Fabian, first (ever) of his name. T&M, photonics, data center interconnects, music & endurance sports. NFA. Not investment advice. Not any advice. My own views.
🇱🇧🇷🇴🇬🇷🇩🇪🇺🇸
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Happy to share that I am joining @FundaAI.
For more than a year, the team has been publishing rigorous, differentiated research on photonics, memory, software, and the rest of the AI infrastructure stack. I have spoken to them several times over the past few months and have been impressed by the depth of their expertise, their culture, and their determination to build a respected and trusted research firm. On top of that, they are building an ambitious AI powered research OS that I think will change how the buy side consumes fundamental work.
I will continue running my own newsletter on Substack alongside the FundaAI role, and the two should complement each other well.
A note on prior content: any posts, tweets, or newsletter pieces published before my start date at FundaAI reflect my personal views at the time of writing and were produced entirely independently of FundaAI. They do not represent the views of FundaAI, were not reviewed or endorsed by FundaAI, and should not be interpreted as the firm's research, recommendations, or investment advice. Any positive or negative commentary on specific companies, securities, or individuals in that prior content predates my affiliation with FundaAI.
Going forward, all tweets and posts on my newsletter represent my personal views only and do not constitute investment advice or the views of FundaAI. There will be some restrictions on what I can comment on. FundaAI takes its regulatory obligations seriously and expects the same from its team.
It has been an incredible six months on Substack, life changing to say the least, and I am looking forward to the next leg of this journey.
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Great to have people like @vikramskr and @pequityresearch conducting expert interviews on our @FundaAI platform.
Spoke 1:1 with the most excellent @FundaAI today, and I will be doing expert interviews on their platform.
Although most people prefer to keep transcripts to institutional clients, they are letting me post to my Substack, and it will become part of their expert network database!
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Off Topic, but a Lesson for Investors, Life and Politicans
Last night, Peter Thiel, born in Germany, received the Axel Springer Award in Berlin. Since then, the german media and social networks have been full of criticism. Wire reports describe Thiel as libertarian and right-wing conservative, while commentators use much harsher terms: anti-democratic, Trump supporter, far-right. Palantir fares little better.
On a long car ride recently, I listened to a podcast series on Palantir by Germany's public broadcaster, more than five hours in total. Even the opening was surprisingly candid. Palantir co-founder and CEO Alex Karp, who lived in Frankfurt for several years, comes from a left-wing background. As a student, he protested against racism, and a yearbook photo shows him wearing a keffiyeh. He wanted to earn his doctorate under the late Jürgen Habermas, an icon of the German left, who rejected his draft. The image of an anti-democratic neoliberal with right-wing views, which clings to Karp in Germany, hardly fits this biography.
On the occasion of the award, Thiel gave an extensive interview that also paints a more nuanced picture. He sees the AfD (Germany's far-right party, currently gaining ground) as a reflection of the failure of the political center. He considers debates about Ukraine, China and Israel legitimate, but says the AfD is wrong on all three. Nor does he come across as an unconditional Trump supporter. Trump's 2016 victory, he says, was a reaction to a failing establishment, but the current administration is staffed with loyal yet not very smart people. His infamous 2009 statement that freedom and democracy are incompatible was, in his words, written hastily and corrected two weeks later. What he meant was a critique of libertarians who relied too heavily on elections. The quote appears in almost every report, the correction hardly ever. Critics counter that he has repeated the thesis many times since. Either way, one should know both sides before passing judgment.
Most remarkable is his view of Europe. Thiel wants Europe to be a reliable ally of the United States and sharply rejects any moral equivalence between the US and China. That makes his diagnosis all the harsher: In AI, Europe is worse off today than France once was with the Minitel, a national online service that was overrun by the internet. Germany, he argues, suffers not only from a fear of failure but also from a fear of success, and does not dare to scale companies aggressively. His numbers: Among the 50 richest Americans, 12 are Gen X or younger, 9 of them self-made. In Germany, the figure is 20, and all of them inherited their wealth. I find this criticism largely accurate.
You don't have to agree with everything Thiel and Karp stand for, and there are good reasons to debate the use of Palantir software by security agencies. But the prevailing caricature does not survive serious scrutiny. So why such one-sided coverage? Psychology offers well-researched explanations. And the very same mechanisms cost investors money every single day.
Motivated Reasoning: We see what we want to see
Those who already consider Thiel dangerous read every quote as proof and overlook every qualification. Investors read the quarterly report of their favorite stock the same way: as confirmation, even when margins are shrinking.
Identity Protection: The thesis becomes the self
Those who define themselves politically through their rejection of Thiel would have to give up a piece of themselves with every nuanced view. The committed value investor clings to the value trap for the same reason. At some point, you are no longer defending a thesis, but yourself.
Cognitive Dissonance: Dismiss the information rather than change your mind
Thiel's explanation of his quote is then written off as "pure tactics," his criticism of the AfD as "a distraction." For investors, the profit warning becomes a "one-off slip."
Reactance: Agreeing means losing
Those who find Thiel's criticism of Europe justified would have to concede a point to their bogeyman. And those who have argued with skeptics about their stock for months are reluctant to sell precisely when the skeptics turn out to be right.
What investors can learn from this
Thiel himself offers a fitting image: The moral opposite of "good" is "evil," the functional opposite is "bad." A Ferrari is "evil" because of its fuel consumption, a Trabant is simply "bad." Society's real problem, he argues, is not evil but incompetence. For investors, this distinction is invaluable. What matters is not whether we like a founder, but whether the business works.
