Fire Sam Altman, The End of Software Engineers, and Why AI Is All Narrative

Summary

---

More or Less – March 6, 2026

Episode: Fire Sam Altman, The End of Software Engineers, and Why AI Is All Narrative
Hosts: Dave Morin, Jessica Lessin, Brit Morin, Sam Lessin

---

Episode Overview

This week’s episode dives into the evolving drama in the AI sector, with particular scrutiny of the OpenAI vs. Anthropic battle and the “Fire Sam Altman” uproar. The longtime friends dissect the narrative wars powering AI companies, the business model shake-up of Silicon Valley, and whether the role of software engineers is on the verge of extinction. They also touch on Apple’s latest AI hardware moves, workforce reductions attributed to "AI productivity," economic uncertainty, and the global AI power struggle—especially between the US and China. Finally, the hosts get candid about the second wave of agent-based AI and the business/investment opportunities that might still exist.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The OpenAI vs. Anthropic War & #FireSamAltman Movement

Timestamps: 02:36–07:31

• Jessica explains Anthropic’s CEO Dario’s rift with the US Department of Defense and Sam Altman. Dario’s leaked 1,600-word Slack memo blames Sam Altman for undermining Anthropic’s standing and details the cultural/employee wars heating up between AI giants.
• Brit points out “Quit GPT” and “Fire Sam” trends are causing spikes in ChatGPT uninstalls (up 295%) while Anthropic’s revenue has doubled to $19B ARR.
• Sam: “They’re trying desperately to stay in the news cycle when other stuff is going on.”
• Dave frames the consumer rebellion as a marketing moment for Anthropic, calling it a classic “face vs. heel” dynamic: “Anthropic is the principled actor standing up against ‘the man’, while OpenAI is the evil heel.” (05:29)
• Consensus: Viral uproars (e.g., #DeleteUber) often reverse or net benefit brands in the long run.

---

2. The Economics of AI: Business Models, IPOs, and Enterprise Skepticism

Timestamps: 07:58–09:34

• Jessica relays skepticism among investors about real enterprise ARR numbers for AI, suggesting unsustainable seat-based pricing models. Companies are likely to move to usage/outcome-driven models as they mature.
• Sam: “With everything with AI, you’re speed-running all of history all over again.” (08:57)
• The group reiterates the cyclic nature and low-margin aspect of general AI businesses.
• Sam: “I think it’s a terrible business...there’s just no defensibility to any of it.”

---

3. AI-Created Persona Pods & Automation Experimentation

Timestamps: 09:34–15:56

• Sam has automated the More or Less podcast using AI: personalized bots simulate the hosts’ personalities/voices; the system creates new podcast episodes, real-time chatbots, and even an automated "Flatterbot."
  • Sam: “It really is...just like Roblox for adults. I’ve built like six apps this week.” (10:23)
  • Brit: “Could I take an archive of [Taylor Swift’s] life, have AI sum it up into 13 episodes?”
  • Jessica evaluates the AI: “It also got the tone of what we all talk about...our personalities. So I appreciated what you did this week, Sam.”
• Sam’s hot take: All content becomes cheap and valueless as automation becomes trivial: “There’s no value in any of it because it’s way too easy to make.” (16:16)

---

4. The Death of the Software Engineer – Real or Hype?

Timestamps: 21:37–32:36

• The crew debates the tangible impact of AI on tech employment, especially software engineers:
  • Brit notes massive workforce reductions (Block/Square, Microsoft, Salesforce, HubSpot) attributed to “AI productivity.”
  • Sam: “It’s a cover story, but it’s also true...AI, like why would you hire most people?” (22:59)
• Classic Argument:
  • Brit/Sam: Half of Bay Area software engineers will NOT have jobs in 3 years.
  • Dave: Disagrees; believes software creation will only increase, if by different people.
  • Sam: “Just because there’s more writing doesn’t mean you have more scribes...just because there’s more calculating doesn’t mean you have more calculators.” (24:31)
  • Brit: “Think about it, they [engineers] were running around these places like kings. Anything to get the engineers happy...Now you’re saying that stopped?”
  • Dave: “That’s still going on— for the best of the best, but not for all.” (29:41)
• Sam’s analysis of silence from engineers: Admitting fear of automation is tantamount to admitting mediocrity. “To admit that you are worried about software taking your job as a software builder is to effectively say that you are a bad software engineer.” (27:09; see also 00:00)

---

5. Apple’s Edge AI Play

Timestamps: 19:28–21:37

• Apple launches new AI-enabled MacBooks with local inference capability, bypassing cloud compute costs.
• Dave: “Apple is focusing on inference at the edge...their unique advantage.”
• Sam: “Everyone’s like, we’re going to spend $100 billion on infrastructure. And Apple’s like, you know who is going to spend on infrastructure? Our customers.” (20:49)
• Consensus: Apple’s business model (selling powerful devices, not cloud subscriptions) stands out in the AI gold rush.

---

6. Peak AI Bubble & Recession Warnings

Timestamps: 33:08–40:39

• Jessica highlights VC Josh Wolf’s founder memo declaring “peak AI” and predicting a tech downturn due to economic headwinds, political risk (e.g., data center moratoriums), and labor market shifts.
• The group debates whether the bubble is about to pop or if this is just another hype cycle.
  • Sam: “There’s like this huge narrative collusion around like our only way out is up through AI and maybe space...What breaks that narrative cycle?” (38:37)

---

7. China, Open Source, and the Global AI Stack

Timestamps: 40:39–47:46

• Hosts discuss China’s open source AI surge. Lower-quality but open models (e.g., Kimi) are catching up due to longer “energy budgets.”
  • Dave: “If you give a lower quality model a longer energy budget, does it even matter if you’re operating on the better model?”
• Export controls may not matter much if China and others dominate on energy cost and open source scale.
• Sam: “The closed world is clearly the American world...But, ...the Android of AI is open source Chinese shit.” (45:09)
• Brit/Dave: China is running the “meta strategy” – give away open source to catch up in distribution.

---

8. Agentic AIs & The Next Innovation Wave

Timestamps: 47:46–49:30

• Brit: “We’re in the second wave. AGI has been the name of the game...what does this mean on a faster time horizon?”
• Dave: “The second wave and personal AI or agents...Agents might actually be the website of this era. And the browser hasn’t been built yet.” (49:08)
• Still wide open: agent-based models, memory, protocols, standards for AIs talking to AIs.

