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Stefano Scarabelli's avatar

Social media platforms revenues are essentially generated by advertising: if the benefits of AI chips manifest themselves mainly in this economic activity, it's like using a steamroller to crack a nut. Very inflationary indeed.

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Russell Clark's avatar

I originally looked at just advertising businesses - but their revenue has grown far beyond that - almost as if they created new businesses - that needed more advertising. I do know a few people using AI to basically replace call centres - with first results looking very promising - and other possibilities are mind boggling.

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Clement's avatar

If you are correct nVidia is more accurately compared to Standard Oil, which actually had a downstream (refining) monopoly until its breakup. Whereas upstream (crude oil extraction) was more diversified.

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Clement's avatar

Rockefeller (Jensen Huang?) owned 25% of Standard Oil, which was valued circa 8-10% US GDP around 1910, his net worth was about 2% US GDP

10% US GDP in 2024 is about US$2.8tn, vs nVidia mkt cap 3.5tn

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Russell Clark's avatar

True - but is US GDP right measure? global gdp these days? So hard to compare the 1910s to today.

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Matthew Newton's avatar

Kai Fu Lee wrote about this in AI superpower. China is a data generating machine with less privacy restrictions as the west

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Russell Clark's avatar

The question is whether the US capitalistic, more business driven model can outperform China's more government led model

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