Dan Wang's Annual Letter, Meta Acquires Manus, Nvidia's $20B Groq Deal | Diet TBPN

Summary

TBPN Diet | January 6, 2026

Episode Title: Dan Wang's Annual Letter, Meta Acquires Manus, Nvidia's $20B Groq Deal
Hosts: John Coogan & Jordi Hays (with significant participation from Justin Kan and Alex Blania)

---

Episode Overview

In this lively and insight-packed episode, the TBPN crew dives deep into three of the tech world's hottest topics as 2026 kicks off:

• Dan Wang’s influential Annual Letter and its reflections on the US-China-AI landscape
• Meta’s headline-worthy acquisition of Manus AI
• Nvidia’s jaw-dropping $20 billion deal for Groq
  The team contextualizes these stories within broader themes—AI competition, industrial policy, corporate maneuvers—and peppers the discussion with characteristic humor and sharp asides about everything from cultural memes to their favorite drinks.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Dan Wang's 2025 Annual Letter: US, China, and the AI "Future"

[00:03 – 08:07]

• Dan Wang’s Framing:

  • Wang rejects the “AI race” framing, noting, “A race has a definite ending... he doesn’t think it’s something you can win.” (Alex Blania, [00:03])
  • He argues for a more nuanced understanding of US/China competition.

• Reindustrialization & Energy Bottleneck:

  • The US excels at building massive data centers—“Dan’s saying we’re very good at making data centers. Haven’t been so good on the energy side.” (Justin Kan, [02:50])
  • US energy generation growth lagged at 0.1% per year (2008-2021), but is improving (2.4% in 2025, 1.7% in 2026, per EIA).
  • Yet this is still far behind China, which is growing at 6%—“China now accounts for one-third of global electricity consumption and contributed 54% of global demand growth in 2024.” (Alex Blania, [04:48])

• Strategic Weaknesses:

  • China lags behind the West in semiconductors and aviation, and possibly space travel. “They don’t have equivalent [to SpaceX, Boeing, Airbus].” (Justin Kan, [05:22])

• Industrial Character – ‘Who’s the Musk of Energy?’

  • The US lacks an iconic, charismatic leader in the energy sector—“Who’s the Elon Musk of energy is something I keep coming back to.” (Alex Blania, [04:17])

• AI Hype vs. Reality, Market Scepticism:

  • AI “bubble” predictions were premature: “If you were long AI broadly in 2025, you did very well.” (Alex Blania, [06:10])
  • Wang critiques repeated ‘Sputnik moments’ (i.e., calls to arms) without serious follow-through—“At one point we were memeing like Sputnik moments for Sputnik moments.” (Alex Blania, [07:02])
  • “The more that people use the term, the less likely that society spurs itself into taking it seriously.” (Justin Kan, [07:11])

• Underestimating China:

  • Wang: “Too many Western elites retain hope that China’s efforts will run out of fuel by its own accord... I don’t think they are likely to break China’s humming tech engine.” (Quoted by Alex Blania, [07:24])

---

2. Meta Acquires Manus AI: Strategic Move or Opportunistic Grab?

[08:08 – 18:05]

• Deal Overview:

  • Meta acquires Manus AI, rumored for $4-6B—the “fastest to $100 million ARR in history. Just eight months.” (Alex Blania, [13:06])
  • Benchmark “likely 8 to 12 in under a year” on their investment.

• Cultural Ramifications:

  • Reference to Bill Gurley as having “the best voice in venture, hands down.” (Justin Kan, [08:13])
  • Meta’s Alex Wang: “Excited to announce that Manus AI has joined Meta to help us build Jack Randall.” (quoted [08:25])

• Why did Meta Buy?

  • Manus brings high-quality agent tech. “They know really, really well how to build good agents and maybe that’s enough.” (Alex Blania, [18:05])
  • “Nick Dobo says best tool set on the market. They bought a Swiss army knife to hand any AI model... virtual browsers, VMs, code interpreter, PowerPoint slides, app builder connectors.” (Justin Kan, [18:16])
  • Former Meta product leader quips: “I left Meta because I made a bet that models were going to be commoditized and the value would be in the products on top of the models... As always, I was right.” (Alex Blania, [18:28])

• Integration Speculation:

  • “I expect that Manus type workflows will be heavily integrated into ‘Hey Meta’... ‘Hey, build me a slide deck to help me prep for my final later.’” (Justin Kan, [15:50])
  • Debate on whether Meta can deliver a “personal superintelligence”—true AI agents that act for users, not just answer questions.

• Corporate Culture & Politics:

  • Yann Lecun (Meta’s legendary AI chief scientist) “was very, very salty over Alex Wang coming in and becoming his boss effectively.” (Alex Blania, [18:44])
  • “It is an odd, I mean it’s a bold choice to put Yann Lecun on the bench. He’s a...Turing award winner. He’s like one of the greatest AI researchers in history.” (Alex Blania, [19:05])

---

3. Nvidia's $20 Billion Acquisition of Groq: Strategic Masterstroke?

[19:26 – 23:15]

• Deal Details:

  • Nvidia, led personally by Jensen Huang, acquires Groq for $20B. “What a chat. Send the $20 billion wire. Sir, we haven’t fully executed the docs. ‘I’m good for my 20 billion.’” (Justin Kan, [21:17])
  • Store of how fast and personally driven the deal was—closed in less than two weeks.

