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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 TBPN.
Speaker 2:Today is Tuesday, October 13. We got something in
Speaker 3:the mail.
Speaker 2:We are watching know what it is. The temple of technology, the fortunes of finance, the capital of capital. Let me tell you about ramp.com. Time is money. Save both.
Speaker 2:Easy to use corporate cards, bill pay, accounting, and a whole lot more all in one place. What'd we get in the mail, Jordy? Are you gonna open it?
Speaker 1:Or I don't know what it is. Okay. You guys can guess. What what could it be?
Speaker 2:How many days is it until Christmas? Do we have that counter?
Speaker 4:We should pull
Speaker 1:up our countdown if we have one. It'd be kinda crazy to have one It'd be know, before Thanksgiving Yeah. Halloween, but
Speaker 2:is a little early, but it
Speaker 1:would
Speaker 2:be nice to know how many days until Christmas.
Speaker 3:Boom.
Speaker 2:We only seventy two days? We're we're really... I think it's fair game now. It's totally fair game.
Speaker 1:Totally fair game.
Speaker 2:Not even... It was funny earlier. Now it's just serious business. So anyway, how was your weekend?
Speaker 1:It was great. Too long. Yeah? Too long.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Four days is way too much.
Speaker 1:I missed you. Yeah. Missed I missed the Ultradome. But I'm glad to be back.
Speaker 2:We are back. And yeah, it was a good good weekend. I saw the Social Reckoning. Big big drop, big weekend. Because I think it was opening weekend this weekend.
Speaker 2:The theater was completely empty. But it's interesting. Do you think that the Meta team tried to time up Muse Wonder all the good news to like fight back, like the cheeky pint appearance because they completely steamrolled the movie. They won. Don't think they needed to because the movie got really bad.
Speaker 1:The crazy thing is that I had I have zero desire to see the movie. Yeah. I will not be going to the movie. Yeah. And in many ways it's my job to at least go.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I feel like I figured you were gonna go. Yeah. So I felt like we were covered.
Speaker 2:So I did But
Speaker 1:it's crazy that I'm like... It's crazy how excited I am Yeah. To go see the Fielder film. Yeah. And how little I even care to even know about...
Speaker 1:I don't even care about your review.
Speaker 2:Okay. Well, you're about to care.
Speaker 1:Others might.
Speaker 2:My review is gonna be riveting. Okay?
Speaker 4:Okay.
Speaker 2:Okay. So it's Saturday. It's a little rainy in LA. And so I'm like, oh, I'll throw on this jacket. I'll I'll I'll get a little cozy.
Speaker 1:You go see a film.
Speaker 2:I had to go to some other events. Went to over to our friend's place. And then I go to the movie. So I walk in and I'm... And I think I'm looking good.
Speaker 2:I'm I'm dressed for like a, you know, nice rainy day in LA. I walk in to the theater, I sit down for the Social Reckoning and it stars, you know, it focuses on this Wall Street Journal reporter, Jeff Horwitz. And in the movie, I'll pull up a picture of what he wears in the movie because I looked like a kid from Spider Man who dressed up as Spider Man going to see Avengers. And I was like, wait, that's my exact jacket, my exact... I had the same jeans and boots too.
Speaker 2:It was it was really really striking. I just accidentally wore a costume to the movie. So it was very funny. And I was like, that is exactly my jacket. Like it's not even just the same brand.
Speaker 2:I think it's the exact same jacket.
Speaker 1:Anyway That's so funny.
Speaker 2:It was a very funny moment. But it's not quite a sequel to The Social Network. Like it's not the same structure of protagonists, antagonists. It's not really about the internal operations at Meta, at Facebook. It's very much about the...
Speaker 2:So the Mark Zuckerberg character is now played by Jeremy Strong instead of Jesse Eisenberg. And it's much more peripheral. The story follows data engineer Francis Howgen and Wall Street Journal investigative reporter Jeff Horowitz. The whole thing feels very out of date in the scaling era. The race towards superintelligence so dominant in the minds of tech people right now.
Speaker 2:I'm not surprised this movie is an underperforming because it doesn't answer the questions that people are asking about tech companies right now. Worldwide opening was 9,000,000 on a budget of 40,000,000. So it's it's like gearing up to be a flop but not the, you know, the game's not over yet. And Rotten Tomatoes has a 55% score across 215 reviews. The acting's fairly compelling.
Speaker 2:The lighting and... It moves quickly. The story ebbs and flows nicely over the two hour run time. But it feels like a time capsule from a completely different era. Mark Zuckerberg has so thoroughly reinvented himself that it felt like...
Speaker 2:I was like, who is who is Jeremy Strong playing? And I'm like, oh, yeah. Mark was kind of like that in 2019. But since then, it's like UFC, complete fashion makeover. Change the company's name.
Speaker 2:They have fashion line now with like glasses and so many different elements. And then AI, obviously, personal assistance. Like, hearing the word Facebook feels antiquated now because people have actually shifted to, well, Instagram's a more important social platform and then MSL and the AI stuff is really important. So Muse is a more important buzzword than than Facebook. And then they renamed the company and stuff.
Speaker 2:So it felt like a black black black from the past. You know, people often say the job of media is to speak truth to power, ask the hard questions. And I came away thinking Aaron Sorkin refused to ask the hard questions. There are so many hard questions to ask about Meta. You could ask, you know, will Muse margins be comparable to Meta's core ad business?
Speaker 2:But Yeah. Sorkin doesn't ask that. Or you could ask, like, does Muse Wonder jumping really good on the benchmarks, does that change the underlying...
Speaker 5:Is it benchmarks?
Speaker 2:Is it benchmarks? That's a hard question.
Speaker 1:And even Cheeky Pint even Cheeky Pint was pushing on that.
Speaker 2:Exactly. Corporate media. Sorkin completely drops the ball. Yeah. Doesn't address the fact that if Muse is if MuseWonder is competitive, does that change the underlying frontier model economic thesis?
Speaker 2:Like that's the that people want to ask. That's the question that media has a responsibility to ask and to investigate and to interrogate and yet Sorkin completely shirks his duty there. Will the retention curve for Muse smile? You know, right now there's some there's a post by D. D.
Speaker 2:D. Dosh showing that Muse, you know, there's a lot of excitement on day one. After 14, a lot of people have stopped using the product. Sometimes these things come back. What's going on there?
Speaker 2:Completely ignored by the movie. It was very, very odd. And so instead, he focuses on old stories that have been settled in the courts essentially. But there were a bunch of other funny things. I was taking notes.
Speaker 2:And it's hard because Michael, are you are you here to give your review?
Speaker 6:I have to be very careful because I'm a fan of Aaron Sorkin. Okay. I think he's great.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 6:He has made a lot of great work. Okay. This did not feel like one of those great...
Speaker 2:What what specifically was lacking? Because I thought the acting was pretty good and I thought like I... If it had been three hours, would have been like, oh, that was a drag. But like two hours, I thought it was okay. Was it just like too contrived?
Speaker 2:Because like I feel like my critique of it probably very different than yours.
Speaker 6:Yeah. Contrived feels like a good word. It just feels like... It felt like all the all the character dynamics and the dialogue and everything just felt so forced. Yeah.
Speaker 6:And it felt like it was trying to be like an eighties like journalistic thriller like No, All Residents Men or something like that. But it just felt like kind of out of place and it felt too polished to actually Yeah. Fit in that in that scope. Yeah. I don't know.
Speaker 2:It was a total glaze piece on The Wall Street Journal Because Wow. Jeff Horowitz...
Speaker 1:Maybe I wanna watch it now.
Speaker 2:Jeff Horowitz, I mean, sure he's in shape, but let's be honest. Jeremy Allen White, the guy is diced. He's absolutely shredded and they've made... They cast him as like the ultimate Chad. There were a bunch of other funny moments where Jeff Horowitz, the character, the journalist shows up and he's like, I don't even have a Facebook.
Speaker 2:I don't know how to use the GPS stuff in my... He's like the extremely offline guy. And there's a whole bunch of funny funny moments where the benefits of social media are kind of revealed through this because part of it takes place during COVID and the Francis Hogan character is like, oh, yeah. I set up a Facebook group for all these scientists and everyone, like, really understands how serious COVID's gonna be. And and the journalist who's, like, offline, like, doesn't care about tech is, that's a bunch of mumbo jumbo.
Speaker 2:And it's, like, wait. Like, you're kind of pitching me the whole idea of, like, the Internet. Like, it's, like, the biology calling COVID so much earlier. Like, there Yeah. Clearly are some benefits here.
Speaker 2:But there's a bunch of other stuff. They... What stuck out? They... Oh, they have this funny moment where they're like, Mark Zuckerberg has a bulletproof couch and they're framing it as like, look at how weird this guy is and it's the meme like, literal coolest thing ever.
Speaker 2:Like this thing sucks. Because I'm watching them, I'm like, bulletproof couch. That's amazing.
Speaker 1:The couch that's always watching your back.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So the idea is that you can hide under it. And and they kind of frame it as like he's being a coward by having it because like you should obviously like charge straight into the hail of gunfire if you're being attacked. But... And they're like, he would be hiding behind his...
Speaker 1:Did I not kinda call this like two months ago that no one would care at all about the the whole premise of this movie anymore. Yeah. Like, the the the whole... The the the narrative Yeah. Like, even the the media itself is so far moved on.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:That they... I would have liked to see this kind of production on the current AI race. Yeah. Right? And I think we're getting something like that with artificial.
Speaker 1:Yeah. But it's interesting because, like, the social network
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Cult... I don't know I don't know if I can say this. This is a cult classic?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it was a it was a box office success as well, but...
Speaker 1:Box office success but within tech, it's like it's a classic. It was so it it it was so influential on the culture, sort of had the opposite effect that that the the makers of the film maybe wanted it to have, where everyone was like, I wanna be like Zach. Yeah. I wanna be that guy. At least at least on the inside of the industry.
Speaker 1:And and and in some ways, like, could imagine that that Zac and his team were were worried about Totally. This movie because the last one was like such a hit outside... In the outside world and within the tech industry and they've had to... It was like, I'm sure hard to reinvent like, Zac or figure out who he was outside of, you know, the... At some point in the twenty tens, it felt like he was just becoming the character.
Speaker 1:He was looking more and more like the character in the movie in some ways, like almost like becoming... Wait. When? This was like late...
Speaker 2:Yeah. And then P. T. Has that idea that it's it's funny and ironic that Mark Zuckerberg became the Justin Timberlake character from the movie.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Or that or that was... That was... But it was like so influential on it was so influential on the industry and especially the next generation of founders that it seemed like it had an influence on Zuck Oh, you like yourself. I don't know.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's funny. I mean, definitely it definitely feels like the the the post 2020 UFC, like, you know...
Speaker 1:Yeah. That that was like, wait, who am I? Who do I wanna be? Yeah. I have to figure out.
Speaker 2:And he created a ton of distance because the Jeremy Strong character, it feels like it's a completely different person. And then he also... Jeremy Strong reads as kind of older, but he's playing a much younger character than what you see on Cheeky Pint, who's like actually Jeremy Strong's age, but has become something else. Yeah. There's a whole bunch of interesting weird things.
Speaker 2:There's... Yeah. There's also a bunch of things where you're like, oh, that just doesn't that doesn't that's not how things work. Like, there's a scene where Mark Zuckerberg is like addressing the board and explaining how the algorithm will work. And he's like, emoji reactions will be worth five points.
Speaker 2:And and retweets will be worth 50 points. And it's like seen as like, oh my god, he designed the algorithm for controversy. And it's like, that's... You know that the algorithm is like 12 levels deep. It's like, he goes to Adam Messieri, who goes to the chief technology officer, goes to VP of engineering, who says like, okay, what are we doing?
Speaker 2:He's like, well, we created this optimization pipeline for retention that balances all these things. It's a bunch of it's a bunch of data, we have no idea what's going on in the black box, but we saw the retention went up. There's no there's no one at Yeah. Facebook who's like, add another three points to retweets or reposts or whatever, shares. It's like it's like more more signal than can be humanly understood for sure.
Speaker 2:Also, it's just hilarious view of like Hollywood's perception of tech that, like, the final shot of Mark Zuckerberg is him sitting in front of, like, a 42 inch TV in this, like, war room. And he's just, like, sitting there like this and he's just watching code scroll by. Just like really fast code scrolling by. And it's like, why would you be reviewing code at extreme speeds during like... It happens during like January 6.
Speaker 2:It's like, that's not how you monitor a situation.
Speaker 1:Yeah. You could just open Instagram.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. And then also, like, they go through the Trump ban in this weird way where it's very much it's framed as like his decision. And it's like, if you were if you were paying attention on that day, it's like very clear that all of the different tech CEOs were like in a group chat together talking about like, hey, if we're gonna do this, we all gotta do it at once because like otherwise we will be singled out as like the one that did that did it. So there's a bunch of interesting things.
Speaker 2:And Yeah. Very weird that Aaron Sorkin like seems to be under the impression that Frances Haugen and Jeff Horwitz like had a romance of some sort. Which they deny. And Jeff Horwitz was like, Aaron Sorkin, please don't make it seem like it was romantic. We were...
Speaker 2:I would... She was my source and we just worked together on this, but we weren't romantically involved. And there's like so many scenes where you're like, okay, they're trying to make... They're kind of making it look like they're gonna date. And then they like sail off into the sunset and you're like, oh, so did they get married?
Speaker 2:And you look it up and it's like, no. They were both married to other people the whole time. Very weird. Anyway, funny movie. But the big news, of course, is Meta.
Speaker 2:Zuck says Meta has reached the frontier with its new Muse Wonder agent. What was the exact line? He said he said he he don't...
Speaker 1:No. Get into we'll get into that. Let's Okay. Talk Go back about
Speaker 2:to it. So this is from the Financial Times. Mark Zuckerberg says Meta has reached the AI frontier. Feet interview tech billionaire touts release of new MuseWonder model after vast spending to challenge rivals in AI race. Let me tell you about CrowdStrike.
Speaker 2:Your business is AI. Their business is securing it. CrowdStrike secures AI and stops reaches. So yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So speaking with the Feet, as Meta released its Muse Wonder AI model on Monday, this is watermelon, right?
Speaker 2:Everyone's doing the the fruit thing. Was strawberry and then there's banana and now there's watermelon. Internal code names. I mean, guess the fruit code names are, like, hard to read into. Like, unlike the the Greek mythology, which is, like, laden with all sorts of pitfalls and you can be in
Speaker 1:Yeah. Hubris Didn't meaning.
Speaker 2:A tale all of sudden. Anyway, he said the new system was going to allow much more sophisticated behaviors that are at the frontier of what's being done in the AI field. Silicon Valley group... The Silicon Valley group claims Muse Wonder outperforms or performs better than comparable models released by Anthropic and OpenAI in some tasks according to technical benchmarks. The release mark...
Speaker 2:Marks a major milestone for Zuckerberg who, since last year, has committed billions of dollars to shake up Meta's AI leadership, build vast data centers and hire star AI researchers on multimillion dollar salaries, all in a bid to keep pace with OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. Quote, Getting to this point required both a large amount of compute and investment and a lot of very rigorous scientific work by the group working on it over an extended period of time. So he's bullish. He's posting on X about it. What's your take, Jordy?
Speaker 1:I was trying to understand how Mark and Alex really felt about the model by watching Cheeky Pint on the drive to work today. Was listening. It's great to have Cheeky Pint back. I thought that they were all like... I mean, this was the most candid I've ever seen suck.
Speaker 1:That's great. Like, he felt like he was just hanging out, having a beer Yeah. Trying to have a couple beers. Yeah. And so I thought I Tyler thought
Speaker 2:it was cataloged it.
Speaker 1:He did. How many exactly Tyler? Think that's more. It was 1.4 pints.
Speaker 2:1.4? Okay.
Speaker 1:Okay. And I will just go out and say, as somebody who's had a couple drinks while recording a podcast, as we would celebrate whenever we would double way back in the day, I certainly... We always felt that the content just got worse.
Speaker 2:Totally.
Speaker 1:Like, it was like each sip it was getting like a little bit worse. Yeah. So we basically...
Speaker 2:No, it's a funny idea. You think it'll be bit looser, it'll be better content, but that's just not what happens.
Speaker 1:You're just not as sharp.
Speaker 2:You're just not as sharp.
Speaker 1:Period not as sharp and and I yeah, it wasn't like... Suddenly it was like, there's no reason we're here for three hours.
Speaker 2:So if you're going do it, got to practice. You got to be drinking
Speaker 1:six to twelve minutes. If I'm Zuck and I have to launch this new model family and talk about views and all these things, you've got to give him credit because either one, he was practicing having like 10 beers a day so that when he had 1.4, he was still feeling like sharp.
Speaker 2:Like He to built up his tolerance.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Built up his tolerance. But either way, ballsy to come on and just start throwing him back. So yeah, trying to understand, you know, the benchmarks are all amazing. Muse is a great product.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:People love it. They manage by being later movers. They manage to solve a bunch of problems. Totally. And created just a more compelling user experience.
Speaker 1:I thought it was cool. They were even talking about how they even talk about their experience with Open Claw Sure. Which was cool. But I was trying to if you actually listen to the wording, Zach's wording, he said the quote that stood out to me, and I had to play it back a few times to get the exact string of words. He said, this is the beginning of like MSL kind of being at the frontier.
Speaker 1:This is the beginning of Just
Speaker 2:turn it on.
Speaker 1:Like MSL kind of being at the frontier.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's so hard.
Speaker 1:At twenty four minute mark. And then And so Brother Collison then said, so you think this is Astra or Fable level? Yeah. And then Alex and Zuck kind of both like fight over each other for a second, which can't knock them for. We do the same thing.
Speaker 7:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:We just
Speaker 4:do that.
Speaker 1:But then they said by looking at the benchmarks, one would conclude that. Which to me is like, yeah, we all see the benchmarks. They look amazing. Yeah. We all...
Speaker 1:But you've been accused of benchmarking before and so we all wanna...
Speaker 2:No. No. I don't think they've been accused of benchmarking before. Oh, maybe like early...
Speaker 1:I mean, Spark. Like, everyone went through with Spark's bench, you know.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:But it's not like... And and so to me, it's just like... So you think this is asked for a fable level and then you answer... By looking at the benchmarks, one would conclude that. Again, like, I don't think that they are actually...
Speaker 1:It doesn't... Based on a few of these factors Yeah. I don't think they're I don't think they're really at the frontier.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:And I think it will become pretty obvious that that's the case. Yeah. As people...
Speaker 2:I mean, these things always like the the the crown goes back and forth so quickly. Like, they're, you know, they've been working on this for a long time. They launched it. Who knows what the other labs have up their sleeves to fire back, etcetera. I...
Speaker 2:But I I do think the the language is odd because the the... It feels like there's pretty little downside to just being like, yeah, this is a fable class model. And just use the anthropic terminology because everyone has an idea of what fable means. It's like big model, you know, really expensive. And you're like, yeah, we're giving this away.
Speaker 2:We we're putting it in the same category. But it's basically free because it's integrated into the product.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And... But here's here's what here's what is I think here's what I think is interesting.
Speaker 2:And then people can quibble over like the...
Speaker 1:I think you have to be way more excited have to be way about what MSL is doing Yeah. Than Google or SpaceX at this point. Yeah. And you have to give... Like, everyone should be giving Mark credit for that.
Speaker 1:If you're thinking about rewinding a year, even after the talent raids, hey, a year from now, you're gonna be more excited and more interested about what MSL is doing than Google and XAI, SpaceX. Yeah. You know, this was this was pre merger. Yeah. So, yeah.
Speaker 1:They're they're competitive.
Speaker 2:For sure.
Speaker 1:For sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It is interesting that that SpaceX has yet to launch a model. Elon's been very very cautious with the words on, like, when the progress will come from that team on Grok and different versions. But obviously, they have cursor. They have a great team in inside.
Speaker 2:So you would think that there'd be there'd be more progress there. But he's been sort of downplaying a little bit more. But Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting.
Speaker 2:The the the big debate... The funny thing about the the interaction with like the meta universe and like the EA world is... I mean, going back to the movie, there's this moment where there... Like somebody asks Francis Howe again like, what what what percentage of teenage girls having a bad experience on Instagram would be acceptable to you? Like, developing body image issues.
Speaker 2:And she's like, two percent. Maybe one percent. She, like, backtracks it. And they're like, it's thirty four percent. That's like a bombshell.
Speaker 2:But from like an EA perspective, it's like, oh, so like potentially net good if like if like 46% are positively impacted and only 34% are negatively impacted. It's like you take that trade all day long because it, like, maths out in the spreadsheet. Not how people actually think about things, but it really goes to show you how how different philosophical how how different philosophically some of the some of the worlds are right now. And and this is like the the the AI safety world is like colliding with Mark Zuckerberg right now. Like Andrew Curran summed it up.
Speaker 2:He said, pacing is out the window. For it to work, every American lab needed to be on board. Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly make it made it clear that he is not interested. One defection among US labs breaks it all as the others will be forced to accelerate or get past. Mark has a staggering amount of compute and and has been all in on compute CapEx for years even in the face of some investor opposition.
Speaker 2:He never stopped building his info once. He said on the earnings call a couple years ago that he'd rather overspend now and potentially even be wrong than not have the compute when he needed it for the next ten x. He's finally hitting his stride and he's not going to slow down for team pacing to solve a defection like this. They would have needed a supportive pro pacing administration that was passing capable capability regulations and was willing to use the power of the federal government to enforce them and bring non non compliant labs into line. They don't have any of this.
Speaker 2:In fact, it's the opposite. Marques Trump's ear, president Trump, Mark Zuckerberg, Jensen are all completely aligned on policy. It's full speed ahead. And if you wanna pace yourself, go ahead, but don't tell anyone else what to do. That...
Speaker 2:This breaks pacing. And so the interesting thing is like the... They're like, are we on the frontier? Are we not? There are benefits to being on the frontier from a prosumer adoption perspective.
Speaker 2:Like people will be like, oh, gotta try the new model. It's Fable class. Or it's it's it's Astra but it's cheaper or it's Astra but it's integrated by Instagram. People will be excited to try that. But if you actually say like, now we're on the frontier.
Speaker 2:We're the most important AI lab. It's like, okay. So what are you doing about the potential problems from AI? Like, now you're the one getting the hard questions about that stuff. And so it it like being like a strong second, a strong third actually gives you a little bit of cover because you can say, oh, well, like the, you know, the most dangerous stuff, like, yeah, like Muse Wonder's created coding, but you can't build bioweapons.
Speaker 2:Like, that's not that's not anything. Like, we'll see that emerge at the frontier labs first. We'll see those problems confronted by Yeah. Entropical that's one
Speaker 1:of the reasons that's one of the reasons why you can say like they're not at the frontier because the researchers that are at the frontier sometimes Freaking out. Sometimes have this like, you know, stare where you're like, oh, you've seen things. Yeah. That no... You've seen man made horrors beyond...
Speaker 1:Beyond all comprehension. Yeah. Yeah. Let's pull up this video on Saturday, Zuck. Zuck went live.
Speaker 2:He went back to the barbecue.
Speaker 1:Went back to the barbecue. Wow. Back to the Let's pull up this video. Let's get some sound on.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Tank. We're smoking sausage. Smoke whatever the fuck we want.
Speaker 2:Wow. Okay. So... This real?
Speaker 4:This is
Speaker 1:not AI. I I just a boy during this era. But he didn't used to like post selfie videos during the social network.
Speaker 2:He was in and out of going direct through the entire journey.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:So he like...
Speaker 1:Because like part of the reason that this new the new Yeah. The new movie doesn't hit
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Is because you just see Zuck all
Speaker 2:the time Yep.
Speaker 1:Talking to people.
Speaker 2:Totally.
Speaker 1:And he'll go on podcasts
Speaker 2:And and you could do an impression of the new Zuck and make fun of him and do a more exaggerated version of this character and poke fun at the quirks of this character. But it's a completely different vector of, like, comedic attack than the previous arc. Yeah. So I mean early on he did a he did like an interview where he was talking to some interviewer and he was drinking a beer out of a solo cup and it was like very casual and funny. Then he went on stage with Kara Swisher and she was asking him like hard questions and he started like sweating and and sort of pacing in his sweatshirt.
Speaker 2:And it was like a really like bad moment where it was like, oh, like he couldn't handle the pressure. He like crumbled in the hot seat. And then...
Speaker 1:I'm sure he was just getting his steps in but Yes.
Speaker 2:And then and then there were a number of other things where he would like start doing long posts on Facebook directly, writing blog posts. He did... He tested like the live stream functionality with that smoking meats video And Sam Lesson is in that video and that was actually like a longer live stream.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So so this new live stream was almost the tenth anniversary of that. It was on ninth Yeah. '20 '16.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And so I think I think he tested it out with the Sweet Baby Ray's smoking meats thing but there was like some backlash. He'd but he'd he'd livestreamed like other presentations, other talks, keynotes and stuff. So he'd always been dipping his toe in and out of going direct and working with the media and and being quiet. Like there's been there's been arcs and ups and downs throughout the entire journey.
Speaker 2:But the Sweet Baby Ray's thing, think he he embraced as a meme pretty quickly because in a future keynote or, you know, video, he had a bottle of Sweet Baby Ray's on the on the shelf and was sort of like a nod. And he's made jokes about that like many times and sort of leaned in. And so this is just further further leaning in. But anyway, let me tell you about the New York Stock Exchange. Wanna change the world?
Speaker 2:Raise capital at the New York Stock Exchange. So what what else is important to review here before we move on? Because there are a lot of other posts. People really enjoyed the Cheeky Fine. I'm so glad it's back.
Speaker 2:And this is a really good format. Doing like two two interviews, one host turns it into a round table. We've seen Alex on David Senrea. We've seen Mark on... He did sources recently.
Speaker 2:There's been a couple other interviews, but this roundtable format really, really works. Oh, it's funny that they're talking about deploying capital for AI spend. And and Alex is like, you have to make this very large investment. You have to make big decisions about how you're going to invest and develop the technology before you know that there's data to support this. And it's funny because you go back and listen to Dario on Dwarkesh and he's like, there's these people that are just yellowing.
Speaker 2:And everyone's like, oh, he's talking about OpenAI. But it's like, oh, no. He was actually talking about Meta too. And it was absolutely the right thing to do. So it's just funny.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Seems that way so far. But I... This didn't... Yeah.
Speaker 1:The the Using like this line to try to criticize Zach's management style is like he's always operated the business this way. He's always been willing to bet the company. He's always been willing to invest more. He this with the metaverse. Think like it's...
Speaker 1:I don't think if you look back I don't think if you look back it's like......
Speaker 2:The company if you're just spending a
Speaker 1:lot Yeah. Not cash betting not betting the company. He's just because that's not the right word.
Speaker 2:He'll just be like, I have this cash machine and I'm going to spend it. Like he actually treats $10,000,000,000 like it's $10 because he makes $200,000,000,000,
Speaker 1:you know?
Speaker 2:Yeah. And like, to him, it's like, you know, a nice car. Yeah. And for other people.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I I just never thought that with the metaverse, was like, oh, like, this is a 100% going to work, so that's why we're going to invest so much. It was like, there's a chance that this is the next paradigm on a shorter time horizon than the rest of the world thinks and we're going to invest against that. And it's okay if it doesn't work out. Clearly, the company has been fine.
Speaker 2:It is remarkable how how quick companies can catch up in AI, can can get another foothold, can train a new model, can get near the frontier or to the frontier with enough effort, versus metaverse and VR where, you know, Microsoft has a HoloLens and, like, it didn't really go anywhere. And like Apple, when are they going to fire back with the next Visionaire or Vision Pro Yeah. Or something. It's just completely... When you're when you're operating in the domain of pure software, things move so much faster.
Speaker 2:Anyway, speaking of Apple, Apple just announced HomeView, a $299 smart home hub. John Turnis posted it on X. Let's play the video and I want to know, are you in the market for this? Looks like a big Apple Watch, like the rounded rectangle or the rounded square. You're spinning like it?
Speaker 2:Yeah. We heard about this, and I thought it was gonna be much more like the Pixar lamp, like, with an articulated arm. It has a much simpler design to it. I think it just swivels and then you can manually adjust it up and down. But I guess it can follow you around the room if you put it on a kitchen island and they're touting the new Apple intelligence and they think that will catch up.
Speaker 2:It is interesting how what they will have to do to catch up to Muse and Instinct and Dot and Crockbot. Like, are several AI agent products that are barely fully featured at this point and they all have pros and cons based on what they integrate with. Apple has an incredible integration point and an incredible model partner with Gemini. I think if you if you went to Noah Shen and said you can only use DeepMind models, he would... But they're free, he would say, yeah, game on.
Speaker 2:Like I I can build a great product. But it'll be interesting to see like when do they have Yeah. The hey, go and go and, you know, plan a birthday party, reserve, make a reservation, create the invite, send it out to all my friends and, you know, just come to me with the key decision making questions. And I don't want to be involved. I want you to actually do this agentically.
Speaker 2:That that functionality, that feels far off.
Speaker 1:Screams, you know, it screams stagnation.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:And yeah. It's hard to get excited about this. I would be... So here's here's where I would get excited, John.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:If Apple actually... And maybe this is where they're going. Yep. But if if Apple was committed to actually making this device be able to control all of the electronics around my house from like my gates to cameras to Yeah. Lights to HVAC, all that kind of thing
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:I would be extremely excited. Because the current system I have in my house is like some random tablet thing. I don't even know who makes it
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 1:Attached to the wall. Yeah. And it controls everything and the software is really bad.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And if they were gonna actually... Is that what they're doing or is this literally just like a half iPad, half computer that sits on your kitchen counter?
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's an iPad. Okay. So... And that functionality exists.
Speaker 2:Like, Astra or Fable can, like, straight up reverse engineer the API to your garage door clicker and make it work on the smart home. But then they bump into the OS layer all over the place. But I think they're going to reverse engineer that too.
Speaker 1:Think Yeah.
Speaker 2:I think the end state might be buy this and jailbreak it and run your own software that's sort of instantiated on the fly or forked from something. Yeah. But in terms of industrial design, looks pretty nice.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Really solving a problem that no one has.
Speaker 2:Let me tell you about the New York Stock Exchange. How to change the world? Raise capital at the New York Stock Exchange.
Speaker 1:John needed to break the ice so he ran another ad for the New York Stock Exchange.
Speaker 2:Oh, wait. Sorry.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Solving a problem that I don't have. You know when you're FaceTiming and you need the phone to follow you around the room and it's hard to hold it because you're cooking and you want it... And you want the camera to follow you around the room. Yeah.
Speaker 1:But we built the solution for that.
Speaker 2:So Meta had a product that competed with this called the Portal. Yeah. Same thing.
Speaker 1:And I was... I like that for the name. It's Portal Time, baby.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I I actually did get a bunch of them for family members during COVID, and we used them, like, once. And then and then they started collecting dust. Worked as, like, picture friends, basically. But, they they they they did not become, like, the smart home.
Speaker 2:Although maybe they should bring that back now that they have Muse. Like they they basically have a direct competitor to this pre built. They just need to update some software. And like they Yeah.
Speaker 4:One of the
Speaker 1:other videos was like highlighting... One of the other videos was highlighting Siri. Yeah. Like the Siri integration here.
Speaker 2:Comes with Siri AI.
Speaker 1:And we know they're working on making a better Siri. But I actually... It made me realize I think they need to change the voice of Siri. Because at this point, anybody
Speaker 2:The brand is
Speaker 1:brand new. Everybody has had so many disappointments using Siri that I just associate the name with like, I tried to do something, it didn't work or I accidentally triggered Siri. Yeah. I definitely don't wanna do that. And so I think they have to like rebrand.
Speaker 2:You want Tim Cook?
Speaker 1:I want... Yeah. I want Digital. Chair... I want I want the chairman Yeah.
Speaker 1:Speaking to me.
Speaker 2:That'd be great.
Speaker 5:Good morning.
Speaker 2:Let's see. Is software actually...
Speaker 1:But here's but here's the thing.
Speaker 2:Okay. Continue.
Speaker 1:Can you... So so I use FaceTime with family members. Yeah. Usually, like with the kids. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And like it's very chaotic.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:The kids are like jumping all around. Inordinately. Can you imagine trying to have a successful like, FaceTime with, like, the HomeView No. With, like, a bunch of kids running around? It would just be, like, it would just be getting kicked over.
Speaker 2:Yeah. You'd put it out... You'd be... You'd, like, need to put it on the floor in the playroom, and then it would... They would get kicked over.
Speaker 2:Or they would need to be tall enough to stand and then in which case they could maybe just hold the phone.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's odd. Yeah. And I'd just be curious how Apple thinks about this. Is this like a, yeah, we have enough customers that like a million people will buy this.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Like, does it actually move anything? I I would just like to... Yeah. I would love to see that like really bold bet on like we are actually gonna provide iPhone level software
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:For your entire home.
Speaker 2:I mean, would be... I mean, Amazon has gone on a tear and bought like a smart lock system and and they bought Ring cameras and all sorts of different... They have Aero WiFi mesh routing. And so it would be very cool. Like, this could be so much cooler if it was like, oh, yeah.
Speaker 2:Meta or Apple also has a garage door company and a and a and a smart doorbell company. And they also have a product for the cameras in your home. And they have a and they have a wide range of speakers and they make a TV. And so you can actually get all your consumer products from them. And if you go all in, get a great experience, but you gotta be in the walled garden.
Speaker 2:Instead, it's like even if you go all in on Apple, you just don't wind up... You're you're still gonna have so many devices because they don't have a thermostat. Google has a thermostat, but they don't have a thermostat. And so you're going to wind up with like all these weird integration points where Google's like, oh, well, yeah, we're happy to integrate with Siri AI but like let's make sure you're still in in... You're logged in to your Nest Google account or whatever and they're going be fighting.
Speaker 2:So anyway, let's let's move on. Two, console. Console builds AI agents that automate 70% IT, HR, and finance support, giving employees instant resolution for access requests and password resets. People are going back and forth on on software being dead. There's no mode.
Speaker 2:The mode is you. Blah blah blah. The one that the one that I wanted to cover was... Oh, there... Did you see the spa sign?
Speaker 2:The AI generated sign outside of the spa? That is a sign of a sign?
Speaker 1:I love it. Went... They really took me into a different world.
Speaker 2:And they and they zoom in. Because they they they generated an image of a sign and they printed it and put it on a sign.
Speaker 1:Sign ception.
Speaker 2:Yes. They should add a not for you tab. I want to see what the algorithm thinks I'd hate. That's funny. This one this one was...
Speaker 2:I had me dying. Well, that's a new one. My Mustang came back from a touro trip fully tinted. Someone rented this guy's Mustang and they tinted it so that they could enjoy tint while while on the tour road trip.
Speaker 1:It makes me think they were maybe doing something that... No eagle? Very questionable?
Speaker 2:Very, very questionable. Very, very questionable.
Speaker 1:People were going back and forth. Elon posted Yeah. I think his mailing address just right on Main.
Speaker 2:Did
Speaker 1:he? He said, I asked Grok to research the most fun LEGO Star Wars kits for young kids and order them. As easy as that. But if you zoom in, can see that he's sending product to somewhere and it has a shipping address and billing address and
Speaker 2:That's a crazy lead.
Speaker 1:Crazy thing to post. And I don't know if this is true. Yeah. It's probably not. But somebody said, like, I just cancelled your order.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Don't share your info online. So they had the order number, all that other details. Who knows?
Speaker 2:Yeah. This seems maybe photoshopped because...
Speaker 1:Yeah. And he says, that's not my address and the order isn't cancelled. Yeah. Got
Speaker 2:him. But yeah. I mean, yeah. It's a tell because the first reply by the bot is, hi, Elon. Thanks for waiting.
Speaker 2:And it's like, it wouldn't know that until you actually went and said, I'm Elon. Here's my information. Please cancel. It would be potentially possible to do that with with a bad prompt injection or something. But did you see this this f one camera transition?
Speaker 1:I did. Break it down This for
Speaker 2:is elite elite transition. Play this. So it goes from one camera to the next. And everyone thinks they're using AI to merge the two the two video feeds, which is really really cool. Way way more immersive.
