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Technology's daily show (formerly the Technology Brothers Podcast). Streaming live on X and YouTube from 11 - 2 PM PST Monday - Friday. Available on X, Apple, Spotify, and YouTube.
You're watching TVPN.
Speaker 2:Today is Thursday, 06/26/2025. We are live from the TVPN Ultra Dome, the capital of capital.
Speaker 1:The temple Of Technology.
Speaker 2:The fortress of finance. Remixed it for you there. We got a great show for you today, folks. The current thing is the AI talent wars. Meta has poached three OpenAI researchers.
Speaker 2:Then there's also news in the information about what ex OpenAI CTO, Mira Moradi, is planning to do with thinking machines or thinky as we like to call them. Thinky. They're gonna make money. That's the plan. She's Money.
Speaker 1:To help other businesses make money as well.
Speaker 2:I'm excited. Pibbulam at the same time. Is joining to break down what's going on in Europe. She's our European correspondent. Developing nation correspondent.
Speaker 2:Technology. Potential lots potential there. Very excited for that. We might revisit what's going on with Bumble. We might talk about if you didn't follow the story yesterday, Bumble cut 30% of staff as online dating hits quote an inflection point.
Speaker 2:We might dig into that. Also Google has a new artificial intelligence that which will help researchers understand how our genes work. Very interesting. There's new investment platform, Republic, that is planning to let anyone bet on SpaceX. They're going to apparently put secondary shares on chain.
Speaker 2:Also, we mentioned this yesterday, but China is tracking
Speaker 1:down lever up your fart coin
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:To buy SpaceX.
Speaker 2:That might be the right move. You never know. China is tracking down its rare earth experts and taking away passports. And Mike Gallagher is joining from Palantir, and so is Eliana from Palantir. And so we will get the Palantir update, which will be a lot of fun.
Speaker 2:Also, you know, we have to tell you about ramp. Time is money. Say both. He's used corporate cards, bill payments, accounting, and a whole lot more all in one place. Of course, the news that was tearing up the timeline was the fact that the social network too is officially in development with Aaron Sorkin returning this time as director.
Speaker 2:Yaxine says, wrong. I'm the director and I'm also the main character. I thought that was
Speaker 1:really He's definitely a main character.
Speaker 2:Andy, two cents dot money is is writing some some you know jokey dialogue here. He says, sorry I left my aura ring at South Park Commons along with my Eight Sleep burner phone and Bored Ape ledger wallet. You absolute decel. It's pretty funny to reimagine it. But interesting, we have a little scoop here.
Speaker 2:We actually got our hands on the on on a couple pages of the script. It
Speaker 1:was it was left at the gym Yes.
Speaker 2:And we're In Hollywood.
Speaker 1:We're in Hollywood where we are. Yeah. We're fairly confident it is the it could possibly be
Speaker 2:This is the social network too. Official. Official dialogue. Yeah. They haven't shot it yet.
Speaker 2:So with the other script, they've been doing table reads. We wanted to do a little table read for you today. So I'll break it down. You'll play Mark Zuckerberg. I'll play Nat Friedman.
Speaker 1:Sounds great.
Speaker 2:So this happens to be And this
Speaker 1:is taking place in Mark Zuckerberg's office at night in the Meta HQ.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So a middle a minimalist expanse lit by floating AR displays and whiteboards full of transformer diagrams. Mark Zuckerberg is focused yet restless. He stands at a window. Nat Friedman is calm but energized.
Speaker 2:He enters. And Nat opens the scene. You've open sourced Llama, Mark. 70,000,000,000 parameters running in eight k token context windows and word there's a 405,000,000,000 monster still in the lab?
Speaker 1:Open source isn't unleashed, Nat. It's a guided evolution. We publish the weights so the community can help tame them.
Speaker 2:Community, a sizable slice of fair hop to start ups like Mistral. How's the village supposed to ride the beast without many of the original wranglers?
Speaker 1:Talent moves, ideas stay. Group query attention, scaled rotary positional embeddings with NTK where stretching. This isn't incremental. It's a step change.
Speaker 2:Meanwhile, Yan's out there talking about non auto regressive world model hybrids saying the next wave won't be token by token racers. He's ready to retire your thoroughbred mark.
Speaker 1:Yan's job is to keep the herd agile. Llama is today's workhorse. Scout and Maverick are the horizon. Right now, Llama is our public manifesto.
Speaker 2:Your manifesto just made every kid with a decent GPU a potential sorcerer. Hugging Face downloads are exploding. What's next? Magic carpets?
Speaker 1:Exactly. Open weights let the village scale faster than our walls ever could. Purple Llama covers us. CyberSecEval, LlamaGuard, full red team cycles.
Speaker 2:You know Purple Llama isn't bulletproof, Mark. OpenAI is minting cash behind APIs and you're handing out multilingual long context models for free.
Speaker 1:The Llama three community license only restricts firms over 700,000,000 monthly active users. Innovation rises bottom up. Ask Ahmed. Ask Joel. Democratization is the point.
Speaker 2:You're wagering north of $60,000,000,000 in AI CapEx on that democracy. It's a big bet, Mark.
Speaker 1:Not a bet, an ecosystem. Scout is multimodal. Maverick is video first. Laura, Chlora, NFR, quantization. Lama, derivatives already power agents.
Speaker 1:Ragstacks, University Labs, it feeds itself.
Speaker 2:Provided the community keeps aligning with you.
Speaker 1:Alignment happens in real time. RLHF, DPO, RL RLAIF. This is an ecosystem, not a monopoly.
Speaker 2:And if that ecosystem births something you can't steer?
Speaker 1:No one controls progress, Nat. We guide it openly, transparently. No secret rooms. Just a billion hands shaping what's next.
Speaker 2:Then hold on tight and hope we're ready.
Speaker 1:We will be. We're building it together.
Speaker 2:And scene. Really jumps off the page.
Speaker 1:Wow. Riveting. Yeah. Hollywood's back. Hollywood's back.
Speaker 1:This might save Hollywood.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I think this will be People
Speaker 3:said
Speaker 2:that I'm Oscar bait
Speaker 4:right here.
Speaker 1:For sure. Totally. Totally. So anyways, know, maybe maybe somebody just left this as in the you know, as a prank knowing we'd find it
Speaker 2:Maybe. Knowing we'd read it.
Speaker 1:It's entirely possible. It's entirely possible. This is you know, totally real.
Speaker 2:But you know, they're gonna be doing a lot of design work on the next social network movie. They're gonna need to use Figma over in Hollywood. Think bigger, real faster. Figma helps design and development teams build products together. Get started for free at figma.com.
Speaker 1:And make products. You can make products on there now. Check it out.
Speaker 2:So the scoop that we wanted to talk about. Meta has poached three OpenAI researchers, Lucas Bayer, Alexander Kolesnikov, and Joao Zhao. According to people familiar with the matter, an OpenAI spokesperson confirmed the three have left the company.
Speaker 1:I've never I've never seen somebody abbreviate spokesperson
Speaker 2:into spokes.
Speaker 1:Spokes.
Speaker 2:Oh, spokes.
Speaker 1:A spokes.
Speaker 2:A spokes. Okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah. A spokes.
Speaker 2:Brown has a post. He says, wow. They snagged the whole Zurich office. This has been something that's been percolating. The idea that Mark was going on a hiring spree, sending out messages, setting up dinners with AI researchers.
Speaker 2:It seems like he's done it. Tyler Cosgrove has a little bit of background on these folks. I pulled up some posts but what do you have for us, Tyler, to contextualize the trade deal that just went down?
Speaker 5:Yeah. So these guys are are really kind of all stars. Mhmm. So so they're all at Zurich office. They started the OpenAI Zurich office.
Speaker 5:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Has anyone left? Do you know?
Speaker 5:I believe think it might have been just them three.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 5:Because I I know Lucas had there was a tweet where he said he started it, like, just because he didn't wanna move.
Speaker 6:Okay.
Speaker 5:So I think it just them. But, yes. So they all work on multimodal research there. Mhmm. So they're best known.
Speaker 5:They they they were all coauthors on the original vision transformer paper.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 5:So this was in 2020. This is basically this paper is like the reason why you can, like, basically pass an image to ChatGPT. Yeah. Because it it then led to vision transformer then to vision language model, which is now just like kind of they're they're all like multi multi modal now.
Speaker 2:Yeah. VLM is what Yeah. Physical intelligence has been very bullish on. Right? Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 5:Yeah. Okay. So I can just give a little background Please. On on Lucas. Yeah.
Speaker 5:So 2018, he finishes his PhD. Mhmm. He goes straight to Google Brain. Okay. This is where they basically write the the the first, like, you know, vision transformer paper.
Speaker 5:Okay. Then from there, he's he he twenty twenty one, 2024, he he co leads just the entire multimodal team there. Because now they basically realize that, okay. We can actually get these things to be fully general, not just text.
Speaker 2:Yeah. We saw a a Gemini demo of that a couple years ago where it was like a phone looking at a looking at a desk and it would and and the demo person would draw something and then Gemini would be speaking in real time. And the idea was that that was not three different models kind of dancing between each other. It was all one model. And Yeah.
Speaker 2:It was a little controversial at time because it was sped up, I believe.
Speaker 5:Yes.
Speaker 7:But Yeah.
Speaker 2:But it was still incredible technology and you can see that that's something that is gonna get better and now is more in real time. And we're seeing that with Gemini where you can pull out your phone and and show it the world and it will and and Meta's doing this too with the Meta Ray bands. Right? What am I looking at? Right?
Speaker 5:Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I mean, it's really big because, you know, you used to have you would have your text model, then you would have like maybe a convolutional neural network just for the images. Yeah.
Speaker 5:It's very kind of like
Speaker 2:Or you'd like convoluted. You'd like take the take the image, stuff it through BERT to like get some tags around like there's a dog in this image, and then the text model only really knows dog and it all it's only seeing text. But in this case, it can take it can it can continue to see what's actually in the image.
Speaker 5:Got it. Yeah. So okay. So so then Lucas, he is co leading the multi metal team at DeepMind Mhmm. 2024.
Speaker 5:And then just this 2025, this year, he joins OpenAI, starts the new office. Wow. Oh, so he doesn't Not a full year, he's been there. Yeah. It's been really short.
Speaker 5:Yeah. But, yeah, I mean, these are, like, real killers. Like, you know, this is a huge, huge move.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I like Lucas because he's it sounds like he's a legit legend in AI research, but he's also a poster. I don't know if you saw this, but, he was getting back and forth with with Yaxine. He said, ladies and gentlemen, I present to you
Speaker 1:the material was the reason that Yaxine
Speaker 2:It's entirely possible. Terminated. So I I present to you the most surreal exchange I've had on the x on x, the everything app. And Lucas says, sure. If you add ten hours to my days, ten hours during which the kiddo sleeps because it seems like he has children and is dealing with the kind of work life balance.
Speaker 2:And Yaxin says, just perform less good at your job to fit the to fit in the ten hours with the kiddo. That's what I do and I'm sure it will be fine. Going from p 99 to p 90 isn't that big of a deal. And then an hour later, wait this might be bad advice. Please hold.
Speaker 2:Then Lucas says, oh dang. Now I see I got fired today. And what was nice was that Lucas very graciously said, I originally kept the screenshot to wait until the wound healed as I'm not one to put salt on a wound. But since he's addressed this himself, now I assume this post is okay. Let me know if it's not and I'll delete it.
Speaker 2:So very very nice of him. Also, there's a funny post in here where he says, no. I just found out that I left a forty ninety GPU running and completely forgot about it for months. Oopsie daisies. I guess this is how you learn.
Speaker 1:Well, can say now that
Speaker 2:I think
Speaker 7:he can afford it.
Speaker 2:I think he can afford a $117.32 per day on a $40.90, bill. You might even be able to expense that to It's
Speaker 1:per week. It's per
Speaker 2:week. Oh, per week. Yeah. That's not that bad.
Speaker 1:Just a flesh wound.
Speaker 2:Anyway, girl asks, does leaving OpenAI get you on the Sam Blacklist? It turns out these guys weren't OpenAI's best people because last week, Sam Altman said, the best people haven't left for Meta kind of, you know, saying, hey, don't leave because you'll be labeled as a non performer, basically. But the Wall Street Journal
Speaker 1:has more
Speaker 2:data here. The they're joining Meta's super intelligence project. It's it's no longer Reality Labs or LAMA project. It's a super intelligence project. And we've seen a number of the executives come in, they're obviously staffing up on the research side as well.
Speaker 1:Zuckerberg And we heard last week that Mark or maybe it was earlier this week that Mark is personally texting, calling people, inviting them to dinner. Getting dinner. Full founder mode not leaving it up to Meta's massive recruiting team.
Speaker 2:I think it's right move.
Speaker 1:Very motivated.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I mean, this feels like a product and a project that doesn't necessarily need, you know, thousands and thousands of people. It seems like you need the really the thousand x engineers and you need only a few of them. The 50 people.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And the interesting dynamic is if you're an if you're an engineer that joined in the last year, you're getting a pretty meaningful valuation bump Mhmm. But not going from call it 10,000,000,000 to 300. Yeah. And now the other thing that's sort of coinciding with all of the, you know, all this sort of like recruiting chaos is that OpenAI and Microsoft aren't exactly getting along right now in terms of restructuring their deal.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. So there's a lot up in the air in terms of can this entity transition to a for profit? Is it gonna be able to IPO? Yeah. Sure.
Speaker 1:They provide, you know, different mechanisms for liquidity. But, you know, Meta has the ability to provide potentially more stability in that, you know, you're getting equity at what is it 1,700,000,000,000.0 ish. Yeah. But it's highly liquid unlikely to fluctuate Yeah. You know, necessarily to the same degree.
Speaker 1:And you're getting a lot of resources in that, you know, like OpenAI Meta is spending tens of billions of dollars on on CapEx Yeah. To support the the incredible talent.
Speaker 2:It is it is interesting. Like like, the the live player dynamic of Zac in founder mode, like, you can you can you can do the horse race between Sam and Zac all day long, but this feels like it this puts the screws much more to what's Amazon doing? What's Apple doing? What's even Microsoft doing on the AI researcher side if this is such an important such an important role? And we'll we'll go into this with with thinking machines and some of the other some of the other labs and what they're doing.
Speaker 2:But they're like, if you are Tim Cook, you have to be asking yourself, like, I appropriately staffed for the next generation here? Because it's clearly possible for a trillion dollar big tech company to catch up, if you get the right people and you build the right things. And so it seems like this is this is almost like less this this feels like it could be less nerve wracking for Sam, who has a dominant consumer app that's growing growing growing, and a really solid team in place. These hired a ton of people. There's been just as many big, you know, talent moves into OpenAI as have moved into Meta.
Speaker 2:But we haven't seen that on the Apple side.
Speaker 1:There's also more, I'm sure, I would imagine more clarity
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Internally at OpenAI around like, are building a what what could become a Yep. A new tech giant. It could be the MAG eight. Right? Yep.
Speaker 1:Whereas at Meta, it's very exciting. There's a lot of resources. Mhmm. There's a lot of ambition. Right?
Speaker 1:This is a super intelligence team. But at the same time, it's unclear exactly how AI will fit into the Meta ecosystem.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:And it's it's you know, if people want to work on something very specific, know, working on an app that might a year from now have, you know, a billion plus DAUs and something truly novel is certainly gonna be appealing to to some type of people.
Speaker 2:Well, you're trying to build an app with a billion with a billion DAUs, you gotta get on linear. Linear is a purpose built tool for planning and building products. Meet the system for modern software development, streamline issues, projects and product road maps. Should we go to the chief OpenAI hater, OpenAI?
Speaker 1:Is a linear customer themselves.
Speaker 2:Oh,
Speaker 1:wow. And I'm sure if you ask them, they would say, the only reason we are successful is because of Yes.
Speaker 2:Yes. Linear.app. It's like the transformer model and linear.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Those two.
Speaker 1:And then you're done.
Speaker 2:Key ingredients. Nick is is pouring some cold water on OpenAI as he know as he's known to do. He says Microsoft signals to walk away from negotiations with OpenAI. OpenAI plans to convert into a for profit company to raise capital and potentially IPO, but needs Microsoft's approval. Microsoft has IP rights to all OpenAI models until 2000 thirty and twenty percent revenue share.
Speaker 2:OpenAI wants to waive this AGI clause and end Microsoft's IP rights and swap 20% revenue share with royalty plus equity. Microsoft is not happy with the new offer. OpenAI is considering a nuclear option of accusing Microsoft of antitrust.
Speaker 1:Which is funny because having the nuclear option sort of like be leaking out already is kind of rough.
Speaker 2:Part of the It's part of the strategy. Austin Allred says, still absolutely insane to me that Microsoft gets 20% of OpenAI revenue off the top, not 20% of profit. 20¢ of every dollar OpenAI brings in goes straight to Microsoft. It's like something out of Shark Tank.
Speaker 1:That's very Now, you can imagine hearing of Shark Tank pitch Yeah. And and you know, one of the sharks Just
Speaker 2:wanna 20% the sharkiest sharky. Sharky.
Speaker 1:Here here's the deal. Give you, you know, a million bucks but I want 20¢ of every dollar that comes in.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I mean, at the same time like would would OpenAI be where it is today without pulling forward that multi billion dollar GPU credits and that investment that Microsoft made. Like, did take a risky bet. Ben Thompson was basically saying that that And just That if you're oh, sorry.
Speaker 1:What I don't you know, I'm sure they have an entire plan around how they would accuse Microsoft of anti competitive behavior but overall this was a deal that they did that they agreed to Mhmm. That OpenAI wants to renegotiate now. Yep. And I think that you know, Microsoft made a big
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Bet at the time.
Speaker 2:Yep. And The so Ben Thompson was was was digging into this idea of, like, what is the structure and incentives of Microsoft? So Microsoft is not a venture capital firm. And so do they do they have a shareholder duty to to hold on for another 10 x in the stock essentially? Or should they be comfortable getting out of the stock essentially?
Speaker 2:Like like like, is there a world where they are justified with their shareholders to to renegotiate this? And what are their incentives?
Speaker 1:I think Satya has a fiduciary duty
Speaker 2:Just to maximize net present value. Right?
Speaker 1:The value of this partnership and this investment that they Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so what
Speaker 1:role And and and I brought this up I think when we were talking a couple weeks ago, which is like, they're not an investor that's like worried about their brand as an investor. Oh, yeah. It's not like, you know, an important portfolio company goes to a VC firm and they're like, hey, we wanna bring in this new investor and you're gonna get diluted a little bit. It's like Microsoft is not Yeah. Like, they're they're it's not like they're they need to build a brand of being founder friendly.
Speaker 1:This is a hunt multi $100,000,000,000 company dealing with a multi trillion dollar company. And it's at this point it's not about you know, being startup friendly or Yeah. Founder friendly. It's just business.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I guess I I I would probably lean if I were Satya just off the top of my head like lean into allowing the for profit conversion and I would want exclusivity over the OpenAI API because I'm in the enterprise business. I wouldn't necessarily care too much about the long term revenue split on the consumer app. I don't know. I I I might be willing to trade that for for owning the b to b sides.
Speaker 2:Have
Speaker 1:some news from Lucas Lucas Beyer.
Speaker 2:Oh.
Speaker 1:Hey, all. Couple quick notes. One, yes, we will be joining Meta. Two, no. We did not get a $100,000,000 sign on.
Speaker 1:That's fake news. Excited about what's ahead though. We'll share more in due time and he cc's his buddies in the Zurich office.
Speaker 2:That's great.
Speaker 1:And yeah, it's funny he said, no, it's very easy to say no, we did not get a $100,000,000 sign on, that's fake news because he could have just gotten like a 101 or 50 or could have just been like very Yeah. You know, it's like Yeah. Investing We're each vesting you know
Speaker 2:It wasn't exactly 100 Yeah. That's the only thing he denied.
Speaker 1:Yeah. He
Speaker 2:denies it getting exactly
Speaker 1:what He denies that we did not explicitly get a $100,000,000 sign on. Got it. Anyways
Speaker 2:Well, Lucas,
Speaker 1:no matter
Speaker 2:how much you got, I'm sure you should you can afford a luxury watch so you should head over to Bezel. You're already in Switzerland. Perfect. Perfect. Your Bezel Concierge is available now to source you any watch on the planet seriously any watch.
Speaker 2:So, Lucas, we'd be happy to introduce you to a Bezel Concierge to get you set up with some fantastic Swiss watches. It's it's so perfect having a watch sponsor.
Speaker 1:Yeah. He might have like today off, tomorrow off. Yeah. You know, starting in Meta
Speaker 2:on If you're going into Meta, I mean Sam is not a watch guy but Bizak is. Yeah. You want you don't want to walk into the the skip level meeting with Zuck, know. I don't know who he's reporting to maybe maybe Alex, maybe maybe Nat. But you don't want to walk into that that first meeting with Zuck and have bare wrist.
Speaker 2:Certainly Apple Watch. Certainly not an Apple Watch. Like that is straight up rival. No. So yeah.
Speaker 2:You you're gonna want a racing machine on the wrist to let Zuck know that you appreciate high horology. This is important.
Speaker 1:Separately, OpenAI was at Hardfork Live. Yeah. And they were asked by the host about Dario saying that 50% of entry level white collar work could disappear in one to five years. And if they agreed, Sam Altman says, no. No, I don't.
Speaker 1:And then Brad says, COO says, no we have no evidence of this. Dario is a scientist and I hope he takes an evidence based approach to these types of things. Anyways, he he went on in in the clip Yeah. To basically say like, yes jobs will change. Right now, we don't have evidence and basically reorients around.
Speaker 1:It's gonna be important to know how to use these tools really well but they are rolling out AI at tons of different types of companies from SMBs to large Yep. Multinational firms.
Speaker 2:I I I also think this is more of like an economics question than an AI research question. There's this idea of like, what is the so so if if AGI becomes a one for one replacement for a white collar worker, then what are you seeing in the labor market? You're seeing supply increase dramatically. But what is the demand for white collar work? Like how much stuff do we have to do?
Speaker 2:How much software do we have to build? How many software products do we have to sell? Like, we might see the demand for labor is actually 10x. And so, yes, if you believe this world where we can not only have AGI at white collar worker level and then scale it up to produce I mean, how many white collar workers are there? If you say 50% of entry level, that's that's tens of millions of people.
Speaker 2:So can you actually run the inference at that level consistently without brownouts or whatever? And then and then and then will demand for labor stay the same? It could increase by 10. It could increase by a 100. Like, we might find more things to do, in which case you might want both working.
Speaker 2:You might want to have 10 times as many AIs working as humans, and you might still want all the humans working. This happens all the time. And so I I I I don't know. The the the fast takeoff thing, we can go back and forth on this, but I think we're we're kind of post this.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Going back the going back to the Internet example in the .com era, CEOs were selling that you would be able to run, you know, the same type of rhetoric around. You're gonna have a 10 person team doing a billion dollars in revenue, and that ultimately didn't play out Yeah. Exactly that way. So
Speaker 2:Well, staying in AI world, Sam Altman is providing some emails and extra context around the Jason Regolo allegations.
Speaker 1:These four emails really Bodied. Mugged. Bodied Jason Bodied. Regolo. We were covering Yes.
Speaker 1:A few days ago how there's a company called IYO Yep. That had been developing this audio type computing device Yep. That would allow you to leverage AI, speak, you know, speak with it. We what was interesting to me is it was that they they have some type of technology that they're alleged allegedly developing to provide kind of like different layers to audio to kind of give you like this like audio display. So cool language, interesting to think about.
Speaker 1:Sam basically says, they're suing us over the name. The name thing I I do I do kind of understand and clearly a judge felt that way otherwise, I wouldn't have had to scrub everything. Mhmm. But the initial lawsuit really painted this picture like OpenAI was trying to mine this company for for kind of IP beyond the name Yeah. In terms of how the product work and then
Speaker 2:Do you think either of these names are good?
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:My iPhone. I pulled out my iPhone. I pulled out my IO. I'm using my IO. Hand me my IO.
Speaker 2:Pass me my IO. Give me my, you know, I need to charge my IO. I need to charge my IO. They're definitely OpenAI
Speaker 1:has a history of naming things strategically.
Speaker 2:Yes. You know, maybe it breaks through. Google was not Yeah. These names weren't like Yeah. Super logical, but then they became so popular that people people use them.
Speaker 2:I don't know. It doesn't jump out to me as like a as like Yeah.
Speaker 1:Think they're gonna open the eyes and be able to come up with a great name.
Speaker 2:Might be
Speaker 1:able to be in.
Speaker 2:Powerful. I mean, I imagine that this is a settlement.
Speaker 1:I imagine that this is a settlement. Anyways, we can read through some of the emails.
Speaker 2:If if I'm if I'm IYO and I and I have a he he was asking for 10,000,000 to invest in the AI meets audio hardware company. So it feels like $10,000,000 would allow the the company to kind of like move forward with the next thing. He's interested in research and development. Like it seems like he's pre launch. So like, you could settle.
Speaker 2:Say, hey, yeah, we we we do have a claim on this name a little bit. Give us a couple million dollars to back off the name and we'll rebrand. And then when they come out with their thing, they can come up with a different name. It just feels like they would be able to
Speaker 1:this this type of act the the lawsuit overall seemed to be about more than just the name. Mhmm. It was like a frustration with behavior but these emails that Sam shares Destroyed. Destroyed. Absolutely destroyed.
Speaker 1:So on 03/04/2025, Jason, the CEO of IYO says, hey, Sam. I'll keep it brief. I'd love the opportunity to pitch you to invest $10,000,000 in my AI meets audio hardware company. So the key issue here is that it seems very clear that OpenAI had been working on working
Speaker 2:People had been talking about Sam Altman's interest in hardware for AI for two or three years since he made the investment Humane, and he was talking about this for a long time. Long from had been started. Just super logical that Over everyone who's building a consumer app wants to own the next platform. Zuck is going into VR. It it wasn't rocket science to figure out that Sam Altman would be interested in hardware at some point.
Speaker 2:And so like that makes sense but then, you know, Sam clarifies very very quickly here. Like thanks for reaching out.
Speaker 1:With Johnny eye, he's the one driving this. It's crazy. And Jason himself understands he goes, rut rut. Want to work together? I don't wanna go up against you man.
Speaker 1:Not the right language to try to set something up. Anyways, so they go back and They're
Speaker 2:both in lowercase. This is breaking news.
Speaker 1:They're they're Yeah.
Speaker 2:Same on the lowercase Lowercase
Speaker 1:on lowercase violence. Anyways, Peter another member of the team, they I guess tried the product on May 6 and you can see from Jason's email that there were
Speaker 2:Demo fails.
Speaker 1:Bunch of demo fails in in terms of like basically, wasn't working, still trying to figure out a way to partner. Mhmm. And anyways, Peter says the devices, this is May about a month ago, very orthogonal to ours and doesn't really work yet. Mhmm. They offered that we look at the IP but I doubt there's anything there.
Speaker 1:Again, the device wasn't working reliably. It sounds like. Anyways, more of this will come out in court but at the moment it seems like maybe something there around the name and some real frustration but ultimately won't be probably a big deal.
Speaker 2:Well, there's no frustration when you're using Vanta. Automate compliance, manage risk, prove trust continuously. Vanta's trust management platform takes the manual work out of your security and compliance process replaces continuous automation.
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Speaker 2:Joy of using Vanta. That's right. So Turner Novak says, huge if true after raising an astonishing 2,000,000,000 at a $10,000,000,000 valuation from investors including Andreessen Horowitz less than five months after its founding. Miramaradi has told investors that tiny what Thinking Machine Labs Yep. TML is developing custom AI that will enable businesses to make more money.
Speaker 2:Goodness. This is amazing news.
Speaker 1:I can't wait to get our pause on
Speaker 2:this. There's been so much Exactly. There's been so much yapping in AI about, oh, changing the world and exponential take off, fast take off.
Speaker 1:It's It's interesting. Finally just It's the first indication of the startup strategy. You know, the the the media had been taking this angle like, Mira just came out and just raised billions Yep. Without actually talking about what she was doing. And yes, she could raise billions without really talking.
Speaker 1:She could get a blank check. Yes. I have to imagine that she would have had conversations with some of the investors and said, here's generally what we're working on.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And this is a pre seed, remember? Yes. So it's just about the team.
Speaker 2:What's interesting here is that there's been this like pervasive narrative that like OpenAI has been hemorrhaging like talent and cofounders. Right? Because Dario was at OpenAI, he started Anthropic. Elon. Elon starts XAI.
Speaker 2:Ilya starts SSI. Mira starts thinking machines. And my question was always like, okay the narrative has always been like, they don't like Sam and that's why they leave. But my question is like, why don't they all join forces and work together? Like why didn't why didn't Mira go to Anthropic?
Speaker 2:Why didn't Ilya go to Anthropic? Why didn't Elon just work with Anthropic instead of starting another competitor? Everyone always starts like a new competitor. But this kind of seems like it reveals the idea that Mira Moradi and Ilya Zitzkever might be very diverged on like the path of where AGI is going. Mira wants to do RL for businesses.
Speaker 2:Other businesses make and Ilya is much more of like this true believer, just thinking that, you know, he wants to go straight shot to super superintelligence. No products. So, anyway, we will continue to cover this story as we learn more about thinking machines. But we have to bring in our European correspondent, Pippa Lam from Sweet Capital. Welcome to the stream.
Speaker 2:How are you doing? What's going on?
