The Price of Money, AI, and Entropy with Dimitris Valatsas

In this episode, Dimitris Valatsas, Founding Partner at Aurora Macro Strategies, makes the case that you shouldn’t be sleeping on macroeconomics. In the Age of Adaptation, macroeconomics is a powerful force shaping business and investment outcomes, driving the cost of capital, the flow of money, and how sectors respond to shocks. Sanjeev Krishnan sits down with Dimitris to unpack three key macro topics: the price of money, the price of machine intelligence, and the price of entropy. They discuss why household savings rates can dictate growth, how inflation-indexed contracts can protect long-term infrastructure projects, why the U.S. still enjoys dollar dominance despite rising fragmentation, and how AI’s deep capital demands could redefine productivity and competitiveness. For investors and operators alike, the conversation offers both a crash course in macro thinking and actionable insights for building resilience and seizing opportunity.

Key takeaways:

1. Macro isn’t optional: Dimitris emphasizes that in the Age of Adaptation, macroeconomic conditions drive multiples and exit outcomes as much as company execution. 
2. Hidden indicators matter: Dimitris explains why household savings rates are one of the clearest signals of future growth and consumption trends.
3. Dollar dominance persists but with nuance: While reserve diversification and de-dollarization trends are underway, the U.S. still holds the privileged position as the world’s primary safe-asset supplier. Dimitris insists that while de-dollarization is a tail-risk, it is not the base case.
4. AI is rewriting capital intensity: Sanjeev and Dimitris highlight how, unlike past tech waves, artificial intelligence requires enormous upfront investment in power and hardware, creating new dynamics for productivity.
5. The price of entropy is rising: Markets are not efficient at pricing climate and geopolitical shocks. According to Dimitris, policy consistency and better externality pricing are essential to building resilience.

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