Wall Street's Top AI Bull Reveals the Real Bottleneck (It's Not Chips) | Dan Ives

Dan Ives is the Partner and Senior Managing Director at Yorkville Ives, a new merchant bank he's building. In this conversation, we break down the AI trade—Chinese open-source models, Anthropic's slowing revenue growth, the biggest bottlenecks in chips, memory, and energy, and the political battles over data centers. ====================== Arch Public is an agentic trading platform that automates investment strategies across Stocks, Commodities, ETFs and Crypto. Whether you’re rotating into AI & Gold, allocating to the S&P 500, or accumulating Bitcoin, Arch Public executes your plan 24/7 without ever taking custody of your assets or funds. Sign up today at https://www.archpublic.com, and start your FREE automated trading strategy! ====================== Need liquidity without selling your crypto? Take out a Figure Crypto-Backed Loan, allowing you to borrow against your BTC, ETH, or SOL with 12-month terms, 8.91% interest rates, and no prepayment penalties. Or check out Democratized Prime (https://figuremarkets.co/pomp) and earn ~9% APY on real world assets, paid hourly. Unlock your crypto’s potential today at Figure! https://figuremarkets.co/pomp Figure Lending LLC dba Figure (NMLS 1717824). Loans subject to approval. Crypto collateral may be liquidated. Terms apply - see full disclosures at figure.com/disclosures/ ====================== This episode is brought to you by TikTok for Business. If you run a company, your next wave of customers may already be on TikTok. With more than 200 million monthly active users in the U. S. and 51% unique reach, TikTok gives brands access to audiences they can't reach anywhere else. Learn how to turn that reach into growth at TikTok for Business ( https://anthonypompliano.splashthat.com/ ) ====================== 0:00 - Intro0:51 - Chinese vs American open-source models, & the Anthropic IP lawsuit4:36 - Falling model costs and the pricing war5:55 - Cultural bias baked into Chinese AI models?7:44 - Will AI models eat the whole stack? 11:20 - Specialized AI workflows & model routing14:00 - Mag 7 free cash flow vs. exploding semiconductor revenue17:37 - The real AI bottlenecks: memory chips, data centers & energy30:13 - Anthropic's revenue growth is slowing — should investors worry?31:17 - Why Dan is leaving Wall Street to build Yorkville Ives34:32 - Dan's AI market predictions & closing thoughts

• 0:00Speaker 00

  College football is back. So Hilton called to me, the superstition concierge, to make your fan rituals a reality. Need a room to match your lucky number? We got you. Want to make sure our team doesn't wash your lucky jersey? Oh, that smells lucky. Hilton's unmatched hospitality can keep up with any superstition, even a marching band wake up call at 5:55 and 55 seconds. Hit it! When you need a team that will do whatever it takes on game day, it matters where you stay. Hilton, for the stay.

• 0:31Speaker 01

  When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed sponsored jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. That's indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs.

• 1:00Speaker 02

  The reality is like Anthropic and OpenAI, they're playing a whole different game. Then no one will compare from a model perspective to where they are, especially when you think on the open source side. I think the investors, maybe industry, everyone keeps waiting for some crack in the armor. The reality is, is that-

• 1:17Speaker 03

  What's going on, guys? Today, we've got a very special treat. We have Dan Ives, the legend himself, here in the studio. He is now the Partner and Senior Managing Director at Yorkville Ives. It's a brand new merchant bank that he's building. And he spills the tea on every single thing that you care about in the AI trade. We talk about the Chinese open source models, what's going on with Anthropic's revenue slowing down? Where are the big bottlenecks? What does he think about these companies that have seen their stock appreciate so much? How is he thinking about politics and all of the regulation? The data center moratorium in New York City and so much more? All of that covered in this conversation with Dan Ives. All right, Dan, the AI bears have all kinds of new things that they're worried about. Let's start with the Chinese open weight, open source models.

• 1:59Speaker 03

  Now all of a sudden, everyone thinks that they're going to take out the big model labs. What's your take?

• 2:04Speaker 02

  Look, it's a mini deep-seak moment in terms of the fears. But I mean, you've talked about this. The reality is like Anthropic and OpenAI, they're playing a whole different game. Then no one will compare from a model perspective to where they are, especially when you think on the open source side. I think the investors, maybe industry, everyone keeps waiting for some crack in the armor. The reality is, is that the models will get cheaper over time. And there's going to be five, 10x more models over the next few years. The value will be in the data and the moat. And that continues to ultimately be, I think that's the game Anthropic and OpenAI are playing. That's why they're so focused on the enterprise. That's the right move. Models and CARPs talked about it.

• 2:49Speaker 02

  We'll become more and more commoditized. But for the first time in 30 years, it's not even a question. The US is ahead of China when it comes to tech. And I think that's just such an important point where we are.

• 3:00Speaker 03

  Now, what's interesting to me is they're complaining that there's been this like distillation attack and that the Chinese models are essentially drifting or drafting off of, you know, these big American companies. But there's a lot of people in America like, wait a minute. I think Anthropic just signed a $1.5 billion settlement with, you know, 500,000 authors for taking the books. There's a lot of people complaining about, didn't you kind of just like do a distillation attack off of the IP to be able to train the model originally?

• 3:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones, right? And I think just the reality is the models are built off content. I think when it comes from a model perspective, what China is doing, it's smart. Because look, they also have like one hand tie behind their back. They don't have Nvidia chips.

• 3:45Speaker 03

  Allegedly.

• 3:46Speaker 02

  But even if you do, you have a call a third rate Nvidia chip. I mean, you have Huawei, you have some, you know, obviously some competition there. But the models need to get smarter and smarter. And I think what you've seen with the Gemini delay, look, Gemini has come, you know, they've fallen back a bit. But I think that's why it speaks to the pressure, capex, raising capital. This arms race, it is not slowing down. It's third inning.

• 4:12Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm. What I also find pretty interesting about this entire competition is that we basically have American closed source models and then we have Chinese open source, open weight, you know, type models. I don't hear a lot of conversation about American open source. But I know that Jensen seems pretty all in on American open source being a big option.

• 4:31Speaker 02

  Well, I think the issue, if you go back to what Zuckerberg and Meta with Llama, I mean, Llama call that like a shot at that from like an open source perspective. You know, that was one way I think they realized like back to the drawing board. I think Nvidia and Jensen, their view is, okay, we'll do an open source model. We don't, because that's not their game. Like their game is like, we'll create one, that's fine, because it's better for the industry. It goes back to like more open source, more people using it, models are cheaper. Look, the biggest issue when it comes to Anthropic and OpenAI, a lot of it just comes down, and over time, the prices will get cheaper. It's the cost, because cost is the inhibitor relative to AI adoption.

• 5:14Speaker 02

  So when you look at models getting cheaper, see, I'll take like the other side of it. I don't view it as a negative. I view more competition would drive prices down, which would drive adoption down. So I think that, that's the broader view. Like if you're a bull in this market, AI revolution, chips, data center, you need the models to get cheaper.

• 5:36Speaker 03

  When we go and we look at Grok and Meta, both of them, in their latest releases of models or iterations, the leading thing they were putting forward was the cost. That is very different than OpenAI and Anthropic. They've been talking about performance mostly. Is this now kind of like your margins, my opportunity? And these guys are just looking for an angle to be able to catch up? Or do you think that the entire industry now is going to shift from, it's all about performance to it's about efficiency and costs is this big component?

• 6:06Speaker 02

  I think you're going to have the Good Yard or whatever you want to call it. The OpenAI and Anthropic, they're going to be, they're not lowering prices. There will be others that will come. If you go and pack books, like, yeah, we have a great, it's going to be cheaper wallets. So when you look at Grok and when you look at Meta's done, that's sort of been their game. Grok, the thing is a lot of it just comes down to content. But it speaks to broader SpaceX, Tesla, the, what really Musk is essentially building. Price will be, it's going to be a differentiator. It's going to open doors. But then it comes down to like, if you're an enterprise today, what are you looking? I mean, you're, you're essentially ChatGPT or Claude.

• 6:50Speaker 02

  And Claude has become pervasively, probably the best model in the world.

• 6:55Speaker 03

  Yeah. What I also find interesting that we don't yet quite understand, and we're going through this actively with the Sylvia product that we're building, is-

• 7:03Speaker 02

  And congrats.

• 7:03Speaker 03

  We're dealing with finance. And so you want the model to have capitalistic, you know, tendencies and answers. And so this idea of like cultural weights, if we were to go put an open source Chinese model to answer questions, do they have socialist type ideas? Or, you know, kind of Eastern worldviews that are baked in that they may not even be explicit. They may be somewhat, you know, kind of lightly and implicitly put in, which then starts to change the answers and influence behavior. It's been a big concern with TikTok and, you know, many other kind of feed or algorithm driven things. What's your take there?

