# MBI Deep Dives
> Investment Research
Public Ghost content for AI and LLM tooling. Use `/llms-full.txt` for consolidated page and post context.
Append `.md` to any post or page URL to get the content in Markdown (for example, `/example-post.md`).

## Pages
- [About MBI](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/about-mbi.md) - MBI is the abbreviation for “Mostly Borrowed Ideas”, which is my pseudonym on Twitter. Why “Mostly Borrowed Ideas?” As a generalist, I do not have a background in any particular sector. I enjoy navigating across industries, businesses, and countries to learn, understand, and connect the dots. In an…
- [Account](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/account.md)
- [Audio](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/audio.md)
- [Start Here](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/home.md) - Welcome to MBI Deep Dives. I publish one in-depth research on a publicly listed company every month. Subscribers can download the pdf of the deep dives as well as detailed financial models, all of which can be found here. Here are some sample deep dives you can explore before subscribing to my rese…
- [Latest Posts](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/latest-posts.md) - Click here
- [Log In](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/login.md) - Log in New? Subscribe here If you have any problem logging in, please contact rezwan@mbi-deepdives.com
- [Deep Dives](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/models.md)
- [Portfolio](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/portfolio.md)
- [Privacy Policy](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/privacy.md) - Privacy Policy — MBI Deep Dives Connector for Muse Effective date: October 2026 Operator: MBI Deep Dives LLC ("we", "us") Contact: rezwan@mbi-deepdives.com This policy describes how the MBI Deep Dives connector for Muse ("the connector") handles information. What the connector does The connector le…
- [Terms of Service](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/terms.md) - Terms of Service — MBI Deep Dives Connector for Muse Effective date: October 2026 Operator: MBI Deep Dives LLC ("we", "us") Contact: rezwan@mbi-deepdives.com 1. The service The MBI Deep Dives connector for Muse ("the connector") is a free tool that lets Meta Muse search and read MBI Deep Dives' fre…
- [Thank You](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/thank-you.md) - Your subscription has been set up successfully.
- [Twitter Threads](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/twitter-threads.md)

## Posts
- [Is Microsoft Over-Earning on OpenAI?](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/msft-oai.md) - I have been trying to work out whether Microsoft is over-earning on its relationship with OpenAI.
- [Meta’s GEM, Part 2: Finding the Scaling Law](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/meta-gem2.md) - Last year, I first wrote about Meta’s Generative Ads Recommendation Model or GEM. Over the last couple of years, Meta published several blog posts covering different facets of their ad infrastructure in the age of AI.
- [TSMC 3Q’26: Easing Off the Brake](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/tsm3q26.md) - Last year, Ben Thompson described TSMC as the brake on the AI buildout: “If Altman and OpenAI are the ones pushing to accelerate the AI infrastructure buildout, it’s Wei and TSMC that are the brakes.” TSMC has been easing off that brake all year.
- [ASML 3Q’26: 2030 Arrived Four Years Early](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/asml3q26.md) - I know the semi stocks are getting shot at the market due to Anthropic’s ARR “miss” yesterday, but ASML’s 3Q’26 earnings was not the place to look to gauge any hiccup in AI.
- [The Asymmetry of Selling Compute](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/the-asymmetry-of-selling-compute.md) - A couple of readers recently emailed me a paper by Columbia Business School professor Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh.
- [Narrowing the Downside on the Labs](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/labs-narrowing-downside.md) - Given the private market valuation of OpenAI and Anthropic, it does feel a little strange for me to claim the labs may be better business than appreciated by investors. But I do notice a persistent skepticism among many investors about the labs business model.
- [A Month with Muse](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/muse-month.md) - On September 8 this year, Meta launched Muse. The very next day, I shared my first impressions of Muse, and in that piece, I promised I would share more thoughts in a month on how I’m actually using the product.
- [Room at the Top](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/room-at-the-top.md) - I came across this astonishing chart from Michael Batnick yesterday showing that the combined market cap of the bottom 434 companies in the S&P 500 equals that of the top 5. It is the time series, though, that drives home just how unusually concentrated the index has become over the last 30 years.
- [Quantifying My AWS "Vibes"](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/aws-vibes.md) - I actually laughed out loud when I came across this meme yesterday. With (near to medium term) unfalsifiable bearish takes flying around for non-AI stocks, I sympathize a bit with the complaints about the rise of “vibes” based investing.
- [ezCater and the Other Half of Uber's FCF](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/uber-fcf.md) - Barely a week after my Uber Deep Dive, Uber announced yesterday it is buying ezCater, the largest online catering marketplace in the US, for $2.3 Billion in cash.
- [When the Ads Come to the Data](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/ads-data.md) - Last week, I wrote why Muse may never need ads. That piece traveled quite a bit, and interestingly, while I received glowing praise from some readers, I have also heard from people who vehemently disagreed with the word “never”.
- [The Thin Margin of Safety in Selling Compute](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/crwv.md) - I came across this funny tweet last week that says “the best way to signal status in the Bay Area is to act noticeably stressed about lack of compute”. Every earnings season, all the hyperscalers and neoclouds remind us how demand for compute is outstripping supply.
- [The Ever-Widening Overton Window of AI Safety](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/ai-overton-window.md) - AI alignment or safety used to be bit of a fringe issue primarily discussed in some corners in the Silicon Valley offline or in the pages of LessWrong online.
- [Why Muse May Never Need Ads](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/no-ads-muse.md) - It didn’t take too long for the app layer to start to respond to Muse. Amazon, of course, already blocked Muse.
