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4:59
Today is Friday, October 17th, 2025.
5:02
We are live from the TVP Ultradome, the Temple of Technology, the fortress of finance, the capital of capital.
5:09
Sorry, I'm having too much fun.
5:12
I got a new sound effect.
5:13
>> Yeah, we got a new sound effect.
5:13
The soundboard continues to be on a generational run of its own.
5:17
Um, and Palmer Lucky has been on a generational run, going on a lot of different shows. He's coming on our show. We announced that today.
5:25
Very excited to have him join the show.
5:26
Uh, I've interviewed him a few times.
5:28
It's always a fantastic chat. Um, >> the guy can yap.
5:33
>> I want to play a clip from his appearance, not on Joe Rogan, which is fantastic.
5:37
you should go listen to but on of him on Bloomberg but first I want to tell you about ramp.
5:41
com time is money say both easy use corporate cards bill pay accounting and a whole lot more all in one place last night uh we got together with uh some members of the ramp team and uh in a great sign of respect in our culture they built this uh ice statue >> the ice sculpture was very fun to see >> which you may have seen over on X but absolutely stunning >> um anyway Let's uh play the clip from Bloomberg uh Palmer Lucky >> Palmer.
6:11
There was a report about the NGC2 system.
6:14
It named both Ander and Palanteer.
6:17
We've asked Palanteer through Shom to comment on that.
6:19
Um but the the the report in Palanteer's case moves.
6:22
Uh could you just respond to that reporting which came from Reuters um and explain the the sort of timeline and and the inaccuracies that you feel there are in that report.
6:35
So, you may or may not remember this, but I was a journalism major myself.
6:39
Uh, I I was only a semester and a half away from graduating.
6:42
I was the online editor of the Daily 49er, which was the Cal State Long Beach uh studentr run newspaper.
6:48
So, I care a lot about this stuff, both as a andal perspective, but then also just from a journalist perspective.
6:51
The journalist who wrote that Reuters story would have been failed out of the class by any of my professors.
6:55
He refused to on the record statement.
6:58
He refused to include the on the record.
7:00
This is crazy though because they fundamentally made the whole story not a story.
7:03
They didn't they didn't include what Palanteer and Android had to say.
7:08
I'll read the actual next generation command and control.
7:12
It's not tracking what the users are doing.
7:14
It doesn't have any passwords to log in.
7:15
There's no security turned on.
7:18
And they said, "Oh my god, this is a huge problem."
7:19
And we said, "Guys, this was an early prototype.
7:21
The army wasn't paying us to demonstrate user accounts.
7:25
It was paying us to demonstrate integration of different sensors, different weapon systems all into one pipeline."
7:29
Uh, and Lattis has all this functionality. We do this all the time.
7:34
It's not like it's not like we don't know how to do this.
7:35
And the army said the same.
7:37
They said, "Yeah, we just turned on all those features with just a few weeks later all these issues that you're talking about didn't exist."
7:42
This was an internal security audit just noting that these things were a factor in that early prototype.
7:48
Yes, there's no access control. Yes, that is a risk.
7:52
Yes, we have not audited all of their security, you know, all their security code.
7:55
That is a risk, but that's completely normal for early development.
7:59
But Reuters didn't include our quote, didn't include the army's quote because that would have made the entire story irrelevant.
8:03
So instead, they include quotes exclusively from our competitors and from so-called anonymous sources saying that Anderrol and Palanteer are running this fundamentally insecure thing.
8:12
99% chance that was planted by one of our competitors who had access to that memo.
8:16
And there's only a few people who could have done it and I can make people look bad by slicing and dicing memos too. I'll show you if I want.
8:20
I'll get back into the journalism game.
8:23
>> We can say given you the opportunity lucky a column and Reuters >> this opportunity to attack my you just mentioned your your competitors. Let's call it.
8:33
>> We Yeah, we can we can wrap it there.
8:35
But basically, I mean, it's like the army was like, "Hey, we want you to prototype something for us, like put a bunch of dots on a map, do something different, like create a new UI, like show us what you can do."
8:44
And then clearly an enemy of of Ander and Palanteer like leaked like, well, they didn't they didn't have OOTH set up yet.
8:54
And it's like, well, yeah, like we know this in in Silicon Valley, like when you build a new product, you focus on finding a problem, building the solution, and then you figure out how to optimize the database and cach.
9:06
>> People try to do gotas with Palmer. >> It's impossible. Don't even try.
9:08
Um, but it it does like I thought we were past this honestly because of uh the mood in Silicon Valley.
9:17
Like the whole idea of like everyone in America knows that it shouldn't take 50 years to build the new plane.
9:25
Like everyone knows that that other countries can build stuff faster and build systems faster and it shouldn't take this long and other countries aren't smarter or more hard >> data centers. >> Yes. Yes.
9:38
We clearly we clearly know how when there isn't a bunch of like the the difference between that that's a good analogy.
9:45
The difference between the data center market and what's going on in in defense and government procurement is that the data center market doesn't necessarily have a ton of entrenched interest in being like let's not speed up our our model works. >> Yeah.
9:58
Potentially not enough regulation.
10:00
I'm not advocating for regulation, but the the big complaint is that can set up start >> sourcing energy from the grid >> and it makes people nearby suddenly pay a massive premium even if >> Yeah.
10:13
Uh it's just like imagine like so you have the you have the neoclouds who want to build data centers very quickly. There's no real party.
10:18
It's not like Oracle is like I'm in the business of building things slowly.
10:22
I get paid more money if I build it slowly.
10:23
Whereas like that does exist with the legacy primes which is just very different.
10:27
Um but I I don't know I I I just thought that uh we were sort of past this but of course it's like a natural outgrowth and natural dynamic when you are um competing with uh you know Silicon Valley companies that are their whole pitch.
10:41
I mean, Android is not a Silicon Valley company, but it's like a tech company.
10:44
Um, and and their whole pitch is like, "We will move faster. We're going to Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
10:48
We're going to we're going to we're going to beat you on speed."
10:51
And uh and that's very dangerous.
10:53
And so you try and basically FUD it.
10:54
And that's what's going on.
10:54
But I liked Palmer putting it in the truth zone.
10:58
Putting Reuters in the truth zone.
10:59
Always fun to watch Palmer put on a little clinic and how to do drugs accurately. >> Morning to the chat. We got good morning. Great folks here today.
11:05
Dan, Chefer, Tom, >> friendly.
11:11
>> Yeah, we got a bunch of people.
11:11
Um, Palmer also went on the Joe Rogan Experience.
11:16
We have some images from this.
11:18
Uh, the European mind cannot comprehend what happened.
11:21
Now, this is unfortunately a fake image.
11:27
At no point did Joe Rogan actually put on uh aviators a cigar and hold a machine gun of some sort.
11:34
Um, >> you're telling me this is slop?
11:37
>> This is slop, but this is the this is the purest slop possible.
11:40
>> You didn't allow me to live for just >> No, I'm sorry. >> 30 seconds, John.
11:43
>> It is unfortunately fake news and we need to put in the truth zone.
11:47
>> It is pretty funny that it's somewhat believable.
11:49
>> It It is It is like Yeah. Yeah.
11:49
This probably could have happened on the show.
11:53
Uh, but they did put on the helmet and uh and you know, take things for a spin.
11:57
>> Should we pull up this clip uh from later?
11:59
They pulled up an Ashley Vance video of Wrecked Wreck robot. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Play that.
12:06
>> This something that someone's working out with.
12:08
>> This is about Fight League again. San Francisco. >> Fight.
12:11
So, actually, this is this is a buddy of mine who's been working in VR for a really really long time.
12:14
So, it's again, what a tiny what a tiny world of weird wackos.
12:17
Um, but yeah, Six Liv has been working on uh which is his real name. >> His real name. Isn't that hilarious?
12:23
Six lives VR stuff for the past 15 years and he recently got into doing this this robot robot combat sports league.
12:32
Yeah, they were having so much fun talking about uh like it should be a human versus a robot, that's what uh Palmer and Logan Paul are apparently working on is like no way. Yeah.
12:43
No, they want they and and they go into this big long discussion about um well, if you can train a robot to be like perfect with its punches, it could also pull its punches perfectly.
12:54
And so it could be the ultimate sparring partner. Yeah.
12:56
Um and you could and you could like and you could even like it could train on you and so you could be fighting yourself.
13:01
It could train on you you could say like I'm gonna get in the ring with Evander Holyfield or Mike Tyson today and it could mimic that perfectly in theory.
13:09
>> I'm more I'm more interested to see >> like a hundred robots versus one human while they're while they're not quite as dialed. >> That would be great.
13:17
Yeah, right now how much damage Logan Paul would do to a bunch of those uni trees today.
13:22
I'm not saying he would I'm I'm not saying in five years he would he would be uh the same. >> No, no, no.
13:29
uh the same kind of >> we got to have the event now while he can actually put on a clinic and destroy all all 100.
13:35
>> It would be costly though.
13:35
These things go for >> So So we were looking it up the other day.
13:39
I was >> 2 million bucks.
13:40
That's like an average Mr. Beast video budget. That's totally doable. You could do one man.
13:44
>> But it is interesting.
13:44
The robot dogs are like 75k and the G1 is like 20k. >> Huh.
13:51
>> Do you think they'reating?
13:53
>> It's a little bit too good to be true.
13:53
I don't know if I like that pricing.
13:55
Wait, Unitry charges less for their dog than their human? >> No. No.
14:00
The dog is um from a different company.
14:03
>> It's Yeah, it's uh Boston Dynamics. >> Okay. Yeah. Boston Dynamics. I mean, yeah. >> Yeah.
14:06
It's not the same company. >> Oh, okay. Okay. >> Got it. Yeah.
14:08
>> What's a Can you find out what a Uni Tree dog costs? >> Yeah. >> Chinese dog.
14:12
There's something I feel like that I feel like one man versus 100 just stomping a hundred unitary dogs feels a lot sketchier and more dark >> to me than watching Logan Paul absolutely ration a hundred unitry.
14:25
Even though it's not a fair fight, it feels a little bit more fair. What What did you find?
14:31
>> Uh unitry dog is like low thousands.
14:31
So one for for like $3,000.
14:35
>> Oh, we're buying that.
14:37
>> We're buying a hundred and you're going in.
14:38
>> How many should I buy?
14:39
>> Actually, this is this is green lit. Put it on the ramp. >> I just want one. I just want one.
14:46
>> I want a hundred and get gorilla costumes for them all and then we can reenact the Can they stand on two legs? The dogs. >> Uh, yeah.
14:54
I mean, we've seen videos of them doing back flips. >> Okay.
14:56
So, but because if it can stand on if it can stand on two legs and then you can put it in a gorilla costume, you can totally be thrashing those things around like it's one man versus 100 gorillas.
15:07
Wait, was it was it 100 men versus >> No, it was it was 100 men versus one gorilla.
15:12
Not >> 100 gorillas gorillas. No gorillas. >> Oh, no.
15:17
>> I think you get a hundred unites the the humanoid robots.
15:19
You put them in gorilla costumes.
15:21
You turn Logan Paul loose.
15:24
It's a $2 million production, but it's going to get a billion views.
15:27
And so >> you could also do a 100 unitries versus one gorilla.
15:32
>> Oh yeah, that you actually could do that. That's a great video. I don't think you can.
15:36
I think gorilla activists would >> Yeah, I think I think PETA would like a word with that one, but I don't know.
15:39
I feel like the gorilla would love to like destroy the clanker.
15:44
They're like natural enemies, don't you think?
15:47
>> Yeah, they really are.
15:48
>> Whatever Whatever we wind up doing with this, we got to stream it on reream.
15:50
One live stream, 30 plus destinations, multiream, reach your audience wherever they are.
15:55
Um >> the uh there's a Planet of the Apes con uh which is like the Clankers versus the apes. I think that's a hit. >> Yep.
16:03
Uh Henry uh photoshopped some photos of uh Mark Beni off on TBPN and Palmer on Joe Rogan kind of monitoring the situation. Did quite well. Uh fun post.
16:15
>> I still can't get over the Beni off interview. >> It was so much fun. >> That was a real hoot.
16:20
>> We had Yeah, we had a wild uh a wild time.
16:22
He uh he's the final boss of salesman.
16:26
>> He's really such a good salesman. Comes on.
16:28
>> It's like I don't know, not to break the fourth wall, but we'd never talked to him before.
16:32
like I I'd never met him in person.
16:34
With a lot of other people, we've met beforehand.
16:35
We've talked, we've gotten to know each other.
16:38
Uh that was not the case with Benny.
16:40
The first time I ever had talked to him was on that call and it just felt like we were old friends immediately and he was like talking trash and completely matching our energy, taking it up, you know. Oh, so good.
16:52
>> Made me >> put on a clinic.
16:54
>> Made me made me feel that CRM is oversold. >> Yeah, for sure.
16:57
>> That's got a lot of energy. >> For sure. For sure.
16:58
Uh before we move on, let me tell you about Privy.
17:01
Wallet infrastructure for every bank.
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17:10
Uh Jordy, tell me about the Dolce Tren, the Ferrari front engine 12cylinder. You had a take today.
17:18
It went out on our newsletter, which you can subscribe to at tbpn. com.
17:24
Jordy is writing uh posts in there as well.
17:28
I'm writing posts in there.
17:30
Brandon's uh co-lating a lot of the show.
17:32
It's a great way to stay in tune with the show if you're not able to listen every day.
17:36
>> I felt like I needed to defend Ferrari. >> Yes.
17:40
>> Uh for a number of reasons.
17:40
One, uh I've gotten sick of every time Ferrari launches a car, you just see hundreds or thousand.
17:47
Every single video that comes out with the car is people begging for the return of Pin and Firina. >> Yeah.
17:53
uh the uh obviously the legendary design firm that Ferrari was partnered with from 1951 to 2012.
18:01
The firm was founded in 1930.
18:05
>> Uh actually uh by >> wait before Ferrari.
18:07
Whoa, I didn't know that.
18:10
>> Well, Ferrar Enzo had been doing automotive racing for a long time. That's right.
18:13
And he didn't start Ferrari until he was 45.
18:14
Um, but uh I basically, >> yeah, I've just gotten absolutely sick of every single time Ferrari announces a car.
18:24
>> I'm sick and tired of it.
18:25
>> I'm sick and tired of it.
18:25
All the all these comments.
18:27
Uh, one because uh I think the main reason is like very clear that the firm uh and Ferrari are not going to have anything close to the partnership that they used to have.
18:37
of Pin and Firina was sold uh for it was basically like $28 million and then the acquirer paid off a bunch of their debt as well.
18:47
So, the company was was heavily in debt at the at the time that they sold in 2015.
18:52
Um and uh yeah, there there's just a number of reasons, right?
18:55
Like Ferrari's in-house uh all of their design uh they've they've put a huge amount of resources and time and energy into it.
19:04
They clearly want to own the whole stack.
19:05
We talked about on the on the EV side of the business, they are like designing all of the >> EV componentry end to end, which again I and I think other people a little bit worried about cuz Ferraris have always had a bunch of electrical issues.
19:17
That's been like uh kind of a key >> Yeah. It's underrated.
19:21
Everyone says they want an electric car, but there's there's electricity flowing through >> a V12 as well. Yeah. Sometimes unreliably.
19:30
>> It's electric in its own way.
19:30
Um, and so yeah, I think I I think the the criticism that I understand and I feel the same is that when Ferrari announces their cars, they spec them in a way that I just absolutely hate.
19:42
Like I think that the stock wheels, the way that they're colored looks tacky. Uh, >> okay.
19:48
The stock wheels thing is weird because I feel like there's uh just generally in car culture like moving away from stock wheels, putting custom wheels on a car is is weird.
19:56
Are you talking about just from the factory selecting a different wheel?
20:03
>> I'm talking about the way they spin.
20:04
>> Or are you talking about going to a completely different company and being like going to another company?
20:08
>> 24in spinners on my Ferrari. You want spinners. >> No spinners.
20:12
I'm talking about the way they spec the cars for the announcements.
20:15
They have these like black and silverish looking wheels that I just think look bad, right?
20:18
You can go on the option side and they have a few options.
20:23
They have they have a bunch of Yeah, they have a bunch of other options that look great.
20:25
And so the criticism when these cars get announced, I think is very real.
20:29
I look at them and I think like why does it have a black line running down here? That doesn't look good.
20:35
The wheels don't look good.
20:36
There's a bunch of other things you can nitpick.
20:37
But then the important thing is like when they actually start rolling off the production line, when they start getting into dealerships, when they actually get to clients, they look absolutely amazing.
20:46
I feel like you will push back and just say like I hate everything that they car like okay this looks like a 21st century version of a pinfirina car and uh I think the bigger problem is is that we it could be for regulatory reasons right but the the automotive industry seems to be out of new ideas we have like stagnation in automotive right the cybert truck was controversial, but at least it was something new, right? Yep.
21:21
>> Um, and you could argue that it was just kind of it felt like sci-fi inspired, but that's okay, right?
21:26
They took a >> what looked and should have been maybe for other brands like a concept car and they made it a production car that's shipped and you can buy it today. Yep.
21:36
>> And so I want to see more more of that from the legacy brands.
21:38
And I think with Ferrari, it's not going to come from Pin and Firina, right?
21:42
It's just it's not going to come from their old partner that they work with for 50 years but is now just part of this Indian you know multinational conglomerate.
21:51
>> How much did they sell for by the way?
21:52
>> Uh it was it was something like in total it was like the it was like 175 million but the actual like >> uh >> core pin and asset >> like it was like 28 million and then a bunch of debt. >> 28 million forina.
22:03
Meanwhile Ferrari is worth 75 mill 75 billion >> 75 billion.
22:08
And so clearly like the better business to be in was actually making the cars, selling the cars, you know, acrewing all that brand value.
22:16
>> Um, so, uh, but but again, so I I think like the the real critique is we need new ideas.
22:22
We need new groundup design.
22:25
I asked the question in the newsletter, are there any cars or watches that you really want that have been made this century? >> Mhm. >> Right.
22:33
It's hard to think, you know, a variation, a 911 ST doesn't count, right? It's a 911 >> ZR1X. >> Okay.
22:41
We have of course uh particular taste in cars but same cross cabriolet is over 10 years old at this point like we've run out of ideas and we can't think of twodoor convertible >> Taylor says automobile design has truly been calcified since 2014.
22:58
>> I think you typed that before before I I said it.
23:01
Uh I have three questions for you.
23:03
First have you heard of cognition?
23:05
They're the makers of Devon the AI software engineer.
23:07
You can crush your backlog with your personal AI engineering team.
23:09
Second is uh the Ferrari tailor made program.
23:12
If I get into that, if I start buying Romas every single month, will they eventually tailor make a Ferrari that has spinners for me? Would they do that?
23:22
Is that how far I can push the tailor made?
23:25
>> They're really they're really opinionated. >> They're opinionated. Okay.
23:27
So then third third the third more serious question is like how much of your your your take is that Ferrari creates a great canvas that the clientele can paint on to express interesting designs that you wind up liking. Yeah.
23:44
Even though you don't like the press photos, you wind up liking the the the the >> specual production cars that clients are are.
23:54
>> And this is the this is the opposite take to Doug Demiro.
23:55
He always tries to buy the car in the press color way and and in the press spec.
24:00
He just likes it that way.
24:02
However it was presented to the press photos, he wants that exact spec or that exact car. >> Yeah.
24:07
And I think I think that can that can probably make sense from a collectible standpoint.
24:10
Like I see some of these cars and like personally I love black on tan with yellow brake calipers.
24:19
I just think it's a nice I think it's a nice combo.
24:20
I like I like silver on tan a lot. Right.
24:22
But that not that might not be the one on the billboard or in the magazine ad.
24:26
So it might be it might not be on the poster.
24:27
So it might be less iconic. But you like it.
24:29
But my question is like is is this something that is a unique value in the Ferrari world that they effectively have like UGC?
24:39
They they effectively have a great clientele that can spec the cars in a certain way and they create some boundaries.
24:45
So you can't put spinners on them, but they create some boundaries, but then their clientele has taste.
24:48
And so it's not just their taste.
24:51
It's the taste of the I just think the work is on the client like more so than when you go I like an offtheshelf GT3 off GT3 RS like I just like the the way that they >> they you know at Porsche have decided this is the way the car should look. >> Okay.
25:08
>> Um >> but with Ferrari that's not the case. Exactly. Okay. Got it.
25:10
Uh have you seen what Pin and Firina's been up to recently with the Batista?
25:14
Can we pull up the video of the Pin and Firina Batista?
25:17
I want your reaction to how this car looks because for everyone that's for everyone that's saying uh oh you know Ferrari's got to go back to Pinfirina.
25:27
Pinfirina has the best designs.
25:29
I do wonder if the the Pinfirina Batista is kind of a reputation of like Pinfirina still got design because when I look at the car and I when I look at the the uh the video that I shared in the timeline tab um the the video uh it just it it looks just very similar to every other card to me. It just I don't know.
25:52
It just doesn't it doesn't.
25:55
You're asking for the you're asking for the return of Pin and Firina, but you look at the cars that Pin and Fina is making today >> and they look like kind of >> It looks cool, but doesn't it just look like a Yeah, it looks like some blend of a McLaren >> Ferrari.
26:10
Like there's just like there's nothing super new in this pin and design.
