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Marking clearing order inbound. Five clones. You're watching TVP.
4:06
And today is Wednesday, April 22nd, 2026.
4:13
We are live from the TVP and ultra on the Temple of Technology, the Fortress of Finance, the Capital of Capital.
4:17
Uh bunch of major stories today.
4:21
SpaceX and Cursor are partnering up.
4:21
Uh more news out of Images 2.
4:24
0, bunch of uh news out of Open AI, and uh Mythos uh on a group of unauthorized users have been using Claude Mythos since the day it was released.
4:35
It's a big scoop in Bloomberg.
4:37
We'll go through there's a whole bunch of timeline.
4:38
We can also pull up the lineup and take you through who's coming on.
4:42
We got Adobe, Build Forever, AngelList, Zancor, Vast Data, Gradient.
4:48
We're going through all the news of the day.
4:50
Well, uh let's start with SpaceX and Cursor, who are teaming up in a very interesting deal. Is this a gong worthy? >> gong worthy.
4:57
This is gong worthy because it's an option to buy the company, but a $10 billion breakup breakup fee. Yeah.
5:06
>> Incredibly incredibly >> Yeah.
5:07
I think I think it makes it's a win-win. >> Yeah, it's a win-win.
5:10
I think it makes sense for both.
5:12
Uh well well well well let's go through the facts first.
5:15
So, um SpaceX partners >> [laughter] >> Just just immediate takes.
5:20
We assume you already know all the industry. Post fact.
5:24
Do you know all the information?
5:26
Do we need to give you any information? We'll see.
5:27
But uh let's let us run through it.
5:29
So, SpaceX partners with Cursor to quote create the world's best coding and knowledge work AI.
5:34
The deal gets Cursor, who's agentic coding model Composer 2, basically operates at frontier level performance, access to compute from SpaceX's million H100 equivalent Colossus supercomputer.
5:47
And that is the correct term for Colossus. It is a supercomputer.
5:52
There were some other terms that Elon [music] was throwing out.
5:56
Fantastic terminology from the XAI team over there. What was the other one?
6:01
Uh It it was like AI >> Compute giga factory. >> Compute giga factory.
6:06
>> [laughter] >> They're all hilarious and and very good. I like all of these. >> Computer. Computer giga factory.
6:10
Were they saying computer? I don't know. Uh the XAI timeline.
6:14
I was like I was thinking about it and I was like, when did this actually start?
6:18
Like I I cuz it just kind of came out of nowhere and just absolutely blew up.
6:23
I wanted to actually review and reset on like the timeline of events here because it's gotten so crazy to the point where it's like now the thing that started as like Elon sort of being like, I want to buy Twitter, is now like a neo lab with a massive supercomputer data center and a coding agent and code review for the age of AI because don't forget they own Graphite now or potentially will.
6:50
And and and a social media app.
6:52
>> Graphite, the space code review company.
6:55
>> [laughter] >> So, >> I'm really I'm I'm I'm genuinely so excited >> for for for the Graphite team.
7:00
I'm thrilled for the Cursor team.
7:03
I'm thrilled for >> for Scott Woo. >> [laughter] >> Yeah.
7:07
Yeah, Scott Scott Woo's licking his chops.
7:09
He's like, "What are you going to What are you going to leave out in the records?"
7:13
>> [laughter] >> He really is going to have fun with it.
7:16
I also think we need to we need to take one moment >> Yeah.
7:19
and um and uh and and uh just send some thoughts and prayers to SBF, >> Oh, yeah.
7:27
Imagine I I don't know how this works >> Yeah.
7:30
in in whatever prison he's in, but I imagine, you know, what hopefully every few days >> Yeah.
7:35
he can go and like talk to the outside world. >> Yeah.
7:38
And you can imagine him going, you know, making the call >> Yeah.
7:44
and he says, you know, for for the last few weeks, it's like, you know, "Sir, >> What would the market be?"
7:48
How how how how's Anthropic doing?
7:50
How's How's my baby doing?"
7:52
And it's like, "Sir, Sir, it's traded up north of 800 in the secondary markets.
7:57
[laughter] >> And it's and it's quite possibly going to north of a trillion.
8:00
Uh and then he's like, "Th- Thank you. Thanks." Comes back the next day.
8:06
Uh I I haven't checked in with Cursor in a little bit. How are they doing?
8:12
>> [laughter] >> Uh "Sir, you may not want to hear this, but There's a $50 billion acquisition on the table.
8:17
>> They've agreed to sell for 60 billion. 60.
8:22
And if they don't sell, they're going to get 10 billion >> [laughter] >> of non-dilutive capital." Absolutely wild. Anyways.
8:26
What a What a What a wild wild turn of events.
8:29
Uh anyway, let's go through the timeline uh because it's it's interesting to revisit the flurry of news that has come out of Elon in Inc.
8:38
over the past just 4 years when this all started. April 14th, 2022. It's April 22nd now.
8:46
So, we're talking 4 years to go from just proposing buying Twitter.
8:53
He made an unsolicited offer to acquire the company.
8:56
He closed that acquisition after a bunch of back and forth saying, "Yeah, maybe I don't want it."
9:00
It was very clear that the stock would have traded down significantly from that $44 billion because there this was when the interest rate hike happened and uh the end of ZIRP and basically all software companies uh sold off significantly.
9:14
And so, we saw declines in Snap and Pinterest and uh basically anything that was uh even Meta sold off like 40 50% post uh uh although that was like an anomaly and they built back up, but uh the question about like, "Okay, well, Reality Labs is a what a $10 billion tens of billions dollar bet on on revenues that might come in like 10 years."
9:38
Like it was so far away and the revenue ramp on VR and metaverse projects was so slow that the market just had to discount those future revenues even if they were still bullish on the idea of Meta winning the VR race, winning the metaverse at some point.
9:52
Uh it just wasn't going to happen anytime soon.
9:55
So, you got to discount that back at 6% instead of 3% or whatever your risk free rate is in your DCF and so everything sold off and and Elon had locked in that pre end of ZIRP price and there was a big question about could he get out of it?
10:09
Were they going to twist his arm?
10:10
They there was a little bit of arm twisting.
10:12
The arm was a little bit twisted but Morgan Stanley came on board and a bunch of other people came on board.
10:18
It was almost But the people who get who were whose arms were twisted Morgan Stanley and all the VC backers who came in they wound up with SpaceX stock and so they wound up doing very well because they wound up with XAI stock and then SpaceX stock and so it's all looking like you know as crazy it was it was never bet against Elon.
10:33
Like that was the thing was like surely this is the time to bet against Elon.
10:38
He's buying Twitter for 44 billion dollars is a crazy idea based on the market where things are but everything sort of penciled out.
10:45
So um >> [clears throat] >> He closed the Twitter acquisition on October 27th, 2022 and he took control of the platform at the end of that month. That was sink day.
10:54
Of course he he comes in with a sink.
10:56
Something about the What was the joke about the kitchen sink? Let that sink in. Oh let that sink in.
10:59
Okay it wasn't it wasn't like I'm doing the whole the whole Isn't the whole kitchen sink another phrase as well?
11:04
Yeah like throw the whole kitchen sink at it. Okay yeah.
11:08
Well he did that trying because he threw everything together. Yes good job. Yeah yeah. So XAI came later.
11:16
He publicly announced XAI on July 12th, 2023 and that's only nine months after ChatGPT maybe eight months after ChatGPT Google quick followed with Gemini and it was like it was a very fast following I think to get to XAI off the ground.
11:31
And that was like just just for context that was right around the time you first publicly talked about the potential for a tech live stream. Right? Oh yes yes I did.
11:42
>> 2023 I think that was I think that was actually very close to the date.
11:44
Yeah I was making YouTube videos.
11:46
I made a whole YouTube video about the Elon Twitter acquisition and I was sort of trying to justify it as a you know it was it was more about his desire for free speech than anything else like you shouldn't look at it in financial terms.
12:00
I think that still probably holds.
12:00
Um but [clears throat] there wound up being a whole bunch of other knock on effects for Elon's strategy.
12:04
Anyway so he was you know coming out on July 12th, 2023 saying I'm back in the AI horse race.
12:13
I'm competing directly with the big labs.
12:15
I'm going to go up against DeepMind.
12:16
Still Remember that's why he founded OpenAI.
12:19
He wanted to push back against DeepMind.
12:22
I'm going going to go up against Anthropic going to go up up against OpenAI.
12:25
And so the first major product milestone came just a couple months later November 3rd.
12:29
That's when they introduced Grok November 3rd, 2023.
12:31
So it's been almost three years.
12:35
The first real integration with Twitter happened on December 7th, 2023 when Grok started rolling out inside of X for premium plus subscribers which was a new tier.
12:45
It was It's actually crazy how many people got verified. Yeah remember?
12:50
I mean the the the that year on Twitter was insane.
12:52
Like just product feature product feature and they were shipping stuff that had been clearly developed beforehand.
12:58
beforehand. Like I think the community notes idea had been workshopped and even like engineered in the pre-Elon era but he just got there and was like ship that tomorrow and like there were a lot of things like that that happened and there
13:10
were other things that got pulled back and review and like there were other pieces of the puzzle that were like not doing so well and he was just like cut cut cut and so he sort of like put it back in startup mode and it felt a lot more agile and it still does. And so that was the moment Grok finally
13:23
And so that was the moment Grok finally became a part of the X product experience.
13:26
In early 2024 XAI started shipping updates quickly.
13:29
March 17th, 2024 it open sourced Grok 1.
13:31
March 26th, 2024 Grok access expanded to X premium subscribers.
13:38
Two days later they announced 1. 5.
13:40
Then on April 12th, 2024 they announced 1.
13:44
5V which added multimodal capabilities. Then Grok 2 Grok 2 mini.
13:47
By the end of 2024 Grok was available to all X users.
13:51
And so 2025 XAI moved from being connected to X to absorbing it at the at the product level on February 19th, 2025 XAI announced Grok 3 beta.
14:05
Then March 28th, 2025 so over a year ago for some reason this feels more more recent than that XAI acquired X in an all stock deal.
14:14
So March 28th, 2025 effectively merging the AI company with a social platform.
14:19
After that X kept releasing faster model updates.
14:22
They did Grok 4 fast Grok 4. 1.
14:24
Then came the SpaceX deal.
14:26
That was February 2nd, 2026.
14:29
So the clean sequence is that Musk first proposed the Twitter acquisition then founded XAI then brought Grok into X then merged XAI with X and then SpaceX bought XAI.
14:38
And so now Cursor is joining the team and Yeah and this just makes this just makes uh It makes [clears throat] so much sense right?
14:47
Cursor needs compute they need the resources they need the capital to train a frontier coding model.
14:54
>> never done a pre-training believe whereas XAI team has right?
14:55
And the the big big thing is that the Grok brand has you know been through so much.
15:03
There was uh some an idea being thrown around last year that it had been banned in more workplaces than it had been adopted right?
15:13
So more people had said like you cannot use this product in the workplace than we're actually using it in the workplace.
15:19
Cursor's a great brand right?
15:22
It's a It's a brand that I think can probably expand outside of outside of coding right?
15:26
As they in the announcement best to create the world's best coding and knowledge work AI.
15:31
So we're at a point right now where everyone is building the exact same thing.
15:35
[laughter] You got everyone on earth building building a box that you can tell to do things Oh oh so you just want one company to do it all? Communist?
15:45
No no I don't I think I think I think the competition I think the competition is great.
15:50
>> You want the government to have It's bringing out the best in It's bringing out the best right but I think Cursor's like Cursor's always had a great brand.
15:56
Wait he's saying Wait SBF replied to SpaceX's tweet saying that's me.
16:02
>> [laughter] >> Pull up pull up the first post here and then scroll down the SpaceX and Cursor are now working closely.
16:10
Would that that that It should be like the first one in the in the timeline.
16:15
SpaceX and Cursor SpaceX AI is what they're calling it now. Is it not up there?
16:19
In Cursor I can find it and and send it in.
16:23
Um Let me let me find this post and send it into the production chat.
16:25
Tuxedo Sam says do you think they'll they'll make Elon take his shoes off at the Cursor office?
16:33
[laughter] Okay so Richard Woo has some context. Yeah there you go.
16:38
Look SBF is is somehow on Twitter.
16:41
How can you be on Twitter from jail?
16:43
All these people in jail on on X I don't understand it.
16:45
No it says it in his bio. It says it in his bio.
16:49
It says we can use BOP approved phone calls emails to tell others what to post on our socials right?
16:56
I think it would be a free speech violation to say like if you are in jail you cannot distribute information in the outside world in any capacity but it feels like this was maybe some legislation that was created pre-internet because it seems like having like a ghost writer on your account is a really good way to like start you know kind of like influencing public perception right?
17:18
I think this is Elizabeth Holmes has had enough kind of moments where it was like she you know her proxy posted something that was mildly kind of entertaining and over time that just wears on people and eventually people are like you know may maybe maybe maybe she isn't so bad after all right?
17:40
So Okay well Richard Woo broke down the structure of the deal.
17:42
He says the structure of the deal is pretty interesting here.
17:45
I think what's happening is one XAI is having trouble training a state of the art coding model hence co-founder departures.
17:52
They might have a bunch of idle GPUs.
17:55
Cursor doesn't have capital to blow on a five billion dollar training run to compete with Codex and Claude.
18:03
XAI three XAI says to Cursor use all the GPUs you want at cost and get to a state of the art coding model as long as we have the option to buy you.
18:14
Four Cursor also gets a free option.
18:16
Train a model better than Opus and get bought out for 60 billion or get 10 billion that pays for all the GPUs you you rented. Win-win.
18:23
And I was reflecting on Michael Truel's I mean [clears throat] fantastic entrepreneur remarkably young but his aesthetic is is very much in like the Stripe world I imagine because he I feel like the one really cinematic podcast he's done is that one with Was it Patrick Collison?
18:42
Is that the one I'm thinking of?
18:44
And it's like them at the coffee shop and it's so welcoming and warming.
18:47
It's like that is that is welcome in every corporate entity in America right?
18:52
Like and to your point about like you know oh like if your corporation is like oh what's going on with Elon and politics blah blah blah do we really want Grok running around with Mecca and Annie and all this crazy stuff but if it's just like Michael Truel from Cursor he's so reassuring like I if I'm like Coke or GE or Ford I'm like yeah of course like we love Cursor. That's great.
19:14
Very very aesthetics do matter vibes do matter and I think makes a lot of sense.
19:18
Matt Slotnick says he loves math.
19:21
Okay what is the math here?
19:24
>> What he's talking about Julian.
19:24
He's So Julian says at a 30X revenue multiple at first glance it appears that SpaceX is overpaying for Cursor.
