Hello Reader,
Many of you are probably travelling this weekend. I'll keep this short. Today, I want to talk about building a new moat in the age of AI. Also, I believe a new wave of data centres is coming to Asia.
Building a new moat
On Saturday, I chatted briefly with someone on LinkedIn who shared how he's been working on "skills and projects" on Claude Cowork. Everyone across social media platforms is prompting people to "build," he noted.
He then added: "[With democratized access to AI]... what becomes of our value-add and moats in our business?" The conversation was still hanging at the time I wrote this commentary, as online chats are wont to. But it got me thinking.
The only way to maintain our advantage, I suspect, would be to embrace the new technology and forge a new moat from it. And that's what I've found myself gravitating towards.
How can I use my skills in writing and my ability to clearly articulate technology, together with the latest AI tools - to create an edge that someone else with AI alone cannot easily match? Or better yet, how can I use it to build new capabilities that I can weave into a broader skill set? That's probably why I've been spending too much time creating apps.
In "10x is easier than 2x," author Dan Sullivan contrasted the horse buggy with the automobile. A reputable company in the buggy business could probably, with some effort, build a better, faster buggy. But it would only be fractionally better. The automobile, while initially crude, unreliable, and seemingly impractical, represented an entirely different trajectory.
Indeed, when it first appeared, the automobile was something no one had a framework for. Instead of improving on the buggy, it eventually made it obsolete. Are you still expending effort on the buggy?
A new wave of data centres is coming
Anthropic just can't stop talking about Australia of late. Earlier in March, the AI firm announced its fourth office in the Asia-Pacific in Sydney. This culminated in a visit by CEO Dario Amodei who flew over this week and signed an MOU with the Australian government to collaborate on AI.
While reports say Anthropic is "exploring" data centres in Australia, I think a deal will happen sooner rather than later. The reason? Anthropic has fewer data centres of its own than you think, and none of them are currently outside the United States. For this reason, I assess that it will move quickly.
And if you have been speaking to ecosystem vendors in Japan, you will also realise that there is a substantial amount of not-yet-announced data centre activity happening there. Then there is Thailand, Vietnam, Batam and Johor. And Singapore's DC-CFA2 for 220MW of new data centres which will draw to a close next week.
These data centres are being built to meet a surge of demand. They aren't the massive, off-the-charts growth that the likes of OpenAI like to project. But they represent a steady, sustained build-out that will reshape the region's digital landscape.
Beyond digitalisation, this will be needed to power AI inferencing. As AI becomes embedded in everyday life and its share of the pie eventually exceeds AI training, the new data centres will be essential to keeping up with its relentless demand.
As usual, you can reply to this email to reach me.
Regards,
Paul Mah
