Diet TBPN: October 30, 2025

Summary

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TBPN Podcast Summary

Episode: Diet TBPN: October 30, 2025
Hosts: John Coogan & Jordi Hays
Date: October 31, 2025

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Main Theme

This episode dives deep into the latest earnings of tech giants Meta and Google, touching on the sustainability of their advertising-driven business models, their massive AI investments, corporate culture differences, and the growing impact of AI on content and employment. The hosts also riff on trending stories from OpenAI's looming IPO to Nvidia’s meteoric rise, plus a humorous look at robotics, crypto, and viral tech news.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Meta’s Earnings & Advertising Juggernaut

• Meta’s Q3 2025 earnings: Record revenue reported, but shares fell 7% on warnings of rising AI-related CapEx.
  • "Meta reported record revenue in the third quarter. But the technology company warned of accelerating capital expenditures around artificial intelligence sending its stock down 7% now $1.7 trillion company." – Ben Thompson [00:00]
• Reels revenue growth: Outperforming nearly all of US TV advertising.
  • "Standout for me reels at north of a $50 billion run rate." – James Allworth [00:19]
  • "Which is more than all of TV combined." – Ben Thompson [00:23]
• The persistent power of advertising: Hosts question how ad-based cash flows change as companies mature, with reflections on historic capital access fueling today’s tech giants.

2. The Culture & Strategy Behind Meta and Google

• Comparing company cultures:
  • Google is described as “nerdy,” mission-driven (organizing the world’s information), producing offspring like Maps and Waymo.
    • "Google had a very different culture. You know, it's a PhD research project, sort of an academic campus." – Ben Thompson [04:30]
  • Meta’s mission is bluntly characterized as monetizing attention.
    • "What's Meta's mission? Monetize the world's attention." – James Allworth [05:16]
• Diversification as Search Stalls:
  • Google’s lineup: Cloud, Waymo, Maps, Gmail, Chrome, DeepMind, Google AI. As search ages, these bets become increasingly important.
  • Meta’s rebrand and “side project era” discussed, with Reels as a standout success.

3. The Role and Risk of AI Investments

• Meta’s AI and Reality Labs:
  • Critique of billions channeled to risky bets (Metaverse, Ray-Ban Vision, Reality Labs) with uncertain ROI.
    • "Metta is spending all this money on? You’ve spent 70 billion on real reality labs to make the Ray Ban vision. Are you serious?" – Ben Thompson [07:17]
  • Discussion about Meta Vibe as a lackluster first AI product.
    • "The first AI product that Meta announced was Meta Vibe. That does not inspire confidence." – James Allworth [09:04]
• AI shifting content creation:
  • The prospect that future YouTube content might be AI-generated, eliminating creator payouts.

4. OpenAI’s Potential IPO

• OpenAI’s valuation ambitions:
  • Expectations of a record-breaking IPO.
    • "OpenAI lays the groundwork for juggernaut IPO at up to a $1 trillion valuation." – Ben Thompson [06:31]
  • Comparison drawn between highly profitable scaled tech companies and high-burn, high-growth (but unprofitable) OpenAI.
    • "Versus OpenAI, which we know will be losing, you know, tens of billions of dollars at the time of the ipo." – James Allworth [06:53]

5. The Age of Trillion-Dollar Companies & Nvidia’s Ascent

• Nvidia’s timeline to $5 trillion:
  • Staggering acceleration highlighted; celebratory tone and jokes about “Korea having the world’s best fried chicken.”
    • "The first trillion took him 6138 days. The second trillion, they did it in 180 days. The third trillion in 66 days..." – Ben Thompson [10:34]

6. Tech Humor and Viral Moments

• Call of Duty Movie:
  • Surprise at Taylor Sheridan and Peter Berg attached to direct.
    • "Taylor Sheridan and Peter Berg team on Paramount and Activision's Call of Duty movie." – James Allworth [08:22]
• Home robotics banter:
  • Jokes about $20k robots doing chores (badly) and tongue-in-cheek speculation on security and social impact.
    • "20k to simulate the experience of a roommate with a ketamine problem." – James Allworth [11:20]

