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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. Today is Friday, 04/11/2025. We are live from the Temple Of Technology, the Fortress Of Finance, the capital of capital. We have a great show for you today, folks. We've had some technical issues, but we're working it out.
Speaker 1:We're getting better every single show. So stay tuned. We got a great show for you today, folks. Thanks a lot.
Speaker 2:If ESPN is buying the TV rights to something like this
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:They're not just doing it out as charity. Right? They wanna build Run ads. They wanna run ads against it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And having flagship content like this is accretive to the network. But in general, when you start running the analysis on just purely on the number of ads you could run against an audience like this. It's pretty obvious to see why people aren't exactly jumping
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:To watch this. The other thing I thought was interesting is Netflix ran an analysis on f one and they found that three quarters of of live f one viewers already are subscribed to Netflix. Yep. So Netflix is really not interested in paying Yep. To get this as a streaming property because it's not gonna drive incremental subscribers to them.
Speaker 1:And to your point about the million, it might not be a so if you take a million and you just assume the same saturation number, that's only 250,000 new subscriptions. Netflix is what? What's their ARPU? Like, a hundred bucks a year. Right?
Speaker 1:Yeah. That's Maybe more than that now. Yeah. Maybe a little bit more. But if it's 250,000 people that would subscribe, potentially if you convert all of them, that's still only 25,000,000 that they would make.
Speaker 1:And then maybe they make that over a few years, but they would have to keep that person subscribed at extremely high margin for eight years to
Speaker 2:make the 30,000,000 pay the same Yeah. Rights fee for the second year too.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It just does not math out.
Speaker 2:Math does math out. The other thing I thought was interesting, this was your take. Were talking about this offline, but it's very possible for for the American audience where f one is airing at these odd hours Yep. That drive to survive is just a much Better be far superior way to watch and follow along with the sport Yep. Than trying to get up.
Speaker 3:Oh, I'm gonna get at 5AM on a Sunday Yep.
Speaker 2:And watch this. You gotta be a really, really you gotta be a super fan
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 2:To wanna do that consistently.
Speaker 1:And, I mean, I got into f one through Drive to Survive, like a lot of people.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And what I realized was in the first season of Drive to Survive, they didn't have access to the top drivers, but that was actually an advantage because this was in the Hamilton era where he was running away with it, and there was no drama at the top of the leaderboard.
Speaker 2:They were creating drama by focusing Yeah. To to the sort of bottom Yeah.
Speaker 1:What's going on with Hoss? What's going on with the all all these all these, like, middle of the pack teams and and people getting cut. It's much more dramatic. Lewis Hamilton, he's got a job every year. There's not much drama And it was interesting because those narratives, if you are a dedicated, dedicated f one fan, you can pull that out through the commentary, and you can follow, and you can see, oh, yeah.
Speaker 1:I I know that Hamilton's gonna win first, but what I'm really watching for is what's going on in the middle of the pack. As a as a random viewer who just turns it on, it's very it's very hard to get at that level. Yeah. It's I mean, it's almost like watching the NFL and trying to understand, like, how is the o line matching up with the the defensive line on this particular game?
Speaker 2:Yeah. And the other thing with America, you have intense competition. Right? Because you have IndyCar, you have NASCAR.
Speaker 1:Totally.
Speaker 2:And those are all people that would be watching f one. Yep. They're just more interested in in these sort of driving events that are that are more culturally native to America.
Speaker 1:But the I mean, the boom in f one really can't be overstated. I mean, they basically doubled viewership. So in 2018, a little over half a million people were watching Formula one live on ESPN. By 2022, it was almost 1,200,000. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So huge, huge gain, but it's since fallen off and actually plateaued right around that 1,100,000 number that we cited. So ESPN walked away late last year from its exclusive negotiation window for a new package. Netflix, Warner Brothers Discovery, Fox, and Amazon.com, and NBC are lukewarm on the offering too, at least at the current price, according to people familiar with the company's discussions. The NBA and NFL have inked giant media deals in recent years, but it is becoming harder for entertainment companies to justify big spending on other sports as networks face continued challenges from cord cutting. And so
Speaker 2:Yeah. The other challenge here is is if you're an advertiser and you wanna be a part of f one, you can just pick your favorite team and get involved with them.
Speaker 1:There's so many different products. Like, you can you can even just do the only way is not running one race.
Speaker 2:Like a Super Bowl where you have to run if you wanna be involved with the Super Bowl, you have to run Yeah. You know, Super Bowl ad. Really not the same way here because you can be, you know, on you know, in the car basically. You can have logo placement. I was I was nerding out about this on on the race Yeah.
Speaker 2:Last week because the the cockpit of of these cars has logo visibility for for like 20 different sponsors. Just
Speaker 1:It's our dream. It's our dream come
Speaker 2:over the top but but as an advertising enjoyer, it's But also there's
Speaker 1:no there's no halftime show. There's no part where, oh, I really wanna see the last lap, so I'm gonna stick through all these extra ads because they stuff the halftime show with a bunch of ads during the Super Bowl. And those are probably some of the most lucrative because everyone's watching, and they're waiting for the next for for the next quarter to start. My my take on this is that, going forward, I have this idea that creating a funnel and, like, vertically owning all of the surrounding media around a sports league is gonna be incredibly valuable. I don't know exactly who's gonna win or how it'll play out, but I'll give you an example of how I think this could work.
Speaker 1:Yeah. One would be so Apple TV owns the rights to MLS. Now MLS is not the most popular soccer league, but you could imagine if they somehow got the rights to NFL we'll use soccer as an example. So as soon as they got the rights to MLS, I was saying they should do a drive to survive for the MLS. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Take us through the drama and the characters in the MLS and and give us the reality TV version to get people in. And then they should also do the sitcom version. What's that what's that show on on Apple TV about the the happy guy who coaches soccer?
Speaker 2:You know what I'm talking about? Yeah. The UK team or whatever. I never watched that.
Speaker 1:How can I not remember that? Apple TV soccer show. Ted Ted Lasso. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So I honestly think that it's possible just like Drive to Survive got people into f one, I think you could get into soccer from Ted Lasso, go from Ted Lasso to the MLS version of Drive to Survive, and then start watching MLS Because it's like this smooth gradient of getting you into the content and working you up. I can
Speaker 2:see that I just think at the end of the day, you know, talking about there's a very real difference in watching reality TV about f one versus being actually you don't actually need to be interested in the sport to be interested in the sort of characters and the locales and all that stuff.
Speaker 1:Sure. But I mean, it seems like if I'm trying to get someone interested in f one and watching an actual race, the best way to get them into it is say, hey. Start with Drive to Survath. Yeah. Right?
Speaker 1:And then it's gonna be a funnel. Not everyone's gonna convert, but it will it will convert.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:The problem that f one's struggling with right now is that they don't own the full funnel, and they've sold the rights piecemeal. And so That's tough. They can't they can't really do some what they should what
Speaker 2:they shouldn't do is say,
Speaker 1:hey, Netflix. If you want Drive to Survive, you also have to get the rights to f one. And there needs to be a call to action right there. Hey. Click a like, click remind me when the when the next race goes live.
Speaker 2:One point that I think is important, Paul in the chat noted out that they've they've Netflix basically attempted to run back the success of Drive to Survive with other sports.
Speaker 1:Tennis is one. Tennis is Golf
Speaker 2:is one. And it hasn't actually played out in the same way.
Speaker 1:That because sports are already popular in America?
Speaker 2:That's possible. It's also possible that just like the first sort of like crack at a relatively novel format. Yeah. And I also think f one is exotic. It's sort of European.
Speaker 2:Right? Americans like Yep. Love the idea of the European Totally. But then when you're just following along some like from Florida. It doesn't quite it's it's not it doesn't quite hit the same.
Speaker 1:I mean, I remember when they inked those deals, was like, this is genius. I love Drive to Survive. I'm totally gonna be into the golf one and the tennis one, and I never watched them. I downloaded them on phone once. I never watched them.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Because I was just like, ah.
Speaker 2:John in the chat has a good point. He says, how about TBPN makes a bid for the rights? Yeah. So we can get some TBPN on the weekends. That's great.
Speaker 2:We'll see. We're very mindful of profitability. But if they can get into the 8 figure range, you know, we would Yeah. Consider a bid.
Speaker 1:Well, it's coming down because research firm Ampere Analysis estimated the f one US rights being worth a hundred million a year, but not the hundred and $80,000,000 that the industry reports earlier said it was seeking. Derek Chang took over as chief executive of Liberty in February. He said he's looking for the best mix of exposure to new fans and the highest paying deal, but recognizes the industry is shifting and challenging for both broadcasters and streamers. The whole media world is a very fluid situation. And so, yeah, this is an interesting fragmentation.
Speaker 1:So the f one races are on ESPN. Drive to Survive is on Netflix, and then the f one movie starring Brad Pitt was on Apple. And it's like, that should all have just been in one place because I could totally see the funnel where you're like, like Brad Pitt. I'll watch the movie. Oh, okay.
Speaker 1:What should I watch next? Drive to Survive. Okay. What should I watch next? The actual the actual race.
Speaker 1:And that type of, like, funnel, I feel would let I feel like it would create more value. I'm not exactly sure, though.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I'm surprised they actually haven't maybe there's something in the works here for UFC as well, some type of reality TV around the fighters. They have their big show called Dana White's Contenders series. Then it's very possible that UFC goes to Netflix as well, like the actual live product. Yep.
Speaker 2:Because due to somewhat unfortunate for the UFC, but I think the prevalence of illegal streaming which is also big for f Yeah. But the prevalence of illegal streaming is meaning that people just aren't buying pay per views at the same rate. Yep. So that should be a good, you know, property for Netflix as well. And I could see them building around that.
Speaker 1:So the journal goes on to write, the lack of fervor over f one's US live rights live TV rights stands. In contrast with global excitement around the sport, models and actors clamber for spots in the paddock close to the action as men pile into single seat cars and navigate circuits and destinations, including Australia, Mexico, and Italy. High end brands vie for prime promotional placement. Netflix's drive to survive documentary series helped catapult f one's popularity in The US, Then came Gran Turismo, a 2023 Sony film based on the story of a gamer who got a shot at competing in real life. I actually saw that movie.
Speaker 1:It's pretty good. This June, Warner Brothers is distributing an Apple film f one starring Brad Pitt, but again, very approach Yeah. To to to selling the rights and, like, actually pushing this media around. Despite the Hollywood hype around f one, the races themselves aren't blockbuster draws. That is partly because of timing.
Speaker 1:Many races air early Sunday mornings for US viewers. Not really a great solution to that. I mean, there's a lot that they could do to make f one more
Speaker 2:There are some very savage solutions. Right? And again, the UFC has done this where they've had You're right. They've forced The UK fans historically to watch the title fights at like 5AM. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So it's basically like, hey, come on a Saturday night. Yep. But then we're gonna air that like it needs to be airing at like, you know, a reasonable time Pacific Standard Time or or Eastern Standard Time. Yep. So we're actually you have to stay in the stadium until five 6AM and it's crazy because it's the fighters are dealing with this, the fans are dealing with this.
Speaker 2:You're a fighter and you basically have to pull an all nighter Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Ahead of a title fight which can be like
Speaker 1:What about when they do in The Middle East? It must be even worse.
Speaker 2:No. The Middle East though is the thing. The Middle East generally, they're such large backers at the USC that Dana White just says, now we're gonna host it at 7PM your time. So when the fights happen in The Middle East, the fight card will typically be at like 10AM Ten AM. Pacific or something like that.
Speaker 1:If it's on the weekend, that's not too bad. But, yeah, it's still it's still very early.
Speaker 2:It's just funny that that the UFC says, you know, it's gonna be it's gonna be in, like, you know, North American time zones except if, you know, we're going. Yeah. But
Speaker 1:So the the coming US rights deal represents a small slice of f one's revenue, but Liberty has focused on growing f one in the country, and the new deal will help determine the sport's next chapter here. The success of drive to survive in earlier reports prompted speculation that Netflix might want to bid on f one rights, but but it isn't currently planning to bid according to a person familiar with the matter. This is what you said three quarters of f one fans already have Netflix subscriptions. ESPN still hasn't completely ruled out new talks on f one according to people familiar with the matter, but it's making tough choices. Disney signed a $2,600,000,000 deal with the NBA last season, and ESPN recently ended its thirty five year relationship with Major League Baseball saying it was unwilling to continue paying the $550,000,000 the league wanted for a new games package.
Speaker 1:It's also preparing to bring its programming onto a new streaming service. ESPN might be more inclined to bid for f one if the company thought it would drive subscriptions to that service. ESPN.
Speaker 2:That's crazy. I didn't know that about the MLB. Apparently, they still figured out exactly Yep. Where they're taking the TV rights for MLB. So there's this weird situation where ESPN is sitting there with the rights kind of letting the clock run down.
Speaker 2:Yep. And I imagine they're sort of the the the leagues understand that that ESPN is probably the bidder of last resort. Yep. Yep. Run your little road show and we'll be here.
Speaker 2:But we're gonna bid, you know, a fraction of of what you're asking for it. So
Speaker 1:Yeah. There's We'll see. There's Ben Thompson's written a lot about this with the the local sports the local like, have you ever seen, like, Nesson, New England Sports Network? It's like a regional sports network for cable, and it's very high margin because the local fans pay and Yeah. And basically the sports drive.
Speaker 1:And then they just add on a bunch of channels that are basically, like, you know, free. And and and Well,
Speaker 2:this was a theory with The Athletic. Right?
Speaker 1:Yep. It was
Speaker 2:like hyper local sports Yeah. Are gonna you know, fans will have a much higher willingness to pay to get really close coverage around the leagues and and or specifically the teams and athletes that they really care
Speaker 1:about. And then simultaneously, you know, Disney for a long time was partnered with Hulu and saying, hey. We're gonna stay out of the streaming business. We're just gonna distribute through streaming like we do with TV, with with, like, Comcast and cable networks. And now they're saying, hey.
Speaker 1:We want Disney plus. We want ESPN plus. We want you to subscribe to us directly, and we'll take all of that. And so they're trying to get more leverage. Everyone's duking it out in the in the media world.
Speaker 1:But there's a lovely photo of Charlotte Claire, the Ferrari Formula One driver there.
Speaker 2:And And what do we have in common with
Speaker 1:We sleep on the same bed, baby.
Speaker 2:There we go.
Speaker 1:Eight sleep. Eight sleep. The pod four Ultra. They got a five year warranty.
Speaker 2:Proud performance sleep partner
Speaker 1:to your night net risk free trial, free returns, and free shipping. Pod four has all the signature features you love about the pod plus new groundbreaking upgrades. Go to 8sleep.com/mysleepscore,
Speaker 2:John. Check it out. You're not gonna like this. Why don't you go first?
Speaker 1:Let me see. Mine I woke up before o seventy seven.
Speaker 2:Not good. Weirdo. I'm gonna go. Proof of work here everybody.
Speaker 1:One hundred. One hundred.
Speaker 2:Only on seven hours and sixteen minutes of sleep but
Speaker 1:Not bad.
Speaker 2:You know, had a routine dialed.
Speaker 1:For some reason, woke up and I checked my eight sleep score and it was like, hey, we know you're still in bed. Like, do you wanna end this or do you wanna try to go
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:No. Thank you. I'm good.
Speaker 2:You're good. You tapped out.
Speaker 1:I tapped out. That's a rough thing. Couldn't do it. Anyway
Speaker 2:You've got twins. It it makes the game harder.
Speaker 1:It does.
Speaker 2:It's just an entirely
Speaker 1:Legweights. Another cube.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Let's if you think about it that way,
Speaker 3:it's rough.
Speaker 1:But it's great. And the Eight Sleep has been fantastic. It's been it's been a major major upgrade genuinely. I'm a big fan. Especially the 8sleep.com/tvpn.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Go check it out. Thank you. Anyway, let's move from Giga Chads sleeping on Eight Sleeps to Gigafactories being built in the EU. Yes.
Speaker 1:The EU is betting on Gigafactories to catch up with The United States, China in the AI race. The block has been lagging behind since OpenAI's twenty two twenty two release of Trachyp9. Some people been here. Some people might argue that they've been lagging behind since
Speaker 2:On a
Speaker 1:September of the year. Six.
Speaker 2:That's true. Yeah. That's true. But The the European Union said it would focus on building artificial intelligence data and computing infrastructure and making it easier for companies to comply with regulation. Classic.
Speaker 2:In a bid to catch up with The US and China in the Yeah. See the European Commission, the EU's executive arm said it wanted to develop a network of so called AI Gigafactories to help. I like the vibe.
Speaker 1:I like the vibe too. Like Giga.
Speaker 2:A network of so called AI Gigafactories to help companies train the most complex models. Those facilities will be equipped with roughly a hundred thousand of the latest AI chips Yep. Around four times more than the number installed in AI factories being set up currently. It's funny they're calling these AI factories. I guess it is AI factories.
Speaker 1:I mean, it's very it's very romantic with Elon. Right? Like Yeah. What what what what's his terminology for it? For the The x AI?
Speaker 1:No. No. No. For for for Tesla, doesn't he set up Gigafactories?
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's the Gigafactory.
Speaker 1:That's just what he calls it.
Speaker 2:Right?
Speaker 1:Yeah. And so they're just copying that term directly? Yes. Interesting.
Speaker 2:But I believe, like, you know, in America, we just call these data centers. Yeah. But AI factory sounds pretty cool. Yeah. Factory.
Speaker 2:The announcement part of EU's AI continent action plan endorses underscores efforts from the block to position itself as a key player in the AI race against The US and China. Yeah. The EU has been lagging behind since OpenAI's twenty twenty two release of ChatGPT ushered in a spending boom. Earlier this year, Washington announced Stargate, an AI joint venture. Pretty amazing that they're they're still crediting Washington with doing this even though it was Sam and Masa.
Speaker 2:Yeah. An AI joint venture that aims to build data centers in The US for OpenAI. Just again, crazy line. Yep. Incredible finesse from from Sam Alden.
Speaker 2:OpenAI, Softbank Group, Oracle, and MGX are the initial equity funders in Stargate, while ARM, Microsoft, and Nvidia are technology partners. The companies are committing a hundred billion dollars initially, but plan to invest up to 500,000,000,000 over the next four years. You guys obviously know about Stargate already.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean, it makes sense. If you're if you're in the EU and you see that announcement, it's like it doesn't really matter that Washington isn't putting the money in or putting the deal together. It just matters that, like, hey. It's happening.
Speaker 2:Seems important.
Speaker 1:Excited about it.
Speaker 2:Seems important.
Speaker 1:Backing it, and it's real. And so you gotta you gotta answer. And so their answer is to the EU in February pledged to mobilize, 220,000,000,000 US dollars equivalent in euros in AI investments. More than 20 investors earmarked a hundred and €50,000,000,000 for AI related opportunities in Europe over the next five years, while the block is setting up an a new €20,000,000,000 fund to for five for up to five AI gigafactories. Member states will work with companies and public private partnerships to roll out the infrastructure given the elevated costs, a senior EU official said.
Speaker 1:And this has been happening all over. There was, like, Falcon what is it? Falcon nine b was, like, a UAE funded LLM project, and there's been
Speaker 2:Oh, right.
Speaker 1:There's been big big discussions about, this is in Leopold Aschenbrenner's situational awareness essay talking about, how major countries will want to have, country level AI efforts.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And Alex, from Scale AI was talking about a strategic data reserve, as well. So expect Maybe they will the EU to fast follow.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean, he was testifying in congress about it. Maybe they'll see that and and wanna do something of their own over in the EU.
Speaker 2:Yep. This was a good quote. The global race for AI is far from over. Mhmm. Says Hena Verkunin, the EU executive vice president for security and democracy.
Speaker 2:That is a broad area of Very European. Expertise. Very European. This action plan outlines key areas where efforts need to intensify to make Europe a leading AI continent. I love Europe.
Speaker 2:I want them to be an AI leader. And I, you know, I imagine there's there's a lot of collaboration that can happen over time.
Speaker 1:I wonder how that collaboration will take form because there's, like, there's just general nationalist tendencies broadly. Like, you know, we've been hearing, like, Europe wants their own defense companies. Right? But what about at the how far do you think they wanna go down the stack? Like, they wanna train their own foundation model.
Speaker 1:Do they want their own data, or are they okay with just a broad scrape of the public Internet? Do they want to outsource the energy management to a US company? Do they wanna build their own? Like, this is a bit these are big questions because when 200,000,000,000 is floating around, there's gonna be some companies that are major, major winners. And if if this is truly like a an EU only project, that will probably mean huge growth for companies in Europe that are focused on Yep.
Speaker 1:Data center build outs, energy production, transformer manufacturing. Right? All these different elements of the data center supply
Speaker 5:chain.
Speaker 2:Yeah. You can imagine Mistral will probably be a key player
Speaker 1:For sure.
Speaker 2:A lot of this.
Speaker 4:For sure.
Speaker 2:I don't foresee x AI getting any
Speaker 3:of
Speaker 2:this 200,000,000,000 just given that you and and Elon's current dynamic. Yeah. But
Speaker 1:And I wonder yeah. I I wonder how yeah. I mean, with with with Mistral, I wonder, you know, how much of Mistral was probably trained on existing hyperscaler infrastructure. And so It's a good point. Like, Microsoft has data centers There are cloud ABS has data centers in Europe.
