Gavin Baker - AI Market Jitters - [Invest Like the Best, EP.485]
Gavin Baker - AI Market Jitters - [Invest Like the Best, EP.485]
Podcast1 hr 5 min
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Note: AI-generated summary based on third-party content. Not financial advice. Read more.
Quick Insights

NVIDIA (NVDA) currently trades at its cheapest forward P/E multiple in a decade, presenting a prime long-term entry point for investors despite recent AI sector volatility. Underlying fundamentals for NVIDIA (NVDA) remain exceptionally strong as token growth and GPU rental pricing continue to accelerate rapidly. Investors should capitalize on short-term market panics to buy top-tier hardware and infrastructure providers like Microsoft (MSFT), Meta (META), and Amazon (AMZN), whose hyperscaler cash flows are surging. As older contracted compute bases expire, upcoming price re-adjustments will significantly drive revenue acceleration across the semiconductor sector.

Detailed Analysis

NVIDIA (NVDA)

  • Trading at its lowest forward price-to-earnings (P/E) multiple of the last 10 years, comparable only to major market bottoms like "Liberation Day" and the "DeepSeek" sell-off.
  • The market currently assumes NVIDIA is significantly over-earning, which explains the low multiple despite accelerating underlying fundamentals.
  • NVIDIA is playing a sophisticated chess game in supply chain matchmaking and has introduced a credit wrapper business model with a revenue share component if GPU prices remain above a floor. This acts as a royalty on recurring revenue and helps bridge the cash flow gap for buyers.
  • The company's chips remain the gold standard for financeability, land acquisition, and power integration compared to newer startup competitors.

Takeaways

  • Despite heavy market volatility and a recent 40-60% correction in AI-related names, NVIDIA's fundamental demand drivers—such as token growth and GPU rental pricing—continue to accelerate rather than decelerate.
  • Long-term investors may find an attractive entry point given the historically low forward P.E multiple, provided they believe compute demand and hyperscaler operating cash flows will continue to expand.

SpaceX / xAI (Private)

  • Has demonstrated an ability to bring on massive amounts of compute faster and at lower costs than almost anyone else in the industry.
  • Market participants speculate about aggressive future compute expansion (such as scaling significantly over the next 18 to 24 months), though skeptics point to high capital requirements and rising interest rates.
  • Core ecosystem products like Grok 4.5 and Cursor are driving strong adoption and helping fuel high annual recurring revenue (ARR) potential.
  • Benchmark recently funded StarCloud, an orbital compute partner utilizing SpaceX's starlink laser technology, signaling institutional confidence in adjacent space-based compute initiatives.

Takeaways

  • While public market sentiment has been skeptical regarding the immense capital outlays required for data center and compute buildouts, execution history suggests that underestimating management's ability to compress timelines remains a risk for bears.

Infrastructure and Hardware Sector (Semiconductors, Memory, and Cloud)

  • Older GPU generations and contracted compute bases are trading at massive discounts to current spot markets, and as long-term contracts roll off, repricing higher will drive strong acceleration in infrastructure revenues.
  • Hyperscaler operating cash flows for major players like Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon have accelerated.
  • Memory and components are increasingly tied to Long-Term Agreements (LTAs) and customer prepays, shifting industry dynamics toward long-term durability and supply chain allocation security.
  • Open-source inference clouds (such as Together AI, Modal, and Base10) are scaling rapidly, taking margin dollars away from frontier model layers while simultaneously driving massive demand for underlying infrastructure compute.

Takeaways

  • Short-term market panics driven by credit spreads or temporary narrative shifts often overlook the underlying quantitative reality: compute shortages remain acute, and data center demand continues to increase across both AI-native startups and enterprise routers.
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Episode Description
My guest today is Gavin Baker, founding partner and CIO of Atreides Management. This is our seventh conversation, and just two months after Gavin's last appearance. It's about the gap between what the market is doing and what companies are seeing. It's been a tough month or so for public AI names, but there's no sign of a slowdown on the ground in Silicon Valley. We discuss the latest moves, contracted vs. spot GPU prices, the game theory of memory supply agreements, and why Claude has become the Walter Cronkite of the stock market. We close on SpaceX, orbital compute, and what Gavin sees as the single biggest risk to all of it. Please enjoy this conversation, from the famous table at Benchmark, with my friend Gavin Baker. For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here. ----- Become a Colossus member to get our quarterly print magazine and private audio experience, including exclusive profiles and early access to select episodes. Subscribe at colossus.com/subscribe. ----- Ramp's mission is to help companies manage their spend in a way that reduces expenses and frees up time for teams to work on more valuable projects. Go to ramp.com/invest to sign up for free and get a $250 welcome bonus. ----- Trusted by thousands of businesses, Vanta continuously monitors your security posture and streamlines audits so you can win enterprise deals and build customer trust without the traditional overhead. Invest Like the Best listeners get a special offer of $1,000 off Vanta when you go to vanta.com/invest.  ----- WorkOS is the infrastructure B2B and AI-native companies use to sell to enterprise. It covers everything enterprise security requires: SSO, SCIM, RBAC, Audit Logs, AI governance, and more. Trusted by 2,000+ fast-growing companies, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Cursor, and Vercel. ----- Rogo is the AI platform for finance. They're building agents for Wall Street that are trained to understand how bankers and investors actually do work: from diligence and modeling, to turning analysis into deliverables. To learn more, visit rogo.ai/invest. ----- Ridgeline has built a complete, real-time, modern operating system for investment managers. It handles trading, portfolio management, compliance, customer reporting, and much more through an all-in-one real-time cloud platform. Visit ridgeline.ai. ----- Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant. Timestamps: (00:00:00) Welcome to Invest Like The Best (00:02:35) First Question: July Was 2022 in a Month (00:04:08) The Private Companies Public Markets Can't See (00:05:06) Old GPUs Repricing Higher (00:06:53) Walking Through the Month (00:08:22) Kimi, GLM 5.2 & the Open Source Freak-Out (00:10:51) Real Yields, Spreads & CDS (00:11:54) Does the Build-Out Need Credit? (00:15:22) A Sell-Off With No Clear Villain (00:17:35) Open Source as Dark Matter (00:18:39) Nvidia's Lowest Forward PE in 10 Years (00:21:35) Claude as Walter Cronkite for the Stock Market (00:23:55) Continual Learning & Sample Efficiency (00:25:19) What Would Actually Scare Him (00:26:38) Routers & the Multi-Model Future (00:30:51) Tokens as a Percent of Comp Spend (00:33:37) The Game Theory of Breaking an LTA (00:36:41) Nvidia's Credit Wrapper & Revenue Share (00:37:45) What He'd Do If He Ran Hynix (00:41:46) Who's More Bullish than Him (00:43:28) China's DUV Machine (00:46:10) Bull Case for Software (00:48:16) The RSI Maximalist View (00:49:31) Inference Clouds Growing Without Burning Cash (00:50:35) The Biggest Risk Is Regulation (00:53:44) Telling the Story Better (00:57:15) Dark Horses (00:58:02) SpaceX in the Public Markets
About Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy

By Colossus | Investing & Business Podcasts

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