business – Observations from Uppsala

AI and the Software Company Apocalypse

Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the form of large language models (LLMs) has made quite incredible strides in coding capabilities in the past year. As a result, stocks of software companies are coming under pressure (the clumsily-named “SaaSpocalypse”). It seems that each time a new frontier model drops, the stock market reacts negatively. The underlying logic appears to be that “anyone can build their own software to do X” and that therefore existing companies selling software doing X are going to go out of business. I don’t think that checks out. AI is definitely causing massive changes to the software industry, but the Saaspocalypse looks overhyped.

Sun buys Montalvo

Sun just bought Montalvo whose hardware I blogged about some while ago. And just like the Apple acquisition of PA Semi, the question of “why” appears. Some analysts blame the simple fact that both Montalvo and PA Semi simply needed to be acquired, since their venture capitalists did not want to put in the next 100 million USD needed to go to silicon (Montalvo) or really expand on the opportunity already at hand (PA Semi). Here is my crazy guess.

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Off-Topic: Car Sizes and Prizes

The car market is pretty fascinating in many ways. Going out actually buying a car quite recently, I was given cause to reflect on prize vs actual size. The non-linear prize increase you have to pay to get to a slightly bigger car from whatever point you are at is interesting. And the fact that a “very small” car is just above four meters long, while a “pretty large” car is at around five meters. How can a few centimeters actually matter that much?

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