Sep 29, 2025 · 1h 31m · 20vc

Groq Founder, Jonathan Ross: OpenAI & Anthropic Will Build Their Own Chips & Will NVIDIA Hit $10TRN · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Jonathan Ross · 1h 3m spoken Harry Stebbings · 13m spoken
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Groq founder Jonathan Ross discusses the macroeconomics of the AI industry, explaining how compute, energy, and custom silicon dictate geopolitical power and enterprise success. He challenges industry assumptions about market bubbles, details Groq's unique supply-chain advantages, and shares a visionary outlook on the democratization of software development through AI.

How this conversation actually went

Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Harry holds 16.8% of the talking time here. How this is scored →

Harry as informed peer 3.9 Guest teaching 4.8 Guest disagreement 2.3 Harry pushing back 3.2
05100:0020:0040:001:00:001:20:000:53–3:42 · Harry as informed peer 3/10 Analyzing the AI Market and the "Vibe Investing" Bubble Harry asks if the AI market is in a bubble, and Jonathan immediately reframes the prompt, advising him to ask what smart money is doing instead. Harry pushes back on Jonathan's assertion that aggregate market returns exceed spend by highlighting Nvidia's extreme revenue concentration.3:42–8:02 · Harry as informed peer 4/10 Hyperscaler Capex and the Valuation Imperative Harry presses Jonathan on hyperscaler capex, insisting that at some point financial returns must materialize regardless of Mag Seven status. Jonathan counters by explaining that capex spend is driven by existential career risk rather than pure financial ROI metrics.8:02–12:35 · Harry as informed peer 5/10 Analyzing the NVIDIA Loop and the Supply Bottleneck Harry questions whether Nvidia investing $100B into OpenAI is an infinite money loop, calculating that 60% flows directly back into Nvidia's stock. Jonathan rejects the premise, explaining compute supply constraints and calling Harry's suggestion that users tolerate latency '100% wrong'.12:35–16:46 · Harry as informed peer 3/10 High Bandwidth Memory and the Strategic Value of Custom Chips Harry asks if OpenAI and Anthropic can successfully move into custom chip production. Jonathan educates him on the difficulty of chip software and introduces Nvidia's monopsony over HBM memory supply.16:46–19:17 · Harry as informed peer 3/10 Capital Planning, Memory Shortages, and Data Center Costs Harry asks if HBM shortages explain Sam Altman's call for hundreds of billions in capital. Jonathan directly shuts down the theory with a blunt 'No', explaining that data center amortization over 10 years dominates overall spend.19:17–22:43 · Harry as informed peer 5/10 Upgrading Silicon and the Economics of Legacy Hardware Harry challenges accounting assumptions around 3-to-5-year chip amortization given rapid annual silicon iteration cycles. Jonathan breaks down the economic distinction between capex payback thresholds and opex retention thresholds.22:43–24:52 · Harry as informed peer 2/10 Groq's 6-Month Lead Time and the 18-Month Advantage Jonathan outlines Groq's core pitch: delivering LPUs in 6 months versus Nvidia's 2-year advance checks. Harry reacts approvingly, framing it as an 18-month strategic chasm.24:52–29:12 · Harry as informed peer 5/10 Designing Models for Silicon and NVIDIA's Future Harry challenges Jonathan's assertion that compute always equals performance, citing GPT-5's pivot toward efficiency over raw scale. Jonathan rejects the framing, explaining that models are tailored to hardware architecture and compute scale directly drives application quality.29:12–32:48 · Harry as informed peer 4/10 Training vs. Inference Costs and the Geopolitical AI Race Jonathan debunks popular market claims regarding Chinese AI models like DeepSeek, revealing they are 10x more expensive to run than US open models. Harry questions whether CCP energy subsidies negate this cost penalty.32:48–37:35 · Harry as informed peer 3/10 Prompt Recycling and Building a Competitive Moat Harry inquires about open-sourcing models to counter Chinese distillation techniques. Jonathan explains prompt compatibility lock-in and contrasts US aversion to errors of omission with European aversion to errors of commission.37:35–40:42 · Harry as informed peer 3/10 Japanese Decisiveness, Permitting Hurdles, and Geopolitical Power Jonathan praises Japan's decisive execution on 2nm fabs and nuclear restarts. Harry pushes back on European adoption feasibility, questioning whether governments can deploy infrastructure at necessary speeds.40:42–43:49 · Harry as informed peer 4/10 The Tourist Economy Threat and Allied Energy Collaboration Harry suggests sovereign European models like Mistral offer a compelling defense against US control. Jonathan dismisses model sovereignty without compute infrastructure as meaningless for long-term competition.43:49–48:16 · Harry as informed peer 4/10 The Shifting AI Market and the Virtuous Loop of Hardware Harry asks if inference growth threatens Nvidia's dominance given GPU inefficiency for inference. Jonathan clarifies that inference growth creates a virtuous cycle that amplifies demand for training GPUs.48:16–53:40 · Harry as informed peer 3/10 Debunking Unemployment Myths and the Rise of Vibe Coders Jonathan outlines a counterintuitive macroeconomic view where AI induces labor shortages rather than mass unemployment through deflationary wealth effects. Harry agrees, highlighting the gap between public perception and market realities.53:40–57:08 · Harry as informed peer 5/10 Margin Strategy, Volatility, and the Jevons Paradox Harry cites startups like Lovable and Replit to question whether gross margins matter during exponential growth phases. Jonathan explains that high margins provide structural stability against market volatility.57:08–1:00:54 · Harry as informed peer 4/10 AI Cost Reduction and Solving Customer Problems Harry reflects on his previous mistaken assumptions regarding Canva's AI costs. Jonathan explains that reducing customer friction dramatically expands the total addressable market.1:00:54–1:04:27 · Harry as informed peer 4/10 Economic Downturns, Predictions, and Market Stability Harry asks about potential market pullbacks given S&P concentration in tech. Jonathan details economic reflexivity and laments that excess capital encourages top engineers to launch solo ventures instead of joining Groq.1:04:27–1:07:23 · Harry as informed peer 4/10 The Economics of the Tech Talent War Harry asks which incumbents Jonathan worries about, noting Google's turnaround. Harry presses Jonathan on whether Google's window of distribution advantage is closing relative to OpenAI.1:07:23–1:10:56 · Harry as informed peer 4/10 OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and the Dynamics of Coding Tools Harry questions developer tool moats given low switching costs between AI coding assistants. Jonathan responds that enterprise contracts foster sticky adoption and asserts both OpenAI and Anthropic remain deeply undervalued.1:10:56–1:13:35 · Harry as informed peer 5/10 Groq's Recent $750M Fundraise and Margin Strategy Harry challenges Groq's recent $750M fundraise, asking if it is sufficient capital and confronting Jonathan on past negative software margins. Jonathan clarifies hardware vs software unit economics.1:13:35–1:16:08 · Harry as informed peer 4/10 The Chip Market Future & NVIDIA's $10T Valuation Harry prompts Jonathan for 5-year chip market predictions. Jonathan predicts Nvidia will maintain over 50% revenue share despite selling a minority of total physical chips.1:16:08–1:21:16 · Harry as informed peer 5/10 