19:30
However the deal is wildly accretive for SpaceX given it is expected to go public at more than 100X revenue.
19:36
A 70 term multiple expansion on two billion of revenue adds up. So >> Wow. Yeah.
19:43
This is This is a notorious thing in corporate M&A and and occasionally it's gone poorly but there is like an old adage that if you can acquire earnings at a lower earnings multiple and maintain your current multiple, that is accretive to the stock.
19:58
And so there's a whole philosophy around that.
20:00
But the smart investor should price each earning stream differently and having like a monopoly on launch capacity should be a higher multiple than super competitive oligopolistic coding market if that's what this winds up being.
20:17
It's a tricky tricky situation, but Well, Brian, wow, cursor just hit a 10 billion dollar run rate. They did. It's guaranteed, right?
20:23
There's no way that they won't make 10 billion this year.
20:27
That's not even run rate.
20:27
That's just like it's locked in.
20:28
It's more than contracted. I don't know.
20:29
Yeah, and and and and and it's very meaningful because it is effectively an exit and that it's, you know, by it by itself.
20:37
They can you know, they they'll be in a position to actually, you know, reinvest that.
20:44
That's like a a nice little neo lab kind of series A basically. Uh But Ken says no.
20:52
You got to multiply that 10 billion by 12 because in that month where they get the 10 billion dollar check from SpaceX, it will be a 120 billion run rate.
20:59
They will be the largest AI company in the world. That month.
21:05
And then they just have to figure out They don't collect until end of year if they're still independent.
21:11
Otherwise, it's more like 25 billion. Okay.
21:12
Well, so let's hear some other thoughts where they are.
21:15
What is this post from Patrick? Wait, wait, which one?
21:20
This is he Patrick is quoting Scott Wu.
21:24
>> Oh, yeah, yeah, last of the Mohicans. Scott Wu.
21:26
I love it because despite this does not look good.
21:30
>> images too, without images too, we just this this kind of adds to it.
21:33
I actually think this might have been done the old-fashioned way. This is nanabanana. There we go.
21:38
It's going to cutting out faces. >> Thank you, watermark. Yes.
21:43
He says, here we go again, last of the Mohicans.
21:45
Yeah, Scott Wu is the last one standing in this particular category and yeah, he's licking his chops thinking about who might want to hop over to Cognition Cursor Cognition Windsurf Devin Cursor Zombie Corp as the as the ghost ships continue to line up on the shores of Scott Wu's territory.
22:08
What else should we go through with the Cursor the Cursor Cursor's launch liability was I think that's it.
22:14
Very happy for everyone involved. Yeah.
22:18
Some news from Space News Inc.
22:21
>> This is very interesting.
22:21
China backs orbital data center startup with 8.
22:22
4 billion in credit lines. They're billed. They're billed. >> Elon is interested. 8.
22:27
4 billion in credit lines. That is a lot of money.
22:30
A Beijing-based space startup has secured early stage funding.
22:34
Early stage funding to the tune of 8. 4 billion?
22:36
What are we doing [laughter] here?
22:40
An extensive credit [music] backing is part of a broader Chinese push towards space-based computing infrastructure.
22:45
Beijing Orbital Twilight Technology Company Limited.
22:50
We don't know how to name companies like that in this country. Seriously. This is the new meta. Yeah.
22:53
What is what is Cursor's real name? AnySphere?
22:57
That's a that's a pretty good name.
22:57
I like I like AnySphere and I like Cursor, but doesn't hold a candle to Beijing Orbital Twilight Technology Company Limited.
23:06
Also known as Orbital Chunguang announced the completion of a pre-AI funding pre-A1 or is that pre pre-A1 funding round April 20th.
23:16
The round saw participation from venture and industrial investors including Hysun Capital, CITIC IC Construction Investment Capital, Cathay Capital. They got everybody.
23:27
It's a murderer's row over there.
23:31
At the same time, Orbital state said that it has obtained strategic credit lines totaling 8.
23:37
4 billion from 12 major financial institutions including the Bank of China.
23:42
Are they going to build rockets with this?
23:44
I mean, I don't I don't understand why this would be so capital intensive if they're not going to fabricate chips and they're not going to launch the rockets.
23:50
Well, they're going to put a lot of GPUs in space.
23:54
>> they're just going to buy a lot of Huawei chips or something.
23:55
Are they going to go to Huawei and get some special stuff?
23:59
>> mean, this is pretty interesting because I feel like, you know, generally the main bull case for space data centers is that the like regulatory environment in the US is going to be so hard to build data centers.
24:07
Like, you know, Supercomputers, but yeah. normal land yeah. Yeah, supercomputers.
24:11
So you got to send supercomputers to space because there's less regular >> No, we can do data centers in space.
24:16
We just we we if it's on the ground, it's a supercomputer.
24:19
Okay, yeah, that makes sense.
24:21
Because because we don't want any more data centers on Earth.
24:22
It's Earth Day, by the way. Congratulations, Earth.
24:26
You've done fantastically. Yeah.
24:26
But but the whole thing like in China is like they, you know, you can just like build things there, right?
24:32
There's like very little regulatory overhead. Yeah.
24:33
So it's like what like I I feel like the the the space data centers is a lot more sense for the US. >> Yeah.
24:40
If you're worried about if the if the bull case is regulatory, which it seems to be, that's like generally consensus, I think. >> Yeah.
24:46
I was laughing about how uh you know, how there's all this this fear about like data centers using water in America, but over in China they have the Three Gorges Dam, which generates electricity from water.
24:55
It technically uses a lot of water.
24:57
The water's not destroyed or anything.
24:59
It just passes through the dam, generates electricity, but >> an entire ocean of water.
25:05
>> Exactly, the Hoover Dam. That's a nightmare.
25:06
If you just like like there's one frame where you don't want the water to be destroyed or made unpotable so you can't drink it anymore, but there's another one where you think like water has individual rights and should not be used at all.
25:19
Like it should not be used.
25:21
It should not flow through a water wheel.
25:22
It should not flow through a dam and generate electricity at all.
25:25
It should be left to its own devices, still and just chill. Maybe.
25:31
Anyway, Orbital has incubated with is incubated by the Beijing Astro Future Institute of Space Technology, which itself is backed by Beijing's Municipal Science and Technology Commission and the Science Park Administration.
25:43
The institute leads a consortium of 24 organizations.
25:44
The rationale for the constellation in November briefing Large-scale data centers have expanded rapidly worldwide, but further growth faces faces major obstacles including heavy land use. Weird.
25:57
Soaring energy consumption. Weird.
26:00
Limits on atmospheric cooling.
26:02
These things usually don't apply in China, but maybe they are skating where the puck is going and maybe they're thinking that they will need to change their direction.
26:09
Uh >> [clears throat] >> So they're planning a dawn-dusk orbit about 700-800 km above the Earth aiming to achieve a large-scale space data center to support space-based computing by 2035.
26:21
Wow, thinking in decades over there.
26:24
So they're they're they're they're going slow. They're getting there.
26:27
The initial phase spanning 2025 and 2027. Wait.
26:33
Why are they talking about last year?
26:34
We'll focus on core technology changes in the first computing They're manipulating time, Josh.
26:40
The experimental satellite was slated for launch in late 2025 or early 2026, but it does not appear to have launched.
26:47
They have They have like decent launch capacity with the Long March rocket.
26:50
I think that they just aren't not amazing at landing it, but you got more money, you can just YOLO more rockets up there, I guess. Problem solved.
26:59
Although I would be surprised if there's as much pressure to not build supercomputers next to the Three Gorges Dam. Anyway, moving on.
27:10
More images out of ChatGPT images too Image Gen 2 images V2. These are crazy.
27:18
Has anyone done that rune test of the of the the the guy driving the car into the you know, the whole thing where he was like it's AGI if it can understand this meme.
27:27
I wonder I wonder how I guess you can't because like that particular meme has been saturated on the internet and so it it no longer is a challenge.
27:35
>> to have it make an image. I am a I am a tiny man. What is this? My space. My son was born.
27:41
This is truly never >> me to him.
27:47
>> Never forget where you came from. Blink-182.
27:48
They really packed so much stuff in here. It's almost too much.
27:51
I have been noticing um >> [cough] >> the Gabriel over there is pushing the model into chaos and seeing what happens.
27:58
Cows are flying, horses are flying, trampolines are flying.
28:02
The next one by Ethan Mollick has like every image benchmark You were you were asking about this.
28:07
You you said and explain the history of this.
28:11
So originally like when when like DALL-E first came out, the the like image that everyone was like, oh, this is crazy, it was an astronaut riding a horse on the moon.
28:18
So then it's like, okay, that's like very easy.
28:20
And Well, it's very hard to Photoshop that.
28:25
It's very hard to go get an actual picture.
28:26
Because if someone's just like, make a picture of a dog and it's photoreal, everyone's just like, oh, who cares?
28:31
We have a picture of a dog.
28:31
We don't have any pictures of of astronauts riding horses on the moon.
28:36
>> people riding horses, right?
28:36
And and so like there's sense where it's like maybe the it's not like doesn't need to fully understand like everything that's going on because there's a lot of like references it can pull from.
28:45
So then it became can a horse ride an astronaut, right? It's like the reverse. >> Yes.
28:52
And early image models would always just do the flip.
28:53
They would just put the astronaut on the horse.
28:54
Yep, cuz that's more logical, generally.
28:58
>> there's a number of a number of these things where like if you ask a person to draw it out, it's like, okay, you just think logically like this is how it would look, but there's just like no reference images online.
29:06
So another another one was like a full wine glass.
29:07
So you think of a full wine glass is like it's still only like technically, you know, halfway, 3/4 I never understood why that one didn't work.
29:15
I I I saw the whole video There's very few images online of a full wine glass being like full to the brim because people typically fill them halfway.
29:22
So in the training data, okay, got it. Yeah.
29:24
Yeah, and then there was the >> [laughter] >> What is this image? This is not the one. >> This is not the one.
29:30
This is not the one from the timeline.
29:31
That one's way more aggressive than than the This is the one.
29:35
This one looks aesthetic and it still looks weird.
29:39
>> The only the only thing is is it would a horse's belly really look like that?
29:41
It is sort of like a human horse.
29:45
>> it kind of looks like >> [laughter] >> human.
29:48
But it does have the wine glass completely filled and and then explain the clock.
29:53
>> up was was Grok, I think.
29:54
>> [laughter] >> Okay, explain the explain the clock.
29:57
What's going on with the clock?
29:57
Yeah, that one's just another like understanding thing where like can it if you give it a time can it do the the clock like the correct time?
30:03
There's also one where you do a bunch of clocks on different time zones. >> Yeah.
30:10
It couldn't do the clock.
30:10
It couldn't do the clock. It has two hour hands. Yeah, this one. >> know what that means?
30:14
We're moving the goal posts. Do it. Do it. It's time. It's time.
30:30
>> [applause] [applause] >> You guys have more work to do. No, no.
30:37
Sam was talking about this with Ashley Vance.
30:38
Vance. He was saying that like you know, he thought he thought the job was finished with like chat GPT images because it was really good and then they worked a lot harder and they realized that there was more to do and this is
30:49
like the Karpathy thing about like you get the self-driving cars to 99% and then takes another year to get add another nine takes another year to add another nine and then another nine and it just takes forever to improve these things because we demand perfection. We do not accept two
31:03
We do not accept two hands on a clock. Keep grinding folks. Keep grinding.
31:10
Anyway, there are a lot of other fun posts.
31:11
Sam analysis, I thought this was just a real image of Dorkhast taking a selfie and then it was recontextualized via a meme.
31:20
It is in fact an AI image and it's it's >> even look like the new model though. Hi, I'm Dorkhast.
31:25
I grew up all over the US and now SF based and always down to nerd out about AI science and history. A little about me.
31:31
I host the Dorkhast podcast, study at UT Austin, just published a book on the history of AI scaling.
31:37
Let's grab coffee or do a fun activity this summer because of course this is a a meme template.
31:42
It is very popular and has gone viral with a lot of new people that have been hired and moved to San Francisco.
31:50
>> so the other thing I've noticed with images too >> Yeah, yeah.
31:52
is that I think it has fully the new model has actually has taste >> I agree.
31:59
and it has fully democratized like high-quality lifestyle and product imagery. >> Yeah.
32:07
And I'm shedding a tear just a little bit >> Yeah.
32:12
because you used to be able to tell like the kind of >> [clears throat] >> somebody was working on a CPG company.
32:21
You could kind of clock their ability. Yep.
32:23
as a founder based on the quality of their images, right?
32:26
Because maybe they're not super creative themselves, maybe they haven't raised a bunch of money, but if they're scrappy they can meet the right photographer, they can put stuff together.
32:34
>> And now it's like everyone just has a great product photography and I saw this morning with there's that Andreessen Horowitz company that does like electric scooters. >> Oh, yeah.
32:45
They were just like ripping out a bunch of images that look like they spent tens of thousands of dollars doing that but they're clearly like images too. Which is cool.
32:53
Which is cool. It's just like funny that we've entered a world where Yeah, I've seen I've seen some people I I I think that the the end result will be like you will see more opinionated and creative and and more people like like there will be a collapsing around like everyone will copy Apple or linear but then on the
33:12
flip side you will see people that are um that are doing things that are really unexpected and those things will be copied but if the if the brand can run through and actually establish itself as like oh it has this unique aesthetic it won't matter that somebody can can recreate it cuz plenty of people did that with the Red Antler stuff. It was
33:30
It was like that like there were brands that really owned that and carved that out as like their aesthetic and then there were a bunch of copycats and no one really liked those.
33:38
liked those. Um I was reflecting on the fact that like for a long time Midjourney felt like it had a very unique aesthetic like uh uh like uh ArtStation and like painterly and sci-fi really well and then chat GPT images V1 and some of the
33:52
other image models just felt like stock photography and now I feel like I'm starting to see more stuff out of images of chat GPT that feels more opinionated and has a stronger aesthetic and it can do more of like the sci-fi stuff. Although sometimes it leans in a little
34:04
Although sometimes it leans in a little bit too much to the photo realism.
34:06
bit too much to the photo realism. I think you got to get kind of crazy with the prompts to actually get something that's abstract because I was taking some Midjourney prompts and I was putting them into chat GPT images and I was noticing that
34:17
like it was just putting out stuff that was like it was like like what [clears throat] the prompt was like make a video game of like a car racing and it just looked exactly like a video game cuz it just looks like a screenshot instead of like the idea of a video game. Okay, last one we're going to pull
34:30
Okay, last one we're going to pull up and then we have our first guest. >> Yes.
34:33
Post from Ben Hilack from Ben.
