Titan Summit NYC
How to invest in AI was the #1 theme at the Titan Summit in NYC.
We just wrapped our first-ever Titan Summit in NYC, and wanted to share a quick download with you all.
Clay and Joe sat down with David Tisch from BoxGroup to dig into something that's been on all our minds: AI and what it could mean for investing in 2025 and beyond. Not the fluffy "AI will solve everything" talk – we went deep on what we believe to be the real implications.
Some territory we covered:
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How past tech revolutions actually played out (because history doesn't repeat, but it rhymes)
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Where we see the real opportunities in AI beyond the hype
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How we're thinking about portfolio strategy amid evolving markets
Imagine history as a series of massive technological waves—Agriculture, Industrialization, Digital, Mobile—each starting with a new “foundational layer,” or what we’re calling “picks & shovels.” These revolutions follow a predictable pattern: early adopters who invest in foundational infrastructure (like John Deere’s steel plow or Carnegie’s steel mills) capture outsized rewards, while latecomers get left behind. Today, AI is emerging as the next gigantic wave, and we’re right at the bottom layer where chips, data centers, and advanced models like ChatGPT are in hot demand.
To make sense of these shifts, we use a layered cake model: at the bottom, you’ve got the foundational picks & shovels (in AI, that’s hardware providers like NVIDIA or cloud platforms like AWS). Above that are the platforms—think OpenAI, Anthropic, or Meta’s Llama—that will act like Windows or iOS did in previous eras. Finally, at the top layer, we’ll soon see next-gen AI applications—companies that harness these platforms to deliver consumer or enterprise services we can’t even fully imagine yet. Historically, value emerges bottom-up, so understanding this progression is key to successful investing.
AI is reshaping every sector at breakneck speed, much like the digital and mobile revolutions before it. We’re at one of those pivotal inflection points—reminiscent of 1995 for the internet—when being early and informed pays off tremendously. You shouldn’t have to navigate this alone. Let us be a partner to help navigate.
