AI demand isn't slowing. It's getting rationed. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy says AWS's 2026 capacity is sold out, 2027 is largely sold out, and a good chunk of 2028 is already committed. To us, that settles the "will the neoclouds survive?" debate: the hyperscaler with the deepest pockets can't build fast enough either, so the overflow has nowhere to go but the rest of the stack. Our house view is that we're still in the first inning, and the timeline to watch is how long data centers take to build, not whether demand holds up. Musk saying the cost of serving SpaceX's Grok Bot agent is "unsustainably high relative to revenue" makes the same point from the other side: agents burn compute faster than pricing has caught up. From there we go to the places where AI is leaving the data center. Anduril and Qualcomm unveiled BlueChip, a rugged laptop running Snapdragon X chips made by TSMC in Arizona. It's aimed at the military, government, first responders and law enforcement, with preorders opening in 2027. It's Palmer Luckey's playbook of landing and expanding beyond drones, from a company valued at $61B in its May Series H and around $90B in an October employee tender. Then there's Microduck, the $399 open-source robot duck from Hugging Face's Pollen Robotics. Preorders reportedly passed 20,000 after Jensen Huang showed it off on stage at GTC Berlin, and Nvidia has agreed to acquire Hugging Face in a reported $12.9B deal. We'd watch it as a sim-to-real training platform as much as a holiday toy. We close on Kalshi, which reportedly just raised $1B at a $40B valuation, with Polymarket as its main rival. On Election Day, we ask whether prediction markets are a good business, whether they're an ethical one, and why proprietary betting data may be the real asset.
Aaron Ross and Aaron Dillon break down AWS's sold-out cloud, Anduril's move into laptops, Nvidia's viral robot duck, and the business case for prediction markets.
In this episode:
AWS sold out through 2027: why Dillon says you can't be bullish on Amazon's backlog and bearish on neoclouds at the same time
How do you value a company that's running at full capacity? Build timelines vs. demand, and the overbuild debate
Grok Bot's compute math and whether AI agents are underpriced
Microduck and Reachy Mini: Pollen Robotics, Hugging Face, Nvidia, and robots in the home
Anduril × Qualcomm BlueChip: a US-built laptop for government buyers, and Palmer Luckey's land-and-expand strategy
Kalshi and Polymarket: sponsorships, the Vice Fund lens, regulatory risk, and the data moat
Prediction markets vs. polls, who's behind the money, and sports-integrity scandals
Where do you draw the line? Dillon on building a values-screened S&P 500 ETF
Chapters
00:00 Intro: AWS, Anduril, Microduck & Kalshi
00:31 AWS sold out: you can't be bearish on neoclouds
01:04 How do you price a company at full capacity?
01:30 Build timelines vs. demand: the overbuild question
02:12 Why Dillon says it's still the first inning
02:40 Grok Bot's compute math doesn't work (yet)
03:10 Would you pay double for your AI agent?
03:24 Microduck: Nvidia, Hugging Face & Pollen Robotics
03:58 Star Wars vibes and a robot for a one-year-old
04:27 Dillon's daughter and the four-month wait
05:00 Reachy Mini: the build-it-yourself desktop robot
05:44 Robots in our houses very soon
06:43 Anduril's BlueChip laptop
07:05 Palmer Luckey, ModRetro, and building in the garage
07:53 Government first, phone next?
08:11 Why a US-made computer matters
09:05 Anduril's land-and-expand playbook
09:38 Kalshi: are you a gambler?
10:05 Sponsorships everywhere: good business, ethical business?
10:29 The Vice Fund lens
11:53 Kalshi vs. Polymarket and the brand race
12:16 Regulatory risk and the data moat
12:55 Prediction markets vs. polls
13:21 Who's behind the money? Manipulation risk
13:51 Front-running rules and the Polymarket CEO headlines
14:08 Betting scandals and sports integrity
15:16 Is Kalshi a good business?
15:46 The values-screened ETF story: where do you draw the line?
17:41 Norms, vices, and why prediction markets aren't going anywhere
17:59 Close
This content is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice, an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy any security. Opinions expressed are those of the speakers as of the recording date and may change without notice. Private company securities are illiquid, speculative, and involve a high degree of risk, including the potential loss of the entire investment, and are generally available only to accredited investors. The hosts or their affiliates may hold positions in, or have business relationships with, companies discussed. Valuations and figures cited are based on public reporting and have not been independently verified.