Newsletter #33: Jensen Huang’s 2025 CES Keynote - AI’s next frontier + decoding what to expect in 2025

The keynote Jensen Huang delivered last week to kickoff CES 2025 felt like the closest thing I’ve seen to “here’s how AI is going to unfold over the next 5-10+ years” and “here’s what it tangibly means for the next 12 months.”

He did an incredible job contextualizing everything by helping the audience understand how we got here but without going too far into the technical weeds where it could feel more like a lecture. 

Instead, it was super insightful, entertaining and inspiring.

After watching it, I couldn’t help but pull together a quick micro essay framing my top 9 key takeaways.

I’m going to use this newsletter to expand on four of the key takeaways to provide a bit more content to try and convince you to find the :90 minutes to watch the keynote.

I guarantee you won’t regret it. 

So here we go.

Key Takeaway 1: A company’s ability to process Data into Actionable Insights and action them has never been more important.

Jensen’s quote: “Over ‘next couple of years, humanity will produce more data than humanity has ever produced since the beginning of time’ (45:35).”

Using one of my favorite Charlie Munger mental models - “Show me the incentive and I’ll show you the outcome” - but flipping it to data / tech, it seems safe to say “Show me a company’s AI capabilities and I’ll show you the outcome.”

Data is growing exponentially as is the utility of Generative AI native technology. Yes, there is a lot of hype and noise but there is also a whole lot of signal.

Those that can distinguish the signal vs noise to modernize their data / tech stack along with the associated people and process, to build Compound AI Systems will rip market share from their competitors that don’t.

Rip. Market. Share.

A few links to consider for context:

Bank of America published an excellent report in / around May ‘24 - “BofA Thematic Investment Report: AI Primer - ‘Me, Myself + AI” - which reinforced what I described above. 

Here’s a link to “Newsletter #5: How do you ride the AI crescendo, tsunami wave? Where is Laird Hamilton when you need him… ;)” that included the primer and the following excerpts:

“If data is the new oil, then AI is the new electricity.”

“More data is created per hour today than in an entire year just two decades ago, and global data is expected to double every 2 years.”

“We are entering the age of the Yottabyte, but still, only 1% of global data is being captured, stored and used. This is about to change.”

“By the time you finish reading this sentence, 231mn emails and 6bn searches on Google and 69mm WhatsApp messages will have been sent and 500 hours of video will have been uploaded on YouTube .”

“We will generate more data in the next 2 days than all the data created between the dawn of humanity and 2000... and 90% of global data was created in the last 2 years. And data creation is doubling every 2 years.”

Most definitely in “the more things change, the more things stay the same” category, these excerpts from “Gartner Top Strategic Predictions for 2018 and Beyond” feel like they could be published today…

Excerpts below from my post “Re: AI, Mark Cuban was absolutely right about ‘Thinking Critically + Creatively” 11.22.17 including those from Gartner 's 2018 report:

“#4 – Enterprises know that 'speed kills' but are struggling to keep up.”

“This is most definitely not an easy one nor is it of the 'silver bullet' aka 'yep, got that done' variety…”

“The advance of technology is outpacing the ability of enterprises to keep up. Enterprises will still be required to develop discipline around how pace can be achieved.”

“#5 – Might sound cliché but continuous learning and becoming a 'learning organization' is a competitive advantage…but please don’t say 'yes, we’re there' when those on the front-lines know you’re not.”

“To reduce employee churn and sustain growth, transform from episodic or nonexistent learning to continuous learning. Upskill employees to maximize the effects of AI-enabled roles and decisions. Transform your culture to make it rapidly adaptable to AI-related opportunities or threats.”

“AI will be taking away routine tasks, freeing up employees to be more productive and creative by doing what humans can do best. Invest in reinforcing agility, soft skills and creative innovative attributes that will be needed in the symbiotic culture of people and AI.”

Key Takeaway #2: Harnessing intelligence - “the most valuable asset we have” - is a big deal.

Jensen’s quote: “Intelligence of course is the most valuable asset that we have and it can be applied to solve a lot of very challenging problems” (50:07).

While this might feel like an obvious statement, think of intelligence in terms of an iceberg.

The intelligence you have access to is everything below the waterline vs what you’ve processed into actionable insights and made accessible is the bit above the waterline. 

In this ridiculously oversimplified example, the waterline could effectively be thought of as the Semantic Layer that sits between all of your lovely but likely siloed data (vs in an elegant, modern Knowledge Graph) and actionable insights that users can interface with because they’re “viewable, accessible etc above the water line”...

Hence my $1 bet with CEOs and senior, non-technical business leaders around getting ahead of “this one, you’re going to put real deal points on the board…”

Link to my micro essay - “What is a Semantic Layer? Why should CEOs and senior, non-technical business leaders care?” - if you want to go deeper.

Speaking of $1 bets, I’ll bet the “What if” thinking that is propelling all of that super impressive AI enabled innovation at Wendy’s is enabled in part by the strength of their Semantic Layer…checkout my AI with Alec fireside chat with The Wendy's Company AI Leader Will Croushorn, MBA where he spoke to their AI enabled innovation, "what if" thinking etc. Very impressive and inspiring.

Also reminds me of two relevant Ethan Mollick quotes:

Tech innovation cycles vs organization's ability to absorb + operationalize.

Building an LLM vs projecting the specific tasks vs benchmarking vs figuring it out.

