Gurley: Sam Altman's Energy Compute Framing Is Jobsian-Level Promotion
Bill Gurley · Ep6. AI Demand / Supply - Models, Agents, the $2T Compute Build Out, Need for More Nuclear & More · Bg2 Pod · Apr 4, 2024 · at 21:39
Benchmark partner Bill Gurley discusses OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's media interview tactics with Altimeter Capital's Brad Gerstner.
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“I want to, there's two things Sam did this in this recent Interview that I think put him in the promotion hall of fame. And one of them was he juxtapositioned AI versus the smartphone market and then on the smartphone market is being small. He said, well, that's limited to five billion purchases every two years. And we're going to go way beyond that, which was I just thought genius, right? Like bring up something really big and then say, degrade that and say, it's going to be way bigger. That's genius. But the second thing he did was he said, he's afraid they're going to run out of energy. Now this is genius also, because the minute you leave that conversation and say, holy , how much energy is used by data center? You've succumbed to the game. Like, because You've now accepted that this thing's going to be energy limited, and you're going off and trying to figure out whether that's true or not. I think both of these things were, and I, it may sound like I'm kidding, I'm not. I think they're Jobsian level promotional techniques, like spectacular.”
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