Speaker 6:Hey, guys. How's it going coming in from Europe?
Speaker 2:It's great. Is your Starlink connection strong? I know they don't have they don't have broadband out there in the old Continent.
Speaker 6:You know what? We're all just trying to get ourselves to The Hague and get some of that defense procurement that
Speaker 2:Yes. Yes. Yes.
Speaker 6:We're now gonna be spending on. So, yeah, hopefully, the Starlink will make it here. No. Hopefully, they'll hear me hear me okay.
Speaker 2:Hopefully. Yeah. Give us the breakdown of the latest news from NATO.
Speaker 6:Yeah. So it's it's exciting. I mean, I think that pretty much all global press has been focused on this morning. You know, president Trump and the current US administration has really managed to do thank you very much, has managed to do the thing that no US leader has actually managed to do before, which is to get Europe and US' allies here to actually open up their their wallets and increase their annual commitment to percentage of GDP on defense spending. So, know, this is something that dates back to, I think, 2017.
Speaker 6:Mean, obviously, certain lot of American presidents have have really pushed for this before. This isn't a new ask from The US side. Mhmm. But, certainly, this is the first time we've really seen some some progress. I mean, to put this in context, The US has really paid about yeah.
Speaker 6:It has paid about two thirds of, you know, the NATO budget for the for the recent years. So it's really been on it upon the upon Europe to really, you know, increase how much they're contributing. And so I think it's certainly a big win for The US, but also a big win for national security across across the West and its allies. So, yeah, definitely good sentiments here on the ground, and I think certainly when it comes to if you see how Trump's mood has changed from when he when he was boarding that helicopter a couple of days ago to Swearing.
Speaker 3:Some of
Speaker 6:the comments he was making Yep. After secretary general Rutter's comments. I think that, you know, The US is in a really interesting position now, and and so is NATO.
Speaker 1:Did we ever figure out what the the NATO chief he claims he didn't call Trump? No.
Speaker 5:I I
Speaker 2:don't know if
Speaker 1:see all this?
Speaker 2:No. No. Break this down.
Speaker 1:I don't I don't know if he saw anything. I I I couldn't tell what was fake news. Did you have any insight there that NATO
Speaker 6:So I so I saw the headlines.
Speaker 1:There's an ABC news headlines from yesterday. NATO secretary general calls Trump quote unquote daddy.
Speaker 2:Wait. Oh yeah. And then the White House put out a video about this. I don't know who's on
Speaker 1:NATO secretary general I guess came out and denies it.
Speaker 2:Yeah. The White House, this is on the official page, put out a one minute video and it just and the and the comment on acts is daddy's home. Hey, hey, hey, daddy. President Donald Trump attended the NATO summit in The Hague, Netherlands.
Speaker 1:Then the secretary general came referred to US leadership, not Trump.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:So Yes. Still
Speaker 6:The White House social media never disappoints. Have to say that is I always have my expectations and they surpass.
Speaker 2:It's it's pretty wonderful.
Speaker 6:I did really I did go back and watch the original clip to try and understand the analogy. And effectively, Trump was comparing some of our some of the geopolitical conflicts right now to children playing in the playground, and then, of course, secretary general Rutter then comes and says, and sometimes if people are being children, then he brings in the daddy analogy. And, of course, in the press conference, Trump just jumped on that. He said, Yeah. They called me daddy.
Speaker 6:You know, he it was he just ran with it. And as we saw in the White House account this morning, I think there's Reels, there's, you know, there's YouTubes. They they really went for it. So
Speaker 2:So on on new dispense spending, there's actually a graphic that is pretty interesting to pull up here. It is The United States is paying, like, more than two thirds. So in 2023, NATO's budget was 1,300,000,000,000.0. 860,000,000,000 of that came from The United States. Germany was the next second highest with 68,000,000,000.
Speaker 2:So Yeah. Less than one tenth. Then The UK at 65,000,000,000, France at 56,000,000,000, Italy at 31,000,000,000, and then a bunch of other countries in the 10 to 5 to 8,000,000,000 range. Canada's 30,000,000,000. And so, yeah, this is a big change.
Speaker 2:I guess the the current benchmark is 2% of GDP. And this is, I guess, it is an agreement to to try and get to 5%. Now that's gonna roll out over the next decade to 02/1935. And and I mean, the real key takeaway is that now Trump is publicly supporting NATO. He's been Yeah.
Speaker 2:Very against it, but he's in favor. But and and then there was also some questions about the the shift away from the focus on Russia and Ukraine. Trump wants to end the conflict there. We can talk about that, but then eventually, wanna get into what this means for startups.
Speaker 6:Yeah. I think I think what's also interesting is is I have the same questions as you. Right? So they put out these headline numbers. It all sounds very good.
Speaker 6:We all agree that there needed to be more of a balance between The US spending versus the rest of NATO. Mhmm. And I think what was really encouraging to see in terms of how this is is going to impact markets is if you look at comments that came out from The UK this morning from Prime Minister Stalmer, he actually said, Okay, well, we've got this, you know, target by 02/1935. We are going to dedicate up to, you know, five well, 5% of of GDP spending on defense. But he actually then gave us further information and said that actually, if you look at where we see the national security needs now, we actually expect to surpass 4% of spending by 2027 or in 2027.
Speaker 6:So that's, to me, that's that's a great, you know, signal to markets that this isn't some sort of lofty target that they're going to try and hit push out and sort of, you know, relabel things in this defense or or really kind of be very gradual about how they're deploying and how they're gonna procure. I see this, and I think, okay, Europe is really serious about this. The UK is currently, just for perspective, at around 2.3% of its its GDP. So it's slightly above that 2% benchmark. But the fact to go from, you know, 2.3% to 4% by 2027 is is really encouraging.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 6:And I know certainly on the ground, we're already seeing quite a lot of increased interest in European defense plays, some of the existing I suppose, call them incumbents, but, you know, the Andriel's of the world are getting really excited about this market. And less so for from a change on their side, but a fact that, okay, the, you know, The UK and Europe is potentially finally actually putting its money where its mouth is in terms of how it wants to procure and how it really wants to beef up its national security efforts.
Speaker 1:Yeah. There because the question will be, how does that budget actually get distributed between new players like Helsing Yep. Twitch, Daniel at Spotify had a nicely timed, investment into
Speaker 2:that. Actually.
Speaker 1:It's almost like he had a crystal ball or something and then new new kind of, the new and the American players
Speaker 2:like the of the Nordic tech scene.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I'm sure the NATO the NATO chief would probably refer to him that way. Yeah. And then, know, Andrew all the way down to, you know, the the Boeing's and the Yeah.
Speaker 2:Lockheed. I I mean, the four companies that I think are really interesting to study in this in this like how does this development plays out are probably Rheinmetall, Helsing, Andoril, and Palantir. And and they all kind of represent very different strategies and and but you could see money flowing to any of them, but then there are also decisions with all of those. Obviously, Rheinmetall, very old company, legacy incumbent in Europe, and so easier to get across the the a deal done because they have all the infrastructure there. Helsink's kind of the up and comer.
Speaker 2:Andoril's the the hot American company. Palantir's, you know, founded by some Germans, but ultimately American company. What are you seeing the
Speaker 1:Even Rheinmetall has been on this crazy run. Oh, yeah. For $32 a share. In 2022, you could have bought it for $30 a
Speaker 2:share. Wow. And what is it now?
Speaker 1:And 432.
Speaker 2:400 at 10 x.
Speaker 1:So so, yeah. Up up tremendously. Even even this year is up, you know, 250%.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So so so so what what are you thinking about? I mean, this seems like a massive military budget increase in Europe. How serious is the rhetoric around the desire for homegrown defense technology solutions in Europe broadly?
Speaker 6:So, I I mean, I think, Jordi, as well on your point on Rheinmetall, I think you also wanna pull up the chart for Saab. That's been rallying, you know, a lot. So you're definitely seeing some allocation from institutions into existing incumbents. But I think for me and other members of the startup and venture community, what we're really asking is how serious is seriously is this going to impact the pre IPO and private markets? Mhmm.
Speaker 6:And I think what's very interesting here is you also saw Anderil announce a partnership with Rheinmetall, I think, about a week ago. So you're certainly going to see some you know, there's there's plenty to go around in terms of the market opportunity, and I think the sentiment is really beginning to shift now in terms of, you know, both investors and governments opening their wallets. But I do think that, you know, on one hand, I do still tend to agree with this argument that defense primes are really hard businesses. There is always going to be, in my view, a monopolistic or oligopolistic element to how these markets run. It's not that we're gonna come out and see, you know, 10 Andorils all spring up.
Speaker 6:I think ultimately, a defense prime doesn't doesn't spring up overnight. And as you mentioned, you already have Anduril in The US, who, by the way, has been very present in Europe and The UK from the very start. You also obviously have, you know, our Swedish backed, but German company, Helsink. Yeah. And there's some really interesting companies coming out of The UK right now.
Speaker 6:There's one in stealth at the moment, which has been getting a lot of interest both here on the ground, but interestingly, a lot of the cap table is is American. So I think, you know well Two for America. Undefeated.
Speaker 1:Air horn
Speaker 5:is always It's
Speaker 1:always ready. That's great.
Speaker 6:I think so, Link, look, on one hand, I I haven't changed my thesis on defense investing overnight. Still think that there is a monopolistic advantage that that companies like Andrew will will have here. But I do think at the same time, this does mark a real change in sentiment and opportunity around European and UK defense. And I think there are a few reasons why. I think number one, if you look at, you know, pure dollar spend, the you know, Europe and The UK is just coming from a a much further or earlier starting point.
Speaker 6:So if you look at the multiples in terms of pure purchasing and and procurement, they're going to far outspend The US because they've been so behind. Mhmm. So on a pure kind of procurement dollar basis, you know, Europe has to play catch up. So I think that's obviously going to be, you know, a tailwind both for, know, companies like Andriel, but also some of the the local players. Yeah.
Speaker 6:And I do think that this is is kind of furthering this idea of what's called trusted capital. So the opportunity for The US and its allies. So certainly, you know, getting in, so some contracts by a housing or a or a local company here in The UK. I think the second piece that's really interesting is that The UK in particular is, you know, behind from a manufacturing standpoint. So there's gonna be a huge exam opportunity for a lot of companies to really onshore here, and that could be, you know, American companies who want to build out manufacturing capabilities here in The UK or across Mainland Europe.
Speaker 6:And that is also going to result in investment, dollars spent, and a huge opportunity for for the defense sector. I think the counter to this, and and this goes along with a lot of conversations that I've had with with Brian Shimp from Andoril, who, by the way, was having a lot of these conversations at Bilderberg in in Stockholm a couple of weeks ago across the Paris Air Show and and with with leaders here in in The UK and Europe. And that's the the criticism has to be that Europe has had a template for modern warfare on its doorstep for the last, you know, several years. You know, Putin first invaded Crimea in 02/2014. There have been so many blueprints for how modern warfare looks on our doorstep, yet the governments haven't really got the memo.
Speaker 6:This is really the first time that we're seeing governments come out with real new blueprints for how modern warfare should be conducted. So, you know, the the classic example is, you know, Houthi rebels sending over drones and, you know, The US and its allies having these exquisite exquisite weapon systems to to shoot down these these drones. So, you know, Europe has really been asleep at the wheel when it comes to to some of these more kind of modern warfare or or scrappy warfare strategies. And I think that from what it sounds like from conversations here on the ground, the government is actually getting the memo now, which does clear that path for startups to enter with a different product spec. I think, not to talk up my own book being British, I do think that The UK is leading the pack here.
Speaker 6:Sorry. That's good. You know, The UK has just done a strategic military defense review, and they're actually really taking some interesting steps in terms of how they're reshuffling, how they organize the military. And, you know, I think some great work's been done here on the ground with you know, it was UK Tech Week a week ago, and, you know, Mac Clifford, who is an adviser to to the prime minister, talked specifically about how there is going to be an opportunity to have a trillion dollar market cap out of The UK, and he actually mentioned that, you know, defense really could be somewhere that that we could see that happen.
Speaker 1:So what about what about British dynamism? Is there a groundswell of excitement in on the ground in Europe? You have some great manufacturers, Bentley, Rolls Royce, Aston Martin,
Speaker 5:and then you also
Speaker 1:have ARM, So the computing
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah. ARM is
Speaker 1:a Computing history as well. So it does feel like there's still some very, you know
Speaker 6:We just got a new we just got a new head of MI six. So the one public facing he was a woman, actually, the first ever chief of MI six. And her role actually at MI six had previously been Q. I don't know if you follow
Speaker 2:the Bond.
Speaker 6:James Bond films, but her background was is
Speaker 1:That's not just Hollywood creation.
Speaker 2:I thought that was entirely for the cinema.
Speaker 6:Well, I mean, I think I think that The world
Speaker 1:is a cinema, John. It's the greatest cinema of all time. Yeah.
Speaker 6:That would be the adjacent role that she had And so but but C, which is is the Mhmm. Name that is given to the bureau chief, that is the one front facing role of of MI six. So but but she obviously does have a background in in that space, and so I think it is very interesting. And and, you know, it would be remiss to say that The UK has has got a fantastic r and d sort of heritage, you know, whether whether it be in, you know, AI, obviously, we've talked about this before, Demis
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 6:And and DeepMinds and a lot of, you know, machine learning talent. We've also had, you know, incredible stuff in robotics and and synthetic biology. There's some really fantastic r and d centers, you know, outside of London, Oxford, Cambridge, Bristol. And and, actually, we we also saw some exciting news in the autonomous vehicle space about a week ago with UK company called Wave, who announced their first public road rollout of autonomous vehicles on public roads, which is going to be in partnership with Uber, which is going to be the first time we have, like, a Waymo equivalent experience witnessing them on the streets of London. So, yeah, we're Yeah, think we're
Speaker 1:going to have It's Alex Kendall from Wave as the Yes,
Speaker 2:we're going
Speaker 1:to have him on the show soon. Who's the British?
Speaker 2:I'm excited about.
Speaker 6:He's great. Also, I think, if you look at some of the work that, again, adviser to to Downing Street, Mac Clifford has done, the the government came out with its AI opportunities plan in at the beginning of the year. And in the spending review last week, The UK committed to spend, I think, $2,000,000,000 or maybe £22,000,000,000 on on AI opportunities and a further £1,000,000,000 for ARIA, which is an r and d deep tech body. So I think, certainly, you know, defense is one angle. We're also going to see continued interest, know, in autonomous vehicles and robotics and some of these really deep tech sectors that actually The UK has got a very deep history in that, you know, hopefully, is gonna translate into market opportunities for both both local investors, but also US investors that want to get some exposure to some of these increased dollars that are gonna be spent.
