Bending Spoons Buys Airtable, OpenAI Hits Back at Apple Over Lawsuit, Spider-Man Ads in BMWs | Diet TBPN

Summary

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TBPN: Bending Spoons Buys Airtable, OpenAI Hits Back at Apple, Spider-Man Ads in BMWs | Diet TBPN

Hosts: John Coogan & Jordi Hays
Date: August 5, 2026
Duration: ~30 minutes

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Episode Overview

In this Diet TBPN episode, John Coogan and Jordi Hays dive into the latest tech headlines, offering sharp analysis, industry context, and trademark humor. The discussion covers the surprising acquisition of Airtable by Bending Spoons, OpenAI’s pushback against Apple in a high-profile lawsuit, Snap’s quarterly earnings (and the saga of its $2,200 smart glasses), and the viral uproar over Spider-Man ads appearing in BMWs.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Airtable Acquired by Bending Spoons: SaaS Valuations Realign

[00:02–11:33]

• Airtable’s Trajectory:
  Airtable, once valued at $11.7B (2012 founding), is acquired by Bending Spoons for $1.285B enterprise value, 2.7x ARR, with a $2.25B equity value barely clearing the preference stack.

  • "Once hot startup, now an unfortunate victim of the SaaS bust." – Andrew, [00:02]
  • Many employees and later investors will see minimal return.

• Market Realities & The 'SaaS Apocalypse':
  Reflects a broader reset in SaaS multiples and changing investor sentiment.

  • "Sort of exemplifies the current moment where a company can sell for over a billion dollars and everyone's like, wow, that's unfortunate." – John, [01:14]
  • Valuations are being pressured down, with comparables drawn to the downfall of DTC ecommerce’s venture hype.
  • Andrew explains: "I think that there's actually a pretty safe path if you just build the business ... if I'm trading at 3 times ARR. I'm happy because the cap table set up right." [03:45]

• Product Threats & User Behavior:
  The utility layer Airtable once offered is threatened by new AI agents and custom-coded solutions.

  • "For my first business, I would 100% just vibe code a solution today..." – John, [04:11]
  • Discussion on whether Airtable’s growth is coming from expansion within orgs or new user growth.

• Impacts on Employees & Liquidation Preferences:

  • "Silicon Valley can do a better job talking to employees about what stock is worth in various scenarios, but no one is incentivized to do it." – Andrew, [06:57]

• Bending Spoons' Strategy:
  Bending Spoons emerges as a value-driven consolidation player in SaaS, compared to Constellation Software.

  • "It's a buyer of last resort." – John, [08:20]
  • Spinning out Airtable’s AI unit (Hyper Agent) before acquisition.
    • "So the company lives on and likely some cash with it, probably can be recapitalized. Seems like a fantastic outcome." – Andrew, [08:55]

2. Snap Earnings, Smart Glasses & Focus

[11:35–19:15]

• Snap’s Financial Results:
  Snap posts a strong quarter: 19% YoY revenue growth, accelerating margin improvement, advertising growth, and a surge in paid subscriptions to $316M a quarter (up 85%).

  • “It was a great quarter for Snap. … The free cash flow business is really starting to inflect.” – Evan Spiegel, [15:32]
  • Despite strong global numbers, user growth lags in Western markets.

• The Smart Glasses Question:
  Hosts poke fun at the absence of Snap CEO Evan Spiegel wearing the company’s $2,200 specs during a CNBC interview.

  • “Well, it felt like in that interview, Spiegel was talking about specs, but he wasn’t wearing them.” – John, [13:34]

• Strategic Distraction?
  Discussion on whether Snap should spin out its hardware & AI segments as standalones, allowing core focus on their profitable software business.

• Enterprise Use Cases:
  Skepticism about selling Snap glasses into enterprise: “Trying to sell in like Snapchat glasses into the enterprise? … Feels like just going to be a tough sell.” – John, [18:49]

3. OpenAI Fires Back at Apple Lawsuit

[19:15–22:10]

• Blog Post Response & Lawsuit Drama:
  OpenAI responds to Apple in a "glazy," almost polite blog post, denying claims, clarifying details, and revealing that Apple’s legal team confused identities and communication chains.

  • “They say Apple is one of the greatest companies of all time. What a funny way to kick off a blog post.” – Andrew, [19:15]
  • “Turns out the lawyers emailed the wrong Asian guy because two Asian last names look similar.” – Andrew, [19:40]

• Alleged Downloading of Files:
  Texts suggest ex-Apple employees accessed files, but possibly at the behest of Apple employees needing institutional knowledge.

