0:03
I see multiple journalists on the horizon.
Search this video
0:10
We're surrounded by journalists. Hold your position. Overnight success.
0:29
Makes me feel threatened. Double play. Right. That's misinformation. Copy. Clearing order inbound. That's just wrong.
1:10
We're surrounded by journalists. Hold your position. it up. Trust the experts. Five code. We are accurate. Founder mode. Five code.
1:44
I see multiple journalists on the horizon. Stand by. Extract confirmed. UAV online. Blitz. Double blades. Triple blades. Double kill. Five kill. Wrong. Come get up. Blades. Team death match. We are experts. Triple blades. That's just wrong. Right.
3:08
All security order in back. Come get up.
3:22
You're surrounded by drones. Take your position. Strike one. Strike two.
3:44
Activate global retrieval.
3:54
Switch to the anti-tank >> Mortar clearing order inbound.
4:18
I see my first journalist on the horizon.
4:19
Dead man journalist on the horizon. Dead man. You're watching TBPN.
4:36
Today is Thursday, April 2nd, 2026.
4:39
We are live >> days until April Fool's. >> Yes, that's right.
4:44
We are live from the TBPN ultradome, the temple of technology, the fortress of finance, the capital of capital. We have some huge news.
4:52
Uh this is from the OpenAI blog.
4:55
OpenAI acquires TBPN, accelerating the global conversation about AI.
4:58
Uh this is not an April Fool's joke.
5:01
April Fool's was yesterday.
5:03
We didn't do anything for April Fool's Day. Uh this is real.
5:05
This is a very interesting deal.
5:07
I think a lot of people will be interested in this.
5:10
We're very excited about this.
5:10
Uh we have a bunch of context and information to share about how this changes things, what changes, what doesn't.
5:19
I'm sure there's a million questions.
5:20
We're trying We're going to try and get to them all.
5:21
But then we also have a huge normal show. Normal show. We got Marc Lore.
5:26
>> That's the first thing that's not changing. TBPN's not going away.
5:27
Uh we're going to be live every day, 3 hours, as long as we want.
5:31
Uh we have a lot of flexibility.
5:33
We're going to do a lot of interesting things.
5:34
We got Marc Lore, the LeBron James of e-commerce.
5:38
This is from his Wikipedia page.
5:38
Uh we can pull up the uh if you are calling me right now, I can't pick up because I'm live.
5:47
And I think you know >> to turn off the phones.
5:49
>> I think yes, it might be time to turn off the phones.
5:52
>> Yeah, very very strange.
5:52
I think this is maybe the first time in history there's been a deal like this and then uh two people that are a part of it have to go and talk for >> Yes.
6:00
3 hours straight, but uh it's technology business as usual over here. Yes.
6:05
>> have a fun show for you today.
6:05
We'll get into the news in a second, but we have Adam Myers coming on from CrowdStrike >> Yes.
6:10
to talk about all uh the recent uh Axie Infinity hack and uh >> More.
6:16
We have Jeremy from Circle coming on. >> In person.
6:19
In person, which is exciting to talk about stable coins.
6:23
Justin from Shepherd, Garav from Mirage, and then Philip Starboard >> Starboard Lots of space news. >> the week.
6:29
Uh we're very excited about the Artemis 2 mission going successfully.
6:32
Hopefully you all watched it. It was a lot of fun.
6:33
We were watching it here on the uh on the screen and we were gripped as the rocket took off because uh Yeah, we were we were so locked in.
6:41
We were we were joking around that it should have it felt like it should have been a paper review.
6:44
Like could we turn space into a profit center for the government?
6:47
Somebody was saying that it was not entertaining.
6:50
I was extremely entertained. I don't know. >> Yeah.
6:53
Maybe they maybe they could do more, but I thought it >> NASA has a decent e-commerce business, too.
6:56
We were watching they were selling like 10,000 patches a minute or something like that. >> yeah.
7:01
I think we were we were doing the back of the envelope just from the main call to action at the bottom of the YouTube stream.
7:06
They were selling a patch for I don't know tens of dollars and they'd sold like hundreds of thousands of them.
7:11
So as we were watching they were selling like something like $10 million worth of merch.
7:15
Um so maybe go get some for yourself.
7:17
Anyway, let's go over to Fiji Cmo's post on the OpenAI blog.
7:19
Uh she shared this message with the company earlier today.
7:26
She says, "I'm excited to share that we've acquired TBPN.
7:28
This acquisition brings a team with strong editorial instincts, deep audience understanding, and proven ability to convene influential voices across tech, business, and culture.
7:38
That's >> I'm still going to be hitting the soundboard. Yeah, you are.
7:43
Um TVP has built something pretty special.
7:48
It's one of the places where the conversations about AI and builders is actually happening day-to-day.
7:51
A lot of you already watch it and rely on it to stay close to what's going on.
7:55
As I've been thinking about the future of how we communicate in OpenAI, one thing that's become clear is that the standard communications playbook just doesn't apply to us.
8:04
We're not a typical company.
8:06
We're driving a really big technological shift.
8:08
And the mission of bringing and with the mission of bringing AGI to the world comes a responsibility to help create a space for real constructive conversation about the changes AI creates with builders and people using the technology at the center.
8:23
And that's exactly what TVP has built, which is what I was going to say. It's the next line.
8:28
That is a huge part of the show is making sense of what's going on, how these tools are actually being used, all of the implications.
8:36
We've gone all over the place and we will continue to go all over the place.
8:40
>> Yeah, and over the last over the last year, like, you know, multiple years, there's just been so much there's so much uncertainty about AI.
8:44
I don't think we can change that.
8:48
But there's also a lot of fear.
8:48
Just talking through it with the people that are actually helping diffuse AI through the economy across every single industry is something that we've enjoyed a tremendous amount and is exactly what we're going to continue to do. If you want to continue. Yeah, so she says.
9:03
So rather than trying to recreate that ourselves, it made a lot of sense just to bring them in, support what they're doing, and help them scale while keeping what makes them special.
9:12
A core part of this is editorial independence.
9:15
We can say whatever we want because we're live and we don't need to run anything through anyone. Uh It's not possible.
9:22
It is It would be very difficult to have somebody here. Can we say this?
9:26
I'm about to say a sentence.
9:27
TVP will continue to run their programming, choose their own guests, and make their own editorial decisions.
9:33
That's foundational to their credibility and it's something we're explicitly protecting as part of this agreement.
9:38
And also, we were never in the scoop industry.
9:40
People were kind of asking like, is this journalism? Is it commentary?
9:42
I think we've always been like, hey, we, you know, like to talk to a lot of people, have a conversation, bring in people >> Yeah, and even even when companies have approached us and said, "We'll give you the exclusive."
9:52
We don't >> Yeah, we'll say, "Give it to somebody else."
9:54
It's like, "Hey, you can come on the show, but we actually want you to go talk to the journalist or the Times >> Or Bloomberg, wherever, Bloomberg, etc. >> Yeah. Wherever you want to go.
10:02
Um And then come and contextualize it with us and and let us dig in and understand more about the strategy.
10:08
Uh and so, uh TBPN will continue running their programming, choose their guests, and make their own editorial decisions.
10:15
That's foundational to their credibility and something we're explicitly protecting as part of this agreement.
10:19
I'm also excited to bring their amazing comms and marketing instincts to the team.
10:23
We got lots of ideas and we're very excited for this.
10:26
Uh they're they've helped many brands market online and because they have a strong pulse on where the industry is going, their comms and marketing ideas have really impressed you, Jason. >> About me.
10:35
Uh I can't wait to leverage their talent outside of the show to innovate on how we bring AI to the world in a way that helps people understand the full impact of this technology on their daily lives.
10:45
TBPN will sit within our strategy organization.
10:47
We're reporting to Chris La Hayne.
10:48
Really excited to welcome Jordy, John, Dylan, and the broader team.
10:52
And here's a statement from you.
10:54
Do you want to read this? What did you say?
10:55
Over the past year, we've had a front row seat not just to OpenAI, but to the entire ecosystem covering the daily news, announcements, and launches in real time.
11:03
While we've been critical of the industry at times, after getting to know Sam, Greg, and the OpenAI team, what stood out the most was their openness to feedback feedback and commitment to getting this right.
11:14
Uh moving from commentary to real impact in how this technology is distributed and understood globally is incredibly important to us.
11:23
So, uh I contextualize it a little bit more.
11:26
Shared uh you know, a lot of people are like, is this an April Fools' joke?
11:28
I've have saying, "Expect the unexpected." This is a plot twist. I'll give you that. It was unexpected. It was unexpected to me.
11:36
Uh and but I'm really happy about it.
11:38
And when I reflect on my career, it's I think it makes a lot of sense and I can walk you through some of my career and my experience with OpenAI and with Sam Altman.
11:47
Um the uh I've known Sam for maybe 13 years.
11:49
He invested in my first company in 2013.
11:55
And then we got in a really serious logjam during a financing and I wrote him an email.
12:00
I told this story in Bloomberg a couple of years ago.
12:03
Uh I wrote him an email and said like, "Hey, like this is getting really rough. I'm first-time founder.
12:06
I don't know if we're going to be able to get this done."
12:09
Uh and he called me and we hopped on the phone for like 5 minutes and he was able to completely resolve everything and everyone walked out of the deal uh feeling pretty good.
12:15
And so, that always left this impression on me that like he was founder-friendly.
12:22
Obviously, he didn't In this particular case, it was to my benefit, not particularly to his benefit, the way the deals the way the way the deal like wound out.
12:28
And uh and he was just a great ad great addition to the uh to the negotiation and really And you were very young at the time. You were just a wee lad. >> I was. I was.
12:43
>> 24, something in that >> Something like that. Yeah.
12:44
And then uh when I took my second company through YC, he was president at the time.
12:47
Uh and then when I joined Founders Fund, uh the very first deal that I saw in motion at Founders Fund was the post-ChatGPT round in OpenAI uh in late 2022, early 2023.
13:01
And so, I sort of had this like front-row seat to all of this.
13:03
And then once we actually started growing TBPN, he was one of the first people that I texted to, you know, say, "Hey, do you want to come on the show?"
13:11
Uh and he was the first lab lead to come on the show.
13:14
And we're excited to continue having him on the show.
13:16
Hopefully, have other lab leads on the show, have other people from all over the industry.
13:19
And just generally, I think that um when I was at Founders Fund, I was not particularly in the weeds of intra venture capital fights.
13:29
I was much more interested in the conversation around technological stagnation, not funding companies, not making great companies happen.
13:38
I never was in a situation where I was like, "Oh, like if a different VC firm backs a great company, that's bad, you know?"
13:46
And I think that's the same philosophy that I have always taken forward and will continue to believe in, which is that like the American AI industry is the most important thing and that will continue to be the case and I'm excited for all the different competition and everything that's happening in the industry to to continue and yeah, push further.
14:10
Jordi, did you have anything else to say?
14:12
You said >> I just wanted to say some thank you's because a lot of people have been a part of this journey to date.
14:18
It's been I think something like, let me do the math here.
14:26
496 days, roughly 16 months since we put out the first episode.
14:31
It was just the two of us and Ben sitting in a room, couple cameras, couple microphones.
14:38
And I will just say I didn't know this special of a business relationship was possible between you and me.
14:46
Like I think like if you look back on that almost 500 days we've had disagreements around strategy or approaches or things like that, but we have like almost universally stayed perfectly aligned on everything that matters every single day, every step of the way.
15:06
And I think that's somewhat of a miracle given that we went into this not really knowing what it would become and >> Yeah, we did like one side project together and it took like eight months and it was like not It was like successful, but it was not like, "Oh, yeah, like okay."
15:19
We were we were working together daily for months, you know.
15:23
It was a lot of just just jumping and leap of faith, right?
15:28
>> Yeah, and I think we've got this question so many times like do you guys get sick of each other?
15:31
You know, you just have to talk to each other for 3 hours a day and like I've said this before, I'll say it again and it is actually hilarious the second that we leave the office.
15:43
We're we both get in the car, we call each other, we end up talking for like another hour on the way home and so it's just been it's been the privilege of of a lifetime to just build this business with you and the whole team.
15:57
The team has been absolutely incredible.
16:03
You guys are all truly amazing and this very much is a this very much is a team like a team sport.
16:10
Like business is a team sport, but this is like a live team sport.
16:13
We come in here every single day and the show doesn't happen if we don't all come in and and make it happen and so the consistency of the team has been just incredible and watching everyone's individual talents just flourish has been incredible.
16:32
A lot of people came into this, you know, having done a thing or two in the past, but learning new things.
16:41
Brandon has been absolutely incredible.
16:46
Just an absolute rock in the organization.
16:49
Brandon, if if you're not familiar, writes writes our newsletter every day and is just remarkably consistent and has like, you know, helped us shape our editorial approach and has been incredible.
17:02
Dylan, who joined us I guess technically Q4 of last year.
17:05
You know, I'd worked with him at my last company, but is truly truly one of a kind remarkable.
17:14
I never want to I never want to do business without him.
17:16
Um and uh he has just done such an exceptional job working off air.
17:21
It's like, you know, challenging when you're building a company and you're also having to put on a live performance Yeah. for 3 hours every day.
17:29
And he wrote the newsletter yesterday. So That's true. That's true. the op-ed. He wrote the op-ed.
17:34
Uh Ben Ben, who's been here uh since since day one.
17:39
>> TBPN, he was working with me on my YouTube channel.
17:41
What When did we start working together? I was here before Jordy. Yeah.
17:46
Maybe like Wait, mid-2024, maybe? Something like that? Sounds right. We made some videos. Yeah.
17:52
Yeah, we we traveled a lot. A lot of Pelican cases.
17:56
>> but it's been it's been absolutely incredible to watch you grow uh from from an an extremely talented individual into a very capable uh and talented manager and and building out a team of people that are so hardworking and wonderful and uh you know, Michael, Scott, Jackson, you guys uh you know, are so uh you know, such a joy to to work with even though what we do is uh is not easy and it's changing, you know, day-to-day. Yeah.
18:29
Um to all the guests, seriously, it's been it's been so much fun.
18:33
Like uh if you went back and rewound to the beginning of of the show to to we we started with no guests.
18:40
We did something like 50 episodes without any guests.
18:44
>> Uh we thought that uh there was a time that we thought we would just do that forever.
18:48
Cuz that was the only thing that was you know, really unique about the show.
18:53
>> Like that's the reason I started creating content in 2020.
18:55
Because it was during COVID, there were no uh events, there were no places to meet other founders, meet other business people.
19:03
I wasn't thinking of it as like a media business, I was thinking of it as like a way to just have conversations and meet other for who are building companies.
19:11
And now we get to do that all day long, which is just a dream come true.
19:14
Yeah, so so many so many guests have turned into to dear friends, you know, the the Joe Wiesenthals, the the Dylan Patels, uh there's there's really too many to list, but we will have you all back on the show, so I can't wait.
19:27
Uh to everybody that's tuned in, whether you've watched, you know, the RSS feed, uh the live show, uh the clips, the newsletter, um you know, we've strived to to create the right product regardless of how much time you have.
19:43
If you have 2 minutes a day to read the newsletter, great.
19:44
If you've got 5 minutes to watch some clips, if you want to watch the entire podcast, if you want to watch diet TBPN, the daily cutdown, uh uh thank you. Thank you for tuning in.
19:59
Uh and uh fortunately, pretty much everything is going to stay exactly the same.
20:04
Uh to our to our one and only Tyler, uh Tyler, uh you are truly truly incredible, one of the the brightest uh young people I've ever I've ever worked with, and uh you have such a bright future.
20:21
You know, we always we always uh we always knew that uh I I I've felt from the very beginning that you would go on to start your own company, uh and we cherish every single minute that we have with you.
20:32
Uh and uh we're going to do our very best to retain you for for decades, but uh thank you for everything you've brought to the show, everything you've built.
20:41
Tyler, uh if if you're just tuning in now, has built uh all of the internal software that we we use to run the show.
20:49
Um it is a, you know, fully custom, you know, content management system, CRM.
20:53
It helps us edit all of our videos.
20:56
It is the backbone of the show.
20:58
It's a it's a tool that the entire team uh uses on a daily basis, and truly the show would not be possible without it.
21:08
Um and uh uh yeah, your your contributions on air as well. It's uh >> It's amazing.
21:15
It's so much fun uh to be able to cut up cut over to you.
21:20
Uh and so it is with great honor that I give you this soundboard. Thank you, Jeff. Um and uh our sponsors. Yeah.
21:31
We can start with uh with the Ramp team, Eric, uh Eric Karim, and uh the whole uh co- uh uh the whole team over there has just been incredible.
21:42
They allowed us, you know, at the at the beginning at sorry, the end of 2024 when we had started doing the show, we really loved it.
21:48
They were they committed to sponsoring the show for a year, and that allowed us to do um to do so much uh in terms of investing in all in all the equipment that we use, hiring people.
21:59
Um they they made it possible and have been uh truly, truly exceptional partners, and and you know, watching Ramp's growth over the last Yeah.
22:08
uh over the last couple years has just been uh phenomenal, and they deserve all the all the success.
22:14
Um and every other sponsor that is that has been a part of this. Yeah.
22:18
It's truly um Shout out Nick as well. Oh, did he not get one?
22:22
Oh, we got to get a direct shout out for Nick.
22:23
We got to do a direct shout out for Nick.
22:25
Uh we don't know we don't know what to call Nick.
22:28
He's a he's a producer >> name on air cuz he'll get 10 times more emails.
22:32
He uh he man- the the the lineup every day is uh is crafted by Nick.
22:34
He is our liaison to 99% of the guests that come on the show.
22:43
Sometimes it starts with an interaction over X or a a a a text message, or uh there's other intermediaries involved.
22:50
There's a lot that goes into actually getting someone into the waiting room, into the show, making sure that they understand how the show will work.
22:55
It's sort of like, you know, you're hot drafting into this live show.
22:58
That's new for a lot of people, and Nick does a great job uh communicating and and parsing all the noise to understand what the best news of the day is, how we can contextualize it best with the with the optimal guests, and he's done a fantastic job and will continue. It's an honor. It's an David Senra. Yeah. Uh one of a kind.
23:21
He literally inspired us from the harder.
23:23
Yeah, David was our very uh first listener that I'm aware of.
23:29
He gets sent a lot of We sent him a link in a Google Drive.
23:31
And he listened and from that first episode, even though it was very scrappy, he said, "Take this you know, 100 times more seriously Yeah.
23:41
than than you than you are right now."
23:44
And we did, and it's it's the best advice that I've ever gotten, and he has been And we have a picture of And we have a picture picture of him here.
23:51
We couldn't print it full size, and it appears that it was printed on a black and white photo printer, but it's a black and white photo, and he's a black and white brand, so thank you to David Senra, who's been the podcast godfather, truly. And the gong. The gong.
24:05
The chat is asking us to hit the gong.
24:07
We have to We have to Russell Lage. The gong will remain. The gong will remain.
24:20
Will Manidis has already chimed in with his take.
24:22
He says, "Many got Many people are saying we're in the deal guy Yuga, many are saying."
24:26
And it means a lot that Will Manidis The only He is the only guest who has co-hosted a full show from start to finish with us.
24:38
And if you want to go back in the archives, you can you can watch that episode. It's a wild one. It was in a hotel room.
24:43
We had yet to figure out the remote shows fully.
24:45
The team worked really hard to make that one happen, and it was a good time. Very chaotic.
24:49
Um And yeah, where where else should we go?
24:54
Should we go to Is there anything else to say about Open AI?
24:57
I mean, of course we'll be in conversation with you forever, you know.
25:01
Anytime on the show, you're welcome to leave a comment or chat in the chat is asking, "Where is Will Manidis right now?" I don't know. Probably sailing a boat. I don't know.
25:11
>> Yeah, and yeah, it's it's an it's an honor to to partner with OpenAI and every single person on the team that we've had the pleasure of meeting. We've been impressed by.
25:22
They are ridiculously talented and every single person is committed to getting getting this AI thing right, so We're very excited.
25:31
We're incredibly excited. Great.
25:33
Well, let's move on to the Artemis 2 pictures and images and news. Very very exciting.
25:40
It made the front of the Wall Street Journal.
25:42
And NASA aims to orbit moon for first for first time since '72 to boldly go.
25:49
The crew of NASA >> Chat is asking, "Is that three Diet Cokes?" Yes.
25:52
I got you got to you got to thank you got to thank >> Diet Coke.
25:55
Thank you to the Coca-Cola Corporation for making this possible.
25:59
Thank you to the the Human team for the for the Mateina Yerba Mate's, the podcast in a can. >> Yes.
26:06
Wouldn't be possible without you guys.
26:08
And thank you to tailors and suit makers.
26:10
There's a lot of people that make this possible.
26:12
The horse, the prop department.
26:13
There's a million things here.
26:17
It's been a It's been a great time.
26:19
Uh So, the crew of NASA Artemis 2 head to Cape Canaveral launch Wednesday launchpad Wednesday for the first human spaceflight to the moon in half a century.
26:30
John Kraus posted a incredible photo.
26:35
Is he Is he someone who actually Yeah, he he he uh Special comms assistant.
26:41
>> Special comms assistant.
26:41
He actually goes to the launches and brings special photography gear to get the best possible photos.
26:46
And man, he did he deliver with this one.
26:50
What an incredible moment.
26:50
We talked about a little bit.
26:52
Um Uh there's an article on the watches of NASA Artemis 2.
26:57
What John, we have to thank our lovely wives. Of course. How could we not? >> Our families. Did you get a text? Maybe.
27:07
Uh we we we don't talk about them a lot on the show.
