Senior Director of Global Business Development @ SOTI

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Awesome read, we are just at start of the AI revolution !!
$NVDA $AMD $CBRS $TEM $CRWV $NBIS $IREN People need to sit with what OpenAI just announced about Astra. This may be one of the most mind-boggling moments of the entire AI era, and I do not think the market has begun to process its implications. OpenAI reports that an internal version of Astra, its next major model, produced ten new results across high-dimensional geometry, coding theory, group theory, operator algebras, arithmetic circuit complexity, quantum complexity, lattice cryptography, and extremal combinatorics. Every selected problem had gone at least a decade without progress on its main result, with many open much longer. OpenAI estimates that the tokens required to discover all ten solutions would cost roughly $2,000 at Sol API rates. Humans then prepared the manuscripts with the model, and Astra formalized every argument. The $2,000 figure covers the solution-generation tokens alone. Model training, infrastructure, human manuscript preparation, and independent verification sit outside that estimate. Even within those boundaries, the economics are staggering. The marginal cost sounds almost absurd relative to the years of elite human labor these problems could previously consume. Intelligence is beginning to behave like infrastructure. The mathematical community will now scrutinize the manuscripts, establish their significance, and build on the results that hold up. The fact that one general model generated serious arguments across this breadth of specialized fields is already extraordinary. OpenAI also released accounts of Astra exploring unsuccessful approaches, encountering genuine obstacles, changing representations, and eventually finding productive paths. This begins to resemble sustained conceptual research: searching through ideas, understanding why they fail, reframing the problem, and turning the resulting insight into a formal proof. Now imagine systems only a few years from today, vastly more capable and operating across trillions of tokens, relentlessly pursuing the next frontiers of human knowledge and progress in mathematics, medicine, physics, engineering, and nearly every other field. This is where the ASI discussion becomes much more concrete to me. We are beginning to see expert research compressed into scalable computation. A single model appears capable of sustained conceptual search across unrelated fields, including exploring dead ends, changing representations, connecting distant ideas, and converting those ideas into formal proofs. This changes the AI trade once again. The evidence now includes original intellectual output on problems that resisted progress for decades. We are witnessing the early stages of a revolution that will require massive amounts of compute, power, memory, networking, cooling, and data-center capacity. Systems capable of operating at this level could reshape mathematics, medicine, engineering, education, labor, national competitiveness, and the organization of society itself. Hopefully, humanity directs this extraordinary capability toward improving life, expanding abundance, and solving problems that previously appeared impossible. We are likely to see the cost of producing useful machine intelligence fall rapidly while AI begins to exceed the best human intellectual capacity across an expanding range of disciplines. That combination could unleash an extraordinary increase in the number of tasks, agents, experiments, simulations, and research loops that become economically viable. Advancing the frontier will require increasingly vast amounts of computation. This is the Jevons paradox at the center of the AI trade: cheaper intelligence drives far greater consumption of intelligence, while more capable intelligence creates entirely new categories of demand across scientific research, healthcare, software, engineering, and almost every knowledge-based industry. $NVDA and $AMD sit at the leading edge of this dynamic. NVIDIA’s planned 10-gigawatt deployment with OpenAI is explicitly designed to train and run next-generation models on the path toward superintelligence, and its investment and long-term Vera Rubin partnership with Ilya Sutskever’s Safe Superintelligence places it directly alongside a laboratory devoted entirely to ASI. Jensen Huang’s deeper thesis is that agentic AI transforms the basic unit of computing, with a single request initiating vast chains of reasoning, retrieval, simulation, verification, and