Speaker 2:Interesting. Flipping back a bit to the Ukraine situation, is it possible that we see, like, a drone company come out of Ukraine? Ukraine has a long heritage of fantastic software developers. There's a lot of companies that have had, like, offshore Ukrainian engineering teams for a long time. Like, the the the populace has clearly been very technical, but then, you know, the the pressure cooker of the war has resulted in just insane industrial capacity.
Speaker 2:I'm pretty sure they make more drones in Ukraine than I think even even China, like anywhere in the world, they're making the most of them. Now a lot of them are like handmade, and it's it's not fully automated. It's not fully productized. But, like, my my hope would be the the war dies down, but then there's this residual capability that comes out of that. But have you heard any, like, rumblings about that, or do you think that there's any sort of, like, peace dividend that could come out of Ukraine?
Speaker 6:I think that what's you know, as I alluded to before, the Ukraine has really been a blueprint for, you know, how modern warfare is conducted. And I think that, certainly, we've, you know, definitely been following very closely in Europe what's been happening on the frontline in The Ukraine. I think also, know, the Americans have also been paying close attention. If you look at a lot of the work that Eric Schmidt has been doing, especially since The US announced that it you know, its intention is to pull back some of its commitments with Ukraine. I think you've had private individuals such as as Eric Schmidt, you know, really take the mantle when it comes to how some of these newer sort of more scrappy drone technologies are being built.
Speaker 6:So I certainly think that that is going to provide an opportunity for, you know, scaling across procurement on, you know, other areas of the content the continent. I do think that in some ways, and I was talking to a a defense founder this morning about this, there is an opportunity in this middle space. So I think that, you know, traditionally, we had these exquisite weapon systems which were really, you know, the the the luxury pick your your car of choice, the Aston Martin of
Speaker 1:of the The b two spirit.
Speaker 6:Yeah. There we go. Okay. And then we had the very kind of scrappy, you know you know, drones that are being built in the front line. And I think what is the really kind of sweet spot right now is going to be trying to fill out some of that that gap in the middle.
Speaker 6:And certainly, know, if you look at some of the the products that that Andoril have build been building and some of the incumbents that I'm sorry. I should say new entrants that I'm looking at here in The UK, they're really trying to to try to fill that. Not not quite the the very early entry sort of technology pieces, but that kind of one up, which are more affordable. And you can still use against, you know, your Houthi rebels or whoever, and it's not going to kind of use up your entire budget. But it's also, you know, modern technology.
Speaker 6:It's it's, you know, looking at at technologies like like autonomy, autonomous vehicles. So I think that that that is a really strong entry point for some of the incumbents sorry, the the new startups we're seeing now.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's kind of a interesting wrinkle to the idea of, like, when you're ramping up defense budgets as fast as NATO is in this case, it's it's it's like, the budget itself isn't necessarily as big as America, but there's so much new budget coming online that you're almost better equipped to buy autonomous systems as opposed to The United States and the army modernization effort is reallocating budget. No one's saying like, oh, yeah. Let's double it. Like, we don't have the money to double it.
Speaker 2:And so every dollar that we allocate towards an autonomous We could. We could. Yeah. But but every dollar that we allocate towards an autonomous system, a modern system has to come away from an exquisite system that has a ton of constituents, a ton of people that build it, a ton of lobbyists.
Speaker 1:All parts come from so many different states
Speaker 2:and regions and
Speaker 1:different senators that
Speaker 2:that Yeah. Whereas if you're bringing net new budget online, it's a lot easier to go with the newest and and best technology that's actually equipped for the
Speaker 5:modern world.
Speaker 1:My question is, will we see, you know, a $5,000,000,000 company that just makes drones? Defense? Yeah. Right? Like, could a Niros be something like that?
Speaker 1:Or if you look at history of these contractors, you see that they often are are very the primes are obviously all multi products. Right? And so we will have to see how it develops.
Speaker 2:Very cool.
Speaker 6:I I think what's most encouraging, though, for me is the sentiment has changed. So I think there was this hubris, right, amongst a lot of the, I mean, US and its allies, but particularly in Europe, where they just wanted to create these exquisite weapon systems that were really never designed to be used. And so I think the biggest shift for me has been kind of, like, waking up and realizing that this is totally unfit for purpose. And actually, you kind of look silly by having these exquisite systems that are completely, you know, you you can't use them. So I think that, for me, when I start to see more of a kind of cultural shift in government, which is very rare, that's when I think you can start to see some of these impacts, like, trickling into markets and be it in in the later stage or in public markets, but then also really kind of at this, I'd say, series a stage at the moment where you're seeing a lot of interest from from US and European investors.
Speaker 2:Very cool. I mean, it's really exciting stuff. We gotta track it more. I'm excited to talk
Speaker 1:to some
Speaker 2:of these founders. Wave and Helsing will have to give them on.
Speaker 1:What other situations are you monitoring? There's a lot going on this week. We've been we've been I don't know if you've been following the the prediction market space but with the with the New York City Oh, yeah. Primary was interesting. Is that is that a is that Yeah.
Speaker 1:You paying attention to that category? Do you think there's potentially opportunities for new prediction markets or are are is poly market and and other players kind of racing away?
Speaker 6:I mean, I haven't been following it so closely beyond, you know, it's impossible to even sitting here in London avoid all the the memes that are coming out about about what's going on in New York. I think that, you know, I think Shane Coupland is a fantastic operator. I don't know how much space there is in in terms of, you know, post deregulation of some of this space. You know, you would think that there there are going to be other entrants. I think that, you know, Shane's created such, you know, in some ways a a head start for himself and and how Polymarket is is is doing that I haven't been spending active time looking at sort of new entrants in that space.
Speaker 6:But, you know, look, ultimately, I'm a you know, our our fund has a heritage of of gaming. And so I think certainly whenever there's an interesting consumer trend that is unlocked or there is a regulatory shift that can, I guess, impact how a a consumer product is is being built, then we do pay attention? But, yeah, I've definitely been spending way more time on some of this geopods. Yeah.
Speaker 1:What about any you mentioned Wave earlier in the autonomous vehicle space with their UK launch. Are you expecting has there been any chatter about what Tesla would do around autonomous vehicles in in The UK. I think they they sold sort of I think they sold around 25 or 30,000 cars in The UK last year. And so depending it could be an interesting dynamic that we'll we'll see with, Waymo here in The US and Tesla where Tesla has, you know, a much a much more efficient way to build a network, where they don't have the same CapEx requirements as someone like a Waymo. And I'm interested to see if, if, you know, how you see that market unfolding in The UK.
Speaker 6:It's interesting. I think that Wave has really been the poster child for autonomous in The UK, especially in recent years and its partnership with the with with Uber. They also have launched NSF. I mean, Alex Kendall, I'm sure he'll tell you about this when he comes on. Fantastic founder.
Speaker 6:He's been spending a lot of time in San Francisco. I think an interesting story for me here with the autonomous vehicle space in The UK is that, you know, much like I was saying earlier, The UK has a really strong heritage of deep tech. And there was actually initially another competitor in autonomous vehicles who was sort of incubated out of Cambridge. I mean, so was so was so was WAVE. I think Alex Kendall took his first VC pitch meeting in his Cambridge dormitory or something.
Speaker 6:Know, the law was No. Cool. Is perfect. But, actually, this is I I often use autonomous vehicles as an example for the government because there was actually a front runner ahead of WAVE at the beginning, but because it was incubated out of Cambridge University, I think it was Cambridge Oxford. I think it was Cambridge.
Speaker 6:No. I am ex Oxford, so not to kind of, you know, hate on a on my computer. But what was interesting is that there was this technology transfer clause, which meant that the cap table got totally messed up by the arrangements in place from from, you know, Cambridge University, UK government, which basically said for a product of product of this nature, the the the university has to own a certain amount in order to unlock r and d, you know, credits or or, you know, research spending for this company. And, actually, it's it's a perfect example I use for sort of a the old way of building technology in The UK, which was incubated out of these, like, very old historic universities. Mhmm.
Speaker 6:Enter then Alex Kendall, who also wants to pursue autonomous vehicles, and instead of going to the university or to the sort of traditional incumbent capital providers, goes out and raises venture capital
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 6:And is able to therefore scale much faster, build up the technology. I mean, again, these are not overnight.
Speaker 1:Well, you got Masa on board. I'm sure that helps. Right?
Speaker 2:For sure.
Speaker 6:Yeah. Right. And so I think, for me, it's, you know, maybe just an interesting anecdote which pertains to this sector about, you know, how, you know, maybe mentality in Europe
Speaker 5:Mhmm.
Speaker 6:Is at some of somewhat of an inflection point. And I think that autonomous vehicles, you know, is one of the examples where Alex Kendall was able to go out and raise venture capital and really, you know, prove out some of these more kind of hard problem, you know, the teal flying car Yeah. You know, adjacencies in Europe. So I think, look, going forward, let's see. I think that robotics, you know, hardware, you know, deep tech coming out of of The UK is not gonna go anywhere.
Speaker 6:I think it's gonna continue to see a lot of interest from US investors. I think the the fact that that Wave have partnered with Uber is also significant. So the idea is that, you know, it's not simply gonna be, you know, one company is expected to be able to do everything. I think that on a distribution and kind of regs perspective, it it makes a lot of sense to have been partnered with Uber, and I think Dara was here yesterday. So, yeah.
Speaker 6:So, look, I am I am let's see how the the stage four trials go here. I think it's gonna be it's gonna be a bit of a culture shock for for the Brits here to to see the cars driving
Speaker 1:on you could have a culture shock. You put a Waymo in in the streets of London and say it's driving on the wrong side of the road.
Speaker 2:No problem with that because Waymo is a Jaguar. That's a British car.
Speaker 1:So it feels it might feel at home.
Speaker 2:But the wave car is built on the Nissan platform which is extremely foreign to
Speaker 6:another smart car. I did hear rumors though that that the Waymo was gonna change to a Chinese supplier.
Speaker 2:Oh, interesting.
Speaker 6:Was yeah. This is
Speaker 1:a hoping they went with Bentley. Yes. The Bentley Waymo.
Speaker 2:Yes. I mean, we'll we'll we'll we'll we'll tell Hey, let's rip out Nissan. Let's get on the Continental GT platform. This is logical.
Speaker 6:Exactly. We need some like James Bond approved autonomous pills on the streets. Yeah. I'm a big Waymo Maxie, so Okay. You know, I'm just excited to be able to to translate that to to the times that I'm here in London.
Speaker 6:But but let's see.
Speaker 2:Awesome. Well,
Speaker 1:thanks having us on. Bye.
Speaker 2:See you. This is fantastic. Have a
Speaker 6:great evening.
Speaker 5:We'll talk
Speaker 2:to soon. Bye. Bye. Let's go back to the timeline. Talk about investment platform Republic.
Speaker 2:Merthelios.dev, friend of the show says, big news. Soon you will be able to trade SpaceX on Solana, which will be followed by Cursor, Ramp, XAI, and more. Internet, Capital, Markets. Maybe they'll be able to trade numeral one day. Numeral HQ, sales tax on autopilot.
Speaker 2:Spend less than 5 minutes per month on sales tax compliance.
Speaker 1:Anyways, this this we can kind of go through the journal article. Yep. Investment platform Republic plans to use blockchain technology to sell investors exposure to SpaceX another effort in an arms race to give regular traders access to hot startups.
Speaker 2:Yep. This is something
Speaker 1:that was like in some
Speaker 2:vaguely predicted but felt like it had immense regulatory pressure but they just, I guess, they're figuring it out
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Which is crazy.
Speaker 1:We are gonna have the CEO of Republic on the show Friday.
Speaker 2:Very exciting.
Speaker 1:Excited about. Ken, he is an animal. Mhmm. But we can break this down. So, they are planning to sell digital tokens that mirror the performance of SpaceX's private shares Mhmm.
Speaker 1:In a move largely untested with regulators and untested with companies because you know historically illiquidity one
Speaker 2:simple trick.
Speaker 1:No. You know CEOs
Speaker 2:Liquidity is a feature.
Speaker 1:Yeah. You don't want your shares to be getting constantly marked to Right? Or or imagine what Anderil shares would have been Depends.
Speaker 2:I I mean, I remember story about Enron during the .com boom. The shares were absolutely mooning because they were kind of doing some cooking of the bucks.
Speaker 1:They were cooking.
Speaker 2:Everything looked really good. They were cooking. They were cooking the bucks. The wrong
Speaker 1:kind of cooking.
Speaker 2:But but I mean the the stock was truly on like a generational run and they had in the elevator when you went into the office you got in the elevator the share price was right there in the elevator displayed at all times. And so you'd come in and the, oh, stock's up. Like, I'm happy. I'm working hard today. I'm I'm worth more.
Speaker 2:Multiply it by the number of shares you own. You just know that your net worth just
Speaker 1:went By the time Ken Griffin showed up Yeah. It's probably flash Zero.
Speaker 2:They must have ripped that out of the elevator by then. But yeah,
Speaker 1:mean So yes. So they're gonna start with SpaceX.
Speaker 2:Could be good or bad.
Speaker 1:Yes. And they plan to and SpaceX for the most part only goes up sometimes the rockets Mhmm. You know blow up on the on the launch pad. But token buyers won't have access to company's financials and won't own actual stakes.
Speaker 2:Yes. The
Speaker 1:tokens could draw scrutiny from regulators which you know, we're in a friendly regulatory environment. Yeah. Republic says it won't need permission from the companies whose token is selling because the tokens represent securities sold by Republic.
Speaker 4:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:So So this is kind
Speaker 2:of like a stable coin play where for every token that is sold they will try and go and buy one share and so they'll be backed one to one or something like that? Or is it more like
Speaker 1:a means to what it seems like they'll fractionalize it or it'll be you know Yeah. Tokens that represent ownership in an LLC. Yeah. You know an SPV that owns shares.
Speaker 2:What's weird is that you kind of have this like dual float situation where there could be like someone could be willing to pay a massive premium for these tokens that they no longer track the underlying price of the secondary shares. So if SpaceX is trading at like a 350,000,000 billion dollar market cap, but someone wants to get in and they're willing to pay up to a $500,000,000,000 market cap, the token could trade. But that doesn't I mean, that doesn't happen with stablecoins because no one ever says, hey, I'm I'm interested in paying more than a dollar for one stable coin dollar.
Speaker 1:Know? These are unstable coins, Sean.
Speaker 2:These are unstable. It'll be interesting to see where they actually trade. I mean, it should be some sort of price signal. But at the same time, if if the supply is so restricted, I mean, they're saying that they the Republic says it's able to offer the tokens in part because of a provision in the twenty twelve Jobs Act that lets private US companies issue securities and raise up to $5,000,000 a year from retail investors. Republic says it would be the issuing company, and the tokens are essentially a note that assures token holders they will be paid any increase in the price of SpaceX's common stock if it goes public or is purchased.
