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Technology's daily show (formerly the Technology Brothers Podcast). Streaming live on X and YouTube from 11 - 2 PM PST Monday - Friday. Available on X, Apple, Spotify, and YouTube.
You're watching TBPN.
Speaker 2:Today is Friday, 09/19/2025. We are live from the TBPN UltraDome, the temple of technology, the fortress of finance, the capital of capital. Thank you to everyone in the chat.
Speaker 3:It is teaming today. Love to see it.
Speaker 2:The first message I saw was thank you to Ramp for another TBTN Friday.
Speaker 4:Thank you
Speaker 2:to Ramp. Ramp.com. Time is money. Save both. Easy to use corporate cards, bill pay, accounting, and a whole lot more all in one place.
Speaker 3:We have we have new sound effects from the team, by way. Oh, we do? Hit him.
Speaker 2:There we go. I'm hearing multiple things. This is getting crazy.
Speaker 3:And we have a special guest today. Let's go let's go to the wide.
Speaker 2:Yes. We have turbo puffer. Turbo puffer here.
Speaker 3:Look at this.
Speaker 2:It doesn't show how three d it is.
Speaker 3:I mean, it this this it is absolutely stunning. Turbo
Speaker 2:puffer clock.
Speaker 3:And it's functional too.
Speaker 2:Of course, search every byte. Turbo Puffer. We're puffing. Serverless vector in
Speaker 3:full text search. Built from
Speaker 2:first principles on object storage. 10 x cheaper, extremely scalable. Go to the Gong game. Thank you, Turbo Puffer from Because we pop it. Us.
Speaker 2:Excited to dig deeper into that company. There's some fun stuff to share at some point. Anyway, the big news, Colossus two x AI, it seems like it's going well. People have been saying Elon spread too thin. Starships, you know, crashing into the firmament every two seconds.
Speaker 2:Starships landed. It's came back. The haters are mean, he pulled back from politics. It seems like there's lot of Water,
Speaker 3:the huge L for the firmament believers
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:After the last launch.
Speaker 2:Yes. Elon made it to space and back. And he's also making progress on Colossus two, the data center.
Speaker 3:Ten, twenty minutes ago, CNBC is reporting that xAI raised a fresh $10,000,000,000 at $200,000,000,000
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 3:That just hit There the
Speaker 2:we go. Dylan Patel, What's something about that
Speaker 3:headline? Did you put a headline in the In
Speaker 2:the newsletter?
Speaker 3:In the newsletter today?
Speaker 2:Yes. XAI, if you build it, they will come.
Speaker 3:Oh, Okay.
Speaker 2:Because his plan is to build the biggest data center, the first gigawatt data center in the world. And Semi Analysis says they have a unique RL methodology. It's focused less on these RL environments for specific business use cases. We're not hearing about them cloning DoorDash or Amazon or creating a unique browser use, like go solve a very specific They're not trying to build deep research RL environments. They're building Annie, the romantic companion, which is an RL environment that feeds off of human interaction.
Speaker 2:And so semia analysis is a very interesting Harvest it. Potentially. Potentially. But Dylan says, every time you think Elon has lost his touch or is failing, he does some crazy stuff. And you're like, damn, he really still got it.
Speaker 2:How Elon is building the largest data center in the world faster than anyone else is amazing. Also, what they're doing on the RL side is equally nuts. There's a bunch of there's a bunch of posts here and bunch of bunch of interesting
Speaker 3:Do not go data center for data center with a goat?
Speaker 2:Yes. So, I mean, he got into this game late. He found he co founded it's gonna be the ten year anniversary of co founding OpenAI. December 2015 is when he co founded OpenAI. And we're coming up on December 2025, and he's about to have a data center that's on par.
Speaker 2:It's close to OpenAI. It's not yet bigger, but they're getting there. Is semi analysis breaks down the megawatts of IT capacity, which is effectively the total AI training data center capacity. OpenAI is still ahead of of x AI, but Elon's pulling out every possible trick play to catch up to the firm he cofounded. They're now ahead of Anthropic and Meta Superintelligence according to Semi Analysis's data.
Speaker 2:You can go deeper and obviously subscribe. And if you upgrade to the most high tier, you get their data center model, and they'll even tell you what Google is doing, which is much more complex because Google trains across multiple data centers. So everyone loved Colossus one from built from the ground up in one hundred and twenty two days. It had 300 megawatts of IT power, which is now small potatoes because the next one's three times bigger. Zuck has talked about Hyperion and Prometheus shortly after going on his MSL hiring spree.
Speaker 2:OpenAI is, of course, working on Stargate in partnership with Crusoe and Oracle and others.
Speaker 3:Also, in Alex Heath Heath
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:Review the other day was saying that I think it released yesterday that he believes we might be in an AI bubble.
Speaker 2:Zuck didn't say that. That was an interpretation of the Zuck clip.
Speaker 3:Interesting.
Speaker 2:So so I saw that post. We should pull up the actual clip
Speaker 3:Let's let's watch it.
Speaker 2:And and and review what Zuck said because I believe that this was somebody adding a caption and interpreting the vibes that were coming off of that particular interaction between Alex Heath, who just launched a new Substacking podcast. Let's listen to this interview with Mark Zuckerberg.
Speaker 5:Out of the way. That's kind my job for them.
Speaker 6:Yeah. You were talking about the CapEx and the data centers. You obviously see something on the other side of that that will warrant that being worth it. But I'm wondering, do you ascribe to these bubble fears at all that people are talking about that we're in this massive overspending, getting ahead of the skis bubble? And maybe a company like Meta will be Okay because you guys do have a core business that makes a lot of money,
Speaker 5:but Yeah.
Speaker 6:How do you think about this bubble talk that has been going on for the last few months especially?
Speaker 5:I mean, I think it's quite possible. I mean, I think basically if you look at most other major infrastructure build ups in history, whether it's railroads or fiber for the internet, in the .com bubble, These things were all chasing something that ended up being fundamentally very valuable. In most cases, it ended up being even more valuable than the people who were kind of pushing the bubble thought it was going be. But in at least all these past cases, the infrastructure gets built out, people take on too much debt, and then you hit some blip, whether it's some macroeconomic thing or maybe just have a couple of years where the demand for the product doesn't quite materialize, and then a lot of the companies end up going out of business. And then the assets get distressed, then it's a great opportunity to go buy more.
Speaker 5:So it's obviously impossible to predict what will happen here. There are compelling arguments for why AI could be an outlier, basically just if the models keep on growing in capability year over year and demand keeps growing, then maybe there is no collapse or something. But I do think that there's definitely a possibility, at least empirically based on past large infrastructure build outs and how they led to bubbles, that something like that would happen here.
Speaker 2:He's going back and forth there. Not as strong as what Sam Ahmed said. Yeah, again. It's possible we're in a bubble that's not the same as, yeah, we're definitely in a bubble.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And the and and the But
Speaker 2:I think you're right.
Speaker 3:The Post, the Yeah.
Speaker 2:Summer was
Speaker 3:flipped that is is right as well, and that it's much better to be in a position where you have a highly profitable advertising business that can support this
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 3:You know, that all of the AI CapEx could effectively never go to what we think of as, like, new gen AI products. They could just go to the core business Yeah. It'd be great.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I mean, when we hear about Meta spending $60,000,000,000 on CapEx, like, lot of that is still core AI. A lot of that is still just recommend better ads, recommend better reels, that type of stuff. And so a lot less just tons more downside protection at a company like Meta versus xAI, which is using leverage, using these deal shifting pawns across Having
Speaker 3:SpaceX investors. Tesla.
Speaker 2:Then SpaceX SpaceX employees and and and Tesla employees are coming over. And Tesla mega pack battery packs are going over there. Like, it is a crazy, crazy kiratsu that
Speaker 3:Well, you'll speaking of well placed ads, Tyler Rongi just shared this moment earlier. We gotta pull this up. We'll pull this up in the timeline. Tyler clipped it for us. John delivered potentially the greatest host read ad in history.
Speaker 3:We're a little bit of a little bit biased, obviously.
Speaker 2:Ramp.com. Time is money. Save both. You can use corporate cards, bill payments, accounting, a whole lot more all in one
Speaker 3:seconds on the countdown.
Speaker 2:Let's bring him on. Mark Zuckerberg live on TV PM. Welcome to the stream. How are you doing, Mark? Good to see you.
Speaker 2:We're ready to have a party. This is really just the the the pinnacle, like, truly, like, the the pinnacle of the bit that we started maybe a year ago, less than a year ago. I mean, I guess we started doing ramp I think started doing ramp ads even before we had a deal with them. We just thought it was fun. But this whole idea of like, let's be overly commercial.
Speaker 2:Let's really push the ad reads, it was started as a joke and then it just became like our thing and we normalized it to a point where we can actually go and do an ad read, a host read, right before interviewing a Mag7 CEO. So it was a fantastic, fantastic day, fantastic week. We had a lot of fun. Anyway, continuing with what's going on with xAI, there's this thought provoking part of the latest semi analysis that article that kind of breaks down how Ani and the romantic companion chatbot actually flows. We can read through a little bit of this.
Speaker 2:I mean, Elon is extremely satisfied with how the build out's going. Yeah. Some analysis said, xAI now has eight 460 megawatts of natural gas turbines installed and either operating or under construction. This includes 12 SMT one thirty turbines at Colossus 1 and seven Titan three fifty turbines at Mississippi. Those are extremely cool names for turbines, Titan three fifty.
Speaker 2:And Elon says Elon. Still small fry at one gigawatt for Sirius power in the 100 gigawatt continuous range, one fifth of USA average power consumption. It probably needs to be solar battery powered at one terawatt. Solar battery is the only realistic option.
Speaker 3:Elon's Solar. Elon company companies are so good at infrastructure. They should have bought the Fyre Festival IP because they actually I believe they
Speaker 2:Oh, they could pull it off for sure.
Speaker 3:They could have pulled it off on a on a barren island. They would have been able to do it. Yeah. Might might not have been super well, you know, easy on the eyes, but it would it would have the festival would have run.
Speaker 2:Yeah. For sure. Restream. One livestream 30 plus destinations. We're restreaming right now.
Speaker 2:Multi stream to reach your audience
Speaker 3:wherever We they stream every day.
Speaker 2:Semi analysis continues. The location of XAI's AI data center hub in Memphis is highly strategic as it sits at the intersection of three states. Tennessee residents are already frustrated with the environmental and noise concerns caused by the gas turbines powering the facility. To address this, Elon Musk simply placed the new turbines a few miles across the border in Mississippi, running a short transmission line back to the Tennessee hub. It is so crazy that he can even build a line a couple miles.
Speaker 2:Like that like, how long does it take California to build a couple miles of railroad? Like, a decade? The idea that you can actually, like, build even a transmission line that quickly is remarkable.
Speaker 3:I wonder I wonder if any crazy land deals got done, like, in that two mile stretch. Right? Like, because if he had to, like, do you think he owned all the land across state lines? Was there some section where where
Speaker 2:But it gets yeah, it gets more complex. So and if Mississippi residents or regulators push back, well, no problem. He can just go a few miles west, build additional turbine plants in Arkansas and connect them with another short transmission line. Elon Musk has also confirmed that XAI is purchasing an overseas power plant to bring to The US to continue powering his physical AI into Right? The plant
Speaker 3:that's overseas and
Speaker 2:just moving it? I think so. I think just like pick it up and put it down. Semi analysis called it another 200 IQ first principles move by Elon due to pushback on the Tennessee from Tennessee over environmental concerns. He built it at this intersection of three states and kind of move between them.
Speaker 2:There's some really remarkable things, this genius trick. Such a crazy move. And you have to think that he didn't run into this like later. He thought about this. He thought that the state regulation, it would be complex, so picked that zone maybe a year ago and has been a beneficiary of it ever since.
Speaker 2:Such a fascinating story. And you can see some images from 200 megawatts to 1.1 gigawatts. And you can see the physical change of the look at this. The the physical change of the site from March 2025 to August 2025. That's just a few months, and it looks like a completely different, like terraforming It's the absolutely wild.
Speaker 3:Grok right now, guess guess Grock's revenue on Sensor Tower, so the App Store Mhmm. Last month.
Speaker 2:$100,000,000, something like that.
Speaker 3:Last month?
Speaker 2:I would hope that they're at a billion dollar run rate, maybe less. 5. 5,000,000?
Speaker 3:So $60,000,000 run rate in the in the App Store. Granted, they could have other people go to grok.com and sign up and that that those sign ups wouldn't get counted towards this.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:But this is counting
Speaker 2:And there's a lot of that use Grok within X. So they have an X premium account, that gets them that gets them access to Grok. But, yeah. I mean, Semi Analysis shares a lot of data around the AI Lab ARR external revenue. OpenAI is at a $14,500,000,000 run rate.
Speaker 2:Anthropics at a $7,000,000,000 run rate now, and Grok is not really showing up on this particular chart. There's some discussion in here about Elon going to The Middle East. There's the KSAs, Kingdom Holding Company. They own 16.87% by the public by PIF, Public Investment Fund. They owned and kept a $1,800,000,000 a $1,900,000,000 stake in Twitter when Musk took the company private in 2022, and also owned an $800,000,000 stake in XAI prior to the merger.
Speaker 2:So they're building a position in XAI. The UAE's privately owned Vi Capital bought brought in $700,000,000 in 2022 to support Elon's takeover of Twitter. It also invested in the XAI Series C alongside UAE state fund MGX. And Qatar's QIA also owned and kept a 375,000,000 stake in Twitter and participated in XAI Series C. And so according to the Financial Times, XAI is preparing a new round in the tens of billions valuing the company close to 200,000,000,000 with Saudi PI
Speaker 3:The CNBC broke that that has That's how allegedly been closed.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So semi analysis earlier this week was talking about a raise as large as 30,000,000,000. It sounds like 10,000,000,000 came in today.
Speaker 3:And remember, XAI's lawyer Yeah. Was on the record, I think, a couple days ago saying the idea that XAI is struggling with fundraising is entirely false.
Speaker 2:Yes. That it was like, they're good at fundraising. Right?
Speaker 3:They were performing well in fundraising But is what they the reporter was pushing them and basically saying Yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean, you you can give you can give these labs, like, a little bit of leeway because Anthropic wasn't making a ton of money. And then it when they hit product market fit on the actual model, like, it ramped very, very quickly. Same thing with OpenAI, obviously.
Speaker 3:The 200,000,000,000 semi analysis says this is challenging because it is hard for most investors to justify x AI's having a valuation higher than Anthropic.
Speaker 2:That is that is tricky considering Anthropic's at like a $7,000,000,000 run rate and growing very, very quickly. Anyway, let me tell you about one of our newest sponsors, Privy, Wallet Infrastructure for Every Bank. Privy makes it easy to build on crypto rails, securely spin up white label wallets, sign transactions, and integrate on chain infrastructure all through one simple API.
Speaker 3:The official wallet infrastructure provider Of TBP. Of TBPN.
Speaker 2:Proud to work with them. Beyond external capital sources, Elon could generate capital internally since merging X with XAI to form X Holdings. Semi Analysis believes there's an ever growing piece of XAI's revenue, revenues are intercompany transfers. So when you call Grok at Grok to at Grok is this true on X to answer questions, x.com is licensing that LLM technology for the functionality such as search, ad and even the recommendation algorithm. Elon has said just today that he wants it to be entirely powered by x AI, by artificial intelligence, know that he wants to rip out the older system.
Speaker 2:Tyler?
Speaker 3:And remember, in July, the Department of Defense awarded a $200,000,000 contract to XAI.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah. That's right.
Speaker 3:So that's Yeah. Significant.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Significant. I mean, you you add that. You add the 60,000,000 in Sensor Tower. There's probably a bunch more coming just directly.
Speaker 2:There's probably some coming over
Speaker 3:from But, yeah, at the at the end You're in, like, 9
Speaker 2:figures, but we're not seeing, like, the multi billion dollar
Speaker 3:revenue stream. Large scale allocator and you are having the opportunity to simultaneously invest in Anthropic Yep. OpenAI and x AI
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 3:OpenAI at somewhere $3.50 to 500,000,000,000. Yeah. Anthropic, $1.60 or $1.01 70, whatever it is. And then XAI at 200,000,000,000. It's like you really gotta be riding with Elon.
Speaker 3:A movie
Speaker 2:ride, baby. Semi Analysis says it's moving describes it as moving money from Elon's right pocket to his left pocket. This has happened a bunch, though. It happened with SolarCity. He acquired that company.
Speaker 2:And then we didn't really hear that much about solar from Tesla. There was this vision for a while that you would buy a solar roof and get solar panels installed in your house through Tesla. That project, it was slow, and then it didn't really reach breakout speed. But interesting to see how much like, at this point, it's been, what, a decade since you want to hold on to your puffer fish. Are you very happy about that thing?
Speaker 2:It is so cool. Do you we we at the at this point, if Elon was really, like had changed his tune on solar, he very much could have pivoted and said, like, now we're doing nuclear, and we're not doing solar anymore. And, you know, we're kind of slowly like, the actual SolarCity acquisition was never that big, and it's been sort of, like, written down over the time. No no one's saying, oh, Tesla needs to deliver SolarCity, the the original vision there for that to happen. But yet Elon's still beating the drum of solar will be really important long term.
Speaker 3:So I wonder if can were not happy about the SolarCity acquisition.
Speaker 2:Yeah. But but over time, it didn't matter because the stock
Speaker 3:is didn't matter in the end. And that and that's and that's why I've said, I think Yeah. I think if XAI eventually rolls into Tesla, I think that one, Tesla will, like, probably pop on that news. Yep. And over in the fullness of time, like, it it probably will not be I think it'll be somewhat of a rounding error.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It it would be interesting if it if it if it comes back. And in another decade, Tesla or Elon Inc. Is a major player in solar power generation. They certainly aren't a material amount of total power generation.
Speaker 2:They're getting into a material amount of total AI IT capacity and and data center capacity, kind of bootstrapping a hyperscaler, becoming a hyperscaler just through the x AI efforts. But it would be very interesting to see if we look back and we're like, oh, they actually did wind up installing a ton of solar. They needed an excuse to do it, not just ground up adoption from everyday people putting it on the roof, but could happen. So Semi Analysis asked the question, does XAI have a shot at becoming a frontier lab? XAI has been able to catch up in many aspects to the current frontier.
Speaker 2:Grok4, by some measures and evaluations, was up there with some of the best models on release. Yet Semi Analysis believes they're struggling to translate eval's strength into revenue. Let's discuss the talent pool. There's a funny there's a bunch of interesting things here. So xAI got folks from Google DeepMind, Greg Yang and Tony Wu.
Speaker 2:XAI also has renowned researchers like Jimmy Ba, co inventor of the Atom Optimizer. Since then, xAI has poached more talent from DeepMind Meta and in some cases NVIDIA, which is interesting because they're buying a ton of chips from NVIDIA, but they did get some folks. They got Ethan He, who was a senior senior engineer at NVIDIA working on their Nemo model series. And my question is, is Ethan He him? Or is he just Ethan he?
Speaker 2:At this point, they have north of a thousand employees and are continuously expanding with a new office stated to open in Seattle. They work really hard. It's famously hardcore. I like this phrase here. Part of this is the fast, extremely hardcore pace.
Speaker 2:X a x AI engineers, 996 look easy. I I think you're saying, to x to x AI engineers, 996 looks easy, often pulling what they call
Speaker 3:saying nine nine six
Speaker 2:double o seven, which is 12 to twelve, seven days a week, which I think is just twenty four hours a day. This
Speaker 3:is Well, If you were doing twelve noon to twelve or you're or or
Speaker 2:Well, that's not that much more than nine to nine. Twelve to twelve. Yeah. Like, I think I think what they're saying here is that, basically, it's like you are 100% working. Even when you're sleeping, like, that's part of your job.