Speaker 2:So there's levels. We gotta get the AI transitions in the ultra dome for sure. We gotta figure out how they did this. But that is such a cool such a cool move. What are drinking over
Speaker 1:there? OJ.
Speaker 2:Orange juice? Why does Merck think f one is a scam? F one might be the greatest scam of the decade, totally unwatchable IRL. 50% oversupplied for paddock tickets. They're just random IBM and Oracle employees.
Speaker 2:That's a dream come true. Who else do you wanna be hanging out with other than
Speaker 5:I agree.
Speaker 1:Tech employees? It is completely unwatchable, IRL.
Speaker 2:It's not about, like, following the race directly.
Speaker 8:Like, you
Speaker 2:can still watch the TV or the map if you want. It's about like being there to feel the cars go by really fast, I think. Like,
Speaker 1:that... But it's really just like a... It's a big spectacle now. Yeah. Like, it's not about It's like a weekend, and
Speaker 2:you're there to, like, watch the performance. Like, you go to the practice, sometimes you'll take a ride on a vehicle and go on the physical track. It's like... It's much more experiential than, like, you're locked in, like, walking Yeah.
Speaker 1:No. And and the and the biggest challenge with motorsports is the viewers, live viewers, whether you're watching at home or at the event Yeah. You have no way of understanding what the drivers are going through. Like... Oh, sure.
Speaker 1:Because...
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's all abstract.
Speaker 1:Because it's so normalized because the cars are going around and they and they rarely crash. Yeah. And so it doesn't feel nearly... And they're and they're so precise, they're so technical, they're so highly skilled that they just normalize it very quickly, even though it's completely ridiculous. Like, it's one of the craziest things that we do as humans.
Speaker 1:No, it's insane. And it's an insane But again, you can't tell that they're they're they have like the equivalent of like a ridiculous fever the entire time that they're driving. Right? Like you can't tell that that... Not
Speaker 2:at all. Well, gets kind of snippy on the on the comps sometimes. Yeah. And that's but that's the most you get.
Speaker 9:That's
Speaker 2:it. Well, speaking of cars, Alfa Romeo launched a new car. I want your review. The Corresco, Coro Rosso launched and they put up a YouTube video here breaking it down. There's also an article that we can click through from Autoblog.
Speaker 2:But let's play the actual video. I think it's a cool launch and I wanna know what you think about the front, the wheels, the back.
Speaker 7:Cars became Let's
Speaker 2:play this video.
Speaker 10:They almost forgot how to make a heart's race. But not us. Every Alfa Romeo has always been built around the same engine. Not the one beneath the hood, the one inside our chest. That's why an Alfa Romeo has never simply taken you somewhere.
Speaker 10:It has always taken your breath away. As
Speaker 1:much as I wanna keep watching this, we have our
Speaker 2:first Give us your review first.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna I'm gonna leave it as cliffhanger.
Speaker 2:Cliffhanger?
Speaker 1:Cliffhanger. We'll get back to it.
Speaker 2:I think the I think the front looks great. I think the side looks great. The back is a little crazy, but it's it's Let me tell you about MongoDB. What's the only thing faster than the AI market? Your business on MongoDB.
Speaker 2:Don't just build AI. Own the data platform that powers it. And let's bring in our first guests of
Speaker 4:the show. Welcome
Speaker 2:Boom. To the show. Thank you so much There
Speaker 4:they are.
Speaker 2:For joining. Let's start with some introductions. Knows who's who.
Speaker 4:Hey, guys. Go ahead, William.
Speaker 11:Hi. I'm William Chew. I'm the head of private equity over at Zurich Alternative Asset Management. Thank you guys very much for having us here. Long time fan, first time joiner, diet coke enabled.
Speaker 1:There you go. Cheers. Great to have you. About these other two? Who are they?
Speaker 4:Hey guys. Good to see you again. Some of you know me. My name is pronounced Anjney. Friends call me Anjney.
Speaker 4:You guys should feel free to as well. And you got my partner Negin over here. Hey there.
Speaker 12:Hey. Negin Oliver. Nice to meet you guys.
Speaker 1:Amazing. Where are guys calling in from? Side of the road somewhere? Data center?
Speaker 4:You can... You Does it
Speaker 2:look good? Is it obvious? Isn't that the Golden Gate Bridge?
Speaker 1:I mean Yes. Your hat was kind of blocking it, I gotta say. At least at the start. But now now I see it. I thought you were gonna be somewhere down in like West Texas or something like that.
Speaker 1:But it's amazing to have you guys.
Speaker 4:Well, aren't aren't federal land. We're at the Presidio in which is where our campus is. This is where AMP is headquartered. Cool. And and so we just stepped outside for some sunshine and to talk to you guys.
Speaker 4:Thanks for having us.
Speaker 1:Amazing. Well, why don't you kick it off, Anj? Yeah. Why are we all here today? And why is this...
Speaker 1:Why will this day be remembered throughout? Why will it echo throughout Yeah.
Speaker 4:Well, as you guys know, compute is getting expensive. And as sheriffs in the AI infrastructure world, we started getting a lot of calls for help last year from startups who wanted access to compute at scale. But because they weren't as rich as the hyperscalers, they were getting told they could not access the compute they needed. So they called us in. We're the cavalry, and I'm excited to announce today that we're kicking off a $100,000,000,000 program called the Grid Trust that's been anchored by Zurich.
Speaker 4:Mhmm. Zurich Asset Management is one of the biggest institutional investors in the world. They have over 300,000,000,000 of assets under management, and they have anchored the Grid Trust program with a meaningful amount of capital that we are using to bring up capacity... Compute capacity for startups all around the world. And we're really lucky that we had Negin join us from AMD to lead this effort when Negin Negin was at AMD for over eight years and helped build the GPU business over there from scratch.
Speaker 4:So between Negin and William, we're in pretty good hands.
Speaker 2:That's great.
Speaker 1:Where should we start from here?
Speaker 4:William, I'm gonna hand it over. I'm gonna call on William a little bit to explain
Speaker 2:Perfect.
Speaker 4:What Zurich does. I think the the big question every time you guys have asked me, Anj, do you want to build out two gigawatts? Yeah. Your question has always been, how are gonna pay for it? And so the good news is we've got William to answer your question.
Speaker 11:Well, that's a that's a heavy ask there. But, look, happy to give you some perspective from our lens here and just for some context as well. What I do here over at Zurich Alternative Asset Management. We are the alternative investing arm of Zurich Insurance Group. Obviously, you know, it's a publicly traded company.
Speaker 11:I will slightly correct Anj. We have a little bit more than 300,000,000,000. It's actually 440,000,000,000. Woah.
Speaker 4:There you go.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow. It's just a rounding error. $100,000,000,000 rounding error.
Speaker 11:You know, what's the... What's that among friends. Right? But...
Speaker 4:Exactly two gigawatts. Isn't that convenient?
Speaker 11:Yeah. Look, we are super thrilled, super excited with our partnership here with AMP. And Anj is a a dear friend of mine and the team as well. I've got to know them for some time and really excited about this ambition endeavor. Super proud to have this opportunity and privilege to kind of showcase with you guys live today, as you said.
Speaker 11:This is kind of a a more... A very memorable day for us and, obviously, for hopefully the future of compute. I mean, there's a number of reasons why we're super excited about this opportunity. And, you know, I think from a perspective of what really kinda got us over over the hump, so to speak, is a a few reasons. One, I would say is Anj has been kind of the lead catalyst around the whole world of compute, he's he's looking to change the game in venture, in in the very core and what the essence of it is.
Speaker 11:I cannot be more excited about partnering with someone like that who is not just to kinda be yet another venture firm, because I think the firm... The reality is, you know, we've seen a lot of those folks out there, but I think for those that really kinda have an ambitious plan to really change the DNA of what it means to be a venture capitalist today in today's environment, I think that's one of the reasons why we're super excited. And I think from the specific opportunity set here, I think a few reasons. One is I'll break it down into a few categories, so I'll try to be brief. Right?
Speaker 11:But, you know, the spending curve. One is people often think about the frontier AI labs and the compute. It's always speculative. But, frankly, the infrastructure side behaves a little bit more like a utility than a start up. And that's, I think, a testament to what Anj has been kind of evangelizing, and we're a believer as well.
Speaker 11:I've... Obviously, some data and research has kinda shown that. I think model capabilities have improved. I mean, we know the obvious ones, particularly on the frontier side. And likewise, higher compute consumption has followed.
Speaker 11:Right? So labs may compete, models come and go and change, but the demand, frankly, for the compute has followed consistently. So as investors, institutional investors at that, we're looking for a pattern of spending that's durable and observable. Right? Mhmm.
Speaker 11:A few other things I'd just highlight, you know, I I think that we've seen what Jensen's been doing, particularly around the NVIDIA chips, and really just kind of making a big splash around info. All the various different parts of infrastructure being now financeable because of this pattern of spending. Right? And there's demand, and you get reasonable confidence in that. So that helps.
Speaker 11:We're not relying on any single model provider to win the game, and this is going back going now into my third piece of it, why we're super excited, which is pooling. Pooling actually reduces the risk. So instead of kind of putting all the eggs in one basket where you have a single tenant build out, you know, you're basically going for the Hail Mary, one customer run more roadmap, one growth trajectory, pooling actually changes the economics. It actually helps diversify. And from a risk perspective, as you can imagine, I work at an insurance company, so risk is a a natural big theme.
Speaker 11:This is actually an incredible diversifier here. So and last but not least, you know, I would say, why does this matter? I think we all know, like, look, AI is not fat. AI is long standing here, and we're we're investing here not just in in the promise of compute and what it can bring, but, you know, in terms of the high utilization that it, of course, compute can deliver over a long period of time. And so we're super excited, and, of course, it starts with AMP and our partnership with them.
Speaker 11:They are... I mean, Anj doesn't need yet another plug. You know, if you if you follow Anj, he's successful in his own right.
Speaker 13:He's well
Speaker 11:spoken, and he's got his x account for those that don't follow, they should. It's quite entertaining on many levels. But I think what's important as well is there's a lot of players in this space, but you have to have the right one. And I think AMP is the partner of choice for us, and they're one of the very, very few that we are doing business with.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Very cool. Anj, how are you thinking about timelines here? Do you have a bunch of portfolio companies? You're going to have a lot more in the future.
Speaker 1:You also have, I'm sure, companies reaching out to you all the time. Anj, we don't work together yet, but I need compute. You're looking to bring two gigawatts online. That's not going to happen instantly. But how are you communicating the timeline today?
Speaker 4:Typically, I introduce them to Negin, and then she takes over. So why don't I turn to her? Because, you know, at AMD, the last thing Negin helped assemble over there was the the two gigawatt partnership each with OpenAI and Anthropic. And I think those will be looked on as templates for scaling across the ecosystem. But, know, Negin, would you answer that question?
Speaker 12:Yeah. I mean... And I think it is gonna take some time. And as Anj mentioned, my focus is really to figure out how we get the two gigawatts online in a reliable way. You know, one of the things that William talked about, pooling for the end customers, there's also value in having multiple cloud providers and neo clouds on the grid.
Speaker 12:So our customers are now, you know, have a little bit more security and they're less dependent on a single cluster and have have a more of a reliable vision of where the capacity is gonna come online. And whether it's one or the other, it kinda doesn't matter. When people come to us looking for compute, I mean, we have compute live today. The grid works. We have people running on it.
Speaker 12:It's been unbelievable. We have NVIDIA and AMD. Our hope is to get all chips onto the grid because that's what's really going to make this fungible for for people. And, you know, we've got capacity coming online between now and, say, twelve months from now that we have very clear line of sight to where it's gonna be, how much it's going to be. And it's a a process to educate our customers on how best to utilize that capacity because our goal is not to have them lock it up and just sit idle.
Speaker 12:The goal is to make sure we get the most utilization out of those GPUs that we have on the grid. So that's really what my focus is. I've spent my entire career in the semiconductor industry focusing the last eight years just on the infrastructure side for AI, and so that's what's complementary with what Anjney's bringing to the table and looking, you know, looking forward to getting this built out and getting our labs access to GPUs at the way they need it, really, when and where they need it.
Speaker 1:Amazing.
Speaker 4:So next time any of our friends listening in wanna know exactly when their next cluster is gonna come online, all you have to do is message nagin@amppbc.com. You no longer need to go... I'm no longer the bottleneck as many will testify. I hope you don't mind me sharing your email.
Speaker 12:Most people won't know how to spell it.
Speaker 14:We'll be good.
Speaker 12:We're good.
Speaker 4:There'll be a lot of A of big ones will find out.
Speaker 12:Yes. Some of
Speaker 15:the big ones will find me.
Speaker 1:Yeah. John, what were you going to say?
Speaker 2:I'm I'm interested to know about how do you think about the diversification, the spreading of risk across different customers at different levels. That seems like it's important to the philosophy here. Obviously, there's a number of labs and hyperscalers and neo clouds, but then there's also start ups. But how do you think about actually spreading out the long tail of demand across all the potential customers? Is there, like, a portfolio strategy This in
Speaker 4:is a great question. So if you go to the website, nationalcompute.com, which is where the grid is hosted, you'll see it says the grid is now in public access. Public sector access. You know, we we started with a public mission Mhmm. Which means the the compute, the infrastructure that's being built out has to go on the grid to people who need it the most.
Speaker 4:Mhmm. Today, that means for us .users, ..gov users, .milusers, we're... As far as we're we're we're one of the only places
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 4:Where these folks can access live, like hundreds of chips on demand at subsidized rates. You can get an AMD chip there, an MI three fifty five for $3 an hour. And you can get a b b 200 from NVIDIA for about $4. The commercial pool we have, there's over 60 different commercial labs also on the grid. They pay a much higher price.
Speaker 4:So we've had several millions of dollars being spent on m I three fifty five at about $12 an hour as of yesterday. And so just to give you a sense of the spread, commercial customers do pay higher for on demand access, but public sector users get their compute at subsidized rates. And and the benefit of pooling is we get to essentially load balance across these different customer types and ensure folks who need access the most can get it at prices that don't sort of exclude them from the market. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Totally. Last question from my side for now. How... Like demand planning.
Speaker 1:It feels like the greatest challenge for application layer companies, even obviously the labs as well. But is this something that can be solved? Or like it feels like this is the solution where you just get the most number of chips in a single sort of platform all over the world. And because it just feels like it feels like demand planning for these companies is entirely unpredictable. You have like an instinct moment where you go from obscurity to, overwhelming demand.
Speaker 1:Or you've seen labs release a new model and it's you get that new capability increase and suddenly you have customers that you weren't even imagining. And so this feels like the only solution, but what are you guys seeing the smartest companies do around around forecasting? Is it really just napkin math and sort of like guessing? Or or is this a new kind of core skill set?
Speaker 12:I I think each company on their own is doing the napkin math and guessing. And they're looking at their neighbors. Like, they're looking at what is this guy doing? What is that guy doing? And trying to, like, extrapolate that.
Speaker 12:I think the beauty of what we're doing is is that our grid members are sharing their napkin math with us, so we get visibility across a larger number. And then we're the ones taking the bets on some of the unknowns. Right? Like like the instinct moment you mentioned, you know, we're gonna plan for that so that there is capacity for those that didn't know better than to plan. And the idea is that if you have enough users across it, some may plan too high, some may plan too low, but you should be able to sort of smooth out that demand curve and make sure that the people who need it most have access to GPUs at the time they need it.
Speaker 4:And and like everybody else, we also use AI. So the first thing you'll see when you log in to nationalcompute.com is our agent called Marshall.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 4:Marshall is named after, you know, the the the general who helped unite The United States and Europe post World War two after the Marshall plan. Mhmm. And Marshall is an automated system that input ingests all of that data that Negin was talking about and then actually does demand forecasting for us. And every good member can go talk to Marshall, do... You can kind of think of Marshall as your chief AI compute officer.
Speaker 4:And we're using reinforcement learning to improve it. And over time, I think this will really unblock a lot of bottlenecks for folks who don't have their own infrastructure teams, their own procurement teams. You know, it's not uncommon today for the the largest labs to have a 100 plus people doing this job. But I don't see why we can't relieve some of that stress through automation.
Speaker 2:Fantastic. Thank you so much for coming on the way down.
Speaker 1:Milestone and and so excited that a lot more companies will will get access to this to this compute. And and, yeah, it feels like we had this beautiful sort of hacker moment, hacker culture emerging and then the sort of like financial realities of like how do you access massive amounts of compute as a small team kind of you run into that. So Yeah. I'm very excited about this and and congratulations on the partnership.
Speaker 4:Fantastic. Well, big shout out to Zurich. It takes a village to raise AI infrastructure. And as you can see between William with his background and us over here in San Francisco. William's actually based in New York.
Speaker 4:We think this has to be a cross country scaling approach, and we're really lucky to have Zurich believe in us at scale.
Speaker 2:I love it.
Speaker 1:Amazing. Well, looking forward to having all three of you back on the show soon. Yeah. And good luck out there.
Speaker 2:Have a good rest of your week.
Speaker 1:We'll wear our cowboy hats next time.
Speaker 9:Thank you.
Speaker 1:See you. Cheers.
Speaker 2:Let me tell you about Cisco. Critical infrastructure for the AI era unlock seamless real time experiences and new value with Cisco. Our next guest is Neil Stephenson, the fantastic author. Know and love his latest book is d heavy water. Here he is.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the show, Neil. How are you doing?
Speaker 8:I'm good. My voice is still working because this is day one of the book tour, so you got me in a I'm great sure.
Speaker 1:How have, book tours evolved? I imagine your book tour now is like eight podcasts a day for two weeks.
Speaker 8:Well, yeah, of course, that's obviously new during the time I've done it. It used to be, like the first book tour I did, it was old school and they would sort of put you on like drive time shock jock radio programs and you'd try to explain your book to a, you know, a shock jock in thirty seconds. It was pretty challenging. I like this better.
Speaker 2:There a trade off between talking the book too much and not leaving enough for people to actually go and convert versus like talking about anything, talking about other topics, anything that just gets people interested? We've talked to some people. I think it applies more in non fiction where someone has a thesis and then they lay out that thesis on like a three hour podcast, and then people are like, well, why would I get the six hour audiobook if I can just hurt listening to you for...