Speaker 2:Now SpaceX has 350,000,000,000 of of value. Right? And so if you're thinking about we are going to offer a $5,000,000 slug of that, what will demand for that be like, and will that track at all with the with the broader private market? It's it Yep. It could it could could be completely disconnected.
Speaker 1:Yep. And important context, Ken, the CEO was general counsel over at AngelList
Speaker 4:Okay.
Speaker 1:For in 2014 to 2016. So he's been in the space for over a decade Yeah. Now. And so, anyways, the the the big takeaway here is that one thing is for sure, there will be I think an exceptional amount of demand for this product. The question is, will regulators like it?
Speaker 1:Will companies like it? And it's possible that it'll be no on both fronts. But it's possible that, you know, at the same time, this sort of over overwhelming consumer demand. And I think that, you know, in general, you know, retail investors should be and and are fair can fairly be frustrated Yep. By not having access to companies like SpaceX, Figma, Epic Games, Stripe, Anthropic, Ramp, Cursor, Andoril, Mercury, Canva.
Speaker 1:So, these are all companies that they're planning to launch even linear. This is
Speaker 2:Oh, really?
Speaker 1:Almost looks like a mirror of our partners. That's amazing.
Speaker 2:Is Adio on there? Customer relationship match? Not yet. Adio is the AR native CRM that builds, scales and grows your company Too smooth, John. Adeo.com.
Speaker 1:Slash t bpn.
Speaker 2:Go check it out.
Speaker 1:So, public has a license
Speaker 2:through the Isn't there a SPAC that bought SpaceX secondary and trades at like a massive premium to the underlying value? That is. It's not a SPAC. It's a public company.
Speaker 1:XYZ. XYZ.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And so, I mean, like there clearly is demand in the public markets for for private market shares. And so, have been a number of platforms and a number of strategies attempted. This is the first one that's using crypto, but it'll be extremely exciting to follow what happens with the actual prices of these of these assets once they got
Speaker 1:Yeah. Right now, the Destiny Tech one hundred Mhmm. Is trading at $425,000,000.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:And I'm trying to figure out the book value.
Speaker 2:I think it is a
Speaker 1:fraction of that based on what investors actually mark.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And it's because there's such limited demand, such limited liquidity.
Speaker 1:Yeah. There's limited supply.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. Limited supply. And so much demand
Speaker 1:just willing to pay
Speaker 2:So much to me.
Speaker 1:A multiple of
Speaker 2:what Fascinating.
Speaker 1:Institutional. So it's funny because in this effort to get retail access Yep. To these, you know, highly sought after private company shares Yep. Retail gets kind of hosed Yep. By ending up having to pay, you know, massive premium.
Speaker 2:Yeah. But if you're an investor who takes it seriously, you gotta get on public.com. Investing for those who take it seriously, they got multi asset investing, industry leading yields, and they're trusted by millions. We have other news from Palantir. Oh, George Savolka, founder of Hebia AI.
Speaker 2:He's coming on the show soon. He is thrilled to share his acquisition of Flashdocs, the number one AI company in AI slide deck generation. That's fun. Flashdocs turns prompts into fully branded presentations in seconds. Goodbye PowerPoint.
Speaker 2:I need this badly. This is very helpful. I mean, I'm interested to see how he bakes this in because he's been focused on the Wall Street crowd, the hedge funds and the investment banks. So could be more of like a b to b product than a generalization product.
Speaker 1:Feels that way.
Speaker 2:But we will talk to him
Speaker 1:and and You know, expect some some pushback from from slides crafts people. Yes. Know, people that treat you know, that the making of a great you know, deck. Yes. You know, something more almost more than an art form.
Speaker 1:Yes. And so, interested to see the outputs here and we'll we'll talk with him live. Yes. Palantir has some news which we'll talk about in a little bit. They have signed a $100,000,000 five year deal with the nuclear company.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:I had never heard of the nuclear company before.
Speaker 2:Well, we'll ask Mike Gallagher about it when he hops on the show.
Speaker 1:And we have Dan Shipper joining in a minute to talk about a new product that he's launching under Every.
Speaker 2:Oh.
Speaker 1:His parent company and media.
Speaker 2:Is he running out of home ads for it yet?
Speaker 1:Not yet, he should. He really should. He should launch the Good.
Speaker 2:Launch of com.
Speaker 1:Great video.
Speaker 2:Out of home advertising made easy and measurable. Say goodbye to the headaches of out of home advertising. Only AdQuick combines technology, out of home expertise, and data to enable efficient seamless ad buying across the globe. The Mark Andreessen says the term chat g p chat chat GPT rapper is tired and really really wrong quoting Andre Carpathi. Says plus one for context engineering over prompt engineering.
Speaker 2:People associate prompts with short tasks, short task descriptions you'd give an LLM in your day to day use when in every industrial strength LLM app, context engineering is the delicate art and science of filling the context window. I like Max Meyer chiming in here. Kinetic energy wrapper, gasoline wrapper, aeronautical lift wrapper, everything's a wrapper. Should we bring in our next guest?
Speaker 1:Let's do it. Let's do it. Welcome to the
Speaker 2:stream, Dan.
Speaker 5:How are you? What's going on? Welcome to
Speaker 1:the show.
Speaker 4:Good see you guys. Can you hear me?
Speaker 2:Yeah. We can hear you loud and clear.
Speaker 1:It's great to great to have you back. You're always calling in from exotic places.
Speaker 7:Where are
Speaker 2:you today?
Speaker 1:Last time it was Anthropic Dev Day. Where are you now?
Speaker 4:I am currently in a cabin in Upstate New York in Hudson Valley with Hirsch Agarwal, CTO co founder of the browser company, a good friend of mine Cool. And another another friend of ours and Hirsch's wife and their baby. So it's a it's it's a really fun time.
Speaker 1:Amazing. Let's get right into it. What are you launching today?
Speaker 4:Break it down. We launched publicly Quora, which is you can think of it like a chief of staff for your email that costs $15 a month instead of a 150 k. Mhmm. So what Quora does is it sits on your email, it connects to your Gmail, it screens your email. So when emails come in, it decides, is this important?
Speaker 4:Do you need to see it right now? Is it urgent? If it is, it makes it to your inbox. If not, it automatically archives it. For anything that's a common request, Quora will pre draft response for you.
Speaker 4:So you open your email, anything your inbox has a response. And then twice a day, we send you what we call a brief, which is a really beautiful summary of everything that's in your inbox that you need to see but you don't need to respond to. And so you can basically like do three hours of email by scrolling through in thirty seconds. It's very, very cool. We also have a full on assistant so you can chat with it.
Speaker 4:Can email it. Can tell it all about your preferences, all that kind of stuff. It's been in beta for about six months. We have about 2,500 between 2,503,000 users active users on it. And we are launching it publicly today, so anyone can sign up.
Speaker 4:It's $15 a month. It also is bundled with Every. So if you sign up for Every, $20 a month, you get access to Quora, Spiral, which is our content automation tool, Sparkle which is our file organizer, and all the all the writing that we do on every all for that price.
Speaker 1:You guys are cooking. You gotta raise prices. $100 a month. You gotta get those numbers up.
Speaker 4:I'm thinking about it. But now that you said that, can blame it on you. So thank you. I appreciate Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. You can say Jordy complained that the price was too low. Very cool. The the perfect irony of the timing here is right before we got on the show John was onboarding
Speaker 2:I'm texting him.
Speaker 1:An EA type person who just joined the team and literally saying all these things. These kind of emails like just archive. Yeah. These ones I wanna see it but it's not important.
Speaker 2:I'm sending
Speaker 5:them the
Speaker 2:link right now so you can install it on my on my inbox.
Speaker 1:So we'll get it spun up.
Speaker 5:I mean
Speaker 2:I have a bunch of very specific questions because I'm in I'd like the No.
Speaker 1:This is a product you've been asking for. Yes.
Speaker 2:I've been asking for this because yeah. I mean I paid for like the top tier of Gemini and like there's this Gemini button, but it just it just gives me bullet points for each individual email. It doesn't do anything at like a higher level abstraction, at least that I can tell. And then when I search, if I search for Dan shipper, it will it will search, like, the JavaScript in some marketing email and find that, like, there's some token in the URL that has the text SHIP, and then it'll surface that. And I'm like, instead of just the email that's obviously from Dan Shipper, like, how does it not know to to rank, like, the the name of the person higher than, like, embedded CSS class or something?
Speaker 2:It's always super frustrating. I've been very, very upset about, the the the Gmail search functionality for a while. I feel like it's it's it's not that it's like degraded, it's more like the nature of email has scaled where I think every person gets about an order of magnitude more email than they did, you know, a decade ago. And so the traditional search tools are just completely breaking down and then also email marketers
Speaker 3:are gonna have to Like get out
Speaker 1:a couple 100 a day and you're averaging even twenty seconds in email.
Speaker 2:It's a lot. It's a lot. And yeah. And then also the nature of the way people write emails like the all there's so many of these hacks where people say like they'll they'll do that thing where they'll say like if you're doing like outbound for every for example you'll be like introducing Dan and John. And and it's like, wait, like this is a sales email.
Speaker 2:Like why are you acting like we're why you're making a warm intro? Or Yeah. Where people will do like re like signing up for every. And it's like, wait, this isn't a re? Like you're not responding to anything.
Speaker 2:Like, you just put that in the title. And there's a million of those little hacks that I feel like the traditional Gmail workflow has been exploited by kind of black hat emailers.
Speaker 1:SDRs.
Speaker 2:SDRs, black hat SDRs. And, I feel like it's the perfect it's the perfect thing that you need to hammer with AI. So, I'm excited for Talk to me about the the drafting of responses. I I I was I was talking to the fellow on our team about how, you know, so like we get a lot of pitches from people that say, hey, I have news. I wanna come on the show.
Speaker 2:Sometimes, wanna let people down like softly and say, hey, this isn't a fit right now but we wanna have you on when there's news or or you know, and I kind of have like a template for that. I'm I'm a little bit hesitant to to send something that has like a an LLM flavor to it. I'd almost rather just have a like a pre written script, but I would also be okay with some fine tuning. Like, how are you thinking about making sure that the voice doesn't spiel too LLME?
Speaker 4:So basically what we do is when you onboard, we will look at all, like about a thousand of your previous emails Mhmm. And abstract out, okay, what's your job title?
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 4:How do you normally talk to people? What do you normally do in these kinds of situations? So for company emails that you get, so like a pitch, what do you normally say? Mhmm. And then we create a set of procedures for ourselves so that when we do the draft, we can refer back to, okay, you have a procedure for a process for here's how I respond to pitches.
Speaker 4:Mhmm. And that's what we use to fill in the draft. So it's basically we use your historical emails to inform how we how we write the draft. To your earlier points though, I think those are I think those are really really important. Thing that I think connects to something you said earlier in the show is the the idea of of rappers.
Speaker 4:So like in a lot of ways, this is a rapper on
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Claude and Gemini. Right? Yeah. And what's really interesting is I think there was this narrative about, like, a year ago or two years ago that all the incumbents were gonna win in AI because all they have to is bolt on AI. Yeah.
Speaker 4:And you can see, like, if you go into Gmail, like, their AI features or their search features, like, they're still not very good. And that's because it's so hard when you have a scaled huge user base that is used to things working in a in a particular way and a large organization that's used to building things in a particular way actually start from a blank slate and get the most out of a new technology. And so I think that's that's one of the things that we and other startups like us can do for email that, like, at Google can't or it'd be much harder for them to do. And I think you can see that, for example, in some of the filtering things that you're talking about. So one of the problems with the sort of black or gray hat emails that you get is it's a little bit hard to get a specific rule for, okay, this is the kind of email that I don't wanna see.
Speaker 4:It's not gonna be from a particular sender. It's not gonna have a particular thing in a subject line. It's kind of a vibe. Historical email filtering has to be very rule based. It has to be it has to be from this sender.
Speaker 4:It has to have this keyword in the subject line, all that kind of stuff. And language models change that. Now you can filter emails on Vibes and that's what Quora does. It also has a rules based filter too, but it has a Vibes filter to be like, anything that looks like this, get rid of it or make sure I see it. And that's much
Speaker 1:more people have been training, you know, a chief of staff or an EA to detect the vibe of an email. Right? Exactly. Like this is the kind of email, like it look sales y but it's actually really interesting Yep. Because it came from this person and it's an opportunity that aligns with with with what we're with with our focus.
Speaker 1:So it's interesting.
Speaker 4:Yeah. And and and I think incumbents, it's very hard. It's going to be harder for them to do that because it's very expensive to filter on Vibes on Vibes for like everybody's email account because there's hundreds of millions or billions of people getting like billions and billions of billions of emails a day. And so startups, because you start from a smaller user base, you can do the expensive LLM inference that is gonna get much cheaper in five years. But for now, it's not affordable unless you have a smaller user base that's all paying.
Speaker 4:And that's something that we can do, which I think is great.
Speaker 1:How do you think the actual email infrastructure and rails evolved? I I every like it seems like every six months Google Workspace just sends me an email. It's like, we're raising prices. And I and I always think it's funny because it's like, they could theoretically just like continue to raise the price for a very long time without Mhmm. Without much pushback.
Speaker 1:Because like, what's what's the alternative at least as a company? How do you see how do you see that evolving? Have you thought about other companies like, hey, that actually want to Yeah. Kind of own the the underlying The deeper layer. The deeper layer and
Speaker 4:That's a good question. I mean, I think one of the beauties of emails is of email is that it's decentralized and interoperable. And so right now, we sit on top of Gmail, but we will eventually add support for Outlook and other third party like Pop or IMAP type services. And I think that that's great. And I I don't think that you'll see us create our own like, hey, that's very hard and complicated to make sure that you deliver emails and you don't get stuck in spam and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 4:And I think we've been focused on building out a layer above that because that's where that's where the new stuff is. There's there's something completely different about software that doesn't have to operate on ordered lists. So email is just an ordered list of things in the order they came in. And software doesn't have to do that anymore. You can rearrange everything based on based on priority, based on vibes.
Speaker 4:And so I think for us, I'd probably rather not get stuck at a layer, like, of ensuring email deliverability for senders and and and all that kind of stuff and, like, let Google do what Google's good at for now. Mhmm. But who knows? I think eventually, this will be an email client where you can do all of your email through Quora. For now, it interoperates with Gmail, with Superhuman so that we don't have to mess with, like, all those baseline features.
Speaker 4:Even, like, creating an email sending feature where you're, like it's a it's a composed window. There's infinite amounts of complexity in there that you can get stuck doing if you're a small startup Totally. That we've tried to avoid to, like, just something that's so good at one or two things that you'll use it even if it doesn't have everything.
Speaker 2:Yep. How are you how are you
Speaker 1:building the team? What what's the ambition with with this product specifically? You're wearing yeah. I know you wear a lot of hats. So
Speaker 4:I only wear the every hat. Yeah. Yeah. So there's a super talented team building this that and it would not be possible without them. So Kieran Klassen is the GM of Quora.
