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TBPN is a live tech talk show hosted by John Coogan and Jordi Hays, streaming weekdays from 11–2 PT on X and YouTube, with full episodes posted to Spotify immediately after airing.
Described by The New York Times as “Silicon Valley’s newest obsession,” TBPN has interviewed Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, Mark Cuban, and Satya Nadella. Diet TBPN delivers the best moments from each episode in under 30 minutes.
You're watching TBPN.
Speaker 2:Today is Thursday, 10/01/2026. We are live from the TBPN UltraDome. The temple of technology, the fortress of finance.
Speaker 1:The capital of capital.
Speaker 2:Let me tell you about ramp.com. Time is money saved by these used corporate cards, Bell Pay, accounting, and a whole lot more all in one place. Let's start with the day. Great show yesterday. We put the timeline in turmoil with the MongoDB debate around the responsibility of CEO.
Speaker 2:I thought it was a really fantastic conversation. I I came away like, wow. This, you know, this is like a unfortunate situation but lot of cause for optimism. Yeah. And and I think he he summed it up well without going too aggressive but let but you know He let his feelings Exactly.
Speaker 2:Exactly. And I saw a lot of love for the clip. I saw a lot of people quote quoting the clip and say like, oh yes, like okay, this confirms like what what what my position was beforehand.
Speaker 1:So thought that was cool. This confirms my preexisting view. Yeah. I suppose. Thank you for confirming what I already believe.
Speaker 2:Yeah. The timeline was was also in turmoil over co... CoSLa Ventures, Cognition, Factory. We can go into that. There was one interesting thing that happened on the show yesterday that I didn't really...
Speaker 2:I I I started thinking about it after the show ended. So our first two guests were from NVIDIA and CoreWeave. And obviously, those two companies, like, work really closely together. And the conversations were sort different. We were talking about security with NVIDIA, and then CoreWeave, of course, were interviewing the CEOs.
Speaker 2:We were talking about the business overall and their transition from a rent a GPU company to a more of a pull AI cloud. They'll rent you everything you need. And it was interesting because I was remembering that there's... It was just like last year that NVIDIA was like, we're going to layer CoreWeave or we're gonna layer all the neo clouds. We're gonna be the front door to compute with DGX Cloud Leptin.
Speaker 2:I don't know if you remember any of this, but this started back in, like, 2023 post the Chatuchipati moment. Jensen comes out on stage at one of the keynotes he gives and he says, like, this is the iPhone moment and we're going to aggregate all of the underlying compute and you're gonna be able to come to us and deploy whatever resource you are. And we're gonna compete with, like, AWS and Azure and GCP, and we're gonna be a one stop shop for this stuff. It's gonna be really important. And at the time, I feel like people were sort of like, woah.
Speaker 2:Okay. This is bold, but this could be really, really powerful because they have this odd tension between the the neo clouds where you... If you go in, you lose your connection to your customer effectively. And the margins could get compressed. You're in a much more competitive environment.
Speaker 2:And at the same time, if you don't go in, then NVIDIA can just say, hey, like, you know, all the DGX Cloud Leptin customers, well, we're gonna send them to the clouds that did sign up. And so you have this, like, tension. They really did really did... It really did feel like NVIDIA had some leverage. Biggest company in the world very shortly after.
Speaker 2:And obviously a very aggressive business. Like they're they're not just going to be like, oh, that would be improper to compete. Yeah. But it but it played out very differently and NVIDIA has become very friendly with Core Weave and they both found their places where there's still little competition here and there. But I was just reflecting on like how that journey came together, where that where that landed.
Speaker 2:And and it it... The the long story short is that, like, the the DGX product, it came out and the reviews weren't like, okay. Yeah. This is actually better than working with CoreWeave. And there were still so many benefits from going to a neo cloud or even a, you know, true cloud provider.
Speaker 2:There was just more to do. NVIDIA made an acquisition. They bought Lepton, where the name came from, in April 2025 which sort of kicked most of that discourse off. The rumor was that they paid between 300 and $900,000,000 for that. And Jensen was like so gassed up on this.
Speaker 2:I loved his quote. He said NVIDIA DGX Cloud Leptin connects our network of global GPU cloud providers with AI developers together with our NCPs, which is NVIDIA cloud providers. We're we're building a planetary scale AI factory. That's what his tagline was, which makes sense. Like, there is a world where that would have played out.
Speaker 2:That's not what happened.
Speaker 1:Please. Talk about how we have failed so far
Speaker 2:I know.
Speaker 1:Convince a lot of our friends not to call supercomputers AI factories.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Right? If we continue to fail, they're gonna be like, it's a refinery. It's a it's an AI offshore decker. It's an oil decker for
Speaker 1:AI. Like... It's a chemical plant
Speaker 3:Yeah. For AI.
Speaker 1:For
Speaker 2:AI. Yeah. It's exactly what you want in your community for sure. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Rough. Anyway...
Speaker 1:The risk of of total failure in your backyard is low, but non zero.
Speaker 2:Non zero. Yeah. And then you have another person who's not working....
Speaker 4:Why did you say that?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Ridiculous. I wanna go back to supercomputers. We'll make it happen eventually.
Speaker 1:Hope... Gabe says it's a data ranch, brother.
Speaker 2:Data ranch. There we
Speaker 1:go. Putting a data ranch in your backyard. Yeah.
Speaker 2:But... Yeah. I mean, at at the time, there was a bunch of reporting sort of like people familiar with the matter. The information got a scoop from a bunch of the neo cloud compute providers saying like, lepton was a potential competitive threat. And and if you refuse to participate, that creates a risk that NVIDIA could direct workloads toward competitors.
Speaker 2:And it was this... It was a bit of this tense time, but the end result was more balanced. So instead of layering their customers and trying to control aggregate demand, which would be really powerful if it happened, the product evolved into this unified AI platform, which is their their words. But basically, it's between an actual like Expedia for GPUs and just a set of standards. So it's a bunch of proprietary software.
Speaker 2:It is sort of what makes up the CUDA mote. So everything from handling GPU node groups, interactive dev pods, distributed batch jobs, inference endpoints, storage, observability, reservations, more. So all the things that you need to actually schedule, manage GPUs, you can run that, but you can still use your own hardware, do whatever you need to have the relationship with the underlying owner of the GPUs. And so the rest of the Neo Clouds are are generally like, you know, pretty safe. And so it was it was interesting because it was it was was heralded as this like, oh, okay.
Speaker 2:Things could get spicy. You could see all the neo clouds like really chirping at Jensen. Jensen really coming for the throat. It didn't really play out that way. But it does sort of go to show that Jensen is...
Speaker 2:Does not take lightly to to any whispers that the CUDA mode is going away anytime soon. Like, he's he's... Like, the ace is still up the sleeve in my opinion. Like, they still have to do a lot of work because when semi analysis actually like demoed it, were like, it's not working as well as some of the other systems. Like, if you were to put...
Speaker 2:I don't even know if NVIDIA Cloud Leptin is on ClusterMax, but they but they would they would... At at the time that they tested it, they were like, yeah, you're gonna have a better experience if you just go direct to Core Weave, Nebius, the other ones that are in the platinum tier.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Overall overall, I think in in many ways, we've seen it's been very strategic to work with fifty, hundred really, really, really smart teams
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:That are gonna have their own incentives to grow their businesses, grow their their buying of of NVIDIA.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And if you just use the if you just use the framework of like, who was upset yesterday about CoreWeave launching their... What was the actual product called? CoreWeave Forge, which is their like AI cloud. Right?
Speaker 2:So they're just saying, hey, we we got CPUs now. We got storage. We got tools to manage all of that. Who's really mad? It's like it's only their direct competitors basically who are like, ah, now we got to catch up.
Speaker 2:If you're a CPU seller or you're a compute a storage seller or something like that, you're like, great. I got a new customer. I'm happy. And then if you're a customer of Core Weave, you're like, okay, I'm happy. I get more stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And so it was yesterday's Core Weave move was not particularly a like a shot across the bow to anyone other than just like, hey, we know we're in a race with like 300 other neo clouds. You see them on cluster max. We're gonna do more to reach that diamond tier, which is what you propose. But, yeah, really, really remarkable margin expansion story.
Speaker 2:I mean, the depreciation the depreciation story, like they beat the depreciation allegations pretty quickly, but that that value of like dollar per watt is increasing really really quickly. And so if they can get in line with with the Elon and Jensen 60,000,000,000 a gigawatt, it's it's gonna be a very very exciting business. It already is an exciting business, but it was a it was a fun conversation and that's what my wheels were turning about yesterday. Let me tell you about Console. Console builds AI agents that are 70% of IT, HR, and finance support giving employees instant resolution for access requests and password resets.
Speaker 2:Let's go over to the timeline. You you... Is there anything going on yesterday? You said you wanted to get in the mud and wrestle with pigs even though the pig likes it and you get muddy? Yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay. Let's wrestle. Yeah. What are we wrestling about today?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So we we kind of caught some of this live at the beginning of the show yesterday, but the post kept flowing yesterday. Yes. What really got people up in arms was Vinod Mhmm. Coming in and saying you are a struggling second tier competitor that is more unethical and lying just because you have no decency or sense of proper behavior and shows your desperation straight out lying about if Chris being fired I thought would be below even you.
Speaker 1:Just like the most the most crashing out on Matan's personal crash out. Sure. So crash out on crash out... Three car pile. It only took about twenty seconds for people to put it together that Coastal Ventures is of course an investor in Factory- and Cognition.
Speaker 1:And like
Speaker 2:a pretty big one, right?
Speaker 1:But is funny enough an example that like venture firms can have firewalls Yep. And individual people
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:That have exposure to one company that might wanna get involved with another company can still behave in a way that is ultimately like ethical. Yeah. Right? I'm not saying that Fanode, you know, attacking his portco is but...
Speaker 2:Yeah. Was Keith still at FF when Cognition... When they did Cognition? I think he might have already been at Coastal potentially Exactly. Zen.
Speaker 2:And so I I think Keith might be the the the factory board member or something. I don't know. I I just saw Keith coming to Matane's defense. Yeah. Right?
Speaker 2:Which is obviously the the the Coastal Ventures divide. But that's the nature of these of these these partnerships. Sort of a... Sort of clear that the node's not using AI for these posts. Totally.
Speaker 2:Totally all all over the place grammatically.
Speaker 1:Straight out lying. Are a
Speaker 2:competitor that is more unethical and lying. That's not right.
Speaker 1:This was firing from the hip.