• Windfalls & Gossip:

  • “There’s been a bunch of chatter... Groq employees made out in the Nvidia deal...in short they did very, very well...sounds like in general everyone sort of got paid. It sounds like Chamath did very well on this. He was a very early [investor].” (Alex Blania, [20:18]-[20:46])

• Strategic Analysis:

  • “Is this offense or defense for Jensen?” (Justin Kan, [22:42])
  • Hosts discuss the custom silicon “long game”—chip development is a 5–10-year bet that you hope aligns with market needs:

    "You sort of like point your bow and then you release the arrow and then you just, like, wait like five or 10 years." (Alex Blania, [21:25])

• Industry Implications:

  • Nvidia flush with capital, able to make multi-billion-dollar speculative bets; reference Jensen as akin to running the “biggest company” with the ability to “fire [capital] around at places.” (Alex Blania, [22:44])

---

4. Food Delivery App Scandal: Dark Patterns & Exploiting Desperation

[23:11 – 29:13]

• Viral Reddit Post Break Down:

  • A supposed backend engineer at a “major food delivery app” claims the “priority fee and driver benefit fee go 100% to the company. The driver sees 0% of it.” (Justin Kan quoting Reddit, [23:11])
  • “Desperation score” for drivers: If a driver consistently accepts low-value jobs, algorithm tags them as “high desperation” and gives them crappier orders, reserving good jobs for casuals to hook them early.

• Manipulative Practices:

  • “We generated millions in pure profit just by making the standard service worse, not by making the premium service better.” (Alex Blania, [25:31])
  • The ‘benefit fee’ is allegedly funneled into corporate lobbying, not driver pay.

• Hosts’ Take:

  • “If you’re using a delivery app, you should assume the delivery app is trying to get as much money as possible from you.” (Justin Kan, [28:26])
  • Justin reflects on the lost art of tipping and the UX tricks companies use to create good feels for customers—“I appreciate the art of tipping...having this sort of digital intermediary that is messing with that relationship sucks.” (Justin Kan, [28:41])

---

5. Parenting, Work-Life Dissonance, and the ‘Dan Bilzerian Method’

[31:48 – End]

• Reading a Viral Post on Parenting Dissonance:

  • A dad wails over guilt for not enjoying time with his young son:

    “The ideal amount of time I would like to spend playing with my kids is probably about 70 to 140 minutes a week...My feelings of love towards them are perfectly strong, but I have to watch them or entertain them for more than about 10 minutes, my blood starts to boil. I just want to be working or accomplishing something.” (Anonymous Dad, [31:48])

• Cultural Commentary:

  • “Skill issue. Skill issue. I love Justin, but skill issue. You have to use what I call the Dan Bilzerian method [with boys].” (Alex Blania, [34:17])
  • “If you’re not satisfied with where you are in life as a man whose job is to provide for his family, if you’re not satisfied with your life, you will not be satisfied by parenting.” (Justin Kan, [35:10])

• Notable Quote:

  • “Four year old boys have the mind of Dan Bilzerian effectively. And so if you adopt the mind of Dan Bilzerian, you will have a very enjoyable time with your four year old son.” (Alex Blania, [35:10])

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Overuse of ‘Sputnik Moment’:

  “The more that people use the term, the less likely that society spurs itself into taking it seriously.”
  — Justin Kan, [07:11]

• On Meta's Product Strategy:

  “This can potentially give us some clarity... One version of personal superintelligence is you have AI agents that can go out on the Internet and do things for you.”
  — Justin Kan, [14:22]

• Corporate Drama:

  “He was very salty over Alex Wang coming in and becoming his boss effectively. ...It’s a bold choice to put Yann Lecun on the bench.”
  — Alex Blania, [18:44] & [19:05]

• Jensen Huang’s Swagger:

  “Send the $20 billion wire. Sir, we haven’t fully executed the docs. ‘I’m good for my 20 billion.’”
  — Justin Kan, [21:17]

• On Delivery App Exploitation:

  “The system deliberately stops showing [desperate drivers] high paying orders. The logic is, why pay this guy $15 for a run when we know he’s desperate enough to do it for $6?”
  — Reading from viral Reddit post, [25:53]

---

Selected Timestamps for Important Segments

• Dan Wang’s AI Letter and Energy Bottleneck: [00:03] – [05:22]
• Meta Acquires Manus—What it Means: [08:08] – [16:49]
• Nvidia Buys Groq—Deal Anatomy and Implications: [19:26] – [23:15]
• Food Delivery Dark Patterns Exposed: [23:11] – [29:13]
• Parenting Real Talk – The Dad Dilemma: [31:48] – [35:10]

---

Tone & Atmosphere

The banter is sharp and irreverent, the tone somewhere between keen industry analysis and startup-bro happy hour. While the hosts don’t shy from poking fun (“Who’s the Elon Musk of energy?”), they deliver trenchant analysis on the deeper implications of these megadeals and sociotechnical shifts. The episode, peppered with internet and Substack references, delivers for both tech insiders and curious bystanders.

---

In Summary

This episode weaves together the state of AI and geopolitics (with Dan Wang's annual letter as a prism), the strategic motives behind big tech M&A (Meta/Manus, Nvidia/Groq), and the real-world impact of technological scale—from the plight of gig workers to existential questions of parenting in a hyper-competitive age. It’s equal parts industry insider, technological philosophy, and culture-meets-product energy, capturing the spirit of tech in early 2026.

Transcript

[Justin Kan]

It is so good to be back.

[Alex Blania]

It's amazing. Ton of stories to get through because so many things have built up. The Grok deal, the Manus deal, Dan Wong's annual letter. There's so many different things that we're going to take you through today. We should kick it off with Dan Wong's annual letter. His 20, 25 letter. Dan came on his show during his book tour for his, you know, excellent book that sort of reset the narrative around the AI competition. He doesn't like the phrase AI race. Yeah, he likes. He doesn't think it's something that you can win. A race has a defense, like a definite ending. There's a finish line. Whoever crosses it first wins.

[Justin Kan]

And that's where a lot of super prefers to say that the US and China need to win, win the AI future. And this echoes what Gurley has said. Too true. Obviously, at the time, he was coming out in defense of Manus Benchmark's investment in Manus.

[Alex Blania]

Totally.

[Justin Kan]

He's like, I don't know what the AI race is.