7. Geopolitics & Regulatory Hints

• AI and chip/regulation worries:
  • Controversies about possible US tech restrictions (selling Blackwell chips to China).
    • "My sense is that selling Blackwell chips to China would quite possibly be the Most unpopular tech policy move of the Trump admin..." – James Allworth [12:41]

8. Crypto and Payments

• MasterCard’s acquisition of ZeroHash:
  • Significance for on/off ramp crypto infrastructure in the US.
    • "MasterCard is set to acquire crypto startup ZeroHash for nearly 2 billion." – James Allworth [13:33]

9. Tesla & Executive Incentives

• Elon Musk’s pay plan and impact:
  • Defense of large performance-based compensation and Musk’s outsized role in Tesla’s growth.
    • "There is no one remotely close to Elon Musk for Tesla." – Ben Thompson [14:26]

10. Apple Maps Comeback

• Apple’s product trajectory:
  • Former executive’s firing over Apple Maps, and retrospective analysis of Apple’s strategy and leadership, plus personal anecdotes about using the app.
    • "Apple Maps was this kind of disastrous launch where it really didn't work as well anywhere near Google Maps. But eventually they turned it around..." – Ben Thompson [15:05]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Meta/Google contrast:

  • "[Google’s] mission is organizing the world's information...It's a little bit harder to jump from: 'our mission is to bring people together' to 'we're generating AI or VR.'" – Ben Thompson [04:30]

• On founder privilege:

  • "One factor was founders having wealthy parents. So the founders felt like they could take these really massive high risk swings because they weren’t going for a base hit." – James Allworth [01:28]

• On big bets:

  • “There’s a ton of gravestones in the graveyard from various note taking apps and chat apps and Google readers over there. But overall, they wound up building a very diverse, very valuable business…” – Ben Thompson [03:07]

• On tech scale-up:

  • “The first trillion is the hardest.” – Ben Thompson [10:34]

• On Meta’s risk:

  • “Zuck is repeating the 2022 sinking of a great money machine in Meta with wasteful spend. The Metaverse sucked, and AI is nearly as dumb.” – Ben Thompson [08:38]

• On robotics in the home:

  • "Me after loading the dishwasher instead of paying a robot $20,000 to do it for me." – Ben Thompson [11:03]
  • "Is it gay to have sex with a female robot teleoperated by a man, Elon Musk?" – James Allworth [12:23]

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Timestamps of Key Segments

| Segment | Timestamps | |--------------------------------------------|--------------------| | Meta’s earnings & ad future | 00:00 – 02:00 | | Company culture and diversification | 02:00 – 05:20 | | AI investment critique & YouTube’s future | 05:20 – 06:00 | | OpenAI IPO comparison | 06:26 – 07:53 | | Meta & Google’s spending/side projects | 07:17 – 09:00 | | Nvidia’s rise & celebratory banter | 10:00 – 10:57 | | Robotics, humor, and viral memes | 11:00 – 12:41 | | Tech geopolitics and regulation | 12:41 – 13:23 | | Crypto infrastructure deal | 13:33 – 14:08 | | Tesla incentives & Apple Maps story | 14:08 – 15:30 |

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Tone & Style

The episode is witty, fast-paced, with a balance of sharp industry analysis and lighthearted, sometimes irreverent banter. There’s a clear rapport between the hosts, who blend data-driven takes with internet-native humor.

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Concluding Note

Listeners are left with a sense of awe at the speed and scale of big tech, the dizzying sums flowing into AI, and a reminder that no bet is too big—or too weird—for Silicon Valley. The episode closes with Halloween-themed anticipation for the next show.

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Transcript

[Ben Thompson]

Meta missed earnings. Meta reported record revenue in the third quarter. But the technology company warned of accelerating capital expenditures around artificial intelligence sending its stock down 7% now $1.7 trillion company. Not bad. But we are in the age of 3 4, $5 trillion companies now.

