OpenClaw vs Meta vs OpenAI: The Personal Agent Wars Heat Up

Summary

More or Less Podcast Episode Summary

Episode: OpenClaw vs Meta vs OpenAI: The Personal Agent Wars Heat Up
Date: February 20, 2026
Hosts: Dave Morin, Jessica Lessin, Brit Morin, Sam Lessin

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Episode Overview

This episode centers on the intensifying competition in Silicon Valley’s “personal agent” space, spotlighting the major moves among OpenClaw, OpenAI, and Meta. The hosts, all seasoned founders and investors, dissect the significance of recent news: the OpenClaw founder joining OpenAI, the creation of the Open Claw Foundation (with Dave Morin on its board), and Meta’s rapid response with its own wearable/AI personal agent projects. The conversation weaves through the consumer vs. cloud control debate, poaching talent, the proliferation of agentic software, the shifting venture landscape, hardware innovation (or lack thereof), and the looming disruption of the software engineering labor market. Sprinkled throughout is their signature rapport and humor, plus a surprise ski injury update and speculation on government tech contracting.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. State of the Agent Wars: OpenClaw, OpenAI, and Meta

[05:44-09:32]

• OpenClaw’s Future and Foundation:

  • Jessica explains the news: OpenClaw’s founder moves to OpenAI, and in parallel, the Open Claw Foundation is created to secure the open-source ethos, with Dave Morin joining the board.
  • Dave emphasizes “the claw is the law” and expresses pride in shepherding what may be the fastest-growing open-source project in internet history.
    • Dave Morin [07:00]: “It’s great for all the developers and builders and hackers out there. Maintaining the open source project itself and its ethos is really important.”
  • The foundation aims to ensure continued independence, transparency, and rapid innovation for developers.

• Meta’s Response & Mana Agent:

  • Jessica: “Meta matched this news within 24 hours with … a new Manus agent coming from an acquisition they did.”
  • Brit points out the fundamental architectural differences: Meta and others are deploying cloud-based agents, but OpenClaw is “literally on hardware on your own computer and it’s the thing that you own.”
  • Brit [09:03]: “That’s the big OpenClaw advantage… You have full control, not some company in the cloud.”

• Open Source, Cloud vs. Local Control, and Market Differentiation:

  • Dave underscores that cloud-based solutions will appeal to billions, but many want data/AI ownership—giving OpenClaw lasting appeal for a privacy-focused segment.
  • They all agree this validation by big players puts “personal agent” innovation in hyperdrive.

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2. Talent Wars: Poaching, Rivalry, and Market Signals

[11:41-15:36]

• Jessica shares the news that Charles Porch, senior Instagram exec, switches to OpenAI—evidence of “a new wave of poaching” beyond just AI scientists.
• Jessica [13:01]: “You can always tell a lot about a company from who it sees as its greatest rival.”
• The group reflects how poaching patterns can signal which firms consider each other existential competitors—predicting future moves before the public narrative catches up.

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3. Hardware Innovation or Déjà Vu?

[15:36-18:37]

• Meta’s smartwatch plans resurface, and hosts debate if anyone will buy them—or if “smart” wearables are stuck in a design rut.
• Jessica: “This is reminding me of… the Internet of Things era… everyone was just putting an iPad on everything. That’s what this all feels like to me.”
• Gendered fashion/wearable challenges discussed: Brit notes the lack of women-focused wearable design.

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4. Ambient Tech, Agents, and the Future of Memory

[18:37-22:37]

• The hosts riff on the coming “agentic” world, where wearables, rings, glasses, and ambient recording mesh with AI memory agents to fundamentally change how we record and recall daily life.
• Brit: “We need a catchphrase for this agentic world we’re about to live in.”
• Jessica is bullish on AI-powered ambient memory/recording—especially for business and personal productivity.

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5. Venture & Startup Market: The Tale of Two Cities

[22:44-26:56]

• Jessica spotlights massive fundraising rounds for companies like Anthropic and Anduril, while “meg7” founders continue to raise at sky-high valuations.

  • Brit: “Valuations are still coming hot and furious.”

• Dave describes an ecosystem split:

  • Brand-name founders and “private meg7” can raise billions on vision and narrative.
  • The seed/AI startup market stays hyper-competitive as everyone scrambles to keep up. “The market is pretty normative right now … things are moving so fast that what you invested in last year might already be in trouble.”

• Larger companies feel the strain of pivoting to agentic/AI-first models due to sheer scale and bureaucracy.

  • Brit [26:24]: “A 600-person company CEO was like—I need to pivot to agentic, but it takes months… the landscape is shifting in weeks.”

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6. Engineering Jobs: Will They Disappear?

[27:18-41:12]

• Jessica opens the controversial topic: will AI tools reduce traditional software engineering jobs, especially in the Bay Area?
• Estimates: 400,000 professional engineers today. Three years from now?
  • Dave is optimistic: more software = more work, though some jobs may shift away from coding to overseeing AI tools/agents.
  • Brit and later Sam argue job decline is inevitable: “One great engineer can do the work of many… the number of actual engineers will go down.”
  • Jessica [30:54]: “In three years, I’ll go down to 300,000 … then it drops more precipitously. I think by then it will drop more.”
  • Sam [43:53]: “200,000.”
  • All agree that how the transition happens (“who blinks first” in layoffs) will be important—and that the story will likely evolve from “removing bureaucracy” to “AI-driven efficiencies.”
• Dave questions whether “normies” will build their own apps at scale using these new tools—Brit is bullish, Dave is skeptical, humorously playing “voice of Sam.”

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7. Government & AI: The New Contracting Battleground

[41:40-47:52]

• The hosts briefly touch on the brewing clash between Anthropic and the U.S. government over terms of use and access to their AI, while Meta, xAI, and others chase lucrative government contracts.
• Sam muses on whether intelligence is becoming so abundant and cheap that it’s “a commodity, [and] I just don't understand how anyone can hold each other ransom effectively over terms of use because you just … buy it from someone else.” [46:30]
• Dave likens the rapid commoditization of AI tokens to the power industry.

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8. Commoditization, Orchestration, and the Business of AI

[47:53-55:12]

• Sam lays out a provocative viewpoint: if intelligence (tokens) become ultra-abundant/cheap, real business value accrues to orchestrators and specialized agents—echoing lessons from the power industry.
• Brit highlights healthcare as a vertical where agent accuracy and trust will matter a lot more than price alone.
• Jessica and Dave note OpenClaw is already an orchestrator, routing requests to different models for efficiency and use case performance.
• Dave [52:10]: “This is also the story of OpenClaw … a great orchestrator across all the models. … What you’re going to see is the rise of a billion bots.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “The claw is the law.” — Dave Morin [05:57]
• “It’s the Internet of putting iPads on things.” — Dave Morin [17:33]
• “We need a catchphrase for this agentic world we’re about to live in.” — Brit [18:13]
• “[Agentic engineering is] playing out across the stack… dark factories where people are no longer reviewing code.” — Dave Morin [26:58]
• “Is San Francisco Detroit if no one is doing software engineering 12 months from now?” — Dave Morin [33:12]
• “We have no idea. That’s why it’s so fun.” — Jessica [33:44]
• “If intelligence becomes super cheap and abundant, then intelligence isn't worth anything.” — Sam Lessin [45:38]
• “If you are a major CEO in Silicon Valley, are you really going to let go of 30% of your software engineers, 50%?” — Dave Morin [35:13]