[Alex Blania]

I mean, he looks great. Now that Manus is an American company, it's a Meta property. So, you know, and I mean, the Manus team, of course, it was from China, but quickly moved to Singapore and now Menlo park, presumably.

[Justin Kan]

No, I think they're going to stay.

[Alex Blania]

Stay there. But still, I mean, you have to imagine that a lot of the talent migrates and it's like a fully American controlled asset, essentially. Now that it's controlled by America and Meta and Mark Zuckerberg.

[Justin Kan]

Let's take it over to Tyler. Let's check in with Tyler.

[Alex Blania]

Oh, yeah. What are we checking in with Tyler?

[Justin Kan]

The chat Mrs. Tyler.

[Alex Blania]

Oh, they just missed Tyler. How you doing?

[Justin Kan]

Also, so we signed a massive contract extension with Tyler. He hasn't. He's not technically a college dropout yet, but he may as well be a gap year. It's a gap decade. It's a gap century. Tyler's parents, if you guys are watching, I'm just joking around.

[Alex Blania]

It's the age of gap years. We're in the age of gap years. We're in the age of research, and we're also in the age of gap years. And so we thank Tyler for sticking around, hanging out with us. We're going to have a lot of fun this year. So the Dan Wong piece, we should read through some of it. He is reflecting on the AI future, what it takes to win the AI future. We've seen this amazing, just, you know, this remarkable march of research. The models are getting better, all the benchmarks are getting better. You know, completely dominated. Then we're seeing the massive hyperscaler build outs where we were reflecting on like, what does reindustrialization mean? What does American dynamism mean? What does this idea of like, America needs to build big things, we need to be able to build big things, new bridges, we need to build high speed rail. And, and we've failed at a lot of that, obviously, but we've, we've succeeded at building multibillion dollar data centers. No. Yes. Podcast, Yes. I mean truly, truly. Media has been a cultural export of America for a very long time. Yeah.

[Justin Kan]

So Dan's saying we're good, we're very good at making data centers. Haven't been so good on the energy side.

[Alex Blania]

My big question was like, we've been talking a big game about energy being a bottleneck for AI for a long time. It wasn't truly the bottleneck with bottleneck was chips and then data centers and then just moving the energy around. But it feels like the last year we were just kind of shuffling energy assets around the board and that's why we saw energy prices go up where if just supply and demand, if we'd been building a ton of energy infrastructure, well, supply would have gone up and actual prices would have fallen or at least stayed flat because all the net new data centers would just be using the new energy infrastructure. But that's not exactly what happened. So from 2008 to 2021, America's annual growth in energy production was 0.1% annually. Really, really bad. Not good. But it is getting better. The EIA's December 2025 Short Term Energy Outlook projects generation growth of 2.4% in 2025 and 1.7% in 2026. That's like, you know what, 20 times higher. That's great. But also that doesn't feel like, oh, fast takeoff. We're going to be doing 10% jumps. We're going to be really, really ramping up here. So it feels like there's something that still needs to change. And then simultaneously you, you have this massive political backlash to rising energy prices. And I think most importantly, we've identified some of the characters that drive AI. We know Dario, we know Demis, we know Sam. Right. We also have identified a lot of the people who are running the Neo clouds or doing build out of new data centers. We don't really know the characters. Who's the Elon Musk of energy is something I keep coming back to. There's no one who's really become the main energy guy or Dow. Right?

[Justin Kan]

Yeah, I would say, like Chase at Crusoe is potentially a contender. Totally unclear yet if he's a Joe Rogan CEO.

[Alex Blania]

Other, other crazy stats. So while we're growing at like 2.4%, 1.7%, China is consistently putting up 6% growth. China now accounts for one third of global electricity consumption and contributed 54% of global demand growth in 2024. So more than half of the growth in demand came from China. There are two fields in which China is substantially behind the west, semiconductors and aviation. So there is one that I think he missed and maybe you put it in aviation, but I think, I think space travel, like they're way behind on.

[Justin Kan]

On rocketry, SpaceX, the Boeing, Airbus, they don't, they don't have equivalent.

[Alex Blania]

And maybe you put SpaceX and Blue Origin in the same category as Boeing and Airbus. I particularly don't, I think of them as separate technologies and I think of this as potentially like the third category that China's way behind in. Obviously we were tracking the performance benchmarks of the models, then we were tracking the diffusion. What's the actual revenue? Is it sticky? There was a lot of risk of, oh, this company comes up with some AI app, they ramp to 100 million. Will it stick around or will they just get swept by the wayside and people will go back to doing it the old way or they'll use something else or they'll pay way less?

[Justin Kan]

I don't think that that is a public perception. I would say, like the most popular.

[Alex Blania]

Topic, well, beat the bubble will pop in 2025. Allegations like, like, at the start of the year, people were predicting that like, OpenAI would not be, would not do an up round, for example, and like, that just didn't happen. It was like all up rounds for basically all the major players. Like, if you were long AI broadly in 2025, you did very well. In the other section of the Dan Wong piece, he talks about competition and I thought this was just an interesting element to read. He talks about Sputnik moments. One might have expected the US to have roused itself after this bout of the trade war, but there have been too many declarations of Sputnik moments without commensurate action. I hadn't thought about that, but at one point we were memeing like Sputnik moments for Sputnik moments. Remember? Do you remember this?

[Justin Kan]

Yeah, that was super. That must have been like a year ago.

[Alex Blania]

Yeah, it was like a year ago or something.

[Justin Kan]

But.

[Alex Blania]

But you know, when it becomes like a meme that we're like, you know, everything's a Sputnik moment, like it really is overused.

[Justin Kan]

Yeah. So Barack Obama declared a Sputnik with China's high speed rail. Mark Warner repeated with Huawei's 5G. Marc Andreessen called it with deep seek. The more that people use the term, the less likely that society spurs itself into taking it seriously.

