Good evening, everyone. This is our second Dean's Distinguished Speaker Series Talk. I'm so excited to have someone here very special. He's a true leader, he's very well known. Those who invest will never miss this person. And more importantly, I met you three years ago during COVID time in a restaurant and I came on saying, 'Can there be a person nicer than him?' And I truly mean that. He is extremely approachable, very friendly. And you'll see why.
The only show I watch every morning is CNBC. Maybe a little bit of local news, but it's CNBC and back to work. And you see Dan often on CNBC. And one day I switched to CNN, you are there also there said, wow, I follow you. We don't see too many people having their last name with the ETF as well. I see ETF.
And more importantly for us is he is our alumnus who graduated with an MBA in year 2000. I don't know whether you recognize any faculty here or not. I don't know. There's only one who might have taught, no, Joe? Yeah, he got his undergraduate at Penn State BS in finance and I saw your picture in the football.
So let me welcome Dan Ives. Thank you for being here.
I'm gonna quickly introduce, you know, there's no need to introduce you. Most people know you, but nevertheless, Dan is the managing director and senior equity research analyst at Wedbush Securities where he also serves as a global head of technology research.
In June, 2025, something dramatic happened, Wedbush launched the Dan Ives Wedbush AI Revolution ETF, which is called IVES. This ETF capitalizes all about AI technology revolution, the entire supply chain from the chip to the software developers, to the cloud service providers and the users like Tesla. It captures all of it. And if you had invested in that, I think it was one of the fastest ETF to hit billion dollars.
It was the fastest to hit a billion dollar in less than five months. And if you had invested in that, you would've been better than investing in QQQ or XLK.
So QQQ at that time was 20%. I think you're at 38%.
Yeah, I think it's up from about 20%.
Yeah. You know I did have IVES before it became this IVES, the other previous one I had good data.
That was a different one ETF. Before joining Wedbush in 2018, Dan built an impressive career that began as a financial analyst at HBO and later as managing director at FBR Capital Markets where he spent 16 years leading coverage with the enterprise technology ecosystem.
Beyond the research world, Dan is a globally recognized commentator on technology and markets. How well he is known, when I posted online, I had many deans contact me. 'How did you get him?' I said, 'He is our alum.' His insights are featured across major outlets including CNBC, Bloomberg, CNN, Fox News, BBC, and countless others. He has been quoted widely in Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Financial Times, Guardian, The Time Magazine and the list goes on. In 2024, something dramatic happened too. He was even named the best dressed man on Wall Street by New York Post.
And this morning, I had a tough time finding a suit that can match yours.
I thought you were gonna go like a pink.
I thought at least I'll get my pink suit then I had worn my blue shirt. I thought it doesn't match.
Please join me in welcoming one of the finest gentlemen in Wall Street and one of the kindest and nicest person in Wall Street. Welcome back to business school.
I don't think I give such enthusiastic welcome to a lot of others because I know you.
No, so we've talked about this for years. Like I think like when you first came, we talked about this, so I'm just so excited like to be back here and to be doing this also. It's such an exciting time with tech, AI revolution.
So we do ask our audience to give questions and I got questions that span the entire bandwidth of varied questions. That is a lot of students asking, preparing for the future with this AI revolution. How do you prepare yourself? What does the future of work look like? How do you value firms in the AI age? That's a lot of them ask that question. Is the investing behavior changing with the AI and AI revolution? What is the implication of this AI revolution given the geopolitical tension that's happening with a lot of constraints on tariffs and constraints to export technology? How does that value chain work and what is it? And I know you visit all over the world, we love to hear that. How is the broader market itself is changing? A very nice question is much of the growth has come from few stocks.
What does it mean to rest of it? Right? And there was one nice question that is, will AI create jobs or destroy jobs? When will it start to create jobs? And I think there's a lot of paranoia in the market, including in higher education. Oh my god, gloom and doom and it keeps repeating every so many years. And then we have no people to hire after some time.
There are questions about energy needs with AI revolution, what it's gonna do to sustainability? Some of them are asked what is the value of an MBA?
And then what about quantum? And love to hear that. And finally, there was a big set of lot of questions. I can guess what it is. Are we in a bubble? When will this bubble burst? So there are lots of questions. So before starting since we have a lot of faculty alums and students, but majority of them are students. So I'm gonna ask a few questions about that they may be excited, you can inspire them.