• Apple’s Security Lapses:
  “During the middle of a ... talent raid ... would not go through the process of actually taking back their laptop and making sure ... separation was finalized...?” – John, [21:32]

4. Controversy: Spider-Man Ads in BMWs

[22:10–26:51]

• AD Outrage on X:
  Viral posts showed Spider-Man promotional banners on BMW infotainment screens at startup, sparking outrage about invasive advertising.

  • "Of all the brands ... I thought might bombard you with in car ads... I had BMW pretty dang low on that list." – quoting Josh Elman, [24:04]
  • Paul Graham wades in: “I'm never buying a BMW.” [24:35]

• Actual Functionality Explained:
  Controversy overblown: The ad was a temporary, optional startup banner, not a forced commercial. Owners had to tap the banner to see the full animation.

  • “The Spider man promotion is an optional startup banner ... The banner does not automatically play a full screen ad. Instead, owners must tap in to launch a themed animation...” – Andrew, [24:52]
  • “This is right on the line." – Andrew, [26:11]

• Broader Point:
  The hosts riff on the future of ad-supported hardware, imagining free self-driving cars funded by ads:

  • “So ad supported cars that get you free self driving where … the ads take over the whole entertainment system in the car.” – John, [27:28]
  • “Like a company that just prints billions ... in advertising and then they go into the self driving market.” – Andrew, [27:47]

5. SpaceX Earnings & AI in Space

[28:54–31:13]

• SpaceX Partnerships & Growth:
  New Nvidia partnership to bring high-powered compute to orbit and segment review of SpaceX’s financials.

  • Revenue beats: $7.81B total; $962M from space, $4.29B from Starlink (connectivity), $2.56B from AI.
  • “Starlink business is more than four times the size of the actual launch business. ... launching rockets is now their third largest line of business.” – Andrew, [30:33]

• Broader Takeaway:
  Echoing the show's running theme that software is now in everything:

  • “Everything is computer.” – John, [31:12]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Sort of exemplifies the current moment where a company can sell for over a billion dollars and everyone's like, wow, that's unfortunate.” – John, [01:14]
• “If I'm trading at 3 times ARR. I'm happy because the cap table set up right.” – Andrew, [03:45]
• “Bending Spoons is emerging as the Constellation software of the Prosumer High Churn. Higher Churn SaaS is a fascinating turn of events...” – Andrew, [08:06]
• “If Airtable had wanted to sell in 2020, I'm sure they would have gotten meaningfully more.” – John, [11:12]
• “They say Apple is one of the greatest companies of all time. What a funny way to kick off a blog post.” – Andrew, [19:15]
• “Of all the brands I thought might bombard you with in car ads on screen ... I had BMW pretty dang low on that list.” – quoting Josh Elman, [24:04]
• “Everything is computer.” – John, [31:12]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Airtable acquisition & SaaS multiples: [00:02–11:33]
• Snap earnings & specs: [11:35–19:15]
• OpenAI vs. Apple lawsuit: [19:15–22:10]
• Spider-Man ads in BMWs: [22:10–26:51]
• SpaceX/Nvidia partnership & financials: [28:54–31:13]

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Tone & Style

The conversation is fast-paced, knowledgeable, and laced with the hosts’ dry wit. They balance sharp analysis with inside jokes and hyper-current Silicon Valley references, making even deep financial discussions entertaining and approachable.

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TL;DR

This TBPN episode explores the realignment in SaaS as Airtable is quietly offloaded at slashed valuations, Snap’s steady (if unspectacular) comeback driven by subscriptions and a hardware gamble, OpenAI and Apple trade shots in court, the auto industry flirts with ad-blitzed infotainment, and SpaceX quietly turns itself into an AI/cloud company with rockets as a side business. Silicon Valley, always in beta.