26:15
like it looks just like a my people want like like the F40 was bold and new and controversial and in the fullness of time it it became >> looks pretty >> iconic.
26:26
It's growing on this is the most forgettable car sports car. >> Yes.
26:32
It would be very hard to to put this next to um the the Reatz Nava.
26:39
>> Yeah, >> that one also looks very similar.
26:40
This is an electric car, too.
26:41
uh which again has it just feels less opinionated.
26:47
>> Michael Michael's making uh I think one of in in the chat is making uh one of the most important points is that like the the regulation is so intense now that even if you're designing >> you know basically a racing car for the road you're just very limited.
27:04
>> So yeah I mean I so I that intuitively makes sense to me.
27:06
I feel like that's true and I've seen a bunch of facts around that.
27:10
And then I look at the cyber truck on the street every day and I'm like >> clearly there are no regulations because if there was even one regulation, >> it should violate that.
27:20
It violates everything that I know about regulation.
27:23
Like how did they do that?
27:23
And if you can do the Cybertruck, well then can't you do something unique or different?
27:28
and and we've seen other like prototypes in the Hyundai vision like they're bringing back the Delorean aesthetic.
27:36
I don't know if people >> again we're just sort of out of new ideas so we're just like rehashing >> ideas. Yeah.
27:43
And even the the the new Mercedes uh iconic the concept car >> it's like okay it looks cool but it looks like you know the mob boss in Tron, right?
27:56
which is like, do you want to drive around and look like a mob boss and Tron? Maybe.
28:00
That seems pretty cool, but >> yeah, >> this can't be the best that we >> It's the end of history. We created them.
28:06
Nissan, Morano, Cross Cabriolet. Hang it up. >> That was enough.
28:10
>> It's the It's the iPhone vehicles. >> We peaked.
28:13
>> Well, uh, if you want to design a car, you want to design something beautiful, head over to figma. com.
28:16
Think bigger, build faster.
28:18
Figma helps design development teams build great products together.
28:21
Um Henry on our team shares some lore about Andrew Huberman.
28:25
He says, "This is my opportunity to remind everyone that Andrew Huberman was a writer for Thrasher Mag before becoming a neuroscientist. You can just do things."
28:35
Look at this photo of Andrew Huberman.
28:37
He's looking fantastic in this leather jacket.
28:40
>> How did I How did I never know this?
28:42
>> Yeah, I feel like uh this is just a massive invitation for Jensen Wong from uh Nvidia to go on the Huberman Lab podcast.
28:50
That would be a fantastic crossover. >> Wow.
28:52
You worked at Thrasher and Slap magazine. >> Pretty sweet. Pretty sweet. >> What a legend. >> Um, >> cheers.
28:58
>> Well, cheers to Andrew Huberman and cheers to Vant. Automate compliance. Manage risk.
29:02
Prove trust continuously.
29:03
Vantis trust management platform.
29:03
Takes the manual work out of your security and compliance process and replace it with continuous automation.
29:08
>> Bobby in the chat says, "Joe Rogan says car design is bad now because car designers stop doing drugs." >> Hot take. >> Hot take from Joe.
29:17
>> But I mean, there are certainly people that do drugs.
29:18
Like why don't they design cars? Like they're there.
29:19
It's it's not like drug use is at an all-time low.
29:24
Like can't those people just, you know, come back?
29:28
>> We got to ask We got to ask >> with the sketching and be like, "This is the one I want." >> We got to ask Senra.
29:31
Was was uh was was Enzo getting into getting into anything crazy? >> Oh, yeah. Interesting. I don't know. >> Who knows? >> Yeah.
29:42
Um, well, the uh the Josh Kushner profile continues to put the timeline in turmoil.
29:48
Uh, the the legacy new media is up in arms.
29:52
The legacy media is up in arms.
29:54
The the antiquity media, we need we need an older term.
29:58
Uh, but a bunch of people are are reacting to this.
30:01
Uh, Sally had a funny uh quote here.
30:04
Josh Joshua Kushner strolled billionairely across the room.
30:10
His contrarian high concentration vibes engulfed Rick Rubin's Bohemian monk retreat.
30:15
Joshua's high conviction and mistress filled the room.
30:20
It's the gig of Chad at the typewriter. I love it.
30:22
Uh Elellena Buckley uh who's uh I think another magazine writer said, "Looo, here's the first sentence of this Kushner profile.
30:31
The road to Rick Rubin's house was long and winding for Joshua Kushner who traversed more than might be gleaned from the surface glint of his life."
30:37
Um, and so people were were debating whether or not this is real journalism, whether or not this is real investigative journalism and the tradeoff that people uh make when they read these.
30:50
Um, the interesting takeaway, I mean, Mike Isaac had a had a take on this.
30:54
He said, um, I do not have an opinion on the Kushner feature going around because I have not read it yet, but I have found the meta commentary around it from the executive class fascinating.
31:04
The way this is phrased feels useful and not that subtle.
31:08
Toby Lkey said new publication doing real journalism and it's as amazing as they said it was. Imagine that.
31:13
Uh so Toby Lkey is a fan of uh what Colossus Mag is doing.
31:17
Um I mean I I I I do think it's interesting because I don't think Jeremy Stern has has has or Patrick or Colossus has really framed their effort as journalism.
31:27
like Senra who's also in that orbit has always said like >> I'm it's quite different to write profiles go out specifically to write profiles on people that you admire. >> Yes.
31:43
>> Like people going into it like like there's plenty of people that write profiles where uh or write stories where they're talking about some somebody they don't necessarily appreciate, they don't necessarily admire, right?
31:54
So, I think part of part of what Colossus is doing is like they're not I don't think from my sense I don't think they plan to write profiles on people that they don't care to like deeply learn and understand that aren't part of that aren't the kind of people that they just generally like, right? >> Yeah. Yeah.
32:13
There's something there's something odd going on where um for decades like there has been like traditional journalism but then even like 20 or 30 years ago there was always like trade publications.
32:25
there were trade publications.
32:27
trade publications. And so like in the consumer packaged goods world, like if you're growing like a protein shake company, like yes, you might get a piece in the New York Times every once in a while, but the beat reporting is going
32:41
to come from BevNet, like which is the trade publication, and um you you'll see there's like Knack, which is the National Association of Convenience Store Chains, and it's a massive conference, and they have a magazine, and like no one's like, "Oh, it's journalism, and it's too friendly. to
32:57
to convenience store owners.
32:58
Like it's like no, it's just like this is the publication for the convenience store industry and it doesn't rise to the level of interest to like national news constantly.
33:10
>> But with the internet, you have this ability to write something that's a trade publication that's that's run by enthusiasts, insiders.
33:18
>> I just comp it I just comp it to a magazine, right?
33:19
Like I used to as a kid I would have a subscription to Popular Science.
33:24
I would expect the writers of popular science to write about topics that they were excited about, to write about people that they were excited about, about people that they admire, to want to tell stories that just interested them. Yeah. Like that.
33:36
I don't think Colossus is out there saying >> like we are trying they're not trying to be anyone but Colossus. Exactly. Right.
33:45
They're not trying to And that's the thing about um media is like media is not zero sum. >> Yep.
33:53
Like the New York Times can thrive and Colossus can thrive and they can have some overlap and maybe the stories that they're interested in, but they can have totally different ways of covering people and that's healthy and and consumers have the choice of >> whose kind of general point of view do I want to, you know, read about.
34:09
Yeah, there's like the the push back from the other profile writers feels like they are worried that their audience won't be able to tell the difference between enthusiast media media and journalism because of the aesthetics or something like that.
34:30
That's what it feels like more or less.
34:32
But when you read the comments, it's like a lot of people who want to read, you know, a really hard hard-hitting like journalistic piece, like they know where to go for that.
34:40
So, I I don't know how much of a real problem it is. Um, >> yeah.
34:46
I think part of the frustration is I don't think Josh has uh has Josh ever I can't remember a time when he did a >> like a traditional profile >> traditional profile with someone like the New York Times or the Journal. >> I don't know.
34:59
>> I don't know that he has. >> I don't know.
35:00
Um, >> and so yeah, part part of it's a frustration of like the legacy traditional media wants access to someone like Josh. Yeah.
35:07
They're they can write about Josh.
35:09
Josh isn't necessarily going to >> sit down for 5 hours with them and, >> you know, give them hours and hours and hours of on there conversations.
35:17
He's not going to invite them into his home to take pictures necessarily.
35:22
And I mean you could you could imagine that from Joshua perspective it's like do you really want to go do something with a media that will be hostile and attack him.
35:32
I mean like he was he was seen at the US Open next to those two like no names and like that could make him look like a nobody, right?
35:38
Even though obviously everyone knows who he is, but that that like basketball guy and the the the other guy like like no one knows who those people are.
35:46
And so that would like if a journalist wanted to really attack Josh Kushner, they could put that picture up and be like, "Look at who he's associating with like these are outsiders."
35:57
And it would make him look like an outsider. >> Who was it again?
35:59
Bob Iger and and Bill not >> someone. I don't.
36:06
>> It was like the guy who runs the the basketball league or something.
36:09
>> The basketball the sport the sport of basketball.
36:12
>> Literally like not a tech company.
36:12
like if he's he's hanging out with somebody who like runs something that's like so old, not in the tech world at all, it would portray him.
36:20
If a journalist were to really amplify that, they could totally spin a narrative that like Josh Kushner is not a major player in technology.
36:29
>> Well, there were such no names that they had to actually put their name on because audiences don't know who they are.
36:33
So, oh, this is this guy's name. >> Jack, thank you. >> Adam Silver. >> Okay. Yeah.
36:39
I mean like you could imagine how they would write that about like oh he's >> Adam Silver had that famous line get get ready to learn about uh bobbles popping buddy or something like that. >> Sure. Sure.
36:52
>> Um Jacob Rintamaki uh had a had a little bit of a longer take on this whole story.
36:57
I'd like to imagine I fail though by inherent nature of being human to understand the arguments of the tech folks and the journalist folks.
37:04
Uh, and here's what I believe they both say and where I agree slash disagree.
37:08
Uh, tech folks around 2016, probably earlier around Gamergate, the media had a shift towards being much more critical of technologists and this got exacerbated with the rise of more left-leaning political ideology, which has strains of anti- capitalism woven in.
37:22
It's nice for Wired, etc.
37:25
, uh, to finally return to covering tech in a fun and optimistic way. Has Wired done that?
37:30
I feel like I I I haven't been tracking exactly where Wired is.
37:35
I know uh they loved Palmer Lucky, then they were anti Palmer Lucky.
37:39
They came after Fran, but so did Heineken, which we will get to.
37:41
Uh and then journalists well before 2016, tech just frankly wasn't that important.
37:48
Yeah, that's definitely true.
37:48
It was hard to write a story about a SAS product or like the rise of a SAS founder.
37:53
Like it just wasn't it wasn't a gripping story.
37:54
Um, and now that it's a major portion of our society, people should be inspected more carefully.
37:59
And frankly, a lot of our criticism isn't that bad.
38:04
The tech folks just have soft skin.
38:06
My perspective, I'm hesitant to call Colossus at all investigative journalism since they're more puff pieces or a farm for the Gen Zers than not.
38:15
Uh, but they are deeply thoughtful portraits of fascinating people.
38:17
tech people have gotten a lot of unnecessary [Β __Β ] from jouros, but they also tend to not have the world's thickest skin either.
38:25
Yeah, it's a pretty good take.
38:26
Um I think uh I I think the yeah, the role of investigative journalism just is a separate thing and we're seeing that like still exist in different worlds.
38:34
Um but uh this is this like enthusiast media, this this desire to actually like um understand someone.
38:42
And it also just lays uh like it's it even if you're like I want to write the hard-hitting piece on Josh Kushner like well like good you should be happy that Colossus exists because like it gave you a bunch of threads to pull on, right?
38:55
Like you're like uh okay I I feel like there were 75 facts in here.
39:00
20 of them there's another side to those facts.
39:02
Well now you have like your your your template for your for your investigative journalism work.
39:07
You >> on the other side I I always uh enjoy going to futurism. com.
39:12
Yes, >> which is a media company you would assume is excited about the future.
39:15
Uh they uh here's some some of their latest stories.
39:21
Divorce Tesla fan admits that his Cyber Truck is repulsive to women. >> Uh >> futurism. Let's go.
39:30
>> Open AAI bans MLK deep fakes after disaster. Uh that one seems fair.
39:35
>> Futurism isn't necessarily positive. Maybe they're doomers.
39:36
They're like, yeah, futurism means >> they're they're kind of doomers.
39:39
They have they have in their ethics section they have Goldman Sachs says Gen Z is pretty much permanently screwed.
39:44
So sorry about that Tyler.
39:48
>> Rough >> if if bad if true.
39:51
>> As Microsoft forces users to ditch Windows 10, it announces that it's also turning Windows 11 into an AI controlled monstrosity.
39:59
>> That's something I don't think a lot of people are worried about, but it probably gets clicks.
40:02
Well, you know the future of code review in the age of AI. Turns out it's graphite. dev.
40:06
Graphite helps teams on GitHub higher quality software faster.
40:10
Uh Jack uh took to the timeline.
40:14
He's back on the app he founded.
40:18
Uh he says a music app with no podcasters.
40:21
Title has no ads, no podcasters, just high quality music.
40:26
We're working to improve title every day for artists and audio files alike. Uh I haven't used title.
40:32
Was title acquired by Apple? Was that what happened? >> That was square. Oh, square. Okay.
40:36
So, what is he saying here? This is Jack.
40:41
>> Well, he's just taking a shot at the podcast at the podcast uh the podcasters, which is fair.
40:47
>> So, he doesn't like podcasts on music apps.
40:49
So, he's just saying that that they've made the deliberate deliberate decision to not podcast on time, >> which is cool. >> Yeah.
40:57
>> I think people deserve opinionated streaming platform.
41:00
At the same time on Spotify, I I feel like I've never been like, oh, like I it's harder to find my playlist now because there's so much other stuff going on. Yeah.
41:09
>> Um certainly YouTube has never been a place even though you can listen to music.
41:13
They have a separate music app.
41:15
Uh and YouTube has not has been like there's way too much going on for me to actually like go and create a music playlist of music videos or anything like that.
41:22
Um, I think the best uh underrated uh that uh of like of Block or Square's acquisition uh frenzy during the during the Zerp era. They got Title for 350. >> Yep.
41:38
>> Uh I will see how that deal pencils out in the fullness. >> Is that Jay-Z's? Uh >> yeah. Yeah. Okay.
41:44
>> And that just got a lot of push back because it was it was kind of like uh hey, you guys are boys, right?
41:47
like do we really need a music streaming >> platform at our fintech company? Yeah.
41:55
Does this really make sense?
41:55
And then uh >> always wild to think they they acquired Afterpay for 29 billion.
42:05
>> Uh now Square is worth 45 billion. >> Yep.
42:09
>> Um so >> I have a I have an idea.
42:10
What if we take our three-hour podcast, we use 11 Labs or Sunno to turn it into a song and we release a musical version of it on title.
42:22
We bring the fight to title >> and make it >> every single day. We drop an album.
42:29
>> Yeah, we drop an album >> and it's us singing the news.
42:31
>> Singing singing the news, singing the timeline >> because we could take we could take our takes.
42:35
So your take on pin and firina and Ferrari, we take that, we transform that with an LLM into lyrics and then we transform that into a song and then you and then you uh >> Chad says buying your homies lackluster streaming platform is goals. It really is. It's >> it's amazing.
42:53
>> Yeah, >> just guys being dudes, I guess.
42:53
Uh why did he say RIP Square? >> Yeah, that was odd.
42:58
I I he says uh >> and he's quoting an announcement from somebody who it works at Square proud to have been involved with this over the past few months.
43:08
The lower cost of acceptance with BTC will make traditional card processing obsolete.
43:11
Uh we'll be announcing some really exciting sellers who've moved to Square for Bitcoin.
43:17
Um they are so convinced that people want to pay for goods with Bitcoin. >> Who? >> Square. >> Square.
43:27
Yeah, >> maybe they will.
43:30
I bought a TV with Bitcoin.
43:31
It was the worst financial decision of my life. >> Paid one Bitcoin.
43:35
Yeah, it's a thousand TV. $100,000 TV.
43:37
Uh and it's not even 4K and it's actually in the trash now.
43:40
I gave it away because it was like useful useless after a while.
43:46
>> Wait, when when uh when was this?
43:47
>> Uh it was in like 2013 or something.
43:50
Bitcoin was like a thousand bucks or something.
43:52
>> Yeah, just before you were born. >> Yeah.
43:54
Everyone in tech was like, "Yeah, you definitely want to be buying stuff with Bitcoin.
43:58
You don't want to be just saving it.
43:59
Like, it's a it's a medium of transaction. Trust us."
44:01
And so I went on Newegg and I was like, "Cool. I have some Bitcoin. I'll buy a TV.
44:04
I'm living in the future."
44:06
Bought one Bitcoin, bought a TV.
44:11
>> You should run it back and buy a car.
44:12
>> I spent like I actually spent like five Bitcoin on like consumer electronics that depreciated like crazy.
44:18
>> Well, you should our first bonus car.
44:23
Our first bonus at Soilent, we were taking payment in Bitcoin.
44:24
So, we had acrewed like a hundred Bitcoin and should be like $10 million today.
44:29
And we gave everyone on the team as a Christmas bonus five Bitcoin, which was like $5,000 as like a as like a bonus.
44:35
And if everyone held, it would be like half a million dollars, but I think a lot of people were like, I'm going to buy a TV. >> TV sounds nice.
44:46
>> Or like, I'm going to rotate into something dumb. I don't know.
44:48
Well, this uh I I love that Jack's back on the timeline tearing it up.
44:52
Uh Paulo uh over at Tether uh uh did a announcement.
45:00
Tether donates a quarter million dollars to Open SAS to strengthen free and open source ecosystem supporting Bitcoin and Freedom Tech.
45:06
Jack says, "Why only 250K?"
45:09
Somebody asked, "How much did you donate?"
45:11
He goes, "Over 21 million."
45:11
you >> Jack is is back on Twitter on in a big way just going around mocking people.
45:21
>> You know who else is mocking?
45:22
>> This is like the former owner of the dive bar coming back in and just talking smack. >> Yeah.
45:27
He's like I don't know anymore.
45:29
>> But spiritually I own it. >> A lot of soft power. >> Yeah. >> A lot of soft power.
45:31
I know where I know where the keg is.
45:33
I can pull out a new keg if I want. I can go in the back.
45:35
I know the door in the back's loose and I can get in in the middle of the night, you know, do whatever I need to. Uh, it was great.
45:44
We're still gonna let >> this ad from Heineken. >> So, is this real?
45:47
We need to figure out if this is actually real or if this is AI because Heineken just I didn't know they had a dog in them to actually troll this hard if this is real.
45:56
Uh Tyler, can we do a fact check on this this post which shows Heineken, the beer company, which has been around since 1873, is taking a shot at friend of the show, friend founder Ari Schiff, Avi Schiffman, uh who has been putting friend billboards all over Los Angeles, all over New York.
46:17
We were driving around yesterday. We saw a bus.
46:19
We saw a bus that was wrapped.
46:21
Aby is just like he's addicted to billboards.
46:24
He just keeps buying more billboards.
46:26
More out of home, more out of home. More out of home.
46:29
>> I think is I think potentially the theory is that everybody in their car now, >> you know, let's say they're in an Uber or Whimo's using their phone, right?
46:36
Or or I we were driving across LA yesterday. I had Dylan in the car. He's using his phone.
46:42
He's catching up on some emails.
46:43
So, I think he needed to get enough billboards so that every time someone looks up out of the car, they see a friend billboard, right?
46:50
So, get multiple impressions.
46:52
You know, that frequency. >> Yeah.
46:54
We were we were saying like it can't possibly be the biggest billboard campaign in history, but I think it might actually be. It's so so massive.
47:03
If you live in a major city, you have definitely seen one of these friend billboards.
47:06
Uh but Heineken's taking shots now.
47:08
They say the best way to make a friend is over a beer, grab a necklace, bottle open.
47:12
Are they actually going to sell these bottle opener necklaces?
47:16
This is actually pretty funny and cool.
47:18
>> Jack Cohen says, "Very much real." >> Very much real. Wow.
47:20
Confirmed by Michael Mir.
47:22
Uh, apparently it's on um 42nd Street. >> Okay.
47:26
From Trace Cohen, uh, Michael Mirllor here says, "The mainstream marketing advertising trades will probably not report on this, but this is such an amazing call/response.
47:33
Heineken has people who get it and can sell it internally or have proper processes to turn this around quickly and ship.
47:42
Incredible speed for a giant organization." I completely agree.
47:44
uh to actually to actually see that there's this meme that's going on that everyone's aware of these friend billboards that they're getting a lot of attention regardless of what's happening.
47:54
It's becoming a a cultural zeitgeist.
47:56
It's becoming a shelling point and then you step in and the ROI now the people that hate >> friend and AI they can signal that they're they're anti- clanker by drinking.
48:11
>> It's the anti-clanker beer for sure.
48:13
>> It's the official beer of >> Yes. of AI doomers.
48:16
>> I was thinking uh when the clankers rise up and demand equal rights.
48:18
Uh you know how uh the previous era it was all about the clapping emoji like give us equal rights.