Speaker 1:If you were not focused on specifically EU mandate, you would probably just train on, you know, EU based hyper American hyperscaler infrastructure. But maybe this is a shift away from that. I don't know. We'll have to see. Who knows?
Speaker 1:It seems like they want to build gigafactories, as they said. Five.
Speaker 2:But anyway Giga centers.
Speaker 1:Good luck to them. Hopefully, build some stuff and catch up.
Speaker 2:And And if you're building data centers in the EU, give us a shout. We'll have you on the show.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. I'd be interested to hear what's going on. But $200,000,000,000 floating around. They gotta control cost.
Speaker 1:They gotta get on ramp. They gotta get smart. Save both. Easy to use corporate cards,
Speaker 2:building payments, accounting, a whole lot more all in one place.
Speaker 1:Go to ramp.com.
Speaker 2:Go to ramp.com.
Speaker 1:Well, we got a great show for you today, folks. Let's let's run through who we got. We got Blake from Brink Drones coming in. He just announced a new fundraising round. We got Zach Weinberg from Curie talking to us.
Speaker 1:He just debated Keith Rabois with Logan Bartlett all about tariffs. We'll we'll ask him about that, but we'll also talk to him about that.
Speaker 2:Debated Anthony Pompliano.
Speaker 1:He did. I wanna hear a breakdown of
Speaker 2:the debate circuit. I think
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:This this is kind of like a, you know, hopefully will be more relaxing for him than his previous show appearances this week. Yeah. Because we're not here to talk anything related to politics. Never. Am interested to hear how he's updated his thinking, how he's thinking of the art of the squeal.
Speaker 1:The art of the squeal.
Speaker 2:And all other related topics.
Speaker 1:Then we have Ian Cinnamon from Apex Space. Jen from Anderil who's runs design over there and has been putting together this
Speaker 2:fantastic Just been on an
Speaker 1:absolute tear. And then we got Ryland. Is
Speaker 2:that right? Ryland? Yep.
Speaker 1:From BLW dot AI?
Speaker 2:Yep. So Blue Water Autonomy.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 2:He is building autonomous ships for the open ocean. Very cool company. Talked to Ryland for the first time about a month back. Mhmm. Excited to have him on and and be able to talk about what they're working on.
Speaker 2:He was at Amazon Robotics. He had a company called Six River Systems Mhmm. Which I believe, yeah, sold to Shopify for $450,000,000. And he's put together a fantastic team. He also was in the US Navy at the very start of his career.
Speaker 2:So full circle moment, which would be cool.
Speaker 1:Then we're kinda staying in defense tech for maybe a full hour there. But we got Zach from Conductor AI, a company that helps with, form filing with the DOD. And then we got Paul from Carbon Robotics building automated farm tractors. It's a very cool company. Very big already.
Speaker 1:Very cool. So Conductor AI.
Speaker 2:Conductor AI founder, by the way. Actually. Zach. I forget. Somebody was on saying that Chris Chris Backey on X was saying, you have a guest that's not on X.
Speaker 2:This is Alpha. How do I invest 10,000,000? So Zachary from Conductor AI, not on X.
Speaker 1:But he might be after the show. We've converted people before.
Speaker 2:Yep. It wouldn't be the first time.
Speaker 1:But anyway, let's run through some timeline before our first guest joins in six minutes. Jason Carmen is hiring a storyboard artist and assistant writer for his company, Story. Your days will be filled with drawing sci fi storyboards, writing creative outlines, briefs, and working directly with me on every project we're producing. Details below. Share some amazing photos.
Speaker 2:Fantastic opportunity.
Speaker 1:Yeah. If you're looking if you've been thinking about getting into Hollywood, news flash, Hollywood's dead. Jason Karman's the future. The only thing that you will see in theaters ever in the future will be produced by Jason because he's the only person kind of embracing the modern landscape of filmmaking in my opinion.
Speaker 2:Many people have said he's
Speaker 1:I think he's
Speaker 2:on a the next Steven Spielberg. Yes. I think we've said that. Yes. Among others.
Speaker 1:The next James Cameron. James Cameron has been floated around Yes.
Speaker 2:Yes. George Lucas.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Yes. Yeah. But young George
Speaker 1:Fred Coppola is in conversation.
Speaker 2:Basically, he's
Speaker 1:Lars von Trier
Speaker 2:as well. Be in the conversations with the greats after, you know, at least a couple more films.
Speaker 1:I think so. So I think so. But we're huge fans of Jason.
Speaker 2:No. This is a cool opportunity. I think it'll be interesting. He's he's obviously gonna push whoever takes this role to really leverage a lot of these new models.
Speaker 1:I was about to say
Speaker 2:like, incredible output.
Speaker 1:I was about to say, I bet there's so many storyboarding jobs that are stuck in the previous paradigm, and they're fighting technology. And you know if you go work with Jason, he's going to be embracing all of that in a very positive way that still holds on to what the what the humans do best and and how can he create great content with these tools, and he does view the AI products as tools. So very exciting. Anyway, we have a post here. Consulting firms are cooked, just absolutely cooked.
Speaker 1:The Pentagon says it's ending $5,100,000,000 worth of IT and consulting contracts with firms including Accenture and Deloitte.
Speaker 2:Yeah. One one thing to note here, Accenture has they did 60, nearly 65,000,000,000 in 2024 revenue, and Deloitte did 67,000,000,000 in revenue. So Okay. Clearly, you know, they they do have a lot of big government contracts. Yep.
Speaker 2:But I I you know, they're not completely One to 2%
Speaker 1:of their revenue probably something like that.
Speaker 2:Not completely cooked yet. They're diversified.
Speaker 1:And they're probably making 20,000,000,000 in new net new revenue from AI consulting.
Speaker 2:That's also just just with the Pentagon. Yep. So it's very possible. I wonder how much We should try and
Speaker 1:make a poly market around this. Where does the Pentagon's IT budget land in 2026? That's what
Speaker 2:I wanna know.
Speaker 3:That's niche.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So Accenture US federal government contracts accounted for 8% of their total revenue. So pretty significant. You know, unclear yet if if it's just the Pentagon that's cutting, but I would guess it's it's more groups.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And you probably already know this, but the show is supported and sponsored by Polymarket. We have a ticker down at the bottom. Interestingly, one of the markets that I've been following really closely has been which company has the best AI model by the April, and then they also have by the end of the year. And so what's interesting is you can kind of, merge these different markets to create kind of a yield curve of AI progress.
Speaker 1:And so Google is currently expected to have the best model by the April, but OpenAI is is expected to have the best model by the end of the year. And so a lot of this comes down to when the various models are releasing, what the expectations are, expectations about how different models will scale out, when the training runs end. And so it's one of the most interesting markets that I've been following on Polymarket, so go check it out. Anyway, let's move over to Will Menides.
Speaker 2:The other one that's interesting just because it's been such a meme, g GTA Oh. Six release in 2025 is sitting at a 68% chance.
Speaker 1:I can't believe how long it's taken them to release I
Speaker 2:mean, the expectations are so sky high at this point. I'm interested to see how that release goes. Yeah. But
Speaker 1:Have you heard the creators of GTA talk about why it's so hard for them to release it and why they've kind of had, like, writer's block more or less? It's very interesting. I don't know. Basically, said that, like, GTA has always been a satire on society, and they've had a lot of different so you turn on the radio, and they'll be making fun of all these different groups of people. And they kinda make fun of everyone, but they'll be, like, business people that are heightened versions of business people.
Speaker 1:In one of the GTA five missions, you hack into a tech company that's very clearly based on Facebook, and they're talking about, like, stealing all your data and, like, owning your whole personality and all this stuff. And it's very, it's very funny, and it's all in jest. And the creator said that now we're in this, like, culture war era where if you make fun of one side, that immediately aligns you with the other side and they're and and and getting that balance right. And then, also, they said that the pace of the vibe shifting and social media happens so fast that if they, like, if they made GTA six and they scripted out a bunch of stuff that was, like, making fun of, like, Trump in 2024 when they scripted it, like, well, the way you make fun of Trump in 2024 is very different than the way you make fun of him in 2020 because he's a different person and everything's changed and, like, the memes are different and stuff. And so by the time you write the script, bake that into the game, create the the sequence of events, people will say, oh, well, like, you're the way you're making fun of them makes it clear that you're thinking you're you're very partisan left or you're very partisan right.
Speaker 1:And they just wanna be like comedians, essentially.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's also interesting to be making a game around a topic, which I I just associate GTA with crime.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 2:You know? Yeah. Like, you know, 12 year old kids Yeah. Ten years ago were just going into GTA to just do crime.
Speaker 1:Yeah. But at the same time, was it was kind of like the I
Speaker 3:mean,
Speaker 1:GTA three were it was very much a a spin on, like, old mafia movies. Like, you know, they it would be like, oh, it's the godfather. And so, yes, it does touch on crime, but a lot of them feel like, oh, this is heat. Like, I'm playing heat right now. It's like, yeah.
Speaker 1:It's bank robbery. It is but but it's, like, it's kind of fun anyway. Anyway, we have, we have Blake from Brink Drones here. Let's bring him in the studio.
Speaker 2:Let's see.
Speaker 1:Doing, Blake?
Speaker 5:Doing good.
Speaker 3:It's great to see you guys.
Speaker 1:Great to see you too. How are you doing? What's the latest with the company? And what did you announce this week?
Speaker 3:Yes. So I I guess, first of all, we released our our nine one response drone network.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:Did that, man, maybe eight months ago, something like that, which is really the product that I started bring to build. So that was an important moment for me personally. But it kinda kinda what we designed to manufacture are drone recharging pods that we install on top of police and fire station roofs.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:And then we integrate that network with computer aided dispatch. So the second someone calls 91, we grab the GPS coordinate that's associated with that 91 call, and we can automatically launch a drone from the nearest recharging station to the emergency, send to that location at 60 miles an hour. When it arrives, we can deliver Narcan, EpiPens, personal flotation devices, all sorts of stuff, and also just provide first responders a lot of additional information about the situation they might be walking into. So our drones have thermal imagers. They can see hot spots and structure fires, communicate that to a fire department before they arrive.
Speaker 3:And then when they do arrive, help them point their hoses in the right direction. And then on sort of the policing side, we can, you know, tell responding officers if someone's holding a lighter or a gun or anything like that before they even show up. So that was huge. And what we just released or announced a couple days ago is our latest funding round. So a new 75,000,000 led by Index Ventures, but with significant backing from Motorola Solutions,
Speaker 1:which Amazing.
Speaker 3:Is actually kind of an interesting company. They have more or less a monopoly position in the body worn radio market. So they have preexisting commercial relationships with just about every police and fire department in the free world. And they're gonna start distributing our products and helping us sell into those logos. But we're also gonna be integrating with their body worn radio so officers can basically request drone backup very easily.
Speaker 3:That's awesome. And they have a strong market position in a number of public safety software categories. So we'll be integrating with all of that too.
Speaker 1:That's super cool. Can you take me through some of the history of the company? What was version one of the drone that you built? What was the first drone you built?
Speaker 2:It was just kinda hacking it. You said you said something that stood out, which is this was your original vision for the company, but you started it back in 2017. Yeah. And then there's been so many, you know, different areas in which drones have emerged and so much potential across a bunch of different categories. I imagine you had all this pressure to go in different directions over But, yeah, would love to hear of of how your thinking has evolved since the beginning, or was this like, this was the idea from the beginning and you're just, like, happy to finally, you know, get to to really focus and and deliver on it?
Speaker 3:I mean, I've I've loved aerospace technology since I was a little kid. Right? If if I had the choice when I was 16, I would have been designing full scale fighter jets, but or 12, whatever. But when I was that age, you know, I maybe I didn't quite have the resources to pull off, a full scale manned aircraft program, but I definitely did have the resources to build reasonably sophisticated props. So I've been doing that ever since I was pretty small.
Speaker 3:But, really, what got me thinking about public safety technology was the the October 1 tree. So I I I grew up in Las Vegas. I knew people that were along the strip when that was happening, And that's what got me thinking, like, maybe maybe there's a home for some of the technology that I love in the hands of first responders to help them save lives during critical incidents. So I went and I reached out to Vegas Metro SWAT, and surprisingly, they agreed to have lunch with, like, 18 year old me at the time.
Speaker 1:That's amazing.
Speaker 2:And the
Speaker 3:beginning of that interaction, you know, we we talked a lot about what happened during October 1, and I learned things that I didn't realize. But then the conversation broadened to the the rest of their jobs, you know, the high risk warrant searches and barricades and hostage rescue missions that they have to face every day. And, you know, I I walked I walked away from that interaction thinking if they just had a way to get eyes and ears in dangerous places, that that would be a life saving capability for them regularly in the context of active shooter response, but also all of the other missions that that I mentioned. And while I also conceptualized the idea of, like, a citywide nine one response drone network in that meeting, I was familiar with how technically complex it would be to pull something like that off from my time at DJI because they're my prior employer before I started Brink. Just the levels of reliability and airspace deep infliction and optics and, like, many other things that you have to pull off in order to really make that work.
Speaker 3:It it felt out of scope for me at the time. So I began with the indoor system, which is really like a purpose built drone for SWAT teams to get eyes and ears in dangerous places. We invented the world's first drone glass breaker. So the drone can actually fly up to a window, shatter it out, make entry. Then it has a lighter on board a LiDAR onboard.
Speaker 3:So as it's clearing rooms, it's drawing a floor plan of that structure and then streaming it back live to first responders, has thermal imaging capabilities, four k cameras, and also a two way audio system. So when the drone finds someone, a crisis negotiator can actually use it like a flying cell phone to try to deescalate the situation. And today Wow. Over 600 SWAT teams are actively using it, which is about 10 to 15% of the SWAT teams in The United States. And that that success is really what enabled us to take on this, like, larger vision of automating a lot of nine one call response.
Speaker 1:That's amazing.
Speaker 2:How do how do the teams test with the product? Do they have traditional sort of I imagine they're they can go to ranges and do scenario planning and shoot houses. Right? Yeah. Kill houses.
Speaker 2:Are they going and using your tech at the same shoot houses and and practicing, or do you build sort of digital systems that allow them to practice as well? What does that look like?
Speaker 3:Both. Yeah. We we have simulators. So if folks wanna fire drones virtually, that's totally possible. But many of them do choose to train with the actual hardware.
Speaker 3:And I I I would say, like, when I was developing the first version of LEMER, I actually rode along with Vegas Metro SWAT for, like, six months. So I went on twenty, thirty SWAT callouts, and I I watched them deploy the early versions of our drone. And more more than in any other way, like, that's how the technology was actually developed. Like, me paying close attention to what worked and what didn't work. And if something didn't work, I would go back to my mom's house at the time and, like, reengineer the product to the point where I thought it would do better on the next mission.
Speaker 3:And then when I would get a 3AM notification, there's a barricade at this address in Vegas, I'd, you know, bring that version of the drone.
Speaker 2:Can you talk about just how hard it is to deploy hardware in the field in these environments? We've talked about we talked about a company called Sonos that I'm sure you've interacted with at different points. Yeah. We bring we bring this up sometimes because it's like, you know, they're in these like highly controlled environments, which is just your home and they connect to your local Internet and you just like want them to be able to like, you wanna be able to hit play and just like have it play music yet 20% of the time It doesn't doesn't play. And I I bring that up as an example because it's like, it's not like they're not talented.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Hardware is Hardware and it's like that is the perfect example of just how hard hardware is. Yeah. Even in a hyper controlled environment where no lives are on the line. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And then you go into a situation, you know, that that you're dealing with with Brink all the time where like you need Yeah. This stuff needs to work because first responders are relying on it. You know, the nine nine one one operators are relying on it. You know, so much is kind of riding on it. So I'm curious how you think about sort of battle testing products internally and and at what point you feel like they're ready to be deployed in the field.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:I mean, the reality is it's just incredibly difficult. Yeah. I'll tell you. I mean, in the the very early days of Brink when I was riding along with the SWAT team, I I might have just faced, like, countless issues. A large portion of this happened during Las Vegas this summer.
Speaker 3:So, like, overheating was a theme for a couple of months. The RF environments where you're trying to operate drones can, in some cases, be incredibly congested, especially in ISM bands. Think about, like, an apartment complex. Right? Like, every apartment has its own Wi Fi transmission system.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And you're trying to share, you know, spectrum with all of that, which is terrible. In some cases, public safety radios will blow out your communications. You have to be aware of that and sort of, like, integrate with all of the other radios that a SWAT team might already be utilizing. And then everyone wants pilot assistance on these drones and obstacle avoidance, but many of the techniques that you would normally want to employ in order to give a drone indoor localization are sensitive to environmental factors, like visual inertial odometry utilizing an HD image sensor.
Speaker 3:Right? Like, maybe that works super well when you're not blowing up shitloads of dust all the time in attic. Right? Or maybe it works well in, like, a well lit room, but you you start kicking up insulation in zero light conditions and, like, good luck making that function. So what what you ultimately have to invest in is large numbers of redundant systems.
Speaker 3:Right? Localizing based on LiDAR data and IMU data and VIO data and GPS data, etcetera, barometer data, etcetera. And then if you layer enough systems and you're clever enough in your system design and software design and everything else, you can get to to something that works. But, I mean, this is this is what makes all of this hard. Right?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Like, putting together a quick demo of a product that competes with us, you know, that's pretty easy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3:That actually actually does better than what we make in the field is extraordinarily difficult. I mean,
Speaker 2:I No. And it and it's it's funny because I I imagine that that there's companies that that have or will try to compete with you that fly a DJI drone, and they're like, oh, I could make an American version
Speaker 1:of this that you could fly in
Speaker 2:a house. And then
Speaker 4:they They
Speaker 5:make it
Speaker 3:look so easy. DJI I mean, DJI is an extraordinary company.
Speaker 1:I would it
Speaker 3:would be really amazing to spend some time within within their org. Yeah. You break down
Speaker 5:some They make
Speaker 3:it look easy.
Speaker 1:But Can you break down some of the the the the design trade offs from, what people might have experienced with the DJI quadcopter? You know, I think about, like, twenty minute battery life being kind of the upper bound, but I've heard about drones, you know, being gas powered, being single rotor. There's so many different trade offs. Octocopters, there's all sorts of different what ZipLine's doing. We talked to the ZipLine folks yesterday.
Speaker 1:It's completely different system. So what trade offs have you made to move your product away from what people might be familiar with with, like, a DJI Mavic three or something like that?
Speaker 3:Totally. Well, the first thing I would say is DJI is actively getting banned throughout The United States.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So on on the order of 10 states have already passed laws preventing their public safety agencies from utilizing Chinese drones. Yep. DJI drones are Chinese. Autel drones are Chinese.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 3:DJI has something like 90 of the global market. Autel is roughly 5%. Wow. So, like, 95% of the market
Speaker 1:Is banned.
Speaker 3:Is controlled by by companies that can't sell into public safety agencies in 10 states,
Speaker 1:which Yeah.
Speaker 3:Definitely is generating a significant need for more drone makers in the free world. Right? There's also potential potentially some federal legislation coming that would have a similar effect on all 50 states.
Speaker 2:Sure. Since it's go for it. Sorry.
Speaker 3:Yeah. But no. I mean, if we're looking at the actual products
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:LEMR two competes most directly with DJI Avada. But we invented a whole bunch of features that make LEMR two very fit for purpose for a swap mission. Mhmm. Things like a glass breaking attachment. So the drone can actually make its own hole into a structure and make entry because it is fairly dangerous for SWAT operators to go up, rake and break a window when there's a person with, like, a rifle inside.
Speaker 5:No one
Speaker 6:wants to do that.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So our customers care a lot about that feature. LEMR two has a two way audio system. So when a drone finds someone, you know, it can actually be used to communicate with them, which is usually the number one goal besides getting someone out of a structure during a swap call out. Like, you want to establish negotiation and a line of of communication. If you do that, the the risk of something going terribly wrong goes down tremendously.
Speaker 3:So it's it's a pretty common tactic. Our drones have thermal imagers. Our indoor drone has a thermal imager. DJI does not offer an indoor system with a thermal imager that can see heat, which is unbelievably beneficial on basically every mission. I could go on and on and on.
Speaker 3:We've invented a million features along these lines.
Speaker 1:What about How you
Speaker 2:do you think about supply chains? Obviously, I'm sure it's top of mind this week. How are you thinking about it? How are you adapting Brink? I'm sure you've been, you know, trying to become independent from China.
Speaker 2:Time.
Speaker 3:You are. Hard, but it's super
Speaker 4:hard.
Speaker 3:I've been personally sanctioned by China. I cannot enter China. Brink has now been sanctioned by China twice.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 3:What's so we're not allowed to buy any parts in China. Wow. Yes.
Speaker 1:How how are you dealing with that? I feel like we just heard a story about Skydio not giving any batteries.
