Rajiv Jain of GQG Partners evaluates late-stage private market valuations and profitability while speaking with Ted Seides.
Opinion
Jain: Semiconductor barriers to entry are declining as China ramps capacity
“Semiconductor industry, the barriers to entry are getting lower, not higher. Chinese are coming in a very aggressive way, including into semi-cap site, equipment site, memory site, the ramping up capacity. That's a far lower barrier to entry business than what…”
Insight
Jain: If Chinese firms compete in an industry, they will overproduce
“One of the big lessons investing is if Chinese are a competitor, be very careful because they will overproduce and kill you.”
What-if
Jain: Google's operating margin would be single digits without depreciation changes
“If you look at Google, if they had not changed the depreciation policy, the margin would be high single digits, operating margin.”
Opinion
Jain: AI is powerful, but infrastructure economics are structurally bad
“Our view is that this is a powerful technology, but the economics are really bad. And time is not a friend. So if you're trading here, different matter. But the economics are not good economics.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Jain: Over half of hyperscaler backlog stems from OpenAI and Anthropic
“Now we're getting more clarity that more than half of the backlog, hence probably the revenue too,
Is coming from basically anthropic slash open AI.
If you look at Google and Microsoft is more than half open AI.
Amazon is more than half.
So they invest with op…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Jain: CoreWeave and GPU cloud providers are bleeding heavily from underpricing
“When you're underpricing everything, if you look at CoreWeave and EBS, they're bleeding heavily.
That means they're not covering the cost.
The real test of shortage is when you're priced appropriately.
It's a capitalistic system, so when you subsidize somethin…”