• 7:38Speaker 02

  It's going to be bifurcated. It's almost two sort of worlds that will play side by side together. The models, the cross pollination between a Chinese model and ultimately US model and China, you're going to sort of have that cordoned off. There are social issues, there's capitalistic, there's worries about government relative to on a data perspective. It's US and China today, but like as Middle East, as eventually Europe, as rest of the world, this is just, it's the beginning of what we're going to see as models. Because I could argue like two, three years from now, you go to Malaysia, they might have like their own country model. They might have it specifically to finance and industrials and others.

• 8:21Speaker 02

  So then you are going to see that across the board, which is why the models are so important as you start to see this fourth industrial revolution, the use cases. I mean, you've seen front and center with what you're doing on the consumer side, on enterprise, all these data centers that are getting built. It's like a stadium, you got to fill it with people. You got to fill it ultimately with GPU, with capacity and with use cases.

• 8:45Speaker 03

  You know what I find interesting is it seems like the AI industry could learn something from the crypto industry, which usually, you know, those two groups are separate. But there used to be this thing called the FAT protocol thesis in crypto. And the entire idea was that all value was going to accrue to the protocol layer, whether that was Bitcoin, Ethereum, whatever. Obviously, that's not what happened. Instead, you got applications and then you got infrastructure, you got the protocol, et cetera. It seems like AI is going through the same thing. And I haven't heard anyone explicitly say it's like the FAT AI model thesis. But that's pretty much what people who are betting like the models are going to eat the whole stack. I just don't see that world happening. Like I see it being very much fractured. And I think that's good because it ultimately creates a better performance, better applications and lower cost for the customer.

• 9:29Speaker 02

  I think that, you know, we went through a period, and I think some of that was maybe like the PR problem that AI created. But it was a view like Anthropic eating everyone's lunch. I mean, even go back to like cybersecurity, the view like AI was gonna, you know, in terms of Anthropic was going to eat cybersecurity. The reality is cybersecurity is going to be, I'd say it's going, budget's going to double over the coming years because of AI. If you look from the SaaS apocalypse, and there will be software companies disintermediated, as we see, but I agree with you is that I think right now, I think the biggest misconception, or I think maybe the way that the market is maybe, you know, misjudging how this is all going to play out,

• 10:12Speaker 02

  underestimating the scale and scope and the second, third, fourth derivatives of what's playing out today. Today, is it a small number of players that are the winners? Yeah. But this is, it's building the Las Vegas, it's like we're in Vegas, 1955, building the strip. That's essentially what we're doing. So every one of these companies knows in the hyperscale, like we need our spot on the strip. If we don't do that now, others will come in. That you could be like, why are you spending so much money now? Goes back to the whole capex, you know, debate. They know this is year three of an eight to 10 year cycle. And you could argue a 20 to 30 to 40 year cycle when it comes to physical AI.

• 10:57Speaker 02

  That's right now, the sort of tug of war that we're seeing in this market.

• 11:03Speaker 03

  Today's episode is brought to you by Figure. If you're into Bitcoin, you already know selling is the last thing you want to do. But at the same time, life happens, man. Opportunities arise, bills come up and markets move. That's where Figure comes in. Instead of selling your Bitcoin, Figure lets you borrow against it so you can get cash without losing your position and they also avoid triggering a tax event. Right now, their loans are around 8.91% interest. That's 9.9% APR at a 50% loan to value. So you keep your upside, but still get liquidity. And I know the first question people ask is, yeah, but is it safe? It's a good question. Figure uses MPC custody, which basically means your Bitcoin stays in its own segregated wallet. It's not

• 11:47Speaker 03

  being lent out, pooled, or sitting on some exchange. They also have optional liquidation protection, which helps if the market gets volatile. And if you're on the other side, like you've got cash and you want to yield, they've got something called democratized prime. It's earning up to 9% APY, paid hourly, and is backed by real world assets, not just token inflation. So whether you're trying to hold your Bitcoin long term, or actually put capital to work, it's a pretty interesting setup. If you want to check it out, I've got a link in the description that you can go to, or you can go to figuremarkets.co/pomp. You know, the other thing I find pretty fascinating is there's these big bets on specialized workflows for general purpose models. And, you know, with Sylvia, we're making this massive bet on specialized

• 12:31Speaker 03

  workflows. But as we've built that product, what we've realized is like, the model is very important. But it's a lot of the proprietary technology you're building around it. It's, you know, agentic file systems, it's memory, it's, you know, even maybe like model routing is a pretty interesting idea. So Sierra, Brett Taylor's company, he's been talking about, I think they have an engineering blog that's out where they have something like 20 different models. And so for those that don't understand how this works is when you ask a query on chat GPT, they're routing it to some model that you've chosen on their platform. But if you're using Sierra or Sylvia or any of these other platforms, that query may be best answered by Claude, or by, you know, chat GPT, or Kimi K3, or whatever. And so that model router is basically

• 13:16Speaker 03

  taking the query and putting it to the right model. Now, when I see that, what it starts to tell me is actually, the world is not going to have general purpose. It's going to start getting super specialized. And then the model router is going to be the general purpose, you know, type technology. Is that the way you see this?