Speaker 2:Like, the sleeping in the tent is like you're doing that to enable your work. So you you live at the office, and you truly are working endlessly. But the talent exodus is a real issue with x AI. People are churning out, but they keep finding young people to join. And their two of their two of their best data center folks just left to join OpenAI, but Colossus two keeps tracking forward.
Speaker 2:So they're able to backfill, and they haven't been able to be fully destroyed. There's an interesting Yeah.
Speaker 3:Mean, there's there's just there's a world where even if x AI ends up just leading on infrastructure and actually being able to deliver compute Yep. There's a ton of value in that as well. Right? I I I we were talking offline the other day. There some world where Oracle says like, hey, we have this crazy backlog.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:We'll basically, like, if you give us access to Colossus, we'll pay you a premium for it. But who knows?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there is a question of like, it's super risky. There's debt. They're building out this massive cluster.
Speaker 2:And there isn't that much demand from the actual API for Grok. And there's not this crazy compounding advantage in consumer. But at the end of the day, if you wind up with a one gigawatt cluster, there's a lot of hyperscalers that want a one gigawatt cluster. And so you could probably just go sell that to AWS or Google pretty quickly. So it doesn't seem that crazy as in terms of like where the dollars are going.
Speaker 2:It seems like an efficient build out that creates capacity. But then we're talking about like the dark fiber world where we couldn't find a use for this today, so we had to sell it kind of at cost or below cost. But it's not a zero. It's not completely spent on something that might not materialize at all. Anyway, let me tell you about Cognition, our latest sponsor.
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Speaker 2:AI to to write code. Cowbell. Cowbell's great.
Speaker 3:Hit that horn again, Nick.
Speaker 2:I love the horn. It's great. Grok four is priced at the same level of Claude Sonnet four, yet does not show the same level of coding abilities. For non coding applications, GPT-five is even cheaper and has better capabilities across the board. So both Anthropic SONNET 3.7 and SONNET four are both at four dollars per million tokens.
Speaker 2:Grok four is also at $4 per million tokens. But very quickly, GPT-five is at $2 per million tokens. GrokCode fast is much cheaper, but and a lot of the explosion over GrokCode fast has been on Open Router. Semi dug into the Open Router stuff and it said that there is interest in a small, cheap and performant model, but there's a catch. Semi Analysis thinks that the spike on OpenRouter comes from xAI providing free voucher credits to kilocode users who call xAI models via OpenRouter.
Speaker 2:Real demand will be clearer in the long run as voucher redemptions run out. So they've been doing a lot to just spur adoption. Hopefully, those folks stick around. There was very there was one very interesting stat in here that they linked to. So a survey from Netskope found that Grok is used in twenty three percent of organizations.
Speaker 2:This is up from like 0.01% of adoption of Grok two in enterprises that were surveyed. So massive, massive adoption of Grok in companies broadly. 23% is pretty high, actually. But 29% of organizations have just blocked Grok entirely, likely due to the Mecca incident and Crazy. And some of that stuff.
Speaker 2:So so it's unclear how Elon's influence over Grok will, you know, persist in poke in post training quirks. If you're just if you just want a model to, optimize a a a manual workflow, you might not want it to take a strong stance on some political issue. You might just want it to put the tokens in the bag. So on the consumer side, ChatGPT is truly, truly crushing. The thirty day app revenue index to ChatGPT at 100.
Speaker 2:Grok is at 2.6 relative to ChatGPT's 100. So 2.6% of ChatGPT revenue. And then Claud is at 1.3%, and Gemini is at 0.5%, and so according to Semi Analysis and SensorTal.
Speaker 3:It is pretty wild that the Mecca incident happened in the very July. Yep. And they were still able to announce the DoD contract for $200,000,000 in mid July.
Speaker 2:I mean, had haven't happened in a long time. Yeah. It takes time. So everyone discusses AI's weakness from model and lack of business perspective, but it's important to recognize that they do have a unique method for RL, reinforcement learning. Semi analysis is continuing.
Speaker 2:So Anthropics focused on code, automated software engineering, digital productivity as a path to automate model research, infrastructure improvements. This is clearly the best path towards revenue in the short to medium term, but XAI believes this is not a valid approach to AGI. A more generalized approach is required system analysis. While XAI is chasing code performance, they are also chasing other areas, including emotional intelligence, and empathy. ANI is key to this.
Speaker 2:This is interesting. XAI's ANI is set to be one of the most diverse RL environments. If the goal is to maximize engagement, then the model can attempt to maximize on that. While their idea of utilizing humans as an RL environment is a crazy thing, it will be commonplace as AI evolves. Once xAI implements RL on human environments, they could dramatically improve engagement and eventually turn on turn to other goals as well.
Speaker 2:Becoming really good at SLOP is a potential path. I think we were talking about this earlier. It's just a fascinating concept of like where this goes. It's a potentially very dark very black mirror, very black pilling, but could be very cool. Creating many RL environments makes spiky intelligence.
Speaker 2:But if humans are the ones to optimize against, perhaps it will be general. It's debatable whether this leads to intelligent gains anytime soon. But if the goal is to expand beyond engagement, it could lead to impressive advancements or it could just lead to a dystopian future where people are addicted to some anime girl they talk to, says Dylan Patel over at Semi Analysis. It's a wild, wild
Speaker 3:So the next section, the future of x AI in the next two to three years, x AI's compute footprint will be heavily weighted towards training. Their inference demand is rising and will benefit the neo cloud market. But in the short term, it will pale in comparison to their multi gigawatt training expansion. While that situation isn't viable from a financial perspective, we think XAI's integration into X will likely provide some cash cushion. X is already integrating XAI technologies into its core advertising engine to increase monetization per user.
Speaker 3:Again, you know, that x a I x Twitter has never been an incredible cash engine
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Throughout its history. But it's but it's something Semi Analysis says, to support its LLM training build out, x AI will need to generate tens of billions of dollars of revenue and follow the path of Anthropic and OpenAI. The core question is whether xAI's success would take market share from them or create net new spending. We think it'll be a mix of both. XAI's ramp will enable GenAI to reach a broader audience, but it also increases the financial weakness of the GenAI market and the risk of market turndown as training still outspends inference.
Speaker 3:For precise breakdown of training inference
Speaker 2:capacity Go ahead. Hit the data center industry model. Do it. Just upgrade. Pull the trigger.
Speaker 2:Pull out the pull out the ramp card. Put it down for the semi analysis. Giga tier. Giga tier. Then hop over to figma.com.
Speaker 2:Think bigger. Build faster. Figma helps design and development teams build great products together. Get started for free.
Speaker 3:Let's go.
Speaker 2:And we have our first guest of the stream, our European correspondent. Our UK correspondent.
Speaker 3:UK correspondent. I love this stuff. We actually should license that.
Speaker 2:We definitely are gonna get demonetized for that.
Speaker 3:Great to
Speaker 7:see you.
Speaker 8:It's my it's my favorite sound. I'm back in the studio. Yes. Got the soundtrack going.
Speaker 2:It's such a banger song. It really is. It really is. Give us give us the weather report first. How was how was summer?
Speaker 2:How was was it Wimbledon? You went to some tennis event? What what what did you do?
Speaker 8:I had I had a tennis. Yeah. I had a good tennis summer. Was actually in the US Open as well. US Open.
Speaker 8:Okay. Recently.
Speaker 2:Is that the same as Wimbledon? Are they are they the same thing?
Speaker 8:I mean, they're technically the same on, like, you know, seniority. But I would say, you know, as a proud Brit that they are slightly different.
Speaker 2:Okay. Got it. Got it. And then and then take us through this week. What what what why why are we paying attention to Europe?
Speaker 8:So I think, you know, the headline here, I know that Jordi sort of said, UK correspondent, not not European Yeah. Is that we've had this huge state visit this week from, you know, the White House delegation. We also had a huge tech delegation come over, which really sort of marks the first landmark second state visit that a US president has been given, which president Trump liked to remind us lots of times. So it's the first time that a US president hasn't been invited for a second ceremonial visit to to visit the royal family. So you had this sort of pageantry of this big White House delegation to Windsor Castle.
Speaker 8:There was a big state banquet. You had, you know, Benson even taking off his black leather jacket
Speaker 3:Woah.
Speaker 8:And putting on his white tie, which is, you know, one level up from black tie. Know, we we get very Your horses. Here and
Speaker 2:saw tons and tons of horses at There the were a
Speaker 8:lot of horses. There was a lot of gold. We love gold
Speaker 2:That's great. As
Speaker 8:So so we really had one day, which was, you know, a showcase of diplomacy and tradition. And then you had a second day, which was at Checkers, which is The UK prime minister's traditional sort of country home That's right. You know, historical diplomacy is carried out there. And the focus on that was not just, you know, UK trade and investment. If you cast your mind back to May, I think I was on the show, we had The UK and The US come up with one of the first trade agreements, which given the sort of the landscape of tariffs, I think was a demonstration by the White House that they're really keen to make trade deals where they can.
Speaker 8:So you had a continuation of that, but the real focus this time was on tech and innovation across both energy and nuclear. You had it across AI and quantum, and then also, of course, defense and and national security. So that's why you not only had the delegation from the White House and a lot of key politicians, but you also had some of our favorite tech CEOs from Silicon Valley making the trip over and putting on the white tie and also announcing a lot of investment.
Speaker 3:Who were some of the key names? Sam was there. I saw Jensen. Jensen. Benioff.
Speaker 3:Right?
Speaker 2:But Palantir and the role as well. Yeah.
Speaker 8:Yeah. So so I guess the main companies, you had Microsoft, so you had Satya there. You had Google. You had Nvidia. Also, Jensen was was extremely bullish on The UK, and we'll maybe come back to that because he's he's sort of announced a multilayered investment in The UK over multiple years.
Speaker 8:You also had, you know, Carp here from Palantir. You had Brian Shimp Shimp from Andoril. And, yes, Sam Altman from OpenAI. So it was really you know, and there are a few others as well across, you know, Blackstone and and and BlackRock. You also had a lot of the large big pharma and health care companies.
Speaker 8:You know, GSK, for example, Blacksmiths Klein has announced that it's going to be investing a lot into US r and d. So it was really a big showing across, you know, major industries for investment on both sides of the Atlantic, but there was a huge, you know, representation from Silicon Valley. And, I mean, just some of the numbers are quite impressive. So so Microsoft announced that it's going to put $30,000,000,000 into The UK over the next four years. You had Google also committing around $7,000,000,000.
Speaker 8:$30,000,000,000.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Much.
Speaker 8:That's crazy. You had Google announcing they're going to put $7,000,000,000 into a data center that they've already established. But the the real number here that was impressive were was NVIDIA. So Jensen really wasn't just taking off the the black leather jacket for nothing. He's put $670,000,000,000 into a UK cloud computing company called Enscale, which is really designed to help AI sorry, The UK become an AI superpower.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 8:As he called it. So so that specifically is into to manufacturing and the infrastructure. And then he's also potentially talking about putting $500,000,000 into Wave, which is the main autonomous vehicle company here in The UK. I don't know if you've had Alex Kendall No. Yeah.
Speaker 8:On TPN.
Speaker 2:No. We need to.
Speaker 8:He's amazing founder, you know, brilliant brilliant UK founder. So so Jensen's really I mean, he did a whole separate event where he met with prime minister Keir and really announced with a lot of enthusiasm, such as the the Huang style, that The UK is going to be a a superpower, so AI superpower.
Speaker 2:How should Americans be thinking about Kirst Armer as prime minister right now? Like, where does he fit in in the left, right continuum? Or there's a lot of countries that have leaders who are leaning more Trumpian in their style or leaning more focused on innovation or leaning leaning less lawyerly, more engineering focused? Like, how should people think about him who are who haven't dove very deep?
Speaker 8:Yeah. It's So I think the first thing to know is that Kia Stahmer came in on a landslide mandate, similarly to Trump, earlier in the year. So sorry. Early in the year to Trump. So in the same way that you had a new leadership come into The US at the end of last year and then the inauguration earlier this year Yep.
Speaker 8:The UK had a similar thing happen about six months before. So Kirstamer came in. You know, his party, the Labour Party, had been in opposition for a very long time. You'd had Boris Johnson and conservatism for a long time. So it was a real big landslide change for The UK.
Speaker 8:So what that means is similarly to the White House currently, The UK prime minister has a pretty large mandate for change. So even though, you know, when I was sitting in in The US at the end of last year, there was some trepidation around the fact that, you know, the party is traditionally more left leaning. It's called the Labour Party. Yeah. However, what you've actually seen is, one, a real ability to drive change.
Speaker 8:So, you know, the number one thing is can you actually get legislation passed? And number two, and this was a sentiment echoed by quite a lot of tech CEOs yesterday, was a real pragmatism to actually getting stuff done. Now my personal view is that The UK, after leaving the European Union, is now very much standing on its own. It's been able to, you know, reassert its relationship with The US. It's been able to carve out its own opinion on things like AI sovereignty.
Speaker 8:It can be sort of pro AI. It doesn't get held back by some of the anti or or I should say more risk averse EU legislation.
Speaker 2:More cookie based really serious. Presumers.
Speaker 8:Yeah. Exactly. So even though traditionally you would you might think that the Labour Party is more left leaning
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 8:In The UK, everything is gonna be slightly more central central as well. It's, you know, it's just a smaller country. Yeah. And so I think that, you know, you're not gonna see us as extremes. But, you know, what I've been really, you know, happy to hear from a lot of the CEOs I've spoken with is that there's this pragmatism to to getting stuff done and and being, you know, a pro a pro business, open for business leadership within Europe.
Speaker 2:What I feel like I feel like this is a new thing where, like, the entire like, America is going on tour. Like, we saw this in The Middle East where it was like all of the tech CEOs and all the government people from The United States show up, they're like, we're all doing deals today. And then you see the Trump
Speaker 3:And it's a little competition.
Speaker 2:Here's biggest deal. And yeah. And and at the dinner, it's like People get carried out a number. And then Tim Cook says out a number, it feels like it was the same thing this this weekend or this week.
Speaker 4:Thank you for choosing UK.
Speaker 8:It was like that outfit with with frillier outfits. Yes. Yes.
Speaker 9:But, you
Speaker 8:know, Tim Cook was also there. I mean, I'm gonna I'm gonna tweet an interesting list afterwards. But Yeah. I highly recommend, if you have some downtime, just googling some of the images from from the last few days because they were really quite something. Yeah.
Speaker 8:You know, the pageantry is is quite impressive on The UK
Speaker 7:Nobody does it. Side.
Speaker 2:Are the
Speaker 3:has it like the royal family.
Speaker 2:What are the top sort of like priorities just for the the British government right now? In The US, I mean, there's a lot of focus on on tariffs, immigration, the overall economy. The economy feels like running hot. Everything's at all time highs from gold to Bitcoin to the stock market. At the same time, we're seeing weakness in the labor market.
Speaker 2:How are things feeling over in The UK broadly?
Speaker 8:I think The UK's main focus is on growth. There are definitely a lot of issues, of course, around immigration. I think some of the, you know, highlighted issues on places like AXA have have kind of showed that there are a lot of, I guess, questions around immigration policy across Europe at the moment. Yeah. UK is definitely part of that.
Speaker 8:I think, you know, from my perspective, a lot of the focus is really trying to draw drive a pro tech, pro growth environment. I think that traditionally, a lot of the growth in The UK has come from the city. So traditional, you know, big finance players, it was a real hub for for financial services. And I think that there's a recognition that The UK is actually, if you look at it, a really big hub for r and d. You know, you've had, you know, Google DeepMind originated in The UK.
Speaker 8:You've had a lot of advances in both synthetic bio and big pharma come out The UK. You know, hubs not just in London, but, you know, real r and d centers like Oxford and Cambridge have have really been leading for a long time. You've got the big semis company arm based in The UK. So Mhmm. In the last few years, I think you've really seen governments on both sides of the aisle try and move away from, like, purely financial driven growth into, you know, tech and and r and d.
Speaker 8:So that's something that I think the White House and and Ted Downing Street are really aligned on. And, you know, this is obviously was a big sort of PR campaign to also show that the the special relationship, as we call it, goes both ways. And and I think, you know, something that was significant. A lot of people have said to me, okay. What's in it for The US?
Speaker 8:You know, we're obviously investing a lot of money into The UK. But I think that if you look at how The US thinks about exporting its own AI data stack across the world and you you put that against some of the competition with, you know, the Far East and and China, this was a really good opportunity for The US to kind of reassert its position as the dominant AI player. And, you know, they signed a really interesting memorandum. It was called the tech prosperity deal. Lovely name.
Speaker 8:Give that to tech prosperity. Yeah. Exactly. Which basically allows The US to align on, you know, how data models are built and and some of the kind of, you know, very cool things that The US cares about in terms of ensuring that the data stack is defined by The US and not by someone else.
Speaker 2:Take us through an update on the private markets in Europe broadly, in The UK. Who are folks focused on at the growth stage? We were at the New York Stock Exchange. Was that last week? I keep losing track of time.
Speaker 2:But Clarna IPO ed successfully. Stock trading up.
Speaker 8:How was the mood? I mean, it was it's obviously continued to hold up pretty well. Yeah.
Speaker 2:But I think it's The mood was good. For it was it was our takeaway was kind of interesting with with the CEO is that it was just another day for him. He didn't bring his family. He just came, raised some money, got in, got out.
Speaker 3:It was a fundraise.
Speaker 2:It was a fundraise. Whereas with Figma, it was this huge moment because a lot of folks in Brooklyn use Figma, and Manhattan use Figma. And so it it
Speaker 3:really company too.
Speaker 2:It's an American company. They really focus on the story of Dylan and with Sebastian over at Klarna. It was it was it it wasn't as much of, like, everyone is a partner in this ecosystem. But in general, it felt like a a really good moment. People have been waiting for Klarna to go out for a long time, and it was great to see them get out successfully.
Speaker 2:But who else is driving this the market or the news?
Speaker 3:Yeah. Do you expect any type of spinouts from DeepMind as well into like more like application Or layer do you feel like the researchers there are just going to be content to double down?
Speaker 8:So I think just on on that front Yeah. As well as you mentioned, I think both Dylan and Sebastian, amazing founders. Really
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 8:Exciting that we're seeing the IPO market off to off to a a good start at the moment. And, you know, I think
Speaker 3:Although StubHub, I think StubHub is down
Speaker 2:StubHub had a hard had a hard time.
Speaker 3:From listing price yesterday. So
Speaker 8:It's okay. Okay.
Speaker 2:Well We'll get it all back in the next one.
Speaker 8:But I think that, you know, in terms of names to watch here, the big elephant in the room for a long time has been Revolut.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 8:So for those not familiar in The US market, Revolut is really the largest fintech player here in The UK. Its last valuation, I think, was around $70,000,000,000. The last employee, I think that was a secondary. So that's really been the main question. Some of the news stories around that have been around its, you know, banking license over the years and and whether they were going to, you know, go for an IPO.
Speaker 8:I think that one, you know, continue to watch on. And and if you look at Jensen's comments even on this trip, he's even said that, you know, NVIDIA may also invest in in in Revolut. So I think Jensen's really he's really keen on The UK. We love we love Jensen.
Speaker 2:He's pumping everything. It's great.
Speaker 8:I think in terms of of Google DeepMind Yeah. I'm unclear if they're going to be, you know, spinouts. I think that, you know, the UK government has always looked at DeepMind as an example of UK companies that really should have been able to stay and prosper in The UK or Yep. Within Europe. And so I think that you're gonna continue to see a lot of focus on, you know, UK's own AI infrastructure, the energy stack that's required for that.
Speaker 8:So we also had quite a lot of announcements around nuclear this week because, of course, the energy question is a big one for The UK. Interestingly, actually, one of the other things the White House got out of this week's negotiations was that there was a commitment to The UK from being completely unreliant on on any any Russian nuclear energy as well. So I think that, you know, you're really seeing both The UK shore up its its energy stack, and I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that UK really wants to try and, you know, make itself a great hub for for AI talent, whether that be through Google, DeepMind, or or some of the other really exciting companies like Wave.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Makes sense.