34:35
Says nightmare blunt rotation.
34:38
>> [laughter] >> Oh, yeah, it can do it can do 360 images.
34:41
It can do 360 images which is really cool cuz >> Sam Olson.
34:47
So it generates a full equirectangular image which is something you could view in VR and then and then you can load that into a panoramic you know stereoscopic image generator.
35:02
I wonder I wonder when 3D images will come and also I mean the the the big question is like people are going to want to animate these.
35:08
What's the downstream tool chain for actually turning this into video?
35:11
Are we going back into video at some point? We will see.
35:14
Anyway, people are having a lot of fun with it and it should should help with like front end and and a lot of other stuff.
35:20
It seems like it's done very well on on on on design and layouts and all that stuff.
35:27
Well, we have a perfect person to talk about AI imagery, AI generative AI, creative tooling and more because we are joined by Anil from Adobe where he is the president. So let's bring in Anil. How are you doing? Welcome to the show.
35:44
>> Thank you for having me on.
35:44
Great to be back on TBN and congrats on your acquisition. Great news for you guys. >> Thank you. It's great to see you. Great to see you again.
35:51
I would love to just get a general update on what has changed with Adobe, what has what have you been working on since the last time we spoke?
36:01
Well, look I'm coming to you from Adobe Summit.
36:03
We are here in Las Vegas, you know, big show, 14,000 people.
36:08
You were just talking about Jensen.
36:09
Jensen was here on Monday and really talking about how Nvidia and Adobe are working together and you were just talking about 3D at kind of the tail end of your comments there and that's actually one of the big things we announced is how do you have digital twins so that you can take the digital twin and carry it all the way from product design into marketing and customer experience.
36:29
So you know, with HP for example, they have 15,000 new SKUs every every year with all the products they have and they're working with us and with Nvidia and to bring it together into into marketing.
36:42
So we are super excited about you know, what we call customer experience orchestration which is how do you use AI, how do you use all the software you have to deliver personalized experiences, how do you bring the right content, the right data about the customer and then put that into the channel that they care about and really get them most out of the customer life cycle, build loyalty.
37:05
So that's what we're that's the big topic of the conference here.
37:09
Yeah, walk me through that HP example because if if they have a >> [clears throat] >> a SKU I imagine that there's a CAD file at some point and then they might want to instantiate that in in text or imagery or video or a 3D rendering and they might want to go over to one of your 3D products or bridge to another.
37:28
How how important is Adobe at the center of like uh asset management and actually creating some sort of abstraction on top of what the actual core item is versus just translating from one sort of output to the next in the way that someone might take a PNG from Photoshop and drop it into Premiere Pro.
37:50
Well, that's exactly right.
37:50
So they start with the the 3D image that they have or the 3D uh as you said a CAD file. Yeah.
37:56
From that what we do is we create the digital twin and then we apply the brand intelligence on their behalf.
38:04
So in HP's case for example, if it's a new PC that they're releasing they have all kinds of things on what they want when the when they say it's a it's a laptop and the laptop is open what's the kind of image they want on the laptop?
38:18
What's the kind of lighting they want on the laptop?
38:19
And then they release it all over the world so there's pictures of people they always want to show a business professional in the laptop.
38:28
That's the along with the laptop.
38:30
They want them showing them using the laptop to do something.
38:32
So they have all kinds of brand guidelines of course but then there's a lot of tribal knowledge on what makes an ad successful.
38:43
And it's not only for them then they have to get all of that traveling through the entire marketing campaign because one of the big problems has been you know, in the in the current world they use the 3D CAD files for everything in manufacturing and so on but the marketing, the content starts with a photo shoot.
39:00
They're not actually using the 3D CAD file that they have the source of truth and that's what we're you know, enabling them to do.
39:07
Use the source of truth so that the images are completely high fidelity, they're brand preserving but then you can generate everything around that.
39:17
You can generate the background, you can generate the foreground, you can generate the users and then of course you can do what we call transcreation which is the translation into different languages.
39:27
All of that can be generated based on their brand guidelines and what works for their brand.
39:31
So is your relationship with Nvidia that you want to marshal enough compute that you can be delivering inference to a customer?
39:41
Because I remember using content aware fill back in the day.
39:43
It ran locally on my device.
39:46
As the models get more compute intensive, they eventually won't run on device.
39:50
They'll run in the cloud.
39:52
I know you have API partnerships, but is there a vision to deliver inference to the customer all in one go? Exactly.
40:02
It depends on the campaign.
40:03
Let's say HP is running a back to school campaign.
40:05
Then they want a set of imagery.
40:07
They want a set of things that they can transfer over to their channel partners.
40:11
Along with accurate product data.
40:13
Or if they're running for example a holiday campaign, a different set of imagery. And so on and so forth.
40:18
So depending on the campaign, depending on the geography, depending on the customer segment.
40:24
Making sure that they have the right campaign that is obviously the content.
40:28
It's also the product data.
40:28
Making sure that that's super accurate because it's got to match what exactly the customer is buying.
40:34
And then anything that's relevant for the particular channel partner.
40:38
It could be through their own direct channels, but it could equally be through CDW or through other channels.
40:44
And they want to make sure that the entire thing carries over.
40:45
So that's what we're doing for them is not getting the workflow right.
40:49
Getting the Adobe brand intelligence, which is one of the big things that we announced this week at Summit.
40:55
Getting all of that together so that they can have a single seamless marketing workflow and get the benefit of both AI and the 3D technology together. Jody.
41:06
You guys announced a big buyback this week and and that that's been exciting, but what do you think you need to do from a results standpoint to show that you guys are an AI beneficiary versus a versus a victim, right?
41:21
Because the narrative is obviously against you.
41:25
The market has has spoken, but at the same time AI is a powerful creative tool.
41:31
You guys have massive distribution into, you know, millions of individuals and businesses.
41:35
And so I think people are waiting to actually see see the story in the numbers.
41:41
And there's like only so much you can say to kind of like get people confidence.
41:45
But how are you thinking about it? Yeah, exactly.
41:48
As you said, we announced a $25 billion buyback.
41:50
That is a signal of our confidence of you know, this is going to continue to be a very profitable business for years to come.
41:59
And we wanted to make sure that everybody in the market knew that.
42:00
And you know, look, I think to your point first step for us is AI adoption and making sure that AI is delivering real value.
42:11
Whether it's to individuals and real value to users or to enterprise customers like we were just talking about.
42:16
And for us, what that means is how do you really embed it into the tooling so seamlessly?
42:21
Whether you're a marketer, whether you're a creative, or whether you're a business professional using Acrobat that AI works for you flawlessly.
42:31
And it does what you want.
42:31
I love the example from the last year that you had, which is sometimes you do want the the horse riding the astronaut.
42:37
That was an interesting concept.
42:39
But you know, that maybe we have a lot of customers like Home Depot that just want sawdust and nails.
42:45
And that's that's what makes their campaigns authentic.
42:46
So depending on what the customer wants, depending what the user wants, making sure that AI is helping them get value, not AI is getting in the way.
42:57
That's our focus right now is just making sure that customers, whether they're enterprises, individuals, small businesses, students understand that AI is critical to the next generation of of creative platforms and marketing platforms and tools.
43:12
But it's in the context of what they're using.
43:14
It brings the UI, the agentic the agents and the reasoning, the models and the data all together to work for them.
43:22
So that's I think we've made a we've made a lot a lot of strides on that front here at Summit in the over the last couple of years.
43:28
I think as as the results show, one thing for us is I think from where we are in the market for the market even to see us continuing to the performance that we've had.
43:37
We're a double digit grower.
43:39
You know, we have very healthy margins.
43:41
Even continuing to see that for the next couple of years I think we'll change a lot of minds.
43:46
And then I think we also see the opportunity through customer experience orchestration to reach a real inflection point.
43:51
So that's that's what we're looking to do.
43:55
Jody, you can Yeah, I was going to ask how are how are you what what's your M&A outlook?
43:59
It seems like there's a ton of really talented teams building building creative tools that could could fit into to Adobe.
44:06
Hopefully, you know, you're spending a lot on the buyback, but hopefully there's still some dry powder for some talented teams. We we do.
44:16
We we have plenty of dry powder.
44:18
We we haven't overextended ourselves.
44:20
In fact, we are really pleased.
44:22
We just announced that we have received all the regulatory approvals for Semrush.
44:27
And we're in the in the in the waiting period to close it.
44:29
So in the next few weeks we'll be closing Semrush.
44:31
We're super excited about that because Semrush along with our portfolio solves a real problem for marketers.
44:38
You know, marketers, I mean, we heard a lot from customers at Summit.
44:42
Every brand is like, how do I show up in the right way through Open AI, through chat through chat GPT obviously, but through Claude and Gemini and Perplexity and Grok.
44:53
I don't even know how consumer they know consumers are going there in droves.
45:01
What they don't know is what are they even prompting for that I should be I should know about.
45:05
So if I'm a brand in the cosmetics world how are they what are they actually prompting?
45:15
I don't even know what they're prompting for that I should be aware of.
45:18
Then how should I make sure what do I need to do to make sure that I am included in the response?
45:22
And then what do I need to do to make sure that I'm included in the response in an accurate manner?
45:28
And then how do I get that traffic coming to me?
45:30
Or how do I close the sale right there if I if if it's something that I can close right there?
45:37
This is a new world for marketers.
45:39
They have marketers have no idea how this whole thing works.
45:42
I mean, they they don't know for example what happens when you put in a prompt into chat GPT?
45:50
What is the queries that get kicked off?
45:52
Where does it get kicked off to?
45:52
How is that information assembled?
45:54
How does it impact their brand?
45:58
They don't know the first thing about it is what they're telling us.
45:59
And they're saying, Adobe, help us.
46:01
I'm interested to see how how this category plays out cuz there's obviously a bunch of companies doing uh they call it answer engine optimization, AIO or GEO, whatever they're calling it.
46:13
But the big question was always uh this feels like a very natural thing for someone like a Semrush to enter in a big way.
46:18
They already have the distribution, so it'll be an interesting battle uh between Semrush and some of the upstarts like uh profound and some other players.
46:27
But >> Well, I think the battle will be over pretty soon according to me.
46:32
>> [laughter] >> There there we go.
46:33
I think James I think James at Profound, we should have you guys both on and go and go at it.
46:40
>> [laughter] >> That's great.
46:40
I I I want to talk about video.
46:43
So I mean, we saw Open AI pulled back from Sora.
46:45
There are some really amazing models that are happening.
46:47
Some of them are in China.
46:49
There's a whole bunch of IP stuff, but uh what I'm interested in is that um uh Photoshop continues to be an important tool even in a GenAI world uh because there's so many fine details.
47:02
Having GenAI as just one possible tool is valuable.
47:05
The models are getting better.
47:07
We're 3 years into this boom, but video is moving slower.
47:09
It's more inference demand.
47:11
And I'm wondering about how you're taking lessons learned and strategies that you applied to the evolution of Photoshop how that integrates with different model providers, different tools, different in-house solutions and how you're planning to bring that to After Effects and and Premiere because this feels like a place where you would need even more opinionated editing.
47:32
Like we're nowhere near text box editing like you know, two like 40 hours of video into a movie.
47:41
Like that's just not like we're so far from that. Exactly.
47:45
So look, this is where I I we believe Adobe brand intelligence will be a huge differentiator because that's what then Okay.
47:50
gives us the right information to pass on to the creatives to say this is how this is the kind of how you use Adobe creative agent.
47:58
And this is how where you want to let the AI be take over and this is where you want to be opinionated.
48:05
I mean, what we have done is provided that flexibility.
48:07
You know, we we announced over 30 integrations now.
48:10
You know, whether it's Runway or Flux and obviously Google with both VO and and Nano Banana etc.
48:15
So we've we've been very open and we're very open to integrating any other models that come up as well.
48:24
The key though is the creative themselves, if you're working for a brand I mean, if you're working for I mentioned Home Depot earlier or if you're working for Coca-Cola and so on.
48:33
They don't have enough information by themselves unless they really get a really super detailed creative brief on what exactly to where they need to take control, where they can let the AI run.
48:44
We believe we can automate that and provide the right information at the right time to the creative.
48:50
They can bring the brand idea.
48:51
They can bring the hero asset.
48:53
They can bring the creative idea.
48:56
And then you can apply the intelligence and exactly to your point you can be a lot more opinionated in what you produce. Yeah. Yeah.
49:02
It is very fascinating that we got like fully generated video before we got a tool that puppetiers uh Premiere Pro in a way that can sync up music and edit to beat and make cuts just on normal non-AI generated footage.
49:20
That's just the nature of uh computer use and whatnot.
49:22
So uh I'm sure it's an exciting time.
49:24
Uh lots to build, lots to work on.
49:27
Uh congratulations on all the progress.
49:29
Yeah, great to get the update.
49:31
Yeah, thanks so much for taking the time. Good to see you.
49:32
Thank you for having me on.
49:34
We'll talk to see Cheers. Thank you. Goodbye.
49:38
Up next, we have [clears throat] One one like quick quick thought.
49:40
I think like right right now like already the great image models, the nano bananas, the images too.
49:51
It is like you're just talking to somebody who is a digital guy or girl who is very good at Photoshop.
49:59
Like that is the experience today.
49:59
And it was not that way 12 months ago. It is that way now.
50:05
I no longer need Photoshop.
50:07
I don't need to go to Fiverr to say like, "Hey, I need somebody that's good at Photoshop."
50:12
I don't need to text like Ben and be like, "Hey, can you help me Photoshop this?"
50:15
And you can just actually just prompt your way.
50:17
You do not need any UI anymore. That's true. That's true.
50:22
But but the average for the average for for Yeah, I mean it we are we are And I'm just saying that's going to get that's going to get there with video where you just have a timeline and you can click on a scene The speed is really really important here.
50:37
Like like if you if there's one word that's wrong on image and you need to regenerate it, you're going to wait 45 seconds and it will be faster to to have done that in just a you know traditional workflow.
50:50
Now, it's getting faster. >> It's so fast now. It's it's very fast. >> It's so fast.
50:54
But if you're you're thinking you're editing a 2-hour podcast and you say, "Oh, I want you to cut to Jordi in minute 45."
51:00
And it has to go regenerate the entire thing like that is slow.
51:04
You're going to need to puppeteer the tools.
51:06
You're going to need to you're going to need tools using here. I I I I think. I don't know.
51:10
Yeah, I was just I was just shocked cuz I was I was playing around with like generating product photography and you're able to say like, "Put the text here you know, turn it around, put it at a different angle, more shadow, less shadow, all this stuff."
51:23
And it's wild what you can do without any UI.
