What I read this week...
Week 106
STRATEGY & MANAGEMENT
Why AI Labs Are Starting to Look Like Sports Teams (Sequoia)
“one year ago we were seeing a consolidation in research labs because of the daunting costs of building a foundation model lab. Microsoft/OpenAI, Amazon/Anthropic, Google, Meta and xAI emerged as five “finalists” in the AI race as others folded, because these companies had reached GPT-4 level models and had sufficient capital to continue scaling. Now, by contrast, a new cohort of players has sprouted up, including SSI, Thinking Machines, and DeepSeek, who claim talent, not raw compute scale, as their primary differentiators… And yet, even amidst this fierce competition, the broader AI ecosystem also feels calmer today than at any point in the last three years. That’s because for most people, the race itself is now a constant and the market structure feels stable. People are getting comfortable with the status quo. The unstable competitive equilibrium is itself stable — for now…”
Can the F1 movie kick Formula One into top gear? (Sherwood)
INDIA
The retail reinvention paradigm: How brands could up their game (PWC)
“Insights shared in this report are based on a survey, conducted in collaboration with Hansa Research, of over 1,000 retailers and 800 consumers across metro cities, tier 1, 2 and 3 cities in India. These insights are further complemented with the data collected in a survey, conducted in collaboration with Kirana Club of 508 retailers.”
Is Quick Commerce Killing Your Local Kirana Store? (Breakdown)
FMCG giants are caught in a spice war. MTR’s owner beat them to it years ago (The Ken)
“..“If an FMCG company hired a management consultancy to figure out which segment to diversify into, they would probably say spices,” said a senior executive at a major retail chain. It all comes down to the math: where oil and ghee offer single-digit margins and staples like rice and pulses hover around 20%, spices consistently offer margins north of 30%. This, when even premium products like dry fruits max out at 25%…”
Brands are FOOLING you!! (Zero1 by Zerodha)
Strategic Musings
“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” ― Maya Angelou
Caught my eye…
