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>> Today is Wednesday, July 29th, 2026.
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4:48
The US government has banned Chinese humanoid robots.
4:51
The US is banning new imports of foreignade humanoid robots. Quadriped robots. Robot dogs. You might know them. Bye.
4:57
Uh, very controversial based on We got to get General Catalyst to weigh in on this because aren't they anti-root dog?
5:06
Wasn't that the whole thing of the video?
5:07
Maybe I'm misremembering. That's right.
5:09
So, they must be celebrating.
5:10
>> Some platform VCs are pro. >> Yes. >> Robot dogs.
5:14
>> I Everyone should be pro- robot dog.
5:16
Anyway, uh it's there's nothing wrong with a robot dog unless it's a geopolitical discussion and then there's another another layer to the debate.
5:22
Uh so the Federal Communication Commission's FCC today uh announced some restrictions uh and these apply to new versions of those products.
5:33
FCC chair Brendan Carr said the move is intended to quote secure America's critical supply chains.
5:40
China, meanwhile, has condemned the decision as protectionism.
5:46
Uh, is that because they're protecting the like the small children from getting smacked in the face by the humanoid robots? >> It is protecting.
5:54
>> I know that video >> I think that you're referring to. >> Yeah. Brutal.
5:59
>> It's absolutely brutal.
5:59
We should try to pull it up.
6:00
Try to find the humanoid uh kicking a child, please.
6:06
>> Sounds wrong, but I just want to get at the truth. >> Yes.
6:09
>> I just want the truth.
6:09
The move comes as Chinese companies have established a commanding lead in humanoid robot robotics.
6:15
Of the roughly 15,000 humanoid robots shipped worldwide in 2025, China's Unitry and uh Agibbot, AGIbot, I'm not sure how you pronounce that. Each delivered.
6:28
>> Okay, we have the video of the robot kicking the child. >> Brutal.
6:31
There's another one where he's spinning around and gives him sort of like a spinning back fist.
6:34
But that is a crazy and >> that is >> seeing that you're kind of like yeah I I'm up for some protection negligence >> if it's going to if it's going to protect children I think it's maybe in the best interest.
6:47
No, that's not why this is happening. Of course.
6:48
So uh 5,000 units were delivered from uh from uh each unitry and adubot.
6:55
Uh by comparison, US companies including Tesla and Figure shipped only a few hundred robots each if that.
7:02
China is also estimated to control about 85% of the global humanoid robotics market and also a ton of the deep supply chain.
7:10
Obviously, according to this the Associated Press, the restrictions are expected to add new tension to USChina relations ahead of a planned September meeting between Chinese President Cinping and US President Donald Trump.
7:23
Uh the FCC argues the measures are necessary to reduce potential risks po posed by connected foreignade devices that could become part of critical American infrastructure.
7:32
What's interesting here is that we're seeing a ban on a Chinese technology that is so nent that you don't have a coalition of companies that are saying whoa whoa whoa I've deployed my business is built on top of unit.
7:48
I know there's geopolitical considerations, but I can't make the cars that I make without them.
7:54
I can't run my business without them.
7:56
And so, this is going to hurt me.
7:59
No one's really stepping up in the same way that they are with Chinese LLMs, which a lot of companies are like, "No, I'm actually going to cut my inference cost by 80% if I can."
8:09
>> And you have all of the the various cloud businesses that are already making money >> making money from them. Exactly. >> Yeah.
8:16
I'm I'm saw a bunch of people that were sort of >> saying that they didn't like this, that there was, you know, protectionists and >> and uh that there must have been some American humanoid or robotics companies that were pushing lobbying for this in DC.
8:32
Maybe there were, but I personally don't want a hundred million humanoid robots in this country running around that are not made by a US company >> or at least a western ally. >> Yeah.
8:50
where because there's been the DJI ban, there's been various surveillance uh tools that are banned, but there's still so many different uh pieces of technology from that come from all over the world.
9:02
Um I wonder where people would like to draw the line generally on technology like is it okay if the Wi-Fi router is made international?
9:12
>> We drew the line on Huawei.
9:12
Yeah, on Huawei on the 5G tower specifically, but most you can still get a router that you know a Wi-Fi router for your house that comes from China.
9:21
Um, and you have to imagine that many of the actuators, the motors, the batteries, cat, catl, cattle, that company ships batteries for all sorts of stuff.
9:30
The the the Google Whimo approach I think is probably the correct like like finding the line.
9:34
So Whimo is sourcing like almost all the parts for the new Whimos from China, but they are building them I believe in the United States and all of the software is from Google or Alphabet or Whimo.
9:46
And so you have to imagine that they're able to tear all these pieces down and sort of maintain their own cyber security posture, which is really what this is all about.
9:56
Um, but uh it is interesting.
10:00
Do you think this actually accelerates the American humanoid market?
10:06
Does this lead to up rounds from 1x and figure because the playing field is more open?
10:10
Does Tesla meaningfully pull forward their their road map?
10:15
>> I was Yeah, >> I mean these companies have already raised a lot of money.
10:18
Elon's putting billions into it. >> Yeah.
10:22
>> Figures managed to raise billions.
10:22
Uh I think that the first thing that we need is >> uh profitable use cases for humanoids.
10:32
Uh and so I think there's a lot of work that the industry needs to do to make these >> uh to make these products like genuinely valuable in the home, in workplaces, in factory settings, all these things.
10:45
>> Uh I think that's a bigger problem.
10:45
I think if you uh it does feel inevitable at this point just because there's so much money going into it, so many smart people uh dedicating all their time to it. It feels inevitable.
10:56
Maybe it speeds it up a little bit. Mhm.
11:00
>> Uh I would it just felt like we were going to end up in a situation where they would just continue to dump humanoids onto our you know you could buy you probably still can buy robot on Walmart.
11:13
>> I was asking Tyler about this because you used to be able to buy a unit G1 I believe one of the robots on Walmart which was sort of crazy and the price was accessible.
11:22
I mean it was still tens of thousands of dollars but it was something that a research lab could buy pretty easily.
11:26
Um I wonder if there will be other ways for companies to to get access to uh this test these products at least for benchmarking because they will be competing internationally like even in a world where uh you know Tesla gets to the frontier of humanoid robots with Optimus and then they're going up against um an a uh a unit. Yeah.
11:51
>> For uh a deployment in Germany like BYD, right?
11:55
BYD and Tesla compete internationally even though Tesla's Teslas can still be sold in China but not vice versa.
12:01
Um but uh internationally there needs to be a lot of like what are the capabilities so you can actually sell against your competitor. Yeah.
12:08
>> Uh even if you're >> so far everything Uni Tree I'm seeing on Walmart is out of stock.
12:13
>> So I don't know if they just marked it out of [clears throat] stock when this went live or they had just sold out.
12:18
>> It would probably spike if they hit cars and bids or bring a trailer.
12:21
I think you throw a unitry G1 last edition final edition banned camp.
12:27
>> Who's making bots and bids? >> Bots and bids.
12:29
[laughter] That might be it.
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12:45
>> I was listening to to Elon Musk on uh The Economist.
12:48
He sat down with the economist for a long form interview.
12:52
There were there was a clip that went sort of viral for some some sharp jabs back and forth about the media and and how the public perceives the media.
12:59
But the much more interesting substance was about his vision.
13:04
>> You're describing the crash out.
13:06
>> Yes, it was it was described as a crash out.
13:08
But that seemed like a very small section of what was actually interesting about the more than an hour they talked.
13:15
uh one was um I mean he talks about humanoid robots and uh he paints a very clear vision for the Optimus program and it made me really hope that there's a lot of focus there because that feels like an industry where like like he obviously has a very strong philosophy around XAI and Grock and you saw it in the SpaceX X S1 where the market for enterprise software was like 22 trillion or something like that.
13:44
And so there is some value there.
13:47
It might make sense from a business perspective, but it was less inspiring than rockets, less inspiring than self-driving electric cars because you as you go back, you think about SpaceX and you think if he hadn't worked on that, probably wouldn't have a rocket company in America.
14:04
And same thing with the electric cars.
14:06
Like, yeah, GM had the EV1.
14:08
There were a couple other companies that were sort of like testing things, but we'd probably be 10 years behind if he hadn't sort of like sheer force of willed that into existence.
14:19
And it feels the same for humanoid robots where if he can really go and push that extremely hard and marshall all the capital and do all the difficult things to build the supply chain, make it happen, make it work, you you can get to a place where there is a national champion in America.
14:35
But if if Grock stopped training and there were no more XAI LLMs, like there would still be a massive competition between OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, Google, like there's plenty of really well-funded hyperscalers and leading labs that are going to provide that service of like ask a question and get an answer or fire off a prompt and get some code back.
14:58
um that that that the the the American humanoid robotics industry feels much more fragile in the sense that if you don't have this massive hammer of capital and will coming to bear, you could just wind up with it never happening, which I worry about. >> Yeah.
15:17
And America needs to figure out how to make billions of robots >> itself.
15:22
I do wonder how this is going to play into all the other discussions that are going to happen at that US visit by Chinese leader Xin Ping.
15:31
He's scheduled to meet with US President Donald Trump in September.
15:34
Um I'm I'm interested to see are they going to be this?
15:40
>> Can you see if we can possibly get him on the show? [laughter] >> Thank you.
15:44
Uh, I wonder I wonder if uh uh uh if he >> What if X was just like, "Yeah, I'm meeting with the president, but I'm also going on a 50 podcast tour while I'm here."
15:57
>> Get him on Yeah, there's a bunch of good shows he could he could do.
15:59
Uh, he should do >> Modern Wisdom.
16:03
I want to understand his mindset. >> Would be great. I'd love him.
16:05
I'd love to see him on Hot Ones. >> Joe Rogan, of course.
16:08
I mean, he's a no-brainer.
16:11
>> That should be kind of the last show.
16:13
But Neelk would be like the obvious choice.
16:15
Yeah, >> a lot of world leaders they have a history of >> world leaders have been on there. That's true.
16:20
>> Controversial world leaders. >> That's true. Why not separ?
16:24
Uh let me tell you about console.
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Console builds AI agents that automate 70% of IT, HR, and finance support, giving employees instant resolution for access requests and password resets.
16:30
Uh let's go to some of the uh reactions.
16:33
Uh today we're launching TA's humanoid cleaning service in San Francisco at $30 per hour.
16:41
Access is initially invite only as we scale operations.
16:43
So Alexander Ko is talking about uh his company Tao Robotics.
16:48
He's the founder and CEO Zfellow, emergent ventures fellow. Love that.
16:52
Um >> fellow maxing [laughter] >> this fellow.
16:58
>> And Sean Perry from My First Million says, "Why did putting clothes on the robot make me like it 15 5x more?"
17:02
Um yeah, just way looks way more human if you don't see the metal.
17:08
Uh that makes a lot of sense.
17:11
But uh are the clothes particularly for just the the vibes of deploying this product into someone's home and it just makes people feel like oh that was a good experience.
17:20
It does look like it has a Wi-Fi router on its head.
17:23
What what are all those bars coming off the top?
17:25
That's a little disturbing.
17:28
It looks like Edward Scissor Hands or something. >> Interesting.
17:30
So they are doing teleop.
17:31
He says each humanoid is jointly controlled by a human operator and AI.
17:36
uh interesting to come out and charge $30 per hour.
17:38
That feels about what you'd pay for a a human.
17:42
Um and so it can either do human level task. >> Yeah.
17:51
>> Uh and you know, clearly they I I would have expected them to come in and say it's like, you know, $5 an hour or something like that, right?
18:00
>> Probably not unlimited venture funding.
18:02
They got uh and it's probably better to test the market with something that's actually >> Yeah.
18:07
Something on the higher end. >> Yeah.
18:08
To see if people will pay.
18:08
Uh anyway, um >> you can scroll down.
18:11
You can see it in action.
18:14
>> It does look so funny with clothes on >> cuz it kind of looks like it walks like a toddler.
18:19
Yeah, >> but it's like full size. >> Yeah.
18:22
Well, yeah, it does look very funny.
18:26
[laughter] >> I like this.
18:28
>> All right, we got one more video. It's doing some dishes. Okay.
18:34
It gets the soap onto itself.
18:35
>> It's washing its own hands.
18:38
>> Why does it need to do that? Does it get dirty?
18:40
I guess I guess if it gets dirty, it's got to wash its hands. That's pretty cool.
18:44
>> You don't want a robot with dirty hands.
18:46
>> The purple eyes do also do make it look more friendly as opposed to those.
18:48
Dude, that that is way creepier.
18:51
That looks like uh Yeah, that's uh that's full Terminator mode.
18:57
Uh anyway, Dean Ball is going back and forth with Will Manitis.
19:01
Uh Dean says, "Do we think the Silicon Valley leaders who were so up in arms about using Chinese LLMs last week will be similarly outraged about the US government's decision to ban import of all advanced robotics from all foreign countries?
19:15
Is Manitis going to write an essay about how the US robot companies need to be nationalized in exchange for this policy favor?"
19:23
Will says, "You're welcome to tag me if you want a take." What's your take? He does ask him for it.
19:29
And Will says, "Dean seems to not understand that the FCC is issuing a published rule under statutory authority with a waiver process and judicial review is different than a thinly veiled suggestion that regulators carry out an extraleal whisper campaign to protect the interests of his employer.
19:43
The robotics companies need not be nationalized until they also ask for public infrastructure preeemption, federal backs stop of their debt, and a swip swept market just so [snorts] they can call themselves national institutions.
19:56
when they do, send them my essay.
19:57
And Dean Ball says, "So wait, if the US straight up banned Chinese LMS using explicit statutory authorities, eg supply chain risk, that wouldn't necessitate lab nationalization, but doing it through soft law would what uh your instance uh that my analytic prediction was a thinly veiled suggestion continues to be bad faith."
20:15
I do wonder uh I do wonder if we'll just see more, you know, figure shows up in those secondary demand tables.
20:22
I wonder if this is bullish for that. I don't know.
20:26
I I OneX just seems to be on a good path.
20:28
Sunday Robotics just seems to be on a good path.
20:31
We've talked to a lot of other companies where the the regulatory and competitive landscape has always it hasn't seemed like it's a driver of financings, right?
20:39
It's not like, oh, you're waiting for approval or you're waiting for some some rule to break.
20:45
It's like, yeah, at some point in the future, America's going to want an indigenous like, you know, robotic supply chain.
20:51
Yeah, the compelling teams have raised anywhere from hund00 million to billions of dollars >> and now they need to effectively deploy that and get >> commercial use cases starting to ramp and then I expect them to be able to raise an order of magnitude more capital each, right?
21:08
So, uh I don't again I I don't think capital is really a constraint here.
21:12
Um but I think they've raised their sort of like they've raised their like vibe rounds, let's say. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
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21:30
Uh Mark Zuckerberg is in the Wall Street Journal.
21:34
Uh Paywald, you got to pay to read what Mark has to say, but he penned an op-ed and he says the US should should accelerate AI development, not restrict it.
21:45
He says the the AI future is for everyone.
21:47
There there's some interesting quotes in here.
21:49
He's taken shots he's taken shots at doom, fear-based marketing.
21:52
Uh he says, "It is surprising that the discourse from many of those who are developing art artificial intelligence is so filled with doom.
22:03
I don't understand why anyone who believes that AI will eliminate most jobs and much of humanity's relevance would rush to build that future.
22:11
The only the notion that AI is so dangerous that only that the only safe path is an extreme con concentration of power seems dangerous historically hoping that an absolute power will benevolently provide for humanity if sufficiently enlightened.
22:29
>> So he talking about machines of love and grace >> I think so something like that uh hasn't led to safer positive outcomes.
22:34
Humanity has witnessed many transformative advances.
22:38
Each time there is fear that people will be left behind.
22:40
But each time humanity has come out with more people sharing greater prosperity, health and freedom.
22:47
We believe this will be true with AI as well.
22:49
And the abundance of the future can be shared by everyone. He's abundance build.
22:54
Um and so I I think it's good to sort of reset, you know, where he is.
23:00
He's been he's been he's talked about AI a bunch, but it's never been like right on the cusp.
23:07
but he's just like throwing his hat firmly in this camp of, you know, he's he's he's obviously playing an AI, but has a particularly positive vision.
23:14
Um, and he's sort of throwing down the gauntlet.
23:18
If you think if you think AI is so bad, then stop working and let me let me work on it. >> Let me cook. >> I don't know.
23:25
Um, but uh not too much uh like chatter around this.
23:29
Um, it did stand in in opposition.
23:32
you know, he's saying you the United States should accelerate AI development.
23:36
At the same time, there's this open letter from a bunch of lab employees saying like, hey, maybe we should do a mutual pause.
23:40
Maybe we should all slow down.
23:42
And uh I I think even some meta researchers signed that as well.
