In this episode, we discuss Gavin Baker’s view that AI is a super cycle, with the biggest opportunities in infrastructure, chips, memory, and power rather than software. It&#x27;s interesting to pit him against Leopold Aschenbrenner, who has taken a higher octane approach to similar overarching theses. Gavin&#x27;s portfolio includes Astera Labs, Cerebras, NVIDIA, Micron, and Unity Software. DYOR! ------ 🌌 LIMITLESS HQ ⬇️ NEWSLETTER: https://limitlessft.substack.com/ FOLLOW ON X: https://x.com/LimitlessFT SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/5oV29YUL8AzzwXkxEXlRMQ APPLE: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/limitless-podcast/id1813210890 RSS FEED: https://limitlessft.substack.com/ ------ TIMESTAMPS 0:00 AI Infrastructure Thesis 1:47 Gavin’s Track Record 2:57 Bottlenecks in Chips 5:26 Unity and World Models 7:40 Inference 11:20 Four AI Constraints 17:35 Energy and Space Compute 19:08 This Isn’t Dot-Com 24:10 Supply Constraints 26:06 Conclusion ------ RESOURCES Josh: https://x.com/JoshKale Ejaaz: https://x.com/cryptopunk7213 ------ Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures⁠

How Gavin Baker Invests in AI, and Where the Bubble is Going Next

Limitless: An AI Podcast

# Full Transcript

**Podcast:** Limitless: An AI Podcast

## Participants

- **Josh Kale** (None)
- **Ejaz** (None)
- **Gavin Baker** (Atreides Management)

## Transcript

Gavin Baker is one of the most prolific AI investors that almost no one has heard of. He spent the last 20 years investing in some of the biggest AI companies before they became household names. He was an early backer of NVIDIA, as well as Cerebrus, which IPO'd very recently. And he has a very concrete thesis, which is AI isn't in a bubble. It's quite the contrary. It's in a super cycle. He says that by looking at the watts, wafers and tokens, the infrastructure of AI, he's identified some of the key bottlenecks and constraints.

And he has one simple thesis. The biggest returns that you can get in AI is in electricity, power and silicon fabrication. It's got nothing to do with SaaS software as a service. It's got nothing to do with chatbots such as Anthropic or OpenAI. It all filters downstream from semiconductors, the picks and shovels that build the entire AI industry. And he's been expressing that interest to the tune of $4.1 billion. While most people are calling the AI industry a complete bubble, he thinks that it is a generational buying opportunity,

specifically for AI infrastructure. And he makes the thesis very clearly in his font. And if you hear these constraints that he's talking about, this AI infrastructure, you realize that this kind of sounds pretty familiar. We've heard this thesis before. And that's because on the show, many times we've covered a investor by the name of Leopold Ashenbrenner. He has been around for three years. He just published his most recent 13F. And he has a lot of the same core philosophies. Now, here's the difference. Leopold's been around for what, three years?

Gavin's been doing this for 20 plus years. And when we're comparing these two, Leopold actually has almost three times the assets under management. But there's this great quote that I was reminded of from our producer Luke before the show is like, Okay, you can beat Warren Buffett over a year, but can you beat him over multiple decades? And Gavin Baker has a track record that proves that he might have a slightly different outlook on this investment thesis. For those who don't know, Gavin Baker, he is the basically founder of this company named Atreides Management. They are an investing fund. And he has spent 20 years investing in NVIDIA.

Now, if you've invested in NVIDIA for 20 years, it's a miracle he's still working because those are some pretty incredible returns. Some of the early wins that we've recently seen include companies like Cerebris, which he was a very early investor in. Cerebrus, if you'll remember, just IPO'd for an ungodly amount of money. Same with this company, Astera Labs. And there's a lot of other companies that I don't think you've probably heard of before that we're going to cover in this episode

as we walk through his portfolio and his guidance on whe...

How Gavin Baker Invests in AI, and Where the Bubble is Going Next

Transcript

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How Gavin Baker Invests in AI, and Where the Bubble is Going Next

Transcript

Built for investment professionals

Every day you wait, your competitors are findingedge in conversations you're not hearing.

Every day you wait, your competitors are finding
edge in conversations you're not hearing.