• 13:32Speaker 02

  That's been our whole thesis. Like, our whole thesis is, there's a view like AI is just a takes away jobs. Everyone's gonna just use these to get rid of whatever, white collar workforce where everyone's like, it's wrong. I'm not saying there's not disruption. The reality is, is that each, you're gonna see specific, they could be using the same model, but there's gonna be so many specifications and so many different mousetraps that they build. That's what's gonna separate you from him or her or whatever it may be. And I think the reality is, is that that's more and more what companies are realizing. The proprietary data workflow, and what I'll call the model

• 14:13Speaker 02

  enhancements, or maybe algorithms that are specific to companies, whether it's financials, industrial, manufacture, go back to manufacturing. You take company A and B, they're using the same model. The reality is, what's the differentiation if they're using the same model? It's gonna be the proprietary nature. And what that's gonna do, it's gonna create more companies. But it goes back to like, it is an innovation boom that's happening in this country. And I just think it's something where we're gonna look back years from now and be like, wow, that was just to be, I didn't realize that A, B, and C was gonna happen. And I think that that's what makes us

• 14:54Speaker 02

  such an exciting time. But it's also the tug of war that we see between capex and monetization.

• 15:00Speaker 03

  Well, I think now people have seen this chart of like the MAG7, you know, free cash flow is basically just falling off a cliff. I mean, almost like a cartoon. At the same time, the semiconductor, you know, revenues have just exploded the opposite direction. And we're literally taking money from the MAG7 and we're just shoving it in all the semi companies. Is that sustainable? Do you worry about, you know, MAG7 type companies doing this? Or what's your take?

• 15:23Speaker 02

  Look, my view is like, they're making 10-year, 20-year bets. Now, granted, they've had to take out little debt, do some equity raises, outspend some others, yeah. But they recognize, see, the difference is, the reason capex is not getting ultimately cut, or you're not seeing hesitation, as they talk to more of their enterprises, more of their companies, they realize what the pipeline's gonna look like. Now, of course, Oracle being like, maybe like the poster job for this, like, took on more and more debt. Stock obviously got crushed because of OpenAI, 300 billion, call it another 300 billion of deals. So you're like, where is the breaking point where companies

• 16:06Speaker 02

  need to ultimately peel back? I just think it's one where we are talking about an 18 to 24 month period that will ultimately set the stage for the next decade. And that's what, that's what these companies are doing. And look, investors, some will say, I'm done. No mass, patient, I don't want to see this free cash. I want to see them pull back. But it comes back to like, 2022. Jensen, why are you spending on AI? You're a gaming GPU company. Like, go back to like, 2008 financial crisis, Apple, you released iPhone, it was great in 2007. Now, with the financial crisis,

• 16:49Speaker 02

  why would you continue to double down here? Everyone has BlackBerrys. Let's just focus back on your core. Nadella, why go after cloud? You're not a cloud company. Just focus on New Key and the traditional Microsoft. Like, I'm just saying, you could go back to decades, and they were coming, they went through gut check periods. That's what the industry's going through right now.

• 17:11Speaker 03

  And basically, what you're arguing is, they're making these bets. And I guess if you just extrapolate this out, if they're right, they're not investing enough. If they're wrong, then it almost isn't gonna matter how much they invested because they're blowing the money.

• 17:25Speaker 02

  But then to that point, if they were wrong, by this point in the cycle, they would have already saw, you know, wherever the smoke come out of the chimney, whatever the signs are like, whoa, come, they're not seeing the ROI, they're not. But I could tell you, like, Pom, I could tell you, like, whether it's Palantir, whether it's Snowflake, whether it's what we see on cybersecurity, private companies, data bricks, data, you see it more and more that the companies, they're seeing the ROI. That's why they're spending more, whether it's insurance, financials, biotech, pharmaceuticals. Is AI ultimately gonna be like the first true discovery to get rid of a Parkinson's,

• 18:06Speaker 02

  a cancer, an Alzheimer's? Like, I'm just trying to walk through, like, I think there's a view today where it's just, okay, it's gonna take away my job and increase my electricity bill. And that's a huge PR problem created by the industry. The benefits of this are just starting to be realized. And I think that, look, that speaks to the market. Like, that's why every earnings season is so important, validation, what demand. But I could just tell you from recent Asia trip, like, it's still what, 12 to one, demand and supply when it comes to chips.

