Big Tech turns to mining, Thinking Machines loses top executives, NYC Sauna Wars heat up | Diet TBPN

Summary

TBPN Podcast Episode Summary

Episode: Big Tech turns to mining, Thinking Machines loses top executives, NYC Sauna Wars heat up | Diet TBPN
Date: January 16, 2026
Hosts: John Coogan & Jordi Hays (with Ben Thompson, Tony, Dylan, Tesla Lithium Refinery Engineers)
Duration: ~30 mins (Diet TBPN best-of edit)

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Overview

This engaging episode explores the deepening integration of Big Tech into core industrial sectors—particularly mining for critical minerals like lithium and copper. The hosts dive into Tesla’s new U.S. lithium refinery, AWS’s copper deal with Rio Tinto, and the emerging challenges these shifts pose. The episode also covers the high-profile executive departures at leading AI startup Thinking Machines, the unfolding “Sauna Wars” among New York City bathhouses, and various notable happenings, including major layoffs at Meta and quirky debates about whale and seal hunting.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

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1. Big Tech Goes Mining: Tesla’s Lithium Refinery & AWS-Rio Tinto Copper Deal

Timestamps: 00:02–07:35

• Vertically Integrated Tech

  • “We're now in the era where the tech companies are starting to vertically integrate so deep they own the mines and the refineries … not just building software for the mining.”
    — Ben Thompson (01:19)
  • Marc Andreessen’s “software is eating the world” thesis has now extended literally to industry, with tech firms increasingly controlling their supply chains all the way to raw materials.

• Tesla’s Texas Lithium Refinery

  • First North American spodumene-to-lithium hydroxide plant opens.
  • Tesla Lithium Engineer: "We're deploying a new technology platform that is inherently much more environmentally friendly and cleaner. It's a simpler process." (02:44)
  • Enough lithium for 500K–1 million EVs/year; “copy paste” for more capacity.

• Supply Chain & Geopolitics

  • “Obviously, the narrative around China controlling 90% of rare earth extraction ... This is their response.” — Ben Thompson (01:52)

• Copper Crunch & AWS-Rio Tinto Deal

  • AWS is underwriting a new, cleaner process to refine “messy” copper ore—the success of which could potentially triple copper supply and lower prices.
  • “70% of the global supply of copper is currently locked away in ore that's not economical to refine ... If this new process technology works, you effectively triple the amount of copper.” — Ben Thompson (06:29)

• Speed of Industrial Innovation

  • Tesla’s refinery went from groundbreaking to production in 19 months—“unheard of at this scale.” (07:10)

Notable Quote:
"I see mining as sort of terraforming. I see it in some ways as literally eating the world." — Ben Thompson (01:32)

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2. AI Talent Wars: Thinking Machines Turmoil

Timestamps: 07:36–16:44

• Executive Shake-Up

  • Thinking Machines terminates CTO Barrett Zoff for “unethical conduct.”
  • Sumit Chintala promoted to CTO.

• Mass Talent Exodus to OpenAI

  • Multiple co-founders and key staff return to OpenAI, intensifying the ongoing “AI talent wars.”
  • Tony: “Not great. I think potentially more controversial news was that Thinking Machines has branded squat racks at the office.” (09:28)

• Startup Excess & Red Flags

  • Debates around spending VC money on vanity perks (custom gyms, branded fitness gear) vs. building product and revenue.
  • “It’s got to be so weird to start a company and on day one, have enough money for a custom gym. That’s just, like, unheard of … Normally you start your company in the garage.” — Ben Thompson (10:44)

• Acquisition Rumors & Valuation Speculation

  • Thinking Machines potentially valued $30–60B; possible acquirers: NVIDIA, Microsoft, Apple, Meta, Amazon.

• Lord of the Rings Meme as Industry Code

  • Rune’s cryptic “the elves have left for Valinor” (a recurring meme) signals major talent leaving startups for big labs such as OpenAI:
    • “Now OpenAI is Valinor right? They’re setting aside $50B just for pay packages. If you go back, I mean, you’re doing pretty well. It’s pretty safe, right?” — Dylan (16:12)

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3. NYC Sauna Boom: The Sauna Wars

Timestamps: 16:45–25:20

• Explosion of Bathhouses

  • Flatiron/NYC now home to a dense cluster of luxury bathhouses.
    • Competition among Bathhouse, Othership, Altar, local coworking/wet lounges, and venerable Russian & Turkish Baths.

• Wellness as Social Battleground

  • “While the message from founders blissed out on 180 degree heat is one of bringing together community and good vibes, the reality can be cutthroat.” — Tony (19:45)
  • “Bitcoin Bathhouse” joke—some locations even use crypto-mining heat to warm tubs.