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Transcript

[Andrew]

Big deal. The big one that's tearing up the timeline right now is that Airtable, founded in 2012 and once valued at $11.7 billion, is getting acquired by Bending Spoons, founded in 2013 at 2.7 times ARR. Once hot startup, now an unfortunate victim of the SaaS bust. Says Dee Dee D Doss, it raised $1.4 billion only to be sold for 1.285 billion enterprise value because they had almost a billion dollars in cash on the balance sheet. And so the total equity value was 2.25 billion equity value. Just clearing the preference stack. So early employees, founders probably got something later investors probably got 1x their money back, but probably probably had it tied up for a few years. So not a good outcome. But there's some interesting silver linings here. Obviously it's good for, could be good for Bending Spoons if they got a good deal and they turn it into a mammoth cash machine. Also there's some nuance to where different pieces of the business are going because they're sort of dividing it up really

[John]

sort of exemplifies the current moment where a company can sell for over a billion dollars and everyone's like, wow, that's unfortunate.

[Andrew]

Yeah, yeah.

[John]

And in a wake up call to the many, maybe younger companies that are at a lower revenue run rates that are raising at much higher valuations and basically signaling to them like you've got some, many, many years of compounding to do.

[Andrew]

Yeah, it's interesting. There's a SaaS apocalypse narrative which is like these companies are going away. Software won't exist, you'll just prompt it. And I think there's a lot more nuance to it than that. But one thing that it does feel like, the underwriting, the financial trajectory of these single point solutions, SaaS products, single player, somewhat sticky, maybe not that sticky, maybe replaceable. It's not that they're going to zero. Bending Spoons wouldn't be buying it if everyone was churning and it was going to be a zero. But at the same time you can't grow, right?

[John]

It's growing 20%.

[Andrew]

Yeah, yeah. But you can't underwrite it at 40x revenue, 100x revenue anymore. And it feels a little bit like what happened with DTC E commerce. Honestly, there was a moment where E commerce brands were venture backable and you could, and you could underwrite them or they were being underwritten similarly to venture startups that had true moats, true compounding advantages. They would get the same multiple as a SpaceX or an AI company or a social media company. And that never really made sense. It was sort of just a weird quirk in the system for a couple years and then go forward a few years when there were some pullback. Some of the IPOs went out. They didn't do that well. The they traded down and all of a sudden it was like, okay, well if we're doing, if we're doing in my case like food on the Internet and we're going to VC back a food company. Like has Nestle been disrupted? Like no. And that would. Unilever. Is Unilever trading down like crazy because they're facing so much pressure and that's usually what happens when there truly is disruptive innovation. Like you see this with. I saw some crazy post about how people were bearish on Starlink for a while and the company that they were competing with just went bankrupt. And you see this with you know, social media came out and yes, like the newspaper and the Internet actually the newspaper stocks did actually trade down. That never happened in e commerce, D2C e commerce, any of that. And we're now in this new regime. So I think that there's actually a pretty safe path if you just build the business. If you're saying look I AM in this SaaS industry, it is going to be more competitive going forward but I'm setting myself up to have a reasonable multiple so that at every point if I'm trading at 3 times ARR. I'm happy because the cap table set up right.

[John]

Yeah. One thing I will say is I started using Airtable, it was 2015 right. So I probably started using it a few years in. But the product, the way that I use the product back then for my, for my first business I would 100% just vibe code a solution today because I was using very basic dashboard functionality. I wanted dashboards that we could use internally share externally. Now it'd be very quite easy to just do all of that in Codex or your favorite agent. I do think that business is very much under threat over the long run but still has sort of compounding that it can do just given how deep it is into the Fortune 500 and the Long tail of small businesses.

[Andrew]

I'd be very interested to know what is new user new logo growth like versus just expansion within an organization. Because if you have some company that's already sort of running on airtable, they're growing so they're adding seats, they're adding functionality because they're sort of bought in and they're not going to rip it out. What does that growth rate look like versus new companies actually going and signing up and saying like yes, this is the best tool for the job because you do get a lot built for free. And like it's not like they don't have access to AI agents that can improve their systems. Like you might be doing a lot of maintenance on your vibe coded solution, but at the same time a lot of people, especially in smaller organizations were using this as like just one small dashboarding tool, one small database that is sort of replicable. So interesting to see where it goes. And yeah, just like an interesting data point in the SaaS apocalypse. Late stage growth. Like is it a zombie corn? What are you, what term are you using for it? Jared Sleeper has some more thoughts. 480 million ARR growing 20% it's a unicorn exit Many very satisfied customers, including Jared Sleeper for years. Fantastic run. Never underestimate how much VCs love products that make, quote everyone, a builder. The wrinkle is that one player products are high. Churn was Airtable. I mean I feel like the whole pitch for Airtable was that it was multiplayer, but maybe that wasn't the way that people were actually using it that often. A lot of people would just be like, oh yeah, that guy on the team is using Airtable for that thing. But I mean certainly from very early on the.