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Important Timestamps

• [05:44] – OpenClaw Foundation announcement; Dave Morin’s board role
• [09:32] – OpenClaw's architecture versus Meta’s cloud-based agent
• [13:01] – Talent poaching between Meta and OpenAI
• [17:26] – “Internet of putting iPads on things”—hardware design rant
• [22:44] – Startup/VC landscape: Private “meg7,” hot deals
• [27:18] – Bay Area software engineering jobs debate
• [40:29] – When will “normie” friends start building their own apps?
• [41:40] – Government contracting and Anthropic–Pentagon dispute
• [45:38] – Sam’s “cheap intelligence means no leverage” thesis
• [52:10] – Value of orchestration in the agentic AI world

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Episode Flow

• Light intro / banter with updates from the hosts—humorous detours including Sam’s ski injury and urgent care trip ([03:10-04:42])
• Major AI news, Open Claw Foundation, and Meta vs. OpenAI rivalry
• Wearables & hardware's relevance and design shortcomings
• Agentic future, privacy vs. convenience, and AI-powered memory
• VC market, valuations, and company pivots
• Deep debate: Will engineers be disrupted like taxi drivers, or will new opportunities emerge?
• Government and regulatory tension
• Meta-point: The real value may not be AI’s “raw tokens,” but orchestration and vertical applications

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Final Thoughts

• The episode delivers a dynamic, sometimes playful, often heated debate about where the AI agent wars are heading—both technologically and socially.
• It highlights the uncertainty (and opportunity) of the next three years: for startups, big tech, individual workers, and society.
• The hosts invite listener/viewer participation, particularly in predicting the future of engineering employment and the practical impact of agentic AI.

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To join the discussion or learn more, visit the More or Less website or follow the hosts on social (links in episode description).

Transcript

[Dave Morin]

People seem to want the cheapest or the personality. They prefer the OpenCloud community. People actually choose to route to Claude, particularly Opus 4:5, because they like the personality better than, say, Codex.

[Sam Lesson]

Maybe. But Dave, that's kind of like. Imagine you had two accountants and one's slightly prettier than the other. It's like you'll use the prettier one a little bit, but like you're just gonna use the better one or the cheaper one, right?

[Brit]

I think the better one.

[Sam Lesson]

Well, you're rich, Brit, so you'll use the better one.

[Brit]

More

[Jessica]

no or is a yes. We'll debate the text. That's best when we get More or less Dave and GR +Salmon. Jess put it all right to the test, More or Less. Why? Hello, friends. Welcome to More or Less. How are you Morins?

[Dave Morin]

Hey, Joss.

[Brit]

Doing well.

[Jessica]

How was lunch? We were having lunch in the same restaurant as usual.

[Brit]

We were talking capital. What else do we do?

[Dave Morin]

Yeah, talking about capital.

[Jessica]

Well, this is an exciting week to be doing the pod because there has been a lot of technology news stuff going on.

[Dave Morin]

Very exciting.

[Jessica]

We're going to dive into it. Some of the people on this pod are even involved in said technology news.

[Brit]

Some of the people on this pod

[Jessica]

broke the technology news. You know, it has been. I don't. It's always busy. I don't know. But it's an exciting time. And of course we're talking about the Open Claw OpenAI news, but there's a lot of other things. Information reported today that Meta's smartwatch plans are back on. So we could do a wonderful poll about who is going to buy a Meta smartwatch. Considering I still don't have any smartwatches, I'll probably be on the negative side of that.

[Brit]

That's really confusing to me.

[Jessica]

Yeah, yeah. No, it's against brand, but, you know,

[Dave Morin]

do you have smart anything?

[Jessica]

I am trying to be less connected to my devices, so I have watches

[Brit]

that I like to wear.

[Jessica]

I do not have an OURA ring yet, although I'm thinking about getting one because it tracks stress levels. Now it does interested in. But also I want to make sure we have not circled back with three VCs and a journalist on this pod. We have not circled back recently to the fundraising market, to the state of startup investing. There have been a number of major rounds that are in the process of closing or have closed Anduril. The information has new reports out about obviously Anthropic. So I want to get to that too because, you know, the people are here for the vc. Speaking of vc, those watchers will notice we're down to vc. I just have to explain to the people that it's snowing in Jackson Hole, and then they will understand why Sam Lassen is not on this late, late afternoon podcast taping.

[Brit]

But he likely will. Come on. He'll have a grand entrance, so just stay tuned. He'll jump in.

[Jessica]

Don't worry. He'll probably be like a beacon. He's here. He made it.

[Brit]

Welcome, Sam.

[Sam Lesson]

All right, guys, start. Start rolling. I have things to say that could

[Dave Morin]

not have been more perfect.

[Jessica]

No, we already. What do you mean we've been rolling? I just explained why we were down at vc and then you popped on,

[Sam Lesson]

so somewhat bad news. Mostly for my wife, but maybe for David and Brittany. Well, I may have just damn corned myself.

[Jessica]

What? You broke your collarbone?

[Sam Lesson]

I'm gonna do the podcast and we'll see how it feels.

[Jessica]

No, we're not doing the podcast.

[Sam Lesson]

It's fine. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine.

[Jessica]

I do not want to do a podcast when you may have broken your collarbones.

[Sam Lesson]

It's fine because it'll be kind of funny, and we're going to check in next week. It's fine. It's fine.

[Brit]

We told you we'd make a great entrance, everyone.

[Sam Lesson]

So here's the deal, Sam, does this

[Jessica]

mean you're not going to Alaska? Don't you want to go to urgent care and take care of it so you can go to Alaska?

[Sam Lesson]

An hour won't make a difference if it's a broken rib or whatever. I'm going to have to do whatever. Here's the upshot. I did the classic thing, which is I was so proud of myself. I was on the top of four pines with 15 minutes before the podcast, and I had a great run. It is in awesome shape, like, blower pow, all the way down. And then I was scooting across the lower hobacks in those huge fucking icy moguls, and I basically.

[Jessica]

Which we skied five times today.

[Sam Lesson]

Okay, it's fine. I was trying to go a little extra fast, and I basically went over the handlebars into my pole, into my beacon, into my rib, and I was like, ow, that hurts. And then I woke up, I was like, oh, my arm hurts. And so then I just skied home, and I was like, this isn't too bad. But then I would take my ski boot off, and it definitely hurts a lot. So we'll see. We'll see.

[Jessica]

Sam, this is not taking care of your body. These injuries, like the swelling in the next half hour, could go crazy. And we're back. We're back from urgent care.

[Brit]

Do we want to give the prognosis, Jess?

[Jessica]

We give the prognosis. Sam did not break his shoulder, his rib or his collarbone. So he's in significant pain, but it's not broken. So anyway, dear listeners, thank you for that. Now we are ready. It may or may not show up, but it will have nothing to do with his perfectly intact bones. So, okay, let's start with openclaw. So the information reported this week that the founder of OpenClaw was going over to OpenAI. The announcement was quickly followed by OpenAI announcing that the news was true and interestingly, that a new foundation for this red hot open source project that we've been talking about nonstop on this pod called openclaw, this foundation would be established and who would be on this board of said foundation while none other than Dave Morin. So we are honored to be in the presence of Open Claw foundation board greatness. Dave, what can you tell us about this exciting project? Don't laugh.

[Dave Morin]

Ah, the claw is the law.

[Jessica]

The claw is the law.

