u/iwangotamarjo

Just curious. Today I read that SEC has rules against market manipulation, including rumor mongering and even front-running of trades.

I link this back to what Michael Burry did in April and May, and have the following questions.

1. Do public statements like "Palantir is overvalued" and "I have XYZ put position on Palantir" actually imply market manipulation?

2. If (1) is true, then why is Michael Burry not taken to task for violating such rules?

3. If (1) and (2) are both true, then how about analyst estimates? Aren't they also a form of market manipulation?

In totality, I am not affected by any of this nonsense. Holding for the long term. But I am just curious about the rules in the casino.

Just a discussion thread – beginning with three points.

1. Recent advances in artificial intelligence are largely driven by LLMs, which on the backend are artificial neural networks with a transformer architecture.

2. Palantir was founded in 2003, preceding almost the whole suite of technologies that run the Internet today, including LLMs. LLMs are just one tool it can use. The entire architecture of the business is built on being the best ontology platform (ontology here being an information science term; not the philosophical study of existence – although it can be argued that Karp likes that term given his background in German philosophy).

3. What comes after? I am genuinely curious.

For context, I am a data engineer and I sort of saw the rise of LLMs prior to its sudden and awe-inspiring entry on mainstream media. Eventually the wow factor will go away, and we will treat it as any other tool.

Last week, Moonshot AI launched Kimi 3 and Silicon Valley was shocked from its complacency. Shyam and Karp have talked about this before, but the US government continues to deliberate whether LLMs should be governed. The evidence is clear. They should not. Major tech players including Nvidia and Palantir signed an open letter urging the White House to avoid implementing any form of regulatory guardrails on the development of LLMs.

The evidence is clear. Any tech developed in a heavily regulated environment is not incentivized for progress. The development of LLMs and AI in general has largely stalled in Europe because of regulatory backlash and bureaucratic red tape. Meanwhile, the rest of the world moves on.

Chinese LLMs pose a unique threat unlike any other to the survival and dominance of American technology. It is my hope that they spur the development of open weight American models, which in turn would continue to benefit a LLM-agnostic platform like Palantir. Once again, Karp and his lieutenants have been prescient in warning Silicon Valley about being blindsided while chasing capex and big ideas. His warnings were unheeded especially by the AI giants of today.

What we are now witnessing is the slow progression of the AI revolution from the opening act to its later, much more substantial phases. I believe this is just the beginning, but at the same time, I also believe that the optics from Chinese LLMs may be slightly detrimental to the valuation of Palantir in the short to medium term (10-12 months). There is no doubting that Palantir continues to dominate its niche area, and to my knowledge few Chinese firms have come to match it.

Hanging in for the long ride, per usual.

Michael Burry began his short with the declaration that “Anthropic is eating Palantir’s lunch”. He was right, in an obtuse and technical way, but nevertheless his thesis misses the bigger picture.

As do most theses about the “rise of AI”. Recently, PR have been doing their work and the Altman and Amodei have been scaling back their comments about mass unemployment.

I think Ronny Chieng got it right: AI is going to make smart people smarter and dumb people dumber. It’s an accelerant, not a stimulant nor a substitute.

That’s why I think Burry is wrong. He views the whole stock market as a zero sum game - in many ways, and in some sectors, it is (one company lives, at the expense of many others). But Burry fails to realize that this is a positive sum game in the long run IF you recognize the contingent fact that AI has to be somehow harnessed and channeled before it is suitably used.

And that’s why Karp is right, on so many grounds. He famously raged against short sellers who have nothing better to do except to destroy good American businesses. What Palantir is focused on is building, and not destroying. Burry is the inverse, and he will never understand that society progresses brick by brick, not by razing everything to the ground. There is a reason why we celebrate Caesar and the great Roman emperors for their virtue, and only appreciate Hannibal because of his military prowess.

As the American Republic turns 250 in a few days, I'd thought it was timely to write down a few notes. It is doubtful that, when the founding fathers penned the constitution two centuries and a half ago, they would have foreseen the prowess, both commercial and political, of a medley of states, united by a burgeoning but weak central power. They would not have foreseen the potential, both destructive and innovative, that their imagined society would have wrought upon this world. For better and for worse, the experiment begat in 1776 with “we the people” has had a drastic impact on the modern world.

No other nation has rivaled the US with its depth of capital funding and irrational sense of importance in this world. The outsized belief, at times justified by the awe inspiring advancements of science and technology, has been core to the purpose and raison d’etre of Palantir. Even as the republic convulses under the weight of its own contradictions, Palantir continues to trudge forward.

Dare I say, no other company in modern history rivals the autistic single mindedness that Palantir has. It is fucking autistic, to say the least. Alex Karp has been at this for 20 years. That is an INSANE amount of time for any CEO to be running the show. The only other few people who have sat at the table this long, day in and day out, are probably Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos and Larry Ellison. Most founders-cum-CEOs have gone on to other ventures or gotten distracted (a la "everything is interesting" Zuckerberg). Historical figures like Thomas Edison and Kelly Johnson would be a good yardstick as well.

It goes to show the depth of commitment and belief that Karp and his team have in this project. If anything, I'd be putting more money where my mouth is if I had more. Karp understands the futility of Wall Street and modern-day Silicon Valley. If technological innovations do not permeate and trickle down to the people, they would be for nought. The Technological Republic is not only a description of a pragmatic Utopia, but a rulebook and guideline for ensuring that the seeds of civil war and internal strife are not sown in the successes of Silicon Valley. For many years, they have. Mark Zuckerberg, being the poster boy of this nonsensical, secular and irresponsible movement that has distracted the powers that be. This is not a paean to the joys of technological democracy - it is a recognition that innovation has its discontents that must be dealt with, lest they foment the divine rage of a displaced people.

Happy birthday. No other nation has rivaled the US with its unique combination of distrust in authority, a belief in the rights of man (not even Enlightenment France), and the almost insatiable drive and strife to be Number 1. Time and again, the nation had faltered, second guessed and fallen behind others. Yet time and again, through the rebellious temperament of a proud people, ingenuity seemed to triumph.

As Warren Buffet, the consummate capitalist said, never bet against America.