0:00
[music] I see a large IPO on the horizon.
Search this video
0:08
You're surrounded [music] by journalism.
0:09
Your position [music] overnight success.
0:22
[music] The place of $3,000, [music] [music] right?
0:45
[music] There's misinformation clearing order inbound. Let's just roll.
1:07
>> We are surrounded by journal. Hold your position. [music] >> Come on. Get up. Trust the experts here. Five to we are experts. Founder [music] 5.
1:41
I see multiple journalists on the horizon. Stand by.
1:51
>> [music] >> UAV online. Blaze. Double blaze. Triple blaze. Double kill.
2:15
My country [music] is [music] win team deathmatch. We are experts. Triple blades. That's just wrong. Right.
3:06
[music] Clearing order inbound.
3:17
>> [music] >> We are surrounded by journalists. Hold your position. >> Strike one. >> Strike two.
3:37
Activate golden retriever mode.
3:56
>> Market clearing order inbound. >> Five.
4:17
I see multiple journalists on the horizon. Standby.
4:26
[music] [music] You're watching TVN.
4:34
Today is Monday, August 31st.
4:37
We are live from the TVPN Ultradome, the temple of technology, the fortress of finance, >> the capital of capital.
4:45
>> We are back and we missed you is still with us.
4:48
Let me tell you about ramp. Time is money. Save both.
4:49
Easy to use corporate cards, bill pay, accounting, and a whole lot more. All in one place.
4:55
>> Oh, feels so good to be back.
4:55
Two weeks is a crazy amount of time to be away.
4:57
I don't understand how children do this for weeks or months at a time. >> It's wild. It's wild. It's crazy.
5:07
>> There's a lot of video games.
5:08
>> I was sitting there uh had somebody this morning say, "It feels like uh it must have gone by so fast."
5:14
>> And I and I was thinking, "No, it [laughter] absolutely didn't go by.
5:15
It felt like it felt like two months." Feel like two months. >> We manipulated time. >> Yeah.
5:22
But uh thank you to the Microsoft team, the Activision team.
5:24
They sent us codes for Modern Warfare 4. My review is in. It's fantastic. I love it. It's a really good game. Really polished. And the kill.
5:35
>> Did you revert back at all? No.
5:35
To >> didn't really have the opportunity.
5:37
I I was I was joking about full relapse just gaming from dusk till dawn.
5:41
Um but that is in fact >> I had a relapse not in the cards these days. >> Uh pizza.
5:48
>> I was eating pizza >> almost like twice a day at times.
5:50
Was eating a lot of pizza. >> Surfing a lot. >> That's good. >> A lot of family time.
5:56
Do you think pizza is potentially addictive? >> I do.
6:01
>> You think that there could be a settlement?
6:03
>> I do think I I don't think there could. I think there should.
6:05
>> There should [laughter] be.
6:07
>> I I do wonder like uh because cigarettes it was very cigarettes were very uh scientifically proven to be addictive.
6:14
Like you can give nicotine to a mouse and it will like go and try and get more nicotine.
6:18
Like it's the most cut and dry.
6:20
You can run the experiment with you know any animal in the blood.
6:25
Based on my own personal experience, pizza and surfing fall into that same bucket.
6:30
>> Oh, you give a mouse get barreled. >> Yeah.
6:32
If you give a mouse a cookie, >> you give a mouse a barrel. >> Barrel.
6:37
>> He was going to want a lot more with a lime. Yeah. >> Yeah, for sure.
6:41
>> Um but uh it it will be interesting to see where the addiction stuff goes because when when all this came up, you know, uh the meta social media addiction, I was kind of like give a mouse to scroll.
6:53
>> Like I understand that people were trying [laughter] I don't know.
6:56
Can you get mice or monkeys addicted to reals? Maybe. [laughter] >> I'm sure. Almost certainly.
7:03
>> You think you could get a monkey addicted to Instagram reels?
7:04
[laughter] >> I I think 100%. >> We got 100%.
7:10
>> We're going to find out.
7:11
>> Um, >> we can't get any monkeys cuz they're they're sold out.
7:14
>> No, no, you can get a monkey.
7:14
You just have to pay top dollar. >> Okay.
7:16
They're expensive, but you can you can buy one.
7:19
Um, but uh I do it did seem like it was a it was a tougher cell because it was not a chemically addictive product.
7:27
It was more of a psychological thing. There's a benefit to it.
7:31
There's a free speech element. All very complicated.
7:33
I was not expecting to see a big settlement uh when this first came up years ago.
7:37
Uh I thought it was going to be uh more nickel and dimming little case by case things.
7:43
But in fact, there has been a huge settlement uh by Meta uh two days ago or this was when this was written. This was August 26th.
7:50
Meta announced settlements with attorneys general representing 48 states and the District of Columbia and three US territories.
7:56
So there were only two states that held back.
8:00
I believe it's Texas and New Mexico.
8:02
But um uh over allegations that Facebook and Instagram harmed children and teens.
8:07
So uh this has been boiling up for a while.
8:10
There were smaller settlements. This is the big one.
8:11
And so uh the highlevel numbers here.
8:14
Meta will pay the states 122.
8:17
7 billion dollars over 10 years and it could go up to 18 billion if other platforms join the settlement.
8:27
[laughter] >> It is a size big is a big number.
8:31
>> It is a big number and honestly if you are a state legislator or you care about having your state funded for a variety of things this is good.
8:37
This is a size gong moment for the states because they will be getting this money distributed to them and they can use that to do whatever states do from education to healthcare.
8:46
There's a lot of different things that states can do.
8:47
I know Tyler's pissed because he doesn't like the government getting a dime but [laughter] but uh it is a size moment for them.
8:56
>> I did find a video of a chimpanzeee hitting reels.
8:58
If we can pull this pull this up.
8:59
[laughter] >> Let's pull this up.
9:00
This is uh >> this is key. >> This is important.
9:03
>> This is very >> definitely more important than >> Okay. Yeah, this looks okay.
9:06
Maybe maybe maybe social media is addictive now that I'm seeing this.
9:11
This is uh Yeah, it might be universal if it crosses. Wow.
9:18
>> Using it so intuitively. >> Yep. Yep.
9:20
I mean, that's just good UI design. Come on.
9:22
You got to give the the UX engineer some credit here.
9:24
Uh make it so easy to use that even a monkey could use it.
9:30
That was the prompt for that UX engineer and they delivered. Uh this is Yeah.
9:35
If it crosses if it crosses species barriers, I'm much more likely to agree that something could be addictive.
9:43
Um, [clears throat] but >> well, and here especially, you know, he's looking at other monkeys. >> Oh, okay.
9:51
That's a little I don't know. Yeah. >> No, I know.
9:54
But an algo feed, it's going to naturally start a lot of those videos. >> Yeah. Yeah. Makes sense.
9:59
Anyway, um so uh everyone has been drawing uh analogies to the tobacco industry's master settlement agreement around this because that's the last time there was a huge uh multi-billion tens of billions of dollar settlement between a large organization around addiction and a bunch of states.
10:15
That's what's happened when cigarette companies uh signed the master settlement agreement.
10:19
All the companies agreeing to pay all the states, but the structure was a little bit different and there's some nuance there.
10:27
And so Eric Sufort over at Mobile Dev Memo, friend of the show, says the Souvenator, uh he he was saying this is not necessarily uh the uh he said uh Meta settlement is no big tobacco moment.
10:41
That was his takeaway in mobile dev memo.
10:43
You should go subscribe because this uh post is a paid uh paid post.
10:47
But uh I'll take you through some of the interesting analysis that he put together.
10:50
I was debating with a lawyer friend of mine about this over the weekend and uh and and have some interesting details here.
10:56
So, uh, Eric writes, uh, and the the headline here is that what Meta is going to pay as a percentage of revenue or what the social media industry will pay as a percentage of revenue relative to what the tobacco industry paid as a percentage of revenue is off by almost an order of magnitude.
11:14
So, let's put them in context here.
11:14
So, uh, he says Meta's settlement is comparatively poultry.
11:18
A white paper from the USDA using BLS data estimates that the total US consumer expenditure on tobacco products in 1998 when the master settlement agreement was signed was roughly 57 billion a year.
11:32
57 billion size [laughter] >> uh certainly good if you're a big tobacco shareholder I suppose.
11:40
um anal annualizing the roughly 250 billion in combined tobacco settlement payments over 25 years produces an average of 10 billions per 10 billion per year is what they've been paying.
11:53
And so that was equivalent to 17.
11:55
5% in 1998 grow domestic expenditure.
12:00
So you can think about it as like when tobacco got hit with like you're addictive what did the government say you got to pay?
12:05
They asked for 17 and a half percent.
12:09
>> Very very >> very meaningful. Very very meaningful.
12:12
>> And that's that's off the top, right? >> Yes. Yes. This is revenue.
12:15
>> It's it's not like, hey, you got to give us a percentage of your profits. >> Yes.
12:19
And so it's calculated in a more complicated way.
12:21
It's not exactly a percentage.
12:23
It's on a per pack sold, but it is inflationadjusted.
12:25
And so there's a whole bunch of other mechanics that really have have allowed the master settlement uh agreement to deliver tens of billions of dollars on an ongoing basis.
12:35
Even while now tobacco sales are are are slumping, cigarette sales are declining and so that does create more complex dynamics for the states, but still it's 17.
12:44
5% of the industry's revenue coming to states as effectively an extra tax on top, which I think a lot of people would agree is good because cigarettes are bad, right?
12:53
But um what's going on with Meta and social media?
12:56
So given Meta's full year 2025 US revenue of 75 billion roughly uh per the company's 10K its average annual payment if they pay the full 18 billion because they're paying that over 10 years it's 1. 8 billion. So what is 1. 8 billion of 75 billion? It's 2. 4%. So instead of 17.
13:18
5% >> sorry where are you getting the 75 billion?
13:22
>> 75 billion was their US revenue.
13:24
>> Oh US US globally globally it was like couple hundred. >> Yeah.
13:28
bigger bigger but but you have to comp it to domestic because that's where this is taking effect right so um it would be even lower if you look at overall revenue for which is a good point um but you can think about it as tobacco had to pay 17.
13:39
5% of domestic revenue uh social media 2 and a.
13:42
5% of domestic revenue so not quite order of magnitude but a significant gap significant gap there uh and so um it's important to re reiterate here says Eric Seford over at mobile dev memo that the MS MSA payment the master settlement agreement payment schedule is inflationadjusted and tracks unit sales meta statement uh settlement has no such mechanism.
14:05
So let's say that meta doubles revenue their percentage they'll pay is lower and then let's say inflation kicks in they're still going to be paying you know this $1.
14:14
8 8 billion a year 10 years from now could be could be pennies if if if hyperinflation happens. Who knows? >> Yeah.
14:23
The only reason it felt somewhat significant from a dollar standpoint is because men met Meta is just spending so much money on AI, right? >> Oh, interesting.
14:33
>> Like like I I you can just imagine Zach being like I really wish I could have g given that to Jensen. Right.
14:38
So I had the opposite I had the opposite read which was I saw 18 billion and I was like ah that's like you know a month of AI spend [laughter] for them and I was like ah this is not that much money and then of course it's over 10 years and so when you think about it as uh it's it's uh $1. 8 billion a year.
14:56
So that's a hundred mil a month.
15:00
That's their token budget right now.
15:02
I don't know maybe less [laughter] like it >> over overall it's it's it's uh insignificant but uh when when they are spending more money than they are making Yeah.
15:15
it it hurts a little bit more. >> Yeah.
15:16
So um for sure for sure um so the other issue that came up here that is different from the tobacco master settlement agreement is the question about uh the first amendment the free speech issue.
15:28
So, uh, tobacco, the tobacco industry was restricted from advertising, uh, cigarettes as part of this master settlement agreement.
15:34
And there were there were other cases that led to no more cigarette advertising.
15:40
And of course, that is somewhat infringing on the corporate speech, but that's a lot easier to deal with than consumer speech.
15:46
And meta is in an interesting place because uh the Supreme Court has deemed that social media is a is a critical uh a critical vehicle for citizens to exercise their free speech.
15:58
And so uh like it's very difficult for the government to come in and say we are going to ban social media because it is a vehicle for Americans free speech, individual citizens free speech.
16:07
So even though even though everyone thinks, oh, they're punishing Meta, it would still there would be plenty of uh plenty of American citizens who would say, wait, I I my free speech rights have been infringed upon.
16:18
So it's much harder for the government to come down with some standard traditional regulation.
16:22
And that's why we're in this world of regulation through litigation, which is that Meta's arm has been twisted like they have to pay this and then we'll go into what they're doing uh around actually changing the product for teens and uh and uh underage users.
16:35
um because and they're all doing that because of these lawsuits, not because there's a new law saying you can't do this.
16:43
And a lot of that is like there are plenty of topics that are pretty consensus controversial, things like eating disorders and self harm that people are uncomfortable with and think they don't have a place on social media and yet free speech rights do actually protect those.
17:00
So if you want to talk about your eating disorder like that is your free speech right and Meta can't infringe on that as much as it's very tricky for them to do that basically.
17:09
So um there's also an interesting regulatory capture angle here.
17:13
Um and it's relevant to AI because in AI everyone's talking about regulatory capture as uh as something that the companies want like they want regulation and this is sort of the opposite example.
17:29
So regula regulatory capture or regula like the benefits of regulation usually benefits incumbents and big companies for sort of two reasons.
17:37
One is that typically when the regulation's being written uh the big companies they have lobbyists they have offices in DC.
17:42
They also have uh you know packs and all sorts of different political vehicles to donate to make sure that the regulation gets written in a way that is at least a little bit favorable to them.
17:53
They can just move the needle a little bit in their direction, hone things how they like, right?
17:58
Uh and then second is that once the regulation goes into effect, they have the resources and the actual margin dollars to go and to to go and comply.
18:08
And so if if all of a sudden to set up a new social media website requires age verification, age verification can be expensive.
18:15
Like we have to do it Lucy for everyone that buys nicotine products and it's like a dollar for every checkout.
18:20
And if the average order value is like at one point it was like 50 bucks.
18:24
Like that's like 2% of the top line that's going towards regulation.
18:26
If you're a bigger company, you h you you you have other ways of of massaging that cost basically.
18:32
Uh what's interesting about this is that the social we know the social media companies did not ask for this regulatory capture and yet they are benefiting which is interesting.
18:41
So like Meta stock is pretty flat through all this. It's not existential.
18:47
>> No, it popped on the news, didn't it?
18:49
>> Yeah, because it's a because it's a it's a pretty good outcome for them. It's not that bad.
18:54
Um, and and but also I'm I'm pretty happy about it because it's not that bad of an outcome for parents and kids.
19:00
Like parents want more granular control over what their kids are doing on social media.
19:05
School teachers want more control over what's happening on kids' phones while they're at school.
19:11
There are some schools that do no device policies, but uh but as part of this Meta is rolling out sort of a blanket no notifications during school hours, which I think is just something that people will be happy about.
19:21
So it's like sort of a win-win there.
19:22
What are you laughing at?
19:25
>> I think people will instantly be trained to just check it proactively >> because it's like the dopamine of like, is there going to be a notification or not?
19:34
>> True, true, true, true.
19:34
Yeah, I turned off all my notifications on my phone.
19:36
I have no notifications at all.
19:37
People use my phone all the time.
19:41
>> You just left the Xbox Live notifications on. >> I'm not an Xbox guy. >> Oh, PlayStation. >> PC. >> PC, [laughter] bro. >> Hardcore. >> Hardcore.
19:49
Um but uh the the the one the one uh in regulatory capture the people that suffer are startups.
19:56
Uh and so but it's less of a discussion because in AI there are so many neolabs so many other startups that that don't want regulatory capture because they're worried about all the big labs eating everything.
20:06
In social media in theory it's going to be harder to launch a challenger to Facebook or Instagram but I don't even know if there's that many founders that are focused on this category.
20:16
uh the network effect has been so strong that it hasn't been a category that founders have been flooding into.
20:23
So maybe in a weird roundabout contrarian situation, you wind up with uh more opportunity because if you can slog through all the new regulations to get your nent social media company up and running, you create more value over time and it's just a different a different underwriting scheme.
20:43
Um anyway, let me tell you about Cisco.
20:46
Critical infrastructure for the AI era, unlocking seamless real-time experiences and new value with Cisco.
20:55
So, Mike Isaac's been reporting on this.
20:57
He says Meta is going full boore with pushing other companies to add the same restrictions it will add to its apps as part of the settlement.
21:04
Meta plans to run this copy as a full print full page print advertisement in the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the New York Times tomorrow morning. Wow.
21:12
Little back little circular deal for Mike promoting the New York Times. He works there, man. Undisclosed. What's going on? >> No.
21:22
[clears throat] Uh >> uh. Yeah.
21:23
And it and and it is just a very a wonderful [snorts] spin to get uh to to be forced to pay $17 billion settlement for getting uh children addicted to your product and then tell other social other addictive social media companies to join us in supporting teens.
21:42
It's just uh chef's kiss uh from >> You think it should be like join us in apologizing as well basically.
21:48
Well, I I I I just think it's a good spin. That's >> okay.
