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"I didn't use my own software this week because the OpenAI agents were better. And that's me retiring my own software." — Keith Teare
Something broke this week. Both Anthropic and OpenAI launched multi-agent systems—"agent swarms"—that don't just assist with tasks but replace custom-built software entirely. The market noticed: Adobe, Salesforce, Workday, and other legacy SaaS companies saw their stocks collapse in what some are calling a trillion-dollar selloff. Keith Teare joins Andrew Keen on Super Bowl weekend to unpack what may be the most consequential week in AI since ChatGPT launched.
The conversation ranges from the Anthropic-OpenAI advertising spat (Dario Amodei's Super Bowl ad vs. Sam Altman's "online tantrum") to the deeper structural shifts: Microsoft and Amazon becoming utilities, Google betting $185 billion on an AI-first pivot, and Elon Musk merging SpaceX with xAI to put data centers in space. Along the way, Teare and Keen debate whether the AI race is a myth or a wacky race, whether venture capital is in crisis, and what happens to human labor when agents do the work.
About the Guest
Keith Teare is a British-American entrepreneur, investor, and technology analyst. He co-founded RealNames Corporation, a pioneering internet company, and later served as Executive Chairman of TechCrunch. He is the founder of That Was The Week and SignalRank, and publishes a widely-read weekly newsletter on technology, venture capital, and the business of innovation. He brings four decades of experience in Silicon Valley to his analysis of the AI revolution.
36:02 Closing
"That really was the week in tech"
"That really was the week in tech"
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Mentioned in this episode:
About Keen On America
Nobody asks more impertinent questions than the Anglo-American writer, filmmaker and Silicon
Valley entrepreneur Andrew Keen. In Keen On America , Andrew brings his sharp Transatlantic
wit to the forces reshaping the United States — hosting daily interviews with leading thinkers
and writers about American history, politics, technology, culture, and business. With nearly
2,800 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most
prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting.
Website | Substack | YouTube
Nobody asks more impertinent questions than the Anglo-American writer, filmmaker and Silicon
Valley entrepreneur Andrew Keen. In Keen On America , Andrew brings his sharp Transatlantic
wit to the forces reshaping the United States — hosting daily interviews with leading thinkers
and writers about American history, politics, technology, culture, and business. With nearly
2,800 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most
prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting.
Website | Substack | YouTube
Creators and Guests
What is Keen On America?
Nobody asks sharper or more impertinent questions than Andrew Keen. In KEEN ON, Andrew cross-examines the world’s smartest people on politics, economics, history, the environment, and tech. If you want to make sense of our complex world, check out the daily questions and the answers on KEEN ON.
Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best-known technology and politics broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running show How To Fix Democracy and the author of four critically acclaimed books about the future, including the international bestselling CULT OF THE AMATEUR.
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Hello, my name is Andrew Keen.
Welcome to Keen on America, the daily show
about everything that matters with the
world's leading commentators and thinkers.
Hello everybody.
It is Saturday the 7th of February.
I am talking to, as
always, from San Francisco.
Tomorrow is the Super
Bowl, the annual American.
Celebration of all things football.
Um, one piece in the Financial
Times talks about how the NFL became
America's true national pastime.
It's the one thing that brings
Americans together, and of course
it's taking place tomorrow in Silicon
Valley and the heart of San Jose.
But as it happens, uh, the.
Super Bowl is not bringing
Silicon Valley together.
In fact, it's dividing them.
That's been the big story
of the week out here.
Anthropic have a big ad about the
absence of advertising in their
product, and Sam Altman has lashed out.
Keith, I know you are a keen observer
of all things ChatGPT and Anthropic.
What should we make of this
latest, um, spat between Altman
and Anthropic; Dario Amodei
well, the, the, the joke on the
streets here is, um, of course
Anthropic doesn't have ads.
Because it doesn't have consumers.
Um, and so ads would play no role for it.