Speaker 2:Down here just. But he's he's got to lay it down. He's got to lay it down. I mean what what this really could say is that even though you have an economic incentive to align with this person, you need to distance yourself from them because you know that they are in the wrong. Like that's a...
Speaker 2:Like the fact that Vinod has bags here and he's still posting this makes it more severe. Right? Like...
Speaker 1:Yeah. But I but but I think it's I think there is a chance that Vinod kind of forgot that
Speaker 2:Yo, you think that's that exposure.
Speaker 1:I think I I got... You got to put that at like 15%.
Speaker 2:I I just feel like, yeah. Forgot. Is that possible? I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 2:What... I mean, he's a multi billionaire. The the the economic...
Speaker 1:I mean, he was coming... He was coming... He came on the show last week to talk about Foe Foe Foe.
Speaker 2:Foe. He's clearly working more closely with another...
Speaker 1:Thank you, Jack.
Speaker 2:Was it called Foe? I I like that. I would sign up for that. But yeah. He's clearly like on the board of that company and not on the board of Factory because the the really crazy thing is like how did this not...
Speaker 2:How did this go straight on the timeline? Like like this should have been a text message and maybe it was, but you're only talking about two and a half hours. I feel like if a portfolio founder is out of control, you would text them and say, hey, you are in the wrong. You're about to get smoked. You don't have the leverage here.
Speaker 2:Like you would say, hey, look, you're you're a second tier competitor and you're being unethical and you're lying. So I think you should take the post down and apologize. You know, you would say that behind closed doors. Yep. You would text that.
Speaker 2:You would not just go straight to the truth nuke from outer space which is what Vinod did. It's a truth. Right?
Speaker 1:Well well, I don't I don't even think it's necessarily... I wouldn't call it a a truth nuke because it's it's an ad hominem. Like he just went directly Adam. He didn't even talk about Okay. Any of the facts.
Speaker 1:Well... So here's the thing. So Luke Metropane...
Speaker 2:If knows if he knows the facts are true and it's... We we don't we don't disagree that it's a nuke. Correct?
Speaker 1:It's definitely a
Speaker 2:nuke. It's definitely a nuke. The question is is it a truth nuke or is it an ad hominem nuke? And I think it might be a truth because I think as an investor you might actually know the truth of what happened. You might know because he could go into like the internal CoSLo Slack or something and say like who are the board members?
Speaker 2:Is this guy actually a board member? You know like like what what files have been shared from Factory to our board? Oh, nothing relevant that would be useful to Cognition? You know, he could have made that decision.
Speaker 1:What are you what are you calling it, Tyler? Ad homunuch.
Speaker 2:Ad homunuch. Okay. It's an ad homunuch. We'll leave it there. I think we can close that out.
Speaker 1:Anyway, so Luke Metro said what I think everyone was thinking, can we please not start cognition versus factory before we get a resolution to rippling versus deal. Great post. That being said, wildly different situation than rippling versus deal. When the Rippling Deal drama broke, there was immediately insane, seemingly insane smoking guns Yep. That are getting worked out through the court system.
Speaker 1:But it was like rippling had basically like tricked deal in some ways.
Speaker 2:Right? Wait. Really? Oh, I don't remember that at all.
Speaker 1:I mean, it it it's it's sort of fuzzy at this point.
Speaker 2:It was like a honey pot operation.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And that is sort of a trick? That's sort of tricky?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Well,
Speaker 1:yeah. Honeypot is a better word.
Speaker 2:I I think that was like their term. Right? They put the honeypot
Speaker 1:and spy went for it. My current read is that CRO, you know, the advisor goes to Meton and says, I'm getting poached. And Meton says, you can't get poached. You're being fired for unethical conduct. But the firing happened days after he was notified that he was leaving for a competitor.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. And... Yeah. Keith Keith said it is unethical per se to even interview at a competitor while attending board meetings and board dinners.
Speaker 2:And and I I I read this and I was like, yeah, I I think that's right. I think I agree with that. But then but then I was thinking about like how would you do this how would he have done this more responsibly if that's what happened? And I was like, so so the... Have to you have to resign because you think that you should go interview at a competitor and then reach out to them.
Speaker 2:And it doesn't it doesn't seem it doesn't seem like that's the way things happen that often. I don't know. People people like even direct competitors will maintain, you know, somewhat jovial, know, interactions. Oh, how's it going? Oh, it's going great.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Cool, man. Like and both parties are kind of just saying nothing, but you are having like a conversation technically Because you like bump into someone at a conference. You might both be on stage at the same park talking about agentic AI or something. I don't know.
Speaker 2:And then and then I was thinking about like how does this rank if he was... If the if the new cognition CRO, I forget his name, was on the... Chris Dagnon. No. If Chris Dagnon was on the...
Speaker 2:He was a board observer or board adviser. What's the terminology?
Speaker 1:I think his only... From what I understand, his only technical title was adviser.
Speaker 2:Adviser. Okay. So I'm just thinking like back to your back to your original frame of like, is this more or less hardcore than before? And I'm thinking about like the Steve Jobs and Eric Schmidt interaction where like Eric Schmidt is on the board of Apple and being like, we're buying Android over at Google. We're launching Android over at Google.
Speaker 2:And Steve Jobs gets pissed. Yeah. But it doesn't spill out on the timeline. Or... That's where Steve Jobs...
Speaker 1:Another another comp is like Mike Krueyger.
Speaker 2:Oh,
Speaker 1:yeah. His involvement with Yeah. And resigned from the board I think a couple days. A day before launching a a competitor.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So again, this stuff has been happening but the funny thing is to see this like whole... All this drama around companies that provide basically enterprise applications. Mhmm. When when you look at what's happening on the research side where aggressive, constant aggressive poaching around like truly like companies developing truly novel IP Mhmm. That basically have no protections where you can work at a company for five years, learn a bunch about what they do, get poached and bring all of that know how over to a new company Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Within the same twenty four hour period. Right? Mhmm. Yeah. And so I just don't...
Speaker 1:This whole situation, like an adviser that gets poached Mhmm. Doesn't feel like a big deal at all to me in the context of everything else that's been happening.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. It's just...
Speaker 1:And and and ultimately, don't think... I think the story is like over. Like I think it's it.
Speaker 2:No. No. I think you're right. It's... Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's different because like the researchers do post but they don't they don't have like they don't have as many interactions with VCs. So like there's a there's that back and forth about the three open AI researchers who were just fired according to the Wall Street Journal for sharing information. But like that doesn't reach the level of like board interaction. Right? So you're not gonna see board members, at least that I can tell, like doing drama about it.
Speaker 2:And even when the talent wars happen between Meta and OpenAI, like we were the ones that were posting the most like spicy stuff about it. Right? Because like the board members, they don't necessarily have the same level of interaction with the researchers as the other board advisers. Yeah. And so I think this this just gets a lot more personal I think.
Speaker 2:Anyway, you want to close the book on this. Are you sure?
Speaker 1:Miles says... We're there... Okay. We're going back. The end of trough.
Speaker 1:Let's go back.
Speaker 2:Let's go back.
Speaker 1:Let's go find the pigs.
Speaker 2:Let's do it.
Speaker 1:Miles says, I work with a company that's doing great by all definitions. Recently, one of its star executives was poached by an a plus company to lead a very popular product. Founders tried to retain him, they couldn't, so they wished him well and began the recruitment process to replace him. The investors sent him notes thanking him for all his work. No temper tantrums or ethics debate or debates or Twitter name dragging.
Speaker 1:Just grown ups getting back to work. And Martin over at a sixteen c says, boring.
Speaker 2:Yeah. But that's kind of what Miles is advocating for. He's like these these types of interactions should be boring. Right? So I don't know.
Speaker 2:That's reasonable. Sean McGuire says nice one from the cheap seats. You know 1% of the story. And Sean's really like teasing something. He's like, there's gonna be the files.
Speaker 2:There's gonna be some crazy drop. There's gonna be another truth nuke. It's gonna be truth World War three. Something like that. Yeah.
Speaker 2:But has he actually posted anything? Like it feels like today is the day to like share the
Speaker 1:the truth. I hope everyone can sort it out behind the scenes.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. He said he has a nuclear weapon. Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's a truth nuke. He has a truth nuke. That's what he's saying. A nuclear weapon on the timeline. But...
Speaker 1:He did come out and say cognition is infosys masquerading as anthropic. And then... Which is funny because Infosys does like technology IT transformation, which is in many ways what cognition does. So it it... But the only thing I would disagree with Sean on is I I don't see cognition like masquerading as anthropic.
Speaker 2:No. Not at all. You talked to Scott Wu and he's like, yeah, we're providing
Speaker 1:enterprise Automating node generation and business...
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. It's not an anthropic library at all over there. I mean like they they they take their business seriously but that's not an anthropic. That's not a uniquely anthropic thing.
Speaker 1:Well and also also this would tell me that the two... That Factory and Cognition are going in very different directions. Maybe. Thinks the Infosys direction is bad. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And hopefully they can go in different directions.
Speaker 2:That's great.
Speaker 1:And maybe they could even work together at some point.
Speaker 2:Oh. Okay. Yeah. And maybe you don't need the Snowflake CRO if you have discovered some fundamental thing. Right?
Speaker 2:Like like the whole the whole tease was like we did something on the research side. But like that doesn't matter if your CRO leaves. Right? Yeah. Hopefully he didn't...
Speaker 2:Hopefully he doesn't even understand it. He doesn't even understand what's going on in the research department. He's like, I don't know. It's bunch of mumbo jumbo. Just tell me who to call and sell it to.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I don't know. Anyway, let me tell you about Shopify. Shopify the commerce platform that grows with your business, lets you sell in seconds online in store, on mobile, on social, on marketplaces and now with AI agents. Moving on.
Speaker 2:What's next? Bunch of people got slop ads from Instinct. They're upset. Pulling up the Steelman helmet because I think it's good.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Get the Steelman helmet.
Speaker 2:I'm I'm gonna fight 40...
Speaker 1:But I would clarify. I don't I don't think they're... I would be shocked if they're actually monetizing this already. Seems like it was just an experiment. Right?
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Can we can we suggest products that people will want to buy? Because it would be a big... It would be a... I think everybody... Noah's been very explicit that they plan to do this.
Speaker 1:Right? They plan to get deals with different retailers and platforms and be able to monetize the purchases that they draw. Yeah. Now, something I've always said or at least said a lot in the last month or so, is that if you wanna get to the point where you can have meaningful take rates, you need to be driving net new demand. Right?
