It's going to be an interesting week, friends. I've got a lot to say on this Nvidia drama, but I wanted to start off just a little lightly, just a little bit light-hearted before I get to the serious stuff, because it's a serious day. Really serious day. First up, interesting post. Not to paraphrase Elon Musk perfectly, but really interesting speech. I encourage everyone to check this out by Sir Demis Hassabis, DeepMind CEO. Really interesting chat by him, and I don't think he's wrong. I mean, you were probably looking into — we're probably looking into a future, I should say, where a very credible, game-changing company is going to be led by and created by a single person because of AI. I think he's on to something, and I think Elon Musk gets that too as well.
Next up, one more post, and this is along the same lines. Really lengthy post by Brian Armstrong detailing how he has changed his work over the last few weeks, leaning in on agents. You know, having interacted with Brian and a lot of other CEOs, he's not alone in changing how they work. You know, I think not that he's replacing his human people that report to him, but he's really leaning in on all things AI to change how he works, really leaning in on agents. So go read that post. It was really interesting because he's not alone, and I think you're going to see a lot of changes like this within the C-suite.
Now, let's just get on to really the story. I think the story of the year — this is the story of the year — and it came out of left field. I have heard from a lot of you on the hot water Nvidia's celebrated CEO Jensen Huang is in following his admission having cheated on his wife of 40-plus years with a reported — I want to emphasize that reported — Chinese spy. I said on X that Nvidia is now in its first true crisis arguably since its founding in 1993 on a napkin at Denny's by Jensen. Some of you pushed back on me, calling it a crisis, calling attention to Nvidia's strong demand pipeline and leadership position in AI chips. I suspect Jensen's vision has helped make you a lot of money through the years. So I get the first instinct is to sweep this under the rug and voice support for Jensen. I'm not going to sit here and deny you have a point on the fundamentals of the business of Nvidia. I also won't deny that Jensen is a generational founder of a transformational business. But make no mistake, this is a crisis created by Huang that didn't need to happen at all.
And it all boils down to trust. If Jensen can have an affair with a reported Chinese spy — again, I want to emphasize reported — can we trust what he is saying on AI demand being off the charts for as far as the eyes can see? Can we trust he didn't divulge company secrets to this person? Can we trust this is a one-off for Jensen and he will emerge as a changed human being? Can we trust he will finally put forth a clear succession plan at Nvidia? So there's all that. Then there is this other aspect of trust. Nvidia is not only one of the world's most valuable companies with a market cap of $4.5 trillion, but it has lent its own creditworthiness to speed up infrastructure growth. Over the last two years, Nvidia has offered $300 billion in financial support to customers in addition to investing billions into startups including neoclouds like CoreWeave. At the epicenter of this is trust in Jensen, the human, and trust in Jensen leading the company at such a high level that he can make good on all these financial commitments, and as he makes good on these financial commitments, his wallet will stay open to support the AI ecosystem in good times and bad. We can agree to disagree on this being an Nvidia crisis, but there's no disagreement on Jensen having breached the trust of his investors, big and small, and of course breaching the trust of his family.
Now, I want to continue all along this Jensen analysis, and that's what I'm doing here. I'm not going down the trove of the photos and the commentary I saw out there on X, which borders — it's a lot. That's not what we do here. I just want to give you the analysis, and I want to start here with this succession plan or lack thereof. Now, since Nvidia's founding by Jensen on a Denny's napkin in 1993, we have followed Jensen on an amazing journey for a CEO, for a founder. We follow Jensen around the world to his various trips as he built this generational company. We follow him as he puts on a black jacket at various GTC events. We've all wondered what if he's going to be wearing a sparkly black leather jacket or just a straightforward Tom Ford leather jacket. People have bought Jensen memorabilia on auction at a high price. We have watched him eat fried chicken at overseas trips and that get highly publicized when he's eating that fried chicken with other billionaires. So we've watched this, and we've seen Nvidia create massive wealth for not only the people inside of that company, but also for a lot of the average investors and institutional investors out there watching this program. But through it all, we know jack squat about Nvidia's succession plan.
And that is basically a byproduct of the flat leadership structure that Nvidia has. I mean, he has tens — he has, I believe, 60 people reporting directly to him. This is basically the Nvidia leadership. And I want to call out, you have the co-founder there, but to my knowledge, he's not exactly involved in day-to-day operations. What do you notice here? These are all longtime Nvidia executives, but they're all executive vice presidents. Now, in a normal public company, it is usually signaled via the president title. In addition to, if you're a CFO or COO, you get that president title, because if the CEO were to step away for whatever reason, retire, it's usually the president and COO or the president and CFO that step up and take that position. It's up now to Jensen and this board to clearly define who succeeds him, if he is forced to leave the company, if he decides to leave the company in the wake of this. It's unclear what happens here. All we know is that the Nvidia board is investigating this entire situation. But it is now up to that Nvidia board, in addition to investigating Jensen's behavior, to signal clearly who the successor is, because we have no idea. It's not in proxy statements. It's not in the annual report. This business since 1993 has been led by Jensen Huang, a generational founder that has created generational technology who is powering the next generation of AI in the United States and in many respects around the world. Now it's up to Nvidia and its board to signal who would succeed him for whatever reason. It's the right thing to do for investors, and it finally has to happen. This can't continue.
