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TBPN is a live tech talk show hosted by John Coogan and Jordi Hays, streaming weekdays from 11–2 PT on X and YouTube, with full episodes posted to Spotify immediately after airing.
Described by The New York Times as “Silicon Valley’s newest obsession,” TBPN has interviewed Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, Mark Cuban, and Satya Nadella. Diet TBPN delivers the best moments from each episode in under 30 minutes.
Tesla is sharing that they made a ton of progress on their lithium refinery. And then simultaneously, AWS did a deal with Rio Tinto to buy a bunch of copper, not that much copper, we'll get into how much, but they're sort of underwriting a chemical process for refining copper. And it's also sort of interesting that Marc Andreessen published the Software is Eating the World story back in 2011. And I think even the folks in tech who took that seriously were saying, Oh, yeah, of course. Well, that just means that
Speaker 2:I didn't take it seriously. I took it literally.
Speaker 1:You took it literally. But the people that took it seriously were thinking, Okay, well, you're going past just the first wave of the Internet, the newspapers on websites, that type of stuff. And yes, we're going get the Ubers. We're going to get more and more tech companies that are consumer facing or business facing, and you might see some transformation in legal services, financial services, logistics. Airlines will be using apps to let you book.
Speaker 1:But we're now in the era where the tech companies are starting to vertically integrate so deep that they own the mines and they own the refineries. And it's not just that they're actually building software
Speaker 2:Yes, that's or not the technology mining eating the world.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes. And it's a new layer of vertical integration that sort of just crept up on me because it wasn't an issue until the AI boom really necessitated massive industrial scale build outs, new industrial policy, which admittedly can't turn on a dime, but we're now two, three years into the ChatGPT boom, into the AI boom. The data center build outs are getting bigger. We're seeing bottlenecks all over the place, whether it's chip shortages or energy shortages. And so the companies like Tesla, AWS, a lot of other folks are really looking deep into the supply chain all the way into the ground, into literally eating the world.
Speaker 1:Because I see mining as sort of terraforming. I see it in some ways literally eating the world, like you said. Amazon's buying the first new copper produced in America in over a decade. It's a very exciting project. And Tesla now has a Texas facility that can convert raw ore directly into battery grade lithium hydroxide.
Speaker 1:It's a more efficient process. We can get into that. Tesla originally broke ground on this, lithium refinery operation in May 2023. It feels like they sort of quiet about it, but now they're getting a lot louder. Obviously, the the narrative around China controlling 90% of, rare earth, extraction and rare earth elements has been in the news, and this is sort of their response.
Speaker 3:Finally, it's the first spodumene to lithium hydroxide refinery in North America. We're deploying a a new technology platform that is inherently, much more environmentally friendly and cleaner. It's a simpler process.
Speaker 1:It's not that big of a facility, this should be able to create enough lithium for 500,000 vehicles a year, EVs a year, maybe a million a year, I've heard. Now Tesla is shipping 1,650,000, so this won't be 100%. But you copy paste this two, three times, and you got, enough coverage for all for the entire Tesla fleet.
Speaker 4:Take it through a kiln and cooler. From there, we take it through an alkaline leach and additional purification steps, take it into crystallization, and produce battery grade lithium hydroxide. Our process is more sustainable than traditional methods and eliminates hazardous byproducts and instead produces a coproduct named analcime used in concrete mixes.
Speaker 5:From breaking ground in 2023 to running rock through the kiln in 2024 to start a full integrated plant
Speaker 1:startup now. So tired. He's just like yeah. It's been it's been great working for Elon. Hi.
Speaker 1:I I love it.
Speaker 2:I Yeah. It's been really relatively relaxed here. Yeah. The site.
Speaker 1:The the the you know, we sleep in the factory. In this case, it's just dirt, but sleeping in dirt, surprisingly comfortable.
Speaker 3:This refinery really enables us to have access to the critical minerals for energy storage, for battery manufacturing, and it enables us to accelerate Tesla's mission by regionalizing supply chains for battery minerals and materials, by providing jobs, by cutting emissions from the transportation network that's required for those supply chains. It really allows us to usher in energy independence for North America.
Speaker 1:Who would have thought that Texas would be the the home of EV domination?