---

9. Fun Wrap-Up: David’s Protein Ice Cream & Venture Life

Timestamps: 49:43–51:14

• A lighthearted segment announces David’s protein bar pivoting into high-protein ice cream.
• Sam jokes: “I’m clearly going to eat a lot whether it makes you sicker or not...I’m going to eat it and it might kill me.” (50:23)

---

Notable Quotes & Moments

• Sam Lessin [00:00]: “To admit that you are worried about software taking your job as a software builder is to effectively say that you are a bad software engineer.”
• Dave Morin [05:29]: “Anthropic is the principled actor...doing the right thing, standing up against the man. And OpenAI is the evil heel. This is the ultimate marketing moment for them.”
• Brit Morin [24:41]: “Seems like the product managers are the big winners here.”
• Sam Lessin [16:16]: “There’s no value in any of it because it’s way too easy to make.”
• Dave Morin [49:08]: “Agents might actually be the website of this era. And the browser hasn’t been built yet.”
• Sam Lessin [20:49]: “Apple’s like, you know who’s going to spend on infrastructure? Our customers. We don’t have to pay on it. That’s pretty good.”
• Sam Lessin [45:09]: “The world becomes US is Apple and Claude code and expensive shit. And like the Android of AI is open source Chinese shit.”

---

Thematic Summary

• Narrative vs. Reality: Much of the momentum (and valuation) in AI is driven by narrative—media wars, consumer drama, and self-reinforcing hype cycles. The crew is skeptical about long-term defensibility and value.
• Automating the Automators: AI is so easy to deploy that literally anyone—including the hosts—can spin up bots that mimic personalities or generate entire media properties. The value of originality and even technical skill may be eroding, and traditional “job descriptions” are obsolete.
• Software Engineering’s End? The group is divided: Is software engineering as a career doomed, or simply about to evolve? There's consensus that “code is no longer the moat”—future jobs may not resemble today’s.
• The Next Big Wave: Agent-based AIs and “personal AI” are emerging—but the infrastructure and standards are missing. Massive, uncharted opportunity remains.
• Global Power Struggle: Open-source AI, particularly out of China, and energy economics may disrupt American supremacy in AI faster than many expect.

---

Key Segments

• [02:36–07:31] OpenAI v Anthropic, Dario’s memo, Fire Sam Altman trend, and marketing spin
• [07:58–09:34] AI business model skepticism, ARR, and historic parallels
• [09:34–16:28] AI-generated podcasts, bots, the value of content, and the automation of personas
• [19:28–21:37] Apple’s local inference strategy and business model discussion
• [21:37–32:36] Workforce reductions, fate of software engineers, silence and shame in tech
• [33:08–40:39] Peak AI bubble, Wolf’s memo, economic warning signs
• [40:39–47:46] China’s open source play, AI commodification, global competition
• [47:46–49:30] Agent-based AI, new wave of opportunity, lack of standards
• [49:43–51:14] Protein ice cream, light closing banter

---

Final Thought

Anyone following Silicon Valley’s transformation, and the AI hype vs. reality debate, will find this episode a nuanced, lively, and occasionally self-deprecating romp through the industry’s contradictions and emerging truths.

---

Transcript

[A]

To admit that you are worried about software taking your job as a software builder is to effectively say that you are a bad software engineer.

[B]

But if it's as broad based as you guys suggest, that 200,000 people in this town are not going to be here anymore. Why aren't 200,000 people talking about this?

[A]

Because it would be to admit that you're the 200,000 that's getting fired. Not the 200,000 is going to get paid more.

[C]

More or less. Easy no. Or easy yes. We'll debate the text. That's best when we get more or less. Dave and Grit plus Ham and Jess

[A]

put it all right to the test.

[D]

More or less.

[C]

Why?

[D]

Hello friends. Welcome to More or Less Indian Wells Edition. I'm here in Palm Springs.

[C]

You are?

[D]

We're not there at the Information House. Indian Wells, the hottest place in this tournament. But the news is so hot. I had to break from the festivities to be with you all. How's everyone doing?

[B]

I like sporty Jess.

[C]

Oh my God. There's a lot going on this week. Thank you for being here, Jess.

[A]

It's nice of you to take a break from your fourth hour of tennis in the last two days to tie on 10 podcast.

[D]

Guys, you know there are some good players.

[A]

Do you get paid for this? This is. Have you figured?

[D]

I do. This would be a great time to thank IBM.

[C]

She does get paid for this. This is Jess's favorite job she's ever had.

[D]

PwC and Meta Ray Bans for their support of Information House. Information House.

[C]

Hold on. Dave and I aren't getting paid. We're not getting paid to mention them. So you guys have to say something.

[D]

My friend Cameron Stanhouse at IBM, power to you.

[C]

Oh my God, we're getting double paid now.

[B]

Okay, I want free Meta Ray Bans.

[A]

I'm sponsored by Puppers Golden Lager.

[D]

Okay, great. We all have our sponsors and I'm wrapping racket, which is also all over Indian Wells. Latest Edition just hit newsstands.

[A]

Do you remember when you weren't in the advertising business?

[C]

Yeah, I remember and I'm still traumatized by it.

[D]

I love. I'm here with our corporate subscribers as well. So I'm in all the businesses at the moment and I've got to say there is a tech connection because as they call him, Uncle Larry, as in Larry Ellison owns this whole operation and is doing a pretty good job sitting over at Nobu right now. So I actually don't know if he's there at this moment, but wow.

[A]

Did he just get a free Free plug in the information well, while his

[C]

son acquires Warner Brothers.

[D]

But you know what? This is my favorite asset that is owned by Larry Ellison. I've got to, I've got to tell you.

[A]

So fire Sam Altman is trending on X again. Is this like October of 2020?

[B]

Whatever.

[A]

What happened?

[D]

Let's get to the news. Let's get to the news.

[C]

Okay.

[B]

Why is this AI so dramatic?

[A]

Because they made it dramatic. You get what you ask for.

[D]

Minutes ago, my friends, the information broke. The latest volley in this Anthropic open AI Department of Defense war and the latest memo broken by my team was that on Friday, Dario, the CEO of Anthropic wrote a 1600 word memo in Slack, basically defending why they had walked away from the defense deal and blaming the mendacious Sam Altman for undercutting their reputation in public. And while writing that email or a Slack message, he also said that Anthropic had failed to curry favor with the Trump administration by not acting with dictator like craze of the Trump administration. So that is literally the breaking news we published. First some exception of the memo and then the whole memo. And I'm really interested in what you all think about this. Obviously I think there will very likely be blowback from the government that behind the scenes has been continuing to do some back channeling and negotiations with Anthropic about getting their technology back in production in some way. I think this might make it harder. But what's also interesting, and people should read the whole memo, it's really saying Sam is trying to undercut us, but now we're trying to undercut him. And it illustrates the whole real culture and employee wars nature of this. So to your point Sam, about buyer Sam Altman trending again, we are back in that part of the cycle where it's like winning the hearts and minds and employees and culture of these companies. And I think it's interesting because we've been here at so many points in the AI cycle and that's my takeaway. But what do you guys think?

[C]

Well, beyond all of that, Jess, I think you have to mention that the consumers are also super upset, right? So like ChatGPT uninstalls, we're at 295%. There's this Quit GPT movement, Fire Sam like you mentioned. And then meanwhile Anthropic's revenue is, has doubled. It's like 19 billion ARR.

