The AI Revolution: Who Wins, Who Loses & the SaaSpocalypse | The Real Eisman Playbook Ep 70

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
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**Steve Eisman** (1:01)
Hi, this is Steve Eisman, and this is another episode of The Real Eisman Playbook. The biggest debates going on right now are clearly involving AI, how profitable it's going to be, how sustainable it's going to be. The debate also changes almost on a week-to-week basis. It's really quite extraordinary. So today, I'm going to interview two tech analysts. Dan Ives, who has left Redbush and has gone on to create his own investment bank, and Gil Luria of Davidson. What I like about these two is they cover a broad swath of the tech sector.
Most tech analysts cover chips or they cover tech equipment or they cover software, but these two cover pretty much everything. So I think they're going to have a lot to say about the breadth and length of the debate. And I'll be back at the end to talk about lessons learned. Before we start, if you like what we're doing on our interviews and our weekly wrap, the best way to support The Real Eisman Playbook is to subscribe as free subscribers on YouTube and on Substack.
Hi, this is Steve Eisman and welcome to another episode of The Real Eisman Playbook. So there's so much going on in tech literally every single week. I talk about it on the wrap. I've never seen a group where the pace of change is so big that every single piece of news is not like incremental, it's almost thesis changing. So today we have as two guests, first, recurring guest, Dan Ives.

**Dan Ives** (2:39)
Great to be here as always.

**Steve Eisman** (2:40)
New guest, Gil Luria.

**Dan Ives** (2:41)
Thank you.

**Steve Eisman** (2:42)
Dan is doing a new gig which we won't talk about and Gil is at Davidson. That's right. They cover, one of the reasons why I have you guys on is you, most people just cover semiconductors or they cover software, but you guys cover a very broad swath and what's happening impacts so much. So let me say a couple of things and I'll give it to you guys.
If we were here a year ago and we were talking about AI, I know Dan would have been incredibly positive and he would have talked about how NVIDIA, the revenue growth is huge and the hyperscalers are growing very rapidly. And you'd be hard pressed to find a negative story, a negative thesis. A year later, you're not so hard pressed to find a negative thesis. So let me hand it up first to you, Gil.
Why don't you just summarize, take a couple of minutes, give us from a high level, what are the terms of debate, and where do you stand in the terms of debate?

**Gil Luria** (3:46)
Absolutely. So there's two really big debates happening in technology. One of them is, are we going to get a return on all this investment? Are these data centers going to create the return on investment for the companies building them and the capital that's being deployed, that will justify the extreme expenditure that we've had?

**Steve Eisman** (4:04)
And everybody has to factually admit it's extreme.

**Gil Luria** (4:07)
It's extreme.

**Steve Eisman** (4:08)
Yes.

**Gil Luria** (4:08)
It's unprecedented.

**Steve Eisman** (4:09)
Unprecedented.

**Gil Luria** (4:10)
So that's one really big debate that's being had back and forth, and our views are a little nuanced on that. Let's frame the other side of the debate, which is how is it going to impact all the other companies, especially software companies? How are software companies going to do in a world of AI?