YouSaid · the spoken record

David Cahn

lines on the record: 82
first: 2024-08-05
most recent: 2024-08-05
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Yeah, and I think I use Steele as like this catch all for kind of all the industrial stuff. So include generators there, batteries, right? There's all this industrial stuff, like you have to manufacture. When I talk to the big cloud companies, here's what I hear. We are calling our manufacturing partners, our factory guys, like the steel guy, the generator guy, et cetera. And we're saying to him, we have a humongous order coming. Here's our next five years. We're going to be ordering tons and tons of your product. Please increase your manufacturing capacity to support us. And what they're hearing back is we don't believe you. We do not want to double our, because your manufacturing partner, let's say you're the guy making the diesel generator, you have to build a new factory in order to produce more diesel generators. And if Microsoft stops buying your diesel generators, that factory is going to sit dormant. You've just put a lot of capital into the ground. The supply chain dynamics here are just fascinating where you need to convince your supply chain to increase their capacity. And you're telling them all these orders are coming. The supply chain guy is not like an AI person, right? The supply chain guy is like a”
2024-08-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia's David Cahn on AI's $600BN Question | Why the Data Centre is the Most Important Asset | Servers, Steel and Power: The Core Pillars Powering the Future of AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, the politics of this stuff is crazy. But I think the political ramifications of all of these chips are coming from Taiwan. Obviously, everyone knows there's risk there. Does that mean that U.S. invest in the U.S. supply chain? I think the answer is probably yes. We're seeing that. How much of that gets onshored? How do you do that? There's obviously a very heavy reliance on TSMC. I don't know how that plays out, but I think that will be an important political issue in the future.”
2024-08-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia's David Cahn on AI's $600BN Question | Why the Data Centre is the Most Important Asset | Servers, Steel and Power: The Core Pillars Powering the Future of AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think it's one of the history of Silicon Valley is Moore's Law. Chips get cheaper, chips get better. And I think that this is one of the things Silicon Valley is amazing at, right? Is prices come down. You make things better. You look at the B100. The B100 is for the price. The price that you're going to get based on what they've announced publicly, right? The price that you're going to pay for more performance is amazing, right? So the price-to-performance ratio continues to improve. And I don't see that stopping. NVIDIA is a fantastic company. They have a track record of innovating. They have a track record of new products. You better believe Jensen's driving this team super hard on what the next chip is. So I think Nvidia is going to continue to surprise us to the positive. At the same time, AMD, Broadcom, these other companies, they see this huge business, right? And, you know, you see a lot of startups now also wanted to compete. This is going to be a huge business. NVIDIA earns a big gross margin. And when anyone sees a fat gross margin in a big market, people come chasing.”
2024-08-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia's David Cahn on AI's $600BN Question | Why the Data Centre is the Most Important Asset | Servers, Steel and Power: The Core Pillars Powering the Future of AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Funny, I used to kind of agree with Alex, and I think that my mental model has actually shifted. I kind of think compute models and data have kind of converged. All the big guys know what they're doing. They're all doing the same thing. Everybody's using scale. Now, I love Alex. Alex is fantastic CEO. He's doing a great job, right? Like he is kind of this arms dealer. Everybody has to buy from him. He's providing all these big model companies with data. But I think it's really hard to argue today that any of the big model companies has a data advantage. Compute, it's just a commodity that you pay for. So it's hard to argue that any of them has a compute advantage. And then models, they would all argue that they have some secret sauce, but again,”
2024-08-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia's David Cahn on AI's $600BN Question | Why the Data Centre is the Most Important Asset | Servers, Steel and Power: The Core Pillars Powering the Future of AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I do think the tier below those three big companies are scared right now. I think there's probably like those boardroom conversations are probably tense, right? I think on the one hand, huge opportunity, huge opportunity, right? Make the product better. You already have existing distribution. Distribution is a huge advantage and a huge moat. On the one hand, you're like, this could be a huge opportunity. On the other hand, you need a lot of money to compete with those big companies. And they're going to have a lot of power. And so I think the smaller companies are very concerned. And I think that they are doing everything they can in order to compete. But again, there's a lot of game theory here in terms of the big three companies can afford to go to war with each other and do this arms race. The other guys can't or maybe they can and maybe they'll try. And it's a less obvious to what is the strictly rational calculation. Zuck used this phrase this week in his quote, right? It's a strictly rational for the big companies to invest. It's less obvious what's strictly rational if you're Salesforce. It's less obvious what's strictly rational if your workday.”