And then, and again the goal is like, I like these things to be like where people like walk away like learning something like for them too. Like how it helps them, whether it's like career, whether it's your PA, whatever it may be. You know what I mean? Because too many people just like, they talk these things and like you leave and you're Like, 'Dude, that was such a waste like hour and a half.'
Well let me say, so you've become one of the most recognizable tech analyst on Wall Street. How did your journey begin? And how did it take from what you did in MBA here to that path?
Yeah, and also it's like a good example of like everyone has a different path. Like some people's path is just like glide path. Like everything just sort of works out. Like they get invest in banking job maybe like out of college. And then it becomes this sort of like lockstep sort of career.
Mine was different. Like I came out of Penn State, like I couldn't get a job on Wall Street. I was like a good student but I wasn't someone that was gonna like hugely stick out like academically. I did have a great fun time, but.
And then I did corporate finance HBO and then basically like when I was at H Brothers back in like or mid-'90s. I realized like, 'Look, I need to get an MBA to kind of pivot.' For me, it was like to really to get into Wall Street. Stocks was always my passion, but I couldn't get there coming out of school.
Came here and this really launched me into that realm. I felt like it was gonna like give me all the building blocks that I needed to understand stocks. And being here there's like really like you go back to '98, '99 like dot-com bubble, you know, tech booming, especially like AOL, (indistinct).
And I basically like FBR, which is where I started. Like I started like intern there and ultimately started working there. But I had no knowledge of technology just to be clear. Lot people now like, 'Oh, you're a technologist.' I literally had little understanding of technology.
I started covering tech in '90s and basically really needed to ramp on every part of technology from an outsider perspective. As that happened, you know, if you go back to like '98, '99, 2000, 2001, 2002 of course, bubble. But yet I just kept ramping my whole sort of understanding of the technology and also being able to also like do it in a way that like to understand stocks.
At the end of the day, there's so many people that understand technology, they could do the best spreadsheets in the world, but literally like, they couldn't pick a stock if their life depended on it. My strength has always been being able to pick stocks.
Because I also like the job where it's not about like performance reviews and all the, you're either good and you get paid extremely well and if you're bad you just get riffed and they show you where the boxes are. So I always enjoyed being in an industry like that for me.
And I think what really put me on the map globally was being like, you know, basically one of the first to identify how big Apple the iPhone was gonna be and then getting to know Elon Musk very early on in his career and basically betting on Tesla. So I think for me, like that's what put me on the map. Because you also have to make calls, right?
There's a lot of people like in these roles. If you ask them if it was raining, they talk for an hour and you wouldn't even know if it's raining. Like again, like if you were next to me in like on a red eye, you jump out over Kansas or like in a parachute.
So I'm a very kinda like, you know, we don't mince words and I think our career has really been defined. It is kind of brick by brick by brick building it.
But do you use a lot of intuition or it is data-driven?
I think for me like 70% is probably more like the work we do combined with intuition and building a very strong ecosystem.
Like, I mean look, I've traveled like what, over 3 1/2 million air miles the last 25 years. So like, you know, just being around the world. So you have like a very strong network and I think that's given me the ability to like, have a very good understanding of the things that are going on as well as especially investor psychology.
For me, having a high EQ has been more important than having a high IQ. And I think that's helped me a lot in terms of like my style, the way that I call stocks, but also communicate it. Like when you talk about things like publicly TV and having like a big like global presence. I think like my personality lends itself to that, but I know others like, look they're dry as a Sahara desert, right? And the reality is like they are phenomenal spreadsheets. They are like some of the smartest people I know, but they don't have the personality where maybe that suits them.
So I think in this job, everyone has like a different sort of MO. And I think that's what makes on a Wall Street side exciting. Cause you know, you don't have to be square peg round or you could kind of be your own person in terms of your franchise.
But you are dealing with AI where still we are not even at the inflection point of this usage, right? So how do you make your predictions, how is that?
I'll give you example. Like, you know, knowing Jensen early, okay? And I'll just go back to like it's 2022. This is a real example. The two worst years I've ever had in my career with 2008 financial crisis, 2022. Cause obviously, market was a disaster for tech. You know, macro, fed-driven, you know, everything that was happening.
