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>> 5 You're watching TVN.
3:21
>> Today is Monday, April 27th, 2026.
3:21
We are live from the TVP Ultradome, the temple of technology, >> the fortress of finance, >> the capital of capital.
3:28
Earlier show starting with guests.
3:31
We have Zack Brown from McLaren Racing joining in just a few minutes.
3:35
Will Herd coming in person.
3:39
Uh Anous from AMD is calling in at noon.
3:42
Then Augustus is coming to the Ultradome at 12:20 and Rick Caruso will be in person with us as well at 1 pm.
3:47
Uh we'll take you through some quick headlines of what's going on in the news today.
3:52
Of course, uh the the Elon Moment for the production team.
3:58
>> Yes, we have >> background update.
4:00
>> We have a new screen in the background.
4:02
Much better contrast, much brighter.
4:04
We're excited to explore this.
4:04
The production team's stoked.
4:05
Uh we uh there's four key stories going on in the news today.
4:11
Uh the first is Elon Musk's $134 billion lawsuit against Sam Alman goes to court today in Oakland.
4:15
Uh Musk is alleging that OpenAI abandoned its original nonprofit mission and became a for-profit entity focused on maximizing profit for Microsoft.
4:25
Jury selection is going on today.
4:27
There are a number of reporters on the ground and we'll be uh checking in on the progress there.
4:31
Uh >> already there was some reporting that said uh certain people were saying it would be difficult for me to be unh unbiased here because of my general dislike for basically everything going on. >> Okay. Yeah.
4:47
>> Uh the uh uh Sam and Greg were uh spotted on scene.
4:52
Elon has not been spotted yet.
4:52
Uh there's also other Microsoft OpenAI news.
4:57
Uh they changed their partnership.
4:59
uh OpenAI can now serve all of its products to customers across any cloud provider.
5:03
Andy Jasse had some uh had a post about it saying it was a very interesting update.
5:08
Obviously, he's excited to vend uh OpenAI technology through AWS, which they are also have a partnership.
5:15
And so, uh in other words, OpenAI can potentially use Google Tpus, Amazon Tranium, other chips are on the table now.
5:20
There's a lot more flexibility that comes from that.
5:21
Over in Meta World, uh, China has blocked Meta's $2 billion acquisition of artificial intelligence platform Manis after regulators reviewed whether the deal violated Beijing's investment rules.
5:34
This was something that went back and forth.
5:35
Did they get enough of the company to Singapore in order to clear the hurdles that require the acquisition to go through?
5:42
Then some members of the Manis team were detained briefly in China uh on business.
5:46
there were some issues there >> and and one of the challenges is going to be uh clearly the Manis team wanted to do this deal.
5:54
They wouldn't have signed up for it.
5:55
It was a great outcome for the team.
5:57
They were excited to build with Meta.
5:59
Uh but one of the challenges is you have all these different team members, many of which you know were born and raised in China and they still have family members and people um back in China that they care a lot about.
6:10
So that's going to be I would assume that's going to be a leverage point. Yeah. >> Um from the CCP.
6:15
And the last story also from Meta is that they are uh planning to use solar power from space at night, beamed from space.
6:23
Uh they're partnering with Overview Energy, a different company than the other solar space we talked about.
6:31
Uh they've been in stealth for about four years.
6:33
Uh they're planning to beam up to 1 gawatt of space solar power from orbit to Earth for aroundthe-clock power production.
6:38
Uh they're also deploying 1 gawatt of ultra long duration storage uh batteries uh with noon energy.
6:45
So some exciting deals coming out of Menllo Park.
6:48
Well, we will be revisiting these stories over the course of the show, but we have our first guest of the show in the waiting room.
6:55
Zack Brown from McLaren Racing is here with us in the TV Ultra. Zack, good to meet you. How are you doing? >> Yeah, I'm very good. Yourself? >> We're fantastic.
7:03
Uh thanks so much for taking the time to jump on the show.
7:05
I know it's later uh where you are uh but we appreciate you taking the time.
7:09
I would love to >> looking forward to this.
7:12
>> Would you would should we start at the beginning?
7:14
Should we go through sort of the the journey to how we got here? >> Okay.
7:18
So the backstory is that people in tech say they love F1, but they've really just watched maybe one maybe two seasons of Drive to Survive.
7:24
So they know you in that assume the the audience knows you in that context.
7:28
But we wanted to have you on to actually understand your history more and then uh talk about how F1 is the business of F1 and then also how technology is shaping it today because obviously it's always been engineering le but there's some a lot of exciting advancements.
7:46
So yeah should we start at the beginning?
7:49
>> Yeah I'd love to know. >> Absolutely. >> Yeah. Yeah.
7:51
I'd love to know like the you started in carting.
7:53
What was the first uh initial spark that got you into racing so many years ago?
8:00
>> Uh 1981 Long Beach Grand Prix. I'm originally from LA.
8:03
So I was 10 years old at the time.
8:05
And uh my mom and dad who didn't have any involvement in in motor racing.
8:10
It was kind of like the circuses in town.
8:12
And uh they took uh myself and my brother.
8:15
And as a 10-year-old kid, when you get around a Formula 1 car and you hear it and you see it uh and the size and the scale and the speed, I became a uh a Hot Wheels kid and then um went to high school >> barely uh with uh uh someone that was was in racing and so went back to the Long Beach Grand Prix in 1987.
8:39
Uh at that point I'd really had the bug and met Mario and Drey.
8:41
uh one of my uh heroes and asked him, "How do you get started in racing?" And he said, "Carting."
8:48
And there happened to be a little ad in the uh race program for Jim Hall cart racing school.
8:52
I'd been on Wheel of Fortune teen week at 13 years old.
8:56
Went and sold a bunch of his and her watches at a pawn shop in Ban Eyes.
9:01
Bought my first go-kat cart and that's how it all got started. >> That's amazing. >> Amazing.
9:05
Uh can you can you take me through uh getting like your first interaction with the business side of racing uh just motorsports marketing?
9:13
Like what was the inciting element that got you into the business side of racing?
9:19
>> Well, I didn't have any family resources or certainly not the family resources needed uh to to go racing.
9:24
My mom was is a travel agent and so I just kind of school a hard knocks of how does this sponsorship work? how do you raise money?
9:35
You just call companies and ask them for logos on race cars.
9:37
And it's much more uh sophisticated, certainly much more sophisticated than that uh today.
9:44
And uh she got me an intro to uh TWWA airlines at the time and did a barter deal where they gave me some airline tickets and then I would go to companies and say, "Sponsor me and I'll give you some matching value and airline tickets."
9:58
and then just totally immersed in uh and and kind of bartering and understanding what was TWWA trying to do with their business and and just became uh obsessed with my career and knowing that the only way I was going to advance my career was through getting sponsorship.
10:15
So therefore I became obsessed with understanding how companies how I could help companies.
10:21
Uh, and then once I, uh, was done with my career, recognized I wasn't as famous as a lot of the racing drivers out there.
10:28
So went back to a lot of the contacts and said, "Forget about Zack Brown.
10:32
What if I could take you to NASCAR, Formula 1, Indie Car, Jeff Gordon, McLaren, etc."
10:36
And had a lot of credibility as a racer that I understood how the sport worked.
10:42
No one was advising corporations on how to get the most out of motorsports.
10:46
It was more people representing racing teams and that uh turned into a big business kind of by accident. It wasn't by uh design. >> Yeah.
10:56
I I think a lot of people uh when they think of like a partnership, they just think logo on the car, but it's a lot more than that.
11:01
Like when did you how did you how how were you uh positioning partnerships uh to actually like h to move the needle for a brand like TWWA or someone else that you worked with?
11:12
What was the key success or like the key innovation that led for led to maybe more confidence to deploy not just free airline tickets but real dollars behind partnerships with motorsport?
11:26
>> I think it was trying to get corporations to not think about uh our our business i. e.
11:32
our business i.e. motorsports, but to think about and inform us what are you trying to do with your business and then you know I help bridge the gap between this is what you're trying to do with your business you know TWWA or or you know now the you know the world's
11:47
leading companies and then I understood how motorsports work so I kind of played uh middleman if you like not just in brokering the deal but helping uh race teams understand what corporations needed and helping corporations understand how motorsports worked and help them leverage it. So, it was really
12:04
So, it was really tell me what your business needs are.
12:08
What are you trying to do?
12:08
Build brands, you know, get new customers, retain customers, upsell customers, demonstrate technology.
12:16
And every company has some similarities and then every company's different.
12:20
And then approach the industry based on what I knew corporations wanted.
12:25
Hey, I think you make sense in NASCAR.
12:27
I think you make sense in Formula 1.
12:28
I think you make sense with this team for those reasons and really be uh focused on what the corporation needs and still very much take that principle uh you know very much today is you know what are the Googles and the Cisco and the Dells and we've got an unbelievable group of partners and just trying to understand their business and how we can help them move the needle. >> Yeah.
12:51
C can you talk a little bit about scaling the the marketing firm?
12:54
Uh uh like how small was it at the beginning?
13:00
How how did you think about hiring?
13:00
How did you think about actually uh just servicing a larger swath of the market?
13:08
Did you go region by region or or league by league or category by category?
13:12
Like what was the philosophy around uh careful growth and scaling of that business?
13:21
Yeah, we we've been fortunate uh where if you look at the brands on our car, they're they're like-minded brands.
13:25
Uh they're global, you know, we're we're great in the technology space.
13:31
You know, I'm sitting in here at McLaren Technology Center, you know, so you know, our brand is known as a as a premium brand, a lifestyle brand, a technology brand.
13:42
We're racing around the world.
13:45
So we approach companies that we uh feel are like-minded.
13:47
We approach companies that we're already doing, you know, business in.
13:54
So you know, you take a Cisco, Cisco all throughout McLaren long before >> we put our partnership in place.
14:00
Dell, you'll see Dell all throughout McLaren long before there was a commercial arrangement.
14:06
So we're in a very fortunate position that we can do business with companies that want to do business with us and that we think we can make a difference.
14:16
We don't need we're not in a position where we need to just do business for the sake of doing business.
14:22
So that's a great place to be.
14:25
Mastercard being our new naming partner which we announced uh last year.
14:27
So we're quite proud of our partnership ecosystem.
14:34
I've very much taken the same approach back when I had an agency.
14:36
So, we have the largest uh to my knowledge marketing department, but size isn't all that matters. It's it's quality.
14:45
So, I'd like to think we uh we have the largest staff.
14:50
I'd like to think we have the best staff and we're very much same principle of being focused on our partners' needs.
14:56
We have partners of all shapes and sizes.
14:58
We're much more concerned with the affiliation than the size and scale because that kind of takes care of itself uh over time and we very much play the long game and uh and that's what our track record shows if you look at our partner base since uh we kind of got started in what we're calling the papaya era.
15:16
Um our retention and growth speaks for itself and that's because we're focused on what our partners need. >> Yeah.
15:24
Um, ho how as a leader, how do you uh deal with uh just managing the emotional roller coaster that is an F1 season or a series of seasons together?
15:38
It feels like one of the most tumultuous organizations like there's so many organizations where they're managing to like quarterly earnings or even just how did we do this year and you have a very different results that come in on a very much much faster basis and I imagine that uh a big win or a setback can echo through the productivity of the organization even for people that aren't uh you know in the seat directly.
16:07
Yeah, it's it's all about culture.
16:07
I I think that's our greatest strength is our is our people.
16:12
We've been working together uh a long time. We've added people.
16:17
We haven't changed much, you know, since we've had our uh success here the last couple years.
16:21
You know, I'm looking as CEO >> five years out.
16:25
I'm I'm obsessed with our people.
16:28
That's my number one job is to have the right people in the right roles, giving them the right feedback, the right resources.
16:34
My philosophy is I work for the race team. They don't work for me.
16:40
So, I go around every day, what what do you need? How can I help?
16:42
So, I'm here to serve uh the racing team, not the other way.
16:48
Uh around it is difficult at times.
16:52
You know, culture is tested when things aren't going well.
16:58
You know, a lot of what happens you see at the same time as as I see it.
17:00
So, our report card gets marked.
17:03
You know, sometimes when you have quarterly uh shareholder meetings, you have time to plan for the results.
17:08
Here um you know, I go from having three or four strategists on Pit Wall to about 3 million on social media instantaneously.
17:20
Um a lot of which, you know, are not very well >> informed because it's a very complicated sport.
17:27
But, you know, sport is all about emotion for the fans and that's great.
17:33
cheering, booing, favorite drivers, you know, good guys, the villains.
17:36
But back at the factory in the racing team, there's no place for emotion. We're passionled.
17:44
There's a fine line between passion and emotion.
17:47
And I think our job is to stay cool, calm, and collected.
17:52
Usually, when we've made a mistake, it's not an individual person's failure.
17:55
It's a sequence of events.
17:58
So, you know, when you're emotional, you have a bad pit stop, the right rear uh doesn't go on well, everyone wants to, you know, your instinct, the emotional response is that right rear driver might not have stopped.
18:13
Could have been a mechanical failure with the gun.
18:14
Maybe a light didn't work.
18:16
Maybe it was the person's fault. There's three people.
18:18
One's taking the tire off, one's putting the tire on.
18:22
The other's using the gun.
18:24
could be like so you got to be very careful because you know it's kind of like those emails that we've all written and over time you you know what I should have put that in my draft folder and saved it and checked it in the morning
18:37
and I'm a big fan of when something happens unless you need to correct it real time say it's a bad pit stop it's over so review it Monday when the you know the the passion the emotion the you know you can't fix it at that moment it's done. So, I'm a big fan of tackle
18:54
So, I'm a big fan of tackle it in the moment if you can change it in the moment.
18:59
But if it's, you know, something that's happened, do a proper debrief on Monday because, you know, it's hard to take, you can say sorry, but if you overreact or you say something, it's hard to unwind uh an allegation, an accusation that was, you know, sorry, I was just emotional. Well, you still said it.
19:16
So I think that's also part of just being calm uh in in the heat of the moment. >> Yeah.
19:23
You uh you mentioned that uh you know F1 is a sport that or just a business where you have you know uh a chattering class.
19:31
You have so many armchair critics.
19:33
Uh I want to know about your thought process going into the first season of Drive to Survive. It felt like a risk.
19:41
You're you're potentially shining more of a light on your operation.
19:44
you're going to get more armchair critics and yet that choosing to actually participate in the very first season feels in retrospect like a fantastic decision for you and the organization.
19:56
Uh but how were you processing it at the time as you reflect on that decision and what has happened to the team and the and and and F1 broadly uh on the back of drive to survive?
20:09
Uh how how do you think about that initial season?
20:13
So, I think our, you know, our initial thought was this was just going to be more shoulder programming.
20:17
There's been shows done before.
20:19
So, I don't think any of us anticipated it having the impact on the sport that it had.
20:24
Two teams didn't actually participate in year one and they got all sorts of grief from from their partners, their fans.
20:34
Um, you know, I've always been I'm a huge fan of racing and I think about that 1981 Long Beach Grand Prix and I think about the impact it had on me.
20:41
I think about the first racing driver I met, the first autograph I met and so I thought here's a wonderful opportunity to go from being a very exclusive sport to a very inclusive sport. So, we were all in.
20:55
And the impact it's had when Liberty acquired, there were three main areas the sport needed to grow.
21:01
Needed a younger audience, more diverse uh uh women, and it needed a younger audience.
21:10
Sorry I mentioned that and a US >> and you got to give drive to survive in liberty a tremendous amount of credit and to the industry for acting differently because I think uh under previous leadership the sport was very
21:24
closed book it was kind of what's behind the curtain and that works because that was intrig but you know we kind of open the curtain and let you saw what the Wizard of Oz was all about and I think you know especially >> I think we have some technical sport. >> Sorry, I think we just
21:40
>> Sorry, I think we just >> Can you hear me? Okay. >> Yeah, we're good.
21:42
>> Y that that that sport and entertainment aren't one and the same.
21:45
Anything you buy a ticket to, whether it's a movie, sporting event, fireworks show, that's called entertainment.
21:52
I'm buying a ticket to go sit down to watch something.
21:56
So, I think the sport's always been fantastic, but it's been closed shop.
22:00
And I think Netflix gave us the opportunity to show everyone, we only have 20 drivers, now 22. you only have 10 teams.
22:08
So, I became it became very easy for the audience to get to know everyone.
22:12
And it's an unbelievable sport.
22:14
Probably a sport that has more excitement off the track than any other sport, right?
22:22
Most sports are concentrated on the field of play.
22:23
And our field of play is as much off the track as it is on the track.
22:26
So, it's it's been awesome.
22:29
It's continued to grow and it's changed our sport.
22:31
And it's it's great to see how big our sport now is with a younger audience, women, North America, and uh we just need to keep doing the the same.
22:42
I don't see any headwinds in our sport other than, you know, the crazy stuff that's going on around in uh in the world at the moment. >> Yeah, makes sense.
22:50
Jordan, >> can you give us a history lesson on the major technology cycles in F1?
22:53
In tech, we talk about web, mobile, cloud, AI.
23:01
How what what are the equivalents in F1 and then bring us up to the present?
23:07
>> I mean it's everything you just mentioned.
23:08
We're the most technology sophisticated sport in the world.
23:11
I think it started with data and then you know applying that data you know we have and and some some people will be impressed by this others will go that's nothing because I know who the audience is uh you know watching your show but we're pulling down uh one and a half terabytes of data a weekend.
23:30
We run 50 million simulations.
23:34
We have 300 sensors on the race car.
23:37
We change about 80% of our race cars. over 50,000 parts.
23:41
The amount of simulation that we run, uh, if you take the car at the beginning of the year and you let that was on pole first and it was untouched, by the end of the year it would be last.
23:55
So, the pace of development in our sport, we live in a prototype world.
24:00
Soon as that suspension is done, we're right back to the drawing board of how do we make it lighter?
24:04
How do we make it stronger?
24:06
How do we make it more aerodynamic?
24:08
So, we are constantly developing.
24:10
We don't kind of do something and go, "Right, we're done.
24:14
Let's go produce that for the next five years."
24:16
So, we live in a prototype world.
24:18
Of course, AI is here in a big way.
24:21
We're fortunate to have Gemini as is a huge partner of ours. We learn a lot.
24:26
You know, our technology partners are all integrated into our business.
24:28
We have two different types of partners. We have consumer brands. >> I see your your Coke.
24:37
You got to turn it a little bit if you want to kind of get some impression. There you go.
24:40
That's how you do it, guys. That's how you do it.
24:45
So, we have consumer brands.
24:51
>> And what we do with our consumer brands is we want them to help us engage with our fans, grow our fan base, build our fan base.
24:59
So, that's what we look for from the Monsters, the Mastercards, the Googles.
25:04
Then on the technology side, we look at the Googles, the Dells, the Ciscos, the Workdays to help us be a more efficient business, run HR better, run finance better, produce our race car quicker, do our financial forecasting better.
25:18
So that's where partnerships have evolved to is in the good old days it was I need your money to go racing.
25:27
Of course, this is an expensive sport.
25:29
We need their investment, but we also need their technology because that's how our data is getting moved around.
25:34
That's how our communications are are happening.
25:37
That's how we're using AI to figure out strategy, entire strategy.
25:42
And so all this new technology, we embrace it.
25:46
And we have the type of people at McLaren and Formula 1 in general that want to know what technology is coming tomorrow. Mhm.
25:55
>> Uh how do you guys sort of develop and maintain your own sort of IP and processes as a team?
26:01
One of the things that uh having gone having gone to um a number of races, I've always found it fascinating that I could just walk into one of the garages and I see, you know, uh computer monitors. I'm looking around.
26:19
I can, you know, so much of it is out is out in the open.
26:21
And yet you guys are trying to maintain an edge and develop constantly kind of developing and refining your approach.
26:28
How do those two things balance?
26:33
>> So healthy degree of paranoia um a high amount of trust with our our team members.
26:40
Um you know IP is is is critical obviously security in itself because you got a lot of bad actors around this world.
26:49
So, you know, protecting because there's two things.
26:53
There's people that just want to disrupt.
26:55
You know, we had an incident 25 years ago where someone broke into our radiocoms in the Australian Grand Prix.
27:05
We were running first and second and this was just someone in the grand stand broke into our radio coms, told our driver Mika Hackin to pit and he did.
27:14
Fortunately, we were running first and second so we were able to reverse him. But, Right.
27:18
him. But, Right. So you have everything from bad actors in this world who would love to you know we can't start our race car there's not keys you started on a laptop so you know the redundancy and the protection cyber security how quickly we're moving data around the world because we're very much like NASA
27:39
whether we're racing in Australia Austin or China it's all coming back to woken here um you know not far from my office um and So protecting that with with people um from from bad actors and then of course you know we're in a very competitive sport where we're we're constantly analyzing the competition. Things like 3D scanners were coming into
28:01
Things like 3D scanners were coming into play.
28:03
We do a lot of photography of each other.
28:05
3D scanners have now been banned.
