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Rethinking the Data Moat
I want to highlight a couple of pieces which I found to be quite intriguing. The first is Dwarkesh Patel’s conversation with Ryan Greenblatt, chief scientist at Redwood Research. Admittedly, while the conversation about whether automating AI research triggers recursive self-improvement was thought provoking, it was also quite
Why DoorDash’s Autonomous Strategy Beats Uber’s Hodgepodge
Uber’s decision to divest its stake in Serve, the autonomous delivery robot company that was spun out of Uber in 2021, was more interesting than it may appear at first glance. When I looked into it, I came to realize that Serve is actually a publicly listed company now.
The AI Compute Squeeze
Programming Note: MBI Deep Dives will be off during the weekend and I will resume the daily posting cadence from Monday next week.
If you followed hyperscalers earnings, you probably already knew that the neoclouds would repeat some version of “demand for compute is outstripping supply” in their earnings calls.
Why I am going to utilize options more to manage my portfolio
Back in 2021, I once responded to someone on X (formerly twitter) why I didn’t want to engage in trading options. While that choice sounded “wise” to me, reality hit me in 2022. As you can see here, I came to 2022 with a significant exposure to big tech
Constellation Software 2Q'26: Soft Organic Growth, but Encouraging Deployment Pace
Constellation Software (CSU) delivered a quarter that can be considered bit of a Rorschach test. Organic growth printed the weakest number in nearly 6 years while capital deployment pace is running pretty hot. I cannot speak for other shareholders, but if you own it (as I do) for CSU’s
License to Chase the AI Frontier
While looking at Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, I was quite struck by what they all have in common. The top model developers except one all have one thing in common: they are all currently founder-led companies. Alphabet is the sole exception. But even in Alphabet’s case, the company
Figma 2Q'26: Near-Term Re-acceleration vs. Long-Term Durability
Following its IPO last year, Figma reported two consecutive quarters of revenue growth deceleration. Then it flipped and revenue growth re-accelerated in each of the last three quarters. Given investors ever growing obsession with “accelerating revenue” companies, at first glance you may be surprised that the stock has been
Digital Advertising Industry Snapshot 2Q'26
As I do after every quarter, let me share the snapshot of the overall digital advertising industry. Let me first explain some changes for this quarter’s edition.
First of all, digital advertising industry is defined as Alphabet’s advertising revenue+ Meta’s advertising revenue+ Snap’s ad revenue+ Pinterest
Shopify 2Q'26: Sustained Miraculous Growth
Shopify’s Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) maintained its almost miraculous 30% growth (FXN) in 2Q’26. This was actually their fifth consecutive quarters of 29-30% GMV (FXN) growth. I say miraculous because never in a million years I would have imagined five years ago that Shopify would grow at
Airbnb 2Q'26: Widening the Gap with Booking
Airbnb reported an acceleration in nights and seats (N&S) booked, adding 14 million (+10%) N&S YoY which was the highest since 3Q’23. More importantly, Airbnb guided low double digit N&S growth even for 3Q’26 which indicates a likely sustained acceleration in the