27:10
This is a show about technology and business, but they have been uh they are the back They are the the truly the backbones of the show and have put up with um A lot of travel. >> a lot of travel.
27:22
>> Late nights, lot of phone >> Incredible hours, uh a lot of kids.
27:26
>> A lot of early mornings.
27:26
I think out of the last out of every single day that we've done the show, I haven't I've I've left the house past uh 6:00 a. m. maybe twice, right?
27:36
Uh it's been it's been a long uh it's been a long road and and the good news, ladies, is it's uh nothing's going to change. So Uh no, uh thank you.
27:50
Uh to both of you for uh supporting us and uh allowing us to to do what we do.
27:56
>> Can we pull up this picture, Ben, of in the production chat of the first episode that we recorded in the Jonathan Club in downtown uh showing a little >> put it up earlier. >> Oh, you did? Yeah, behind the scenes.
28:07
This is uh Yeah, such a such a wild time. >> Remember that?
28:10
Yeah, remember that, John? >> Suitless. Suitless. >> the flag. Yeah. But no suits.
28:13
It looked It looked It looked pretty good on camera.
28:18
I was I was happy with the way it came out, but Uh uh >> Ben can cook. Ben can cook.
28:21
Well, um Where should we go next? Artemis 2? Let's do it.
28:27
Uh yesterday the long-awaited Artemis 2 mission took to the stars en route to the moon for the first such manned mission since 1972. >> Going flashback.
28:43
The chat asked for a flashback. We had to apply. Okay, that's good. Yes.
28:49
The flashbang has been a highlight, for sure.
28:51
Both literally >> Yeah, the sound the soundboard.
28:52
It's truly it's truly a character on the show.
28:55
And I have some, too, now.
28:58
Uh Its members all had Omega Speedmaster X-33 models strapped to their flight suits.
29:04
Danny Milton uh just wrote a full article on the site now detailing the watches worn on the wrists of the four astronauts throughout their time as part of this mission.
29:12
Watches have a long-standing history with spaceflight, most notably through the Omega Speedmaster Moonwatch, but there are countless others that have cemented their place in the cosmos.
29:20
Head to the site to learn more about the watches of Artemis 2, from the Speedmaster X-33 to a surprising Breitling.
29:27
You won't want to miss it.
29:28
And this is from Teddy Baldassar.
29:29
Uh who's a great uh watch creator.
29:32
>> So, we can pull up this video now of uh the astronauts uh working on a on what looks like some type of tablet.
29:38
Uh the this was Do you think this is an iPad? I don't think so, right? >> think it's an iPad.
29:43
It looks like it's running looks like it's running some Windows.
29:46
They they seem very committed to the Oh, yeah.
29:48
Are they running Outlook or something? Yeah. Yeah.
29:49
Uh so, here he is uh typing in >> most secure password known to man. What is that? 9393 or something? 3939? >> 3939. 9393? Powerful. Powerful.
30:00
Um Well, uh we're going back to the moon.
30:05
Uh apparently that video we played yesterday was a little bit of fake news.
30:11
The the the the young man, the uh adolescent who swears and says, "We're going to the effing moon."
30:18
He was he the the real line, I believe, in the community note is that he says, "We're going to the freaking Yeah, yeah, yeah.
30:26
And and it had been altered to add the actual F-word.
30:29
But, the but the the sentiment is still the same.
30:31
Uh it's very exciting, very inspirational.
30:34
>> Jared Isaacman on launch day says, "Oh, this kid is definitely getting it back in NASA gear." That's great. >> Very cool.
30:39
Um Um >> There is some There are some wrinkles with the launch, right?
30:43
Fortunately, nothing like disastrous or catastrophic or anything, but the good news is that we're on our way back to the moon.
30:49
The bad news is that the toilet's broken, apparently.
30:52
Uh and I believe this is from the live blog from the New York Times.
30:55
Uh the NASA associate administrator said there is a controller issue with the toilet on the Orion capsule, and it would take a few hours to troubleshoot.
31:01
We're just getting started, he said, when addressing that some that and some other glitches with the space spacecraft.
31:08
The spirit of Apollo 10 lives on. They said 1:35. They told us that.
31:13
Here's another uh Uh it seems like this is not the first time that this has happened.
31:17
Um but we're hoping for the best here.
31:21
>> Sounds like there were some other issues with Outlook as well.
31:23
Uh we can pull up this video from Tom Warren. Yes.
31:30
Oh, so there's audio with this, too?
31:32
>> We can remote in and take a look directly. Yeah, go for it.
31:38
And then I also see that I have two Microsoft Outlooks, and neither one of those are working.
31:42
If you want to remote in and check Two, why do you have two?
31:45
Like web and desktop, or you think it's like two separate desktop installations?
31:50
>> Join in on your PCD, and we'll let you know when we're done.
31:52
Honestly, this is the best possible failure scenario is Outlook and not the rocket itself. So.
31:59
>> can they vibe >> it's a good outcome.
32:00
There were so many amazing images coming out yesterday. >> Yeah.
32:04
Uh Peyton Alexander says, "This is the real reward for Artemis.
32:06
This is who we are actually doing this for.
32:08
They will grow up knowing they can one day work in their country's bases on the moon and Mars.
32:13
We are not just abstractly hoping for a better world for them. We are going there."
32:18
Uh and uh two kids here watching the launch from Orlando. Uh just beautiful.
32:26
Yeah, my 5-year-old said it was boring, which is not what you want to hear, but we'll have to give some more context to him about how big of a deal it is.
32:33
He was like, "Yeah, I I know."
32:36
Maybe he wants more more flashing lights on the screen.
32:38
>> we were we were driving for the actual launch and it was so funny listening to the audio feed and sitting in traffic and just looking out at everyone. Yeah.
32:47
And and and realizing that um it felt like the majority of the world still wasn't paying attention or or uh or didn't care. Yeah.
32:56
I mean, like rockets do launch like every day now.
33:01
>> SpaceX has normalized it to such a degree.
33:03
Isn't there Isn't there some sort of subplot on the Apollo missions that by the by the third or fourth Apollo mission there was no like the the actual viewership had dropped off and like the American population had gotten bored with it. >> 2.
33:16
6 has put Subway Surfers on it. Yeah. On the NASA feed.
33:19
Crazy that you actually need to maybe need to do this.
33:25
Um Ed Ludlow was was at the launch, but he >> Yes, he was.
33:28
Let's pull up this this video of of legendary tech anchor >> I mean, it's it's an emotional moment, so I guess it makes sense to capture his result, but everyone's saying he should turn around and actually watch it.
33:39
It's very funny to do the selfie video.
33:42
I mean, it it contextualizes the moment perfectly, uh but it is Oh, he was live on the air. He was live on the air. Okay.
33:48
So, I mean, if you're live like you you you don't want to necessarily turn around, I guess. I don't know.
33:53
There's that famous clip of What? It's It's a wild video.
33:59
There's that amazing clip of from that documentary where the the host is giving this monologue and then the monologue ends right as the launch happens.
34:07
Like he timed it up perfectly and it's very cinematic. Anyway, I don't know.
34:14
Uh Dellinger shared the the coolest orbital animation he's seen of Artemis 2.
34:18
It looks a lot less fishy when you see it this way.
34:21
It's fascinating how close they have to be. That's the point.
34:27
>> John means One of the other animations actually it shaped like a fish.
34:31
>> Shaped like >> fish, but this one is a little bit more of a straight shot.
34:35
Uh but it really emphasizes how short that window is where you're actually next to the moon.
34:39
Uh it really Delian says really just really shows you how far away they're flying today and how precise they need to be to go to the moon. Yeah, remarkable.
34:51
Uh I'm very excited to to following this.
34:53
>> New York Times article, how AI helped one man and his brother build a $1. 8 billion company.
34:58
Who needs more than two employees when AI can do so many corporate tasks?
35:02
It's super efficient and a little bit lonely.
35:04
Aaron Griffith has the story.
35:09
Uh people are calling this the the prophecy.
35:12
the prophecy, the one-man $1 billion company.
35:15
>> Yeah, if you're in tech and you're in the business of making predictions, no one wants predictions. We want prophecies. >> Prophecies.
35:22
>> You need you you need to be prophesizing, for sure.
35:25
Uh so, the article, how AI helped one man and his brother build a $1. 8 billion company.
35:30
Who needs more than two employees that when artificial intelligence can do so many corporate tasks?
35:34
It's super efficient and a little bit lonely.
35:36
So, Aaron Griffith tells the story of Matthew Gallagher who took just 2 months, $20,000, and a more than a dozen artificial intelligence tools to get his startup off the ground.
35:47
From his house in Los Angeles, Mr.
35:49
Gallagher, 41, used AI to write the code for the software that powers his company, produce the website copy, generate the images and videos for ads, and handle customer service.
35:56
He created AI systems to analyze his business's performance, and he outsourced uh the other stuff he couldn't do himself.
36:01
His startup, MedV, a telehealth provider of GLP-1 weight loss drugs, got 300 customers in its first month.
36:09
In its second month, it gained more than 1,000 more.
36:13
In 2025, MedV's first year in business, the company generated four uh the first full year in business, uh the company generated $401 million in sales. Mr.
36:24
Gallagher then hired his only >> is absolutely insane because I as GLP-1s were starting to take off, I had I I remember distinctly talking with somebody that was like, "I want to start a telehealth company for GLP-1s." Yep.
36:37
>> And at that time, I was like, "Okay, there's a lot of telehealth companies that are at scale and they're well aware of this.
36:42
They will immediately introduce this product and other, you know, similar products to their customer base.
36:48
And it's going to be incredibly difficult to be to be competitive.
36:53
And it turns out there's just such overwhelming demand for these products Yeah.
36:58
that you could come in as a new company and scale.
37:00
Uh, you know, I'm I'm sure this guy, uh, Mr.
37:03
Gallagher is incredibly talented, but uh, the market overall is just growing so quickly that, um, it didn't matter that every other telehealth company was also getting into the game.
37:13
There was just such an incredible, you know, volume of, uh, sales coming in. Yeah. Yeah.
37:17
So, uh, like 1 year in, maybe, he hires his only employee, his younger brother, Elliot.
37:24
This year they're on track to do 1.
37:24
8 billion dollars in sales. Uh, a 1.
37:26
8 billion-dollar company with just two employees in the age of AI, it's increasingly possible, says Aaron Griffith in the New York Times.
37:33
Uh, Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, uh, predicted the rise of a new breed of super-efficient company in 2024.
37:40
A one-person business worth 1 billion dollars would have been unimaginable without AI, he said on a podcast, and now it will happen.
37:49
Uh, now as AI tools spread, entrepreneurs are harnessing the technology to expand their startups to an enormous scale at breathtaking speed with very few human humans.
37:57
Big companies, uh, especially in tech, are getting in on the disruption, too.
38:02
Pinterest, Block, and others have cut thousands of workers in recent months, citing efficiencies enabled by AI. Mr.
38:07
Gallagher, who formerly formerly ran a startup that sold wristwatches, said he thought Mr.
38:11
Altman's prophecy of a 1 billion one-person 1 billion-dollar company would be a firm that built AI.
38:18
He was excited when he realized he may have have it, taking the old taking an old idea being a middleman for weight loss drugs and using AI to turbocharge it.
38:25
Um, I am interested to know and we're going to try and get him on the show uh the like what the margins are on this.
38:30
I imagine that the revenue is you know like a lot of this needs to accrue a lot of the value needs to accrue to the the the companies that actually designed and >> Yeah, and the one-person, one-billion-dollar companies at a billion-dollar valuation.
38:44
Yeah, at the same time at a billion-dollar run rate.
38:48
>> imagine that even even a reseller would trade around like one x revenue maybe.
38:53
I I don't I have no idea. Maybe way more.
38:54
Uh I imagine Does this count?
38:57
Does this count yet though?
38:59
Like I feel like to be the one-person, one-billion-dollar company you got to be able to log in you got to be able to log in to your payroll tool and you're the only person there.
39:06
Oh, so it is And he's got his brother in there. Sorry, bro. Take a walk.
39:13
Uh he's got he's got to let his brother let his brother go. >> Uh in an email, Mr.
39:16
Olman said that it appeared he had won a bet with his tech CEO friends over when such a company would appear and said that he would like to meet the guy who had done it. >> Yeah.
39:24
Uh Medvie is technically not a one-person, one-billion-dollar company since he hired his brother and some contractors.
39:28
The startup, which has not raised outside funding, also has no official valuation, but many highly valued tech companies can only dream of hitting one billion in revenue with so few workers.
39:38
Medvie is also profitable.
39:41
Uh is great and important if you're bootstrapped.
39:42
And can't can't get to that. >> a wrapper company?
39:45
It's it's like a GLP-1 wrapper.
39:48
Is it But it's AI enabled, but it's not wrapping the AI foundation model.
39:52
It's like using the tool to wrap another industry and just create the efficiency between the manufacturer and the actual distribution.
39:59
distribution. Um, it's it it really is remarkable that they were able to hoover up so much revenue uh in such a competitive space because you you would assume that that the other telehealth providers would have uh significant ad operations and that the margins on uh customer acquisition would be very very
40:19
tricky to crack, but he must have found some unique insight into how to distribute the product, get actual people to the website because like the the the the AI certainly can build the website and write the copy, but it not it can't necessarily get people to show up and actually put down their hard-earned cash for the product. Um
40:39
Um Yeah, just to put it into context, Hims did 2.
40:42
3 billion in in full year 2025 revenue for 2025.
40:45
This guy started in 2024 and got to 401 million in sales.
40:48
I I want to know more about the yeah, the strategy here, how this how this built up so quickly. As a teenager, Mr. Gag Mr.
40:59
Gallagher began building websites for local businesses.
41:00
He always had a hustle including selling candles and samurai swords on eBay.
41:04
This is the classic founder journey selling something on eBay.
41:09
That's how I I I was selling DJ equipment on eBay back when I was a teenager.
41:14
At 18 after building a web hosting business, he sold that business for uh $6,000.
41:20
He briefly attended the University of Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky University, but did not graduate.
41:23
In 2010, he moved to Los Angeles to become an actor.
41:26
He eventually returned to coding bouncing between tech jobs.
41:27
In 2016, he built Watch Gang, a startup that sold wrist watches via subscription. Interesting.
41:33
Is that Is that like buy now pay later for watches?
41:38
That would get a lot of people in trouble.
41:40
>> You're like, you got another watch? Yeah.
41:43
Oh, I'm If you're just subscribed to like new watches >> realize I was getting a subscription.
41:48
Oops, it came in the mail again.
41:50
It had fans, but never turned a profit. Watch Gang even as Mr.
41:52
Gallagher chased revenue growth and hired 60 people.
41:55
So wildly different business outcome here. Wow.
42:00
He's like, I'm not doing that again.
42:02
Opening eyes release of ChatGPT 2022 inspired Mr.
42:05
Gallagher to start tinkering with AI.
42:06
Two years later, he met Jitin Chhabra, a co-founder of CareValidate, a medical startup in Atlanta.
42:12
CareValidate offers what is essentially telehealth in a box kits.
42:17
Uh companies, employers, and retailers who that want to sell customers prescription drugs can use CareValidate's technology and network of online doctors to set up a business.
42:24
The company's software connects patients with doctors and pharmacies which write, fulfill, and ship the prescriptions.
42:31
CareValidate charges fees for its software.
42:32
So, you have to imagine that there's that there's like a fairly decent cost structure here, but it's that's not to diminish it. It's incredible money. >> Yeah. >> revenue.
42:40
Like, you look at the comps and you're blown away.
42:41
Um but uh yeah, it's just it's just interesting to understand the the Yeah, the other the other big the other big question here is like how much are you spending on ads?
42:49
Like, it's very possible that uh you know, the the company's profitable, but if you're spending 60% of every dollar you bring in on paid acquisition plus COGS Yeah.
43:02
and then any other expenses that actually go into fulfilling and actually getting prescriptions out.
43:08
>> "I don't need an investment bank.
43:08
I'm just going to like vibe code the the the the the road show.
43:13
And 100% retail allocation. I don't know.
43:17
I mean, I I I think I think like taking a company public is just technically a bunch of SEC filings and if the investors signed up and the emails are sent and everyone agrees, it can happen. So, who knows?
43:28
Maybe he takes his company public with with two people.
43:32
That would be a wild Like, it's just the the the New York Stock Exchange bell ringing and normally it's like 20 people and it's like only the executive team and bankers and they're all the employees are, you know, outside or on the trading floor and and he's just standing there being like, "Oh, yeah.
43:47
Yeah, I did it like by myself." Wild.
43:47
Uh Gallagher saw an opportunity for his own telehealth business.
43:52
He could use AI to do the branding and marketing and let CareValidate and a similar platform, OpenLoop Health Health, uh which is another interesting company, and someone was posting about, handle the doctors, pharmacies, shipping, and compliance.
44:04
He planned to start with GLP-1s.
44:05
He was entering into an established market for nearly a decade.
44:08
Hims & Hers, Health, Ro, and other companies have sold drugs for erectile dysfunction and hair loss online using an online network of doctors to write prescriptions.
44:16
Hims, which went public in 2021, has 2,442 employees and generated 2.
44:21
4 billion in revenue last >> is what I This was what I was explaining to my friend who wanted to do something in this space. Yeah.
44:27
Uh like, "Hey, you're you're you're going to be going up against a company that has billions of revenue already, thousands of employees >> Yeah.
44:35
>> that already has all the infrastructure to prescribe these drugs. >> Yeah.
44:39
But again, the market is just growing so quickly.
44:40
Yeah, he he really used everything.
44:43
ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, uh Eleven Labs, Midjourney, Runway to create media assets for his uh website and ads.
44:50
Um he spent $20,000 on ads.
44:54
>> something quite notable >> Yeah.
44:56
uh out of any any time we're seeing these stories where, you know, the guy who was making uh a cancer drug for his dog.
45:01
Like, a lot of people are picking uh if if you can think of LLMs as like digital digital guys or girls, like people are working with multiple digital guys >> Yeah, yeah, yeah.
45:12
to do to like complete these projects.
45:14
And so, >> one model's better at writing, one model's better at coding, one model's better at marketing or strategy or uh anything else. Uh interesting.
45:21
He said, "From the beginning, growth was insane."
45:25
Uh he became He quickly became one of Care/of Validates and OpenLoop's top clients.
45:29
Companies were blown away by the startup's speed and scale.
45:31
You're like, "Do you have an army of people behind you somewhere?" And he's like, "Nope." Wow.
45:35
Uh well, you can go read the full the full article on The New York Times at nytimes. com.
45:39
It's Aaron Griffith's latest piece.
45:42
You can also listen to it.
45:44
There's an audio version.
45:46
Um uh there is some commentary on this.
45:49
Uh just a lot of people having fun with it.
45:51
Um Who uh Clayton Petty says, "Who has two thumbs and wants to know what the ad spend is?" This guy.
46:00
Uh yeah, I'm I'm very interested to know.
46:02
I mean, I I I would still be shocked if this is not a fantastic business.
46:06
Yeah, that at that scale you can have truly terrible EBITDA margins and still be printing.
46:12
>> Yeah, and and it's like even if even if like it's impossible that it's negative margin because he hasn't raised money.
46:17
And so like where would the losses come from?
46:19
So you can't be losing money and if you're Going to lever it up. Maybe. I don't think so though.
46:23
I think everyone's going to be shocked by how much cash flow this business is producing.
46:29
But it is it is very exciting exciting moment in story.
46:32
Let's let's go over to Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution.
46:37
The yeah yeah he just shares this Sam said one person running a billion dollar company, but if two are closely genetically related Tyler Cowen still counting this as says as a correct prediction.
46:47
And some people in the comments.
46:49
Yeah, huge opportunities for for other siblings to fulfill the prophecy as well.
46:55
>> Yeah, so people are moving the goalpost already because technically he had agencies that had humans that work there.
47:01
And if he works with a marketing agency and then there's a bunch of people there, it's more just like the disaggregation of the of the different institutions and the different organizations. What's your take?
47:11
>> think the the real goalpost we got to move is just you can't talk to anyone the entire time you're You can't talk to a human at all?
47:17
>> can't say >> only be on the command line basically in prompt box.
47:20
But you can tell the agent or the LLM to go and and and call someone.
47:28
I yeah, I think that's fine, yeah.
47:29
You're not interfacing with someone, right?
47:31
You have to be truly a shut-in.
47:31
That that's the prediction now. Absolutely ridiculous.
47:38
>> Chat is asking for John. Actually John >> Yes.
47:41
>> Getting the ultra down. >> Yeah, back here.
47:44
We did not unplug actually.
47:44
We got to get him back in here. >> He's he's somewhere.
47:47
We'll find >> No, we'll we'll we'll we'll get him back in.
47:50
Uh Jonathan Ross is talking about the petrodollar.
47:54
There was a story about how there has been an interesting flight to the dollar.
47:59
The dollar is very strong even amid all of the geopolitical uncertainty.
48:04
Uh Jonathan Ross, the founder of uh Grok, uh now the chief software architect at Nvidia, said uh the petrodollar defined the last 50 years of American economic dominance, the token dollar, the currency AI compute is bought in and sold in define the next 50.
48:21
Oil is priced in the in US dollars.
48:24
That means every country on Earth needs dollars to fuel their economy.
48:26
That single fact has been the foundation of American financial power since the 1970s. Now consider AI.
48:31
Try training runs cost tens of billions.
48:34
Inference is scaling to hundreds of billions.
48:36
The companies sell that are selling compute are American.
48:40
The currency it's priced in is dollars.
48:42
The petrodollar The petrodollar had oil.
48:44
The token dollar has compute.