I was basically out to dinner in San Francisco. It was like November with a bunch of AI engineers, you know, from big tech companies. And I basically left that dinner being like, it's not even a question. This is gonna be a revolution. And that's why I coined there's gonna be AI revolution.
Now when you say AI revolution and stocks are getting crushed, they're like, 'Like what are you smoking or drinking? Like what are you talking about?' But it was a true belief that you just needed a silver bullet. And when Microsoft bought, when they basically made their investment in OpenAI, in my mind, that was it. Like it was on.
But it took time for that to play out. But it was like every day like AI rep, this is it, this is it. And look, and that's how like investors around the world that have followed me, they just understand the way I look at stocks and the work that we do.
Haters hate, right? So I always say like there's a lot of bears in the basement when mom's bringing meatloaf down to the basement as they're on the keyboard, you know, for dinner. You know, they've been bearers for decades, right? Bears sounds smart. Bulls make money.
That's a good one. You know, you talked about haters. Sorry-
Yeah, and my research is when we analyzed Yahoo message boards, early 2000, you all the haters came together, all the bull people came together and they never talked to each other. So we start to see homophily even in that environment, one where the only goal is to make money.
But also it's like my view is like my whole job is to make you money. So a lot of times, like I'll be someone, they're Like, 'What about, you know, like what does this mean for like society and all these things?' Like, look, you wanna talk about that? Like go to the United Nations and talk about. That's cool. Like have fun doing that. My goal is like, how do you make money in stocks? And I think that's the reality is like, that's what I do, right?
Like so sometimes people have like these very like, well what about in decades? My look man at that point like, like I'll be on a golf course like in Ibiza and I'm not really focused on it. So it's just trying to like, it's put in a way where investors could, they can make money from it.
Like my goal, like when I do something like this, people walk away like, what are stocks that you own? Like how do I make money? Like for my career, like what does that matter for like internships, for jobs. And it comes down to like when I covered internet, everyone's like, 'Dude, there's gonna be new jobs with internet.' So, and I'm like, okay, so just think about it creates Silicon Valley, the biggest asset in this country in my opinion right now.
So when you go about AI, for the first time in 30 years, the US has head of China when it comes to tech. So much of my life I'll be in like Taiwan, China watching fabs be made 18 hours a day where like they don't take lunch breaks. Then I land at like New York airport and there's some fist fight at Dunkin Donuts and I'm like, dude, I'm like, we are so screwed. You know?
So, but now, for the first time, US is ahead of China when it comes to tech. It's a revolution.
So when it comes to like AI is gonna steal jobs, this same idea script, I actually view it as like so many cities that I've been around in this country that 75,000 people, now there's 20,000 cause the factory left went to India, Mexico, they have drug issues, education issues.
The point is like the investments that are happening now, it's a fourth industrial revolution. So I'm not saying that there's not gonna be certain jobs where they ultimately, you know, they suffer. But I think no technology in the last 100 years has ever been a net job detractor.
And that's why like at universities and I speak about universities around the country, it's like AI some like embrace it and how could you equip students for four years to be better educated? A lot of times, I go say we do, at Penn State, we do like the AI Innovation Center, my wife and I, cause I don't believe, like me and you have talked about like, it's so easy in universities. Like what about the athlete? You gotta equip students in this new world. Whether it's, you know, building out, you know, use cases like, having like programming technology, having those skill sets are so important.
Yeah, but thank you for being very frank about your views because it becomes very hard to say the truth sometimes.
But that's how you have to, right? There's so many people, like they talk about things, you know, like well, like dude, what they speak like dialects of man. They're like what are they even saying? I don't understand. So it's like my whole goal is like, it's a very clear view of where we are and it's a clear view of like, you know, I think like the opportunities, like I think like it's a tech bull market for another two to three years.
The bubble movement. Like look, many people have just called like bubble, bubble, bearish, this. I know how this ends. It comes down to this. You're in year three of an eight to 10 year build out of the AI revolution.
If you have an eight-year-old today, they're not gonna get their driver's license when they're 16. Humanoid robots are gonna be a reality. I'm not doing 10, 15 year, like in the next few years. Like you're gonna have flying taxis at the Olympics in LA in 2028. The point is like that's the reality of where we are.