28:08
But that's certainly trying to understand what the competition >> So so just just to be clear that's that's a team walking around and effectively trying scan another team's >> vehicle or equipment. >> Correct. Correct.
28:23
3D scanning is now banned, but it wasn't before. >> You'll see.
28:28
>> Do you think it still Do you think it still happens, though?
28:29
I mean, there's a lot of things.
28:32
>> No, I mean, >> you would see somebody with a scanner, right?
28:36
>> Yeah, you would see it.
28:36
I I I I I think you know our job in Formula 1 is to um find the loopholes, push the boundaries, but there's a difference between working the gray areas.
28:49
So, I'll give you an example.
28:51
You're not allowed to have uh movable aerodynamic devices.
28:53
I mean, we do now with with DRS, but we weren't in the past.
28:58
So, these very clever engineers found materials that flex under load. Yeah. Yeah.
29:04
So, it's not a movable aerodynamic device, but it does flex. Ah, very clever.
29:09
Then the FIA, our governing body went, okay, we're going to do a push down test on your rear wing to put load on it, and you can only have so much flex.
29:19
So, then the teams went, ah, so there's a push down test.
29:23
Now, let's come up with aerodynamic where it falls back.
29:27
Now, there's a pole test.
29:30
So, the engineers are always one step ahead.
29:33
ahead. and then the governing body who do a very good job go I don't think so and that's that's the cool part of this sport right where when you have technology that is constantly evolving you're always trying to figure out what's the new technology AI is an interesting one because we have limitations on how much CFD and wind
29:55
tunnel time we can use but we don't have regulations around AI yet so I think >> yeah we had George we had George Curts on the show on Friday and he was he was saying uh he was saying that there there eventually could be restrictions on like how much >> how much compute you can have as a team because of what I think you're getting at right now. >> Yeah,
30:18
>> Yeah, >> exactly right.
30:19
And I think that's where the sport it's never going to stop because technology is never going to stop.
30:24
So, it's about how do you get that competitive advantage so you get to, you know, what the sport called is flexi wings eventually they stop that.
30:31
But because we're looking for the smallest incremental gain for as long as possible, you go until they tell you to stop and then you go find something else until they tell you to stop.
30:44
So it's a constant as technology evolves I think there will be regulations around AI that don't exist today that will exist in one year two years three years four years and then there'll be another technology and that's the beautiful thing about our sport and technology is the ball is always moving up the field and it's about finding that competitive advantage and trying to capture it for as long as possible. >> Yeah.
31:12
What are the norms around uh poaching?
31:15
There's in in uh in Silicon Valley there's a famous email exchange between uh Steve Jobs and and Larry Ellison or is it Adobe?
31:25
>> No, I think it was with Google, was it? >> Oh, goo Google. Yeah, sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Mixing it up.
31:28
But anyways, basically like people having a kind of a handshake agreement not to poach.
31:32
Uh but uh obviously drivers are kind of open season, but uh what about like the rest of the people on on the team?
31:44
>> Yeah, it's interesting.
31:44
So where a lot of sports are regulated, you know, there's trade windows and we know the what was it the I think the Dolphins had a bit of a no.
31:52
If I got the team wrong, I'm sorry. You know, what was it?
31:56
Talking to a a quarterback and they're not allowed.
31:58
We don't have any of those.
32:01
We have contracts, but if I want to go talk to a driver or someone wants to talk to my drivers, we have contracts, but there's no nothing stopping them from having conversations or taking them to dinner.
32:11
Um, America tends to be a bit more of an atill state uh a country from an employment point of view where here on the more senior side, you get into two, three, four year contracts.
32:23
We've got gardening leave. We have non-competes.
32:26
the more senior the the the tougher those are.
32:31
But you do sign people early and play the game of because we live in a cost cap world.
32:38
We are signing people early and then the competitive team has to go how long do I want this person around that I know is going to competitor?
32:49
When do I shut them off from IP knowledge?
32:55
Then if you put them on gardening leave, you got to pay them.
32:58
We live in a cost cap world.
33:00
So that presents a challenge of I want to spend every penny on performance of my race car, whether that is on performance of my people, their technology, or the race car.
33:10
So now I'm in a predicament of I'm now paying to park someone so they don't go to my competitor.
33:19
So, I'm stopping my competitor from getting smarter faster, but I'm actually really not getting great value for money because I'm paying someone to not work.
33:28
So, those are the tricks of the the trade.
33:32
So, you know, the senior people are under contracts and that's and what's happening is people are getting signed earlier and earlier.
33:42
So, we're not, you know, we're regulated by a contracts, a contract, but there aren't rules in our sport like there are in other sports, trade windows and and rules and, you know, in other sports they publish, you know, the players salaries, things of that nature.
33:59
So, it's a fascinating game of of poker, chess, and bat gaming.
34:02
Uh, which again, I think is part of the draw of what fascinates people about our sport. >> Last question for me.
34:11
uh if a company came to you looking for general advice, they had a h 100red million of annualized revenue and they wanted to get into sponsoring F1, obviously you'd put together, I'm sure, a nice package for them at at McLaren, but uh how how would you think about breaking into F1 sponsorship as a kind of a midsize company today?
34:33
>> Yeah, I think it's all about what are you trying to do with your business?
34:35
who are the uh companies involved with that particular race team.
34:42
Are those companies synergistic?
34:43
If they're, you know, conflicting, then obviously >> So you Yeah.
34:47
You want >> you want you want synergy is you think it's like helpful to have kind of a shared cuz I've I when we were in Vegas last year for the race it was f it was so funny cuz we had friends companies were basically on every team because like every company needs like a neocloud now or every team needs a neocloud etc.
35:06
But you're looking for like synergy across the portfolio of of sponsors. >> Absolutely.
35:11
You know, we I call kind of Formula 1, it's 24 Super Bowls from a consumer point of view and it's 24 Davos from a businessto business point of view.
35:22
And so, you know, our ecosystem, everyone does business together.
35:26
They benefit from giving each other exposure.
35:30
When Cisco runs a global television campaign, all the partners benefit from that.
35:35
We know Dell runs their campaign.
35:38
You know, the Dells, the Googles, the Ciscos, the Massacers, they're all doing business together.
35:42
And there's a lot of stuff that goes on behind the scenes, businessto business that people don't necessarily see.
35:49
So, that all comes down to, you know, the Davos side of our business.
35:54
when you come to a Grand Prix brings a tremendous amount of seale executives and the amount of business that we've facilitated for from dinners at grand pris and we're very active in that.
36:06
You know it comes back again to knowing what our partners want.
36:10
We're a technology extension, we're a brand extension. We're a sales extension.
36:15
We're a culture extension.
36:18
And so once we understand what our partners are trying to do, we're not thinking just about going racing.
36:22
That's what our racing team's thinking about, but our commercial team's thinking about Dell has this objective.
36:28
Ah, this person's there this weekend.
36:31
And and so there's a tremendous amount of business to business that's going on. >> That's fantastic. Doing deals. >> Oh, yeah.
36:40
>> I think uh yeah, there there's I I love that that uh how much you've embraced um you're you've embraced the commercial side.
36:47
I'm sure there's I'm sure there's managers that just think of it as like a necessary evil.
36:51
I'm going to do the bare minimum to like keep the keep the team running, but clearly it pays dividends to really invest in the in the uh in the partnership side and um I really appreciate the time we've been so much.
37:06
>> We uh we love it and thank you for uh giving us the opportunity to uh chat and >> good luck this weekend.
37:11
>> We'll talk to you soon. >> Cheers.
37:14
Uh, up next we have Will Herd returning to the show, but this time he's live in person in the TVPN Ultra Dome. We have Will Herd. Welcome to the show.
37:26
>> Thank you so much for taking the time.
37:29
Um, you know, you've been on the show before.
37:31
Uh, I know we have some exciting announcements today, but I was hoping we could sort of, uh, since we have 30 minutes, we have some time.
37:37
I was hoping we could go back and tell a little bit more of the well heard story because I it's one of my favorite stories, but uh does that sound good?
37:43
Can we start at the beginning? Where did you grow up?
37:47
>> I grew up in San Antonio, Texas. >> Okay. How was it? >> Born and raised. I loved it. I was the baby of three. >> Okay.
37:53
>> Um my my So my father's black, my mother's white, and so growing up as a biracial kid, that word biracial didn't exist when when when I was growing up, but love San Antonio. Love San Antonio Spurs.
38:06
>> Uh love everything about it.
38:06
Did you play sports in high school? >> I did.
38:08
I played basketball and and so um uh and I I was on the practice squad at Texas A&M for three days.
38:15
U when I went to when I went to college, I realized I'm going to I going to play I'm going to only play defense >> and maybe get to ride the pine later down.
38:25
So then I got involved in student government. >> What? Okay. Student government.
38:27
I want to ask you like what was your perception of the US government at that time?
38:33
>> I I I didn't have one, right?
38:33
like I I wasn't, you know, I wasn't reading the Constitution when I was nine or things like that, right?
38:40
I I I >> I I played basketball. I loved um robotics.
38:45
I um I got to intern at um the Southwest Research Institute when in San Antonio, which is the largest private um research institution in the United States.
38:56
And I worked for this woman who graduated from Stanford and she had she was doing some cool robotics stuff.
39:02
And I'm like, I want to be like her.
39:04
And that's why I decided to I knew I was going to major in computer science, but I thought I was going that route.
39:12
Politics wasn't anywhere on my on my radar.
39:15
But my freshman year in school, somebody said, "Hey, you should get involved in student politics and help because you meet a lot of people that way."
39:23
And I ended up as a freshman running this guy's campaign for student body president. He won.
39:26
And so that's kind of how I got involved in in in student politics a little bit. >> Yeah.
39:32
I I I'm always so fascinated by your story >> marketing hacks. >> What?
39:36
>> Uh look, so so so for us, he used this is this is I'm dating myself, right?
39:40
Um >> he had the first guy we we built the first website ever used in in student politics in in in 1995, right?
39:49
And it was it was like earthshattering.
39:54
Um and and it you know it's like we were still using you know 2400 baud modems at the time.
40:03
Um and so so yeah so that was really that was really the beginning of kind of digital marketing.
40:09
>> Have I ever told you the story about when I ran for uh I didn't run for student body president but I ran for class government and my entire philosophy was just name recognition and like ad impressions effectively. Yeah.
40:21
>> So I just put up huge banners everywhere that said vote Kougan.
40:24
I made every single person in the school a t-shirt that said vote Kougan.
40:28
I bought these like cheap shirts and would spray paint them on so they were really efficient to make.
40:33
So everyone had everyone was very aware.
40:36
They didn't know what I was running for.
40:37
They didn't know what I stood for, >> but they knew my name.
40:39
And so when they went to the ballot, okay, I guess I'm voting Kugan because I've been told vote Gooan so many times. >> Name ID. >> Name ID, right?
40:47
>> Is the most is the most important thing. So you knew that.
40:50
You knew that at an early age, you know.
40:52
Uh but I mean the the the reason that I'm I'm I'm so fascinated by this interplay is because it feels like >> computer science and government have been on a collision course for years and we are now at this moment where there are very serious discussions.
41:04
But I want to continue into uh you know actually studying computer science like >> what was that like?
41:11
Where did you think that was going?
41:12
Did you think this was was this like uh the the you know the the the birth of big tech? Were you watching that?
41:19
watching that? like where were you what what what was were you just interested in the technology broadly like what how were you processing computer science >> so I I was interested in technology broadly I was interested in the problem solving for me what I always say what's great about computer science is it
41:32
teaches you a way of solving challenges and and and and regardless of being able to vibe code now and all that that that mentality is 100% and so so I thought it was going to be cool to be on the cutting edge of stuff and look I I had some pretty cool offers out of school um my first offer in the CIA was in the science and technology department. Um,
41:52
Um, basically the queue of of the of the CIA, but I knew I wanted to do ops and recruit spies and steal secrets and and so I I I went that way instead.
42:03
But it but it really is weird this this um uh this understanding technology enough and the implications of it and how it's adopted and some of the the consequences um and how you use new technology uh to solve old challenges is is it's it's funny sitting here thinking about go back my life is like those are things that I've been focused on since I was 19. >> Yeah.
42:30
Uh take me through the decision to run for Congress.
42:32
Look, I um in addition to recruiting spies and stealing secrets, I had to brief members of Congress.
42:39
You know, I I lived I was in DC for two years at what I used to call our super secret CIA training facility called the farm. Now it's on Google Maps.
42:47
Um I did two years in India, two years Pakistan, two years um doing inter agency work in New York, and then a year and a half in Afghanistan where I manage all of our undercover operations in Afghanistan.
42:57
>> Yeah, I was in Afghanistan.
42:57
And and so my career started with the USS Coal bombing.
43:02
This is, you know, this is when a lot of uh uh uh the public uh first became aware of al-Qaeda.
43:08
Al-Qaeda and Bin Laden had been along for a long time.
43:13
>> And then my career kind of ended in with right before Coast.
43:15
Coast was the deadliest attack in CIA's history.
43:20
>> Um a a double agent got onto our one of our bases and blew himself up and and killed uh many of of my colleagues at the time.
43:28
So, so I was there in the, you know, in in the global the global war on terrorism.
43:32
Um, and in addition to recruiting and doing that job, I had to brief members of Congress.
43:37
And I'll be I was pretty shocked by the caliber of our elected leaders.
43:41
And there was this time in Afghanist >> Negative. Yes.
43:46
I had a negative impression.
43:47
I had a negative impression.
43:49
Um, and and I >> I I I I've had some interactions with members of Congress and I've been shocked to the upside on how good of people they are, like how much they're trying, but shocked to the downside of uh just you regurgitate some basic fact and they just have a surface level understanding, but then you dig a level deeper and you're like, is it how like what would it actually take to have an encyclopedic knowledge of every discipline?
44:17
And so there's a lot of uh it's sort of galman amnesia.
44:19
Whenever you're talking to somebody in government, you come in, you're the expert in media or you're the expert in technology or you're the expert in oil and gas and you come in and you're like this person doesn't know anything about oil and gas.
44:30
It's like well they have to know 1% about everything sometimes.
44:32
And so it is somewhat forgivable, but you clearly thought that it could be done better.
44:38
>> And and let me be clear like there are there are many members of Congress that are fantastic and I just didn't get the chance to meet them, right?
44:43
And there was an experience in Afghanistan where um um a bomb went off in in front of our our compound, killed some of our local guards, took out a section of our our protective wall, and my unit was responsible trying to figure out what happened.
44:58
And and basically, we conducted a bunch of operation, a short period of time, and I had a a briefing with members of HIPSY, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
45:08
>> And basically what happened in the meeting, someone asked, "What's the difference between a Sunni and a Shia?"
45:13
and I'm started explaining, you know, uh the the the divide between the two. Excuse me.
45:18
I he asked why the question was actually about Iran.
45:21
Um why was Iran not supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan the way they were supporting other groups?
45:26
And then I start explaining the Sunni Shia divide >> and and and this person raises his or her hand and says, "What's the difference between a Sunni and a Shia?"
45:35
>> And I'm thinking, this person is about to make a really inappropriate joke and who am I to deny them that opportunity?
45:41
And I said, "I don't know, congressman.
45:42
That's the difference and I'm getting ready to go but I'm >> bump.
45:46
>> They didn't know that difference in Islam.
45:47
And and that was really the one I think it said for me.
45:49
It's like hey my mom always said you're the part of the problem, part of the solution. >> Yeah.
45:55
>> And decided to move back to my hometown in San Antonio and run for Congress.
45:56
And I had been student body president.
46:02
And I only needed like 6,000 more votes in a primary to win.
46:05
And when I got when I was student body president, I can I can do this. I can do this.
46:10
But look to to your point, right?
46:13
But the the the amount of information that members of Congress had to deal with like a a day like when I was in there, you know, my I would do probably 30 35 meetings a day. >> Yeah.
46:24
>> And that started with >> How does that how does that actually work?
46:27
What does your calendar look like?
46:29
>> Uh look, your team is is is what matters.
46:32
My my scheduler is like the single most important person.
46:36
Pre-briefs, read the briefs, have the information down, right?
46:38
Like it's it's and it's like a 5 minute 5 minute meeting here, 30 minute meeting later, 10 minutes.
46:47
>> Usually about 30, right?
46:47
Usually about 20 20 to 30.
46:48
Um and some of that may be speeches, some of that, you know, all the different kinds different physical activities that you got to be prepared for.
46:56
for. and and the um uh and what one day you would start about the sheep and goat herders of America which is a true like I had a lot of sheep and goat herders in my district to the San Antonio chamber of congress to a company that's putting um technology along the border to uh
47:16
some um issue in cis lunar space with overhead architecture so you had to deal with with all of it right and and for me what I try to do is focus on technology because that's what I had experience experience and I had helped build a cyber security company before I I I was in Congress. And so so I that's where I
47:31
And so so I that's where I tried to focus my lane on and and and and it goes back to that intersection of technology and and national security and to be able to help continue to make sure that America stays the greatest country on the planet.
47:47
on the planet. Um and so and then now in my post career to be able to be involved in companies that do that and with you know to work with friends um on this on that intersection right because the company Icon right I'm the president of Icon Prime we 3D we build 3D printed
48:06
structures right and and all those places I lived I lived in some pretty crummy places and people were living in shipping containers like my colleagues and I were in shipping containers we're we're working 18, 19 hour days putting ourselves in harm's way and we're going back to basically a cot in a shipping container. I'm sorry that's not
48:25
I'm sorry that's not >> what what what what's the first thing uh first thing you do if you get in a shipping container?
48:30
How do you make it comfy?
48:32
>> Uh you get a good mattress. >> Good mattress.
48:35
>> Yeah, a good mattress is >> you try to insulate it at all.
48:38
>> So some of these did come with with insulation so you didn't have to have that and they would have a AC unit, right? Right.
48:43
So they were they were a little kided out before you got in.
48:44
But it's still a box, right?
48:46
And and and and men and women in that are putting themselves in harm way deserve deserves better.
48:53
And that's one of the that's one of the things we're focusing on on on Icon Prime.
48:57
Like it starts with barracks.
48:59
There's like the black mold and um uh there's like 19 billion dollars worth of problems from from um weather events that our our soldiers, sailor, airmen, marines, and guardians are living in. That's unacceptable.
49:13
Um Secretary Hicks has said this is an erosion of our military readiness, right?
49:21
And so that's, you know, to be able to use big robots to to help, you know, repair military readiness as one as one thing at part of what we're doing at Icon Prime is is pretty exciting. >> Okay.
49:35
Uh we I think we have some photos of the actual uh structure.
49:37
So we we're going to have the team pull them up.
49:40
Um, walk me through the the bullcase for 3D printing because I've talked to some folks in construction and they've said that, well, uh, 3D printing is great when you need something very unique, but a lot of houses are just flat walls.
49:55
We're actually pretty good at just milling flat structures, laying 2x4s together.
49:59
Um, why is 3D printing an important technology here?
50:03
>> Well, first off, and and and you're seeing this is one of our our robots building um, you know, we can build bunker.
50:09
That was a bunker, I think, what you're seeing there.
50:10
the first part with some with some um some barracks.
50:14
>> Whether you want a box >> Yeah.
50:17
>> or a Fibonacci spiral. >> Yeah.
50:19
>> The cost is exactly the same. >> So flexibility.
50:22
>> And then here's what happens when you curve.
50:24
If if I took a piece of paper, you can't stand it up. >> It'll fall down. Yeah.
50:28
>> But if you curve it, it's a little bit sturdy.
50:31
>> That's why that internal structure.
50:32
>> And so that's why you can start doing some unique things with with internal structure.
50:35
And we have gotten the price down.
50:38
So, so, uh, the the, uh, construction has been the same since the Middle Ages. >> Yeah.
50:44
>> And we have gotten our price down to below the national average of putting up walls.
50:49
Walls are the most expensive part of construction.
50:51
That's what Jason Ballard, our CEO, and our founders, the unique insight was, if you're going to disrupt construction, what is the the thing that can do have the biggest impact?
51:02
And they discovered it was the wall system.
51:03
And so now the fact that like we can make wall systems below the national average.
51:08
So why do you want just a box?
51:10
Now here's the other thing. Guess what?
51:13
Um guess what happens with concrete? Termites don't eat it. >> Sure. >> You can't burn it. >> Sure.
51:19
>> It can it can uh stand up against a flood. >> Yeah. >> Right.
51:22
And so these are these are some of the challenges you don't have in in in in traditional construction.
51:27
Now the the US military has also um done some unique things with our walls to test their strength really um and and that there's an added benefit for that when you're trying to help um project force in in difficult places.
51:41
So so that's the that's the that's the use case of why 3D printing now uh there construction uh technology construction technology companies have been around and many have failed.
51:52
There was a company that was 3D printing.
51:54
They put out they sent out about 110 robots, but they only built like a hundred structures. >> Wow.
52:01
>> You know, at Icon, we have built over 250 individual structures and and so and and the reason we're unique is that we've done the entire vertical integration. That's the difference. It's the design.