Speaker 2:I know. Narrative violation. California really dropped the ball.
Speaker 1:Tesla shipping 1,650,000. That was a little lower than the previous year. I think they were up at $1,700,000 But you get a couple of those facilities, and it should be enough to cover everything that they need. There's been a whole bunch of news around rare earth minerals generally. Last year, a company called Ionic Mineral Technologies made a large discovery of 16 different types of minerals in Utah late last year.
Speaker 1:This was in December.
Speaker 2:That was As great we do.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It has been funny. There have been rumors about this, but they found a huge deposit of all these different minerals.
Speaker 1:Amazon's partnership with Rio Tinto is a little bit different. They're not fully vertically integrated like Tesla is, but they are partnering with Rio Tinto. Rio Tinto had been working on a new method of refining low grade copper deposits. So basically like there's a fair amount of copper in the ground, but there's a lot of dirt, a lot of other stuff that you have to process out. That can be very expensive.
Speaker 1:But because of the data center expansion exploding, the price of copper has, I think, nearly doubled in the past two years. Copper is not the main ingredient to an AI data center or token factory, but it is important because the biggest data centers use tens of thousands of metric tons of copper to move electricity around, so you need wires. There's copper in circuit boards. There's copper in the transformers that move electricity around. And there's tons of miscellaneous electrical components all over a data center that need copper.
Speaker 1:So this particular AWS Rio Tinto deal is only 1,400 metric tonnes over four years. I don't even think that's enough for a single AWS data center, but it's allowing Rio Tinto to underwrite this sort of risky new process methodology that if it works and they get the price down on this new process, then they can apply that to tonnes more copper reserves that's locked up in messy ore that otherwise would be uneconomical to refine. 70% of the global supply of copper is currently locked away in ore that's not economical to refine into actual copper So right if this new process technology works, you effectively triple the amount of copper. You triple the supply, and so price should fall. It's doubled.
Speaker 1:You triple the supply. Maybe price comes down. Good news for anyone who's in the copper market.
Speaker 2:Rio Tinto, some quick backstories, one of the world's largest and oldest mining corporations with a history that spans over one hundred and fifty years. Mhmm. Name is inspired by the Rio Tinto in Southwestern Spain. But the founding, again, goes back to the mid nineteenth century. Spanish government was facing financial crisis and they started selling off their older mines.
Speaker 2:And so crazy story of just like a very old company, you know, continuing to be Yeah. A key player in an entirely new tech trend.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Also for lithium ion, do some stuff there. They had one investment that I think they wrote down, then they spun another one up. They've been back and forth. XFreeze broke the Texas lithium ion lithium refinery down a little bit more.
Speaker 1:It's the first in North America to convert the raw ore into battery grade lithium hydroxide, skipping intermediate steps in the long term, probably more economical. It went from groundbreaking to first production in just nineteen months, an unheard of timeline at this scale. The process is cleaner, no hazardous waste, a useful byproduct that can be turned into concrete. The single refinery can supply lithium for over 500,000 EVs per year and directly challenges China's 60% grip on global lithium refining. Elon chimed in and said it sounded like I I saw another number that was maybe closer to a million, but either way, you do two or three of these and you're good.
Speaker 1:As we predicted in our annual predictions episode at the start of the year, unless someone shows up with superconductivity or carbon nanotubes, Copper is the only game in town, and AI is a huge demand driver for a very under resourced material. He's taken a victory lap with his thesis on copper. And speaking of AI, there is turmoil in the trade wars, in the talent wars. Breaking Thinking Machines has terminated its CTO, Berit Zof, due to unethical conduct according to two sources familiar with the matter. CEO Meera Moradi announced the news in all hands with employees today.
Speaker 1:Sumit Shantala will be taking over as CEO. And Meera posted as well, confirming the news she said. We have parted ways with Barrett. Sumith will be taking the new CTO of Thinking Machines role. He is a brilliant and seasoned leader who has made important contributions to the AI field for over a decade, and he has been a major contributor to our team.
Speaker 1:We could not be more excited to have him take on this new responsibility.
Speaker 2:And Alex Heath actually has some new news Yeah. Broke thirty minutes ago. He says more Thinking Machine employees are in the process of joining OpenAI after three of the startup's cofounders rejoined yesterday. Yeah. Of course, the Thinking Machine co founders had previously been at OpenAI.