Speaker 4:He's incredibly technical, He's a Rails guy. He's like very agent pilled. Like, he's running like 15 Cloud Code instances at any at any one time. And we just we have our our most viral YouTube video ever is him, like, talking about how he uses agents. It has, like, 50,000 views from a week ago.
Speaker 1:Amazing.
Speaker 4:And so he runs Quora. He he also used to be, like in his past, he was a composer and a pastry chef. So he's got this, like, crazy resume. He's amazing. We also have one engineer, his name is Nitesh, who's also amazing.
Speaker 4:And they're just like, I think they're both iterating on what email can be and iterating on how to actually build software in this new paradigm. Because there's a whole new way of building software with agents. Like, think that they're they they use this term that I love called compounding engineering, which is like doing the work so that each successive feature you build is easier than the last. And I think that that has allowed them as a super small team to just move really fast and build this beautiful product that is scaling to thousands and thousands of users. Yeah.
Speaker 4:We also internally Brandon Gell is our head of studio, so he works a lot with them. And then we have a whole creative team. So Lucas Crespo is our creative lead and he did, like, the video and all the visuals and all that kind of stuff. So and I'm helping out with all, you know, whatever wherever I'm needed. But I think all of those people are doing an incredible job and I think we wanna kill email.
Speaker 4:I think you should do email very differently. I think generally, we all have a very anxious attachment to our inbox and it's quite unhealthy. And one of the things that I've noticed using Quora is everything is much quieter and that can be really unsettling because you're like, where like, if I miss something? Yeah. But it has turned out, at least for me, that mostly it's fine And only 10% of the emails or 20% of the emails are things I actually need to see.
Speaker 4:And when I use it, I get to spend much more of my time doing shit that I actually care about and wanna do rather than rather than email. And that's a very exciting mission for for us and for this product.
Speaker 1:I feel like I developed email anxiety probably when I was like 10 years old. Whenever I first got an email, it was like summer break and everyone was just sending me That's cool. Emails around and stuff. Yeah. And it's stuck with me ever since.
Speaker 1:So thanks email. But thank you for for trying to help fix it. We're we're excited to try the product and always great to have you on the show.
Speaker 4:Check it out. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:Have fun
Speaker 2:in the
Speaker 1:woods. Cheers. Bye. See you. Bye.
Speaker 2:Up next, have Eliana Eunice from Palantir coming in the studio. Oh, Tyler's perking up, sitting up straight looking for some Palantir merch. The Palantir merch king himself in the studio. Head
Speaker 1:to toe.
Speaker 2:Head to toe. Is this a dripped out technology brothers? Woah. What's going on here?
Speaker 7:You know, I was you just kinda gave me an idea. I should get, like you know, like, the Chicago Bulls, like, you know, nineties are coming out. They got the music. And the coach of the Bulls is Phil Jackson, and then they start ripping them off. Yep.
Speaker 7:That's the next that's, like, the next stage of the Palantir merch store. So but, anyways, good to see you guys.
Speaker 1:Good to see you too.
Speaker 2:Many, how many pull ups have you done today? How many were kipping? How many were non kipping?
Speaker 7:You know, it's funny. I have that tweet right over here.
Speaker 1:Oh, shit. He's got the printout.
Speaker 7:This was this was the beginning of our journey as, like you know, I remember I was just sitting there one day, and I and I get this clip. I'm like, who the hell are these guys? And it was like, you guys had you had just started out, and you guys are geeking out about it. And it was just really awesome to just see how far you guys have come, since that. It's been it's been it's been, like, really crazy growth.
Speaker 7:But I actually
Speaker 1:Well, thank you for printing that out. That's a sign of great respect
Speaker 2:in our culture. Great respect in our culture. And and I actually went to DC. I did pull ups with Eliana. I can attest he can do a ton of non kipping pull ups.
Speaker 7:Yeah. Well, I so I I I'll admit. I didn't go this morning because we were we launched the store, and Yeah. It was pretty you know, you're making sure everything's working. And so but I'm you know, I will be at the gym tomorrow, John, and then I will bring the newspapers into the sauna.
Speaker 2:Okay. Give us the story of the launch, the store, the URL. Where can people go buy?
Speaker 7:Well, so first and foremost, the URL is store.palantir.com, but I think we sold everything out. Oh, yeah. We sold we sold more merch in three hours than we did pretty much in any day, maybe in any week than we did last year. So the demand is at all time highs. And, basically, this is the third iteration of the store.
Speaker 7:You know, when we first launched the store, it was well before I started. It was, kind of, you know, as a company was gonna DPO. They launched the store as a way to sort of, cultivate, people that were interested in the company. And then they took it offline because it kinda became a cost center. No one really owned it.
Speaker 7:It was kind of, like, made in China. The the process, the shipping, and everything was kinda weird. And so then last year, about a year ago, I was like, hey. Like, we need to do this. And I eventually did it after a lot of internal lobbying, and it ended up being a success.
Speaker 7:But, around, you know, really about a month after we launched the the store last year, it just something didn't feel right. It didn't feel like Palantir. It didn't feel like the aesthetic, the website, the merch. Like, was made in like, we were buying hats that were blanks that were made in other countries. And I was just like, Palantir is a special company.
Speaker 7:We do things a special way. We do things our way. And so I was like, we need to just tear this down and rebuild it. So that's what we did. And today, about seven months later of working on it, we launched a store.
Speaker 7:Everything's made in The USA. We're buying literally shirts from scratch. We're we're like, we're working with the mills and they're milling the cotton and and we're making things all in America really hard.
Speaker 1:I want a hand sewn version from you. I want I want to I want to see you on on the ground in the factory American dynamism, you know.
Speaker 2:Just Yeah. Give us the stats. How how how much have you sold?
Speaker 3:Are we turning
Speaker 1:it into a profit center?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Big is scale of the merch operation? Can we can we bring the gong for anything?
Speaker 7:Don't know if I'm allowed to like give out details because then it's like you you like it's like during market hours, people might I don't want the lawyers to like
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. Sure.
Speaker 2:This is I
Speaker 7:will say this.
Speaker 1:This could this could cause some major price action. Yeah. You know, if if people realize that it's not just you know,
Speaker 2:it's a
Speaker 1:much onshoring peril which is a know, of billions of dollars and
Speaker 2:Well, we're still gonna ring the gong for you because congratulations on the launch. Fantastic.
Speaker 7:I appreciate You know, I will say, you know, our car you know, the Palantir as of its last earnings, does like what? 80%, 80 something percent in margins. Yeah. Like, a really good high end, you know, company that does like, you know, Hermes or Louis Vuitton, like, they're doing like 60% margin. So Wow.
Speaker 7:Until until I can get to like 80% margins, I'm not even gonna go to Dave Glazer, the CFO and even try to like get this in there. But for now for the the intent of the store really is just to get the stuff out there, get good stuff out there and grow the pot that I have to buy and then resell stuff and invest in like really cool, like, just like really unique, like one of 15 items that are gonna be 4 or 5 figures. I mean, we're we're gonna take this to the next level.
Speaker 1:Let's go. It's amazing. If I if you get to bespoke suits, call us. Yeah. Call us first.
Speaker 1:We're we're happy to wear the Palantir monogrammed suit. Yeah. Sorry. And I'm saying this, you're not saying this of course because I I I can say this as as a news maxer but you move the mark, you know, if I was just looking at the stock chart, the stock popped this morning. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:I'm assuming it's because of the merch store.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:And you've moved the the market cap has moved by about 3,000,000,000.
Speaker 2:So Wow.
Speaker 1:Fantastic fantastic
Speaker 2:Congratulations. No comment from
Speaker 5:No comment.
Speaker 1:Just say no comment.
Speaker 2:But you know, it's clear. It's clear what's going on.
Speaker 1:It's clear. The story is
Speaker 7:very You do have a you do have a gentleman named Mike Gallagher coming on Yep. Later, who, by the way, is probably the biggest merch fan at the
Speaker 2:Let's go.
Speaker 7:Like, nobody likes Palantir merch or ever. Like, I'll get so if you think I go to the gym early, Mike goes to the gym at, 5AM religiously. He will shoot me messages. He'll signal me from the gym and being like, like, what about an x y z? And I'm like, bro, like Straight here.
Speaker 7:And, like, so he he he really loves merch.
Speaker 2:That's great. You'll get
Speaker 1:a chance to
Speaker 7:talk to him about maybe some other reasons why the market cap may have moved.
Speaker 2:Yes. Yes. Yes. I I I yeah. I saw him name drop you on a, on a podcast he was on, and I was like, yes.
Speaker 2:Let's go, Eliane.
Speaker 7:He sees the vision. He sees the vision. So but, no, I'm really I think I I I don't I don't know. I've I've thought a lot about the Merge store and just sort of, like, my role at Palantir and and sort of how I engage the community. And I think it's it really boils down to, you know, the founders and Doctor.
Speaker 7:Karp and all these people and all these tremendous engineers have built this, like, great company. And we just you know, we're a company that stands for something, and so we've really built this community organically. I didn't build the community. I just cultivate it. And it just feels really good to serve them and just give them as much gear as possible.
Speaker 7:And so the demand the the numbers today again, I can't share them, but the the the numbers today were way above anything I expected to the point where the site almost crashed within four minutes. And, I mean, we're talking about the some of the most traffic that we got was from South Korea. And so, like, we have a that's our third largest market despite, you know, additional shipping costs.
Speaker 1:Give it up for the South Koreans. Yep.
Speaker 2:There you go.
Speaker 1:Palantirians out in South Korea. No. I I thought it was funny. I looked on the website at all. It's all preorder right now because I think you guys sold out.
Speaker 1:And I was like, wait. They can't be doing this because of, like, you know, bal you know you know, lot of apparel companies won't do preorder because, like,
Speaker 2:they don't have the balance sheet to
Speaker 1:to to pre Yeah.
Speaker 2:Working capital is a real issue.
Speaker 7:I don't know. So reason for the the reason for sort of the the the eight weeks so it's eight weeks and the reason for that is actually so when when the whole tariff thing happened Mhmm. All of these people were then looking to do stuff to fund alternatives inside The USA. Yep. And so we were already sort of tracking the whole USA thing.
Speaker 7:So our our vendor, you know, they're working. I can't they've they've asked me and we wanna just kinda keep it secret because they're very special. But basically, the the amount of demand that they got for, like, cotton that was American sourced and everything, like, skyrocketed. And then we tweaked some designs and stuff. So that's the reason for the delay.
Speaker 7:But as we sort of ramp this up and get it, like, fully, you know, basically, like, in production, my hope is that we won't sell out of everything, but we'll actually sell out of a few items. Like, sure. We're gonna have limited drops of different products that are unique. But, you know, hopefully, the hats and, like, some core shirts will be available twenty four seven.
Speaker 2:That's amazing. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:Well, it's great to see you. Let's get a workout in soon.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Let's do it.
Speaker 7:Awesome. Thank you,
Speaker 2:gentlemen. Rest of
Speaker 1:the day. Cheers.
Speaker 2:Talk to soon. Alright. And up next, we have Mike Gallagher from Palantir Technologies. He's the head of defense, and he put out some comments about the partnership between Palantir and the nuclear company. Says this partnership marks the first time Palantir software will be used to help power the next generation of nuclear energy infrastructure.
Speaker 2:So we're excited to bring him and welcome him to the show. Mike, how are
Speaker 5:you doing?
Speaker 1:Great to have you.
Speaker 3:What's going on, guys? I'm honored to be with you. You guys are famous.
Speaker 2:You're famous too. Thank you for joining. We're just I
Speaker 1:used to be, man.
Speaker 3:I used to be. Now I'm just, you know, I'm a Aspect.
Speaker 1:You're a techno you're a technology brother.
Speaker 2:You're one of us.
Speaker 1:You're one of us. I
Speaker 2:I mean that's actually a great place to start. I I I wanna talk about your career and the transition that you went through. There's there's a you know, obviously it's very exciting what you're doing now. There's also this story about like, I want you in the government too, and I want people like you in the government. And so is the government a place for high performing technologists to flourish?
Speaker 2:Is there something that needs to change there? I'm interested in to digging into that. But why don't you kick it off with kind of like how you tell the story of how you got here to this moment?
Speaker 3:Yeah. I I think, well, obviously, you know, from Northeast Wisconsin, Green Bay, and I kinda grew up always interested in the world outside of Wisconsin in The United States. When I went to college, I studied Arabic in The Middle East. I became fascinated, by what was happening. I was an undergrad when we invaded Iraq.
Speaker 3:I was a senior in high school during 09/11. And the more I dug into that intellectually, the more I became convinced that I would regret it if I didn't step up and serve. Felt very strongly about service to country, but also on a practical level, really wanted to apply the language and regional and cultural skills I was learning in a nonacademic context and felt like there was no greater challenge than joining the United States Marine Corps. So even though I didn't come from a military family, didn't know anything about the military, I just felt like this was the hardest crucible that I could throw myself into. I had a just really an awesome experience, couple great deployments, learned a ton with the counterintelligence, human intelligence officer.
Speaker 3:And it's kinda similarly when when I got out of the marine corps and, you know, I worked on a presidential campaign. I worked in the senate as a Middle East guy. Never thought about running myself. I'd moved back home to work for this energy and supply chain management company when, some people reached out to me about running for congress. I was very young.
Speaker 3:I was 31. And I my initial reaction was hell no. I mean, it was just I was not I didn't know anything about raising money. You know, I was the guy who, like, wrote the white paper that someone read before they went on TV. I wasn't wouldn't be on TV myself.
Speaker 3:I kinda thought of myself as, like, a pure national security professional, not a politician. I still don't think of myself that way. But, honestly, it was the fact that it scared me that, like, led me to do it. I felt I felt like anything that force you outside your comfort zone Yeah. Is good for your your development personally.
Speaker 3:And it was I felt like it would be an extension of my military service, a way to continue my work of enhancing American deterrence, albeit from a legislative perspective. And and I'll swear I'll I'll wrap up after this. I went into it knowing it was never gonna be a career for me. I was the youngest guy in congress when I got elected. I always conceived of it as a season of service.
Speaker 3:I think the problem with congress is that we have too many career politicians. So I kinda always had in my head, I do a decade. And when I decided to leave, you know, Palantir was a was just a obvious Yeah. Way for me to continue that mission. I mean, Palantir was one of the rare companies that was unapologetically pro American military, committed a 100% to enhancing deterrence, you know, willing to say that, like, we're the good guys.
Speaker 3:You know? The commies are the bad guys. And I really felt like, you know, it was a continuation of that theme in my career where something really hard that scared the crap out of me, I. E. Now being surrounded by genius, you know, like, 20 that make me feel stupid and then a continuation of of the mission.
