Limitless Podcast

Nvidia's $20 billion deal with Groq could totally change AI infrastructure. Meanwhile, Meta's purchase of Manus AI might not be so bullish. 

We celebrate Google’s Gemini app dethroning ChatGPT and discuss Alphabet's acquisition of Intersect for better energy control. Plus, insights from Andre highlight the future of generative AI in shaping user experiences.

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🌌 LIMITLESS HQ: LISTEN & FOLLOW HERE ⬇️
https://limitless.bankless.com/
https://x.com/LimitlessFT

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TIMESTAMPS

0:00 Nvidia's $20 Billion Acquisition
0:49 Understanding Grok's Inference Technology
10:11 Meta's Latest Acquisition
12:10 The Rise of Manus AI
15:53 Google Takes the Lead with Gemini
21:46 Google's Strategic Energy Acquisition
22:05 Andre Carpathy's LLM Year in Review
23:57 Wrapping Up the Year

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RESOURCES

Josh: https://x.com/JoshKale

Ejaaz: https://x.com/cryptopunk7213

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Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here:
https://www.bankless.com/disclosures⁠

What is Limitless Podcast?

Exploring the frontiers of Technology and AI

Ejaaz:
Nvidia just spent $20 billion to acquire a company no one's ever heard of,

Ejaaz:
and it's their biggest acquisition to date.

Ejaaz:
Grok specializes in a very unique type of GPU, which will help Nvidia gain an

Ejaaz:
even larger monopoly on the GPU stack.

Ejaaz:
But they're not the only ones making acquisitions over the last week.

Ejaaz:
Meta announced their 20th acquisition of 2025, Manus AI, which specializes in

Ejaaz:
their very own unique AI agent.

Ejaaz:
But I'm feeling pretty bearish about this. I think that this is one of many

Ejaaz:
pitfalls that Meta is going to face over the course of 2025 and 2026.

Ejaaz:
And in other news, Google has finally dethroned OpenAI at the number one spot for AI app being used.

Ejaaz:
It is top of the charts for Apple. We're going to be getting into all of these

Ejaaz:
and much more in this episode.

Josh:
Yeah, so let's get into Grok, which is not to be confused with Grok, the other Grok.

Josh:
One is with a K, which is the one that we frequently talk about, which

Josh:
is made by xai this grok that we're talking about today is

Josh:
g-r-o-q which is a totally different

Josh:
company that was just recently acquired by nvidia but

Josh:
we need to make an important clarification about the acquisition it wasn't actually

Josh:
an acquisition of the company nvidia does not own grok what it was is a non-exclusive

Josh:
licensing deal for grok's inference technology and a big acqui-hire of grok's

Josh:
top leadership and engineers including the founder and ceo jonathan ross who

Josh:
we're going to get into why he is so important in a little while.

Josh:
Basically, it's this non-exclusive license for the technology,

Josh:
the inference technology. And I think that's what we're going to focus on a lot this episode is that

Josh:
NVIDIA has the GPU, which we all know is the powerhouse of AI.

Josh:
But one of the weak points that we're missing is this inference time,

Josh:
this test time, this thing that needs to be quick and very cheap.

Josh:
And what we've seen with Google and other companies is as they've started to

Josh:
introduce TPUs onto the scene, well, things get a little complicated for NVIDIA's bulky GPUs.

Josh:
They're not as efficient. They're not as effective. They're not as cost effective.

Josh:
And it left them with this blind spot, which seemingly they filled with this Grok acquisition.

Ejaaz:
Let's get into what that blind spot actually is, right?

Ejaaz:
So to your point, Josh, NVIDIA makes these GPUs that are really good at helping

Ejaaz:
AI models train, and it requires a different type of architecture to be able to do that.

Ejaaz:
But when it comes to AI applications, what you really want to rely on is how

Ejaaz:
quick the AI responds to you.

Ejaaz:
I don't know if you've come across this, Josh, but when you write a prompt to

Ejaaz:
your AI model, I sometimes get really impatient when it hasn't responded over like 20 seconds.

Ejaaz:
I'm like, come on, like, can you think a little quicker and just give me the answer now?

Ejaaz:
And this comes down to like that test time compute that you mentioned.

