Alex Sacerdote - How to Invest Through Technology Cycles
June 9, 2026
AI Summary
5 min readThe S-Curve Framework for Investing Through Technology Cycles
Alex Sacerdote, founder of Whale Rock Capital Management, manages more than $17 billion by betting on technology S-curves. His highest conviction position right now is Anthropic, and walking through that investment reveals how he thinks about the entire AI stack—from chips to models to applications.
Sacerdote's framework rests on three pillars: identifying the right part of a technology S-curve, finding companies with durable competitive advantages, and recognizing underappreciated earnings power. When these align, he argues, earnings can grow from one dollar to ten dollars far more often than most investors believe.
The Anthropic Bet and the Coding Unlock
When ChatGPT launched in November 2022, Sacerdote's 10-person team immediately went into deep-dive mode. His first instinct was to invest in chips and infrastructure—the bottom of the stack—because demand would come first and the winners were knowable. Over the next two to three years, however, the foundational model layer clarified into what looked like a three-horse race: OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google's Gemini.
Continue reading the full summary in the app — free to try.
Read Full Summary →Free • No credit card required
Never miss an episode of Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Get every new episode summarized in your inbox — free, ~5 minutes to read.
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
What you'll learn
- 1 (03:00) **Highest Conviction: Anthropic** - Alex explains why Anthropic is his top position, starting with the post-ChatGPT deep dive and the evolution of the foundational model layer from 60 players to a likely oligopoly.
- 2 (08:45) **The Coding Unlock and Model Differentiation** - Alex details how Claude Code's shift to full agentic capability flipped the market, citing Andrej Karpathy and Linus Torvalds as evidence.
- 3 (11:11) **The S-Curve Framework and AI's "L-Curve"** - Alex explains his core investment framework (S-curve, competitive advantage, underappreciated earnings power) and applies it to AI, arguing it's an "L-curve" with massive runway.
- 4 (13:25) **Investing in Private Markets** - Alex details how a public markets investor gains access to high-demand private companies like Anthropic and Stripe.
- 5 (19:49) **Deep Dive: The S-Curve Framework** - Alex explains the full S-curve framework, including the "tornado of demand" when barriers to adoption are removed, and how to estimate the height of the curve.
- 6 (28:50) **Adoption Speed: Radio vs. Dishwasher** - Alex contrasts fast consumer adoption (radio) with slow B2B adoption (dishwasher), applying the "dishwasher" model to enterprise AI's need to integrate with existing systems.
- 7 (31:04) **Identifying the Leader and Competitive Moats** - Alex explains how to spot the eventual winner in a new S-curve by analyzing powerful digital moats (network effects, industry standard, scale, IP).
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Show Notes
My guest today is Alex Sacerdote, founder of Whale Rock Capital Management.
Whale Rock is a technology focused investment firm that manages more than $17 billion across hedge fund, long only, and hybrid strategies. Over the past three years it has been one of the best performing hedge funds, compounding at roughly 44 percent a year.
Alex invests through a single lens that he has refined over twenty years. He looks for technology S-curves, durable competitive advantages, and underappreciated earnings power.
This conversation is a tour through how he applies that framework right now. We start with his highest conviction position, which is Anthropic, and use it to work through the entire AI stack from chips to models to applications.
Please enjoy my conversation with Alex Sacerdote.
For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here.
-----
Become a Colossus member to get our quarterly print magazine and private audio experience, including exclusive profiles and early access to select episodes. Subscribe at colossus.com/subscribe.
-----
Ramp’s mission is to help companies manage their spend in a way that reduces expenses and frees up time for teams to work on more valuable projects. Go to ramp.com/invest to sign up for free and get a $250 welcome bonus.
-----
Trusted by thousands of businesses, Vanta continuously monitors your security posture and streamlines audits so you can win enterprise deals and build customer trust without the traditional overhead. Invest Like the Best listeners get a special offer of $1,000 off Vanta when you go to vanta.com/invest.
-----
WorkOS is the infrastructure B2B and AI-native companies use to sell to enterprise. It covers everything enterprise security requires: SSO, SCIM, RBAC, Audit Logs, AI governance, and more. Trusted by 2,000+ fast-growing companies, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Cursor, and Vercel.
-----
Rogo is the AI platform for finance. The
More from this podcast
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy →