Posts of Venture Capital

🤖 AI Tokens Get Cheaper, Usage Explodes AI token pricing is collapsing, while usage is exploding as reasoning models and agents consume far more tokens per task. That should drive more AI usage across $GOOGL, $MSFT, $META and $AMZN. $NVDA, $AMD and $AVGO power the compute stack, while $MU and $SKHY supply memory. ✔️ @venture

Fair Isaac is down 64% from its highs. This is the backside of concentration. $FICO When a fund's largest holding moves against it, investors will surely leave. Fund management is tough. ✔️ @venture

Nano Banc became the 6th US bank to fail in 2026. Over 25% of its loans went bad, mostly tied to commercial real estate. ✔️ @venture

A $10,000 investment a decade ago produced: 🖱️ Nvidia, $1,355,800. 🖱️ AMD, $964,300. 🖱️ Sterling, $684,000. 🖱️ Micron, $601,300. 🖱️ Comfort Systems, $570,300. 🖱️ Arista, $383,200. 🖱️ Celestica, $350,400. Nvidia was the clear leader. ✔️ @venture

📊 Risk Types ✔️ @venture

What “Smart Money” bought last quarter. ✔️ @venture

Top investing books. ✔️ @venture

📊 A Narrow Market Beneath the S&P 500 The S&P 500 is near all-time highs, but almost half of its stocks are moving differently from the index. Goldman says the divergence resembles the Tech Bubble. Market concentration is driving the gap. The 10 largest stocks account for around 40% of the S&P 500, and many are benefiting from the AI boom. Their size can lift the index even as broader participation weakens. The rest of the market is facing higher bond yields, $100+ oil, a stronger dollar, and higher borrowing costs. Record levels in the S&P 500 do not mean most stocks are performing well. ✔️ @venture

🚀 SpaceX President Sells $52.55M Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX president, sold $52.55M of $SPCX. She has run daily operations since 2008, shares sold for $151-$155 each. 342,170 shares sold across 5 transactions on Sept 22, she still holds $366M in $SPCX. ✔️ @venture

⚠️ AI Risk Claims Face Investor Skepticism Sam Altman and Dario Amodei told the UN Security Council that AI could be “a risk to humanity as a whole” and warned that we could “lose control of the future to AI.” Ten days earlier, Michael Burry called the message self-serving hype. 🖱️ LLMs are not AI and will not become AGI, so there is nothing to slow down. 🖱️ Competition is arriving quickly, which could reduce the benefits for incumbents. 🖱️ IPO candidates need hype. Saying “we are so awesome it could become dangerous” fits that pattern. 🖱️ The warnings may also provide cover for slowing growth if planned IPOs are pushed out. ✔️ @venture

🆗 BNP Raises NBIS Price Target BNP upgraded NBIS to Outperform and raised its price target to $399, modeling $22B+ in exit 2027 ARR as AI cloud pricing moves toward $40M/MW. With Meta and Microsoft largely ramped by early 2027, BNP sees a sharp reset higher in incremental-capacity economics, with Nvidia’s Vera Rubin adding another leg of upside. ✔️ @venture

"Those who keep learning will keep rising in life." Charlie Munger ✔️ @venture

📉 10-Year Yield at 2007 High The 10-year bond yield is at its highest level since July 2007. Three months later, the global financial crisis began, and the Nasdaq fell 56% over the next 16 months. ✔️ @venture

Palantir crossed $190 for the first time in a year. $PLTR is up 669% since Jim Simons disclosed a $21M stake. He opened it in Q2 2021. ✔️ @venture

“The greatest investors make large concentrated bets where they have a lot of conviction.” - Stanley Druckenmiller. There’s a fine line between confident and overconfident. Positions should be large enough to capture opportunity, small enough to keep you in the game. ✔️ @venture

🇨🇳 China’s Gold Demand Surges China spent nearly $160 billion on gold in the last 8 months, even as prices reached $5,595 this year. The government sees gold as a safe store of funds with no counterparty risk. Domestic investors are also turning to it as real estate and stocks struggle, while the 10-year bond yield is just 1.67%. China imported more than 1,000 tonnes this year, exceeding its entire 2025 volume. Demand shows no sign of fading. ✔️ @venture

NVIDIA director Mark Stevens sold nearly $947M in $NVDA shares in under a month. 🖱️ Aug 31-Sep 2: Sold $410.8M in $NVDA shares. 🖱️ Sep 4: Sold an additional $235.6M in $NVDA shares. 🖱️ Sep 18: Sold an additional $300M in shares. Stevens has held a board seat since 2008 and still holds $6.3B in $NVDA. ✔️ @venture