48:46
Same structure, same leverage, new resource.
48:48
Countries aren't just competing over AI talent and chips.
48:52
They're competing over whether AI remains a dollar-denominated economy.
48:56
Uh that's the game nobody's naming yet. And so he is coining it.
48:58
He says the token dollar is the is the concept.
49:04
>> Yeah, it's a it's a it's a cool positioning. >> Yeah.
49:06
So, I mean, it'll be interesting to talk about uh Circle with Jeremy about how stablecoins fit into all of this.
49:12
Uh also yesterday talking to Corweave about uh uh compute-backed credit lines and uh all the different financial products that are popping up related to debt issued against GPUs that have essentially a flow of business that will be expected to come in against them.
49:27
Uh very interesting watching the uh larger AI economy uh you know, mature.
49:31
Uh Brex says compute-backed credit lines are the next frontier for fixed income and will quickly turn into one of the largest asset classes on the planet.
49:41
Um People are going back and forth. No shade. Trying to learn.
49:46
Isn't compute as an asset depreciating quickly due to innovation scale economies, uh hence bad collateral.
49:52
Uh Brex Brexin says no shade taken, you're right, but it's still a couple notes.
49:56
Supply constraints on chips right now makes older chips still valuable in secondary markets.
50:01
Because of the above, capital markets care more about revenue produced from chips rather than resale value, and chips are only a subset of the total cost of compute, heterogeneous builds, the rack, powered shell, interconnect, cooling.
50:13
It was interesting uh when we were talking with Coreweave about the the the I was I was really expecting the answer to be chip constraints, and he was saying powered shells, powered shells, which is what we heard from Satya Nadella and so Yeah, and I and I and I think it makes sense given their business.
50:29
It's like it's it's uh it's hard to get chips, but think about all of the logistical complexity to actually get the location, the energy, the shell, everything built together, um and navigating all those regulations.
50:44
It's just like one of the uh it's an incredibly complex infrastructure project that you're trying to compress onto timelines that America has generally not done infrastructure projects at in a long long time, right?
50:58
And so this was this was always some of the you know, one of the exciting things about the data center build out.
51:04
Uh among among the fear has been that um uh Amer- like a bunch of people are learning how to build complex things faster, right?
51:16
So Well, uh the year is off to the strongest start for big deals ever.
51:20
Corporate mega deals flourish despite turmoil.
51:26
Uh this is in the Wall Street Journal.
51:28
Large corporate deals had their best quarterly uh showing ever as companies forged ahead with tie-ups and investments despite the Iran war rattling markets.
51:36
So far in 2026, uh 22 transactions valued at 10 billion or more have been announced globally, a record quarterly number according to LSEG data.
51:48
Uh the next closest quarter was the fourth quarter of 2015 when 21 such deals were announced uh in that year.
51:56
This week alone, Unilever uh unveiled a more than $65 billion deal including debt to combine its food business with spice maker McCormick.
52:03
And Sysco, which we talked about a few days ago, agreed to buy Jetro uh Jetro Restaurant Depot for over $29 billion including debt.
52:12
Uncertainty due to oil growth rate growth and rates isn't going away, but major deals are still getting done, said Ben Goodchild, a partner in the M&A group at law firm Paul Weiss.
52:25
The M&A market is focused on the long-term fundamentals, right deal, right price, and right strategic rationale.
52:31
Um there's more in >> The total value of all deals announced globally jumped roughly 29% in the first quarter from a year ago, but the number of deals is down more than 17% as smaller deal activity slowed.
52:41
The mega deal tally includes a handful of big equity investments in AI companies such as Amazon's $50 billion investment uh in OpenAI, announced in February.
52:53
A number of other big transactions are in the works.
52:54
Estee Lauder has been in discussions to acquire Spanish beauty group Puig brands, a deal that would combine two of the world's biggest beauty companies.
53:04
Uh and there is a number of others.
53:09
>> Absolute is buying Jack Daniels.
53:09
Uh Tilman Fertitta is buying Caesars Entertainment.
53:15
>> There's another heist on the Caesars casino uh referencing Apollo.
53:18
Uh many companies see a moment to pounce on bigger deals that would normally face prolonged antitrust scrutiny.
53:24
The Justice Department's top antitrust official departed in February after clashing with Trump allies who at times favored more lenient oversight of big deals.
53:31
All this all comes as US stocks delivered their worst quarter in nearly 4 years led by a 7% drop in the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index.
53:41
Uh that makes it harder for buyers and sellers to agree on price to agree on prices.
53:44
Uh the Iran war has sent crude prices above a $100 a barrel, which could keep interest rates higher for longer to combat rising prices and make funding deals more expensive.
53:52
There's a very interesting uh chart.
53:54
I don't know if we can pull it up in the journal.
53:56
Big deals have big first quarter number of global deals valued at 10 billion or more. There we go.
54:03
And uh it's just Look >> at 2020 2021. If you 2021? What was going on?
54:11
>> this is another chart. >> nine.
54:12
Oh, if you want to scroll down, you can look at the smaller deals.
54:14
These are deals valued between 1 billion and 5 billion, and 2021 was huge. What was going on then? It was zirp era, right?
54:24
Post-COVID, lots of I mean, if when interest rates are near zero, you may as well lever up.
54:30
I guess that's yeah, I guess that's what's going on.
54:34
>> Uh bankers and lawyers say smaller deals are less of a must-have.
54:36
Buyers are more willing to put them on hold, but the big deals, they have to have them happen regardless of what's going on in the economy.
54:43
Uh also, private equity firms are sitting on a record number of portfolio companies they need to eventually sell or pay take public, including many software firms threatened by the rise of AI.
54:50
But, many are hesitant to strike deals at today's depressed prices.
54:54
While deal-making activity in the software industry has stalled, there has been plenty in other sectors, including financial uh services and health care.
55:01
Uh Eli Lilly struck a deal for Contessa, and Biogen bought Apellis.
55:07
Uh deal makers have high hopes going into 2026, Couple Couple questions in the chat and a special arrival.
55:12
John Axley has entered the chat. >> Let's go! Welcome.
55:16
The original chat room general. Yes.
55:21
>> Hit the gong for Axley. >> the gong for Axley. John Axley.
55:26
I know that John is missing an episode, and uh it's an honor to podcast with you, John. Thank you, sir.
55:33
>> another question, who is blacklisted from TBPN now? Uh no one. No one.
55:39
>> We've never uh there's never been any anyone blacklisted from the show.
55:41
In fact, uh the evidence of this is every single one of our sponsors ever.
55:46
We've had the competitors on the show.
55:49
Um and um all of that will continue.
55:53
We want this to be a place where um Conversations can happen about anything. Yeah. Yeah. So.
55:59
And there's also just a broader trend of this.
56:01
I don't know if you if you watch like the broader podcast landscape, people from like you know, quote-unquote like rival firms or different firms go on each other's shows all the time.
56:10
Uh not not uncommon these days for uh crossover uh content to happen all over the place.
56:16
Uh James Cramer says if private credit is so horrendous, how is KKR over subscribed so easily on his $20 billion fund? They raised $23 billion.
56:25
Some kind of disconnect here, boys.
56:29
Boy, are these firms ill-advised in how to tell their story?
56:32
>> This was the this was the early uh confusion about private credit.
56:34
People were seeing a whole bunch of private credit deals during the AI boom.
56:38
And and then uh when the when like the the the the nervousness matured, it was much more when we talked to uh carried no interest, for example, the the the the worry was much more around uh software companies, not hard assets.
56:56
It was not, "Oh, in this private credit uh fund, there's a data center that Meta is going to pay their bill on."
57:01
It's some other company that maybe is not going to have as high of dollar retention going forward.
57:06
And so, I think that the the different private credit firms have a messaging problem of like, "What is in the fund?"
57:13
because it can be a lot of different stuff.
57:15
And KKR clearly did a great job explaining why their particular strategy will endure for the long haul.
57:23
Uh there's other news about Let's pull up Let's pull up this video quickly of Cramer talking about our friends at Semi Analysis. >> this is great.
57:32
Cramer's going to be Uh there there is a company that I regard as the it's the absolute it's the gospel, SemiAnalysis.
57:42
And I've got this guy Dylan Patel I like that picture.
57:45
>> realize SemiAnalysis is the arbiter Uh they're like >> that?
57:49
gods of semis and when they do something when they bless something, it means that it's the the benchmark, it's the best, they are the most honest guys I've come across and I I I've always been reading them, but Jensen Huang really praised him at TTC.
58:03
So, I reached out to this guy whom I regard as he's genius. He's genius. >> That's good. >> to talk to him.
58:10
That's that's that's a promo.
58:12
>> Yeah, we'll see you tonight though. >> That was good promo. Add money 6:00 p. m. down It's awesome.
58:16
Dylan says, "Can I short myself?"
58:20
Hey, Jim Cramer tried to >> people some people were saying like yeah, come on, dude.
58:24
Like he's complimenting you and and Dylan and Kurt and Cramer And I've always said that that Cramer having this thing where no matter what he says, people say like they'll take the inverse.
58:35
It is the best engagement hack ever for a content creator personality because it just means anything you say, you get a million impressions from people saying the opposite.
58:47
And the fact is like Jim Cramer is he's an entertainer.
58:50
He is incredibly you know, fun to listen to and we'll be we'll be having another conversation with him in the next in the next month or so which I'm excited about.
59:01
Let's head over to Clear Cliffwater and Steven Nesbitt.
59:04
He brought private credit to the masses.
59:09
Now the masses are fleeing.
59:09
This is more context around the private credit story.
59:13
Uh Uh Cliffwater's racing to calm investors after steep withdrawals.
59:16
So, Steven Nesbitt is private credit's chief evangelist.
59:20
His investors and industry are having a crisis of faith.
59:23
>> Nick says, "Hope this still means my invite is open."
59:25
We'd love to have you, Nick. For Nick, you're family.
59:27
Yeah, we're always back as long as as long as we keep it positive we can say it's and and we keep the camera roll smiling and we and we maintain that occasionally we are back. It's not always over.
59:42
Very frequently we're back. >> Very frequently.
59:47
And Nick Nick will admit that. It's true.
59:49
No, we had a great conversation with him when he came on.
59:52
For more than a decade the 72-year-old champion, the hottest asset class on Wall Street.
59:56
His firm Cliffwater went from managing no money to nearly 50 billion on the back of impressive fundraising and big gains turning Nesbit into a billionaire.
1:00:04
Now, many of the wealthy individuals who powered Cliffwater's rise are itching to leave as investors rethink their views on private credit.
1:00:11
After a handful of high-profile defaults, investors are pulling so much money out of industry funds that managers are restricting withdrawals.
1:00:18
We've talked about this many times on the show.
1:00:19
Shares of big firms are dropping.
1:00:21
Few are like Cliffwater which until recently was an investor darling but now finds itself in the hot seat.
1:00:26
Its top executives aren't lending specialist themselves.
1:00:28
Instead, the firm invested alongside and sometimes in other funds.
1:00:32
It's a fund of funds strategy.
1:00:36
A feature that is now being treated as a vulnerability.
1:00:38
Investors asked to pull the equivalent of 14% of its biggest fund in the first quarter.
1:00:42
Wall Street skeptics who long questioned Cliffwater's growth are now calling it a canary in the coal mine and a turducken of problems. Turducken of problems.
1:00:52
That is such a weird phrase.
1:00:54
Nesbit's ability to qualify fears will be a test of his funds and the industry's future.
1:01:01
>> it a blue owl in the coal mine? Something like that. >> No, I'm just joking.
1:01:05
Of course, Blue Owl capped private credit fund redemptions Okay.
1:01:11
at 5% after steep request levels.
1:01:11
This was the other news Oh, okay. from this morning.
1:01:16
I think they got something like 21% redemption request outstanding during the first quarter, so they had to cap it at 5%.
1:01:27
>> Well, you know what this guy did before he started a what $50 billion private credit fund? He was a gravedigger. I'm not kidding.
1:01:36
Yeah, he grew up near Rochester, New York.
1:01:38
He worked as a gravedigger in high school.
1:01:39
He spent a quarter century at Wilshire Associates consulting for pension funds on private equity and hedge funds.
1:01:45
Nesbitt was a soft-spoken presence in a big been a business of outside outsized egos, says Greg Williamson, a long-time pension fund executive.
1:01:55
He didn't preach like others.
1:01:57
Williamson said, he spoke about his clients' needs.
1:01:59
In 2004, Nesbitt started Cliffwater.
1:02:02
After the 2008-2009 financial crisis, he began recommending private credit just as banks were pulling back from lending to riskier companies giving Blackstone, Ares, and others the opportunity to make high interest rate loans.
1:02:14
Nesbitt became a private credit advocate.
1:02:16
Cliffwater launched an index tracking performance.
1:02:20
The firm shared research and Nesbitt wrote two books on the topic.
1:02:21
In 2019, he shifted to managing money launching Cliffwater Corporate Lending Fund or CCLFX with Blake and Phil Hasbrouck, a then 30-year-old executive.
1:02:32
They they marketed to wealthy individuals through independent financial advisors, the kind of clients Hasbrouck worked with.
1:02:40
It was built as an interval fund offering to buy back 5% of its assets each quarter from investors and provide daily updates on its value.
1:02:46
It charged lower fees than some rivals and allowed clients to avoid the messy tax filing requirements of traditional private funds.
1:02:54
By February, the net assets totaled about 33 billion.
1:02:56
Cliffwater made 375 million in fees from the fund in the first 17 in the first 18 months that ended in September.
1:03:03
A 54-person crew researched and managed the portfolio of 4,100 or so underlying loans.
1:03:07
Along the way, Cliffwater wrangled with rivals when an executive bond powerhouse PIMCO when an executive at bond powerhouse PIMCO said the returns of private debt didn't compensate investors for its growing dangers, Nesbitt sent investors a letter saying PIMCO had had a failed track record of predicting market changes. After J. B.
1:03:28
Diamond used a cockroach analogy to warn about looming defaults, Nesbitt declared there were no cockroaches in private debt.
1:03:35
Others criticized Cliff Water's marketing, especially when it boasted of hedge fund-like returns with minimal risk, setting industry metrics like sharp ratios and standard deviation.
1:03:44
Critics said private loans rarely change hands, so they lack the volatility that funds face.
1:03:50
Anyway, it goes into the deflation problem.
1:03:52
Well, speaking of Jamie >> Jamie Diamond uh the Axios show.
1:03:55
Jamie Diamond eyes post-J. P. Morgan media venture.
1:03:58
He's potentially launching a podcast? Is that what this is?
1:04:03
Matthew Zeitland, friend of the show, former guest, says the desire to post is the only force in the universe that holds a candle to compound interest. It's actually true. Everyone needs a pod.
1:04:14
People have been talking about him running for president.
1:04:16
A lot of presidents and media people have podcasts.
1:04:22
They're going to have podcasts.
1:04:23
Uh well, there there isn't all that much news here, but Diamond said that if he were to start a media venture, it would be something different about policy.
1:04:31
He said, "I think media is critical. Media teaches everybody.
1:04:36
Media is the great influencer."
1:04:37
A lot of bad policy, he believes, stems from people in the media doing a bad job of explaining issues.
1:04:44
And so, we talked about this yesterday or the day before in the Wall Street Journal.
1:04:47
He has the new plan, the Diamond plan for the American dream, wanting to lend to more small businesses.
1:04:54
That seems more important than ever in the world where you have a one-person, one-billion-dollar business.
1:04:58
More people should have shots on goal.
1:05:01
And if you if you think about the the $20,000 that that gentleman was able to marshal to get the business off the ground, if you have more people that have the opportunity, that's probably a good thing.
1:05:14
But, we'll be tuning in when Jamie Diamond launches his show.
1:05:17
Should we go over to Apple? Should we? I think it's time.
1:05:22
>> They really dominated this entire week.
1:05:24
I mean, it's spring break, which is perfect timing.
1:05:25
This must happen >> they probably planned that 50 years ago.
1:05:29
They knew the 50th would be during spring break in 2026. >> Yeah.
1:05:33
And so it would be a good time to, you know, really celebrate the anniversary. >> Yeah.
1:05:37
We had a great, great conversation with AQ yesterday.
1:05:40
You can go listen to it on Apple Podcasts, which he created.
1:05:45
And but there's more reflections and and and stories about Apple from all over the place.
1:05:51
Ben Thompson wrote a great retrospective.
1:05:53
The Wall Street Journal got access to rare Apple archives that even Tim Cook hadn't seen before.
1:06:01
It's very cool because And you think about it, it's like that's crazy.
1:06:05
He's the CEO, he should know all the archives.
1:06:06
But then you think about like how busy his day is, and he probably doesn't have that much time to just like go reminisce in >> obsess over every small decision or prototype like that.
1:06:17
>> There's like so much work to be done.
1:06:17
He doesn't have that much time to go look at like the original patent for the Apple II um or or whatever he you know, is in that archive.
1:06:26
So, the Wall Street Journal took that took the viewers through that in a video.
1:06:31
We have a big read from the Financial Times here that's very interesting talking about the roots of a tech revolution.
1:06:38
So, Winston Churchill called it, quote, "The most daring and courageous act of the entire war."
1:06:44
On August 30th, 1945, General Douglas MacArthur landed in Atsugi, southwest of Tokyo.
1:06:51
He wore aviator sunglasses, a corncob pipe dangled from his lips, and he was unarmed.
1:06:58
A man of war was arriving to make peace.
1:07:00
Over the next 6 years of Allied occupation, MacArthur would demilitarize Japan, enfranchise women, And by the way, >> you know, you guys know AGI will be very close when Tyler is smoking a corncob pipe himself because AGI, of course, should be able to one-shot, you know, any sort of lung issues that might come from >> Yeah. using a corncob pipe.
1:07:23
So, In my Some people skip sunscreen, other people, you know, indulge.
1:07:29
In 2012, I lived in a hacker house in Sunnyvale and the best engineer, I still, one of the best engineers I've met in my entire life, the best engineer in the house, uh was completely straight edge, would not drink or use caffeine or anything, but he would smoke a a literal pipe.
1:07:47
It was a very odd thing and he just That's so Lindy.
1:07:52
It's a I I yeah, I don't know.
1:07:54
It was like, "Ah, I just enjoy this."
1:07:54
It I would actually I would actually expect it to make a comeback, right?
1:08:00
>> Um people are, you know, a little nostalgic, right?
1:08:02
It's clear that vapes are maybe not something that Yeah.
1:08:05
uh people should be using, but the corncob pipe Yeah. Who knows? There's a chance.
1:08:13
Tyler, what do you think about corncob pipes?
1:08:15
Yeah, I mean, if super Lindy, I think I'm You're in?
1:08:19
Yeah, I I mean, we're probably like one one or two models away and then Yeah.
1:08:23
start ripping pipe pipe bowls. I'm into it. I'm into it.
1:08:25
Um So, over the next 6 years, he enfranchised women, oversaw the writing of a new constitution and a decree of democracy.
1:08:35
Uh but first, he faced a more prosaic problem.
1:08:37
Japan's communication industry was in such shambles that he could barely issue commands. This is MacArthur.
1:08:44
Uh solving this challenge turned out to have enormous consequences, not only reshaping Japan in the 1940s, but upending global manufacturing in the 1980s and by the 2000s, revolutionizing the way products >> Maxim. Thank you.
1:09:04
Uh revolutionized the way products would be built at Apple, a company that did not exist at the time.
1:09:08
So, Apple, which turns 50 years old on Wednesday, is arguably the world's most iconic company.
1:09:13
It is also notoriously opaque and secretive in virtually all accounts of how Steve Jobs transformed Apple from near bankruptcy in 1997, which we talked about yesterday, that EQ, uh to the world's most valuable company by his death in 2011, product vision and design all get the credit.
1:09:29
But, what actually makes a $1,200 iPhone possible at global scale with vanishingly few defects is a manufacturing philosophy that traces back not to Silicon Valley or Southern China, but to war-devastated Japan.
1:09:42
And it took all my energy yesterday to not use the uh 20 minutes we had with Eddie Q for for kind of like a tech support session.
1:09:51
I'm having this issue where >> You seem to be having like particularly weird >> I actually need I think I need to like return the iPhone.
1:09:58
>> you are having some weird issues because there are weird UX UI issues that you can learn and adapt and change and I would say that they are skill issues.
1:10:06
Like, if you can't use the the camera roll effectively by now, you are needing to like >> Yeah, you should just throw off some sort of problem >> My issue, I don't know if any anyone in the chat has experienced this, but when I open the messages app or the phone app, I just get a blank white screen and then the app crashes like a bunch of times.
1:10:27
>> You have something weird >> I just doesn't matter what I do.
1:10:28
I can do a hard reset or anything like that.
1:10:31
>> wonder if we were pushing it to the limit too hard yesterday because we were on a FaceTime call together and then also watching the Artemis 2 launch on YouTube, and then I was I was watching it on my phone and I was streaming Jordy my screen via SharePlay, and I think that might have The The phone was really hot.
1:10:50
I can tell you that much. I don't know.
1:10:52
Anyway, by and large, the products are flawless, and I have enjoyed my Apple journey the whole way.
1:10:56
Uh So, in the in the decades after the Second World War, Japan's economy grew rapidly.
1:11:04
This is a story of how ideas travel across oceans and factory floors and sometimes through a single person changing jobs.
1:11:10
It is a story about how America invented a manufacturing philosophy, exported it to Japan, forgot it, relearned fragments of it through a handful of companies, and then re-exported the whole synthesis to Asia.
1:11:23
The story lately leads us to the present moment with the US spending vast sums to bring it all back, Southern India investing to be the next global tech hub, and China fighting to hold onto its manufacturing dominance.