- [MBI at The Synopsis Podcast](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/mbi-synopsis.md) - I had a great chat with Drew Cohen on 'The Synopsis' podcast. We dove deep into how AI agents like Muse could impact consumer internet platforms such as Booking, Airbnb, DoorDash, and Amazon.
- [The Case for Meta Enterprise Platform](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/meta-enterprise.md) - Meta seems to be announcing something everyday these days. Yesterday, the company announced “Meta Enterprise Platform”.
- [Uber: The Aggregator on Trial](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/uber.md) - You can listen to the Deep Dive here The very first Deep Dive I wrote for MBI Deep Dives, back in 2020, was on Uber, and a lot has obviously changed since then. Uber in 2019 did ~$65 Billion of Gross Bookings while burning ~$4.9 Billion of Free Cash Flow (FCF).
- [A Portfolio Change](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/a-portfolio-change.md) - I know I promised an Uber Deep Dive this week, but I am pushing that to next Monday. In the meantime, I wanted to share some quick thoughts on a portfolio change I made today, which I'll discuss behind the paywall.
- [A Few Changes to My Publishing Schedule](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/a-few-changes-to-my-publishing-schedule.md) - I would like to make a few changes to my schedule. I am currently working on my Uber Deep Dive but, frankly speaking, I am further behind than I would like to be.
- [What Anthropic's 25 Gigawatts Can Earn in 2030](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/anthropic-2030.md) - On Wednesday I showed what OpenAI has to believe to break even in 2030 and said I would run the same exercise for Anthropic. However, when I started working on Anthropic, I realized the relevant questions are a bit different for the company.
- [Groceries, Aggregators, and Agents](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/groceries-aggregators-and-agents.md) - Just over two and a half decades after Walmart was founded, the company entered the grocery industry in 1988 and then in just thirteen years after getting into this business, Walmart became the largest grocery player in the US.
- [What You Have to Believe for OpenAI to Break Even in 2030](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/oai-breakeven.md) - Programming Note: MBI Deep Dives will be off tomorrow, but I will be back on Friday. Yesterday I mentioned that I would publish my work on OpenAI today.
- [My Last Financial Model](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/my-last-financial-model.md) - A couple of months ago, I wrote about Terence Tao’s proclamation that mathematics is evolving from an “era of proof scarcity to an era of proof abundance”. The more I use the frontier models, the more I realize this may be the eventual fate for most knowledge work itself.
- [Meta’s Trojan Horse for the Consumer Internet](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/meta-muse.md) - When I wrote my “first impression of Muse” piece last week, I promised that I would write a follow-up piece on how I am using it after a month. I may still do that, but after using Muse for the last five days, I feel compelled to share my updated thoughts right now.
- [Why “Affordable Luxury” Doesn't Compound](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/affordable_luxury.md) - Programming Note: MBI Deep Dives will be off during the weekend and I will resume the daily posting cadence from Monday next week. Even though I sold my Lululemon position last year, I have to admit I don’t quite feel much relief for avoiding the 50% drawdown experienced this year.
- [Muse Implications for Consumer Internet](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/muse-marketplace.md) - Since I have received several emails and messages from readers after publishing my first impression of Muse yesterday, I want to elaborate behind the paywall a bit more on how I think agents such as Muse can have an impact on some of the consumer internet companies.
- [First Impression of Muse](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/muse.md) - Meta launched Muse yesterday which is Meta’s attempt to be your personal agent to get things done for you. Meta’s launch blog post as well as its approach to security are both worth reading.
- [Pulte’s Bag of Tricks](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/pulte.md) - While covering FICO’s FY 3Q’26 earnings, I wrote: “… there is no doubt that Pulte’s FHFA is overtly hostile to FICO and perhaps investors are concerned that Pulte may have more tricks in his bag to truly hurt FICO’s compounding machine.” On Thursday evening last week, Pulte pulled a few of those
- [A quick update on Deep Dives](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/a-quick-update-on-deep-dives.md) - I won’t be publishing anything new today, but I wanted to share a short update on the Deep Dives I’ve been working on. Last month, I started working on Micron to understand the memory complex a bit better.
- [What can I learn from my 20-month-old son?](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/learning_from_son.md) - Programming Note: As a reminder, every Sunday, I write pieces that are predominantly based on personal experiences which may or may not be loosely connected with investing.
- [Bypassing RevenueBench to Buy the Feedback Loop](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/revenuebench.md) - We have seen an accelerating pace of model release cadence over the last few weeks. Frankly speaking, this may be a new normal for the rest of this year instead of being an anomaly.
- [Spare a Thought for Broadcom Shareholders](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/avgo3q26.md) - After Nvidia’s earnings, I was almost shocked to see how the company’s estimates for next year surpassed far above consensus estimates and yet the stock has barely outperformed the S&P 500 (and actually underperformed both the QQQ and the semiconductor ETF).
- [Notes from a Dasher Shift, and the Drone Delivery Future](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/dasher.md) - Programming Note: I will take a day off tomorrow, and will be back with daily posting schedule on Friday. DoorDash has a program called “WeDash” which requires its employees do delivery shifts every year.
- [The Bid Shading Threat to Amazon Advertising](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/amzn_ads.md) - Almost six years ago, NYT published a critical piece on Amazon’s business practices with 3P sellers. The reason I still remember that piece after all these years is that the article had an interesting background on how Amazon made its foray into advertising.