23:47
But there's like a wide group from OpenAI, Anthropic, a bunch of other firms, Google, uh that all signed.
23:55
Uh John Palmer of course uh ever [laughter] the TBPN promoter says TBPN must publish an open letter against distillation after their model was distilled by every competitor in the industry.
24:06
And I said I'm advocating for a complete and total podcast ban multif federal year multi-year federal approval process for new RSS feeds to get issued.
24:17
Uh uh he says better hurry up and write that open letter before Chinese technology network launches.
24:21
I think a Chinese TBPN would actually be electric.
24:25
I think that'd be amazing. >> Love to watch. >> I would love that.
24:27
Uh, you know, just wildly different.
24:30
They just don't do the going direct thing over there the same way.
24:34
You know, there was like the deepseek investor meeting four hours that was like leaked.
24:37
That's not the same as actually sitting down with someone that has a particular point of view.
24:43
>> Sitting down with a stack of 200 posts. Yeah.
24:48
>> And just chitchatting. >> I don't know. Maybe it does exist.
24:49
Uh when Dwaresh went to China, [laughter] it was such a funny observation.
24:54
He had a bunch of observations, but the one that really stuck out to me was he was like I asked everyone and I and it is clear China does not have a Joe Rogan.
25:04
Like they don't have someone who is like a larger than-l life yapper political commentator just like a guy who talks about everything including politics.
25:12
Uh, and there's a political reasons for that, but it's also maybe cultural and it's just interesting because the demand for that would be electric.
25:19
I I feel like you have to uh you have to imagine that like Joe Rogan clips make them make their way around the world and are sort of like a barometer for where the American psyche is at in a certain in a certain way like a certain group of of Americans um feel that way.
25:33
Um there's this other there's this other post uh that's sort of interesting to see where the anthropic back and forth on the open letter goes.
25:43
letter goes. is obviously anthropic uh clarified their stance on open source not advocating for a complete and total ban but they're very worried about distillation they're very worried about cyber security and they're very worried about authoritarian uses of AI all good
25:58
points uh Chattton over at Benchmark says very publicly claiming there needs to be a crackdown on distillation is puzzling it's a 1 trillion dollar company with incredible resources and the distillation attacks at the scale they describe would seem easy to detect act. I don't know how easy they are to
26:13
I don't know how easy they are to detect.
26:15
I think the people, you know, harness up a whole bunch of different VPNs and stuff, but at the same time, it's like it's an AI company. Put AI on the job.
26:22
Maybe you should be able to detect it.
26:24
So, we'll take his point AI to be able to find >> a needle in the biggest hay stack of all time. [laughter] >> Yeah. Yeah.
26:32
>> The world's largest hay stack. >> The final benchmark.
26:34
Uh yeah m maybe distill bench is uh distillation attack bench is the one that needs to be hill climbed next.
26:42
Uh but he says the only cost would be giving up the associated API revenue.
26:46
So you should have a very aggressive um a very aggressive internal policy around if you're suspected of a distillation attack you're kicked off the API.
26:56
Of course, in a very short amount of time, you can fire off a lot of prompts and get a lot of tokens and you can do that a lot around across across a lot of different accounts.
27:04
Uh what do you think about this?
27:07
>> Yeah, I mean um detecting distillation seems like a very hard problem.
27:09
I think if it was trivial, they would have just done it. Yeah.
27:13
>> And also seems like it's not that big of a like percentage of their revenue.
27:17
>> Like I'd be surprised if if like distillation attacks accounted for a large amount of of like >> Yeah.
27:21
I don't I don't think it I don't think it's meaningful.
27:23
think it's meaningful. Also, so it does it does feel like it's hard um because a lot of it doesn't actually go through the direct API necessarily like it goes through a a company that is vending a service and then someone is prompting that service and so you're further
27:40
obuscating it like there are a number of different sort of rappers that effectively wrap various frontier APIs and uh and if you're getting hit in a bunch of different you're blending all of that together you're looking at open source There's also just people that will like this just happened with uh uh was it Matt Schumer? He he basically
27:58
He he basically uploaded to GitHub a game that he made with Opus 5 along with the prompt.
28:02
And so you you can sort of distill on that like it's only one data point or you know you know a small bag of tokens but there's a lot of people that will share a prompt and the actual output and so you can train on that and there's no way to detect that you found that.
28:17
What's [snorts] interesting here is that the knock-on effect of Chatton's point is that you like if if if Anthropic takes Cetton's advice, you wind up giving out the model less frequently and being more closed about it, which was something three months ago.
28:34
Everyone in the ecosystem was like this is annoying like I'm a small startup.
28:38
I can't get into the Mythos tier.
28:40
I can't get access to Project Glass Wing.
28:43
I'm not an enterprise level uh you know customer but I still so I just don't get Frontier Intelligence and I just get steamrolled by you know Microsoft who has access to it or Apple who has access to it or whatever.
28:56
Um and so this the whole idea of like if I if if a if a amazing intelligence an amazing model is made should it be widely available that's actually at odds with distillation because you have to hunt those bad actors down and you play this whack-a-ole.
29:11
So I don't know it is it is tricky. We'll see. We'll see where it goes. We'll see where it goes.
29:15
Anyway, let me tell you about Public. com.
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29:22
Uh, >> apparently over on Facebook Marketplace, people are adding a sort of gold aura to their listings.
29:31
Would this make more likely to buy John? >> What?
29:36
It does look like a rare drop. >> Yes.
29:39
for only $25 picking up this table with that level of aura certainly tempting.
29:47
>> I It does make me like it more.
29:47
I think it actually works.
29:49
I've seen people do this where they add they'll add like a woman to it as like the saleserson basically with AI and that draws more attention on Facebook Marketplace.
29:57
I don't know if I've ever bought anything on Facebook Marketplace, but maybe uh maybe we should try and have Tyler do like a trade a trade a paperclip into a car challenge.
30:10
Have you ever seen these with Ryan Treyan?
30:11
And there's >> Tyler would be exceptional at that kind of thing.
30:15
>> You think you could you think you could trade up from something on your desk?
30:17
>> I think this would definitely help it. >> Yeah.
30:19
giving it some kind of so basically you have to look for the most unoptimized listings that are undervalued and then tr and then once you buy them give them the ultimate glow up on uh on on with AI images put them back up for a higher price in increase your margin start printing this is a very Garyve hustle for sure um asking a guy okay where where do we want to go next let me tell you >> Joe wise and joining in just one minute.
30:52
Uh if we have time, we should cover this story coming out of eBay. >> Let's do it.
30:56
>> Uh pretty incredible story.
30:56
eBay pays couple $56 million for its role in cockroach harassment campaign.
31:07
>> That is a crazy headline.
31:08
>> The couple received threatening deliveries, including funeral wreaths after criticizing the e-commerce retailer in a blog.
31:13
So, this couple, David and Ena Steiner, were harassed, it sounds like, for years, for criticing criticizing eBay.
31:23
Who knew that criticizing eBay could get you uh in this much trouble?
31:31
Of course, it's eBay that ended up getting in trouble.
31:34
Um, but uh >> so they had an online e-commerce blog called E-commerce Bites, and they criticized eBay uh on that.
31:40
And then back in 2019, so this has been going on for like seven years.
31:45
There's a whole new executive team in in in place now.
31:50
But there were actually criminal charges in 2020.
31:51
Seven employees of the company were sentenced to prison terms ranging between 1 and 5 years.
31:57
>> And so what were they doing?
31:57
Uh eBay leadership apparently mailed a series of threatening deliveries to the Steiner's home in 2019. >> That's crazy.
32:07
including a box of live cockroaches, a bloody pig's head mask.
32:10
I don't even know what that is. Head mask.
32:15
>> Is this a real pig head that's been turned into a mask or is it >> uh hopefully just a a sort of a Hollywood remake of that? Uh and a funeral wreath.
32:24
The Steiners also accuse executives of online harassment, including online posts inviting strangers to their house for sex.
32:34
>> Also >> absolutely insane.
32:35
Who like in what in what world is is a company is a public company like eBay just getting some criticism which all companies [laughter] do? >> Yeah.
32:49
Like takes it this personally that you're going to try to ruin the lives of two people that are >> already in your in your industry.
32:56
Was the impact of e-commerce bites blogs showing up in your quarterly reports?
33:03
Like was it actually >> eBay pleaded guilty in 2023 in a criminal case over harassment and paid a $3 million p penalty following criminal charges in 2020.
33:11
Seven employees of the companies were sentenced to prison terms ranging from 1 to 5 years.
33:18
>> It's absolutely brutal.
33:18
According to court documents, eBay executives grew increasingly upset by the Steiner's critical coverage of the company in early 2019, leading then executive >> Devin Wenig to test to text another executive that it was time to crush the Steiners and take her down, referring to Ena.
33:39
That summer, harassment against the Steiners escalated from threatening messages to delivering items to their home, which also included a book about surviving spousal beria.
33:49
>> So, that's like sort of a death threat, I guess. Yeah. >> Right.
33:52
>> What's >> uh also sending uh adult magazines to neighbors homes in the husband's name.
34:00
So, just like completely trying to destroy this couple's life and and uh marriage.
34:05
eBay employees also traveled to Massachusetts to vandalize the Steiner's home and stalk them around their hometown.
34:13
All the employees involved in the harassment were fired in September 2019.
34:18
eBay said uh the lawsuit was actually started in 2021 under the settlement.
34:26
So we have a we have a good ending here.
34:28
I think it's a fair ending.
34:30
[laughter] Under the settlement, the couple will receive 48 million, okay, in compensation from eBay and former employees.
34:36
eBay will also pay six million to char charitable organizations and Wen will pay 1 million to a free speech charity in a Steiner's name.
34:48
>> This is like the ultimate Stryand effect.
34:49
I never would have heard about e-commerce bites or their criticism of eBay if they hadn't done all this. What a mess. >> E-commerce bites.
34:56
I'm I'm looking up exactly what they said because eBay is in my opinion just the most said it and forget it company that's just had the same service for 20 years basically.
35:08
>> Well, but now we're going to get to the bottom of it.
35:11
>> Ena Steiner published >> uh the news that this settled on her blog.
35:15
So, E-commerce Bites has been giving sellers a voice since 1999.
35:17
So I do think that it it it appears just from looking at it very briefly that e-commerce bites clearly is an important voice >> Mhm.
35:30
>> in the like eBay seller world but still absolutely insane way to go about doing business and I'm glad that eBay cleaned up their act in in 2019.
35:43
Uh, in 2019, E-commerce Bites posted an article said, "Did you know that eBay built a lavish New York City pub style lounge because they had constructed an elaborate replica of a Manhattan pub at an eBay campus and the framing was basically this appears to be a no expense spared executive amenity.
36:01
Maybe they were going to do a podcast in it. You never know.
36:05
Anyway, we have Joe Wisthal from Bloomberg [music] Odd Lots.
36:09
You know him, you love him. He's back on the show. Welcome to the TV Ultra. How you doing?
36:14
>> It's been It's been too long. I miss you guys. >> I miss you, too. >> You too.
36:17
Okay, so I have a question for you.
36:19
You've got You've had a podcast for a long time.
36:21
Have you ever gotten like a negative review or a negative comment? [laughter] >> Ever. >> No, never. Never. >> No. Be honest. Be honest. Maybe you've gotten one.
36:29
Have you ever thought about sending them a box of live cockroaches? Maybe vandalizing.
36:33
There are actively people mad at Joe right now on Twitter about his latest.
36:39
>> I don't hopefully she's not watching right now, but my co-host Tracy would if if one of us would do it.
36:44
First of all, she is the one who [laughter] reads the comments.
36:47
I don't think she would, but I think if like to float this idea like she might at least like spare a few mental >> like I thought about doing that.
36:55
I ran it down, but I I know the whole the backtory with eBay.
37:00
>> I try I try to be the voice of it's a cautionary tale.
37:02
You guys don't want to have to, you know, down the line pay a $50, $60 million settlement. >> Definitely not.
37:08
>> Sending a horse head to a former listener for leaving a bad review.
37:12
>> We have That is not on the road map. >> No, not at all.
37:14
Uh >> I'm trying to think if I can I don't I don't know if you caught the story right before this, but uh basically eBay had to pay a couple $56 million because like a bunch of executives were were harassing this couple for just like criticizing the company in 2019.
37:31
So like no one is no one is even really thinking about eBay in 2019.
37:36
Like it's just not like it's a big company.
37:40
It's a company that everyone a lot of people have used and a lot of people love.
37:43
Uh but no one's like really it's not really that top of mind and and seven executives are like >> becoming criminals.
37:52
[laughter] >> I will die for this company.
37:56
>> You know in 2018 they might have said oh that would never be me.
37:58
You know, maybe who among us if you're late at night, you start going down a path.
38:03
You have to exhibit really good cognitive hygiene because who among us knows the path to psychosis online.
38:12
Many such cases and maybe we all need a little bit of humility about what the set conditions that could put us in that in that path. Yeah.
38:21
>> Sometimes one prompt is all [laughter] >> Sometimes one prompt.
38:24
>> Sometimes one prompt. I took a week of vacation last week and I was like I'm not going to post anything for a week and I did I actually did but I felt it all like bubbling out like Friday evening when I sort of mentally it's
38:38
like oh vacation's over it's the weekend now and I was like it's just like all like controllably so it's like we all have to be mindful and self-aware about what we're capable of because some maybe you don't really know like when it comes to internet vandettas what uh what could happen. Do you think social media is
38:52
Do you think social media is addictive?
38:55
[laughter] >> Because I can't.
38:57
It's so hard to tell when your job is social media.
38:59
Like I am the screen time.
39:02
I have three hours of live stream time every day. >> Yeah.
39:07
>> But it's like how I buy food.
39:07
So it's like am I am I addicted to my job? Like I don't know.
39:13
>> Well, I've thought about the funny you mentioned food because this is how I justify it, right?
39:17
I've probably said it before.
39:18
This is how I justify always being.
39:19
It's like, oh, it's very important for me to know what people are talking about is how I hone in my skill.
39:24
But it is like, you know, it's funny.
39:24
I was thinking like food specifically because with other addictions, you just go cold turkey, right?
39:29
You're just like, I'm not, you know, and with food, you can't.
39:32
So, you have to like, it's really hard to like, so even with me in social media, it's like >> it's hard for me.
39:37
Like, cold turkey is not that hard.
39:39
I'll just take a week off.
39:41
Posting all that time is not that hard.
39:43
The middle ground is when it gets really hard because there's just so many things to respond to, so many things waiting for my take, so many questions that only I need.
39:53
>> Also, yeah, there's takes that will never exist.
39:54
There's there's takes that will never exist, right?
39:57
The takes that have been lost to history when you were on vacation.
40:01
You will never get those takes.
40:03
>> [laughter] >> I do feel like >> you think of >> Yeah, I I do feel like one benefit that you have and I have felt is when you have multiple uh maybe dopamine reward paths, but like outputs, it is nice to be able to retreat because you can do a podcast, you can also write an essay, you can also rip off a post.
40:19
And so if you only have one of those, then you can sort of get lost in the sauce of like, oh, it's been rough since I had a great guest or it's been rough since I had a great viral banger post.
40:29
But if you can sort of move around and be like, "Okay, I'm gonna take a break from the from the the knife fight at the dive bar and put my thoughts together into an essay." Uh that >> No, I agree.
40:41
This is very important to have multiple outlets for man's desire to uh to post and put things out into the world.
40:50
Yes, I the deepest desire it's like in the hierarchy is like to be someone we are listened to, right?
40:56
You could see it in all of like the billionaires who like cannot resist the impulse to get online and start posting.
41:03
It's clear that money, yes, it's all great, power is great, but what they really crave is to just be heard by someone out in the world.
41:08
And so they start posting.
41:11
>> The the the death of Twitter X uh fully over now given that Jensen Wong joined, Mark Zuckerberg had to join.
41:18
Mark Zuckerberg had to join. like [clears throat] it pul truly pulled everyone over slowly kicking and screaming because I imagine Mark Zuckerberg would prefer to promote his Wall Street Journal op-eds just on his own platforms but that's not where that
41:33
community is so you got to go >> no it's true like with AI especially specifically which is that it's X right like if every time someone leaves one of the big companies they have to post a big thread or you know a really long tweet or whatever and it's only X I They could post it on Instagram. They could
41:50
They could post it on LinkedIn. They could post. They don't though. I mean they might. I don't know.
41:55
But they posted that is where the news happens and you can feel like I think you know the thing that was really striking last week with the um the discourse as one says about the open letter etc.
42:06
It germinated on Twitter specifically.
42:09
Why did the White House why did this why was this suddenly in that week a thing that the White House in some way needed to talk about Chinese open models?
42:18
It was because of how much it was bubbling on social media, on Twitter specifically.