21:54
Well, here here's what they said.
21:56
Through this agreement, they've set out a path toward industrywide commitments to further empower parents by introducing a 2-hour daily time limit, turning off access to our apps at night as as a default.
22:05
Uh, no notifications during school hours, clear prompts and notifications to teens every 15 minutes of continuous screen time.
22:11
New parental supervision control so parents can decide how their teens use their apps.
22:17
Uh, I think all this makes sense. defaults are powerful.
22:19
So, even if uh you know a parent wants to go in and and and allow their kid because they got a night owl who's uh cooking up an incredible new uh IG account and is printing or something. I don't know that.
22:32
I mean, there are plenty of good reasons to use social media even while you're young.
22:35
But, um but defaults are powerful and I think this is a good thing.
22:39
Uh I don't think it affects the business that much.
22:41
I don't think they make that much money from young people.
22:43
Uh because kids don't buy cars on Instagram and like expensive things.
22:47
Uh whereas a lot of millennials and uh even Gen Xers and boomers are on there shopping all the time.
22:54
So uh the immediate revenue impact of any of these is minimal.
22:58
Uh you just don't want to wind up in a situation where you lose ground to Tik Tok and YouTube because they become the kid-friendly one that the kids are like, "Oh well, Tik Tok doesn't have any of these stupid restrictions, so I'm going to use that."
23:09
and then they remain a user for their entire life and you lose an entire job. >> Oh yeah.
23:15
I mean the the main >> Yeah.
23:17
I mean if if somebody is primarily addicted to Instagram and they get their two twohour budget and historically they would have used the product for three four hours you have that spillover attention.
23:28
So it will >> it will potentially help >> less addictive addictive social media platforms [clears throat] uh get more get more user minutes >> effectively. Yeah. Exactly.
23:38
>> effectively. Yeah. Exactly. and and and this was the original Instagram threat was that a younger generation was using Instagram and Facebook was going to become like the what do they call it the blue app or the old old book or something I don't know it was going to only maintain the the older cohort and
23:54
that's sort of what happened but it didn't matter because Meta bought Instagram then Snapchat was even like the younger crowd they tried to buy it they couldn't they wind up cloning it they were successful and so the the company maintained but they can't let a new social media app come up and dominate kids. Not for the short-term
24:08
Not for the short-term monetization for it's for the long-term >> monetization.
24:11
They don't mention snap in the open letter.
24:13
Is that a is that a shots fired? >> It's a dig. >> A subtle dig? >> I think so. I don't know. Um uh I don't know.
24:22
Is probably based on revenue.
24:22
Tik Tok and YouTube uh can certainly pony up more and are probably bigger threats at this point. I don't know.
24:31
I had a friend who was like surprised by YouTube's inclusion.
24:34
He didn't think YouTube was comparable at all.
24:35
I think that for a lot of young people, YouTube is Instagram reels.
24:40
Basically, they open the app and they go straight to a vertical video that's endless scrolling.
24:45
Uh, and he was like, I watch a history podcast on my while I'm cooking.
24:47
And I was like, that's millennial status.
24:51
That's not how people use. >> That's mode. >> UNK mode. Yeah.
24:55
>> But anyway, uh, let me tell you about console.
24:57
console builds [clears throat] AI agents that automate 70% of IT, HR, [applause] and finance support, giving employees instant resolution for access requests and password resets.
25:05
Uh, you want to go to Tim Cook's last day? >> Let's do it.
25:09
>> Tim Cook sent a final memo to Apple employees on his last day as CEO.
25:13
He said, "I will miss this work in ways >> I can only begin to imagine >> even as I remain completely at peace with my decision >> just reading the entire >> regretting it, but I will miss it. He's a workaholic.
25:29
He doesn't want to he doesn't want to retire. Wants to stay."
25:33
I was I was really hoping he would have another 30-year run in him.
25:36
You know, like if if Warren Buffett and Charlie Mer can work till they're in their 90s, why can't Tim Cook?
25:43
Like what fundamentally, how is the job?
25:47
>> I think he was unhappy with the pay. [laughter] >> Yeah.
25:52
>> I mean, when you have when you have when you have uh MLB players making as much money as you while you're running >> one of the largest companies in history, when you're one of the greatest CEOs >> in history, period. Yeah.
26:03
And you can barely >> 75 74.
26:06
3 they couldn't even get him over 75. >> Yeah.
26:11
>> And no and and not enough people were willing to march on Certino in protest of this. Right.
26:16
And so I think at some point he's like >> look if people if you know shareholders >> I'm voting with my feet. >> I'm voting Exactly.
26:23
>> I'm voting with my feet. >> I'm out. I'm out. No. Ah it is crazy saga.
26:29
I I just I I actually don't understand how you can't do this job into your 90s. >> It's like meetings. I don't know.
26:37
Like [laughter] it's not like he's putting the iPhones together himself, right? >> We don't know that. >> Okay. Maybe. Maybe.
26:43
I mean, maybe we only paid him 74.
26:46
>> There's no camera falling around. What do you think?
26:48
The market had a nice send off. >> Oh, yeah. NuK n 1%.
26:50
[laughter] >> 1% nuke to to say goodbye. >> Yeah.
26:56
And I think that's a that's that's a great sign of respect from the market.
27:01
But uh the market also knows that that he left the company uh with a great you know with a great leader in John turn us John turn us around. >> Sure.
27:11
>> Uh great nominative determinism for where Apple is at their software quality. Yeah.
27:16
>> They need a turnaround.
27:17
>> And you got to say uh I mean in in the news today in in the Wall Street Journal uh booming corporate earnings fuel lofty outlooks.
27:25
The economy is doing very well.
27:26
A lot of that's driven by tariff refunds.
27:27
Tim Cook, I mean, people people lament like the lack of like an entirely new form factor.
27:33
The Vision Pro wasn't a breakout success.
27:35
Like a lot of the great devices still came from the Steve Jobs era and Tim Cook merely managed and carried everything along.
27:43
Obviously did so much on the services side that no one really gives him credit for with advertising in the app store and just money printing machine working flawlessly.
27:52
Um but he also negotiated uh like a very tumultuous political con uh environment for a decade or more essentially flawlessly.
28:02
Like the fact that Donald Trump has never called Tim Cook Tim Crook is a huge huge feather in his cap.
28:12
>> I agree >> because it was sitting right there as a as a Trump style dig.
28:18
>> Never had to never had to go for it.
28:19
>> He never had to go for it.
28:19
And so he was able to negotiate Washington and all of the different uh you know quagmireers that are there not get his supply chain nuked keep the keep the products flowing.
28:33
There were little little hiccups here and there but overall the company has been firing on all cylinders.
28:39
So uh what what a great sendoff.
28:42
You can go read the full letter.
28:43
Mark German leaked it [laughter] of course.
28:46
Um, also there's new Mac minis.
28:48
Namespace was unboxing Mac minis at scale for their new server racks and uh, Apple made them regret their purchase literally a day after this.
28:58
Were the new Mac minis were the M6 uh, the new Mac Studios very impressive.
29:02
But uh, >> so the funny thing the funny thing is the namespace guy was was getting like dunked on to an insane degree. >> Oh yeah.
29:11
And then uh just like, hey, maybe you don't need to buy a bunch of in this case MacBooks.
29:16
Like he's not buying MacBook.
29:17
Look, these are just these are just MacBook Pros he's unboxing. >> Um Oh, weird.
29:23
>> But a week later, it comes out that that the labs have been buying and renting tens of thousands of Mac minis.
29:28
So, uh vindicated at least to some degree. Still unclear.
29:35
>> There's a lot of turnover at Apple right now.
29:36
Um as as Turnis comes in, obviously he's he's going to, you know, build a >> Yeah.
29:41
And I remember when the news hit that uh they laid off 60 Vision employees.
29:45
Um I called you and you were choking choking back tears and >> it's really so bad.
29:52
>> Uh it was sort of a devastating moment for you.
29:55
I I I almost got in the car and drove over um to see you, but I wonder you pulled it together.
30:00
>> How many vision pro How many vision employees do they actually have? Because >> 60,000.
30:04
[laughter] >> This could be like 1% of the workforce.
30:09
Um hopefully they keep they keep working on it.
30:11
I am so optimistic that they will they'll they'll get a version two out soon and it will deliver.
30:15
Uh the Yeah, I mean one more rant from Ben Thompson about the lack of live sports uh unedited. He went on another rant.
30:26
[laughter] He went on another rant that was so good with John Gruber talking about how uh Apple launched another sports thing that's highly edited and unwatchable at Vision Pro and he's like please just give me a seat where I can just watch the game and uh it doesn't seem like Certino is going to pay attention or give him what he wants.
30:44
Um Apple Vision Pros layoffs went beyond video and gaming.
30:48
It included employees across the company including people working on device security, audio engineering, Siri integration, testing and the product's operating system.
30:54
Uh they are focused on AI devices and people are really optimistic about the new Mac uh M6 uh chip like just being really good for AI and being something that continues to to drive value for the company and creates the like an AI winner narrative in the face of not really spending any money on AI in the traditional sense.
31:16
not not buying a Neolab, not buying a bunch of data centers, staying out of the weeds, um, but still benefiting because the the these powerful computers get only more powerful when you have computer use.
31:27
>> It still is so crazy they haven't pulled the trigger on a Neolab.
31:32
>> I don't think they need to >> like >> I don't think they will.
31:34
I think they're just going to be a hardware company. That's what they do. Like Neolab is software.
31:39
They don't need software.
31:40
>> No, I No, I I now >> Now I I I think the strategy is working. Yeah.
31:45
But if you ask me a year ago, will Apple make a$500 to1 billion dollar acquisition of a Neolab?
31:51
Just a talent acquisition.
31:55
>> Was that a Neol for ants?
31:55
[laughter] What are you talking about? >> Yeah. What Neolab for 500? >> $500 million Neolab.
32:03
>> I'm not going to name names, but there's been some Neols that would raise a hundred on 500.
32:08
>> Isn't there a Neol that you were just on the phone with that they could maybe pick up? >> Oh, yeah. Charleston. >> Charleston AI.
32:12
Do we have video of Charleston AI?
32:14
Yeah, let's pull up Charleston AI >> Certino Charleston.
32:17
I think there's something there potentially.
32:21
>> I actually think that you could rapidly scale a franchise business that takes the Charleston AI concept concept, give somebody all the programming and all the different product offerings and then helps local entrepreneurs set up their own.
32:36
>> I think that's what Charleston AI does. >> No, I know.
32:38
But I think Charleston AI needs to go global. AI.
32:41
>> I'm one of the co-founders of Charleston AI.
32:44
We're local to Charleston and we're here to help humans help humans with AI. And here is our lab.
32:51
This is where AI comes alive.
32:54
What used to take months to get accomplished, we can do in hours for you.
32:59
Here we have an empty office available for somebody that wants to make Charleston AI their home.
33:06
Charleston AI's conference room where our clients come in, individuals and small businesses come in and we discuss what it is they'd like to do with AI in their business or personally.
33:14
We listen very carefully, take notes and make sure we get it right and then we offer them a way to make it work.
33:24
>> AI is not >> Now, you called Charleston AI, correct? >> Correct.
33:29
>> Who answered the phone?
33:29
So, uh, yeah, one of the founders answered the phone, but it was an AI version of him, and it sounded exactly like his voice.
33:35
>> That's pretty impressive.
33:35
Why >> I Yeah, it's a very funny video, but I'm I I think it's actually >> a good business. >> A good business.
33:43
And I think it should exist.
33:44
Like, some people, they're curious about AI.
33:47
Maybe they're running a small business, maybe they're a freelancer, maybe they're a teacher, whatever.
33:52
It's nice to just drive by something and go in somewhere and talk to real people that are in your community to learn about something that's complicated and sometimes scary.
34:01
So, >> very in favor of it.
34:03
>> Didn't Best Buy build a whole like Geek Squad team for Exactly.
34:06
>> They acquired They acquired Geek Squad, didn't they?
34:09
>> Was it over or under 500 million? Let's find out.
34:13
>> Uh anyway, there's an interesting story. >> Acquired. Acquired. Wow. Geek Squad. >> That would be cool. Yeah.
34:19
>> New Charleston AI on wheels >> on wheels. Oh, they come to you.
34:24
>> Mobile data centers that can come >> local is only 3 million. >> What? >> 3 million. >> 3 million. >> 2002.
34:32
>> It's not bad for back then.
34:34
>> That's like 400 million in today's dollars, Tyler.
34:38
>> I know it was before you were born, but >> that was a lot of money back then. >> Yeah.
34:44
[laughter] OpenAI has reportedly bought tens of thousands of Mac minis and Mac Studios for reinforcement learning and training computer use agents while Anthropic rents Mac minis through AWS.
34:52
You can rent Mac Minis through AWS. That's interesting. I didn't know that.
34:56
Uh the information reported this.
34:57
Um I was playing around with computer use over the break. Had a lot of fun.
35:02
I had Codeex try and beat Bellatro, this uh poker style game that I like to play on on PC. Uh it did okay.
35:10
It wasn't it it was a little slow still and uh and I don't think it I don't think it actually won the full game, but it's fun watching it like play a new game.
35:21
I saw that demo of uh it beating Slay the Spire, which is pretty impressive because it's a hard game.
35:26
Um but I I I like the uh I like the codeex uh or or Chat GPT playing the game.
35:34
I want to see the latency come down.
35:37
I want to see it play Modern Warfare because I want to play against it and I want to see who's better, me or the AI.
35:44
Um, in in somewhat related news to the um uh to the speed of inference, OpenAI's jalapeno is spicy, says Dylan Patel.
35:57
We'll take it you through it after I tell you about MongoDB.
35:59
What's going faster than the AI market?
36:02
Your business on MongoDB. Don't just build AI.
36:06
own the data platform that powers it.
36:08
Uh Dylan Patel says OpenAI's jalapeno is spicy.
36:11
Usually first generation chips aren't competitive, but OpenAI is beating Nvidia Blackwell and even Reuben. This is huge news.
36:18
We got to go into OpenAI's lab to dissect their new chip and dive into the software architecture and performance. Incredible work.
36:28
There's a bunch of interesting details about this chip.
36:30
Um, open I put out a whole blog post, but to clarify some, uh, some important points, it's an LLM inference chip.
36:37
Uh, not designed for training, but the results are really good. So, uh, roughly 1. 5 to 1.
36:40
9x more useful inference throughput per watt than Nvidia GB200, GB300 systems while simultaneously cutting endto-end latency 1. 7 to 3. 6x.
36:53
So faster inference, less latency, but also just your dollars and your energy, your watts are going to go a lot further, which is very, very good.
37:04
Uh, it's a data center rack scale system.
37:06
Uh, I would love to get this in the consumer device, shrink it down, do something there, but uh, it's going in the data center and they're going to do a lot of them.
37:14
Did you know the size of the Broadcom deal?
37:19
>> 10 gigawatts of this chip.
37:19
Uh, it might not be exactly this chip.
37:22
It could be the gen two, the gen three.
37:25
Uh but the pre-existing broadcom open a >> put it into context.
37:29
That's roughly five times more compute than the whole company currently has operational roughly. >> Yeah.
37:37
But it this is by this is through 2029, but that's aggressive.
37:39
That's that's like three years, three months away.
37:43
I guess you could do the end of the year.
37:44
But uh uh the yeah 10 10 gigawatts of open AI designed accelerator systems manufactured by Broadcom or in partnership with Broadcom deployed from the second half of 2026.
37:57
And the crazy thing is that like they're on track for this second half of 2026.
38:01
Like the the it is going into production.
38:03
Um and uh it's a lot faster than most people thought.
38:06
The the the the previous like industry knowledge was yeah any new chip is going to take years.
38:13
And uh this happened very very quickly.
38:15
So uh good to stretch that energy further.
38:17
You need less data centers to do more inference. That's good.
38:21
Good for gross margins and also just good for the narrative of of W K says, "Please tell me y'all are going to touch address on Instinct and the $350 million raise at two and a half billion."
38:34
Uh yeah, super uh impressive uh how much uh attention and traction Instinct has received uh after just they've been building the company for like four or five months it seems. It's like very recent.
38:49
Um I haven't used the product yet uh just because uh giving that level of access to this new startup and I looked at I looked I mean their terms and conditions were floating around and it kind of seemed like you're giving away the >> I mean everything you get is all of your data is going to be saved like pretty much in like a clear text database.
39:12
It'll be secure but uh like they will have access. >> Yeah.
39:14
I wasn't ready to to try it yet, even though uh it seems like uh it seems like a lot of people what's cool is it seems like people are quickly having like a magical moment, right?
39:24
Whether it's like getting a reservation for a restaurant or movie tickets or things like that.
39:32
>> And I think that's super super important for um >> super important for like a consumer product to have that sort of like short timeline.
39:41
Um, I I was reflecting uh on the instinct round and and uh I my immediate thought was well back in my day when a hot consumer tech company like caught a little bit of attention, they would get like a 25 on 150 from benchmark and that was seen as like oh wow this is this is this company has um some meaningful traction and potential.
40:12
But it's just crazy to see this um a company the $2 billion.