Palantir is the best example. Anyone who avoided the stock out of dislike for its founders missed one of the most spectacular rallies of recent years. Sympathy and antipathy are not analytical criteria. The market doesn't ask whom we like, only whether we are right. And this applies beyond the stock market: Anyone who keeps Palantir software out of public security not for substantive reasons, but out of antipathy toward Thiel or Karp, may one day pay for it with human lives.
The desire to stay right is often stronger than the desire to be right. In your portfolio, it costs money. In politics and life, possibly much more.
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Do Americans use French expressions when things are going okay?
Force-majeure notices are commonplace in developments of this scale and are often used to preserve contractual rights among project partners. They do not, by themselves, establish a project delay or change delivery expectations.
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Fabian فابيان retweeted
🇱🇧 Liban classé à la 10e place parmi les pays dont les ressortissants à la naissance sont le plus en emploi, avec un pourcentage de 73,1%
Seul pays non-occidental et extra-européen à y figurer
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Meta is expanding its smart-glasses lineup with its first camera-free models, support for the new Muse assistant and a new hearing-aid mode. And the new lightweight VR headset promises to reset the category, explains @markgurman. bloom.bg/4yP0CMI
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Good Morning from Germany, where voters have delivered a historic blow to the political mainstream. Merz’s CDU has been shut out of a state parliament for the first time in the Federal Republic’s history: just 4.9% in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, where the far-right AfD won 38.2%. In Berlin, The anti-capitalist Left topped the poll w/25.7%. As Germany’s electorate polarises, pressure on Chancellor Merz is mounting and so is the risk that much-needed growth reforms are watered down or blocked altogether.
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Guys, 2030 is a stretch. Nvidia can push as hard as they can, but mass production by 2030 might be challenging.
Korean media reports that Nvidia has asked substrate makers in South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan to complete glass substrate development within two years, potentially before 2028.
kipost.net/news/articleView.…
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This is exactly what we are doing. FUNDA's Context Layer Platform has already converted our own EPS Excel Models into database format, and everything can be handed over to our proprietary agent for precise modifications.
This experience will only spread, in my view.
The historical best practice to get smart on a name was read the filings, read the transcripts, and read a big stack of sell-side research, then model out the company. This hadn't really changed much in decades (outside of innovations in alternative data & expert network transcripts). Having a comprehensive offering of sell-side research was important at the institutional level.
We have reached threshold on numerous fronts where a public market investor can achieve similar or deeper comprehension on a name with AI, and doesn't necessarily need that same comprehensive sell-side offering. That random sell-side report that went deep on a certain aspect of the business or industry can now be created with an AI agent sitting on the right data pipeline.
One example I've shown in the past on DKNG...in the past, if I'm trying to get smarter & sharper on a deep dive on state level taxation, the right sell-side note dropping at the right time is supremely helpful. Now, I can run that analysis when I need it at the push of a button. The cohort of investors who build off of sell-side models will, very soon, be at push-button AI capabilities (and more may move modeling off Excel into JSON). The moat of the sell-side is melting.
And I believe the sell-side has, collectively, overplayed their hand in being adversarial to the agentic path. My view is they will eventually fold, but not before many clients learn to build around the commercial friction and, maybe, eventually come to the same conclusion as Just Another Pod Guy.
Like most things the top decile sell-side analysts will be fine, decades of investor trust and relationships will continue to monetize.
But what happens to the 16th best analyst on a name? It think it's obvious the industry just needs fewer voices on a name, so how do you pivot?
Corporate access has enduring value (if you don't believe it, be a fly on the wall when there is one seat at a key meeting and 5 pods wanting that same seat...).
But I think it's deeper than that...how does the sell-side drive differentiated client insight? Not just regurgitate publicly available information (never much value, and now zero value). Cleveland Research to me is the working mental model of deep embedding of their analysts into the operational flow of industries driving a regular & valuable flow of investible insights.
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FUNDA has been conducting in-depth research on $INOD for some time. Last year, we published several detailed reports examining how META’s acquisition of Scale AI would affect INOD, drawing on extensive expert interviews and technical discussions.
Deep|The Scale AI Halo Effect Updates: INOD May Haved Raised Its Sales Target This Year
fundaai.substack.com/p/deept…
Deep|The Scale AI Halo Effect: Will Meta's Investment Lift the Other Boats, or Just the Leader?
fundaai.substack.com/p/deept…
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$INOD - So I was wondering if @FundaAI previously discussed Innodata and... sure enough they have, back in 2025, in three relatively under-read posts:
fundaai.substack.com/p/deept…
fundaai.substack.com/p/deept…
fundaai.substack.com/p/revie…
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I feel like I am living in a simulation
Erebor wants to be the first US bank in markets reopening to the global financial system.
Venezuela first, now Syria.
Basically: take geopolitical + compliance risk that big banks won’t, and become the financial bridge before others show up.
theinformation.com/articles/…
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Fabian فابيان retweeted
Artists: but I don't want to lose my job. I love it.
Mathematicians: but I don't want to lose my job. I love it.
Economists: LONG HAVE I AWAITED THIS HOUR! DESTROY ME, EFFICIENCY, AND LET UTILIZATION-ADJUSTED TOTAL FACTOR PRODUCTIVITY RISE ON THE WIND OF MY ASHES!
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