Speaker 2:Not great. I think potentially more controversial news was that Thinking Machines has branded squat racks at the office. Yes. Ryan Peterson posted a photo. Ryan posted this.
Speaker 2:A lot of people a lot of people took this as somewhat of a red flag. Right? Mhmm. People say, you know, the the sort of common guidance is don't make merch until you're generating some real revenue. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Right? And so if you take that further, it's like maybe you shouldn't have
Speaker 1:What was Ryan doing to get this photo? It seems like I think he
Speaker 2:just walked by.
Speaker 1:He's going journalist mode here. Do you see this? He's like he's not So
Speaker 2:if zoom in, you can see these things look fantastic. Ryan, you're outside. I'm somewhat
Speaker 1:You're outside the Thinking Machines branded gym.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm somewhat envious. These things look fantastic. I'm kind of mad that we didn't get the branded plates. But this coming out while losing half of your family.
Speaker 1:It has to be weird. Mean, much did they raise? It was $2,000,000,000 at $12,000,000,000 something like that. It's got to be so weird to start a company and on day one have enough money for a custom gym. That's just like unheard of.
Speaker 1:Like normally you start your company in the garage and maybe there's a weight in the corner you can lift or kettlebell.
Speaker 2:One dumbbell. Not even two.
Speaker 1:One kettlebell or something. But to just come in and say, oh, yes, we're taking Class A office on day one, hiring a massive team, bringing on six or seven co founders.
Speaker 2:Atlas was saying, like, the other red flag is where are the 45? I think I'm going to assume they're just not in sight, you know, like, you can't see them. Right?
Speaker 1:They would be they would
Speaker 2:be mounted they would be mounted lower Yeah. Right on the rack. In case you forgot, Andrew Tulloch left Yeah. Thinking Machines in
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Q four of last year.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Zac had been trying to poach him and offered increasing amounts of money. The sense is that Andrew was like,
Speaker 1:I can't be bought. But he needed the money. He had a shopping cart filled with chrome hearts supreme. And he was like, wow, like my next outfit's going to run me 500 mil. I got to get a new job.
Speaker 1:I can't afford it. I can't afford my lifestyle. Maybe it was a case of lifestyle inflation. They talk about that.
Speaker 2:Tyler, do you remember the final amount that Meta paid? It was like because because I I always appreciate
Speaker 1:There were a of rumors. It was in the billions.
Speaker 2:Like my my in my head it was like Andrew was like, yeah, like I I'm really like honored that you would such a big offer, Zach, a billion dollars. Yeah. But like unfortunately, like I'm I'm mission driven. There's really no price Yeah. That I would take to leave the company that I started.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And Zach's like 2,000,000,000.
Speaker 1:He's like Well,
Speaker 6:so I I think Yeah. What happened? I think all the rumors were actually from the summer when there was like the all of the talent wars going
Speaker 1:on.
Speaker 6:So first, there was I think it was just 1,000,000,000 and then Just one. There were rumors of three and a half. Wow. And that being turned down. But then later in the year, then he eventually went.
Speaker 1:Okay. So people kind of assume that the rumor is true because because it that he he eventually made the move.
Speaker 6:Yeah. But I mean it's not necessarily higher than three and a half, right? Yeah. Because now we're seeing more people leave, like why are they leaving? Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 6:You know? Yeah. So at one point, one of my buddies who works at a big lab, he was saying at that time, Thing Machines has like the best team. Yeah. Like any of the big labs.
Speaker 2:There was already immense amount of pressure and like really, really, really high expectations on Thinking Machines around what they put out first. I don't think these these people leaving, maybe it makes it harder to deliver, right, on those expectations, but the expectations are still sky high. I did feel like kind of rough messaging, very, very rough messaging, right? You know, pushing this like unethical conduct angle. People at OpenAI have obviously their bias, but they've denied it.
Speaker 1:Some quick thoughts on Barrett Zoff and Metz and Schoenholz. Going back to OpenAI, Barrett was the vice president post training at OpenAI before he left for Thinking Machines. He left OpenAI in September 2024. Barrett would have probably would have probably initially had options for about 10% to 30% of thinking machines. That's insane.