Speaker 3:And I've, you know, I've kinda dedicated my life to this idea of preventing World War three, and I'm seeing kinda how we marry the tech community with the warfighter every day in Palantir. So that's the the short version, and it's been really exciting.
Speaker 2:Is that is that a typical flow for elected politicians? Someone reaches out to them. Is there kind of, like, a scouting department, in in our government that's looking for up and coming talent and then keep giving them the ideas? Because I feel like the story that most people tell is is, this guy, you know, wants power or wants to you know, he's on a warpath. Everyone tells him no.
Speaker 2:And then he runs and and gets elected or kind of sheer force of will. But but which direction does it go more commonly? Was your path uncommon, or is it more the norm?
Speaker 3:Well, to be clear, I I don't wanna pretend like this was some pure awe shucks, mister Smith
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 3:Goes to Washington thing. Right? Like, clearly, was driven
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Ambitious, like, had kinda always had a drive my whole life Yeah. And and wanted to, like, test myself. But, honestly, it was not like I didn't think of, like, the political domain at that point
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:In my life. I think more often than not, people are drawn to politics. It used to be the case that, like, you'd go to law school, you'd become a lawyer, you'd run for state or local office, and then that would be a natural kinda, like, farm team that would lead into congress. And then you'd run for senate, and then you'd try and be president one day. I actually think that's changing a little bit.
Speaker 3:Like, one actually healthy thing I saw during during my time in congress is we started to get more young veterans, veterans of the kinda nine eleven wars running for office, which created a cool Yeah. Bipartisan group of legislators that were willing to work together on stuff. That's good. Think, you know, I think we're seeing voters, like like, wanting to have more outsiders, whether it's, you know, business people, traditional, or tech bros, like
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:You know, that you guys talk to a lot. Think people are
Speaker 2:just tired of situation. Lawyer. It used to be Oh, so like every single person
Speaker 3:was born. Lawyer yeah. Being a lawyer seems miserable to me. No offense, lawyers. I I don't know.
Speaker 3:And I will say finally, I went in with the assumption that the fundamental problem with congress was the people. Right? The people were either purely Machiavellian ambitious or, like, horribly corrupt and just didn't attract the right people. Now to be sure, there are plenty of people that, like, would you know, could not like, they can't leave congress because they are otherwise unemployable. And, like, you know, they're they're, like, they're not, like, the greatest in the world.
Speaker 3:But I was actually pleasantly surprised with the quality, the talent, as well as the patriotism. And I would say most people run for congress wanting to serve the country, wanting to make a difference, wanting to do right by, you know, the part of the country that they're from. And they get forced into a system where the incentives really don't reward hard work in the domain that congress should be focused on. Right? Like, there's really no reward for doing the boring work of oversight of the executive branch, of caring about the legislative process.
Speaker 3:The modern congress has become so structurally weak that people channel their ambition into building a media platform Mhmm. Social media in particular, and that almost becomes their full time job. And that that's really a a problem because we need congress to focus on the nuts and bolts of budgeting, of oversight, of proclaiming its authority from the executive branch. My I came to believe that's kind of the the fundamental problem with most things is that we've become so unbalanced in terms of the overall power of the federal government. And then within the federal government, the power is purely concentrated now in the executive branch, which is why our our presidential campaigns get so intense every four years because the stakes are high.
Speaker 3:Right? Everything is done via executive order and has profound consequences for every business. I think a healthier balance would be if congress, article one, which was envisioned by our framers, could be the dominant grant branch of government. In fact, were concerned that congress would grow too powerful. They never would have envisioned the current state of affairs.
Speaker 3:Congress surrendering its power since the seventies and then in bipartisan fashion, continuing that trend has had really perverse and unintended consequences for our politics and it's why they've become so intense. And why people
Speaker 1:are turned off by
Speaker 5:it, I think.
Speaker 1:Yeah. In our lifetime, do you think we will see term limits in in congress at all? It seems like a lot of smart people, seeing certain actors over the last decade would would feel that that that would be beneficial to The United States. It's this weird distortion where it feels like people are in in power for a long time, but not even necessarily thinking in decades or super long term. They're they're thinking in, you know, election cycles and and kind of create some distortions.
Speaker 1:But I'm curious what you think having been in there.
Speaker 3:You know, it's funny, man. By the way, can I say you have great flow? I just wanna throw that out to both of you. In fact, as as someone who's losing his hair, I just have to admire it and, you know, cherish it, gentlemen.
Speaker 1:Some people should just be news anchors,
Speaker 2:I guess.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's destiny.
Speaker 3:Yeah. It's funny. Like, when I first came in and I got elected in 2016, and we we thought like, our freshman class, Democrats and Republicans, we thought we had serious momentum behind a term limits bill. We had a bipartisan term limits bill. I remember going to the White House.
Speaker 3:So this was Trump's first year in office. A group of six of us, three Republicans, three Democrats, went to the Oval Office to get Trump's support on our term limits bill. Because our basic theory was unless the president was using the bully pulpit to force congressional leaders to do it, it would never happen. And so if memory serves, Trump actually weaned about it, endorsing the bill. And I remember I did some selfie video, you know, having just complained about members of congress focusing on social media.
Speaker 3:This is probably the apex
Speaker 1:You gotta dabble. Dabble, basically. Exactly.
Speaker 3:I remember doing some, like, selfie video coming out of the White House, and I genuinely thought in that moment that we had momentum behind a term limits bill. It's overwhelmingly popular with the American people. I've I the counterpart the counterarguments which we can discuss, don't think are persuasive. What was unique about our bill and the reason the reason we thought it might have a chance of passing? Well, two things.
Speaker 3:One, we were in that moment to sort of drain the swamp moment, the reason Trump got elected the first time. You know, everyone's disgusted with the status quo business as usual. Kid made a pledge, late in the campaign to do this, he's gonna support term limits. And then, secondly, we kinda phased it in. So what was unique about our bill is we applied it to our class and all subsequent
Speaker 1:classes. You grandfather in if you're if you're a career politician and you're like, I got another fifteen years that I was planning on really, you know, running it around here. You let them phase out and then the new the new guard, you put some limits on them.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 3:And then it Totally. Your grandfather and the grandfathers and they just sort of die off Yeah. Over time. And then the new people so and then and then we made it equal in the House and the Senate. Twelve years in the House, so six terms and then twelve years in the Senate.
Speaker 3:So theoretically, someone could do twenty four years. They could do twelve in the house, run for senate. And so that seemed generous to us, but it died. It died a slow death and then a sudden death. You know, the the problem is, you know, nobody in leadership wants to bring a a term limits bill to the floor because they fear it endangers their own power.
Speaker 3:So I really do think the paradox, it's like the things we need to do to to enhance the power and the functionality of the modern congress actually require an overempowered president to make them happen. Yeah. Like, otherwise, congress won't do it on its own. And I was never able to transcend that paradox if it makes sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. I I I wanna kind of wrestle with this idea of of, you know, the the the executive branch having power. There are term limits there. We've also had a wildly back and forth executive branch with Trump for four years, then Biden, then back to Trump, kind of unprecedented.
Speaker 2:We'd previously been in, you know, eight year stretches for a while. And I wanna run a theory by you around Iran. My my working theory is that they're not happy with how things are going right now. And part of that is because part of how Iran got into this particular situation is that they potentially saw America as not supporting Israel aggressively during the Biden administration. And more importantly, the idea of a president who would strongly support Israel like Donald Trump would was it was unthinkable that he would get elected again because he was being indicted and he was seen as kind of like a joke almost and was de platformed from social media.
Speaker 2:How was this guy coming back? He didn't even have a Pinterest account. And so he he so so if you're if you're Iran and you're thinking, well, America's backing off and doesn't seem to be coming back on the offensive anytime soon, now is the time to start ramping up spending with the Houthis and Hamas and Hezbollah. And and But then, surprise, Trump's in. Now, have to deal with the consequences of that.
Speaker 2:And so, into this weird way, America feels almost unpredictable geopolitically and maybe that's an advantage if you take it seriously, but maybe it's a risk. And to your point about wanting to avert avert World War three, I'm wondering about the current structure of the executive branch changing hands every four years. Is that bullish for avoiding World War three? Or is it a risk? Or do we need to just tussle with it more?
Speaker 2:Like, how do you think about all those different concepts?
Speaker 3:Yeah. Well, first of great question. A lot of interesting threads to pull on there. The first, would say, I'd go even further back than Mhmm. The Biden administration to when we started to negotiate in earnest with Iran of its over nuclear program in the second half of the Obama administration.
Speaker 3:And, really, it was it was it was sort of, like, covert negotiations that then become overt amidst the backdrop of a region that had gone from all this hope around the Arab Spring turned Arab winter, Syrian civil war, coup in Egypt, just chaos everywhere, then Obama was pursuing this nuclear deal with Iran. Obama had sort of a theory about the region. He he talked about creating a new equilibrium in The Middle East whereby we would sort of distance ourselves from Israel and balance sort of a recognize Iran's enhanced hour and role in the region and use Iran to balance against the Sunni Arab Gulf states and Israel. The only problem is that that that new equilibrium created intense disequilibrium and missed the real story, which was the only path to equilibrium in the region is to build off this alignment of interest between Israel and the Sunni Arab Gulf states, which are on paper strange bedfellows where are united by the shared threat from Iran. The long pole in the tent that links all of our traditional allies together is the threat from Iran.
Speaker 3:And if unless you want an enhanced American military presence in the region, the only way forge a semblance of stability is to build off of that. And that was kind of the genius of the Abraham Accords that Trump would later put in place. Long story short, the other missed opportunity so there was an analytical problem with Obama's approach to Iran. There was a constitutional problem, which relates to what we were talking about before, where the Iran deal sure looked a lot like an arms control agreement. But Obama recognizing because at that time, we still had sort of pro Israel Democrats in the senate, recognizing that the deal was unlikely to get congressional support in the senate in this case.
Speaker 3:He constructed it purely as an executive agreement, an agreement between himself and the supreme leader. There was no congressional buy in. And so, therefore, when Trump got elected, one of the first things he did after extended review was to throw it in the trash. Mhmm. Biden comes in, tries to resurrect it.
Speaker 3:Trump comes back in in his second term, and, basically, he gives the Iranians sixty days to negotiate and then took the action that you just saw. So Yeah. That's a long way of me saying there's a misunderstanding of the region and then a misunderstanding that as hard as it is to bring congress into the process, it actually makes your executive achievements more durable and, I think, improves your negotiating position. Now to get to the last part of your question, I do think the president's recent decision was the right one. I think, really, going even back before Obama's failed, and flawed agreement with Iran, the Iranians have consistently used the cover of diplomacy to covertly advance their program.
Speaker 3:And And at some point, we were either gonna have to accept the nuclear Iran or take kinetic action to set back their program. And this is the first time in a long time, really since our the invasion of Iraq, that we've combined maximum economic pressure with a credible military deterrent. And so I do think it gives us a chance to effectively eliminate their nuclear program. That being said, there's a lot of work we need to do in terms of rebuilding our entire defense industrial base so that the munitions we're using in CENTCOM, they'll completely deplete deplete the resources we need in other theaters along the way. And I'll stop there because I could talk about The Middle East for twenty minutes and all of your your audience would evaporate.
Speaker 2:No. This is fascinating. I'm really enjoying this. Do you have a follow-up there? Or I wanted to talk about
Speaker 1:I I I wanted to get a get a a quick read on how you think China has viewed the events of the last couple months and and couple weeks specifically.
Speaker 3:Well, I think the so the my most, like, bullish case for what Trump has just accomplished would be not only has he set back, if not eliminated for a decade, Iran's nuclear ambitions, he he could have just shattered the emerging axis of chaos, this sort of axis between Iran, Russia, and China. Because China sort of views Iran as both a a source of hydrocarbons as well as, like, a gateway to expand its influence in The Middle East and continually poke the Americans and our allies in the eye. This is incredibly problematic for China's view of the region. That being said, the biggest wildcard that I just don't know enough about is where Trump is gonna go next on China. There were some reporting yesterday that he was gonna allow China access to Iranian oil.
Speaker 3:And so I think it's you know, in Trump one point o, there was this tension between some more hawkish members of of the administration on China and then more dovish members at treasury. There's a there's sort of a version of this tension going on right now. And then Trump himself at times wants to make a deal with Xi Jinping and thinks he's uniquely suited to do it. At other times, he's, like, uniquely able and willing to impose costs on China. I think he deserves credit for actually the biggest shift in US foreign policy since the end of the Cold War in terms of the more hawkish turn on China.
Speaker 3:And so there's I guess there's there's lingering questions about how we wanna approach China, but I really think this is the serious setback for this this axis of chaos, this anti American access. Russia, of course, was getting enormous benefits from Iran in terms of drone technology for its ongoing war in Eastern Europe. I can't help but think that that's gonna be increasingly difficult given that Iran is is is is dealing with the aftermath of the attack as well as increasing internal pressure. And then hats off to the Israelis. I mean, I think this shows how valuable it is to have lethal allies that not only have extraordinary capabilities of their own, but are willing to take a a a big role in the the regional security architecture and not just rely solely on The United States Of America.
Speaker 3:And in fact, what we've seen really in terms of the way they've they've gone after Hezbollah, the beeper operation, and then, their systematic campaign against a nuclear facility, some of the most daring and imaginative intelligence and military work that I think I've ever seen in my lifetime. And even if one isn't as pro Israel as I am, I think you'd have to admire, just how effective their military and intelligence community is.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That's undeniable. A bit of a random question, but I'm curious if you have any insight here. There was
Speaker 2:a lot of we're wrong.
Speaker 1:No. There was some interesting price action in Bitcoin, which is hard to read too much into. But people were alleging that the Iranian regime was mining bit you know, a lot of Bitcoin. Fascinating. You know, maybe maybe it didn't come up for you but I I saw somebody posting that he was like, I'm not buying Bitcoin right now.
Speaker 1:It seems obvious that the regime is just like dumping in order to
Speaker 2:find trying to find
Speaker 1:the war effort. You know, basically, the the recovery effort
Speaker 2:It makes sense. Yeah.
Speaker 1:That's question. But if you don't have any insight there, we can move on. I wanted to
Speaker 3:You know, I I'm afraid I don't, but I I do think and I've said this to, like, all the smart crypto folks like Brian Armstrong and others. I I I think there's or a Wisconsin colleague of mine, Brian Style, who's one of the leaders in the house on this issue. You guys should have him on. He's really smart. You know, Converse Street in Wisconsin.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Style and
Speaker 3:Brian Style. He's always in
Speaker 5:style. Name.
Speaker 1:He's welcome. Welcome.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. The I think there's, like, a an underexplored aspect or argument about, like, crypto's role in national security. Right?
Speaker 3:Because the anti crypto argue anti crypto argument is always like, this is just a way of sanctions evasion
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 3:And money laundering. And I think what people don't appreciate is, like, how this could be a tool to advance America's and and our allies' national security interests. And, certainly, it was a case when, you know, people were trying to get out of Ukraine and Afghanistan. Mhmm. The crypto was enormously valuable in that regard.