Speaker 1:So if I go to my personal agent and say, buy me this thing, right, the demand was created elsewhere.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Like that that it was generated with like advertisement or or organic content or some... Something caused me to wanna go and buy it. And brands are not gonna be standing up and lining up to pay big referral fees effectively when they already paid to create the demand elsewhere. Yep. And so this Instinct test his hey, hey, we understand this person.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. Let's basically suggest some products that they may be weren't thinking about
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:That they would buy and... Like a phone charger. Like a power bank.
Speaker 2:Like a power bank.
Speaker 1:Or some sunscreen.
Speaker 2:I just like... I saw like 12 different screenshots that were all power banks. It's like it is sort of universal. If you were gonna if you were gonna blast, just blast that. I mean, yeah, mean we talked to the shot at the ridge and he's like, yeah, they just move.
Speaker 2:Like it's a good business. But I don't know. So we got to just figure out like are they actually monetizing this because Instinct is in a position where you could literally just go and set up an Amazon referral fee thing and start taking a cut. And websites have done that for a long time. Like if you go to the wire cutter now owned by the New York Times, you will be able to click on checkout for a suitcase, for some sunglasses, for the best TV they have.
Speaker 2:And if you click on one of their partner sites, it puts a cookie there and when you check out they actually do make a referral commission. I would be surprised if Instinct wasn't monetizing that. But at the same time I think they might not even need to because the scale of what they're trying to do is more just like understand the consumer and then have a net... Have an... Have the next proof point for the next race.
Speaker 2:Because obviously, it's incredibly compute intensive. They're growing very quickly. They're going to be raising very quickly.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And being able to go back to the next round of VCs and say, hey, we've actually tested e commerce and it converts at seven times the rate of Instagram reel ads or whatever. And it's like we have this this much surface area and here's the response. And yes, there was a lot of feedback that was like, oh, this is Slop. Who who said it? Shop Slop or whatever?
Speaker 2:Shop Slop. Dave Moran called it from Open Claw.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Somewhat somewhat biased, right? He's running the the opens... Like, he's running the foundation
Speaker 2:Oh, sure.
Speaker 1:Open Claw. Sure. Which, you know, is like basically own your compute, own your agent
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Don't get ads pushed to you. Have your agent be aligned to you. That that's
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Their stance.
Speaker 2:I think the... I think this flop... Here's here's
Speaker 5:the thing.
Speaker 1:Please. They can actually give you a 10 out of 10 recommendation, people will love it. Right? When you... When someone recommends you a product and you're just instantly like, yes, this is great.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That's a wonderful experience. The question is how quickly how quickly can they get there? It didn't really feel like they were nailing it, but we don't know. Like maybe people are sharing screenshots.
Speaker 1:Like one of these was pretty cool. Was they found like some row loafers
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Which are generally... They generally sell out. They're kind of hard to find. Yeah. And so it's possible.
Speaker 1:This person didn't like it, but I think a lot of people would be like, cool. Thank you.
Speaker 2:Like... They were like, this is this is the worst thing ever. Then you see one thing you're like, you're like, meh.
Speaker 4:Okay. I'm told... No.
Speaker 1:The one that I saw that that I thought was funny was Instinct knew that this guy had a '9 11 Targa.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And because they had worked on some insurance stuff. Yeah. But the issue is that Instinct was like basically clock like, okay, this guy's a car guy. I gotta hit him with a bunch of car stuff. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Then it recommends a trickle charger
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Which nine elevens really don't need Yeah. Especially modern Yeah. Nine elevens. And an indoor cover Yeah. To use inside your garage, which car guys I know would never use an indoor cover because I said this yesterday briefly at the end of the show.
Speaker 1:But because if you have any sort of... That basically like the the cover against the paint can cause more damage than it just like sitting there. Right?
Speaker 2:So Yeah.
Speaker 1:You generally want it out of the sun. Yeah. But but you're better off just like leaving it especially because if there gets... If if there can be any debris between the cover and the paint Yeah. You get even more aware.
Speaker 2:But you could imagine how the model evolves....
Speaker 1:About the user but it doesn't know about what car people actually want. Right? And so... Yeah....
Speaker 2:Recommend like a straight pipe exhaust system or under lighting or something that a car guy would want for their Targa. Right?
Speaker 1:Yes. Exactly. Or spinners as you always say.
Speaker 2:Spinners or even just knobby off road tires, an off road kit, something like that. Yeah. The... With the shop slop screenshot here from Dave Moran, what sticks out to me is the the fact that there's like five let's buy this buttons. I don't know, like, this seems like a normal ecommerce site, but the the repetition there of all the calls to action is what's throwing me off and making this look sloppy.
Speaker 2:I don't know if that's what's triggering me. But the actual recommendations there of a couple things...
Speaker 1:Well, it's funny because this was this was always a historical concern with AI ads Mhmm. Is the AI that you trust for information and to help you do things suddenly is like, come on, let's like, I think we should buy this.
Speaker 2:Totally.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Let's buy this. Yeah. What do you think? Should we buy this?
Speaker 1:Right? Yeah. And it's like, it it ends up feeling a little... This feels a little bit pushy. Yeah.
Speaker 1:The other thing that stands out is is, you know, they've taken a very UI light approach. Right? They're... Noah said you don't need new interfaces. You know, it has a computer.
Speaker 1:It has a phone number. It has a number that you can text. But I feel like they're gonna need to... They have to make interfaces. Right?
Speaker 1:And this is one one of the first.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And and then, yeah, again, the challenge is like getting pushed products in text is just very very very very... It's just very very personal.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Right? And I think that a lot of ecommerce brands, you know, will use text marketing. I find that I'm like a thousand times more likely to unsubscribe from text marketing than I am to from email marketing.
Speaker 3:Right?
Speaker 2:Well, yeah. I mean, it can be dangerous to operate on the previous era of like text message conversion rates and open rates because we have moved into a regime where my iMessage at least, probably yours as well, has a number of folders for unknown senders, promotions, spam, transactions. Transactions. And if it starts flagging Instinct or your AI agent not as a friend but as a promotions vehicle, it goes in that bucket and then the open rate goes way down. And this is what happened with like the newsletter apocalypse in Gmail where you got filtered off into a different section.
Speaker 2:You're not actually in the inbox anymore. And so that's that's pretty risky. I I was I was demoing Dot yesterday and just had a phone call with it on the way home and was shopping and said like, go find this pair of pants that I bought in my Gmail. Go find another pair in like a slightly different color. And it was hunting around and it was just like nothing's in stock in your size, bro.
Speaker 2:And I was like, is there some like global pants outage or something? What's going on? And it was like, no. This isn't like a conspiracy or something. But I was actually like kind of laughing back and forth...
Speaker 1:Crazy. They're crazy.
Speaker 2:It was a pretty it was a pretty delightful experience but but but like my end result was like I was like I don't want you just to send me random stuff but I do actually want you to check on this so go create a background task to check like every day for this pair of pants and then just let me know if they come back and stop. And it's like I'm expecting one notification sometime in the next few months for that particular pair of pants and then I can just be like, get it. Okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah. But... Anyways, closing this segment out, Instinct is as of I think last week was like 13 or 14 people. Right? Yeah.
Speaker 1:Like tiny. They're shipping super quickly Yeah. As a as a small team, experimenting. I think that's important. Yep.
Speaker 1:And they just hired our friend Ben from Kotu Yeah. Who was at Snapchat for almost a decade
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Leading like content and partnerships there.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:He joined as a chief business officer at Instinct and I think that that is gonna be a massive unlock for them.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:There's so much that Ben can do.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I do think that there is To
Speaker 1:improve this experience Totally. To make it more like an Amex style experience
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Right? Where it's very mass market and commercial but they're trying to make it feel like elevated and and put the
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Put the user first.
Speaker 2:They might need to do a new pre trained specifically on car guy data to to really nail that, really dial that in. No. I I think that there is a little bit of a gap between the ex Twitter community, the tech people, the insiders who are like, I don't want a bunch of ads. And like, there's a lot of people who are like, yeah, like, I actually enjoy going through all the newsletters and sales in my email. I like the email email, you know, promotional marketing materials.
Speaker 2:And I watch the ads on Instagram. I like them. I enjoy having products be shown to me Yeah.
Speaker 1:In a... That, you know, they maybe they park their car on a on a public street and then they go back to their car maybe after going to a restaurant and there's one of those like business card ads. Yeah. Like I will buy your junk car. You ever got those?
Speaker 1:No. In LA, there's people that like they put a they'll put a business card like in your windows like...
Speaker 2:I I've gotten business card but for like like gardening or like we'll trim your trees like that type of thing. I've never gotten an offer to buy my car.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I've got the multiple times in LA Okay. Of like, we buy junk cars. We buy junk I'm like, wow. Shots fired.
Speaker 1:I thought I was thought I was doing alright.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Was kind of a kind of a nag. But yeah, I I I think a lot of people will will will be excited to have like the daily text of like the best product that they could bet... That they could possibly buy.
Speaker 1:John says nobody on earth can do what Ben can. Change his instinct overnight. I agree. No. Agree.
Speaker 1:True. I've had a... I mean, I've had a bunch of conversations with Ben about about where consumer AI should go offline and he's going to crush it.
Speaker 2:Okay. So let me tell you about Cisco, critical infrastructure for the AI era. Unlock seamless real time experience and new value with Cisco. The folks over at dBind picked the best day to launch Gemini for Argon when everyone's talking about Factory- and Cognition, of course. But it did break through some really impressive benchmarks, also some controversy over how much Google employees are using it internally to code.
Speaker 2:Of course we'll need to see the meme is we're launching Gemini IV Argon and a group of people are talking about did you see the factory guy calling out cognition guy? And then Twitter share goes cool and then goes back to model agnostic, the enterprise model agnostic harnesses are fighting. And so it is certainly a tough day to launch when there's a lot of drama on the timeline that is more engaging than the Model Wars. The Model Wars used to be the most engaging thing but now the interpersonal board dynamics are clearly taking a lead. But what's going on with the naming schemes here?
Speaker 2:Open
Speaker 1:All eyes my are
Speaker 3:gone.
Speaker 2:That's pretty funny. So the naming schemes. OpenAI's in the solar system, you got Luna for the moon, Terra for the Earth, Sol for the sun, Astra for the stars. Anthropic is doing Haiku, a Japanese poem, a sonnet. It's a 14 line poem.
Speaker 2:Opus, major work. Fable, moral story. And then Google arrives with Argon. Just look at the image. The word Argon comes from the ancient Greek word Argos, which means lazy or inactive.
Speaker 2:I think they're named after the element Argon and they're probably just going to go down the list of elements, which is a cool But, place to pull yeah, tech leaders, got to dig into these words. Keep saying this. Too many too many hubristic tales. I don't need any more project Titan project. What was it?