[A]

So.

[C]

So like the bigger question is wait,

[B]

over what time period?

[C]

Over what is that just like a week?

[D]

Not over the last Two days.

[B]

Does it have anything to do with this? It has nothing to do with this.

[D]

This. He was speaking at Morgan Stanley.

[C]

Well, people are pointing towards it, like, basically there's this question out there in the field, which is like, is it cool now to say, no, the government? Because that can earn you so much marketing cred with the people.

[B]

Yeah, no, this is classic, you know, face versus heel marketing. It's like anthropic is like, you know, taking this marketing moment all the way to the bank. They're the principled, you know, actor that is doing the right thing, standing up against the man. Face, face, face, like. And OpenAI is the evil heel, you know, da, da, da, da. Like, that's like. This is the ultimate marketing moment for them. They're playing it like a fiddle.

[D]

Remember, they. Before all of this, there are the super bowl ads too. I mean, so it's not just that they're seizing this moment, but this has been their playbook to.

[B]

Yeah, this is clearly their strategy. This is clearly their marketing strategy.

[A]

Or are they just, like, trying desperately to stay in the news cycle when other stuff is going on? Like, I got to say, I'm like,

[D]

right now on Twitter, they're not happy about this memo.

[A]

So I'm liking. I'm enjoying Senator Sanders. Bernie Sanders. Will I become part of the humans if snow is humanity? I went to Silicon Valley to ask them leading AI experts the question. Bernie Sanders is running around San Francisco like San Francisco asking people AI questions. This is wonderful. What great Bernie Sanders.

[B]

But isn't anthropic the AI or isn't anthropic the Bernie Sanders of AI?

[A]

No, because it's good.

[D]

Well, but they would be more politically aligned. I mean, this was Dario's in the Slack message, which I thought was really interesting because we see all these highly polished treatises on the future of humanity from Dario, right? He is the philosopher CEO, always publishing. So it was really interesting to see his raw internal Slack messages, which actually weren't that polished. And that's also interesting to me because what CEO sends a 1600 word Slack message in 2026 and doesn't expect it to be out there? But I think, Britt, to your point, I don't know what to make of all these uninstalls climbing the app chart thing, right? I assume that just kind of sorts itself out, right? Like, remember delete Uber? Did anyone delete Uber and then, like, keep Uber deleted? I mean, I don't know.

[B]

Every time, every time this happened at Facebook in the early days, it was the Best thing that ever happened to us.

[C]

Remember when Life360 got banned by the teens on TikTok and everyone gave it a one star rating to just lower its app store rating. And it did. It suffered for like a month and then it became the best thing that ever happened to it. And teens actually really like Love Life 316. It turned Nest back to like 4.8 now. So yeah, I could see this reversing. I don't think this is long term.

[D]

I mean is it the bigger question that the product, like if the products are comparable and there's no differentiation, you know, I mean that's really the bigger, bigger question. And this is happening against the backdrop of the walk up to all these IPOs hitting the investment banking conference circuit, all touting their ARR. One thing I will say from the conversations I've had here, there's a lot of skepticism about these AI companies enterprise ARR numbers because people are pointing out they're selling these huge seat deals because companies don't yet know how to buy this stuff. But eventually all these companies are going to say I'm not going to buy, you know, however many thousand dollars seat for all of my employees. I'm going to want usage based pricing or I'm going to want some kind of outcome thing. And people are just very skeptical that the model that they're selling, AI companies are selling at the Enterprise today will be the model in a couple of years.

[A]

Just like with everything with AI, you're just speed running all of history all over again, right? Like experimental budgets to real budgets to like buy whatever. It's like everything's just speed running, you know. So yeah, like there's no way it's not the idea like the whole thing with SaaS right was everyone's like, oh this once you acquire a customer, they're infinitely valuable because they will never cancel and subscribe forever to this thing. And so like they could like spend all this money like, but that turns out to be bullshit, right? And like the same thing with this. It's like there's just general intelligence, it's low margin, it's. I mean it's great. I'm. I'm like literally building stuff as we talk. I'm like into it, but I think it's a terrible business.

[D]

Well that, that is our second topic on the so dear listeners of more or less Sam lesson has been busy this week replacing us all with bots. And I'll let Sam talk about how I did, but you can also go to our website more or less.com and click on chat in the top right corner.

[C]

More or less pod. More or less pod dot com. What is more or less dot com? Is it a porn site or something?

[D]

I don't know. But Sam, why don't you tell everyone what you've been up to?

[A]

I mean, so like every six months I just spend a lot of time vibe coding. And I will tell you that this time it's different because it's like truly a thing you can do. Instead of Internet shopping, slash, looking at Instagram on conference calls like it's no longer like almost.

[D]

Do we need to short Instagram's shopping revenue? Like are we worried about that at the moment? No.

[A]

But I will tell you that I've bought fewer things this week on Instagram because of vibe coding, but not for the reason people think, which is just like it's so fun to build stuff, right? Like I was joking the other day, it's like it really is at this point, which it wasn't even six months ago, that this is just like Roblox for adults. So you know in the. I've done, I've built like six apps this week. Like literally, I'm not even exaggerating but like I did buy, I did first build a quick version. I basically took our, all of our transcripts, I ripped through them, how to build personality psychographic profiles of all of us, like the patterns of like what, how we chat, et cetera. Then I had it started pulling. I built a little thing mulchat AI which you can get to from our website. But it basically that the first, first little applet was pull the news once an hour. Jessica as the moderator picks the topic that matters the most. And then we have like an open ended debate, the four of us like in our, in our words, in our language, you know, on the real time news. Then I was like, well I can just make the entire podcast. So I had another thing I built out using some stuff I had worked on before, which is like top news of the week, pick the topics, do a full podcast and then by the way turn it into voices. So I like have with 11 labs all of our voices. You can literally just auto generate pretty credible podcasts. And then I build a chat version where like you can just come in if you're signed in and ask a question to all of us and we'll respond the four characters. Then I built a flattery bot that just uses our characters and like does an entire like it says just say nice things about me. And so I built an entire podcast of just an hour of nice content. About me.

[B]

We need the flatter bot to use our Twitter to flatter everyone in Silicon Valley.

[C]

Or the troll bot. Maybe they should troll everyone instead. Like if we. We have the face or heel option.

[B]

No, no, no. We're gonna flatter everyone on more app, more or less.

[A]

Flatterbot, honestly, is a thing and I'm gonna keep working on it. It's great. It makes you feel awesome. And it comes from. I had a real life flatter experience. Not on purpose, but we were doing some like, I had a real life flatter experience where we were doing some, some stuff for an announcement that's coming up. And so we were talking to a bunch of entrepreneurs and saying, hey, just do us a favor and give us kind of like some nice things you remember about us and our interactions. And found it. And so you. Basically, I had two days of people being like and LPs saying nice things on camera with me. I'm like, this feels great. And like, wait a minute, I can just automate this. I can have flattery all the time, right? From characters that are in my life. And the nice part is with your real voices, it sounds great.

[D]

So the flattery buys the least. So, Dave and Britt, as hearing yourself and your voices engaged in this podcast, what was your reaction? Like? Was it one of these, oh, no way. Or were you like, could you. Have we crossed some chasms?

[C]

My voice is definitely the best, I think, of the four of ours, I will have to say I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. My voice is the most easily, like, replicable for bad purposes on the Internet and our identic future or for my advantage in this scenario. But I. I'll take the under on that and, and say, like, I'm into it. Like, I thought we. And it also, by the way, got the tone of what we all talk about, right? Like our personalities. So I appreciated what you did this week, Sam. Thank you.

[A]

I'm not even done. I've got more stuff I'm working on as we talk, but it's.

[B]

Yeah, can we take like giant archives of files and start publishing like, parallel podcasts using our voice?

[C]

That was my question too. Like, if I wanted to do a Taylor Swift podcast, so easy, could I take like an archive of her life, have AI sum it up into 13 episodes?

[A]

I've got open search backends. I've got the whole thing firing, by the way, incredibly easy to do at this point. I can take millions of records. I actually, you know what I did? I took all of our transcripts, ripped them apart, had them in a PostgreSQL database by character, so we can remix and redo anything we want. Like, you give me any text file, it's like literally three keystrokes and I can give you anything you want.

[C]

Like a really great gift you can give someone. You know, you used to like give someone a cool AI when AI was new, and you could like make them a cool AI photo of themselves because only a few people knew how to do that yet. Now Sam could be like, Brit, you're like a really good friend of mine. I've actually created your AI digital identity. I've got your voice, right, Your personality, right? All these things. You're welcome. And like, give it to me in a package that I can.

[A]

I'm happy to give that to you, Brit, and whoever and all of you. And like, honestly, it's just like, it's so fun. It is the most fun with computers you can have while on a conference call.

[D]

I gotta say, my reaction to the first kind of transcript, first topic was like, this is totally a conversation we should. We could have. But it's very one note. Apparently I only care about governance issues. So whatever the topic is, I'm going to point out now, and I would say like maybe one out of five times, I think there's an interesting follow up governance question, but. But it really has me pigeonholed into that track, I got to say.

[A]

Well, yeah, that's. But that's. In all fairness, that's just because, like I did this really quickly, right? Like I can. I'll get it more sophisticated for you.

[D]

I mean, I also care about business models. I also care about the bigger picture. These are other Jessica isms that the AI.

[A]

I can tell you the Jessica. Here's the Jessica. Like what the bot again, this is like compressed. It has other, other elements to it. But your psychographic is analytical Journalist, operator, hybrid, likely ENTJ3 forward profile. Like it has your.

[D]

I heard that.

[A]

No, I didn't. I actually honestly didn't. I asked it to do a psychographic, but I didn't hand code any of this.

[C]

Sam, what's your upshot on all this for our listeners?

[D]

I want to comment. Do you want us to release an AI only pod?

[C]

But is it like this is what's happening? Like, where is this going? Like, what's, what's the takeaway?

[A]

No, my belief is that this is so fun and like the entire dead Internet is gonna look like this and it's super fun and I love playing with it. And there's no value in any of it because it's way too easy to make.

[C]

There's no value in listening to this podcast.

[A]

My thing is like, it's. It kind of just like all this content code is just content. All this stuff is just content. It's fun. Some of it might be really good to just this point. Some of it's kind of useful. But this idea that like, any of this stuff is valuable is. I don't see it. Right. It's like, it's. It's incredibly powerful and tends towards zero because, like, everything will just work this way. And like, I'm like, maybe a few months ahead of people just because, like, I'm just technical enough that there's a few hurdles that like, for instance, I did a bunch of work to set up Jessica Bots for her company, which are sick. Like, they're so good.

[C]

And they're like, what is it, Jessica Bot? Do you ask her editor when the article is coming out?

[D]

It's a lot of. A lot of analytics and then a lot of hopefully ultimately marketing suggestions. Very tailored marketing suggestions around individual articles.

[A]

Yeah. So good. It's so good. There's a stuff you're doing six months ago you had to like, manually patch and like, now it just like, understands how to like. And so, but it's, it's just too, like, no one's going to build a company doing any of this stuff because it's too easy to build. Right. Like, there's no software defensibility to any of it. Right. Like, so you just have to be really pure on business model and like, why it is that you're going to have a compounding advantage versus, like, you did something that was quote, unquote hard that a customer asked for and that's somehow valuable. I mean, this is my number one rant. I've had several meetings this week where I feel like people are still stuck in the old model of building companies where they're like, I'm like, what are you working on? They're like, we did this. I'm like, why? It's like, well, we talked to the customers and the customers said they wanted X, so we built it for them and now we'll sell it to them. I'm like, no, you're not going to sell it to them. They might want X. That's very nice. That's not customer discovery. That customer discovery, YC style, like, blah, blah, blah, is just so wrong for the moment. In terms of how to build a business because just because like Bill in sales has some CRM shim problem. It doesn't matter. Like you can't build it and give it to him and sell it to him because anyone can build it for him in a second and give it to him and he'll be able to build it for himself in four days. You know, like it's, you know, it's like that's game over. Now I will say from an infrastructure perspective, my God, is my digitalocean bill gone up? Not just anthropic.

[D]

What is going on in the pool?

[A]

I mean, I don't even. I. Luckily I am spending a legitimate amount on like infrastructure personally now that I wasn't before. So, like those numbers will go up. But ultimately, like I just use Digital Ocean because it's straightforward and easy for the things I need. Like, it's not like there's no margin in it long term because it's very easy to switch.

[D]

Okay, well, dear friends, I'm going to turn over the moderator mic to Brit and go do my other day job in chatting with the great corporate subscribers of the Information.

[C]

Get us some sponsors for the pod while you're at it.

[D]

Jess, you know I could. People love the pod. So I wish you luck in the remainder of this conversation and I will see you all soon.

[C]

Thanks, Jess. See you.

[D]

Bye.

[C]

All right, boys, you're mine now. Get excited. I wanted to raise another theme that we've been seeing. Apple this week announced They've got new MacBook Pros and a MacBook Air and an M5 chip, and they are citing the RAM shortage, but they're saying this is now a local AI machine. And so further cementing the idea that Apple is potentially the winner in all of this. What do we think? Did this help their case this week? Dave, over to you.

[B]

I mean, this was. Everybody's been waiting. I think what's actually most people are disappointed about is that these chips aren't in the Mac Studio and the Mac Mini yet. You know, it's great that they're in the laptops.

[C]

It's like they chose the wrong devices for what everyone needs them for.

[B]

I don't know. It's super clear that Apple is focusing on inference at the edge. I mean, we've been saying this, I've been saying this for, you know, I don't even know how many podcast episodes now. But, you know, this is their unique advantage and so it'll be interesting. I mean, one of the things I heard from somebody I was Doing this week in startups podcast earlier this week and they were talking about running, you know, a lot of their inference tasks locally on a Mac studio. I haven't started doing it yet. I want to try it. Apple's got a serious advantage here.

[A]

So I mean, this goes back to my like again. I hate Apple, but I respect this move where it's like everyone's like, we're going to spend $100 billion on infrastructure. And Apple's like, you know who's going to spend billion infrastructure are customers. We don't have to pay on it. Right? I'm like, ah, that's pretty good. That's pretty good. Make the customer pay for the computers.

[B]

They're the only one executing business model. They're like the only ones in AI other than, I guess Google, that's executing a business model in AI that actually works.

[A]

So the computers, what a crazy concept. I don't know.

[B]

Don't go off balance sheet for like a bajillion infinity dollars in debt. Do the thing you're great at.

[A]

Why would we buy computers? We should sell the computers.

[C]

Genius. All right, we also, I. Since we, since we all gathered here only a week ago, we also watched as Jack Dorsey did a 40% cut of block slash square. As well as companies like Microsoft, Salesforce, HubSpot, et cetera, all starting to watch AI agents start to erode their user licensing business models. And even the HubSpot CEO proposed tollgates to monetize like agent access to the data. So it seems like there's, there's continuing to be this like existential threat that AI is taking over in an agentic fashion as well as within the workforce itself. And that block perhaps is the first of many to come in terms of cutting back staff because of the productivity gains. Agree or disagree?

[A]

I just think it's funny that like, if you think about the two comp. The two companies, Jack is like Twitter and Square, right? Or whatever it's called now. What are they called? Block. And you're like, okay, so like Twitter, Elon did it for him and cut that from like thousands of people to like 200 people or whatever ridiculous number it now is. And he's like, ah, probably I should do this one myself, right? Like it's, it's a cover story, but it's also, it's a cover story because

[B]

like, it's definitely a cover story.

[A]

But at the same time it's like, it's also true that like I AI, like why would you hire most people?

[C]

So you think it Was both.

[A]

Look, I, I think it's a cover story in the case of Block. They might as well take the stock boost on like whatever and bigger story than like if you said oopsie, we over hired and fired people, you don't get as much credit as you say. We can do it. You know, you get some because you still fire people. But like you get more credit to be like there's some agent future AI story. I will say though that like it was interesting. I was talking to some public markets investors that this week and they're like, I think this Block thing's a bigger deal because it signals. Because they were saying like we talked to really big companies, like we see no AI impact on our workforce. And he's like, people have been saying, ah, this is going to like change the narrative on that. And I, maybe that's true, but to me it's like, yeah, like obviously these companies are all going to shrink a ton. And like, I don't know, Dave, you, you think Silicon Valley, you still believe that Silicon Valley isn't going to fire a ton of people because like I'm the guy. I mean we're all 50% cutters and you think everyone's still going to have a software engineering job.

[C]

Well, you and I said half of the software engineers that are employed right now in the Bay Area will not be employed three years from now. And Dave said, no, you guys are wrong. It will definitely be more. And then this happened.

[B]

I'm just saying, no, you guys are still wrong.

[C]

We're still wrong.

[B]

And you're, and you're playing a semantic game of how to label it, blah, blah, blah. There's no possible way we aren't building more software in the future than less. Like that future is already here. Sam, you built how many apps this week? Like the future is already here, but

[A]

with how many people? This is the point. It's like just because there's more writing doesn't mean you have more scribes. Just because there's more calculating doesn't mean you have more calculators. In like the hidden figures sense.

[B]

I understand, but like I don't. They may not be working at the Mag 7, but like people are. There are still going to be technical people building software for like Cambrian number of things in the world. Like, it's just like not going to be the case that we're doing less.

[A]

Am I a software engineer?

[B]

Yes.

[C]

Seems like the product managers are the big winners here.

[A]

Well, okay, I guess that's the semantic thing. If you consider me a Software engineer.

[C]

I don't consider Sam a software engineer. That's, that is the.

[B]

SAM is technical enough.

[C]

I mean he has never been employed as a software engineer.

[B]

All right,

[C]

did we get over Dave's line? We pushed him over.

[B]

It's just like this is just like a semantic difference in like how to think about whether or not there are going to be people making software for other people and what you title them and like I think that's like what this comes down to. And we're like constant. Like you're trying to like argue semantics with me. And like I'm telling you that the number of people making software for people in the world is going to go up. Like it's just gonna.

[A]

Taking photos. No one's arguing that the number of people who. I think that's the same as anything is that the number of people, for instance taking photos in the world has gone up dramatically. But the number of photographers has plummeted. The number of people who type is through the roof. The number of typists has gone to zero.

[B]

So I mean this, this, there's this question which is like okay, Hollywood had a massive strike about this, right? And I mean it was like biggest strike in the history of Hollywood, right? Related to, I guess it was name and likeness writers, et cetera, right? All related to AI. The question is why haven't Silicon Valley software engineers gone the same way instead? They're just like driving, they're like building the gun that they're holding to their own head is what you guys are arguing.

[C]

What would they strike for? What regulation do they want?

[B]

I'm not talking, I'm not saying strike but nobody's talking about it. I guess our friend Aditya wrote like a piece in the Information today that's kind of. He did bemoaning this. Yeah, he wrote a piece in the Information about you know, that software or writing code is dead. And I tweeted it this morning. It's just, it's like kind of strange to me that everybody just seems okay with this. Like people are just like, like what? Why is that?

[A]

Two reasons. One, unlike Hollywood, Silicon Valley is not unionized, right? And like that makes a big difference in terms of the culture and things like that. In terms of, in terms of all that.

[B]

You've often made this, you've often made the argument that maybe they should be.

[C]

I agree. Well in former world they should have been.

[B]

It's too late now.

[A]

No, but here's the, here's, here's too late now. Here's the thing about I think the more important element, beyond just the structural unionization part is, look, you're a software builder. To admit that you are worried about software taking your job as a software builder is to effectively say that you are a bad software engineer, right? Because it basically the story should be for the best of the best, right? Which by the way, the best of the best going, getting paid even more, right? Like I am one of the best of the best, therefore I am not worried. But you should be worried as not the best of the best. Like it's kind of an admission that you're not good at your job, right? To some degree. And so I think while a lot of people actually practically do face this and feel a lot of angst about it in some ways, like there's this thing with soft, which is not true of Hollywood because it's a separate industry where like if you are of the chosen few, you should be happy about this, right? And I think that dynamic keeps people from like speaking out very much about this because by, by being worried about using your job to AI, you are almost implicitly identifying yourself as someone who is not, doesn't think they're the best at what they do. That's I think the issue, right? So it's like, because like the story is actually true, right?

[B]

But if it's as broad based as you guys suggest that 200,000 people in this town are not going to be here anymore. Like why isn't anyone, like why aren't 200,000 people talking about this? Is it just the social.

[A]

Because it would be to admit that you're. The 200,000 is getting fired, not the 200,000 is going to get paid more,

[C]

but I think there's some middle ground, right? Where like it's not that they're not going to be here. I don't think they're going to be employed as software engineers.

[B]

But that's what you guys have been arguing. Me arguing with me about that they're not going to be here anymore.

[C]

I don't think they're going to be employed as software engineers. I think they're going to like use their engineering brains to develop other skills. And like I think there will be new jobs that have different titles that they might be. And so they might still be here, but just in a different role.

[B]

I don't think that's the spirit of the question.

[C]

You've been arguing they might not get paid as much. Like I don't think like these software engineers, think about it, they've been kings. Like I worked At Google, you guys were at Facebook, we worked at Apple. They've like name the number. Like they were just like running around these places like kings. Anything to get the engineers happy. You know, it was so easy to switch jobs. A lot of them actually had like 16 month tenures. That's the average of a software engineer in Silicon Valley. Because they would just cherry pick lottery tickets across all the startups over the last 15 years. And now I'm, it's like, oh, you're saying that stopped?

[B]

That's still going on, like for the

[C]

best of the best? Sure. I don't think for all of them. Like, I think they're, I think we're in a like really interesting time where a lot of these people are starting to think like, oh, what, what is my role five or ten years from now?

[A]

Yeah, I, I definitely think they're seeing that. I will say my funny line on this right now, which you guys might remember is, remember there's like a, there's like a famous, this old saying which is actually true, which was kind of like Silicon Valley, like how it worked for a long time, which is everyone say code wins arguments. Like it was like this big thing. My line on this is like, huh, interesting. If code wins arguments, but now everyone can write code, then who wins the arguments? As opposed to it being like the engineers win because they can, they wrote the code.

[B]

Isn't that why people are so excited?

[A]

Because they're going to get the win

[B]

arguments because everyone can speak the same language? Yeah, yeah.

[A]

It's just the people who used to win all the arguments like are lose leverage.

[B]

Yeah. And what, what becomes valuable is like that he, you know, he or she who can communicate the best idea wins the argument. Right. And now everyone can write code. So you know, like it's a more level playing field. Everyone can look at what they might, what the outcome might be.

[A]

I'm not promoting this. I just think it's a massive shift and very destabilizing, I will say.

[C]

Like, I think there's a land grab right now for the engineers that are smart and entrepreneurially minded to be like starting companies and actually filling the gap that they used to have of like needing to find like a business minded co founder or whatever to be like their agent while they like can manage fleets of agents. Like I think there's like something opportunistic in the water right now for those, for a lot of those people.

[A]

Maybe, maybe. Can I define it a little differently? But here's what I think is opportunistic. Because I think what's really amazingly cool is effectively the IC engineers who weren't managers maybe couldn't communicate well and can just like what the real opportunity is. Engineering management getting flattened. Because I can just do so much more myself. I don't need to talk to anyone. The business thing is interesting because I actually think this is one of the big angsty things right now is look, if you were an amazing scribe in the year one or a thousand bc, that was great, but you didn't know anything other than scribing. If all of a sudden everyone can scribe like you have no comparative advantage. Whereas like if you know a business really well or whatever, there's still like some maybe talk about the death of expertise, like there's some angle or some community you have trust with or you have relationships, like there's other assets. I think the problem with being a pure scribe or a pure software engineer is like you don't. That doesn't give you what you need to be successful at business. Right. Like I do, I do think it can knock out engineering management if you're a great IC engineer but not a great manager. But I don't think it like, I actually think this is a real problem is a lot of who's like core advantage or like if you were a computer in the year 1920 and really good at adding, it's like you don't have to do that anymore, right? And that's what you're specialized in maybe.

[C]

But like, I mean we have this company I think we mentioned last week called Pulsea that's just like on a tear right now as a one person company that's gotten from like 0 to 2 million ARR in two weeks. And like the agent, the agent is just running the company. It's doing all the, it's in 150 investor meetings in the last week. It's done like all of this stuff, like making strategy decks, like managing financials, like all of that stuff. And I think that's like quite interesting if you're a technical person who doesn't know how to like run a business. But now you can.

[A]

Yeah, I hear you, I hear you.

[C]

All right, let's change gears to more exciting topics. Our friend actually Josh Wolf at Lux Capital wrote an email to his founders at Lux saying we are at peak AI.

[A]

This is also in the information. What a week we are.

[C]

The bubble is about to pop. Everyone try to go like, try to go public, get funding like batten down the hatches because the impending doom of the recession is coming so now everyone's obviously debating was this an overreaction or is this warranted?

[A]

I think it's just a way to get, I mean it's a totally reasonable opinion. It's either right and he'll look smart or it's wrong and no one will remember. So who cares?

[C]

Do you think that this is going to infiltrate the rest of the valley? I mean like Lux is a really well known firm. Right. So do you think others are going to draft off of this and be like, yeah, like we should, we should be like battening down the hatches here. This is definitely going to be a recession. There's a lot of group think in venture capital. So I'm curious how the, the halo effect will take shape.

[B]

I guess I'm like trying to look up what the points that he's trying to make. So I guess. All right. He says bonds and equities are telling different stories. The 10 year yield hit a 4 month low while stocks sit at near time high or at, at near highs. When these two diverge this sharply, fixed income tends to be the more reliable signal, sometimes a recession predictor. So that's 0.1. He says physical infrastructure is seeing political interventions. So 300 data center moratorium bills have been filed across 30 states. So grid interconnection timelines are, you know, stretching out. So there's a bunch of risk that growth plans and compute get stalled, I guess by political moratoriums. That's point two. Point three is tariff structures have shifted, New balance of payments framework, put structural floor on import duties. I guess that's what Ryan Peterson and all those guys were talking about last week. You know, many of you import hardware, materials and those costs are fluxing all over the place. So that's number three. And number four is what we just talked about, which is the markets rewarded, blocked 50% workforce reduction with a 20% gain. And so he's suggesting that those four things suggest something's really off and a recession might be company. What do you think, Sam?

[A]

Yeah, something is clearly really off. Both things can be true at the same time. Right? Like the, we're in like a major moment of disruption in, in like a bunch of different ways and we've got a hot war.

[B]

I'm surprised he didn't mention that.

[A]

But that's good for the economy.

[B]

Yeah, Most people don't understand that.

[A]

I think also like it's good to get rid of terrible, terrible regimes. So congrat, good job America. By the way, my favorite thing in the war, I have to say Our military is very good. It's like I saw this like CENTCOM upgrade update and they were just like, here's where he's like very like matter

[C]

of fact, what's that?