Last but certainly not least, this quote from Jesse Beyroutey , a recent guest on "Invest Like the Best" with Patrick O'Shaughnessy, CFA certainly stuck in my head…just the same way Mark Cuban 's comments did from 2017 referenced above.

Key Takeaway #3: AI Agents are likely “the next Robotics industry.”

Jensen’s quote: “AI Agents is probably the next Robotics industry and it's a multi-trillion dollar opportunity…30 million software Engineers around the world everybody is going to have a software assistant…there's a billion knowledge workers in the world” (1:06:54).

Not only is the AI Agent stuff 100% real, I don’t think it’s hyped up enough. 

Without considering the implications of AI software engineers that can execute end-to-end what a junior software engineer can do today so that that engineer plus the rest of the Product + Engineering rockstars can focus on higher impact, bigger problems to solve, the area I’ll pound the table on is the implications of enabling Operators / SMEs etc to build. 

Building on their own, using democratized tools of development so they get direct access to all of this gnarly horsepower available today is massive.

Aka you are the Developer now.

Speaking of which, I built my first AI Application.

Yes, I’m technical (non-engineer) and have been involved in the space forever but I'm not a software engineer. When asked, I used to say “I can’t code but…”

Thanks to these tools, that's not true anymore. Gives me the chills writing that.

Anyhow, the implications of all of this are outrageous.

Check out a micro essay I wrote about Devin from Cognition Labs including the following excerpts:

“You work with Devin the same way that you would work with a coworker.”

“Devin is in your Slack , Devin is in your GitHub , uses all of your tools and works in your local developer environment. And so you can just tag Devin, you can say, ‘Hey, Devin, I've got this bug that's going on in the front end. Can you figure out what's going on?’" 

“It's very much a junior engineer today. That's how we think of it.”

“So I think it's exactly right, eating the 90% of all the miscellaneous implementation and debugging and iteration and whatever. I think what happens then is, honestly, you just get to do 10x more of the 10%.”

“I honestly think we're going to see a lot of this Jevons paradox where we're just going to be building more and more and more software as it gets easier.”

“It's what we've seen already, but maybe to a somewhat lesser scale. Building software now versus building it in the 80s probably is about 10x easier or so.”

“And this shift will happen a lot quicker, obviously.”

Check out Andrew Ng 's comments including the excerpts below:

“Despite having worked on AI since I was a teenager, I’m now more excited than ever about what we can do with it, especially in building AI applications."

"Sparks are flying in our field, and 2025 will be a great year for building!”

“One aspect of AI that I’m particularly excited about is how easy it is to build software prototypes. AI is lowering the cost of software development and expanding the set of possible applications. While it can help extend or maintain large software systems, it shines particularly in building prototypes and other simple applications quickly.”

“Until now, a huge friction point for getting a prototype into users’ hands has been deployment. Platforms like Bolt, Replit Agent, Vercel V0 use generative AI with agentic workflows to improve code quality, but more importantly, they also help deploy generated applications directly.”

Key Takeaway #4: Regardless of where you sit in the org, it’s time to put your hands in the AI dirt and start building. 

Jensen’s quote: “Age of agentic AI is here for every organization…AI agents are domain specific task experts” (1:07:40).

Building on Devin - the AI Software Engineer - let’s bring this to life with a few more examples that can be used by a variety of different people within an organization.

What if there was an AI Analyst for Wall Street? Rogo …link to my AI with Alec fireside chat with co-Founder / CTO Tumas R.

What if there was an AI SDR / BDR for B2B Lead Generation? 11x …and a bit more context about them in Newsletter #32.

What if there was an AI Customer Service Agent for any business? Sierra ...and a bit more context about them in Newsletter #30.

You get it.

Modern companies and leaders are building and embracing more Compound AI Systems and delegating more work to machines. 

Increasing the Humans + Machines collaboration quotient etc.

If you don’t yet have your hands in the dirt, now is the time. You’ve got this.

Looking at the “Future of Jobs Report 2025: These are the fastest growing and declining jobs” by the World Economic Forum can be helpful when considering where the puck is headed…

The optimistic case for 7% GDP growth by Goldman Sachs doesn’t look like such a stretch, does it? ;)

Link to “Newsletter #15: The rise of the Chief AI Officer - competitive or complementary to the Chief Digital Officer?” 08.06.24 where you can find the above report and others from Goldman Sachs.

One more thing...

Last but certainly not least, I wanted to find a place for some interesting stuff I came across since publishing Newsletter #32. 

Although this content doesn't necessarily fit in the flow of the above, I wanted to share it anyway in case any of you find it as interesting as I do…

1: Scott Belsky ’s comments about “conforming software” are super interesting.

2: I know there are a lot of ways to look at the inputs vs outputs of a portfolio but this quote about Sequoia Capital seed stage investments is wild…99%.

3: Comments from Shane Parrish on “discomfort you’re willing to bear” is lights out.

4: If AI in the real world captures your imagination, follow Brett Adcock (founder + CEO of Figure ) who builds in public and crushes it → “Figure is giving artificial intelligence a body”

5: This Airbnb is outrageous, has an amazing story and no surprise the “waitlist is years long”...

6: Giga Berlin embracing Street Art + Robotics…WOW

7: “How Steve Jobs Kept Marketing Simple...You will go far with a single idea expressed clearly”...follow David Senra while you’re at it, his book summaries are incredible.

That's it.

Hope you enjoy the rest of your Sunday.

For those that dig the National Football League (NFL) , enjoy all that playoff football...I most definitely am!

Talk soon.

Alec