Speaker 2:What was Behemoth? It's like you look at it like the untamable. Oh you couldn't get it out. Interesting. What a coinkydink.
Speaker 2:Anyway, what else is going on in in Gemini world? Anything? Yeah. Employees are sharing some skepticism. We'll see we'll see how it evolves, how they wind up using it and and where it goes from there.
Speaker 2:The the most trusted rating agency for over 30, Aegon Jones Mhmm. Is black pilling says it's over. Complete disruption of the economy is now all but certain thanks to AI. It has a community now. Now Joe shared this so I don't think it's fake news.
Speaker 2:But the purported Egon Joan... Egan Jones risk commentary number 22 does not appear on the firm's website. Okay. Might be
Speaker 1:I it is. Entirely fake. They got him. Interesting.
Speaker 2:They got him.
Speaker 1:They got him.
Speaker 2:There's so much slop on the timeline. It's crazy. There was this fake there was this fake New York Times article about a stock photographer that was put out of work. And I feel somewhat responsible for this because I was doing this bit like a year ago where I would take quotes from our friends and put them just to inspect element. No AI.
Speaker 2:I would just go and edit the HTML to to put a Jeremy Gaffan quote in the Financial Times and then screenshot it and share it to be like, oh, it's like funny that one of their tweets is in the in the Financial Times. And then we got to the point where like we were actually commenting and we were actually in the Wall Street Journal with our basically our tweets and our joke posts. And so things got very muddy there. And then people took the ability to instantiate these these joke posts a little too far. So you can scroll the timeline and just and just see community note after community note of of fake news.
Speaker 2:So be safe out there. A lot of info hazards. But this one isn't. Let me tell you about CrowdStrike. Your business is AI.
Speaker 2:Their business is securing it. CrowdStrike secures AI and stops breaches. We got to talk about this house. We got to do another tier list. There's a house that's for sale in Los Angeles that is accepting OpenAI equity and anthropic equity.
Speaker 2:And we need to do another tier list to decide whether or not it's a good house. Is it worth precious shares in Frontier AI? Or should the humble AI researcher sitting on 30,000,000 of equity in a Frontier lab sit this one out? So we have the Zillow here. I will pull it up.
Speaker 2:And I want Jordy to give me some tier list stuff. So 1210 Chicory Lane in Los Angeles. Price cut, $4,000,000 cheaper. A humble $30,000,000. Five beds, 11 baths.
Speaker 2:Rate that ratio. Twice as many baths, having twice as many baths as bedrooms, where does that fit in the tier list?
Speaker 1:I think that's excellent.
Speaker 2:That's excellent. A tier?
Speaker 1:A tier.
Speaker 2:A tier. We got an a tier for having twice as many baths. My man likes extra bath.
Speaker 1:Only thing is it's a lot of bathrooms for a third of an acre.
Speaker 2:Okay. So third of an acre, point three five technically just over a third of an acre. Where do you put the acreage?
Speaker 1:To eat here. Fuck.
Speaker 2:Rough.
Speaker 1:Well, that's just a personal thing.
Speaker 5:It is.
Speaker 1:You you like to to me like smaller house on more land. Okay. But there's going be some people that that are that are fired up on the view and they don't care that that they can't Okay. Really touch the earth anywhere on the property.
Speaker 2:We got some we got some other stuff in here. So it's set at the end of a quiet cul de sac. Where do you sit quiet cul de sacs? Are you a cul de sac guy?
Speaker 1:Feng Shui. Not not... Can can be rough on the Feng Shui side.
Speaker 2:For defense purposes?
Speaker 1:No. No. No. Trapped energy.
Speaker 2:Okay. Okay. I'm here in d tier?
Speaker 1:F tier.
Speaker 2:F tier for the cul de sac. Okay. Cul de sac's f tier.
Speaker 1:Sorry sorry.
Speaker 2:It's fine. Sorry. Be honest. Be honest.
Speaker 1:Mean the view is really incredible.
Speaker 2:Okay. So the view?
Speaker 1:The view is the view is s tier.
Speaker 2:S tier. What about the 110 linear feet of 11 foot motorized glass walls that disappear completely transforming the great room into an open air retreat above the city.
Speaker 1:I hate motorized glass walls.
Speaker 2:Okay. What are we doing? In What tier? Are you putting it in? Motorized, a 110 feet
Speaker 1:of... F tier. F tier? Like Wow. And and I say this because I unfortunately have them and you have to...
Speaker 1:You can only put this in f tier if you've been like late at night, you know, you're Okay. Trying to like turn off the lights and I accidentally hit the motorized door button. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Like literally middle of the night. Okay.
Speaker 2:Is it loud?
Speaker 1:At least mine, you have to wait until they get to the end like...
Speaker 2:It's gas powered so it needs to fire up a v six.
Speaker 1:It's not super loud but it's it's incredibly annoying when you're sitting there and suddenly your entire house is open air, you know, past midnight.
Speaker 2:Okay. Lightning round. Formal dining room.
Speaker 1:A tier.
Speaker 2:A tier. Ocean facing library office.
Speaker 1:A... S tier.
Speaker 2:S tier. Four stone islands. That too many?
Speaker 1:Maybe. Quite possibly. So we're we're putting it in c tier.
Speaker 2:Okay. Lower level brings together media lounge and illuminated bar. Do you like an illuminated bar?
Speaker 1:Not not for me but but I think I think...
Speaker 2:Give me a tier. Give me a tier.
Speaker 1:B tier. Temperature controlled wine room. If you turn it into a data center, I think it's a tier. Okay. Cinematic theater.
Speaker 1:Toby Lucky did. Theater. S tier because I could say John.
Speaker 2:Hey. Because I'll be over. Yeah. Using it. Okay.
Speaker 2:Glass enclosed fitness studio. Do you like a home fitness studio?
Speaker 1:No. I don't like working out at home. So? F tier.
Speaker 2:F tier. Okay.
Speaker 1:Working out in a gym in great gym is just a million times better.
Speaker 2:Okay. We'll end with this one and I'm hoping for a good result. We're going with the 60 foot zero edge infinity pool and spa that appear to dissolve into the hills joined by multiple multiple lounge and fire areas, a full outdoor kitchen and a flat lawn.
Speaker 1:D tier.
Speaker 2:D tier? What? Said pools were s
Speaker 1:tier yesterday? The elite setup for a pool is basically like grass surrounding the full pool.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:And and being able to go from grass straight into the water.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:It's obviously f tier. Okay. And anytime it's just kind Grass of like a body
Speaker 2:to water is S tier. Out of the water and you're falling down the hill, that's F tier.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay. I think we clarified it. Well Well Agree or disagree with Jordy, make your call as long as you got 30,000,000 in cash, open ass stock or anthropic equity because Well the seller will accept equity as payment.
Speaker 1:Fascinating. As much as I'm sure this is entertaining for our friend Will who's in the waiting room.
Speaker 2:Yes. Let's
Speaker 1:He's got more important things to do than
Speaker 2:He does.
Speaker 1:Let's a tier list. What's going on?
Speaker 2:And Will Bruey from Varda. Hey. Welcome back to the show. How you doing?
Speaker 1:Hey. It's it's not that I disagree with Jordy. Inconsistent. Oh. The the the pool inconsistency, you know, that infinity pool you just had, definitely s tier.
Speaker 1:Come on, guys. Yes. Shot. No shot. There's a bunch of houses in LA where you can get an infinity style pool on a sprawling lawn with the same view.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:And I think... Anyways, I think the house is dramatically overpriced. That's all I'm gonna say. That's all I'm gonna say. But Well more importantly...
Speaker 2:Space manufacturing, space industrialization, certainly not overpriced. We're just getting started on the space manufacturing boom. Give us the latest. What's the latest in Varda What's the latest in space? You guys
Speaker 4:know I only come on when it's Gong worthy. Today is the first flight.
Speaker 1:We don't know what's happening, but we're excited.
Speaker 2:You want some money?
Speaker 4:Awesome. Awesome. I love the energy. Love the hype. This is great, guys.
Speaker 4:No. So I come to you because today is the first flight of multiple commercial reentering in history.
Speaker 1:Can't hear you. I hear you over the sound of this gong.
Speaker 4:I have no idea what's happening. Too much success. I love it. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay.
Speaker 4:So I come bringing news of series d. You might have saw that in the news this I'm currently...
Speaker 1:Oh, baby. More gong hits. I need him. He's gonna break the gong.
Speaker 2:I appreciate it.
Speaker 3:We'll lock in.
Speaker 2:We'll lock in. Okay. Okay. So I just get excited.
Speaker 6:I know it's a lot
Speaker 3:to get over here.
Speaker 2:We want five
Speaker 4:bathroom houses, you know, now we're on reentry vehicles.
Speaker 2:Don't know how
Speaker 4:you guys do the context switch.
Speaker 2:I get I get it. Yeah. It's all...
Speaker 1:Alright. Why is it important? Why does it matter?
Speaker 4:So it matters because we are now in a fleet mentality, which means that we can manufacture at scale. We've done proof of concepts. We've been got... We've begun scaling over the last couple of years. We've flown six of these vehicles.
Speaker 4:Today is eight and nine at the same time, which just means that, you know, we have the ability and the infrastructure to do a fleet rather than just one off missions, means significant unlock for microgravity manufacturing.
Speaker 2:Well, how did that actually play out in the factory? Like I remember touring the factory and seeing like it felt like an assembly line but maybe like one capsule at one vehicle at a time. Are you just parallelizing and you have like multiple pods coming together piece by piece? Or is there machinery involved now? Like what did it actually take to go to, you know, this higher velocity?
Speaker 4:Yeah. The assembly line is higher velocity for sure. The mission control is now parallel. Okay. Launch ops are now parallel.
Speaker 4:We have vehicles at the Cape and Vandenberg, multiple vehicles on a rocket. All the ground systems, a lot of it's digital and in software where we have to be able to handle data from multiple vehicles at the same time. They fly over a ground station. How do you tell them apart? How do you do mission ops with multiple vehicles?
Speaker 4:So this has obviously been done before in constellations, but never for reentry vehicles, you know. And so like if you think about Starlink or other constellations, hundreds sometimes thousands of satellites, we are now able to do that not just with satellites but with reentry vehicles which has never been done before today which is kind of a weird thing to say.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Read some article about like space launch capacity being extremely tight as a market. Jordi was even pitching like buying future capacity and reselling it trying arbitrage something. But how much does that go into your fundraising plans? Your it's effectively your supply chain, like you're going to need to buy launch capacity years out.