What the Market Misunderstands: SRAM vs. DRAM Harry demonstrates technical knowledge from past interviews by identifying Groq's SRAM architecture. Jonathan breaks down system-level memory cost math, demonstrating why SRAM is cheaper at scale than DRAM.1:21:16–1:29:35 · Harry as informed peer 6/10 Groq's Stance on Going Public Harry brings up Cerebras going public and asks rapid-fire questions citing Hamilton Helmer's Seven Powers. Jonathan corrects Harry on Cerebras pulling their IPO and refutes Cuda lock-in claims for inference.1:29:35–1:31:09 · Harry as informed peer 1/10 Concluding Thoughts: LLMs as the Telescope of the Mind Jonathan offers a closing reflection comparing LLMs to Galileo's telescope, framing AI as expanding human consciousness. Harry expresses gratitude and concludes the episode.0:53–3:42 · Guest teaching 4/10 Analyzing the AI Market and the "Vibe Investing" Bubble Harry asks if the AI market is in a bubble, and Jonathan immediately reframes the prompt, advising him to ask what smart money is doing instead. Harry pushes back on Jonathan's assertion that aggregate market returns exceed spend by highlighting Nvidia's extreme revenue concentration.3:42–8:02 · Guest teaching 5/10 Hyperscaler Capex and the Valuation Imperative Harry presses Jonathan on hyperscaler capex, insisting that at some point financial returns must materialize regardless of Mag Seven status. Jonathan counters by explaining that capex spend is driven by existential career risk rather than pure financial ROI metrics.8:02–12:35 · Guest teaching 6/10 Analyzing the NVIDIA Loop and the Supply Bottleneck Harry questions whether Nvidia investing $100B into OpenAI is an infinite money loop, calculating that 60% flows directly back into Nvidia's stock. Jonathan rejects the premise, explaining compute supply constraints and calling Harry's suggestion that users tolerate latency '100% wrong'.12:35–16:46 · Guest teaching 6/10 High Bandwidth Memory and the Strategic Value of Custom Chips Harry asks if OpenAI and Anthropic can successfully move into custom chip production. Jonathan educates him on the difficulty of chip software and introduces Nvidia's monopsony over HBM memory supply.16:46–19:17 · Guest teaching 6/10 Capital Planning, Memory Shortages, and Data Center Costs Harry asks if HBM shortages explain Sam Altman's call for hundreds of billions in capital. Jonathan directly shuts down the theory with a blunt 'No', explaining that data center amortization over 10 years dominates overall spend.19:17–22:43 · Guest teaching 5/10 Upgrading Silicon and the Economics of Legacy Hardware Harry challenges accounting assumptions around 3-to-5-year chip amortization given rapid annual silicon iteration cycles. Jonathan breaks down the economic distinction between capex payback thresholds and opex retention thresholds.22:43–24:52 · Guest teaching 4/10 Groq's 6-Month Lead Time and the 18-Month Advantage Jonathan outlines Groq's core pitch: delivering LPUs in 6 months versus Nvidia's 2-year advance checks. Harry reacts approvingly, framing it as an 18-month strategic chasm.24:52–29:12 · Guest teaching 6/10 Designing Models for Silicon and NVIDIA's Future Harry challenges Jonathan's assertion that compute always equals performance, citing GPT-5's pivot toward efficiency over raw scale. Jonathan rejects the framing, explaining that models are tailored to hardware architecture and compute scale directly drives application quality.29:12–32:48 · Guest teaching 6/10 Training vs. Inference Costs and the Geopolitical AI Race Jonathan debunks popular market claims regarding Chinese AI models like DeepSeek, revealing they are 10x more expensive to run than US open models. Harry questions whether CCP energy subsidies negate this cost penalty.32:48–37:35 · Guest teaching 5/10 Prompt Recycling and Building a Competitive Moat Harry inquires about open-sourcing models to counter Chinese distillation techniques. Jonathan explains prompt compatibility lock-in and contrasts US aversion to errors of omission with European aversion to errors of commission.37:35–40:42 · Guest teaching 5/10 Japanese Decisiveness, Permitting Hurdles, and Geopolitical Power Jonathan praises Japan's decisive execution on 2nm fabs and nuclear restarts. Harry pushes back on European adoption feasibility, questioning whether governments can deploy infrastructure at necessary speeds.40:42–43:49 · Guest teaching 6/10 The Tourist Economy Threat and Allied Energy Collaboration Harry suggests sovereign European models like Mistral offer a compelling defense against US control. Jonathan dismisses model sovereignty without compute infrastructure as meaningless for long-term competition.43:49–48:16 · Guest teaching 5/10 The Shifting AI Market and the Virtuous Loop of Hardware Harry asks if inference growth threatens Nvidia's dominance given GPU inefficiency for inference. Jonathan clarifies that inference growth creates a virtuous cycle that amplifies demand for training GPUs.48:16–53:40 · Guest teaching 5/10 Debunking Unemployment Myths and the Rise of Vibe Coders Jonathan outlines a counterintuitive macroeconomic view where AI induces labor shortages rather than mass unemployment through deflationary wealth effects. Harry agrees, highlighting the gap between public perception and market realities.53:40–57:08 · Guest teaching 5/10 Margin Strategy, Volatility, and the Jevons Paradox Harry cites startups like Lovable and Replit to question whether gross margins matter during exponential growth phases. Jonathan explains that high margins provide structural stability against market volatility.57:08–1:00:54 · Guest teaching 4/10 AI Cost Reduction and Solving Customer Problems Harry reflects on his previous mistaken assumptions regarding Canva's AI costs. Jonathan explains that reducing customer friction dramatically expands the total addressable market.1:00:54–1:04:27 · Guest teaching 4/10 Economic Downturns, Predictions, and Market Stability Harry asks about potential market pullbacks given S&P concentration in tech. Jonathan details economic reflexivity and laments that excess capital encourages top engineers to launch solo ventures instead of joining Groq.1:04:27–1:07:23 · Guest teaching 4/10 The Economics of the Tech Talent War Harry asks which incumbents Jonathan worries about, noting Google's turnaround. Harry presses Jonathan on whether Google's window of distribution advantage is closing relative to OpenAI.1:07:23–1:10:56 · Guest teaching 5/10 OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and the Dynamics of Coding Tools Harry questions developer tool moats given low switching costs between AI coding assistants. Jonathan responds that enterprise contracts foster sticky adoption and asserts both OpenAI and Anthropic remain deeply undervalued.1:10:56–1:13:35 · Guest teaching 5/10 Groq's Recent $750M Fundraise and Margin Strategy Harry challenges Groq's recent $750M fundraise, asking if it is sufficient capital and confronting Jonathan on past negative software margins. Jonathan clarifies hardware vs software unit economics.1:13:35–1:16:08 · Guest teaching 4/10 The Chip Market Future & NVIDIA's $10T Valuation Harry prompts Jonathan for 5-year chip market predictions. Jonathan predicts Nvidia will maintain over 50% revenue share despite selling a minority of total physical chips.1:16:08–1:21:16 · Guest teaching 5/10 What the Market Misunderstands: SRAM vs. DRAM Harry demonstrates technical knowledge from past interviews by identifying Groq's SRAM architecture. Jonathan breaks down system-level memory cost math, demonstrating why SRAM is cheaper at scale than DRAM.1:21:16–1:29:35 · Guest teaching 5/10 Groq's Stance on Going Public