Ejaaz:
And the way that you enable a quicker response is if you reduce the latency.

Ejaaz:
And there's many different architectural choices that you can make to do that.

Ejaaz:
The point is, NVIDIA didn't specialize in that, but this company Grok has.

Ejaaz:
And so NVIDIA had a few options to make about this, Josh, which is highlighted in this tweet here.

Ejaaz:
Option A, they just kind of continue using NVIDIA GPUs. It costs a lot more

Ejaaz:
and it's just inefficient.

Ejaaz:
Or option B, they acquire or partner with Grok, which is the leader in these

Ejaaz:
specialized chips that allow for lower latency.

Ejaaz:
Or option C, they start creating their own specialized

Ejaaz:
chips from scratch but it'll cost them a lot of time a lot

Ejaaz:
of money at which point grok will already be the number

Ejaaz:
one leader so i think this is a strategic position they spent 20 billion dollars

Ejaaz:
which is a lot of money for them but um they're able to acquire the number one

Ejaaz:
leader in that case and own that monopoly for them and not be afraid of grok

Ejaaz:
kind of taking over nvidia or providing an alternative to nvidia in the future yeah.

Josh:
And if you remember like google recently we made so many episodes about the

Josh:
TPU and how it's becoming a legitimate threat to NVIDIA. Why?

Josh:
Well, it's because the TPU is good, really good at something that NVIDIA is

Josh:
not, which is this very deterministic computation that happens locally and rapidly

Josh:
when it's actually delivering AI to the user.

Josh:
So this won't interfere with the core business of NVIDIA, which is largely the

Josh:
GPUs and this pre-training part of the world.

Josh:
And we have a post that breaks this down really well, Ejas, that you shared

Josh:
with me earlier that I kind of want to take a second to go through if you don't on sharing

Ejaaz:
Yeah so it's this post right here um and it

Ejaaz:
describes something called lpu so

Ejaaz:
we've heard of gpu graphics processing unit lpu stands for language processing

Ejaaz:
unit and as it as its name implies it's specialized for llm specifically and

Ejaaz:
efficiently processing tokens into whatever output you would like from your

Ejaaz:
ai model right and there's a few things that make this specifically unique,

Ejaaz:
architecturally. One, it uses this thing called static random access memory.

Ejaaz:
So we've all heard of RAM.

Ejaaz:
We've all heard of DRAM, dynamic random access memory.

Ejaaz:
SRAM is an alternative to DRAM. So for context here, DRAM is like the most sought

Ejaaz:
after type of memory that people want to put into their AI chips to train their models.

Ejaaz:
And Josh, you and I have been discussing this a lot.

Ejaaz:
The price of DRAM has like 5X'd over the last couple of months.

Josh:
It's kind of outrageous.

Ejaaz:
Because we just don't have enough. In fact, like the cost of a, what was this?

Ejaaz:
The cost of like a PC memory card now, Josh, is the equivalent of like the latest MacBook.

Ejaaz:
It is just insane out there, right?

Ejaaz:
And so Grok has this alternative memory board called SRAM, which they integrate

Ejaaz:
into this LPU chip, which is what makes it so unique.

Ejaaz:
Well, what's so unique about it? In a typical GPU, so take, for example,

Ejaaz:
NVIDIA's GPU, in order to process an LLM request, you need to take information

Ejaaz:
from the memory and take it to the processing unit, the processing part of the chip.

Ejaaz:
With SRAM, you don't have to do that as much. You can just store the entire

Ejaaz:
model weight on that part of the memory component, and it's able to process

Ejaaz:
way more efficiently. How much more efficiently?

Ejaaz:
10 times more. So for a singular chip, you can store 10 times more data, or more memory rather,

Ejaaz:
and it'll require one-tenth of the energy cost, which makes it an extremely

Ejaaz:
efficient chip to get fast inference between your AI model and the person that's using the AI model.

Ejaaz:
That's the unique unlock here, and it's just super cool to see.

Josh:
Yeah. So in conclusion, it's not that NVIDIA bought Grok.

Josh:
It's closer to NVIDIA bought the parts of Grok that actually matter the most.

Josh:
And a big part of that equation is the talent, the people that were involved

Josh:
in Grok. And where did I find out about the people?