[Dave Morin]

Thanks for the good intro, Jess. Yeah, I mean, the really good news for the openclaw community is that the open source project will be managed and looked after by the Open Claw Foundation. We're in the process right now of getting all of the proper structuring set up. And yeah, it's just super good news. I mean, I think it's great for all of the developers and builders and hackers out there. You know, this is the, as near as we can tell, the fastest growing open source project in Internet history. There's a lot of people building on it. And so maintaining the open source project itself and the ethos of that is really important. And, you know, I'm really grateful that Peter has trusted me with helping him figure out this part of the equation. I think, you know, being part of it from the sort of beginning of January, late December, you know, we've been talking about a lot on the pod. It's just been a really fascinating experience and I feel, I guess, lucky to reapply some old skills that I have in developer platforms and ecosystems from the 2000s to a new era. So it's been fun so far.

[Brit]

You don't feel old, do you, Dave?

[Jessica]

No, we don't. We don't use that word.

[Dave Morin]

Never.

[Jessica]

So, Brit. And again, I know there's, there's a lot of inside baseball, Dave, that you don't want to talk about, which makes sense. But obviously Peter Steinberger, the founder, going to OpenAI to report to build more personal agents. It just seems like we're on one hand this is totally validating for the personal agent idea and the concept, but we also now have this race between OpenAI going hard at it. I reported with my colleagues and the information that Meta was making a big play for Peter to join as well. Meta matched this news within 24 hours with releasing a new or talking about a new Manus agent coming from an acquisition they did. So is this full on? What are we to make of this and which agent is going to win if, you know, we're at this point where everyone just seems to be moving very quickly to have very similar products?

[Brit]

Well, I think it's interesting that Manus was able to launch that so quickly, which means, like, clearly they had been probably working on it throughout the open cloud negotiations. I don't know. Just wondering.

[Jessica]

Yeah. Oh, definitely. Well, probably since they acquired the company.

[Brit]

Yeah. But I think the difference is, like, Manus is in the cloud. Right. And OpenClaw is literally on hardware on your own computer and it's the thing that you own, so. And Meta doesn't own. And so I think, you know, the people that are going to leverage Mana's AI, fine, sure, it's an agent, and I think you're going to start seeing a lot of these types of agents out there and new platforms where you can build your own agent. The question is, do you want to own that as an individual on your own hardware so that you for sure have full control over it, or do you want to offload that into the cloud somewhere that another company owns? And I think that was the power and is the power of open cloud and why people are loving it so much. And it doesn't make sense for anyone else, like one of the big, you know, the big tech companies, to have a competitive version of this because it's. They're not. And inherently it has to be open source, it has to be distributed. And so that's the big open cloud advantage.

[Dave Morin]

Yeah, I mean, perhaps only Apple has the technology and the ability to deploy personal AI to, you know, the edge, I guess, onto people's personal devices, because that's their business. But Brit's right. You know, I think the. The entire ethos of Open Claw is to give people a way to own their own data, to own their own personal AI experience and to pull it completely out of the cloud. And, you know, that's not going to be something that everybody wants or needs. I think there'll probably be billions of people using cloud based versions of this. Um, but you know, for the people that do, which it seems like there's quite a lot of people out there that are interested in owning their own data, then the open source model really matters.

[Jessica]

Yeah, and I think the big question too will be like, who can deliver a really great consumer experience? Because privacy will win over some users, but probably most the history of the Internet has been won over by convenience. And, and it's just early. I still, you know, Jessica, check in coding developer, whatever we're in. Now that I'm probably eight days into my AI coding journey, I'm just using Cowork and OpenClaw, like constantly.

[Dave Morin]

Interesting. What are you building?

[Jessica]

And sometimes I forget. Well, Dave, I think I'm doing, I'm building an app every day. It's our kids ski break, so I'm on vacation, still working, but I'm building an app every day. I have not built my app yet because I had to go to urgent care when I was going to build my app. So might have to build my app this evening. But it's everything from. I did some really cool analysis of years of information subscriber sentiment data that has to do with showing correlation to how public stocks move and newsflash. Turns out there is a correlation between the sentiment data and what, what public stocks tech stocks do over the next three months. So that's not an app per se, that's an analysis. But I built a social media app that my team is now using that I uploaded online and I'm looking for more ideas. So but anyway, my biggest problem with these things is I forget what they're doing because they. I go off and do something else and I come back and I'm like, wow, that PDF is done. What? Oh yeah, I asked it to do that.

[Brit]

So.

[Jessica]

But we're going to move up. We've talked a lot about bots, but we had to circle back to sort of note this development. We've reached a new interesting phase. I am also just so tickled would be the wrong word. But the Meta OpenAI rivalry is rearing its head in all sorts of ways. We also saw today that Charles Poarch, a senior, what would you call, I should say his disclosure as a friend, because sometimes people get mad when I don't say that. But Charles, who ran Instagram, some of the most important relationships, including a lot of their celebrity relationships, is going to OpenAI to do a similar role there. So I think we have now two very, very recent data points of how this rivalry is rearing its head. And obviously there's been a lot of poaching back and forth between the two companies, but.

[Brit]

Jess, do you have any speculation as to why Charles would make the move from Meta to OpenAI?

[Jessica]

I don't, but I think it's. It's. What's interesting to me about it is we saw the poaching of like, it's. The poaching is enter is like gone beyond AI researchers too. So I think it's like a very interesting.

[Brit]

A new wave of poaching.

[Jessica]

A new wave of poaching, and there's been plenty of that already. But it's interesting to me. I mean, these companies aren't. I think you can always tell a lot about a company from who it sees as its greatest rival. Like, I remember years ago, maybe a decade. It was probably a decade ago. And I don't even know if Sundar was the CEO of Google yet. When did Sundar become the CEO of Google?

[Brit]

No, it was. It was shortly after I left Google, maybe like 2013.

[Dave Morin]

I mean, Charles was at Meta for 15 years. Right. I mean, that's a really good run. Right. And you could argue that OpenAI is entering its 2010 meta era, right?

[Jessica]

No, it is, it is. Right. And I guess the point, I was just saying zooming out from one move, as I remember when Sundar wrote a memo about Google's biggest problem shortly after becoming CEO, or maybe shortly before, it was all about Amazon. And at the time you would not have found a single article that had really pit. Everyone thought Facebook with social was Google's biggest problem or something else. And here there was this memo being like, no, Amazon, which was getting into the ads business and absolutely has become one of Google's business biggest rivals and now in cloud with Google Cloud. And so I think if you want to be looking six months ahead to what companies are doing, what kind of employees they're poaching and who they see themselves as most competitive with, which is often not. Where the public narrative is, I think is really interesting. So now the public narrative is probably caught up around OpenAI and Meta. You know, it wasn't obvious. And so I think it's like the exclamation point on that rivaling, if you will. And we'll see where OpenAI goes with ads. I mean, we have. They're now in beta or whatever. Like you can see. Have you guys seen an OpenAI ad? I have not.

[Brit]

I haven't seen an OpenAI ad.

[Jessica]

Yeah, I paid for it. So I'm not going to see I have to have two accounts I guess. You know, it takes years to build an advertising business. I mean just ask anyone.

[Dave Morin]

Five years.

[Jessica]

Yeah. So it's going to be a long time or longer.

[Dave Morin]

I mean that's, that's actually a generous way to look at it. I mean it, it takes like a decade to build like a serious ad.