[John]

I think by one player he means that you can. It's more like product led, like one person at a company. Because I've only used it in a team capacity. Right, but one player can sign up, start using it, invite other people to the team.

[Andrew]

Yeah, but it's, it's an advantage because you're bottom up. You can just ramp into a different company so quickly. But at the same time, if you're not like going through the CFO and being like, there's a mandate that we're using the CRP system.

[John]

200 seats at once.

[Andrew]

Exactly. Yeah, it is a little different. Three his third point, gross retention remains the single greatest predictive variable of terminal value. For any business that doesn't have a scale effect or network effect, it dictates somewhat mathematically what folks like bending spoons will pay. Great to see employees get liquid, but perhaps sad that some are learning about liquidation preferences. SaaS multiples to their disappointment. So of course if you had mentally marked your stock at 11 billion, but then this deal happens, the investors that put in that money at 11 billion, they're going to get their money back first and then you're going to have to fight for whatever's left over the scraps. Silicon Valley can do a better job talking to employees about what stock is worth in various scenarios, but no one is incentivized to do it. Well, I mean, you can also just look it up. There's a whole bunch of blog posts about it. You can ask ChatGPT and get a whole deep dive on, run this whole scenario and play out every possible option. But yes, I agree, no one likes to, you know, oh, we're closing a big candidate. Let's tell them about what's going to happen if Bending Spoons comes in.

[John]

Let's tell them what happens if we get our spoon bent.

[Andrew]

Bending Spoons is emerging as the Constellation software of the Prosumer High Churn. Higher Churn SAS is a fascinating turn of events and a good thing for pref stacks everywhere. Just because there's more liquidity for systems.

[John]

Well, it's a buyer of last resort.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[John]

Whereas like no founder setting out, hey, I want to be, you know, go on this generational run and then get my spoon bent. But it's still great because it allows again, it is real liquidity.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[John]

This is a win. I think Bending spoons. Bending spoons will obviously end up, I would, I would say like, right. Sizing the company. They're not going to continue to run at the same way that it's been run, but at least it allows everyone to get out and go on to do new things.

[Andrew]

Yeah. In an interesting twist, speaking of getting out, SHIELD Monot shares this about the airtable acquisition. They spun out their AI business Hyper Agent prior to the acquisition. So the company lives on and likely some cash with it probably can be recapitalized. Seems, seems like a fantastic outcome. Shed the old business and focus on AI. So I would be very interested to see who is going to be working at hyperagent. Is this something where the founders didn't want to exit the business entirely and then just start from scratch. They wanted to take a whole bunch of the team with them and they wanted a bunch of the resources and learnings and so they were able to package everything up. And this will be something that's very founder led or was this just okay? That is a more expensive piece of the business. Bending Spins, it's earlier in its ramp. Maybe it's working, maybe it's not. But that's not the business that's Bending spoons in. And so this is more like a bending driven look.

[John]

We've had, we've had both founders on the show. Bending Spoons is like hey, let's take a great product and just basically right, size the team, run it efficiently and we're not trying to get growth back to 200, 300% a year. Howie's been on the show, he talked a bit about Hyperagent. That's a product that if they execute well, can grow 10x year over year. Right. And so I could imagine again leaving some of the team to just continue running Airtable indefinitely and then again, like you said, taking some of the talent out and saying like, let's take another big swing.

[Andrew]

Liquidity is laughing about the fact that Bending Spoons has a very soft, friendly brand. Bending Spoons branding, very, very simple. And it just sounds like such a simple name. It's not like Cerberus Capital. And yet when they negotiate, they're presumably difficult to negotiate with. I don't know, I mean in a certain situation you can be very friendly and amicable and just sort of say like, yeah, we're, we're a buyer at 2.7 ARR. We're not going to like screw you over here. We're just going to give you, this is a fair price, take it or leave it. And you can take it. You don't necessarily need to be this like crazy werewolf of like a shark, you know, the.

[Host]

Yeah.