Josh:
Well, on Chamath's memo from 2016, nine years ago. So for people who don't know

Josh:
Chamath Paliapati, I mean, you probably do.

Josh:
He's a very, just very influential person in the world of technology.

Josh:
And he published his memo from 2016 very early on about this guy named Jonathan

Josh:
and about his decision to be the lead investor in the Series A of this small

Josh:
little company called Grok.

Josh:
And nine years later, fast forward, this tiny little company worth $10 million sold for

Josh:
got a license acquisition for $20 billion. And it was fascinating to read this

Josh:
memo and kind of see what the world looked like in 2016. It's this funny snapshot.

Josh:
It's a very forward-looking and accurate representation of where we would have

Josh:
ended up at a time when this wasn't clear.

Josh:
So if you remember in 2016, the transformer paper hadn't even come out yet.

Josh:
There was no such thing as a transformer.

Ejaaz:
Josh, I was at university in 2016. I had no idea that was happening either.

Josh:
No one did. And yet this memo signaled like, hey, this thing called a TPU is

Josh:
going to be very important towards machine learning, which is also going to

Josh:
be this very important thing.

Josh:
And what's really funny about the memo is the header. It includes a subsection,

Josh:
fundamental human need, which says understanding and creation.

Josh:
Then it says, is this going to affect 25% of the population?

Josh:
Yes, but indirectly. $100 billion by 2045?

Josh:
Possibly. A special person? Yes. And then as you read more through the memo,

Josh:
you start to understand that he invested in this company because the founder

Josh:
and CEO was, or the founder and CTO at the time, who later became the CEO,

Josh:
he was the founder and the creator of the TPU, which Google now has.

Josh:
This is the dude, the dude running rock is the dude who created the TPU,

Josh:
which is now the biggest thing in the world.

Josh:
So clearly they saw something early.

Josh:
Clearly it was the correct bet. And I mean, good for them. They deserve it.

Josh:
I mean, we certainly were not thinking about these things nine years ago when really mattered

Ejaaz:
Isn't it crazy that he had the foresight to identify both the trend of machine

Ejaaz:
learning becoming the most popular form of computation,

Ejaaz:
and coupling that with like, we need a new chip.

Ejaaz:
So at the time, GPUs were super popular. You and I were discussing this before

Ejaaz:
we started recording, Josh.

Ejaaz:
You know, we were using GPUs for gaming. We were then using it for like crypto

Ejaaz:
mining around that time. It was becoming more popular.

Ejaaz:
But he had the foresight to be like, this is probably going to be used for some

Ejaaz:
kind of AI ML inference in the future.

Ejaaz:
And he saw it a decade ago and he waited it out. So if you look here,

Ejaaz:
it says it would allow them to own around 28.57% of the company.

Ejaaz:
Which is just a massive bet.

Ejaaz:
I mean, yeah, great. His 10 million is now worth a hell of a lot more.

Ejaaz:
I think there's rumors that he made over a billion dollars on this.

Ejaaz:
It's just insane to kind of see at that time.

Ejaaz:
I just want to like kind of put into context what this NVIDIA acquisition looks like, right?

Ejaaz:
So there are specific types of chips or kind of like hardware that you need

Ejaaz:
to make a successful AI model or an AI product in general.

Ejaaz:
You need GPUs, which everyone's heard of. Now we We have these LPUs,

Ejaaz:
which now, I'm here on this tweet, NVIDIA now also owns Viagroc,

Ejaaz:
the number one leader of this.

Ejaaz:
And then there's CPUs. And we

Ejaaz:
know that companies that are specializing in CPUs include Intel and AMD.

Ejaaz:
Earlier on in this year, NVIDIA made very big investments in both of the leading

Ejaaz:
companies, AMD and Intel.

Ejaaz:
So I just see this kind of like this Thanos grip that tightens with every single

Ejaaz:
acquisition that Jensen makes. And the craziest part about this,

Ejaaz:
Josh, is that it's all pretty much free.

Ejaaz:
When the news broke that NVIDIA had acquired Grok, their market cap pumped $35

Ejaaz:
billion, which paid for the acquisition of more. That's so nuts.

Ejaaz:
It's just crazy. It's just crazy.

