Q2 2025 Investor Letter: Zoom Out—A View From the Edge of Transformation
Three emergent themes shaping the decade ahead: Chinese innovation, autonomous transport, and intelligent automation.
https://t.co/kqmCIpvtVN
This week, we published our longform deep-dive on Amazon AI, robotics, and automation.
It’s based on countless interviews, extensive firsthand research, and in-person site visits.
And it’s one of the more mind-blowing stories I’ve ever worked on.
Very cool breakthrough by our physical AI and robotics teams-- Vulcan is the first robot that combines sight and touch, and can feel its way through cluttered spaces the way humans do. Vulcan is helping make work safer by handling ergonomically challenging tasks, while creating opportunities for our teammates to grow their skills in robotics maintenance. https://t.co/pJbXOFMyT3
Our Portfolio Manager @DanCrowleyNVC discussed his views on $AMZN, $TSLA, and $BABA this morning on @BNNBloomberg.
Topics discussed:
- $AMZN moat and continued growth
- $BABA AI progress and expanding cloud business
- $TSLA real-world AI is coming
https://t.co/IsNMvfMqfY
Real world AI is coming and will have far larger effects than people are anticipating. Market has been lulled into a sense of complacency around FSD.
If we look at the rate of improvement since V12 was launched last year the trajectory puts Tesla on a path to solve autonomy in relatively short order.
For broad autonomy adoption a scalable solution needs to work on a unit economics level. Cheap hardware sophisticated software - geographically distributed.
$TSLA
"Artificial intelligence, much like electricity in the early days, is transitioning from a series of impressive demonstrations to becoming a foundational pillar of business."
@EricMarkowitz@JeffBezos
NEW: Nightview Capital Portfolio Manager @DanCrowleyNVC spoke with @joshuahlipton this afternoon on @YahooFinance to discuss his views on Tesla, Amazon, and the coming boom in real-world AI, robotics, and intelligent automation.
Watch it here: https://t.co/uH2Hx0Ogr5
Belated passing to a musical legend Zakir Hussain.
I am grateful to have had the pleasure of seeing him perform last year. It was inspirational.
Always awe inspiring (and exceedingly rare) to witness a demonstration of true life long mastery.
Zakir Hussain Meets Berklee - Ustad Zakir Hussain Tabla Solo https://t.co/a8FAsko573 via @YouTube
New essay from @NightviewCap CIO @ArneAlsin:
Confessions of a Crazy Stock Picker Part II: Tesla and the Art of Long-Term Thinking
https://t.co/FsAIEbehM0 $tsla
We just published our latest fact sheet. It includes:
-Top Holdings
-Performance
-Philosophy
-Gaining an Edge
-Research and Investment Process
-How to Invest
Additional disclosures and PDF here:
https://t.co/9Qq9Lx8YSm $TSLA $AMZN $GS $SCHW $MS $WYNN $DKNG $H $MGM $QCOM
Outside of entirely new business lines (FSD, etc.) excited about possibility for AI & robotics to accelerate top and bottom line expansion at more mature businesses.
Jassy's insights at re:Invent were eye-opening: leveraging AI and robotics has cut holiday season cost-to-serve by ~25% (optimistic or not still impressive). Time to serve also continues to compress.
By reducing time / cost whole new retail segments open up that were resistant to e-commerce. Increasing both revenue and operating income. Highly encouraging.
$AMZN
Read our Q2 2024 deep-dive on $AMZN:
"One of the traits we most admired about the company was management’s obsession with improving the customer value proposition—even if that meant reducing margins and the company’s bottom line.
The underlying bet that Jeff Bezos was making—across both the retail and cloud operations of the business—was as much about scale as it was about human behavior."
https://t.co/45OsPB0LMM
This cycle requires scale and pre-existing platforms. Amazon has both in spades. Additionally, two key themes we believe have decade(s) long transformational power at play here. Automation & AI.
We always say our favorite moats are those that require both significant buildout time and significant capex. We can find no better example of this than Amazon retail.
AWS continues to grow at a high-teens rate while maintaining impressive EBIT. In retail, margin expansion is expected through technological efficiencies and higher margin business lines. Together, these factors should ultimately drive higher-than-expected free cash flow, even with elevated CAPEX.
$AMZN
Energy storage growth, inflection in gross margin, EPS - all great. But more importantly..
FCF of $2.7 bn. while funding sufficiently high levels of CAPEX de-risks thesis further. Ability to invest in autonomy (and more) while materially increasing cash balance impressive.
Incredibly compelling.
$TSLA