1:11:33
It is above all a story underscoring that what Apple started to build in Shenzhen, China, a quarter century ago is not merely an assembly line, it is the endpoint of a multi-decade chain of civilizational knowledge transfer.
1:11:49
A feat of enormous complexity that cannot be replicated with tax breaks and car nuts.
1:11:55
Or ribbon-cutting in Texas.
1:11:58
Tax breaks aren't going to be enough.
1:11:59
You need civilizational knowledge transfer.
1:12:02
The whole chain begins with the question.
1:12:03
In occupied Tokyo, a 33-year-old engineer named Homer Sarasohn start stood before a group of Japanese executives asked, "Why does any company exist?" Powerful.
1:12:13
When the telegram arrived from General MacArthur, Sarasohn initially thought it was a prank.
1:12:19
A physicist by training, the paratrooper turned radar engineer was working on a transcontinental microwave relay system >> Tyler. in the US.
1:12:29
>> by training, podcaster / vibe coder. That's true.
1:12:34
He He dismissed it, only realizing his error when an when an indignant colonel called him back a few weeks later.
1:12:40
Then he was dutifully off to Tokyo for what was supposed to be a 9-month stint.
1:12:48
Sarasohn's mission was to reestablish and rehabilitate the communications industry, but he found there was nobody to work with.
1:12:54
American bombers had devastated industry and MacArthur had abolished the zaibatsu, the powerful pre-war corporate cartels.
1:12:59
We had to start from scratch, he recounted in 1988.
1:13:03
When we looked around, not only did we see no facilities, but we could find no managers.
1:13:09
We had no We had to find lower-level people, second-level managers.
1:13:13
And I And I said, "As of today, you're going to start up this new company and you're going to run it."
1:13:21
Uh the quality of manufacturing in Japan was shoddy even before the war, but as Sarason began learning the language and immersing himself in Japanese culture, he realized the root of the problem was not technical, it was managerial.
1:13:31
When he asked a group of employees how they might improve quality, they murmured among themselves uh about what an answer would please him rather than answering directly, sort of the opposite of like the Elon walking the floor and like I want to get to first principles.
1:13:46
They're literally like, What do you think he wants to hear?
1:13:52
When When When When When will this plant be online? Yeah.
1:13:54
I think he's expecting it in in June. Tell him June. Lie.
1:14:00
Yeah, this is not not good.
1:14:00
Uh everyone understands this now, but that was not the case in in Japan in the '40s and '50s, I suppose.
1:14:08
Uh they had been taught to be deferential, he concluded, to not not to question authority.
1:14:12
Uh so Sarason set out to teach them a philosophy of management.
1:14:17
Despite initial opposition from MacArthur, the need for economic stabilization meant that Sarason got his wish.
1:14:24
He and another engineer, Charles Protzman, went off to an Osaka hotel for a month to write a textbook on industrial management.
1:14:31
They designed a rigorous 8-week course and made it compulsory for top managers.
1:14:35
The seminar began on the importance of quality as, quote, a guiding state of mind, a devotion, and dedication.
1:14:43
After asking, "Why does any company exist?"
1:14:47
Sarasohn encouraged his disciples to draft a mission statement by invoking a motto from a shipyard in Newport, Rhode Island, "We shall build good ships here, at a profit if we can, at a loss if we must, but always good ships." It's a good line. It's a good line. >> line.
1:15:06
Manufacturing, he taught, had to be considered a total system.
1:15:09
Its Its disparate parts orchestrated with such repetitive precision that defects could approach zero.
1:15:18
He inculcated his students in his students a sense that quality was foundational to the whole enterprise, empowering workers close to production, and telling managers they needed to understand the details.
1:15:30
"Quality control is not a band-aid," Sarasohn later recounted.
1:15:33
"To be effective as as a control, the total process to which it is applied must be well-designed to begin with."
1:15:41
So, when Sarasohn left Japan in 1950, he recommended his successor be the academic W.
1:15:44
Edwards Edwards Deming, an advocate of statistical process control.
1:15:51
>> Let's give it up for statistical process.
1:15:53
Let's also give it up for using the first initial of your first name and then your middle name.
1:15:57
That's an under We've That's sort of a lost art.
1:16:01
You don't meet a lot of people that introduce themselves that way, but uh J.
1:16:05
Alexander Coogan, I think that sounds pretty cool.
1:16:07
Maybe I'll rip that at some point. That sounds very regal. Yeah, it sounds good.
1:16:12
What what what would you be Tyler? >> J. Tyler Cosgrove. That's good.
1:16:14
Yeah, cuz Tyler's the middle name, so J. Tyler. That's good. Okay. Well, um uh J. uh W.
1:16:22
Edwards Deming would prove so influential that the Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers And then it says, "Sometimes I get emotional about manufacturing." Us too.
1:16:34
Yeah, that is That is a >> Well, the the ships quote is so is so good.
1:16:39
I'm sure it's already been printed and hung on many uh of the you know new defense tech and American manufacturing companies, but it is a good reminder to always build what is of high quality and aim for profit, but always aim for >> Chad is on fire today. Of course.
1:16:55
It's great to see all of you Someone asked how are we going to celebrate?
1:17:00
I think we're going to have lunch with the team later. Excited about that. We're excited for that.
1:17:08
>> Um but I but I think uh funny thing is just really our lives aren't aren't changing. It's business as usual. >> Chop wood.
1:17:17
Uh we're going to go hang out with our families and I'm I'm already excited for next week.
1:17:24
>> We we we do have a holiday tomorrow. Uh the it's good Friday.
1:17:28
So the New York Stock Exchange is closed, the market is closed, and so we will not be streaming tomorrow, but we will be back on Monday.
1:17:35
But just so you're aware, don't be shocked oh like this this opening ideal happened and then they stopped streaming.
1:17:40
That's not what's going on.
1:17:41
This has been on the calendar for a long time.
1:17:42
We haven't been booking guests for for for months because we know that this is a holiday coming up which we are very excited about.
1:17:49
And everyone will be enjoying the long weekend.
1:17:50
So Uh Sarasohn recommended the work to of Joseph Juran, a consultant who during the war had managed a program shipping war materials to Allied Nations.
1:17:59
Juran's work in Japan would go on to earn him the highest honor from Emperor Emperor Hirohito.
1:18:07
Um we don't have a ton of time.
1:18:07
Want to tie this into Apple.
1:18:12
Yeah, let's let's let's go. I love it.
1:18:15
>> go on this insane tangent.
1:18:17
>> We used to do crazy long reads where where we'd spend like two hours on one New Yorker article.
1:18:23
And then of course the the the show got much more complex.
1:18:24
We talk about a lot more topics.
1:18:26
But I like I like I like going through a long read, but of course you can pick this up in the Financial Times which you should go and subscribe to.
1:18:34
Alex asked how long did the acquisition take from start to finish?
1:18:36
I don't remember uh have the exact number of days but it was incredibly incredibly quick. >> Yeah.
1:18:45
And you know, part of what enabled that was we had been having people from open AI on the show having interactions with them.
1:18:52
We had spent 100 hours talking about open AI and I didn't have like you know, we didn't have a lot of questions. Yeah.
1:19:03
And you know, just just given how much time we've spent and so that that enabled a quick process.
1:19:06
All also you know, your your long history with Sam.
1:19:11
Yeah, just like you meet your last choir like years before anything else.
1:19:15
>> this case 13 years before. It's crazy.
1:19:19
Okay, where where where where where do we go to close this out? It was the early 1990s.
1:19:23
We're flashing forward and Jobs was a half a decade into leading next the startup that he had founded after being ousted from Apple.
1:19:32
Next first product a cube state workstation from costing $6,500 had already been a much hyped flop.
1:19:37
The team's goal had been to make a computer their friends could afford by the time it shipped the joke goes.
1:19:43
The only friends that could afford to buy it were Steve's.
1:19:46
Japanese quality ideas had been all the rage for a decade.
1:19:48
The superiority of Japanese production had become a clear become clear in March 1980 when Richard W.
1:19:54
Anderson a Hewlett-Packard executive famously discovered that the best Japanese memory chips performed 1000% better than their American equivalents at initial inspection and 50% better over time.
1:20:09
The so-called Anderson bombshell made HP start to obsess over quality.
1:20:12
It's Japanese joint venture Hewlett-Packard Yokogawa won the Deming prize in 1982 and became the foundation for rigorous standards applied across the whole company.
1:20:23
HP aspired to improve quality tenfold within a decade and when that looked to be failing it adopted adopted a Japanese step-by-step approach to quality known as plan, do, check, act. Let's see what else.
1:20:36
Jobs was clearly taken by the ideas of qualities of quality Silicon Valley was beginning to import from Japan having set out to build a computer company that would create better products.
1:20:46
He commissioned an automated factory in Fremont inspired by the plants of Japanese electronics manufacturer Alps Electric. Mhm.
1:20:51
Um Anyways, we can we can continue but um but um We have our next We have our next guest Mark Lore joining in just a few minutes.
1:21:04
Let's run through some of the timeline posts. >> was cool.
1:21:07
Taylor Taylor Johnson said nothing gets me hyped like a re-accelerating top line.
1:21:11
Is that the definition of an AI company, right?
1:21:16
Sharing sharing or or just a founder mode company but really both you can see this is data from Sacra. Sacra shared Mhm.
1:21:28
So funny people calling me right now. I know. I know.
1:21:31
If you have called me if you have sent me a text message >> live. >> I'm sorry.
1:21:38
I will get back to you after the show.
1:21:40
Feeling feeling the love but anyways incredible chart here you can see Plaid ended they were in 2023 they went from 308 to 390 million of ARR and then jumped up to over half a billion in 2025 so Zach and the team are on an absolute tear.
1:21:59
You know who else is on an absolute tear?
1:22:00
Taylor Lorenz apparently she spends 17 hours a day in screen time.
1:22:06
I guess that means phone but maybe phone and computer.
1:22:09
Well, she has to spend a lot of time because she's defending big technology. Exactly.
1:22:16
There's some incredible quotes in the story I think she said if she could put the screen in her brain she would. That's wild. That's very unexpected.
1:22:24
she's >> to get got to get set up with a Neuralink team.
1:22:26
Get me a true timeline merchant. Yes, yes. It's Yeah.
1:22:32
Uh Well, yeah, extremely online is her is the name of her book.
1:22:35
And she certainly lives uh lives her brand.
1:22:37
Uh Eliezer Yudkowsky had an interesting post here.
1:22:42
He said, "Today I learned that Gemini Claude and ChatGPT, but not Grok, are told that today he was referring to March 1st, April Fools' Day yesterday, is March 32nd."
1:22:50
Because if you tell LLMs it's April 1st, the conditional text predictions downstream become less less reliable for obvious training data set reasoning.
1:23:03
>> The model's like, "Okay, understanding April 1st.
1:23:05
How do I understand >> be very very confusing.
1:23:08
I mean, we were confused all yesterday because you see so many news announcements go out and you're like, "Is this a joke?"
1:23:13
There is news coming >> you're told it's April 32nd or or March 32nd, like >> more confused.
1:23:19
>> You're going to be like, "That's That's clearly wrong."
1:23:21
>> Yeah, I wonder how real this >> Yeah, you'd think they'd just keep it March 30th for something. Yeah, I don't know. We'll see. We'll see.
1:23:28
I'll have to ask some people.
1:23:29
Uh Rune says the AI doc reminded me mostly of Kony 2012 documentary slacktivism, selling the feeling of we need to do something as a product, oddly centering the filmmaker.
1:23:38
Uh when is the embargo lifting for the AI doc?
1:23:42
Because I did see it with Tyler and a bunch of other folks on the team, uh and enjoyed it, but I would love to talk about it.
1:23:47
I believe we're going to have the I think it already came out. >> It came out? >> Yeah, March 27th.
1:23:52
Yeah, yeah, it was interesting.
1:23:54
It was The The The biggest gap between the the the AI doc and his his like, you know, the press tour that the creator is on now is that uh he seems like he doesn't believe AI is is real at all, I guess.
1:24:06
He He He was very worried about doom in the in the movie, comes away sort of like, "Oh, there's an optimistic scenario here."
1:24:13
It's a very nice ending, uh but then uh he came away being like, "Ah, this stuff is not real."
1:24:20
Which is a very funny like conclusion cuz he's not really asking about any of the financials or economics or business applications.
1:24:25
Like he's having a much more philosophical debate and then came away with like a financial conclusion. I don't know. It's interesting. >> Yeah.
1:24:31
Uh Google has released Gemma 4, the best open models in the world for their respective sizes.
1:24:37
Demis has excited to launch Gemma 4.
1:24:42
Available in four sizes that can be fine-tuned for your specific task.
1:24:43
Uh 31 billion dense for great raw performance, 26B MOE for low latency, and effective 2B and 4B for edge device use. Happy building.
1:24:54
Excited to see uh what people do with it.
1:24:56
They're available now under the Apache license in Google AI Studio or on Hugging Face and some other platforms. Um so, massive launch. Um Very exciting. What else do we got?
1:25:13
Uh there's more on the Mercor leak. Very unfortunate.
1:25:16
Gary Tan says incredible amount of state-of-the-art training data is now just available to China thanks to the Mercor leak.
1:25:22
Every major lab, billions and billions of value and a major national security issue.
1:25:26
I'm just feeling I'm I'm feeling you know, the the national security issue is one thing.
1:25:32
I'm feeling really concerned for individuals that not only gave PII as part of onboarding, but maybe now there's like live video of them tied to that PII.
1:25:45
So, it feels like there's some real deepfake risk.
1:25:52
>> I'm very glad that we have Adam Myers from CrowdStrike coming on today to explain the surface area, what the trends are in cybersecurity because things do feel like they are ramping up significantly.
1:26:03
Um very Also, just very odd that there is there's now a leak of of data that could be used to RL models.
1:26:09
There's new open-source models.
1:26:12
There's also the leak of the of the cloud code harness.
1:26:17
And so, you if you piece all these together you get pretty close to the frontier and that's something that we're certainly going to have to like contend with the fact that there's every time that there's a leak you probably shrink the gap between the frontier and the open source community a few by maybe a few months or something as they catch up even if they're doing it like sort of above board.
1:26:41
Anyway, Lewis says he found a public company with 99% of revenue coming from one customer.
1:26:47
>> You've heard of the one employee one billion dollar company.
1:26:50
Now we found the one customer one billion dollar company.
1:26:55
I actually don't know how big this company is but um we need to figure out what company this is. >> This is TSS Inc. Ticker is TSSI.
1:27:04
>> And they said we derive a substantial majority of our revenues from a single OEM customer.
1:27:08
Revenues from this customer comprised approximately 99 99 and 96% of our total revenues for the year ending December 31st 2025, 2024 and 2023.
1:27:17
So they actually had more revenue diversity in 2023 and then the revenue concentration increased over the last two years.
1:27:27
Although we provide services across multiple business units and divisions of this OEM and have entered into a long-term AI rack integration agreement that includes minimum monthly payments our overall financial performance remains highly dependent on the continuation and scope of this relationship.
1:27:43
Well, you know the >> Yeah, and they're they're trading very reasonably.
1:27:47
They're at something like a $240 million run rate as of Q4 market cap of like $366 million. >> Okay.
1:27:55
So yeah, It's price seems seems to be priced in. Yes.
1:28:00
Um Bucco says imagine being a software company with like 250,000 customers, one billion of revenue growing 20% and the market says you're worth 3. 5 billion.
1:28:10
And then Rigatoni Computing has generously five customers and basically no revenue is worth four and a half billion. Uh, it's a cold world. I don't know.
1:28:20
Yeah, I mean this is the this is the the reality of like working on a on a sci-fi technology is that if it works values really really big. >> Yeah. Essentially.
1:28:29
>> Prepared remarks says but those five customers might go to six so you have to get in before that.
1:28:35
Uh, what is what what's going on with Scott Wiener's based act? Did you see this?
1:28:40
Probably the most radical bill ever to degrade tech products.
1:28:44
It it bans Amazon Prime, stops iPhones from having FaceTime, strips travel shopping shopping local and AI results out of Google search results.
1:28:52
This feels like a stunt almost. I I I I I don't know.
1:28:56
It must be a commentary on something else.
1:28:58
This feels like something that's like sort of being misinterpreted almost. I don't know.
1:29:03
>> Adam Adam sent out an update to the chamber progress his group.
1:29:05
He said the based act is likely the most radical proposal to regulate and direct technology product design ever advanced in California legislature.
1:29:13
The bill dictates how core products must function from search results to app stores Okay.
1:29:21
>> to e-commerce marketplaces.
1:29:24
Well, we have our next guest in the waiting room.
1:29:26
Let's bring in Marc Lore from Wonder. How are you doing Marc? Good to meet you. Hey, how you doing guys?
1:29:31
Thank you so much for taking the time.
1:29:35
Uh, sorry we couldn't give you much warning or our news.
1:29:38
It's kind of a wild wild day over here. >> I just saw it. Congratulations. Yeah. Thank you.
1:29:45
I'm sure I'm sure we can get into M&A war stories and whatnot.
1:29:49
Whatever you want to talk about.
1:29:49
But why don't you since it's the first time in the show sort of take us back in history and give us a little little background on yourself for for the viewers. Yeah, sure.
1:29:59
I started my career in investment banking and then in the late 90s did a first startup sold it to Topps, the baseball card company. Oh, wow. Then started diapers. com. Okay.
1:30:11
Um and then sold that to Amazon in 2011. Yeah. Um 550 million.
1:30:14
And then worked inside Amazon for a couple of years. Started jet.
1:30:20
com, which is another e-commerce site.
1:30:23
Um and uh 2 years later sold that to to Walmart for 3 billion.
1:30:29
And then uh became the CEO That's why they call him the LeBron James of e-commerce, folks. It's on the wiki.
1:30:39
Uh became the CEO of Walmart's e-commerce business.
1:30:41
And did that for about 4 and 1/2 years. Yeah.
1:30:43
Um yeah, now I'm the founder and CEO of Wonder. Yeah. A food tech startup.
1:30:49
May- maybe take us back to diapers. com.
1:30:51
Uh I'd I'd love to know like how you were thinking about that business when you started it.
1:30:57
Was Was there a thesis that sort of vertical focused e-commerce was was going to be a trend?
1:31:02
What was the ecosystem like?
1:31:04
What was the competitive landscape?
1:31:06
Were VCs saying like Or did you just snap up a great domain and think I got to make some money with it? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:31:12
How much of it was just organic versus strategic?
1:31:15
>> the way it started, I was just searching on Google what search terms people were searching for a lot.
1:31:19
And uh doing it at night, searching, searching, searching.
1:31:24
It would tell you how many times it was searched.
1:31:25
And I saw Oh, so they didn't even have So did they even have like Google Trends at that point?
1:31:29
Or you just had to search and they had they would show you >> I think it was called Alexa maybe or something. Oh, yeah. Okay.
1:31:34
You type in a search term and it would tell you how many times it was searched on Google. Yeah.
1:31:39
And uh diapers, I remember, was 200,000 times a month.
1:31:42
And so I went online and I saw the price of diapers was like $10 more expensive.
1:31:46
And I thought I mean I had a baby at the time.
1:31:49
It was a pain to go get diapers.
1:31:51
Why aren't diapers delivered like everything else?
1:31:54
Like books and all this other stuff.
1:31:56
And I thought, yeah, diapers. com, you know.
1:32:00
And that was actually 1-800-Diapers started cuz I couldn't afford the diapers. com domain. >> Yeah.
1:32:06
Wait, so the 1-800 There must have been a moment where like the 1-800 was like more expensive than the .
1:32:12
com though, and then did it did it flip at some point?
1:32:15
>> Oh, yeah, it was very like when I when I was there it was very cheap.
1:32:17
It was like, you know, I don't know, just tens of thousands where as the diapers.
1:32:20
com was like a half a million or something.
1:32:24
So, uh What was it like building an e-commerce website back then?
1:32:28
Like we I mean we just we just read a story about a one-person or I guess two-people company two-person company that's at a billion dollars in revenue.
1:32:40
And that feels unthinkable, but like what was the team like?
1:32:42
Were you racking servers?
1:32:44
Did there was there cloud? >> servers. We were racking servers.
1:32:46
Yeah, it wasn't there nothing was in the cloud.
1:32:50
It was just, you know, eventually transitioned to it.
1:32:51
But yeah, no, it was servers in the server closet. And uh It's amazing.
1:32:56
>> Yeah, we had um, you know, designers, you know, designing the website and building it out.
1:33:00
And like it was, yeah, old school.
1:33:03
And then uh I mean, how do you how were you thinking about fulfillment, vertical integration, what you want to do, what you don't want to do early on with that journey?
1:33:13
I mean, the the we had very little capital, so everything was, you know, uh hand to mouth.
1:33:17
It was we would sell a diaper online, a box of diapers online for let's say $40.
1:33:22
And then we'd go to the wholesale club and buy it for 42 and ship it to the customer. No way.
1:33:30
So, it was like that kind of thing.
1:33:30
So, we were actually losing money on every on every box we sold. Yeah.
1:33:37
And then and then what what was the the integration with Amazon like at the time?
1:33:41
Where was Amazon as a business? Where was the vision?
1:33:44
What was the What was the thesis and like with the what you saw was was going on at Amazon?
1:33:48
Like why was it an exciting opportunity?
1:33:53
Yeah, so I mean, in the early days Amazon was actually crushing it in 2005 when we started diapers.
1:33:57
com but they were mass they weren't focused any one category wasn't a great experience like if you're like me a new parent going on to Amazon and wanting to buy like your stuff for your baby you're like all over the place it wasn't a great experience.
