Equity Empire Podcast

Wall Street is obsessed with legacy software and the cloud data center. But the agentic layer is guaranteed to replace humans inside organizations — and that work isn't going to the cloud. I break down why on-prem hardware is about to have its biggest moment in 15 years, which companies benefit (Apple, Nvidia, Dell, Intel, AMD, IBM, Oracle), and why the choice between renting the cloud and owning your own AI will be obvious.

SaaS stocks are selling off and Wall Street is debating whether Salesforce and Adobe can pick themselves up off the mat. But the bigger opportunity isn't in old software — it's in a brand new layer of the economy. AI agents aren't tools you use. They're workers you deploy. And that changes everything — payments, security, identity, hardware, and operating systems all need to be rebuilt for this new layer. I walk through the three phases of how this rolls out, who wins at each phase, and why smart investors are getting positioned now while Wall Street is still a year behind.

Nvidia can only sell what TSMC can build. OpenAI can only ship what compute allows. Even the power grid is a constraint. I walk through why every AI winner so far has been supply-limited, why Jevons Paradox means removing those limits won't slow spending, and where the uncapped Phase Two opportunity emerges. Plus the inference flip data from this week's article.

A subscriber asked what drives asset manager stocks. Here's a deal BlackRock and KKR aren't the same business. I break down the two camps what makes each one move, and why the coming wave of IPOs could be a catalyst for both. Plus the AI infrastructure connection nobody's talking about yet.

For two years, AI capex was funded by excess — buybacks stayed huge, free cash flow stayed solid. In 2026, that changes. Meta, Google, Microsoft are now spending beyond their free cash flow. The demand is real, but certain investors can't hold these names anymore. I explain the shift from "funded by excess" to "funded by commitment" — and why patient investors have the edge.