[Jessica]

Well even, like, even something that you could point to and say this is a revenue stream today and it could become the kind of revenue stream that offsets some of this capex or whatever. Right. Is a. But that's obviously a next front. And hardware too. You know, we reported today in the information that Meta has had on again, off again smartwatch plans. I said earlier in this episode, you know who's going to buy it? Brit, are you going to buy it?

[Brit]

Well, and we know that you're not going to buy it. Well, I have, I'm such a loyalist with my Apple watch by the way.

[Jessica]

Shocker.

[Brit]

First of all, all my fashiony female friends. Shame me Dave doesn't know this and all the men that listen don't understand this but like women often get shamed in the fashion circles for like wearing smart watches because they're just not that cute. Like there are definitely cuter watches out there.

[Jessica]

See all my fashionables, you just have cute bands, you make it cute.

[Brit]

Okay, for normal everyday but like I like to wear 247 because I mean I'm checking out my data.

[Jessica]

No, you can't wear that thing to a black tie event. No.

[Brit]

Okay, maybe black tie is where I cut it off. But anyway, I can dress it anyway. So this is just a problem for women. But. And I'm like if Meta hasn't yet designed great looking eyewear for women.

[Dave Morin]

Men do not talk about or care about this.

[Brit]

With their Meta glasses, are they really going to design a cute watch for women? No. Like so maybe in the future once they actually design something relevant for me,

[Dave Morin]

I mean maybe that should be their

[Brit]

strategy just to go after women.

[Jessica]

Well, I, I've had convers with the, the team working on the glasses about like more feminine form factors and styles. I think they're working. They want to just have a broader range. The electronics though are the size they are.

[Brit]

Put some diamonds on those electronics, a

[Jessica]

little bit of some diamonds.

[Brit]

They could be lab grown.

[Jessica]

It's fine. Oh my God. Yeah, well we'll see and then you know, we have the OpenAI. Johnny, I've hardware plans that who the Hell knows what they are.

[Brit]

No, they have been leaked, Right?

[Jessica]

They've been leaked, like, nine times. What's the latest leak?

[Brit]

I don't know. Was this.

[Jessica]

AI?

[Brit]

You tell me, reporter.

[Dave Morin]

This is reminding me of. I don't know what year it was, but do you guys remember the Internet of Things era when everybody was talking about the Internet of Things?

[Brit]

This is Marc Andreessen's huge, huge speech.

[Dave Morin]

What year was that?

[Sam Lesson]

I don't know.

[Dave Morin]

It was, like, early 2010s, right?

[Brit]

Yeah.

[Dave Morin]

And I remember somebody went to CES that year, and they walked around CES and they were like, this is not the Internet of Things. This is the Internet of putting iPads on things. Because everyone was like, putting an iPad on refrigerators and an iPad on washing machines and an iPad. It was like a screen on everything. Right. And that's what this all feels like to me. It's like nobody has any original ideas, so everybody's like, let's just put more electronics in people's pockets, on their wrists, on their face, and we'll see what hap. You know, we'll see what works. Right.

[Brit]

Well, we need to brand this moment. If that was the Internet of Things. Is this the Internet? Like, we. I just feel like we need a catchphrase for this agentic world we're about to live in. This could be the moment. Jess. To define the moniker, I assume.

[Jessica]

I guess I have to get to what the point of this watch is, and I assume it's to get some ancillary power or features to the glasses.

[Brit]

Right.

[Jessica]

Like, because already one. The one model, you have some kind of. You have the Neuroband, Right. That can.

[Brit]

I think this can do your. Your fitness and everything else.

[Jessica]

Yeah. But I think they want to control. They. They. They have a product where there's a band that allows, like, small finger movements to.

[Brit]

Yeah. So same with Apple, like, sort of going in that direction with the Vision Pro and the whole finger gesture situation. Yeah, I think you're right. I think in the future, everyone is betting that we will have stuff on our eyes, ears, and wrists. Hands, likely, maybe fingers with the rings. And we will not necessarily need our phones anymore because we will ourselves become computers. Is that kind of the direction you think we're going in?

[Jessica]

I mean, I hope not in that world. What I want is. I do want more ambient recording. I think I've talked about this. Do you? Yeah, I do. Like, and not just as a reporter, but as a human. I think I see the value of having conversations where I really see it in A business context, having meetings, recorded, having all of that is super useful for connecting dots and AI and all that kind of stuff.

[Brit]

But you as a reporter, don't you feel like the need to discuss, disclose everything to anyone you're talking to? Because you're literally having off the record conversations all the time.

[Jessica]

But I'm also talking about meeting, like if I'm having a meeting about an upcoming project internally. Right. So it doesn't even have to be. But I bet if I had off the record conversations and said, hey, this is off the record, same terms, you've known me for 20 years. It's always been off the record. But by the way, I'm really interested in what you have to say and I want to make sure I understand it and get the most out of it. So I'm going to record it for myself. You know, maybe 50% of people say no, but 50% of people say yes.

[Brit]

Right?

[Jessica]

Because. Yeah, and they might. I. I would give them the same courtesy. Right. If I were sharing my thoughts. So.

[Brit]

So all of this is going to be streaming back to some agent that you have somewhere that's like your memory agent.

[Jessica]

I'm like full agents everywhere.

[Brit]

I know, but this will be like, like you're gonna have your memory, like all the things Jess ever said and interact people she interacted with. And like, that just needs to live somewhere. Right. Like right now, for me, it all lives in granola. And then I export all the indie files and I port them over, but we're going to have a workflow now where that can change. And then you'll have your CRM that's extracted from that. Right? Because it'll know all the people you talk to the most. It'll probably have. You can give it personality scores, the people you actually like. So do you think in effect you're gonna have a friend ranking list of, like, who are actually your closest friends?

[Jessica]

You guys memorialized thread is like, pinned is one of my top texts. Right? Because it's pinned. Yeah. You guys are pinned. I didn't pin you. Apple decided to pin you. Right? Apple did, so, yeah, I didn't pin you. Yes, you did. Maybe I accidentally pinned you. I don't know. I mean, this. I'm not the. But anyway, I think all of that. I don't know, we're going to veer away from the AI rabbit hole at this moment because I want to talk to good, hard, cold venture startup financing for a moment.

[Brit]

Okay.

[Dave Morin]

All right.

[Jessica]

But anyway, the device war is heating up too, and I just hope we see things that are actually useful and we get out of these, like, Kickstarter projects.

[Brit]

You know, I think it'll have, like, this is the moment where it's expanding, right? Everyone's trying something and then there will be adoption.

[Jessica]

So you wanted to coin it. That's a good exercise. The inner. Is it the inner.

[Brit]

I want to coin the Internet of things, the Internet of wearables, but also the age, like, what's happening with the agents, because we now have agents for everything. It's like Internet of things was like when the Internet just went into everything. And right now the agents are going into everything.

[Jessica]

You know, I think the concept of recording and memory might become core to this next. I mean, if you look at. If you consider health tracking as sort of the precursor to this wave, which I think it is, and it's the thing that's driving adoption, a lot of these things.

[Brit]

I'd just like to point out that this was one of my 2026 predictions.

[Jessica]

Oh, good check.

[Brit]

We're only a month and a half in Brett.

[Jessica]

We can go on vacation for the rest of the year because we got it right. Okay, guys, so startup financings, as you probably know as venture capitalists, they're like coming hot and furious still. We have not. We're still seeing huge valuations. Latest. Well, we have anthropic around. What was it, 380 billion. I should look this up.

[Brit]

It was something around that number, 300 billion.

[Jessica]

And you know, OpenAI's round is coming together.

[Brit]

There's been many startup stuff.

[Jessica]

No, that's true.

[Dave Morin]

Okay, what's the. What's the OpenAI round coming together?

[Jessica]

I don't know what we've reported or not, so I have to. We have to. We have to read the information. I think public information. I think it's more than the last one. It's not going to be a trillion.

[Dave Morin]

Let's just say that it's like two anthropics, basically.

[Jessica]

I think it's one anthropics or something like that.

[Dave Morin]

Yeah, I don't know. That's just what my guess is.

[Jessica]

Yeah, that's probably the right range. Anduril, I know these aren't startups, okay, but Anduril in talk stories at 60. But there are many, many. Well, what are you guys seeing with earlier stage? Are we still in the get a billion dollar series A valuation mode in the Valley or where are we at?

[Dave Morin]

I think you're seeing the Tale of Two Cities. We've talked about it a lot on the podcast, but narrative capitalism is driving a lot of behavior.

[Jessica]

Sam would be so proud. Dave.

[Dave Morin]

I mean it's just true. Like there's a lot of name brand founders. A lot of what you just mentioned, Jess, is whatever you want to call it, the private Meg 7 is the new way. I've been thinking about it. Yes.

[Brit]

I love that.

[Jessica]

I love that way of thinking.

[Dave Morin]

The private meg7 and any sort of founder that can command a serious narrative has the ability to raise at, you know, billion plus valuations for very big crazy visions. And that world seems to be hot. And then on the other hand, there's still a lot of seed stage stuff going on. Seed deals happening every week in AI and then your typical sort of. There's a lot of incubator traffic out there, a lot of, you know, open claw projects. The word on the street is something like a third of the of Y Combinator is open claw already. And their winter class, I don't know how far through they are. I guess they're. I think it's the first investor meets or one month from now. So, you know, the market is pretty normative I think right now in terms of what's going on. I think a lot of people are trying to figure out at the seed stage how to think about what's happening just because things are moving so fast that what you invested in last year might already be in trouble. And how do you think about what to invest in this year? I think that a lot of that conversation is happening a lot.

[Brit]

Well, and I would double down on say that's not just with the startups themselves. Like we were at a lunch today or yesterday. I forget then there's a CEO there has a 600 person company and is like this is so exciting and awesome. And I'm terrified because I know I need to start pivoting my company to be more like agentic and AI enabled. And yet to move 600 people with the types of bureaucracy that we have and this is only 600. It's not like multiple thousands or tens of thousands like some of the companies out there.

[Dave Morin]

But 600 is a big, is a big company.

[Brit]

It is but like it takes time. That takes months, likely not weeks, not definitely not days. And, and the problem is like the landscape is shifting in weeks right now, not months. And so like you make a plan as a CEO and you're like, oh my God, three months from now, the whole plan was wrong. And that's how VCs are feel too right in the investing cycle.

[Dave Morin]

That person specifically was referencing something we've Talked about the last couple episodes which is this agentic engineering process.

[Jessica]

Dark factories.

[Dave Morin]

Yeah, dark factories where people are no longer reviewing code. The engineering process is moving extremely faster. And if you've got a 600 person organization shifting to this is non trivial. So I think this, this thing is playing out across the stack.

[Jessica]

So here, here's a question for you guys. Someone approximated there are about. I'm going to get this wrong, but not really wrong. Maybe it's wrong. 500,000 software engineers in the Bay Area. Am I off? By an order of magnitude, Dave, you

[Brit]

know the number of the world, isn't it 4 million in the world? So no 1/8 of them in the bay feels right.

[Dave Morin]

There's around 3 million iOS engineers. There's around 4 million Android engineers. There might be some overlap.

[Jessica]

Okay.

[Dave Morin]

I don't know. I think of it as like there's like around 10 million in the world.

[Jessica]

So there are estimates that in the San Francisco Bay area there are about 400,000.

[Brit]

So 4% of global engineers are in the Bay Area.

[Jessica]

What percentage of those do you think will be employed as software engineers in three years?

[Dave Morin]

I think that this, the labor market drama is vastly overblown. I think that it's likely.

[Jessica]

So give me a number, give me a number.

[Dave Morin]

I think all, I think that it will be. I think that everyone's going to continue to be building a lot of software. I think there's going to be more software being built. I actually think that the demand for software, I mean, Jess, as you were talking about earlier and you were telling me yesterday, you know, now you're building things.

[Jessica]

Right. But I'm not a software engineer. And if you were Microsoft and you employed 30,000 of these, are you really going to keep employing 30,000?

[Dave Morin]

I don't know about that, but I don't know that that means that these people aren't going to be managing software projects. No, no.

[Jessica]

But are they going to be paid to do software engineering?

[Brit]

Right.

[Jessica]

Is their job because.

[Dave Morin]

Yes.

[Jessica]

Okay, so you think.

[Brit]

I disagree. I'll take the under on that. I think more people overall will be building software.

[Jessica]

Yeah.

[Brit]

But the number of actual software engineers will need to go down because one great engineer can do the work of many engineers and their job will likely be to like manage and oversee some of these software engineering agents at the sort of like highest rank ranking of the company. So there will definitely still be a software engineering job title, but we will not have as many engineers. And I think I just don't agree from like the hr.

[Jessica]

This is a Helpful market to the

[Brit]

marketing person, to the Charles porch. I don't even know.

[Dave Morin]

I just don't agree.

[Brit]

Is going to be enabled to build their own software too. And like I couldn't disagree with this more. Checks and balances that go on.

[Jessica]

I get to vote and then we can all. I am totally on Brit's side, I think, Dave, there's no way that companies that have software engineers like these companies rush to hire as many as possible at a range of skill sets. They have really excellent ones that are involved with key parts of their apps and they have mediocre ones. And these are also companies that are spending way more money than Wall street wants them to be on infrastructure and they're way cut costs. So I think in three years you'll be.

[Dave Morin]

But I guess, like, how are you framing this question? Like this is really, it's a very simple question.

[Jessica]

If 400,000 people today are professional software engineers in the Bay Area and they are employed by technology companies to come to work and build software every day, what is a number in three years of people who will be employed by tech companies in the Bay Area to come to work and build software every day? And I would not count software engineers. I would not count the journalist who uses AI to copy edit their story as a software engineer.

[Brit]

Right.

[Jessica]

Like take the pool today. And how many of them have jobs as software engineers? I mean, I'll also.

[Brit]

Less than half. Do you think, Jess, what's your number?

[Jessica]

Well, so I will go down in three years. I'll go down to 300,000 and then I think it probably drops after three years. I think by then it will drop more precipitously and I'll see 50%.

[Dave Morin]

I think the operating variable here is in the Bay Area because I think that everyone that understands how to build software is going to have more to do in the future than less. And whether or not they are doing a job in the Bay Area or somewhere in the world, I think that, you know, everyone that understands software is going to be managing agents building software. They're going to be managing building software for more things, not less things. And I don't know whether they're all going to be in the Bay Area.

[Brit]

I like how you threw in our podcast title many times there, Dave.

[Jessica]

No, no, but I'm using the Bay Area. I mean, Dave, it's healthy to have this debate. And by the way, this is the debate that is playing off across society, right? Like it's just a debate at this point and your point of view is very reasonable. And is sort of the, the optimist maximus point of view. And I think Britt and I have a different point of view. Which doesn't mean that the power of these coding tools won't be unlocked and show up in society in myriad ways. But in the same. I think this is going to be like taxi drivers with the rise of Uber or what happens to truck drivers as self driving cars. Like I think there will be a disruption. And it's not to say all these people be unemployed. They might go build amazing businesses by themselves doing all sorts of things. I don't think we know, but it's fascinating. I would love to hear in the comments from our listeners and watchers about this.