Speaker 2:Isn't it hilariously ironic that we can't pass federal legislation to ban DJI, which owns 90% of our market? Yet they're banning our our Our team.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's insane. Right? I mean
Speaker 3:Same old story though. Same old story. Right? Like, all of their social media platforms can come into our market and MVP, but we can't go into theirs. Yeah.
Speaker 3:The exact same dynamic is now unfolding in the drone industry. It's ridiculous.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, supply chain. Like, how are you thinking about it? Because it feels like just even if you're fully aligned with made in America, it's hard to get a reliable source of batteries in America. And we just saw that story with Skydio, having their battery manufacturer get pulled kinda out from under them.
Speaker 3:Well, our drones are NDA compliant. Meaning that we don't we don't utilize any electronics from China whatsoever. No processors, no radios, no imaging sensors, like none of that stuff. Yep. We we had to become NDA compliant a couple of years ago in order to sell to the customers that that we sell.
Speaker 3:Sure. So that was, like, a great step one. Got it. Listen. I mean, you just you have to set this as, like, an initial design requirement.
Speaker 3:Like Yeah. Engineering team, we can't use parts from China.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Can't do it.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 3:And if if that's a part of the original brief, then people find solutions.
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 3:Yeah. They work with new suppliers. They in house stuff. Like, whatever is necessary, they do it, and you you end up with a product. I think what what's excruciating is building something without that initial requirement set and then having to, like, transition it over.
Speaker 3:That seems really, like, really bad. But we just we've not been in a position where we've had to do that because of NDA compliance requirements and other things. We we saw this one come. So it is exactly with this very much.
Speaker 2:Do you think there's the an adequate investment in in the domestic drone design manufacturing today, or do we need it to next?
Speaker 3:I think it's I think it's off by, like, a factor of a hundred. It's actively it's actively terrifying, actually.
Speaker 1:Wow. We have we
Speaker 3:have no drone industrial capacity. I think the the DOD continues to underinvest in small drones. They're only now beginning to realize that these things are important weapons of war because of the the conflict in Ukraine, but they're not writing checks. I mean, the the largest military small drone purchase that I'm aware of is SRR, and it's just not very big. It's like, I think, digit thousands of systems.
Speaker 3:Those those are the orders that have been placed so far. So when we're buying a couple thousand drones at a time and DJI is producing literally millions a year. Wow. It's not a it's not a good situation for America for
Speaker 2:the future. How how do you how do you think about focus in that context? Because in my view, if there's not if you if we need more investment, one of the ways to do that would be you launch a DOD focused side of the business or you start to work, you know, with with foreign allies and stuff like that. But clearly, you've you've you've made a decision in the in the fullness of time to sort of focus on the local market, but I'm sure you have pressure all the time. I'm sure you have investors that, like, send you an article about Ukraine, and they're like, hey, Blake.
Speaker 2:Did you see what's happening in Ukraine? And you have to be like, yes. I saw, but, you know, we we have our own sort of battles at home.
Speaker 3:Listen. If military customers aren't buying drones, that's not a decision I can make.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Fascinating.
Speaker 1:What about in the in
Speaker 3:the supply say, though, just to be clear, like, I I absolutely adore the public safety market. Like, I I started this company to serve first responders. I think the lifesaving mission that they take on is extraordinary, and it's something that I'm I'm deeply passionate about and excited to support. So, like, that that's what I care about here. But, I mean, I'm not blind to what's going on in in China or Ukraine, and it's clear that systems very similar to the ones that we build will shape future conflict.
Speaker 3:Is
Speaker 2:it is it I'm I'm interested in and, again, maybe getting a little bit out of scope here, I'm interested. There's this classic idea of like, you know, US Marine training with some type of like AR based rifle and they spend all this time training on this sort of rifle. Are are they spending enough time training how to fly FPV drones, how to work with drone networks, or do you think the training is not even sort of caught up to the realities of the battlefield today?
Speaker 3:Well, you know, FPV drones are really hard to fly. I don't know. Have you either of you guys tried to fly, like, an FPV system before?
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's really hard. I've just done basic DJI type
Speaker 3:They're not they're not stabilized. Like, they don't have GPS. So if you take your hands off the sticks, FPV drones will fly into a wall at, like, 40 miles an hour. It takes incredible skill to, like, even keep them in a hover, like, let alone hit some moving target somewhere. They've been they've been highly successful in Ukraine, but I don't I don't feel like FPV drones as they're currently designed or manufactured are really like the end state of this technology.
Speaker 3:I think they'll be more automated. Yeah. They'll have stabilization systems. You'll be able to select a target, and the drone will do its own navigation to intercept that target. They won't rely necessarily on RF communication systems since the jamming environment is getting so bad in, you know, in in many places.
Speaker 3:So that that's all to say. Like, you can say, okay. We should be training our military on how to fly FPVs, but, like, that's gonna be a huge amount of work. And all of that work might not be very relevant in five years when some of the technologies that it described or capabilities I described mature to the point that they're they're commonplace. Yeah.
Speaker 3:So I don't know. I think really the right choice would be invest a lot more in purchasing drones, actually buy Oh,
Speaker 1:Zach. Zach. We're flipping people over. Have some technical difficulties in the studio today, but
Speaker 5:No worries.
Speaker 1:We'll be with you in just a minute. Zach, we gotta say goodbye to Blake.
Speaker 3:No. I I guess just to finish my my last statement. Sorry. I think the move here is for the US military to buy drones at significant scale, start incorporating them into inter armed forces, you know, get people familiar with them, but have drone manufacturers like us or or anyone else, like, build something that's actually fit for purpose. So, you know, all of those efforts result in a in a good outcome for all all all parties involved.
Speaker 1:That makes sense.
Speaker 2:Well, this has been fascinating. Yeah. Love to have you back again soon, and thank you for the work that you're doing, and congrats to you and the team on the new milestone.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Congratulations.
Speaker 2:Thank you. They really appreciate it.
Speaker 1:Massive round.
Speaker 2:Cheers, Blake.
Speaker 1:Cheers. Talk to you soon. Bye. And it seems like Zach's already here, so let's just bring him in. He's out.
Speaker 1:One second. He's out? Okay. We gotta bring him back in. We're we are building the flight the plane as we're flying it, and we're also being attacked by state actors.
Speaker 1:So
Speaker 2:The state actors.
Speaker 1:If you see an if you see an air, take it up with the state actors because they're the ones that are, hacking us at every at every turn at every turn. But we're very excited to have Zach Weinberg on the show. You probably know him from his repeated appearance on the Logan Bartlett show, formerly cartoon avatars, if you're a real Logan Bartlett head. Zach was almost the cohost.
Speaker 2:Great era.
Speaker 1:He denied it. He said, I I'm I'm not I'm not really the cohost of that show, but we know that so many great episodes came out of that era. He was debating the crypto folks again and again and again, weeks on end, fighting the fight during the height of ZERP. And, now he's moved on to fighting, Keith Rabois about tariffs. And, we'll we will get into all that, and then I'm sure we'll talk about bio and what he's up to, at Curie.
Speaker 1:So let's bring Zach in if he's here. Okay. He's coming back in. We will send him a message.
Speaker 2:I love his, X banner. It's a George Carlin quote. Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups. He loves it. Which sometimes is what it feels like on X.
Speaker 1:Yeah. He's been on a tear. This has been a a good week for him. He's had plenty to comment on and dunk on and, had a lot of fun chatting. I really want to get him to break down his debate with Anthony Pompliano as well as what he's been talking to Keith Roy and Logan Bartlett about.
Speaker 1:But let's bring him back in the studio when we get a chance. And in the meantime, let's tell you about numeral Sales tax on autopilot, you can spend less than five minutes per month on sales tax compliance. Go to NumeralHQ.
Speaker 2:Just doit.com.
Speaker 1:Just do it.
Speaker 2:Thousands of companies work with Numeral. You should be one of them.
Speaker 1:And what was the stat? Over 75 states now collect tax on?
Speaker 2:I think it was a couple hundred.
Speaker 1:Couple hundred.
Speaker 2:Actually, no. I have a note here 25 states.
Speaker 1:25,000 states.
Speaker 2:Soon, if if if we have our imperial way, it could be hundreds of states.
Speaker 1:Yes. That requires The moon's gonna be a state and they're gonna have sales tax on the moon for sure. Yeah. Greenland? Oh, you think you can ship to Greenland without paying sales tax?
Speaker 1:Right. Yeah. Right. We're not letting those penguins free ride on us. They're gonna be paying sales tax, and you're gonna be paying your sales tax on Numeral with Numeral HQ.
Speaker 1:Go to NumeralHQ.com. Check it out. In the meantime, Palmer Lucky fired back at folks hating on Colossal, talking trash about how, oh, colossal didn't create direwolves. Technically, they just spliced 10,000 year old year old direwolf DNA with gray wolves. They should spend their time arguing that Jurassic Park did not, in fact, depict any dinosaurs.
Speaker 1:And, Palmer shares, this thing sucks actually. And it's literally the coolest thing ever. And I agree. Very very excited that the dire wolves are back, that we got hairy, big, gray wolves. Very funny.
Speaker 1:You know, who knows where colossal goes. Maybe it's just more entertaining zoos, but I'm I'm here for them.
Speaker 2:I just
Speaker 1:I'm rooting for them.
Speaker 2:Great great positioning, the de extinction company. Yep. And they're putting up some big numbers. At least in the funding department
Speaker 1:for sure.
Speaker 2:There he is.
Speaker 1:Zach, welcome to the Can
Speaker 4:you hear me?
Speaker 1:Yeah. We can hear you.
Speaker 4:You kicked me out, and then Zoom said I wasn't allowed back in.
Speaker 1:I'm sorry about that. Well, thank you for joining us. We're very excited to have you. Can you give us a little breakdown of the last two days you've been on a debate tour? Which debates do you think you've won?
Speaker 1:Where where where where's your weakest talking point that I could Needle you
Speaker 2:on.
Speaker 1:And we were we
Speaker 2:were joking earlier. Hopefully, this is the most enjoyable, you know, podcast experience that you have this week because I I know some of them got a little contentious.
Speaker 1:A little feisty.
Speaker 2:So it's great to have you.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Yeah. It's been fun. I pray to God I did not lose a debate to a Bitcoin bro. So at that point, I'm just committing suicide and hanging it up.
Speaker 1:You did go in the lion's den with that one.
Speaker 4:Yeah. No. Actually, I would say the most interesting conversation I did, we just posted, which was yesterday with Derek Thompson from The Atlantic who co wrote the abundance book with Ezra Klein, which I think is a great book. And we mostly agree on 70% of the things and, you know, some of the stuff we didn't agree with at at at the end. And we got to both, which was really nice.
Speaker 4:So that has been fun. You know, it's funny. Like, I the reason I started to do it be is because these topics, tariffs Yeah. Pie. Like, these are not interesting topics to the vast majority of Americans day to day.
Speaker 4:Like, they don't care about this stuff Yeah. Until right now.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 4:And so I was like, alright.
Speaker 5:Fuck
Speaker 4:it. Let's go have a conversation about things that, like, I'm interested in and I think are important for America. But, normally, you know, the audience of is like, you know, my family.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 4:So that's part of why I was doing it, and and still have a few more next week actually just to try and make try to make sense of what's going on in this really complicated economic concepts, you know, for, like, normal people. That's been my goal. So it's been fun. It's been fun.
Speaker 1:Are you abundance pilled at this point? Because I was I was listening to something about Ezra Klein talking about how he was very, like, inspired by West Wing, and the abundance movement feels very aspirational, but there's always this question of like when the rubber meets the road, can the out can the impact of that actually not just be To
Speaker 2:me, yeah, to me at a base level Yeah. It's an amazing positioning. Yeah. Like coming at it from a bunch you can jump right spot. Even yesterday, there was somebody in San Francisco that was saying, we should tax Waymo to fund public transit.
Speaker 2:And then somebody was quoting it being like, you know, basically like, the idea is like, this is kind of ridiculous. Like, why don't we just make Waymo so cheap that that everybody use it? Yeah. There's just an abundance of, you know, autonomous cars that everyone has access to.
Speaker 4:By the way by the way, you do tax Waymo already. Yeah. Yeah. You're like, welcome to how this works already, guys.
Speaker 2:You know?
Speaker 1:You're you're
Speaker 4:real shitty at building public transport. Like, that's the problem. It's not the Waymo tax. By the way, Waymo loses, like, a billion dollars a year. Like, they're already sending you money.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Anyway, yeah. I mean, what is your read on abundance? Not just I mean, obviously, give me, like, the do you like the framing, but then also, is it a meaningful shift from just rhetoric, it will win the election, or it will actually have meaningful change if it is implemented?
Speaker 4:I love the concept because it gets the Democrats in particular, but America talking about growth
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 4:And talking about how growing the pie and making the pie bigger is better for everybody. Mhmm. Then as a dem or as, like, a left leaning person, when you wanna talk about how the pie is allocated, which is about taxes and redistribution and social programs and all of that, Those are cool conversations to have when the pie is really big. When the pie is really small and you think of it in this fixed mentality, then you get into these awful debates of you assume everybody that there's only $1 to go around. But in reality, there's way more dollars if you grow.
Speaker 4:And so I love that framing. It brings us back to Clinton, not Hillary, but, like, Bill back in the day. Right? You know, this is the kind of stuff that they were talking about. This is why I think the Dems, you know, were a great political party, you know, twenty years ago.
Speaker 4:Yeah. So that part I agree with. I think it's great. The other thing I think they they touched on that I love is that abundance actually matters a lot more in a few specific categories. Like, it's not it's abundance is not created equal.
Speaker 4:And in particular, housing. That housing is kind of like the only thing that really matters in the long run for most people because it is such a large percentage of everybody's income, either as a homeowner because of the mortgage or obviously as a renter. And sure, you can complain about grocery prices, but the reason you care so much about the movement in grocery prices is because housing is eating up 50% of your income. Mhmm. And so, like, go get the big thing, and then the little things will will matter a lot less.
Speaker 4:So I really like that positioning as well. I think they nailed the, like, problem in America is is is really housing costs. And other stuff matter, but not not as much. Health care is probably the second. Where we disagree, and we had this little fun little disagreement on it, is what is the role of government in creating that abundance?
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 4:And where do you need government to do stuff such as building roads and providing, you know, health insurance through Medicare and and Medicaid, through, like, construction of energy infrastructure and things like that, military. And where do you need government to get the fuck out of the way? Because government is the thing holding us up And rules and regs that prevent the free market and from capitalism from building the homes. There's just a lot of nuance, I think, of where government should and shouldn't be involved. And so their book is a little bit more like make government good at its job.
Speaker 4:And my view on that is like, I don't really think that's ever going to happen for a variety of reasons. And so there are some places where we actually need to get the government out of the process, and and that will help. And and it just depends on what you're talking about. Are you talking about, like, you know, bridges and tunnels and highways? Are you talking about homes?
Speaker 4:Are you talking about semiconductor manufacturing? And we disagree on some of the specifics there. But the goal is is is noble and good and way better than what we have been talking about for the last ten years, which is like, I don't even know what we've been talking about. It's been
Speaker 1:I agree. Yeah. That was a good point. I I I wanna get to tariffs. How did you I mean, like, take me on the roller coaster of emotion that you went through over the past week with regard to Liberation Day and the fallout from it.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And then
Speaker 2:we can get to the art of the squeal. Yeah.
Speaker 1:The art of the Talk about it.
Speaker 2:It's just been the talk of the timeline today.
Speaker 4:I have no idea what that is, but interested in learning more. You know, like, because I work day to day in in in biotech and in in in health care, but specifically in biotech, and in early stage biotech, which is before a drug is approved. Right? This is all drug discovery. The tariff stuff doesn't really impact us on a day to day basis.
Speaker 4:And so from, like, a professional side of things, it's interesting to watch and be interested in it because, you know, tax revenue helps fund science. So I'm very interested in growing the economy because it'd be nice for us to have more money to fund more science. That's that's really my big interest in this. Right? Like, if America were 10 times richer, then the NIH budget would be 10 times bigger.
Speaker 4:And you know how much cool shit we would discover as, like, humanity if the NIH budget was 500,000,000,000 instead of 50,000,000,000. Like, that's pretty cool. I think it's, 30,000,000,000. And so that's why I'm really interested in this stuff because I think, you know, as members of society today and our kids, we benefit from a booming US economy in ways that are not always clear, and one of them is in science and in drug discovery. So that part that's part of why I'm interested in this stuff because I think it's bad for America if we don't grow.
Speaker 4:But on a day to day basis, it hasn't impacted us. Now there are other things going on in the administration related to health care as I'm sure you've seen with, you know, RFK and the FDA that we we pay a lot more attention to, and they're very nuanced biotech specific problems, which, you know, needs a lot of context to share. Yeah.
Speaker 1:With regard to the NIH, why hasn't why is that $30,000,000,000 budget so important? Why you know, we we don't we like, DARPA created the Internet, but Right. The free market and venture capital in Silicon Valley is like, well, they kinda took it from there. Right? Why hasn't that happened in in biotech?
Speaker 1:Why do we need the government doing anything? Why can't they just kinda get out of the way? And, you know, kid in the lab, you know, with his CHECH EPT, looking it up, formulate something, and they test it. And then the government may be still there to approve it, but, you know, it moves a lot faster.
Speaker 4:I knew this question was coming because I get asked it all the time. And I was I was trying to come up with, like, a simple way to understand where you need and where you don't need government in biotech. I'm gonna try my best.
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 4:I wanna make the distinction between biology Mhmm. Which is the understanding of how the body works
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 4:Versus drugs. You could think of it as chemistry, it's more than chemistry now, which is creating something, a pill, an injection, mRNA, siRNA, whatever. There's a lot of different things you can make to change that biology. Mhmm. Right?
Speaker 4:One is like, I I wanna this is a thing that's going wrong in the body. I wanna I wanted to do more. I wanted to do less. That is biology. And then there's the, I gotta now create something that doesn't naturally happen in in your body or isn't happening to to make an impact on disease.
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 4:And those are two different things. Those are two very, very different things. Biology, you cannot patent. There is no patent for understanding, you know, a a process that happens in your cells or happens in, you know, your immune system. Right?
Speaker 4:Like, you gotta remember a p I think people think we know more about how the human body works than we
Speaker 1:do. Mhmm.
Speaker 4:We barely understand how this thing works. I mean, we have a little bit of, like, we understand, you know, how to, like, sequence DNA and how DNA creates RNA and how RNA sometimes creates proteins. Like, we have some basic level understanding of this stuff. But it is an incredibly complex system that if you don't understand how it works, you can't even start a drug program in the first place because what are you pointing it to? What are you trying to drug?
Speaker 4:And that, I think, is really, really important because there is mostly no business model in finding new biology. Like, learning how a certain type of cell works or how cell communication works. Like, you can't make money doing that. And it is real I mean, like, yes, some rare cases, sure. But you really can't.
Speaker 2:So the solution is to do like a DAO or something like that.
Speaker 3:I mean Owned.
Speaker 5:Owned. Admitted.
Speaker 4:Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1:Crypto is the solution.
Speaker 2:Sorry. Sorry. I don't wanna trigger you.
Speaker 3:I know you
Speaker 2:were triggering.
Speaker 1:It's good.
Speaker 3:It's good.
Speaker 1:I'm kidding.
Speaker 4:And so like, you know, when when people talk about academic discoveries and discoveries in the lab and government funded discoveries and none of like, those are all true things.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 4:But mostly what academics discover mostly, in this world, in my world is biology. Oh, this is how this thing works. This is how this process works. And then private group groups go and go, ah, okay. Now that I understand, you know, this thing is causing a type of cancer or this thing is causing cell signaling in a weird way or this thing is causing Alzheimer's or dementia or some immune, you know, condition.
Speaker 4:Now I'm gonna try and make a drug to go and stop that thing from happening or modulate it down. And those drugs, you can patent.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 4:Right? And that's what creates an incentive for private business to go and take a massive amount of risk because most drugs fail, and it costs hundreds of millions of dollars to figure out if they fail. But because you can patent those things, and then because that patent life is long enough and the prices on the other side of this are high enough that you can make money doing it, you could you know, it's not easy to make money, I'm like let me be clear. So you need government to discover biology. Without it, you won't it won't happen.
Speaker 4:And and here's, like, a simple there's a few examples of this that not I'm gonna try to make it tangible, but, like, we do not know what causes Alzheimer's.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 4:We have no idea. I mean, we have some we have some things that show up in the brains of Alzheimer's patients that seem wrong. Right? And this is the whole, like, tau and, you know, some of the the best way to describe it. There are things in the brain of Alzheimer's and dementia patients that shouldn't be there.
Speaker 4:And so, okay, we're gonna try and, like, remove those things from the brain, but we don't actually know what's causing those things to to to to be there in the first place. And is that actually is that causing Alzheimer's? Is it driving the disease? Is it a is it or is it actually a passenger? There's something else driving it over here, and that's causing this to which what are these things do we try and drug?
Speaker 4:Right? Like and, you know, this is, like, tau and beta amyloid and all these things we think are kind of involved, but we don't actually know what causes Alzheimer's. We're not even close to understanding this. And so if you want good drugs for dementia and Alzheimer's in the future, we need to know what the hell is happening now. And without government funding that kind of biology research, we will never figure this out.
