AI, AGMs, and Overworked Directors
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hello, welcome to The Money Cafe. I'm Stephen Mayne, contributor and television investor, founder of Crikey and shareholder activist.
And I'm James Thompson, senior Chanticleer columnist at the Australian Financial Review.
Now, James, the Lionel Messi of Australian business journalism, Mr. Kohler, is having a well-earned break, so I consider myself very lucky I get to talk to the Killian Mbappe of Australian business journalism instead.
How did the World Cup and current geopolitics frame the episode's opening commentary?
Have you been taking in the World Cup and what's your hot take?
Oh, well, look, I guess I have. I think it's been... Wow, it's had a bit of everything, hasn't it? It's gone on for a long time, but they extended the number of countries involved from 32 to 48. I must admit, I thought at the start of the tournament, oh, it's going to drag a bit. But look, it's been great fun, I reckon. Terrific tournament for Australia in terms of the time zones have just worked beautifully. We've been able to watch a lot of it at pretty reasonable times. You know, it's been nice to come into the office and have it sort of playing in the background some mornings. Yeah, and I think from my limited knowledge of soccer, the best team won. Correct. Spain was the sort of, you know, seemed to be the purest footballing nation throughout the whole thing and so I think the right result was…
earned in the end. Correct.
I thought they just dominated both Spain, France and Argentina and everyone was saying France was going to win. But it's just demanded global attention like no other sporting event. I mean, I was amazed this morning that The boss of Coke rang the bell at the New York Stock Exchange this morning, Monday morning. And why? To celebrate their sponsorship of the World Cup. I mean, since when does a sponsor of an event – you've normally got to have an IPI to get to – to ring the bell at the Stock Exchange. So –
I think the bell ringing at the New York Stock Exchange has become a little bit less special than it once was, perhaps. Yes. All sorts of people get in there and ring it. So, anyway.
Yes, yes. No, I completely agree. Now, Russia was banned and China didn't even make the top 48 teams to get to the World Cup. But, boy, they're… Rocking the boat in the AI space, aren't they? You had an interesting column on Kimi and the AI wars.
Yeah, look, this has come out of nowhere. I mean, you'll remember about 18 months ago, we had this, what became known as the deep seek moment when this Chinese AI lab called deep seek released a large language model that appeared to come from nowhere to compete with ChatGPT and Claude, which is made by Anthropic. Basically, the same thing's happened again. an AI lab in China called Moonshot AI has released a model called Kimi K3, which only trails the very best bleeding edge frontier models from OpenAI and ChatGPT. Sorry, OpenAI and Anthropic. The way to think of it is that Anthropic and OpenAI thought they had about a 12-month lead on the Chinese labs.
No, you don't.
Now it looks like that lead is three or four months at best.
Yeah.
So what does that mean? I think everyone's trying to figure that out at the minute. Obviously, it's not great for OpenAI and Anthropic who are charging premium prices for what everyone thought were premium AI models. And now that is going to have to be... But, of course, there's sort of the strategic imperative between China and the U.S. You know, could the U.S. government ban Chinese models, which have become, you know, they've got a 30% market share in the U.S. at the moment because they're cheaper. So, you know, is there a political element to all this? That's yet to be played out. And, of course, you know, the billions in data centers investment just keeps rolling on. is that going to earn the returns it needs to if the profit pool from these AI models is reduced?
Because that's the danger here, Stephen. These AI models basically become a commodity and it's very hard to make money from commodities.
And I was interested to see that the SpaceX shares are down to $120,000. So I'm very happy with my decision now.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:12–0:34
2
How did the World Cup and current geopolitics frame the episode's opening commentary?
0:34–11:23
3
What recent Chinese AI developments (Kimi K3) threaten OpenAI's lead and why does it matter?
11:23–17:58
4
Could AI commoditisation and cash burn at big tech threaten data‑centre investments and valuations?
17:58–45:31
5
What should investors watch at the upcoming Macquarie AGM and why is the audit tender controversy important?
45:31–47:16