Harry brings up Cerebras going public and asks rapid-fire questions citing Hamilton Helmer's Seven Powers. Jonathan corrects Harry on Cerebras pulling their IPO and refutes Cuda lock-in claims for inference.1:29:35–1:31:09 · Guest teaching 1/10 Concluding Thoughts: LLMs as the Telescope of the Mind Jonathan offers a closing reflection comparing LLMs to Galileo's telescope, framing AI as expanding human consciousness. Harry expresses gratitude and concludes the episode.0:53–3:42 · Guest disagreement 3/10 Analyzing the AI Market and the "Vibe Investing" Bubble Harry asks if the AI market is in a bubble, and Jonathan immediately reframes the prompt, advising him to ask what smart money is doing instead. Harry pushes back on Jonathan's assertion that aggregate market returns exceed spend by highlighting Nvidia's extreme revenue concentration.3:42–8:02 · Guest disagreement 3/10 Hyperscaler Capex and the Valuation Imperative Harry presses Jonathan on hyperscaler capex, insisting that at some point financial returns must materialize regardless of Mag Seven status. Jonathan counters by explaining that capex spend is driven by existential career risk rather than pure financial ROI metrics.8:02–12:35 · Guest disagreement 4/10 Analyzing the NVIDIA Loop and the Supply Bottleneck Harry questions whether Nvidia investing $100B into OpenAI is an infinite money loop, calculating that 60% flows directly back into Nvidia's stock. Jonathan rejects the premise, explaining compute supply constraints and calling Harry's suggestion that users tolerate latency '100% wrong'.12:35–16:46 · Guest disagreement 2/10 High Bandwidth Memory and the Strategic Value of Custom Chips Harry asks if OpenAI and Anthropic can successfully move into custom chip production. Jonathan educates him on the difficulty of chip software and introduces Nvidia's monopsony over HBM memory supply.16:46–19:17 · Guest disagreement 3/10 Capital Planning, Memory Shortages, and Data Center Costs Harry asks if HBM shortages explain Sam Altman's call for hundreds of billions in capital. Jonathan directly shuts down the theory with a blunt 'No', explaining that data center amortization over 10 years dominates overall spend.19:17–22:43 · Guest disagreement 2/10 Upgrading Silicon and the Economics of Legacy Hardware Harry challenges accounting assumptions around 3-to-5-year chip amortization given rapid annual silicon iteration cycles. Jonathan breaks down the economic distinction between capex payback thresholds and opex retention thresholds.22:43–24:52 · Guest disagreement 1/10 Groq's 6-Month Lead Time and the 18-Month Advantage Jonathan outlines Groq's core pitch: delivering LPUs in 6 months versus Nvidia's 2-year advance checks. Harry reacts approvingly, framing it as an 18-month strategic chasm.24:52–29:12 · Guest disagreement 3/10 Designing Models for Silicon and NVIDIA's Future Harry challenges Jonathan's assertion that compute always equals performance, citing GPT-5's pivot toward efficiency over raw scale. Jonathan rejects the framing, explaining that models are tailored to hardware architecture and compute scale directly drives application quality.29:12–32:48 · Guest disagreement 3/10 Training vs. Inference Costs and the Geopolitical AI Race Jonathan debunks popular market claims regarding Chinese AI models like DeepSeek, revealing they are 10x more expensive to run than US open models. Harry questions whether CCP energy subsidies negate this cost penalty.32:48–37:35 · Guest disagreement 2/10 Prompt Recycling and Building a Competitive Moat Harry inquires about open-sourcing models to counter Chinese distillation techniques. Jonathan explains prompt compatibility lock-in and contrasts US aversion to errors of omission with European aversion to errors of commission.37:35–40:42 · Guest disagreement 2/10 Japanese Decisiveness, Permitting Hurdles, and Geopolitical Power Jonathan praises Japan's decisive execution on 2nm fabs and nuclear restarts. Harry pushes back on European adoption feasibility, questioning whether governments can deploy infrastructure at necessary speeds.40:42–43:49 · Guest disagreement 3/10 The Tourist Economy Threat and Allied Energy Collaboration Harry suggests sovereign European models like Mistral offer a compelling defense against US control. Jonathan dismisses model sovereignty without compute infrastructure as meaningless for long-term competition.43:49–48:16 · Guest disagreement 3/10 The Shifting AI Market and the Virtuous Loop of Hardware Harry asks if inference growth threatens Nvidia's dominance given GPU inefficiency for inference. Jonathan clarifies that inference growth creates a virtuous cycle that amplifies demand for training GPUs.48:16–53:40 · Guest disagreement 2/10 Debunking Unemployment Myths and the Rise of Vibe Coders Jonathan outlines a counterintuitive macroeconomic view where AI induces labor shortages rather than mass unemployment through deflationary wealth effects. Harry agrees, highlighting the gap between public perception and market realities.53:40–57:08 · Guest disagreement 2/10 Margin Strategy, Volatility, and the Jevons Paradox Harry cites startups like Lovable and Replit to question whether gross margins matter during exponential growth phases. Jonathan explains that high margins provide structural stability against market volatility.57:08–1:00:54 · Guest disagreement 1/10 AI Cost Reduction and Solving Customer Problems Harry reflects on his previous mistaken assumptions regarding Canva's AI costs. Jonathan explains that reducing customer friction dramatically expands the total addressable market.1:00:54–1:04:27 · Guest disagreement 2/10 Economic Downturns, Predictions, and Market Stability Harry asks about potential market pullbacks given S&P concentration in tech. Jonathan details economic reflexivity and laments that excess capital encourages top engineers to launch solo ventures instead of joining Groq.1:04:27–1:07:23 · Guest disagreement 2/10 The Economics of the Tech Talent War Harry asks which incumbents Jonathan worries about, noting Google's turnaround. Harry presses Jonathan on whether Google's window of distribution advantage is closing relative to OpenAI.1:07:23–1:10:56 · Guest disagreement 2/10 OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and the Dynamics of Coding Tools Harry questions developer tool moats given low switching costs between AI coding assistants. Jonathan responds that enterprise contracts foster sticky adoption and asserts both OpenAI and Anthropic remain deeply undervalued.1:10:56–1:13:35 · Guest disagreement 2/10 Groq's Recent $750M Fundraise and Margin Strategy Harry challenges Groq's recent $750M fundraise, asking if it is sufficient capital and confronting Jonathan on past negative software margins. Jonathan clarifies hardware vs software unit economics.1:13:35–1:16:08 · Guest disagreement 2/10 The Chip Market Future & NVIDIA's $10T Valuation Harry prompts Jonathan for 5-year chip market predictions. Jonathan predicts Nvidia will maintain over 50% revenue share despite selling a minority of total physical chips.1:16:08–1:21:16 · Guest disagreement 2/10 What the Market Misunderstands: SRAM vs. DRAM Harry demonstrates technical knowledge from past interviews by identifying Groq's SRAM architecture. Jonathan breaks down system-level memory cost math, demonstrating why SRAM is cheaper at scale than DRAM.1:21:16–1:29:35 · Guest disagreement 3/10 Groq's Stance on Going Public Harry brings up Cerebras going public and asks rapid-fire questions citing Hamilton Helmer's Seven Powers. Jonathan corrects Harry on Cerebras pulling their IPO and refutes Cuda lock-in claims for inference.1:29:35–1:31:09 · Guest disagreement 0/10 Concluding Thoughts: LLMs as the Telescope of the Mind Jonathan offers a closing reflection comparing LLMs to Galileo's telescope, framing AI as expanding human consciousness. Harry expresses gratitude and concludes the episode.0:53–3:42 · Harry pushing back 4/10 Analyzing the AI Market and the "Vibe Investing" Bubble Harry asks if the AI market is in a bubble, and Jonathan immediately reframes the prompt, advising him to ask what smart money is doing instead. Harry pushes back on Jonathan's assertion that aggregate market returns exceed spend by highlighting Nvidia's extreme revenue concentration.3:42–8:02 · Harry pushing back 5/10 Hyperscaler Capex and the Valuation Imperative Harry presses Jonathan on hyperscaler capex, insisting that at some point financial returns must materialize regardless of Mag Seven status. Jonathan counters by explaining that capex spend is driven by existential career risk rather than pure financial ROI metrics.8:02–12:35 · Harry pushing back 5/10 Analyzing the NVIDIA Loop and the Supply Bottleneck Harry questions whether Nvidia investing $100B into OpenAI is an infinite money loop, calculating that 60% flows directly back into Nvidia's stock. Jonathan rejects the premise, explaining compute supply constraints and calling Harry's suggestion that users tolerate latency '100% wrong'.12:35–16:46 · Harry pushing back 3/10 High Bandwidth Memory and the Strategic Value of Custom Chips Harry asks if OpenAI and Anthropic can successfully move into custom chip production. Jonathan educates him on the difficulty of chip software and introduces Nvidia's monopsony over HBM memory supply.16:46–19:17 · Harry pushing back 3/10 Capital Planning, Memory Shortages, and Data Center Costs Harry asks if HBM shortages explain Sam Altman's call for hundreds of billions in capital. Jonathan directly shuts down the theory with a blunt 'No', explaining that data center amortization over 10 years dominates overall spend.19:17–22:43 · Harry pushing back 4/10 Upgrading Silicon and the Economics of Legacy Hardware Harry challenges accounting assumptions around 3-to-5-year chip amortization given rapid annual silicon iteration cycles. Jonathan breaks down the economic distinction between capex payback thresholds and opex retention thresholds.22:43–24:52 · Harry pushing back 1/10 Groq's 6-Month Lead Time and the 18-Month Advantage Jonathan outlines Groq's core pitch: delivering LPUs in 6 months versus Nvidia's 2-year advance checks. Harry reacts approvingly, framing it as an 18-month strategic chasm.24:52–29:12 · Harry pushing back 5/10 Designing Models for Silicon and NVIDIA's Future Harry challenges Jonathan's assertion that compute always equals performance, citing GPT-5's pivot toward efficiency over raw scale. Jonathan rejects the framing, explaining that models are tailored to hardware architecture and compute scale directly drives application quality.29:12–32:48 · Harry pushing back 3/10 Training vs. Inference Costs and the Geopolitical AI Race Jonathan debunks popular market claims regarding Chinese AI models like DeepSeek, revealing they are 10x more expensive to run than US open models. Harry questions whether CCP energy subsidies negate this cost penalty.32:48–37:35 · Harry pushing back 3/10 Prompt Recycling and Building a Competitive Moat Harry inquires about open-sourcing models to counter Chinese distillation techniques. Jonathan explains prompt compatibility lock-in and contrasts US aversion to errors of omission with European aversion to errors of commission.37:35–40:42 · Harry pushing back 4/10 Japanese Decisiveness, Permitting Hurdles, and Geopolitical Power Jonathan praises Japan's decisive execution on 2nm fabs and nuclear restarts. Harry pushes back on European adoption feasibility, questioning whether governments can deploy infrastructure at necessary speeds.40:42–43:49 · Harry pushing back 4/10 The Tourist Economy Threat and Allied Energy Collaboration Harry suggests sovereign European models like Mistral offer a compelling defense against US control. Jonathan dismisses model sovereignty without compute infrastructure as meaningless for long-term competition.43:49–48:16 · Harry pushing back 3/10 The Shifting AI Market and the Virtuous Loop of Hardware Harry asks if inference growth threatens Nvidia's dominance given GPU inefficiency for inference. Jonathan clarifies that inference growth creates a virtuous cycle that amplifies demand for training GPUs.48:16–53:40 · Harry pushing back 2/10 Debunking Unemployment Myths and the Rise of Vibe Coders Jonathan outlines a counterintuitive macroeconomic view where AI induces labor shortages rather than mass unemployment through deflationary wealth effects. Harry agrees, highlighting the gap between public perception and market realities.53:40–57:08 · Harry pushing back 3/10 Margin Strategy, Volatility, and the Jevons Paradox Harry cites startups like Lovable and Replit to question whether gross margins matter during exponential growth phases. Jonathan explains that high margins provide structural stability against market volatility.57:08–1:00:54 · Harry pushing back 2/10 AI Cost Reduction and Solving Customer Problems Harry reflects on his previous mistaken assumptions regarding Canva's AI costs. Jonathan explains that reducing customer friction dramatically expands the total addressable market.1:00:54–1:04:27 · Harry pushing back 3/10 Economic Downturns, Predictions, and Market Stability Harry asks about potential market pullbacks given S&P concentration in tech. Jonathan details economic reflexivity and laments that excess capital encourages top engineers to launch solo ventures instead of joining Groq.1:04:27–1:07:23 · Harry pushing back 3/10 The Economics of the Tech Talent War Harry asks which incumbents Jonathan worries about, noting Google's turnaround. Harry presses Jonathan on whether Google's window of distribution advantage is closing relative to OpenAI.1:07:23–1:10:56 · Harry pushing back 3/10 OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and the Dynamics of Coding Tools Harry questions developer tool moats given low switching costs between AI coding assistants. Jonathan responds that enterprise contracts foster sticky adoption and asserts both OpenAI and Anthropic remain deeply undervalued.1:10:56–1:13:35 · Harry pushing back 4/10 Groq's Recent $750M Fundraise and Margin Strategy Harry challenges Groq's recent $750M fundraise, asking if it is sufficient capital and confronting Jonathan on past negative software margins. Jonathan clarifies hardware vs software unit economics.1:13:35–1:16:08 · Harry pushing back 2/10 The Chip Market Future & NVIDIA's $10T Valuation Harry prompts Jonathan for 5-year chip market predictions. Jonathan predicts Nvidia will maintain over 50% revenue share despite selling a minority of total physical chips.1:16:08–1:21:16 · Harry pushing back 3/10 What the Market Misunderstands: SRAM vs. DRAM Harry demonstrates technical knowledge from past interviews by identifying Groq's SRAM architecture. Jonathan breaks down system-level memory cost math, demonstrating why SRAM is cheaper at scale than DRAM.1:21:16–1:29:35 · Harry pushing back 4/10 Groq's Stance on Going Public Harry brings up Cerebras going public and asks rapid-fire questions citing Hamilton Helmer's Seven Powers. Jonathan corrects Harry on Cerebras pulling their IPO and refutes Cuda lock-in claims for inference.1:29:35–1:31:09 · Harry pushing back 0/10 Concluding Thoughts: LLMs as the Telescope of the Mind Jonathan offers a closing reflection comparing LLMs to Galileo's telescope, framing AI as expanding human consciousness. Harry expresses gratitude and concludes the episode.