Tesla shares are up 5,581% since this 2013 headline. ✔️ @venture

💵 Schwab Cash Rates Compared On 21st September 2026, $10,000 in Schwab’s Bank Sweep at 0.01% would earn about $1 yearly. The same amount in managed portfolios’ cash allocation at 3.29% would earn about $329, before tax and account costs. Deposit insurance covers eligible bank deposits within limits, but does not set rates. The 3.29% applies only to cash in Schwab Intelligent Portfolios, not the full portfolio, which carries market risk and expenses. The Fed’s 3.75% to 4% target range took effect on 16 September, after the 3.29% rate began on 1 September. Intelligent Portfolios resets monthly. Ordinary cash rates can change at Schwab’s discretion. Schwab One Interest may pay $0 for a day when interest is below half a cent. At 0.01% on $10,000, daily interest is about 0.27 cents. The 15th October 2026 expectation is 0.01% for ordinary cash and above 3.29% for managed cash. ✔️ @venture

🍏 Apple Pay Eyes Stablecoins Apple, with over 2 billion users, is hiring an Apple Pay strategy lead with stablecoin and blockchain experience. That could bring stablecoins into one of the world's largest payment ecosystems. ✔️ @venture

Ⓜ️ Meta’s Narrative Turns on Price Meta shows how quickly the market can change its narrative once the stock starts working. The same capex, AI spending, and installed base that were ignored suddenly look like advantages. Muse was the turning point. Meta showed a consumer AI product with clear monetization through paid tiers, while plugging the agent into apps and services people already use. The lesson is to build conviction before the story feels obvious, so the position is in place before everyone else pays up for the same thesis. ✔️ @venture

🛢 Oil Inventories Near Operational Floor Global oil inventories are projected to hit their operational floor of 6.8 billion barrels this month if the Strait of Hormuz remains shut, according to JPMorgan. Below that level, pipelines cannot maintain pressure and refineries start failing, regardless of the oil price. It would be the first time in recorded history that physical oil availability, not just price, becomes the concern. ✔️ @venture

🕊 A Ceasefire With a Missing Party Published by Oman on 6th May 2025, the one-sentence deal bars Houthi and US attacks on each other, including American vessels, in the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab Strait. Saudi Arabia is not mentioned, while Israel was excluded by the Houthis. The arrangement has held: no American bomb has fallen since then, and no confirmed Houthi strike on a US target has been recorded. US officials say ships still targeted are Saudi. That leaves a policy contradiction. More than 100 US military personnel are reportedly in Saudi Arabia, providing targeting data to aircraft fighting the Houthis. The coalition said it destroyed Friday’s missile, but AFP saw a burning Aramco-branded fuel tank and the Journal reported hits to jet-fuel facilities. The cause remains unconfirmed, but the strike reached Riyadh for the first time since March 2022. ✔️ @venture

A 1964 prediction about our AI future. ✔️ @venture

📉 Oracle’s Filings Under Scrutiny Michael Burry says Big Tech filings may not show the full scale of AI commitments. Oracle is his main example, with $288B in leases it has not started paying. 🖱️ CEOs sign filings under oath, and lying on them is a crime. 🖱️ The filings do not show how much AI demand comes from companies buying each other’s products. 🖱️ Oracle’s 121% growth figure includes this type of revenue, without disclosing how much. 🖱️ Amazon, Meta, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Oracle made $400B in profit last year, a fraction of their committed spending. Burry is not calling it fraud. His point is that the truth may not be in the filings. ✔️ @venture

Trump says he is creating an AI Force and will appoint an AI czar. The U.S. will not slow or stifle AI development. AI could eventually account for 25% of U.S. GDP. ✔️ @venture

❤️‍🔥 Coffee Prices Fall 20% Coffee prices are down 20% this year as supply exceeds demand for the first time in 4 years. Brazil, the world's top coffee producer, is behind the surplus, with exports up 40% from a year ago. ✔️ @venture

🥋 BOJ Signals Further Rate Hikes The Bank of Japan voted 7-2 to raise rates to 1.25%. Further hikes will depend on activity, prices, and financial conditions. Underlying inflation could exceed the 2% target as wage growth, rising expectations, a weak yen, higher oil prices, and strong AI-related demand push up selling prices. The economy is recovering moderately, supported by employment, income growth, and AI-related demand. CPI is expected to move clearly above 2% from the second half of FY2026, while financial conditions remain accommodative. Governor Ueda’s remarks will be watched for clues on the timing and pace of further hikes. ✔️ @venture

“You don't need a lot of brains in this business…What you do need is emotional stability. You have to be able to think independently: when you come to a conclusion, you have to really not care what other people say and just follow the facts and your reasoning.” Warren Buffett ✔️ @venture

☺️ AMD Chip Prices AMD is reportedly preparing to raise chip prices by ~10% as higher TSM wafer costs flow through to customers. The increases are expected to hit AI accelerators and consumer GPUs in Q4, as advanced-node manufacturing gets more expensive. ✔️ @venture