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In this episode, Marcus and Vic discuss the nationwide Amazon cloud outage and its impact on tech infrastructure, the Trump administration’s decision to release aid to struggling U.S. farmers, and the latest U.S.–China trade tensions. They cover new sanctions on Russia, global energy shifts, and rising healthcare costs for employers. The hosts also break down major healthcare investments and acquisitions, including AI startups, GLP-1 innovations, and hospital mergers. They explore Mark Cuban’...
In this episode, Marcus and Vic discuss the nationwide Amazon cloud outage and its impact on tech infrastructure, the Trump administration’s decision to release aid to struggling U.S. farmers, and the latest U.S.–China trade tensions. They cover new sanctions on Russia, global energy shifts, and rising healthcare costs for employers. The hosts also break down major healthcare investments and acquisitions, including AI startups, GLP-1 innovations, and hospital mergers. They explore Mark Cuban’s partnership with Trump Rx, new developments in cancer detection and retinal implants, policy battles over non-competes, the rise of autonomous vehicles and flying cars, and breakthroughs in biotech and AI-powered medicine.
Links
00:42: - The Day Amazon Broke the Internet for Millions of Americans WSJ
4:13 - Trump Administration to Release Farm Aid Frozen by Shutdown WSJ
4:56 - Stocks Retreat as Trade Fears Resurface WSJ
5:45 - U.S. Imposes Substantial New Sanctions on Russian Oil Giants WSJ
8:48 - Ampa raises $8.5m to begin US neuromodulation system launch Medical Device Network
10:04 - Hyro Snags $45M for Its Conversational AI Agents MedCity
10:53 - Andel grabs $4.5M to help employers close the GLP‑1 coverage gap Tech Funding News
11:39 - Knownwell Secures $25M to Expand Obesity Medicine MedCity
12:17 - R1 acquires Phare Health, boosting AI abilities Modern Healthcare
13:20 - Cigna, CVS join TrumpRx in offering discounted infertility medications Healthcare Finance
13:58 - Mark Cuban says Cost Plus Drugs will partner with TrumpRx Healthcare Dive
17:31 - The Average Cost of a Family Health Insurance Plan Is Now $27,000 WSJ
20:06 - Hospital lobby again petitions FTC to exclude doctors, hospital execs from noncompete enforcement Fierce Healthcare
22:09 - Minnesota attorney general investigating Aspirus Health over claims of unlawful noncompetes Fierce Healthcare
25:58 - Optum unveils new AI-powered claims processing platform Fierce Healthcare
29:23 - Molina slashes 2025 profit guidance again on ACA woes Healthcare Dive
30:08 - Elevance outperforms in third quarter but warns of Medicaid challenges Healthcare Dive
31:36 - Samaritan Health Services to join MultiCare Health System Fierce Healthcare
32:25 - Novo Nordisk to Shake Up Board After Obesity-Market Challenges WSJ
33:44 - Grail says new data on multi-cancer screening test show improved performance Stat
36:08 - Vision Restored Using Prosthetic Retinal Implant NYT
37:56 - A Mother and Son Share an Autism Diagnosis. Their Worlds Couldn’t Be More Different. WSJ
Every week, healthcare VCs and Jumpstart Health Investors co-founders Vic Gatto and Marcus Whitney review and unpack the happenings in US Healthcare, finance, technology and policy. With a firm belief that our healthcare system is doomed without entrepreneurship, they work through the mud to find the jewels, highlight headwinds and tailwinds, and bring on the smartest guests to fill in the gaps.
If you enjoy this content, please take a moment to rate and review it.
Your feedback will greatly impact our ability to reach more people.
Thank you.
What's up man?
How's it going?
Going well, busy around here.
Uh, finally.
Got a little chilly in Nashville.
Kinda like that.
Yeah.
Uh, I, I've heard, I've heard.
I think I need to get ready.
I'm, I'm coming back on Sunday, so I don't think I'm ready for it.
I don't think I'm ready for the cold weather yet.
Yeah, it's uh, it's too nice in Mexico City.
Busy week.
Lots of stuff has gone down.
Let's start, uh, right away.
Dig right in Amazon.
Amazon took the internet down and I just, I just wanna say like, I had a couple people reach out to me about this, you know, Vic, before you and I started working together full-time.
Back when I was CTO of Moon Toast, we had migrated to the cloud.
This was early, you know, early in the AWS history.
Like I think it was probably.
Uh, 2011 or something like that, and we were part of the first Regionwide outage and it took 48 hours.
Yeah.
When it came, when it came back up.
And so, and a CTO o you're there almost the whole 48 hours.
You're like trying to, trying to figure out something.
Yeah.
And, and here's the thing.
It was the first time it would, it had happened.
And so, you know, most people didn't believe you, the individual company.
Right.
When you were like, no, no, no.
Like, everybody's down.
But, but I, I remember Twitter went down and that was finally what got everybody to realize.
It was something much, much bigger happening.
Yeah.
At, at this point, these things happen pretty regularly, right?
These like internet wide outages between Amazon and cloud search.
I think it is.
You know, there's CrowdStrike is the thing.
Maybe it's CrowdStrike.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You know, the internet is really just running on a few different big providers.
Yeah.
It's a lot of concentrations, so, yeah.
And there's really only three, there's only three cloud providers really, in general.
Yes, yes, yes.
And, and look, you can set it up where you have redundancy across regions.
The size of this outage was pretty significant, so this feels like whatever happened, they hit a pretty nasty endpoint.
I think it was Dynamo DB endpoint that, uh, that got compromised.
Yeah, it's just, it is just kind of the reality of it.
Apparently as soon as everything came back up, the Amazon stock kind of shot back up, uh, which I think is the appropriate response.
If you've, if you've, if you're an analyst and you've been tracking Amazon, then this is not the first time you've seen AWS go down.
And so, you know, you know, as long as they bring it back up, it's fine.
It's not like people are gonna like, leave AWS because of, you know, these, these outages at this point.
But, uh, but yeah, it's, well maybe talk about the SLAs for a minute.
Like, do they have SLAs where, where they, if it was down for say a week?
They would start having to pay money out, but there, there's a certain amount that you can do and still would be within that probably.
Yeah.
Well, I think this probably broke SLA but I think at the end of the day, this is such a high margin business that whatever the, you know, whatever the recoup the customers are gonna have to avoid any churn is, is pretty immaterial, quite frankly, for them.
So I don't, I just don't think it's that big a deal, you know?
Uh, anything you have to say.
I know I'm kind of the tech guy, uh, the two of us, but I mean, no, I mean, I just think it's, uh, you know, we're getting more and more reliant on technology and it's gonna, things are gonna happen once in a while, so we go down.
That's right.
It's a, it's a vector of attack and there's huge concentration risk in how much all of us use one cloud.
You know, in, in the, in the cloud design world, there's a methodology called hybrid cloud where you basically can either work between.
Public and a private cloud or multiple public clouds to sort of avoid this kind of redundancy where you can kind of fail over.
Like if Amazon goes down, you can like fail over to Azure or fail over to Google Cloud.
Yeah.
And almost nobody thinks it's worth doing, you know, like all the work it takes, it's a lot of, uh, it's a lot of, you know, intellectual cost and dollar cost to keep y going.
Yes.
But I think every time one of these things happens, I think the tech teams are like, uh, maybe we should, uh, this, this is, you know, it's pretty painful.
Okay.
Moving to the next story.
The Trump administration's gonna release pharma aid frozen by the shut.
Uh, we continue to have more and more stories every week about, uh, how much farmers in America are struggling.
Some of it is due to the, um, geopolitical trade war things that are happening, especially with China.
We talked about the, the soybean farmers, I think it was last week, and Trump administration's making a move here to provide some made to those farmers.
Yeah, I mean, the estimate is.
The farmer's gonna lose a hundred dollars an acre if they're farming soybeans, which is.
A lot of money that I think, so the Trump administration had to bail out the farmers in the first Trump administration during the trade war with China.
So I don't think anyone's surprised that they're gonna bail 'em out again.
Nope.
Nope.
Agree.
Stocks retreat as trade fears resurfaced, the NASDAQ falls nearly 1% with earning season.
Picking up as to Wall Street Journal, what's your, what's your take here?
I mean, it seems like people are really feeling, you know, this, this us China trade war is, uh, is pretty durable and could be long standing and just could be difficult to navigate.
Right.
It's, it's hard to plan when you don't know when the next true social post is gonna pop up.
Right.
Saying we're gonna have, you know, a hundred percent tariffs going up.
So, yeah, I think that's right.
I mean, it is, uh, it's one thing to have tariffs, but we're getting now to a point where it's, it's a trade war with China.
And then, you know, when you talking about, I meant this, this rising tensions with Russia where it's gonna be, I think really.
More than just a tariff, it could really kind of be difficult to navigate.
Yep.
Agree.
Agree.
The US imposes substantial new sanctions on Russian oils giants.
So Russia sort of now falling into the, the crosshairs of the, the State Department and President Trump's focus on balancing the geopolitical issues that, that we face in America, tackling two of the biggest oil companies based on the war on Ukraine.
And I mean, I think President Trump's had, you know, pretty solid success in the Middle East, but Ukraine has been, uh, a difficult.
Shift for him to, to sort of write, you know, on both sides.
I mean, he's tried to sort of have, I think, pretty heavy handed conversations with Ukrainian leaders, Zelensky and maybe less heavy handed, but also tried to be firm with Putin.
And there's not much changing, uh, in, in that, in that conflict.
Uh, it continues to escalate.
Ukraine is continuing to recede in terms of the land, uh, that they're protecting.
And while in the beginning it felt like Russia was, you know, losing a lot of face, losing a lot of, of military, uh, it, it's now become, I think, pretty apparent that, that Russia does have the upper hand in this war attrition.
And so, I mean, what, what's your take on, on President Trump taking to an economic angle now?
Yeah, I think we need to do it.
I mean, Russia's losing a lot of men every week.
They're, they're probably, I think they're losing more men than the Ukraine side, but they have a lot more men in their army and Right.
I think Putin is, you know, willing to go.
Maybe as deep as he needs to go.
So putting economic pressure, I think we have to try to do everything we can do.
Yeah.
I mean, you know, we'll see for every reaction there's an opposite reaction.
And, uh, you know, what I think will be interesting to see is how does China respond?
Does anything come about from, from bricks as a result of this?
You know, it seems like Trump has been able to get Modi to, to align with him on this particular topic, but, you know, Russia's got other allies and so it, it'll be interesting to see, you know, I'm, I'm just thinking back to when, when Biden leveraged the Swift network to sort of cut off, uh, significant as Russian assets.
And ultimately, I mean, it, it, it did little to stop Putin's, you know, dedication to this effort.
So, so we'll see.
Yeah.
But the other, the other thing that they're considering is.
Allowing Ukraine to have tomahawk missiles or cruise missiles or other missiles.
Mm-hmm.
And I think that is more worrisome.
That's worrisome.
'cause we could get That's worrisome.
We could get pulled into it in that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, I, I think, I think Putin would say economic sanctions are one thing and you know, it's kind of, you're right at the end of the day, I mean, you know, if, if you don't like what I'm doing and you want to change the way we do business, then okay, that's fine.
But I think that.
That supplying Ukraine with, you know, serious weaponry.
You know, that that's where it, it moves into the, the US is leveraging Ukraine as, as part of a proxy war against Russia.
So I, I agree.
That is worrisome.
If we end up going to that step.
Alright.
Moving to the VC rundown, AMPA raises 8.5 million to begin US neuromodulation system launch.
So this is a, uh, a system that's dedicated to people who have treatment, uh, resistant, uh, depression.
Yeah.
So it's, it's a TMS system, a transcranial magnetic stimulation.
There's been other technologies, but I'm excited to see more, more options coming to people with, you know, depression that is.
Not really treatable with the typical medication, so great to see it come out.
I don't know much about technology, but excited to see it.
Yeah.
Uh, and, and I didn't know the VCs either, but I think we should, we should sort of track Nexus Neurotech Ventures, so obviously dedicated to, to brain technology.
Right.
And then Satori Capital, Morningside Ventures, I know this brings their total funding to 18 million.
So relatively well funded for, you know, effectively like a, it's, it's a digital therapeutic, but not in the typical sense of, you know, vr, ar, things like that.
You know, it's, it's still in steal, well, it's emerged from stealth, but it's, it's still, you know, I think pretty early in, in terms of it being rolled out from a clinical perspective.
Yeah.
Well, I think there is a physical magnet you have to put on the person's standard on, yes.
Yeah.
But yeah, it's definitely a digital technology.
Yep.
Hiro Nexts, 45 million for its conversational AI agents.
This is an agentic AI company.
They've raised a total of 95 million.
They're being used by Intermountain Healthcare, bons Core, Hackensack Baptist, and Sutter Health.
Yeah.
So it's a decent sized round.
It's a crowded space, as we've talked about before here.
Yes.
But the, with the customer list that they listed there, it's a decent amount of, uh, really strong health systems that Yeah.
They're good to have.
So, just wanted to watch.
Yeah.
No, no, listen, I agree.
Big round, led by healthier capital.
Really, really strong group of health systems around the table, so, you know, we'll, we'll, we'll track them and kind of see how they do.
I, I agree.
It is very, very busy.
It feels like there's gonna have to be some consolidation and I wonder if the valuations are gonna stick when, when it's time to start doing some consolidation in this space.
But, you know, we'll see.
And Dell grabs 4.5 million to help employers close the GLP one coverage gap as an interesting business model.
It's, it's really like a group purchasing, uh, platform to help employers be able to deliver GLP one medic medications at a more reasonable price.
So, interesting.
I, I don't know.
It seems like a pretty niche space, but, uh, but good.
Yeah.
I mean, GLP one, it's, it's such a huge, huge hot topic.
I think you and I have talked about.
We've got a company in Foundry that's, that's playing in the, in the clip one space, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So, you know, I mean, there's a lot of shots on goal in this space.
Uh, VCs around the table on this one, light Bank Seed Camp Bertlesman.
So, you know, some, some well known VCs, we'll just kind of track how they're doing.
Next up known well secures 25 million to expand obesity medicine.
So this was led by CVS Health ventures.
That's notable included participation for the Mass Mutual Catalyst fund, Intermountain Ventures, a 16 Z Bio and Health and Flare Capital Partners.
That's a really strong group of folks around the table on this deal.
This is a primary care and metabolic health company.
So they announced this at Health this week.
I mean, there are, there are other groups that are doing weight loss as a focus telehealth effort.
They come at it more from a primary care.
Space and then they're expanding into metabolic health and weight loss, weight management.
So.
It's pretty interesting.
Big story, which is not really vc, it's really a private equity story in terms of an acquisition, but a VC-backed company called Fair Health.
