

Michael Waitze
44 posts

@MichaelWaitze
Asia/US Tech Analysis, founder Interviews, and Intelligent Daily Signals on AI, FinTech, and Infrastructure






Chamath: AI Will Kill Brands, Only Abundance Wins The brands that bring abundance will win big. @chamath: “ If I had to bet, I'm going to bet that brands go to zero.” @Jason: “Really?” Chamath: “When you can make things that are as good or better, and you can make them in a cheaper, faster, better way, people want that abundance more than they want an affiliation to a brand. The perfect example is actually what Tesla did to BMW. This is a fundamentally cheaper, faster, better product. Yes, it's got a great brand, but nobody's going to pay a premium for these products. The reason why Y has outsold everything else is because the Model Y is priced better and it's superior on every operational dimension of comparison. Maybe the right word is abundance. The brands that bring abundance, that bring more to the table than their competitors, and they're able to bring more at the same unit cost or less, capture share. That's probably true.”

I could not agree with this more. This is a massive enabler, just like every other tech transformation that preceded it. @MichaelWaitze

I’ve seen several waves where progress was defined by what systems could describe, not what they could understand. What’s interesting here is the shift back to first principles: grounding intelligence in the physical world rather than abstractions alone. Breakthroughs often come from these reframings, not by extending the current path, but by questioning whether it was the right one to begin with. What's your take on this development? @pchamard @Khulood_Almani @antgrasso @GlenGilmore @Shi4Tech @CurieuxExplorer @FrRonconi @chidambara09 @theomitsa @Analytics_699 @Nicochan33 @nafisalam @pierrepinna @smaksked @Corix_JC @amalmerzouk @AdityaRPatro @quepasachico @IngridVasiliu @EstelaMandela @sonu_monika @RLDI_Lamy @SpirosMargaris @IanLJones98 @Timothy_Hughes @avrohomg @bimedotcom @HaroldSinnott @c4trends @mvollmer1 @DG_Collective @bamitav @rwang0 @ipfconline1 @sijlalhussain wired.com/story/yann-lec…

How to make mega money: Buy things that other people misjudge as risky. Ex: Quitting your job. Moving across the country. Going all in. The reality is that the alternative is riskier - it just takes longer to realize it.

A CEO from one of our portfolio companies shared this with their team. I’m re-sharing it with their permission, because it resonated and reflects what all founders and CEOs should be communicating. -- We are living through a period of compounding change. And in moments like this, the biggest risk is no longer making the wrong decision. It is moving too slowly while the world moves around you. There are two paths. We can play defense: - Protect what we have - Optimize what works - Wait for clarity It feels safe. It isn’t. Or we can play offense: - Learn faster than the environment changes - Use new tools to solve old problems in better ways - And create entirely new strategies and businesses That’s where the opportunity is. Challenge yourself to do things faster and better than you have ever attempted. Stay uncomfortable. Stay on the front foot.


. @AlibabaGroup Launched Accio Work In New Agentic AI Push, @amitysolutions_ Raises US$100 Million. ATP Insights discusses the most important tech news in Asia. On this episode's agenda: 00:00 Alibaba Launched Accio Work In New Agentic AI Push 18:13 Penny Chai - Vice President, APAC at @sumsub 32:59 Alan Kepper - CEO of Laminar & Lumenir Cybersecurity project lead 44:24 Arne Jeroschewski - CEO at @ParcelPerform 1:05:18 Ask Michael Anything

One common issue with personalization in all LLMs is how distracting memory seems to be for the models. A single question from 2 months ago about some topic can keep coming up as some kind of a deep interest of mine with undue mentions in perpetuity. Some kind of trying too hard.



Three companies absorbed 83% of all global VC in February. $189B month. OpenAI, Anthropic, Waymo. Everyone's debating which AI model wins. The real question: who's building the picks and shovels underneath them? That's where the durable seed-stage opportunities are hiding.

Starship is the Hope that our future is bigger than our past It will enable us to build a civilization beyond Earth - a true multi-planetary civilization among the stars

Cuteness is such an underrated under discussed highly valuable attribute to consumer home robotics market. The image, movements, “personalities” are highly influential to human reactions. A cute, friendly, non threatening robots that can make kids relaxed/happy will sell better than dystopian sci-fi creepy looking humanoids.


And so the myth of technology-driven unemployment dies once again.

OpenAI just exited the video generation business entirely. App dead. API dead. No video inside ChatGPT. Disney’s $1 billion deal, signed four months ago, is dead. Read that again. This isn’t a consolidation into the super app. Altman told staff Tuesday that OpenAI is winding down all products using video models. Disney’s own statement says they respect OpenAI’s decision to “exit the video generation business.” The Sora research team is being redirected to robotics. The reason is sitting right there in the competitive data. Anthropic hit $19 billion in annualized revenue by early 2026 selling text and code. No video generation. No image generation. No consumer social app. No Disney deal. One product surface: chat, code, computer use, all in one place. OpenAI looked at where every dollar of market growth was coming from and saw the answer: coding and enterprise. So now they’re copying the model. ChatGPT, Codex, and the browser merge into one app. Instant Checkout killed today too. Every consumer experiment is getting cut. What remains is the Anthropic playbook: one app, code and chat, enterprise and developer focus. The Sora numbers explain the urgency. Total consumer revenue across iOS and Android since September: $1.4 million. Peak month was $540,000. Every video generation burned GPU compute that could have been running inference for ChatGPT or Codex instead. OpenAI’s own head of Sora announced generation limits because chips couldn’t keep up. At $14 billion in projected 2026 losses, every GPU matters. Google just inherited the AI video market by default. Nano Banana already lives inside Gemini. No standalone app to manage, no separate brand to support. Among the majors, they’re the only ones left. Runway, Kling, Minimax, Luma, and the other independents are still shipping, but none of them have Google’s distribution. Disney put $1 billion in stock warrants on a product that lasted six months. The deal was announced in December. Characters from Marvel, Pixar, and Star Wars were supposed to be generating fan videos on Sora by now. Instead, Disney is writing a polite press statement about “respecting OpenAI’s decision” while its legal team unwinds a deal that never produced a single licensed video. Four months from billion-dollar partnership to obituary. That’s how fast the AI product landscape reprices when the unit economics don’t work.



We’re saying goodbye to the Sora app. To everyone who created with Sora, shared it, and built community around it: thank you. What you made with Sora mattered, and we know this news is disappointing. We’ll share more soon, including timelines for the app and API and details on preserving your work. – The Sora Team