Speaker 2:How real is the crunch? Are you... I mean, we just saw Starship come back and be successful. So it feels like there might be a big unlock. Are we in a temporary period of a tight market?
Speaker 2:Or is it just going to be tighter and tighter and this is going to be core competency for you forever?
Speaker 4:Yeah. Think it'll come in waves like any other market in this situation. We got lucky because we have... We booked our flights. We took...
Speaker 4:We also had that arbitrage idea, we booked flights all the way out through 2029. So we have seven already on contract for next year, 10 the year after that, and so on and so forth. So, you know, as one launch vehicle winds down like Falcon nine and Starship winds back up to a microgravity manufacturing company, we treat launch like shipping. And so, you know, a lot of business... Not a lot of business models are you talking to someone about like, FedEx has a truck.
Speaker 4:What do you think? It doesn't it kind of is below the layer of abstraction for us. So as long as our we have access to space and the COGS meet the value that we're generating, it's G and A there.
Speaker 2:So I think everyone's acutely aware of like how much space is booming. The best representation is just like SpaceX is a $2,000,000,000,000 company, IPO ed, the price held. Like it's so real in everyone's face. I'm more interested in your view on what's happening in bio and the pharmaceutical industry because it feels like GLP-1s are really exciting, but there's also this sort of undercurrent of progress at Anthropic around the future of AI that we've talked to a ton of AI for bio companies that are doing molecule design, drug design. There's a lot of energy there that feels like it's going to get unlocked.
Speaker 2:How important is that trend to your business? What are you... What's real there? What are you actually excited about? And then what are the timelines around that?
Speaker 4:So I'm I'm definitely excited about AI's contribution to life sciences and the biotech industry at large. It's a force multiplier. It's also a great pairing with a company like Varda where the aspect that we're offering is a low gravity environment to create chemical outcomes that you otherwise wouldn't be able to do on Earth, period. So even if, you know, even if you can or if AI does unlock the answer, if you will, to do something, you still have to go to space to get to microgravity. You cannot physically replicate microgravity or lower gravity on Earth.
Speaker 4:That's Einstein's principle of equivalence. And so I'm I'm super excited about this, especially with respect to monoclonal antibodies and informing us which drugs make the most sense to crystallize in microgravity. So in the same way that this is acting as kind of a tide raises all boats in the biotech industry, That's also true for Varda, of course. And the lucky aspect for us is that that gravity knob is something we have a monopoly on right now.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So... It comes to
Speaker 1:do monopoly on gravity. Let's give for it that. I I wanted I wanted to get like how should space enthusiasts update their timelines after the last Starship launch and and the...
Speaker 4:Mark to market for enthusiasm. I would say pretty excited. Let's see. Sometimes I like to think back about like, when was Falcon nine at this level of maturity? And of course, you can account for all the synergies that SpaceX and compounding interest of learnings that they've had since then.
Speaker 4:Going to orbit and landing, this one technically landed in the ocean, but it was, from a physics perspective, essentially the same thing as, like, let's say, flight 21. So you're kind of in the 2015 time frame, if you will, in Falcon nine years. If you wanna mark to market that way, from an enthusiasm factor, I mean, I don't know. You you saw those videos. They were awesome.
Speaker 4:Yeah. It's hard to not be enthusiastic about the space industry after you see a skyscraper spitting out data centers into orbit. That's pretty cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. Is there a risk factor to you that data centers crowd out or or kind of, you know, like just drive up the price of launch? Because when it feels like the first VARTA model was probably predicated just on communication. Now there's this new entrant.
Speaker 2:How do you play nice with that? Is there actually a benefit to the launch market broadly as it becomes more competitive to having some diversity of revenue? How do you think about the long term interaction between you and the space data center market?
Speaker 4:Yes. I don't think it's too different than any other infrastructure build out in history. And what I mean by that is you know, if locomotives, hey, the killer app there was moving oil around or moving steel
Speaker 2:around. But,
Speaker 4:you know, there's no reason not to scale up. We already have the operational leverage from having that infrastructure exist. And once you show that the unit economics for any application, whether it be microgravity manufacturing or, yeah, or data centers or anything else of that nature, there's really no reason not to take advantage of the rails that are already laid. And so I don't... You know, there might be some high frequency noise in there.
Speaker 4:But other than that, the free market has shown that launch access to space, there's a lot of application layers on top of that, data center, Starlink, etcetera, pharmaceuticals. And so the the word is out that money is to be made off our home planet, unfortunately. So... Or fortunately, I should say. And so therefore, investment will go there to bridge the gap between known value and realized value.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah. There's the this is this is from the Starship launch? This one? Take me through...
Speaker 4:This one is ours right here.
Speaker 1:That's... That's
Speaker 4:This one is ours going up right now. We're about to see main engine cut off at the second stage and that's when both of our reentry vehicles will deploy from the rocket.
Speaker 2:Wow. Take me through reentry specifically. It feels like that is the place where you've always been the pioneer, the leader, the most aggressive, advanced, pushing the envelope of like what the system was designed to handle. There were setbacks in the past, delays, there were landings in other countries. What is the current strategy?
Speaker 2:Have you found an equilibrium for how to bring something back reliably? Where is the right place to land? How the actual reentry process evolved?
Speaker 4:Let's see. So we're this will be eight this is vehicle eight and nine. So we've flown six before. Five of them, we landed in Australia Yeah. At our landing site with our partner Southern Launch.
Speaker 4:One of them, we landed in Utah with our partner, the Utah Test and Training Range. It's kind of rinse and repeat now. We have an FAA operator's license, means that if we're not doing dramatic changes to the operation... Oh, here we go, baby, sonic boom. This is amazing.
Speaker 4:Moment of silence for for breaking the sound barrier. Wow. It never gets old, dude. It never ever gets old. No.
Speaker 4:But I I... Back to the question of of reentry.
Speaker 2:Just asking serious questions. Dude, you should
Speaker 1:be a streamer. I think I think a lot of people would watch would watch you just like react.
Speaker 2:That's crazy.
Speaker 1:Let's get some w's in the chat for the sound barrier. Exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Just know.
Speaker 1:So... My god.
Speaker 3:No. But I mean like, you know,
Speaker 4:the the... It's it's been proven, you know. I mean, we've done it now multiple times. So Yeah. It's really exciting.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So does... So it sounds like Australia is not gonna have a monopoly on landing these things. There's gonna be a different places. Is there is there any possibility of landing in the ocean for you? Is that like did you cross that off as like not viable?
Speaker 2:Because it seems very logical. It's like the biggest possible target. It's international waters but at the same time like you got to catch it and not let it sink. But what was the actual thinking between like why we haven't heard like, oh, Varda just lands in the
Speaker 1:ocean every time?
Speaker 4:Yes. So we land on land because it's... Why put a boat in the assembly line? Really what it comes down to. From a unit economics perspective, it's just cheaper to land on land.
Speaker 4:The reason why reentry in the past has been done in the water is just to absorb the shock load for astronauts. Mhmm. But since we don't have astronauts on board, we're moving inanimate objects. These are just drug molecules. I mean, you can drop a pill bottle on the ground and nobody dies.
Speaker 4:So let's drop a pill bottle on the ground because it's cheaper than dropping one in the ocean. It's really just as simple as that.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That makes a ton of sense.
Speaker 6:Very cool.
Speaker 2:Jordy, anything else?
Speaker 1:No. I mean, I'd like
Speaker 2:to see... One more more
Speaker 1:the ocean to create some waves.
Speaker 4:Well, I wanted to I wanted to land one in the Taiwan Strait just to prove
Speaker 2:a point of
Speaker 4:what could be possible with the art of technology, you know? But, you know, I don't know if the State Department would have any... Oh, by the way, see
Speaker 1:you put 251,000,000 series d there.
Speaker 4:Where is Yeah. It is. I I I said it should... We should
Speaker 1:just say $2.50, make
Speaker 4:it simple, but, know, Delian wanted to get that plus one in there. So Yeah.
Speaker 1:I can
Speaker 4:give him some shit next time.
Speaker 2:Okay. Someone's snuck in at the last second. Got room
Speaker 1:for one more. Who got
Speaker 4:that last allocation?
Speaker 5:I thought we capped it.
Speaker 2:Well, congratulations and thanks so much for coming on the show.
Speaker 1:Great to see you. I appreciate it. Amazing progress. It's it's it's like our favorite part of the job is just seeing the progression across amazing. You know, different different appearances and you guys are just you know, it's amazing.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Thank you. Awesome.
Speaker 4:Well, I appreciate it. I'm looking forward to seeing you guys in person soon.
Speaker 2:Have good one. Goodbye. Let me tell you about public investing for those who take it seriously. They got stocks, options, bonds, crypto, treasuries and more with great customer service. Our next guest is the chairman, president and CEO of Ecolab, Christopher Beck is coming in for the TBPN UltraDome.
Speaker 2:How are you doing? Happy. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 5:Hey. Good to see you guys.
Speaker 2:Good to see you too.
Speaker 1:Great to Thank you see
Speaker 2:so much for joining.
Speaker 5:I'm here. This is good. Friday.
Speaker 1:I know. I don't know if you caught much of the last interview, but we're certainly acting like it's We're we're certainly acting like it's Friday.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Friday somewhere.
Speaker 5:Everyday is Friday. Oh my god. Spending time in Korea the other day. They were talking on Saturday. It's the second Friday.
Speaker 5:Yeah. Sunday, it's the third Friday. So it never stops.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Oh. But
Speaker 2:first time in the show, would love for you to give us a little introduction on yourself and the company just to kind of set the table for the discussion.
Speaker 5:Okay. Well, let me talk about the company first, which is way more important than just me. We're the world's water and infection prevention company, so we're big problems like water scarcity, small thing, making sure that we have enough water so to survive and to grow for the years to come, making sure that food is safe around the world. Not an obvious thing, unfortunately, when we look at what happened with lettuce lately as well and today. So looking at how do we make sure that AI infrastructure, which means microelectronics manufacturing, power generation, and cooling in data centers.
Speaker 5:So it's made in ways that are, well, good for people, good for the environment. Big topic right now. So that's where I'm spending most of my time. I was born in Switzerland and I've been living in 10 different countries. I don't exactly know where home is but that's where I am right now.
Speaker 2:Great. I mean water is a huge topic. We can go all over the place but I'd love to know more concretely what product services are actually relevant to the world of modern data centers? We've heard about closed loop systems. There's filtration systems.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of different things that go on. But how do you fit in when we're thinking about a new power shell coming online, a bunch of water cooled GPUs going in that building? Where when are you meeting the builder? How are you interfacing with them? What products and services are they using?