That's spelled P-H-A-R-E.
Health was acquired by R one.
This news just came out today.
This is R one, boosting their AI abilities.
This is a pretty young company.
They've not been around that long.
It's pretty intense to sort of see that R one has has chosen their first acquisition in the AI space.
This article that's in Modern Healthcare also talks about the fact that R one has launched an AI lab in partnership with Palantir and that, you know, that was also done in partnership with Coastal Ventures.
And so I, I think generally speaking, we know that there's a lot going on in the revenue cycle management space.
We know that R one as a leader, they were recently taken over by Tower Brook and CD and R, but now we're starting to see them move on, on acquisitions and doing it, you know, alongside Palantir and Coastal is, is pretty impressive.
Yeah, I agree.
I don't know, this startup pretty good situation for Cosla.
Yeah, agreed.
Okay.
So moving into policy, Cigna and CVS joined Trump RX in offering discounted infertility medications.
Manufacturer, EMD Serrano is engaged by the Trump administration to bring the price of the medicine down by 84%.
Yeah, so this is incredible.
I mean, it is very expensive to do in vitro. Um, that's one of the obstacles, honestly.
Mm-hmm.
And so having Trump RX be able to bring the cost down is, is great and good to see sort of a group of, I mean, there's several pharmaceutical companies now coming on to Trump rx.
I think it's gonna be an actual thing.
Yep.
And on that note, mark Cuban at Health this week on the main stage said that cause plus drugs is gonna partner with Trump RX as well.
Tell me about that.
Yeah, I was surprised about that.
I mean, they have similar motivations, but a very different style.
Cost plus drugs is, is.
As the aim says, they're very transparent about like what they call, what they pay for the drugs, and they put up.
15% margin on it so everyone knows what, what everything costs.
I think it's probably good that they're joining together.
So I, I, I will say, to me, this feels very in line with Mark Cuban's positioning in, in two ways.
One, he has very much positioned cost plus drugs as a challenger company, right?
Being less about the success of this one company and more about how improper the PBM industry is.
Right?
And so I think it, it makes sense to me that he would align cost plus.
With really any entity that aligns with helping to lower the cost for employers and the general public.
Right.
So I I, I think on that or, or, or put, you know, put pressure on the PBM model which Trump reactively is doing.
Yes, yes.
Exactly.
So, so, so I, I, I would say there, there's alignment there and, and this feels consistent with that positioning from him.
The second thing I'll say is, you know, I track Cuban both on X and on blue sky, and one thing that I noticed he is very, very consistent about is he does not want to be positioned as someone who has Trump derangement syndrome.
Okay.
And so he's very quick to credit or congratulate President Trump when he does something that is in line with the principles that Mark has.
So as opposed to kind of consistently criticizing him, he, he seems to try to sort of balance his criticism with congratulations and praise based on each activity.
Right.
And, and I think this is just more of him demonstrating that he's really, at the end of the day, independent and pro-America.
Right.
And so, uh, I, I, I think this is, this is consistent from Mark Cuban.
And, and you know, I, I gotta say in a time when, when the country is, is so divided, it's, it's kind of cool to have a billionaire and an entrepreneur with the kind of influences as Mark Cuban really kind of consistently sticking to the principles and not getting pulled in to the political melee.
It's really cool to see him hold his own individual ground.
And not feel that he has to sort of, I don't know, just yeah.
Powow to makes sense to one side or the other.
Makes sense.
I just, I saw him on a TV show, bill Mahers show with uh mm-hmm.
Aaron Ross Sorkin and Mark Cuban talking about Trump and they both made the point that to, to congratulate him on the Mid East piece deal 'cause it just, it happened.
Mm-hmm.
Um, but then they went on to sort of, you know, so these, this part was really good.
But these other thing, then they, they had a bunch of criticism too, but they definitely both, even Aaron, Russ, Orkin, you know, definitely was this is, we have to recognize that this piece deal.
Now, maybe it's not gonna hold, but it's holding sort of so far that gives you more credibility.
I think when you criticize, when it's not just like a blanket, everything he does is bad.
It, that's, I mean, I think that's the point is he, he does not want to get lumped in with TDS.
Right.
And I'm, and I'm not even saying TDS is a real thing, but, but it's, it's, it's a real point of debate that people use to try to, you know, minimize another person's argument.
Right?
Yeah.
Okay.
The average cost of a family health insurance plan is now $27,000 higher spending on chronic diseases.
Weight loss drugs and hospital bills help drive the increase.
This is covered by the Wall Street Journal, and before they even give you the first sentence of the article, they slap a, a chart right there.
And if you happen to be watching this right now on YouTube, you can see it is up into the right in a pretty nasty way.
The worker contribution is going up a little bit, but the employer piece, I mean, it, it has doubled.
It has doubled since, from 2010 to 2025, that contribution has gone from $10,000 to $20,000.
Yeah, that's right.
I mean, I think it's.
Wait, it's more than $20,000.
So it's almost 30 27.
So it's gone.
It's gone up.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
The employer contribution.
Oh, the employer piece, yeah.
Right.
Okay.
Yes, yes.
The employer contribution has double.
Yeah.
The employer to 20 K.
Yes, that's right.
So the employers are mostly.
Absorbing the, the extra cost.
Yes.
But I do not think that is gonna last.
I think, um, it is.
So if you go down a little bit, there's a, there's a deductible chart that's pretty interesting.
Keep going.
It's, it's more, maybe the last charts down a little ways.
Big companies are still holding on with a, with a easy deductible, but, um Right.
Smaller companies have already increased it.
Yeah.
Well, well, well, you, you just can't eat it in your p and l. Yeah.
You know?
Yeah.
You can't afford it.
You can't, you can't, you have to keep sort of pushing it off.
So, yeah.
I mean, thi this, this trend and, and this is gonna continue.
I mean, you know, we're, we're obviously not talking about employer plans when we talk about the, the a CA markets, but we're, we're a week away from, from those new rates rolling out.
And, uh, you know, it's, it's gonna be, it's gonna be terrible.
It's gonna be terrible, right?
Yeah.
And it's not clear that anyone in DC is gonna work it on.
I mean, Trump is going to Asia, I think tomorrow, and the Senate left yesterday on, on recess.
Maybe they could come back, but I don't know.
It seems like our elected officials are not really doing their job now.
Maybe Trump's going to a, a summit in Asia, so I shouldn't say he's not doing his job, but he is not working on this.
Well, well, they, they're, they're not, they're not coming to the table, that's for sure.
Right?
Yeah.
You know, they, they, they do not have enough alignment to come to the table.
I think that's the point.
They would argue they are doing their job for their party and their constituents by holding the line, uh, and, and on both sides.
But yeah, in the meantime, we're all gonna be stuck with much, much higher insurance bills.
Right.
Alright.
Hospital lobby, again, petitions the FTC to exclude doctors, hospital execs from non-compete enforcement.
Uh, that hospital lobby is of course the a HA.
How is this going so far, Vic?
I think it's going pretty poorly.
I mean, in September, so couple, few weeks ago, four weeks ago mm-hmm.
Head of the FTC Andrew Ferguson sent letters to a bunch of health systems urging them to voluntarily modify their contracts.
So you get rid of Noncompetes.
Okay.
I think that's the step you do before you start enforcement.
I don't think that a HA is gonna have much success.
Well, I mean, it's, it's been, it's, I think it's been a pretty tough year for a HA lobbying efforts this year.