42:23
I actually think the entire thing more or less originated from one tweet that said that uh Kimmy 3 was really good at front-end design work. That was that was it.
42:34
It was that one post because if you look around like that actually that crystallizes in everyone's mind that like oh here it is maybe as good as the most uh advanced frontier models.
42:46
frontier models. No, there was one category of one overall thing and that was the thing everyone locked into and from there and I believe that that was the moment straight through to okay now the white house and all these companies need to make comments about open models can be traced to that specific all online all on Twitter from that >> America front end built this country if
43:07
we don't have front end we don't have [laughter] anything this country needs front end development specifically no I mean I I I agree with you when I when I Looking at the benchmarks, I was like, the one that I'm actually interested in is the cyber security benchmarks because that's where we could actually have this meaningful discussion of, okay, you just actually democratize hacking into things. This is going to get kind of
43:28
This is going to get kind of crazy and you're going to have like script kitties out there that are, you know, just hacking into the random flower shop on the corner and just making it a nightmare for them.
43:35
Um, and uh, and we couldn't really I don't know.
43:40
It hasn't been >> fully posted this, but someone was sharing this morning.
43:42
I mean, they're trying to figure out how much you need to spend to have your own >> Yeah.
43:48
>> setup at home to be able to run Kimmy efficiently. It was like $100,000. Yeah. >> Right.
43:54
>> Um just just to get to the point where you'd be able to >> Yeah.
43:57
>> And it's a lot of energy >> in a sovereign way.
43:58
You know, a sovereign hacker would need to have a hundred grand, which hopefully prevents like the script kitties.
44:04
>> It might be the new Lambo, though.
44:04
You know, you you get the influencer, the larer, they got the NVL72 in the corner.
44:11
You're like, "Yeah, what's up?
44:11
I got the I I got the sovereign AI going. I don't know.
44:15
How else did you process the uh the open letter?
44:17
Were you surprised by the order that companies signed?
44:19
I Ben Thompson had this interesting take that it's uh two of the last companies to sign.
44:26
I don't think Apple's signed yet.
44:28
You'd think that they benefit from uh open source since they haven't been playing that game.
44:31
Uh Amazon was also a little bit late, but Amazon and Apple both have physical products like warehouses and they sell physical things and so they're maybe a little bit less nervous about AI disruption because they have a physical aspect. I don't know.
44:45
I I don't know what what you thought about the the sequence of events.
44:51
Yeah, I mean I think there was like two things that really struck out to me or which is that the first wave of signitories were either companies that are behind the frontier or Nvidia which does not want to be left with only one or two like this is the thing.
45:06
So they're like oh like this is let's start with Nvidia.
45:09
I think the nightmare scenario for Nvidia or at least a nightmare scenario for Nvidia is that it basically has it the two one or two labs break.
45:20
so far from the pack that it's just, you know, it's almost monopsiny uh conditions.
45:26
And then those clients can even >> and to be and and and just to add to that, yeah, >> like both the the the two front runners are already making their own chips.
45:37
They're already working with multiple chip companies, right?
45:39
So they're already like actively trying to reduce their dependence on a key >> supplier. Absolutely.
45:45
So So first they might have better pricing.
45:48
they're like no we're just not going to pay that margin that you expect or they're already um both diversifying etc.
45:54
So that is that is the first thing and then the other thing that seems very obvious to me is that the all the first round of signitories was subjectively falling behind the frontier.
46:06
And so you're when you're in software categories, you have um you know either companies that are trying to build a model and they're behind.
46:14
So Microsoft at least on just we're talking LLM's clearly behind, Meta clearly behind, right?
46:20
>> And then you get the and then you have the company I don't know the service nows of the world who will look like they could be in a position where they might have to pay a tax to the most advanced models.
46:30
And so like and then you get the late signitories like open an AI or an alphabet etc that are close but probably not at fable five like max like look at the whole thing and then there are the last ones to join and so like I I guess I had [laughter] like look I love all that stuff about I love freedom like I love freedom and I love tinkering I love tinkering and I want to like do all that stuff etc.
46:57
But what I think like what really like motivates these companies is like you know I don't put a ton of stock on oh it's really important to diffuse AI into our main street businesses and hospitals and hackers. Sure. Great. I love that stuff. Lovely.
47:13
But like, you know, I think there is like we, you know, I think the thing that would really like we're really not psychologically or sort of as an economy really equipped to think about what if one or two of these companies just runs away with it?
47:29
What if Anthropic just runs away with it?
47:31
What if like like we're we sort of like, oh yeah, everyone's sort of in the game.
47:34
And I think for most of us, I'm not 100% sure of this because I'm not the most sophisticated like person technical person at all, but I have a feeling like most of us can't really get a good intuitive feel for like what is the difference between a GPT 5.
47:50
6, a Fable 5, or even the most advanced Gemini model or a Kimmy or a Deep Seek 4 or whatever.
47:58
like we're like not really able to personally grasp what the difference is at the extremes.
48:03
But like what if we what if in a year from now there's one company what if or two that are just so like clearly like there is no longer any debate these other ones just are not in the game.
48:14
That is a very weird I would say very deeply uncomfortable situation we would find ourselves.
48:20
I think none of us would like that.
48:21
I think most of us feel comfortable in a world in which you have a handful of companies roughly jostling around the quote frontier is like okay this is like comfortable for us but if we weren't in that situation like I think we would be rightfully all of us would be quite anxious >> so was Lena Khan right?
48:39
[laughter] Well, this so this is the thing.
48:44
Well, this so this is the thing. I think that like and I think like the um the Mark Zuckerberg oped in the Wall Street Journal I think further hammers this point and I actually think and there's a sense in which I find the Mark Zuckerberg um uh op-ed to be a little bit maybe more interesting than the open
49:00
letter because the open letter is sort of this plausible deniability where it's just we're advocating for principle here that principle is open right the Zuckerberg oped >> and it's also and it's more their uh >> it's it's just again I think part of what you appreciated is like using the open letter format to just advocate for your own commercial interests. It's like
49:19
It's like almost like stolen valor, you know? >> Sure.
49:23
But like so like the the open letter like the Zuckerberg oped in the Wall Street Journal I thought actually took it a bit further.
49:29
He's like we cannot have super intelligence controlled by one company.
49:33
So that was not merely saying let's let the market decide.
49:38
Let's keep like light touch regulation.
49:40
He was saying, "No, [clears throat] this would be existentially bad," which I think most people would actually agree with if one company were to be the monopoly provider of quote super intelligence unquote.
49:49
So then you think, okay, >> which is funny, too, because >> he's like, >> it's very funny.
49:57
>> Well, he he's probably top three largest customers of Anthropic. Oh, sure. Right. >> Right.
50:03
>> Right. Uh so so he's the one fuel, you know, fueling all of this and then and then right >> two months later he's like okay actually >> isn't that like >> to me that like if that is a very telling fact when you think about like who are the largest customers the
50:22
competitors so it's like that marginal difference like I said like most of us probably can't really tell a big difference between like advanced models but when you have like a really big very highskilled very like sophisticated model maker and they're a huge customer
50:40
of a major competitor that's better than them like people are going to the frontier and this is something that like surprised me like I thought maybe like there would be a bit more of a market for like subfrontier intelligence or like quote cheaper intelligence but look
50:54
how fast um anthropic turned out uh Opus 5 and I you know I haven't really used it that much but it could be like that in a market where there's if there is one winner that winner could emerge all up and down the price curve and so you have like your Gemini flash level >> frontier. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Yeah.
51:12
And I mean that's what that's what Sam was on invest like the best yesterday and he's talking about how you as as a company that sells intelligence, you want to have the best >> model at every point of the cost curve.
51:28
Like it's actually going to be important to hit >> all of those different moments. Yeah.
51:32
And I I I it seems like and look it things change by the week.
51:36
So I I'll come back out on a week and I'll tell you say something else.
51:39
But it seems like like a while like I started, you know, like I was just sort of poking around.
51:45
I was like, "Oh, Gemini Flash, this is really fun for like high batch low intelligence things, right?
51:49
Like you could do 30,000 queries of in two hours and it cost you 20 bucks or something." That's amazing.
51:57
could be pretty good for my life as a golden retriever high [laughter] batch low intelligence.
52:03
>> Yeah, that's >> doing a lot of stuff.
52:05
>> But probably or it seems at least plausible that the company that is has the most advanced model will probably also win for the sort of like low or could at least be in a good position to also win the high batch low intelligence. >> Yeah.
52:22
But I would say but I would say there has been a lot of there has been a lot of push back around the RSI narrative in the last 24 48 hours because Opus 5 is actually not getting great reviews from the community.
52:32
I think people had initially they felt >> like people thought it was like a great in between between like a fable and a five six soul and then now I've seen a lot more negativity >> towards it.
52:46
[snorts] This to me again goes back to our original point of sort of like the incredible importance of Twitter in all of these discussions because if you think about like each time a model comes out okay there's the benchmarks and it's like they but then it's like you'll just see like someone will be like there was some tweet when GLM 5.
53:04
2 came out that he's like some guy was like I've been using uh GLM 5.
53:08
2 for the last eight hours.
53:11
I've never seen an open model like this. Got like 2,000 retweets. It's like eight hours.
53:15
Like what were you doing?
53:17
You're like what are we doing here?
53:18
Like it's like oh like I I got a sort of weird vibe from Opus 5 4 all these things. It's like I don't know.
53:24
I actually think this is probably a [clears throat] good reason for all of us to maybe log off a little bit more and to actually just read through benchmark reports rather than like one tweet or seen front end dev like this.
53:39
on the flip on the flip side of like the benchmarks like it actually makes me more strong on Mark Zuckerberg's uh like ability to produce a thoughtful opinion because he has cons he's spent a billion dollars on frontier intelligence in a
53:54
month deployed across 10,000 people and can look at like the needle how the needle moved across different models and and actually look at the like the efficiency like the ROI is at the end of the day what matters in the in a business context text. Yes, the like the
54:08
Yes, the like the vibe check matters.
54:11
Yes, the benchmarks matter.
54:13
But at the end of the day, in terms of moving the needle from 10 billion to hundred billion in revenue to a trillion dollars in revenue, uh a lot of that's going to be driven by or companies actually like getting the bill and being like, "Yep, I'm happy to pay because it it was worth it."
54:29
This is something I noticed a while ago, which is that you read through like a lot of these like popular benchmarks that come out.
54:35
And the thing that has surprised me is that up until like recently, most of them actually don't talk about the dollar cost of completing a task.
54:45
So it'll be like, can the model solve these 100 problems in engineering or whatever?
54:50
It's like, oh, this one got 85 and this one cost, this one got 75. Right?
54:55
Right? What we're really like going to need is to see like what was the okay how many dollars do I have to spend to get 90% of these questions solved and we're just starting to see that I have a theory but I don't really know if it's right that probably a lot of these
55:12
benchmark organizations started from like a safetist mindset right like they're worried about like oh like um bio bioengineering risk or >> can you do it binary >> and can you do it at any cost right because you don't really care about your token cost. If you're like trying to
55:25
If you're like trying to exert a lot of damage, you just do it.
55:29
So, I think that for like the bigger questions like hopefully we'll see more like what was the dollar cost of achieving X at this model and then maybe we'll like really those are the for I think for our conversations those will be a lot more interesting than some of the sort of legacy benchmarks.
55:47
>> How much do you think the opensource uh it feels like we're in this moment of like this catchup?
55:51
There was a the last six months pregm 5.
55:54
2 uh it felt like open source was sort of falling behind as the frontier labs released more models and more crazy demos and there were more stories about mythos and solving math problems and all these crazy conjectures and stuff like the the labs were sort of trading back and forth with like new capability new capability new benchmark crazy thing um and open source was kind of quiet and then we got glm 5.
56:16
2 2, Kimmy, K3, and all of a sudden it was like, oh, okay, like like the the the the open source uh market is catching up for sure.
56:22
Still on the same trajectory, maybe still behind, but like you know, like like on track.
56:26
Uh how much is that moving the market, do you think?
56:31
How much are are we in a replay of the Deep Seek moment, the Jevans paradox debate?
56:36
Because it feels like there's this selloff, but I don't know.
56:40
Like it feels weird to me that people would be processing it the exact same and making the same mistake that they made.
56:45
So, is this time different or h how are people talking about it uh in New York?
56:49
Like, >> yeah, as as people who just care about the lines going up, it is I I think like >> No, for real though, I mean, I do think like it's plausible that this on some level this is just another quote deepseek moment in the sense like you get a little bit freaked out. I agree with you.
57:07
Like it's weird to think that like you would do that same playbook twice.
57:12
I think like another factor is just generally setting aside like maybe the Kimmy and GLM stuff is a little bit maybe it's a little overrated in terms of a story.
57:22
I think people are looking at a situation in which they just do not foresee the end of these free cash flow losses, right?
57:31
That there's just like that we're we're nowhere close.
57:33
It's like, okay, when can you when is the offramp for this spending?
57:36
Yeah, >> that story isn't totally satisfying because if that were if it were just about, oh, they're spending a gazillion dollars on um capital expenditures, you would expect the Korean chip stocks to do well.
57:52
I mean, the Korean chip stocks have been absolutely getting crushed over the last three weeks.
57:57
>> Um so, like I there's something more to the story here.
58:00
Like I don't like it could just be that a lot of manic it could be two separate things.
58:05
could be two separate things. It could be there were a bunch of manic traders in Korea who were buying these double and triple XX leveraged ETFs that just trade SKHEX and then that had to eventually flush out because there's you
58:19
know there's so much volatility baked into that that you get a little selling and it ripples and then in the US it could be that investors are looking at like I do not have any confidence that I could name the date at which the alphabets of this world will return to positive free cash flow. there is no
58:34
there is no reason to think that that off-ramp is coming when they could say like, "Oh, we're good. We have enough compute."
58:40
So maybe there's a couple of things going on that I think are perhaps a little bit separate from the pure like, "Oh, we're freaked out about margin compression from Chinese open models."
58:53
>> Yeah, it's very odd because the industry revenues are going up like and and the and the revenues are very very diffuse.
58:59
Everything from a adup supported use to a $10 subscription to a $200 subscription to uh hyperscaler spending a billion dollars a month on tokens like the the demand is there in that it is this economy.
59:12
It's not this total circular there's just one like it's it's like NFTTS or something like that.
59:17
It's not some dislocation.
59:19
But I agree with you that uh as you play out the capex requirements we're we've now drawn down all the hyperscaler cash flow.
59:26
all the hyperscaler cash flow. we're issuing more debt and equity and at a certain point you're like, "Okay, if there's another 10x increase, if there's another 100x increase, like there's sort of not enough money in the world for this like and and so you almost need a pause on capex more than you need a
59:41
pause on like the capability development for because I do think that if you just if you just spent the capex that you're spending now, paused, and then just did the diffusion work to get these models into all the different businesses and use cases, like the economic upside and the ROI would be there but >> not when you're going to spend 10 times next on capex. >> Yeah I think my framework is like you
1:00:01
>> Yeah I think my framework is like you have >> the whole world betting on a meaningful capabil like continued capability increases >> which I think is like okay to lean on because we've just been seeing that quarter over quarter. It is it is real. >> Yeah.
1:00:20
And and then you also have some like hoarding which is like >> not only are the capabilities going to get much more much better.
1:00:28
I'm also going to basically figure out a model that's going to be so good it's going to just like hoover up a bunch of like new demand and I'll be able to ramp revenue and justify all this capex.
1:00:40
And if I but if I can't do that someone else will I'll be able to I'll be able to offload it. Right.
1:00:47
it. Right. But the concerning thing right the concerning thing right now is like >> the the incremental big buyers of compute you effectively have a >> two players there and and then at the same time you have the whole industry being like well like praying for like an oligopoly as opposed to a duopoly or monopoly right like very interesting to scenario to have >> the biggest companies in the world so scared of a of a of a monopoly that
1:01:18
they're effectively praying for an oligopoly is like is my my view on Yeah, it's really wild and you know uh I don't know if you guys saw today the recent blog post from uh Darkhoresh had a great day about like expectations that
1:01:33
compute could get a lot more expensive which you know we've one of the sort of uh stylized facts of the last few years has of course been the extraordinary drop in token prices right like if you go back to like GPT3 token prices they're down like 99.9%
1:01:48
9% >> but like you Now, so we think, okay, there is some iron law that token prices will get cheaper over time, but maybe not.
1:01:58
I mean, we thought there was an iron law that memory prices would uh drop over time, right?
1:02:01
Or that any sort of um uh hardware would drop over time.
1:02:07
And what the story of the last two years is that turns out that is capable of reversing.