51:26
But without further ado we have Naveen from Build Forever who's the former Pinterest [music] CPO. Welcome to the show. How are you doing?
51:38
Hey guys, thanks for having me. Thanks for having on.
51:40
I like the I like the bomber Jordi. Nice piece. Thank you. Thank you.
51:43
It's a one of one uh New York Stock Exchange >> Stock Exchange NYSE.
51:49
What what what date was the New York Stock Exchange founded? >> You tell me 17 1792. 11 Wall Street.
51:55
Wow, that is a very old >> Great address, great great year to get into business.
52:01
>> Great year to get into business.
52:01
Best day to get into business.
52:02
Uh but it's great to have you on the show. Yeah.
52:06
Uh first time on the show, please introduce yourself and the company a little bit. Yeah, totally.
52:10
So, my name is Naveen Gavini.
52:11
I'm the co-founder and CEO of Build Forever.
52:13
And honestly, we're just a group of engineers and designers and people that love building products that people love to use.
52:20
And we've worked as you said, I was early at Pinterest and we worked on a number of consumer products that people use around the world today.
52:25
But our focus has been on a product that we launched yesterday called Extra.
52:30
And it's really a reimagination of email as your life's inbox.
52:35
And so for many of us, we spend all day kind of working sending email.
52:42
And when we have time to get to our personal email, it often feels over on overwhelming and just like I don't know.
52:48
I personally gave up on my personal email.
52:49
I had over 250,000 unread emails.
52:52
And so we were just kind of looking for a solution of just making email more manageable, more fun and delightful.
52:55
And so with Extra, it keeps track of what's important for you so you never have to miss something.
53:02
It helps you clean up your email, organize around your life.
53:06
And it does things proactively for you in the background.
53:08
Helps you get stuff done.
53:10
And so this endless to-do list feels not so overwhelming and it just feels delightful and joyful to open up your email every day.
53:16
Is it a for you page for email? Um yeah, essentially.
53:20
That's how you can think of it.
53:23
That's a good That's a good analogy.
53:24
Yeah, so everything that's important in your life >> We turn every email that you have into a short vertical looping video.
53:32
>> quite that, but your life isn't always >> I know what you're saying.
53:33
It's basically like Yeah, just actually picking and choosing you know, I it's always been so silly that inboxes it it were were primarily based around who messaged you last, not based around what was actually important or actionable or anything like that.
53:47
Um and I I feel like we we we need to move like the idea the whole idea of inbox zero [clears throat] is just such a pre AI idea where you are just getting flooded with more and more and more and more and more and more spam.
54:06
And I think products that can help here are great.
54:09
Also it feels like you can kind of just Yeah, I'm curious.
54:17
So, you're built on top of Gmail.
54:17
I don't know if you're supporting other email providers.
54:21
Google is like aware that AI can be powerful in email.
54:27
They're working on a lot of features.
54:28
But I feel like this is one of those things that is going to require like really really rapid iteration.
54:32
And so I feel like you probably have this beautiful window of like maybe 3 to 4 years where they're kind of just slow to figure out some of this stuff.
54:42
And and you can probably build a cool business in the meantime.
54:46
But where do you want to where where does this go?
54:48
How do How does this How do you know you know, how are you thinking about this as a venture scale opportunity? >> Yeah, totally.
54:56
Well, I mean like maybe starting where you kind of left off.
54:57
I think one of the challenges in email is historically for the past 20 years like all the innovation in email if you think about it has gone into the enterprise.
55:07
And it's gone into really sending emails faster, right?
55:09
So, that's like kind of all the email clients that you've seen have been like, "Let's help you get to inbox zero and send faster."
55:16
And when in reality like our different take on email is that when you think about your personal email, not your work email, the amount of emails you send is actually very little relative to the amount you receive.
55:26
And so the the entire experience actually needs to be rethought of from information consumption, not as a communication tool.
55:33
And I think that's the big pivot with email to think about on the personal side is that it's more around information information consumption, delivering to you the right information at the right time.
55:44
And then from there, there's an entire business to be built on how do you actually get things done for people in their in their lives?
55:50
How do you help them along that next point in in in time in the journey without them having to do work.
55:57
And so you're seeing, you know, a whole ecosystem of amazing companies being built on the agentic side around fulfilling different actions.
56:03
But all of them need kind of a distribution entry point of like, "How do we start that journey?
56:08
And what is the personal data that we actually help achieve some of those actions upon?"
56:13
And so I think email is a really great place for that.
56:17
Um and if we can build a experience that starts to make that seamless for a user where they don't have to go and I don't know set up an API key or connect to a service and they can just seamlessly launch that from experience that feels native to them like email, it could be a really compelling experience.
56:30
And I think you know, we previously built a very big business with ads at at Pinterest and other companies.
56:37
And so this idea of being able to show people products and services at the right time could lead to a really incredible consumer product that's also accessible to the masses. Ads.
56:50
I was not expecting that.
56:50
Well, that that was at Pinterest. No, I know.
56:52
But but but you're saying Are are you saying like in theory if you build a really beautiful >> of the inbox.
56:58
I'm going to say everyone's sending you a thousand emails.
57:01
And if I advertise and pay, I can get more surface area. Maybe.
57:05
>> Also, I think people I mean my our stance and many people's stance, I'm sure your stance is like if you get a really nicely targeted ad, it is like additive to a product experience.
57:14
And so I think in a in the world in the future where, you know, somebody's using Extra for their email like and you decide to turn on ads, you could probably serve, you know, really high quality ads users.
57:28
Yeah, some of our beta users really love actually finding deals and products from brands that they actually love that often get buried and missed in their in their in inbox today.
57:37
And when we show CMOs and marketers the product, they absolutely love the idea of their products being displayed natively, not buried in a promotions tab.
57:47
You know, their CTRs are through the floor with with kind of the existing treatment in many people's mailboxes.
57:53
So, if you're actually interested in the brand and you've bought something from them before, the idea of being able to see other complementary products or things from that brand in the future could be very compelling.
58:02
And I think we're thinking about multiple tiers.
58:03
Like I think there's obviously a lot of folks that, you know may just want to not have ads and pay.
58:09
And so I think there's there's lots of different ways to go about it.
58:11
We're still early in the journey.
58:13
But right now we're focusing on getting as many people to have a joyful inbox experience as possible before we start to monetize.
58:18
What's the beachhead agentic experience? Is it just unsubscribe?
58:25
People love coming in to clean up their inbox. It's crazy.
58:26
I I I recommend everyone that's listening in like if you if you're tired of your inbox being a world in 5 minutes with our onboarding flow, we'll we'll give you a inbox designed around your life.
58:35
And you know, and you'll feel a lot lighter and cleaner after after using Extra.
58:38
But I think a lot of people Is that specifically for the person that's sitting on like 200,000 emails?
58:42
If they have like 10 like I probably have like 10 emails in my personal and like they range a lot from like need to write a thoughtful response to need to do some flow in some web app or need to send a payment or need to do and I'm like I don't know that I would hand over the keys to an agent for most of those.
59:02
But I would definitely love for you page on my like promotions and updates tabs in Gmail which are like >> Yeah.
59:13
basically newsletters and and sponsored stuff.
59:15
And then I would love because Gmail's done like an okay job with the unsubscribe button, but it misses it a lot.
59:21
And but then there's some services that are just like "We're breaking the law."
59:26
And like you have [clears throat] to call us to unsubscribe from our emails.
59:29
And I'm like I'm not going to like chase this down so I'm just going to keep getting like, you know, random our privacy policy updated for some like telecom service usually.
59:42
Yeah, so I think with extra you get an amazing free page with the information that you want and I think honestly a lot of people just feel the sense of control and clarity of being able to see it in a different view of like >> Sure.
59:55
Here's what's important and here's what I need to do today and you know, it's distilled down to just a few items versus this long list of things that you have to do in your inbox. That's cool.
1:00:04
Is the app live on the App Store? It is.
1:00:06
Yeah, we went live yesterday. Uh Amazing. Your life's inbox. Here we go. Happening now. I'm getting it. Thank you. There we go.
1:00:15
Very excited to try this. Great to meet you.
1:00:19
Uh well, thank you so much for coming on the show breaking it down for us.
1:00:22
Congratulations on the launch. We'll talk to you soon. Cheers. Goodbye.
1:00:27
>> [applause] >> Up next we have Avlok from AngelList and I believe we might have someone else joining as well.
1:00:33
Like Ankur's joining as well. Fantastic.
1:00:34
They both been on the show before.
1:00:36
You know them, you love them and they have a big announcement.
1:00:39
Today AngelList is launching [music] USV C, a public venture fund alongside Naval Ravikant. How are you doing? Yo, yo. Hello. Feeling great. to the show. Big day. Big day. Break it down for us. What is USV C? All right, perfect.
1:00:58
I'm going to let Ankur break down what USV C >> we're working on getting a a four up. Just give us one second. We can just hang out.
1:01:07
Great great great hair Did you Did you just get a haircut? >> go. We got everybody. There we go. Yeah. There we go. >> Yep.
1:01:14
Got a haircut just for TBPN, you know. >> There we go. I thought so. Great to see you guys. Welcome to the show. Massive day.
1:01:22
Ankur, it's it's been too long since since last >> last week. I miss the vineyard.
1:01:26
Every every Wednesday afternoon blocked out.
1:01:29
But now Um today's launch is really fun.
1:01:32
I mean we couldn't reveal that much last week but really the last month has been gearing up towards this and I think I think Naval mentioned it when he first started AngelList.
1:01:42
This was such a big part of his vision of what this company could become.
1:01:46
And it's it's really fun to like finally get this out there.
1:01:51
Uh Get Let's get right into it.
1:01:52
I think >> the Yeah, yeah.
1:01:54
Let's talk specifically about the product.
1:01:56
This uh the you know, everyone everyone is aware of the companies that are that are a key part of it but but um yeah, talk about kind of the decision-making that that went into the product.
1:02:07
How it's how it's different than uh other other products in the market, all that stuff. Cool.
1:02:14
Um yeah, so the idea with USV C is we wanted to open up access to the asset class of venture.
1:02:21
Right now it's I believe it's very siloed.
1:02:23
You need to know a lot of people.
1:02:24
Um it's very very hard for most of America to have have to have access to, you know, the place where most of the wealth is created.
1:02:32
So that's the goal with USV C.
1:02:34
Can we build sort of a high-quality way to index into venture as an asset class?
1:02:39
Um what's unique about this structure is there are a lot of private market ETFs.
1:02:45
People may have seen the Destiny ETF, the Robinhood ETF, all of that.
1:02:47
The difference with this is this is set up differently where it's a closed-end tender offer fund which I mean sounds like a lot of heavy words but what it really means is when you're investing in this you're actually holding something very close to the underlying business.
1:03:04
So the price of So the price of what you pay and what you redeem at is roughly equal to the price of the underlying companies.
1:03:10
It's not driven by FOMO or like markets being super excited or down.
1:03:15
Um and I think that is structurally very different. Mhm.
1:03:20
>> know if I've done anything and you know, part part of the challenge with with some of these other products is they can have they can have great assets that make up the fund but if you want to pay but but it's hard to justify if they're trading at five, six, seven times NAV.
1:03:35
It doesn't matter how good the underlying assets are.
1:03:37
No good investor can kind of confidently say, I'm going to invest in this fund unless you truly think that the assets are kind of mispriced fundamentally by five or six X. Yeah.
1:03:50
Yeah, that Yeah, that's exactly right.
1:03:50
I think you the way to think about USV C is it's meant to be a vehicle that you can think about over the long term.
1:03:58
So rather than kind of think about am I getting it at the right NAV, am I getting it higher or lower than it's valued, you can just trust that when you invest in USV C you're getting it at the the right NAV and you can hold it for the very very long term.
1:04:12
Uh that's why we made the decision or that's why USV C made the decisions [clears throat] that it made.
1:04:19
So how do you how do investors actually onboard?
1:04:24
>> [snorts] >> It's very easy.
1:04:24
So right now it's Yeah, it's very easy.
1:04:26
I we'll get we'll get you all to invest soon but it's fully self-serve USV C. com.
1:04:30
Uh it's been Yeah, and that's sort of been the innovation here like historically these types of funds required people to be accredited investors but now access is truly open to anyone with as little as $500.
1:04:45
Uh how are you thinking about number number of bets?
1:04:48
It's it's open-ended so so it sounds like uncapped but is this the kind of thing where you want to I feel like is it you want to concentrate on like 20, 30 core positions similar to a venture fund?
1:05:03
I imagine this isn't like you want to spray and pray at at at seed but maybe you would if it's the right founder.
1:05:10
How are you thinking about it?
1:05:13
Yeah, so I can talk about portfolio construction.
1:05:15
Um you'll see a lot of the names we've gone out with today are the names everyone has heard of, you know, XAI, Open AI Who? Anthropic.
1:05:24
>> [laughter] >> However, long-term I think a lot of the long-term alpha is not even necessarily in these names so we absolutely will also start investing in a lot of seed stage companies.
1:05:37
The idea is these are bets.
1:05:39
It's not just about the next one year but bets that will pay off in the next three, five, seven, 10 years.
1:05:42
So about a third of the portfolio, the goal would be to have it skew early stage as well just because we want to be finding these companies before they're actually discovered.
1:05:54
Yeah, so sim- similar to a kind of a platform VC where they're going to concentrate a lot of their capital into later stage established winners uh that are more stable and then you can still get exposure to the early stage of super promising companies. That's that's very cool.
1:06:11
Can you talk about the concept of direct ownership?
1:06:15
How many layers of abstraction?
1:06:15
I think that there's there's there's just like FUD generally among retail investors that I've talked to that they will see a name that they're excited about and then they will find a product that sort of proxies that name but it's seven layers deep.
1:06:32
It's very confusing and and and they don't really know how to process it and mostly they're not even necessarily worried about fees or or anything like that.
1:06:44
They're more worried about like, I thought I owned SpaceX and then it just turned out I didn't.
1:06:48
And we've talked to Matt Grimm at Anduril about this.
1:06:51
There's been Yeah, people promoting Anduril SPVs that don't have access.
1:06:56
don't have anything and it's just like, yeah, and I think that I think that that messaging is important.
1:07:00
So can you talk us through like like how you think about ownership?
1:07:04
What rights you actually do need? What rights you don't?
1:07:07
How you think about delivering exposure to the end to the end user or the end investor?
1:07:16
I'm going to let Avlok take this because AngelList as a platform has drawn the line on what they will accept as an SPV.
1:07:23
So Avlok, why don't you take this one? Sure.