- [The Left Tail of AI](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/the-left-tail-of-ai.md) - AI is obviously a transformational technology, and anyone still dismissing it as a 'con' job is, ironically, likely pulling a con themselves. It’s hard not to feel that AI needs a better group of bears if we crave for a more diversity of opinions around AI.
- [An Ode to Ben Thompson](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/an-ode-to-ben-thompson.md) - Programming Note: As a reminder, every Sunday, I write pieces that are predominantly based on personal experiences which may or may not be loosely connected with investing.
- [Veeva 2Q’26: "SaaSpocalypse" Cancelled](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/veev2q26.md) - Early this year when most investors were grappling with “SaaSpocalypse”, I started buying Veeva when the stock was trading at $220. As the SaaSpocalypse mania spread like a virus in investors minds, Veeva stock went into a tailspin for a few months.
- [Meta Buys Away its Distraction at Minimal Cost](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/meta-settlement.md) - A couple of days ago, Meta reached an agreement with 52 attorneys general across US states to settle their lawsuit alleging that it knowingly designed addictive platforms that harmed young people’s mental health.
- [Nvidia Climbing the Wall of Worries](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/nvdafy2q27.md) - A year ago, the average sell-side consensus estimates for Nvidia’s FY 2028 (which is essentially CY 2027) revenue was ~$310 Billion. But yesterday, Nvidia guided for ~70% revenue growth in FY’28 which translates to approaching ~$700 Billion revenue next year!
- [Nvidia’s Long-Term Margin Question](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/nvda-lt-margin.md) - Nvidia will report earnings later today, but I want to take a bit longer term view and discuss some concerns I harbor in my mind about their long-term margin questions behind the paywall.
- [Big Tech Off-Balance Sheet Concerns](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/off-bs.md) - A couple of weeks ago, WSJ published a piece titled “Why Big Tech’s AI Spending Is $3 Trillion Higher Than It Seems”. Some excerpt from the piece: “Each quarter, big tech companies disclose their massive capital expenditures on artificial-intelligence infrastructure, from data centers to chips.
- [Stripe’s “Singularity” and the Divergence from Adyen](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/stripe-vs-adyen.md) - Last week, Stripe announced their acquisition of OpenRouter, the AI model gateway and routing platform. Ben Thompson had an interesting take on Stripe’s OpenRouter deal, so I won’t repeat the potential strategic reasons to pursue such an acquisition.
- [Core Memory](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/core-memory.md) - Programming Note: As a reminder, every Sunday, I write pieces that are predominantly based on personal experiences which may or may not be loosely connected with investing.
- [The Non-linear Economics of Grocery Delivery Basket](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/grocery-basket.md) - A couple of days ago, I discussed about Instacart’s unit economics and mentioned “there is non-linearity in grocery economics in terms of basket size which is why owning half the basket size of Instacart certainly does not lead to half the profits.” Today’s post is about quantifying such
- [Walmart’s Evolution](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/wmt2q26.md) - After posting 4%+ same store sales growth in the US for eight consecutive quarters, Walmart’s comp numbers last quarter surprised investors a bit as it came to be only 2.6% in Q2 FY27. During the call, management flagged their health & wellness (H&W) segment as the primary culprit for the poor comp.
- [Instacart’s Unit Economics, and Implications for DoorDash](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/cart-vs-dash.md) - While covering DoorDash’s 2Q’26 a couple of weeks ago, I showed the company’s LTM unit economics on a per order basis. I re-created this per order economics for Instacart.
- [Airbnb Model Update (2026)](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/abnb-2026.md) - The last time I shared my updated Airbnb model was October 2025. As the stock has gone up ~50% since then, investors need to re-underwrite the assumptions today.
- [Rethinking the Data Moat](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/data-moat.md) - I want to highlight a couple of pieces which I found to be quite intriguing. The first is Dwarkesh Patel’s conversation with Ryan Greenblatt, chief scientist at Redwood Research.
- [Why DoorDash’s Autonomous Strategy Beats Uber’s Hodgepodge](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/dash-vs-uber.md) - Uber’s decision to divest its stake in Serve, the autonomous delivery robot company that was spun out of Uber in 2021, was more interesting than it may appear at first glance. When I looked into it, I came to realize that Serve is actually a publicly listed company now.
- [The AI Compute Squeeze](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/compute-squeeze.md) - Programming Note: MBI Deep Dives will be off during the weekend and I will resume the daily posting cadence from Monday next week.
- [Why I am going to utilize options more to manage my portfolio](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/options.md) - Back in 2021, I once responded to someone on X (formerly twitter) why I didn’t want to engage in trading options. While that choice sounded “wise” to me, reality hit me in 2022.
- [Constellation Software 2Q'26: Soft Organic Growth, but Encouraging Deployment Pace](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/csu2q26.md) - Constellation Software (CSU) delivered a quarter that can be considered bit of a Rorschach test. Organic growth printed the weakest number in nearly 6 years while capital deployment pace is running pretty hot.
- [License to Chase the AI Frontier](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/frontier.md) - While looking at Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, I was quite struck by what they all have in common. The top model developers except one all have one thing in common: they are all currently founder-led companies.
- [Figma 2Q'26: Near-Term Re-acceleration vs. Long-Term Durability](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/fig2q26.md) - Following its IPO last year, Figma reported two consecutive quarters of revenue growth deceleration. Then it flipped and revenue growth re-accelerated in each of the last three quarters.
- [Digital Advertising Industry Snapshot 2Q'26](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/digital_ad_2q26.md) - As I do after every quarter, let me share the snapshot of the overall digital advertising industry. Let me first explain some changes for this quarter’s edition.