1:02:11
reversing. So you know it's not impossible to imagine that compute prices I think it's not impossible to imagine that compute prices get more expensive and get significantly more expensive and then of course he posited the possibility maybe there is no almost
1:02:26
no thing that we do economically currently with AI is is economical where compute prices going which is hard to imagine and then the thing that I take away from it is but that doesn't mean you can stop spending on it because you have to worry about hardening yourself
1:02:42
for cyber security because it's like all right you know what there's like this is not economical for me anymore I want to tap out of the whole AI risk well then your competitor develops a stronger model and then you're done you're you're really done so like this is the scary
1:02:56
thing which is and I think even just in the sort of like hyperscalers is like you what if like free the situation is you're bleeding free cash flow but you also don't have the option of saying we want to opt out of the game >> which I think is a source of anxiety for investors It is. It is like It's so
1:03:11
It is like It's so weird that we went back and forth on like the Doom narrative and the and and no matter where you sat on that, it was either like perfect utopia, everything's amazing, or like Terminators kill everyone.
1:03:24
And in fact like we are very much in this messy middle of like a lot of annoying things like the cyber security equilibrium is I mean maybe there's like this doom scenario but most most likely it's just like costs go up uh for everyone loosely because you have to harden yourself more against AI and it's like yeah it's great to fix bugs but there's going to be more bugs introduced and it's just like it's just annoying.
1:03:47
It's annoying and there's a lot of there there's a lot of scenarios where it's like there okay there's more cost on AI slop and then you have to detect the slop and then you're annoyed and uh uh we we have a friend on our team who uh always laments when like AI does some amazing like math thing.
1:04:01
He's like no one cares like that.
1:04:03
like no one cares like that. This is why you need to return to like you know the [clears throat] the curing cancer the doing something useful actually helping you uh with some problem that people do experience but a lot of times it's just these abstract
1:04:16
>> going back going back to the Zuck op-ed >> he has he's in the position where he doesn't have a he didn't do a bunch of podcasts about AI and AI doom in like 2019 when no one cared about AI whereas a lot of the other key players were doing podcasts and they were talking about the risks and all these things. So
1:04:32
So he can kind of come out and just say like look it's going to be awesome.
1:04:36
We just got to make sure there's fair competition.
1:04:38
But >> the push back there is that like the average he's not the best messenger for this because the average person believes that social media while >> it is great in some ways has damaged birth you know hurt birth rates right like damaged teen teen mental health right uh is is just like draining the attention right all these things.
1:05:00
So like he's maybe the best messenger that we got but [laughter] he's not the best. >> Yeah.
1:05:08
>> This so this is the issue that I arise when I think about this is that like okay you have two executives.
1:05:12
One is like it's all going to be okay and one of them it's we're going to have doom, right?
1:05:18
So and then it's like well which one of them has been paying attention and taking seriously AI for the last 10 years and which one of them three years ago was talking about the metaverse?
1:05:29
Well, it's like I'm going to trust the one who has been taking AI seriously for the last 10 years and that unfortunately that happens to be the doom guy or that seems how it is. Yeah.
1:05:36
That unfortunately that like if you just go by these huristics we have of like well who was like there have been people who are like very right about AI who are very nervous and this is like what makes me I don't have any ability to adjudicate these questions like I'm just like I'm just reading stuff on the internet.
1:05:54
you know I'm not so but unfortunately a lot of the people a lot of the doomed people have had much better intuitions about just the broader trajectory of the technology than the people who are very optimistic who three years ago or four years ago we're talking about NFTTS
1:06:10
>> well yeah there's some line I think it's from Demis where he's saying like he met with Zach when they were selling deep mind and it's a great part Zuck you know viewed like the metaverse as like or VR as like equal equally interesting to AI and that was part of what made him decide to not go to meta. >> Um, and
1:06:28
>> Um, and >> has Dennis ever watched a movie in VR? It's electric.
1:06:33
[laughter] >> It's the best experience.
1:06:34
Uh, no, it is funny because because you got to it's amazing. Apple Vision Pro. Uh, it's it's fantastic.
1:06:41
But, uh, the the there was a doom narrative around crypto and there was a doom narrative around metaverse.
1:06:48
the the crypto one was that every criminal is going to be able to transact uh anonymously and there's going to be a huge increase in drug.
1:06:56
>> Well, the doom scenario was actually that the dollar would just completely collapse.
1:06:59
But that was something that people were cheering.
1:07:01
>> They were excited about that.
1:07:01
And then and then with the metaverse, it was like wireheading.
1:07:04
So, everyone's going to be in the metaverse and we're going to lose any and all interaction in the real world.
1:07:10
And of course, Mark Zuckerberg never addressed that.
1:07:12
He was never on podcast being like, "Yes, it is.
1:07:14
there is a risk that it goes into the matrix and we're all in these virtual worlds and like I'm not going to do that.
1:07:20
Uh Apple sort of like forced his hand with that with the crazy AR and like the screen on the outside and Apple's messaging was like we don't want to be an isolating device.
1:07:30
We want to be an a mixed reality device and and they were sort of being like the anti-doom but Zuck never really went full like doomer or even addressed it.
1:07:39
Uh, and and and then of course we just like sort of got the good ending because it just like kind of flatlined and never really went anywhere. I don't know.
1:07:46
I don't even know if that's the good ending.
1:07:47
It's like the middle ending. >> No, no, totally.
1:07:50
And it's interesting because when you read like that Zuckerberg oped in the Wall Street Journal, it reads like, you know, so you mentioned like everyone is super s cynical about social media, right?
1:08:00
And you mentioned the birth rate.
1:08:01
So everyone's got so like so just feels so like >> kind of gross about the whole thing now.
1:08:09
But, you know, in like 2010, 2011, people were like really excited.
1:08:11
It's like we're going to connect.
1:08:12
This is going to be great for democracy.
1:08:16
Citizens are going to like be able to like collaborate and stuff like that.
1:08:19
And so, when I read the Zach Opad, I was like, this is a kind of optimism that I haven't read from anyone in in over 10 years about where like digital technology is going.
1:08:31
Unfortunately, people like, you know, very few people are as optimistic about social media as they were in say the beginning of the 2010s, but it it did hearken back to that this is going to be very democratizing, etc. And I hope it is.
1:08:47
>> Well, I I expect like personally social media I do think has made my my life better.
1:08:56
Like net like if you net it out, it's like how to you know I work too.
1:09:01
too. I work in media but even if I didn't you know pre being in in this kind of business met a lot of people I learned a bunch of stuff that I otherwise wouldn't I think it's been a had a net positive impact on my life I think that AI hopefully one of the good scenarios is that it is the same way
1:09:18
right where like net net makes everyone's lives a bit better even though it has these things that are >> that are quite quite bad right >> I think we should be open-minded to that uh possibility I And you know, look, we get things everyone's dooming so hard these days about and you just go down the list. You I could we could easily
1:09:36
You I could we could easily rattle off 10 very three or four big things right now.
1:09:40
But, you know, usually the bad we're we're wrong.
1:09:43
We're pretty bad about predicting the future.
1:09:44
And so, like we should be open-minded, I think, towards like, you know, right tail scenarios where things go well.
1:09:51
scenarios where things go well. because I don't think like I put a lot of stock or I don't think there's any good reason to put a lot of stock on what the Twitter conventional wisdom is or the editorial board of any publication what they're all anxious about right now like
1:10:07
you know like I don't know what that great outcome looks like um per se you know I do look we could get great technological breakthroughs I'll say one thing which is that like in the circles of people I talk to everyone is like reading more philosophy these days probably because of AI. That's pretty That's pretty good. Like I'm pretty happy.
1:10:25
Like that's a pretty cool thing that like people are sort of like a renition of a certain curiosity about things that I think was sort of uh dormant for a while.
1:10:33
So like that seems like a pretty >> making music for the first time in years.
1:10:41
Well, like like we should pay attention to like the good I actually do think we should pay attention to the good things that are, you know, because it's so easy to get caught caught um focused on a negative narrative.
1:10:52
In the meanwhile, like various like positive things are happening.
1:10:56
I uh you know changed a flight recently and it was much easier because I used Chad GPT to like walk me through the process of like turning [laughter] >> there of like making >> of you know to to a roundtrip flight to a three-legged flight which I was very anxious about is easy.
1:11:14
So like we should pay attention. Yeah.
1:11:18
>> I think to things in our like day-to-day life that we can say you know what are making this better even if like it doesn't feel like the whole even if we're like anxious about where it's all going. >> Last question. You have a podcast. We have a podcast. That's right.
1:11:33
There's a lot of new podcasts.
1:11:34
Would you support an open letter that we're writing?
1:11:36
We would like you to sign in to ban new podcast.
1:11:43
actually wouldn't ban, but it would there would be a multi-year sort of approval process, bunch of safety checks and uh a new government agency to issue RSS feeds.
1:11:54
>> Yeah, I this is really important.
1:11:54
I'm so glad you brought this up because someone such an important someone could just launch an RSS feed that, you know, ends the entire world. Who knows? We don't know. It can't happen.
1:12:06
>> Or or removes viewers and listeners from mods at TVPN.
1:12:08
We cannot let that happen.
1:12:11
>> That would that's ridiculous.
1:12:11
[laughter] Are you saying that I would do this for my own financial gain? This is crazy.
1:12:17
>> I can't believe you would even go there. That's wild.
1:12:19
I would never think that way.
1:12:21
I'm purely thinking altruistically. Okay, Joe, let's leave.
1:12:25
>> America needs to win on podcasts.
1:12:25
And this is very objectively winning. >> We are winning.
1:12:33
>> We have been winning on entertainment and have no [laughter] >> No, there's no competitors yet. >> Yes. Well, thank you so much.
1:12:40
>> I'm signing the letter. >> I love it. I love it. We'll circulate.
1:12:43
>> Great to see you, Joe.
1:12:44
>> Have a great rest of your week. We'll talk to you soon. Goodbye.
1:12:47
>> Let me tell you about Figma agents. Meet the canvas.
1:12:51
Your AI agents can now create and modify your Figma files with design system context.
1:12:55
And we are very fortunate that we have our next guest Jameson Deweiler here with us in the TVP Ultra. Welcome to the show. >> Thanks for having me.
1:13:05
>> Please introduce yourself and the company.
1:13:07
>> Yeah, I am uh Jameson Deweiler.
1:13:07
I am the uh co-founder and CEO of Chip and we are building what we like to think of as the ideal second car today but as everything becomes autonomous the ideal primarily owned vehicle of the future. >> Okay.
1:13:20
>> Can we get um the chip that I specked out on the big board because it is a special special car and I think it would would provide some important context.
1:13:30
>> So quick facts uh it's an electric low speed life utility.
1:13:34
>> How do you rate my spec? How do you rate my spec?
1:13:36
I love the I I love the the spaceship there and everything.
1:13:39
And the spaceship obviously package surf rack. >> Yes.
1:13:44
>> And the TV on the front. >> Yep.
1:13:47
>> If we could get TVPN on there, it would uh it would kind of complete it.
1:13:50
But good [laughter] start. Good start for me.
1:13:53
Um before we get too much into Chip, what were you doing before this?
1:13:56
What led you to uh creating uh the vehicles of the future?
1:14:03
Yeah, I uh before this I was uh at Tier Mobility which was Bird and Lime's largest competitor in Europe uh backed by Sopic and Muodala.
1:14:09
They owned spin scooters in the US.
1:14:11
Um so got wound up there by selling my HD mapping business uh fantasmo to them.
1:14:16
So uh basically creating a digital twin of the world and we built a computer powered GPS and turns out uh scooters don't know where they are very well because of GPS and so bird jumpaduber and tier were our biggest customers and scaled up and uh then also started building kind of driver assistance systems for scooters as well.
1:14:35
So yeah been in the mobility space for a while. >> Interesting.
1:14:37
I can imagine driver assistance would be great for scooters.
1:14:42
I don't know how I don't know how far along it's gotten just because driving around LA some people on scooters do things that that are you know maybe not illegal but definitely wrong. >> Yeah. >> Yeah.
1:14:54
I mean we say driver assistance is like ads and cars but really was about restricting their behavior, right?
1:14:57
So it's like are you drunk?
1:14:59
Are you going are you on a sidewalk?
1:15:01
Are you going the wrong way down a bike lane?
1:15:02
And so you're putting that on on there and just you know camera and compete at the edge running there.
1:15:07
So building a lot of that kind of Yeah.
1:15:09
Why is uh autonomy important for this vehicle?
1:15:11
This feels like the last place I would want self-driving.
1:15:15
I I need self-driving in the morning commute. I'm tired.
1:15:18
I'm going 40 miles or 20 miles and I just want to like zone out and just get to where I'm going.
1:15:24
But this looks fun to drive.
1:15:26
This looks like you're driving it around a small community.
1:15:28
It's not that much of a hassle to actually drive.
1:15:30
Why is autonomy important?
1:15:32
Yeah, I mean for us like where we're starting with the autonomy stack is actually kind of like the inverse of what you'd expect when you get from a Tesla or anywhere else, right?
1:15:41
So like yeah, we like to say chip is fun to drive but parking never is.
1:15:42
So this is not like FSD in a Tesla.
1:15:45
Um in fact like when we do bring autonomy eventually to the vehicle we'll be you know uh unsupervised in in the way that we do it. >> Got it.
1:15:54
But what we're doing today is we can take a chip, you can pull up to, you know, a busy place uh in West Hollywood and skip the valet line, hop right out.
1:16:07
Chip will go off, take care of himself, okay?
1:16:10
>> Take care of the parking, show up when you tell him to come back, either from the calendar or as you speak to him or text you, let you know when he's on the way back there, and pick you up exactly where you want to be picked up.
1:16:20
Unlike a Whimo, right, which like will make you walk a long distance.
1:16:23
And the way that we're able to achieve this, by the way, today is with direct remote control of humans because there's actually a data gap there. >> Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
1:16:31
Uh is there also an easier regulatory approval path because if the if it's only autonomous or remotely controlled while there's no humans in the car, it's safer.
1:16:42
Does that make it easier to get to market faster? >> Yeah.
1:16:45
So, it's definitely an easier path and for us like we think a very responsible path because like when we run our, you know, we're going to be running our pilot in Miami um this winter, a great market for us where we're based.
1:16:55
Uh and we're, you know, our early customers are going to have effectively, you know, virtually unlimited access to it and they'll hop out and we'll take that vehicle, we'll drive it, in fact, we'll drive it at lower speeds on less busy roads, etc.
1:17:09
Uh, and so it's just a way for us to validate and bring kind of that safety level up and then eventually we'll drive with people and we'll move from direct remote control to, you know, full autonomy here over time.
1:17:18
Yeah, >> that makes sense, Jordy. Sorry.
1:17:21
>> Yeah, that use case is cool.
1:17:21
I think like think about like you have a >> surfboard off the beach. >> Yeah.
1:17:28
Yeah, that that but like yeah, there there's something one of the biggest benefits of like having a driver is just being able to be like, "Oh, I need to run into the grocery store, pull up outside, go go go straight in."
1:17:35
Even if the parking lot is like crazy or chaotic, you're just going in, coming out, you're not thinking about it.
1:17:42
To me, that's the most underrated.
1:17:45
>> The number of people that have drivers, but not they don't order delivery, groceries is like [laughter] very small.
1:17:51
But yes, [clears throat] >> no, no, I'm I'm just saying like to me that that's been a um >> in in my experience one of the most underrated parts and that's something that uh you expect the the Tesla to >> be doing soon, but uh can even make sense in this form factor when originally we saw the launch video and we were like why would we need why would I want autonomous driving for something that I'm just driving to the beach or whatever. >> Yeah.
1:18:16
Well, I mean it's so you can go to the beach for like if you're living in Manhattan Beach where like where golf carts are really popular. Yeah.
1:18:20
You know, it's small, it's easy to park, but there's still no parking.
1:18:24
So, in that context, you can take your friends there, get dropped off, and you just go back to home and come back.
1:18:28
And, you know, also like really what we're trying to do here is bring this like fun robotic, you know, uh, private driver to everybody.
1:18:36
It's why it talks and it can go pick up the groceries, right?
1:18:37
can go there and it can do curbside pickup and you know the frunk opens and because the confused Target employee comes out the vehicle can talk and say, "Hey, put it in there. We're good to go." Do that. >> Exactly. >> What do you think? What do you think?
1:18:52
>> Like it feels like there's been an explosion of like just new vehicle startups.
1:18:58
You have Slate, you have you guys, you have Amble.
1:19:00
Like clearly a bunch of smart people at the same time were like why is there not this super specialized vehicle, right?
1:19:08
Slate was like it's going after everyday pickup truck.
1:19:13
Amble, you know, focus on uh resorts, right?
1:19:16
You guys are focused on uh everyday consumers and like in these sort of like my view like coastal hubs at least like uh at least that's where I see you guys getting a lot of traction.