I think that's just objectively true.
It this is their job.
Right.
This is their job.
Yeah.
So it's not like they sort of woke up today and decided that they were gonna petition.
This is what their members pay them for.
Right.
You know, focus on their interests in DC I think the Trump administration is not that excited about giving them audience and, and I think that's your, that's your point here.
Yeah.
And there's a, there they list five or six reasons, which are, are correct.
So, for instance, it protects the investments hospitals make when they're recruiting and training physicians.
So, okay.
But, uh, the FTC is, is saying that the public is overwhelmingly in favor of this, which, which I think is probably right.
So both sides are right, but I think that they're gonna have to try to navigate it.
Yeah.
And, and again, you know, core public opinion, I think people care more about their doctors than they do about the brand of the hospital the doctor works at.
And so, you know, it's just, I I think it's just another one of those situations where the healthcare industry broadly has, has lost leverage in, in the court of public opinion, which then has resulted in them losing leverage in dc Right.
Because it's, because there's, there, there's not a lot of political jeopardy to denying their requests.
Right.
Uh, Minnesota Attorney General investigating Aspirus Health over claims of unlawful non-compete.
So very related story.
Uh, this is Keith Ellison.
Keith Ellison is, has an ag pretty regularly in the shorts of health systems when it comes to mergers and, and, and other matters.
And so, uh, it's not, uh, unusual for, for me to see him, him sort of taking this, uh, this action, but I, but I think it shows sort of exactly the kind of thing that the a HA is trying to get more leverage for, for health systems on.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's right.
I mean, this is sort of, uh, maybe a sign of what's to come across the across.
There's only, there's only four individual states that outlaw non-competes today at the state level.
Minnesota's one of the four.
It's gonna be happening much more often next year when FTC federally starts working on.
Yeah, I mean, you know, I, I think, I think at this point, both politicians and think tank leaders have just sort of.
Stuck with the focus that they are against any behavior that health sys health systems would employ that even smells anti-competitive.
Mm-hmm.
Right.
Like if, it doesn't matter if you're doing it to your labor force or if you're doing it to your community through m and a, it's, it's going to be heavily scrutinized.
Right.
And, and even more so if you happen to have private equity money.
Right.
So it's just the playbook for health systems is just getting more and more constricted.
And if you're not one of these, like if you're not, you know, Ascension, HCA, you know, advocate, if you're not sort of at that level of scale, then I just think it gets really difficult, you know, to, to sort of navigate the, the fundamental challenges that you're gonna be facing at already based on demographics and, and.
The economy, but then on top of that, everything that's coming down the pipe with HR one, so I, I still think we are in for many, many, many hospital closings over the course of the next five years.
It's, to me, at this point, there's just too many things pushing the industry in that direction.
Which, which is, which is going to result in less jobs, less coverage, you know, and, and a bunch of other things.
It's like, maybe it will be good to, to, to have this happen, to get to the next version of the healthcare industry.
But as you and I know, the regulatory environment means that nothing in healthcare moves that fast.
And so, while we are making it more and more difficult for health systems to operate, there's not like a good solution emerging, you know, to, to, to pick up the slack.
Yeah, that's right.
There's gonna be patients that fall through the cracks or can't get, can't get the care that they would've gotten five years ago.
Health was this week.
Both you and I were not there.
Um, and you know, I gotta say like I. I think about my, my friends in healthcare and fewer of them were there this year than last year.
I'll just say that.
And I, I think it's just a combination of the intense difficulty that we are finding, uh, in, in the healthcare environment right now.
We have a, we currently have a government shutdown that's not helping anything and just kind of conference fatigue.
You know, it's like you go to these things and they're, they're mostly press release, um, events and, and opportunities to go out and do some networking, see if you can, you know, grease some deals through the pipeline.
But it, it's, it's a, it's a lot when you really kind of are like, do I have the budget to do the travel?
Do I have the budget for the, to pay for the badge?
So just, just acknowledging that there's a lot of pressure out there, um, that I think is, is going to also find its way to the conference world.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's right.
I mean, there's a lot of solutions there, but it's almost overwhelming the number of solutions and innovations Exactly.
And startups and things.
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
So on that note, Optum unveiled their new AI powered claims processing platform.
And you know, this, this was a strange one for me because if I had to think of like, okay, what is the one organization in America that is probably leading the pack in terms of AI when it comes to claims processing?
I, I would've already said Optum.
Right?
So, so, so apparently like there, there's some next level that they've, that, that they've achieved with this, with this new platform.
But, uh, what did you read about, about this story?
Um, it's, it's real time.
It's meant to be like immediate response, giving you the, the answer about reimbursement and getting you your money more quickly.
Okay.
Um.
I mean, so they, they talked about like, I think there's a, not just at Optum, but there's a trillion dollars in administrative costs.
Well, 20% of the healthcare system is in all the administrative back and forth, submitting a claim.
Maybe it gets disputed, there's fights over it, then they pay it.
So Optum is putting forth the solution that would cut all that out and just pay you immediately.
That sounds great.
As long as it is paying at a rate that everyone agrees on.
Uh, I think there's reasons that they, they fight over it, but they do have a health system.
Align the health as part of this kind of announcement and rollout.
So, and Align is having a lot of success with it.
So if it, if it can solve the administrative burden and provide fair payment.
Whatever fair means.
I think that could be great.
That's what every health system and physician wants.
I don't think they want extra payment, they just want to get paid for what they do.
Right.
But getting to the truth is, has been a challenge.
I mean, the entire revenue cycle management business is for that.
So, so, you know, I, I think one thing that, that helps Optum on this story, you, you and I both know this because a fair amount of the, the Optum team that focuses on sort of the consulting side of the business, especially when it comes to, with, uh, providers is actually based in, in Nashville, but they, but they're not well known for that, right?
I mean, I think, I think the brand is known for their, their Optum care side of the house as well as for.
You know, the stories around kind of having a closed loop between Optum and UnitedHealthcare, right?
But they have a very, very robust services and consulting and technology business that they, that they offer to health systems.
And I think, you know, more importantly than talking about, you know, Optum rolling this, this platform out to UnitedHealthcare is the align of health story, right?
Like showing that they are actually working with health systems to help them to, to get their money faster and to improve the patient experience.
And so it's probably why, you know, especially given sort of the year they, that they, that they have pulled themselves out of, I would say it feels like the drumbeat of negative United Stories has, has dropped off in the last, you know, two months.
Yeah.
Uh, which is, which is good.
It feels like part of the story they want to tell is that Optum is a solutions provider, right?
And not just Yeah, kind of the, the in-house data arm for, for the insurance company.
Yeah.
They definitely want to put that out there.
I think, I think it would be healthy for it to, to become that.
I think it's on the way.
Yeah.
Well, I, well, I, I, I think they already are that, I just don't think the narrative is there.
Right.
I mean, I think if, if you look at the scale of that business between Advisory group and some of the other stuff, they have Optum inside.
It's, it's, it's pretty significant.
It's just, it's just not as strong on the narrative side is what I would say.
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
Uh, healthcare Dive Molina slash is 2025 profit guidance, again on a CA woes.
This is our first story on the payer side.
And this a CA stuff is gonna be a real problem for the managed care companies.
Yeah.
So Molina is, uh, you know, they really focus on government pay and their MLR was 92.6 overall, but then in the a CA book of business, 95.6, but I don't even know how to think about it.
Um, you know, over 95% MLR, that means very little money is available for Molina to do any, anything else.
