Ben Thompson on Big Tech, China, and the AI Boom Running Out of Money

Ben Thompson, founder of Stratechery, joins Patrick O'Shaughnessy to dissect the competitive dynamics of the AI boom. The conversation maps the entire big tech landscape—from OpenAI and Nvidia to Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon—examining the race with China, the coming capital constraints that dwarf compute as a bottleneck, and the structural lessons of past infrastructure buildouts like 1870s railroads and container shipping. Thompson applies his Aggregation Theory lens to the AI era, explores why consumer AI might need an advertising model, and breaks down which big tech companies are best positioned for the next phase.