Speaker 1:They had six cofounders. How could that beat so high? Post training was one of the more valuable skills at launch, I suppose. Okay. The seed round was 2,000,000,000 at 12,000,000,000.
Speaker 1:So this would mean that he would have options now for around 8 percent to 25% of the current company. This seems all hypothetical here. There were rumors back in November that Thinking Machines was in talks to raise at 50,000,000,000 to $60,000,000,000 so this puts his equity at $4,000,000,000 to $15,000,000,000 valuation. Thinking Machines could probably exit somewhere at between $30 and $60 today. Who has that money?
Speaker 1:Don't know. Maybe Nvidia buys them or something. At least at some point in the over the next two years. I think the most likely acquirers would probably be Microsoft, Apple, Meta, Amazon, and Nvidia. Okay.
Speaker 1:Large cap company that wants to build a frontier model. Bear would have been just over his one year cliff. So assuming he was not fired for cause or thinking he doesn't wanna litigate, he still has about one
Speaker 2:to How 300 does that math work? I
Speaker 1:don't know. It's called thinking machine now because there's only one left. No, there are three left, so it's still plural.
Speaker 2:Reading into this, I mean, there's got to be some real excitement on OpenAI has just been outflows, outflows, outflows. Mhmm. Some of these superstars back
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:On board Okay. Has gotta be good for Mercy.
Speaker 1:So is this with the elves and Valinor? Do we know what Rune's posting about? Because we learned that Rune posts the elves have left for Valinor every two years apparently.
Speaker 6:Okay. Well, he posted once before Yes. In in 2024 Yes. Yes. About in January 22.
Speaker 2:Yes. Yes.
Speaker 6:So yeah. So so now, he posted this like on the twelfth Mhmm. So three days ago. I think most people have now taken it to mean to be about this. Right?
Speaker 6:Mhmm. People leaving I think machines going back to OpenAI. Mhmm. But I think there's a couple ways you can look at it. Right?
Speaker 6:So if you look at it in the context of of the last time you said this
Speaker 1:Mhmm. It was
Speaker 6:the exact same quote, the elves had left for Valinor. Mhmm. Like, okay, what is Valinor in Lord of Right? The Valinor is where elves go so they don't like diminish.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 6:Or like they don't like kind of fade away.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 6:So it's okay, what does that mean? Like, maybe it's you're just basically securing like massive wealth. Right? Or the other
Speaker 2:way to read that is like you go to you go to like one of these newer labs and you could be a superstar but your your abilities could fade away with time. Right? Because you just don't have the scale or the resources. Yes.
Speaker 6:So I think in the 2024 context Mhmm. Valinor actually was the NeoLabs. Right? Because you basically go start a company, be the co founder, you guys raise at 12,000,000,000.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 6:You're just like, let's go. Like, yeah, you just secured insane amount like massive bag. Yeah. But then now
Speaker 1:Now OpenAI is
Speaker 6:OpenAI is now Valinor. Right? They they they're they're setting aside 50,000,000,000 just for pay packages.
Speaker 2:Sure. Sure. Sure.
Speaker 6:If you go back, mean, you're doing pretty well.
Speaker 1:It's just another bag.
Speaker 6:It's pretty safe, right? Don't have a startup. You're not sure if it's going to work or not.
Speaker 2:Everyone's focused on the AI wars, not enough attention going to the sauna wars. The real heated rivalry is at the bathhouse. Yes. From bathhouse to other ship to alter, a wave of bathhouses in New York City are popping up just blocks apart Okay. Igniting a war of zen.
Speaker 2:This is especially relevant to the TVPN team because Of course. We've been in somewhat of a sauna war ourselves, which we'll get into at some point in the story. The Flatiron District in Manhattan has been a center of Nuvo Wellness for around fifteen years with its many boutique fitness classes, gyms, acupuncturists, and stretching and recovery centers, now wave of bath houses that offer dry heat and cold plunges face off in a few blocks. There's Bath House on West 22nd with other ship two blocks away, and altar set to open this winter. You could walk between all three in mere minutes.
Speaker 2:Williamsburg has its own cluster. Right? Parallels.