action. Lisa Su describes a closely related future of continuous reasoning, autonomous agents, massive multimodal inference, and always-on intelligence, with global AI capacity moving toward tens of yottaflops within five years. AMD’s six-gigawatt partnership with Meta is explicitly tied to delivering personal superintelligence. NVIDIA and AMD are building the GPUs, CPUs, networking, memory, software, and rack-scale systems required for intelligence that operates continuously across science, business, robotics, and daily life. Each generation lowers the cost of useful intelligence, expands the work these systems can perform, and drives greater aggregate demand for the infrastructure beneath them. Astra is an OpenAI model achievement. Its relevance to $CBRS lies in the economics of iteration. Mathematical and scientific reasoning requires generating an approach, testing it, discovering the failure, revising the representation, and repeating the process. Faster inference allows more of those loops to occur within every hour of compute and every hour of a researcher’s time. OpenAI has already agreed to deploy 750 megawatts of Cerebras high-speed inference capacity through a multiyear deal valued at more than $20 billion. Cerebras and OpenAI also launched Codex-Spark at more than 1,000 tokens per second. As models become capable of producing valuable intellectual work, inference speed becomes the speed at which that work can be explored, refined, and delivered. The same development raises the ceiling for the neoclouds. $CRWV ended Q1 with $99.4 billion of revenue backlog, more than 3.5 gigawatts of contracted power, and over one gigawatt already active. $NBIS says it now has more than $40 billion of additional contracted revenue from investment-grade customers such as Microsoft and Meta. $IREN has a $9.7 billion agreement with Microsoft covering a 200-megawatt AI cloud deployment. Each company carries meaningful financing, construction, customer-concentration, and execution risk. Pick the structure you understand best and lock in your favorite neocloud, because scalable machine research across science and industry could require an almost unimaginable physical infrastructure buildout. It probably doesn't matter much which leader you choose, just that you get onboard the train before it departs. Then there is $TEM. As frontier models become stronger scientific reasoners, proprietary domain data, real-world integration, validation, and distribution become even more valuable. Tempus has assembled more than 500 petabytes of molecularly grounded healthcare data covering over 45 million de-identified patient journeys, including 1.5 million patients with sequencing data. A system with ASI level reasoning and Tempus’s clinical, molecular, imaging, and treatment data could search for relationships beyond the practical reach of any individual physician, researcher, or pharmaceutical company. These are likely to be Tempus' future foundation models themselves. The opportunity spans diagnostics, treatment selection, clinical-trial design, biological discovery, and drug development at scale. This moment is completely mind-boggling. We may be watching the beginning of superintelligence becoming a scalable economic resource, with the cost falling, the capabilities expanding, and the demand for compute accelerating at the same time. $NVDA, $CBRS, $CRWV, $NBIS, $IREN, and $TEM. I think we are much earlier than it feels. The AI trade is not just a "trade," it's an unstoppable revolution. Let’s go.
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The 20 Best Greatest Secret Agents Movies Of All Time 20.The Manchurian Candidate' (1962) 19.Charade' (1963) 18.On Her Majesty’s Secret Service' ( 17.Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery 16.Spy 15.The Spy Who Came in from the Cold 14.The Ipcress File 13.A Most Wanted Man 12.Three Days of the Condor 11. La Femme Nikita 10.Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy 09.The 39 Steps 08.The Hunt for Red October 07.Mission: Impossible – Fallout 06.Alphaville 05.Goldfinger 04.The Bourne Ultimatum 03.The Lives of Others 02. Casino Royale 01.Notorious
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Everyone quotes Sun Tzu. Nobody actually uses his decision framework. I turned his 2,500-year-old strategy system into copy-paste AI prompts that tell you exactly when to fight, when to retreat, and when to win without fighting at all. Real strategy looks nothing like hustle culture 👇
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Healthy cake ready in just 5 minutes no sugar, no flour!