Josh:
So that's the big news on NVIDIA this week in an acquisition that feels very

Josh:
powerful and meaningful, like it will actually move the needle.

Josh:
And now here's another acquisition where I'm not sure the same thing can be said.

Josh:
Just this week, Meta announced another acquisition after the seemingly hundred

Josh:
that they've done in terms of personnel and companies this year in a company named Manus.

Josh:
Now, Manus is a Singapore-based, Chinese-founded company, and the price hasn't

Josh:
been disclosed yet, although it's rumored to be somewhere between $2 and $5 billion.

Josh:
Manus is less than a year old, EJS, I believe, and it was valued at half a billion

Josh:
dollars just earlier this year, and they raised $75 million. dollars.

Josh:
And then in nine months, they went from zero to a hundred million dollars.

Josh:
Oh yeah, here's the post. In eight months, they went from zero to a hundred

Josh:
million annual recurring income, which is just this unbelievable hockey stick growth.

Josh:
So why would Meta want to acquire that?

Josh:
Manus is different than other companies. Manus is more of an agent than a chatbot.

Josh:
And if you'll remember, Meta's had a tough time building a chatbot,

Josh:
but has a lot more use for an actual agent. So Ijaz, maybe you want to explain

Josh:
kind of what this acquisition was,

Josh:
why Meta made it, and what their hopes are in terms of what type of value this

Josh:
can add to a company that's kind of having a pretty tough time deploying AI

Josh:
in an effective and meaningful way.

Ejaaz:
So I'm reminded of something specific that Zuckerberg said in his interview

Ejaaz:
with Dwarkesh earlier this year.

Ejaaz:
Dwarkesh was like, why are you investing tens of billions of dollars into AI?

Ejaaz:
You guys are a consumer app product. And he goes, yeah, I don't want to build the best AI model.

Ejaaz:
I want to build the best consumer AI app.

Ejaaz:
Meta specializes in consumer apps. We think we're the best at it.

Ejaaz:
And we think we can be pioneers in this new AI world.

Ejaaz:
We're not trying to get the best model. We just want to build the best consumer experience.

Ejaaz:
I think this is another step towards that. So if we kind of like track back

Ejaaz:
to like the age of the internet, which we currently kind of live in right now, right?

Ejaaz:
We use websites. We download apps. It's a very kind of archaic thing when you

Ejaaz:
consider that AI is probably going to automate a lot of this.

Ejaaz:
How is that going to be automated? It's probably going to be in the form of

Ejaaz:
agents, agents that can automate a bunch of work for you, but also make your

Ejaaz:
entertainment and lived experience way, way cooler, right?

Ejaaz:
So it can help you with research, but it can also help you kind of discover

Ejaaz:
new things, new shopping experiences, stuff like that.

Ejaaz:
And Manus AI is one of the top agent producers out there.

Ejaaz:
And like you said, Josh, this hockey stick growth to 100 million AIR,

Ejaaz:
even though I think that's a pretty vague metric and I think a lot of that can

Ejaaz:
be gamed it's still very very impressive and I know a bunch of my friends that

Ejaaz:
use Manus in many different ways can I just put my bear hat on for a second

Ejaaz:
Josh I know we don't like the bears on the show but my skin is tingling for this one particularly,

Ejaaz:
why can't like a Claude code or a Claude in general just kind of.

Ejaaz:
Recreate this entire product. I don't understand the unique capacity for here.

Ejaaz:
And maybe it's because Meta didn't have the props or the talent to create this

Ejaaz:
themselves. So they just saw this as an easy acquisition for a cheap $2 to $5 billion.

Ejaaz:
And now they can kind of just put this ready-made product out to their millions of billions of users.

Ejaaz:
That's also still bearish for me because they've spent $35 billion this year

Ejaaz:
alone to acquire like a hundred different people and they've got nothing to

Ejaaz:
show for it. I'm just honestly confused, dude.

Josh:
Yeah, it's aside from the actual strategic thing, you could kind of look at

Josh:
what Manus does and then I guess back yourself into the conclusion from there.

Josh:
And you mentioned Cloud Code. I would say Manus is kind of similar to Cloud

Josh:
Code in the sense that it's kind of a harness for a base model.

Josh:
There are these base models that are interchangeable that Manus accepts because

Josh:
Manus does not actually have a base model.