1:19:29
But like what what is it snowballing now?
1:19:32
Should we expect a lot more vehicles?
1:19:34
Is there some like is it just the the advancements of batteries and declining costs?
1:19:39
Like what do you think is driving it? >> Yeah.
1:19:42
I mean I think it's really interesting like when consumer behavior changes in such a major way, right?
1:19:47
Especially around cars and like you know in a lot of ways I think like the American love affair with the car is dying.
1:19:54
>> Uh everything's too expensive.
1:19:54
Uh, and increasingly too, like we're reurbanizing and even in places when >> Sorry, I was I was going to hit the boo.
1:20:03
[laughter] >> There we go. >> No, no, no.
1:20:07
I I I think you're I think you're right.
1:20:08
And the the the one some even you can see manufacturers now all the all the cars started looking the same 10 years ago.
1:20:17
Less and less was like a like nobody goes and they're like, "Oh, I need a new daily.
1:20:22
I'm going to get a yellow car." Right?
1:20:23
Whereas historically, like somebody would be like, I need a new car.
1:20:27
I'm going to get like a yellow Volkswagen Beetle or something like that.
1:20:31
And now it's all like converging around like the Model 3 format, right?
1:20:36
Or even John was complaining the other day cuz like he's in the market for a Tesla and he's like, I wish that they still made the S.
1:20:42
Like that's the one I want >> or convertible or a fullsize SUV.
1:20:45
It feels like there's a it's almost like a barbell effect like there there in the heyday of the love affair with the American car.
1:20:54
It was you got one car that was an expression of everything you needed.
1:21:00
So maybe four doors but also some power and uh and a supercharged V8.
1:21:06
But now the the standard like pod that just takes you to work is so bland and standard that maybe there's room for a second car that is just completely on the other side of the barbell. >> Yeah.
1:21:21
Uh, and I think for us, I mean, there's a lot of variables here to like how we think about this.
1:21:24
And a large part of this is like how do you, >> you know, almost like ball on a budget.
1:21:29
Like our car, like our cars are like our fashion and they reflect who we are.
1:21:31
But today, if you want to buy a new car, that's cool.
1:21:36
That's out of reach for the majority of people.
1:21:38
And so that's part of what we're trying to provide here and make it, you know, from design, but also like add a lot of function that supports kind of the lifestyles that we live today cuz like we are living closer to home, you know, today.
1:21:49
And so it's I think that's a large impact as well.
1:21:53
>> Do do you think this can slot in because $15,000 estimated MSRP for four seats.
1:22:00
Top speed 25 miles an hour, 100 miles of range per charge.
1:22:03
>> I'm going to test the top speed, [laughter] too.
1:22:08
>> I'll I'll be the one to decide what the top speed of the chip is.
1:22:11
>> [laughter] >> I mean that does feel like it would be I if you are truly uh a budget conscious buyer who's looking for a commuter 15,000 you'd go with like used Honda Civic instead of this but I is there something where the math actually does work out with more charging places where this does become a commuter because 25 miles an hour is just like too slow for anyone who's hopping on the freeway for a daily commute. Right. >> Sure. But we're in LA, right?
1:22:36
If you know we've driven this thing, [laughter] >> you know, like we sad, but that is like the future.
1:22:41
Like the traffic's so bad.
1:22:43
Yeah, you really do go 25 miles an hour a lot.
1:22:46
>> Well, he's I think he's just saying like you can a like very easily in LA, you can just >> stay off of freeways. Sure.
1:22:51
And it's not even necessarily slower of [laughter] >> No, no, that's right. >> Well, yeah. And that's the thing.
1:22:56
It's like if you're, you know, it's 5:30 on a Wednesday, right?
1:23:00
and you're coming from downtown back to Venice, you know, like you can be in a car that can do 0 to 60 in 2.
1:23:07
5 seconds sitting on the 10, but >> you're still going to get there in the same amount of time.
1:23:11
It's going to be a lot >> such a funny being on the you're like betting that there's going to be wall to-all traffic and then you get your chip out on the freeway and you're like whoa like >> yeah [laughter] >> a lot less traffic than I was expecting.
1:23:22
>> Forgot it was a World Cup and there's no one on the road.
1:23:25
>> But yeah, for us like it's like the ICP that we're really focused on is like I built this for myself.
1:23:28
Like I like to say that like golf carts like escaped golf communities during the pandemic and the growth area has been like young families in Sunb Belt regions.
1:23:37
And so for me >> I live in Miami.
1:23:39
I live in Edgewater basically downtown area.
1:23:42
I'm not going to put my kids into a golf cart. It's not safe. But I like the idea.
1:23:44
This is built to to facilitate that.
1:23:47
And so that's kind of where we're starting in terms of the function, the price point. >> Yeah.
1:23:52
Like the golf cart companies have been so asleep at the wheel.
1:23:54
Like they like when it comes to customization, it's like, "Oh, you want to customize your cart?
1:24:01
You want to order this cart?"
1:24:02
And it's like >> you have one thing that you can decide and it's the color and there's like six options, right?
1:24:07
And you can't even you can't really change much of anything.
1:24:11
And I and I went down I was excited to see you guys come up and and uh and Amble and some of these other companies because I was like I've just talked to all these legacy manufacturers and they clearly don't care to try to innovate or try to allow this like specialization customization.
1:24:30
>> And for a car like this which is like this like weekend, >> you know, this like weekend vehicle, >> you want it to be like really expressive and fun cuz you know you're not thinking I'm gonna just be like driving to the office and parking and coming back.
1:24:43
It's like it is the place that you want to express yourself.
1:24:48
>> Paul Graham had this back and forth with uh the creator of friend Aby Shiffman who's working on an AI device and uh the question was how do you counterposition against Apple?
1:24:58
If you come up with a new electronic device, a consumer electronic device, uh Apple's going to do what they did to Pebble with the Apple Watch where they launched something with the Apple design language.
1:25:08
And uh and Paul Graham's advice was uh do something so bold with your design and your aesthetic that Apple can't copy you.
1:25:16
And this feels like a little bit of this.
1:25:19
This feels like very antithetical to what other car companies are doing such that you could not be fast followed even if the technology is on the same supply chain loosely.
1:25:29
Uh this would be such a brand change for most car companies they couldn't jump in. Is that conscious? Is that accidental?
1:25:37
What's the thought between behind all of the customization? >> I don't know.
1:25:40
I think Ferrari might have knocked [laughter] with the luch a little bit.
1:25:44
They [clears throat] might have gotten a little inspired with the luch been like, "Hey, Chip looks pretty good.
1:25:48
We should make a No, it's it's uh >> you're going to chop the top on that thing anyway. [laughter] >> Yeah.
1:25:54
I mean, I look I think uh Apple tried. They missed. >> Oh, yeah. The car, >> right? They missed.
1:26:01
>> No, they're coming back, right?
1:26:01
Aren't they announcing a a 40 and then and then they're also launching like a livery for like a hyper car or like a lemon car? Doesn't count. >> Yeah.
1:26:12
And you had that and like you know Ford had a product in this category like 25 years ago.
1:26:17
25 years ago. Ford think there's one that like actually like is around Venice all the time still and like but you know these guys are like you look at all of these companies and like they're all tied to products I think that are huge money makers but like create problems for innovation there right for them and so this is an area where it'll be like
1:26:35
very hard for them to come in kind of come in and innovate and think about it and you have to approach engineering differently you have to approach sales differently and marketing like we're like frankly like in a lot of ways I think of us more like a sneaker and culture company than I do about like a car company in the way that we are selling, marketing, engaging our community, etc. And I think that's going
1:26:53
And I think that's going to be really hard for anybody of the certainly any of the incumbents to do uh today. >> For sure. >> Yeah.
1:27:00
>> I feel we go check it out.
1:27:02
>> Yeah, we got to go check it out.
1:27:02
I Well, Tyler, what was that car that I was showing you earlier today? Uh the 1991.
1:27:09
We got to pull that up at some point, but I want your reaction to that car because it's a it's [laughter] a fantastic one.
1:27:13
But let's go take a look at the the actual vehicle.
1:27:15
You brought it here today. Let's go see. >> Let's do it.
1:27:18
>> Do we have everything set up? Are we good to go? >> You got the camera.
1:27:21
Okay, we're gonna we're gonna switch over so we can go take a a tour of a real chip motor.
1:27:23
And you got me on the lav.
1:27:26
Thank you for coming along with us, Jordy. Want to hop up? Uh take us through it. Where where we going? >> Right out here. >> Let's see. Outside the Ultra Dome.
1:27:38
Second car review we've done. >> We are. >> Whoa. Here we go.
1:27:40
Wait, it's it's driving itself. There we go. >> What's up, Chip? I ship. >> Look at this thing. >> Hey, Jordy. Hey, John. >> This is amazing. >> See it?
1:27:52
>> It's a lot taller than I thought it would be. Wow. >> Yeah.
1:27:55
It's like golf carts are actually really tall.
1:27:57
So, like the typical golf cart that people have um is actually like taller than every single trim F-150. Sure.
1:28:03
>> And so, what happens here is there's a couple things.
1:28:04
So, you actually want the deck here and your safety structure to be uh tall because you need to interact with trucks on the road.
1:28:10
But also, while this looks big, it's a very efficiently packaged size. It's 4T 11T 4T 11 wide.
1:28:18
It's about 30 and 1/2 ft long.
1:28:18
And we've designed this, you'll notice, like you're sitting like a dining room table, basically, right?
1:28:22
You're not going to be in this thing typically for more than 45 minutes.
1:28:25
So, we want to create something that's really comfortable and that's going to actually have a ton of space.
1:28:29
And so, actually, in production here, we're moving the second row back a bit.
1:28:34
And everything is going to enable, you know, for me, I got I still have two kids in rearfacing car seats that fit in here well.
1:28:38
And so it the design exercise like started from like the inside out.
1:28:43
There's a boxiness to it that's necessary because for us like function does like drive form. Yeah.
1:28:49
>> Um and we also like leaned into it because I don't want people to look at this and think that it's a car that can go 60 mph, right?
1:28:55
And so the funkiness of something that we've embraced >> and that feels to me out of the Pixar universe. >> Yeah.
1:29:03
>> Is that that was intentional? >> Yeah.
1:29:04
Yeah, for me, I mean, I grew up going to Disney World and like I really like I grew up at like the world of tomorrow and I love kind of the future that the Jetson's created and we've leaned into like a little bit of this kind of retro kind of futuristic aesthetic cuz I want to see this positive vision of the future come true.
1:29:22
>> It feels increasingly like we're maybe headed toward a Bladeunner future and that's not what I want to see. >> Yeah. No, I like that. I like that.
1:29:27
Uh, what was the process for actually building this one?
1:29:30
Because obviously this is sort of handbuilt at this point.
1:29:35
What what how much of the supply chain are you building on something as a demo unit?
1:29:38
Are you using other other something else as a platform?
1:29:40
What like I imagine that like you know you don't have your own leather tannery yet?
1:29:44
But yes, what uh what how did this come together?
1:29:49
How long did it take to build? Who built it?
1:29:50
I'm curious about this process.
1:29:52
>> This this you know uh prototype has been built over a little like over the last 18 months and tinker with and optimized a lot.
1:29:57
And so we actually uh imported a small like Chinese EV >> that we wanted to learn from and built on top of tore it down and like end up rebuilding. >> Distilled it. >> Yeah. Distilled it. Exactly.
1:30:07
Tore it down to the chassis.
1:30:09
Ended up replacing like the entire drivetrain, the battery, the whole thing.
1:30:12
And so like it's kind of over time most of that like disappeared. Yeah.
1:30:15
And they allowed us to kind of learn a lot from I mean frankly they've been doing these small EVs for a long time >> and that was really really good for us.
1:30:24
And so yeah, that that kind of exploration uh has gone on for 18 months and now we should have um production intent units in hand in the next like four months or so.
1:30:33
>> And then there are manufacturers for like these types of bench seats that you can go to at this point and pull those together.
1:30:38
>> So actually our VP of vehicle engineering uh came to us from Canoe sector there, but he uh thankfully started his career um in uh seating and restraints.
1:30:45
And so he's like and by the way >> in a lot of ways seating is one of the harder kind of industrial design problems for this.
1:30:51
like there's so much nuance to doing it well and there's a lot that gets improved from here and so we're having actually like optional heating and cooling in here too.
1:30:58
There's also like optional HVAC and so that's a huge a huge part of our focus.
1:31:03
>> Wait, you'll have a covered version of it as well. >> Yep. Yeah.
1:31:06
We have a soft top that it will come with. We have hard doors.
1:31:07
We have an enclosure here.
1:31:09
We have HVAC as all as an accessory.
1:31:11
But like >> it's, you know, even if you're going to be operating this in a cold place, you know, like we took this through Aspen and people absolutely loved it.
1:31:18
Or if you're in Seattle, it's raining.
1:31:20
Like if it's a nice day, you should be able to top off.
1:31:23
So our designs, we'd like to say >> driving this home from dinner in a winter storm would be electric.
1:31:28
[laughter] >> Well, >> well, if you're going to do if you're going to make a mountain version, you got to get chains, I guess. >> Yep.
1:31:33
Well, it's all-wheel drive.
1:31:33
Um, we use four in wheel motors as well, so it has a lot of torque, so like it has no issue uh in the snow. >> Crazy. >> Yeah. >> Interesting. >> Very cool. >> Interesting. >> Very cool. >> Very, very cool. I want [snorts] one.
1:31:48
>> Yeah, >> I can make that happen.
1:31:48
What is this track back here for? >> This is Elra.
1:31:52
So, this is an option here.
1:31:54
This is a standard kind of accessory you'll see in truck beds. Okay.
1:31:56
Um, this is actually also the same that they use to like uh hold down airplane seats there.
1:32:00
So, this is an accessory.
1:32:01
You can do tie downs and things like that.
1:32:03
Um, we have uh so these seats actually fold down into a truck bed too so you can use it.
1:32:08
You can put plywood and so we designed that way.
1:32:12
So, like the thing is people like end up wanting to buy this kind of vehicle cuz it's like the ideal vehicle to go to the beach.
1:32:17
But what ends up happening and you've seen kind of this behavior is like they're like, "Oh, this is functional."
1:32:21
They'll go pick up the groceries. They'll go to Costco.
1:32:22
They'll take the kids to school.
1:32:24
And we want to take that kind of like feeling of a vehicle that really empowers you and feels like very light and turn up to 11.
1:32:31
And so it's a Swiss Army knife that you can do and you can pick and choose what you want.
1:32:34
You know, >> if you're a surfer, you can have your surfboard rack here.
1:32:36
We'll have like um a hand shower for like uh uh getting sand off and just go heavily into that accessory >> ecosystem. Yeah, that's cool.
1:32:44
That's a great way to differentiate.
1:32:46
What what does it take to keep this uh thing street legal?
1:32:49
It feels like right on the fringe, right on the edge.
1:32:52
You have mirrors but no doors.
1:32:53
Like what uh what else is like the bare minimum to make sure that you're always street legal? >> Yeah.
1:32:59
So the category that we're currently operating in is called a low speed vehicle.
1:33:02
That's what a street legal golf cart is. It's FMVSS 500. Okay.
1:33:06
>> Uh you have to uh >> and that's because of the top You have to cap the top speed. >> Top speed. Yep.
1:33:10
And you can uh ride on roads 35 miles per hour and under.
1:33:13
So you can ride on, you know, basically every surface road here in Los Angeles you can go on.
1:33:19
>> Uh, and then yeah, you have to have seat belts, you have to follow lighting requirements, you have to have a backup camera and things like that.
1:33:22
But frankly, like we actually think that the category is like severely underregulated.
1:33:27
Like golf carts are death traps and there's a lot of like really really bad stories that you hear.
1:33:32
>> And for us like we're doing a lot to not only, you know, exceed but push the boundaries here.
1:33:37
And so for us, we're doing designing this for a crash at like the appropriate uh speed that we're operating at.
1:33:44
We're putting in uh features that we're going to be deploying uh for active safety, leveraging the cameras and everything else we have in there, too.
1:33:51
So >> underregulated going to be open up the Chip Washington office soon and pushing for uh pushing for >> total complete lockdown.
1:33:58
Uh so uh this is basically a oneonone. Uh is it street legal?
1:34:05
Did you have to tow it here?
1:34:05
Can you get something like this approved provisionally for a demo drive so that you can test it on streets or is this something that uh you have to go through a whole process and they all have to be street legal before? >> Yeah.
1:34:17
No, this is street legal and we've registered it. Yeah.
1:34:18
There's like a custom build there that we've been able to do. Uh yeah.
1:34:21
Uh and we we typically tow it when we come from like West LA to here. Just we can drive it.