Whereas OpenAI has hundreds of
millions of consumers, many of
whom use the service for free.
So ads make sense, but the, the
more serious point underneath
that, um, pushback is to do with
the content of Amodei's ads are
basically fundamentally dishonest.
Uh, and deceitful.
Uh, he's making the point that OpenAI
plans to have the AI tell you different
things based on what it's trying to
sell you, which is just not true.
Um, and, but it's,
when was the last time Keith, you ever
saw an honest ad? By definition, those
are ads by definition at dishonest, so I
don't know why we should object to that.
Um, uh, uh, Altman had
an interesting ex-post.
Uh, he acknowledges that the philanthropic
ad. Is funny and it made him laugh, but
he says, and and it's interesting that
the way he frames it, he suggests that
most people can't afford anthropic.
It's too expensive.
Only wealthy people use Anthropic
and therefore the OpenAI.
Advertising model is actually
suited for less well off people.
It's an old argument.
It was made back in the Web 2.0.
Age as well.
Yeah.
Look, I've, I, I've
advocated for, um, not ads.
I don't like the word ads
'cause it conjuress up exactly
what, uh, Amodei is implying.
Uh, but paid links, a paid, a paid link.
Uh, if relevant to the context
can be a helpful thing.
And I, I see that more and more
actually in places like Instagram
where the ads are relevant to
something I'm kind of interested in
and I don't object to them as much.
So I think, I think there's a smart
way for Altman to be right and I
think for sure am day has done.
It is a good marketing move by
him, don't get me wrong, but it's.
And you're right, ads are doula.
Um, but it isn't like the
Apple 1984 ad, which was.
Truly symbolizing, um, a shift and a
change in Apple's position in the world.
Thi this is just, um, childish.
I mean, it's like playground stuff, so
it doesn't, it doesn't really, uh, you
don't draw the conclusion that Anthropic
is breaking through to a, to a new,
oh, they're coming back.
I hadn't thought of the, uh, the
Apple 84 ad, but the anthro, uh,
the Apple 84 ad was very much.
Directed against IBM and their model.
So it was equally childish in the sense
that they were bashing their rival.
Yeah, it, it, it was childish, but.
Luckily for Apple, it reinforced a true
theme in the real world, whereas no one
in the real world thinks that Anthropic is
looking out for the interest of consumers,
'cause it isn't a consumer company.
It's
just, well, I use it.
I'm a consumer.
I'm not sure that's an entirely true.
Um, Altman's been ridiculed, uh,
according to the BBC, at least for
what they call his online tantrum.
Do you think it reached a nerve?
Uh, Altman's usually a fairly
smart, self-controlled guy.
Why, why did he respond so angrily?
Well, it goes to the
roots of his personality.
I mean, Al Altman is, um, you know, a
somewhat deceitful and devious person
himself, probably more so than Amodei.
And when you get under his
skin, a bit like Trump.
He reacts and, and, and
that's what happened there.
Um, you know, if you look at
the other player, uh, Demis, uh,
Hassabis
um, of the three, he's the most,
you know, uh, I'd say fundamentally,
intellectually honest of the three.
Well, it's interesting you
put him in their company.
He is, of course not the CEO
of Google, although he runs.
DeepMind, he's the Google AI chief.
I wonder, Keith, whether
one could argue that.
Altman was already
irritated enough this week.
Anthropic's had a remarkable week,
uh, a breakout moment according to the
FT with the launch of, um, their new,
uh, version of, uh, of, of Claude,
which has really riled the markets.
How big a week has it been,
do you think, for Anthropic?
And do you think that's the real
reason why Altman has lashed out?
Well, look, j just to frame it, uh,
I think the answer to that is no.
Because literally the day after that,
anthropic Launch ChatGPT launched
version 5.3 of of its, um, modeled,
which was a very similar leap.
The Anthropic one, and indeed
yesterday I spent most of yesterday
playing with both of them, and I'm
an anthropic user, as you know.