[James Allworth]

Standout for me reels at north of a $50 billion run rate.

[Ben Thompson]

Crazy. Which is more than all of TV combined.

[James Allworth]

In 2024 television advertising spending in the US was expected to amount to approximately $60 billion.

[Ben Thompson]

I mean they're within striking distance. So there was this one time tax charge of 15.9 billion that crushed net income. Spending on AI researchers has also been crazy recently.

[James Allworth]

So in between two stories you can get up to five individual ads. So got to pay for all that CapEx somehow.

[Ben Thompson]

51.2 billion in revenue this quarter. They were up 26% year over year. My bigger question today is what happens to the advertising cash mach once you're two decades in. I don't think these businesses, at least most of them would exist if they hadn't grown up in a cash rich environment like I don't. It's just so hard to predict in 2009 how much capital is it going to take us to build a self driving car network that will be able to launch in San Francisco and barely be profitable and then we'll probably need another decade.

[James Allworth]

Strange comp here is yc. I don't know it's some years ago at this point was trying to understand what the factors that contributed to the breakout successes and one factor was founders having wealthy parents. So the founders felt like they could take these really massive high risk swings because they weren't going for a base hit. The founders like if I make a few million dollars it doesn't change my life, right? Trust is well beyond that. I gotta go big and so I gotta go big. Willing to like look silly for a long period of time. Willing to you know, just stumble around as long as it takes to hit it really big.

[Ben Thompson]

Google was able to just hold on To Waymo from 2009 to today 16 years, they're probably still losing money on it. I wanted to look at some parallels between what's going on with Google who's been on a tear and now has this like all of a sudden pretty diversified business. The search giant, the cash machine of the of the ads business is taking the other bets as their children and now as search becomes less relevant potential in the age of AI. Well what does Alphabet have? They have Google Cloud, they have Waymo, they have Maps, Gmail, Chrome, DeepMind Google AI like it's a stacked lineup. And so yes, even if search does.

[James Allworth]

Get old, I love how YouTube is, doesn't even, isn't even serving of its own Ninja Turtle. Right now you're seeing more AI content on YouTube, but it's still created by independent channels. You know, YouTube pays out a huge amount of its revenue today to the creators on the platform. There's a world in the future where YouTube just generates the, the, the video, the content itself through, you know, it's, it's various AI products never actually has to pay out a creator.

[Ben Thompson]

The Google story is very interesting. For the last decade, since 2015 when they rebranded as Alphabet, I feel like they were not getting a lot of credit. Now everyone's waking up to this idea that it's like whoa, they have like four monster businesses. And yeah, there's a ton of gravestones in the graveyard from various note taking apps and chat apps and Google readers over there. But overall they wound up building a very diverse, very valuable business where even if Waymo is not cash flowing a ton, is it worth $100 billion? Facebook rebranded to Meta in October of 2021. People I think overly were overly narrow about framing that transition about specifically VR, specifically, specifically virtual reality, the Metaverse, everything that Mark Zuckerberg was investing in.

[James Allworth]

Feel like the name Meta has aged pretty well.

[Ben Thompson]

I agree.

[James Allworth]

Even though it was ultimately embarrassing overinvestment at the time.

[Ben Thompson]

It was just important for, for Mark Zuckerberg to send the message that we're.

[James Allworth]

Not any single app.

[Ben Thompson]

We're not Facebook. Yeah, yeah. And we're not even just social networking.

[James Allworth]

People are using alums in social ways. And so as, as people spend more and more time talking to LLMs, that is time that they are not in Meta. I'm just saying like Mark certainly like sees ramping attention and user minutes on OpenAI products.

[Ben Thompson]

Totally.

[James Allworth]

And it's a concern, it's a risk.