[John]

There's just not, there's just not that many, there's not that many buyers for a company like airtable. Yeah. And it's a, just sort of in this, in this economy, a slow growing enterprise software business. Right. There are not that many buyers. If Airtable had wanted to sell.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[John]

In 2020, I'm sure they would have gotten meaningfully more. They probably did have offers at different points. You can imagine Airtable, you know, ending up at a, you know, a salesforce as an example. But now Luca is saying the buyer of last resort is like maybe unfair.

[Andrew]

Yeah. Just like a value based buyer.

[John]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

I don't know.

[John]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Snap earnings happened and Evan Spiegel was on CNBC talking to Sorkin and it's a very interesting storyline because people are obsessed with the specs. I mean job completed in terms of like getting more attention for the company. But it's been sort of a weight around the company because the question is like, okay, is, is everyone going to be buying $2,200 smart glasses from you anytime soon when that's not really the story. The story is actually like the revenue growth, the profit, the operating leverage that coming back into the business. So I mean overall it was a good quarter for Snap Clear Beat revenue was up 19% year over year, with profitability and cash generation rising even faster. So that's that operating leverage. They're growing revenue to faster than their growing costs, and so they're increasing their margins. Advertising revenue grew 9% to 1 point, roughly 3 billion in the quarter. But the really interesting number that was surprising to me was they're making $316 million a quarter in subscriptions and paid services, up 85%. So just subscribing and being a paid power user, it's only 3% of the user base. Something like that. That's. That's now a billion dollar line of business. Obviously very high margin working, really plays to the strengths of what Snap offers. And usage is up globally, but they're losing a step in Western markets. So the North America, I think, fell 7% and Europe fell 2%. And so that's not great for long term ad monetization because you want to be in the richer countries generally. But still revenue is accelerating. They are monetizing better. And that's probably an AI story. It's just like a boring AI story because it's like the ad recommendation system got a little bit better. Nobody really cares. People want to focus on specs, but they're $2,200 and they're bulkier than competing smart glasses.

[John]

Well, it felt like in that interview, Spiegel was talking about specs, but he wasn't wearing them.

[Andrew]

Does he need to wear them?

[John]

I think he kind of needs to wear them all the time.

[Andrew]

I mean, you're gonna hold Apple to that. Tim Cook's gotta wear a Vision Pro everywhere he goes. That'd be hilarious.

[John]

No, but the Vision Pro is not

[Andrew]

meant to be augmented reality. It's augmented reality. It's meant to be worn 24 7. If you're a serious person, let's actually pull up.

[John]

You should do a full show. If you love Apple Vision Pro so

[Andrew]

much, not be a problem.

[John]

Do the full show. Okay, do the full show this Friday. Book it.

[Andrew]

We'll test run it with Tyler. So here's an interesting tidbit. Specs, it feels like, oh, my God, they're spending so much money. It's like so crazy. I think the rough estimate is like 300 million a year, which is a lot. But it's only 5% of their cost. It's like 20% of their overall R and D budget. Maybe something like that. These are very rough numbers, but it's not like. It's not like if they just spun out spacs or cuts, got spacs and they were just like, we're not doing anything there. All of a sudden, the business is, like, wildly profitable. It's not that big of a stone around the neck. It's more just like a distraction, a question. And it's also not great that on the earnings call, they asked, how many pre orders have you sold? And he sort of danced around it and didn't really give a straight answer on that. Because if it was good, you'd probably be like, yeah, we sold.

[John]

Yeah, you lead with things.

[Andrew]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, let's play a little bit of Evan Spiegel on CNBC.

[Host]

I want to hear him reporting Q2 results after the bell on Monday. They scored an earnings beat with $1.6 billion in revenue. It's 19% higher than just one year ago. And joining us right now for more, SNAP CEO Evan Spiegel. He did not bring his glasses on the set, but we're going to talk about those glasses in just a minute because I think that's been a big part of the story. But you beat across the board, not just by the way, on the revenue piece, but on the margin piece, which is what I think the market was actually looking for.

[Evan Spiegel]

Yeah. Well, first of all, thanks so much for having me on, Andrew. It's such a beautiful morning here in Aspen. It was a great quarter for Snap. And I think what folks are seeing is that the free cash flow business is really starting to inflect, which is allowing us to offset dilution to strengthen our balance sheet and of course, to continue investing in the future, which is so important to us.

[Andrew]

Okay, click forward 230 pieces of that

[Host]

story I mentioned glasses. We'll get there in a second. I think glasses.

[Andrew]

I want to hear him talk about glasses.

[Host]

About 2200 bucks right now. 2100 bucks is what they're going to come in.

