Thomas Chua
banner
steadycompound.bsky.social
Thomas Chua
@steadycompound.bsky.social
Filling my stock portfolio with steady compounders and sharing my analysis at http://steadycompounding.com
I write about businesses with structural advantages—the kind that compound while competitors struggle to catch up.

Follow @steadycompound

Subscribe for deep dives: steadycompounding.com/subscribe/
Thomas Chua | Weekly Newsletter
Subscribe to get Thomas' latest insights on investing, business breakdowns and timeless lessons from super investors delivered straight to your inbox.
steadycompounding.com
December 24, 2025 at 11:10 AM
But when forced to pick ONE company for the next 5 years, he chose Stripe over Adyen.

Why?

"We're entering a period of technological chaos over the next three to five years, and I believe they're better positioned than anyone to handle that."
December 24, 2025 at 11:10 AM
But when forced to pick ONE company for the next 5 years, he chose Stripe over Adyen.

Why?

"We're entering a period of technological chaos over the next three to five years, and I believe they're better positioned than anyone to handle that."
December 24, 2025 at 11:10 AM
What about Checkout, Nuvei, Braintree?

"Those three companies will continue to survive and possibly thrive, but there's still a lot of share to be taken from legacy players."

Translation: They'll win some deals. They won't change the structural picture.
December 24, 2025 at 11:10 AM
They're not identical though.

Adyen: Traditional retail, physical POS, enterprise (<10,000 customers)

Stripe: Non-traditional enterprises, platforms, millions of merchants

"Stripe is winning in non-traditional enterprises, whereas Adyen has succeeded in traditional retail."
December 24, 2025 at 11:10 AM
Scale becomes self-reinforcing:

• More volume → better data → better fraud detection
• Lower unit costs → pricing flexibility
• Single platform → faster feature deployment

"As market needs become more intensely technical, Adyen and Stripe are best positioned to differentiate."
December 24, 2025 at 11:09 AM
The problem for incumbents isn't features—it's infrastructure.

"Their competitors are bogged down with numerous acquisitions and disjointed infrastructure."

Adyen and Stripe win with unified single-stack platforms. Legacy can't replicate that without starting over.
December 24, 2025 at 11:09 AM
His view: Adyen and Stripe aren't really competing with each other.

They're both taking share from legacy players—Fiserv, Worldpay, Chase Merchant Services.

"There are a few others nibbling around the edges, but Stripe and Adyen have really taken the market by storm."
December 24, 2025 at 11:09 AM
The expert spent 40 years in payments—Verifone, Cyber Source (now Visa), Google, Stripe.

At Google he personally managed partnerships with Stripe, Adyen, Chase, Worldpay, Braintree, and PayPal.

He's now a shareholder in both Adyen and Stripe.
December 24, 2025 at 11:09 AM
TL;DR:

- Training: CUDA moat holds, but Google TPU is taking share
- Inference: Cost per token wins. Hyperscalers will each have their own chips.
- Revenue may still grow—market is expanding faster than share loss
- Edge is the next battleground

Source:
inpractise.com/articles/be...
Beyond CUDA: How TPUs and Trainium May Pressure NVIDIA | MSFT | Microsoft | Interview | In Practise
Read Beyond CUDA: How TPUs and Trainium May Pressure NVIDIA on In Practise
inpractise.com
December 21, 2025 at 7:03 AM
If you found this valuable:

Follow @steadycompound for more investing insights and business breakdowns.

Subscribe to my newsletter for deep dives on structural long-term winners: steadycompounding.com/subscribe/
Thomas Chua | Weekly Newsletter
Subscribe to get Thomas' latest insights on investing, business breakdowns and timeless lessons from super investors delivered straight to your inbox.
steadycompounding.com
December 21, 2025 at 7:03 AM
On Transformer architecture:

Transformers have a problem—context window is limited to maybe 1 million tokens today.

That's only ~500k words. Not enough to process all your emails and documents.

The Transformer architecture is not AGI. Something else will replace it.
December 21, 2025 at 7:03 AM
On Anthropic's chip strategy:

It's smart for Anthropic not to rely solely on Google TPU or AWS.

By using multiple options, they can negotiate pricing.

Everyone wants to work with Anthropic—which might lead NVIDIA to offer a lower price.
December 21, 2025 at 7:03 AM
Who wins in edge?

Apple is the absolute monopoly for consumer devices.

In automotive, it's mainly NVIDIA and Tesla. Tesla makes their own chips.
December 21, 2025 at 7:03 AM
On edge inference:

Eventually it's going to be all on the edge.

Edge isn't just phones—it's self-driving cars and humanoid robots.
10-year view: 80% on the edge.

5-year view: 50/50.
December 21, 2025 at 7:03 AM
On how NVIDIA might respond:

NVIDIA is nimble—they can adapt quickly, unlike Google.

They might develop custom ASICs that are less general purpose but cheaper.

They do everything in-house, so they can potentially offer lower costs than Google.
December 21, 2025 at 7:03 AM