• Cultural Trends & Market Dynamics

  • NYC’s trendiness not necessarily representative of broader American habits, as many nationwide can buy home saunas or use local gym facilities.
  • “I'm extremely bullish on Americans starting to sweat more … The evidence is so clear that if you use a sauna every day, you will probably extend your health span lifespan.” — Tony (23:47)

• Hosts’ “Sauna Wars” Anecdote

  • Personal rivalry playing out in local NYC saunas; stories of “talking too loudly” and encountering “angry elves.” (25:00)

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4. Tech Industry Updates: Meta, Land, Whales & Seals

Timestamps: 21:17–30:40

• Meta Reality Labs Layoffs

  • 1,500 laid off from Metaverse division, 14,000 remain.
  • “Even though Mark Zuckerberg has effectively complete control over Meta … at the end of the day he does respond to shareholders.” — Ben Thompson (23:36)

• Meta’s Pivot to AI

  • Capex hit $72B last year, ramping further for AI infrastructure. Ray Ban smart glasses reach 2 million units sold.

• Miscellaneous News

  • China bans CrowdStrike (tiny impact).
  • OpenAI hater “Nick” is back online, continuing drama.
  • Merge Labs: OpenAI and Sam Altman back new “human-machine fusion” startup.
    • Sam Altman (2017): “It is a failure of human imagination and human arrogance to assume that we will never build things smarter than ourselves. The Merge can take a lot of forms ... I think the Merge is probably our best case scenario.” (27:19)
  • Stan Kroenke buys nearly 1M acres in New Mexico, becoming America’s largest private landowner; farmland becomes a hot asset in the data center age.

• Greenland Anecdote—Hunting, Tech, and Politics

  • Conversation on hunting rights in Greenland crosses over into tech expansion and American attitudes.
  • Host debate: pro-whale vs. anti-seal.
    • Tony: “Seals—you're the problem. … Growing up surfing, these things are the dogs of the sea. … I'd just be in the water by myself beefing with a seal.” (29:57)

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• “I see mining as sort of terraforming. I see it in some ways as literally eating the world.”
  — Ben Thompson (01:32)

• “It's got to be so weird to start a company and on day one, have enough money for a custom gym. That's just, like, unheard of.”
  — Ben Thompson (10:44)

• "The elves have left for Valinor."
  — Dylan, reciting AI industry meme about top talent changing labs (15:18)

• “I'm extremely bullish on Americans starting to sweat more … If you use a sauna every day, you will probably extend your health span.”
  — Tony (23:47)

• “The Merge can take a lot of forms. We could plug electrodes into our brains or … just become really close friends with a chatbot.”
  — Quoting Sam Altman’s 2017 essay (27:19)

• “Seals—you're the problem … Growing up surfing ... these things are the dogs of the sea ... I'd just be in the water by myself beefing with a seal.”
  — Tony (29:57)

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Timestamps for Major Segments

| MM:SS | Segment | |:---------:|---------------------------------------------| | 00:02 | Big Tech mining: Tesla & AWS/Rio Tinto | | 02:44 | Tesla engineer: new lithium refinery tech | | 06:29 | Copper supply and new refining processes | | 07:36 | Thinking Machines shake-up & talent wars | | 15:18 | “Elves leave for Valinor” meme explained | | 16:45 | NYC “Sauna Wars” begin | | 21:17 | Meta layoffs & Reality Labs strategy | | 23:47 | Sauna health benefits, market dynamics | | 26:17 | Global tech news (China, Merge Labs, land) | | 29:57 | Seals vs. whales debate |

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Conclusion

Diet TBPN’s January 16, 2026 episode offers a snapshot of tectonic shifts in the intersection of technology, industry, and society: tech giants now mine critical minerals, AI startup drama grows ever more intense, and New York’s wellness landscape is emblematic of shifting consumer culture. The hosts’ lively banter and insightful asides surface the stakes—and absurdities—of the modern tech landscape while keeping the conversation grounded in authentic, often humorous, firsthand perspective.

Transcript

[Ben Thompson]

Tesla is sharing that they made a ton of progress on their lithium refinery. And then simultaneously, AWS did a deal with Rio Tinto to buy a bunch of copper. Not that much copper. We'll get into how much, but they're sort of underwriting a new, a new chemical process for refining copper. And it's all just sort of interesting that, you know, Marc Andreessen published the software is eating the world story back in 2011. And I think you, even the folks in tech who took that seriously were saying, oh, yeah, of course. Well, that just means that I didn't.