Speaker 1:It's like a super cluster. Welcome
Speaker 2:to the sauna wars where dedicated bath houses compete with members clubs like West Village's Continuum, which costs 40,000 per year. It has a bathhouse setup and the Financial District coworking space, WSA's wet lounge as well. Coworking space with a wet lounge, something Sour. Not something you hear about every day. The fitness chain TMPL has a whole subway ad campaign entirely around their bathhouse facilities featuring women in swimsuits reclining in a suggestive way that one doesn't really find in saunas in real life.
Speaker 2:And of course, the Russian and Turkish baths in the East Village, which is the sort of place newcomers are brought to see a slice of the real New York City. It's usually teeming with people, some getting whacked by bushels of oak leaves in a treatment called Platza, and has two owners who rotate weeks of ownership. That's interesting. It's no frills and even a little gritty. For those who are used to conveniences such as booking ahead, there's none of that to be found.
Speaker 2:They do have a nod to modernity with an active TikTok account featuring guest endorsements recently highlighting Uma Thurman wrapped in a pashmina and calling it one of the greatest, best New York institutions. The first time I went to 10th Street Bath was in 2007. I love the authenticity and how it made me feel. I would find my way back there when I felt depleted, underslept, whatever it might be. I would come out feeling great, says James O'Reilly, who is one of the founders of the co working space Neuhaus.
Speaker 2:His latest project is the new Lore Bathing Club. This is where you go if you want to cultivate lore in your life, I guess. Founded alongside restaurateur Adam Elser, lore takes some inspiration from the Russian and Turkish baths, as well as the communal sweat traditions of Europe and Asia, and drops it into a 6,200 square foot space finished in travertine and white oak in Noho. The bath world is quite a scene, one where skin care brands such as Pharrell Williams, Human Race send out a press release to announce they're temporarily supplying L'or locker rooms with their signature seven d gel sets. What is a seven d gel set?
Speaker 2:Tyler.
Speaker 1:I have no idea.
Speaker 2:Other chip is hosting comedy nights. Alter will be selling bathing suits that are custom made in Brazil. He has hired a lighting designer who has worked with Billie Eilish. It is a sonic boom reminiscent of the glut of boutique fitness studios that flooded the market in the wake of the success of Soul Cycle. It used to be that you would go to a gym and it was outrageous to go to an expensive group class, says Jafari, but now there are 99 boutique fitness concepts in a four mile radius.
Speaker 2:Still, there are not as many as the peak days pre pandemic. Not every boutique fitness studio survived, let alone thrive like Solid Core and Tracy Anderson. Competition is always something we are aware of, says Emily Bent, Other Ship's co founder and director of marketing. The saturation in North America for bath houses is not even close to what it is in Europe. We're starting an industry and rising tides and all that.
Speaker 2:While the message from founders blissed out on a 180 degree heat is one of bringing together community and good vibes, the reality can be cutthroat. Consider the case of Bathhouse, probably the most well known of the businesses in the second wave of New York City sauna culture. Co founders opened their first location in Williamsburg in 2019 and a second in Flatiron in 2024, both featuring sauna steam rooms, warm pools and cold plunges. Goodman, the founder, saw the company's more is more approach through the model of working on large event production. You think like an experienced designer, so going to Bathhouse is not a monolithic experience, but more of a choose your own adventure.
Speaker 2:When it first opened, Bathhouse was jokingly called the Bitcoin Bathhouse as they used the heat generated from mining to warm the tubs.
Speaker 1:Media meta, we got to talk about meta because they just laid off 1,500 people in their metaverse division. Obviously, 1,500 people is a ton. That's a lot of people. But they still have 14,000 people working on Reality Labs. So there's a question about like what exactly will they be doing?
Speaker 1:How much does this represent a shift? The Reality Labs team work on a bunch of different stuff. And it started as sort of the Oculus acquisition, a VR headset, then all of a sudden it was Meta Ray Bans, which is mostly just a camera, certainly not a VR headset. But it feels like it's sold many more units. I actually don't know the precise numbers.
Speaker 2:I'm super curious how many of those 1,500 people will end up working in VR in their next Somewhere else? Because Oh, it's like, can the industry really
Speaker 1:Absorb that.
Speaker 2:Absorb that many people?