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21 years sucking fat out of billionaires wives
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10 AI Skills to Master in 2026 📚📘 #ai #skills #MachineLearning
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🇨🇦 Every Canadian should read this twice: 🇨🇦 Canada ranks— 🥇 1st in uranium 🥇 1st in potash 🥈 2nd in nickel 🥉 3rd in oil 🏅 5th in gold 💧 1st in freshwater Countries start wars for LESS than this. And somehow we are told we’re too poor to cut taxes, too broke to build homes, too weak to compete, too small to matter. It took historic levels of incompetence and ideological sabotage to bury a country this blessed. Imagine where Canada would be if we were actually allowed to win. #cdnpoli #Canada #Future #Resources #Economy #Energy #Mining #Prosperity
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You’ve been lied to about “healthy food.” The stuff they told you to eat is wrecking your metabolism. And the foods they told you to fear? They’re actually healing. Here are 7 nutrition myths keeping you fat, tired, and inflamed:🧵 1. Myth: Eggs raise cholesterol
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Everyone believes that losing weight means eating less. But that's a lie. Here you have 9 foods that you can eat until you're full and that will help you lose weight: 1. Eggs
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50 YouTube Channels Schools Don’t Want You To Know 🤯🎓🚫 1. 📐 Khan Academy – Math, Science, Economics 2. 💡 TED-Ed – Animated lessons on every subject 3. 🔬 CrashCourse – Academic subjects, history, science 4. 💻 freeCodeCamp. org – Coding, tech, software 5. 📊 Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell – Science, philosophy 6. 🔍 Veritasium – Science & experiments 7. 📜 SmarterEveryDay – Curiosity-driven science 8. 🧪 AsapSCIENCE – Science concepts 9. 🔨 Mark Rober – Engineering & experiments 10. 🌍 National Geographic – Nature, science, culture 11. 🌎 Wendover Productions – Geography, economics, logistics 12. 📚 CGP Grey – Society, systems, geography 13. ✍️ MinutePhysics – Simplified physics 14. 🌌 PBS Space Time – Astronomy & deep physics 15. 🧬 SciShow – Science topics 16. 🧱 3Blue1Brown – Advanced math visualized 17. 🎭 The School of Life – Psychology, relationships, philosophy 18. 🧩 MindYourDecisions – Math puzzles, logical thinking 19. 🛠️ DIY Creators – Practical DIY skills 20. 🌱 Epic Gardening – Gardening science & skills 21. 🧠 Vsauce – Curiosity, science, deep explanations 22. 🧬 ColdFusion – Technology, innovation, history 23. 🛰️ Isaac Arthur – Futurism, advanced science 24. 🤖 Two Minute Papers – AI, research explained 25. 🚀 Everyday Astronaut – Space & rocket science 26. 💻 Fireship – Tech explained fast 27. 🧠 Ali Abdaal – Productivity & learning 28. 📘 How Money Works – Finance basics 29. 💸 Patrick Boyle – Economics, finance, markets 30. 🎓 Thomas Frank – Productivity & study systems 31. 🗺️ RealLifeLore – Geography, world systems 32. 🧪 Physics Girl – Science experiments explained 33. 🌍 It’s Okay To Be Smart – Science education 34. 🧬 SciShow Psych – Psychology 35. 🛠️ Practical Engineering – Engineering explained 36. 👨‍🔬 Steve Mould – Science & quirky phenomena 37. 🎥 Vox – Global issues explained visually 38. 📊 Economics Explained – Economics simplified 39. 🔍 Aperture – Deep investigations & analysis 40. 📜 Ancient Architects – Archeology & lost history 41. 📚 History Matters – Bite-sized history 42. 🌿 Nature on PBS – Wildlife & environment 43. 🚀 Real Science – Scientific discoveries 44. 🎒 CrashCourse Kids – Learning basics 45. 🎨 Proko – Drawing fundamentals 46. 📝 EDX – University-level online courses 47. 🎓 MIT OpenCourseWare – Full academic courses 48. 🧪 Periodic Videos – Chemistry explained 49. 🔭 Fraser Cain / Universe Today – Space & astronomy 50. 🧠 Big Think – Ideas, science, expert talks
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🎬 Top 50 Greatest Films of All Time 1. The Godfather 2. The Shawshank Redemption 3. Citizen Kane 4. Seven Samurai 5. Schindler's List 6. 12 Angry Men 7. The Godfather Part II 8. Casablanca 9. The Dark Knight 10. Rear Window 11. Tokyo Story 12. 2001: A Space Odyssey 13. Bicycle Thieves 14. Singin' in the Rain 15. City Lights 16. Parasite 17. City of God 18. Cinema Paradiso 19. La Dolce Vita 20. Metropolis 21. Pulp Fiction 22. Vertigo 23. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King 24. Psycho 25. Apocalypse Now 26. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly 27. Sunset Boulevard 28. Chinatown 29. On the Waterfront 30. The Third Man 31. Spirited Away 32. Goodfellas 33. It's a Wonderful Life 34. Rashomon 35. The Seventh Seal 36. Fight Club 37. Inception 38. Forrest Gump 39. The Matrix 40. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest 41. 8½ 42. Mulholland Drive 43. North by Northwest 44. The Wizard of Oz 45. Persona 46. The 400 Blows 47. In the Mood for Love 48. Modern Times 49. All About Eve 50. Pather Panchali
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Dale Carnegie’s 9 Rules for Wealth and Success 🧲🔥 1. Master the art of making people feel important. 2. Speak less. Listen like your future depends on it. 3. Avoid criticism—it builds walls, not bridges. 4. Give sincere appreciation. It’s free and priceless. 5. Talk in terms of others’ interests. That’s influence. 6. Admit your mistakes quickly. It earns trust. 7. Smile. It’s the cheapest investment with the highest return. 8. Ask questions instead of giving orders. 9. Make others feel the idea was theirs. That’s leadership. ⚠️ If you can’t win hearts, you’ll never win wealth.
