저자: BillAckman · 외국인
요약 보기
Ackman는 Anthropic이 수익화에 성공해 선두라고 평가하고, OpenAI는 대규모 적자 전망 때문에 우려한다고 말함. SpaceX는 Starlink 독점적 수익성과 GPU 인프라 때문에 매력적이나 예측가능성이 부족해 Pershing Square 포트폴리오에는 편입하지 않음. 구글(알파벳)은 AI 공포로 저평가된 기회였고 약 $94에 매수해 $392 부근에서 4배 수익을 거둔 사례로 소개됨. AI는 단기 트레이딩을 가속하지만 장기 인내 투자자에게 기회가 남아 있다고 봄.
다듬은 글
So, as OpenAI, Anthropic, and SpaceX prepare to go public, who do you think will emerge as the winner? You know, Anthropic seems to be a leader in advanced models, and they've built a business that's obviously recently become profitable. This is quite impressive. What worries me about OpenAI is, you know, the predictions of very significant losses in the near future.
And I also believe that open source models are becoming so good that people will have access to cheaper or free tools that will allow them to solve most of the important questions. Therefore, I have less faith in the success of companies that rely only on advanced models. You know, SpaceX is a very interesting business.
Their Starlink franchise is extremely profitable and is a de facto monopolist in the field of global satellite communications. Their space franchise is incredible, and they are in a great position in terms of data infrastructure . If you want to rent 100,000 GPUs , SpaceX is pretty much the only place you can do it today.
And they get very high returns on these assets. In addition, they have their own AI models. They recently launched a new model. So this is an incredible collection of assets, managed by, you know, the most talented technologist and entrepreneur of our generation. And I think the only issue is the price.
At a valuation of a trillion, or whatever, six or seven, the growth potential is less than if you could buy it for half the price. But, you know, I wouldn't...the main rule is to never play against Elon. So I think SpaceX is going to be an incredibly important company over the next period of time. However, it is not in the Pershing Square portfolio because it does not have the level of predictability we are looking for.
We like businesses that...when you think of businesses, you know, people usually think of stocks and bonds, right? With bonds, you receive a coupon, or interest rate, several times a year. And, you know, if it's a fixed-rate bond, you're definitely going to get your 6 or 7%, and at the end of the bond's life, you're going to get your principal back if the company is reliable.
A business is a bit like a bond, except that the coupon, i.e. the interest payment, is not known in advance. You have to, you need to estimate what it will be like, and the interest payments; The way to think about it, the way we think about companies, is that we look at profits as a kind of profitability of the business.
So, you know, people talk about the P/E ratio, right, stocks are trading at a P/E of 20. Well, if you invert the P/E ratio, you get a 5% return. One way to think about it: you invest in a company that generates a 5% return on your investment today, and the question is , will that 5% return grow over time, or will someone come up with a business that will destroy it and the company will disappear?
And that's why , you know, stocks are riskier than bonds because there's not the same degree of certainty about their future. But if you narrow down the companies you invest in to these really predictable, you know, businesses where their market position is, in our opinion, so dominant, you can get a return that's significantly higher than bond yields without taking on any risk.
Now, another area that has been of great interest to investors recently is artificial intelligence. Are you investing in things related to artificial intelligence? You know, the most direct investment that we have in AI, I would say, is Google, or Alphabet, which, you know... You're a big shareholder in Alphabet.
We are a small shareholder of Alphabet because it is a huge company. We have, you know, a large investment, approaching two billion dollars, in this business. Hmm, and in fact, it was AI that created the opportunity for us to buy Google at an attractive price. You know, basically Microsoft together with OpenAI had a very powerful demonstration of a new product launch, and then Google's launch, well, it was a bit of a disaster, the stock fell because of the fear that Google was very far behind in AI.
And their, you know, advertising franchise more than covered the cost of the company, and you got everything they did in the AI field, so to speak, for free. And in our view, based on the work we've done, Google has actually been on par, if not ahead of OpenAI, in terms of their progress in the business.
My question is about AI: if it starts making research breakthroughs , for example in physics or science, do you think it will replace investment management by 99%? Or what are your thoughts? So I think Citadel, Millennium, uh, I think AI is going to make a lot of investment strategies increasingly short-term, almost like an arms race where a company files a 10K report and an AI can read it and come to a conclusion faster than anyone else who has the fastest model to analyze it to come to a conclusion and open a deal based on that.
Um, the two biggest forces in the markets right now are indexation, right? Uh, I don't know if it's half of the companies, but a certain significant percentage of free float is being taken out of the market by index funds. And another big force is these "pod shops" like Millennium and others, incredibly short-term, you know.
They had separate teams, very high compensation, very tight risk limits, which essentially means stop-loss type structures. And the effect of that, where the free float is shrinking and short-term money is increasing, and AI is going to do the same thing , actually creates very good opportunities, probably for most people in this room.
If you have a horizon longer than, say, a minute, if you can look many years ahead, some really great companies will become available at ridiculously low prices because of some short-term information that portends a stock drop, and a whole crowd will follow you . So I think AI is a great tool for research.
I believe that in the markets it will be used to gain very short-term insights. You know, if you think about Citadel, there are always stories about putting the server in the shortest distance with the fastest fiber, if you will, closer to the exchange, to get even a little advantage over the competition.
So I think that's where AI is more useful, or where many of them will have the resources, you know, to be the third largest customer of Google or someone else. But I think there will be more opportunities for the long-term patient investor . The other thing I would say AI, at least right now, is understanding everything that's happened in the past and based on that, maybe predicting the future, and that relies on, you know, I think creativity is essentially doing something that's never been done before .
When I look at Virgin Square, many of our most successful investment deals were things that had never been done before. You know, playing on the downgrade of a AAA-rated company's credit rating. You know, buying shares of a company that's going bankrupt. These are two of our most successful investments, but it didn't happen until we did it.
We just held an IPO. We did it in a completely unique way. I mean, AI wouldn't tell you to give a gift to an IPO investor when you buy, because that hasn't happened before. Therefore, I believe that there is still room for human creativity . I think AI is more of an accelerator. But I believe there is still room for us , at least for now.
Bill Ackman's 4x return on Google investment is a classic example of buying a great business when the market is in fear. In early 2023, after the launch of ChatGPT, many investors believed that Google's search business was under threat. When Alphabet shares fell, Ackman's hedge fund Pershing Square invested nearly $1.1 billion, purchasing approximately 8.1 million Class C shares and 2.2 million Class A shares.
Ackman believed the market was underestimating Google's exceptional strengths. In addition to the search engine, Alphabet owns YouTube, Android, Google Cloud, Chrome, Gmail, and one of the world's largest digital advertising businesses. He also viewed Google as a global leader in artificial intelligence with years of AI research and unparalleled technical expertise.
By the time Pershing exited the position in 2026, Ackman's average purchase price was about $94 per share. When Alphabet was trading at around $392 per share, that yielded a more than 4x return on investment, turning his $1.1 billion bet into an investment worth around $4.6 billion , generating around $3.5 billion in profit before fees and taxes.
Ackman's investment in Google is a reminder that the best opportunities often arise when temporary fear causes the market to undervalue an exceptional business like Google.
Comments 0