Friday File: Altucher’s AiPhone Story, Homes, Nukes and, yes, more NVIDIA Chatter

I’m starting with a quick teaser solution for you, since we’ve got more people asking about this latest James Altucher ad today than anything else. I’m not going to go through all the detail for you, due to a lack of time, but it seems like folks are feeling itchy about this one so we’ll give you the quick answer. I’ll probably write it up in more detail, with some additional thoughts, on Monday…

But for now, here’s the basic story. Who’s James Altucher teasing as the Secret “AiPhone Supplier?”

It’s another irritating over-promise presentation about a “small partner” or “small supplier” from James Altucher, now his third such pitch so far in 2024 — first for Kopin (KOPN) as “almost guaranteed to be a supplier” on the Apple Vision Pro, then for Smart Global (SGH) as “sure to be a key named partner highlighted by Jensen Huang” as a backdoor NVIDIA (NVDA) play (not a literal quote for either of those, but that was the gist).

The first two reacted a little to Altucher’s prodding, of course, but in neither case did the “almost guaranteed to be a big new announcement” promise bear fruit (and to toot our own horns, we were pretty sure Altucher was blowing smoke with these hyped-up ads, and thought there was almost no chance that these companies would be publicly featured by Apple and NVIDIA, respectively… though to be honest, that’s always a safe assumption). Both are both down now (KOPN is down dramatically, SGH is a much larger and more “real” company, and has reacted more moderately)… so at this point they’re nowhere near the 10X returns he similarly promised for those two (to be fair, we’re only a few months in).

That’s your cautionary tale, just to get things going. These promos are always the same, lots of big-picture talk, but then hints about some “smoking guns” that “all but guarantee” a major partnership or a big deal will be announced involving “this tiny company.” So it’s fair to say that I’m going into this with a LOT of skepticism, but I’m still curious to learn what he’s talking up.

As I said, though, we’ll keep it quick and just go through the clues and get you a name… I couldn’t even bear to listen long enough to learn what product he’s selling, but I assume this was another pitch for the …