Strategic Foresight - Insights in Business and Technology

 Generative AI - Where is The Growth?  The current state of the Gen AI industry shows that big tech companies, especially hyper scalers, dominate the scene. They are the primary drivers of innovation and growth, focused on achieving long-term sustainability by shifting their focus from selling computing to selling generic and specialised model services with higher margins.  This has led to increased interest from venture capitalists, resulting in numerous startups focused on selling model-based services and integrating with existing apps and services. The low barriers to entry make it easy for startups to grow in the short term, but sustainability is challenging without a unique proposition. Many startups will likely fail, with some being acquired by larger companies.  Software providers such as Salesforce, Oracle, and Workday are also integrating AI services, either by building or purchasing specialised services to defend and survive the industry changes. Future of Language Models Lar

Palo Alto Networks - Leader in Cyber Security   Key Indicators  Market Cap – 73.07 Bn EV – 72.95 Bn Debt - $2.26Bn P/B – 41.79 (Goodwill from M&A)  P/E (Trailing) – 184.99 (Growth)  P/E (Forward) – 44.44 (Growth) Economic Moat: Wide (product, innovative)    Palo Alto Network provides network security solutions. The company's solution offerings spread across network security, cloud-native application protection, security operations, and endpoint security and are available across multiple key industries. Cybersecurity has 5 stage lifecycle - Identify, Protect, Detect, Recover and Restore. This cyclical process is essential for protecting an organisation from cyber threats. It helps to ensure that corporations are constantly prepared and able to respond to evolving threats. Dominating Growth Strategy Since Nikesh Joined as CEO in 2018, Palo Alto Networks has grown with a CAGR of 24.9% with market cap. surging by $48Bn to $73.1Bn. This growth is spurred by M&A activity, improvi

 IBM a Tech Giant - How it Lost its Way Key Indicators  Market Cap – $129.39Bn EV – $173.4Bn Debt - $57.5Bn, Cash - $17.9Bn  P/B – 8.57  P/E (Trailing) – 60.44 (Growth)  P/E (Forward) – 14.3 (Div. Centric,  No Growth) Economic Moat: Narrow (under threat)   Where is the Growth How it Lost its Way IBM a more than 100-year-old company that used to be a trendsetter in the technology space has become a laggard and is struggling to get its Mojo back. It is facing headwinds, and it is not clear how it will modernise its business. Today, IBM has 3 business segments, Infrastructure, Software and Consulting, and all of them are declining YoY. There are multiple reasons why IBM's revenues are declining except for the minor surge in 2021, and 2022. Let's look at the key reasons. Unlike its peer group players like Salesforce and ServiceNow which specialises in providing packaged application software in the Cloud (SaaS), IBM has no application software to offer. Instead, IBM's software o

Tesla - It's not a Car, It's an AI Device on Wheels Tesla - Evolution Tesla - AI Device on Wheels Teslas Secret of Success Anecdote: In 2013, Elon Musk sent a meeting request to Apple's CEO Tim Cook, but Tim refused to meet him.  Musk confirmed this by tweeting in Dec 2020, that he had tried to sell Tesla to Apple for 1/10 of its current value during "the darkest days of the Model 3 program ."  It's still a mystery why Apple didn't end up buying Tesla, but there are a few theories out there. One possibility is that Apple's CEO, Tim Cook, just wasn't interested in acquiring Tesla. Another theory is that Cook was worried about some of the difficulties Tesla was going through at the time, like production delays and financial losses. Lastly, it's also possible that the two companies couldn't agree on a fair price for Tesla. Occasionally, there is a rumour that Elon Musk aspired to become the CEO of Apple . Following Steve Jobs' passing in

Taiwan Semiconductor (TSMC) - The Chipmaker That Runs The World Key Indicators   Domain: Semiconductors  Comp. (Chip Manf) – Samsung, SMIC, GFS, UMC Growth Segment – HPC AI Chips (Up) Economic Moat – Wide Cyclical - Yes Key Customers (Total 530+) TSMC's revenue is made up of 26% from Apple and 7% from Nvidia. Apple has a 10-year partnership with the chip maker.  Apple designs chips for iPhones and Mac computers, while Google designs Tensor Chips for Pixel smartphones. Qualcomm and MediaTek design processors for Android phones. Nvidia designs Gaming and Artificial Intelligence (AI) processors and AMD and Nvidia design advanced processors for Tesla.  TSMC chips are also used by major cloud providers like AWS, MSFT, Google, Oracle, and IBM for data centres, networking, and software. Broadcom designs chips for broadband and wireless markets.   TSMC is able to offer its customers its manufacturing capabilities in the areas of Smartphones, High-Performance Computing (HPC), Internet of Th

