Our next guest expects the AI trade to shift from broad enthusiasm to a more selective environment in the new year. Wall Street legend Rick Sherland is founder of Sherland Partners and recently joined Wedbish Investment Banking as a senior adviser. Rick, great to have you with us. Nice to see you.>> Melissa, thanks for having me. And I should caution you that I no longer wear the analyst hat, so I'm going to be ducking some stock questions probably. >> That is fine.We we want to get into your head, Rick, in ...

Core Insights - Circle is currently operating as a treasury money market trade with 76 billion USDC in circulation, backed by US short-term treasuries or cash equivalents [1][2] - The company's earnings are primarily derived from interest on these US treasuries, which constitutes about 80 to 90% of its revenue [2] - Upcoming earnings reports will focus on short-term instruments, interest earned, margins, enterprise adoption, and on-chain transactions [3] Company Performance - Circle is facing competition from Tether, which has seen increased global adoption as a stablecoin [4][5] - Circle is perceived as a more regulatory-backed stablecoin, focusing on enterprise use cases, which may help it gain market share [5][6] - The company has experienced a significant stock pullback of about 66% from its all-time highs post-IPO, trading around $100 per share [12][18] Market Dynamics - The macroeconomic environment, including recent rate cuts, poses challenges to Circle's earnings potential [2][8] - Adoption of USDC and stablecoins for cross-border transactions is crucial for Circle's growth, with a focus on increasing activity in Europe [9] - The cryptocurrency market, particularly Bitcoin, has shown limited momentum compared to equities, which may impact investor sentiment towards Circle [10]

Ecosystem Growth & Adoption - Sei Network 10 月份专注于全球扩张、企业采用和机构发展势头 [1] - Sei 成为了 TVL 效率排名第四的生态系统，与 Solana、Hyperliquid 和 Ethereum 并列 [3] - Sei 链上 DEX 累计交易量超过 100 亿美元 [3] - Sei 月活跃地址超过 1300 万 [3] Institutional Investment & Partnerships - Laser Digital (日本最大投资银行的子公司) 在 Sei 上推出了代币化的 LCF 基金 [2] - Apollo (一家管理 8400 亿美元资产的管理公司) 通过 Securitize 扩展到 Sei [3] - Hamilton Lane (一家管理 9860 亿美元资产的管理公司) 在 Sei 上推出了代币化的 SCOPE 基金 [3] - BlackRock 的 ICS 美元流动性基金通过 KAIO_xyz 在 Sei 上线 [3] - Brevan Howard 的代币化 Master Fund 在 Sei 上线 [3] Product Development & Expansion - Morpho (一个价值超过 120 亿美元的借贷市场) 将其通用借贷网络引入 Sei [3] - SIP-3 (仅限 EVM) 钱包升级上线，为 Sei Giga 铺平了道路 [3] - YeiFinance 通过 CLO 代币启动了 TGE，标志着生态系统的重大扩张 [3] Market Access & Recognition - SEI 在 Robinhood 上市 [3] - REX Shares 和 Osprey Funds 向 SEC 提交了 Form N-1A，申请推出 staked SEI ETF [3]

Ecosystem Growth & Adoption - Sei network experienced global expansion, enterprise adoption, and institutional momentum in October [1] - Sei became the 4 ecosystem by TVL efficiency, alongside Solana, Hyperliquid, and Ethereum [3] - Sei surpassed $10 billion in LTM DEX volume [3] - Sei crossed 13 million monthly active addresses [3] Institutional Investment & Partnerships - Laser Digital, a subsidiary of Japan's largest investment bank, launched a tokenized LCF Fund on Sei [2] - $840 billion asset manager Apollo expanded to Sei with @Securitize [3] - BlackRock's ICS U.S Dollar Liquidity Fund went live on Sei with @KAIO_xyz [3] - Hamilton Lane, a $986 billion asset manager, launched the tokenized SCOPE Fund on Sei [3] - Brevan Howard's Tokenized Master Fund went live on Sei [3] Infrastructure & Technology - Morpho, a $12+ billion lending market, brought its universal lending network to Sei [3] - SIP-3 (EVM-only) wallet upgrades went live, paving the way for Sei Giga [3] Market Access & Recognition - SEI was listed on Robinhood [3] - REX Shares and Osprey Funds filed a Form N-1A with the SEC for a staked SEI ETF [3] - @YeiFinance TGE'd with the CLO token, marking major ecosystem expansion [3]

