Mala Gaonkar

Founder of SurgoCap Partners and co-founder of the non-profit Surgo Health.

Claims

As speaker

Mentioned in

Key positions and views

The most stable and valuable part of the AI ecosystem will be the recurring, annuity-like revenue from inference, not the more volatile and 'spiky' market for model training.

A true competitive moat is defined by a business's ability to generate high incremental returns on invested capital (ROIC) and its capacity to deploy large amounts of new capital at that same high rate.

To deliver significant value and quality in the modern economy, every company, regardless of its industry—from aerospace to med-tech—must operate fundamentally as a technology business.

The most effective human collaboration occurs in small teams, which is why investment organizations should and will become smaller in the future.

Companies with proprietary, real-time data sets and embedded user workflows possess a strong defense against disruption from large language models.

Podcast consensus on Gaonkar

Points of consensus

▶Microsoft's acquisition of Nokia's mobile business for approximately $7 billion in 2014 was a strategic failure, which the company wrote off about 18 months later. This event is cited as the basis for a significant loss on a short position Gaonkar held while at Lone Pine Capital.Apr 2026

▶Mala Gaonkar founded SurgoCap Partners with $1.8 billion in assets under management, which was reported to be the largest-ever hedge fund launch by a woman.Apr 2026

▶SurgoCap Partners' investment strategy is consistently described as focusing on four main verticals: enterprise data (or technology), financial services, industrial technologies, and healthcare services.Apr 2026

▶The global market for robotic surgery, where companies like Intuitive Surgical are prominent, is in the early stages of penetrating a market of approximately 300 million annual surgical procedures.Apr 2026

Points of debate

▶There is a minor inconsistency in the description of SurgoCap's investment verticals across claims; one source lists 'technology' [15] while another specifies 'healthcare services' [33], suggesting a potential evolution or differing emphasis in her communication.Apr 2026

▶Gaonkar's investment philosophy presents a bifurcated timeline: a long-term horizon of 3-5 years for long investments [34] is contrasted with a short-term, catalyst-driven approach of less than nine months for short-selling [17].Apr 2026

▶A tension exists between Gaonkar's ability to identify transformative tech shifts early (NVIDIA's AI potential in 2015) [6] and the practical difficulty of investing when a company's primary revenue drivers are in volatile, unrelated markets (gaming and crypto) [22].Apr 2026

▶Gaonkar advocates for small, nimble organizations ('one-pizza team') [26, 31] and believes disruption originates from smaller companies [32], which contrasts with the significant scale of her own fund's $1.8 billion launch [1, 4].Apr 2026

Key themes

▶The Anatomy of a Quality InvestmentApr 2026

Gaonkar defines a quality business by its ability to generate high incremental Returns on Invested Capital (ROIC) and deploy large amounts of additional capital at that high rate. Her valuation methodology is rigorous, emphasizing free cash flow multiples and expensing stock-based compensation to get a true picture of a company's economics.

Her framework combines classic quality investing principles with a modern, dynamic view of capital allocation, suggesting she prioritizes future growth potential at high returns over static measures of value.

▶AI Value Chain and Semiconductor Moats

Gaonkar distinguishes between the volatile, 'spiky' market of AI training and the stable, 'annuity-like' revenue stream of AI inference, where she believes long-term value will be captured. She sees durable competitive advantages in the semiconductor space being built by companies with application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) like Google's TPUs and process engineering dominance like TSMC's.

This focus on the AI inference layer indicates a strategy that looks beyond the current hype cycle of model training to identify where sustainable, recurring revenue and economic moats will form.

▶Technology as a Universal Business ModelApr 2026

A core belief for Gaonkar is that to deliver significant value, every company must fundamentally operate as a technology business, regardless of its sector. She applies this lens to diverse industries, from med-tech and robotic surgery to aerospace and financial data providers.

This perspective widens her investment universe beyond traditional 'tech stocks' to include tech-enabled leaders in other sectors, focusing on how technology creates operational leverage and competitive advantage.

▶Systematic Learning from Investment MistakesApr 2026

Gaonkar openly discusses and analyzes past investment errors, including being on the wrong side of the Microsoft-Nokia deal, misjudging the balance sheet leverage of Altice, and succumbing to sunk-cost bias by not re-investing in NVIDIA. These reflections appear to be a core part of her process.

Her willingness to deconstruct past failures suggests a disciplined and systematic approach to refining her investment framework and mitigating cognitive biases in future decisions.

Source episodes

Timeline

2014

While at Lone Pine Capital, experienced a significant loss on a short position when Microsoft acquired Nokia's mobile phone business for $7 billion.

Circa 2015

Identified the long-term potential of NVIDIA's GPUs for AI after the release of DeepMind's papers, but was deterred from investing due to the company's primary reliance on the volatile gaming and crypto markets.

Circa 2016

Observed Microsoft writing off the entire $7 billion Nokia acquisition approximately 18 months after the deal closed, validating her original bearish thesis on the business.

Post-2015

Sold a position in NVIDIA and later identified her failure to re-evaluate and buy back into the stock as a significant mistake driven by sunk cost bias.

Recent

Co-founded the non-profit Surgo Health with Semis Geyer to apply data science to health challenges, partnering with organizations like Uber for programs such as 'Rides for Moms'.

Recent

Founded SurgoCap Partners, launching with $1.8 billion in assets under management in what was reported as the largest-ever hedge fund launch by a woman.

Suggested prompts

How does Gaonkar's 'one-pizza team' philosophy scale with a $1.8 billion AUM, and what are the potential trade-offs between team size and asset base? &nearr;Given her focus on AI inference as the 'annuity stream', how might Gaonkar's valuation of companies like Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic differ from the broader market? &nearr;How does Gaonkar's framework for identifying quality businesses (high incremental ROIC) apply to her chosen verticals of enterprise data, financials, healthcare, and industrials? &nearr;Based on her cited mistakes with NVIDIA and Nokia, what specific processes might SurgoCap have implemented to mitigate cognitive biases and react to M&A catalysts? &nearr;

Key concepts

SurgoCap Partners 2 ep Investment Strategy 2 ep Artificial Intelligence 2 ep Semiconductor Industry 2 ep Investment Mistakes 2 ep Healthcare Technology 2 ep Corporate Strategy 2 ep Competitive Moats 2 ep Disruption & Innovation 2 ep

Notable quotes

“Every business is a technology business. So, if you are an aerospace company, or made tech business or financial data business, so you are a technology company in your background. If you want to deliver a big value and quality with great quality, then you will have to be a tech business.”

Mala Gaonkar · Mala Gaonkar - SurgoCap Partners की Founder | पॉडकास्ट | In Good Company | (Hindi version)

“I think training is a little spiky, but inference is the annuity stream.”

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

“When I talk about the moit, I mean that a business is a high incremental ROICs... Second, you can see how much capital can you put in incremental returns?”

Mala Gaonkar · Mala Gaonkar - SurgoCap Partners की Founder | पॉडकास्ट | In Good Company | (Hindi version)

“Like you heard, Jeff Bezos does two pizza box teams talk about, but we will be able to live in one pizza box.”

Mala Gaonkar · Mala Gaonkar - SurgoCap Partners की Founder | पॉडकास्ट | In Good Company | (Hindi version)

Report last updated: Apr 21, 2026

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