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Such a stupid article, unbelievable 🤦🏽‍♂️ This 2024 Business Insider “True Cost” hit piece on Cybertruck aged like milk. Nearly 2 years later, reality obliterates their doom-and-gloom narrative: • “Unprofitable $100k gamble”: Cybertruck achieved positive gross margins in 2024 and remains solidly profitable per unit as production scales. •...

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Captain Eli

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50,435 views • 7 months ago •via X (Twitter)

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The Cybercab is aiming to produce 2 million units per year. Let this sink in. Today, Tesla produces about ~1.7 million vehicles per year total, across its entire lineup. And now Tesla is preparing to outproduce that with one single vehicle, a fully autonomous one. This is Elon and Tesla going ALL-IN on autonomy. Production is scheduled to start April 2026 at Giga Texas, with volume ramping throughout the year. And as of early 2026, Cybercab prototypes are already being tested around the U.S. The Tesla Cybercab is built from the ground up for unsupervised autonomy. There is no steering wheel and no pedals, just cameras, AI, and Tesla’s custom inference computers. No lidar and radar like other companies, just pure vision and software. Elon put it best on the Q3 2024 earnings call: “It’s not just a revolutionary vehicle design, but a revolution in vehicle manufacturing that is also coming with the Cybercab.” That quote matters a lot bc that means the entire way a vehicle is manufactured is changing with the Cybercab. Tesla is designing what Elon calls “the machine that builds the machine.” The Cybercab uses Tesla’s unboxed manufacturing process, where major sections are built in parallel instead of one long assembly line. There are fewer parts, less steps & cost, and faster scale. That’s how you make 2 million Cybercabs per year possible. FYI, this is not going to be easy though. Elon has been brutally honest about production for many years: • “Prototypes are easy, production is hard.” • “The extreme difficulty of scaling production of new technology is poorly understood. It’s 1000% to 10,000% harder than making a few prototypes.” • “For cars, it’s maybe 100 times harder to design the manufacturing system than the car itself.” He reinforced this again in January 2026 when talking about Cybercab and Optimus on 𝕏: “Initial production is always very slow and follows an S-curve. The speed of the production ramp is inversely proportional to how many new parts and steps there are. For Cybercab and Optimus, almost everything is new, so the early production rate will be agonizingly slow - but eventually end up being insanely fast.” This is the key thing most people miss about Tesla manufacturing. Early output will be slow by design. Almost everything is new like the vehicle architecture, factory layout, AI hardware, and manufacturing flow. But once it works and clicks, it begins to scale hard. Tesla already proved they can do this. They survived Model 3 production hell. They turned Model Y into the BEST selling car in the world, of any kind. They ramped Cybertruck, which has over 30,000+ unique parts, to meaningful volume. Elon summed it up perfectly in 2024: “Compared to the insane pain of reaching high volume, positive margin production, prototypes are a piece of cake.” That’s why Tesla makes manufacturing look easy bc they already earned the scars from the last vehicle lineups. The Cybercab is aiming to be: 1/ Under $30,000 price 2/ ~$0.20 per mile operating cost 3/ 200+ mile range 4/ Up to 5x utilization vs personal cars 5/ Designed to run nearly nonstop 24/7 This is what you call manufacturing + AI + autonomy converging at scale. The competitors are still showing prototypes and demos, while Tesla is building new production lines, expanding factories, and actually building the product. I remember when Elon told me in the past that one of Tesla’s key advantage long term was going to be manufacturing technology. I get it now.
0:21

The Cybercab is aiming to produce 2 million units per year. Let this sink in. Today, Tesla produces about ~1.7 million vehicles per year total, across its entire lineup. And now Tesla is preparing to outproduce that with one single vehicle, a fully autonomous one. This is Elon and Tesla going ALL-IN on autonomy. Production is scheduled to start April 2026 at Giga Texas, with volume ramping throughout the year. And as of early 2026, Cybercab prototypes are already being tested around the U.S. The Tesla Cybercab is built from the ground up for unsupervised autonomy. There is no steering wheel and no pedals, just cameras, AI, and Tesla’s custom inference computers. No lidar and radar like other companies, just pure vision and software. Elon put it best on the Q3 2024 earnings call: “It’s not just a revolutionary vehicle design, but a revolution in vehicle manufacturing that is also coming with the Cybercab.” That quote matters a lot bc that means the entire way a vehicle is manufactured is changing with the Cybercab. Tesla is designing what Elon calls “the machine that builds the machine.” The Cybercab uses Tesla’s unboxed manufacturing process, where major sections are built in parallel instead of one long assembly line. There are fewer parts, less steps & cost, and faster scale. That’s how you make 2 million Cybercabs per year possible. FYI, this is not going to be easy though. Elon has been brutally honest about production for many years: • “Prototypes are easy, production is hard.” • “The extreme difficulty of scaling production of new technology is poorly understood. It’s 1000% to 10,000% harder than making a few prototypes.” • “For cars, it’s maybe 100 times harder to design the manufacturing system than the car itself.” He reinforced this again in January 2026 when talking about Cybercab and Optimus on 𝕏: “Initial production is always very slow and follows an S-curve. The speed of the production ramp is inversely proportional to how many new parts and steps there are. For Cybercab and Optimus, almost everything is new, so the early production rate will be agonizingly slow - but eventually end up being insanely fast.” This is the key thing most people miss about Tesla manufacturing. Early output will be slow by design. Almost everything is new like the vehicle architecture, factory layout, AI hardware, and manufacturing flow. But once it works and clicks, it begins to scale hard. Tesla already proved they can do this. They survived Model 3 production hell. They turned Model Y into the BEST selling car in the world, of any kind. They ramped Cybertruck, which has over 30,000+ unique parts, to meaningful volume. Elon summed it up perfectly in 2024: “Compared to the insane pain of reaching high volume, positive margin production, prototypes are a piece of cake.” That’s why Tesla makes manufacturing look easy bc they already earned the scars from the last vehicle lineups. The Cybercab is aiming to be: 1/ Under $30,000 price 2/ ~$0.20 per mile operating cost 3/ 200+ mile range 4/ Up to 5x utilization vs personal cars 5/ Designed to run nearly nonstop 24/7 This is what you call manufacturing + AI + autonomy converging at scale. The competitors are still showing prototypes and demos, while Tesla is building new production lines, expanding factories, and actually building the product. I remember when Elon told me in the past that one of Tesla’s key advantage long term was going to be manufacturing technology. I get it now.

Teslaconomics

31,985 views • 7 months ago

A Tesla is the #1 safest vehicle on Earth and I would never let my kids and the people I love drive anything other than a Tesla. Independent safety agencies around the world all come to the same conclusion. Teslas consistently earn the highest possible safety ratings and even set records no other car has beaten. Many still may not believe this, but safety is the #1 priority behind every single design decision at Tesla. The Tesla Model 3 and Y both hold 5-star overall ratings from U.S. regulators in every category: frontal crash, side crash, and rollover protection. The Model 3 also holds the lowest probability of serious occupant injury ever recorded in government testing - 5.7%, compared to 7-15% for most sedans and SUVs. No other vehicle has ever surpassed that. In Europe, the results are just as strong. The Model Y earned 98% adult occupant protection, 89% child protection, and one of the highest active safety scores ever measured. Also, in the real world, using data collected from billions of miles driven, Tesla’s own safety reports show: • 1 crash every ~6.36 million miles when Autopilot or supervised FSD is active • 1 crash every ~3.85 million miles with standard active safety features • All while the U.S. average is 1 crash every ~670,000 miles! Bro… this means driving with Tesla’s safety systems is about 9x safer than the national average! This is not a coincidence. Teslas are designed for safety first from day one. 1/ The battery sits low in the floor, giving the car a low center of gravity and dramatically reduces rollover risk 2/ There are massive crumple zones to absorb energy before it reaches the cabin 3/ A rigid safety structure keeps the passenger space intact 4/ Cameras and AI software react faster than humans, cutting rear end crashes nearly in half 5/ On top of that, Teslas get safer over time with software updates continuously improving braking, pedestrian detection, and crash avoidance and more. People can debate their opinions on the internet all they want, but as a parent, all I care about are the facts and outcomes. And when something goes wrong, I want my family in the car with the lowest injury risk ever measured and the best real world safety record on the road. That’s why I choose Tesla. I don’t care about how it looks… even though I think they are the sexiest cars on the planet. I simply choose a Tesla for protection.
2:42

A Tesla is the #1 safest vehicle on Earth and I would never let my kids and the people I love drive anything other than a Tesla. Independent safety agencies around the world all come to the same conclusion. Teslas consistently earn the highest possible safety ratings and even set records no other car has beaten. Many still may not believe this, but safety is the #1 priority behind every single design decision at Tesla. The Tesla Model 3 and Y both hold 5-star overall ratings from U.S. regulators in every category: frontal crash, side crash, and rollover protection. The Model 3 also holds the lowest probability of serious occupant injury ever recorded in government testing - 5.7%, compared to 7-15% for most sedans and SUVs. No other vehicle has ever surpassed that. In Europe, the results are just as strong. The Model Y earned 98% adult occupant protection, 89% child protection, and one of the highest active safety scores ever measured. Also, in the real world, using data collected from billions of miles driven, Tesla’s own safety reports show: • 1 crash every ~6.36 million miles when Autopilot or supervised FSD is active • 1 crash every ~3.85 million miles with standard active safety features • All while the U.S. average is 1 crash every ~670,000 miles! Bro… this means driving with Tesla’s safety systems is about 9x safer than the national average! This is not a coincidence. Teslas are designed for safety first from day one. 1/ The battery sits low in the floor, giving the car a low center of gravity and dramatically reduces rollover risk 2/ There are massive crumple zones to absorb energy before it reaches the cabin 3/ A rigid safety structure keeps the passenger space intact 4/ Cameras and AI software react faster than humans, cutting rear end crashes nearly in half 5/ On top of that, Teslas get safer over time with software updates continuously improving braking, pedestrian detection, and crash avoidance and more. People can debate their opinions on the internet all they want, but as a parent, all I care about are the facts and outcomes. And when something goes wrong, I want my family in the car with the lowest injury risk ever measured and the best real world safety record on the road. That’s why I choose Tesla. I don’t care about how it looks… even though I think they are the sexiest cars on the planet. I simply choose a Tesla for protection.

Teslaconomics

14,952 views • 7 months ago

I've never heard Elon Musk be so bullish on Tesla ⚡️ here's my video analysis of the $TSLA Q4 2024 earnings call: -Robotaxi launch in Austin, June 2025 -California & other states launch robotaxi late 2025 -Cybercab in 2026 -Optimus V1 in 2025, 1K/month production line -Optimus V2 in 2026, 10K/month production line -2026 good year for Tesla, 2027/28 insanely good & more!! Timestamps- 0:00 Intro 0:44 Elon Opening Remarks 13:29 SAY Retail Questions 22:37 Analyst Questions 25:04 Gali Final Thoughts/Rant also here are my notes I typed during the conference call if you're interested! (may be errors) Tesla Q4 2024 Earnings Call Notes INTRO- ELON OPENING REMARKS -Q4 set record, delivered cars at rate of almost 2M cars/year -Model Y best-selling vehicle of any kind on earth (elon focused and talking quickly) -10Xing on autonomy, not doubling -many investments made this year that will bear immense fruit in the future, for AI -see a path for Tesla to the worlds most valuable company by far, worth more than the next 5 companies combined, difficult but achievable path -overwhelmingly due to autonomous vehicles and autonomous robots -setting up for an epic 2026, and ridiculously good 2027 and 2028 -meeting FSD now is like meeting a toddler -human intuition is linear, we’re seeing exponential progress -#1 recommendation is try it -typical passenger car has 10 hours of use out of 168, when its autonomous, itll be used for 55 hours a week … can deliver packages in the middle of thenight, or supply restaurants, all hours of the day or night. 5X increase in utility -more on self driving, continued improvements in safety numbers, much safer to use FSD -V14 will be another big step from V13 -launched CORTEX training cluster at Giga Austin, big step for FSD, continue to invest in training needs -Optimus training needs are about 10X what’s needed for the car -cost of training is dropping dramatically over time -Optimus has potential to be north of $10T in revenue, can put a lot training compute into that situation, even pumping $500B into it would be a good deal -future very different from the past, incredible inflection point in human history -proof is in the pudding -launching in June this year in Austin, already have cars moving autonomously in Fremont, thousands of cars per day driving, soon in Austin then elsewhere in the world -toe in the water at first to make sure everything is cool, but we have a general solution for autonomy , then put a few more toes, then a foot. Safety of the general public and those in the car as the top priority -with regard to Optimus, making insane revenue projections that sound insane, i realize that. But i think they will prove to be accurate -several thousand bots made this year, they will be doing useful things by the end of this year, im confidence, production design one at the tesla factories, then will learn for production design two -ramp optimus production faster than anything has ever launched, doesn’t take very many years before we’er making 100M of these things per year , 500% growth per year -tried using all these suppliers to get it to build Optimus, but nothing worked, had to build it internally from first principles, the hand is increibdle -long term Optimus will be the value of the company -back to Energy,/earth, -energy storage is a big deal, becoming more important, enables far greater energy output to the grid than is currently possible. -grid has no storage, designed for peak storage, lots of waste -once you have grid energy storage, the potential of the grid is unlocked, at least double -this will drive demand of battery packs as to as much as we can possibly make -shanghai factory starting operation, starting another factory -cant shoot our selves in the foot, battery capacity can only go into storage or mobility, so always making that tradeoff -demand for total Gigawatt hours for batteries, transportation or stationary will grow in a very big way over time 2025 a pivotal year for tesla, launch of full self driving, biggest year in tesla history, maybe even bigger than first car or model s, 3 or y … probably most important year in tesla’s history I don’t even know who is in 2nd place in real world AI, would need a telescope to see them SAY QUESTIONS -FSD Unsupervised launched in California this year as well -most likely release it in many regions of the US by the end of this year -40K people day everyday no mention, some scrapes a shin with autonomous car its headlines news -need to use insane amounts of caution -discussions about licensing FSD? Yes -best way to know to work with us, bbuy a car and take it apart -only worth very high volume cars/production partners -tesla engineering very focused on getting it to roll out for tesla first -soon will be obvious that if you don’t have FSD you’re dead as an OEM -is Optimus design locked? -Optimus is not design locked, constantly iterating, best robotics engineers in the world, and other ingredients, battery pack, charging, great electronics, great communications, great connectivity, real world AI, then you need to scale that production to real world levels -prototypes are easy production is hard -thijs year close loop with using optimus internally at tesla, would could obviously use a few thousand robots for the most boring annoying tasks at the company -with production version 2, launches sometime next year, would like beginning, might be middle though, -production line will be doing 10K units per month capacity for v2, first line designing is for roughly 1,000 units per month, then next line will be for 100,000 units per month -could start delivering them late next year, will go so fast, will ramp like crazy, demand will not be a problem, even at a high price, once were above 1M units per year, production costs of optimus will be less than $20,000 -if you compare complexity of optimus to complexity of a car, its much less than a car -price of optimus will be set buy market demand -Semi ramping next year, TCO no brainer, like optimus, will be massive demand, will meaningfully contribute to tesla’s revenue at scale -tesla semi with autonomy, is incredibly valuable -we actually have a shortage of truck drivers here in the US -will HW3 owners need a hardware update, got 12.6 which is like a baby v13, have’t given up on it, releases will trail HW4 releases … “honest answer” is were going to have to upgrade for those who have bought full self driving, will be painful and difficult and we’ll get it done “Happy not many people bought FSD” -solar roof, given up on ramping it? -lots of customer interest despite premium, making easier to install, focused on growth through certified installers, many been installing for many years -supply product to the roofing industry -it’s a premium product like S/X -combined with Tesla powerwall you can be self sufficient for several days ANALYST QUETIONS -robotaxis in Austin and several other cities this year, and next year all over america -america innovates, europe regulates, to release FSD in europe, have to go through massive paperwork through netherlands, then presents to EU in may, some big country committee, nothing we can do to make it happen sooner. -can’t do training in china with video training, publicly available videos in china are being run through the tesla system to be used for training, bus lanes are complicated and a big challenge -tesla can keep manufacturing even if geopolitical tensions rise to very high levels -Pierre question on June in Austin, -can i try unsupervised myself, or will it be the Tesla fleet? -it will be the Tesla fleet testing it, that’s the toe in the water, scrutinizing everything -autonomous ride hailing for money in june -probably next year for you to put your car on network -trump removing EV incentives? -all transport will go electric, can’t be stopped, even planes, will be like stopping the steam engine or combustion engine -only thing holding back EVs was range, and thats a solved problem -right now solving battery production, not demand, big battery retooling for model y coming up, short term impact on output
33:55

I've never heard Elon Musk be so bullish on Tesla ⚡️ here's my video analysis of the $TSLA Q4 2024 earnings call: -Robotaxi launch in Austin, June 2025 -California & other states launch robotaxi late 2025 -Cybercab in 2026 -Optimus V1 in 2025, 1K/month production line -Optimus V2 in 2026, 10K/month production line -2026 good year for Tesla, 2027/28 insanely good & more!! Timestamps- 0:00 Intro 0:44 Elon Opening Remarks 13:29 SAY Retail Questions 22:37 Analyst Questions 25:04 Gali Final Thoughts/Rant also here are my notes I typed during the conference call if you're interested! (may be errors) Tesla Q4 2024 Earnings Call Notes INTRO- ELON OPENING REMARKS -Q4 set record, delivered cars at rate of almost 2M cars/year -Model Y best-selling vehicle of any kind on earth (elon focused and talking quickly) -10Xing on autonomy, not doubling -many investments made this year that will bear immense fruit in the future, for AI -see a path for Tesla to the worlds most valuable company by far, worth more than the next 5 companies combined, difficult but achievable path -overwhelmingly due to autonomous vehicles and autonomous robots -setting up for an epic 2026, and ridiculously good 2027 and 2028 -meeting FSD now is like meeting a toddler -human intuition is linear, we’re seeing exponential progress -#1 recommendation is try it -typical passenger car has 10 hours of use out of 168, when its autonomous, itll be used for 55 hours a week … can deliver packages in the middle of thenight, or supply restaurants, all hours of the day or night. 5X increase in utility -more on self driving, continued improvements in safety numbers, much safer to use FSD -V14 will be another big step from V13 -launched CORTEX training cluster at Giga Austin, big step for FSD, continue to invest in training needs -Optimus training needs are about 10X what’s needed for the car -cost of training is dropping dramatically over time -Optimus has potential to be north of $10T in revenue, can put a lot training compute into that situation, even pumping $500B into it would be a good deal -future very different from the past, incredible inflection point in human history -proof is in the pudding -launching in June this year in Austin, already have cars moving autonomously in Fremont, thousands of cars per day driving, soon in Austin then elsewhere in the world -toe in the water at first to make sure everything is cool, but we have a general solution for autonomy , then put a few more toes, then a foot. Safety of the general public and those in the car as the top priority -with regard to Optimus, making insane revenue projections that sound insane, i realize that. But i think they will prove to be accurate -several thousand bots made this year, they will be doing useful things by the end of this year, im confidence, production design one at the tesla factories, then will learn for production design two -ramp optimus production faster than anything has ever launched, doesn’t take very many years before we’er making 100M of these things per year , 500% growth per year -tried using all these suppliers to get it to build Optimus, but nothing worked, had to build it internally from first principles, the hand is increibdle -long term Optimus will be the value of the company -back to Energy,/earth, -energy storage is a big deal, becoming more important, enables far greater energy output to the grid than is currently possible. -grid has no storage, designed for peak storage, lots of waste -once you have grid energy storage, the potential of the grid is unlocked, at least double -this will drive demand of battery packs as to as much as we can possibly make -shanghai factory starting operation, starting another factory -cant shoot our selves in the foot, battery capacity can only go into storage or mobility, so always making that tradeoff -demand for total Gigawatt hours for batteries, transportation or stationary will grow in a very big way over time 2025 a pivotal year for tesla, launch of full self driving, biggest year in tesla history, maybe even bigger than first car or model s, 3 or y … probably most important year in tesla’s history I don’t even know who is in 2nd place in real world AI, would need a telescope to see them SAY QUESTIONS -FSD Unsupervised launched in California this year as well -most likely release it in many regions of the US by the end of this year -40K people day everyday no mention, some scrapes a shin with autonomous car its headlines news -need to use insane amounts of caution -discussions about licensing FSD? Yes -best way to know to work with us, bbuy a car and take it apart -only worth very high volume cars/production partners -tesla engineering very focused on getting it to roll out for tesla first -soon will be obvious that if you don’t have FSD you’re dead as an OEM -is Optimus design locked? -Optimus is not design locked, constantly iterating, best robotics engineers in the world, and other ingredients, battery pack, charging, great electronics, great communications, great connectivity, real world AI, then you need to scale that production to real world levels -prototypes are easy production is hard -thijs year close loop with using optimus internally at tesla, would could obviously use a few thousand robots for the most boring annoying tasks at the company -with production version 2, launches sometime next year, would like beginning, might be middle though, -production line will be doing 10K units per month capacity for v2, first line designing is for roughly 1,000 units per month, then next line will be for 100,000 units per month -could start delivering them late next year, will go so fast, will ramp like crazy, demand will not be a problem, even at a high price, once were above 1M units per year, production costs of optimus will be less than $20,000 -if you compare complexity of optimus to complexity of a car, its much less than a car -price of optimus will be set buy market demand -Semi ramping next year, TCO no brainer, like optimus, will be massive demand, will meaningfully contribute to tesla’s revenue at scale -tesla semi with autonomy, is incredibly valuable -we actually have a shortage of truck drivers here in the US -will HW3 owners need a hardware update, got 12.6 which is like a baby v13, have’t given up on it, releases will trail HW4 releases … “honest answer” is were going to have to upgrade for those who have bought full self driving, will be painful and difficult and we’ll get it done “Happy not many people bought FSD” -solar roof, given up on ramping it? -lots of customer interest despite premium, making easier to install, focused on growth through certified installers, many been installing for many years -supply product to the roofing industry -it’s a premium product like S/X -combined with Tesla powerwall you can be self sufficient for several days ANALYST QUETIONS -robotaxis in Austin and several other cities this year, and next year all over america -america innovates, europe regulates, to release FSD in europe, have to go through massive paperwork through netherlands, then presents to EU in may, some big country committee, nothing we can do to make it happen sooner. -can’t do training in china with video training, publicly available videos in china are being run through the tesla system to be used for training, bus lanes are complicated and a big challenge -tesla can keep manufacturing even if geopolitical tensions rise to very high levels -Pierre question on June in Austin, -can i try unsupervised myself, or will it be the Tesla fleet? -it will be the Tesla fleet testing it, that’s the toe in the water, scrutinizing everything -autonomous ride hailing for money in june -probably next year for you to put your car on network -trump removing EV incentives? -all transport will go electric, can’t be stopped, even planes, will be like stopping the steam engine or combustion engine -only thing holding back EVs was range, and thats a solved problem -right now solving battery production, not demand, big battery retooling for model y coming up, short term impact on output

Gali

79,010 views • 1 year ago

The Musk-Led Manufacturing Revolution Nobody Is Talking About | ZeroHedge When most analysts discuss Tesla, they focus on new vehicles or the electric vehicle company’s advancements in autonomy. Yet, according to Launch i/o CEO Jeff Lutz, one of the most significant—and under-discussed—developments at Tesla is happening not in its design studios or on the road, but in its factories. Lutz, a former executive at Google and Motorola, argues that Tesla’s true innovation isn’t just the electric vehicles or robots it’s building, but how those products are being made. The company’s first-principles approach to manufacturing is a radical departure from the industry norm, focusing not just on cheap labor or existing models, but on rethinking the entire production process. Tesla is creating factories that are the product—designing, testing, and perfecting every element just as they do with their cars. This focus on manufacturing efficiency, Lutz believes, will lead to a dramatic reduction in production costs, potentially bringing them closer to zero. And this shift in how products are built—rather than merely assembled—could set a new standard for the entire manufacturing world. FARZAD MESBAHI: It's no wonder that innovation has been lacking so much it's because we've brute forced essentially manufacturing by leveraging globalization because we had that $2 an hour rate in China or Mexico wherever else like we're not like well we have to just get really good at building stuff to be competitive I was like nah just let him do it like we'll get get our margins just let them do it. JEFF LUTZ: The most under-discussed thing in the analyst world about Tesla is not the new vehicles coming, nor the growing discussions about autonomy, but rather Tesla's next product: their new way of manufacturing. It's a big deal, a huge step in how products are made today, and I don't think many investment firms have the right research people actually looking into what this impact is and what it's going to enable. It's going to enable the variable cost to build products to shrink further and further, approaching zero. This is the step function needed for cost reduction to achieve further scale, and I don’t think enough people are talking about it. It’s going to be how the Cybertruck is made, how Optimus will be made. Tesla versions its factories like they version their product. They spend time perfecting it and have design reviews of their factory designs just as they do with their products. They have specs and performance attributes they are trying to meet. This is very different from what happens at other companies at the executive level. FARZAD MESBAHI: This is such a profound statement because a lot of the stories that I hear are related to, like, say Tesla capitalizing on making manufacturing the product—really just honing in so much on the factory that it becomes the product, the you know, and where we throw around 2 million cars per year, five million cars per year per factory, tens of millions of bots per year sooner than people think. The usual narrative is crazy, pie-in-the-sky; they can't do that, look at Ford, look at BYD, they can only do so much. But what we're missing here is that we've had decades of just sitting on our asses, leveraging cheaper labor versus going out of our way to really push the boundaries of engineering and manufacturing. And now that we have a company that's willing to do that because the leader is viewing that as a first principles approach to manufacturing, right? Instead of like, okay, cheap labor is good, but why aren’t we pushing manufacturing and engineering as much as we can to make this as efficient and as productive as possible? Of course they’re extremely talented, they’re doing something very unique, but it’s also on the backs of 30-40 years of, I’m going to call it laziness. Like, you're just taking the easy way out, and I get it, more profits, you're taking care of shareholders—I get it—but you're not really pushing the boundaries of manufacturing. I think what this leads to is, if companies and leaders truly take this to heart, we’re going to see an explosion in manufacturing across the board. It’s not just going to be a Tesla thing; I think we’re going to see it all over the place. JEFF LUTZ: I’m advising companies on this now, you're going to see massive localization of manufacturing. People think costs just instantly go up when you do that. They do unmitigated, but if you're a company like Tesla and you're thinking about it the way they do, they're actually focused on localizing and making costs go down. Think of it, how many auto factories are expanding in Germany? Just answer that question. Read more:
1:57

