Exploring the frontiers of Technology and AI
Josh:
Google just launched the first laptop built for AI and it's everything Apple
Josh:
said Siri would be and a lot more.
Josh:
It's pretty awesome. The signature feature is this thing called a magic pointer
Josh:
where you can wiggle your cursor over a date in an email and Gemini will schedule a meeting.
Josh:
You hover it over a living room and a new couch and Gemini will composite the
Josh:
two together and render what that would look like.
Josh:
You can ask it to plan a family reunion and it builds these live dashboards
Josh:
with the flights, hotels, and countdowns all built in natively to this new laptop
Josh:
they're calling the Google book.
Josh:
Now, if you'll remember from 2011, there was a little thing called the Chromebook
Josh:
that revolutionized how we use laptops forever.
Josh:
Today, we have some new innovations from Google that are going to do that once
Josh:
again for the AI era. This laptop is pretty amazing.
Josh:
And it's one of many things that was announced at Google's IO conference yesterday.
Ejaaz:
This was surprising to me for many reasons. Number one, we are a week away from
Ejaaz:
Google's flagship IO event where we were expecting all these major AI announcements.
Ejaaz:
And it seems like a week before they're giving us like three to four new updates. This is just the warmup.
Ejaaz:
Yeah, it's just the warmup. And I'm actually quite impressed.
Ejaaz:
So there was a sentence that was repeated twice across all of these announcements
Ejaaz:
yesterday by Google, which was.
Ejaaz:
We are moving from an operating system to an intelligence system.
Ejaaz:
Now, what that means is they're upgrading a traditional computer operating system
Ejaaz:
to something that is more compatible with AI agents or AI models in general.
Ejaaz:
It's a new way to interact in this new AI-powered world.
Ejaaz:
Now, if that sounds familiar, that's because OpenAI announced something similar
Ejaaz:
with the rumors of their upcoming phone, and we did an episode on that.
Ejaaz:
But anyway, back to Google. What did they release?
Ejaaz:
So on the hardware side of things, there's a brand new laptop,
Ejaaz:
which is engineered from the ground up to be suited towards Gemini,
Ejaaz:
their flagship AI model.
Ejaaz:
They also released a bunch of new software, which includes something called
Ejaaz:
Gemini Intelligence, which is basically their Gemini model, but actionable across
Ejaaz:
all the different apps, tools, and products, software products specifically, that Google has.
Ejaaz:
So if you understand the Google model, they're vertically integrated, right?
Ejaaz:
They have the model layer, the GPU layer, and they have all this amazing distribution
Ejaaz:
through Google Maps, G Suite, and a bunch of other, like Gmail as well.
Ejaaz:
So the point is, they created Gemini Intelligence to work across all of these things.
Ejaaz:
So if you wanted to order on DoorDash or if you wanted an AI agent to go scow
Ejaaz:
your email and figure out what books you need to order for your syllabus at
Ejaaz:
college, it can all do that seamlessly without you needing to prompt it on its own.
Ejaaz:
And then on the ecosystem side, one thing that I found interesting is they've
Ejaaz:
now made it incredibly easy to port over all your Apple products and software
Ejaaz:
data into the Google ecosystem, Which is something that is very Android,
Ejaaz:
very open source, which is what Google is, I guess, kind of known for.
Ejaaz:
But I'm excited about this. Now, the flagship product, I know you said it was the pointer, Josh.
Ejaaz:
For me, it has to be the laptop, this new Google book. It's pretty impressive.
Josh:
The Google Book is the natural extension of the Chromebook. Now,
Josh:
if you'll remember way back in 2011, 15 years ago, Google released the Chromebook.
Josh:
This was a $200 laptop that was available basically to anyone.
Josh:
It was the first time that a device that powerful was accessible to the rest of the world.
Josh:
And what happened was, is that the Chromebook kind of ate the software stack
Josh:
and they tried to make everything exist in the browser.
Josh:
So the Chromebook, if you remember, you can't actually download applications.
Josh:
Everything ran within Google Chrome. Now, the natural extension that is happening
Josh:
again with the Google book, where instead of the browser cannibalizing software,
Josh:
the AI is now cannibalizing the browser.
Josh:
And what we have as a result of this is this thing that Google is calling Gemini intelligence.
Josh:
And now Gemini intelligence is basically that baked in operating system into this new device.
Josh:
The Chromebook itself is fairly beautiful. It looks somewhat similar to a MacBook.
Josh:
If you're familiar with the MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, it's kind of a hybrid
Josh:
between those two. They're pricing it at about 200 to $500.
Josh:
So it's very competitive with the MacBook Neo, which is sitting just above its $600.
Josh:
And I have a feeling that a lot of people are going to be interested in this
Josh:
because of the native AI features built in.
