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▶ 21:37 · $TSM · TSMC's process-engineering moat cited as systemic, multi-layered advantage
episode briefing
In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen

Mala Gaonkar - Founder of SurgoCap Partners | Podcast | In Good Company

2026-01-21 · 6 company · 8 thematic
sentiment
4 bull0 bear2 neu
speakers
mala gaonkar

Founded SurgoCap in 2021 with $1.8B, now ~$6B AUM. Spent 23 years as founding partner at Lone Pine Capital, one of the most successful hedge funds. Focuses on concentrated, long-duration moats across enterprise data/tech, financial services, healthcare services, and industrial technologies. Uses data-science debiasing and private-market access.

quote
“businesses like TSM that are well known that have really kind of corner in Taiwan kind of the process engineering aspects of that. So it's not really just about one thing it's all about multiple things.”
—mala gaonkar
now playing · $TSM
$ISRG···bullish· medium· posmala gaonkar
Robotic surgery penetration of 300M annual procedures seen as massive runway
Only early innings of robotic surgery adoption across ~300M global surgeries; combination of haptic feedback, mapping software, and surgical workflow integration drives lower erro…
$TSM···bullish· medium· posmala gaonkar
TSMC's process-engineering moat cited as systemic, multi-layered advantage
TSMC owns not just the leading-edge fab but the entire process-engineering ecosystem around chip manufacturing, creating a systemic moat that is hard to replicate.
$NVDA···bullish· high· posmala gaonkar
Gaonkar details Nvidia inference moat and admits sunk-cost bias from 2015 exit
Inference is the annuity stream of AI; application-specific chips (ASICs/TPUs) built for inference workloads create very long-duration moats. Gaonkar missed the full move after se…
$GOOGL···bullish· medium· posmala gaonkar
Google's custom TPU inference stack highlighted as key AI infrastructure play
Google's vertically integrated TPU stack for inference workloads reduces cost and creates a durable moat in the AI inference layer.
$OPENAIneutral· lowmala gaonkar
OpenAI building proprietary inference stack alongside Google and Anthropic
Major frontier model providers are each developing their own inference infrastructure, reinforcing the view that inference is a distinct, defensible layer.
$ANTHROPICneutral· lowmala gaonkar
Anthropic building proprietary inference stack alongside Google and OpenAI
Major frontier model providers are each developing their own inference infrastructure, reinforcing the view that inference is a distinct, defensible layer.