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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.
You're watching TVPN. Today is Friday, 01/09/2026. We are live from the TVPN UltraDome, the temple of technology, the fortress of finance. The capital of capital. Let me tell you about ramp.com.
Speaker 1:Time is money. Save both. Easy use corporate cards, mail pay, accounting, and a whole lot more all in one place. I forgot in the Vanity Fair profile that we were pitching Julia ramp so much. She actually put it in the profile.
Speaker 1:It's very, funny.
Speaker 2:Anyway, if you haven't Always.
Speaker 1:To read, we were in Vanity Fair. Yesterday should it it's a fun piece, little little whirlwind tour of what a show that happened maybe six months ago. So a lot of things have changed, but it's a good snapback.
Speaker 2:Got up to speed.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's fun. Yeah. It's fun. Anyway, we have a massive show for you today, folks.
Speaker 1:Night $15,000,000,000 raised by Andreessen Horowitz. We have a bunch of folks. We have four
Speaker 2:members just because
Speaker 1:Hit the gong warming up. You gotta warm it up because we gotta hit it 15 times when we have Jen, Alex, David, George, and of course, Ben Horowitz coming on the show. Hit that app. Loving gong majority. Linear, of course, meet the system for modern software development.
Speaker 1:Linear is a purpose built tool for planning and building products. We also have Jeremy Ontiveros from Semi Analysis coming on to explain energy, to explain data center build out and the the gas turbine infrastructure that's going into those. He did a great interview with Ben Thompson that dropped yesterday. We're gonna dig in and go deep into there's a bunch of fascinating things. Apparently, there's like 10 terawatts of requests for data center capacity, which is like way more than anyone would ever build.
Speaker 1:But it's because of this weird dynamic of you have to ask for more than you need because you might not get it. There's And a whole bunch of interesting things. He, of course, broke the story that Meta had completely changed their data center design. They were optimizing for sort of energy efficiency before. Now they're much more focused on speed of development and scale.
Speaker 1:And so we're going to be taking you all over the place today.
Speaker 3:But we're
Speaker 1:going to start with Steve Jobs' Apple. We're going back into Cupertino because there's a rumor that Tim Cook might step down sooner than expected. So this comes from Tim Cook. His compensation, we've talked about it a lot, 74,290,000.00 per year. Salary is 3,000,000.
Speaker 1:Stock awards, 57,000,000. Non equity incentive compensation. He gets a 12,000,000, $12,000,000 bonus if he does well. He gets 21,000 in 04/2001 k. Personal use of private jet, 800 k on that.
Speaker 1:That's nice
Speaker 2:to see. Only 800 k?
Speaker 1:Vacation cash out of 56 k. Security expenses, they're paying $900,000 a year to secure him. That's that's gonna be a whole team of people. Probably some jacked tier one operators following him everywhere he goes. But he is he is rumored to be out.
Speaker 1:Apple's Tim Cook has told senior leaders that he is tired and would like to reduce his workload. Rumors suggest he could Doubt
Speaker 2:he I doubt they wanted that quote specifically Yeah. To leak.
Speaker 1:But it did via The New York Times. And so rumors suggest he could announce a plan to retire as early as this year. Of course, the the rumor is that John Turnis might step into that role. MacRumors has a story here. With Tim Cook having recently turned 65 years old and a number of other senior Apple executives having already departed in recent months or heading for the exits, there has been a significant focus on Apple's plans for who will succeed Cook as CEO.
Speaker 1:I I I was hoping for a Warren Buffett third act from Cook. I was hoping for him to just say, I'm just hitting my stride. 65 to 95, that's where I'm gonna do my best window. Haven't you haven't seen any compounding yet. It's a completely underrated era for business leaders.
Speaker 1:If you can stay in the game and and and continue to compound from 65 to 95, that's where the sweet spot is. You just get ready to lock in, not not not check out. But he might
Speaker 2:be he might be We love to joke about him being underpaid. I actually think he is, or he has been. Seriously?
Speaker 1:For how big of a company is it? What he's done to the company?
Speaker 2:Of Tim Cook coming in and just absolutely cooking
Speaker 1:He's cooked.
Speaker 2:For as long as he has. Yes. It will always be Yeah.
Speaker 1:So several recent reports have identified Apple's senior vice president of hardware engineering, John Turnis, as likely to be named the next Apple CEO. And The New York Times has now shared a profile of Turnis with some context on his expertise and how he's viewed within the company. According to sources who spoke with the New York Times, Apple has begun accelerating its planning for Tim Cook's succession last year with Cook having expressed a desire to reduce his workload while software chief Craig Craig Federighi, services chief Eddie Q, marketing head Greg jaw jaws and retail HR chief Deidra O'Brien have all reportedly been seen as potential candidates. Turnis appears to have shot to the front of the pack with Cook likely to remain as chairman of the company's board of directors. Oh, so he's not completely out to pasture.
Speaker 1:He'll be in the boardroom. Ternus is known for his expertise as an engineer, having worked on many of Apple's devices through, although he is known, quote, more for maintaining products than developing new ones. Big question about what the next decade or two of Apple's product road map actually looks like. How many more new products do they need? They sort of have one thing in every category.
Speaker 1:If we go through a major form factor shift, that could be an issue. But in general, if you have someone who's really good at maintaining products and keeping dominant market share, driving up margins, that could be the right person for the job. Yeah. Quote about John Turnis. He's a nice guy.
Speaker 1:Let's hear it from us. Sometimes sometimes nice guys finish first. You know? They always say nice guys finish last. I think it's a bit of fake news.
Speaker 1:This is from former Apple engineer Cameron Rogers. Quote about John Turnis. He's someone you wanna hang out with. I love it. He's just a good hang.
Speaker 1:Everyone loves him because he's great. He has he made any hard decisions? No. Taking shots at your boy. Hey.
Speaker 4:He loves
Speaker 1:We just like hanging out with the guy. We just like hanging out. Has he had to do any real work ever? No. Has he has he made any single hard decision in his life?
Speaker 1:No. I'm sure that's not true. But it does characterize his role, I guess. He hasn't been in the CEO seat, so he probably hasn't had to make crazy decisions like, should we launch Apple Vision Pro now or later? You know?
Speaker 1:He's not the one. He's just like, you told me to launch it. I got it done. Right? That's that's his role.
Speaker 2:Should we make the iPhone less durable?
Speaker 1:That's a hard decision. Are there hard problems he solved in hardware? Also, no. What? This is an insane quote.
Speaker 1:Wow. Ternis and others may quibble with that assessment. However, as Turnis has been involved involved with a number of innovative products over the years, including spearheading effort to develop the iPhone Air and working on the upcoming foldable iPhone. That's exciting. Turnis is seen as a natural successor to Cook even with with an even temperament, strong attention to detail, and an an intimate knowledge of Apple's supply chain.
Speaker 1:That's obviously very good. But he may not bring the visionary focus when willingness to take risks that Steve Jobs had leading to debate among Apple employees about exactly what type of leaders
Speaker 2:We need to get the Germinator on. We do.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Definitely Can have to you reach out to Mark Gurman to try to get on the show Monday?
Speaker 1:Talk through all of these things. There's so much to talk about here. Before we continue our conversation, let me tell you about the New York Stock Exchange. Wanna change the world? Raise capital at the New York Stock Exchange.
Speaker 1:So there's this question. Will John Turnis, if he steps into the role of CEO of Apple, will he bring the visionary focus and willingness to take risks that Steve Jobs had? That's a tall, tall order. I think Tim Cook's executed extremely well. He hasn't even it doesn't really seem like he's tried to bring a visionary focus.
Speaker 1:He he's been the operator.
Speaker 2:He's a supply chain visionary.
Speaker 1:He's a yeah. Visionary in his own way. Yeah. But you were thinking, and we've been discussing this need for a Steve Jobs of AI, a visionary leader in AI. We have a number of household name type CEOs, Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Dario Amade, Demis at Yeah.
Speaker 1:DeepMind. But we don't quite have that Steve Jobs. Maybe that's too tall of an order Yeah. But you still think it's necessary. So walk me through your thinking.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Before you do, let me tell you about Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform that grows with your business and lets you sell in seconds online, in store, on mobile, on social, on marketplaces, and now with AI agents.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Everybody's worried about not having a job because of AI. AI needs the jobs too. They need a Steve Jobs.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Oh, I didn't get that. That's good.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, I I we've talked about this a little bit this week. I tried to summarize it today in the newsletter, and I'll kind of read through a little bit. So I went back and looked at the history of the phrase tech clash. It was originally coined by Adrian Waldridge, an economist in 2013. He correctly predicted that, quote, the big developments of 2014 will be the growing peasants' revolt against the sovereigns of cyberspace.
Speaker 2:The silicon elite will cease to be regarded as geeks who happen to be filthy rich, and become filthy rich people who happen to be geeks. Over the coming years, he was entirely correct. It was actually in 2018 that Techlash was the runner-up word of the year.
Speaker 1:No
Speaker 2:way. So he he like Yeah. Called it perfectly. Obviously, you had the Cambridge Analytica scandal
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Which is actually finally gonna be dramatized this year with the social network too.
Speaker 1:That's coming out this year. Do we have a release date yet for that?
Speaker 2:I don't think so. Okay. But it is in the works. And then, just growing concerns about monopoly power, privacy, democracy, censorship.
Speaker 1:Really quickly, Tyler, 10/09/2026?
Speaker 5:Yeah. That's what I'm seeing.
Speaker 2:There we go. Okay. We do.
Speaker 1:Book the tickets now. It's gonna be an
Speaker 2:exciting. Okay. Probably great This would be a good We should organize We should we should Yeah. Actually, I don't know. I I'm not sure that this movie is I I expect this movie to hit like 10% Yep.
Speaker 2:Or potentially negative in comparison to the social network one.
Speaker 1:I agree.
Speaker 2:And so I think it might be the kind of thing you get a bunch of people to go and it's just like Yeah. Okay, that that was
Speaker 1:The social network, the original movie is is a really good Rorschach test for are you gonna have a good time in tech? Like, if you ask someone who is thinking about working at a company or a tech startup, like, do you think of the social network? And they're like, oh, I thought it was, like, awful and, like, I hated all of it and there were no heroes. Well, they're probably not gonna enjoy tech. But if they came away from it being like, oh, well, it's actually really inspiring because he just coded a thing in his in his dorm room that became really And, yes, there was drama and and fights over who gets what on the cap table.
Speaker 1:But even Eduardo Saverin became a multibillionaire. So, you know, sort of an aim for the moon hit, land amongst the stars situation.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So, yeah. I mean, you could read it both ways, but I think most people, most tech insiders, if you ask them about The Social Network, they were like, that was inspiring. I listen to the music all the time. It inspired me to grind harder, basically.
Speaker 2:Real quick. Happy birthday to
Speaker 1:Happy birthday.
Speaker 2:The chat. Happy birthday to you. Birthday to you.
Speaker 1:Gemini three Pro, Google's most intelligent model yet, state of the art reasoning, next level vibe coding, and deep multimodal understanding.
Speaker 2:That's a good Anyways, I'll continue. So first TechLash is all about how is this impacting our mental health, how is this impacting our democracy, the foundations of our country, society, privacy, censorship, etcetera. The second techlash has begun, feels like it started last year. Is one of those Fizzing things things up. Yeah, you don't really know.
Speaker 2:Like sometimes it takes a while to realize like, okay, we're in we're in this thing now that we can look back and see Yep. How public opinion has been forming around this. So Yeah. I believe the average American believes that technology and now AI is now like a threat to their way of life. So I was looking at
Speaker 1:There were rumors of the techlash in 2024 when the image generators came out. A lot of the arts community were saying this is really, really bad. It's gonna put artists out of jobs. The the the thumbnail community on YouTube was upset. But this year, it's solidified around there's, like, three or four key points Yeah.
Speaker 1:Key talking points. If you talk to someone, why don't you like l AI? Well, it's it's stealing copyrighted information. It's slop. Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's putting people out of jobs. It's stealing water and stealing power. And each one
Speaker 3:of those is some
Speaker 2:was like, okay, these tech our lives are now existing in these platforms. Yeah. Yeah. And they are in some ways more powerful than the government. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Now, so I I was I pulled I I had Maslow's hierarchy of needs pulled up. Mhmm. And I was just like going through and looking at physiological needs, right? Air, water, food, shelter, sleep, clothing, reproduction, safety, personal security, employment, resources, health, right, all these different things. And then you just go up and you can see that, like, there's good reason for the average American to just kind of believe, like, AI is gonna mess all of this up, right?
Speaker 2:So starting at the bottom, Americans have heard that data centers use a lot of water. Yep. Knew water. Not necessarily factual.
Speaker 1:Yep. It's been Sure.
Speaker 2:Water is used in the process.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Yes. But we're not, like, you know, blowing through water at the rates that the public sort receives.
Speaker 1:I was joking about this online. I was hypothetically debating with an AI doomer about water usage. Well, are they long water stocks? Because if you if you believe that AI is gonna use all the power and you bought GE Verona, you did very, very well. But the water stocks have not mooned.
Speaker 1:So, hey, D cells who think AI is going use all the water, maybe you got to put on a long position.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Or just privatize a public utility. Yeah. Become a monopolist.
Speaker 1:Also, I mean, we're talking to Jeremy at Semi Analysis, who's sort of their power expert. Obviously, AI does use a lot of power, and there's a lot of investment theses that can be built on top of the semi analysis energy model. Why doesn't semi analysis have a water model? Oh, because it's actually not a bottleneck to anything.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So the power thing is more real. People now just assume, like if they I have to imagine people are reading an article, oh, your power bill might be going up. If your power bill just goes up because it's a winner, like, oh, thanks AI.
Speaker 1:Yep, Thanks, it's popped
Speaker 2:up. I didn't ask for this. So they've seen Terminator two, so they can imagine the sci fi scenario playing out. That's one factor. If they're super online, they might have heard the Casey Hammer or other people talking about this, like solar panels.
Speaker 2:An AI system just saying, hey, actually, this farmland, I could use it better than you humans.
Speaker 1:Remember that Ilia video?
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, yeah. So he
Speaker 1:did an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle. It was this video it was like a video documentary almost, where they were interviewing him, but there was questions. So you never saw who was asking the questions. But he was giving his answers, he's sort of like sadly walking around on a gloomy beach. It's like very moody.
Speaker 1:And
Speaker 5:I I would say it's he was aura farming. He looked sick. He was looking over the
Speaker 1:He did aura farm San Francisco a little bit. But as I was getting dressed up as him for Halloween, we were playing that video, and the makeup artists who were who were applying the Ilias Sutskever, you know, all the makeup to me, were watching that being like, that's not inspiring at all. Okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And I didn't even include that in here, but that's like the reaction. Like, every time people hear leaders at labs talk Yes. They're like, turn it off.
Speaker 1:Opposed to you could show someone an Apple ad or a Steve Jobs clip, and it would be like, oh, dancing on your wired headphones with your iPod? I love music. They're making music available. Great. I love it.
Speaker 1:And there were so many things that were just inspiring. So continue.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Continuing. So, moving up the pyramid, people have been told that AI is coming for their jobs. Some people have like actually had an experience
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That made them feel like, wow, I I thought I was I thought what I did was unique and special, but now I'm watching job. Trying to do it on my own computer. Yep. Maybe, you know, imagine somebody that's driving for Uber and Lyft and all day long they're driving and they're just seeing they're sitting next to Waymo's in traffic and you're looking over and there's no one in the seat like Yeah. That's ominous.
Speaker 2:That's that's that's gonna be scary if that's how if how somebody puts food on their table. And then every single CEO last year was saying like, we have, you know, fortunately, we have increased efficiency due to AI Yeah. And so we've laid off 10,000 people. Yep. Right?
Speaker 2:And so a lot of that is just kind of spin, marketing, etcetera. But that's what people are hearing. Right? Totally. And then you look at what are the AI leaders are actually saying.
Speaker 2:So so Ilya talking for ten minutes, people are like, woah, that doesn't seem good. Ilya is saying like
Speaker 1:He he's saying, like, let's not do that. He he's he's trying to prevent that bad scenario. Sure.
Speaker 3:I'm sure.
Speaker 1:But it still reads like, woah, didn't realize they were taking that seriously.
Speaker 2:Yeah. You look at the quotes just you could easily look up quotes from Dario. Obviously, he had his quote, AI could wipe out half of all entry level white collar jobs
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And spike unemployment to 10 to 20% in the next one to five years. Elon had a good quote from over a decade ago. He said, with AI, we are summoning the demon. Some
Speaker 1:people today might say the demon has been fully summoned.
Speaker 2:Fully summoned.
Speaker 1:Fully summoned.
Speaker 2:And Sam obviously said at one point, AI will probably most likely lead to the end of the world. But in the meantime, there'll be great companies. Crazy. And so this kind of messaging, credit to them, it's like Yeah. Super effective for fundraising.
Speaker 2:Right? Sure. If somebody's saying like all jobs will be wiped out, the world will be destroyed. Yeah. But in the meantime There's lot of
Speaker 1:funds that are long demon. You know, you're just like The demon thesis. The demon the the free cash flow from demons.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah. So it's like if you're sitting there being like, if AI is gonna eliminate my job Yeah. I wanna own a piece of it. Yeah. So, you know, maybe maybe I
Speaker 1:can Yeah.
Speaker 2:Benefit from it. So, yeah. So the big issue is like anybody that's hearing all these Mhmm. Like why would they actually be excited about AI? Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Right? Even though even though it is so incredible in so many ways. Right? I gave the example earlier this week of like AI just being like a a free sleep consultant for a Yeah. That just like one shots it and it's free.
Speaker 2:Right?
Speaker 1:You can chat to PC Health that launched this week. Mean, that that that's very good news for a lot of people you know, can't see a doctor that often or just don't have the time or don't have the money. Yeah. There's a million reasons why that might be advantageous. And yet, it's it it it's it's not that they're not pitching it like Steve Jobs pitched Garage Band, which was like, now anyone can be a musician.
Speaker 1:Now anyone can be their own doctor is inspiring, but it's just like they are fighting an uphill battle because of those other quotes.
Speaker 2:Yep. So, yeah. And I and I was thinking about it. It's like if you if you wanna if if somebody is kind of like generally scared of AI Mhmm. Who do who do you who, like, what do you what content do you point them towards?
Speaker 2:Typically, you'd wanna point them towards the people building it
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right? And say or or people around it. But even like, Dwarkash is like a little bit maybe like too high level or Sure. Not not high level enough actually. Right?
Speaker 2:It's like a little bit too ethereal right? Talking about all these different potentials.
Speaker 1:I mean
Speaker 2:But if you have them listen to, like, a Joe Rogan Yeah. Episode with one of these guys, it's gonna be
Speaker 1:To be fair, I not to debunk your piece, but I I do think Demis is pretty good.
Speaker 2:I yeah. Demis is great. He's had
Speaker 1:He doesn't have one of those crazy quotes. And there's been two documentaries about him. Both of them are incredibly inspiring. And when I hear him talk about AI curing cancer or humans curing cancer with AI, it hits a lot different because he literally has a Nobel Prize and is solving The approaching the
Speaker 2:problem, if you look at if you just count up the views that Elon, Sam, and Dario have gotten in comparison to Demis Yeah. Right?
Speaker 1:It's He's much less of a household name. And he's also not the CEO of a big company because he's running the biggest lab in a big company. Yeah. So there's that. He just
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I've just been feeling like there's this Gap. Gap. Steve Jobs sized hole, right? He had plenty of concerns about technology.
Speaker 2:He showed them freely. Somebody once asked him, so your kids must love the iPad. And then he said, my kids haven't used it. He just That's said we limit how much technology we have in the home. Yeah.
Speaker 2:He he did talk about losing the PC race to international business machines. He said if for some reason we make some big mistake and IBM wins, my personal feeling is that we are gonna enter a computer dark age for about twenty years. Yeah. Like, you can imagine Sam saying something like that around, like, you don't want and and you've seen the internal sort of messages between him and Elon talking about, like, losing to Google. To Google.
Speaker 2:It's like, oh, we don't want Google to to
Speaker 1:Control it.
Speaker 2:Control the AI god. Right?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:He also had a he had a 1994 Rolling Stones interview. Mhmm. A Rolling Stone interview. He interviewer said, nevertheless, you've often talked about how technology can empower people, how it can change their lives. Do you still have as much faith in technology today as you did when it when you started out twenty years ago?
Speaker 2:Steve says, oh, sure. It's not a faith in technology. It's faith in people. Technology is nothing. What's important is that you have faith in people, that they're basically good and smart.
Speaker 2:And if you give them tools, they'll do wonderful things with them. It's not the tools that you have faith in. Tools are just tools. They work or they don't work. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:It's people you have faith in or not. Yeah. Sure. I'm still optimistic. I mean, I get pessimistic sometimes, but not for long.
Speaker 2:And I and and and part of this, I just it feels like people have, like, are are part of it's like fundraising, part of it's just how excited we are about AI, but like, you're leaving humanity out. So there's this quote from Sam. He says, if AI stays on the trajectory that we think it will, then amazing things will be possible. Maybe with 10 gigawatts of compute, AI can figure out how to cure cancer. So it's like, that's a fine quote.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. If you there's some way to look at it and be like, okay, super is abundance, this is super exciting. Yeah. I'm I'm maybe more optimistic about AI. But he happens to he's saying that AI is gonna figure out how to cure cancer.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Right? And like, if you've used these tools today
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And any and talk to people that are that are at the labs, they're they the reality is like it feels much more likely that humans will use AI
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:To cure cancer. Yeah. So thesis. Like Steve would have said if AI stays on the trajectory that we think it will then amazing things will be possible. Maybe with 10 GW of compute, humans can use AI to cure cancer.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Small, small tweak. Human sensuality. But it's a big it's a big difference. And so I wrote the facts of the facts.