1:34:27
>> But uh >> I don't like to think about how much this vehicle is worth because we can't get insured for the value [laughter] as a startup with a with a prototype. >> Yeah.
1:34:35
you will now find an underwriter.
1:34:37
So, yeah, we take good care of it. >> I love it. I love it. Thank you so much.
1:34:40
>> I mean, it's impressive how solid it feels even as a prototype.
1:34:42
Like, it feels like ready to >> ready to ship.
1:34:47
>> Well, we'd love to get you guys, you know, later.
1:34:48
We can take it for a drive. >> Can't wait. >> Absolutely. Thanks for coming.
1:34:52
>> Is there anything we can see in here?
1:34:52
Is this uh open or >> uh not right now here?
1:34:55
This the party in the frunk, but we have uh a little bit of of wiring we've got clean up there right now.
1:35:01
But yeah, but yeah, that's where you'll see the TV in the frunk here. Yeah.
1:35:04
>> And then you has going to have a huge space you're going to fit >> miniaturize stuff. Exactly.
1:35:10
>> And we have um you know my goal is I got I need to have a double stroller that will fit in there that I can keep in here at all times. >> Yeah. >> Very cool. No, I love it. I love it. Well, thank you so much. >> Thank you. >> Uh Jordan. >> No, this is amazing. >> Yeah. >> Awesome progress.
1:35:24
>> Thank you so much for showing to us. >> Appreciate it. Yeah.
1:35:25
Thanks for coming back in the show. >> Have a great day. >> Cheers, guys. >> Very cool. >> See you. Goodbye.
1:35:36
>> Ah, friendly little guy. >> Friendly. >> Back to the show.
1:35:46
We have a couple more guests coming by.
1:35:48
Tyler, did you find the car that I was pulling I was talking about yesterday? Can we can we send that?
1:35:52
Uh, it also looks >> the Nissan Figaro.
1:35:55
>> The Nissan Figar Figaro, right? >> Uh, Nissan Figuro.
1:35:58
Can we pull up a picture of that?
1:36:01
Uh, I like the way this one looks.
1:36:03
And this is just like for sale on Cars and Bids right now.
1:36:04
This old thing, uh, also looks a little bit like a what a cool vehicle.
1:36:08
It's so I'm so glad that uh, consumers are getting options because like wildly different design decisions than Amble, which obviously launched right at the same time.
1:36:22
>> Amble's going for like the very low tech route, like the most simple >> possible vehicle.
1:36:27
like they're not even really selling I think a screen in it. >> You like that? >> Um I like that. I love that >> Figuro. >> I love it.
1:36:36
>> Um whereas Chip is going for really creating like a consumer electronic product. Yeah. In many ways.
1:36:44
>> Tyler, do you want to send uh a link to the car that you were looking at picking up earlier?
1:36:48
I think it was a little bit of an older car.
1:36:50
I want to get Jord's review uh of whether or not you should pull the trigger on this car.
1:36:55
Have you ever old have you ever owned an old car? >> Not since uh college. >> Cuz Yeah. Uh what do they call it? Vintage or retro? I don't know.
1:37:07
You go further back cuz Yeah. CL.
1:37:10
It's really a classic car. >> Yeah.
1:37:13
So if we can pull this up.
1:37:13
This is from uh early 20th century 1922 uh Chevrolet. >> Oh. Oh, it's pre-war.
1:37:21
I thought you were going post war.
1:37:24
>> Uh there's a few options.
1:37:25
>> Tyler's thinking about getting that. Whoa, whoa, whoa.
1:37:28
>> Don't you think this is >> I mean, but why not just go for something horserawn?
1:37:33
>> Like, if you're going to go this far back, why not go 20 years prior and go horserawn? Who would have thought?
1:37:37
This car would be put out of business by horses because yeah, if you're going to go a horse is less maintenance than this thing, it's over for the What is this?
1:37:48
Model A, Model T, something like that.
1:37:50
>> Well, it's not Ford, so >> Oh, it's not Ford. Okay. >> Chevrolet.
1:37:52
an 490 Touring is what it's called. >> Touring.
1:37:57
>> I mean, they kind of nailed the design. >> It's beautiful.
1:38:00
>> They made the perfect car and then ever since then, we've been trying to get back to this. >> Yeah.
1:38:04
I think it's wildly illegal to design a car like this.
1:38:07
I don't think you could even if you modernized everything. >> Yeah. We don't even know how. >> We don't know how.
1:38:12
Uh but we do know how to tell you about MongoDB.
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What's the only thing faster than the AI market?
1:38:18
Your business on MongoDB. Don't just build AI.
1:38:20
own the data platform that powers it.
1:38:23
Um, Adam Hunt, researcher at Cambridge University, has a PhD in evolutionary psych psychiatry.
1:38:32
He said he's recently flipped from being bullish to bearish about AI.
1:38:34
He says he's updating his bearishness to be more solidly bearish.
1:38:39
Early thoughts uh, and his reasoning laid out here, the whole it turns out if you keep training and scaling the models more, they develop broad new capabilities and lots of domains thesis was wrong. Sorry, Demis.
1:38:52
Uh, the recent batch of models haven't gotten more general.
1:38:53
They've gotten less general.
1:38:55
This is the most obvious fact that their language outputs uh have gotten much worse in comparison to EGO3.
1:39:02
If they were gaining generalist cap capacities, we would expect them to be describing their work in ever more graceful and comprehensive pros.
1:39:09
And I don't know if that's that accurate.
1:39:12
I mean you hear about like clawudish and like the little languages that emerge from the models to be more token consider uh considerate and so there there is an evolution of language there but I I sort of take his points that uh it feels like it feels very much like the spikes are getting spikier and and if you scroll down you can pull up this chart.
1:39:34
So Thomas Puero had put out the this mainstream AGI thesis this idea that there's uh spiky intelligence.
1:39:40
It starts if you zoom in on the top left there, you'll see the the circle where there's tasks that AI can do.
1:39:46
And a human is better at every single task.
1:39:52
Then the AI is helping me in some tasks.
1:39:54
Means that there's these little spikes where the AI is is maybe 80% as good as you.
1:40:00
So it's somewhat helpful, but there's other areas where it's useless.
1:40:03
Then all of a sudden you scroll over and the AI has a jagged frontier.
1:40:05
Sometimes it's amazing, sometimes it's dumb.
1:40:07
And then the final stage is wow, the AI is unbelievably intelligent, but for some reason it fails at X.
1:40:15
And then AGI is when it's still spiky, but every possible point on that blurry blob is beyond the human capabilities.
1:40:23
And so it is generally intelligent even while remaining spiky.
1:40:28
Now if you scroll down, uh this individual has a different story that he is playing out.
1:40:34
AI is a fun toy that is helping me do some tasks. has a jagged frontier.
1:40:39
But then if you go over, he's saying you're going to get crazy crazy spikes while the actual uh the actual frontier broadly sort of stays within that human circle.
1:40:50
And then at the final stage, you have this like extreme strength in a few domains like coding and math, but it's weaker in many other areas.
1:40:58
And he claims that uh the through the process of of optimizing for coding and cyber security in these specific business use cases, you might actually shrink the broad capabilities.
1:41:10
But uh Tyler over there thinks he knows better than the PhD in evolutionary psychiatry from uh Cambridge University.
1:41:18
No, we were debating this earlier.
1:41:18
Uh but give me your push back.
1:41:20
Uh because you you think that this is maybe maybe too soon to call this or not not exactly.
1:41:25
I I'm not saying that it's like not correct, but like I think if we want to like make models really good at at language or common sense or social reasoning, like it's it seems pretty clear to me that like right now we could do that if we wanted. Yeah.
1:41:38
>> Like all of the the recent advancements are because like >> we like want a really good coding model so we can make the model like really good at coding. Yes.
1:41:45
>> And it's not clear that like >> it's impossible to make lang like Yeah, maybe it's true that um the methods we're using right now to make models better don't apply like equally to all kind of types of capabilities.
1:41:58
>> But it like there's a reason that like the models aren't really good at social reasoning right now.
1:42:02
It's because like it seems like social reasoning is not that valuable for models.
1:42:06
[laughter] It >> just even even writing it's like look at some of the most iconic like exchanges in business history.
1:42:21
>> You're never even like never like, "Oh, well, when Steve emailed the Adobe CEO, his pros wasn't absolutely electric."
1:42:28
It was just like, "What did it actually say?"
1:42:33
And so, I think it's possible that like >> incredible writing >> just isn't valuable enough to >> Yeah.
1:42:42
I mean I so so I agree with you that uh that there's a world where like every task needs to be hill climbed.
1:42:48
Uh there's some debate on the timeline today about uh chess bench.
1:42:52
So Gary Marcus has taken a little bit of a victory lap saying agi smarter than the smartest humans.
1:43:00
my ass says car uh Kasparov peak rating uh 2851 could probably probably could have crushed the best commercial language models in chess when he was 7 years old.
1:43:11
And so this graph of chessbench shows that uh GPT 5. 5, Gemini 3.
1:43:16
1 Pro preview are all around just north of a thousand ELO uh which is still impressive.
1:43:23
It's crazy, but uh it's not uh by any means superhuman.
1:43:29
Uh and um but but like every time someone points out something where it's like the models are bad at this, it does seem like there's a very quick cycle of like let's make them good at that. >> Yeah.
1:43:42
Also like uh I think it was Amjad that was talking about this.
1:43:44
He basically took an LM and he said like help me make a chessbot and then it was like became superhuman.
1:43:51
>> So like if the model can just do the thing like yeah maybe it's is it the model doing it or is it the model writing code that then does the thing?
1:43:58
>> It's kind of the same thing. Yeah. Yeah.
1:44:00
I mean, at a certain point >> using tools to >> Well, then at a certain point, a really good model would just be like, I'm going to go download Stockfish and just run the actual chess engine.
1:44:06
Like, I don't need >> Yeah.
1:44:09
I mean, that seems fine to me.
1:44:09
I I don't >> I just think that when people say the model is generally intelligent, they're hoping that uh it just like a natural >> like they're implying that chess is like indicative of some other cognitive ability, right?
1:44:22
Because clearly the chess is not the actual thing that matters because the chess can just download Stockfish. >> Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. Um, anyway, fun stuff.
1:44:28
Let me tell you about Codeex.
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1:44:44
>> I really like the dog one. It's great.
1:44:46
Anyway, we've been keeping Stanley Tank from Door Dash waiting for far too long.
1:44:50
He's the co-founder and chief product officer.
1:44:52
Stanley, welcome back to the show. How are you doing?
1:44:55
>> Hey, how are you doing, Jordy?
1:44:55
Good to >> great to see you. >> Yeah, I can see it.
1:44:59
>> I want to get the update.
1:44:59
I want to get the news on a big day.
1:45:01
>> I sort of I I also want to know your take on this idea.
1:45:03
I don't know if you were listening, but uh this idea that LLMs and AI models are so incredible and yet they're underperforming at chess on this chess bench.
1:45:12
Uh how are you what what is your overall frame for thinking about progress in AI, the intelligence, the spikyness of these models?
1:45:20
because I imagine that that flows through what you will do with a harness or with a new initiative and what you will just wait for the model to naturally get better at.
1:45:32
>> Yeah, I mean I think I feel like we're in going through one of the most exciting phases in in in kind of the tech industry.
1:45:38
I think AI is going to be huge.
1:45:40
I think the models are only going to keep getting better and better.
1:45:42
Uh, I mean I I spent a lot of time thinking through how do you apply AI not just in the LM world but seeing all the stuff that's coming out of the AI LM world and bring that to the physical world. >> Yeah.
1:45:54
>> Uh and I think that's probably going to be the next frontier. >> Yeah.
1:45:58
>> Uh like robotics physical AI drones etc.
1:46:02
And and honestly like a lot of the things you're the reason why you're seeing like the Whimos that are happening the dot robots at Door Dash that we announced last year the drone a lot of these it's it's it's all part of the same revolution.
1:46:13
It's it's these AI models getting better and better and and the moment you you sort of flip from kind of this classical heruristics approach to now this AI ML learned approach that's when all these robotics started working too.
1:46:28
And it so I I think it's things are just going to get keep getting better and better.
1:46:33
>> So >> I think what you see now is probably the dumbest version of what you ever see. >> Yeah.
1:46:37
So give us the overview of DA Door Dash Air and then I want to know how AI is accelerating the deployment of that program, how it's integrated into the actual vehicles and the drones and the business broadly.
1:46:49
But just just set the table for us on Door Dash. >> Yeah.
1:46:52
Well, we're really excited to announce uh Door Dash Air today.
1:46:54
It's it's it's our in-house uh drone delivery program.
1:47:00
Uh it's the same team that's built behind Door Dash Dot.
1:47:02
So, it's built as part of our Door Dash Labs group.
1:47:05
Uh and I think the the big milestone we we we announced today is that we uh officially got our uh FAA part one 35 certification.
1:47:13
So, essentially it's a it's our air carrier certification.
1:47:18
It's the same certification that actually all the whenever you charter a corporate jet, you have to get a part 135.
1:47:23
Uh and and and we are and and with that it means we are now officially legal to do drone deliveries commercially in the US.
1:47:32
We're the eighth uh company to get the part 135 for drone delivery.
1:47:39
So we're really excited to bring drone deliveries to the Door Dash marketplace.
1:47:43
Yeah, it it this feels AI accelerated because if if we were talking five years ago, eight years ago, 10 years ago, and like the discussion was around launching sidewalk robots or drones, it the ore would be very important there, I imagine.
1:48:04
And [laughter] it feels like this year it flipped to and very quickly.
1:48:07
And is that because the team is accelerated with uh with coding agents and AI or is it just that the opportunity is so big and your company's bigger that you can really I know it's one team but I imagine the team can be very big now.
1:48:21
Uh but what's actually enabled you to move so quickly here?
1:48:26
>> Yeah, I think it's a combination of a bunch of things all coming together.
1:48:28
I think certainly the AI piece, the models are getting better and better.
1:48:33
are getting better and better. uh things that weren't possible five years ago all of a sudden now the the the dot robots can can can now handle it drones can do it uh I think the second is hardware as well just hardware getting better and better and this investment I mean
1:48:49
because of the AI revolution there's so much money now being invested in things like compute like you know like again like >> 5 8 years ago like we didn't have things like like the Nvidia Thor chips uh and things that can actually run the the these these powerful AI models. Uh it's
1:49:03
Uh it's a lot of investment going behind that.
1:49:07
And obviously now with with um robotics and physical AI being a thing like a lot of investment going behind the the hardware itself as well like the the drones, the components, the supply chain.
1:49:18
Um and and then last last piece of course is the operational piece as well like uh obviously we we've actually been you know we we started labs almost 8 years ago.
1:49:28
It took us a while to just even figure out the operational piece.
1:49:32
And I think that's the other big thing a lot of people um don't realize is with something like drone deliveries.
1:49:37
It's it's not just putting a aircraft out there.
1:49:41
A lot of what we spent the past few years working on is also thinking through what does the endto-end uh stack the endto-end infrastructure looks like?
1:49:51
Like how does this how does a drone actually plug in to the Door Dash network?
1:49:56
like what what does the loading infrastructure at a merchant look like?
1:49:59
How does a merchant handoff look like?
1:50:00
How do you how do you route a drone order, a dot robot versus a human dasher?
1:50:05
Uh how do you how do you even know if an order is drone eligible or not?
1:50:09
Like how do you build so so we have to build what do we have to build a device?
1:50:12
It's called smart scale where we give out to these merchants where you have to weigh the device so that you know it's actually you know there's there's weight limitations on these drones that it's actually a drone eligible order.
1:50:22
So we have to build all that.
1:50:24
I mean a drone is a a drone itself is not particularly useful if it's not connected to our marketplace if it's not connected to our customer to our merchant uh and and we spend a lot of time working on those.
1:50:36
So I think it's it's it's you got to do all of the above.
1:50:39
I think it's a confluence of a lot of these things all coming together that's which we feel like is which makes it the kind of the perfect moment to do uh Door Dash air.
1:50:47
So there's a lot of AI, I imagine, accelerating the just the development of the SAS products that you need to create the ecosystem, actually run the drone program.
1:50:58
Then there's probably some AI assisted hardware development, everything from procurement, sourcing, parts, uh the supply chain.
1:51:06
Um, but then what does the AI actually look like on the drone?
1:51:08
I you can't probably bring an NVL72 with you. So what is that?
1:51:13
What does that look like?
1:51:15
what does the uh the autonomy stack look like on a modern drone these days?
1:51:21
Yeah, I mean we we we we we'll have more to share about the drone itself, but I mean you can imagine it's just even even things like uh like how does a drone like like I think I think like thinking through like like for example the pickup experience or the merchant like how does a drone actually the way it it docks at a drive-thru standalone store is very different than a strip mall like is very different than like a rooftop.