We talked about, are you a
consumer?
Keith?
Never.
Nevermind whether I'm a consumer,
but I am now a convert to OpenAI.
I used OpenAI to do the You
But you've always been a convert.
No, I've used Anthropic forever.
I don't, I don't use OpenAI um, uh,
because I see it as a consumer app.
I'm, uh, and I'm using it for
real use cases in my work.
But yesterday I switched to OpenAI because
the, the new is called, uh, OpenAI Codex,
which is an app that runs on the Mac.
Uh, not to be confused with the
codex they've had for months.
And it is, it is, um, it and
Anthropic, and this is both of them.
Uh, so this is the big story.
Both of them have introduced, um, the
ability for the interface, the chat
interface to launch multiple workers, if
you will, or agents in their language.
So if you give it a task
that has multiple skills.
It will spin up an agent for
each of those skills and they'll
collaborate with each other.
In the case of Anthropic, they
literally talk to each other.
In the case of OpenAI, there's a, a,
a kind of a boss agent that each of
the other agents talk to one-on-one,
but they're all collaborating on
your job and the outcome of the job.
And it can take, you know, anywhere
for depending on the complexity
of the job, anywhere between
10 and 15 minutes to complete.
And it replaces.
Software.
You know, you don't, you don't
really use software anymore.
You use
Yeah, I mean, that's the headline.
Keith, say it again?
It replaces software.
I mean, that's a massive statement.
You've been hinting at this now for
months, but it, this seems to be the
week where the promise of replacing
software has become a reality with
the launch of Claude Opus 4.6 and of
course the new ChatGPT, uh, a lot of
the headlines this week have been about.
And, and this one is about
Anthropic Anthropic triggering
a a trillion dollar sell off.
When we talk about replacing software,
it means that software companies are in
suddenly being dramatically hit on the
markets and, and in every other sense.
Yeah.
I mean, if we define software as.
Take my Creator automation.ai,
which I built for myself with AI.
I didn't use it this week because
the OpenAI agents were better than
my software, and, and that's me
grandfathering my own software, or
that's the wrong word, isn't it?
Retiring my own software, which was custom
built for my use case, and OpenAI now
does a better job than my software, and
by the way, saves me about two hours.
That otherwise I would've
had to use the other.
The other one is Claude Bart, which
has now been renamed to Open Claw.
Yeah.
You've got, uh, you, you quote
in your post of the week, um, om
who says Open Claw is ht, HAWT.
Well, and OOII, I put it to
work on my newsletter as well.
Two, I, I actually produced
two copies of my newsletter.
One with OpenAI, uh, and one with Openclaw
and, uh, actually a third one with Claude
and Claude didn't, wasn't very good.
Um, for my use case, it's probably good.
Uh, other things, it's very good in
Excel, for example, if you use the
Claude Plug into Excel, it's fantastic.
Um, but, um, both Open Claw and OpenAI
did a actually a really, really good job.
Now, the nice thing about Open Claw is,
um, I can embed its persona in a telegram.
Uh, uh, account and I can talk to it and
ask it to do things from anywhere in the
world, and it's running on my computer
at home and will carry out my tasks.
So when, when you put it all together this
week was a massive shift in how you use
AI and how productive it can be for you,
right?
And, and let's talk about the
impact on the rest of the market.
As I said, um.
Some people believe that this latest
version of Anthropic's Claude triggered
a trillion dollar se sell off.
What will it mean to companies like.
Adobe middle market companies
look at the stock price.
It's dramatically collapsed over the last
few days, and, and they're not alone.
The same has happened with PayPal
and many other software companies.
Yeah, Salesforce.
Um, uh,
yeah, and Salesforce used to
be a cutting edge company.
Now it appears more and more archaic.
Workday, I noticed that Workday, um,
all, all, all of these companies have had
massive reductions in their share price.
I mean, in a way, Google is
lucky to be in the AI game.