52:14
Designing structures takes time and there's different elements of design.
52:17
Then you have the then you have the the construction piece.
52:19
We also deal with the regulatory effort.
52:21
the regulatory effort. So the fact that we've done all of this vertical integration is what has made us successful and we have this is not novel techn this isn't science projects this is real technology real robots real um AI enabled software real material
52:39
science like our the most PhDs we have is in the material science um um um area and so so this is what makes us unique and and now we've started the technology business we're going to be selling robots to Um, so it's it's an exciting it's an exciting place to be. Oh, and and by the
52:54
Oh, and and by the way, >> if we're going to be an interplanetary >> exploring civilization, >> we're going to have to be able to build in other places.
53:05
And we're pro we're going to be building uh the first structure on the moon using some of the tactics, techniques, and procedures we've learned down here on Earth in order to do that. So, it's it's exciting.
53:15
Yeah, >> this actually feels like you could probably mix cement from moon from dirt on the moon like fairly easily and use the actual materials on the moon.
53:24
>> Well, it's easier than wood. >> Sure.
53:26
Like easier than easier than getting wood up there.
53:29
>> Here are the three insights and how you're going to be able to be um a interplanetary explorating civilization.
53:36
>> You got to use the resources there in situ uh resource utilization, right? That's one.
53:42
>> You got to have some robots to do it.
53:45
And then those robots have to be generalist, not not specific.
53:46
And the the moon has some unique challenges.
53:48
But but right now, but right now, look, we're we're excited. >> Just a few. Just a few.
53:56
But look, we're we're we're super excited cuz because again, when I was in Congress, like I knew about this this barracks problem. Sure.
54:05
Um, I was on the appropriation subcommittee that dealt with this issue and the fact that now we're solving this many and and we are right now printing 10 barracks in six months in in in Fort Bliss.
54:19
Um, this is they the the army came to us said, "Hey, can you do in a year?"
54:23
When we were doing the negotiation, they came down, can you do it in six months?
54:26
Um, to have the one of the largest military construction projects to be done in six months is absolutely unheard of.
54:33
And these are places that um give our war fighter uh the the the dignity that they deserve.
54:40
And because of this work um we got another project um in in Louisiana at Fort Pulk and this is our newest one.
54:45
It was $21 million contract uh to to >> There we go. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There we go.
54:55
I want to talk about the aesthetics of 3D printed housing and materials.
54:57
We saw a Starbucks that was 3D printed and it had sort of the the the signature like ripples of the concrete.
55:06
Uh people the Starbucks community was up in arms about it.
55:12
They don't think it looks good.
55:13
I think that for military applications, people will probably take whatever's safe and comfortable.
55:16
Uh but >> yeah, you just want something that's highly highly functional.
55:22
>> But do you think not issue?
55:22
Do you think that people will that like the the taste will evolve and people will start to see uh 3D printed structures as a sign that it's more sustainable and and uh and it will actually just be normalized and people will be cool with that or will we be like plastering over this to create a flat wall?
55:41
Look, I I think people will will and it's will, you know, evolve.
55:45
And I live in a 3D printer now, right?
55:48
We we live we in when I'm in Austin, we have a we call it house zero.
55:51
This was the first um home uh that we built to show that this is great living and my wife and daughter love it.
55:58
My daughter's 13 years old and she she loves the ripples and friends when they come over they love.
56:04
Now the Starbucks, I don't know who built it. It wasn't us, right?
56:07
So, just like with anything, quality is is different everywhere you go.
56:10
And and so we've done a a hundred home neighborhood in North Austin um with LAR.
56:18
The folks that are there love love living there.
56:21
We have a a community in in south south of Austin called Wimberly.
56:27
We're looking to build in Miami as well.
56:28
So, so we we've done the whole range from helping the the the chronically homeless in Austin to high-end luxury in Miami to uh folks in the military in barracks in El Paso and then astronauts on the moon, right?
56:44
Like we we've done the whole whole bit.
56:46
And again, this is the the the thing about uh 3D printing is it the walls are probably the thing that creates the most >> uh makes something a home and and and when you have the waves and the unique uh uh structures, it makes it it it it it you have a different experience and I've seen it in in my personal life and the folks that are living in the 240uh homes that we've already built um are are loving it as well too. >> Yeah.
57:16
Great part of the great part of the sales pitch.
57:17
They're like, "How well, how is it to to live in?"
57:19
You're like, "Come over for a barbecue." >> 100.
57:23
Look, when y'all are come to Austin, y'all I got a place, you know?
57:28
Y'all can y'all can y'all can uh y'all can attest to it. >> Yeah.
57:32
Um the company is sort of like a dualuse technology now, working with the government, but also building homes.
57:38
How do you see that evolving?
57:40
I have to imagine that the uh the commercial real estate market is massive compared to the United States military barracks market.
57:51
Same with the residential market.
57:51
Uh is is the army project or is the is the uh department of war project more about proving the technology, scaling the technology or do you see yourself as evolving into primarily a prime?
58:05
Like where does the business go?
58:07
This seems like a fork in the road. >> Sure.
58:09
So I the the business is really three parts, right?
58:11
It's um you know the the my part the the being a government contractor.
58:17
We we are we've done um already 360 million dollars of work.
58:22
We have we have more coming.
58:24
You know my goal is to build 900 barracks in the next 5 years.
58:29
And so so the immediate we're doing it because there the customer needs work, right?
58:34
right? in this project we're doing in Fort Bliss and the demonstration in Louisiana say this is real right like this is and we're moving at a scale people don't have we also are going to help you know uh deliver force projection in hard places how do you build in situ >> in difficult places whether it's the
58:51
first island chain um in in in the Indo-Pacific or somewhere else right so how do you ha how do you do that so so delivering um force projection and then we've we've talked about about space Now, we just started the technology business where we're going to be selling the robots um to to others. And yes,
59:07
And yes, that um right now, if we had if we sold 2,500 robots, right?
59:15
And to give us some context to that number, John Deere of their big tractor sells about 66,000 a year, >> right?
59:25
So, we're talking about 2500.
59:28
That would make the Icon Builder Guild the largest home builder in America >> because they could build so many.
59:37
>> They could build so many with with those robots.
59:38
And when you look at the the market share, it rounds down to zero the global market share.
59:45
That's how much opportunity there is in in in this space.
59:50
And so yes, the technology business is going to grow in that opportunity, but we are going to have a core um a core government because that's our responsibility we believe.
59:59
And then and our third part is we have what we call it um um design built.
1:00:03
This is our general contractor inhouse.
1:00:06
This is how we've proven all the steps you need to do.
1:00:11
How do you have the ecosystem um and the tools necessary in order to build?
1:00:16
We've proven that with all these structures.
1:00:18
We're to continue to prove that with the government business and that's what's going to inform um when we have the the Icon Builder Guild start printing with with our robots. >> That makes sense.
1:00:28
What do you think the future of prefab is in this case?
1:00:32
>> Look, I I there's a there's a $2 million uh not $2 million, excuse me, two million home deficit. >> Yeah.
1:00:39
>> In the United just in the United States every single year.
1:00:41
So, you know, there's going to be tools for everything, right?
1:00:45
I I think I think there's a place for it.
1:00:46
Uh I I believe and we believe that 3D printing is is the way to go because not only of the quality um to withstand um rains and and fires and and and bugs um but it's it's the the the ability to deliver something that's beautiful as as well too. >> Yeah.
1:01:03
on on the national level, was there ever any proposal around home building or solving that home deficit that perked your interest but maybe didn't get across the finish line?
1:01:16
It feels like uh the lot of the housing crisis is driven by uh specific markets going through bull cycles or permitting or timelines.
1:01:27
And then of course there's the materials and all sorts of different uh technologies that can happen.
1:01:33
But uh I haven't I I've heard the price of housing elevate to a national conversation, but I haven't heard of someone put down a plan that actually gets traction.
1:01:47
>> Look, so so affordability is probably the number one issue across the United States of America right now.
1:01:50
And and so I I agree with you, but there's there's this is a this is a a problem that has this is a it's an issue that has multiple problems.
1:01:57
Now, I can make an argument that because of poor design over many years, that is what's caused all this overregulation, because people weren't doing the things in order to take care of their communities, right?
1:02:09
We just went through this process of getting into the UFC, not mixed martial arts, but but the the the uniform facilities code.
1:02:16
This is what the the government uses in order to build.
1:02:18
It was a process and we went through it and now we're in and we're going to be able to start doing more.
1:02:23
And so, so, um, the difficulty of of doing this community by community is why some people want to see that, um, that change, but I think it starts with do innovative things.
1:02:32
We use robots to change the walls. Yeah. Right.
1:02:37
That's just the beginning of of this process.
1:02:39
It's labor, it's time, right?
1:02:42
Like all of these things has has what impacted um the the issue of housing.
1:02:47
And for us, the key insight was how do you stop how do you do something different and change something that's been been going on since the Middle Ages and and do it faster and better and smarter and cheaper. And that's it is right. Okay. Look, you're right.
1:03:00
If you had a house that was 100 years old, >> Yeah.
1:03:05
>> it would probably be a little more stable than one that was built >> five 10 years ago. >> Right.
1:03:10
And and this is this is one industry that hasn't that hasn't been changed.
1:03:14
And that's what we're that's what we're trying to do. >> Cool.
1:03:17
Well, thank you so much for taking the time to get you.
1:03:20
>> We'll talk to you soon.
1:03:20
Our next guest is in the waiting room already.
1:03:22
Let me pull my >> headphones back on. We have Anous from AMD.
1:03:29
He is the vice president of AI software and we'll bring him in to the TDP Ultra Drone in just a minute. >> Here he is. >> An how are you doing? >> What's going on? >> Good. Good. How are you guys doing? >> We're doing great. Uh happy Monday.
1:03:43
Thank you so much for taking the time.
1:03:45
Uh since it is the first time on the show, I would love uh for you to give a little bit of an introduction on yourself and how you fit into the the AMD organization.
1:03:53
>> Yeah, I um I joined AMD about uh two and a half years ago.
1:03:56
Um I'd um you know I came in through an acquisition uh called Na N.
1:04:01
AI uh and we'd been building ML compilers for five six years um the precursor to AI.
1:04:07
uh and I was at um uh Google prior to that building Chromebooks, Chrome OS and um and now I lead uh AMD's software strategy, software execution uh and trying to make sure AMD has a um you know a pervasive AI software story as much as a pervasive AI hardware story. >> Got it.
1:04:27
>> Got it. Uh I'm sure the question that everyone is asking you is around uh how AI is you know speeding up uh uh the actual deployment of AI models onto other silicon stacks other chipsets AMD specifically uh how is it going what is real how much acceleration are you feeling obviously we've seen uh incredible performance from AMD on semi analysis's uh inference max which I think has been renamed but u
1:05:02
>> inference x >> inference x that's right and so and so like it is clear that AMD can can provide incredible inference for AI models uh and I think there is an expectation that the AI models themselves will allow for more powerful
1:05:19
models to be deployed IMD more effectively but what are you feeling what are you seeing what are your sort of timelines for more fluidity between the uh silicon stacks that are out there. >> Yeah, very good question. Um, so until
1:05:31
>> Yeah, very good question.
1:05:31
Um, so until about December, I was um, you know, I I I I saw it like a linear progression, right?
1:05:39
Like I'd been here for two years at AMD and it was like hard work, grind, grind, grind, and then suddenly it was like, oh wow, >> software is just tokens and time.
1:05:46
So, you know, you know, since January, it's just like uh supercharged our ability to execute.
1:05:54
um even performance things that we were you know traditionally took a little bit longer to kind of get for you know when we launched the MI355 um it it it would take us a little bit to like get understand workloads that are not in the well-lit path and go after the performance.
1:06:11
Um now all of it like you know we have to be everywhere at the same time and be performant and AI helps us do that right.
1:06:18
So we have like automated uh performance loops that just run with uh you know as soon as the customer tries the model we start an agent that's just like non-stop optimizing the customer's model right and then that allows us to not just make the uh performance aspect but also the breadth of coverage uh to make the out ofbox experience uh delightful and magical.
1:06:42
uh and that we're seeing it in our like you know customer feedback in in what what what we hear on social media.
1:06:50
I I track that very religiously just to make sure that the experience is good.
1:06:54
Uh and it's it's been good so far.
1:06:57
>> Yeah, I I think I've seen you do the uh the little yachty walk out once or twice taking lab courtesy of some some AI company and and some analysis of course.
1:07:09
um uh walk me through the key, uh like levers of AI enhancing productivity on AMD because I feel like there is potentially a world of secret tricks to model performance that are maybe not in the pre-training data and are locked in the heads of very talented folks that work at AMD and often are deployed with a company to actually get the last 1% out of uh whatever production run is going on.
1:07:41
But then there's the other side which is uh this feels like a perfectly like verifiable reward. You can run this loop.
1:07:48
You can sort of brute force it and uh if you're deploying a large scale model and there's a lot of money on the line, you can potentially put a ton of compute behind it.
1:07:56
And so even if the even if the training data isn't 100% there, uh you'll get there through uh reinforcement learning.
1:08:04
But what are you seeing as moving the needle?
1:08:08
What what else what what's the next thing that needs to happen?
1:08:10
Are we just purely uh scaling compute here and uh and and everything is like you know one click on AMD and everything's great.
1:08:19
I don't even know what the benchmark is but but the hypothetical full performance is is real. >> Yes. Right. >> Yes. So very good question.
1:08:24
Um I I'll just take a step back and say AMD has had this um you know um ethos of open source right which really plays to our advantage.
1:08:36
>> Every Frontier model that I use has already seen every bit of AMD source code. >> Sure.
1:08:42
>> And I can even like it it will rewrite my spec for me. >> Yeah.
1:08:46
>> Because it already is in the pre-training data. Right.
1:08:47
So which you cannot get from closed ecosystems, right?
1:08:51
Because you are constrained by like what is out there.
1:08:52
like we publish our ISA specs.
1:08:55
In fact, I built a virtual GPU simulator just based off of our public specs and uh and now I'm running it on the GPU.
1:09:02
So, I can run like cross generational um you know um GPU uh simulations on a um uh on on a existing hard.
1:09:12
So, so to your point on pre-training data, we have that advantage and and we'd run a dev day contest where we generated more tokens on AMD like Triton kernels and hip kernels.
1:09:22
um than that existed on the internet at the time.
1:09:25
So GPU mode had that set this up. Wow.
1:09:27
Uh and so now that's all part of pre-training data, right?
1:09:30
So which again it's a superpower because now you're open source and you're agentically um you know accelerating this uh uh process.
1:09:37
Uh and then the second part is you know that's already the foundation is solid.
1:09:42
Uh and now agent loops just you know they're working non-stop, right?
1:09:47
Um so uh we know our roof lines and so these agents just continue and and execute towards those roof lines.
1:09:55
Um and so it makes us achieve that.
1:09:58
So from from where I see it right I think AI is just you know it's become like this great equalizer.
1:10:03
I thought abstractions alone would be the great equalizer for GPU programming like you know Triton and higher level Pythonic ones but now it's like that plus aentic AI you know I have agent loops that are running non-stop you know every night uh that are you know looking at bugs PRs and and they're just automatically uh fixing them.
1:10:24
Of course we have humans in the loop where needed but if your harness gets really robust uh it's it's good to be in autopilot.
1:10:32
So um so I'm very confident in like the uh the enablement that you know agent has given AMD as a whole and uh how we can execute and and kind of skate to where the puck is going not all the journey of where it went to now. >> Okay. Yeah.
1:10:49
Uh that makes sense in the in the theme of uh skating where the puck is going.
1:10:54
Uh you know I'm I'm loosely familiar with this uh you know the the the the paths around CUDA and and and and some of the trends that we're seeing there.
1:11:03
uh what is going on in the CPU world?
1:11:05
It feels like we're incredibly CPUbound from a physical number of chips perspective, but what are you hearing from developers and engineers on what needs to happen to unlock all of the capacity and and use the CPUs more efficiently?
1:11:22
Is there a need for more software there?
1:11:24
Is this just purely just make as many chips as we can like the job's finished or uh what are people asking you?
1:11:31
That's a very good question.
1:11:34
Um, software the job is never finished.
1:11:36
It's just you're you're going you're going higher and higher in terms of orchestrating and and enabling the last mile, right?
1:11:41
Like you always want to try and see how much more efficient you can make a system.
1:11:46
Um, and like we started the thing right the discussion um AMD even on laptops right like the strict halo laptop it's got a CPU, GPU and NPU.
1:11:56
Um and now with uh Agentic AI we are actually able to like provide a very clean um heterogeneous runtime and then a compiler so that now you can actually bounce between these based on the usage.
1:12:10
So if it's tool calling and it's like you know it's compute uh it does it's not GPU bound and you can use it on the CPU we can shift to the CPU but then the interfaces we want to make it seamless so that it's elastic between where you want to run this.
1:12:25
I have a a stricks halo here on my desk that's running like a local voice model that does uh my transcription.
1:12:33
It's a it's a it's a hacked up version of codeex >> um that can actually do realtime voice transcriptions. That's cool.
1:12:40
>> And I I I have um I have a small keyboard that that just has next but next session previous session and this is push to talk. >> That's awesome.
1:12:49
and and and this one here is uh extra high or high or you know the model selector and and then you can just speak to it and and so in that case >> it's running all of the uh voice on the NPU right so it's able to do like realtime voice translation >> and then it does uh GPU and then CPU and
1:13:08
then where required it it puns it to you know the thinking models are up on the cloud so it gets yeah it gets a combination of all of those >> yeah yeah that makes sense uh the flip side of that incredible redly cool fourkey keyboard is uh it's over for you if you if your entire job is based on the traditional cordy keyboard. I'm sure
1:13:25
I'm sure that there's a uh I I I'm curious about like AMD seems like a fantastic place to work in an AI takeoff in a crazy uh AI future world.
1:13:36
Uh what are you seeing on uh the people that are joining AMD right now that are set up for success?
1:13:43
What does it take to get a job at AMD?
1:13:45
where are the new high lever positions within the organization where you see okay this person is is uh is on a you know fantastic career track inside of AMD.
1:13:56
>> Well, it's a very very good question.
1:13:56
So um I what I do like about AMD is that you know uh it's I I think it comes from a a humble place of being through 55 years of a journey right um but then deeply ambitious and then you know at the right place at the right time you know have been executing on hardware for so long and now the software pieces like you know um accelerating it.
1:14:19
Um so the way I tell my teams is that it's uh we're a startup.
1:14:25
We're a 55 year old startup and you know and even in the AI group it's like few thousand people.
1:14:31
Um I encourage everyone to work like you know startup do the right thing.
1:14:37
know startup do the right thing. It's a you know I I have an all hands with everyone who has a manager because in the future it's going to be manager of people and agents right like you're just going to accelerate that um you know uh capability and and your breadth of um
1:14:53
what you do is going to increase um so I think the the workplace and the culture is like hey let's go do it be humble ambitious go do it and then um the AI acceleration is just something that I look for um for people to look at it as it doesn't replace first principles thinking but it can do a lot of your
1:15:16
work right um you know and and so my my coding interview is like show me your plan your skills and solve this problem while you're sitting at it right like you know like the first 10 minutes of what you do with God code or codeex I know exactly your thought process in terms of like how you're going to
1:15:35
approach it and what's your harness going to look Um so I I yeah I'm super excited about um the the overall team how we're adopting u agent KI but also the folks that are joining us um that have deep experience uh in in the in the fields and now you know just uh supercharging it. >> Yeah. What is uh AMD's uh equivalent of >> Yeah.
1:15:56
What is uh AMD's uh equivalent of the forward deployed engineer?
1:15:59
Like at any given point, how many engineers do you guys have like on the ground at at at different data centers or even within the offices of of labs or other companies?
1:16:11
>> Yeah, that's a very good um question.
1:16:11
We didn't get very creative.
1:16:14
We called it forward deployed engineering.
1:16:16
Uh we fix are very broken. >> Yeah.
1:16:23
Um so so we started that about about two years ago and um well I I guess now we should have an FDA also power deployed agents.
1:16:32
Um so FB and FDA um but um but you know it's um multiple hundreds of people that are just u um the the the way they're focused on the customer.
1:16:47
The way I I I phrase FDE is that um you know SD or software uh developers are the forward pass and FDs are the backward pass.
1:16:57
So the forward pass like executes to a PRD and the FDS execute from a customer backwards and that's your entire model of operation and both of you know you have to be a software engineer to start but you know you just come at the same code base from uh you know whether you're forward pass or backward pass. >> Yeah >> makes sense.
1:17:18
Um, how has uh uh I wanted to ask about the uh the the story of George HOTS and how he sort of raised alarm bells, but it felt like you know you said AMD as a startup and I did not think that AMD I didn't think of AMD as a startup three years ago but when I saw that interaction and the back and forth there and the change that actually happened uh that felt like okay this company is in founder mode, this company is in startup mode.