[Alex Blania]

It's a good point. Right? Because I think the US continues to systematically underrate China's industrial progress for several reasons. First, too many Western elites retain hope that China's efforts will run out of fuel by its own accord. Industrial progress will be weighed down by demographic drag, the growing debt load, or maybe even a political. Political collapse. I won't rule these out, but I don't think they are likely to break China's humming tech engine.

[Justin Kan]

Yeah, it was interesting because you could say this was a 2025 letter, but this felt like the best possible summary of the geopolitical economic dynamic between China and the US Anyways, go read it. But he called Europe cooked and chopped. Let's talk about Manus.

[Alex Blania]

This all started because Bill Gurley was an investor in Manus. And whenever.

[Justin Kan]

And I think Bill Gurley has the best voice in venture.

[Alex Blania]

I agree.

[Justin Kan]

The best voice in venture, hands down. Who's got a better voice than Bill Gurley?

[Alex Blania]

It's amazing.

[Justin Kan]

He's got pipes.

[Alex Blania]

So this all started with Alex Wang over at Meta, formerly Scale AI, he says excited to announce that Manus AI has joined Meta to help us build Jack Randall.

[Justin Kan]

In the X chat, did anyone check on Delian?

[Alex Blania]

Oh, yeah.

[Justin Kan]

Yeah.

[Alex Blania]

That's funny because Jack worked with Delian.

[Justin Kan]

Yeah, I mean, it really is.

[Alex Blania]

Hey. Hey. Delian might be taking a victory lap because if Miami comes back because of this wealth packs thing, Delian totally vindicated.

[Justin Kan]

Also that and Patrick Collison was bull busy. So did Del capitulate? Did they.

[Alex Blania]

No, no. He gets to play musical chairs. He's like, what? I never said anything about Manus. I don't know about that. It's fine. It's fine investment. It makes sense. Dan Wonk says the most read essay from Silicon Valley this year was AI 2027. The five authors who come from the AI safety world outline a scenario in which superintelligence wakes up in 2027. A decade later, it decides to annihilate humanity with biological weapons. My favorite detail in the report is that humanity would persist in a genetically modified form form after the AI reconstructs creatures that are quote to humans what corgis are to wolves. It's hard to know what to make of this document. He's talking about AI 2027, he says, because the authors keep tucking important context into footnotes, repeatedly saying that they do not endorse a prediction.

[Justin Kan]

He talks about humor within tech and the ccp. Yeah, yeah, I want to hear that. He gives a line from Sam Altman. That is, Sam says, I think that AI will probably most likely sort of lead to the end of the world, but in the meantime, there will be great companies created with serious machine learning. I mean, that is so good.

[Alex Blania]

It is fun.

[Justin Kan]

That is really funny. That's really fun. This is the key problem for the tech industry in 2026 is like, how you need to paint a more. Like the founders need to paint a more optimistic vision for AI because it's not working right now because people see their energy bill going up or they even hear about the idea of their energy bill going up, and then they see some of the slop. The slop is getting better, Right. You look at some of the videos coming out of the slop Venezuela debacle, right? People in all types of roles are worried about job loss. And, you know, they see the investment going into AI and they're just scared, right? And so when you, you do quotes like this, whether they're serious or not, saying, I think that AI will probably lead to the end of the world, people are starting to ask, like, wait, why are we automating all of this in the first place? Can we just stop? Right? Like, I don't actually. I don't want my job automated. I'll keep doing it. The industry needs to figure out how to paint a more optimism, you know, because people, you know, maybe in 10 years reminiscing about a time when young people didn't just have shelter and an income provided for them, they had to fend for themselves. Right. And so in the 20th century, it was like, you know, it was easy mode being a politician or a CEO, because you could go into a room of business executives and head, okay, you currently spend, like, if you were running like an AI company.

[Alex Blania]

Yeah.

[Justin Kan]

Before the Internet.

[Alex Blania]

Yeah.

[Justin Kan]

Before everything was recorded. You could go and say, like, hey, you currently spend $1 billion a year on payroll. Yeah, I'm going to be able to reduce that by 80%.

[Alex Blania]

Yeah.

[Justin Kan]

There's going to. You're going to be able to conduct lots of layoffs and then you could go on TV and say, like, AI is going to create an abundant future and that in the, in the clips wouldn't kind of cross pole. Politicians could go talk to a labor union here and then go talk to business leaders here. You just didn't.

[Alex Blania]

I mean, we see this on our show where people come on and we're all having a conversation and we're all like, oh, yeah, this makes sense. We all have the context. And then a clip goes out and people are quote reading like out of context and being like, oh, I hate this. I hate what they're saying. And we're like, well, we weren't trying to get them to say something controversial. But they.

[Justin Kan]

Before that, before you hate that you say it. Go back and watch every episode of TBP 2025 before you criticize, just to get some context.

[Alex Blania]

I don't know. I don't know if the AGI pill. People are so AGI pill that they think we're going to defeat the speed of light. Every like, physicist I've ever talked to has always said, like, no, the, like, that one holds forever. That's not like, oh, quantum computing, it can work, but it's a couple of decades away. Or fusion. Or fusion. Like all these other things are like somewhat engineering problems. I think the speed of light is like going to be around forever. I don't know.

[Justin Kan]

Just get a faster horse. It's the year of the fire horse.

[Alex Blania]

It is?

[Justin Kan]

Yeah.

[Alex Blania]

What does that mean?

[Justin Kan]

Wait, I thought they 20, 26 Chinese year of the fire.

[Alex Blania]

But are they adding superlatives to the animals? I thought it was just horse. Sn, snake, dragon. And then they rotated through those. You can.

[Justin Kan]

It's the year we upgraded animals.

[Alex Blania]

It's amazing.

[Justin Kan]

Fire horse.