Speaker 8:Yeah. I kinda had that experience with sometimes with non fiction books like business Yeah. Totally. Advice books, you know. It's like, okay, I I get it.
Speaker 8:Yeah. I don't need to read it. Yeah. Obviously, you don't want that as an author. Yeah.
Speaker 8:I think with fiction, you've got a big advantage in that if you can kind of set up the general the general thesis of the book, that hopefully gets people interested in the story and gives them a reason to actually pick it up and read it.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. Makes sense.
Speaker 1:How do you think about the responsibility that... Like, do you feel like science fiction science fiction authors have a responsibility? And and do you think... Like, how much of a weight do you feel like there is to the work? Because, like, in my view, you guys you're sort of predicting the future and you're entertaining, but then also it inspires so many people that you you impact the world in a very unique way just just with your words.
Speaker 1:And I think you have to assume that, like, something about it, these ideas just sort of, like, weed their way into people's consciousness. Yeah. And it affects their actions and affects the products that they make. It affects the weapon systems that get built in the future. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And there there seems like there is some weight to it.
Speaker 8:Yeah. I mean, I think the good thing is that to tell a story that intelligent readers will actually enjoy, you need to be realistic. You need to include some of actual complexity and ambiguity of the real world. Otherwise, it just comes off as kind of a one dimensional, you know, screed. And so I tried to do that, you know, the last book I wrote that had some of that potential was was Termination Shock, which is about geoengineering.
Speaker 8:So, I mean, it depicted people doing geoengineering and one of the main characters was a big advocate of geoengineering, but there are also characters in the book who took a different view and who were ambivalent or openly hostile to the efforts that were being made in that area. So I think if you, to begin with, that just made it a better book. But, you know, if you're reading a book like that with an eye towards, you know, starting a company or something, then hopefully you notice the fact that there's different points of view on it, there's complexity, and you take that into account in your decision making going forward.
Speaker 2:Do you believe in nominative determinism?
Speaker 7:Well,
Speaker 8:novel writing, sure, because you get to pick the names.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 8:And so the... So Dickens, for example, you know, was was really good at at giving his characters names like Scrooge or Uriah Heap Yep. Or whatever that immediately gave you a clue as to the nature of that particular character. Whether that really translates into real life, I'm a little less certain.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Well, how do you grapple with it as an author? It it it can sometimes be tempting to say the main character's name will be, you know, Chad Goodman and the bad guy will be named like evil And it can be a little bit on the nose. But sometimes it's Hero protagonist. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Hero protagonist is a great one. Yeah. But how do you how do you personally deal with that balancing act?
Speaker 8:I mean, it's just a question of trying to have a little bit of a light touch, you know, make it a little funny, a little witty. If if it feels like you're hitting the reader over the head with something obvious, then they're not gonna take that very well. Yeah. But on the other hand, if you can kind of slip it in there and have it be sort of sort of clever and funny, then the reader feels like, okay, I'm in on the joke.
Speaker 2:Sure. Sure. Can we go back to 2013? I'd love to know how you met Seamus Blackley who sort of, I think sort of kicked off this arc. Do I have that correct?
Speaker 8:Yeah. Yeah. I've known Seamus, I don't know, since the late nineties probably. He, after he left Microsoft, he got interested for a while in trying to help gamers fund their projects, and that I think led to him being... We're we're kind of running the game division of CAA, the big Hollywood talent agency.
Speaker 8:And at the time, my agent in LA, Richard Green, was working at CAA. Sure. And so one day Rich said to me, hey, you know, if you're in town, there's this guy, Seamus, you know, you guys should meet. So we went out, had lunch, and immediately kind of, I think, understood each other and became friends. And so we're...
Speaker 8:We've been in touch ever since. I saw him just two weeks ago when I was down in LA.
Speaker 2:How are you...
Speaker 8:But, yeah. He...
Speaker 2:Yeah. He's sort inspired the book, right? Sorry.
Speaker 8:Yeah. He made me aware of the existence of some of the story content that this book is based on, specifically the Earl of Suffolk. And so since then, he and I have sort of traded notes as the occasion warrants about, you know, when we come across some interesting piece of information, we'll email it back and forth to each other.
Speaker 2:How are you thinking about the current moment in video games and AI? There's all of these mashups that are happening. People are using AI to decompile video games, and it feels like we're at a moment where fan made video games are going to be more of a thing like a fan made Halloween costume. I can imagine that fans will turn many of your works into AI generated video games. There's obviously a lot of property discussion around there, but how are you churning through it?
Speaker 2:Is there a part that excites you, part that is nerve racking? How are you dealing with that moment?
Speaker 8:Well, I'm more of a just hands on guy, so I am the co founder of a startup called Wind Air that's actually working in kind of in this area, not exactly what you're talking about, but, you know, the premise is to allow fans of story worlds to tell stories in their favorite you know, fictional universes by giving them an environment that, you know, represents part of that world and a script editor that they can use to determine what they want to see happen. So, and we've actually just last week made an announcement. We've been working with a company called Dreamlands dot ai that has made some incredible strides in this area, made it possible for a tiny team like ours to generate environments, realistic high quality, you know, video game environments that a few years ago would have cost, you know, a million dollars plus. So that's kind of the way I come at this. If...
Speaker 8:I I haven't followed the, you know, the the mashup scene very much, though.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Jerry, please.
Speaker 1:So you published Snow Crash in 'ninety two, and then we went through a period of, like, what what in hindsight feels like total stagnation, where you get, you know, the the Internet becomes big and and that's cool, but it sort of just extends it extends a lot of existing technologies. And then it feels like the 2020 is, like, I I think, like, generally, people have felt the sort of acceleration and the speed up and new capabilities. From your view, having written about a lot of the things that we're starting to, like, see in the real world and experience today even in small ways, Did it feel like a period of, you know, twenty years of of stagnation and then and then a and a and a real acceleration? Or, like, what was your sort of lived experience? Because it just feels like such a big it feels like a big gap where, like, if reading The Wall Street Journal or reading the mainstream media has at times felt in the last year like you're reading science fiction.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And it certainly didn't feel that way. In some ways, like, the early two thousands and the twenty tens was like, great. We have new database software and we have more wars, and it didn't it didn't feel like there was any... It didn't feel like it was the news
Speaker 8:Oh, that was wild excitement. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 8:Yeah, know what you mean. I kind of wasn't even aware of it, you know, but now that you point it out, it's like, yeah, yeah, it was sort of that way. And I mean, you know, the Internet came along. It was big. It was very important.
Speaker 8:And there was kind of a period of consolidation, I think, where it changed from, you know, sort of like, you know, rampant grad students, you know, stringing things together to big business and the consolidation of power and influence on the Internet by the, you know, the FANG companies basically. And so, yeah, I think gradually over time, you you begin to... You get tired of it. You begin to lose the sense of of wild excitement and, you know, big things happening and the sense that, hey, there's I can do something, you know, there's opportunities here that I could grab. That that starts to to fade after a while and now it's sort of back because of the the things that you mentioned.
Speaker 2:How are you
Speaker 1:thinking about... Then and then on that, like, as you're... I I don't know what your process is like for, you know, generating ideas for for future work. But, like, do you feel like this is a time where you can open the newspaper and start to... Because what's been interesting is like many people in the technology industry, like the people closest to the frontier of AI, have started writing their own science fiction.
Speaker 1:Right? So you have work like AI 2027, which is like... 2040. Yeah. And and AI 2040 where it's like, hey, let's look at the the technology that we have today and sort of just try to extrapolate it out quarter by quarter and see where this goes.
Speaker 1:And and you have to... Basically have this series of compounding assumptions that lead to these really insane outcomes. But in some way, that's you were kind of running that same kind of process, but over maybe a larger time scale where it's like if you assume the technology we have today is gonna improve this way and make jumps in this way, then I can imagine this whole world that where this would be the way that you travel around the earth or or this would be the way that individuals interact with, you know, corporate, large corporations, etcetera.
Speaker 8:Yeah. I haven't read the things you mentioned. I wasn't aware of them, but I'll, you know, now I am. I'll check them out. But I think, you know, to make a good yarn, you need to...
Speaker 8:There's some elements that you need to include in the story that give it a feeling of realism. And one of those is, you know, it's one thing to posit a new technology and think about what you might be able to do with it just on a pure engineering level. But in addition, you know, real technologies answer to other masters as well. So you've got kind of the social and creative side, you know, what do people do with new technologies that's unexpected, like electric guitars. You know, we had electricity.
Speaker 8:Everyone knew there was going to be light bulbs and washing machines, but electric guitars were kind of an unexpected thing that came out of a more social and cultural milieu. And then there's the business side, you know. You've got to, you know, you've got to have a plausible business plan for why some future technology in a science fiction book actually makes sense and can get funded. So, those are some elements that I think, in a way, it adds some additional work and some additional challenge to the process of writing science fiction, but it more than pays off because what you end
Speaker 3:up
Speaker 8:with is something that feels a lot more organic and realistic and as such can do a better job of drawing the reader into the story.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. How are you thinking about AI in the process of researching, writing, fact checking, proofreading, and the trade offs of using tools that might atrophy your own skills? How have you grappled with all the different opportunities and risks?
Speaker 8:Think you answered the question. I'm not real big on atrophying my skills. Yeah. So, I do think that it's, you know, it's a little bit difficult to explain, but there's something about the serendipity and the randomness of doing it yourself that is very productive in the end. And so, like when I was writing my Baroque Cycle series of historical novels, I would just make notes by hand in comic books.
Speaker 8:I had a huge stack of these notebooks and it was all hodgepodge, you know. It wasn't organized, it wasn't searchable, certainly. And so I would have to flip through them trying to find stuff, you know. I think it's somewhere in here kind of deal. And in the course of doing that, I would stumble across things I'd have forgotten about or connections would get made, new ideas would emerge, and so for me, having that work done by a research assistant, whether it be a human or an AI, would actually be counterproductive.
Speaker 8:And I'm just not interested in it at all.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 8:But, I mean, I already know how to write books, so I don't need help.
Speaker 2:That's a good point. Is there a science or technology that you think is underrepresented or underexplored in science fiction? Like, there's a lot of space stuff explored.
Speaker 8:Lot of
Speaker 2:robots, basically. I mean, we maybe need to advance that. But is there something that sticks out to you as as potentially fertile ground or underexplored?
Speaker 8:I mean, I think a lot of the story of the next half century or century is going to be how we get carbon out of the atmosphere. Sure. And that is a straight up technology engineering project that's going to have to be carried out on a really large scale. So I'd like to see more about that for sure. There's all kinds of different carbon sequestration technologies that are being talked about.
Speaker 8:Some are biological, some are kind of industrial facilities, some are sort of like enhanced weathering of stone and so on. So there's a lot of ideas floating around right now and we haven't really settled on what the right one's gonna be. But it's an interesting area right now of engineering ferment. There's like bright people going into it. And so I hope that we'll be seeing more in that area.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. What about... Would you ever write something about algorithmic social feeds? Like it it seems like it seems like an idea that you would have imagined that maybe you have like, you know, a decade ago or two decades ago or this idea that like everyone would be spending, you know, four hours a day, you know, immersed in this device that is showing them entirely different sort of world view and and set of facts and all these different things. Was scrolling I was scrolling on X over the weekend and there's this new I mean, it's not really new, but it seems to have gotten worse where people would just share fake image, you know, fake news, fake images, and the only and these things have, you know, 10,000,000 views.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. And I can see that it's in the process of getting community noted. Sure. And you can click in and see that like, oh, this is not a real image. This never appeared or whatever.
Speaker 1:But but AI is making it we've had this technology for years now but it's so much easier.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Is easier. And if I wasn't in the if I wasn't in the like community notes program, I never would know that I would just be scrolling past these things seeing fake news. And so there's this sort of fake news element that it is still underexplored but then also this idea of like, I'm just seeing...
Speaker 2:Living in a filter bubble.
Speaker 1:I'm living in an entirely different online world than than somebody next to me in traffic. And then what are the downstream implications of that? Yeah.
Speaker 8:I kind of went there briefly in my book Fall or Dodge in Hell, and it's sort of a minor sideshow to the main story. So... But it kind of depicts a semi near future in which big swathes of the country have been kind of colonized by the sort of thing you're describing with the results that the, the, that part of the country in my book is, is called Ameristan. And you know, it's this kind of war torn place inhabited by people who have absolutely no idea what's going on, but they're sure that they do. And so it's, to me, to me, I mentioned carbon before, to me the two big problems facing us right now are carbon and what you just described.
Speaker 8:And with carbon, I can see, you know, that's an engineering problem straight up. The other problem, people living in their own realities is you could address it with engineering or, you know, by blowing up a few Yandex server farms.
Speaker 16:Oh,
Speaker 8:yeah. That's crazy. It, you know, it's a harder problem because people like it, you know?
Speaker 1:Yeah. And people... So that means you have to police. What are you gonna do? Start policing?
Speaker 1:Like, it can get Yeah. Kinda dark if you're like, oh, okay. Well, now the government is gonna decide all
Speaker 8:Yeah.
Speaker 1:They're gonna try to enforce a rule set around Yeah. What can be seen and shown. It's this weird thing where, like you said, like, the fake stuff just naturally is absurd often, so it gets more engagement. It is more entertaining. People spend more time.
Speaker 1:They get served more ads. Yeah. But at the same time, you have government intervention, and so, yeah, it's like we're much... The human race is so much better set up for engineering problems where we have this monumental problem that we're facing.
Speaker 2:At least we all agree
Speaker 1:on But in that situation, you have one hacker, you know, theoretically hacker in their garage or at some university lab or whatever and they can they can have this one breakthrough that can then get global adoption because there's an incentive to have that global adoption. And right now, with this like problem of us all living in our own world, there's no obvious incentive structure that that will fix it. If anything, there's an incentive for And it to get
Speaker 8:in some ways, the videos and the images are... For me, it's it's a little easier to look at those, at least at the current stage of technology, and say, yeah, I don't think that's real. But what's more insidious in a way is lots of posts underneath that video, you know, by, so mostly by bots, Right? And so in a way that's a sneakier way that the same bad actors can influence the way we think because, you know, we read these things and we tend to think, well, there's a real person out there somewhere who's actually typing this when, you know, that's that's not actually the case at all.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I know you've studied the fall of Rome a lot. How do you compare those problems that you just described to the problems that were faced by Rome? They feel extremely modern, but is there some connection that we could actually learn lessons from the past here?
Speaker 8:Yeah. Well, you know, there were two falls of Rome. There was the fall of the republic. You know, which finally bit the dust around time of Julius Caesar. And then there was the much slower fall of the the empire and a kind of different phenomenon in a way.
Speaker 8:It's easier to get a grip on the fall of the republic because you can just see what happens to certain people like Marius and Sulla who just decided that they were going to sweep aside the norms that until then all of the important people in the Roman Republic had agreed to observe, and they just decided to flout those norms and do what they wanted to do. And that's a little bit, I think, where we are right now in modern society. The fall of the empire is a, you know, slower and more complicated process that, you know, took, you know, another fifteen hundred years to fully, you know, reach its its end. There you're talking about a lot of things like migration and changes in religion and so on and so forth that make for good reading. I recommend, you know, studying this, but I don't know if I have a quick answer for you.
Speaker 2:Well, one solution for algorithmic feeds, picking up a book, d Heavy Water is available.
Speaker 1:I wanted to ask you before you leave. Do you think is the most who do you think is the most underrated science fiction author
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:That you think would resonate with our corner of the Internet, our small corner of reality? You're you're you're you're among, like, venture capitalists. You might laugh at this, but you're certainly the most widely recommended and read, you know. Ask... If you ask any of them, they're...
Speaker 1:They'll tell you.
Speaker 8:I mean, if I just had to pick one off the cuff, first thought is Matt Ruff, r u f f, who wrote he wrote The Lovecraft Country, which got turned into a TV series. So that's his most widely known book. But every book he writes is different and they're all great. And he's got one, he's winding up now called Black Sheep, but I don't think it'll be out real soon. But I know he's he's...
Speaker 8:It's about AI. So so if I had to pick one, that's that's my first thought.
Speaker 2:Well, thanks for the recommendation. Was great
Speaker 1:to meet you. Thank
Speaker 2:you Thanks for coming coming on the show and congratulations on the book launch.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Good luck keeping your voice over the next couple of weeks.
Speaker 2:Yes. Good luck.
Speaker 8:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Talk to me in two weeks. We'll we'll know.
Speaker 2:Fantastic. Cheers, Neil. Goodbye.
Speaker 1:Thank you.
Speaker 2:Our next guests are already in the waiting room. Have Ravi Gupta and John Hegeman from Ithaca Holdings, the co founders, co CEOs here to discuss the landmark deal Boom. From HomeView. Welcome to the show, guys. Thank you so much for coming on and such a big day.
Speaker 1:Look at us. You put a smile on our face. It's great to
Speaker 16:see good to see you guys. But but wait, sorry. Before we get started, why are guys so bundled up?
Speaker 1:It's in LA. It's the coldest it's been
Speaker 2:am in... Dressed as the as the gumshoe journalist from the Social Reckoning. There's a Wall Street Journal reporter. He wears this exactly. And we were doing a movie review earlier.
Speaker 2:I just...
Speaker 16:And Jordan, you're just cold because it's 70.
Speaker 1:It's freezing. It's freezing. It's it's It's nice It feels like the tundra.
Speaker 2:It's only seventy two days till Christmas, so, you know, you got to warm up inside. If a Yule tide is here, then we want to warm our hands by the hearth. But things are heating up in the world of deal making. You are buying Bumble. Take us through
Speaker 11:it.
Speaker 16:Let's go. Yeah. We signed it. We signed it. We announced it this morning.
Speaker 16:So we're pumped. Are partnering with Whitney Wolfherrd, who's the founder of Bumble. Yeah. And we are taking it private. It's the first thing that we're doing as Ithaca and John and I are pretty pumped.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Take us through the thesis because, I mean, we talked about the the the idea for Ithaca, the structure Yeah. And there's so many different ways this fund could have gone. There's so many different activities. The different funds and different teams are working on different opportunities.
Speaker 2:Why is Bumble the right move right now?