So it's difficult times in, in, uh, the payer world.
Right on.
Next story is ance.
They outperformed it in the third corner, but they warned of Medicaid challenges.
The thing that jumped out to me in this story was the MLR, which has jumped year over year.
Let me just find it in the story here.
Uh, but I think it was over 90%.
Um, yeah, so last year it was 89.5%.
Um, this year it was 91.3%.
So it's better than the analyst forecast.
But I mean, we're, we're really just kind of.
Blowing the MLR out out, out the window now.
I mean, are we gonna have to just totally re-look at, you know, similar to what we talk about when we, when we are talking about the baseline for inflation and how 2% is just not, not realistic anymore?
I mean, are we gonna have to just re-look at what's reasonable again for MLR?
I think it's difficult.
Above 90, I don't know how you can run the operations.
I mean that, I think about it like a gross margin basically.
So the gross margin is under 10%.
Now Ance has care on, just similar to Optum.
Optum, yes.
And so it contributed, uh, 800 million in, in income.
Yep.
Molina doesn't have that.
So that, uh, no.
You know, I think ance is better than Molina a better positioned, but they're still really difficult on all fronts managed care.
Yeah.
Not that health systems are that much better.
I mean, everywhere in healthcare is challenging.
Yeah, yeah.
No, no.
The whole thing is hard right now.
The whole thing is hard.
Um, moving on to health systems, only one story this week, which is a merger, Samaritan Health Services to join MultiCare Health System.
This is a, a new deal that will create an 18 hospital system in the Northwest, about 7.5 billion in revenues.
And so, while the hospital count is not, is not that high, 7.5 billion in revenues, I think makes it legitimate.
You know, that's kind of in the same scale as the hat Coac was, uh, acquired.
Summa Health, so, you know, could be a real target for, for innovation, but very regional, focused in, in Oregon and uh, and, and Washington.
Yeah, that's right.
This is in the northwest.
So I don't know the brands that well, but, um, two fairly small systems getting together, which I think is positive.
I mean, we need consolidation.
For all the reasons we've been talking about on the health system side.
Yeah.
And this one is across state, even though it's in the same region.
It is, you know, sort of Oregon and, yeah.
And Washington, you know, blending together here.
Okay.
Moving on to Pharma, Novo Nordis to shake up board after obesity.
Market challenges.
Last week we were talking about a pretty big acquisition they were doing, but we know that they're still flailing around from, you know, just kind of Lily and them lunch for, for quite a while.
And, and now there's also sort of broader things coming out of, uh, out of Washington, talking about really driving the cost of, of Glip one drugs down.
I think it impacted the entire space.
Um, but, uh, but basically there, there was a controlling shareholder and, uh, they had a fight with, with the board chairman and the board chairman and, and, and, uh, many of the directors are now out.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So we're used to seeing like, um, you know, kind of like a, someone who's tries to, um.
Cause change in the corporate environment from the outside.
This was the Novo Nordis Foundation and they were looking for more, more management change, more shakeup in the strategy than the board was willing to do.
So they replaced the chairman and replaced six other members.
So now they have a majority of the board and can put in the plan they want I think So pretty big change.
Well, yeah, I mean look it's their right and, and certainly, you know, management and, and the board a tough 12 months.
So, you know, it makes sense.
Alright, grail says new data on multi canncer screening tests show improved performance.
This is from stat finding strength in the biotech's push for FDA approval of the GRI blood test.
Yeah, so this was pretty exciting that they tested 36,000 adults.
So it's like a pre.
It's a screening test for early discovery of cancer, and these were volunteers and they, they were able to find that caught cancer in a decent number of patients.
So it was really impactful.
You could get stage one cancer, you know, before there are any symptoms or anything, which obviously is much easier to treat.
Yeah.
Um, we're gonna continue to talk about the false positives.
So they had about, um, 62% were real positives where they found the, you know, the warning of cancer and the patient had cancer.
Mm-hmm.
And then 38%, they did a bunch more testing to find that the patient did not have cancer, was a false positive.
So I think it's really valuable and also valuable to sort of just watch the, the false positives too.
And the false positives are dropping in, in the, in the previous studies it was, it was more like 43%, you know, were, were false positives.
So that's, it's good to see that continue to drop, you know, all of the negative results did not have cancer, so that negative predictive value is 99.1%.
And so, you know, look, it's, it, uh, is it perfect?
No.
Is it going to create false positives that will create, you know, issues for people as they worry and sort of take the next step?
Yes, it's not perfect, but, uh, the, the continued improvement and, and sort of finding more out, more about what is driving those false positives, we'll continue to drive the false positives down right.
Credit to the heroes that are signing up and, and, and.
Being part of these studies and getting the false positives and having to deal with that worry when in fact they don't have cancer.
But, you know, every one of those hopefully is, is giving grail really valuable insights.
They need to improve and then continue to lower that false positive, you know, percentage to something.
I think much more palatable.
I, I, I think right now it's certainly true that that 36% does seem pretty high, but at the same time, I wanna see more and more of these diagnostics at a, at a low cost get, get pushed out.
And so I'm hoping we continue to, to do these studies.
I agree, it's gonna keep getting better, which is great.
Yeah.
Uh, New York Times vision restored using prosthetic retinal implants.
This is, uh, another health and eye story.
Um, the device could help a million people with a severe form of macular degeneration to be able to see enough to read more and more sort of neuro implants that are, you know, just boggling the mind and showing us maybe we're just, you know, fleshy computers.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, it's incredible.
The, the, uh, there are glasses with cameras on them and then an implant, they show a picture of it, it compared to a penny, so you can get a frame of reference, but mm-hmm.
It is very small.
It, it gets implanted into your retina if you have macular degeneration.
I think that's the disease that, um, they can now treat.
And so you have, you can have a field of vision.
It's not as wide as, as normal human eye, a limited field, but, but you can read.
Read a book, read, read the newspaper, read things, which is incredible.
Yeah.
So again, this is science.
There were side effects.
Some people had pressure in the eye, tears in the retina and bleeding.
I mean, this is, these are scientific advancements, you know, it's, it's, uh, every person who steps up, takes on, takes on risk, you know, puts them, puts themselves in the line of, of fire, you know, hopefully for, for improvements to their own condition, but ultimately for the advancement of science.
Right.
So it's just, it's just such an interesting time.
I mean, we, we, we had so many sci-fi books and stories and movies about all these implants and we're, you know, Vic, we're living in the time now where I felt every other week, one of the stories that we go over in the health and eye section is about some form of implant, you know, in the head somewhere, you know?
Yeah.
Yeah, it's, it, it's a fun time.
I mean, it's a, it's a crazy time politically, but also a fun time in, in, uh, science.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Fun time in science.
Okay.
A mother and son share an autism diagnosis.
Their worlds couldn't be more different.
Parents and doctors question whether one label can encompass a condition with a range of needs.
So I, I mean, I'll just tell you, as someone who knows multiple, actually quite close to multiple, um, young people who are on the spectrum.
I, I, I feel like if you know people on the spectrum, then you know that it is a spectrum.
Yeah.
Um, and, and, and how, and how, you know, their condition presents is, you know, while, while there are groupings and while there are very similar symptoms, it's also very individual, you know, it's very individual because you're talking about something that, that, uh, is intertwined with personality.
Right.
It's not something that, that happens at the layer of like.
Fitness and like how you move your limbs or something.
I mean, it's, it's, it's how you present in the world and how you engage with other human beings.