Josh:
But it creates this harness around the model that allows the AI to do more interesting

Josh:
things than it would if you were to just go to ChatGPT or Gemini.

Josh:
A few of those things include tool use and orchestration. So a big thing when

Josh:
you're using AI agents is tool use.

Josh:
What types of tools are they able to use in order to do things for you?

Josh:
And if you think of CloudCode as the agent for building code,

Josh:
you could think of Manus as the agent for controlling your computer,

Josh:
for doing deep research, for managing files.

Josh:
It's more of the consumer-facing version of CloudCode, where it's really great

Josh:
at tool use. It's really great at running virtual computers.

Josh:
It's really good at analyzing real-world competitiveness through deep research

Josh:
of many, many different variables. It's really good at UX and design.

Josh:
And it has this unique skill set that doesn't require a core base model in order to use.

Josh:
And I think that's important because Meta does not have this core base model yet.

Josh:
In fact, I suspect if they're going to continue using Manus,

Josh:
they're going to have to use some third-party application until they could deploy

Josh:
their new supposed model named Avocado, which is their first closed-source model

Josh:
that will hopefully release sometime soon.

Ejaaz:
The way you describe that, like, you know, it doesn't use a base model.

Ejaaz:
It kind of sounds like a rapper, right? And, you know, there are a bunch of

Ejaaz:
critics against rappers. I actually think rappers are great and fine.

Ejaaz:
But isn't that just cursor? I guess it's the same as what cursor is for coding.

Ejaaz:
Manus is for agents in a way, and it doesn't matter what model it uses.

Ejaaz:
I don't know if that convinces me enough behind this acquisition.

Ejaaz:
And I'm purely coming at that from the fact that they have acquired so much

Ejaaz:
supposedly good talent and teams over the last six months, and they've had nothing to show for it.

Ejaaz:
And I'm kind of confused at meta strategy in general. They say that they want

Ejaaz:
to go into consumer AI, but the Vibes app, which is basically AI TikTok that

Ejaaz:
they released, got completely swept under the rug. No one cares about it.

Ejaaz:
No one uses their AI chatbot. In fact, their kind of gaming metrics by allowing

Ejaaz:
any Instagram search is now an AI model search.

Ejaaz:
I don't know if you've seen that, Josh, but like it comes up with this really

Ejaaz:
annoying kind of summary when you're on Instagram.

Ejaaz:
I'm just like, why are you doing this? I don't really care about this.

Ejaaz:
So I'm not convinced, but let's see in Q1 whether they release this new avocado

Ejaaz:
model and whether it's actually something that people want to use.

Ejaaz:
I'm going to remain kind of like uncertain on this for now, I think.

Josh:
Yeah, I guess in terms of the agentic use case, it does make sense because like

Josh:
Meta has, they have billions of people generating real world data all the time

Josh:
to improve this. Then they have the glasses and the Quest headsets that they want agents for.

Josh:
They have, like you mentioned, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger as places to use.

Ejaaz:
They have the distribution.

Josh:
They have the distribution. So if you can apply this agent, this agentic force

Josh:
on top of it, you can generate a lot of value for the user.

Josh:
So maybe, I mean, again, we'll see. And then one last point is there's this

Josh:
funny little chart that I like to reference, which is Yahoo.

Josh:
It shows their acquisitions by year up until 2014 because, well,

Josh:
if you remember after that, they didn't do so well and then had to get acquired.

Josh:
But there's an interesting chart that follows this. And this is kind of reflective

Josh:
of Meta, which shows their market cap over time. And you could see that,

Josh:
Their market cap exploded and was at the highest it's ever, or just about the

Josh:
highest it's ever been as they were making all these acquisitions.

Josh:
They were desperately trying to acquire the talent needed in order to be competitive in this new world.

Josh:
Unfortunately, that didn't work.

Josh:
And just two years later, they were acquired by Verizon for 90% less.

Ejaaz:
They acquired Tumblr? That's crazy.

Josh:
They acquired everybody. They made so many acquisitions two years and one year

Josh:
prior to them going under.

Josh:
And what we're seeing with Meta, not to draw a direct tie, but there's this

Josh:
kind of almost irrational acquisition spree where they're spending tens of billions

Josh:
of dollars on individual people.

