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TBPN is a live tech talk show hosted by John Coogan and Jordi Hays, streaming weekdays from 11–2 PT on X and YouTube, with full episodes posted to Spotify immediately after airing.
Described by The New York Times as “Silicon Valley’s newest obsession,” TBPN has interviewed Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, Mark Cuban, and Satya Nadella. Diet TBPN delivers the best moments from each episode in under 30 minutes.
There's a whole bunch of interesting news. We're gonna talk about Michael Grimes today, what Apollo's doing, some new humanoids out of China. There was one piece in the journal that I wanted to read for you. Streamer Braden Peters suffers awkward encounter with Arizona State fraternity leader. Video of the interaction has drawn widespread attention.
Speaker 1:Braden Peters, the online streamer known as Clavicular, found himself at the center of viral attention this week after a brief in person encounter with a fraternity leader at Arizona State University left him visibly diminished. This is this is news just today. Video of the exchange, which has circulated widely across social media platforms, shows mister Peters appearing noticeably uncomfortable as the unnamed fraternity member dominated the interaction through sheer physical presence and social confidence. Viewers noted that Mr. Peters, despite his considerable height, appeared to shrink during the exchange, struggling to maintain composure as the other man controlled the tone and pace of the conversation with apparent ease.
Speaker 1:The clip has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times now with commenters Millions. Largely agreeing that mister Peters was in the parlance of his own audience thoroughly outclassed. Neither mister Peters nor the fraternity leader could be reached for comment, but we'll be following that story, of course. Anyway, moving on. Michael Grimes.
Speaker 1:He's Elon Musk's banker, and he might be the most important person in the SpaceX IPO that's probably gonna happen this year. Kevin Kwok summed it up. He said, Michael Grimes moving back to Morgan Stanley is the strongest signal so far that SpaceX that the SpaceX OpenAI anthropic IPO jubilee, it's a real thing. We're going to dig into it. A lot of people are actually very familiar with Michael Grimes.
Speaker 1:He took Facebook, Google, Tesla, Uber, Spotify, Salesforce, LinkedIn, Workday, and literally hundreds of other tech companies public. He's been in the industry for decades. He has a reputation
Speaker 2:because he becomes a customer or user.
Speaker 1:Oh, yes. That's a Of fun
Speaker 2:the different products as during the kind of bidding process. Yes. He talked about playing FarmVille. How many hours did he play FarmVille?
Speaker 1:He didn't say how many hours he played. At some point, we'll have to ask. He just said played hours of FarmVille in the lead up to the Facebook IPO. To understand the IPO thesis, the investment thesis for Facebook at that time, you had to believe that other businesses would be built on top of Facebook, so you had to understand FarmVille. Yeah.
Speaker 3:So what? You would expect him spend hours talking to Annie for the SpaceX IPO.
Speaker 1:For sure, for sure. Yeah, definitely. He also actually drove for Uber before taking Uber public in 2018. And so he likes to dig in. He also has just a very like perfectly aligned background for tech and tech banking.
Speaker 1:So he did the traditional investment banking thing. He was at Salin Brothers, then Bear Stearns, then Morgan Stanley. But before that, he studied electrical engineering computer science at Berkeley. And so he was never really boxed in as this pure finance guy. And there's this interesting full circle moment where many people could comp Elon Musk to Howard Hughes, who started Hughes Aircraft and created like the aviation boom.
Speaker 1:And Michael Grimes actually interned at Hughes Aircraft in the space and communications group back in 1985. And what is SpaceX? It's like a space and communications company. And So you have this very full circle moment, which I thought was cool. He's truly a deals legend.
Speaker 1:He did a brief stint with the commerce department and people were wondering, is he going to be able to stay out of going back to deal land? There's so many good deals on the table right now. You've Anthropic, you've got OpenAI.
Speaker 2:Well, there's the government.
Speaker 1:There's deals in the government, but it's just a different environment. You know, there's so much red tape. And famously at Morgan Stanley, Michael Grimes was set up in a way that he, at least reportedly, was not really required to deal with all like the firm wide strategy, what's going on with the rest of Morgan Stanley. They were like, go hunt. Like, you're a killer.