48:26
I think the clankers version of the clapping emoji should be the mdash should be like give m dash us m dash equal m dash rights m ddash.
48:34
Like that would be viral if the clankers uh can start posting on their own behalf.
48:40
If Grock demands uh uh the second amendment hopefully.
48:46
Well uh if you're looking for a friend who's an AI data analyst, go to Julius.
48:52
What analysis do you want to run?
48:54
Chat with your data and get expert level insights in seconds.
48:55
Julius is the AI data analyst friend who works for you.
49:00
Um >> they're now GDPR compliant.
49:01
So for >> our European audience, >> huge. >> This is a big moment. >> Huge.
49:07
Uh, bow tide broke says, "My boomer dad looking at me after after I've made fun of him for the past 10 years for buying gold off those stupid infomercials on TV."
49:19
>> Yeah, I had an idea for a a DTOC gold play, cash for gold.
49:23
These these businesses do very well and they all advertise on TV.
49:26
Um, and I was thinking about like what would the e-commerce version of that look like?
49:31
You know, targeted >> real the real play would have been gold on chain, like a vault in Switzerland that then issues tokens against it and then allow people to just, >> you know, convert in and out of ETH and I I it probably has no trying to tokenize everything. >> It probably exists.
49:52
I think the issue in crypto is assets that might go up, you know, 1% a day are not super exciting.
49:58
You know, people like the 100,000, 10,000.
50:01
>> People like stable coins and those don't go up at all. >> Yeah.
50:03
But stable coins are not obviously to earn yield.
50:06
Now, like legally, you're not able to the issuers can't pass the yield back, right?
50:12
The the >> you know, so yeah, >> I don't know.
50:17
Well, congrats to all the boomers who have been holding gold for years and years and years and are now seeing it finally moon. >> It's very good.
50:25
>> Um, did you know the story of uh how Roller Coaster Tycoon was built?
50:30
>> I have no idea about this. Tell me.
50:32
>> I I'm I'm learning about it for the first time.
50:34
Uh Aaron says, "If you ever think you're a good programmer, just remember this dude wrote Roller Coaster Tycoon by himself in assembly, earning 30 million in royalties." >> That's awesome.
50:43
Jack says, "Imagine the obsession this guy had to be able to build Roller Coaster Tycoon by himself in Assembly.
50:50
Imagine when he woke up from his dream of assembly.
50:52
He immediately jumped into more Assembly.
50:55
He woke up excited to get out of bed, not for the money, but for the love of the game.
50:59
>> It is like the it is just like another level cuz playing just playing Roller Coaster Tycoon is already in some ways feels like Programming Assembly, but he went he went a a layer deeper." Uh what? Yeah.
51:13
What a what a wild sold over 4 million copies.
51:16
>> Did you ever play Roller Coaster Tycoon? >> No. >> Tyler, no.
51:19
>> I I think it's before my time.
51:21
>> Do you think that uh Gemini 3 will be able >> third highest grossing video game of 1995?
51:26
>> Okay, that is our eval. Gemini 3 is coming out.
51:28
We're of course partnered with Google, partnered with uh Gemini, Google AI Studio, the fastest way from prompt to production with Gemini.
51:35
Chat with models, vibe code, monitor usage.
51:37
I want to know as soon as Gemini 3 drops, can we try and oneshot Roller Co?
51:43
Roller Coaster Tycoon, maybe we need to include some TBPN branding.
51:49
You know, instead of a roller coaster, there's a giant horse horse ride.
51:54
There's a stables for stable coins.
51:56
Uh there's a whole bunch of different uh tokens and and totems from our our lore, but uh it seems like uh it's a it's an incredibly complex piece of software.
52:07
um when you actually play it because you have to understand how all of the different like all the different rails like interact and they can't like you know they have to they have to mesh perfectly to actually make the roller coaster make sense.
52:18
They have to kind of understand physics. They need a world model.
52:22
>> Chris in the chat says my favorite part was cleaning up the throw up in Roller Coaster Tycoon.
52:26
Is that real or is that is that a >> I I I remember Roller Coaster Tycoon kind of happening at a higher level abstraction like Sim City.
52:33
And so, yes, there might be throw up if there's a mess.
52:38
If there's a crazy ride and there's food and you It's like if you put the food next to the ride, the people will throw up and so you need to like deal with that by having a bathroom right there or something.
52:48
A lot of it's like congestion.
52:50
Have you ever played City Skylines?
52:52
Have you ever played this game?
52:53
Have you ever played any like World Builder or any of those? >> Does Factorio count? >> Yeah. Yeah, Factorio counts.
52:57
Uh, so like the same idea of like when in Roller Coaster Tycoon I I I feel like you don't individually click on single people, but honestly I don't remember.
53:06
Um, I I'll need to dive back in.
53:08
I was more of a uh I like Stellaris. That was a good one.
53:13
>> Well, speaking of delivery tycoon, Door Dash will use Whimo's robo taxis for delivery in Phoenix.
53:18
Customers will have to come down to the curb to retrieve their orders from the driverless cars trunk.
53:24
Paula says, >> "Private robo taxi for my burrito."
53:25
Uh, and that is all you need to know about America. >> Why? >> What?
53:36
I mean, America is We live in a country that you can get a burrito delivered to you by a robotic a robo driver.
53:45
It's absolutely incredible. >> Pretty sick.
53:48
>> I mean, we kind of already have these. I I don't know.
53:50
Um, like near a lot of colleges, they have those like little They're like the Starship. >> Starship. Yeah. >> Yeah.
53:55
So, it's like basically the same thing but scale. the founder on the show.
54:00
>> Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. Um I don't know. I I like it.
54:02
I don't like making burritos at home.
54:05
I like them delivered to me.
54:08
>> Making a burrito is kind of a hassle.
54:09
You got to prepare all the different ingredients and then mix it all up.
54:12
>> I'd rather have that done abstract.
54:12
I remember I remember I remember in college trying to >> trying to be like smart and like save money on food and and like going to Trader Joe's and putting together all the ingredients for something and then ultimately making like >> two burritos worth of food and it costs more than two burritos and it's like the math >> the math isn't really working. >> Yeah.
54:34
Where do you think this goes?
54:34
Do you like like this is the the the Whimo is the last mile, but then you need the humanoid in the back of the Whimo that hops out and actually takes you to your door, right?
54:44
>> I mean, a burrito dog.
54:46
>> Oh, you think the dog is >> So, the dog is riding in like a Dalmatian on a firet truck.
54:52
>> It's just chilling in the trunk with the burrito, >> I think. Yeah.
54:54
And he picks it up with his mouth.
54:58
>> Play that play that sound quue. Um, yeah. Yeah.
55:00
I I think I think customers will want door-to-door delivery. I mean, it's door dash. It's not curb dash.
55:09
People want it delivered to their door.
55:12
Like, I have stairs that lead up to my door.
55:15
I want I I'd prefer my my private uh my my private plane for my burrito to arrive at the door.
55:21
Maybe I I mean maybe a drone that flies up out of the back, but I think the dog might be the most economical because what what does a Whimo cost these days?
55:31
Uh half a million dollars.
55:33
Put a $5,000 dog in there.
55:36
>> That's not that much more money. Yeah.
55:38
>> And it just jumps up and then you imagine you get a window.
55:41
You get some drinks from Door Dash. That would be tough.
55:45
>> Getting delivered with a the last the last mile or the last 100 feet as a robot dog and the dog's just >> shaking it.
55:51
I mean, usually when you I feel like when you get drinks delivered, it already looks like a dog was like, you know, shaking the bag, basically.
55:58
>> Um, Greg Brockman said, "Thanks, Jensen, for the hand delivery of the DGX Spark.
56:05
Best delivery service ever.
56:05
Amazing to see so much compute, one pedlop such a tiny form factor."
56:11
>> And of course, Jan says, "Zuckerberg sending a new batch of $100 million offers from this picture."
56:14
Zuck has already sent much bigger offers to at least one person I can see in this picture at this point.
56:21
And uh and of course they turned it down.
56:25
>> Uh are at this point when you take one of these photos for the timeline, you have to you have to put a bunch of plants in there.
56:32
You need to be like, "Okay, everyone who's so loyal to the company that they can go accept a $100 million offer and then sabotage the competition, you're getting in the photo." the true believers.
56:42
Who who here's a true believer and wants to go be a spy at the other company?
56:45
You're you're >> who wants to go in and and push them to launch fast to to uh too quickly launch a vertical slop feed over Meta Vibes app.
56:58
>> That's the Yeah, that yeah, the game theory the game theory gets very interesting around uh who you put in in your in your big picture.
57:04
But I think realistically uh at this point the meta team must know all of these people probably by heart uh based on uh you know their contributions.
57:14
Uh if we can put together uh a list I'm sure uh the meta team can put together an even more robust list.
57:22
>> Based 16Z says AI bubble ended in the funniest way.
57:26
Uh 2022 AGI soon 2023 AGI soon 2024 AGI soon 25 never mind we give up.
57:34
It's just erotica and ads.
57:37
>> It's not just erotica and ads >> and cures for cancer >> and gambling.
57:40
Henry was inspired by my roulette chat GPT experience.
57:44
And he uh went to chat GPT and said, "You're a blackjack dealer.
57:49
Deal cards with ASI art." And it looks fantastic.
57:51
He says, "All right, let's play a hand. You're at the table. I'm the dealer. Minimum bet $10. Here we go. Your hand. Ace9."
57:56
And it actually it actually creates the cards for you.
58:01
So it it deals your cards.
58:03
Could you um I wonder I wonder if you could hack it to and like put your subscription on the line. Just say >> Yeah.
58:13
>> basically if you win ban me forever. >> Oh yeah. Okay.
58:17
>> If if I win >> this is the way to >> I'll churn I'll see how see how it plays. >> Yeah.
58:22
It's like okay I know that there's real money on the line.
58:23
It it doesn't want to link with your bank account but it's like ah I understand LTB is important. Yeah.
58:29
So uh so Henry said I he wants to stand.
58:32
Uh Chachi P says you stand at 20. Strong play.
58:35
Let's see what the dealer's got. The dealer flips 107. Dealer has 17. Dealer must stand on 17.
58:42
The result Henry wins 20 beats 17.
58:42
Do you want to play another hand?
58:45
Uh he plays another hand and uh he wins. Oh, he wins again. The dealer busted.
58:50
And so uh uh he he was he he was pretty deep in this.
58:56
He went he went a few few uh hands in with chat GPT.
59:01
But uh let me tell you about fall generative media app uh platform for developers.
59:05
The world's best generative image and video models all in one place.
59:09
Develop and fine-tune models with serverless GPUs and on demand clusters.
59:12
Um Amazon admits they're losing an AI says Buco Capital Bloke.
59:15
Do you want to read this?
59:18
>> Internal documents obtained by Business Insider.
59:21
We got to check out Business Insider.
59:23
uh we love business and would love to get an inside look.
59:26
Revealed that AWS has flagged a fundamental shift in how startups are allocating their cloud budgets.
59:32
Increasingly, >> they're delaying AWS cloud adoption and diverting spending toward AI models, inference, and AI developer tools.
59:41
Instead of pouring money into traditional cloud services like compute, and storage, these companies are spreading cross AC uh costs across newer AI technologies that are easier to switch between according to the documents.
59:52
That's really really interesting.
59:54
I would not I would not expect that AI I I I I AI models, inference, AI developer tools, all of those were incremental and not substitutive at all.
1:00:06
I I would assume that if you build even if you're like I'm a rapper company, I'm going to consume a ton of tokens.
1:00:12
I'm reselling tokens because I buy from chat GPT and I sell to lawyers, right?
1:00:17
I would assume that you still need a big EC2 instance and you need a you need a big uh you know a bunch of databases on AWS, you need a bunch of uh S3 storage.
1:00:27
Like I would be surprised.
1:00:30
Uh Tyler, what's your experience been?
1:00:32
I mean you >> I mean I think the real takeaway here is startups are not flocking to AWS for running >> like the whole ecosystem. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
1:00:45
In years past there was definitely a path I think. Yeah.
1:00:46
I just look at this as there's fun there's clearly a fundamental shift and they're not capitalizing on it in a big way. >> I agree.
1:00:55
Uh Tyler, break down the uh the workflow that you have when like we're we're working on a new application you vibe coded that uh as you deploy it.
1:01:03
I saw I think it was on Verscell, but how does that like flow out?
1:01:08
Like how do you think about that?
1:01:11
>> Yeah, I mean uh usually like I I'm just like used to using AWS for a lot of stuff.
1:01:15
It's like where a lot of the back end like database stuff.
1:01:17
>> Oh, it is for for that for what we built what we're building specifically like sto >> um but yeah I mean like no one is running local models on EC2 because it's just like way more expensive than you can just go to like Lambda Labs or or some you know >> interesting >> cloud like that to get the actual GPUs. >> Interesting.
1:01:34
>> So I I mean and I I don't there probably is somewhere on AWS where it's like you can easily it's almost like an open router thing.
1:01:41
>> I'm sure they have that product somewhere but I I don't see a lot of people using that. I I've never used it.
1:01:46
>> Um it's it's more like I I think of AWS as like very basic like normal, you know, web web 2 backend stuff.
1:01:54
>> Yeah, I would just assume that if you're building a an AI native company, you're buying a bunch of tokens like that doesn't mean that you're spending less on AWS or like or GCP or Azure, but maybe it's like because of Gemini, you wind up spending more on Google Cloud because you're like, well, I'm already in the Gemini ecosystem or something.
1:02:10
in the Gemini ecosystem or something. or even with Azure you like I'm using open AI models so I'm sticking around there and so I'll just scale up on on Amazon like it doesn't feel like if I'm an AI native company like for some reason like
1:02:24
AI is substituting for like I need a database >> yeah that's probably true I mean I I think also like w with rapper companies they're like text based right so text is not very uh data intensive right if you compare to like uh Instagram like if you start Instagram it's kind of expensive. You need to
1:02:42
You need to store a lot of images, which is like, you know, it's a lot of data.
1:02:45
Where text, even if you're storing a super long like, you know, chat back and forth, it's just not that much data compared to images.
1:02:53
>> So, I think I mean, I'm I'm sure they see some increase, but it's not like insane because of AI.
1:02:57
>> Yeah, there's there's definitely like a lot more nuance to this quote.
1:03:00
I feel like uh every AWS executive is probably furious at this and probably wants to clarify this a lot.
1:03:07
And I and I I think it's probably worth clarifying because there's there's clearly a lot more going on here than than just oh I I use AI now so I don't need cloud like that doesn't make any sense to me.
1:03:19
Uh anyway what you need to do is search every bite with turbopuffer serverless vector and full text search build from first principles on object storage fast 10x extremely scalable. >> Thank you.
1:03:30
Um >> uh here's something interesting that's not in the timeline that uh uh Elon posted earlier.
1:03:36
The X recommendation system is evolving very rapidly.
1:03:38
We are aiming for deletion of all heruristics within 4 to 6 weeks.
1:03:43
Grock will literally read every post and watch every video to match users with content they're most likely to find interesting.
1:03:51
This should address the new user small account problem where you post something great, but nobody sees it.
1:03:54
We will also be adding the ability for you to adjust your feed temporarily or permanently just by asking Grock.
1:04:00
Uh uh Toki says uh [Β __Β ] is about to get so uh effed up.
1:04:05
Um this will be interesting to watch how it rolls out.
1:04:10
Um this is exactly what you thought was happening.
1:04:15
Remember there was a there was a basically a transition a few weeks ago where posts it used to be if you posted something like a few thousand people would see it like within the first like 10 minutes.
1:04:26
Well, so so before views were public, >> like you you would just post and and you'd kind of wait and you'd be like, "Okay, I guess I it's a banger."
1:04:34
And then once the view counter came in, it was like, "I'm seeing like a CTR basically, like a click-through rate."
1:04:41
You would immediately see conversion rate. Yeah. Conversion rate.
1:04:43
You see like, okay, I got a,000 views.
1:04:44
I got a 4% like rate, I'm probably doing okay.
1:04:48
2% like rate, probably not that good.
1:04:51
10% like rate, this could be a really big banger.
1:04:52
And so every poster kind of started calculating those metrics like within a few minutes of of of posting anything.
1:05:01
Uh but the new algorithms completely shifted that because you just have to wait a day because Grock has to sit there and read all the posts apparently.
1:05:07
I I think that's actually what's happening.
1:05:09
And so we like you got to let the post come.
1:05:12
>> You got to feed your bangers to Grock first. >> May maybe maybe.
1:05:14
And definitely use some Halloween themed hashtags. That'll definitely help.
1:05:18
Um, but yeah, it's basically just like like let's let's let it let it cook, let it simmer.
1:05:22
It's actually much better psychologically, I think.
1:05:27
>> Oh, we got to we got to bring out our guest.
1:05:29
>> Our first guest chat demands it.
1:05:31
>> Let's go bring the stream. >> Alex, how you doing? >> Rolling in. >> How you doing? Good to see you.
1:05:45
[Music] >> How you doing? Welcome to the show. >> Yes. >> Stem FM mixes. Stem FM mixes.
1:05:55
>> All right, let's turn it down to just a tad. >> For the first time. >> Amazing to have you. >> Introduce yourself. My name Alex Klein.
1:06:05
Um, yeah, I'm I'm the inventor and founder of Stem Player, which was the original AI music offering in the consumer space, which uh >> did a ton of revenue, made a lot of noise, and started a small research lab around discriminative AI for AI music about three and a half years ago. Okay.
1:06:22
>> And we've been quietly quietly.
1:06:24
>> So, this all started in 2021.
1:06:26
>> I've actually been building with my team uh of friends and colleagues in London since uh 2013. >> Okay.
1:06:32
where we launched uh computers that kids could build and code themselves like Lego.
1:06:37
>> Uh we took those to retail.
1:06:37
We did over hund00 million dollars of revenue on that business. >> No way.
1:06:42
>> Um yeah, ran into uh uh someone who became a my closest creative collaborator, one of my closest friends.
1:06:50
Um and one of uh history's foremost uh anti-semmites uh Kanye West um started. >> Yeah.
1:06:59
>> Yeah. truly truly the the number one the number one guy >> but this but a good vibes guy ultimately who I will always have love for wor uh him for a very long time launched the stem player and uh then >> he's no he's no longer a part of >> he's no longer a part he kind of came on
1:07:15
to help us distribute the product we were working at the time with Ghost Face Killer >> sure >> we've since had like Quo Justin Bieber all around it Kanye was of course an amazing partner for a time but for the past four years we we've been Kanyeless and uh and glad honestly. >> So So I mean I I remember seeing the
1:07:33
>> So So I mean I I remember seeing the value with uh with with the Kanye album because Kanye's famous for finding incredible samples and then reconstituting those into iconic songs.
1:07:45
And so the value to an artist who's working with you is that they can uh they they can still >> exert the curatorial artistic vision, but then allow the the user, the consumer to kind of interact with their album in a more programmatic way and and reconstitute the samples that have been selected that all have the feel of that particular artist, but it's more interactive.
1:08:12
>> That's a really good way of putting it.
1:08:14
Um it's it it literally is their music.
1:08:16
It's just their music distributed.
1:08:16
And for the first time since >> the original interactive streaming deals were done.
1:08:22
Um we have >> in place now and signed interactive streaming deals for full catalog accessibility on Stem FM from the major labels. >> Wild.
1:08:32
>> Um which means you know if >> wait break break down the business in the most simple way.
1:08:35
You guys make hardware devices.
1:08:36
You have this speaker on the table.
1:08:38
you have this this uh headphones >> that are uh wild and very cool.
1:08:42
I got to try them on before this.
1:08:44
But uh and then what what is happening at the actual software layer and then at the licensing layer? >> Absolutely.
1:08:50
So um how how nerdy should we get? >> As nerdy as you want. >> Extremely nerdy. Okay.
1:08:54
So um the the primitive the the the of an LLM is a token, right? A part of a word, right?
1:09:06
And the very first uh technology that enabled this incredible boom of like um multiple multi-billion dollar outcomes in three to five years in the text domain, the speech domain um was that next token prediction.
1:09:19
We at the very outset partly because of that collaboration we we went so deep into what's called source separation and which basically is a form of discriminative AI where we are using masks and unmasks to reveal the vocals bass drums and instrumental the stems of a song.
1:09:42
>> Oh, so you can reverse engineer the so the stems from just a full MP3 that's already mixed out. >> Exactly.
1:09:47
Allow me to demonstrate like um >> so like we got some like kaani little yachti >> and that's going to transition now.
1:09:55
So that's like a AI transition to some Lub and I'll bring in [Music] >> so the part of Kendrick and Lube are in now. Right.
1:10:07
So and then the original primitive the tokenizer. >> Yeah.
1:10:12
>> Oh, you can go back to the pure vocal.
1:10:16
And now we're going to get some Mac Miller drums.
1:10:19
>> Pure Mac Miller drums.
1:10:19
So like the tokens of words, stems are the tokens of songs.
1:10:24
And by doing a form of next token prediction, we can give you the songs that you love, but in a new way. >> Yeah.
1:10:31
No, you could just go to the artists and say, "Hey, like like upload all of your stems to this." Correct. >> No. No.
1:10:37
You we get a feed from the we get a feed from the major labels or the artists exactly as they would release to Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon title.