Partnerships & Events - Sei Development Foundation participated in MetaMask's Builder Nights [1] - PayPal was also a key participant at MetaMask's Builder Nights [1] Industry Focus - Stablecoins and enterprise adoption were central topics of discussion [1] - Sei envisions becoming a global settlement layer for institutions, stable assets, and infrastructure [1]

AI Adoption & Enterprise Integration - Enterprises are eager to integrate AI agents for task automation, expecting significant gains in productivity, revenue, cost reduction, and risk mitigation, though widespread success is still in early stages [2] - Data Bricks' partnership with OpenAI aims to enable customers to leverage OpenAI models on their data within Data Bricks, facilitated by Agent Bricks [3] - AI adoption is gradually increasing, with use cases emerging in areas like product onboarding (Mastercard) and sentiment analysis for product improvement (Adidas) [4][5] - Block Square automates store and restaurant setup via natural language interaction [6] - The industry anticipates it will take several years to see complete transformation across all companies due to AI [6] AI Infrastructure & Investment - There was excessive excitement and investment in AI infrastructure in the past two years [4] - Despite impressive user numbers from companies like OpenAI (700-800 million users), there's still potential for significant growth in LLM usage [8] - Increased AI usage will necessitate more inference capacity, requiring further infrastructure buildout in various regions to minimize latency [8][9][10] - Data Bricks hosts multiple major models (OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini), providing redundancy for customers [12][13] - More hardware deployment is needed to support the growing demand for AI model inferencing [14] Concerns & Mitigation - Concerns exist regarding the concentration of AI power around entities like OpenAI, potentially creating a single point of failure [11] - Data Bricks mitigates this risk by hosting multiple major AI models, ensuring redundancy for its customers [12][13]

Chainlink Ecosystem - Enterprise adoption leads to revenue generation [1] - Revenue is linked to Chainlink [1] - Chainlink is connected to Chainlink Reserve [1]

Model Capabilities & Enterprise Adoption - GPT-5 represents a significant advancement in coding, writing, and healthcare, unlocking enterprise opportunities due to its improved reliability in tool calling, structured thinking, reasoning, and problem-solving [1][2] - Enterprises can adopt these models for an increasing number of use cases, with coding being a significant area of demand [2] - 92% of Fortune 500 companies were actively using chatbots shortly after the launch of ChatGPT, indicating organic adoption in the enterprise [4] Market Share & Competition - While some analyses suggest a decrease in OpenAI's enterprise market share from 50% to 25%, the company focuses on delivering the best models and products for customers [6][7] Developer Ecosystem & Enterprise Growth - OpenAI's API is actively used by over 4 million developers daily to build new products [8] - Enterprise seats grew from 3 million to 5 million in two months, showing accelerating growth and significant potential impact for both developers and enterprises [9] Infrastructure & Investment - Project Stargate is a $500 billion investment in the United States to build infrastructure for OpenAI and the country, addressing the increasing demand for AI [11] - The company is continuously investing aggressively to meet the growing demand for AI, aiming to make it more cost-approachable for enterprises and consumers [12][13] Microsoft Partnership - OpenAI values its positive relationship with Microsoft, which has been a significant infrastructure partner through Azure since before ChatGPT [17] - The company anticipates Microsoft's continued significant involvement and is actively working on defining the future of their collaboration [17][18] Talent & Mission - OpenAI attracts talent due to its mission-driven approach to building general intelligence beneficial for all of humanity [21][22]