Speaker 1:Just go do whatever you Go need to fish. Go fish. Sort of cleared the agenda to just let him go do what he did best. He obviously was extremely successful at that. He got pulled back to Morgan Stanley and he got a promotion.
Speaker 1:So now he's the chairman of investment banking, which is I guess higher than co chair of global technology banking, which sounded like the top, are levels. He's even higher now. And it makes sense. If SpaceX, you know, they're on track to raise $40,000,000,000 in this IPO, you know, nothing's really confirmed yet, but that feels reasonable in the range. So what are the investment bankers gonna have to do?
Speaker 1:They're gonna have to talk to literally everyone with money, and the investment banking fees could be like $400,000,000 Right now, people are thinking those will be split across the four lead banks, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, JPMorgan and Goldman. Either way, you got to get ready for the roadshow of a century. It'll be interesting. What will Michael Grimes do to prove that he's ready to go to space? Will he go to space personally?
Speaker 1:I want to see some stunts. I want to see stunts pre road show.
Speaker 2:Elon, I fell in love with Ani. Think that's We're starting a family.
Speaker 1:Put Michael Grimes in the rocket. Let's do it. Do it. It's so much easier to underwrite the deal if you're like, I've been. I've been to space.
Speaker 1:It works. I It's nice of I've driven for Uber. I think everyone should I played FarmVille. This is the best technology. Going to space is better than playing FarmVille or driving Uber.
Speaker 2:What if he says put me in the mass driver?
Speaker 1:Put me And this was sort of a surprise to people. People thought, okay, Elon has run the AB test. He took Tesla public. He kept SpaceX private. He had a much better time with SpaceX doing secondary sales and fundraisers very easily.
Speaker 1:He could do whatever he wanted, really, like much more control. Tesla, he's getting sued by shareholders, all these different things, like regulations, SEC stuff. Like it's a headache, but the stock's doing really well. And at a certain point, maybe you cap out what's possible in the private market. So all of a sudden, Elon says, I'm going public.
Speaker 1:I'm merging everything together. I'm going now. I've made the decision.
Speaker 2:I mean
Speaker 1:This week, Grimes put himself back in the middle of the action and in line to reap millions of dollars of fees. Morgan Stanley said Monday he was rejoining the bank as chairman of investment banking, a promotion from his previous role as head of global technology investment banking. SpaceX has long been considered a golden goose by IPO bankers. It skyrocketed to a 1.25
Speaker 2:Let's give it up for all the golden geese out there.
Speaker 1:Geese. May they never be slayed? They must just continue laying eggs. Interesting, there's all this news about the xAI co founders leaving, but you're post acquisition. Of course the co founders leave, right?
Speaker 1:That's pretty normal.
Speaker 2:Well, I think the reason that people care is because it was happening for quite while
Speaker 1:Do they need to just be near the frontier, or do they actually need to be doing research to advance the frontier if they wind up like, should you think about xAI more like a neo lab that's trying to solve continual learning or some unsolved problem in AI research? Or should you think about them more like a hyperscaler, like an AWS or like a Core Weave or like a Lambda, like a Neo Cloud that's just like capacity and more of an engineering task. And if they're able to build Colossus and then build 10 more Colossus and then build a bunch of space data centers and they just have a lot of capacity, who knows? Maybe they wind up working with Anthropy.
Speaker 2:I mean, I forget at what point last year we started talking about that possibility. Yeah. But as the consumer products and the enterprise products have kind of fallen behind or failed to fully catch up.
Speaker 1:I don't know. I'm seeing a breakout in Grok in the comedy category on Instagram Reels. You can go check them out. There's some funny, funny interactions.
Speaker 2:It is really wild. Yeah, you really have to find the different modes in the product. Yeah. But finding the different characters, going to the unhinged setting, it is about five times more unhinged than I would expect
Speaker 1:Totally, totally.
Speaker 2:A product like this to be.
Speaker 1:Talks trash about Elon. It goes all over the place. Honestly, some of it is genuinely funny though, which is like a high praise. It's a new benchmark for AI. It is sort of like doing, it's cheat code
Speaker 2:because Part know what else is doing to humor can be truth seeking, right?
Speaker 1:Truth seeking or just saying what no one else can say be Exactly. You don't expect the computer to
Speaker 2:talk Sometimes people can't say that there's certain topics you can't say the truth. Unhinged mode is certainly truth seeking.