I'd much rather own tech stocks in the left lane in a Ferrari, Bugatti going 100 miles an hour, get speeding tickets. I get it, points in the license. Than to own in the right lane in the minivan going 45 miles an hour. The bumper sticker saying my kid was an honor student in third grade.
That's my view.
Okay, a lot unpack here, but let me ask you, the question that you brought about with China. Our staff, our faculty went to China. They are factories with zero defect.
I was just there like two weeks ago.
Yeah, I did see that you in China. In fact that company is gonna come to Dallas to produce and I asked them, isn't it cost of production very high here? Well we won't have many people. It'll be all robotics completely automated, zero defect. So whether I do in China or here is same thing.
That's exactly, this is a Chinese owner also an alum of the school. It's a $15 billion company and they're coming to US to produce because they're gonna hardly use human beings and they have zero defect. That's unheard of in a manufacturing environment. So if the argument is we are ahead, US, is there evidence that we are ahead? Because they may not talk too much, We talk a lot.
Yeah. I mean there's one chip in the world fueling the AI revolution, it's got Father Jensen and Nvidia. Huawei compared to Nvidia is like White Castle compared to Peter Luger's. That's the just reality.
And when it comes down to like China, like robot, their advanced like robotics and energy. But it's not even a question US is ahead when it comes to, from Microsoft to OpenAI to everyone.
But it's also why the geopolitical. Trump knows he holds the cards relative to Jensen here, Carl Pier, Altman over here. That's the reality. I mean they know that's a huge advantage for US when it comes to negotiations with China. China like rare earth and everything else.
That's how China backed off cause they recognize like, I know so many, like Alibaba, Baidu, who do they wanna use? They don't wanna use Huawei, they want Nvidia. So it just comes down to like that's the reality of where we are. And it's also an arms race, US versus China.
Oh, I'll let others who had lots of questions to ask. I'm gonna ask a few more questions here.
You just say well maybe it's like real interactive and-
Yeah, yeah. That's what I like. I have students and faculty. Actually, I have faculty too have some questions. How do you separate the hype from real?
Because you know, in internet time, if I'm correct, there were over 10,000 B2B companies that went public and only about handful survived. Most of them died.
But so let's just like compare but if you compare those periods, like, the average tech company was trading at 30 times revenues today is 27 times earnings. Back then, it was like managing teams. You wouldn't want babysitting your kids. PowerPoints galore. They were levered business models.
They didn't have cash today it's being run by basically big tech with a trillion unbalanced and three to 400 billion a year free cash flow.
But the main thing is like AI, it's the true fourth industrial revolution. It's not a question of if. It is, like as it's playing out.
And in terms of hype, look, just cause the company says AI 30 times in a conference call doesn't make them an AI player. There's many private companies like I'll meet with. We sit there, it'll be like an hour and I'm like, they're calling themselves an AI company but it's basically the equivalent of like a legacy company just spicing things up and saying that they're AI.
So I think you have to, my whole job as part of like the ETF, it's separating like the winners from the losers. Like what's real, where the spending's gonna be. Like from hyperscale, cause I'm really focused on like what are the second, third, fourth derivatives of AI. Whether it's robotics, energy, nuclear, cybersecurity. That's what I'm so focused on.
Oh, okay. In fact, this is a question from, let me, I had that question, but somebody posted the exact same question. Oscar Alenado, I don't know, He's actually alum who asked that question. But it's a question about circular deals. What is your view about this? And I believe that there is a circular deal and you can explain what it means. And is that real or is it?
Yeah, and the circular deals but it's also goes back to the historical where like in the '90s vendor financing is basically like, I'll give you something, you give me something, it's revenue, but we're not really paying for it.
And like when you look at like the internet boom and bust, vendor financing was always viewed as like one of the culprits. So here, circular financing in terms of OpenAI being like, 'Okay, AMD will get a 10% stake.' We get this revenue, but is it really revenue cause you're getting a stake?
Same thing with, you know, if you go back to like, you know, if you go to Oracle and so many others, see I don't view it as circular financing. The reality is like OpenAI has, I mean, and they're basically gonna have capacity from a cash perspective what will ultimately be like 800 billion to a trillion dollars.
They're building out an economy from the ground up. I mean that's essentially what's happened. This is Vegas in the '50s, bust. It's Dubai, no buildings. This is collaboratively what's essentially happened in terms of the build out.
