I thought data companies are going to die, I was wrong. Instead, they might end up being the kingmaker. They’re selling shovels. They are going to continue growing a lot more. Surge will probably have the reputation of Anthropic in less than 18 months. Compute is no longer a sustainable edge, researchers change labs & carry their experience with them - data is THE differentiator. Labs will be forced to buy a lot more data & vertically try to penetrate different industries. This has already been proven with Anthropic’s focus on coding. But GitHub for other industries don’t exist. Data companies with strong research muscle & domain expertise will dominate. As intelligence penetrates enterprises a lot more, their dependence on a few labs will reduce as well. It’ll be extremely difficult for other companies to pivot into this business because the combination of operational muscle + research you need can’t be built overnight. That DNA is critical to do this work. We of course have a million companies doing this business but extremely few that genuinely push the frontier forward. We “need” a lot more of those who can partner closely with labs to help build the most critical technology of our lives.

Lost trust on Tesla’s FSD yesterday. My Tesla took a right turn on a right red arrow & started driving directly on the road with with muni rail. I’ve been a frequent user of FSD but these incidents are a good reminder that these technologies are pretty early & not reliable.