1:34:13
Um the diapers were actually more expensive on Amazon than in the store they just weren't they weren't getting the the sort of the whole diaper thing and I saw an angle to create a specialty site that focused just on that vertical everything the parents want everything they need all in one spot.
1:34:27
Um and it was really working you know we also um we're able to ship the diapers and all this stuff out of the same fulfillment center with two-day delivery uh which wasn't being done on Amazon at the time in that category. Yeah.
1:34:40
Um And is that is that more important is that more important in that particular category because parents need diapers for the kids it's a more urgent like it's it's a fast like where you might wait for a book or you might wait for a TV or something.
1:34:55
>> Yeah yeah exactly you you realize I'm running out of diapers I need them tomorrow you know that sort of thing so um definitely I also think there's a lot of you buying them like a lot of different things and it's expensive to ship them from multiple warehouses so wanting to get them all in the same box. Yeah.
1:35:10
Like getting the wipes the diapers um the baby formula well bottles and things like everything in the same box cuz they're low margin. Yeah.
1:35:19
And so it's too expensive to ship them separately but we were also the first ones to uh bring in Kiva Robotics into the warehouse. Oh no way.
1:35:27
>> Um then Amazon ultimately bought Kiva Robotics but we were the first ones to to use robotics in the warehouse and again um all all in the name of the margins are low we have to we have to figure out how to automate we create this software that told the people in the warehouse exactly how to put everything in the box so we can get all the things in the smallest box possible sure because FedEx a lot of times would charge you for the box size.
1:35:52
And so we tried to like we had 23 different box sizes.
1:35:55
So like we were very advanced when it came to the logistics and and trying to pull costs out of the system.
1:36:02
And um What what what elements of the internet boom like what are the ways in which the internet boom feels similar to the AI boom and and how does it feel different?
1:36:16
Um I think it feels very I think it feels very similar.
1:36:20
Um I mean certainly um you know just just people on both sides of the fence this is good this is bad what it's going to do like a lot of uncertainty.
1:36:28
Yeah we were we were looking back on on how people all the fears people that had about the internet are almost mirrored one to one with AI.
1:36:39
Like every single one kind of matches up.
1:36:42
Um you know the job displacement fears Y2K you know Y2K things like that.
1:36:48
It's pretty remarkable how how humans feared the internet in the exact same way as as >> Humans fear everything.
1:36:54
You go back to when they trains okay?
1:36:57
I don't know if you guys you know know this but when when trains when trains when trains were a thing they strongly advised people not to go on trains because at that speed they don't know the long-term effects it'll have on your brain.
1:37:13
And they told pregnant women do not go on a train if you're pregnant because of the same reason.
1:37:18
Like any industrial advancement that's ever taken place in history there's always an incredible amount of of fear. Yeah yeah. Yeah it's fascinating.
1:37:30
Can you tell me about the process of the idea for jet. com?
1:37:37
It it it when I remember that process happening and it felt like okay at this point you know with diapers.
1:37:43
com like there's a niche there's a there's a landing zone like it makes so much sense.
1:37:48
It's complimentary to Amazon. Jet.
1:37:50
com felt much more like, "Okay, this is like a direct competitor."
1:37:52
Was that the correct framing?
1:37:54
Were you thinking about that?
1:37:56
Were you just thinking there needed to be more options in the market that you could differentiate?
1:37:59
What was your thought process going into launching Jet. com?
1:38:02
Yeah, I think I think this is a massive market and there was no number two to Amazon and we had an angle.
1:38:08
You know, Amazon at the time was you know, shipping stuff from multiple warehouses.
1:38:13
It was very inefficient from a logistics standpoint.
1:38:16
They were burning a lot of money but they had no competition so they could do it and the idea was very simple.
1:38:23
Let's empower people and teach them how to shop smarter so that they can save money.
1:38:29
And so we built this smart cart technology where, you know, when you started adding items into your basket, it would reduce the prices of the items that could be fulfilled from the same warehouse in the same box. >> Sure.
1:38:41
As an incentive to get people to save money because if you ship an item from two different warehouses, you had to pay, you know, at least at least $5 per shipment. >> Yeah.
1:38:51
And if you shipped it in the from the same warehouse, the marginal cost to ship might be 15 cents.
1:38:55
And so that was the idea of teaching people how to shop smarter to save money.
1:39:03
What was the Yeah, what was the fundraising environment like throughout that throughout that journey?
1:39:08
>> I doubt you've had a hard fundraise.
1:39:11
At the same time, it's like, you know, you're going up against Amazon during this time.
1:39:15
It's I mean, I tried to raise money in 2001, 2008, 15, some really tough years.
1:39:20
I've been through it all.
1:39:21
I've been raising money now for 30 years.
1:39:23
I've done probably as many venture capital pitches as anyone.
1:39:28
You know, probably over over a thousand pitches easily now over over the career.
1:39:35
Um but the fundraising has changed.
1:39:36
In the early days of diapers.
1:39:37
com, if you were to raise a hundred million dollars, that was like a huge deal. Yeah.
1:39:41
And and then today, you know, it's raising billions, tens of billions, you know. Yeah.
1:39:49
Very different environment today.
1:39:49
But back then, it was it was much harder to get private capital. What drew you to food?
1:39:54
We had we had Travis Kalanick on a few weeks ago and and uh we were sort of joking around is like you do if if you've done food feels like uh the hardest possible you know, massive opportunity, but it's like probably the hardest food tech, probably one of the hardest categories.
1:40:13
And so if you've mastered you know, at scale uh logistics and these you know, incredibly you know, capital intensive things like e-commerce or ride share, it feels like uh the final frontier, an incredible challenge.
1:40:26
But what what brought you uh what drew you into it?
1:40:31
I mean, first of all, I I think the margins in food are just so much better than e-commerce. Oh, that's interesting.
1:40:37
I felt like you know, this is a restaurant sector that's ripe for technological disruption.
1:40:40
And restaurants haven't changed fundamentally in 100 years.
1:40:43
They're still capital intensive, labor heavy, difficult to scale, and they're they're places.
1:40:49
And um we wanted to challenge that and ask the question, what if restaurants weren't place?
1:40:53
What if restaurants were just ideas?
1:40:54
What if you can build a restaurant and scale it across a network like software without any incremental capital or incremental uh labor with robotics in the back end. Yeah.
1:41:07
And if we're able to do that, then we would be able to bring, you know, uh make great food more accessible.
1:41:11
We can bring restaurants to places that currently don't have access, at times of the day that don't have access, and at price points that are really unfathomable today.
1:41:23
Um that was really the the sort of the the the thinking there.
1:41:25
And um you know, we managed to today in 2,500 square feet have 25 unique restaurants across 20 different types of cuisines, everything from a high-end Bobby Flay steak to Jose Andres, to barbecue, burgers, Chinese, Mexican, Italian, Middle Eastern, fried chicken, pizza, all in one 2,500 square foot kitchen with uh no gas, all electric, no open flames with very lightly trained labor.
1:41:51
So, it's very systematized. Yeah.
1:41:52
Um and we see a future where we'll have a thousand or more unique restaurants offering out of the same 2,500 square foot kitchen. Yeah. And so, Wow.
1:42:04
Hey, have you read any of those like old stories about the automat's in 1950s? Have you heard of this?
1:42:12
It's like this It's like this uh restaurant, I think it was in New York, um and basically there was like a wall of cubbies where the food would be prepared in the back and then you would just sort of open the cubby and take your food and there was no interaction and they were like see they were heralded as like the future in sci-fi, uh but they never really took off and like the 50s, I guess.
1:42:35
guess. And I've always wondered about like how important is the the the online interaction, like the delivery point because there's been a number of attempts to make like robotic restaurants work, but it feels like if people are going to a restaurant, they want a particular experience, but if they're ordering food online, they want
1:42:59
they're okay with a different experience and I'm wondering how how to separate those are even though we think of them as like it's the same name, it's you know, this pizza place in person or this pizza place in in on delivery, they're actually maybe much more different experiences and like and like experiences delivery, like what the value prop is. Yeah, we're I mean, we're focused is
1:43:19
Yeah, we're I mean, we're focused is primarily delivery first, so 70% of revenue is delivery, about 25% is pick up and then less than 5% is sit down.
1:43:28
So, we have 10 to 20 seats in the front, so it's like a looks like a high-end fast-casual in the front, but it's a pretty small front of house.
1:43:36
Um but being vertically integrated, so we bought Grubhub, so we own the delivery. Okay.
1:43:39
We own and we also own all the restaurants.
1:43:42
So, we own all the restaurants, we do the cooking, we built all the technology, and so the vertical integration combined with a very tight delivery radius allows us to offer an incredible experience, like faster, more on time, hotter food, great quality, and of course everyone in the family could order from a from a different restaurant, and it all gets cooked and delivered at the same time.
1:44:02
And we can do that in exurban and even rural areas where restaurants can't typically go.
1:44:08
And that's one of the advantages of the model.
1:44:10
And then recently, we just added drone delivery in New Jersey, and that'll be a big part of the of next year's Is it flying or or road-going with wheels? Uh sorry, flying. Flying.
1:44:22
And And who did you guys partner?
1:44:24
Did you fully verticalize?
1:44:27
Uh yes, fully No, no, we're partnered with a couple different drone companies.
1:44:31
They are, but but we're live.
1:44:32
You can order from drone in New Jersey in this one location, and uh Texas is going to be next year.
1:44:39
>> What are the challenges with doing prepared food delivery via drone?
1:44:40
Like I've seen some of these videos where a package will fall, you know, 10 ft out of the sky, and and obviously that's not going to work if you're ordering ordering a nice meal.
1:44:51
>> No, it comes down with a tether. Yeah.
1:44:54
>> It comes down with a tether and very gently puts it on the ground, but the advantage is no tips, it's more on time, you can service a bigger area, and then you can also deliver to if you're on a boat on a lake, on a beach, a field, uh you could be camping.
1:45:08
So, the idea of being able to deliver it to the point as opposed to somebody's residence is really cool.
1:45:13
And uh it's really at an inflection point now.
1:45:17
I know we've been talking drones for 10 years, but when we go to Texas next year, we fully expect half of our deliveries to be done via drone. Wow.
1:45:26
So, just to kind of put that in perspective, we've >> had we've had Keller from Zipline on uh a number of times and it it you we've been feeling the acceleration with every every interview we have.
1:45:34
How do you Yeah, one of the things that Go for it. Oh, sorry. Go ahead.
1:45:38
Um how have you approached everything on the supply chain side actually because I imagine some of that is out of your control, but that you know, you need uh you're you're heavily relying on those inputs no matter how good your whole technology stack and processes, the food's got to arrive uh at at each of these kitchens.
1:45:59
Um what is that >> that is absolute most important.
1:46:01
I'm glad you called that out.
1:46:03
We have you know, 40 culinary engineers on staff.
1:46:04
Uh we just hired a Victoria who's the head of uh global supply chain at Sysco Foods.
1:46:12
So we have a 700 ingredient library.
1:46:14
We source everything from a number of different uh perveyors.
1:46:16
It brings it to our distribution center and then from distribution center every day we replenish every location. Ah.
1:46:22
Um today we have 100 and I think 18 locations open.
1:46:27
Next year we'll have 400.
1:46:29
So we're growing growing very fast. Wow.
1:46:32
Um but the food quality is the most important.
1:46:35
>> I'm assuming it would never have worked to work with third-party like food distributors.
1:46:42
Like you need to control it sent you can have them come in to the central hub, but you need to actually understand what you're >> So if you have everything from pizza dough to barbecue to sous vide steaks to that like everything comes from a different uh supplier.
1:46:55
In some cases come manufacturer.
1:46:58
Um but yeah, the food quality is is most important.
1:47:00
With the 700 ingredient library is fixed, all the equipment is fixed.
1:47:05
Think of that as like a data center.
1:47:07
Once you have the the data center and and piping in the ground, anybody can create a restaurant using the platform and launch it across instantaneously across all locations.
1:47:17
So at the end of this year we're launching Wonder Create where anybody in the world with just an AI prompt can create their own restaurant and launch it across all Wonder locations for $10 a month.
1:47:34
We think it's going to fundamentally change how people think about restaurant creation.
1:47:38
So, yeah, walk walk me through this.
1:47:40
I come in, I want a prompt, I start prompting or even just typing out what I want to make, and then your guys's are base using robotics, are you you can just make it on the fly?
1:47:51
Like what is the lead time?
1:47:53
Can you can you actually like open up the floodgates here?
1:47:57
Like how how limited will be?
1:47:59
In December yeah, in December you'll be able to go to Wonder Create homepage and say, "Create me a fast casual Mexican concept for Gen Z." And that's it. Hit create.
1:48:10
Then AI will brand your restaurant, name it, give you a couple options, do all the images, do all the recipes, write the descriptions, price everything, do all the health information, create your entire restaurant in under a minute.
1:48:20
You can decide to publish it in all Wonder locations for $10 a month instantaneously.
1:48:27
And now you're live to potentially 20 million people next year.
1:48:32
You can push it on DoorDash, Uber, and Grubhub if you want as well.
1:48:36
And you own the restaurant.
1:48:36
You price it, you own it, it's live, and if you're an entrepreneur you >> Sorry, are you doing a rev share back with the with the creator or how does how does that work?
1:48:45
Yeah, you just basically the creator would pay us for food and pay us for robotic time.
1:48:49
So, it would plug in, let's say you created a fast casual Mexican concept, it would plug into our infinite bowl machine that we acquired from Sweetgreen.
1:48:58
The infinite bowl machine would make your bowl according to your recipe, Yeah.
1:49:02
and then we would actually print your packaging on demand to match your logo.
1:49:09
So, you're fully in business.
1:49:09
You don't need to do anything.
1:49:11
You can be live in a matter of minutes with your new restaurant.
1:49:15
And then we're next year launching an automated sauce machine, an infinite sauce machine, which has 130 raw ingredients and can make 80% of all sauce recipes on the internet on demand, 500 sauces an hour. Mhm.
1:49:27
So you can also create your own sauce recipe, your own dressing, your own whatever sauce you want on these on these bowls that are made from the infinite bowl machine.
1:49:37
So that's that's sort of all it's all going to launch at the end of this year. I have yeah.
1:49:43
I mean like You're you're you're you're describing a very a very broad vision for the type of food that can be delivered and and made.
1:49:49
Uh walk me through the like the level of robotic automation because you walk into a a place that toast bagels and they have a machine.
1:49:59
It's sort of robotic that will like move the bagels down and toast it or the pizza goes through the oven.
1:50:05
Uh and then you and then we see pictures all the time from humanoid robotics companies where it's operating a toaster that's not automated at all but the but the robot is moving and it's fully humanoid. What is actually useful?
1:50:15
Where are we in the deployment of this?
1:50:17
What like what robotic form factors are actually moving the needle and driving value? No, so okay.
1:50:26
So where we are today Yeah.
1:50:28
we have conveyors in every location.
1:50:30
We have again no open flames, all electric cooking platform.
1:50:35
When the item gets onto the conveyor, goes down to the expo area, it gets auto scanned, no human, robotic arm picks it off and puts it into the right uh bagging lane. Mhm.
1:50:45
So like that is that is the extent of the robotics today, but the robotic machine, the infinite bowl machine we bought from Sweetgreen is live in 32 Sweetgreens.
1:50:53
It makes all the salads and all the bowls without any human intervention. Mhm.
1:50:58
The only thing you have to do is put the ingredients in the machine, but the bowl is beautifully made.
1:51:04
It turns the bowl, neatly puts the ingredients in the bowl, and there's no human labor.
1:51:08
You're pulling out 25 points of labor on on making those bowls and the and the ball machine can do 500 balls an hour.
1:51:16
It can do 13 million in revenue in 300 square feet. Wow.
1:51:18
Incredible piece of machinery.
1:51:21
This great team from Spice Robotics, they've 34 MIT engineers up in Boston. Yeah.
1:51:26
Uh are now working for us and they're building the sauce machine.
1:51:31
The sauce machine will go live early next year and we're working on an infinite beverage machine that could make basically any drink.
1:51:36
You know, in a in in a in a coffee shop or a cold brew concept.
1:51:41
All the foaming, layering, blending, that machine will also go live next year.
1:51:46
So, we're layering on the automation. Mhm.
1:51:48
Um and then uh in the middle of next year we're launching an auto automatic um retrieval system where all has a cold storage of frozen and ambient and everything's stored in there.
1:52:00
And so, if you order wings, it'll robotically pick the wings and send them to the fryer. Yeah.
1:52:04
And then you the person just puts them in the fryer.
1:52:07
In the future, the fryer will be automated, but that's kind of like where we are today and where we're going next year. But we envision Yeah. Go for it.
1:52:17
What we envision in the not so distant future being able to generate 20 million of revenue at a 2,500 square feet uh with with only 15 people operating that 20 million in revenue.
1:52:28
So, your labor cost is a small percentage.
1:52:30
Your your your rent is a tiny percentage and we're able to make a 50% four wall margin, which we're going to take that extra margin and put a lot of it back into the price.
1:52:40
So, we'd expect prices to come down and be deflationary over time and it's consistent with our mission of just making great food more accessible.
1:52:46
Price point >> Yeah, food has food ever been deflationary?
1:52:50
It just feels like it all it all it forever it just goes up and up and up.
1:52:56
Um I wanted to get your thoughts on humanoid robotics specifically in a restaurant context.
1:53:04
Uh I I'm guessing I already know what you think, but uh but I but what's what's your take?
1:53:10
>> we don't use any humanoid robots.
1:53:10
So I think >> I know I I I understand now.
1:53:13
I mean more like diffusion.
1:53:15
Do you think that Do you think a humanoid form factor will ever be productive in a commercial kitchen?
1:53:22
Or are these kind of like bespoke systems like you've created going to dominate?
1:53:28
I mean, I think definitely in short term what we're doing is is sort of like first principle thinking on this stuff.
1:53:34
Like the humanoid robots going into a kitchen that exists is oh, there's the fryer. This is what you do.
1:53:39
You put the fries in the basket, the basket down, the basket up, the basket over.
1:53:41
We like to rethink and think why do you even need to do that that way?
1:53:45
Why can't you just create a fryer that has a conveyor and the conveyor goes through the fryer and fries it along the way.
1:53:51
So you don't need to put anything in a basket and take it out of a basket.
1:53:54
Like that sort of that sort of thinking.
1:53:56
I do think there's some things that can't be automated and be a long time before we could ever automate it like assembling a burger or rolling a burrito.
1:54:04
If a humanoid is able to roll a burrito or or assemble a burger, we'd be very interested in in that and we would look at it.
1:54:14
It doesn't seem like anything that's going to happen in the in the very short term, but I'm always open to know that anything you think is not possible today, you know, could be possible >> Yeah, we were we were asking a humanoid founder about what we're calling Diet Coke bench.
1:54:26
How effectively How effectively can a humanoid open open a Diet Coke?
1:54:31
It's simple, but probably not too not too easy.
1:54:34
Yeah, we we would like to just Sorry. Okay, good.
1:54:37
like to just Sorry. Okay, good. Uh just my last question is I I'm wondering about your vision for the future of like restaurant brands generally because if like will we get to a point where I can go and prompt or design a specific meal and if I want
1:54:58
buffalo wings put on pizza and a folded it a calzone deep fry like all as long as I'm using the tools that are within one facility, will I be able to just create something that's essentially a one-of-one meal that is to my exact specifications and actually be direct to consumer? Yes, you'll be able to create your own
1:55:17
Yes, you'll be able to create your own restaurant, your own recipes, the way you want, and go direct to consumer.
1:55:21
So, we envision a future where there are not only influencers creating restaurants, but every college student can have their own cold brew concept, a high school student can have their own, you know, salad or Mexican concept.
1:55:32
We envision a in the not-too-distant future, there are tens of thousands of salad concepts in the US, tens of thousands of fast casual, and the market will be very long tail, very fragmented.
1:55:43
It won't be consolidated the way it is today.
1:55:45
It's fascinating where you're you're basically taking franchising and bringing it bringing it online and and franchising in a way has been so successful because you're giving people a system and a proven product, but in this case, you're not asking for them to take on, you know, hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars of debt to to set up these >> $10 a month. That's all it is. It's 10 bucks a month. Well, thank you. Incredible.
1:56:11
Are you guys What are you hiring for right now?
1:56:16
I mean, across the board.
1:56:16
We're we're we're kind of you know, big open a lot of open positions in robotics and engineering.
1:56:24
So, you know, we've got over a thousand engineers on staff, but we can't seem to to get enough.
1:56:28
So, um yeah, if you're listening, reach out. Amazing.
1:56:32
Well, thanks so much for taking the time to talk to us.
1:56:37
Yeah, I've been follow followed your career I was building the e-commerce company in 2012, and I was like, yeah, this guy's the LeBron James.
1:56:44
So, thank you for everything you've done for the company. We'll talk to you soon.
1:56:48
We'll have to create a TVP and kitchen. Yeah, I'd love it. Goodbye.
1:56:53
Uh there was something that you wanted to pull up, Jordy. What should we pull up? Pull up Jordy?
1:56:57
>> from Rat King, our friend over at New York Times. Yes. Tech reporter. What'd he say?
1:57:03
Uh, he wrote he wrote uh, a profile on us.
1:57:05
Uh, he was able to get uh, a screenshot actually from our contract >> Okay. with OpenAI.
1:57:12
Uh, and he says, "Interesting, as part of negotiation with OpenAI, TBPN has a commitment to editorial independence written into the contract, which states the following: TBPN retains full control over its daily pro pro programming, editorial decisions, guest selection, and production schedule.
