Amusing Ourselves to Death
kamil@unable
−6.0%
since Oct 6
The idea
I believe personalized AI content is pushing entertainment toward infinite, adaptive experiences that capture more and more human attention, and a new wave of AI-native products will take share from today's feeds. Since no one knows which challenger wins, I spread across the layer that benefits regardless: AI-native engagement products, the gaming and creation engines new formats get built on, and the inference compute and chips every challenger needs.
What it owns
- These platforms are closest to becoming AI-personalized entertainment machines, each a potential breakout format that converts infinite generated content into user attention. · Roblox CorporationUsers and AI tools build the content while the platform learns what keeps each person playing, making it an adaptive entertainment machine., AppLovin CorporationIts AI engine decides which game or app wins each person's next moment of attention by turning personalization into ad revenue., Duolingo Inc.It already runs the loop of AI learning what keeps each person engaged and generating content on demand, entertainment dressed as learning., Reddit Inc.It owns a massive pool of human attention and is wiring AI into both its feed and data licensing, winning whether people scroll it or models train on it., Bilibili Inc.Its audience already lives on animated creator-made video, the format AI generation makes nearly free, making it a bet on an animated AI-fed platform emerging there first., Snap Inc.It is among the first to put an AI character in front of hundreds of millions of young users, a bet that AI companions become mainstream entertainment.31%
- Generating personalized content at scale requires enormous inference compute capacity, and nearly all of it runs on these companies' hardware regardless of which entertainment format wins. · NVIDIA CorporationNearly all inference compute for personalized content runs on its chips today, so every platform that wins attention pays NVIDIA rent., CoreWeave Inc.It rents GPU capacity that AI entertainment startups cannot afford to build themselves, collecting from every challenger regardless of which format wins., Nebius Group N.V.It rents AI compute capacity to platforms building personalized content, a higher-risk way to own the same infrastructure rent., Advanced Micro DevicesIf personalized content becomes truly infinite, buyers will seek a second source of inference chips, and it is the only credible alternative.24%
- The networking, custom silicon and data-center infrastructure underneath the compute layer collects rent from every platform attempting to serve personalized content at scale. · Broadcom Inc.It builds the custom AI chips and networking that the largest platforms use to serve personalized content cheaply at scale., Vertiv Holdings CoEvery data center built to generate and serve personalized content needs its power and cooling equipment., Marvell Technology Inc.Moving enormous amounts of generated video and interactive worlds to each person requires the chips it sells to connect data centers.14%
- New AI entertainment formats, especially games and interactive characters, get built on these tools and studios, so owning the platforms matters more than guessing which format wins. · Unity Software Inc.Whoever builds the next AI-native game or interactive character likely builds it on this engine, so it captures the toolmaker without guessing the winner., Take-Two Interactive SoftwareIt owns franchises that capture huge portions of consumer leisure time while AI adoption in game development promises to lower production costs and accelerate content creation., NetEase Inc.It is already shipping AI-driven characters and content inside games played by hundreds of millions, showing the wave may start in China first.14%
- Infinite generated content only matters as a business if attention converts to revenue, and these companies operate the rails that do that conversion across platforms and formats. · The Trade Desk Inc.If attention scatters from big feeds to new AI-native surfaces, advertisers need an independent way to buy across them, which is its core business., Pinterest Inc.It is using AI to turn browsing into a personalized, shoppable feed, betting that AI makes existing attention worth more per hour.7%
- Cash10%