[Alex Blania]

It's amazing. So Ramp Labs modeled it out. They did a little analysis on the Meta acquisition of Manus AI. They said the estimated price is 4 to 6 billion dollars based on AI M&A comps. It's the fastest to hunt to 100 million ARR in history. Just eight months. Wow. And benchmark likely 8 to 12 in under a year.

[Justin Kan]

People were kind of putting the deal between 2 and 3 billion, I guess. Let's get in. Let's get it. What was, I guess what was your immediate reaction? The thing that I was excited about is this is Zuck buying a product that people love.

[Alex Blania]

Well, that's. But I like your take. But Mark Zuckerberg has done a number of talent acquisitions.

[Justin Kan]

Yeah, that's what, that's what I'm saying. So, so. But he just went, he just went through a talent acquisition era. Yes, he, he, they, they. They're the, you know, biggest investor in scale. Right. But. But they didn't acquire the product.

[Alex Blania]

Yeah, yeah.

[Justin Kan]

Zuck has been saying, you know, Trump, you know, beating the personal superintelligence drum.

[Alex Blania]

Yeah.

[Justin Kan]

It's been very unclear what that means.

[Alex Blania]

Yeah.

[Justin Kan]

Manus has been building high quality agents. They're sort of time and time again I talk to people that are just very excited about Manus. They're like, just use Manus. Like it's the year of the agent.

[Alex Blania]

Yeah.

[Justin Kan]

Like, use it. You'll see the future.

[Alex Blania]

Sure.

[Justin Kan]

And so just given Zuck's history from a product acquisition standpoint, I get excited because this can potentially give us some clarity around what they're like. One version of personal superintelligence is you have AI agents that can go out on the Internet and do things for you. Yeah, they can go, I think in the context of meta, I think about like shopping, right. You see something on Instagram that you like and you can, you could trigger an agent effectively. Like, go find this product. Like, you see a car that you like, go find this product.

[Alex Blania]

The elusive GT3RS GT3 bets.

[Justin Kan]

Yeah, yeah. Basically, like you see, make any image or video shoppable.

[Alex Blania]

And in fact, I would probably argue that LLMs in the chat form, where you have a bunch of information with a knowledge cut off, baked into some big model llama 4 and it's vended through the Instagram search box that you choose chat with that just. It can never fully satisfy the vision of personal superintelligence. A personal assistance, something that actually can take actions for you. It feels like. It's incredible. It's amazing. Obviously for knowledge retrieval, it's great, but it was never going to fulfill the real vision there. So this does feel like. I don't know, I would hope that they bake this in, in a really interesting way.

[Justin Kan]

I expect that Manus type workflows will be heavily integrated into a. Hey. When you say, hey, met wearing glasses, like, hey, build me a slide deck to help me prep for my final later.

[Alex Blania]

Right.

[Justin Kan]

And I can imagine like effectively the same product experience that Manus has today will be integrated into like meta AI.

[Alex Blania]

Yeah. There's a lot of areas where it feels very natural for Google to expand into. It feels very natural for Microsoft to expand into Apple to expand into like Apple has a spreadsheet app, right. They have a word processor. They like Meta doesn't really have those. They did meta for meta for Meta at work for a while, but they, they. It. It doesn't this whole idea of like go to an Open Instagram to do your homework feels crazy to me. And the same thing with Open Instagram to build a slide deck. That feels crazy.

[Justin Kan]

Yeah, but, but everything that they're doing in AI, they're. They're piping through Meta AI, the new standalone app.

[Alex Blania]

So maybe they want.

[Justin Kan]

That's a bunch of like, to me, I look at that as like experimental area that you can just put anything into it. I was told by someone close, close to the action that apparently like the, the meta AI trough the, the.

[Alex Blania]

The Vibes. Yeah.

[Justin Kan]

Vibes. Yeah, Meta vibes. Actually, the usage is actually insane.

[Alex Blania]

Really? Yeah. No way.

[Justin Kan]

So, so trough.

[Alex Blania]

Wait, no. But, but I mean it's, it's terrible in the App Store, right? It cannot be ranked.

[Justin Kan]

Even.

[Alex Blania]

Even Sora is not ranking.

[Justin Kan]

Well, one thing with Manus, this is maybe the first acquisition of in the billion, in the billions for a company with a Isle of man domain. Their Manus im. You don't, you don't see a lot of multibillion dollar IM acquisitions.

[Alex Blania]

Isle of Man, Tyler. Is that where you're from?

[Justin Kan]

Isle of Chad?

[Alex Blania]

You? Did you get into looks maxing over the break?

[Justin Kan]

I've been bone smashed.

[Alex Blania]

It looks like you got into looks maxing, doesn't it? Doesn't his mid face ratio look different?

[Justin Kan]

I got to fix my recessed maxilla.

[Alex Blania]

I feel like his maxilla is looking different. It's looking better. He doesn't have the filter on.

[Justin Kan]

Wait, Tyler, go like this. Do that.

[Alex Blania]

The double jaw surgery.

[Justin Kan]

Definitely. They definitely have the filter.

[Alex Blania]

Can someone explain why Meta bought Manus? What's the one pager for Zuck other than we have an F ton of money, so why not? They know really, really well how to build good agents and maybe that's enough.

[Justin Kan]

Nick Dobo says best tool set on the market. They bought a Swiss army knife to hand any AI model wide research, virtual browsers, VMs, code interpreter, PowerPoint slides, app builder connectors. So yeah, they're just good at product.

[Alex Blania]

I left Meta because I made a bet that models were going to be commoditized and the value would be in the products on top of the models. But Metamate and Genai were highly politicized, sucking up all the oxygen in the room. As always, I was right.

[Justin Kan]

Hilarious line. As always, I was right.