Speaker 2:As extra context, in 2021, Demis Hassabis over at DeepMind co founded Isomorphic Labs, which is a spin out, but still, I believe, private and owned by Alphabet and DeepMind. And they're focused
Speaker 3:on artificial intelligence drug companies, not government owned, that type of thing.
Speaker 8:And he's still based in The UK, which, you know, the prime minister always likes to point out, but he's still working with Satya, so people. Yeah. With
Speaker 2:Ruth. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for hopping on the show.
Speaker 3:Always great to get that
Speaker 2:great to hang out with you.
Speaker 8:Always fun to chat with you guys.
Speaker 2:We'll talk to you soon, Pippa. Cheers. Bye.
Speaker 9:Bye.
Speaker 3:Hopefully, we can have a new tennis tournament sometime soon so Pippa comes back to The US. I'd love it. Seems like that's what that's what gets her over here. Should we talk about
Speaker 2:Vanta, automate compliance, manage risk, improve trust continuously. Vanta's trust management platform takes your manual work out of your security and compliance process and replaces it with continuous automation whether you're pursuing your first framework or managing a complex program. Back in America, we should talk about this house in Malibu. Johnny Carson's longtime Malibu home lists for a $110,000,000. I've been to this house.
Speaker 2:An early investor in Jewel and a Hard Rock Cafe, heiress are selling the modern California house which the talk show talk show icon owned until his death in 02/2005. It's a 10,000 square foot, six bedroom house on roughly four acres. And we'll go through a little bit of this. For more than twenty years, Johnny Carson lived in a modern triangular shaped home perched on a bluff
Speaker 3:overlooking How did know that? How did
Speaker 2:I've you never talked to you this.
Speaker 3:You told me that Johnny Carson lived on the bluff in Point Doom.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I definitely told you this as we were driving by it together. Interesting. Probably told you multiple times. Interesting.
Speaker 2:Who knows? You might have been locked in. You might have been the timeline. Might have been something more there might have been a a more pressing current thing to be monitoring. You might have been This monitoring house is it's amazing.
Speaker 2:The property, which has changed hands multiple times since his death, has been redecorated and is going back on the market. The price tag is more than double what the sellers paid for it in 2000
Speaker 3:14,000,000 in 2019.
Speaker 2:I know.
Speaker 3:I I every time you look back at Yeah. At things that you could buy Yep. Before COVID, it's painful. It really Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's crazy. Because I The fame talk show
Speaker 3:host bought
Speaker 2:the estate in '19 in the nineteen eighties, about a decade before ending his thirty year run helming The Tonight Show. He owned the property at the time of his death in 02/2005. The current owners are the venture capitalist, Reyaz Vallani, an early investor in e cigarette maker Jewel, and his wife, Hard Rock Cafe, heiress Augusta Tigrette. The couple paid 40,000,000 in 2019, as you mentioned. Look at Johnny Carson looking great.
Speaker 2:In, of course, a Johnny Carson suit, fantastic, interesting story about this. Johnny Carson was so was so dominant in the culture. I mean, the The Tonight Show was one of just a few late night shows because we didn't have the proliferation of the Internet. There were only a few things that you could watch every night, and he was absolutely dominant
Speaker 3:viewers was he pulling nightly?
Speaker 2:I believe it was like tens of millions. It was massive. I might have that wrong. But the interesting story was that he was so focused on his craft, he was not interested in business at all, really. And so he had a business partner who said, hey, you wear a suit every night.
Speaker 2:We should get you a custom suit. We'll start a a d to c apparel company effectively, Carson suits, and and we'll sell those suits. And then and then you'll be you'll be able to market them on the on the show. But he didn't he didn't really care about contracts or understand business. And so his business partner one
Speaker 3:of these. You can find I have them on eBay right now. You're finding one? Seventies Johnny Carson suit for a 170
Speaker 2:You gotta get one of those. That sounds amazing.
Speaker 3:I gotta
Speaker 2:get one of these. But his business partner set up the set up the the the Carson suit enterprise, and I don't believe he had equity in it. And so he he would get free suits, but he wasn't making any money off of it. And for years, Carson was not monetizing well at all, but eventually, he went back to and renegotiated his contract, got ownership over The Tonight Show, and was one of the few late night hosts to actually own his own show, have full control over it. And then after he died and retired The Tonight Show, the catalog and there's merch and there's DVD sales and there's greatest hits, all of those would be, would be sold and continue to generate revenue even though it was a daily show.
Speaker 2:But there were, you know, a lot of iconic comedy moments that happened on that show. So back to the house, Riaz, Vilani, and Tigrette, also have homes in London and Northern California. They viewed this the estate as an investment property where they could entertain. Tigrette said, they redecorated the two bedroom main house and had plans drawn up to add two new houses and another pool, didn't end up building them. It is a remarkable property how large it is, and then it's just a two bedroom because but it has all these massive open spaces you can see in those images.
Speaker 2:They are selling because they have decided to focus on real estate investments in Northern California. It was designed by architect Ed Niles. The main house is about 7,100 square feet. Triangles appear throughout the house. The dining room is a triangular shape, as is the wood
Speaker 3:Some of glass glass
Speaker 2:won't be there now, Paul. As is the wood and glass ceiling of the central atrium where mature trees are situated. The estate also has a two bedroom guesthouse, a tennis pavilion with two guest rooms, and is said to have been a gift from Carson to Carson from NBC. Tigrette said, One of her favorite parts of the house is an outdoor dining area with a large round table where guests would congregate, violating the triangle symbolism with the round table. We had so many important business meetings there, she said.
Speaker 2:The area is naturally shaded thanks to a coral tree and a pepper tree whose branches grew together over time creating a leafy canopy. And it is beautiful. There's a massive Right. There's a massive tree inside the house. I don't know if you can see this in the images, but and the tennis court
Speaker 3:is This view of the tennis
Speaker 2:court It's so
Speaker 3:under the bluff.
Speaker 2:Crazy how big this tennis court is. It's wild. Yeah. You can see that. That's insane.
Speaker 3:So insane.
Speaker 2:The property is among the largest in Pointe Du with where standard lot sizes are roughly one acre. This one is, of course, four acres. The main house So
Speaker 3:the listing agent Chris Cortaza. Yeah. Friend of mine. I I
Speaker 2:Would you know
Speaker 3:him? I bought my house through
Speaker 2:No way.
Speaker 3:Through his firm.
Speaker 2:Oh, really? That's funny. Yeah. The main house is situated closer to the bluff than houses that can be built today, he noted. The $110,000,000 asking price is warranted by recent trades, he said, including a property that recently
Speaker 3:sold Yes. There's a house right nearby this that's like a I think it's like a two or two bedroom house Mhmm. That has similar views that's sold for 80 it's literally a shack that's sold for for 80 down the road. So Absolutely crazy. This makes that makes $1.10 for this spot look like an absolute bargain.
Speaker 2:It's great. You know what else is a bargain? Graphite. Dev code review for the age the age of AI. Graphite helps teams on GitHub ship higher quality software faster.
Speaker 2:You can get started for free. Road River Partners, I've never seen this account before, no profile picture, says, in the late 1990s, a pal attended a dinner for tech hedge fund CIOs.
Speaker 3:All the top guys.
Speaker 2:All the top guys.
Speaker 3:All the top guys
Speaker 2:were there. All the top guys at the time. $25,000 of wine was consumed and portfolios were shared. My pal was sitting at a 135% gain for the year, and his performance was the worst in the room. By far, a week later, he'd gone he'd he'd went a 100% cash.
Speaker 2:He was the only one that survived the next three years.
Speaker 3:Pretty insane.
Speaker 2:Pretty crazy. You're looking around too much wine. I'm I'm up a 135%. I look like the idiot. Maybe it's time
Speaker 3:to Yeah. The the account here asking, coward, mister coward. Coward nut like. But why did he go a 100% cash?
Speaker 2:Because everyone else was up late anymore. Yes. What if
Speaker 3:he just like gave up? He's like, I'm terrible at this. Selling to cash. He's gonna just like Yeah. No.
Speaker 3:No. He's go and distribute everything out and just quit. And then and then he really is just looking around like, wait. I'm the only one standing?
Speaker 2:Yeah. That maybe It's remarkable. Well No.
Speaker 3:I do know. My my dad always told me a story about Mhmm. One of his of his college buddies just went 100% to gold like right before the great financial crisis and just like ended up just absolutely printing.
Speaker 2:Well, whatever asset you want to invest in, go to public.com. They got multi asset investing. It's it's investing for those who take it seriously. They got industry leading yield, trusted by millions. You can lock in
Speaker 3:We're not allowed to give financial advice, I think it's fair to ask you to take it seriously.
Speaker 2:In other news, we interviewed a lot of fun people at the Meta Connect twenty twenty five event. The one that broke through on the Internet, on Teapot, on X was, of course, our interview with chief wearables officer at Luxottica.
Speaker 3:Rocco. Rocco Basilico.
Speaker 2:Rocco Basilico. Yeah. Mullen says, I'm sorry. His name is what? We live in a simulation, dog.
Speaker 2:And
Speaker 3:Yeah, dad.
Speaker 2:This got 3,000 views. There were there was another couple were couple other Yes. Posts
Speaker 3:on on Rocco. Rocco 7.4
Speaker 2:No relation to Rosco from the Roscoe Chicken and Waffles
Speaker 3:No relation.
Speaker 2:Chain
Speaker 3:That we know of.
Speaker 2:But we really enjoyed talking to him.
Speaker 10:Also, relation to Rothko, the artist.
Speaker 2:Oh, Mark Rothko. Really? Yes. I don't think so. People had a ton of fun with this.
Speaker 2:Where was the other post in here? Someone else was saying something about Richard says, my name is Rocco's Basilisk and I'm making artificial intelligence that you put on your body. Now I got
Speaker 3:So let's give some backstory. Tyler, do you wanna give some backstory on Yeah.
Speaker 2:What is the joke that people are making here?
Speaker 3:Less Wrong?
Speaker 10:Okay. Yes. So his name basically sounds like Rocco's Basilisk Yes. Which is like this famous thought experiment from Less Wrong in like early like twenty tens, I think.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 10:Basically, idea is like, Okay, so there's going to be some future superintelligent AI.
Speaker 3:And
Speaker 10:you can do this kind of decision making where it's kind of similar to this Prisoner's Dilemma thing where there's two agents.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Pascal's wager. What is Pascal?
Speaker 10:Where where where basically, you can chart it out to where like the idea is you have this this this super intelligent AI. By the time it gets to becoming like instantiated, the idea is that it's gonna like punish people that did not like accelerate.
Speaker 2:It's Yeah. Did not help it be born.
Speaker 10:And and the the idea is actually it's not just like You didn't
Speaker 3:love me at my benchmarks, you don't deserve me at
Speaker 2:At my AI superintelligence. Yeah.
Speaker 10:Yes. So it's basically like the the whole thing is like it's like an information hazard. Mhmm. This like term LIAs are actually banned, like, discussion of the topic Wait. From less wrong for, like, five years.
Speaker 2:Well, because it's a justification for accelerating superintelligence.
Speaker 10:I think so, but also
Speaker 3:You don't wanna be the safety guy.
Speaker 10:Yeah. But but the whole thing is, like, if you chart it out, basically, it only applies to you if you, like, learned about this idea. So, like, if you knew about the idea of of
Speaker 2:Of
Speaker 10:Rocko then Master and you didn't, like, start accelerating AI, then it's gonna punish you.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And this is why we covered Metaconnect and we covered
Speaker 2:Isn't there some lore about Rocco's basilisk? And
Speaker 10:Like, the the whole idea is, like, it's a basilisk because, like, if you look at the
Speaker 2:basilisk basilisk. Is that a snake?
Speaker 10:Yeah. It it's like in mythology, if you look at the basilisk in the eye, then it you, like, instantly die. Yeah. So it's like, if you learn about this thing and you don't do anything, then you, like, will be punished by the future AI.
Speaker 2:Apparently, this is this is what this is what originally brought Elon bought brought Elon Musk and Grimes together. Musk was going to tweet about Rococo's Basilisk, which is a reference to Rococo, the eighteenth century Baroque art style, and they bonded over that. He discovered that Grimes had made the same joke three years earlier and reached out to her about it. One can only speculate about Mhmm. Very, very interesting thought experiment.
Speaker 2:Well, we should have we should have asked him about it because I wonder I wonder how aware he is. It can't be the first time he's he's heard that his name sounds like Rocco's Basilisk. Right?
Speaker 10:Yeah. I see must be aware.
Speaker 3:Well It's Captain.
Speaker 2:Well Captain. We'll have
Speaker 3:to I mean, the story of him just like cold emailing Zac
Speaker 2:Clear.
Speaker 3:Being like, hey, I think we should do some international business together.
Speaker 2:Let's hop on a quick call.
Speaker 3:He made it happen.
Speaker 10:I I wonder if Zac knew about
Speaker 3:It's such a
Speaker 10:Netflix when he got that. Because then it's like you're getting an email from Vasilis asking if you wanna help accelerate AI. Yeah.
Speaker 2:You have to say yes.
Speaker 10:You have to say yes. Otherwise, we're gonna
Speaker 2:be Yes.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I think it's one of the most, like, under hyped, like, partnerships of the last few years. It's so strategic for both sides. It gives Meta this incredible, durable advantage to be able to innovate on the technology side and not on the design side. And it gives Luxottica the ability to defend itself and actually thrive in a world where, you know
Speaker 2:We were we were debating
Speaker 3:everybody is wearing smart glasses.
Speaker 2:Yeah. We we we
Speaker 3:were debating I think that's that's actually the that's actually the thing. Right?
Speaker 2:It's like
Speaker 3:there's people that don't wear glasses today that may or may not be using smart glasses in a few years. But Zuck brought this up. There's like 1,000,000,000 to 2,000,000,000 people in the world that wear glasses all the time and looking good.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I mean, were we were debating with a few people about whether or not the meta AI glasses oh, I just triggered it. Oh, it's talking now. Whether you can immediately clock them, whether they look like tech nerd gear, or whether you can pass amongst normies the unaugmented, as someone who's just wearing Ray Bans. And I was leaning in the camp of, like, if someone throws on Meta Ray Bans and they do have the cameras on there, but they're not recording, there's no light, you kind of don't notice.
Speaker 2:But other people were saying, I don't know. Like, you you you you can still see the camera lenses and it still reads as it's a little, like, tech nerdy. But I think it's like a specific
Speaker 3:That's a specific frame, though. Like, Ray Bans This is actually
Speaker 2:an Oakley frame with no Yeah. With no sunglass in it. It's just eyeglasses. But but the but the the the original Meta Ray Bans, they do look exactly like Ray Bans, an iconic silhouette and something that people are very confident in wearing. And I think even with the cameras on there, even though you can see them, people are much more willing to throw them on when they go out.
Speaker 2:And you do face a little bit of like, oh, like, you're like a tech nerd. You're trying like the new thing. Like, it's not as it's I mean, it's like carrying
Speaker 3:a Think of think of billion plus people that just wear glasses because they need them to see. They already wear
Speaker 2:glasses.
Speaker 3:And then you say like, hey, do you want a small display in those Yes. That can give you directions that you can use to play music.
Speaker 2:Chunky frames are kind of in
Speaker 3:right see messages come in on
Speaker 2:It's kind of a vibe. And so I think I I I mean, I agree. It's a it is it is an underrated partnership. It's a great partnership. I I wonder I'm I'm I'm, like, dying to know what the the well, first off, like, what Apple's response will be like because I feel like they they they could I'm imagining that they're gonna be white for some reason.
Speaker 2:I don't know why. But I just have like Well, I also think can do the
Speaker 3:clear one, like the old Macs
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Where you could see all internals.
Speaker 2:Was They've really moved away from that aesthetic But if they
Speaker 3:brought it back, think
Speaker 2:people It just feels like they haven't even done black AirPods. Right? Like the like the AirPods. Maybe they could do the Beats line and use some of that.
Speaker 3:By the way, apparently, the new phone scratches like crazy.
Speaker 2:I saw yeah. I saw a picture of it cracking. People have been recording But yeah. What what what was it they went back to aluminum or something? Yeah.
Speaker 2:People don't like that?
Speaker 3:Titanium. It was a good run.
Speaker 2:I don't know.
Speaker 3:It's a good run.
Speaker 2:I I think well, you you already purchased it, so it's in the mail?
Speaker 3:Yeah. This is this is bullish for Apple, the fact that I'm not gonna get it for more than like, basically, I'm gonna get it in, three weeks. Yeah. Well They're selling.
Speaker 2:Julius AI, what analysis do you wanna run? Chat with your data and get expert label expert level insights in seconds. Go to Julius.
Speaker 3:Let's pull up this video of Matthew McConaughey. Matthew McConaughey. I'll be right back.
Speaker 2:Matthew McConaughey says he wants a private LLM fed only with his books, notes, journals, and aspirations so he can ask it questions and get answers based solely on that information without any outside influence. Now, like, that's impossible, right, just because you need to do pretraining on something or other. Right?
Speaker 10:Yeah. I mean, unless his books are, like, the length of, like, the Internet Yeah. I don't think that model would be very good if you just train it on, like, five
Speaker 2:or six. So really, he's he's kind of saying that he wants something fine tuned?
Speaker 10:Yeah. I I mean, it seems like he doesn't really understand how they're trained. Yeah. But, yeah, you could instantiate this, I guess, through fine tuning it.
Speaker 2:Let's play the Matthew McConaughey clip and see what he has to say.
Speaker 7:LLM where I can upload, hey. Here's three books I've written. Here's my other favorite books. Right. Right.
Speaker 7:My favorite articles I've been cutting and pasting over the ten years and log all that in. And Here's all my journals whatever the people out and log all that in so I can ask it questions based on that
Speaker 2:right
Speaker 7:and basically learn more about myself right stand on the political spectrum right? I'd like to No. That's that's what I'm would like to do, which is sort of a glorified word document. Mhmm. But it still would hold a lot more information than just, oh, can you find this term?
Speaker 7:I would be asking it, and it would be responding to me on things that I've forgotten along the way. Load it with the information I'd like to load
Speaker 3:it with.
Speaker 7:Right. Yeah. Maybe even like I'm saying in this in the words of belief in in the in the man I'm working to be, the man I want, load it with that, load it with my aspirational
Speaker 3:You're so selfishly done.
Speaker 7:And then ask it, and it's giving me answers going, oh, this is but before, it's slowly learning about me through conversations, then going, oh, I think
Speaker 2:this was check
Speaker 1:based on
Speaker 2:a conversation. No.
Speaker 7:I want the answer based
Speaker 2:on what I'm talking again? He uses some funny phrase. Woah. What did he say at the beginning?
Speaker 7:I am interested, though, in a private LLM.
Speaker 2:Private.
Speaker 1:Where I
Speaker 7:can upload hey. Here's three books I've written. Here's my other favorite.
Speaker 2:You can do this.
Speaker 7:Customs should nice. Articles I've been cutting them. You can do
Speaker 10:this with, like, ten years. Rappers. Log all that in.
Speaker 2:That's what he keeps saying. Okay. Yeah. I love that he says he wants to log it in. No one's talking about logging data into your private LLM.
Speaker 2:Like, this is the future. This has No one's tried logging content into a private LLM.
Speaker 10:This has, like, been possible for, like, three years. But no one is embedding your
Speaker 2:Oh, embedding? That doesn't sound like something in. That's what I want. I wanna log it in. I wanna log in my favorite book.
Speaker 2:I wanna log in my favorite article. Log in the holy bible. Sounds like that's what he's doing.
Speaker 3:He should he should hit up Salesforce for this. He's Oh, true. With
Speaker 2:What do they have? Merlin AI or something? Well, he's close to many
Speaker 3:He's one of the faces. Yeah.
Speaker 2:He's one of the faces. And they have Einstein AI. He should fine tune it. Fine tune it on Matthew McConaughey mode. Einstein AI, I feel like missed opportunity to personify the AI much more.