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TOP GROWTH NAMES TO OWN WITH REAL REVENUE Real Contracts. Real Revenue Companies. 1. HPC / AI INFRASTRUCTURE $IREN – Hundreds of millions in revenue + real AI compute deals $BITF – Real mining revenue + expanding HPC $CIFR – Hosting revenue + scaling compute 2. QUANTUM COMPUTING $IONQ – Commercial quantum revenue + Fortune 100 contracts $QBTS – Enterprise quantum services with real revenue 3. ROBOTICS / AUTOMATION / DRONES $RR – Real robotics revenue $SERV – Automation platform with customers $ONDS – Defense/drone communications contracts 4. NUCLEAR / URANIUM / ENERGY $CCJ – Global uranium leader with long-term contracts $UUUU – U.S. uranium + rare-earth revenue $NXE – Strong development path with real resources 5. DIGITAL HEALTH / INSURTECH $HIMS – Explosive revenue + profitable $OSCR – Real insurance revenue + improving margins $DXCM – Massive med-tech revenue machine 6. FINTECH / DIGITAL FINANCE $SOFI – Real banking revenue + profitability $HOOD – Profitable with strong trading revenue $NU – One of the fastest-growing fintechs globally 7. SPACE $RKLB – Real launch revenue + highest cadence $PL – Satellite imaging revenue + gov/enterprise deals $ASTS – AT&T-backed satellite-to-phone network 8. CONSUMER / DIGITAL PLATFORMS $AFRM – Accelerating revenue + merchant growth $ROKU – Real platform revenue + advertisers returning $UBER – Proven profit engine + global dominance 9. BATTERY & STORAGE $ALB – Real lithium revenue, global leader $SLDP – Real partnerships + near-term commercialization $EOSE – Real orders + early revenue (higher beta) 10. AUTONOMOUS / EVTOL / SELF-DRIVING $JOBY – DoD contracts + FAA progress $ACHR – eVTOL partner ecosystem + real backing $UBER – Already monetizing autonomous logistics partnerships
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Totally Agree, Canadian Govt follows the below rule very well !!
🔥 Elon Musk just summed up modern slavery in one sentence: “You work. You get taxed. You buy something. You get taxed. You own something. You get taxed again.” It’s the loop of quiet control — a system designed to keep you compliant while the government spends your money on causes you never consented to. Every paycheck, every purchase, every property — siphoned through layers of bureaucracy. And what’s left? A fraction of what you earned, traded for a false sense of freedom. Musk’s point cuts deep: The problem isn’t just taxation — it’s how it’s weaponized. To fund endless wars. To bankroll wasteful projects. To grow a government that lives off your labor while pretending to “serve” you. It’s not public service anymore. It’s public extraction. Time to break the loop.