If it wasn't, it would've had a similar.
Reduction based on workspaces
and, and, and, um, you know,
Google Docs and all that stuff.
So, so ba basically what's happened is the
stock market has moved away from software
companies and SaaS companies as well.
It, it, it can't yet move towards AI
companies because they're not listed yet.
They, they probably,
well, Google is.
Google is, but actually Google had
a bit of a drop this week as well.
'cause it's a hybrid.
Um, and, uh, and you know, I don't
believe it will stay a hybrid.
I think it's gonna go the whole
way and become an AI company.
Uh, unlike saying Microsoft,
which had a huge hit this week
because it's deemed to not be an AI
company.
And, and Amazon, Amazon
had a terrible week.
I mean, just to put things in
perspective, um, Google, Google's
numbers came out this week.
They beat.
Expectations dramatically.
And yet, uh, the stock declined even
though they committed $185 billion
this year to investment in AI.
So it does reflect the complete shift
in, in the way the markets are viewing
tech companies and their valuations.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Although I, you know, I, I
think we should say out loud.
Google are doing the right
thing by doing that and Oh,
absolutely.
And Amazon, I think, committed
$200 billion and, and their, their,
their stock, uh, lost about 10%.
And, and Microsoft, of course,
um, is increasingly looking of all
these tech giants the least able
to, uh, embrace AI, or at least as
well, it, it's become a utility in the
AI world, a bit like Oracle, Microsoft.
It, it isn't a player except
at the infrastructure layer.
And it, it will be able to charge
a rent for that infrastructure
through Azure as it does to OpenAI.
But it, it isn't gonna be the company
that transforms our experience.
Right.
And they're, they're cloud numbers.
Uh, in, if not in crisis, certainly
in decline, especially compared to
to, to glue to Google's cloud numbers.
So even on that front,
they're not succeeding.
The other thing to bring into this,
'cause I think it's part of it, is
the merger between SpaceX and XAI.
Yeah, I was gonna bring that up.
I mean, Elon Musk as.
Regular viewers, listeners to the
show, knowing our conversations.
I'm not a big fan, but you have to admire,
I mean, he thinks very clearly on this.
And according to The Economist,
he's betting his business empire on
AI by merging XAI, uh, and SpaceX.
So he's, he's part of this
dramatic week, isn't he?
Yeah.
I mean, I think if you measure
the effectiveness of the CEOs
in, uh, or leaders in this
space, he's the most definitive.
You know, he says, this is what's
gonna happen, here's what I'm gonna do.
He then does it, and you know, in
his case, he, it's, um, audacious.
He wants to put apparently a
million satellites into orbit,
which are effectively data centers
for AI processing, using the
power of the sun to, to fuel 'em.
And, you know, there's no doubt
even that's a huge audacious goal.
He reckons by 36 months from now.
Most of the power needed to run data
centers and AI will be in space.
Um, who we'll see.
Yeah.
Which is interesting because
Google this week came out with more
initiatives about their AI energy
race, investing in earth bound energy.
So that's gonna be an interesting story.
Keith, a couple of months
ago we did a show on AI.
It seems every week we do a show on AI.
We talked to, or you argued that
the AI race is a myth and I. Argued
that it's a bit of a wacky race
every week there's a new leader.
Has anything changed this
week in terms of the order?
We have Google, we have Microsoft, we have
OpenAI, we have Anthropic, we have XAI.
Has anything dramatically changed
or is it just that AI is moving
ahead of the rest of the tech world?
Uh, AI is moving ahead.
Um.
It's, we, it's easy to forget this, but
the first player who stepped up to this
new level of functionality was Kimi.
K 2.5 is the version, which is a
Chinese, uh, system that started this
concept called agents swarms to, uh,
put a swarm of agents against a task.
That was three weeks ago, I think.
So the last three weeks have seen Kimmy.
OpenAI and, and anthropic
leapfrog Google actually.
So Gemini now is a generation
behind again and no doubt is
already working on not being.