Speaker 2:It should have gone Microsoft's going to have Clippy. We're getting Ani from XAI. Every company is going to need their own personified AI. And I'd be much more likely to use Salesforce's AI if I knew I was talking to Matthew. Matthew McConaughey.
Speaker 3:In other news, Howard Lutnick Yes. Is posting screenshots of his portfolio.
Speaker 2:Wait. Really?
Speaker 3:No. I'm kidding.
Speaker 2:Okay. I mean,
Speaker 3:it's close. Pull up pull up this next post.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:It's a picture of from Trump on Truth Social of an AI slop of him sitting at his desk with bought intel at $20 it's dollars
Speaker 2:He's happy. Well, other somewhat political news, TikTok sale announced by we're tracking this on Polymarket. December 31 is now at a 79% chance that a a TikTok sale will be will be announced.
Speaker 3:So And Polymarket also got a a market up on will Tesla acquire x AI in 2025.
Speaker 2:So
Speaker 3:the market will resolve to yes. It is officially announced that x AI will be, has been, or is being acquired or merged with Tesla.
Speaker 2:I could see that happening. I'm interested to
Speaker 3:keep track of it. In
Speaker 2:other xAI news, Nikita Beer says, the goal for your x timeline is to get out of the mainstream algo and political crusades and find your niche. Should be able to post about your interests and have friendly, relevant people chime in. And I feel like I've been able to do this. Like, you do have to be proactive about it still. You have to say, I'm not interested in this post.
Speaker 2:You have to send a lot of likes and retweets to content that you actually like, engage with it, reply to people that you like in real life, that you like in your niche. But my algorithm has been doing well, I'm hoping that they continue to improve it. Elon says, The algorithm will be purely AI by November, with significant progress along the way. We will open source the algorithm every two weeks or so. I wonder how that like, once it's purely AI, it's driven by just weights.
Speaker 2:Are they gonna open source the weights? Open source open weights or fully open source the model? Like, that sounds crazy. What do you think, Tyler?
Speaker 10:It's kind of unclear what he I mean, by AI, I assume he means, like, LLMs. Because, like, if if you just say, like, AI, like, it's kind of already done by AI?
Speaker 2:Yeah. It'd be very interesting to, like, open source the open source the the algorithm, and the algorithm is just, like, recommendation dot next, you know, parentheses. Like like inference of the model is the is the Python guidance. Yep. We didn't change it.
Speaker 2:It it still just goes crazy.
Speaker 3:Breaking news.
Speaker 2:Trump is
Speaker 3:adding a $100,000 fee, application fee for h one b visas in the latest crackdown.
Speaker 2:Another breaking news, fall.ai, the world's best generative image and video models all in one place, develop and fine tune models with serverless GPUs and on demand clusters. In the Wall Street Journal
Speaker 3:Tyler.
Speaker 10:UAE.
Speaker 3:Project. Yes. I want to add tbpn.com/sounds. Mhmm. And it's the digital version of our sound board that people can use in their meetings.
Speaker 2:Oh. I like that. Yeah. We gotta do that.
Speaker 3:Given to me in a DM. Yeah. Sound board at home. So, yeah. Just try to wrap it up in the make it wrap it up in the next, like,
Speaker 2:five And or Don't make mistakes. The United Arab Emirates is buying houses in Washington, DC. They have a $200,000,000 collection now. The government's latest purchase is a $27,500,000 spec home in McLean, Virginia. I don't know if I'm actually saying that correctly.
Speaker 2:This week, it added a roughly 21,000 foot spec estate in Virginia, paying $27,500,000 in an off market deal. The deal is the most expensive home sale to close in the capital region this year. The UAE directly or through its employees or royals owns at least 21 properties in the area worth roughly $200,000,000 The Emiratis have purchased so much real estate at such high prices in recent years that they've helped reset values in the Gold Coast region.
Speaker 3:Let's give it up for resetting values. According
Speaker 2:to real estate agents. The house was recently restaged to give it a modern minimalist look. Each time they purchase something, it's a big number, says a real estate agent of Compass. The the estate is located near Langley, where the CIA is based. The with a six bedroom main house and a pool house, it was constructed as a spec home by Ambar Homes, a luxury development firm, headed by local dentist and entrepreneur, doctor Sonu Kakar.
Speaker 2:Kakar said he bought the land for 2,100,000.0, started construction, in 2022. It took him four years to start construction, completed the house four years, two years later. So he's selling this big house. It was first listed for $29.09. Came down a bit, but they got the deal done.
Speaker 2:There's a marketing video feature showing a motorcade of Cadillac Escalades resembling a diplomatic entourage heading up a winding driveway to the newly built modern mansion. Check this out.
Speaker 3:They made a hype video?
Speaker 2:They made a hype video. A startup launch video for their house. It's funny. It's like they knew who they were selling this to. They're like, we got this house, and we're gonna show a bunch of
Speaker 3:A home hype video.
Speaker 2:Cadillac at the timeline. Wait. Did you guys scroll that that fast? It it plays it that fast?
Speaker 3:No. That's in the video.
Speaker 2:That's in the video. That's baked in. They're doing hype videos for sure. That's a vibe reel if I ever saw one. The UAE's residences are dotted in large clumps across the capital region, typically on prime waterfront lots.
Speaker 2:On Crest Lane, the count the country owns several homes in the Bank of the Potomac where that's where the ambassador's official residence and guesthouse house are located. Well, you got to go hang out in DC, do deals, and so you got to have some big houses for your folks to come and hang out at. On Chain Bridge Road, one of the area's most upscale neighborhoods, the Emiratis paid just under 43,000,000 in 2020 for a riverfront estate previously owned by AOL cofounder James James Kimsey in Mayor. 2020. The same year the country purchased a vacant lot nearby for 20,000,000.
Speaker 3:Are they actually just buying these on the balance sheet?
Speaker 2:I think so. I think they got cash to to spend. And they wanna come visit. When they wanna come visit, they wanna have a nice nice place to entertain, host host guests, do deals, all the above. If you're if you're if you're a start up, you got couple $100,000,000 burning a hole in your pocket, you're doing deals in DC, pick up a $23,000,000 mansion.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Why not?
Speaker 2:Mark Zuckerberg did. Earlier this year, Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, purchased a $23,000,000 mansion in Washington DC. Of course, that is much smaller than what the what the MRI has been picking up. But regardless, you gotta get your brand mentioned in ChatGPT, go to ProFound, reach millions of customers who are using AI to discover new products and brands. TJ Parker has
Speaker 3:Yeah. That's a good post. The bull case for Apple and AI is they're going to completely avoid enormous amounts of CapEx spend, get most of the consumer value from intelligently integrating Gemini, and get paid a boatload of money from Google for doing so. And I agree. I think I do think it is frustrating as a user that Apple has moved slowly and somewhat ineffectively on AI.
Speaker 3:But I don't think they're in a bad spot from a business standpoint.
Speaker 2:No. No. Nothing's gotten me to consider moving off of Apple. Like, even if iPhone Air doesn't have the right battery life or iPhone Pro, you know, crap Yeah.
Speaker 7:That's whatever. Big
Speaker 2:If I need a case on it, it's like, I'll I'll solve all of that. I'm sticking with
Speaker 3:And that's a big question.
Speaker 2:Sticking with CooperTD
Speaker 3:The big question with the Meta the new Meta displays is is there a world where because right now, when we demo the displays, you can get an Instagram DM, you can get a WhatsApp Yep. Message, and it will pop up in your display, nice little notification. Yep. But the question is, will they be able to figure out a deal with Yeah. With Apple so you can get iMessage piped into their So
Speaker 2:yesterday, Meta Connect continued and they did talk about the developer kit, the SDK, how developers can integrate. And they had a couple of integrations. They did one with Twitch, so you can livestream from the from the the devices, from the Meta Ray Ban displays. They did one with Streamlabs and Disney and there were a few others. They're still pretty niche and they're all partnered with like pretty big big companies, the type of companies that would do like pretty big press junkets for these.
Speaker 2:But some cool demos. I I thought that they were interesting. I'm very interested in the Twitch demo. Obviously, we livestream on Twitch. Thank you to Bobby Cosmic in the Twitch chat holding
Speaker 3:it down.
Speaker 2:But it it seemed like the livestreaming capability, which we didn't expect to launch very quickly, is gonna launch. It is gonna be live. You are gonna be able to livestream from the glasses. But the the amount of time that you can actually spend livestreaming is pretty short. It didn't seem like something where you could be streaming for hours.
Speaker 2:It was probably minutes. There were different timers that popped up when I was looking at the video kind of showing, Okay, if you keep streaming at this scale, it's going to chips are going be on fire. You're to run out of battery life pretty quickly. And so there might be all day battery life, but that's more like all day battery life for the occasional picture and the occasional meta AI LLM query, not all day battery life stream your entire life. Like you were mentioning that the AI mode was maybe an hour max.
Speaker 3:Live AI.
Speaker 2:Live AI was maybe an hour There's lots That's the a lot there.
Speaker 3:Using it to translate real time.
Speaker 2:And I think it's also taking pictures of what you're seeing while it's doing that for the actual for the extra context there. Anyway, whatever if you're planning to build a product that integrates with Meta AI display glasses, you got to get on Linear. Linear is a purpose built tool for planning and building products. It's a double kill. You can plan and build the products.
Speaker 2:Meet the system for modern software development, streamline issues, projects, product road maps. Jeremy Giffon has a post.
Speaker 3:Hot take.
Speaker 2:Wouldn't be surprised if this printed in the legacy media soon. But now we're seeing it on ads.
Speaker 3:Wrote it by hand. Wrote some drafts out Yep. On a piece of paper and then transferred it. Yeah. Had maybe a member of his team, one of his guys actually.
Speaker 2:So he says the chief of staff is overrated. We meet we need more confidants. Eminence grise grisees? I don't know what that is. Visees?
Speaker 2:Viseers. Praetorians. There is a phalanx of different guys you can have at your side. You don't need to copy the president. Consider the king or the priest or the emperor instead.
Speaker 2:Banger. Must have the title grand in front. I think we gotta we this pretty title. He needs to be a confidant or a a grand vizier. Yes.
Speaker 2:I think a vizier is a good is a good title. I mean hire was a vice president. Our first hire was a vice president. We have a wheel man. We have a VP of logistics.
Speaker 3:Yep.
Speaker 2:We have a few other folks, a CIO, of course.
Speaker 3:Yep.
Speaker 2:Chief intern officer, Tyler Cosgrove over there holding it down.
Speaker 3:Yep. Breaking it down. Jim Kramer says, that thirty year treasury better start behaving. Is Get it bar
Speaker 2:in order.
Speaker 3:He also posted posted a a picture of him hugging Tim Cook saying, own it. Don't trade it.
Speaker 2:I love this. He said this ten years ago. We reacted to his his interview with Tim Cook on Squawk Box or on on Mad Money a decade ago. The stock had sold off. They'd they'd hit earnings.
Speaker 2:They beat earnings. They generated something like 10,000,000,000 in free cash flow, but it wasn't enough for the for the Street. And so Kramer did a very interesting interview with Tim Cook where he explains that he is excited about the company. He personally is bullish on the company, but he has to get the story straight for what the Street is saying. And the Wall Street traders were saying, Apple, will this company go the way of HP or Compaq or IBM?
Speaker 2:Like, have they reached stagnation? And Tim Cook says, no. We're gonna keep growing. We're gonna keep compounding. You don't even know how much revenue we're gonna make off of the App Store.
Speaker 2:And he kinda teases he he says, hey, services are gonna be big. The iPhone's You're still gonna be very big. And he was a 100% right.
Speaker 3:Got a great toll road going. Yeah. Base sixteen z Speaking says
Speaker 2:of toll roads, the tax is a toll road on your business. Don't waste any time with it. Head over to Numeral HQ. Put your sales tax on autopilot.
Speaker 3:That's right.
Speaker 2:Numeral is the platform for sales tax and VAT compliance.
Speaker 3:And we have Sam from Numeral, the CEO, joining in just a little bit. Looking forward to that. Base sixteen z just shared a screenshot of CNBC. They said New York will soon send its, quote, first ever inflation refund check checks to taxpayers.
Speaker 2:Is this the state or the city? New
Speaker 3:York. The state of New York will be giving you a refund for inflation.
Speaker 2:They're they're they're paying back.
Speaker 3:Concerning. Concerning. Well Let's see. What else we got here?
Speaker 2:There's news about OpenAI. OpenAI has approached GoreTech, which assembles AirPods, HomePods, and Apple Watches to supply components such as speaker modules for OpenAI's future One of the products, OpenAI, has talked to suppliers about making resembles a smart speaker without a display, the people said. Would you carry this with you? Would you have this in your home? OpenAI has also considered building glasses, a digital voice recorder, and a wearable pin, and is targeting late twenty twenty six or early twenty twenty seven for the release of its first devices.
Speaker 2:Digital voice recorder. I I you you know who you know who really convinced me? Who was really convincing at the Meta Connect event? Was it the the the VP of wearables? He was saying he believes in in kind of Lindy form factor.
Speaker 2:Yeah. You wear a watch. Glasses. You had a garment on. You wear glasses.
Speaker 2:It's people don't wear a lot of pins. Maybe if you're the hand of the king, you wear a pin. Maybe a crown or a cane, a smart cane Yeah. Is an interesting idea. But it it does seem like it's harder to get people to wear
Speaker 3:open open AI is saying we're gonna do a speaker or at least that's, you know, between the lines. That's what they would would do here. But Apple is remember, they're building the smart lamp
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 3:For your
Speaker 2:Are they?
Speaker 3:Well, this this was teased
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah. Part of that. It's not really that. It's an iPod it's an iPad on a robotic arm that can follow you around the room in the kitchen.
Speaker 3:I know. I mean, I just meant more of the Pixar lamp.
Speaker 2:It does feel Pixar lamp esque, and I'm actually very excited about that product. I think it'll be very cool. Maybe they should There was a post a couple years ago a couple days ago from someone saying, like, Apple should lean into they should make up just an actual lamp. You don't need to throw crazy AI. It doesn't need to be iPhone level internals.
Speaker 2:Just apply your design skills to industrial design all over
Speaker 4:the Yeah.
Speaker 3:We've asked we've asked for this stuff, the TV.
Speaker 2:The TV, but it's not gonna happen. It's not gonna happen unless you have the full flywheel of you can take a cut of everything that happens on that device. You have an App Store. You have all the downstream stuff. You have a solid replacement cycle.
Speaker 2:When was the last time you upgraded your TV? Happens like once every five years, ten years. And yet people upgrade their phones. They lose their AirPods. They get new AirPods.
Speaker 2:They get the latest I iPad, iPad.
Speaker 3:Apple made a battery powered TV, and you'd be forced to replace your TV every
Speaker 2:I think you're talking about the Apple Vision Pro, which is the the the vision for, you know, where where that goes. Well, speaking of Hollywood visions, Near is shouting out Alibaba's character swap via WAN 2.2 Animate. Very impressive and free and open source. By the way, this lets you insert yourself as the main character Which Sorkin? Anyone.
Speaker 2:We go. Let's play it.
Speaker 8:Mister Sorkin, you are five minutes late. Is there a reason why I should let you in?
Speaker 3:Look, I I'm just trying to ditch the cops. Okay? I I don't really care if you let me in or not.
Speaker 2:This is gonna be pretty viral.
Speaker 8:Mister Spector will be right with you.
Speaker 2:This is gonna definitely launch some start up videos.
Speaker 8:Can I get you anything?
Speaker 2:I'll call you. Someone's gonna use this to do a start up launch video very soon.
Speaker 3:Pretty
Speaker 2:cool swapping yourself in. It really it really does it flawlessly. Remarkable. Look at that.
Speaker 8:I'm a fan. I have
Speaker 11:to know.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Another tool in the tool kit
Speaker 3:for Yeah. For for
Speaker 2:video creators. Much like fin dot a I, the number one AI agent for customer service, number one in performance benchmarks, number one in competitive bake offs, number one ranking on V2. We have another financial section today. It's Friday in The Wall Street Journal.
Speaker 3:Another one.
Speaker 2:Kara Ross, the ex wife of billionaire Steven Ross, created related properties, the man who created the strip mall, essentially. He she is putting her New York home on the market.
Speaker 3:The gem gemologist and jewelry designer bought the Lenox Hill co op around the same time she filed for divorce from the Miami Dolphins owner. Caroline
Speaker 2:point $75,000,000, she's asking. She bought it for 5,600,000.0 in 2021 around the same time she filed for divorce. She tapped a lot of designers Tony Ingrao and Randy Kemper, who worked on the couple's former home in Columbus Circle to reconfigure and redesign the apartment. The apartment is is 2,500 square feet, has two bedrooms and a large terrace. The terrace is 2,000 square feet.
Speaker 2:So she referred to it as a diamond in the rough, of course, a play on words because she is a Gemologist. Jewelry Yeah. She is a jewelry designer. They've been worn Her designs have been worn by the likes of former First Lady Michelle Obama. And so if you're looking to pick up something in Manhattan, give her a call.
Speaker 2:It was a classic old apartment with hallways and drop ceilings and beams and all in and beams in all the wrong places. They focused on opening up the layout so that the terrace is visible from the entrance to the apartment, even removing one of the three bedrooms. Now, the expansive living area has a backlit onyx bar that can change color to fit the mood.
Speaker 3:They've really gotta swap out the current furniture and just redo the interior because this place is not
Speaker 2:It doesn't look as good as it can. Homey. It doesn't look like you could just hang out here and crash. In the short time that she's lived there, Cara says she's hosted several events including her daughter's engagement party. I love to have friends and family over to create a nice environment for them.
Speaker 2:The co op market has been soft and richer in recent years, but listing agent expect to see demand for this property because it is newly renovated. Apartments like that sell for a premium because time is money. Homes that require renovation are still trading at a discount. In in 02/2022, Stephen Ross sold the couple's former condo near Columbus Circle for about $40,000,000 a significant discount from its original $75,000,000 price tag. That building was completed in the early two thousands by a partnership that included Related, so he used his own firm.
Speaker 2:Steven, who acquired the Dolphins around 02/2009, has since launched a new company focused on development in West Palm Beach, which is very, very popular. And if you're looking to grow your business, get on Adio, customer relationship magic. Adio is the AI native CRM that builds, scales, and grows your company to the next level. Ben Lang has a good
Speaker 3:That's $25 purchase, a Bluetooth device to connect AirPods on any plane.
Speaker 2:A couple of people post about this.
Speaker 3:This I put this in here not for this use case
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 3:But to bring up this sort of funny state of the world Yes. Where every single, like, hospitality esque business Mhmm. Just like adopted USB
Speaker 2:Yes. At the worst
Speaker 3:everything possible is USB A. USB C. Yes. So I was on a plane the other week. They had a U S
Speaker 2:USB a.
Speaker 3:USB a. It was a charter that I got through Preston Holland.
Speaker 2:Should I
Speaker 3:have Preston Holland? And I was just like, the the plane had been refurbished in like 2020. Mhmm. And it still had USB A. I was like, what's going on here?
Speaker 3:And then we were at a hotel for Yep. For Metaconnect
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 3:The other day and it's like, great. I'm glad I have USB A Yep. Charging here next to the and it seems like you could create a business just like going around to like a lot of these different types of of companies that have installed USB a and just be like, look, like this is not a real this is no longer an amenity. Yeah. In fact, it's a frustration because I check into a hotel room and I'm like, great.
Speaker 3:I I I'm glad I could charge a USB a device here. Yep. Thank you for this.
Speaker 2:Hopefully, USB c is the the final The final. The final format. Although, do you know that there are like 12 different standards for what goes in a USB c cable? So USB c is the shape. It's not actually the data transfer.
Speaker 3:And so The final shape.
Speaker 2:I just wanted which fine, is but there are slow USB c ports. There are fast USB c ports. There's Thunderbolt four, which is a faster faster protocol that goes over USB c. It's all a mess.