Speaker 1:It's certainly unhinged as well. Will DePue shared a little hack for everyone who's in to Chipotle. We reposted a clip that is truly evergreen. Jordy, quote, I used to get 90% of my calories from Chipotle at certain times in my life. It was something I would look forward to.
Speaker 1:But the last time I pulled over to get Chipotle, it was like, this is going to be rough. The quality has degraded. I'd rather fast than eat Chipotle, taking shots at Chipotle.
Speaker 2:Yeah. A couple of the younger guys on the team, like, what's wrong with Chipotle? And I started shedding tears explaining how you
Speaker 1:used Back in my day, there was the pure experience.
Speaker 2:When I was a boy, it was more fresh than the farmer's market.
Speaker 1:I love your role.
Speaker 2:But Will has a good hack. He says, I bought a Chipotle hat on eBay once, I would walk to the Chipotle in Ann Arbor and wear it when I went. And they would just give me the employee discount every time. I didn't even ask. It was a $2 hat, and I saved $7 on my $15 order every time.
Speaker 1:This is thinking outside the box. This is He says, I used to be so into budgeting in Chipotle that I'd measure everything in Chipotle meals. Rent was four Chipotle meals a day. A nice hat was two Chipotle meals. I also grokked it.
Speaker 1:And in case this is fraud, it was more than six years ago, so pass the statue of limitations. Can't get me. On second thought, I need to atone for my sins and repay Chipotle the $21 I stole from them by purchasing $21 of their stock. I am sorry, Chipotle. Another resignation has hit the timeline.
Speaker 1:The co founder of XAI is out. You want to read through it?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So he says, I resigned from XAI today. This company and the family we became will stay with me forever. I will deeply miss the people, the war rooms, and all those battles we have fought together. It's time for my next chapter.
Speaker 2:It's an era with full possibilities. A small team, darned with AIs, can move mountains and redefine what's possible. Thank you to the entire XAI family. And Elon, thank you for believing in the mission and for the ride of a life time. Some of the executives at XAI were offered cash instead of staying around, and so it's possible he just said, cool.
Speaker 2:Time to time to move on. This isn't looking good, it's the original XAI co founders. There was one, two, three, four, 56, 78. There's three remaining, Elon plus Manuel and Toby.
Speaker 1:Jack Clark here. He said, people leaving regular companies. Time for a change. Excited for my next chapter. People leaving AI companies.
Speaker 1:I have gazed into the endless night, and there are shapes out there. We must be kind to one another. I am moving on to study philosophy.
Speaker 3:Well, this was like in reference to there's an anthropic researcher that just left. And it was like this whole essay, and then he ends it with this poem.
Speaker 1:Yeah. People get deep at these companies.
Speaker 2:Head of anthropic safeguards research just quit and said, the world is in peril. And then he's moving to The UK to write poetry and, quote, become invisible. Other safety researchers and senior staff left over the last two weeks as well, Probably nothing. Yeah. There's multiple factors going on.
Speaker 2:You can't discount the fact that many of these people maybe made something in the range of $100,000,000 in the last two years. And if you're AGI pilled enough, you believe that that will be many, many, many, many, many, many, many lifetimes worth of wealth. And so why not go to The UK and write poetry? There's obviously a more dystopian sci fi vision where when this period of our lives gets turned into Hollywood blockbuster movies, this will be a moment where the safety researchers start peeling off and going all over the world to write poetry.
Speaker 1:Just want one AI cofounder researcher to leave and be like, look, I got an allocation of an F80. I got a bus down coming. I'm good. I'm Gucci. I don't need I quit.
Speaker 1:I quit.
Speaker 2:Moving on. Apollo says it avoided the pain of PE peers by steering clear of software holdings.
Speaker 1:Software? Never heard of it.
Speaker 2:What's that?
Speaker 1:I don't touch it. You know, people are saying the SaaS pocalypse or SaaS mageddon, but assassination was right there. And I don't know why we're not just calling it the assassination. Isn't that better?
Speaker 3:I would I think assassination would be like SaaS is assassinating something else.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay. But You know, it's like your fun got sassassinated. Assassinated.
Speaker 3:Like it I would think it got killed by SaaS.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I guess you're right.