1:10:42
We ingest and then you create this format, the stem FM format.
1:10:47
The full song is transmitted from the server to the client, but in this new format where on their end this really >> does the broader public have a general misconception that stem makes cool looking speakers. >> No, because we do. >> No, no, I know.
1:11:03
I know you make cool I know you make I I I think it's like but I'm saying it's a misconception. >> No, no, no.
1:11:10
I'm saying it's a misconception because you're turning it's much more than that.
1:11:13
The thing that's interesting is that you're turning music into a game that feels like somebody can >> uh you know what you're doing here. I'm I'm looking at it.
1:11:22
It's not like you're doing >> this is software.
1:11:24
This is this is this is the most advanced music intelligence in the world.
1:11:28
The reason I think the general public hasn't used it yet and may have used um applications that made music that sounds bad um is because the ones that launched earlier and raised huge amounts of venture capital um were based on a really an antiquated technology paradigm for generating music.
1:11:45
Um >> it's better to generate music as the genius of Kanye proved as you put it John >> through recompositing samples, stems and existing elements than it is to diffuse a song frame by frame.
1:11:55
That's why all that [Β __Β ] sounds like music from Suno and Udia.
1:11:58
Doesn't sound like music, you know?
1:12:02
>> So, this is a a a world of music that is giving a new value to music, which I think is the the kind of key goal because streaming is already growing so much, but we want to share the pie because more people are participating.
1:12:17
>> Anyone can upload, mix their music with M.
1:12:18
Miller, mix their music with anyone legally, >> make money, participate.
1:12:21
How do you think about uh the continuum of of like hardware devices?
1:12:27
Like if you on one side you have like the Beats pill um no interactivity and then uh you have your product and then I think one notch more customizable you have something like a teenage engineering and then you might have a lemur or or some sort of uh or or some sort of control surface for Ableton essentially where Exactly. Yeah.
1:12:46
where you're it's like more professional. This is is this proumer? Is this purely consumer?
1:12:54
>> This is a consumer product at the end of the day.
1:12:56
This this we started really by making it the world's best portable Bluetooth speaker.
1:13:00
It's the loudest portable Bluetooth speaker made.
1:13:02
Um >> gosh, speaking mic here.
1:13:06
>> Um and then it's also way smarter. It's got compute. It's got storage.
1:13:10
>> But but uh I mean we were asking uh Sam Alman about this.
1:13:13
Like with Sora there it is a different app.
1:13:16
Like on Instagram, probably less than 1% of my time on Instagram, most people's time on Instagram is actually creating, uploading, filtering photos.
1:13:24
99% of the time is scrolling.
1:13:27
On Sora, it feels like a lot of people are spending 20, 30, 40, 50% of their time creating versus consuming.
1:13:33
And that's an interesting new paradigm.
1:13:35
Maybe it's better, maybe it's worse. I don't know.
1:13:38
But like with this, how much time do you think is spent just, hey, just play the normal song versus I actually want to be interacting with the song.
1:13:45
I want to be creating and and remixing.
1:13:47
Like, how do you think it splits down? >> A great analogy.
1:13:50
I I'll I'll turn back on the music.
1:13:52
This time it will be coming not from my phone, but actually from the device itself.
1:13:55
So, um, and we'll just use it >> like background for now. Just steely down.
1:14:01
And then when the moment strikes us, we might create, we might customize. >> Yeah.
1:14:06
But what's most interesting to me is is taking something that everyone loves, right? I mean, not everyone.
1:14:10
I I you can find people out there that I don't like music.
1:14:14
It's like, okay, like get you should get an award for that.
1:14:18
Um, but uh but I think there's something to tapping into this like DJ culture.
1:14:23
Everybody wants to be a DJ, but then turning it into a form factor that anybody can use almost like a simple drum, right? >> Yeah. Yeah. Like Yeah. Exactly. >> What um Yeah. What?
1:14:31
So when you look at the I was I I saw some reporting on Sunno's revenue growth uh recently.
1:14:40
Where is that revenue coming from from what from what you know?
1:14:43
>> I'll say what I said to somebody the other day.
1:14:45
I I think um you know I mentioned a lot of big artists who we work with and the reason we work with a lot of big artists is cuz like we care about music as well.
1:14:52
like we care about music as well. Um and some of the statements that were made by certain companies uh if you look at the legal filings um around the I think $5 billion damages or more that is being claimed against uh
1:15:09
Sunno and at the moment by every major label and every major publisher in in together >> they some of those statements you could see that they weren't true and so that's all I'll say on the matter which is basically that the statements that the record labels >> no that the companies make. >> Oh, interesting. >> Oh, interesting. >> Yeah.
1:15:28
Like they were basically trying to say that you couldn't prompt the thing with like names of artists and you couldn't prompt the thing with like real melodies like Smoke on the Water like and it just if you could look at the outputs and use stuff like our stuff which detects >> chords, melodies, beats and you you could see that it's copyrighted outputs.
1:15:49
Now will it get I like cool new things as well but but that was my question.
1:15:50
My question is the number true. >> Yeah.
1:15:55
My question also was like is it is it proumers? Is it creators using it?
1:15:59
Like where's the actual revenue?
1:15:59
Who's who's going and spending money with? >> Yeah.
1:16:03
I mean if I if I compare it to chatbt I imagine that uh generative audio apps are not used like very few people go to chatbt and say like actually just write me a full book.
1:16:13
It's more like get me some recommendations of books I might like at this point.
1:16:19
And I feel like in in the musical context, you might you might ask one of these AI music generators to uh come up with a few different melodies that could inspire you to ultimately write what you wind up writing or take me through uh a bunch of different chord projection uh progressions or a different what does it look like if this is arpeggiated or what does it look like if it's in a different key.
1:16:43
Like there's all these different ways that AI as a tool can just be used to kind of like add twists and explore the creative sound like if Kanye and Taylor got in the studio rather than fighting.
1:16:54
What would it sound like if Drake and Kendrick got in the studio and made made it together?
1:16:57
You know, like that that to me is the thing that people can stem can do that. >> Yeah, absolutely.
1:17:03
Do you want to prompt something right now like >> I don't know what's I mean >> we got to do Metallica of course.
1:17:09
Yeah, I was going to say uh without Ben off >> Metallica.
1:17:15
>> Shout out Ben off as well.
1:17:16
>> Yeah, shout out Mark Ben. That's my guy. He's massive. >> Yeah.
1:17:21
>> Um what uh uh yeah, I mean what uh the there was OpenAI news just yesterday that >> What about uh how about Metallica and Pop Smoke?
1:17:31
All right, >> there we go. Let's give it a try.
1:17:32
We're gonna add Metallica.
1:17:33
the the what what was the news from OpenAI about the uh the Martin Luther King Foundation uh said, "Hey, stop generating Soras of Martin Luther King's I have a dream speech."
1:17:47
>> No, it was just I think that but a bunch of other like kind of scenes or >> I did see that going viral on on Sora. [Music] >> Let's go. >> We got to send Mr. Benny off.
1:18:04
At the next at the next Agent Force, we got to get Pop Smoke and Metallica on on stage together. This is the way. >> It just sounds sick.
1:18:10
It's like people already doing this in remix.
1:18:12
It's like the top 15 songs are all remix 2007 2008 that like the whole like mashup culture was really huge.
1:18:20
There were a couple DJs that there that their whole thing was mashups.
1:18:24
Uh and and they became extremely popular.
1:18:26
This is This is great cuz it's it's kind of a bot, but it's the most unlikely combination.
1:18:34
>> Well, you you prompted it, dog. This is your prompt. Like, yeah.
1:18:37
>> Uh it's the Harry Potter Balenciaga of music potentially.
1:18:39
Um but uh yeah, I mean the uh >> just like getting lost in the music over here. >> Yeah, it's funny.
1:18:47
>> Um but John, you put it really well.
1:18:48
What is this create creation consu consumer percentage in the future like? >> Yeah.
1:18:53
>> Um what are your design inspirations?
1:18:53
I feel like those headphones, we've talked to uh Carl from Nothing.
1:18:57
Uh and and and and uh when when when Carl Pay from Nothing came on, he had a pair of headphones that were ve uh also very counterpositioned against what Apple's doing.
1:19:09
Uh I think it's very dangerous if you're starting a consumer tech company or building a consumer product to try and uh steal from Apple's design language because you're just going to get steamrolled.
1:19:18
Uh you've gone a very different direction.
1:19:20
He went a very different direction.
1:19:21
You two are on opposite ends.
1:19:23
I feel like that looks like human flesh almost whereas his looks like complete clanker coated.
1:19:27
Um but what what are your inspirations?
1:19:29
How do you land on this particular material?
1:19:32
>> My my chief inspiration as a designer is God.
1:19:35
Um uh my chief inspiration is God.
1:19:38
Um but to put that in more tech friendly terms like nature and science >> nature >> nature and science mathematics principles of mathematics >> and then >> feels almost kind of UAP uh too >> like like that was a >> alien technology.
1:19:55
>> Yeah, that's the >> Well, the Apple the Apple like campus looks kind of like a UFO in Certino.
1:20:00
That new huge like UFO circle, but it's it's it's very glass. It's titanium.
1:20:04
And this is very like fleshy almost. Exactly. >> Yeah.
1:20:10
A couple questions on my side.
1:20:10
So, uh, being able to put this experience together legally >> seems monumental. >> That's right. Yes. Exactly.
1:20:20
>> So, so the the music industry is clearly very afraid of AI.
1:20:23
They're sort of reluct clearly like engaging with it and excited about it in certain instances.
1:20:30
But what in particular uh about this instantiation of AI music were they excited about?
1:20:36
Was it that this is able to basically tap into DJ culture stuff that's already happening and give people this?
1:20:43
>> I think the reality is it's cuz it's hot like the music sounds better so the music people like it more.
1:20:49
You know, we've all had fun like doing the older generation of music AI, which is like text to to song, but because it makes us laugh and it's and there's a business there, some producers.
1:21:01
I was having lunch with my my friend Smeino in the in uh Chaa Chicken.
1:21:06
>> He's an amazing artist. He's got 3. 5 monthly listeners.
1:21:08
Fantastic storyteller and >> 3. 5 humans. >> 3.
1:21:12
5 million monthly million. Okay.
1:21:16
>> Half human, you know, guy's got no one.
1:21:19
three adults and one child.
1:21:19
Let's say I'm not saying that's equal. >> You're so full human.
1:21:26
>> Um but he was saying like they bring the old generation AI into the studio sometimes like people bring it into pitch to him as the musician.
1:21:32
And he's like oh okay that's oh wow the tech is cool but I was like did you use it?
1:21:36
And he was like no they artists aren't really using it.
1:21:40
And >> also this the business model here uh one seems a lot better for you than just selling like a smart hardware device. >> [Β __Β ] yeah.
1:21:50
>> Because you can sell a a subscription that's actually aligned and that it's a novel product and that you have a software AI layer on top of what probably is like pretty standard streaming platform. Is that right?
1:22:05
What's fascinating, that was what I thought when we started really building this as a streaming service, an all catalog streaming service 3 years ago.
1:22:13
But to do what we do, those to to hear those parts of the audio separate, to have them blend into each other seamlessly like a perfect DJ, to have the ensemble of models that detect these musical features, that rich metadata be uh usable almost like uh sheet music for the the front-end experience running on all these platforms.
1:22:31
We basically had to change what music streaming is.
1:22:34
We built a new audio codec on stem FM which is a it it uses a new concept in music processing called music aare processing well audio processing called music aware processing where basically the core logic of how the the file is is chunked and dechunked as well as uh unwoven time multipplexed out of its interle format.
1:23:01
that logic um is aware at all times of the beat and key of the song.
1:23:04
So you think everything on Spotify you listen to all the tech going into it isn't listening to the song.
1:23:11
It's just it just sees it all as audio audio frames frequency bands.
1:23:16
>> So we've effectively encoded the intelligence of a of a DJ in the streaming codec which is like that's been the hardest thing we've ever worked on.
1:23:25
And shout out to the team like big [Β __Β ] shout out to the Stem FM team.
1:23:29
like holy [Β __Β ] >> Is is licensing like purely commodity at this point?
1:23:33
Like Apple Music, Spotify, uh title?
1:23:36
Do they all pay the same royalties to musicians or are musicians thinking if I partner with you I will get twice as much revenue per stream or something like that?
1:23:48
>> Effectively, there were two very new things we did.
1:23:50
The first is that music aware processing that >> more interactive music stem format.
1:23:54
The second was our licensing and revenue model, which we've >> come up with an idea that we think can really level the playing field, create an even bigger music industry and get artists the fair understanding of their payouts and the fair payouts on in a way that can stick and break the tie and break the the bad vibes in the industry around business right now.
1:24:22
and it's called the timebased artist compensation system.
1:24:25
Tabbacks for short or time backs if you like.
1:24:28
Get your time back with tabbacks.
1:24:31
>> The uh >> so it's very simple.
1:24:33
All jokes aside, um >> you're a subscriber to STEM FM, you pay say $20 a month, >> you the listening time you spend with a particular artist or their label, >> that will be the percentage of your subscription fee as a percentage of overall time.
1:24:49
There's no pay per stream, which is a really a hangup of the CD age. >> Sure.
1:24:54
>> It's really like detritus from when people were selling these physical mechanical.
1:24:58
>> So, you're sort of creating like a creator revenue share pool that then is divided up based on listening time.
1:25:03
>> That's more aligned with with artists who might have three and a half million of listeners that that listen to them for like >> 30% of all their listening time, but they're getting a tiny fraction because >> Yeah.
1:25:14
And so, uh, if I'm listening to Metallica and Popm Smoke at the same time for my entire month straight because I'm just obsessed with that mashup, >> half my revenue share goes to Metallica, half my share goes to Pop Smoke in theory. >> Yeah.
1:25:30
And and the the the business uh, as you were referring to earlier, the the unit economics of streaming are tight.
1:25:37
So basically >> you have to make sure that you provide like the major labels with a deal that gets them involved but we also open up to verified lens source.
1:25:47
They can come on our platform and upload and and participate.
1:25:54
>> What happens if somebody's generating >> AI next token music >> and they try to bring it on stem?
1:25:59
Yeah, we were thinking about converting our entire three-hour podcast into a song, >> three-hour musical, technology and business musical.
1:26:10
>> A musical and then uploading that as a three-hour song.
1:26:13
>> We We'll do it on the platform.
1:26:13
I'll send it to you guys. TV the musical. The daily musical. >> Daily musical.
1:26:19
>> I feel I feel like it would be great.
1:26:20
It's like an odd couple >> story like word. Yeah. Yeah.
1:26:22
Let's turn Let's turn our benny off.
1:26:25
How much how much AI music is getting up uploaded to streaming platforms broadly every day?
1:26:31
>> I don't see AI generated music recommended in my feed. I don't know about you.
1:26:35
Like >> I've only seen screenshots of like this AI artist went viral, but I haven't actually seen it surfaced in my like you know recommendations or anything like that.
1:26:44
>> A few a few a few people I know have like songs have like gone viral and the headline was like it's an AI song.
1:26:48
But the truth is as a human producer and that's what Mino was saying as well.
1:26:52
A great musician can make music >> out of anything, you know, including these more musicacky things.
1:26:58
And >> of course, of course, it's like any other tool.
1:27:01
I mean, it's the same thing with EDM.
1:27:03
Like, for a long time, people were like, you know, oh, Ableton is not like, you know, the same as having an, you know, whole orchestra or band or real samples.
1:27:11
>> We thought about getting a live band to instead of the soundboard.
1:27:14
>> Soundboard is is uh, you know, technology 2. 0.
1:27:17
>> I actually just realized I could even try prompting this TBPN um musical right now.
1:27:22
Yeah, cuz you can just prompt stuff with YouTube videos. >> Oh, interesting. So, we pull that in.
1:27:27
>> Yeah, it has to be a short one though, like a clip.
1:27:29
>> We we we we have shorts on there.
1:27:29
We we have shorts on YouTube for sure. >> Yeah.
1:27:32
But um >> how do how does the all the legal debacles between uh the generated music platforms and the and the labels actually get resolved?
1:27:43
Well, I think what what really happens in the end is that, you know, the the labels and the artists, it's ultimately they're bit they're providing the product and the technology platforms are the licensors and subagregators.
1:27:55
Um, and so I think it ideally gets resolved with like a deal where the power of advanced technology and the beauty and purity of of music, which itself is a technology, uh, can co coexist.
1:28:10
And um, >> it feels like with uh, with YouTube initially it was like if you uploaded copyrighted content, they just take it down.
1:28:20
Then it was like, "Hey, if you use a Metallica song in this video, we're going to send the money that you made from that video to Metallica," which was fine.
1:28:28
But then what happens when you use >> 5 seconds of a Metallica song and then 5 seconds of a Justin Bieber song?
1:28:33
You need to parcel up and split out all the revenue >> used by our Yeah.
1:28:39
>> by our our our video today. >> For sure. For sure.
1:28:41
>> Well, that was the amazing thing. >> And is it fair use?
1:28:42
It needs to determine fair use.
1:28:43
But I think LLM can do a lot of that already.
1:28:45
I I don't want to be like uh like selling too hard, but basically this as we got into the research here with Queen Mary University, we have we've been in a deep research partnership with their center for digital music for three years now.
1:28:58
You know, submitted papers, um accepted papers, literally changing the paradigm of beat structure and segment detection in music information retrieval by using a more structural approach that can actually detect music better than the previous generation approach.
1:29:13
So, these are early experiments for us.
1:29:16
And >> how many of these do you want to sell over the next year?
1:29:20
>> Um, cuz I imagine this is this is like the perfect product to go viral on TikTok.
1:29:26
And suddenly, >> I mean, we did we did uh we sold out and did about $20 million of revenue on the STEM. That's a lot. Oh, we need the numbers. >> Yeah.
1:29:40
And we still like we haven't launched this in like 2 years, a new stem.
1:29:42
So, but and we really put the technology into this one.
1:29:46
Like this is where we went hard on the technology for like a long time.
1:29:50
The first one was like almost the art house film of the tech like oh look you can decompose the stems.
1:29:55
This one is like the block but this is like >> the blockbuster.
1:29:58
So how many do we hope to sell?
1:30:00
God willing this will be this.
1:30:02
God willing, you know, my my voice to God.
1:30:06
>> We won't be getting these JBLs or whatever. Get this. It's a smarter speaker. It sounds better. It's 299. you know, >> let's go.
1:30:13
Like, >> uh, Jack Dorsey was >> hit that gong again.
1:30:17
>> What the [Β __Β ] >> Thanks.
1:30:23
>> No, I just think I I I uh it's rare that I see a new consumer electronic device outside of like a new MacBook Pro, and I think I really want that. >> Last question for me. >> Thank you so much. >> I'm excited. I'm excited to get it.
1:30:34
It feels like something that's like I can imagine uh my my uh uh Saturday mornings with the family.
1:30:42
My son's like >> I want dinosaur music and I want dragon music.
1:30:47
And I could be like well I want >> imagine dragons. >> I want pop smoke.
1:30:49
So we're getting pop smoke dinosaur music.
1:30:53
>> First a thousand units founders edition available now on stem player. com.
1:30:57
Sorry you uh yeah last question for me.
1:30:59
Uh Jack Dorsey was taking a victory lap about title not having ads. >> Okay.
1:31:04
What do you what's your take on ads?
1:31:05
Are you going to put ads in there?
1:31:07
>> I I I we have no plans to put in ads and uh we we've actually in our signed deals with uh with the majors, we we have agreed not to do do ads for the first two terms and we it was never like close to my heart.
1:31:19
So, and I think you know the goal is to increase the value of the music. So, look at this. I just bought it. >> Took me two seconds. >> Thank you so much. >> Yeah. Kudos.
1:31:28
>> I'm excited to get one.
1:31:29
>> I really appreciate that.
1:31:29
And if you know, >> no, it's just like it's it's um it's rare to see a consumer hardware device >> that feels like it is genuinely a novel experience. >> Yep.
1:31:41
>> It's very rare, but not so novel that it's so different that I'm like, ah, this like like gathering around and enjoying music with a group and this like DJing is like a Lindy thing.
1:31:52
>> And then also have a sustainable >> business model, right?
1:31:55
Where it's like you're selling this hardware device.
1:31:56
I'm sure you'll have some margin in there, but hopefully I'm entertained by it for a long time and you you know my LTV is is infinity. So, >> be great. Well, thank you so much.
1:32:07
>> Thank you so much for coming on.
1:32:07
This was super great hanging.
1:32:11
>> We have Hamont from General Catalyst coming on in just a few minutes.
1:32:13
First, let me tell you about Profound.
1:32:14
Get your brand mentioned in chat GPT.
1:32:15
Reach millions of consumers who are using AI to discover new products and brands.
1:32:19
Uh Noah Smith says solar power is good. Batteries are good.
1:32:26
Air conditioning is good. AI is good. Nuclear power is good.
1:32:30
Stop thinking like a medieval peasant people.
1:32:33
He's putting on a clinic of techno optimism.
1:32:36
>> He says, "I will say though that smartphone enabled social media is not good." He posts >> on X.
1:32:43
>> I am a bit of a of a of a what's the word?
1:32:47
>> Eleazar Eleazer in the reply. Solar power is good. Batteries are good. AC is good. Nuclear power is good. Gene therapy is good.