Josh:
Now, what you'll notice throughout this video is a lot of these features are
Josh:
actually baked into being an extension of your phone.
Josh:
This currently works with Android phones. So if you are a Android user,
Josh:
this is probably an incredibly compelling product because in a way they're building
Josh:
the Apple ecosystem. They're building everything that Apple said they were going
Josh:
to do, but failed to deliver on in terms of software.
Josh:
And it serves as this really good companion to Android phones.
Josh:
Now, if you're an iOS user, this is probably more of a fun experimental laptop,
Josh:
but the MacBook Neo is still looking like it's a little bit more compelling than a laptop like this.
Ejaaz:
The other exciting thing is the cursor thing that you mentioned.
Ejaaz:
What I like about this is there's a lot more of a human feel about this feature.
Ejaaz:
So instead of using a cursor to click on things and then typing something to
Ejaaz:
action it or clicking on various different buttons,
Ejaaz:
this is more of a point and shoot type of feel where you can circle a particular
Ejaaz:
image or point at the crab, as you're seeing on this screen today,
Ejaaz:
and then you can voice what you want the Gemini AI assistant to do things for you.
Ejaaz:
Now, this is part of a broader theme that I'm noticing over the last couple
Ejaaz:
of weeks where certain AI labs this week was actually thinking machine labs started by Mira Murati.
Ejaaz:
They've started producing these new types of AI models that can ingest and produce
Ejaaz:
voice that understand what you see.
Ejaaz:
And it's not just LLM based. It's not just word based.
Ejaaz:
And I like that Google, who has been a leader in Omni models for a while,
Ejaaz:
is able to kind of put this into their products or embed this into their products
Ejaaz:
in a very seamless way. This looks fun and something that I would use.
Ejaaz:
To your earlier point, though, a lot of people are just mass users of Apple's
Ejaaz:
ecosystem and products.
Ejaaz:
It seems like Google is aware of that and they're making a concerted effort to focus on this.
Ejaaz:
So I've got a list here that I wrote up, which was the Apple target list.
Ejaaz:
So for the MacBook, you now have this Google book or this new AI laptop.
Ejaaz:
For iMessage and iPhone, there's a massive lock in here, but now you can do
Ejaaz:
a bunch of wireless transfer of this data.
Ejaaz:
AirDrop is something. that Google kind of hacked and prototyped about a month ago.
Ejaaz:
And so I feel like whilst Apple is kind of dawdling and twiddling their thumbs,
Ejaaz:
Google is slowly eating into their market share.
Ejaaz:
I mean, Apple signed this billion dollar a year partnership with Google to license
Ejaaz:
their Gemini model, and there's no signs of them creating their own base model.
Ejaaz:
So I feel like Google is now taking the moment a week ahead of their major announcements
Ejaaz:
to eat into Apple's market share.
Josh:
Yeah, I mean, it's pretty clear that Gemini is pivoting from an app to a full system layer.
Josh:
I mean, Gemini is now becoming the operating system of this new device layer.
Josh:
And these are the first series of devices that we're really seeing that are AI first.
Josh:
And a common conversation that we have on the show is what the new AI hardware stack will look like.
Josh:
What does that AI OS look like? And this is one of the first real physical manifestations
Josh:
of that being shipped out as a teaser, again, to Google I.O.,
Josh:
which is happening properly May 19th and May 20th. So we will be here to cover
Josh:
all of the news as it relates to that as soon as it drops.
Josh:
But this was not the only huge news coming out of Google this week.
Josh:
The second involves our pals over at SpaceX, who seem to be working together now for
Josh:
AI data centers in space. The trend that everyone has come to know and love.
Josh:
We know Anthropic last week, they just signed with XAI or SpaceX AI,
Josh:
I should say, to fulfill Colossus One and start using it for their own training
Josh:
data with the option to send data centers in space.
Josh:
Google is now hopping aboard. This is a pretty big deal in the world of SpaceX
Josh:
AI and the move to outer orbit with data centers.
Ejaaz:
Yeah, Elon has been busy, basically. He's realized that the demand for Grok,
Ejaaz:
XAI's product specifically, has been lower than he thought. So he's pivoted
Ejaaz:
a lot of the business lines.
Ejaaz:
You mentioned that he signed that deal with Anthropic last week,
Ejaaz:
where he's basically leased out his entire Colossus One data center to them for inference.
Ejaaz:
And so he's making about $5 billion from that.
Ejaaz:
And now the rumor is, or the breaking news here is that he's signing a new deal
Ejaaz:
with Google, whereby he is going to launch a bunch of their TPUs,
Ejaaz:
which is their own version of their GPUs out into space.
Ejaaz:
It seems like Google and Anthropic are realizing that SpaceX AI has some unique
Ejaaz:
advantages when it comes to scale that they can't achieve.