1:07:24
Yeah, one of the unique things about USV C is that it it runs on AngelList so we're able to have it take advantage of all of the infrastructure of AngelList and one of the things I tweeted out a few months ago was AngelList as an example had banned all layered SPVs by default for the reasons that you mentioned.
1:07:46
In fact, when we did it we lost revenue because of it but that's because we didn't know who the underlying owners were and we had no way to actually even trace it. And so we banned it.
1:07:57
So in general when it comes to the infrastructure that we're running at AngelList uh we are always thinking first and foremost about ownership of the underlying assets because we're running infrastructure for funds, SPVs at scale.
1:08:10
Uh so from that vantage point uh you can think of it as USV C in the way it thinks about it acquiring assets has the exact same ethos which is you want to only look at assets where you actually know where the underlying assets are coming from rather than these layered SPVs that have fees that are not disclosed and carried that's not disclosed.
1:08:36
Uh that's something that we effectively banned from AngelList a while ago. Makes sense.
1:08:43
What is what is what is the pitch for founders?
1:08:47
Why why should they take USV C money?
1:08:50
I can give I can give reasons but how are you positioning it?
1:08:52
I think I think that this is the most fun part and you're going to see see this soon where okay, you know you'd argue that Anthropic doesn't really need more promoters right now but we're going to be taking some bets on companies and startups that have very loyal, very passionate communities but they may be a $50 business, a $100 business, something in that range.
1:09:12
And to them it allows them a very scalable way to actually let their community share in the upside.
1:09:18
And that's going to be one of the magical things here where it's not obviously an IPO or anything but now we can have a vehicle for people to get their communities involved in their upside and for most founders it's you know generally pretty cool to be able to say hey by the way if you are a customer and you want to participate in this you can invest in USV C. There's a $500 minimum. Is there a maximum?
1:09:44
>> [laughter] >> There's there's no maximum so load up load up the load up the truck.
1:09:46
What what happens if Elon, Sam, Daria, these guys are like you know what?
1:09:52
I want to just team up with the other guys.
1:09:53
Let's let's throw 50 billion collectively into each other's companies. Through USV C. Through USV C.
1:10:01
>> [laughter] >> You know, let's just let's just all create a keiretsu.
1:10:04
This is the Japanese way, correct? Yeah.
1:10:08
Hey you did you did you did strike something interesting.
1:10:10
The the nature of this fund is different, right?
1:10:13
Like effectively it's an evergreen fund which means we can accept kind of unlimited amount of capital but from a deployment perspective every time that happens effectively we have you know we have to kind of come up with the strategy for that.
1:10:27
So it's a very different structure.
1:10:29
Yeah, how should investors think about the time horizon?
1:10:31
If you're if you're going I've talked to people that have LP'd into VC funds and they're like I don't even know if I'll see it before retirement.
1:10:39
I mean there's people who got into like early rounds of SpaceX and they're and they're like 20 years into like it looks great on paper but I still don't have liquidity and that's that's a benefit but it's also a drawback and I think going in with eyes open is important but how should the investor they think about this is 10 years journey or something that they're thrown in retirement bucket mentally or should they think about it?
1:11:04
Obviously it's not something that they're going to be trading in and out of on a day-to-day basis but what's the right mindset to go into this with?
1:11:13
So I'll caveat that this is not a liquid instrument, right?
1:11:16
Like we've been told to repeat this is not a liquid instrument.
1:11:19
However, the goal with this type of structure is at our discretion.
1:11:26
Things are looking good and this is our goal.
1:11:27
We will have up to 5% of the fund available for redemption every single quarter.
1:11:33
So the idea is that people theoretically once we get into a good rhythm can kind of pick and choose for how long they want to be a part of this journey.
1:11:42
Um again it's not the most liquid instrument but from a timing perspective there's it is you know people can kind of come in and come out.
1:11:51
However, you know only through quarterly redemptions.
1:11:53
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Very cool.
1:11:55
>> Do you have anything else? No, this is great. I'm very very excited.
1:11:57
This is the most AngelList product ever, I think.
1:12:01
Even though you guys are more than a more than a a decade in now, right?
1:12:07
And yeah, I'm excited to see where this goes.
1:12:09
I feel like I imagine you guys are going to be spending a little more time on the East Coast.
1:12:12
With this I guess you're already over there, Ankur.
1:12:17
We're already in New York and also on the West Coast so we have good coverage.
1:12:20
Yeah, the website is usvc. com.
1:12:23
There's a beautiful video of Naval.
1:12:23
And I have and I have no doubt we'll have many many of your new portco founders on the show. We can't wait. Keep us in the loop. Great to see you guys.
1:12:33
Have a great rest of your day. Likewise. We'll talk to you soon.
1:12:38
Uh this this launch video is very funny because >> [clears throat] >> there there there are clips of Naval and then there are clips of founders and the first uh the first clip sort of makes it look like Naval is talking to Steve Jobs if you if you just have the sound off but what a what a fantastic portfolio.
1:12:55
Go check it out at USV C.
1:12:55
There are seven companies in the portfolio currently.
1:13:00
XAI, Crusoe who's been on the show, Anthropic, Sierra Technologies, Bret Taylor, Lagora, Open AI and Vercel.
1:13:09
You have seven different companies here represented. Go check it out at usvc. com.
1:13:16
Wow, before we go into the next guest segment I'm trying to this hasn't been posted by any any super reputable sources yet but there's a number of sources saying that Thoma Bravo actually according to Reuters is nearing agreement to turn software firm Medallia over to creditors which would be a 5 billion dollar loss. That is rough. Absolutely. Brutal.
1:13:46
We'll dig in here more next.
1:13:48
>> Anyway, um we have Joel Edwards from Zanskar in the waiting room.
1:13:52
Let's bring Joel in to the TVP and also bring Joel in. Joel, how are you doing? What's going on? Good. Hey guys. Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me on. Great to meet you.
1:14:02
>> hopping on and thanks for cleaning the camera. I appreciate that.
1:14:03
Always want to look sharp on TVP and first time on the show please introduce yourself and the company. Hey guys, Joel Edwards.
1:14:12
I'm a geologist by training.
1:14:12
I'm from Zanskar Geothermal.
1:14:16
We're a group that we wildcat for new geothermal resources out west Yeah. to make power. Okay.
1:14:22
What's the best >> Incredible.
1:14:23
Actually music to my ears.
1:14:25
What's the best geothermal Like if I got one more AI agent I [laughter] would not kidding.
1:14:32
Name every geothermal resource.
1:14:32
Like what are we actually we just concretize it for me.
1:14:36
Like what are we talking about here?
1:14:37
What is you striking gold look like? >> Yeah.
1:14:42
Striking gold in in your head have you guys ever been to Yellowstone National Park, first National Park? >> think so.
1:14:46
Seen the Old Faithful Faithful geyser any of those thermal features? Okay.
1:14:51
Now these are the types of systems we're looking for except for the systems we're looking for are hidden or blind. Okay.
1:14:56
So there's nothing at the surface.
1:14:58
There's no geyser, there's no hot springs. Okay. Nothing.
1:14:59
But there are massive geothermal resources Okay.
1:15:02
at depth that you can tap with a well field.
1:15:06
You can pull that heat out of the ground and you can put it in a turbine and make electricity. Interesting.
1:15:12
Yeah, take me through the the the the geology 101.
1:15:16
The where's the heat coming from? Why is this underground? How do we get it out?
1:15:22
>> [laughter] >> Is it just they're just like pockets of hot air, hot water?
1:15:25
Like really dumb it down for me.
1:15:29
>> [laughter] >> There are pockets of hot water underground. >> Okay. Not hot air. Yeah.
1:15:33
Uh and they're fairly discreet, fairly local but when you find them they're incredibly energy dense.
1:15:40
So think in your mind like volcanoes. Yeah. Right?
1:15:44
That's a that's a manifestation of a geothermal system. Okay.
1:15:46
Um think hot springs and so forth.
1:15:48
There are parts of the world of the crust where there's just a lot of heat. Yeah.
1:15:55
And um that gets manifest in these different thermal features and you can drill into these things and you can pull steam or hot brines out of the ground and then you put it into a power plant just like you know all thermal power plants, nuclear Yeah.
1:16:09
coal, combined cycle gas.
1:16:12
They all put heat into turbines, turbines spins spins the generator and you make electricity and so forth. Yeah. It's that classic meme.
1:16:18
We we discover a new way to generate power and we're going to use it to boil water and generate steam and spin a turbine until we get more electricity and this is like what we do every time we discover something new.
1:16:27
We want to make it steam.
1:16:28
What does the what is what is the business actually going to look like?
1:16:31
Is this a whale hunting where you're really trying to find a single site in the next 24 months and then you'll spend years >> it or do you want to sell it off to another company at that point?
1:16:46
Like how how far stacked do you want to go here?
1:16:49
Yeah, we already own and operate a power plant, geothermal power plant in New Mexico.
1:16:52
So we sell electricity to an investor owned utility and then they service Albuquerque and Santa Fe and so forth. Interesting.
1:16:58
So the business is to find geothermal resources, build a power plant and then sell the electricity to a customer. So this is part of that.
1:17:07
Yeah, sorry sorry is there is there this feels like eco-friendly?
1:17:12
Is there pushback to geothermal energy production generally?
1:17:18
Like people are worried about earthquakes or something. I don't know.
1:17:20
Like it feels like this is this is Yeah, people are going to find a way to hate anything.
1:17:25
[laughter] So what are they going to hate about this?
1:17:28
Like are you in like are you renewable? Are you clean energy?
1:17:31
Like what what category are you in do you think?
1:17:36
Yeah, right now we are beloved by both sides of the political aisle. So you show up in DC.
1:17:40
Enjoy it while it lasts, buddy. Yeah, exactly.
1:17:43
[laughter] Somebody will find a way.
1:17:47
We're we're one of the few like bipartisan things where you show up in DC and everybody loves you, shakes your hand.
1:17:52
It's a really exciting moment.
1:17:54
There's attributes about geothermal that people love. It's base load.
1:17:56
There's no emission profile.
1:17:58
It's domestic so all these resources are in the US.
1:18:01
You know, it uses US supply chains. It uses drillers.
1:18:05
Everybody loves drillers.
1:18:05
Not everybody but a lot of people love drillers. And so forth.
1:18:10
So it has a lot of those attributes that speak to both the left and the right.
1:18:13
And then probably you know, another attribute is the underdog attribute.
1:18:17
Everybody loves a good underdog.
1:18:19
Geothermal is an underdog.
1:18:20
We're a niche, small industry.
1:18:23
We have a lot of the same set up that oil and gas had like 100 plus years ago where it looks like there's a lot of resource out there.
1:18:30
Looks like a ton of potential. It's still niche.
1:18:32
Is it going to scale to the Yeah, is this one of those things like rare earths are not actually that rare?
1:18:39
It's hard to we don't like doing the refining nearby.
1:18:45
How how how rare is How much geothermal energy is there?
1:18:48
Like are we talking like tens of gigawatts potentially if we were to put it in like AI data center parlance?
1:18:56
Yeah, I I think tens of gigawatts is near term super duper realistic based on the tools and the tech that we have today. So exciting. Yeah.
1:19:03
Um obviously there's people talking hundreds of gigawatts, terawatts.
1:19:08
We'll see what happens, right?
1:19:10
As as things as industry scale non-linear unpredictable things happen, right?
1:19:15
Cost and technology and all these things change so it's It's to predict what's going to happen 10 years from now, but basically, there's two things that drive scale for resources.
1:19:24
It's the number of resources out there in existence, Yeah.
1:19:28
and then it's your ability to extract the resource, and that's really technology dependent.
1:19:31
So, geothermal, where where Zanskar is really focuses on finding more geothermal hotspots.
1:19:36
We have a thesis that there's a lot more out there.
1:19:40
We've already found a bunch of sites.
1:19:41
We've announced a few of them. There's more to come.
1:19:43
And then there's other groups that have focused on how do you get more out of these systems, and those are in the unconventional bucket.
1:19:50
It's like it's like the oil and gas play in the Permian in West Texas. Yep. Right?
1:19:54
They came in with unconventional well fields.
1:19:56
They drill horizontal wells. They stimulate.
1:19:57
They get more hydrocarbons out of the rock. >> Yep.
1:20:00
That process is happening in geothermal right now as well. Okay.
1:20:02
So, you have the exploration piece, finding more, and then getting more out of it. >> Yeah.
1:20:07
[snorts] Uh double-clicking on the exploration piece.
1:20:08
Um uh it sounds like [clears throat] AI can be used to do more computational discovery, actually interpret data.
1:20:18
But what's the gold standard for actually obtaining the data?
1:20:22
Like what Like what sensor are you using to detect uh the potential of a geothermal uh you know, uh discovery? system.
1:20:34
What's the secret sensor?
1:20:34
We The The trick in geothermal is that there's not a single type of geologic data that tells you if a system is in existence other than just drilling a well and sniffing and measuring.
1:20:47
>> you can do just like radar or like pulse something through the ground and find it that way? Unfortunately, no. I wish it was that easy. >> Okay. You got it.
1:20:55
In In oil and gas exploration, they use seismic reflection imaging, and that was kind of their silver bullet tool set to find a lot of these reservoirs.
1:21:03
In geothermal, we use a mix of data sets to try to find these hidden systems. Interesting.
1:21:07
And that's where That's where like AI tools really flex because they can they can handle the hyper dimensionality problem really well, Yeah.
1:21:14
better better than humans. Interesting.
1:21:17
>> we basically build a sandbox in which the models learn how to find systems. Mhm.
1:21:21
And the building the sandbox piece is the really hard piece.
1:21:23
You have to put the right data in there.
1:21:24
You have to put the right learning Yep.
1:21:27
>> objective rates and so forth.
1:21:27
That's That's the piece that we live in.
1:21:29
We build the sandboxes for the models. Interesting.
1:21:33
Uh la- last question for me.
1:21:34
>> I feel like you guys are bending towards [clears throat] uh the the you know, the meme template like the world like the world if it ran on geothermal energy, [laughter] and it's like yeah, it's idyllic like you know, there's flying cars and everything's green. >> All right.
1:21:48
Hypothetically, uh friend of the show, Mark Benioff, he's out in Hawaii. He's big on AI.
1:21:54
Could we put a cap on a volcano and capture all the energy out of a volcano and use that to power Salesforce AI? Sure, why not? A cap?
1:22:04
What is What is the cap look like? Is it Is it a sandbox?
1:22:09
>> I'm imagining a physical something to trap the heat that comes off of the volcano.
1:22:13
Maybe you want to drill into the volcano and extract the lava that way.
1:22:17
But has anyone actually at least the theorized about capturing energy from volcanoes? They seem very powerful.
1:22:24
They're They're pretty powerful.