- [Shopify 2Q'26: Sustained Miraculous Growth](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/shop2q26.md) - Shopify’s Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) maintained its almost miraculous 30% growth (FXN) in 2Q’26. This was actually their fifth consecutive quarters of 29-30% GMV (FXN) growth.
- [Airbnb 2Q'26: Widening the Gap with Booking](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/abnb2q26.md) - Airbnb reported an acceleration in nights and seats (N&S) booked, adding 14 million (+10%) N&S YoY which was the highest since 3Q’23. More importantly, Airbnb guided low double digit N&S growth even for 3Q’26 which indicates a likely sustained acceleration in the business.
- [DoorDash 2Q'26: Growth Beyond the Restaurant](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/dash2q26.md) - DoorDash had a fine quarter with total orders growing ~27% YoY (~17% ex Deliveroo) and marketplace Gross Order Value (GOV) growing ~36% YoY (~23% ex Deliveroo). More importantly, GOV in US restaurant category slightly accelerated in 2Q’26 primarily due to DashPass membership.
- [Spotify 2Q'26: Pressing the Monetization Lever](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/spot2q26.md) - Spotify reached 300 Million Premium subscribers milestone in 2Q'26. Getting from zero to 100 Million took over a decade, 100 to 200 Million took 15.5 quarters, and 200 to 300 Million took roughly 14 quarters.
- [FICO FY 3Q'26: Welcome to "Gaming"](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/fico3q26.md) - FICO 3Q’26 revenue increased +26% YoY, but this was actually slightly below the consensus estimates. I don’t quite think a slight revenue miss was the reason for FICO stock being down ~24% since they reported earnings last week.
- [Meta's "True" ROIC, and Some Notes from Meta and Alphabet's 10-Qs](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/meta-googl-10q.md) - Over the weekend, I realized that the way I was calculating Meta’s ROIC somehow masked its “true” ROIC.
- [Floor & Decor 2Q'26: Tentative Green Shoots](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/fnd2q26.md) - Programming Note: Even though every Sunday I tend to write my personal musings, I’m skipping that this week given I have some earnings coverage left to catch up. For the first time in more than a year, Floor & Decor (FND) reported a quarter and did not cut its annual guidance.
- [Hyperscalers vs AI Labs Debate, and the Moving AI Frontier](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/hyperscalers-vs-labs.md) - I thought I would cover Microsoft’s earnings today, but let me first respond to a tweet by SouthernValue and then I will share some thoughts on the state of AI models. I recommend you read his pushback to my yesterday’s piece before you read the rest.
- [Amazon 2Q'26: AWS Gets the Love](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/amzn2q26.md) - In 1Q’26 earnings coverage of Amazon, I mentioned AWS would likely grow by ~35% in 2Q’26. AWS did slightly better than that as it grew by ~37%!
- [Meta 2Q'26: Not Amazing, Not Bad, and Still Compelling](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/meta2q26.md) - 2Q’26 wasn’t the quarter that propelled Meta out of the penalty box. While revenue came ahead of estimates, operating earnings fell short due to one-off expenses such as legal and severance related costs.
- [DoorDash: The Infrastructure of Local Commerce](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/dash.md) - Programming Note: MBI Deep Dives will be off tomorrow, and the regular cadence of daily posts will resume on Thursday when I expect to cover Meta’s 2Q’26 earnings. You can listen to the Deep Dive here The very first Deep Dive I ever wrote for MBI Deep Dives back in 2020 was on Uber.
- [The Fleet Owners' Push for Aggregating Demand](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/uber-vs-waymo.md) - Last week, Financial Times reported that Waymo notified Uber that it intends to launch its own app in Austin and Atlanta in January 2028. These were the two cities where Waymo’s robotaxis have been exclusive to Uber’s platform after the two already unwound their Phoenix pilot earlier this year.
- ["From an era of proof scarcity to an era of proof abundance"](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/proof.md) - Programming Note: As a reminder, every Sunday, I write pieces that are predominantly based on personal experiences which may or may not be loosely connected with investing.
- [Texas Instruments 2Q'26: Not Another Head Fake](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/txn2q26.md) - While covering Texas Instruments (TI)’s 1Q’26 earnings, I wrote that TI had reached an inflection point, and that the fact management was even willing to talk about raising prices made me think this one might not be another"head fake."Indeed, revenue grew by 23% YoY and 13% sequentially in 2Q’26.
- [Tesla and SpaceX's Likely Merger, Portfolio Change](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/tesla-and-spacexs-likely-merger-portfolio-change.md) - During Tesla’s earnings call on Wednesday this week, there was a very interesting discussion on the topic of whether SpaceX and Tesla will eventually be merged.
- [Alphabet 2Q'26: Google Cloud is On Cloud Nine](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/goog2q26.md) - For the first time as a public company, Alphabet reported negative Free Cash Flow (FCF) in 2Q’26.
- [Danaher 2Q'26: Yet Another "Meh" Quarter](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/dhr2q26.md) - Danaher is one of those compounders that has largely lost its luster in current market. However, Danaher shareholders cannot quite blame Mr.
- [The Geopolitics of Open Weights](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/open-weights.md) - Ever since Kimi K3 was released, it really captured the attention of the broader AI and investor community. As open weight closes the gap with closed, frontier models, many are understandably worried about the implications across the value chain.
- [TSMC 2Q'26: Stratospheric Margins Amidst the AI Super Cycle](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/tsm2q26.md) - Programming Note: MBI Deep Dives will be off for the next three days. The regular cadence of daily posts will resume on Tuesday next week.
