Key insights
- The article discusses Ouster's long-term prospects, highlighting concerns about vision-only AI systems (like Tesla's FSD) and potential commoditization from Chinese lidar manufacturers. The author questions Ouster's current valuation (13x sales) given these threats, suggesting a potential bearish outlook if vision systems prove sufficient and lidar becomes commoditized.
So I bought a small position in Ouster a while ago because I thought there would be a physical AI boom and Ouster had a reasonable chance to capture some of that value. My issue is, I'm concerned about their long term prospects due to the threat of vision only systems. Tesla is currently deploying full self driving robotaxis with vision only in Houston and other locations. Tesla's robots, and the Figure AI robot that did that youtube stream, rely on vision, not lidar.
I'm not an expert so correct me if I'm wrong, but the big limitation for the capability of vision based physical AI is inference compute, and that's exactly the kind of thing that can get orders of magnitude better over the next 5 years.
Ouster at 13x sales now is a bet that they will grow and execute at a very high level. Is it too high of a multiple to pay when their moat is threatened by both vision, and the potential commoditization of cheap Chinese lidar?