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🔮 Lessons from China

Smooth trains, low-cost motors, and specialised AI

In today’s live I reflected on a whirlwind three-day visit to China. You can’t do justice to a small country in three days, let alone a big one. But I was observing. And here are a few things that stuck out:

  • Infrastructure built at speed: Beijing’s immaculate airport, 300 km/h rail to Tianjin, and smooth expressways hammer home the sustained investment, the concrete and steel, that China has poured over the previous decades.

  • Verticalised AI in action: American frontier labs lead. Chinese ones are a little behind and constrained by the compute crunch. But there were some super-interesting plays in verticals: robotaxis in Wuhan, billion-record health datasets powering a medical AI, and a $200m a year AI teacher that beats the countries best human teachers.

  • EV cost leadership is set: China’s EVs are absolutely remarkable. Their years of domestic competition have honed an incredible level of innovation and cost discipline. They’ll hit European car makers like a sledgehammer.

Enjoy.

📅 Catch me live every Friday at 9 am PT | 12 pm ET | 5 pm UK.

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