[Tony]

Take it seriously, I took it literally. Yeah.

[Ben Thompson]

But the people that took it seriously were thinking, okay, well, you're going past just the first wave of the Internet, the newspapers on websites, that type of stuff. And yes, we're going to get the Ubers. We're going to get more and more tech companies that are consumer facing or business facing. And you might see some transformation in legal services, financial services, logistics. Airlines will be using apps to let you book. But we're now in the era where the tech companies are starting to vertically integrate so deep that they own the mines and they own the refineries. And it's not just that they're actually building software for the mining.

[Tony]

That's not the technology eating the world.

[Ben Thompson]

Yeah, yeah. And it's a new layer of vertical integration that sort of just crept up on me because it wasn't an issue until the AI boom really necessitated massive, massive industrial scale build outs, new industrial policy, which admittedly can't turn on a dime. But we're now two, three years into the ChatGPT boom, into the AI boom. The data center buildouts are getting bigger. We're seeing bottlenecks all over the place, whether it's chip shortages or energy shortages. And so, you know, the companies like Tesla aws a lot of other folks are really looking deep into the supply chain, all the way into the ground, into literally eating the world. Because I see mining as sort of terraforming. I see it in some ways as literally eating the world. Like you said, Amazon's buying the first new copper produced in America in over a decade. It's a very exciting project. And Tesla now has a Texas facility that can convert raw or directly into battery grade lithium hydroxide. It's a more efficient process. We can get into that. Tesla originally broke ground on this lithium refinery operation in May of 2023. It feels like they were sort of quiet about it, but now they're getting a lot louder. Obviously, the narrative around China controlling 90% of rare earth extraction and rare earth elements has been in the news and this is sort of their response.

[Tesla Lithium Refinery Engineer]

Delivery is the first spodumene to lithium hydroxide refinery in North America. We're deploying a new technology platform that is inherently much more environmentally friendly and cleaner. It's a simpler process.

[Ben Thompson]

It's not that big of a facility. And this should be able to create enough lithium for 500,000 vehicles a year. EVs a year, maybe a million a year. I've heard Now Tesla's shipping 1.65 million. So this won't be 100%, but you copy paste this two, three times and you got enough coverage for all the. For the entire Tesla fleet.

[Tesla Lithium Refinery Engineer 2]

Take it through a kiln and cooler. From there we take it through an alkaline leech and additional purification steps, take it into crystallization and produce battery grade lithium hydroxide. Our process is more sustainable than traditional methods and eliminates hazardous byproducts and instead produces a co product named Analsyme. Used in concrete mixes.

[Tesla Lithium Refinery Engineer]

From breaking ground in 2023 to running rot through the kiln in 2024 to start a full integrated plant startup.

[Ben Thompson]

He looks so tired. He's just like, yeah, it's been, it's been great working for Elon. Hi. I love it.

[Tony]

Yeah, it's been relatively relaxed here. Yeah.

[Ben Thompson]

You know, we sleep in the factory. In this case it's just dirt. But sleeping in the dirt, surprisingly comfortable.

[Tesla Lithium Refinery Engineer]

This refinery really enables us to have access to the critical minerals for energy storage for battery manufacturing, ultimately for evidence. And it enables us to accelerate Tesla's mission by regionalizing supply chains for battery minerals and materials, by providing jobs, by cutting emissions from the transportation network that's required for those supply chains. It really allows us to usher in energy independence for North America.

[Ben Thompson]

Who would have thought that Texas would be the home of EV domination?

[Tony]

I know. Narrative violation.

[Ben Thompson]

California really dropped the ball. Tesla shipping 1.65 million. That was a little lower than the previous year. I think they were up at 1.7 million. But you get a couple of those facilities and it should be in enough to cover everything that they need. There's been a whole bunch of news around rare earth minerals generally. Last year, a company called Ionic Mineral Technologies made a large discovery of 16 different types of minerals in Utah late last year.

[Tony]

This is in December, as we do.