Josh:
They're spending billions of dollars on companies and they're just trying to

Josh:
get talent in-house, but they still have nothing to show for it.

Josh:
They're not able to generate revenue. They're not able to make the products better.

Josh:
So I don't want to directly compare it to, because I don't see them going down

Josh:
90% like Yahoo did, but it's just a testament to show that normally when people

Josh:
start, or companies start acquiring at this rate.

Josh:
It's just something to be aware of is all. But we should probably move on to

Josh:
the next bit of news for this week because there's a lot going on and that is

Josh:
the Google Gemini app back in the news, right?

Ejaaz:
Josh, my favorite company is

Ejaaz:
officially number one. And it's a massive release being able to say that.

Ejaaz:
So what are we talking about? So Google Gemini is obviously Google's leading AI model,

Ejaaz:
but it's also the name of their AI app, which is a dedicated app like the ChatGPT

Ejaaz:
app that you can go on and you can speak to Gemini 3 Pro and all the latest models.

Ejaaz:
And for a while now, it's been creeping up the rankings.

Ejaaz:
And it was in the top 10 for a while. and then Gemini 3 Pro released and they

Ejaaz:
shot to number two and it's been at number two for a while. They are finally number one, Josh.

Ejaaz:
And this comes after learning a few weeks ago that more people.

Ejaaz:
Or rather people are spending more time using Gemini models than the average

Ejaaz:
ChatGPT user, which is just crazy.

Ejaaz:
And the number of daily, weekly, and monthly active users have been creeping

Ejaaz:
up to the point where it's almost, not quite yet, but almost at parity with

Ejaaz:
OpenAI's ChatGPT users as well.

Ejaaz:
This is a major milestone, in my opinion, because for a while,

Ejaaz:
I mean, you and I know this very well, Google's just been on a rollercoaster of a ride through AI.

Ejaaz:
They created the Transformer paper, so they were supposedly in the lead,

Ejaaz:
but then they didn't do anything with that.

Ejaaz:
ChatGPT and OpenAI ate their lunch, and then they made this massive 180-degree

Ejaaz:
turn. Sergey Brin came back, and they've made this crazy comeback. And it's just

Ejaaz:
Kind of cool to see them take the crown of this position, both at the consumer

Ejaaz:
level and at the chip layer with their TPUs.

Ejaaz:
And now everyone's using Google Search in AI mode. It's just crazy to see this

Ejaaz:
type of comeback from Google.

Josh:
And they forced the $20 billion acquisition for NVIDIA and Grok.

Josh:
I mean, I assume if GPUs didn't become big, that would not have been a pressing issue.

Josh:
But this is not the only time that Google was in the news this week.

Josh:
There's already more news coming out of Google, which is as it relates to energy

Josh:
and infrastructure, EJS, what's going on with this? I didn't get a chance to read it.

Ejaaz:
So the headline here is Alphabet's acquired this company called Intersect.

Ejaaz:
And I think they acquired it for $5 billion.

Ejaaz:
So what does this company do? Intersect is an energy supplier and producer.

Ejaaz:
And so you might be like, well, why is this important? Well,

Ejaaz:
Google's building out all these crazy AI data centers to help house their TPUs

Ejaaz:
and train and inference their Gemini models.

Ejaaz:
But there's one big issue, Josh. there's not enough power to power these GPUs

Ejaaz:
and TPUs up in the first place. There's never enough power. There's not enough power.

Ejaaz:
America's electric grid is constrained at the moment.

Ejaaz:
And it is a big, big worry going into 2026 because everyone's spending...

Ejaaz:
Tens of billions of dollars, hundreds of billions of dollars to create these GPUs.

Ejaaz:
But if we don't have any power to supply them in the first place,

Ejaaz:
then these become kind of defunct pieces of metal that just collect dust.

Ejaaz:
And Satya Nadella earlier this year actually spoke about that,

Ejaaz:
saying he has a warehouse that has hundreds of millions of dollars worth of

Ejaaz:
NVIDIA GPUs, and he can't do anything with that because he can't get the electrical supply to it.

Ejaaz:
So I see this as a very strategic move. What sounds boring on the surface is

Ejaaz:
actually a really important move.