1:51:46
like it's like how do you build kind of the the the the perception system to kind of handle these various uh merchant pickup infra?
1:51:56
Again, that's part of going back to like you got to think about the system end to end.
1:51:59
And then on the consumer side, again, it's like there's a lot of like nuances like how do you know like the exact uh coordinate to drop the the the package?
1:52:08
It's not as simple as oh just take the latl long from Google maps and okay that's where you drop it because that might be over someone's like car or or or someone's like building or it might be like wires or etc.
1:52:22
So it's like how do you build the perception system that and then then of course like while it's actually traveling the air like how does you how do you handle deconliction with other other drones?
1:52:31
Um, I mean in in in for example in airlines like the way you do it is like every every airline sort of has this thing called it's called ADSB which is essentially think of it as like it's find my friends but for airplanes.
1:52:44
Um, so I'm a pilot so I actually kind of deal this [clears throat] all all day but with drones you can't have that.
1:52:48
So it's like it's like so what is that what becomes a system to cause to to do aircraft def conflictions?
1:52:54
There's a lot of again there's a lot of nuances that goes into building something like Door Dash Air and and again it's not just getting a drone just to fly.
1:53:02
That's like the easy part.
1:53:03
It's how do you build kind of the end system to actually commercialize drone delivery, manage the fleet, handle pickup, drop off deconliction, uh merchant loading, routing, which areas, what orders are good for drones, etc.
1:53:15
It's it's that whole system and and that's honestly that's probably more of what we've built um as part of Door Dash Air in addition to of course we got to build the aircraft as well to get our FAA part 30 part 135 certification.
1:53:28
Tell me the story of Door Dash's original go to market, your selection of markets because you took a pretty contrarian stance if I remember and then I want to know about uh if you're thinking of applying that same philosophy to the rollout of Door Dash Air.
1:53:50
>> Yeah, I mean I mean even I mean we started Door Dash 13 years ago in Palto.
1:53:55
is literally a a Stanford food delivery project called was called Paul Alto Delivery. com back then.
1:53:58
Eight PDF [clears throat] menus and a Google voice number.
1:54:02
We're delivering car out of our own cars.
1:54:05
Uh you know like like Tony had a Honda Accord.
1:54:08
We were just driving around delivering orange hummus.
1:54:10
Uh so we definitely come a long way but I think the the principle remains the same.
1:54:16
same. It always starts like like I think again this is I think this is a a common trap a lot of these companies make is instead of saying oh like let's just build something cool a cool technology for the sake of it you always have to start with what's the use case what's the customer use case what do these
1:54:33
deliveries look like especially with door dash I think again people kind of have this misconception that like delivery is very nuanced it's not like you know we do over three billion deliveries a day it's not like you just like all three billion all three billion deliveries look different. You don't
1:54:48
You don't just like plop a drug.
1:54:49
But specifically deliver so mindblowing. >> Yeah, it's crazy.
1:54:54
Uh but but specifically uh I I seem to remember I don't know if it was investors or just commentators, but people were saying like uh it is crazy that Door Dash started in a suburb.
1:55:03
Everyone assumed that uh delivery services and like Uber for example would start in like the highest density because it's the lowest distance to go. It worked out.
1:55:13
What is unique about where Door Dash Air you think might be successful?
1:55:18
Because people might say San Francisco, they're techies.
1:55:22
Uh they might say New York, but there's different considerations around tall buildings and regulations like where should we see this flourish early?
1:55:32
Where's where's the last place it's going to go?
1:55:35
>> Yeah, I mean it's I mean in a way it's kind of similar to Door Dash like Door Dash thrived in in the suburbs and I see kind of see the same road map here of drones.
1:55:41
It's like again you start with the use case where the deliveries happening and does this use case fit into our form factor and turns out drones are do really well in suburbs because >> um uh one you can travel you know like it's it's great for deliveries where things are further out where perhaps there's not a straight line you can just get to or maybe more rural areas where it's less desirable for human dashers to take an order.
1:56:05
Um, but and also of course like drones don't have to sit through stop lightss and things like that and and and and then of course single family homes are like and subways are like the perfect use case for dropping off the drone package like right in front of our in your you know front porch or or or your backyard.
1:56:21
So again, it's like um I think you always want to start what the use case is and kind of figure out like okay like these are the deliveries are really good for drone deliveries, but then these are deliveries are really good for our are our dot robots and then the remaining maybe it's a complicated grocery order with like you have to go up steps or highrises.
1:56:41
You still want humans to do that.
1:56:43
So again, it's all about like picking and choosing.
1:56:44
There's no two deliveries across our three billion deliveries that look the same.
1:56:47
And it's all about how do you, >> you know, how do you build kind of this multimodal system, right?
1:56:53
That's kind of the future we we believe in is kind of this multimodal platform.
1:56:58
>> How >> what what does range look like for Door Dash Air over time?
1:57:02
Like if I have a favorite restaurant that's 30 miles away, am I going to be able to get that delivered hot? >> Yeah, maybe one day.
1:57:11
I mean, but so far like like most of our deliveries tend to fall between kind of the three to six miles, maybe up to 10 miles.
1:57:17
And if you can kind of get a, you know, a coffee delivered in under 15 minutes when before it might have taken 45 minutes or an hour like that.
1:57:29
That's like a that that would be a killer use case.
1:57:31
Again, it's like what are the use cases we can unlock that is possible with drones that you couldn't do with someone that's in a car. Those are >> delivered.
1:57:41
You're thinking about ordering French laundry to Malibu.
1:57:44
[laughter] Is that what you're trying to do, Jord?
1:57:48
>> I'm actually looking forward to getting to the 500 mile range, you know. [laughter] >> Exactly. >> Exactly.
1:57:54
>> I want you to break the sound barrier.
1:57:56
What I'm asking for >> over time.
1:57:57
I'm sure you'll get there. Well, congratulations. >> Yeah. Really, really cool.
1:58:00
Thank you so much for taking the time to come chat with us.
1:58:02
Have a great rest of your day. Congratulations. We'll talk to you soon. Cheers. Goodbye.
1:58:06
>> Let me tell you about CrowdStrike. Your business is AI.
1:58:08
Their business is securing it.
1:58:10
Crowd Strike secures AI and stops breaches.
1:58:12
And we got Amjad Masad from Replet, the CEO, the founder. You know him. You love him.
1:58:17
He's been on the show multiple times. And [music] he's back. How you doing? Look at that.
1:58:19
What we got on the on the shirt? Oh, looking good. Thank you. [laughter] Wow. Royalty. That's CL.
1:58:29
That's uh that's vintage. That's vintage.
1:58:33
>> Thank you so much for taking the time to come chat with us. >> My pleasure. Really.
1:58:35
I haven't seen you in a while. >> This is way too long. Yeah.
1:58:37
I mean, we went to your office.
1:58:39
We recorded an episode in your Most people don't know this probably because it was just a blank wall in the background, but uh we recorded an episode in your office and uh we didn't actually get you on the show that day because we were just hanging out.
1:58:49
But I'm so glad that we have you here.
1:58:51
Uh catch us up to speed on what's happening in Replet World, the new uh the new launches, the AI powered creative suite.
1:58:58
Uh and then I have a million other questions to ask you. >> Awesome. Yeah.
1:59:01
So, um a few things are happening.
1:59:04
One is you might have seen we signed this big letter with Nvidia and Microsoft around >> open models.
1:59:11
We're really excited about open models.
1:59:13
Look for two years anthropic was the undisputed king of coding agents >> and and right now actually it's not just uh GPT that's caught up but also the open source models.
1:59:26
Kimmy K3 is an amazing model.
1:59:29
>> It's at maybe quarter the price, sometimes even better.
1:59:32
>> Um, and it's also a fantastic design model.
1:59:36
>> So, we have this new >> What's that?
1:59:38
>> I saw the arena leaderboard.
1:59:38
We were talking to Joe Wisenthal about this an hour ago.
1:59:42
um that that Kim and K3 really outperformed spiky on front end which is we were talking about how it changed the conversation because if it spiked on bioweapon development that would be a different conversation but uh it's if we wanted to spike anywhere front end is probably a good place for it to spike. >> Absolutely. Absolutely.
2:00:02
It's a it generates beautiful aesthetics.
2:00:03
This is the first model that I see that is actually trying to reason about design trying like if you read the traces.
2:00:11
That's the cool thing about open models.
2:00:13
They kind of show you the traces.
2:00:13
Now the closed models don't show you the traces anymore.
2:00:17
>> It thinks about page structure and layout and aesthetics and things like that.
2:00:22
And so replica design for one is the first product on the market that's purely multimodel.
2:00:28
>> We kind of we evalu others are good at animation. how they're good at CSS.
2:00:34
Um, and so we created an environment that brings up the best of these models.
2:00:40
You can also select the model you like.
2:00:42
You want to design purely with Kimmy, go ahead and do that.
2:00:46
>> And so there's no other place on the internet where you could do that.
2:00:48
And and kind of the motivation behind that is, you know, we've been on a now multi-year crusade against slop.
2:00:53
We don't want to be purveyors of slop on the internet, right?
2:00:59
I mean, we're all inundated with tech slop.
2:01:00
I mean, LinkedIn is sort of unusable at this point, but also all the apps kind of look the same >> because I haven't logged in in >> months. Yeah. >> Yeah.
2:01:11
It's It's not worth it, honestly.
2:01:13
Um, and so we're like, okay, how can we make it so that look, we think people largely have taste.
2:01:20
It's hard for them to express how they want designs to look.
2:01:26
And so we came up with this concept we're calling ambient intelligence where you can design by point and click.
2:01:32
And the way that happens is >> you sort of we we we well first of all we give you a mood board. We integrate with mobin.
2:01:40
It's typically a paid service.
2:01:42
We're providing it for free.
2:01:44
>> And so you can find inspirations from around the internet from the best UIUX websites and landing pages.
2:01:48
You can drag and drop them into the canvas.
2:01:50
Then when you click on an artifact on the canvas, it gives you options to continue the design.
2:01:57
It's like, let's design another page.
2:01:58
Let's look at different vibes.
2:02:00
Let's generate different variations.
2:02:03
>> And so I'm someone who I I think I have a good taste.
2:02:05
I know what looks beautiful, but I can't express it.
2:02:07
I can't say, you know, it should be brutal style, whatever.
2:02:12
I don't have the language.
2:02:13
And so by just pointing and clicking, I'm arriving at at really cool designs.
2:02:18
Like I'm working with an architect on our new office.
2:02:19
I I kind of know intuitively what I want my office to look like, but I can't go and Pinterest and search or whatever.
2:02:27
So, I went to Replet, you know, put an initial prompt for things I like.
2:02:32
It created kind of a mood board I like, point to click, point and click.
2:02:35
An hour later, I have something that exactly that I would like.
2:02:39
I would never in a 100 years be able to express it.
2:02:42
>> So, it's it's really designed for non-designers.
2:02:45
That's sometimes you don't sometimes you don't have words for it, but you also just need to see every possible direction and then you can really hone in.
2:02:54
And uh to me that's the uh it's so crazy to me.
2:02:56
I used to go when I was like a teenager, I'd go on the the freelance platforms and I'd do like a $5 project to make a logo and I'd have a bunch of people do it.
2:03:10
I'd spend whatever I'd spend 2530 bucks on it.
2:03:12
And I was so excited to get all these different kind of variations.
2:03:15
And now it's actually as simple as a single prompt.
2:03:18
You can just put in the prompt.
2:03:19
Make me 30 version, you know, don't just make a a logo, make 30 versions of the logo.
2:03:23
So yeah, uh >> it's not even a prompt.
2:03:26
It's it's two clicks on on replet.
2:03:27
And [laughter] we're actually we talk a lot of internally about the postprompting world.
2:03:35
>> Like I think we're entering an a period where prompting is no longer needed.
2:03:41
Some people will still do it, but it's not just in design.
2:03:44
And I'm sure you're kind of following the narrative around loops where you specify a high level intent and then agents prompt other agents. >> Mh.
2:03:56
>> And so this is something we're increasingly focused on because again people are really not good at prompting.
2:04:03
It is like you know we went from coding which is a very low-level kind of task to prompting higher level but it's still somewhat low level from how people think.
2:04:13
The way people think is they they specify an intent like I want to I want my you know sales leads to to get responses in five minutes. >> Sure.
2:04:24
>> I don't want to say I want the routing to be that way and that way agents should be able to figure it out. >> Yeah.
2:04:29
How are you thinking about?
2:04:31
>> John wanted like a large kind of lever like a slot machine to not have to prompt anymore.
2:04:35
Just pull the lever, you know. [laughter] >> Yes.
2:04:40
>> If you could use that to start a new loop, that would be a very satisfying uh user experience.
2:04:45
>> How are you thinking about >> it'll be like these Vegas casinos where all >> Yeah, exactly. Ex [laughter] the game.
2:04:51
Uh how are you thinking about game development?
2:04:53
There's been some very impressive uh web- based games.
2:04:55
there's been some acceleration in what I'm seeing on Steam with little niche games and it feels like that's a place where you're particularly uh just well set up and I feel like a lot of I don't I don't want to characterize the the Replic community too precisely because it's huge, but it feels like there's a lot of folks who uh want to build a business, they go to Reddit.
2:05:19
They want to build a tool, they go to Replet.
2:05:21
Um if they want to build a game, they might be going there, too.
2:05:27
probably already are, but it feels like that's the next thing to really fall, really get polished, really get deployed into the mobile app stores, into Unreal Engine, and there's more harness there and partnerships that I could imagine you creating a really amazing product around.
2:05:44
>> Yeah, I will say last week has been a huge week for AI, for game developments, right?
2:05:51
I mean for a long time we actually spent some time about a year and a half ago building a gamedev stack which still exists in replet but it wasn't very good.
2:06:02
The models were really bad at 3D reasoning. >> Sure.
2:06:05
>> And I think between Kimmy K3 opus 5 now they're starting to actually be good at at 3D.
2:06:12
>> And so it's it's something that we're we're paying attention to.
2:06:14
There's actually already a large uh you know community of people who do a lot of 3D and games things on Replet.
2:06:23
We we recently launched a CAD integration >> so you can like make real physical products and and we actually have some folks in the office that designed something on Replet and actually went and and produced it.
2:06:36
>> And so it's not just games.
2:06:36
I think it'll start affecting robotics.
2:06:38
It'll start affecting kind of physical industrial design.
2:06:43
And so it's a it's a very exciting time and we're we're sort of we're paying attention to that.
2:06:48
>> Uh what's been the biggest source of growth for you this year?
2:06:51
There's a lot of companies that are doing, you know, direct response advertising, influencer marketing, channel partnerships.
2:06:59
There's so many different ways just just SEO, GEO.
2:07:03
What stuck out to you as a particular uh a particularly valuable marketing uh strategy that's grown the platform? We do all of the above.
2:07:13
I I think we have one of the best performing UGC ads right now.
2:07:19
>> Uh I'm sure I don't know if you saw that, but we have like a bunch of um bunch of videos where people there's like one that's really going viral right now where uh where like typically a woman are is getting like an app from Replet like a Replet built app >> uh about like um uh you know asking her out on a date. >> Oh, I have seen this. Yeah. >> Yeah.
2:07:41
25 million views [laughter] and all of that and now a lot of our competitors are copying it.
2:07:45
But >> the biggest source of growth has been enterprise.
2:07:49
Um and >> I think Replet differentiates in many ways but one of the ways we differentiate is because we've been building the platform for a long time.
2:08:02
We we actually have a really deep stack like everything when you buy Replet you get a hosting environment, deployment environment, security agents, you get uh admin controls, you get all this enterprise stuff and we've been growing
2:08:17
really fast in in enterprise because you know Vibe coding has been kind of proven out and now we've went from kind of the consumer excitement that happened last year and now real adoption in enterprise affecting real impact. on how people
2:08:30
on how people actually work.
2:08:33
And the really cool thing is, you know, when we talk to our enterprise customers, it's like this is the most impactful tool more so than like the core works of the world where you're sort of like you're doing the same thing.
2:08:45
You're sitting in Excel or whatever.
2:08:46
It's it's saving you 10 minutes here, 15 minutes there.
2:08:48
U this is actually automating entire um workflows where it's like I used to do this for 20 hours a week.
2:08:58
Now I built an app and I do it for zero hours a week. >> Yeah.
2:09:03
>> And so you can automate entire work and and we have a bunch of products and launches coming up >> around this idea of loops and really automating uh work coming soon and so enterprise has been the largest growing segment for us.
2:09:17
We're still growing consumer proumer and all of that.
2:09:19
Are enterprises asking you to sort of act as a de facto router?