2024-08-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia's David Cahn on AI's $600BN Question | Why the Data Centre is the Most Important Asset | Servers, Steel and Power: The Core Pillars Powering the Future of AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Don't know. I mean, it does seem like a lot of what's going on in AI has to do with antitrust, right? Microsoft probably doesn't want to acquire OpenAI. Amazon probably doesn't want to acquire anthropic. And so I think you have this setup. And this is unique. And as a student of business, I kind of love this stuff. I think it's cool. It's like this is kind of unique where you have these kind of like they're not wholly owned. They're not controlled. They're kind of like 49% owned, right? So you have a strong amount of ownership, strong amount of incentive alignment, but separate businesses. I think that will probably sustain because it's not really possible to acquire these businesses. Now, you can acquire the smaller ones, and we've seen that with inflection and adept. You can acquire some of the teams, but it's going to be much more difficult to acquire something like Anthropic.”
2024-08-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia's David Cahn on AI's $600BN Question | Why the Data Centre is the Most Important Asset | Servers, Steel and Power: The Core Pillars Powering the Future of AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think exactly what he's doing creating an open source alternative. I think that is good for the world. I think that is good for Meta. I think Llama is fantastic. I think it's great for startups. Startups are going to build on top of Lama. They're building on top of open source. The consumer killer use case hasn't emerged yet. Obviously, Meta has fantastic distribution. And so if they can unlock that killer use case, they'll figure out how to do that and they'll make a lot of money off of that. The meta approach really makes a lot of sense.”
2024-08-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia's David Cahn on AI's $600BN Question | Why the Data Centre is the Most Important Asset | Servers, Steel and Power: The Core Pillars Powering the Future of AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Another great question. I think that, you know, the cloud guys are playing defense meta's playing offense, right? And so I think that's like the easiest way to think about it. The cloud guys are protecting their existing business. I think Meta can afford to be pretty creative. And also, I think Meta has to play less defense because if they decide it's not worthwhile, they don't have to keep investing. The cloud guys are stuck in more of a prisoner's dilemma. They have to keep investing. If they do not invest, they risk losing market share in one of the greatest businesses of all time. Meta gets to sort of play for the future and Zuck is still young and he's doing a fantastic job. And I could imagine Zuck playing a pretty important role in the future of AI.”
2024-08-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia's David Cahn on AI's $600BN Question | Why the Data Centre is the Most Important Asset | Servers, Steel and Power: The Core Pillars Powering the Future of AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the evidence of the last couple years is in order to play in the big model game, you need a cache machine, and that cache machine cannot be the AI business. Facebook has a cache machine called Instagram. Amazon has a cache machine called AWS. Microsoft has a cache machine called Azure. I think you need a cache machine in order to compete.”
2024-08-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia's David Cahn on AI's $600BN Question | Why the Data Centre is the Most Important Asset | Servers, Steel and Power: The Core Pillars Powering the Future of AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“By the way, the other company that has vertical integration is Meta. Zuck controls his own data centers, right? He also is building the models. And so I think the vertical integration piece is going to matter in the sense of you can't have a separate team running the data center and a separate team building the model. That is just not going to work as these models get bigger and bigger. Your need to deeply couple those things. And I think you look at Elon, you look at Zuck. They are doing that. And I think actually one of the big questions that Microsoft and OpenAI are going to face and Amazon and Anthropic are going to face is how do they unify those efforts, right? Anthropic and OpenAI are separate from the parent company. The parent company controls the data centers.”