[Alex Blania]

Ex meta. People are getting spicy. Do you see the Yann Lecun Financial Times deep dive? We should dig into that. But he took a bunch of shots at a lot of different people. Basically just saying like you can't tell a researcher what to do. Especially not me. He was very, very salty over Alex Wang coming in and becoming his boss effectively.

[Justin Kan]

You got level?

[Alex Blania]

Well, yeah. It is an odd, I mean it's a bold choice to put Yann Lecun on the bench. He's a, I think touring award winner. He's like one of the greatest AI researchers in history.

[Justin Kan]

Where did he land on the Metis list? Tyler?

[Alex Blania]

Tyler, do you have Jan on the list?

[Justin Kan]

Yeah, he actually wasn't on there.

[Alex Blania]

He wasn't on there.

[Justin Kan]

I think we were trying to rage bait him or something. No, yeah, he wasn't on there.

[Alex Blania]

Wow, we are so bad. So there were two major blockbuster deals before the end of the year. Unclear. I mean were both sort of these zombie acquisitions or were any of them just clean, normal deals? I guess we don't fully know. We know that the Grok Nvidia deal was very much a sort of ghost ship type deal where you take the team, take some of the IP license, pay out the investors.

[Justin Kan]

20 billion dollar deal. What should we do with that, John? You hit that app Lovin Gong.

[Alex Blania]

We have a new gong. Everyone look at this gong.

[Justin Kan]

It's bigger than ever. It's bigger than ever. We actually, it's, it's so big. It's so loud. We have to be kind of careful with it. I mean it's, it's a John sized gong. So John is 6, 8. If you're just tuning in for the first time, it's a massive gong and it is a massive gong for a massive company. Fantastic company.

[Alex Blania]

There's been a bunch of chatter, says Dan Premack, about how Grok employees made out in the Nvidia deal. He made some calls to find out and in short they did very, very well. Even if not fully vested. We did hear that. So if you were there a very short amount of time and you were not senior at all, you might have had a bad run. But we'll have to dig into that a little bit more. But it seems like in general everyone sort of got paid. It sounds like Chamath did very well on this. He was a very early.

[Justin Kan]

Oh, I mean Chamath haters were in shamble. We need to check on that.

[Alex Blania]

We need to, we need to check.

[Justin Kan]

If you, if one of your friends doesn't like Chamath, call them. If you haven't heard from them.

[Alex Blania]

Wellness.

[Justin Kan]

I would be worried.

[Alex Blania]

You doing okay? Let's just go hang out, call your friends and golf or something.

[Justin Kan]

Take him out. Touch grass. Yep, touch grass.

[Alex Blania]

Because it's going to be rough for a while. The whole process took less than two weeks and was personally driven by Jensen Huang. No other bidders. Wong wired money early and wanted the deal to close before the new year.

[Justin Kan]

What a chat. Send the $20 billion wire. Sir, we haven't fully executed the docs. I'm good for my 20 billion.

[Alex Blania]

Why is Nvidia buying Grok? Is it a response to the tpu? We'll have to get some of the semi analysis folks on the show to, to dig into it. They've been on this like super crazy roller coaster. I think not a lot of people expected them to wind up at 20 billion. There's two sides to it. One is like when if you read the actual social capital memo that Chamath put together, it's, it makes so much sense to invest at the valuation he did with a lot of the custom silicon, the custom chips, you sort of like point your bow and then you release the arrow and then you just like wait like five or 10 years because like tape out, just tape out. Just like going from the design of the chip to actually getting the first one made takes like 18 months or something like that. Like it takes years. And then, and then you're sort of locked into the specific spec and you're building an ecosystem of developers that can run on your chips. And so like there's this, you make a bet on a certain architecture and there's other firms right now that are betting on like we're going super long, the transformer architecture, we're going super long cerebras like wafer scale where we want to put the whole model on one chip instead of a rack, instead of a rack of a whole bunch of chips. Or we want to be really memory constrained or have a ton of memory or something like that. So you make your decisions about what trade offs you're making and then you kind of just wait and you hope that people come up with a use for what you made.

[Justin Kan]

Is this offense or defense for Jensen?

[Alex Blania]

I mean I think he's like almost like even though he's not literally the richest person in the world, he's running the biggest company. So he has the most capital like fire around at places.

[Justin Kan]

And I think to put this into perspective, this is like us saying investing in a nice camera, right?

[Alex Blania]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Justin Kan]

Like it's not the kind of like it's. We take like Jensen personally led this process. It took him two weeks. He wired early. Yeah, you, you would do the same thing for a nice camera.

[Alex Blania]

Holy effing ass. Not swearing really, really hurts the quality or you can read it on the screen. But he's very sensational. So it's a screenshot from Reddit. It has 36 million views and 207,000 likes. It's a massive post. It says I am a developer for a major food delivery app. The priority fee and driver benefit fee go 100% to the company. The driver sees 0% of it, $0 of it. So here's where it gets conspiratorial. It says I am posting this from a library wi fi on a burner laptop because I am technically under a massive NDA. I don't care anymore. I put in my two weeks yesterday and honestly I hope they sue me. I've been sitting on this for about 8 months just watching the code get pushed.

[Justin Kan]

I hope they sue me, but I'm on a library wi fi with a.

[Alex Blania]

Burner we're going to dig into all the different aspects of this, but this is crazy. Some people in the chat already read this, but we're going to go through it. So just watching the code getting pushed to production I can't sleep at night knowing I helped to build this machine. You guys always suspect the algorithms are rigged against you, but reality. But the reality is actually so much more depressing than the conspiracy theories. I'm a backend engineer. I sit in the weekly Sprint planning meetings where product managers PMs thanks discuss how to squeeze another 0.4% margin out of quote, human assets. That's literally what they call drivers in the database schema. They talk about these people that like they are resource nodes in a video game, not fathers and mothers trying to pay rent. First off, the priority delivery is a total scam. It was pitched to us as a psychological value add. Like I said in the title, when you pay that extra 299 it changes a Boolean flag in the order JSON, but the dispatch logic literally ignores it. It does nothing to speed you up. We actually ran an A B test last year where we didn't speed up the priority orders. We just purposefully delayed non priority orders by five to 10 minutes by making the prior to make the priority ones feel faster. By comparison. Management loved the results. We generated millions in pure profit just by making the standard service worse, not by making the premium service better. Even in this scenario it's like maybe unethical but like this is actually a bull case for paying 299 if the default service is actually slower and 299 gets me 5 to 10 minutes faster.

