Mike Volpi on Why AI Infrastructure Will Outlast the Hype Cycle

The gist

1. Volpi expects an economic correction, noting NVIDIA counts about 200 neoclouds with weak balance sheets, but says the assets will stay useful, like 1990s fiber.
2. He says H100s, once rented at $1.82 per GPU hour with an assumed five-year life, now rent for $2.50 to $3 because chips are scarce.
3. At Cisco his team did about 70 acquisitions that became half of $30 billion in revenue, using a repeatable integration process rather than one-off efforts.
4. Volpi urges startup CEOs to have one or two coffees a week with big companies and even direct competitors, calling it intelligence gathering.
5. He predicts model routers will push buyers toward cheaper tokens, and says predictable AI traffic opens room for cheaper, rethought data center networks.