[Ben Thompson]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It has been funny. There have been rumors about this, but they found a huge deposit of all these different minerals. Amazon's partnership with Rio Tinto is a little bit different. They're not fully vertically integrated like Tesla is, but they are partnering with Rio Tinto. Rio Tinto had been working on a new method of refining low grade copper deposits. So basically like, there's a fair amount of copper in the ground, but there's a lot of dirt, a lot of other stuff that you have to process out that can be very expensive. But because of the data center expansion exploding, the price of copper has, I think nearly doubled in the past two years. Copper is not the main ingredient to an AI data data center, a token factory. But it is important because the biggest data centers use tens of thousands of metric tons of copper to move electricity around. So you need wires. There's copper in circuit boards, there's wire in the, there's copper in the transformers that move electricity around, and there's tons of miscellaneous electrical components all over a data center that need copper. So this particular AWS Rio Tinto deal is only 1400 metric tons over four years. I don't even think that's enough for a single AWS data center. But it's allowing Rio Tinto to underwrite this sort of risky new process methodology that if it works and they get the price down on this new process, then they can apply that to tons more copper reserves that's locked up in, you know, messy, messy ore that otherwise would be uneconomical to refine. 70% of the global supply of copper is currently locked away in ore that's not economical to refine into actual copper right now. So if this new process technology works, you effectively triple the amount of copper, you triple the supply. And so price should fall. It's doubled. You triple the supply, maybe price comes down. Good news for anyone who's in the copper market.

[Tony]

Rio Tinto. Some quick backstories. One of the world's largest and oldest mining corporations with a history that spans over 150 years. Name is inspired by the Rio Tinto in southwestern Spain. But the founding again goes back to the mid 19th century. Spanish government was facing financial crisis and they started selling off their older mines. And so crazy story of just like a very old company continuing to be a key player in an entirely new tech trend.

[Ben Thompson]

Yeah, also for lithium ion, they do some stuff there. They had one investment that I think they wrote down, then they spun another one up. They've been back and forth. X freeze broke the Texas Lithium ion lithium refinery down a little bit more. It's the first in North America to convert the raw or into battery grade lithium hydroxide. Skipping intermediate steps in the long term, probably More economical. It went from groundbreaking to first production in just 19 months. An unheard of timeline at this scale. The process is cleaner, no hazardous waste, a useful byproduct that can be turned into concrete. The single refinery can supply lithium for over 500,000 EVs per year and directly challenges China's 60% grip on global lithium refining. Elon chimed in and said, it sounded like I saw another number that was maybe closer to a million, but either way, you do two or three of these and you're good. As we predicted in our annual predictions episode at the start of the year, unless someone shows up with super conductivity or carbon nanotubes, copper is the only game in town. And AI is a huge demand driver for a very under resourced material. So he's taken a victory lap with his thesis on copper. And speaking of AI, there is turmoil in the trade wars, in the talent wars. Breaking Thinking Machines has terminated its CTO barretz off due to unethical conduct, according to two sources familiar with the matter. CEO Mira Muradi announced the news in all hands with employees today. Sumit Chintala will be taking over as CEO. CEO. And Mira posted as well confirming the news. She said, we have parted ways with Barrett Sumit will be taking the new CTO of Thinking Machines role. He is a brilliant and seasoned leader who has made important contributions to the AI field for over a decade and he has been a major contributor to our team. We could not be more excited to have him take on this new responsibility.

[Tony]

And Alex Heath actually has some new news 30 minutes ago. He says more Thinking Machine employees are in the process of joining OpenAI after three of the startup's co founders rejoined yesterday. Of course, the Thinking Machine co founders had previously been at OpenAI. Not great. I think potentially more controversial news was that Thinking Machines has branded squat racks at the office.

[Ben Thompson]

Yes.

[Tony]

Ryan Peterson posted a photo.

[Ben Thompson]

Ryan Post.

[Tony]

A lot of people, a lot of people took this as somewhat of a red flag. Right. People say, you know, the sort of common guidance is don't make merch until you're generating some real revenue. Yeah, right. And so if you take that further, it's like maybe you shouldn't have.

[Ben Thompson]

What was Ryan doing to get this photo?

[Tony]

It seems like he just walked by.

[Ben Thompson]

He's going journalist mode. Here you see this? He's like, he's not.

[Tony]

Zoom in. You can see these things look fantastic.

[Ben Thompson]

Well, well, Ryan, you're, you're outside somewhere. You're outside the Thinking Machines branded gym.

[Tony]

Yeah, I'm somewhat there. I'm somewhat envious. These things look fantastic. I'm kind of mad that. That we didn't get the branded plates. But this coming out while losing, you know, half of your family, it has to be weird.

[Ben Thompson]

I mean, how much are they raised? It was 2 billion at 12 billion, something like that. It's got to be so weird to start a company and on day one, have enough money for a custom gym. That's just, like, unheard of. Like, normally you start your company in the garage and maybe there's a wait in the corner you can lift or Kettlebell.

[Tony]

One dumbbell.

[Ben Thompson]

Yeah.

[Tony]

Not even two.

[Ben Thompson]

One kettlebell or something, but to just come in and say, yes, we're taking class A office on day one, hiring a massive team, bringing on six or seven co founders.

