TBPN Podcast Summary

Episode: ChatGPT’s Three Year Anniversary, OpenAI Partners With Thrive, David Sacks Vs The New York Times | Diet TBPN
Hosts: John Coogan & Jordi Hays
Date: December 2, 2025

Episode Overview

This episode marks the three-year anniversary of ChatGPT. The hosts reflect on how the landscape of AI and technology investing has changed, discuss the growth of tech giants ("Mag 7"), recent lawsuits involving OpenAI and media companies, rivalry among leading AI models, the David Sacks vs. The New York Times controversy, and a wave of analysis around Nvidia, Google's TPUs, and major strategic business moves such as OpenAI’s partnership with Thrive Holdings.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Three Years of ChatGPT: Did Everything Change, or Nothing? (00:00–02:10)

• The hosts reflect humorously on life with and without AI.
  • “It’s been three years since ChatGPT launched. I wanted to reflect a little bit. Everything changed, or maybe nothing changed, or maybe some amount of change in between everything and nothing.” — Jason (00:00)
• The biggest visible shift is not robots in the home, but the normalization of AI in family conversations, especially around holidays.
• Wider public is now discussing AI (bubbles, trillion-dollar valuations), not just tech insiders.
• AI is a major topic even among people with no professional stake in tech.

2. Agentic Commerce and AI Walled Gardens (00:34–02:10)

• OpenAI is aggressively moving into agentic commerce—using AI to drive revenue via recommendations and transactions, especially during the holidays.
• The walled gardens are forming:
  • Example: Wirecutter (owned by NYT) cannot be scraped by ChatGPT due to lawsuit-related restrictions.
  • “If you go to ChatGPT and you say, hey, pull a deep research report… It said, hey, we can’t touch the Wirecutter. Like, it’s off-limits. You gotta head over there yourself, pop open a Chrome tab, brother.” — Jason (01:40)

3. The AI Boom and ‘Mag 7’ Tech Companies (02:24–06:12)

• Discussion of seven leading tech megacaps (Mag 7): Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Meta, Tesla—and potential outsiders like Broadcom.
• The AI-driven growth has dramatically inflated these companies’ values, especially Nvidia (10x stock price in 3 years).
  • “Nvidia was second to last in the mag 7… Today the stock is up over 10x. Basically it’s $4.36 trillion and up today.” — Jason (03:12)
• Questioning future rankings: Is Nvidia’s dominance sustainable?
• Mag 7 skews toward U.S.-based, consumer-recognizable brands.

4. Evolving AI Models: Gemini vs. ChatGPT, Pre-training, and Model Stickiness (06:12–08:53)

• Google’s Gemini app is rapidly catching up to ChatGPT in downloads and engagement.
• Industry debate around whether large-scale pre-training is still useful or if further scaling is running into limits.
• Pre-training isn’t dead: Gemini 3’s strong performance is tied to recent pre-training.
• Product “stickiness” and user experience still the key battlefronts—for all the model prowess, getting and retaining users matters most.
  • “It’s a sprint to actually create an app that is as sticky as ChatGPT, because ChatGPT, the app is fantastic and very, very, very well designed." — Jason (07:40)
• Integration anecdote: Just-in-time knowledge in meetings via Gemini is now possible.

5. David Sacks vs. The New York Times: Tech, Politics, and Media (08:53–16:08)

• The NYT publishes a piece scrutinizing David Sacks' role as AI and crypto czar in the White House.
• Sacks and core tech community push back:
  • "Every time we would prove an accusation false, NYT pivoted to the next allegation. This is why the story has dragged on for five months." — (09:33)
  • Sam Altman (OpenAI): “David Sacks really understands AI and cares about the US leading in innovation. I’m grateful we have him.” (10:15)
• Core debate: Should public officials have deep industry expertise, or is that a conflict of interest?
  • “If people can't have history or friends in a field before leading it, then our leaders won’t know anything.” — Jason (12:10)
• History and function of the "czar" role in U.S. government.
• Discussion on polarization in media coverage, especially in podcasts like ‘All In’.

