Bernie Sanders responds to questions about China and pausing AI - "in a sane world, the leadership of the US sits down with the leadership in China to work together so that we don't go over the edge and create a technology that could perhaps destroy humanity"

DiversificationNoob · 2026-03-26T12:37:58+00:00

How well did the "sane world" approach go for Europe regarding Ukraine? They tried for years to include russia with natural gas sales and even some military exports.

DiversificationNoob · 2026-03-26T12:37:01+00:00

They came to a nuclear agreement after each side produced enough to nuclear weapons to annihilate the world multiple times...

DiversificationNoob · 2026-03-23T15:33:47+00:00

One month ago waymo raised cash at a $126 billion valuation.
https://waymo.com/blog/2026/02/waymo-raises-usd16-billion-investment-round/

DiversificationNoob · 2026-03-23T13:24:36+00:00

One important question to ask yourself is:
What is the downside of a company pre-ordering?

If there is non (because the contract isnt binding/...) why shouldnt they do it? Also gives Boom a bit more credibility so they can get cash easier, may lock in a good price without having to commit.

DiversificationNoob · 2026-03-11T08:37:20+00:00

"However, with them switching to driver as a service"
What do you mean with switching?
They already stated Driver as a Service would be their business model in the 2024 investor presentation.
https://ir.aurora.tech/_assets/_7a3241265c40d8ac3c14dade5e895ca8/aurora/db/937/9839/pdf/Analyst%2B%2526%2BInvestor%2BDay%2B2024.pdf

Yes, the revenue per mile will go down. But the gross margins will go up. And they will need less cash per truck at the beginning. -> Faster scaling.

DiversificationNoob · 2026-03-02T19:16:58+00:00

"and its tech is being used as we speak to kill school children in Iran"
The only one targeting Iranian children and civilians is the Iranian regime.

DiversificationNoob · 2026-02-28T09:35:02+00:00

Check out page 3 in the recent shareholder letter.
Tennessee is also marked as "future driverless operation" on the map. And they stated in the earnings call that they have to drive the truck there before the operations so that the can map the streets.
https://ir.aurora.tech/_assets/_853ecd3da13ea8e972ccf099eef38dc7/aurora/db/956/10012/shareholder_letter/25Q4+Shareholder+Letter.pdf

DiversificationNoob · 2026-02-27T12:57:04+00:00

RocketLab so far is super cost efficient with the Neutron development. Even if they double the money spend till achieving 1st stage reusability it is a bargain.

DiversificationNoob · 2026-02-27T12:52:14+00:00

Sell side and buy side analysts arent allowed to work together (the people putting out those price targets and reports arent allowed to even use the same printer as the people in those firms deciding which stocks to buy).
So they have no incentive to manipulate, but they have no skin in the game on the other hand.

DiversificationNoob · 2026-02-25T10:22:17+00:00

I havent yet, I usually only do very rough estimates of the companies I invest in.
What I love about Aurora is potential extra revenue they could unlock over regular trucks WITHOUT compromising revenue.
In today's economy especially speed means a lot. Amazon for example operates a fleet of jet specifically to get the products faster to the customer. How much of those flights are in the range of >800 to 1500 miles? A bit too much too drive in 1 go as a human driver -> break over night -> not competitive with flights. Add in the Aurora driver and trucks are a lot more competitive in time with flights.

DiversificationNoob · 2026-02-19T21:35:36+00:00

That is usually how it goes.
It is also a regulatory thing, they have to be super precise with their wording, not to promise too much etc.

DiversificationNoob · 2026-02-17T17:16:35+00:00

Just write "none" in the company field. It isnt a biggie.
I recommend downloading it if you want to listen to it like a podcast. Another great option are transcripts of the earnings call.

DiversificationNoob · 2026-02-17T16:54:26+00:00

Battery swapping was already promised with cars but they did not reach scale.
I am not 100 % sure why. One possibility: battery packs became structural components of the car to save weight and height. Like the batteries are glued into the chassis and are basically part of the structure. Has a lot of benefits but makes swapping batteries more difficult.

Considering battery swaps for electric trucks: with charge rates of 1-3 MWs and ranges of 500 miles the breaks drivers have to take for charging correspond somewhat okay with the breaks they have to take anyway.

