🤖 In-silico materials discovery cracks cheap battery chemistry
We understand almost none of the periodic table, and machine learning applied to materials search finds combinations no human would guess. Chamath's disclosed venture points ML at cheap LFP chemistry to give it NMC/NCA energy density by doping it with 'all kinds of random stuff you would have never guessed in a million years' - he says they are finding real breakthroughs and just raised money on it. If computational materials search works, the cheap end of the battery complex re-rates and the binding constraint becomes compute and experiment cycle time.
other ideas on the same ticker, same direction: AI compute capex supercycle has 12-24 months of runway 86 (NVDA) · Nvidia + Hugging Face makes NVDA the open-source AI champion 55 (NVDA) · The AI doomer campaign fails — no FDAI, open source survives 31 (NVDA)
⚖ Why this result
fully deterministic — computed from daily closes on the scoring date; nothing below is editable or hand-set
- Window: 2023-07-27 → 2024-07-27 — first mention + 12-month horizon, then the window locks.
- The call: ▲ LONG LIT (primary play). LIT fell 38.7% over the window → return (sign flipped for a SHORT) = -38.7% (the call lost money).
- Benchmark: holding SPY over the same window returned +22.0% → vs SPY = -38.7 − (+22.0) = -60.7% — what this call made or lost against just owning the index. This is the number the result uses.
- Rule fired:
· RIGHT — return ≥ +10% AND beat SPY by 5+· HALF — return ≥ +5% OR beat SPY at all▶ WRONG — everything else
- Credit: supporters of a WRONG earn 0 each, opposers the opposite — this feeds the scoreboard. supported: Chamath, Friedberg | proxy-sensitive: NVDA→HIT (+146.4%)
Conviction timeline
bands: green ≥ 65 · watch ≥ 45 · ember ≥ 15
Plays vs SPY · % since first mention (2023-07-27)
Plays
| expression | symbol | kind | relevance | rationale |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ▲ LONG | LIT | etf | PRIMARY | lithium and battery-tech cohort, the concrete application Chamath funded |
| ▲ LONG | ALB | stock | adjacent | lithium and cathode-materials supplier levered to cheap-chemistry cells scaling |
| ▲ LONG | NVDA | stock | adjacent | the compute layer doing the in-silico materials search |
Mention log newest first
“This Korean team did is they had a separate paper that they published talking about the demonstration of using AI to try and be predictive around quantum mechanics, which is something that people said we can't really do quantum modeling until we get quantum computers.”
“And what we're finding is, holy shit, like we don't know anything. And there are these like really big breakthroughs, one which we'll probably announce in like the next few weeks because we just raised a bunch of money around this idea.”
Who built this conviction
each voice's total push on the score, in conviction points across every mention — supports and opposes · share = % of all mention-driven movement
⏳ decay drained -42.7 over the idea's life — that's time passing, attributed to no one
Score events
| episode | kind | Δ | after | note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| E139 2023-07-27 | init | +36.0 | 36.0 | E139 born by Chamath (positioning x3) |
| E139 2023-07-27 | reinforce | +14.4 | 50.4 | E139 Friedberg support x2 (new voice) |
| E140 2023-08-04 | decay | -2.0 | 48.4 | E140 silent |
| E141 2023-08-11 | decay | -1.9 | 46.4 | E141 silent |
| E142 2023-08-18 | decay | -1.9 | 44.6 | E142 silent |
| E143 2023-08-25 | decay | -1.8 | 42.8 | E143 silent |
| E144 2023-09-01 | decay | -1.7 | 41.1 | E144 silent |
| E146 2023-09-22 | decay | -1.6 | 39.5 | E146 silent |
| E147 2023-09-29 | decay | -1.6 | 37.9 | E147 silent |
| E148 2023-10-07 | decay | -1.5 | 36.4 | E148 silent |
| E149 2023-10-13 | decay | -1.5 | 34.9 | E149 silent |
| E150 2023-10-20 | decay | -1.4 | 33.5 | E150 silent |
| E151 2023-10-27 | decay | -1.3 | 32.2 | E151 silent |
| E152 2023-11-03 | decay | -1.3 | 30.9 | E152 silent |
| E156 2023-12-08 | decay | -1.2 | 29.6 | E156 silent |
| E157 2023-12-16 | decay | -1.2 | 28.5 | E157 silent |
| E158 2023-12-23 | decay | -1.1 | 27.3 | E158 silent |
| E159 2023-12-29 | decay | -1.1 | 26.2 | E159 silent |
| E160 2024-01-06 | decay | -1.0 | 25.2 | E160 silent |
| E161 2024-01-13 | decay | -1.0 | 24.2 | E161 silent |
| E162 2024-01-19 | decay | -1.0 | 23.2 | E162 silent |
| E163 2024-01-26 | decay | -0.9 | 22.3 | E163 silent |
| E164 2024-02-02 | decay | -0.9 | 21.4 | E164 silent |
| E165 2024-02-09 | decay | -0.9 | 20.5 | E165 silent |
| E166 2024-02-16 | decay | -0.8 | 19.7 | E166 silent |
| E167 2024-02-23 | decay | -0.8 | 18.9 | E167 silent |
| E168 2024-03-01 | decay | -0.8 | 18.2 | E168 silent |
| E169 2024-03-08 | decay | -0.7 | 17.4 | E169 silent |
| E170 2024-03-15 | decay | -0.7 | 16.7 | E170 silent |
| E171 2024-03-22 | decay | -0.7 | 16.1 | E171 silent |
| E172 2024-03-29 | decay | -0.6 | 15.4 | E172 silent |
| E173 2024-04-05 | decay | -0.6 | 14.8 | E173 silent |
| E174 2024-04-12 | decay | -0.6 | 14.2 | E174 silent |
| E175 2024-04-19 | decay | -0.6 | 13.6 | E175 silent |
| E176 2024-04-26 | decay | -0.5 | 13.1 | E176 silent |
| E177 2024-05-03 | decay | -0.5 | 12.6 | E177 silent |
| E178 2024-05-10 | decay | -0.5 | 12.1 | E178 silent |
| E179 2024-05-17 | decay | -0.5 | 11.6 | E179 silent |
| E180 2024-05-24 | decay | -0.5 | 11.1 | E180 silent |
| E181 2024-05-31 | decay | -0.4 | 10.7 | E181 silent |
| E182 2024-06-07 | decay | -0.4 | 10.3 | E182 silent |
| E183 2024-06-14 | decay | -0.4 | 9.8 | E183 silent |
| E184 2024-06-20 | decay | -0.4 | 9.5 | E184 silent |
| E185 2024-06-29 | decay | -0.4 | 9.1 | E185 silent |
| E186 2024-07-04 | decay | -0.4 | 8.7 | E186 silent |
| E187 2024-07-12 | decay | -0.3 | 8.4 | E187 silent |
| E188 2024-07-19 | decay | -0.3 | 8.0 | E188 silent |
| E189 2024-07-26 | decay | -0.3 | 7.7 | E189 silent |