So it is like the wacky race.
It's every episode or every week
it seems to be a new leader.
One pulls ahead, one falls behind.
Is there a dick dastardly here?
Is it, I mean, for me,
of course it's Musk.
Uh, for others it's Altman some.
It's Dario Amdis.
It does it really depend
on one's own perspective.
I vaguely watched that show when I
was a kid, but I can't, uh, I haven't
got your ability to link it to what's
going on, so, so I don't know who
is Dick dastardly in this context.
The, the bad guy chasing down all everyone
else and cheating is probably Amodei.
If there is one, because he's, he's
just using marketing and lying to
try to look better when he, when
he actually isn't any better.
In other words, he's as
bad as everybody else.
Yeah.
And the focus of your editorial this week
is that the CEOs are not growing up, but
does that reflect again, the reality of
our AI age or however smart AI becomes
and it's becoming smarter and smarter.
It's not making humans any smarter.
It doesn't make Elon Musk or Sam Aman
or Dario Amodei, and we just accept
that, that however smart AI becomes,
we're always gonna be a bit dimwitted.
We're always gonna watch.
Stick dastardly and wacky races.
Yeah.
I, I, I don't think
exactly you of course, who,
who, who was always mature.
Were you, what were you doing when
you, what were, you were watching?
Six, uh, uh, when you were
six Keith, uh, Shakespeare
when I was six.
You missed wacky races.
How?
I was six in 1960, so I think I was
probably watching top of the pops.
Uh, so you did have a
little bit of triviality.
You weren't always an adult or as
much of an adult as you are now.
I,
I certainly wasn't, but, you
know, but I, I, I, uh, I, we lost
the thread there a little bit
when you asked me that question.
I was, I, I had it all
teed up and now it's gone.
So.
Okay.
Well, let me tee you up again.
Um.
Are, are we dealing with these weirdly
paradoxical realities that on the
one hand, AI is becoming smarter
and smarter and on the other hand
we it's becoming dumber and dumber.
Yeah.
I've got it back.
So, look, I I, I don't think we should
be measuring AI's impact on whether
it makes individual human smarter.
Um, I, I, I think we, we are as
smart as we are, we're all different.
What it does is it makes us.
Leverage tools to get more
done, hopefully done better.
Uh, not always true.
Sometimes it gets done
worse, hence the slop word.
Um, and it doesn't make us smarter.
It just makes us better at using
our smarts to get things done.
And, and I think if it can
achieve that, that's huge.
But then why'd you write this editorial
about AI growing up and the CEOs aren't?
Well, so that is to do with two things.
Uh, let's take AI growing up.
This, this leapfrog from a single chat
interface with a single AI to AI that
can carry out work using multiple AI
agents that it manages is, is a huge
change in what AI can do and how fast
it can do it, and how well it can do it.
That's the AI growing up bit, the
CEO's not growing up, is the mud
fight between Altman and Amodei.
Um, basically when Amodei talks about
adolescence in, in terms of the tech,
it's ironic 'cause he's displaying
adolescence in his use of advertising.
And Altman is equally in his response
showing adolescence when all of them
have got better things to be doing, they,
they're actually contributing massively.
But having this side fight as they do it,
that that's the CEO's not growing up bit.
But, so what does that tell us that,
are you optimistic that these people
can become a little bit more mature
or is that just the nature of things?
They totally can.
Yeah.
I mean, I, all of every entrepreneur,
and I'll include myself in this, in
the, you know, in their learning phase.
When they, having their ass handed to
them in all kinds of ways, uh, react,
um, based on their past experience,
you know, either better or worse.
I, I had some when I was doing
real names, roughly at their age.
Uh, I remember thinking I could
beat Microsoft in a fight.
And I, I really thought I could.
Um, and I didn't.
I lost and had my ass handed to me.
And over time you learn that not
everything is under your control.
And that is a maturing learning curve.