1:22:24
We have a lot of active operational geothermal well fields on volcanoes today. >> Really?
1:22:31
>> So, the main island of Hawaii has a geothermal well field.
1:22:34
They've drilled into the side of that volcano, and they make electricity out of it. That's crazy.
1:22:40
>> I guess if that's the cap, Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:22:42
>> is the wrong approach, but they are extracting Yeah.
1:22:44
But but but they are extracting energy from the volcano. That's remarkable. >> That's right. Wow. >> Yeah.
1:22:50
So, there's a lot of geothermal operations, power plants in Indonesia, Japan, Philippines, where a lot of these big vol- volcanic systems live.
1:22:56
In the US, we have some volcanic systems generating power in California, Yeah, yeah.
1:23:03
and then the most of the rest of the systems are generating from from cracks or fracture zones Sure. in the crust. Sure. That's very exciting.
1:23:10
Uh did Did you raise money?
1:23:15
We raised some money, yeah.
1:23:15
We've >> How much did you raise? We've got some cash.
1:23:17
>> I want to ring the gong for you. That's exciting.
1:23:18
The gong is The gong is coming.
1:23:20
I knew the gong was coming. >> Yes.
1:23:21
Uh we we raised $115 million a few months ago, and Congratulations. Thank you. Wait, $40 million what? Credit facility?
1:23:32
>> It's It's a It's a credit facility, yeah. Massive. >> Yeah. It's all good.
1:23:36
>> I'm really glad you're doing this. Yeah, this is amazing.
1:23:38
>> glad you're doing this. >> Appreciate it.
1:23:39
Uh you know, the people talk about AI bottlenecks and AI, right?
1:23:43
You know, talent, chips, you know, uh energy, uh and there there's and there's sort of like this cycle in technology live streaming right now, and right now there's sort of like a talent bottleneck, but uh and an equipment bottleneck, but uh you know, if if we keep doubling from here, there will be a an energy bottleneck in in technology live streaming.
1:24:04
So, I'm glad you're I'm glad you're doing this work. Thank you, guys. Appreciate it.
1:24:08
Have you ever been on a drill rig? Uh I don't think I have.
1:24:14
You guys have not lived yet.
1:24:14
I mean, this is the American experience.
1:24:15
It's to be on a drill rig. I know. I know.
1:24:17
Tell us Tell us when you're in Southern California.
1:24:22
We would would love to go live from a from the rig. Yeah. So. Anyway, it's good.
1:24:27
>> Thanks for hopping on. We'll talk to you later. >> Appreciate it. Cheers. Goodbye.
1:24:32
Uh up next, we have the founder and CEO of Vast Data uh just hit a $30 billion valuation. >> Congratulations. >> billion series F. Absolutely massive news. How are you doing? Welcome to the show. Good. How are you? Thanks for having me. We're good.
1:24:50
Uh would you mind uh just giving us a little bit of the journey, a little bit of the background?
1:24:54
I'd love to know uh all the things that went into uh building the company to this point since it's such a you know, massive milestone. Of course.
1:25:05
It's been 10 years in the making. We started in 2016.
1:25:11
>> [laughter] >> We wanted uh to redo infrastructure.
1:25:13
We thought AI required a new infrastructure stack way back then.
1:25:18
If you remember 2016, it was a very very early days of AI, but it was already clear that you needed fast access to a lot of data to train these massive systems.
1:25:29
And now we needed to infer and to fine-tune and for reinforcement learning.
1:25:33
And so, we've been on this journey with AI throughout um its various evolutions.
1:25:41
Uh we started from storage, building the massive >> Was there Was there any any Were there any points on that journey where you were like, maybe maybe we were too early?
1:25:50
Did we pick kind of the wrong category?
1:25:53
Or was it kind of like steady You felt like there was steady progress being made, and you had li- line of sight to getting to where you are now the entire time?
1:26:03
We definitely did not have line of sight.
1:26:05
Uh when we started, if you looked at my presentation that I built for myself, the last slide had a picture of a brain on it, and it asked, "Can we build a thinking machine?"
1:26:15
I I'm not sure we still have today line of sight to doing that, but it it's been our North Star.
1:26:21
And over the years, we always partnered with the organizations that were on the bleeding edge of of AI.
1:26:28
Before generative AI, it was hedge funds and life science institutes that were doing massive analytics uh using GPUs.
1:26:37
And then of course, once generative AI hit, it became the labs and the AI clouds uh that became our biggest customers.
1:26:46
>> Do you have insight into how hedge funds are scaling uh compute resources?
1:26:48
Uh I just saw Didn't Jane Street invest a billion dollars in uh CoreWeave?
1:26:53
And it seems like uh I saw another company that they funded that was doing custom silicon, and it feels like they have an incredibly advanced uh compute stacks that are a little bit more opaque because uh they're maybe just have a different recruiting flow or different public messaging flow.
1:27:12
Uh that is exactly right.
1:27:12
In fact, Jane Street is a customer of ours both directly and through CoreWeave, and so we know them well. Yeah.
1:27:19
Um we play in that space now for 7 or 8 years. >> Yeah.
1:27:24
I found I found that before the big AI labs, uh the hedge funds were the ones that had the biggest GPU clusters. Um Huh. Yeah.
1:27:33
They're They're ahead of their time, and they're very secretive, so we don't know much about what's going on there.
1:27:39
What about the social social networks and the social platforms?
1:27:42
I feel like uh ad delivery is also potentially underrated as a source of like large-scale machine learning, large-scale compute clusters.
1:27:50
We've seen, you know, Meta trained the Llama model on the the the the Reels-sized cluster that they built as sort of a bonus.
1:27:59
But uh How big is How big is that of a business for you?
1:28:03
And how how do you think it comps to the hedge fund world?
1:28:08
I think the hedge fund world is a lot more secretive, but I would dare to say that it's bigger in terms of size.
1:28:12
Um there are very few of these Metas out there. Yeah.
1:28:20
And there are a lot more hedge funds. >> Oh, interesting. Okay.
1:28:21
Um well, talk about uh what the next phase for your company is on the back of this financing round.
1:28:31
So, we're trying to fill in that software infrastructure layer.
1:28:33
Uh Jensen gave a really good analogy of a five-layer cake: power, chips, infrastructure, models, and applications. Mhm. We're that middle layer.
1:28:45
We want to abstract this new hardware away from these new models and applications.
1:28:50
We want to make it easy, make it secure for everybody to generate AI agents and use AI in production. Mhm.
1:29:01
And especially as we move from the labs into enterprises, uh I think it needs to be simplified.
1:29:06
And it's always been that software infrastructure layer, what I call the operating system, that took a new technology from new hardware and a killer app to making it widespread where everybody can use it.
1:29:20
And I think we're at that moment with AI and we're trying to do our part in in accelerating the adoption of AI.
1:29:27
How have you been processing the the CPU shortage?
1:29:32
This idea that like as agents get more and more robust, they need more CPU. They need to be fed.
1:29:38
You got to feed the GPUs.
1:29:41
Is that something that you're working on particularly or do you have a view on the the overall just just CPU shortage which sort of blindsided I think a lot of people in tech who'd been following the the GPU ramps but then they're saying, "Oh, well, what what what's going on with the CPU crunch?"
1:30:00
I think these AI factories are bigger pieces of technology than we've ever built before.
1:30:04
It includes CPUs, it includes DPUs, it includes GPUs, and some cases it includes TPUs.
1:30:10
Sorry, what what what are DPUs? Can you break that down? D, data processing unit. >> Oh, data. Okay, yeah. Yes.
1:30:20
And so all of these chips are in high demand.
1:30:26
We're seeing a NAND shortage that's extremely severe right now.
1:30:28
We're seeing a memory shortage.
1:30:29
And so I don't think there's anything that is um of abundant supply right now.
1:30:35
The fabs need to be built out.
1:30:38
Nobody was expecting this type of curve in the growth of AI.
1:30:43
And I think it's going to continue for definitely a few years to come if not many years to come.
1:30:50
And so the hardware vendors need to build out a lot faster than they have been. Yeah.
1:30:53
Can you walk me through at a deeper level your relationship with CoreWeave and how that fits together?
1:30:59
I think a lot of people think of CoreWeave as servicing, you know, the the the the the companies that are training and inferencing models specifically.
1:31:09
What are you getting out of that partnership?
1:31:12
So CoreWeave has been an amazing partner for us.
1:31:14
They're the biggest of these new AI clouds like Nscale and Crusoe and Lambda.
1:31:20
You see them around the world also as sovereign clouds.
1:31:23
And basically they're building this new stack and they're making it easy for end users to consume this new stack in a cloud environment.
1:31:37
We're just the software builders.
1:31:37
And so we try to provide them with as much software as we can such that they can turn that around into cloud services whether it's a storage service or a database service or a streaming service.
1:31:53
As we add more and more layers of this stack, those are the things that are required from those end users.
1:31:59
Okay, so we I mean we were just talking to the president of Adobe.
1:32:03
It sounds like Adobe is doing inference and they're training some models and they're doing a lot of different things.
1:32:08
They might go to CoreWeave and then Vast Data might be powering the software underneath and they might not even necessarily have a direct relationship with you because they're getting just access to the best possible product from CoreWeave directly effectively. Is that right? It is right.
1:32:23
Adobe specifically does have a direct relationship with us.
1:32:25
Most of these larger enterprises tend to have uh >> [laughter] >> both cloud environment that they're leveraging and on prem and hyperscale.
1:32:39
And what we've built, what we call a data space, basically allows them to do all three of those and have one abstraction layer that enables seamless experience. Interesting.
1:32:52
Given given your exposure to the to the world of hedge funds, are there a bunch more situational awareness ask funds that have absolutely printed over the last year or so but just done it a lot more quietly and the West Coast kind of hasn't picked up on it?
1:33:11
That's a really good question.
1:33:11
I actually met those guys from Situational Awareness a couple weeks ago.
1:33:15
They have a really interesting view into the future and I think they're capitalizing on that view for every phase as as it unrolls.
1:33:27
I am not the right person to ask because those funds tend to not have as much infrastructure.
1:33:33
The ones that we work with tend to be more quant driven.
1:33:38
Situational Awareness I think is just a few very smart people.
1:33:41
They don't need that much compute power. Yeah.
1:33:43
Yeah, it's more macro research.
1:33:45
Doing it the old-fashioned way with with guts. Yeah. Yeah, I love it. Conviction.
1:33:49
Yeah, yeah, I mean conversations and research and having a having a contrarian view.
1:33:56
Well, congratulations on the round.
1:33:58
Thank you so much for taking the time to come chat with us. Yeah, great to meet you.
1:34:01
Appreciate you breaking it down. We'll talk to you soon. Have a good one.
1:34:06
>> [clears throat] >> Yeah, can you imagine Situational Awareness with couple gigawatts of compute under the hood?
1:34:13
Anything's possible at that level.
1:34:15
I was What what was that what was that copy trading profile?
1:34:21
You know the one I'm talking about where you can like create the Nancy Pelosi autopilot.
1:34:24
Autopilot has a tracker for Situational Awareness.
1:34:28
Every time they they post about it they use this like AI image of him.
1:34:31
It doesn't really look like anything like him. No, no, no, no.
1:34:34
But but there's so few images of Leopold on the internet that that AI image has just become like what mainstream media will pull from for him because they just assume that that's actually him and it's not but it's just very funny that it's A man who has only appeared under our cash. Yes.
1:34:49
There's no other there's only video of him.
1:34:52
SBF just posted his full holdings.
1:34:54
If lawyers hadn't fire [music] sold, he's up 165X on Anthropic, 72X 27X on Solana, 8X on Robinhood, Genesis Digital.
1:35:05
Anyway, he's taking a victory lap.
1:35:06
We have our next guest, Darian from Gradient Ventures in the waiting room. Welcome to the show. How are you doing? What's going on? Hey, how's it going? Good to see you, Jordy. Good to see you. It's been a long time. Good to see you, too.
1:35:20
Where are you calling in from?
1:35:22
I'm in our office in Jackson Square.
1:35:25
We just moved in here about 8 months ago and we're right next to Thrive and Obvious and IVP.
1:35:30
It's like you know, a VC community now.
1:35:34
We can almost [laughter] live in we could live here even.
1:35:35
There's apartments upstairs, you know.
1:35:40
Since the first time on the show, I'd love to get some of your backstory, some of your journey to venture, just a little bit of like how you wound up in this particular seat.
1:35:50
I grew up in Silicon Valley.
1:35:52
I grew up in Silicon Valley.
1:35:52
My father came here in the 70s.
1:35:54
He worked in tech as well.
1:35:57
What was he doing what was he doing in the 70s?
1:35:58
Like what was tech like in the 70s? >> Semi conductors. Semi conductors. The true Silicon Valley. The true Silicon Valley. Not SaaS Valley. He was industrializing.
1:36:08
Now we're re-industrializing.
1:36:10
But so he was working in semis. Okay.
1:36:15
Yeah, and then he sort of fast-tracked and like coached me through everything on you know, what startups were, venture financings, all those kinds of things.
1:36:21
He had he was actually fortunate because in business school his his closest friends were Vinod Khosla and Bob Kagle.
1:36:27
Probably everybody knows Vinod but Bob was one of the founders of Benchmark.
1:36:31
And so he had been steeped in you know, all these different kinds of communities that were very very venture focused and startup focused.
1:36:36
And the industry has evolved a lot.
1:36:38
Then I was fortunate because I actually got an introduction to Sean Parker when I was 17 through my cousin Hadi Partovi who I think you've had his brother on the show.
1:36:50
He introduced me and and I I visited the Facebook office and met Mark and Mark was like, "Oh, you should come work here."
1:36:55
I think they were struggling to hire people at the time because I wasn't exactly the best engineer.
1:36:58
But you know, it was it was a fun time.
1:37:00
You know, we built a lot of stuff.
1:37:02
We launched newsfeed, photos, etc.
1:37:04
And then I Really quickly, what what is the story is the is the apocryphal potentially apocryphal story of like everything was a single file and you would yell, "Hey, I'm I'm changing the code."
1:37:17
Is that Do you think that story is real at all?
1:37:21
Oh, I mean like we when we wanted to push to the web tier, we would just rsync the latest folder on Dustin's laptop.
1:37:27
It was like that was the push process.
1:37:29
And then we introduced subversion.
1:37:30
Actually there was a guy that I worked with, Aaron Selig, who was brilliant who who we we we put together like subversion, checked in files in and out. We created templating.
1:37:40
I worked on that project, too.
1:37:42
But when we got there, there was like tons of SQL inter- persed with HTML.
1:37:45
It was it was [laughter] hilarious.