[Ben Thompson]

On the face of it, Google and Facebook have similar backstory, similar cultures. You know, young founders who, who built up these tech companies only seven years, eight years apart from each other when they started. But Google had a very different culture. You know, it's a PhD research project, sort of an academic campus. When you're walking around, the mission is organizing the world's information. It's like very nerdy. And that obviously translates to hey, how do we organize the world's information? Let's create a mapping product, Google Maps. Okay, what do we do when we have all the maps? Let's try and drive around a car on it and then they get self driving cars. Right? And it's like it's a little bit harder to jump from. Like our mission is to bring people together so we're generating AI or VR, which feels like the opposite direction.

[James Allworth]

What's Meta's mission? Monetize the world's attention. I would love for Mark to just go super villain mode again. Update on Halloween. Spooky.

[Ben Thompson]

I like that. Are any of the side projects going to become monsters? Because you're kind of in the side project era now that you're 20 years old.

[James Allworth]

In the second quarter of 2022, REELS was at a $1 billion run rate. By the third quarter of 2022, at $3 billion run rate, second quarter of 23, 10 billion and the third quarter of 2025, 50 billion. So the growth is absolutely incredible.

[Ben Thompson]

Google's parent company reported a 16% surge in with growth in its digital advertising and cloud computing units, helping to finance robust artificial intelligence spending. Sales reached a record 102.3 billion.

[James Allworth]

Is that good?

[Ben Thompson]

Hey, we did our first hundred billion dollar quarter. Net income was 35 billion, a 33% increase from the same period a year ago. Like other large tech companies, Google is pouring tens of billions of dollars into AI development. I mean, what a remarkable result. Let's move on to some timeline. Let's move on to some news. Tyler, what's new in your world?

[Tyler]

I mean, most of the big news, I guess, was the OpenAI IPO.

[Ben Thompson]

Yeah, OpenAI lays the groundwork for juggernaut IPO at up to a $1 trillion valuation. The company has looked at raising 60 billion at the low end and likely more. They cautioned that talks are early and plans, including figures and timing could change depending on business growth and market cond.

[James Allworth]

Depending on where matters. Market cap is at the time of the OpenAI IPO will be like potentially. It will be an interesting comp because you're going to be able to look at a business that's like very, you know, at scale, like profitable, still growing very quickly, versus OpenAI, which we know will be losing, you know, tens of billions of dollars at the time of the ipo.

[Ben Thompson]

Makes no sense. What the f Metta is spending all this money on? You've spent 70 billion on real reality labs to make the Ray Ban vision. Are you serious? I don't know. He does have one of the biggest cash machines in the entire world. In the entire history of business. Google has all this money. Why do they have this growing cash pile? Why can't they find Something to do with it. They truly had too much cash to do. They invested so much in Waymo and so much in DeepMind and so much in Google Cloud, and at the same time, they still had money left over.

[James Allworth]

Meta Platforms is one of the greatest businesses of all time. And the CEO's a little crazy. He's a bit of a wild card. Like, he has, like, obviously has an.

[Ben Thompson]

Incredible of the big tech companies.

[James Allworth]

And the last time that that Mark invested this heavily in something, it did not deliver roi.

[Tyler]

People were calling for Sundar to be basically fired for, like, a long time. Like, until, like, basically this year.

[James Allworth]

Yeah.

[Tyler]

So I feel like you're. You're exaggerating how much, like, Google has been like this, like, winner the whole time.

[James Allworth]

Breaking news.

[Ben Thompson]

Yes.

[James Allworth]

This is going to rock your world.

[Ben Thompson]

No way.

[James Allworth]

Taylor Sheridan and Peter Berg team on Paramount and Activision's Call of Duty movie.

[Ben Thompson]

Let's go.

[James Allworth]

Let's go. Hit the gong for that. The creators that made Yellowstone Hell or High Water and Lone Survivor and Sicario.

[Ben Thompson]

Basically, Taylor Sheridan left Ellison's new empire, left Paramount, and said, hey, I'm out and I'm going over to NBC Universal. I'm riding with the Comcasters. This AI stuff is so dumb. Zuck is repeating the 2022 sinking of a great money machine in Meta with wasteful spend. The Metaverse sucked, and AI is nearly as dumb.