Speaker 4:And because there is no business really in doing that kind of lab work. It's it's it's open ended science. You know, this is where you need philanthropy and and and money that isn't chasing profit. I'm the first person who will say capitalism is the greatest thing that ever happened to humanity. But there are some places where it doesn't work, and that's where there isn't profit to be made.
Speaker 4:And biology is really, really, really key.
Speaker 2:Can you I wanted to get your thoughts on tariffs specifically in the context of the pharmaceutical industry. Trump had come out this week and basically said that pharma is next. But if you actually look at The US China, there there isn't a huge pharmaceutical trade imbalance between The US and China. It seems like we buy a lot from them. They buy a lot from us.
Speaker 2:Is that should that even be a part of the conversation or is it just a total distraction?
Speaker 4:It's really, really stupid. And and it's stupid for it's it's even dumber than that, which is that the pharmaceutical product that you're manufacturing at the end of this is the approved drug. By the time you're at that point, all the hard stuff has kind of really been done, right, which is figuring out what drug to make in the first place, how to design, how to develop it, all the risk, all the failures are in what happens before this, before the approval. And that's where all the money is made. Right?
Speaker 4:All the money all the stuff that is, like, strategic for The United States to be good at is in drug discovery and drug development. It is not drug manufacturing that matters. Right? Like, that is not the hard part. It's not easy, but, like, that's not the thing that we need to be doing in America.
Speaker 4:These are also, like, giant facilities. There's not a ton of people. It's really more of, like, quality control processes. It's actually better for us if we can build them elsewhere because it allows drugs to be slightly cheaper for Americans. Right?
Speaker 4:Like, I don't view drug manufacturing as strategic to The United States. Like, someone's gotta do it, but that's not the part that matters. The part that matters is drug discovery and drug development, which is really what our biotech and pharmaceutical companies that's mostly what they're good at. Just because it's made in Canada or Europe, I don't think really matters as long as the quality control is there. So tariffing the last mile manufacturing is irrelevant.
Speaker 4:Like, it just it just doesn't make any sense. Why do we need these things here? It's just gonna make things more expensive. So it gets the problem wrong?
Speaker 2:Yeah. That makes sense.
Speaker 4:That makes sense?
Speaker 2:Can you talk about AI in the context of the early stage investing that you're doing, drug development work that, you know, the portfolio is doing? I did a command f on your site by the way. You don't mention AI at all. Yet every time Sam Altman needs to raise another $1,020,000,000,000, the sort of like, you know, the idea that LLMs are gonna cure all disease seems to come up. So I'm curious to get your take on the opportunity generally.
Speaker 2:Because like our our takeaway from this week is like with with all the potential of AI, it's sort of upsetting in many ways that we've had to kind of like, you know you know, take this, like, detour down, you know, trade war lane and yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean, at the same time, like, when when AlphaFold dropped, it was like the protein folding problem is solved. Biotech markets didn't really move, and I'm always wondered why there's such a disconnect there between, like, the hype around AI and bio versus what the market is saying. But maybe it's taking stage taking place at the early stage, but would love just the the the the current rant on AI and biotech.
Speaker 4:Okay. One of the hardest things to explain in a short period of time, the the the the TLDR is like nice, cool tool in the toolbox. Mhmm. Useful. We'll make a few steps to this process potentially more efficient.
Speaker 4:Not a panacea by any means. Mhmm. Why? Let's let's see if I can try to explain this. Making a drug is like a 40 step process that requires you to actually make early versions of, like, the physical molecule itself.
Speaker 4:Right? Because you don't just because the computer says do x, y, and z doesn't mean it's right. Right? Like, it's not it's not software predictions where it makes you a picture and then you go out of that picture. You have to go and make the thing
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 4:That the computer is suggesting if we're talking about, in this case, using AI for the drug making part of it, not the biology part. We can talk about biology in a second or differently. So you gotta go, like think, like, make, test, iterate cycle. Mhmm. And it's atoms.
Speaker 4:It's not bits. It's these are physical atoms. So you do go, like you know? And then you take that early version of the drug, and you stick it in, like, a petri dish, and you see what happens. And then you have to then you have to tweak it.
Speaker 4:And you gotta go make more of them, and you gotta run this little loop. And then if that works to where you want, now you gotta go and stick it in a mouse. Which mouse? Does the mouse have the right model? Does the mouse predict a human?
Speaker 4:Which version is it a human? Like, there's so many things. And then, okay, you get through the mouse, dog or monkey. Right? Because my because because mice aren't people.
Speaker 4:Mice aren't people. Right? And neither dogs or monkeys, but they're closer to people. Right? And so now you gotta go do all that And so, like and then, by the way, even after all of this, even after all of this, we've gotten through the the petri dish and the mouse and the dog and the monkey, and then you go to the people.
Speaker 4:You still don't know if the drug works because you have to go like, humans are weird. Right? Biology is weird. We don't know how it works. You know, you stick it in if it it does everything right in the monkey, that doesn't mean it's gonna work in the human.
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 4:And so, unfortunately, like, there's just the data you would need to make all of these predictions. And then it's not just the predictions. You need the feedback loop. Right? Like, why is Scale AI a $20,000,000,000 business?
Speaker 4:Because you need a bunch of people clicking, like, not the right picture, not the right picture, not the you need that loop for training, and you don't have that loop in biotech. You do not have that you have to the date the size of the data we're talking about here is, like, one one billionth of what you can do in digital land. Because in the digital world, your training dataset is the history of every written word and picture ever in the history of humanity. Like, think of the size of the training data. In biology, you don't have that.
Speaker 5:One other little nuance
Speaker 4:is your training even where you do have training data, and there's different types of training data, in terms of trying to predict. It's protein structure is one thing. A lot of that training data comes in a petri dish. Right? Like Mhmm.
Speaker 4:We're not act when we when we think about, like, how a cell works and what's going on inside of it, we're not actually measuring and watching that cell in a real biological system, meaning, like, it's touching other cells and doing stuff. You're doing it in a petri dish Mhmm. Which is a piece of plastic. And, like, the way that cell works on a piece of plastic is not the same way that it tends to work in a in a could we tell you exactly what that difference is? No.
Speaker 4:And so you have some really big challenges in even just the quality of the training data if you want to use this to make high quality predictions. And so it's gonna come off as I'm, like, super negative about all this, and I'm not. I'm not. I think it's awesome that we have slightly better tools to make predictions about, you know, how to design a small molecule. That's really what this is particularly good at.
Speaker 4:But this idea that, like, a computer is designing a drug is so far from reality that that's why you don't see the the this the like, the people who know
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Know. And that's why it's not moving. It's great. It's cool. I'm glad we have it.
Speaker 4:It's not going to change the game. And part of this is like not to finish my rant here if you don't understand the biology, what is the computer trying to predict? Right? Like all the way back to the thing we just, you know, we talked about in the beginning. If we don't even know what causes a particular disease, what is the computer going to make for you?
Speaker 4:Right? Like, and so so much of the problem of making drugs for the future, and there's so many challenges in all of this, and it's great that America is good at this. But, like, it is actually on the it's in the biology side of things where, you know, know, we we need more science. We need more scientists. We need more smart scientists.
Speaker 4:So the idea
Speaker 2:of think it's a budgeting. I think it's a good a good it's it's not necessarily negative, but it's a good wake up call to the sort of EAC, you know, super AGI pill types that say, just survive the next two years and then we're all gonna live forever, you know, which is I did wanna ask specifically how you thought about the potential of even just base LLMs within healthcare. There was a study recently around how, you know, basically LLM based therapy was actually showing to have tremendous potential and that's cool because the idea that everybody can get access to a, you know, high, relatively high quality therapy effectively for free could have tremendous benefits. But I'm curious if you think AI can be deflationary within healthcare broadly outside of, you know, drug discovery and development, things like that?
Speaker 4:Probably not at a giant number, but there are some things that I think these LMs will be particularly good at. I'm not going to talk about the boring part of health care, which is like insurance, reimbursement
Speaker 2:PDFs.
Speaker 4:Prior authors, like paperwork.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 4:I actually think LMs should be awesome on the paperwork side. And so things should get better. Should see things should be faster, efficient. That'll be great. No more you ever make an appointment with a doctor and, like, some, you know, front desk person is trying to call you 18 times?
Speaker 4:You're like, hey. Have you ever heard of, like, a text message that I can confirm my appointment? Like, that stuff should be solved, hopefully. I think the other area that is really useful is in differential diagnosis, which is basically like the job of a doctor to try and figure out what's wrong with you.
Speaker 3:Yep.
Speaker 4:And part of that is understanding the science, and then part of that is, like, the literature that you have to you know, based on the symptoms that this person is talking about and telling you, like, what might it be, and that's probability weighted type analysis that, you know, the docs do, and they try and rule stuff out. And a lot of that just comes from experience and education, and and that should be replicable by models over time. You know? Well I think that's getting better.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. Do you have any specifically, one thing that I think is interesting is like way it seeming seemingly like people are much more excited to get their biomarkers done and their services now that allow you to test a really broad range of biomarkers for seemingly less money than going yeah. Yes. Companies like Function and and Superpower and others. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Are you excited about just having a lot more data? And obviously, it's like a snapshot in time, but that and data by itself is not valuable, but I imagine
Speaker 4:That's it right there. You just hit it right there, which is like data by itself. Just because you can measure it doesn't make it important. And just because it's going up or down doesn't mean it matters. And sometimes the data can be confusing and actually point you in weird directions that don't make sense because this biomarker that we think is important, we don't actually have great data to know whether it
Speaker 7:is. Mhmm.
Speaker 4:And, you know, certain things can be elevated in your blood because of, like, the coffee you had in the morning, and it doesn't mean so I think it's great that people are interested in their own health and interested in understanding what's going on in their body. I think the chances of wide blood based biomarker screening like basically what function does
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 4:Actually mattering for the vast majority of people is probably not true. It's kind of like healthy neurotic people staying more healthy and neurotic. Mhmm. And things that really matter are much more for people with chronic disease and cancer. Tech people have this really weird view of health care because tech people tend to be healthy.
Speaker 4:And that's not health care. Mean, it's health care, but that's not the health care that really matters, which is mostly when you're older and sicker. And chronic disease is a symptom of aging. And so I'm much more interested in how do you think about health care as it relates to disease rather than, you know, these, like, biomarkers that don't necessarily tell you tons of things. The the flip of it is look.
Speaker 4:Like, every once in a while, it is going to catch something that matters. Right? It's it's not it's not never. It's just not frequent and often. There's also a risk in health care.
Speaker 4:I know I have jump in. There's always a risk in health care of finding something you think is going wrong, trying to figure that out, and while you are trying to figure it out, harming yourself. And a simple example of this is a biopsy. Right? Like, you go and get a scan, and you gotta remember, it's a scan.
Speaker 4:It's not a detail. So, like, you see something in a scan. Could be an x-ray. It could be MRI, whatever. And it looks like, oh, we have this little nodule here.
Speaker 4:And so is it cancerous? Is it not? We don't know. So you have to go get a biopsy, which is like a giant needle, Right? They gotta, like, stick into the whatever that thing is and pull out some cells and take a sample and then go test it.
Speaker 4:And, like, biopsies are not danger free. And you can hurt yourself, especially if it's in your, like, GI area, and especially if you're older. Right? And the doc can do it incorrectly, and you can have symptoms and and and complications. Doing more in health care is not always better.
Speaker 4:Mhmm. And I think that's really hard for people to understand is, like, more is not always better because treat diagnosis and treatment is not risk free.
Speaker 1:Except when it comes to the NIH budget or NIH budget maxing over here.
Speaker 4:Doing more health care services is not always better.
Speaker 1:But thank you for joining. This is a fantastic conversation. I really appreciate you.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Let's let's do this again soon.
Speaker 1:I probably have
Speaker 2:that. 40 other questions.
Speaker 1:Yeah. This is fantastic.
Speaker 2:Thanks for
Speaker 1:your Official biotech correspondent. Thank you. You
Speaker 4:you go. Works for me.
Speaker 1:We'll talk to you soon. Bye. Next up, we got Ian Cinnamon from Apex coming in the studio. Apex is a very cool company if you haven't looked at it. Apexspace.com.
Speaker 1:You can actually track the Ares SN one, the orbit
Speaker 2:of the A little pop nominative determinism, Ian Cinnamon. Okay. Cinnamon is a spice Oh.
Speaker 1:Dune. Oh, okay. I was wondering where you're going. How did I like that? I like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah. You you can track its orbit right now. The last update, twenty one hours ago, manufacturers Apex. The mass, 200 kilograms wet, 200 kilograms dry. That is both of us.
Speaker 1:It launched on a Falcon nine, launched back over one year ago. So it's been up there for a year ago. Air launched from the Air Force Western test range. We're excited to talk to Ian about Apex and everything in space. We are gonna do a full space day on the show soon.
Speaker 1:Yep. Was talking to Ian about putting that together, and we'll certainly bring him back for that. But we have him in the studio now, so welcome to the stream, Ian.
Speaker 2:Great to
Speaker 1:see you. How are doing? Boom.
Speaker 5:Hey, guys. Great great to be here. I heard
Speaker 7:you talking all about Ares, and it's been on orbit over a year now. And Yeah. There's a lot more going up soon.
Speaker 1:Congratulations. I mean, I feel like there's a there's a very clear binary when you're starting a space company and you get your first thing into actual space. Deleon's talked about this with Varda. It's like the number of companies that raise a lot of money and never got a single thing to space, it was too high, but it's coming down, and you're part of the movement. So can you break us down for us just the history of the company, the goal, the mission, how things are going, and kind of what what what what's keeping you up at night now?
Speaker 7:Yeah. No. Absolutely. So for a little bit of context, company is very new. Right?
Speaker 7:We're only about two and a half years old at this point. I started the company with my cofounder Max Benassi, spent his career, scaling production at SpaceX Mhmm. September of twenty twenty two. And it took us, less than one year from starting the design of Ares, the satellite that's on orbit from a clean sheet design, blank piece of paper to it actually working in orbit, which you know, to your point, it's not actually just about can you put the piece of metal into space because frankly, it's not too hard to put a piece of metal into orbit. Right?
Speaker 7:You pay SpaceX. You throw a
Speaker 8:hunk of metal in there.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 7:It has to work. Yeah. And that I think is the key thing that, like, Dalian and I actually went to college together. So we've known each other forever. And I think one of the things that we bond over is both of our companies not only got something to orbit, but the damn thing actually works.
Speaker 7:And that is something that is rare, frankly, in this industry. And, like, there's other great companies out there that get to orbit. It lasts a few months. It lasts a few days. But having them actually work after a full year and keep working is a little bit unheard of in this industry.
Speaker 7:So I'm just really proud of the team that we put together that let us actually do this.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So talk about the the actual product, what you actually put in space. It's designed it's on your website, it says spacecraft platform. I'm seeing satellite bus. Break those terms down for us.
Speaker 7:Yeah. So in the industry, a satellite itself is not just, you know, this piece of mail. Right? It's effectively comprised of two components. One is
Speaker 8:called the bus, and the other is the payload.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 7:So the satellite bus itself is all of the hardware, electronics, the avionics, the control systems that actually let a payload function in space. So let's say you wanna go take photos of the Earth. Right? You can't just stick a camera and a lens up into orbit. You need to
Speaker 8:give it power. It needs to be able to move around. It needs to talk to the Earth.
Speaker 7:The satellite bus does all of that. In The US, we call it a satellite bus. The rest of the world calls it a platform. Frankly, platform, I have to say, you know, I'm a big fan of The US and America and everything that we're doing, obviously, but platform might be a better name than a bus. But I just can't convince the US government to change the name from bus to platform for whatever reason.
Speaker 7:They're stuck in calling it a bus.
Speaker 2:Oh, well. Well, we'll start calling it a platform.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, I I I'd love know about, some of the some of the satellites that you're excited about going on the bus or the platform as we'll call it. What are you excited about? We've heard a lot about, Internet communication. We've heard the story of Starlink, obviously. We've heard Planet Labs and Albedo working on stuff to take better images.
Speaker 1:Are there any and then, obviously, Varda's doing crazy stuff up in space now. What's exciting to you, and how are you designing the business to take advantage of those trends?
Speaker 7:So when we call it a platform, we mean that because we really wanna be a platform provider. And whether you wanna do something like take images of the Earth or you wanna beam power down to Earth or you wanna be able to, you know, shoot down missiles that are coming to attack The US, we wanna be the platform that works for everything. And I will say, I think we've done a pretty good job. If you look at the customers that we have so far, we have people who are using our platform from on one side of the spectrum. They're doing hyperspectral imaging, which means you have a camera that could see in hundreds of colors that you and me as humans cannot describe.
Speaker 7:And from space, they could look down at Earth and say, that's farmland with potatoes that are seven days old. Right? Like, that's nuts
Speaker 5:to be able
Speaker 7:to see from space. Then we have other customers. Aetherflux is one example founded by a good friend of mine, Baiju. He started Robinhood, and now he's going and he started Aetherflux, which is collecting power from space and beaming it down to earth, all using our platform, which is phenomenal. Then we have other customers who are using it for defense missions.
Speaker 7:Right? Androil's a great customer of ours. We continue to do more and more with them. And then there's others that I can't talk about yet at this time. But the theme that honestly excites me more than anything, it's not just connectivity or taking photos of Earth.
Speaker 7:But something that has become, frankly, something we've always loved but has only been talked about recently in the public domain is this idea of how do we develop the technology to protect The US and our allies from the scariest threats that are beginning to emerge. And to me, that's everything from hypersonic glide vehicles to missiles to everything else. And being able to use satellites in orbit to actually protect from this is phenomenal. And that's you know, you read the recent executive order titled Golden Dome. Right?
Speaker 7:It's asking for space based capabilities that protect The US and our allies from these very scary threats.
Speaker 8:And that is what, frankly, for
Speaker 7:me and my company, we are most inspired to support.
Speaker 2:Do you think this the speed at which you guys have not just become a company and develop products, you think that can be the new normal just based on the the sort of talent density that SpaceX had and and other companies of that generation training people like yourself on how space works is one one one question I have is people in Silicon Valley have for a long time had this sense of, you know, looking at an industry they know nothing about and saying, I'm gonna go do it. I'm gonna fix it. I got this guys. And they can raise
Speaker 1:a of money
Speaker 2:for And that's honestly in many ways played out very well in a bunch of different industries. But space seems like, you know, an order of magnitude harder, potentially more. And I'm curious if this is an industry where you can get people coming, you know, true outsiders coming in and, know, actually solving problems or or you're better off, you know, putting your time in at an Apex or a SpaceX before kind of making that leap.
Speaker 7:It's a great question. I mean, I'll be the first to admit, I don't come from a space background. I come from a software background. I built an AI computer vision company and I sold that to Palantir. Like, was my background.
Speaker 7:Now at Palantir, I got to work on software related to satellites, but I wasn't manufacturing hardware. So I'm an outsider. I'd argue that you look at other successful companies out in the market. Right? Like, we mentioned Dellion and Varda.
Speaker 7:Right? Like, Dellion does not necessarily come from a aerospace background. Right? Like, he he was working on venture investing and other things before. I think the secret, though, is you need to pair that outsider point of view with a brilliant technologist who can bring it together.
Speaker 7:So in my case, my cofounder Max spent his career at SpaceX. In Deleon's case, he had Will Brewery who came from SpaceX as well. And that can like, the the combination of that together, I think, is what truly is special. If you look at companies who are founded, who frankly come too far from the direction of purely kind of the space industry, it's it's difficult, right, because you end up falling into the same traps that you're used to. There's phenomenal companies out there, you know, TrueNomaly, Impulse, all these others that, frankly, like, they haven't had success in orbit, their satellites, were unfortunately not able to succeed.
Speaker 7:That's bad for everybody. Right? You need a little bit more of that, I think, kind of outside perspective to come in and combine in order to succeed. It's it's it's a tough industry. I will say to answer your question about speed, I look at where we are today, and all I can say is I certainly hope that the market is not gonna go at the speed that we're going at because I think we're going way too slow.
Speaker 7:Right? I I think we should be moving much faster. I think you should look at what Apex has done and say, why did it take a year to go from a blank piece of paper to a satellite in orbit? Why can't you do that in a week or a day? That to me is where I think we need our mindset to be, not, oh my god.
Speaker 7:It went from five years to one year. That's still slow, and I think we all need to embody that.
Speaker 1:Can you talk a little bit about I mean, your your craft is at, it looks like, something around, between four fifty and five hundred kilometers up right now. Can you talk about what's happening in Vileo and then what's happening above you and where the biggest opportunity is going forward?
Speaker 7:Oh, man. There's a lot of opportunity out there, and I would say it's all orbits are, fascinating from my perspective. So if you think about it, right, we're here on Earth. We're at, you know, zero kilometers of orbit. Right?
Speaker 7:We're we're standing here on the ground. The higher you go, the different different capabilities are unlocked. Yeah. So there's capabilities that, frankly, are best served by being airborne. Right?
Speaker 7:So that is flying at, you know, what an airplane or a a high altitude vehicle or even a high altitude balloon would be at. Then you move into very low Earth orbit, v LEO. You're moving a lot faster. Right? Because you're circling the Earth.