Speaker 16:Yeah. Well, listen, the first thing is I'm going tell you, so we're not a fund. We're a technology company.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 16:You know? So, you know, so the first thing is what we're looking for is companies that matter, right, and companies that are going to matter even in an increasingly AI, you know, abundant world. Yeah. Right? And so when you think about that, it's actually pretty hard, right, because what consumer value propositions are going to endure?
Speaker 16:Yeah. But when you think about human connection and you think about meaningful relationships, you think about bringing people closer to love, we think that's only going get more important. Yeah. And so in all the companies we've looked at in the last six or seven months, Bumble was crazy unique. Yeah.
Speaker 16:And the thing that's pretty cool about it is Whitney saw that twelve years ago. And so this starts with her. Yeah. I mean, she founded this company, she started a movement, you know. Millions of people have better lives, right?
Speaker 16:Have found their spouses, have, you know, had children and because of Bumble. And so when we think about important missions, you know, John and I had the best jobs in the world before we started this. I came on TBPN that day, if you guys remember,
Speaker 3:you know.
Speaker 7:That's huge.
Speaker 16:And like, you got to work on something that's a worthy journey and there's nothing more worthy than Bumble. And then, I think, John, you should talk about it, but we think that we can actually really help and really make the product even better than it is now.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I want to hear about that.
Speaker 13:Oh, yeah. So AI is not going to replace human relationships, but we do think it can play an important role in just making the product a lot better and helping people connect with other people, not just that they're going to swipe right on, but that they're going to have a great conversation with, that they're going go on a great date with and hopefully form a lasting, meaningful relationship. Just really excited about the opportunity to work on an important problem and one where we think we can do a lot to help people.
Speaker 2:Yes. I feel like one of the main benefits that's always touted about a take private of a public company is that you have an opportunity to actually rethink the business model basically from first principles as long as you have the cash on the balance sheet. And I feel like there's a lot of different monetization paths that have been tried. And And you could imagine everything from the product's free the whole time. It's just ad supported, obviously, of experience there to what would people pay to actually find the one?
Speaker 2:Like people pay, what are they called, matchmakers, like $20,000...
Speaker 16:What would you have paid to find Jordan?
Speaker 2:I want
Speaker 1:to know that. I want to know. What what would you have paid for this? It is like a... It is it is is a...
Speaker 2:Where to find a real spouse is is incredibly valuable. And and so there there's this wide gamut of business models. But then there's also just, hey, maybe it's time to bring in some new operational talent and keep the business model the same and just be more operationally efficient. What are you thinking that might change? What's going to stay the same?
Speaker 2:What are you excited about?
Speaker 13:Yeah. I think the number one priority is just on making the product create more value for people and getting Sure. More people to use I don't think we're at all worried about ability to kind of grow revenue and monetize better over time if you can do that. I think there will be plenty of good opportunities. But, yeah, it's such an important problem to people where if you have the best possible version of the product, that is priceless and so think there will be great ways to monetize that over time.
Speaker 16:Yeah, the other thing it's so funny. This isn't going be a reference. I don't think it's made very often on TBPN, but I was watching the Post this weekend with our family, with my wife and our boys and there's a line where Catherine Graham is writing it down and it's like, you know, profits follow quality. Yeah. Listen, like, you have to actually help people find amazing dates.
Speaker 16:You got to have them find amazing relationships and like, the monetization will come. And one of my favorite things about John is like, John was responsible for $200,000,000,000 of revenue at Meta, right? I don't know. I don't know if we're going hit the Gong, but that feels like it could get the Gong. It may...
Speaker 16:We hope. But like,
Speaker 3:only thing
Speaker 16:that gets you that... What did you say?
Speaker 1:We'll get to the gong, so... Okay. Good. Please. We appreciate it.
Speaker 16:I think the the only thing that gets you that is if you actually provide value for people, right? And so ultimately for us, like, the monetization will come, but what you actually have to do is be great at getting people great dates, getting them matches that they wouldn't have gotten and getting them matches that are the best matches that they could ever get.
Speaker 2:So what's the low hanging fruit on the product side? Do you need to, like, kill off more bots or bring new people in with top of funnel advertising? Like, where... How do you make the product actually better?
Speaker 13:Yeah. I I think those are some of the themes. I think we can do more to improve the matching algorithm so that it's showing new matches that you're not just going to swipe on but that will lead to great conversations, great I is, I think, more work to be done to make sure that all of the profiles you're seeing are high quality. I think there's been some good work on that already. Yeah.
Speaker 13:Then I think there is room to kind of integrate AI in kind of more ways over time too that will, I think, facilitate that whole process and just make it work better for people.
Speaker 16:Yeah. I think on that, guys, one of the things that think Whitney started it with the quality reset, right? This idea of like, we are going to make sure that we have only the best profiles, only real profiles on Bumble. Like, that's a hard decision that's courageous and she did it as a public company CEO, which is baller. Then the other thing I would tell you that I get some inspiration from is like, listen, I see Instagram ads and I think they're magic.
Speaker 16:Can't imagine how they understood what I wanted, right? That was Sean and his team when he was there. And I think that what you hopefully want people to feel is that same kind of magic, but even more important, right? Because it's on a much more important problem, right, that they get to feel because of the matching algorithms and because of some of the work that we hope we can do in the product.
Speaker 1:How have you guys thought about developing your own internal thesis around AI winners versus losers? Because over the last year, we've just seen in the public markets, it's extremely violent, right? Like, general investors, like you sort of bubble up. There's more of sort of like broad ideas like SaaS is dead and maybe you want network effects. But then there's also like looking at all these, you know, subcategories.
Speaker 1:The... In the public markets, like, even if you don't think a company's an AI loser, other people might, and then you probably should should at least get out of it. Whereas you guys can take a longer term view and and actually apply more rigor and I think that's an advantage. But like, how much of that... Like, you've you've looked at hundreds of companies since since starting Ithaca and so like, what are your sort of like updated models there?
Speaker 16:So the best part for us is concentration actually is extraordinarily helpful. Right? Look, we're not trying to build a portfolio. We're going to go... We we have signed an agreement to buy Bumble.
Speaker 16:We're going to go operate it. John and I are going be the co CEOs. So there is a real look into each other, the whites of each other's eyes of like, do you really want to go do this That for a long actually is extraordinarily helpful because on a lot of companies, it's not that we're like, oh, we know that this is going to break this way. It's honestly that we don't know. It's uncertain, right?
Speaker 16:But if it's uncertain, that's good enough for us of like, Well, we're not going to go do that, right? We better be... If it's not a hell yes, it's a hell no, right, for
Speaker 14:us.
Speaker 16:Yeah. And so, that really helps. I think the other thing is one of my favorite things about working with John is like, despite being so smart, there's just a lot of humility. So, a lot of times I'll ask him like, hey, what do you think is going to happen here? I mean, just kind of like, I don't really know.
Speaker 16:I don't really know how to think about the way that's going go. I think that's kind of missing from a lot of people's perspectives in the markets right now because they're sort of trying to take a strong point of view. The reality is, on a lot of businesses, nobody knows. The reason that we think Bumble is unique is we do fundamentally believe, and we believe this with all of our hearts, that like humans want relationships with humans. Right?
Speaker 16:And they're going to want relationships with humans, and those relationships are going to be even more important in the future. And what we hope is that this is pretty obvious in retrospect as AI has advanced the way it has.
Speaker 1:So I on the betting exclusively on the why and being okay with not knowing exactly the how. Right? Is that like another way to put it? Because like there are software companies where like their why is the how. It's like we create like a database and then we sell that to companies.
Speaker 1:Yeah. This is like a very... And and and with this, it's like if human connect... The company exists to drive human connection. But how exactly you do that, whether it's like opening up, you know, digital twins or agents or what whatever whatever it might be or just better matching algorithms, like that feels like like all of that can be figured out in time.
Speaker 1:But knowing that like the the end goal of the company will never change is like something that you feel like you can lean on and like bet the next chapter of your career on.
Speaker 16:Is that... Yeah. Yeah. I mean, honestly, I'll be... I'll I'll I will do this for John rather than him having to do it himself.
Speaker 16:I think we are more confident in the how. Right? And I think specifically, maybe I would tell you, I think that... Listen, like, you know, I sort of think like, John, like, couldn't you... Couldn't we fix this?
Speaker 16:What about this product? What about this product? I think this one has a pretty good overlap with stuff that I think John has done in the past. And so I think we do believe that the matching algorithms and maybe just like the way that you actually go and show people people they might really like, I think we can do that really well. We really believe that we can do that.
Speaker 16:And I would say like that's very difficult, you know, to do, but we think we're uniquely suited to do it. I think the thing that is more of a question mark that we think will follow the why is the monetization, which is like we will figure out how to make sure that people feel like they're paying for something that's fair. But the most important thing is that you actually deliver the value and I would tell you that we have real confidence that we can deliver this value in this sector and that people are going to want this value for a long time. You know, so I agree on the monetization side, but on the product side, you know, we feel confident. I'm using we liberally because of my co founder here, John.
Speaker 2:Well, congratulations. Thank you so much for...
Speaker 1:You guys are a fantastic fantastic duo and and yeah, I can tell that there's so many things like with with John and I where I was just like, yeah, I never would have been able to to do this if we didn't have what what John is is so so capable at. Yeah. So...
Speaker 2:You guys... Just so fun that this happened in consumer like, I I don't... I think everyone is like, oh, they're gonna buy some database thing or something....
Speaker 16:Said that and I think that's the thing for us. This is actually... It's gotta be fun. Yeah. If you wanna get the best people in the world, it's gotta be fun.
Speaker 16:Totally.
Speaker 2:And this
Speaker 16:one's gonna be fun. So we appreciate it and we appreciate you guys. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Awesome.
Speaker 2:Have a great rest of your day. Cheers. Bye. Let me tell you about public.com. Invest across all asset classes.
Speaker 2:Automate anything with AI agents, run trading strategies, risk management, money movements, and monitor markets with AI agents on public. Our next guest is with us in the waiting room. We have Jack Goldburg from Yes Chef Group, the cofounder and creator. We're very excited to have Jack. How are doing?
Speaker 2:What's going on? What's up? Not too much. Good Tuesday. You have a good weekend?
Speaker 9:It was good. It was good. We did our I first
Speaker 2:feel like you have like a million things going on.
Speaker 9:Yeah. We do. For good or for bad. We do... We're trying to trying to cool this down.
Speaker 9:By the way, I... I'm super pumped to be here.
Speaker 2:Thanks.
Speaker 9:I... You know, you guys have been inspiring to our team in many ways. I feel like I I love this this story and the trajectory. I mean, I think people think it probably was like, my god, this happened so fast. Obviously, it's taken time and you put in a lot of fucking work to get to this point.
Speaker 9:Yeah. And I
Speaker 14:think a lot
Speaker 9:of people don't... Maybe not realize that. Yeah. But congrats on everything that you guys have done. It's been very cool for our team to watch and inspire us.
Speaker 1:Yeah. The meta the meta story behind, like, media companies now is, like, more important than ever. Totally. Like, I I saw you guys posted a a video recently about, like, one of your event, like, having... It was a weather issue with one of your events and, like, giving people...
Speaker 1:Like so much of TBPN has been about like giving people behind. We we sort of... We came out and we were like, don't believe in like building public in the traditional sense. Like in Yeah. In tech, when people build in public, they just post their revenue every single month.
Speaker 1:And then usually they stop because they go through a rough patch. Yeah. But but like in media, you're sort of forced to build in public because people just see everything that you're working on.
Speaker 2:The interviews you're getting, the sponsors you get, whatever you're doing.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's like creating that creating that meta narrative is like actually really important to driving engagement. Yeah. So...
Speaker 2:But I mean, let's go back and set the table for everyone. How did you get started? I want to hear about the first product and and the growth trajectory there. How fast was that? I'm sure everyone labels you an overnight success as everyone does.
Speaker 2:It was probably a lot of hard work. But take us through that because I want to then explore how the footprint has grown because there is a lot going on now.
Speaker 9:Yeah. 100%. Kind of the high level. So about four years ago, my cofounder, Liam, and I, we met studying abroad. Actually, before four years ago, we met studying abroad in Australian college.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 9:And four years ago, we posted our first video.
Speaker 4:And
Speaker 9:really has always just been rooted in passion and love for food. Like, I was working at PwC doing tech consulting at the time, and he was, like, Capgemini. I did management consulting.
Speaker 2:Thank you for your service. Seriously. It's it's a little disappointing when you left, but, you know. Yeah.
Speaker 9:Yeah. It's actually funny because the first full circle moment, the first job I did at PwC was for Pepsi. I Oh, didn't... And I was a consultant for Pepsi, and now fast forward to today, Pepsi is one of our large partners. I'm really close friends.
Speaker 9:Kirkham, CMO.
Speaker 2:Very cool.
Speaker 16:And I told
Speaker 9:him, I was like, I actually worked for you for a different way. So we we did our first video at this Mexican restaurant, Aldama, like, literally four years ago, and we'd be working till 8PM, go to dinner. We we didn't know what we were doing. We were, like, pulling a lobster tail like this and holding this and I was just, like, doing it. Because we felt that there was a need for innovation in the food space.
Speaker 9:Everyone was kind of the same. We're like, it doesn't feel like there's someone who is relatable, who when you go and watch the content, that's like me and my boys are our friends sitting and eating. That's what we want to put out. Like, there's no difference between us talking here and me talking on the internet. Like, it's just the same thing.
Speaker 2:And
Speaker 9:we went and we did that first video, and it did, like, a quarter million views, and we were like, oh, shit. Like, that was crazy. Let's go into every single restaurant in a square mile and show them what we just did and run it back. Yeah. So Liam was living in San Francisco.
Speaker 9:He was literally canceled his flight home. He was supposed to come for a couple days. He stayed on my couch literally for a month, and he's, like, six, four, and
Speaker 14:a half, like, five feet tall.
Speaker 4:Parked in
Speaker 9:the hospital closet with three people, and he'd just run and gun every day. Same thing. Like, work during the day, 8PM, dinner, edit till 3AM, post, boom, boom, boom. And it just kind of compounded, you know, the next we did, like, half a million, and a million we started gaining followers. And our our big moment, I think in every founder's story, there's, like, that that moment that you work towards, that lucky moment that allows you to take the next step.
Speaker 14:Sure.
Speaker 9:And I think a lot of people say luck is involved in all stories, it totally is. Obviously, you need to be ready to, like, take advantage of a lucky moment, though. And we were at dinner, and the CEO of Sports Illustrated at the time was at the table next to us, and we just kind of get it... Started getting some followers, and we have a bunch of food on the table, and these moms come up to us, and they're like, my daughters know you. So we, like, kinda had a little bit of motion for the first time.
Speaker 9:He kinda looked at us. He's like, like, who are you guys, and what the hell is going on? And we give him the pitch. We're like, we make content, but we do consulting. This is only 10% of the time.
Speaker 9:We've done 30,000,000 views in
Speaker 1:two weeks.
Speaker 9:And he was like, what if, you know, we're looking to get younger and do more social first content on SI? And they also... It was the company, Rooter Group. They own Men's Journal, and they own a couple other magazines and different sites. So he was like, what if we did short form content with you guys?
Speaker 9:And we kind of just, like, pitched him the entire world Yeah. That night. A week later, we got on a call with their whole c suite team, and they offered us a full... So they offered to match our consulting salaries plus the $50.50 on rev split. Amazing.
Speaker 9:And we literally never looked back and just went for it.
Speaker 16:Yeah.
Speaker 9:Wow. Consulted and did, and created shows for them, so we came up with two new shows. And that's kind of like, since then, we've just never really looked back, and we've just doubled down on the content, and then the experiential side of the business has been really a big part over the past two years.
Speaker 2:Quick side note, Sports Illustrated, did you know that they're sitting on an absolute gold mine? Yeah. Si.com. If you're gonna rebrand to super intelligence, someone's going to have to pay a billion dollars for that domain at some point. Anyway Right.
Speaker 2:Focus, focus, focus. That's the mantra. Eventually everyone realizes that there are opportunities but you got to be really careful not to get over your skis and ruin the golden goose while you go and explore the next thing. What was the first side project or line expansion that you got enough confidence to actually go after aggressively and know that it wouldn't degrade the core product.
Speaker 9:Yeah. It was our festival because we spent the first two ish years doing at that point probably like a couple billion views, and we were doing all these cool things and seeing all these different foods and tuna cuttings. And we're like, this is all awesome. What if we can bring this together? And not only have people watch it, because I wanted to prove to ourselves and our team, me and Liam, that we're not just creators that live online, but we can actually move bodies and create real community, because there's such a difference between people that can go viral on the internet, but people that can actually create communities and move people together.
Speaker 9:I've always said, I think it's harder to get 10 people in a room on a Tuesday night than get 10,000,000 views on a video on a Tuesday
Speaker 2:night. Yep.
Speaker 9:So our food festival, we kind of took all the cooler things that we saw and restaurants that we loved, and, you know, tuna cuttings and different moments, and put it into this experience and made content about it just like we made content about everything else. We're like, we have the Yes Chef Food Festival, and we sold out on like two posts, and that was our first ever festival in New York about... That like, that was two years ago, two and a half years ago, and since then, we've sold that 10,000 people again. We did New York the year after, then we moved to LA. We did LA.
Speaker 9:We just did New York recently, but we had to move because of the storm. But experiential for us is so important because it doesn't take away from what we're doing. I actually think it builds a stronger connection and community into the people that watch the content, and they feel like it's more real. And we try to think about events on, like, a way that we could hit different consumers in different parts of their journey. So we have Yes Chef Tailgates that we just launched this past weekend with Pepsi on...
Speaker 9:In Penn State. We have Penn State University of Florida and Texas A and M, and then we're doing an NFL one with them. That is geared more towards, like, the college sports crowd. We have the festival, which is 10,000 people, and the demographic is awesome because you you have every type of person there. We have Yes Chef Reserve, which are, like, these super invite only premium one on one dinners that we do with super high end guests and celebrities, billionaires, athletes.
Speaker 9:We have the wrong club that we do that focuses on, like, the health space. So for us, we're like, food is this underlying connection. Like, everyone in the world eats, so essentially, your total addressable market is 8,000,000,000 people.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I was about to ask I was about to ask about Tam because it's funny, like, I'm I'm not a foodie at all. Like, if I'm traveling somewhere and I have a night... A meal that I actually like, I'll just go back to the same restaurant, like, three or four times because I don't I don't even care to try something else. I'm like, I like this.
Speaker 1:It's solid. I don't wanna I don't wanna roll the dice and like have a bad meal. Yeah. I'd rather just stick with with what I know. So I've never I've never been I've never been a foodie.
Speaker 1:But like, what... I'm curious of like what percentage of people actually describe themselves foodies and like is that actually... Relevant. The TAM feels a lot bigger because like, if you guys do a pop up at like a sports, you know, sports event or something like that, I feel like a bunch of people will just happily participate even if they are not like self described foodies that are just I obsessing over it day to
Speaker 9:think it's unique because you guys have talked about how you knew your audience is finite, and you wanted it to be that way because you have this super niche, you've done such a good job of that. I think in some ways, I guess it's the opposite for us. I truly do think that tan is the whole world, and if maybe, you know, you're not the biggest food guy, but you love sports, you know, when you go to sports, you're still eating, and you can pair it. So food's kinda like this underlying connecting layer to food and music and travel and sports. So, know, you I I like to think of it as as food and food being the part that everyone can connect on initially.
Speaker 2:Totally. How do you think about when you launch a new product or event or series or something that's gonna have its own name, its own brand? Are you the type where you effectively want to be the CEO of that project and you're maybe hiring younger, more up and coming talent? Or are you trying to bring in a general manager, someone to run that process? Like, what does the team building look like as you're expanding into different areas?
Speaker 9:Yeah. That's a really good question. We... No. I mean, in order to scale anything, you're you're only as good as your team.
Speaker 9:I think it's really important that as we look to this next year, and we're really kind of focusing on the content side of things. So for us, it's one of our first partners that we brought in was a live events expert who did that for ten years, and through, you know, Drake and Justin Bieber, Super Bowl parties, and other huge concerts and events. So we like to bring in partner with people who are really good at what they do. One of our big focuses, as I mentioned, is content and also stepping into long form. We just announced this really big deal with one on one studios, David Glasser, Tyler Sheridan, who do Yellowstone, Landman, Linus, Tulsa King.
Speaker 9:Our thought is, like, sure, could we spend the time to maybe try to go create it ourselves over the course of the next five or ten years? Like, maybe. Yeah. But if... To do it really, really well and kind of break through the noise of everyone else making content in the world, you have to partner with the best in class.
Speaker 9:And that's why we partnered with one zero one to launch Yes Chef Studios, which we feel like, for us, like, I think that's gonna be the next food network where people grow up, bring in new talent. I wanna be... You know, we have an incredible team, and, me and Liam are so involved in all the processes and main decisions of why certain brands launch, but ultimately, you know, I would love to have people on the team, like, run and manage these things on their own, and I'm focusing on the content side, still being involved, of course.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 9:But I think it's always great to add people who are, like, focusing and specializing in those areas to help them drive so we can expand and scale up other parts
Speaker 1:of the business.
Speaker 2:What is the state of live streaming in food? I feel like YouTube is really well to, you know, like defined in terms of you can do everything from like food challenges to specific recipes that you follow very closely.
Speaker 1:We on we went on a show and we were like we we thought that like TBPN for cooking would be an interesting niche like a daily live show where it tells you a day in advance, hey, at 05:00 every day I'm gonna cook, you know, this Yeah. The funny thing is I think someone in tech watched it and then they made it tech podcast cooking show.
Speaker 2:We were
Speaker 1:like, no, no. He's an actual amazing
Speaker 2:chef actually and you can watch them step by step, make the whole thing. They got to be entertaining enough to talk about it. But with us, the reason we went live was because like the tech news happened so fast. There's like a new release. There's a new financing like being the live matters.
Speaker 2:But with food, I don't think foodies are like there's a new cut of beef dropping. I got to get a review right now. But maybe I just don't follow it closely enough. I mean, for restaurant openings, maybe you want to know that minute. But what is the state of live streaming in food?
Speaker 2:Where do you think it'll go? Where are the opportunities? Or is it maybe farther off?
Speaker 1:Is it cooked?
Speaker 2:Is it cooked?
Speaker 9:No pun intended. I think there's definitely an opportunity for live. I mean, we've gone live as we travel a bunch to and Japan and these different markets, we're walking around and showcasing these crazy things, because a lot of people too are so interested in these other places. And obviously, you can get that from videos, but I think there is a value of seeing it live there that you can kind of get the surroundings and understand where the person is that you can't get just from other content. So it's something that we definitely think about.
Speaker 9:You know, we, in Barcelona, recently, were at dinner. We were shooting a short form video, a YouTube video, and we're simultaneously live on x, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, Twitch, all at the same time. Yeah. So it was just like, like, a content overload shooting out to millions of people. So I think that there's, yeah, there's totally room for that.
Speaker 9:As every genre of content and topic innovates, I think there will be ways that live finds its way in the food space. And I think live cooking thing is cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I could imagine it working, but you've to have really good talent, for sure.
Speaker 1:Would would you guys ever create like Yes Chef kind of cafeteria, like an ongoing physical space that had basically like individual food stands? There's a place where I went to college where it was like one one building and there was probably like 10 different restaurants in inside and and each one was like a very opinionated, individually operated. So it wasn't like... It wasn't the building being like, oh, we're gonna make 10 different, you know, restaurants inside. But it feels like over time you go from like, okay, making videos that people love to events that people love to eventually like a, you know, maybe it starts as a pop up, but then like a sort of ongoing durable thing.
Speaker 9:Yeah, definitely. I think I've always thought about this golden triangle of content, community, and products, and if you can pair that kind of like the famous Disney flywheel, each part helps the next. So, yeah, we... We've ideated a bunch on some different brick and mortar concepts and different CPGs that we have, but I think it's really easy to think about a million ideas and to, like you've said, you know, forget about the golden egg for us right now that is content. That's why we're so focused on the studio deal.
Speaker 9:We're, you know, like, we're looking to hire the best in class Yeah. Editor and videoographers to add to our team so that we can really double down, and I think the more... This world, I think you guys have seen it, is really just like it... Whoever gets the most amount of attention wins. If you can get the most amount of attention, then eyeballs, then you have all these...
Speaker 9:You have all these, like, AI companies, and, you know, Instinct, and
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 9:The other one that, they have... Their their values go from 50,000,000 to 500,000,000 in two weeks because a million people use their app, they don't even monetize, but the, you know, the public thinks they can monetize in the future. I think it's... How we view it is, like, we're building the largest and most engaged food community in the entire world, and we don't need to rush to monetize that right away. We want to really thoughtfully and carefully come out with things that we're passionate about, so everyone launches a product and sells you something.
Speaker 9:Like, we don't want to just do something to do something, and we know that long term value of what we're building with the studio, and the NextGen Food Network, and the content, and these events and experiences of like, we want to just continue that. It doesn't need to happen overnight and tomorrow. We know the value that all of that is going to kind of combust and explode over time.
Speaker 1:Hopefully not explode, but launch into the strategy. Not in
Speaker 9:good way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah. One more. Are you seeing any interesting technology in kitchens? Like, people have... You know, some of the QSR concepts have been promoting their robots for a long time now.
Speaker 1:Unclear, like, very unclear as somebody who's, you know, far from the industry like how how much adoption these kind of tools are getting. One thing's for sure I don't think consumers are going to care. If anything it'd be a turn off. It's like, hey, this sandwich was made by a robot. Like kind of an interesting novelty thing.
Speaker 1:Gimmick. But like, you would think it would be hitting in coffee so hard by now. Like, you'd think we'd have like Yeah. Really good coffee robots and yet, like, people want to go to a barista that they know and that that seems pretty Lindy.
Speaker 9:Yeah, I agree. I feel like, especially in the coffee space, you'd see it explode. I'm sure you guys have seen Mark Lohrey from one different... He's a friend, and he invested a ton of money into the robotic systems to automate all the food. I'm curious to see how that plays out, because if it works, I think it's great.
Speaker 9:Like, I don't know. There's so many people that every day at work, you don't care. Like, if your food tastes good, you don't really care who made it or how fast it was made for a large part of the population. But on the other side, I do think there's a huge population that does really care and doesn't want to just, like, let a machine make their food. I think it's an interesting balance.
Speaker 9:I don't know. I think that technology has killed lunch, though. Like, lunch lunch is dead. No one goes to lunch anymore. You know?
Speaker 2:It's all
Speaker 9:swappled. Like, technology literally, lunch used to be a thing. Lunch does not exist. Like, RIP, lunch.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Used to you used to have, like, you know, some some... A nice salad, some salmon.
Speaker 4:Three or four cocktails.
Speaker 2:Three or four cocktails.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Maybe a cocktail. You walk
Speaker 9:around in London and everyone's pounding Dennis. I'm like Yeah. Where did
Speaker 16:where did
Speaker 9:that go? We forgot that. Did that go? Like, we're too locked in,
Speaker 2:I guess.
Speaker 9:Locked in, capitalism is overtaking Totally
Speaker 1:agree. We gotta bring it back. My last question for now, should your metabolism be studied? Do you think there's I any sort of like Yeah, your personal metabolism.
Speaker 7:Do you
Speaker 1:think there's be any sort of like breakthrough, scientific breakthrough that we could get by understanding how you process such a high volume and diverse set of foods?
Speaker 9:Potentially. I I guess I'll... First of all, thank you. I'll take that as a compliment.
Speaker 2:It was a huge compliment. It came in the And
Speaker 9:there there actually is a... There's something that we're we're working on.
Speaker 4:Woah.
Speaker 9:That that, you know, is... It kind of it kind of helps digest and something that I think would be valuable to a lot of people that
Speaker 1:Yes, chef. GLP one slash testosterone blend.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Okay. Last question.
Speaker 9:Not crazy. Crazy.
Speaker 2:Last question. AI, I think we've all had this experience where like the model progress is really good. Everything's like, woah, this is amazing. And then you go and you talk to the models about the thing that you're the expert in and you're like, ah, like it's not good at the thing that I'm good at. Geordie always has this with like surfing and cars.
Speaker 2:It'll make weird recommendations. Are you seeing that in food if you ask for recipes? Like we noticed with music, the lyrics will always have the word glass in it, which is just an odd thing that doesn't need to be in every song. And I'm wondering if there's like, you know, you're absolutely right or it's not this, it's that, but for food or for recipes, have you picked up on any telltale signs that a recipe is AI or AI is in the food world or something like that?
Speaker 9:I think when it comes to recipes, it's fine and works because recipes are pretty simple to follow, but when it comes to actual recommendations, I think there's a, yeah, there's a huge lacking because it kind of just pulls what it sees, but then you go on Uber Eats and a lot of people pay for reviews. It's not... I can't really act... You can't intuitively think about, like, who this chef is and and what they're doing and so the I think it kind of spits out, like, not great recommendations. I think there's a huge area for growth
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 9:In the food world that is very interesting to me. But, yeah, I don't I don't think it's, like, perfect
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yet. It goes a back to, like, often the models are good at like what the researchers care about. If they don't care about going to lunch, it's not going give you very good lunch recommendations. They care about chess.
Speaker 2:They care about math. It's really good at math. Really good at math. Whipping up the best possible, the super slot bowl.
Speaker 1:Power lunch. Super. Power lunch. Yeah.
Speaker 4:I think
Speaker 9:it has some room to catch up.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So well, thank you so much for coming on. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Great to have you on. Yeah. Amazing business and And and I love when we meet a company that's crushing it and yet it feels like there's just a million Yeah. You know, new opportunities and and ways to expand. Come back on soon and...
Speaker 1:Great. Yeah. I'd love
Speaker 9:to come back on and
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 9:Thank you guys for inspiring our team from afar.
Speaker 2:It's been awesome. It's been awesome.
Speaker 9:Growth and journey. Hope we will meet in person and get some food Yeah.
Speaker 1:That'd great. Talk to Give our best to the team.
Speaker 2:Have a
Speaker 1:good one. Jack.
Speaker 2:Goodbye. Let me tell you about Railway. Railway is the all in one intelligent cloud provider. Use your favorite agents to deploy web app servers, databases, more while Railway automatically takes care of scaling, monitoring, and security. Our next guest is Ugi D'Amour from x b o w x bow.
Speaker 1:That's right. And CEO. Welcome to the show. How are you doing? Here he is.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for taking the time. Hey.
Speaker 1:What's happening?
Speaker 7:Welcome. Thanks very much for for having me.
Speaker 2:Thank you for joining. Yes. I would love to to get a brief introduction on yourself and the company first, and then I wanna go into just cybersecurity and what you're seeing, what is interesting, how big is the problem, how effective is the solution.
Speaker 7:XBO is a company that automates security research. So it does the work of an offensive security researcher. You point it at a target and it will report the vulnerabilities it finds working like a human expert. Yeah. Now, today, we are announcing a particular vulnerability found by OG.
Speaker 7:A full chain vulnerability in Chrome.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 7:What that means is that you just point your web browser at one malicious website, and the attacker will own your entire Windows PC. Okay. Your email, bank account, passwords, key... Keystrokes, and so this vulnerability affects a billion users. Wow.
Speaker 7:Google Google acknowledged the problem, paid their maximum bounty. But what's really interesting is that it only took six days.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 7:Six days by a very skilled security researcher. Yeah. It was joined by a swarm of agents. Sure.
Speaker 2:That makes sense.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And the other the other thing that's notable is, like, you know, finding this this exploit that that would impact a billion users in a very meaningful way. And and congratulations. Your prize money is $250,000, which
Speaker 2:Yeah. Do prize monies need to go way up so you can offset compute? I don't know what you spend. I don't know if you want to share, but I've heard of, like, million dollar agent swarm runs, essentially prompts that wind up working for days of wall clock time, and they're burning GPUs for hours and hours. And it feels like it can get expensive.
Speaker 2:But the value of catching these bugs is so high, especially right now that should companies be spending more on these, like, white hat bounties?
Speaker 7:So definitely, everyone should get their defenses up. But, no, it was not that expensive.
Speaker 4:Okay. We
Speaker 7:used an off the shelf model, a GBT five six Soul.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 7:And it only cost $40,000.
Speaker 2:Okay. Wow. Yeah. And and so how how how integrated are you with OpenAI to be able to do offensive cybersecurity testing? Do you need to get whitelisted with them in some way to to actually be able to run prompts that might get rejected just by the default ChatGPT front end?
Speaker 7:So OpenAI are great partners of ours, as are all of the other front end apps. Yeah. In this case, it was a publicly released model, but we are part of daybreak, and
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 7:Of course, we also got to got to play with the restricted models. Yeah. However, we really wanted to make the point here that it's possible to do with a publicly available model.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, break break this down a little bit more because because... So so the browser, like, you would simply have to navigate and land on the website. You don't need to you wouldn't need to to download anything or run any software. It's literally just you land on it and it's over for you. Is that is that generally correct?
Speaker 7:That's exactly right. So this this type of bug in Chrome is really really hard to find. Every major security intelligence agency in the world has a team of people doing this kind of thing, and some of my contacts have been telling me that it takes months, something like six months to do this with a team of people. Yeah. And this time, it was done in just six days by one person.
Speaker 7:I mean, not really building on our previous experience that he had gathered with his with his with his colleague.
Speaker 1:Yeah. When you find an exploit like this, does it ever go through your head like maybe somebody would have found this before but wouldn't have the incentive to share it publicly or obviously they Yeah. Like a malicious actor could make a lot more than $250,000, like, exploiting this, then... And and so it begs the question, yeah, was this already being abused for a while?
Speaker 7:So we have no evidence of that. I don't know for sure, but don't know whether someone else has found this particular bug before. But what the story does tell you is that everybody really has to get their defenses in order. Cybersecurity is now right at the top of what everyone needs to be worried about. Take action.
Speaker 7:Find the bugs before the bad guys do.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:What what are your predictions for for the next three to six months? Like, feels like the... This... Everyone inside of tech is is is well aware of the issue and and, you know, making sure that that their walls are are are as strong as possible. And it feels like the the the sort of mythos moment really helped bring this sort of risk into even outside of the tech industry.
Speaker 1:Let's call it like the the Fortune 500, things like that. But but but for for every one of these that your team finds, there's a there's a concern that there's, you know, more more risk out there that that's not being found. So like, how are you how are you advising your customers in a more maybe in a more specific in a specific way?
Speaker 7:So this particular research that we're reporting today is part of work that we're doing towards new products that test desktop applications like Chrome. We have an already released product used by hundreds of enterprises around the world that that autonomously tests web applications. So you point it at a website and it will do the work of a skilled hacker. We'll do it carefully, not not doing any damage, just reporting the problems that that are there. Everybody needs to do this type of autonomous scanning.
Speaker 7:There's just not enough experts in the world to do it all manually or even with a human in the loop. And so, while this particular bug was found through the combination of human ingenuity and AI, Our ultimate aim is to do this in a completely automated fashion. We already do it for web apps, and now we're also starting to do it for desktop applications and firmware.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Talk about progress in open source. You know, people on X have gotten access to obliterated models and been very concerned about their capabilities. What are you seeing? I'm assuming any I'm sure you guys are, like, experimenting and and testing open models so that you understand what people around the world, even people that aren't a part of, let's say, nation state groups or more sophisticated groups could get access to.
Speaker 7:Totally. So whenever new models drop, we immediately run them through our tests. That includes the open waste models. I'd say the open waste models are three to four months behind the frontier and cyber capabilities. And so that just shows the urgency of problem.
Speaker 7:We all need to get ready for models that are as powerful as the very best ones in the frontier labs are being available to all everybody, including the attackers.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you for everything you're doing. You Yeah. For coming on the
Speaker 1:Thanks for helping out a billion people.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's great work.
Speaker 2:Serious Not
Speaker 1:not many of our guests get to get to do that every day at least. Yeah. So... And hopefully,
Speaker 2:I don't know, many more bugs found before anyone else does. I guess that's it. I... We want as we want as few bugs as possible, but we want you to be as
Speaker 4:successful as possible. Yeah. Would hate...