Ejaaz:
And And Google obviously sees meaning here, and it's kind of making its next

Ejaaz:
steps towards solving that crisis.

Josh:
Yeah, part of being an AI behemoth now requires owning the entire stack from

Josh:
electron generation through token output.

Josh:
And it's becoming increasingly clear that if you want to be a serious competitor,

Josh:
you must compete across every facet of the spectrum, including actual energy

Josh:
generation, which is what we're seeing from Google.

Josh:
And it's a signal that what we predicted is kind of coming true,

Josh:
where you can't really compete unless you are one of these giant behemoths.

Josh:
And the race is now getting shrunken down, it's tighter and tighter and tighter

Josh:
by the people who could actually afford to compete at this level.

Josh:
Google has won, OpenAI has won, Microsoft's XAI, but there's not that many left.

Josh:
So it seems to me that if you really want to be a big player, you need the money.

Josh:
Google's doing it and they are making big strides in this.

Ejaaz:
And the final topic of this episode, Josh,

Ejaaz:
Daddy has officially spoken. Andre Carpathy has given us his 2025 LLM year in review.

Ejaaz:
We also did a year in review. That episode is out. You should definitely go check it out.

Ejaaz:
But I was really keen to see what Andre would talk about because his history

Ejaaz:
has been across all the major AI model providers.

Ejaaz:
He's worked at Google before. He was actually one of the founding engineers there.

Ejaaz:
When it comes to the AI world, he was involved in the research side of things

Ejaaz:
and OpenAI as well, right?

Ejaaz:
And so I was curious, like, you know, where does his allegiance lie?

Ejaaz:
And some of his takeaways were super fun. One of my favorite takeaways,

Ejaaz:
Josh, I think you would agree with this. I'm scrolling right to the bottom here. One second.

Ejaaz:
Is Nano Banana. He loved Google's text to image and image editing generation

Ejaaz:
model because he sees it as the future of graphic user interface.

Ejaaz:
So if you have to navigate to a website or look at a screen to interact with

Ejaaz:
the internet today, the future of AI will be generative.

Ejaaz:
And he believes you don't have to go to a website. The website will just be

Ejaaz:
custom made and created for you.

Ejaaz:
And he thinks NanoBanana is the first step to it. Do you agree with that,

Ejaaz:
Josh? I know you're super excited with this.

Josh:
Oh, dude, I love NanoBanana. It's one of my favorite models.

Josh:
I think it won my favorite model of the year in 2025.

Josh:
It is a miracle that that thing works. And I love Andre's framing of how he

Josh:
thinks it is most impactful when applied to building user interfaces.

Josh:
And that seems really cool because as we go to this dynamic world where everything

Josh:
is generated in real time, being able to generate really powerful interfaces

Josh:
or just visual elements in general is so important.

Josh:
And Google, again, is leading the charge. So it's cool to see Andre...

Josh:
On board with that and agreeing in a way that is very thoughtful.

Josh:
This is a really good post. I would encourage everyone to go and read the full

Josh:
thing if you get a chance, because I really enjoyed it.

Ejaaz:
And that is it, folks. A crazy week for a week where supposedly not much is

Ejaaz:
meant to be happening. You know, we've got a quiet Christmas week.

Ejaaz:
New Year's is around the corner. And we have a casual $20 billion acquisition

Ejaaz:
or licensing acquisition, if you want to be technical about it before the year's end.

Ejaaz:
I'm excited for 2026. We have an episode releasing soon, which is going to be

Ejaaz:
our predictions for 2026.

Ejaaz:
Josh and I have thought long and hard about that to the extent where Josh brought out his glasses.

Ejaaz:
So please stay tuned for that episode. It's going to be a very good one.

Ejaaz:
And we have some really, really good takes.

Ejaaz:
But aside from that, if you're not subscribed, if you haven't turned on notifications,

Ejaaz:
if you haven't subscribed to our newsletter where we drop alpha twice a week,

Ejaaz:
please do all of those things and we will see you in the next episode.

Josh:
Yeah, it's the guys, it's the holiday season. If you do anything for us for

Josh:
Christmas, just hit the subscribe button. That'd be pretty cool.

Josh:
We got a great episode that came out earlier this week. We have the predictions coming out on Friday.