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- The AI Revolution Has a New Bible — And Mary Meeker Wrote It
The AI Revolution Has a New Bible — And Mary Meeker Wrote It
But I'll share a summary so you don't have to review over 300 slides...
Todd Ballenger
June 13, 2025
the light bulb took something close to
75 years to drop as far in cost as ChatGPT
has dropped in just two years"
|
Mary Meeker's AI Mega-Deck: The Top 10 Takes That Will Blow Your Mind!
AI Growth is Absolutely Unprecedented (Like, Seriously): Forget what you thought you knew about tech adoption. ChatGPT's user growth has increased eightfold in just 17 months, reaching 800 million users. Revenue is nearing $4 billion, and subscribers are up to 20 million from virtually zero in 2022. Even crazier? ChatGPT reached 365 billion annual searches 5.5 times faster than Google, achieving this milestone in 2 years compared to Google's 11. That's an "up and to the right" trend on steroids!
The AI Infrastructure Boom is REAL: We're talking massive capital expenditure (capex) here. The "big six" cloud providers have experienced astonishing growth rates in capital expenditure (capex) spending since 2020, marking the beginning of the AI buildout. Data center buildout has also increased significantly, up 49% annually since 2023. And get this: Nvidia's GPU computing power has soared 100x in just six years! Talk about scaling up.
AI Costs are Plummeting Like a Rock: If you're wondering why all this AI magic is suddenly possible, look no further than cost efficiency gains. The energy required per LLM token has seen a 105,000x decline over the last decade. AI inference costs? They're dropping through the floor, with the cost to serve a model 99.7% lower over a two-year period. Mary Meeker even compares it to the light bulb: ChatGPT's cost drop in two years is similar to what the light bulb took 75 years to achieve!
Model Performance is Converging (No Single AI Overlord): Remember when different AI models felt miles apart? Not anymore! Major players, such as Google, OpenAI, and Deepseek, have seen their overall arena scores converge, despite being very different just over a year ago. This convergence underscores that we're moving towards a world with multiple winners in AI, rather than just one dominant player.
Fierce Competition is Great (Especially for Businesses): Mary Meeker views this intense competition in classic economic terms—good for consumers. However, the expert behind the video notes that consumers seem to have already anointed ChatGPT as a winner. Still, this "vicious competition" is expected to be "very good for business-to-business (B2B) use cases," where we'll see much wider adoption.
Consumer vs. B2B: A Tale of Two AI Worlds: There's a clear split happening. For consumers, it often feels like a "lottery" where you're competing with ChatGPT, and a proliferation of new AI apps isn't happening as expected because people stick to their existing "habit stack". But for B2B, it's different. There are individuated use cases where custom tools are needed, and lower model costs make a huge difference for unit economics.
The Big AI Funding Puzzle (Capital Overhang Alert!): Here's a head-scratcher: AI model companies have raised nearly $100 billion (Mary pegs it at $95 billion), but they've only cleared about $11 billion in annualized revenue. While that revenue number is rising fast (Anthropic is exploding after its Claude 4 launch!), there's a "tremendous capital overhang". This means these companies have raised about 10 times more than they've delivered in revenue.
Will AI Prices Skyrocket? (The Uber Analogy): That massive funding discrepancy leads to a big question: how will AI model makers resolve this gap? The expert points to Uber's journey: once dirt cheap, rides are now significantly more expensive because they started charging the "economic price.” Could AI model makers substantially raise prices to close their revenue gap? Time will tell if users will stick around if that happens.
AI Agents: Hype vs. Practicality: Interest in AI agents is booming, with Google search trends up a staggering 1,888% over the last 16 months. But here's the nuance: practical use cases are still quite limited. We're mostly seeing wins in very large companies with strong LLM engineering teams or with "tidy pre-built agents" that handle very narrow tasks. The messy middle for mid-market companies with custom needs but limited capital remains a challenge.
It's a Gold Rush, and "Picks & Shovels" are Winning: It's not just you imagining the AI hype; over 50% of S&P 500 firms are now mentioning AI in their quarterly earnings calls, skyrocketing from 10% in just over a year! Developers, startups, and apps in the NVIDIA AI ecosystem have doubled. Mary Meeker herself calls this a "gold rush," emphasizing that selling "picks and shovels" (such as chips and infrastructure) is a high-margin business, whereas selling tokens is a low-margin business. Think Google with its TPUs and, of course, Nvidia!
Every day, I am amazed at how much work I get done using these tools. Suppose you are not investing an hour a week learning to use AI in your job. In that case, you are losing hundreds of hours of future work that you’ll have to do that you could have learned to do more efficiently and effectively.
Let’s say as a child you enjoyed digging and planting with your hands, and as you got older you refused to learn to use a shovel. Then you realize the shovel is amazing, but you get so attached to the shovel you totally miss the tractor.
Let’s Go!
a BORROW SMART CONCEPT
Correlation is not Causation…
Golf Drives and Home Prices: A Story of Unrelated Awesomeness 🏡🏌️♀️
Two very different things started to rise at the same time:
The average driving distance of PGA Tour golfers (that’s how far the pros can whack a golf ball).
U.S. home prices. (Yes, the cost of the roof over your head).
Both lines went up. Steadily. Almost eerily in sync.
But before we all sell our homes and start hitting the gym to beef up our drives, let me tell you something important:
Just because two things happen at the same time doesn’t mean one caused the other.
🧠 Let's Break It Down:
Imagine you’re eating a peanut butter sandwich and wearing your lucky socks. Suddenly, it starts raining outside.
Did your sandwich make it rain?
Nope.
Did your socks call in the clouds?
… again, nope.
That’s correlation. Two things happened at the same time, but one didn’t make the other happen. Another name for that is ‘pigeon superstition’ and it often impact our decisions more than we realize in our work. You called on a Realtor on a Monday and got a big referral, now you think Monday is the best day to call on Realtors.
🎯 Back to Our Chart:
Golfers are hitting longer drives because of better clubs, science-y training, protein shakes, and maybe space-age golf balls.
Home prices are going up because of inventory supply and demand, interest rates, and more people entering the buying age for housing, etc.
💡 Pro Tip:
Next time you see a news articles that says:
“As ice cream sales rise, shark attacks increase,”
just remember:
People eat more ice cream when it's hot out.
People swim more when it’s hot out.
Sharks also like warm weather buffets.
Don’t blame the cookie dough swirl.
😂 Final Thought:
If hitting a golf ball 300 yards raised your home value, realtors would be handing out drivers at open houses.
LIABILITIES
What’s Happening?
talking about assets and liabilities is important
Taxes are required, and housing is usually the largest discretionary expense
overall housing affordability is starting to base and improve
Employment is staying strong, which is very important for housing
REAL ESTATE
What’s Happening?
First Shot - on the new Gemini Image Tool - prompt “a nice inviting house with a for sale sign that says Wish You Were Here’
inventory climbing
purchases still dropping
housing prices in some states already dropping = better affordability
but still difficult
another look at slaes overall
ASSETS
What’s Happening?
another great week for stocks
I love OTM Short Puts - my favorite deviant behavior…
big gap to close
tariffs are going to lead to some inflation if this keep sup
wow, amazing returns since 2022
great returns lead to more ownership
some are pulling chips off the table
a new currency of choice
just wow!
Nothing in life is as important as you think it is when you are thinking about it."
- Daniel Kahneman
ON BEING HUMAN
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AI
and The Future of Work…
Great example from ‘Prompt Perfect’ for images:
