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- [00:01]
A
Is OpenAI looking for a government bailout if things go wrong? Elon Musk gets a $1 trillion pay package to build an entirely new Tesla and Amazon sues Perplexity. That's coming up on a Big Technology Podcast Friday edition right after this. Capital One's tech team isn't just talking about multi agentic AI. They already deployed one. It's called Chat Concierge and it's simplifying car shopping using self reflection and layered reasoning with live API checks. It doesn't just help buy buyers find a car they love, it helps schedule a test drive, get pre approved for financing and estimate trade and value. Advanced, intuitive and deployed. That's how they stack. That's technology at Capital One. The truth is, AI security is identity security. An AI agent isn't just a piece of code. It's a first class citizen in your digital ecosystem and it needs to be treated like one. That's why Okta is taking the lead to secure these AI agents. The key to unlocking this new layer of protection is an identity security fabric. Organizations need a unified, comprehensive approach that protects every identity, human or machine, with consistent policies and oversight. Don't wait for a security incident to realize your AI agents are a massive blind spot. Learn how Okta's identity security fabric can help you secure the next generation of identities, including your AI agents. Visit okta.com that's okay. T a.com welcome to Big Technology Podcast Friday edition where we break down the news and our traditional cool headed and nuanced format. We have a great show for you, a big show for you today because we're going to talk all about this big controversy over OpenAI potentially requesting a backstop of its debt from the federal government or not. Some disputed reports on that, but we have a point of view. Elon Musk also won a $1 trillion pay deal that obviously goes in different steps, but is has finally been passed by Tesla's shareholders and Amazon has sued Perplexity, putting the bot Internet into question. Joining us as always on Friday to do it is Ranjan Roy of Margins. Ranjan, good to see you.
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B
Who knew that the biggest socialism story of the week would be OpenAI?
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A
You were cooking that up for a while.
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B
I've been waiting for that all week.
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A
Also Ranjan, I'm very glad to see that, you know, you're at your computer and not messing people's stuff up with your with your personal robot. I know we had some people concerned about that.
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B
I left the robot. We're waiting another another few weeks before I start destroying people's houses via humanoid robot. That's good.
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A
Well, we will take our precious time left on this earth before Ranjan gets access to destructive technology to talk about the state of OpenAI. Really, it's, it's a story about them looking for a backstop from the federal government, but, but more broadly, it's a story about whether OpenAI is ready for this moment in the company history. So let me set the scene for OpenAI. CFO Sarah Fryer is out at the Wall Street Journal's big tech conference, and she, she basically says explicitly that they are going to be looking for a backstop on the debt that they take out should things go wrong. Let's listen to a clip. Maybe even governmental.
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B
The ways governments can come to bear meaning like a federal subsidy or something.
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A
Meaning like just first of all, the backstop, the guarantee that allows the financing to happen. Okay, so, so Fryer says, we are looking for this backstop, this guarantee that allows the financing to happen, that can really drop the cost of the financing, but also increases the loan to value. So the amount of debt that you can take on top of an equity portion. And so the reporter asks of some form of backstop for chip investment, and she says, exactly. Um, Ranjan, let's just start with the logic here. It's pretty logical for a company like OpenAI, which has not been turned down by anything really lately, basically, everything it touches, it gets. Everything it wants, it gets. Why not ask the federal government to guarantee your loans?
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B
Well, I think though, everything that it's been trying to get is actually it con committing to spending money, not asking for money. Remember all of the, I mean, it's obviously raised an ungodly amount of money. But in the last few weeks, every big announcement is we will spend $38 billion with Amazon, $100 billion with Oracle and everything else. So this is a very, very different ask, I think. I mean, we'll definitely get into what it means. But, but I do agree that there's a certain kind of, I don't want to say arrogance. It's almost just, it feels like they just can say whatever they want in whatever big numbers they want. And it's okay because it's worked out pretty well for them so far.
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A
Yeah. And I think my broader point is that OpenAI has just been on this, like, run of a century, Right. Just like funding deals left and right, the fastest growing product in history. And so when you think about, like, what you can do, why not ask, you know, whether the federal government can guarantee Your loans, for instance, because you can position it as a national security thing. Here's Fryer and these are the exact comments that she gave at this event from the Wall Street Journal. She goes, I think we're seeing that and I think the US Government in particular has been incredibly forward leaning, has really understood that AI has an almost as a national strategic asset and that we really need to be thoughtful when we think about competition with, for example, China. Are we doing all the right things to grow our AI ecosystem as fast as possible? So she's coming out and saying it. There's no ambigu about it. She's clearly asking for a backstop and she's positioning it as a national security situation for the United States.
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B
This is where it is difficult. I'm going to try to take OpenAI side in this. Let's say this is the single biggest national security battle that we're going to face over the next 30 to 50 years at that point, and we've all talked about, I think on all sides of the political spectrum the idea that America has fallen behind in critical infrastructure. So if that is the case, and we are buying into this story that AI is going to be the battleground of the next century, does it seem okay that they're asking for federal guarantees or a backstop in terms of all the debt financing that's being taken out?
- [06:46]
A
I mean, I think that's my point here. I think it's perfectly reasonable for OpenAI to ask. I don't think that the US taxpayers should be backstopping the company's debt though, because, and Sam Altman in a follow up made this clear. If they fail, you'll still have Google, you'll still have Anthropic, you'll have many others that are going to be building this. So in other words, I do think that the United States is, is going to, is going to be in a good position. And I also don't really think that the government should be picking winners and giving OpenAI these guarantees, assuming that OpenAI would be the only one to get them. So to me, it's just like it's a personal. It's a perfectly reasonable ask and it's a perfectly reasonable no from the U.S. government. And David Sacks, the AI czar basically said no to bailouts.
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B
I still love that we have AI czars. Like, I think you gotta have a bailout.
- [07:43]
A
Doesn't have a czar.
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B
Now if it's not a czar, I mean, especially in the context of not wanting to have Soviet Union references across our government. But side conversation, I think on this. I think on this. So to me, where this is the most interesting is as we're talking about this, the idea, okay, in the, like, halls of power, having discussions, looking at the long term, what is the threat from China, what critical infrastructure do we need? I mean, even if you look at, like, the Biden ira, there's plenty of money that was being given to fund critical infrastructure, especially across energy. So these conversations to me seem completely reasonable as well. What's so fascinating to me is how all of this played out just in the last week. What kind of words were actually uttered by Sarah Fryer and then posted on Linked by Sarah Fryer and then tweeted by Sam Altman like they're trying to get out of it and then not get out of it and then get out of it again. Like that, to me is. It's almost shocking, but it's not shocking because it's OpenAI. But you would think that they would have a more cohesive strategy on something this important and big.
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A
And that's. That's exactly it. So we both started this show talking about, all right, like, we're not going to, you know, say it's the craziest thing in the world for them to ask. I'm not saying to be granted. I don't think they should be granted, but why not ask if you're open AI for something like this? The Internet just blew up and basically it was like, you know, we do not need the, you know, citizens of the United States of America to be guaranteeing the loans for a $500 billion company. It's crazy. Fair enough. And then the weird happen, which is that OpenAI's walk back started, and it wasn't just a walk back saying, you know, after consideration, we don't want these guarantees. It was almost like, hey, we actually never said that. Here's, here's, this is From Sarah Fryer, CNBC headline, OpenAI CFO Sarah Fryer says company isn't seeking government backstop. Clarifying prior comment, OpenAI CFO Sarah Fryer said late Wednesday that the artificial intelligence startup is not seeking a government backstop for its infrastructure commitments. I used the word backstop and it muddied the point, Fryer wrote on LinkedIn. As the full clip of my answer shows, I was making the point that American strength in technology will come from building real industrial capacity, which requires the private sector and government playing their part. Sam Altman, I would like to clarify a few things. First, a few things. First, the obvious one, we do not have or want government guarantees for OpenAI data centers. We believe that governments should not pick winners and losers and that taxpayers should not bail out companies that make bad business decisions or otherwise lose in the market. If one company fails, other companies will do good work. This is the weird thing. They are going back on it, but that's exactly what they were asking for.
- [10:41]
B
Yeah, I think it's so, it's always so frustrating now where Sarah Fryer of course going on LinkedIn and saying like it muddied the point. My, the full clip of my answer shows trying to almost make it seem like pulled out of context. When I mean in this it was so explicit. The reporter even asked her to confirm it and she confirmed it and said the word backstop again. So like I think it's just already, that's just a little bit disingenuous and just and does not land well. But I think the reason this is so salient right now is I think because it comes on the heels of, I think it was last week the Brad Gerstner altimeter interview where Sam Altman where he asked him around, you know, you're only making 13 billion but you're committed to 1.4 trillion in spend. How are you going to do this? And Sam got very defensive and then suddenly we get start to get leaks that they're seeing $20 billion annualized RE@ ARR not necessarily actual revenue but basically the numbers have never added up. Like we've talked about this at length. No one actually has really mapped out a genuine understanding of how that 1.4 trillion in spending actually is justified. So it, I think it's more real because it feels more emotional almost because they almost will certainly need this government backstop to actually make this work. Like it's not just, you know, this is some opaque financing deal that no one understands like 2008, like where you know, only PhDs are able to kind of, you know, like untangle complex sum prime mortgages and see credit default swaps. Like they're pretty clear numbers and they don't make much sense. So when you say government financing and backstop it feels a lot more real. I think that's why this is hitting so hard.
- [12:35]
A
That's exactly right. And on cnbc, I was on CNBC talking about this earlier in the week and I said Basically, look, OpenAI is going to be a trillion dollar IPO company. It's already $500 billion and its executives need to learn to speak with a little bit more discipline when it comes to Questions like this, questions like Sam got at the Brad Gerstner and then subsequently, now it can add on what say our friar said. And I, I think that you're right that this is the reason why people freaked out here wasn't necessarily because of the ask itself or maybe it was. And we're going to go into some more things about what, what Fryer actually said at this conference because there's some more really fascinating aspects of her talk that we should cover. And not just this one thing, but it's the fact that basically the entire US Stock market, the entire global stock market to some degree is counting on OpenAI to one execute on the promises that it' made to companies like Nvidia and AMD and Oracle and Microsoft to some degree. So there's that, there's that, you know, dependency there. And then if we all, we both know, and we, I think we all know, everybody listening to this, that if there's weird stuff going on in OpenAI's books, that's going to cascade. And so that's why people are like, wait a second, this does not sound like, you know, all taken together like the remarks of a company that's mature enough to be able to have everybody counting on it.
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B
No, that's a, that's a good point because I was actually thinking about like, I mean Sarah Fryer spent over a decade at Goldman Sachs. She was the CFO of multiple, I think, yes, Square Next or CEO of nextdoor. Like she has been se suite of publicly traded companies. She's, she was at the most buttoned up investment bank in existence. Like you would think decades and multiple decades of just like knowing how to be disciplined around messaging would just be so kind of deeply ingrained in her. Yet you go to OpenAI and suddenly you see how this like misspeaking or potentially actually saying what you're thinking but then trying to walk it back, having to post on LinkedIn. Meanwhile your CEO is tweeting out all other sorts of things. But then in the background I had just come across that there was a letter though submitted to the Office of Science and Technology where again they have an entire section where they talk about like the need to counter the PRC People's Republic of China by de risking US manufacturing expansion, provide manufacturers with the certainty in capital they need to scale production quickly. The federal government should also deploy grants, cost sharing agreements, loans or loan guarantees to expand industrial based capacity. So from a policy perspective they are actually pursuing this. And again as we are saying, that's not the most ridiculous, unreasonable thing to at least have a conversation around. But like, and we're going to talk about the Ilya Sam battles of the past, but it's almost like she, she shows up at OpenAI and suddenly her entire comm strategy is like Elon situation or, or just kind of this kind of like, you know, totally chaotic OpenAI comm situation. It brings you down.
- [15:52]
A
That's the thing. It's not the ask itself. It's the bag going back and forth. And then it comes on the back, comes on the back of this comment where Sam tells, you know, Brad Gerstner enough. When Gerstner asked how are you going to fund 1.4 trillion in investments with 13 billion in revenue? I'm not like, I don't want to be the, like, you know, disciplined police. I certainly don't hope to be that way. But again, if you think about just the magnitude of the, you know, how much of the stock market, how much of the economy is depending on this to work out, you want to see something more buttoned up than that. Now I do think we should get to some of the other comments that Fryer made.
- [16:32]
B
Wait, wait, hold on, hold on. I would like that. We are the discipline police in this situation. Come on. I want to, I don't think you should say like that's a bad thing. Come on. For the companies that are value. Once you cross a certain threshold. Just. Can we go back to having a little bit of communications discipline? I have worked in this for many years, even in companies in the hundreds of millions of revenue and that are, you know, like even then we had a lot of hand wringing and oversight and, and I'm not going to say it was necessarily always the most pleasurable thing to have to deal with, but like at every other level, every, you know, did you see the snowflake chief revenue officer, I believe, who was speaking to a tick tocker and accidentally like said something about revenue guidance and then they, and they filed an 8k. They still are trying to, it was a screw up, but they're still trying to play by the rules. And they're like recognizing that this is actually, you know, like an important thing that actually to play by the rules we have to still. It was a screw up and we're going to try to fix that versus companies like this that are just completely the entire, you know, like discipline of the US Financial markets just kind of making a mockery of. So I'm going to say we need more disciplined police around comms. Please just be a little thoughtful when you're speaking.
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A
This is why we need humanoid robots. So Ranjan at scale can go into your living room and start flipping tables over if you're undisciplined.
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B
If I had my humanoid robot army and it got me my trillion dollar pay package, because actually there's a humanoid robot army in that actual language in the pay package. Yeah. I'd be flipping tables right now.
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A
Well, hang on. I mean, does it matter that they're private? They're a private company. Like, they don't need to file with the, the SEC for these type of things.
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B
No, no.
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A
But shouldn't you have a little grace so you can ramp up, up to this stuff? You tell me.
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B
But see, this is where the whole, like, you know, ballooning of private valuations, I do think becomes even more problematic. This is a whole, much larger rant in general. But, like, it's because it allows the company to become this critical to our over. As you said, like, OpenAI might be the, like, entire kind of like at the bottom of the pyramid, holding up the entire US Economy right now. And because they have not had to go through any kind of rigor that even like public company with a couple of hundred million in revenue would have to go through, that's how we're ending up in these kind of situations. And it's, I mean, it's a little bit scary that, like, you know, on one hand you have your CEO getting mad about just being asked a very simple basic question that he should have had a very clear answer to. And on the other hand, you have a CFO who's had decades of training on this and suddenly seems to be backsliding into, you know, a way of communicating that, you know, you would kind of attribute to a first time cfo.
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A
That's, that's a good, that should be an article. That's a good, good opinion piece right there.
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B
That's.
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A
I like that. Okay, so I do want to talk about some of the other things that Fryer said, but before we get there, let me just ask you this one bigger question, which is that I'm curious, do you think the backlash that we're seeing here, I mean, because obviously OpenAI backtracked because of the backlash to Fryer's comments. Do you think the backl is finally a sign that OpenAI is hitting the ceiling of what it can get financially? Like, eventually it's going to push and there will be pushback. Is this sort of a sign of the top of its abilities?
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B
Yeah, I think it's not just that it's also like a really good indicator of where it is in the national conversation or the global conversation right now. Like we have talked about it for a long time. Our listeners and our friends and networks have been talking about it, but they are inserting themselves and they are becoming not just like an economically critical part of the US Economy, but also just known by every person in America. So I think it's a sign that they have a branding problem. They're going to continue to have a branding problem. And so the idea that they are getting a backstop when you know they've had secondary sales of I think they had a secondary sale at the $5005-000000-00000 valuation. So like already people are getting insanely rich off this. So it just makes it that much more unpalatable for any normal person to, to have to hear this kind of thing.
- [21:25]
A
It is interesting because their product really is beloved, but they are starting to, again speaking of our discussion last week, run into some like Facebook territory on the comm side. And what you don't want to be is like viewed as like big bad tech. So I don't think they're there. I think people really do love ChatGPT. To me, it's already one of if not the most useful tech products I use on a day to day basis. Maybe the iPhone is right above that, but it's pretty close and I don't know, I think that this is a concern for them.
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B
Yeah, agreed. And yeah, I think it's a good point that, that, that the distinction between like people love the product versus love the company. Facebook actually shown meta shown pretty well that you can do both and succeed. So if your product remains that sticky and like addictive. So, so I think it doesn't mean from a product standpoint that it's, it's genuinely troublesome for them. But I don't know, I, I feel at a certain point the more people kind of pay attention to how OpenAI has been run for this long and it's not just us and others talking about it, I think it really starts to kind of bring a different kind of light shining on it.
- [22:43]
A
Now let's get to these comments by Fryer because this was fascinating and it sort of makes you think this is how they are going to pay for that 1.4 trillion in investments. It's the best explanation I've heard yet. And if they're able to pull off this vision, then maybe OpenAI will be the most valuable company ever. Ever. And so this is sort of what Fryer said. I'M just going to get to the last two parts of what she said. She said they will. This is from Garrett Devink, who is a Washington Post reporter. They will do creative commercial deals. They're not just going to sell access to a pharma company on a per token basis. They're going to demand a rev share of the profit pharma company brings in from developing drugs using ChatGPT. This applies to commerce too. They want to take a cut of both the discovery and the transaction when someone searches for a product using ChatGPT. This is already happening with Walmart, Etsy, Shopify, all announced on dev on their dev day. That is very interesting. So what do you think about these monetization strategies?
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B
You know what I. The pharma thing is very interesting to me because the commerce side of it is kind of par for the course from a platform. I mean that's Amazon's entire retail business. I mean with the, on the third party marketplace. But everyone accepts. If you sell on my platform, I will take a cut of the transaction. But the idea that like our technology helps a pharma company create drugs in a much faster way and we would want to take a rev share, I think that's, that's really interesting. And you can imagine how many other ways that that becomes applied. But then also at that point are they taking on the risk as well? And then like they're giving away free compute in order to get that longer term rev share, which just adds actually an amazing whole additional layer of risk to the business. Like, I wonder what, like what could that look like?
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A
So I actually thought this was much cooler when I saw it for the first time. And then when I think about it, it's like, all right, so let's say, let's just go crazy here. Let's say OpenAI develops medical superintelligence that enables pharma companies to do things they never could before at human scale. Somebody else is just going to develop super intelligence as well and they're going to get into a price war. So how long can you say I want to party the profit of this drug that you're going to develop with our technology where like somebody else can be like, well, here's the platform. Just pay us a licensing fee, right, that only, that pricing model only works if you're the only one that can offer that. I just don't think they're going to be.
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B
Well, no, no, but see, I would think about it differently because not from the competitive standpoint, but from the, again, going back to what business are you in? When we're, when, when they're looking at their trillion dollar IPO and we're going through their S1. You know, the way any investors should rationally look at these things is just try to understand what business are they in. We've talked about this at length that you know, like already we don't know the economics of what a generative AI business would be. It's not traditional software because there's actually, you know, like incremental cost to the utilization of it. The more compute you use, the more expensive it is for the provider, but still subscription business for consumers. API token revenue. That's a pretty straightforward business. And I think that could make sense if it is. We are an AI cloud business, a consumer devices business, which Sam Altman said as part of that Gerstner interview. And now we're also a drug, a pharma business because we're going to be taking on some kind of risk around drug development in the actual underlying economics of our business. Like, I mean my God, that, that, that's quite something. I like, I respect a good creative contract. But like that is, that's too much.
- [26:46]
A
If they can pull it off, I mean, good for them. And I don't think it's a non 0% chance that they can, that they can pull it off. But again, the question is, you're not the only one developing this. If you're the only one developing it, fine, you could get a percentage of the revenue. It's just going to be harder than I think they think to do that now. Okay, let's just go quickly and talk about this government infrastructure side of things. So Sam Altman says what we do think might make sense is governments building and owning their own AI infrastructure. And one area where we have discussed loan guarantees is part of supporting the build out of semiconductor fabs in the US where we and other companies have responded to the government's call and where we would be happy to help. What do you think about the idea of a government AI, government owned AI infrastructure, Does that make sense? And we don't really have to talk too much about this CHIB thing because that's been done. But I think the idea of government AI infrastructure, obviously lots of governments are talking about sovereign AI. I'm curious what you think about that, Ron. John.
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B
I mean it, if we're saying, I think was it Sundar was like it was more important than electricity, like. And fire. And fire. If we, if we have like nationalized infra utility infrastructure though, it's still not fully nationalized in that way, but still much more public, private types of infrastructure in that way. Sure, maybe it makes sense if we're really saying this is going to be the backbone of the entire economy. But again, if that's truly the case, we should be building that today with that in mind and not where private citizens can actually just make ungodly amounts of money before we even get there and then be backstopped by the government. Then it should be like if that was really the case and there anyone. This is the part that feels disingenuous again to me because like if Sam, if Jensen and other comments like if anyone was really serious about this, you would be giving up economics within your own firm for the public side of things. But no one's doing that yet.
- [28:58]
A
It. That's right. That's a very good caveat. But I would say I'm for it. Go out and build the government AI infrastructure because in case this thing does become we, I think we both agree there's a chance that this thing can reach AGI. I don't know how high of a chance there is. Or the amount that it's advanced in three years is actually insane. Like I'm now using ChatGPT and it is like reliable on many, many searches like they've built, they've answered a lot of the questions like hallucinations, reliability capabilities, things like math and science are assisting with these, these capabilities. It can do that. So given the priorities we've seen so far, I think a government should invest in it. I don't fully know what a government does with it.
- [29:43]
B
Well, no, but, but that's like that. That's what does it look like in that case, if you think about it like is if you're running a company, do you get a bill from the US Government for your API consumption? Like, I cannot imagine any of the folks involved in Silicon Valley or AI are going to be advocating for that. So what does it look like? Or is it just the government backstops your loans and heads, what is it? Heads you win, tails they lose.
- [30:14]
A
I mean, ultimately, I think what a government wants is for its country to be strong. And so that can play out in a couple of ways. First of all, government can develop AI technology on its own, build a foundational model and make that available for, you know, I guess anybody in, in the country to use at a low cost and see and spark innovation from there. So that's like external use. And the other side of it is if you're an effective and efficient government you're going to end up, you know, creating a stronger country. And we know that we don't have an efficient government. DOGE obviously wasn't the answer to make it efficient, but do you want to build very powerful AI and then use it to sort of connect all the disparate data that you have, you know, with within the country? You know, assuming you can do it in a way that's sort of privacy compliant, which is a big if, and then use that to make better decisions and then run your country better. If you can do that, then then it would be very valuable.
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B
So are you advocating for US GPT or some kind of the foundation model? Okay, maybe I'm feeling it a little bit.
- [31:21]
A
USGPT. Build it.
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B
Nationalize the LLMs.
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A
Well, you could have, you could have the private sector and the public sector both doing it, but I, I think given where we are today, why not? I mean, it's not, it's not going to be a massive portion of your, of your budget to be able to do stuff like this. And I think the US government should.
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B
Now, are you running? Is this a 2028 platform pitch?
- [31:47]
A
No, I think, but we're running.
- [31:48]
B
Let's join. Ticket. Joint ticket.
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A
Joint ticket.
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B
This is the platform.
- [31:51]
A
USGT I'll be your vice president. You can run against, I don't know, Whoever comes up. J.D. vance, right?
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B
J.D.
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A
Vance would be pro U.S. no, it's nationalizing the LLMs.
- [32:05]
B
We're, we're the team USGPT. The people want it.
- [32:10]
A
Maybe we can run under Elon's new third party. I think we would definitely be the ones he's looking for. But there is this battle between countries. Right? Jensen Huang from Nvidia on Wednesday, as this is all going down says, as I have long said, China is nanoseconds behind America in AI. It is vital that America wins by racing ahead and winning developers worldwide. I mean, the man wants to sell his chips into China. I don't know how that makes the U.S. you know, stay ahead if you're anti export restrictions. What do you think is going on here? And, and is there a value in, in one country having more advanced AI than another? And probably yes. But what do you think?
- [32:55]
B
I don't know if I'm overly salty this week just given socialism as the topic of the news. Meanwhile, we're having to hear all these kind of things, but like, like even statements like this, it's always kind of just China is nanoseconds behind America in AI. Like is he using nanoseconds just to sound more technical and smarter versus either just say China is tied with America or almost catching up. But I feel like it almost is just me. It's trying to make it, he's saying it to make it sound more techy. But that's more of just a, you know, a slight criticism. I think more importantly, as you said, Jensen has not shown. I mean he, he's lobbied hard to sell chips into China. So if this was really an issue and you really cared about it, you would not be doing that.
- [33:48]
A
All right, let's close this segment out with of course put some bubble talk. This user on X said Edward Dowd. I says I see a pattern. Altman and Jensen smell the end of the bubble financing drying up and are going to ask daddy for taxpayer money citing national security issues.
- [34:07]
B
Your Reid, I think it feels like, I mean that's how you started this segment and it feels like that is kind of where things are, that there's this, it's still a money pit in the way things are working currently. And if it's, if, if you need to continue to have, have money pouring in and private capital is going to dry up at some point, you might as well find the next, the next.
- [34:34]
A
Wave of money inevitably. I mean you, there's only a certain number of sources that you can go to for money and then you eventually look for governments. I just don't think we're at that. I think that stage is still a couple years away. I don't think we're there yet.
- [34:50]
B
Yeah, I think I'm realizing why I'm even saltier on this whole topic now is having worked in the finance sector, in the trade, on a trading floor during the last, during the global financial crisis when there was bailouts and it was, you know, like watching it firsthand was a very problematic thing. So I, I genuinely think like it's all, it's always stuck with me in a way but Wall street never like openly maybe dickfold did a little bit but like Wall street wasn't you know like begging for this stuff even before anything happened. So that's why it's just come on, come on tech industry, don't ask for a bailout in a backstop before we're even, we're even there yet. Maybe behind the scenes start kind of laying the seeds. But don't say it at a Wall Street Journal tech live event. That's all I'm asking.
- [35:41]
A
It's got to be a record. Is it the first non public company to float the idea of being too big to Fail probably. Okay, well one person that might be able to backstop OpenAI is Elon Musk after he got a trillion dollar pay package approved. Of course the money won't come right away, but we'll talk about the big pay package whether it makes sense or not for Elon to get that money and how he'll get it right after this. Capital One's tech team isn't just talking about multi agentic AI. They already deployed one. It's called Chat Concierge and it's simplifying car shopping using self reflection and layered reasoning with live API checks. It doesn't just help buyers find a car they love, it helps schedule a test drive, get pre approved for financing and estimate trade and value. Advanced, intuitive and deployed. That's how they stack. That's technology at Capital One. Shape the future of Enterprise AI with Agency agntcy now an open source Linux foundation project Agency is leading the way in establishing trusted identity and access management for the Internet of Agents, the collaboration layer that ensures AI agents can securely discover, connect and work across any framework. With agency, your organization gains open standardized tools and seamless integration including robust identity management to be able to identify, authenticate and interact across any platform, empowering you to deploy multi agent systems with confidence. Join industry leaders like Cisco, Dell Technologies, Google Cloud, Oracle, red hat and 75 plus supporting companies to set the standard for secure scalable AI infrastructure. Is your enterprise ready for the Future of Magentic AI? Visit agency.org to explore use cases now. That's Agntcy.org and we're back here on Big Technology Podcast Friday edition. Someone's had a good week. His name is Elon Musk. Tesla shareholders, according to the Wall street journal, approved his $1 trillion pay package. Flanked by dancing humanoid robots on stage bathed in pink and blue light at the Electric Vehicle Makers Austin, Texas Quarters headquarters, Musk thanked the crowd of shareholders who supported the trillion dollar pay package. And with more than 75% of the votes cast, we are about to embark upon what we're about to embark upon is not merely a new chapter of the future of Tesla, but a whole new book. I guess what I'm saying is hang on to your Tesla stock, Musk said. Do you like the trillion dollar pay package? I mean of course like Tesla has to like hit some crazy goals which is an $8.5 trillion market cap. It's right now at $1.5 trillion. So you know 5X the company. What do you think? Ranjan?
- [38:38]
B
So I saw from like non tech friends I saw A lot of kind of angry posts about this and that live more in the political realm. But I'm actually going to say I. And I've been plenty salty this episode so far, but this one did not bother me in the sense that if you're Getting Tesla to 8 and a half trillion, take a trillion, Elon. Like, if you're going to sell eleven and a half million new vehicles, even when you've only sold eight and a half million vehicles in the lifetime of Tesla, take your trillion. Like, if you create this humanoid robot army and it remains out of my hands and I'm not destroying people's apartments with it, you know, take your trillion. All of that I'd written in the past a few times. Like, to me, the problem that happens here is my grand theory is that, like Elon and Tesla as a company was a great car company the moment he had his 27 pay package that was completely aligned to valuation. That's when all the shenanigans around just trying to focus on appreciating the stock, just really building this army of just people who are religious about the stock began. So now that we're moving back to just another just insane goal around, around the actual stock appreciation is a primary driver of this just reminds me we're going to go through endless cycles of Elon saying crazy things already. I just think he was like this morning, tweeting like so many rabbits to pull out of the hat right now. He said he wants a big enough ownership stake in Tesla to be comfortable that the robot army he was developing did not fall into the wrong hands. So maybe he listened to our podcast.
- [40:28]
A
Episode last week, but he's mostly trying to do this to keep his robot army away from you, Ranjan. Even though he'll be president and Musk's third party, he wants to control those robots. I think that's a fair bargain, which.
- [40:40]
B
I can't argue with. I respect this.
- [40:44]
A
Okay, so a couple of things. First of all, it is interesting to me that this is Musk effectively saying he's done with Tesla as a car company. I mean, that's the only way that I read it, right? Like, oh, are they going to still produce cars? Yes, but the ambition is robo taxis, and the ambition is humanoid robots. And if you can pull that off, I think it's. He'll be worth the money. Especially if you can pull that off in a way that, like, makes the market cap go to 8.5 trillion. I don't know. It seems to me like robo taxis, humanoid Robots are much more the future than electric vehicles. Even if, you know, maybe they, that those robo taxis are EVs. What do you think about this?
- [41:22]
B
Yeah, no, no, it's a good point. Which is like, I mean this is where the, the disconnect is always. It's been around for a long time already. But like, like it's, it's almost comical as analysts all try to analyze every like Tesla sales number and like from a car company standpoint, but then the stock price is just completely dependent on humanoid robots and things that don't exist today. But, but I, I think that's actually a fair point. Like Tesla is no longer a car company in any way. Elon is not pretending it's a car company in any way. We should all stop looking at actual vehicle sales. That should be an afterthought. That should be like the least important part of the overall business and people should just focus on the bigger opportunities here.
- [42:11]
A
Do you think Elon is sincere when he says, look, we're going to be producing all these humanoid robots and if we're doing that, I don' anybody else to control them, I want to have oversight and therefore I should have 25% of the company. So I'm curious, actually, this is a two parter. One, do you think he's sincere? Two, if you know that Elon wants to control this humanoid robot army, what exactly are you signing up for if you buy one? Like, is that yours or is that his?
- [42:39]
B
That's a good point. And actually now that you repeat that, it is kind of like a, like it's, it's a threat, it's like extortion to the shareholder base where it's like, listen, if you don't give me this, this humanoid robot army we're building could fall into the wrong hands and only I can save you. But, but, but you better give me my 25% of Tesla if we hit these milestones, because otherwise watch out for those robots. So, so I think, I mean, I don't know, with Tesla it's always something like this, but it is, it's pretty amazing that that's just being said out loud.
- [43:16]
A
Yeah. He also effectively threatened to leave as well. So maybe this is the goal. Maybe true world domination means having a humanoid robot in every house. And if somebody annoys you or is undisciplined in their PR statements about financial stuff, you just go smash their up.
- [43:34]
B
The true promise of the humanoid robot army is world. I mean, actually, you know what, it's gotta be the, the, the path to world domination is necessarily having control of a humanoid robot army. I think that's, it's a pretty safe bet.
- [43:51]
A
Exactly. All right, so I don't know if that segment made me more optimistic about the state of the world or less, but I, I, I think it's, it makes sense that Elon got that got that package and we'll see what he does with it. It'll certainly be an interesting story moving forward. I doubt he'll ever get the trillion, but if he does, good on him, I suppose. Okay, let's go to this story. Bloomberg says Amazon sues to stop Perplexity from using AI tools to buy stuff. I thought this was a fascinating story and it really goes to sort of the question of whether this agent agentic web will ever be allowed to take off because they're going to be companies that are just going to say we don't want your agents using our, our technology. We never this our stuff is for humans and not bots. Here's a story. Amazon Inc. Is suing Perplexity to try to stop the startup from helping users buy items on the world's largest online marketplace, setting up a shutdown, a showdown that may have implications for the reach of so called agentic artificial intelligence. The US online retailer filed a lawsuit Tuesday demanding Perplexity stop allowing its AI browser agent Comment to make purchases online for users. The e commerce giant is accusing Perplexity of committing computer fraud by failing to disclose when Comment Comment is shopping on a real person's behalf. What do you think about this? It's a pretty fascinating showdown.
- [45:12]
B
Yeah, actually. Okay. I feel like this is bringing us all the earlier conversations back down to earth. And this is what, this is where like the real work is happening. And it is incredibly fascinating because like what is a browsing activity? So the idea that Comet Perplexities browser using Agentic browser capabilities to actually do the shopping of a customer, which I've actually. And it didn't actually work. I'll say this. I was testing something. My son's really into Dogman, the book series. So I was like, here's the books I own. Can you find all the books I don't own and create an Amazon shopping list? It actually was a disaster and it was unsuccessful. I tried it on ChatGPT Atlas as well. Did not work. So just a reminder, like when we talk about these more kind of like theoretical things about your browsers doing all your shopping, we're not quite there yet, but, but again, you figure you're in Perplexity. You ask Buy me some paper towels. And it goes and does the work. Like, why shouldn't you as a consumer have the ability to do that? Like, it feels like that seems, I don't know, a pretty basic thing. But Amazon Rufus is actually killing it right now. That Andy Jassy came out there saying, like, usage, over 250 million users have actually used it. Users are 60% more likely to buy a product if they use Rufus. So, like, they have in their own closed ecosystem a pretty valuable path in terms of still owning the entire shopper journey. So they're going to fight for it. But it's a weird theoretical thing because, like, yeah, is it. If it's an AI doing the shopping for a consumer who wants the AI to do it, should you be allowed to block it? Do you think they should?
- [47:03]
A
I don't know. It's. It's a question that we're going to get. You know, we've talked a lot about how agents could do tool calling. And this is going to just be a question that will just keep coming up because you think about the contract that effectively app builders built with, you know, people who use the Internet in mind. It's. They built for human users, right? And now what happens if most of the traffic is bots or maybe agents working on our behalf? But it's a completely different value of Visit that probably doesn't sustain a product the same way that a human Visit would think about just a mapping product, for instance. Right. So let's say you're asking an agent for directions, right? And in the background it's like going to Google Maps. It's not Gemini, right? It's going to Google Maps and it's finding new directions and then, you know, presenting to you in a chat window. Well, Google Maps only made sense for Google to create because there's ads there that will support it. So now, like, what happens if most of the traffic on Google Maps is agentic? It sort of really changes the economics of the Internet. Now if I'm Amazon, I wouldn't block perplexity because what I want is purchases. And if a bot is on my page trying to add stuff to a cart that somebody might buy, then I'm very happy about that. The other thing, the only thing to worry about is that Amazon has a big advertising business now. So does that cut off the advertising business?
- [48:26]
B
Okay, that, that's a really good point. I think, like the idea, especially if there's no transaction or commerce taking place, agentic browsing totally destroys the economics of the web. But I Think, but even on the transactions, I think the idea is probably like, unless it still introduces a great deal of risk because Amazon's value really is locking you in their ecosystem. Like I don't go to a lot of web pages as destinations. I go to Amazon.com all the time. Like if suddenly Perplexity is choosing where to buy for the customer, that's a problem. So I think, I think, yeah, I think, I think. See, I think it is a big problem for Amazon. They have to maintain some ownership of that customer relationship and not just be one of many choices that if perplexity gives you the benefit of being where the transaction takes place, that's a threat.
- [49:23]
A
And it's just by the way, one more sentence like people use Amazon like you said, because they're locked into the ecosystem, they just find it to be the most convenient place. You go to Amazon, it's one site that has everything, the Everything Store. And you don't want to search 20 different sites for the same product. The Agentix stuff flips the Everything Store completely on its head. Because instead of the Everything Store you just type one more query in and now the entire web is the Everything store inside of the Comet browser. So that is I think why Amazon is upset at this. It's just because the value proposition is gone. If it's just one more sentence into an AI browser to find you products across the entire web.
- [50:00]
B
Chatbots are the Everything store. I like that take. I think ChatGPT is perplexity is Gemini. All these chatbots allow us to shop for everything and anything at once, which is what Amazon. That's been their entire value proposition. But one question. If agentic browsing is problematic and different, if my humanoid robot is going to a store, is that problematic and will that be banned and will they be discriminated?
- [50:33]
A
Well, I think we will definitely have a, a war among people and humanoid robots. It's without a doubt. Even if the humanoid robots don't assemble into the army, people will knock these things out and they're already burning waymos. People don't like robots. They don't. And so they will, they will just knock these things out.
- [50:54]
B
Well, but if so, if Perplexity Comet traffic to Amazon can be banned legally, like if you can file a lawsuit and say that traffic should not be allowed on my website, can Walmart physical retail prevent my humanoid robot from going and shopping for me?
- [51:14]
A
Absolutely. I mean, bars were banning Google Glass 10 years ago, so yeah, they're going to be no bot zones.
- [51:21]
B
No bot zones. It's Discrimination. Bots have rights too. Neo, don't discriminate.
- [51:28]
A
We're joking. But this will absolutely be a battle that will play out in our lifetimes.
- [51:31]
B
Yeah, actually, you're right.
- [51:32]
A
Without a doubt. This will be. I mean, we might go back to this show when we're podcasting together in 2045 and just being like, well, we.
- [51:39]
B
Called it 20 years ago robot rights, Twitter. Just like.
- [51:44]
A
Yeah, well, I mean, is it a coincidence that the guy that's building the robot army also owns Twitter? Okay, I don't think that's. That's a forward thinking thing. It was just about Trump. I don't think so.
- [51:57]
B
It's all about the humanoid robot army. In the end, we should all be working towards that.
- [52:03]
A
I mean, of course we should all. And we will. This podcast will be front and center in those wars. I promise you that. Now that we've staked out our positions. Okay, let's end this week on what I call notes on the coup. Because we just got a deposition that had Ilya Sutskever, the former OpenAI chief scientist, his testimony about what happened inside OpenAI before Sam Altman was fired. So Ilya, apparently put. Had been planning the coup for about a year, put together this document. And this is from the deposition. The very first page says Sam exhibits a consistent pattern of lying, undermining his execs, and pitting his execs against one another. And the lawyer asked Ilya, that was clearly your view at the time. And Ilya says, correct. I mean, it's just kind of interesting that we're now seeing that that's the document coming out. So maybe it wasn't necessarily the effect of altruists, although I'm sure they played some role in this. But it was, you know, OpenAI's own executives that caused that firing. And it's a pretty, pretty wild thing to read that Ilya had written down this type of thing about Sam. What are your thoughts about. About this?