The Musk-Led Manufacturing Revolution Nobody Is Talking About | ZeroHedge When most analysts discuss Tesla, they focus on new vehicles or the electric vehicle company’s advancements in autonomy. Yet, according to Launch i/o CEO Jeff Lutz, one of the most significant—and under-discussed—developments at Tesla is happening not in its design studios or on the road, but in its factories. Lutz, a former executive at Google and Motorola, argues that Tesla’s true innovation isn’t just the electric vehicles or robots it’s building, but how those products are being made. The company’s first-principles approach to manufacturing is a radical departure from the industry norm, focusing not just on cheap labor or existing models, but on rethinking the entire production process. Tesla is creating factories that are the product—designing, testing, and perfecting every element just as they do with their cars. This focus on manufacturing efficiency, Lutz believes, will lead to a dramatic reduction in production costs, potentially bringing them closer to zero. And this shift in how products are built—rather than merely assembled—could set a new standard for the entire manufacturing world. FARZAD MESBAHI: It's no wonder that innovation has been lacking so much it's because we've brute forced essentially manufacturing by leveraging globalization because we had that $2 an hour rate in China or Mexico wherever else like we're not like well we have to just get really good at building stuff to be competitive I was like nah just let him do it like we'll get get our margins just let them do it. JEFF LUTZ: The most under-discussed thing in the analyst world about Tesla is not the new vehicles coming, nor the growing discussions about autonomy, but rather Tesla's next product: their new way of manufacturing. It's a big deal, a huge step in how products are made today, and I don't think many investment firms have the right research people actually looking into what this impact is and what it's going to enable. It's going to enable the variable cost to build products to shrink further and further, approaching zero. This is the step function needed for cost reduction to achieve further scale, and I don’t think enough people are talking about it. It’s going to be how the Cybertruck is made, how Optimus will be made. Tesla versions its factories like they version their product. They spend time perfecting it and have design reviews of their factory designs just as they do with their products. They have specs and performance attributes they are trying to meet. This is very different from what happens at other companies at the executive level. FARZAD MESBAHI: This is such a profound statement because a lot of the stories that I hear are related to, like, say Tesla capitalizing on making manufacturing the product—really just honing in so much on the factory that it becomes the product, the you know, and where we throw around 2 million cars per year, five million cars per year per factory, tens of millions of bots per year sooner than people think. The usual narrative is crazy, pie-in-the-sky; they can't do that, look at Ford, look at BYD, they can only do so much. But what we're missing here is that we've had decades of just sitting on our asses, leveraging cheaper labor versus going out of our way to really push the boundaries of engineering and manufacturing. And now that we have a company that's willing to do that because the leader is viewing that as a first principles approach to manufacturing, right? Instead of like, okay, cheap labor is good, but why aren’t we pushing manufacturing and engineering as much as we can to make this as efficient and as productive as possible? Of course they’re extremely talented, they’re doing something very unique, but it’s also on the backs of 30-40 years of, I’m going to call it laziness. Like, you're just taking the easy way out, and I get it, more profits, you're taking care of shareholders—I get it—but you're not really pushing the boundaries of manufacturing. I think what this leads to is, if companies and leaders truly take this to heart, we’re going to see an explosion in manufacturing across the board. It’s not just going to be a Tesla thing; I think we’re going to see it all over the place. JEFF LUTZ: I’m advising companies on this now, you're going to see massive localization of manufacturing. People think costs just instantly go up when you do that. They do unmitigated, but if you're a company like Tesla and you're thinking about it the way they do, they're actually focused on localizing and making costs go down. Think of it, how many auto factories are expanding in Germany? Just answer that question. Read more:

Owen Gregorian

58,478 views • 1 year ago

This battery is about to change the world in 3 months, or make this guy a fool | Fred Lambert, Hacker News Donut Lab lit the EV and energy storage industry on fire last week with its announcement of a 400 Wh/kg solid-state battery cell that can last for 100 years. At face value, if true, we are looking at the single most disruptive announcement in the history of the electric vehicle industry and energy storage as a whole. We aren’t just talking about a better motorcycle battery. If the claims of a 5-minute charge, 100,000-cycle life, and ~400 Wh/kg energy density are accurate and scalable, as Donut Lab claims, this is the holy grail of energy storage. Battery breakthrough announcements generally don’t catch fire like this, but Donut Lab’s did because it said that the cell was already in production and will be in a production vehicle, Verge’s electric motorcycle, this quarter. It gave credibility to the claim, pushing everyone to report on it. Now, we have interviewed Donut Lab’s CEO and investigated the technology. At this point, it looks like either this battery changes the world within the next 3 months, or it will make the CEO look like a fool. In this article, we discuss the impact of the battery, whether real or not, as well as clues about the secret sauce behind its chemistry. The Holy Grail of Energy Storage Consider the implications. A battery that lasts 100,000 cycles is effectively immortal in human terms. You could charge it every single day for 270 years, and it would still be working. It means the battery outlives the vehicle, not just once, but ten times over. It changes the economics of transportation entirely: you buy the battery once, and you swap it into your next five cars. The power density required for a 5-minute charge and the 400 Wh/kg of energy density opens the door to commercial electric aviation, a sector currently strangled by the weight and slow charging speeds of lithium-ion. It solves the grid storage problem by offering a medium that doesn’t degrade, meaning utility companies could amortize the cost over a century rather than a decade. If this is real, the internal combustion engine didn’t just die today; it was buried 100 feet deep, and every other battery is not far behind. But, and this is a massive “but”, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, and Donut Lab has yet to release that proof. And that brings us to the man making them. The Man Betting His Reputation I spoke with Marko Lehtimäki, the CEO of Donut Lab and Chairman of Verge Motorcycles. My goal was simple: ask him about the chemistry behind his battery and, if that doesn’t work, look him in the eye and figure out if he’s selling vaporware or if he’s sitting on the breakthrough of the century. Marko isn’t a random guy shouting about a battery breakthrough that will change the world. He is a legit entrepreneur. A computer scientist who built a no-coding app builder years before “vibe coding” was even a thing and sold it to SAP. After the successful exit, he became an investor and serial entrepreneur with his biggest, or most well-known, company being Verge Motorcycles, which has real products on the road. By announcing that this “miracle battery” is already in production and will be shipping in customer vehicles within 10 weeks, he is betting his entire personal reputation on this technology. If he misses this timeline or if the specs are fake, Donut Labs and Verge Motorcycles might not survive the credibility loss. He has a lot to lose here. In my article about the battery announcement last week, I noted that Marko’s presentation was incredible. He basically described a perfect battery: record energy density, incredible charge rate, unprecedented longevity, no rare metals, a cost lower than traditional Li-ion cells, and in scalable production right now. Sounds too good to be true? The only thing he didn’t share was details about the chemistry, beyond saying it doesn’t use lithium or other rare metals. What’s the point of protecting the chemistry if the battery is already in production and it will be in a product shipped this quarter? If that’s true, the battery will be reverse-engineered before the snow completely melts. We discussed it with Marko during our interview. His logic is that once the bikes ship, competitors will tear them down and figure it out anyway. But that won’t happen for another 10 weeks or so, and the head start is critical for a technology this disruptive. In the meantime, Donut Lab’s goal with the announcement was to get the attention of OEMs and ship them battery packs for validation. Marko said: We are right now shipping demo packs to OEMs under NDAs and under tight disclosures so that they can test that all of that is true, which serves our business very well [better than disclosing the chemistry]. But these programs with OEMs are likely to take a long time before they become public. Shorter term, there’s Verge Motorcycles shipping bikes with the battery by the end of the quarter. Before that, Marko also said that we should soon see third-party testing of those cells: We rather right now ship it to authorized research and science center that tests everything without opening it and telling everybody what’s in there. In short, we should have a good idea whether the claims are true or not in just a few weeks no matter what. What does Marko, or Donut Lab, have to gain by lying about this? I also discussed this with Marko and the only thing I could come up with is if he happens to be raising capital right now, but he shut that down: There are a million investors chasing us right now, but we are literally not talking to anybody. We tell investors that we can discuss terms after we have done all our disclosures. Marko insisted that Donut Lab is not taking any investment until they have proven their cells work. In short, it’s hard to find an upside for Donut Lab in making this announcement if the claims are not true. It doesn’t mean that they are, but it makes you think. The Investigation: What Is the “Donut Battery”? So, what is the secret sauce? Marko wouldn’t say, but after digging into public records, supply chains, and research papers, I believe we have a pretty good idea. Let me preface this by saying that I’m not a chemist or physicist, but I’ve been a journalist covering electric vehicles for more than a decade, and I’m pretty good at connecting the dots, and in this case, I’ve had the help of a couple of great sources, too. I’m not saying that this is the Donut Lab battery, but since they are not sharing much, we have to speculate, and all evidence points to a Finnish nanotechnology startup called Nordic Nano and its Chief Scientist, Dr. Bela Bhuskute. Donut Lab invested in Nordic Nano in October 2025, just months before this announcement. At the time of writing this, the press release has fewer than 200 views. The announcement went under the radar, and while Marko said that Nordic Nano is more of a “solar company” during our interview, the announcement mentions both solar and energy storage. Dr. Bhuskute’s research at Tampere University focuses on amorphous Titanium Dioxide nanostructures, which could benefit many different technologies, including batteries. It fits the “miracle” specs perfectly: - 100,000 Cycles: Traditional solid-state batteries are crystalline (like a brick wall) and crack when ions rush in. Dr. Bhuskute’s amorphous Titanium Dioxide is disordered (like a sponge) and “breathes,” allowing it to expand and contract without breaking. - 5-Minute Charge: This chemistry stores energy via “pseudocapacitance,” which is basically like Velcro. Ions stick to the surface almost instantly rather than having to burrow deep inside the material. - The Manufacturing: Nordic Nano uses a “nanofluid” printing process for its solar product using the technology. This aligns with Donut Lab’s description of a “clay-like” material that enables an easier manufacturing process. Some call this “battery printing”, which could explain Donut Lab’s ability to bring this to production in record time. When I asked Marko for the volumetric energy density (Wh/L), he claimed he “couldn’t remember”. Volumetric energy density is one of the few specs that Donut Lab hasn’t released. This battery is lighter than lithium-ion, but it could be bigger due to the amorphous nature of the titanium dioxide. However, the CEO claimed it has a higher volumetric density than traditional Li-ion batteries, without providing a specific number. If that’s true, not only could electric vehicles and energy storage switch to this new chemistry, but even personal electronics, such as smartphones. In 2025, Nordic Nano has been making moves, including securing a former large retail location in Imatra, Finland, near the Russian border: It could be where the company has set up production. Following investment from the Finnish government, Nordic Nano had to elaborate a bit on its products and confirmed that it is working on “solar energy systems and energy storage solutions”: The company’s range of products includes two product families: solar energy systems and energy storage solutions: The ultra-thin and flexible solar film collects twice the amount of energy compared to traditional silicon-based solar panels. Solid-state salt batteries are manufactured by printing from nanofluid, which enables the efficient use of space and the production of batteries in varying shapes. Furthermore, the company confirmed that it is using a “screenprinting” manufacturing method. This is not new. Other companies have produced battery cells with this technology with varying degrees of success. It appears that the bet is that the amorphous rather than crystalized titanium dioxide nanostructure could be more easily adapted and scaled with this manufacturing technology. Electrek’s Take I’m naturally skeptical, and this screams “too good to be true”, but I can’t find anything that categorically rejects the claims. I get battery breakthrough announcements in my inbox every week, and most of the time they never amount to anything. If I decide to spend some time researching them and talking to experts, I generally quickly hit a problem or two that make them commercially unviable. This announcement is different. We can’t really investigate the actual breakthrough; we can only speculate about it, since it is guarded. Marko’s logic for guarding the chemistry is sound, and the incentives to lie about what they have aren’t clear if he is not currently raising money. Then, because they claim this is already in production and will be in a deliverable product within weeks, we will know whether the claims are true in short order, and their reputations, especially Marko’s, are on the line. During my interview, Marko didn’t seem too worried about it. It doesn’t sound like someone who needs to quickly figure out how to deliver this, but rather someone who has a couple of aces in their hand and is looking to maximize them. It’s also strange that this innovation and then production quickly comes from a relatively small company. I thought researching Donut Lab would make me more skeptical about the claims, but it’s the contrary. It confirms that their technology stems from years of research, backed by university and government funding for its commercialization. Could it be that this critical research went under the radar and a small electric motorcycle startup in need of a significant bump in energy density stumbled upon it? Then, a savvy entrepreneur quickly found a way to optimize the impact of this potentially groundbreaking tech by spinning out a startup from the motorcycle company to market the battery to a broader market. Maybe? This could be real, or it could be hype. Again, I’m still skeptical, but I can’t point to anything specific that would disprove any claim made about this miracle battery. Again, if this is true, we are talking about a complete reset of the entire energy and transportation sectors. Donut Lab would become one of the biggest companies in the world. A Nobel Prize would be coming to Dr. Bhuskute and her colleagues in the near future. If it’s not, Marko and Donut Lab’s reputation would be destroyed. There might also be a middle conclusion where the battery is nearly as good as they claim, but when you ramp up production, other problems arise, such as scrap, which has been the undoing of another company that recently tried screenprinting batteries. Who knows? But it sounds like we should find out soon. Within weeks, we should get independent verifications of the specs. Then the bikes get delivered within months. You can fake a presentation, but there are things you can’t fake.
24:10

This battery is about to change the world in 3 months, or make this guy a fool | Fred Lambert, Hacker News Donut Lab lit the EV and energy storage industry on fire last week with its announcement of a 400 Wh/kg solid-state battery cell that can last for 100 years. At face value, if true, we are looking at the single most disruptive announcement in the history of the electric vehicle industry and energy storage as a whole. We aren’t just talking about a better motorcycle battery. If the claims of a 5-minute charge, 100,000-cycle life, and ~400 Wh/kg energy density are accurate and scalable, as Donut Lab claims, this is the holy grail of energy storage. Battery breakthrough announcements generally don’t catch fire like this, but Donut Lab’s did because it said that the cell was already in production and will be in a production vehicle, Verge’s electric motorcycle, this quarter. It gave credibility to the claim, pushing everyone to report on it. Now, we have interviewed Donut Lab’s CEO and investigated the technology. At this point, it looks like either this battery changes the world within the next 3 months, or it will make the CEO look like a fool. In this article, we discuss the impact of the battery, whether real or not, as well as clues about the secret sauce behind its chemistry. The Holy Grail of Energy Storage Consider the implications. A battery that lasts 100,000 cycles is effectively immortal in human terms. You could charge it every single day for 270 years, and it would still be working. It means the battery outlives the vehicle, not just once, but ten times over. It changes the economics of transportation entirely: you buy the battery once, and you swap it into your next five cars. The power density required for a 5-minute charge and the 400 Wh/kg of energy density opens the door to commercial electric aviation, a sector currently strangled by the weight and slow charging speeds of lithium-ion. It solves the grid storage problem by offering a medium that doesn’t degrade, meaning utility companies could amortize the cost over a century rather than a decade. If this is real, the internal combustion engine didn’t just die today; it was buried 100 feet deep, and every other battery is not far behind. But, and this is a massive “but”, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, and Donut Lab has yet to release that proof. And that brings us to the man making them. The Man Betting His Reputation I spoke with Marko Lehtimäki, the CEO of Donut Lab and Chairman of Verge Motorcycles. My goal was simple: ask him about the chemistry behind his battery and, if that doesn’t work, look him in the eye and figure out if he’s selling vaporware or if he’s sitting on the breakthrough of the century. Marko isn’t a random guy shouting about a battery breakthrough that will change the world. He is a legit entrepreneur. A computer scientist who built a no-coding app builder years before “vibe coding” was even a thing and sold it to SAP. After the successful exit, he became an investor and serial entrepreneur with his biggest, or most well-known, company being Verge Motorcycles, which has real products on the road. By announcing that this “miracle battery” is already in production and will be shipping in customer vehicles within 10 weeks, he is betting his entire personal reputation on this technology. If he misses this timeline or if the specs are fake, Donut Labs and Verge Motorcycles might not survive the credibility loss. He has a lot to lose here. In my article about the battery announcement last week, I noted that Marko’s presentation was incredible. He basically described a perfect battery: record energy density, incredible charge rate, unprecedented longevity, no rare metals, a cost lower than traditional Li-ion cells, and in scalable production right now. Sounds too good to be true? The only thing he didn’t share was details about the chemistry, beyond saying it doesn’t use lithium or other rare metals. What’s the point of protecting the chemistry if the battery is already in production and it will be in a product shipped this quarter? If that’s true, the battery will be reverse-engineered before the snow completely melts. We discussed it with Marko during our interview. His logic is that once the bikes ship, competitors will tear them down and figure it out anyway. But that won’t happen for another 10 weeks or so, and the head start is critical for a technology this disruptive. In the meantime, Donut Lab’s goal with the announcement was to get the attention of OEMs and ship them battery packs for validation. Marko said: We are right now shipping demo packs to OEMs under NDAs and under tight disclosures so that they can test that all of that is true, which serves our business very well [better than disclosing the chemistry]. But these programs with OEMs are likely to take a long time before they become public. Shorter term, there’s Verge Motorcycles shipping bikes with the battery by the end of the quarter. Before that, Marko also said that we should soon see third-party testing of those cells: We rather right now ship it to authorized research and science center that tests everything without opening it and telling everybody what’s in there. In short, we should have a good idea whether the claims are true or not in just a few weeks no matter what. What does Marko, or Donut Lab, have to gain by lying about this? I also discussed this with Marko and the only thing I could come up with is if he happens to be raising capital right now, but he shut that down: There are a million investors chasing us right now, but we are literally not talking to anybody. We tell investors that we can discuss terms after we have done all our disclosures. Marko insisted that Donut Lab is not taking any investment until they have proven their cells work. In short, it’s hard to find an upside for Donut Lab in making this announcement if the claims are not true. It doesn’t mean that they are, but it makes you think. The Investigation: What Is the “Donut Battery”? So, what is the secret sauce? Marko wouldn’t say, but after digging into public records, supply chains, and research papers, I believe we have a pretty good idea. Let me preface this by saying that I’m not a chemist or physicist, but I’ve been a journalist covering electric vehicles for more than a decade, and I’m pretty good at connecting the dots, and in this case, I’ve had the help of a couple of great sources, too. I’m not saying that this is the Donut Lab battery, but since they are not sharing much, we have to speculate, and all evidence points to a Finnish nanotechnology startup called Nordic Nano and its Chief Scientist, Dr. Bela Bhuskute. Donut Lab invested in Nordic Nano in October 2025, just months before this announcement. At the time of writing this, the press release has fewer than 200 views. The announcement went under the radar, and while Marko said that Nordic Nano is more of a “solar company” during our interview, the announcement mentions both solar and energy storage. Dr. Bhuskute’s research at Tampere University focuses on amorphous Titanium Dioxide nanostructures, which could benefit many different technologies, including batteries. It fits the “miracle” specs perfectly: - 100,000 Cycles: Traditional solid-state batteries are crystalline (like a brick wall) and crack when ions rush in. Dr. Bhuskute’s amorphous Titanium Dioxide is disordered (like a sponge) and “breathes,” allowing it to expand and contract without breaking. - 5-Minute Charge: This chemistry stores energy via “pseudocapacitance,” which is basically like Velcro. Ions stick to the surface almost instantly rather than having to burrow deep inside the material. - The Manufacturing: Nordic Nano uses a “nanofluid” printing process for its solar product using the technology. This aligns with Donut Lab’s description of a “clay-like” material that enables an easier manufacturing process. Some call this “battery printing”, which could explain Donut Lab’s ability to bring this to production in record time. When I asked Marko for the volumetric energy density (Wh/L), he claimed he “couldn’t remember”. Volumetric energy density is one of the few specs that Donut Lab hasn’t released. This battery is lighter than lithium-ion, but it could be bigger due to the amorphous nature of the titanium dioxide. However, the CEO claimed it has a higher volumetric density than traditional Li-ion batteries, without providing a specific number. If that’s true, not only could electric vehicles and energy storage switch to this new chemistry, but even personal electronics, such as smartphones. In 2025, Nordic Nano has been making moves, including securing a former large retail location in Imatra, Finland, near the Russian border: It could be where the company has set up production. Following investment from the Finnish government, Nordic Nano had to elaborate a bit on its products and confirmed that it is working on “solar energy systems and energy storage solutions”: The company’s range of products includes two product families: solar energy systems and energy storage solutions: The ultra-thin and flexible solar film collects twice the amount of energy compared to traditional silicon-based solar panels. Solid-state salt batteries are manufactured by printing from nanofluid, which enables the efficient use of space and the production of batteries in varying shapes. Furthermore, the company confirmed that it is using a “screenprinting” manufacturing method. This is not new. Other companies have produced battery cells with this technology with varying degrees of success. It appears that the bet is that the amorphous rather than crystalized titanium dioxide nanostructure could be more easily adapted and scaled with this manufacturing technology. Electrek’s Take I’m naturally skeptical, and this screams “too good to be true”, but I can’t find anything that categorically rejects the claims. I get battery breakthrough announcements in my inbox every week, and most of the time they never amount to anything. If I decide to spend some time researching them and talking to experts, I generally quickly hit a problem or two that make them commercially unviable. This announcement is different. We can’t really investigate the actual breakthrough; we can only speculate about it, since it is guarded. Marko’s logic for guarding the chemistry is sound, and the incentives to lie about what they have aren’t clear if he is not currently raising money. Then, because they claim this is already in production and will be in a deliverable product within weeks, we will know whether the claims are true in short order, and their reputations, especially Marko’s, are on the line. During my interview, Marko didn’t seem too worried about it. It doesn’t sound like someone who needs to quickly figure out how to deliver this, but rather someone who has a couple of aces in their hand and is looking to maximize them. It’s also strange that this innovation and then production quickly comes from a relatively small company. I thought researching Donut Lab would make me more skeptical about the claims, but it’s the contrary. It confirms that their technology stems from years of research, backed by university and government funding for its commercialization. Could it be that this critical research went under the radar and a small electric motorcycle startup in need of a significant bump in energy density stumbled upon it? Then, a savvy entrepreneur quickly found a way to optimize the impact of this potentially groundbreaking tech by spinning out a startup from the motorcycle company to market the battery to a broader market. Maybe? This could be real, or it could be hype. Again, I’m still skeptical, but I can’t point to anything specific that would disprove any claim made about this miracle battery. Again, if this is true, we are talking about a complete reset of the entire energy and transportation sectors. Donut Lab would become one of the biggest companies in the world. A Nobel Prize would be coming to Dr. Bhuskute and her colleagues in the near future. If it’s not, Marko and Donut Lab’s reputation would be destroyed. There might also be a middle conclusion where the battery is nearly as good as they claim, but when you ramp up production, other problems arise, such as scrap, which has been the undoing of another company that recently tried screenprinting batteries. Who knows? But it sounds like we should find out soon. Within weeks, we should get independent verifications of the specs. Then the bikes get delivered within months. You can fake a presentation, but there are things you can’t fake.