So one of these folks theoretically should get elevated to president and something. My bet is on Colette Kress, one of the best CFOs in the game. I've had the opportunity to talk to Colette in the past. She knows Nvidia's business inside and out, incredibly respected on Wall Street. So again, keep an eye on Colette. Very important. All these folks are important, but now I think she deserves to get that president title and be that person waiting in the wings should something happen to Jensen as this investigation plays out on a grand world scale.
Now, I also don't want to forget about the AI sell-off that we have been seeing over the past few weeks, because you know that was one of the major stories before this Jensen story. And you know, the first thought is that AI stocks have been selling off because of fears of overvaluation, and now we have the blue wave. I get it. But there has been another story starting to emerge, and it's this: you have the likes of Apple and Amazon starting to, I think, more closely scrutinize how much AI they're spending inside of their own companies. Look, you've had Apple encourage employees to scale back their token usage in the company. You have had Amazon scale back the token usage within their company and look for cost savings, because the costs to operate AI functions and workflows in the business have probably gotten out of hand. I mean, some of these executives have probably lost their minds when catching the bills for all things AI.
And I like what Miller Tabak chief market strategist Matt Maley had to say on this topic. He's saying this is the first sign of pushback on higher prices for AI tools, and that is a nugget I think that the market overlooked. Now, the market has been focused on the blue wave and the slowdown in data centers, and they're right to do so. However, I think you have to pay attention to the pushback on AI pricing inside a lot of these companies. It could be something that snowballs, and this is something, in my humble view, is not priced in or factored into the earnings estimates of a lot of these AI companies. You look at a lot of the earnings estimates for a lot of the main players in the AI ecosystem. I think it's under the assumption that we will see AI demand just ripping higher for many more years to come at whatever prices AI companies decide to charge large enterprises. It doesn't exactly work that way. A lot of these companies are public, and they have to watch the bottom line and protect their bottom line, and they're not going to be spending willy-nilly on AI.
And then outside of AI, I want to focus on this too, because while we're sitting here focused on, you know, Jensen, look at the other company he's competing with. That's AMD and CEO Lisa Su, who continues to get it done over at AMD amidst this. And shout out to the Oppenheimer team — they just came out and upgraded AMD, citing strong data center demand for the balance of this year, strong data center demand for the balance of next year. Oppenheimer not mentioning anything regarding Nvidia, but if you are down on Nvidia and you are down on what Jensen did here, you have the opportunity to look at a company like AMD with a strong outlook, a strong business, and no controversy surrounding its business. In fact, here's what AMD CEO Lisa Su told me about demand she's seeing in her business.
Most companies, if you look at how they plan, they plan on an annual cycle. They say, 'Hey, we're going to do an annual operating plan. These are the budgets. These are the things that we're going to do.' With AI and the progress that we're making through AI adoption throughout the industry, what we're seeing is what used to be — and let's call it, you know, fairly static plans — are now actually becoming pretty dynamic. You're realizing how fast the adoption curve is going. You actually see an opportunity, like I said, with, you know, Muse is one of the best examples. I mean, over 10 million people activating in the span of 45 days — I mean, that's pretty incredible. Like, that's an adoption curve that, you know, probably wasn't in the regular plan, and we're seeing that across a number of applications. And so from our standpoint, we are very dynamic. You know, we're a tech company that has a lot of resources and the ability to expand our supply and expand our ability to help our customers, and that's what's led to, you know, tremendous growth. So, being able to say that my data center business is going to grow 50% sequentially from Q3 to Q4, it's a big step up, and it's a testament to how important computing is in the industry today. And, you know, we're looking to double the business, more than double the business as we go into next year. We are a data center first company. That is our profile, and, you know, people need more computing to power all of these applications.
No, I don't think so. I mean, this trade has been taking on water for a long time. I mean, this started back in June. I put out a note saying, 'Hey, I think we're going to see an AI speed bump,' because companies at that time were already trying to control their AI spending costs. And then before the elections, I had a podcast on Tuesday where I said I was terrified of what would happen on the other side of the midterms because my belief was there was going to be a blue wave. And, you know, I published on that as well. And so we're seeing that, all of that combined with the fact that there is obviously circular financing, but don't forget this happened during the internet bubble as well. And that can continue for a few years until the bubble ultimately breaks. I don't think we're at the top. Could be. I mean, it very well could be, depending on what these incoming governors of these different states like Texas, Georgia, Ohio, you know, New Mexico, Michigan, which all flipped, what they decide to do. I mean, there's about 40% of incremental data center capacity at risk, and the circular financing ties into all that. And I've written about this. Even the companies that Nvidia backed couldn't get public. Firmus Grid, if you remember, that IPO has gotten pushed back. NScale, which Nvidia also backed, that IPO's also been pushed back. We'll see at what price Anthropic comes out at and how much they can raise. But all of this has been going on. This clearly doesn't help the situation, but, you know, there's much bigger problems in the industry than just one person.
