Jeff Brown says he called the rise of Nvidia years in advance.
Jeff spent more than two decades as a senior executive at Qualcomm, NXP Semiconductors and Juniper Networks, two of them chip companies. He says that experience lets him see big tech trends before most people catch on, and before they become “breaking news.” By then, he says, the shares have usually already popped.
Now he says the next big chip story belongs to Elon Musk.
Why Elon Is Making His Own Chips
AI runs on chips, and Jeff says whoever wants to dominate AI needs more computing power than anyone else. That’s what Elon is after.
Jeff says Elon went to the world’s biggest chipmakers, Nvidia among them, and told them he would buy all of their chips. They couldn’t sell him that many, because they have many other customers. And Jeff says even all of their chips wouldn’t be enough.
At the launch of his chip project in March, Elon put it this way:
So Elon is making his own. Jeff calls it step one of Elon’s three-step AI plan: Terafab, which he says is set to be the world’s largest and most advanced chip-making operation. He says Tesla’s Gigafactory in Texas, the size of 174 football fields, looks tiny next to the planned Terafab.
Jeff visited its first phase in Austin, riding there in a Cybercab with no steering wheel and no pedals.
The Machine Elon Will Need
Jeff says a single chip packs tens of billions of tiny switches onto a square the size of a large postage stamp. Building it takes precision at the atomic level, and “one of the most precise machines humans have ever built.”
“This is not a guess. It’s not a prediction. It’s just physics,” he says. “If Elon wants to build chips, he will need that machine.”
Jeff believes he’s found the company that will supply it.
He’s Been Early on Elon Before
In November 2018, while the media was mocking Elon, Jeff told his readers: “When I think about Tesla, I see one of the leading artificial intelligence companies in the world.” He calls it “the most hated and controversial recommendation I had ever made.” He says Tesla went on to jump almost 2,200%.
In 2019, while parts of the media called Starlink a “pipe dream,” he predicted it would get up and running and start selling its service. A year later, he says, it did.
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Jeff still calls Tesla a great company over the long term. “But I’m not here to recommend Tesla,” he says.
Three Steps, Three Picks
Jeff says the chips are only step one. He’s picked a little-known company for each step of Elon’s plan.
Step 1: Chips
Elon’s Terafab chip project. Jeff believes he’s found the company that will supply the chip-making machine it needs.
Step 2: Energy
Jeff says Elon plans to put AI chips on satellites, powered by the sun. His pick is a company he says has worked with SpaceX for more than a decade, on chips used in every Starlink satellite and ground terminal.
Step 3: Robots
Self-driving Cybercabs and Optimus, Tesla’s humanoid robot. His pick is a company he says already supplies Tesla with a key piece of sensor technology. He wouldn’t be surprised if it ends up supplying Optimus too.
The short version
- Jeff Brown, a former chip executive, says he called Nvidia years in advance and recommended Tesla in 2018, while the media was mocking Elon.
- He says Elon Musk needs far more AI chips than Nvidia and the rest of the industry can make, so Elon is building his own.
- He’s picked a little-known company for each step of Elon’s plan: chips, energy and robots.
Jeff’s free presentation lays out all three steps. The companies’ names come with a paid subscription to The Near Future Report, which renews automatically each year.
Free to watch · Investing involves risk · Elon Musk hasn’t endorsed Jeff’s research. The picks are Jeff’s.