Speaker 3:But Well, we have an iPhone review from Joanna Stern. Let's pull up this video. I thought this was important for the audience to see. So she has a new iPhone.
Speaker 2:This is the new iPhone. This is the Air?
Speaker 3:This is the Air.
Speaker 2:The Air had had had round edges. It has sharp edges.
Speaker 3:That looks like the air to me.
Speaker 2:She's cutting cheese with it.
Speaker 3:She's cutting the cheese.
Speaker 2:She has a little viral sense going. She, of course, is the tech reviewer
Speaker 3:over at Culture Journal. Fantastic. Well, without further ado, we should bring on our second guest Hey. Our first in person guest Let's go. Aaron.
Speaker 3:Welcome to
Speaker 2:the show. How you doing
Speaker 3:to the show. Announces series a today.
Speaker 2:Congratulations. Good to
Speaker 3:see you. Welcome to the Ultradome.
Speaker 11:Welcome. You
Speaker 3:got a mic here. Hello. Keep it
Speaker 2:Introduce yourself. How's it going?
Speaker 11:Aaron Slodov, CEO, Atomic Industries.
Speaker 3:Very very few people have sat here at this table with us.
Speaker 11:I thought this was appropriate. Right?
Speaker 2:I mean Yeah. It's great.
Speaker 3:You got a round to announce?
Speaker 2:What's the news today?
Speaker 11:Well, the first news is I got some merch here.
Speaker 2:Let's see it.
Speaker 11:So the first first of kind merch and some of the shirts.
Speaker 2:You go in with wild colors.
Speaker 3:I'm going with brown. Brown is the most underrated color on earth.
Speaker 11:That's clay. We got a good clay.
Speaker 3:Oh, a clay. Love it. Nice. Here we go. Industries.
Speaker 3:Very, very cool.
Speaker 11:Inspo for these? Yeah. So these are obviously not like our official logo. And I have I'm gonna have to airdrop you some hoodies, I guess, too. Do it.
Speaker 11:I had a great guy on Instagram who basically takes corporate logos and, you know, vintage ifies them There's a merch. And yeah. So special special edition.
Speaker 3:2019. It's overnight success.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. We actually met in Pasadena. We got coffee probably 2021 Yeah. Something like that.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 2:We broke it all down.
Speaker 11:It's been
Speaker 2:Yeah. We have we have
Speaker 3:Absolutely brutal to start an American dynamism dynamism business like four years before the word was Yeah. For sure. The trend was created.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. Break down the news today.
Speaker 11:Alright. So Series A? You can hold this.
Speaker 3:Oh, my.
Speaker 11:So we have A
Speaker 2:lot of Gong hits.
Speaker 11:Yeah. A lot of Gong hits.
Speaker 2:We put that through its paces.
Speaker 11:So this is kind of a, you know, a bunch of great market validation. We're gonna dump this into R and D, a little bit of, like, expansion on the footprint. And actually, if you want, instead of doing, like, a fancy render, I can actually show you guys a little clip of the new factory.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Let's do it. We have a video pulled up already?
Speaker 2:Let's pull it up. Wait. Wait. This is in Detroit?
Speaker 11:This is in Detroit.
Speaker 2:Making Detroit. Bring it to Detroit.
Speaker 3:So you did sign the lease?
Speaker 2:This is wow. That's weird. There we go. That is huge.
Speaker 3:We make a of things in that. Yeah. It's a lot of gonna keep the floor dirt like
Speaker 2:that. We had you we we had you call in, and you were walking around the the previous facility. It didn't look small. What what what goes on the floor? Are you, like, at the point where you're, like, copy pasting the same work cell over and over again?
Speaker 11:Not quite yet. But Okay. You know, the idea behind what we're doing is we started kind of software first, right, to kind of prove the concept that we could actually design something in, you know, at the same clip that like a trade expert could. Mhmm. So we did that first.
Speaker 11:That was enough proof to actually get the first factory off the ground. And then the design software started, you know, saturating into the molds that we would make, right, like at that factory. Now, we're kinda moving into the actual production of parts. So this facility, we're gonna basically have factory one and two. That's the the footprint that we're using.
Speaker 11:Yep. Factory one makes the molds. We ship it to factory two to actually make the parts. So that facility will just be nothing but part making.
Speaker 2:What's the wheelhouse part that you make? What what's the canonical example?
Speaker 3:Name it all Name every name
Speaker 2:Yeah. Name every Yes.
Speaker 3:Every part. You make parts. Name every part.
Speaker 11:We got a lot of parts here. Yeah. I mean, basically, what we're doing is trying to focus on taking, like, specialist shop knowledge. Right? Like, you would go to a shop that's really good at doing, like, automotive parts or aerospace parts and generalizing that same capability, like, across the board.
Speaker 11:So our envelope or constraint is kind of like size instead of industry or part. So we can't do something like the size of the table, obviously, but we can work up to that, So you for now, we're kind of like parts that are a couple shoe boxes are smaller, like
Speaker 2:What was the thesis for your pitch to have every person who works in manufacturing wear a pair of Meta glasses and start collecting data? Like, how would that actually flow through?
Speaker 11:So I started a lot of my earlier career in, like, self driving cars. Right? Sure. I worked at Google fifteen years ago doing It's actually insane. Don't even, like, thinking about that.
Speaker 3:You, like, 15 years old?
Speaker 11:Yeah. I was I was 10. I was a wonderkin. And, you know, a lot of a lot of the kind of like idea behind that is controlling a system well enough. Right?
Speaker 11:Like a human control car. Mhmm. Same principles kind of apply to a factory.
Speaker 4:Right?
Speaker 11:If you're producing the same thing over and over again, you can dial a factory like Elon does. Right? And it's just like ultra efficient. The holy grail is being able to take a factory and kind of adapt to different things, you know, over and over again. And mold making is kind of like that because every part has a unique geometry.
Speaker 11:So ultimately, the shape drives, like, the construction of every mold. And it's a little bit different. Right? But, yeah, ultimately, that
Speaker 2:will Yeah. I mean, actually pulling data from someone who's working on a line, I mean, they're gonna see you're gonna see someone using a screwdriver one day and then a hammer and then different tools and then pushing buttons and maybe sitting in front of their computer, like, taking notes. Like, isn't that just, like, a ton of messy data? Like, how do you actually compress that into something that's actionable?
Speaker 11:So the self driving analogy is very similar to that. Right? Like Mhmm. Being able to actually intuit, like, a mechanical task. Sure.
Speaker 11:Right? Or, I don't know, anything like programming a machine or something like that. Right? If we have the ability to actually collect the data seamlessly and relatively easily, that's kind of a floodgate, you know, to being able to do a lot of these things. Processing them is a different problem, depending on how general they get.
Speaker 11:But I do think that that's actually a pretty interesting use case for them.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Give us the update on reindustrialization broadly.
Speaker 3:There's been some headlines on the job side this year that have been not super thrilling to look at. Actually, reduction in in manufacturing workforce. But what's actually Yeah.
Speaker 2:A lot of energy in the
Speaker 4:space.
Speaker 3:But What's the vibe like on the ground?
Speaker 11:The vibe on the ground
Speaker 3:Actually, and and to be clear, I want I I wanna get a sense of, like, what the vibe is, like legacy manufacturing and then, like, the the reindustrialized crowd.
Speaker 2:No way. You gotta take that.
Speaker 11:I can't. I can't do that right
Speaker 2:now. No.
Speaker 3:You can take it.
Speaker 2:It right now.
Speaker 11:He'll call back. He'll call back.
Speaker 3:That's actually I mean, I don't know if you're fucking with us.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I don't know if you're messing with us, but that's fine. The It's crazy. Big if true.
Speaker 3:Big if true.
Speaker 11:The yeah. I mean, the vibe on the ground for this stuff is it's interesting. Right? Because there's a huge need for it and, like, economic data, you know, numbers go up and down all the time and people will panic. Businesses might not actually take on more because capex is ultra expensive or something.
Speaker 11:Right? At the end of the day, stuff still has to get made. Right? And there's a lot of work that we're doing right now with the admin, which, you know, maybe we'll talk about someday. But people are very aware of this problem.
Speaker 11:Right? And we need to pump resources into the industrial base in a really meaningful and fast way. So ultimately, there's a huge demand and need. Even without the tariffs, it was still there. Right?
Speaker 11:Yeah. I mean, yeah, starting this company when I did was a really interesting moment in history. And like, I was trying to front run that problem. And ultimately, I didn't really do anything for, you know, 2020 at all. Yeah.
Speaker 11:But, yeah, I think I think people, you know, they're actually churning out parts and components are, you know, extremely happy with where things are at. But, you know, overall, this is something that, like, we have the same conversation about over and over and over again, which is, you know, factory jobs and manufacturing jobs. Like, a lot of people don't know if that actually means a specialist, you know, CNC machinist, a cam programmer, like somebody just pushing a button on a machine on a line somewhere. And ultimately, you'll kinda see, you know, a a collapse or you'll probably see, you know, a little bit of condensing of skilled trade labor as, like, technology flows more into the industrial base, and we get more efficient factories that are cheaper. Ultimately, it's not a zero sum game.
Speaker 11:Right? It's like Jevan's paradox for for stuff. If you can figure out a way to make more, we're gonna make more.
Speaker 2:I feel like there's a ton of energy. Like, the biggest American dynamism story or the the biggest reindustrialization story has oddly been like the x AI colossus, like the neo clouds, what Crusoe's doing. Like, it feels like there's an immense pull from the industry to build big things. And they're building multibillion dollar projects in America. It's very much assembling parts from all over the place.
Speaker 2:We just got a report that Elon's potentially buying a power plant internationally and then just rebuilding it in Memphis or Mississippi. But and and, like, do you think that that actually translates to going down the stack, Or do you think that, like, all the AI energy will just wind up resulting in just build a big data center but still continue to make the transformers wherever they need to be made or make networking equipment wherever it needs to be made? I mean, the chips, like, the actual energy around moving chip production back to America, it's a multi decade project.
Speaker 11:Yeah. I I think I think there's like a secret plan here Mhmm. That nobody's really talking about, which
Speaker 2:What's that?
Speaker 11:You you've you've seen Elon and like Jensen hint at this Mhmm. In some of their public stuff that they've said. They're all driving for applying AI to, like, the physical
Speaker 2:Oh, sure.
Speaker 11:Right?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 11:Obviously, we have to play with LLMs for a little bit and, like, cool video and image tools and stuff. But ultimately, I think that, like, you know, we saw what was that? Like, week ago, Elon talking about making Transformers now. Like, just going straight for the kill. I think that ultimately, and, like, how Jensen talked about, like,
Speaker 2:you know I mean, SpaceX vertically integrated a ton of a ton of part making internally because they were they were fed up. But what does that mean for your business?
Speaker 11:Right. So ultimate ultimately, what it means is that, like, you're gonna have a trade off where skilled tradespeople are kind of, like, you know, the replacement rate is very low. Mhmm. So you might actually see some kind of like conglomeration or agglomeration of these trades kind of, you know, forming like a foundational layer of building blocks where we can make components and parts Yeah. And the technology is applied to that.
Speaker 11:Yeah. Right? Like, that's what was saying, like, Jensen, his whole thing is, like, using tokens for whatever. Right?
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 11:If we can apply that to the part making layer, Right? It's just foundational kind of stuff. And then from there, you can build whatever you want.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Are there I I remember early on when we were talking, one of the interesting use cases for AI in a manufacturing context was you have a part that needs to be injection molded. You need to build the casting for that. Right? And you need to figure out where you drill the holes to dissipate heat.
Speaker 2:Right? And then and the example you gave me was, like, if you're if you're molding a bumper for a car, the it's a very odd shape. It's not just, something you can roll out on a sheet or cut stamp or do anything else. Right? You need to actually mold it.
Speaker 2:And it it it does that have any indexing towards, like, what goes on the data center? Like, what are there parts that are that are benefiting in the data center context from that type of, like, injection molding optimization work?
Speaker 11:Potentially. I mean, it's gonna be a lot
Speaker 2:of, like,
Speaker 11:racking and componentry.
Speaker 2:Right?
Speaker 11:So if if there's some kind of weird new, you know, form factor, what? Probably not.
Speaker 2:But Yeah. Most of the data center just feels like it's, like, vertical racks
Speaker 10:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And just bolted together, very, I mean, Zuck's building data centers in tents now. Like, they're not going with like bespoke Yeah. Like beautiful, like, custom shapes or anything like that.
Speaker 11:I think a lot of it like, whenever you need to form a part of some kind, right? Yeah. You have to pick what type of methodology you're gonna use, like whatever is most cost effective and also meets the requirements. So if it's bunch of metal stuff, you're probably gonna stamp it or, you know, it'll be made out of sheet metal or CNC'd or something. Then if it is a plastic thing that you can actually blast out in high volume and it's it's actually worth it, that's a great problem to solve.
Speaker 11:Right? Yeah. And what we're doing is actually trying to lower that barrier. And not everything can be a plastic part and
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 11:People don't want that. But if you actually lower that barrier, then, you know, engineering changes actually. Yeah. Because now you can actually rescope what is plastic, what is metal, and consider a different, you know, production method for it.
Speaker 3:How are the capital markets treating manufacturing businesses and especially tech enabled manufacturing businesses today. So I'm assuming you're not getting AI multiples, but hopefully there's there's plenty to go around.
Speaker 11:Well, that's that's the thing. It's like there's no comp for this. Right? Nobody's actually done this before. So, you know, TBD on that.
Speaker 11:But I do think that even even like announcing the raise earlier, right, was a huge mistake on LinkedIn, you know, just because I now have gotten probably a 100 different emails and texts from, you know, people Right. On the other side of venture.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 11:They're just like, loans, you know. It's just like Mhmm. It's a wellspring of money. There's an ocean of capital on the other side of this if you can prove something viable.
Speaker 2:Where's the where's the business? I mean, you you said $25,000,000 series a massive facility that you showed us. How are you tracking with, like, revenue, headcount, anything else that you can share?
Speaker 11:Yeah. So with that kind of progression of going, like, software to mold making to Yeah. Part making, we picked up, like, our first couple big, you know, part production contracts. So interestingly enough, it's kinda like SaaS. Mhmm.
Speaker 11:It's just, like, you know, I need a widget for five years.
Speaker 2:Like Yeah.
Speaker 11:You're in charge of making the mold and the part now. Yeah. So we're gonna start stacking, like, multi year production programs. So we're kind of in the mid 8 figure range for that right now. That's cool.
Speaker 11:And Let's give it up for
Speaker 3:the mid eight figures. It's it's an amazing place to be. Underrated. Right? People already always talk about nine figures.
Speaker 3:Being in the mid eight figures.
Speaker 11:The next time I'm back here, we'll be we'll be we'll be at, you know, nine figures. Fantastic.
Speaker 3:There we go.
Speaker 11:There we go. And then, yeah, we're
Speaker 3:kind of Come back tomorrow.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Oh, yeah. We'll be
Speaker 2:back tomorrow. Yeah. Answer that phone call and then
Speaker 11:Roughly 50 people right now.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow.
Speaker 11:And it's it's interesting too because Most of Detroit?
Speaker 3:That includes people that are, like, in in the factories themselves, like Like ever. Helping. Right? Yeah.
Speaker 11:I mean, it's it this is one of the main reasons we actually wanted to build in Detroit. Right? Because, you know, even though I love California Yeah. That talent is not here. Yeah.
Speaker 11:So we do have to kind of like rely on that initially to build out the footprint there. And then once we actually have
Speaker 3:Would you come to California?
Speaker 2:Yeah. For sure. But is California anywhere near the top of the list? I feel like Texas, there's other mean, what's happening in Memphis and in in Mississippi, like, there's so many other states that are more like, please bring your business here. Yes.
Speaker 11:Yeah. I mean, we're we're gonna have to take a look at statewide, you know, incentive packages Yeah. And see see how that's looking. But that's that's kind of the model, right? It's like 80% Does
Speaker 3:California offer incentives for these kind No. Of
Speaker 2:Disincentives, exactly.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Disincentives, yeah. If you come here, we're we'll make your life hell, but the weather's great. That was so funny. I was looking at I was looking at the weather report yesterday Yeah.
Speaker 3:And I was like, this is this is why we this is why we do what we do. 75 today in Malibu, 75 in sunny, then 78 in sunny, then 77 in sunny, then 79 in sunny, then 79, and then 79, then 77.
Speaker 2:I'm sure it's not that bad
Speaker 4:in Detroit right now. It's Actually summer.
Speaker 11:It's probably perfect.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Fall It's probably perfect. Everybody talks
Speaker 2:Don't talk about winter.
Speaker 3:California people don't talk about fall in Detroit.
Speaker 4:Fall in
Speaker 2:Detroit. I mean, in in Chicago, it's the same thing. Chicago has fantastic summers.
Speaker 10:Yes. It's the
Speaker 3:Indy. People call Detroit the Saint Tropez of America.
Speaker 2:It is. It is. Anyway, congratulations. Thanks so much coming on the show.
Speaker 3:Dude, thank
Speaker 2:you for that. Gong is
Speaker 3:Yeah. Hit that as hard as you can. Woah.
Speaker 2:Woah. Was good.
Speaker 3:That was a good hit. That was you kept it you kept it in. That's a true test of strength. Being close to the gong and still getting that
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:That contact. Congratulations.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much for
Speaker 3:joining All the progress. Go go take that call.
Speaker 2:We will talk to you soon. And
Speaker 3:we have Good.
Speaker 2:Ariana coming on the show in just a few minutes. In the meantime, let me tell you about Eight Sleep. 8sleep.com. Get a pod five, five year warranty, 30 risk free trial.
Speaker 3:I'm back with the purchase. I put
Speaker 2:up a shipping.
Speaker 3:What did I do?
Speaker 2:You did well?
Speaker 3:I got a 94 last night, seven hours fifty
Speaker 2:six minutes. A 94. 94. 98. 98.
Speaker 3:I was not expecting
Speaker 2:98. Put that phone down. I beat Jordy Hayes.
Speaker 3:Great. The great sleep off. Yes. We run a weekend, like weekend average, see how Yeah. See how we do.
Speaker 3:Sleep off.
Speaker 2:There's a new paper that claims LLMs are better at selecting founders than venture capitalists. Someone I who's don't believe it. VC bench, the first benchmark for predicting for founder success in venture capital. This is from the University of Oxford. And Julia Hornstein's shares thinking about this, quote, but for but for Andreessen, there is one job that AI will never do as well as living, breathing living living, breathing human being his.
Speaker 2:Think I'm kidding? On an a 16 z podcast last week, Andreessen opined that being a venture capitalist may be a profession that is quite literally timeless. When the AIs are doing everything else, he continued, that may be one of the last remaining fields that people are still doing. Is Vlad, say something too? Like, you know, singularity, you just invest for a living?
Speaker 3:I I agree with the the the sense that the the high level point which is that, like, humans humans will, like, raise capital.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Machines will probably deploy it. Yes. But I do I do wonder. I I would love to I I we have to we should dig into this VC bench thing more because Yep. I do think if I just like ran you could basically run a model against like a deck.
Speaker 3:Yes. And even you can even analyze things like how fast a founder responds. Right?
Speaker 2:I would love
Speaker 3:to People talk about
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:People talk about some of these like smaller data points, like founders that respond fast, Yeah. That really outperform.
Speaker 2:The like outperforming, I mean, I'm not exactly sure how what the outperformance was. But being in the sixtieth percentile of venture capitalist, like, does not matter. Like, you still do very poorly. Like, you need to be at the long tail of the power law. I'd be fascinated
Speaker 3:to is, like, one of the biggest drivers of
Speaker 2:that. Brand's super important. But also, I I think I mean, you you read Zero to One, the value of secrets. Like, secrets are not in the training data. And so there's so many decisions that are made in a business partnership or backing a founder that are secrets that never make their way onto the Internet.