[Justin Kan]

This made me think they should add A feature that's whenever you get around. I'll take it whenever you get around to it. And so it's just like, it's just like surprising. Really? Really.

[Alex Blania]

I'm feeling lucky.

[Justin Kan]

I mean, no, it's just like the lowest cost version.

[Alex Blania]

Oh yeah, yeah.

[Justin Kan]

You might not get the pizza.

[Alex Blania]

Well, that was like, do you remember that? Or Uber pool those.

[Justin Kan]

Amazon does this for packages too. Oh yeah. You get a credit if you like take it up.

[Alex Blania]

Yeah, yeah, you get like a Kindle store credit or something prime. It's kind of interesting. But anyway, it goes on that to much darker places. He says. But the thing that makes me sick, the main reason I'm quitting is the desperation score. We have a hidden metric driver for drivers that tracks how desperate they are for cash based on their acceptance behavior. If a driver usually logs on at 10pm and accepts every garbage $3 order instantly, without hesitation, the algo tags them as high desperation. Once they are tagged, the system deliberately stops showing them high paying orders. The logic is, why pay this guy $15 for a run when we know he's desperate enough to do it for $6? We save the good tips for the casual drivers to hook them in and gamify their experience while the full timers get grinded into dust. Then there is the benefit fee. You've probably seen that $101.50 regulatory response fee or the driver benefits fee that appeared on your bill after the recent labor laws passed. The wording is designed to make you feel like it's. You're helping the worker. In reality, that money goes straight to a corporate slush fund used to lobby against driver unions.

[Justin Kan]

That's not really how, that's not really how money works.

[Alex Blania]

Right.

[Justin Kan]

Like it's like route, you know, this.

[Alex Blania]

Is earmarked for this.

[Justin Kan]

It's not a guy in linear being like, tag the, you know, revenue from this product. Yeah, send it to that. No, no.

[Alex Blania]

You know what this is, this is, this is like dude logic for being like, oh, oh, I got a $5,000 bonus. This is watch money. I should buy a watch or something like that. Like, like this, this money is for this thing, right? It's like, oh, I got a bonus. I'm buying a car with this. With this money.

[Justin Kan]

I'm extremely frustrated. I will say this like, this feels like. This feels like fan. Yes. Really. What restaurant In. In high school I worked at it. I actually, my first, my first job, first job outside of reffing soccer was picking up cigarette butts with my hands.

[Alex Blania]

Wow.

[Justin Kan]

For two hours. In the morning.

[Alex Blania]

Yeah.

[Justin Kan]

And then I'd go at a restaurant and then I'd go work at a surf shop. Then I actually worked my way up the restaurant picking up the cigarettes, butts.

[Alex Blania]

Off, picking up the cigars.

[Justin Kan]

That was just pure cigarette butts. I was like, I was like, I.

[Alex Blania]

Think I was, wait, people could smoke indoors or something?

[Justin Kan]

It was like a, it was a brewery.

[Alex Blania]

Okay. So people would sit outside, they'd sit.

[Justin Kan]

Outside late at night and so they would go into like a child in.

[Alex Blania]

This smoke filled environment.

[Justin Kan]

I'd go pick up the cigarette butts on my hands. I didn't even wear gloves. Very, very, very gross.

[Alex Blania]

Yeah, disgusting.

[Justin Kan]

If you're using a delivery app, you should assume the delivery app is trying to get as much money as possible from you.

[Alex Blania]

Yes.

[Justin Kan]

And going to psychologically manipulate you totally into feeling better about the order, feeling better about the value, feeling like you're supporting this person.

[Alex Blania]

It's on its way. They're going to do everything they can ux wise to make it a delightful experience.

[Justin Kan]

And as somebody who keep coming back more, I appreciate the, I appreciate the art of tipping. There's an art to it. It's something I've always enjoy doing because I'm always getting a service and I want to at multiple times in my life worked for tips. So having this sort of digital intermediary that is messing with that relationship sucks. Right.

[Alex Blania]

Anyway, the big question is, did he tip his librarian? He was at the library drinking. I think if you're getting drinks at the library, I didn't even know you could get drinks served at the library. That's awesome. I want to go to this library.

[Justin Kan]

So at least hit the librarian with a buzzball.

[Alex Blania]

For sure, for sure.

[Justin Kan]

This is a life hack.

[Alex Blania]

If you have a 30 rack, if you bring a 30 rack into the library, throw it down on the desk.

[Justin Kan]

Throw a buzz ball to the librarian as a sign of respect.

[Alex Blania]

Yeah, librarian go. Bear me beer me, brother. If you're gonna be in here posting on Reddit and chugging beers all day long, tip me. Tip me.

[Justin Kan]

I hope that 2026 is year of the buzz ball.

[Alex Blania]

You're into buzz balls? I was. Buzzballs were post my time. I never had one.

[Justin Kan]

They were big when I was a 4 local guy. And what I appreciate now, in college, people were ready for buzz balls. Like you were trained. You were. No, you were, you were trained in the sense of like if somebody threw a buzzball at you, your arms are staying at the side.

[Alex Blania]

Oh, wait, wait. Oh, this is a, this is like A prank. I'm completely unfamiliar with it.

[Justin Kan]

Wow.

[Alex Blania]

You don't tell me. The culture of the buzz ball.