[A]

Comm Central command. And like they just like the guy running it was like, who? I don't know and I should probably know who he is. Just gave like a very like to the point, clear, articulate, this is the situation, this is what's happening. This is what's happening. And you're like, competence is just so attractive. I'm like, thank you for being competent. It's like especially juxtaposed to like all the blow hardness that we're used to in the Internet and a bunch of other places. Like the military is just like competent and like I know there's all sorts of problems and I talk with smart people about procurement and weight. Like I get it all. But like there is something very comforting and fundamental about just like competence and execution. And like I think, you know, go America, go Israel seems very competent what's going on right now, at least from the military side. Also it's kind of cool that we blow up a ship with a torpedo since first time since World War II.

[C]

Yeah. And clearly all the AI defense companies are benefiting from this Israel. I saw Saronic just raised at a 7 1/2 billion dollar valuation. They make warships, andral, et cetera. So do we think this is. I haven't actually paid too much attention. Like is this going to be a quick one or do you think this is going to last for a while? And does this therefore net impact, delay, whatever, recession? Come on, give me your war times.

[B]

Definitely not our lane.

[C]

What did sitcom say?

[A]

I just enjoyed the competence. I mean I look, I'm just happy that we got rid of a terrible dictator who is awful and causing a lot of terror. What comes next? I understand people are like, understand like I. It's always complicated and I understand people who are upset about blah, blah, blah. But at the end of the day like you have to be willing to act, right? Like if you're not willing to act, like you have nothing. And like I applaud our willingness to act. You know what it is? It's kind of like, you know, I was talking to some entrepreneurs the other day, but like I think this is kind of a Silicon Valley narrative that's been built up and people keep repeating which isn't like the future belongs to people who just do shit or like take initiative. Right. I think that is a hundred percent true. It's like when you're looking for people to hire, you're looking people work with. It's like the people who are gonna just take initiative and like use the tools at our disposal and like do stuff. Are the people who successful and get things done. And like, it's crazy to say this, but I think this like is true in like things like global politics as well. It's like I applaud the US just doing things right as much as anything else.

[C]

What's our net net on recession in 26?

[A]

Look, I've been saying for like could

[B]

argue we're already there.

[A]

I look for two. We're not mathematically there. Like, but for two years I've been saying, like, look, there's this like triangle trade between D.C. silicon Valley and New York. Whereas huge deficit, huge debt problem. Huge debt problem. GDP has to grow massively fast in order to deal with it. It's like the only way out because we can't cut costs to make it happen realistically. And so the triangle trade becomes Washington. Being like, GDP must grow to like Silicon Valley. Being like, I have a magic answer called this AI thing to make GDP number go up to New York and Riyadh and wherever else. Being like, cool, we'll fund it and we'll get in the game, which is really exciting. And so this is all. There's like this huge narrative collusion around like our only way out is up through AI and maybe space. Space and all this type of stuff. And like, look, I partially my beneficiary this, I can't complain too much, but like, that's just a very clear question is what breaks that narrative cycle, right? Like what, what breaks it? Because that's what's propelling everything right now, right? It could be, oh shit. It turns out that like GDP headline number sort of goes up because we build a bunch of data centers or spend a lot of money. But actually it's not growing the economy in a more holistic, healthy way. It could be, oh shit, this actually causes a bunch of jobs to go away and that's a huge problem for consumer spending and blah, blah, blah. Like there's so many ways it breaks. But the real question is like you have this narrative that's been very, very successful and like there's really cool stuff coming out of it to a point, right? But what's going to break that narrative? And I don't know, I don't know when that happens or why it happens. There's a thousand ways it could. It's always been a bit of A narrative story, but it could keep partying, you know, like, I don't know, no one knows. If we knew, we'd trade it.

[C]

Wasn't there some, like, I mean, don't we need, we need from a geopolitical stance, AI to keep being the narrative so that we can throw a ton of resources into everything we're building so China isn't like continuing to overtake us with everything that they're doing. I mean, some of the models that they're creating are really good.

[A]

Well, this is the thing. Actually, Dave, I wanted to ask you about this because like the interest there is. The China story is quite interesting. I was thinking of this. I saw this thing pointing out that like the place that like Open Claw is crushing it is China. Yeah, right. And there's like. And it kind of couples in my mind with the open models. It's like, ah, interesting. Like I'm kind of using Claude code. Like I think Claude is better for what I want. Again, I, I do run Open Claw and like have it running, but I'm not using anywhere near as much as I use Claude in like my cloud instances. I pay a lot for these models. I'm like willing to pay more for the tip of the spear. But then there's all this like down market open stuff, right, which is like largely from China, largely because China's blocked out of the really fancy, like the best stuff. So they've had to like be scrappy and figure it out and like what does that look? What is that stack? That stack is like a bunch of the open source models. It's Open Claw. It's all this other stuff effectively, like, what's your talk track on that? Like, is open source AI a Chinese phenomenon for the, for the foreseeable future?

[B]

It's an interesting question. I mean I've been hearing that the Kimi model is really incredible and the team that built it's really amazing. I mean, I think there's this interesting question I tweeted about earlier this week, which is that if you can give a lower quality model a longer energy budget, does it even matter if you're operating on the better model? Because I'm hearing a lot of people that just like give a longer reasoning budget to a lower quality model and it comes out with the same answer anyway. And so there's that question, right? Like, do the chip, you know, the export controls that we're putting in place for the best chips even matter in the long run? And by the way, do they even matter for being the best in the world at this, at like any given task. Right. It might just be that you, if you have like infinite cheap energy, you can just like let it reason for a really long time with a lower quality model. And so what you see coming out of China is a lot of these like open source, lower quality models, right. And them trying to like spread it and get a lot of people working on it to make them better and better and better. And like you're seeing a lot of people do that, right? And you're seeing a lot of people with open claws running Kimi. Because they don't want to spend the money on four, six. Right. And they're gonna wake up their claw in the middle of the night five times to do the reasoning when it's cheap. Yeah, exactly. And so like I think that's like a, that's like a real thing.

[A]

Yeah. And so for me it's like, look, I. Even with my claw, not with Claude, but with my claw, like, I just use OpenRouter now, which is great, by the way. Like, open router is wonderful for like all the things. Right.

[B]

But what do you use it for? Do you route amongst different models or. I mean, all OpenRouter does is proxy calls to the different big models.

[A]

Well, it can also balance between them or like optimize between them, et cetera. Yeah, I just, I just honestly, I think it's a better interface. Like, it's less brittle. I find in a lot of ways you let them handle all the weird connections to different things. Right. Like now I do think, like long term, it's one of those places where like, look back in the day when I started my first company with Drop IO, like we had this whole vision about routing storage. The cheapest storage providers that turned out to like not matter or be a thing. Because it was like, yeah, it doesn't that much.

[B]

I forgot, I forgot you guys were doing that.

