Emergence Capital founding partner Gordon Ritter breaks down the capital structure and expenditure distribution of massive AI infrastructure initiatives like Stargate.
Opinion
Ritter: Almost no dollar price is too high to beat China
“The national security part, we should put in I, it's one person's opinion, but we need to make sure we win this race against against China in particular. And I, there almost no dollar price is wrong in that using that lens”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Ritter: Public AI training data is exhausted; commercial data is next
“Fundamentally, the harvesting of publicly available data has, for the most part, run its course, and Ilya Sutskiver said as much I love, you know, it's an interesting quote by saying, ah, AI data is fossil fuel for AI, and we've run out of it. And I generally …”
Insight
Ritter: Raw corporate data is worthless compared to captured employee workflows
“Remember when it was just data? You can get access to our data. Well, data is nothing. It's the way your employees are using that data to make value out of it. Guess what models do and good models are going to do it even better.”
Insight
Ritter: LPs Know Real Venture Returns Come from Early Stage, Not Late Stage
“Most of the LPs that are backing this segment, the venture capital segment, know that the real returns come from early stage and later stage is great, but it's a different, it's closer to their buyout category than it is to their what they call venture capital…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Ritter: 2025 tech IPO window unlikely to be as good as hoped
“I I'm not sure that the IPO markets are going to be as good as I had hoped coming into twenty-twenty-five.”
Opinion
Ritter: Tight vertical strategies may not yield the best AI outcomes
“A lot of AI companies are now doing very tight verticals for good reason, because they have, you know, they have tighter context around what they can do with AI. And we love that, but it may not be the best strategy to reproduce those kinds of results.”