[Justin Kan]

The culture of the buzz ball. So you get a buzz ball, obviously, like near the checkout and any type of like.

[Alex Blania]

Yes, I've seen. I've seen them. I've seen them.

[Justin Kan]

And so the idea is like you're going to buy the thing that you're actually going to drink. You just pick up one of these. They have a few. It's the equivalent of a few shots of just terrible alcohol.

[Alex Blania]

That's pretty strong for.

[Justin Kan]

Yeah, it's very strong.

[Alex Blania]

It's more than a single serving, though.

[Justin Kan]

Yeah, it's very strong. It's terrible. So it's like a punishment. You would never drink one of these for fun. And you go back to whatever your house or apartment and you throw the ball at somebody. If they catch it, they have to drink it. Normally, if you throw something at somebody and they're just expecting it, they're going to catch it. They're like, what's going on? Of course, in kind of at least the heyday of buzzball, for me, you knew this was something that could. A threat that could come out of nowhere at any time. It could come out at 9am Right? 10am and so you're going to keep your hands down and you're not going to catch it. You'll kind of. You'll sidestep.

[Alex Blania]

Okay, okay. But now what if it smashes into the tv? Are there like buzz ball disasters that happen?

[Justin Kan]

I'm sure there are results in a lot of disaster, destruction and. But now people. People are not. I hit my dear friend Ben Taft. He's a venture capitalist. He's my neighbor.

[Alex Blania]

You hit him with a buzzball?

[Justin Kan]

Hit him with a buzzball.

[Alex Blania]

When? A couple days ago.

[Justin Kan]

Like three weeks ago. He was fully unprepared. Fully unprepared? He just completed.

[Alex Blania]

Well, I would be unprepared.

[Justin Kan]

I was like, now I'm unprepared. I feel bad that you caught this.

[Alex Blania]

Scoot in the chat says I already got the CEO of substack to drink a buzz ball. Is the culture of the buzzball alive to well on college campuses or do we.

[Justin Kan]

I'm not 21. I never had alcohol.

[Alex Blania]

Okay. Oh, yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

[Justin Kan]

Am I just a monster? It's been four years since I became a father and I'm beginning to fear for my soul. The truth is, I just don't like being around kids for very long. Historically, this is not uncommon among fathers, but today it feels almost legal. It's causing me a lot of confusion, confusion and anguish. The ideal amount of time I would like to spend playing with my kids is probably about 70 to 140 minutes a week. Roughly 10 minutes each day, maybe two times a day. Taking breaks from work. My feelings of love towards them are perfectly strong, but I have to watch them or entertain them for more than about 10 minutes. My blood starts to boil. I just want to be working or accomplishing something. I try to be grateful, but it doesn't work. It's 9am this morning. Saturday, January 3rd. It's a sunny warm day here in Austin. My four year old son is begging me to play catch in the street. I was drinking coffee, still waking up, so I didn't really feel like it. But at this age his desire to play is insatiable. He begged and begged, so I conceded and with a smile. I have no problem being a kind and loving father. The problem is I only is only that I do not enjoy it.

[Alex Blania]

Brutal.

[Justin Kan]

Very, very brave to post this. It's not that I'm trying to Max.

[Alex Blania]

But we haven't seen the other side of this. What if his son is like yeah bro, I don't enjoy it either.

[Justin Kan]

What if this is going to be like a generational father son rivalry? Anyways, Justin continues. It's not that I'm trying to maximize my personal pleasure. It just seems wrong that I experience so little delight when my dad friends all claim to experience so much. It was beautiful. We live on a picturesque tree lined block. I am even relatively relaxed from the holiday rest.

[Alex Blania]

Tree lined blocks.

[Justin Kan]

Give it up for tree lined blocks. Playing catch with your son is supposed to be an iconic peak experience. Yet for every single minute on the inside I just don't want to be there. I want to be drinking my coffee in peace. Then I feel guilty and absurdly ungrateful and ashamed when we're done. I know that when he is a teenager I'll long to have these days back. I have all of this perspective rationally and I've been very patient and steadfast trying to digest it, but nothing fixes me emotionally. Am I a terrible person or is my feeling within a certain range of historically normal and it's modern parenting norms that are off. Whether it's my fault or not, I don't even care. I just want to figure this out. Something is wrong and I no longer have the excuse of being new to this.

[Alex Blania]

A lot of people weighed in. 14 million views.

[Justin Kan]

14 million views. Part of what he talked about was like how you can make it as an independent writer or creative. And so I think you have to view this post from the lens of somebody who is their primary focus in life right now is escaping the permanent.

[Alex Blania]

Underclass, but also outside of institutions. I think in general. Skill issue. Skill issue. I love Justin, but skill issue. You have to use what I call the Dan Bilzerian method.

[Justin Kan]

This is parenting of parenting.

[Alex Blania]

The Dan Bilzerian method, especially. This works especially well for four year old boys. So you just assume you're Dan Bilzerian, but instead of entertaining like an Instagram girl, you're entertaining a four year old. So you're like, hey, want to get in a really fast car and drive around fast? They're like, absolutely. That sounds amazing. Want to go look at fine watches? Want to go, you know, want to go look at guns or whatever else? Like, whatever Dan Bilzerian does. Want to learn poker, buddy? I'll be like, absolutely. I want to play cards. Four year old boys have the mind of Dan Bilzerian effectively. And so if you adopt the mind of Dan Bilzerian, you will have a very enjoyable time with your four year old son.

[Justin Kan]

I think if you're not satisfied with where you are in life as a man whose job is to provide for his family, if you're not satisfied with your life, you will not be satisfied by parenting. Thank you for being a part of this. We're so excited for this year. It's going to be a lot of fun.

[Alex Blania]

Huge.

[Justin Kan]

And we hope you have a great Monday.

[Alex Blania]

Talk to you soon. Goodbye.