Every so often, a set of numbers lands on my desk that makes me stop, lean back, and just… think. Not just about market caps or price targets, but about the sheer velocity of the change we’re living through. This week, it was the staggering juxtaposition of Nvidia’s 1,000% three-year return against AppLovin’s mind-bending 4,600% surge since the dawn of the ChatGPT era.
When I first saw the AppLovin numbers, I honestly just sat back in my chair, speechless. It’s the kind of data that feels like a glitch in the matrix, a signal that the fundamental rules of value creation are being rewritten right before our eyes. We’re all watching Nvidia, the undisputed kingmaker of the AI revolution, but this… this is different. It’s a sign that the shockwave from Nvidia’s hardware explosion is now creating entirely new titans in the software world at a speed we've never seen before.
This isn’t just a story about two hot stocks. This is a story about the birth of an ecosystem. It's about the engine and the vehicles it powers, and how the company building the engine is also helping to fund the first cars off the assembly line.
The Self-Fueling Rocket
Let’s get the Wall Street chatter out of the way. Goldman Sachs recently bumped its price target for Nvidia, which is about as surprising as the sun rising in the east. But buried in their analysis was a fascinating, and I think deeply misunderstood, warning about something they call “circular revenue.”
The analyst, James Schneider, pointed out that Nvidia isn’t just selling chips; it’s investing heavily in the very AI companies, like OpenAI, that are its biggest customers. The concern is that Nvidia is essentially handing its clients the cash to buy its own GPUs. Analysts call this “circular revenue”—in simpler terms, it’s like Nvidia is giving its customers the money to buy its products, which could artificially inflate demand. According to one report, Goldman Sachs Bumps Nvidia Stock (NVDA) Price Target, But With a Warning.
On the surface, it sounds like a house of cards. But I see something else entirely.
Imagine you’re building the world’s first continental railroad in the 1800s. You can lay down thousands of miles of pristine track, but what good is it if there are no towns, no farms, no factories along the way to use it? The truly visionary move isn't just to build the tracks; it's to also fund the creation of the cities that will one day depend on your railway. You're not just building infrastructure; you're building the entire economy that will make that infrastructure indispensable.
This is what Nvidia is doing. This isn't a clever accounting trick. It's an act of world-building. Nvidia is bootstrapping a new industrial revolution, and the capital it injects into the ecosystem is the seed money for a forest of future innovation. Is some of that money coming back to them in the short term? Of course. But what does that investment create in the long term? Does it create a dependent, fragile customer, or does it accelerate the creation of a thriving, self-sustaining world that will need more of its hardware than we can currently imagine?
The Ghost in the Machine Economy
And if you want proof that this new world is already taking shape, look no further than AppLovin. Here’s a company that doesn’t make a single piece of silicon. It operates in the chaotic, hyper-competitive world of mobile advertising. Yet, by harnessing the power of AI with its Axon platform—a platform that runs on the very kind of processing power Nvidia provides—it has generated returns that make the chip giant look modest.
AppLovin is the perfect example of the ghost in this new machine economy. It’s a software-first company that took the raw power unlocked by the hardware revolution and used it to solve a complex problem with breathtaking efficiency, processing vast datasets to optimize ad targeting in a way that was science fiction just a few years ago.
This is the dynamic we need to grasp. The value isn’t just in the engine; it’s in the incredible new vehicles that engine makes possible and the speed of this is just staggering—it means the gap between an idea and a multi-billion dollar reality is collapsing faster than we can even process the quarterly earnings reports. We're witnessing the Cambrian explosion of the AI era.
This brings us to a moment of profound responsibility. As we build this new economic layer, we have to ask ourselves what kind of world we’re creating. The power to shape markets and create value at this scale is reminiscent of the dawn of electrification. Companies like General Electric didn't just sell generators; they funded the invention of lightbulbs, toasters, and radios to create a world that needed electricity. We are in that moment again. What are the "lightbulbs" of the AI era, and are we building them for everyone?
The question is no longer if AI will change everything. The real question is, what will we build with it? And when a software company in the mobile ad space can ride this wave to the S&P 500, it tells you the wave is far bigger and more powerful than any single company, even one as mighty as Nvidia. As one analysis pointed out, This Stock Has Quadrupled Nvidia’s 1,000% 3-Year Return — And It Just Joined the S&P 500.
We're Not in a Bubble; We're Laying the Foundation
Let’s be clear. The hand-wringing over "circular revenue" completely misses the forest for the trees. This isn't a sign of weakness; it's the signature of a foundational technology at the moment of its birth. Nvidia isn't just selling shovels in a gold rush. It's terraforming the entire landscape, knowing that the cities built on that new ground will need its tools for generations to come. The explosive growth of companies like AppLovin is the first flower blooming in that newly fertile soil. We are witnessing the blueprint of 21st-century capitalism being drawn in real-time, and it is more creative, interconnected, and breathtakingly fast than anything that has come before.
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