 Oracle's Evolution - Database Leader to AI Innovator   Market Cap – 290.15 Bn EV – 369.18Bn Debt - $88.94Bn (High), Cash – $12.08Bn  P/B – 122.43 (intangibles in the book)  P/E (Trailing) – 31.05 (Growth)  P/E (Forward) – 19.43 (Growth) Economic Moat: Wide (product sales, under threat)    Domain: Enterprise Software and Database Comp. (Business Apps) – IBM, SAP, Workday, MSFT, Salesforce Comp. (Database) – MongoDB, MySQL, Cassandra, AWS, Azure, IBM  Growth Segment – OCI (Up)  Oracle's Facing Headwinds - In the Age of No SQL The emergence of Digital Transformation in the early 2010s has brought multiple challenges to Oracle's relational database segment. Today, it is facing stiff competition from both commercial and open-source vendors. It must constantly innovate and create new products and services to stay ahead of the database market. Despite the challenges, it is rising to the occasion by developing its own cloud-native database products and investing in artificial inte

Google the King of Search - What the Future Beholds in the AI World  Google's Evolution   Google King of Search - Where is the Growth Google Search - Economics with Gen AI Google Cloud's - AI and ML Play Googles AI Journey  Googles $100Bn Blunder Google - Risks to its Growth My other posts on  AI Value Chain ,  Amazon the King of Retail -WhyAWS is the Crown Jewel ,  Microsoft the King of AI in Software ,  Salesforce under the AI Cloud  and how  Generative AI can transform Telecoms ,  Energy and Utilities Source:  Seekingalpha ,  Bloomberg , Martinfowler.com,  Databricks.com , Linkedin,  Nvidia ,  Google ,  AWS ,  Fourweek MBA Blog ,  Amazon

 Nvidia Godfather of AI - Why the Market is Bullish What is their Economic Moat Where is the Growth Dot Com Era - History Repeating Itself  Nvidia - Under The Hood  Two CEO's Personal and Professional Relationship Risks to its Growth My other posts on  AI Value Chain ,   Microsoft King of AI in Software ,  Salesforce under the AI Cloud , AWS is the Crown Jewel and how  Generative AI can transform Telecoms ,  Energy and Utilities

Microsoft's transformation under Satya is phenomenal, from a PC dominant player to being called the King of AI in Software and Cloud.   Where is the Growth Partnership with OpenAI Why Microsoft is called as The King of Generative AI in Software and Cloud.  My other posts on  AI Value Chain ,   Microsoft The King of AI in Software ,  Salesforce under the AI Cloud  ,  AWS is the Crown Jewel  and how  Generative AI can transform Telecoms ,  Energy and Utilities Source:  Seekingalpha ,  Bloomberg , Martinfowler.com,  Databricks.com  Linkedin,  Nvidia ,  Google ,  AWS

 Salesforce - Under The AI Cloud  -- Marc Known for his mission and marketing mantra, ”The End of Software" Revolutionised the CRM industry by introducing Cloud-based service.  Despite facing tough competition from companies like Oracle, SAP, and Microsoft, it has emerged as the leader in this field. Today it commands 23% of the Global Market Share. Strategically acquired companies like Tableau, Slack (Data & Analytics) and MuleSoft (PaaS) to build a platform-centric flywheel by integrating CRM and Business System applications. With a Market Cap of US $209Bn and a Robust Economic Moat, it can become a $500Bn company by the end of this decade. Strategic shift from Competition (MSFT 365, ORCL) to Cooperation (Google, OpenAI) Risks to AI Ambitions My other posts on  AI Value Chain , Microsoft Transformation - The King of AI in Software and Cloud   and how  Generative AI can transform Telecoms ,  Energy and Utilities Source:  Seekingalpha ,  Bloomberg , Martinfowler.com,  Databric

 NVIDIA - The Godfather of AI - Why the Market is Bullish Key Message Q2 FY23 -  The data centre business, driven by demand from cloud providers and internet companies, played a vital role, contributing $10.32 billion (76% of total revenue). Gaming revenue also grew positively to $2.49 billion. Products like the H100 tensor core GPU, DGX supercomputers, inference platforms, and AI Infrastructure-as-a-Service in the cloud are poised to transform AI delivery, partnered with major cloud providers. Today Nvidia commands 70% of the AI Chip market. Other Key players are AMD, ARM (Softbank) and Intel.  If you take the other Nvidia divisions separate them out and add them together, revenues were up by 9.9% to $3.18Bn. That’s another way of saying that the Nvidia datacentre business is now 3.2x bigger than the rest of Nvidia, and the datacentre business now accounts for 76.4% of the overall sales for the company. A single chip can cost upwards of US$40K  and Open AI used about 10,000 of them to