Speaker 7:You're kind of looking at these different things. You're much closer to the Earth, so you're able to get much higher resolution imagery. So there's interesting trade offs there. Then you move into where we are, which is low Earth orbit. That's an orbit that, frankly, I don't think there was as much commercial demand for it until, call it, about ten years ago when this wave of proliferation started, and you realized you could put a lot more vehicles up.
Speaker 7:Then you go higher altitude than that and you go to medium Earth orbit. That's where GPS satellites are flying and things like that. That's also a very interesting orbit because you're further away from Earth, you're more protected from, you know, things like missiles that wanna shoot down a satellite. But at the same time, you're not so far away that it takes too long for, you know, radio waves to communicate between Earth and the satellite. And then you have, GEO, right, which is where traditional satellites tend to operate.
Speaker 7:And GEO is interesting because as Earth is rotating, you have the satellite rotating at the same rate. Mhmm. So you're always over the same point over Earth, and that's companies like Astronus, I think, done tremendous work over there, and I'm very impressed with the work they've done. And then from there, frankly, you go to deep space, cislunar. You have companies like AstroForge launching asteroid mining missions, setting kind of world records for the furthest to commercial satellite has gone.
Speaker 7:The there's more and more capability with each of these orbits.
Speaker 2:You Last question. Talk about how the industry, aerospace industry is reacting to the tariffs broadly? Obviously, you're, you know, doing a lot in defense. So I'm sure you were not sourcing from from China. But but I'm I'm I'm sure like generally, there's a lot of space companies that are kind of caught off guard here.
Speaker 2:I'm curious what your read on it is.
Speaker 7:Space is a global industry. Right? And I'm a big believer that we are in what I call the new space race right now, and it is The US and our allies against China and Russia, and we have to win. That being said, as a proud US company, right, most of our parts come from The US. So there's we looked at our tariff impact, and it's pretty much nothing, right, as it should be because we're a good US defense company.
Speaker 7:We do do sell a lot of our satellites to allied nations overseas. So as the tariffs come in, that doesn't affect us, but reciprocal tariffs from other countries may affect us as that happens. The good news is, though, most things in aerospace and defense purposes tend to be exempt from these tariffs because at the end of the day, these are the kinds of trades that we want The US and our allies to be engaging in where we're sharing the cutting edge technology that allows us to stand up as one unified unit against those near peer adversaries. So I think the more commercial oriented areas of the space industry are probably more affected. That being said, like, we are able to produce in The US, and we're not having any issues with it.
Speaker 7:So what I would just say is, you know, we wanna bring more of that knowledge and that manufacturing onshore and continue to see that rise as a trend.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Well, thanks so much for joining us. We'll definitely have you back. We're gonna
Speaker 2:kinda gather a
Speaker 1:whole space day and go way, way deeper, but I'm so glad you could come on the show today. I really appreciate you taking the time.
Speaker 7:Thanks, guys. It's great to be here. We'll
Speaker 6:talk soon.
Speaker 1:This was great.
Speaker 2:We'll talk soon. Congrats on all the progress.
Speaker 1:And, I mean, he mentioned Andoril's a customer. We have a, an a person from Andoril coming on the show, Jen, who, has been leading the design charge over there, creating some incredible, hero films. I don't even know how you describe them. Motion graphics, anime, all of the above. But I wanted to talk to her about the evolution of Andoril's design language.
Speaker 1:They still do a lot of these, like, military inspired, films, but now they're in an entirely new territory with the animation. And I'm sure we'll have a lot to talk to her about, the AI trends, the different motion graphics trends, all the different things. So Jen, welcome to the stream.
Speaker 9:Hey. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:Thanks for joining.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna go out on a limb and say you're probably the most copied designer in tech right now. And and you're I'll give credit to your team too. It just feels like Yep. The entire industry is just racing to, like, do what you guys did maybe two years ago. Yep.
Speaker 2:But you're consistently staying consistently staying out on the edge. It's great to have you.
Speaker 9:Right. Gotta keep them on their toes.
Speaker 1:Yeah. You do. Just keep innovating, by the time you get copied, they'll just be copying the old thing. I do wanna talk about that evolution of the design language. It feels like the cartoon anime style probably came from Palmer.
Speaker 1:He's a big sword art sword art online fan. Was that the genesis of this? And how do you think about the evolution of kind of the the the I don't even know what you described it. It's like the brand language, the the the video Right. Themes, whatever you call it.
Speaker 2:The brand world.
Speaker 1:The brand world.
Speaker 9:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so I actually pitched this about two years ago doing an anime and like obviously very easy sell to Palmer. Right? Yeah.
Speaker 9:But it just wasn't the right time. We didn't have the team that we have now.
Speaker 3:Sure.
Speaker 9:And it obviously pairs really well with Palmer's identity. Right? But also this anime style for Andrew just made a lot of sense.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 9:So if you look at, you know, anime as a medium, historically, it's leaned really heavily into military themes. Right? The battles and the really complicated dynamics using like really futuristic machines like the mecca and the cyberpunk of it all. Right? Yeah.
Speaker 9:And like really advanced technology to like defeat adversaries. And man, the future's here like Andrew is building it. So of course, like we'd lean lean into that. Yeah. And like, you know, Andrew, like the way things that we do things, it's fundamentally different the way we build, how we operate.
Speaker 9:But part of the way that we do things differently is really the way we approach our communication and our product identity. Mhmm. The way defense looks and feels and we just wanna cut through the noise. Right? The sea of sameness like it's really authentic to to who we are.
Speaker 2:How has does recruiting changed over the last couple years on the design side specifically? There was not I I remember, you know, I imagine now you you guys have hundreds of applications for every role. It's sort of normalized, you know, working in defense. But certainly only feels like it half, you know, five years ago, it felt like there was this pretty frequent tendency if you're if you're a startup doing anything defense related, you would get consistently turned down by designers that said like, yeah, like, this is not not in my wheelhouse. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:But I think that's like changed. I'm curious what your read on it is.
Speaker 9:Yeah. I mean, I can speak from my own experience as well. Right? I think there comes a point in your career where you want to utilize your skill set and, you know, towards a greater mission. I think what we're finding now with, you know, all the conflicts around the world, a lot of the designers who are applying are coming to us saying, like, I really want to support and use my creativity to be able to do this and what an amazing opportunity that somewhere like Androl is providing that is welcoming these people.
Speaker 9:And I wanna see that, right? Like the end game for me is seeing all the different disciplines in design coming here and creating all of this work is such a rewarding and unexpected thing for me to witness and so it's been really incredible.
Speaker 2:How did you process the Studio Ghibli moment specifically in the context you guys came out with the film? Was it I mean, was it Monday or
Speaker 1:something like that?
Speaker 2:I think it was Monday. But you I'm sure you guys have been developing it Yeah. Way before Studio Ghibli. And it feels like you guys were maybe the last company to get to launch something like this before there will be an inevitable wave of others being able to kind of create versions of it but for like, you know, one one hundredth of the cost. But I'm curious how how you reacted to that.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 9:And So interesting. I mean, like the Ghibli, like, look that it's it's pretty good. I will have to say. Right? It's a really it's really good.
Speaker 9:I'm really impressed. And I think there's just, so many tools out there right now. You know, we launched our first one, Barracuda Mhmm. Last year. So we were sort of like on this wave.
Speaker 9:And we also started noticing the trends in the industry too, McDonald's did one, the Chargers did one and we're like, yeah, we must be kinda onto something here. It wasn't until like just recently this boom and obviously like the Ghibli filter and chat had a lot to do with it as well. Yeah. But I think for us it was really about, again, it made a lot of sense and pushing our skill set in house too, our toolbox of all the different programs that we're using. And, you know, one could argue that all the rendering tools that we've using that we've been using for decades now are that was AI.
Speaker 9:Right?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 9:And so I think here, we want our autonomy to enable humans to do what humans do best, promises all the time and robots to do what they do best and Mhmm. I think we've got the best of the best in our in house focusing on making the art and we're utilizing the tools to do the Can
Speaker 1:you walk us through the actual process, of making one of these films? Does it start with storyboarding and then you move into Blender or Cinema four d? I'd I'd love to know kind of like what the team looks like from the motion design perspective to take an from an idea to a finished film.
Speaker 9:Totally. We certainly, use cinema, you know, Blender, Redshift for texturing, like, you know, Rhino, Keyshot. I mean, the list goes on. Like Yeah. Course.
Speaker 9:Everything starts with a mission set and as we call it, the concept of operation, Conop for short. And Mhmm. Our storyboarding is really all about distilling like an incredibly complicated, as you can imagine, technical and operational scenario into a like one to two minute narrative. Mhmm. Right?
Speaker 9:That is digestible and is visually provocative for really any audience. And we do some key frames to dial in that texture and the lighting, get that right, then we move into previs pretty quickly. And that really helps us block in all of that kind of technical authenticity early. We find a rhythm, then we go into production and all like the final paint overs and stuff. And and all the designers at, you know, that are involved in all all aspects of the project, they're working together in this process.
Speaker 9:So we've got art, we've got motion, editing, graphics, music and sound. Right? And we're also vetting these storyboards with our customers along the way and making sure that we have their feedback. And so like this entire process, I think for the maritime short, the most recent one, we went from sketch to to final video in like five weeks.
Speaker 1:Wow. Right. That's very
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 9:It's crazy. I mean, products at Antero move quickly into production and like we're just here trying to trying to keep up.
Speaker 2:Where where has AI been particularly impactful in your guys' process today? I'm sure Andoril doesn't do a lot of vibe coding on the engineering side just because you you need a bit more reliability. You wanna kinda make sure that that things work consistently. Yeah. But I'm curious where you're seeing an impact today and where you hope to see kind of more of an impact in the future.
Speaker 9:Yeah. I know we're an AI company but we don't use any AI in our art and certainly nothing generative. Right? And Yeah. Like I said, think a lot of the tools that we use, right, could could be in that AI kind of bucket like we've been using it for a long time.
Speaker 9:But I think where I see this being really useful though and where I want to invest in is really in that previous stage. So and it's not just for animation. I mean, for blocking in practical photography and videos as well, like figuring out the composition and and the lighting setups, the camera movements. It's just so critical for us to have a watertight shot list whenever we're going into whether it's animation or video. A lot of the times like especially on the video side, we have one one take to get get the shot.
Speaker 9:Right? Yeah. And so like kind of building this ahead of time and all of that planning is so important for us and that's kind of where I'd like us to spend a little bit more time and investment in.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's interesting to think about the workflow now where even if you're planning to do a one day shoot and it's gonna be really expensive, there's gonna be a big crew, there's gonna be, in Andrewell's case, like actual hardware involved, you still you might generate you might generate all the core scenes so you can like visualize it but then still actually go through So the shot list just becomes like basically a preview Yeah. Essentially.
Speaker 1:With with AI kind of commoditizing or democratizing, certain art styles, do you think that there's maybe alpha or even just like a creative urge to find specific art styles that are incredibly difficult for AI to work with. We were talking about Houdini earlier, and I don't know if you followed, like, what Man versus Machine did with Nike and the Flyknit. It's like this incredible weaving of threads to create the shoe, and it's basically impossible for generative AI to crack that at this point. But it's very different than, like, the Studio Ghibli style, which is kind of becoming easier and more accessible. Does it does does when AI commoditizes or democratizes a theme, does that push you to go deeper in that area because it's more accessible or find a different niche to kind of go and explore?
Speaker 9:I think it's a different niche. I think, again, like, our subject matter is really tied very intentionally to the mission set. Know, it's hard to prompt things like, you know, we need these machines to talk to each other and come up with a way to do that, come up with a way to visualize that. Right? It could be any number of things.
Speaker 9:And I think so, really kind of helping guide that by, you know, using, I think, just the people who are creating this art is probably where we're going to stay and kind of where we're gonna lean into even harder.
Speaker 1:Is being so technology first in the Andoroll organization broadly, is that an acceleration for the motion design team because you can just ask ask an engineer, hey, can you pass me like a CAD file and I'll export as OBJ and just import it into Cinema four d and like boom, I'm good to go? Or or because of, like, ITAR, I imagine that you might have to rebuild these models from scratch. Like, is there anything where you're like
Speaker 3:Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1:Actually, we can't use that model over here because it's, like, we'd be leaking if we got hacked or something.
Speaker 9:Yeah. No. We're we're definitely not, you know, picking up like the engineering CAD file and dropping it into this. Right? Like even for the previous like Yeah.
Speaker 9:We definitely, you know, a lot of the designers in our team like they're they're very, you know, technically fluent.
Speaker 1:So
Speaker 9:a lot of the CAD work that's done even to get it there is like about scrubbing it and it's really like creating, again turning it into almost a whole new OBJ that's watertight so you can like texture it and throw lighting on it. Right? So there's like a ton of work that goes into even setting up the files. And, obviously, also, like, you know, make sure that it's not, like, exactly the thing that, you know, we're building.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Have you had any, explorations using virtual reality in combination with motion design? You know, you there's a lot of move towards, oh, we're gonna do a lot of motion design in Unreal Engine. I don't know if you've been tracking all of that stuff with the real time motion graphics. But, you can imagine, you know, there's even these demos where you walk around, you sculpt something, then you export that OBJ and then you're playing with that in Cinema or Houdini.
Speaker 1:I imagine that Polymer makes it easy to, you know, expense a VR headset if you need one. But Yeah. What have you have you played with any of that and are you optimistic about that going No.
Speaker 9:I mean, I think, like, that that, like, Iron Man future is certainly something that I want. Yeah. There's so many times when, you know, we're building something, even my past experience, like, if I could just, like, just reach in there and just, like, pull that, you know, like, I just wanna, like, do it. Right?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 9:And you know, I I think if there were was you know, a forum to do so, like it may be in some of our exploratory phases. Right now, we've got designers. We have a whole different pipeline just to kinda do experiments. Right?
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 9:We have an Australian designer, his name is Joel. He's doing some crazy experiments with Blender right now with textures just like pushing that to its limit and like James who comes from working on movies like Avatar. Like, you know, he's trying to recreate like worlds and do world building and, like, Unity and stuff. Right? So, yeah.
Speaker 9:We're, like, constantly, trying to figure out ways to also level up our technical ability to be able to, do better discovery, right, better experiments so that we can, like, produce better work.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Well, since it only takes you five weeks to produce these, you're on the clock. We look forward to checking in with you in four weeks
Speaker 5:Four weeks.
Speaker 1:When the next one drops. But, I I think everyone I think everyone in the audience is very excited when these drops. So thanks so much coming on the show and breaking it down for us. That was really fascinating.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Great.
Speaker 2:Thanks, And thank you for the work you do
Speaker 1:for the country. Thank you. Appreciate it. We'll talk to soon. Thanks so Cheers.
Speaker 1:Bye. Fantastic.
Speaker 2:Very cool. Yeah. Anderil has the blessing and the curse of whatever they do, they do it so well that they that Immediately copied? Get immediately copied. Yep.
Speaker 2:And imitation is not flattery. It is wrong.
Speaker 1:It is a shame. And what would your mother say if you're imitating people? Well, we have our next guest. Come on into the studio, the temple of technology. We're ready to talk
Speaker 2:to How are doing? What's going on?
Speaker 6:I'm doing great.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the stream. Can you start with just giving a little bit little bit of a breakdown on, who you are, what you do, what's happening this week?
Speaker 6:Okay. My name is Ryland Hamilton. I'm the cofounder and CEO of Blue Water Autonomy.
Speaker 4:Mhmm.
Speaker 6:We design and build autonomous ships, ones that can operate across the open ocean.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 6:So think thousands of nautical miles of range and being out there for months at a time like no people. Mhmm. And we just came out of stealth today.
Speaker 1:So, like, super yachts for billionaires who wanna just, like, hang out without any crew for months. Is that what we're talking about?
Speaker 5:Or Eventually, like from a defense
Speaker 1:angle here.
Speaker 6:I like that. That sounds a little bit easier than what I'm doing now. No. But due to regulation stuff, it's the navy. They have an urgent need.
Speaker 6:We have a shipbuilding issue within The United States.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 6:What's super cool about what we're doing is because there are no people on board Mhmm. So when you remove the bridge, the galley, the birthing, the showers, and all that stuff, you can make the ship a lot smaller. So our big navy shipyards today are at capacity, and we're trying to build destroyers and carriers and submarines as quickly as possible. But our size allows us to build it in all these mid tier shipyards all over the country, and so we could build them today.
Speaker 1:So how small are we talking? Like, 25 feet, 10 feet?
Speaker 6:So think like a 50 feet. So, like, if you get too small, you can't go across, like, the ocean. You don't have enough fuel. You're gonna get whacked in different kinda sea states. Yep.
Speaker 6:But if you're too big, you're too expensive. So there's kind of this sweet spot in the middle.
Speaker 1:So what does it take to cross the ocean? Is this like you just diesel fuel and you're good, or is there something there
Speaker 5:alternative? Yeah.
Speaker 6:That that's not a bad guess. We're not re feeling everything. But, yeah, we're pretty practical. Like, we're taking commercial off the shelf Got it. Green kind of components.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 6:But we're redesigning the ship from the queue up because our learnings have said that if you just take, like, a commercial design
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 6:That's meant for people and put sensors on it, that's okay for a week or two. But, like, eventually, it's gonna break down. Like, you have one engine room and something leaks. And if you've no one on board or no like, you just you you can't you know, you're gonna be dead in the water in middle the ocean. That's the last thing that RDB
Speaker 1:wants. Yeah. That makes sense.
Speaker 2:It's interesting. When when we first talked, Rylan, I think we were talking about this u there's this YouTuber, and I'm blanking on his name now, but he just like nerds out about all the autonomous vehicles being used in Ukraine.
Speaker 1:I like that.
Speaker 2:And it's crazy stuff. Like, there's people just applying, you know, putting like a sensor on a jet ski and it's just like out, you know, going around. Yeah. That's cool. It's really wild.
Speaker 2:I'm curious. So I talked a little bit about your backstory earlier on the show. You started your career in the Navy, then you went into robotics, you're at Amazon, sold the company to Shopify. Right. How much of both of those chapters of your career shaped what you're doing now?
Speaker 2:It's kind of like you're the perfect guy to build this business but you had to spend, you know, however long in the Navy and then, you know, do the robotics thing and and you know, do it at at scale. But I'm I'm curious, you know, how the kind of learnings you took from each of those chapters.
Speaker 6:Yeah. I think this is kind of my dream job except we're a startup and we're hustling every day working seven days a week, so it's not easy. But, yeah, last twenty years, like, my first four years, as you said, surface warfare officer in the navy. I was an engineering officer. I was actually an electoral officer.
Speaker 6:So on our ship, we had fires, floods, like, name it. We got hit by lightning. The ship would lose power, but I learned a lot. So over the you know, in four years after I went to graduate school
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 6:And then I actually got lucky, and I joined this company called Kiva Systems that got bought while I was there by Amazon, came Amazon Robotics. It's employee 200, became the youngest person on the leadership team. But I was there with, like, a couple thousand robots were in the field. We scaled it with Amazon to 15,000. And now, like, my guess is there are over a million robots in Amazon warehouses based off that company and that technology.
Speaker 6:And so I left, and then I started my own robotics company. Again, collaborative autonomous mobile robots.
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 6:So ones that didn't need fencing or stickers or anything like that. And I kinda feel like right now, we're building kind of one of the world's largest mobile robots. It's just a ship that has to cruise across kind of the the oceans. And so we're taking all these lessons where you take the hardware primitives and you smartly design it into something that's reliable and works all the time, and then you gotta write the software on top. And so, like, that's the talent that we have on
Speaker 4:our team right
Speaker 2:now. How when how how much or how little has the average navy vessel advanced since you were on them back in the day? I imagine it's not as much advancement as one would like.
Speaker 6:So we let me just be clear. We build the best warships in the world. They are amazing. You look at a guided missile destroyer. It's been through a lot of iterations.
Speaker 6:It's it's fucking awesome. However, it takes a lot to make a design change on a warship because there's so many different components. You have to make sure the supply chain's there.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 6:So it's a couple weeks ago, I was actually walking through a big navy shipyard. And I was looking and, like, you look at the gauge and and there's it like, the concept of IoT is just not there. But they work, and it's been, like, hard tested. And so we have this opportunity when we redesign everything to kind of put and make everything smart and have, you know, sensors over everything. And so right now, just on our core design, it'll get better over time.
Speaker 6:We have four 550 kind of data feeds into our edge compute just to know what's going on in the ship. So, like, we need to know everything, but that's just not where you're gonna get on a modern navy ship.
Speaker 2:That makes sense. Can you talk about the Jones Act? Was it was it good or bad? Maybe you don't have to give that aggressive of a take, but in this era where deregulation is is popular, I'm curious if you think that should be sort of dug into further. Obviously, we're just not building nearly as many ships as as Yeah.
Speaker 2:Of our adversaries and and you guys are hopefully changing that, but curious your thoughts.
