Halkin is very pleased to welcome back Mike Orme, co-founder of the advisory Signum Intel, Mike will:
- Set the scene with profiles of Sam Altman of OpenAI and Liang Wenfeng of DeepMind
- Explain why the parallels with the dot-com era are inexact
- Discuss the threat of China Inc flooding the world market with cheap AI that’s 80-90% as good as prestige US offerings
- Consider whether the vast capex on US AI data centers will prove justified?
- Suggest investment opportunities in data center power and cooling infrastructures and in embodied AI rather than cloud based GPT.
Mike Orme has been a technology forecaster and analyst for 40 years, armed with a strong aversion to hype and hand-waving. Left field is his natural habitat. He worked directly with Steve Jobs and Andy Grove on projects while at the legendary Silicon Valley consultancy Regis McKenna, broke the story on the BBC behind the collapse of the Japanese 5th Generation Computer project, spent nearly a decade as a global consultant at HP, helped companies spun out from Cambridge University find start-up capital, headed up technology research at Centrum and Mirabeau, and worked closely with Cyrus Mewawalla at CM Research. Mike also founded the Signum Intel advisory for global fund managers and wrote one of the first books on the semiconductor revolution: Micros: A Pervasive Force.
His career spans many roles, including Secretary of the joint Treasury/Bank of England Home Finance Committee; Private Client portfolio manager at leading City stockbrokers – Kitcat & Aitken and J&A Scrimgeour (now long absorbed into investment banks); Mr Bearbull at the Investors Chronicle; Editor, Technology Magazine; Head of Regis McKenna (UK) – working with Apple, Intel and HP among others; Associate partner, Peat Marwick – when it acquired Regis McKenna (Europe); Market relations/analyst relations consultant, HP (Europe); Co-founder/Director, Blue Sky Forum linking Oxbridge spin-outs to business angels and VCs; PR strategist, Apama Ltd (now part of Progress Software); Global strategist, Westhall Capital (London) – produced monthly briefing, Peripheral Vision, for FMs and ran frequent brain-storming sessions with Westhall clients in the UK and Asia; Global strategist, Centrum Capital (Mumbai, London). Produced monthly briefing, Mind Over Mania, and ran frequent brain-storming sessions with Centrum’s Indian clients; Freelance analyst providing in camera briefings to large global fund managers, as well as developing ‘Inside Track Ltd’ in Kenya to offer PE to East African ventures.