Speaker 2:Steve Jobs was not one to shy away from impressive specs and massive scale. But flipping the final line from AI will cure cancer to humans will use AI to cure cancer makes all the difference. Apple put human centrality at the heart of everything they did, even when they were talking about something like a CNC to mill an aluminum block into a MacBook Pro, the focus was not on the CNC. Mhmm. It was on what it allowed the human being to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Right?
Speaker 1:CNC is literally a robot. It's computer numerical control. But when you watch that unibody presentation, it puts Johnny Ive at the center. And it's like, I used the tool to create something beautiful out of this amazing material that I could never do with just my normal tools. Like, I could never chisel out an aluminum unibody.
Speaker 1:I need a CNC for that. I have it, and I can create something beautiful.
Speaker 2:Yep. So, yeah. At the end of this, I just said, like, I think AI has a massive narrative problem right now. It the narrative is working within the industry. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:It's not working for people that are outside the industry, and I just don't I really don't think it has to be this way. Right? I think that there is a human central, there is an empowering way to pitch this technology in this future, and we're not doing it right now. And and I expect that I expect that everybody will will you know, Elon has his own style of pitching all things, and I don't think he's gonna change.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I think that that other folks, maybe like Dario and Sam, can, you know, make small tweaks that will go a long way. Yeah. And and obviously, there's there's founders that we don't even know their names yet that are gonna be huge players in all of this as well.
Speaker 1:Definitely. Before we move on, let me tell you about 11 labs. Build intelligent, real time conversational agents. Re imagine human technology interaction with 11 Labs. So there's some massive news from Meta.
Speaker 1:They are doing a big deal with Oklo to build nuclear power plants. We've been following the energy story very closely this week. Obviously, we're talking to Jeremy in just a little bit. We have some exciting guests next week digging into how we are going to generate more power in this country. The headline from The Wall Street Journal is Meta unveils sweeping nuclear power plan to fuel its AI ambitions, and we'll read through a little bit of this.
Speaker 1:Meta Platforms on Friday unveiled a series of agreements that would make it an anchor customer for new and existing nuclear power in The United States where it needs city sized amounts of electricity for its artificial intelligence data centers. The Facebook parent said it would back new reactor projects with the developers TerraPower and Oklo and has struck a deal with the power producer Vistra, which is up 11% today, to purchase and expand the generation output of three existing nuclear power plants in Ohio and Pennsylvania. So they already exist. There's probably some some work already done on the permitting side. They're probably deeper in, but, Facebook's just stepping up and saying, hey.
Speaker 1:We we're opening the pocketbooks. We got the debt. We got the cash flow. We got the money to power this and take it across the finish line. So Vistra and Oclo, both their shares rose about 15% after the stock market opened.
Speaker 1:TerraPower is still privately held, so no movement there, but you imagine the secondary market is booming right now. Meta aims to see the first new reactors delivered as early as 2030 and 2032, which feels like it won't matter because superintelligence will be here by then. Certainly, AI 2027, we're now we're now less than twelve months away from from the super intelligence, if you believe, the the most aggressive possible scenario.
Speaker 2:I mean, to give to give AI 2027 credit
Speaker 1:They didn't
Speaker 2:date, it's been it's been fairly on point.
Speaker 1:It has. It has. And no one will correct you more quickly than Tyler Cosgrove over there, the ultimate AGI I I do think we were trying to do the number of days till AGI on the ticker, and I think we gotta go analog. I've been enjoying moving the goalposts, and I think we need a massive flip forward.
Speaker 5:It's like the doomsday clock.
Speaker 1:Yeah. You know how do you remember back in the old days when there was a movie theater, and they would put up the letters on each of the like, if if it was, like, Avengers, they would take an a, and they would take a little sticker sticks, like, suction cup on the end of a pole, and they would put it up on the the marquee one letter at a time, I feel like we need something much more analog to change the number of days till the singularity as we monitor it here on TPPN. It's purchase of Yeah. Yes. We're we're very wide we're very eyes wide open that the schedule is challenging, but we think it's important to be bold, said the director of global energy at Meta.
Speaker 1:What a gig.
Speaker 2:That's a great Hitting. I'm the director of global energy. Around the I'm the energy director. I'm the chief energy
Speaker 1:power this globe? You're going through me. Soon, I mean, you you gotta be angling for a promotion I
Speaker 2:view Meta as like a a nation state.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Well, that that so the problem is the globe. It's impressive. Meta operates all over the globe. But why aren't you thinking bigger?
Speaker 1:Who's the director of solar system level energy development? Galactic energy production. True. Universal energy production. You should be producing energy all over the universe, Meta.
Speaker 1:You're thinking too small with merely focusing on the globe. Hitting those timelines for new reactors would require the companies to quickly select sites that would be acceptable to nuclear regulators, start working with utilities to secure grid connections and get their manufacturing operations up and running, she said, but it would also mean they have a chance to meet the urgent demand for more electricity to fuel AI computing. And so if you think about twenty twenty two thousand and thirty two, this stuff comes online. That's great. But it feels like 2027, 2028, we're going to see a mismatch in demand relative to production.
Speaker 1:So we'll talk to Jeremy from Semi Analysis about how we can solve that in the interim. Let me tell you about Figma before we move on. Figma Make isn't your average vibe coding tool. It lives in Figma, so outputs look good, feel real, and stay connected to how teams build, create code back prototypes and apps fast. Continuing.
Speaker 1:Oclo and Meta is making this announcement. 1.2 gigawatts is the total size of this nuclear campus in Pike County, Ohio. The agreement includes binding prepayment to support fuel procurement, enabling Oklo to advance early project work to and secure fuel, adding new, clean, reliable power to the grid. So
Speaker 2:Yeah. Oklo opened super high this morning and then is at at 01:15, and then it's been trading down. So it's up 7% today, but up 28.7% in the last five days. So it's almost like it's almost like somebody knew this was coming. Yes.
Speaker 2:But this was a this was a fun article in the journal. Were you happy to hear that AI is mining our trash for treasure?
Speaker 1:Trash economy. Trash economy. We're gonna be using cubes
Speaker 2:We're all gonna
Speaker 6:be trash.
Speaker 2:We're all gonna be getting trash post AGI.
Speaker 1:Yes. Yes. We're gonna be using cubes of trash to everyone will be rich because everyone be everyone will have a cube of trash in the trash economy. The the headline from the journal is AI is mining our trash for treasure.
Speaker 2:Plus hospitals embrace AI for better and worse, and scientists create a robot smaller than a grain of sand.
Speaker 1:So waste management, the largest US trash hauler and recycler is spending on building and automating recycling facilities. You you have to go back and imagine a Sopranos like scenario where the mob is running trash management and just vibe coding and being like, what model should we use to detect what's in the trash? What what what's actually happening here is that they have to sort out the recyclables because there are valuable things that get thrown away in the trash, and the more that you can route things to different places, the better. So it's a difficult job that pays workers little, and it's hard for companies to fill. Who really wants the job of trash sorter?
Speaker 2:I was like, my first job, picking up cigarette butts.
Speaker 1:Yes. But you didn't have to sort them. You should you it's ridiculous.
Speaker 2:Maybe I How should do
Speaker 1:never figure out that they just have that you know that bucket that you put down and then you sweep into it?
Speaker 3:How did you not develop tools?
Speaker 2:Was a Vacuum. It like consider of vacuum. It was like fine rock Oh. That was the ground. Okay.
Speaker 2:And so if I was doing that, I would just
Speaker 1:be Picking up rocks.
Speaker 2:And then I'd have to be
Speaker 1:What about one of those grabber tools? I still feel like at a certain point, you weren't even operating at monkey or dolphin level tools. Was more like
Speaker 2:was running I know. I actually was running around like a monkey. I like the speed at which I
Speaker 1:could see, like, running around. But the monkey and the dolphin, they developed tools, and you you were unable to develop tools, and you suffered
Speaker 2:because I was promoted fairly quickly
Speaker 1:to You you developed tools eventually. Thanks for recent advancements. Some recyclers are now employing machines to do this dirty work. This week, Ryan Dezember reports on the recycling companies using AI to find valuable commodities in the trash. So here's a job that computers can take without much complaint, sorting recyclables.
Speaker 1:And before we read this, let me tell you about Lambda. Lambda is the superintelligence cloud, building AI supercomputer for training and inference that scales
Speaker 2:By way, you have the you have the honor of being serviced by Waste Management?
Speaker 1:I don't know, actually. I think my town might have its own, but Yeah.
Speaker 2:Every time I use I interact with Waste Management
Speaker 1:It's good?
Speaker 2:It's great. Really? Like, it makes me wish that all utilities were privatized.
Speaker 1:How does that how does that manifest?
Speaker 2:I mean, like, the website is great. The Okay. Support is great. It everything about the experience is great.
Speaker 1:When are you going to a website to interact with your trash?
Speaker 2:Just like moving.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay. I need If new if you move Yeah.
Speaker 2:All these things like interacting with California utilities
Speaker 1:is My trash bin broke at one point. I needed Yeah.
Speaker 2:Placement. One click.
Speaker 4:One click.
Speaker 2:I bet waste management will have an agent that
Speaker 1:Clog code. Get me a new get me a new trash can, I suppose? For humans, it is a foul laborious job that entails standing over a conveyor belt, plucking beer cans and detergent bottles from a stream of refuse. The job pays little and is hard to fill. At Murphy Road Recycling's material recovery facility near Hartford, the machines are taking over the dirtiest jobs.
Speaker 1:A few workers remain on the line mostly near the front to watch for hazardous items. Otherwise, the system of conveyors, magnets, optical sorters, and pneumatic blocks run largely unmanned. Watching over it all are computers that analyze material as it passes by about seven miles an hour. The devices made by London based Gray Parrot, that's a good name for a company, use artificial intelligence. The African Gray Parrot, I think, the smartest parrot, or maybe it lives the longest.
Speaker 1:Use artificial intelligence to identify recyclables, flag food grade material, gauge items mass, access market value. They're doing DCF on every African item.
Speaker 2:Gray parrots can live to 70 or 80.
Speaker 1:Let's go. Let's go.
Speaker 2:Imagine just having the world's most wise parrot Incredible. With you always.
Speaker 1:I like it.
Speaker 2:Tyler, you should get into birds. Yeah. Bird guy. I don't know if we're don't know if our office lease allows
Speaker 5:That's my budget. Bird
Speaker 1:It's your budget. I was I think an African big gray parrot is expensive. I remember I was moving into an apartment building, and and I don't know why, but my friends were telling the landlord that we had that one of the friends that was moving in had a collection of African gray parrots, and they just thought it was the funniest thing to try and get this landlord to approve the African grey parrots in the in the apartment. It was very very silly.
Speaker 2:There's a store there's a store in LA called The Perfect Parrot. Maybe you should go over there,
Speaker 1:Tom. Maybe. Gold Rock's microw is punching the air right now. Dirty jobs getting displaced. So environmental concerns and the White House's push to boost domestic production of raw materials have turned attention to America's waste stream, which is full of valuable commodities.
Speaker 1:The aluminum tariff of 50% has lifted demand for scrap metal. Meanwhile, pulp mill closures have left box makers reliant more than ever on old corrugated containers, and consumer good companies want to reclaim their bottles and jugs as states adapt adopt extended producer responsibility laws aimed at reducing plastic pollution. That's good news. There's really a lot of value value in a lot of recyclables and garbage, says the founder and chief technology officer at AMP, a Colorado company that builds AI run recycling facilities. The problem has been that the cost of pulling those materials out is similar to or greater than the actual value of those materials.
Speaker 1:Recyclers believe that AI will allow them to efficiently mine our trash for treasure. Gray Parrot's analyzers were shown recyclables thousands of times in conditions raising ranging from crumpled to perfectly intact until the computers could recognize materials. Perfect job for AI. The devices gather data about what is passing through the facility in which items aren't winding up where they belong. It's helping us make adjustments to the system.
Speaker 1:Murphy Road executives say the technology allows them to sort up to 60 tons an hour of curbside recycling. And some of these some of the some of the stuff that you can pull out of recycling is is remarkable, especially if there's batteries that can be disassembled. There's a whole company, Redwood Materials, founded by J. B. Straubel, former cofounder of Tesla, early employee of Tesla, board member of Tesla, focused on recycling EV batteries because, obviously, we have the rare earth elements.
Speaker 1:We make the magnets. We make the batteries, and then we just kind of trash them. And if you can recycle them, that's obviously effective and valuable. Sort of an interesting second What
Speaker 2:do think about the name Redwood Materials? I wouldn't wouldn't you expect them to be working
Speaker 1:In wood? Wood? I guess. I don't know. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I don't know why they call that. I think they're out in Vegas. They have a massive facility. I wonder how the business is doing. I know they raised a bunch of money.
Speaker 1:It was a massive CapEx intensive effort, but it seemed like something that was uniquely powered by, you know, seeing the rollout of Tesla. You know, he JB Straubel's working on Tesla, seeing how many cars they're shipping, watching all the batteries go out the door, and just thinking, okay. Well, something's gonna happen with those in a couple years. I should start building this business today. Well, CrowdStrike.
Speaker 1:Your business is AI. Their business is securing it. CrowdStrike secures AI and stops breaches. So let's move on to the big news of the day. Andreessen Horowitz raised $15,000,000,000.
Speaker 1:Why are we here? Why did we raise $15,000,000,000? Ben Horowitz wrote a piece on X. You can go and read it. He's also joined by show.
Speaker 2:Redwood Materials, the last round they raised was in October 2025. Mhmm. I missed that.
Speaker 1:October 2025? Okay.
Speaker 2:So very recently raised 350,000,000.
Speaker 1:Yes. So massive suite of new funds. The Hull represents 18% of all venture capital dollars allocated in The United States in 2025.
Speaker 2:Yes. So did you that was something I was curious about. Does this get sort of like backdated, like this wasn't factoring into the data that we had from last year and now that it's was it already being counted in some way through filings, right? Because you add an incremental $15,000,000,000 funding.
Speaker 1:Don't know. We'll have to ask them. But a16z is now at $90,000,000,000 of AUM, and it's split over a number of funds. Growth the growth fund got 6,750,000,000.00. American dynamism two got 1.776, I believe.
Speaker 1:Right? Or is it 1,176,000,000.000? I I it's there's two different numbers here. Apps, two, got 1,700,000,000.0. Infrastructure, the second fund, got 1,700,000,000.0.
Speaker 1:Bio and health care got 700,000,000, and other strategies got 3,000,000,000. I wonder crypto is sort is sort of missing here. I wonder if crypto is just on a different cycle or has some sort of different structure. We'll have to ask them about that. But very exciting and and feels like despite the headline of venture capital fundraising declining, certainly plenty of money to go around if
Speaker 2:you Well, think don't both need Josh and Delian this week talked about kind of the K shape and how emerging manager less emerging managers, less new funds, but the the platforms have been doing just fine.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. I I I'm I'm I'm curious about this this oh, the Okay. So I I understand it. So, American Dynamism Fund two raised 1,176,000,000.000.
Speaker 1:They already had a $600,000,000 fund. So you add those together, and you get the final amount of funding for American dynamism across the two funds, 1,776,000,000.000 for American dynamism. And some cool trading cards going up from Andreessen David Ulovich shares one of an Andoril Fury drone flying across a mountain range for companies that support the national interest. Catherine Boyle had a different graphic with a horse, which we love. Play that horse sound.
Speaker 1:With an American flag and the and the the indrissent new font, which is a very beveled and three d looking metal texture. Very fun. And
Speaker 2:Packy has a new piece on on some of the history of the fund. Yeah. The opening is quite Let's read it. Quite fun. I'll just read it.
Speaker 1:Before we do, let me tell you about Cognition. They are the makers of Devon, the AI software engineer. Crush your backlog with your personal AI engineering team.
Speaker 2:Paki says, Andreessen Horowitz hears your feedback, that it's too loud, that it would shut up and dribble, that it should shut up and dribble, politically speaking, that you don't agree with a recent investment or two, that it's unbecoming, to quote the pope, that there is no way it will ever generate a reasonable return for LPs on such enormous funds. A 16 z does hear you. It has been hearing you at this point for nearly two decades. Overnight success. And then he goes in to a bunch of the history and the news.
Speaker 2:So I I would I would encourage everybody to go Yeah. To go And we're pass that there's there's a bunch of information on on their actual returns, which is cool. But, unfortunately, this went out right before we joined, so I have not been able to read it yet.
Speaker 1:There but was some spice. We gotta get to the drama. So Andrew Zoras, they put out this image. We why we raised 15,000,000,000. We're all in on America.
Speaker 1:And what image do they use? They use Mount Everest. They're climbing Mount Everest. The the the the metaphor is clear. It's the tallest mountain.
Speaker 1:We're the tallest mountain in Venture. We got the most money. We're we're the biggest firm. But a lot of people are saying, hey, why do you use a Chinese mountain? Why do you use a Chinese mountain?
Speaker 1:It's Everest. It's over there in China. It's actually half in China, half in Nepal. It's more complicated. But maybe it's
Speaker 2:Let's not get into that.
Speaker 1:Maybe it's foreshadowing. You know, we're acquiring Greenland. Maybe they know something we don't. Maybe it's not gonna be in China forever. Maybe we already we already named it.
Speaker 1:Everest has named it by an American who, I believe, was the first person to climb it.
Speaker 2:And Yeah. Remember, so so Land acquisitions is House officials have talked about a $5,700,000,000 payment Yeah. For for Greenland. Yeah. Right?
Speaker 2:That depending on what type of payment would be needed for a place like Nepal, right, you can imagine it being potentially less than that. So Yeah. A16z, they've got plenty plenty of cash. But I'm super excited to have a whole host of folks from the fund. Jen is joining Alex Rampell.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. David, and then Ben will cap it off at the end Great. For his
Speaker 1:And Dan Primmick is pulling out the spiciest quote, VC industry shots fired by Ben Horowitz. Ben says, as the American leader in venture capital, the fate of new technology in The United States rests partly on our shoulders. That that seems reasonable. They're they're certainly up there. And leaders, obviously, by what definition, but they're certainly in the top with in terms of AUM.
Speaker 1:And and the they I mean, they do have a they do have a responsibility
Speaker 2:for And what did Josh Josh Wolfe yesterday was saying that he expects at least one or two of these larger platform funds to go public.
Speaker 6:So
Speaker 2:we'll have to get into that.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean, that's a very interesting angle with Andreessen is because it's becoming such a large they call it platform fund. They're almost private equity type deals. They've seen General Catalyst buy a hospital network. Like, they're at a scale where they can keep a company private until they're a trillion dollar company, but they can also buy whole companies and roll things up and incubate stuff.
Speaker 1:There's so much that you can do at this level. And it starts to look like, is the comp actually BlackRock? Is the comp actually Blackstone? And those two firms are worth $170,000,000,000 each, something around there, dollars 190,000,000,000 each. And so it's gonna be it feels like it's gonna be interesting to start seeing these firms more as financial institutions with more traditional
Speaker 2:Not just a firm and institution.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Not that it's gonna happen anytime soon, but it feels like
Speaker 2:it's But this long feels like it could be effectively a pre IPO round.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah. Pre IPO fundraise. Yeah. Maybe.
Speaker 2:Maybe. We will see. We will But go go read Paki's piece. Yeah. And Shyam Sankar says, we should insist that all data centers that are built are architecturally beautiful in the neoclassic style.
Speaker 1:Yes. I wanted to do an architecture deep dive. Before we do, let me tell you about Labelbox delivering you the highest quality data for frontier AI. Get in the box. The Labelbox.
Speaker 1:Get in the box. I love that they they gave us enough just enough rope to hang ourselves. So, Shyam Sankar, you know, he he wants data centers built that are architecturally beautiful in the neoclassical style. You have you seen those photos of the AWS data centers that back up onto Virginia housing developments? So it'll it's just like an idyllic few houses that just look like a normal neighborhood and then just behind out.
Speaker 1:Massive white school box.
Speaker 2:They're like, I'm not leaving.
Speaker 1:Well, now, you don't even get a box, you get a tent because Meta is now they gave up on their previous architectural design, and now it's just a tent, which maybe is more Economy.
Speaker 2:IRL slop. Yeah. Exactly.
Speaker 1:But there were some interesting architectural debates that I wanted to go through. Before we go to the next one, let me tell you about MongoDB. Choose the database built for flexibility and scale with best in class embedding models and re rankers. MongoDB has what you need to build what's next. So imagine being as locked in as the Kyoto architecture community was in 1397.
Speaker 1:I cannot believe this was built seven hundred years ago, sixteen hundred or six hundred years ago. Explain what
Speaker 5:So there there's some lore here.
Speaker 1:Give me the lore, Tyler.
Speaker 5:Okay. So so, yeah, 1397 when when it was built. Yeah. I think in maybe 1950. Mhmm.
Speaker 5:So it was like a temple. Right? So there's there's monks that lived there.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 5:And I I think it was 1950 For
Speaker 1:five hundred years or six hundred years.
