A VC Insider Explains the Next $10 Trillion Monopoly

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
I know you're an energy investor, so what are you focused on as far as the future of energy? What are you looking for as far as energy? And then you just talked about geopolitics. So obviously, we're in a geopolitical quagmire right now with Iran, just finished the Venezuela conflict.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:23)
So yes, yes, what's that book? Oh, oh, that's a good one. Talking about power.
It talks about the history of the oil industry. You guys might be able to help me with this.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:38)
No, not all one on one.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:40)
Oh, the prize.
So what it does and what it shows you is that all this geopolitical stuff that we're talking about, you know, all the issues that are and, you know, perfect example with Iran, you just mentioned comes back to energy, comes back to power. Oil has been how we get energy. Civilizations, civilizations live and die and grow based on their access to energy and power. It's almost like a perfect correlation. The more energy you have, the more abundant, the more the GDP grows. You know, there's some really interesting kind of like correlations there. And so yes, power and energy, especially in the geopolitical situation. Iran, perfect example.
You know, it's a good example of that. We can go off into the tangents. I'll try to keep.
So yeah, so power is important. We look at a lot of new age power, renewables, solar, hydrogen, like I invested in a solid state hydrogen company. For example, we look at a lot of nuclear, you know, and you guys have probably talked about small modular reactors and their importance and how we get access to energy. And for better for worse, why we don't have it now is kind of like the unfortunate point and why we're kind of playing catch up, right? Versus other countries that maybe do use nuclear, obviously China, but France even, you know, for example. But small modular reactors could be our way out. Small modular reactors behind the meter, which means not having to deal with the grid, because we have a grid issue. The strain on the grid from, you know, Troy, you're talking about the basketball player, you're saying like, how much do you use AI? Each time you use that, obviously, it generates memory. There's a memory issue, but there's also a power issue for that same, for the compute to happen. And if you scale that out, like you mentioned, imagine all those people trying to get access to answers, straining on a grid that was built, you know, what, I don't even know when the grid was built, hundreds of years ago.
So, you know, we're gonna have an issue there as well. And so that's why like distributed compute is becoming really interested and distributed behind the meter power is becoming really interesting from a venture standpoint.

**SPEAKER_4** (2:59)
Yeah. And when you brought that up, when we talk about these singular forms of energy, a caterpillar makes sense, right? Energy even over it makes sense because they're actually doing that using gas turbines. Even a generac is a company that surprises you by creating their own gas turbines for individual companies. I think Metta was like one of those first companies to say, all right, we're going to try to stay off the grid. We're going to build our own energy source. But the ultimate energy call is the one that's powering us every day. And that's the sun.
And so, what are your thoughts about data centers in space?

**SPEAKER_3** (3:38)
Lunar economy?

**SPEAKER_4** (3:39)
I was going to ask you, but I mean, this was a thought that people thought, oh, wait, we're 10 years, we're 15 years away.
And then you see SpaceX IPO, and if you look at the S1, it's right in there. So, what are your thoughts around this new solar economy that we're on the cusp of?

**SPEAKER_3** (4:01)
And lunar.

**SPEAKER_2** (4:02)
Yeah, man. So, at nine years old, I went to space camp.
I wanted to be an astronaut.
And so, the fact that this is all happening is just fascinating. Look at this, in our lifetime, we're going to see people, we're going to see a moon base, we're going to see people going to Mars. We're going to see vehicles going to Mars. Who knows what we'll see about people.
We're going into the stars. So, that's exciting. Now, the whole AI data center and space thing, from what I've heard, at least, in terms of the math and how, the least of rationale, let's say, from first principles is there comes a point where, to your point, there's unlimited energy in space because of the sun. You can be within the sun's orbit the whole time, and that's how you get access to unlimited energy, but there's obviously a cooling issue. There's a retirement of old chips issue and other issues that need to be solved for. But there comes a point where the price of, what was it? The price of, oh, I know what it was. The price of rocket bringing upmass to orbit, as it gets cheaper and cheaper, it crosses over and there's an inflection point where it's actually cheaper to actually build a data center in space than it is on Earth because of the cost of bringing upmass to orbit. Right now, it's extremely expensive, but as Starship comes out and they start getting that going, just like they got the Falcon 9 going, it will come a point where it's so cheap to actually get mass to orbit, then it's actually cheaper. Because then, obviously, you talked about the solar being pretty much zero. So that's like, now getting it there is zero, versus on Earth, you have permitting, which costs land value and all the other things, and then you have to access power, which costs there, it's free on both of those axes. There comes a point where the cooling and all the other things that still need to get figured out and become more expensive, as a percentage of the total become cheap enough where that inflection point happens. And so I think people are playing toward that inflection point that's coming. There's still technical things that need to be fixed, but like, look, are you betting against Elon not figuring that shit out?