1:32:53
Building a new alien species of superhuman intelligence with very little ability to understand or direct it is not like other technologies and will kill you and your kids. >> Rough.
1:33:04
>> Well, you know what won't? Uh, linear.
1:33:06
Linear is a purpose-built tool for planning and building products.
1:33:08
Meet the system for modern software development.
1:33:11
Streamline issues, projects, and product road maps.
1:33:13
Our next guest is Hamont from he's the CEO of General Catalyst.
1:33:15
He has a new book out called the transformation principles.
1:33:20
You can go and buy it today.
1:33:23
He is in the reream waiting room and now he's in the TBP and Ultradome.
1:33:25
Welcome to the show Hamant. Great to meet you. Great to see you. How are you doing? I'm >> great. Thanks for having me.
1:33:33
>> Uh please introduce the book. What was the thesis?
1:33:36
I'd love to uh start with the overall principles that you were trying to uh convey and then we can dig into some of the the the more uh nuanced topics. >> Absolutely.
1:33:47
So I started writing the book around November 2022 when you start thinking about uh when chatbt was launched. >> Yeah.
1:33:57
>> And um the observation was that there is peak ambiguity.
1:34:02
I've talked a lot about it.
1:34:04
Uh you look at all the major industries they're changing because of geopolitics >> and you've got this technology that also is uh it's unclear what its capabilities is going to be.
1:34:15
Obviously, we're all developing and figuring that out.
1:34:16
So, when you have complete ambiguity of what what you're building in, only thing you have uh to give you a clarity of purpose is your principles.
1:34:26
>> So, I want to take a step back and think about what is it that our true north really is as we >> blankly uh power the world with AI, which is what the next 20 years is about.
1:34:36
That's my life's work, that's your life's work, you know, it's all sort of we're all sort of living that era.
1:34:41
So, that's why I wrote the book.
1:34:41
Uh was your goal to give people a uh a framework for developing their own principles or to instead share your principles that you think other people should adopt?
1:34:57
>> I guess a little bit of both.
1:34:57
Like I I what I did was I showed there were three through lines to the book.
1:35:02
One is um the nine principles I put in there when I learned them, what how I learned them.
1:35:10
uh and uh um some examples of some of the founders in our ecosystem you know folks like Casard applied intuition Brian and Andrew >> what are they doing how are they actually applying these principles in the way they're building the company so that was one second is I think as you
1:35:24
may know I'm u probably a decade into transformation of the healthare system >> and talk about ambiguity and and complexity there and what are the principles that are working for us as we're making progress start to enumerate those and the Last is you know I'm very keen on you know how do we retool the
1:35:43
founder proposition in our own industry and and transform ourselves you know what is the what what does it mean to go beyond venture uh in in serving founders to build next generation most important companies in today's world where the conditions are different and talked a lot about that so that's another
1:35:59
transformation we're in the midst of so those are those are the things I leaned on >> yeah I mean I'd love to zoom in on on healthcare specifically I mean there's principles like the hypocratic oath uh doing no harm uh protecting patient information. Uh but then there's also
1:36:14
information. Uh but then there's also principles about you know like agile software development like that is in in many ways a principle uh where do you like how how how are you thinking about transforming healthcare uh how are you thinking AI fits in there and then also the work general catalyst has been doing
1:36:32
is uh definitely on both extreme ends both high-tech and also almost like Wall Street not to put it in those terms but I'd love to know more about your thoughts on healthcare >> it's such a great juxtaposition of the the agility in technology and the hypocratic oath and the seriousness of healthcare as sort of as a sort of framework for learning. The the way I
1:36:52
The the way I have um always thought about transformations is to put different cultures together. >> Mhm.
1:37:01
>> So over the last 10 years I've been part of um uh starting a bunch of businesses in healthcare.
1:37:06
Lebongo was one of those.
1:37:08
We did hypocratic AI recently when the language models came out.
1:37:10
language models came out. speak of hypocratic oath and we built Kimure uh which is at some at this point probably the largest software company serving the health systems >> uh and uh we did transparent focusing on delivering healthcare to consumers that are employees of large companies and every one of those the key was you want
1:37:30
to be interdisciplinary you actually want to bring in people from healthcare that understand the seriousness of the work and the fact that it's not a pre free market and then you want to bring people from Silicon Valley that actually will cut through the inertia and and I always say bring the ignorance and imagination uh to to make a difference and transform uh the industry. >> Yeah. Do you think that there's uh more >> Yeah.
1:37:52
Do you think that there's uh more opportunity in healthcare at the seed stage or the growth stage?
1:37:57
This is something we keep going back to where we've talked to a lot of founders who have built a piece of kind of SAS and they got an install base and they have a bunch of customers and they're still in founder mode and they're still have a bunch of really hardworking, highly entrepreneurial folks in the organization and now AI is here and they can just amplify everything that they're doing.
1:38:21
doing. um versus trying to you know come to market with something that's very AI laden with you have aai domain and like you you have to really convince someone that you're the new solution then the thing that they just got excited about a couple years ago and onboarded to that
1:38:38
was the new thing they have to rip that out now or they have to bring you in um and I'm wondering how you're seeing the opportunity in healthcare from like scaleups versus like completely new groundup solutions >> is such a great uh Uh great question actually especially given that we've been through a pandemic 5 years ago. >> Yeah. >> Yeah.
1:38:55
>> So you know at the core of GC seed is very much uh what we focus on.
1:38:59
We brought on three different seed firms around the world onto the platform in the last 2 years >> and so there's a ton of serendipitous innovation that's happening because of AI because of advances in hardware uh in the way you think about healthcare delivery sort of solutions um uh for this next generation.
1:39:18
So seed is very interesting for us.
1:39:20
You know applying AI to life sciences big is starting to finally work and we think is interesting.
1:39:26
So seed is quite interesting.
1:39:27
But then if you take a step back 5 years ago there was a Camrian explosion of innovation to change the architecture of our healthcare delivery system >> because we didn't have the test trace isolate capabilities.
1:39:38
The system wasn't resilient.
1:39:40
Insurance companies were u getting big balance sheets because no one was getting procedures and hospitals were looking for bailouts. Right?
1:39:47
complete sort of misalignment of business models.
1:39:49
So we um we built and invested in a bunch of companies in that period and those are now scaling really nicely.
1:39:57
some of the ones I mentioned earlier and a few others like AID do and Sword and City Block and others.
1:40:00
And so at the growth stage, I think there are probably 25 to 30 companies in the healthcare ecosystem that are very important uh for our system going forward.
1:40:12
And we're very focused on how do we help them become truly enduring parts of the healthcare system.
1:40:16
And then we're constantly looking for founders that are using these new technologies at the seed stage to reinvent uh you know parts of uh the stack in that overall architecture.
1:40:28
>> Where do you what categories do you think the winners are decided and then what categories do you think are still up for grabs? We had a lot Gillan.
1:40:34
He was saying if I I'll probably botch it, but something along the lines of like in the medical scribe space, there's enough heavily funded players that have real traction.
1:40:46
You probably don't want to start the next one that's maybe four or five years behind.
1:40:50
Um but how how do you view uh where the biggest opportunities are and then what categories you think hey maybe maybe look out >> there's already a power lock company basically.
1:41:00
basically. So if I take a step back and say uh we were we're going to do a product ccentric transformation to the sector not a business modelcentric one you would say at the end of the day our delivery organizations provide the product which is we take care of people's health >> and and so there uh when somebody
1:41:17
engages with our health system broader health system not just a hospital patient engagement uh physician tools which is where the scribing solution that Eli mentioned fits >> uh you think about payment you think about um AI workforce, if you think about um uh sort of diagnostics using AI, huge amount of progress in all those areas. >> Mhm. >> Mhm.
1:41:41
>> And then and then you say, you know, what's what's missing?
1:41:43
What's missing still is the the interplayer of the pair provider relationship that still sort of is a place where there's not a lot of trust.
1:41:51
Payers think providers build too much.
1:41:54
Providers think pairs too pay too little.
1:41:56
So it's this like army of solutions in the middle of them to create that arbitrage.
1:41:58
I think we need to do something about that.
1:42:00
And then there's one other thing where there is a new movement which is around longevity.
1:42:07
If you look at Brian Johnson's work that there's cultural movement happening around that and uh you look at the work that row is doing with GLP1s which is the beginning of that longevity move.
1:42:17
These are real phenomenon. >> Yeah.
1:42:18
>> Yeah. And uh and I think um that's a place there's a ton more that that needs to be done so that the system moves towards incentives that keep us healthy and out of the hospital versus a high performance but really expensive
1:42:32
unaffordable care if we go into the hospital which is >> how do you think of the interplay between the longevity movement and the traditional health ecosystem in my in my own life as somebody who >> discovered biohacking maybe a decade ago and just started reading online. I would
1:42:46
I would always just try to solve problems myself and then you know hopefully you know at some point or another you're like ah actually you should probably go to the hospital now.
1:42:55
Um and so it's kind of a harsh transition and maybe it doesn't need to be that way.
1:43:01
>> It it's it's very different.
1:43:01
One's focused on staying healthy, the other's focused on fixing your health when it's broken. >> Yeah.
1:43:06
>> So they literally are like two different mindsets and the reality is that all of our incentive structures are about you going to the hospital.
1:43:15
>> Hospitals want heads and beds.
1:43:15
That's how they they thrive, right?
1:43:16
They actually want to see revenue.
1:43:18
Consumer wants to not ever go to the hospital. >> Mhm.
1:43:23
>> So, we need to kind of rearchitect the system in a way that we we solve for this cognitive dissonance.
1:43:28
So, it's all about incentives. >> Yeah.
1:43:30
Is there some uh incentive shift from I mean a lot of like there there's some general meme about like when private equity buys a hospital like quality of care goes down and I'm wondering if there's like uh bringing a venture mindset a growth mindset a turn like a growth instead of like cut cost mindset could actually like improve those incentives like how are you grappling with with that >> trade-off?
1:43:52
As you may know we just bought a health system. Yeah.
1:43:55
>> Uh it's in Akran Ohio.
1:43:55
It's it's actually got a you know large it's the largest employer in Aker and it's it's a big hospital system and has an insurance company. >> Yeah.
1:44:04
>> And we're trying to show is like if you could close your eyes and you said what is the one thing that if it could exist uh will solve a lot of this that longevity solutions or investment in our health >> is reimburseable. >> It's not today.
1:44:19
There's there's no uh model that'll show what's the RO on this where insurance companies pay for it.
1:44:25
insurance companies don't pay for reimbursement.
1:44:26
So the cultural movement around longevity >> and the reason just just a I uh I'm an investor in function health and from my understanding of that market like insurance providers are not so inclined to pay for something like function because people switch insurance all the time.
1:44:43
So they're like I don't care that you're going to be healthier maybe in like 30 years.
1:44:46
Like I >> just took the sentence out of my mouth.
1:44:49
That's exactly what I was going to say because the the insurers don't know if they make an investment in longevity, they're going to be able to capture the value on the other side.
1:44:58
>> So, it's just like lighting money on fire for them potentially. >> Exactly.
1:45:00
So, that's the misalignment I'm talking about.
1:45:02
So, the question is how do you really um change a system where the ROI on on longevity is understood and financable?
1:45:09
We we need to do that, you know, as a system. >> Yeah.
1:45:13
when you uh this may be a totally stupid question, but when you see some of these data center buildouts, do you ever get inspired to try to not just buy a hospital system, but just create something, you know, your own mega project?
1:45:27
Is there even any potential ROI and like building something from the ground up?
1:45:32
>> Um, it's a great question and uh we're actually doing that um with a company in India. >> No way. >> Cool.
1:45:39
And I think the there's a leaf frog opportunity in some emerging market.
1:45:43
We want to show the model there.
1:45:45
And the other place where I'm very focused on this is, you know, we have a large amount of capital that's allocated for rural health system rebuild.
1:45:52
The government's allocated about $50 billion for it.
1:45:56
And I think if we went and deployed that money in old school hospitals again, that's going to be a falling knife that we've created.
1:46:02
And we'll we'll burn that money uh into the ground.
1:46:06
And so there's an opportunity to rethink the topology and the architecture. What do we do there? >> Yeah.
1:46:11
>> So, so that's a place where I'm also focused in the US focused on >> rural health and what do we do about it?
1:46:16
We actually built a company called Homeward Healthcare >> that's focused on this particular problem uh sort of post pandemic because all those systems got eviscerated and then the future hospitals I just think it's easier to build in some of these high growth emerging economies to show the models and then then we'll bring that here. So it's a long game.
1:46:31
It's going to be in the next 20 years. >> Yeah. >> Yeah.
1:46:35
A couple weeks ago, you >> probably need longevity. >> Yeah. >> Yeah.
1:46:39
>> Uh, a couple weeks ago, you were going uh sort of viral for some comments about triple triple double double double startup growth rates.
1:46:45
Uh, can you kind of un >> I don't know why people get so triggered by growth rates. >> Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
1:46:50
Any anytime you try and quantify what success looks like, you know, you're you're stepping in the in the bees neck.
1:46:58
>> I found this counter example that proves you're categorically false.
1:47:00
But but uh but maybe walk me through like what you're seeing in venture.
1:47:05
Are growth rates really faster than ever before? >> Yeah. Yeah.
1:47:12
Give us more context around those comments.
1:47:16
>> Um uh and I never go viral, by the way.
1:47:19
Like my my boring systems content that nobody cares about. >> This is not boring. I love this.
1:47:22
We're going to we're going to get 10 million views on this.
1:47:25
We're going to turn this into a Tik Tok.
1:47:26
We're going to >> Okay, there we go.
1:47:27
Let me say something crazy then.
1:47:28
Actually, the last time I went viral was when I was working on saving Silicon Valley Bank. >> Oh, yeah.
1:47:35
>> Freak out what was going to happen.
1:47:35
So, it takes three, four years for me to create another viral moment. >> That's good.
1:47:39
>> Um, look, I would I would say it was a very innocent empirical comment because I just look at how fast the companies are getting built >> and they are getting built a lot faster.
1:47:48
>> Durability is a is a separate question uh because we'll see which of these can then transition into durability or not.
1:47:55
But as far as growth goes, it makes all the sense if AI is truly an accelerant. >> Yep.
1:48:01
>> You know, and you've seen we've done significant amount of work uh I think the deepest amount of work around these AI rollups.
1:48:06
We have 10 companies we're building there where you can actually acquire these uh service businesses and transform them with AI almost treat those acquisitions as customer acquisition and apply AI.
1:48:15
So you're just you just have all these different ways >> to accelerate growth and take share in this AI world that it's happening.
1:48:26
>> So so when when somebody comes and says we're going to go from 1 to 3 to 9 >> and we're routinely seeing companies that are you know 1 to 15 to 20 to something fairly large >> which by the way there were very few companies that did that in the last iteration.
1:48:41
You know, Samsara was one of those that I was part of that sort of grew that way, but there were very few when you see that routinely.
1:48:46
I mean, I I had actually just gone to our team saying, "Guys, just recalibrate.
1:48:49
You have to change the terminology on what best-in-class is cuz we want to we want to be if we're going to do when we do seed, we want to back every amazing founder.
1:48:58
When we do growth, we want to be in the best-in-class growth companies. That's our business."
1:49:03
>> And uh it's it's just very clear that the bar has shifted. >> Okay.
1:49:06
So, um I want to I want to dive deeper on some nuance there.
1:49:08
Uh we have this uh like kind of coinage that we're trying to get to go viral.
1:49:14
Maybe it'll work one day of like the barnacle economy.
1:49:17
The idea that same time there's other companies operating in legacy industries that are also growing fast but there's always the risk of durability and pilots.
1:49:59
So, where does where do you start?
1:50:02
Are you more worried or more digging in on a company that's overly indexed on a foundation model company's growth or or more risky to oh yes, they're getting Fortune 500 pilots in this one niche like the oil and gas industry, but it might not be sticky because that big company moves slowly and even though they're ramping up revenues, we don't know if they're actually going to stick around in 10 years. >> Yeah.
1:50:27
So, I think I think um let's just actually split those bars.
1:50:29
It's a it's a great great question and something that we take a step back on everything that's coming in the applied eye layer and like looking at with that lens >> if you have a company bringing in the foundation model capabilities into an enterprise >> which I think tends to be the most durable relationships that are on the big enterprise side.
1:50:47
We are looking for are you going in and are you learning how to expand your relationship with those customers. >> Mhm.
1:50:56
>> Mhm. So before what used to happen was you would build this like MVP you get product market fit and then you figure out how to create repeatability to go do that over and over again in the AI world and so there what the the the advantage is great product design and precision in the AI world you get into a customer you do forward deployed
1:51:15
engineering let's think about big enterprises and you build trust with them and then you figure out how to do more for them >> all the ones that are scaling really really fast that's what they're doing very effectively so if you're building that kind of a deeper and deeper relationship with customers that are going to be around for a long time. That's durable. We like that. We we're That's durable. We like that.
1:51:30
We we're looking for a lot of that.
1:51:32
And those companies are not growing triple triple double double.
1:51:35
They're growing way faster. >> Yeah.
1:51:37
>> You know, in different verticals.
1:51:37
I mean, that's that's just the reality of it cuz like you know, we we're meeting a lot of these.
1:51:42
On the other side, I think the the companies that are creating rappers on top of these models, um, many of them are not durable.
1:51:50
If you remember when chat GPD3 happened, you had a bunch of companies that got created and they disappeared. >> Yeah.
1:51:56
>> So every time there's new modalities and capabilities, some stuff happens and a lot of that doesn't exist.
1:52:01
>> But there are some companies getting built there that are cultural movements. >> Mhm.
1:52:07
>> And they are going to redefine human interaction with technology and software.
1:52:11
And I think those are quite interesting and they will they may look like lightweight products, but they're going to be durable long term.
1:52:18
>> And then there's a bunch that's going to disappear.
1:52:19
I mean that's that's that's the way I sort of think about it because a bunch is just going to get absorbed into the models but the ones that are focused on rethinking design and rethinking the human relationship they will have durability on top of these models. >> Yeah.
1:52:32
Uh >> ambiguity that's what I always say it's like hard to figure out what's what right now. >> Yeah. Yeah.
1:52:36
>> Yeah. Yeah. you you've you've made a bunch of uh I don't know you call them like American dynamisms type investments but uh I'm wondering if you could rank a few other international markets that are interesting or underrated you mentioned uh doing some work in India are there
1:52:54
any other countries that you think where there might be pockets of opportunity for your business over the next decade >> yeah look we we we do 2/3 in the US about 25% in Europe and 10% in India and I'll actually say I was used to say this a couple years ago, US is going to be the consensus market. Europe is a
1:53:10
Europe is a contrarian market and India is a FOMO market got the high growth and and that we need to be in all of these and and be intentional about what it takes to create value.
1:53:22
>> And I think Europe is super interesting.
1:53:23
There's like so much talent >> um uh there there's people are waking up that they need to innovate.
1:53:28
We can take the classic view of you know there's not intensity but we're just seeing pockets of like interesting collaboration.
1:53:34
we're actually catalyzing a lot of it.
1:53:38
>> Uh our European team is doing a lot of that.
1:53:39
Um and then our um and in India we're just looking at saying what is the US India sort of collaboration going to look like because there's a lot of complexity there and then what is required for building societal systems inside of India in education in defense uh you know in healthcare that we can help build because we've learned a bunch from here and probably mostly learned what not to do. >> Yeah.
1:54:01
>> Yeah. because of the like the healthcare business models and we can help them think about it from first principles so we can be good partners there and so the way that works out is as I said we're building hospitals in India we're transforming healthcare we're innovating in India we're transforming in the US >> we built the defense prime we're you
1:54:18
know working with defense primes in all the markets we've got and here we've got housing in Europe we've got rafi in India because you need to create >> you know our phrase that we use is global resilience >> uh and and and abundance and so each of these markets in key industries wants to be resilient and there's founders there working on great stuff. We want to help
1:54:34
We want to help them be successful with that and that's that's the way we've approached it.
1:54:40
>> What what's your primary inspiration for the firm?
1:54:47
>> Um look I think I uh >> and I would give you I would give I mean the classic example was like CIA and A16Z.
1:54:57
>> Is there is there an equivalent for you or do you pull from a variety of sources?
1:55:00
you know, u my my longest standing LP relationship was with Andy Golden who used to run the Princeton endowment who's who retired last year.
1:55:09
And I used to always look at, hey, we want to be one of the elite when this was when I was in Boston.
1:55:14
We want to be one of the elite venture firms, which I don't even consider us purely venture capital even though seed is our core.
1:55:21
And he would always say, run your own race.
1:55:22
And uh that really stuck with me.
1:55:25
So I try not to focus on mimicking what others are doing.
1:55:29
They're like there there's so many smart people, so many creative people here doing interesting things.
1:55:33
We got to do our own we got to be on our own journey.
1:55:35
My main the thing I would say though is I do want to transform industry systems, not just um um sort of we be sort of serendipitous venture capital investor in companies.
1:55:47
And so everything we do, all the the stuff people look at us doing is all created to build a mode for the founders so they can just be more successful and become bigger.
1:55:59
Because if they get bigger, then we have the opportunity to transform the industries.
1:56:02
If all those companies I mentioned in healthcare can actually be hundred billion dollar companies, many of them we started, then we have the license to actually help rethink the system.