Speaker 2:They never make it they never make it into the weights whatsoever. Maybe they make it into a biography after someone passes away, like decades later. But so much of decision in venture capital and decision making in business is really on the backbone of whisper networks and understanding Being able to act
Speaker 3:accurately predict the future.
Speaker 2:Of text. It's not just accurately predicting the future. I feel like accurately predicting the future, like broadly, like the like AI is not that bad at that. But AI doesn't necessarily know like like all the different all the different secrets that are
Speaker 3:going into a business for But if if you're running let's say you're running a model generally
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And and you asked in 2017
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 3:Do you think that bright young people in Silicon Valley are gonna wanna work in defense tech in seven years? A model might be like, people have like pretty bad taste in their mouth. Like Google and others are protesting even having any contract. Right?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So it just depends on
Speaker 2:I mean, yeah. The the the LLMs right now are not designed to be contrarian machines. Like, they're they're they're very much consensus focused. And just getting to a a model that thinks independently or can take a contrarian position that isn't just take your conclusion and add a minus sign in
Speaker 3:front It's like, what the average Redditor was deploying capital?
Speaker 2:That's certainly the bear case for this. At the same time, you know, potentially, like, the average Redditor is deploying capital, and that might actually define the VC industry pretty accurately
Speaker 3:right now.
Speaker 2:You're absolutely Yeah. Tyler, what's your take?
Speaker 10:Okay. So I'm I'm looking at the actual, like, benchmark.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 10:So basically What'd they take again? So there's 9,000 the data set is 9,000 anonymized founder profiles. Mhmm. And then, basically, they're either labeled, like, success or, I guess, like, failure Mhmm. Depending on
Speaker 2:Do they return or something?
Speaker 10:Yeah. If they exited IPO ed over 500,000,000 or raised over 500,000,000. And then it has, like, some of the stats are, like, tier one VCs are at predict 23%.
Speaker 6:Mhmm.
Speaker 10:And then deep seek chat is at 80%.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow. That's a huge dollar.
Speaker 10:It's kind of like I it seems hard to, like, anonymize these correctly Yeah. Where, like, you're still encapsulating, like, what made them a good founder, but also still, like, different enough that a model can't just, like, be, like, oh, that's just Mark Zuckerberg
Speaker 2:Totally.
Speaker 10:Without his name. Totally. So, like, yes, he's successful.
Speaker 2:Yes. So Yes.
Speaker 10:Yes. I I think it's
Speaker 3:The other thing is, like, VC is the the issue is, like, VC is not about identifying the great founders. You have to identify them and win allocation at specific moments in
Speaker 2:100 that. And then, yeah, and then also it's identifying the next great founder, which is usually breaking a pattern. I mean, Paul Graham has that famous example where he over indexed on Mark Zuckerberg, met a founder who literally looked like Mark Zuckerberg, wrote the wrote a check, and it was one of the most underperforming investments he's ever made. And he was like, yeah, Dijon was just like this guy. It's like
Speaker 3:All right. Well, we
Speaker 2:Went to Harvard, dropped out of Harvard, looked like Mark.
Speaker 3:We have Ariana in the waiting room. Let's bring her in.
Speaker 2:Let's bring her
Speaker 3:in to TBP. Mold company. The Ultradome. How you doing? What's happening?
Speaker 9:Hi, Jordy. Hi, John. Great to be here.
Speaker 3:Thanks, Great to meet you. Okay. I will start this off by saying
Speaker 2:I Hate mold.
Speaker 3:Got I hate molds. I'm a I'm one of the number one haters. I I had a a rental once that had a mold problem. I got terribly sick and it ended up being this crazy saga where I was fighting with my landlord because they were saying there's no mold problem. I was showing them test results that showed there was a mold problem.
Speaker 3:They were kinda pushing back. I think it's a huge problem. I went down this rabbit hole. I think a bunch of people are kind of waking up to how prevalent the issue is, especially in specific regions and even specific local communities. So excited that you're building this and excited to hear about it.
Speaker 9:Thank you. Yeah. There's definitely a cultural awakening happening. You might have even seen HBO shows and Netflix and throughout the Reddit forums, Facebook communities, influencers on Instagram, etcetera. Like, feels like there's this groundswell of education and awareness happening beyond even our company.
Speaker 3:Yeah. How did you how why why did you start the company? Personal story?
Speaker 9:Yeah. Super similar to yours. Went through that journey with my landlord as well. And prior to starting mold code, didn't have health issues, then experienced debilitating symptoms and actually developed something called chronic inflammatory response syndrome, which is the more formal name for mold toxicity or mold related illness just in a six and a half month time frame of being in my Miami unit, which was quite moldy.
Speaker 3:Crazy. Yeah. What is the have an easy to tell what the company does at a high level, but how are you tackling the problem? What does the business look like?
Speaker 9:Yeah. We're tackling this in a few different ways. So the vision is to drive the standard of care for mold treatment and mold labs. And what we do is offer labs both for health and the environment. So that includes four different tests available on our website today, specifically a three panel and a 16 panel for the LabCorp lab draw, and that's based on our thirty years of research in the field.
Speaker 9:So we have on our founding team the world experts, the folks that not only pioneered this space, but also defined chronic inflammatory response syndrome, came up with the biomarkers, came up with the treatment all in their lifetime, which is an extraordinary effort. So we have that. We also have something called HLA haplotype testing to see if you have a genetic susceptibility to mold related illness and that impacts one and four here in The US. And we also have a test, which I frankly love over even a home inspector at times. It's just a quick litmus test, low cost, use a sweeper pad to wipe down your surfaces.
Speaker 9:So we have it on the lab side. And then on the care side, we have our own in house providers and we built a platform to treat patients at scale and that includes concierge care and our patient portal and that includes a distillation of something called the Shoemaker Protocol, which is the only published peer reviewed treatment approach in this space. There's hundreds of publications making the Mold Health Connection. There's really a small body of work that demonstrates treatment and what's effective for patients. So that's what we've done.
Speaker 9:We've translated that into a virtual care clinic and we've done a lot of creative things to make that scalable for patients so we can keep the cost low and affordable.
Speaker 3:What if if somebody I guess, like, what what is your recommendation? You meet somebody, like, randomly. They hear about your business. Like, what is the first step? Because I think a lot of people, you you talked about people having like genetic susceptibility.
Speaker 3:This this is I think important because it means that like a few people could be living in a house and like some people aren't having necessarily any issues or symptoms and like one person could be having a super adverse reaction. And that I feel like can make can make people like just like not really be aware of the problem because if you have, if somebody's in college and they have some roommates that are doing fine and they're struggling, they can it can end up being confusing. But what do you recommend to people? Where do you recommend people start if they're kind of concerned that they might be dealing with an issue?
Speaker 9:Yeah, absolutely. So we have testing options to meet patients where they are. So it really just depends on where they are in that journey. And you touched upon a really important topic and that's the canary effect. There could be others in your household that start experiencing symptoms before you even experience symptoms, but, it really just depends on where the patient is.
Speaker 9:Have they already made the Mold Health connection? Have they conducted a battery of lab tests to validate that? If so, those patients are often great to start care. If the patient hasn't even made the mold health connection, but they're sure that there's mold in their home, they can probably skip the dust test and even a visual inspection or having that musty earthy odor is sufficient. So for that type of patient, we may recommend even the starter panel, which is one of our three, lab panels and that has the highest, signal biomarkers based on the research that we have today, which I'm sure will evolve.
Speaker 9:We actually have an r and d arm with the largest data set in the world for what we're doing too. So we're looking to advance that and really drive the standard of care. Or if a patient doesn't know if they have mold in their home, but they're having the indicative symptoms, which includes brain fog, fatigue, gastrointestinal issues, etcetera. It's normally a multi system, multi symptom issue, non specific but affecting multiple systems, then we would recommend lab panel such as the starter panel or a complete panel. The HLA
Speaker 3:Would you guys help cuss like clients, customers with with like legal? Because I ended up having to hire a lawyer when I was going through my issue because my landlord was just like completely just like basically like gaslighting me. Not not is that something that that you guys would ever help people with or is that outside of kind of the wheelhouse?
Speaker 9:It's currently outside our scope. In terms of the next evolution of the company, the parent company is actually called the ImmuneCo, and our vision is to spin out LymeCo and LongCo next. Our thesis is that the data set we've collected, which is looking at these microbial insults, mold and biotoxins that lead to innate immune system dysregulation leading to chronic inflammation, can actually have the underlying research to help solve some of these other biotoxin related issues. So we're more so going that direction versus expanding too horizontally within the mold economy, but I think there's definitely opportunity there for founders.
Speaker 3:The mold economy. We're here. How are you how are you guys acquiring customers at this point? Is it is this this feels like the kind of thing that that one, there's a lot of influencers that that have dealt with this Really? And that'll talk about it.
Speaker 3:But also feels like you could have an organic TikTok or real strategy or something along those lines.
Speaker 9:Yeah. We're doing a lot of different things. We actually just launched something called a content farm. We had 7,000,000 views in the last week or week and a half or so just off of that. So we are tapping into TikTok and Instagram and doing some fun things there.
Speaker 9:We had a Reddit AMA with Doctor Shoemaker, the Messiah of Mold, our founding physician and that went viral in Messiah
Speaker 3:of Mold. Yeah. You got some you got some good good coinages here. The mold economy, the Messiah of mold.
Speaker 9:Thanks. I don't have bots on my cap table though, so maybe next. But, yeah. So we've done that. We've done we've had shout outs from patients.
Speaker 9:At least 15% of our patient base is based on referrals and we haven't even optimized for that yet. I've been on at least 30 podcasts at this point. So we're tapping into a lot of different ways to reach patients and increase education and awareness, but there already is a large portion of The US that has made the Multi Health Connections. It's been pretty streamlined targeting those patients and onboarding them into our care.
Speaker 3:Would you do anything last question I have, I'm curious. Would you do anything around helping people make decisions on, like specifically, the moment in time where somebody's either buying a home or considering renting a property? Because the thing that's like tragic about like kind of the mold crisis, if that's what you wanna call it, is there's a lot of homes that are brand new and they will literally have like a like a To see significant mold toxicity problem On day one. On day one because of the way they were built or you think about it, it's houses can take a long time to build. They could have leaks, they could have a bunch of weather, all these different things and then you move into a house that you think is brand new and it already is gonna like make you sick which is just tragic.
Speaker 9:Thank you for touching on that misconception that new builds don't have mold issues. They definitely do. The building materials are left outside in the rain. The energy efficiency standards often have a trade off for having more microbial growth in the home. So I think there's a lot of dramatic irony there for home buyers and renters.
Speaker 9:It's not something we're targeting at a deep level right now. I often say that the environmental side is off more intractable than the health care side just because the health care side already has the solution available. And every home is unique, every, rental is unique. So we offer free educational guidance, but I think that's also another opportunity for a builder in this space if they wanna help essentially renters and owners better navigate which homes have mold and to avoid that. And there's also novel materials coming out like sire wall too to prevent mold in the first place.
Speaker 3:Awesome. Well, congratulations.
Speaker 2:Give us the fundraising news.
Speaker 3:What's the fundraising news? I know you announced it yesterday. Right?
Speaker 9:Yeah. Yeah. So we raised earlier this year a bit of a delayed announcement with Cantos and CloudFund as our lead and yeah. There we go.
Speaker 2:How much did you raise?
Speaker 9:8,000,000 total.
Speaker 3:You go. Congratulations. Congratulations. Great names. Names.
Speaker 3:Love to see it.
Speaker 2:Thanks so much for hopping on the stream.
Speaker 3:Thanks for jumping on.
Speaker 2:We'll talk to you
Speaker 3:soon. Cheers.
Speaker 11:Bye.
Speaker 2:If you wanna get away from your moldy old home, head over to wander.com. That's right. Look. Go wander with inspiring views, house tech, great amenities, dreamy beds, top tier cleaning, and 20 fourseven concierge service. It's a vacation home, but better folks.
Speaker 2:Better. Our next guest is Will Heard from Chaos Industries. He's the chief strategy officer, former CIA, former congressperson.
Speaker 3:Welcome What's going on?
Speaker 2:How are you doing?
Speaker 1:Doing fantastic. It's great to be on with y'all. I I feel like I'm on with the Shaq and Barkley
Speaker 2:of So tech
Speaker 1:thanks for having me.
Speaker 2:We love to hear that. Thank you.
Speaker 3:Let's go. Fun fact. We know about sports, but but those sound like some big names.
Speaker 2:Fun fact. I endorsed you for president. I said, everyone else who's running as a lawyer, you're the only computer scientist. Talk to me about your journey studying computer science through working in the government. I I I wanna I wanna get a little bit of backstory before we go into what you're doing now.
Speaker 1:Sure. You know, it was funny. When I was in high school, I had the opportunity to do an internship with a woman who was at Southwest Research Institute. They are one of the largest private research entities in the country. And I fell in love with with computer science and decided to go to Texas A and M University, Giga Maggi's and, you know, study computer science.
Speaker 1:You know, and and when I when I first when I first got to college, I thought I was gonna go work at IBM and then Let's
Speaker 3:give it up for
Speaker 2:international International Business Machines. We love international business and machines. There there we go. And
Speaker 1:and but I had this guy who was a guest lecturer in one of my classes that was a former CIA officer. Yeah. And he told the most amazing stories and I was like, I wanna do that. And so, when I graduated from college, I joined the CIA and my I was a case officer, so my job was to recruit spies and steal secrets. It was it was the best job
Speaker 3:Thank the you for distinction because I think people think about CIA agents but those are the people that are recruited by the case officers Yes. Who are doing the the the puppeteering. Right?
Speaker 1:That that's right. Or or you could say the spy master. Yeah. The spy master.
Speaker 3:Spy master.
Speaker 2:That's great. So Yeah. No. Yeah. Please.
Speaker 1:It was a it
Speaker 2:was look.
Speaker 1:It was an awesome gig. Right? Yeah. Two years in India, two years in Pakistan. Wow.
Speaker 1:I did some interagency work in New York City around counter proliferation and then a year and a half in Afghanistan where I managed all of our undercover operations. And in addition to collecting intelligence on our threats to our homelands, I had to brief members of Congress And I was pretty shocked by the caliber of our elected leaders, so I decided to run for Congress. And and that's kind of how that started.
Speaker 2:That's amazing. We we had Dan Wang on the show recently. He wrote a book, Relentless, and he talks about I I hope I have that right. I might be, messing some of that. But, the the basic thesis of the book is that China has an engineering mindset, and they employ a lot of engineers in the government, whereas America has become the lawyerly society.
Speaker 2:And we have a lot of lawmakers who are lawyers by training. And I'm wondering about your thoughts on the direction America should be going in terms of empowering folks who can think from first principles or have engineering mindsets to actually go and build things like high speed rail or, you know, we got to the moon, and, we're seeing a little bit of this with with Doge and more engineers in in the White House. What's the overall your overall view on the level of engineering talent in government and the benefits and costs of that?
Speaker 1:Look, I I think that thesis is is actually correct. I've spent the last twenty five years of my adult life in some form or fashion connected to national security, whether it was CIA in Congress. I was on the House Intelligence Committee seeing how things he our threats to our nation evolve. I was on the Appropriations Committee making sure that we were spending trillions of dollars in in in the right way. I've been on the National Security Agency Advisory Board.
Speaker 1:When I was at Allen and Company, the New York Investment Bank, I was working with technology companies. And here's been one similar throughput to all this. The Chinese government has made it very clear. The way they're gonna surpass The United States Of America as the global superpower is by mastering a number of different technologies. It's about fifteen, sixteen, 17 of them.
Speaker 1:Everything from AI to to hypersonics. And with that as the overarching goal, there is a desire and interest in order to win. Let's look, you you mentioned the space race. Right now, we're there's we're we're rushing to go back to the moon. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And the So it's Chinese are gonna do. The Chinese are gonna do it the exact same way we did it in the past. Right? Yeah. Shocker.
Speaker 1:They're gonna steal all of our plans and ideas and and replicate them, you know. What? Crazy the first time. Yeah. Exactly.
Speaker 1:Exactly. But but but we're also seeing that in whether it's AI and how they're trying to dominate it. We saw them dominate five gs. The fact that the five gs infrastructure now is think it's like over a third in the world is Chinese tech. In AI, the issue of AI, they're trying to make sure by 02/1930, every six year old is AI conversant.
Speaker 1:And we're still having debates here in The United States Of America about whether AI should should be included. And then I don't even tell you about what's happening on the battlefields. Right? You know, we're seeing they're they're learning from Ukraine. They're figuring out how to use autonomy in air, on land, and and and in the sea.
Speaker 1:They're focused on electronic warfare and how to disrupt our systems. They're trying to not only build more than what we have, they're also looking forward to to making sure that they have mass and autonomy in warfare. And so this is this is the world in which we're living in and we need people that actually understand technology to make sure that we can make it happen. Perfect example. No company cannot figure out they don't know that what their budget's going to be next year or what their plan for sales is next year.
Speaker 1:But within the federal government, we don't know necessarily from year to year what the funding is going to be. And for a trillion dollar enterprise, you can't do that. I think at a minimum, should have a two year budget and appropriation so that you can know with some certainty of where you need to go and not trying to go month to month to try to get things done. And I think that's right now one of the issues that I think a lot of venture capital and venture VC backed companies are trying to change with DOD. It's slow.
Speaker 1:It's going. It's moving. It's changing. But we have to have we have to bring that mentality to government.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Talk about your path to chaos. It's a it's a wild name for a defense tech company, but you're doing some very cool things. How did how did all this come together?
Speaker 1:Look, I I didn't think, swinging radars was good was on my bingo card. Right? When when I I got to meet, doctor Beaumar, one of our our our co CEOs and founders of Chaos, he had also previously founded Epirus, John Tennant, another one of our co CEOs who I've known for some time. And he's like, look Will, we're doing something interesting. Why don't you come to LA and see our product?
Speaker 1:And I was blown away, right? First off, unbelievable team, right? These are engineers that have been quoted Nobel Prizes, right? Real You operators in government Navy SEALs, folks that worked in Delta Force, CIA. You have operators that have been in the system.
Speaker 1:And you're working on some of the most cutting edge technology, right? Like you know, we we we have we have figured out a thing called coherent distributed networking. This is taking multiple things in talking to talking to each other, and we figured out how to do that to the picosecond. Now a picosecond, for some references, one picosecond to a second is like a second is to thirty two thousand years. That's really fast.
Speaker 1:And by figuring out how you have this time transfer work, we're able to build a more powerful system and a cheaper system. And and and and so the the that, you know, amazed me and and ultimately the vision of of the company. Right? Since, let's call it the end of the Korean War. Right?
Speaker 1:America and our allies have had air superiority. We and that air superiority has given our troops the ability to look forward not above their heads at swarms. It's allowed commerce to whip around the world. And and those days are over, right, because of autonomy on on the battlefield. Seventy percent of of casualties in in warfare right now are from autonomous systems and drones.
Speaker 1:And the time to detect and do something about it is shrinking. Ultimately what chaos is doing is we're giving the warfighter more time, a time to understand what's happening, time to decide what to do and time to act. And so for me to get back to my roots of national security, it was exciting. And so, that's how I ended up that's how I ended up at Chaos.
Speaker 2:What's the what's the highest priority threat that, radar can help mitigate? Is it is it these autonomous drones these days?
Speaker 1:It it is. Look, there's a lot of conversation right now around Golden Dome, and and Golden Dome is is is something that we need to have. We need to be able to defend against nuclear tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles Yeah. Right, from our adversaries, primarily China, Russia, Iran, and and North Korea. And this is a phased approach from detecting it when it when it launches from their homeland to trying to identify it in space.
Speaker 1:The the the technology that has evolved and what we're able to do now sensing in space is pretty fantastic. And this is an important this is an important problem. But the reality in my the most recent threat, like, the threat we're most likely to see is a a subsonic cruise missile or a drone. And and this can be this can be shot from a plane off the coast of California. It could be a van that is filled with a number of explosive drones.