Owen Gregorian

123,359 views • 7 months ago

The Junior Mining Trade is Finally On and Here's Why For junior mining investors, 2024 has been a mixed bag of patience and promise. While the price of gold and silver has been skyrocketing to levels unseen in over 20 years, junior mining stocks haven’t kept pace. Many investors who poured money into smallcap exploration companies expecting them to follow gold’s surge are getting restless. But things are finally looking up for this lagging sector, and it’s all about where we’re at in the natural resource cycle. Let’s break down what’s happening and what might be on the horizon. Gold and Silver Are Shining—So Where Are the Juniors? Over the past year, the price of gold has climbed nearly 38%, with silver up a stunning 42.5%. Yet, despite these record-breaking moves, the smaller companies focused on exploration and discovery, the juniors, have barely moved. The S&P TSX Global Mining Index is up a respectable 23%, but the TSX Venture Metals and Mining Index, where most juniors trade, has only eked out a 9% gain. What gives? The answer lies in understanding how large and small mining companies navigate their roles in the precious metals cycle. Large mining firms like Newmont have been basking in higher prices, increasing production, and capitalizing on high margins. But for smaller companies, the real opportunity often comes when large producers start feeling the need to secure future supply. And here in late 2024, that moment is just arriving. The Resource Equation: Why Giants Like Newmont Look to the Smaller Names To understand how the big miners influence juniors, let’s look at Newmont Corporation, the world’s largest gold miner, operating across four continents. Newmont’s primary goal is to produce as much gold as possible at the lowest possible cost. But mining is unlike most industries—every ton of ore that comes out of the ground depletes reserves. Once Newmont extracts an ounce of gold, it’s gone for good. And unless it adds new ounces to its portfolio, production eventually declines, and so does the stock price. For a giant like Newmont, replacing these reserves through new discoveries is costly, risky, and time-consuming. Companies like Newmont prefer to purchase assets that are already developed or nearly so. Recently, Newmont acquired Newcrest in a $28.8 billion deal, marking the largest gold merger to date. Newcrest itself grew through acquisitions, buying up promising mines like Red Chris and Brucejack to shore up its reserves. By buying Newcrest, Newmont added high-quality, low-cost ounces to its portfolio, but the global giant still needs to continually replenish reserves to meet production demands. That’s where the juniors come in. Agnico-Eagle and the Depletion Dilemma Agnico-Eagle, the second largest gold producer, faces similar challenges. After its own string of acquisitions, including a merger with Kirkland Lake Gold and the purchase of Yamana’s assets, Agnico has continued to produce significant volumes of gold. But high production volumes mean reserves are also dwindling fast. Take Agnico’s mines in Mexico, Pinos Altos and La India, which once held nearly 80 million tonnes of gold and silver ore. After a decade of operation, these assets are close to depletion. Agnico has exploration projects, but it’s unclear if they’ll be able to replenish the company’s gold supply at the rate it’s being depleted. For Agnico, acquiring developed assets is a faster solution, but with competition increasing, the company may soon have to look at even smaller players—putting junior mining companies back in the spotlight. The Junior Mining Cycle: Positioned for Growth? As long as gold and silver prices remain high, big mining companies will be on the lookout for acquisitions to secure future production. In fact, the 23% gain in the S&P TSX Global Mining Index and the 45% one-year return on the GDX signal that the metals rally is starting to reach mining stocks. The trend is only beginning to impact juniors, but it’s gaining momentum. Soon, even higher-risk, earlier-stage exploration companies may become prime acquisition targets for larger miners. For juniors, this translates into real opportunity. As big miners get hungrier for reserves, they’ll go further up the risk curve to secure assets, bringing much-needed capital into the space. Exploration companies that prove their resource quality, viability, and production potential may see increased valuations and potentially, acquisition offers. And with investor attention gradually returning to the sector, the right companies could see significant price moves. How to Navigate the Junior Mining Space The challenge, of course, is identifying which juniors have what it takes to make it. As some veteran mining investors will tell you, success often depends less on the project itself and more on the people managing it. I’ve spoken with Rick Rule, Doug Casey, and Frank Giustra over the last year and they all emphasize the importance of strong management teams in mining. A great deposit in the hands of an inexperienced team can lead to wasted resources, while an average deposit managed well can turn into a profitable operation. The Deep Dive has hosted numerous junior mining CEOs who’ve given us insight into their companies, strategies, and outlooks. One example is Silver Tiger Metals, which has been developing a promising silver asset in Sonora, Mexico, close to Agnico’s Pinos Altos. We spoke with their CEO, Glenn Jessome, about how he plans to bring the project to fruition. For investors, hearing directly from these leaders can provide a clearer sense of who knows what they’re doing and who might struggle if challenges arise. 2025: A Big Year Ahead for Junior Mining? The signs are there—2025 could be a pivotal year for junior miners. The macroeconomic backdrop is favorable, with sustained demand for gold and silver likely as inflationary pressures and a strong dollar drive more investors into metals. Meanwhile, big mining firms are looking to juniors to secure their future production, meaning higher acquisition interest and more money flowing into exploration companies. If you’re watching the junior mining space, keep an eye on the fundamentals: Who has strong management? Which projects are positioned in promising jurisdictions? And crucially, who has the financing and expertise to make the most of their assets? Where to Start If you want to follow our efforts, subscribe to The Deep Dive to stay updated on all things junior mining. We’ll continue to feature CEOs and industry experts to bring you insights directly from the companies on the frontlines of this cycle. And if you have questions for our guests, let us know in the comments—chances are they’re reading too.
9:47

The Junior Mining Trade is Finally On and Here's Why For junior mining investors, 2024 has been a mixed bag of patience and promise. While the price of gold and silver has been skyrocketing to levels unseen in over 20 years, junior mining stocks haven’t kept pace. Many investors who poured money into smallcap exploration companies expecting them to follow gold’s surge are getting restless. But things are finally looking up for this lagging sector, and it’s all about where we’re at in the natural resource cycle. Let’s break down what’s happening and what might be on the horizon. Gold and Silver Are Shining—So Where Are the Juniors? Over the past year, the price of gold has climbed nearly 38%, with silver up a stunning 42.5%. Yet, despite these record-breaking moves, the smaller companies focused on exploration and discovery, the juniors, have barely moved. The S&P TSX Global Mining Index is up a respectable 23%, but the TSX Venture Metals and Mining Index, where most juniors trade, has only eked out a 9% gain. What gives? The answer lies in understanding how large and small mining companies navigate their roles in the precious metals cycle. Large mining firms like Newmont have been basking in higher prices, increasing production, and capitalizing on high margins. But for smaller companies, the real opportunity often comes when large producers start feeling the need to secure future supply. And here in late 2024, that moment is just arriving. The Resource Equation: Why Giants Like Newmont Look to the Smaller Names To understand how the big miners influence juniors, let’s look at Newmont Corporation, the world’s largest gold miner, operating across four continents. Newmont’s primary goal is to produce as much gold as possible at the lowest possible cost. But mining is unlike most industries—every ton of ore that comes out of the ground depletes reserves. Once Newmont extracts an ounce of gold, it’s gone for good. And unless it adds new ounces to its portfolio, production eventually declines, and so does the stock price. For a giant like Newmont, replacing these reserves through new discoveries is costly, risky, and time-consuming. Companies like Newmont prefer to purchase assets that are already developed or nearly so. Recently, Newmont acquired Newcrest in a $28.8 billion deal, marking the largest gold merger to date. Newcrest itself grew through acquisitions, buying up promising mines like Red Chris and Brucejack to shore up its reserves. By buying Newcrest, Newmont added high-quality, low-cost ounces to its portfolio, but the global giant still needs to continually replenish reserves to meet production demands. That’s where the juniors come in. Agnico-Eagle and the Depletion Dilemma Agnico-Eagle, the second largest gold producer, faces similar challenges. After its own string of acquisitions, including a merger with Kirkland Lake Gold and the purchase of Yamana’s assets, Agnico has continued to produce significant volumes of gold. But high production volumes mean reserves are also dwindling fast. Take Agnico’s mines in Mexico, Pinos Altos and La India, which once held nearly 80 million tonnes of gold and silver ore. After a decade of operation, these assets are close to depletion. Agnico has exploration projects, but it’s unclear if they’ll be able to replenish the company’s gold supply at the rate it’s being depleted. For Agnico, acquiring developed assets is a faster solution, but with competition increasing, the company may soon have to look at even smaller players—putting junior mining companies back in the spotlight. The Junior Mining Cycle: Positioned for Growth? As long as gold and silver prices remain high, big mining companies will be on the lookout for acquisitions to secure future production. In fact, the 23% gain in the S&P TSX Global Mining Index and the 45% one-year return on the GDX signal that the metals rally is starting to reach mining stocks. The trend is only beginning to impact juniors, but it’s gaining momentum. Soon, even higher-risk, earlier-stage exploration companies may become prime acquisition targets for larger miners. For juniors, this translates into real opportunity. As big miners get hungrier for reserves, they’ll go further up the risk curve to secure assets, bringing much-needed capital into the space. Exploration companies that prove their resource quality, viability, and production potential may see increased valuations and potentially, acquisition offers. And with investor attention gradually returning to the sector, the right companies could see significant price moves. How to Navigate the Junior Mining Space The challenge, of course, is identifying which juniors have what it takes to make it. As some veteran mining investors will tell you, success often depends less on the project itself and more on the people managing it. I’ve spoken with Rick Rule, Doug Casey, and Frank Giustra over the last year and they all emphasize the importance of strong management teams in mining. A great deposit in the hands of an inexperienced team can lead to wasted resources, while an average deposit managed well can turn into a profitable operation. The Deep Dive has hosted numerous junior mining CEOs who’ve given us insight into their companies, strategies, and outlooks. One example is Silver Tiger Metals, which has been developing a promising silver asset in Sonora, Mexico, close to Agnico’s Pinos Altos. We spoke with their CEO, Glenn Jessome, about how he plans to bring the project to fruition. For investors, hearing directly from these leaders can provide a clearer sense of who knows what they’re doing and who might struggle if challenges arise. 2025: A Big Year Ahead for Junior Mining? The signs are there—2025 could be a pivotal year for junior miners. The macroeconomic backdrop is favorable, with sustained demand for gold and silver likely as inflationary pressures and a strong dollar drive more investors into metals. Meanwhile, big mining firms are looking to juniors to secure their future production, meaning higher acquisition interest and more money flowing into exploration companies. If you’re watching the junior mining space, keep an eye on the fundamentals: Who has strong management? Which projects are positioned in promising jurisdictions? And crucially, who has the financing and expertise to make the most of their assets? Where to Start If you want to follow our efforts, subscribe to The Deep Dive to stay updated on all things junior mining. We’ll continue to feature CEOs and industry experts to bring you insights directly from the companies on the frontlines of this cycle. And if you have questions for our guests, let us know in the comments—chances are they’re reading too.

SmallCapSteve

52,868 views • 1 year ago

The rise of ZXMOTO and its founder, Zhang Xue, isn’t just another business success story; it is a disruptive masterclass in how a "challenger brand" can dismantle the decades-long hegemony of Japanese and European giants. While traditional powerhouses like Honda, Yamaha, and Ducati have long relied on their legacy and massive economies of scale, ZXMOTO has sprinted past them by weaponizing three distinct advantages: unfiltered passion, radical R&D reinvestment, and the world’s most agile manufacturing ecosystem. 1. The "Pegasus" Factor: Founder-Led Obsession In an industry often governed by corporate committees and "safe" incremental updates, Zhang Xue is a glaring anomaly. Known as the real-life version of the film Pegasus (a story of a grassroots racing dreamer), Zhang’s background as a self-taught mechanic gives him a technical intimacy with his products that most CEOs lack. *Authenticity as a Brand: Zhang doesn't just sell bikes; he lives them. From chasing TV crews at age 19 to personally leading rally teams, his "all-in" persona resonates with a new generation of riders tired of sterile corporate marketing. *The "Kill or Be Killed" Mindset: His decision to leave his previous successful venture (Kove Moto) to start ZXMOTO in 2024 specifically to chase WorldSBK glory shows a commitment to performance over profit—a gamble that has paid off in brand prestige. 2. Speed Over Legacy: The Chongqing Edge The Japanese "Big Four" have spent decades optimizing global supply chains, which, while efficient, can be slow to pivot. ZXMOTO, however, is a product of Chongqing, the "Motorcycle Capital of the World." *Hyper-Local Agility: With over 400 suppliers within a single city, ZXMOTO can iterate on a design in weeks what takes traditional brands months or years. *Cost-to-Performance Ratio: This ecosystem allowed ZXMOTO to launch the 820RR-RS—a bike that dominated the 2026 WorldSSP in Portugal—at a fraction of the cost of its European competitors. When a $6,000 bike beats a $20,000+ Ducati by nearly four seconds, the "value" conversation shifts from "cheap" to "superior engineering." 3. Radical R&D: Buying the Future Critics often dismiss new Chinese brands as "copycats." Zhang Xue silenced this narrative through sheer financial force. While industry standard R&D spending hovers around 3–5% of revenue, ZXMOTO has pushed its investment to nearly 10%. "ZXMOTO is investing nearly 70 million yuan annually in R&D, with plans to double that in 2026. They aren't just building bikes; they are buying the technological lead." By focusing on high-RPM engines and lightweight materials (like the 820RR’s class-leading power-to-weight ratio), they have bypassed the "entry-level" phase and jumped straight into the high-performance tier where Japanese brands once felt untouchable. 4. Racing as the Ultimate Litmus Test ZXMOTO’s strategy of "Win on Sunday, Sell on Monday" is an old-school philosophy executed with modern precision. By entering the World Supersport (WorldSSP) category—a production-based series—they proved that their street bikes are fundamentally superior. *Global Validation: The double-victory in Portugal (March 2026) wasn't just a trophy; it was a global certificate of quality. It shattered the "Made in China" stigma in real-time, leading to over 5,500 pre-orders in less than a week. *The Psychological Shift: For the first time, Western and Japanese riders aren't looking at ZXMOTO because it’s cheaper—they’re looking at it because it’s faster. Conclusion: A New Era of Competition The success of ZXMOTO and Zhang Xue signals that the "cut-throat" nature of the motorcycle industry has changed. The Japanese brands can no longer rely on the assumption of superior reliability or engineering. ZXMOTO has proven that when you combine China’s manufacturing muscle with a founder’s fanatical vision, you don't just join the race—you lead it. The era of the "Big Four" is officially over; the era of the Global Challenger has begun.
2:30

The rise of ZXMOTO and its founder, Zhang Xue, isn’t just another business success story; it is a disruptive masterclass in how a "challenger brand" can dismantle the decades-long hegemony of Japanese and European giants. While traditional powerhouses like Honda, Yamaha, and Ducati have long relied on their legacy and massive economies of scale, ZXMOTO has sprinted past them by weaponizing three distinct advantages: unfiltered passion, radical R&D reinvestment, and the world’s most agile manufacturing ecosystem. 1. The "Pegasus" Factor: Founder-Led Obsession In an industry often governed by corporate committees and "safe" incremental updates, Zhang Xue is a glaring anomaly. Known as the real-life version of the film Pegasus (a story of a grassroots racing dreamer), Zhang’s background as a self-taught mechanic gives him a technical intimacy with his products that most CEOs lack. *Authenticity as a Brand: Zhang doesn't just sell bikes; he lives them. From chasing TV crews at age 19 to personally leading rally teams, his "all-in" persona resonates with a new generation of riders tired of sterile corporate marketing. *The "Kill or Be Killed" Mindset: His decision to leave his previous successful venture (Kove Moto) to start ZXMOTO in 2024 specifically to chase WorldSBK glory shows a commitment to performance over profit—a gamble that has paid off in brand prestige. 2. Speed Over Legacy: The Chongqing Edge The Japanese "Big Four" have spent decades optimizing global supply chains, which, while efficient, can be slow to pivot. ZXMOTO, however, is a product of Chongqing, the "Motorcycle Capital of the World." *Hyper-Local Agility: With over 400 suppliers within a single city, ZXMOTO can iterate on a design in weeks what takes traditional brands months or years. *Cost-to-Performance Ratio: This ecosystem allowed ZXMOTO to launch the 820RR-RS—a bike that dominated the 2026 WorldSSP in Portugal—at a fraction of the cost of its European competitors. When a $6,000 bike beats a $20,000+ Ducati by nearly four seconds, the "value" conversation shifts from "cheap" to "superior engineering." 3. Radical R&D: Buying the Future Critics often dismiss new Chinese brands as "copycats." Zhang Xue silenced this narrative through sheer financial force. While industry standard R&D spending hovers around 3–5% of revenue, ZXMOTO has pushed its investment to nearly 10%. "ZXMOTO is investing nearly 70 million yuan annually in R&D, with plans to double that in 2026. They aren't just building bikes; they are buying the technological lead." By focusing on high-RPM engines and lightweight materials (like the 820RR’s class-leading power-to-weight ratio), they have bypassed the "entry-level" phase and jumped straight into the high-performance tier where Japanese brands once felt untouchable. 4. Racing as the Ultimate Litmus Test ZXMOTO’s strategy of "Win on Sunday, Sell on Monday" is an old-school philosophy executed with modern precision. By entering the World Supersport (WorldSSP) category—a production-based series—they proved that their street bikes are fundamentally superior. *Global Validation: The double-victory in Portugal (March 2026) wasn't just a trophy; it was a global certificate of quality. It shattered the "Made in China" stigma in real-time, leading to over 5,500 pre-orders in less than a week. *The Psychological Shift: For the first time, Western and Japanese riders aren't looking at ZXMOTO because it’s cheaper—they’re looking at it because it’s faster. Conclusion: A New Era of Competition The success of ZXMOTO and Zhang Xue signals that the "cut-throat" nature of the motorcycle industry has changed. The Japanese brands can no longer rely on the assumption of superior reliability or engineering. ZXMOTO has proven that when you combine China’s manufacturing muscle with a founder’s fanatical vision, you don't just join the race—you lead it. The era of the "Big Four" is officially over; the era of the Global Challenger has begun.

Ignis Rex

10,401 views • 5 months ago

🇨🇳 Chinese EVs have been taking the world by storm, whether you like it or not When I look around here on the street in China I try recognize the car brands and I see so many brands I don't know One brand I see a lot is LI, but also BYD, Zeekr and XPeng Apparently there's now 129 (!) EV brands in China producing cars, which kinda shows the massive scale of the EV boom here There's a real historical parallel here with the US a hundred years ago, where there were about 2,000 new American car companies in America. Of course most failed, and only a few remained The same is predicted for China, where only 15 EV brands are predicted to survive in a decade, so a real battle is going down here now to see who will win One interesting thing is that there is one American brand that is remarkably present here, and that's Tesla, you see Teslas everywhere, the Tesla Y often holds the top spot for most cars sold in China, and you see Tesla superchargers here a lot What's also interesting is that where Elon Musk gets so much hatred in the West (not from me), in China he's revered as a hero. Elon is a high IQ engineer and successful entrepreneur. And it's a real artefact of the culture that Chinese respect that kind of person while in the West if you're rich, successful and smart you're seen as a bad person by at least half of society. I think that says a lot about our society and how we educate people in the West and we should really reconsider that. Engineering and entrepreneurship are the key stones of a functioning society. Engineering invents new things and entrepreneurs turn those inventions into businesses that bring them to people. Without both, you don't have jobs, money, and well, prosperity! Chinese culture seems to understand this well, which is why they like Elon Musk and still drive Teslas as one of the few Western cars here. Anyway to continue, in this video I visited the Huawei store and I have to add a correction, because due to new Chinese regulation that requires car brands to fully own their manufacturing, Huawei has "officially" separated their car business, but in fact they still fully design the car, sell the car, and get most of the profit from it. They just can't call it a Huawei car anymore Huawei is interesting because they produce everything, phones, tablets, watches, laptops, and, well indirectly, EV cars too A similar brand is Xiaomi, who actually do own the manufacturing of their EV, and their EV is one of the fastest growing in sales in China It's a real slap in the face for the West I feel that Apple, the creator of the iPhone, wasn't able to produce a car and cancelled their car project, when many of the Chinese phone companies are producing their own cars now with relative ease Of course the iPhone is produced in China, and manufacturing is in China, so being closer to the manufacturing physically, it must have been easier to design a car, than try to do it remotely from Apple's office in Cupertino But it does seem significant that we couldn't do this While I'm writing this the news comes in that Germany's car and greater manufacturing industry is tanking, their energy costs have gone up 2-3x due cutting off the Russian gas, and they've simply become too expensive overnight Germany's car industry, the historical center of car production in the world with BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Audi and Volkswagen, has started laying off 100,000+ employees and scaling down their production due to declining sales, which are a direct result of the competition from China offering cheaper, more advanced EVs with better software than the Germans And I mean you can feel it, I walk around in EV car stores here and the cars look great, the interior looks modern, the software is miles ahead of the clunky interfaces of German cars, most EVs here have a little cute robot on the dashboard that you talk to, so you never have to touch the screen anymore to do anything, like "switch on the wipers" or "route me to my hotel" etc. The EVs here honestly do not feel cheap, they're well built and comfortable Europe has tried to stop the rise of the Chinese EVs in the European market with a 45% tariff, but even with that tariffs, many Europeans still prefer to buy Chinese EVs over others, and they're still cheaper than the German cars! The US went further with a 100% tarrif, and that stopped them from being sold mostly in the US because it's not profitable anymore for the Chinese One thing I have to add which you probably know is that the Chinese government does heavily subsidize their EV industry (with about $230B+ in the last decade), it's not a secret and their subsidies do not compare to the ones the US and EU provide for their industries, which gives Chinese EV companies the (unfair) advantage to produce them at a discount and sell them abroad cheaper, which is exactly why the EU and US put tariffs on them Even with the subsidies, the engineering and production and software is impressive and feels very modern, I'm a Tesla fan, own a 2025 Tesla Y, but the Chinese EVs feel and look more modern to me. They usually have more screens, more features etc. There's real innovation happening here it feels like And that's kinda the conclusion you get being in China with every industry, they've already by far departed from being cheap clones of Western products, they're now at the next stage of adding their own features and ideas, which is what we always criticize Chinese on "they're not creative", well they are creative, they just start from the point where Western products are now, and then start innovating from there (instead of starting from scratch fully, I mean, why would they?) If you ask Grok how does the future of the Western car industry look like, especially the European/German ones, it's pessimistic. The only positive it can find is that maybe European brands can focus on premium and exclusivity. Like they do with Hermes hand bags, but then do the same with cars. BMW and Mercedes-Benz are of course luxury brands and they could survive by remaining premium and make money that way. But the regular middle and low end of car production in Europe (and America?) will most probably be wiped out and replaced by the Chinese I think That is if the Americans and Europeans will keep allowing them into their markets But even if they don't, the Chinese are happily going to the rest of the world like South America, the Middle East or the rest of Asia where you see BYDs literally everywhere As a European this does feel bittersweet, but then again we've all been shouting from the roof tops for years that this would happen if you didn't create a pro-business climate where startups would sprout, so now it's kinda "I told you so"
8:43

🇨🇳 Chinese EVs have been taking the world by storm, whether you like it or not When I look around here on the street in China I try recognize the car brands and I see so many brands I don't know One brand I see a lot is LI, but also BYD, Zeekr and XPeng Apparently there's now 129 (!) EV brands in China producing cars, which kinda shows the massive scale of the EV boom here There's a real historical parallel here with the US a hundred years ago, where there were about 2,000 new American car companies in America. Of course most failed, and only a few remained The same is predicted for China, where only 15 EV brands are predicted to survive in a decade, so a real battle is going down here now to see who will win One interesting thing is that there is one American brand that is remarkably present here, and that's Tesla, you see Teslas everywhere, the Tesla Y often holds the top spot for most cars sold in China, and you see Tesla superchargers here a lot What's also interesting is that where Elon Musk gets so much hatred in the West (not from me), in China he's revered as a hero. Elon is a high IQ engineer and successful entrepreneur. And it's a real artefact of the culture that Chinese respect that kind of person while in the West if you're rich, successful and smart you're seen as a bad person by at least half of society. I think that says a lot about our society and how we educate people in the West and we should really reconsider that. Engineering and entrepreneurship are the key stones of a functioning society. Engineering invents new things and entrepreneurs turn those inventions into businesses that bring them to people. Without both, you don't have jobs, money, and well, prosperity! Chinese culture seems to understand this well, which is why they like Elon Musk and still drive Teslas as one of the few Western cars here. Anyway to continue, in this video I visited the Huawei store and I have to add a correction, because due to new Chinese regulation that requires car brands to fully own their manufacturing, Huawei has "officially" separated their car business, but in fact they still fully design the car, sell the car, and get most of the profit from it. They just can't call it a Huawei car anymore Huawei is interesting because they produce everything, phones, tablets, watches, laptops, and, well indirectly, EV cars too A similar brand is Xiaomi, who actually do own the manufacturing of their EV, and their EV is one of the fastest growing in sales in China It's a real slap in the face for the West I feel that Apple, the creator of the iPhone, wasn't able to produce a car and cancelled their car project, when many of the Chinese phone companies are producing their own cars now with relative ease Of course the iPhone is produced in China, and manufacturing is in China, so being closer to the manufacturing physically, it must have been easier to design a car, than try to do it remotely from Apple's office in Cupertino But it does seem significant that we couldn't do this While I'm writing this the news comes in that Germany's car and greater manufacturing industry is tanking, their energy costs have gone up 2-3x due cutting off the Russian gas, and they've simply become too expensive overnight Germany's car industry, the historical center of car production in the world with BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Audi and Volkswagen, has started laying off 100,000+ employees and scaling down their production due to declining sales, which are a direct result of the competition from China offering cheaper, more advanced EVs with better software than the Germans And I mean you can feel it, I walk around in EV car stores here and the cars look great, the interior looks modern, the software is miles ahead of the clunky interfaces of German cars, most EVs here have a little cute robot on the dashboard that you talk to, so you never have to touch the screen anymore to do anything, like "switch on the wipers" or "route me to my hotel" etc. The EVs here honestly do not feel cheap, they're well built and comfortable Europe has tried to stop the rise of the Chinese EVs in the European market with a 45% tariff, but even with that tariffs, many Europeans still prefer to buy Chinese EVs over others, and they're still cheaper than the German cars! The US went further with a 100% tarrif, and that stopped them from being sold mostly in the US because it's not profitable anymore for the Chinese One thing I have to add which you probably know is that the Chinese government does heavily subsidize their EV industry (with about $230B+ in the last decade), it's not a secret and their subsidies do not compare to the ones the US and EU provide for their industries, which gives Chinese EV companies the (unfair) advantage to produce them at a discount and sell them abroad cheaper, which is exactly why the EU and US put tariffs on them Even with the subsidies, the engineering and production and software is impressive and feels very modern, I'm a Tesla fan, own a 2025 Tesla Y, but the Chinese EVs feel and look more modern to me. They usually have more screens, more features etc. There's real innovation happening here it feels like And that's kinda the conclusion you get being in China with every industry, they've already by far departed from being cheap clones of Western products, they're now at the next stage of adding their own features and ideas, which is what we always criticize Chinese on "they're not creative", well they are creative, they just start from the point where Western products are now, and then start innovating from there (instead of starting from scratch fully, I mean, why would they?) If you ask Grok how does the future of the Western car industry look like, especially the European/German ones, it's pessimistic. The only positive it can find is that maybe European brands can focus on premium and exclusivity. Like they do with Hermes hand bags, but then do the same with cars. BMW and Mercedes-Benz are of course luxury brands and they could survive by remaining premium and make money that way. But the regular middle and low end of car production in Europe (and America?) will most probably be wiped out and replaced by the Chinese I think That is if the Americans and Europeans will keep allowing them into their markets But even if they don't, the Chinese are happily going to the rest of the world like South America, the Middle East or the rest of Asia where you see BYDs literally everywhere As a European this does feel bittersweet, but then again we've all been shouting from the roof tops for years that this would happen if you didn't create a pro-business climate where startups would sprout, so now it's kinda "I told you so"