[Brit]

Yeah, you should do an information poll too, Jess.

[Dave Morin]

The interesting thing might be that both of our takes might be optimistic. If you take what.

[Jessica]

Yes.

[Dave Morin]

If you take what Anthropic says seriously, which, you know, Anthropic says no one will be doing software engineering 12 months from now.

[Jessica]

Exactly.

[Dave Morin]

And so if that is true, then, Jess, you know, San Francisco is Detroit.

[Brit]

Oh, I don't think so.

[Jessica]

Well, but. Well, two things and then we can move on. My opinions tend to be shaped by talking to my sources. And my sources tend to be the people who make these decisions and are thinking about them deeply. And so I actually think I, you know, and this isn't one. This is a range of people across a range of companies and they are predicting this level of decline in the job. So this isn't, I mean, my, that's. I form my opinions by talking to people.

[Dave Morin]

Yeah, I get it. I think it might be possible that. We don't know.

[Jessica]

No, we really don't. That's why it's so fun. We have no idea. We have no idea.

[Dave Morin]

But I think it's so new. I mean, just even the conversation you and I were having yesterday.

[Jessica]

Yeah. About my building.

[Dave Morin]

It's so amazing what people are doing. And people are operating at an entirely new. They're operating in an entirely new level of abstraction in software. And so the idea that we're going to make less of it and we're going to make less technology, less digital experiences, it just, I just don't buy it. Like, I think we're going to make more.

[Jessica]

No, but those things are two different things, Dave. I think you have to realize those things are two different things. Right. We have. People are arguably. Well, I don't, I don't know if I agree with this. People might argue that people are very informed today. The number of people employed as journalists has been slashed over the last decade. Right. Like, you. You can have an explosion in something while also having this particular profession very hard hit.

[Brit]

Right.

[Jessica]

And. And I think I'm totally with you. I'm so proud. Like, even the stuff that I've been playing with and sharing with my team, to see other people on the team just, like, pick it up and start building their own things, it's awesome. Like, and it's. But that's very different from the question of, like, you know, how many engineers is Google gonna have? Google's gonna keep their engineers the longest. I think we should all admit that. I don't think Google's getting rid of their.

[Brit]

Well, Google's one of the big winners in all of this. So, like we've said from the beginning,

[Jessica]

Google just can't fire an engineer for, you know.

[Dave Morin]

But I think it's really interesting question. Like, if you are. I think this is a really difficult question. Like, if you are a major CEO in Silicon Valley, are you really going to Let go of 30% of your software engineers, 50% of your software engineers? There's no way.

[Brit]

Over time, gradually.

[Jessica]

I think the other thing to figure out, though, is, like, we're pretending that all of these places only have the best engineers who are really suited to what is to come next. And the story of the growth of the Valley over the last 20 years has been a mad dash for hiring and a mad dash for hiring software engineers. And I. I think there's probably a lot of slack in the system, for a lack of better word, too. And so I think that's why. That's also what's going to make this trend hard to really tease out and why investors are so, like, obsessed with figuring it out. Because you're going to have layoffs and layoffs and layoffs. I mean, you're sort of seeing this at Amazon, right? You're having layoffs and layoffs and layoffs that Angie Jassy is saying are just getting rid of bureaucracy. And then you're starting to have layoffs,

[Dave Morin]

but that's a different thing.

[Jessica]

No, no. But. But also, you know, I know this is shocking, but sometimes CEOs kind of manipulate the story a little bit. So, like, you can, when it becomes politically correct, AKA Wall street, and your employees will buy it. To admit that you're having waves of layoffs because of AI, then it will go from being. We're stripping out layers of management to we have found efficiencies with technology to AI has changed. The narrative will just change. And we're Sort of in that gray area now between. But it's going to take 1, 2, 3 outspoken CEOs just to say, look, when we started this company, however many decades ago, we organized it like this. Now we're going to try and organize it like this and they're going to do it and they're going to do it all in lockstep as soon as the tide turns. So it's sort of like who blinks first is my opinion.

[Brit]

And I also think it'll be more about less hiring of these engineers going forward. Like if you were going to hire x percent more engineers every year, you probably would just stop that now and get better use of your current engineers that are in house because they can

[Jessica]

do so much if you have the right skill set. I think that's right. But like I. And that's where, I don't know.

[Brit]

Can I also make an argument on the personalized builder vibe coding front? Like now I have all these friends and husbands that are building all these things, but you have multiple these.

[Jessica]

You have to, you have to clarify. You have one husband.

[Brit]

Single husband. Single husband. Yeah, but like you're building a new Apple day. Dave's building. I'm building a new app a day. All my, A lot of my friends, my like normally Normie friends, including like all my mom friends, like my friends from text, they haven't even gotten in on this yet. So let's fast forward to when all of our friends who aren't super like early adopters are now vibe coding their own apps. They want us to try all their apps because they think it's so cool and interesting.

[Dave Morin]

I have to play Sam.

[Brit]

We're going to have app overload in our life and then we won't be able to keep up with it. Why are you playing Sam?

[Dave Morin]

Because we have all worked on software systems. Like we've managed teams of people. Worked in teams of people.

[Jessica]

No, actually I sort of do. No, no, I do that.

[Dave Morin]

Your system is very, very sophisticated and you've been around the building of software and so your ability to think about what you can build is vastly beyond people who have zero experience. Right. And I guess this is my point, which is that this is still a very technical domain and people are going to need to be able to work with people that understand how technical this is. I mean, this whole open claw thing really exposed this to me, which is like there this town is really the tale of two cities. Also on this front, the technical people and the non technical people and the skills that it takes to make this stuff really work, even though it's really powerful right now, are still very technical. And I think that's not going to change for many years.

[Brit]

I mean, I disagree.

[Jessica]

So, Dave, what I wanted to clarify. I am lucky to run a great engineering team, but I am not technical and I don't need to be. I literally told Cowork to move the template so that the icon appears on the left, not the right, and to create two versions, one for headline, one for headline, and one for body text. And I just followed all of its instructions and it happened. So I don't. Yeah, I couldn't set up openclaw by myself, but I don't know. We will have to return. I really am so interested in our listeners. Viewers to comment on. If there are 400,000 people employed as professional software engineers in the Bay Area today, three years from now, what is that number? Share your number. We'll remember it and we'll give you some cookies if you got it right.

[Brit]

How many months or years you think before your normie friends that don't live in the Bay Area are going to send you their app that they just made? Because I think it's like, I think it's like 12 months.

[Jessica]

But a lot of the stuff I make, Brit, I, I, I, I mean, so I, like, it's not clear to me. The workflow is to start sharing it, though.

[Brit]

I think people are gonna start making random things. Like, all my mom friends are gonna start making their, like, carpool tracking app. They are, Brit.

[Dave Morin]

They're not gonna make up.

[Jessica]

I don't think so. I think they're just gonna get the answer for themselves.

[Brit]

I think they're gonna make apps. That's okay. You don't have to back my day.

[Dave Morin]

It's not going to be apps we have uncovered.

[Jessica]

I need the morin solo more often. I've uncovered some real sources of professional between you two. So one more quick hot topic before we wrap.