1:57:28
TBPN will continue to host a broad range of voices and perspectives, which we shared earlier. >> Yep.
1:57:35
Um, yeah, open open stage to talk about whatever whatever you're building Mhm.
1:57:41
in technology and uh, AI.
1:57:41
Uh, TBPN independently determines its external appearances and commentary.
1:57:47
OpenAI will not control TBPN's planning materials or working documents.
1:57:50
OpenAI will not provide direction on TBPN's editorial calendar.
1:57:55
OpenAI will not influence who TBPN books or what topics it covers."
1:57:59
Again, we just talk about so Yeah. many things.
1:58:01
Often times we're talking about topics like on the fly. There's breaking news.
1:58:06
This was incredibly important >> Yeah. uh, to us.
1:58:10
>> more fun to have have the directors be the hosts as well. Yeah.
1:58:11
So then we're not talking heads.
1:58:13
We're just say whatever we want.
1:58:15
>> people have always asked us how do you guys decide who comes on the show or decide what to talk about and the honest truth is we, you know, it's whatever we're interested in.
1:58:25
It's always been that way. It's super important.
1:58:26
Uh, it's always been important because uh, we have to sit here and talk for 3 hours every day.
1:58:35
We have to >> interesting >> It's got to be interesting to us.
1:58:39
>> Um, and uh, yeah, OpenAI will not materially alter, discontinue, or rebrand TBPN.
1:58:44
OpenAI does not have rights to TBPN host likeness.
1:58:48
Uh, yeah, that we specifically have it set up where they can't even train models on TVPN.
1:58:54
Can't train it on the chat, they can't train on anything TVPN related.
1:58:55
Uh I'm sure other companies train on TVPN already in one way or another.
1:59:02
Um but but yeah, this was incredibly important to both teams and I think we got it to a really good place.
1:59:10
And thanks to Mike Isaac for covering it.
1:59:12
Um well, let's bring in our next guest, Adam Meyers from CrowdStrike.
1:59:15
He is the head of counter adversary operations at CrowdStrike and the host of the Adversary Universe podcast.
1:59:21
Adam, welcome to the show. How are you doing?
1:59:25
>> Adversary's worst nightmare.
1:59:26
>> The adversary's worst nightmare.
1:59:29
Uh yeah, thanks for having me.
1:59:29
Congrats on the acquisition, too.
1:59:30
I was reading about that earlier, so it's awesome.
1:59:35
Yeah, and thanks for hopping on.
1:59:35
A crazy week, I imagine it's a extremely crazy week for you.
1:59:39
Can you sort of level set for us?
1:59:42
Is this a really really weird week generally?
1:59:47
>> interesting because when we had last time we had George on or maybe the time before I was talking is like we haven't had big AI related security breaches to date and not everything that's happened this week has been, you know, directly tied to AI, but it feels like everything is is heating up. We're seeing more of it.
2:00:05
There's been a couple in the last 2 weeks of these supply chain attacks.
2:00:09
And you know, I think what's clear is that especially with the use of quad code and some of the different agentic solutions that are out there, people don't know necessarily what these things are downloading, what they're loading on their systems.
2:00:24
I know you guys have talked about like open quad before and things like that.
2:00:26
And it's just, you know, the supply chain for software has been an issue for a while and it I think it's just escalating, right?
2:00:33
We've seen so many of these over the last week.
2:00:35
We've seen Team TC Team PCP doing a few of these and then this most recent one which was a big one tied back to North Korea. North Korea.
2:00:46
Uh yeah, it's it's two things are happening.
2:00:47
People aren't reading code.
2:00:49
They don't understand the ways in which they're they're actually building products.
2:00:52
And then there's also, like, you know, feels like a hundred or a thousand times more software just being created.
2:00:58
So, you know, the combination of those things is, uh, what's what's driving this.
2:01:02
Maybe I mean, I've been doing a playing with it a lot, and it's crazy, you know, you can't even see it as it's running, and and it's just pulling down NPM libraries and God knows what else from PyPI and stuff like that.
2:01:13
So, it's just, you know, who knows what's out there.
2:01:14
And And the other thing is, you install these libraries one day, and then they become evil overnight.
2:01:19
And, you know, you have to go back and review everything that you're using.
2:01:23
Yeah, can you give us a supply chain attack 101?
2:01:25
Uh, some people might be familiar with SolarWinds.
2:01:27
That was the last one that really broke through to the mainstream, but, uh, just how does this work?
2:01:32
What's the anatomy of a supply chain attack?
2:01:34
And then we'll go into how to fight it and how why they're on the rise in particular. Sure, yeah.
2:01:40
So, generally, supply chain attacks, you know, are going to impact the software supply chain.
2:01:43
And so, in SolarWinds, I actually worked that one.
2:01:48
Uh, so, I I can I can tell you that one was was pretty special because they got into the, um, CI/CD environment, and were able to actually affect the building of the software so that it was done in a way that nobody really could tell that that had happened.
2:02:01
What we're seeing in these new uh, supply chain attacks is that they're targeting the developers themselves, many of whom probably listen to this show, and so, it's important to pay attention.
2:02:11
Uh, that they could, you know, they go after your credentials, they phish you, they get access to your, uh, logins to things like NPM and and PyPI, and then abuse that.
2:02:22
And and there's a a number of ways they can do this with Git tags, where they can actually, you know, hide the code and then redirect, uh, Git to a Git tag.
2:02:32
Uh, but effectively, what happens, you know, for the layman, is that you have software that is depended on by enterprise applications, by, uh, open source stacks and they're you know Axios was downloaded something like 100,000 times per week, right?
2:02:47
So that that gives you a sense that these things are being used extremely frequently.
2:02:54
And you know, people don't look at them.
2:02:56
They don't they don't analyze that code.
2:02:58
They don't analyze that library.
2:02:58
They trust it came from NPM. It must be good.
2:03:02
The community's looked at it, but those things can be updated at a moment's notice and you don't you don't know what that latest update is unless you review the code yourself. Yeah.
2:03:09
Okay, so on on reviewing the code yourself, we were debating this.
2:03:14
The two sides that we were kicking around was maybe the reaction to this is that sure we're not going to write as much code going forward.
2:03:21
We know that the models are good at writing code, but there will be a lot more code reading that goes on and people will just demand that if you're hired as a software engineer that you read every line, you you work through the dependencies.
2:03:33
You are in charge of the code that you ship regardless of whether or not it was generated by an LLM or not.
2:03:42
The other side of it was sort of like maybe the answer to you know, bad code bad AI code is more good AI code and that we will be doing more AI code reviews and that we can actually throw more AI at this problem.
2:03:57
I imagine the solution somewhere in the middle, but how how are you wrestling with those two paths forward?
2:04:02
Well, I think what we're looking at is how do we secure it absent of is somebody reviewing the code or not?
2:04:08
And so there's things that you can look for at the endpoint at the security fabric, right?
2:04:12
We we kind of see ourselves as the operating system of security at CrowdStrike.
2:04:16
So being able to see that you know, the AI agent is writing code and it loads a library and inside that library, you know, use this Axios example, there's a chunk of it that's base 64 encoded and it's being you know, decoded and instantiated.
2:04:33
That's suspicious behavior, right?
2:04:33
Just if I say that out loud, I'm like, hey, you guys are going to pull down a bunch of base 64 code and then decode it and run it." Yeah.
2:04:40
>> They'd be like, "No, we're not."
2:04:40
So, you know, I think that those things that we can see at the endpoint at the build time, we can actually look for that and say, "Okay, this is suspicious behavior.
2:04:50
Let's flag this and pay attention to what's happening with this particular thing."
2:04:54
Because, you know, to your point, you could demand everybody read all the AI slop that they're generating, but the reality is that even if they do that, they're not looking at all the libraries that they're using, right?
2:05:05
How many libraries does a standard build have, right?
2:05:07
I mean, I've I've been vibe coding for a while and you know, who knows what libraries you know, you run it and that's the beauty of it, right?
2:05:15
You run it, it spits out a bunch of stuff and then it works. Yeah.
2:05:19
The reality is nobody's looking at those code bases until something like this happens.
2:05:22
Yeah, what what is the what is the future of security products, CrowdStrike?
2:05:27
I I I can just imagine a world where more people need secure security products for open-source projects, for their personal projects, for their personal life.
2:05:39
Like, if you have someone whose day job is important, but then they're vibe coding their, you know, their their family calendar at home, but all of a sudden that creates a vulnerability where you can get their, you know, phone number and then, you know, SIM swap or something.
2:05:54
I think that's the thing soft soft people have had like relatively high trust with software for the last 10 years. >> Totally, right?
2:06:02
It's like, oh, it's a Google login and yeah.
2:06:03
And only only this year have I started to be like really question >> Yeah.
2:06:09
different apps and things like that that people are making because there's a tendency, if you're working in tech, to like want to try the new thing, right? >> Totally.
2:06:17
And now when something pops up, it's actually kind of a headwind >> Yeah.
2:06:20
for startups because I think we're probably headed into a lower trust era. Yeah.
2:06:28
Yeah, I think that's part of it.
2:06:28
I also would point to the people that are building these libraries, right?
2:06:31
They need and we've seen this with Chrome plugins, too, and and and browser plugins.
2:06:36
You need to have MFA, you know, multi-factor authentication on all of your authentication for, you know, pushing code out to these library bases because, you know, somebody comes along, fishes the developer, convinces them to enter, you know, password for, you know, drive or or some sort of cloud storage or something like that.
2:06:55
They take those credentials and then they use that to log in and change the code base.
2:06:58
So, the developers really need to be focused on securing their own accounts and identity. Yeah.
2:07:05
And we've seen, you know, we released this global threat report a few weeks ago.
2:07:08
Identity, you know, for a long time, endpoint and when CrowdStrike I I've been with CrowdStrike since we started back in 2011, endpoint was kind of where the bad stuff happened. What a good run.
2:07:25
Uh what what did what advice are you giving to developers today that are, you know, I think everyone that my advice would not be freak out and, you know, slam your computer into the table.
2:07:37
You can't go back to pen and paper, yeah.
2:07:38
You can't go back to pen and paper, but like what what are the, you know, two two factors, an obvious one, any any other like advice that somebody should basically implement immediately?
2:07:51
If we give everybody secured their identity, then my job would be a lot easier, right?
2:07:54
Like the number one thing thing that we've seen is identity attacks.
2:07:58
I mean, two years ago we saw that voice-based phishing.
2:08:01
So, threat actors calling up the help desk and being like, "Hey, this is Jordi and I can't log into my account." Yeah.
2:08:08
And sorry, Jordi, I I'm just picking on you there.
2:08:12
But, you know, but hey, it's you know, I can't log into my account and they're like, "All right, well, you know, who's your supervisor?
2:08:17
What's your work location?"
2:08:17
You answer those two questions and they reset the cred for you. Mhm.
2:08:21
And that that happens to the point hundreds of percentages of increase that we've seen that occurring Yeah. uh from threat actors.
2:08:29
So, you know, one of the ways to get around that from a a defense perspective, multi-factor authentication.
2:08:34
Don't use SMS, by the way, for multi-factor authentication because that's a whole other thing cuz I can SIM swap you or I can, um, you know, and and, you know, if you have a backup for your multi-factor authentication is your Gmail, well, I'll target your Gmail.
2:08:48
And then I'll I'll intercept that key.
2:08:50
So, having smart secondary factors and using pass key and things like that really important.
2:08:57
And then using different you know, I I tell this to everybody and you know, even if I'm talking to a bunch of school kids, like, "Hey, use different passwords for everything." >> Yeah.
2:09:06
And I love nothing more than going into a room of people and I'm like, "All right, raise your hand if you don't use the same password for every account."
2:09:14
And they all raise their hands and I'm like, "Look around.
2:09:15
If your hand is is up, you're a liar."
2:09:17
Because everybody does password reuse. Yeah, of course.
2:09:22
Uh, give us the pitch for the podcast. Give us a summary.
2:09:23
Tell people where to find it.
2:09:25
Yeah, it's the Adversary, um, Universe podcast.
2:09:28
It's myself and Christian Rodriguez, who's our field CTO of the Americas.
2:09:32
And just like you guys, we like to have a good time, just kind of back and forth banter or bringing guests occasionally.
2:09:37
But we really dive into the adversary.
2:09:39
So, in this case with the the Axious incident, we're attributing that to Star Dust Chollima, which is a North Korean group. Wow.
2:09:47
We've been tracking them since 2015 and one of the things that they So, and then Lap Lapsus, I don't know if I'm saying that correctly, was connected to the Light LLM attack, but that Do I have that correct?
2:09:58
Or was it a different group?
2:10:01
>> Uh, well, yeah, that's that's kind of Team PCP, I think, claimed claimed credit for that.
2:10:05
Um, but, you know, there's they're they're actually fighting.
2:10:08
You can watch this in some of their channels.
2:10:10
The two groups are kind of, you know, talking about that. >> "I did it. No, I did it."
2:10:13
They're they're Well, I think the Lapsus guys were like, "We're shiny hunters."
2:10:17
Was like, "This is why we hacked them." Right?
2:10:19
So, um, you know, they hacked Team PCP.
2:10:21
is there's a lot of back and forth there.
2:10:25
But, you know, this one was North Korea who has been doing, you know, they stole last year 1.
2:10:29
46 billion dollars in just one attack against a cryptocurrency company.
2:10:35
So, they've been stealing cryptocurrency since 2016 at, you know, billions of dollars is is kind of the the current total.
2:10:44
And when they do a supply chain attack like this, they want to go after developers who are doing blockchain and and kind of dials and stuff like that because they know that if they can get into there, then they can they can actually steal cryptocurrency and use that to buy things for the weapons program. Wow.
2:10:59
Yeah, a lot more straightforward than than acquiring data and then trying to auction it off which we've seen with the the North Korean incident.
2:11:08
Well, yeah, some of some of those are interesting cuz they actually they were deploying um, Steelers, right?
2:11:14
To steal credentials to then go after other targets.
2:11:16
And there's a whole ecosystem on the underground where, you know, you can go in you can buy creds to an organization.
2:11:22
And if you have creds to an organization and you log in, you can go straight into their single sign-on.
2:11:28
You can get into, you know, Microsoft SharePoint or any of their data stores and you're off and running.
2:11:34
And there's really very little that organizations can do to prevent that.
2:11:38
You know, it's a legitimate user logging in with a legitimate credential.
2:11:41
So, it becomes very difficult for them.
2:11:42
Well, thank you so much for taking the time to come break it down for us. Have a great weekend. >> was uh, insightful. Come on. Come on more often. Yeah, that'd be great. >> Anytime, guys. My pleasure. Have a good day. Good to have you. Goodbye.
2:11:54
Our next guest is Jeremy Allaire from Circle.
2:11:56
He's live in person in the TVP in Ultra Lounge with us.
2:11:59
We're very excited to talk to him. Jeremy, good to see you. How are you doing? >> I'm good.
2:12:04
Um, take us through the the the announcement.
2:12:07
We were covering it uh, over the past few days uh, around uh, maybe maybe reset on where the business is today and then we'll go into the quantum story. Yeah, absolutely.
2:12:18
I mean, look, um obviously we went public last year.
2:12:21
Um and you know, as we went public we talked Thank you.
2:12:25
He has a sound board in person, too. I have that now.
2:12:30
And um and you know, at that time like we we were talking a lot about like our stablecoin network, which is like rooted in USDC.
2:12:37
And um but really, you know, over the last year we've really widened out. >> Yeah.
2:12:43
And so we we are a broader platform company now, and we have an operating system that we've been building called Arc. Mhm.
2:12:49
And that's getting ready to, you know, go mainnet, um as we say.
2:12:53
And um and then we've been kind of building out abstractions uh uh around kind of payments and sort of making payments more simple and mainstream.
2:13:02
Um and then just building a lot of infrastructure and tools for developers and stuff. So Sure.
2:13:05
the plat- platform is really broadened, but I mean, if you look at, you know, where where we are now, like USDC has become the most widely transacted uh digital currency in the world. Mhm.
2:13:17
Bigger than anything else, basically.
2:13:19
And and has overpassed overtaken Tether in terms of transaction volume. Interesting.
2:13:23
Um and you know, we're seeing um new uptake.
2:13:26
Uh we're seeing new uptake from you know, major companies now.
2:13:31
You know, whether it's like uh uh a fintech like Ramp that just launched like whole treasury management with it, or it's you know, a global bank like JP Morgan that's now has used it to like sell digital bonds. Wow.
2:13:43
And so it's it's all over the place, which is pretty cool.
2:13:46
And then um you know, one of the things that we saw really start to pick up, and we'll talk about I think hopefully today, too, is and is is is effectively like this explosion in people building agents. Yeah.
2:13:59
And agents consuming services and needing ways to kind of pay for all of that.
2:14:03
And the technology and standards to kind of do agent-to-agent economic transactions, financial transactions.
2:14:11
and USDC's played a a big role in that and that's that's emerging and it and to me is like one of the most interesting things happening in the agentic economy.
2:14:19
And uh and yeah yeah, USDC in our stablecoin network is like 99% of the transactions happening now at at that at that layer.
2:14:29
Yeah, so how how are you tracking adoption?
2:14:31
What kinds of use cases are you expecting to be the first to to really kind of go uh more mainstream?
2:14:39
This is something that uh people have been talking about uh for years now and as agents have become massively more popular, it feels like now uh now could really be the moment, but like what are what are you tracking most closely?
2:14:52
>> Yeah, I mean look, there there there are a bunch of things.
2:14:53
I think um you know, if you if you think about like the agent stack as it's emerging, right?
2:14:57
Um you you you you're clearly seeing a lot of companies that have services, have software, have other things and they're basically like, "Okay, I need to kind of convert what I do into an agent consumable system."
2:15:11
So, I want to have an MCP server, I want to have uh you know, CLI interface, right?
2:15:17
So, you're all all these kinds of things and this sort of discoverability. Mhm.
2:15:20
And then you need ways to basically enable agents to like onboard and transact really really quickly and not go through the kind of onboarding that you you would typically deal with.
2:15:31
And so, um that's where we see this first wave is basically agents consuming services um that are now kind of agent ready and have been kind of structured that way.
2:15:43
And so, there's like a registry of now um you know, you know, thousands of services that are basically becoming what's called X402 enabled, which is a key standard we're involved with.
2:15:52
And there's a big announcement actually today about that. Yeah.
2:15:57
And uh and so, that's like the first.
2:15:59
It's sort of like getting getting that connected, but to me the really interesting and more explosive kind of growth potential is really you know agents that are providing services to other agents themselves.
2:16:11
services to other agents themselves. And so if you think about like I'm I'm building an agent that's you know extremely good at a particular form of let's say medical analysis or I'm building an agent that's extremely good at reviewing resumes or I'm whatever that is the sort of agent as a service is again the the the way that people are talking about this is like in those models you're basically paying for um
2:16:36
you know intelligence and and intelligence is is going to be priced in in in dollars but also as as consumable tokens and you need at that point like if you look at like what's the cost for intel cost of intelligence for x number of tokens with the given model it could be 5 cents it could be a dollar it could be 35 cents it could be it could be more it could be something long running could could be you know $100 or whatever. And
2:16:57
And so once you start having agents contracting with each other and needing that medium of exchange to to settle that that's where I see this as explosive because you get this compounding effect of agents.
2:17:11
>> Yeah we were talking earlier there there's a a guy in the New York Times today that built you know 1.
2:17:16
8 billion dollars business.
2:17:17
>> now I've been reading about it and watching the show before I came in here yeah.
2:17:20
yeah. Uh and and and what's notable is like he's using a bunch of different intelligence providers but if you're just hopping between different LLMs all the time it's not great you're like copy and pasting and it's not like unified and so you would imagine that over time
2:17:36
you get to actual aggregators and you're like hey we need to tap into a different model for this but you know And you know like an agent a a red an agent marketplace and these registries of agents and this and and obviously like because it's all machine to machine like it's super discoverable >> Yeah. Um and what's behind any given
2:17:51
Um and what's behind any given agent which is just kind of consumed through you know some kind of underlying CLI or whatever API right like doesn't matter what the underlying model is behind it.
2:18:03
It's just like I There's a There's a function I need and it's here.
2:18:07
And so, um yeah, I think it's also, you know, the the kind of you know, compensation, fees, transactions around agent-to-agent stuff is obviously has that like huge exponential potential.
2:18:19
I think what gets more interesting is um is is when you really start to think about structured economic relationships.
2:18:29
Like Like most economic relationships are not just like you have a thing, I'm paying you for the thing, right?
2:18:34
It's like a a labor contract might There might be a lot involved in it or a service contract.
2:18:39
There may be many, many stipulations that are part of it.
2:18:43
And and and like a a trade agreement between two companies, there's like all kinds of stuff.
2:18:47
And so, um you can imagine like more elaborate forms of contracts.
2:18:53
And those need to be machine-written contracts, machine-enforced contracts, and machine-validated and audited and and and kind of have dispute resolution against all of those.
2:19:05
And like economic operating systems that are built on blockchain tech stacks are like the way that will happen.
2:19:10
And that's more of a view of like what is the agentic economy?
2:19:14
What is the economic system?
2:19:16
And actually these these these new companies that are um you know, the one-person billion-dollar startups, etc.
2:19:23
, like all all of that um phenomenon, in some ways like these are these are These are emergent corporate forms, right?
2:19:32
That that are are using a lot of AI labor.
2:19:34
And um but over time, like I think even the the nature of corporate forms will change.
2:19:40
And we'll have more digitally native corporate forms that uh most of the substance is actually just software execution.