Speaker 5:Yeah. Okay. The one was living there and
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 5:He burned down the temple. Woah. And then he tried to, like, commit suicide No. Right outside it. What?
Speaker 1:What's wrong?
Speaker 5:I don't know.
Speaker 1:He just wasn't locked in?
Speaker 4:Well, no
Speaker 5:one knows what happened. But Okay. But then so this is actually it was rebuilt. And there's a good
Speaker 1:Oh. But it was rebuilt in the same style? Yeah. So the architectural style is truly from 1397.
Speaker 5:Yes. That's right. I there's I think there's some questions about how much gold was actually used in the original In
Speaker 1:the original?
Speaker 5:Design. Yeah. But, yeah, there's feel like gold should be pretty
Speaker 1:fire resistant. You know? Gold, probably high melt Sure.
Speaker 5:But I mean, it's like a very thin Yeah. It's not
Speaker 1:Well, that's that's a skill issue. They should have made it out of solid gold. Then a single ember
Speaker 4:That's
Speaker 1:you're trying to light it, trying to get it started, the monk is just, I can't get this gold building to melt. Yeah. But there's a
Speaker 5:good Yukio Mishima book about this.
Speaker 1:Oh, really? There's a whole book just about this story?
Speaker 5:It's like a fictionalized story of the Interesting.
Speaker 1:Very cool. How would you rate this out of 10, Jordy? Would you live in this Kyoto temple?
Speaker 2:If it was in Amman, yes.
Speaker 1:If it was in Amman, I must have a spa.
Speaker 2:I'm kidding. I do I like the water feature.
Speaker 1:The water feature
Speaker 2:I really wanna bring back Moats. Moats. Moats. Moats. The obvious thing that's missing from modern architecture.
Speaker 2:People talk about the material use, the form factor, but the obvious the elephant in the room is a lack of moats in modern Indeed. Architecture. We need to bring back moats, gators in the moats, potentially sharks in the moats.
Speaker 1:I feel like sharks are a little bit safer in the moat because you can hang out Whereas at the if there's gators in your moat and you're on the grass next to your moat
Speaker 2:Yeah. People have like koi fish, you know, ponds, but why not just go size it up a little bit Do know if modify shark pond.
Speaker 1:Shark pond.
Speaker 2:Shark pond. Imagine, you know, people go out, they like the being relaxed and kind of like feeding the Yeah. Feeding the the the koi. But imagine just you know, throwing like chicken breasts into the water for a shark. How relaxing that would be Yeah.
Speaker 2:If you needed just, you know, fifteen minute break from Yeah. From work before you get back to your email job.
Speaker 1:Well, if you're building a Fintech company, you need a moat, you need Plaid. Plaid powers the app you use the apps you use to spend, save, borrow, and invest secure securely connecting bank accounts to move money, fight fraud, and improve lending now with AI. What about the architecture at the Charles De Gaulle Airport in France? It's a cross section of a wing complete with spar box. I didn't know what that means.
Speaker 1:Need Billy Thalimer, founder of Regent Aircraft, been on the show. He says we need more buildings modeled after airplane parts. I've seen this as well in a house. Someone took an airplane wing, a physical, real airplane wing, and built it into a house that sort of served as the unifying ceiling. What do you think about living in an airplane wing?
Speaker 1:Did you do that? It was the mock.
Speaker 2:I've seen I feel like I saw a house at some point that was built around Yeah. July.
Speaker 1:Yes. Yes. Well, you also might be thinking of John Travolta's house, which just often had a seven forty seven parked outside, which he flew himself, which is incredible. Imagine being so into private aviation that you learn to fly massive
Speaker 3:jets Okay.
Speaker 2:I've found it.
Speaker 1:And then land them at your house with your own with your own
Speaker 7:I put
Speaker 2:it in the timeline, guys, if you can pull it up. There's something called the 747 Wing House in California. Yes. Let's pull up this let's pull up
Speaker 1:seen this on on a show called Grand Design on Netflix. I believe I watched a little mini documentary or or an episode of reality TV about this. Let's
Speaker 7:see. Yeah.
Speaker 1:This is the exactly I've
Speaker 7:watched it. Don't come across views like that.
Speaker 1:More
Speaker 7:than once in a lifetime, it
Speaker 1:is somewhere that once seen, it would never Reveal Reveal it. Reveal Reveal Enough of the get this cactus outside. Running water Okay.
Speaker 6:Or even roads is an endurance test only that brings disused bowing There
Speaker 4:it is.
Speaker 1:There we go.
Speaker 2:Look at this thing.
Speaker 1:Two wings. Interesting. Oh, very cool. That looks really cool.
Speaker 2:We don't know how to make
Speaker 1:wing nuts. You know what this is? I Every time you watch one of these episodes, it's always just some couple that's just maniacally focused on making this particular thing, and they interview them. And it takes like years to create one of these episodes. Wow.
Speaker 1:Interesting. It's blurred. I wonder why that that is. Very, very odd. But it's always someone has a vision, and then they think it's gonna be easy, and then they spend a decade building it, and they have to check-in with them.
Speaker 1:We checked in with them four years later, and they were still in production and still getting permits. But eventually, it does get built, and it looks beautiful when it does.
Speaker 2:And You gotta really love the seven forty seven to to be in love with this house. I think it looks very cool. Yeah. I'm glad they did it.
Speaker 1:I flew on a seven forty seven for maybe the first time to Europe. It was beautiful. It was amazing.
Speaker 2:The first time?
Speaker 1:Yes. Seven forty seven's are pretty rare. Like, except for long haul international flights.
Speaker 2:You Oh, yeah. You're an America guy.
Speaker 1:I'm an America. So I'm usually seven thirty seven max. Always. Like or or or Airbus or Airbus. But the the seven forty seven, it's got a special it has a special aesthetic to it because of the the smooth bump.
Speaker 1:You get the second story, but only for the first half of the plane. It's I mean, it's the plane that we use Air Force one for that we use for Air Force one. Whereas the competitor, which I believe is the Airbus a three eighty, doesn't have the same aesthetic beauty. It just it's two stories the entire way. It's very efficient, but it just doesn't have the same clean line as the seven forty seven, which is just so so iconic.
Speaker 1:Anyway, Charles De Gaulle Airport. Go check it out. Also, out Restream. One livestream, 30 plus destinations. If you wanna multi stream, go to restream.com.
Speaker 2:Checking in on 262 5th Ave. Yes. Sage Hunter Bornstein says
Speaker 1:Should be raised.
Speaker 2:It's a crime. It should be raised. Shame on s l c e
Speaker 1:r You really dug into who built this thing.
Speaker 2:Wow. Moscow based. Yeah. He's going at them.
Speaker 1:26 residences. He calls it hideous architecture. He says it takes away Madison Square Park's views of the Empire State Building. I don't know. What is that at the top?
Speaker 1:That that that top is
Speaker 2:Don't don't worry about the gold cube, John. Don't worry just don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. It's just a it's a gold cube.
Speaker 1:Wow. We found a rare post here. Zero likes. A 166 views.
Speaker 2:Wow. First First one to like
Speaker 1:except for the fact that I disagree with it. I think it's actually sort of a nice building. I think we just we generally need more buildings.
Speaker 2:I think it just feels harsh because of the contrast to the building next to it.
Speaker 1:True. True. But I don't know. I I was we will we'll read this in the mansion section, but there's there's some interesting dynamics about how HOAs enforce aesthetics in communities and whether or not that's good or not. In other news, they three d printed a Starbucks.
Speaker 1:Starbucks has a new drive through in Texas. The coffee giants, first three d printed store in The United States.
Speaker 2:It's funny. They've really made it look like it's three d printed.
Speaker 1:Look at this. Look at this. So, I mean, I I've talked to one of the there's a YC company that does this technique. I know. It looks so sloppy.
Speaker 1:And and there's a little bit of, like up at the top, it actually looks like there's a little bit of, imperfection and randomness that looks sort of aesthetic. It looks like it's sort of designed in the way that a log cabin, not every log is gonna be perfect. But then you get to the middle section, and it's like the tube that was pumping it was just not working. If you scroll over to the left and then down a little bit, just down. Like, that is messy.
Speaker 1:So this the way it shows up, you basically get like a crane with a gantry that can move the nozzle in an x and y axis, and it just pours cement in loops, circles again and again and again.
Speaker 2:Okay. Need to know I need to know how quickly they built this and how much it costs. Because if this came in at at 80%
Speaker 1:They said it was it was $2.02 g's, $2. Can you imagine? It's so cheap.
Speaker 2:Starbucks was down to their last $2.
Speaker 1:And they're just like,
Speaker 5:I just three
Speaker 1:d print it. Yeah. I don't know. I think
Speaker 5:Around 1,200,000.0. Okay.
Speaker 2:That's What is a normal What is the average Starbucks cost. Stand alone building cost?
Speaker 1:Tyler asks, who is the architect? And Pete says, slop GPT. People are not happy. The US
Speaker 2:says, wouldn't download a Starbucks.
Speaker 1:US graphics company says, I have the sudden urge to insult this in biblical terms. Yeah. People are not not very happy with this. It does see it does feel like a low quality print. Hopefully, the three d printing company, you know, this is just a step in the road, and they become more more aesthetic, more precise, I
Speaker 5:think. Okay.
Speaker 6:So so the
Speaker 5:total investment range for a Starbucks location is 760,000 to 2,200,000.0.
Speaker 2:See, that's not It's kinda like
Speaker 5:like right in the
Speaker 2:range there. The median cost, but one of the more ugly ones. I yeah.
Speaker 1:Whether you're long or you're short Starbucks, you gotta do it on public.com. Investing for those take seriously. Stocks, options, bonds, crypto, treasuries, and more with game great customer
Speaker 2:service. Matt Stavik says they save 10.
Speaker 6:Good to
Speaker 1:see you, Matt. The wrath of non says, is comparing some architecture in Oslo, Norway.
Speaker 2:Wait. Going going back to the for second.
Speaker 1:Let's go back
Speaker 2:to Could they not have found a material to just place on that? Like, it seems like this could be a great way to build a like, the core structure. Yeah. Couldn't you just Plaster over it. Put something
Speaker 1:over it.
Speaker 2:Like, just It seems like they wanted to Really throw it in really put it in your face. But the whole point of technology is not the technology itself. Yeah. It's what it enables. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So if you can build a Starbucks for half the cost Yeah. You know, twice as fast, that's amazing. But it doesn't mean it has to look like
Speaker 1:Well, yeah.
Speaker 2:It was three d printed.
Speaker 1:You you can you can plaster and spackle over any sort of rough material, and then you can print. You you can basically stamp, like, brick texture into it or some cinder block texture into it. It is fake, but it looks like what it looks like. They didn't do any of that here. They really let the, like, the loose tubes really lay out.
Speaker 1:It looks just Looks like
Speaker 2:two it looks like it looks like
Speaker 1:Looks like a gingerbread house.
Speaker 2:It looks like a kid's a kid's, you know, school project.
Speaker 1:Yes. Yes. Today, we're using
Speaker 2:And you gotta be like, oh, nice nice work.
Speaker 1:Nice work. Like tongue depressors and chopsticks or
Speaker 2:Popsicle sticks.
Speaker 1:Popsicle sticks and glue, and the and the four year old went a little crazy with the glue. The Elmer's came out in full effect with this Starbucks.
Speaker 2:That being cool that this is actually happening. Yeah. Because this has been promised Yes. For a while. Yes.
Speaker 2:I just hope they they refine the the design.
Speaker 1:At the same time, I've talked to a number of startup founders who operate in the
Speaker 2:Trace says you're gonna also build a Starbucks out of mud, but probably
Speaker 1:You probably should. Oh, wow. Okay. So I've talked to a number of startup founders working in trying to develop cheaper housing, cheaper building materials, and they've all said the last thing that you want a three d print is just a flat wall. Like three d printing is great when you're talking about Lukas Zinger's hypercar and you need some crazy structure that can't just be milled.
Speaker 1:But with a with a like, we're very, very efficient at making flat planes. You can just take a you can just take a metal cube and slice it. You can take a a bunch of wood and build a grid. Like, we're pretty efficient at just building flat walls. You don't actually need three d printing for that.
Speaker 1:You need three d printing for building some sort of special structure. There was a rocket company was it I don't wanna get it wrong, but there was a rocket company that was saying, hey, we're gonna three d print rockets, and it and it would go and solder one piece after another in a in a cylindrical tube. The only problem is that we know how to make cylinders really, really effective. Bend metal. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Can just bend metal. And so that's what what Blue Origin and SpaceX do.
Speaker 2:What Rocket says, Lincoln Logs, Starbucks.
Speaker 1:Lincoln Logs,
Speaker 2:Starbucks. Soft serve building.
Speaker 1:It does look like soft serve. That's right.
Speaker 2:It's a good Starbucks.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Maybe it's an ad for the McFlurry. Maybe the McClurry machine always works there.
Speaker 2:DG says you could do a sand castle Starbucks.
Speaker 1:Sand castle Starbucks might be fun.
Speaker 2:That could go pretty hard.
Speaker 1:Well, maybe they need to do a sand castle national museum over in Oslo, Norway. But before we dig into this, let me tell you about Applovin', profitable advertising made easy with axon.ai. Get access to over 1,000,000,000 daily active users and grow your business today. So he's comparing two images. One is from 1882.
Speaker 1:It's the National Gallery. And in 2022, they launched the National Museum, and he claims that modern architecture is meant to demoralize you. And you can zoom in on this side by side here. The eighteen eighties building is very ornate with lots of gold and brick and details and structure and windows and all sorts of things. And the 2022 Building looks like a black cube from the Borg or Star Trek.
Speaker 2:Really rough.
Speaker 1:Some cool stuff. You can do cool things with flat materials. I've always liked the design of the Walt Disney Concert Hall, but it looks like this sweeping winged structure. It's very innovative and unique. This is a little boring, guys.
Speaker 1:But at the same time, Oslo, it's a gloomy place. It sort of fits in, I guess. I don't know. The were depressed. They had seasonal affected disorder.
Speaker 1:Sad. Anyway
Speaker 2:Steve is sharing, apparently, this was a proposal from a Norwegian architecture firm for the Obama presidential library in Hawaii, but it failed.
Speaker 1:Okay. So the Norwegians got it.
Speaker 2:They still got it.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Sometimes it's the flat black cube. It's interesting because, like, the critique of the new Obama presidential library is that it's too Norwegian. And it turns out he just went with the wrong Norwegians, I suppose, because they're sharing these sort of science fiction looking renders. These look beautiful with a wonderful water feature and this sweeping grass overlay that seems very cool.
Speaker 1:Although, it feels like you would be at risk of falling off the edge here. They would have to put a railing of some sort. But very, very cool architectural designs, and I would love to see more
Speaker 2:presidential pull up the Obama presidential library.
Speaker 1:Does Trump get two presidential libraries, one for each term? Has he already built one? I know the plane's going there. Right? Something like that?
Speaker 2:Very odd. I put I put the Obama one in the
Speaker 1:But if you're worried about a lack of in the presidential library architectural industry, I don't think you need to be worried for very long. I think there will be a very ornate building coming in just a few years probably. And I'm sure the
Speaker 2:Yes. This is the is what Yeah. This is this was the winning bid.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And they did that
Speaker 2:This one is in power source. Right? This one is in Chicago.
Speaker 1:This one is in Chicago.
Speaker 2:Okay. Not Hawaii. Yes. And again, maybe if they get a huge projector and put like a fireplace on the wall inside, it could be cozy.
Speaker 1:I like that.
Speaker 2:But that doesn't look It's crazy how tall It looks like a great place potentially like the the the like a like, if if the deep state felt like not super welcome in other
Speaker 1:buildings I wanna see the aircraft that they're building inside there because that looks like a aircraft hangar for a UFO. Yeah. It seems of alien origin. Yeah. Well, Wrath of Non is continuing to talk about architecture.
Speaker 1:He says, Traditional Korean architecture with its visually rich harmonious patterns produces lower levels of visual stress than modern facades with repetitive patterns hard lines and high contrast materials, which are more likely to overload the visual system and contribute to discomfort, especially in dense urban areas. There's some research that suggests that having variation in your architecture actually can reduce stress, which is fascinating.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Try to zoom in on this picture on the left. You Yeah. Click in because you can see the the one on left, it's it's way for something it just feels more organic or more natural. Right?
Speaker 1:Yeah. And it's a pretty simple shift
Speaker 2:like And then if you go over to the right a little bit
Speaker 1:It doesn't feel like
Speaker 2:they Okay. That looks like a prison. On on the one Oh, side the yeah. Left looks like, you know, they're gentrifying, some area. And on the right, some part of like Mexico City.
Speaker 2:And on the right, it looks like a prison. And it's only a slight
Speaker 1:Or a building in New York City. But, yeah, it doesn't seem like it costs that much to create some variation and randomness in your architectural designs. Maybe it's expensive.
Speaker 2:I wanna see the new a 16 I think a 16 z needs to build Yes. A, like, a massive gold superstructure in the heart of San Francisco. They do. Just carve out, you know, the Yeah. Who knows what the fee structure is.
Speaker 1:You take half of it.
Speaker 2:Take half of the fees and just build a monolithic Yes. Yes. Monument to
Speaker 1:Have you ever been to the Statue Of Liberty?
Speaker 2:I've never actually
Speaker 1:toured Inside? So there's a structure. You can go inside of it and walk up the stairs and whatnot. You could put offices in that. You could build you could build a statue and then put your office inside the statue.
Speaker 1:That's thinking.
Speaker 2:I like that.
Speaker 5:What do think? I think we should kinda look back to Charlie Munger's design for the UCBSD. Yeah. The lock in. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Dormzilla. Just he he
Speaker 2:just wanted Dormzilla. He just wanted He wanted keep lock in. Wanting
Speaker 1:everyone to lock in and he was he was killed for it. Was ridiculous. He was
Speaker 2:Pull pull this up. University of California abandons plans to build windowless dorm
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:The Munger Hall. He just wanted you to lock in. Pull up this article, you can see the design and just how many just how many rooms in this place are windowless. It is very, very powerful. So on the outside, it looks Powerful.
Speaker 2:Like it looks I think he just knew that people were only gonna have a few by the time this was built, people would only have a few years to escape the the permanent underclass
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And windows would distract people. You scroll down, you can see the actual design. Yeah. That is a there's a lot
Speaker 6:of ways.
Speaker 1:It's a lot of windowless things. Maybe he was just super pilled on VR at the time. He was like, everyone's gonna be in the metaverse. Everyone's gonna be locked into their VR headsets.
Speaker 2:Aqua says Munger was cooking. Yeah. We should have let him cook. Yeah. We support him.
Speaker 1:Anyway, Gusto, the unified platform for payroll benefits and HR built to evolve this modern, and medium sized businesses.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I mean, the the funny thing with trying to do that at UCSB is like the most popular freshman dorms at UCSB are actually like in an old like hotel. Yes. So it's these two towers that have these incredible three sixty views. Not three sixty, but the mountains and the ocean, and then you have this huge Olympic swimming pool.
Speaker 2:So it actually feels like you're just staying at like a like a Hilton or something like that. And so to go from that to windowless is just a little bit rough.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Well, underrated strategy, buy a compound with your friend. Former casino mogul Steve Wynn and financier Thomas Peterffy set a record when they bought a four and a half acre compound in 2024. I I can't seem to add this to the list, but it's in The Wall Street Journal today. It's on the cover of the mansion section.
Speaker 1:It's comparing Aspen to Palm Beach, but it's very funny. It says, five years ago, $20,000,000 home sales in Aspen were rare, happening no more than a handful times in a year. An influx of the of uber wealthy buyers has now upended that norm, handing the affluent ski area 34 deals above 20,000,000 last year, up 161% from 2024. Year over year growth almost tripling in that category. The median single family home sale price hit 13,950,000.00 during twenty twenty five's third quarter compared to $9,970,000 in Palm Beach, Florida, raising the question, has Aspen eclipsed Palm Beach as one of the priciest markets in the country?
Speaker 1:Long known as playgrounds for the rich and famous, one sunny, one snowy, Aspen and Palm Beach are increasingly two sides of the same coin when it comes to luxury real estate. Despite 2,000 miles between them, each is home to dozens of billionaires. Restaurants like Saint Ambreuse and boutiques like Brunello Cucinelli have outposts in both locales. Some of the wealthiest people have property in both places too. People run-in packs, and they and they run to the same destinations, said Palm Beach real estate agent Dana Koch.
Speaker 1:The meteoric rise of Aspen's ultra luxury market has made comparisons between the markets unavoidable. Both Palm Beach and Aspen saw deal volume and prices soar in 2020. That's continued to be driven by strong financial markets. The one percenters are making money hand over fist, said Aspen real estate appraiser Randy Gold. Real estate, he said, is a hard asset that they can enjoy.
Speaker 1:Those are small markets that are protected geographically, adding to their exclusivity. Palm Beach is an island. I gotta turn to M 9.
Speaker 2:Aspen is basically an island in the mountains surrounded by public land. Yeah. Once you're here, it's very private. Each has a limited supply of homes. There are only so many beachfront properties in Palm Beach and or homes on Aspen's Red Mountain, which has fueled major price appreciation in both.
Speaker 2:The numbers are mind boggling, but the reality is that is these properties are unicorns. When they come up for sale, you have buyers out there who will pay a premium.