Speaker 2:Apollo says fees rise as company reports record quarter for deployment of capital.
Speaker 1:The group's decision to avoid heavily investing in software companies during an era of strong of soaring valuations will bolster its growth as investors move their money to firms that avoided a sector now threatened by AI. Private capital groups would see a dispersion of returns depending on their exposure to software companies following growing fears of AI disrupting many IT businesses that triggered a recent sell off. Apollo would benefit after largely avoiding such deals within its private equity portfolio and curtailing leading to the industry over the past decade, helping to bolster its performance of Versa's many rivals. He said during earnings call, I expect that we will be, along with a handful of other managers, prettier than we have been historically. They cut its exposure to software loans as it grew increasingly bearish about sector's prospects in the wake of rapid inroads made by AI, the decision appears to have been validated by a recent sell off in software stocks and the loans of many large IT companies amid rising AI fears.
Speaker 2:Monday.com had earnings, and the stock went down 21% after they flagged AI agents as a competitive threat on their earnings call.
Speaker 1:Issued weak guidance as it grapples with rising concerns that artificial intelligence is disrupting software business models. I imagine it's seat based right now, monday.com, and they have to transition to some sort of consumption based, some sort of usage based, something outcomes based, I suppose.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you'd think at least some would say, like, we actually love the seat based model in the era of agents. Every agent will require a seat. Again, you might have 100 employees, but then a bunch more agents. Maybe you can't charge nearly as much on a per seat basis. But we'll see how this nets out.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It seems pretty easy just to be like, you have one agent that goes into the software and does everything that it needs to and then brings it out to your organization. It's like, I need to use the tool.
Speaker 2:There's one agent whose sole job is to pull a view.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Everyone gets a prompt box. And then that agent has one seat and uses the tool and brings you back the results.
Speaker 2:Brutko Capital is out for blood. He's you worried about stock based comp. Me, these businesses only need half their employees.
Speaker 1:Oh, so he's bullish. I believe he thinks that the SaaS apocalypse is overstated. Headcounts for assorted companies. Salesforce is at 87,000, ServiceNow 32,000, Workday is at 23,000, Zoom is at 12,000, DocuSign famously large at 8,000, OpenAI is at 7,000, Okta is at 7,000, UiPath at 5,000, Sprinklr is at 4,000, and Anthropix at 4,000. The flip side of this is that the companies do need employees to go deploy AI.
Speaker 2:Correct, Tabuko. I have a strange amount of conviction that they could cut up to 40% and not impact growth. Tabuko says, in fact, it would accelerate. Yeah.
Speaker 1:KPMG is trying to force its auditor to accept less money since accounting work can be significantly automated by AI. But KPMG makes money from accounting. So this looks like a company accidentally announcing to the world that its business model is under attack. Matt says, auditing can basically be done by AI, so why should we pay for it? It's not a crazy thing for most companies to think or to say to their auditors, but it's a crazy thing for an auditing firm to say to its auditor.
Speaker 1:That is wild. KPMG should be paying Grant Thornton more. In these crazy AI times, everyone needs to pay more for trusted human auditing. We'll go first. I guess that's what Grant Thornton said.
Speaker 2:It seems like they'll have to switch to value based pricing too, like everyone else. And the value, even if it can be one shotted with a prompt by some superintelligence, is non zero. It is very valuable to have an external party verifying your work and the numbers that you're reporting. The other dynamic is you have basically legacy, the big brands in the space. They adopt maybe a more Coke and Pepsi model, where Coke and Pepsi both could you've talked about this get in an insane price war, cut down, compete on price so aggressively that there's just no money to be made anymore.
Speaker 2:But they have somewhat of an equilibrium where it's not really in any group's interest to compete prices to zero.
Speaker 1:Coke and Pepsi, it's a duopoly, not an oligopoly. So there's no third player that can be, oh, we're 5% of the market. There's so much to gain. Let's go be the bull in the China shop. It just doesn't happen.
Speaker 1:And then also there's lock in around the brand. And then there's also lock in around the distribution because Coke and Pepsi have trucks that go to every store where it needs to be distributed. Auditing might not be the same structure.
Speaker 2:Let's pull up this clip of Gerstner on CNBC.