2024-08-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia's David Cahn on AI's $600BN Question | Why the Data Centre is the Most Important Asset | Servers, Steel and Power: The Core Pillars Powering the Future of AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes and no, and I'll break it down into two pieces one element in which I say yes and one element in which I say no. The element in which I say no is I have had this mantra for six years and it served me well. It's like don't bet against Jensen. I think it's really, really difficult to bet against Jensen and Nvidia. Jensen, I had friends joining NVIDIA years ago and I said to them, you're making a super smart decision. Jensen is the Steve Jobs of our era. And that seems increasingly true, right? Jensen is just a phenomenal CEO. I think it's really hard to bet against phenomenal CEOs. And a visionary CEO, right? Like this was not obvious when Jensen started doing this 30 years ago. I wouldn't bet against NVIDIA. Now, is there going to be more verticalization? Yes. And I think that actually comes back to this data center construction piece and running the data center. One opinion that my mind has changed on over the last few months and year, you hear Elon talking so much about data center construction and he's going to build his own data centers and vertical integration. Increasingly, I think that's a pretty smart approach. I think that vertical integration between the model layer and the data center mass”
2024-08-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia's David Cahn on AI's $600BN Question | Why the Data Centre is the Most Important Asset | Servers, Steel and Power: The Core Pillars Powering the Future of AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I think you're right in its nuance, right? I think the nuance here would be in businesses with barriers to entry, you have pricing power, in businesses with low barriers to entry, you don't have pricing power. So I actually think that will be sector by sector. There will be some sectors where you're right. Things get commoditized and they just basically get bid down to 0% gross margin.”
2024-08-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia's David Cahn on AI's $600BN Question | Why the Data Centre is the Most Important Asset | Servers, Steel and Power: The Core Pillars Powering the Future of AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You get from Spotify. It's amazing. Like products that consumers buy are really, really good. And you don't pay that much for them. And capitalism's amazing that way. The burden to deliver value is very, very high in business. We're not seeing that so strongly in AI yet.”
2024-08-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia's David Cahn on AI's $600BN Question | Why the Data Centre is the Most Important Asset | Servers, Steel and Power: The Core Pillars Powering the Future of AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You are so right on this, Harry. I really like this question. Look, Elon came to Sequoi's base camp event this year and he said something that stuck with me, which was the only thing that matters is building useful stuff. Like everything else in business kind of figures itself out. If you do something useful, people generally will pay for it. If you don't do something useful, people won't pay for it. The question for Kanban, the question for all of these software companies is, can you make your product more useful with AI? I think if the answer is yes, then you probably have pricing power. You can probably earn a margin if you're driving value to the end consumer. However, and this is your point, I think, Harry, however, if you are not making your product more valuable and if you are simply injecting AI so that you can tell investors that you have AI and so that you can talk on your marketing page about how you have AI, then you're just injecting a new cost item with actually no benefit to the consumer. And if there's no benefit to the consumer, they're not going to pay more. And something I like to talk about on this is like Netflix. I mean, think about how much value you get from Netflix. Netflix is amazing. Think about how much value.”
2024-08-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia's David Cahn on AI's $600BN Question | Why the Data Centre is the Most Important Asset | Servers, Steel and Power: The Core Pillars Powering the Future of AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, this is the scaling eye question, right? This comes back to the bitter lesson that people talk about. The question comes down to, are the researchers going to come up with a research breakthroughs faster than we can build bigger data centers? There's a lot of people in Silicon Valley who say all that matters now is scale. There's other people, and I've met a lot of these people, and I think they're quite smart, who will say, no, actually, we're going to make a breakthrough on reasoning. We're going to figure out how to use data better. We're going to figure out how to make the models more efficient. So I think there's two schools of thought on this. The evidence today, I think, is more strongly in favor of scaling laws. And I hope to see more evidence of these other breakthroughs being able to drive progress because I want to see as much progress as possible. And if we can have both, that's better than having just one.”
2024-08-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia's David Cahn on AI's $600BN Question | Why the Data Centre is the Most Important Asset | Servers, Steel and Power: The Core Pillars Powering the Future of AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“People, they're getting on planes, they're going to be put up in hotels, just the sheer physicality of what's going to happen in the next 12 months is pretty awesome. I think it's going to be really fun to see.”