[Evan Spiegel]

2195.

[Host]

Okay, so the question I keep under, how quickly those can come to market in a way, at a, in a way and at a price point that people buy them, you know, en masse. And how you think about the competition coming from whatever you think Apple is ultimately going to create, where everything Google is working on and whatever you think Metta is going to do next.

[Evan Spiegel]

Well, we've been working for more than 12 years to reinvent the computer and make it feel overnight. I think people are spending more than 7, 7 hours premature staring at screens. Specs represent the opportunity to bring computing into the world, to make it a shared experience and ultimately to help, you know, bring all the productivity gains we saw in desktop computing and laptop computing to the real world and to real world jobs, which is the vast majority of jobs, about 60% of jobs. So I think this computing transformation is incredibly exciting. We're certainly the leader in the space. I think specs represent a totally new category.

[Host]

Right.

[Evan Spiegel]

If you look at the landscape today, you, you have very bulky but capable headsets and then you have very limited but lightweight glasses. And specs represent, you know, the capability of some of these VR headsets in terms of the immersiveness and the ability to really have a full workstation experience, but with the wearability of some of these lighter weight glasses.

[Host]

But do you say to yourself, apple's going to come and do the same thing and that is going to go. I mean, so how do you think about that given the cost of putting this all out there and the amount of money that some of these big companies can actually throw at this?

[Evan Spiegel]

Yeah, well, I think, you know, as we look at the history of innovation, I actually think one of the things that helps power innovation are constraints. Right. And one of the things that makes Snap so unique is that we've been so laser focused on specs for such a long period of time. So I think this focus, our history of innovation, you know, and our first mover advantage in this space, like it

[Andrew]

should be a different company. If you want to be laser focused. It feels like the benefit would be like, do the Elon thing, start a separate company that is laser focused on it. The investors in that company are laser focused on that. The employees.

[John]

Yeah. Have a distribution deal with Snap.

[Andrew]

Yeah. You know, like just, just have this like, you know, get, we're good on this video. Just get Snap to a really polished, oiled machine. You own all the equity, you have the founder control. It's your, you know, your, your, your financial backstop, your, your, your credibility for to actually go and truly laser focus because like, it's weird to be laser focused on a thing that's not your core business. And then everyone's just constantly asking you, like, we'd love for you to laser focus on the main business that's making billions of dollars every year.

[John]

Seems pretty solid.

[Andrew]

Yeah, it's like making $6 billion. Well, what do you think, Tyler? Yeah.

[John]

I mean, earlier this year they did spend off the AI video company and that seems like much more related to the main Snapchat app.

[Andrew]

That would have been the glasses. Right. What is the AI video company?

[John]

I think it's called dotmo. It was like their internal generative video team.

[Andrew]

Interesting.

[John]

He was talking about enterprise use cases for the glasses. Like workplace use cases. It's so hard to imagine as an independent company, you make a really great device. I can imagine that company having its own go to market motion saying, hey, Amazon, we want you to use our devices across your workforce and maybe they do a pilot. But trying to sell in like Snapchat glasses into the enterprise. Yeah, Feels like just going to be a tough sell.

[Andrew]

OpenAI is firing back at Apple a little, little glazy though. They say Apple is one of the greatest companies of all time. What a funny way to kick off a blog post. Firing back at a lawsuit Apple just cooked open. I just.

[John]

Well, they say and built a reputation for obsessing over the smallest details.

[Andrew]

True.

[John]

And then they go on to say maybe there were some details that were missed.

[Andrew]

Yes. So what, what were the key things that they said? They accused Apple, accused OpenAI of ignoring them. Turns out the lawyers emailed the wrong Asian guy because two Asian last names look similar. They claimed you discussed the allegations with OpenAI's general counsel. They admitted that that conversation never happened. Accused an ex employee of improperly accessing files they forgot to mention. Apple employees were allegedly asking him to access those same files after he left. So there seemed to be some scenario where like the guy had left, but he had so much internal knowledge that someone at Apple was just like, hey, like can you remind me where this thing is or something.

[John]

Yeah. When reading through the initial complaint, Apple made it seem like the employee, or the former employee was just running wild through his old laptop. He had sent a message to someone at Apple saying something to the effect I'm paraphrasing, but I still have access to my computer. Lol. But the reason that in the text messages that they shared, you can imagine the reason that he was there and sending that message.