@levelsio

595,426 views • 8 months ago

AI companies just BROKE the global supply chain for every piece of technology you own. And the fallout is way worse than anyone predicted... Sony is delaying the next PlayStation to 2028 or 2029. Nintendo is hiking the Switch 2 price mid-cycle. Apple warned investors that iPhone margins are getting crushed. Cisco just posted its worst share loss in 4 years. Oppo is cutting phone shipments by 20%. Lenovo, Dell, HP, Acer, and ASUS are all raising laptop prices 15-20%. Samsung is now reviewing memory contracts QUARTERLY instead of annually because prices change too fast to plan. And Elon Musk just told investors Tesla has to build its own chip factory from scratch because no supplier on the planet can keep up. His exact words: "We've got two choices: hit the chip wall or make a fab." All of this happened in the last 3 weeks. Same cause. Every single time. AI data centers are buying every memory chip on Earth. And there's nothing left for everyone else. Here's how we got here: 3 years ago, ChatGPT launched and the AI arms race began. Since then, Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron, the only 3 companies that make memory chips, quietly made a decision that's now reshaping the ENTIRE global economy. They stopped prioritizing consumer memory. Every factory. Every production line. Every wafer. All redirected toward one customer: AI data centers Why? Money. AI memory chips sell for 3-5X the margin of regular RAM. When Google calls offering to buy your entire output at premium pricing, you don't say no. So the 3 companies that control 90% of the world's memory supply chose their highest-paying customers and left everyone else fighting over scraps. The numbers from this week are insane: OpenAI's Stargate project ALONE will consume 40% of the entire world's DRAM output. HBM demand is surging 70% year over year in 2026. HBM now takes 23% of total DRAM wafer production, up from 19% last year. Meanwhile, there's a 4% gap between global DRAM supply and demand. And that doesn't even account for depleted inventories across multiple industries. DRAM prices have surged over 170% since early 2025. DDR5 contract prices are still jumping double digits month over month. And the memory makers? They're printing money. Micron's revenue is expected to more than DOUBLE this fiscal year. SK Hynix sales doubled in 2024 and are on pace to double AGAIN. Samsung just reported quarterly profit nearly tripling. 3 companies. $650 billion in AI spending chasing their products. And they get to name their price. But the collateral damage is everywhere: Every industry that uses memory, which is every industry, is getting squeezed. Smartphone manufacturers are getting destroyed. For a mid-range phone, memory now represents up to 30% of the total build cost. Triple what it was in early 2025. Chinese phone makers like Xiaomi, Oppo, and Transsion are cutting shipment forecasts and raising prices because they literally cannot afford the memory to build their phones. Lenovo's CFO called the cost surge "unprecedented" and admitted they stockpiled 50% more inventory than normal just to survive the next few months. The PC market could shrink by up to 9% this year according to IDC. Not because people don't want computers. But because they can't afford the memory that goes inside them. And the gaming industry? Sony is seriously considering pushing the next PlayStation to 2028 or 2029. Their carefully planned console cycle is getting blown up because they can't secure memory at prices that make a new console viable. Nintendo is looking at raising the Switch 2 price. In the middle of a launch cycle. Something console makers almost never do. Nvidia is cutting RTX GPU production because they can't get enough GDDR7 memory. Even the car industry is getting hit... Analysts are warning about a repeat of the pandemic-era chip shortage that shut down auto factories worldwide. All because AI companies decided their chatbots needed the memory more than your car does. And this doesn't get better for YEARS. Building a new memory fab takes 3-5 years minimum. Micron's new factory in Idaho won't meaningfully increase supply until 2027 at the earliest. By then, AI demand will have grown even more. Memory makers are already selling their 2027 AND 2028 capacity to AI customers today. There is no supply relief coming. That's why Elon is planning to build Tesla's own "TeraFab," a massive semiconductor plant that makes logic chips, memory, AND packaging all under one roof. He said existing suppliers including TSMC, Samsung, and Micron simply cannot supply Tesla at the levels the company needs. Think about that. One of the richest men in the world, running one of the largest companies on Earth, can't buy enough memory chips. So he's building his own factory. If ELON can't get supply, what chance does everyone else have? The AI revolution has a tax. And YOU'RE paying it. Every dollar Big Tech spends on AI infrastructure drives up the cost of the memory inside your phone, your laptop, your car, your TV, and your gaming console. $650 billion in AI spending this year. 3 companies controlling 90% of the memory supply. And every wafer they allocate to an Nvidia GPU is a wafer denied to the device in your pocket. The AI boom isn't free. You're subsidizing it every time you buy a piece of technology. And the bill just went up like crazy.
1:31

AI companies just BROKE the global supply chain for every piece of technology you own. And the fallout is way worse than anyone predicted... Sony is delaying the next PlayStation to 2028 or 2029. Nintendo is hiking the Switch 2 price mid-cycle. Apple warned investors that iPhone margins are getting crushed. Cisco just posted its worst share loss in 4 years. Oppo is cutting phone shipments by 20%. Lenovo, Dell, HP, Acer, and ASUS are all raising laptop prices 15-20%. Samsung is now reviewing memory contracts QUARTERLY instead of annually because prices change too fast to plan. And Elon Musk just told investors Tesla has to build its own chip factory from scratch because no supplier on the planet can keep up. His exact words: "We've got two choices: hit the chip wall or make a fab." All of this happened in the last 3 weeks. Same cause. Every single time. AI data centers are buying every memory chip on Earth. And there's nothing left for everyone else. Here's how we got here: 3 years ago, ChatGPT launched and the AI arms race began. Since then, Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron, the only 3 companies that make memory chips, quietly made a decision that's now reshaping the ENTIRE global economy. They stopped prioritizing consumer memory. Every factory. Every production line. Every wafer. All redirected toward one customer: AI data centers Why? Money. AI memory chips sell for 3-5X the margin of regular RAM. When Google calls offering to buy your entire output at premium pricing, you don't say no. So the 3 companies that control 90% of the world's memory supply chose their highest-paying customers and left everyone else fighting over scraps. The numbers from this week are insane: OpenAI's Stargate project ALONE will consume 40% of the entire world's DRAM output. HBM demand is surging 70% year over year in 2026. HBM now takes 23% of total DRAM wafer production, up from 19% last year. Meanwhile, there's a 4% gap between global DRAM supply and demand. And that doesn't even account for depleted inventories across multiple industries. DRAM prices have surged over 170% since early 2025. DDR5 contract prices are still jumping double digits month over month. And the memory makers? They're printing money. Micron's revenue is expected to more than DOUBLE this fiscal year. SK Hynix sales doubled in 2024 and are on pace to double AGAIN. Samsung just reported quarterly profit nearly tripling. 3 companies. $650 billion in AI spending chasing their products. And they get to name their price. But the collateral damage is everywhere: Every industry that uses memory, which is every industry, is getting squeezed. Smartphone manufacturers are getting destroyed. For a mid-range phone, memory now represents up to 30% of the total build cost. Triple what it was in early 2025. Chinese phone makers like Xiaomi, Oppo, and Transsion are cutting shipment forecasts and raising prices because they literally cannot afford the memory to build their phones. Lenovo's CFO called the cost surge "unprecedented" and admitted they stockpiled 50% more inventory than normal just to survive the next few months. The PC market could shrink by up to 9% this year according to IDC. Not because people don't want computers. But because they can't afford the memory that goes inside them. And the gaming industry? Sony is seriously considering pushing the next PlayStation to 2028 or 2029. Their carefully planned console cycle is getting blown up because they can't secure memory at prices that make a new console viable. Nintendo is looking at raising the Switch 2 price. In the middle of a launch cycle. Something console makers almost never do. Nvidia is cutting RTX GPU production because they can't get enough GDDR7 memory. Even the car industry is getting hit... Analysts are warning about a repeat of the pandemic-era chip shortage that shut down auto factories worldwide. All because AI companies decided their chatbots needed the memory more than your car does. And this doesn't get better for YEARS. Building a new memory fab takes 3-5 years minimum. Micron's new factory in Idaho won't meaningfully increase supply until 2027 at the earliest. By then, AI demand will have grown even more. Memory makers are already selling their 2027 AND 2028 capacity to AI customers today. There is no supply relief coming. That's why Elon is planning to build Tesla's own "TeraFab," a massive semiconductor plant that makes logic chips, memory, AND packaging all under one roof. He said existing suppliers including TSMC, Samsung, and Micron simply cannot supply Tesla at the levels the company needs. Think about that. One of the richest men in the world, running one of the largest companies on Earth, can't buy enough memory chips. So he's building his own factory. If ELON can't get supply, what chance does everyone else have? The AI revolution has a tax. And YOU'RE paying it. Every dollar Big Tech spends on AI infrastructure drives up the cost of the memory inside your phone, your laptop, your car, your TV, and your gaming console. $650 billion in AI spending this year. 3 companies controlling 90% of the memory supply. And every wafer they allocate to an Nvidia GPU is a wafer denied to the device in your pocket. The AI boom isn't free. You're subsidizing it every time you buy a piece of technology. And the bill just went up like crazy.

Ricardo

567,905 views • 6 months ago

After regrouping with our investors and the team, I’ve made the difficult decision to wind down Hike completely. Our US business, launched just nine months ago, is off to a strong start. But scaling globally would require a full recap, a reset that is not the best use of capital or time. The Big Question → We could raise the capital, but the real question is: is it worth it? Is this a climb worth pivoting for? For the first time in 13 years, my answer is no. Not for me, not for my team, and not for our investors. Why? 1. RMG was never the destination. It was a way to test unit economics and traction in India while working toward a bigger vision. In hindsight, starting in India locked us into the model and regulatory headwinds, turning a temporary path into a more permanent one. 2. The Gaming Nation vision is real, but we may be too early. The world will eventually move toward a Nation-type model in gaming and Web3 - Company 2.0. But crypto regulation is still developing globally, and we don’t want to repeat India, where we hoped for clarity that never came. 3. And most importantly, if doing a full reset, is this where I’d put my own capital and energy today? For the first time, the answer is no. The world has changed in the last decade - and so have I. There are more important problems to solve and bigger opportunities to deploy brilliant talent and capital. Looking Back & Lessons The last 13 years have been immense. Hike Messenger reached 40M MAUs and became the 35th most loved consumer brand in India at its peak. With Rush, we built a brand new kind of Casual PvP gaming platform and scaled it to 10M users and $500M+ in gross revenue in just 4 years. Our execution was super, but we could never quite make it stick. There are clear lessons to carry forward, especially on market selection: 1. Be careful with winner-take-all markets. To win, you need to go global. 2. Don’t build for today’s tech constraints. Build on the spring/summer of new technologies. 3. Regulatory clarity matters. Risk is fine; uncertainty is not. More importantly momentum is everything. And build what your heart and mind are deeply excited about. It’s the conviction that carries you through. This is both a disappointment and a hard outcome. But I choose to look on the bright side: the learnings are invaluable, and my conviction for what’s next is even stronger. To everyone who has been part of this journey - our users, our team, our investors, and our community - thank you. As a CEO, you’re only as strong as your team, and I want to give a special shout-out to mine - an incredible group of people who gave this everything. Hike This chapter ends, but the climb continues. Looking Forward I’ve always thrived at building at the forefront of technology. Over the last decade, in the little time I had to explore outside of Hike, I kept returning to the same three frontiers. And now, they feel like the great canvases for decades to come → 1. AI → For the first time, technology has both intelligence and memory. Imagine products that don’t just serve us functionally but truly know us - systems that adapt, grow, and partner with us. As a UX-first builder, this is the most exciting time to be building software. 2. Breakthroughs in Energy → Human progress has always been bound by energy. The world’s demand for energy is rising faster than ever. Breakthrough approaches, especially in physics are needed to power the future. The last century gave us mastery of fine matters and electricity, the next will move deeper, at the intersection of science and spirituality - into what yogis call divine magnetism and physicists call the quantum world or electromagnetism. From there will come technologies that today feel impossible to imagine. 3. Mastery of the Self → As AI takes on more of our work, a deeper question will rise: what now defines us? When productivity is no longer the measure of worth, humanity will turn inward. Man’s evolution will move from the intellect to intuitive attunement - a deeper connection with ourselves and the divine (which we’ll realise are one and the same). The tools, spaces, and guides that help us explore this inner world will be as transformative as any innovation in the outer one - unlocking the next level of humanity’s potential. If you put these together, a picture emerges: → the cost of intelligence trending to zero → the cost of energy trending to zero → and the cost of willpower falling lower and lower. Just imagine a future where willpower is infinite, energy is abundant, and intelligence is at our fingertips. This is the future I will help build — and it’s where I’ll be contributing in the decades to come. This new chapter will look very different from the last one 🚀 Video for perspective. Full substack post link below.
0:40

After regrouping with our investors and the team, I’ve made the difficult decision to wind down Hike completely. Our US business, launched just nine months ago, is off to a strong start. But scaling globally would require a full recap, a reset that is not the best use of capital or time. The Big Question → We could raise the capital, but the real question is: is it worth it? Is this a climb worth pivoting for? For the first time in 13 years, my answer is no. Not for me, not for my team, and not for our investors. Why? 1. RMG was never the destination. It was a way to test unit economics and traction in India while working toward a bigger vision. In hindsight, starting in India locked us into the model and regulatory headwinds, turning a temporary path into a more permanent one. 2. The Gaming Nation vision is real, but we may be too early. The world will eventually move toward a Nation-type model in gaming and Web3 - Company 2.0. But crypto regulation is still developing globally, and we don’t want to repeat India, where we hoped for clarity that never came. 3. And most importantly, if doing a full reset, is this where I’d put my own capital and energy today? For the first time, the answer is no. The world has changed in the last decade - and so have I. There are more important problems to solve and bigger opportunities to deploy brilliant talent and capital. Looking Back & Lessons The last 13 years have been immense. Hike Messenger reached 40M MAUs and became the 35th most loved consumer brand in India at its peak. With Rush, we built a brand new kind of Casual PvP gaming platform and scaled it to 10M users and $500M+ in gross revenue in just 4 years. Our execution was super, but we could never quite make it stick. There are clear lessons to carry forward, especially on market selection: 1. Be careful with winner-take-all markets. To win, you need to go global. 2. Don’t build for today’s tech constraints. Build on the spring/summer of new technologies. 3. Regulatory clarity matters. Risk is fine; uncertainty is not. More importantly momentum is everything. And build what your heart and mind are deeply excited about. It’s the conviction that carries you through. This is both a disappointment and a hard outcome. But I choose to look on the bright side: the learnings are invaluable, and my conviction for what’s next is even stronger. To everyone who has been part of this journey - our users, our team, our investors, and our community - thank you. As a CEO, you’re only as strong as your team, and I want to give a special shout-out to mine - an incredible group of people who gave this everything. Hike This chapter ends, but the climb continues. Looking Forward I’ve always thrived at building at the forefront of technology. Over the last decade, in the little time I had to explore outside of Hike, I kept returning to the same three frontiers. And now, they feel like the great canvases for decades to come → 1. AI → For the first time, technology has both intelligence and memory. Imagine products that don’t just serve us functionally but truly know us - systems that adapt, grow, and partner with us. As a UX-first builder, this is the most exciting time to be building software. 2. Breakthroughs in Energy → Human progress has always been bound by energy. The world’s demand for energy is rising faster than ever. Breakthrough approaches, especially in physics are needed to power the future. The last century gave us mastery of fine matters and electricity, the next will move deeper, at the intersection of science and spirituality - into what yogis call divine magnetism and physicists call the quantum world or electromagnetism. From there will come technologies that today feel impossible to imagine. 3. Mastery of the Self → As AI takes on more of our work, a deeper question will rise: what now defines us? When productivity is no longer the measure of worth, humanity will turn inward. Man’s evolution will move from the intellect to intuitive attunement - a deeper connection with ourselves and the divine (which we’ll realise are one and the same). The tools, spaces, and guides that help us explore this inner world will be as transformative as any innovation in the outer one - unlocking the next level of humanity’s potential. If you put these together, a picture emerges: → the cost of intelligence trending to zero → the cost of energy trending to zero → and the cost of willpower falling lower and lower. Just imagine a future where willpower is infinite, energy is abundant, and intelligence is at our fingertips. This is the future I will help build — and it’s where I’ll be contributing in the decades to come. This new chapter will look very different from the last one 🚀 Video for perspective. Full substack post link below.

Kavin

24,481 views • 11 months ago

Robert Friedland (Robert Friedland) is one of the most important voices in Metals & Mining. When he speaks, we should listen. He recently gave a 40-minute speech on Green Energy, Electrification, Metal Scarcity, and more. Here are my notes from the talk 👇 WHAT DOES "ENERGY TRANSITION" MEAN? "You have a billion people that burn firewood to live. They have no access to electrical energy." "We're burning more coal and more oil today than in the history of the world." "We spent $4T putting up solar panels for hydrocarbons to still capture 83% of energy source." "You're not going to stop global warming by buying an electric car." ON ELECTRIC CARS & EV BATTERIES "With current lithium ion technology, the destruction we cause, the global warming gas we cause, we might as well sit on our chairs and do nothing." "You just bought your wife a coal-burning car by buying an EV." "The current generation of EV batteries will be toast in 2-3 years." "I would short every lithium company in the world." "We're going to kill the lithium hydroxide business over time." COMMON METALS VITAL FOR TRANSITION "If we're going to have a transition, we need common and abundant materials. We can't rely on things like nickel." "The batteries they're making now are low-grade lithium metal. You don't need nickel, cobalt, graphite, They're out the window." "You want batteries made out of common materials so billions of people can use it." WOMB TO TOMB EXAMINATION OF NET ZERO "Look at the whole system if you're trying to eliminate global warming." "The Chinese are saying 2060 and India is now saying 2070. What does that tell you?" "There's zero chance that the twelve major automakers will find enough nickel to make their batteries." "The amount of metal we need doesn't exist currently in a way that's green or sustainable. It's apparent to any readily intelligible person." "How can we stop burning coal and oil and not have an energy transition?" TWO COMPETING PARADIGMS "We have two competing tribes. One tribe says 'I want to save the world, I'm green, I need cobalt, nickel, platinum, or palladium'. The other tribe says 'Holy shit, the Army/Navy wants these metals for national defense.'" "The intensity of metal demand in conflict is beyond your wildest imagination. In WWI you needed a telescope to see the price of copper." "So we're heading to a world where both tribes have a strong demand for more metals. We're balkenizing the world into two camps and its tearing the global supply chains apart." A VERY DIFFICULT TIME "It does appear that the world is warming, and there's zero chance we'll reduce that. The question is how bad will it get?" "I was in CA recently, it was $6.20 per gallon. The average citizen is pissed off." "I agree with Jamie Dimon that this is the most dangerous time since I've been alive." "The Fed are idiots. They told us that inflation was over. And it's not even close." WE NEED TO REINVENT THE MINING INDUSTRY "First of all, we have to try to mine in the United States. No intelligent person has tried to do that in the last few generations." "Everything is blown out of proportion because mining is viewed as a bad thing." "We also have to determine what metals we actually need for the future. Which is copper." "Imagine you're plugging an EV w/ 1MW charger. Our grid is literally a 110 year old lady waiting to die. The Chinese tell me it will take $21T to rebuild the electrical grid." "Our grid is like balancing a pencil vertically on your palm. There's no storage there." "The symbol of the US, the bald eagle, is flying into offshore windmills. They're just chewing them up. Who wants to live near them? They're very low density." "At least real miners know how hard it is to actually find metals and mine it." ENERGY CONSUMPTION "A Google search requires 1,000 joules of electrical energy. You think its free, but its paid for by advertising." "You think the internet is green? You know how much energy it requires to use AI/ChatGPT? You think Bitcoin/crypto is green?" IMPORTANCE OF COPPER "I don't know if we need gold. But I do know we need copper. And we need it really badly." "Having said that, I'd rather there be gold in my copper. Because people will always want gold." "People are getting rid of their excess copper because they're de-stocking to reduce their interest cost. But we're nearing the end of de-stocking and paper selling." "This huge clash is coming between Army, Navy, Air Force and the Greening of the world economy. And the miners have an unbelievable burden to make that happen." "At the same time we need these metals, its harder to get the equipment needed to mine the metal!" "The miners have a very important role to play to supply the world with the metals it desperately needs." IMPORTANCE OF SAUDI ARABIA "If Saudi Arabia can't maintain basic energy security, we'll have $200-$300 oil. We need stability in that pricing. At $100-$300 oil, people in Egypt don't eat." "Saudi is playing a beneficial role by keeping oil between $70-90 per barrel." AUDIENCE Q&A "The valuation of the mining industry relative to the S&P 500 is the lowest in living memory. The general person thinks that mining is evil and must be eliminated." "50% of what goes into an EV is hydrocarbon. If we stopped producing oil, half of humanity would die from starvation." "I don't think we understand how formidable the Chinese are." "In a Balkenized economy, we went from a Just-in-Time supply chain to a Just-in-Case supply chain." "How much metal do we need to build nuclear reactors? How much steel, concrete, rebar, nuclear engineers do you need to build these things?" "The problem is that the world economy is Balkenized. Where is the steel coming from? Where are the pumps coming from? The French want nuclear power, and the Germans are burning coal. Even within Europe, its Balkenized. That's all I see." "I think the mining industry needs to defend itself more. Where do you think stuff comes from? There's the hardware of the mine (tons, grade, engineering). Then there's all the people around the mine (locals). There's invariably a clash with the locals around the mine. Unless they're buying into it, its not going to happen. That's the software around mining." ON KNOWING WHERE THINGS COME FROM "People don't realize where things come from. As people live in urban environments, they forget where things come from." "We need to communicate the importance of mining and humanize it as an activity. We need to mine in the United States. We need to figure out what should be mined, where we're allowed to mine, and how."
48:43

Robert Friedland (Robert Friedland) is one of the most important voices in Metals & Mining. When he speaks, we should listen. He recently gave a 40-minute speech on Green Energy, Electrification, Metal Scarcity, and more. Here are my notes from the talk 👇 WHAT DOES "ENERGY TRANSITION" MEAN? "You have a billion people that burn firewood to live. They have no access to electrical energy." "We're burning more coal and more oil today than in the history of the world." "We spent $4T putting up solar panels for hydrocarbons to still capture 83% of energy source." "You're not going to stop global warming by buying an electric car." ON ELECTRIC CARS & EV BATTERIES "With current lithium ion technology, the destruction we cause, the global warming gas we cause, we might as well sit on our chairs and do nothing." "You just bought your wife a coal-burning car by buying an EV." "The current generation of EV batteries will be toast in 2-3 years." "I would short every lithium company in the world." "We're going to kill the lithium hydroxide business over time." COMMON METALS VITAL FOR TRANSITION "If we're going to have a transition, we need common and abundant materials. We can't rely on things like nickel." "The batteries they're making now are low-grade lithium metal. You don't need nickel, cobalt, graphite, They're out the window." "You want batteries made out of common materials so billions of people can use it." WOMB TO TOMB EXAMINATION OF NET ZERO "Look at the whole system if you're trying to eliminate global warming." "The Chinese are saying 2060 and India is now saying 2070. What does that tell you?" "There's zero chance that the twelve major automakers will find enough nickel to make their batteries." "The amount of metal we need doesn't exist currently in a way that's green or sustainable. It's apparent to any readily intelligible person." "How can we stop burning coal and oil and not have an energy transition?" TWO COMPETING PARADIGMS "We have two competing tribes. One tribe says 'I want to save the world, I'm green, I need cobalt, nickel, platinum, or palladium'. The other tribe says 'Holy shit, the Army/Navy wants these metals for national defense.'" "The intensity of metal demand in conflict is beyond your wildest imagination. In WWI you needed a telescope to see the price of copper." "So we're heading to a world where both tribes have a strong demand for more metals. We're balkenizing the world into two camps and its tearing the global supply chains apart." A VERY DIFFICULT TIME "It does appear that the world is warming, and there's zero chance we'll reduce that. The question is how bad will it get?" "I was in CA recently, it was $6.20 per gallon. The average citizen is pissed off." "I agree with Jamie Dimon that this is the most dangerous time since I've been alive." "The Fed are idiots. They told us that inflation was over. And it's not even close." WE NEED TO REINVENT THE MINING INDUSTRY "First of all, we have to try to mine in the United States. No intelligent person has tried to do that in the last few generations." "Everything is blown out of proportion because mining is viewed as a bad thing." "We also have to determine what metals we actually need for the future. Which is copper." "Imagine you're plugging an EV w/ 1MW charger. Our grid is literally a 110 year old lady waiting to die. The Chinese tell me it will take $21T to rebuild the electrical grid." "Our grid is like balancing a pencil vertically on your palm. There's no storage there." "The symbol of the US, the bald eagle, is flying into offshore windmills. They're just chewing them up. Who wants to live near them? They're very low density." "At least real miners know how hard it is to actually find metals and mine it." ENERGY CONSUMPTION "A Google search requires 1,000 joules of electrical energy. You think its free, but its paid for by advertising." "You think the internet is green? You know how much energy it requires to use AI/ChatGPT? You think Bitcoin/crypto is green?" IMPORTANCE OF COPPER "I don't know if we need gold. But I do know we need copper. And we need it really badly." "Having said that, I'd rather there be gold in my copper. Because people will always want gold." "People are getting rid of their excess copper because they're de-stocking to reduce their interest cost. But we're nearing the end of de-stocking and paper selling." "This huge clash is coming between Army, Navy, Air Force and the Greening of the world economy. And the miners have an unbelievable burden to make that happen." "At the same time we need these metals, its harder to get the equipment needed to mine the metal!" "The miners have a very important role to play to supply the world with the metals it desperately needs." IMPORTANCE OF SAUDI ARABIA "If Saudi Arabia can't maintain basic energy security, we'll have $200-$300 oil. We need stability in that pricing. At $100-$300 oil, people in Egypt don't eat." "Saudi is playing a beneficial role by keeping oil between $70-90 per barrel." AUDIENCE Q&A "The valuation of the mining industry relative to the S&P 500 is the lowest in living memory. The general person thinks that mining is evil and must be eliminated." "50% of what goes into an EV is hydrocarbon. If we stopped producing oil, half of humanity would die from starvation." "I don't think we understand how formidable the Chinese are." "In a Balkenized economy, we went from a Just-in-Time supply chain to a Just-in-Case supply chain." "How much metal do we need to build nuclear reactors? How much steel, concrete, rebar, nuclear engineers do you need to build these things?" "The problem is that the world economy is Balkenized. Where is the steel coming from? Where are the pumps coming from? The French want nuclear power, and the Germans are burning coal. Even within Europe, its Balkenized. That's all I see." "I think the mining industry needs to defend itself more. Where do you think stuff comes from? There's the hardware of the mine (tons, grade, engineering). Then there's all the people around the mine (locals). There's invariably a clash with the locals around the mine. Unless they're buying into it, its not going to happen. That's the software around mining." ON KNOWING WHERE THINGS COME FROM "People don't realize where things come from. As people live in urban environments, they forget where things come from." "We need to communicate the importance of mining and humanize it as an activity. We need to mine in the United States. We need to figure out what should be mined, where we're allowed to mine, and how."

