Cliff Sosin - Owning the Complements to Intelligence - [Invest Like the Best, EP.497]
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'ShaughnessyShow Notes
Cliff Sosin is the founder of CAS Investment Partners, which he started in 2012. Roughly 80% of his portfolio is in Carvana.
We discuss why Cliff thinks there are hard limits to what even the smartest AI can predict, which businesses benefit as intelligence gets cheap, and what that means for Meta and the frontier labs.
We also cover why he avoids investing in the AI build-out, how AI agents will push customers to the lowest-cost provider, and why he is comfortable with 80% of his portfolio in one stock.
Please enjoy my conversation with Cliff Sosin.
For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here.
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Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant.
Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Why Intelligence Has Limits
(00:02:34) Chaos Theory and the Butterfly Effect
(00:04:59) A 200 IQ Team in Every Pocket
(00:07:33) Meta as Personalized TV
(00:11:18) The Frontier Labs as Businesses
(00:14:59) Jevons Paradox and the Limits of Demand
(00:18:47) Automated Labs and the Speed Limits of Experiments
(00:20:39) Why He Stays Away from the AI Build-Out
(00:22:28) Why the Best Entrepreneurs Are Building Supply
(00:24:22) Lessons from Past Capital Cycles
(00:26:05) TSMC and Physical Moats
(00:27:03) AI Agents and the Low-Cost Producer
(00:29:44) Will AI Replace Investors?
(00:32:01) Price as a Signal Wrapped in an Incentive
(00:34:16) America’s Underrated Capital Markets
(00:37:05) Why America Dominates Risk-Taking
(00:38:36) What Higher Rates Are Telling Us
(00:39:24) The AI Speech He Gives His Companies
(00:41:45) The Best Time to Start a Company
(00:43:03) Corporate Margins and Vertical Stacks
(00:45:16) AI and the Income Distribution
(00:48:13) Letting AI Size the Portfolio
(00:50:56) Why He Holds So Much Carvana
(00:52:22) Educating Kids in the Age of AI
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