Speaker 4:Happening to the degree it is, as we've discussed on numerous occasions, is it overdone? At times, you've said yes. The last time we were together, you said something like 90% of the companies, the software companies that were down the way they are deserve to be. Those, think, were your your exact words.
Speaker 1:Words. Where are we?
Speaker 5:Yeah. So so when you and I were together on January 6, I said, you have to understand the difference between earnings and revenue and stock price. Okay? And what's happened in software is hard for people to get their head around because the stocks have been cut in half. But that's not what the market is discounting, Scott.
Speaker 5:The market is looking into the future and saying, in the past, three years ago, I could I could buy thirty five years worth of of Salesforce's free free cash flow into the future. Give them 35 times free cash flow because I had that level of predictability. It was like a government bond. It was a sure thing. You definitely were gonna get those.
Speaker 5:And then we have AI. Do what AI has done over the course of the last several months, and people just said something very rational. I can't see as far into the future, so I'm gonna pay less for the terminal value. I'm gonna pay less for those future free cash flows. So the only way that reverses, Scott, is those companies have to accelerate their core revenues and show that they are beneficiaries of AI.
Speaker 2:I think the the real SaaS pocalypse might not start until you have some of the labs public. And people can actually really rotate out of software fully and say, I don't want to own this thing that I don't fully understand how AI is going to impact it when I could own the disruptor, the Anthropix, the OpenAI's
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. People were asking, where will the $50,000,000,000 come from? Where will the $100,000,000,000 of capital come from? And we see this in China, too, where one company will go public and you actually see a drop in the previous Bidus or whoever the legacy company is because there just isn't that much liquidity in the market. So it needs to come from somewhere.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I just don't know how the narrative around SaaS flips positive because the models are not getting worse. I think They only get better. Yeah. We actually need to see some type of plat like SAS would benefit from a model plateau, right?
Speaker 2:It's like, hey, there's sort of a set of capabilities. Yep. SAS companies can deploy this. Yep. But if the models just keep getting better and better and better and agents get better and better and better, where's the bottom for SaaS other than some type of minimal free cash flow multiple?
Speaker 1:Well, it's like refocusing on a narrative that has durability even in a world where software R and D is essentially free. I
Speaker 2:what I'm saying is like if you see a business actually really accelerating, growth accelerating, then it's possible to get excited about that one company. But it's hard to get excited at any point about SaaS broadly because the models are just going to keep improving, and that just seems to be more and more of a threat.
Speaker 1:Yes. But within SaaS, there will be companies that reveal to the market and correctly message that they are, in fact, like AGI resistant because of ad networks, because of lock in effects, because of regulatory moats. There will be a number of categories that emerge. Like when we talk about the payment rails, those feel like, yes, you could maybe vibe code it, but are you going to vibe code your bank charter and all these other things that you need to do and get all the customers like the distribution, the lock in? So I think within SaaS, there will be things that are pretty easy to just rip out and replace with something directly like a model.
Speaker 1:And there will be other companies that are old and are legacy. But you're just like, oh, yes, that's actually assaulted by a model. It's impenetrable because it's actually a different thing. And so those companies will wind up sort of rebounding, I would imagine.
Speaker 2:This is one of the most underrated observations in tech right now. If AI commoditizes software, what's actually safe, Regulated, liability bearing businesses, someone has to be on the hook. For sure. Anything touching the physical world, hardware, manufacturing, energy Yep. That's kind of Tesla
Speaker 1:Yeah, these are the subcategories of things that are sort of SaaS businesses now but will reveal themselves as being not actually that asset light.
Speaker 2:Proprietary data sets AI makes your data more valuable, not less. Marketplaces and businesses with network effects. Operationally intense businesses, the bad businesses become the best ones. And cybersecurity and physical security, more AI equals more attack surface.
Speaker 1:It's the famous Bezos quote, your margin is my opportunity. And so small company comes in, sees high SaaS margins, can actually go attack them now. Instead of needing to raise $1,000,000,000 and do five years of R and D, they can raise $10,000,000 and do one year of R and D and have a competitor that's ready to go head to head on a battle card against an entrenched public company SaaS company. And maybe they're only earning 30% margins instead of 60% margins, but they're happy with that because, hey, it's a new business. And they started it from nothing.