2024-08-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia's David Cahn on AI's $600BN Question | Why the Data Centre is the Most Important Asset | Servers, Steel and Power: The Core Pillars Powering the Future of AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Here's what's happening, and I think a lot of people are not paying attention to this right now. Amazon in the last six months has announced $50 billion of new data centers, right? This is when I talk about AI $600 billion question, like this is the cost line on the $600 billion question. Like these data centers are getting built. And they have to go hire people to go build these things, right? Like you're going to go to some town. There's a company called Cyrus One. There's another company called QTS. These companies are the real estate developer for data center. So Microsoft or Amazon goes to this real estate developer and he says, hey, I want you to build me this data center. And the real estate developer goes to this company called DPR. DPR is the biggest general contractor in million data centers. DPR is like, hey, I need you to build me this data center. DPR goes and finds a subcontractor. The subcontractor needs to go find you 1,000 electricians and all these people. I mean, labor is the single biggest cost in data centers. And now you're putting ads on Facebook and you're like, electricians need it. Please come to this random town in the middle of Illinois. We need you to come build a data center, right? And then you have all these.”
2024-08-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia's David Cahn on AI's $600BN Question | Why the Data Centre is the Most Important Asset | Servers, Steel and Power: The Core Pillars Powering the Future of AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That basically the data center is the most important asset, and we're going to have to learn how to build these really, really big data centers.”
2024-08-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia's David Cahn on AI's $600BN Question | Why the Data Centre is the Most Important Asset | Servers, Steel and Power: The Core Pillars Powering the Future of AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, yeah. Direct attribution to Harry. Thank you. I just thought it was just such a fantastic way of just succinctly summarizing the issue here, which is let's say models get way better. Let's say models change. Let's say we're scaling laws continue to hold. All this good stuff happens. Actually, that means that we probably need to change the architecture of the data center. We probably need new chips. Right now, everyone's chasing 100,000 GPU cluster, right? That's the sort of bleeding edge. Elon says he's going to build a 300,000 GPU cluster. If all that actually happens, it's going to dramatically change the physical architecture, the real estate of what actually needs to happen for these data centers. And I think increasingly you could think, you could argue, a model is just a data center, right? The bigger these models get, the more that scaling laws become the dominant thing. All these researchers, they jump from one lab to the other, it's not like there's that much differentiation anymore between the actual models that these companies are launching. And so I think there's a really good argument.”
2024-08-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia's David Cahn on AI's $600BN Question | Why the Data Centre is the Most Important Asset | Servers, Steel and Power: The Core Pillars Powering the Future of AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think model efficiency is going to improve. And I actually think this is one of the points I made in the game theory piece, which is if you're optimistic on AI, you are actually more concerned about data centers becoming outdated. And there's this great line that I heard somebody say, and I've just been thinking about it a lot ever since, which is no one's ever going to train a frontier model on the same data center twice. Because by the time you've trained it, the GPUs will be outdated and the data center will be too small. I just thought it was amazing and it's like, it's reminiscent of the, you know, no man ever steps in the same river twice, right?”
2024-08-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia's David Cahn on AI's $600BN Question | Why the Data Centre is the Most Important Asset | Servers, Steel and Power: The Core Pillars Powering the Future of AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Fantastic. I think that's actually a really fantastic question. I think the thing that bridges, so I think they are a little bit at odds, and I'll tell you why. Compute is a euphemism, right? Compute is the thing that you consume, but how do you make compute really matters? So what is compute? Compute is a data center somewhere in the middle of Illinois with a bunch of GPUs and a bunch of liquid cooling systems and a bunch of physical things in the world. So I think part of the reason that the dialogue around AI has become so extreme is that people use these euphemisms, compute, cloud, all this stuff, and it doesn't actually capture the physical reality of what this is. And so the big question is, okay, you're a big tech company. You, in the next two years, data centers take about two years to build. You are going to build, and they cost about $2 billion per data center.”