speaking balance: gold is Harry, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)

0:00 · Harry 34.4% · guest 65.6%0:00 · Harry 34.4% · guest 65.6%3:00 · Harry 14.7% · guest 85.3%3:00 · Harry 14.7% · guest 85.3%6:00 · Harry 17.5% · guest 82.5%6:00 · Harry 17.5% · guest 82.5%9:00 · Harry 14.9% · guest 85.1%9:00 · Harry 14.9% · guest 85.1%12:00 · Harry 5.7% · guest 94.3%12:00 · Harry 5.7% · guest 94.3%15:00 · Harry 9.6% · guest 90.4%15:00 · Harry 9.6% · guest 90.4%18:00 · Harry 19.2% · guest 80.8%18:00 · Harry 19.2% · guest 80.8%21:00 · Harry 7.7% · guest 92.3%21:00 · Harry 7.7% · guest 92.3%24:00 · Harry 12.6% · guest 87.4%24:00 · Harry 12.6% · guest 87.4%27:00 · Harry 12.9% · guest 87.1%27:00 · Harry 12.9% · guest 87.1%30:00 · Harry 11.8% · guest 88.2%30:00 · Harry 11.8% · guest 88.2%33:00 · Harry 11.6% · guest 88.4%33:00 · Harry 11.6% · guest 88.4%36:00 · Harry 11.8% · guest 88.2%36:00 · Harry 11.8% · guest 88.2%39:00 · Harry 22.8% · guest 77.2%39:00 · Harry 22.8% · guest 77.2%42:00 · Harry 35.5% · guest 64.5%42:00 · Harry 35.5% · guest 64.5%45:00 · Harry 7.2% · guest 92.8%45:00 · Harry 7.2% · guest 92.8%48:00 · Harry 13.8% · guest 86.2%48:00 · Harry 13.8% · guest 86.2%51:00 · Harry 33.5% · guest 66.5%51:00 · Harry 33.5% · guest 66.5%54:00 · Harry 2.8% · guest 97.2%54:00 · Harry 2.8% · guest 97.2%57:00 · Harry 30.5% · guest 69.5%57:00 · Harry 30.5% · guest 69.5%1:00:00 · Harry 14.1% · guest 85.9%1:00:00 · Harry 14.1% · guest 85.9%1:03:00 · Harry 16.5% · guest 83.5%1:03:00 · Harry 16.5% · guest 83.5%1:06:00 · Harry 24.1% · guest 75.9%1:06:00 · Harry 24.1% · guest 75.9%1:09:00 · Harry 18% · guest 82%1:09:00 · Harry 18% · guest 82%1:12:00 · Harry 24.1% · guest 75.9%1:12:00 · Harry 24.1% · guest 75.9%1:15:00 · Harry 21.2% · guest 78.8%1:15:00 · Harry 21.2% · guest 78.8%1:18:00 · Harry 7.3% · guest 92.7%1:18:00 · Harry 7.3% · guest 92.7%1:21:00 · Harry 21.5% · guest 78.5%1:21:00 · Harry 21.5% · guest 78.5%1:24:00 · Harry 10.2% · guest 89.8%1:24:00 · Harry 10.2% · guest 89.8%1:27:00 · Harry 18.7% · guest 81.3%1:27:00 · Harry 18.7% · guest 81.3%1:30:00 · Harry 13.3% · guest 86.7%1:30:00 · Harry 13.3% · guest 86.7%
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 11:53 Dismissing latency acceptance as 100% wrong

