Invest Like The Best

Sarah Guo is the founder of Conviction and one of the most closely watched investors in AI. In this conversation, Sarah and Patrick discuss what the people at the frontier of AI actually believe, why some researchers think exponential intelligence may be only a few years away, and how she’s navigating an investing environment that can’t be backtested.They also explore the race for compute, the future of open-source AI, why America may need compute independence, the rapid progress in robotics, how AI could transform biology and drug discovery, and Sarah’s framework for building conviction before the rest of the market catches up.Timestamps0:00 Intro1:08 Investing Through the AI Boom5:03 Building Conviction in AI12:06 What AI Researchers Believe15:44 Compute, Capital & Robotics24:03 How Sarah Makes Investments39:24 The Case for Open Source49:01 America’s Compute Independence51:32 AI’s New Investment Markets59:36 Finding Truth & What’s Next#InvestLikeTheBest #SarahGuo #ArtificialIntelligence #AI #VentureCapital #Investing #OpenSourceAI #Robotics #Technology #StartupsPresented by Ramp:https://ramp.com/investSponsored by Vanta, WorkOS, Rogo, and Ridgeline:https://www.vanta.com/investhttps://workos.com/https://rogo.ai/investhttps://www.ridgelineapps.com/******Patrick O'Shaughnessy is the CEO of Positive Sum. All opinions expressed by Patrick and podcast guests are solely their own and do not reflect the opinion of Positive Sum. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. Clients of Positive Sum may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. To learn more, visit psum.vc

Neil Movva, co-founder of Sail Research, joins Patrick to explain why the next era of AI may be defined not by faster chatbots, but by background agents that work autonomously for hours, days, or even weeks—and what it will take to make that intelligence cheap enough to become abundant. Neil lays out Sail’s “token factory” strategy across software, chips, data centers, and power; the lessons he learned chasing “speed of light” performance at Nvidia; why he’ll buy almost any chip at the right price; and why unreliable, distributed data centers powered by sources like solar and wind could actually be an advantage. They also discuss transformers and memory, the future of AI training data, the economics of the chip shortage, open versus closed models, and Neil’s belief that there will always be demand for more intelligence.TIMESTAMPS0:00 Intro0:38 Building a “Token Factory”4:21 The Future of Background Agents13:09 Nvidia and the GPU Stack23:27 Chips, Memory, and Transformers36:14 The Future of AI Training Data44:32 Chip Scarcity and Compute Arbitrage52:44 Reinventing the AI Data Center59:01 Power and the “Scavenger Strategy”1:10:10 Open vs. Closed AI#ArtificialIntelligence #AIAgents #NVIDIA #AIInfrastructure #InvestLikeTheBestPresented by Ramp:https://ramp.com/investSponsored by Vanta, WorkOS, Rogo, and Ridgeline:https://www.vanta.com/investhttps://workos.com/https://rogo.ai/investhttps://www.ridgelineapps.com/******Patrick O'Shaughnessy is the CEO of Positive Sum. All opinions expressed by Patrick and podcast guests are solely their own and do not reflect the opinion of Positive Sum. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. Clients of Positive Sum may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. To learn more, visit psum.vc

Ben Thompson joins Invest Like the Best for a wide-ranging conversation about the economics, geopolitics, and business models shaping the AI era. They discuss why overwhelming U.S. dominance in AI could be dangerous, whether the massive AI infrastructure buildout can generate returns before the capital runs out, and what the railroad boom can teach us about today’s spending cycle. Ben also explains why Google may increasingly resemble Berkshire Hathaway, how AI could turn intelligence into a commodity, why Amazon may have the deepest moat in technology, what Apple gets right by staying focused on hardware, how AI threatens Microsoft’s core business, why the current compute shortage may have saved Intel, and why Google and Amazon could ultimately become Nvidia’s most important competitors.#InvestLikeTheBest #BenThompson #ArtificialIntelligence #AI #Investing #Technology #Nvidia #GoogleTIMESTAMPS0:00 Intro0:59 America and the AI Race8:26 AI’s Funding Problem15:31 AI’s Capabilities and Limits20:30 Aggregation Theory, AI, and Ads31:10 Compute, TSMC, and Intel47:31 Amazon and Apple’s AI Moats54:43 The Frontier AI Players74:07 Nvidia and Commoditized Intelligence82:52 What Survives an AI Bubble?Presented by Ramp:https://ramp.com/investSponsored by Vanta, WorkOS, Rogo, and Ridgeline:https://www.vanta.com/investhttps://workos.com/https://rogo.ai/investhttps://www.ridgelineapps.com/******Patrick O'Shaughnessy is the CEO of Positive Sum. All opinions expressed by Patrick and podcast guests are solely their own and do not reflect the opinion of Positive Sum. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. Clients of Positive Sum may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. To learn more, visit psum.vc