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Akash Mainra retweeted
WARREN BUFFETT JUST SENT WHAT COULD BE HIS LAST MESSAGE TO BERKSHIRE HATHAWAY $BRK.B SHAREHOLDERS AS CEO OF THE COMPANY Here is the full and entire 8 page press release Warren Buffett just released ⬇️⬇️ To My Fellow Shareholders: I will no longer be writing Berkshire’s annual report or talking endlessly at the annual meeting. As the British would say, I’m “going quiet.” Sort of. Greg Abel will become the boss at yearend. He is a great manager, a tireless worker and an honest communicator. Wish him an extended tenure. I will continue talking to you and my children about Berkshire via my annual Thanksgiving message. Berkshire’s individual shareholders are a very special group who are unusually generous in sharing their gains with others less fortunate. I enjoy the chance to keep in touch with you. Indulge me this year as I first reminisce a bit. After that, I will discuss the plans for distribution of my Berkshire shares. Finally, I will offer a few business and personal observations. * * * * * * * * * * * * As Thanksgiving approaches, I’m grateful and surprised by my luck in being alive at 95. When I was young, this outcome did not look like a good bet. Early on, I nearly died. It was 1938 and Omaha hospitals were then thought of by its citizens as either Catholic or Protestant, a classification that seemed natural at the time. Our family doctor, Harley Hotz, was a friendly Catholic who made house calls toting a black bag. Dr. Hotz called me Skipper and never charged much for his visits. When I experienced a bad bellyache in 1938, Dr. Hotz came by and, after probing a bit, told me I would be OK in the morning. He then went home, had dinner and played a little bridge. Dr. Hotz couldn’t, however, get my somewhat peculiar symptoms out of his mind and later that night he dispatched me to St. Catherine’s Hospital for an emergency appendectomy. During the next three weeks, I felt like I was in a nunnery, and began enjoying my new “podium.” I liked to talk – yes, even then – and the nuns embraced me. To top things off, Miss Madsen, my third-grade teacher, told my 30 classmates to each write me a letter. I probably threw away the letters from the boys but read and reread those from the girls; hospitalization had its rewards. The highlight of my recovery – which actually was dicey for much of the first week – was a gift from my wonderful Aunt Edie. She brought me a very professional-looking fingerprinting set, and I promptly fingerprinted all of my attending nuns. (I was probably the first Protestant kid they had seen at St. Catherine’s and they didn’t know what to expect.) My theory – totally nutty, of course – was that someday a nun would go bad and the FBI would find that they had neglected to fingerprint nuns. The FBI and its director, J. Edgar Hoover, had become revered by Americans in the 1930s, and I envisioned Mr. Hoover, himself, coming to Omaha to inspect my invaluable collection. I further fantasized that J. Edgar and I would quickly identify and apprehend the wayward nun. National fame seemed certain. Obviously, my fantasy never materialized. But, ironically, some years later it became clear that I should have fingerprinted J. Edgar himself as he became disgraced for misusing his post. Well, that was Omaha in the 1930s, when a sled, a bicycle, a baseball glove and an electric train were coveted by me and my friends. Let’s look at a few other kids from that era, who grew up very nearby and greatly influenced my life but of whom I was for long unaware. I’ll begin with Charlie Munger, my best pal for 64 years. In the 1930s, Charlie lived a block away from the house I have owned and occupied since 1958. Early on, I missed befriending Charlie by a whisker. Charlie, 6 ⅔ years older than I, worked in the summer of 1940 at my grandfather’s grocery store, earning $2 for a 10-hour day. (Thrift runs deep in Buffett blood.) The following year I did similar work at the store, but I never met Charlie until 1959 when he was 35 and I was 28. After serving in World War II, Charlie graduated from Harvard Law and then moved permanently to California. Charlie, however, forever talked of his early years in Omaha as formative. For more than 60 years, Charlie had a huge impact on me and could not have been a better teacher and protective “big brother.” We had differences but never had an argument. “I told you so” was not in his vocabulary. In 1958, I bought my first and only home. Of course, it was in Omaha, located about two miles from where I grew up (loosely defined), less than two blocks from my in-laws, about six blocks from the Buffett grocery store and a 6-7-minute drive from the office building where I have worked for 64 years. Let’s move on to another Omahan, Stan Lipsey. Stan sold the Omaha Sun Newspapers (weeklies) to Berkshire in 1968 and a decade later moved to Buffalo at my request. The Buffalo Evening News, owned by a Berkshire affiliate, was then locked in a battle to the death with its morning competitor who published Buffalo’s only Sunday paper. And we were losing. Stan eventually built our new Sunday product, and for