- [ASML 2Q'26: Time to Flex Pricing Power](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/asml2q26.md) - Back in 1Q’26 call, ASML management was asked whether they are willing to flex their pricing power given how demand for chips seems to materially outweigh the supply. ASML management indicated to prefer more measured approach across different set of customers throughout the cycle.
- [Airbnb’s Cost of Market Creation and Regulatory Survival](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/abnb_ban.md) - Airbnb is one of those rare marketplaces that derive supermajority of its demand organically and hence, they have the privilege of mostly not needing to pay Google et al for traffic.
- [WhatsApp's New Era](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/whatsapp.md) - Last month, Mark Zuckerberg announced a surprising leadership change in WhatsApp. Will Cathcart, who led WhatsApp since 2019, was replaced by Kunal Shah, an India-based serial entrepreneur.
- [Defending the Enterprise Castle from the Model Layer](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/enterprise-vs-model_layer.md) - If Microsoft’s lagging stock performance didn’t already cause a tinge of nervousness among its shareholders, Satya Nadella has been writing several pieces on X almost to clarify why Microsoft may be in a spot of bother in a world where model layer eventually becomes utterly dominant in capturing
- [What Makes Us Rich](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/rich.md) - Programming Note: As a reminder, every Sunday, I write pieces that are predominantly based on personal experiences which may or may not be loosely connected with investing.
- [Matan on Stitch Fix](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/matan-on-stitch-fix.md) - Matan Zinger has been writing a very interesting series on Stitch Fix over the last couple of weeks.
- [Meta On the Offense!](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/meta-on-the-offense.md) - This week has turned out to be a plethora of model launches with SpaceX releasing Grok 4.5 on Wednesday, and Meta and OpenAI releasing Muse Spark 1.1 and GPT-5.6 yesterday.
- [The Salience of Data](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/data.md) - Let me begin with a thought experiment. Imagine you know nothing about OpenAI’s or Anthropic’s financials.
- [Why Consumer AI Appears to be Lagging Enterprise](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/consumer-vs-enterprise-ai.md) - Last week, Mark Zuckerberg internally shared that AI agents haven’t progressed as fast as he hoped.
- ["It's not a lie if you believe it"](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/its-not-a-lie-if-you-believe-it.md) - A couple of weeks ago, I explained that I am currently in the process of moving ~85% of my portfolio from Canada to the US now that I have become a permanent resident in the US.
- ["Never Sell" Episode: Scuttleslops, OpenAI Valuation, Ryan Specialty](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/never-sell-16.md) - Programming Note: As mentioned earlier, MBI Deep Dives will be off for the next week and I will resume the cadence of posting daily on Tuesday next week (July 07, 2026). For the “Never Sell” podcast, Scuttleblurb and I published a new episode yesterday.
- [Recommended Read](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/recommended-read.md) - Instead of writing my personal musings on this Sunday, I would actually suggest you read these two pieces that expanded my understanding of the world: “How funerals keep Africa poor”, and “Why kinship societies kill their old”. They are both quite thought provoking and illuminating in a way that is…
- [The Shape of Compute Curve](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/the-shape-of-compute-curve.md) - In a recent podcast, Lambda (one of the neoclouds) CTO Stephen Balaban expressed almost bit of a disdain for the critics who wondered whether the hyperscalers or neoclouds are “gaming” the GPU accounting by assuming higher useful lives of the GPUs than warranted.
- [The ASIC-GPU Standoff](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/the-asic-gpu-standoff.md) - My friend Liberty recently highlighted an interesting paper from Google that goes through the evolution of TPUs.
- [Scale Without Sluggishness](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/scale-without-sluggishness.md) - A couple of months ago, WSJ reported that Mark Zuckerberg has been wondering whether Meta should start building a plethora of apps. From WSJ: “So, like, Chris and I have been talking about ‘all right, well can we build 50 new apps?’ Like, yeah probably.
- [Scheduling and Disclosure Update](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/scheduling-and-disclosure-update.md) - A few things I wanted to share: what’s coming up, a break I’m taking next week, and a change to my portfolio disclosure. What I’m working on I’m currently working on DoorDash, which I expect to publish sometime next month.
- [Spotify Model Update](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/spot-model-update.md) - As mentioned yesterday, I am uploading my detailed Spotify model behind the paywall. The objective of this exercise is to gauge what metrics you need to underwrite to believe management’s long-term outlook provided for the business during the 2026 Investor Day.
- [Some Notes from Spotify's 2026 Investor Day](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/spot-2026.md) - Spotify held its third Investor Day in May, eight years after the 2018 debut that asked whether it could win against the big tech walled gardens with their own music streaming offerings, and four years after the 2022 edition that asked whether it could ever be a real business with real margins.
- [On Father’s Day](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/fathers-day-26.md) - Programming Note: As a reminder, every Sunday, I write pieces that are predominantly based on personal experiences which may or may not be loosely connected with investing.
- [Airbnb's Fintech Opportunity](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/abnb-fintech.md) - Airbnb first launched its guest travel insurance product in 2022. Then in 4Q’22 call, Brian Chesky mentioned that the guest insurance product was available in 8 countries and the product had been “really, really successful”.
- [Shopify at the E-com OS Layer](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/shopify-os.md) - Shopify shipped its Spring’26 Edition this week with 150+ updates. Given the plethora of updates, thankfully Eric Seufert had Venkat Prabhu (Director of Product for Shop Campaigns at Shopify) on the Mobile Dev Memo podcast to discuss the key highlights of Shopify’s recent product updates.