1:17:49
Uh how has the flywheel of feedback from the open source, the individual, the the random Twitter poster, uh actually become actionable?
1:18:00
Because I think there's a lot of companies that will see something being said but not necessarily take action like how culturally has AMD changed to actually uh move the needle when something like that happens.
1:18:13
>> Yeah, very good question.
1:18:13
First, mad respects to uh George Hodson and the skills that you know he has, right?
1:18:18
Like I I I wrote a a rock port on Mac OS just based off of like you know uh tiny grads um you know what he's done, right?
1:18:28
um you know what he's done, right? So now I have Mac OS Rockcom running with an eGPU um and and that's you know that that's the power of open right like we can see and now you know the the the industry moves forward
1:18:43
>> um on the um on the flywheel I personally monitor all of X um as much as I can like all the keywords AMD software sucks or something like that so if someone if someone >> if somebody posts you're going to take it personally it's going to ruin I >> it's going to ruin your afternoon. >> It's okay. It's okay. It's I I I take >> It's okay. It's okay.
1:19:02
It's I I I take that as one of my jobs to do.
1:19:05
Um so I personally respond um and to to you know whether it's George Harts or whether it's anyone else uh I I may not know who that is but um but usually my response is if there's a specific issue with the GitHub I will go personally track it down and make sure it's fixed.
1:19:23
Um if it's an opinion, it's hard to fight opinions because it's an opinion and and sometimes opinions are like lagging indicators and that's fine.
1:19:30
Um we'll earn their trust and we will you know take step by step to get there.
1:19:34
take step by step to get there. uh but the problems that exist we want to you know like double down and go actually fix and you know we started this about a year ago where people were like oh you you removed support on this uh card or that card or you don't support Windows well and um so a year ago I I took a
1:19:54
like a poll and and we sorted all the uh systems that we needed to support and now at least as a community supported version all of those hardware for Windows and and Linux and and Now, Mac OS 2 um is all being like enabled so that customers or developers can can, you know, use AMD uh and be delighted by it. >> Last question. Is AMD a car? >> Last question. Is AMD a car? >> Is AMD a car? >> Um uh is it a car? Let me see.
1:20:25
Um well, tell me more about the car.
1:20:33
>> It's a Formula 1 car, John. It might be a car. It's a Formula 1 car. There we go.
1:20:37
That's the correct answer.
1:20:38
>> That's the correct answer.
1:20:39
>> That's the correct answer. >> It's a good car, sir. >> It It is a good car.
1:20:43
It is a Formula 1 car and the race we run, you know, sometimes we're a little two inches behind and one inch ahead, but we we're ready for the race. We run that race. >> I love it.
1:20:53
It's been fantastic following the race.
1:20:55
It's been fantastic following your progress.
1:20:57
>> One thing I know for certain, you did not wake up a loser. >> That's for sure. That's that's 100% true.
1:21:03
Obviously, it comes across very clearly. >> Thank you.
1:21:06
It's it's >> Thank you so much for taking the time.
1:21:10
Uh the the the the news today is that uh uh annual developer day, San Francisco, April 30th. Go check it out.
1:21:17
Uh and thank you so much for taking the time to come join us. >> Nailed it. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Great. Great to hang. We'll talk to you soon. Goodbye.
1:21:33
>> Up next, we have Augustus from Rain Maker, who's the CEO and founder.
1:21:36
He's teal fellow and he's in the TBPN Ultra Dome live with us in studio in Hollywood. Welcome to the show.
1:21:44
You're looking fantastic. >> Oh, thank you.
1:21:47
And not as good as Jordy in the Rain Maker green suit.
1:21:50
>> Yeah, >> you did that just for me.
1:21:51
>> Yeah, the background everything fits. Give us the update. How are How's life? How are things going? >> Uh, blessed. Better than ever.
1:21:55
Uh, Rain Maker is the first company in human history to unambiguously, repeatably modify the weather and prove it. >> Okay. >> Yeah. This past year. >> You break it down. When did this happen? Where?
1:22:07
>> So, you know, I've known you guys for a while.
1:22:09
Um, it's pretty tough to be the mulleted kid running around saying that you're going to modify the weather for a few years without being able to prove it.
1:22:16
>> The mullet looks less mullety.
1:22:18
>> It's It's a little just >> You're growing out the front, so now it's party in the front, party in the back.
1:22:22
>> I would say everywhere.
1:22:22
I would say either party or just disheveled all around.
1:22:26
Um, >> but across our operations in Oregon, Idaho, Utah, and the Middle East, >> we've been able to run these operations and in areas with otherwise no precipitation whatsoever, >> see snow happen exclusively downwind where our measured and modeled air souls are going.
1:22:42
And so for anybody that's not familiar with cloud seating, >> it's this technology that's been around for 80 years.
1:22:47
General Electric invented it in 194.
1:22:49
I would actually be shocked if there's someone in tech that is not familiar with cloud settings just because just because you've been around the you've been you've been around the circuit for the last few years a couple times.
1:23:01
Give it to us again in case someone anybody's been living under a data.
1:23:06
>> We'll start with what a cloud is. >> Yeah. Yeah.
1:23:07
Scientists don't actually know.
1:23:09
That's a separate question.
1:23:09
By the way, speaking of people not >> this goes deeper than I >> pe people uh that might not heard of Clive Scene before, I was talking to some big fancy show producers and we were like, "Hey, do you want this story?"
1:23:20
And they're like, "Well, maybe if you go on TBNN first, then we would take it."
1:23:24
Um, and so there's some other hits this week that it's all credited to you.
1:23:29
>> But, um, the long story short is there's lots of clouds that have small drops of liquid water in them, too small to naturally fall.
1:23:34
If you can find those clouds, release the right material into them, those drops will freeze onto your dust and become big enough to fall.
1:23:43
Problem is, if you blast a cloud and then it snows, who's to say whether you actually made it snow? >> Attribution. >> Attribution.
1:23:48
Oh, he's reading the investor updates. Yeah. Yeah. It's uh Yeah. Yeah.
1:23:53
It's it's just like uh brand marketing. >> Yeah.
1:23:55
But now uh the most like normie interpretable attribution we have is downwind of where we're seating.
1:24:01
Uh sometimes you can see the water in the cloud in the entire portion that we seated freeze and then fall out and in an otherwise overcast day this hole will open up in the sky and you can see the blue sky and sun and snow falling downwind uh and otherwise it's totally overcast.
1:24:18
So using data from our own proprietary radar, from the National Weather Service radar, even NASA satellites, um we're able to show exactly how much of the precipitation is man-made.
1:24:28
Uh and then tell our customers, be they governments, hydroelectric utilities, insurers, ski resorts now, actually.
1:24:35
>> Yeah, I can imagine ski resorts being early adopters. >> Yeah. Yeah.
1:24:37
>> Although isn't it very narrow? >> Such a small target.
1:24:40
When I think about like rainfall on a corn field, that seems like sort of spray and prey and you're good.
1:24:46
But uh if you want that double black diamond to be hit perfectly, that feels like precision.
1:24:52
Are we there yet on the technology?
1:24:53
>> Well, really what the ski resorts want is the off ped to get snow, right? >> Like uh you got Yeah. Yeah. Off off peace. Off piece. >> Um >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
1:25:05
Because your snowblowers, the conventional stuff, they can get the actual like trails, but if you want to do the backount, >> cloud seating is best for that. Okay.
1:25:13
Um, and so historically cloud seating has been no more precise than a few hundred square miles at a time.
1:25:17
You're flying these planes at hundreds of miles an hour.
1:25:21
The entire waterershed will get water.
1:25:23
>> We've gotten it down to because of the wind sensing that we're doing, the modeling that we're doing.
1:25:27
We're like an AI company now. Sorry to say it.
1:25:29
Um, uh, we're we've gotten it precise enough to land on about 8,000 acres at a time.
1:25:39
Um, and doing all of like our snow zone research.
1:25:41
That's what we're calling the area that we're hitting.
1:25:42
Um, we can probably get it down from 8,000 to a little bit smaller, maybe a thousand acres at a time, which is easy for any mid to ultra large resort in the US. >> Yeah, makes sense.
1:25:53
Uh, where has demand been?
1:25:57
You mentioned a few different geo locations, you mentioned a few different industries.
1:26:01
Do you think that you will be narrowing down at some point?
1:26:03
um >> like finding a beach head, finding a product market fit and it's like >> yeah, he's narrowed down already.
1:26:10
Earth >> I know I know I know there's a broad there's a broad uh vision but every company goes through a narrowing and a focusing point and then a broadening diversification.
1:26:23
Do you see yourself going more narrow for a little bit and just being like the dominant main player in, you know, the Pacific Northwest in ski and then going other things or do you want to keep running in multiple places?
1:26:38
Is there a benefit to that?
1:26:40
>> It's it's a super salient question, right?
1:26:41
Because if you look at say Reflect orbital, right, the guys that are offering sunlight on demand, >> yep, >> infinite potential applications for that.
1:26:48
uh rain or snow on demand.
1:26:51
>> A bunch of different uh demos could use that.
1:26:53
For us, it's two things exclusively.
1:26:56
Um it is municipal and state water agencies.
1:26:58
So say like the Utah Department of Natural Resources, uh the California uh Department of Natural Resources, water for them.
1:27:04
Um that's straightforward.
1:27:07
We're very allegible to them.
1:27:09
They understand the value of snowpack and how that relates to their water table. So that's one.
1:27:13
And then just ski resorts.
1:27:14
So all these other markets although eventually we'll play in them.
1:27:18
I think insurance is really interesting for like crop insurance.
1:27:19
Um I think that hydro >> does that work?
1:27:23
>> So right now uh there's insurance against crop failure due to drought. >> Sure.
1:27:29
>> Um so if you have like a parametric insurance play where you can structurally reduce the risk of drought killing your crops then you can more water down. >> Exactly. >> Makes sense.
1:27:39
>> Um although that'll all be interesting.
1:27:41
It's really going to be uh Alpine, Rocky Mountain, Sierra Ski Resorts, and then just the governments that I mentioned before. >> Makes sense.
1:27:48
>> What kind of advancements have you made on the hardware side, the actual drones?
1:27:53
Like you guys are flying drones in probably more extreme conditions than like I would guess any other >> company or organization on the planet.
1:28:05
>> Um, >> is that is that is that accurate?
1:28:07
There's some pretty cool defense uh companies that are building crazier drones than ours, but we have the only rotor wing vehicle that can fly in severe icing in in all of NATO.
1:28:14
Um >> rotor wing vehicle quad >> quadcopter rather than fixed wing. >> Sure. >> Yeah.
1:28:21
Um and so the advancements have been candidly last year our drones were basically like bottle rockets.
1:28:27
Um they'd go up the icing was really severe.
1:28:29
We had not perfected the system required to sustain flight through severe icing.
1:28:34
But now in atmosphere >> bottle rockets as in they would go up, they would deliver a payload and then they would just kind of fall.
1:28:42
>> I was kind of making a joke about them exploding. >> Yeah.
1:28:47
>> So all of the the development that's that's been done in the last year is about reliability and precision.
1:28:51
Um these vehicles, >> you don't want to lose a drone every time. No, >> it doesn't work. >> Exactly.
1:28:57
Um and so we're flying 3 to four miles above ground level.
1:29:00
um that's being done pretty consistently up to 60 70 mph winds in these atmospheric rivers.
1:29:07
Um that's the big development there.
1:29:10
And then also another big thing is the aerosol sizing.
1:29:12
So this was part of the big breakthrough that happened in January.
1:29:17
We we realized we needed significantly smaller so like nanometer scale and then significantly more concentration of these particles to deliver the effect that we were intending.
1:29:27
Before that, we were releasing like micron sized particles, but now um because we're releas releasing more and smaller particles, we're able to more reliably see our effect. >> Wow.
1:29:40
>> How is the response been to just the vanilla push back of like dangerous chemical goes in the cloud?
1:29:44
Like this this like the actual silver is it still silver iodide? >> Silver iodide.
1:29:50
>> Is silver iodide something you can't just chug in a glass of water, right?
1:29:54
>> Did you see a dag video? >> Yes.
1:29:56
I want you to unpack that.
1:29:56
That did not look very good.
1:29:59
Like what's going on there? >> Yeah.
1:30:01
So, shout out to Daxon from Soon. Um, >> great filmmaker. >> Yep. Spectacular.
1:30:05
>> Potential investigative journalist going on. What's going on here?
1:30:08
>> Um, so so silver iodide is still what we're using. Yeah.
1:30:11
>> Uh, in this upcoming winter, we're going to have scaled operations with our alternative seating agent.
1:30:16
It's this uh bio uh naturally occurring protein from like uh American soil. >> So on brand for you. >> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
1:30:24
We think that you know how like you're trying to make >> it's like a naturally occurring white monster. >> Exactly.
1:30:30
So we're going to mix the protein into whey and then I'm going to that and it's going to play.
1:30:34
Um but >> no I mean putting salt in the atmosphere doesn't it it seems like that could be if it's a natural substance if it is something that you could drink that would be that would kind of close the loop.
1:30:45
But uh are you thinking about moving away from silver iodide entirely and moving over to this new seating agent?
1:30:52
So silver iodide because it's safe, because it's proven, because this problem's already inordinately complex, we'll continue to use in most of our commercial ops for the next two years.
1:31:01
Um the reception is generally like there's two things happening at once.
1:31:05
There's more awareness of cloud seating.
1:31:07
Like in the last three years, there's 400 times more searches of cloud seating than there were before.
1:31:12
>> We're all wondering who responsible for this.
1:31:16
Um, and then also on the like public sentiment side, as long as you can disambiguate like the sort of Bill Gates dimming the sun type stuff from cloud eating, which is localized precipitation enhancement, >> people are pretty receptive and and silver iodide, if you back out the math for people, they're willing to talk 90% of the time.
1:31:35
10% less tractable, but we're we're always going to be open and transparent with them.
1:31:38
Long term though, my primary interest in alternative seating agents, it's not just because I want to get away from like the PR of using silver iodide.
1:31:46
It's that these proteins are about a thousand times more effective at nucleating ice.
1:31:52
>> Um, and the Chinese have that one primary advantage over our weather mod program.
1:31:58
Um, so they're doing very advanced material science for different graphine particles um that much much more effectively manipulate the weather conditions.
1:32:05
But that seems more problematic from a environmental perspective.
1:32:10
Like if I if that falls on my corn, I eat it, I don't necessarily want graphine in my digestive tract. >> Something like that. >> That makes sense. Yeah.
1:32:19
>> But maybe in certain applications, you don't care about the chemicals in the water. I don't know.
1:32:25
Uh like I mean, if you're skiing, you're not necessarily eating the snow.
1:32:28
So there's potential for chemicals.
1:32:31
>> Lots of people eat the snow.
1:32:31
So maybe that's not the maybe that's not the best example, but there there there must be some sort of there's probably some applications where uh you know you're not net polluting the environment potentially. >> Yeah.
1:32:43
And I think there's also always the like dilution is the solution angle.
1:32:48
You say okay if you put down >> 50% more water then it's still an inconsequential amount of material in the soil.
1:32:54
That's their angle right now. >> Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense.
1:32:55
Um Jordy, you have something else?
1:32:58
Uh what's the team like today and where are you guys like where all over the map are you?
1:33:04
>> Yeah, so we were I don't know what we were last we spoke but this time last year we were about 30 people.
1:33:09
Um we're a little bit over 130 now. >> Wow. >> Yeah, >> it's huge. How is that divided up?
1:33:15
>> Um so there's about a third uh 40 or so in Los Angeles at any given time. Okay.
1:33:21
>> There's about 60 in Salt Lake. Sure.
1:33:23
>> Um shout out Utah, shout out Governor Cox. Shout out LDS church. Yeah, love them all.
1:33:28
Um but uh then we have a smaller operational site in Pendleton, Oregon. >> Yeah.
1:33:34
>> Um an operation in the Middle East, which we still cannot >> sure >> talk about the location of.
1:33:37
Um and then our our DC team and shortly actually in Alaskan. >> Oh. As well. >> Alaska. Yeah.
1:33:44
>> Um are you still going to like local court hearings constantly?
1:33:46
I feel like you were on a run there.
1:33:48
Also, there was like a there was like a potential of like is this going to get completely banned in certain states or at the federal level?
1:33:55
like what's the status of like the government push back?
1:33:57
I know the government's doing a lot of different stuff, but >> yeah.
1:34:01
Um at the state level of the 31 bans that were proposed, uh only two went through in last session.
1:34:06
Um >> Florida, >> Florida and then Louisiana. >> Okay.
1:34:12
>> Um unsurprisingly, the discourse in everywhere east of the Mississippi where they don't need the water as badly is more uh liable to chemtrail conspiracy discourse.
1:34:21
east or west of the Mississippi, people need the water and are willing to hear you out and dismbiguate. Sure.
1:34:27
>> Um >> I think that uh in terms of federal involvement and potentially preeemption, President Trump brought up the necessity of saving the Great Salt Lake, right?
1:34:35
Um we have operations for the Bear River, which is the primary tributary into the Great Salt Lake right now.
1:34:41
And if we were to scale up our operations about 10 times, we could radically accelerate the timeline to reversing the eritification of and refilling the lake.
1:34:50
And so we might get to see some participation at the federal level in cloud seating because um it's the only way to produce net new water for the lake.
1:35:00
And and that's an interesting project.
1:35:02
Not because not just because the lake is a piece of national American heritage.
1:35:07
Not just because it's something that all of the ski industry is dependent on in Utah because that lake effect snow is what gives you the champagne powder.
1:35:14
It's not just important because if the lake aridifies you end up with toxic arsenic getting kicked up like in the salt and sea.
1:35:22
>> Um but also uh it's the training wheels for what a interstate weather modification project would look like for the Colorado River, right?
1:35:29
the the Bear River which flows through or the wershed which flows through Utah, Wyoming and Idaho.
1:35:37
Um that is sort of the the precedent setting that we're looking for for the Colorado which is down to about 8.
1:35:44
1 million acre feet through Lee's Ferry every year.
1:35:46
That's the the place where they measure flow of the river so they figure out allocations.
1:35:49
Um that's about half of where the water was measured to be or suspected to be when we made the Colorado River compact.
1:35:56
Um, Rain Makaker's goal to call a shot publicly is to get the Colorado River back to its 1920 supply levels by 2031.
1:36:07
Um, that will mean uh about 8 million more acre feet of water down.
1:36:10
Um, and a lot of that will come from cloud seating and some of it will come from other technologies that we're looking at right now.
1:36:18
>> How do you structure uh your customer contracts?
1:36:24
>> Like how how does that work? Right.
1:36:24
Uh, I'm assuming um you have these different types different types of groups that you're working with, but but what does a typical contract look like?
1:36:32
I'm assuming it's like annual contract.
1:36:34
You're trying to deliver a certain amount of effect in that period, but but walk us through it.
1:36:42
>> So, there there's two modes depending on the customer.
1:36:44
Um, with B2B, it is value based pricing.
1:36:49
Um, we've recently hired on some guys from Palunteer.
1:36:52
They've been instrumental in us figuring out how to set up those structures.
1:36:55
It is some program standup fee and availability and like uh operations, maintenance, repair fee, and then being paid based on the inches of snow that we produce, the gallons of water that flow into the system of interest.
1:37:09
People value the water from cloud seeding very differently.
1:37:12
And so we we structure that outcomesbased pricing differently depending on the customer segment and what they actually want.
1:37:17
Um, then on the B2B side, I'd prefer to do that sort of outcomes based pricing, but you wouldn't be surprised to find out that governments have a harder time paying for outcomes than they do for infrastructure services.
1:37:32
>> Um, and so that has looked like firm fixed fee for the most part. Yeah.
1:37:35
>> Um, so all of our operations priced into uh the initial contract standup.
1:37:41
>> Give me an update on the Gundo.
1:37:41
Um, dude, uh, >> feels like a bunch of companies have grown a ton, uh, potentially outgrowing the Gundo.
1:37:50
Are there more What's net inflow like?
1:37:52
You know, what's going on?
1:37:54
>> Well, I think the first >> It's also just less noisy now.
1:37:55
I feel like the meme like you kind of locked in wins and then locked in, right? Yeah. >> Yeah.
1:38:02
There was a pretty deliberate discussion that happened in the group chat after your piece came out.
1:38:05
We were like radio silence like we all have to shut up. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
1:38:11
So I think the most important thing is that uh it didn't blow up in like a fiery disaster.
1:38:17
Um which it totally could have. Yeah.
1:38:18
>> Um but if you look at us, if you look at Valor, if you look at Nearos, um a lot of these companies are like at scale and and operating in size now.
1:38:27
Um Valor >> and the older guards doing well too.
1:38:32
Radiant and Impulse and Varda, that crew, they're like the I feel like they're like the the >> thes.
1:38:38
>> Yeah, they're the enks.
1:38:38
They're like the juniors.
1:38:40
So you guys are like the sophomores now and the seniors like the SpaceX's and the >> Locked Mattel.