Speaker 3:It might allow us to do certain things in denied areas and transfer assets that are uniquely valuable to our intelligence community. So I assume that's a that's an area where, like, national security nerds like me should pay increasing attention to the utility of crypto, but I hadn't heard that about Yeah.
Speaker 1:Alright. Switching gears to the European continent. Yeah. Wanted to get your reaction to the the NATO spending Yep. News and maybe kind of the backstory.
Speaker 1:I'm sure when when you were in congress, you probably always felt strongly about this kind of thing, but any any any reactions there?
Speaker 3:Well, listen. I think anytime first of all, this this idea that, you know, the American president would want our NATO allies to spend more on their own defense is not a new thing. It is not sort of unique to Trump. Eisenhower, the first supreme allied commander of NATO, like, actually made this argument and expressed frustration with our European allies at the time. And so this is like and we've we've had democratic senators try to defund NATO because of their frustrations with NATO.
Speaker 3:So this is like a an old argument that is new again. I think the fact that certain European countries are willing to spend more on their defense is a great thing for deterrence in general. I would say, however, I've always been of the view that this obsession with the inputs, I. E. What percent of GDP a NATO member spends on defense is not the right lens of analysis.
Speaker 3:Right? Like, every NATO country could be spending 5% of their GDP on defense, but if they're all buying the wrong crap or buying stuff that isn't interoperable and doesn't actually amount to a coordinated multinational deterrence by denial effort with hard power shifted as far east as possible with the frontline states playing a unique role, then you actually have you haven't actually fighting off a common operational picture, and shout out to Nato for acquiring Maven Smart System made by Palantir Technologies. No big deal. Then you have to actually answer your a sports team
Speaker 1:a sports team doesn't wake up one morning and, like, let's all give it a 100% and that's the only coordination. It's like Yeah.
Speaker 2:You can easily turn this into a jobs program where you say, yeah. We're gonna spend 5% of our GDP on horseback and cavalry. And it's like, you're gonna lose, but yes, you're technically gonna be spending 5% you're gonna have a massive military, but you're gonna get rolled if you're not investing in the right programs. So is there any do you think that the European countries are thinking about it correctly? Because it feels like it feels like to me getting from 2% to 5% is the bigger mental hurdle than the allocation of that 5%.
Speaker 2:And, yes, we're right to move the conversation to where you're taking it right now, but that feels like, an easier conversation. Or maybe I'm wrong there.
Speaker 3:I think the closer you are to the threat, the more your your thinking is sharp. Right? So it is my experience that, you know, Poland, the Baltic States tend to have a clearer view of reality and are making hard decisions in order to invest in their own military. By the way, we've acquired two new NATO acquired is the wrong term. We we've had two new countries join NATO in recent years that bring phenomenal capabilities to the table.
Speaker 3:I think, you know, traditionally struggled convincing the Germans who are, you know, the big elephant in the European room to make the right investments and to make more investments. My hope is that that conversation is getting better. You know? I guess I worry sometimes that kinda related to what you said earlier, they they'll be privileging certain domestic companies even if they don't actually produce capability. I think it's fair to say, obviously, I'm biased because I work in an American software company, but we are the best in the world, like, by 10 orders of magnitude when it comes to software development in this country, and that's just not something that Europe does well.
Speaker 3:So there could be opportunity for creative collaboration between the Palantirs of the world and, you know, European hardware defense manufacturers. I'd love to see more of that going forward. And I've always been a proponent of you know, there's we have a ton of troops in in countries like Germany and Western Europe. Getting them out of garrison, shifting them further on NATO's eastern flank, taking advantage of the invitation that certain frontline states like Poland made, at least in the previous administration, to build new bases and forts that enhance our deterrence posture. I I think there's a there's a huge opportunity here.
Speaker 3:And and it may just be the case that Trump's rhetoric, as unpolished as it can be at times, is the thing that's shaking it's taking it loose right now. I mean, obviously, it's it's a bit overdetermined. I mean, you know, the other thing shaking it loose is Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Yeah. And it's a massive wake up call for Europe Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah. That they need to need to invest more and buy the right things. So but I do think we have a moment here. And I think what's critical to our analysis in The US, particularly my own party, the Republican party, is to do a better job, and I didn't quite do this well when I chaired the China Committee in Congress, in teasing out the connection between Russia and China, and why what happens in one theater affects another theater, and that it isn't just a choice between Europe or the Indo Pacific. We're a global power.
Speaker 3:We're a sole superpower. We have an existential challenge in the form of communist China. We have to pay attention everywhere. Yes. We have to make hard decisions and prioritize.
Speaker 3:Accordingly, the Indo Pacific is the priority theater. But one of the best ways we can invest more of our own exquisite resources into the Indo Pacific is to get on the same page with our allies in Europe and ensure that they're buying the right things and that the way we fight together is actually leveraging cutting edge commercial technology software or hardware.
Speaker 1:It's great. Great.
Speaker 2:Do have another
Speaker 1:Should we talk about the the news today? Announcement? The nuclear deal that you announced? Yeah.
Speaker 2:That'd be great.
Speaker 5:Can you
Speaker 2:break down for us?
Speaker 3:Is nuclear.
Speaker 1:Everything's nuclear. We're going Yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean, I wanna know the shape of the partnership, anything you can share there. But then I'd love to go into kind of what you're particularly excited about in nuclear or even just energy broadly. We've seen that The United States energy production per capita is kind of flatlined for a while. China's increasing energy production very aggressively. It feels top of mind, especially in the backdrop of the foundation model AI race that we need to be building more energy infrastructure.
Speaker 2:And there's different resources coming online. Nuclear is probably the most fascinating one that has the ability to scale because we've we've we've we've we've tamed the atom and yet and yet we can't just seem to copy paste, know, Diablo Canyon 50 times to to actually get a massive increase in energy production. There's also stuff happening on the smaller scale. I want your take on nuclear as a whole in addition to the deal.
Speaker 3:Yeah. By the way, may get pulled to do a TV interview about this the nuclear stuff. By the it's your fault, though, because my understanding is I'm just batting cleanup for Eliana.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah. That's true.
Speaker 3:And he talked too much, but I'm happy to come back at
Speaker 1:any point.
Speaker 3:Listen. I mean, we can't obviously, we can't dominate the, like, the commanding heights of critical technology and AI if we don't improve our our sort of all the above energy policy. Mhmm. There is no workable energy strategy without a nuclear renaissance in this country. The Trump administration has put out some really productive EOs, but now it's incumbent upon the private sector to step up.
Speaker 3:And the nuclear company is that. I mean, they they're gonna leverage our software to build reactors, which right now take over a decade to build Yep. And collapse that timeline down. And I think we're at the forefront of something really interesting. China is investing billions of dollars in this space, putting their best and brightest on the problem, and we can't fall further behind.
Speaker 3:And, oh, by the way, it affects our military deterrence as well because our diplomacy is enhanced with foreign countries when we're able to come to them and say, you can we are a reliable partner for civilian nuclear technology, and we help you build and access that technology safely. When what I don't wanna see is a a replay of what we saw with China and five g and Huawei, where China was going all over the world saying, you can have five g Internet, steeply. We'll just control the infrastructure. It it'll be in a box. You know?
Speaker 3:You won't even have to
Speaker 1:worry about that. Worry about anything. You don't have to worry about anything.
Speaker 3:And, like, in America, it was like, woah. Don't do that. Time out. But if you're a country that doesn't have resources Yep. In Africa or or in the global South, like, you're probably not paying as much attention to the CI concerns.
Speaker 3:And so there's something similar playing out in the nuclear space right now. So I'm very bullish about this partnership. You know, I I think this is the cusp of something big Yeah. Both for the nuclear company and for Palantir. And we're gonna be able to leverage all the lessons we have from working with Andor Olseronik and nontraditional partners with our warp speed manufacturing product and apply it in into the nuclear space.
Speaker 2:That's fantastic.
Speaker 3:I'm getting pulled.
Speaker 1:I'm getting You're
Speaker 5:getting pulled. You're getting pulled. We'll
Speaker 1:see you on another and we'll
Speaker 2:see you the to have you on soon.
Speaker 1:Come back on soon.
Speaker 2:We'll talk you soon.
Speaker 1:Thanks for
Speaker 2:coming on. Have a one.
Speaker 3:For Packers commentary.
Speaker 1:Alright. See you guys. Great. Cheers. Yeah.
Speaker 2:The, the the the nuclear like like like, a lot of people still don't understand fully what Palantir does but you you have to pull the example from Airbus manufacturing. So Palantir is that's one of their partners. If you're making a plane, you need to know how many screws you have, how many wings you have, how many engines you have, and the lead times on all of those, how much they cost, when they depreciate, what the testing regimen is as you integrate them into the plane. Exact same process for building something like a seven forty seven as building a nuclear power plant. So very exciting deal and I'm excited to see it play out.
Speaker 2:But that was fantastic. Let's run through a couple timeline posts and then get out of here. We got two ads left and that's why we're leaving early today because we're gonna go film some ads for Wander.
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Speaker 1:The great city of Malibu,
Speaker 2:the great
Speaker 1:town of Malibu, California.
Speaker 2:That will be airing on TVPN and then go out on the on the Internet. And we're also filming an ad for Eight Sleep. How did you sleep last night?
Speaker 1:I got wrecked again.
Speaker 2:You got wrecked again? I
Speaker 1:have a systematic issue with the three year old.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's rough. Have you you have you tried telling him man up?
Speaker 1:No. I mean, I would be down for my sleep to be disrupted for a decade if it means he sleeps just a little bit better. Yeah. But it's certainly the the thing that really hurts is losing to you. I got a 78.
Speaker 2:I got an 86, baby. Hit me with the Ashton Hall.
Speaker 1:Mogged again.
Speaker 2:It's my This is my favorite soundtrack on the
Speaker 1:whole song. We're gonna need a new sound effect.
Speaker 2:I love this sound of It's now it's now when there is a John Winn, I get the Ashton Hall sound effect.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 2:Anyway, go to eightsleep.com/tbpn.
Speaker 1:If you're building TBPN. You're building cup a warranty. Sleep, head over to fin.ai. Yes. The number one agent, AI agent for customer service.
Speaker 1:It is number one in performance benchmarks. Number one in competitive bake offs and number one ranking on g two used by Coda, Consensus, Aspire, Lovable, all of your favorite software companies and more. So check it out. We gotta have on on again. You just have Monarch.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Once a day, once or twice
Speaker 2:a day.
Speaker 1:That'd be great.
Speaker 2:You can co host
Speaker 1:the
Speaker 1:show
Speaker 1:with
Speaker 2:He's
Speaker 1:absolute legend.
Speaker 2:I think he's a little busy for that.
Speaker 1:And, yeah. If you're if you're selling to customers, if you're a businessman or woman, you're going to benefit a lot from Finn.
Speaker 2:Well, that is pretty much everything. There's one more piece of news I wanna cover. Baiju over at Aether Flux has a new board member, Dan Gallagher. He's worked with him for years. Dan is in a league of his own.
Speaker 2:He is a man of integrity and has become a close friend over the years. He'll help us engage in Washington DC and support Aether Flux and America to lead in space solar power. If you're not familiar with Aether Flux, they are putting solar panels in space and then beaming down the energy that's captured in space via lasers. Very cool.
Speaker 1:They're beam maxing.
Speaker 2:Also, Baiju, absolute hitter on his wrist every time he's spotted. Absolutely criminal because this photo here in the slide deck
Speaker 1:Cuts it out.
Speaker 2:Cuts it out. We can't see what he's What
Speaker 1:was the photographer doing?
Speaker 2:What was the This is a this is Huge missed opportunity. Journalistic misin malpractice.
Speaker 1:Post here from Scott Belsky. It's really Observed among the most successful people I admire who really worked for it. They don't want to network, they want to learn.
Speaker 2:Yeah. This is good one.
Speaker 1:They are mining you for information constantly. Yep. Sometimes it looks like networking but they're mining.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Zach Weinberg says, in fact, the networking part is really just a tax you get comfortable paying in order to do the learning. I like that. It's good point.
Speaker 1:We have a post
Speaker 2:here thing is like don't don't ask for money, ask for advice. Like, if you're genuinely interested in something, you wind up meeting interesting people Yeah. Because that's the only way to get the real answers that aren't baked into the LLM yet. You gotta go to the source. You gotta meet people.
Speaker 2:And you gotta ask them for the answers to the pressing questions of the day.
Speaker 1:Yep. Anyway. We have a post here from Woodrow Montague.
Speaker 2:I'm so done.
Speaker 1:I'm so done. I can't take this anymore. And there's a Bloomberg
Speaker 2:Yeah. What is this?
Speaker 1:Hit. A footwear startup is teaming up two space companies to design a shoe in orbit as part of a mission to make artificial intelligence and blockchain less expensive and more eco friendly than it is on earth. Orbit's Edge, a company that supports AI and blockchain applications and Copernic Space, which offers digital marketplaces for space assets, plan to send a solar and battery powered satellite to space equipped with a computer that will use AI automation to produce a shoe design for the Sintelay brand. The mission is expected to launch on a SpaceX Falcon nine rocket in early twenty twenty six.
Speaker 2:We should call Deli and do a wellness check. Yeah. He's been like, I'm the guy who's manufacturing space.
Speaker 1:Space manufacturing
Speaker 2:Well, much for your monopoly thesis, Dalian. There's another space manufacturing company in
Speaker 1:They're designing. They're using AI and blockchain
Speaker 2:technology I haven't heard to do solar. Talk about AI or blockchain yet at all. This is missing from their thesis entirely. Wow. What a blind spot for Delli.
Speaker 1:It's so funny to feel like you need to send something to space to produce AI slop of our designs. Anyways Good luck to them. Let's end on a weird. Let's end on a positive note. Brad Gerstner, I don't think this was a response to our the the socialist
Speaker 2:No. But he
Speaker 1:so wrong. But he said the answer to socialism is more capitalism and the Invest America Act is more capitalism, mister president. It makes every child a capitalist from birth sharing in the upside of America. Worried about what what just happened in NYC, help is on the way.
Speaker 2:I love this. Let's ring the gong for Brad Gershun.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. Well, this is the shortest show we've done in a very long time. But fortunately, I'm sure we'll be back with
Speaker 2:But we're still recording. We're gonna be recording We're be Over the next few hours.
Speaker 1:Putting up minutes.
Speaker 2:And then that will hit the timeline
Speaker 1:later. Anyway, so thank you for tuning in to the show. As always, leave us a five star review on Spotify or leave us a written review on Apple Podcasts. Please. And we will read that on the show.
Speaker 1:So have a fantastic afternoon. We'll see you tomorrow.
Speaker 2:See you tomorrow. Bye.