• 18:37Speaker 03

  When you think of those bottlenecks, right? You go on these trips, you go and you visit the manufacturers, I think, memory chips, like, we can go through all these different components. Where do you see the bottlenecks that are not getting solved?

• 18:49Speaker 02

  Memory is the biggest bottleneck. Because there's no obvious, like a Pamba Ives memory datas that we're gonna build in New York or New Jersey. You're talking about, like, on one hand, the amount of memory players. That's why from SK, you know, to Micron, to everything we see, you know, across Korea, and you've seen in the Cosby, like, their memory is the biggest constraint that we see. And you probably don't have equilibrium till 2028, 2029. Now, you could argue different on in terms of the stocks, what are they reflecting? Is it cyclical? Has this almost changed the cyclicality? Power is clearly the biggest constraint. And I think the biggest constraint

• 19:32Speaker 02

  is just data centers need to get built in the US for this all to happen. That's, there's no gray.

• 19:41Speaker 02

  As we go into midterm elections and like political grandstanding and no data centers here and whether it goes from like, you know, if there's a moratorium in New York and then it goes down Tennessee or Texas, I think the biggest risk relative to US-China, it's a data center because there's no debate where we're winning on chips, models, hyperscalers, IP, China winning on robotics and energy. But if data centers are not built here, that's, that'd be like, you know, a hospital not having, you know, surgeons or not having, you know, the technology to do what they do. So that, that continues to really be the bottleneck.

• 20:26Speaker 03

  What do you think about Hokel's moratorium in New York?

• 20:29Speaker 02

  I think it's so dangerous because the problem is like, and like me and you, we go to DC a lot, you know, and like, there's some politicians that I've met with, whether senators, they get it. They're technologists. They understand not just the job creation, but what this ultimately means in terms of ripple effect. When you get into the political grandstanding argument about it, especially with a lot of politicians that are still using BlackBears, the problem is, is that it's dangerous because that's the limiting factor. Now, I get some of the risks and some of the concerns, you know, whether it's a, you know, water cooling, sound and other things that need to ultimately obviously get vetted.

• 21:13Speaker 02

  That's the danger because ultimately those jobs, they go to other states. That's why right now, like I spend more time going to Texas to see companies than a lot of times Silicon Valley. I'm just saying in terms of like the shifts. And I just think that it's very dangerous when the political piece gets in the technology piece because it comes down like for the first time in 30 years. Like I said, US is ahead of China when it comes to tech. We don't want to cut ourselves off at the knees.

• 21:46Speaker 03

  Now, it, it feels like some of this is driven by local communities, but some of it is being driven by lobbyists and, you know, kind of the big machine. It is always fascinating to me. There's people who are yelling and screaming about climate change and then they're screaming about the next thing and now it's data centers. But when you go and you look at the data, they bring down property taxes in the most concentrated data centers, locations, the job creation, not just in the data center. Yes, there's not a ton of-

• 22:15Speaker 02

  Restaurants, con-

• 22:16Speaker 03

  Correct. It's just you get this huge thing. Obviously the construction industry explodes when you get this stuff happening. But I, I think the part that maybe people get the least understanding of is then you also like the latency that you get, the advantage you get by putting the data center locally, ends up having this ripple effect throughout every single business that's there.

• 22:37Speaker 02

  And then companies move there. See, it's also, it's the, go down to Austin, go within 40 miles of Austin in any direction. Cause it's the ripple effect of companies that ultimately move there and then build businesses there around data centers. You're going to have a lot of parts specifically like in the Midwest where there were companies and I've seen like my whole career, right? Like just going so much around the world and around this country where there were cities that had a factory, whether it was GM for whatever it may be. Then all of a sudden got closed. Okay. That got shipped to Mexico, China, Malaysia, wherever it may be. You did town, so many people lost their jobs, went

• 23:19Speaker 02

  from 70,000 people to 15,000. Education, so many other issues that have happened. Now all of a sudden, there's opportunities where those could actually come back and get built. And I'm just saying like, this is a renaissance. It is a boom in this country. And that's probably the thing that like I'm most sensitive to where I get, people could have different political views or whatever. But when it comes to this, it gets dangerous when it becomes a political game relative to the reality of I think what it's ultimately going to be.

• 23:53Speaker 03

  Well, the, the politics of this too, I think is, you have on one hand, it seems like the big model labs are basically begging the government to go and ban any sort of Chinese open source models, et cetera. Then you've got local communities that are basically begging the government to do moratoriums or ban data centers. Like, I don't know. It's kind of seems like all the people who were supposed to be in the free market, everyone's turning to the government and saying play referee.