So I don't view it as like this sinister red flag, circular deals negative for tech. I actually view it much more collaboratively in terms of how it's being built.
And also for OpenAI, for every dollar that they put into Nvidia and AMD, they get 12 to $15 back. So that's why I don't view it in a more negative sort of view, but remember, in this market, like say haters hate or whatever, but like any little like speed bump or like, so you'll have everyone come out be, 'This is it, the bubble.' They'll be on Twitter, this, the whole thing.
The reality is like we've said it like it's an AI party that started at 9:00 PM, it's 10:30 PM, party goes to 4:00 AM. Now the bears will look at the party like we're in Vegas through the windows packed... And they'll be like, 'Ah, it doesn't even look that fun in there. I'm gonna go up to my room and read a book.'
Bulls and Bears meet up at 6:00 AM. Bulls have a lot better night than the bears.
And the reality is like, now look, I'm not saying like there's not a glass on the dance floor. DJ stops playing music. Cops maybe come a few times like for the party. But the point is like this party's gonna continue to play on and the bears will continue to watch it through the windows.
That's interesting. So what let me do, and there are lots and lots of questions. I'd rather have, I'll just open it up. If we can, why don't you students or anybody wants to ask questions. Please come to the mic, tell your name as well.
But I think legit question is, like, are you gonna start wearing more color in your wardrobe? No, but I think it's a legit question.
I know, I know. I was so stupid, I'll tell you.
But you're very tech-centric, like your Austin background, like you could pull that off pretty good too.
Yeah, I admit, yeah, I was wrong. Go ahead.
First of all, thank you so much for coming to speak with us. We very much appreciate it. My question is, does Michael Burry shorting Nvidia and Palantir have any effect on investing in technology stocks for the average investor? Obviously, you're not the average investor, but-
No, but Burry, like if you look at Burry, like, because like big short and the whole thing, you know, like in terms of like, does that make not ironic like Steve Eisman, I'm good friends with, and he's actually a bull, we were going back and forth today, like he's bull. So it just goes back to like Burry, whatever.
Look, Burry's someone where like, first of all, he's been, you know, if you look at like his call in Palantir Nvidia, right? Like, I mean it's obviously it's been the exact opposite in terms of how it's played out. But it's easy that you're gonna throw like kinda like match where there's hay and gasoline. It's gonna cause obviously nervousness out there.
My view is like, look, he obviously an illustrious in terms of his able to whatever, big short back in 2008. This is just a total different game because the reality is like, you have more money being spent in the next two to three years than the last 10 years combined, right? That's factual.
Now I'm not saying that you're not gonna have some froth on certain names, but to sit there and say like, 'That's a bubble,' it's the exact opposite.
Because I think maybe a year ago or a year and a half ago, and there were many that said it, but now the validation's there. Look at the use, look at what's happening Nvidia. I mean like right now, demand the supply for Nvidia chips is 15 to one.
Demand the supply. So if you're telling me all those CIOs and all those, you know, IT departments are wrong and he's right, I'll take those 1590 SATers anytime over Burry relative to my, but again, haters give other opportunities where stocks sell off. It gives you more opportunities to own names and there's so many investors, right? Like, you know, you could easily miss names, risk off days, like get people yelling fire into a crowded theater. It just creates the opportunities to own your winners.
Thank you. Can I ask you a question on that? Is that investment people are throwing these numbers, half a billion, trillion, people are throwing numbers like crazy. Is it to please the person in the White House nine miles from here? Or is it real that they're gonna follow through that? I mean these are staggering numbers.
Well first of all, the reality is like you either play nice in the sandbox or it's not gonna be a good time for that company. And I think everyone's fully recognized that.
Be like, 'That's crazy.' This dude's like, my name's Dan. We drive on the right side of the road. It is what it is. Like the point is like companies have adjusted to like the new environment.
When you look at like the real spending, it actually is real investment. Now are there some investments that would've already been there? Yeah, but there are real, you're talking about like, whether it's international to please whatever kiss the ring or companies, it's real investment.
And the way I view it, that is really gonna create... I'm not saying you don't have like a soft patch in between where like a transition period, but it's gonna create like a massive innovation cycle in this country. That's just the reality.
That's more on the infrastructure side.
Well it's all in the infrastructure because look, if you're building a data center in Wyoming, they're building that data center and where are they going to restaurants and then where are they staying in hotel? The point is like the ripple effect here is pretty staggering relative to, you know.