Speaker 1:Okay. So Steve Wynn and Thomas Peterffy, they both they both own homes in the same area in Palm Beach, and they're known to be friends, and they're both GOP donors. They're neighbors in Florida, and apparently they became close enough to go in on a $108,000,000 Aspen estate together. And so Wynn is the founder of Wynn Resort and Casino in the Bellagio. Thomas Peterffy is the founder, chairman and largest shareholder of Interactive Brokers.
Speaker 1:So he's made a ton of money. Thomas is worth 35,000,000,000. Steve Wynn is maybe worth 3,400,000,000.0. So a one order of magnitude gap between them. And you wonder if it's Wynn being like, I gotta bring in some extra firepower on here.
Speaker 1:Let's go fifty fifty, brother.
Speaker 3:Well, here here's
Speaker 2:the thing. How like, this sounds great in theory, and then it's New Year's, and both families wanna be in Aspen.
Speaker 1:But it
Speaker 2:is a 22,000
Speaker 1:square foot compound. You might just say, hey, we're doing Christmas together, New Year's together.
Speaker 2:I know. But actually families that wanna go be in a cabin
Speaker 1:Yeah. Is Oh, it's it's it's a tall order. It's crazy to be like, oh, yeah. Like, bro, you're only little bro, you're only worth 3,400,000,000.0. Hit the couch.
Speaker 1:I I I got the master. You got
Speaker 2:the couch.
Speaker 1:Oh, you only put in 50,000,000 into this compound. But this is where it gets funny. So no one there's no reporting on, like, why they decided to buy this together, but we have a clue because they they the buyer is actually an LLC that they set up, and the name of that LLC is Buddy's Aspen. Buddies. We're Aspen Buddies.
Speaker 1:We're a couple of Aspen Buddies, and we went in on it together. And so they bought a mat they bought an Aspen mansion together. It's a it's a very funny time. The the other buddies who did not buy a mansion together are, of course, the Google cofounders who have both bought property in Miami. Larry Page just spent 173,000,000 on two Miami homes.
Speaker 1:Some of them are very odd. We'll we'll go into these. First, let me tell you about fin dot a I, the number one AI agent for customer service. If you want AI to handle your customer support, go to fin.ai. So Google cofounder Larry Page has bought two massive Miami estates for a combined $173,000,000 according to people familiar with the situation.
Speaker 1:The deals come as Page and other Silicon Valley moguls descend on Miami in the face of California's proposed tax on billionaires. DeLean called it just a little bit too early, but the move is finally happening. Page paid a $101,000,000 in December to buy one of the properties, a waterfront compound in Coconut Grove that had long been the home of the late restaurateur Jonathan Lewis. He then purchased a nearby Coconut Grove property for 71,900,000.0 from heiress Sloane Lindeman Barnett and her husband Roger Barnett.
Speaker 2:Okay. Let's pull up. There was some interest in one of these homes
Speaker 4:Yes.
Speaker 2:That Larry bought. We can pull it up. I put it at the bottom of the timeline.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:But one of the homes that that he purchased looks fantastic. It looks like this jungle oasis. Zoom in a little bit.
Speaker 1:Do the CSI. Enhance. It a little bit. Gets a little odd.
Speaker 2:It's a little odd. Haven't Uh-oh.
Speaker 1:Uh-oh. It has
Speaker 2:a It's lot work not. It's just a sculpture. Can
Speaker 3:we Hopefully, can
Speaker 1:let's see. This is gonna be a jump scare if it's anything but this.
Speaker 2:Yes. Yep. So this So you have to show the zoomed out picture.
Speaker 1:So scroll down, show the zoomed out photo. Oh, wait. No. It's not there. Uh-oh.
Speaker 1:Don't don't scroll there too much. We need to find the original photo.
Speaker 2:The the original photo is just
Speaker 1:Where did the original photo go? We'll we'll find that, and and we'll tell
Speaker 2:you. But
Speaker 1:if you but but basically, there's a there's a you know, it's a stock. It's a real estate photo. It's a photo that was taken clearly. This is agent hired
Speaker 2:Before it was Larry's house.
Speaker 1:Before it was Larry's house, to be clear. So
Speaker 2:Yeah. Look.
Speaker 1:This is the photo. And then people started zooming in and you keep zooming in, and you keep zooming in, and you keep zooming in. Let's go. And you start seeing some very weird design and decor interior decorating decisions that, tell a little bit of a weird story about whoever was here. Usually, these properties are staged before they are photographed.
Speaker 1:Who choice.
Speaker 2:Who owned it previously?
Speaker 1:Also, it's something that Tyler,
Speaker 3:do you
Speaker 2:try to find out the the previous owner of this house?
Speaker 1:I don't know. So, I mean, we we we have we do have some Jonathan Lewis is one and Sloane Lindeman Lindeman Barnett and her husband Roger Barnett are the others, if this is Larry Page's new house, but I know Sergei also.
Speaker 2:Some guy named Jeffrey.
Speaker 1:Oh, no. No. No. No. No.
Speaker 1:No. And they declined to comment. California's proposed ballot initiative would impose a one time 5% tax on the assets of billionaires. It would retroactively apply to those who were California residents as of 01/01/2026. Now this proposal is not even on the ballot yet.
Speaker 1:It's it's still being workshopped, but many tech billionaires are not taking any chances, and they're relocating as of January 1 or December 31 in many cases.
Speaker 2:December 31 was really the day to send the press release.
Speaker 1:It was. It was. Pretty much every other day, I'm showing property to a client from the San Francisco Bay Area says d d Dina Goldentier of Douglas Elliman. Every conversation I overhear, they're talking about the wealth tax and how it's retroactive. They're in a hurry, and they're all looking at the same houses.
Speaker 1:Several agents told The Wall Street Journal they couldn't talk about the deals because they'd signed non disclosure agreements that could end their careers if broken. The former Lewis compound spans about four and a half acres on Biscayne Bay and Coconut Grove, one of the city's most coveted neighborhoods. Lewis was the son of the late Peter b Lewis, onetime CEO of Progressive Insurance Company. What a great business. The property listed for a 135,000,000 in 2024 was most recently asking 115.
Speaker 1:The estate has two primary residences. One was designed for the Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan in the nineteen twenties, and Lewis built the other home for his father around 2002. The other property purchased by the Barnett's for 45,900,000.0 in 2021 is less than a mile away. Sloane is the daughter of billionaire George L Lindeman, and Roger is the chief executive of health supplement maker Shakely. I don't know Shakely, actually.
Speaker 1:The Barnett sold the San Francisco mansion to a billionaire Lauren Powell Jobs, wife of the late Apple visionary Steve Jobs for around 70,000,000 in 2024, setting a record for the California City. The Barnett property wasn't on the market at the time of the deal, so little information is available. Real estate data website. Property shark shows it was built around 2015 and spans 17,000 square feet with seven bedrooms. Pear Page and Sergey Brin founded Google as Stanford students in 1998 and built it into the one of the world's most valuable companies or one of them.
Speaker 1:Step back from active management in 2019 and maybe getting back in the arena during the AI boom. Page is worth around $270,000,000,000 according to Bloomberg, in addition to his home in Palo Alto. He he obtained New Zealand residency in 2021. Miami's ultra luxury market has skyrocketed in recent years. In 2025, there were 19 sales above $50,000,000 in Florida compared with just 12 in New York and 10 in California.
Speaker 1:Miami had four deals above $100,000,000 last year. Billionaire hedge fund hedge funder Ken Griffin paid a 106,000,000 for
Speaker 2:a Miami Miami really makes Southern California look cheap. It does. Ask a Miami guy to watch him browse watch him browse Zillow.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And they're like, why? They're giving the houses away here.
Speaker 1:Well, let me tell you about vibe.co, where d to c brands, b to b startups, and AI companies advertise on streaming TV, pick channels, target audiences, and measure sales And just like on you know what else is surprisingly expensive? Nashville. I had no idea. But there is a Nashville condo that quote, where it's James Bond meets Lenny Kravitz. And it just is for sale now for 33,500,000.0.
Speaker 1:So looking to hang out with John Fiorentino out in Nashville. You gotta pick this one up. It's 5,000 square feet.
Speaker 2:Does John live in the 4 Seasons?
Speaker 1:I think he might.
Speaker 2:Not to dock.
Speaker 1:Not to dock. But if you want to get Volta from the source, you gotta head to Nashville and hit John Fio on x with a DM. In Nashville, where luxury home prices have skyrocketed in recent years, a penthouse at the Four Seasons Hotel and private residences is aiming for a record $33,500,000 asking price. The condo unit is the city's most expensive home for sale. The penthouse is also available.
Speaker 1:You can rent it if you don't have $33,000,000 to spare. It's gonna cost you $200,000 a month, and you gotta commit to at least six months. But if you have 1.2 mil burning the hole in your pocket, you wanna hang out in Nashville with one of the greatest idea guys to ever do it, John Fiorentino, maybe maybe
Speaker 2:It's funny. I just realized that the guy selling this house is a buddy of mine.
Speaker 5:Oh, really?
Speaker 2:I actually bought my house through his
Speaker 1:office. Parsons?
Speaker 2:Or This is Cortazzo.
Speaker 1:Okay. Yeah. The newly completed Four Seasons in Downtown Nashville near the Ascend Amp Amphitheater. What? Ascend Amphitheater?
Speaker 1:They're ascending out Nashville?
Speaker 3:Woah. I I Is that
Speaker 2:where you spend spend winter break?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. The Ascend Amphitheater just looks maxing. John has been looking good recently. He must have been spending some time there.
Speaker 1:It's a few minutes away walk away from Broadway and thorough a thoroughfare famous for its bars and live country music, about two miles away from Taylor Swift's longtime home in the city. The penthouse spans roughly 5,000 square feet with three bedrooms and a balcony lined with floor to ceiling windows. The unit has expansive views of the city and Cumberland River. Chris Cortazzo, a Malibu, California real estate agent bought the penthouse for 12,000,000 in 2022 when it was just a shell. There were no walls, kitchen.
Speaker 1:He said there was nothing there. He spent two years building out the unit in an aesthetic he calls James Bond meets Lenny Kravitz, anchored by a circular floating fireplace. Wow. Floating fireplace. That's cool.
Speaker 1:The residence the residence has about a million dollars in smart home technology. He lived full time in Malibu, but began visiting Nashville around five years ago, Cortazzo did. He also owns a roughly 150 acre farm outside the city, he said, and has spent only a few weekends at the penthouse since completing it earlier this year. Cortazzo is also listing the Malibu home of the late actress Shannon Dougherty, a longtime friend of his. Oh, I heard about this news.
Speaker 1:That that property hit the market last year for 9,450,000.00 and has a listing price that has since been reduced to 8,750,000.00. Nashville's luxury real estate market has surged over the past six years according to Parsons. While only one home traded for over 10,000,000 in Nashville, Kruger said that she believes the figure almost hit 20 in 2025. If Cortazzo if Cortazzo's home sells at or near its record asking price, it will set a record for Nashville. The current record is held by a suburban home on 50 acres that sold for 32,000,000 in 2024.
Speaker 1:So if you're looking to head over to Nashville, pick up this penthouse. I I've never lived in a in a in a penthouse, a condo like this. I I would
Speaker 2:Then you've never lived.
Speaker 1:Personally, I've never lived. But personally, I would be going for the 50 acre suburban home. I I I too many dogs, too many animals around. I want Yeah. I want I want the steeds around.
Speaker 1:I wanna be able to ride the horses. But for the right person in the right time of their life, I'm sure this is a fantastic pick pick
Speaker 2:up. In other news.
Speaker 1:Phantom Cash. Fund your wallet without exchanges or middlemen, and spend with the Phantom Card.
Speaker 2:France will delay the g seven summit to avoid conflict with mixed martial arts.
Speaker 1:Really? On on Donald Trump's birthday?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So they're gonna delay group of seven summit to avoid a conflict with the mixed martial arts event planned at the White House on Donald Trump's birthday.
Speaker 1:Do you think they have a group chat for the g seven? And it was like, hey, can we get together? We gotta get together. We gotta do a summit. I g bet you seven leaders.
Speaker 1:Let let's do it. And and and Trump's in there and just be like, yeah, I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm watching UFC that night.
Speaker 2:It's happening in my house.
Speaker 1:It's happening in my house.
Speaker 2:It's gonna be really awkward if I'm not there.
Speaker 1:I gotta be there. Let's plan another another summit, another time. This is this is interesting. Usually, there's some big news that comes out of g seven summits. Usually, there's, you know, all the leaders get together.
Speaker 1:They're striking deals. They're talking to each other. There's something going
Speaker 2:on. Yeah. So definitely worth still doing worth delaying Yeah. But worth worth doing.
Speaker 1:Well, speaking of Trump, Lip Buutan is in his good graces. Donald Trump Post His new best friend. On Truth Social. He says, I just finished a great meeting with the very successful Intel CEO, Lip Buutan, LBT as he's called, for those who know. Intel just launched the first sub two nanometer CPU processor designed, built, and packaged right here in The US Of A.
Speaker 1:The United States government is proud to be a shareholder in Intel and has already made, through its USA ownership position, tens of billions of dollars for the American people in just four months. We made a great deal, and so did Intel. Our country
Speaker 2:is determined. You're kind of slipping into that. Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1:By the end of the year, I'm gonna have it down. Our country is determined to bring leading edge chip manufacturing back to America, and that is exactly what is happening. People are asking for particular financial advice, which we won't which we will not give. But Libertad also sat down with Howard Lutnick. Howard says just four months after The United States invested in Intel, that investment is already delivering tens of billions of value to The United States people.
Speaker 1:That momentum continues with Intel's new 1.8 nanometer processor and a major step towards bringing semiconductor manufacturing back home. Let's play this clip from Lip Bu Tan talking to Howard Lutnick.
Speaker 8:I have the pleasure today of welcoming Lip Bu, and he's come to the Department of Commerce to update us on how Intel has been doing since we made our historic investment in the company.
Speaker 1:Oh, thank you so much. I'm so delighted to come over here to see you. We doubled the market cap. It's over 200,000,000,000 200,000,000,000.
Speaker 4:That's And also very exciting.
Speaker 1:We announced our products first time on the 18 a production in the world. In that Series three processor with multiple of our customer in US globally, and using that is the most advanced post design, and also using our most advanced Using background.
Speaker 8:Right. So for The United States, we we love the fact that Intel is doing leading edge work in America.
Speaker 1:In America.
Speaker 8:Right? 18 a means 1.8 nanometer. 14 a is 1.4 nanometer. I mean, think of how sophisticated and tiny that is.
Speaker 1:And then
Speaker 8:And then packaging. Yes. You take this little little little little teeny thing and how you put layers and layers of sophisticated circuitry on top of it. And you do it with, know, just the most amazing doing that
Speaker 1:Seems like it.
Speaker 8:In America, leading in America by a US company.
Speaker 1:Get yourself an investor
Speaker 8:that talks
Speaker 1:about your We're company like
Speaker 8:of you. This is Okay. We're rooting for you, and we need you to be successful for a man.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much. This is the new startup launch video. You do a deal, you raise some money from a VC and you gotta put out a music a video like that. You guys sitting down on the couch next to each other with the succession music and they explain your business, shake your hand and
Speaker 2:There's so many new formats.
Speaker 1:Yeah. New format. Unexplored. Unexplored. Clone that one.
Speaker 1:Call call video production team. Get it done. In some other news, US oil executive is commenting on Venezuela. No one wants to go in there when a random effing tweet can change the entire foreign policy of the country. And deep dish enjoyers is l m a o.
Speaker 1:It is it is remarkable how online this this administration is. You saw during the during you know, people have been celebrating the death of X, and yet during the invasion on in one of the images of the of the war room, in the background on the TV was just x.com/search for venezuela. Let's see what people are saying. Remarkable times.
Speaker 2:Time, they'll probably have, Regis monitoring the situation They
Speaker 1:should done that. They should also be using Railway. Railway simplifies software development, web apps, servers, and databases run-in one place with scaling, monitoring, and security built in. So I posted a piece about the Apple Card and how it's changing from Goldman Sachs to Jamie Dimons, JPMorgan, of course. And a software architect for Goldman Sachs' consumer bank, Matt Lowe, chimed in and says, good article.
Speaker 1:I think the main reason it didn't work with Goldman Sachs is that it lost its high priority in a double whammy. CEO, David Solomon, used a lot of his power to evolve the partnership culture to an exec first modern corporation. That's interesting. Through that reorg, I speculate he had less political flexibility to defend Marcus from other partners who didn't want to wait for the consumer bank to scale up. Marcus even grew through leadership turnover during the pandemic and made a huge acquisition of GreenSky.
Speaker 1:It seemed to fizzle out and lost the continued executive it needed to keep going while reporting to an asset and wealth management division. Note in a couple in last in last in a in last couple weeks podcast with Sequoia Capital, Solomon said the main reason for the wind down was regulatory. Interesting. So just some extra context around the Apple Card. Well, let me tell you about Graphite, and then we'll bring in our first guest to the show.
Speaker 1:Code review for the age of AI. Graphite helps teams and GitHub chip higher quality software faster. And without any further delay. Let's bring in Jeremy from semi analysis. How are you doing?
Speaker 1:Good to you again. Second time on the show. So excited to have you here.
Speaker 6:Happy New Year. New Year.
Speaker 1:Happy New Year. How are you? Are you are you shocked to see that the the g seven that's supposed to happen in France? Aren't you in France right now?
Speaker 6:I'm in France right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Well, you're gonna have to wait for the summit because UFC takes priority in America, apparently. I don't know if you saw that. Anyway, congratulations on the new article. I would love for you to set the table for us and explain sort of what were the questions that you were trying to answer?
Speaker 1:What was the overall thesis that you came into this particular article, how AI labs are solving the power crisis? And then I have a whole bunch of questions that I wanna dig into.
Speaker 6:Yeah. Look. The question that we keep receiving every day, every hour, it seems, is how are we gonna power the AI race? Yeah. You know?
Speaker 6:Is the grid able to handle all of that? And look. Last time I came in, I think I said, hey. There's, like, over half a terawatt of data server requests in all of The US grid. Yeah.
Speaker 6:Same amount of requests. And we we talk about sort of prisoner's dilemma where because everyone is trying to find power, then it creates sort of a vicious cycle of everyone starts being more speculative and putting requests everywhere. And so, basically, the grid is overwhelmed. Yeah. People can't find energy.
Speaker 6:And so that's why you're seeing the rise of on-site gas, which is something that a lot of people have been talking about. Mhmm. But for more research, we just haven't found sort of any good any good way to understand what are people actually doing. What are the challenges? What are the systems that people are actually deploying?
Speaker 6:What's the benefits? What are the trade offs? And how to understand how to make sense of all of these new entrants. Yeah. Because one of the key highlights is, okay, everyone talks about GE Vernova.
Speaker 6:Everyone talks about Siemens Energy. Yeah. But we count actually 12 manufacturers that have secured orders of over 400 megawatts for US data sets on Saigas Power. Yeah. There's way more people in the pipeline.
Speaker 6:Yeah. But essentially, we wanted to we wanted to to show people how are the labs solving the power crisis. Talk about, to some extent, x AI was a bit of a pioneer because, obviously, it did that before everyone. Yeah. And how are the other players following suit and actually solving this issue?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Let's let's stay with that point about power requests from AI companies. That's expanded significantly. Correct? Isn't it it's over 10 terawatts now or something like that?
Speaker 1:Everyone's spamming with these requests, isn't it? It's an insane figure. Is that roughly correct? Or
Speaker 6:I don't know about 10 terawatts.
Speaker 1:About 10. It's it's over one, Over
Speaker 6:a ter roughly a terrawatts. Roughly a terrawatts. It's always complicated to know exactly. Yeah. But roughly a terrawatts.
Speaker 1:And what are the mechanics of a of a of a request for power? Is that going to to government run organizations? Is that a permitting process? Like, what is the anatomy of actually making a request for power if you're an AI company?
Speaker 6:Sure. So, typically, you send a request to a trans transmission provider. Okay. So say American Electric Power, the largest in The US. Mhmm.
Speaker 6:You send them a request, I want power in Ohio. Yeah. You have to fill whatever, some kind of form. You tell them what you want by when you want it. And then if sort of that first phase moves through, you have to go through a system level study.
Speaker 6:Yeah. Okay? And and the reason we have to do that and that process, the reason it takes time is because the way the grid works is demand and supply have to be always perfectly synchronized. And if they fall out of sync because there's too much supply or too much demand, then there's basically a blackout for everyone. That's the worst case scenario to be clear, but it's possible.
Speaker 6:It has happened. It happened in Spain about a year ago because of an issue on the supply side. And so the implication is that if you wanna interconnect a one gigawatt data center, you're gonna have plenty of system level studies that they are gonna slow down the process. Mhmm. And this is where you get into that sort of vicious cycle because everyone is sort of putting requests because they know it's gonna take a while.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Well, also also Isn't there isn't there some people putting in requests just at from a speculation standpoint? They're just like, hey, I know that if I get access to the power, can resell it to somebody else. And if I just kind of lock into, you know, you know, one of these Deals. Grids basically giving me a a contract, then I can go and flip it.
Speaker 2:Is that is that happening?
Speaker 6:Everyone wants megawatts these days or gigawatts. Yeah. So you're you try what you can to get some. And if you if you're for example, say you're based in Ohio, you typically operate in Columbus, Ohio, Then suddenly, you tell your utility, hey. I I want another 500 megawatts, and they respond.