[A]

It doesn't like it was the right mentality, which is like, this is just a commodity. I don't care what back end it is. We're just going to like route to the cheapest storage option. It didn't end up mattering that much. It was more intellectual than practical because like the difference in cost wasn't that much and it wasn't like fast enough. This is the version that actually does make sense, right? Where you're like, okay, I don't care where the intelligence is on earth, just route to the cheapest intelligence based on what I actually need. Like, don't, don't give me a fucking Einstein when I'm asking a problem that a 2 year old can do and like when I need Einstein, like make Einstein work, you know, like that's like a good mentality and a expensive enough thing to do. But it's just interesting because I just wonder if we like the closed world is clearly the American world ironically right now of. And like this stuff is good. It's like really good, right? It's better. But to your point, especially if we end up with like economic jitters or all of a sudden these labs can't pay people infinitely and open source moves faster and it's already like fine, it's just going to be an interesting thing if that turns out to be a Chinese phenomenon, right? If like, if the, if the world becomes us is Apple and Claude code and expensive shit. And like the Android of AI is open source Chinese shit.

[C]

Not just Chinese, but probably rest of

[A]

world, but it's mostly Chinese, partially in AI.

[B]

I think you're doing open source if behind, right? Like it's a distribution strategy. And I think Sam, if you went back to like maybe the beginning episodes of the, of our pod, we were talking about meta running a distribution strategy because they were behind, right? And so they started putting out llama and all of these open source models to try to just get the distribution and get everybody in the ecosystem working on them because they didn't need to monetize the models, they just needed to like they can take whatever the community makes better and then put it into their advertising system and make money rain from this guy. Right. And so you could argue that China's just running the same strategy here.

[A]

Broadly, I buy that it's just an interesting moment.

[C]

What to train? To train what on? Where's the money coming from?

[B]

No, no, no, not to train anything. It's just that, you know, they have, you know, less chips in volume than we do. Right. And they are therefore behind. And so they need to get like as many eyes and hands working on their various technologies in the AI realm. And so they, they get out there faster if they use open source because

[A]

people share it 100%. But it also just becomes really interesting when, if you think about like okay, like right now you're talking about the loop into the economy question. Economy hot. Infinite capital for these like head labs with questionable economics long term, right? But like it's fine and like they can run faster if all of a sudden they can't run as fast because they don't have the same infinite access to capital. Like how does that play out? Right? Like this all of a sudden, like, you know what I mean? Like all of a sudden the edge.

[B]

But does it become, I guess, like, but my question is like, does infinite access to low cost energy matter more?

[A]

Yeah, it probably does. Right. And this is the reason why. Yes, but that's what I'm saying.

[B]

Like they can put up a nuclear plant and like something like what is it, like nine months? It takes us six years.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And so like they're going to have access to lower cost energy. Like there's like under no metric whether it's number of solar panels, number of nuclear power plants, like they are going to have the cheaper energy based on how things are going right now.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And that might, that might be all that matters in the end.

[A]

That makes a lot of sense. I think that probably is. Right.

[C]

So we need to focus on nuclear plants.

[A]

Well, people are, I just think it's like we're going to have structural problem with that. This is just the thing about why I like find this intelligence thing and this business such a weird one because you're like, I don't understand, like this is basically all going to back to energy at some level. There's not going to be that very much margin in it. And like low cost intelligence production is going to be the key.

[C]

So Sam and Dave, I guess as we start to wrap soon, where are you most excited about investing right now? As things have changed, have continued to change. I guess knowing that Sam, you, you, you, you haven't probably changed your tuna.

[A]

How much have it changed?

[C]

I feel like in February, February was like a wild month in the state of Silicon Valley and AI and I think a lot of people are, I

[B]

think we're in the second wave.

[C]

AGI has been the name of the game in so many conversations I've been part of right now. Just like, oh, this is actually going to happen and happen soon and like what does this mean on a faster time horizon and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

[B]

I just think we're in the second wave.

[C]

The second wave, which is what?

[B]

Yeah, I think we're in the second wave and personal AI or agents, however you want to talk about it is here and there's going to be a lot of interesting things to be built and there's a lot of infrastructure that hasn't happened. There's a lot of agent based business models that people are going to explore. Memory is still like this entire area that has, is not figured out at all. And so I think there's just. Yeah, it's like exciting. I think that's that's why everybody's so excited right now. I think that the. It's. It, like, agents might actually be the website of this, like, of this era. And like, the browser hasn't been built yet. And, you know, we're like, at the

[C]

very beginning, infrastructure just needs to be created.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[C]

It may be protocols and so many other things.

[B]

There's like no standards for, you know, soul files and config files and, you know, there's no protocols for how personal agents or clause should communicate with each other. Like, there's just like, a lot of stuff to be figured out, but you don't need standards.

[A]

It doesn't matter anymore.

[C]

Sam talking with a protein bar in his mouth. No one needs standards.

[B]

Oh, wouldn't Jess, if she were here, wanted us. Want us to end this by talking about David. Dave.

[C]

You blew it, Dave. All right, I'm gonna go there. I'm gonna go there. As we wrap Sam, I'm gonna hand the mic to you to do the big announcement.

[B]

What's the big announcement?

[C]

What did David's protein pivot into as its new product? Because I think that people are gonna be excited about this. And if you don't know, David's. David's is the protein bar.

[A]

I've eaten two of them while we've been chatting, which is like 40 grams of protein, which is pretty good. Podcast episode. We can get 40 grams of protein. Ice cream.

[B]

David, that's the best news ever.

[C]

Ice cream. All right, ladies and gentlemen, 30 grams of pro in a pint. 30 grams of protein, 260 calories, 2 grams of sugar. Are we more or less all chemicals on David's ice cream?

[A]

I mean, I'm clearly going to eat a lot whether. Whether it makes you sicker or not. Who knows? Like is what I would say. Like, it's like, I'm going to eat it and it might kill me.

[C]

Okay. I think we should have a more or less meetup ice cream ice cream social, as they might, as the kids might call it, and. And do a trial of all this ice cream. So more protein for everyone. I'm surprised there's no creatine or anything else in this fiber, but I'm sure that's coming next.

[A]

It's hard to put creatine in because it destroys it. You got to put that in a powder and just drink it in the morning like a adult.

[C]

Ah, okay. I've also heard about creatine overload. All right, we, dear listeners, are going to head back to our wildlife as being venture capitalists because I've been on this call.

[A]

I've had an API issue with a sendgrid key, and I've been in a loop for, like, literally 10 minutes with my bot. I've just fixed.

[C]

We're so sorry.

[A]

The problem. This call was too engaging. It distracted me from fucking around.

[C]

Yes, that's the goal here, everyone. All right, well, if you enjoyed this episode, please, like, rate and subscribe and we will see you back here next week for another episode of More or Less. Bye, guys.

[B]

See you later.

[C]

If you enjoyed this show, please leave us a virtual high five by rating it and reviewing it on Apple Podcast, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcast. Find more information about each episode in the show notes and follow us on social media by searching fororless avemorin essonless lesson. And as for me, I'm Brit. See you guys next time.