Brandon Beylo

440,189 views • 2 years ago

Just finished a one-week trip to China. I've now "survived" all the major (~20) L2 self-driving and robotaxi vehicles in both the US and China. Some thoughts & observations: ▶️L2 self-driving I tested major brands like $Huawei, $Li, $NIO, $Xpeng, and $Xiaomi. Overall, they exceeded my expectations. The rides were not overly cautious and handled complex situations (yes, road conditions in China are very challenging!) quite well. Nothing compares to $Tsla's approach. I see imitation learning/end-to-end as the only effective approach for self-driving. While Chinese peers perform well on main roads, they struggle on frontage roads due to reliance on high-precision maps and rule-based methods (e.g. cars stopped in the middle of the road where there was no clear white lining). Chinese EVs' self-driving capabilities are far ahead of those from US and EU brands. I doubt any Chinese players can profit from L2 self-driving, not because it’s not useful, but because it’s hard to differentiate, and price wars dominate the market in China. Chinese consumers and regulators seem much more receptive to self-driving. Even with a 5/10 self-driving capability, cars are practically *hands-free(!)* Insurance-wise, for L3+ cars, OEMs bear responsibility for incidents, so OEMs avoid labeling cars as L3+. ▶️Robotaxi I tested major brands like $Didi, and $Bidu. I'd rate equal to $Waymo, and it's ahead of other peers. However, the same issue applies here: user experience is nearly perfect (in Yizhuang, Beijing), but expansion is the real question. Chinese robotaxi companies are very sophisticated. While the rest of the world focuses on technology, Chinese peers treat it as a product, considering unit economics, operations, mass production, etc. Interestingly, most companies expressed a preference NOT to operate fleets themselves. They aim to be asset-light and let fleet managers handle operations. Policy Support: China has a very clear approval process, driven by data (autonomous driving distance, fully driverless distance, intervention rate, passenger ratings, etc.). ▶️Chinese EVs In major cities like Beijing or Shanghai, EV adoption (green license plates vs. gas cars with blue license plates) seems to be 40%+. If 40% of cars on the road are EVs, then EV penetration (defined as the % of new car sales) must already be over 50%. In shopping malls, the ground floor is filled with EV showrooms—easily 10+ brands, many of which are unfamiliar Chinese brands. It appears almost too easy to make an electric car, which is a stark contrast to the US. $Xiaomi, for example, can achieve a 10% gross profit margin in its first year of operation, compared to $RIVN's -45%. Additionally, $Xiaomi cars are priced at 30% of $RIVN's price. It's fascinating to see how China transitioned from "couldn't make their own gas cars at all (only JVs)" to "dominating EVs globally." The government deserves credit for setting the direction and executing effectively. China now controls the entire supply chain, with $CATL holding 40% of the global market share. 🔹How did it happen? The success of the industry Incentives were set just right: the government provided incentives early on to make EVs and gas cars have comparable MSRPs, allowing consumers to choose based on functionality. This approach differs from how the IRA offers incentives... Perfectly competitive market: $TSLA was brought in, and competition was welcomed, unlike the US, which has a 100% import tax on Chinese EVs. Strategic regulations: License plate restrictions were used effectively; for example, taxis and minivans are required to be EVs. 🔹The challenges Despite the success, the industry faces challenges with low-margin companies and struggling stocks. The intense competition shows no sign of ending. Well-funded global OEMs and Chinese state-owned car companies continue to subsidize, leading to new EV brands emerging annually. The natural tendency in China is to race to the bottom. I think this ties back to China's history as the "world’s factory," where manufacturers price products at "cost plus" versus the US and developing countries, which price based on "affordability/value creation." 🔹The wow EV feature >Software features that surprised me the most: - Everything in the car can be voice-controlled. Not just simple tasks like playing music; users can adjust the height of the steering wheel and set the temperature easily. - Self-parking, which $Tsla has yet to release to all FSD users, is already a table stake in China (I'd rate the quality as 10/10). >Other fun hardware features: - Mini fridges in the car - Infotainment systems - IoT: remote access the car/home via cellphone - all connected together - Heads-up displays - UV-protected glass roofs: $Xiaomi took $Tsla's design, but the glass roof of the $Xiaomi car is made of double layers with silver, blocking 99.9% of UV and infrared rays...as a result, heat is no longer a problem inside the car
0:31

Just finished a one-week trip to China. I've now "survived" all the major (~20) L2 self-driving and robotaxi vehicles in both the US and China. Some thoughts & observations: ▶️L2 self-driving I tested major brands like $Huawei, $Li, $NIO, $Xpeng, and $Xiaomi. Overall, they exceeded my expectations. The rides were not overly cautious and handled complex situations (yes, road conditions in China are very challenging!) quite well. Nothing compares to $Tsla's approach. I see imitation learning/end-to-end as the only effective approach for self-driving. While Chinese peers perform well on main roads, they struggle on frontage roads due to reliance on high-precision maps and rule-based methods (e.g. cars stopped in the middle of the road where there was no clear white lining). Chinese EVs' self-driving capabilities are far ahead of those from US and EU brands. I doubt any Chinese players can profit from L2 self-driving, not because it’s not useful, but because it’s hard to differentiate, and price wars dominate the market in China. Chinese consumers and regulators seem much more receptive to self-driving. Even with a 5/10 self-driving capability, cars are practically *hands-free(!)* Insurance-wise, for L3+ cars, OEMs bear responsibility for incidents, so OEMs avoid labeling cars as L3+. ▶️Robotaxi I tested major brands like $Didi, and $Bidu. I'd rate equal to $Waymo, and it's ahead of other peers. However, the same issue applies here: user experience is nearly perfect (in Yizhuang, Beijing), but expansion is the real question. Chinese robotaxi companies are very sophisticated. While the rest of the world focuses on technology, Chinese peers treat it as a product, considering unit economics, operations, mass production, etc. Interestingly, most companies expressed a preference NOT to operate fleets themselves. They aim to be asset-light and let fleet managers handle operations. Policy Support: China has a very clear approval process, driven by data (autonomous driving distance, fully driverless distance, intervention rate, passenger ratings, etc.). ▶️Chinese EVs In major cities like Beijing or Shanghai, EV adoption (green license plates vs. gas cars with blue license plates) seems to be 40%+. If 40% of cars on the road are EVs, then EV penetration (defined as the % of new car sales) must already be over 50%. In shopping malls, the ground floor is filled with EV showrooms—easily 10+ brands, many of which are unfamiliar Chinese brands. It appears almost too easy to make an electric car, which is a stark contrast to the US. $Xiaomi, for example, can achieve a 10% gross profit margin in its first year of operation, compared to $RIVN's -45%. Additionally, $Xiaomi cars are priced at 30% of $RIVN's price. It's fascinating to see how China transitioned from "couldn't make their own gas cars at all (only JVs)" to "dominating EVs globally." The government deserves credit for setting the direction and executing effectively. China now controls the entire supply chain, with $CATL holding 40% of the global market share. 🔹How did it happen? The success of the industry Incentives were set just right: the government provided incentives early on to make EVs and gas cars have comparable MSRPs, allowing consumers to choose based on functionality. This approach differs from how the IRA offers incentives... Perfectly competitive market: $TSLA was brought in, and competition was welcomed, unlike the US, which has a 100% import tax on Chinese EVs. Strategic regulations: License plate restrictions were used effectively; for example, taxis and minivans are required to be EVs. 🔹The challenges Despite the success, the industry faces challenges with low-margin companies and struggling stocks. The intense competition shows no sign of ending. Well-funded global OEMs and Chinese state-owned car companies continue to subsidize, leading to new EV brands emerging annually. The natural tendency in China is to race to the bottom. I think this ties back to China's history as the "world’s factory," where manufacturers price products at "cost plus" versus the US and developing countries, which price based on "affordability/value creation." 🔹The wow EV feature >Software features that surprised me the most: - Everything in the car can be voice-controlled. Not just simple tasks like playing music; users can adjust the height of the steering wheel and set the temperature easily. - Self-parking, which $Tsla has yet to release to all FSD users, is already a table stake in China (I'd rate the quality as 10/10). >Other fun hardware features: - Mini fridges in the car - Infotainment systems - IoT: remote access the car/home via cellphone - all connected together - Heads-up displays - UV-protected glass roofs: $Xiaomi took $Tsla's design, but the glass roof of the $Xiaomi car is made of double layers with silver, blocking 99.9% of UV and infrared rays...as a result, heat is no longer a problem inside the car

Freda Duan

399,004 views • 2 years ago

Last night was the biggest disaster in the history of Tesla. Let me walk you through what actually happened on that earnings call, because the headlines are doing you a disservice: Elon Musk got on the call and admitted (his words) that Hardware 3 "simply does not have the capability to achieve unsupervised FSD." He said he wished it were otherwise. He said the memory bandwidth is one-eighth of what Hardware 4 has. And that's the end of the conversation. Approximately 4 million Tesla vehicles on the road right now have Hardware 3. Many of those owners paid $8,000 to $15,000 for Full Self-Driving capability based on Musk's repeated promises (going back to 2016) that the hardware was sufficient for full autonomy. As recently as 2022, Musk was publicly assuring owners that HW3 had the processing power to get it done. BUT IT DIDN'T Those promises are now officially broken. The solution is a "discounted trade-in" toward a new car with Hardware 4. Not a refund or a free upgrade... A discount on buying ANOTHER Tesla. Investor Ross Gerber said it too - all HW3 owners got screwed, and with roughly 285,000 FSD purchasers affected, the potential liability runs into the BILLIONS. But that's not even the worst part. Musk was asked if the current FSD v14.3 was ready for unsupervised deployment. He said yes. Then immediately walked it back and admitted Tesla has "major architectural improvements" in the pipeline that would significantly improve safety. What he really means: the software isn't SAFE ENOUGH to deploy without a human watching. Full unsupervised FSD for consumer cars is pushed to Q4 2026. At the earliest... Maybe. How many times has this deadline been pushed? I've lost count. And trust me, I've seen a lot of broken promises. But this one takes the cake. Now let's talk about the numbers everyone is celebrating: Tesla reported $22.4 billion in revenue and $0.41 in non-GAAP earnings. A "double beat." The stock popped 4% after hours. Victory, right? WRONG Dig into the actual filing: The number one driver of operating income improvement wasn't cost reductions, wasn't volume growth, wasn't FSD revenue. It was - and Tesla listed this FIRST in their own shareholder letter - "one-time benefits related to warranty and tariffs." They released warranty reserves. They booked tariff refund windfalls. They stretched supplier payments by 10 days. They took on billions in new debt. Then they presented everything through non-GAAP metrics that strip out over $1 billion in stock-based compensation. GAAP net income was $477 million on $22.4 billion in revenue. That's a 2.1% net margin. On a $1.4 trillion market cap. Let me put that in perspective: 3.75 billion shares outstanding. Annualize the Q1 GAAP profit and you get roughly $1.9 billion. That's a trailing P/E ratio north of 700. Use the adjusted number - strip out stock comp, which is a REAL cost to shareholders through dilution - and you're still at around 250x earnings. All of this is extremely bad, but I didn't even talk about the CAPEX BOMB yet... 3 months ago, Tesla guided to "over $20 billion" in 2026 capital expenditure. Last night they raised it to over $25 billion. A $5 billion increase in a single quarter. That's 3x their historical annual capex run rate - $8.5 billion in 2025, $11.3 billion in 2024. The CFO confirmed on the call that Tesla expects NEGATIVE free cash flow for the rest of the year. So you have a company generating roughly $6 billion in annual free cash flow on a good year, and they're about to spend $25 billion. The math doesn't work. They will almost certainly need to issue equity. Which means dilution. Which means the $1.9 billion in annual earnings gets spread across even MORE shares. The core auto business is literally deteriorating in real time: Tesla delivered 358,000 vehicles in Q1 (missed estimates again). They produced 408,000. That's 50,000 cars sitting on lots that nobody bought. Inventory days jumped from 10 to 27 in just a few quarters. California (their most important US market) saw registrations crash 24% year over year. Their market share in the state fell from 9.2% to 7.7%. That's on top of a Q1 2025 that was ALREADY weak from Model Y retooling. They're declining off a decline. And here's what really kills the bull case... The entire valuation rests on robotaxis, Optimus robots, and autonomy. So let's put numbers on it: Waymo - the actual leader in autonomous driving with 15 million completed rides in 2025 alone, over 127 million autonomous miles driven, operating commercially across 6 US cities with plans to expand to 20 more - just raised $16 billion at a $126 billion valuation. That's the market's verdict on what the LEADING robotaxi company is worth. $126 billion. And Waymo is YEARS ahead of Tesla in actual deployment. Tesla has 3.75 billion shares outstanding. So even if you assign $126 billion in robotaxi value (giving Tesla full credit for matching Waymo despite being nowhere close) that's $33 a share. Add the auto business at generous auto-industry multiples, maybe $20 a share. Throw in energy storage and services, $10-15. Sum of the parts gets you to roughly $65-70 a share if you're feeling generous. Maybe $50 if you're not. The stock is $387. So what exactly are you paying for? You're paying for a STORY. You're paying for PROMISES that keep getting pushed back, technology that keeps falling short, and a business plan that requires spending $25 billion a year while the core product sells fewer units at declining margins in a market where California sales just fell 24% and the federal EV tax credit is gone. I managed the number one mutual fund in America. I founded two billion-dollar hedge funds. I've been doing this since 1981. And I am telling you: Tesla at $387 is one of the most egregious mispricings I have seen in my entire career. THE CRASH WILL BE EPIC
5:21

Last night was the biggest disaster in the history of Tesla. Let me walk you through what actually happened on that earnings call, because the headlines are doing you a disservice: Elon Musk got on the call and admitted (his words) that Hardware 3 "simply does not have the capability to achieve unsupervised FSD." He said he wished it were otherwise. He said the memory bandwidth is one-eighth of what Hardware 4 has. And that's the end of the conversation. Approximately 4 million Tesla vehicles on the road right now have Hardware 3. Many of those owners paid $8,000 to $15,000 for Full Self-Driving capability based on Musk's repeated promises (going back to 2016) that the hardware was sufficient for full autonomy. As recently as 2022, Musk was publicly assuring owners that HW3 had the processing power to get it done. BUT IT DIDN'T Those promises are now officially broken. The solution is a "discounted trade-in" toward a new car with Hardware 4. Not a refund or a free upgrade... A discount on buying ANOTHER Tesla. Investor Ross Gerber said it too - all HW3 owners got screwed, and with roughly 285,000 FSD purchasers affected, the potential liability runs into the BILLIONS. But that's not even the worst part. Musk was asked if the current FSD v14.3 was ready for unsupervised deployment. He said yes. Then immediately walked it back and admitted Tesla has "major architectural improvements" in the pipeline that would significantly improve safety. What he really means: the software isn't SAFE ENOUGH to deploy without a human watching. Full unsupervised FSD for consumer cars is pushed to Q4 2026. At the earliest... Maybe. How many times has this deadline been pushed? I've lost count. And trust me, I've seen a lot of broken promises. But this one takes the cake. Now let's talk about the numbers everyone is celebrating: Tesla reported $22.4 billion in revenue and $0.41 in non-GAAP earnings. A "double beat." The stock popped 4% after hours. Victory, right? WRONG Dig into the actual filing: The number one driver of operating income improvement wasn't cost reductions, wasn't volume growth, wasn't FSD revenue. It was - and Tesla listed this FIRST in their own shareholder letter - "one-time benefits related to warranty and tariffs." They released warranty reserves. They booked tariff refund windfalls. They stretched supplier payments by 10 days. They took on billions in new debt. Then they presented everything through non-GAAP metrics that strip out over $1 billion in stock-based compensation. GAAP net income was $477 million on $22.4 billion in revenue. That's a 2.1% net margin. On a $1.4 trillion market cap. Let me put that in perspective: 3.75 billion shares outstanding. Annualize the Q1 GAAP profit and you get roughly $1.9 billion. That's a trailing P/E ratio north of 700. Use the adjusted number - strip out stock comp, which is a REAL cost to shareholders through dilution - and you're still at around 250x earnings. All of this is extremely bad, but I didn't even talk about the CAPEX BOMB yet... 3 months ago, Tesla guided to "over $20 billion" in 2026 capital expenditure. Last night they raised it to over $25 billion. A $5 billion increase in a single quarter. That's 3x their historical annual capex run rate - $8.5 billion in 2025, $11.3 billion in 2024. The CFO confirmed on the call that Tesla expects NEGATIVE free cash flow for the rest of the year. So you have a company generating roughly $6 billion in annual free cash flow on a good year, and they're about to spend $25 billion. The math doesn't work. They will almost certainly need to issue equity. Which means dilution. Which means the $1.9 billion in annual earnings gets spread across even MORE shares. The core auto business is literally deteriorating in real time: Tesla delivered 358,000 vehicles in Q1 (missed estimates again). They produced 408,000. That's 50,000 cars sitting on lots that nobody bought. Inventory days jumped from 10 to 27 in just a few quarters. California (their most important US market) saw registrations crash 24% year over year. Their market share in the state fell from 9.2% to 7.7%. That's on top of a Q1 2025 that was ALREADY weak from Model Y retooling. They're declining off a decline. And here's what really kills the bull case... The entire valuation rests on robotaxis, Optimus robots, and autonomy. So let's put numbers on it: Waymo - the actual leader in autonomous driving with 15 million completed rides in 2025 alone, over 127 million autonomous miles driven, operating commercially across 6 US cities with plans to expand to 20 more - just raised $16 billion at a $126 billion valuation. That's the market's verdict on what the LEADING robotaxi company is worth. $126 billion. And Waymo is YEARS ahead of Tesla in actual deployment. Tesla has 3.75 billion shares outstanding. So even if you assign $126 billion in robotaxi value (giving Tesla full credit for matching Waymo despite being nowhere close) that's $33 a share. Add the auto business at generous auto-industry multiples, maybe $20 a share. Throw in energy storage and services, $10-15. Sum of the parts gets you to roughly $65-70 a share if you're feeling generous. Maybe $50 if you're not. The stock is $387. So what exactly are you paying for? You're paying for a STORY. You're paying for PROMISES that keep getting pushed back, technology that keeps falling short, and a business plan that requires spending $25 billion a year while the core product sells fewer units at declining margins in a market where California sales just fell 24% and the federal EV tax credit is gone. I managed the number one mutual fund in America. I founded two billion-dollar hedge funds. I've been doing this since 1981. And I am telling you: Tesla at $387 is one of the most egregious mispricings I have seen in my entire career. THE CRASH WILL BE EPIC