And so, um, it's not just the condition or even sort of what your particular condition is on a spectrum.
It's also who you are as an individual.
Right.
And, and, and how you, how you have, you know, evolved w alongside this condition that you have.
I don't, to me the headline was not that, that, that surprising.
But I do think there are a lot of people who don't know people with autism and, and this kind of education is helpful.
Yeah, I think it's helpful.
And it also, I think there's a beginning of a, it's probably a small group right now, but there's a quote in there from a chief of clinical enterprise for, uh, Boston Children's.
Mm-hmm.
Basically saying that using the same term autism for people, you know, some people that are very functional and.
And if you met them, you wouldn't necessarily even know right away.
Right.
All the way to nonverbal, you know, very difficult, uh, cases.
Yes.
We called them all autism on the spectrum.
Yes.
And he thinks he's saying this Boston Children's leader that we need to create new categories, new terms, because calling it one thing just is a disservice to all.
I don't know this, I think there's pros and cons to it, but it's starting to be a conversation, I think with all the attention and autism, you know, brought by the Trump administration.
Yeah.
I look, I, I, I think it's, I think it's right it, because we had, well not just the, the, the Trump administration, but I think just the, the prevalence of the condition, you know, um, yeah.
I mean, I, I mean, I feel like.
Maybe 20 years ago, not everybody knew somebody with autism.
And uh, you know, I think it's getting kind of hard to not know somebody with autism.
Yeah.
You know, the, the, the prevalence is just so high at this point.
So Yes, I, I agree.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, yeah, it was, it was first created in the DSM in 1980.
I mean, we didn't have a diagnosis until 1980.
This was in the article.
I didn't know that.
Okay.
Okay.
And so it's relatively new compared to other medical diseases.
So I think it's worth looking into the, I don't know what the right answer is, but there is a wide difference where, in the way you are in the spectrum.
Agree.
Alright, two crypto stories this week.
One a big one.
Coinbase strikes a deal for crypto investing platform Echo, the acquisition marks Coinbase ISS eighth Deal this year.
You know, I gotta say this is pretty good reporting by the Wall Street Journal.
I'm glad that, that the, you know, the sub, the subtitles of this article is focusing on the fact that Coinbase has been very, very active in m and a activity this year.
You know, Coinbase is going for it, Vic.
They're going for it.
Yeah.
I, I actually think right now there's probably no better bellwether for the direction of crypto in America than Coinbase.
I think, I think coin is really the, you know, is, is the.
Coin is the ticker, you know what I mean?
For those of us who are actually at least crypto literate, you know, when you look at where they were a year ago, it was just all, all out sort of fighting for, uh, political engagement to where they are today, post-election.
Everything from, you know, being a partner with Circle that's now iPod to, to fighting with maybe different bank lobbies around their right to offer rewards for, for staking, um, USDC to the growth of the base ecosystem and now launching the base app, um, as a new client on top of the forecaster social network.
And now this Echo deal, which is really about raising capital for, for ventures, you know, on crypto markets, right?
Yeah.
And, um, and, and Echo is the leading platform in the space.
Look, they're out in front of the market structure legislation, right?
And, and I think, and I think there are bellwether that.
There's probably a, a better than 60%.
I don't know, I don't know what poly market says about it, but it feels like there's a better than 60% chance that it's gonna happen.
Right?
Yeah.
I mean, and whether it happens this year or next year, I think is the only question.
Yes.
I think it's gonna happen before the midterm elections and yeah.
Coinbase is, is the leader.
I mean there, most Americans when they approach like, okay, I gotta figure out crypto Coinbase, is, is that, and Robinhood are the two places that Americans go, I think really when they're just trying to figure it out.
And you're right, a year ago, it's very different.
It says in the article that it have, uh, the shares are up 40% year to date.
And so, I mean, you're right.
They've, they've made a lot of progress and, and the market has recognized it.
Yeah.
And then, you know, kind of talking about the other big, big, big, big platform in the world, right?
I mean, if Coinbase is the bellwether for the, for the West, Binance is the bellwether for the East.
Yes.
And um, what's so interesting about that is that cz, Shang XO was arrested.
Spend time in jail.
Yeah.
On US jurisdiction for, you know, KYC and other sort of issues, which is why Binance for a very, very long time has not been available in America.
And I think Trump and his continued sort of salvos to the overall crypto industry has, uh, issued a pardon to, to, to cz.
So this is a big deal, right?
I mean, you know, he pardoned, um, Ross Brook from, uh, from Silk Road that felt very symbolic.
But this CZ one, this is, this is interesting, right?
Because this is, this is a, a Chinese national running a company that's still not really available in the United States.
And so you sort of ask yourself like, why, why did he, why did he do this?
And, and I think that there's, there's a lot of interesting theories around it.
I think one of the big ones is trying to send a signal to the entire crypto world, not just the crypto world in the west, but the entire crypto world, that America is going to be open for business with crypto.
Yeah.
Which we want.
I mean, it was just positive.
I mean.
The crypto markets are growing and the US can lead that, or, or not lead that.
I mean, I don't think CZs Bank, you know, crypto platform did anything that other US banks just take JP Morgan, but any bank doesn't do already.
I mean, it is difficult to stop, you know, people laundering money through any platform because the, they're criminals.
They, they are looking for ways to get around stuff.
And if, I mean, I think it was unfair that he got convicted of the KYC stuff, not because the facts weren't right, but because there's, every bank in America has similar things where there's money flowing through it.
People don't go to jail, they might get a fine, but Right, right.
The Biden administration was just ridiculously over, over the top for, we've already talked about it.
It's stupid political reasons that, that don't make sense.
So, yeah.
And, and, and listen, I, I am not, uh, I, I, I haven't fact checked this, but I, I think I was listening to the Bankless roll up, you know, I think David and Ryan were saying that, uh, that the Democrats are going after the market structure stuff.
What do you mean go like they are supporting it or they're not supporting it?
No, they're not supporting it.
They need to do some reading.
They have learned nothing.
Right, right.
But like, if, if, if that's true.
I, I don't know that it's true.
Although I, I, I do trust the Bankless guys.
Yeah.
Like, if that's true, they've learned nothing like just stop fighting crypto.
You're not gonna stop it.
You know what I mean?
Like, it's, it's just.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I don't, yes, they are.
They're fighting something that no one really wants them to fight, and it's not gonna, they're not gonna win votes for that No.
From any, any side of the country.
No.
I, I, I don't know how it's popular at all.
Like, like, like you want to stop people from being able to raise money.
Right.
Right.
It's like, this is just, you know, it's, I mean, 'cause here's the thing, Vic, like, you know, of course whenever the legislation comes out, it's going to have KYC in it.
Yeah.
Like, we're not gonna abandon KYC.
So, so I guess that's my thing.
It's like, why are you trying to force everybody to use the old rails?
I just don't, I just don't understand.
I just don't understand where the AI rundown.
Now Google's DeepMind has a new AI that helps find potential breakthrough in cancer.
The AI model predicted that combining GLI or TIB with low dose interferon could boost immune response.
Turning cold tumors hot.
Yeah.
So we need to define a couple things.
So a cold tumor is one that's not recognized by the body as foreign.
Our own immune system doesn't yet notice it as being something to fight against.
Doctors refer to that as a cold tumor.
I didn't know that before this article, but obviously it's very difficult to fight those tumors because, you know, our antibodies are not, are not targeting it.