2:19:48
And like there's humans involved and and maybe the legal system will always require there's a person uh that that's there.
2:19:54
But I think we're going to we're going to face a lot of very hard legal questions around you know, sort of entity substance.
2:20:01
Like what is the substance of the entity? What is the entity?
2:20:06
Um, and but I you know, I think a lot of this there's a lot of material here that we have to work with to to ultimately create these sort of fully digitally native uh, forms Yeah.
2:20:14
that are you know, composing and interacting uh, with with contracts and economic systems.
2:20:20
How are you how are you guys working with companies today?
2:20:24
The beauty of USCC is anybody can kind of get the power of it by just Yeah, it's permissionless. Just tap in.
2:20:31
Uh, but I know you guys have invested in in companies in the past, partner with you know, a num a ton of them directly.
2:20:37
Like how are people I'm sure you're getting you know, an insane amount of uh, real pitches and then also you know, people pitching you with open claws. Things like that. >> god, yeah.
2:20:46
I mean look, I I think like um, so um, a couple things.
2:20:50
I think within within this AI space, right?
2:20:52
Um We're um, yeah, we're making investments like venture investments in different types of startups that are doing interesting things.
2:21:01
Um, we have uh, we have builder programs.
2:21:04
So we have uh, you know, with funding and stuff like that.
2:21:06
So we have builder programs um, in this space.
2:21:08
Um, but a lot of what we're doing is just basically like making sure everything that we have like all of the infrastructure for wallets, the infrastructure for money, the infrastructure for creating smart contracts.
2:21:21
Like all the stuff that goes into this that all of that is just consumable and discoverable by either AI development tools or by AI agents themselves.
2:21:29
And um, and then letting letting things happen.
2:21:32
Um, but like at a stepping back and a little bit away from the AI specific side of it, Um yeah, I mean the the range of the range of companies now like getting involved and plugging into this is really broad um, and and that's exciting.
2:21:46
Um, you know, this is definitely kind of going in going into a a mainstream phase.
2:21:54
>> I imagine AI companies are ahead of the curve there in terms of adoption and turning on agentic payments because you go to an agent and it needs to use some resource.
2:22:02
That's the logical uh the logical pattern versus >> There was a post I forget who who uh put it out earlier this week something to the effect of people uh AI people are more excited about crypto right now than crypto >> Yes, I saw that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
2:22:18
Well, you know, I've I've always thought of these as as sort of uh highly complimentary and and even going back 13 years when uh we were kind of starting Circle, the thing the thing that got me really excited was this idea of programmable money that we were going to have like self-running software machines that would intermediate economic stuff on the internet.
2:22:41
Like and that was the promise of the tech 13 years ago. You couldn't do it. It wasn't possible. Didn't exist.
2:22:46
But it was like as an internet technologist, that was really exciting to me. I'm like wow.
2:22:49
Like if you can actually have, you know, these sort of self-running software machines that are auditable and can and run.
2:22:54
Now, I didn't have a concept of generative AI. >> Yeah.
2:22:58
But definitely was like, okay, programmable money that it is going to be like a completely new form of utility for money that's never existed. >> Yeah.
2:23:08
And um and so that that was very exciting.
2:23:10
And so I think in in many ways like um you know, a crypto infrastructure, crypto as a tech stack >> Yeah.
2:23:18
is very very purpose-built for the the the agentic world.
2:23:22
Like they really are hand in glove and and will work very very uh closely together.
2:23:27
And so um you know, trustless intermediation is like what what what happens in AI, right?
2:23:36
You know, whether it's of data or of of >> Yeah, it's interesting to think about how many business transactions, like even if there's a contract, they're so trust-dependent. Yes.
2:23:44
and uh stables can can play a role in helping that evolve because you can say Yeah.
2:23:52
you know, you know, basically if you know, you can you can escrow funds like you said you can make a programmable Yeah, you can make contracts, right?
2:23:59
And and these can be very very elaborate.
2:24:00
Yeah, that's always been the thing.
2:24:01
Will people like people like to buy from people, but part of that is because you want to know, okay, who's my counterparty? Yeah.
2:24:07
Do they have a good reputation?
2:24:09
Do I trust that even if we have a contract they'll they'll follow it Right.
2:24:13
and not have to get into some you know, legal um >> Yeah, I remember the pitch for machine-to-machine payments. >> Yes.
2:24:21
I think that was around like Ethereum maybe 2015.
2:24:24
>> So this was like an early thing. Yeah.
2:24:26
Yeah, and it sort of made sense, but it was very hard to imagine writing all the code to do all of that. >> just writing itself. Exactly. Yeah, makes total sense.
2:24:34
I'm wondering what you think holds about the the current economic philosophies or the economic rules of the road just in business and what might be different as we move towards a world of decentralized agentic payments.
2:24:51
Like I imagine network effects still hold.
2:24:53
I imagine that if you create value, you create the network, you can capture value through some transaction percentage and everyone will be happy in the ecosystem.
2:25:03
How do you think about the economics?
2:25:04
Yeah, I mean look, I think I think there there there are a bunch of different pieces here, right?
2:25:09
So so Circle is a is a money issuer.
2:25:12
Like we issue digital dollars.
2:25:14
>> We issue digital euros.
2:25:14
EURC is the largest digital euro stablecoin.
2:25:16
We issue digital treasury products.
2:25:18
We have the largest tokenized money market basically. So we're a money issuer.
2:25:24
And so um if we can build networks uh that have wide utility and protocols for that those those monies that we issue that are super super widely used and provide a great, you know, utility.
2:25:37
You can permissionlessly plug in etc.
2:25:39
And and we and we can grow that.
2:25:41
The monetary base alone Mhm. can be massive, right?
2:25:43
So we can we can we can we can imagine that, you know, these these kinds of of digital dollars running on these networks there will be trillions of dollars of these as opposed to hundreds of billions of them now.
2:25:55
And so that itself is is significant and, you know, the economics are are very significant from that. >> Yeah.
2:26:02
But I think, um, you know, ultimately, I think, uh, you know, as as the infrastructure becomes kind of more widely utilized uh for real world transactions, I mean, whatever that means, right?
2:26:18
Um uh yeah, we absolutely have an opportunity to participate in the the the velocity of those transactions and the economics around that.
2:26:26
But, you know, we had this philosophy when we started Circle that, you know, over the long run that the marginal cost of storing and moving value would go to zero and that the business model of charging fees for payments would collapse. >> Interesting.
2:26:41
And and, you know, I think over the long run that is still going to be true.
2:26:44
Like >> Actually zero or like 0.
2:26:45
00001% and it's just so big you still So so yeah, I mean, almost yeah, I mean, actually zero to most of the consumers of it because the costs underneath it are going to be so low.
2:26:56
It's like like, you know, you don't get charged for your WhatsApp audio call, right?
2:27:02
They're like, you know, we're going to we're going to deal with the two dollars and other ways.
2:27:08
>> But like we've we we just announced something called Circle nano payments.
2:27:12
It's a it's a module for agents to basically be able to like have a stored balance of of digital dollars of of tokenized dollars and be able to transact them to like different wallets on different blockchains.
2:27:24
And and we've gotten it to the point where we can actually have transactions priced uh at 1 1 millionth of a penny per transaction.
2:27:36
Uh and and, you know, you're like well, who would ever need that?
2:27:39
Well, if there's like Well, here's here's an example.
2:27:41
So yesterday we had Eddy Cue on from Apple and he was talking about the early days of the App Store and how when you when you bought a song, they would effectively kind of open a cart and they would hope that you would buy multiple songs. I remember.
2:27:56
Because it's so expensive per transaction.
2:27:58
Yeah, 25 cents, 30 cents. Right. Yeah.
2:28:01
Compared to 5 cents, 10 cents, 20 cents. Right. Yeah.
2:28:04
Yeah, a quarter of a transaction.
2:28:08
And so like that right there is insane.
2:28:09
Like the fact that the Apple, one of the, you know, biggest consumer tech companies in the world had to use this kind of weird workaround just to not give 25% of every transaction.
2:28:17
Taking money away from, of course, like the creators and the record labels and and Apple just like pure kind of rent extraction.
2:28:25
Yeah, it's like payment systems like were never designed were not designed for a machine and an AI economy. They weren't.
2:28:34
And um we we even see this now where because the cost to transact USDC on has has gone to, you know, sort of fractions of a cent in in in general, you can do that.
2:28:43
Like the velocity of transactions has exploded.
2:28:46
And you see that in the growth in the year-over-year growth.
2:28:49
It's like tens of trillions of dollars of transactions on a monetary base of around, you know, We like trillions. Yeah.
2:28:56
I'm always I'm always saying the biggest number.
2:29:00
On scale, what are you tracking right now to understand where we are in the adoption of agentic payments?
2:29:07
Because I imagine like it is happening. It's small.
2:29:10
Is it Are you doing like a percentage of GDP thing?
2:29:16
Percentage of your transaction base?
2:29:19
Like just growth month-over-month?
2:29:22
Like what's the what's the correct internal KPI?
2:29:24
So there's there's there's a couple ways to look at it right now.
2:29:28
So so one is like there are specifically standards for agentic payments.
2:29:34
And so we are a co-developer of the X402 standard.
2:29:41
Actually the X402 Foundation just got merged into the Linux Foundation and a lot of great companies, Stripe, Coinbase who is a a pioneer in this, Circle.
2:29:50
>> This has been a proposal in HTTP for like 25 years, right? >> thing.
2:29:53
It's a money It's like payment request model.
2:29:55
And so but now if you look at like X402 version 2, it's like building out into a a pretty rich vernacular that's needed for the the the needs of agentic payments.
2:30:05
So one way to look at it is like what's X402 traffic and like you can you can look at X402 traffic, you can track it, you can look at the payloads, you can see what the transactions are.
2:30:14
And that's in the like it's been growing, it's in the hundreds of millions. >> Okay.
2:30:18
Okay, so quite small from a from a starting base, but I think the if you look at a leading indicator which is the number of of these like agents or services or endpoints that are X402 enabled has been growing very rapidly.
2:30:34
And and we as as well as like companies like Stripe and Coinbase and others are we're basically like shipping stuff so that it's like super butt simple to like have X402 in front of whatever it is you're doing.
2:30:46
Or or you in front and behind.
2:30:46
So you could be a consumer and a service provider.
2:30:50
And so I think that like 2026 we're going to see this huge growth in that and then the consumption models the leaked entropic code actually had all of these references to X402 in it.
2:31:01
And so you know, it's clearly like even in foundation models becoming something that they're they're going like hey this is going to be like a common pattern.
2:31:10
But you know, so that's that's one way to look.
2:31:12
And then the other is like it's hard to measure which is like people are using AI to create bots.
2:31:16
Like these Polymarket trading bots or these hyperliquid trading bots or like all kinds of stuff.
2:31:21
And those aren't using X402 and so that's like other traffic, but it's AI driven transaction volume.
2:31:29
And so it's hard to measure. We got to talk quantum. >> Quantum. Yeah, quantum.
2:31:30
When I mean I'm assuming you were aware of the risk of quantum to encryption overall.
2:31:41
So, very aware and >> I'm saying like aware predating starting circle, right?
2:31:47
Like cuz this is just a risk for overall encryption.
2:31:51
>> this has been you know Crypto is cryptography which is math and and you know all of this is about who can compute these you know keys and ciphers and all that stuff.
2:31:59
So of course it's always been a background debate.
2:32:02
Always been a theoretical back background debate.
2:32:05
As we've been building up our own operating system, our own crypto-based operating system Arc, we have been saying okay, we're doing this kind of clean room from the start.
2:32:16
It's a new infrastructure.
2:32:16
We have a chance to do post-quantum readiness from the start.
2:32:20
Whereas you know existing networks and there's this Google paper and all that jazz and so on.
2:32:24
Like there's a migration and there's risk and all that kind of stuff.
2:32:29
And so we we basically said okay >> massive coordination problem.
2:32:32
Huge coordination problem.
2:32:34
So we basically said look, we have phenomenal you know you know PhD crypto people you know in the company and so we we made this a key priority and so we actually just announced today our whole post-quantum roadmap and and one of the one of the most powerful things is that you know when Arc goes mainnet in the not too distant future, right?
2:32:57
It will have post-quantum signatures there from the start.
2:33:02
So if you're issuing assets and you're you're doing transactions, you can actually use post-quantum methods from the start.
2:33:09
I think we'll be the very first blockchain network in the world to to have that there which is key.
2:33:15
Now there's like multiple layers to this and so the roadmap also details like okay, you know, how how how do the, you know, validators on the network get themselves to be quantum resilient and resistant and so on.
2:33:28
So, there's multiple layers that have to happen over time.
2:33:31
But, the the baseline, which is the most important, which is the fundamental mechanism for how you sign transactions, how transactions are are are published to the network, and how assets get defined, like that's that's post-quantum.
2:33:46
Um there's a lot of detail we put out in our documentation today.
2:33:49
Um but, you know, we we've been thinking about a long time and, you know, it's sort of interesting cuz we were gearing up to launch this and then this Google DeepMind whatever it was like came came out and we're like, okay, well, time to launch.
2:34:01
>> Well, an interesting challenge for the industry because everyone needs to get their house in order and like create a plan, but then it's also like the entire industry needs to rally because even if you guys have your Oh, yeah, no, it cascades across all these ecosystems and like USDC runs on 32 blockchain networks, right?
2:34:16
And and so, like, you know, we we are part of the whole ecosystem, obviously.
2:34:23
Um and then, you know, of course, like if from a de novo perspective, people building new stuff, I mean, one thing to remember is like basically like crypto infrastructure, blockchains had been an early adopter phenomenon until very, very recently, and like the actual usage at a global scale in the real economy, like, you know, 98% of that's still ahead of us.
2:34:41
So, we're still very early in all this.
2:34:43
Last question for me, how did you process the 2028 intelligence crisis?
2:34:49
You that that paper to Trini because some some of it was, you know, specu- basically making the argument there's a lot of kind of rent-seeking in the economy and AI can potentially make a lot of transactions a lot more efficient.
2:35:02
That's kind of what you're betting you're betting the company on.
2:35:05
>> bunch of specific stuff about stablecoins and USDC and like, you know, all that.
2:35:08
I mean, look, um we are um uh uh so, I I I read that and there's a lot of really interesting things in there and and and broadly like um you know even Circle itself >> criticism too is like the criticism was like okay this is like sci-fi but when you look back at sci-fi throughout history there's a lot of sci-fi that that that is like you know kind of come come to life.
2:35:32
>> look I mean the fundamentals of of like um of like like completely restructuring like what what transaction costs are and and and basically models where you know much of the work that's conducted in the real economy is work conducted by AI or by intelligences
2:35:51
um and that that that work is economically going to be measured out and and metered out and executed using these new digital currency forms like I believe that very very deeply and um I don't think anyone knows how big that will be but it it certainly
2:36:06
you know again like total processed volume which is like this number that like uh the card networks and others use like these numbers are going to be look so small in comparison to the unit economics are going to be very very different so I I'm I I I agree with you
2:36:22
know a number of those conclusions uh I'm not a hedge fund I don't have any positions in any of these companies and all that but like I think um uh it's it's it's real and it's happening and um uh yeah we're we're we're trying to build for that future. Amazing. I'm glad we Amazing.
2:36:35
I'm glad we have you working on it.
2:36:37
Thank you so much for taking the time >> Thank you guys.
2:36:40
>> to come on down to the TV panel ultradome. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
2:36:44
>> Uh our next guest is in the waiting room and we will bring in Justin Levine from Shepherd into the TV panel ultradome.
2:36:52
Kicks off our lightning round. Jeremy how you doing? Oh sorry Justin. Still up there. Traveling through time. Congrats big day. Yeah big day thank you.
2:37:03
>> honor honor to have you here on this day.
2:37:04
Sorry we couldn't give you a heads up but uh It's all good. All good.
2:37:08
Um well we are not here to talk about us we're here to talk about you.
2:37:12
Please introduce yourself and the company.
2:37:15
Yeah, uh Justin Levine, co-founder CEO of Shepherd.
2:37:18
We're a AI native insurance business.
2:37:20
Uh we focus on large-scale industries like construction and and renewable energy. Yeah.
2:37:24
Uh how how are you thinking about the growth of the construction data center industry broadly?
2:37:31
Like what's the headline number that you're quoting?
2:37:33
Because I imagine you have a a TAM and it's growing, but how do you actually sense make about the what to expect over the next couple years as you build a business?
2:37:43
I mean, we're in we're in a massive construction supercycle specific to the AI infrastructure layer.
2:37:48
Um I think this year alone there's something like $400 billion of infrastructure spend just related to either data center assets or the energy assets that need to support those data centers.
2:37:58
There's not enough energy on the grid, so we now have to build the energy assets next to the data centers in order to make it all operational.
2:38:05
Um so, you know, from a TAM perspective, we are we're seeing a massive inflection uh in in terms of construction.
2:38:10
This year alone um $80 billion of data centers were uh started.
2:38:15
Uh so, $80 million new data center starts just happened in in in the last 12 months.
2:38:21
So, we're just seeing a massive wave and it's kind of ironic for us.
2:38:24
We we built Shepherd on this thesis that AI was uh really ripe to productize this service of underwriting and doing underwriting differently and then ironically a lot of these AI companies became our customers um because this industry is is is really, you know, the the driving force of construction right now.
2:38:42
Okay, so who are all the different parties that you guys are helping insure?
2:38:46
It's it's AI company, Neo Labs, actual >> construction firms. Who who who calls you?
2:38:55
Yeah, it's it's a mix of of all the above.
2:38:57
So, everything from hyperscalers to the labs companies to, you know, contractors that are building obviously these these assets.
2:39:05
Um our portfolio is actually more diverse than just AI specific uh companies, but so you know our typical business is a large scale developer of assets that are either energy assets or health care assets, hospitals, things of you know all sorts of different I say large commercial physical assets and then we ensure the contractors as well.
2:39:26
So a big portion of what we do is is identifying the best contractors or using the best technologies out in the field and then rewarding them with innovative pricing.
2:39:34
Yeah, so what what what are what are they ensuring right?
2:39:39
Is it is it weather inclement weather fire damage there's so many different what can you what can you ensure versus like what is just too what what could you ensure but it's just too hard to price you have to go you know too high to make it you know feasible.
2:39:52
There's there's a lot of different hazards obviously like related to the construction cycle.
2:39:57
So there's obviously like the the just the the cost of the building during the construction phase.
2:40:04
So the property risk that is associated with again a large data center campus might be 20 billion dollars of both construction material as well as well as equipment that's being installed.
2:40:15
So there's a an enormous property component and just ensuring the actual property during the construction phase is a huge strain on the insurance ecosystem.
2:40:24
Then there's a liability perspective.
2:40:26
So you know the the builders that are are creating these assets are they are on the hook for mistakes for defects for potential you know injuries to people or buildings and other assets that are around these job sites.
2:40:43
So depending on sort of like the the product offering you're obviously focused on a on a specific hazard.
2:40:48
We really focus on like the driving hazard.
2:40:53
So casualty is our our key our our key product offering and again that's going to be like property damage or bodily injury to people in and around the building of these large scale assets.
2:41:04
But then we also do property.
2:41:04
So we also do the the the materials and the cost of construction while it's being built.
2:41:11
Uh What what are what are your relationships like on the actual insurance side?
2:41:15
Who who are you who are you actually who's who's putting up all of the capital and taking on the risk?
2:41:23
Yeah, so we we partner with large scale insurance balance sheets almost similar to like a neo bank that's going to have you know sort of a traditional bank behind it you know providing all the financial stability and and and rating and and the necessary requirements to fulfill whatever the the contractual risk that is there between a lender and a and a and a builder.
2:41:44
So we kind of we stand up under what's called an MGA model which is that Shepherd really owns all of the upfront marketing sales underwriting policy servicing everything from a submission coming in the door the underwriting that happens the making the decision making around what risks we want to we want to ensure and then ultimately servicing those accounts once they become policy holders underneath our brand.
2:42:06
Uh take us through the raise.
2:42:09
We got a $42 million round.
2:42:17
And and yeah what what is special about this like the actual investors on this round?
2:42:22
Yeah, so so this is our series B it was led by one of the largest insurance companies in the world.
2:42:28
So Intact Private Capital led led the round that's the venture arm of Intact Insurance.
2:42:34
Intact is a $30 million global insurer.
2:42:38
I I I would say what's special about it is the signal.
2:42:39
You know I think a lot of the things that we're trying to do differently specific to the automation of underwriting making underwriting significantly faster and more efficient.
2:42:51
A large insurer large commercial insurer like Intact pairing with us and partnering on this I think signals that they see that the world of underwriting is is is about to change dramatically just like other large industries,
2:43:01
whether it's legal or um accounting or all these other areas where we've seen a huge impact from AI and um brokerage and and in and underwriting are kind of um you know, right in that that wheelhouse of of where services businesses can change dramatically. So, um Intact had
2:43:15
So, um Intact had partnered with us uh at the A.
2:43:18
They were a capacity provider for us, so they are one of those balance sheets that that sits behind us.
2:43:24
They see what we've been doing, they see the innovation that we're bringing the industry, and so they um they actually preempted the round and and and double down into the into the B.
2:43:33
Um Last question for me, how how human is the process of underwriting?
2:43:35
Because I feel like you could probably build a model, square footage, what are the assets, where is it?
2:43:41
You know, you probably have underwriting models, but there's probably still so like who are you hiring?
2:43:47
How do How would How do How will the How will the human capital side of the business scale? Yeah, totally.
2:43:52
So, I I you know, commercial insurance uh you know, differently from personal lines is is definitely more complex, it's more more data heavy, more intensive, and there's a lot more sort of decision nuance and decision-making that happens at the underwriter level.
