Alex Sacerdote - How to Invest Through Technology Cycles - [Invest Like the Best, EP.477]

My guest today is Alex Sacerdote, founder of Whale Rock Capital Management.  Whale Rock is a technology focused investment firm that manages more than $17 billion across hedge fund, long only, and hybrid strategies. Over the past three years it has been one of the best performing hedge funds, compounding at roughly 44 percent a year. Alex invests through a single lens that he has refined over twenty years. He looks for technology S-curves, durable competitive advantages, and underappreciated earnings power.  This conversation is a tour through how he applies that framework right now. We start with his highest conviction position, which is Anthropic, and use it to work through the entire AI stack from chips to models to applications.  Please enjoy my conversation with Alex Sacerdote. For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.  ----- Become a Colossus member to get our quarterly print magazine and private audio experience, including exclusive profiles and early access to select episodes. Subscribe at ⁠colossus.com/subscribe⁠. ----- ⁠Ramp’s⁠ mission is to help companies manage their spend in a way that reduces expenses and frees up time for teams to work on more valuable projects. Go to⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠ramp.com/invest⁠⁠ to sign up for free and get a $250 welcome bonus. ----- Trusted by thousands of businesses, ⁠Vanta⁠ continuously monitors your security posture and streamlines audits so you can win enterprise deals and build customer trust without the traditional overhead. Invest Like the Best listeners get a special offer of $1,000 off Vanta when you go to ⁠vanta.com/invest⁠.  ----- WorkOS⁠ is the infrastructure B2B and AI-native companies use to sell to enterprise. It covers everything enterprise security requires: SSO, SCIM, RBAC, Audit Logs, AI governance, and more. Trusted by 2,000+ fast-growing companies, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Cursor, and Vercel. ----- Rogo is the AI platform for finance. They're building agents for Wall Street that are trained to understand how bankers and investors actually do work: from diligence and modeling, to turning analysis into deliverables. To learn more, visit rogo.ai/invest. ----- ⁠Ridgeline⁠ has built a complete, real-time, modern operating system for investment managers. It handles trading, portfolio management, compliance, customer reporting, and much more through an all-in-one real-time cloud platform. Visit⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ridgelineapps.com⁠. ----- Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://thepodcastconsultant.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠). Timestamps: (00:00:00) Welcome to Invest Like The Best (00:02:29) Alex Sacerdote (00:03:08) Anthropic: Highest Conviction Position (00:13:23) Investing in Private Markets at Scale (00:19:08) S-Curves: The Full Framework (00:25:08) When to Buy Tech Companies (00:30:20) Identifying the Leader from the Pack (00:34:04) Anthropic & OpenAI's Competitive Moats (00:37:31) AI's Threat to Enterprise Software (00:43:18) Network Effects in the Agent Era (00:44:22) The Hardware Renaissance: Chips & Infrastructure (00:53:56) Why So Few Investors Get This Right (00:55:36) Key Risks to the AI Bull Case (00:57:47) The Application Layer (00:59:40) How AI Is Changing Research at WhaleRock (01:02:53) The Role of Investor Networks & Idea Sharing (01:03:40) Building a Multi-Product Firm (01:07:58) WhaleRock as a Learning Machine (01:09:15) The Kindest Thing