• 24:18Speaker 02

  Well, I think, look, part of the problem, the industry created a huge PR problem. I'm saying self, if you tell everyone, almost like pull the ladder up when you're up there, it's like, this is going to wipe out jobs. It's going to be the crusher. We're going to own everything.

• 24:33Speaker 03

  They were bragging.

• 24:34Speaker 02

  No, but you don't have to be Stephen Hawkins to figure out that's going to be a huge issue. Now you maybe have seen a curtailing there because also the reality from a job perspective, yeah, I get to like speaking to so many universities every year, like it is a huge fear. But if people think that AI only means them not getting a job or losing their job and their electricity bill going higher, and it's only just a few companies that are successful because of it. I get it. Like, yeah, it's like a ground swell. So I think that's the first thing that needs to happen. You need to separate the reality from, the Fed talks about, no technology, last hundred years, ever been a net job detractor.

• 25:17Speaker 02

  But it all comes down to like, that's some of the, it's some of the battles that you're going through right now. And it's, it's a dangerous time relative to like, if we shoot ourselves in the foot, for, because for the first time now, we are in pole position.

• 25:32Speaker 03

  When you think about these companies like Alphabet, et cetera, obviously their earnings, when these things start to come out, I think that people are evaluating them as, okay, Alphabet's making big AI bets, but they have search and they have YouTube and they have, you know, other things. When you go and look at the memory companies, maybe as an example, you could use, you know, SK, look at Micron, all these different companies, their stocks, again, look like cartoons, like they just have exploded vertical. When you're talking to clients and folks like, should they be allocating? Should they not? How do you think about, you know, there's a shortage, but the stock's up, you know, 1,200%.

• 26:11Speaker 02

  I think part of it was like, as someone, I spent so much time like in Korea for years, Korea was almost like a forgotten market. But yet the memory was all there. That's why now like New York City cab driver talks about the Cosby, but no one even knew what the Cosby was, in terms of like, you know, a typical person a few years ago. I think it's, it's probably, it's gotten like, like a swing. It's probably gotten overdone on one side, you know, maybe not appreciated on the other relative to hyperscalers versus memory. The reality is like the memory players, they will continue to be massively successful

• 26:55Speaker 02

  because of the hyperscalers. But you can't just forget about the ones that ultimately will be probably the biggest winners in the whole thing in terms of big tech. Cause remember without, a lot of times there's a view, Mag7's not important anymore. It's idiosyncratic. It's really more memory and chips that you have to focus on relative to broader tech. I disagree because when you think about the end game here, the ones that will benefit the most are the hyperscalers versus just the, when you start to segment it to like the memory or other players on the chip side.

• 27:31Speaker 03

  And I guess as you go further and further through the stack, are there other places that maybe people are not talking about yet, but you think will be big bottlenecks?

• 27:39Speaker 02

  Look, I just think the biggest bottleneck in this country is energy. I don't even think there's a debate. And we can say, we talk about the data center build out, but I think energy continues to be the biggest debate because look, we need three to four X more energy to ultimately, if we went to 20, 25% of companies fully embracing AI in terms like, you need three to four X more energy. The way that's coming is a pipeline, you know, is it grid? Is it not gas?

• 28:17Speaker 03

  Space data centers.

• 28:17Speaker 02

  No, I'm saying, is it like, yeah, I mean, you know, obviously you talk about space, but it's like nuclear, you know, and then you start to go to like fission, nuclear fusion. I think that right now is the biggest question because we have the technology, but at one point you, you hit, you hit an energy shortage. And I think that's something where that right now, there's a race going on. That probably, look, that doesn't happen for another, call it two, three years. But that, that will be like a big part of this build out when it comes to the energy and the infrastructure build out in terms of what's happened in this country.

• 28:57Speaker 03

  Today's episode is brought to you by TikTok for Business. If you run a company, you are probably already spending a bunch of money on ads, search, X, maybe Meta. But there's a platform your competitors are sleeping on and the window to move first is closing. TikTok has over 200 million monthly active users in the US alone and 51% of that reach is unique, meaning that those users aren't reachable on any other major platform where you are already buying. Unlike follower based platforms, TikTok's algorithm rewards strong creative, not audience size. That means a well-made video from a brand no one's heard of can reach millions of relevant users. For companies trying to acquire users cost effectively, that's a fundamentally different model. TikTok for Business gives you full

• 29:39Speaker 03

  funnel tools built for performance. Whether you're looking to drive awareness, introduce your products or convert new audiences, TikTok is becoming an important discovery engine for businesses and cryptocurrency alike. If you're a founder, a CMO or growth lead and you haven't run a TikTok campaign yet, now's the time to change that. Click on the link in the description or go to antonypompliano dot splash that dot com. Again, click on the link in the description and go check out TikTok for Business today. Today's episode is brought to you by Arch Public. Arch Public has just expanded its agentic trading platform beyond crypto. So pay attention, this is a big one. Now they are automating strategies across stocks, commodities and ETFs. And I think that this is going to be huge.