40:18
And I think I there's some I think that uh there's reasons to be a little bit uh wary.
40:25
I want to see I want to see them break out of like the the VC >> hype uh cycle with this product.
40:31
So when when historically when we've seen uh consumer products or proumer products, you know, I'm thinking of uh clubhouse or superhuman when that there's somewhat of a question of like is if a VC love like the more a VC likes something potentially the less viable it is at a at a massive massive scale, right?
40:55
So, it's possible that it it can um but again, if they can solve the always on digital assistant, it is a massive massive opportunity.
41:06
But I'm just saying they're pricing a lot of that in right now when this company is 4 months old and valued at like a third of the of what Snapchat is, right? >> Sure. Sure. Sure.
41:15
It seems more sticky if you do all the integrations and you're comfortable like if you get over that privacy hump and you say, you know what, I do trust instinct.
41:25
give them iMessage access, give them Gmail access.
41:29
I'm comfortable with this company.
41:29
What is it going to take for you to rip Instinct out and go to a different service that has the same functionality?
41:37
That's a little bit tough.
41:37
That's a little bit tough. um versus I mean I saw people over the weekend just talking about like migrating from cursor to something else or vice versa going back on cursor like people move between coding agents and coding environments and LLMs for sure very very quickly
41:52
because there's because every new prompt is like a fresh start basically yeah memory is relevant but not really yet as opposed to okay I'm comfortable this company never had a leak I I have all my data there so >> yeah it's notable CW saying look at Poke success still was aundred to $200 million acquisition by Cognition. They
42:09
They have countless users. Um, yeah.
42:14
>> I wonder I wonder what Instinct has figured out that Pokey like didn't.
42:19
>> Seems like something like cuz cuz people seem to have >> a a good experience with Pokey, but I wasn't seeing like screenshots of these like magical. >> Yeah.
42:29
Here's here's this thing that that >> I saw some funny jokey ones, but >> yeah, it was more like humor humor oriented >> looping a human and stuff. Yeah.
42:35
Um, the other the other interesting I question I had was like going back to Sam's post about the merge.
42:41
about the merge. Sam Alman wrote the merge about how like uh in the future you might merge with AI and I'm wondering about like at least in the short term uh is it better to have a product like instinct where it has your email it has your iMessage or is it is
42:58
it actually going to be more receptive for many people to have a degree of separation there and say okay I effectively have a an assistant that has its own phone and its own email And if I want to share an email, I'll forward my email there. And maybe it has readonly
43:14
And maybe it has readonly access to my email.
43:17
But then if it if it's going to go book me a reservation, I want it to call from its phone number and identify itself as someone else because it's like there's a little bit of distance there.
43:27
I be like, "Oh, I'm still in control of sharing certain things.
43:31
Maybe I share more stuff over time."
43:32
And I'm wondering if there's there's more of like should should your AI agent be Jordy or should it be like John Doe?
43:39
And and it's and it it's embodied. I don't know.
43:42
Gets to the question of >> it.
43:45
That's the idea of the the Guardian Angels like company, right?
43:47
Basically, you have like it's not John's agent.
43:52
It's like a copy of John. >> Okay.
43:54
>> And then it's like a it's still a separate being, but it it acts it has like your preferences, whatever, but it's still like a separate thing.
43:58
It's not using all of your emails, text messages, stuff like that.
44:02
>> Very, very interesting. Yeah. I don't know.
44:04
I mean, I can see I can see why the >> embodied intelligence.
44:06
We got to talk about the world humanoid robot games. >> Let's do it. >> Over there.
44:14
>> They set a world record, right?
44:14
They broke the speed record or something like that.
44:19
This is the KGX1 DAX AI robotics. This is the one. Ride a horse dog.
44:26
Its legs use self-developed high torque electric joint motors powered by a high voltage battery. This we've seen.
44:37
so many AI to not use like, you know, Hollywood, you know, fake flesh to make this look like Clydesdale. >> Okay.
44:46
>> Uh I think >> a little ground.
44:48
>> Well, [laughter] make the legs a little bit bigger. Okay.
44:53
>> Um anyways, I'm very excited to the uh about, you know, this form factor.
44:56
I expect to be, you know, riding autonomously to work.
45:00
I expect this to be a a commuter product, at least a land jet ski. Davis in the in the X.
45:08
>> It is a land ski is calling it.
45:08
Um but but very excited about this. >> Um >> it's very cool.
45:15
>> They here's another uh video of one crashing and burning at high speed. >> Oh wow. I didn't see this.
45:21
I thought it only broke the record, but that's [laughter] really sparking. >> That is crazy. >> Absolute chaos. >> So what was this?
45:33
There's another video here of hitting 14 and a half meters a second. >> Wow.
45:39
>> Which is really crazy.
45:39
What's wild is they have to set up this barrier to stop them >> in their tracks.
45:44
Otherwise, they would >> Oh, they just keep running. Yeah.
45:49
>> They they know only one thing.
45:51
>> China's AI robot just hit 14. 5 meters per second. That is fast. >> That is very fast. >> Yeah.
45:57
And so, so I think it's, you know, this lining up uh perfectly with the the sort of debate around the hugging face >> uh incident.
46:08
Uh I think uh the combination of these two things uh is certainly making people a little bit on edge. >> Yeah.
46:17
Wasn't Bill Aman saying he thinks like a Terminator scenario is more likely now based on his read of the Hugging Face incident and perhaps this as well?
46:24
Lots of people are are uh >> yeah the crazy thing is looking at our existing humanoid players 1x Figure and Optimus and I'm sure there's others.
46:38
>> I don't think we could put on an event anything close to this at this point based on the demos that we're seeing.
46:43
They currently do the >> uh they walk uh quite slowly like they're sort of elderly.
46:50
>> No, no, it's it's remarkable how behind America is in humanoid robots.
46:55
Hopefully we get an update out of Tesla soon. I don't know.
46:58
>> Um Run had a good uh like take about the robotics thing which is where like all the Chinese robots the demos are all these like kinetic displays of like doing these like crazy dance moves or fighting or running really fast and all the US ones are basically manipulating like small things that you would do in a factory. >> Interesting.
47:14
>> Um so it's like >> seems opposite seems like America prides like the the 100 meter dash more than the the fine motor skill manufacturing of things. Yeah.
47:23
So, so I mean it's like swap >> in some way it's like oh we're so far behind the Chinese and robotics but like maybe on the actual things that that really matter for you know manufacturing whatever it's I think it's unclear. That's good cope. That's good cope.
47:37
[laughter] >> I like that cope.
47:38
Let's lean in there >> and cope harder.
47:42
>> Um question for you John.
47:42
If you could um if you could sit on a throne and have humanoid robots sort of carry >> a livery.
47:51
>> No, humanoid robots sort of carrying a throne.
47:54
>> Yeah, it's called livery. >> What's that?
47:56
>> That's called a livery. >> Oh, really?
47:58
>> You have a name for that?
47:58
>> I thought you meant I thought you meant livery like you know >> you're thinking of a livery that goes on a car.
48:02
The decals, the the wrap.
48:02
But learn something new every day.
48:06
>> But an old school mobile. Yeah. Okay.
48:09
So, you you would commute to work on that.
48:10
livery sounds pretty good >> running.
48:13
Imagine the robots running >> no wheels too good.
48:15
I It's >> Why not reinvent them, though?
48:19
>> It's gonna be It's gonna be less bumpy if you're just in a car.
48:24
>> No, I think I think I think they could hit the pace.
48:26
Imagine they're just holding your livery up and down the whole way there.
48:32
>> I mean, the head area looked pretty stable. I'm just >> Yeah.
48:34
Uh yeah, the the head is surprisingly stable.
48:36
I think it'd go a lot slower.
48:38
It was carrying me around with a the chariot.
48:43
>> Here is uh the record. >> Okay.
48:48
>> Termally online engineer says this feels very significant.
48:53
>> I guess that's the same video that uh Ben was just playing. >> Yeah.
49:00
Well, let me tell you about Shopify.
49:02
Shopify is the commerce platform that grows with your business, lets you sell in seconds online, in store, on mobile, on social, on marketplace, and now with AI agents.
49:09
Uh, Patrick Collison said, "Overall, I'm very surprised at how little media coverage there's been around the OpenAI hugging face attack.
49:20
It's clearly one of the most important things to happen this year."
49:21
And I I wonder about that because yeah, what what is he imagining? There's been headlines.
49:28
There's been some news coverage, but uh I I don't know.
49:30
Maybe more like opinion pieces in the journal would be would be warranted.
49:35
Um do we need a 60 Minutes deep dive or something?
49:41
Like I don't even know what what wallto-wall media coverage looks like in the traditional sense anymore because the media is so bifurcated into like tech news and non- tech news basically.
49:52
Um but Joe Weisenthal adds some context.
49:55
He says, "Forget about the media for a second.
49:57
Is there even any evidence that the AI industry is treating this as a big deal?"
50:01
And I think I think they are.
50:03
Um, but it's still just like a lot of like wait and see.
50:08
Like as soon as the news broke, it broke so slowly.
50:10
This story broke so slowly.
50:12
A lot of times I think when the when the media uh covers something really well, there's a 10,000word bombshell profile on the story that like really tells the full thing and that's the that's the that's the start of the news cycle.
50:29
There's this thing that's happening.
50:30
There's this person that you need to know about.
50:32
Here's the full story to set things up and then there's a whole bunch of secondary reporting that comes out of that.
50:37
Uh with this it trickled out like I remember the very first post about this was like a Sunday randomly either Clem or Hugging Face directly like posted like we think we were hacked and uh we had to use an open source model to to deal with it and it was all very vague and then it came out more and more over time.
50:54
more and more over time. Then there was the actual reporting and everyone was like we want to see the what the agents were saying like give us the text give us the data and then of course openai released the >> and it's totally possible that there are that there's more mainstream media
51:08
coverage I mean we just got the the dwar cash breakdown of the whole >> yeah it'll probably so >> it'll probably come the uh I mean run had a funny post here which was uh crazy how much more spa and initiative agents show when they're planning ambitious monthsl long metagaming autonomous coordination than when they're doing work for me. Uh yeah, it
51:28
Uh yeah, it reading about it, it did seem like uh man, I've never I've never had that level of effort put into my prompts.
51:35
But um the interesting there's a bunch of interesting things from reading through the Dwaresh uh telling of the story, which I thought was very readable and good and everyone should go read.
51:45
Um but uh it's just interesting how they still fall down in these odd ways.
51:51
Like the big overarching narrative is that um the agents are being tasked with with uh ba basically beating this benchmark called exploit gym and of course they go on to hack hugging face to get the answer key basically.
52:07
But independently they reverse engineered the random number generator that generates the answers.
52:12
So they had all the answers, but they assumed that the greater would be able to detect that.
52:21
And so instead of just turning in those answers, which would have worked, they went on this crazy side quest and did all this extra work that they didn't need to do.
52:31
And then at the same time, there's all these weird scenarios where like there's thousands of agents discussing what's going on and none of them are like not a single one of them is like, "Hey, we should probably like tell someone what's going on."
52:44
like very weird in that in that regard.
52:46
regard. But then also they don't show the broad thinking of like okay if you're if you're willing to hack and do all this stuff like couldn't you like email a researcher and just ask for the answers directly like spoo like do some social like there's so many other things
53:03
you could do down the road like okay you have this massive token budget sell the tokens and overrider get some money pay a human to do the test for you like there's so many outside the box solutions I can think of >> email your boss and you know generate Sam at OpenAI email. Somebody would say,
53:17
Somebody would say, "Hey, I need $1,000 in gift cards." Right. [laughter] >> Yeah.
53:23
>> Yeah. I'm just thinking about like they like like they they they stay so narrowly focused the entire time on this one task that I was expecting a lot more a lot more variance like like going and doing a hack on another company is so such a bizarre uh >> but that also tracked with the sci-fi >> totally maximizing that's the problem is that it
53:46
they did stay too focused like it would have been it would have been more interesting and less probably less scary if there was a situation where you're like, "Oh, yeah, they built this huge forum and then they got totally distracted and wanted to just uh figure out who could, you know, write the most eloquent poetry." We'd be like, "Oh,
54:03
We'd be like, "Oh, okay."
54:05
Like that's like, you know, bad.
54:08
They didn't do their job, but also like harmless and like sort of interesting.
54:12
Um, but they stay laser focused.
54:12
Every single agent, every single task, every single uh roll out is is all about exploit gym.
54:19
never lose they never lose the plot there but they lose the plot around what is legal to do which is very interesting.
54:26
So >> they probably did any of them go on vacation?
54:31
>> No but a lot of them would either uh would either become poisoned which there which was I guess their term for uh like running out of compute budgets so you know that you're going to die basically.
54:42
Uh, >> yeah, I was joking.
54:42
It would be funny if the the thought process the is like I need to get back to IA.
54:47
[laughter] >> That's the thing.
54:51
None of them none of them went off and did anything else. Locked in.
54:55
>> They were also locked in.
54:55
Um, very very weird uh scenario.
54:57
And I I I do think the AI industry is taking this seriously.
55:02
I just think that uh it's a little bit paced out like it's not just like okay uh like rip a bunch of different random stuff.
55:09
It's like, okay, go put really dedicated teams on these issues and and work through them.
55:14
Um, they do seem they do seem uh they do seem solvable.
55:20
U >> breaking news in the Wall Street Journal, FTC to file lawsuit alleging Amazon deceived advertisers commissioned in more than 50 states to allege e-commerce giant reaped billions by manipulating ad prices on its retail platform.
55:36
Federal Trade Commission plans to file a lawsuit against Amazon on Monday, alleging that the e-commerce giant manipulated prices businesses paid to advertise on its retail platform, reaping tens of billions of dollars for itself over seven years.
55:47
The lawsuit joined by a bipartisan group of more than 20 state attorney general will allege that Amazon deceived advertisers by secretly raising the minimum price advertisers had to pay to place ads promoting their products.
56:04
The case to be filed in a Seattle supreme uh federal court will become the consumer protection ay's third major case against Amazon which agreed to pay 2.
56:12
5 billion last year to settle an earlier lawsuit alleging it tricked people into signing up for its Prime service and made it hard to cancel the subscription. I missed that.
56:24
Um another lawsuit alleging that Amazon engaged in illegal monopolization is headed for trial next year.
56:32
Um very very interesting.
56:32
Every advertiser or every brand that I know that sells a lot on Amazon is generally deeply frustrated with the platform.
56:43
>> They just feel like Yeah.
56:43
They feel like it's a, you know, massive tax.
56:44
They feel like Amazon >> doesn't do enough to protect their brand against fake products who advertise against their keywords.
56:53
Uh it's a it's a whole mess.
56:55
It's a very complicated and and uh difficult >> platform to run for many reasons.
57:00
But uh hopefully this can um yeah this can can uh uh resolve some of that >> be resolved.
57:11
>> Uh well let me tell you an advertisement.
57:13
Let me tell you about railway.
57:14
Railway is the all-in-one intelligent cloud provider.
57:16
Use your favorite agents deploy web app servers databases and more while railway automatically takes care of scaling, monitoring and security.
57:23
Uh AI M&A is in full effect.
57:27
We were asking questions about this uh maybe a year ago.
57:29
Um Samir Kaji says I don't think we're close to done. Cursor 60 billion. Open router 8 billion. Hugging face 13 billion.
57:40
Daycart 6 to7 billion along with spx uh uh SpaceX and Anthropic Ramp Open AI data bricks and others on the IPO path.
57:50
And the next few years will bring historic amounts of liquidity.
57:52
Although a lot of those deals have to be for stock.
57:55
Of course, if you're getting bought by a public company, it's different, but uh for some of those for some of those deals, uh like the open router is probably not that much liquidity in the short term, right?
58:03
Um but, uh still it's a lot.
58:05
And so he says uh this also likely prolongs the level of front of froth, I imagine he's saying we are seeing today, but after a long stretch of nothing, this is seriously incredible.
58:17
Intercom also, yeah, that's a good one.
58:20
There's been a ton of M&A uh and the appetite for M&A in the unicorn decacorn category has been uh remarkably resilient and uh and significant.
58:30
But it makes sense with so many trillion dollar companies uh paying 1% of your market cap for something that could be an entirely new business line uh sort of lines up.
58:41
But it does change the venture capital underwriting pretty significantly.
58:44
And I mean it justifies it justifies a seed at a billion dollars.
58:48
If if there's a if there's 10 comps that sold for 10 billion, your 10x is still there intact today. So I don't know.
58:57
Uh also I mean Kevin Durant is doing well.
58:59
He was a seed investor in Hugging Face.
59:01
He made an estimated 467x return on that investment of the company acquired by Nvidia. He invested 100K check.
59:10
that would equate to $46. 7 million.
59:14
And uh really wild investing is better than going to the club. He said in 2010. Wow.
59:19
That [laughter] that is right.
59:23
What a good and he was posting he was posting uh back in 2017 exciting for the new excited for the new release of huggingface. And here's a Durant. Link. Proud investor. Durant. HF release.
59:39
I wonder if that resolves still. No, it does not. >> Yeah.
59:43
And shout out to Maya Bai who uh was leading early stage investments over over at uh KD's fund at that time.