They'll, they'll all get there,
um, because the world won't be
kind to them unless they go there.
Well, one thing for sure is they've
all got jobs and it was an, an
interesting, another interesting.
Piece of this week's news, there's so
many interesting stories this week,
is that US job openings dropped to a
five year low, uh, in December, 2025.
More and more pessimism on the job front.
One big piece, at least of media
news was that the Washington Post.
Uh, essentially committed suicide,
at least according to the Atlantic.
Is this an important week in
terms, again, you've talked about
swarms and bots and smart ais.
Is this an important week or will it be
seen Keith as an important week when it
comes to what more and more people are
believing to be a crisis of human labor?
I think it is the starting point of that.
Uh, and most of these things
are overreactions, uh, based on
a misunderstanding of timing.
I don't, I don't think
timing suggests that.
You know, anytime soon, meaning the
next few months, you're gonna see
a huge change in the job market.
Um, I, you know, so I think
the answer is there's always an
emotionally overreaction and the
stock market is the extreme of that.
'cause it reprices things very
early once it sees a trend.
So there is truth in the reactions, but
timing wise, probably an overreaction.
Coming back to my favorite
television program, wacky Races.
It is made up of all sorts
of interesting teams.
Uh, and in terms of the AI wacky
races, I mean, obviously we think
of Anthropic and OpenAI and Google,
Microsoft, Amazon XAI, but I know
for you it's a more complicated race.
The VCs are also participating, and in
this week's editorial you imply that.
They're not doing very well, but
they're certainly not leading
the pack when it comes to the AI
race and this crisis of software.
Can we talk, Keith, also maybe
last week about the crisis of
traditional venture capital as well?
Well, the, the crisis is, uh,
what you could think of as.
Um, a, a massive concentration of
capital into a small number of hands.
In venture capital, most of the
money being raised and deployed is
coming through about five funds.
Um, those five funds, uh,
sucking the air out of the room.
So the, the, the venture ecosystem
thrives due to seed investors.
Who find these companies before
anyone even knows they exist, and
the seed investors are being starved
of oxygen and many are threatened.
With being viable.
And there's a lot of writing
this week about that.
Uh, three, three very good pieces.
One from Beza Clarks
and one from Dan Gray.
And, um, I'm blanking
on who the third one is.
Um, and, and they all, uh, naval
gazing about the impact of this
structural shift in capital.
For innovation.
And I think that's, that's
a reasonable concern.
I do, I I do think that, um,
really, really good angels and
seed investors will still thrive.
But, um, anyone in the
middle is, is threatened.
Yeah.
And it, it, this is part of this crisis.
It's the middle market companies
like Adobe is in crisis.
Um, it's the five or six.
AI companies that are dominating
everything, whether they're private,
privately owned or publicly owned.
There'd probably be two IPOs,
anthropic and OpenAI this year.
So what's happening with Venture is
a mirror and a cause, or perhaps a
cause and a consequence of what's
happening more broadly in tech.
Is that fair?
I mean, it's a, it's a winner
take all economy in every sense.
Yeah.
Whether you are an investor, whether
you are a developer, whether.
Um, whether you are an ex,
uh, you are an AI company
Yeah.
And there's some public
companies in there as well.
And Palantir's results
this week were spectacular.
Um, it did actually suffer, um, a, a
big rise and then a big drop in it.
Share price.
Over two days.
Um, you think of and
Unreal, who's the AI in?
Yeah.
And these are smart defense.
Yeah.
Smart military software companies.
So the, the, the, you know, the s
and p 510 years from now is not going
to look anything like it does today.
And if you're an investor, you want
to be putting money into the future
s and p 500, not the current one.
One company we haven't mentioned
actually is, is, is Facebook,
are they a loser in this?
Are they They are.
Are they a foot?
No.
Now in, in, in, in, uh, in the wacky
racist, do they even have a team in this?
Well, look, they're a fantastic company.