And so Google has a large language model that a C two S scale, 27 B, it's a $27 billion million, uh, parameter model that is, um.
It's a, it's a biotech model.
It's not predicting, you know, human English language.
It's pre predicting DNA and RNA.
And they worked for the Yale medical School to explore how could we sort of shine a light on these cold, cold cancer cells and get the body to recognize it, when then maybe our own, uh, antibodies would, would attack it.
And together they found a possible combination of two, two molecules.
Yeah.
And then Yale tested it so incredibly it, it works.
Which, uh, really good to see, uh, you know, one that this science fiction stuff is really kind of producing things of value and now they're integrating back into the academic community to go, you know, go, go test things.
So.
Mm-hmm.
It's great.
Yeah.
I mean, look, go Google continues.
Make real contributions.
It's, it's, uh, it's super cool.
And, and here's another one, ley, which is part of the alphabet stack, rolls out a consumer app for free health guidance and an AI agent.
Um, I'm gonna, I'm gonna download this'cause I, I, I gotta try it out and see.
Have, have you downloaded it yet?
No, no, but I, I'm the same.
I think we have to test it out.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So to read a little bit from the article here, early launched a free consumer health app to connect patients with personalized care recommendations based on their health data within the app called Verily Me.
Patients can be connected to licensed clinicians who review me relevant medical records across multiple providers and health systems.
That is huge.
Users can then use those health recommendations to inform conversations with their providers.
The app is intended to identify care gaps and provide tailored health recommendations fairly executive set.
It's at no cost, and the goal is for it to be adopted broadly by the general public as a tool to have access to and engage in better preventative health management.
Yeah, it's incredible.
I mean, no one except Google or Verily, which is a Google spinoff, would be able to do this or would consider doing, but just giving something to the world totally for free is great.
I mean, I, we'll see over the next, you know, week or two, you and I can test it, but it's gonna be, it's gonna be worth the cost.
Definitely.
Yeah, exactly.
And it would get better and better over time.
I mean, Google's gonna roll out their, uh, 3.0 model, they're saying before Thanksgiving, and so it's already sort of leaking out a little bit and it's just gonna keep getting, you know, stronger.
So, yeah.
No, I, no, I agree.
I think, I think, I think it's awesome.
And here's what I think is really, really interesting about this particular opportunity, right?
So when you think about Google and all the many things they have, one of the things they have is Android, right?
And so if you've been tracking mobile health for a while, you know that on Apple, apple Apple's got, you know, the, the whole health kit thing, and then Google's got their Google Health.
Platform and so on, both, on both phone, ioss, whether Android or or iOS.
You can have this health app that can pull in all of your, not not, in fact, it can't even pull in all of your, it can pull in many of your health records across different systems.
It's really good at pulling in labs from different places, but for the most part, you have to be a pretty big health system to be registered on, on those systems for you, you to be able to pull in your, your health records.
Right?
But the, but like, you pull it in and then it, I, I, I can't, I can't speak to, to the Google experience, but on the Apple experience, you pull it in and then it just gives you like a dashboard that's just viewing the information the same way if you were to be looking at a printout, right?
So there's, there's no additional insight or intelligence.
And one thing we know is Apple is not good at ai.
Right.
And so to me, this is, this is really probably one of the first big consumer health sort of milestones that I've seen Google do that makes me feel like, ooh, you know, they could kind of pull ahead here because Google is so good at ai, right?
That this could make Google, Google Smartphones, just the superior device for people who really care about controlling more of their own health.
You know, people who are in the medicine 3.0 biohacking and things of that nature.
You know, it's, it will be interesting to see this roll out.
Why that Google Tam Yeah, it'll, it'll be interesting to see this rollout and continue to, to advance, you know, look, I, I'm, I'm an Apple user, but I keep two phones because I'm always trying to keep up with what's going on on Android.
I, I just don't, I feel like at this point.
It's, it's a preference thing there.
I don't believe there's significant advantages to either.
It's a preference thing, but, but this is the kind of thing that could really make me pull out my Android phone more often.
Um, okay.
Open AI's AI powered browser chat.
GPT Atlas is here.
Chat, GPT is the feeding heart of Atlas according to employees on the live stream.
So this from the Verge, you know, we're, we're definitely in the window, Vic of a wave of AI powered browsers rolling out.
This is going to be a threat to Chrome.
You know, there's also, uh, I think.
A lot of concerns.
I've been, I've been looking on x not just at this, but you know, people talking about comet from perplexity, which, you know, was only available to pro users for a while, so you had to pay $200 a month.
I wasn't gonna pay that.
But what they're talking about is some of the security issues that, that come with these AI powered browsers and, and that they haven't really sandboxed the agentic, uh, activities well enough.
And so there can be prompt injections as the AI is like reading all the code on a website.
Like there can be an Easter egg of nefarious code on a webpage that instructs the AI to do something negative to your computer.
Right.
I, I, I just think this is part of the whole, we're moving so fast because we are in this arms race and the general public is so oblivious to the, to the risks, to themself.
And this AI powered browser, I think is going to.
Be one of those incredible trade-offs where people are just like, oh my God, I'm gonna gain so much time back by doing this.
But they could also potentially be exposing themselves pretty significantly to some security issues.
Uh, and I think maybe the first place we'll find that is where a bunch of corporations say you are not allowed to use these AI powered browsers.
Yeah.
So, I mean, two things.
I, I'm trying to get more open to being, you know, kind of willing to consider open AI as, as the dominant thing it is, but it's just hard for me to get excited about it.
I mean, they do a demo and they showed a variety of agentic, like things you can buy food or book a restaurant.
It's just not super exciting.
Uh, yeah, they do talk about the pro prompt projection, and their answer is that you should watch it, like visibly watch it.
Well, it's doing the work so that, so nothing happens.
Which didn't seem very realistic to me.
And then they're, they built it on the chromium open source stack.
Of course they did.
Of course they did.
They using the chrome like base.
I, I don't know.
It's hard for me to get too excited about it, but, but a lot of people use it.
Uh, I think, you know, I'm a brave user, which is also based on chromium, but it's much more focused on privacy from an ad blocking perspective.
And also crypto.
It's got like an embedded crypto wallet in it.
And, and it's also got its own token and stuff like that.
And Brave was on X basically saying like, we're working on the agent stuff, but like, we're not ready to roll it out because, you know, so again, to me, Vic, I, I think that we we're, we're in this, we're in this era.
Here's the best thing about this era, right?
The last era, which was social.
We kind of didn't have a choice, right?
Like, like Zuckerberg ran away with it so badly that, you know, we just were stuck with him.
And you just have to decide, am I gonna be on social media at all or not?
Right?
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
But like, you didn't really have a choice of who you would align with eth ethically.
And I think what's really nice about AI is that's not true, right?
Like, you know, I can use Claude even if David Sachs doesn't like it, because I am more aligned with them ethically than I am with open ai.
Right?
So, or maybe a better way of saying is I'm more aligned with Dario than I am with Sam, you know?
Um, yeah, that's right.
Yeah.
Claude released a bunch of new, um, kind of tools, but also extensions, so it is getting much stronger, but this is a different story.
So, um, yeah.
Well, well, it's a good segue.
So, philanthropic launches, Claude for life sciences, embedding AI directly into lab workflows.
So, you know, Claude continues to, to find ways to, uh, to, to create value for people who are doing good things Right.
Which is awesome.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And they listed a bunch of partners, so this isn't just like a press release they had.
