A quiet investor’s $10 billion bet on AI, chips, and defense

Alex Davis plans to put $10 billion into roughly 10 companies.
His firm, Disruptive, has maintained a low profile out of Texas while backing Reflection AI, ElevenLabs, Groq, Shield AI, Databricks, and Helsing. Its earlier investments include Palantir, Airbnb, and Spotify.
I sit down with Davis in Dallas for his first-ever podcast interview to understand how he picks the companies worth a billion-dollar check. He focuses on companies he thinks are already winning, even as their valuations climb.
We discuss why he doubled down on Palantir before it went public, what he’s building at Groq after its $20 billion licensing deal with Nvidia, and the opportunities he sees in open AI models, compute, and defense technology.
I also ask where the AI boom goes wrong, from speculative data centers to investment vehicles promising access to private companies.
Thanks to the show’s premiere sponsors: Atlassian, Granola, and Mercury.