2024-08-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia's David Cahn on AI's $600BN Question | Why the Data Centre is the Most Important Asset | Servers, Steel and Power: The Core Pillars Powering the Future of AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think there is, right? I think that's a super valid perspective. What you would argue is these companies are too powerful. They're basically erecting barriers to entry, right? Now, in order to be an AI cloud, you need to be willing to light a bunch of money on fire. And so I think that that is a pretty significant barrier to entry for new entrants. And by the way, I think what you heard from the commentary this week is that's not an accident, right? That's pretty explicitly what they're trying to do is say, hey, we cannot afford to let anybody else attack our golden goose, this cloud business. The cloud business today is a $250 billion business. So the cloud business today is the same size as the SaaS sector. That's the business at Azure, Google, and AWS control is the same size as the entire SaaS sector. So of course they're going to do everything they can to protect it.”
2024-08-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia's David Cahn on AI's $600BN Question | Why the Data Centre is the Most Important Asset | Servers, Steel and Power: The Core Pillars Powering the Future of AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Taken that view. I mean, that's the view when I first published the $200 billion question nine months ago, I said this is great news for startups. And when I published a $600 billion question, I said, this is great news for startups. So one refrain that I've sort of been consistent on is this is fantastic for startups. These big tech companies are producers of compute. Startups are consumers of compute. So if you believe there's an overproduction of compute and that compute prices go down, startups win because they are buying those compute. Lower cost of compute directly translates to higher gross margin for startups, higher gross margin for startups translates directly to more valuable companies. So I'm very happy that this is happening. I think it's fantastic for the economy. I think it's fantastic for the technology ecosystem. But I think we do need to be clear-eyed about what it is and we do need to be clear-eyed about the next few years and what's on the horizon.”
2024-08-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia's David Cahn on AI's $600BN Question | Why the Data Centre is the Most Important Asset | Servers, Steel and Power: The Core Pillars Powering the Future of AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Knows something we don't know, and therefore is making this investment, and therefore hundreds of billions of dollars of AI revenue are guaranteed in the next two years. That's the extrapolation I think people were making that I was questioning. And I think increasingly people are going to realize these investments are happening, but they are speculative and there's a lot on the come.”
2024-08-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia's David Cahn on AI's $600BN Question | Why the Data Centre is the Most Important Asset | Servers, Steel and Power: The Core Pillars Powering the Future of AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think it changes much. I mean, my opinion is that Mark Sundar and I have always agreed, right? My opinion is actually that it is the sort of, let's call them crypto proponents who sort of came into AI in the last 12 months who are shouting from the rooftops that AI is going to the moon. That's the group of people who've been saying that CapEx is all rational. I don't think that any of the big tech companies are sitting in their boardroom saying we know exactly how we're going to pay back this CapEx. Now, that's fine, right? They're making a strategic calculation if we don't make this investment our competitors are going to get ahead. And I think one thing that people weren't paying attention to and maybe are now is that this is one of the most powerful oligopolies in the history of business that we're dealing with. Microsoft, Azure, and Google now represent $7 trillion of market cap. That's 10% of the global market cap. So we're talking about one of the most powerful oligopolies in the history of business. Of course they're going to be willing to spend aggressively to protect their oligopoly. The wrong takeaway is, oh, Google.”
2024-08-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia's David Cahn on AI's $600BN Question | Why the Data Centre is the Most Important Asset | Servers, Steel and Power: The Core Pillars Powering the Future of AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, look, I think we're talking 48 hours after Mark Zuckerberg just acknowledged the overbuilding that's happening. Sundar talked about this. And so I actually think that something meaningful just changed this week in the sense of actually think Mark Zuckerberg's Sundar and I all basically believe the same thing. I think we had all these kind of promoters coming into AI trying to say, hey, look, the CapEx doesn't matter. The budgets don't matter. And I think what you heard this week from Sundar and from Mark Zuckerberg is they understand that this is risky. Now it's a risk worth taking and they have to take it and we can talk about the game theory behind that and why it makes sense for them to take that risk. But even Mark Zuckerberg is not sitting here saying, hey, it's risk-free. AGI is coming. Don't worry. He's saying if AGI comes, great, fantastic. This is going to be a great investment. If it doesn't come, this may be a difficult investment. It's a risk we have to take.”