- [What's Embedded in OpenAI's Stock Price?](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/openai.md) - OpenAI is still a private company. They have recently submitted a “confidential S-1”, so we don’t know their financials for certain.
- [Airbnb's Incentives](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/airbnbs-incentives.md) - On X, I often come across some version of a stock performance chart showing how Airbnb has performed since its IPO which has been largely flat for more than five years now! It looks particularly unflattering when you compare and contrast to its closest peer: Booking Holdings.
- [Owning the Hill](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/owning-the-hill.md) - Satya Nadella spent part of last weekend writing a think piece on X titled “A frontier without an ecosystem is not stable”.
- [Meta's Myriad Questions](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/metas-myriad-questions.md) - A couple of days ago, “SouthernValue” tagged me in the below tweet: Since I also received a handful of emails asking about some of the topics raised by the tweet, I decided to share some brief and crisp thoughts on them behind the paywall.
- [The Geography of Time](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/the-geography-of-time.md) - Programming Note: As a reminder, every Sunday, I write pieces that are predominantly based on personal experiences which may or may not be loosely connected with investing.
- [Adobe's Continued Deceleration](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/adbe2q26.md) - If you’re on X (formerly known as “twitter”), you may be under the impression that Adobe’s growth has accelerated in FY 2Q’26 as I noticed quite a few posts mentioning how total ARR has finally accelerated last quarter.
- [FICO: Capital Allocation, Management Incentives, and Valuation](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/fico4.md) - Programming Note: This is the final part of my FICO Series. Last month, I announced that I would start publishing my Deep Dives as a series of posts rather than one single post.
- [Automation's Asymptote: Part 2](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/automations-asymptote-part-2.md) - Yesterday's piece ended on a question I could not quite resolve: it can be simultaneously true that humans remain in the loop and that the economics of being in the loop deteriorate.
- [Automation's Asymptote](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/automations-asymptote.md) - Anthropic launched “Claude Fable 5” yesterday which is the much anticipated “Mythos-class” model. Anthropic was already leading in most benchmark with its Opus 4.8 model, but Fable 5 created a bit more distance from its competitors.
- [FICO: The Contestable Monopoly?](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/fico3.md) - This is part-3 of my FICO series. In Part 1, I traced the company’s history through the 2018-2025 pricing-power era and pushed back on the popular narrative that FICO’s monopoly was simply gifted to it by the 1995 GSE decision.
- [Veeva 1Q'26: Strong Present, Patient Future](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/veev1q26.md) - Programming Note: Some of you may have missed my announcement in my last post that I would be taking a couple of weeks break and reached out to see if everything is okay. Thank you for your concern, and I am back to daily posting schedule.
- [Airbnb's Soul Search Beyond Homes](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/abnb_soul.md) - Programming Note: I am going to take a Summer Break for a couple of weeks. I am actually traveling to Bangladesh to spend some time with family after three and half years.
- [FICO: Deconstructing the Monopoly Margins](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/fico2.md) - Programming Note: This is part-2 of my FICO series. In Part 1, I covered FICO’s history through the 2018-2025 pricing-power era, where the score business finally started capturing the rents it had been giving away to the credit bureaus for three decades.
- [Floor & Decor's Cyclical Malaise vs Structural Moat](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/fnd_cycle.md) - One of the ironies of operating in a cyclical end market is that management can sound like genius to somewhat hopeless depending on the stage of the cycle they are in.
- [The Honeymoon Phase of Capacity](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/honeymoon.md) - Although I am yet to write any Deep Dive on any neocloud, I still like to pay close attention to what they are saying during their earnings calls. Both CoreWeave and Nebius had some interesting nuggets in their 1Q’26 call.
- [The Best Yardstick](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/yardstick.md) - After a very good 2023 and 2024, I wrote the following in my 2024 annual letter: “given the somewhat elevated valuation multiples among stocks I have looked at, I think I wouldn't be too upset if I underperform the S&P 500 next year in case we see another >25% performance year for the index in 2025.
- [Figma 1Q'26: "Not Dead"](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/fig1q26.md) - “Quick update: not dead”…that’s what Dylan Field tweeted after releasing Figma’s 1Q’26 earnings! For the second consecutive quarters, Figma’s growth re-accelerated, growing ~ 46% in 1Q’26.
- [FICO: Pricing the Standard](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/fico1.md) - Programming note: As I have mentioned earlier, I am making some changes in how I publish my Deep Dives. Instead of publishing one big Deep Dive, I will do a series of posts on a particular company over multiple weeks.
- [Constellation Software 1Q’26: Leaning In Amidst the SaaSpocalypse](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/csu1q26.md) - During the current “SaaSpocalypse”, Constellation Software (CSU) delivered a slightly uneven but, in important ways, also encouraging quarter.
- [Roblox 1Q'26: Age Check Hangover, But Aiming to Go Beyond the Blocks](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/rblx1q26.md) - Programming Note: In case you missed it yesterday, I have released"MBI"Skill for Claude and Codex.
- ["MBI" Skill for Claude and Codex](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/mbi_skill.md) - Today’s post is about how to get more out of MBI Deep Dives. When MBI Deep Dives was only about the monthly Deep Dives, it wasn’t very difficult to keep track of everything I was writing about.
- [Digital Advertising Industry Snapshot 1Q'26](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/digital_ad_1q26.md) - As I do after every quarter, let me share the snapshot of the overall digital advertising industry.