Speaker 2:Well, things have changed quite a
Speaker 5:bit as you guys know. So for a very long time, it was air conditioning, HVAC, the air in a in a data room. And that's what we were doing. Basically, so I was making sure that the whole cooling system, cooling towers, control equipment, remote monitoring, everything was doing well in order so to keep the the data centers all running. That's changed the last two years in dramatic ways with Blackwell, with Vera Rubin and all the new things that are coming up.
Speaker 5:But on the one hand, you can't cool them with HVAC anymore. It has to be directed to cooling. And second, if you don't do it differently, it's using a lot of water, and that's big deal. So what we've done is basically to invent technologies that are in a enclosed loop, which is what we've done in most industries as well, And to say, well, you can have the combination of getting a coolant directly on every GPU anywhere in any rack in the data center to get into a CDU, a coolant distribution unit. We have coolant as well that are remote monitored, so we can trace basically the quality of the coolant.
Speaker 5:Is it cooling as it should? Is there any risk as well so to lose any cooling capacity as well? And the really cool news is that, well, you don't need any incremental water for it. So it's a closed circuit. You don't need incremental water.
Speaker 5:They don't have impact for the communities around. And the other good news is that ultimately, you need less power to do it, so which means more power to compute.
Speaker 2:Yes, of course. I'm interested in how you have been setting the company up to thrive in an era of the the the gigawatt compute campus era. I don't know what else to call it, but it feels like we're seeing projects in Abilene, huge campuses of buildings and buildings and buildings that go on for miles. And I'm wondering, is it enough to just vertically or horizontally duplicate your current solution set? Or are you actually at a place where you need to build new systems that can handle the bigger buildings and the bigger networking fabric that's happening at these campuses.
Speaker 2:What has your solution been as the actual campuses have gotten bigger?
Speaker 5:Well, things evolve very quickly because the demand evolves quickly.
Speaker 1:The the
Speaker 5:way chips are being produced evolves as well. So we're trying to stay ahead of it. We had the last few days, so we're talking about innovation with our team as well and saying, okay. Now the the next move is this direct to chip cooling, which is 3% of the data centers. And water neutral data center in the country, have three that are like that.
Speaker 5:So it's very early on that journey. But at the same time, as you're mentioning, so with the the gigawatt type of data center, we know that direct to chip is right for the near future, whatever that means, one, two, three years, and needs to think afterwards what is it going to be. So we're thinking about dual phase. It's basically an evaporation of the liquids are close to the GPU. But it's thinking as well as our laser systems, for instance, to remove the heat from computers within the racks.
Speaker 5:That's a little bit more for the future. So we never stop. But for now, it's really so scaling the the direct to chip cooling. But the the most important in a way right now when I think about the next few months, you know, even for that, so we're using kind of a a coolant which has some chemistry in it in order not having fouling and all the crazy stuff that you might have in your car, for instance. And we're thinking, well, if we were to use nature, just water, give 17% more cooling power of it, but you get the fouling, you get scaling, you get the corrosion, and all the stuff coming with water.
Speaker 5:So it's trying to find ways to get closer to 99% water than to get to second phase than to get to maybe light laser. That's the way we're thinking about it. That's data center. But what's important to keep in mind as well, well, you need to power those chips as well. That's electricity generation.
Speaker 5:That's the second use of water in the country after agriculture. I need to produce the chips, which is where we're active as well.
Speaker 2:Sure. Sure. Yeah. What how have you grappled with the AI bottlenecks, the bottlenecks to the build out? You sometimes it's good to be a bottleneck because that means the stocks going through the roof as demand.
Speaker 2:You can just raise prices so much. At the same time, you want to keep your customers happy. You want to keep the supply chain flowing. What have you had to grapple with on the supply chain on your supply chain side to make sure that when you get the call, can deliver your products on time, on budget within the expectations and to the quality that the buyer demands.
Speaker 5:Well, it's the number one problem if we look at the two political parties today. So they don't agree on much, But on that, they agree that they don't like data centers Mhmm. Which is a problem for everything that we're talking about here. When you think about it, while investments go through the roof and all that, but 60% of the projects are being either paused or delayed. Yeah.
Speaker 5:Well, that's a problem. So on one hand, so you have huge demand, and on the other hand, so you have huge slowdown politically for the for the most part. And it's really unfortunate unfortunate what's happening here because in our country right now, so there is this way of talking about technology and AI in negative ways. It's gonna kill all of us. It's gonna eliminate all the jobs.
Speaker 5:It's gonna be impacting our power bills. I mean, all the stuff that are really dramatic, which is really unfortunate, but that's where it's going. And at the same time, locally in a community, in a village, in a city, nobody wants to have a data center. So what's happening in our country right now, so we think that speaking louder will solve the problem. Well, that makes it just worse because the whole negativity is getting more prominent, which is a problem.
Speaker 5:What we do, and we've done that in many industries, is basically so to get much closer to the community. It's to go to a city council. It's to call the neighbors. It's to be with the local politicians, the NGOs, all the people who really hates what's being done, and to listen to them and to share with them. Okay.
Speaker 5:Do you realize that we can have a data center that is gonna use no water, which means less than a car wash in your own village there? Your power bill might go down because you have the same infrastructure and you use more power through the same infrastructure. Okay. You know, you need to be a genius to understand so how the cost is gonna go down as well. And that's how we're making some progress.
Speaker 5:And one example is Minnesota and Texas. We've been working with the two states. I took those two because they're kind of extreme, most liberal, most conservative. Mhmm. One way to simplify it, and interestingly enough, Minnesota hasn't gotten to a pause while access went up.
Speaker 5:In a way, I think we're finding ways, but it's hard. Have you
Speaker 1:been surprised that the sort of tech industry saw that data centers were unpopular and decided to start calling them AI factories because I'm sure you work with like thousands of factories globally that are actually producing, you know, wastewater
Speaker 2:or They're not the most aesthetic things. I would think you want to not go towards that. That's the
Speaker 5:last thing you wanna be. Yes.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 5:Oh my god. Yeah. Well, I don't think it's the right thing. And it's going... Both sides are going so kind of against each other in crazy ways and thinking, well, if I spend more money so against you, I'm going to convince you that you're wrong and that you're going to say yes to my stuff.
Speaker 5:That's where we are right now. That's the exact wrong way. And we're talking with the hyperscalers, the collocators as well, and to say, calm down. Get closer to the folks, in your communities, the schools, the churches, the NGOs, the communities. They're they're good people.
Speaker 5:They're like us. They're Americans. They wanna have a good life in front of them. Speak less loud, try to listen, come with solutions. I think that technology is gonna help all those things there.
Speaker 5:And for whatever reason, we start... Spent two weeks in China a week ago. Well, 90% love it. Yeah. Well, that's exactly what the Chinese want us to slow down.
Speaker 5:They said, well, are we doing the right thing here? Well, maybe not.
Speaker 2:No. I completely agree. Tell me about some of the other product lines. And I'm I'm I don't know if you have a strong thesis on this, but I'm very interested in desalination. I remember I remember Blake Masters during one of his campaign runs just talking about the future of California should be nuclear powered desalination because that would allow the Colorado River to flow back to Nevada
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And Arizona and sort of create this lush inland area. And I was like from a tech
Speaker 5:Sounds great.
Speaker 2:From a technology perspective it sounded doable you know on a long enough timeline but I haven't we we talked to CEOs all the time. We haven't talked to that many people that are like, I'm going be the one who's doing the mega project on desalination. We've talked to plenty of people that want to do that nuclear. What what is your view on desalination? Well,
Speaker 5:it sounds great because obviously we're surrounded by water especially when in California. We don't have that problem in Minnesota where I'm living. It's kind of far away from from the sea. But desalination is not the solution for the future. It requires a lot of hour to get it done.
Speaker 5:It needs to be close to the sea, obviously, otherwise you don't get much salt water. That creates geopolitical issues as well. Look at what's happening with the the big oil pipeline in Saudi that got destroyed by the Houthis as well. Well, that's creating a big issue in the country. If it's water, which is the case in Saudi by the way, you have another problem because you can cut the water access as well as the two big cities.
Speaker 5:There's a much simpler solution, is to do what nature has always done. The concept of wastewater is just a wrong concept. It's an engineering. For an engineer like me, I'm an aerospace engineer, this is just a flaw. Nature has never done it that way.
Speaker 5:It's always in a circular way. It's in a lake, it evaporates, it goes to the clouds, it goes down, it gets filtered, they get to use it and all that. Whether we like it or not, well, the water that we're drinking today, well, has been through a human a few 100 Yeah. Tastes prior. Don't overthink it.
Speaker 2:Just keep it cycling. Yeah. It makes perfect sense.
Speaker 5:Keep recycling. You know, with the the the the fabs, we have that discussion in in Taiwan, in Korea, here in the country. We have this art of putting those fabs in places where there's absolutely no water. Well, you need ultra pure water for a fab. You're familiar with it.
Speaker 5:It's a million times more pure than the water you put in your own body in an injection. Well, that's hard to recycle to make sure that you get to the highest standard. We've developed those technologies at ultra pure water level. Well, guess what? You recycle the water, you get higher purity, water, which means that you can get lower than the two nanometers, and you get a higher yield as well.
Speaker 5:So from 60% to 85%, this is billions. Why wouldn't we do that? You don't need a diesel plant to do that.
Speaker 2:Okay. Okay. Real rock... Decelerate the desalination. He's a desal desal desal.
Speaker 2:That's what he is. I'll agree or disagree. I'm still optimistic. But I... You make a lot of good points.
Speaker 1:Last question. I know I know we're over. In many of... From from my understanding in many of the areas where there are proposed data center developments, the actual water infrastructure in those areas is is terrible and that the local water utilities are like actually wasting water as in there's like leaks because the infrastructure is old. They're under billing for water because they don't actually have good systems to to sort of understand flow.
Speaker 1:Is there not an opportunity for the tech industry to go and say Yeah. To these local communities, hey, our data centers are very water efficient already. We're gonna make a closed loop system. It's gonna be use less water than a car wash. And you're also...
Speaker 1:We know that you're wasting a ton of water by having, you know, leaks and and under billing and all these different things. Why don't we invest a relatively more modest amount to actually just like upgrade the local water utility infrastructure in these areas that just don't have a lot of funding? Again, I've I've heard a lot of this through the grapevine but it feels like you could come in and say, hey, we're gonna give you $20,000,000 to like upgrade your local utility to to remove waste and and help find leaks, etcetera. And then we're gonna put this thing in that is gonna use a little bit of water but the the delta will be significant.