Maybe eight or 10 big, big lab technology companies that, that are using it now embedded in, which is great.
Yep.
Okay.
So here's a story I, I think I sent to you on X and you went and found the official story on TechCrunch, but OpenAI pauses the SOA video generations of Martin Luther King, Jr.
I think I sent you the ex post where OpenAI, uh, their newsroom acknowledged that the, uh, the, the family, uh, the king family that, uh, is, is, uh, in control of the estate and all of the images and likenesses of, of Martin Luther King Jr. Basically.
Yeah, if you go down just a little bit, it's in the story here too.
Just go down.
Okay.
Yeah, yeah.
You know, basically sent them a cease and desist saying like, you know, these depictions are, are disrespectful.
And, and so OpenAI said, while there are strong free speech and interest in depicting historical figures, OpenAI believes public figures and their families should ultimately have control over how they're like, this is used.
And so, you know, the thing about this is.
For my own personal affinity from Martin Luther King Jr. I was happy to see this.
And also, uh, I agreed with many of the comments I saw on that ex post, which were like, oh, so the family of MLK Jr can opt out, but I can't, you know what I mean?
And it's just, it's just the brazenness of these platforms to have a disregard for the impact that their technology can have on individuals' lives.
And just sort of say whatever, you know, it's, it's actually worse than what Zuck did, right?
Because with Facebook, like at the end of the day, you could still opt out, right?
You could just say, I'm out, I'm not on the platform and like, whatever.
And if I'm not on the platform, I'm not on the platform.
Maybe someone puts up a fake version of me, but like, whatever.
And, and, and you could always like, you know, reach out to Facebook and say, this is not me, and they would like take it down, you know?
So at least there was that, but like.
What, what recourse do you and I have to, to get in touch with open AI and get them to do the same take down that they did with MLK Junior?
We don't have any.
None.
Right.
I mean it's, I mean, this is why I don't like them.
This is why I don't like this company, you know?
Yeah.
I mean, it's great that they took this down, but you're right, there are hundreds of other historical figures, people that are still alive today that are on the platform right now.
People are making them do whatever they want 'em to do, and Yeah, laughing about it.
And you should have the right to.
Take your own image off.
Yes, yes.
It's ridiculous.
Samsung's Galaxy XR headset debuts at half the price of Apple's Vision Pro.
It actually took Samsung quite a while now to put their mixed reality headset out there, you know, half the price, that's you.
Look, here's the thing, I, I mean, I think Samsung's, high-end Galaxy devices are, generally speaking not that much cheaper than the iPhone, right?
Yeah.
I mean, that's right.
Samsung, the phones are Samsung.
Samsung, the phones are pretty much the same.
Yeah, the phones are pretty much the same.
The Galaxy is a, is a, is a premium brand a phone, and so it's sort of, you know, amongst Android users, I mean, the Google has come out with the Pixel and that's become a challenger to it.
But the Galaxy, it's really the blue chip Android phone, and it's not cheap.
So I think it says a lot that they've dropped the headset that is half the price of apple's, you know?
Yeah, yeah, that's right.
And, and they're using Google's, uh, operating system.
In some way to, to sort of reduce the cost.
And then they have, they're coming up with smart classes as well, so I compete with meta, so there's gonna be more and more of these devices of all different shapes and sizes.
Yeah.
And, and to me it just feels like an r and d pathway to wherever we ultimately land.
Right.
It does feel like the, the, the regular bifocal form factor that we're seeing with RayBan is, is going to like, be viable that, that feels like it's got a real shot at being viable over time.
Yeah.
But there may be incredible use cases for, for these, these mixed re reality glasses, especially in, in training environments.
Right.
And, and you know, you gotta think, okay, if I'm a corporation and I'm looking to train a whole bunch of people, do I want to pay $3,500 or do I want to pay $1,800 for a headset?
Right.
Right, right.
So, you know, there could be some pretty great, you know, corporate, you know, business development opportunities here for Samsung.
IBM sales jump as clients start scaling ai, the company's revenue rose 9% to$16.33 billion in the third quarter.
This is Wall Street Journal.
We talked, was it last week about IBM and, and Anthropic working together?
I think it was last week.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think so.
So, so, so another story of IBM and the AI side and, and look, you know, as we said last week, IBM is a great bellwether for corporate adoption.
And so if, if they are seeing their revenue growing, I think we, we can reliably say that means corporate adoption is, is happening of ai.
Yeah, that's that's right.
If you're using IBM, you're not on the bleeding edge in like a skunkworks thing.
It's, it's more in the main part of your company.
And they're very reliable.
I mean, that, I think IBM is, is one of the most reliable consulting practices that they're agnostic to which tools you use.
So they're a good choice in that sense.
Yeah.
I think we're gonna see over the next year that we're gonna start see corporate America really rolling out, you know, new AI sort of infused products.
Mm-hmm.
GM aims to deliver eyes off autonomous driving by 2028, the Cadillac Escalade IQ electric SUV will be the Detroit automaker's first vehicle to have the feature.
Yeah, I'm excited about this.
I mean, eyes off, I mean, hands off is one thing, but eyes off where I can just take a nap while I'm driving to Atlanta.
This just sounds pretty good.
So, yeah.
Yeah.
And, and, and, and it's coming, right?
I mean, I think this is one of those things where are there gonna be crashes?
Are there gonna be errors, et cetera, et cetera.
Yes, yes, yes.
But my God, I mean, can you not look out there in the street and see how many people are driving with their eyes on their phone?
Right, right.
Yeah.
And one hand on the wheel.
'cause the other one is holding the phone.
Like, it's not even hands free.
Uh, you know, I mean, it's, yeah.
This is coming.
And, and, and, and the final story, they're for the week.
They're using, they're using the Waymo, the Google technology, so the, the, you know, Waymo's already driving around.
Yeah.
Um, with full autonomous vehicles.
So yeah.
I think it's gonna be good.
Yeah.
Uh, and then the final story, uh, of the week from the Wall Street Journal, I test drove a flying car.
Get ready, they're here.
Danielle takes a test flight of the pivotal black fly, a series produced electrical vertical takeoff and landing vehicle made for consumers.
And they've got a video in here of him in this thing just sort of flying around, flying around the California coast.
Yeah, I mean, the vertical takeoff and the ease of which to learn.
I think it took him an hour, a little less than an hour to learn.
Um.
Is is great.
I mean, I, I want one, it's, I, I gotta say it's pretty slick looking.
Uh, it only seats one, right?
It only seats one.
So in that way, I think there's a lack of practicality to it, right?
I mean, you have to be traveling by yourself.
And so it's, it's a, you know, it's in the phase of it being an emerging luxury product for people who, they don't have the time to take all the pilot lessons, but they want to be able to fly.
Right?
What's, what's sort of the distance it can cover, Vic?
Uh, I don't know that, did you see that in there?
Okay.
We're, we're, we're gonna link in the shadow, so if you're sitting and learning about that, you can read the, you can read the article.
Yeah.
They say that the price point, uh, they're taking orders now for an upgraded version called the Helix.
We can stick with the sticker price of 190 k. That's not a lot of money.
Yeah, it's not a lot of money for a plane.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's not a lot of money.
So Link will be in the show notes.
Uh, great way to end the show.
Um, and, uh, next week we will be back in person, I believe, right?
Yeah, yeah.
Excited to be back in the studio.
Yeah, back in the studio.
I'm looking forward to it as well, man.
Thanks for everything and uh, I will see you next week.