00:29:39 · John Coogan, Gavin Baker
[00:29:39] S0: Yeah. [00:29:39] S2: In your in your town. You know? One of my favorite exchanges was somebody said, well, I'll wait until they start building data centers in the wealthiest county in America. Well, Loudoun County is the wealthiest county in America. They have the highest per capita data centers. [00:29:53] S0: Yep. Virginia. US East. [00:29:56] S2: Amazon. Yep. So just understanding that, like, I understand why, you know, some people are worried. There... There's been a lot of fear. There's... You know, that we've all seen scary movies. But a lot of awesome things are happening today Yeah. Because of AI for ordinary Americans, for blue collar Americans, for these small towns. We're re industrializing America. We're, you know, massively increasing our electrical generation capacity, which is you cannot re industrialize without power. That's job number one. So I think a lot of good things are happening, and I'm just trying to do what little I can to at least tell that side of the story, and then be pretty balanced. Like, you know, Anthropic, I called it like I saw it in the summer. They were losing market share. Mhmm. I'm calling it like I see it in October. They're reaccelerating Yeah. And gaining share. [00:30:50] S0: Yeah. [00:30:51] S2: The s one, it was an upside surprise to me. I'm trying to call balls and strikes Sure. Because my job is to just get it right.
00:30:51 · Gavin Baker, Jordi Hays, John Coogan
[00:30:51] S2: The s one, it was an upside surprise to me. I'm trying to call balls and strikes Sure. Because my job is to just get it right. [00:31:01] S1: Yeah. Jordan And it's funny because, you know, people will get so flustered by, you know, seeing different posts on x. Sure. But imagine how boring x would be if no one ever took a stance. [00:31:12] S2: Oh, yeah. [00:31:13] S1: It was just like, well, it might be this. [00:31:15] S0: Yeah. It might be that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. [00:31:16] S1: And it might be this. [00:31:17] S0: No. No. But have you considered that? It's over or or we're back. This is the best thing ever in the world. Because then we can have a debate. At least you took a stance. Yeah. Yeah. It's great. [00:31:25] S2: Yes. [00:31:25] S0: Jordy mentioned, getting sharp on bio, starting to think about opportunities there. How deep have you gone in the AI stack? I saw a a funny post that was like, you could spend all your time thinking about OpenAI and Anthropic and Google or... And then, you know, meet all the neo clouds and, meet Lynn and Tuan and figure out what's going on in the private markets, or you could just buy copper. And you could just sit there and hold copper. Right? Because, like Yeah. It's almost a perfect proxy or something like that. But how far have you gone down into energy infrastructure, commodities? Like, how how sharp are you on those? How how relevant or interesting is the... Are those markets to you in this world since they do seem adjacent?
00:31:25 · John Coogan, Gavin Baker
[00:31:25] S0: Jordy mentioned, getting sharp on bio, starting to think about opportunities there. How deep have you gone in the AI stack? I saw a a funny post that was like, you could spend all your time thinking about OpenAI and Anthropic and Google or... And then, you know, meet all the neo clouds and, meet Lynn and Tuan and figure out what's going on in the private markets, or you could just buy copper. And you could just sit there and hold copper. Right? Because, like Yeah. It's almost a perfect proxy or something like that. But how far have you gone down into energy infrastructure, commodities? Like, how how sharp are you on those? How how relevant or interesting is the... Are those markets to you in this world since they do seem adjacent? [00:32:05] S2: No. I pay close attention to all of those. I ran a diversified fund in Prior Life for nine years. You know, I was an energy investor. Yeah. You know, natural resources. I always... For many years, did would do, like, kind of marketing meetings with the with the gold analyst at at at my my prior employer, Fidelity. So I'd always, you know, knew about the merits of gold from a portfolio construction perspective, but always have it in the fund. By the way, just because it triggers people, I wanna say it. I find it so amusing how upset gold bulls get at the idea of asteroid mining. Like, what? It is the idea of asteroid mining. [00:32:46] S0: Oh, yeah. [00:32:47] S2: No one no one has ever been... I've never gotten more hate [00:32:52] S0: Yeah.
00:32:52 · John Coogan, Gavin Baker, Jordi Hays
[00:32:52] S0: Yeah. [00:32:52] S2: Than from the gold crowd about the idea of asteroid binding in the in the asteroid space.... I mean, was like, talk about a challenge to your world's view. [00:33:03] S0: Wait. Are are [00:33:03] S1: they mad about that? It's like it's one of the things you have to... Like, you need to imagine technological disruption. Right? Like Oh, yeah. Look at the diamond industry. [00:33:11] S2: Yeah. Right? Like Totally. Yes. Absolutely. [00:33:13] S1: If you understood that that technology disruption was possible, you probably built labs, like, you know, twenty years ago. [00:33:21] S2: Maybe you would have done something different with that, you know, with the diamonds in your family. But but as far as... I mean, I do... We have spent a lot of time on, like, energy, on the industrial infrastructure, on on natural resources, but we have not made it a big part of the portfolio. We've done some things in private markets as far as trying to help with rare earths. [00:33:47] S0: Mhmm.
00:33:47 · John Coogan, Gavin Baker
[00:33:47] S0: Mhmm. [00:33:47] S2: And... But this is not through acquiring minds. Yeah. It's more... You know, the problem with rare earths, it's not that they're rare. It's that refining them is a very dirty process. And so we we've we've, you know, that we've invested in a company that, know, has a chemical process for refining rare earths. And, you know, I actually think DARPA has done some pretty smart stuff. Like, they kinda have a a lot of different efforts around this. But... Yeah. I mean, I try to pay as close attention to all of it as I can because you you know, as an investor, you you you never know where a weak but important important signal is gonna come from. And so I wanna cast as wide a net as possible. Mhmm. But then also kind of focus maybe the portfolio on the areas where I do feel like maybe we have the the biggest competitive advantage as a firm.
00:34:38 · John Coogan, Gavin Baker, Jordi Hays
[00:34:38] S0: How are you thinking about the evolution of, like, the the marginal capital decider sort of changing in 2027 potentially? Like, if you go back a couple years, you have essentially like seed stage VCs making bets on these AI labs and then eventually some more scaled up venture firms being important capital partners. Some of them have taken Board seats, but they are not deciding the race now. It's big hedge funds, pre IPO rounds. But we're coming up to a world where the fidelities of the world, the insurance agencies are going to be involved, and the insurance funds and sovereign wealth funds are gonna be increasingly involved in financing the build out. Like, what does the next year look like from a perspective of, like, how we get the big dollars into the AI build out? [00:35:29] S2: I mean, I think you named all the big dollar sources. Yeah. And something that I think is pretty underappreciated is, you know, American mutual funds. [00:35:37] S0: Okay. [00:35:38] S2: You are limited in the percentage you can hold in a liquid asset. [00:35:42] S0: Sure. [00:35:43] S2: And so SpaceX and Anthropic [00:35:46] S0: Yep. [00:35:47] S2: Going public [00:35:48] S1: Yep. [00:35:48] S2: Is actually gonna free up a huge amount of buying power [00:35:53] S0: Interesting.