Coté logo Coté

Sucking Air Through Their Teeth, 50/50 success/failure, and Dell's $43B AI Server Quarter - Related to your interests, Friday

Also: the improbable life, four years working at AWS, an AI-SDLC panel debate.

Loteria-style card numbered 15, illustrated with a man in a straw hat, dark jacket and red bow tie speaking into a microphone with a laptop and stack of papers in front of him, labeled 'EL PODCAST'
Spotted by Dan Bettinger in Austin.
  • Most generative AI and custom model projects will be a bust: Gartner - ‘Analyst firm Gartner thinks at least half of all generative AI projects “will overrun their budgeted costs due to poor architectural choices and lack of operational know-how,” and most organizations that try to build custom models “will abandon their efforts due to costs, complexity and technical debt in their deployments."’ See also my commentary.
  • AI server demand drives staggering revenue growth for Dell and its stock soars - “The company delivered earnings before certain costs such as stock compensation of $4.86 per share on revenue of $43.84 billion, up by a staggering 88% from the same period one year ago. That’s a truly astonishing leap for such an established company, and it crushed Wall Street’s targets. Analysts were looking for earnings of just $2.94 per share on much lower sales of just $35.43 billion. // Dell delivered an even more impressive jump in its bottom line. It reported net income of $3.44 billion at the end of the quarter, up 256% from a year earlier, when it delivered a profit of just $965 million. // Since reentering the public markets in late 2018, five years after Dell had taken itself private, the server maker had never managed to exceed more than 39% growth in any quarter.”
  • I think Anthropic and OpenAI have found product-market fit - ‘I think both of these stories support my “product-market fit” hypothesis. The best advice I ever heard on pricing a product was that your customer should suck air through their teeth and then say yes. Uber’s budget overrun and Microsoft’s seat cancellations look like that effect playing out in practice.’
  • Amazon Web Services - Four Years and Out - By all accounts, working at Amazon is a tough gig.
  • Halide Mark III - I love a cool looking camera app.
  • Your Most Improbable Life - Yeah, sure. But it sounds like a lot of work. Can we strive for an equilibrium of not having to strive all the time?
Bar chart of Anthropic's run-rate revenue from 2023 through May 2026, showing a steep climb to roughly $47 billion in 2026
From: Anthropic's run-rate revenue hits $47 billion

AI Summaries

I wanted to read these, but I didn’t make the time, so I asked the robot to summarize them.

Economist chart titled 'Is AI putting graduates out of work already?' showing unemployment rates for recent college graduates rising relative to other workers in the US, especially in computer science and engineering majors
From: Is AI putting graduates out of work already?

ICYMI

Conferences

Conferences I’ll be at and some that I’m interested in.

Logoff

Another week. Closer to full-on summer.

Want to subscribe to this newsletter and get it in your email? Do that here. You’ll just get this type of link and post round-up, not everything posted on the weblog.

newsletter (531)