Yeah, thank you very much. Pleasure to meet you. Thank you for setting this up with Dan.
So I just had two questions. One is I'm a little nervous, sorry, regarding the data center buildouts, you know, listening to some of the interviews by like Jeff Dean, Noam Shazeer, the Google guys or like the Anthropic infrastructure folks, they're like, this is one of the greatest, biggest infrastructure buildouts in like human history. And I was just gonna get your take on that is that like, it doesn't seem hyperbolic cause like even some of the engineers are like $1 trillion, one quadrillion dollars, you know what I mean? And you know, so that data center build out, they're claiming 100, 200, 300% a year. How long could that go? 10, 20, you know, years maybe to 2045. I don't know if that was, you get your take.
And the second thing is retail investors in relation to like public markets, I'm understanding that it's getting a little bit more difficult because a lot of companies are staying private, like OpenAI, Anthropic. And so that getting that exposure, that economic growth either has to get through indirectly, you know, or you know, something like that. So it's gonna get, and you know, of course the index funds with Glass Lewis and ISS and stuff. So if you had any take on retail investors, I'm sorry.
No, it's great questions. Look, there's some data centers are gonna be half the size of Central Park. I mean the reality is like only three, if you think about it, there's more data centers under construction today than active data centers.
So that's not hyper, like it's real. Now the point is like does it ever end? It's like okay, there's 3% of companies in the US that have gone down the AI path. When you get to 20%, you basically the energy, it's like rubber meets the road. You basically don't have enough energy after 20%.
The biggest constraint in all this, it's energy. I mean that's why it's like, might be like nuclear, whether it's grid enhancements, what's gonna happen with natural gas. So nuclear to me is gonna be the real, like, that I think is gonna be like the golden goose, in terms of there.
So it's not hyper, I mean, it's real.
Now it goes back to you haves like private companies, Anthropic, xAI, OpenAI, which would be public probably 2027. Cause companies have so much more funding so they can stay private so much longer. But the reality is like private company and you see it every day in New York, NYSE or Nasdaq, like private companies, ultimately, they're gonna need to go public.
So I think the reason so many were staying private, if you go back to the last three, four years, valuations weren't there. There wasn't the appetite. And I think a lot of that's changing. So I think you're gonna have a surge of companies that go public.
But everything's changing too in terms of like, tokenization, the ability to invest in private companies. Retail, like also like a democratization, whatever.
Like the retail investor, 10 years ago, I'd even say five years ago, was viewed as kind like, yeah, it's like a side show like mosquito and the strawberry type thing. Now, they're no longer like at the kids' table, like at Thanksgiving, they're like right there with institutions.
And I think like (indistinct) names, Palantir, Robinhood, Tesla, I mean the list goes on, retail has been ahead of institutions.
And that's why like I think information flow, like if you're on like Twitter a lot, I mean the amount of people that I meet around the world that like have made significant, you know, wealth, a lot of it is like as retail information flow is out there, it's even the playing field.
So that's why like a lot of times, like there'll be like a 14 year old's like, yeah, I just wrote a book and like I'm thinking about quitting school cause like I made like a million dollars. I'm like, dude. So the point is like, but that's the beauty right now, this environment.
Yeah. Cool. Thank you very much.
Well the next question, great, keep it short the questions, but while you come in, your talk on CNBC about the energy is what made me look at OKLO.
By the time I could go, it went from 20 to 190 and of course, it fell, is amazing how the nuclear thing just too far.
But OKLO has been our favorite. But that's just the start of more nuclear fusion plays that are gonna be coming to market.
I had a question about the AI boom. So I'm a CS major. So one of the things is that AI has been out for a long time. It's just only now that large language models are getting smarter. And there's this like argument that like large language models can only get so much smarter because of scalability. They're just making the models large, they're having big data centers. But at some point, that starts to converge as we are seeing cloud models, xAI, OpenAI, all are starting to converge on the benchmarks. So like at some point it's like, it's not that the AI bubble will crash, but like, almost like we have reached kind of a peak with LLMs and stuff like that.
And what happens to the whole AI landscape because you have a lot of exposure to like people. I'm thinking smarter people than we have thought about this. So what happens when like, you know, when you realize the public realizes that like kind of like, LLMs have kind of reached their local maximum and what happens when you like, kind of like the whole AI industry as a whole?