some years our paper – formerly hemorrhaging cash – earned over 100% annually (pre-tax) on our $33 million investment. This was important money to Berkshire in the early 1980s. Stan grew up about five blocks from my home. One of Stan’s neighbors was Walter Scott, Jr. Walter, you will remember, brought MidAmerican Energy to Berkshire in 1999. He was also a valued Berkshire director until his death in 2021 and a very close friend. Walter was Nebraska’s philanthropic leader for decades and both Omaha and the state carries his imprint. Walter attended Benson High School, which I was scheduled to attend as well – until my dad surprised everyone in 1942 by beating a four-term incumbent in a Congressional race. Life is full of surprises. Wait, there’s more. In 1959, Don Keough and his young family lived in a home located directly across the street from my house and about 100 yards away from where the Munger family had lived. Don was then a coffee salesman but was destined to become president of Coca-Cola as well as a devoted director of Berkshire. When I met Don, he was earning $12,000 a year while he and his wife Mickie were raising five children, all destined for Catholic schools (with tuition requirements). Our families became fast friends. Don came from a farm in northwest Iowa and graduated from Omaha’s Creighton University. Early on, he married Mickie, an Omaha girl. After joining Coke, Don went on to become legendary around the globe. In 1985, when Don was president of Coke, the company launched its ill-fated New Coke. Don made a famous speech in which he apologized to the public and reinstated “Old” Coke. This change of heart took place after Don explained that Coke incoming mail addressed to “Supreme Idiot” was promptly delivered to his desk. His “withdrawal” speech is a classic and can be viewed on YouTube. He cheerfully acknowledged that, in truth, the Coca-Cola product belonged to the public and not to the company. Sales subsequently soared. You can watch Don on CharlieRose(.)com in a wonderful interview. (Tom Murphy and Kay Graham have a couple of gems as well.) Like Charlie Munger, Don forever remained a Midwestern boy, enthusiastic, friendly and American to the core. Finally, Ajit Jain, born and raised in India, as well as Greg Abel, our Canadian CEO-to-be, each lived in Omaha for several years late in the 20th Century. Indeed, in the 1990s, Greg lived only a few blocks away from me on Farnam Street, though we never met at the time. Can it be that there is some magic ingredient in Omaha’s water? * * * * * * * * * * * * I lived a few teenage years in Washington, DC (when my dad was in Congress) and in 1954 I took what I thought would be a permanent job in Manhattan. There I was treated wonderfully by Ben Graham and Jerry Newman and made many life-long friends. New York had unique assets – and still does. Nevertheless, in 1956, after only 1½ years, I returned to Omaha, never to wander again. Subsequently, my three children, as well as several grandchildren, were raised in Omaha. My children always attended public schools (graduating from the same high school that educated my dad (class of 1921), my first wife, Susie (class of 1950) as well as Charlie, Stan Lipsey, Irv and Ron Blumkin, who were key to growing Nebraska Furniture Mart, and Jack Ringwalt (class of 1923), who founded National Indemnity and sold it to Berkshire in 1967 where it became the base upon which our huge P/C operation was constructed. * * * * * * * * * * * * Our country has many great companies, great schools, great medical facilities and each definitely has its own special advantages along with talented people. But I feel very lucky to have had the good fortune to make many lifelong friends, to meet both of my wives, to receive a great start in education at public schools, to meet many interesting and friendly adult Omahans when I was very young, and to make a wide variety of friends in the Nebraska National Guard. In short, Nebraska has been home. Looking back I feel that both Berkshire and I did better because of our base in Omaha than if I had resided anywhere else. The center of the United States was a very good place to be born, to raise a family, and to build a business. Through dumb luck, I drew a ridiculously long straw at birth. * * * * * * * * * * * * Now let’s move on to my advanced age. My genes haven’t been particularly helpful – the family’s all-time record for longevity (admittedly family records get fuzzy as you work backwards) was 92 until I came along. But I have had wise, friendly and dedicated Omaha doctors, starting with Harley Hotz, and continuing to this day. At least three times, my life has been saved, each with doctors based within a few miles from my home. (I have given up fingerprinting nurses, however. You can get away with many eccentricities at 95 . . . . . but there are limits.) * * * * * * * * * * * * Those who reach old age need a huge dose of good luck, daily escaping banana peels, natural disasters, drunk or distracted drivers, lightning strikes, you name it. But Lady Luck is fickle and – no other term fits – wildly unfair. In many cases, our leaders and the rich have received