Speaker 2:Don, just to be clear,
Speaker 5:it uses zero water. So we're working with some companies not to be named. There's not so many of you that are thinking about data centers in space. Those data centers in space are are not connected to a garden hose Yeah. Obviously, so to get the water.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Sure. Sure. Sure. So
Speaker 5:it's 100% closed loop, so you need no water. You bring it once and it works forever. But the point you're making of saying supporting the communities, that's a good idea, but that has nothing to do with the data centers or providing water so... To it because you need zero, like 0.0 and that's important to keep in mind.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And I know but but just like for me there's like outrage around data center water usage and no outrage around just poor utilities, poor water infrastructure in these local often rural communities where no one for years has come in and said they just don't have the budget to invest. Right? And tech companies... This is
Speaker 5:a great idea. Yes. It... That's back to the point I was making before. It's to to get closer to the local communities.
Speaker 5:It's not to spend billions on communication, it's to be closer to those guys. I mean, it's people like us. They want to have kind of a good community, good schools, live in great places, not having their water being wasted and all that. Yes. We should help and we have to.
Speaker 5:Love it. Thank you, sir. Alright.
Speaker 1:Well, I think we I think we solved it. We solved We did it.
Speaker 2:We We
Speaker 1:We did it.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for coming on the show.
Speaker 1:Have a great rest of to day. Meet you. Let's let's do it again soon.
Speaker 2:Yeah. We got to do it again soon. Great to
Speaker 5:see you guys.
Speaker 2:All the best. Talk to
Speaker 1:you soon Friday.
Speaker 2:Goodbye. I got a pitch for you, Jordy. You know how he mentioned the ultra pure water that's used in semiconductor fabs?
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:I think you got to daily drive that.
Speaker 1:I think so too.
Speaker 2:$100 a gallon.
Speaker 1:Actually actually no. No? You you want the mineral content.
Speaker 2:Oh you want the mineral content. Okay.
Speaker 1:You want the mineral content.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Folks.
Speaker 2:Well then it's out. It's out. But you know who's in? Figma. Agents meet the canvas.
Speaker 2:Your AI agents can now create and modify your Figma files with design system context. And you know who else is in? The New York Stock Exchange. Wanna change the world? Raise capital at the New York Stock Exchange.
Speaker 2:Our next guest will probably be there shortly. We got Hassaan Raza, cofounder and CEO of Tavis, here with us for the first time on TBPN. Welcome to the show. How are doing?
Speaker 3:Hey. Good. So nice to meet you all. Excited to be on here.
Speaker 1:Thank you. Great to meet you.
Speaker 2:Beautiful office. What is the car behind you? Is that a Corvette?
Speaker 3:That is. It's a '85
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:Corvette. It's part of the... I spent the last couple of years restoring it, but we got a lot of vintage computers out here. If you've seen
Speaker 2:That's great.
Speaker 3:The MPAD, they said it was one of the most powerful computers at the time. So it's a lot of fun.
Speaker 1:I love it. I love it. Very cool.
Speaker 2:Tell us about what you're building. Tell us about Griffin.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I mean, so... I mean, Tabitha's a nutshell. We're a research lab focused on human computing.
Speaker 2:So we
Speaker 3:want to deliver a feature where using a machine will feel like talking to a friend or coworker.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 3:And today, we released our biggest breakthrough model yet. It's called Griffin. Mhmm. It's a human interaction model, and it's the first model to pass a Turing test.
Speaker 2:Did it actually pass? I'm looking at the data. Forty eight percent of testers, 26 out of 54 believe Griffin was a real person. That feels like you barely didn't pass. Well,
Speaker 3:be clear, before, the the next best model had less than a 2% pass rate.
Speaker 2:I'm not saying it's not amazing. I'm not saying it's not the best. It's not... I'm not saying it's not... I think what
Speaker 1:you're saying is job's
Speaker 2:not finished. I'm saying job's not finished.
Speaker 3:Oh, 100%.
Speaker 1:Well, there's also there's also... When when you're getting asked do you think this is an AI video like you're also like playing... True. Okay. This is good point.
Speaker 1:Might you might you might have an instinct to do something but you know you're being tested.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So you're gonna look for... Yeah. You're gonna kinda cheat. You're like looking for the details in the background.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Little aberration. It's okay.
Speaker 3:We we did we did do like a human baseline as well. Mhmm. And so, we did that so that people who might have been like, oh, I'm being tricked. And like, you know, 15% of them thought that the real human was AI. And so Yep.
Speaker 3:We used all this in the study. And so this is like a... We have a lot of work to do.
Speaker 1:Okay. Which one is the AI here?
Speaker 3:It is the one the one who's talking. The ginger lady.
Speaker 2:You. You are AI right now.
Speaker 3:Oh. Is that okay? Yeah.
Speaker 1:Because I because I was watching this and I thought the guy with the Rubik's cube was AI. So so you got... You fooled me.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You did it. Alright. So what what How making
Speaker 2:How you making money on this?
Speaker 1:For commercial guys.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Can imagine so many so many things, but who's the... What's the beachhead market?
Speaker 3:Yeah. I mean, essentially, like, we use these models to power what we call like PALs, Right? Which is like AI employees, AI coworkers, AI companions. And so people are building ASCR. Like, on Salesforce, something they have AI star that's powered by TBP.
Speaker 3:It's a continued meta allocation, AI tutors, like, AI health care workers. Like, all of these things where, like, you would normally need a human. Like you need their EQ, need their trust, you know, you need to be able to see. But there's like not enough of them. And like, those are the markets that we're going after and that are already using our model today.
Speaker 1:Okay. So is this is this a bet? Because there's been various attempts at making these kind of like live interactive video models that have, you know, frontier, near frontier intelligence. But oftentimes, like if you're doing, you know, I've I've seen people complaining or even film, like there's viral Instagram videos filming themselves doing like a like a screening call for for a company. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I've seen these.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And it's like, hello. How are you today? You know? And it's like it's it's very...
Speaker 1:And so is is the bet here that like once the models are just way better, there will be like exponentially more demand and consumers will stop being frustrated by them?
Speaker 3:Exactly that. Right? Like the thing is that essentially like the closer that we get to passing the Turing test, the more people they they know it's AI because it's disclosed, they just don't care. Because it's like the most natural thing you could do is, like, instead of, like, trying to figure out what to prompt in the machine or, like, what button to click or, like, you're, like, waiting for it to respond, it just it just feels like it feels like you're talking to another human. So you don't even think about it.
Speaker 3:You know it's AI. Don't even think about it at all.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. Walk me through how you're grappling with the various debates of how this technology gets rolled out, the potential downsides. I imagine you're not going open wait but is there a process to onboard a customer so that you know it's not literally just a scammer who's trying to get grandma to send a gift card or something?
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah. No. So with Griffin, we're doing an early research preview. So we're only releasing it to select testers.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And it's exactly for that. Right? It is the first model and by far the largest sort of leap ahead in passing Turing tests. So we're like, we know we have to do more AI safety work, but we want to do, like, proper disclosure work, make sure that the model always says that it's an AI and not a human.
Speaker 3:Yep. And so we're working through those safety sort of testing and do like safe releases. So we're probably gonna be releasing over the next couple months.
Speaker 2:And then on the actual, like, you know, jobs not finished, like, where this goes, it feels like Turing test passed on, you know, basic Zoom call. Where do you What want like what capabilities do you want to unlock next? I I I can imagine like it's nice to be able to talk to somebody and it looks like they're on a video but occasionally you'll want that person to like stand up and go get an object and show it to you. And I don't know if the model can do that yet. And there's like other things that happen in the course of a Zoom call.
Speaker 2:Where do you see this all going? Yeah.
Speaker 3:I mean I mean, I think what's really special about this model is that it is actually capable of doing a lot of these movements. Like, it won't get up and walk away just yet, though technically it's capable of it. But, like, it's a small things. Like, it should, like, shift around her chair. It can, like, it can do gestures.
Speaker 3:It can, like, touch its face because it feels nervous. Like, all these things that humans would naturally do, and it builds all this trust. But really, what we're trying to go with this is, like, how do we make these more capable? Like, how do we make them more capable employees, more capable assistants, more capable, sort of coworkers? And then how do we make it so that the interface sort of disappears?
Speaker 3:Like, you don't think about it, and you're just asking it to do its work and it does it just goes and does it. So that's like intelligence and then there's like the Turing test naturalness.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I can imagine virtual guitar tutor being a really hard benchmark.
Speaker 3:I think I think that's really good. So one of my... That actually one of my sort of use cases that I wanna unlock is like teaching me piano. Yeah. Because it it can see.
Speaker 3:It can already... It has perception. So it can see and people are already using it to do sorts of training. You can hold things up. You can...
Speaker 3:Yep. People are like our team and others, like, they'll play tests with it, and it's telling... It's like, play Yeah. Against So those are all things you can do. But like piano and guitar are definitely difficult, because it can't tell the difference between like different, like...
Speaker 3:It doesn't doesn't know the difference between different keys and stuff yet, but it'll get there. Like Yeah. All these things will get there. And so being able to have like a personal tutor, personal trainer for every single person is like that's the dream.
Speaker 2:Yeah. No. Makes a ton of sense.
Speaker 1:How how are you... Like, am I right to assume that when... If somebody's like talking to a pal, like a virtual coworker, and then that pal is gonna go off and like do work in the background. Let's say you have like, let's jump on a quick call, talk about the thing we wanna do, and then the pal decides to go do work. Will that workflow be model agnostic because there are a bunch of specialized models and frontier models that you can use to just run-in the background and you don't need to really focus there.
Speaker 1:You need to focus on like the interaction collaboration.
Speaker 3:Exactly. Exactly. So like the way we like to talk about it is like the Oracle and the Envoy. Like we're building the Envoy model. Like its job is to just have really great conversation, understand and simulate human behavior.
Speaker 3:And then whenever it needs to do something that it can't do in conversation, it goes off to the big the big model in the sky and goes, hey, let's let's work together on this. Let's do this in the background. And so it can reach out to any tool, any model, and go do that work rather than this model doing everything. Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Well, congratulations on the progress. Very impressive stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And
Speaker 2:I'm sure you'll be back on the show soon.
Speaker 1:Very cool.
Speaker 3:Thanks. Have a great rest
Speaker 1:Congrats on the progress. Drive... Do do some donuts in the in the Corvette next time you join. Yep. In the lobby.