1:37:46
But you know, that that is what startups are about. It's super messy.
1:37:49
And that's what I learned there.
1:37:52
Although I also learned that you know, only one in a billion are as anomalous as Facebook.
1:37:57
You know, they're not every startup can go that way.
1:37:58
But also hilariously did that warp your your kind of like where where I don't I don't even I don't know the full story but did you go now Everything I turn everything I touch is turns to gold.
1:38:08
And then it's like, okay, normal VC world like there's going to be failures. I don't know.
1:38:12
I feel like I'll I'll I I feel like I'll talk with with founders sometime and it's their first company and it's going so well and they have they don't even know that that like how anomalous it is.
1:38:23
And sometimes they'll just be like, you have something really really special here and like and and stay locked in because the odds of this happening, you know, another time in this way are very low. Oh, totally.
1:38:34
I mean I I ended up starting an enterprise software company which was much more difficult.
1:38:38
I remember meeting Aaron Levie when he was starting Box.
1:38:41
He was in a bunk bed with Dylan in a house in Berkeley and they asked me if I'd invest and I thought they were crazy and I didn't and that was a huge mistake.
1:38:49
So you know, but then there there there are positive stories like I met most of the founders of Palantir and invested personally early in Palantir and that was ended up being an incredible company.
1:38:57
Or you know, you know, when Luke Nosek was talking about SpaceX like almost a decade ago and I was like, "You're crazy.
1:39:04
We're going to launch rockets to the moon.
1:39:06
Like we're not going to do that."
1:39:07
And ultimately you you you really just have to surround yourself with really smart people.
1:39:11
Fortunately, I've always been surrounded by people much smarter than myself and so I think that's why I'm in this chair.
1:39:16
Ended up being a founder, invested a lot of great companies like first investor in case text which got bought by LexisNexis.
1:39:26
One of the first investors in Legora which is now on a tear and then at Gradient we've you know seeded Lambda Labs.
1:39:31
My partner did that deal.
1:39:31
You know, I joined here about 8 years ago with the goal of investing in AI mainly because I didn't get crypto and I was like I don't understand why crypto's interesting and so I joined the nerds at the AI fund that we did.
1:39:43
the AI fund that we did. Yeah, the during the 2021 era like you guys you know you were the the Google's early stage AI fund but you were still like as a fund overall some of the partners were like branching out and would do different stuff obviously but but you
1:39:59
guys now get the benefit of like we were doing all these companies like you know almost a decade ago or a decade ago and now they're What what was what was the enterprise software company that you built and and like coming out of consumer social why enterprise? Yeah, I mean I was always obsessed with
1:40:18
Yeah, I mean I was always obsessed with data.
1:40:19
Like I I actually thought that the edge that Facebook had was how clean the data was in everyone's profiles.
1:40:25
Like you people would just give us their birthday like what classes they were in like all this information and it was very well organized and this is before LLMs where you know you couldn't organize and massage that data very easily.
1:40:39
Now you can and things can be amorphous and it's easy to process but before you couldn't and so you know I was very interested in you know small business data.
1:40:48
I thought that we could compete with Dun & Bradstreet.
1:40:49
It was a company called Radius that we scaled to pretty significant ARR and we sold it.
1:40:56
It was a huge it was a long journey.
1:40:56
It was full of crisis, full of learning and actually that kind of helped me with a with becoming a VC mainly because I I really empathize with like how founders are going through a terrible time.
1:41:08
I mean running a company is not fun regardless of whether it's going well or not.
1:41:13
Like the best companies in the world it may look like everything's going well but the mess is just masked by growth.
1:41:18
It's like the that's the difference between a good company and like not a good company and and in general like founders I really have a lot of respect for because I decided not to sign up to found another company after my own.
1:41:29
I decided to go go to the dark side and be a VC which sometimes I say is a cop-out but you know being a founder is really what it's is really the most difficult job and if you can sign up for a multiple times I mean that's incredible.
1:41:41
That's a sign of like just incredible resilience. Or a masochist.
1:41:46
>> [laughter] >> What are you I'm so curious I'm so [clears throat] curious what you're excited about investing today and I know it's probably like comes down to like just backing great teams cuz that that typically works well but we're in
1:42:00
such an interesting time right now where it feels like all software all enterprise software is like converging on the same kinds of simple use you know use cases is a natural language interface to get agents to do things. Like everything
1:42:16
Like everything is everything is converging and you know you guys were you know you did Neo Cloud you did Lambda you did a Neo Cloud 8 years ago.
1:42:25
That was like the best time to be investing in a Neo Cloud and then now that it just feels like you know that you have the SaaS apocalypse in the public market and then a lot of early stage companies that are getting investment are still SaaS.
1:42:39
Like so I'm curious like do you still believe do you still believe in SaaS?
1:42:44
Like what kinds of opportunities are you most excited in?
1:42:50
I I believe in shorting SaaS if I can.
1:42:52
>> [laughter] >> Like that's that's probably what I believe in right now.
1:42:56
Like I I generally think that software is Bullish on puts. Bullish on puts, yeah.
1:43:01
Yeah, I'm bullish on Salesforce puts is what I'm saying.
1:43:03
But you know I think I think that the reality is that we are doing a lot of soul searching like a lot of seed funds.
1:43:10
You know, there are a lot of things that are still very interesting and investable.
1:43:12
Like we just invested in a robotics company that I'm super excited about that has a hardware component.
1:43:18
I wouldn't touch hardware with a 10-ft pole 5 years ago.
1:43:22
Now I'm very interested in it.
1:43:22
You know, we've invested in you know tools that help you manage multiple coding agents.
1:43:28
We've invested in you know video editing solutions.
1:43:30
We're investing in an AI hedge fund.
1:43:31
Like we are investing in a lot of really interesting things that are outside of the software as a service scope.
1:43:37
And the real reason is just that you know if you want to build anything you can in a few hours.
1:43:41
Like it's just so easy to and I think that that is a major change not just for software companies but generally for like the bottom 40% of work that you don't that you sit behind a desk for.
1:43:53
Maybe the bottom 60% and so [clears throat] you know we're spending a lot of time thinking about ways in which we can you know think about new areas.
1:44:00
Now we have the benefit of having done this before cuz when we launched in 2017 right after the transformer paper came out there were no AI companies.
1:44:11
Like there were none and like OpenAI was a non-profit and Anthropic didn't exist.
1:44:16
You know, like DeepMind had you know was still like a a small division within Google.
1:44:20
Google. Like you know, now you know, so we had we had to go and hunt and find companies like Lambda, like Rad AI, like Streamlit, like Writer, you know, like a lot of these businesses and and so we're we're getting back onto what we had done
1:44:35
before which is scouring and doing a lot of outbound going and meeting founders getting to know founders and and really slowing our deployment pace until it's very clear where the value is going to accrue at the seed stage. And that I
1:44:45
And that I think is the smart thing to do right now.
1:44:49
I think that software in general is really in jeopardy and there we've made some software investments but we believe they have strong moats because they have network effects or they have data network effects but in general like 80% of software companies are really in trouble. Yeah.
1:45:03
Talk about the pipeline for founders and how it might be changing.
1:45:08
I'm sure you've been tracking like there's this crazy fall off in the number of computer science grads and that used to be just fertile ground for it used to be general casting, right?
1:45:17
Central you know central casting for you know VC back founder was like Stanford CS and I don't know about Stanford specifically but it seems like we're getting a lot less or or fewer computer science grads and I'm wondering if you envision a future where you'll be pulling more physicists and mathematicians or theologians or philosophers into entrepreneurial stuff.
1:45:42
I mean Mark Zuckerberg did not study computer science as primary major, right?
1:45:45
Wasn't he a philosophy major I think or something? >> Psych major. Yeah, psych psych major.
1:45:49
So like like there's plenty of examples that It honestly makes a lot of sense for social media. Brilliant. Brilliant.
1:45:56
But but I mean do you see there being like a pipeline crisis?
1:45:59
Is the contrarian move now to study computer science at a time when coding jobs are going away?
1:46:05
Like walk me through how you're processing this idea that you know our best and brightest aren't going to you know just learn to code and become computer scientists you know at the same rate. >> Oh. I mean absolutely.
1:46:17
You talk to any scale-up or you know tech company today the mid-level engineers are managing coding agents in English. They're not even coding.
1:46:27
They're managing like hundreds or many dozens of coding agents at once.
1:46:32
I think this at the senior level the engineers are probably okay because we do need more code reviews and evaluations cuz a lot of these coding coding agents are spitting out bad code at at volume and that will that will get improved over time but I think it is a challenge.
1:46:46
But I do think for entry-level positions we've told a whole generation including my generation that you should go to college when like I don't think that that's necessary, right?
1:46:56
Like college was originally formed especially liberal arts was formed for the process of being creative or thinking or philosophy or things like that or writing.
1:47:05
You know, we we've told people that they can go to college and get a good job at a tech company all those kinds of things.
1:47:10
I think that that's kind of in jeopardy currently.
1:47:11
My hope is that we focus more on like real trades, right?
1:47:16
Like welding and plumbing and a lot of or you know ceramics and pottery.
1:47:21
Like these are going to be like more respected work lines of work in the future as knowledge work just gets completely replaced by AI.
1:47:29
I don't have a great answer for you but I generally do worry about this because I don't know if colleges should be teaching computer science to everybody.
1:47:37
That being said I think everyone should take a course to understand how AI works, how these LLMs actually work.
1:47:41
I think that everyone should do their best to read the transformer paper, you know, everyone in the world because it is kind of the Magna Carta of this generation.
1:47:54
But you know, I do worry about this.
1:47:54
I worry about you know workforce displacement and how that transition works and if our government is even capable of helping helping people transition from one phase to another. Or one era to another.
1:48:04
Yeah, I'm just wondering like is the next great like pottery entrepreneur going to go through pottery trade school or like be a business major and be able to like marshal a billion dollars of capital to like build the pottery empire of the future?
1:48:19
Like like do you do you do you go deals guy route and then tack on the trade or do you pull from the trade school?
1:48:26
Maybe it's a moot point because you'll know it when you see it and you meet the person but it's a fascinating world to imagine because for the longest time it was like oh you want to do something in pottery?
1:48:36
Well, it's going to be a SaaS company and you're going to have to know computer science and now right?
1:48:39
Like somewhat right here. Do you think Go ahead. Go ahead, Jordy.
1:48:44
No, I was going to take the conversation another way so finish finish the finish your Oh, I was just going to say that like imagine being someone that's incredibly good at like some form of ceramics.
1:48:52
You would create your product and then AI would market it take photos of it, would you know, design it, buy ads for it, do the back office and do the finance for it.
1:49:03
That's actually the future that I think we're going to end up in.
1:49:04
Now ceramics is kind of a weird example but you know what I mean?
1:49:07
Like a car mechanic or like an antique car mechanic or or something or a welder.
1:49:10
Those are examples of like how AI would help those people.
1:49:14
So, I think we'll have many, many more entrepreneurs that are not building unicorns.
1:49:17
They're going to be building, you know, smaller lifestyle businesses.
1:49:20
>> Yeah, I completely agree.
1:49:20
It feels a lot like what happened when everyone got an iPhone and a YouTube account.
1:49:23
There were a lot more creators.
1:49:25
There's like this flirt or Shopify, same thing.
1:49:27
Like you're democratizing these like long tail businesses that like previously it would be like, oh, you want to like during the dot-com boom there was like, oh, you want to you want to sell t-shirts online?
1:49:39
Here's a $10 million check so you can buy some servers and rack them and and just have a website. >> Teespring.
1:49:45
Yeah, well, Teespring was sort of like Yeah, Teespring was like sort of a meta platform a little bit.
1:49:49
But yeah, I mean, it's a good example of like a lot of hot a lot of expensive infrastructure for doing something pretty basic. Sorry, Jordyn. What's that?
1:49:56
Uh I I was curious, do you think you'll write more checks this year than last year or vice versa?
1:50:02
Um I think >> and have you gotten to have you reached a point of frustration around valuations? Mhm.
1:50:10
You like you've been through you've been you've been through, you know, cycles >> cycles enough to to kind of know when things are getting a probably overheated.
1:50:19
Yeah, I mean, we don't feel as the valuations are out of control at the pre-seed and seed stage.
1:50:23
The where they are out of control are probably in the later stage.
1:50:27
You know, like series A's, series B's, even really late stage are trading at incredible multiples.
1:50:32
I mean, you you know, I think that we did this robotics company at like sub 50.
1:50:36
We've done, you know, this other multi-coding agent company at sub 50 as well.
1:50:41
Like we're pretty focused on keeping valuations below 50.
1:50:47
And I think that capital constrained companies are the ones that end up being very successful because they sort of figure out how to build better products and become more efficient.
1:50:54
It's when you over fund companies like some of these new neo labs that are raising billions of dollars, people like start making bad decisions when they have when they're over funded.
1:51:02
And so, I think that where we play, which is not funding the next contender to Anthropic or OpenAI, the valuations are pretty favorable. Yeah.
1:51:12
Uh Jordyn, anything else?
1:51:14
Uh thoughts on solo GPs today?
1:51:14
Is it overrated to be a solo GP? Yeah.
1:51:18
And should there be a trade school for becoming a >> [laughter] >> GP?
1:51:24
Should we should we take >> how we solve worker displacement.
1:51:25
We need to create millions of millions of venture capitalists.
1:51:30
Everyone [clears throat] who's doing pottery You know, we keep going back to the pottery example.
1:51:34
If if you are a top level ceramicist, which is the actual term, it is incredibly lucrative, incredibly prestigious.
1:51:40
Like it is it is I didn't know you had this pottery Oh, yeah.
1:51:44
Ceramicists are real like it is a an art form and it is incredibly high skill ceiling.
1:51:50
Similar But not as high of a skill ceiling [laughter] as venture capital. Yeah.
1:51:53
Not as high of as an art form.
1:51:55
>> Yes, yes, it is an art form.
1:51:55
But yes, thoughts on solo GPs.
1:51:59
Yeah, I mean, I've I'm not one this morning.
1:52:01
I've invested in a bunch of them.
1:52:02
I I think that the sub $50 million solo GP is a great business.
1:52:06
If you can raise the money, you can get allocation in rounds, you don't have to compete.
1:52:12
It's when you get above 50 million that it's really challenging cuz you're going to be ownership constrained.
1:52:15
You're competing against someone like us.
1:52:16
And you know, we have we have we we write a larger check.
1:52:21
I think also another thing is that the solo GPs are really effective at feeding companies to the multi-stages and to, you know, pure play seed funds like us.
1:52:29
Um and so, I think it's actually a fantastic place to be.