[Dave Morin]

So is Sam okay?

[Jessica]

Sam's fine. Sam, because he's skiing all day, has to cram all of his work into like two hours at the end of the day. And as dear listeners of this pod will now have heard multiple times, we just had a stint at urgent care that really sent us back. So I imagine he's doing business. I would think this is business. We all have business, too.

[Brit]

It's fine.

[Jessica]

But. Okay, I want to just flag something that we haven't talked about a lot in this pod, but maybe we'll leave it as a little dangler. But the debates about Government contracting of tech are heating up again. And all these tech companies that. It's been such a big headline. Will the US Government ban anthropology topic or not? Have you guys been following this?

[Brit]

No, I haven't, actually.

[Dave Morin]

A little bit. I saw the headlines. I don't have the details.

[Jessica]

Well, that's it. I mean, on one hand, you have everyone competing for the business. And this has been, you know, of Department of Defense, US Whatever it is. That's been true always of tech.

[Dave Morin]

I saw somebody called them un American. Like they. Why is that?

[Jessica]

It's a great question, Dave. I'm not sure I know exactly the answer to it. I think a lot of it comes

[Dave Morin]

down to, are they trying to control access to it? Like, they don't want the Pentagon using their models in certain ways. Is that what it is? Is that what it's about? Like, in the one sub headline I read, it sounded to me like they have anthropic has decided to, you know, restrict certain aspects of how they use the product. And so because of that, it's a

[Jessica]

terms of use dispute.

[Sam Lesson]

What's the terms of use on American.

[Brit]

Oh, boy, here we go.

[Jessica]

Sam, how are you?

[Sam Lesson]

I'm fine. I told you I was fine.

[Brit]

The marital dispute at the beginning of this pod was really cute.

[Jessica]

You guys just.

[Brit]

It was nice how much you cared.

[Jessica]

How would we have known if he was fine? By the way, you can't move your arm or breathe, but it's not broken. So we're good.

[Sam Lesson]

Yeah, we're fine. By the way, it turns out that the more or less. More or less medical back channel is a hell of a channel. So thank you, Dan, for saying that.

[Dave Morin]

We got you. We got you the best. New group chat.

[Jessica]

Sam, we're wrapping this episode great by just giving a taste of.

[Sam Lesson]

Of.

[Jessica]

Oh, let's ask you quickly. 400,000 Bay Area engineers.

[Dave Morin]

Oh, yeah. I want to know what Sam thinks.

[Jessica]

People employed as professional engineers in the Bay Area currently three years from now. What's your number? And then I'll tell you what everyone else said.

[Sam Lesson]

Well, did you guys discuss this? Dave, question of, like, if you make things with bots, are you an engineer or just a user?

[Brit]

Yeah, that doesn't count.

[Jessica]

We spent way too long. You have to be paid by a technology company to do software engineering.

[Sam Lesson]

So it's 400,000 now. And how many years is in the future?

[Jessica]

Three years. Three.

[Sam Lesson]

200,000.

[Brit]

Yes.

[Jessica]

Okay, that spreads.

[Brit]

Sam. Agree.

[Dave Morin]

What is.

[Sam Lesson]

What's Dave's number? Is it like a hundred million?

[Brit]

No, Dave was like, no, my name More.

[Dave Morin]

I'm a more.

[Sam Lesson]

That's. You are a more.

[Jessica]

Okay, going back.

[Sam Lesson]

You joining the Les family?

[Brit]

Yeah. Surely that's me.

[Jessica]

You are welcome.

[Brit]

I've been really cynical on this pod so far. Sam, you're gonna love it.

[Jessica]

Somebody has to fill the void. Okay, so, yes, Anthropic and the Pentagon are fighting over terms of use. Meanwhile, Xai and everyone else are tripping over themselves to get these government contracts. I don't know where this goes. Anyone have thoughts? It's just a bit. We should. We hadn't talked about it, so I wanted to put it on everyone's radar.

[Sam Lesson]

I guess the question for me, here's the interesting question. Why is this debate between the Pentagon and Anthropic in the public domain? Like how did who's. Like who, like who's signal chat?

[Jessica]

Probably Anthropic. They tend to write essays.

[Dave Morin]

No, it can't be Anthropic. It has to be the government. Right. That's how they play it, right. This administration.

[Jessica]

That's true. Both of these are leaker. Well, Anthropic's not leaker. Yeah.

[Sam Lesson]

I guess the question for me is like, I don't. These types of things don't end up in the public domain unless someone wants them to be in the public domain. Like if we're arguing about terms of use, simple. It's like too in the weeds, you know what I mean? For it to be a thing. And so I just. That's my question is I'd be very curious as to like, who's selling the story effectively to back into what's going to happen.

[Jessica]

Elon Musk is probably selling the story, don't you think?

[Dave Morin]

No, this sounds to me like the Pentagon, they wanted to use the models in a certain way and Anthropic said, no, you can't. And so they're like, all right, we're going to go take this to the public.

[Sam Lesson]

I guess I think for me on a lot I was thinking about, I have a tweet I wrote while in the backcountry today in my head.

[Dave Morin]

And. And maybe that's why you ended up in cow.

[Sam Lesson]

And like, it's something along the lines. I haven't framed it yet exactly. Of like the whole point. If, if, if intelligence becomes super cheap and abundant, then intelligence isn't worth anything. So and so like we already have this going on with human intelligence in theory. Like, everyone's like, there's so much more quote unquote intelligence in the world with these machines. So like supply of intelligence up and because supply of intelligence is so up, unless somehow demand for intelligence increases faster than supply of intelligence, which I think is what some people argue will happen. I just don't believe it. Right? Then, like, actually intelligence doesn't become that valuable. And it's just kind of like a. It's just the commodity that's kind of cheap, you can get anywhere. In which case I don't really understand why anyone cares. Like why anthropic thinks that they can hold the government ransom on a terms of use because just someone else will just give them the intelligence, right? So I don't know, it's like there was this kind of story a long time ago when OpenAI decided they needed infinity money, where the story was race to AGI. Whoever gets to AGI first is the winner of everything and owns all of the intelligence, right? And it's like clearly bullshit. Then it's now really clearly bullshit, right? Like there'll be lots of dealers of intelligence. And then the question is, is like if there is, and if intelligence keeps getting cheaper and the cost of tokens keeps getting cheaper, like, I don't understand how anyone can hold each other ransom effectively over terms of use because you just like buy it from someone else.

[Dave Morin]

It's like, what's the marginal cost per token? Where it does become commodity is kind of the question.

[Sam Lesson]

Well, I'm just saying, like, if you think about it, it's like, let's pretend the humans produce tokens, right? You'd say humans produce tokens, but they're expensive, right? Like, why do I, like, why do you talk to like Claude and not a human? It's because the Claude produces cheaper tokens. There's still tokens. Like you can go to a psychotherapist and get the same analysis that Claude or GPT or whatever gives you. It's just cheaper, right? And so like, okay, like if tokens keep getting cheaper, like one, sure, humans can't produce them cheaply enough. So you know, that's why you go from 200,000 developers to 100,000 developers or whatever. And like you're just like, yeah, you also can't make any money as a company who sells tokens or intelligence.

[Jessica]

That's possible. We just don't know.

[Brit]

There's a lot we don't know. Seems like.

[Dave Morin]

Sam, I also think there's like a, there's a social cost of talking to humans for tokens that you don't have to pay talking to bots.