Ejaaz:
Google specifically in this deal is a cheaper highway to space.
Ejaaz:
Now, it does say in the announcements that they're looking at other providers
Ejaaz:
to do the same, but I think that that's basically a very weak hedge.
Ejaaz:
SpaceX is obviously the cheapest way to do this. And this isn't birthed out
Ejaaz:
of novelty, by the way. It's not just a trend thing.
Ejaaz:
Sundar Pichai about, I don't know, six months ago at this point,
Ejaaz:
announced that they're prototyping and already working on radiation-resistant
Ejaaz:
TPUs to put into outer space, but they need a way to get there.
Ejaaz:
So it's interesting that Elon is willing to allow them to pay the toll.
Ejaaz:
We mentioned this on previous episodes, he'll be the toll master,
Ejaaz:
and then they'll be competitive out in space itself.
Ejaaz:
Now, what I noticed, Josh, is...
Ejaaz:
Over the last two weeks recently, there seems to be a kind of AI alliance forming
Ejaaz:
amongst a bunch of these different companies.
Ejaaz:
It's between SpaceX AI, Anthropic, Tesla, Google, and Cursor.
Ejaaz:
And it's incredibly fulfilling for all parties involved.
Ejaaz:
So I wrote a list here, which is like, Google gets cheap access to space,
Ejaaz:
right? Plus the infinite energy that they can harness from the sun through solar power.
Ejaaz:
Anthropic gets 300 megawatts of inference compute from Colossus One.
Ejaaz:
SpaceX gets around five to $10 billion between the deals that they signed with Anthropic and Cursor.
Ejaaz:
And Cursor gets a flagship coding model because they get access to all the compute
Ejaaz:
that they couldn't afford necessarily themselves.
Ejaaz:
So it's a very symbiotic relationship between these companies.
Ejaaz:
And there's one noticeable AI lab that's left out of this, which is, of course, OpenAI.
Josh:
Yikes. It's a rough week to be open AI. Although it seems like in the court
Josh:
cases that we're going to get into a little bit later, they're doing all right.
Josh:
The polymarket has been going up for open AI chances of winning the case.
Josh:
But some key facts that I think might be noteworthy and important.
Josh:
EJ, if you'll remember, Google already owns 6.1% of SpaceX, the company.
Josh:
So Google is a very large shareholder in this company. They have a vested interest in making it work.
Josh:
If you'll also remember, Google has Project Suncatcher, which was announced
Josh:
in November of last year that we actually covered on an episode.
Josh:
And that is Google's existing space-based machine learning initiative.
Josh:
So they've been working on this technology for a while. They're also talking
Josh:
with these other rocket launch companies and working with Planet Labs,
Josh:
which is another satellite designing company to actually design the satellites
Josh:
that they're going to go in space with.
Josh:
And then as SpaceX goes public, one of the clearly stated missions that they
Josh:
have is to be the picks and shovels provider for this next space race.
Josh:
So there's a lot of converging energy that points to the fact that Google has
Josh:
been working on this for a long time.
Josh:
They just kind of officially penned a deal with SpaceX here
Josh:
to make it so that SpaceX is more inclined to want to
Josh:
send them and make sure that they reserve that space on these ships that
Josh:
I'm sure is going to be very precious given the
Josh:
amount of tokens that we're generating and overall really big news for Google
Josh:
really exciting for SpaceX AI I mean all of these things are pointing to an
Josh:
absolutely gigantic IPO there's no large tech lab outside of open AI that doesn't
Josh:
stand to benefit from SpaceX winning and I think that's going to be huge when
Josh:
they do go public sometime in a few months. We're getting pretty close.
Josh:
Now, there's more news on the Google side. Google is just having themselves
Josh:
an unbelievable week, this time coming in the form of a company that most people
Josh:
may not have heard of before called Isomorphic Labs.
Josh:
It raised $2.1 billion, which is a huge number.
Josh:
And the reason they were able to get that is because Demis Asabas,
Josh:
the CEO of Google DeepMind, he is at the helm of this.
Josh:
So they spun out, they raised a huge amount of money. And from what I understand,
Josh:
this company is pretty badass.
Josh:
This is like the biology copy of Google DeepMind. Is that right?
Ejaaz:
Yeah. So one of the major breakthroughs in AI that Demis Hussabes made pretty
Ejaaz:
early on is something known as protein sequencing.
Ejaaz:
So a big problem in science is we can understand and identify proteins,
Ejaaz:
but we need to understand the genetic makeup of these proteins because they
Ejaaz:
regulate how our bodies work.
Ejaaz:
And that can be attributed and applied towards cures to specific diseases.
Ejaaz:
So what he thought of was maybe if I apply this AI model to protein sequencing,
Ejaaz:
it'll be able to guess what the protein will eventually do. And he nailed it.