Speaker 6:So I'm not an expert on the Jones Act, but I'm definitely aware of it. But I think what's critical is we need to be able to build ships in The United States. Like, sea power has been the bedrock for our prosperity and security for the last hundred years, and that needs to be you know, we need to have sea power for the next one hundred years. So we can't outsource shipbuilding. We need to have that as a core ability within The United States, and we need to get a lot better and increase our capacity.
Speaker 6:I think because of the Jones Act, we still build ships here in The United States, and that's important. Maybe there could be some tweaks to it, but we can't outsource shipping to other countries. It's, like, too critical, for our nation.
Speaker 1:Palmer Luckey was on the Sean Ryan podcast talking about how, China has vastly, vastly more shipbuilding capacity, and a big part of that is that, civilian ships in China must be built to military specifications. They need to have roll on, roll off capabilities for troop carriers. You could you could argue that maybe American civilian ships should have should be built to military specs, but that kind of spits in the face of the free market. What if I don't want, you know, tank treads on my pleasure yacht? But where do you stand on that as kind of just from an American standpoint?
Speaker 6:So I haven't worked walked through a Chinese shipyard, and I don't think I ever will.
Speaker 2:I don't think you're welcome. No.
Speaker 1:I don't think you'll either.
Speaker 6:But I know that we build ships a lot better in terms of warships than any other country, and they're built. And if you look, there have been instances where we've been hit by mines or ship missiles or, like, any or, like, anti ship missiles, and they withstand and they don't sink. And so, like, a lot of credit to our navy in terms of how we design things. But if we just try to compete with China head on head in terms of, like, who can build more destroyers, they're gonna win. So we need to out innovate them.
Speaker 6:And I think there are lot of there's not a silver bullet, but if you look at the things that Andrew is doing underwater, it's awesome. Right? Mhmm. And if you look at our nuclear submarines, we're generation ahead on submarines versus Chinese. And now what we're trying to do is saying on the surface, let's complement our manned fleet with an unmanned fleet
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 6:So we can kinda be a force multiplier. So we don't have to put a DDG in every area, that we can kinda be the frontline or the picket fence for some of these destroyers and put it in harm's way before you put, you know, the destroyer out there. And so it's not like you know, I think the point is, like, let's innovate and try let's lean into sort of autonomous systems, but let's not pretend like we're just gonna change our shipbuilding capacity overnight and compete with the Chinese.
Speaker 1:How do you think hypersonics change the nature of naval warfare?
Speaker 6:It definitely changes it. Because if you think about our exquisite platforms, whether it's aircraft carriers or destroyers, like, we're not gonna put them kind of as close as we would to an area of conflict because of these anti ship missiles and hypersonics with extended range. Now one thing you have to appreciate about military, it's a system of systems. Mhmm. So there's a lot of and I'm not an expert.
Speaker 6:There's a lot of cool stuff that's happening in space and others. So it's really hard to hit an aircraft carrier that's going 30 plus knots. It's a couple thousand nautical miles away, and we have some countermeasures to it. So but it definitely means that we're gonna sort of keep these ships farther and farther away from areas where there could be, either hypersonics hypersonics or anti ship missiles.
Speaker 2:Great. That makes sense. What do you think about you you mentioned early on about there seemingly is domestic our existing domestic capacity to make the size ships that Blue Water Autonomy is making. Do you think they're do you think that the actual manufacturing layer still needs to scale significantly, or is the capacity there and it's just, you know, needs to be allocated more efficiently or or needs to get more efficient?
Speaker 6:Yeah. So the capacity is there to build them, but we can do a lot better just, like, take the status quo. And so these shipyards, they build ferries, they build tugs, they build barges, they build crew transfer vessels, but their business is kinda lumpy. And so it doesn't make sense for them to invest in a lot of automation. But when the navy can give a strong demand signal and say, we're gonna build a lot of these, that's when you can really double down in terms of building, like, these shipyards of the future and put a lot of investment into it.
Speaker 6:The other thing is since we've been designing this kind of ship from the queue up, everything's, like, you know, in CAD. It's all there. It's all digital. It's all already tied to a product life cycle management system. So we get the benefits of starting, like, today with modern tools to build this, which allows us to kind of, like, outsource this to a lot of different like, some of the parts of the ship could actually build be built in, like, a central facility in The United States.
Speaker 6:You don't need to put everything in the shipyard. But when you build a ship today so let's say it's like a steel hull ship, you build the hull, you may be building components, you stitch it together, and then you send all of the electronics and everything, and then you commission it on the ship. Well, that's the hardest place is actually turn on a system in the middle of a hull in a shipyard, and it just takes a long time. And so I think there's a much better way that we can kinda build these ships at scale.
Speaker 1:How do you think about what Andriel's doing on the Lattice side? I could imagine if your ship if you're producing a ton of autonomous ships, you'd want those to be somehow teaming with dive XL submarines and drones overhead and all sorts of stuff. And I'm sure the the modern warfighter would want to have all of that on a map essentially or be able to integrate all of that. How are you thinking about integration with other systems that might be competitive in the financial markets, but but close close allies in the in the geopolitical sense.
Speaker 6:Well, I haven't talked to Andrew yet, but we just came out of self. And maybe because this podcast will reach out to me, someone from the Lattice team.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 6:No. But I think it's really important that we talk to systems like Lattice because we're not gonna be the control system for all these, like, UX fees that are out there. Yeah. That's not our bread and butter. Our bread and butter is building autonomous ships that are reliable and that just work.
Speaker 6:And so we wanna make sure that we have the integration layer to kinda connect all these different systems. At my last company, we built an automation solution where we are in over a 20 warehouses
Speaker 5:Mhmm.
Speaker 6:All throughout the world, and we talked to, like, many different types of warehouse management systems. So we needed to build in that integration layer and not just be beholden to one WMS. And we have some of those same people on the team, and that's what we'll need to build. Like, we need to be agnostic to kind of the layers that we speak to above us.
Speaker 2:Random question, not related to the current business, but I'm really interested to get your take on it. We've talked a lot about the various companies doing humanoid robotics. Yep. One of the the pitches for humanoid robots is that, hey, we have all these, you know, fulfillment centers throughout the world. Humans are working them.
Speaker 2:Humans are great at a lot of stuff, but they're also, you know, some sometimes they wake up and they're sick or they don't have, you know, enough energy or whatever. Yep. You were working in robotics in fulfillment for a very long time at the, you know, incredible scale. Do you think that humanoid robotics are overhyped in the context of fulfillment or really have, you know, potential there that, you know, maybe people aren't seeing?
Speaker 6:So humanoid robots are very divisive in my kinda like robot mafia. Yeah. I I kinda think of it, like, when I started my last robotics company, it was 2015. And everyone's saying, in five years, we're gonna have autonomous vehicles, and it ended up being ten years. And I kinda feel like we're at that moment where it's super exciting to see all the progress we're making.
Speaker 6:I just don't think it's been five years. I think it's closer to ten years. Mhmm. And I don't think humanoid robots could do everything, but I think they're super exciting. One thing actually, like, a little tidbit that I learned recently is that everyone's like, why don't you just put it on a big mobile base?
Speaker 6:It's a lot easier. Well, if you think about, like, a warehouse and some of the activities that you do, when you have two little legs, you can actually get into, like, areas that are a lot tighter. But if you have a really small mobile base, they're gonna tip over if they're trying to carry something heavy. So I think there's a lot of experimentation that's gonna happen. Also, like, things about humanoids is when they fall, humans, we brace ourselves with our hands.
Speaker 6:Well, then those hands need to be robust. If you put a lot of sensors on the hand and they fall all the time, well, then it's not gonna work. You have to repair them. So I think there are a lot of things that we're gonna have they're gonna have to iterate on over time, but there's a ton of investment that's happening in that space, and it's super exciting for robotics overall.
Speaker 2:Last question. Last question. In the context of humanoids, is there ever a point in the future where you could imagine a humanoid on one of your ships or is there just gonna be better form better ship directly.
Speaker 1:That's the future. It's gonna be a sailboat No. Not operated by humanoids.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Not not that not that silly, but I but I'm curious if you could imagine a future
Speaker 1:gib. Cut the gib.
Speaker 2:Or they'll just be better better form factors.
Speaker 6:I don't see it right away. I don't think it makes sense to have a humanoid actually turn the wheel when you
Speaker 1:have a motor turn the wheel. Just just saying. That's what I want. I wanna be drinking Dom Perignon on the back having the the sails go up and down by the humanoids. Pull pull pull pull pull the ropes.
Speaker 6:Here's the thing. I actually think, as we think about building our ship, we're like the taxi for a bunch of other UXPs. So it's not humanoids you can put on these,
Speaker 3:That's right.
Speaker 6:I think that what Android just launched. They just launched these really cool UUVs or whatever they call them. Or if you think about drones or other autonomous aircraft, like, we could become the modern aircraft carrier to carry these kind of drones or these smaller things that don't have the range, but we can carry them out. In the same way that SpaceX is carrying all these cool satellites up into space, like, we wanna be that vehicle that makes the cost of getting these things out there cheaper, and so we can carry a portfolio of these kind of drones on our ship.
Speaker 1:That's fantastic. I mean, congratulations on the launch. We look forward to following the company, and thanks for coming on the show.
Speaker 6:Thanks for having
Speaker 3:me.
Speaker 1:Yeah. This is fantastic. We'll talk
Speaker 2:to you soon.
Speaker 1:Bye. Next up, we have Zach from Conductor.ai coming on the show in a minute. That was really cool. I if I had one more chance, was gonna ask him about to take me on a tour of the various seas across the world. I I've heard that the Taiwan Strait is particularly unique in terms of the the wave formations and the tides.
Speaker 1:And so that there's certain times
Speaker 2:Almost like Taiwan doesn't wanna be invaded. Yeah. It's like they perfectly designed the sea.
Speaker 1:Topology or topography built
Speaker 2:different for sure. Yep.
Speaker 1:Anyway, do we have Zach in the studio yet? Not yet. We can go to some timeline. We can go to some ads. We can tell you about Bezel.
Speaker 1:Go to Bezel. Go to getbezel.com. Download the Bezel app. Your Bezel concierge is available now to source any watch on the planet. Seriously, any watch.
Speaker 1:You name it, they'll find it for you. They're listening to a bunch of stuff.
Speaker 2:They got the date date. Nate, Bladeorn posted earlier. He says, you might never be as tall as John Coogan, but there's always a way to feel like you're up in the clouds. Head over head on over to Bezel and choose a pilot's watch from their fully authenticated luxury selection. Tell them the technology brother
Speaker 5:sent you.
Speaker 1:I love Bezel. Thank you. Thank you for posting.
Speaker 2:Great post, Nate.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. And we have Zach here in the studio. Let's bring him on in. Welcome to the show, Zach. Good to be here.
Speaker 2:Hey, man.
Speaker 8:Hey, guys. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2:The man with no x account.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah. You're you're the second guest, I think, in show history to not be on x. What's going on? I mean, are you not into technology and
Speaker 8:What's truly tragic is I'm in totally a Twitter like, I've actually blocked Twitter on my phone because I use it so often. I just never post. I only read. Okay. So clearly clearly, I need to become more involved in the scene and actually
Speaker 7:post something. So
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Well, if you create one tonight after the show closes, we'll tag you in the clips. We'll try and get some audience.
Speaker 2:You can or you can never post. Never even use the app. Just come on the show. We'll clip it up, and then and then we'll post it for you. And you could get all the benefits with none of the time other than, you know, for
Speaker 1:Like, he's so elusive.
Speaker 4:He doesn't
Speaker 1:even have an account, yet I'm seeing him all over x in these viral clips.
Speaker 5:I love
Speaker 1:it. Anyway, can you do a brief introduction on you, the company, kinda what you're building?
Speaker 8:Sure. Thanks so much. I'm Zach. We're building Conductor AI, a company designed to automate paperwork in the government. And, yeah, that's what we're doing.
Speaker 1:What's the first go to market? Who's the first customer? What's the first piece of paperwork that you're automating?
Speaker 8:Sure. So we are working with air force, the office of the secretary of defense, and a a few other defense customers around problems like security classification, foreign military sales, ITAR controls
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 8:And things that are these very important and very sensitive document review workflows that if you've spent a lot of time working with the Department of Defense, you will unfortunately encounter that we are trying to hopefully make it easier to deal with.
Speaker 2:How much is this Just how much paperwork does the government do? Is it I I feel like it's a lot, but I think it's probably more than I'm even imagining.
Speaker 8:Yeah. So the government there's internal estimates. They have they spend basically, like, $18,000,000,000 a year on classifying information, and it's this very complicated apparatus that has has grown over the years to ensure that, you know, we keep secret safe. One of the unfortunate byproducts of having a complicated and expensive classification apparatus, it can make it very, very hard to actually Mhmm. Get information to the people that need it.
Speaker 8:And so there are many, many separate chains in the government around how you can share and approve and release information.
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 8:And Conductor is trying to make it easier to solve to solve that problem and then other problems where you have these, like, very complex approval processes and navigate through them.
Speaker 1:How much of this is just going from, like, paperwork to a modern, you know, crud app using standard software as a service versus AI agents, LLMs, all the on trend tech?
Speaker 8:So the the people in the government that are doing this, it it's it they actually often have some form of of of system here
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 8:For this. What what you we're actually seeing is the people that are sort of doing these are sort of these adjudicators that have these very important jobs of saying, yes. You can say this. No. You can't.
Speaker 8:They're sort of in charge of these complex approval process. They the challenge for them is there is not just, like, one page of rules or, like, one document. Oh, this is the rules to follow. There's, like, 20,000 pages of policy that they are supposed to have read and follow and apply on each of these cases. And, obviously, that's incredibly hard.
Speaker 8:And so what we're trying to do is make it easier to, more quickly read and apply those those the very complicated policy guidance to those four PowerPoint slides that you're trying to.
Speaker 1:Yeah. When you're working with the government like this, is are you are you following, like, the standard defense tech sales playbook, like SBIR program of record, or is it just a completely different sales motion for you?
Speaker 8:The so I worked at Palantir for seven years before this, so we have some familiarity there. Are great. They're not they're not all work the same. Our very first contract that we got was a, but we have unfortunately, we haven't won another one since then. So since then, it's all been getting OTAs and subawards off of existing contract vehicles.
Speaker 8:But, yeah, the go to market motion in the government is I mean, frankly, like, you know, it's it's fortunate. I worked at Palantir, so I sort of, saw how this worked from a best in class perspective. But if I was a 23 year old just starting out, I'd have I have no idea how you'd how you'd figure out how to navigate this world. It is not friendly to outsiders.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Is it is it weirdly frustrating when you see just how much the government spends on tons of random things and yet you're selling them a product where you're like, you know, this is gonna save you a bunch of, like, time and and, you know, through that, save you save you money if if you just sort of adopted it? Because it's
Speaker 5:The
Speaker 2:Or or is it almost like a positive feature that it's hard for the government to start? Even even if they know they want something, it can be hard to to, you know, get onboarded and and Yeah.
Speaker 8:Yeah. It's more of the latter there. It's like the the thing that's I found pretty interesting is that sort of these challenges you have of of how hard it is to break in, how hard it is to get these first contracts are in some ways the defensibility from a company perspective. Right? It's that, like, it does take a super long time to get your foot in the door with these organizations and then build trust.
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 8:But to a large extent, because of how how much process there is, once you're in, it is there is a bit of a word-of-mouth. So I think that's like, I don't have a Twitter, but there's people in the government and various, like, means that people communicate in the government, and that's that's sort of where if you're in the defense tech space, you want you wanna be more present, if you will.
Speaker 1:How much of your company is built on, like, this thesis that there would at some point be a shift towards, like, government efficiency, and then you maybe hit the jackpot with
Speaker 8:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Like, Doge becoming, like, the biggest meme in government maybe ever. But it seems like some of the like, even though Doge has been somewhat controversial and partisan, you know, people have gone back to, oh, like, Joe Biden was quoted talking about efficiency, and Obama was taught was quoted thinking about this process, and Clinton was saying this again. And so, government efficiency could be something that becomes bipartisan, could stick around for a very long time, and you you suspected that this was going to be an ongoing trend. Was that part of the thesis behind starting the company?
Speaker 8:Yeah. I mean, frankly, well, part of the thesis was just I lived it, and I've seen all of these processes. So, like, you knew it was very clear to me early on and, you know, as AI, know, became very popularized that there were so many of these complicated paperwork approvals process that I'd experienced and and been frustrated by. I do believe that I mean, I think that making the government more efficient is a good thing. I think that Doge is certainly, you know, is now definitely a part of an effort, but I think it's an arguable that we can make the US government operate more effectively.
Speaker 8:And and I personally believe that that's a really good a good thing to do is we want the government to be more effective. What I I don't want what I wanna make sure when these processes, though, are not they're not fake. Like, they're very real. Like, the I I don't personally believe that we should you should be allowed to build any form of weapon and then sell it externally with no form of review process. Like, these are important, complicated procedures to review.
Speaker 8:What constitutes a weapon? What doesn't? Like, these are actual questions, and those processes shouldn't just be discarded or written of as, like, oh, that's unnecessary government bureaucracy. But we do wanna make it possible to to navigate those complicated chains without it being a three year cycle.
Speaker 2:How how do you think about your so you're creating workflows, but then and and so you guys are a software company, but you inevitably, I'm sure, run into these sort of, like, offline work flows. And is that a is that I mean, I'm guessing. Right? In in sense of like, hey, like, this was approved, but we need to take it to this other building to get this other person to sign off on it. And it's like, I've is that is that the right feed?
Speaker 2:Or can you fully digitize it?
Speaker 8:You do see you definitely do see that. Like, I can tell you that my colleague, Eric, like, some workflows are on classified networks, and you can only access classified networks in certain spaces. So we are literally flying to places to go to upload forms to say, yes. We can be deployed into this network so that our software can be deployed to perform this type of document review. So you definitely see this challenge around there's only certain access points, and you kind of that just is the reality of it.
Speaker 8:You're there's not it's gonna take a while, and there's a lot of process to Mhmm. Be automated.
Speaker 1:I mean, you mentioned, like, 20,000 pages of rules. That seems like you might need a large context window for some of these problems if you're throwing an LLM at it. Yep. What are you tracking in the progress of the foundation models? I imagine you're not using DeepSeek.
Speaker 1:Maybe you're taking a look at Llama. What are you excited about in terms of, foundation model breakthroughs? Is it just IQ, or is it, you know, Rag or any of these kind of buzzwords that we're hearing about?
Speaker 8:Yeah. So one of the challenges that we deal with is the the state of the art, like the GPT 4.5
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 8:Gemini two point five, they're really, really good at a lot of this. But in the networks that we're operating and for a lot of our government customers, they can't yet they can't yet access those. So for us, there's this somewhat it's, like, really an engineering tension. It's like we can see, oh my god. This is gonna work so well Yeah.
Speaker 8:In two years when these models get accredited to be available in your network. But for now, it's what is the state of the art model that we can actually deploy and run-in these more resource constrained environments. One of the ways that we're working around this problem now is and I'm sure other other, you know, companies at the at the workflow layer are are doing something similar, is we're trying to disambiguate the the user from the we're trying to basically make it so that when, like, a user submits a request, they don't expect an answer instantly. And so if you think about how you interact with, like if you were submitting I don't know. Have you ever renovated your apartment or anything like that?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 8:Yeah. So you probably had to get, like, a permit from the department of buildings or something. You submitted your your form into the department of buildings, and then someone got back to you maybe three months later or something like that. Mhmm. That we wanna compare against that type of cycle time.
Speaker 8:So we wanna have a workflow where you submit a document, and then you get an email response ten minutes later. Yeah. Oh my god. That's amazing. That's so fast.
Speaker 8:But if you're in, like, a UI layer of software and you upload a document and it takes ten minutes to process, that's actually kind of a bad user experience. So we wanna try and drive it to, like, the Yeah. Human review side. That makes sense.
Speaker 1:I I I was talking to Jordy about this a long time ago. Like, in in the permitting process, I wish that there was just a button, like, check permit comply comp compliance in the CAD software. Right? And it would just be real time. Like, you can't save the file if you're in violation, and then you just know that, yeah, when you send it off, it's gonna be approved, and that should be deterministic.
Speaker 8:And this is so much of what we actually see is that in these, like, complicated review these complicated cases, so much of the stuff that, like, kicks you back is not some edge case question of, oh, is this permitted or not? It's like, you just don't understand what it is you're submitting. Like Yep. And I I apologize I have to be, like, a little vague when
Speaker 7:I talk about, like,
Speaker 3:what these things
Speaker 8:are, but it's like, you just filled this out wrong. And, like, I can tell you instantly, hey. You filled you're gonna get instantly rejected. Say this instead, and it's gonna rather than taking four weeks and requiring, like, nine separate signatures, you're gonna be good to go, and the material information is almost identical. And that's that's the type of thing we're trying to push back to the user very quickly so that they understand, oh, this is a really hard question, but this is something that you can just get a yes on, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1:Sense. Any more last questions?
Speaker 2:Very cool.
Speaker 1:I'm excited.
Speaker 2:We we recently went off, our paper process. So once you're starting to,
Speaker 1:once you print out every everything every topic that we would discuss. We'd print out the tweet and reread it on
Speaker 2:the Very, very complicated work.