[Host]

What?

[John]

Why would he send the message if he was doing something that was wrong that he would feel guilty of? Right. He was helping his former teammates. And they say there's 10 other people. I could ask you, but you're the smartest or something like that. And so when you have all this context, the story looks quite a lot different.

[Andrew]

Yeah, they're sharing a lot of text messages. You can go read the blog post, but there's full back and forth imessages between Chong Liu and Apple employees were Chang, whose last day at Apple was January 22, 2026, is being asked by his former colleagues to help them locate files and information to assist them with their Apple work. Note other individual names and Apple Confidential information has been redacted. So certainly another wild yeah, I'm still

[John]

just very surprised that Apple during the middle of a, you know, a year long talent raid would know that someone significant had quit and that would not go through the process of actually taking back their laptop and making sure that, you know, the separation was really finalized. People have been saying stories how historically, you know, maybe call it 15 years ago, if you quit Apple, someone would show up to your house immediately and take back any prototypes that you may have had or anything of the sort.

[Andrew]

I'm excited for prediction markets to get on this. Honestly, it was very helpful during the Elon Musk OpenAI case. Currently Kalshi has a few here. Will the OpenAI Jony I've device have a screen no is at 82%. When will OpenAI release astray? There's some dates here. What else are they? Will OpenAI increase the cost of ChatGPT? No at 87%. No market on the Apple lawsuit because it's still very early. There's not even like a court date yet. But we'll keep tracking it because it's an interesting story. Is BMW forcing owners to watch a Spider man brand New day promo when they start their cars up? That's the question. A lot of people were upset about this. Jordy this morning is like, this is awful. There's some nuance here. So BMW BMW owners are debating the company's latest in car promotion after videos spread across X showing a Spider man brand new day animation appearing on their vehicle's infotainment screen at startup.

[John]

And the reason why this fake news triggered me was back in the day in college I was getting a Kindle and on the checkout page it was like, do you want to save $10 and get the ad supported Kindle? And as a college student I was like, saving $10 sounds pretty nice. And then I had to live with a Kindle that would sit on my bedside table just blaring ads in my face constantly. And it wasn't like I would have actually appreciated ads. Can't you just flip it upside down? True.

[Host]

Wow.

[John]

One simple, one simple trick. Jordy hits us one simple trick. But it wouldn't be ads for like Spider Man. It would be ads for random books, right?

[Andrew]

Yeah, books.

[John]

And the targeting wasn't good. So again, people don't like ads.

[Andrew]

That target was good.

[John]

Anyways, what happened here, John?

[Andrew]

Okay, so venture capitalist Shield Monot wrote, when you start a BMW, it shows you an ad for Spider man really cheapens the BMW in my opinion. A16Z partner Josh Elman added, of all the brands I thought I might, I thought might bombard you with in car ads on screen right when you start the engine. I had BMW pretty dang low on that list. This seems the opposite of luxury and performance. Is BMW a luxury brand? But they were premium.

[John]

Yeah, I think it's a premium brand.

[Andrew]

Premium brand. Even Paul Graham weighed in though, reposting Monat's video and saying, I'm never buying a BMW. He's never, never buy in a BMW. What about an old BMW? They can't show you ads in a E39.

[John]

Wait, but what actually happened? You have to opt into this community.

[Andrew]

Notes added Important context According to OneNote, the Spider man promotion is an optional startup banner available on compatible BMWs from July 27 through August 10, 2026. The banner does not automatically play a full screen ad. Instead, owners must tap in to launch a themed animation featuring music and synchronized vehicle lighting. BMW has offered sal similar limited time startup experiences in the past, including holiday themed animations.

[John]

Jordy. Very, very, very different. You can just see the pop up there. Surprise. Spider man just dropped into your BMW and that's an ad.

[Andrew]

You press the button. You have to actually turn it on. It's not.

[John]

Yes, yes, but I'm saying there's a banner ad.

[Andrew]

Oh, there is a banner.

[John]

It's just a banner. Look at the video. Start it over.

[Andrew]

Let's see. Let's be the G judge of this.

[John]

Look at this banner. It's a banner.

[Andrew]

Oh, okay.

[John]

Then you click the banner. Then it plays an ad. So it's a pop up that you click, okay. And it's like, wait, what is this pop up? Why does my car have popped up

[Andrew]

into a setting somewhere? There should be an icon that's like

[John]

promotions or themes that didn't look tucked in anywhere. They're literally saying, surprise. A Spider man ad. And they're not even like, they should just say, hey, we have an ad for Spider man here if you'd like one.