2024-08-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia's David Cahn on AI's $600BN Question | Why the Data Centre is the Most Important Asset | Servers, Steel and Power: The Core Pillars Powering the Future of AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think yes. I mean, look, my dad was my coach growing up. He's someone who success sort of doesn't matter. You don't celebrate wins. It's always what's next. How can I be better if you get a 99? How do I get 100? And so I don't know that they were proud of it. I'm sure they were proud of us, but it's not the topic of conversation. The topic of conversation is what's next?”
2024-08-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia's David Cahn on AI's $600BN Question | Why the Data Centre is the Most Important Asset | Servers, Steel and Power: The Core Pillars Powering the Future of AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know if this is a challenging moment, but I think my family history and heritage is something that's really shaped me. My dad's family fled Nazi Germany in the 30s to the United States. My mom's family immigrated from Syria to the United States. Both my parents were the first in their families to go to college. And so I think that learning from them and learning from their families and seeing that struggle, I feel the pressure of this is the chance, this is our chance, you know, 100 years of struggle and sacrifice has sort of gone into putting me in this position where I have this incredible opportunity to be in Silicon Valley, investing in technology, working with founders. And so I feel that. I think about that every day. And I think that's something that really drives me.”
2024-08-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia's David Cahn on AI's $600BN Question | Why the Data Centre is the Most Important Asset | Servers, Steel and Power: The Core Pillars Powering the Future of AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One stroke ahead, and you're afraid of being one stroke behind, right? And so I think there's a bit of you're so close and you don't have this. I think with other people, you can say, oh, well, this person is smarter than me or this person is stronger than me. Or you have the same deck of cards. So it becomes about how do you play that deck of cards really well. And I think being a twin kind of pulls you into this direction of how do I make the most of myself? How do I make the most of what I have in order to be competitive?”
2024-08-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia's David Cahn on AI's $600BN Question | Why the Data Centre is the Most Important Asset | Servers, Steel and Power: The Core Pillars Powering the Future of AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's the single biggest thing that's influenced my life. And I would say, first of all, I love being a twin. My brother and I are extremely close, and we spent a lot of time talking to each other. We talked to each other every day. There's two ways that it's really influenced my life. I would say the first way is I think being a twin gives you a bit of a license to be non-conformist, especially in technology, especially in the valley. There can be a lot of herd mentality, and we're going to get into that a little bit on the AI stuff. But I think that being a twin growing up, you just feel this sense of this person is with me, this person is at my side, and I can kind of be who I want to be and say what I want to say. And I think that was really empowering growing up. I think the second way that being a twin really influenced me, and I think Andrew Reed would probably agree with this, who's also a twin, being a twin just makes you hyper-competitive. You're growing up, my brother and I used to swim competitively when we were seven, eight, nine, ten years old, and you're just one stroke behind. You know, you're so close.”
2024-08-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia's David Cahn on AI's $600BN Question | Why the Data Centre is the Most Important Asset | Servers, Steel and Power: The Core Pillars Powering the Future of AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a great first question, and I would have to say that actually being a twin is the single most important fact about me. And so it's a good place to start.”
2024-08-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia's David Cahn on AI's $600BN Question | Why the Data Centre is the Most Important Asset | Servers, Steel and Power: The Core Pillars Powering the Future of AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No one's ever going to train a frontier model on the same data center twice because by the time you've trained it, the GPUs will be outdated and the data center will be too small. The bigger these models get, the more that scaling laws become the dominant thing. And so I think there's a really good argument to be made that basically the data center is the most important asset. I'll propose my own three things that I think are the three things that matter. And I would summarize it as servers, steel, and power. The industrial revolution is just getting started.”
2024-08-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia's David Cahn on AI's $600BN Question | Why the Data Centre is the Most Important Asset | Servers, Steel and Power: The Core Pillars Powering the Future of AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source