Ejaaz:
It's called Alpha Fold and Alpha Go. These are two separate AI models that basically
Ejaaz:
come together to produce that exact result.
Ejaaz:
And what they've ended up doing is it's being used by, I think,
Ejaaz:
300,000 frontier scientific researchers all over the world, globally, for free, by the way.
Ejaaz:
And they've discovered a host of new molecules which can potentially be formed
Ejaaz:
into applicable cures. And we're talking about cures to like major diseases
Ejaaz:
like Alzheimer's and cancer.
Ejaaz:
So the next step then is how do we actually create the drugs and distribute
Ejaaz:
the drugs to the mass audience, you know, the mass amount of patients that require
Ejaaz:
these types of cures. That is isomorphic labs.
Ejaaz:
And up until this day, it's kind of been internal to Google.
Ejaaz:
In fact, they acquired the company a while back and it's just kind of been incubated
Ejaaz:
for a while until this week where they announced that they are spinning it out
Ejaaz:
and raising 2.1 billion dollars.
Ejaaz:
It's being led by, I believe, Thrive Capital and their flagship model,
Ejaaz:
which has a very weird name, which I'm not going to try and remember.
Ejaaz:
It is ISO DDE.
Ejaaz:
Very, you know, very catchy term that is basically able to identify a host of new molecules.
Ejaaz:
They've already proven that already. And the idea with this money is they're
Ejaaz:
going to scale this out into human trials and start releasing,
Ejaaz:
hopefully, the first bunch of cures over the next couple of years.
Josh:
I like the name ISODDE, the isomorphic AI drug design engine.
Josh:
It's a mouthful, but it gets the job done. And tell me if this is wrong.
Josh:
I was trying to figure out what this company does in summary for people who
Josh:
are novices in the world of biology.
Josh:
And my understanding is that proteins are the machines that run pretty much
Josh:
every process in your body.
Josh:
And then drugs work by binding to specific proteins, neither turning them on
Josh:
and off. And that's the entire thing. They're either on, off, or they're blocked.
Josh:
So what isomorphic labs does is it uses AI to
Josh:
predict exactly how a protein folds into its 3d
Josh:
shape and you mentioned protein folding that actually won um demesis
Josh:
abbas the nobel peace prize in 2024 or the
Josh:
nobel prize not the peace prize nobel prize in chemistry um for
Josh:
alpha fold 2 so these are people who have really established
Josh:
themselves in this industry and now are using ai to apply it to
Josh:
the frontier so using these ai models they then
Josh:
design a molecule that's custom built to slot into
Josh:
every one of these proteins kind of like a key into a lock and
Josh:
that unlocks the ability to turn them on turn them
Josh:
off or block them in ways that can basically manipulate the human body
Josh:
into doing a lot of pretty sci-fi-esque things it starts with blocking diseases
Josh:
but turns into i mean eventually allowing us to do things like see infrared
Josh:
light with our eyes and kind of turn us into superhumans so this is a really
Josh:
compelling technology that is being led by the guy like if there is a guy to do this it is demis and
Josh:
co and this two billion dollar investment is hopefully going to really accelerate
Josh:
the progress towards this yeah
Ejaaz:
I mean he's been obsessed with this for decades now so it doesn't surprise me
Ejaaz:
that he's the guy to birth this product um to to give an even simplified version
Ejaaz:
of what you just described josh.
Josh:
It's like when
Ejaaz:
You look at a disease it's usually bad because it can plug into like a cell
Ejaaz:
a hole imagine like a keyhole in your body right and it causes havoc what this
Ejaaz:
model does is it identifies the keyhole,
Ejaaz:
can create a blueprint for a protein that can fill that keyhole and block the
Ejaaz:
bad guy from connecting to that keyhole.
Ejaaz:
That's like a super, super dumbed down version.
Ejaaz:
And it sounds simple when I put it like that. It is incredibly hard to do because
Ejaaz:
of all the molecules that need to be put together in the exact same formation
Ejaaz:
and then to mass produce that as a cure.
Ejaaz:
So what they're doing here is pretty remarkable.
Ejaaz:
But moving on, Josh, in the land of sci-fi, that story kind of like hits pretty high up.
Ejaaz:
But what if I told you that there's a real life mecca that you can buy for $50,000,
Ejaaz:
a mecca robot that you can jump into and walk about New York City in.
Ejaaz:
How do you feel about that?
Josh:
I used to watch Power Rangers. I feel like this is something you'd see in like
Josh:
Power Rangers where they're just jumping into the suit and walking around as robots.
Josh:
This is an interesting launch for people who are listening.