Speaker 1:Personally, would hate for another company to save as many... Save more people than you guys do.
Speaker 2:Yes. You know? Yes.
Speaker 14:Yes. There we go. Thank you very much. It was great.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Well, yeah. Great great to meet you, and I'm sure we'll have you back on soon.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Have a great rest of your
Speaker 7:day. Awesome. Thank you
Speaker 1:very much. Cheers.
Speaker 2:Let me tell you about Figma. Agents meet the canvas. Your AI agents can now create and modify your Figma files with design system context. Next, we will be talking to Nick Talken at Albert Invent, the cofounder and CEO. He's in.
Speaker 1:Here we go.
Speaker 2:What's going on? Nick, how are doing? Welcome to the show.
Speaker 8:I'm doing well, guys. How are you doing, dude?
Speaker 2:We're good. I think we need to warm up this Gong. First Gong hit. We we had another couple other big announcements, but
Speaker 1:We kinda missed the Gong moment. Crazy. It's been a little crazy today.
Speaker 2:Lot of people on. So but this is this is a clean Gong hit territory. So take us through it. What's going on?
Speaker 5:Yeah. So excited to announce today series b 55,000,000 led by TCV. Let's go.
Speaker 1:Great hit, John. Congratulations. Yeah. Great. Well, we'll we'll talk soon.
Speaker 1:Alright. Yeah. Yeah. Introduce yourself, the company, how you got here, all that good stuff.
Speaker 5:Yeah. So at Albert, we make chemistry native AI. Mhmm. And so we're helping scientists in the lab with the white coats invent faster. Mhmm.
Speaker 5:A lot of people don't really appreciate the chemical industry, but it's, you know, the entire physical world is made of chemistry. Everything in your guys' studio, everything you're wearing is chemistry. And traditionally, it takes years to invent and launch new products. Mhmm. And so we're replacing paper notebooks, bringing AI into the lab, and help them invent faster.
Speaker 2:And what's your what's your thesis between fine tuning models, training your own models versus using the advancements that are happening in the the foundation model companies and then diffusing that with software integrations, etcetera?
Speaker 3:Yeah. I mean, there's no
Speaker 5:sense in reinventing the wheel if the wheel is working well. But it turns out that in chemistry, it doesn't work too well. And so as part of this announcement, we actually are announcing a new Frontier retrieval model that we'd trained. It's 45 x better than OpenAI and Voyage and the the... Some of the traditional retrieval models.
Speaker 5:Sure. And what it really comes down to is the models that are trained on the entire Internet are really good at discriminating between this is life sciences, this chemistry, this is legal. But when you get down to what's the difference between a, you know, nanoparticle, encapsulant, in a paint coating and a, you know, some sort of, you know, cellulite there, they cannot differentiate between that. And so we had to build our own models for that, which is which is fun.
Speaker 2:45 x feels like a different type of lift from when we talk to, like, a a legal company that's like, yeah. We fine tune this, and we do 20% better on this benchmark. Do you expect that to hold for a long time because of the data? Because there there... There's kind of...
Speaker 2:There's constantly this back and forth, and then the the the specific models get leapfrogged, and then they go back and forth. How are you thinking about this over the long term?
Speaker 5:Yeah. Super good question. So it all comes down to the data and the availability of the data. It turns out that in chemistry, all of the publicly available data is is the the successes. Right?
Speaker 5:So if you think about science, right, you publish your successes and the failures, you basically discard or you keep in your paper notebook. And so we have customers who are using our platform that have more tokens of chemistry information in their single enterprise than the entire public corpus of chemical information out there. And so that allows us a pretty big advantage to build something that's very domain specific to them.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. How is how is, people that that work in, you know, chemistry and material science, how are they reacting to model advancements? I can imagine I can imagine, you know, you're working with commercial companies.
Speaker 1:They see model progress. They probably get excited because they think we can do more work faster. Whereas, like, mathematics that's happening on university campuses, that can be a little bit more jarring because you're sort of like, hey, there was a bunch of work that was being done that that we were enjoying doing, and now there's no point in doing it anymore, and what do we do kind of thing?
Speaker 5:Yeah. So I think it's scary to a lot of the people. Right? I mean, there's... A lot of our customers are 100 year plus old companies.
Speaker 5:They... You know, change is hard. And the other thing that's different is that you have to get into the physical world to close the loop. Right? With math or coding, right, you can have a model that just reinforce learns on a computer, and you can just set it and run it, and it will just get better and better and learn.
Speaker 5:In our world, we have to get to the lab. You have to actually run that experiment. You actually have to do that. And so we like to think of, you know, software engineers are turning it to software architects. Right?
Speaker 5:You're architecting systems. You're architecting, you know, your applications. I think the same is happening now in chemistry, maybe a little bit delayed, where instead of you being the person doing the work in the lab and maybe designing every nuance of the experiment, you're now architecting an experimental, system, and then you're letting the AI go and actually do that work for you. I think, you know, problem solving has become... Is becoming commoditized.
Speaker 5:So now the question is what is the right problem to solve? And so that is, you know, get close to your customers, understand their needs, and then you can figure out what to actually point the AI at to go solve.
Speaker 2:What is the holy grail in chemistry and material science? Like, everyone in bio says cure cancer, but what is, like, crazy advanced success over the next decade look like?
Speaker 5:Yeah. I don't know if it is one problem, and I think that's kind of the fun of it. Right? I mean, if you want... If you...
Speaker 5:If Elon wants to go to Mars, he needs better ablative materials for the outside of the rocket. Like, they know how... What the trajectory looks like to send a rocket to Mars. They need better materials. If we want batteries that last longer, we want better solar cells, we want plastics that degrade and don't pollute, we wanna get rid of PFAS that's, you know, leaching into the environment, though, that's all chemistry.
Speaker 5:Those are all chemistry problems. And so I think there's a lot of holy grails, and our hope is to give the tools to the people that are inventing and trying to solve those problems because if we don't, they're not gonna be solved fast enough.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. It's fascinating that there's there's there's so many different opportunities and applications here and probably lots of companies, lots lots of potential customers and lots of work to be done up and down the stack. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, what what an exciting time. Congrats on the fundraise. Very exciting.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Hoping that you're... Like, you know, I've I've gone back and forth on these... On this idea that, when you when you see all these math breakthroughs, you have to assume that like a bunch of other breakthroughs in other fields that are gonna be much more impactful Oh, sure. Directly on people's life like an alternative to PFAS Yeah.
Speaker 1:Or you know, new new new...
Speaker 2:By Navier Stokes on a daily basis?
Speaker 1:I mean, but I don't
Speaker 2:wanna speak Most people that weren't affected by it. Yeah. That makes sense. Well, congratulations...
Speaker 1:Great to meet. Thank you coming on. And congrats to the team.
Speaker 2:We'll talk to you soon. Goodbye.
Speaker 4:Cheers.
Speaker 2: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. And we have Jeff Holden from Atomic, founder and CEO, With us here, Ed and the team, can talk about the
Speaker 1:Black Screen. We are working on Jeff. Here he is.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the show. How are you doing, Jeff?
Speaker 14:Good. How are doing?
Speaker 2:We're good. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Since this your first time, I would love for you to kick it off with an introduction of yourself and the company.
Speaker 14:Oh, great. Yeah. So so let's see. The the nutshell version of me is, you know, I'm a computer scientist who went very multi... Multidisciplinary over my career.
Speaker 14:Mhmm. My my first manager out of college was Jeff Bezos. He was my manager at D. E. Shaw and Company in New York and I followed him to Amazon and so I was engineer number 10 at Amazon and it really built the, you know, sort of led the charge to build the back end of Amazon, kind all the fulfillment aspects of it.
Speaker 14:And then went over and I joined us team and ran the consumer side for about four years and built Amazon Prime amongst other things. So I'm I'm the one to blame. So if you're building find yourself spending too much.
Speaker 2:The matter compiler from the diamond age. Explain for everyone Yes. What that is and how you're actually going about building it.
Speaker 14:Yes. The atomic... Atomic machines is... It just come out of stealth after six years. We're like turning on mushrooms.
Speaker 9:Overlooking... How much did
Speaker 2:you raise in the process of coming out of stealth?
Speaker 14:250,000,000. A
Speaker 1:very a very humble amount for your pedigree, I will say. But
Speaker 14:Thank you.
Speaker 4:It's a
Speaker 14:good start. Yes. It does it does seem small these days. But we've made it work well, so yeah. What the Matter Compiler does, it's new kind of manufacturing technology, a new manufacturing system.
Speaker 14:It's new because what it does is it takes, digital code and produces a complete working micro machine out the other side. And that's they're just this is the technical name for this is a combinatorial constructor, so David Deutsch reference. But, you know, this type of technology doesn't exist today. You know, the closest thing would be something like a three d printer, which can make different shapes in material. But this is, you know, complete working micro machines with moving parts, you know, that that, you know, to serve a purpose.
Speaker 14:You you you basically describe to an AI.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So this is building the gray goo machine from the book, don't build the gray goo machine?
Speaker 14:We're not quite at gray goo yet. Okay. You know? So, yeah, so this is, you know, it's actually, there's Neill Stephenson who was obviously just on a little while ago is, you know, is one of... Is like my favorite author.
Speaker 14:And we... The matter compiler is actually attributed to, you know, the matter compiler in the diamond age. But I would say we're closer to the manufacturing technology in Snow Crash. Okay. Yeah.
Speaker 14:So this is like the auto factories of Snow Crash, know, we're we're still working with material, you know, kind of like, you know, macro materials. We're building micro machines, so features in the microns. But we're not working yet with atomic scale. That's Sure. That's part of our mission.
Speaker 2:But the actual machine might be a centimeter?
Speaker 14:Yeah. Millimeters in millimeters in scale.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That's small.
Speaker 14:Our first device is is called PrimeSwitch. It's a it's a new class of power relay, and that's that's a 9.5 millimeter diameter by three millimeter thick device, and it can carry a 150 amps Yeah. And open in fifty microseconds. So, yeah, new new thing for the world.
Speaker 2:What is the TAM on these types of machines? Like, seems like if they're used in data centers, they're used probably all over the place. But what what, like, what is your go to market? Are you going to conferences for people that need these particular machines at the scale? It feels like it's very diffuse.
Speaker 2:Diffuse is probably like a piece in the supply chain of, you know, so many everything from consumer electronics to medical equipment to data center equipment, etcetera.
Speaker 14:Yeah. Yeah. It's true. Like, what we did is we essentially planted a flag in a relatively unserved space, right? Sure.
Speaker 14:Micro machines, you know, it's a and this is the reason we started here is because it's out of reach of conventional manufacturing. You just can't use traditional kind of macro scale manufacturing technologies because the physics kind of fails you as you go down into the low digit microns. And so what you have left in to make something, anything at any kind of volume at that scale is semiconductor manufacturing. And semiconductor manufacturing was invented to make one kind of machine, right? It's the semiconductor transistor and circuits built around that.
Speaker 14:So that leaves the whole world of micro machines, which is you can think of as kind of several different domains of physics crossed with kind of a couple of different purposes. It leaves that whole space unserved. And so we've built the first manufacturing system that can actually really fully address that space. But we also went beyond that and we built it in a way that is a combinatorial constructor so that what we're hoping to trigger is a massive kind of innovation explosion at that scale. And you mentioned some of the kind of domains applications.
Speaker 14:I this is a negative space, so it's hard to put a TAM on it. I think it's extremely large, of course. But things like robotics, micro robotics that can go into difficult environments, including the human body. Medical micro robotics is something people have talked forever, right? It's like, in the early 2000 people were like, it's here, but it's not really here.
Speaker 14:Turns out you just can't build those things. And like one example of that is I was actually talking to Eddie Chang, who's the head of neurosurgery at UCSF. He said, what we need for a watershed in neurosurgery is like a millimeter scale micro robot that we can insert into the through the cranium into the brain and then steer it to its destination. Sounds It kind of creepy, but like the imagine if you could just if you could carry a little drug payload to any place in the brain. Today, you're limited to you make a hole in the cranium and then whatever you can reach with a straight line tool is what you can get to.
Speaker 14:And that limits the areas you can operate on. And that's a really simple idea, you know, and it's but like there's just never been a manufacturing technology to make that device. And so, you know, some medical applications, know, little tiny, you know, grain sort of size of a piece of rice kind of dosing pumps, these kinds of things. That's the stuff we'll be able to build. And I'm super excited about medical applications.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. Very exciting.
Speaker 1:One of the... Yeah. A very fitting day to have you on the same day as Neil. When you were... Prior to six years ago, post Amazon, did you just decide I'm gonna read a lot of science fiction and figure out what to build?
Speaker 1:Like, where where was the... I was asking Neil about how he feels, like, what kind of weight he feels in terms of writing science fiction because Yeah. For better or worse, you sort of come up with ideas that are plausible, believable, but but far out and and entertaining, and and yet then generations of of humans read that and imagine what's possible, and then Yeah. And then it becomes possible because somebody imagined it in a in a sort of fictional context.
Speaker 14:Yeah. Right on. Yeah. No. I mean, I was definitely influenced by by science fiction.
Speaker 14:I mean, it started for me at five years old with Star Trek. In fact, there's an Enterprise right behind me. That's the original the original series, which you guys probably don't remember. But, you know, Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock and those guys.
Speaker 14:Yeah. Basically, you know, this idea that you you could like, you know, the the... A purpose for existing exploration and learning and curiosity was like, it blew my mind. And the idea that you could, you know, you have the ability, our species has the ability to like edit our future, you know, to build for problems we can't yet anticipate, you know, to create new knowledge and to build new types of technologies, new physical things. And I just wanted to be part of that.
Speaker 14:Like, from from when I was a kid, I wanted to I wanted to get a push on the frontier of what humanity can do. And so, you know, I've done that in different ways. Like, you know, I was, know, at Uber and another thing there is like, by Uber, you know, that's the elevator aircraft. Yeah. So, you know, the the the EV tall world.
Speaker 14:I mean, so, you know, I've... That's a... That's been a passion of mine for a long time. And I developed a thesis around this that I call the human command of matter. And it's...
Speaker 14:And it's... You know, it led to the creation of atomic machines and it led to our very ambitious mission, which is on demand universal command of matter. We... To get to get there, you're really at the point that Neil envisioned in the diamond age where it might not be done. If there's the feed and the seed, those are two different versions of that world.
Speaker 14:I hope it's the seed, not the feed. But where you can literally create any sort of physically stable configuration of atoms that quantum mechanics allows. Right? That's what we want. That's when we're with that, I'll probably take a vacation.
Speaker 2:I love it.
Speaker 1:What's a more... Leave us with a sort of maybe a more cute or trivial use case besides you know, medical applications? Like, I'm imagining, could we get mosquito sized robots that defend your home from mosquitoes? Like, how how far can can you Yeah. Take
Speaker 14:Sure. I mean, you know, there's kinds of things like that, you know. And I and our our approach is going to be to open up the matter compiler as a foundry. And so we'll let the world invent what those devices should be. If it's mosquito killing machines or it's, you know, graphene on copper super capacitors or it's, you know, you know, a a cooling...
Speaker 14:Two phase cooling loop for a GPU. Right? Something that you just can't, know, you can like bond to the chip and put inside the package. I mean, these are all these are all kinds of applications. But, you know, our goal is to get to the point where, you know, you you interact with an AI just the way you would with, like, Cloud Code or, you know, Codex.
Speaker 14:Right? You you interact with an AI, and the AI is generating output tokens, some of which are physical, you know. So you... It's... Know, and and the reason, like, you know, Yeah.
Speaker 14:If you think about it, the the reason you can do cloud code is because beneath beneath this... You have this new layer of intelligence which lets you vibe code. Right? You can you can like talk to the intelligence. The intelligence will map your messy natural language into a formal grammar of a compiler.
Speaker 14:And you have a compiler with a formal grammar. There isn't something like that for Adams. Right? You can't do the same thing. You can talk...
Speaker 14:You might even... Even if you... You know, kind of, presume that there's a a clog code two point o that that, you know, now for atoms, and it says, know, hey, you know, go ahead and design anything you want, any machine. There's no formal language to express the machine in to then compile it into a physical thing. Mhmm.
Speaker 14:So you then have to go figure out how you're gonna manufacture that thing. And that's that's the kind of the the world we live in today. Right? It's it's like the manufacturing line is a kind of per device thing or per kind of device thing. You have to build kind of from scratch and figure it out and tweak it and tune it over years.
Speaker 14:You know, that's the game we're trying to change. So that way, there is a formal grammar that you can express, you know, the the thing you're trying to build. In our world, it's called a process graph. This is real. And if you can express the correct sentence in that formal grammar, you can get the machine out the other side.
Speaker 14:So that's a very hard thing to build. That's why we went into a hole for six years.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Well... Yeah. It's fascinating. I I I feel like we're going to look back in fifty years and look and and and look at, you know, pre 2030 and be like, back then, we could only build big machines.
Speaker 1:The only machines you could build, you could Car. Were massive. Yeah. The car, the plane, etcetera. Right.
Speaker 1:Very, very fascinating. I'm sure you'll be back on a lot, and we'd love to have you.
Speaker 2:Congrats on the fundraising coming out of Stealth.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Thanks.
Speaker 14:To meet you guys so much.
Speaker 2:We'll talk
Speaker 14:to Yeah. You
Speaker 1:Let's do it again soon.
Speaker 4:Have a
Speaker 14:good one.
Speaker 1:Take care. Cheers.
Speaker 2:Up next, we have Eli Manning and Michael Waldron, the executive producers of Chad Powers and we have some special I know
Speaker 6:what time it is.
Speaker 2:Time to put up
Speaker 1:Here we go.
Speaker 2:Hours now. These are insane. Let's bring in Eli Manning and Michael Waldron to discuss the latest season. Here they are. Chad Bowers, how are guys doing?
Speaker 3:Doing great. Thanks for having us.
Speaker 1:We're gonna try to keep... I'm gonna try to keep it You're gonna
Speaker 2:keep it on? I'm gonna
Speaker 1:try to keep it together on. It's it's a lot.
Speaker 15:It's really upsetting.
Speaker 2:It's a lot. Yeah. Well, so on Halloween, we we we we do the full Hollywood makeup. And last year, did Marc Andreessen and and it was three hours. It took forever.
