Gavin Baker - Watts and Wafers - [Invest Like the Best, EP.473]

About this episode

Gavin Baker discusses the future of AI, focusing on the constraints of watts and wafers and their implications for the industry.

My guest today is Gavin Baker, founding partner and CIO of Atreides Management, and this is our sixth conversation. The central theme is watts and wafers, the two physical constraints that in Gavin's view will dictate the next phase of AI. On power, he thinks the near-term shortage starts to ease in 2027 and 2028 as new sources of energy come online, and that orbital compute solves it in the long term. On wafers, he explains what is different this time from the dotcom bubble and why TSMC’s capacity decisions may be the single most important variable to watch. We also discuss Elon’s Terrafab, the disaggregation of GPUs, the role of new chip companies, and whether the economic value of AI will keep accruing to frontier models. For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. ----- Become a Colossus member to get our quarterly print magazine and private audio experience, including exclusive profiles and early access to select episodes. Subscribe at ⁠colossus.com/subscribe⁠. ----- ⁠Ramp’s⁠ mission is to help companies manage their spend in a way that reduces expenses and frees up time for teams to work on more…

People in this episode

Host: Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Guest: Gavin Baker

Topics covered

• AI
• energy
• semiconductors
• chip manufacturing
• economic value of AI

Keywords

• AI
• energy shortage
• semiconductors
• chip capacity
• economic value

Sponsors

Ramp, Vanta

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Atreides Management, TSMC

Products: Terrafab, GPUs

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