Speaker 6:Actually, I've had, like, 10 other people ask me this, so you're gonna beat the queue. Mhmm. And there's 10 other requests they have to evaluate before I get to yours.
Speaker 1:Is there Yeah. This is something
Speaker 2:But that's but that this is why some of the Bitcoin miners have done actually very surprisingly well in just sort of, like, pivoting to AI because they had they had the the preexisting power deals in place. Right?
Speaker 6:Yeah. It's not in the queue. It already exists. Yeah. Because the queue is just an evaluation, but then once you have the once you have everything approved, you have to build a substation.
Speaker 6:You have to actually interconnect your data center to the grid. And the crypto the big the Bitcoin miners, they already have the substation. They already have the transformers on-site. They already have the energy flowing. The electrons are there.
Speaker 6:So for them, it's just about retrofitting and just leveraging the megawatts at
Speaker 1:the Is there is there anything that I mean, we were we were reviewing this this meta deal today, and and they have someone on staff who's the director of global energy. Is there anything that a team or one of these hyperscalers can do to move through the queue quicker? I I imagine they can't just overpay or bribe or it would otherwise just be an auction process. But is there is it sort of a battle of the four that actually happening? Is there is it just a battle of the forms?
Speaker 1:Is it the regulatory team that you have on-site? Is it different, like, scientists that are driving the work? Or is it just all the best legal team wins? Like, what is the anatomy of actually winning allocation in power?
Speaker 6:So the first thing we have to flag is there there are many different transmission providers Yeah. In The US, so many different parties that work differently.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 6:But there's a few ways you can do. So first of all, if you're a sophisticated end user, what you're gonna do is analyze the grid and try to understand where where does it make sense to have power from a, I guess, grid congestion perspective. Analyzing the network, you you realize, okay. This area probably should have free power, I'm gonna talk to my utility. And if you if you wanna if you wanna have a better chance of being ahead of others, then at least you have identified a specific spot that is likely to have available power.
Speaker 6:Mhmm. Now, typically, relationships obviously matter. If you've been in the business for ten years or whatever and you're good friends with, you know, c level executives, you can perhaps move up the grid just because just because of trust. It's it's it's not about necessarily bribing or something. It's more about Overguides.
Speaker 6:You have a whole lot of new entrants. You have a whole lot of new entrants Yeah. That don't don't have a lot of experience, and then you have this other guy that maybe has been doing it for ten years and has a lot of experience and success. So, obviously, for the utility, it's easier to trust the guy that has a track record and has the existing relationship. So that that's that's one angle.
Speaker 6:Sure. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I'm interested to know about your process to understand how much power each player is actually accumulating. I've seen the semi analysis watermark screenshots of data centers. Is satellite imagery actually that useful for understanding, like, the map of total data center capacity? Are you looking at regulatory filings? Are you looking at statements from the companies themselves?
Speaker 1:Like, it feels like you're at least one or two clicks ahead of what the executives of these companies are publicly saying, and your act the purpose of semiannual analysis is to provide analysis and data ahead of what's publicly available. But what is the process for actually understanding Azure's compute capacity this year before anyone else does?
Speaker 6:Yeah. Sure thing. So there's there's different, to some extent, lead times. Mhmm. For us, the the the the the way we do the the, call it, the short term forecast Yeah.
Speaker 6:Short term being roughly the next six quarters. Sure. Extensive satellite imagery. We we love satellites. We've been we pay a lot of money for satellites.
Speaker 6:No way. Every single block these days, you you see satellite pictures. Yeah. And it's pretty simple. Right?
Speaker 6:One thing is using historical imagery, figuring out when did construction of specific building stop. Mhmm. Two is what's a typical time to build for an operator. So you have to you have to get a sense of, like, you know, having reviewed many of their buildings, how much how long they typically take or sort of understanding the design patterns, how maybe they can accelerate the build out to what extent. Yeah.
Speaker 6:Right? And then if if you know how how long it takes and once started, you can know when it's gonna be operational. Then it's about the size. It's also about if it's large project, how fast can you get up to speed? Because one thing is to build the shell, and the other one is to build all the electrical, the mechanical, and obviously deliver sequentially data hole by data hole typically.
Speaker 6:So there's a bunch of things you can review. We use all of it. Satellites, we're big fans, of course. And, like, some of to us, it's interesting because we've been able to be very successful at predicting trends with through also hyperscalers by analyzing data sets. Because you have to think of it.
Speaker 6:I'm I'm saying you can't just use satellite imagery, but you have to do it for hundreds of data sets.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 6:Who has the time to do that? Wait. We do. We're crazy.
Speaker 1:That's awesome.
Speaker 4:That's a good idea.
Speaker 6:Out. Because if you think about it, Amazon, they accelerated growth, right, from 70% to 20% last quarter, and a lot of people were surprised because people were saying, no. They're losing AI. Azure has accelerated, Google has accelerated, and Amazon hasn't. But actually, if you analyze data center construction, they've been accelerating like crazy on the construction side in the fourth quarter twenty twenty four.
Speaker 6:In the fourth quarter twenty twenty four, it takes a year for them to build. Obviously, you see the acceleration float mechanically q three twenty five, q four twenty four 25.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 6:That's one aspect. The other one, which is a bit more complicated, is tracking the the leases. Mhmm. And so sort of understanding what are the different hyperscalers leasing capacity from third party operators. The big guys are QTS, digital realty, Equinix, and there's all the crypto miners that are basically doing the same thing.
Speaker 6:And that's also something we track very closely, and it's complicated because some of that information isn't public. But by triangulating many data points, you can actually get to the answer using only public data, which is what we do extensively.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 6:And using permittance, digging into filings, and all of that is a huge part of the process as well to get to the answer.
Speaker 1:Yeah. As I understand How
Speaker 2:much is the are you guys benefiting from, like, actual AI tooling on the research side? Like, are you guys running, like, you know, 20 agents in parallel that are, know, like, looking
Speaker 1:at a lot of PDFs, spreadsheet, spreadsheet,
Speaker 2:etcetera? Are you feeling an unlock?
Speaker 6:Yeah. Yeah. So we're using AI quite a bit. I think we can do more. I wish we could do more.
Speaker 6:To some extent, obviously, bound by computer use.
Speaker 7:Mhmm.
Speaker 6:There are some complications. There are some portals for for permit purposes, permit tracking purposes that we can automate. But the problem is that if you think about there are so many states, so many counties Yeah. So many different things, and some of them are fairly easy to use, and so today's agents can actually automate the process. Other ones are maybe more complicated, more archaic.
Speaker 6:Right? Some of them you have a clean PDF, other ones it's like, you know, a scanner and it's written by hand. Yeah. There's a lot of different stuff. When you
Speaker 1:go into the the the
Speaker 6:weeds of the permitting process in The US, so we do automate quite a bit. What what we're starting to do with this pretty interesting project that we have on the data center side is a vision model Yeah. Where you can actually, based on satellite imagery, detect real time sort of what's the status of construction and understand sort of the inflections that you see as well Yeah. On the in the on that.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Zooming out, it feels like I think you quoted it something like half a gigawatt of new data center capacity was being added for a period of year sort of linear growth. And now we're seeing a break in the graph, and we're seeing exponential growth. And I'm wondering how you're thinking about there's always this question of like, when will AI show up in the GDP statistics? It's obviously a big business, and there's a lot of revenue.
Speaker 1:But we're not seeing the 10% GDP growth just yet. Maybe that's coming. When
Speaker 2:are Productivity we seeing growth.
Speaker 1:I mean Productivity growth?
Speaker 2:CNBC yesterday Yeah. Was trying to figure out why US economic productivity surged almost 5% Okay. Highest in six years. Maybe. So
Speaker 1:But, I mean, my question with regard to, like, overall US power generation, are you expecting to see a meaningful acceleration, a break in the graph there this year, next year? Or is the data center overall energy picture still a small enough slice of the pie in terms of overall American energy production and consumption that we won't see it move the overall needle just yet.
Speaker 6:Oh, it's already moving the needle. It's just going to accelerate. There's just one direction, at least for the next, call it, two years. If you one thing you can do is a lot of the utilities are publicly traded, so you can go one by one. Yeah.
Speaker 6:Every single one of them, the only thing they're talking about these days is is data service. Yeah. It's how much load growth I I have and how oh, and then it's about capacity cost. Can I deliver on that on that demand? But all of them are seeing tremendous load growth.
Speaker 6:And if you think about the leading indicators on the data center side, for us, we use two things on this if you think about self build, so the data centers that are built and approved by hyperscalers
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 6:Construction starts are exploding. So they're all massively accelerating. They've have accelerated tremendously versus 2022, '23. So '24 is a big year, '25 insane. So this is a leading indicator with regards to what's gonna happen in '26 for CapEx, for revenue, and obviously for load growth because these days, it's all correlated.
Speaker 6:Yeah. And on the on the leasing side, same thing. If you think about how much data center commitments are the hyperscurs doing these days, it's also just up into the right. 2025 has been an insane year for the leasing market. And so everything points to '26, '27 just accelerating.
Speaker 6:Yeah. And then if if you think about GDP growth, because I think it's an interesting topic, there's two two two things we can talk about. One is on the infrastructure side, and the other one is on the productivity side. Mhmm. On on the infrastructure side, we we you're already seeing it.
Speaker 6:But I think it's pretty easy to look at statistics. You can look at data center contribution to GDP. There's a bunch of stuff from some of the agencies. You can look at computer investments. There's a specific GDP that tells you.
Speaker 6:All of that is is exploding. Roughly speaking, a guesstimate is over 50 of GDP growth today's AI infrastructure Yeah. Which is kind of the same Yeah. If you think about it. Yeah.
Speaker 6:Alright. And and you can do some monkey math as well. You you see NVIDIA's revenue. Yeah. What what is it these days?
Speaker 6:Like, 250,000,000,000 annualized or or more. If you do the math, right, a lot of that is going to The US. Now there's obviously, it's complicated because there's imports and things like that you have to deduce, but, you know, US GDP is over 40,000,000,000,000. Right? 1% is 300,000,000,000.
Speaker 6:Yeah. Easily year over year additions, AI for investments over 300,000,000,000. Sure. Sure. All plans, data centers, chips, and all of that.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And then that should drive significant GDP growth.
Speaker 6:That's And then the second phase of this is on the productivity side, obviously, you have to see to some extent, you you you would expect to see the people that are providing that productivity to to be beneficiaries. Mhmm. And so this is why it's important to track what are the AI labs doing, what are the startups doing Mhmm. Which is something we've been trying pretty closely recently to be analysis. Yeah.
Speaker 6:And so if you look at the AI labs, yes, they're all accelerating pretty pretty pretty fast as well on the revenue side. Yeah. Like, you see used OpenAI tripling revenue, Anthropic 10 x, and so on and so forth.
Speaker 1:Can you take me through the latest bottleneck in gas turbines? We had Blake Scholl from Boom on the show, and it feels like he's expanding his business to build turbines. And I'm interested in that specifically because we hear about nuclear power plants coming online. That's obviously a very heavy regulatory burden. Also, supersonic flight feels like incredible regulatory burden.
Speaker 1:But how difficult is it to just manufacture a new turbine or more of the same design, bring them online, actually ramp up capacity of natural gas turbines?
Speaker 6:So so typically, develop a new turbine, you're talking about seven to ten years r and d process.
Speaker 4:Wow.
Speaker 6:So it's pretty fascinating because you have a few a few new entrants that are hitting the market today. Yeah. A big one is Doosan. Doosan is providing roughly two gigawatts of turbines to XAI. Mhmm.
Speaker 6:Doosan, Korean giants on the nuclear side, they've been developing their turbine for over ten years. Mhmm. And it's like, you know, perfect timing. Yeah. They have a direct sale.
Speaker 6:Yeah.
Speaker 1:What what amazing timing. That's great. Yeah.
Speaker 6:It's pretty lucky. ProEnergy is another interesting example. Also, seven year r and d r and d program in late twenty three. Finally, they got all the approvals. It's just very very complex technology, a lot of very high precision materials.
Speaker 6:So ramping up the manufacturing side is complicated. Another thing to to think about and that's the difference we have with folks like Bloom is what is the like, how long can you make your investment when you build a new factory for gas turbines or some of these systems? And is this an interesting thing to analyze because some for some folks, it's actually easier to build new capacity because their payback period is much higher and because their revenue per megawatt is higher and because the the their cost is also higher.
Speaker 1:Just because the prices are going up because AI labs are willing to pay more for the turbines?
Speaker 6:So so yes. But I'm more thinking about comparing different technologies. Like, if you think about Bloom Energy, the the cost to buy fuel cells is is very high. Sure. It is much higher than buying a turbine.
Speaker 6:But the flip side of this is that the payback period, because the revenue is so high per megawatt, the payback period of building a factory is actually much shorter. So for Blum from Blum's perspective, they take less financial risk if they expand capacity and they manufacture more. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty good position.
Speaker 1:It makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 2:How did you react to the meta Oclo news from the this morning?
Speaker 6:Well, I I mean, it's I think all of the all of the all of these folks are are looking for energy that is, you know, cheap, stable, looking for ways to ensure their the continuity of their supply. Mhmm. And it just makes sense for all of the hyperscalers to to to work with the nuclear nuclear companies. It's not a surprise because everyone has done it already. Right?
Speaker 6:You saw Google as well with Kairos. You saw a bunch of these deals already switched with Oclo as well a few about a year ago. Yeah. So not too surprised about this one.
Speaker 1:Yeah. How much does the nuclear fission or even the fusion stuff got Google's partner with Commonwealth Fusion Systems on a few things? How much does that play into the analysis that you do when you're looking out six quarters? Because when we saw the date 2029, 2032, 2035, our eyes kinda roll back in the in the bottom in the back of our head and say, well, that feels post singularity. So what's the point?
Speaker 1:Probably important at some point, but certainly less of a less of a critical decision in the horse race of, you know, which lab will get power next month to train the next model that we're all gonna be focused on.
Speaker 6:Yeah. Exactly. That's why if you read the report that we we wrote, it's all about gas because if you think about the next few quarters, then it's gas. There's just no other solution. Yeah.
Speaker 6:Nuclear is gonna take a few years. Solar and batteries are ready yet. All of these other alternatives, I think they all have good potential, and I'm I'm sure we're gonna see a lot of different solutions in five, ten years, but today, it's just gas. So
Speaker 1:so you're modeling energy. It's mostly gas. Any plans to monitor to to model or or analyze or model water? Is that important at all?
Speaker 6:Oh, interesting. Yeah. Big topic these days. Right? Yeah.
Speaker 6:All of you, generally speaking, is that water is not that big of a problem Yeah. Because in the data center space, you have this trade off between energy and water.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 6:And so you can actually use enclosed loop systems that consume pretty much no water. Yeah. In some cases, zero water. There is some water required just to to to build the the initial tank and the initial loop. Yeah.
Speaker 6:But it's closed loop, so don't need water. So what's the issue? Right?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. It is it is a funny retort to anyone who's worried about the water, the the AI water usage. Just if it's important, why doesn't somebody else just talk about it ever?
Speaker 1:Why are people not trading the water stocks if it's if it's important? I am interested in
Speaker 6:We the might talk about it soon.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean, I'm sure there's some sort of angle. But on on the on the question of water usage, it does seem like Meta is moving from an air cooled system to a water cooled system. I think I have that right. They moved away from H design of their data center.
Speaker 1:Can you tell me more about why the H shaped data center was not suitable for water cooling? It felt like a very modern building. Why was it impossible to retrofit that? Why do they have to go with an entirely new design?
Speaker 6:Yeah. So the the the thing about the edge design, about everything, it it was really designed by Meta for leading cost efficiency.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 6:And so typically, the the ratio people use is the PUE, which tells you what's the energy efficiency of a given facility.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 6:Meta had the world's best the world's most efficient facilities. That's great. The the energy required to cool the data center was extremely low. Yeah. And that's because it had a fairly complex structure, free stories.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 6:The drawback of that is is that the time to build a facility was about two years. So that doesn't work in the AI era. We're talking about a month. Right? It's hundred and twenty two days for XAI.
Speaker 6:So you need to go faster. So that's one of the main issues. Now the other one is regards to cooling. The the way that we're cooling this specific data server is, like, it's I call it an air to air system. You you could you could simplify and say, they open the window.
Speaker 6:That's that's basically how they call data center. They open the window. Obviously, have a bunch
Speaker 2:of stuff. The window.
Speaker 1:You know, I I actually I actually toured George Hodges' he has a a miniature data center, just a couple racks of GPUs that he trains for autonomous driving for self driving cars that he builds. And and his cooling, it really is just like a window unit that just flows air through the this particular room in his office. And and he's using air
Speaker 2:I had car with no AC once. Open the windows. Just open the window.
Speaker 1:It's a time honored tradition. I'm sorry. I cut you off.
Speaker 6:Works. It works. It doesn't work that well if your your hardware is liquid cooled. Yeah. Obviously, if you have a cold plate that goes through the chip, then the question is how do you cool the the fluid that you put into the cold plate to remove the heat from the chip.
Speaker 6:Yeah. Opening the window doesn't work doesn't work that well. You can do some kind of retrofit with liquid to our CDUs. It's expensive. It's not very efficient.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 6:So the best way to do is to have a dedicated fluid cooling system, which involves building a whole dedicated piping infrastructure and all of that, which is what Meta did. Their new data center can handle seamlessly liquid cool chips, whereas the old one was much more complicated.
Speaker 1:Do you have a view on you said Meta's Meta's previous data center, I think it was a 150 megawatts. Two years to build it. How fast are they now? Are they at six months, a year? Do you have any idea of where they will be on this on the speed frontier since that seems so critical?
Speaker 6:Yeah. So it's two two two and a half years, roughly speaking. Then they build some sort of rectangular design, which is twelve to fifteen months.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 6:And then they realized, actually, we need to go faster, that's when you started seeing the tents. That's right. And these tents yeah. The goal is to be be able to put out a GPU cluster in six months. Six months.
Speaker 6:Wow. Wow. It's nice. And it's interesting because they go back to an air to air cooling system. So what I told you earlier actually is wrong because despite hardware being increasingly liquid cooled, now they're doing air to air, again, opening the window.
Speaker 6:Sure. But they have those sidecars which are liquid to air, which are expensive again. Oh, okay. Yeah. It's one way to go faster.
Speaker 6:That way, you don't have to be able to haul, like, by paying in front of that.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. What about how the other hyperscalers are matching up in speed? Terms But also, lot of the other hyperscalers, a lot of the big tech companies, have made commitments to maybe move away from natural gas, to maybe go more net zero, more energy efficient, more carbon neutral.
Speaker 1:That feels like the water debate is maybe a moot point, but there will be some sort of climate discussion in the future as more and more natural gas gets brought online. It is a fossil fuel after all, or it is not a renewable energy source. So how how are are there any big tech companies that are grappling with that or struggling to get through previous commitments that they made to be more environmental or more net zero and now they sort of have to retool their business and messaging?
Speaker 6:Yeah. You've already starting seeing this in 2025, early twenty twenty four where they all they all said, for the time being, we keep our commitment for whatever, 2030 or something Yeah. Net zero. But short term
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 6:We're gonna have we're not gonna be able to meet our goals and to, I guess, you know, clean our fleets as as as fast as we expected. Yeah. But, yeah, there there there's just no way. So even there there are a few interesting things. So the the first thing I would say is you're seeing some projects that are natural gas based, but they have they have ways to become more sustainable.
Speaker 6:Mhmm. For example, there's a it it could be a site where you have great geology to do carbon capture. Oh. So for the Crusoe has a a one like that in in in Wyoming. So the that's those types of projects obviously have a long term potential as well because then you can meet your commitment if you're still committed to that.
Speaker 6:Mhmm. It's a clear they're already committed, but other topic. The the other thing is so Google generally, from our analysis, Google seems to be still the most committed hyperscaler. Yeah. And they're doing some pretty interesting stuff in in Texas.
Speaker 6:Right? You saw the acquisition of Intersect Power. Yeah. They're building some of these in some massive campuses in Texas where they actually have on-site solar energy and battery. But to be clear, it's not behind the meter.
Speaker 6:The reason we talk don't talk about it in the in the article is because it's not fully off grid. There's still a good connection.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 6:So it's not really comparable to the off grid deployments of folks with turbines and
Speaker 1:Interesting. Yeah. On on the Google topic, is there any sort of durable advantage in multi data center training that you're seeing from Google? Are are are you seeing evidence that they're leaning into that more? Are they building more smaller data centers, or are they also I I don't know off the top of my head.
Speaker 1:Are they competing with, like, the Colossus two, these Mark Zuckerberg comes out with the picture of the cube in Manhattan, and it's very clear that Meta is in the one big massive data center race. At least they're trying to visualize it that way. I haven't seen that from Google. Is that intentional? Is there anything we can read into that about their actual training and deployment strategy?
Speaker 6:No. No. You're right. That's a good point. It's it is it is interesting to to analyze the different, I guess, frontier AI training architectures from different players.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 6:If you if you look at the what Meta is trying to build in in Louisiana Mhmm. It's a two two point one gigawatt campus for the first phase, and they have individual buildings that are 400 megawatts each Okay. Per bill. It's pretty insane. Microsoft, broadband AI
Speaker 1:But it's still split up. It's still split up. But then putting it all on the same campus, there's some sort of economy of scale around power generation, or is it just or is the latency with the fiber connections actually relevant, and you wouldn't wanna have it across town so you put it on the same campus? Like, when would when would a big tech player choose to split across state lines, across the country, across the world versus centralize everything in one campus?