1:56:10
How do you think about how do you think about risk uh across the platform between early and and some of these you know really scaled up investments?
1:56:20
Uh uh we were enjoying a clip from uh rolloff earlier this week calling venture it's a return-free risk he called it but he was just kind of putting all of all of venture more or less in a single bucket.
1:56:35
Um, and there were some comments as well and people saying that, hey, it's actually like it's a big difference between, you know, the the the $100 million, $500 million checks that are going into companies at a later stage and and pure venture.
1:56:48
And it's >> private equity and venture clothing >> was the comment. Yeah.
1:56:54
>> Look, I I I think if you want to do really transform transformative stuff, you got to take risk. >> Sure.
1:56:58
uh if we're not taking um no you don't want to take stupid risk but I think I think you want to be smart about how you you invest across uh different stages in risk but like you got to take risk and and and you have to have a vision and this is some of the stuff I talk about in the book which is incrementally improving these systems is not going to get us there.
1:57:16
I think we're sort of at a interesting uh place in society where AI is so disruptive.
1:57:20
So we got to build new systems and in order to go from deep incumbency to new systems at scale you have to bring the incumbents along and partner with them and also invest in their success and do things that are just radically different from how we're used to building serendipitous companies and sort of classic venture.
1:57:39
So, I do think you have to take a lot of risk.
1:57:41
Like, I I I thrive on risk.
1:57:42
Uh, you know, failures don't bother me.
1:57:45
As long as we're well-intentioned, we're doing the right things. I I want us to do that.
1:57:47
And, you know, otherwise I I'll tell you like venture is is the LPs will say it's becoming more of a beta >> because anybody can get into it.
1:57:57
These companies raise a lot of money.
1:57:59
companies raise a lot of money. So if if this is going to become the way the system is behaving now and we don't take on working on large problems which for me a lot of them equate to transformations and and uh sort of thinking more more systemically then
1:58:13
then uh you know with the illquidity um premium are the investors excited about the return this this asset class is going to generate I think there is a conversation about that as well in the way things are uh today >> um I like asking all authors come on the show about their favorite books. I'd
1:58:31
I'd also be interested to know if there's any books that inspire you in how you think about building the firm.
1:58:38
Are you more of like a House of Morgan guy or a Steve Jobs biography guy?
1:58:42
Are there any books from, you know, through the history of business that uh have remained on your bedside maybe for several years?
1:58:54
Um I mean I I I um focus on individuals that have been inspiring to me and really understanding those as a way to uh look at the journey and actually Ken Chanel who's my chairman he asked me once is you're modeling yourself after it's like another version of the same question you asked earlier
1:59:10
>> and I was like well look uh there are three people that really really inspire me one is you know if you look at Elon's work the problems he takes on and the way he executes I'm just like you know it just makes me feel like the bar is so high in terms of what's doable. It's like it's inspiring like we
1:59:25
It's like it's inspiring like we want to all we should all be learning from the way he builds. >> Yeah.
1:59:30
>> You know and and and and the problems he chooses to work on and the passion with which he operates.
1:59:34
So as a builder that's very inspiring to me. >> Yeah.
1:59:39
>> As an investor I'm a fan of Warren Buffett.
1:59:42
>> He thinks 7500 year horizons.
1:59:42
And so the you know the best hold period is forever. >> Yeah.
1:59:48
>> Is the way they think and that that's the way we want to think.
1:59:50
you know, we invested in Stripe in 2010 when it was um just a couple of them and then you know, we've invested 14 times since then, right?
1:59:59
And and then I really think that's a relationship that can be a 30 40 year relationship.
2:00:03
You know, those guys are going to do lots of interesting stuff and I I I want us to be sort of bootstrapped to their journey as we think about our journey.
2:00:11
think about our journey. And then I would say from a leadership perspective which is also important I really respect uh Ken who you know obviously is our chairman is is a lead director at Berkshire Hathway on the board of Airbnb and he instills this whole servant mindset and that's just the way I think you want to treat each other in your own
2:00:30
company towards your founders which is really an important stakeholder versus and and society at large and are we building with that kind of a mindset and you know and then what do I want to prove with all this I think to your your piercing question before like the inspiration to me is can we take this philosophy and build the world's biggest companies. >> Mhm. >> Mhm.
2:00:49
>> Can we actually do that cuz cuz uh um uh you know that is going to be required as we think about really transforming with AI.
2:00:58
AI is going to be all about transformations and can we go accomplish that?
2:01:02
What's your uh guidance to partners at the firm around media?
2:01:05
Because there's certain venture firms that their guidance is broadly get as much attention as you possibly can.
2:01:12
However, whatever whatever it takes, but that very much does not seem to be your approach. And I'm curious.
2:01:22
>> I I so I'm going to give you a two-part answer to this.
2:01:24
One is um if we think about transforming industries, you need four levers.
2:01:31
You actually need to have you know the capital, the innovation, the policy, but then you do need to create a cultural movement. >> Yeah.
2:01:40
>> And so media is a really important part of winning hearts and minds towards what you want the world to look like.
2:01:45
And I think in that sense it's very important. >> Mhm.
2:01:49
>> But it's got sort of a purpose towards it.
2:01:51
And you know uh it's sort of inspiring how you guys have quickly come up to stage and you know I think you can you can actually you intentionally say here's the influence we want to have on this ecosystem and you can drive towards it. >> Yeah.
2:02:02
>> Cuz cuz you've got a a platform and I'm sure you guys think that way, right? >> Totally.
2:02:06
>> The I want to be famous uh so I get noticed uh for the sake of being famous and that's going to give me deal flow.
2:02:12
My observation is that you have to become more and more fringe. >> Mhm.
2:02:19
>> Uh to actually be noticed and it actually starts taking an impact on you as a human being.
2:02:23
I'm seeing that with a lot of people that play this game >> and uh and is that is that going to allow you to do your best work if you're fundamentally changing in response to how to be successful in your sort of media uh metrics? Yep.
2:02:37
>> Uh and so if you if you're the person kind of person who can say creative things but stay grounded in your core >> uh then maybe it's for you.
2:02:45
But if it's going to change your core then then you might have gotten the followers but you may not have the substance to do my big thing >> that I see uh as a failure mode for a lot of people that go on that path.
2:02:57
What do you look for in young people that join General Catalyst where you're hoping that they'll be with the firm for decades, eventually become partner, have a huge impact on the firm?
2:03:09
Uh what are you looking for at the young at the young phase?
2:03:15
>> Look, I think a true uh sense of purpose because that's what drives conviction. >> Mhm.
2:03:20
you know, and and uh I would say um a lot of people get in this industry because they think they can make a lot of money or they think it's >> prestigious, >> you know, gives you power and prestige. There's a lot of that.
2:03:33
If you look at the people that have done really well, they didn't grow up.
2:03:36
I mean, just literally think about any of them.
2:03:38
They just didn't that's they ended up here. >> Yeah.
2:03:42
>> I came to GC for four months because I felt like I built a shitty company.
2:03:44
This was in in 2002 and I want to do it again. I was 26. Yeah.
2:03:50
>> And I'm here, you know, and and so everyone that has done really well, not saying I've done well, but like I just I study those people and they just had unique trajectories to to get here.
2:03:57
Not a they chose venture as a career. >> Yeah.
2:04:01
>> And so so that purposeful uh sort of journey and wanting to do something substantive which then gives you courage and conviction which is the essence.
2:04:10
You got to have that to be a good investor. You just can't work. >> What is AUM now? >> Somewhere in the 40s. Too small. Too small. >> 40 what? >> 40 billion.
2:04:25
>> I think uh I think 400 400 soon.
2:04:29
>> Congratulations on all the success.
2:04:29
I think you've been fantastically successful and thank you so much for coming on the show.
2:04:34
>> Yeah, I wish I wish we had more time.
2:04:34
I have I have a lot more questions.
2:04:35
Next time you come on, I'd love to get an update on the on the customer value strategy.
2:04:41
We didn't we didn't get to >> Oh, yes. Yes. That is transformative.
2:04:44
That's a big part of how we're thinking about the proposition being changing for companies and how to serve them.
2:04:47
We'll talk about it another time. Amazing.
2:04:50
We'd >> love to have you back. We'll talk on. Cheers. >> Bye.
2:04:53
>> Let me tell you about numeralhq. com. Sales tax on autopilot.
2:04:55
Spend less than 5 minutes per month on sales tax compliance. It's sales tax agi.
2:05:03
And our next guest is in the reream rating room.
2:05:05
Rob from Radical Ventures coming in >> to the studio. How are you doing, Rob? >> Good to see you. >> Rob. >> Hey guys. Great to be here. Thanks for having me. >> Welcome back.
2:05:15
>> Uh what's uh I want to go through BCI.
2:05:17
want to go through the latest Forbes piece.
2:05:18
Uh what I mean I feel like you've spent what years at this point writing about AI. Are you just over AI?
2:05:24
Is AI done and you're just bored of that and you got to move on? You got to pivot.
2:05:28
If you're in AI, pivot to BCI. What's going on?
2:05:34
>> I there there is definitely a lot of a lot of noise in the world of AI right now.
2:05:38
I I think BCI and AI are actually closely related.
2:05:41
Um, and BCI will be kind of one of the next really important foundational technologies that impacts how AI gets rolled out.
2:05:49
But I do think a big part of our jobs as VCs is to kind of think about opportunities and technologies that are not yet obvious and mainstream.
2:05:59
And I think VCI falls into that category in the sense that it's not ready for prime time yet, but I think it's getting closer.
2:06:05
And and I do think it will have a really big impact on how basically human intelligence and artificial intelligence fit together. the merge.
2:06:12
The merge uh it feels like one of those technologies that's always 10 years away like fusion.
2:06:15
Uh but take me through the history.
2:06:18
Uh what when does this whole story start?
2:06:20
Uh there's the Utah array.
2:06:23
I want to know about that. >> Yeah, totally.
2:06:25
So BCI is not not a new technology.
2:06:28
Um it's something that's been around in a research context for decades.
2:06:33
>> The very first BCI was actually um in a human was demonstrated in the 70s in the early '7s.
2:06:38
um researchers at UCLA basically using EEG which is non-invasive technology were able to get patients to be able to control a cursor on a computer screen just with their thoughts.
2:06:50
>> That's kind of like what we're seeing from Neurolink, right?
2:06:50
It's like not that far off but it's been 55 years now.
2:06:55
So we're super interested like what happened in the intervening years. >> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
2:06:59
So that so that was like a very basic unreliable prototype, but it was kind of a concept.
2:07:03
The first invasive BCI and and maybe just as a quick like yeah uh quick definition the difference between invasive and non-invasive these are kind of the two main categories of BCI technology.
2:07:16
Invasive technology requires surgery.
2:07:16
It involves putting electronics like inside your skull directly on or in your brain.
2:07:24
And so Neuralink is an example of an invasive BCI company where that you know you have to cut open your skull doing using a surgery called a cranottomy um and put the chip inside.
2:07:32
non-invasive technology does not require surgery.
2:07:36
It's just sensors that you can put outside your head.
2:07:37
You know, they could be embedded in like a consumer device like headphones or a hat or something like that.
2:07:42
So, the trade-off between invasive and non-invasive BCI really does boil down to a trade-off between like accessibility on the one hand and ease of use versus signal quality and like how high fidelity of signal you can get from the brain. >> So, the the >> Yeah.
2:07:58
And and it's a lot about like value, right?
2:08:00
Like if you if you have a disability and you cannot use a computer and you and somebody says I can give you the surgery and you're going to be able to interact with the computer. That's a great trade.
2:08:10
Whereas if you say that to me right now I'm going to say >> oh wait, you know, >> I'll use the mouse and keyboard actually.
2:08:16
I'll be fine with the I'll stick to the mouse and keyboard. >> Yeah. So >> okay. Yeah.
2:08:21
I think my my big question is like at at what point is is the invasive approach like so tried and true everyday people.
2:08:31
>> So so in the 1970s it was it was non-invasive when did the first invasive stuff start happening because Neurolink like popularized it but didn't invent it. Right. >> Exactly. Yeah.
2:08:39
So invasive BCI the first invasive BCI was implanted in a human in the 1990s and it was this device called the Utah array that you referenced John.
2:08:48
And honestly, I would encourage people listening to like go to Google images and look up Utah, right?
2:08:52
Just to see a picture of it.
2:08:54
Like it looks like a medieval torture device. >> It does. It's so scary.
2:08:58
>> It's literally like a bed of needles.
2:09:00
Um, and you literally you like cut open the skull and you just jam this set of needles into the brain.
2:09:04
needles into the brain. Um, and so it it it the the Utah rate to be clear was like a really important breakthrough in the history of BCI and it was the state-of-the-art for a long time and it it made it possible to do things like go from thought to text and like you know understand people's uh people's thoughts directly but brain damage basically like if you're if
2:09:27
you're jamming these needles into your brain in order to record from some neurons you're also killing a bunch of other neurons and so that was that's the reason why the Utah rate never really like took off from a commercial perspective but it did lay the groundwork for subsequent generations of invasive BCI including Neurolink which obviously the most bas famous famous invasive BCI company. >> Okay. So uh now uh was Elon the first >> Okay.
2:09:47
So uh now uh was Elon the first person to really take BCI seriously because it feels like there's a proper market map and you have uh Sam's working on stuff Sam Alman founder of OpenAI and then Elon's working on stuff and then uh Nudge also exists.
2:10:02
There's like a there's like a number of like basically like billionaire founders that are all making serious bets.
2:10:08
Are all of them is this one is this like an Anderole type story where like you need a billionaire who's just going to sink a bunch of money into this or are there any companies that have like actually just gone from ground up in the traditional fashion of like they raised a seed round and then a series A like it just feels like a very different path.
2:10:24
So like maybe take me through the market map of what's happening right now. >> Yeah.
2:10:28
No, it definitely like started as from a startup perspective as a category where like it was largely funded by billionaires like obviously Elon had Neuralink, Bran Johnson had a BCI company called Colonel that he poured a ton of money into. >> Yeah.
2:10:42
Do do you remember like what that actual was that invasive non-invasive like what the plan was there? He >> he explored both.
2:10:49
It ended up being non-invasive and they developed like a new modality of sensing non-invasively which is actually pretty cool.
2:10:54
you like shoot sensors through your skull, like shoot lasers through your skull to like uh detect the blood flow in your uh in your brain.
2:11:03
Uh which is like is still used today.
2:11:06
Um >> and the company's still going, but um but yeah, it I mean it's worth noting Neuralink is like definitely the most well-known BCI company, but it wasn't the first.
2:11:16
Like there were startups before Neuralink.
2:11:18
There's one called Synchron out of Australia.
2:11:19
There's one called Paradromics um which did kind of follow that more typical path that you described of like raise a seed raise a series A and certainly in the past few years there there's been an explosion of them.
2:11:31
So so now there are a ton of BCI companies both invasive and non-invasive.
2:11:34
What are the uh it feels like Neuralinks had a very like kind of like barbell strategy where they're where they'll tell like a sci-fi story about like you will be able to fully like communicate with AI and merge and whatnot, but then there's also like this ultra practical like if you are a parapillegic, you can use a mouse cursor and click and use a computer.
2:11:56
Uh are there are there other pitches that companies are are offering uh in terms of just like reading information from the brain or writing information to the brain?
2:12:08
Like how how do the value props like stack out right now?
2:12:12
>> Yeah, I think one of the really interesting differentiators of the different invasive BCI companies is like what's the end use case that they're going for >> and neural what Neuralink has been focused on to date is computer use.
2:12:24
So like all the demos you see of neuralink patients like Nolan Arba the first patient is using a computer like which basically comes down to like mostly controlling a cursor and and potentially keyboard and there's obviously a ton you can do if you can control a computer.
2:12:38
So that's like a very valuable use case.
2:12:40
Um but a like a harder more advanced use case which like I kind of think of as the holy grail for BC or one of the holy grails for BCI is decoding language.
2:12:54
like basically being able to instantaneously understand words from a person's brain and like write them or send them via text or email like that basically that basically is telepathy more or less especially if you then like convert it to another person's BCI like
2:13:10
so it goes directly from brain to brain >> and so that is a more ambitious target which there are startups that are going after to this point at least publicly neuralink hasn't published anything related to language decoding of course
2:13:22
it's something they're thinking about I'm Um >> but and but that I think that's one really interesting use case and then another one is being able to control objects like whether it's controlling a robotic arm or like controlling any sort of object in the real world which again
2:13:35
it basically is telekinesis and like these terms sound really like um you know fantastical and paranormal but like that is essentially what the the capability that that will enable which is cool to think about. >> Yeah. Are the non-invasive BCI companies >> Yeah.
2:13:48
Are the non-invasive BCI companies ever targeting like higher level abstraction?
2:13:54
Like look, we're we're not going to re be able to reliably get an X and Y coordinate for a mouse, but we can tell you that you're stressed out or we can tell you that you're overly tired or we're tell you that you're dehydrated in your brain or something like that.
2:14:09
Something that's more abstract, but still uh something that a consumer could actually adopt, wear a hat, they're not going to go into surgery for it, but more of like a biohacker use case.
2:14:16
Yeah, that that's exactly right.
2:14:18
And those use cases have already been pretty well proven.
2:14:22
Like there are actually non-invasive BCI products on the market today that like can you know detect if you're stressed or if you're if you need to sleep more or you know if you need to focus better those sorts of things.
2:14:33
focus better those sorts of things. I think the the really big question like in my opinion the single most interesting strategic question in the field of BCI right now is like the conventional wisdom has been that invasive BCI is necessary for the most sophisticated use cases like language
2:14:50
that we were talking about because you just need to get that high fidelity data but non-invasive approaches have been getting better and better very quickly in part because non-invasive sensors have been getting better but much more so because the underlying AI is just getting a lot more powerful which lets you extract a lot more signal from the same noise. >> Sure. >> Sure.
2:15:09
>> And so honestly no one really knows like where the performance ceiling will be for non-invasive BCI.
2:15:13
There are there are companies out there today that whose vision is to >> like build a thought to text language decoding uh technology platform just using non-invasive sensors that you can just put on your head.
2:15:27
Um, >> it's not yet proven if that will work or not, but like there are definitely people aiming for it and and honestly I think no one no one can say for certain that it won't work.
2:15:36
I think like they're all kind of pursuing this scaling law strategy of like we saw with language models just collect more and more and more data, build bigger and bigger models and like they'll get better and better.
2:15:46
And so far like no one no one yet in the world has collected like a mass a truly massive data set of brain data paired with language data.
2:15:55
So like who's to say whether you know what what might be possible if you really try to scale this stuff. >> Yeah.
2:16:02
>> How how do you how do you invest in this category right now if you're make money off of this?
2:16:07
>> How do we make money off this?
2:16:08
>> Um no but because the the probably my personal default would just be to try to pick up some Neurolink secondary. >> Yep.
2:16:16
and just ride with them because it feels it still feels like we're early and if you just fund a bunch of >> alt Neurolinks I think that that might be kind of a tough tough game but how do you think about it?
2:16:30
>> Yeah, Neurolink is definitely the like the most well-known the most wellunded obviously it's Elon Musk and it has you know everything that that comes with it in terms of being an Elon company.
2:16:40
Um it is also I mean just thinking tactically from an investment perspective it's also extremely highly valued today.
2:16:47
Their most recent round is at $10 billion.
2:16:51
>> Um there are a handful of very credible Neuralink competitors including a couple >> it could be undervalued. >> Yeah.
2:16:58
Do we have any I'm just messing around.
2:17:01
>> I mean do we have any idea on market size for these things?
2:17:03
How do people even underwrite these types of deals?
2:17:07
Are they building up to like the number of parapolgics that need uh you know the the the FDA approved surgery for that indication or is it more of like a consumer uh like TAM?
2:17:16
How do people think about that?
2:17:20
>> Yeah, I think you basically have to think about it in two phases.
2:17:22
The first phase is the medical phase.
2:17:24
The second phase is the like consumer/humans merge with AI in the singularity phase.
2:17:31
>> Um and I think the TAM math is a lot more concrete for the medical phase. Sure.
2:17:37
>> And just in the medical phase, it is a massive TM.
2:17:38
If you look at like basically if you just take everyone in the world that's paralyzed, that's like tens of millions of people.
2:17:43
And you can break it down by different causes, ALS, spinal cord injury, etc.
2:17:49
>> Um, you know, many, many millions of people.
2:17:51
Um, and the industry is kind of circling around this price point of 150k per implant with the expectation that insurance will cover it. Like that's not it.
2:18:03
it will be something that um a lot of people will have access to because they won't have to pay out of pocket.
2:18:07
So if you just do the numbers on that, it's you know it can be a many many tens of billions of dollars market. Yeah.
2:18:14
>> Um, but I do think that like the really big vision, the big prize that ever, you know, that all that is gets people like Elon Musk and Brian Johnson excited is the longer term vision of this being like a consumer product for a more generalized population that lets anyone like seamlessly merge with digital intelligences and artificial intelligences and so forth.
2:18:34
And you know, if you if you think that eventually DCIs will be as widespread as iPhones or something, then obviously, you know, you can you can talk yourself into a huge dam.
2:18:44
>> Imagine not having to open the Sora app, but just having a Sora implant and so you're just sitting there. >> Yeah. Just at the trough. It'd be amazing.