1:38:47
>> Mattel's there of course >> classic Gundo company.
1:38:49
Um >> yeah uh so I think that our original like Gundo bro cohort having matured.
1:38:59
That's something that's pretty cool.
1:38:59
But yeah, every single one of these companies now has operations manufacturing namely outside of Gundo.
1:39:07
Um R&D will stick in and around Gundo Torrance, the greater Gundo area.
1:39:09
Um >> the greater Gundo including Bair and Malibu.
1:39:15
I consider these greater Gundo.
1:39:18
>> I think actually Greater Gundo extends all the way down to Costa Mesa >> to include and >> yeah, there's a prolific defense company in Gundo. Gater Gundo.
1:39:27
>> Throw throw San Diego in. Why not? >> Yeah. Las Vegas. That's Greater Gundo.
1:39:31
>> No, we don't claim Vegas actually.
1:39:31
But um but uh >> right up until San Mateo, you get Nvidia maybe, but not not Facebook.
1:39:37
You you stop at the chips. >> Yeah.
1:39:41
And uh the inflow um has been pretty consistent largely through Dipulus. >> Yeah, that's right. Jacob.
1:39:49
>> Yeah, Jacob's been crushed last week, right? >> Yeah.
1:39:51
Yeah, that was really cool to see. >> Give me a rundown. How'd it go?
1:39:55
>> Um well, I'm I'm personally investing uh in some of the companies from Dipulus.
1:40:01
Um I think there's a few worth checking out.
1:40:02
Uh, one just at the top of my mind is Western Chemical. Okay, Jared West. >> He is the guy.
1:40:07
I don't know if you saw the Jared West of Western Chem. It's so good. >> Yeah. Yeah.
1:40:13
So, uh, he's doing uh water processing, taking um waste water, and then putting duckweed into it, harvesting and cleaning the water, and then uh uh taking the hydrocarbons out of the duckweed thereafter. >> Yeah.
1:40:28
So, that's one of the first processes that he's scaling up production of. Okay. >> Yeah. >> What? Yeah.
1:40:33
What what were the other trends?
1:40:34
I mean, I feel it feels like uh one interesting trait of the Gundo companies was that uh they were maybe more like pointed to specific solutions.
1:40:49
There was already there were already like a big energy company generally or like big oil or like you know big a big defense tech company but then you'd get somebody like Nuros and Saurin who are like laser focused on this one application and still breaking through and um like it's not it's not like you were framed as like just like oh like dealing with water broadly.
1:41:08
You weren't the water company.
1:41:10
you were like cloud seating specifically and it was this sort of off the-beat technology and I feel like that's uh part of what made the Gundo experiment so interesting was that it felt like a science fair in some ways and there were a lot of people that were like bite they weren't biting off more than they could chew but they were taking on really ambitious projects that like if they scaled they'd work.
1:41:29
Um, but is that is that culture alive and well?
1:41:34
Like are and are there are there like the the decipulus thing?
1:41:37
Are those are those companies like coming to the Gundo or there's new freshmen joining every year basically? >> Yeah. Yeah.
1:41:44
I sometimes I feel bad because the original cohort >> feel bad for the hazing rituals. >> No.
1:41:50
In 2023, I assure you I'd have instituted something like that.
1:41:53
But 2026, Augustus, >> not so grown up. >> Yeah. Yeah.
1:41:59
Nobody even lives in the office anymore. Um. Wow. >> I know. Fell off.
1:42:01
There's no squat rack in the office. >> Brutal. >> It's brutal.
1:42:04
Um but uh >> gone corporate. >> The Yeah, it's over.
1:42:07
Um >> these big cloud seating now. >> Big cloud.
1:42:10
But uh what's interesting about this most recent cohort is it's largely like uh chemical manufacturing. Um yeah.
1:42:18
So I think that if we pumped out more um defense slop um or or energy slop >> like that space is pretty >> Well, it's hard. Yeah.
1:42:27
Ander has a bet in almost every category and a lot of funding and a lot of talent.
1:42:31
And so there's a big question about should you try and compete with Anderol or just go work at Anderol, right?
1:42:37
Like you can you can certainly fulfill a mission if you want to work on some particular, you know, solution in defense by just going over to Ander.
1:42:47
It's not some abstract company.
1:42:49
Do you have any younger competitors as in like startups or are you or is your competition somebody deciding just >> a newer hotter cloud sitting company with a longer mullet who's just logging >> because I know I know you guys you guys acquired a company at one point right that was doing some some something in the space broadly uh but has anybody been crazy enough to to try to fast follow you?
1:43:15
Um, so we did acquire one of the legacy cloud seating companies that was using planes ground generators and we're going to continue rolling those up um, just because it it's very simple to inject our tech, produce significantly more water, prove our yields, and then upsell accordingly.
1:43:29
Um, no, I don't know of anybody uh, that's started a company um, that's competing with with Ray Maker.
1:43:38
>> Um, and I I think that um, they'd probably get bodied instantaneously uh, if they were to do so.
1:43:43
be it would be a nightmare.
1:43:45
No, I'm sure I'm sure there will come a point where people will be like, "Wow, he he figured it out."
1:43:48
And and uh basically like once you once you hit a certain scale, then they'll be like, "Oh, that seems like a good idea."
1:43:58
But it'll be it'll be too late.
1:43:58
You'll already be getting dragged in front of Congress for uh for monopolizing cloud seating. >> Yeah.
1:44:04
I I think that I'm supposed to uh be magnanimous publicly about that sort of thing.
1:44:10
Um, but I >> Do you do you have to be magnanimous publicly about energy drinks >> about energy drink?
1:44:14
Oh, >> the first time the first time we recorded uh anything together, we did a a tier list.
1:44:19
I want you just a quick tier list of of rank all of these, please.
1:44:24
>> Can you rank every >> Can you rank every uh >> You got the Alani new up there.
1:44:30
>> This is This is the biggest tier list guy >> for uh for the these are these are unranked.
1:44:35
This is the beginning of a tier list where you have to sort these from absolute heaven S tier. A wonderful and amazing. B pretty damn good. C it's fine. D gets the job done. F.
1:44:46
Why are you drinking this?
1:44:49
Then instant kidney failure is the lowest possible tier.
1:44:51
And then of course you can put things in never tried. There are a lot in here.
1:44:55
I didn't even realize some of these existed. >> Full throttle.
1:44:59
That's pretty >> full throttles in there. We got a lot. Anything standing out.
1:45:01
anything make it in the Augustus rotation or the or the uh rain maker fridge more frequently than previous?
1:45:10
>> Um I think the I think the biggest one is not actually listed here. There's um >> deep cut.
1:45:15
>> There's like a I think it's called like red tiger. It's this. It's called Jordanian.
1:45:19
It's this Jordanian energy drink list ingredients.
1:45:22
And so I would actually disagree with the premise and say instant kidney failure if it gives you the optimal neutropic effect is probably what we're optimizing for.
1:45:30
We never got you to rank Diet Coke.
1:45:32
Are you pro Diet Coke or are you a hater? >> Stand on Diet Coke.
1:45:37
>> You know, I think unfortunately Diet Coke is SF coded. >> Oh.
1:45:42
>> However, however, I'll offer I'll offer my olive branch to SF and say, um, we did the meme, we dogged on you guys for making nonsense for long enough. We can be friends now. >> Yeah.
1:45:53
Now they're they're shipping I don't know, semiconductors and hardware.
1:45:57
There's a lot of companies up there. Uh, Ulisses.
1:45:58
I don't know if you're buddies with Right. Yeah.
1:46:00
And he's building real stuff up there. >> Poseidon. >> Yeah.
1:46:05
There's a ton of uh also just like I feel like >> both Ulisses and Poseidon. >> Yeah. >> That's hilarious.
1:46:10
Uh there's also the uh there's also just a boom of like consumer hardware uh industrial robotics. Pretty cool.
1:46:21
>> There's a lot of stuff.
1:46:21
And I feel like even even if it's like a consumer robot that does your laundry or something like that's a little bit more uh I don't know just like an more optimistic future than just more adtech.
1:46:32
And I think it sort of checks the box.
1:46:34
It's close to checking the box of the Gundo criticism which was fair.
1:46:37
>> What what is the TBPN uh like public policy on on prediction markets by the way?
1:46:43
>> Public policy state we we we don't uh engage in them. We don't trade on them.
1:46:48
They're sometimes useful to pull up uh like like the Elon Sam Alman lawsuits going on right now.
1:46:56
I think it's sitting at exactly 50%.
1:46:57
So bad example because that tells you nothing.
1:46:58
Uh but but but uh in terms of like the midterms flipping, I find that really useful.
1:47:02
Um but but I generally I generally hear your criticism about like we don't need more sports betting.
1:47:08
So uh we've had Sager and Jetty from Breaking Points on.
1:47:10
I think you agree with him and I think we're like in loose agreement with that. >> Okay.
1:47:14
that uh that uh the the sports betting is like zero sum, negative sum.
1:47:21
>> Did you hear about the uh what was it the SF guy that not San Francisco but special forces guy that bet on the uh Maduro extraction? >> Yes. Bet on himself.
1:47:30
>> Yeah, he's betting on himself, but obviously a violation of the job, I imagine. So, not good.
1:47:35
I mean, it's crazy because it puts it puts you and your team in insane harm's way because you have to like Maduro and his government have access to the data source.
1:47:47
>> That's a I hadn't even thought about that. That's crazy.
1:47:50
>> And so you're basically telling the enemy >> Yeah.
1:47:53
>> indirectly like when you are going to >> Yeah.
1:47:56
Because they can see a spike in the chart. >> Yeah. It's a signal.
1:47:57
And so yeah, the more the more I sat with that, I was like, >> Trump Trump's reaction when that somebody mentioned it to him was he was like comparing it to like betting on yourself in baseball. >> That's the joke.
1:48:07
That's not the real thing. >> Yeah.
1:48:10
But this was like a, you know, putting I I I I think that guy should probably go to prison for like >> Yeah.
1:48:17
>> 20 years or something.
1:48:18
>> Rough, >> but not based in SF.
1:48:19
I think both companies are in New York. >> True. So >> true. Yeah. Finance.
1:48:24
>> Stick it with the finance prize.
1:48:24
Uh, we haven't yet made money off of uh snow prediction markets.
1:48:29
>> Well, you saw you saw about the hairdryer, right?
1:48:31
So, there was a Paris weather market and this guy gets caught on video pulling a haird dryer up to the to the to the to the meter.
1:48:39
And uh >> I mean, the other thing that's uh that was sort of irksome was uh we got to a point where there were prediction markets around what people would say during their TVN appearance. >> Oh.
1:48:53
And and so so so that creates this weird thing with the chat where the chat will chime in and be like >> ask them about Bitcoin >> and and sometimes that's like a reasonable thing like maybe we do want to know is there a crypto integration to this thing or you know they might want to ask you about uh oh ask him about like Abu Dhabi specific or ask him about you know Spain specifically.
1:49:15
>> Is there anybody's bag we right now? >> Yeah exactly.
1:49:17
And so it creates this weird dynamic where it sort of like degrades the quality of the questions that are getting asked in the chat which is annoying because the chat is very useful for us to you know bring an extra character in.
1:49:29
And then we had a very weird interaction where at one point we had uh prediction markets scrolling across the bottom and a guest actually Sam Alman uh was looking at them because he could see them and one of them was like Sam Alman declares AGI and he's like running this weird thing like this is weird like people are gambling on what if I say this word right now this triggers this thing and it's just like distracting. Yeah.
1:49:49
And so there's been like a back and forth there, but uh still some cool intelligence and some cool like metaanalysis for like understanding what is going on and just synthesizing a bunch of like polling data.
1:50:01
That's still pretty interesting to me. Yeah. But >> yeah.
1:50:03
No, I uh I think they should be illegal.
1:50:06
Um >> even the even the even the uh political ones like who's going to win the next presidential election. >> I so I well yes.
1:50:12
Um but like I heard one person say you could uh self-und a campaign.
1:50:18
You ever read this article where it was like bet on yourself? Yeah, exactly.
1:50:21
Um, >> all that to say though, uh, like >> Gundo still all the changes it's gone through, corporatization, not like sleeping in the office anymore.
1:50:30
>> Like everybody does hate the get-richqu cash out slop stuff.
1:50:32
Um, and if only for the sake of some moral fortitude and like the mitigation of the degrading mental quality of everybody across the country and also like the middle and lower classes just being utterly bodied by uh people that are doing deacto insider trading on these things like >> yeah they should probably be illegal.
1:50:54
Yeah, that was a Sagger's point about just gambling broadly.
1:50:56
Uh that like the inaccessibility of like Las Vegas is like a feature, not a bug and should not be worked out and you should need to like explain to your friends and family like why you're going to Las Vegas and then like maybe you're only there for a weekend.
1:51:11
You come back and you're like not just like stepping away from the gambling but also probably hung over and being like I don't need to do that for a couple years as opposed to like push notification. It's available now. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Very tricky. Very tricky. But stay safe out there.
1:51:24
Uh I don't know >> any any more shots you want to call for this year.
1:51:30
>> Um for this upcoming year um I think >> ASI yes or no >> ASI.
1:51:37
>> Are you are you a AGI pled?
1:51:39
>> Um I would have said two months ago no absolutely not.
1:51:44
But um some of our smartest uh philosophy graduate like super super AI native young kids rebuilt some of the most sophisticated weather models in the world with uh LLM this year.
1:51:59
So yeah, I would say actually you have to AGI harden your company.
1:52:02
So we're doing all of this >> that feels like AGI pill, not AI godp. >> Yeah. Yes. Yes.
1:52:10
Not not >> but also you you >> like useful tool pled. >> Yeah. >> Not not slop. Oh, it's a bubble. It's nothing. It's not even useful. Like it is useful. >> No. Super super useful.
1:52:22
I think the weird take though is like most of the economy is faked already.
1:52:25
So everybody's jobs getting automated is like ostensibly. No.
1:52:30
>> You've seen those you've seen those Instagram reals, right?
1:52:31
It's like AI is going to take my job. What job?
1:52:33
And it's like a guy like you know skateboarding or something. >> Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. >> Too many examples.
1:52:39
So yeah, I think it'll probably like revolutionize a bunch of stuff now.
1:52:43
Um I think on the water thing, I brought this up before the water critique of data centers. Um yes, sure.
1:52:50
We'll talk my own book all the time, but like they don't actually use that much water.
1:52:53
>> No, I think all of Google used 50 golf courses worth or something like that. Like crazy.
1:52:58
>> 50 golf courses just around.
1:53:00
>> Google controls like 20% of compute or something like that. Maybe more.
1:53:02
Like it's like absolutely insane. It's not a water issue. It is a power issue.
1:53:05
Uh, are you bullish on desalination? >> Uh, yeah. Yeah.
1:53:10
I think DAL is going to be pretty instrumental.
1:53:12
Um, >> I mean, are is there a bit of you where you're looking at what Isaiah is doing and you're like, mega project, DAL, like this feels like you could crush that.
1:53:25
And it's I don't know like it's it's a different it's a different shape of company.
1:53:30
Like what you're doing right now is maybe more innovative than just being like there's a desalination plant that works here.
1:53:36
I'm gonna build another one. Copy paste.
1:53:38
But what's really involved in that is like what Isaiah is doing, which is like marshalling the capital, marshalling the political will, getting stakeholders aligned.
1:53:46
Like it's this very soft, messy thing that's >> all things that you're quite good at. >> You're good at this.
1:53:52
And I feel like I feel like if you know, isn't there a plant right down from your office? >> Uh yeah.
1:53:58
Well, >> it's off, right? >> The the del plant.
1:54:00
Well, are you thinking Carl's bad down in San Diego?
1:54:04
>> I thought there was one like in Elsagundo. Is that not right?
1:54:07
>> There's the water treatment plant. Hyperion.
1:54:09
Yeah, um they do a ton of recycling.
1:54:11
No, I think a shot that I will call is by Q1 of next year, uh Rain Maker is going to be doing some del. >> Let's go.
1:54:18
>> And and yeah, a lot of that is a lot of that is um like marshalling political will and stakeholder engagement.
1:54:22
It's also you got to take the perspective of modular manufacturing of units, right?
1:54:29
Like that's what Valor's big thing is. >> Nuclear.
1:54:31
>> We talked to somebody who was doing a uh del at the scale of like a cooler.
1:54:33
So, you know, you're going camping, you can fill it up with just swamp water and you can get clean water, battery powered.
1:54:42
It's a smaller unit, you know, but you can kind of scale up. >> Yeah.
1:54:46
Sorry, I'm I'm laughing to myself.
1:54:48
I uh I realize I haven't told any of my investors yet.
1:54:52
So, >> don't worry, it's not like it's live.
1:54:56
>> Um >> we'll review this before we post it. >> No, no, no.
1:54:58
Um but, uh yeah, stay tuned for stay tuned for del.
1:55:00
I think the del um really the the road map is >> Yeah.
1:55:04
really good at snowtime uh precipitation enhancement.
1:55:07
Um then come next year, we're going to be doing operational summertime like warm cloud precipitation enhancement alongside hail suppression.
1:55:16
>> Um that's the same period when an arm of the company will start doing this del work.
1:55:21
Um and then thereafter the the third thing that you have to do >> is automated tractor tilling of uh biochar or hydrogels into soil.
1:55:29
Um because we make a ton of water right now via cloud seating, but if you do that in say Moab in southern Utah, um your effective precipitation is about 10%.
1:55:40
Most of it evaporates away before it actually percolates into aquifers or runs off into streams.
1:55:43
If you start to till the soil with these absorptive materials that increase the amount of organic matter there, you can change the trophic potential of the soil such that it's not just sand anymore, but grasses can start to live there.
1:55:56
Uh biota can start to survive in the soil.
1:55:58
And then you you retain more water year over year because of that.
1:56:02
That's more of like a 20 28 arm that we're going to stand up.
1:56:06
Um but snowpack now, rain and hail next year, del towards the end of that.
1:56:10
Um and then automated tractor tilling thereafter. >> Very cool. >> Yeah.
1:56:17
>> Thanks for coming on the show.
1:56:18
>> Fantastic to get the update. Thanks. >> Great hanging out. We'll see you soon.
1:56:23
>> We have our next guest Rick Caruso joining the What you got?
1:56:25
Look at these to the American Conservation Coalition. >> Looking sharp. >> Cool.
1:56:33
Well, we have about 40 minutes until Rick Caruso joins us live in the TVP and Ultra Dome.
1:56:38
We will go through some news since we really haven't been through the timeline.
1:56:41
Uh, we got to start with these Diet Coke videos cuz I fell down a rabbit hole of Diet Coke Instagram reels.
1:56:48
And >> I'm surprised you weren't in this.
1:56:51
Yeah, it took him a long time to figure out that I drink three Diet Cokes a day and I love Diet Coke, but these uh these videos have uh brought me a lot of joy. So, we can play one.
1:57:03
There's been a new study about Diet Coke versus Coke Zero, and we can pull it up in just a minute.
1:57:12
We can also flow to something else, whatever we want.
1:57:15
The world is our oyster today in the TBPN Ultradome.
1:57:17
Uh Rick Caruso will be joining at 130 uh to talk LA fires retrospective, state of the LA real estate market, his management style, risk preferences, deal philosophy.
1:57:31
We'll go through it all 130.
1:57:33
I want a fune deep dive for sure.
1:57:36
We're going to get that out of him.
1:57:37
Anyway, let's play this video.
1:57:40
>> They just came out with this new study that compared people that drink Diet Coke versus people that drink Coke Zero.
1:57:44
And what it actually found was that people that drink Coke Zero are idiots.
1:57:48
And um people that drink Diet Coke are actually Sigma Chads that are way better than everyone else. >> Thank you. Thank you. We needed that.
1:57:58
>> Wait, play the restock video.
1:57:58
There's a restock video that is It claims to be $4,000 of Diet Coke stored all over this person's massive house.
1:58:08
>> I think it's about 200. >> Let's count it up. Let's count it up.
1:58:11
Let's pull up the restock video and you tell me.
1:58:13
Is this $4,000 worth of Diet Coke?
1:58:15
Okay, that's maybe $20 of Diet Coke.
1:58:19
This is maybe $10 of Diet Coke. Here's another 10. We're what?
1:58:22
Under $100 still of Diet Coke, I would imagine.
1:58:28
>> I'm just so curious when when do they opt for the plastic bottle versus the can? >> It is odd.
1:58:32
Some people have preferences.
1:58:34
I saw again on Instagram in my Diet Coke uh deep dive uh someone who insists that the 16 aluminum can of Diet Coke tastes better than the 12 oz aluminum can.
1:58:47
That's the level of diet Diet Coke.
1:58:50
>> Also, check out the organizational inefficiency in this fridge. >> What's going on here?
1:58:53
She's not >> putting up in the front. Yeah. Frauding. >> Frauding.
1:58:57
Yeah, because you could stack the Diet Coke much deeper, but once you're that far in the reel, you you call it >> Instagram is just the Diet Coke app for you now. >> Yes.