Josh:
We're looking at literally a mecca robot and there's this man who is climbing up into the cockpit,
Josh:
strapping himself in and is now moving around in what i
Josh:
assume is what like 20 feet tall 25
Josh:
feet tall it weighs 500 kilograms and it
Josh:
is a really impressive looking robot what i find most interesting about this
Josh:
is the concluding sentence of this post which says please everyone be sure to
Josh:
use the robot in a friendly and safe matter as the robot leans back on his hind
Josh:
legs and now walks in all fours.
Josh:
This is pretty crazy sci-fi-esque.
Josh:
I think this is a testament to
Josh:
China being, you know, pretty cracked when it comes to making robots,
Josh:
but also a testament to kind of like what the devices of the future could look
Josh:
like. This is a pretty weird one.
Ejaaz:
Yeah. So this thing weighs like well over a thousand pounds.
Ejaaz:
And I was thinking, why on earth like would someone like use this thing?
Ejaaz:
And I think the answer is simply because just because, right?
Ejaaz:
So China has for a long time led the robotics industry, not because they have
Ejaaz:
like an amazing lead in robotics models specifically, but the hardware.
Ejaaz:
They always nail it and they can scale it out pretty massively.
Ejaaz:
And they've been experimenting with this stuff for a while.
Ejaaz:
So where we sit right now is this robot costs you about $50,000.
Ejaaz:
I saw a hilarious tweet yesterday, which was like, what do you want more?
Ejaaz:
Do you want to put a deposit down on a Ferrari?
Ejaaz:
Or do you want to buy this robot? A lot of people replied, I would rather buy this robot.
Ejaaz:
The friendly thing is weird, because in this demo, they literally show this
Ejaaz:
robot knocking down a brick wall. So I don't know what they're trying to get out here.
Ejaaz:
But moving on, we have some news from Thinking Machines Labs.
Ejaaz:
Now, if that's not a name that you've heard for a while, that's because this
Ejaaz:
is a company that was hyped a lot when it was announced.
Ejaaz:
And it was Mira Murati, which was a former co-founder and pretty high.
Ejaaz:
She was the CTO at OpenAI who left to found this salad.
Ejaaz:
She raised the biggest ever seed round. I believe it was like $15 billion or
Ejaaz:
something crazy like that.
Ejaaz:
And then it was Radio Silence. We haven't heard anything from them for about
Ejaaz:
a year and a half to almost two years.
Ejaaz:
And finally, this week, they released their new model.
Ejaaz:
And I'm pleased to say that it's not like every other model that we speak about
Ejaaz:
typically on the show. It's not an LLM.
Ejaaz:
It's something pioneering and new called an interaction model.
Ejaaz:
Now, this model is unique in one specific way, which is, it is, what's the term?
Ejaaz:
I guess it's like unimodal. So the way it works is it can hear what you hear,
Ejaaz:
see what you see, and it can speak to you all at the same time.
Ejaaz:
Now, typically, when you speak to an AI model, when you interact with an AI
Ejaaz:
model, there's a harness around it. It kind of acts like a walkie talkie.
Ejaaz:
So if you notice, if you speak to OpenAI's chat GPT, if you interrupt it,
Ejaaz:
it kind of stops and it forgets what it was saying.
Ejaaz:
And it kind of it's like the visual analogy is like as if it has like earmuffs on.
Ejaaz:
So once you start speaking, it kind of like, once it starts speaking,
Ejaaz:
sorry, it doesn't hear what you say.
Ejaaz:
But this particular model, as they demonstrate here in this demo,
Ejaaz:
and we're going to show you a few more, basically is very universally interactive as a human.
Ejaaz:
And the point that they're making here is it's a new type of model that can work with you.
Ejaaz:
It's meant to be an AI agent that feels and thinks more human,
Ejaaz:
and that you can actually work with in your daily workflow, or whether you're
Ejaaz:
using software, or whether you're doing things in real physical life.
Ejaaz:
So it's a pretty cool model.
Josh:
Yeah, I think one of the constraints with a lot of models is that it feels like
Josh:
that walkie talkie where you can talk to it or you can listen,
Josh:
but you can't do both at once.
Josh:
This fixes that. And it also solves a huge question mark that a lot of the industry
Josh:
had, which is what is Mira working on?
Josh:
Mira and Ilya, two of the co-founders of OpenAI that left to build their own
Josh:
companies. We have thinking machines. We have safe super intelligence.
Josh:
We now have the answer to what one of them is building. And I have to be honest,
Josh:
it felt a little underwhelming.
Josh:
It is a they call it an omni model and
Josh:
it's very impressive by nature it's it processes audio
Josh:
video and text simultaneously and it takes these they pride
Josh:
themselves on 200 millisecond micro turns meaning it can listen while it talks
Josh:
very very quickly and respond very quickly having being able to interrupt more
Josh:
naturally meta a few hours after shipped something somewhat similar to this
Josh:
after the team from thinking machine said this was kind of impossible yeah the
Josh:
meta ai voice conversation power.