[Tony]

Atlas was saying, like, the other red flag is, where are the 45? I think I'm gonna assume they're just not in sight. You know, like, you can't see them. Right. They. They would be mounted lower, Right. On the rack. In case you forgot, Andrew Tullock left thinking machines in Q4 of last year. Zuck had been trying to poach him and offered increasing amounts of money. The sense is that Andrew was like, I can't be bought.

[Ben Thompson]

But he needed the money. He had a shopping cart filled with chrome hearts supreme. And he was like, wow, like, my next outfit's gonna run me 500 mil. I gotta get a new job. I can't afford it. I can't afford my lifestyle. Maybe it was a case of lifestyle inflation. They talk about that.

[Tony]

Tyler, do you remember the final amount that Meta paid? It was like. Because I always appreciate a lot of rumors. It was in the billions. In my head. It was like. Andrew was like, yeah, I'm really honored that you would make such a big offer, Zach, a billion dollars. But unfortunately, I'm mission driven. There's really no price that I would take to leave the company that I started. And Zuck's like 2 billion.

[Dylan]

I think all the rumors were actually from the summer when there was, like, all of the talent wars going on. So first there was. I think it was just one billion.

[Ben Thompson]

And then just one.

[Dylan]

There were rumors of three and a half and that being turned down. But then later in the year, then.

[Ben Thompson]

He eventually went, okay, so people kind of assume that the rumor is true because. Because he eventually made the move.

[Dylan]

Yeah, but I mean, it's not necessarily higher than three and a half.

[Ben Thompson]

Right.

[Dylan]

Because now we're seeing more people leave. Like, why are they leaving?

[Ben Thompson]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, yeah.

[Dylan]

At One point one of my buddies who works at a big lab, he was saying at that time, Think Machines has like the best team like any of the big labs.

[Tony]

There was already immense amount of pressure and like really, really, really high expectations on Thinking Machines around what they put out first. I don't think these, these people leaving, maybe it makes it harder to deliver right on those expectations, but the expectations are still sky high. It did feel like kind of rough messaging. Very, very rough messaging. Right. You know, pushing this like unethical conduct angle. People at OpenAI have obviously their bias, but they've denied it.

[Ben Thompson]

Some quick thoughts on Barrett, Zoff and Matt's and Schoenholtz going back to OpenAI. Barrett was the vice president post training at OpenAI before he left for thinking machines. He left OpenAI in September of 2024. Barrett would have probably initially had options for about 10 to 30% of thinking machines. That's insane. They had six co founders. How could that be so high? Post training was one of the more valuable skills at launch, I suppose. Okay, the seed round was 2 billion at 12 billion. So this would mean that he would have options now for around 8 to 25% of the current company. This seems all hypothetical here. There were rumors back in November that Thinking Machines was in talks to raise at 50 to 60 billion. So this puts his equity at 4 billion to 15 billion valuation. Thinking Machines could probably exit somewhere at between 30 and 60 today. Who has that money? I don't know. Maybe Nvidia buys them or something. At least at some point over the next few years. I think the most likely acquirers would probably be Microsoft, Apple, Meta, Amazon and Nvidia. Okay. Large cap company that, that wants to build a frontier model. Barrett would have been just over his one year cliff. So assuming he was not fired for cause or thinking, he doesn't want to litigate, he still has about 1 to 3 billion.

[Tony]

Okay, that part's incorrect. How does that math work? I don't know.

[Ben Thompson]

It's called Thinking Machine now because there's only one left. No, there are three left, so it's still plural.

[Tony]

Reading into this, I mean, there's got to be some real excitement on. OpenAI has just been outflows, outflows, outflows. Getting some of these superstars back on board, it's got to be good for me.

[Ben Thompson]

So is this what the elves and Valinor do We know what Rune's posting about? Because we learned that Rune posts the elves have left for Valinor every two years apparently.

[Dylan]

Okay, well, he Posted it once before. Yeah. In 2024. About in January 22nd.

[Ben Thompson]

Yes.

[Dylan]

So yeah, so now he posted this like on the 12th, so three days ago. I think most people have now taken it to mean to be about this, right? People leaving thing, machines going back to OpenAI. But I think there's a couple of ways you can look at it, right? So if you look at it in the context of the last time you said this, it was the exact same quote that elves had left for Valinor. Like, okay, what is Valinor in Lord of the Rings?

[Tony]

Right?

[Dylan]

Valinor is where elves go. So they don't like diminish or like they don't like kind of fade away. So it's okay. What does that mean? Like, maybe it's you're just basically securing like massive wealth, right?