Speaker 1:Hopefully. Yeah. There's like a fundraising milestone in the lobby would be great. Fantastic. Great to great to hang.
Speaker 2:Have a good one. Goodbye. Let me tell you about MongoDB. What's the only faster than the AI market? Your business on MongoDB.
Speaker 2:Don't just build AI. Own the data platform that powers it. Let me also tell you about Codex. Codex is a powerful workspace for getting work done with AI agents. Whether you're writing code, analyzing data, creating content, or automating business workflows, Codex helps you move projects forward from start to finish.
Speaker 2:And our next guest, Connor Renton, is the founder and CEO of Brody Rec League here with us on...
Speaker 1:There he is. There's What's
Speaker 6:going on, fellas? How are we?
Speaker 2:We're
Speaker 1:doing great. We're doing great....
Speaker 2:Outfit. That's looking great. What is behind you?...
Speaker 6:Dressed up for you guys.
Speaker 2:What is
Speaker 3:behind you? This is
Speaker 6:this is our world, guys.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 6:So we're the largest basketball league in the world. We do 15 times more games than the NBA.
Speaker 2:And for for us, for those at home, what is basketball?
Speaker 6:Basketball. Invented...
Speaker 2:You're gonna have to dumb it down. Wait. Is it actually invented in Canada?
Speaker 1:Woah. I always kind of felt like always I always was suspicious of that. Yeah. I never knew the truth. Interesting.
Speaker 1:Okay. So so saw this pitch Yep. Whenever we started talking about having you come on the show and John and I are not not big traditional sports guys but I've been thinking about this for years Mhmm. Like this this kind of like league that's that's digitally native that's capturing all these different moments Mhmm. Specifically because I think like like bragging rights are like eternal, right?
Speaker 1:And so it's
Speaker 3:like Mhmm.
Speaker 1:It's fun to go play, pick up basketball or or shoot around a soccer ball, etcetera. But like actually being able to capture that and go out and and not just like compete compete to win in that moment but to compete for eternal glory by Yeah. You know, getting the clip, you know, draining a three in in in front of your in front of your friends, etcetera. So yeah, very very excited about the vision, but but talk about where it's at today and where you want to take it.
Speaker 6:Yeah. So I mean, it's funny like in 1970 when Nike started and Phil really started taking it off, when people would run, they would say, why are you training for the Olympics? And if I went to an LA Fitness or a YMCA or a gym and I'm putting my shots up, I'm in the I'm in the lab super early, people are going to ask me, are you training for the NBA? Like, there's no reason why if you don't play pro that your sports dream and your your hoop dream deserves to just... To die.
Speaker 6:And like I always say, if you're 19, you're in the NBA, you're a rookie. If you're 19 and you're not on the NBA, you're washed and you're on polymarket betting your life away. So like...
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. We... Yeah. We need we need a better...
Speaker 1:Okay. But what... But like break down the actual product.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Like where is it today Yeah. You're doing 15 times you're 15 times bigger than the NBA already. But Yeah. But like what what is the experience today?
Speaker 6:So it's a pro experience. Like Brody is the pro experience for the everyday athlete. We took what you know about beer league, what you know about rec league, and we stripped it all the way. Mhmm. So it's full uniform videos, photos, livestream, player clips.
Speaker 6:You get badges and earn rewards based off your play style. It's the closest thing you can get to a pro experience without actually being in the pros. And essentially, it's just that pathway. If you want to keep playing that sport you love, you don't have to hang it up. Like, I think a lot of people don't play team sports and rec sports as they get older and they move to running or they move to high rocks or they move to Sure.
Speaker 6:Marathons Because the infrastructure to build team sports is it's it's tough. It's... You gotta you gotta convince 10 dudes to show up. It's a lot easier to put on some running shoes and go and go play. But it doesn't mean that people don't want to play the game they love.
Speaker 6:That makes sense. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So so where where where is the line? I imagine that in order to get a team going, still need someone with a lot of initiative. But what are you taking off their plate? I imagine you can take off scheduling the software piece but those jerseys are...
Speaker 1:But it's not just scheduling, it's like the the location.
Speaker 2:That's what I'm saying. Yeah. Plate time. Do you bring to bear?
Speaker 1:Video, etcetera.
Speaker 6:So we make it super easy. Like, if you ever try to play team sports
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 6:And you show up to a gym with the basketball, if you're not one of the best players, it's gonna... You're gonna be... It's be hard for you to find that space on the court. Sure. So everything we built from super early on was how do we make basketball truly the...
Speaker 6:It the most, like, accessible sport. So you show up to a gym, you go into Brody app, and we're going to find you a team, we're going to find you a captain, we're going put you in that group chat, we're going to find the perfect skill level for you. So we've made it easy to play team sports in a world where it's incredibly hard. And it's... Like I said, everything from the the full twelve week experience is all curated for you.
Speaker 6:So we're building this world for the athlete to live forever who wants to play forever. We're taking and stripping away everything that's really shit about trying to organize basketball as an adult, and we're we're making it happen for
Speaker 2:them. I imagine...
Speaker 5:What do
Speaker 1:you think your next sport will be?
Speaker 2:Surfing. So we
Speaker 6:want to go really deep on basketball. I think basketball is like, I I mean, I I was a hooper growing up, and I I actually played
Speaker 4:a lot of hockey, a
Speaker 6:lot of rugby. Every venue we rent, we rent across 40 different locations today.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 6:They all have volleyball courts as well.
Speaker 5:Oh, yeah.
Speaker 6:So we're building infrastructure for any sport. Right now, it's just basketball.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That makes a ton
Speaker 1:of sense. David in the chat says, what about orange slices? Do you guys supply orange slices or is that on the players?
Speaker 6:That's on the players' mom still.
Speaker 2:Okay. Stays with the mom. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Mom's What what cities are are the best like player experiences right now? If somebody's watching and they and they want to they want to get involved?
Speaker 6:So we're in Toronto, New York, Chicago, Boston, Vancouver and Calgary up in Canada
Speaker 1:as well. Okay.
Speaker 6:Those are our big ones.
Speaker 2:Sort of expanding downward. And monetization, I imagine that people are fine to pay like a league fee. Are are you just Mhmm. Charging players directly or is there a more complicated monetization scheme afoot?
Speaker 6:It's it's super simple so far and that's sort of on by design. Like Yeah. Every sort of semi pro league like think like Drue League, even like Unrivaled, these like new challenger leagues, they all require so much capital, so much sponsorship investment upfront for those leagues to actually run. Yeah. Ours is like 100% the Brody athlete and the player.
Speaker 6:Sure. So our our model is super simple. It's a twelve week season. The player fee is paid, and that's all we do. I think we're sort of laying up though this world that we've built into apparel, into sponsorships, into partnership deals, into bigger events like a marathon, like a high rocks event.
Speaker 6:But right now, it's just weekly, super simple. And I think that's the exciting part about what we've got going on too.
Speaker 2:Yeah. No. No. That makes makes sense.
Speaker 1:Well, let's hit the gong.
Speaker 2:No. Let's do
Speaker 1:it. I I think I think at least a couple guys on the team should... Just gotta join the league. I think we're putting Tyler. Tyler, you're going to the league.
Speaker 1:You're going to league. You're going the I'm I'm like genuinely like this is a really really really cool idea. Right?
Speaker 2:Also just a white belt company, you
Speaker 1:know? Yeah. Yeah. People getting together having fun. And yeah, I'm so I'm so glad you're building it.
Speaker 1:I do I do hope that you expanded into surfing. That's fine.
Speaker 2:It would be
Speaker 1:cool. That's just a that's a that's a... You can do that in like ten years.
Speaker 2:Racing? But the beauty...
Speaker 1:So the beauty of motorsports is like like drivers today even if they're like total amateurs effectively get this like pro level experience that you're getting because they work with a team. There are there is videos and photos and there's organizers Yeah. And like it's all like sanctioned in different ways Sure. And there's...
Speaker 2:That's fine.
Speaker 1:So yeah. I think like part of what people love about motor sports as adults is you get that experience even if you're not... Even if you're, again, nowhere near a pro level, you get to feel like you're a pro in many ways. Yeah. And it's funny that that hasn't come to these other games that are more accessible, that are more popular, that are played all over the world.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And yeah, can imagine that the Brody the Brody World Championship... So they call...
Speaker 2:Wait, when it's not professional, it's professional style recreational basketball. Do think they should call it gentlemen's basketball? Like gentlemen drivers in racing? That might be the might be the next thing.
Speaker 1:Maybe maybe that's like the the senior class in '60 and out. Real ball knower.
Speaker 2:Yeah. For sure.
Speaker 6:Yeah. That's right.
Speaker 2:Congratulations. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Really, really Thanks, cool great to meet Thank you.
Speaker 6:Appreciate it.
Speaker 2:We'll talk to soon.
Speaker 6:Thanks, guys.
Speaker 2:Goodbye. Let me tell you about Railway. Railway is the all in one intelligent cloud provider. Use your favorite agents to deploy web app service databases and more while Railway automatically takes scale of scaling, monitoring and security. There are we there's some drama, Jordy.
Speaker 2:We got to talk about the drama. But Pop Tarts has ended their Buzz Balls partnership. This is huge. But on the other side of things, there's more collabs happening because Mr. Reeves Feastables partnered with Liquid Death peanut butter cup soda flavored sparkling water.
Speaker 2:So...
Speaker 1:Okay. So we kind of ended up like net neutral... We're net neutral. Yes.
Speaker 2:Yes. It's reincarnated in some ways.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Never really died. It never really died.
Speaker 2:Has been reincarnated as the Mr. Beasables liquid... Beas Feastables liquid death peanut butter cup soda flavored sparkling water. That is a long name for a product. Do you think this is gonna fly off shelves?
Speaker 2:The mister beast festivals liquid death peanut butter cup soda flavored drinking water sparkling water?
Speaker 1:It looks like a nightmare.
Speaker 2:Peanut butter cup water is a crazy move. Right? Yeah. But maybe that's untapped.
Speaker 1:But maybe we're living in a crazy world...
Speaker 2:The next coconut water. No one was drinking coconut water back when, you know, before before it came to America. I don't know. Maybe peanut butter cup water is the next thing.
Speaker 1:Tyler, this has got you written all over it. Friday challenge. Drink a six pack of peanut butter cup water.
Speaker 2:Would you rather drink the Mr. Beast Feastables Liquid Death peanut butter cup soda flavored sparkling water or the Pop Tarts Buzzball? Frosted S'mores.
Speaker 1:We love Buzzball.
Speaker 2:Leave us Pop Tarts on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Speaker 1:See you tomorrow.