Speaker 1:And if they make $10,000,000 they get to take a lot of that home and stuff. So
Speaker 2:Sheel says, the greatest rebrand in enterprise software history is calling consulting revenue forward deployed engineering. I do wonder if a year or so from now we'll see companies that, these companies that went from one to ten or one to twenty million dollars in revenue really quickly, it just turns out like, hey, they just kind of like they were doing about $10,000,000 worth of engineering work. It wasn't actually again, a lot of them are setting it up where like, hey, we're going to come and build a bunch of software for you, and then we're going to charge on an ongoing basis or based on usage. But still, I'm sure there's some examples where it really is just effectively consulting or you're running a software development in agencies.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's funny. Thinking about OpenAI, I think they're at 8,000 employees. And wasn't the report that they're hiring something like 800 forward deployed engineers? So you're going to have 10% of an AI lab that's focused on AI research carrying cancer is going be like forward deployed engineers. And you have to imagine that it was basically zero five years ago.
Speaker 1:I think the forward deployed engineering is going to be important. Like the AI diffusion question, it's a lot of sticky systems. There's a lot of people that don't have time. The fact that we see these spikes in attention during long weekends and holidays, it's like that's when people have time to go do the new project and stop doing the same system again and again and again. And a forward deployed engineer comes into your organization and just is able to do that hard work that you don't have the slot capacity for.
Speaker 2:China is going all in to beat The U. S. On humanoid robots.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Beijing is showering companies with support, but some fear a bubble.
Speaker 1:And they're getting taller. Chinese humanoid robots are getting taller very, very quickly. The Unitree G1 is the robot that most people think of when they think of Chinese humanoid robot. The Unitree G1 has 23 joints and it's four'four tall. That's something you can drop kick across the room.
Speaker 1:It's probably pretty safe, but they're getting taller. The UniX AI Panther has 34 joints, and he's five foot three. The UBTECH Walker S2, it has 52 joints, and it's five nine. We're getting we're getting short king status now. Then now they're now the AI squared robotics Alphabot two, five'eleven.
Speaker 2:Wait. That could be some regulation that I could get behind. Yes. All humanoids should be capped at a certain height so that if if if any any people out there are a little bit on the shorter side, they get to feel tall. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And then, but in general, a lot of the average person should mog the robot. Yes.
Speaker 3:Yes. Definitely. On Dora Kesh, Elon said the Optimus is five eleven as well.
Speaker 1:Five eleven. Yeah. That's a very reasonable height. China's going all in to beat The United States on humanoid robots. Of course, have a ton of industrial advantages.
Speaker 1:So Elon Musk has been telling investors for months that Tesla's Optimus humanoid robot will revolutionize the world and create a new mega industry. But most of it could belong to China, he has warned. China is an ass kicker. Next level, Musk said in January. To the best of our knowledge, we don't see any significant competitors outside of China.
Speaker 1:China is moving quickly.
Speaker 2:Shots fired at at
Speaker 1:Figure and 1x. Humanoid robotics companies are sprouting up from Shenzhen to Suzhou. There's 140 different companies. So you got a market map over there. We have five, and they have 140.
Speaker 1:They're tapping a vast ecosystem of parts suppliers and engineering talent. Starting They're to produce humanoid robots at scale and actively Like this humanoid is running of them?
Speaker 2:Running a bit right now. That's how you run
Speaker 1:They're actively introducing them into real life scenarios in factories, hotels, and John. Yes.
Speaker 2:Grock unhinged voice mode in an optimist. Very intimidating. Hanging out around the office, just running bits
Speaker 1:It would of actually be hilarious.
Speaker 2:It would actually be hilarious.
Speaker 1:Get ready. I mean, you're going to be able to do that in like two years. Is that skin over a humanoid? Not a fan of that. Since late twenty twenty four, Beijing, Shenzhen, and other cities have established investment funds totaling more than $26,000,000,000 That's right.
Speaker 1:That's 1,000 times as much as France is investing. The moves closely track the way in which China built up other industries, such as electric vehicles, which benefited from incentives from buyers to help stimulate demand. Now China has many of the world's most notable EV makers, including brands that are eating up the market shares of General Motors, Volkswagen, I've
Speaker 2:seen the people doing the I'm outside in the BYD
Speaker 1:Oh, yes. Is that a Drake line? China is once again mobilizing state support supply chain depth and rapid commercialization to build a new strategic sector. Success will depend on who can best solve the myriad technical problems associated with humanoid robots. Skeptics say humanoid robots are a bubble and may never find a true use case.