• 30:22Speaker 03

  You can now automatically take profits when one market hits new all time highs and rotate that capital into other markets showing more opportunity. Whether you're rotating capital into AI stocks, gold, if you're investing in the S and P 500, or you're accumulating Bitcoin, Arch Public brings real discipline and automation to your investment strategy. Additionally, they've launched a powerful new tax loss harvesting tool. With crypto being so volatile and its exemption from the wash sale rule, Arch Public can offset gains with losses without compromising your long-term positions. It's exactly what every serious investor does. Institutional grade automation that works across every major asset class. There's no more emotional trading, no more missing tax opportunities, just smarter, hands-free execution of your preferred strategies. Go to archpublic.com right now.

• 31:06Speaker 03

  Connect with their team, set up a time, bring your accountant if you'd like, then you can learn what automated trading can do for you. Archpublic.com. It was just reported that Anthropic's revenue is still growing, but it has significantly slowed from the growth rate that it had previously. Does that worry you?

• 31:22Speaker 02

  It just, but it's ultimately healthy over time because it speaks like, just like you said, more models, more competition, pricing will get driven down. You can't just have one company owning the market. OpenAI, they're obviously going to continue to accelerate. You're seeing people picked off left and right in terms of, you know, the tech talent. And I think it just shows like this industry is more than just Anthropic and OpenAI. It is, it's spreading and you're seeing, look, go back to like Caterpillar, or you could argue on the defense side, like where Lockheed Martin could be when it comes to defense tech relative to AI.

• 32:07Speaker 02

  It's almost like a third, fourth derivative. And I think investors now are starting to, I think, better appreciate the scope of what this is all going to do.

• 32:17Speaker 03

  When you think about your kind of position in the market, you've made a big jump. You're going to go and you and Yorkville are coming together to create a kind of a brand new, modern merchant bank. Explain what this is.

• 32:31Speaker 02

  Yeah. And look, for me, you know, over 25 years in the street, like I wanted to try to build something. I mean, look, you've built so much stuff, you know, in terms of, you know, successfully. And obviously that's unbelievable. For me, it's like, I've never built anything and I, I really saw the opportunity the last few years in terms of a true merchant bank. One, where it's an investment bank, but you actually could skin the game. You actually have the capital to also invest in the companies, you know, as it's obviously siloed off and to create an end to end bank that I think there's a huge gap in the market. Yorkville, and those guys I've known personally and professionally for decades.

• 33:12Speaker 02

  And for me, relative to like the fourth industrial revolution and where we are and the amount of capital that's going to be needed and so many small mid-cap companies that are yelling from the mountain tops, you know, no one's really paying attention to them. I think that's the opportunity that we see and why I'm just so excited to be building this is really a modern merchant bank.

• 33:34Speaker 03

  And when you think about that merchant bank, what you guys will do, investment banking services, you'll have research and then you also make investments in certain deals as

• 33:41Speaker 02

  Exactly. And that's, and I think that's, now if you go back like the Thomas Wiesel, Robbie Stevens, Alan Cumming, like you go back to early days of what Hanford did at Jeffries. I mean, there, there are obviously like a lot of examples of it. Goldman in the early, early days. I just feel like relative to where the market is, there's a huge opportunity and like to do with the right people, right? It's something in the right industries, you know, relative to tech, energy, infrastructure, you know, potentially healthcare. And that's why I'm so excited. And for me, it's like, I knew like this was the time, it was like right time, right place, right partner for Yorkville Ives, like to really do something where I feel like we'll have like, like anything, you'll have skeptics that you, but I feel like something that we

• 34:24Speaker 02

  could really disrupt Wall Street.

• 34:27Speaker 03

  And when you are successful, what does that look like? Is it that it's the number one merchant bank? Is it specifically focused on just AI? How do you kind of look at what the North Star is?