Speaker 6:So I would say for now, Google is really the only one that has been that's had us up to this strategy and Yeah. Is very unique. But to some extent, you could argue it's because of first of all, they're the most sophisticated on the networking side. Yeah. For for a while, like, that's one of the advantages with Google is for the last fifteen years or whatever, they've been the best at infrastructure Yeah.
Speaker 6:On every single part of infrastructure. And so networking, they've been building their own fiber fiber networks for a while. And so they have much higher bandwidth beyond inside a metro and between metros and other other hyperscalers because they've been doing that longer. They've been planning ahead for for all of that. Yeah.
Speaker 6:So Google is sort of ahead of the others. And on the tech side, they've they've figured out multi data center training from a from a model perspective, way ahead of everyone else. Yeah. They've been very open about this. For you, a podcast from Jeff Dean, for example, a few months ago where he said, openly, yes, we're doing a multi data center.
Speaker 6:It works pretty well. Yeah. No one else has really done it at that scale for now. We have a bunch of startups, but they're not doing it at scale.
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 6:So, yeah, just Google is better at doing it. And what it enables them to do is and it's it's it enables them to, to some extent, have more options with regards to site selection. Yeah. You they're not really limited to finding the one to be the one site or the one, you know, 1.5 gig sites. They can just go on a metro, maybe a 50 mile or even a 100 mile area and find a bunch of sites that are each 200, 300, 400, 500, connect them, and bam, they have a, you know, two gigawatt campus.
Speaker 6:Yeah. Yeah. So that's the strategy they're pursuing.
Speaker 1:That makes sense. Last question for me, and we'll let you get back to your day. I know it's late there. Have AI workloads has this shift in AI workloads had any effect on power decision making? It feels like you go back a couple of years ago, and the vast majority of power that was being used by AI was for training.
Speaker 1:Now we're moving more towards inference. Does that change the landscape of power acquisition for AI companies broadly, or is it sort of an irrelevant point?
Speaker 6:So first of all, I was actually disagreeing with the premise. Okay. Based on our analysis, training is still the majority, and it's growing equally as fast as inference. Inference is surging, and training is surging as well. And just normal because you have an incentive to do Yeah.
Speaker 6:Everyone wants to, you know, invest in their own model that's gonna unlock revenue growth next year.
Speaker 4:Sure.
Speaker 6:Sure. You we haven't seen the limit. So there's the incentives are aligned to invest today, and that's what everyone is doing. Interesting. Anyways, to to answer your question, yes, inference does have different requirements.
Speaker 6:There is different types of inference as well. If you think about OpenAI, for example, they have two main businesses. Charge GPT is a vertical application. It's fully controlled by themselves. So for them, it's it can plan larger campuses.
Speaker 6:It can be gigawatt scale. Can be a few 100 megawatts. It's gonna be big campus anyways. They can make use of smaller ones, but if if you think about it from an infrastructure perspective, what is their biggest pain point as a company is they wanna maximize GPU utilization rates. Mhmm.
Speaker 6:But it's the single largest expense by far is GPU. Mhmm. So they need to maximize it, and that's easier to do when you have large campuses. So that's why you still see campuses are fairly large, even for inference. They also, in terms of latency, that's a common sort of topic a of discussion.
Speaker 6:Do you need to be very close to the end users? Well, you know, if you think about it, what what is actually consuming power for OpenAI? It's, you know, deep research. It's a GPT 5.2 pro. It's just thinking models, and they they take minutes to answer.
Speaker 6:And so you don't really need to be near a metro. You can just be sort of far away until find large pockets of power.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Makes sense. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. Congratulations on the progress.
Speaker 2:Really appreciate the update.
Speaker 1:Semi analysis is hiring. Correct? Can you take us on a brief summary of of roles or how to apply?
Speaker 6:Oh, yeah. We're hiring a lot of people. So we have a a careers section in our website, so you can all check out. We're looking for folks in the AI space. Mhmm.
Speaker 6:So if you're if you're interested in digging into what we call tokenomics, which is analyzing the economics of AI, analyzing the latest trends in terms of LLMs, different types of model architectures, reach out. If you're an engineer, you have experience with GPU clusters, reach out as well. We're hiring to to increase the support our technical team. InferenceMax, really cool project as well where we benchmark all of the different models. If you wanna work on InferenceMax and work on CPUs and training and GPUs and AMD and NVIDIA and all of that, reach out as well.
Speaker 6:We have a lot of pretty cool offers, so you should all check out the website. And, yeah, that's a good good adventure.
Speaker 1:Amazing. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to come over
Speaker 4:to the
Speaker 1:office for us. Great to see you. And happy New Year. We'll talk to soon. Cheers.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Goodbye. Turbo Puffer, serverless vector and full text search built from first principles on object storage, fast, 10 x cheaper, and extremely scalable.
Speaker 2:Love, guys.
Speaker 1:Next, we are entering our Lambda Lightning round with Andreessen Horowitz celebrating their $15,000,000,000 fundraise. We have Jen Ka in the Restream waiting room. Let's bring her in Here she for the TVP at Ultradome. How are you doing, Jen? Good to see you.
Speaker 2:Jen, what's happening?
Speaker 7:Hey. Hey. What's happening, brothers?
Speaker 1:Not too much. You're off to a banger start of the year. Congratulations. Break it down for us. What happened
Speaker 2:today? We need a bigger gong for you guys in particular this year and probably about
Speaker 1:the gong hits across the four Andreessen Horowitz partners that we're talking with. We'll see.
Speaker 7:You know what I have to say? There
Speaker 2:we go. You go. Wait. What does it say? What does it say on it?
Speaker 7:It says it's time to build, baby.
Speaker 1:I love it. That's fantastic.
Speaker 2:There we go. You've That's great. Probably been hitting that a lot. Do you Yeah. Do you do you just do like one hit every time you get off an LP?
Speaker 2:You got a new commit just a a light tap. You probably had to do a few of them to Yeah. Get up to 15.
Speaker 7:Exactly. It's not quite your 80 inch one, but, you know, next time I'll get a horse, and then we'll call it even.
Speaker 1:There we go. How was how was how was how are the LP pitches going into this fundraise different than in previous years? The market's evolved. Technology has evolved. Andreessen Horowitz has evolved.
Speaker 1:What were you saying that you felt like it was the first time you were saying to LPs this time around?
Speaker 7:Yeah. So so let me first break down. So $15,000,000,000, huge headline. Yeah. The number is huge, but, you know, I I first, I should foremost say, I normally don't respond to online rumors, but I feel the need to do so at this moment.
Speaker 7:The $15,000,000,000 is not for the Nepal or Himalayan or Greenland. Right? Let's just spell that right now.
Speaker 1:You you you know, people tease things all the time. Little little little breadcrumbs in the releases. I'd like to see an American Everest. I feel like I've heard a pick for Greenland. The moon The moon might be American at some point.
Speaker 1:It already is in many ways, maybe Everest. But, you know, you're putting it in startups. You're putting in technology.
Speaker 7:Exactly. So so so hope spring's eternal. So so the prelim number you guys covered this yesterday, but the prelim numbers for for NVCA came out to, you know, 66,000,000,000. So that actually ended up being what would have been equivalent to 22% of of what was raised in in 2025 with the $15,000,000,000. So Great.
Speaker 2:So so does the 15,000,000,000 get included? Do they are they gonna update the 2025 numbers, or do they count it towards 2026 because it's actually being announced now?
Speaker 7:Yeah. It's gonna it's gonna get counted for 2026. So that that is that is forward so we're closing our fund today. Okay. So that'll be 2026 numbers.
Speaker 7:Yep. Cool. And so Huge. Calling now VC winter, maybe, you know, potentially over for some folks. But
Speaker 1:Fantastic.
Speaker 7:But the the sentiment to answer your question. So the sentiment from LPs is different insofar as that we are now this is the next the second set of funds that we've raised in this AI super cycle.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 7:And so we were oversubscribed in three months. You know? It was, I think, very clear for most people that AI is obviously taking over the world. Yep. And particularly when LPs have conviction and also the right information, they will close quickly.
Speaker 7:So most funds you know, the average VC fund takes probably close to over a year
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 7:To fundraise. And the reality is it's it's a tale of two cities. If you have great companies, great performance, great DPI
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 7:It's very, very easy to raise capital. Yeah. We are luckily in that camp. If you don't, it's just a lot tougher. And and by the way, let let me tell you also a story because it's related to
Speaker 2:Please.
Speaker 7:On this liquidity topic that you guys oftentimes talk about and hear about from LPs. So, you know, there's a lot of bellyaching from LPs about liquidity, but the reality is it's in select companies. So we actually went through this whole exercise last year. So this was in the middle of liquidity concerns, and this is early days of of, you know, the the administration stance on on endowment tax cuts. And, you know, we internally had this conversation.
Speaker 7:So, gosh, you know, should we offer some liquidity particularly for some of our older funds to our LPs? So we so we went around. We called all of our our LPs in those older vintages. And, specifically, we had a strike position, seed position in fund one, and then we had Databricks at the series a in fund three. And we said, hey.
Speaker 7:You know, we know you're in a liquidity crisis. Would you be interested if we got you some liquidity in those names?
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 7:And I'll tell you, 30 out of 30 of those early LPs said absolutely not.
Speaker 2:Yeah. They said no. Thanks.
Speaker 5:Like, we want
Speaker 1:liquidity. You're telling me would I like to not ride my winners?
Speaker 2:Interesting. Exactly.
Speaker 7:I Exactly. So there's like subtlety in that conversation, which is like, you know, they want liquidity, but they want liquidity not out of those names.
Speaker 2:They wanna ride those Right? They wanna let the unfortunate. You want liquidity the most from the from the from the assets or the companies that you're least
Speaker 1:Yeah. Excited about, which is this paradox. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:That that makes sense. Talk about the split of strategies going on at Andrews and Horowitz today. I think a lot of people were
Speaker 2:curious about DOE. You guys have the
Speaker 1:in this suite of funds? Is that just a different cycle? Is that a mechanics thing? What what's going on there? Or is it truly, like, a completely separate thing, we'll be hearing about that later?
Speaker 7:Yeah. So the so the latter. So the funds that we raised and and announced today, it's five out of seven of our funds. So crypto is off cycle, and then so is our games fund. Okay.
Speaker 7:So so more to come from that.
Speaker 1:Got it. Okay. That makes sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah. How how are are LPs up to speed on this kind of, like, structure now? You obviously don't have to go into a conversation, explain Yeah. Andreessen Horowitz, but most funds are not at the scale where there's, like, you know, this multi multi front fund approach. Is that like, how how much of the conversation is about, like, okay, like, giving you capital, where is it gonna be actually allocated, and how is it gonna be split across the funds?
Speaker 2:Is it just straight pro rata across the different strategies and funds, or how does that work? Yeah.
Speaker 7:Yeah. So it's a that's a great question. And in fact, I think we're one of maybe the first to actually split our funds. Most most firms just have a generalist fund. They everything's out of one vehicle.
Speaker 7:Yeah. And we very early on presently realized we needed to decentralize as a firm and then also our funds as well to match that to the teams. And so if you look at any of the individual teams, the deal teams are no bigger than, you know, four to six people.
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 7:And so we're kind of similar to smaller funds and smaller firms, but with the breadth, of course, of of, you know, the injuries and horrors umbrella. And so for for LPs, when they think about allocating to us, most of them just say, hey. I wanna follow you into all the different funds. And they allocate pro rata. And in fact, we actually set up a vehicle to to allow them to do that.
Speaker 7:Some folks pick and choose, and our view is, hey. Every single fund needs to stand on its own, it needs to earn its own keep from its LPs. And sometimes those LPs might be different. Right? Some some LPs, for example, internationally can invest into certain strategies like crypto, for example, maybe American dynamism.
Speaker 7:So Oh, okay. There's some there's some nuance there of which we we do, account for.
Speaker 1:Interesting. Yeah. How much, how many questions are you getting from LPs about, trying to predict the next next Andreessen strategy that might take place in this fund. Like, Andreessen started as I mean, you look back at the early, like, the fund one, and it's basically a seed fund by today's standards. Growth was obviously added on, then bio, then crypto, and then liquids, tokens.
Speaker 1:Like, there's so many different strategies that if you went back to the dawn of Andreessen, you would say, well, that doesn't fit in this fund mandate. And and we've seen firms buy hospital networks and do more private equity style deals, more do more secondary deals. Are LPs looking for you to lock a strategy, or are they leaving you with a lot of flexibility? Are they looking for guidance on what might happen in the next ten years in terms of creative financial plays that you might be able to make?
Speaker 7:Yeah. So it's funny. Our first fund is funny, you should say. It's the size of a seed fund. The first deal we actually did was the buyout of Skype, which is
Speaker 2:is no. Yeah.
Speaker 7:There's a there's a good story, around that we made, you know, forex our return in eighteen months, and the rest is history. But but, you know, that that first
Speaker 1:Yeah. I always remember seeing that on Andreessen's website, and it was like, it wasn't a seed bet. It was this weird deal, and but it still panned out really well. And it was like a great logo to have on the on the portfolio page, but for peculiar reasons.
Speaker 7:Yeah. And there and there was a bunch of risk in it because everyone was like, oh, you won't get the IP because of of eBay and blah blah blah. And then, you know, Microsoft ended up buying it. Yeah. But, you know, the the and then there's a whole story there because a lot of our LPs, suffice to say, after raising a a venture fund, were like, what are you doing?
Speaker 7:Yep. Totally. It ended up working out. Nonetheless, you know, we we always talk about internally how, you know, the way the individual funds are set up now is almost in the incarnation of the original Andreessen Horowitz from the size of the team Mhmm. From the capabilities and resources on the operating front.
Speaker 7:And so you've got these, you know, kind of seven different funds and teams that are effectively the incarnation of that first Andreessen Horowitz now replicated. Mhmm. And that's actually how you scale. We have 600 plus people at the firm now. That's the only way you could actually nimbly move without getting mired in the morass of of bureaucracy and and oftentimes what big organizations end up being.
Speaker 7:And so in some respects, we don't necessarily we're not motivated by innovating into you know, there's a lot of VC firms out trying their hand at private equity, as you said, buying hospitals
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 7:Raising private credit strategies. Sure. Like, that's not really of interest to us. I think you you mentioned at one point, like, going public. Like, as long as Ben is CEO, we are not a public gonna be a public company.
Speaker 7:Yeah. So we don't try to innovate on fund structure. Right? We like boring vanilla VC.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 6:Kind of
Speaker 7:returns, and you give us money and we'll send you back and and where we'll take risk and and innovation is on the companies we invest into.
Speaker 2:How much do you involve individual GPs in the fundraising process? Sounds like, I mean, a three month process, really not that long. Are you are you tapping them in at at key moments because certain LPs wanna understand, like, really get to know the individual investors? Or are you, like, aggressively trying to protect their time because their time is really best spent with, you know, founders and actually evaluating and doing deals. Mhmm.
Speaker 7:Yeah. And the so, yes, we try to protect their time, but also at the same time, like, this is just like a company. Like, a fundraise is a very important exercise. And in fact, you know, a few years ago, when people were asking whether we we would go away from the traditional fund structure, You know, Mark and Ben kinda like the concept of pressure testing our thesis every couple years. Right?
Speaker 7:You gotta go out to your LPs. You gotta prove to them that your thesis, you know, is worthy of their capital. And then it pressures you also. Sorry for for my voice. It's a little hoarse because I've been shouting, getting to watch VPN too often.
Speaker 1:Like, why are the why are deadlines now?
Speaker 7:Exactly. Exactly. The the but that that kind of sentiment of pressure testing your thinking is incredible. And it you guys know from fundraising Yeah. You know, with companies, like, you learn a lot through the course of that process as well.
Speaker 7:So so all of our GPs get involved. All of them are in the meetings. You know, they're all talking to the LPs. They're shaking hands, kissing the babies. They are front and center of it.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:How do you how do you realign the LPs from just endless AI questions and actually keep them interested in bio, health care, American dynamism? Do you do you try and, like, have the AI narrative cut across everything, or is it drowning out the rest of the stories that you're trying to tell?
Speaker 7:I think AI is similar to any platform shift where it's just gonna infiltrate everything. And it's, like, obviously in the zeitgeist, but eventually, it's just gonna go in the background just like cloud
Speaker 2:or mobile. There's that quote from Mark in in the launch video that was like, someday in ten years, we won't talk about the Internet because it'll just be everywhere. And it feels like we're already
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I I like when companies I think this is the year where companies, like, maybe stop pitching AI as aggressively in taglines because you should just assume that the company is leveraging it to the fullest extent.
Speaker 7:Yeah. 100%. Yeah. Well, yeah. What else are you doing?
Speaker 7:Like, I forget what's with that. 100%. But I I do think, you know, it's it's great too because I also think, you know, with this platform shift, LPs can actually have a feel for how transformative this is themselves. So our entire, for example, fundraise process, we tried to take an AI native first approach. So we had an AI chatbot that was replicated.
Speaker 1:I was about to ask.
Speaker 7:In my in in our data room, there was an AI gen in there. Interesting.
Speaker 1:You know,
Speaker 7:there's AI chatbot that was answering any question in any hour of the day. Yeah. And then our LPs also are playing with these tools themselves as well their underwriting and their diligence, but also even individually. I'll I'll I won't name the LP, but I was talking to an LP earlier this this morning who was playing around with Reply. And I was like, you gotta try it.
Speaker 7:Like, just just code something that you wish, you know, you had access to. And she's like, well, I really want to be able to code an app that can look at Peloton classes and let me know when this instructor sees I'm like, try to prompt it. And she was able to do it literally in the course of the morning. So it's it's one of those things where I think these worlds are converging so quickly. It's also almost great that we're just all we're doing is testing and trying and iterating.
Speaker 7:And for the first time, LPs as users can actually see the real world visceral impact to how they run their day to day life.
Speaker 2:How what what is what is general LP sentiment specifically around 2026? What are what are expectations? Obviously, we're expecting a slate of IPOs, and that's very exciting if you've been in in these in these companies, these names for, you know, a decade or or more at this point.
Speaker 7:Yeah. I feel like Elon dropped, like, an early Christmas present when he was there was, like, rumored to say that SpaceX might be going public in 2026, and everyone's like, oh, maybe we'll go public in 2026. So I I do think sentiment and people are are generally positive. Obviously, you know, we'll see where the IPO markets kind of turn out to be. But generally speaking, it's it's early.
Speaker 7:It's off to a good start. Like, we'll we'll see what happens. But I I do think people are expecting more capital this year in a way that once one breaks through, it's gonna be a watershed moment that might even top, you know, 2021 in terms of the amount of liquidity coming back to folks.
Speaker 1:That's gonna be exciting. That's gonna be exciting.
Speaker 2:Was was 15 always the target, or did you go out, thinking that you do less and then you kind of upsized it based on demand?
Speaker 7:We had a range for our target, and we try to kind of keep in that range to to avoid, you know, upsetting.
Speaker 2:It was possible because if if Maso can do a 100, it's like, come on. Can can we can we can we do 15?
Speaker 7:I won't I won't make that comparison. It is it is it is funny retrospect, you know, that that Vision Fund, you know, is is
Speaker 1:The whole thesis was AI.
Speaker 2:Well, was genius. I completely blocked Vision Fund out of my head. Yeah. And and then I was like I I was researching before that, so I was like, okay. 15,000,000,000 has to be the biggest fund venture fund ever.
Speaker 2:And I was like, oh, no.
Speaker 1:Of course.
Speaker 2:Of course.
Speaker 1:Biggest fun. Anyway, well, thank you so much for coming on the show. Congratulations on Yeah. Massive news. And we will talk to you soon, Jed.
Speaker 2:Incredible work.
Speaker 7:Awesome. Great to see you later. Catch Cheers.
Speaker 3:See you.
Speaker 1:Let me tell you about Vanta, automate compliance and security. Vanta is the leading AI trust management platform.
Speaker 2:And Up next. You to the chat. There has been some updates to Claude's policies. Tyler is researching the story now, and we will get to it
Speaker 3:At the end
Speaker 2:as soon as we can.
Speaker 1:Well, we have Alex Rampell from Andreessen Horowitz coming in to the in UltraDome. Welcome to the show, Alex. How are doing?
Speaker 6:Thank you. Good.
Speaker 3:How are
Speaker 1:Beautiful background. Fantastic American flag. What what a day. Congratulations. How are
Speaker 4:you doing? Good.
Speaker 1:Good. Fantastic.
Speaker 2:Super excited to have you on. I've I've I've enjoyed you're somebody who's I've I've read your writing and Yeah. And listened to your your podcast appearances for a decade now and and always always appreciated your your point of view on a on a bunch of different things. So welcome to the show.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. And I'm I'm here to prove that I'm real.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. I I
Speaker 4:mean You never it's like proof of life is very important increasingly. Right?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. It is.
Speaker 1:I mean, first time on the show, can you, give us a little bit of the backstory of the journey to Andreessen and and, and how long you've been there?
Speaker 4:Sure. So I've been here for ten years. Previously, it's been a long
Speaker 3:time success.