Jonathan strongly rejects Harry's suggestion that users are content with inference latency, calling the opinion 'a hundred percent wrong' and citing historical internet engagement metrics.

Hardest push from Harry ▶ 28:21 Challenging guest on GPT-5 efficiency vs compute scale conflict

Harry refuses Jonathan's framing that compute directly scales quality, pressing him on whether Sam Altman's focus on GPT-5 efficiency directly contradicts Jonathan's central thesis.

Biggest teaching moment ▶ 1:17:03 System-level SRAM vs DRAM economic breakdown

Jonathan corrects common market misunderstandings around SRAM pricing by breaking down system-level memory duplication, showing how GPUs consume 500x more memory copies.

Harry holds his own ▶ 1:16:29 Demonstrating architecture expertise with SRAM callout

Harry correctly identifies SRAM architecture as the underlying driver of Groq's multi-user serving capability, impressing Jonathan with his technical memory from their prior interview.

the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
ChapterTopicHarry as informed peerGuest teachingGuest disagreementHarry pushing backWhy
Analyzing the AI Market and the "Vibe Investing" Bubble 3434 Harry asks if the AI market is in a bubble, and Jonathan immediately reframes the prompt, advising him to ask what smart money is doing instead. Harry pushes back on Jonathan's assertion that aggregate market returns exceed spend by highlighting Nvidia's extreme revenue concentration.
Hyperscaler Capex and the Valuation Imperative 4535 Harry presses Jonathan on hyperscaler capex, insisting that at some point financial returns must materialize regardless of Mag Seven status. Jonathan counters by explaining that capex spend is driven by existential career risk rather than pure financial ROI metrics.
Analyzing the NVIDIA Loop and the Supply Bottleneck 5645 Harry questions whether Nvidia investing $100B into OpenAI is an infinite money loop, calculating that 60% flows directly back into Nvidia's stock. Jonathan rejects the premise, explaining compute supply constraints and calling Harry's suggestion that users tolerate latency '100% wrong'.
High Bandwidth Memory and the Strategic Value of Custom Chips 3623 Harry asks if OpenAI and Anthropic can successfully move into custom chip production. Jonathan educates him on the difficulty of chip software and introduces Nvidia's monopsony over HBM memory supply.
Capital Planning, Memory Shortages, and Data Center Costs 3633 Harry asks if HBM shortages explain Sam Altman's call for hundreds of billions in capital. Jonathan directly shuts down the theory with a blunt 'No', explaining that data center amortization over 10 years dominates overall spend.
Upgrading Silicon and the Economics of Legacy Hardware 5524 Harry challenges accounting assumptions around 3-to-5-year chip amortization given rapid annual silicon iteration cycles. Jonathan breaks down the economic distinction between capex payback thresholds and opex retention thresholds.
Groq's 6-Month Lead Time and the 18-Month Advantage 2411 Jonathan outlines Groq's core pitch: delivering LPUs in 6 months versus Nvidia's 2-year advance checks. Harry reacts approvingly, framing it as an 18-month strategic chasm.
Designing Models for Silicon and NVIDIA's Future 5635 Harry challenges Jonathan's assertion that compute always equals performance, citing GPT-5's pivot toward efficiency over raw scale. Jonathan rejects the framing, explaining that models are tailored to hardware architecture and compute scale directly drives application quality.
Training vs. Inference Costs and the Geopolitical AI Race 4633 Jonathan debunks popular market claims regarding Chinese AI models like DeepSeek, revealing they are 10x more expensive to run than US open models. Harry questions whether CCP energy subsidies negate this cost penalty.
Prompt Recycling and Building a Competitive Moat 3523 Harry inquires about open-sourcing models to counter Chinese distillation techniques. Jonathan explains prompt compatibility lock-in and contrasts US aversion to errors of omission with European aversion to errors of commission.
Japanese Decisiveness, Permitting Hurdles, and Geopolitical Power 3524 Jonathan praises Japan's decisive execution on 2nm fabs and nuclear restarts. Harry pushes back on European adoption feasibility, questioning whether governments can deploy infrastructure at necessary speeds.
The Tourist Economy Threat and Allied Energy Collaboration 4634 Harry suggests sovereign European models like Mistral offer a compelling defense against US control. Jonathan dismisses model sovereignty without compute infrastructure as meaningless for long-term competition.
The Shifting AI Market and the Virtuous Loop of Hardware 4533 Harry asks if inference growth threatens Nvidia's dominance given GPU inefficiency for inference. Jonathan clarifies that inference growth creates a virtuous cycle that amplifies demand for training GPUs.
Debunking Unemployment Myths and the Rise of Vibe Coders 3522 Jonathan outlines a counterintuitive macroeconomic view where AI induces labor shortages rather than mass unemployment through deflationary wealth effects. Harry agrees, highlighting the gap between public perception and market realities.
Margin Strategy, Volatility, and the Jevons Paradox 5523 Harry cites startups like Lovable and Replit to question whether gross margins matter during exponential growth phases. Jonathan explains that high margins provide structural stability against market volatility.
AI Cost Reduction and Solving Customer Problems 4412 Harry reflects on his previous mistaken assumptions regarding Canva's AI costs. Jonathan explains that reducing customer friction dramatically expands the total addressable market.
Economic Downturns, Predictions, and Market Stability 4423 Harry asks about potential market pullbacks given S&P concentration in tech. Jonathan details economic reflexivity and laments that excess capital encourages top engineers to launch solo ventures instead of joining Groq.
The Economics of the Tech Talent War 4423 Harry asks which incumbents Jonathan worries about, noting Google's turnaround. Harry presses Jonathan on whether Google's window of distribution advantage is closing relative to OpenAI.
OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and the Dynamics of Coding Tools 4523 Harry questions developer tool moats given low switching costs between AI coding assistants. Jonathan responds that enterprise contracts foster sticky adoption and asserts both OpenAI and Anthropic remain deeply undervalued.
Groq's Recent $750M Fundraise and Margin Strategy 5524 Harry challenges Groq's recent $750M fundraise, asking if it is sufficient capital and confronting Jonathan on past negative software margins. Jonathan clarifies hardware vs software unit economics.
The Chip Market Future & NVIDIA's $10T Valuation 4422 Harry prompts Jonathan for 5-year chip market predictions. Jonathan predicts Nvidia will maintain over 50% revenue share despite selling a minority of total physical chips.
What the Market Misunderstands: SRAM vs. DRAM 5523 Harry demonstrates technical knowledge from past interviews by identifying Groq's SRAM architecture. Jonathan breaks down system-level memory cost math, demonstrating why SRAM is cheaper at scale than DRAM.
Groq's Stance on Going Public 6534 Harry brings up Cerebras going public and asks rapid-fire questions citing Hamilton Helmer's Seven Powers. Jonathan corrects Harry on Cerebras pulling their IPO and refutes Cuda lock-in claims for inference.
Concluding Thoughts: LLMs as the Telescope of the Mind 1100 Jonathan offers a closing reflection comparing LLMs to Galileo's telescope, framing AI as expanding human consciousness. Harry expresses gratitude and concludes the episode.