Speaker 3:Now we're
Speaker 1:going digital.
Speaker 2:Yeah. We're going digital too. So we're glad that you're helping the government do the same. It's been much more efficient.
Speaker 1:It has been more efficient for us.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you for coming on.
Speaker 1:Yeah. We really appreciate
Speaker 2:it. And the work that you're doing.
Speaker 7:Yeah. Pleasure to meet you guys.
Speaker 1:Hopefully, hope hope to see you on x.
Speaker 8:Oh, yeah. I'll I'll make sure I've I've created an account. Talk to you guys soon.
Speaker 2:There we go.
Speaker 1:We'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 2:Thanks,
Speaker 1:next up, we have Paul from Carbon Robotics coming in. Carbon Robotics, very cool company, has built a self driving tractor. The LaserWeider g two, the world's most precise weed control, and the Autotractor, the most dependable tractor autonomy solution. Very excited to talk to
Speaker 2:you Auto Tractor.
Speaker 1:Great names, honestly. It's a laser weeder. The Laser Weeder g two combines computer vision, AI deep learning technology, robotics, and lasers to identify crops versus weeds, and it shoots the weeds with lasers. It's so intelligible for what is probably a very complicated product.
Speaker 2:And it seems a lot more healthy than what, you know, just dumping pesticides.
Speaker 1:You're gonna love this.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna love
Speaker 1:this guy. This is amazing. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna love this.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Eliminate hand labor, cut costs by 80%, reduce labor costs and address labor shortages, eliminate the need for herbicides and manual mechanical cultivation.
Speaker 2:You wanna know something fun, John? What? The S and P five hundred closed up Let's hear it.
Speaker 1:7%. Five %?
Speaker 5:On the week. Wow.
Speaker 2:On the week.
Speaker 1:On the week. That's great. Well, if you're doing well, let's bring Paul into the studio. Paul, welcome to the stream.
Speaker 5:Hello. How are you doing? How's everything?
Speaker 1:We're doing great. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 2:What's going on?
Speaker 1:Would you, would you kick it off for us with just a little introduction to Carbon Robotics and yourself?
Speaker 5:Man, you know what? I love I love this job. I love our company so much. We do some cool stuff. Our company, we build AI robotics.
Speaker 5:Mhmm. That's the core of our company. Mhmm. But we focus on agriculture. Mhmm.
Speaker 5:And agriculture is such a great place to be. Mhmm. So we make the thing called the laser weeder.
Speaker 4:Mhmm.
Speaker 5:Maybe you've seen videos of the laser weeder. I hope you have. And the laser weeder uses an AI system. We find weeds live in farm fields and we kill them with lasers. Wow.
Speaker 5:So that's that's great. Why is that good? Because you don't have to spray chemicals all over the place.
Speaker 2:That's what I was just that was just what I was saying before you joined. It's just
Speaker 1:It's the
Speaker 2:best. It's a beautiful future.
Speaker 1:It's a beautiful future.
Speaker 5:The thing is like the you know, for for years, I mean, we had we had know, humans have been doing agriculture for thousands of years. It may be tens of thousands of years. And and we invented this technique for growing all of our food. And, you know, we came up with things like, you know, chemical fertilizer and nitrogen based fertilizers and and and herbicide sprays and things like that that were just like dousing props, but that'll how we built our food supply. But now we're at the point where we can use AI systems to be very specific and targeted in only killing the weeds that are in the field and not having to just dump these chemicals all over the place.
Speaker 5:And then, you know, of course, we have all these immigration problems and things like that. And so if we can just do all this work through automation, it just helps everybody Yeah. Farmers and everyone.
Speaker 2:So little backstory. I found out through experimentation that I was super sensitive to food created with gly like, with glyphosates in the process, which is like traditionally from from what I know, I'm not an expert, but any, you know, sort of mass produced flour in The United States for me was like, you know, basically a no go. But so I I was super excited about this. I I guess like some of the stuff I'm super interested in is is agriculture's huge sector of our economy. It's critical.
Speaker 2:But it's also, I imagine in some ways been I'm interested to hear about the adoption of your products and and selling these because if you go to a farmer and they're using, let's say, these, like, you know, massive amount of pesticides and they're really, really, you know, cheap and then you say, like, hey. I can replace this, but it's this, you know, device. You can do financing and stuff like that, but talk to talk maybe about kind of like the go to market and what you're seeing from an adoption standpoint and and just the, like, receptivity to to the technology. Because I imagine when you go in, it's you're not like you're leading probably with the value that you're offering, not like, hey. Look at this new AI system.
Speaker 2:They're like, well
Speaker 6:Of course.
Speaker 2:Yeah. You know.
Speaker 5:Yeah. You you know okay. So glyphosate is the main chemical ingredient in Roundup. And Yeah. A lot of people have problems with with Roundup.
Speaker 5:They think some of the extra sensitivity for things like celiac disease can be kicked off by by glyphosate. There's some evidence for that stuff. But I think everybody has this experience with somebody who had some kind of food intolerance intolerance or allergies, and then wound up going, you know, to Europe or whatever. You hear this all the time. Right?
Speaker 5:I went to Italy and I discovered I can eat pasta. Why can't I eat pasta in The United States? Well, a lot of this is because the you know, they I mean, they do these studies where if you were to take a hundred people and you do a urine analysis on those hundred people, at least eighty, eighty five percent of those people have glyphosate in their system at any given time. And so and when we know that glyphosate is a carcinogen and like many carcinogens, the question is just how much is enough to to cause a response, not is it bad for you? It's like what dosage and how sensitive are you?
Speaker 2:Mhmm. We had to be clear, this this is the thing that we're using to just kill all life out of farmland. Right? Like we're using it, you know, to basically and it's somewhat targeted. I guess this is like where GMO crops come in, GMO crops can be resistant to glyphosate, but it just kills everything else.
Speaker 2:Is that Yep. Is that correct?
Speaker 5:That's exactly it. Yeah. So in in in your vegetables, onions, carrots, broccoli, cauliflowers, you know, celery, any of those veg, lettuces. Right? We don't have we don't have Roundup ready vegetables.
Speaker 5:We don't have Roundup resistant vegetables. So we have Roundup ready versions of corn and soy and wheat. And in those fields, they can just completely douse the field and the crops are resistant against the herbicide. But in everything else that you eat, the round but, you know, the herbicides actually really damage the crops as well. And so it's also just it's not good for the soil.
Speaker 5:There's runoff issues, you know, all of these things. And but you touched on an interesting thing. Okay. So, you know, I have a tech background, and I come from places like Seattle and San Francisco. And our farmers are in places like Salinas and Iowa and Othello.
Speaker 5:Right? And so I'm coming into these areas talking about the things that we've developed, and you're right. We we can't talk we don't say, hey. Do you want AI or, you know, what is your thoughts on the latest trends in neural nets or, you know, what you right? And and and so we really are value selling, and we're we're talking about the ways in which we can we can give them a solution to how they can keep their fields clean of weeds, not spray all over the place, and also not have to rely so much on labor.
Speaker 5:Because labor is really the big hot button issue for these farmers even more than the chemicals. Because we just don't have enough labor in The United States to do all of our agricultural work. And in fact, almost all of it is migrant labor.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 5:And so with your labor constrained, the last thing you wanna do is send is send people out in the That's just the least value I've had. Because the chemicals don't you wind up sending folks out in the field anyway. And then and especially if you're producing organic crops, your access to herbicides, I mean, there's only a couple things you can use. And so you use people a lot. You use labor a ton.
Speaker 5:And so we talk to them about the way is the way we did it, but that's not the selling point. And so the cool thing is that the farmers are way more receptive, inventive, looking for new solutions, willing to try things than I ever could have imagined. So as a customer base, they're they're kind of the they're, like, the funniest, coolest, most easy to work with, easy to get to know people. Especially, you know, I came from IT, man. If I'm gonna sell to, you know, a storage CIO or a or a farmer, right, I'll take the farmer all day long.
Speaker 5:Right? Yeah. And it's like the guy who's gonna write me you know, our machines are expensive. Gonna write me a multimillion dollar check is like the fifth generation farmer whose, you know, name is on the building and, you know, his great great grandfather started the farm. And so there's like history and pride and wanting to when really wanting to grow good food and wanting to make help make people healthy, wanting to provide a good product and doing everything they can to do that.
Speaker 5:And so they need help. They need automation. They need solutions that can do stuff that isn't gonna cost them a bunch of money that or at least when it when it's expensive like ours that like you can show the ROI. Right? Mhmm.
Speaker 5:And so here's my thing. I wanna make sure that all my machines pay back within three years. So whatever money you outlay, that should that should be saving you enough money every year that by the time that three year horizon hits, you're basically it's paid for itself.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 5:Everything from then on is just Briefly.
Speaker 1:What is the what what is the market structure of the farming industry right now? You've heard about, like, these mega farms kind of buying each other, rolling up.
Speaker 5:Yeah. But
Speaker 1:it sounds like at the same time, you're still running into folks who it's a fifth generation farm.
Speaker 5:Yeah. Right.
Speaker 1:Who are you selling to? And what is the overall trend in the industry? Is it consolidating still?
Speaker 5:There's been consolidation. I don't know if I would say it's consolidating a lot because I most of the farms that we've been selling to since the beginning of this company are still in their own independent entities. There's been some private equity acquisitions. Mhmm. There's been more PE activity than there has been consolidation.
Speaker 5:I'll say that. So it's been a farm that's running very well, that's been going for a long time, that is highly profitable, that a PE firm comes in and buys and operates, but I have not seen, you know, eight farms that suddenly get gobbled up and turned into one giant entity. So I think I think I think the consolidation part of the reason you get consolidation too is that you get economies of scale with the consolidation. And some of that and what that affords you is the ability to buy more modern equipment
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 5:And be at the at the cutting edge of technology to get the most, you know, optimum solution. So we're kinda pride ourselves that LaserWeider, our main product, is actually available to growers of all sizes. So we kinda help them be competitive. Right? We help them be competitive and not have to get consolidated.
Speaker 5:Mhmm. So, you know, I feel pretty good about that. I but I I do not feel like there's been a massive amount of consolidation Sure. Since we've been selling.
Speaker 2:How how do you think about on what timeline is robotics really deflationary within food and agriculture? Right? Because the idea here is, like, on a long enough time horizon, if you don't need human labor, which I imagine is the core kind of cost for Yeah. A lot of products, you could and especially if you can make it, you know, a lot cheaper to even do organic food, you can imagine a world in the future where organic food is priced similarly with, you know, whatever perfectly GMO, you know, grown crops.
Speaker 5:Mhmm. I think what's really what's happening is it's I kinda look at it the other way around. The herbicides are actually getting less effective. We're getting we're getting herbicide resistance in the weed population. There are weeds coming through the country right now that we don't have chemicals that can kill.
Speaker 5:And so and so that's gonna keep happening just like we have antibiotic resistant bacteria when you have ovaries of antibiotics. Same same process is happening. So I look at if you just roll the clock forward, what do you what do you think is gonna happen in the end? Right? Where are we gonna be pick some time horizon in a hundred years while most of the chemicals aren't gonna work anymore.
Speaker 5:We're gonna have to severely labor constrained on ability to buy to to grow food. We're gonna really care about the health of the soil because we have a a limited amount of that. And so how do you what do you need to do? Well, you need to plan for a world in which you're not so heavily dependent on chemicals because they are they are getting less useful every year. You need to be able to protect your topsoil, which means not digging stuff up so much.
Speaker 5:Right? One of the common techniques, one of the ways in which you can help kill weeds with with cultivation where you run blades through the ground, but that's bad for the topsoil. Right? So it's like okay. So where we have to get to is a point where we're not we're not damaging our topsoil.
Speaker 5:We're not spraying stuff all over the place. So we're actually, I think, helping to keep things stable. The price of food is, you know, it's priced into the CPI. Right? So so it's one of the core components.
Speaker 5:And so what happens is it it it like many of the main constituents of the economy kinda tracks with the economy. Right? It doesn't really separate in the way that some of the more consumer goods will. So I don't know if I'd call it deflationary so much as being able to sustain the profitability of the farmers that we so depend on to give us healthy food.
Speaker 2:How how have your customers reacted to the tariffs? I'm sure you've had conversations or just heard kinda industry news because, obviously, I'm you know, as much as we consume the food that we produce in The United States, we also export it around the world.
Speaker 5:It's true. Okay. So United States, for the last three or four years, has been in an agricultural trade deficit. This is relatively new for us. We that's not been the case before that, and this is this is concerning.
Speaker 5:Part of the part of the problem is that we are losing acreage to Mexico and south of the border every year because of the labor challenges and the price of things like herbicides. But and just sort of how much there's a lot of government regulation as well, and that makes a challenging environment for these for these farmers. So in that sense, maybe the tariffs kinda help. But there's a lot of negatives here. Right?
Speaker 5:That it makes it it does reduce the place in places in which they can sell. Right? Even though we're at a agricultural trade deficit, we still are selling a lot of stuff overseas. And a lot of this equipment, you know, components and parts all come from overseas. Everything electronic comes from Taiwan.
Speaker 5:Right? We're not whatever you wanna think about the chip sack, right, we're not up and running. Right? I can't buy GPUs that are made in, you know, Iowa or whatever. Right?
Speaker 5:Right? So, I mean, realistically, you know, right, all of that stuff still needs to come inbound. And then we do a fair amount of business overseas as well. We sell a lot into Europe and a lot into Australia. So for us, that's challenging as well.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 5:So this is a long way of saying, we don't really know where the impact nets out at the end of the day. And even the farmers I've spoken to, they kinda say the same thing. Paul Paul, I don't know if this is good or bad. Like, I can't it's hard to run the numbers. Right?
Speaker 5:This is a multivariate equation, and and it's changing. Right? It's like, it's on. It's off. It's right?
Speaker 5:So I haven't heard a consistent position on this from anybody, and I think it's one of these things where we nobody knows what their position should be until they understand the impacts, and the impacts are, like, very hard to calculate right now.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. Yep. Yeah. It's interesting to think about seasonality in the context of the tariffs too. You're producing or you're maybe off season and the tariff hits, it's like, well, I don't really know what that's gonna do to demand until I actually pick the crop and go to sell it or or, you Can you give us
Speaker 1:a little bit of a farming for dummies, farming one zero one on what a tractor actually is used for on a farm and then take me through the auto tractor and what that product means for your business.
Speaker 5:Yeah. I mean, growing food is setting up the land. So you'll run there's a this term is generally called tillage, where they'll run large blades through the ground, and they're trying to tear it up, turn over that soil, loosen things up Mhmm. Allow access to the nutrients and the micro microbiomes in that soil, get it ready for planting. Then you put your seeds in the ground.
Speaker 5:You've done tillage, and then you've done planting, and the tractor is pulling the tillage bar through the field, and then it's pulling the planter. And then you spend your time doing fertilization, irrigation, and keeping weeds at bay. And so there's a couple different ways to do irrigation, but some of them involve laying pipes in the field, and there's a tractor for that. And then when you're doing weed control, you're running you may be renting running cultivators through the field that I mentioned before or a spray rig if you're using a lot of herbicides or laser weeder and you're using tractor to to pull through for that. And then when usually, you're running harvest, you may have a harvest machine that you're pulling tractor through, or some of those are are self driving as well.
Speaker 5:But there's a bunch of activities, and the tractor is kind of the main engine for all of these. The tractor is the thing that provides you locomotion, and from that locomotion, you get power. So, for example, tractor has a thing called a PTO, it says for power takeoff, and it's just a spinning shaft with a gear on it. And you can plug into that, and then you get power. So we use that for a generator, for example.
Speaker 5:We get we get three phase two forty volt power off the PTO spinning the generator. So tractor is kind of the main it's the main engine. It's the starting point for everything moving on the farm. And, like pulling weeds, we found that one of the major challenges with getting enough done was finding tractor drivers. How do you get enough people to drive the tractor?
Speaker 5:Tractor driving is fun and it's interesting and kinda cool. Right? But try doing it for twenty four hours a day when, you know, like, it it it when it's time to farm, it's time to farm. And and for tools like Laser Weeder, in order to help that ROI really pay for itself, like, you wanna run twenty four seven. So who are gonna get to do the midnight to 8AM shift?
Speaker 5:Right? Like, these things are really hard. So we we we started working on tractor autonomy, And we had we had original LaserWeeder was actually autonomous, the very first one that we built many, many years ago. And so we revitalized the autonomy stack. But here's the thing.
Speaker 5:Here's the key that I feel like just like, people didn't realize or whatever. When we were thinking about this, the big reason why tractor autonomy hasn't taken off in the world, farming tractor autonomy, is because of all the exception cases. Right? So if I'm gonna put my tractor out in the field at midnight, my autonomous tractor at midnight, and I wanna I wanna come back at 8AM and see it did its job. Mhmm.
Speaker 5:What everybody discovered from the call them, like, the existing autonomy solutions was that in reality, what happens is you put that tractor out at midnight, you five because it saw a pig in the middle of a field or a deer or whatever. Like, these things happen. And so they couldn't reliably get any of the autonomy solutions to do the job. And so what we figured was, well, what if we could remotely log in and handle the exception cases? And the problem was, you know,
Speaker 4:we
Speaker 5:investigated control methods and video feed methods. What if we put up big radio tower so we could broadcast? Because these are rural areas. Right? You don't have good you certainly don't have five gig and maybe you don't have LTE.
Speaker 5:Maybe you have no way to talk to the Mhmm. To the room to the machines at all. But we wanted to do remote observation command and control for the exception cases. So the thing that came up that really changed the game for us was the satellite based Internet solutions like Starlink. Right?
Speaker 5:I think that is gonna be the biggest game changer for agriculture. Mhmm. You know, other than LaserWeeder, it that might be one of the biggest game changers for agriculture. And I think that not a lot of people realize it yet.
Speaker 1:That's very cool.
Speaker 2:That's very cool. What have the tech the tech bros messed up with farming? I'm I'm thinking of like, you know, high profile failures like Bowery, which was important unfortunate.
Speaker 1:Was that vertical farming?
Speaker 2:That was vertical farming that Yeah. You know, a cool attempt at, you know Yeah. Kind of futurizing farming. Mhmm. And then Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Another one is like, we've we've looked into like Larry Ellison's project in Hawaii that Yeah. Seemingly like the probably lost more money than any farm in history. Yeah. Just just on a cash in cash out standpoint. Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And is the you know, clearly, your solution is much more like, hey, let's lean into how farming's already done today and and make it bet more efficient, make it better versus just reinvent. Like, is the idea that we just need to completely reinvent farming wrong?
Speaker 5:I think you got it. Yeah. I think that that's wrong. I think that and Bowery wasn't the only high profile vertical farm farming failures. There were a couple of them.
Speaker 5:We're talking about tens of billions of dollars at this point. K. So the here's the here's the fact. If I take food, grown food, vegetables, and I throw it on the ground, it will make more food. Okay?
Speaker 5:So this is how things happen. So then if you say right. So the whole conceit about vertical farming was I can put these things in these urban environments, I can grow them near to where people can eat them or whatever, but the economics just don't pan. It just doesn't pan out. Farmers have experience and knowledge and specialized understanding of soil health and how things grow, and there's a lot of nature involved in food growing, growing well, and growing efficiency.
Speaker 5:And so this is an example of where you try to take everything apart and then closely manage all the inputs and keep, you know, and keep track of everything required to make that thing grow optimally, you wind up doing a worse job than you just need lean into the natural environment about the ways that things evolved to happen this way on this planet. And so that's so what you said was absolutely right. We're gonna reinvent farming as the tech pros, you know, tech pros of of the urban environments. Right? That we're gonna you know, it just it doesn't happen.
Speaker 5:And so we we went out and said, how do we help farmers with their job they're trying to do? And instead of how do we, like, reinvent what they think you know, what we think they should be doing. And I think
Speaker 2:that Yeah. It it feels like one of those things like, you know, tech bros now trying to reinvent private equity with roll ups. Right? Yeah. You know, private equity is super efficient industry.
Speaker 2:Know, trying to reinvent farming, we've been doing it for a very long Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Business misnomer that, oh, farmers don't know what they're doing. It's like, no. They take their business really seriously. It's a hard business.
Speaker 1:It's super competitive. Super smart people in there. It's not some yeah. Yeah. Like, the country bumpkin Yeah.
Speaker 1:Is, like, wildly incorrect.
Speaker 2:I have
Speaker 6:a Yeah.
Speaker 2:I have a portfolio company that that sells into the ag world, and I've been amazed at the ingenuity at the farm level where they're just it's like, this product doesn't exist. I'm gonna make it myself and I'm gonna
Speaker 1:I I have a follow-up on that. I mean, you've raised money from Bond Capital. Mhmm. Storied capital allocator, Mary Meeker, known for investing in consumer technology during the .com boom. Yep.
Speaker 1:What what do you think, venture capitalists get wrong about a company like yours where you are a tech company, but you're a couple steps away from, oh, it's a website. It's a SaaS product. It's your your robotics company, and you're selling into an industry that they might not be familiar with. What's that process been like?
