In today’s issue:

  • Was I right about Tesla?
  • White House secret meeting
  • Angry Green Goblin

Editor’s note: Today, we bring you a guest piece by Sam Volkering from his publication AI Collision which was first published on Tuesday 29 October.

You can hear from Sam more often at AI Collision and learn more about the latest developments in AI by simply clicking here to sign up for free.

Welcome to AI Collision 💥,

Tesla’s best day in over a decade.

$150 billion added to Tesla’s market cap in a single day.

30% sales growth expectations.

It was quite the week for Tesla last week, going up 22%. And quite the week (again) for Elon Musk.

Source: Yahoo Finance

Not only is SpaceX doing extraordinary things, but Elon is now heavily on the campaign trail with Donald Trump. If Trump wins, Elon may be deeply involved in clearing out government excesses.

Then, Starlink is likely to keep pushing down the direct to cell path, meaning most incumbent Telcos are doomed. At the time of writing, I’m about to go and use the Starlink app myself to see if it’s going to work at my new house. If coverage is good, then I might be joining the exponentially increasing number of Starlink users worldwide.

Uber has some competition incoming too… Elon expects to roll out consumer ride hailing apps in certain US states next year. That means Robotaxis on the road, and/or fleets of Teslas with full autonomous driving doing the heavy lifting.

There is also the expectations of Optimus possibly getting into commercial production by the end of next year.

We’re not even scratching the surface on Neuralink yet, but that’s full steam ahead.

X.com gets slated in the press, but it has fast become the world’s most used news feed for anything. There’s also the ongoing development of xAI’s training clusters for Grok and its continuous “intelligence”.

What’s most fascinating about all this is that it was only weeks ago that Tesla and Elon and his companies were being ripped through the media. The big Robotaxi event was seen as being underwhelming and more “Hollywood” than substance.

But as soon as Tesla came out with growth in demand, growth in production, growth in product margin, growth in net income, and Elon’s prediction for 30% sales growth next year, all of a sudden Tesla (and Elon) are loved again.

It’s a fickle sport this. But it goes to show the ebbs and flows of media and news against a backdrop of an election and the long-term vision of a modern-day visionary.

Say what you want about Elon, but he’s got conviction in spades.

It was only about two weeks ago, when Tesla was trading at $217, that I posed the question:

I think you doubt Musk at your own peril. Tesla is fast shifting away from being just a company that makes EVs. It feels like it is certainly more about the robotics and AI now – I would even go so far to suggest that maybe, just maybe, if he can pull off the idea of an Optimus robot in millions of homes worldwide, that maybe we should be starting to think of Tesla as undervalued.

I asked what you thought and had some great feedback. Some of you agreed with me, some very much disagreed with me. That’s certainly what Tesla and Elon can do – they’ll make you love them or hate them. There’s really no in-between.

It seems the mainstream financial media now loves him again, with a rerating of Tesla stock higher virtually across the board.

With the stock now trading up around $270, it’s easy to see why that sentiment may have kicked in.

AI gone wild 🤪

Did you know that in mid-September there was somewhat of a clandestine meeting at the White House with some of the most important people in AI in attendance?

These people included Sam Altman (OpenAI), Dario Amodei (Anthropic) and Ruth Porat (CIO @ Google), as well as Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and White House chief of staff Jeff Zients.

Source: The White House

This was reported by the White House at the time with its news release saying,

Participants considered strategies to meet clean energy, permitting, and workforce requirements for developing large-scale AI datacenters and power infrastructure needed for advanced AI operations in the United States.

Nvidia’s Jensen Huang was also there, caught by CNBC on his way out (he apparently wasn’t on any official lists) where he said,

We are at the beginning of a new industrial revolution.

The more I read about this meeting, and the action we’ve seen in AI and nuclear energy markets since, the more it brings me back to the secret meeting held in 1910 on Jekyll Island which laid the foundations for the Federal Reserve system.

A secret meeting where power brokers in private industry and government decided on what shape the financial future of the US, and subsequently the world, would look like.

To me, this meeting between the White House and leaders of AI is the same thing in a different era.

Since then, we’ve seen an explosion in funding, a loosening of red tape, and massive media announcements of AI companies going deep down the nuclear energy route.

It seems like decisions were made that day that have green lit the pathway for Big Tech, giving them the confidence that their spending on a nuclear strategy won’t be frivolous.

While we certainly don’t know exactly what was discussed off the record or in backroom dealings, the market has already shown us that nuclear and AI will go hand in hand.

Furthermore, at the pointy end of a US presidential race, it will be the swift action we see after whomever is declared the victor that will really tell the tale.

My expectation is regardless of who does win, the nuclear agenda in the US will be pushed very hard to appease those in Big Tech. In fact, it may even be a significant, yet massively understated part of who does eventually win.

While Trump might lead most polls for now, is Big Tech’s obsession and desire for nuclear a strategy that Kamala Harris gets behind, promises behind closed doors and ultimately sees her into the White House as president?

PS On the subject of nuclear, I have my eye on a little-known company led by ChatGPT’s genius creator… and it could soon go VERTICAL off the back an announcement from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. To find out how you could invest in this one-of-a-kind company, click here for full details. Capital at risk.

Boomers & Busters 💰

AI and AI-related stocks moving and shaking up the markets this week. (All performance data below over the rolling week.) [Figures correct at time of writing.]

Boom 📈

  • Predictive Oncology (NASDAQ:POAI) up 23%
  • Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) up 22%
  • SK Hynix (KOSE:A000660) up 6%


Bust 📉

  • Veritone (NASDAQ:VERI) down 18%
  • dotdigital (LSE:DOTD) down 12%
  • Teradyne (NASDAQ:TER) down 11%

From the hive mind 🧠

  • These kinds of surveys are completely useless. I remember when the iPhone came out and 25% of people still wanted buttons on their mobile phones. See how that worked out! OK, I’m not 100% sure on that stat, but the point is that every time new tech comes along, there’s always initial pushback.
  • I loved Michael Parkinson interviews. The Muhammad Ali one from 1981 is still one of the most notorious; the Paul McCartney one from 1999 one of the best. But they should all be archival interviews. The idea of “Parky” interviewing from beyond the grave… nope, not a fan at all.
  • Remember how we’ve said AI will replace some jobs? Well, in Poland at this radio station that’s exactly what’s taken place.

Artificial Polltelligence 🗳️

My view is that AI will unlock a new wave of capital and opportunity that will see the most recent “Age of Excess” look like a drop in the ocean. I think the new unforeseen companies and billion-dollar “Unicorns” will be more in the next decade than we’ve seen in the one gone by.

But my question to you was, do you think that we’re in store for a new Age of Abundance or a new Age of Austerity in the UK? And here’s what you said:

Weirdest AI image of the day

The Green Goblin protesting at a McDonald’s for discontinuing the McRib – r/weirddalle

ChatGPT’s random quote of the day

“People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.” – Alan Kay, 1982

Thanks for reading, see you next time!

Sam Volkering
Editor-in-Chief, AI Collision

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