Josh:
So literally within hours of Mira's company producing this and saying,
Josh:
we created this unbelievable breakthrough, Meta was like, no, no, no, not so fast.
Josh:
We actually figured out the same exact thing you have. And to me,
Josh:
this is a little discouraging because Mira and Ilya were supposedly working
Josh:
on these moonshots, these things that would really push the frontier forward.
Josh:
What we got is just a, sure, it's a piece of frontier technology,
Josh:
but at a very narrow context of a use case that I'm sure other companies will
Josh:
commoditize. So it's interesting, nonetheless, it is best for today.
Josh:
But I know a lot of companies, specifically OpenAI, are really working hard on that
Josh:
voice interface and they really want to perfect it because they have those hardware
Josh:
devices coming and the primary interface is likely going to be voice and that's
Josh:
going to be a huge focus so for thinking machines to continue progress down
Josh:
this route they're they're going to have their work cut out for them i
Ejaaz:
Think it's just hard man like as you mentioned like the the omni model specifically
Ejaaz:
isn't unique to thinking machines google's pioneered it open air is working
Ejaaz:
on it anthropics doing the same thing also the model size of this thinking machines
Ejaaz:
model is 12 billion parameters.
Ejaaz:
Now, if you're familiar with like some of the more bleeding edge models,
Ejaaz:
they're around 1.5 trillion parameters, if you want to believe the rumors around Claude Mythos, right?
Ejaaz:
So the point is, parameters or size does matter.
Ejaaz:
And you need to embed intelligence as much as you can into the actual foundational
Ejaaz:
model before it actually ends up becoming useful.
Ejaaz:
That being said, these demos do look encouraging.
Ejaaz:
And if this is something that they can achieve with such a small model,
Ejaaz:
I look forward to seeing what a model two to maybe five times bigger than this actually operates as.
Ejaaz:
So, you know, I'm still going to cross my fingers and hope that they produce something cool.
Ejaaz:
But the point is, like, it's hard for smaller labs, even if you have a famous
Ejaaz:
co-founder and you've raised a ton of money to actually do something impactful.
Ejaaz:
The bigger AI model labs are like completely running away with it.
Ejaaz:
And it's hard to catch up at this point.
Ejaaz:
And speaking of this hype, obviously, there's a lot of investor demand to try
Ejaaz:
and get access to some of these top model labs, namely the ones being Anthropic and OpenAI.
Ejaaz:
And there was a specific story this week concerning Anthropic.
Ejaaz:
Where it all started off with this one tweet from this lady called Ash Aurora, where she goes,
Ejaaz:
simply brokering an Anthropic secondary deal made me more money than my entire
Ejaaz:
net worth from working in my 20s. This is insane.
Ejaaz:
Now, what she's referencing is Anthropic has raised a series of rounds,
Ejaaz:
equating to like hundreds of billions of dollars.
Ejaaz:
And that is the equivalent of investing in Anthropik before it goes public.
Ejaaz:
Now, of course, these rounds are reserved exclusively for specific partners.
Ejaaz:
It's not applicable or accessible to you and me or the general retail public.
Ejaaz:
That's why it's private versus public.
Ejaaz:
Now, what can happen is there's an entire secondaries market where the people
Ejaaz:
who are contributing or investing in Anthropic Grounds who have been blessed
Ejaaz:
with the crown can basically syndicate their allocation out to regular people
Ejaaz:
who Anthropic hasn't necessarily improved.
Ejaaz:
And this creates a structure known as the SPV, which is quite common in the
Ejaaz:
investing realm, where you or I could get access to invest in Anthropic,
Ejaaz:
but it's not officially on the cap Timmel, but it's through someone who actually
Ejaaz:
does have access or allocation to it.
Ejaaz:
And if you are able to broker such a deal, you can usually get a percentage
Ejaaz:
upfront fee based on that.
Ejaaz:
And because Anthropic is the biggest, hottest AI lab right now,
Ejaaz:
and they're raising billions of dollars, that could equate to like a couple
Ejaaz:
million if you're like playing your cards right.
Ejaaz:
She announced this. And almost immediately after, there was an update to Anthropic
Ejaaz:
support page where they go,
Ejaaz:
any sale or transfer of Anthropic stock or any interest in Anthropic stock that
Ejaaz:
has not been approved by the board of directors is void and will not be recognized
Ejaaz:
on our books and records.
Ejaaz:
And this led to an absolute crash out on X, because obviously,
Ejaaz:
I'm assuming quite a bunch of people have invested in these dodgy SPVs,
Ejaaz:
and they haven't been basically able to confirm that they have investment contracts in Anthropic.
Ejaaz:
And if Anthropic actually goes through with this and voids all their contracts,
Ejaaz:
their money may end up in the ethosphere, and they may not have actual ownership of Anthropic at all.