Statements from this episode (84)

Insight
Ross: Countries controlling compute will control AI
“The countries that control compute will control AI, and you cannot have compute without energy.”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 40:31
Prediction Open · timeframe Sep 2030
Ross: Nvidia will be worth $10 trillion in five years
“I personally would be surprised if in five years NVIDIA wasn't worth 10 trillion, but I can't predict the outcome.”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 0:18
What-if
Ross: OpenAI and Anthropic revenues would double with double compute
“If OpenAI were given twice the inference compute that they have today. If Anthropic was given twice the inference compute that they have today, within one month from now, their revenue would almost double.”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 0:28
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Ross: Microsoft withheld Azure GPUs because internal usage made more money
“Microsoft in one quarter deployed a bunch of GPUs, and then announced that they weren't going to make them available in Azure because they made more money using them themselves than renting them out.”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 2:01
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Ross: 35 to 36 companies generate 99% of AI token spend
“35 companies or 36 companies are responsible for 99% of the revenue or at least the token spend in AI right now.”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 2:26
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Ross: Total AI ROI will exceed capital invested despite individual failures
“Right now, people are making more money than they're spending. It's just very lumpy. As an aggregate. Plenty of people are gonna lose their shirts, but overall, less money is gonna go in than is gonna come out.”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 3:29
Insight
Ross: Hyperscaler AI spending is driven by existential survival, not ROI
“That's how the hyperscalers feel. So of course they're going to be spending like drunken sailors because the alternative is that they're completely locked out of their business. So it's not a purely economical framework that they're using. It's a, do we get to…”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 4:43
Insight
Ross: Big tech must spend on AI to protect Magnificent Seven valuations
“If you're not a member of the mag seven, You're not going to be able to get anywhere near the valuation. And so what do you do to stay there? You spend. And it's worth it because the stock value stays up because you're in the top seven or 10.”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 5:11
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Groq deployed a customer feature in four hours with zero human code
“Four hours later, it was in production. Not a single line of code was written by a human being. There was no debugging done by a human being. It was all prompting.”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 6:10
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Ross: Shipping features during customer meetings will win deals against competitors
“Qualitatively, when you can do that before the customer meeting is over, you're gonna be able to win deals that your competitors won't.”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 6:50
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Ross: Google ran three parallel chip projects, but only TPU succeeded
“So, people look at the TPU as a big success, and what they don't realize is that there were about three chip efforts at Google at the same time and only one of them ended up outperforming GPUs.”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 7:13
Assertion Supported
Ross: Tesla's Dojo custom AI chip project was recently canceled
“And when you look around the industry, you've got a bunch of people building chips, some of them are getting canceled, like Dojo recently got canceled.”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 7:26
Insight
Ross: Building custom AI chips to rival NVIDIA is like replicating Google
“Going off and saying, I'm gonna build my own AI chip to compete with NVIDIA, It's a little bit like saying, you know, that Google search is pretty nice. Let's go replicate it. It's insane. Like the level of optimization, the level of design and engineering tha…”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 7:34
Insight
Ross: CPG profit margins correlate directly with response speed
“What is the number one thing that a high margin correlates to in CPG? It's the speed at which the ingredient acts on you. So that dopamine cycle, how quickly something occurs, determines your brand affinity. And so when something has a very quick response, you…”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 11:08
Assertion Supported
Ross: Every 100ms speed improvement increases conversion by roughly 8%
“Every 100 milliseconds of speed up results in about an eight percent conversion rate.”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 11:39
Prediction Open · timeframe Sep 2030
Ross: OpenAI, Anthropic, and all hyperscalers will build custom chips
“I have no doubt that OpenAI will be able to build its own chips. I have no doubt that eventually, Anthropic will be building their own chips, that every hyperscaler will build their own chip.”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 13:06
Assertion Partly supported
Ross: NVIDIA effectively holds a monopsony on High Bandwidth Memory
“The thing is, Nvidia effectively has a monopsony on HBM.”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 14:26
Assertion Supported
Ross: NVIDIA will produce ~5.5M GPUs this year despite 50M die capacity
“If Nvidia wanted to, they could build fifty million of those GPU die, Per year. But they're going to build about 5.5 million GPUs this year.”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 14:48
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ross: Securing AI Memory Allocations Requires Paying Two Years in Advance
“The problem is you have to write that check more than two years in advance.”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 17:29
Insight
Ross: Memory Suppliers Restrict HBM Supply to Protect High Profit Margins
“There's also this situation where the margin on HBM is so high, That no one wants to actually increase the supply, because then the margin goes down.”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 18:01
Opinion
Ross: Hyperscaler AI CapEx of $100B Annually Is Not Overspending
“So when you hear the hyperscalers talking about that, you know, seventy five billion to a hundred billion dollar a year investment, because they're building out the capacity for data centers, they're putting a lot of money up for returns that they're expecting…”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 18:58
Prediction Held up
Ross: Groq plans to upgrade its AI chips annually
“We're looking at upgrading chips about once a year.”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 19:42
Opinion
Ross: Five-year AI chip amortization schedules do not make sense
“And in our case, we actually don't think that five years makes any sense.”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 20:43
Assertion Supported
Ross: NVIDIA H100 GPUs remain highly profitable to operate despite age
“They're getting close to five years old. And they're still operating well, they're still earning more than their operating costs by quite a bit. You would never deploy an H 100 today, but they're still profitable to run, right?”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 22:08
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ross: Groq LPUs Ship in 6 Months Versus 2 Years for GPUs
“You have to write a check two years in advance to get GPUs. For us, you write us a check for a million LPUs, and the first of those LPUs starts showing up six months later.”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 24:14
Insight
Ross: Hardware incumbents win because AI models are optimized for existing GPUs
“So if you are the incumbent, you have an advantage because people are designing their models for your hardware. It doesn't even matter if there's a better architecture out there. It's not going to run well, so it's not a better architecture.”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 25:22
Prediction Held up
Ross: NVIDIA will keep selling chips despite AI labs building custom silicon
“NVIDIA still keeps selling chips.”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 26:00
Assertion Partly supported
Ross: Data center demand has exceeded projections for ten consecutive years
“For the last 10 years, infrastructure for data centers, you're planning that out two, three, four, five years in advance, right? And what happens is everyone, everyone's predictions are wrong. They end up building too little. This has just been what, what's ha…”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 26:16
Insight
Ross: AI product quality scales directly with compute spent per query
“AI doesn't work the way SAS does. In SAS, you have a bunch of engineers who go out and build a product, and the quality of that product is determined based on what those engineers did. That's not the case in AI. In AI, I can improve the quality of my product b…”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 27:04
Assertion Open · timeframe Sep 2026
Ross: Chinese AI models cost 10x more to run than US open-source
“The cost to run the OSS model is about one-tenth that of the Chinese models.”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 30:11
Prediction Open · timeframe Sep 2030
Ross: China will build 150 nuclear reactors to power domestic AI compute
“They're going to build a 150 nuclear reactors. So they're going to have enough energy, even though their chips aren't as energy efficient.”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 32:10
Prediction Open · timeframe Sep 2028
Ross: US will maintain AI hardware advantage over China for 2-3 years
“So my expectation is that right now for the next two to three years, the United States has a clear advantage in that away game over China.”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 32:34
Opinion
Ross: An AI model itself is not a clear competitive advantage
“I think the model itself is not a clear advantage.”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 32:56
Opinion
Ross: Anthropic should open-source older models to counter Chinese AI adoption
“I think that Anthropic should be open sourcing their previous generation in order to get people using them instead of the Chinese models.”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 33:32
Insight
Ross: Prompt compatibility functions like software compatibility to create ecosystem moats
“And just like you have software compatibility, you have prompt compatibility.”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 33:51
Insight
Ross: Missing out costs more than fumbling in growth economies
“There's two kinds of risk. There's mistakes of commission, where you do something that's a mistake, and then there's mistakes of omission, where you don't do something and it's a mistake. And the United States is terrified of making mistakes of omission. When …”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 35:50
Assertion Contradicted
Ross: Norway could match total US energy output via wind and hydro
“Norway has about an 80% utilization rate of wind. So, like, 80% of the time you can be generating energy. They have enough hydro that if you deployed an five x the wind power of the hydro, Norway itself could provide as much energy as the United States and cou…”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 36:52
Assertion Supported
Ross: Japan built a two-nanometer fab and is producing wafers
“Japan decided to build a two nanometer fab. When I was there last, they were showing off these two nanometer wafers that they produced. Now, the yield's not where it needs to be. This is not production grade, but they built a two nanometer fab, and they are pr…”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 38:09
Assertion Partly supported
Ross: Japan allocated $65 billion toward AI initiatives
“They've allocated sixty five billion dollars for AI.”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 38:28
Prediction Open · timeframe Sep 2030
Ross: Saudi Arabia will build 4 gigawatts of data center power
“They're going to build out three to four gigawatts in the very near future.”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 39:42
Assertion Contradicted
Ross: US nuclear power permitting costs triple actual construction costs
“He said they spend three times as much on the permitting in the United States than on the nuclear power plant.”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 40:02
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Ross: Europe will become a tourist economy without rapid AI energy expansion