George Noble

1,225,812 views • 4 months ago

$ASTI Ascent Solar Technologies Space and Drone Solar Panels The "Going to Zero" or Mispriced Space/Drone Solar Play Intro and comparison to $RKLB and $RDW panels Let’s get the ugly stuff out of the way first. $ASTI is a distressed penny stock with a ~$5M-$10M market cap. • They burn millions in cash. • 2024 Revenue: ~$40k. 2025 Revenue (YTD): ~$60k. • They generate less revenue than a single Tesla Model Y. • They have diluted shareholders relentlessly. $ASTI just raised $2M in December with the potential of $3.5M more via warrants while being a ~$5M mcap "company". Yikes. To most, this is "uninvestable trash." Stay away. Full stop. So why did I buy ~5% of the float? IF the technology works and IF they execute then I believe this is a massive market pricing dislocation about to inflect. They have been grinding for years and may finally be hitting an inflection point. $RKLB Rocketlab is the king of space solar and they are my second largest position overall, but here is why $ASTI might be a very high risk but asymmetric bet in Space & Defense right now. 1. The Tech Pivot: Flexible CIGS vs. The World Ascent started in 2005 but pivoted 2 years ago from consumer to pure-play Space & Defense. They have sunk ~$250M and 20 years of R&D into proprietary CIGS (Copper-Indium-Gallium-Selenide) thin-film technology while building out fully domestic and vertically integrated manufacturing capabilities. The Physics: • Thickness: 0.03 mm (Thinner than paper). • Flexibility: Wraps around drones/satellites; rolls up like a poster. • Durability: "Self-Healing" capabilities against space radiation. Can take a bullet or micrometeoroid and keep working. Can handle shocks/vibration. Does not shatter. The Metric that Matters: Specific Power (W/kg) (aka energy to weight ratio) In space, mass means cost and difficult decision decisions. • Rocket Lab ($RKLB) / Spectrolab: ~150 W/kg (System level). • Ascent Solar ($ASTI): ~1,960 W/kg (Module level). $ASTI is roughly 10x lighter for the same power output potential (mass-wise). This frees up design limitations and cost. 2. The Competition: $RKLB & $RDW Rocket Lab (SolAero) & Redwire (iROSA): • Tech: Rigid Crystal Cells (Multi-junction) embedded in a fabric mesh. • Pros: Extreme Efficiency (~30%+). Perfect for limited surface area. • Cons: Heavy, Brittle, Expensive ($3k-$10k per Watt). Manufacturing multi-junction cells (SolAero) involves slowly growing crystals in a vacuum chamber. With radiation the panels degrade and loose efficiency over time which will limit the satellite lifespan. • Use Case: James Webb Telescope, Flagship missions. Ascent Solar (ASTI): • Tech: Flexible Thin-Film on Plastic. • Pros: Ultra-light, Durable, Cheap ($500-$1k per Watt). Manufacturing CIGS is roughly similar to printing newspapers (roll-to-roll). The panels are radiation degradation resistant and will outlive the satellite • Cons: Lower Efficiency (~17.5%). Requires 2x surface area. • Use Case: Mega-Constellations (Starlink/Amazon Leo), Small/Low cost satellites, Drones, Deformable surfaces. The lower efficiency is not an ASTI failing. It is the inherent physics trade-off of not using glass/rigid silicone. The downside however is increased atmospheric drag with very larger/massive panel sheets. Because ASTI modules are ~50% less efficient than rigid panels, they require ~2x the physical surface area to generate the same amount of power. In GEO (High Orbit): Drag doesn't matter. Weight savings are king. A massive solar array allows for more sensors and longer project lifespan. ASTI is highly competitive here. In LEO (Low Orbit): Atmospheric drag is real. A massive solar array acts like a large parachute, causing the satellite to de-orbit faster unless it burns more fuel to stay up. At LEO, smaller satellites are a better fit for ASTI. 3. Durability & Radiation "Self-Healing" Radiation Hardness This is ASTI's "Ace in the Hole" for physics. The Problem: In space, high-energy protons (radiation) smash into solar cells, creating atomic "defects" that trap electrons. Over time, this kills the panel's power output (degradation). The CIGS Advantage: CIGS (Copper-Indium-Gallium-Selenide) material has a unique property where heat (annealing) allows the atomic structure to relax and "heal" these defects. Self-Healing: Because CIGS heals at relatively low temperatures (often achieved just by the sun heating the panel), it suffers significantly less degradation than traditional Silicon or even some GaAs panels over long missions in high-radiation belts (like MEO or GEO). Lifespan: While a rigid GaAs panel might lose 15-20% of its power over 15 years (enough to kill a satellite), CIGS panels heal and can maintain a flatter power curve, potentially outlasting the satellite itself in high-radiation orbits. 4. Brittleness & Flexibility ASTI (CIGS on Polyimide): Flexible. You can roll it like a poster. It can take a bullet or micrometeoroid and the hole will just be a dead spot; the rest of the panel keeps working. It does not shatter. Redwire (ROSA) & Rocket Lab (SolAero): Brittle Cells on a Flex Blanket. $RDW's ROSA (Roll-Out Solar Array) typically uses rigid multi-junction cells (made by SolAero/Rocket Lab or Spectrolab) mounted on a flexible mesh fabric. The Risk: If you bend the cells too far, they crack. They rely on the mesh backing for flexibility, but the active generating material is still a brittle crystal wafer. Much heavier, more expensive, and less durable than $ASTI's option 5. The Inflection Point (Why Now?) After years of silent struggle, late 2025 has seen an explosion of activity. Recent Agreements (Nov/Dec 2025): NovaSpark: Hydrogen-powered military drones. $ASTI panels generate power in the field → NovaSpark creates hydrogen fuel. CisLunar Industries: Integrating ASTI solar with power conversion hardware for deep space longevity. Defiant Space: A strategic alliance to act as the "door opener" for classified DoD/NATO programs. More headlines: Ascent Solar Technologies Provides Leading Space Company with Thin-Film PV modules for Spacecraft Power Generation Testing in Cislunar Space December 03, 2025 08:00 ET Ascent Solar Technologies Delivers Thin-Film PV for Saltwater Environment Durability and Space-Based Power Beaming Testing October 14, 2025 08:00 ET Ascent Solar Enters Teaming Agreement with Emtel Energy USA to Advance Thin-Film PV Energy Storage Capabilities September 16, 2025 08:00 ET Ascent Solar Technologies Signs MOU with Star Catcher Industries to Improve Power Capabilities for Thin-Film Solar Technology in Space August 28, 2025 08:00 ET Ascent Solar Technologies Establishes Rapid Thin-Film PV Delivery Process to Provide Customized Space Solar Products Ahead of Schedule on Mission Enabling Timelines August 07, 2025 08:00 ET The Pipeline (From Aug Corporate Presentation) 18 new NDA's signed in 2025. They are field testing with 3 major players: • Company A: Mega-constellation (+2,500 satellites). • Company B: Space Defense (Explicitly mentioned "Golden Dome"). • Company C: Satellite Manufacturer (30-200 unit scale). Management: New board members include a former founding member of SpaceX and a retired Air Force General and Deputy Assistant Secretary for Contracting (acquisitions expert). The company started in 2005 based out of Colorado, but two years ago pivoted to Space & Defense and away from consumer applications. Made in USA: Defense contracts heavily favor domestic supply chains. ASTI manufactures in Colorado. This is a huge moat against cheap Chinese solar. In their Q3 report they note that their market has seen sudden recent acceleration. The space solar industry is currently only capable of 8 to 12 MW per year of production meanwhile the demand is growing to over 100 MW per year. 6. The Risk (The Sword of Damocles) ⚠️ This is critical. $ASTI just raised ~$2M in December. Attached to that raise are ~2 Million Warrants with a strike price of $1.70. These are exercisable immediately. If the stock rips to $3.00, warrant holders exercise at $1.70 and dump on the market for a risk-free 76% profit. This creates a massive "sell wall" and potential 40% dilution of the float. Summary: This is a binary bet. • Bear Case: They run out of cash in 6 months, dilution spirals, stock goes to $0. • Bull Case: They land one of the "Company A/B/C" contracts. Revenue jumps from $60k to projected $20M+ in 2026. The stock reprices from a "bankrupt penny stock" to a "critical defense/space supplier." I have gradually accumulated ~5% of the float. I am ready for it to go to zero. But if the space economy demands "Cheap, Light, and Durable," $ASTI is the only public pure-play. Disclaimer: This is a very high-risk microcap. Do your own due diligence. Not financial advice.
3:04

$ASTI Ascent Solar Technologies Space and Drone Solar Panels The "Going to Zero" or Mispriced Space/Drone Solar Play Intro and comparison to $RKLB and $RDW panels Let’s get the ugly stuff out of the way first. $ASTI is a distressed penny stock with a ~$5M-$10M market cap. • They burn millions in cash. • 2024 Revenue: ~$40k. 2025 Revenue (YTD): ~$60k. • They generate less revenue than a single Tesla Model Y. • They have diluted shareholders relentlessly. $ASTI just raised $2M in December with the potential of $3.5M more via warrants while being a ~$5M mcap "company". Yikes. To most, this is "uninvestable trash." Stay away. Full stop. So why did I buy ~5% of the float? IF the technology works and IF they execute then I believe this is a massive market pricing dislocation about to inflect. They have been grinding for years and may finally be hitting an inflection point. $RKLB Rocketlab is the king of space solar and they are my second largest position overall, but here is why $ASTI might be a very high risk but asymmetric bet in Space & Defense right now. 1. The Tech Pivot: Flexible CIGS vs. The World Ascent started in 2005 but pivoted 2 years ago from consumer to pure-play Space & Defense. They have sunk ~$250M and 20 years of R&D into proprietary CIGS (Copper-Indium-Gallium-Selenide) thin-film technology while building out fully domestic and vertically integrated manufacturing capabilities. The Physics: • Thickness: 0.03 mm (Thinner than paper). • Flexibility: Wraps around drones/satellites; rolls up like a poster. • Durability: "Self-Healing" capabilities against space radiation. Can take a bullet or micrometeoroid and keep working. Can handle shocks/vibration. Does not shatter. The Metric that Matters: Specific Power (W/kg) (aka energy to weight ratio) In space, mass means cost and difficult decision decisions. • Rocket Lab ($RKLB) / Spectrolab: ~150 W/kg (System level). • Ascent Solar ($ASTI): ~1,960 W/kg (Module level). $ASTI is roughly 10x lighter for the same power output potential (mass-wise). This frees up design limitations and cost. 2. The Competition: $RKLB & $RDW Rocket Lab (SolAero) & Redwire (iROSA): • Tech: Rigid Crystal Cells (Multi-junction) embedded in a fabric mesh. • Pros: Extreme Efficiency (~30%+). Perfect for limited surface area. • Cons: Heavy, Brittle, Expensive ($3k-$10k per Watt). Manufacturing multi-junction cells (SolAero) involves slowly growing crystals in a vacuum chamber. With radiation the panels degrade and loose efficiency over time which will limit the satellite lifespan. • Use Case: James Webb Telescope, Flagship missions. Ascent Solar (ASTI): • Tech: Flexible Thin-Film on Plastic. • Pros: Ultra-light, Durable, Cheap ($500-$1k per Watt). Manufacturing CIGS is roughly similar to printing newspapers (roll-to-roll). The panels are radiation degradation resistant and will outlive the satellite • Cons: Lower Efficiency (~17.5%). Requires 2x surface area. • Use Case: Mega-Constellations (Starlink/Amazon Leo), Small/Low cost satellites, Drones, Deformable surfaces. The lower efficiency is not an ASTI failing. It is the inherent physics trade-off of not using glass/rigid silicone. The downside however is increased atmospheric drag with very larger/massive panel sheets. Because ASTI modules are ~50% less efficient than rigid panels, they require ~2x the physical surface area to generate the same amount of power. In GEO (High Orbit): Drag doesn't matter. Weight savings are king. A massive solar array allows for more sensors and longer project lifespan. ASTI is highly competitive here. In LEO (Low Orbit): Atmospheric drag is real. A massive solar array acts like a large parachute, causing the satellite to de-orbit faster unless it burns more fuel to stay up. At LEO, smaller satellites are a better fit for ASTI. 3. Durability & Radiation "Self-Healing" Radiation Hardness This is ASTI's "Ace in the Hole" for physics. The Problem: In space, high-energy protons (radiation) smash into solar cells, creating atomic "defects" that trap electrons. Over time, this kills the panel's power output (degradation). The CIGS Advantage: CIGS (Copper-Indium-Gallium-Selenide) material has a unique property where heat (annealing) allows the atomic structure to relax and "heal" these defects. Self-Healing: Because CIGS heals at relatively low temperatures (often achieved just by the sun heating the panel), it suffers significantly less degradation than traditional Silicon or even some GaAs panels over long missions in high-radiation belts (like MEO or GEO). Lifespan: While a rigid GaAs panel might lose 15-20% of its power over 15 years (enough to kill a satellite), CIGS panels heal and can maintain a flatter power curve, potentially outlasting the satellite itself in high-radiation orbits. 4. Brittleness & Flexibility ASTI (CIGS on Polyimide): Flexible. You can roll it like a poster. It can take a bullet or micrometeoroid and the hole will just be a dead spot; the rest of the panel keeps working. It does not shatter. Redwire (ROSA) & Rocket Lab (SolAero): Brittle Cells on a Flex Blanket. $RDW's ROSA (Roll-Out Solar Array) typically uses rigid multi-junction cells (made by SolAero/Rocket Lab or Spectrolab) mounted on a flexible mesh fabric. The Risk: If you bend the cells too far, they crack. They rely on the mesh backing for flexibility, but the active generating material is still a brittle crystal wafer. Much heavier, more expensive, and less durable than $ASTI's option 5. The Inflection Point (Why Now?) After years of silent struggle, late 2025 has seen an explosion of activity. Recent Agreements (Nov/Dec 2025): NovaSpark: Hydrogen-powered military drones. $ASTI panels generate power in the field → NovaSpark creates hydrogen fuel. CisLunar Industries: Integrating ASTI solar with power conversion hardware for deep space longevity. Defiant Space: A strategic alliance to act as the "door opener" for classified DoD/NATO programs. More headlines: Ascent Solar Technologies Provides Leading Space Company with Thin-Film PV modules for Spacecraft Power Generation Testing in Cislunar Space December 03, 2025 08:00 ET Ascent Solar Technologies Delivers Thin-Film PV for Saltwater Environment Durability and Space-Based Power Beaming Testing October 14, 2025 08:00 ET Ascent Solar Enters Teaming Agreement with Emtel Energy USA to Advance Thin-Film PV Energy Storage Capabilities September 16, 2025 08:00 ET Ascent Solar Technologies Signs MOU with Star Catcher Industries to Improve Power Capabilities for Thin-Film Solar Technology in Space August 28, 2025 08:00 ET Ascent Solar Technologies Establishes Rapid Thin-Film PV Delivery Process to Provide Customized Space Solar Products Ahead of Schedule on Mission Enabling Timelines August 07, 2025 08:00 ET The Pipeline (From Aug Corporate Presentation) 18 new NDA's signed in 2025. They are field testing with 3 major players: • Company A: Mega-constellation (+2,500 satellites). • Company B: Space Defense (Explicitly mentioned "Golden Dome"). • Company C: Satellite Manufacturer (30-200 unit scale). Management: New board members include a former founding member of SpaceX and a retired Air Force General and Deputy Assistant Secretary for Contracting (acquisitions expert). The company started in 2005 based out of Colorado, but two years ago pivoted to Space & Defense and away from consumer applications. Made in USA: Defense contracts heavily favor domestic supply chains. ASTI manufactures in Colorado. This is a huge moat against cheap Chinese solar. In their Q3 report they note that their market has seen sudden recent acceleration. The space solar industry is currently only capable of 8 to 12 MW per year of production meanwhile the demand is growing to over 100 MW per year. 6. The Risk (The Sword of Damocles) ⚠️ This is critical. $ASTI just raised ~$2M in December. Attached to that raise are ~2 Million Warrants with a strike price of $1.70. These are exercisable immediately. If the stock rips to $3.00, warrant holders exercise at $1.70 and dump on the market for a risk-free 76% profit. This creates a massive "sell wall" and potential 40% dilution of the float. Summary: This is a binary bet. • Bear Case: They run out of cash in 6 months, dilution spirals, stock goes to $0. • Bull Case: They land one of the "Company A/B/C" contracts. Revenue jumps from $60k to projected $20M+ in 2026. The stock reprices from a "bankrupt penny stock" to a "critical defense/space supplier." I have gradually accumulated ~5% of the float. I am ready for it to go to zero. But if the space economy demands "Cheap, Light, and Durable," $ASTI is the only public pure-play. Disclaimer: This is a very high-risk microcap. Do your own due diligence. Not financial advice.

YeahDave

208,349 views • 8 months ago

RESCUE OF THE KEEPER OF TARA EARTH This is going to sound like absolute fiction, but the story still needs to be told. Let me preface by saying I’m not just sane, but an autodidact polymath with multiple quantum physics patents under exclusively my own name, not part of any collaboration. So by dismissing my testimony as someone who is just nuts is really reading a book strictly through its cover. This all actually happened, even if you’ve never heard of anything like this before. What we don’t know about ‘the real worlds’ out there you could barely fit in all of our skies, we’ve been that isolated here. Everyone in this preschool dimension have preconceived notions about who ‘god’ is, inflated to the realm of all-knowing and all-powerful, able to create whole worlds, complete with millions of species of flora and fauna, and all in just 6 days. And while it is true such powers do exist, they are not without collaboration with other ‘gods’ to make that all happen, no matter how grandiose your captors want to make themselves seem. Just one species of your apples or oranges here represents possibly trillions of years of development and perfection. They didn’t just magically appear. “God” is a psyop term that stands for the word “perfect”, of which there is no such thing. The term perfect is strictly subjective, because what may seem perfect to a caveman is going to seem rudimentary kid’s stuff to George Jetson. The real term for the creator of all things is not ‘god’, but rather Prime Creator. “God” is actually DOG spelled backward and got its name from the Dog Star, also known as Sirius A, the headquarters of the Anuhazi Elohim’s breakaway group that call themselves The Michaelube, Suns of Ba’al. The ‘Arch Angels’ want you to believe they are the creator god of all things in this world. That was a lie 560m years ago and it is still a lie today. In reality, Tara Earth existed more than 4 billion years prior to the Anuhazi’s arrival to take the Human Elohim Project spirit essences hostage. They DID in fact help create Tara earth, just like you did, because they are fractals of Prime Creator. But to present themselves as ‘one guy with a long white beard who created the world and everything in it’ is word magic and gaslighting, designed to demoralize and subjugate Humans. For more on the why to this psychopathic plan, see my article: 👉 HISTORY OF THE CHIMERA. With that said, there are MANY beings in the world around you that are secretly ancient ‘gods’ of past eras who really do have more powers than humans do. I know, because I’ve met some and dealt with others during my years of education from the keeper of our simulation. There are also beings here who have roles to play to keep our world functioning correctly so Tara is able to continue offering a holographic platform for your manifestation adventure, who also have god-like powers, such as the keeper mentioned above, and others that are part of the team I refer to as the ‘crew’. You would call them angels, I call them people. Scary powerful people, but still people. Among the ‘crew’ is the main ‘keeper’ of the simulation that you wind up referring to as god down through the ages, because once in a while humans get to meet the keeper and witness the power for themselves which is very obviously not human. But the keeper doesn’t have a long flowing white beard, doesn’t sit on a throne in the sky and certainly isn’t perfect. But like you, a work in progress. Always seeking greater balance. That is the one common denominator among all fractals of Prime Creator, regardless if they are currently playing ‘bad guy’ roles, or ‘good guy’ roles. Understand there are beings here constantly at war against the keeper that has control of the universal elements of the hologram. Also understand, like the other beings who came here from much higher dimension with ‘god-like’ powers, they fractalize themselves into many, many different bodies, so it is effectively impossible to ever ‘kill’ each other. You would have to not only find all the many hundreds or thousands of them, but have a fool-proof way of killing them all at the same exact moment, making sure they are gone-gone, not just that one avatar holding their spirit awareness. That’s not going to happen. Not to any of them from what I’ve witnessed. Which means simply, as far as you are concerned, they are eternal beings, continuously here since 560m years ago in some case, depending when each one of them arrived. The ‘gods’, and the keeper, live in mortal bodies that age and die. But their positions are always held by the next one of themselves that can step into that role to maintain continuity of their offices. These are all the same person and can appear exactly identical to each other, or they can take on totally different appearances as well. I’m not sure why or how, but I’ve seen them both ways. After I was contacted by the keeper and informed of my role where I was in contract to supply protection and help to the crew back in 2013, eventually I was activated for that help in September of 2017. Both the keeper and a portion of the worldwide crew support staff as it were, had been taken hostage in California. I was tasked to bring them out to safety. I won’t go deeply into the details of this, but it was a serious situation where the invader races had stripped the keeper of all access to banks and cash, making it impossible to remain safe inside of the place they had been using as headquarters, literally casting them into the streets. And before you imagine this would be ‘impossible’, the keeper can’t just manifest stacks of cash out of thin air, and also there were a massive amount of beings all working together to neutralize them so they could possibly remove them from the levers of power of the simulation. That’s really all I can offer for details about that for now. The alphabet agencies were keeping the entire crew isolated in that one city, living in a car, camping in the woods and basically making it impossible to look after Tara. The keeper was able to get donations through various support mechanisms, but were shut out of getting off the streets. They brought in specialists to help them all escape, but the agencies wound up permanently disabling them, or taking them out altogether. That’s when I was contacted for assignment. Not being one of ‘the gods’ like they are, I was naturally terrified of having anything to do with this mission because I had no powers I was aware of that could provide anything they couldn’t. Which is really a fantastic understatement, since the keeper and crew can translocate anywhere in the world in seconds, have ‘thousands of avatars’ scattered out as vessels they can use in any city around the world, and basically everything they can do we can’t are about as intimidating as they can be. But I was told I was the only one who could rescue them. And while that may sound like the perfect scenario for a deluded mind seeking validation with illusions of grandeur, like a classic mental patient would come up with in their insane mind, this is what I was actually told, and I do mean in real life. To this day I find it as confusing to believe as you will trying to believe me now. Nonetheless, I carry certain powers I have been fitted with for my contract here on earth that I have had no education about at all. And the main one I’ve learned of now is I have a frequency shield that blocks out ‘the gods’ from doing harm. As long as the keeper and crew were within that field, the invaders were rendered powerless. Wow, even I want to roll my eyes at that. But I watched it play out first hand now multiple times after I got the crew off the streets in a ‘place of safety’ over the next couple of years. As long as I was at the safe house, nothing nefarious happened. When I went shopping every other week for groceries in town over 10 miles away, that’s when all hell would break out back at the compound. Those stories too would seem impossible to you to believe, just like everything else I am covering here, so I won’t go deeply into them. But they included black helicopters, 10’ long rattlesnakes sealing off the safe house & even assassinations. I was even requested to get to town and back as quickly as possible and not to linger due to these threats. I was told that my frequency shield while blended to the natural frequency shield the keeper and crew all have reached ‘87.3 miles’ apart (or so, going by memory now. But it was a very specific number). But even though the overall power of our combined fields still increased within that distance, the closer I was to the group, the more powerful the shield. I’m just telling you what I was told. You can believe it or not. I certainly wouldn’t believe it had I not actually witnessed it myself, so I’m right there with you if that’s your position. That brings us to the story I intended to pass along to you here; regarding that flight from ‘homeless bondage’ out across the deserts that spanned well over 1000 miles I was brought in for. The keeper and crew had been held hostage and homeless for 2 ½ years by the time I got the call requesting me to sell everything I owned and fly half way around the world for their rescue. Their lives had been hell, trust me. I arrived late at night where they picked me up and the hard part of the journey began. I will skip the details of the truly insane things I witnessed starting then for another time after the separation, for obvious reasons having to do with breadcrumbs and the very real fluid war we’re inside of still. But I will tell you about the ‘angels’ that were with us for that escape I would only learn about myself after 2 days of running. In the video below you will see what appear to be asteroids or a meteor shower, but they are traveling horizontally, not downward at all. We’ve seen this now since late 2024 a few times. This time I saved one of the videos taken on 2/19/2025 in Germany so I could actually show people what I saw first hand on that second night of our escape. We had covered whole states by this time, but we couldn’t stop and rest until we made it to a ‘frequency zone’ that was somehow outside of the reaches of the keeper’s enemies. I’m under the impression that there are certain key cross-leyline areas on earth that are too high in frequency for the low-vibration invader races to penetrate with their hyper-advanced psychotronic & scalar weapons, and that had been our destination ever since our escape that began at about 3:30-4am in the dead of night when the least amount of eyes would be surveilling us. Boy do I have outrageous stories about just how absolute that surveillance really is too. It is like they are not just tracking us, but using time travel to put agents in areas we would be arriving to, posing like homeless people and everyday folks. While in real life they were monitoring my every word in secret. I was surveilled many times during the weeks in that city while arranging for the escape and it blew my mind every time. The asteroids that really look more like comets in the video is what the "guardian angels" that had been secretly escorting us from overhead looked like, WHEN they were uncloaked. They only showed up in my visible view at the moment we broke over a ridge at about 3:30 in the morning 2 days later after our run began, at the exact same moment I could see the city lights way off in the distance below that was the ‘safe zone’. Suddenly overhead three giant comets appeared immediately above my head. I was in the lead vehicle the whole way, because the keeper was following my taillights. This is the only way they can navigate at night, because they don’t see like you and I do, looking at solid shapes and images, but everything through their eyes are light waves. I couldn’t make up something like that if I spent 10 years trying to write this article, mostly because it is still not believable to me now, 8 years later. These 3 comets were massive, what looked to be around 50 feet across, with tails of flame coming off that must have been 150-200 feet behind streaking VERY low across the sky. As I came down the hill to the desert floor for the final 10 miles between us and the safe zone (small town lights), the ‘comets’ started coming straight down toward ground, one at a time. They appeared they were going to crash into the highway, now traveling vertically at hypersonic speed, then just stopped 50 ft away from impact and vanished. You would have to try to imagine being in the total dark desert with only very faint, far-away lights off in the distance, only to have 3 comets traveling RIGHT DIRECTLY overhead suddenly uncloak, then turn straight down to get an idea of how insanely frightening they appeared, since their trajectory was to strike directly in front of your vehicle on the highway, as if you were about to slam right into them as they hit like giant bombs that would certainly blow up on impact and basically vaporize you and your moving van, to appreciate how absurd this event was. I was only about 150 feet away from where they were set to strike, so there was no hitting the brakes and avoiding anything. They were right there. Which means it was sort of like watching 'god' just fill the night's sky with fire. I saw 3 of them myself, but I was informed there were an additional 9 ‘angels’ that my own frequency wouldn't allow me to see according to the keeper. It is because this story is so unbelievable that I avoid talking about it, as you can imagine. Since 99 people out of a hundred are only going to accuse you of being insane upon hearing it, some possibly trying to have you committed at the same time, and the other person is likely already crazy themselves, so they just glaze over it. Until you see something like that with your own eyes, I'm pretty sure you will *never believe it could be a real thing. But this is what we call angels look like when they are decloaked and traveling at night. I don’t personally know if they were inside vehicles, or they are just simply traveling in their own Merkabah fields. That part was never explained to me. I was told they were with us 'flying overhead the entire journey' since we escaped California and were basically ‘signing off’ as I gathered it, now that we had reached the safe zone. You can believe I'm crazy all you want to, but now you can see them with your own eyes in this video, sure as hell not acting like meteors, but acting more like flaming time crafts (‘space’ ships). Are you crazy too? - On X, to search for my articles, simply type in the name of the piece, enter one space, then from: plus my username in parenthesis such as shown here: CASTING THE APOCOLYPSE (from:iontecs_pemf) Off-site, you can look up any of my writings through this link below for my other more than 100 recent articles and many thousands of comments on X, regularly updated thanks to Justin This message will only be seen by your eyes if not shared, and if you want to reference this article again later, you will need to cut and paste it in your own notes off line, as it will surely be erased. This is the most accurate translation of these events I am aware of at this time.
0:20