Josh:
Yeah, it's a little concerning. And the same also happened with OpenAI,
Josh:
where OpenAI went ahead and said, hey, actually, we're doing the same thing.
Josh:
If you didn't acquire these legitimately, these are not yours to own,
Josh:
and we are going to take action to prevent you from owning them.
Josh:
Now, this is a big problem because a lot of money has changed hands.
Josh:
And a lot of these platforms are actually fairly popular platforms.
Josh:
I mean, Forge Global was one of them.
Josh:
Hive is one of them. These are commonly places where retail investors will go
Josh:
to in order to source these funds.
Josh:
And now Anthropic and OpenAI went ahead and said, these are actually invalid.
Josh:
You can't do this. we will negate the ability to redeem these for actual shares
Josh:
in the future when they go public.
Josh:
So it's an interesting conversation that leaves a little bit of a bad taste because
Josh:
Like, man, go public then. You guys have been building so much wealth and you
Josh:
want it to be aligned. And yet that alignment isn't offered to the public. That sucks.
Josh:
But then there's also the issue that I see where these tokens are being,
Josh:
or the shares are being tokenized on chains like Solana and being traded at
Josh:
a $1.5 trillion valuation.
Josh:
And they're speculating on a market cap that doesn't even exist.
Josh:
And it's not public. I mean, Anthropic is just now rumored to raise $30 billion
Josh:
at a $900 million valuation.
Josh:
So when they published this, it at least recalibrated the market,
Josh:
where a lot of the speculation that was happening on secondaries kind of cooled
Josh:
off a little bit. And maybe that's mission accomplished. We'll see.
Josh:
We'll continue to follow this along with all the IPO progress.
Josh:
Now, there is some more big news this week that doesn't relate to any of these
Josh:
companies, but instead, the CEO of SpaceX AI, who is on a plane currently that
Josh:
just touched down in Beijing.
Josh:
This is like the avengers donald trump has assembled
Josh:
the top people in the country to go
Josh:
visit xi jinping to talk business and
Josh:
there's a few goals that are here on the timeline so
Josh:
they're looking to rebalance trade prioritizing reciprocity and fairness to
Josh:
restore american economic independence a lot of this is going to be kind of
Josh:
legal jargon but basically the idea is that they're going to kind of put some
Josh:
pressure on g to make changes that improve the quality of life of America and
Josh:
hopefully make some deals.
Josh:
Now, one of the big things that's obviously going to be discussed is Iran,
Josh:
getting China to push Tehran to open up that Strait of Hormuz and initiate a peace deal.
Josh:
This would be great for markets. This would be great for energy prices because
Josh:
this current blockade is spiking energy prices around the globe.
Josh:
A big conversation is also going to be held around rare earth supply because China has a lot of this.
Josh:
And then generally setting up some framework for these like bilateral AI discussions,
Josh:
Particularly what I would assume around AI risk and safety, which Elon cares deeply about.
Josh:
And also Jensen Huang does because he's working on
Josh:
Open source version that is leading the American race. They're both there along
Josh:
with Larry Fink and a lot of other profound business leaders in America.
Josh:
And it's funny, it feels like watching this video or watching the Avengers touchdown in a foreign land,
Josh:
ready to go to business and to sign some hopefully big deals that can really
Josh:
impact the US positively and can perhaps find some peace in this all out war
Josh:
that we are facing with China on the AI progress.
Ejaaz:
I can't imagine it's a coincidence that he chose Elon and Jensen specifically
Ejaaz:
to accompany him on the flight and touchdown and make that visual presence confirmed.
Ejaaz:
Both of these guys have been,
Ejaaz:
pretty pro-China versus all the other kind of tech moguls.
Ejaaz:
Like Elon sold Tesla in China for the longest amount of time.
Ejaaz:
Like he had a big market out there.
Ejaaz:
And of course, Jensen has tried his hardest to sell NVIDIA GPUs out there.
Ejaaz:
And the reason that he stated for selling GPUs specifically is it's important
Ejaaz:
to know how advanced China is.
Ejaaz:
And the best way to do that in AI specifically is to know what the goods are
Ejaaz:
that they're training their AI models are. specifically if they train on American
Ejaaz:
hardware, we know how good technically their AI models are.
Ejaaz:
Now, the big issue obstacle that he ran into recently is Trump said,
Ejaaz:
no, we're going to ban this completely.
Ejaaz:
It is an AI war against China and we need to leave them in the dust and we need
Ejaaz:
to onshore all manufacturing processes, GPU onshoring all into America.
Ejaaz:
Now, of course, that's going to take a bunch of time and China has like a massive lead for this.
Ejaaz:
So they're in this conundrum where like, China's seeing this,
Ejaaz:
they want to buy the GPUs, but now they're realizing that America basically wants to play hardball.