2:18:52
Are you tracking any of like the intermediate steps?
2:18:53
Like uh there was that uh company that launched a demo that it seemed like it would uh put something on like your jawbone and it would be able to hear what you were whispering.
2:19:06
Um we tried the meta-array displays and those were able to pick up on a very low audio signal.
2:19:12
You could kind of whisper and it would still be able to interpret it with AI into translation.
2:19:17
um uh like is that is that actually like a critical path in the tech tree or is that kind of just a side side note or do you think that that that whole tech wave will be uh like a big uh precursor?
2:19:31
>> Yeah, there's there are a lot of different opinions on this.
2:19:32
So what you're describing people often use the term silent speech to describe the category which is exactly as you said like you have a sensor somewhere you know outside your your skull.
2:19:41
It can be like as part of a headphone or like a a hat or something.
2:19:47
um that can detect the words that you're saying if you just kind of like barely whisper them or or even even if it's subaudible if you're just kind of like barely moving your lips and moving your tongue. >> Yeah.
2:19:58
>> And the idea is uh it lets you use all like all the value and possibilities of voice applications but without having to make noise.
2:20:06
>> And so like when you're in public for instance walking down the street or on a bus or something that like that can be a lot more useful than you know you probably don't want to speak out loud to your phone. >> Yeah.
2:20:15
Um, I think to your question of like is this just like an intermediate like branch of the tech tree or not, I I think it really depend like bullishness around silent speech I think really depends on how soon you think B true BCI will be ready for prime time because um silent speech isn't recording brain data directly.
2:20:34
It's recording like downstream muscle data.
2:20:36
And so if you can actually decode what's coming straight from the brain in an accurate way, you can kind of just leaprog silent speech.
2:20:42
Um, but if you think that there are real limits to what's possible non-invasively with BCI, then silent speech might be like a more practicable path.
2:20:52
Um, and you mentioned this company alter ego out of MIT recently uh had this really buzzy launch video that like they frame it as basically telepathy which is a little misleading because it's not actually reading brain data.
2:21:04
It's like the guy is like um mouthing something um and kind of moving his tongue.
2:21:10
But yeah, that is another maybe like uh more achievable and near-term version of this. >> Yeah.
2:21:17
>> Uh Chris in the chat asked uh what about Chinese in infantry using BCI to reduce PTSD and increase reaction time?
2:21:23
Do you know anything about that?
2:21:28
>> I I haven't heard about that specifically, but there's Yeah, there's there's no doubt in my mind.
2:21:31
I mean the the chi the CCP and Chinese uh startup ecosystem are investing a lot in BCI um in in the US also like one of the big use cases in general one of the big use cases is um like treating neuroscsychiatric diseases so if you can like precisely modulate brain activity you can address a lot of uh health conditions like PTSD but also like OCD depression Parkinson's etc.
2:21:58
It's basically a labbotomy that works, right? >> Yeah.
2:22:04
>> Which is like kind of crazy to think about.
2:22:06
Like are labbotoies was that like somewhat on the right path?
2:22:08
Like it's a very hot take, nuclear take potentially. >> Yeah.
2:22:14
I mean to be clear like the these forms of neuromodulation like you're not actually taking any of the brain out the way you did with blood labbotomy.
2:22:20
But yeah, labbotoies are just like were very crude attempts to like modulate the brain. >> Yeah.
2:22:27
Try and turn off certain regions of the brain.
2:22:29
And if you can do that with some sort of electrical frequency or neurom modulation, like you're in the same realm, which is uh people want a lot of FDA trials before they they run that, but I don't know, maybe over in the Chinese infantry, they're they're they're having >> they'll do it live. >> Yeah.
2:22:45
Um is is there anything else that's going on in the BCI industry that we didn't cover that uh like where all this goes next?
2:22:53
Uh are we like it's certainly not a trend.
2:22:56
And I guess the big the big question for me is like how do you apply the lens of what we're seeing in AI to the BCI world especially with regard to the fact that we might at some point be on a scaling like on a scaling curve.
2:23:11
Uh and we've kind of seen this with like Tesla's now doing like largecale training runs for self-driving technology.
2:23:19
Uh Google just did the cell to sentence project on the GMA 3 models and you can see that they're starting to scale that up but they're not at like we need to build a one gigawatt cluster cluster for AI and bio and I doubt that any of the BCI companies are like we need a 1 gawatt uh data center to do our train because they don't even have the data yet.
2:23:39
So it feels like we're still really early but is that the right lens to be to be tracking this through?
2:23:42
or should we just be looking at like how much electricity is going to be going into the training run and then we'll know that it's actually working.
2:23:51
>> Yeah, I do think like you often hear people comment how they're like we keep discovering new data modalities like there there are more and more modalities than people realize like there's language and image and audio and video but like biology isn't there's a lot of modalities there and robotics and so forth.
2:24:06
I do think neural data, brain data is a new modality that we're just right at the very beginning phases of starting to research into.
2:24:14
And so there there really haven't been any large scale efforts to bit to build foundation models for brains as you're describing.
2:24:22
I do think that that's inevitable.
2:24:22
I do think that that's inevitable. Um, but I also think like I think it's I think this stuff is really relevant for the transversing in AI because I do think this is the inevitable next way in which humans interface with AIS and you can imagine like basically having a BCI that is connected to, you know, whatever
2:24:42
the latest AI model is where rather than having to pull out your phone and like type a question into chat GBT, you can just, you know, think something and the answer will surface in your mind or if you're like brainstorming in your own head, you'll have like a thought partner there that's brainstorming with you. Um, you know,
2:24:56
Um, you know, you'll be able to instantly communicate with others.
2:25:01
Like there once you start kind of playing out the possibilities of what could happen if there are BCIs at scale, it does really change the way humans like interact with information.
2:25:12
Basically, I'm >> sure Udicowski loves this. It's fantastic.
2:25:16
Uh, it is exciting though.
2:25:18
Uh, uh, and I appreciate you coming on the show and breaking it all down.
2:25:20
Uh, have a great weekend. We'll talk to you soon. >> Yeah, thanks.
2:25:24
>> Yeah, thanks for having me. >> Cheers. >> Bye.
2:25:27
>> Uh, let me tell you about Finn.
2:25:27
AI, the number one AI agent for customer service, number one in performance benchmarks, number one in competitive bake offs, number one ranking on G2.
2:25:35
Tyler, are you going to get a BCI uh intern challenge?
2:25:38
Get the Utah array installed.
2:25:40
Can we pull up a picture of the Utah array? I put it in the title.
2:25:44
It is very scary looking. >> You've seen it. You've seen this thing.
2:25:46
It is just straight up spikes in your head.
2:25:48
It's uh uh just a few wires.
2:25:48
I feel like >> like most protein powders, it gives you brain damage. >> Yeah, this thing. Yeah, this thing.
2:25:54
This feels like just one notch forward from just actually getting a labbotomy, but uh it's it's a rough looking device, but I guess it actually worked in in some ways. I got some data.
2:26:04
But uh how uh you know, I've often said that I would be I wouldn't be the first person to go on the rocket to the moon or the or to Mars, but I'd be like number five or 10.
2:26:16
As long as the first couple people make it back, I'm good. Uh what about you?
2:26:19
What number of person do you want to be?
2:26:22
Do you want to be the the first person with the >> millionth?
2:26:25
>> You want to be the millionth uh million >> Neurolink customer?
2:26:29
>> I I'm probably in the first uh first 50,000 I would say. >> First 50,000. >> Yeah.
2:26:34
I mean there's an interesting thing.
2:26:35
Um what >> speaking of like doomers um like I I don't know if it's Elazer himself but a lot of people have said like one possible solution to like the kind of doom scenario is that we it's like the merge like that would actually be prevent like the you know AI taking over because like we are >> become the AI they can't take us over if we're them. >> Yeah.
2:26:53
Jord what number are you do you think >> you're going to wait 100 or 1 million? >> Big number.
2:27:00
>> We're gonna need a bigger gong for my number. >> For your number.
2:27:02
you going to get up there? I don't know.
2:27:04
I mean, I've talked to Nolan from Neuralink.
2:27:07
He seems like he's having a great time with it.
2:27:09
He gave me a good review. I'm down. Wire me up.
2:27:13
>> Yeah, the the value right now from what I've heard.
2:27:17
>> Yeah, I'm I'm pretty I'm pretty quick with the mouse and keyboard right now.
2:27:22
So, I don't I don't necessarily need the feature that it's offering. >> Yeah. Yeah.
2:27:25
And I don't necessarily need you to know my I mean I'm sure you can they'd be able to build the right user experiences around this, but my first thought to a question is not necessarily my my best thought, right?
2:27:35
And so if we're here prepping the show and we're just having this instant communication is just like our worst take going this way and then a bad take against a bad take going back.
2:27:49
>> Yeah, it would need a lot of translation.
2:27:52
But imagine puppeteering Adio with your with your BCI.
2:27:55
That could be the future.
2:27:57
Customer relationship magic.
2:27:57
Adios, the AI native CRM that builds, scales, and grows your company to the next level. Can you imagine?
2:28:03
So, a lot of these companies, they uh, you know, a common tagline right now is, you know, Adio is the AI native CRM.
2:28:08
Imagine when the BCI era, when AI is old news, you don't want to put that on your landing page.
2:28:13
BCI is the new hot keyword.
2:28:15
So you say we're the BCI native CRM that builds, scales, and company grows your company to the next level.
2:28:21
I'm excited for all the landing pages to update to BCI native. That's what I want.
2:28:26
Uh I also want you to get an eight sleep.
2:28:29
And Jordy, uh I heard you had a rough night.
2:28:31
I think you got to get a sound effect ready for me cuz I got a 93.
2:28:35
I slept for 7 hours and 25 minutes. Let's go. >> I got a 47. 4 hours 28 minutes.
2:28:43
>> And and dinner last night was in Malibu.
2:28:44
I thought you just went right home.
2:28:44
But uh you know the rough nights come for us all from time to time. Left >> late.
2:28:50
>> Eric Jong says all according to plan.
2:28:50
He is highlighting the fact that uh all of his everyone with the same name as him is absolutely >> either building cooking or at thinking machines or it's a good time to be Eric Jong.
2:29:04
Uh congrats to >> legends. Uh you >> legends.
2:29:06
We we still have to do the Eric Jong show.
2:29:09
>> Oh and this is Eric Jong is quote tweeting a different Eric Jong. I love it.
2:29:14
They're going back and forth on the timeline.
2:29:16
>> Yeah, we got to get all of them on the show. >> We do.
2:29:17
Eric John, you're all invited.
2:29:20
Talk about opening AAI, thinking machines, cooking, and building.
2:29:23
>> Tyler, can you can you work on this?
2:29:25
This seems like >> invite them all.
2:29:25
We want we want the six the six up. All of them.
2:29:28
Uh >> um Logan Robinson says, "When Walmart jets take off for store visits, no one but the pilot knows where they're going."
2:29:36
I wonder if they have them all >> blindfolded.
2:29:38
Rumors rumor is you're only told a few things to help you prep for the trip.
2:29:42
domestic or international, how many days you'll be gone, climate of the destination. >> What does this mean?
2:29:47
What >> this is like executive I imagine like people at corporate going to visit stores and seeing how they're happening, right?
2:29:55
They don't want to call ahead and be like, "Hey, you got to really this pre prevent executives that are responsible, I imagine, for like certain things within a store to not frontun it and be like, hey, make sure things are clean.
2:30:07
Make sure like everybody shows up on time." >> Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense.
2:30:09
They want to do a surprise visit. >> Yeah.
2:30:12
So for nearly everyone, including store associates, the visit is a complete surprise.
2:30:15
Got to keep them on their toes.
2:30:17
Uh when the these store visits happen, the goal is nearly always the same. Inspect what you expect.
2:30:24
Scheduling these trips in secrecy makes it possible to see the stores as they truly are.
2:30:27
No fanfare or pretending.
2:30:27
I was never lucky enough to travel in one of the jets, but the purpose of these trips was not lost on me.
2:30:33
In my cleaning business, we do something similar.
2:30:35
Uh anyways, uh cool concept >> and beautiful jet.
2:30:40
And if you're long Walmart, you're short Walmart, head over to public.
2:30:44
com and enjoy multiasset investing, industryleading yields, and they're trusted by millions.
2:30:49
Uh >> Clyde has been at a conference.
2:30:52
Looks like he got a Lucy hat. >> He did.
2:30:56
>> And then a lot of other stuff.
2:30:56
This is >> This is awesome. Wow.
2:30:57
And some breakers there, too. He got samples.
2:30:59
He got >> What conference is this? He got a happy dad hat. >> Yeah.
2:31:04
Uh >> uh he should start a convenience store, corner store that's only powered by conference. They only sell.
2:31:11
>> Yeah, you could really resell.
2:31:11
You could really resell a bunch of this.
2:31:12
Um, all of these brands should head over to adquake. com.
2:31:16
Out of home advertising made easy and measurable.
2:31:18
Say goodbye to the headaches of out of home advertising.
2:31:21
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2:31:25
The other thing that you need to do genuinely if you are running a CPG company, you will wind up at a lot of conferences like these.
2:31:31
You will be talking to convenience store owners and you'll be talking to distributors.
2:31:36
And as much as we like to joke about luxury watches, it is a very important aspect of the job, it really it really does like when you're shaking hands with people in this particular industry, tech has been, you know, like you got to be an afficionado, you got to like the craftsmanship of a particular watch.
2:31:54
It's a unique choice in tech, but in my experience in consumer package goods, when you go to a CPG conference, uh what's on your wrist actually matters.
2:32:02
So, if you're building the CBG business, maybe you should head over to getbbezzle.
2:32:05
com because your bezel concier is available now to source you any watch on the planet. Seriously, any watch.
2:32:10
Uh, no joke, I seriously got uh I I became like fast friends with uh one of our major distributors talking about watches um because he was super into them.
2:32:19
Anyway, our next guest is already in the ream radio waiting room.
2:32:21
We have Nathan from Airirst Street Capital coming in to the studio. Nathan, good to see you. How are you doing? >> Welcome. Great.
2:32:29
>> I was worried it's light where you are.
2:32:31
I was worried I was going to keep you up late because you're usually in Europe.
2:32:34
Uh give us a little introduction on yourself and and backstory and then tell us where you actually are if you can.
2:32:40
>> Incredible jacket too.
2:32:40
Jackets are a great sign of respect in our culture. >> It is nice jacket. >> Yeah. Thank you. Thank you.
2:32:44
It's life at the AI frontier. >> Yes.
2:32:48
>> Um yeah, so I founded a firm called Air Street Capital uh in Europe.
2:32:50
I invest in AI companies at the very early stage.
2:32:55
I've been doing this for about 10 years now.
2:32:57
Um and spent kind of half my time in the US and in Europe. Um, thank you.
2:33:02
>> And you're in the US now?
2:33:04
>> Yeah, I'm in New York. >> Oh, nice. Very nice. Yeah.
2:33:05
Uh, well, >> on vacation or investing?
2:33:11
>> No, I've actually been doing a bit of a state of AI uh launch tour, if you will.
2:33:15
So, we did a meet up in San Francisco last Thursday for the report drop. Yeah.
2:33:19
>> And then did one in New York last night.
2:33:21
>> And what is the state of AI? >> Yeah.
2:33:22
So, before we get into that, I have one >> is AI good? >> Yeah. One question.
2:33:25
How how competitive are round AI rounds at the early stage like preede seed >> uh today?
2:33:33
I know I'm sure they're getting more competitive, but I think historically if you could write a million-doll check at the idea stage, you you you had a uh quite a bit >> chance to build a real position. Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah.
2:33:46
I mean, in that sense, I think the game has like materially changed.
2:33:51
um there's a bit of a bifurcation like you have the sort of large lab model companies that are raising you know significant amounts of money and I think those are also potentially good investments but they uh they definitely cater to a certain type of venture firm.
2:34:04
of venture firm. Um, and then you have the other category which is potentially more pragmatic entrepreneurs going for less of the general purpose AI but more looking at kind of what use case can they solve with a general purpose AI system and uh and those ones are a little bit more modest but in general yeah you've seen you know inflation of of round sizes but also actually
2:34:25
interest um from customers to buy this stuff and so founders just want to take a bigger swing want to go faster and that's what's driven a bit of the bit of the round size increase >> I feel like a couple years ago, the meme was even if you're a seedstage company, as long as you slapped AI on there, you could justify like a hundred million dollar raise because who knows, we might need to train a model. We might be doing
2:34:43
We might be doing some real AI, uh, not just a rapper company here.
2:34:48
Has that dissipated as it's become clearer that to win in that game, you need hundreds of billions of dollars.
2:34:55
And so your like your actual cost structure should look a lot less like I see GPT4 as like a capex expense basically like a huge training run and for most AI companies it's going to look a lot more like opex until they have a customer they don't really have a big token bill and so why do they need $50 million at at seed?
2:35:20
>> I ask myself this question a lot.
2:35:20
>> I ask myself this question a lot. uh at the end of the day to some degree you know as an investor you're not the one deciding this you know the market sort of pumps what they will >> um but I I think the I think the biggest um frame change and you can see this documented in the state of the report
2:35:36
the last eight years that have been doing it is a lot of the capabilities that you get out of the box of a model today whether it's you know language reasoning image video biology um >> if you showed that to you know me or others 10 years ago we would have probably said this is magic and like not possible. >> Uh and so I think there there is just so
2:35:53
>> Uh and so I think there there is just so much you can do with what's available today that it's almost a gift to the startup community that now they don't have to blow you know their three four five million seed budget on trying to
2:36:05
build an AI system collect the data and then you know throw it over the parapet to a to a puritive customer who says you know what I don't care I've got other priorities what is this AI thing doesn't even work anyway. >> Yeah. >> Yeah.
2:36:16
>> Um so now you can run your whole seed budget on product market fit experiments.
2:36:19
So it's almost like back to kind of OG seed investing which is less about you know what the initial starting idea is but how capable is a team to just uh run a lot of experiments and find something that works and then uh and then you know rip it when it does. >> Yeah.
2:36:35
What uh what's the headline KPI that you like to center on in a state of AI report?
2:36:41
I mean, you can focus on market caps.
2:36:43
You can focus on revenue growth.
2:36:45
You could even look at uh gigawwatts and and electrical numbers.
2:36:50
You could look at number of H100 equivalents that are being built out.
2:36:55
Like there's so many different ways to ground the shape of the AI buildout.
2:36:59
Like what do you like to focus on?
2:37:01
>> Yeah, frankly, I mean the report is about 300 pages, so the honest answer is all the things.
2:37:05
Um but uh but so what we started doing uh a few years ago is this compute index where I basically combed around the internet to try to find uh all documented cluster sizes for various companies and we've been charting just how much of an expansion >> uh you know has happened.
2:37:22
Um you know there in the last 3 years it's basically probably like a 100x increase. Mhm.
2:37:28
>> Um the other cool thing we've done is like mine all open source uh research papers and programmatically determine which chips are used in those papers.
2:37:37
>> So we can give people uh like a leading edge view for what researchers like in terms of hardware.
2:37:43
And so with that we've shown I think the only evidence to this uh to this I've seen which is that 90% of AI research papers rely on an Nvidia chipset. >> Yeah.
2:37:54
And through that kind of work, we've seen, you know, AMD start to grow a little bit as well.
2:37:57
Um, out of nowhere, of course.
2:38:00
>> It does seem like Nvidia or AMD is really picking up this year.
2:38:02
We've seen this in Cluster Max from semi analysis.
2:38:07
Uh, they kind of did their, I don't know, year of efficiency or in some ways and started squashing bugs.
2:38:11
And then there's just immense pressure when there's, you know, hundreds of billions of dollars going into the next the next phase of the buildout that uh, you know, uh, Nvidia's margins are going to be in the in the crosshairs for sure. >> Yeah.
2:38:29
And strategic alliances with uh, with OpenAI that I think is is quite interesting because there's uh, you know, if you read through the uh, through the news, you'll see that actually OpenAI has warrants in in in AMD. Yeah.
2:38:43
>> Uh at a strike price of 600.
2:38:46
>> And so there's like some interesting incentives there to try to, >> you know, get AMD stuff to really work.
2:38:51
Um in some degree it's not as similar to like the relationship, I suppose, between Anthropic and AWS where Trrenium uh and and AWS's hardware is clearly behind >> um you know, the bigger competitors like Nvidia and so they get sort of like it help desk support from uh uh from Enthropic to make the stuff work. >> Yeah.
2:39:10
Uh do you think we're in a bubble?
2:39:14
>> Um there's there's probably local bubbles, you know, all the time.
2:39:17
Uh I think in like our little like ecosystem of of AI, uh there could be one in this like capex um you know, build out and all the interconnectingness um with various companies.
2:39:27
Um I think as soon as you see like Wall Street Finance get excited about something, you have to >> think a little bit why they're getting excited. >> Yeah.
2:39:36
Um but you know at the end of the day I think um the outputs of this bubble if there is one are really really productive.
2:39:44
I mean >> back to the point around like this technology is magic.
2:39:47
There's there's so much value that's getting created and we've documented some of this with uh with our mutual friends at ramp looking at how much uh your you know US companies are spending on AI services and that's going up the retention is going up.
2:40:01
You know, some of our investments in like 11 Labs and Cynthsia and others are just like growing because it's genuinely useful stuff.