Speaker 4:Previously, long time entrepreneurs. So it kind of started by writing software when I was a kid in high school, actually, even before that. Uh-huh. And then out of college, I was like I graduated in 2003. I was probably the only person from my class that just kinda became an entrepreneur right away.
Speaker 4:Yeah. And it wasn't because I was smart or dumb, probably more dumb than smart. It's like I had a little business that I was running in college, so I kinda kept doing that. Met this guy named Chris Dixon Yeah. Who was in Harvard Business School when I was at Harvard College.
Speaker 4:And you have to remember, like, 2002 when we met, the Internet one point o had just died. Yeah. Everybody lost their jobs. It was September 11 that it happened. And what do you do if you're a dried up entrepreneur?
Speaker 4:You go to business school. Yeah. Remember there's a company called cosmo.com, a huge hit that kinda went to zero. What did that guy do? He went to HBS.
Speaker 1:No way.
Speaker 4:So Chris Dixon was there, and he and I were, the only two people, I I swear, in, like, the entire state of Massachusetts that thought that the Internet was still kinda cool. We got introduced by an mutual friend, had had a coffee at Au Bon Pain, this, like, little East Coast chain, and then cooked up a product called Did They Read It, which still around today. It's an email tracking tool. It embeds a tracking pixel in every email that you send out. That did pretty well.
Speaker 4:Then we started the venture backed company together that became SiteAdvisor. That got acquired. And then I started another company called TrialPay to like, the thing that we learned at SiteAdvisor is that nobody likes paying for software. Like, you're willing to pay for an intangible good, like a glass of wine. $20 for that seems totally reasonable.
Speaker 4:Right?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4:But paying $20 for one song on iTunes, there would be riots in the streets. So the idea was, I'll give you this digital good for free if you buy something else. And if you know how affiliate marketing works, it kinda plugged into that. So it's like, hey. We'll give you this product for free if you sign up for Netflix or if you switch to GEICO or if you shop at the Gap or if you get a Discover card using the affiliate commission to go pay for the product, that did pretty well.
Speaker 4:Like, it was, like, half of the revenue of SideAdvisor. It it was, like, from my from my little shareware business that I used to have back in the day, doubled our revenue. So I turned that into a company called TrialPay. That did great for a while, then it did terribly, then I kind of resumed to okay, sold it to Visa. And then along the way, met this guy Max Levchin Yeah.
Speaker 4:After he had sold Slide to Google, and we cooked up a company called Affirm. So I co founded Affirm at Max in 2012, and actually brought Affirm to Andreessen Horowitz, as a funding opportunity, which which they did. And, Chris Dixon kinda ended up talking me into joining here in 2015. So I've been here ever since.
Speaker 2:How how quickly did you realize that that Chris and Max were special? Because I imagine you you during those two periods, you were meeting hundreds of different people. I'm sure people wanted to build stuff with you, other entrepreneurs, And you picked well back to back. No. It's probably the hardest hardest, you know, one of the hardest things to actually clock at times.
Speaker 4:Yeah. I mean, I I think a lot of the greatest they have two things in common. They have this term that I that's going around a lot, like high agency. Like, they don't just, like, follow the rules. They just, like, take matters into their own hands and do something.
Speaker 4:And then they just kind of know the history of everything before. Like, they they just students of history, philosophy like, you know, Chris was a philosophy major. People don't know about him. He went to like, he he went to you know, he got his bachelor's degree in philosophy, was gonna do a PhD, kinda realized that was a bad idea, and then eventually went to business school, which is he will probably say the worst idea. But, yeah, it it was kinda self evident.
Speaker 4:I mean, Chris and I, mean,
Speaker 2:I The history the history of that is a real thing. Like, if if you're talking to an entrepreneur that has been building their business for one to two years, and you can tell them companies that in somewhat recent history, in the last decade even, that have, like, attempted that, or companies that are adjacent, they're like, oh, I'm not familiar with that. It's, immediately, like, such a Yeah. Bearish signal
Speaker 4:Oh, because red flag. Well, the opposite. Like, that's the red flag. The whatever the opposite Green flag.
Speaker 2:The Yeah. Green What's
Speaker 1:green flag?
Speaker 4:Flag is not only have do I know everything, I mean, I I'll give you one example. I think the Collison brothers went out to, like, D Hawk's Ranch. Oh, yeah. Like, D Hawk started Visa. He's kind of like a weird quasi communist even
Speaker 5:though he started one
Speaker 4:of biggest companies in the world. Wow. Because Visa was meant to be this, like it was a nonprofit. Visa was a nonprofit until '28. Don't know.
Speaker 4:2008, maybe 2009.
Speaker 1:Was biggest IPO. Yeah. That's right.
Speaker 4:Yeah. But it was a nonprofit until then. Yeah. A nonprofit like the NFL is a nonprofit. It, like, makes a lot of money, but it's owned by the constituents.
Speaker 4:And the constituents that own Visa were the banks. Mhmm. And it's like, okay. I'm starting a payment company. There were a lot of payment companies that came before, but it's like, who will let's find this guy who's 90 years old, who's moved outside of capitalism, is working as a farmer just to learn from him.
Speaker 4:And, like, I have this mental model that I now use for entrepreneurs, and it's a memo that I've written that we use internally a lot. I gotta say, like, the best entrepreneurs, they have five things that that I look for. They can materialize labor capital and customers, and hopefully, are self evidence. Like, you can get people to quit their high paying job for, like, certain failure. It's like the Ernest Shackleton thing.
Speaker 4:It's like you wanted men for dangerous journey, almost certain failure and death, but if it worked, you might be famous. Right? It's like you want that. Very, very hard to do. You have to find people that can materialize capital.
Speaker 4:It's like get people to give you money, and the best the best sign of future fundraising success like, we do round n, we wanna make sure that it's gonna be around n plus one, or you're gonna be profitable on round n, which is unlikely. So are you good at fundraising? Can you get customers? Like, imagine it's like, I have two weeks of cash left. Please be my first customer.
Speaker 4:I have none. Like, who it's very hard to pull that off. Yeah. Then you wanna know the history of the space, which is super important to your point. You want that green flag version, not just the intermediate you know, what's the what's the the combination of green and red flag like the
Speaker 1:Brown?
Speaker 4:The tur you don't want the
Speaker 2:turquoise or the whatever. Yeah.
Speaker 6:Like, you you want the
Speaker 4:green flag. This person knows everything that's tried before, and they have a new angle of attack. They're not gonna learn on the job. They've actually learned through history. And then the last thing that I care about a lot well, everybody in my my team knows this.
Speaker 4:My favorite book is the Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. Mhmm. And it documents the story of this guy, Edmund Dantes, who's, like, wrongfully accused, is, like, imprisoned for seventeen years, but then becomes the richest person in the world
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 4:But doesn't give a shit. Right? It's like, all the all the riches of the world do not matter. He wants revenge.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Right? You want or so you could either revenge kinda sounds bad. Yeah. It was like a testimony. But you either want revenge or redemption.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 4:And some of the best entrepreneurs have this in common. And the reason why it's so important from a venture lens is imagine that you're a 20 year old kid. You start a company, and somebody offers you, I don't know, half $1,000,000,000 to buy your company. And you own 25% of it. You're gonna make over a $100,000,000.
Speaker 4:You'd have to be insane to turn that down. Mhmm. Right? Yeah. And we need people that are insane that that actually are going for it's not that we don't want people that aren't capitalists that don't care about money, but it's like they care about if you've seen the movie Spaceballs, it's like, we're not doing this for the money.
Speaker 4:We're doing it for a shitload of money. Little little different here. It's I'm doing it for another reason. And, like, a great example of this is there's this guy, Renewal Laplanche, who started a company called LendingClub.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. Oh,
Speaker 4:yeah. Very famous company at the time. There was, like, a dearth of IPOs. Like, LendingClub kinda gets to scale, goes public. He gets fired from his board, ousted from the company.
Speaker 4:He's probably made hundreds of millions of dollars. He's the count of Monte Cristo. He's like, you know, fuck those guys. I'm going to start a new company. I'm gonna I'm gonna start an Upgrade.
Speaker 4:And you know what he called his new company? Upgrade. It does the exact same thing as LendingClub. It's probably 10 times the size of LendingClub now. And what's motivating him is not just the, hopefully, you know, shit ton of money, Spaceball's quote, but he wants revenge.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 4:He wants redemption. And you see this with some of the best entrepreneurs. Like, what is the driving motivation? And because when times get tough, like, you need something because, like, there is no money. Like, if if your company is going to zero, if you're an earner Shackleton in the winter of Antarctica, like, your voyage is not successful.
Speaker 4:Right? You you need something else driving you at that point, and that's why that that medal is something that that I I find extremely valuable.
Speaker 1:Have you seen Spaceballs, Jordy? I have not. You got to.
Speaker 2:It's a great Oh, my favorite I famous I famously have seen, like, that movie.
Speaker 1:He's not
Speaker 2:a superhero.
Speaker 1:Last question.
Speaker 2:One of my probably like a really I was gonna say maybe it's hard to exactly place a top 10. Like I loved your episode on invest like the best on operating systems. How is AI kind of like updating your thinking on moats and operating systems and how somebody can create a lot of value with a startup?
Speaker 4:Yeah. Well, I I think well, maybe I can rewind a little bit. And just because we announced this new fundraise, can tell you exactly what we told our LPs in terms of, like, what we want to invest in at the application layer because I I do application layer stuff. And it's really three things. You know?
Speaker 4:Category one is I call it greenfield bingo. And kind of maybe another way of answering your question is there's something that there's a quote that I use a lot. The best companies have hostages, not customers. Right? Like, that's why nobody likes using Salesforce.
Speaker 2:You gotta be taking revenge. You gotta be taking hostages. You
Speaker 4:know, it's it's very old testament stuff. Of course. The the best companies have hostages, not customers. Those are great companies to invest in. Right?
Speaker 4:And that kinda goes to to to the point that I was making. Like, you know, NetSuite, Workday, Salesforce, like, they're all hated by their customers, but none of those customers can leave. Mhmm. However, if you build a better version, like, kind of a more AI first version of all of these companies and you're selling into the greenfield Mhmm. You've got a shot.
Speaker 4:Right? Because, like, I was lucky enough to be the first investor in Mercury, and Mercury worked not by stealing people from SVB. They just worked. It's like, oh, you're a brand new company. You can use shitty SVB, or you can use really good mercury.
Speaker 4:Yeah. And that worked. Whereas they never got customers from SVB until the weekend that SVB failed. Yeah. So that greenfield opportunity for software, like, that is AI enabled in the same way that, like, that was true for cloud.
Speaker 4:Right? That was true for mobile. It's like, here is the new thing. The incumbent will eventually build it. Like, another expression I use a lot is, like, the battle between every startup and incumbent is whether the startup gets the distribution before the incumbent gets the innovation.
Speaker 4:The incumbent my my default assumption is that the incumbent normally wins. Mhmm. Because they have the distribution, they will get their act together three years later. And with AI and cursor and everything else, they'll get their act together maybe three weeks later.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 4:So the the the the the kind of the might of distribution is very, very powerful. So one option is you just go into the greenfield. So that's kinda category one is, you know, we we call it greenfield bingo. It's just like build. We we have a bet that's just like NetSuite.
Speaker 4:It's better. It's AI enabled, but they're not gonna steal customers from NetSuite. They're just gonna get Greenfield. Category two is this kind of new super exciting category of software does labor. And, like, there there is no incumbent software product for another trial attorneys.
Speaker 4:Like, it's called Microsoft Office, but, like, Eve does that and does that really well. There's no incumbent software product for dental office receptionist, but Tenor does that and does that very well. So that's a really these are all industries that I wouldn't say they've been untouched by software. They've been untouched by specialty software. Mhmm.
Speaker 4:And the reason why is because the market was perceived to be too small. Mhmm. And this is exactly what happened to SaaS. Like, fintech really changed SaaS significantly because take I'm sure you've heard of Toast. Toast is one of my favorite businesses.
Speaker 4:It's like Square, but it's only for restaurants. It's this whole operating system for restaurants. How many restaurants on their IBM PC junior in 1984 use software like zero?
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 4:And how many of them would pay tens of thousands of dollars a year for software Xero? But they all need payment processing. They all need payroll. They need these other services. You kinda bundle them in with software.
Speaker 4:And this is the really exciting thing about AI is you go say, hey, trial attorney. I want you to pay $50,000 a year for software. You said this ten years ago. Like, no way. Like, we'll pay for Microsoft Word because we use it to write demand letters.
Speaker 4:Like, that's it. And now you can say, hey. We'll handle all these cases for you that you could not handle profitably, and that's AI plus software. Now they are software buyers. Mhmm.
Speaker 4:So that that's category two. And then category three, call the walled garden, and I wrote a post about this a little while ago. But walled garden businesses are amazing because if you assume that in the world that we live in today, and this is another way of thinking about kind of defensibility in in AI, OpenAI has their sights kind of on everything. Right? Like, Anthropic probably has their sights on everything.
Speaker 4:It's so easy to build everything. So I'm not have you guys heard of Open Evidence?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4:Okay. So I I tore my Achilles in February. It's almost a year ago. Sucks. Right?
Speaker 4:It's it's all better now. I mean, what did you do? It was. I was skiing in Japan.
Speaker 2:There we go. That's a good reason to that's a good reason.
Speaker 4:There we go.
Speaker 5:There we go. Won the award.
Speaker 4:Jeremiah Achilles, what do I do? So I go to ChatGPT. I'm in, like, the the clinic in Nisako, Japan talking to this Scottish doctor, and he tells me, oh, yeah. You only have surgery in The US. Nobody does it outside The US.
Speaker 4:I was like, this guy's on crack. Like, of course, you have surgery to fix an Achilles. I go to ChatGPT. It tells me everything. Then I think I find this thing Open Evidence, and it's like ChatGPT, but it has every single medical document in the world.
Speaker 4:And imagine that tomorrow, ChatGPT five three comes out. It's AGI. Everybody agrees it's AGI. Human race is over, but it has no medical data. And then on the other side, you have GPT 3.5, and it has every single piece of medical knowledge ever known to mankind.
Speaker 4:What would you rather use? Mhmm. And the answer, at least for me, and I I did use this, is open evidence. So there are so many businesses that look like this where they find some proprietary, piece of data. Mhmm.
Speaker 4:They're the only ones that have because before, would have to sell data. That was, like, your only that was your only hope as a business. And, like, another example that I mentioned, this post, there there's a company called Vilex, And Vilex is this, like, twenty five year old European data business that bought up, you know, legal records in Spain to start, and they would sell it to firms like Wilson Sincini that needed it for case law. Now they sell an outcome because they're the only ones that have all the the records. So you can chart you can build a really interesting business if you're the only source of some unique form of data.
Speaker 4:And I love businesses like that because that's the other sorry for being so long winded here on on the answer to your question. But the the the the businesses that can be very, very large in AI that can grow very, very quickly, you still need to make sure that they're fundamentally defensible. And that's the really hard thing to disambiguate today, which is you can have things grow so quickly, but they can also go to zero so quickly because anybody can build software in, like, a weekend, which is both great and terrifying at the same time.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Indeed. Well, thank you so much for hopping on the show and breaking it down. Incredible overview. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Really yeah. Great to meet you. Thanks for
Speaker 1:coming soon, Alex. Congrats. Alright. Have a great rest of your day. Let me tell you about console.com.
Speaker 1:Console builds AI agents that automate 70% of IT, HR, and finance support, giving employees instant resolution for pass for access requests and password resets. And up next, we have David George. We are running late. David, good to see you again. How are you doing?
Speaker 4:Good to
Speaker 6:see you.
Speaker 2:Congratulations on all
Speaker 1:the progress. How does this change growth, the growth practice? Is this just more of the same strategy? Or can you do new things with this new fund?
Speaker 9:It's more of the same, honestly. First of all, I'm still like thrown off because I've worked with Rampell for seven years and And we're close I just realized that his favorite book is Count of Monte Cristo, and that's my favorite book.
Speaker 1:No one? Yeah. It's a great one.
Speaker 9:No. More of the same for The Growth Fund. I mean, look, the last seven years since we started it, it's been a pretty simple mandate. It's like best companies in the world, best founders in the world with huge ambitions. Typically, the bet that we're making is that it can be bigger than other people believe it can be.
Speaker 9:Paki wrote a whole long 16,000 word essay about this today. But if I were to summarize our views and what defines like quintessential growth investment for us, it's a belief that it can be bigger than people would realize. And we've got a ton of success stories on that. So more of the same in terms of our strategy. And it just so happens that we're on the back of, like, the best trend of my lifetime.
Speaker 1:Do you think there's something changing in the psychology of startup founders where the new crop of mega corns, the SpaceX, is it sort of gives the next generation permission to stay private longer. Maybe, hey, previously, it was maybe $100,000,000,000 IPO would be crazy big. Now we're maybe having a few trillion dollar IPOs happening soon. All of a sudden, logically, even if you're not in that category, you're like, I'll stay private until $100,000,000,000 Is the psychology changing for founders?
Speaker 9:Yeah. It is changing.
Speaker 3:I'm going
Speaker 8:to talk about
Speaker 9:the psychology of founders in two different ways. So one that I'm more excited about, like, could talk about capital markets and public markets and private markets. The thing I'm more excited about is the psychology of the founders that has changed post COVID. This generation of founders is just way more hardcore. I, for one, am all for the being back in the office, the working really hard, unabashed pursuit of success.
Speaker 9:And I think it's a big change in the last five or six years that's happened. I think it's part of what's propelling these companies to be so good so fast. Obviously AI is the big technological driver. But I think the vibe shift is a huge part of it. We were looking last night at some stats and going back and forth on some of our best companies.
Speaker 9:And we have a bunch of the AI native companies that are application companies that are kind of $100,000,000 plus, 100,000,000 to $1,000,000,000 of revenue. And we were looking at, do we think they're running themselves differently? So to this point of like different vibes, what they care about. And it turns out like the old rule of thumb for companies was if you look at like revenue divided by all their employees, it's like $400,000 of revenue per employee. When you look at, like, public software companies, that's kind of where it shakes out.
Speaker 9:All these AI native companies, they were basically, like, 500,000, 900,000, 2,000,000, 2,000,000,
Speaker 3:2,000,000, 5,000,000.
Speaker 9:So they're totally different. I think they're being run totally differently. We're really excited about that. And the biggest thing is just like there's a tsunami of demand coming their way, which I think enables them to run much, much faster. So I'm super excited about that.
Speaker 9:As it relates to the capital markets thing, the staying private longer, it's totally rational. Look, there's a bunch of it that is our own government doing as it relates to being a public company and how difficult and expensive that has become. We have a robust private market. It's been a benefit to us. It's allowed us to invest in a bunch of companies that otherwise would have gone public sooner when we can still invest in them and they're growing really fast.
Speaker 9:And the value proposition for founders is pretty good to be a private company. They can stay private. It's probably a little bit of a higher cost of capital for them. But the trade off for them is they can sort of avoid the daily kind of volatility of the stock price and what that means for
Speaker 1:paying And more M and A options as well. There's a lot of
Speaker 2:is your day like? What are your weeks what are your weeks like? Because I imagine, like, you're the the the balancing and, like, prioritizing when
Speaker 1:Most of it's adding zero to spreadsheets.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay. We gotta add the
Speaker 2:The model's breaking. The model's breaking. No. But but it I imagine it's hard prioritize when you can write everything from like a $100,000,000 check up to at times like Multi
Speaker 1:billion dollar rounds are coming together.
Speaker 2:Multi billion dollar rounds are coming together. How do you prioritize your day and your week?
Speaker 9:I mean, reason we raised this fund that's a little bit larger, one, it's a reflection of the opportunity set. And two, we want to be able to say, hey, we can write a billion dollar check into a company directly out of the fund. And we have resources to be able to do more than that beyond it. But that was a big part. If we're high conviction in a company, want to be able to do that.
Speaker 9:There's not very many of those. And so, you know, we have to use our time wisely. Fortunately, given our brand and given our coverage, you know, we're able to see most things. We're able to meet a lot of entrepreneurs. And so, you know, we see, you know, probably as a firm hundreds of deals or investment opportunities or companies a week.
Speaker 9:Yeah. And then, you know, we have the, you know, we have the luxury of getting to kind of matchmake with the ones that want to work with us that we think are really special. You know, after this, just, was texting with a founder and he was like, he kind of cracked open the door that he might do a fundraise.
Speaker 1:And
Speaker 9:I'm like, great. All right. I'll meet
Speaker 1:you in our office. Let's meet
Speaker 9:our office at 04:00. Like, we got to do it. So the way I try to spend my time is like the thing that gives me the most energy is to to meet those founders and make investments.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Well, we'll let you get back to chasing deals. Good luck with that particular founder. Hopefully, that founder will be on the show ringing the gong in just a few weeks.
Speaker 2:Yeah. This I'm excited to see what what you do with this with this new fund.
Speaker 1:It's Get some big
Speaker 2:preparation, timing, opportunity. Yeah. This is gonna be
Speaker 1:an amazing chapter. Well, have a great rest of your day, David. Good to good to catch We'll see you. Cheers. And up next, we have Ben Horowitz, the founder of Andrews and Horowitz, the Horowitz in Andrews and Horowitz.
Speaker 1:Ben, how are you doing? Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3:Good. How are you guys?