Speaker 1:A year after the name change and pivot, the Journal reported that the company's flagship metaverse product called Horizon Worlds was failing to catch on with users. It had less than 200,000 monthly active users and most so called worlds were never visited by anyone at all. But I
Speaker 2:still believe Meta is a fantastic name Yeah. For
Speaker 1:Do you think Salesforce should rename? I wanted to ask Benioff that yesterday, if he's ever just going to go Force.
Speaker 2:Metal Force.
Speaker 1:Force. Metal Force would be a good name. Meta's been ramping up AI, spending on AI, pushing its capital expenditure to $72,000,000,000 last year with plans to accelerate that spending this year. It's also doled out offers worth tens of millions tens and hundreds of millions of dollars to AI researchers and engineers and recently acquired a Singapore based AI startup called Manus for more than $2,000,000,000 The company's Ray Ban smart glasses equipped with AI have also started to take off. The company sold more than 2,000,000 pairs and has delayed the rollout of its newest glasses in Europe as it struggled to keep up with demand in The U.
Speaker 1:S. The sort of Ben Thompson takeaway from this was that even though Mark Zuckerberg has effectively complete control over Meta and can rename the company and move very aggressively and acquire big companies, at the end of the day he does respond to shareholders. And the shareholders have been watching the Reality Labs losses pile up billions every year. And at some point, if you have a new sort of big money pit initiative that's AI and you're going to spend tens of billions there, you have to sort of make a sacrifice or at least like show the shareholders that you're refocusing on the new
Speaker 2:thing. I want to go back briefly to the SANA thing. I didn't get a chance to give a take.
Speaker 1:Okay,
Speaker 2:yeah. I am extremely bullish on Americans starting to sweat more because the evidence is so clear that if you use a sauna every day, you will probably extend your health span, lifespan. It's heavily, heavily studied because of how popular it's been in The Nordics for decades and decades. So very bullish on sweating. One of the things that's interesting, though, is that New York is the center of consumption.
Speaker 2:People have tiny apartments, so they're just constantly consuming food, exercise, shopping, etcetera. But I don't think it's representative of the way that the Americans will sweat broadly because you can get a sauna for like a couple grand. And so all these bath houses are like a few $100. And so I think for some people, they want the social experience. Sure.
Speaker 2:Whereas for me, I don't like the I'm not really like that into the
Speaker 1:You don't like talking in the sauna?
Speaker 2:I do like talking in the sauna. We've obviously had our sauna wars. Our sauna wars are I guess we were talking too loudly in the sauna the other day because this guy just absolutely snapped. Was Snap. He was a bit of an angry elf.
Speaker 2:Anyways, most consumers are going be looking like, I can go and buy a sauna for $2,000
Speaker 1:And I have space for it because I have a two car garage and a backyard and maybe a pool. Like for the average American, it has a little bit.
Speaker 2:Last time I lived in an apartment, this was like six or so years ago. Sure. I had a whole cold plunge that I snuck into my apartment.
Speaker 1:No way.
Speaker 2:And a sauna just I had a two bedroom loft.
Speaker 1:You had a sauna too?
Speaker 2:No. No. Had two. I had a two bedroom. I had a two bedroom loft.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow. One of them I just put a it was just like cold plunge on a wooden floor.
Speaker 1:That's insane.
Speaker 2:And I had a sauna. Okay. Course, like, I don't think you're allowed to bring like a mini swimming pool
Speaker 1:into your Right. If it leaks, you're gonna destroy the
Speaker 2:whole building. Actually, I did. They did eventually tell me I had to get rid of it because there was a leak in the building Yeah. And they went in to look. You have to understand as you're you know, for other ship in these companies, you have to go, I think, into dense areas where people don't have a lot of space to have saunas because a lot of people are going to look and say, I either have one in my gym or people can go and just even if they don't have $2, you can use a firm and you're effectively paying a couple $100 a month for a private In other news, Beijing has told Chinese firms to stop using CrowdStrike.
Speaker 2:If you didn't have a reason to start using CrowdStrike, this is a pretty
Speaker 1:good Is this the TVPN effect? They saw us run a couple ads over in Beijing, they were like, yeah, they're too powerful. Too powerful. They're too powerful. We have homegrown current.