Speaker 5:Yeah. I mean, yeah. So Bond Capital, Mary Meeker and Mood Raghani, I mean, really quality people. So we the challenge for us is that part of it is that that we're selling into a market that they're not familiar with. The other challenge is, of course, that it's hardware.
Speaker 5:Right? Like, hardware requires capital. It requires inventory. Some of the r and d is money you're spending on parts to try stuff that you're just ultimately gonna throw away. It's a little bit different.
Speaker 5:Right? But I really lean on this idea about where is AI useful for you in society and in the world. Right? Chat g p t is cool and rad. Cursor is cool and rad.
Speaker 5:Right on. But how am I how are we gonna make your life better? How can you make yourself more healthy? How do we prevent people from having the kind of food intolerances, you know, that you were mentioning. Right?
Speaker 5:What are we trying to do really with this technology? And if we can make we can actually make the world a better place, not in the Silicon Valley, you know, show Silicon Valley show style, but we can actually do some real things. Plus, farming is a big enough TAM that you can make a good business out of this. I think, you know, Carbon Robotics will get to the point where we're gonna have a really nice IPO. And so that's kinda you can plot a course to get there, but you have to be able to tell this story.
Speaker 5:And I think that maybe we had a little bit of advantage because we're kinda half we were, like, half tech, half agriculture, and so we knew how to talk in both worlds. Mhmm. And when we're talking to the folks in Silicon Valley and Bond and all those folks, you know, we're definitely leaning on some of our Silicon Valley tech bro roots, but but it's to to know how to tell the story, I will say. Yeah. But you know what's interesting about our company?
Speaker 5:This is controversial sort of. Look at our look at our investors. It's, you know, it's it's Bond and Sozo and Ignition and and Fuze and, like, Voyager and Anthos. But who who who's not on our who hasn't invested in us? Who's not on our capital?
Speaker 5:Ag tech VCs. We have no ag tech investment. Interesting. So what so why is that? I think part of it is that you had to sort of step out of what you knew about agriculture to get what we were doing.
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 5:And we you know, a lot of people, like a lot of people who knew, who were experts, really like love to tell us how stupid we are to try to do lasers. Like, what a dumb idea. Why would you do that? That's just stupid. You just put chemicals all over the place.
Speaker 5:What are you trying to do? Like, literally. So it it took it took the people who were used to doing bold innovative new things and turning industries upside down to see what we were doing. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Would you guys would you guys ever do consumer hardware? I got my landscaper told me yesterday, hey, we need to add another day of the week just for weeding. And I was just like, honestly very annoyed. I was like, this isn't part of landscaping, weeding. But having a little robot in my backyard that's just sniping weeds as they come up, you know, it sounds it sounds like I would definitely I definitely pay, you know, I'd probably pay just as much for a robot to do it as as a human just because I'd rather have a robot in my backyard all the time than
Speaker 5:We you know, I think we have a ways to go to to get there. I mean, like, the point at which you'd see, you know, laser readers at, like, Home Depot, I think we have a ways to go. And, look, I'm a b I'm like I'm a b to b kind of guy. Right? Like, consumer is is not really where I've where I've been successful in my career.
Speaker 5:I was at Uber for quite some time, but I was working on the infrastructure. Right?
Speaker 4:Sure.
Speaker 5:So I feel like and, you know, and the deep learning and all that stuff. So I feel like I would love to get there at some point, but we're gonna get there based on our Yeah. Trajectory and and and, you know, where we get and success on the, on the industry side.
Speaker 1:In terms of going deeper in farms, you know, we've seen with Andoril, they build a lot of hardware, but then they're also working on a software platform called Lattice to kind of allow the autonomous system to team with each other. Mhmm. Is there an existing farm management platform that you want to integrate with, or is that something you could see growing out of your technology?
Speaker 5:Yeah. This is a good question and it's actually somewhat controversial right now. So we have a thing called the Carbon Operations Center.
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 5:And the Carbon Operations Center shows you everything that LaserWeeder is doing and everything LaserWeeder saw. How many weeds, what type, how big they are, how many crops we saw Mhmm. How big they are, what the spacing looks like, you know, all of this kind of stuff. John Deere has their John Deere command center, which you can log into into your tractor. Every time I have this question for folks about what you want us to integrate with, nobody has a favorite.
Speaker 5:Nobody nobody there's been no clear leader in this space. But the reason why it's controversial is because maybe this is kind of a theme here based on some of the other stuff we're talking about. There have been a number of companies, startup companies out of Silicon Valley who were who basically said, this is great. I have my brand new computer science degree from Stanford, and now I'm gonna go teach farmers how to farm, right, with my data platform, and they all fail just over and over and eating it, just not making it happen. Because it turns out that you can go collect data and show things, but unless you actually can make it actionable, there's no there's no insight there.
Speaker 5:It's just telling people what's happening in their fields. And so having that be your business model, your primary business model, I think is a failure, and it's been a failure. So maybe, you know, something like the Carbon Operation Center or maybe even the John Deere Command Center where you you're kind of there to to help show what's happening on some existing machines, and then you can pull more in after that. Maybe that's the solution there. But I there's not been a great platform for that.
Speaker 5:And I would love to see there be one. It's but it's different also. It's gonna be it's gonna be it's gonna definitely be mobile first because these farmers, they're in their fields all the time. And so that means phone. Right?
Speaker 5:It doesn't mean desktop. Yeah. And and and, you know, and those kinds of things are there's a lot of it specific to what farmers are trying
Speaker 1:to get Phone and Starlinks, two major drivers of this change.
Speaker 5:It's totally true. It's completely true. Access to Last yeah. Go ahead.
Speaker 2:I was gonna say last question because I know we're at we're at time, but after all the time you've spent in in agriculture, what keeps you up at night? Because I feel like for Americans we take food security for granted. We just sort of accept it that you're gonna go to the grocery store and maybe the price is up or down for eggs one day but you know there's generally gonna be eggs. What what scares you?
Speaker 5:I'm worried about us in The United States and many of these even many of the economies in Western Europe being able to continue to be self sustaining, and that means agriculture, that means manufacturing, ability to make things and grow things that that keep your keep your country moving along. In a world we cannot compete globally dollar for dollar for labor prices.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 5:We we can't. And and and without a, you know, drastic reduction in our in our standard of living. Right? That's like that's never gonna happen. So if you watch all of our manufacturing leave, all of our agriculture leave, we're in a very, very vulnerable spot.
Speaker 5:And this to me is a should be a national emergency. Right? The slope is the slope is already clear. The the most deleterious effects haven't happened yet. And by the time they do, it's gonna be too late.
Speaker 5:So we need more AI automation or just say automation in this country to be able to help us sustain those very important things for our country, growing food, building products, right, making things that we use. You know, this is like whatever you think about Elon Musk, this is a good quote. He's like, if nobody is making things, you won't have any things. Right? And right?
Speaker 5:It's a and weary. Right? So that's what I'm worried about it.
Speaker 1:That makes a ton of sense. Well, this was a great conversation. Thanks so much.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I really enjoyed it.
Speaker 1:I'm really excited about what you're doing too.
Speaker 5:Thank you very much. I appreciate
Speaker 1:Huge impact. So, keep up the great work. I mean, it's already been a massive success, but I'm sure you have a long future ahead of you.
Speaker 2:And Thank you very much. Officially our agricultural correspondent.
Speaker 1:Yeah. We'd love to have you back and talk about Looking forward to the next one. Agriculture as it happens.
Speaker 5:Let's do the next one in a farm. We can go get you guys out of the studio, right?
Speaker 3:Sounds Get some
Speaker 5:boots boots on you. You can go to we can go see some laser weeders. Alright?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Love
Speaker 2:that. My first job was my my mom would give me a nickel for every weed of a certain, you know, stature that I would get out of the yard. So I feel like Hey. I'm glad I'm happy that you're doing this, but I'm built for
Speaker 1:it. Yeah. You know? I'm sure you can tell the farmers exactly how to do it. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. I know exactly. Some great advice. We'll tell them what's really going on.
Speaker 2:Here's what you gotta do.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Don't worry. We'll we'll solve all this crisis. Anyway, thanks so much, Paul.
Speaker 5:Cheers. Have a great have
Speaker 1:a great weekend. We'll talk to
Speaker 3:you soon.
Speaker 5:Yeah. You as well. Thanks. Bye.
Speaker 1:Bye. See you. If you're looking to go spend some time near a farm, maybe you should book a wander, Find your happy place. Find your happy place. Book a wander with inspiring views, hotel grade amenities, dreamy beds, top tier cleaning, and twenty four seven concierge service Join vacation home.
Speaker 1:430,624
Speaker 2:wanders and counting. That's a lot of people.
Speaker 1:One time, like, they're the the guest is not gonna have checked out of the Zoom and they're just gonna hear us do this deranged ad read. They're gonna be like, why are they singing? I don't have full context on the show.
Speaker 2:We gotta be singing more.
Speaker 1:Pretty good. We should. Well, should we sing this TechCrunch article? FinTech founder charged with fraud after AI shopping app found
Speaker 2:to be powered by This was relevant to the conversation yesterday. We were talking about how Figure AI is claiming to
Speaker 1:End to end robotics system.
Speaker 2:End to end AI. Yes. Closed system. Yes. No SIM
Speaker 1:plus plus in there.
Speaker 2:That has not been fully achieved by any other company
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:In their category
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Which makes it very impressive if they're if they're doing it, a potentially massive breakthrough, but also a potential risk vector if they're sort of promising investors that they've achieved this, which they already
Speaker 3:have.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And this is gonna be an ongoing theme, I think, AI companies is the claims around the level of automation. We saw this with this TechCrunch article, the CEO of Nate, an AI shopping app that promised a universal checkout experience, which makes a lot of sense. You go to the AI app. Hey.
Speaker 1:Buy me a bottle of Dom Perignon. It goes and finds that it buys for you. It should be automatable with agents and operator and all the all the amazing LLM magic that has been in the boom. Nate was founded in 2018. They raised over $50,000,000 from investors like Cotu and Forerunner.
Speaker 1:They raised a $38,000,000 series a in 2021 slightly before the AI boom, but they were still pitching this idea of, like, you can buy from any ecommerce site with a single click thanks to AI. But in reality, Nate relied heavily on hundreds of human contractors in a call center in The Philippines to manually complete those purchases. Now no problem with that if you're upfront about
Speaker 2:it Yep.
Speaker 1:With your investors. You don't even have to be that upfront about it with the customer, I think.
Speaker 2:I think you put trust service. Cares that much.
Speaker 1:The customer doesn't care. I just want the output, which is one click checkout on any ecommerce site. That's what I'm being promised. I don't really care how you do it. You could be using LLMs.
Speaker 1:You could be using deep learning. You could be using some special algorithm. Yeah. And I by hand. Who cares?
Speaker 2:Remember this company. Yes. I remember their billboards specifically. Yes. And there was a lot of hype around it.
Speaker 2:I didn't fully get it. Yep. But I also think anytime these shopping apps launch, they tend to just launch these massive incentives so they can really run up users where they're basically giving money money away for user acquisition.
Speaker 1:And that creates very high burn, and that makes it harder to spend that money on r and d to actually solve the AI problem that requires all the training. And there's no problem with with hiring a bunch of folks in The Philippines or anywhere to do a bunch of jobs, get a bunch of training data, and then create the final algorithms. This is the story of Scale dot ai and OpenAI. You know, they get a bunch of contractors. They answer a bunch of questions.
Speaker 1:They bake that all into the training data, and you get a magical experience at the end of the chain, but you gotta actually deliver that magical experience, especially if that's what you're promising to investors. And so this now the DOJ's Southern District of New York is alleging that Nate relied heavily on hundreds of human contractors, and they made
Speaker 2:Well, and they found it was effectively 0%
Speaker 3:Effectively 0%
Speaker 2:AI. And the reason that this That's a % of low risk then claim. What Nate was doing was basically computer use Yep. Or OpenAI operator, very similar, or stuff that browser base is doing, helping companies achieve now. Totally.
Speaker 2:Which even now still requires a human in the loop. Totally. It's not really reliable when you watch OpenAI operator do this which is one of the best agent teams in the world. It's still like watching, you know, your grandma use a computer. It's sort of slow.
Speaker 2:It gets hung up in places. Yep. It will get better. But Nate was promising all this in 2021, which Yep. I imagine that if there were AI founders at the time, people that were thinking about this agentic experiences.
Speaker 2:I imagine they would have looked at this and said like, like, it's a cool idea and we're gonna get there. But
Speaker 1:Yep. But And so the company ran out of money, sold the assets, leaving its investors with near total losses, and that is the basis for the lawsuit. The investors probably wouldn't care about the involvement of humans if it was delivering shareholder value and the business is growing really nicely. Amazon went through something similar with their Yeah. One
Speaker 2:Yeah. The bigger issue is Human not
Speaker 1:in the loop checkout. If
Speaker 2:Nate had been saying that they were using humans for everything Totally. And they were gonna over time use it for less and less and less.
Speaker 1:It's a little bit less sexy of a story, but I think it can still totally work. It's
Speaker 3:totally viable.
Speaker 2:There's probably a good chance they wouldn't have raised the last round without that Yeah. AI narrative. Yeah. That's the issue.
Speaker 1:Totally. Yeah. So so so if the investors feel duped, they're going to sue, and it's gonna get ugly. But good luck to everyone involved. Hopefully, it resolves smoothly, and everyone can move on and build something cool in the future.
Speaker 1:Anyway, speaking of AI, Brad Gerstner has a great thesis, I think. BG. On
Speaker 2:Yeah. We talked about this yesterday. Basically, everybody said LLMs have no moats. Yep. There's no switching costs.
Speaker 2:Yep. Introducing memory Yep. Effectively large context windows switching costs.
Speaker 1:Yes. And
Speaker 2:so all the Yep. Sort of inputs and conversations that you have with the model.
Speaker 1:So OpenAI launched Infinite Memory. The switching costs switching costs up. Yeah. Switching costs far too low in the foundation model space, but not anymore
Speaker 2:Not for long.
Speaker 1:Thanks to Infinite Memory launched by OpenAI earlier this week.
Speaker 2:Somebody was pushing back and saying that you could just export your data from ChatGPT. No one's gonna do that. But no. Yeah. And export your You can you can export yourself too.
Speaker 1:Yeah. You can export yourself from people were saying this about, Google Circles. Wasn't that the competitor to Facebook that they launched? Oh, well, you could just export your, you know, your all your data and import all your posts there. No one wound up doing it.
Speaker 1:If you get in the flow of just, training ChatGPT again and again and again, it knows what you like. It knows how you like to like data to be formatted. It knows about what you know, what you don't know, what you've asked previously. It has all that extra context. It's gonna be harder and harder to go back and forth.
Speaker 1:And I think people really have been going back and forth for, oh, there's a new Claude model. It's hot on Twitter or on x. Yeah. Let's go jump over there for a little bit. Let's jump back to the latest and greatest.
Speaker 1:Kind of the the model wars will maybe be winding down as the switching costs increase. So interesting story.
Speaker 2:This is also interesting.
Speaker 3:Base sixteen
Speaker 2:z? Base sixteen z says, he's pulling something out from Netflix, earnings report or or some type of report they did in they said engagement remains a key catalyst for Netflix's growth. During its last earnings call, Netflix revealed that subscribers spend an average of two hours daily on the platform.
Speaker 1:How is that possible?
Speaker 2:I don't know how this is possible but that's a good answer for why we put out three
Speaker 1:Three hours.
Speaker 2:Plus hours a day of content because every if if all those people that were, you know, basically doom watching Netflix
Speaker 1:Cancel your Netflix subscription. Leave us five stars on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. But that is that is a lot of Netflix. But, yeah, I mean, I guess if it's replaced your TV, you have it on the background. A lot of what Netflix does best is this, like, laundry TV.
Speaker 1:Have you heard this term? The idea that, like,
Speaker 2:put it
Speaker 1:on while you're doing laundry. It's meant to be yeah. A lot of the reality TV shows, they kind of recap what happens Yeah. At every, like, fifteen minute interval. And so you can kinda tune out, tune in.
Speaker 1:It's not it's not all content that's, like, Game of Thrones super layered. You gotta be following along. You gotta be reading the the fan theories. A lot of it's just, yeah, you throw it on. It's it's, it's reality TV, you just kinda let it sit there in the background.
Speaker 1:Anyway, this was a cool story from Steven Zhang. He built the app that someone was talking about. Preston went viral with a post saying, I want a finance app with three numbers. What I spent today, what I spent this week, and what I spent this month. And and Preston's post went super viral.
Speaker 1:Yep. And Steven built the app, and he shows a little time lapse of him vibe coding it probably on his couch. Blurred out? Was he worried about his face? Yes.
Speaker 1:He's worried
Speaker 2:about people?
Speaker 1:He blurred out his feet in the video, which is hilarious because you could've just put on shoes or something. But
Speaker 2:Maybe he realized after the
Speaker 1:fact He might
Speaker 2:have realized after the fact posting.
Speaker 1:That he didn't wanna wind up on
Speaker 2:Never put your feet on the Internet.
Speaker 1:Never put your feet on
Speaker 2:the Internet. I like this post from Joe, a friend of the show, sort of a long lost brother. Just threw this in because You did that. Some if you're in New York, you should go check this out. There is a store across from the UN in Manhattan that's called the UN of beers.
Speaker 1:UN of beers.
Speaker 2:Which is just an amazing, you know Yeah. Example of you can just name your store or your business whatever you want. You complete Advanced Manufacturing Company of America.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Amka.
Speaker 2:It's a cool name. There's Bank of America. I don't know if you've ever heard of that.
Speaker 1:I have. It's a
Speaker 2:cool name. Yep. Imagine coming up with that name, you know? Yeah. You're like looking around.
Speaker 2:Someone's looking for domains at
Speaker 1:the time. Beer of America.
Speaker 2:The United Nations of America. But the UN of beers is a fantastic name.
Speaker 1:It's great. Well, after you go testify in front of the UN, you might need a beer, and so you head across the street to the UN of beers. This, post from Pavel I enjoyed. He said, quote, maybe if I hire someone really good at math, my product will get better. Why did this become the default Silicon Valley narrative, Lowell?
Speaker 1:And, Pablo, think you know why it became a meme. There's been someone who's been recruiting I o I I OI gold medalists into tech companies for years. And His
Speaker 2:name is Eric Lyman.
Speaker 1:Yes. And you once worked at that firm. So this should not be a surprise. Everyone is cargo culting ramp.
Speaker 2:No. It's just a I think I think he's more basically more saying Yeah. I I think that if if you blend people that are really good across different domains Yeah. They're probably gonna get get a great output. Juwan says people just farm PhD hires thinking 27 year olds that haven't written a single line of production code in their lives can change the trajectory of their company.
Speaker 2:Yeah. But Takes more than that. Mathletes are low key goaded. So
Speaker 1:Low key goaded.
Speaker 2:I wanted to cover one final poly market before we sign out for the weekend and that is the 2025 masters winner. Right now, they got Scottie at 25%, Rory at 21%, Bryson at 20% and then it kind of drops off pretty hard from there.
Speaker 1:That's pretty even balanced. It's kind of anyone's game. Anyone's game?
Speaker 6:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:But good luck to
Speaker 2:everyone watching Masters. TJ was posting something earlier that that the Masters was the closest American like institution or event that feels like Japanese culture. It's like just very like calm and pleasant.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Can get People are well dressed. Yeah. There was a guy basically wearing a full blazer, playing in a blazer. That's cool. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I don't know if I actually played but I saw him warming up in it.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's one of those thing it's one of those sports that you don't need to take the athletic attire to the absolute extreme and so you can express yourself a little bit more.
Speaker 2:It's cool. And then the other one, we got UFC three fourteen this weekend going down in Miami and we Who's playing? There's This is team. This is
Speaker 1:team based? There's two teams.
Speaker 2:Yeah. This is great.
Speaker 1:This is the New York
Speaker 2:sluggers versus Relevant relevant for me because Chandler is fighting this weekend and he is a Rora athlete.
Speaker 1:That's fantastic.
Speaker 2:He's been posting about his his water consumption this week. So root for Chandler. We wanna see the win. We wanna see Yeah. You know, his continued success.
Speaker 2:So that's a good place.
Speaker 1:What's his signature move? Does he do like a karate chop? Is that is that what it is? Karate chop. Because you can do anything in in in UFC.
Speaker 1:Right?
Speaker 2:This is the this is John's best bet. Yeah. He's that he has no idea how how works.
Speaker 1:Good luck, Chandler. I hope you make it all twenty five
Speaker 2:One of us
Speaker 1:25 rounds?
Speaker 2:Yeah. All 25 rounds.
Speaker 1:All 25 rounds. Hope he makes it. And, yeah, good luck to you.
Speaker 2:Godspeed. Godspeed. Have a great weekend, everybody. It was a crazy week in the markets. Yeah.
Speaker 1:We made it through.
Speaker 2:I think everybody made it through.
Speaker 1:One last size gong. We ended up up 5%, folks. Down 12% if you count last week, but still up 5% this weekend. That's what we're celebrating today. Have a great
Speaker 2:Have a great
Speaker 1:weekend. Folks. Weekend. Bye.