RESCUE OF THE KEEPER OF TARA EARTH This is going to sound like absolute fiction, but the story still needs to be told. Let me preface by saying I’m not just sane, but an autodidact polymath with multiple quantum physics patents under exclusively my own name, not part of any collaboration. So by dismissing my testimony as someone who is just nuts is really reading a book strictly through its cover. This all actually happened, even if you’ve never heard of anything like this before. What we don’t know about ‘the real worlds’ out there you could barely fit in all of our skies, we’ve been that isolated here. Everyone in this preschool dimension have preconceived notions about who ‘god’ is, inflated to the realm of all-knowing and all-powerful, able to create whole worlds, complete with millions of species of flora and fauna, and all in just 6 days. And while it is true such powers do exist, they are not without collaboration with other ‘gods’ to make that all happen, no matter how grandiose your captors want to make themselves seem. Just one species of your apples or oranges here represents possibly trillions of years of development and perfection. They didn’t just magically appear. “God” is a psyop term that stands for the word “perfect”, of which there is no such thing. The term perfect is strictly subjective, because what may seem perfect to a caveman is going to seem rudimentary kid’s stuff to George Jetson. The real term for the creator of all things is not ‘god’, but rather Prime Creator. “God” is actually DOG spelled backward and got its name from the Dog Star, also known as Sirius A, the headquarters of the Anuhazi Elohim’s breakaway group that call themselves The Michaelube, Suns of Ba’al. The ‘Arch Angels’ want you to believe they are the creator god of all things in this world. That was a lie 560m years ago and it is still a lie today. In reality, Tara Earth existed more than 4 billion years prior to the Anuhazi’s arrival to take the Human Elohim Project spirit essences hostage. They DID in fact help create Tara earth, just like you did, because they are fractals of Prime Creator. But to present themselves as ‘one guy with a long white beard who created the world and everything in it’ is word magic and gaslighting, designed to demoralize and subjugate Humans. For more on the why to this psychopathic plan, see my article: 👉 HISTORY OF THE CHIMERA. With that said, there are MANY beings in the world around you that are secretly ancient ‘gods’ of past eras who really do have more powers than humans do. I know, because I’ve met some and dealt with others during my years of education from the keeper of our simulation. There are also beings here who have roles to play to keep our world functioning correctly so Tara is able to continue offering a holographic platform for your manifestation adventure, who also have god-like powers, such as the keeper mentioned above, and others that are part of the team I refer to as the ‘crew’. You would call them angels, I call them people. Scary powerful people, but still people. Among the ‘crew’ is the main ‘keeper’ of the simulation that you wind up referring to as god down through the ages, because once in a while humans get to meet the keeper and witness the power for themselves which is very obviously not human. But the keeper doesn’t have a long flowing white beard, doesn’t sit on a throne in the sky and certainly isn’t perfect. But like you, a work in progress. Always seeking greater balance. That is the one common denominator among all fractals of Prime Creator, regardless if they are currently playing ‘bad guy’ roles, or ‘good guy’ roles. Understand there are beings here constantly at war against the keeper that has control of the universal elements of the hologram. Also understand, like the other beings who came here from much higher dimension with ‘god-like’ powers, they fractalize themselves into many, many different bodies, so it is effectively impossible to ever ‘kill’ each other. You would have to not only find all the many hundreds or thousands of them, but have a fool-proof way of killing them all at the same exact moment, making sure they are gone-gone, not just that one avatar holding their spirit awareness. That’s not going to happen. Not to any of them from what I’ve witnessed. Which means simply, as far as you are concerned, they are eternal beings, continuously here since 560m years ago in some case, depending when each one of them arrived. The ‘gods’, and the keeper, live in mortal bodies that age and die. But their positions are always held by the next one of themselves that can step into that role to maintain continuity of their offices. These are all the same person and can appear exactly identical to each other, or they can take on totally different appearances as well. I’m not sure why or how, but I’ve seen them both ways. After I was contacted by the keeper and informed of my role where I was in contract to supply protection and help to the crew back in 2013, eventually I was activated for that help in September of 2017. Both the keeper and a portion of the worldwide crew support staff as it were, had been taken hostage in California. I was tasked to bring them out to safety. I won’t go deeply into the details of this, but it was a serious situation where the invader races had stripped the keeper of all access to banks and cash, making it impossible to remain safe inside of the place they had been using as headquarters, literally casting them into the streets. And before you imagine this would be ‘impossible’, the keeper can’t just manifest stacks of cash out of thin air, and also there were a massive amount of beings all working together to neutralize them so they could possibly remove them from the levers of power of the simulation. That’s really all I can offer for details about that for now. The alphabet agencies were keeping the entire crew isolated in that one city, living in a car, camping in the woods and basically making it impossible to look after Tara. The keeper was able to get donations through various support mechanisms, but were shut out of getting off the streets. They brought in specialists to help them all escape, but the agencies wound up permanently disabling them, or taking them out altogether. That’s when I was contacted for assignment. Not being one of ‘the gods’ like they are, I was naturally terrified of having anything to do with this mission because I had no powers I was aware of that could provide anything they couldn’t. Which is really a fantastic understatement, since the keeper and crew can translocate anywhere in the world in seconds, have ‘thousands of avatars’ scattered out as vessels they can use in any city around the world, and basically everything they can do we can’t are about as intimidating as they can be. But I was told I was the only one who could rescue them. And while that may sound like the perfect scenario for a deluded mind seeking validation with illusions of grandeur, like a classic mental patient would come up with in their insane mind, this is what I was actually told, and I do mean in real life. To this day I find it as confusing to believe as you will trying to believe me now. Nonetheless, I carry certain powers I have been fitted with for my contract here on earth that I have had no education about at all. And the main one I’ve learned of now is I have a frequency shield that blocks out ‘the gods’ from doing harm. As long as the keeper and crew were within that field, the invaders were rendered powerless. Wow, even I want to roll my eyes at that. But I watched it play out first hand now multiple times after I got the crew off the streets in a ‘place of safety’ over the next couple of years. As long as I was at the safe house, nothing nefarious happened. When I went shopping every other week for groceries in town over 10 miles away, that’s when all hell would break out back at the compound. Those stories too would seem impossible to you to believe, just like everything else I am covering here, so I won’t go deeply into them. But they included black helicopters, 10’ long rattlesnakes sealing off the safe house & even assassinations. I was even requested to get to town and back as quickly as possible and not to linger due to these threats. I was told that my frequency shield while blended to the natural frequency shield the keeper and crew all have reached ‘87.3 miles’ apart (or so, going by memory now. But it was a very specific number). But even though the overall power of our combined fields still increased within that distance, the closer I was to the group, the more powerful the shield. I’m just telling you what I was told. You can believe it or not. I certainly wouldn’t believe it had I not actually witnessed it myself, so I’m right there with you if that’s your position. That brings us to the story I intended to pass along to you here; regarding that flight from ‘homeless bondage’ out across the deserts that spanned well over 1000 miles I was brought in for. The keeper and crew had been held hostage and homeless for 2 ½ years by the time I got the call requesting me to sell everything I owned and fly half way around the world for their rescue. Their lives had been hell, trust me. I arrived late at night where they picked me up and the hard part of the journey began. I will skip the details of the truly insane things I witnessed starting then for another time after the separation, for obvious reasons having to do with breadcrumbs and the very real fluid war we’re inside of still. But I will tell you about the ‘angels’ that were with us for that escape I would only learn about myself after 2 days of running. In the video below you will see what appear to be asteroids or a meteor shower, but they are traveling horizontally, not downward at all. We’ve seen this now since late 2024 a few times. This time I saved one of the videos taken on 2/19/2025 in Germany so I could actually show people what I saw first hand on that second night of our escape. We had covered whole states by this time, but we couldn’t stop and rest until we made it to a ‘frequency zone’ that was somehow outside of the reaches of the keeper’s enemies. I’m under the impression that there are certain key cross-leyline areas on earth that are too high in frequency for the low-vibration invader races to penetrate with their hyper-advanced psychotronic & scalar weapons, and that had been our destination ever since our escape that began at about 3:30-4am in the dead of night when the least amount of eyes would be surveilling us. Boy do I have outrageous stories about just how absolute that surveillance really is too. It is like they are not just tracking us, but using time travel to put agents in areas we would be arriving to, posing like homeless people and everyday folks. While in real life they were monitoring my every word in secret. I was surveilled many times during the weeks in that city while arranging for the escape and it blew my mind every time. The asteroids that really look more like comets in the video is what the "guardian angels" that had been secretly escorting us from overhead looked like, WHEN they were uncloaked. They only showed up in my visible view at the moment we broke over a ridge at about 3:30 in the morning 2 days later after our run began, at the exact same moment I could see the city lights way off in the distance below that was the ‘safe zone’. Suddenly overhead three giant comets appeared immediately above my head. I was in the lead vehicle the whole way, because the keeper was following my taillights. This is the only way they can navigate at night, because they don’t see like you and I do, looking at solid shapes and images, but everything through their eyes are light waves. I couldn’t make up something like that if I spent 10 years trying to write this article, mostly because it is still not believable to me now, 8 years later. These 3 comets were massive, what looked to be around 50 feet across, with tails of flame coming off that must have been 150-200 feet behind streaking VERY low across the sky. As I came down the hill to the desert floor for the final 10 miles between us and the safe zone (small town lights), the ‘comets’ started coming straight down toward ground, one at a time. They appeared they were going to crash into the highway, now traveling vertically at hypersonic speed, then just stopped 50 ft away from impact and vanished. You would have to try to imagine being in the total dark desert with only very faint, far-away lights off in the distance, only to have 3 comets traveling RIGHT DIRECTLY overhead suddenly uncloak, then turn straight down to get an idea of how insanely frightening they appeared, since their trajectory was to strike directly in front of your vehicle on the highway, as if you were about to slam right into them as they hit like giant bombs that would certainly blow up on impact and basically vaporize you and your moving van, to appreciate how absurd this event was. I was only about 150 feet away from where they were set to strike, so there was no hitting the brakes and avoiding anything. They were right there. Which means it was sort of like watching 'god' just fill the night's sky with fire. I saw 3 of them myself, but I was informed there were an additional 9 ‘angels’ that my own frequency wouldn't allow me to see according to the keeper. It is because this story is so unbelievable that I avoid talking about it, as you can imagine. Since 99 people out of a hundred are only going to accuse you of being insane upon hearing it, some possibly trying to have you committed at the same time, and the other person is likely already crazy themselves, so they just glaze over it. Until you see something like that with your own eyes, I'm pretty sure you will *never believe it could be a real thing. But this is what we call angels look like when they are decloaked and traveling at night. I don’t personally know if they were inside vehicles, or they are just simply traveling in their own Merkabah fields. That part was never explained to me. I was told they were with us 'flying overhead the entire journey' since we escaped California and were basically ‘signing off’ as I gathered it, now that we had reached the safe zone. You can believe I'm crazy all you want to, but now you can see them with your own eyes in this video, sure as hell not acting like meteors, but acting more like flaming time crafts (‘space’ ships). Are you crazy too? - On X, to search for my articles, simply type in the name of the piece, enter one space, then from: plus my username in parenthesis such as shown here: CASTING THE APOCOLYPSE (from:iontecs_pemf) Off-site, you can look up any of my writings through this link below for my other more than 100 recent articles and many thousands of comments on X, regularly updated thanks to Justin This message will only be seen by your eyes if not shared, and if you want to reference this article again later, you will need to cut and paste it in your own notes off line, as it will surely be erased. This is the most accurate translation of these events I am aware of at this time.

W.R. Schock, QBD

62,162 views • 1 year ago

Behind The Scenes In The Vegas Loop: Inside Elon Musk's The Boring Company Bold Bet On Urban Mobility Hey everyone. Tesla Owners Silicon Valley (Tesla Owners Silicon Valley) here. I recently had the chance to go behind the scenes with Steve Davis, President of The Boring Company, for a deep dive into the Vegas Loop in Las Vegas. This wasn’t a quick photo op. It was a full 47-minute immersion: riding through the LED-lit tunnels in a Tesla, visiting active construction sites with Prufrock boring machines, and hearing directly from Steve about what’s working today, and what’s coming next. I’m posting the full long-form video alongside this recap so you can experience it firsthand. But here’s the readable, “what actually matters” story from the tour. From “Traffic Is Soul-Crushing” To A Working Underground Network The Boring Company was founded in 2016, born of a familiar frustration: gridlocked cities that can’t build fast enough, cheap enough, or with minimal disruption. The premise is simple but ambitious: reinvent tunneling to make it practical infrastructure, not a decade-long mega-project. Las Vegas is where that idea is being tested at real scale. Instead of waiting for buses, shuttles, or rail schedules, the Vegas Loop aims to provide point-to-point trips in Teslas, fast, quiet, and emissions-free, connecting major destinations without the chaos of the Strip above. And after seeing it up close, what stands out most is how operational it already is. This isn’t a render. It’s a functioning system handling real demand, in real conditions, with real riders. What It Feels Like: Fast, Weirdly Fun, And Surprisingly Smooth The “Loop experience” is part transit, part sci-fi. The tunnels are lined with shifting LEDs—purples, greens, yellows—that make the ride feel more like entering a venue than commuting. Trips are short and direct. One example Steve shared: LVCC to Encore in about 85 seconds. But the biggest “wait, that just happened” moment on the tour was Full Self-Driving. FSD Underground (And Onto Surface Streets) We rode in a Model Y running Full Self-Driving (Supervised), which navigated the tunnels smoothly and then transitioned back to surface streets without intervention. Steve’s point wasn’t that autonomy is a cool demo; it’s that autonomy is a force multiplier for throughput, consistency, and future scale. Steve Davis: “Full Self-Driving Supervised is live commercially between LVCC and Encore, watch this: zero interventions as it navigates the tunnels and pops out onto surface streets seamlessly.” Right now, they still operate with safety drivers, but the trajectory is clear: as autonomy matures, the system can move more people with tighter headways and less variability than human-driven operations. The Numbers: “Spiky Demand” Is Where This System Wants To Win Vegas isn’t a steady-demand commuter city. It’s a burst-demand city: conventions, games, concerts, and tourist surges. Steve emphasized that this is exactly where the Loop model shines, because you can scale vehicles dynamically without rebuilding an entire transit line. During CES 2026, the Loop moved 90,000+ passengers, peaking at 6,600+ riders per hour, including 22,000+ trips to/from Resorts World, Encore, and Westgate. That’s on top of 3.5M+ total passengers since 2021. Steve Davis: “We’ve hit over 3 million passengers since 2021, and during CES 2026 alone, we shuttled more than 90,000 people, peaking at 6,600 passengers per hour without a hitch.” And beyond the numbers, there’s a secondary effect people don’t always talk about: for many riders, this is their first time in a Tesla, and it’s an unusually positive first impression. The Airport Connection: A Phased Plan With A Very Clear Endgame Connecting the system to Harry Reid International Airport is the crown jewel, and they’re doing it in phases to deliver value quickly while they work through the harder parts. Phase 1 (Live Now) Limited airport rides are already operating via a mix of tunnels and surface streets from existing stations, including Resorts World, Encore, Westgate, and LVCC. They’re doing roughly 50 test rides per day, and Steve noted 100 of ~130 vehicles are already “airport-ready” with transponders. Phase 2 (Next Couple Months) This is where things get meaningfully faster: a 2.2-mile dual tunnel from Westgate to 4744 Paradise Road, eliminating about two miles of surface traffic and stoplights. New stations are planned at Virgin Hotels, The Boring Company’s apartment complex, the former Gordon Biersch site, and Firefly. Fleet expands to 160 vehicles. Steve Davis: “Phase 2 kicks in soon: a 2.2-mile tunnel to Paradise Road, cutting out those surface miles and stoplights.” Phase 3 Extend to 5032 Palo Verde Road near Terminal 1, further removing surface bottlenecks around Tropicana and University Center. Fleet scales to 250–300 vehicles. Phase 4 (The “Holy Grail”) A direct underground station at the terminals, true curb-to-gate simplicity, fully underground. Steve Davis: “Phase 4 is the holy grail: a direct underground station right at the airport terminals.” The Big Build: 68 Miles, 104 Stations, Privately Funded The long-term vision is expansive: 68 miles of tunnels and 104 stations spanning the Strip, downtown, the stadium, and the airport. Core Strip construction begins this fall, with a 2027 target for that major phase, and further expansion into 2028–2029. Steve emphasized something important here: the funding model. These builds are privately funded, and the cost structure is the entire point: build rapidly and avoid “subway economics.” Steve Davis: “68 miles, 104 stations… all privately funded at about $10M per mile, versus billions for subways.” The Real Workhorses: Prufrock Boring Machines Up Close If the Loop is the user experience, Prufrock is the engine underneath it. Seeing Prufrock at an active dig site is hard to describe unless you’ve stood next to one. It’s enormous, loud, and relentlessly practical. The key advantage is that it changes the setup cost: it can launch from the surface without massive open pits, and it’s designed to move fast, with a long-term target of one mile per week. The machine isn’t just digging; it’s built around an integrated approach to lining, pumping, and maintaining the tunnel environment while staying cost-effective. Challenges They’re Solving In Real Time: Groundwater And Permitting One of the most interesting “myth-busting” moments was hearing Steve talk about tunnel conditions. Despite the desert setting, the tunnels are roughly 30 feet below grade, and in many areas, they’re fully submerged in groundwater, sand, clay, caliche, and water management, all part of the daily reality. Steve Davis: “Tunnels are 30 feet down, fully submerged in groundwater, desert myth busted.” They manage leaks through periodic sealing (foam, maintenance cycles) and now operate with stronger compliance processes for water treatment and disposal. The bigger long-term bottleneck, though, isn’t engineering; it’s approvals. Steve noted they need hundreds of permits (600+), and many can take months. Their push is toward a more streamlined, operator-style approval model, closer to how SpaceX is regulated: certify capability and safety, then execute without rearguing every step. Steve Davis: “Permitting’s the bottleneck… we’re advocating for a SpaceX-style operator license.” Fleet Scaling And The “Robovan” Strategy Right now, the fleet is about 130 Teslas, including Model Ys and Cybertrucks, tuned for tight turns and repeated high-frequency operations. The larger goal is to scale up to 1,200 vehicles as the network grows. And that’s where Robovan (high-occupancy, event-optimized vehicles) becomes strategically important. Steve’s framing was refreshingly clear: cars are more efficient for small groups. Robovans win when you can predict surges, like a Raiders game or a Sphere show, and load high-occupancy vehicles in advance. Steve Davis: “Robovans shine when everyone’s going to the same spot… that’s when you put the high occupancy vehicle in.” What’s Next: Suburbs, Regional Links, And Bigger Swing Ideas After the core network is built, they’re looking at suburban expansions (Henderson, Summerlin) via shorter demo segments first, proving utility for pedestrian and vehicle connectivity. And then Steve hinted at the kind of long-range thinking that gets people excited (and skeptical): longer-distance routes, potentially even Hyperloop concepts like Reno connections, if permitting and economics align. Steve Davis: “Suburbs like Henderson and Summerlin next… long-term? Hyperloop to Reno… private funding makes it doable if permitting catches up.” Final Take: Vegas Is Becoming A Live Testbed For A New Kind Of Transit This tour made one thing very clear: The Boring Company isn’t trying to win the “traditional public transit debate.” They’re trying to change the rules of what’s feasible, building faster, cheaper, and with an experience that people actually want to use. Watching FSD glide through the tunnels, seeing Prufrock tearing through the ground, and hearing the phased plan for the airport and Strip expansion straight from Steve… It’s hard not to feel like Vegas is a real-world preview of what mobility can look like when infrastructure is built like technology. Huge thanks to Steve Davis and The Boring Company team for the access and the time. And keep an eye out, I’m posting the full 47-minute video with this recap so you can see the ride, the sites, and the details for yourself. What do you think, would you ride the Loop instead of sitting in Strip traffic?
47:36

Behind The Scenes In The Vegas Loop: Inside Elon Musk's The Boring Company Bold Bet On Urban Mobility Hey everyone. Tesla Owners Silicon Valley (Tesla Owners Silicon Valley) here. I recently had the chance to go behind the scenes with Steve Davis, President of The Boring Company, for a deep dive into the Vegas Loop in Las Vegas. This wasn’t a quick photo op. It was a full 47-minute immersion: riding through the LED-lit tunnels in a Tesla, visiting active construction sites with Prufrock boring machines, and hearing directly from Steve about what’s working today, and what’s coming next. I’m posting the full long-form video alongside this recap so you can experience it firsthand. But here’s the readable, “what actually matters” story from the tour. From “Traffic Is Soul-Crushing” To A Working Underground Network The Boring Company was founded in 2016, born of a familiar frustration: gridlocked cities that can’t build fast enough, cheap enough, or with minimal disruption. The premise is simple but ambitious: reinvent tunneling to make it practical infrastructure, not a decade-long mega-project. Las Vegas is where that idea is being tested at real scale. Instead of waiting for buses, shuttles, or rail schedules, the Vegas Loop aims to provide point-to-point trips in Teslas, fast, quiet, and emissions-free, connecting major destinations without the chaos of the Strip above. And after seeing it up close, what stands out most is how operational it already is. This isn’t a render. It’s a functioning system handling real demand, in real conditions, with real riders. What It Feels Like: Fast, Weirdly Fun, And Surprisingly Smooth The “Loop experience” is part transit, part sci-fi. The tunnels are lined with shifting LEDs—purples, greens, yellows—that make the ride feel more like entering a venue than commuting. Trips are short and direct. One example Steve shared: LVCC to Encore in about 85 seconds. But the biggest “wait, that just happened” moment on the tour was Full Self-Driving. FSD Underground (And Onto Surface Streets) We rode in a Model Y running Full Self-Driving (Supervised), which navigated the tunnels smoothly and then transitioned back to surface streets without intervention. Steve’s point wasn’t that autonomy is a cool demo; it’s that autonomy is a force multiplier for throughput, consistency, and future scale. Steve Davis: “Full Self-Driving Supervised is live commercially between LVCC and Encore, watch this: zero interventions as it navigates the tunnels and pops out onto surface streets seamlessly.” Right now, they still operate with safety drivers, but the trajectory is clear: as autonomy matures, the system can move more people with tighter headways and less variability than human-driven operations. The Numbers: “Spiky Demand” Is Where This System Wants To Win Vegas isn’t a steady-demand commuter city. It’s a burst-demand city: conventions, games, concerts, and tourist surges. Steve emphasized that this is exactly where the Loop model shines, because you can scale vehicles dynamically without rebuilding an entire transit line. During CES 2026, the Loop moved 90,000+ passengers, peaking at 6,600+ riders per hour, including 22,000+ trips to/from Resorts World, Encore, and Westgate. That’s on top of 3.5M+ total passengers since 2021. Steve Davis: “We’ve hit over 3 million passengers since 2021, and during CES 2026 alone, we shuttled more than 90,000 people, peaking at 6,600 passengers per hour without a hitch.” And beyond the numbers, there’s a secondary effect people don’t always talk about: for many riders, this is their first time in a Tesla, and it’s an unusually positive first impression. The Airport Connection: A Phased Plan With A Very Clear Endgame Connecting the system to Harry Reid International Airport is the crown jewel, and they’re doing it in phases to deliver value quickly while they work through the harder parts. Phase 1 (Live Now) Limited airport rides are already operating via a mix of tunnels and surface streets from existing stations, including Resorts World, Encore, Westgate, and LVCC. They’re doing roughly 50 test rides per day, and Steve noted 100 of ~130 vehicles are already “airport-ready” with transponders. Phase 2 (Next Couple Months) This is where things get meaningfully faster: a 2.2-mile dual tunnel from Westgate to 4744 Paradise Road, eliminating about two miles of surface traffic and stoplights. New stations are planned at Virgin Hotels, The Boring Company’s apartment complex, the former Gordon Biersch site, and Firefly. Fleet expands to 160 vehicles. Steve Davis: “Phase 2 kicks in soon: a 2.2-mile tunnel to Paradise Road, cutting out those surface miles and stoplights.” Phase 3 Extend to 5032 Palo Verde Road near Terminal 1, further removing surface bottlenecks around Tropicana and University Center. Fleet scales to 250–300 vehicles. Phase 4 (The “Holy Grail”) A direct underground station at the terminals, true curb-to-gate simplicity, fully underground. Steve Davis: “Phase 4 is the holy grail: a direct underground station right at the airport terminals.” The Big Build: 68 Miles, 104 Stations, Privately Funded The long-term vision is expansive: 68 miles of tunnels and 104 stations spanning the Strip, downtown, the stadium, and the airport. Core Strip construction begins this fall, with a 2027 target for that major phase, and further expansion into 2028–2029. Steve emphasized something important here: the funding model. These builds are privately funded, and the cost structure is the entire point: build rapidly and avoid “subway economics.” Steve Davis: “68 miles, 104 stations… all privately funded at about $10M per mile, versus billions for subways.” The Real Workhorses: Prufrock Boring Machines Up Close If the Loop is the user experience, Prufrock is the engine underneath it. Seeing Prufrock at an active dig site is hard to describe unless you’ve stood next to one. It’s enormous, loud, and relentlessly practical. The key advantage is that it changes the setup cost: it can launch from the surface without massive open pits, and it’s designed to move fast, with a long-term target of one mile per week. The machine isn’t just digging; it’s built around an integrated approach to lining, pumping, and maintaining the tunnel environment while staying cost-effective. Challenges They’re Solving In Real Time: Groundwater And Permitting One of the most interesting “myth-busting” moments was hearing Steve talk about tunnel conditions. Despite the desert setting, the tunnels are roughly 30 feet below grade, and in many areas, they’re fully submerged in groundwater, sand, clay, caliche, and water management, all part of the daily reality. Steve Davis: “Tunnels are 30 feet down, fully submerged in groundwater, desert myth busted.” They manage leaks through periodic sealing (foam, maintenance cycles) and now operate with stronger compliance processes for water treatment and disposal. The bigger long-term bottleneck, though, isn’t engineering; it’s approvals. Steve noted they need hundreds of permits (600+), and many can take months. Their push is toward a more streamlined, operator-style approval model, closer to how SpaceX is regulated: certify capability and safety, then execute without rearguing every step. Steve Davis: “Permitting’s the bottleneck… we’re advocating for a SpaceX-style operator license.” Fleet Scaling And The “Robovan” Strategy Right now, the fleet is about 130 Teslas, including Model Ys and Cybertrucks, tuned for tight turns and repeated high-frequency operations. The larger goal is to scale up to 1,200 vehicles as the network grows. And that’s where Robovan (high-occupancy, event-optimized vehicles) becomes strategically important. Steve’s framing was refreshingly clear: cars are more efficient for small groups. Robovans win when you can predict surges, like a Raiders game or a Sphere show, and load high-occupancy vehicles in advance. Steve Davis: “Robovans shine when everyone’s going to the same spot… that’s when you put the high occupancy vehicle in.” What’s Next: Suburbs, Regional Links, And Bigger Swing Ideas After the core network is built, they’re looking at suburban expansions (Henderson, Summerlin) via shorter demo segments first, proving utility for pedestrian and vehicle connectivity. And then Steve hinted at the kind of long-range thinking that gets people excited (and skeptical): longer-distance routes, potentially even Hyperloop concepts like Reno connections, if permitting and economics align. Steve Davis: “Suburbs like Henderson and Summerlin next… long-term? Hyperloop to Reno… private funding makes it doable if permitting catches up.” Final Take: Vegas Is Becoming A Live Testbed For A New Kind Of Transit This tour made one thing very clear: The Boring Company isn’t trying to win the “traditional public transit debate.” They’re trying to change the rules of what’s feasible, building faster, cheaper, and with an experience that people actually want to use. Watching FSD glide through the tunnels, seeing Prufrock tearing through the ground, and hearing the phased plan for the airport and Strip expansion straight from Steve… It’s hard not to feel like Vegas is a real-world preview of what mobility can look like when infrastructure is built like technology. Huge thanks to Steve Davis and The Boring Company team for the access and the time. And keep an eye out, I’m posting the full 47-minute video with this recap so you can see the ride, the sites, and the details for yourself. What do you think, would you ride the Loop instead of sitting in Strip traffic?

