592: Mark Leonard Resigns, Four Tech Kingdoms, AI Capex Eating the World, US Healthcare, Apple + Intel, GDPval, Cloudflare, Testosterone, ChatGPT Pulse, and Highway Piano

"a rare gem in this world."

I love what I’m doing, and don’t want to stop unless my health deteriorates.

—Mark Leonard, 2015 President’s Letter

😢📰 Mark Leonard, the President and Founder of Constellation Software, resigned yesterday morning for health reasons, “effective immediately.” Here’s the official press release.

The suddenness makes it clear that it’s something serious (to give you a sense of the timing, the company’s ‘about’ page hasn’t been updated yet).

I’ve heard some things through the grapevine, but out of respect for his privacy, I won’t comment publicly on the health issue, and I hope others will do the same.

I sincerely hope he’s okay. He’s a true gentleman and a scholar, a rare gem in this world.

I genuinely care about him as a person, not just as a businessman.

In a world short on role models and mentors, I’ve learned so much from how he thinks and how he conducts himself: always with integrity, deep curiosity, a drive for true understanding, and a rare long-term perspective.

I’ve been following him for close to 15 years, attending the AGM several times, reading everything he’s written, listening to every call he did (including recordings of the early quarterly calls), and even that internal company podcast that was released publicly by mistake. We’ve exchanged emails for many years, sometimes discussing business, other times, evidence-based medicine or evolutionary biology, or recommending books to each other.

I wish him a speedy recovery. My thoughts are with him and his family and loved ones during what must be an extremely trying time. ♥️

---

🏦 💰 Business & Investing 💳 💴

💰💰 ‘The Four Kingdoms of Tech Profits’ 💰💰

Source: Ethan Ding

(I’m not endorsing the whole post, btw, I’m unsure about parts, and I’m not a fan of the lack of capitalization. But this graph jumped out at me as a crisp way to visualize the landscape.)

🏗️🏗️🏗️🏗️🏗️ Will AI Capex Eat the World? 👷🚧👷

Clearly, “nobody knows” for sure (maybe I’ve got Mark Leonard on the brain, but I’m reminded how few people dare say “I don’t know” even when that’s the truth) how much will be spent because things are changing way too fast AND it’s always dangerous to extrapolate exponential trends.

For all we know, things could go even faster than expected OR a huge bubble could burst and slow things down massively.

I try to remain skeptical of the hype 🚀, but also skeptical of the skeptics who claim to know how it’ll all go bad (they don’t know either). After all, few people would have predicted 10-15 years ago the scale that companies like Nvidia, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft would reach today, even if they knew things were going very well for them.

But back to capex and future capacity: I can’t help but wonder at what point the AI boom starts to strongly distort other industries by sucking in so much labor, materials, and power.

At some point, you won’t have enough cement trucks, plumbers, bulldozers, pipe fitters, cranes, gas turbines, or transformers to go around. It takes time to build more equipment, and it takes time to train more skilled workers.

We won’t have robots doing that work quite yet… 🦾

What happens when all these things get bid up and other industries can’t keep up? How does that supply constraint manifest elsewhere? Second and third order effects? 🤔

🇺🇸 US Healthcare Sector Relative Performance is Worst Since the 1950s 💊👨‍⚕️🩺🏥📉

From friend-of-the-show Lawrence Hamtil:

The last ten years or so have been the worst for healthcare stocks on a relative basis in ~70 years

70 years! For once, I think this *actually* qualifies as “the long-term” 🕰️

🍎🤝🐜 Intel Asked Apple to Invest, But What Does Intel Have That Apple Needs? 🤔

Following Nvidia’s $5bn investment in Intel, and a reported approach to TSMC for a partnership of some sort (they already fab some Intel chips, but I think this would be about helping Intel’s manufacturing side), Bloomberg reports:

Intel has approached Apple about securing an investment in the ailing chipmaker, according to people familiar with the matter, part of efforts to bolster a business that’s now partially owned by the US government.

Apple and Intel also have discussed how to work more closely together [...]

Intel also has reached out to other companies about possible investments and partnerships, the people said.

Clearly the feds are going around and making it clear that everyone needs to help out Intel…