Speaker 1:It was a lot more than three hours.
Speaker 2:Was so worth it. And when I watched the 2022 clip of you Eli putting on the makeup, I was like, that is us. Like, this is so this is so us. I know how much time that takes in the in the the show. You show all the different prosthetics and how much work goes into that both...
Speaker 2:Like, it's almost an athletic endeavor to get into that makeup every day. But anyway, thank you so much for being here.
Speaker 3:Of course. Looking forward to it.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Can we go back to that 2022 original bit you did? Like, what was the inspiration? What were you drawing on? Like, what led you to come up with that idea?
Speaker 3:I think just the idea of the fact that Penn State still, you know, held an open tryouts for for to try to walk on and try to go out there and see if you could still throw a little bit
Speaker 16:and compete with these guys.
Speaker 3:So I was excited about that, the fact that Jane Franklin was into it, didn't want to tell any of his coaches. I felt like he was kind of pranking his coaches to see if they would recognize if someone had a little talent and showed up for one of these tryouts. And definitely after, you know, sitting in that chair for two hours to go through the prosthetics and the hair, you know, sweet mullet, great mustache, and you know, once I started competing, like, I was definitely worried about the 40 yard dash, that I might pull a hamstring and just ruin this whole thing. All that hard work and logistics to pull this thing off is go to waste on the hammy. But then just started making up stories and just kind of, you know, did not worry about getting caught in the lie.
Speaker 3:And just, I'm gonna make every lie more outrageous than the other, and and kinda... I like how Michael's continued to do that with the show. Just, like, keeps going lie after lie that you gotta kinda cover up and figure out, and then sometimes you just kinda run away and and, like, don't don't over over, you know, complicate things in the sense of explaining too much. Just kinda say random stuff and and then get out of it.
Speaker 2:That's great. So, Michael, what was your what was your reaction to that and your journey to getting involved and actually taking this into what it's become today?
Speaker 15:Well, I was... Glenn and I were buddies, and we've been looking for something to do together. And I'm a big college football fan. I went to Georgia. Glen went to Texas.
Speaker 15:And, obviously, a fan of Eli and the original sketch. And so, somehow this thing came to us that they wanted to adapt it. And I think our initial reaction was that's an insane idea. As Glenn and I started talking about it, Glenn was the one who said, Well, what if you really took... What if you did the Mrs.
Speaker 15:Doubtfire thing? And it was a story about a guy putting on prosthetics to try and do this for real. We got really excited because I think what we thought about was just how insane someone would have to be to do that. And also, it's weirdly believable in the world of college football, like, that someone would do something that insane. Like, if I saw that story, I think I'd believe it.
Speaker 15:And and so we we said, alright. Let's let's do it. And let's take the story really seriously. And let... Let's, like, let's let's try and make it dramatic and romantic and, like, elevate the filmmaking.
Speaker 15:And and so we did. And I and I think the other thing that about it about it that was fun for me, everything that Eli said, it's It's stupid improv. Eli, it's like he's just saying the first thing that comes to mind. So really, it allows me to be a very lazy writer. The funniest thing that Chad can say is the first thing that comes to mind.
Speaker 15:He's an idiot. He's terrible at improvising. So it's actually a very joyful, easy show to write. Yeah, I think it's just a lot of fun, and I can't believe here we are. Yeah.
Speaker 15:There's two seasons of it.
Speaker 2:How did you think about the transition from season one to season two? I mean, the reviews are incredible, and a lot of shows, I feel like, have ten years of, we're going to do this. They do the first season, and then they're like, oh, we caught the we're the dog that caught the car. We got to figure out season two. This feels like there's much more planning or much more thought.
Speaker 2:But is this something that's evolving organically? Are you responsive to what the fans and the critics are saying? Or are you more of like, I know where things are going five years from now?
Speaker 15:Twenty season plan.
Speaker 2:Okay. Lock it in.
Speaker 1:Thing I live my life one episode at a time.
Speaker 15:This this thing, if any idea has legs, it's Chad Powers. We're gonna we're we're gonna chase down the Simpsons.
Speaker 2:Yeah. He's going to space eventually.
Speaker 15:I think it's a it's a little bit of both. I mean, you have an idea of maybe where you hope something would go, but I think that you're you're an idiot. And and if if you're not responding Yeah. If you're lucky enough to get a second season and and you've got fans and you... And you've got sort of audience reaction, you you know, you...
Speaker 15:That should inform what you do. And and we're making the show, to to hit as wide of an audience as possible. I... At the same time, I think for season two, I kind of did more of probably what I always wanted the show to be, which was just make it more of a thriller
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 15:Maybe more dramatic and lean into those elements. And I and I think that while perhaps unexpected for for audiences, seems seems like it connected with them, which is Eli,
Speaker 2:what advice are you giving to young athletes that want to get into media or even just have a great career in a world where you're expected to do some sort of media, even if it's just some social media? How are you thinking about the challenges faced by young athletes today?
Speaker 3:Well, think, you know, you don't do anything you don't want to do. You know, if you don't want to be a media source, you don't want to be on social media, if you don't want to, you know, be out there and and doing it, don't don't do it. But if you have interest in it, you have a personality and you wanna pursue that or just kind of enjoy being in front of the camera or behind it or doing interviews or having fun with it, then I think just gotta be yourself. Don't try to be someone you're not. And and and so I think that's kind of the idea, that you can have fun.
Speaker 3:I think I think nowadays, kind of being an athlete and being a personality and and doing things outside of your sport is kind of more acceptable. Twenty years ago, that wasn't really the case. Like, maybe you could do a commercial, but you didn't want to kind of be seen as like, well, this guy's doing too much or he's not taking his day job seriously. All these athletes take their day job very seriously, but they can also kind of show the lighter side of themselves and do something, go undercover, or do a skit, or do a prank, or you know, what or whatever, kind of show a little that you have you have something going on besides your your kind of your everyday, your day job, your your sport that you, you know, spend 90% of the time doing. You know, you can have a personality, you can do other things, and if that's an interest, you should pursue it.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's interesting. I I noticed, like, great at the media side cannot take you from a good athlete to a great athlete. Yeah. But it can take you from an okay athlete that maybe wouldn't have a career to somewhat of a career, you know, not necessarily in every sport.
Speaker 1:Sure. There is a new generation of athletes that are actually not elite, they're just so good at social media that they can get the attention necessary to kind of make a career out of it. I wanted to ask, like, what are the ups and downs across creating a new season of a TV show like this? Most of the people most of the entrepreneurs that come on our show are building companies and products and it's kind of like this, you know, it's it's a roller coaster, but you go from like concept, everyone gets excited about a concept, maybe you raise some money, build a product, you launch it, you... But but like the the point of launch is, like, when the work begins because you have this flood of customers that come in.
Speaker 1:For you guys, like, when the customers are coming in, people are watching. It's like the work has already been done and you have to be thinking about the next one. But, like, during the sort of during the actual creation process, I imagine you get all sorts of roller coasters where you're going, maybe we're going in the totally wrong direction with with with this part of the story or whatever it is.
Speaker 15:Yeah. And we and we have we have our investors that we have to to contend with. The the the Walt Disney company. But but that's... It...
Speaker 15:It's... I mean, there's probably... I hadn't thought about it. There's probably a ton of similarities between the two. You know?
Speaker 15:Filmmaking, making anything, it's it's a collaboration. It's a it's a lot of people with a lot of different skill sets collaborating. You know? You're you're working with the studio and the people who are paying for the thing and, you know, they... They've got a perspective on what can make something a success for their platform.
Speaker 15:And and and you unless you're really up your own ass, you you want it to be a a commercial success. And so, you know, you take that into account. And and then just in the making of of something, yeah, there's a million different departments that that you're, you know, the actors, the costumes, whatever, you know, and and and these things take a long time. When you... Once the thing launches, it's true.
Speaker 15:We have to sort of sit back and just see, you know, all right,
Speaker 1:how's... Let Chad take the wheel.
Speaker 15:Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. It's up to Chad then and, you know, you hope that a thing connects and it... And and there's no guarantee that it's hard.
Speaker 15:You know? I've... And and so when something like this that's that's really... You know, people don't know what to think of an adaptation of the Chad Powers sketch. And so when it does break through and you're able to get a second season, then it's like, alright.
Speaker 15:That's that's a gift. And and so really, I think the goal of season two is just elevate it, and you wanna grow the audience and and keep, I guess, making a better product over time.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Eli, when you... I'm sure you have a lot of ideas for different characters that you've seen across your career. How do you how do you think now about which characters should be... Should end up in Chad Powers versus our entirely other cinematic universes that you could...
Speaker 1:You guys could build shows around.
Speaker 3:Well, yeah, I always I always try to think of, like, you know, when talking with Michael a lot kind of around the first season, just about the characters, like, on the team that you could you could have, or just funny stories that happened in the locker room, or things that happened at practice that maybe you could make into a funny skit. So it was a lot of fun, I think, working with him and just got a, you know, reminiscing on just the great things that that happened in a locker room. A lot of it you can't quite tell the public, but you can tell a writer that he could kind of get this story out without me saying this has happened to me or this is my teammate did this. So kind of a secret way to release some of these stories. And maybe the greatest way to tell a story is like a guy all of sudden your teammate's watching is like, wait a minute, that's me.
Speaker 8:I did
Speaker 3:that. The pervert that said that. Like that's my, you know, I did, you know, what the heck's going on here? But, so I think, you know, that's kind of the fun way with shows movies and these type of things, doing these things, it's kind of another way to tell different stories and also you can make it to how you want it to happen also, and how you wanted it to remember. You don't have to let the total truth get in the way and just to to, you know, make it a little bit better.
Speaker 3:Hollywood it up.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Someday, you know, twenty years from now, you should do... You should put out the like watch along guy... This is this guy.
Speaker 1:DVD copy. This is this is this guy. Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's great. Alright. I I'm interested in understanding a little bit more about Glenn Powell. There's this take that goes around Hollywood like Tom Cruise is the last movie star. And when I saw the new Top Gun, I was like, I think we might get another movie star.
Speaker 2:But I'm wondering about how you're processing just the changes that are happening in Hollywood. What's actually not changing? And what's it like working with Glenn?
Speaker 15:Eli, how are you processing the changes in Hollywood? Yeah.
Speaker 3:I mean, yeah. I think you should take this one, Michael. I
Speaker 15:mean, Glenn, you know, Glenn, clearly, a movie star is so amazing, and that's part of the joy of this show is getting to show audiences what he can do, you know. One half of this handsome leading man, and then the other half is this Jim Carrey esque idiot performance, which is so insane. It's like, I love just what a showcase it is for his incredible range of talents. And, it's a really like... For a guy that is, everybody's like, Oh, you're the next guy.
Speaker 15:This is a really brave performance. Like like, not not every leading man is always able to to go and and play an idiot and and, you know, really humble themselves and lose scenes the way that that Russ and Chad does. And and and Glenn is that character so happy to be the the butt of the joke and let other actors win, and it and it makes you root for him and root for Chad, root for Russ. And so it's really an incredible performance. And as far as, you know, I don't know.
Speaker 15:I I I mean, I'm I'm not that old, I guess. People are always saying... I mean, Hollywood's... Everybody's always saying that Hollywood's changing. I I suspect that's a thing that everybody's heard.
Speaker 15:Yeah.
Speaker 14:And and and it
Speaker 15:probably is always changing, but I but I think the the thing that I believe at least is that, you know, and and maybe we're seeing it this year more than ever, is that audience will show up for original cool stories and and great actors, great performances, and and great filmmaking. So if you make good shit, people are gonna wanna watch it. And it's like, that's not really a subversive idea, and I actually don't think that that's gonna change.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It feels like this year has been particularly... Like, we've just seen so many breakouts, The Backrooms, Obsession thing, Iron Lung, all these, like, indie filmmakers. Are you finding talent in on... In like non traditional places for your team across the organization?
Speaker 2:Like... Because we we hear about the YouTuber who turns into the director. Right? But I don't know if
Speaker 1:we the hear the Friday beers guy in Yeah. Artificial?
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:Yeah. There's...
Speaker 2:He was an Instagram comedian. Right?
Speaker 1:Yeah. We're seeing this and I I have a I have a buddy who just started making skits and...
Speaker 2:He's getting cast and stuff now. Yeah. But what what... Yeah. What...
Speaker 2:Are you seeing the same effect or is it just starting to heat up?
Speaker 15:I mean, yeah. I... Well well, I can at least speak to like, you know, casting, you know, these people that they're just casting folks, digital creators or whatever, folks who are just have little niche followings online are oftentimes really exciting to see them break out in these big movies. Like, the guy who played Timmy Chalamet's friend in Marty Supreme was amazing, that guy. And I think he had, like, maybe a little...
Speaker 15:He was, like, a little minor Internet presence before that, I think. But, like, he was so good. And and so I I think it's a great place to find find actors. Certainly, we're seeing these, you know, awesome industrious filmmakers and writers come come out of YouTube and all that. So, yeah.
Speaker 15:I mean, of course, I wanna work with those people.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I want them to
Speaker 15:be able to give me a
Speaker 1:job. Well,
Speaker 2:thank you.
Speaker 1:Awesome, guys. Well, we're we're super excited for everyone else to to get to watch. And, yeah, really amazing work.
Speaker 2:Have a great rest of your day.
Speaker 1:We'll soon. See Goodbye. Go
Speaker 9:fish.
Speaker 2:Well, let me tell you about Codex. Codex is a powerful workspace for getting work done with AI agents. Whether you're writing code, analyzing data, creating content or automating business workflows, Codex helps you move projects forward from start to finish.
Speaker 1:Some big news on the timeline.
Speaker 2:What happened?
Speaker 1:We're just getting getting it live, so I'm gonna try to
Speaker 3:Pull it up.
Speaker 1:Figure out what happened. OpenAI discovered a sophisticated recording device that was hidden inside one of their offices. They used models to understand the device and where it came from, identifying that a specific employee had planted it a few days earlier. We referred the matter to the FBI and we're grateful to the agents and prosecutors who moved quickly to make an arrest. The FBI's investigation is ongoing and we will continue to support their work.
Speaker 1:Just reading the OpenAI newsroom. At this time, we have no indications of this individual inappropriately accessing or exfiltrating model weight source code or customer data. The employee was terminated. We take protecting our technology, data, and people seriously. And as a matter of national importance, our security program is designed to protect against a wide range of threat actors from insider risks to cybercriminals to nation states.
Speaker 1:And this case is an example of how an AI... Of how AI can help address these sophisticated security threats. So reading the SF standard, if I can pull this
Speaker 2:up... This photo is Chris.
Speaker 1:Federal prosecutors say an employee from Saudi Arabia planted an audio recorder and left another unattended in his bag. I'm not gonna be able to fully pronounce this. Abdulrahman Alphazan, a Saudi national, was arrested Friday, and charged with using or attempting to use a device to intercept oral communications. He made his initial appearance in federal
Speaker 2:court This photo is crazy. Today. They have a camera back there that caught it? What is going on?
Speaker 1:Well, Was this maybe his own device that he recorded himself with?
Speaker 2:Maybe. I don't know. I don't know why you need video from behind the TV. That's very odd.
Speaker 1:No. But it was a... It said it was a recording device. But maybe...
Speaker 2:I thought it would just be audio.
Speaker 1:Know. Maybe it just happened to......
Speaker 2:As well. That's crazy. Crazy. Crazy. Interesting.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Really really wild.
Speaker 2:You wanted to be a fly on the wall for the wrong reasons. You gotta be in those meetings just to... For the mindset like like our our friend the poster who wanted to be on the fly on the wall at the White House dinner. Now this is this is very, very crazy. Really underscores like the stakes here that they're like
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Potentially like nation states and spies afoot. All sorts of crazy, crazy stuffing going on in the AI race. But thanks for breaking it down, Geordie. Anything else we need to cover today on the show? Or should we stop?
Speaker 1:I'm sure we'll get more on this story by tomorrow, but fun show. Fun show. Ending on a on a brighter note, are we gonna get the Roadster this week?
Speaker 2:It's a crazy week for cars. On October 15, both Porsche and Tesla should be announcing vehicles if the Roadster is not delayed again. They said it was delayed for weather. The weather seems like they might be getting worse. I don't know.
Speaker 2:We'll see. But, yeah. October 15, both the both
Speaker 3:And if
Speaker 1:this doesn't launch, I think a lot of people will accuse SpaceX and Tesla of manipulating the weather to hide the fact that their car might be Yeah. A bit behind schedule.
Speaker 2:And they they might wind up competing more directly than people think. Like, they're going out on the same day. I know that they'll have different price points, but like in terms of like, the new supercar, like...
Speaker 1:These are not...
Speaker 2:I'm not saying I'm not saying that they're I'm not saying that they're gonna be direct competitors or anything. Just... They're wildly different. I'm I'm just saying in terms of like, it's not it's not that it's not that Porsche's Mission S is going up against the new Model Y launch. Like, it's...
Speaker 2:The both companies are launching a product that is above their normal level. They're both launching special cars. Yeah. And that's what's interesting is that it's happening... Go head to head.
Speaker 2:Obviously, two wildly different camps. I agree with you on like that they don't actually compete but they are they are both special... You
Speaker 1:might be the one person that is equally excited about both.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Well, I'll have to see day of. And we're gonna invite some some car journalists and car content creators on the show over the next couple weeks to... We should.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Should get some people lined up for Thursday. Yeah. I'm hearing a lot of amazing things about the about the new Porsche. Hearing it at all.
Speaker 1:Hearing and just seeing because they have some some teaser images. But something between a nine five nine and a GT one. I think they're gonna make a lot of them. I think people are gonna love it. Even the key, that they that they're teasing now looks incredible.
Speaker 1:So can't wait for this to get out. I can't wait to drive it. Nick, if you're listening, let's figure out a way to take it for a spin sooner than later. But thanks for hanging out with us today, folks. Yeah.
Speaker 1:All over the place. Yeah. But that's what we do.
Speaker 2:Yeah. We'll see you tomorrow at 11AM Pacific. Sign up for our newsletter at tbpn.com. Leave us five stars on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. And we'll see you tomorrow.
Speaker 2:Cheers. Bye.