[Tony]

Or the other way to read that is like you go to like one of these newer labs and you could be a superstar, but your abilities could fade away with time. Right? Because you just don't have the scale or the resources.

[Dylan]

So I think in the 2024 context, Valinor actually was the NeoLabs, right? Because you basically go start a company, be the co founder. You guys raise at 12 billion, you're just like, let's go like, yeah, I just secured insane amount, like massive bag.

[Ben Thompson]

Yeah.

[Dylan]

But then now, now OpenAI's OpenAI is now Valen or right?

[Tony]

They're.

[Dylan]

They're setting aside 50 billion just for pay packages. If you go back, I mean, you're doing pretty well. It's pretty safe, right? You don't, you don't have startup, you know, you're not sure if it's going to work or not.

[Tony]

Everyone's focused on the AI wars. Not enough attention going to the sauna wars. The real heated rivalry is at the bathhouse.

[Ben Thompson]

Yes.

[Tony]

From bathhouse to other ship to Altar, a wave of bath houses in New York City are popping up just blocks apart, igniting a war of xen. This is especially relevant to the TVPN team because we've been in somewhat of a sauna war ourself, which we'll get into at some point in the story. The Flatiron district in Manhattan has been a center of Nuvo wellness for around 15 years, with its many boutique fitness classes, gyms, acupuncturists and stretching and recovery centers. Now, wave of bath houses that offer dry heat and cold plunges face off in a few blocks. There is bathhouse on West 22nd with other ship two blocks away and Altar set to open this winter you could walk between all three in mere minutes. Williamsburg has its own cluster, right?

[Ben Thompson]

Parallels super cluster.

[Tony]

Welcome to the Sauna wars, where dedicated bath houses compete with members clubs like West Village's Continuum, which costs 40,000 per year that has a bathhouse set up in the financial district. Coworking space WSA's wet lounge as well. Co working space with a wet lounge. Not something. Not something you hear about every day. The fitness chain TMPL has a whole subway ad campaign entirely around their bathhouse facilities, featuring women in swimsuits reclining in a suggestive way that one doesn't really find in saunas in real life. And of course the Russian and Turkish baths in the East Village, which is the sort of place newcomers are brought to see a slice of the real New York City. It's usually teeming with people, some getting whacked by bushels of oak leaves in a treatment called Plaza and has two owners who rotate weeks of ownership. That's interesting. It's no frills and even a little gritty. For those who are used to conveniences such as booking ahead, there's none of that to be found. They do have a nod to modernity with an active TikTok account featuring guest endorsements recently highlighting Uma Thurman wrapped in a pashmina and calling it one of the greatest best New York institutions. The first time I went to 10th Street Bass was in 2007. I love the authenticity and how it made me feel. I would find my way back there when I felt depleted, underslept, whatever it might be. I would come out feeling great, says James O'Reilly, who is one of the founders of the co working space Neuhaus. His latest project is the new Lore Bathing Club. This is where you go if you want to cultivate lore in your life, I guess. Founded alongside restaurateur Adam Elser, Lore takes some inspiration from the Russian and Turkish baths as well as the communal sweat traditions of Europe and Asia and drops it into a 6200 square foot space finished in Travertine and White Oak in NoHo. The Bath World is quite a scene. One where skincare brands such as Pharrell Williams Human Race send out a press release to announce they're temporarily supplying Lore locker rooms with their signature 7D gel sets. What is a 7D gel set? Tyler?

[Ben Thompson]

I have no idea.

[Tony]

Other chip is hosting comedy nights. Alter will be selling bathing suits that are custom made in Brazil and has hired a lighting designer who has worked with Billie Eilish. It is a sauna boom reminiscent of the glut of boutique fitness studios that flooded the market in the wake of the success of SoulCycle. It used to be that you would go to a gym and it was outrageous to go to an expensive group class, says Jafari. But now there are 99 boutique fitness concepts in a 4 mile radius. Still, there are not as many as the peak days. Pre pandemic, not every boutique fitness studio survive, let alone thrive like Solidcore and Tracy Anderson. Competition is always something we are aware of, says Emily Bent, Othership's co founder and director of marketing. The saturation in North America for bath houses is not even close to what it is in Europe. We're starting an industry and rising tides and all that. While the message from founders blissed out on 180 degree heat is one of bringing together community and good vibes, the reality can be cutthroat. Consider the case of Bathhouse. Probably the most well known of the businesses in the second wave of New York City sauna culture. Co founders opened their first location in Williamsburg in 2019 and a second in Flatiron in 2024, both featuring sauna, steam rooms, warm pools and cold plunges. Goodman, the founder, saw the company's more is more approach through the model of working on large event production. You think like an experienced designer, so going to Bathhouse is not a monolithic experience, but more of a choose your own adventure. When it first opened, Bathhouse was jokingly called the Bitcoin Bathhouse as they used the heat generated from mining to warm the tubs.