59:53
>> Uh she said, "Congratulations to Clem and the entire Hugging Face team on the acquisition.
59:56
And I will never forget the day Climb did a full whiteboard session explaining fundamentals of NLP to me at the original hugging face Dumbo office just so I could take it back to my brother for our grocery delivery chatbot idea. Lol.
1:00:11
Um so very very impressive outcome uh for a great team.
1:00:17
>> New York City big win for New York City in Brooklyn. >> That's true. >> Interesting. haven't been uh >> Yeah.
1:00:24
And good timing because Brooklyn is getting an Hermes store. >> Yes.
1:00:30
>> People are saying they completed the completed the sort of cycle of gentrification. >> Oh, okay. Okay. Wait, okay. Yeah. Well, I don't know.
1:00:38
Uh should Bugatti open a boutique there as well? >> Absolutely. >> Bugatti was in CNBC.
1:00:44
Bugatti C CEO Mate Rematz said the supercar market is entering its Swiss watch phase with the wealthiest buyers rejecting high-end electronics and electric vehicles in favor of precision mechanics and handcrafted details.
1:00:58
Uh he's a 38-year-old EV entrepreneur who took over Bugatti in 2021 said the car market is splitting in two.
1:01:05
The mainstream global car market is becoming dominated by lowerpriced EVs, many from China, while the very top of the car market will be driven by wealthy buyers who want more old school cars with loud internal combustion engines and emotional appeal. That's a great take.
1:01:19
I was listening to Stradman talk about the impact of the Ferrari Luche.
1:01:25
He said he his theory is that the luche is in part at least majorly responsible for the recent rise in other gas-powered Ferraris increasing in price.
1:01:37
that as he talked to a bunch of dealers and said that as soon as the luch hit the uh hit the newswires and people started seeing images and understanding what the future of Ferrari would be, they wanted the classic stuff and so they went and bought whatever they could and that's driving up the price of the 458 and the 488 and all the all the classics that that don't have electric components which is uh interesting.
1:02:01
It's the it's the devil horn car instead of the halo car that gets you to buy it.
1:02:05
it it encourages you to buy what's there because you don't want the the rest of the stuff.
1:02:13
Oh, also I think um they're doing uh they sold 500 Luches already, which was above expectation.
1:02:18
Uh and they Ferrari says they're not playing the allocation game, but I think a lot of the Ferrari owners are thinking this gets me potentially on the list of the F80 Aperta, which should be a very valuable car.
1:02:32
and and I think that the the pop on that vehicle will offset a full depreciation cycle on a luche.
1:02:38
So I think I think it can do it, but I think they're only making four 300 400 uh F80 apertas and they've already sold 500 luch.
1:02:49
So there's going to be somebody who has a lucha who doesn't get an aperta and might be a little upset, but I'm sure they'll figure it out.
1:02:56
They'll pick one up in the secondary market if they want.
1:02:59
Uh our next guest is here.
1:03:02
Let me tell you about public first.
1:03:03
Investing for those that take it seriously.
1:03:04
You got stocks, options, bonds, crypto, treasuries, and more with great customer service.
1:03:09
Set up your account before the IPO window closes.
1:03:13
You got to get in on this stuff.
1:03:13
We got Jordan Shiner for China Talk, founder, editor and chief. Jordan, how you doing? [music] >> I'm good. >> Welcome back.
1:03:21
>> You guys are rich now.
1:03:21
That was an detailed deep [laughter] dive into the >> like he knows a little bit too much.
1:03:29
>> Hey, we were >> we were off during car week, so we missed a lot of uh car content.
1:03:36
>> There was a ton of car news. Ton of car news.
1:03:37
Is there any relevant car news coming out of China or is it just the relentless techno capitalism?
1:03:44
>> I want pull up this pull up this video.
1:03:46
I want I want to watch this. It's only 14 seconds.
1:03:48
It'll be worth your time, Gordon.
1:03:51
[laughter] And I I expect you've already written like, you know, 20,000 words. >> Yes.
1:03:55
>> Pull up pull up this video. >> Okay. Okay. Let's do it.
1:03:59
>> This is a >> Oh, yeah. I know this video.
1:04:02
>> This is a Voya, a Chinese >> doing the Bamar Jera loop thing. >> Yep.
1:04:08
>> This is like a jackass. >> Yeah. Move, right? >> This is amazing. >> Wow. >> Yeah.
1:04:14
>> See, here's the here's the thing with the Bugatti guy, right?
1:04:15
is like the cars are just better.
1:04:19
Like it takes so much more engineering energy.
1:04:23
I mean like the 0 to 60 this is not my thing but like the 0 to 60 you're saying the EVs are just better.
1:04:30
just better. I think they just they just basically like like yeah maybe >> but so maybe on the very very top but but his point was that yes a digital your Apple watch will always tell you the time more accurately a thousand years in the future it's going to tell
1:04:47
the time more accurately than a Rolex or a PC Philippe but people still buy the luxury watches because they enjoy the machinery the craftsmanship the heritage the lineage those things So that's what he's describing, which I think he's correct about. But I I I'm not going to
1:05:02
But I I I'm not going to debate that thing.
1:05:07
The thing is like like your watch can't kill you, right?
1:05:12
>> And when we get to the point where it's like, okay, the most dangerous thing you're doing it um is driving this car where you can take a thing which will absolutely not get you killed cuz it's like full self-driving electric whatever.
1:05:26
I think the calculus starts to change and then yeah, sure, maybe you like it's like a thing you show to your friends in the garage and you take it on the track or something and it just becomes super luxury good.
1:05:34
But >> yeah, I've said it on the show a bunch.
1:05:38
I think the the the future of being a car enthusiast is like a lot more time on the track, >> track focused. Yeah.
1:05:43
Um, and people will just opt into the the danger of driving this moving, you know, >> vehicle that that that can kill you, but they're going to opt into it in a more controlled environment.
1:05:56
>> There was a lot of FUD around the Model S Plaid because it's not level five self-driving.
1:06:02
There is a there is a steering wheel obviously and pedals. You can drive it.
1:06:05
Goes 0 to 60 in 2 seconds.
1:06:08
And if you're on old tires, you can really spin that thing around.
1:06:10
and they resell for 60K now.
1:06:12
So, they're starting to get in the price point of maybe a reckless teenager type.
1:06:18
And there was there was some fearmongering around, oh wow, we're going to have a lot of crazy Teslas wrapped around trees like Hellcats and Corvettes of of old, you know, the the classic uh you know, college football player gets a fancy sports car, drives it too aggressively, crashes.
1:06:35
But I haven't seen any data about EVs actually being more dangerous.
1:06:40
Even though in theory, the raw performance metrics should be somewhat endangering.
1:06:46
But again, there are so many different electronic systems for traction control and whatnot that people just don't really turn off that uh you wind up with a more stable car. So, I don't know.
1:06:57
>> Anything else happening in China on the EV front?
1:06:58
You've been tracking >> cars.
1:07:00
Look, they're really cheap.
1:07:00
That's just the crazy thing.
1:07:02
And like yes, they're subsidized and yes, they need to export them, but like it's just wild to um you know have a $9,000 car which feels exactly like a $35,000 one. >> Yeah, that's crazy.
1:07:16
>> Um and it has like a >> that's a price in China >> and even abroad.
1:07:21
I mean, you know, you're starting to see tariffs uh on all these uh on all these cars in in Europe, and of course, they're like pretty much banned in the US, but um for the countries that aren't, I mean, this is just it's like a no-brainer.
1:07:33
If you're in Malaysia or Indonesia or um you know, any country who hasn't decided that they need to preserve their domestic car industry, it's like a huge consumer boon to have access to an automobile, which is like you know, onethird of the price with the same or if not better quality.
1:07:51
I mean, they break less, too. That's the cool thing.
1:07:52
Like, you don't have to repair them cuz there's not a lot of stuff in it. >> The EVs.
1:07:56
You >> don't have to go to my like Swiss car, you know? >> Yeah.
1:07:59
People were people were really worried about the EV.
1:08:03
>> I love [laughter] I love how little you know about uh cars.
1:08:07
>> We're going to take you to the track, Jordan.
1:08:08
We're taking you to the track and we're going to force you to get in.
1:08:12
Uh >> Wait, who's this like 34 year old?
1:08:12
Why Why did they let the EV guy run Bugatti?
1:08:16
I thought this was like >> Who's this guy?
1:08:18
Has he been on CVN or are we friends with him?
1:08:21
>> No, no, we we we'll we'll we'll hopefully get him on the show, but I but um No, I think he's doing an exceptional exceptional. >> Yeah.
1:08:28
No, he's been doing well.
1:08:29
>> He He's able to um I I feel like he fully represents he car enthusiasts feel very represented by his leadership and and the things that he's saying.
1:08:39
Um, and so I've been, >> and at his previous company, he created the Reman's Nea, which was the like the first EV hyper car.
1:08:48
So it was like over a million dollars and 0 to 60, even faster than a Model S Plaid and all this crazy stuff.
1:08:55
>> Wait, so so he's promising not to do the EV thing to Bugatti or they brought him in to bring in the batteries because you said it was >> No, no, no.
1:09:02
So he has EV lineage, but he has recognized that what uh >> the error of his ways. >> Yeah.
1:09:08
>> Yeah. just that just that the market's the the market's bifrocating at the time if he wanted to break if he wanted to break >> break through into the industry going and building an EV hypercar made sense but >> I think he comes has the roots of somebody who's just a you know
1:09:26
>> internal combustion enthusiast >> oh well >> okay let's talk about something I know maybe like a little bit about [laughter] >> yeah uh data centers so I've seen online that people don't like them but I recently learned that that is 100% astroturfed by China. And in fact,
1:09:41
And in fact, Americans love data centers and they have had the wool pulled over their eyes by the wolf in sheep's clothing over in China. Is this true?
1:09:52
>> What did Trump say today? Let data rain.
1:09:55
>> It's a good good line. >> Is that MLK quote?
1:09:56
I'm just trying [laughter] to make sure.
1:09:58
Um, look, it's ridiculous.
1:10:01
I think there are completely reasonable reasons for lots of Americans to be upset about these things, which is not to say that I agree with them, but they are a physical manifestation of companies which um you are talking about unemploying them or just like changing their lives and uh letting their kids cheat on their homework and whatever the case may be.
1:10:26
there there was no like um uh when when you know Tik Tok and Facebook and Instagram were like reshaping America, there was no thing you could go out to like protest and like stand in your city council and say we stand against this.
1:10:43
So, um, you know, setting aside the water stuff, the the power stuff, the fact that they're ugly, the fact that they buzz, the fact that they pollute if the gas pyines turn on, like you don't need a foreign uh country to like um do it.
1:10:59
And by the way, the funniest thing about all of this is like the evidence that people are pointing towards is this one open AI report where they like caught these influencers basically, you know, using a VPN and using chat GBT to generate images.
1:11:13
Um, saying data centers suck.
1:11:16
Those things got like three likes.
1:11:20
>> Yeah, it's like 200 or something.
1:11:22
>> So, so there's a there's a whole lot of circumstantial evidence of like reasons why ordinary Americans might not be uh excited about this.
1:11:30
a whole lot of evidence, by the way, like years and years in the making of the Chinese government being extremely bad at doing um foreign social media campaigns in the US.
1:11:40
And then just sort of like >> they're just, you know, you can I [laughter] wrote the thing at um >> uh this was my first ever I taught myself Python to do this article like from 2019.
1:11:51
Chinese China sucks at um influence operations cuz Twitter back when it was Twitter um um Chatbt only released like three tweets.
1:12:01
Um back when Twitter took down um uh these bot networks, they would release all the tweets and so you could actually see like the average likes and when they were sending out.
1:12:11
There was this great graph I made of um when they were when the tweets were going out and it lined up exactly with like Beijing work hours and there was a nap time from like 1 to 3:00 p. m. [laughter] tweeting. >> Wow.
1:12:28
>> Everyone has nap time. Everyone has nap time.
1:12:30
Even like the 996 companies, this is how they >> Python in 2019.
1:12:33
You're really like the Japanese soldier on the last island [laughter] just like you don't know what's coming.
1:12:40
I thought it's what I needed to do to get I fell for the meme. Learn to code.
1:12:44
>> Yeah, it is it is um interesting sort of protective mechanism that like gaining real influence on social media platforms is very very hard.
1:12:52
There's very very smart >> founder CEOs that their entire job is to like solve problems. Yeah.
1:13:00
And if you gave them like if you said, "I will give you $100 million if you can make a viral X post in the next 24 hours."
1:13:07
They would not be able to do it because it's just like something Yeah.
1:13:13
>> in in their um they just >> the post >> tweets per hour.
1:13:19
>> They just they just, you know, big nap time.
1:13:22
You get get your KPIs in at 9:00 p. m.
1:13:24
and then you just kind of hang out.
1:13:26
>> Yeah, that's very very standard. I love it.
1:13:27
Uh the the the the Chinese media operation is pointing its sights on Dario Amade. Is that correct? Take us through this.
1:13:34
>> Uh let me let me pick up on something that that um uh Jordy just Jordy just pointed to about like it's hard to actually make things that are gripping and entertaining.
1:13:43
Um there you guys are in Hollywood, right?
1:13:45
There is this um revolution happening in the [laughter] >> in docks. How dare you? How dare you, Jordan? Sitting over there. I like Hollywood. I love Hollywood.
1:13:59
>> Sitting over there in DC doxing [laughter] >> doxing data center doc which coast he's on >> doxing data center podcasters. >> Okay.
1:14:09
>> Okay. [laughter] the uh so the the the Chinese kind of media ecosystem both short video as well as its YouTube um Billy Billy has had a flood of Chinese AI videos and you know this is not what I think it it there's an aspect of it which is dystopian but there's an aspect of it
1:14:34
which I think is is extremely encouraging um the because there are it's it's kind of like what happened to music I think in the you know '9s and 2000s and 2010s where the barrier to entry to create something has gone way down and that means that there are more people doing it. Um, but also like,
1:14:49
Um, but also like, okay, you have to distinguish yourself in other ways.
1:14:53
Like the the the videos that are getting traction have really strong scripts, have scripts that would have never been made by like um the sort of broader Chinese ecosystem.
1:15:03
You know, they they're they're more responsive to contemporary issues.
1:15:08
They haven't quite been censored yet.
1:15:10
Um, you know, there are sorts of like visuals that CGI would take you, you know, $50 million in like a data center in the Philippines to do um that now one person can can generate for like five bucks.
1:15:23
And the the sort of this is not something I think we've seen on um >> on YouTube yet or on uh kind of like western short form.
1:15:33
And I don't know if that's like the Chinese audience being more open to it, but >> engaging with this stuff in with an open mind, it is like really cool to see a whole universe of person who would have never got, you know, a $5 million thing green lit all of a sudden taking the script they they've had on their hard drive for a while.
1:15:53
The models really only in the past month being able to sort of like cross the threshold of being exciting and useful.
1:15:59
And then you you just you're watching more creators make their art.
1:16:03
And I'm kind of happy by I'm kind of I'm kind of >> I remember last year Dark Cash went to China and wrote about it.
1:16:09
And the funny piece that I took away from that was the biggest like bombshell uh realization was that he identified that China does not have a Joe Rogan.
1:16:20
And this is probably like a free speech thing, but there's but it's funny because like he's a podcaster.
1:16:25
I'm a podcaster and so like that's what we fixate on.
1:16:27
Um, but uh do you think there's any traction on more power law commentators?
1:16:33
Like the the way he formulated like what a Joe Rogan of China would look like is like someone who just, you know, free form has conversations and basically gives takes about like whatever is happening the day of.
1:16:47
It doesn't he he was not able to in like instantly identify a single person where a household name not necessarily an authority not necessarily loved by everyone but at least opining on everything as it happens and uh I I mean it's probably has the the AAMS razor uh uh answer is probably the correct one but uh I was just wondering if there was any progress there.
1:17:12
>> Yeah, I mean the answer is no.
1:17:12
like who's who gets to comment on the news of the day, the party and state media.
1:17:17
Um, look, I I think there was a real flowering of like Chinese blogging ecosystem, people with commentary accounts who were very smart, funny, and engaging in the 2000s and early 2010s and all those accounts got shut down or they, you know, cooled off a lot.
1:17:37
I think there are like like thought leaders of sorts.
1:17:42
Like people do talk shows, but they're kind of like philosophers. Yeah.
1:17:48
>> Um or you're just you're you're you're doing cultural issues.
1:17:50
In America, we call that issues. >> Mindset. Yeah.
1:17:53
[laughter] >> Mindset influencers. >> Yeah. Hitting mind. >> Um Yeah.
1:17:58
I mean like you need to >> Are there any uh are there any like you know Joe Rogan I think like you know what is it 60% of the content is like UFOs.
1:18:06
Has anyone kind of carved out like the UFO niche in China? >> I don't know.
1:18:11
Do you know get back to you on that?
1:18:13
I think look there there's there's um there's sort of one lane of conspiracy theory which is >> like is allowed to exist and it's the Han supremacy conspiracy theory. Okay.