They're revenues announced last
week were huge, but their stock
price has not gone up because
in the AI race, Theran also ran.
Trying to figure it out.
They, they have a brand new team in
place, building brand new platform to
replace, uh, the LAMA platform that
they've had for the last few years.
There's a big internal debate about
open source versus closed source models,
but with the amount of money they've
got, and, you know, time is on their
side, they'll probably figure it out.
I don't think they'll, I think
they'll be a survivor, but
they're a laggard right now.
Um, you sidestep the
Washington Post question.
Are you concerned that America no longer
really has, it seems a, uh, a viable
newspaper in its capital, especially
in its rather precarious political
state in, uh, in February, 2026?
You know, I, I, I think the Washington
Post has been challenged for, at, at
least 10 years since, um, Kathy Graham.
Um, moved on from it.
I think, I think it's, it's
challenge for a few reasons, but
the first is it tied, its mast.
To the Biden administration and
ended up taken the wrong side of most
discussions and became irrelevant in
a similar way to the New York Times
by, by abandoning the, you know, the,
the, um, being the source of truth
and becoming a co, uh, a combatant,
if you will, in the political wars.
And, and so I think America lost.
A news business, um, CNN tried
to survive by being independent,
uh, against M-S-N-B-C and Fox.
But I think across the entire traditional
media, you've had this partisan
bifurcation of media and they're
all gonna be losers because of it.
'cause most normal people want to make
their own opinion from good journalism,
and that hasn't been available.
But there's less and less journalism.
I mean, that, isn't that the
point of the crisis at the Post?
Is there, and I mean, whether you
like normal or not, they're capable
of, of high quality journalism.
It's, it, it's um, I call
it boogieman journalism.
It's like.
Every couple of weeks.
There's a new boogieman this week.
Is Jeffrey Epstein that distract?
Well, he might legitimate.
I mean, there, there are certain
legitimate boogieman and, uh,
Jeffrey Epstein seems to be one
that, well, he, of course he is one, but
for the entire media to get distracted
from big issues by focusing only on this
boogeyman and trying to un undermine,
uh, Trump, only because of his.
Possible associations, or likely
associations means that the entire
narrative driven by the media's
desire to sell clicks or, or papers or
news or TV channels gets distracted.
You know, before it was Russia
interfering the election as the boogeyman.
There's always a boogeyman.
It's always about the media driving
attention, and none of it is about what's
really going on, which is so frustrating.
What you call this attention
economy is an advertising economy.
And does that mean that maybe Dario
Amid dies onto something by suggesting
that when you insert ads into AI,
you're only compounding attention
and trivialization on all the
other things that have gone wrong?
I'm, you know, I'm definitely against.
What we would think of as ads in AI.
Um, for, for, so
you're in Amides Camp
for good reason, even if
you don't like it.
Uh, well, no, no, no.
Because I do know that OpenAI has
also said it's against that, and
that it has no intention of putting
what we all think of as ads in AI.
But it is thinking of working with,
um, you know, if you think about the
world, the digital world, everything
that there is available to sell, read.
Buy has a link.
And so we live in a place where in
order to have your ideas, products.
Services surfaced in any
conversation with AI.
It has to take the form of a link.
And, you know, Amodei has links, uh,
perplexity has links open, AI has links,
and now they're saying, you know, you can
pay us to put your link there in our free
service if and only if it's relevant.
To what the user is looking for.
I think that's okay.
I don't, I don't, but
that's not the, in to, to borrow a word
from Corey Doc, that's not the ification
of AI or the beginnings of its ification.
I, I, I, I don't think there's any intent.
And, and it would be counter
to OpenAI's economic future.
There is no intent to interfere
with the AI itself and what it
says does thinks, um, at all.
So that's where the Amida ad is.
Just, you know, uh, leveraging
a, a nuance to try to depict
something that isn't gonna happen.
Well, there is other news outside AI.
My tech company of the week is Spotify.
I'm not always my favorite company.