Speaker 1:What? It's like the most obvious use case. They're already doing Yeah,
Speaker 3:like anything a human can do. I can't think of any good use case.
Speaker 1:Who said this?
Speaker 2:Horse says cars may be a bubble.
Speaker 1:Bad news. Chinese makers of humanoid robots, which include human like machines with wheels as well as those with legs, announced orders worth more than $300,000,000 in the 2025. So the Chinese humanoid robotics industry is at a $600,000,000 run rate. It's not bad. Like, that's pretty significant.
Speaker 1:That's not that's more than just like demos.
Speaker 2:It's hard to, like, take every Elon projection at full face value. But he's talking about being able to make up to 1,000,000 humanoids in the X and S facilities in Fremont.
Speaker 1:Yeah. The run rate right now is $600,000,000 Morgan Stanley is predicting up to 100,000 humanoids shipped in 2026. If there's not significant increases in price for these, that would be $6,000 per humanoid. It must be higher. Based on this Morgan Stanley prediction of 100,000 humanoids shipped in 2026, you would expect revenue for the industry to be in the billions for sure.
Speaker 1:Because I I have to imagine that the average selling price of a humanoid is like more like 20,000. It's more like a car. The firm's general purpose humanoid called Alphabot is currently used in factories, including LCD,
Speaker 2:television implies there's a firm called SigmaBot. SigmaBot.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Somewhat antisocial. It doesn't actually
Speaker 1:like to help humans. And looks out
Speaker 3:when a It's ring plotting.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Eeming. Here's another wild story. Alphabet is selling one hundred year debt. You can buy a bond from old Google.
Speaker 1:Sundar's paying you in 2126. You'll be getting a payment from Sundar. They did a big bond sale. They're gearing up to sell bonds that won't come due for a century. You don't get your money back for a full century.
Speaker 2:Can Google a thousand
Speaker 1:dollars. They're gonna pay you a little dollar every once in a while,
Speaker 2:and then you get
Speaker 1:a full thousand dollars back in 'twenty one 'twenty six. Sorry.
Speaker 2:I don't know if this is fake news, but somebody was saying that out of the Dow of 30 in like 1930, none
Speaker 1:of those companies are publicly listed anymore. Thinking in centuries, potentially underrated. For a long time, if you were worried about the AI bubble, the easy counter was, hey, it's just all this build out stuff, it's just being funded with cash flow from these super profitable companies that have been around for decades. Worst case, they take a bath on some cash flow. It's like what happened with Meta and Reality Labs.
Speaker 1:Mark Zuckerberg drew down a ton of the free cash flow from Meta's incredible advertising business, launched some VR headsets, didn't really get crazy traction, went back to printing free cash flow, right? There's no problem. Well, now the hyperscalers as a class are all going all in on AI and spending all of their free cash flow on AI. And that's where people start to get a little bit more worried. I'm sure we will be hearing more about the potential fears of an AI bubble.
Speaker 1:People are broadly very excited about this. Like, believe that this $25,000,000,000 debt offering was massively oversubscribed. People are excited about you know, buying these Alphabet bonds. It's such a robust business. It's been around for a very long time.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Is crazy.
Speaker 1:Where this?
Speaker 2:There's a ATM in China that melts your gold Wow. At 1,200 degrees Celsius and transfers money straight into your account.
Speaker 1:I mean, I've seen those ATMs where you where you put a bunch of change. Have you ever done one of those? Have you ever saved up a, like, a I used to do that when you were
Speaker 2:a kid.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Piggy bank. You you you put a coin
Speaker 2:really fell off, I think.
Speaker 1:I mean, the death of the penny does not bode well for the piggy bank maxers of the world. Although, the real alpha was not using those ATMs because they take a cut of the counting. So Yeah. They're prying
Speaker 2:on piggy banks.
Speaker 1:They are. Yeah. So you get the
Speaker 2:Preying on young pigs.
Speaker 1:Yeah. You get the