1:52:33
But it's just going to be really rare for the solo GPs to break out fund size well beyond that.
1:52:37
So, you have to be comf- comfortable with being you know, a comf- a fund of one with no help.
1:52:41
And you have to be cuz your fee structure is not going to be able to support much more than that.
1:52:47
And so, but I am bullish on it.
1:52:47
And especially with these AI tools, you can really diligence companies without needing more people.
1:52:53
You can run your back office entirely without needing other people.
1:52:58
And so, I'm in gen- in general like pretty pretty excited about them.
1:53:00
They have struggled to raise more recently, right?
1:53:04
Like LPs are not deploying capital at the pace that they were when solo GPs were breaking out in 2021, 2022.
1:53:11
And so, I think that you're going to see a lot of them probably go join funds and a lot of the really good ones with good returns be able to raise their next fund.
1:53:20
And so, >> do you think more of them should be thinking like, okay, I'm going to do a $30 million fund, a $30 million fund, and then a $30 million fund?
1:53:26
Because it feels like a lot tend to be like, okay, I'm going to do the $25 million fund and then I instantly want to ramp up as much as possible and then suddenly have a different strategy.
1:53:36
Suddenly you're actually competing head to head where it feels like if you do want to break out and become a a a brand and a platform every time, if you have like three really high quality funds back to back but in deploying them on a shorter time horizon maybe could be a better route.
1:53:52
Yes, faster deployment cycles, smaller fund because there there just sort of liquidity constraints across LPs.
1:53:58
But a lot of the fund of funds I've noticed are now focused on sub $75 million funds.
1:54:04
And so, there is a a market for that. Excuse me.
1:54:06
And so, I I would generally focus on keeping your fund size consistently small at 30 million, maybe deploy over a shorter time horizon.
1:54:15
And then you can get also get LPs to, you know, pre-commit to multiple funds.
1:54:19
Which is something I've seen people do is that, hey, I'm going to do this every 18 months.
1:54:22
Do you want to commit, you know, some amount every 18 months?
1:54:26
And and that actually ends up being a better story for people than raising one bigger fund.
1:54:32
And and so, I I I generally do think that the faster that the the smaller fund on a faster cycle will yield better results because you also have to put a lot of companies in the portfolio.
1:54:42
Like if you run portfolio modeling, which we do quite often here, at our fund size it's usually 40 to 50 companies per fund in our Monte Carlo simulation that yields a four to five X fund.
1:54:53
In the smaller funds it's really like 80 to 120.
1:54:55
And so, you have to be writing a lot of checks and get to conviction quickly and be willing to own less.
1:55:03
And then you can run SPVs into the into the follow-on rounds, which I think has been really successful for a lot of people.
1:55:08
But the smaller the fund, the more work in my mind because you have to constantly be looking at deals every week.
1:55:15
You have to be putting capital out every week into different companies in order to make the, you know, math work out. Yeah.
1:55:24
Well, tell us about the latest fund at Gradient. What's the structure? How much did you raise? I want to hit the gong.
1:55:30
Yeah, we hit we raised $220 million.
1:55:33
Um I think we already talked about deployment and and how we and and We we It's also possible we already hit the gong for you.
1:55:44
Well, just, you know, whenever whenever it got announced.
1:55:46
But um great great to see you. Thanks for coming on.
1:55:49
Appreciate all the insights.
1:55:51
And let's get let's get your new robotics bet on the show as soon as they're ready to go. >> to go. That'd be awesome. That'd be amazing. >> Yeah.
1:55:56
Have a great rest of your week.
1:55:58
Have a great rest of your day.
1:55:58
And we will talk to you soon. >> Goodbye. >> Thank you so much. Great to see you all. Later.
1:56:06
Anything [laughter] else going on in the timeline?
1:56:07
There's a bunch of stuff. Uh tons of images.
1:56:11
Where else Where else do we want to go today?
1:56:15
>> What other >> top of mind Oh, I wanted to get your take on this.
1:56:18
Uh Uh imagine if Kodak existed in 2005.
1:56:23
And it's this very retro people are doing Imagine if Kodak existed in 2012 and it's the it's the Apple design cues from the early Mac OS 10.
1:56:30
And then the Windows XP aesthetic.
1:56:35
Do you think the Windows XP aesthetic is overdue for a comeback?
1:56:42
This is in the middle of the GPT image two feed right there. This aesthetic. It's got to come back. This and a Mountain Dew.
1:56:53
>> [laughter] >> It would fix It would fix you. This would fix me.
1:56:55
Uh no, I I I you know, I have some fond memories of XP. >> John.
1:57:03
Imagine playing Halo while you just look over and this is just running there. I don't know.
1:57:11
>> drinking a Mountain Dew.
1:57:11
Uh for some reason, I don't know, a lot of the Windows features that were launching during this time were a little bit rough.
1:57:20
This was when Mac was starting to take off.
1:57:22
And these releases, Windows Vista, Windows post-XP, post what was it?
1:57:34
I don't really I don't even remember for the other versions, but uh uh Windows 8 I think was one of them.
1:57:37
They were starting to be less loved.
1:57:40
They were starting to be a little bit more like, is it worth the upgrade?
1:57:45
Is it a good is it a good vibe?
1:57:47
I mean, it's not nostalgic for me yet I guess is what I'm saying.
1:57:51
But there are there are a couple other important warnings in here.
1:57:54
One of them, let me find it.
1:57:57
Um I know uh I know you had thought about potentially putting on a bear costume and trying to defraud your car insurer.
1:58:10
And if you in the audience were thinking about dressing up like a bear and attacking your car in order to collect a insurance payout that's up to $141,000, think again.
1:58:20
Think again because humans, this is in the New York Times, humans who used a bear suit to defraud car insurers are sentenced to jail.
1:58:28
You might be thinking, I'll just throw on this bear suit and I'll attack my car and then I'll call my insurer and I'll collect a check and it'll be easy easy money.
1:58:38
Easy money get rich quick scheme. No. >> No.
1:58:41
Three Southern California residents were sentenced to jail after masterminding a scheme in which they staged fake bear attacks on their luxury cars and collecting more than $141,000 in insurance had a person in a bear suit climb into the cars and use claw-like kitchen essentials to leave scratch marks.
1:59:01
The Los Angeles residents then filed claims to defraud three different insurance companies.
1:59:05
So, I don't understand why they had to be in a bear suit. Like, were they filming? Were they filming?
1:59:12
There is security footage.
1:59:12
It's No >> [laughter] >> Yeah, yeah, we're going to pull up the security footage.
1:59:18
>> [cough] >> It's absolutely wild. A Rolls-Royce Ghost.
1:59:20
Yeah, a 2010 Rolls-Royce Ghost.
1:59:23
I know someone who has one of those.
1:59:26
I don't think he's responsible for this, but it's >> [laughter] >> They are dressing up like a bear to get into the car and rip everything and destroy it so that you can file an insurance claim.
1:59:41
>> [laughter] >> Hey, I'm just a bear.
1:59:42
I'm going to just get in this car.
1:59:44
The schemes are really out of control these days.
1:59:46
That is a wild, wild one.
1:59:49
The California Department of Insurance began its investigation called Operation Bear Claw after an insurance company flagged a suspicious claim about a about a bear rifling through a 2010 Rolls-Royce Ghost in Lake Arrowhead, California where there are in fact bears.
2:00:05
So, it's not that unreasonable.
2:00:08
The defendants claimed that a that the bear had damaged the interior of their Rolls-Royce with photos they submitted to the insurance company showing scratch seats and doors.
2:00:16
Video footage submitted with the claim and released by the department shows what appears to be a bear crawling around in the backseat of the Rolls-Royce and swatting at the dashboard.
2:00:24
Investigators later discovered fraudulent claims submitted to two other insurance companies that claimed a bear had damaged the same interior of two Mercedes-Benzes.
2:00:33
Just scratching everything.
2:00:35
That is like the most perfect scratch line.
2:00:37
Like, it's so suspicious.
2:00:39
Like, it's so clearly like I feel like a bear's claws would be way more organic and like like Also, hopefully doing more damage.
2:00:47
That looks like the weakest bear ever.
2:00:49
Yeah, because it's not a bear. It's a human.
2:00:52
After its investigation, the department concluded that the culprit was not in fact a particularly nimble bear.
2:00:56
The defendants were arrested November of 2020.
2:01:00
So, I would I would My my first thought is not super believable that the bear walks up to the Rolls-Royce Ghost, opens the door, goes around.
2:01:07
But, few weekends ago, I was hanging out at former guest of the show's house. He has goats.
2:01:19
Friend drives up in his car, parks, and leaves the door open.
2:01:25
Few minutes later, what's in the car? A bear. A goat.
2:01:27
A goat goat with a friend got into the car and was just like And this was a this was a a Land Rover Defender.
2:01:34
It was like quite a quite a jump up.
2:01:38
Goat jumps up and is just hanging around like actually just Was there damage to the Land Rover Defender?
2:01:42
I don't think that if there was, he didn't bring it up.
2:01:45
But, there may be some hoof marks. Some hoof scratches.
2:01:50
And and this is all complicated.
2:01:52
It just seems like such such a wild scheme.
2:01:55
There's a real bear going in a car. Okay.
2:01:59
This really could open the door.
2:02:01
>> [laughter] >> Yeah, I I feel like they had to have seen this video and thought, "Finally."
2:02:06
I thought I I feel like most cars will automatically lock the doors.
2:02:08
You know, this wouldn't happen with those Everyone love loves to hate on the flat door handles that all the electric cars have.
2:02:15
But, bears going to struggle to open a Tesla door for sure.
2:02:20
This is Is Is the bear still in there or is he he's Wow.
2:02:25
There's There is There's a history of of bear visitation. What do they know? Pasadena.
2:02:34
There was a woman who was on the local news and said that a bear came and and swam in her pool.
2:02:38
And she seemed like oddly happy about it or like excited.
2:02:43
Like, she sort of liked having the bear come and visit.
2:02:45
And it felt like she wasn't exactly like building the strongest fence and maybe was sort of excited about the idea of a bear coming for a dip in the swimming pool.
2:02:56
But, people do odd things with animals.
2:02:59
People dress up as bears.
2:02:59
Scientists also apparently have been giving salmon cocaine.
2:03:04
I have no idea why, but the New York Times has a post.
2:03:08
The These salmon got high on cocaine.
2:03:12
That wasn't the craziest part.
2:03:14
Scientists in Sweden made an unexpected discovery.
2:03:17
I think Tyler read this piece and can spoil the ending because What are they doing over there, Tyler?
2:03:24
I think I think they tested like what happens when you give the fish cocaine.
2:03:28
And I think the answer was that they swim much faster and they can swim for longer. Okay. And that was unexpected?
2:03:34
That feels like Imagine being the scientists that like didn't get a grant for their [clears throat] research, you know, and they were working on something.
2:03:42
And then they And they're reading this article and they're like, "Wait, like I was going to do Alzheimer's research and then these scientists just wanted to give hard drugs to fish."
2:03:51
Nearly what would happen. Nearly twice as fast.
2:03:53
I guess that's somewhat interesting.
2:03:55
But, this does feel like something that could be one-shotted by There's no way There's just no way you could have done You had to prove it.
2:04:02
You had to prove it for science.
2:04:05
I mean, I guess it's relevant in the in the field of environmental toxicology.
2:04:08
As much as we're joking around while it's unclear if swimming faster and further while under the influence has harmed these fish, experts say it's probably not great.
2:04:17
>> [laughter] >> But, yeah, I mean I I I guess if you're an environmental toxicologist, it is useful to have various data points on what happens with contaminants in the environment to the fish populations in specifically.
2:04:31
And so, I I am willing to to believe that there is good that will come out of this other than just a viral a viral post.
2:04:37
He wasn't trying to bring a Halloween hoax to life.
2:04:39
He wanted to see how salmon in the wild reacted to pollution from the illegal drug.
2:04:44
And there might in fact be pollution if the you know if importation goes poorly and and narcotics are delivered to the water supply.
2:04:54
That would certainly not be good.
2:04:56
In recent years, there has been an alarming rise in the number of waterways polluted with the drug cocaine prompting scientists to wonder how fish might be handling their highs.
2:05:05
As it turns out, fish indeed get wired.
2:05:08
In a study published Monday in the journal Current Biology, Dr.
2:05:10
Brandon and his colleagues showed that coked-up salmon This is in the New York Times.
2:05:15
Coked-up salmon swim Isn't there Isn't there some account that just says like in like like first time it's ever been printed in the New York Times and they just screenshot like words and phrases that feel funny in that particular when they're shown in the gray lady in print.
2:05:30
It makes them swim faster, travel farther than their sober counterparts.
2:05:33
The study prompts additional questions about the effects that human drug habits may be having on salmon and other freshwater fish.
2:05:38
While we certainly want clean waterways.
2:05:39
Speaking of things under the sea, Red Lobster brings back endless shrimp for a limited time starting April 20th.
2:05:50
Luke Metros says this is an EA cause area hostile takeover of Red Lobster. Make it vegan. Make it vegan.
2:05:58
No, they got [clears throat] to make a play to make it come back.
2:06:01
And this seems like something that customers were clamoring for.
2:06:05
So, I don't Have you ever been to a Red Lobster? Nope.
2:06:08
I don't think I've ever been to a Red Lobster.
2:06:09
I've done the Outback Steakhouse.
2:06:12
There are things in life that I don't think I will ever do.
2:06:16
And Red Lobster, I believe is one of them.
2:06:18
Ben, have you been to Red Lobster? I've been there. Yeah?
2:06:20
You What's your You're vegan in Minnesota.
2:06:22
One to 10 on a It's fine.
2:06:26
I I think they're all gone now.
2:06:28
One to 10, what what do you rate it? Like a five.
2:06:31
I think before it was No five. No five. You got to pick a side. Four. Four. It's okay. Subpar. It's sub five in fact.
2:06:41
Anyway, thank you for watching.
2:06:41
Anything else, Jordy, you want to run through?
2:06:45
No, it has been an honor and privilege to Well, this is kind of cool.
2:06:48
ESPN launching sports-only trivia show called ESPN Jeopardy. I like this.
2:06:52
I thought this is a really, really good idea.
2:06:54
I can't believe it took them 50 years to come up with this concept.
2:06:57
But, apparently Joe Buck is closing on a deal to host the show.
2:07:02
ESPN Jeopardy is expected to air on Hulu, Disney Plus, and may make a run on linear TV on ABC or ESPN streaming platforms.
2:07:11
Very This seems like you know so so obvious in hindsight.
2:07:14
I think it'll be very very effective.
2:07:16
A lot of sports fans love trivia and now you can watch it. We love you. See you tomorrow.