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Better Offline now. At the end of November, Nvidia put out an internal memo that tried to, well, get ahead of a few things is how I'd put it that had been bubbling up in the news. Specifically comparisons to Enron, the massive energy trading giant that imploded in the early 2000s after, well, a lot of fraud, also with some other concerns about its earnings. Said memo was leaked to Barron's reporter Taekim, who is one of the largest Nvidia boosters in the known universe. He posts constantly about how Nvidia is going to be the biggest, most hugest company in the world. He he's meant to be like an analyst and a reporter, but he mostly just seems like a cheerleader and it's kind of embarrassing now. Nevertheless, he was leaking a memo that was quite worrisome. So I don't know, Nvidia chose to disseminate it through him, but also to short sellers. The actual providence of this or is it providence? I don't know, but someone will correct me is kind of confusing. Anyway, long story short, people have a few concerns about Nvidia and well, you shouldn't though you shouldn't have any concerns at all because Nvidia's very secret not to be leaked immediately Document spent thousands of words very specifically explaining how Nvidia was fine and most importantly, by the way, nothing like Enron. Now why did I need to say all of this? And why did Nvidia need to say all of this? Well, Nvidia wrote this note as a response to both short seller Michael Burry, famous of course from the Big Short and Scion Capital. There's a whole bunch of other stuff there, but putting that aside, but also because of another thing, a guy called Shanaka Anselm Perera who wrote a piece called and I quote the algorithm that detected the $610 billion fraud, how machine intelligence exposed the AI industry's circular financing scheme and I've now been sent this about 11 times, maybe more, since it came out. Now, the reason I'm not going to link to Pereira's piece in the show Notes or in the companion newsletter to this episode is simple. It's full of bullshit and I've had some very good reporters link to this thing. I've heard from a lot of people say, oh, this scared me. And the fact that it scared Nvidia really pissed me off too, because it's straight up got lies in it, like made up stuff. I'm not even talking just misstatements. I'm talking about really specific things it's made up. For example, in one part, Pereira talks about major semiconductor distributor Arrow Electronics stating things in its Q3 2025 earnings about Nvidia. Let me be fucking clear about this. Really pissed me off. Arrow makes no statements of any kind about Nvidia on its earnings calls, in its 10Q or its earnings presentation. You can go and look. He doesn't link to any, by the way. And if you need another example, Barrera claims that when Nvidia launched the Hopper H100 architecture in Q2 fiscal 2023, also amid reported supply constraints and strong demand, inventory declined 18% quarter over quarter as the company fulfilled backlogged orders. If you bothered to go and look at Nvidia's inventory from that period, which is public by the way, you can see that inventory increased. Now, I'm not pissed off at anyone listening to this, I'm pissed off at any financial media that gave this any kind of attention. And I'm kind of pissed off at Nvidia for doing it too. It's AI slop. And I've not heard of Pereira before, but as LinkedIn says, he is, and I'm not shitting you, the CEO at Pet Express Sri Lanka, I would suggest getting your financial advice elsewhere and at a minimum making sure that you read outlets that actually source their data. Anyway, as you're probably working out, all of this is fine and normal. This happens normally all the time. Companies do this all the time, especially successful ones. And there's nothing to be worried about here because after reading all seven pages of this document, we can all agree that Nvidia is nothing like Enron. No, really though, Nvidia is nothing like Enron. And it's kind of weird that anyone, especially you by the way, is saying that Enron and Nvidia have any similarities at all. They just put out a very long document, by the way, and it says they're not Enron. Why'd you keep asking about Enron? All right, why are you being weird? Okay, well now Nvidia said something about Enron, but that's because fools and vagabonds keep suggesting that Nvidia was like Enron. And very normally Nvidia has decided thousands of words at a time to set the record straight. And I genuinely no jokes, do agree. Nvidia is nothing like Enron. Putting aside how I might feel about the ethics or underlying economics of generative AI, Nvidia is an incredibly successful business that has incredible profits, holds an effective monopoly on Cuda, which powers the underlying software layer to running software on GPUs, specifically generative AI, and not really much else that has any kind of revenue potential. Now, I talked a bit about CUDA and the Haters guide to Nvidia, which I've linked to in the show notes. And yes, while I believe that one day this will all be seen as one of the most egregious wastes of capital of all time, for the time being, Jensen Huang is potentially the greatest salesperson of all time. Nevertheless, people have somewhat run away with the idea that Nvidia is Enron, in part because of the weird circular deals Nvidia's built with NeoClouds, but dedicated AI focused cloud companies like Core, Weave, Lambda and Nebius, who run data centers full of GPUs sold by Nvidia, which they then use as collateral for loans to buy more GPUs from Nvidia. I can see why people are a little concerned. But as dodgy and weird and unsustainable as this all is, it isn't illegal and it certainly isn't Enron. Because Nvidia, as I've been trying to tell you, is nothing like Enron. Now, you may be a little confused. I get it that Nvidia is bringing up Enron at all. Nobody seriously thought that Nvidia was like Enron. Not even the pseudonymous and analyst, just Daario, who's been questioning its accounting practices for years because Enron was genuinely one of the largest criminal enterprises in history. And Nvidia is at worst, I believe, a bit dodgy and doing whatever it can to survive through various forms of accountancy alchemy. Wait, wait. You still think Nvidia is Enron? What's it going to take to convince you? I just told you that Nvidia isn't Enron. Nvidia itself has explained at length, as I'll explain. By the way, it's not Enron. And I'm not sure why you keep bringing up Enron all the time. Stop being an asshole. Enron and Nvidia are nothing alike. Look, look. Nvidia's own memo said that, and I quote, Nvidia does not resemble historical accounting frauds because Nvidia's underlying business is economically sound, its reporting is complete and transparent, and it cares about its reputation for integrity. Now, I know what you're thinking. Why is the largest company on the stock market having to reassure us about its underlying business economics and reporting? One might immediately begin to think Streisand effect style that they are. There might be something up with Nvidia's underlying business, but nevertheless. You know what? Fuck it, Nvidia. Grab your coat, we're going out. Let's forget all of this ever happened. Wait, what. What was. What was that?