6. Scaling, Pre-training, and Industry Memes (16:08–18:22)

• Ongoing debate in the industry: Is “scaling” (making models bigger) finished as a source of progress?
• Industry luminaries like Yann Lecun, Ilya Sutskever, Rich Sutton, and Andrej Karpathy weigh in with skepticism toward further LLM scaling.
• “Scaling is over and LLMs are dead. Aw, you’re sweet. Scaling is over and LLMs are a dead end. Hello, Human resources.” — David & Jason (17:02)

7. Nvidia vs. Google TPUs: Semianalysis Sparks Debate (18:22–23:00)

• Seminal analysis publishes a piece claiming Google’s TPU tech is now a substantial threat to Nvidia’s dominance.
• Some in the AI world (including anonymous Twitter accounts) push back, showing clear conflicts of interest and emotional stakes.
  • “You can feel the panic behind the urgency and intensity with which people are defending Nvidia. It feels visceral and quite intense." — Jason (25:18)
• Reduction in Nvidia’s margins likely as competition increases; but overall AI market (TAM) still massive.
• Pre-training slowdown at OpenAI (since GPT-4.0 in May 2024) raises speculation, but there’s no official denial from OpenAI insiders.
• Insider moves: Meta rumored to be negotiating for Google TPUs to increase leverage with Nvidia.

8. OpenAI x Thrive Holdings: A New Kind of Partnership (23:00–25:18)

• Announced partnership: OpenAI takes equity stake in Thrive Holdings; promises to build “frontier technology” from the inside out.
• “We believe the AI paradigm will be different in that some of the most profound transformations will now occur from the inside out.” — Thrive, quoted by Jason (24:00)
• Hosts predict “inside out vs outside in” will be a defining strategic debate for AI business transformation.

9. Tech Stock News: PagerDuty, Nvidia, and Vintage Merch (25:44–28:22)

• PagerDuty’s sharp drop in valuation: strong revenue, low growth means low multiple.
• Fun fact: Nvidia replaced Enron in the S&P 500 on 11/29/2001.
  • “Nvidia replaced Enron in the S&P 500. I was like, there’s no way. Someone has made a terrible mistake on our team and we are doing fake news unironically now. We used to have some fun, but apparently this is real.” — Jason (26:23)
• Light-hearted segment on vintage Nvidia branded shirts and the Silicon Valley dress code.
• Word of the Year: “Rage bait,” as recognized by Oxford Dictionary.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On AI Hype & Bubbles (02:29):
  "I saw multiple newsletters where the whole conceit...was how to talk to your family about the AI bubble...You’ve heard about $1 trillion…that ChatGPT app, they need a trillion dollars to make that thing work." — Jason

• On Nvidia’s Meteoric Rise (03:12):
  "Today the stock is up over 10x. Basically it’s $4.36 trillion and up today." — Jason

• On The Real Change—Discourse (02:10):
  "The one thing that did really change on Thanksgiving was the discourse. The AI narrative has fully arrived to just family and friends." — Jason

• On Tech’s Reluctance to Let Go of Control (25:18):
  “You can feel the panic behind the urgency and intensity with which people are defending Nvidia. It feels visceral and quite intense.” — Jason

• On AI Leaders Doubting Further LLM Progress (17:02):
  "Scaling is over and LLMs are a dead end. Aw, you’re sweet. Scaling is over and LLMs are a dead end. Hello, Human resources.” — David & Jason

• On Mainstreaming of AI in the Home (02:10):
  "I think it's real because if you've been watching your 401k over the last year, you've seen a massive spike and then a recent sell off." — Jason

Key Timestamps

• 00:00 — Reflections on ChatGPT’s societal change (or lack thereof)
• 01:36 — AI’s impact on daily life and walled gardens (Wirecutter/NYT lawsuit)
• 03:12 — Nvidia’s 10x market cap growth, Mag 7 reshuffling
• 07:40 — The product race: Gemini vs. ChatGPT experience
• 09:33 — David Sacks vs. NYT, “hoax factory” and tech elite support
• 12:10 — Requisite expertise in government appointments
• 14:33 — Media polarization and its effect on podcast audiences
• 18:22 — Semianalysis TOE: Nvidia vs. Google TPU battle
• 23:00 — Thrive Holdings and OpenAI “inside out” vs. “outside in” AI transformation debate
• 26:23 — Nvidia replaces Enron in S&P 500; vintage merch nostalgia
• 28:09 — Oxford “rage bait” as Word of the Year

Conclusion

This episode provides a rich survey of how AI has become mainstream not only in technology and finance but also in everyday conversation, how the business of AI is evolving—both in product competition and investment strategy—and how tech, politics, and media are increasingly entangled. The hosts’ tone remains conversational, skeptical, and humorous, providing critical context around the industry’s biggest stories and tensions as they unfold in real time.