[Ben Thompson]

Speaking of Meta, we got to talk about Meta because they just laid off 1500 people in their Metaverse division. Obviously 1500 people is a ton. That's a lot of people. But they still have 14,000 people working on Reality Labs. So there's a question about like, what exactly will they be doing? How much does this represent a shift? The Reality Labs team work on a bunch of different stuff and it started as sort of, you know, the Oculus acquisition of VR headset. Then all of a sudden it was meta Ray Bans, which is, you know, mostly just a camera, certainly not a VR headset, but has it feels like it's sold many more units. I actually don't know the precise numbers.

[Tony]

I'm super curious how many of those 1500 people will end up working in VR as in their next somewhere else. Yeah, it's just like, can the industry really absorb that, absorb that many people?

[Ben Thompson]

A year after the name change in Pivot, the Journal reported that the company's flagship Metaverse product called Horizon Worlds was failing to catch on with users. It had less than 200,000 monthly active users and most so called Worlds were never visited by anyone at all.

[Tony]

I still believe Meta is a fantastic name for Meta.

[Ben Thompson]

Yeah. Do you think Salesforce should rename? I wanted to ask Benioff that yesterday if he's ever just going to go Force Metal Force Metal Force would be a good name. Meta has been ramping up AI spending on AI, pushing its capital expenditure to 72 billion last year with plans to accelerate that spending this year. It's also doled out offers worth tens of millions, tens and hundreds of millions of dollars to AI researchers and engineers, and recently acquired a Singapore based AI startup called Manus for more than 2 billion companies. Ray Ban Smart glasses equipped with AI have also started to take off. The company sold more than 2 million pairs and has delayed the rollout of its newest glasses in Europe as it struggled to keep up with demand in the us. The sort of Ben Thompson takeaway from this was that even though Mark Zuckerberg has effectively complete control over Meta and can rename the company and move very aggressively and acquire big companies, at the end of the day he does respond to shareholders. And the shareholders have been watching the Reality Labs losses pile up billions every year. And at some point, if you have a new sort of big money pit initiative that's AI and you're going to spend tens of billions there, you have to sort of make a sacrifice or at least show the shareholders that you're refocusing on the new thing.

[Tony]

I want to go back briefly to the sauna thing. I didn't get a chance to give a take. I am extremely bullish on Americans starting to sweat more because the evidence is so clear that if you use asana every day, you will probably extend your health span lifespan. It's heavily, heavily studied because of how popular it's been in the Nordics for like decades and decades. So very bullish on sweating. One of the things that's interesting though is that New York is like the center of consumption, right? People have tiny apartments, so they're just constantly consuming, right, food, exercise, shopping, etc. But I don't think it's representative of the way that the Americans will like sweat broadly because you can get a sauna for like a couple grand. And so all these bath houses are like a few hundred dollars. And so I think for some people they want the social experience, whereas for me, I don't like the. I'm not really like that into the.

[Ben Thompson]

You don't like talking in the sauna.

[Tony]

I do like talking in the sauna. We've obviously had our sauna wars. Our sauna wars are. I guess we were talking too loudly in the sauna the other day because this guy just absolutely snapped. He was a bit of an angry elf. But anyways, most consumers are going to be looking like, I can go and buy a sauna for $2,000 and I.

[Ben Thompson]

Have space for it because I have a two car garage and a backyard and maybe a pool. And for the average American that has a little.

[Tony]

Last time I lived in an apartment, this was like six or so years ago. Sure, I had a whole cold plunge that I snuck into my apartment.

[Ben Thompson]

No way.

[Tony]

Sauna just. I had a two bedroom loft.

[Ben Thompson]

You had a sauna too?

[Tony]

No, no, I had two. I had a two bedroom. I had a two bedroom loft and one of them, I just put a. It was just like cold plunge on a wooden floor.

[Ben Thompson]

That's insane.

[Tony]

And I had a sauna. Of course, I don't think you're allowed to bring like a mini swimming pool.

[Ben Thompson]

If it leaks, you're going to destroy the whole.