[Sam Lesson]

I, I mean holistically, like the whole cost, right? Like, like, oh, I Gotta like drive like. But okay, so like if AI. If intelligence really does end up being like power, right? Here's the interesting about power. It's super regulated, right? Like you can only use PG and E, right? Like there's not an open market for power in most of the country, which is how it supports pricing. If there were an open market for power in the country, power would be unbelievably cheaper, right? But we have like regulated monopolies effectively in power that make these things kind of financially work and finance kind of PG and E or whatever. But people hate them and like the justification is like I guess all the infrastructure build out and spend that like is physically bound. I just don't think that applies to the Internet or intelligence the same way, right? So unless you were going to be like there's regulatory capture and if you live in California, just like PG and E, you also have to use OpenAI, at which point it's just a regulatory arb game effectively if open power. I just don't understand how you make any money on this, any of it.

[Jessica]

That is the question.

[Sam Lesson]

I mean Dave, you're Mr. Claw, congrats by the way. That's pretty cool. I don't care what model it uses at all, right? And I don't believe that this is like a devil's. And the defaults where like OpenAI is going to be like, well it's default OpenAI. So that works for us. I think people are just being like, well I just want the cheapest shit. And it's all basically the same, as

[Brit]

long as it's good.

[Dave Morin]

People seem to want the cheapest or the personality they prefer. Like that's what one of the more

[Brit]

interesting things I'm hearing the best answers.

[Dave Morin]

Well, no. In the OpenCloud community, people actually choose to route to Claude, particularly Opus 4:5 because they like the personality better than say Codex.

[Sam Lesson]

Maybe. But Dave, that's kind of like imagining you had two accountants and one's slightly prettier than the other. It's like you'll use the prettier one a little bit but like not like you're just gonna use the better one or the cheaper one, right?

[Brit]

I think the better one.

[Sam Lesson]

Well, you're a rich Brit, so you'll use the better one.

[Brit]

I think anyone would want the one that's correct.

[Jessica]

But I don't know, maybe I. And then we're going to bring this episode to a close because our dear listeners and viewers have been with us for some time now. But it's also not always Clear. It's easy for you guys who play and test and compare them all day, what's better? And then you use them enough and you sort of get some instinctive feelings like, oh, this one doesn't get things wrong. But all of that is really converging. So I think this concept of being better, it will only matter in the most narrow of use cases maybe, but

[Brit]

like for health in particular, like, you definitely don't want to be 1% off. Like, and I think a lot of people are going to be using this.

[Jessica]

How would you know? Like, you're not going to like run the longitudinal study to compare them.

[Sam Lesson]

But it depends. I mean like most of the things you're going to ask for health are like, you can ask a nurse practitioner, then you don't give a shit. Some things you'll be like, oh, I actually care about like the fanciest doctor in the world. I just think these, the routing becomes like so specific.

[Brit]

No, I think we are going to be ingesting a ton of our personal data through wearables and other testing, you know, et cetera. And we are going to have a doctor as an agent that is taking care of us. And if that doctor is continuously getting things wrong, even on the margins, like that's going to become a huge deal and people will lose trust. And so I think that in healthcare in particular, that matters a lot to be accurate and precise. And so like right now, actually what you're seeing is Anthropic's done a ton of investing and like ton of commercialization and its healthcare infrastructure. OpenAI is doing a lot right now. Like there's a lot of acquisitive stuff happening behind the scenes, which by the

[Sam Lesson]

way makes sense because they're realizing that base intelligence isn't valuable. Right? It's a commodity. And so then you have to like climb up the.

[Jessica]

And then they'll. I mean this isn't. Sarah Fryer told me that they're looking at licensing IP for like drug discovery, right? Because the business model, she's the CFO of OpenAI, like and this is something they're just looking at. It's an acknowledgment that like the raw tokens or the raw intelligence to like in and of itself to everyone is not necessarily the great business, right. That it's more specialized use cases.

[Dave Morin]

This is also the story of openclaw, which is that it's a great orchestrator across all of the different models. Many. Like, one of the big changes in the last week is a lot of People now have developed various skills that can route to the different models based on what the use case is in real time to lower the cost to the lowest amount possible. Right. And, and I think what you're going to see is the rise of a billion bots, right, that, you know, cover every, every conceivable use case. And Brit, like I think your medical case will be, you know, somebody will create the, you know, med claw and people will route to the right models. The orchestrator will take care of all the problems that you just talked about.

[Brit]

Maybe we should create that one, Dave.

[Dave Morin]

Maybe. But you know, like it's. I don't know. I think, I think Sam, I think we're sort of keying in on something really important here, which is that the underlying tokens probably can come from anywhere and how much margin there is in that business over time probably does look a lot like power, like Sam's talking about. And the real value is going to be in the orchestration.

[Sam Lesson]

Well, it's going to be in something that isn't abundant is the point. Like it's like, you know, and, and it is interesting because I think the big difference if I just go back to this is like if intelligence looks a lot like the energy world, right, it resolves back to it in some way, shape or form, but it doesn't have the regulation because it doesn't have the same borders. It's just like a very hard to understand how you ever make money at it.

[Jessica]

Yeah. Well, this will be why we've uncovered and left unresolved the big debates. Who knew? I have to do a little bit of shameless plug for all you listeners out there who like tennis. I and the information are hosting a very cool event right at the start of the Indian Wells tournament and we are going to have about 30 VIPs so we are very limited and we are going to hit and play some tennis with Madison Keys, Grand Slam winner, amazing current player Maddie Keys, and Darren Cahill, best known for currently coaching one Yannick Sinner. And then we're have a party and an awesome dinner and very exclusive seats to the start of the tournament the next day. So if you're interested at all and you don't know where to find me, you aren't very intrepid, but find me. We have a couple of tickets left.

[Sam Lesson]

Did you see the recommendations my Open claw made on who you should invite? Based on my CRM, I did, but

[Jessica]

then I was going to put them in my Open claw and actually filter them for who I should actually invite. So I haven't had time to do that yet because it was a lot. It was a huge list.

[Brit]

You want myopencloth, too? Just to add in on the data.

[Jessica]

Yeah.

[Dave Morin]

This is one of the more fun use cases that I've seen a bunch in the last few days, which is people adding their bots to a group chat with me and having their bot explain things and get into the conversation. And it's pretty interesting, actually.

[Jessica]

Oh, my God. Well, here we go.

[Dave Morin]

Here we go.

[Jessica]

Oh, my God. This Sam and Jessica bot conversation could go in so many.

[Dave Morin]

You guys, let's put all of our bots into the more or less chat

[Jessica]

and see what happens.

[Brit]

That's going to be really feisty. I made my bot send Dave a Valentine's message, but then I forgot to actually confirm to deliver it. So, Dave, I'll send that to you after we're finished recording.

[Sam Lesson]

Classic. A classic like you miss forgot a Valentine's Day thing.

[Dave Morin]

All right, guys, I've got to go. I have to pull a Sam this time.

[Jessica]

All right, I think we all have to go. Dear audience, thank you for listening to this wild episode, which had many threads from the collarbone of Sam Lesson still being intact. To the future employment in the software engineering sector, to the rise of the Open Claw Foundation. I hope you learned something, and we will see you back here next week for another episode of More or Less.

[Dave Morin]

Bye. See you guys later.

[Brit]

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 podcasts. Find more information about each episode in the show notes and follow us on social media by searching for or less at davemorin, at Lesson, at jlesson. And as for me, I'm at Brit. See you guys next time.