Tesla Owners Silicon Valley

447,027 views • 7 months ago

Dear Pioneers, Today, I decided to share this message with you because when I searched online, I noticed something very important. Many exchange markets already know that the Pi Network has GCV — Global Consensus Value. They even acknowledge that this value is community-driven. But they say it is not official, because it has not been formally endorsed by CT. Also we still have a lot of pioneers never deeply understand white paper. They always use market cap to deny GCV. All the above is because they assume Pi is another traditional crypto currency. This made me think. Not only outsiders, but even some of our own pioneers still hesitate or doubt GCV. Why? Because they don’t fully understand the concept difference between traditional crypto and Pi Network. So today, I want to make it very clear for everyone: what is value, and what is price? Most traditional cryptocurrency analysts talk about is price. They see supply and demand, market cap, and speculation. For them, cryptocurrency is just an investment, like buying a stock. In accounting, this makes crypto look like an asset — something you buy and sell at a price. But if you carefully read the Pi white paper, you will see the true vision of Dr. Nicolas. He created Pi Network because he regretted how traditional cryptocurrencies were being used. Blockchain, instead of serving humanity, became only a tool for speculation. Coins were bought and sold, but they failed to bring real value to ordinary people and to our global economy. For years, crypto has been stuck in this loop of speculation. That is why Pi Network was born. Pi is not designed to follow the same path as traditional cryptocurrencies. Its destination is not simply to be listed on exchanges. Current exchange market is the landscape on the road. It is not Pi Network destination. We already have thousands of tokens there. What we truly need is a real currency — one that can resolve economic crises, restore fairness, and bring opportunity to ordinary people. Now let’s ask: what is currency? If you search, you will find a simple definition: currency is a medium of exchange. And for any exchange medium to work, it requires consensus among the users. Everyone must agree on its value before it can be used in the economy. That is how fiat money works. A $1 bill and a $100 bill cost the same to print. The paper and ink are nearly identical. But because the government endorses it, people trust and accept it different value on the paper bill. That trust gives fiat money its power. Yet even fiat money is not always stable. In many countries, we see devaluation and inflation. The value of government money is not guaranteed but still much stable than traditional cryptocurrency. Traditional cryptocurrencies are unstable — their price rises and falls daily, driven by speculation. It can change 100% in one day. But our FIAT inflation is less than 10% in one year normally. This is why Pi Network GCV is so important. We have the opportunity to create a new kind of currency: one that is long-term stable, resistant to inflation, efficient for international settlement, and much cheaper in transfer costs. With Pi, transactions can be faster, fairer, and useful in daily life. A medium of exchange for payments, A store of value to protect wealth, And a unit of account for settlement. This is what Pi is becoming. But here is something very important to understand: the consensus of Pi does not come from the Core Team. If the Core Team could set the value, they would have done so three years ago. There is no reason tell pioneers that the value is from pioneers but they give us another value. CT cannot give us a value or reject pioneers created value— because value is not given by CT, it is created by pioneers community consensus. Our pioneering community has been working tirelessly for over three years. Every day, we generate GCV data. We also have the Industrial Alliance, where businesses and industries are beginning to adopt Pi at GCV in real supply chains. Some people believe that GCV is impossible because it may lead to business bankruptcy. However, this is a misconception. A business faces bankruptcy when its value cannot be stabilized, regardless of whether Pi is valued at $1, $10, or $100 or GCV. Significant fluctuations can cause businesses to fail; in contrast, as long as there is stability, GCV will not put businesses at risk, provided that everyone accepts it. This stability ensures that purchasing power remains consistent. Additionally, it's important to note that 100 billion Pi is not intended for use within a single year; rather, it is meant to last for centuries or even thousands of years. Therefore, there is no need to worry that we lack sufficient assets.Remember, a real currency must serve three functions: We don’t need the Core Team to endorse Pi’s value. GCV official authority is pioneers not CT. What we need is more businesses and more pioneers to accept it. Think about it: in the past, some villages used shells as money. Why? Because a cow was too big to trade for five chickens or other products. Shells were easier, and as long as everyone in the village agreed Pi had fixed value. It can be the village currency. The same is true for Pi. We have more than 60 million pioneers. If we all accept it, and businesses accept it too, then that is Pi’s true value. What makes this so special is that we are not only the users, we are also the creators. This is true decentralization. The power belongs to us. So I hope every pioneer can deeply understand this concept. Don’t doubt, but believe with confidence. What must we do now? Accept Pi in our daily lives. Share correct information and educate others. Promote GCV. Invite more merchants to join. Even though Pi is not yet fully open, businesses can already accept Pi partially — 5%, 10%, 20%, even 50% of a payment. It doesn’t matter. Every transaction, every piece of GCV data, strengthens Pi as a currency. So business don't have any loss or risk. It can only increase their reputation and sales especially now most business bankrupt because of stagflation. Our strategy can save a lot of business. So let us remember: Price belongs to assets. Value belongs to currency. And consensus belongs to pioneers. We already have the victory, because value is in our hands. Together, we will win. In fact, we have already won. Thank you. Doris Yin 🪷🪷🪷 Pi = Real Currency, Not Speculation 📷 Price belongs to assets. 📷 Value belongs to currency. 📷 Consensus belongs to pioneers. 📷 Together, we build Global Consensus Value (GCV). 📷 We are not only users, we are creators.
8:34

Dear Pioneers, Today, I decided to share this message with you because when I searched online, I noticed something very important. Many exchange markets already know that the Pi Network has GCV — Global Consensus Value. They even acknowledge that this value is community-driven. But they say it is not official, because it has not been formally endorsed by CT. Also we still have a lot of pioneers never deeply understand white paper. They always use market cap to deny GCV. All the above is because they assume Pi is another traditional crypto currency. This made me think. Not only outsiders, but even some of our own pioneers still hesitate or doubt GCV. Why? Because they don’t fully understand the concept difference between traditional crypto and Pi Network. So today, I want to make it very clear for everyone: what is value, and what is price? Most traditional cryptocurrency analysts talk about is price. They see supply and demand, market cap, and speculation. For them, cryptocurrency is just an investment, like buying a stock. In accounting, this makes crypto look like an asset — something you buy and sell at a price. But if you carefully read the Pi white paper, you will see the true vision of Dr. Nicolas. He created Pi Network because he regretted how traditional cryptocurrencies were being used. Blockchain, instead of serving humanity, became only a tool for speculation. Coins were bought and sold, but they failed to bring real value to ordinary people and to our global economy. For years, crypto has been stuck in this loop of speculation. That is why Pi Network was born. Pi is not designed to follow the same path as traditional cryptocurrencies. Its destination is not simply to be listed on exchanges. Current exchange market is the landscape on the road. It is not Pi Network destination. We already have thousands of tokens there. What we truly need is a real currency — one that can resolve economic crises, restore fairness, and bring opportunity to ordinary people. Now let’s ask: what is currency? If you search, you will find a simple definition: currency is a medium of exchange. And for any exchange medium to work, it requires consensus among the users. Everyone must agree on its value before it can be used in the economy. That is how fiat money works. A $1 bill and a $100 bill cost the same to print. The paper and ink are nearly identical. But because the government endorses it, people trust and accept it different value on the paper bill. That trust gives fiat money its power. Yet even fiat money is not always stable. In many countries, we see devaluation and inflation. The value of government money is not guaranteed but still much stable than traditional cryptocurrency. Traditional cryptocurrencies are unstable — their price rises and falls daily, driven by speculation. It can change 100% in one day. But our FIAT inflation is less than 10% in one year normally. This is why Pi Network GCV is so important. We have the opportunity to create a new kind of currency: one that is long-term stable, resistant to inflation, efficient for international settlement, and much cheaper in transfer costs. With Pi, transactions can be faster, fairer, and useful in daily life. A medium of exchange for payments, A store of value to protect wealth, And a unit of account for settlement. This is what Pi is becoming. But here is something very important to understand: the consensus of Pi does not come from the Core Team. If the Core Team could set the value, they would have done so three years ago. There is no reason tell pioneers that the value is from pioneers but they give us another value. CT cannot give us a value or reject pioneers created value— because value is not given by CT, it is created by pioneers community consensus. Our pioneering community has been working tirelessly for over three years. Every day, we generate GCV data. We also have the Industrial Alliance, where businesses and industries are beginning to adopt Pi at GCV in real supply chains. Some people believe that GCV is impossible because it may lead to business bankruptcy. However, this is a misconception. A business faces bankruptcy when its value cannot be stabilized, regardless of whether Pi is valued at $1, $10, or $100 or GCV. Significant fluctuations can cause businesses to fail; in contrast, as long as there is stability, GCV will not put businesses at risk, provided that everyone accepts it. This stability ensures that purchasing power remains consistent. Additionally, it's important to note that 100 billion Pi is not intended for use within a single year; rather, it is meant to last for centuries or even thousands of years. Therefore, there is no need to worry that we lack sufficient assets.Remember, a real currency must serve three functions: We don’t need the Core Team to endorse Pi’s value. GCV official authority is pioneers not CT. What we need is more businesses and more pioneers to accept it. Think about it: in the past, some villages used shells as money. Why? Because a cow was too big to trade for five chickens or other products. Shells were easier, and as long as everyone in the village agreed Pi had fixed value. It can be the village currency. The same is true for Pi. We have more than 60 million pioneers. If we all accept it, and businesses accept it too, then that is Pi’s true value. What makes this so special is that we are not only the users, we are also the creators. This is true decentralization. The power belongs to us. So I hope every pioneer can deeply understand this concept. Don’t doubt, but believe with confidence. What must we do now? Accept Pi in our daily lives. Share correct information and educate others. Promote GCV. Invite more merchants to join. Even though Pi is not yet fully open, businesses can already accept Pi partially — 5%, 10%, 20%, even 50% of a payment. It doesn’t matter. Every transaction, every piece of GCV data, strengthens Pi as a currency. So business don't have any loss or risk. It can only increase their reputation and sales especially now most business bankrupt because of stagflation. Our strategy can save a lot of business. So let us remember: Price belongs to assets. Value belongs to currency. And consensus belongs to pioneers. We already have the victory, because value is in our hands. Together, we will win. In fact, we have already won. Thank you. Doris Yin 🪷🪷🪷 Pi = Real Currency, Not Speculation 📷 Price belongs to assets. 📷 Value belongs to currency. 📷 Consensus belongs to pioneers. 📷 Together, we build Global Consensus Value (GCV). 📷 We are not only users, we are creators.

Doris Yin 东方紫莲🪷

30,474 views • 1 year ago

let’s start where this actually lives, not where you want it to live. with the math. the last three weeks of dynamite: 👉 765k 👉 730k 👉 654k that is not a ramp. that is not momentum. that is not “heating up” into a conversion window. that is a decline into it. you are looking at a -111k drop in two weeks, roughly 14–15% contraction from the high to the low, at the exact point where a traditional ppv cycle should be stabilizing or expanding. instead, you have compression. average those three weeks and you land at roughly ~716k linear viewers. that is your real, observable, measurable audience. not hypothetical reach not cumulative impressions not social engagement proxies actual people sitting down and watching the show in the time slot that matters for conversion. i’ve already laid out in detail what the max numbers actually represent and how simulcast behavior works, so i’m not going to re-litigate all of that here. but it matters enough to say again clearly: max is not a second audience at scale. it is a distribution extension that splits the same audience. it does not double your reach. it does not materially expand your funnel. it shifts a portion of existing behavior from one pipe to another. the short version is already established: 👉 max is not additive at scale 👉 max is a split of the same audience 👉 max realistically contributes ~50k–150k, ~75k center so your total reachable audience on a good night is: 👉 ~790k–800k all-in that’s the funnel. that’s the ceiling. that’s the number you are working from. that’s the universe that can possibly convert into a paid transaction. not hypothetical not inflated not “what if” that is the real audience number. now take the number dave is floating: 👉 ~143k ppv buys run the only equation that matters: 👉 143k ÷ 800k = ~17.9% conversion stop there for a second Dave Meltzer is unironically asserting that nearly 1 out of every 5 viewers is converting into a $40–$50 transaction in 2026 in a market with: – no centralized ppv infrastructure – subscription-first behavior – widespread piracy – fragmented pricing (domestic, max discount, vpn international) – a declining weekly audience trend that is the claim. not “strong performance.” not “better than expected.” not “up year over year.” the claim is nearly 1 in 5 viewers converting into a $40–$50 transaction in 2026. this is where the conversation should end, because that number does not exist anywhere in modern media behavior. it doesn’t exist in boxing. it doesn’t exist in ufc. it doesn’t exist in any scaled transactional model operating in the current environment. and more importantly, it didn’t exist consistently even when the infrastructure supporting it was intact. again, this is the part people either don’t understand or choose to ignore: ppv is not just a pricing model. it is an infrastructure model. and that infrastructure is gone. for decades, the backbone of ppv was inDemand. that system wasn’t just pushing content out to cable homes. it was aggregating buys, standardizing reporting, and creating a reconciliation layer that allowed promoters, distributors, and networks to operate off the same dataset. if you were serious about this business, you could triangulate numbers. you could get within a narrow band of reality because the pipes were real and the accounting was shared. that system shut down in 2025. 👉 143k ppv buys is not an aggressive take 👉 it is not an optimistic take 👉 it is a structurally impossible take because we know what real conversion looks like. we do not need to guess. it has been modeled across combat sports, boxing, ufc, and multiple transactional platforms. the ranges are stable: 👉 1–3% → normal 👉 3–5% → strong 👉 5%+ → elite and rare, reserved for events with massive cultural heat and crossover appeal those ranges were established when the infrastructure was intact, pricing was more controlled, piracy was less frictionless, and distribution was more centralized. today, every one of those conditions is worse. pricing is fragmented. you have $49.99 standard, $39.99 through max, international pricing accessible through vpn, and a piracy environment where high-quality streams are available instantly. that is a high-friction, high-leakage system. so conversion should compress, not expand. now apply real-world conversion to your real audience: 👉 800k × 2% = 16k buys 👉 800k × 3% = 24k buys 👉 800k × 5% = 40k buys that’s your range. 👉 ~15k–35k realistic 👉 ~20k–30k as the most defensible center 👉 ~40k reasonable given the strength of the headliners now invert the math, because this is where the claim completely collapses. if you want to justify 143k buys at even a healthy 3% conversion rate, you need roughly 4.7 million engaged viewers. so the question becomes extremely simple: where are the other four million people? 👉they are not on linear television. 👉they are not on max. 👉they are not showing up in any digital engagement metrics that correlate with that level of demand. 👉they are not visible anywhere in the ecosystem that would need to exist to support that level of conversion. 👉👉👉👉👉 they do not exist. and this is before you even account for the trend line moving the wrong way. you are not converting off a growing base. you are converting off a shrinking one. you are not building urgency. you are losing reach. that matters, because conversion does not happen in a vacuum. it happens on top of momentum, visibility, and audience expansion. when those inputs are declining, conversion does not spike to historic highs. it compresses further. the biggest fights in the world are no longer relying on ppv as their primary distribution model. they are moving to platforms that guarantee reach and revenue up front. the most recent example should end this conversation for anyone actually paying attention: netflix just locked tyson fury vs anthony joshua for a major global fight this august. that is one of the biggest possible matchups in boxing. in any previous era, that is a premium ppv event with massive buy expectations, heavy marketing, and a full transactional rollout. instead, it is going to a subscription platform. why? because the economics are better. the reach is global. the friction is lower. the platform values engagement at scale over one-off purchases. that is where the industry is. so when you are being asked to believe that a weekly wrestling property with a ~700k linear audience, declining into its ppv window, is somehow generating six-figure transactional buys inside a subscription platform in 2026, you are not just being asked to accept a number. dave is asking you to ignore the direction of the entire market. and that’s before you even bring in platform behavior. max is not a live sports-first platform. it does not behave like one. when max has something it cares about, it promotes it aggressively. homepage rails. push notifications. press releases. talent integration. cross-platform amplification. you do not see that here. and that absence is not accidental. platforms surface what they want you to see. they amplify what drives engagement and revenue. if ppv at scale were happening inside that ecosystem, it would be visible. it would be part of the narrative. it would be monetized loudly. it isn’t. and that’s before you even factor in the other variables i’ve broken down in detail before: 👉 i’ve already debunked why the max numbers people are throwing around don’t make sense 👉 i’ve already explained what the linear number actually represents and what it doesn’t 👉 i’ve already mapped the media rights landscape in 2026, including how these properties are being evaluated ahead of the paramount–wbd merger the wsj reports could close as early as july so when you’re being told by dave that a property with a ~700k weekly audience trending downward into a ppv window is generating six-figure transactional buys at premium pricing inside a subscription platform in 2026, you’re not being given data. you’re being given a number that does not reconcile with anything else in the system. that’s math. stop it - 45
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let’s start where this actually lives, not where you want it to live. with the math. the last three weeks of dynamite: 👉 765k 👉 730k 👉 654k that is not a ramp. that is not momentum. that is not “heating up” into a conversion window. that is a decline into it. you are looking at a -111k drop in two weeks, roughly 14–15% contraction from the high to the low, at the exact point where a traditional ppv cycle should be stabilizing or expanding. instead, you have compression. average those three weeks and you land at roughly ~716k linear viewers. that is your real, observable, measurable audience. not hypothetical reach not cumulative impressions not social engagement proxies actual people sitting down and watching the show in the time slot that matters for conversion. i’ve already laid out in detail what the max numbers actually represent and how simulcast behavior works, so i’m not going to re-litigate all of that here. but it matters enough to say again clearly: max is not a second audience at scale. it is a distribution extension that splits the same audience. it does not double your reach. it does not materially expand your funnel. it shifts a portion of existing behavior from one pipe to another. the short version is already established: 👉 max is not additive at scale 👉 max is a split of the same audience 👉 max realistically contributes ~50k–150k, ~75k center so your total reachable audience on a good night is: 👉 ~790k–800k all-in that’s the funnel. that’s the ceiling. that’s the number you are working from. that’s the universe that can possibly convert into a paid transaction. not hypothetical not inflated not “what if” that is the real audience number. now take the number dave is floating: 👉 ~143k ppv buys run the only equation that matters: 👉 143k ÷ 800k = ~17.9% conversion stop there for a second Dave Meltzer is unironically asserting that nearly 1 out of every 5 viewers is converting into a $40–$50 transaction in 2026 in a market with: – no centralized ppv infrastructure – subscription-first behavior – widespread piracy – fragmented pricing (domestic, max discount, vpn international) – a declining weekly audience trend that is the claim. not “strong performance.” not “better than expected.” not “up year over year.” the claim is nearly 1 in 5 viewers converting into a $40–$50 transaction in 2026. this is where the conversation should end, because that number does not exist anywhere in modern media behavior. it doesn’t exist in boxing. it doesn’t exist in ufc. it doesn’t exist in any scaled transactional model operating in the current environment. and more importantly, it didn’t exist consistently even when the infrastructure supporting it was intact. again, this is the part people either don’t understand or choose to ignore: ppv is not just a pricing model. it is an infrastructure model. and that infrastructure is gone. for decades, the backbone of ppv was inDemand. that system wasn’t just pushing content out to cable homes. it was aggregating buys, standardizing reporting, and creating a reconciliation layer that allowed promoters, distributors, and networks to operate off the same dataset. if you were serious about this business, you could triangulate numbers. you could get within a narrow band of reality because the pipes were real and the accounting was shared. that system shut down in 2025. 👉 143k ppv buys is not an aggressive take 👉 it is not an optimistic take 👉 it is a structurally impossible take because we know what real conversion looks like. we do not need to guess. it has been modeled across combat sports, boxing, ufc, and multiple transactional platforms. the ranges are stable: 👉 1–3% → normal 👉 3–5% → strong 👉 5%+ → elite and rare, reserved for events with massive cultural heat and crossover appeal those ranges were established when the infrastructure was intact, pricing was more controlled, piracy was less frictionless, and distribution was more centralized. today, every one of those conditions is worse. pricing is fragmented. you have $49.99 standard, $39.99 through max, international pricing accessible through vpn, and a piracy environment where high-quality streams are available instantly. that is a high-friction, high-leakage system. so conversion should compress, not expand. now apply real-world conversion to your real audience: 👉 800k × 2% = 16k buys 👉 800k × 3% = 24k buys 👉 800k × 5% = 40k buys that’s your range. 👉 ~15k–35k realistic 👉 ~20k–30k as the most defensible center 👉 ~40k reasonable given the strength of the headliners now invert the math, because this is where the claim completely collapses. if you want to justify 143k buys at even a healthy 3% conversion rate, you need roughly 4.7 million engaged viewers. so the question becomes extremely simple: where are the other four million people? 👉they are not on linear television. 👉they are not on max. 👉they are not showing up in any digital engagement metrics that correlate with that level of demand. 👉they are not visible anywhere in the ecosystem that would need to exist to support that level of conversion. 👉👉👉👉👉 they do not exist. and this is before you even account for the trend line moving the wrong way. you are not converting off a growing base. you are converting off a shrinking one. you are not building urgency. you are losing reach. that matters, because conversion does not happen in a vacuum. it happens on top of momentum, visibility, and audience expansion. when those inputs are declining, conversion does not spike to historic highs. it compresses further. the biggest fights in the world are no longer relying on ppv as their primary distribution model. they are moving to platforms that guarantee reach and revenue up front. the most recent example should end this conversation for anyone actually paying attention: netflix just locked tyson fury vs anthony joshua for a major global fight this august. that is one of the biggest possible matchups in boxing. in any previous era, that is a premium ppv event with massive buy expectations, heavy marketing, and a full transactional rollout. instead, it is going to a subscription platform. why? because the economics are better. the reach is global. the friction is lower. the platform values engagement at scale over one-off purchases. that is where the industry is. so when you are being asked to believe that a weekly wrestling property with a ~700k linear audience, declining into its ppv window, is somehow generating six-figure transactional buys inside a subscription platform in 2026, you are not just being asked to accept a number. dave is asking you to ignore the direction of the entire market. and that’s before you even bring in platform behavior. max is not a live sports-first platform. it does not behave like one. when max has something it cares about, it promotes it aggressively. homepage rails. push notifications. press releases. talent integration. cross-platform amplification. you do not see that here. and that absence is not accidental. platforms surface what they want you to see. they amplify what drives engagement and revenue. if ppv at scale were happening inside that ecosystem, it would be visible. it would be part of the narrative. it would be monetized loudly. it isn’t. and that’s before you even factor in the other variables i’ve broken down in detail before: 👉 i’ve already debunked why the max numbers people are throwing around don’t make sense 👉 i’ve already explained what the linear number actually represents and what it doesn’t 👉 i’ve already mapped the media rights landscape in 2026, including how these properties are being evaluated ahead of the paramount–wbd merger the wsj reports could close as early as july so when you’re being told by dave that a property with a ~700k weekly audience trending downward into a ppv window is generating six-figure transactional buys at premium pricing inside a subscription platform in 2026, you’re not being given data. you’re being given a number that does not reconcile with anything else in the system. that’s math. stop it - 45

Nick LoPiccolo

20,695 views • 4 months ago