1:59:07
Well, I'm getting I'm so deep that I'm getting Diet Coke vibe reels.
1:59:09
Let's pull this one up because this one is electric.
1:59:14
This is like peak content. Play this. Uh play the next one. Is this it? Yeah. Is this it? No. No.
1:59:23
This There's so many so many Diet Coke videos.
1:59:26
It says uh it's a must be heaven.
1:59:29
Says thank on the thumbnail. There we go.
1:59:32
This one >> this is like >> the fact that somebody took so long to edit this together is >> that looks like something you could oneshot. Not.
1:59:52
And I mean, it's like in Cap Cut and you'd need to like choose the words and place them and add the features.
1:59:58
Like you should be able to puppeteer that with an agent, but I don't know of any uh agents that are really there on the video editing front.
2:00:04
Certainly like the next uh the next chip to fall, the next opportunity.
2:00:09
Uh any >> prize says, "A Chad might mo, but when the gesture performs, even the king sits to listen." >> True.
2:00:19
And this is incredibly true.
2:00:19
Uh we have a friend of the show that is 100% a jester and >> the closest thing we have to kings in this industry will pick up his call and listen to whatever he has to say even if he's jester maxing. >> That's true.
2:00:38
>> Every time base 16 got to be honest bro.
2:00:42
Uh oh >> I think you got deleted >> but said got to be honest bro.
2:00:46
I have no idea what a semiconductor is.
2:00:48
Do you know why they call them semiconductors?
2:00:52
>> That made me laugh so hard. >> It's deleted.
2:00:54
Do do you know why they call them semiconductors? >> I do not.
2:00:59
>> So full-on conductors like copper, electricity flows through it constantly.
2:01:04
A semiconductors like geranium or silicon, the current is can be turned on and off. So it's semiconductive.
2:01:09
And that started the computing boom because you can effectively store ones and zeros in it.
2:01:16
little more complicated than that, but that's like the very high level version for why they are semiconductors.
2:01:20
That's not why they call it semianalysis.
2:01:22
It's because Dylan just says he doesn't want to do full-on analysis.
2:01:25
He only wants to do semianalysis.
2:01:27
I think his analysis is totally full-on analysis, but he decided to go with semi analysis.
2:01:32
Anyway, imagine genuinely believing that the entire human race was going to be wiped out in the next year and then you just kind of aimlessly argue about it on Twitter.
2:01:41
That is a weird weird phenomenon that's going on. Oh.
2:01:43
Uh, Phil is looking for a large gong in the Bay Area.
2:01:48
If you are in possession of a gong that is over 30 in, give him a call. He's in the market.
2:01:55
>> Is a 30-inch gong a large gong, though. >> How big is our gong? I >> think it's 42. >> 42.
2:02:00
We're We're around there. We're around there.
2:02:02
Anyway, do you know where we got this gong? >> Gongsunlimited. com. >> Gongsunlimited. com.
2:02:08
Phil, you have your answer.
2:02:08
Okay, but here's >> I could have replied to this on X, but I chose to save it to Monday. Here's the thing.
2:02:16
Tell it to you in person. Yeah. >> Gong.
2:02:18
Why is Why did we get the biggest gong?
2:02:22
Like, why is there a limit on gong sizes?
2:02:24
We've seen bigger gongs online.
2:02:28
>> They do exist, but they get very expensive.
2:02:30
Uh sort of a sort of an exponential relationship between gong size and price, unfortunately.
2:02:35
Uh which is rough out there.
2:02:39
if you're in the gong market.
2:02:43
>> Okay, we have to talk about this study that went viral over the weekend.
2:02:48
>> Yeah, >> it is uh placebo sleep affects cognitive functioning.
2:02:52
And the the takeaway is that literally just having a delusional golden retriever mindset measurably changes outcomes and physiology.
2:02:58
Sleep badly, convince yourself you're well rested.
2:03:03
Stressful day, convince yourself it's fuel. Failed?
2:03:05
Convince yourself it's useful data.
2:03:07
Uh so in this study it says the placebo effect is any outcome that is not attributed to a specific treatment but rather to an individual's mindset.
2:03:16
This phenomenon can extend beyond its typical use in pharmaceutical drugs to involve aspects of everyday life such as the effect of sleep on cognitive functioning.
2:03:23
In two studies examining whether perceived sleep quality affects cognitive functioning.
2:03:29
164 participants reported their previous night's sleep quality.
2:03:32
They were then randomly assigned one of two sleep quality conditions or two control conditions.
2:03:37
Those in the above average sleep quality condition were informed that they had spent 28% of their total sleep time in REM.
2:03:43
Whereas those in the below average sleep quality condition were informed that they had only spent 16.
2:03:50
2% of their time in REM sleep.
2:03:54
Assigned sleep quality but not self-reported sleep quality.
2:03:57
Significantly predicted participants scores on the paste auditory serial addition test and controlled oral word association task.
2:04:04
assigned sleep quality did not predict predict participants scores on the digit span test as expected nor did it predict scores on the symbol digit modalities test when it was unexpected.
2:04:16
The control conditions show that the findings were not due to demand characteristics from the experimental protocol.
2:04:22
Those findings supported the hypothesis that mindset can influence cognitive states in both positive and negative directions suggesting a means of controlling one's health and cognition.
2:04:33
takeaway golden retriever mode.
2:04:38
Golden retriever mindset.
2:04:40
>> They made a movie about the golden retriever mindset years ago.
2:04:42
I know you haven't seen it. Have you seen it? It's called Yes Man.
2:04:47
>> I was thinking Airbud.
2:04:53
>> Airbud is a great answer to that. No.
2:04:53
Uh that's about a literal golden retriever.
2:04:58
Uh, yes man with Jim Carrey is effectively about the golden retriever mindset.
2:05:04
Basically uh he uh he's a bank loan officer. He's become withdrawn.
2:05:09
He's going through a divorce.
2:05:09
He's having an increasingly negative look outlook on life.
2:05:13
Uh he then goes to this seminar with an inspirational guru who has him enter a covenant with the universe and say yes to everything asked of him.
2:05:24
And so he just has to say yes to everything.
2:05:26
and high drinks ensue, but he has a fantastic time and it's it's a it's a very like interesting like silver linings story. Bradley Cooper's in it.
2:05:34
Zoe Des Chanel and Jim Carrey star.
2:05:34
Uh highly recommend it if you're looking for a good uh a good uplifting movie this week.
2:05:42
>> Should we talk more about Meta's uh space solar project? >> Absolutely. What's going on there?
2:05:47
>> Uh so they announced this morning uh two new partnerships to bring innovative energy generation and storage to our data centers.
2:05:53
We mentioned this earlier.
2:05:55
Space Solar partnering with Overview Energy to beam up to 1 gawatt of space solar power from Earth orbit to Earth for aroundthe-clock power production. What is the company?
2:06:04
I think they're in Elsagunda. >> Reflex Reflex Orbit. We talked about that.
2:06:09
Uh I think Sean McGuire did the deal. >> Yep.
2:06:11
Um and uh so yeah, I was not I was not familiar with with Overview Energy.
2:06:17
Uh and then they're also doing uh >> and also um who is it?
2:06:21
Uh co-founder of Robin Hood uh Baju is that his name? >> Yeah.
2:06:29
But I thought that was more of a play.
2:06:32
>> He has done more compute but uh at least at at one point a piece of the business was collect energy on solar panels in space and beam it down via laser.
2:06:40
Um, and so that was all of these projects are, you know, incredibly difficult to to math out and require a lot of different things to go well.
2:06:51
Uh, they're very exciting, but uh, this company clearly been working for a long time.
2:06:57
But, uh, if it's working for them and it winds up working for Meta, you can imagine that there are going to be lots and lots of buyers because energy of course is in is in short supply.
2:07:06
Um the the the mirror in space is such an interesting solution to uh abs to what I'd heard before which was collect it on a solar panel and then beam it down on a laser.
2:07:19
Uh a mirror is uh such a simple solution to that. So uh we'll have to see.
2:07:25
It feels like the step one is just getting more solar panels down on the ground.
2:07:29
You know you see these data center projects and a lot of natural gas turbines, not a lot of nuclear.
2:07:33
Well, the the question is like if you have this cap this this ability to bring basically 24/7 sun, can you bring a lot more solar projects online because the economics just make more sense because you can power things like data centers, especially if you have batteries.
2:07:50
The >> uh batteries that they they are doing in tandem with this apparently have 100 hours of capacity.
2:07:57
So presumably even if you had >> you know a few days of of cloudy weather you could still keep um energy coming through the system. >> Yeah. Yeah.
2:08:06
It feels tough because a data center wants to run 247 needs to run 24/7.
2:08:11
The math on depreciation and the cost of the chips completely changes if you have intermittent electricity.
2:08:17
And in some cases if you have if you lose power you can actually damage the data center.
2:08:22
Um, and so there's a whole bunch of other things that you need to uh to work through.
2:08:26
Uh, did you see this post from Benjamin Todd?
2:08:28
This was a very interesting post.
2:08:31
We were we we found this a little bit.
2:08:34
>> I mean, you were the first person that like kind of brought this up.
2:08:36
like kind of brought this up. I I had looked at so so so the question is you know AI's impact on on on jobs on jobs and and employment broadly >> and I had brought up the uh I I I'd looked at overall employment in India overall employment in the Philippines uh
2:08:54
and how it was tracking this year because of course uh there's a lot of outsourcing there's a lot of you know lowerkilled white collar style work call centers BPOS outsourced processing centers like small uh you know atomic tasks that get done abroad. Um and so I
2:09:10
Um and so I expected that if there was going to be an uptick in unemployment, it would show up in potentially India and the Philippines first.
2:09:19
Of course, we heard that uh somewhat hilarious quote that the that 90% of the Philippines economy is call centers. Of course, it's not.
2:09:31
It's closer to 5% or something that maybe 6%.
2:09:34
Um, but everyone sort of agrees, at least on the on the surface level, that uh that it's, as Benjamin Todd put it, it's hard to think of a more AI exposed job than Filipino call centers.
2:09:46
But oddly, in 2025, uh, employment was up 4%.
2:09:49
And so, of course, people will say, maybe it's earlier, the technology is getting better, you know, you know, all all these different things.
2:09:58
But um there has been a process of of automation around um around uh call centers.
2:10:04
I mean I was trying to get on the phone with the company just earlier.
2:10:07
I had to go through a whole phone tree.
2:10:08
It was even hard to find the phone number.
2:10:10
There's a whole bunch of steps that companies take to try and reduce the amount of call center operators that are in the in the flow.
2:10:19
And so uh this was not necessarily a new trend.
2:10:21
Um there was some other there was some other commentary about this that I saw that um that uh I I don't know if I can find it now.
2:10:29
There was a quote uh US call center worker employment is in decline but that started before Chad GBT and is probably mainly about outsourcing.
2:10:39
So the outsourcing boom you would think it would have started with like the dawn of the internet.
2:10:43
I would have expected the trend to start in 2005.
2:10:47
You know, like yeah, internationalization, globalization was well underway.
2:10:52
In fact, US call center uh business support services, all employees for the United States, uh the the peak happened in 2016 and then declined sort of during COVID and then has been declining ever since.
2:11:05
Uh probably as things move offshore.
2:11:08
probably as things move offshore. So there so there is a world where you know these technologies they take time to diffuse and so AI might play the similar role in the sense that like there is some sort of onboarding cost to moving
2:11:23
from a US-based to a Filipino call center that's taken a decade uh to to actually decline by you know not even half it went from 900,000 people to 650,000 people over the past decade um certainly not good if you're in that uh if you're in that industry in America. But uh interesting interesting
2:11:42
But uh interesting interesting nonetheless.
2:11:45
Also, Poland is having a breakout year.
2:11:47
Income in Poland is on track to overtake income in the United Kingdom.
2:11:53
This is based on a forecast for uh advanced economies.
2:11:56
Uh UK has growing now slower than Poland.
2:12:00
So, everyone who's a fan of Poland will be excited to hear the news >> that Poland really is going through a fast takeoff over there in Poland.
2:12:09
They are doing some great stuff.
2:12:10
Um, anyway, Poland was once a communist third world country.
2:12:15
Now, it's overtaking Britain.
2:12:17
This is in the Telegraph.
2:12:17
European superpower is luring a record number of UK immigrants with its restored economy and robust patriotism. Interesting.
2:12:26
Three months ago, the British businessman Johnny Mercer ad advertised a marketing role in his construction firm Pstrod based in Poland.
2:12:31
Not long ago, people weren't interested in moving here as he sits down with a trendy French beastro.
2:12:38
This time, however, Mercer was inundated with Britain's eager to work in Poland.
2:12:42
35 applicants for the job were British and happy to relocate permanently, including one without any British links who got the job. People are excited.
2:12:50
Uh Nome Brown um shared some interesting details about um the different constraints on AI progress.
2:13:01
He says no brown suggesting that model weights become relatively less important as inference becomes more important which means securing weights still matters but securing inference capacity becomes a strategic advantage.
2:13:14
This is from a slide uh for a talk he gave uh which is very very interesting just from a uh an AI safety um perspective.
2:13:22
Uh the the idea of uh of sneaking the weights out on a hard drive that you've smuggled in your you know suitcase uh and that being equivalent to you know uh a suitcase bomb is or a >> or a refined uranium. >> Yeah. Yeah. It's not quite the same.
2:13:39
M maybe the the the chips are the you are the you refined uranium more than the actual weights and the weights are are merely one piece of the puzzle.
2:13:49
Do you have any >> Yeah, it's interesting because I I think like recently the past few months we've seen this big fuss over like distillation. Yeah.
2:13:55
But like you know maybe there's an angle where like distillation is actually gets less important because you know even if you know the Chinese can can distill our models they actually can't serve them.
2:14:04
So it's like you know is that even important? >> Yeah.
2:14:07
And even if the models are exactly the same, if I'm able to put 10 agents securing my bank account against your one agent trying to break into it, I will have 10 times the amount of solutions.
2:14:16
And so I should win that battle almost all the time.
2:14:19
battle almost all the time. Uh and you you it does it does seem like we're shifting towards this uh the the incredible value of inference and capacity which of course makes the whole data center slowdown ban so much more complicated because uh once you get into
2:14:36
like the geopolitical considerations uh and uh and what what happens when large inference clusters start coming online elsewhere and you go back to the dorcash uh the the dorcash uh what was it probability density curve where he uh he
2:14:52
says like if AGI comes soon America wins if it comes over long-term China wins because he's worried about China ramping up their capacity over time but they're behind currently >> seor posted an article said meet the man who's outsourcing almost everything in
2:15:05
his life to his AI assistant listens to every conversation reads every message emails and schedules meeting for him all while pretending to be him >> didn't ask I didn't ask it to help me I asked it to be me >> and Taylor says I think this will be normal in five years. She has an excerpt She has an excerpt here.
2:15:21
Uh so he's made a small fortune selling multiple companies to Apple.
2:15:26
Multiple companies to Apple.
2:15:26
That's always that's >> I love I love stories like that where >> um and recently launched a voice recognition startup called Olive.
2:15:34
Said his personal AI has all but taken over his life.
2:15:37
Now when he wakes up most mornings, he consults the agenda his AI assistant has crafted for him and then spends his days following its directions.
2:15:45
The AI has permission to email people on his behalf and sometimes sets up in-person meetings with people he has never met.
2:15:50
It listens to conversations he has with his three kids and then suggest parenting advice which he says has improved his relationship with them.
2:15:58
Uh it's a portrait of an emerging uh uh class of token maxers uh power users who are plunging tens of thousands of dollars to MacGyver level AI assistance not by waiting for the next big model release but by orchestrating today's models and loops with more computing power more passes and more automated checking and a massive dose of risk tolerance.
2:16:19
The idea is to give the system an unlimited amount of tokens and access to every conceivable piece of relevant data.
2:16:24
I didn't ask it to help me. I asked it to be me.
2:16:29
>> So, some of this is extremely weird.
2:16:31
Some of this is maybe very normal.
2:16:31
I'm trying to think of like how many of my interactions in my daily life are like mediated by techn by technology already.
2:16:40
Like uh my alarm clock comes from my phone.
2:16:43
It it decides when I wake up more than anything else.
2:16:47
In fact, I have the eight sleep will decide like the optimal time that I wake up within a few minutes, right?
2:16:53
Because it's like an adaptive alarm.
2:16:55
And then I get in the car, I select maps.
2:16:57
It sort of tells me what streets to go on.
2:17:00
I'm I'm merely like the embodiment of the AI to get where I need to go.
2:17:05
And then I have a calendar that that that tells me what I'm doing when.
2:17:08
There there there are there are some there's some level of like intermediation. Uh but uh I don't know.
2:17:15
There's there there's still incredible value in touching grass and I think that uh the we see a bull market.
2:17:24
I just I just think we're going to be in this in this barbell uh world for so for potentially for ever where you have Larry Ellison is is, you know, buying Oracle data centers and going super long on AGI and also CBS and Fogghorn Legghorn and you got to own Bugs Bunny and you got to own Superman and Batman, right?
2:17:46
And then on the flip side, you have uh Josh Kushner, investor in open AI, ton of different artificial intelligence companies, and then on the other side, SF giants.
2:17:56
And it's like, are these diametrically opposed or are they actually uh are they actually both true visions of the future of the world?
2:18:08
Uh it seems like something that is going to continue.
2:18:10
Uh we should go back to Manis.
2:18:12
Do you want to uh read through the Financial Times with Tyler?
2:18:15
And I'm going to take a quick break.
2:18:17
You can do a can we do a two-up with Tyler in place of me and uh you can read through the Financial Times and sort of some of the reactions because >> Yeah.
2:18:26
So regulators reviewed the deal uh reviewed whether deal violated Beijing's investment rules.
2:18:31
China has ordered Meta to unwind its $2 billion acquisition of AI app Manis as Washington and Beijing v for dominance over the emerging technology.
2:18:41
The decision marks an extraordinary latestage intervention by Beijing involving two non-Chinese companies.
2:18:47
Meta had already begun to integrate software from Manis which was founded in China but relocated to Singapore last year.
2:18:53
It was unclear how the acquisition could be unwound at such a late stage.
2:18:58
A person briefed on Beijing's decision said the announcement could be intended primarily as a warning for similar deals in the future.
2:19:04
The person said the gesture was pretty harsh and it carries a strong intention to stop followon deals like Manis.
2:19:11
In reality, it's hard to unwind a done deal.
2:19:16
Uh Manis has been uh live, I believe, in the Facebook ads manager.
2:19:20
Uh it is, you know, obviously been heavily branded as a Meta Platforms company for some time now.
2:19:30
what the Meta team has been uh investing in in scaling it.
2:19:33
Um and so yeah, very much feels like a done uh it had been a done deal.
2:19:40
I don't I don't I don't think there's been any reporting on it, but I'm I would assume that, you know, the full cap table had been uh paid out in large part already.
2:19:51
So, it's very unclear how you undo uh something like this.
2:19:56
I'm not it's not super surprising given that uh we obviously forced the sale of uh of Tik Tok and this feels like somewhat of a response.
2:20:07
response. Yeah, it it is interesting to like you know is this the moment when like China wakes up right people you know it they're super like agi pill they're like okay at some point China's going to like wake up like this this seems like directionally towards that um
2:20:21
but it is interesting because like um I I don't know like like you you have this and then you have uh you know China approving the sale of of Nvidia chips there so it's like okay how much do they really want to uh you know disentangle from the US regarding AI I It's interesting. >> Yeah. AI 2027 had China wakes up in mid >> Yeah.
2:20:39
AI 2027 had China wakes up in mid 2026.
2:20:44
>> Yeah, it feels like I don't know.
2:20:44
Manis is I mean it's a it's not like a cash flow acquisition like it's not a highly profitable thing that you're trading on earnings.
2:20:56
It's a team >> and it's a it's a rapper >> and it's a technology but the technology is somewhat commoditized there.
2:21:00
There's been code leaks from >> it's a super talented product team with a demonstrated track record of like getting real paying users, >> right?
2:21:11
And so >> the the question was always, you know, how much does Zach care about, you know, keeping this as a standalone product, >> an AI assistant for business that that >> why even buy the whole company then?
2:21:22
Why not do one of those zombie acquisitions where you get the talent and then you get a license and then there's a ghost ship and you leave because that's got to be harder to approve or assume that's what I'm assum I'm assuming that that's kind of what what happens. I I don't know.
2:21:38
I I mean >> it seems like it's too late.
2:21:40
They already bought the company, right?
2:21:43
>> Like they already did like the proper acquisition like you know as you said like paid out the cap table. Uh I I don't know.
2:21:48
I I I don't know the act exact terms of the deal, but it would have been it probably would have been easier to do something like what Grock and Nvidia did or like the wind surf Google thing where like you're bringing people over with this with this like contract and then like yes me China blocks it but it's like what are what are they even blocking?