- [Airbnb 1Q'26: Growth Acceleration Despite War Headwind](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/abnb1q26.md) - Airbnb reported +15% (FXN) revenue growth in 1Q’26 which was its highest topline growth over the last eight quarters. It is particularly impressive given the the backdrop of Iran war.
- [Insurance Brokers 1Q'26 Update](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/insurance-brokers1q26.md) - Insurance brokers are currently in a world of pain as the halcyon days of hard market is clearly behind us. At first glance, the organic growth still seems to be holding up reasonably well (ex BRO), but nonetheless investors are somewhat spooked.
- [Shopify 1Q'26: Impressive, But Still Not Enough to Justify Valuation](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/shop1q26.md) - 1Q’26 was yet another quarter for Shopify in which it added almost the same GMV as Amazon retail likely added in the same quarter. Back in 2017, Shopify’s GMV was only ~10% of Amazon’s estimated GMV.
- [Floor & Decor 1Q'26: Persistent Macro Challenges, but Pro Growth Encouraging](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/fnd1q26.md) - Floor & Decor (FND) posted an ugly quarter and provided an uninspiring outlook for the rest of 2026.
- ["Never Sell" Episode: Big Tech earnings, S&P and Moody’s, AI](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/never_sell_15.md) - For the “Never Sell” podcast, Scuttleblurb and I published a new episode yesterday.
- [Microsoft FY 3Q'26: Multi-Model Mirage, Copilot Momentum](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/msft3q26.md) - Programming Note: While I typically don’t write on company specific topics on Sunday, I’m making an exception during the earnings season. Microsoft’s own narrative about their future has evolved quite a bit following the ChatGPT moment in 2022.
- [Amazon 1Q'26: Rosy Near-term but "Cloudy" Long-term](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/amzn1q26.md) - Amazon’s highlight from 1Q’26 was that AWS has accelerated to 28%, which was the highest growth rate in the last 15 quarters. In fact, looking at the guide, it appears even a more pronounced acceleration is likely for 2Q’26.
- [Alphabet 1Q'26: Stratospheric Heights in Performance and Expectations](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/goog1q26.md) - Alphabet’s revenue growth has accelerated for five consecutive quarters. Except for Google Network business which is increasingly irrelevant, every part of the Alphabet business is humming right now.
- [Meta 1Q'26: Nothing to Complain About](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/meta1q26.md) - I know Meta’s stock is down after yesterday’s earnings, but I have a hard time complaining much as a shareholder. I will discuss why market may not share my enthusiasm later, but let me first share and explain why my own enthusiasm hasn’t abated post-earnings.
- [Spotify 1Q'26: Recalibrating Expectations](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/spot1q26.md) - I didn’t realize until yesterday that Spotify is actually currently approaching its second worst drawdown since becoming a public company as the stock has experienced a drawdown of ~44% so far from its peak in June, 2025!
- [Roblox: Aggregating the Attention of Next Generation](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/rblx.md) - I was a tad bit surprised to learn that Roblox was founded the same year Facebook was: 2004! Roblox, however, wasn’t quite the rocket ship Facebook was, but at $40 Billion current Enterprise Value (EV), Roblox is currently worth more than twice of Snap and Pinterest combined!
- [Personal Day](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/personal-day.md) - I’m taking a personal day today, but wanted to share a couple of quick updates. I was working on a Deep Dive on Roblox this month and it will go out tomorrow.
- [A (Largely) Functional World: Part 2](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/functional2.md) - Programming Note: As a reminder, every Sunday, I write pieces that are predominantly based on personal experiences which may or may not be loosely connected with investing.
- [The Era of Tokenmaxxing](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/tokenmaxxing.md) - A couple of weeks ago, Meta’s internal dashboard for “tokenmaxxing” got a lot of attention after The Information reported on it. Although such tokenmaxxing phenomenon only started getting attention recently, Shopify has been doing something similar since mid-2025.
- [Pricing "The Compute Theory of Everything", Texas Instruments Hitting Inflection Point](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/txn1q26.md) - Believe it or not, the iShares Semiconductor ETF (SOXX) was essentially flat on the year as of March 30…less than four weeks ago.
- [Tesla's Terafab Dream](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/terafab.md) - Tesla had their earnings yesterday, but given the company trades at ~226x NTM EV/EBIT multiple, it is bit of a waste of time to spend time dissecting their existing business. Ultimately, Tesla has become a moonshot bet on several projects that currently do not contribute materially to their numbers.
- [Danaher 1Q'26 Update](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/dhr1q26.md) - Danaher had another somewhat uneventful quarter. Looking at Danaher’s numbers every quarter is a stark reminder just how anemic the growth has proved to be for a company that enjoys some supposedly secular tailwinds.
- [Meta's Heterogeneous Fleet](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/mtia2.md) - Last month, I mentioned the following on Meta’s Chip Resilience: “…in an earlier blog post last year, Meta’s own engineers mentioned dealing with 5–6 hardware SKUs a year makes it harder to move workloads around and can create underutilization and software friction.
- [Token Cost Conundrums](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/token-cost.md) - A couple of weeks ago, I highlighted a couple of pieces by Anjali Shrivastava who made the point that a token is not a fixed unit of cost. Today’s piece is a follow-up driving the point home that even though every model charges its API customers per token, tokens are far from a standard unit.
- [The Counterintuitive Truths](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/counterintuitive.md) - In my investing career, there are perhaps couple of truths that felt counterintuitive to the extent that my first instinct was to fight it. Not only didn’t it feel right, what complicated it further is accepting these truths felt deeply uncomfortable.