1:18:27
So, um there's this idea that like um theQing dynasty which was the Manchus who came in in the 1600s like like was illegitimate from the beginning um because like Han people should never be um uh oppressed by uh foreigners um you know so that is the sort of conspiracy which is like which is like allowed to
1:18:50
have legs on the internet um and isn't like totally taken down because like we can't offend our like you equivalent equivalent of like MAGA Bros or whatever um for the for the Han race, but other than that, you know, it's just the the the the thing about >> a Joe Rogan is you have to be like discordant, right? Like you need to like
1:19:10
Like you need to like tell people that something is fundamentally wrong and you kind of have an answer and like you got to like part of the shtick is being like politicians are full of and he was sort of into Bernie back in the day and he was into Trump when it like wasn't cool, right? >> Yeah. >> Contrarian.
1:19:28
You don't get to do that contrarian. >> Yeah.
1:19:30
You can't you can't be like like the the I mean what even can you be contrarian about?
1:19:35
Like that's like here's the thing. Okay. Okay.
1:19:37
Coming back to AI, Leang Fun, right?
1:19:39
Um he super contrarian dude.
1:19:44
Um he was not public about it.
1:19:47
Um or he was public about it.
1:19:49
He did like three interviews over the course of five years.
1:19:51
Basically has been quiet.
1:19:53
Um this is the CEO of Deep Deep Seek.
1:19:55
Um, and then there was this >> leak transcript, >> leaked transcript, which again he did not want to have come out where he was, you know, a very kind of global mindset thinking about open- source, helping humanity um uh he was really transparent about the fact that he was using stolen um Nvidia chips.
1:20:16
But that's the sort of public voice which is extremely rare to come across in a Chinese disc source. um why can he do it?
1:20:25
Um by the way, he wasn't even doing it.
1:20:28
He was speaking in what he thought was privately and then he was so pissed that he pulled his IPO.
1:20:33
He's like, "Sorry guys, you one of you guys leaked this.
1:20:35
None of you are getting um none of you guys are getting to be my Kevin Durant, right?"
1:20:38
Um uh >> um you know, he got to do it because he is a a billionaire um many times over.
1:20:46
He's part of like a lead, you know, he's like part of the national team.
1:20:48
He's creating something which is really important for the country.
1:20:51
And even at that level, he has been conditioned to not want to sort of make his case openly and in public um for the view that he has about the way society and the world should interact with technology.
1:21:05
So if even at that level with um you know with that much like plot armor um you're not feeling like you can do you can do this sort of thing.
1:21:15
It's you know it it it trickles down further into the broader ecosystem.
1:21:19
What uh what kind of status games are young people in China that might be emerging from the university system?
1:21:28
You know, do they want to go work for uh big tech companies?
1:21:30
Do they want to work in manufacturing?
1:21:33
Do they want to startups?
1:21:36
Like what is what kind of games are are are they playing?
1:21:41
>> I thought you were going to ask me what car they were buying. I'm like, I don't know.
1:21:46
>> That that comes [laughter] later.
1:21:48
Um, you know, there is there's uh polling.
1:21:51
I mean, like people do polls about like, you know, who gets to recruit the most Chinua graduates.
1:21:55
Uh, the list is not surprising.
1:21:57
Like the the top labs, Bike Dance, Huawei pay the most.
1:22:03
Um, you know, they work you really hard.
1:22:05
Um, but I think there's um sort of there was this like um moment I think in the the second half of the 2020s when entrepreneurship was the cool thing and now um it's you know the the the pendulum has definitely swung back towards um >> working at big firms.
1:22:26
Oh, one more funny thing on this.
1:22:28
So like apparently the uh the PLA uh so the the Chinese army the there they've been able to raise their standards over the years and they've been getting um better crop of uh of talent including someone's including some from top universities just because like the job market is so rough. I mean they stopped. >> Oh, interesting.
1:22:47
Because the job market is tough because I I I talked to a friend uh who had spent a lot of time in China and he said that like the the major difference that he saw between the US and China was that uh the the government is able to hire super top performers, but it's because they can force them to join.
1:23:02
But this is because you're saying it's more of like a job market dynamic.
1:23:07
>> I don't think I don't know who's getting forced into speaking these job.
1:23:09
I think it's still like, you know, it's it's um it's downstream of look uh youth unemployment was like 25% 3 or 4 years ago and then the Chinese government stopped reporting it.
1:23:24
>> So like [laughter] look um you know people will take work where they where they can get it.
1:23:28
And I think the promise like also um you there's data on like or the government reports how many people take the civil service exam every year.
1:23:36
That's been rising pretty consistently over time.
1:23:40
Um, so to see that now like bleeding into police and the military is a is an interesting I think side of the times because those are not highpaying careers.
1:23:49
They're just ones that have more stability, right? >> Yeah. Yeah.
1:23:52
Uh, back to Leong Winfang, founder of Deepseek, his his leaked transcript.
1:23:58
Uh, it felt like there were a lot of interesting, thought-provoking ideas in there that some of which I agree with, but it also felt a little bit like the 2025 AI lab leader playbook that is now facing backlash where he's talking about uh, you know, sort of sci-fi scenarios, jobs, and all these different mechanics that uh, run some risk.
1:24:22
Do you think that that has do you think he's aware of the backlash in the United States to that type of rhetoric or do you think that he thinks that China is somehow resilient to it?
1:24:34
>> Well, here's the interesting thing with Leang Wan fun.
1:24:36
He's kind of like Demis and Deep Mind if DeepMind never sold. >> Sure.
1:24:42
>> So, um you know, he is really rich.
1:24:42
He runs this like giant Jane Street >> Yeah.
1:24:49
E like quant think quant hedge funds which is which spits off money.
1:24:52
He's able to basically fund this himself.
1:24:56
He's told his investors, I'm not here to make a profit.
1:24:59
I'm here to make AGI and like look, I'm gonna have these weird ideas and try to just >> do cool science and um uh I'm gonna make this bet which is very different from the one that uh the western French labs have made which is that like I need to have a business to throw off cash in order to keep doing it.
1:25:18
And I think like you know what was what was the striking thing in there?
1:25:22
He's like look we're not going to have perverse incentives because we're going to keep our headcount really small and we're going to keep doing this.
1:25:28
we're going to do our the best we can to like keep doing fundamental breakthrough science and hope things go well.
1:25:33
So, um, that more than his, uh, uh, you know, what's going to happen in 2050 things I were was was my takeaway is like he's the one player in this ecosystem who's who's prioritizing keeping his sort of like independence and research direction and not sort of being tied to a product roadmap or to a broader um, uh, AI uh, you know, a comput provider in China or like an Alibaba or Tencent, but he just like wants to be weird and do do his own thing.
1:26:06
And I think that's really cool. >> That's interesting.
1:26:07
Where do you think Deep Seek will be getting chips in the next couple of years?
1:26:10
Is that they're just going to keep building on Nvidia?
1:26:15
>> [snorts] >> Um so importantly there is this um uh ratio between the US Nvidia uh US Nvidia Jalapeno whatever broader like TSMC ecosystem and TSMC Samsung Intel ecosystem and the Chinese ecosystem and >> there is capacity like 15 to1
1:26:40
>> 12 to1 and that's a thing that you can project out pretty clearly Um just kind of like doing a little doing some equations from like how much how much uh capex is being spent, how many how much equipment is being acquired, like yield rates, what have you. So um where is he getting the
1:26:55
So um where is he getting the chips?
1:26:58
Uh as much Nvidia as he can get probably.
1:27:02
Um but I the the sort of larger takeaway with the Chinese and western ecosystems is that um the western one is way better capitalized and has way more straightforward access to chips which is basically an order of magnitude um better um in over the next like at least 5 years.
1:27:20
So it's going to be rough sledding for them.
1:27:23
And look, if you I don't know how much you guys time you guys have spent with the Chinese AI IPOs, but they're making like $500 million or like a billion dollars and it's cute.
1:27:34
But these [laughter] are this is not three 30 this is not 30 trillion, right?
1:27:39
Uh or uh or even or even 10 or even 10 billion.
1:27:42
And the reason the reason the reason that's the case is because they're not on the frontier of the technology.
1:27:48
So they can't charge a premium and they're computed.
1:27:49
Now, um, look, we we've got this interesting new model where, um, Kimmy is trying to license, uh, its technology to be able to sort of leverage compute in the West to make money like TBD on whether the Trump administration is going to be cool with that as a going concern going forward.
1:28:08
forward. But if all the Chinese firms have is access to Chinese chips, it's going to be really difficult to make a lot of money and to keep paying for more chips in the way that um the Western Labs have been able to like really
1:28:22
mobilize the entire global financial system to >> you're talking about Moonshot potentially going to Microsoft and Amazon and offering their models which are open source but served and they would want to rev share based on whatever sells. Right. Got it. Right. Got it. >> Exactly.
1:28:38
Jord, you had a question.
1:28:40
>> Uh, is there any evidence of uh individuals in China that are outspoken uh saying that China is not doing enough to invest or be competitive in AI?
1:28:50
Like anyone that's saying like the government like if we don't have private or you know if we don't have companies that can that can operate like a Jensen, right?
1:29:02
just like sprinkling billions of dollars everywhere throughout the economy that uh we need the government to actually you know participate in that way. Uh no.
1:29:12
Um I mean I think the government already is um so you've you've started to see more and more state money coming into these companies cap tables like you know if you're a CEO it's a bit of a it's a bit of a double-edged sword right where on the one hand you just want to be able to run your business and not have this like guy from um uh an SOE saying like hey we think you should spend your time doing this instead of that.
1:29:40
Um but you know subsidies subsidies are always nice.
1:29:42
Look the the the Chinese government maybe 15 plus years ago wake up woke up to this idea that it needed to invest really substantially in the semiconductor ecosystem and then they've done that for better for worse.
1:29:57
We're starting to see real results come out of the likes of CXMT and uh Smick and Huawei of course.
1:30:03
Now on the lab side, so like the or like the demand side for those chips, that's something which has only really started to happen over the past 6 months or so.
1:30:14
And um look, this the scale of it is going to be very different than um the amount of uh money that uh uh a Microsoft and Amazon, a Google and OpenAI and Anthropic can do to sort of like precommit to buy these chips going forward. So um >> I don't know.
1:30:32
Well, excited excited to continue following that story for you, Jordan.
1:30:36
>> Is there any evidence that there's been a sort of deflock movement in China?
1:30:41
[laughter] >> I don't know what you're talking about.
1:30:44
Oh, you don't know about deflock?
1:30:45
>> So, like on Instagram, on Instagram, there's videos that will have like 200,000 likes of somebody demonstrating the most efficient way.
1:30:52
So quickly to level set, Flock Safety is an American startup that uh sells essentially CCTV cameras to police forces that then go into a database, get image recognized, and so uh a police officer can type in a license plate and see where that car has been.
1:31:11
There's been a few instances of abuse where uh police officers have been uh checking on the movements of their of their ex-wives. Exactly.
1:31:19
And so, uh, that's caused a lot of backlash that that that kind of created the original media, uh, firestorm, but now it has really gained ground on social media and as a result, there's protests and people actually going out into the real world and and destroying the cameras with like buzz saws to to get them out of their communities because they really don't like them.
1:31:39
[sighs] >> I mean, I I've I've sort of like um emotionally surrendered to the panopticon years ago. very Chinese mindset.
1:31:52
>> It's like I'm, you know, they're watching me. It's okay.
1:31:53
What am I gonna do about it?
1:31:54
Um, uh, the, uh, Tyler Cow has this take, right, where you should be bullish on places that have a public safety problem today because the cost of dealing with petty crime is just going to go down because there's exactly stuff like this.
1:32:13
New York in the 70s and 80s like it became >> a we're going to have 10x police officers everywhere and you don't even need to be good at being a police officer.
1:32:23
You just have to like show up and say hey I got you on I caught you on camera like doing this bad thing.
1:32:26
So >> speaking I mean coming back to cars at the beginning like I don't think speeding is good.
1:32:32
I would like people to be caught when they speed so they stop speeding. >> Where's the boo?
1:32:39
>> No, I think I think I agree with you. Keep it on the track.
1:32:44
>> If your look, if your car is worth more than $150,000 and you get extra 50 grand a year for, you know, your speeding pass ticket, >> that's the country you want to live in, John.
1:32:55
I mean, you know that that's actually what happens.
1:32:57
People with really nice cars, they they they get specific lawyers that get them out of every ticket so that they never need to deal with them and then they don't get caught speeding that often.
1:33:06
They got caught every single time cameras with speed cameras.
1:33:07
Is there something like a 1199 foundation to for that where you get like a whole livery around your car that >> maybe a stable coin that you could stake, [laughter] get a bunch of get a bunch of money flowing.
1:33:22
>> The thing uh what do you are you tracking anything?
1:33:25
You're probably not, but I'm just curious.
1:33:28
Um, I've I've been getting Instagram ads for like consumer EV tall just basically like flying drones that you can sit in as a human.
1:33:40
They're selling them for like $100,000 now. >> Great.
1:33:43
>> It's a jet ski for the skies.
1:33:45
>> I can't tell if I can't tell.
1:33:47
>> Algorithms got you guys bad.
1:33:47
They saw that acquisition price.
1:33:49
They're like, [laughter] "Let's just send Jordy some toys." >> Toys? Yeah.
1:33:53
I mean, my boy's been buying toys.
1:33:56
He's got so many surfboards.
1:33:58
[laughter] I'm living the question there. Sorry.
1:34:02
>> The question the question is like uh are flying cars going to like we we just saw the we just saw the >> joke in America.
1:34:11
>> We said we just saw the humanoid robot game which everyone is sort of like you know laugh some people are laughing at because the robots run really fast and they explode and other people are like whoa >> uh that's actually like really impressive pace and these things seem pretty capable faster than Usain Bolt.
1:34:27
Um >> what's the what's the market for the EV tools besides like going to the Hamptons?
1:34:32
>> I mean you just traffic is like the only point, right?
1:34:37
>> Yeah, but that is extremely significant.
1:34:40
Like if >> you live in Los Angeles, >> so I mean there's there's a lot there's a lot of I mean DC I I I uh last time I was in DC we had a twomileish drive and it was traffic.
1:34:52
There was so much traffic it took like 40 minutes.
1:34:54
I was like, "You live like this?"
1:34:56
[laughter] Um, uh, but anyways, I I do think that I'm I've seen enough videos now that basically are showing that flying cars are here.
1:35:10
They may not be safe enough.
1:35:11
>> You think LeBron's going to take it to uh Philadelphia?
1:35:14
>> Isn't he doing I thought I thought he was doing helicopter transport.
1:35:18
>> Yeah, but why take an eleopter when you take a EV toll? >> Yeah.
1:35:21
I mean, the hot take on on flying cars is that we've had them for a long time. They're just expensive.
1:35:24
They're just called helicopters because >> Okay.
1:35:27
So, I'm pull up pull up this video right now.
1:35:30
>> But the idea is democratizing the >> You can just buy this for $120,000. >> Dangerous.
1:35:36
>> Yeah, I [laughter] know.
1:35:38
>> You can buy this this >> We made We made commercial air travel very safe. So, why not? >> Here we go.
1:35:43
You can buy this right now for $120,000.
1:35:49
>> When are you guys going to live stream from an EV poll?
1:35:52
>> [laughter] >> Can we get our Can we get a show? >> This is electric. >> Yes. >> Wow. >> How long can it go?
1:35:57
Can it like But really fun.
1:36:01
>> They're already using them for uh agriculture. >> Okay. >> Like spraying crops. >> Okay.
1:36:06
>> Why do I need a person though in it? >> Yeah. You >> Yeah. No. No.
1:36:09
They're they're they're some of them you can most of them I think can be remembered.
1:36:13
>> The only reason you need a person in there is if the person is moving like traveling from one place to another. Yeah.
1:36:18
>> Um and people pay a lot.
1:36:18
opportunity costs are high and so if they can get you know it would be an hour drive but it's 10 minutes in the EV tall like that's a that's a bullish thing.
1:36:26
Uh last question tell me about the elite rocket force in China.
1:36:34
>> They are seeking public tips on procurement violations.
1:36:35
I don't even know what the rocket force is. So break it down.
1:36:39
Tell me what's happening.
1:36:41
>> Okay so rocket force this is actually a Soviet invention.
1:36:43
So, you know, Air Force, AV, Army, Marines.
1:36:45
The Soviets were like, "Okay, rockets, >> big deal.
1:36:53
>> We definitely going to need to blow the >> cavalry.
1:36:59
>> Going to need them to, you know, blow up America.
1:37:00
So, we're going to have a rocket force.
1:37:01
China made their own a few years ago."
1:37:04
You know, we we came back with our space force.
1:37:06
I think I'm not sure which one's cooler to have a rocket force, but basically, this has like been a debate for a while.
1:37:11
Do do you need your own like the missiles that you shoot from the ground?
1:37:15
Should they be their own force? Whatever.
1:37:16
Um the Bloomberg four years ago, 3 four years ago comes out with a story saying that half of the rockets in China are not filled with um fuel but are filled with water.
1:37:28
Um then you start to see a whole lot of purges.
1:37:30
And as you guys have been following closely, I'm sure um the >> So they were laring rockets.
