Ben Thompson analyzes statements made on earnings calls by Amazon CEO Andy Jassy and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella regarding datacenter shell CapEx.
Opinion
Thompson: Apple's ATT Was One of Tech's Worst Antitrust Violations
“When Apple passed ATT, app tracking transparency was one of the most One of the worst antitrust violations in the history of technology, like, just Apple unilaterally obliterating all these business models while they're simultaneously building their own, as fa…”
Opinion
Thompson: US AI military superiority would be dangerous for the world
“So I, there's a, just a fundamental disconnect that I have with a lot of the rhetoric coming out of Silicon Valley, coming out, I think, of one of the labs in particular, where if we get to a place where we have a meaningful superiority, particularly from, lik…”
Opinion
Thompson: NVIDIA's neocloud financing deals effectively represent disguised price cuts
“If you actually look at their business holistically, what that is, is a price cut, right? Like they, now the price cut didn't show up in margins. It didn't show up in what they're offering, but a lot of what NVIDIA is doing is how can we maintain our margins?”
Opinion
Thompson: NVIDIA's CUDA moat is dramatically diminished for AI models
“CUDA's moat is dramatically diminished because the models don't care what they run on, and that's what actually matters, what's built on top of the models, but it still matters. It, it's still something of a mode.”
Insight
Thompson: US dependence on China cannot be fixed outside conflict
“I think there's a little bit of magical thinking, which I just invoked in terms of manufacturing and whether it be fabs, whether that be actuators, like all these sort of precursors, like the, I think the degree to which we are dependent on China is underappre…”
Opinion
Thompson: Chinese AI labs remain 6 to 9 months behind frontier models
“I think OpenAI and Anthropic are clearly on the frontier. Who knows what's happening with Google and then Grok and Meta are chasing them. Meanwhile, the Chinese are very capable, very smart, and also definitely distilling these models to sort of stay about six…”