- [53:16]
B
I think reading through all this, the, the, the part I still can't square. I'm curious what you think is this. Was this done to save humanity from runaway evil AI, or was this just very human corporate infighting? Like, this guy annoys me. He's always lying. He's stabbing me in the back. I'm gonna try to, like, go after him as well. Like, when you read this stuff, for all the talk about protecting us from runaway AI, it just feels like the most human thing ever. Like, it's just people are annoyed at each other. There's like everyone's worked with people like this. I don't know how did you read this?
- [53:59]
A
Oh, totally. Yeah, it totally shifted my. I mean, you know, it was always politics. Let's just put it that way. It was always politics. I don't think there was any, like, real fear within OpenAI that, you know, ChatGPT, I mean, it's easy to say in retrospect, but that ChatGPT was like going to go self aware and destroy the world, you know, at that point. But yeah, it's. That was definitely infighting. And I think one of the things that really resonated as this stuff circulated on Twitter was that it was so poorly planned. There was. I mean, we knew about this already, right? That it was a poorly planned coup. But, like, as the details come out, here's one Twitter user. It's the worst coup ever planned for a year without any PR strategy. As they say, if you go to go for the king, better get his head first and foremost. The skill that any leader needs is to be able to survive. Ilya is a great scientist and great human being, but not a practical leader. He didn't have the skill to plot and survive and come out on top. I mean, here's another one. Even though I don't feel like Sam fr Even though I don't like Sam Frodman, I still think it's good that Ilya failed. Somebody that has the planning ability and theory of mind of a toddler shouldn't be in charge of AGI. I mean, it is interesting that, like, saw this hap play out and like, yeah, it goes back to it. It's like these are the people that are supposed to be protecting us from AI gone bad. I don't know.
- [55:18]
B
Yeah, I think that's where Ilia wasn't going to be our savior in controlling the humanoid robot army. I think the it is again. Yeah, the documentation, it. It's as clunky as we all imagined it to be. And I mean, like, going back to where we started the show today, like, this is the kind of stuff that's just been going on at this company for so long, and everyone has just been waiting for them to mature into a different type of organization. And it doesn't seem like it's happened yet.
- [55:52]
A
All right. And of course, my favorite part is when the lawyers bicker at each other. Here's one attorney says, don't raise your voice. The other one says, I'm tired of being told I talk too much. I'm talking too much. First one replies, well, you are. And then the next one goes, check yourself.
- [56:12]
B
The toddlerification of all communication, man, it's, it's everywhere. I still think though, just going, thinking back, like Mia Moradi, how many days was she CEO?
- [56:26]
A
Like a half day, maybe two.
- [56:27]
B
Yeah, I think it was like two days. It was like, I mean still, what an exit from that. Two days as CEO and then go on to raise a billion dollar pre product. Raise a pre product round at a billion dollar valuation that actually. Yeah, yeah, everyone won. Everyone won. We're going to be bailing them out in the end anyway, so.
- [56:50]
A
Exactly.
- [56:52]
B
Start filing your taxes and get our parents. We are going to all be funding the lifestyles of every AI leader out there.
- [57:01]
A
Okay, one more last little fun thing before we leave. The New Yorker had a story on the data center build out and they apparently the reporter spoke with this farmer and they go, I asked the farmer if he ever used AI and the farmer said, I use Claude. Google sucks now, I mean obviously it's not every farmer, but I just think that that was like a pretty interesting line that shows just how, how much people are using AI and how this has proliferated well beyond Silicon Valley. What do you think?
- [57:33]
B
No, no, I think that's a good place to kind of end this because for all of our talk, I mean you alluded to it multiple times. I firmly believe it. This is one of the most incredible technologies that we will experience in our lifetime. And like it's everywhere. Like there's no doubt that everyone at every level, my parents, you know, like, it's just, it's already being used at least at the kind of like base level of promise. So it's something will be amazing and continue to evolve and change and there'll be a lot of money and market capitalization realized. I think like that, that never leaves my head in all of this. It's just how we get there and what it looks like is definitely it's, it's going to be quite a story.
- [58:23]
A
And therefore we must save it at any cost.
- [58:27]
B
At any cost. Yes. And give me my humanoid robot army. 2028. We're running.
- [58:34]
A
We're in, we're in. We'll figure out the rest of the platform later. But wait, are we pro or anti humanoid robots? I can't, I can't tell.
- [58:42]
B
No, no, we're, we're now pro. As long as, as we are in control and we are the only ones who can save everyone.
- [58:48]
A
I, I think we won't get any votes.
- [58:52]
B
I think we'll get a couple. I mean, Eric Adams, got 5,000 votes.
- [58:56]
A
So oh yeah, if Eric can. I mean, some listeners out there will give us at least. At least something for it. All right, Ranjan, good stuff as always. Thank you for coming on.
- [59:05]
B
See you next week.
- [59:06]
A
All right, everybody, thank you for listening. Next Wednesday, Mustafa Rafa Suleiman will be on to talk about why he thinks LLMs may be the route to superintelligence after all. And then Ranjan and I will be back on Friday. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time on Big Technology Podcast. Did you know your credit card points and miles can lose value to inflation? Credit card companies often reduce the redemption value of your points and miles. Now imagine a credit card with rewards that can grow in value. With the Gemini Credit card, you can earn Bitcoin or one of over 50 other cryptos instantly with no annual fee. Every swipe at the store or gas pump earns you instant rewards deposited straight to your account. Plus sign up now for a $200 Bitcoin bonus. To kickstart your rewards, visit gemini.com card today. Check out the link in the description for more information on rates. Again, and if you're looking to invest in Bitcoin but don't know where to start, the Gemini Credit Card makes it easy. The Gemini Credit Card is issued by Webbank. In order to Qualify for the $200 crypto intro bonus, you must spend $3,000 in your first 90 days. Some exclusions apply to instant rewards in which rewards are deposited when the transaction posts this content is not investment advice and Trading Crypto involves risk. The Gemini Credit card cannot be used to make gambling related purchases.