Contrary Research
@Contrary_Res
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The best starting point for understanding private tech companies. Powered by @contrary. Subscribe to our newsletter below:
Joined March 2022
We’re excited to introduce Contrary Research! Our vision is to be the best destination for finding high-quality research and in-depth analysis of private companies. 1/11
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In September 2025, we published The Vertical AI Playbook, a deep dive into the ways AI is being distributed. In that piece, we started with a quote from William Gibson: “The future is already here – it’s just not very evenly distributed.“ Three months later, the quote remains
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That’s not a joke That’s 12,5% up in first hour That’s record sales That’s a huge momentum $NVDA $PLTR $meta $Amzn $SPY
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Stargate project DRAM wafer demand is expected to exceed 40% of global output. Micron, a leading RAM/DRAM wafer producer, said in its first fiscal quarter report that it will only be able to meet demand for “half to two-thirds” of its “key customers.”
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In 2017, Putin said "Whoever becomes the leader in [AI] will become the ruler of the world.” Watching this video of the first Russian AI-powered humanoid robot, feels like a good example of how being early still doesn't mean you win.
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Waymo's capabilities are trained on data from 96 million physical miles but also, more importantly, from 20 billion simulated miles. Being able to simulate the physical world is going to become more important than ever.
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In the US, carbon emissions peaked in 2007 and have been declining ever since. China's emissions, however, continue to rise and now exceed the US and Europe combined.
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Much of Google's recent advantage is built on a foundation of AI excellence that was crafted over the course of the last decade. Not a good idea to count them down and out by any stretch.
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What a crazy stat.
"There are, I think, 5 billionaires that came out of Palantir, because they own Palantir stock, and the revenue was $4 billion... So the billionaires-to-revenue ratio was greater than one" - Michael Burry, speaking publicly for the first time since 2012 https://t.co/j6y3Cp3wLo
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*steps away from dinner to listen*
"There are, I think, 5 billionaires that came out of Palantir, because they own Palantir stock, and the revenue was $4 billion... So the billionaires-to-revenue ratio was greater than one" - Michael Burry, speaking publicly for the first time since 2012 https://t.co/j6y3Cp3wLo
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"There are, I think, 5 billionaires that came out of Palantir, because they own Palantir stock, and the revenue was $4 billion... So the billionaires-to-revenue ratio was greater than one" - Michael Burry, speaking publicly for the first time since 2012 https://t.co/j6y3Cp3wLo
open.spotify.com
Against the Rules: The Big Short Companion · Episode
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Eventually, avoiding autonomous vehicles because robots make you nervous will be morally indefensible. If all cars operated at the safety rates of a Waymo we could prevent 37K deaths a year and save ~$1T in societal costs.
I have a guest essay in @nytimes today about autonomous vehicle safety. I wrote it because I’m tired of seeing children die. Done right, we can eliminate car crashes as a leading cause of death in the United States @Waymo recently released data covering nearly 100 million
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Despite the AI infrastructure boom being funded by some of the most profitable companies to ever exist, the funding isn’t equity. Increasingly, the AI boom is being fueled by debt.
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Any one of China's 13 shipyards could produce more than than the shipbuilding capacity of the entire US. What's more, China reportedly expected to increase its shipbuilding capacity by 80% over the next three years.
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Thrive Holdings announces a partnership with OpenAI to coordinate OpenAI's applied AI team + Thrive Holdings' operations teams in order to "deeply integrate AI into the businesses" they own and operate. The Vertical AI Playbook: Operate AI rather than selling it.
We are excited to announce a strategic partnership between OpenAI and Thrive Holdings. Through our partnership, OpenAI will become an equity owner in Holdings, and collectively we will set out to deliver frontier technology for our customers. For decades, technology has
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The Canonical OpenAI 35K+ words laying out everything there is to know about OpenAI • The AI pioneers that laid the foundation (Turing, von Neumann, Shannon) • AlexNet inspiring Sam Altman to focus on AI • OpenAI's product philosophy, and more Full piece linked below:
It's here! We've published The Canonical OpenAI. 35K+ words across the historical underpinnings of the company's evolution, the product philosophy, the markets they're disrupting, and so much more. Thanks to all who gave feedback on early drafts.
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America desperately needs its own TSMC. Can startups save us? We don't think so. In our latest video, we talked to @kwharrison13 about America's only hope: Intel.
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Dozens of categories are being invented from first principles as AI-native. So the team at Contrary Research dug into Lightfield: the AI-native CRM.
We're launching Lightfield today. It's a CRM designed for founders going zero to one—shaped in the past year by hundreds of founders who took a bet on us and now use it daily, and a waitlist of 20,000 more. When starting out, it takes countless hours of talking to customers to
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Our memo on @lightfld marks the first time @Contrary_Res has covered a company before its public launch. We spent months with @keithpeiris and the team examining why sales software is fundamentally broken – customer truth has been trapped in a maze of disconnected, archaic
We're launching Lightfield today. It's a CRM designed for founders going zero to one—shaped in the past year by hundreds of founders who took a bet on us and now use it daily, and a waitlist of 20,000 more. When starting out, it takes countless hours of talking to customers to
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Full rundown on Valar Atomics: • The Rise & Fall of Nuclear’s First Act • The Build-Nothing Regulatory Regime • A New Nuclear Era My favorite bit? @isaiah_p_taylor highlighting Valar's key insight: "Electricity is a terrible product." Instead? Use nuclear to produce fuel.
Today we're announcing Valar Atomics' $130m Series A, led by Doug Philippone at Snowpoint Ventures and co-lead by Day One and Dream. Also joining Team Valar are Balerion, Contrary, DTX, Alumni, Crosscut, Triplepoint, Palmer Luckey, Shyam Sankar, and more great funds and angels.
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