far more than their share of luck – which, too often, the recipients prefer not to acknowledge. Dynastic inheritors have achieved lifetime financial independence the moment they emerged from the womb, while others have arrived, facing a hell-hole during their early life or, worse, disabling physical or mental infirmities that rob them of what I have taken for granted. In many heavily-populated parts of the world, I would likely have had a miserable life and my sisters would have had one even worse. I was born in 1930 healthy, reasonably intelligent, white, male and in America. Wow! Thank you, Lady Luck. My sisters had equal intelligence and better personalities than I but faced a much different outlook. Lady Luck continued to drop by during much of my life, but she has better things to do than work with those in their 90s. Luck has its limits. Father Time, to the contrary, now finds me more interesting as I age. And he is undefeated; for him, everyone ends up on his score card as “wins.” When balance, sight, hearing and memory are all on a persistently downward slope, you know Father Time is in the neighborhood. I was late in becoming old – its onset materially varies – but once it appears, it is not to be denied. To my surprise, I generally feel good. Though I move slowly and read with increasing difficulty, I am at the office five days a week where I work with wonderful people. Occasionally, I get a useful idea or am approached with an offer we might not otherwise have received. Because of Berkshire’s size and because of market levels, ideas are few – but not zero. * * * * * * * * * * * * My unexpected longevity, however, has unavoidable consequences of major importance to my family and the achievement of my charitable objectives. Let’s explore them. What Comes Next My children are all above normal retirement age, having reached 72, 70 and 67. It would be a mistake to wager that all three – now at their peak in many respects – will enjoy my exceptional luck in delayed aging. To improve the probability that they will dispose of what will essentially be my entire estate before alternate trustees replace them, I need to step up the pace of lifetime gifts to their three foundations. My children are now at their prime in respect to experience and wisdom but have yet to enter old age. That “honeymoon” period will not last forever. Fortunately, a course correction is easy to execute. There is, however, one additional factor to consider: I would like to keep a significant amount of “A” shares until Berkshire shareholders develop the comfort with Greg that Charlie and I long enjoyed. That level of confidence shouldn’t take long. My children are already 100% behind Greg as are the Berkshire directors. All three children now have the maturity, brains, energy and instincts to disburse a large fortune. They will also have the advantage of being above ground when I am long gone and, if necessary, can adopt policies both anticipatory and reactive to federal tax policies or other developments affecting philanthropy. They may well need to adapt to a significantly changing world around them. Ruling from the grave does not have a great record, and I have never had an urge to do Fortunately, all three children received a dominant dosage of their genes from their mother. As the decades have passed, I have also become a better model for their thinking and behavior. I will never, however, achieve parity with their mother. My children have three alternate trustees in case of any premature deaths or disabilities. The alternates are not ranked or tied to a specific child. All three are exceptional humans and wise in the ways of the world. They have no conflicting motives. I have assured my children that they do not need to perform miracles nor fear failures or disappointments. These are inevitable, and I have made my share. They simply need to improve somewhat upon what generally is achieved by government activities and/or private philanthropy, recognizing these other methods of redistribution of wealth have shortcomings as well. Early on, I contemplated various grand philanthropic plans. Though I was stubborn, these did not prove feasible. During my many years, I’ve also watched ill-conceived wealth transfers by political hacks, dynastic choices and, yes, inept or quirky philanthropists. If my children simply do a decent job, they can be certain that their mother and I would be pleased. Their instincts are good and they each have had years of practice with very small sums initially that have been irregularly increased to more than $500 million annually. All three like working long hours to help others, each in their own way. * * * * * * * * * * * * The acceleration of my lifetime gifts to my children’s foundations in no way reflects any change in my views about Berkshire’s prospects. Greg Abel has more than met the high expectations I had for him when I first thought he should be Berkshire’s next CEO. He understands many of our businesses and personnel far better than I now do, and he is a very fast learner about matters many CEOs don’t even consider. I can’t think of a CEO, a management consultant, an academic, a