I guess the rationale behind this is that temperature in space around earth is 120 C in the sun (where you put the solar panels) and -150 in the shade (where you have the CPU/GPU, etc.)
But it still sounds crazy…
I presume the whole point it to put them somewhere where there is constant sunlight.
Which would decrease bandwidth drastically and cost 7 times as much (based on Falcon 9s LEO/GEO abilities) to deliver it there.
Surely not! How about a crypto dao foundation operating agentically from space?
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You’d use a sun-synchronous orbit that’s riding the terminator and thus always in sunlight. The sun-synchronous orbits that are typically used are at low earth orbit altitudes (you could have one at a higher altitude, there isn’t much point to it).
Dealing with radiation and cooling are just engineering problems, not physical impossibilities. They’re obviously solvable, the question is mainly just about finding solutions that use as little mass as possible.
What I think is actually unsolvable in the next 10 years is service. Every hardware fault is going to be permanent and fatal, there are no replacements. And you can’t even do any kind of preventative maintenance, so failure rates will be higher. This doesn’t make orbital DCs impossible, but it does make them less appealing.
If the starship reaches its targets, the TCO of orbital DCs will be competitive with terrestrial DCs. The cost of any terrestrial AI DCs is totally dominated by the capex for the equipment; the land, the buildings, the property taxes, electricity, etc. are a small fraction.
On one hand that means there’s a wide band of launch costs that would be economically viable: you just need to be cheap in comparison to the exorbitant cost of the GPUs. On the other hand, it raises the obvious question of “but, why do it at all then?”.
Orbital DCs have two advantages. First, 24/7 uninterrupted solar power. If the bottleneck for terrestrial DCs is power, orbital DCs solve that problem. Second, no pesky local residents or permit requirements. DCs are unpopular. At some point it’s possible that the main bottleneck is finding a place that allows you to build them.
I personally don’t believe that either of these advantages will matter in the next 10 years. I expect that the main bottleneck will still be the availability of chips, not the availability of power. And the regulatory problems can almost certainly be solved with mere money. (Err… Not bribery, but by municipalities setting special data center taxes that are high enough that it’s obvious to the locals that they benefit from them.)
So please don’t take this as an endorsement of SpaceX 
But the concept of orbital DCs appears to be totally workable, and there are plausible near futures where it ends up as the optimal form of deployment.
After a bruising few months, my SaaS bets are finally in the green. SaaS went from 0% of portfolio to 16% and was essentially red the whole time until the end of last week.
Now all positions are in green except for HUBS.
| Ticker | Yield | %MV |
|---|---|---|
| CRM | 0.9% | 5.1% |
| WDAY | 1.9% | |
| ADBE | 1.7% | |
| HUBS | 1.5% | |
| INTU | 1.4% | 1.4% |
| DOCU | 1.4% | |
| PAYC | 1.1% | 1.4% |
| NOW | 1.2% |
Of course, the biggest % gainer was the one I invested least into (NOW) and biggest position was also the 2nd worst of the picks 
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I want to rotate away from semiconductors and I’m looking for solid bets for the next 3-5 years in the future, if the (financial) story is given and is stable (~=“fastgraphs green area goes up” 
).
Targets:
- MUV2 (Müchen Re)
- CI (Cigna Group)
- FIS (Fidelity)
- FSLR (First Solar) - Fastgraphs data is materially different from all other portals, why?
- GPN (Global Payments) - do we have the bottom yet?
- LULU(lemon) - turnaround story?
- OWL (Blue Owl) - 10% divvies as pinged above, 40-50% growth may also come on top
- WRC (Wells Fargo)
- XYZ (Block/Square)
- AMP (Ameriprise Financial)
- PGHN (Partners Group Holding)
- NST (Northern Star Resources) - gold mining in AUS
Does anyone hold any of them? Any insights? Other (well-researched) tips may come as well
I’ve written puts on Partners Group - nice premiums and also happy to get the stock at a discount.
oh wow
I guess your puts have hatched now…
Yep, may mean I have to take delivery. Thanks for sharing, hadn’t seen that yet.