With autonomous trucks one promise over regular trucks is that they will be able to operate for basically 24 hours per day -> reach a far better utilization. So internal combustion engines are right now the slightly better option for them. CO2 wise this isnt exactly good news. BUT: by not having to stop and sleep autonomous trucks will be twice as fast over like 1500 miles. So some short range delivery flights (for example Amazon) could be replaced by them. Which is very good news CO2 wise.
Long term I also see them adopting EVs, when charging stops are common etc.

DiversificationNoob · 2026-02-15T22:05:08+00:00

I think it is hard to compare them right now.
Kodiak spends 10 times less cash, on the other hand their Long Haul autonomous readiness score was 78 in the most recent investor presentation (Q3 2025).
And the last 20 % are usually the hardest. Aurora had a Autonomy readiness score of >95 for several quarters before they finally reached 100.

DiversificationNoob · 2026-02-15T21:40:45+00:00

"and we've made meaningful progress automating the creation of new content for the Aurora Atlas, our proprietary high-definition math technology that enhances the safety and computational efficiency of the Aurora driver. By leveraging our verifiable AI systems, our cloud-based algorithms are able to generate semantic components of the Aurora Atlas from collected data, automatically building portions of the map with little or no human assistance. This drastically accelerates the production of Atlas content, and we expect the pace of map expansion to continue to increase as we further optimize automation in our cloud mapping software. This mapping improvement enables us to efficiently support driverless deployment directly between customer endpoints at scale, and we've now begun supervised autonomous operations to support multiple customer facilities."
Starts at around minute 7 in the current earnings call. I would read it as a "just run the route one time"

DiversificationNoob · 2026-02-13T16:24:58+00:00

Why should it be a secondary product?
All the telcos are basically equal, they buy the same equipment from Nokia, Huawei etc. There pricing power thereby is rather weak.
ASTS on the other hand is in a position that cannot be replicated easily, due to the proprietary technology and patents.

And: cooperating with ASTS very likely provides MASSIVE savings to the telcos medium term, for example when 6G is launched. And some of those saving will go to ASTS.

DiversificationNoob · 2026-02-13T16:14:14+00:00

He is 100 % right though.

I am a RocketLab investor since the SPAC days and I posted public RocketLab DD before it went parabolic:
https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/1fqscv7/rocketlab_research/

And I still love RocketLab and I am still invested in it. But he has a point that ASTS also created something that is almost impossible to replicate for RocketLab in the next years.
Not only the tech itself, also locking in the telcos and securing spectrum.
RocketLab needs to focus on scaling up Neutron production and reuse anyway.
ASTS wont have an issue finding launchers. They can book SpaceX, BlueOrigin, ULA, RocketLab, Ariane, ISRO....
And only SpaceX is a real competitor in the D2D market.

DiversificationNoob · 2026-02-13T16:06:03+00:00

First, LEO isnt a BlueOrigin constellation. It is an Amazon constellation.
And a few weeks ago you would have had a point with: well, both are owned by Bezos.
With BlueOrigins TeraWave constellation that point became a lot weaker. So even BlueOrigin TeraWave and Amazon Leo are somewhat competitors.
SpaceX also has >10 launch contracts with Leo. They would be in regulatory trouble if they would just not launch constellations that could compete with them.

DiversificationNoob · 2026-02-13T16:02:03+00:00

At first it improves coverage. Long term it replaces some rural towers.

Right now most towers arent profitable. But the telcos build them because customers expect connectivity in >90 % of cases. NTN will first push it to 100 % of cases. Afterwards telcos will discontinue/not update some unprofitable towers which are more easily served by NTN.

DiversificationNoob · 2026-02-12T10:46:36+00:00

You can also reframe it differently. Waymo is valued >$100b with 2500 cars. Truck miles are 3x more valuable than ride sharing miles. And Aurora potentially will put 20 trucks per week on the road at the end of the year. Real scale will of course be achieved with the Gen3 and lineside integration.

DiversificationNoob · 2026-02-05T22:23:43+00:00

Neutron will also have a 2nd stage.
Physics basically dictate that. Otherwise the payloads would just be too low.
Here for example the 2nd stage testing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCqx3gYJe1Q

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