- [Huang Isn't Planning to Wake Up a Loser](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/not-a-loser.md) - You may have already listened to Jensen Huang on the recent episode of Dwarkesh podcast. If you haven’t, I highly recommend you listen to the entire episode and not just the bits and pieces clips.
- [TSMC 1Q'26 Update](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/tsm1q26.md) - Yesterday’s TSMC earnings call was yet another confirmation that the AI momentum right now is one-way street: up and to the right! TSMC’s CEO C.C.
- [ASML 1Q'26 Update](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/asml1q26.md) - A new earnings season has arrived. If ASML’s earnings is any guide, be prepared to hear another quarter of “demand is outstripping supply” from all the players in the semi value chain.
- [AI Economics in the East: Part 2](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/ai-economics-in-the-east-part-2.md) - Yesterday, Flo Crivello tweeted something that caught my attention: We've tested new OSS models the moment they're released for a while at Lindy. Inference is our #1 cost by a lot (more than payroll) — cutting it by 2-5x would be transformative.
- [Frontier AI's Economic Engine](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/frontier-ais-economic-engine.md) - It should not surprise anyone that coding has found the most product market fit in AI, but it is notable that how much it surpasses everything else in enterprise segment so far which explains so much why Anthropic has been on a tear. a16z recently highlighted AI’s adoption and use cases of AI in
- [AI Economics in the East](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/ai-economics-in-the-east.md) - In the most recent All-in episode, Brad Gerstner from Altimeter (which owns stakes in both OpenAI and Anthropic) pushed back at the gross margin concerns for AI labs. From Brad Gerstner (emphasis mine): “Their gross margins are exploding higher.
- [Too Cheap to Meter, Too High to Measure](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/too-cheap.md) - Programming Note: As a reminder, every Sunday, I write pieces that are predominantly based on personal experiences which may or may not be loosely connected with investing.
- [Meta Strikes Back!](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/meta-strikes-back.md) - Following the Llama 4 fiasco and almost 9 months after rebuilding the Meta Superintelligence team (MSL), Meta has finally released a new model: Muse Spark!
- [Jassy's Defense](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/jassys-defense.md) - Since Andy Jassy became CEO of Amazon on July 5, 2021, the stock has not only noticeably lagged broader benchmarks such as S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 but also underperformed every single big tech companies in Mag7 (Nvidia not shown in the chart since it transforms the Y-axis a bit too much…so you get
- [The Jagged Intelligence of Humans](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/jagged.md) - Today’s piece is slightly different from my typical investing musings. I have been thinking about this for the last few days, and I would like to get this off my chest.
- [Man and Machine](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/man-and-machine.md) - For a typical company, analysts and investors evaluate a company’s capital allocation by looking at how the company allocates the cash it generates.
- [The Fat-Tailed Economics of AI](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/fat-tail-ai.md) - Anthropic yesterday disclosed that their run-rate revenue has surpassed $30 Billion (I appreciate that unlike most people in tech, they didn’t call it ARR).
- ["Serious" Era of Software Investing](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/serious-saas.md) - A couple of weeks ago, Redpoint published an interesting presentation on the state of software industry. It’s a good recap of what has been going on in both the public and private software market.
- [A (Largely) Functioning World!](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/functioning-world.md) - Programming Note: On every Sunday from now on, I will try to write pieces that are predominantly based on personal experiences which may or may not be loosely connected with investing.
- ["Founder Mode" Complacency](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/founder-mode-complacency.md) - Colossus recently published a chapter from Sebastian Mallaby’s new book on Demis Hassabis titled “The Infinity Machine”. I haven’t read the book, but did read this chapter.
- ["Never Sell" Episode: AI Doom, Veeva, Research and Writing](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/never-sell-14.md) - For the “Never Sell” podcast, Scuttleblurb and I published a new episode covering investors’ increasing fascination around AI doom scenarios, why we think Veeva is likely to be more insulated from AI disruption, and the value of approaching investment research more as a judge rather than as a
- [Unprecedented Lock-in](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/unprecedented-lock-in.md) - Apollo recently published their US housing outlook which is an interesting read to get up to speed on how the housing market is faring. Let me highlight a couple of things from their piece that stood out to me.
- [Social Media's Defense](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/social-medias-defense.md) - Last week, I shared my concern that algorithmic content may force companies such as Meta to share some liabilities for the content shown on their properties because of the product design choices these companies made.
- [The Pendulum Between Intelligence and Knowledge](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/pendulum.md) - Over the last week or so, I have started noticing an interesting development that is worth highlighting. Let’s start with Microsoft’s announcement yesterday.
- [Energy's Moment](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/energy.md) - S&P 500 is down almost 7% Year-to-date. As you can see below, Energy sector ETF has been by far the best performing so far in 2026 with ~40% return YTD.
- [Thoughts on Last Week](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/last-week.md) - Programming Note: I will take tomorrow off as I have some family commitment. I will be back on Monday.
- [Digital Engagement's Fat Tail Risk?](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/fat_tail.md) - “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” Indeed, Meta, along with other social networks and potentially any company that relies on engagement online, may be passing through a week that can have a much deeper implication over the next decade.
- [Follow-up on Floor & Decor](https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/fnd3.md) - Following my piece “Why I am buying Floor & Decor”, I have received a couple of pushbacks. I will address those and expand on FND’s competitive dynamics a bit more behind the paywall.

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