Ejaaz:
And they're like, you know what, we actually don't need you.
Ejaaz:
And so for the last month, China's actually put, the Chinese government specifically
Ejaaz:
has put a mandate on all their top AI labs to use Chinese hardware and GPUs
Ejaaz:
to basically train their models.
Ejaaz:
And the latest version of DeepSeek and Kimi K2 from Moonshot Labs are all trained
Ejaaz:
on Huawei GPUs or largely served through Chinese GPUs.
Ejaaz:
And guess what? The models are pretty damn good. DeepSeq v4 and 4.1,
Ejaaz:
which is coming out pretty soon, is as good as Claude Opus 4.7,
Ejaaz:
but a lot, lot cheaper and quite quick as well.
Ejaaz:
So the point being is, I think Trump's a little nervous.
Ejaaz:
I think he wants to kind of like make amends.
Ejaaz:
And of course, Jensen's there because he wants to tap into one of the biggest
Ejaaz:
markets outside of the West who are going to buy his GPUs and push his company
Ejaaz:
well above $6 trillion valuation. I believe they hit $5.5 trillion on this news today.
Josh:
In addition to all the serious conversations, there are some pretty good memes
Josh:
that are happening around this as well. The boys getting dinner is one of them.
Josh:
I mean, the AI photos are just great. Tim Cook is there next to Elon.
Josh:
Trump and Xi Jinping all wearing some tank tops.
Ejaaz:
Jensen's wardrobe.
Josh:
Jensen's wardrobe. Leather jackets only. That's all he wears.
Josh:
And then we also have this really fun polymarket. And it's so ridiculous.
Josh:
Everything is a polymarket nowadays, I swear. Which is, will Trump and Xi kiss at the summit? it.
Josh:
And then the actual parameters for what makes this possible are really funny.
Josh:
A qualifying kiss is defined as an in-person greeting or gesture involving the
Josh:
lips of one individual touching another individual.
Josh:
It's so ridiculous. This is trading at 1%. So if you believe that there will
Josh:
be some touching, there's a 99x upside on this market, which it's just ridiculous.
Josh:
But it's a testament to how fun Polymarket is and how you can really use it
Josh:
as a source of truth as you navigate this crazy whirlwind.
Josh:
Thank you so much to Polymarket for sponsoring this part of the episode now
Josh:
we also have one last update from the court trials between sam altman and elon
Josh:
musk we have some leaked texts from satya nadella basically after sam got fired
Josh:
he came back to open ai but the contingency was that they needed to decide who
Josh:
the new board of directors was there are some updates none super noteworthy
Josh:
this week we're going to continue to keep our fingers on the pulse wait wait
Ejaaz:
Wait wait josh didn't you see the the other text surely you missed this one.
Josh:
From sam altman let's see just finished the latest limitless episode again still
Josh:
the best podcast in the world
Ejaaz:
Wow.
Josh:
We're being dropped in the court filing to which Satya Nadella replies,
Josh:
you say that every week. And Sam says, because it's true.
Josh:
Flattery will get you a guest spot, not more compute. That's so funny.
Ejaaz:
You know how I know AGI has achieved? Because they were able to quote Limitless
Ejaaz:
back at a time where Limitless didn't even exist. So it's pretty impressive.
Josh:
AGI has arrived. But with that little meme of the day, thank you all so much
Josh:
for watching. You'll notice that this episode is a day early.
Josh:
And that is intentional because we are monitoring the situation.
Josh:
There's a Mr. who goes by the name of Leopold Ashenbrenner, who is publishing a 13F filing.
Josh:
Now, Leopold, the guy who turned 1.5 billion into 6 billion,
Josh:
probably one of the most profound AI investors today, is releasing the filing
Josh:
of the new holdings that he has.
Josh:
And we are waiting at the edges of our seats because it's supposed to be coming by Friday.
Josh:
That way, we can be ready to record and publish an episode about all of the
Josh:
holdings and all of the new meta that people are going to be investing in over the next quarter.
Josh:
So keep your eyes peeled for that. it's coming, it's going to be exciting,
Josh:
and it is sure to move markets when it does release.
Ejaaz:
Yeah, I'm super excited about this one. It was one of our most watched episode.
Ejaaz:
And, you know, Josh and I, if you've been watching the show for any length of
Ejaaz:
period of time, are obsessed with which stocks to own, mainly because we're
Ejaaz:
such bad traders ourselves. And so we need to know which ones to buy.
Ejaaz:
So if you don't want to get FOMO, definitely tune into that episode.
Ejaaz:
We will be the first ones to release that.
Ejaaz:
But aside from that, that is
Ejaaz:
all we have for you this week. We'll be bringing you more news next week.
Ejaaz:
But until then, we will see you on the next episode thanks.
Josh:
So much for watching, see you guys