[Andrew]

Okay, this is right on the line.

[John]

But this, this is, this is, this crosses my line. This crosses your line because you're like, what does Spider man have to do? What is, what does Spider man have to do with my car? Then you click it and you get an ad for Spider Man.

[Andrew]

Spider Man's doing well though, so the ads are working. So, you know, maybe the BMW show owner showed up in droves because the new Spider man movie scores Hollywood's second biggest debut ever. Ever. That's actually huge. The Sony film grossed $932 million through Sunday, topped only by 2019's Endgame. That is massive. Did you realize that this movie was making that much money?

[John]

I mean if you had asked me an hour ago, is there a new Spider man movie coming out? I would say haven't heard of anything.

[Andrew]

Yeah, I haven't seen that much energy about it. I've been aware of it, but I have not. I've not seen like a massive takeover. But also I'm not driving an ad supported BMW. So maybe that's the problem. Spider man spun a massive weekend for movie theaters, flouting superhero fatigue and giving a major boost to Hollywood summer box office. Sony Pictures Spider Man Brand new day open to an estimated.

[John]

We got some good ideas here in the chat.

[Host]

We got.

[John]

So ad supported cars that get you free self driving where they the ads take over the whole entertainment system in the car. So you're sitting there relaxing, you know the car is driving itself but then it's just blaring high volume. Every.

[Andrew]

I'll take it a step further.

[John]

Every five minutes, 1-32-ad.

[Andrew]

What if there was a volume? What if there's a whole company dedicated to building self driving cars that was funded by an advertising company. Like a company that just prints billions, hundreds of billions of dollars in advertising. Like their DNA is advertising and then they go into the self driving market.

[John]

Why has no one done this before?

[Andrew]

They would have a huge advantage in terms of targeting.

[John]

Why has no one done this before?

[Andrew]

Yeah, they could even have a video platform where they're making a lot of money running video ads and they could take that.

[John]

Oh, almost like a YouTube.

[Andrew]

YouTube, yeah, exactly. So you could have like, you know, a huge ad network, YouTube ads. And then you can have a self driving car company, put them all together, that synergy.

[John]

And maybe you could spend the company out at some point and raise some venture capital to spin the company out

[Andrew]

secretly. Still advertising now I don't think Waymo will do crazy ads. I think, I don't know, maybe a

[John]

major streaming executive just text. A major streaming executive just texted me and says okay, going to get Tubi to build a car right now

[Andrew]

you got to build a car, you got to do it.

[John]

SpaceX announces a new partnership with Nvidia to design its StarMind AI1 payload bringing data center class compute into orbit. That makes a lot of sense. Let's find some actual numbers.

[Andrew]

So revenue was 7.81 billion versus 6.93 billion. Expected loss per share was $0.09. Average analyst estimated a loss of $0.26. Revenue jumped 92% from 4.1 billion a year earlier. So huge, you know, you're even at this scale still doubling the revenue. And it's the first time Elon Musk's reusable rocket maker will face Wall street in this capacity. And investors are jittery. SpaceX stock has dropped 16% since opening at $150 a share on June 12. And SpaceX lost 4.9 billion last year, largely due to heavy investments in artificial intelligence, which we've discussed. The company merged with Musk's X AI in February, CNBC reports, saying that at the time, the vision was to build data centers in space. But the launch business, which came on large contracts from NASA, is losing money. Most of SpaceX revenue for the year and its only source of profit came from its connectivity segment, which consists of its Starlink Internet service. Starlink is sold directly to consumers. So here's how SpaceX performed in the three key segments. For Space, they brought in $962 million versus 835 million which was expected. So they beat in space. On connectivity, they brought in 4.29 billion. So the Starlink business is four more than four times the size of the actual launch business. They brought in 4.29 billion versus 3.83 billion that was expected, so they beat there. And on AI, they brought in 2.56 billion versus 2.18 billion expected. So beats across the board. And very interesting to see that the thing that they started doing, space, of course, launching rockets is now their third largest line of business. Connectivity is, of course, bigger and also AI is bigger.

[John]

Everything is computer, John.

[Andrew]

Everything is computer. That is a good summation of it,

[John]

and that's a good place to end our show.