Eric Vishria, General Partner at Benchmark, joins Invest Like the Best for a wide-ranging conversation on how AI is reshaping software, infrastructure, and venture investing. He explains why the competitive frontier for SaaS has shifted, why companies can destroy value by faithfully executing an outdated plan, and what the cloud wars can teach us about the emerging AI market. Eric also discusses Fireworks and Sierra, the importance of understanding AI’s “jagged edge,” why some AI companies are effectively “selling magic,” and why he believes the market could support many enormous winners. The conversation also covers energy as a potential bottleneck to intelligence, the story behind Benchmark’s early investment in Cerebras, the future of robotics, what he looks for in founders and board partnerships, Benchmark’s expansion into growth investing, and the lessons he’s learned from backing companies capable of generating extraordinary returns.TIMESTAMPS0:00 Intro3:36 What Cloud Teaches Us About AI12:52 Sierra, Sandcastles, and AI Products17:35 The New SaaS Competitive Frontier28:28 AI Demand and the Energy Bottleneck31:28 The Cerebras Story and AI Chips45:10 The Future of Robotics52:53 Eric’s Venture Investing Philosophy1:07:30 Going Public, AI Value, and JobsPresented by Ramp:https://ramp.com/investSponsored by Vanta, WorkOS, Rogo, and Ridgeline:https://www.vanta.com/investhttps://workos.com/https://rogo.ai/investhttps://www.ridgelineapps.com/******Patrick O'Shaughnessy is the CEO of Positive Sum. All opinions expressed by Patrick and podcast guests are solely their own and do not reflect the opinion of Positive Sum. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. Clients of Positive Sum may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. To learn more, visit psum.vc

In this episode of Invest Like the Best, Patrick O'Shaughnessy sits down with Gavin Baker to dissect the intense AI and semiconductor market sell-off of July 2026. Describing the period as "2022 packed into a single month," Gavin explains why public market panic contrasts sharply with the booming fundamentals seen on the ground in Silicon Valley. They dive into the accelerating operating cash flows of hyperscalers, the soaring spot prices for GPUs, and why open-source AI models are actually driving massive infrastructure demand. Gavin also unpacks the game theory behind Long-Term Agreements (LTAs) in the memory market, NVIDIA's strategic dominance, SpaceX's massive data center ambitions, and the looming regulatory risks for AI compute.Timestamps:0:00 Intro1:17 AI Selloff vs. Fundamentals10:20 Financing the AI Buildout18:18 GPU Prices Keep Rising24:23 Claude Moves Markets29:01 What Could Break the Thesis36:59 The Memory Supply War42:08 Nvidia’s New Playbook50:14 China and Open Source61:51 Data Centers and Regulation71:11 SpaceX and Orbital Compute#Investing #AI #Semiconductors #Nvidia #StockMarket #Technology #DataCenters #OpenSource #Finance #VentureCapital #nvidia #stocks #sell #stockmarket Presented by Ramp:https://ramp.com/investSponsored by Vanta, WorkOS, Rogo, and Ridgeline:https://www.vanta.com/investhttps://workos.com/https://rogo.ai/investhttps://www.ridgelineapps.com/******Patrick O'Shaughnessy is the CEO of Positive Sum. All opinions expressed by Patrick and podcast guests are solely their own and do not reflect the opinion of Positive Sum. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. Clients of Positive Sum may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. To learn more, visit psum.vc