[Tony]

I actually, I did. They did eventually tell me I had to get rid of it. There was a leak in the building and they went in to look. You have to understand as you, you know, for other ship in these companies, like you have to go I think into dense areas where people don't have a lot of space to have saunas because a lot of people are going to look and say, I either have one in my gym or I can, you know, people can go and just, even if they don't have two grand, you can use a firm and like you're effectively paying a couple hundred bucks a month for, for like a private experience.

[Dylan]

Yeah.

[Tony]

In other news, Beijing has told Chinese firms to stop using CrowdStrike. If you didn't have, if you didn't have reason to start using CrowdStrike. This is a pretty good.

[Ben Thompson]

Is this the TVPN effect? They saw us run a couple ads over in Beijing and they were like, yeah, they're too powerful.

[Tony]

Too powerful.

[Ben Thompson]

They're too powerful.

[Tony]

Apparently this is already very tiny business for CrowdStrike. So not super impactful. But in other news, OpenAI's number one hater in the entire world, Nick, is.

[Ben Thompson]

Back on the timeline.

[Tony]

He was the OpenAI hater of the year last year. Yeah, he's probably, he's really gunning for it again this year.

[Ben Thompson]

His camera roll is all just pictures of trying to go for a double his camera rolls just all Sam Altman photos for sure. OpenAI and Sam Altman backing a new bold take on fusing humans and machines. It's called Merge Labs. We've heard about this before. We talked to Rob Toews. They now have $252 million in the bank and an all star all star crew.

[Tony]

Sam Altman wrote in 2017 a piece called the Merge. I'll read and short a few paragraphs from it. He said more important than that, unless we destroy ourselves first, superhuman AI is going to happen. Genetic enhancement is going to happen. Brain machine interfaces are going to happen. It is a failure of human imagination and human arrogance to assume that we will never build things smarter than ourselves. The Merge can take a lot of forms. We could plug electrodes into our brains or we could all just become really close friends with a chatbot. But I think Emerge is probably our best case scenario of two different species both want the same thing and only one can have it in this case to be the dominant species on the planet and beyond they're going to have a conflict. Imagine if dolphins Imagine if Benioff has been working with the dolphins to secretly help them merge and they're like in a. In a crazy dolphin human race to see who can merge first because sent.

[Ben Thompson]

Dolphins neuralinks created dolphins just like generate B2B SaaS product ideas constantly Billionaire rams.

[Tony]

Owner Stan Cronky becomes America's biggest private land owner.

[Ben Thompson]

For Stan, let's Stan, are you Stan?

[Tony]

I guess he's listening. He's listening to the show I'm a Stan.

[Ben Thompson]

Stan. Stan.

[Tony]

Buying nearly 1 million acres of new Mexico ranch land farmland investing becomes increasingly popular especially now that you know, maybe somebody comes in and wants to build the data center on your farm and pay, you know, 10 times what you paid for it. At 2.7 million acres, Karonke's holdings are larger than Yellowstone national park or the equivalent roughly 2 million football fields. According to the trade publication Singleton Ranch's transaction is the largest land purchase in the US in more than a decade. Land is back back on the menu. Let's go.

[Ben Thompson]

Speaking of land, Greenland is in the news of course. Dylan says this is the equivalent of affordability in Greenlandic politics. And he shares a screenshot here. It's a quote from a Greenlander who says I hunt whales and seals in the United States. They think whales and seals are cute and shouldn't be hunted. That's what I'm afraid of. Don't bring your fear of hunting. Don't bring o whales.

[Tony]

I like this. He's looking for a carve out. He's looking for a carve out.

[Ben Thompson]

Let me keep hunting my whales. Let me keep hunting my seals.

[Tony]

What if. What if he's selling the blubber out the back door to power data centers?

[Ben Thompson]

We got flashbangs. We'll throw a flashbang in the ocean, all the whales will be doing this.

[Tony]

I think I'm against whale hunting. They're just so majestic.

[Ben Thompson]

Majestic? That's a synonym for cute.

[Tony]

But seals, you're the problem. Oh, you don't like seals? I have deep beef with seals. Why? Growing up surfing in the cold waters in Northern California, seals will would mess with me. I'd be out alone surfing in Northern California. Water is very sharky. And these things are the dogs of the sea. So they'll run up and they would just slam into me and all of a sudden I think I'm getting attacked by a shark. And then I'd just be in the water by myself. Beefing with a seal.

[Ben Thompson]

This is an incredible skill issue for you. Oh, seals annoying me. Oh, I need seals to be hunted. It's fine. Hang out with the seals. Let the seals mess with you. They're the dogs of the sea. Thank you so much for tuning in. Have a wonderful, great rest of your day.

[Tony]

We'll see you very soon.

[Ben Thompson]

Goodbye.