Speaker 1:We're fantastic. Massive news today. Congratulations, obviously. We'll get into the the the fund structure. I'm sure we'll have a bunch of questions there.
Speaker 1:I wanted to kick it off with a reflection on your book, The Hard The Hard Thing About Hard Things. What is the one piece of advice that you think has aged particularly well from that? What has never changed? And then maybe you could take me through some things that might have changed in this era, bigger companies, AI. What do you go back to?
Speaker 1:And what do you maybe think needs an update?
Speaker 3:Yeah. Well, like, I think it's still, like, really hard to be an entrepreneur. One of my favorite quotes in the book is something Mark said to me, you know, when things were extremely bad. He said, you know, one day we'll look back on this, chuckle nervously, and change the subject.
Speaker 1:I think some of us have seen those things.
Speaker 2:How it felt. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3:It's The only thing he he would always say is things get darkest before they go completely black.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean, I it's it's underrated how how long you two have been in partnership beyond just this this firm. You've worked together for so long. Thirty years. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Thirty years. What a run. An overnight success. A true overnight success if there ever was one. How is how how do you two like to work together now?
Speaker 1:How how is how's the day to day working at the firm?
Speaker 3:Yeah. I mean, I think that it works pretty well. I mean, we have pretty different roles. So I I run the firm. And then, you know, Mark is kind of, in a lot of ways, the face of the firm.
Speaker 3:And he also you know, he gets very deep on specific things. So policy, AI are kind of the two things that he's, like, super focused on right now. Yeah. And, you know, he has many, many ideas about running the firm, and I have many ideas about things he does. And so, you know, it's very collaborative, I would just say.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And, you know, we we argue all the time about everything.
Speaker 1:That's great. Has any good
Speaker 3:partner done? Sometimes he's right. Sometimes I'm right.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Well, how is the structure of running the firm? How is the structure of the firm changing in this era? Obviously, the numbers are bigger, but Mhmm. On the fundraising side, but maybe not on the team side, what's changing?
Speaker 1:Is there anything that you've felt like this technology shift requires different management of the firm?
Speaker 3:Yeah. No. For sure. I think that what's happened is we're we have such a powerful new technology platform Mhmm. That the number of really important companies that will be created out of it has just multiplied.
Speaker 3:Interesting. And, you know, like, the the tech industry itself used to just not be that big. Yeah. And now the tech industry is all industry. Yeah.
Speaker 3:And that change is kind of what really changed the architecture of the firm. So, originally, you know, we looked like every other venture firm. We were, you know, a team of venture investors. You know? We were a little different in that we had a more elaborate platform.
Speaker 3:Yeah. But now what we've done is we've kind of subdivided the technology market into all of its submarkets. So, you know, infrastructure
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Applications, you know, crypto, early stage stuff, bio, these kinds of things, American dynamism. And each of those teams is basically looks like the original Andreessen Horowitz, but they're independent of each other. Yeah. And that enables us to both kinda cover the whole market in a very, very serious way, but also be nimble and not have I mean, you don't want 20 people in a room talking about a deal. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Like, you're not gonna get to the truth like that. You know? Just in management experience, it turns out you can't have a conversation with 20 people. You can't have a presentation.
Speaker 1:How do you think about empowering the firm or the subteams to become subject matter experts and actually investigate and prosecute deal theses in entirely new markets where no one in the firm might have ever done an oil and gas deal or a solar deal or some bio thing that's entirely new. And you have a team, but there's, you know, new markets forming and new markets coming online as potential transformation targets for technology. How are you keeping the firm sharp on every corner of the global economy?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So a lot a lot of times, you know, there are super experimental things that we'll look at, but we don't necessarily kind of build the organization around yet. And then you know? But once we commit the flag, then that you know, our our big commitment would be, okay. We'll create a fund around it.
Speaker 3:So, you know, we did that with crypto. We made the Coinbase investment before we had the crypto fund, but then we as we got into it, we said, well, like, this is gonna be a larger market and it's super different than everything we're doing. So we need to commit around that. More recently, you know, with AI AI, like the way you build AI companies, the nature of the AI founder is just so different than everything that we've seen before that we ended up bringing in a lot of expertise from the outside. We kind of reoriented everybody on the inside.
Speaker 3:Like, we we actually had, you know, a huge amount of training materials and, like, you know, basically exams to make sure that, you know, everybody who has worked on that was what we call AI native and understood, like, all aspects of it before getting into it just because, you know, these things do tend to be different. And this is why you you see a lot of people age out of venture capital and then a lot of kind of firms be that what's they once were. You know, they they were very important in 2015, but they didn't necessarily make the transition. They didn't bring in the right kind of talent. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Do you as as when you're managing the firm, do you how do you think about the dividing lines and the walls between different funds? We've seen just with just with the neo clouds, a lot of those folks started as crypto companies. Yeah. Then they became AI companies. But they're building things at such massive scale.
Speaker 1:I wouldn't be as surprised to see them in an American dynamism portfolio because they're kind of sort of reindustrializing. So do you are you the person that the firm that one of the subdivision leaders comes to to say, hey. I want this in my fund. How does that work?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So so there's not that much conflict in that. You know, the categories are pretty clear. There are you know, it happens occasionally where where they bump into each other. But, you know, for the most part, it's like, what are you really trying to do?
Speaker 3:And then the entrepreneur will gravitate towards one of the funds based on what they're trying to do. Like, we wanna sell things to the government. Yeah. Okay. That's likely gonna go into American dynamism, whereas, like, okay.
Speaker 3:We've got, you know, PhDs in AI. That's almost certainly gonna end up in infrastructure Yeah. You know, kind of model world and that kind of thing. Yeah. And so, you know, it's really matching the the funds are you think about markets of entrepreneurs, and the funds are designed to address that market of entrepreneurs, and those tend to be fairly distinct.
Speaker 3:Now sometimes, know, people will try to game us and they'll get rejected by one part and then they'll go
Speaker 2:to the other. Okay.
Speaker 3:We we we have very, very, very good comprehensive data on everything we've seen. We've got extremely good systems, so we we catch those people. But that's
Speaker 1:good to know.
Speaker 2:When did you realize a $15,000,000,000 fund was possible? Was it was it did you did you imagine this kind of scale was possible from from inception, or or was it a did you build that?
Speaker 3:Yeah. Know, our first fund was $300,000,000, so we definitely weren't thinking about it then. We we thought 300,000,000 was a lot, and people, you know, thought we were raising too big a fund in 2009. Yeah. But now, like, what we've done is we we've kind of looked at the markets and said, okay.
Speaker 3:You know, how big is this market? And then what kind of fund do we need to kinda win in that market and generate a large return? And, you know, we tend to have a a relatively optimistic view of the future. I think there are some, like, cynical VCs out there and, like when I was a boy, valuations weren't this high.
Speaker 2:It's just like, play the game on the field.
Speaker 3:Yeah. We like to look forward and not look backwards. And so as a result, like something you know, I think we have done a good job of getting ahead of the game. Like, when we raised fund three, which was a billion dollars, we got a lot of criticism from other funds going like, that's crazy. You know?
Speaker 3:No billion dollar fund has ever returned money. Yardy, yardy, yardy, yardy. And we're like, well, okay. But, like, the world didn't look like this, and software is eating the world, and things are getting bigger, and we think that, like, we can deploy a billion dollars. And, you know, that fund, you know, had Coinbase and Databricks and and Lyft and DigitalOcean and GitHub and, like, a lot
Speaker 1:of, you
Speaker 3:know, big outcomes. Yeah. And if we didn't have that much money, it'd be a problem.
Speaker 1:Yeah. On that on that note of optimism and understanding understanding the scale of the Internet as it eats the entire world, how did you process the bubble talk that took place in the 2025?
Speaker 3:Well, you know, I was CEO during another bubble. Yeah. So I know a lot about bubbles. Look, I think that so there there's a couple of things that that I learned from the bubble that we were in.
Speaker 2:One Sorry. Was Sorry. Bubble We keep a bubble gun handy.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Look. What you know, one of the things if you look back at that bubble, there were there were a lot of things that were present then that are definitely not present now. So, like, probably the biggest being the Internet. Everybody knew the Internet was gonna be giant.
Speaker 3:Mhmm. But at the time that everybody was investing all the money, the Internet was very, very small. So if you go back to 1996, at Netscape, we had 90% browser share and, you know, we had $50,000,000 in revenue. Yeah. The entire or we have 50,000,000 users.
Speaker 3:Sorry. 50,000,000 users. So the the the entire number of people on the Internet was 55,000,000.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So that, like so you're funding these companies and giving them a $10,000,000,000 valuation selling into a market of 55,000,000 people. Like and then half of those were on dial up, so it was limited in what you could do. And so those valuations running way, way, way ahead of the technology is kind of what caused the bubble. Mhmm. You know, if you look at AI, the technology is, like, working and getting to the world right now.
Speaker 3:Mhmm. Like, how many people are on ChatGPT and, you know, how is that business going? It had, I think, zero revenue in November 2022. And I I don't know what the current number is, but it's probably between fifteen and twenty billion.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Like, we've never seen that before. So the things are working. Like, the things that were bubbleicious in '99 aren't quite the same. But, you know, to me, the biggest thing that I learned was right before the bubble burst, nobody thought it was a bubble. Warren Buffett, who had never invested any in any tech in early two thousands, started investing in tech.
Speaker 3:Woah. Woah. Everybody capitulated and agreed prices would never go down. Like, that's what you need to get to a bubble. It's a psychological phenomenon, not a financial phenomenon.
Speaker 3:And so, right now, with everybody talking about a bubble, I was like, oh, great, we're not in a bubble. Because it's when nobody believes it's a bubble that it becomes a bubble. Same with the financial crisis, by the way. If you look at the price, you know, the kind of interest you pay on, like, home loan debt in in in 2007. It was the lowest in history
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Right before it all came crashing.
Speaker 4:And it
Speaker 1:should have been the highest.
Speaker 3:Right before everybody defaulted. Yeah. You know, it it was the lowest in history, and that's because it was a bubble because everybody believed, hey. They're not building any more land anymore. You know?
Speaker 3:Like, that's that's what's going on. And so once you get into that kind of psychological convergence Yeah. That that's when you really get into, like, a really crazy bubble. Now, look. In venture capital, everything is always priced at either half or double what it's worth.
Speaker 3:Mhmm. Like, that's the that's the steady state. Mhmm. And so are there gonna be things that are, you know, priced way too high? Yeah.
Speaker 6:Of course.
Speaker 4:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Speaking of land, how are you processing the move out of California, the the news in California of the wealth taxes? It's a lot of Yeah. Folks are saying that, you know, California might shoot themselves in the foot, kill the golden goose. How have you been processing the news?
Speaker 3:Yeah. I mean, so so it it it's very kinda, like, an interesting kind of view of the world, I think, that that that the you know, the groups in California have been kinda pushing this idea. So, you know, we I go all over the world. I've met, like, in the last year, you know, president of of Mexico, the president of El Salvador, you know, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. So, like, I'm always with world leaders, or I've spent a lot of time with them, and they always wanna know, like, how do we create Silicon Valley here?
Speaker 3:Mhmm. And when you look
Speaker 2:at Silicon Goose. Valley We like your golden goose. We want one.
Speaker 3:Yeah. It's it's pretty remarkable that, like, we've repeatedly created companies with larger kind of GDP than most countries. Like, routinely, we've done that. And so rather than asking, like, how did we do that? It's like, well, how can we, like, rearrange it and, you know, run an experiment and see if it destroys it or not?
Speaker 3:Mhmm. And so I I think that's probably the weirdest part of it for me that people would think about it that way. Like, I mean, it like, if you start confiscating wealth and, you know, taxing unrealized capital gains for people who aren't liquid, like so so, actually, we saw this in Norway. So Norway has an unrealized capital gains tax. And if and Norway's got, like, a lot of extremely smart people, great entrepreneurs, but they all left.
Speaker 3:And when you talk to entrepreneurs in Norway, they're like, well, I literally can't pay the tax because the the the company got marked up
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Whatever. A billion, $2,000,000,000, and I own a lot of it. And I can't get that money out. It's a private company. Yep.
Speaker 3:And so I'm stuck. So I I have to leave the country. And there are no entrepreneurs, and there's basically no tech entrepreneurs in in Norway now. And if you wanted to get it's been so hard to break the Silicon Valley network effect, but this is the best strategy I've seen. If you wanted to break the California tech How?
Speaker 3:Because it's
Speaker 2:How are you processing how it feels like today we have this incredible optimism within the technology industry, this incredible excitement. And then outside of the technology, you know, your neighbor or somebody nearby has like this, there's, it feels like this real tension and kind of fear from broader society about the work that is being done within the technology industry.
Speaker 3:And you
Speaker 2:see interviews that AI leaders will give where they'll say, We're summoning the demon. Or they'll say, know, know
Speaker 1:Not the most optimistic story
Speaker 2:teller The in world will end, but we're gonna create some great companies. So I think people like these interviews and these quotes spread so quickly, lot a of people have heard them, and the question from the broader populace is like, hey, do we need to do What's
Speaker 1:the optimistic vision?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Or or can we stop? Right? Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I I think the good news is it speaks to the importance of the moment. So this is on the order of the microprocessor or the steam engine or something or electricity or something like that.
Speaker 3:So and those things all turned out to be, like, really good for humanity.
Speaker 2:Was there that much with with electricity, was there, like, the level of fear around Oh, because there were people that would, like, go and obviously, I know the stories of people that would, like, their job was to write the light the lamps. Right? But Oh,
Speaker 3:yeah. Like, if you go back and read about the beginning of Electricity, it's wild. Well, they made a law when automobiles first came out, there was a law in The United States that said, if you're driving your car and you see a horse, you have to stop the car, disassemble it, and wait for the horse to
Speaker 1:pass. Disassemble it.
Speaker 3:Well, like like, it was that level, but that was the regulatory idea. So yeah. I mean, I think it by the way, watches were the same. You know, when watches came out, there was, like, huge fear that, like, people would never be able to have a conversation again because they'd be just tech checking the time always. Got one shot by watch.
Speaker 3:Yeah. These technologies, like, generate a lot of fear. But I think that, you know, the good news on it is, you know, this one is really important. I think that the impact into the well-being of humanity is gonna be bigger than certainly anything in my lifetime. And, you know, one of our bigger problems, I think, is there are people in the industry going for regulatory capture who kind of feed into the
Speaker 2:The fear.
Speaker 3:To the fear. And then, like, there are also people who have just you know, it's moving so fast that it's actually freaked them out Mhmm. Who are working on it. And that's
Speaker 2:How do you advise how do you advise portfolio founders or or even people at at the firm around processing noise? Think historically, you know, there wasn't like this constant chatter. Right? We have like x now, which is like a constant, you know, stream of consciousness from millions of people that are sharing their opinion and it's, you know, I I know a lot of entrepreneurs that, you know, one day everybody's saying that they're the greatest thing ever and then the next day, you know, people start to criticize and and how do you kind of what like what's your what guidance do you give there?
Speaker 3:Yeah. Well, I think that, like, the world of media changed. And it's I I think it's tricky for people and companies to process because if you grew up in marketing or in old media, your whole concept of the laws of physics is different. So in old world, you were always thinking defensively because there were very few channels to get your message out. The format was very tight.
Speaker 3:You know, you could get a quote in here. You could get a few sentences before the host cuts you off or whatever. Yeah. You know, you guys watch CNNs from time to
Speaker 2:time. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And so, like, in that world, the way you would think about media is just like, let's make sure we don't say the wrong thing. Let's spend hours and hours crafting the message and so forth. You know, in the new world, it's like wide open. There's media everywhere.
Speaker 3:The formats are whatever you want it to be. And so the right kind of way to think about it is you have to be interesting. And don't worry about making a mistake because you can just come back tomorrow and flood the zone. You know?
Speaker 4:Like, just keep going.
Speaker 3:And that I think it's I found it very, very difficult to reorient somebody who has spent a career in old media world kind of thinking in a new media way. And so the biggest thing that, like, I really talk to our CEOs about is, like, you've got to approach the you have to approach new media with new media thinking, new media people, that kind of thing. And it really it's a remarkably opposite world. It's like, you know, it's like you're landing on Mars, you're like, well, what the fuck happened to gravity? You
Speaker 2:know? Different.
Speaker 3:And and you can't even say, well, no. Gravity is different here because it's like, no. No. Gravity just is. Like, I can't deal with the fact that that's just that's just the truth.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Well, we would love to keep talking about media. Yeah. Very few things that that we enjoyed.
Speaker 1:We should ring the Gong.
Speaker 2:But we know you have a late you got late fees if you're late to meetings. So this Gong Yeah. Is for the whole ASIC CT team.
Speaker 1:Congratulations. And
Speaker 2:we won't keep you any longer, but come back on again soon and and congratulations.
Speaker 3:You so much for taking the time.
Speaker 1:See you guys.
Speaker 3:Talk to
Speaker 1:you soon. Goodbye. And, with that, we need to check-in on the Eric? Croppet Cloud codes
Speaker 2:Eric just said that, that they're good for the $10, Tornburg.
Speaker 1:20
Speaker 2:He's he's gotta you know, he's one minute late to his next meeting.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay. That's a late fee. Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's right.
Speaker 1:That's right. They have a late fee.
Speaker 2:Yeah. For those that don't know, Intrace and Partners, if they're late to if
Speaker 1:they're late Phones too. If they have phones out, they get fined.
Speaker 2:Yeah. No. But it's late if you're late to a meeting with a founder that you're looking to invest in. In Japan. Or or you're just meeting, you gotta pay if you're late.
Speaker 2:That's fine. That's
Speaker 1:Well, we should check-in with Tyler. There were some rumblings about a change to Claude code.
Speaker 2:Can you
Speaker 5:read that? Okay. So basically, what happened was okay. So so when you get a Cloud subscription, right, there's pro and max. Yeah.
Speaker 5:You get like Cloud Code credits, basically. Sure. And so what was going on was was there's like third party harnesses. So there's one Open Code. There's like a bunch of these.
Speaker 5:Yeah. And they would basically use the the credits that you get from CloudCode or from your Cloud subscription
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 5:Like use.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 5:And it's like they're like, you know, open source, agentic harnesses, whatever. Sure. So Anthropic stopped that. Mhmm. So you can't use your base you you can't use your subscription Mhmm.
Speaker 5:As, like, the credits. You have to use the actual API.
Speaker 1:The actual API.
Speaker 5:Yes. Okay. That's, like, the main thing. It's, like, not to me, it doesn't seem that crazy of a thing because you can still use it with AI. It's more expensive.
Speaker 1:Is it an exchange rate thing maybe? Like, if I'm on Claude Pro or Claude Max, am I getting on the on a per dollar basis more tokens than I would Yeah. If I okay. Yes. Got it.
Speaker 5:Why there's, like, a lot Arbitrage. Right?
Speaker 1:Because They were getting arbed. Yeah. They said no more arbing us.
Speaker 5:You can think of, like, Cloud Code's gonna get much better if more people use it. Right? Because it's an RL environment, basically.
Speaker 1:Sure. Sure.
Speaker 5:So the the the data
Speaker 1:So they shouldn't be incentivizing people to go elsewhere, but they are still allowing people to go elsewhere just at the the consistent rate API rate.
Speaker 5:Yeah. So you can still like it's like bring your own key. You can do that.
Speaker 1:Okay. That doesn't seem like too
Speaker 5:It's not that crazy, but people are very mad. They're canceling their Cloud.
Speaker 1:People are mad. Mad at Cloud. So sad. Oh, well. I'm sure that they will figure it out, and the the fun will will continue.
Speaker 1:Oh, we do have to cover another story in the AI world. Logan Kilpatrick, friend of the show over at Google, he said, I'm happy to share that we, the Google AI Studio team, are now sponsoring Tailwind CSS, the project that had to lay off three people. And it was very dramatic because it was 75% of the team. But their business model was not really working because they were selling templates, which of course could be assembled by AI agents in the modern era.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I love this.
Speaker 1:Logan said, honored to support and find ways to do more together to help the ecosystem of builders. And I said, you drop this king
Speaker 2:and I gave him the crown.
Speaker 1:Mario holding the crown. If you scroll down, you should see it.
Speaker 2:Yeah. This is great. Me. I expected this I expected this to happen pretty quickly. I'm glad I'm glad Logan made this move.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And I think a handful of others did as well. So hopefully, Tailwind can hire back the handful of engineers that they were forced to let go. Yeah. And, yeah, this should give them some more predictability while they figure out the next chapter.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Well, in other news, OpenAI is reserving $50,000,000,000 for a stock grant pool. Jack Raines says, 500,000,000,000 company doing 13,000,000,000 in revenue, projecting 50,000,000,000 in equity comp is so good. So price of
Speaker 2:Price of SF real estate is going up.
Speaker 1:Price of the the AI research are going up, but they have the money to to distribute. That is a big equity pool, but it's an opportunity to join pre IPO, get some shares, and hopefully do well for yourself. Well, thank you so much for watching the show and tuning in today. We will be back First
Speaker 2:week in the books.
Speaker 1:Pacific on Monday. Only three stars
Speaker 2:sleep we're back.
Speaker 1:Spotify, and subscribe to our newsletter at tbpn.com. And with that, we'll say goodbye, and have a great weekend.
Speaker 2:Have an amazing weekend.
Speaker 1:Thank you for watching.
Speaker 2:We love you. See you
Speaker 1:on Goodbye.