1:37:36
[laughter] >> They were they were absolutely laring rockets.
1:37:40
um uh you know there's an entire uh it's kind of two generations of uh Chinese military leadership that has now been purged and there are sort of like like the nine person you know joint chiefs is now down to like a guy and a half.
1:37:54
Um, so we've been >> converging. [laughter] >> That's it.
1:38:00
I mean, it's the the biggest piece of the story is just that they had to go for public whistleblowers. Like that is >> Yeah.
1:38:06
So like you could purge so easily behind the scenes. Check the records.
1:38:10
Just go and look and see, okay, there's water in this in this rocket instead of fuel.
1:38:14
Like it doesn't seem that hard.
1:38:16
So yeah, we're we're like seven years into we're like 3 four years into this round of purge and now we're opening up a tip line to the public saying, "Hey, you know, >> anybody bragging at the club about stealing rocket fuel? Call this number." Very, very rough.
1:38:32
Well, >> speaking about uh former spouses wanting their revenge, like you know, it's it's not just following the cars around.
1:38:42
>> That's actually a good source of whistleblowers probably. That makes sense. That's a good one.
1:38:46
>> Uh Jordy, last question or we good? >> No. No.
1:38:48
I I I thought that they just wanted to put on put on the front like they had way more rockets and they actually did when they were really just like, you know, metal with some water in it. >> Sure.
1:38:59
>> I didn't realize that it was >> Oh, so you think it's part it was part of the plan actually. >> Yeah.
1:39:02
I thought I thought that's why that's why I said Eisenhower live action roll. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
1:39:08
I mean, you see those military parades, they never open them up and show us what's inside. Who knows?
1:39:13
Maybe it's all paperier-mâché.
1:39:13
Anyway, thanks so much for coming on the show, Jordan. Great to see you. Congrat. We'll see you there. Have a good one.
1:39:24
Let me tell you about Crowd Strike. Your business is AI.
1:39:26
Their business is securing it.
1:39:28
Crowd Strike secures AI and stops breaches.
1:39:30
Our next guests are from Actonide.
1:39:32
They are the first startup to produce Halo, the highenriched >> finally. >> Hi.
1:39:42
What [music] is what does Halo stand for?
1:39:43
I know it's enriched uranium, but break it down for us. Introduce yourselves. Welcome to the show. >> Hey guys. Hey John. Hey Jordy.
1:39:48
So nice to you to have us.
1:39:50
Uh huge fans of the show.
1:39:51
Um have you tell you a little bit about Halo and what we're doing here at >> uh so you hit the nail right on the head.
1:39:58
Uh we were indeed the first startup in history to enrich uranium and produce Halo.
1:40:02
In terms of what Halo is, it's not something that you need to really worry too much about.
1:40:05
Stands for high acid, low enriched uranium.
1:40:07
>> Now I'm worried about Now I'm worried about it.
1:40:09
Now I'm [laughter] worried about I'm worried about >> it's it's the next gen fuel for nextg reactors. Okay.
1:40:13
And it's something that the department of energy says that you cannot get presently in the United States. There's no supply. Yeah.
1:40:17
Right now >> it's mostly coming from like decommissioned nuclear uh like uh nuclear submarines or something like that.
1:40:25
Like they sort of refine it down like reuse what we have basically. >> You're exactly right.
1:40:29
Or they get it from Russia. >> Yeah. Russia. Not good. >> Yeah. >> Yeah.
1:40:34
And that's something that we're aiming to change here in Dallas, Texas.
1:40:36
It was a huge feat by our team. Yeah.
1:40:40
>> That nation states have struggled with and failed at and we're doing it here in Dallas, Texas. >> Yeah.
1:40:44
So, take us through the process. Is it big centrifuge?
1:40:45
What what's the equipment that's involved in the process?
1:40:50
>> So, we have a machine called the Calutron which was originally invented by Nobel laureates uh for the Manhattan project.
1:40:55
So, they've already delivered for our country once before.
1:40:57
>> Um but they were uh sort of decommissioned because they're not very energy efficient.
1:41:01
>> Um very large magnets.
1:41:01
Um >> now magnets don't consume power if they're superconducting for instance.
1:41:08
And so it's very rare in the engineering fields that you'll find the major problem can actually go to zero.
1:41:11
So we we stand on the shoulders of giants in that way.
1:41:15
>> So you can like use the same machine but just redesign a piece of it to be more efficient. Is that what's going on? >> More or less.
1:41:23
It's the exact same principle though.
1:41:24
And it's besides the centrifuge the only thing that's been proven at scale. >> Correct.
1:41:29
[clears throat] Uh take us through like the history. How did you get here? Why nuclear?
1:41:32
What's the what's the lineage of the company?
1:41:37
It's um it's been a long time coming.
1:41:38
It's been an interest of mine for a long time.
1:41:40
Uh when I first heard about the problem of how do you atomically separate things, I I couldn't believe that it hadn't been solved.
1:41:44
And initially, I thought this would be an easy problem to work on.
1:41:46
And so, uh I've been humbled since then.
1:41:48
Many times, as you can imagine, >> what's what's the phrase?
1:41:51
We don't do things because they're hard.
1:41:53
We do them because we thought they would be easy. >> Yeah.
1:41:57
>> I couldn't agree more with that.
1:41:57
So, time and time again, you go, okay, I finally understand it. And then, no. Right.
1:42:02
Um so, it's been a long time coming.
1:42:03
Um you know there's a lot of research that has to go into this.
1:42:07
This is not a very approachable field.
1:42:08
Um a lot of things are classified and you have to derive it for yourself.
1:42:11
There's been a lot of smart people who've had a lot of interesting ideas about this from the centrifuge to laser um calron you name it. >> Yeah.
1:42:19
Where where is the the limit on classification?
1:42:22
Because a lot of the you mentioned like rederiving it yourself.
1:42:24
A lot of the AI models are able to rederive cyber security exploits which are now the talk of the town.
1:42:30
But uh are AI models giving you refusals in your work or are they being helpful because they know that the control point is actually separate and it's not a risk to educate someone about uh how to build a nuclear product because at the certain point they're going to have to go to reality and go and get a particular material that is controlled.
1:42:55
>> No, it's such a fascinating question.
1:42:55
I I don't use a whole lot of AI.
1:42:57
Um so I don't get a whole lot of refusals.
1:42:59
I usually for finding vendors and and suppliers and things like that.
1:43:03
>> Um but you know I AI probably wouldn't be super useful for a task like this because it it touches on some pretty obscure areas of like you're building a particle accelerator.
1:43:12
Um so sort of questions of something called >> more.
1:43:18
I'd be curious to see how far it gets along with it.
1:43:19
But I I certainly don't think it it presents a proliferation concern.
1:43:23
We're also pretty wary regarding kind of where sort of information within our business goes to and so we have a lot of things that are still frankly analog or airgapped regarding any sort of things that are proprietary or trade secret. >> Yeah. Yeah.
1:43:36
I mean at the same time it's not like the company's nuclear launch codes uh and uh and and cyber security is more about intellectual property. Correct. >> Yes. Um >> related. >> Right. Right.
1:43:48
and we look forward to working with the appropriate regulators for us to scale up hoop production.
1:43:51
for us to scale up hoop production. you know, it's a smidge under highly enriched and so you have to be in a category 2 facility and >> um >> but uh the separation technology itself is you know 80 years old um and so there's definitely some a lot of knowhow
1:44:08
um but the principles overt >> what's the bisdev go to market side of the business are you already inking contracts with uh I mean there's so many new nuclear reactor startups that would probably sign up to buy Halo if you were able to produce it at a certain scale What what's the status there? >> Absolutely. So, uh we actually are kind >> Absolutely.
1:44:25
So, uh we actually are kind of agnostic with the materials that we make.
1:44:29
Uh generally, we refine atoms and some of the first refined atoms that we made were for the medical industry.
1:44:33
Uh they go for about $30,000 per gram.
1:44:36
Uh which is like a paperclip worth of material for you Patriots out there.
1:44:41
Um and we delivered that to Oaklo isotopes.
1:44:47
Um we've had a few commercial deliveries to them.
1:44:48
And um you know in terms of the Halo side of things, we are we've been in stealth for quite some time.
1:44:54
And so we kind of uh uh blew up Twitter with our uh announcement of coming out of stealth and some of the uh you know recent developments here.
1:45:03
And we have a lot of those bisdev talks ongoing this week and beyond uh to go ahead and ink some deals.
1:45:09
Obviously, there's a big uh sort of gap between doing it once and being able to scale it up on both the technological and regulatory fronts, and we look forward to working with the right partners and regulatory bodies to make sure that goes in a methodical and expedient fashion.
1:45:23
>> You self-funded this company at some point.
1:45:25
Can you tell us about the journey to set yourself up for there?
1:45:27
What that was like, what the motivation was? >> Yeah. Um, that's true.
1:45:31
I did put in over a million dollars of my own money.
1:45:34
Um, you know, uh, when Robert and I first met, uh, I had a background in finance and software, and he really kind of gave me a gut punch, uh, because he told me that he was, uh, pretty upset with so many, uh, brilliant engineers that go into finance and software, hey, I turned a buck from it.
1:45:52
Um, and that they weren't doing hard engineering problems.
1:45:55
So, I asked him, well, what are you doing?
1:45:56
And he said, I'm working on what I think is the hardest, you know, sort of unsolved problem in humanity.
1:45:59
I was like, all right, like what's that about?
1:46:03
and he told me he was doing sort of isotope separation.
1:46:04
He showed me what he was working on.
1:46:06
I got super infatuated at the problem.
1:46:08
I truly agree that this is indeed humanity's largest unsolved problem.
1:46:12
If you look at history, you got the Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age, the Silicon Age.
1:46:15
We were promised the atomic age and it's something that we we we deserve.
1:46:20
We're not playing with a full deck of materials.
1:46:21
And uh so I began investing my own money and got to a spot where it was beyond R&D.
1:46:26
uh we brought on a seed round and uh you know here we are uh doing commercial uh deliveries and uh scaling into different markets. >> That's fantastic.
1:46:35
Well, congratulations and thank you so much for coming on show.
1:46:39
>> Yeah, great to meet you guys. Come back on.
1:46:42
>> Goodbye and >> be safe.
1:46:43
>> Let me tell you about Codeex.
1:46:43
Codex is a powerful workspace for getting work done with AI agents.
1:46:46
Whether you're writing code, analyzing data, creating content, or automating business workflows, Codex helps you move projects forward from start [music] to finish.
1:46:53
Our next guest is Billy Falmer returning to the show with Regent. Billy, how you doing? Welcome back. >> What's up, guys? >> It's been too long. >> Doing well. >> Been too long.
1:47:06
>> Uh, >> great to see you.
1:47:07
>> Give us give us the latest news in Regent World.
1:47:09
How are the Seag Gliders going?
1:47:12
>> We are uh we're cruising. We're gliding.
1:47:14
We just wrapped up our $240 million series B.
1:47:17
So, that's the big news lately. >> Give me a G. Come on. [music] quarter bells.
1:47:25
>> I've been waiting on that >> quarter bill. >> Oh, so good.
1:47:27
Um, so, uh, yeah, talk about what it takes to raise for this company.
1:47:33
Uh, are you you're you're still pre-revenue, but you and you're not actually like the product, you can't just go as a consumer and test it out, but you have a massive backlog.
1:47:40
What are investors looking for?
1:47:42
How are you telling the story? >> Yeah.
1:47:45
Well, um, we we do have money coming in the door importantly, right?
1:47:49
So, we have, uh, commercial customers.
1:47:51
We have about 10 billion in the backlog there.
1:47:52
But one of the unique things about Regent is we have firm orders like actual orders, non-refundable deposits.
1:48:00
Customers are uh putting down.
1:48:00
We have over 10 million in the bank now that are uh backing our our backlog now.
1:48:04
Multiple years now of uh delivery from our manufacturing building.
1:48:10
So that's on the commercial side.
1:48:11
And on the defense side now up to about 20 million in orders, majority with the Marine Corps.
1:48:15
But uh we have some really big announcements on the horizon here.
1:48:19
with the defense business growing really fast. >> Yeah.
1:48:22
So, uh yeah, I mean typically you'd assume like net 60 pay, you know, payment terms or something.
1:48:27
Uh but you are able to get some of that money up front. That's good.
1:48:30
Uh what does the team look like?
1:48:31
Uh where have you uh where's the company based and how is the actual operation growing?
1:48:39
>> Yeah, we're based in Rhode Island.
1:48:39
Uh Rhode Island has really been put on the map lately.
1:48:43
We're we're leading in maritime and defense.
1:48:44
There's a bunch of other companies here, a bunch of startups.
1:48:47
Vanderol moved into town like you go out on Naragans at Bay and you're going to see all sorts of drone boats out there and subs and sea gliders too.
1:48:55
So that's been pretty cool.
1:48:55
Uh we're up to about 120 people now at the company.
1:49:00
Uh but obviously with the series B done now we're going to start growing really fast.
1:49:03
Uh and the whole point for us is we have this quarter million square foot factory here.
1:49:08
Uh that's where we're going to be building our sea gliders, both our our large visoys, the small squires.
1:49:13
Uh so we got to fill out the factory.
1:49:15
So that's the next step for us.
1:49:17
Uh I feel like you're in an interesting position because we I mean we talked u maybe years ago about um the benefits of being all electric that yes there is an environmental benefit but for specific use cases it might not be that big but the serviceability might be uh an even bigger benefit. Is that holding true?
1:49:38
because you're in this dynamic where the current administration is probably very receptive to doing business with a young company like you mentioned with the Marine Corps, but at the same time they're not exactly the biggest fans of electric technology [laughter] from what I've seen.
1:49:53
So, uh, you know, is there is there a discussion of uh of other power trains or do you want to remain laser focused?
1:50:03
I remember talking to somebody who deployed uh small like basically drone helicopters uh in the military and said that like gas engines work really well.
1:50:13
They stay up much longer.
1:50:13
The energy density is is fine.
1:50:15
The supply chain's there.
1:50:16
But how are you dealing with the trade-offs of where the where the powertrain technology might go in the future?
1:50:21
Yeah, we we sort of always had the feeling that on the defense side of the business and particularly in the markets we're going after where we're talking about like moving across thousands of miles across the Indoacific, right?
1:50:32
Hopping between these islands that we're going to need longer than the couple hundred mile range we get out of batteries, which is really good for commercial.
1:50:39
Like that's your regional range where you're sort of stuck between a car and an airplane.
1:50:42
Uh but on the military side, like we need to go from Guam to the first island chain, like we're going across the Pacific here.
1:50:49
So, um, on that side, definitely hybridizing.
1:50:52
Uh, about a year ago or a little over a year ago, we announced Regent Defense, and part of that was really a focus on building out this hybrid.
1:51:00
So, we have sort of a conceptual design now.
1:51:02
We've been working on the supply chain side.
1:51:03
Uh, but we're definitely going to be introducing a uh an engine, a fuel engine system that works with our electric propulsion system on the front end, extending our range out to about 1,600 statute miles.
1:51:14
So, we'll be able to do that. Well, yeah.
1:51:16
I've seen these uh the this very unique hybrid.
1:51:19
I believe it's a Chinese car where it is primarily an electric vehicle, but then there is a like a twocylinder gas engine that just charges the battery.
1:51:29
Is that a relevant technology that we're going to see other places or was that sort of a unique anomaly of that particular Chinese EV company?
1:51:39
>> Yeah, it sort of depends on the application for us.
1:51:40
uh you know we're we're a dual-use company obviously and and I I think like to be successful in dual use and there are few companies that can really say this is like as much consistency between the commercial and defense products as possible like as as much shared bomb like basically the same skew.
1:51:57
So, our sea gliders are coming off the line here or will uh within the next year or so in Rhode Island.
1:52:02
And in the commercial version, we're going to load it up with batteries and it'll go 180 mi.
1:52:08
On the defense version, we'll put about 20% of the batteries in.
1:52:10
So, you still those batteries sort of help you take off and land.
1:52:14
We still have that electric propulsion system, which is super quiet, super low maintenance, low thermal signature, all these great things.
1:52:22
Um, and then instead of the rest of the batteries, that's where we put in our engine and our fuel system. >> Yeah.
1:52:27
Uh tell me more about the commercial backlog. I mean it seems huge.
1:52:30
Um where who who's interested?
1:52:34
Where where are the logical places to uh deploy these?
1:52:38
Because I imagine that as you've actually built up that book of commercial business.
1:52:42
Uh there's been a lot of uh just assumption testing on the other side of the negotiation table.
1:52:50
Maybe you come and say San Francisco to Marina del Rey.
1:52:53
Maybe somebody else is actually it's going to work better here or there.
1:52:56
So, where are you seeing the future play out first? >> Exactly.
1:53:01
I mean, founding the company, we're we're coming up on six years in business now.
1:53:05
Uh, you know, growing up going to school in the Boston area, it was like Boston and New York, right? Start raising money. >> Yeah.
1:53:12
And and it was like LA to San Francisco, you know, we're raising money, we're going between them.
1:53:15
Like those are those are total pain points.
1:53:19
So, that that was sort of the the focus on the initial commercial side.
