Vinod Valloppillil

The most under appreciated part of SpaceX is how strong the Starlink position is. People acknowledge its existence but don’t appreciate the math. All three of these assumptions below can be very wrong delaying profitability for years (even into the 2030s) and Starlink continues to throw off a lot of cash. It positions SpaceX as one of the lowest risk bets on AGI.

Would Apple ever buy Anthropic? Claude is very Apple-coded.

Who the fuck are these MAGA clowns to lecture us Europeans about anything? They live in a European ex-colony, under European-written laws, governed by a European-designed political system, speaking a European language, using a European alphabet, practising European concepts of rights, quoting European philosophers, celebrating European holidays, living inside European-mapped borders, with European surnames, and flying a flag based on European heraldic design. Their entire nation is the plastic, theme-park replica of Europe. Instead of spouting bollocks about Europe, they should read a history book...ideally one with words as well as pictures.

Some people (including me at first!) are concerned that SpaceX's AI space data center and reported IPO ambitions may stymie or self-sabotage their Mars plans. This is a legit concern to wonder about. Visionary companies can become suddenly myopic, one eye always on the stock ticker because of shareholders and the vagaries of the market. Here are a few quotes about going public that are attributed to Musk: “There’s a lot of noise that surrounds a public company and people are constantly commenting on the share price and value.” “As a public company, we are subject to wild swings in our stock price that can be a major distraction for everyone working at Tesla…" “I wish we could be private with Tesla. It actually makes us less efficient to be a public company" That being said, there is a solid counter argument, grounded in science fiction, that posits that humans probably can't settle other planets without AGI or at least advanced AI agents. Even the National Academies report released yesterday that recommended a science strategy for the human exploration of Mars, emphasized human and AI Agent pairing. Sophisticated AI inference on the edge (Mars) where round trip communications could take up to 40 mins might be essential to establishing a human presence there. Think of how much construction and civil engineering projects will be needed to scale civilization there. So if you want to see humans settle Mars in your lifetime, and scale their during the lifetime of your heirs, have some faith. This twist of fate might be the right one. 🤷‍♂️

I understand why many smart people feel this way but I’m not worried about this scenario one bit. In the heydays Google and Facebook there were similar predictions. Google was going to swallow the Internet, FB apps were going to replace everything etc. They weren’t the slow incumbents we think of them today. They were scary. I wasn’t around in Microsoft’s heydays but I bet it was similar. One company to rule them all never works out. Especially in the application layer where every design decision is a trade off. That’s why even in the same category, you can have many successful companies based on minor differences. There isn’t one way to find restaurants, learn things, connect socially, organize an event or shop online. You can always find weaknesses of an existing service and build something better for certain customers. If anything, the foundational model companies have much weaker moats than Google, FB and MS had. No models have a monopoly on anything. Distribution and capital is way more accessible for startups than it was 10-20 years ago. OpenAI and Anthropic have some momentum right now. But when they’ve to compete in 10+ categories, you’ll be competing with a PM there, not their founders. These organizations also have significant cultural weaknesses you can leverage. Their coveted researchers want to solve math problems, not hear complaints from soccer moms in Ohio or compliance teams of regional hospitals. So I’ll say game is on. You can’t win if you don’t play.