Biggest mistake investors are making with AI valuations
Biggest mistake investors are making with AI valuations
Description
Investors are incorrectly valuing expensive AI companies using traditional high margin software business models
Key Takeaways
- 1AI companies face higher operational costs per query compared to traditional software companies
- 2Traditional SaaS companies often operate with high margins of 80 to 85 percent
- 3High compute costs required for AI models hinder the profit margins expected by traditional SaaS investors
- 4Current AI valuations may be overblown when compared to the structural cost differences of SaaS
Transcript
When you looked at that Anthropic S1, what was your, you know, what was your initial reaction to that evaluation? So I think, uh, when I saw that evaluation, I felt this, this seems a bit um, starting to get overblown. Um, and I think this is for a couple of reasons. Um, I think people are generally uh, making a mistake in that, obviously we've seen a technology transformation that we've not seen before, and this has created like the hype that it has, and deservedly, but I don't think this necessary this necessarily translates into the valuation that you would expect from typical SaaS companies. Um, and that's just because of the the way they operate and the kind of margins that you expect. So, SaaS companies generally, they have like maybe 80-85% margins on on their products. It doesn't really cost them much to produce what they do. Obviously, now we're seeing amazing intelligence, some call it super intelligence and then obviously people cannot um see why this would not be valued more than typical SaaS companies because they are providing a lot more value. But I think just the way it works, um, we would start to see that it costs too much to be able to um provide this super intelligence. And because of this, um they just would not be able to see the type of profit that um typical SaaS companies
