MBI Deep Dives (Page 20)

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The Slow Singularity

I often come across almost a steady stream of tweets from people mostly in tech (and sometimes in finance) that imply you have a very short period of time left to “escape the permanent underclass”. These tweets have a tinge of humor and warning associated with such an outlook of

Incentives > Intelligence: The Real Barrier(s) to Agentic AI

A few days ago, I came across this reels through which I got to know about Amazon’s new “Buy For Me” feature. This feature, however, created some controversies. From Modern Retail: “Amazon’s “Buy For Me” feature allows users to purchase products from third-party websites without leaving Amazon’

The Misunderstood Utility of Search Ads

I have been increasingly noticing an overwhelming negative perception on search ads. Ben Thompson often mentions how search ads can feel like skimming the advertisers as Google collects rent on economic activity that would likely happen anyway. Notice this piece from 2022: “…oftentimes search ads feel like a rake on

TSMC's Green Signal

A Programming Note: I will take a personal day tomorrow, so there won’t be any new post tomorrow. TSMC’s 4Q’25 call was quite reassuring for AI bulls. Many investors look at TSMC as an important barometer for assessing the cycle as TSMC is deeply incentivized to ensure

Airbnb: Inbound Headwinds, AI Moat Question, and a CTO Shakeup

The travel industry has received some not-so-encouraging news in the last couple of days. First, Skift reported that international travel to the US went down for eight consecutive months. Overall overseas visitation to the US fell 2.5% in 2025. With this year’s Football (Soccer) World Cup

"File over App", Veeva at JPM Healthcare Conference

Back in 2023, Steph Ango, CEO of Obsidian, wrote an intriguing piece titled “File over app”. It’s a bit philosophical piece. Some excerpt from the piece: “File over app is a philosophy: if you want to create digital artifacts that last, they must be files you can control, in

The Ecosystem Advantage: Part 2

While explaining Alphabet’s “ecosystem advantage”, I mentioned “the real advantage of Google is its ability to monetize Gemini through ads even though they are not putting ads on the core Gemini chat bots itself.” To say it differently, I consider it exceptionally likely that Google will insert ads in

China's Rise in Innovation Ladder and Questions for ASML

JP Morgan in its recent “2026 Eye on the Market Outlook” discussed four specific “What Could Go Wrong” for the market over the medium term. One that caught my attention is a section titled “China scales the moat with its own lithography-semiconductor technology…when, not if”. The section starts

Software in Crosshairs: Part 2

After publishing “Software in Crosshairs” last week, I received some interesting feedback. One email from someone who works in enterprise SaaS stood out as he took bit of an issue with how Foundation Capital outlined incumbent companies’ inability to capture the context graphs. I am publishing his email with his

"The Compute Theory of Everything"

One of my favorite recent genre of content these days is annual reflection from AI researchers. Dan Wang isn’t an AI researcher, but I think his fantastic annual letters was inspiration among many. I will admit that through his letters, Wang has singlehandedly elicited from me a sense of