Speaker 1:These are the things that we're going to see more likely than a nuclear weapon. And we call these underlayer threats. These are things that are happening under 50,000 feet. And that's something that radars is able to help detect. And one of the things that we're learning, because of of some of the technological advances we've made, we can see big, high and far and low, small and near at the same time.
Speaker 1:And and I always remind people, I I think pretty much everybody in America watch Maverick, Top Gun two.
Speaker 2:Top Gun,
Speaker 1:That's of a real thing. Flying below the radar is a real thing. And so we're able to see below that level. And and that's something that that is gonna be helpful against this drone threat, which we've already seen. We've seen what the Ukrainians did in in in Russia.
Speaker 1:We've seen what what Israel has done in Iran. And all of that being able to take out this this exquisite infrastructure.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Alright? And and exquisite is actually a a a has a unique phrasing or or or definition in government. That means big ass expensive system.
Speaker 2:Pardon my leg. For real.
Speaker 1:And so you're able to take these systems out with a system that costs a billion dollars with a drone that costs 20 ks, right? So that cost asymmetry is one of the things that the right radar and what we're doing in multi static radar is something that is
Speaker 2:one of
Speaker 1:the reasons why we're getting traction and excitement within DOD Mhmm. And and the rest of and militaries around the world, to be honest.
Speaker 3:I don't know if you can say anything here, but are you guys doing anything on the counter narcotics side?
Speaker 2:Yeah. We've been seeing some stuff here.
Speaker 3:I've I've watched a bunch of YouTube videos on narco subs.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Jordan's obsessed.
Speaker 3:Aren't true submarines, but designed to be hard to detect.
Speaker 1:Look, this is this is an issue that's actually, you know, close to my heart. When I was in Congress, I represented a district that was 29 counties, two time zones, eight twenty five miles of the border between Texas and Mexico. I had more border than any other member of Congress. And so what the narco trafficantes, the drug traffickers are doing, they're sophisticated. The the narcos in Mexico alone are making roughly, and this is a conservative number, $60,000,000,000 in one year.
Speaker 1:Wow. The U the entire US intelligence budget is $60,000,000,000. Right? And and so
Speaker 3:You add up all the all the Foundation Model Lab revenue and you don't get it.
Speaker 2:You don't get it there. It's bigger than AI.
Speaker 1:Yeah. No. It's it's it's it's wild. So so, yes, I I you know, there is it is known. In end of last year, I think beginning of this year, border patrol testified in front of the Senate that there were something ridiculous like 41,000 drone sightings in just one sector of the border.
Speaker 1:So we know the narcos are using the drone warfare against themselves. Right? And and and so so Like you get rival
Speaker 2:gangs basically.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Absolutely. Wow. It it's like the drone warfare you're seeing between Ukraine and and Russia. Wow.
Speaker 1:They're adapting some of these tactics, techniques, and procedures to that fight. And then we also know, the only way you get $60,000,000,000 worth of of of drugs into The United States Of America is by you bringing them in volume and there is likely some coming via autonomous systems, air and sea. And we've had conversations with authorities in order to help with this project. And so once we learn more, we'll come back and I'll give you a report on some of the things that we're seeing.
Speaker 2:Can you give me some describe the shape or the physicality of what you're building? You know, there's been, you you look at those, like, Andoril submarines. They're square now. They look like they just fit in shipping containers. There's a lot of logistics that you get out of the box.
Speaker 2:If it fits in a shipping container, you can load it onto a boat, an autonomous boat. You can load it on a truck. There's also stuff that can be mounted on an aircraft or something that's, you know, getting into exquisite territory, exquisite system territory. Where do you see the opportunity to deploy new radar systems?
Speaker 1:So so one of our our products we call Vanquish is an expeditionary system. So, the three of us can can carry that. Okay. It can fit on the back of an ATV Wow. And go into really is that an invite?
Speaker 1:Rough drink.
Speaker 2:Is that an invite if we're going ATV
Speaker 10:ing? Let's
Speaker 2:do it. Let's do it.
Speaker 1:Hey. You know? Hey. We're I think we're just right around the corner from y'all. Amazing.
Speaker 1:So next time next next time, we'll we'll take
Speaker 2:out we'll take him out. That'd be great. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And and so so that one is is low form factors, small, that can be deployed in in difficult environments. We have another system called Astraea, which we were just celebrating. We had a major finance award from the US Air Force about this product that we're deploying in Eglin Air Force Base in Florida.
Speaker 2:Much was that deal for? We like to ring the gong around here for big numbers.
Speaker 1:There we go.
Speaker 2:Hit it. How much was it?
Speaker 1:So, 2,000,000. Oh. Congratulations. One more gong. We got one more gong.
Speaker 2:We got one more. Give it to us.
Speaker 1:The house of representatives, put in 10,000,000 in the defense bill.
Speaker 3:There we go. There we go.
Speaker 2:Congratulations. There we go.
Speaker 3:I love I love to see it.
Speaker 2:We like to celebrate big contracts around here. What what, what else are, are you or defense tech companies or the United States government, focused on in terms of actual deployment. There's been a lot of talk about, you know, the Ukraine war. It's been going on for a long time. Very sad.
Speaker 2:It's unfortunately become a a serious business for many companies. There's also Anderol announced about a $1,000,000,000 deal with Australia. There's deals going on in Taiwan, obviously, in The Middle East. Where else in the geopolitical realm are should should founders be thinking about understanding the nature of the changing warfighter and the changing battlefield and then building solutions for?
Speaker 1:Look. If you're if you're a defense tech company and you have an operator who aren't operating in Ukraine, that's gonna be a problem. If you're investing in companies, if I'm gonna be an investor in a defense tech company, my first question is, does your stuff work and has it worked in Ukraine in one of the most difficult environments on the planet right now? And that environment is gonna make the first island chain, if we get into a conflict with the Chinese, look like a playground, by the way. And so so we've been in in in Ukraine.
Speaker 1:We've been tested against the electronic warfare systems of the Russians. Ukrainians have asked us to come back. We're working on being able to do that. We were deployed in The Middle East during the twelve twelve day war. We saw Shahid drones going back and forth between between Israel and Iran, so we've been deployed there.
Speaker 1:Of course, the the potential for geopolitical conflict in in the in Indo Pacific is is an important place where we're having conversations to be able to to deploy against there. So so we've been How quickly how quickly
Speaker 3:can you guys set up in a new in a new region? Right? Because, like, CENTCOM has been quieter, but feels like that could bubble up again at any point.
Speaker 1:Look. So so our our system deployed, once it comes off the truck, we can put it up in about fifteen minutes, right? And so doing that is something but changing the flow within US government. Look, the value of a company like Chaos when we have basically half a billion dollars in our bank account from all of our raises is we're able to operate in these long sales cycles or potential changes within the federal government. And so part of us is just understanding where the threat is, making sure we're deploying.
Speaker 1:And one of the reasons we're kind of been a little bit more active in the public is that our stuff works and we've been deployed and it's operating. We have we have a year of of of consistent deployment in really tough places. And and so that's one of the things that's important for us. And we're gonna go wherever the warfighter needs us.
Speaker 2:You're building a sensor. There are other companies building effectors. There are companies that wanna integrate sensors and effectors. I'm thinking of Palantir. I'm thinking of Lattice from Andoril.
Speaker 2:Are those out of the box integrations? Are those partnerships that you're talking to? Obviously, you're super close with a lot of those folks. What does what does building a product that integrates with everything else? Because I can't imagine that you're saying, oh, on day one, we wanna you know, we we we we don't we wanna be the only defense tech company.
Speaker 2:No. You're part of the ecosystem. You're building, you know, one solution. How do you think about integrating with the rest of the ecosystem?
Speaker 1:Part of this and and what the US government needs and wants is is completing the kill chain. Right? So you can sense and do the effector. And and one of the areas holy grail may be too strong of a word, but getting to an effector that's cheap, right? Or inexpensive is the word I should use.
Speaker 1:And so that integration is important. And so we've already demonstrated ability to integrate with our friends at Andorill. But Palmer and I go way back, when I was in Congress, I was talking about having a smart wall, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I get this phone call from some dude named Palmer Lucky and I'm like, he's like, I got your smart wall. And that began a relationship in helping those guys. Again, same with Palantir, right? I've seen Palantir for a really long time, even back to my days when I was in the CIA. So our ability to integrate and work together and and and and the unique thing about some of the technology that we're working on this cutting edge stuff is it actually can potentially be a force multiplier for other systems as well.
Speaker 1:And so the name of the game is to be able to integrate and make sure the command that we fit into the command and control infrastructure and ultimately our sensor can make every effector better. So so this is, you know, exploring those areas as we explore the kill chain and and all of our suite of products, making sure that, again, at the end of the day, we see farther. Yeah. Right? We see farther than everybody else and we give that war fighter more time.
Speaker 1:And when you have more time, then you can decide, wait a minute, which tool in my toolkit do I want to use in order to in order to deal with this threat? And and the more time you have, the better it is. And when you have bombs dropping on your hand and people shooting at you, even if it's five to ten more minutes, that's an eternity. And and to be able to give that time back to the war fight is what we're focused on.
Speaker 3:What's it like for people that are starting their career on the public sector side, whether it's intelligence or something like down at the border, like, are are do they do they have a feeling that that they have, like, the tools are great? Or are they still or is the sense if you're if you're actually op you know, the the one needing to operate and and use these tools that they can and should be a lot better?
Speaker 1:I I look, it depends on which entity you're talking about. An organization like the CIA, which is which is which is geared towards helping the pointing end of the spear, whether that's the case officer that's collecting the information or the the person doing a a covert operation, there is a there is a belief in that. You have entities like In Q Tel, which is focused on bringing in new technologies in to help the warfighter. You know, when you look at some of the special forces units that are really good at adapting and making sure that our our boys and and girls in in in those units have what it needs, but but it's not it's not uniform and we always talk about how the procurement cycles of getting the right thing in the right hands matters and and here's where some startups that are that are VC Bay based or coming out of Silicon Valley don't get wrong like we talk about these long cycles but guess what the stuff has to work out of the box when it comes to when it comes to getting in the hands of our of our military it has to work every time and and so the the training and evaluation matters and that's what adds to some of that time of getting those getting those equipment and it has to work within our system.
Speaker 1:So I think if you talk to someone on the border or first in their in their early in their their career they may be frustrated with the lack of some of the tools. But some of the problems is that that tool has to be, you know, be be tested, and it has to have the cybersecurity defend against, the the Chinese government.
Speaker 3:Well said.
Speaker 2:Talk to me about the path to program of record. You have this radar contract, more money coming from the house approval. The the typical story that I hear from a lot of defense tech startups is they get a SBIR, and then they sprint towards program of record. Obviously, over the long term, you want that durability of rev revenue that you can underwrite a massive manufacturing facility so you can be making this and improving it every year. What is the net what does the future of the company look like for you?
Speaker 1:Well, look look, all all those things are true and and we're we're far down. We're we've engaged with all of the the branches on this. We're at certain levels of the of the buying process. You know, it it starts with a user Yeah. Wanting your thank.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And if you have users wanting your thang, then it makes it a lot easier in order to connect the dots and because they put the thang in the back. Money that you
Speaker 2:that you
Speaker 1:need, right? And so look, use the annual example. When they did their first border technology, that was a $10,000,000 appropriation in the budget, right, that led to one of their first program record. And so that's an example of how you get it. If you have a product that works, if you have a product that is doing something unique and you have a user wanting it, then and you've demonstrated that capability in the most the difficult environments to operate, then guess what?
Speaker 1:I find that path to to program a record is not as difficult. And, again, I'm not trying to act like it's like it's easy.
Speaker 2:It's not.
Speaker 1:But but being able to line up all of those things is something that we that we have experience with.
Speaker 2:Yes. Well, congratulations. Thanks so much for coming.
Speaker 3:This was super fun. The chat the chat
Speaker 2:loves you. Everyone's going crazy.
Speaker 3:He's saying, Will Herd's my
Speaker 2:dog. Yes.
Speaker 3:People are very you fast.
Speaker 1:So much.
Speaker 3:Back on. That would be lovely to news or if there's something in the world happening that you wanna chat about.
Speaker 1:Would would love to do that. Thanks, fellas. I really appreciate y'all.
Speaker 2:We'll talk to you. Have a great weekend. Let me tell you about adquick.com. Out of home advertising made easy and measurable. Say goodbye to the headaches of out of home advertising.
Speaker 2:Only AdQuick combines technology, out of home expertise, and data to enable efficient seamless ad buying across the globe. We have our second in person guest. Welcome to the stream. Looking good in the suit. Our second guest.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's it. Show.
Speaker 3:Thank you.
Speaker 2:Thanks so much for joining. Get this emerge. Oh, fantastic. We love hats here.
Speaker 3:I'm throwing it on.
Speaker 2:We got our second guest. Introduce yourself for the stream for those who don't know.
Speaker 3:$350,000,000
Speaker 4:man. Hello. How's it going? I'm Sam, co founder CEO of of Numeral.
Speaker 2:Which you know, of course, because
Speaker 3:Which you know and love.
Speaker 2:You have been partnered with Numeral for a number of months now. Kick us off with the news of the day. What you got?
Speaker 4:News of the day is we've raised 35,000,000 on a three fifty post.
Speaker 3:Congratulations. Do the honor.
Speaker 2:You take this hit that gong as hard as you can. Wins.
Speaker 3:Subtle, but firm. Not too hard. Coming off series a from benchmark as well. Was that early
Speaker 4:series a from benchmark earlier this year and so just following on there to you know capitalize on all the momentum.
Speaker 2:Who did the series
Speaker 4:down. We did it with Mayfield.
Speaker 2:Mayfield. So Classic fun.
Speaker 4:Got a classic fun. Gotta keep it old school.
Speaker 2:Business for generations, for for decades. We gotta update Jordy's ad read for the probably the first 50 ad reads. Was a benchmark series. We had a lot
Speaker 4:of fun. Forget YCs. Forget YCs.
Speaker 2:YC? Love it.
Speaker 3:When did you do YC?
Speaker 4:We did YC beginning at 2023.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Okay.
Speaker 4:I'm actually working with my old boss at Airbnb, Gustav, so it was fun to get to work with him again.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Wait. What when did you know you wanted to automate sales
Speaker 4:tax? Oh, man. Since the womb, actually.
Speaker 3:That's great.
Speaker 4:I've been dreaming about it. You know? No. For me, you know, I was similarly as you guys, like, actually running ecommerce businesses Yeah. Still own a vitamin gummy shop No 10 plus million a year.
Speaker 2:Amazing.
Speaker 4:And so Why? What is it about
Speaker 3:gummies that just sell better than any product on the planet?
Speaker 2:People love gummies. They don't want
Speaker 4:to It's it's the best e commerce business because, you know, you get that repeatability.
Speaker 2:It's easy
Speaker 4:to it's easy to predict. You take two a day.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 4:And I think people don't like pills. Americans, we love sweets. We love candies. So
Speaker 2:Little treat.
Speaker 3:That's great. Discover the problem through that Exactly.
Speaker 4:So my co you know, my my co founder there and I of the gummy business, we were just dealing with sales tax compliance for all we had to register in 40 plus states. And so I was dealing with, you know, local parishes in Louisiana and like on the phone with some women in West Virginia and I got like an argument about penalty waivers. And I'm like, this is insane that I'm trying to spend my time on growth and marketing Of course. Product and things like that. And instead, was wasting like hours just dealing with, you know, the IRS compared to these states is like working with Apple or like Google or some like company.
Speaker 4:Like Department of Revenue, Alabama, like give them a call and it it's insane. And so, I think the thesis was you have you have these incumbent tools that have been around for twenty plus years. Yep. The most famous one is this one called Avalara. Mhmm.
Speaker 4:And the problem with them is it's a it's a kind of this this very narrow tool and you have to spend hours a month dealing with them. So you get physical mail from The States and then you have to figure out what to do with it, how to call the state, and they won't even pick up the they're owned by private equity so they even pick up the phone when you have an issue. So for us, it's you know, we're not really trying you know, it's software, but we really if you're a customer, we really want it to feel like service more than software because, know, with AI, since we invented AGI, you know Yeah. We're using we're using
Speaker 3:Sales tax AGI.
Speaker 4:Sales tax AGI. Right? And so no. We're well, yeah. With with with AI, you can deliver what feels more like a service.
Speaker 4:Yep. But, you know, fundamentally, it's still a software business.
Speaker 2:What was the fundraising process? Like, I want I wanna know just take the temperature of, like, you just went out and did a fundraising round. You talked to a lot of VCs. Were people trying to pull story out of you? Was it VIBE round, Excel round?
Speaker 2:Like, what is the focus of Silicon Valley VCs right now since AI has become a tool that pretty much every company is pulling off the shelf? Just what was the was the vibe on the roadshow?
Speaker 4:That's a good question. I think, yeah, you have to AI has to be, you know, front and center. Yeah. Any friend that's, you know, is raising and and not putting their front and center, it's hard to actually get a meeting or or be taken seriously. My sense is, you know, it's starting to get maybe a little too far over the edge.
Speaker 4:I haven't seen some insane some insane markups. Like, we intentionally actually took, like, a lower markup than we could have Yep. Just because, you know, I just tend to run these things a little bit more incrementally and and and don't wanna, you know, overextend yourself. I've I've seen I've been in startups where we went went a little too crazy and and like, you know, it's easy it's easy to kinda just you have too much money, you spend too much. So Yep.
Speaker 4:But but, yeah, it's if you're right if you I think too, if you have like some good AI logos of companies you're working with,
Speaker 2:I've seen I've
Speaker 4:been seeing some 100x, 200x multiples out there. It feels a little bit
Speaker 3:back Just because they have they're working with a lab or something like that.
Speaker 4:Yeah, exactly. If you can close a lab, a couple labs, you're going crazy. I mean, in some cases, it's worth it. Look at Mercor, right?
Speaker 2:Because they're growing so fast. And that's their core business. That makes sense with Mercor. But, yeah, if you're more of, like, a software tool that could be used by any company, not not directly indexed revenue wise to the lab revenue, which is growing very fast Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's a little bit of a just, like, it's good good know, they're obviously cutting edge businesses. They probably select the best software. So
Speaker 4:Yeah. But it's it's definitely starting to get a little frothy, you know?
Speaker 2:Yeah. I'm not
Speaker 4:putting my I'm not putting a ton of my own money into Yeah.
Speaker 2:Do you think that AI is changing any of, like, the the business models? Like, we we cover this story with Notion. Notion said they normally have 90% gross margins. Now they have 80% gross margins, but they're growing. And so it's mathing out.
Speaker 2:I feel like with as we enter like the SaaS pocalypse where the legacy SaaS players aren't moving fast enough and we see a new generation of companies come up, I'm wondering how much people should update on the actual, like, foundational, like, or is there something changing about the monopoly thesis, how companies accrue value, the margins, what the actual long term cash flows will be. It feels very much like like it's a big opportunity to build something new, get new customers on board, grow a big business, but it doesn't necessarily change the actual structure of the business. But what's your take?
Speaker 4:Yeah. I think each business is different. So yeah. With the with the with the gross margins, even we've seen some compression because we're spending so much Really? On running agents and Yeah.
Speaker 4:We have, you know, if you have a state portal
Speaker 3:So many people aren't willing to admit that they're like, it's actually a good thing if you're spending a lot on inference because it means you're actually using not just saying you're
Speaker 2:Well, a lot of people were also on credits for a long time.
Speaker 5:And so
Speaker 2:they were doing or the credits were really discounted. But now we're in more of a stable inference cost, $4 per million tokens Yeah. If you're doing something serious.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Our AWS bill, I think, doubled, like, relative to our revenue. Right?
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 4:So it's like our gross margins have actually compressed.