• 34:37Speaker 02

  I mean, for me, the North Star is companies when they're looking to like, whether like they want like phenomenal research, whether they want a company they were birthed to, you know, like, you know, from the beginning, from a private company into a public company as a trusted partner, investors to look at us as like the experts, right? When it comes to AI, tech, energy, infrastructure, are we going to have like, you know, hundreds of people? No, but we're going to be like SWAT team. We're going to be someone as a firm where we're going to have phenomenal people, great culture, entrepreneurial, and ones where like when companies are looking for a partner, when investors are looking for a partner, they look at us.

• 35:21Speaker 02

  And for someone like me that's done it for decades, for York that's done it for decades, we just feel like it's just like a unique combination that just makes us so excited.

• 35:30Speaker 03

  I agree. I definitely agree with that. What are your predictions for the next six months or so, you know, through the end of the year, when it comes to a kind of the big AI trade?

• 35:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think we're going, we're going to continue to go through these like gut check moments, whether it's a Chinese models, whether it's capex debate, no mass, you know, investors are, you know, sort of put in the sort of white flag that they want companies to ultimately cut it instead of see that, wait to actually see free cash on monetization. But I just think it all comes down to like the monetization bets will start to show in the second half of the year. And is that shows whether it's on the hyperscalers, whether it's in software, whether it's really across the, the stack, that to me is the key to this market.

• 36:19Speaker 02

  Now, of course, it's like Fed, oil, gold, crypto, you know, you go through like so, but it's tech that will ultimately drive this market. Or if the market obviously gets hit, it's tech that is the bedrock. So I just think that we're going into like, it's still third inning of the AI revolution. You could argue is it second, is it fourth, but those that say it's seventh, eighth, you haven't, it's Vegas 1955, you're just building the strip. And I think that's also why the debate relative like nine on bubble, is this another bubble? I just, and me and you have talked about before is like they are vastly different markets. And I would say much more confident that this is truly the fourth industrial revolution

• 37:04Speaker 02

  today than maybe a year and a half ago. Well, as you've seen enterprise go down, go down the route. So that's where I, I just think it's like, but we're going to have narratives and it's very easy for investors to get caught up in narratives. And I think that's some of the danger too, in a market like this.

• 37:22Speaker 03

  The part that I always find fascinating is as you get that volatility, it will scare away a lot of folks, but I actually think the best investors, that's why they want to play, right? They want the volatility.

• 37:32Speaker 02

  But totally, but I think it's like, it's scary, especially me and you are obviously like big on social media and we see it's like, it's very easy to get like scared into certain narratives or what Nvidia does, you know, eight hours after they report a quarter as it sings. So I think it's one where you have to follow the breadcrumbs. You got to look at capex, what demand looks like in terms of, you know, from the chip and the memory players and obviously Nvidia and what, and like, if you listen to other conference calls, I'm interested in tech, I'm saying like just across the board, this, there's no debate.

• 38:14Speaker 02

  Like this is something where companies, whether it's financials, healthcare, you see yourself in terms of what you're building, the transformative nature of it. And I think it's one like, and even when it comes to physical AI in terms of the future, will there be stocks that get ahead of themselves near to, will there be a lot of volatility? Of course, you're going through probably the biggest transformation we've seen in over, you know, you could argue like a hundred years, but I just think that's exciting and you, but you have to focus on your North Star. And I think that's the important part.

• 38:45Speaker 03

  All right. Where can we send people to find more about Yorkville Ives?

• 38:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. So yorkvilleives.com, you know, all my stuff's on in terms of contacting me. And we're just so excited to just be doing it at such an exciting time.

• 38:57Speaker 03

  And D Ives Tech on X?

• 38:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, dives tech X. Remember I only block very, very few people. And then, and actually I unblock, I unblocked some, some people last week. And then.

• 39:08Speaker 03

  Why'd you unblock them?

• 39:09Speaker 02

  Also on LinkedIn. Yeah, just, I felt like, you know, maybe a change of tune on this, you know, you gotta, you gotta give people a second chance.

• 39:16Speaker 03

  Yeah. Why did they originally get blocked?

• 39:18Speaker 02

  Look, I think, you know, sometimes when I block people, it's just like, I understand like haters and everything, but then you.

• 39:26Speaker 03

  They take it a step too far.

• 39:27Speaker 02

  It's like this, if you have a, have a Shih Tzu in a territory, a Shih Tzu, but eventually if you keep pulling the tail of a Shih Tzu, Shih Tzu is going to bite, right? So, but then, you know, you gotta settle down and I also, I do the rare unblock, you know, as my, my good friend Mark Fries says, the rare, rare unblock.

• 39:47Speaker 03

  All right. Well, hopefully to all the haters who took it a step too far, they were, they were fortunate enough to get the unblock, do it again in the future.

• 39:55Speaker 02

  Thank you.