Roots of Progress InstituteFellow
2026 — Present
Research & Writing
Nikhil Davar researches, writes about, and invests in the technologies, firms, and people that are making the future high-variance.
Nikhil Davar researches, writes about, and invests in the technologies, firms, and people that are making the future high-variance.
Career
The DiffResearch, Writing, and New Ventures (Investing, Recruiting, etc.)
Aug 2024 — Present
Cosigns Received
Featured Media
arenamag.com
Forward Deployed
For nearly 25 years, Palantir has built a unique business that few understand, inside or outside of Silicon Valley. Now, the Frontier Labs want a piece of the action.
thediff.co
Who was First to Situational Awareness?
In retrospect, Google was building a full-stack AI company all along. Cybernetic Rollups and value capture in a world of abundant machine intelligence.
thediff.co
The Middle Game: Routers at the Edge
If there's an AI application that requires specialized knowledge, and is already attached to a lucrative existing business model, it can achieve escape velocity by getting rapid deployment and monopolizing the best verifiers and training data. This is already happening in healthcare.
thediff.co
Routers, Apps, AGI
The more the default way to start solving a problem is to converse with a frontier agent harness, the more they end up being a frontend to the entire economy. But a frontend is only as useful as the API powering it. Fortunately, OpenAI is building this out—and it's hard to see where that process will stop.