How Elephants May Die

Hendrik Bessembinder's research indicates that ~4% of companies account for virtually all the excess return over the one-month Treasury bill rate in the US stock market since 1926. You have probably already come across this study before, but one of my inferences from this study was we

Hardcoding Habits

In early 2025, Mark Zuckerberg mentioned that he estimates EU fined the US tech companies more than $30 Billion over the last decade or so. He went onto lament that instead of US government defending their tech companies from this indirect form of “tariff”, US government itself often led such

Meta’s AI Advantage is "In the Water"

ChatGPT or any chat bots have the benefit of novelty factor to capture our imagination in the last three years. However, one challenge with the chat bot paradigm is it requires a level of intentionality from the users that may not be as pervasive and persistent than most power users

Digital Advertising Industry Snapshot 4Q'25

Programming Note: I will be in San Francisco Bay Area next Tuesday. If any of you wants to meet for lunch around Larkspur, please feel free to reach out. Since it will be one-on-one lunch meeting, I may have to decline if there are multiple interests. As I

The Nvidia Math

Nvidia posted yet another amazing quarter, and their guide for next quarter was comfortably ahead of the elevated consensus estimates. Yet, the stock has gone down?? In fact, one of the recurring bemusements among many investors is why Nvidia stock seemed to have lost its momentum despite the massive capex

CoStar's Obfuscation, and AI vulnerabilities

While I used to enjoy Andy Florance’s humor during CoStar’s earnings calls, I cannot say I relished listening to the 45-minute prepared remarks by Andy Florance and almost 90-minute earnings call yesterday. Perhaps the stock being flat for almost the last seven years is not helping

Scuttleblurb on Veeva

My friend Scuttleblurb yesterday wrote a very thoughtful piece on Veeva (link to his Website, and Substack). With his permission, I want to highlight three specific bits from his piece. First, Scuttleblurb explained Veeva’s myriad products through the lens of a typical clinical workflow which I thought was really

Alphabet: From Search to AI to "AGI"

Google is perhaps one of the most recognized brand in the world. I wouldn’t, however, confuse familiarity with understanding of Alphabet’s business. By the end of this piece, it will likely be clear how complex this business has become over time. It is perhaps not a stretch to

The Long-term Reality of Hyperscalers: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly Scenarios

In my “Lipstick on Frontier AI Pigs” piece, I wrote the following: Apart from ignoring the cost of training, another deeply questionable assumption Amodei makes in his argument is the gross margin for inference. In his “stylized” example, he assumes gross margin to be 67% which is directly responsible for

Walmart’s Trillion-Dollar Mojo

Walmart was the most recent member in the trillion dollar club companies. After coming to IPO in 1970, it took them almost 54 years to reach half a trillion dollar of Enterprise Value (EV). The next $500 Billion took just two years! As they say, the first $500 Billion is