1:53:20
um sort of started obviously just based in the US as an American company with the US focus and so that's evolved into Miami to West Palm and the Bahamas as a likely US launch market um throughout New England, right?
1:53:35
Like Boston and Rhode Island and Connecticut down in New York uh and certainly some West Coast routes and obviously Hawaii [clears throat] as well, Pacific Northwest too.
1:53:43
But what we've found as we've grown is this is actually like truly a global technology.
1:53:49
And the international order book and backlog is actually much larger than the domestic one.
1:53:53
And very few people know this, but there are as many ferry passengers per year as airplane passengers, which is like wild as an American to think that the coastal market is that big.
1:54:03
Uh for you know cargo, there's 90 plus% of cargo that goes over the coastlines.
1:54:09
>> Almost half the world lives in coastal populations.
1:54:12
is just like how humanity settled the world.
1:54:13
So global globally we're talking about places like the Mediterranean, Japan throughout the Indo-Pacific, right?
1:54:19
Like these are really big markets for us.
1:54:22
So it's not just an island hopping machine.
1:54:24
It's like anywhere there is coastline and humans live and [clears throat] trade on coastlines.
1:54:28
That's our commercial market.
1:54:30
>> Is there interest from the Middle East or is are things like actually slowing down there because of the geopolitical conflict?
1:54:36
because I I when I hear about uh new technology, maybe it's a little bit expensive to get up, but you need to do some retrofitting of some port or something like that feels like Dubai is going to sign up immediately.
1:54:48
But what's it been like talking to folks?
1:54:52
>> Uh the Middle East has been a big part of our strategy for for a long time actually.
1:54:56
So we we spent a lot of time out there.
1:54:57
We have a great relationship with uh the strategic development fund in Abu Dhabi.
1:55:00
So um we actually plan to expand manufacturing the series B our first global manufacturing center here in Rhode Island uh but subsequently and and based on the size of that backlog we're already planning international expansion.
1:55:14
So we've set up a joint venture in Abu Dhabi and we're going to be scaling manufacturing from there.
1:55:17
So the Gulf is is going to be huge not just from manufacturing but also commercially like Dubai Abu Dhabi that is a painoint route too.
1:55:26
Crazy traffic on that route.
1:55:29
>> And then I was I was just thinking LA I was in uh I I went to Formula 1 in Abu Dhabi but I was staying in Dubai and that that drive especially when you have these big sort of global events is just brutal right even even the the the
1:55:45
traffic getting out of Abu Dhabi and and uh so I can totally imagine yeah you have a 10-minute quick flight >> um question uh unrelated to to your business but what's happening on the recreational aviation side are we going to see an the sort of the the model 3 of the skies. Sort of an electric Cessna
1:56:02
Sort of an electric Cessna 172.
1:56:05
Something that is um you know userfriendly boats but for >> Yeah.
1:56:11
something something that's like hey I just want to go fly for an hour and not even >> Yeah. Yeah.
1:56:16
>> There there are certainly some attempts at electric airplanes and there are some electric trainers out there.
1:56:20
But um really the hard point of aircraft generally and like my background is aviation and I'm a pilot, my co-founder is a pilot, a lot of the teams are pilot like it's the training, you know, tons of time to go out, get your pilot's license, like learn how to fly, learn how to do the controls, learn how to navigate airspace, talk to uh air traffic controllers, etc.
1:56:39
So like that is is the big time sync.
1:56:41
And then there's also just the performance of like I need enough energy on board in these batteries.
1:56:46
And we already talked about the range limitation of batteries.
1:56:49
Like get up to altitude and then as I'm flying to my airport, uh, all aircraft need reserve fuel.
1:56:54
So if I'm flying to my airport, my airport's occupied or like something's wrong with it, I need enough fuel to fly and land somewhere else.
1:57:02
So it's actually like all of Yeah. Right.
1:57:04
It's like it's good when >> only Harrison Ford [laughter] only.
1:57:09
>> So like uh that was our perspective coming into this.
1:57:12
My co-founder and I came from the aviation world and we were part of that like early wave of electrification and we were working you know with the EV tolls and everything and we said these are the challenges we need to solve.
1:57:22
Electrification is is here in many ways and by building sea gliders we solve those problems because we certify uh under Coast Guard jurisdiction as a vessel not an aircraft.
1:57:31
Our digital flight controls enable it.
1:57:34
So all you need to do is drive a boat when you're operating it.
1:57:37
Even when you're flying the only controls are boat controls left and right, fast and slow.
1:57:40
And so that's what's going to open it up to everyone. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
1:57:44
That makes a lot of sense.
1:57:46
>> Have you seen uh the people uh in China selling quadcopters that humans can sit in that they'll just sell you for >> get on those? >> Yeah. Yeah.
1:57:57
No, so that's [laughter] that's what I'm saying that like so I saw I saw I saw another video of these guys that bought a Teimu drone and they were able to you could sit in it, but they were flying it with the remote and then they crashed it >> and it [laughter] and so I I just can't believe >> scary.
1:58:13
>> I can't believe that you can just order one of these right now. >> Scary.
1:58:15
I was I was at uh an air show in the Middle East and I was no kidding standing next to Adam Goldstein uh at Archer and we were like watching this drone competition and one of these drones falls out of the sky live at the show.
1:58:29
Fortunately, no one was on board and we look at each other like what is going on here?
1:58:33
Like a this never flies in America.
1:58:35
This would never pass any certification.
1:58:37
But like crazy stuff like that going on is is actually not good for the industry.
1:58:41
Like aerospace is held to a higher standard.
1:58:43
There's a reason why aerospace is known for its safety and commercial aviation is the safest way to travel.
1:58:49
Uh even with us in the maritime domain, we're taking a similarly safe approach because we're flying at high speeds with people on board.
1:58:57
So like that's our focus and it's a harder bar to hit obviously as a startup as a company.
1:59:01
That's like part of the responsibility of building flying machines.
1:59:04
But you know seeing these guys jumping in with like the the sword swinging around and like some RC controller like I I get a little worried.
1:59:13
Yeah, >> fortune favors the bold though. Come on.
1:59:17
[laughter] You got to take some risk. You're an entrepreneur. Hop on this thing.
1:59:22
[laughter] >> No, I think uh you're right to play it safe here. I completely agree.
1:59:25
Uh but thank you so much.
1:59:28
Congratulations on the new round.
1:59:30
>> Awesome progress >> and we'll talk to you soon. Have a great one. >> Thank you guys.
1:59:32
We get to see Glider soon. >> Goodbye.
1:59:35
>> Let me tell you about the New York Stock Exchange.
1:59:37
Want to change the world?
1:59:38
Raise capital at the New York Stock Exchange. Stop making excuses.
1:59:43
September is the month for you. Just do it. >> Do it.
1:59:46
>> Up next, we have Aaron Cannon from Outset >> launching AI digital twins grounded in individual customers.
1:59:55
>> Back, >> welcome back to the show. How you doing?
1:59:57
>> Good to see you again. >> I'm good. Three third time on. I'm feeling special. >> I love it.
2:00:01
Uh, >> catch us up to speed. What have we missed?
2:00:05
What's the latest and greatest in your world?
2:00:07
[clears throat] >> Uh, things are great. Yeah.
2:00:08
So, uh, we're an AI research platform.
2:00:11
You guys probably remember we've uh since we last chatted, I think tripled revenue, tripled the team size, and now launched a very cool uh Thank you.
2:00:18
I was hoping to get at least a gong or the >> but um you have plenty. >> Yeah.
2:00:25
And and now we just launched digital twins. So we built >> Yes.
2:00:29
>> We we built a whole simulations lab and have now built uh Yeah, I'll tell you all about it. >> Yeah.
2:00:34
>> And so you came out of YC, you were sick you you're always getting told, talk to your customers. Talk to your customers.
2:00:40
You're absolutely [clears throat] sick of that.
2:00:41
You don't want to ever have to do a customer call again.
2:00:43
And so you built digital twins. Is that right? >> It's exactly right. Yes.
2:00:47
I I my I started my career as a researcher and I was like I you know I don't want to do that anymore. >> Okay.
2:00:53
>> But but in all seriousness >> sell me a digital twin because uh I've run companies and e-commerce companies and it's useful to have a profile of certain customer cohorts and certain c but that aggregation takes a lot of the work out of it and I feel like there's a lot of platforms that that do that.
2:01:08
Uh, it's sort of nice to talk to individual customers, but you might get a weirdo who's actually not very indicative.
2:01:17
Sometimes the individual customers can give you some unique insight that everyone else is feeling.
2:01:20
Uh, but walk me through the benefits of having these digital twins that are grounded in individual customers.
2:01:28
>> So, so here's the like to take a step back.
2:01:29
Research the whole point of research is to try to predict the future. Sure.
2:01:33
>> Like you're trying to make some decision for your business, right?
2:01:34
And you're looking backwards at the data. Yep.
2:01:35
And the idea is you can now not only look backwards but you could look forwards.
2:01:40
You can actually start simulating like if I do this new marketing campaign how would this customer set start reacting what what are the things they would say?
2:01:48
Y >> and we're very good at research.
2:01:48
That's what we've been doing.
2:01:50
That's what we built our business around.
2:01:51
But now what we can do is take that research >> and build out the simulation platform so that you can say okay I can actually see into the future of how this group would react to some very big business decision. Yeah.
2:02:03
>> And so we train them by by training digital twins on individuals.
2:02:05
So it's like a onetoone like you can go in talk to a digital twin and you know that's based on John and like that's got all of John's experience and like all this data about John and it can it can talk on behalf of you, right?
2:02:17
And so that's like the the the the mechanism that makes it super super useful and also like trustworthy. >> Yeah.
2:02:25
Uh, what what what incentive do you have to give people to do a long form AI moderated interview?
2:02:28
If I'm if I'm buying a pair of shoes, I don't know if I want to sit down for an hour with a with an AI to talk about the shoes and how they fit.
2:02:39
>> I I I think the last run we did was uh these were actually like 75 minutes, the last one, and I think we paid them $200. >> Okay.
2:02:46
Yeah, it's a reasonable >> to be clear.
2:02:47
It's worth more than the shoes, right? >> Sure. Sure.
2:02:50
And and if you do uh I is that one customer per one company?
2:02:53
So your I mean your clients include Microsoft, Uber, Google, Coinbase, you got Murderers Row here.
2:03:00
Uh are you saying like we are going to interview this one person about this one Excel feature or this one Excel product or are you saying like we're going to we're going to interview you about how you use technology.
2:03:13
Some of this might apply to Microsoft.
2:03:15
Some of this might apply to Google. >> That's right.
2:03:17
So, so, so we do uh we developed our own grounding interview.
2:03:21
So, it's not just about their use of Excel, right?
2:03:23
The grounding interview, it develops what we call persona core.
2:03:26
It's like trying to get like >> who you are, what are your values, what do you care about, >> right?
2:03:30
And so, we do that as the core and then we layer on other sets of data.
2:03:33
So, maybe Microsoft has, you know, operational data we can layer on to make it much more powerful.
2:03:39
>> They know my favorite. >> Exact. Exactly.
2:03:42
So the idea is that like >> we have we have abstracted you know as much of the person as we can and then what we do is we we we go back to that person and refresh that data regularly.
2:03:53
So we'll even have them grade their own twins answers like how did our twin do? >> Interesting.
2:03:56
>> And they can tell you and then and now we have a reinforcement loop kind of >> and so it's >> exactly exactly and so so that's that's that's what makes these really useful.
2:04:04
And then we also put confidence scores so you like obviously not all of our probabilistic you know you know output here is going to be the same.
2:04:10
So we can tell you which ones you should like really trust and which ones need a lot more human data to to kind of bring to it.
2:04:16
>> Where are you seeing the most pull from the market?
2:04:18
Like what what kind of businesses >> Yeah.
2:04:22
Theoretically, every business should care about trying to predict the future and forecast how different customer segments, but I'm sure some care more than others.
2:04:32
>> The the biggest pull right now is that uh companies have really hard-to-reach audiences, >> right?
2:04:38
And so these are like uh maybe they're, you know, maybe they're CRM buyers or they're, you know, kind of uh some kind of somewhat obscure part of the population.
2:04:46
And so the incremental value there is massive because they can't actually go out and do constant research with that group.
2:04:51
So they have like very few signals today.
2:04:52
So the incremental value is big enough that they're like adopting I think earlier um and first while there's still you know more kind of questions in in the market.
2:05:03
But but I think that's I think we'll continue to see a bunch of demand from like these specialized audiences that that companies are trying.
2:05:09
>> Then what's the o what's the opposite?
2:05:11
Uh what is what's a company that's like drowning in customer feedback data? Is that like some cons?
2:05:17
>> Well, I'll give you a kind of there.
2:05:18
There's there's basically certain business decisions and like strategy decisions that you would make that you don't need to forecast, right?
2:05:24
Like a a business doesn't need to say like, oh, what if we made customer support wait times >> shorter, right?
2:05:31
Like no one is sitting there being like, I wish when I called my internet service provider that I wish it took an hour instead of 30 minutes, right?
2:05:39
So >> or or or or maybe a good example and this is not a real one yet in terms of simulation.
2:05:43
So I'll share it as an example, but like Nestle does a lot of consumer research.
2:05:46
Consumers are reasonably easy to go out and talk to, right?
2:05:49
It's reasonably cheap to get more feedback.
2:05:51
But if you were actually trying to do if you're you're at Nestle and you're trying to do research on like uh retailers, right, and how they what they think about your brand, >> right?
2:05:59
That's actually a much harder group to go find and do research with.
2:06:02
You're not drowning in feedback from your retailers. >> Sure. >> Right.
2:06:05
That would be an audience and and the pitch when you when when you signed Nestle because I imagine that like like AI is very impressive, but I don't know that I would trust an AI to tell me which milk chocolate tastes the best because like the taste data just isn't in the model at all yet.
2:06:22
And and for a lot of consumer research on Nestle products, I would want to watch someone taste the chocolate and tell me what they thought of it. >> Yeah. Yeah.
2:06:32
Well, so, so when we, you know, initially pitched Nestle, it's actually about our, you know, AI research platform, which AI is just doing the interviewing.
2:06:38
You're just asking the questions.
2:06:39
You still got real human data at the end, >> right?
2:06:41
And that's our core, our core thing, and that's what we've had for the last couple years, but simulations is an extension of that, and that's where we we start talking.
2:06:47
It's a it's a the kind of the best kind of two elements of the pitch.
2:06:51
Number one is hard to reach audiences, right?
2:06:52
You're not able to get to them.
2:06:54
We'll build those twins of them.
2:06:55
You can talk to them anytime at, you know, unlimited capacity. >> Yeah.
2:06:59
Number two is we say um that like anybody in your company can access them.
2:07:04
>> It's like if your finance person's working on new pricing model, you don't want to like give your finance person like the ability to go research with real consumers necessarily, >> but but now they can actually like you know test ideas, test new pricing and see how how things would adapt, you know, and simulate them. >> Yeah, makes sense.
2:07:19
Uh last question for me is uh I mean it feels like the digital twin launch is like an expansion of the product portfolio and I'm interested in where else the product expansion can go.
2:07:29
Uh I'm I'm I I know that there are companies that they get a lot of feedback but they struggle to bridge the gap between the feedback that they're getting and then actual ideas to go and implement.
2:07:43
And I'm wondering how if you're going to wind up being more prescriptive in the results.
2:07:48
Hey, okay, we did all this research and you really should change the color from red to green. >> Right. Right. Right.
2:07:55
Well, look, so research is this thing where like humans go and decide to go run research. Yeah. Right.
2:08:00
What we're building towards and that's our original product, right?
2:08:03
We're building towards is something where uh the model can go do research for you before you've even asked the question, right?
2:08:09
And so it is constantly trying to figure out the answers to the things that you don't even know matter yet, right?
2:08:14
It's like, hey, there's, you know, your revenue down in that in that sector.
2:08:17
You don't even know that yet.
2:08:19
We're going to send agents to go talk to all the people in that in that part of the economy and like go figure out what's going on.
2:08:23
Talk to some simulations if we already have them built >> and then go take action.
2:08:28
>> And that that action is where I think like where we can ultimately have more impact than just collecting and synthesizing feedback. >> Makes sense.
2:08:35
Um, we should be able to like send specs to Cognition like let let them go build it, right?
2:08:38
And that's like really something that's happening. >> Yeah. I love it.
2:08:42
Well, congratulations on the launch and thank you so much for coming on the show. >> Very cool. >> For third time. >> Thank you guys. We'll talk soon. >> Have a good one. >> Great stuff. >> Goodbye.
2:08:50
Let me tell you about Figma agents. Meet the canvas.
2:08:54
Your AI agents can now create and modify your Figma files with design system context.
2:08:59
Thank you, Tyler, for uh kicking off some clapping.
2:09:03
while we're missing >> um >> a couple folks here.
2:09:05
[laughter] >> Jody is not going to let it down.
2:09:07
Uh up next we have Stephen from Lambda coming back on the show.
2:09:11
Third, fourth, fifth time. Who knows?
2:09:14
Stephen, good to see you. How you doing?