2:22:06
It's just people getting a new job and a licensing deal that the money flows through and then maybe they try and claw that back. I don't know.
2:22:15
It is uh it is a tricky tricky situation.
2:22:18
>> Yeah, I'm not familiar with an acquisition that actually closed in venture that was then later fully unwound. >> I don't know. I don't know.
2:22:26
Uh Delian's taken a victory lap.
2:22:30
He said, "Wow, so weird that they can do this since it's not a Chinese uh company."
2:22:33
According to Gurley, there's always been back and forth about whether or not uh China would have any power over the Manis team.
2:22:42
It seems like they have some some some sort of power.
2:22:44
Uh Chris Maguire is writing about this.
2:22:46
He's on the Council of Foreign Relations.
2:22:48
He says, "After China's cancellation of Meta's purchase of Manis, why would any founder start an AI company in China if they had a choice?"
2:22:56
Uh I mean, well, you could make money cash flow in China like you don't you don't necessarily need to sell to an American hyperscaler to have a wonderful life as a founder of an AI company in China.
2:23:08
But uh he makes the argument uh in China you have access to less compute, less capital and salaries are lower than in the west and if you are so successful that a non-Chinese firm tries to acquire you for billions of dollars, the Chinese government will lure you back to Beijing, ban you from leaving the country and take your profits by canceling the acquisition.
2:23:25
Manis did everything right.
2:23:27
They even moved their entire business to Singapore to comply with US outboard outbound investment restrictions.
2:23:32
Their only mistake was that they originally founded the company in China.
2:23:35
It's not even clear what this means for China to force Meta to unwind the transaction.
2:23:39
Is it going to force Manis researchers to return to China and place exands on them?
2:23:42
Two, is it going to force Manis' founders and shareholders to pay back $2 billion to Meta?
2:23:47
This is what happens when you regulate by fiat rather than by rule of law.
2:23:52
Ultimately, this is a much larger defeat for the Chinese AI ecosystem than for the United States. Interesting.
2:23:55
Meta will be fined without manis, but Chinese nationals looking to AI to found AI companies will increasingly start them overseas. Hm. It's interesting.
2:24:04
Uh the message from the Chinese government here is that every AI company founded in China will forever remain subject to the Chinese government regulatory pressure and manipulation regardless of its legal status.
2:24:14
So he goes on, but you can read that there.
2:24:16
Uh what's uh what's Bill Bishop up to these days?
2:24:18
He says uh he's quoting from the Financial Times.
2:24:21
Did we already read this?
2:24:24
person familiar with the matter said Beijing had told the two companies that the deal must be unwound completely including returning funds re-registering the company's ownership and halting Meta's uni use of the Meta of the Manis algorithm.
2:24:35
The person said that if the parties failed to fully undo the acquisition, Beijing could impose penalties on Meta, limits it limit its China related business and possibly pursue criminal charges for individuals involved.
2:24:47
That is a wild >> China does have a good amount of leverage given that like tens of billions of of uh meta ad spend is originates from Chinese companies >> and so they could put pressure on Chinese companies to pull back spend which would would hurt me uh meta.
2:25:07
So yeah, very very unclear how this will all sort itself out.
2:25:16
But um yeah, unfortunate unfortunate for everyone involved. >> Yeah.
2:25:22
What else is going on the timeline today?
2:25:24
Um I mean Bessin says games game over if US doesn't win AI over China in the Wall Street Journal.
2:25:30
Uh as I said, winning this race is a national imperative and they will throw everything at it riding the wave.
2:25:34
Uh lots of people chiming in on that.
2:25:37
Uh, Ethan Mullik says, "We really need a better word for the good kind of AI psychosis.
2:25:43
The one where someone goes into a fugue state with the latest model and returns 40 days later from the mountaintop with something new."
2:25:50
There's Yeah, AI mania instead of AI psychosis.
2:25:56
There aren't enough examples of that.
2:25:56
I guess OpenClaw would be a good example of AI mania where he was deep in in vibe coding and vibe coded a product that wound up going mega viral making money and satisfying a lot of people.
2:26:11
Like you can just debate whether or not OpenClaw is like a gamecher, overhyped or will be copied or all that stuff, but like like people definitely enjoyed using it and people still enjoy using it and uh and that's probably the good the good outcome.
2:26:27
Uh but uh yeah, I don't know.
2:26:32
There there aren't there aren't there are there are simply too many examples of people saying, "I stayed up all night.
2:26:38
I vibe coded for, you know, 10 million lines of code."
2:26:41
And then you ask them what they shipped and they just don't have anything really tangible to show for it.
2:26:45
But uh hopefully this all changes soon. Forge frenzy. I like this.
2:26:52
Um there was something else from Taylor Loren's.
2:26:54
She did an analysis of how much AI content is distributed across each category on Substack. So pulled in.
2:27:00
Did she did she like vibe code this?
2:27:06
>> Let's run this article through panggram. Yeah.
2:27:08
Itself >> did somebody do that already? That is a funny joke.
2:27:11
Uh extracted from the link truncated h fully human riw written says pangram labs.
2:27:17
Uh so she says I use panggram labs the AI detection tool to analyze thousands of posts from the top substack newsletters across every category to find out.
2:27:26
Uh here's what I discovered.
2:27:28
And the uh the main screenshot is that uh nearpure AI is over represented in technology, philosophy and health content and under represented in fiction, music and food and drink content. Also US politics.
2:27:44
I would have expected a lot more political slop.
2:27:49
slop. I am also I mean I'm not surprised that fiction is not being slopped because like when you try and get an LLM to write something fictional it seems to fall down more there than code or math or research or anything else like when you're thinking about technology or even health if you're just trying to
2:28:09
summarize like here's all the literature I did a deep research report even if you're transparent with your audience and you just say hey like here's my take but then here's a deep research report on you know pulling together all the different resources is uh AI seems very very good at that. So I would expect
2:28:21
So I would expect that representation.
2:28:22
Uh fiction has been stuck for a little bit.
2:28:26
I'm not exactly sure when we'll see a breakthrough there, but uh there isn't really a great benchmark for it.
2:28:33
It's somewhat like comedy.
2:28:35
You know it when you see it. It's hard to determine. It's hard to RL against.
2:28:39
It's it's oddly stickier when people thought it was the first thing to go when the computers learn to write it.
2:28:46
it it's turning into like the last thing to go which is just a very odd outcome.
2:28:49
Anyway, we have our next guest uh joining the TVP Ultrium.
2:28:52
Rick Russo is here and he will join in just a few minutes.
2:28:56
Um and we are ready for him whenever he is ready.
2:28:59
Um let's see what else is >> Porsche sold off their stake in Bugatti. Oh yes, their Mac.
2:29:06
Oh yes, their Mac. uh upon completion uh to uh Hoff Capital right uh HOF Capital I think it's Hoff Capital >> uh they had invested in Rimac in 2022 >> um they said drawn to what Mate had built from a garage in Croatia into one of the most technically ambitious
2:29:26
companies in the automotive industry home to record setting hypercars a tier one supplier of batteries trusted by leading global auto makers and since 2021 the iconic Bugatti brand uh And so we are looking to get uh some of the relevant parties on the show. I'm very
2:29:40
I'm very excited about but excited to see what what the Bugatti Rimac does as an independent >> brand. Very cool.
2:29:50
>> Uh pulled up this post from Michael Chang uh showing sort of a glimpse of like the future of generative UI.
2:29:55
So the prompt here, hey chat GPT, what's the weather like today?
2:30:00
Might have been a little bit more complicated than that, but uh using the new images 2.
2:30:03
0 you know, uh, it is rendering sort of a video game style map. I don't even know.
2:30:11
This feels like the type of map that you'd see at the front of like the Lord of the Rings book or like a Game of Thrones book.
2:30:15
Uh, but it's giving you the actual information like accurately telling you for each neighborhood what the weather is like.
2:30:23
Of course, uh, you didn't need that much information because every single town is 56°, maybe 57, maybe 55.
2:30:31
There's very slight uh there's very very slight differences.
2:30:35
Um but it is it is an interesting uh world where you're getting closer and closer to this generative on the-fly UI.
2:30:41
to this generative on the-fly UI. Ben Thompson wrote a big bullcase for the uh the meta uh augmented reality headsets, not just Orion, but also the Meta Rayband displays today, talking about as as AI models get better on the-fly UI
2:30:59
generation with less Chrome, which is like the top bar and the bottom bar and less less permanent UI functionality uh is is what actually feels magical like when you go to, you know, look at something and you get something that that perfectly sums up exactly what you're looking for on the fly. And
2:31:17
And previously, was it possible to build something like this? Absolutely.
2:31:21
You but you would have to hang out in Blender and create the 3D map and render it and then and then build some web page that would go and pull in the the data from APIs and place it on the >> Ryan says one tower golden gate is a crime.
2:31:37
No, there's still hallucinations.
2:31:40
>> There is >> I found I found a benchmark that uh images gen 2 does uh fails at.
2:31:43
If you want to take a look at an anagram and you want to show how that anagram maps to a different word and you want uh lines and string between the letters.
2:31:53
So there I what's the uh quick brown fox jumps over the No, that's a I don't know, you know, an anagram where you take one word and you rearrange the letters and it becomes another word.
2:32:06
Like drawing the lines between the two words that map up. >> It's bad at that.
2:32:12
>> It's still bad at that even on Pro. So more work to be done. Jobs not finished.
2:32:17
But we have our next guest, Rick Caruso, live with us in the TDP Ultradome.
2:32:22
Welcome to the show, Rick. Please take a seat.
2:32:24
And I just want to say thank you so much. Pleasure. >> Yeah. Thanks for having me. >> And uh speak with us.
2:32:29
How is your 2026 going so far? >> It's going well. Thank you for asking. Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Very good. Family's good. >> Yes. >> Business is good. So I have no complaints.
2:32:40
>> What What is on the top of your mind for this year, next year?
2:32:43
What are your biggest goals?
2:32:46
>> Are you talking about from a business standpoint?
2:32:48
>> I'm talking about from an everything standoint.
2:32:49
From an zoom out and and I want to know 360.
2:32:53
What does what does a great next year look like for you?
2:32:56
>> A great next year starts out with a lot of happiness and health with the family first and foremost. That's all I care about. >> Always. >> Yeah.
2:33:03
And we just became grandparents.
2:33:04
So that's Congratulations. I know. It's really Yeah.
2:33:06
It's really a great thing. That's amazing.
2:33:08
>> Oh, the place goes wild.
2:33:09
>> The place has to go wild.
2:33:10
>> Place goes wild over Luca. Luka Caruso. >> Luca. >> Yeah, Luca. Good Italian name. >> I love it.
2:33:16
>> And on the business front, yeah, we are pushing really hard. Okay. And growing.
2:33:20
We've got um two projects already under construction. One in Calabasas.
2:33:23
We're expanding the Commons at Calabasas, >> residential tower, and more retail. >> Yep.
2:33:30
>> And uh we bought uh I can't say where yet because we haven't completely announced it yet, but we bought a golf course and a club. >> Cool.
2:33:38
>> And that's under construction and we're expanding our club business >> and we're going to start in >> generally in California, LA. Yeah.
2:33:46
>> But I just spent a lot of time as maybe you see on my social media.
2:33:48
I was in Nashville, we were in Austin, >> we were down in Florida this last week and uh making a big push to be developing outside the state.
2:34:00
>> What does pushing look like for you in the real estate context?
2:34:02
Does it mean going broader on the fundraising side, on the prospecting side, uh evaluating more properties, hiring more staff to evaluate more potential projects? >> Good questions.
2:34:15
So, we're a little bit unique.
2:34:17
Um everything that we do we've done on our own balance sheet. Yeah.
2:34:20
So we're not out raising funds. >> Yeah.
2:34:24
>> And we've continued to grow on our own balance sheet.
2:34:26
So when we're looking at pushing, there's really multiple levels because we're fully integrated as a company. >> Yeah.
2:34:32
>> So we not only design and build our projects in house.
2:34:35
Um and we bring in outside contractors and outside architects, but we oversee it all in house.
2:34:41
>> We operate all of our properties in house.
2:34:43
And so we are just like a dog on a bone in terms of pushing our operating profits, generating more cash flow, and at the same time elevating the guest experience, which at all costs can never be sacrificed.
2:34:59
>> And then at the same time, we're putting new projects in the pipeline.
2:35:03
>> And we're very disciplined about how we do that, what our returns look like.
2:35:07
>> So that that's the big push.
2:35:07
And we want properties that are irreplaceable, that are in high barriers of entry.
2:35:12
And we want properties in cities and states that actually respect and want our investment.
2:35:19
And we think our investment is safe.
2:35:21
And since it's, you know, our own capital, my own capital, we're very careful about how we invest it, but we can make decisions very quickly because we don't have a lot of committees to go through.
2:35:32
>> Have you ever had doubts about that model?
2:35:33
We don't see a lot of venture capital firms in the tech industry that we see some very high GP commits. Yeah.
2:35:42
>> We don't see very many firms that have no outside LPS at all.
2:35:46
>> Jane Street in high frequency is notorious for also not having uh LPs.
2:35:48
Um have you have you ever considered it or has it been the model works don't?
2:35:55
I think it creates a better I feel like it ultimately the the client the customer wins because if you're spending your own money on something like the experience has to be fantastic. >> Yeah.
2:36:11
>> Well, I think that's right.
2:36:11
I mean I think that's right.
2:36:12
There's a couple things there.
2:36:13
So when I started the company about 40 years ago, I would have never been able to raise money and do what I wanted to do. >> Okay.
2:36:21
So it just wasn't an option.
2:36:21
Well, it it if I would have if you know, even more recently, if I would have said to you or anybody else, I'm going to go build a hotel up in >> Monoscto >> on the beach >> and it's going to be a five-star hotel and um but I got one small problem here.
2:36:41
We got a train that runs through the property.
2:36:42
I don't know if you've been up to Myar. >> I was there.
2:36:44
I stayed I stayed there this weekend.
2:36:46
>> Okay, I'm going >> I go there. I go there. I go there all the time. You'll laugh at this.
2:36:49
I'm in I'm in Malibu, but when my wife and I want to get away, uh it was our wedding anniversary.
2:36:54
We love going to the Rosewood, which is so funny cuz I'm like I'm literally on like living on the beach in Malibu and I'm like I need to get away for a weekend.
2:37:03
>> Go straight to the beach. >> Pretty good.
2:37:04
You're you're in rare air.
2:37:07
>> No, but the but the the funny the funny thing is um my mom my mom's side of the family is from Orange County.
2:37:11
So I I have like a a love for the Surfliner, right?
2:37:16
That runs through that runs through Orange County, too.
2:37:18
So when I'm at the Rosewood, it feels like I'm at home. >> Yeah.
2:37:22
>> And I and I would tell you that uh before the hotel was built, just describing that rightfully so, you'd say you're crazy.
2:37:29
You can't you just can't put a five-star hotel with a train running through the property six, seven times a day.
2:37:36
>> So you know, the question is, can you take pieces of real estate and do something really special?
2:37:42
We have a rule in the company also that every piece of real estate's got some kind of issue.
2:37:45
So you can either isolate that issue or you could celebrate that issue. I can't isolate a train.
2:37:51
So I better figure out how to celebrate the train and make the train an amenity to the to the property.
2:37:58
And I say that just I could have never fundrai my right now. Maybe now I could.
2:38:02
And we're actually looking at a model that would allow because we get a lot of requests to from firms to joint venture with us and whatnot.
2:38:11
So, we're starting to look at that model and I think maybe we could do that now because even if I said to somebody, okay, I'm going to go build the Grove.
2:38:19
I'm going to turn my back on the street.
2:38:21
I'm going to create my own street and then we're going to have this trolley going up and down and actually the trolley goes nowhere, >> but it's going to be really cool.
2:38:29
They would have said, "No, the trolley is gone.
2:38:33
We're not paying for the trolley.
2:38:35
>> If you didn't have the trolley at the Grove, the Grove >> with trains." >> I love it. >> I know. I know. in my childhood.
2:38:42
>> I know a lot of guys a lot of guys are >> Okay, speaking of your childhood, speaking of starting out in a point where no one would finance these projects, did you have a mentor or did you have a sort of a historical legend that you look to the way a value investor might look to a Warren Buffett or a technologist might look to Steve Jobs?
2:39:01
Did you have someone that you were identifying with or learning from in the early days? >> I had my dad.
2:39:06
>> Yeah, >> my dad was my best friend and certainly a mentor.
2:39:09
He started his own business. He was an entrepreneur. >> Yeah.
2:39:12
>> And um he was a great adviser.
2:39:12
He was the one that literally drove to my house.
2:39:16
We spoke every night after work.
2:39:18
We never worked together.
2:39:20
>> Um but um after I announced that I was buying the Myar, he literally drove to my house that night saying, "You are you've lost your mind now, you know."
2:39:26
Um which I actually just >> What was the state of the of of uh of Myiar when you bought it?
2:39:32
Was it >> it was it there was a lot of the old buildings were still there and pretty decrepit all >> but it wasn't an it wasn't >> No, it was not an operating property.
2:39:40
It stopped operating for about 15 years.
2:39:42
I mean >> it was just falling it was just falling apart. >> Falling apart.
2:39:47
We were the third buyers uh into it and I I bought it from Ty Warner who tried to get it developed and couldn't. >> Yeah.
2:39:54
>> And then Ty bought it from I'm blanking on the name that has >> Ty Warner of Studio 54. >> Yeah. >> Wow.
2:40:00
And who who had Studio 54 um in New York? I know I'm dating you.
2:40:05
>> I I I'm I'm familiar with Studio 54.
2:40:07
>> He bought it before Tai and they couldn't get it developed.
2:40:09
So we were the third group into it >> from the original family.
2:40:12
But >> but I listen I I think curiosity is one of the most important things in business.
2:40:20
>> And so I study a lot of people.
2:40:20
I study a lot of companies.
2:40:22
I've done it my whole career.
2:40:24
I think meeting people in your industry or outside of your industry >> is really critically important.
2:40:29
And I cold call people and I'll say, "Do you mind having a cup of coffee? I have zero agenda.
2:40:35
I just want to understand how you think, what you do, how you became successful."
2:40:39
And I learn a lot from that.
2:40:41
I think it's a it's a constant learning arc that I'm involved in.
2:40:44
So, if you're if you don't need to worry about or or deal with wrangling outside investors for a new project, who are the stakeholders that you're trying to build a constituency with to make sure that a project goes flawlessly or has the best possible outcome?
2:41:02
Because there's retail shops, there's employees, there's there's the local community.
2:41:05
How do you think about them uh and and making sure that everyone is aligned throughout the process?
2:41:12
>> Well, first and foremost, it's the guest experience.
2:41:14
M >> So we have a guest experience and then we have a customer experience.
2:41:17
The guest experience is you guys coming by with your families. >> Sure.
2:41:22
>> Shopping, staying with us, whatever.
2:41:24
>> The customer experience is our customers, Nordstrom, Alo, Apple, whoever we're doing business with.
2:41:31
>> We have to be really great landlords and deliver great value to them.
2:41:34
And we want to make sure we're taking care of their customers really well.
2:41:39
>> And then we think about our employees.
2:41:40
We want to have an environment where people are excited to work. We work hard.
2:41:43
There's a lot of intensity at our office because we tend to be perfectionists and we're trying to constantly reinvent the curve on these properties and so I want to take care of my employees.
2:41:54
I have an incredible team of people.
2:41:56
Um and then you know it's our my family because I want this company to be dynastic.
2:42:02
I want it to live long after I live and hand it down to the family.
2:42:06
So I think about all of those people, but every day that all of us wake up, we are literally thinking about the guest experience and how we continue to elevate that and make it something really special.
2:42:17
>> On that guest experience, I heard a conspiracy theory >> that I want you to address.
2:42:21
>> I can't wait to hear it.
2:42:22
>> I heard a conspiracy theory that uh the guest experience is so so important that 90% of the people that you see at the Grove are paid actors.
2:42:29
everyone you're sitting next to on the train, the person that's looking at the fountain excited, the not just not the people in the Apple store, not the people serving you food, but the people walking around and and on certain days I might be the only real normal guest.
2:42:44
Is there anything to that? Could be. Could be. I don't know. Could be.
2:42:50
I'd hate to have that payroll.
2:42:55
>> That does sound like a thousand extra >> 18 million people coming through the Grove.
2:42:59
That's a hell of a payroll.
2:42:59
18 million people come through. Wow. >> Okay.
2:43:02
Your dad thinks you're crazy when you when you buy Myar.
2:43:05
At what point does he call you and say, "I think you might be on to something."
2:43:11
>> Well, you know, Pop was Pop the the greatest gift that he gave me was permission not to go into his company.
2:43:21
He was in the car business and I know he wanted me to be in the car business with him in the worst way.
2:43:24
But I think that's one of the greatest gifts your parents can give you is to say, "All right, go do what you want to do."
2:43:30
You know, the you're good at and passionate about.
2:43:36
>> He never lived long enough.