member of government – you name it – that I would select over Greg to handle your savings and mine. Greg understands, for example, far more about both the upside potential and the dangers of our P/C insurance business than do a great many long-time P/C executives. My hope is that his health remains good for several decades. With a little luck, Berkshire should require only five or six CEOs over the next century. It should particularly avoid those whose goal is to retire at 65, to become lookat-me rich or to initiate a dynasty One unpleasant reality: Occasionally, a wonderful and loyal CEO of the parent or a subsidiary will succumb to dementia, Alzheimer’s or another debilitating and long-term disease. Charlie and I encountered this problem several times and failed to act. This failure can be a huge mistake. The Board must be alert to this possibility at the CEO level and the CEO must be alert to the possibility at subsidiaries. This is easier said than done; I could cite a few examples from the past at major companies. Directors should be alert and speak up is all that I can advise. During my lifetime, reformers sought to embarrass CEOs by requiring the disclosure of the compensation of the boss compared to what was being paid to the average employee. Proxy statements promptly ballooned to 100-plus pages compared to 20 or less earlier. But the good intentions didn’t work; instead they backfired. Based on the majority of my observations – the CEO of company “A” looked at his competitor at company “B” and subtly conveyed to his board that he should be worth more. Of course, he also boosted the pay of directors and was careful who he placed on the compensation committee. The new rules produced envy, not moderation. The ratcheting took on a life of its own. What often bothers very wealthy CEOs – they are human, after all – is that other CEOs are getting even richer. Envy and greed walk hand in hand. And what consultant ever recommended a serious cut in CEO compensation or board payments? * * * * * * * * * * * * In aggregate, Berkshire’s businesses have moderately better-than-average prospects, led by a few non-correlated and sizable gems. However, a decade or two from now, there will be many companies that have done better than Berkshire; our size takes its toll. Berkshire has less chance of a devastating disaster than any business I know. And, Berkshire has a more shareholder-conscious management and board than almost any company with which I am familiar (and I’ve seen a lot). Finally, Berkshire will always be managed in a manner that will make its existence an asset to the United States and eschew activities that would lead it to become a supplicant. Over time, our managers should grow quite wealthy – they have important responsibilities – but do not have the desire for dynastic or look-at-me wealth. Our stock price will move capriciously, occasionally falling 50% or so as has happened three times in 60 years under present management. Don’t despair; America will come back and so will Berkshire shares. A Few Final Thoughts One perhaps self-serving observation. I’m happy to say I feel better about the second half of my life than the first. My advice: Don’t beat yourself up over past mistakes – learn at least a little from them and move on. It is never too late to improve. Get the right heroes and copy them. You can start with Tom Murphy; he was the best. Remember Alfred Nobel, later of Nobel Prize fame, who – reportedly – read his own obituary that was mistakenly printed when his brother died and a newspaper got mixed up. He was horrified at what he read and realized he should change his behavior. Don’t count on a newsroom mix-up: Decide what you would like your obituary to say and live the life to deserve it. Greatness does not come about through accumulating great amounts of money, great amounts of publicity or great power in government. When you help someone in any of thousands of ways, you help the world. Kindness is costless but also priceless. Whether you are religious or not, it’s hard to beat The Golden Rule as a guide to behavior. I write this as one who has been thoughtless countless times and made many mistakes but also became very lucky in learning from some wonderful friends how to behave better (still a long way from perfect, however). Keep in mind that the cleaning lady is as much a human being as the Chairman. * * * * * * * * * * * * I wish all who read this a very happy Thanksgiving. Yes, even the jerks; it’s never too late to change. Remember to thank America for maximizing your opportunities. But it is – inevitably – capricious and sometimes venal in distributing its rewards. Choose your heroes very carefully and then emulate them. You will never be perfect, but you can always be better.
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Akash Mainra retweeted
BREAKING: Elon Musk just got approved for the most AMBITIOUS pay package in corporate history. $1 trillion. 423 million shares. Over 10 years. But it’s not just about the money... Here’s Elon’s plan, the loophole everyone’s missing, and what it means for us: 🧵
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