The puts were way out of the money and with expiration date far in the future so it may also be that in a few days/weeks things normalize again.
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How sustainable do you think that the business of PGHN is given the fear about the private lending crisis? I keep hearing these rumors that sound very scary about the alternative financing system where these companies are heavily involved. I would be interested in PGHN as I love their HQ in Zug. It looks absolutely amazing (I know great business analysis skill 
) however I see it risky at the current stage and have since invested in Singapore banks (DBS, OCBC, UOB) as I see the biggest driver for PGHN also rather in Asia. However, days like today scream of writing puts and collecting the premium.
A couple of thoughts (mind you, I’m not by any stretch of the imagination an expert on private lending / PGHN).
- They have many funds and as far as I could tell from the linked article the cash outflow was only in one of them and only in a small area (non-institutional $). In other words, it may be that the press (and market) made a mountain out of a mole hill.
- Biggest driver in Asia - but won’t the people/org’s forking up $$$ for this be very global? I.e. does investing in Asian firms really mitigate risk?
- Agree, today is a classic “would write out of the money puts” on a firm like PGHN. Not doing it was I already have an exposure but I always maintain a list of several dozen stocks where I like the company, would like owning it, and may at some point write puts. A sudden drop like this often can be a great moment to do so.
You are right, and I fully believe that there is nothing wrong with PGHN on a company level. However, the biggest problem that I see right now is on the news and general fear side. When the private debt crisis really escalates every company somehow involved will get hammered.
In any case I loaded some puts with a contract amount of 10 into my portfolio with a 400chf strike in December, I got 1200bugs for a value of 8000chf. Let’s see how it plays out.
the risk is that we will get a second CS debacle but if that happens everything will be tanking.
So PGHN ended the day at 687 CHF, current yield 7.3%, divvies paid late May (already past).
Assuming they won’t cut the dividend (they haven’t, ever), tell me that this is not a once-in-a-decade opportunity? If it falls more, we can get 8% divvies even… ?
Claude says they broke the trust base by limiting redemption. Probably true. However, holding forever on 7%+ CHF yield doesn’t sound like a bad business to me? Plus whatever the stock price makes.
My Honest Take: Yes, But Not Yet and Not at This Price
The “never sell” thesis IS valid because:
- Partners Group won’t go bankrupt — institutional PE management ($250B+ in locked-up LPs) is untouched by the Evergreen retail
problem- The brand recovers — they’ll restructure Evergreen products, eat the pain, and rebuild. 3-5 years.
- Private markets aren’t dying — allocation is structural, not cyclical
- When fundraising normalizes → AUM grows → fees grow → dividend grows again
- CHF income from a Swiss blue-chip PE manager IS rare and valuable
Yes, that is true. However, note that the current payout ratio is above 90% which by no means is sustainable. Furthermore the dividend is not covered completely by the cashflow. I agree that they will try to maintain their dividend, however I would not bet on that they will have this or raising dividends in the future if the pressure around private debt continues (or increases).
If they have to sell their assets on a fire sale, won’t that have an impact?
I believe their overall assets under management are in fact growing, it is just outflows in a specific fund.
immaterial from a profitability perspective but pulled the rug out from under confidence in the stock for a while
SimplyWallSt says their dividend payout if 79% of cashflow, which is still doable even if a minor fund is getting a reset.
As an alternative to PGHN, 3i Group in the UK is also very interesting. Both as a stock and in light of the option premiums. I just issued an order for some written puts with a healthy ‘out of the money’ safety margin despite analyst estimates being that the stock is materially undervalued.
I’m hesitant to write put options on UK stocks. In my early days of using options at IBKR I sold 100 (I think) put options on BHP with a total value of 380’000 £ instead of the planed total value of 3800 £. Luckily the stock went up and I could quickly buy these puts back with a nice gain. However, I was very close to get the stocks assigned which in fact was my plan but for 3800£. The lesson for me was to not play around with UK options anymore 
.