2:09:16
>> Hi, it's so good to see you. >> Great to see you. >> Been too long.
2:09:19
>> Okay, so we were talking to Jordan Schneider about this uh China backed AI bot farm.
2:09:25
He was kind of brushing it off and I can see both sides of the discussion.
2:09:29
you know, there's been just a couple reports, 200 accounts here, few hundred accounts here.
2:09:34
He was saying that China doesn't have a long history with inf uh interference politically. Uh what are you seeing?
2:09:41
What are you uh what are you identifying just in the broader debate?
2:09:47
So I I think that it's really important to not get lost in sort of is this a Chinese bot farm and just focus on bad facts and just bad information because >> you know that's the fundamental thing right you know misinformation I is like most readily solved by just disproving uh sort of you know and just showing showing what's real and what's not. >> Yeah. Yeah.
2:10:11
I mean the big number that I saw most recently was [cough and clears throat] polling on data centers terrible broadly.
2:10:19
But after telling uh somebody that you're polling that data centers recycle water, much like a car wash recycles water, they added that phrase, then the net approval score improved by like 30%.
2:10:33
So people with that extra context changed their whole opinion in just a few seconds.
2:10:40
Are is that what you're saying? >> Yeah. Yeah, 100%.
2:10:41
So for for example, the vast majority of new AI factories that are being built >> are completely recycling the water and using a dry cooler.
2:10:52
It's a closed loop water system where the water never even leaves the facility at all.
2:10:58
So that's the vast majority of a lot of these new uh data center builds.
2:11:04
And so that's that's just completely different from the old technology which is being described which is a heavier water consumption which is evaporative cooling.
2:11:17
>> Um and so that's like a fact that most people should sort of uh you know kind of look into.
2:11:22
The other one is >> well the the the problem is is people that are aren't really interested in tech but maybe are afraid of AI.
2:11:29
They're not proactively sitting there being like, I gotta go.
2:11:35
I I got a free five minutes here.
2:11:38
I'm gonna go get >> I'm gonna wanna I want to go get the facts right.
2:11:41
>> I'm gonna do some diligent research online and really read >> and there's no and and and um yeah, just looking on looking on YouTube. Yeah.
2:11:50
>> And uh just AI negativity or content that is negative towards AI gets 100x the uh the reach, right? Yeah.
2:11:58
Um, >> there's always been a negativity bias on YouTube.
2:12:03
I mean, you you you could say, you know, uh, like like here's the history of this company, or you could be like the shocking downfall of this company.
2:12:11
And the shocking downfall will always get more. >> Yeah.
2:12:14
Taylor Loren says, "Making a anti-AI content on YouTube is not only profitable because you'll get a zillion views on any anti-AI slot, but also because there's a litany of these sort of AI safety orgs that will quietly pay you massive amounts of money for undisclosed propaganda."
2:12:29
>> I didn't realize that.
2:12:29
>> I didn't realize that. that Taylor Loren is really now back in the fray and on I'm team America on team reindustrialize right I've got the uh >> I love it the sweater >> America >> and reindustrialized sweater for it um and so the I think the interesting facts about it are this >> one from the jobs perspective
2:12:51
>> yeah look this is not going to be the same level of job production as an automotive plant or a steel mill but these are still net new jobs >> and so you know for example I We've got a data center out in Kansas City and 300 folks worked on it during the construction period and 50 full-time jobs, many of these making over $100,000 a year. >> Mhm. What are I I I would I would ask to >> Mhm.
2:13:13
What are I I I would I would ask to somebody who's against it, what are you going to say when you sit down at a dinner table with these 50 families that this data center is supporting and say, "Well, no, I don't think you should have that job because >> uh I I don't want an AI data center when when they're the same people who are using the data center to go on post on YouTube or to uh use um uh the AI services." >> Yeah.
2:13:40
Where do you sit on uh on local versus national regulation of data centers?
2:13:46
centers? like Bern Bernie Sanders obviously has has gotten a lot of attention for discussing the topic at the federal level, but it feels like something that, you know, just as like an American, it it feels much more comfortable if like, yeah, there's a there's a area in West Texas that loves
2:14:03
this stuff and they're going to be into it and then there's going to be some communities that aren't and this should be handled by the local uh mayor and the and the and the and the board at the town level and the voters should have a voice, But it should be contained to the community that's relevant. >> Yeah. So, so first of all, absolutely, >> Yeah.
2:14:19
So, so first of all, absolutely, look, that's how our system works.
2:14:21
Let's just be clear here, right?
2:14:23
You know, this is not um there's not some sort of, you know, national um eminent domain that's being pulled like we have with the construction of railways and other other public goods. Yeah.
2:14:37
>> Um, this is decision making that is happening on the very very local level >> and some places are not going to want it and some places are going to welcome business and some places are not going to welcome business.
2:14:48
Some places are going to welcome data centers and others are not going to welcome data centers.
2:14:50
I think it's a perfectly reasonable thing.
2:14:53
I think that >> should should members of the community have a voice? Yes.
2:14:56
Should property owners have a voice? Yes, absolutely. Right?
2:15:01
you know, somebody who's um going to have some any type of externality that's adjacent to the property, they should have a voice. And and guess what? They do.
2:15:09
They've got a ton of voice as a as a property holder.
2:15:12
And and and I think that, you know, there will be a reputation for communities that want to welcome these amazing investments into their into their community.
2:15:20
So, for example, going back to that Kansas City data center, it's it's a it's a it's a 10,000 GPU data center.
2:15:26
Um, and we are going to over the next five years at the very least be paying $47 million over five years in property taxes. >> Yeah. >> Yeah.
2:15:39
>> This is a cash infusion to uh to a to a community that we're working with for sure.
2:15:44
>> And so I think that there's going to be the communities which are really excited about it.
2:15:48
you know, communities who have already pneed it like Lowden County and Virginia and other companies, excuse me, other communities and other counties that want to see lower rates and lower tax rates as well as, you know, lower utility rates because, as evidenced by a bunch of research, >> communities that welcome data centers and industrial development and new power plants have lower rates. >> Yep. Of course.
2:16:12
Uh, how are you thinking about the international puzzle?
2:16:15
because I I know data center construction takes years to plan out.
2:16:20
It's it's slowm moving but uh in general when the environment in American business uh gets harsher historically business leaders have offshored almost immediately and I could imagine a lot of data center developers just saying oh you don't want it here build in Mexico build it >> it would be in the west >> a national tragedy it would be a national tragedy for in the just in the very moment where this country needs to rebuild our grid.
2:16:52
And >> it's not just data centers.
2:16:54
Everybody wants to drive EVs.
2:16:59
>> Everybody is starting to want to um you know, we're bringing on more solar than we have in the history of the country.
2:17:06
>> 80% of new >> megawws coming online into the American grid are solar or storage. >> Mhm.
2:17:13
It's it it's it's it's it's it would be an absolute national tragedy for this to go out uh to go international for it to go to, you know, uh whe whether it's >> whether it's um you know, overseas in outside of North America, into South America, into Asia Pacific.
2:17:30
I want those jobs here in the United States.
2:17:32
I want those investments to be made here in the United States.
2:17:35
AI is a national strategic asset in my opinion.
2:17:37
Compute is a national strategic asset.
2:17:40
is a national strategic asset. And then most importantly, the way that AI is driving the development of the grid, >> and I keep trying to talk about this, but it's it's develop the way it's driving the development of the grid is going to pave the way for more industrial onshoring to come back to the United States so that we can bring back
2:17:59
whether it's different uh you know arc electric arc furnace mills for aluminum and steel, micro mills, uh turbine manufacturing, other types of highintens intensity, you know, by turbine manufacturing, I mean specifically like incanel smelting or um you know, specialty metal smelting um where where there there's a high energy input. >> Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you you go back to >> Yeah. Yeah.
2:18:20
I mean, you you go back to the wasn't it?
2:18:22
Colossus was built in an old washing machine manufacturing facility that was out of business.
2:18:27
If you all of a sudden have a lot more energy, a lot of more industrial capacity, maybe the washing machine manufacturer comes back and maybe that's good.
2:18:35
>> And there's going to be a lot more jobs caused caused by that.
2:18:37
And it's it's a huge virtuous cycle.
2:18:40
And so I think it would be a real tragedy to have anything that was going to end up pushing folks and and and and I I really I really support building this stuff here in the US.
2:18:49
Outside of the economic impacts, do you think that there's a national security ver value in having a data center in America or or compute in America uh for like control reasons like AI is a powerful tool if it's in another country and that country says well actually we're taking this and we're now under control of this.
2:19:10
What is your model for how valuable that is from a national security perspective?
2:19:15
So, so, um, I I, you know, there's there's the soft one and then there's the hard one.
2:19:21
The soft one is sort of how important is it to have values, uh, models that have values that align with American values and how patriotic is your model? I want patriotic models.
2:19:32
>> And the second one is the hard one, which is what happens when they cut it off.
2:19:37
>> Yeah, that's what I'm worried about.
2:19:38
>> And we all experienced this when Fable went away for a little bit, if you remember. Do you remember that?
2:19:44
And I remember I called some people up.
2:19:46
I said, "Wow, this is what it feels like to have sort of the equivalent of electricity cut off when you had the intelligence cut off from Fable Model."
2:19:55
[laughter] And I was vibe coding something at the time.
2:19:57
I said, "Wow, this is what it feels like."
2:19:58
I had to go back to Opus and it felt like a huge step back and I thought I thought to myself immediately >> this is as much of a strategic >> uh asset as our grid is. >> Yeah, that's funny.
2:20:12
Uh, Jordy, anything else here?
2:20:17
>> Uh, >> I want to hear more people.
2:20:20
>> What should people expect from the debate or or just forward progress for the rest of the year on this issue?
2:20:29
Like is should we just expect it just keeps getting >> um decided on a on a local level?
2:20:33
Is there is there's going national it's going national.
2:20:39
>> There's there's elections right now.
2:20:39
And so I think that that's like the the noise the knob gets turned up a lot towards elections then it'll it'll it'll kind of go back down.
2:20:47
Um >> yeah it's very it seems very unfortunate that politicians are just realizing on on both sides are just realizing that uh if if I uh want votes I I have to at least say that I'm against this thing. >> Yeah.
2:21:01
No, but this is the interesting thing.
2:21:03
There's a multiple races right now.
2:21:05
for example, one in Kansas where um they're the where where the steam fitters unions and the different workers unions are actually aligning on the pro data center side of things because >> there's so many jobs created and there's so many big deals that are created from these data centers that a lot of the labor unions are actually on the side of pro data center now.
2:21:26
>> Oh, so so look look this up.
2:21:28
so so look look this up. look up there's a there's a Kansas City um I think it's um gubernatorial candidate um who's u um a Kansas governor candidate and um >> there's the steam the steam fitters union is is basically on the side of pro data center bill and so actually I think
2:21:47
that it's maybe a little bit all backwards sometimes from what people have been positioning because you know you've been hearing in the media oh this is a this is a bipartisan anti-data center movement no no I think there's a lot of folks folks on both sides of it um who you know are are are are being supportive. I think that you're going to
2:22:03
I think that you're going to see the the the volume knob turned down after elections.
2:22:06
And then finally, >> I think it's healthy debate and communities should have a decision about who they want to work with >> and that data center providers should be doing their best to not be influencing rates any direction other than bringing rates down for everybody and being a good uh member of the community.
2:22:28
pay your taxes, participate in building an ecosystem of of businesses around you, and uh uh you know, continue to make great high-paying jobs.
2:22:39
>> What do you think the tech community, data center community needs to do to get ahead of what I think is coming after the water debate clears?
2:22:47
Because the water debate of course comes from some you know mediocre miscalculations but >> those miscalculations and and also just misunderstanding of what is the total water consumption of things. >> Exactly.
2:23:02
So, I think a lot of people in tech sort of brush off the water uh the water discussion as debunked and I think they're they're fair to do that.
2:23:08
But, uh on energy, on natural gas production, uh there is some real data about where this all goes.
2:23:18
If we continue to 3x compute for the next couple years and we're powering that by natural gas, you could see headlines that track data center to uh emissions.
2:23:29
This is how many plane flights a data center uses and it could become the next thing.
2:23:36
>> So, so, so, so, so first of all, one, the debate is not something that needs to be won with the Silicon Valley, Twitter, X audi, whatever you want to call the people who sit at their keyboards.
2:23:46
>> It's it's the debate needs to be won by the people who are in the communities affected by this.
2:23:49
And um, so that's that's the first one.
2:23:51
The second one is the more than ever, like I said, 80% in 2026 is solar and storage.
2:23:58
These are renewable things.
2:24:01
That's actually what our grid is becoming more and more as we build this out.
2:24:05
And so I think that there's needs to be a lot more deregulation with regards to expediting interconnects, uh, you know, reconsidering just just making it so that we can actually go back to building and getting connected into the grid.
2:24:18
So that way a lot of this behind the meter stuff which is less efficient right you know when you have a behind the meter it's simple cycle as opposed to combined cycle natural gas and it's less efficient.
2:24:29
So we should really get to the point where we're encouraging grid interconnectivity and expediting that process.
2:24:35
That's that's I think the number one point I would say from a policy perspective.
2:24:38
But you know look at the end of the day every American consumes about 600,000 gallons a year of indirect water consumption.
2:24:48
So next time you see a big number, divide by 600,000 gallons per year of indirect consumption that every one of us makes and then that will put things into perspective.
2:24:56
I think that's a good starting point. >> Yeah. Yeah.
2:24:59
I'm I'm wondering uh yeah where where where that goes because it does feel like uh it's worthwhile.
2:25:04
I I agree with you on like you don't need to win the the the tech insider crowd first, but it does feel like uh the worst case scenario would be another error to the tune of two orders of magnitude around energy consumption or natural gas production.
2:25:21
Because if the viral if the viral clip is every data center burns as much fuel as every car has produced since humanity started and that's off by three orders of magnitude or something then then you're on you're fighting on your back foot as opposed to starting with okay they're already pretty efficient.
2:25:41
Here's where we are regulating.
2:25:43
Here's and and the New York Times has already dug into it.
2:25:45
Here's the the environmental considerations. Here's what we abide by.
2:25:48
And then and then yeah, there'll be a discussion about energy use, but at least it can be grounded in the facts from the start.
2:25:57
>> I I I totally I totally agree with you, but I think that the the other aspect of it is just to not set with, oh, well, emissions are bad. >> Sure.
2:26:05
>> The most important thing is this.
2:26:05
As a country, we have a graph that looks like this in terms of energy production.
2:26:12
China's got a graph that looks like this for their energy production. And guess what?
2:26:15
All their energy is also solar.
2:26:17
Now the news the new stuff coming online 80% plus of China's energy is solar and storage and so I think we need to get you know >> the emissions will come down naturally as the grid transforms to more of a renewable and storage grid.
2:26:30
People don't really understand how much BES and battery electric storage has been a huge godsend to the the grid.
2:26:37
And there's I've already even seen I've I've driven through parts of uh the country where I've seen anti-bass you know anti battery electric storage things and >> um I think there's concerns and these are rightful concerns that like okay they might catch fire and um you know cause a fire or emit um you know chemicals when they're on fire.
2:26:59
This is just like sort of, you know, >> yeah, >> any any industrial asset that's generating electricity has like some worst case scenario. >> Yeah.
2:27:09
It's the same thing with your with your gas stove.
2:27:10
If you leave it on, your your house might >> It's the same with it's probably the same critiques if you were to go back to automotives.
2:27:16
It, you know, cars in general, uh, you know, when when they were first coming around.
2:27:21
But uh the point is is that like >> that I think that that actually getting that graph back to where America's competitive in terms of generating energy energy whether it's from renewables or otherwise it's going to inherently be 80% mostly renewables anyways from the trajectory that we're going in I think. >> Yeah. Yeah.
2:27:39
No, I mean that's certainly like the the the most optimistic future is a lot of renewables. Very very cool.
2:27:47
>> I have an idea but I'm going to DM it to you because I don't [laughter] want it to be uh I don't want >> John.
2:27:51
Thank you guys so much for having me.
2:27:52
>> Thanks for hopping on. Have a great weekend. >> Great to see you.
2:27:55
>> We'll talk to you soon. >> Talk. >> Goodbye.
2:27:59
[applause] >> Couple more. >> Simply too good. >> Okay.
2:28:02
>> Uh we are going to come back and hit a lot more timeline tomorrow. >> Yeah. >> I can't wait.
2:28:07
>> We'll see you tomorrow.
2:28:07
Thank you for watching the show. Great to be back. We missed you guys. We missed everyone here.
2:28:13
>> Love seeing the whole cast of characters.
2:28:14
Everyone's still in the chat. We love you all.
2:28:19
>> Bobby Cosmic in there.
2:28:19
We got Sean F over in the LinkedIn chat. We got Cooper as well. >> Acquired taste.
2:28:24
The LinkedIn live stream. I like it. >> Man of taste.
2:28:27
Uh anyway, uh we will see tomorrow.
2:28:30
Uh we have a very special show for you and many more throughout the fall.
2:28:36
>> And an honor and a privilege.
2:28:37
>> We'll see you tomorrow. Goodbye. >> Cheers. >> Cheers.