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 4:But I think our product has gotten a lot better.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 4:And, you know, the hope is eventually over time, you know, these the inference costs go down, the models get more efficient. And so I think to me, that's like a little neurotic to worry. So, I mean, it depends who you are, to me that that's like a neurotic thing to worry about, like the short term gross margins.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 4:I think for me, at least for my business where I'm excited is, you know, the services economy is like at least an order of magnitude larger than the the software economy. And so a lot of what we're starting to replace now is not really There's these legacy software providers but again, as you bigger companies usually they don't even work directly with them. They'll hire an accounting firm to manage Avalara or Vertex solutions.
Speaker 3:So like this this software is so rough. I don't even want it. Let's hire somebody to
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Do that.
Speaker 2:Like, who's I've literally been in that position trying to buy the competitor product years ago and being like, it's expensive. And also, I don't have the manpower to do it. So we'll just continue to just like file whenever we can and Yeah. It's very rough. It's all done in a spreadsheet.
Speaker 4:Yeah. I mean, we are the official I have the real one. Yes. I got the tin here. The official tax provider
Speaker 2:Of Lucy.
Speaker 4:Of Lucy.
Speaker 2:My D2C nicotine
Speaker 4:There you can get it right. There you We love Lucy. We are powered by
Speaker 2:Numeral. It's fantastic.
Speaker 4:Yeah. And so, it's interesting. Right? So, for example, we started we filed taxes for someone this week in Tanzania, in Kenya, and like, we're the only software provider on Earth that's, I think, ever filed taxes in in Tanzania. And and so Let's Let's Let's go Tanzania.
Speaker 3:Hit the Gong for Tanzania. There we go. Tanzania. You can you can send that to the office there. We're gonna chatting with.
Speaker 3:Yep. Yeah. What what what you guys are scaling quickly. Yes. And it's a it's a category that's like not it's an interesting one because it feels like, like investing in ecommerce infrastructure was at its hottest, like, maybe like four or five years
Speaker 4:ago. Yeah.
Speaker 3:And so is do you like that it's like a bit overlooked as a category and like where is most of the growth? Is the most of the growth coming from like online retail companies or is or SaaS and Great question.
Speaker 4:Once that split. Yeah. So we started the business fully focused on e commerce. That's where I was coming from. I mean, I'd worked at software businesses before.
Speaker 4:I was a PM at Airbnb. But we started just in e com and I think, yeah, that market's been really dry for, you know, people servicing the e commerce space like the, you know, software the software is providing for that space because the TAM is somewhat limited, you know, e commerce growth is something like 5% year over year.
Speaker 2:This is a Yeah. You saturate and then you're growing at 5% and no VCs are giving
Speaker 4:you Exactly. Most of good businesses I've seen built being built are either bootstrapped or vain or more like a venture light model, which makes sense just because the TAM is gonna be more capped.
Speaker 2:More like an app in the Shopify app store, plug and play, do something minimal, scale it but it's not really gonna get become like a public company.
Speaker 4:Exactly. I think we were the first company benchmark funded that's actually been servicing, you know, ecommerce merchants. Right? But again
Speaker 3:And was that do you think they had a sense of like this numeral, well, it looks like a Shopify plug in or or just like an Yeah. E commerce infrastructure tool. It's really gonna be eating into the services revenue from these legacy tax like prep.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's so crazy. With Lucy, like, we did not rip out and replace to get on Numeral. Yeah. We went from nothing. And this was like a seven, eight year old business at the time.
Speaker 4:Yeah. And so yeah. So like, just to benchmark like our our partner, Chetan, you know, when he was early in his career, he actually did an analysis on Avalara. They were started in 02/2006, I think, Avalara. And so they were just going public or something.
Speaker 4:He's like, wow, this business should be amazing. You check back ten years later, and it's just being operated really poorly. That's why they had a private equity takeover because they weren't operating well. So I think he had seen this category and was like waiting for there to be someone to go and challenge. You know, we started fully e commerce.
Speaker 4:Now, you know, it's it's a closer split. We have a lot more SaaS and e commerce businesses, especially with our international provide with our international service, the the only player in the space that can actually go and register and file in 60 plus countries. And so if you're
Speaker 3:So like if you're if you're making some consumer AI app and you're selling to users that are in Tanzania or
Speaker 4:something Exactly. Right? So Lucy's probably not selling a lot in Okay. In Tanzania but, you know day. We have like these these hot AI companies that Like the one in Tanzania, they're they're like a year a year old but they have, you know, a $100,000,000 of ARR and so you have customers around the world and, you know, there's your Stripe dashboard is blowing up with all these warnings and people don't you know, they get freaked out but they don't deduce.
Speaker 4:They just kinda kick the can for a long time. Interesting. But, you know, sometimes you can, you know, you can do that and not get in trouble but some places will just like like, you know, you don't wanna mess with those countries. Right? You don't wanna mess with Mexico.
Speaker 2:Like Yeah.
Speaker 4:The the authorities there.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's pretty it it is a pretty new phenomenon that I mean, there were a lot of apps in the last boom of, you know, software that might be internationally distributed because of AWS and and because of Google on day one, but they weren't necessarily taking money from individuals in that comp in that country on day It's more like there's there's ads that are being shown there, but the companies that are paying are in The United States. Or they're doing something else, and they're just like, oh, we'll monetize it later. No. These these companies that are doing new AI products or something like, they're putting the credit card down in that local country on day one, and and then you need to actually process that.
Speaker 2:Right?
Speaker 3:This round this round got this round got leaked by our Far Rock. Right?
Speaker 4:Oh, it did. What was what
Speaker 3:was that? What was it? What was
Speaker 2:the Who do you think who do you think our Far Rock is?
Speaker 3:What was the impact? What was the impact from that? Like Did that help? Was it
Speaker 4:helped a little? Hard to know. I mean closed The round had already closed by then, so it didn't really matter. But it was a little bit low on our revenue. So I did retweet
Speaker 3:some Oh, yeah. You were too annoyed because they clocked the revenue
Speaker 4:They clocked revenue. Not like crazy amount low, but definitely 7 figures low. So yeah, was like, come on, like Yeah.
Speaker 3:We have
Speaker 4:the most ARR of all the sales tax startups in the space and the most most customers, the most money raised. And so, you know, you always wanna be a little bit cocky there because it's hard to know.
Speaker 3:Yeah. What do what do you like, projecting out a few years, like what do you think happens to the category? Can the category support number of players? Do you think some of these venture backed competitors will just end up being like a decent little business?
Speaker 4:Good question.
Speaker 3:Do you think I mean, there's a bunch of, you know, massive massive, you know, tax prep, know, big big consulting Yeah. Businesses. So maybe it can support multiple billion dollar players.
Speaker 4:So when when you look in the public markets, right, you have companies like Avalara who is take you know, they're they're gonna go public again next year. People are saying like 1.1, 1,200,000,000.0 of revenue. Thomson Reuters has a subdivision doing like indirect tax. Yeah. Called OneSource.
Speaker 4:Secretly a billion dollars of revenue supposedly. But it's good. And like nobody it's like it's a thing nobody's looked at. You know, it's like a plug in to SAP and Oracle and so the tool looks insane like it's built in the nineteen seventies. But, know, if you're some big if you're IBM or whoever, you might be using it.
Speaker 4:And this is one Vertex Inc, founded in the nineteen seventies. Another public company, sales tax software.
Speaker 11:Broke.
Speaker 4:You know, it's But companies like DoorDash still rely on Vertex and they rack physical servers in San Francisco.
Speaker 2:No way.
Speaker 4:And for to get the right tax rate, think they updated with like a CD ROM.
Speaker 2:Woah. The rates get updated.
Speaker 3:So are you how much time are you spending how much time are you spending like basically doing these like much bigger high level partnership stuff where you're going to these sort of scaled companies and saying like, look, the way you're doing this is insane. Yeah. It's gonna take time to switch over, but like there's a better way. Is that where you're spending a lot of time?
Speaker 4:Yeah. So, you know, we started more in like the kind of SMB, ecommerce space and and so that's where a lot of our early traction's been. Now, we're starting to have conversations and and starting to sign customers with hundreds of millions of revenue, work with a customer of you guys. Eight Sleep. Right?
Speaker 2:Oh, no. No.
Speaker 3:There you go.
Speaker 4:That's another unicorn. And so we're starting to work with bigger and bigger businesses. Still really focused though on software, you know, kind of startups and and and deep direct to consumer businesses. We haven't gone and started talking to with legacy businesses a lot. That's, you know, working with accounting firms and things like and like the big four that, you know, that this this just takes a long time.
Speaker 4:And we've obviously had some of those conversations, but it's just not our focus.
Speaker 2:What's the ladder for signing bigger and bigger customers? Do you have a rule of thumb, like never jump more than one order of magnitude? Like, if have a company that's doing $100,000,000 in sales, you feel like, yeah, we could probably do a company with 800,000,000 in sales. But if a company with 8,000,000,000 showed up tomorrow, that's gonna be after we sign the $800,000,000 contract. What do you think?
Speaker 4:Yeah. Good question. I think, yeah, word of magnitude seems high. You know, you try to go conservatively. Right?
Speaker 4:Because we are running their tax engine and, you know, you wanna make sure that doesn't go down. Yeah. Lots of money on the line. So we try to have it, yeah, like like four four x roughly. Double four x.
Speaker 4:Or you scale up with folks. Sure. We haven't we've never had like an issue with outages and I think, you know, in 2025, it's not that hard to scale your your servers and and these type of things. But you know, yeah, we do a lot of hype marketing, but we're still kinda we're very conservative with the way we run our product just because it is, you know, a compliance product. And so we'll make a lot of noise, but when it actually comes down to the details, you gotta be pretty uptight, you
Speaker 2:know Is it is it tricky to use AI in a compliance context? Like, what what what kind of guardrails do you have to put on the the the LLMs that are doing work? I can imagine a bunch of places where it's fine to have nondeterministic
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, you know, just data ingest or, you know, something where there's a human in the loop. But Yeah. But where where have you where have you shied away from putting it in Yeah.
Speaker 4:What we think about it is like there's still usually a human that does the last mile.
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 4:So I'll give you a couple examples. Like, one is when we we read for clients and you get physical mail from every state and country
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 4:And you'll you'll get like a like a stack every month and it's like exhausting to have to read through all this physical So we get it, we scan it and we have AI take a first pass reading it. Sure. And most of the mail, the AI, you know, it's like is like
Speaker 3:If you can take physical mail that is going to somebody, like the amount that I would I I actually should find a personal service. Like, I never wanna get mail like at my house like
Speaker 2:I used a service years
Speaker 10:ago have scan it.
Speaker 2:Where you send all your mail there, they scan it, then Yeah. You get like an email inbox, basically. Yeah. That's way better now with a with modern AI, and I can imagine that'd part of the workflow.
Speaker 4:Well, it's like, you get a letter from California or somewhere and it's like, oh, sometimes you get a like, get a little, you know, like Joel. Like Joel of stress. Right? Cortisol, that's the word I was looking for. You you read my mind.
Speaker 4:Yeah. You get little cortisol from the IRS or whoever it is, but, you know, half the time it's like, we got one last week for a client who's, you know, breast pumps in California are tax exempt for the next three months, and like, Lucy probably got this letter. And so, you got the stress for nothing. But then, sometimes it is maybe a letter, hey, there's a lien on your business, there's a big issue here. And so, anything that like requires human intervention, we have like a a male team of six people that literally will go, they open up the the the read the read the letters
Speaker 2:Physical.
Speaker 4:And they'll go and like actually handle the the last mile compliance.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Similarly on the tax research side, you know, how do you know that Juneau I'm making this up. Juneau, Alaska has a $2.04 cent soda can tax law. Often it gets passed in some city council notes.
Speaker 2:Sure. Sure.
Speaker 4:And so the way these legacy providers do it is they have hundreds of lawyers and and researchers just reading this stuff by hand and like, we asked we hired some we have a couple of lawyers on staff. We asked them like, how would you figure out the taxability of, I think it was like bagels in in California? And he's like, going to the California, it's like control f, bread, bagel, like it didn't work. Okay. Baked goods finally worked.
Speaker 4:Yeah. And so this is like such an obvious thing where AI is able to go and do that first pass of like, we put in bagels a category, okay, it finds all the baked goods, it makes it burst best first guess. But any single piece of tax research, it's not even that we have like one human lawyer look after, we actually have to have two legal opinions
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 4:On any single fact. And but it but it really makes them like 100 x lawyers. So all the busy work they were wasting their time doing Yeah. They don't have to spend time. Then the things that are really complex that requires going through, you know, huge adjudications and things like this, they can really put Yeah.
Speaker 4:Use their legal minds for.
Speaker 2:Are you rating scrapers yet to scrape every local law that's passed and then Yeah. At least pipeline that in to say, hey, maybe we still need a lawyer to look at this, but, like, we noticed that something changed.
Speaker 4:Exact. That's a 100% what we're doing. Right? So, yeah, we have a lot of, like, this we have a a tax research group. Yep.
Speaker 4:And, yeah, that's, like, where a lot of the fun work is getting done.
Speaker 3:But then that's the real AI research that that that we need.
Speaker 2:This is this is important.
Speaker 3:How are you thinking of scaling headcount? This feels like a business where, obviously you you probably will grow the team quite a bit post b, but it feels like the kind of business that you should be like, you know, not like running in the red for twelve years in a row. Like, you can probably start to make like real
Speaker 4:profit Yeah. Pretty Yeah. So, I mean, even, like, our raise, where I kept 10% dilution. I'd like I we could have raised, a bigger, louder round. But I think for us, you know, I've seen excess before and, excess hiring.
Speaker 4:So, you know, we don't have so we started the year 25 folks. We're up to 65. Mhmm. That's great. But, you know, we but we but even that, like, everyone it always feels like tight, you know.
Speaker 4:There's no office manager, nothing like that. I was plunging the toys yesterday. We'll post some footage. Someone got of me. Like they so I think, yeah.
Speaker 4:So there we go. So I think no. The point is though, I think we always try to run these things as as as lean as possible. I think still the hardest area to scale exponentially or like that tends to scale more linearly is is your go to market sales team. It's just, you know, we we have some self-service stuff we're building out, but I just think in general, AI has not replaced salespeople.
Speaker 4:It's still a very human endeavor. And so that's probably we and that and
Speaker 3:can eat steak, play a round of golf.
Speaker 2:Not yet.
Speaker 3:It's gonna stay that way.
Speaker 2:We're getting there. But
Speaker 3:should cap off the show with us. Let's let's let's check the timeline and see if there's any breaking news before the weekend. Usually, these companies wait until the second they see we go off the air. Yeah. And then they
Speaker 2:Well, big I mean, the the the big news that we haven't covered yet is NVIDIA did one of those zombie acquisitions. They bought this company in Fabrica, and they paid $900,000,000. They hired the c f the CEO, they licensed the startup's technology. The CEO is Roshan Sankar, the guy behind Broadcom's AVGO, Tomahawk switches. So NVIDIA is is now getting into, like, the app
Speaker 3:hire again. Some clear chat.
Speaker 2:Yes. Yes. Yes.
Speaker 3:NVIDIA isn't just buying talent. They're locking down the AI data center's networking backbone.
Speaker 2:Well, congrats. Dylan Patel
Speaker 3:is really investing. Somebody should make an AI text blocker for your browser so that it detects, like, ChatGPT generated
Speaker 2:content detectable at this point. Yeah. But for some reason, it's not. What else is is going on in here? Oh, JPMorgan put out a report on NVIDIA NVIDIA's investment in Intel.
Speaker 2:NVIDIA put 5,000,000,000 in, marked up The US taxpayer, marked up Leopold Aschenbrenner. Let's hear it.
Speaker 3:That's good.
Speaker 2:Let's hear it for Leopold and The US taxpayer. Fantastic. But JPMorgan's analysis said more value will be is seen accruing to NVIDIA in the Intel collaboration. There's still no commitment to Intel Foundry. So Intel's still going around trying to get enough of those customers to justify their next big fab.
Speaker 2:NVIDIA is is is gonna benefit a a bunch from this. So even though it's just interesting because there was one framing of this story, which was like NVIDIA is is making this investment as, like, an olive branch. They they just have 60,000,000,000 sitting around. They're gonna throw 5,000,000,000 into Intel, maybe just because they think the stock will go up or maybe that that they'll they'll they'll they'll, like, basically give 5,000,000,000 away as an olive branch to support this American chip manufacturer. And then they'll they'll trade something, they'll be able to sell into China or something like that.
Speaker 2:Well, no. JPMorgan's here saying that, yeah, NVIDIA is actually gonna get a lot of value out of this deal, which is kind Yeah.
Speaker 3:Or they just right day after the announcement, they just nuked the chart and mark itself 5,000,000. We got a post here from Nat Eliason who I saw in the chat earlier. Yeah. I I So here. It says the reason you can so easily pull all nighters in college is because you're supposed to be having kids at that age.
Speaker 3:25,000 likes. That is a true true gigabanger.
Speaker 2:Gigabanger.
Speaker 3:You don't see that very very often.
Speaker 2:Tyler, do you think that DeepMind solved Navier Stokes? You see this post from Google DeepMind. We're announcing a major advance in the studies in the study of fluid dynamics with AI, and then they put the water emoji in a joint paper with researchers from Brown University, NYU, and Stanford. They they're they're they're announcing an announcement. They haven't actually announced this.
Speaker 2:What do you think? Are you familiar with this problem? Can you explain the the significance of Navier Stokes? Because Sam here says, don't tell me they figured out Navier Stokes.
Speaker 10:I don't know that I can do a really good explanation, but I did see in the comments, it's like, I'm pretty like, 90% sure it's not. It's not bad. Random math problem
Speaker 2:that's like Well
Speaker 10:not that interesting. So
Speaker 2:Well, still, let's let's hear it for random math problems. We wanna solve all the math problems. Come on. Let's do it. We also have some news in the chat.
Speaker 2:Netflix is trying to buy Warner Brothers Discovery. We thought Wait. Oh. Allison was bidding and
Speaker 3:No way.
Speaker 2:Netflix might be trying to bid. This is from Puck News. Thank you to Raghav for sharing that news. Hopefully, you guys don't figure out that we'll read basically anything you put in the chat because you could put some crazy fake news in there if you if you wanted to. We we talked about a
Speaker 3:few Paramount's other up another almost 6% today, 40% over the last month.
Speaker 2:So We have one last ad read, getbezel.com. Your Bezel Concierge is available now to source you any watch on the planet. Seriously, any watch. You got a series b, you gotta pick something up at Get Bezel.
Speaker 3:Yeah. You deserve a little
Speaker 2:And we'll close with this question. How long is this guy messaged me to quote, hop on a quick call. How long are those supposed to typically last? Somebody asks you for a quick call, how long do you think that lasts?
Speaker 4:What's supposed to be fifteen, but it always ends up being thirty.
Speaker 2:Fifteen to 30.
Speaker 3:Okay. Chad GPT says Read it off. Quick call can last anywhere from five minutes to two to four months. Some quick calls have even been going on since the early nineteen hundreds with ancestors continuing the conversation to loop in key stakeholders and ensure cross generational synergies with a warm handoff.
Speaker 2:Caused it.
Speaker 4:But this
Speaker 3:would be a lot easier to explain over voice mode. Do you have five minutes to hop on a call? This had this is clearly Photoshop, but absolutely hilarious.
Speaker 2:Hilarious. I I wasn't I wasn't familiar. He has access to is the ChatGPT five instant a real feature? I don't have that. Mine just says ChatGPT five usually when I go to ChatGPT five.
Speaker 3:But Yeah. He's getting access to
Speaker 2:This seems like some new feature. I don't know if it's all Photoshop, but Well it's clearly a very clever Photoshop.
Speaker 3:You guys should hop on a quick call with the weekend. With the weekend. Thank you for hanging out with us. Thank you for joining, Sam. Thank It's been an honor to have you and the progress is tremendous.
Speaker 3:And everybody in the chat, everybody listening, have a fantastic weekend.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Love you. For tuning in.
Speaker 4:Sales tax Bye.
Speaker 2:Sales tax AG.