Sacerdote is a top-down technology-adoption (S-curve) investor — stance below reflects how each name was framed in this panel, not a price target. Research legend: QT Qualtrim · SA Seeking Alpha · STK Stock Analysis. Privates (Anthropic, OpenAI) have no ticker. Only Sacerdote's own names are listed here. Ordered Positive → Neutral.
| Ticker | Name | Research | View | What he said | At |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Anthropic | Anthropic (private) | — | Positive | Owned foundational-model leader — revenue "going from 100 million to a billion to 9 billion, and then it's already at 45 billion" run-rate, maybe $100B; with OpenAI ≈ $200B combined by year-end at "staggering," locked-in-compute margins — "you could be looking at something that's like 18 times earnings." | 6:48 |
| OpenAI | OpenAI (private) | — | Positive | The other owned model-layer winner — "between Anthropic and OpenAI, towards year end you're going to be looking at $200 billion of revenue," with enormous incremental margin because they locked up compute early. | 8:18 |
| GOOGL | Alphabet (Google) | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | His big-name pick — "they've won AI… the only public company with a foundational model." TPU chips "phenomenal" (now powering Anthropic), search accelerating, YouTube/Gmail/Sheets to infuse AI; "the stock is very cheap… could easily be up 50%. I don't see very much downside." | 21:55 |
| TTMI | TTM Technologies | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | His small-cap pick — printed circuit boards, once "the biggest commodity of all time," now decommoditizing: AI servers need more PCBs at far more layers (10 → 20/30/40/120), lifting unit growth + ASPs; makes them for Google and Nvidia ("just won Nvidia") plus ~40% defense (Iron Dome contract; defense "getting electronicized"). | 20:50 |
| DDOG | Datadog | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | Endorses Leon's call on the one bright spot in software — infrastructure/data-driven software can win: "a lot of the big model companies like Anthropic are using DataDog's tools. So that's a pretty good tell." | 20:04 |
| SMH | VanEck Semiconductor ETF | SA · STK · FA | Positive | "I bought the SMH, the semiconductor index, for my mom a while back, and she's going to keep holding it after what Leon said" — a light endorsement of the broad semis basket given the bullish AI-compute setup. | 23:57 |
| NVDA | NVIDIA | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | The reference point for the chip layer he owns — "dramatic undersupply of chips," every Nvidia rack pushing power/PCB/networking suppliers; the few component makers "innovating hand in glove with Google and Nvidia." (TTMI "just won Nvidia.") | 15:23 |
| AMZN | Amazon | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | Historical analogy, not a current call — his first stock at Fidelity, bought in '98 when there were "only 100 million internet users and only 2 million e-commerce users… it doesn't even need to grow for this stock to be a buy"; the template for buying an L-curve early. | 6:22 |
A jargon-free summary of the thesis behind each name — what it actually is and why he holds that view. (Plain-language companion to the table above; renders on each ticker's consolidated page.)
Anthropic is the private company behind the Claude AI models — one of Whale Rock's owned "foundational model" bets (the core AI engines everything else is built on). Customers pay per "token" (the chunks of text a model reads and writes), so usage translates straight into revenue.
Sacerdote's point at Sohn is the sheer slope: revenue went from $100M to $1B to $9B and is "already at 45 billion" on a run-rate basis, maybe heading to $100B. Even better is the profit picture — because these companies locked up scarce computing capacity early at fixed cost, every extra dollar of token revenue is very high margin, so profitability could look "staggering," on the order of 18× earnings. That, he argues, kills the worry that all the AI spending has no payoff.
OpenAI, the private maker of ChatGPT, is the other model-layer name Whale Rock owns. Sacerdote lumps it with Anthropic: together he thinks they'll be doing about $200 billion of revenue by year-end, at unusually fat margins because both secured their computing supply ahead of the crowd.
The takeaway is that the two leaders in the AI-model race are turning into highly profitable franchises, not cash-burning science projects.
Google is his big, easy-to-own pick. He says it has "won AI" and is the only publicly traded company with its own top-tier foundational model (Gemini). Its in-house AI chips — TPUs — are "phenomenal" and now even power rival Anthropic, which is a strong vote of confidence.
On top of that, AI is speeding up search rather than killing it, and Google can fold AI into YouTube, Gmail, and Sheets. With the stock "very cheap" and revenue set to accelerate, he thinks it "could easily be up 50%" with little downside.
TTM makes printed circuit boards — the flat green boards that hold and connect a computer's chips. For decades these were the ultimate commodity. AI is changing that: AI servers run hotter, faster, and need cleaner electrical signals, so they require more boards, and far more complex ones — going from ~10 stacked layers to 20, 30, 40, even 120. That pushes up both the number sold and the price per board (its ASP, average selling price), and only a handful of firms can make the hard ones.
TTM is one of them, supplying Google and Nvidia ("just won Nvidia"), and about 40% of its business is defense — riding a defense buildout (it won work on the Iron Dome missile-defense system as weapons get more electronics-heavy). It's his "small one you haven't heard of."
Datadog sells "observability" software — tools that monitor whether a company's apps and servers are running properly. Sacerdote is broadly bearish on ordinary business software, but he carves out an exception for data-driven and infrastructure software, and points to Datadog as a "unique asset" at the heart of the AI buildout.
His tell: the big AI labs themselves, including Anthropic, use Datadog's tools to keep their systems healthy. When the companies driving the boom are your customers, that's a good sign — even if you can debate whether the stock deserves 30× or 40× earnings.
SMH is an exchange-traded fund (a single ticker that holds a basket) of the biggest semiconductor stocks — the simplest way to own "chips" without picking one name. Sacerdote mentions, half in jest, that he bought it for his mother and that she'll keep holding it given how bullish the panel was on AI-driven chip demand.
It's a light, closing endorsement rather than a deep pitch, but it reflects his core view that there isn't nearly enough compute and the whole semiconductor complex benefits.
Nvidia makes the chips that train and run AI, and here it's the anchor of Sacerdote's "chip layer" — the part of the stack he owns alongside the AI models. His point is that chips are in "dramatic undersupply," and each Nvidia server rack draws so much power and runs so hot that it forces every surrounding supplier (boards, networking, power) to innovate.
The few component makers that can keep up work "hand in glove with Google and Nvidia," which is exactly why he likes picks like TTMI — which "just won Nvidia" as a customer.
Summary & timestamps derived from the public YouTube video (transcript in transcript.txt) for personal study. Not investment advice. © Sohn Conference Foundation / CNBC for source material.