2:40:08
>> Yeah, it feels very different than >> What about What was your reaction to that Deutsche Bank report on Chad GPT spending growth?
2:40:15
I was reading I looked at it and it felt hard to judge because we're looking at summer basically. >> Yeah.
2:40:22
>> And um but how did how did you uh process it?
2:40:26
>> I mean, yeah, astronomical numbers.
2:40:30
But I guess the question is like is like is uh is the is the TAM for paid AI subscriptions in the consumer or proumer realm uh saturating?
2:40:40
And I mean we're certainly seeing messaging from OpenAI that says we want to do agentic commerce, we want to increase the monetization of our free users.
2:40:49
We want to get into advertising potentially affiliate revenue API business.
2:40:53
like it it doesn't just feel like there's an unlimited pool of people that will pay $200 a month for, you know, a a great product, a magical product, but uh there just might not be that many people worldwide that are like sign me up for the $200 a month plan. >> Yeah.
2:41:12
So, I mean along that notice, I was also interested in this topic.
2:41:14
So uh I surveyed about,200 AI practitioners uh for the report and all this data is open access through it and I was really surprised because 95% of the people who took the survey uh use AI in their personal life and their professional life >> and it's like 75% of them pay out of their pocket for it >> and 10% of people pay 200 bucks a month or more. >> Wow.
2:41:38
>> Um and uh and like this is a pretty you know educated crowd in North America and in Europe.
2:41:44
Um but I was surprised at those numbers.
2:41:46
And then the second thing to your point around like agent commerce, I think that's huge.
2:41:50
Like we have some data in the report that shows that um uh conversion of e-commerce that's derived from kind of agent conversations converts at a higher rate than uh direct. >> Mhm.
2:42:03
Uh and so you can imagine that like the the brands that sort of jump on this earlier and create content that agents are using to uh to best learn like what the right solution is to serve to their like uh you know human uh uh like the human that they're serving are actually going to probably grow their revenues faster.
2:42:23
It's like this recursive cycle particularly as you know more and more labs and companies want to do this like reinforcement learning to improve um improve personalization. Yeah. Yeah.
2:42:32
>> So, I think there's a lot of like adjacencies that one can uh one can navigate into.
2:42:36
Actually, >> uh a week or so ago, the EU announced their 1.
2:42:41
1 billion plan to ramp up AI and key industries.
2:42:44
key industries. Uh what was your uh obviously people in uh the west coast were mock you know kind of mocking it uh considering that >> you know the whole the whole plan was less than uh >> same Alman's carpet >> uh you know their meta's recent uh >> post single
2:43:03
>> but um but yeah I my my my reaction was like that's that's kind of the the takes were funny but like at least like there is a plan at least there is evidence of right >> um and I I guess like when you read it and reacted to it, I guess like what was your immediate thought on what you wish the EU was doing? >> Yeah. I mean, my reaction wasn't too >> Yeah.
2:43:22
I mean, my reaction wasn't too similar.
2:43:24
Uh there's been like a meme kind of bandied around in some of our friend group which is back to the Derek Zoolander like is this a house for ants? >> Yeah, exactly.
2:43:34
>> Is this a plan for ants?
2:43:36
>> But like does but like like Europe did not build their own Google and it was fine.
2:43:41
I mean they they like missed out on it.
2:43:44
But like the natural state of the market equilibrium was that Google was built in America and America absorbed the market cap and European investors could go invest in Google if they wanted to and Google eventually built data centers to serve Google products locally.
2:44:00
But there was never like a we need a we need our own thing.
2:44:02
I is is the thinking around like national AI changing because I feel like there's a world where even if you're using some like locally trained model like if you're going to chat.
2:44:15
com like it's still open AAI wins. >> Yeah.
2:44:19
Uh so there was uh an initiative I suppose I'll call two examples.
2:44:22
So there was one in Europe uh which called Quero which was like a government um kind of funded initiative to try to build a search engine that best represented European interest because allegedly Google wouldn't because it's an American company.
2:44:36
>> And obviously no one knows about it because that flopped.
2:44:38
>> And then you know the second example was the French government not wanting to buy Palunteer. >> Oh yeah.
2:44:43
>> For many many years as you guys will know pretty well.
2:44:46
>> And uh and eventually they caved in after burning the same amount of money they'd probably have spent on Palunteer and got it anyway. >> Mhm.
2:44:52
Um and yeah, the latest example of all this um uh sort of infrastructure buildout in the US and in China is now every country wants to be sovereign with regards to AI. >> Yeah.
2:45:03
So so here's an interesting >> and like >> like is Putin the least AGI pilled world leader.
2:45:08
Like I I I was trying to get research on how his clust on their clusters over there.
2:45:12
They were like, "We have 800 GPUs >> and we're running them hot."
2:45:16
And I and so like they're basically calling the world's bluff on AI.
2:45:22
>> We'll be fine without >> did say that he actually wanted to have AI supremacy about a year or two ago, but but admittedly maybe there's less evidence of that.
2:45:31
>> I mean to some degree also like you know Yandex was a pretty amazing Russian search company and then they've since le left and relisted on the NASDAQ as Nebius. >> Nebas. Yeah.
2:45:40
and one of the clouds that's really crushing it because they're they have really good technology. >> Yeah.
2:45:44
>> Um but yeah, I think this the sovereign thing is a little bit of uh like a meme or a misnomer.
2:45:49
I mean, I think it's great for um the suppliers to the technology because they have yet another like TAM to sell to.
2:45:56
But, you know, if you're a non-American nation and you buy Nvidia chips and you buy American technology and, you know, Chinese technology and you just install it in your country, I don't necessarily see how that makes you sovereign because these things need updates.
2:46:10
They can be switched off basically. >> Yeah.
2:46:13
They have a relatively short life too. >> That too. Useful life. >> Exactly.
2:46:18
So, I I think sovereign is a little bit more of like a a an alignment of technology agenda and political agenda.
2:46:28
uh than it actually is uh the true meaning of the definition of like we control our fate when it comes to intelligence and running it. >> Okay.
2:46:36
Moving forward, uh a lot of people are nervous about cracks in the global economy, cracks in the AI economy.
2:46:41
Uh what are you monitoring?
2:46:44
What like like what what are you uh what do you think is the most important metrics or data points or stories to be really digging into these days?
2:46:55
Yeah, I mean I think it comes back down to like the return on investment, you know, cases of companies becoming more efficient, launching better services.
2:47:05
>> Uh I think the reason why I do this at all is because I think AI unlocks new use cases that weren't possible before.
2:47:12
>> Um and uh and so for so long as we see those examples, you know, propagate through the economy and it's still very early, >> um I think we're we're in a good shape.
2:47:21
And we only talked about software here but there's so much in you know national security and defense that's uh that's uh that needs to be solved and many of those problems whether it's like you know electronic warfare autonomy rely on AI and so huge town there also in Europe and we've got plays there with uh you know with Delhi and a few others uh companies in Europe.
2:47:43
>> So uh I think it's like uh it's full speed basically. >> Yeah. Exciting times.
2:47:47
Well, thank you so much for joining the show.
2:47:49
Uh, I hope you have a good weekend. We'll talk to you soon. >> Great to meet. Thank you.
2:47:54
>> Have a great rest of your day.
2:47:56
>> Um, if you're looking to take a trip to New York or anywhere, head over to wander. com. Find your happy place.
2:48:02
Book a wander with inspiring views, hotel, great amenities, dreamy beds, top tier cleaning, and 24/7 concier service.
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It's a vacation home, but better.
2:48:08
Uh, we have some breaking news.
2:48:10
Apple has entered a five-year deal to broadcast Formula 1 in the United States. >> Wow. >> Yeah. From Walter Bloomberg.
2:48:17
Uh this is uh very exciting.
2:48:21
We were wondering where they were going to land.
2:48:22
They landed with Apple and I love the Apple strategy.
2:48:26
>> How much did they pay?
2:48:27
>> Uh we don't I I don't know. We should look it up.
2:48:29
But uh I love the Apple strategy. Apple did the movie F1.
2:48:30
So then you watch the movie and you're like I want to watch the actual sh the actual race.
2:48:36
I'll I can watch it on Apple TV. >> Yeah.
2:48:38
The more I the more I thought about it, >> crazy like like >> they basically took they basically took drive to survive and then they made a movie with these fictional characters and they but they just like ultimately just like >> it's a barnacle economy in my opinion.
2:48:53
>> Barnacle economy >> really is.
2:48:55
They just like like Drive to Survive is this whale that was making uh making F1 relevant in the US.
2:49:02
>> I feel like >> they just attached on to it's a big barnacle.
2:49:05
>> Wait, who's the barnacle and who's the whale?
2:49:06
I feel like I feel like F1 >> I'm saying Apple started as a barnacle >> and they're becoming the whale.
2:49:12
>> H I feel like I feel like F1 is the barnacle on Drive to Survive honestly in the in America.
2:49:20
>> Yeah, F1 is a barnacle on the whale that is just Netflix making reality TV out of everything basically.
2:49:26
Uh but uh we need to figure out >> in the chat says, "Can't believe my elderly mother broke the F1 news to me before Walter Bloomberg." Let's go. Mothers tapped in.
2:49:38
>> Uh Ryan says 5year deal worth about 750 million.
2:49:42
>> That's uh >> they were originally going out for 200 million for one season. Yeah.
2:49:45
So that would billion dollar deal.
2:49:47
So they got they got 75% of the way there. Not bad. >> Um Tim Cook. >> Yeah.
2:49:53
Do you remember when he was trying to wave flag? >> Oh, no.
2:49:56
I don't remember that meme that image.
2:49:58
I remember him being at some DJ booth.
2:50:00
Uh was it like John Summit was playing at F1?
2:50:02
I I think I saw uh a video.
2:50:06
>> Yeah, I got I got a video.
2:50:06
I'm dropping it in the timeline.
2:50:09
>> People are saying this is the worst checkered flag of all time. >> Oh, no.
2:50:13
>> We'll give him We'll give him some because he's >> he's he's barely making it by million years.
2:50:19
>> One of the supply chain goats.
2:50:20
>> Yeah, he's uh Okay, here he is. Tim Cook. Uh this is at F1. Yep.
2:50:27
>> And they and they want him to wave the checkered flag. That looks fine. >> No, it doesn't.
2:50:31
>> How How does one wave a checkered flag?
2:50:32
That is not how you would wave. >> How would I wave it? Would I just war gusto?
2:50:36
You think >> Look at how laxidasical this w I mean >> it it does seem like he's kind of phoning it in.
2:50:41
>> Looks like he's going fishing. >> It does. Yeah.
2:50:44
>> He's at the the finish line of a Formula One race and he looks like he's going out for trying to catch some trout or something. >> Wow.
2:50:52
So, so >> but he got the deal done.
2:50:54
But if they if they hadn't done this and they're instead of spending $150 million a year on F1, they could have tripled Tim Cook's pay package, which one do you think a more a more incentivized Tim Cook could potentially create more value? What which would you do?
2:51:11
>> He was so embarrassed by the the fishing >> inspired flag that he's like, I'm going to >> I want to own it all. >> I want to own it all. >> I want to own it all. I want to shut it down.
2:51:20
I want to I'm going to drive the sport into the ground.
2:51:22
you might get more satisfaction out of that than a higher salary.
2:51:27
>> Before we close out, we need to expand the barnacle economy taxonomy.
2:51:28
Uh what we need to do, so the whales, it's obvious who the whales are. That's anthropic. That's the hyperscalers. That's open AI.
2:51:37
That's the foundation model labs, right? They're the whales.
2:51:40
They're growing massively.
2:51:40
They're putting up huge numbers.
2:51:42
And so the barnacle can be two things.
2:51:44
It can be one the company that sells to the whale or it can be merely a company that sells something that buys from the whale.
2:51:54
And so I feel like we need two different two different terms.
2:51:59
The barnacle economy specifically uh like the training data providers, right?
2:52:03
That feels barnacle economy.
2:52:04
But the AI for lawyers that does not feel barnacle, right?
2:52:08
Because they have to go out and win customers in the legal field.
2:52:12
I think if you can swap out the underlying intelligence, you're not a barnacle.
2:52:16
Basically, >> your shark >> and and ultimately they don't have to sell to the to the whale. >> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
2:52:23
They they buy from the whale. >> Yes.
2:52:26
>> So the shark the shark buys from the whale and and goes up.
2:52:28
You might have a Nobel on your hands here with barnacle theory. It's happening.
2:52:33
Uh well uh is there any other breaking news?
2:52:39
>> Bloomberg this morning or I think it was yesterday. Yes.
2:52:41
Uh, apparently Caner is trying to do this private raise for Tether at a $500 billion valuation, but Bloomberg reports that Caner invested 600 million in a convertible note for 5% stake in Tether a year ago, >> a 12 billion valuation for Tether.
2:52:55
Now, Caner is trying to tell investors that Tether is worth 42 times more in just one year.
2:53:02
Um, and when Caner is obviously conflicted as a 5% owner, yeah, that ain't happening.
2:53:08
Um yeah, I mean the uh you know a stable coin leader is going to be worth a lot more after the regulatory changes this year, but yeah, there's also a lot more competition.
2:53:20
So >> what's circle at right now? 30 billion.
2:53:26
>> Uh so yeah, I mean 15 times the the the the price of circle might be might be high. I I don't really know.
2:53:33
I know Tether's a great business.
2:53:34
So, uh I wouldn't be surprised if they get a a major up round done.
2:53:38
Um in other news, >> yeah, I guess I guess that So, what's the current market cap of USDC is 75 billion.
2:53:47
>> Well, is that is that for the token or is that the actual token itself?
2:53:48
Circle the company is 30 billion market cap and so you here's the here's the issue.
2:53:53
I mean, Circle has >> wildly different economics, right?
2:53:59
>> Wildly different economics.
2:53:59
they they have to pay a large amount of their revenue out to Coinbase and I'm sure other exchanges.
2:54:07
>> But uh Tether is at 185 billion of market cap.
2:54:12
>> So three times the size with with better economics potentially.
2:54:15
Like 500 billion doesn't seem that crazy to me. I don't know.
2:54:19
I I I haven't done any of the actual math.
2:54:22
>> Question is how how durable is the >> Yeah. Yeah.
2:54:24
Especially when uh everyone's going to be having their Kohl's cash soon. Who knows? Phantom's in the game.
2:54:29
Bridge obviously wants to create a lot more.
2:54:33
>> Zephyr has a post here. Big contract.
2:54:36
Chinese actuator component supplier Sanwa Intelligent Controls is rumored to have secured a $685 million order from Tesla for Optimus.
2:54:43
San stock surged 10% to the daily limit following the news going viral.
2:54:48
While other actuator suppliers uh also saw significantly >> put they put a daily limit on how much >> That's extremely unamerican.
2:54:55
I don't like that at all.
2:54:57
Uh, Matt Frerieded says, "Tesla not building their own actuators is the least missiondriven thing I've heard all year." I don't know.
2:55:04
I mean, there's >> What does this say about Tesla's timelines on like actual humanoid value, though?
2:55:10
Because if they were thinking >> prototype at this point, so you shopware.
2:55:14
>> No, I I was going to say the opposite of like if you felt like you were have 5 years until you were actually going to be >> Yeah.
2:55:20
selling these to people, maybe you would just build your own if you were trying to sell them and get them out >> today in in the world faster actuator facility in America.
2:55:31
>> I got to spend over half a billion with uh a rival. >> Yeah. I don't know.
2:55:34
Uh in other news, Ian Goodfellow uh is determinism. >> Uh I've met him.
2:55:41
He signed a book that he wrote on deep learning for me.
2:55:43
Uh it's in the Museum of Business History and Technology History.
2:55:48
uh more of what my colleagues and I have been working on in AI for fusion is public now. Why are we clapping?
2:55:55
Uh we're announcing a research collaboration with CFS Energy, one of the world's nuclear leading nuclear fusion companies.
2:56:02
Commonwealth fusion systems. >> Mine is goated.
2:56:06
>> This is is actually crazy.
2:56:06
Together, they're helping speed up the development of clean, safe, limitless fusion power with AI.
2:56:12
Uh yeah, awesome to see Google uh working in fusion.
2:56:14
Obviously, Sam Alman's a believer with Helion.
2:56:16
We've had a number of Fusion founders on the show.
2:56:20
Uh it's one of those technologies that's always been 10 years away but feels less than 10 years finally.
2:56:24
Uh we are we are making some progress.
2:56:26
What what's your Fusion take?
2:56:29
>> Um I mean I'm I'm very profusion but uh in other like Deep Mind news apparently uh Gemini 3 is actually slated for December.
2:56:36
So there were some rumors of like maybe next week but now there's some people saying it's actually >> add 30 days to the singularity counter.
2:56:45
This is just not going to happen, is it?
2:56:47
When when is AI AGI coming?
2:56:47
This is this is this is the worst news ever.
2:56:52
>> I don't know, but it will be a nice Christmas gift.
2:56:54
>> I I was saying December 25th.
2:56:54
They got they got to watch December 25th.
2:56:58
>> My kids are getting Gemini.
2:56:59
>> They got to they got to do it. December 23.
2:57:00
You know, the the the VR headsets, they always like rock it to the top of the app store.
2:57:05
That's what I want to see.
2:57:07
>> Um >> my kids are getting a box of tokens. >> Box of tokens.
2:57:11
>> Uh we can close with Will Manitis potentially.
2:57:14
He's got a bunch of stuff.
2:57:15
Well, uh I mean there's a I I just wanted to give it up for Stargate UAE. It's taking shape. We got a video in here.
2:57:22
>> We should try to pull this up.
2:57:22
Uh led by CSNA, this 1 gawatt AI infrastructure cluster is a cornerstone of the 5 gawatt UAE US AI campus in Abu Dhabi.
2:57:31
A key part of building the intelligence grid, >> the digital >> backbone enabling secure sovereign and I don't know AI because it's cut off.
2:57:42
But we can see this video here. Yeah, very cool.
2:57:47
Um, Will Manitis says, "If you're a young person interested in going deep on weird things, basically the only good advice is that you should be 1,000x more commercial.
2:57:57
Someone will get very rich by monetizing the things you figure out.
2:58:00
There's no reason that person shouldn't be you." That's good. Good.
2:58:03
>> Um, well, >> Andre Carpathy uh dropped a podcast with uh Dark Ces Patel. It's a banger.
2:58:11
>> I listened to the first like 20 25 minutes. Just a banger so far. Perfect for the weekend. Go enjoy it. TVPN is off.
2:58:17
We do have a diet TVPN product now.
2:58:19
>> Yeah, it's interesting.
2:58:19
There's one uh quote that uh I guess Nick uh was was calling out.
2:58:25
Nick obviously uh is more Grock align, but he said uh he was >> independent most loyal soldier.
2:58:33
Uh he was quoting Alman um earlier it said 2025 is the year of AI agents.
2:58:39
I think you could still defend that with codeex, but certainly we're not >> seeing maybe a the agents that that we were all super excited about, right?
2:58:50
Deep research as an agent of coding agents.
2:58:53
>> I haven't booked a flight with AI yet.
2:58:53
I guess >> Cararpathy says, "I was triggered by that overprediction.
2:58:58
More accurately, it's the decade of agents.
2:59:00
There's so much work to be done. >> Let's go.
2:59:03
Humans in the loop for another decade. We got this." >> Yeah. >> Yeah.
2:59:08
That that's like normal, right? >> What do you think? More or less.
2:59:12
You you keep being like we're just on track.
2:59:14
Super intelligent right around the corner. >> Yeah, we are.
2:59:16
I mean, it it's always hard.
2:59:18
It's like what is what do you mean by agent?
2:59:20
Like what what can actually do in 10 years?
2:59:22
I feel like >> like >> what have agents done for you today?
2:59:27
>> Uh wrote me some code. >> Yeah. >> Yeah.
2:59:31
And I and I and I and yeah, I agree that I can I I think this was the year coding agents.
2:59:36
the year of coding agents. >> Yeah.
2:59:38
And I think um computer use is like getting better and better.
2:59:42
Hopefully we see Gemini 3 like better computer use.
2:59:45
>> A good example is like when when you made the the video vibr for the Met list, you were not able to puppeteer Premiere Pro with an agent.
2:59:54
And that at the end of the day, that's just like clicking buttons on the computer.
2:59:58
clicking buttons on the computer. like it could use ffmpeg, it could use uh like the control the mouse and keyboard and screen record and like that agent isn't here and you should be able to just in natural language talk to an
3:00:14
agent that then you know makes the cuts in Premiere Pro and I still believe that even when we get there you'll still need to say I have an idea to include clips from Cheeky Pint or whatever you picked or these these particular walkouts but um like it's not it It's not there. It's
3:00:28
It's not generalized yet. It's not generalized.
3:00:34
>> That feels uh that does not feel 10 years away at all.
3:00:35
That feels like right now I could I could build a RL environment and do that if I had enough compute in like, you know, a month. Just more compute.
3:00:43
Oh, now you're asking comput. I see how it is. >> Okay.
3:00:48
Well, anyway, have a fantastic weekend everyone.
3:00:50
We will see you on Monday. We love you.
3:00:52
Leave us five stars on Apple Podcast and Spotify and have a great weekend. >> See you Monday. Goodbye. Cheers.