2:43:36
He died when he was in his 90s.
2:43:37
He never lived long enough to see the completed product.
2:43:41
>> Um, but I know that pop would be very proud of it.
2:43:44
You know, he he didn't understand the grove at first.
2:43:46
It's like, what are you doing?
2:43:48
And, you know, why are you doing it that way?
2:43:52
>> But he was always super supportive.
2:43:52
But I think the conversations we had every night, it was not only a father and a son, it was a father and a son who were both in business.
2:44:01
And him challenging me was like really important >> because I didn't grow up in the real estate business.
2:44:08
I had no background in the real estate business.
2:44:10
So, it's not like I came out of this industry or from an industry and I knew what all the rules were.
2:44:16
I actually believe very strongly that one of the reasons we've been successful is I didn't know the rules.
2:44:22
And so I didn't know I was breaking a lot of rules.
2:44:24
I didn't know I had to build a a property with a roof and no sunlight and no windows and no no landscaping and and make you feel like you're walking through a prison. >> That is the default. >> That right.
2:44:37
If I would have grown up in the mall industry, that's what I would have built. >> Yep. Totally.
2:44:41
>> So, but it was great having him challenge me with many, many people challenging me along the way, including communities that we serve.
2:44:47
That goes to the other priority of people we're thinking about.
2:44:50
We're very very protective and supportive of the communities we're in whether it's Monaceto or LA or Calabasas and it's they're good.
2:45:00
>> Has any have any data center developers called you and said how do you do it?
2:45:04
Like what's your what's your playbook?
2:45:06
Because uh in the you know data centers are ugly.
2:45:10
They don't employ a lot of people.
2:45:13
They're probably a harder cell than a lot of the developments that >> that you've done.
2:45:17
But you certainly have faced a lot of opposition over time, but got people around and got them aligned and and ultimately created spaces that I think make make the uh whatever area they're in better. >> Thank you.
2:45:32
Well, a data center doesn't need to worry about any of that.
2:45:35
I mean, they need to get their permits, and I know there's a lot of push against data centers now. >> Yeah.
2:45:41
>> Um but they don't have a guest experience to worry about other than they're doing what they're intended to do.
2:45:47
So, no, they've never reached out to you.
2:45:49
Don't you maybe they should because if they were less eyes, they might be they might face less. >> They could. That's true. There's nothing.
2:45:56
Listen, >> I'm a big believer.
2:45:58
It's always good to make things really really nice and attractive. >> Yeah.
2:46:03
>> And we spend a lot of time and a lot of money making things nice and attractive and it it always has worked to our benefit.
2:46:09
>> Is fune a valuable >> 100% everything is funed. >> Explain that.
2:46:13
How did you how did you get into fune?
2:46:15
We got into it because I started studying it a little bit.
2:46:19
And in fact, when you take a look at the Grove, um, our adviser in Funue, Katherine, uh, does every one of our properties, she reviews all of our plans before a property is built.
2:46:31
She is on the property before we open, blessing it, and all the things that need to be done.
2:46:38
>> And it's respectful of a culture that we care about as a guest.
2:46:42
>> Um, but it also makes a lot of sense from a development standpoint.
2:46:44
So the way the railroad at the Grove goes and how it moves and turns was very important not to intersect or get too close to the fountain >> because that's bad funue.
2:46:58
>> It would be cutting off a lifeline. >> Yep.
2:47:01
>> The number that's on the trolley uh was funue.
2:47:04
Now it ends up being which most people don't know.
2:47:07
>> I had >> it ends up being my birthday.
2:47:08
There's all these things in all of our properties.
2:47:10
So the number for the trolley is 1759 being January 7th 59 >> and >> which I wanted to use but we had to make sure it was properly >> funued. Interesting.
2:47:21
>> Did did you did you have any projects early on that didn't work that you now attribute to to to poor funue?
2:47:27
I don't think he can talk about it, but I know that he passed on something.
2:47:32
>> But but but yeah, because I because I think everyone whether or not they've even read about fune, believe in it, all these things, everyone has been in a space and being like, there's nothing objectively wrong with this apartment or store or hotel, but it just it's just bad. >> Doesn't feel right. >> Doesn't feel right.
2:47:50
And and I I've had, you know, a house, you know, a home where I never use like one or two rooms and for some reason >> you got to funue your current office.
2:48:03
Your back is to the door. That's a crime. >> Yeah. That's not good.
2:48:06
That's >> Oh, that's true. No, seriously.
2:48:08
>> But you can there's counter measures.
2:48:10
>> Yeah, >> you can use countermeasures. >> Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. Yeah.
2:48:14
>> I I think that funue is important along with a million other things are important. >> Yeah.
2:48:18
when we are so focused on making that guest feel comfortable in the space and that's why we go around the country and we go around the world actually studying spaces.
2:48:28
We'll look at retail centers, we'll look at malls, we'll look at ones that work and we'll look at ones that don't work.
2:48:34
But mostly what we're doing is we're studying streets.
2:48:36
And so when you go to the Grove or you go to the Americana, whatever, the height of that curb, the slope in that street, how the railroad is sitting there, the fact that there's gutters and there's drains and there's all these things, they're there because your eye picks it up.
2:48:54
>> If we would have built the Grove as a flat plaza without curbs and gutters, you wouldn't read it in your mind as a street.
2:49:02
So the rhythm of the trees, the rhythm of the street lights, we study all of that stuff. >> Interesting.
2:49:07
And we actually had a landscape architect on the grove that threatened to quit because he wasn't going to design curbs and gutters.
2:49:12
He said, 'People are going to trip.
2:49:14
I said, 'People don't trip walking around the cities.
2:49:17
Why are they going to trip here?
2:49:20
>> And then he finally came around.
2:49:20
But we studied um the grove is patterned very much in scale um down in Charleston.
2:49:25
We studied Charleston >> uh in terms of building depths and and whatnot, but all of that's really important.
2:49:34
Uh, how how did you experience the dot era?
2:49:38
Were there people telling you that retail was going to be over?
2:49:43
It was all just you may as well shut down now.
2:49:45
The internet is going to be everything because we have a lot of people in our, you know, in the technology industry that are building uh building products that are either, you know, that benefit from AI or are threatened by AI or or totally unknown yet.
2:49:59
So, a lot of people are going through an existential crisis.
2:50:01
How did you did you ever did you ever doubt?
2:50:03
Did you ever believe in uh in the more out there internet pitches that you were getting or were you always confident?
2:50:13
>> I was always confident. I tell you why.
2:50:14
And may maybe it's because I'm naive. >> And I'm not right.
2:50:18
I'm not trying to be arrogant about it either.
2:50:21
>> No, but it's a good philosophy.
2:50:22
>> But but here here's why.
2:50:22
If if you looked at it through my lens, >> why did I go in the retail business?
2:50:27
I was never in the development business.
2:50:31
So why did I go in the retail business?
2:50:32
Well, I went in the retail business because I loved people and I loved real estate.
2:50:37
So where am I where am I going to do something where I could marry people and real estate?
2:50:42
And I started in the U warehouse business >> and that was just hugely boring to me because I could care less at the end of the day about dock high loading and clear spans and there were no people there.
2:50:55
It was just a bunch of trucks. >> Interesting.
2:50:57
So, I got into retail because as a young kid visiting family in Italy, I was always taken by the piazas and at the end of the afternoon, the sun's going down a little bit.
2:51:07
The people are coming out, the kids are running around, somebody's having a glass of wine, there's a little music in the back.
2:51:16
Very, very, my family came from a very poor, very modest town. Didn't matter.
2:51:21
There was this joy of life.
2:51:21
I wanted to duplicate that.
2:51:24
That that to me is my psychic income.
2:51:28
>> Is this >> you're like the internet's not going to do this thing that >> it can't copy it. >> Yeah. Yeah.
2:51:33
>> And from the beginning of time, what have we done as human beings? We've gathered.
2:51:37
We went around a fire, >> right? We protected each other. >> Yeah. >> Right.
2:51:41
We're just human beings are that way.
2:51:43
So the last thing I would say is there's always been multiple ways to buy a product.
2:51:50
>> There was the Sears catalog long before there was the internet. >> Right.
2:51:54
And so nobody buys just with one channel.
2:51:59
>> And the best retailers, I want them to have a really robust online uh uh operation because that means they're a better retailer.
2:52:06
So it it doesn't scare me at all.
2:52:08
And our business has grown. Our keer is 18%.
2:52:13
>> So I I'm not I'm not too worried about I don't know what was that noise. >> That's a hairorn%. Fantastic.
2:52:22
Um uh you what what's been your thought process?
2:52:27
You've you've uh have such an incredible presence in California, such an incredible track record.
2:52:34
You've made so many of our communities like better spaces.
2:52:36
I I I feel um I I don't live in the Palisades, but I would go to uh the Palisades um you know, your your your property there at least once or probably twice a week on average, just passing through.
2:52:50
And when after the fires it felt like like some part of our community was just gone.
2:52:59
Um and uh what what has been your I imagine people from all over the US have tried to entice you to bring this kind of scale to their states. >> Mhm.
2:53:12
>> What has been when have you when have you indulged in those conversations?
2:53:15
You you mentioned earlier in the conversation uh exploring more opportunities outside of the state.
2:53:21
What has been the the thought process?
2:53:23
Was there early like a loyalty to California?
2:53:28
That was seems like it was your >> I'm a big believer, it's a great question.
2:53:32
I'm a big believer that if you want to create generational wealth in real estate, it gets done because you know the area incredibly well and you're local.
2:53:45
And when you take a look and I'll give you an example.
2:53:48
If you look at the Palisades, so many people said the Palisades is never going to work.
2:53:52
There's not enough people there.
2:53:53
People would even say they don't go out at night.
2:53:55
It's a bedroom community.
2:53:56
just not the case that the the the there was nothing to go out to. Right.
2:54:03
And the case study for the Palisades because I live in Brentwood Park and if you live on that side of the 405, you cannot literally travel east after about 3:00.
2:54:13
It is bumper to bumper >> to get over the 405.
2:54:18
>> So you have this enormous population that's bulcanized >> that can travel west easily. >> Yeah.
2:54:24
to dinner and the movies and shopping including the other side of the 405 Bair home hills they can travel.
2:54:30
So to me it was understanding that dynamic of how the mobility of people >> almost like the funue of the city.
2:54:41
>> Well funue but also just the actuality of the mobility of how people moved. >> Yeah.
2:54:47
>> So I've I've always wanted to stay local because that local knowledge is critically important.
2:54:51
And if you look at the most successful businesses in real estate in any category, it's usually local families.
2:55:00
>> And you get that from a feel, not from data.
2:55:02
I assume >> you get it from a field.
2:55:03
You get it from learned >> information. Yeah.
2:55:08
You're stuck in bumper to bunker traffic.
2:55:10
You know, you don't need to.
2:55:11
>> I drove my kids to school every morning and I know at 8:00 in the morning, you can barely go.
2:55:15
And if you want to go pick them up at 3, you need an hour to get to the 405. >> Yep.
2:55:19
So that that I think is super important.
2:55:22
What we would do is if we go outside the state, and we're going to go outside the state for a number of reasons, we would just make sure that we have a lot of really local talent. >> Sure.
2:55:33
>> Surrounding us to >> to backfill Yeah.
2:55:36
>> that that kind of knowledge that we're going to need.
2:55:38
>> Uh why are you going out of the state then? What are the reasons?
2:55:41
>> Well, California and Los Angeles are very difficult to invest in anymore. Um especially LA City.
2:55:45
We have not built anything new in LA city since the Palisades >> very intentionally uh because it's too overregulated, too expensive, too unpredictable.
2:55:54
Um and and frankly, you know, we spend an enormous amount of money on our properties on security >> because the city, you know, has struggled with having enough police >> and we're very adamant on having a very safe, secure environment on our properties.
2:56:12
>> So, I want to move our capital. I I hate leaving LA.
2:56:15
But I want our capital to go into places that I know is going to grow and be safe.
2:56:20
Now, I don't have to leave California to do that.
2:56:24
>> That's why we're investing in Calabasas. Sure.
2:56:27
>> It's a great community. >> Yeah.
2:56:29
>> We'd love to do more in Glendale.
2:56:31
Incredibly good community, safe schools, clean streets, safe streets.
2:56:37
>> Those are the kind of things we're looking for.
2:56:38
Um, but there's also great growth happening in like Nashville.
2:56:41
I was by How many year how many years do you feel like you kind of raised your hand with the the local government and said, "Hey, these things aren't aren't working.
2:56:54
Uh we need to make changes because like because this wasn't something that overnight you were like, "Oh, this this city doesn't feel safe anymore.
2:57:01
I'm going to move out of state or I'm going to move out of I'm going to move up uh to a different county."
2:57:06
>> You know, listen, a lot of years and I worked for three mayors.
2:57:09
I had the benefit of working for Tom Bradley when I was in my 20s as a commissioner.
2:57:12
I worked for Dick Reirden uh as a commissioner.
2:57:17
I worked for Jim Han uh as the head of the police commission.
2:57:19
So, I understand the city.
2:57:21
So, I worked for the city for 17 years while I was growing my business.
2:57:24
So, I understand it well.
2:57:26
I understand what was working and I understand what's failing.
2:57:29
And so much of what we're doing now is just failing because we have leaders that frankly aren't qualified and they're incompetent.
2:57:39
And they're not bad people.
2:57:41
They just don't know what they're doing.
2:57:43
And if you look at other cities, it blows my mind on how well they're doing.
2:57:48
There's no reason that LA shouldn't be doing well.
2:57:49
It's only not doing well because our leadership isn't making smart aren't making smart decisions >> and we're paying the price for it.
2:57:59
>> Jordy, follow up there.
2:58:03
Uh, >> are you gonna run for president? Ask that.
2:58:07
>> It says here you're here to announce your >> right yeah comment. >> Yeah. Right. Right.
2:58:12
How about that for breaking?
2:58:14
>> Uh, what other what other but um uh >> but I don't want to be, you know, let me add before I interrupt you.
2:58:18
I I'm a very optimistic person and I love this city. >> Yeah.
2:58:24
>> And I believe in the city.
2:58:24
We're not moving out of the city.
2:58:26
We're not doing anything like that.
2:58:27
And I think this city will get back to where it should be in terms of being the most productive city in the country. It just has to. >> Yeah.
2:58:39
>> And it and it will eventually with the right leaders.
2:58:40
>> I was opt I was optimistic during your during your campaign. >> Well, I tried. >> I've heard Yeah. Yeah.
2:58:45
I've heard a lot of uh a lot of, you know, negative takes on LA and things that are going right and I'm and I just keep coming back to like the waves crash on time and the sun shines on time and so Los Angeles will be great for a very long time and the rest of the things are solable.
2:59:02
>> Well, I I think I think the be because of the natural environment, it it sort of enabled some poor government.
2:59:10
>> You get a lot of shots on gold.
2:59:10
There's always new people.
2:59:12
>> You do get you do get more shots on gold.
2:59:14
But but you do have >> a net decrease of population.
2:59:18
>> That's what's going on right now. Yeah. >> Yeah.
2:59:19
So unfortunately >> just like you know I remind people if we operated the grove >> and it was dirty, there were encampments, it felt unsafe, >> people vote very quickly with their feet. >> Yeah.
2:59:32
>> No different in cities. >> Sure.
2:59:34
>> And so there is a tipping point that people are going to say, you know what, I know the weather's great.
2:59:38
I know the views are great. Blah blah blah.
2:59:40
But my quality of life now or the quality of life for my children >> have gotten to a point that it's not worth it anymore. >> Sure.
2:59:50
I mean, we should never get to that edge.
2:59:51
>> We both have, you know, continue to make this decision.
2:59:54
We work we work here in Hollywood, but we are families are not are not in the city.
2:59:58
We both moved out of the city and I would love to I would love to uh buy a home in the city someday, but there's a bunch of things that would have to change.
3:00:08
What uh what cities and states do you think have um the best uh sort of business environment right now? What's what's appealing?
3:00:18
Because I'm sure I'm ass sure there's places that >> uh would would love to have your business and would offer a number of incentives to try to bring them out there, but then I'm sure there's places that are just already great and and you want to set up shop.
3:00:33
>> Well, we've spent time, like I said, we spent time last week in Nashville. I was very impressed.
3:00:36
I met with the mayor of Nashville. Very impressed with him.
3:00:39
There's a lot going on there. Yeah.
3:00:41
>> And businesses moving there, but the streets are clean.
3:00:44
>> You know, the environment was great and people are happy.
3:00:46
You can feel the energy along the streets. >> So, it was terrific.
3:00:49
Um Austin was the same way. We're focused on Austin.
3:00:51
Um last week or Yeah, it was last week.
3:00:57
We've been moving around a lot.
3:00:57
We just covered a big chunk of the state of Florida from Palm Beach to Coconut Grove.
3:01:03
Um lot of interesting opportunities.
3:01:05
Coconut Grove is a very cool city down there.
3:01:07
Um, so we're looking in a lot of places, but I would also say in California, like our property in Monaceto, I I think that region of Santa Barbara is managed very well.
3:01:21
Y >> and we're doing another project up there.
3:01:24
We're expanding the retail up at the hotel.
3:01:25
We're starting that at the end of this year.
3:01:27
We're investing a lot of money in workforce housing for our own employees actually on the property so our employees can live there.
3:01:33
Um, and Calabasas is a good example.
3:01:36
We're putting in another 130 million.
3:01:38
That was a property that I built 30 years ago.
3:01:42
It's effectively that downtown, but it's an incredibly well-run city.
3:01:45
Uh, good schools, good neighborhoods, and it's safe and clean. And same with Glendale.
3:01:51
I mean, Glendale is a phenomenal city.
3:01:54
>> Um, and we want to invest more in Glendale.
3:01:56
So, you don't have to go far.
3:01:58
Culver City's done a hell of a job.
3:01:58
I mean, look at the what's boomed in Culver City with the offices that have gone there. places that >> Yeah.
3:02:05
I was shocked at at the office uh lease lease prices in Culver.
3:02:10
>> Like look at Century City. It's part of LA. >> Yeah. >> Yeah.
3:02:13
>> But it's the part of LA because it's sort of this contained bubble. >> Yep. >> That's clean, safe.
3:02:18
There's there's a lot of emphasis by the ownership there versus downtown.
3:02:25
>> Basically the same office product.
3:02:25
And the office product downtown because of the homeless problem and the crime, you have a 40% vacancy rate. Wow.
3:02:33
>> You go to Century City, you have the highest rent probably in the United States outside of New York City. >> Oh wow.
3:02:40
>> So that just tells you what people are looking for.
3:02:42
>> What do you think it takes to make it in real estate in 2026?
3:02:44
If you're an upandcomer, >> I I think the opportunities are huge.
3:02:50
Um, you know, you mentioned AI.
3:02:50
Um, you know, you mentioned AI. I would tell you I think anybody coming into whatever industry today coming out of college the opportunities are now endless because the world is on a pivot >> and it's going to be a little bit inefficient >> and in inefficiencies are the greatest opportunities and because there's so
3:03:14
much uncertainty how AI is going to impact different industries that's the best time to be leaning into it >> and then finding out How if you want to be in real estate, how AI is going to create a better guest experience, how it's going to create lower cost of building, how it's going to create lower cost of operating, designing. I mean, we
3:03:32
I mean, we do things now in our company through AI would have never thought we could do. >> Yeah.
3:03:40
>> Uh a year or two years ago.
3:03:40
And my one of my biggest frustrations is I'm constantly pushing the team, what more can we do in AI?
3:03:48
Are we adopting everything we should be adopting? >> Yeah.
3:03:53
>> And so I think it's just jumping in. Jump in. Get in it. Take any job you can.
3:03:58
Uh is what I tell people coming out of college. Work really hard.
3:04:05
Don't necessarily do what you're just passionate about. That's great.
3:04:06
Do what you think you're really good at.
3:04:12
>> And if you're really good at something and it marries up with passion, then that's unstoppable.
3:04:16
And then you just keep going.
3:04:19
We'll close with a challenge for everyone listening.
3:04:20
Use AI to funue your home office wherever you work. There you go. Take a picture of it. Upload it to chat GBT.
3:04:28
Tell it redesign this proper fun. I think it'll work. I think we're close. >> That's brilliant.
3:04:35
>> AI might be able to reposition your >> desk next generation.
3:04:37
The way you marry those >> I actually got into fune like two or three years ago. Redid my whole office.
3:04:46
It was so much more relaxing.
3:04:46
I I'm a true true believer.
3:04:49
>> But you married one of the oldest Yeah.
3:04:51
>> cultural science >> with the cutting edge science. It's very cool.
3:04:55
>> Yeah, it can take time to get up to speed. >> Should have a horn.
3:04:57
>> Thank you so much for coming on the show. We will wrap up here.
3:04:59
Leave us five stars on Apple Podcast and Spotify.
3:05:03
Sign up for our newsletter at tbp.
3:05:03
com and we will see you tomorrow. Goodbye. >> Cheers.