Speaker 2:Apparently, this is already a very tiny business for CrowdStrike, so not super impactful. But in other news, OpenAI's number one hater in the entire world. Nick
Speaker 1:Is back on the timeline.
Speaker 2:He was the hater, OpenAI hater of the year last year.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:He's probably he's really gunning for it again this year.
Speaker 1:His camera roll is all just pictures
Speaker 2:of Sam It's
Speaker 1:all his camera roll is just all Sam Altman photos for sure. OpenAI and Sam Altman backing a new bold take on fusing humans and machines. It's called Merge Labs. We've heard about this before. We talked to Rob Toews.
Speaker 1:They now have $252,000,000 in the bank and an all star crew.
Speaker 2:Sam Altman wrote in 2017 a piece called The Merge. I'll read a a few paragraphs from it. He said, More important than that, unless we destroy ourselves first, superhuman AI is going happen, genetic enhancement is going to happen, brain machine interfaces are going to happen. It is a failure of human imagination and human arrogance to assume that we will never build things smarter than ourselves. The merge can take a lot of forms.
Speaker 2:We could plug electrodes into our brains or we could all just become really close friends with a chat bot. But I think emerge is probably our best case scenario of two different species. Both want the same thing and only one can have it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:In this case, to be the dominant species on the planet and beyond, they're going to have a conflict. Imagine if dolphins Imagine if Benioff has been working with the dolphins to secretly help them merge, and they're like in a in a crazy dolphin human race to see who can merge first. Because it's that dolphins basically created dolphins. Salesforce.
Speaker 1:They can just like generate b to b SaaS product ideas constantly.
Speaker 2:Billionaire Rams owner Stan Kroenke becomes America's biggest private land Let's
Speaker 1:stand for Stan. Are you Stan?
Speaker 2:He's listening to the show.
Speaker 1:I'm a Stan Stan, and I'm
Speaker 2:Stan Stan Buying nearly 1,000,000 acres of New Mexico ranch land. Farmland investing becomes increasingly popular especially now that Mhmm. You know, maybe somebody comes in and wants to build the data center on your farm and pay, you know, 10 times what you paid for it. At 2,700,000 acres, Cronke's holdings are larger than Yellowstone National Park or the equivalent roughly 2,000,000 football fields. According to the trade publication, Singleton Ranch's is the largest land purchase in The US in more than a decade.
Speaker 2:Land is back. Back on the menu. Let's go.
Speaker 1:Speaking of land, Greenland is in the news, of course. Dylan says, this is the equivalent of affordability in Greenlandic politics. And he shares a screenshot here. It's a quote from a Greenlander who says, I hunt whales and seals. In The United States, they think whales and seals are cute and shouldn't be hunted.
Speaker 1:That's what I'm afraid of. Don't bring your fear of hunting. Don't don't bring I like this.
Speaker 2:I like this. He's looking for a carve
Speaker 1:out.
Speaker 2:He's looking for a carve out.
Speaker 1:Let me keep hunting my whales. Let me keep hunting my seals.
Speaker 2:If what if what this if he's selling the blubber out the back door to power data centers?
Speaker 1:We got flashbangs. We'll throw a flashbang in the ocean. All the whales will be doing this.
Speaker 2:Oh, no. I think I'm against whale hunting. What? They're just so majestic.
Speaker 1:Majestic. And That's a that's a synonym for cute.
Speaker 2:But seals.
Speaker 1:You're the problem.
Speaker 6:I Oh,
Speaker 1:you don't like seals.
Speaker 2:Have deep beef with seals. Why? Growing up surfing
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:In the cold waters in Northern California, seals will will like mess would mess with me. I'd be out alone surfing. Yeah. In Northern California, water's very sharky. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And these things are the dogs of the sea. So they'll run up and they would just slam into me. All And of a sudden, think I'm getting attacked by a shark. And I'd just be in the water by myself beefing with a seal.
Speaker 1:This is an incredible skill issue for you. Oh, seals annoying me. Oh, I need I need need need seals to be hunted. It's fine. Hang out with the seals.
Speaker 1:Let the seals mess with you. They're the dogs of the sea. You so much for tuning Have
Speaker 2:a wonderful Have a
Speaker 1:great rest of your day.
Speaker 2:We'll see you very soon. Goodbye.