“Then Europe's economy is going to be a tourist economy. People are going to come here to see the quaint old buildings, and that's going to be it.”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 41:59
Insight
Ross: 10x compute scale will outperform a 10x smarter AI model
“You could have a model that is 10 times smarter than OpenAI's model. And if you have 10 times the compute, OpenAI's model's gonna be better.”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 42:29
Prediction Held up
Ross: NVIDIA Will Sell Every Single GPU It Builds
“NVIDIA's gonna sell every single GPU that they build.”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 44:13
Insight
Ross: AI Training and Inference Form a Virtuous Hardware Demand Cycle
“The more inference you have, as mentioned before, the more you need to train the model to optimize for the inference. And the more training you have the more inference you want to deploy to optimize for the cost of that training, to amortize the cost of the tr…”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 44:28
Assertion Partly supported
Stebbings: 10% of the global population uses ChatGPT weekly
“10% of the world's population is a GPT weekly active user.”
Harry Stebbings Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 45:24
Insight
Ross: Compute is the most predictable lever for AI progress
“Compute is the easiest knob because it just keeps getting better and better and better every year. And if I write enough you know, if I write a check for enough money and I'm willing to wait a little while, I'm going to get more compute. It's the most predicta…”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 46:45
Opinion
Ross: There is no upper limit to usable AI compute
“There is no limit to the amount of compute that we can use.”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 47:15
Prediction Open · timeframe Sep 2030
Jonathan Ross: AI will cause massive labor shortages, not mass unemployment
“I believe that AI is going to cause massive labor shortages. Yeah, I don't think we're gonna have enough people to fill all the jobs that are gonna be created.”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 48:39
Prediction Open · timeframe Sep 2030
Ross: AI deflation will lead to earlier retirement and shorter workweeks
“And what that means is people will need to work less. And that's gonna lead you to number two, which is people are gonna opt out of the economy more. They're gonna work fewer hours, they're gonna work fewer days a week, and they're gonna work fewer years. They…”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 49:32
Opinion
Ross: Trump Administration Policies Are Definitely Helping Advance US AI
“Definitely help. All of the moves that have been made are things that are going to help with AI. For example you know, the permitting issues, right? Overall, it's been a very positive experience on AI.”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 51:39
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Ross: Coding will become a required skill for non-technical roles like marketing
“And coding is gonna become the same thing. For you to be in marketing, you're gonna have to be able to code. For you to be in customer service, you're gonna have to be code be able to code.”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 52:55
Insight
Ross: High margins trade competitive moat for market stability
“The real reason why you need higher margins is volatility, because if you have a razor thin margin and the market moves, you may not be able to raise more money, you may not be able to get a loan, and so what a margin does is it gives you stability and staying…”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 54:15
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Ross: Groq will drive cash flow via volume while minimizing margins
“I want my margin to be as low as I possibly can make it while keeping my business stable, and I'm going to make my cash flow by increasing the volume.”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 56:27
Assertion Supported
Harry Stebbings: AI implementation costs have dropped by 98%
“And it's just such a naive approach to ask that question even, because now the cost of implementation has gone down by 98%.”
Harry Stebbings Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 57:25
Disclosure
Ross: PE firms are aggressively seeking cheap AI compute from Groq
“PE firms are all over us. They want access to cheap AI compute, because every time they get more cheap AI compute, they can bring the, they can change the bottom line of their businesses.”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 59:44
Insight
Ross: AI compute expands labor supply, an unprecedented economic shift
“The most valuable thing in the economy is labor. And now we're going to be able to add more labor to the economy by producing more compute and better AI. That has never happened in the history of the economy before.”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 1:00:37
Insight
Ross: Easy funding prevents AI startups from building critical talent mass
“Right now the biggest problem I see in AI is if you see a good engineer, one that you would have hired before, they can go out and they can raise 10, twenty, hundred million, a billion dollars, and then rather than contributing to one of the other AI startups,…”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 1:03:04
Insight
Ross: Markets are only overheated if macro factors hinder corporate success
“In terms of whether or not the economy is overheated, I think one of the best predictors of that is, is the economy getting in the way of the success of the companies. If it's not getting in the way, then I don't think it's overheated.”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 1:03:37
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ross: The tech talent war is more aggressive than ever in history
“It's definitely much more aggressive than it's ever been in history but only in tech.”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 1:04:31
Opinion
Ross: Gemini's integration into Gmail and Google products is practically unusable
“It's like, it's in Gmail, but it's practically unusable. It's in pretty much every product, and it seems thrown in, kind of, like, half thought through”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 1:06:08
Prediction Open · timeframe Sep 2028
Ross: OpenAI is highly unlikely to fail or go away
“At this point, it would be hard to imagine a scenario where OpenAI goes away. I just, I don't see how that happens.”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 1:07:11
Disclosure
Groq engineers recently switched from Anthropic tools to OpenAI Codex
“Our engineers recently started using codecs more than using the Anthropic tools.”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 1:07:39
Disclosure
Groq mandates AI tool usage for engineers while leaving tool choice open
“We have a philosophy, we don't tell our engineers what tools to use. We do tell them you must use AI, because otherwise you're just not going to be competitive.”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 1:07:45
Insight
Enterprise AI adoption is sticky due to long-term software contracts
“Enterprises make these long-term deals, and they stick with whatever their deal they made a year ago.”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 1:08:30
Opinion
Jonathan Ross: OpenAI and Anthropic Are Both Highly Undervalued
“I'd want to invest in both. They're both undervalued. Highly undervalued.”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 1:08:42
Prediction Held up
Ross: Groq Will Never Create Its Own AI Models
“In our case we found an area where we will not compete with our customers, which is we will not create our own models. So we just won't do it.”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 1:10:26
Disclosure
Groq raised $750 million at a valuation near $7 billion
“So we raised seven hundred fifty million. ... Yeah, almost seven billion.”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 1:11:05
Disclosure
Groq originally planned to raise only $300 million in recent round
“It is, in fact we were only gonna raise three hundred million”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 1:11:20
Disclosure
Groq operates with positive gross margins on hardware sales
“So we have when we sell hardware, those hardware units actually have positive margin.”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 1:11:38
Disclosure
Jonathan Ross has never sold any of his Groq shares
“Yeah, but I don't sell shares, so. ... Never.”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 1:12:43
Prediction Open · timeframe Sep 2030
Ross: NVIDIA will retain 50%+ revenue share with 10% chip volume
“My prediction is that in five years, NVIDIA will still have over 50% of the revenue. However, they will have a minority of the chips sold. They might have, you know, minority share. They might have 51% of the revenue, and they might have 10% of the chips sold.”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 1:13:52
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ross: Groq can produce more compute than anyone without supply constraints
“We don't have the same supply chain constraints. We can build more compute than anyone else in the world. The most finite resource right now, compute, the thing that people are bidding up and paying these high margins for, we can produce nearly unlimited quant…”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 1:15:50
Disclosure
Jonathan Ross: Groq is currently operating 13 data centers globally
“We're now at 13 data centers. We have data centers in the United States, in Canada, in Europe in the Middle East.”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 1:18:36
Disclosure
Ross: A customer recently requested 5x Groq's total chip capacity
“Like I said, last week someone came to us and asked for five times our total capacity.”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 1:19:39
Disclosure
Ross: Groq's latest fundraise was 4x oversubscribed on double target
“I mean, with this fundraise, we ended up raising you know, more than twice what we were, you know, expecting to raise, and then we were forex oversubscribed over over what we did raise, and so we could have raised a lot more money, it would have been more dilu…”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 1:20:15
Insight
Ross: Lowering AI chip prices 50% leads customers to buy double
“If we lower what we charge 50%, people are gonna buy twice as much. They're spending as much as they're making because whatever they spend increases the quality of the output.”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 1:21:05
Disclosure
Ross: Groq is not currently preparing for an IPO
“Our focus is purely on execution right now. Whether or not you go public, you know, that's like that's a completely different game than we're playing right now. Right now, all that matters is can we satisfy the demand for compute?”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 1:21:19
Assertion Supported
Ross: Cerebras recently decided not to go public
“Well, they recently decided not to go public.”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 1:21:40
Opinion
Ross: NVIDIA's software moat applies to training, not inference
“That NVIDIA's software is a moat. Yeah it's true for training, but it's not true for inference.”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 1:22:01
Disclosure
Ross: Groq has reached 2.2 million registered developers
“I mean, we have 2.2 million developers on us now. That's how many have signed up.”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 1:22:11
Opinion
Ross: Starting a new AI chip company today is too late
“I wouldn't do chips. That, that chip has already sailed. It takes too long to build a chip.”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 1:22:28
Opinion
Ross: Amazon lacks AI DNA compared to Google, Meta, and Microsoft
“Amazon, I think doesn't have AI DNA. And they, like, if you compare them, so you didn't mention Meta, right? But Meta and Google always had the AI DNA, and Microsoft bought it with OpenAI, but that bought them time. Amazon still doesn't have that DNA, but they…”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 1:29:14
Insight
Jonathan Ross: LLMs Are the Telescope of the Mind
“I think over time, we're gonna realize that LLMs are the telescope of the mind. That right now, they're making us feel really, really small. But in a hundred years, we're gonna realize that intelligence is more vast than we could have ever imagined, and we're …”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 1:30:39

Shorts cut from this episode

▶ Nvidia worth $10T ?! · 20VC with Harry Stebbings (@0:19) ▶ Missing out is MORE Expensive · 20VC with Harry Stebbings (@35:52) ▶ Is AI a Bubble? · 20VC with Harry Stebbings (@4:04) ▶ Can Europe win the AI Race? · 20VC with Harry Stebbings (@0:00) ▶ The Future of AI Chips · 20VC with Harry Stebbings (@13:08) ▶ "The Countries that Control Compute Will Control AI" · 20VC (@0:00)
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