2:44:06
Um so, we actually we equate what we're doing on the underwriting side to a little bit of of a similar view of the self-driving uh kind of autonomous vehicles uh type of road map.
2:44:15
So, we've mapped our own level one through level five.
2:44:18
Uh and the idea is like today most commercial insurance companies have underwriters with two hands on the wheel, and they're you know, literally doing every single thing.
2:44:26
Um what we're trying to do is get to a place where the underwriter at Shepherd is uh much more of an orchestrator.
2:44:32
Uh they are managing a portfolio of 200 accounts rather than just 20 or 15 on a monthly basis.
2:44:36
And so, um underwriters do play a significant role.
2:44:41
We hire underwriters who think of themselves as as entrepreneurs uh who want to build a portfolio, they want to orchestrate and manage that portfolio.
2:44:48
Uh what they don't want to do is data entry and and and some of the I'd say like process heavy and and high friction elements of traditional insurance underwriting today.
2:45:00
Uh, well, thank you so much for coming on and breaking it down for us.
2:45:03
Congratulations on the round and good luck >> Thank you guys. Great stuff. Ripping. Great stuff. Congrats. Congrats. See you guys. Talk soon.
2:45:09
Our next guest is Gaurav Mishra from Mirage, formerly Captions app.
2:45:13
I found out about the company through Evan Randall who did the previous round.
2:45:17
We'll bring in Gaurav to TV Ben Ultra Down.
2:45:20
Gaurav, how are you doing? What's happening? Good. Thanks for having me. Welcome. Thank you.
2:45:26
Yeah, it's been a small almost a year.
2:45:28
Crazy that you're joining us.
2:45:29
Yeah, you were very how you must have been in the first how many guests?
2:45:34
I don't a huge user of this app. I love this app.
2:45:36
I've I've used it for every meme that I send you.
2:45:37
Every time there's a video with captions over it, I'm I'm always downloading on my phone, screen recording, putting it in captions, and then I'll even use it to transcribe videos.
2:45:47
>> John John is a magician.
2:45:47
Like he can make he can make basically feature length memes that that usually just get sent to to the team chat. >> Yeah.
2:45:57
Uh, but yeah, for for those who don't know the the the apps but also just where the business is broadly and where you're expanding to.
2:46:05
Sort of give us the lay of the land.
2:46:09
Yes, I mean as you mentioned, you know, we transitioned our name so we kind of went from Captions to Mirage, but you know, the app still remains to be Captions.
2:46:15
It's the company that we renamed basically.
2:46:16
And part of that is like we're building out a product suite so you know, it makes sense to sort of have a different company name for that.
2:46:24
Now, we obviously we raised about $75 million recently.
2:46:27
We announced that which was exciting. Thank you. Love that.
2:46:39
And so So, you know, with that funding, a A of what we're going to do is expansion, you know, market expansion.
2:46:47
So, you know, we are very excited about the magic moment the product already has.
2:46:51
I mean, you talked about it a little bit, right?
2:46:53
And when we can bring the product in front of a new customer, they're very likely to convert, very likely to pay, and very likely to retain, right?
2:46:59
And that's kind of what our investors saw.
2:47:01
That's kind of why this new investment came in.
2:47:03
Now, we want to bring this to as many people as possible around the world as quickly as possible.
2:47:08
You know, historically, we've been sort of marketing in like five to seven countries.
2:47:11
That's kind of where we've been, US-centric, like a little bit Europe and stuff.
2:47:14
But, now we want to go really broad, you know, especially Asia is a big focus region.
2:47:20
So, that's kind of the plan of where we're going.
2:47:21
How do you think about uh just feature requests and all like the the the scope of what you can do with video plus AI?
2:47:29
I don't want to narrow you down to mobile, but like I think you've executed very well on mobile.
2:47:36
Uh but uh there's so many different features, and a lot of them get broken up into different models, different APIs.
2:47:43
I feel like there's so much opportunity to bring all that together.
2:47:47
At the same time, you're going up against Meta and edits and CapCut and ByteDance.
2:47:52
Like, there are some big players, but there's also a lot of opportunity.
2:47:55
So, how do you see the landscape of things that you can do?
2:48:00
I'll scroll Reels all the time and see some crazy edit and be like, "Oh, I know that they jumped to Blender for that."
2:48:06
Or they used a particular AI model for that.
2:48:08
Or they're in After Effects for that.
2:48:09
And I and I want to recreate it, but I don't want to necessarily sit down for 5 hours and remember how to use Blender.
2:48:17
I mean, it's you actually hit the nail on the head because this is exactly kind of what we're the way we're thinking about how our product roadmap goes, right?
2:48:24
Like, I think if you look at the AI video space, there's tons of companies, there's a lot of activity happening right now, right?
2:48:28
But, our approach is a bit different than everybody else.
2:48:32
Like, we're not only about generating video, even though that's a big component of what we do, right?
2:48:37
And we use all kinds of models out there.
2:48:38
We have our own models as well, right, for audio and video generation.
2:48:41
But, it's really about the assembly of the video into something that actually makes sense, right?
2:48:46
Something that a narrative that that, you know, ultimately can work for you, whether you're a small business, you're you're selling something, whatever it is.
2:48:52
You can tell your story, sell your product, market your yourself or your or your business using our product because we can assemble the right video for you.
2:49:01
Now, here's the interesting part.
2:49:01
What we've noticed is that a lot of our customers, especially the ones that are retaining for long periods of time, it's not just about fully generated video.
2:49:10
Like, that's like It's the thing, if you're making Super Bowl commercial short, like go and generate the entire thing, like it's going to look awesome, right?
2:49:15
But, there's actually a much, much larger market for like a mix of content.
2:49:19
Like, think about like our average customer, like they're like a plumber, right?
2:49:21
Or maybe an electrician or like a nail salon, right? >> Yeah.
2:49:25
They want to actually show like their actual nail salon, right?
2:49:27
What does it actually look like as opposed to a generated nail salon of some sort, right?
2:49:31
They want to merge that with some generated footage, some cool shots, like maybe, you know, a founder video like talking, you know, perfectly about whatever whatever they want to do and put it all together into something that they can give to customers, market on the their website, wherever they're putting it out there, social media, right?
2:49:47
So, it's really about the connection of generated and non-generated together, and then, you know, putting the narrative together.
2:49:54
That's the intelligence layer, right?
2:49:55
So, like, that's really our focus.
2:49:55
How do you think about uh entry points into video creativity?
2:50:01
There's something that can be sort of intimidating about an empty text box.
2:50:06
At the same time, it is like the universal interface.
2:50:08
It's the most broad possible UI.
2:50:14
Uh how when do you want to use it to start with an existing video or an image versus start with a blank text box? Yeah.
2:50:21
So, I actually So, even today, over 50% of our users start with some sort of media, an image, a video, you know, a set of images, a set of videos, audio, music, all kinds of things, right?
2:50:34
So, over 50% of people start with media, which actually is like very different than most other like a lot of like pure video generators, people start with text.
2:50:43
They start with a prompt. And ours is flipped.
2:50:45
It's like media first, prompt is attached to it, right?
2:50:47
Now, I think the way we think that's going to evolve for us is that you know, it's going to go more and more media first.
2:50:56
That's That's the crazy part, right?
2:50:57
Like I think people expect it to go more prompt first, but I think our angle is a little bit more media first using real footage.
2:51:04
You know, I actually think that, you know, there's another extreme here.
2:51:08
Think about like, let's say you want to make a documentary, right?
2:51:09
You probably want like zero generated footage in a documentary, right?
2:51:13
Like it's like all documented reality, right?
2:51:17
>> Yeah, I've been I've been seeing that I I've been lately uh like I'll I'll try to pull up a video on YouTube with uh with with my son of like uh a cheetah.
2:51:26
But I have to find videos that are older than like 4 years because I don't want a bunch of AI cheetahs.
2:51:32
I want I want I want the real thing.
2:51:36
I'm trying to see like documentary footage.
2:51:37
Uh so you got to find like the vintage National Geographic stuff. Uh Wow. Yeah.
2:51:41
Soon that's going to be lost.
2:51:44
We might never find it again.
2:51:46
>> No, we'll always have the archives.
2:51:48
We'll be going deep into the vintage. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. It's real.
2:51:53
Uh what do you What are the plans to scale the business over the next year or two with the new fundraising?
2:52:00
Yeah, I mean, so a lot of it's going to be market expansion, right? We talked about that.
2:52:02
I think secondarily it's use case expansion, right?
2:52:04
So like you talked about like we started off with something really simple, adding captions to your video.
2:52:09
Like we that was the first thing we ever did, right?
2:52:11
Straightforward, but quite useful, right?
2:52:13
And then from there you realize that it's about it's really about like automatically editing your video, right?
2:52:19
Like automatically adding edits, automatically doing stuff that people do manually normally, right?
2:52:22
And that's kind of how we built our road map, right?
2:52:25
So the future for us is expanding use cases on what can we automatically edit, right?
2:52:29
Today it might be, okay, it's talking head videos, it's real estate videos, it's things like that, right?
2:52:34
Tomorrow it could be product launch videos, right?
2:52:38
Tomorrow could be like all kinds of other things that we don't do today maybe perfectly, right?
2:52:40
So, that's kind of where things are going.
2:52:42
And with that comes like new sets of users, you know, expanded use cases obviously is like expanding the town for product, right?
2:52:48
So, that's kind of where we're going both on, you know, product expansion, geo expansion, you know, that's really the focus.
2:52:57
Well, thank you so much for coming on and breaking it down for us.
2:53:00
Congratulations and we'll talk to you soon.
2:53:02
Great to have you back on.
2:53:02
Let's not let it be a a year. Always a great time. Yes.
2:53:05
And by the way, congrats to you guys. Cuz yeah. Have a great weekend. Yeah, great to see you. Talk to you soon. Goodbye. All right.
2:53:11
And without further ado, we have our last guest of the show, Philip from Star Cloud putting more and more data centers in space.
2:53:21
We're very excited to talk to Philip.
2:53:23
He is, I believe, in the waiting room.
2:53:25
We'll bring him in to the TV chemical chamber when he's ready.
2:53:28
Uh, Google released a feature called Inbox Zero.
2:53:30
They say Inbox Zero is a thing of the past, introducing AI Inbox.
2:53:33
Cut through your email clutter with smart prioritization and daily personalized briefings.
2:53:37
Uh, Isaac says brands sending five emails a day to drive higher and higher ROI won't work anymore. RIP email. Yeah.
2:53:44
It'll be interesting to see how this channel does.
2:53:49
>> that sent us a bunch of uh a bunch of emails that he's been getting and they look like spam recruiter emails, but they all come from newly set up Gmail accounts and they're not quite human-sounding, so we can clock them, but basically he's getting like an ever-increasing amount of poaching emails.
2:54:11
Uh, and uh you know, the usually like you'll need another filter on the other side.
2:54:16
Gmail >> Recruiters are going to have to start going standing outside offices and just waiting for people to leave. >> Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
2:54:23
Uh, well, we have uh I believe we have Philip from Star Cloud in the waiting room.
2:54:30
We got some vertical video. We'll make it work.
2:54:31
We are going to have a quick chat with Philip and space. How you doing? What's going on? Thanks.
2:54:37
>> Hey guys, apologies for the vertical video. We're all good. It's great.
2:54:38
We got back-to-back sounds.
2:54:40
Okay, so I can't turn this off.
2:54:44
>> Second time on the show.
2:54:44
Kick us off with the fundraising. Tell us what happened.
2:54:49
Yeah, so we just raised $170 million at a $1. 1 billion valuation.
2:54:57
That is >> Thank you so much. a massive round.
2:54:58
So The video is vertical because the valuation It's going vertical.
2:55:05
But yeah, yeah, oh this is this works great.
2:55:07
So yeah, talk to us about what you'll be building with that new round. Is this hiring?
2:55:16
Are you going to be in the R&D phase?
2:55:18
Do you have manufacturing partners lined up?
2:55:20
Are you going to be buying heavy equipment to make stuff?
2:55:24
What does the next couple of years look like for you?
2:55:27
Yeah, so we're building the third satellite.
2:55:28
That's very similar to it's going to fit on the Starship has dispenser form factor.
2:55:32
So it's this constellation we've just filed with the FCC for 88,000 satellites.
2:55:39
And so what this allows us to do is build a manufacturing line for that.
2:55:43
88,000 satellites by the way would allow us to deploy about 20 gigawatts of compute capacity, which is on the order of 100 billion dollars worth of cap expend. Yeah.
2:55:52
So yeah, we're Rounding up. Too low, too low.
2:55:58
We were swinging a little Yeah. Absolutely wild.
2:56:03
Who like what what kind of partners are are you are you working with?
2:56:07
I can imagine basically every every chip company >> Yeah.
2:56:12
wants to have some exposure to what is an How are you approaching that side? Yeah. Yeah, 100%.
2:56:21
So, we're working with Nvidia on we just announced an a GTC Jensen announced it this space Rubin chip.
2:56:29
So, it's like a slightly mass optimized, slightly radiation tolerant, and then slightly thermally optimized chip which can be used for space inference.
2:56:37
Um we've been working with them on that for a while cuz we've got an enormous amount of data now from the Starlink one satellite which has the first Nvidia H100 on board.
2:56:46
Um and so, we're using all of that telemetry to inform the design choices based on the Rubin chip and also on our second and third satellite.
2:56:51
And are you running workloads, like mini workloads on the on the first satellite?
2:56:57
How What does testing look like? Yeah, exactly.
2:57:01
So, we ran we trained a model.
2:57:03
So, we trained the Andre Capre nano GPT on there.
2:57:07
We did the first hyper out inference.
2:57:10
Um so, we're we're running a version of Gemini called Gemma on this on the spacecraft.
2:57:14
Um and then we're now also doing some more like military kind of useful workloads which is running inference on SAR data.
2:57:20
So, synthetic aperture radar which is basically where companies where satellites collect a 3D image of the world underneath them and then they can use that to detect things like a vessel entering you know, entering your territory or or other things.
2:57:35
Uh how is it How is the discussion going?
2:57:37
How is the research and development going around uh heat dissipation?
2:57:41
That that that felt like the key. Will it work? What are the economics?
2:57:48
Are we Are we expecting to be like on track for some solution?
2:57:50
Do you feel like the solution's in sight on some curve or maybe even already here? How is that going? >> Yeah.
2:57:59
Yeah, and by the way, this is where I want to give you guys credit for shifting the Overton window on this because I think you guys were the first to do a segment where you were like Do you remember the bit where you were like Imagine before they had cameras on spacecraft and people would be like, "Wow, that's so crazy." Oh, yeah.
2:58:15
>> From then from then on people were like, "Okay, maybe yeah, this probably actually is good actually, I think." Yeah.
2:58:19
But but yeah, so so we've been we've been working on this radiator radiator radiator for 2 years now.
2:58:23
It's you know, it's a solved problem in the sense of the physics of it. Okay.
2:58:27
What's what remains to be done is the manufacturing challenge.
2:58:31
So, making this thing cheap and light.
2:58:33
And also small enough to to fit into that what do you call it? Like the Pez dispenser?
2:58:40
Exactly, the Pez dispenser form factor. Okay.
2:58:42
We've got that we've got a design with that we've mocked up.
2:58:45
So, we fabricated it and it was going through thermal and vacuum testing now.
2:58:47
It's about 100 times less cost per watt of dissipation than the International Space Station radiator and about 10 times less mass per watt of dissipation than the ISS radiator. Yeah.
2:58:57
And the main reason is we're not doing 3D like additive manufacturing.
2:59:00
We have a a much simpler manufacturing technique. Mhm.
2:59:03
Um which yeah, that's our kind of our core IP. Sure.
2:59:07
And then just I mean, can you give me like a a mental picture of what I'm visualizing because I feel like >> Yeah.
2:59:14
you can't just be a sail that just like the there's no wind.
2:59:16
So, the wind doesn't expand the sail.
2:59:18
Am I thinking about like hinges and little tiny motors to sort of like expand and and unfurl? Yeah, exactly.
2:59:26
So, the deployment mechanism is is what's called a pantograph.
2:59:28
So, it's um it's like this scissor mechanism that if if you've ever seen like when you when you walk past the building site, you sometimes see those like um platforms that will raise up and down. Yeah.
2:59:40
They're they're lifted by this pantograph scissor mechanism that goes like this.
2:59:43
It's exactly the same deployment mechanism which by the way, all Starlink solar is deployed using a pantograph. Yeah.
2:59:48
So, what we've done is we've just added you might have say 20 segment 20 sections of solar panel that unfold in the Z fold.
2:59:57
And then we've just added five segments of radiator at the beginning which also unfold in the Z fold and then they're connected with tubing.
3:00:02
And then we're pumping coolant past the chips directly and then out to this Z fold five segment radiator. Oh, interesting.
3:00:08
Uh you're at one GPU in space.
3:00:11
You filed for >> Five GPUs. Oh, you're five. Okay. I had you short.
3:00:17
So, you have five, but you're going to 88,000 or something like that.
3:00:21
What will the curve look like?
3:00:21
Are you trying to do 50 and then 500 and then 5,000 and then 50,000?
3:00:27
Are we going by orders of magnitude or is it like a lot of work and then they all start flying up really fast?
3:00:35
So, we are very heavily dependent on Starship before we will be flying frequently.
3:00:41
So, we're expecting Starship to deploy the first Starlink V3 payloads either at the end of this year or early next year.
3:00:46
And then from there, we're expecting 18 to 24 months before the first commercial payloads, so customers like us flying.
3:00:52
So, we're looking at the 2028 before we launch on Starship.
3:00:54
But, our own deployment schedule is later this year.
3:00:57
We'll be launching Starship 2 and that will be a 10 kW spacecraft, about 100 times the power generation of the first one we flew.
3:01:02
And that has this this the first one to have this deployable radiator.
3:01:05
It will be by far the largest commercial radiator in space.
3:01:07
And then next year, we launch a very similar version of that.
3:01:10
And then we launch on Starship this dispenser.
3:01:13
And actually, we may even launch on Falcon 9 the first one just to test it.
3:01:18
Which will be about 200 kW, so 20 times again the Starship 2.
3:01:23
And then we can launch 50 of those per Starship.
3:01:26
So, then you're talking about 10 MW of compute per Starship launch.
3:01:30
And you know, once the once Starship is flying frequently, we're expecting to be launching hundreds of times per month.
3:01:35
So, that's 100 Starship launches about a gigawatt of new capacity.
3:01:37
So, we're we're doing on the order of tens of gigawatts of new capacity per year being deployed at that point.
3:01:44
Do Do you have any insight into how like space compute might in the short term be better for a particular AI workload?
3:01:53
Like it's going to be better at diffusion or worse at diffusion or better, you know, we've seen some bifurcation just in the data center around ASICs, Groq chips, Cerebras, etc.
3:02:04
Is there Is there a world where we're like, oh, there's this one small use case that's going to really really work well?
3:02:10
And then maybe over time it'll do everything, but in the short term, we're confident about this.
3:02:15
Um, so at a high level, it's not going to be any training workload. Okay.
3:02:20
>> And at a low level, it won't be anything that requires sub-50 millisecond latency.
3:02:24
So there'll be a sweet spot in the middle, which in my mind is basically all back office business processing tasks and all code generation tasks.
3:02:31
You know, you could even do voice agents for customer service or um, yeah, anything like that.
3:02:36
Video generation as well. Yeah.
3:02:37
But it won't be things that require extremely low latency or things that require very highly internally networked constel- uh, cluster.
3:02:45
Like like a training workload you could not do.
3:02:47
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
3:02:49
Uh, well, thank you so much.
3:02:50
Congratulations on the round.
3:02:50
I'm very excited >> Yeah, massive.
3:02:53
Yeah, and you you uh, you seem like uh, you've you've even evolved yourself since the last time you're on the show.
3:02:59
I'm sure I'm sure you've just you and the whole team have been uh, pushing it to the absolute limit, but um, >> Yeah, it's it's it's fantastic to see someone like call their shot and then it becomes just one domino falls after another and then it's being mentioned at GTC and Elon's talking about it and it becomes uh, you know, much more like science fiction fully moves towards like science fact, which is very exciting. So thank you.
3:03:23
>> No, I appreciate that. No, thank you.
3:03:25
Have a great rest of your day.
3:03:25
Have a great weekend and we'll talk to you soon.
3:03:28
Hopefully see you >> Congrats. Congrats on OpenAI. It's amazing. Thank you. We'll talk to you soon. Thank you. >> one. Goodbye.
3:03:33
Uh, I texted my dad the news.
3:03:38
He says, "Congratulations. That's so exciting.
3:03:42
Thanks for letting me know. Talk to you soon. Have a great day." So thank you. Thank you, Dad. Oh, it's amazing.
3:03:50
Well, if you've texted me or you've called me in the last 3 hours, there's a good chance that I might respond to you in the next couple hours because we We winding down the show.
3:04:00
Please leave us five stars on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
3:04:02
Subscribe to our newsletter tbvn. com. Everything is the same.
3:04:07
We will see you on Monday 11:00 a. m. Pacific. >> Five shows, 15 hours.
3:04:11
Let's be honest, it'll probably be more like 17 or 18 or 19. We'll see.
3:04:20
>> The world is our oyster.
3:04:20
And thank you for being with us along the journey.
3:04:22
We appreciate >> one more gong hit, John. >> gong hit.
3:04:26
And we will say It's been an honor. A gong hit. Flashback. Gong flashback. Goodbye, everyone. See you soon. We'll see you tomorrow.