2:09:24
Because because you're model agnostic and you understand the different pros and cons, there's a world where if I have a workforce that's pretty deeply integrated into the replet ecosystem, I could either go to you or maybe even enforce a rule that says, "Hey, for front end, we we're using Kimmy because it's cheaper and and this meets our standards.
2:09:47
So at this company we want >> they're asking for that. >> Okay.
2:09:52
>> And they're asking for that granular control on a user and a group level.
2:09:57
>> So I want my designers to be on Kimmy.
2:09:57
I want my front end to be on that. >> Yeah.
2:10:01
>> Uh they want that deeper controls.
2:10:01
And what we're seeing from enterprise customers is that >> they're saying like look I know the big AI labs are trying to lock me into these big contracts where I'm just using them.
2:10:13
And there's this whole token maxing thing that was happening and everyone was sort of burnt by it and there's like really deep mistrust uh because also a lot of the big AI products um don't put guard rails around their product and so a lot of employees you know you you have instances where employees are spending like one employee could spend like 10 $20,000 >> uh a week or like a month doing that.
2:10:37
Um and so they're asking us for control controls on models, on spend for routing.
2:10:45
Um but but also I think more importantly is um I think the guardrails that we build interrupt.
2:10:53
So when you're doing design, you're in design mode. The agent is a designer.
2:10:59
It doesn't go off veer off and do a lot of random things.
2:11:04
when you're building an app, we have the guardrails around building apps and and even with that model routing, replet is a lot more outcome focused and actually cheaper.
2:11:14
And we see a lot of companies now ripping out um you know, say say Claude, they gave everyone CLA, right?
2:11:23
>> And they're like, "Okay, my engineers are great at it, >> but actually people in legal and finance, they're burning tokens for no reason." >> Yeah.
2:11:30
>> So, let me let me implement Raplet and let them be focused on a certain task. Yeah.
2:11:34
Uh there's a remarkable story in the chat.
2:11:37
Somebody in the chat says that two years ago they were in 50 they were $50,000 in debt.
2:11:41
They would meet business owners at restaurants and build them products in real time with Replet and that got them out of crushing debt.
2:11:48
I'm sure you hear those stories all the time.
2:11:50
Uh what yeah total white pill.
2:11:53
Thank you for your service.
2:11:53
Uh what advice do you have for uh young people who are nervous about uh the job market AI?
2:12:03
How how can they take advantage?
2:12:05
>> Look, look, the the AI narrative has been totally warped.
2:12:06
Like, you know, the the politicians, you know, the just the discussion and debate in our country has been about job loss.
2:12:14
It's been about, you know, spend.
2:12:17
It's been about all stuff.
2:12:19
Stories like this, someone who was $50,000 in debt, discovered droplet and got out of debt and perhaps is making more money than that.
2:12:26
Those stories are not getting told.
2:12:28
And I understand like you know negative headlines get get get more attention.
2:12:33
>> I think there's a per perverse incentive for some of the players in the space to generate the negative headlines because you can create regulations coming out of that and we know the story of regulatory capture that's been happening.
2:12:46
It's a story as old as capitalism, right?
2:12:49
Um and so kind of my advice to people is a kind of a first of all mindset shift.
2:12:55
AI is incredibly empowering.
2:12:58
Look, even for me, you could say, "Oh, it's easy for you to say.
2:13:02
You've been always like a technical programmer guy."
2:13:04
I've never trained a machine learning model.
2:13:06
Now I'm training models with with Replet.
2:13:10
I'm going to replet agent.
2:13:10
I actually trained a chess model that's on its way to become the best chess LLM model.
2:13:17
>> It's actually already beating, you know, state-of-the-art GPT models and and these kind of models.
2:13:21
>> And so I feel huge empowerment.
2:13:21
And and to me it's like there's nothing I could not do.
2:13:27
Like I can I was thinking like this math thing that's happening. I've never done math.
2:13:31
I want to go find some proofs.
2:13:33
[laughter] You know like bio >> conjecture max. >> Yeah. Do you conjecture Max?
2:13:38
Do you know there there's this video where um PDD I guess I guess uh you know he could not be named now but there's this video where um he's um he closes a deal. He's on the phone. He closes a deal.
2:13:51
He he uh he he hangs up the phone.
2:13:53
He's like, "What what can't you do? I can do." And he gets >> Yeah.
2:14:00
It's unfortunately it's unfortunate that he is that is him in the video because it's a great it's a great uh it's a great video. >> It's a great video.
2:14:10
>> It's a great video and I feel the same way with AI.
2:14:12
It's like >> what what's out there?
2:14:14
Let me go let me go do it.
2:14:16
Say the world is your oyster.
2:14:18
>> I think that mindset is important. >> I love it.
2:14:20
Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. for breaking it down.
2:14:22
Congrats awesome to Awesome to see you.
2:14:24
>> Always great seeing you guys. We'll talk to you soon. Goodbye. >> Let me tell you.
2:14:30
>> Someone should use AI to take that video of he who shall not be named and put Amjad in the video. >> That might be worse. I don't know.
2:14:39
[laughter] Let me tell you about the New York Stock Exchange.
2:14:41
Want to change the world?
2:14:44
Raise capital at the New York Stock Exchange. Just do it.
2:14:48
that their soundboard is fantastic.
2:14:52
Today, uh we have Adam Cohen from Weave, the co-founder and CEO, coming on the show with an amazing fundraising news. Adam, how you doing? >> Good. We're in good spirits. We're uh good spirits.
2:15:05
>> Yeah, we we signed with standards, so we're all >> What's behind you? What's behind you?
2:15:09
You got a >> What do you got there?
2:15:12
>> The gongs are going viral.
2:15:13
>> Why don't you guys hit it in the matching gong? >> Yes.
2:15:16
Tell us how much did you raise? Uh we raised 13.
2:15:19
5 million thanks to standing. >> Congratulations. Now, >> all right.
2:15:26
Quick history on the company, >> please.
2:15:30
>> And yeah, then we'll get we can get more into the round and where you're going. >> Yeah.
2:15:34
So, we uh we started this company just under two years ago.
2:15:37
We went through YC at the start of last year.
2:15:40
The idea originally would just measure software engineering.
2:15:42
Um very quickly this turned into measuring AI because that was the you know kind of took over.
2:15:49
>> Um and what we realized ahead of the curve we've always kind of been working with like uh token matchers of the world is figuring out once Opus 474A came out uh people realized they didn't need the best models for every task and specifically for coding.
2:16:01
This is like 80% of AI spend.
2:16:02
So we built the world's best prompt router.
2:16:05
Um it reads your prompt uh and actually shifts it to the right model at the cheapest cost.
2:16:10
And this is what standard's like super excited about and we are starting to uh yeah go crazy with >> uh what who do you sell to?
2:16:17
Do you sell to the CEO, the CFO, the CTO?
2:16:23
>> Yeah, we sell to the CTO.
2:16:23
Uh CFOs, CEOs obviously love us, but like we're only focused on engineering.
2:16:28
We think that's like still the majority of where AI spend is happening.
2:16:31
Um so we're just focused on like every engineering task.
2:16:36
uh as opposed to like yeah a lot of the other routers are trying to do some other things or either app level routing or just code routing. >> Okay.
2:16:43
And then yeah how do you differentiate against other routers? >> Break that down.
2:16:46
App app level routing that's somebody that's integrating a router into their product so that behind the scenes it's just deciding it for the user.
2:16:56
This is more of purely this sort of enterprise focus where teams are doing various tasks or they have agents running and you're sitting uh in between them and the models to run all of those processes as efficiently as possible.
2:17:15
>> Yeah, that's exact like the app level routing for us.
2:17:17
What we're doing is like anybody using cloud code or codeex uh plugs in our router.
2:17:21
It sits directly in their current workflow, adds like next to no latency, um, and it will route to whatever the most costefficient model is.
2:17:29
So, we host all the open source models uh, in the US.
2:17:31
Um, they prompt, it routes to the right spot.
2:17:34
Uh, and they save up to well, some companies up to 80%. >> That's amazing.
2:17:39
Uh, how what is uh, customer acquisition like?
2:17:41
Is this uh, you know, like personto person at the highest level?
2:17:46
you're going after enterprise uh CTOs, so you're uh meeting them, talking to them, or is there like a self-s serve option for like small businesses?
2:17:55
Because it feels like a lot of small businesses, they might be starting to use AI, starting to use coding, but a lot of them are on a $200 plan.
2:18:02
They're getting great value.
2:18:02
They don't really they're not really in the like token maxing is going to, you know, make or break my business this quarter. >> Exactly. Yeah.
2:18:10
So, like all the max plans, people still don't care that much.
2:18:14
Um, we have some startups spending like 5 10k per engineer per month.
2:18:15
We're in that bucket, but like startups still don't care that much.
2:18:19
So, it's mostly like enterprises that we're targeting.
2:18:24
Um, we work with like developer experience or developer productivity teams.
2:18:27
They're kind of owning this now, the like optimization layer. >> Sure. Sure.
2:18:32
>> Is it fair to say that something like 15 minutes could save you up to [laughter] 20% on your token bill? >> Absolutely.
2:18:41
>> What's that talking about?
2:18:41
Is that Geico or something? Yeah, >> sorry. Bad joke. Bad joke.
2:18:44
[laughter] >> Couldn't help myself.
2:18:48
>> Well, so so what is your what does your actual team look like?
2:18:50
Are you building in San Francisco post YC?
2:18:54
>> Ours um it's the only way for for what we're doing.
2:18:56
Um yeah, we're all in person.
2:18:57
Uh six, you know, 996 kind of feel here.
2:19:00
Um seems really fired up.
2:19:03
They all want to join the video, but we we weren't sure how far to uh push this.
2:19:08
>> They could come say they could come say hi if they're if they're hanging out. >> Why not?
2:19:11
But what what what what 99 is not even enough.
2:19:14
You don't you're not even that differentiated if you're doing 996 these days.
2:19:17
I feel like there's an opportunity.
2:19:20
>> There's there's you've got companies that are, you know, putting in seven sometimes eight >> eight days a week. >> Yeah. >> There you go. >> There you go.
2:19:28
>> That's why you have to jump out of a plane to attract talent.
2:19:29
This is uh the best part of the video is we've had like an influx of people um that are interested.
2:19:36
Uh I think just cuz I did my fears of acting was scarier than the uh uh jumping out of a plane. >> Yeah.
2:19:42
I talked to I heard one entrepreneur who said he changed manipulated time.
2:19:44
He has he every day is three days cuz his first day goes from 6:00 a. m. to noon.
2:19:50
His second day goes from noon to 6:00 p. m.
2:19:52
Then he works a third day from 6:00 p. m.
2:19:55
>> Stack that up over over a day. >> Yeah.
2:19:57
He's going to crush you >> or a month. >> Yeah.
2:20:00
>> And he's not crazy for saying you're crazy.
2:20:02
[laughter] Sorry, we're having we're having too much fun.
2:20:06
It feels feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feel feeling like a Friday over here.
2:20:08
[laughter] >> Um what are you where you where you going from here?
2:20:11
You going to keep the team small or you?
2:20:15
>> Yeah, so there's about 16 of us.
2:20:15
Um we are hiring very aggressively.
2:20:18
Uh yeah, we need some like incredible uh engineers and aes to just scale up. Uh we are swamped. Um I feel bad.
2:20:25
our kind of like campaign to our account executive and to our go to market team is a death to to Jerry.
2:20:32
Jerry's our AE and he is uh too busy with too many meetings.
2:20:37
So um we want to make him as tired as possible and now we need a second. >> Yeah.
2:20:41
Is there going to be like longtail demand for fine-tuning of uh of open source models uh from your customer base?
2:20:51
like if they're doing something really routine.
2:20:52
Uh typically that's been the domain of like the Neolabs and I don't know if that's the right term for your company but it feels like you could slide there over time. Is that an ambition? >> Absolutely.
2:21:04
So actually we already have like a a early version of this where you can give feedback uh in the router to the router based on what model you're choosing or what model it chooses.
2:21:12
You just easily pass feedback and it's going to learn from this.
2:21:16
So we do this both as like a company.
2:21:18
We have built in, but now we're exploring what this looks like at a per or basis. >> Yeah.
2:21:23
So if if the company is just printing money, they can be like, when I ask for the weather, I do want you to use the frontier intelligence for that.
2:21:32
No, that's probably the default thing is like, you know, people are just hammering off prompts for everything.
2:21:37
Routing around the obvious solutions is the benefit. Makes a ton of sense. Well, congratulations.
2:21:41
Uh don't break that gong all too soon. You got to warm them up.
2:21:45
We've learned this the hard way.
2:21:47
Every time we we hit our gong, somebody comments and says warm it up. Warm it up. So warm it up.
2:21:52
But so far, >> may the so far so good for us >> ring loud and often for your business.
2:21:58
Good luck and thank you so much for coming on the show to break it down. >> Great to meet you.
2:22:02
>> Have a great rest of your day.
2:22:04
>> Uh let me tell you about Shopify.
2:22:05
Shopify is the commerce platform that grows with your business, lets you sell in seconds online, in store, on mobile, on social, on marketplaces, and now with AI agents.
2:22:11
Uh big news out of the Fed.
2:22:14
Uh the Fed holds rate steady, but three officials voted for a rate increase.
2:22:18
The rate has been unchanged in in this July meeting.
2:22:22
Uh the split shows pressure building inside the central bank to act on inflation two months after chairman Kevin Worsh took over and the Dow skids 1,100 points as investors worry about Fed next steps.
2:22:36
They're thinking that there might be a rate hike in the uh in reaction to inflation.
2:22:41
of course uh somewhat driven by energy prices, oil prices, oil is spiking again and so lots of tricky news for the uh global economy but fortunately the economy chugs on and the economy is strong. So >> I believe in it. >> I believe in it too. Never never black pill.
2:23:00
Dark Patel certainly not black pilling.
2:23:02
Gavin Baker uh quote tweeted Darkh's uh po post that predicted uh lab revenues in the trillions very shortly.
2:23:11
Uh Gavin Baker says, "I see a a series of fairly wild thoughts from Dwarcash.
2:23:14
I thought I was bullish, but even I am not assuming that the price to rent compute continues to go up.
2:23:22
I will say that I am in Silicon Valley this week and Darwash is capturing the zeitgeist.
2:23:26
Netnet public markets would probably be trading differently if they saw the OpenAI, Anthropic, Grock, Cursor, and Open source numbers over the last six weeks because everything is growing even in you.
2:23:40
There's so much horse race around oh open source is going to come and grow and it's like well sometimes open source comes and grows and everything else grows too and that's what we've seen uh throughout the whole deepseek saga when the lab revenues grew a ton even though open source was big.
2:23:52
Uh >> yeah there's a comment here that I think is on the nose >> J capital says timeline is very interesting all private AI companies have their best six weeks while retail AI semis have their worst six weeks.
2:24:04
>> Very very interesting. >> So disconnect there.
2:24:04
Yeah, I mean one of them uh uh SKH Highix uh $64 billion in quarterly profit.
2:24:10
It was a disappointment for chip investors in SKH Highix fell 10% despite record results powered by the AI boom.
2:24:17
The the the profit increase was incredible.
2:24:20
I think they uh the they they grew profit over 500% something like that.
2:24:27
Uh and still the stock traded down because expectations are so high.
2:24:31
Everything's priced to perfection.
2:24:33
Uh, in other news, HBO Max is launching HBO Max shorts for those who don't have the attention span to watch an episode of TV.
2:24:41
Uh, it's a mobile feature designed for users to watch iconic and memorial scenes from the HBO library in a vertical and scrollable feed.
2:24:50
This is already happening on Instagram and Tik Tok.
2:24:51
Uh, you see a lot of movie clips, just great moments, and it actually is great content.
2:24:56
So, I can understand why they're trying to own a piece of that.
2:24:59
>> You got to get the Jeffrey Kzenberg apology formulated. For sure. Yeah, for sure.
2:25:05
Uh but yeah, uh high yield Harry captures it pretty well.
2:25:07
Watching society become too cooked even to watch TV episode.
2:25:11
And this is from Idiocracy, Mike Judges, uh one of his best works, the creator of SI HBO Silicon Valley actually, who will now be available in short form because you will be able to watch short clips from uh from HBO Silicon Valley on HBO Max shorts.
2:25:26
you'll be able to see the uh the I don't know all all the iconic moments from Silicon Valley when they're hanging out on the roof of Google or whatever the Google equivalent is. Gavin Bellson's company.
2:25:41
Anyway, thank you so much for tuning in to TBPN.
2:25:42
We will see you tomorrow at 11 a. m. Pacific.
2:25:45
Leave us five stars on Apple Podcast and Spotify and sign up for our newsletter at tbpn. com. We'll see you tomorrow. >> Love you. >> Goodbye.
2:25:56
>> That's [screaming] the outro. Goodbye.