But then news this week was that
when you buy a physical book now and
they've done a deal with bookstore,
um, you'll also get the audio book.
It's always been one of my.
Irritations that you, on Amazon, at least
an audible, if you buy the the audio book,
you still have to buy the physical book.
So that's still innovation.
Keith, I don't know whether you are a,
a reader of physical books or a listener
to audio books, but this is good news.
Spotify is still innovating.
Yeah.
If you look at this behind my head,
it's books and there's a whole
wall of them to my right here.
So I do read physical books.
Um, I, you know, that is
innovation, but with a. Small.
I, I would say, um, and
it, it's smart as well.
It's smart because I think the
consumer will much prefer getting
both in a single purchase.
So I think I, I do think that's smart.
Um,
but in the name of democracy, I
gotta be fair and give you the last
word with your startup of the week.
This is a startup that raised $20
million from Sequoia to build the.
Cursor of CRM sounds rather boring.
Tell me about this company.
Well, we all know that.
Uh, what CRM is?
Customer relationship management.
Probably not Everyone
knows what Cursor is.
Cursor is, um, a, a rapper, um,
uh, not, not a singer, um, a rapper
as in paper, uh, around a rapper
with a w
around, um, using AI to write code.
Um, or perform other tasks.
And, um, this, this is an AI
wrapper around your customer
list and your prospects list.
Um, I dunno if it's any good, but
the investors, what's it called?
The investors who invested in
it, certainly think, what's
its name?
The, the name of the company?
Yeah.
Didn't you say the name
of the company already?
No.
It's your start of the week.
It's your company, not mine.
Start of the week is, um.
Up.
I think it's, uh, upstart,
I think it's called.
Oh, wow.
That's so interesting.
We're not quite sure of their name, but
they are at least RA rapper, the cursor.
They're,
but I will say, uh, before we go,
Andrew, that I think the poster of
the week is the most illustrative.
It's from O Malick and Om, you
know, you know, when we talk
about music, we talk about music
distribution, going from the radio.
To vi and vinyl to cassettes, then
to CDs, and then to streaming,
and then back to vinyl.
And what, what Omar's done is
applied that same evolutionary
scale, if you will, to software.
And in his piece, he talks about, you
know, the different eras of software,
uh, distribution from, I remember
when I started Easy Net, we put a cd.
Cell a tape to the cover of the
internet magazine and we also
gave the CD to Compact to put in
the box when he bought a laptop.
And software distribution was really hard.
Then Mobile came along and suddenly
there were two app stores and
you could ship software to the
whole world in five minutes.
And, and, and it took the form of,
uh, app stores and then there was sas.
Which is the cloud version of software for
enterprises, mainly through subscriptions
or buying enterprise software.
And what OM is pointing out is
that software is now gonna be built
by users for their own purposes.
And it, it'll be self-made, uh,
and I think it is pieces very
thoughtful and really good.
Yeah, software then becomes free
in every sense, metaphorical,
perhaps, and otherwise, although
someone's gonna profit from it.
Uh, one other sector that's getting
a lot of attention in the the Super
Bowl week is the prediction market.
The way in which, uh.
Betting has become ubiquitous.
Maybe we can talk about that another week.
But let's add where we began,
Keith, with the Super Bowl,
not far from you in Palo Alto.
In San Jose.
Uh, who's gonna win between Seattle?
Do you have any sense between
Seattle and New England?
I.
Anyone who listens to my opinion
about football is, um, is a beautiful,
maybe Manchester United will win.
They did win today.
Andrew, against your team?
Yeah.
I, I am not really aware of that.
Well, uh, this was the week that
broke the software business.
I hope next week it'll
be equally dramatic.
Keith, uh, we, we need You, or,
that was the weak newsletter.
It keeps us up to date
with a fascinatingly.
Dramatic changing world.
So, uh, we'll talk again next week.
Thank you so much.
You're welcome.
Bye everyone.