I think like, it's a great question. I think look, to me the value is gonna be in the data rather than the models are gonna get cheaper and cheaper, better and better. Even though DeepSeek was a fake story or whatever you wanna call it. You know, relative. The reality is like models are just facilitators for what I view as like, look, when I talk about AI, the biggest use cases are gonna be like autonomous, robotics, like humanoids.
When you think about just like ChatGPT, the model, that's like tip of the sphere enterprises,
If you think about it, 70% of data they've never been able to access. Now they can access it. So I'm just saying like, to me, it's all data-driven. And to your point, why do you think OpenAI, they're investing in AMD, Nvidia, Oracle, Broadcom? 'Cause they know the model is just the tip of the sphere.
Wanted to ask about Quantum — are they at the party or is this a sideshow?
No, Quantum's at the party. They're like bottle service in the back. Like they're kind of, I mean, to me it's like, that's why like (indistinct) 'cause there's like a whole debate like, is it a quantum bubble? Like, can they get to scale? You know, Jensen obviously like last year at CES basically saying like, what's it gonna be? It's scale. Look, Quantum is gonna be... It's gonna be like a revolution for quantum names. I think it's just from a valuation perspective, it's gonna continue to go through these sort of evolutions. But LINQ's been our favorite in terms of a pure play because I always say like, you don't wanna look at quantum names on risk-off days. You don't wanna look at your PA on risk-off days. But I think Quantum, they're at the party upstairs, bottle service. Yeah.
You've talked a lot about bears looking for moments to criticize and finding new stories to shout fire.
Can you speak into my mic?
Yeah, sorry. Do you foresee there to be an achievement or a moment where even the bears realize, hey, maybe this is for real?
Sure. Well, first of all, you always need the bears. Like, you need the haters. It's part of it, like. Just like the bird thing. 'Cause in a market there's bulls and bears, right? Like, so you need that. I do think like, the bears have recognized the last few years, that's why some of them gotten like, to be honest, you know, I was getting nervous about some like, you know, like a lot of the haters like on X that like I hear from all the time. I almost had to like, you know, do a checkup on them 'cause I haven't heard from them in a while. But the thing is, is that it's what makes a market, right? But I think when you look at the spending, it's part of where like you look at short interest, like short interest like went significantly down. It's clearly now starting to come back up because now investors like, okay, I'm gonna take my stand. Like this is above. And you're gonna like, it's gonna be a continued battle on tech names. But that's what makes, like, what makes it like an enjoyment, right? Like the point is like, what makes it so fun in terms of is like, if you're right and you do the work and you have conviction, those moments make it that much sweeter when you get to the other side.
Thank you. I would like to know, as a Terp yourself, how has Maryland's ecosystem influenced your views on Maryland's role in tech innovation?
Yeah, I mean, look, it's like I say like this — this place played a huge role in my career. I actually think, like, I think especially like here, so they always were like pretty advanced when it came to like entrepreneurship and like technology. And I think that's something that they've been able to like keep that sort of edge. I view it as more of like, it's more of like an edge. Like it's more of like differentiating yourself in a way where if you look at a lot of people that have come out of this school, it's not surprising. Like there's so many successful people that have come out of here. 'Cause I think it creates a certain sort of like DNA. I mean, I'll give you an example, like okay, a lot like, like if you like Cvent, which everyone knows today. So if you go back to like Aggarwal and you know, and everything that they built when I was graduating, Cvent was like a Series A seed company. And they came here and recruited, and a lot of classmates went there. But at a lot of other schools, you wouldn't have done that. You would've just done cookie cutter like Booz Allen or banking, whatever. And people that stayed through the ramp, through the IPO, through this, you know, now like I'm trying to hitch a ride on their jet from Miami. So I'm just saying like, I think that it's created that innovation.
So David Cventan. David Cventan also did Cvent, yeah.
Yeah, but if you could see then like so many of the successful people that have come out of the — were...
So you gonna say this on CNBC sometime?
If you get a little more color, yeah.
Sure, I will. Anytime. You tell me, I'll wear it.
Exactly, like some pink, purple.
Sure, some purple. I don't know about pink here, yeah.
And I have my clothing line, so I'm gonna give you some of my shirts.