[James Allworth]

I think part of the blowback here is that the first AI product that Meta announced was Meta Vibe. That does not inspire confidence. Right. Because it was. If they had launched Sora, people would have been saying like, wow, it's not.

[Ben Thompson]

Like you walk down the street and you were like, oh, wow. Like, this is actually breaking through with just like, everyday random people in the way that Threads has. I don't know, maybe in a year we'll be like, oh, wow. They actually figured it out. They funneled a ton of people to Meta Vibes and it's as successful as Threads. It seems like a tall order.

[James Allworth]

Yeah, it won't be.

[Ben Thompson]

The Jensen video is only 7 seconds. So look at this. He's having beers with some absolute dogs. He's hanging out with the CEO of Samsung, the CEO of Hyundai, hanging out in South Korea, just having some beers, crushing some beers with the boys. This is how you do it. People will call it a top signal.

[James Allworth]

I mean, this is going to go so hard in a top signal vibe reel that we will definitely create.

[Ben Thompson]

Yeah.

[James Allworth]

When the time is right.

[Ben Thompson]

Korea has the best fried chicken in the world taking shots at Colonel Sanders. I don't know why Korea has the world's best fried chicken, but Korea has the world's best fried chicken. Let's go. The best fried chicken in in America is Korean Nvidia investors. That's why Korea is so rich. He's got.

[James Allworth]

He's feeling good right now. I mean on, on your 5 trillion day. I mean, I mean come on, let him, let him have a little fun.

[Ben Thompson]

The first trillion took him 6138 days. The second trillion, they did it in 180 days. The third trillion in 66 days. Then the fourth trillion was in 273 days. And then the fifth trillion in 78 days. So from 6000 days took him 20 years to make that first trillion. They say that the first trillion is the hardest.

[James Allworth]

But they do say that Amazon will sue me for leaking this. He says worth it.

[Ben Thompson]

This is so funny. Putting the tiny Amazon package in the missile launcher me after loading the dishwasher instead of paying a robot $20,000 to do it for me. And I wonder.

[James Allworth]

Chrome hearts all over my knee.

[Ben Thompson]

Yeah.

[James Allworth]

He says 20k to simulate the experience of a roommate with a ketamine problem.

[Ben Thompson]

It's ridiculous.

[James Allworth]

This is what we were saying that we were saying on the show yesterday. It's like, hey Neo, you know, clean up all those wine glasses.

[Ben Thompson]

And it's just like yeah, just smashing everything.

[James Allworth]

Neo with got the Glock out. Now tell me where the seed phrase is. Gotta make sure that the just another reason why they put the experts locally.

[Ben Thompson]

You definitely have to arm them. This is important.

[James Allworth]

Every day I'm more bullish on 1X. Yeah, they have a great understanding of the Internet. Yeah, they've been focused on like a specific use case the home for a while. They're focused on teleoperation, which is the right thing to be focused on because even if it only is good at teleoperation forever, that still could be valuable. Wait till you find that MF20K clanker in your kitchen acting too friendly. Damn. After so long.

[Ben Thompson]

Oh, that's funny. I got caught following him. But I did like this post and I was like, I gotta follow this. There's a dev.

[James Allworth]

Eric Katana has a less not so PC post in here. Is it gay to have sex with a female robot teleoperated by a man, Elon Musk? Elon Musk came in with a crying emoji. Crying emoji?

[Ben Thompson]

I don't know. We'll leave that to the philosophers, I suppose.

[James Allworth]

My sense is that selling Blackwell chips to China would quite possibly be the Most unpopular tech policy move of the Trump admin, especially on Capitol Hill. It's plausible that the long term, really even near term result will be much more compute regulation.

[Ben Thompson]

I like this guy. Dean Ball. Tyler. Do you know Ball, I think you've.

[Tyler]

Already made this joke. I don't think the capabilities right now merit the nationalization. Yeah, but I think a lot of people still think that like it's like you know, two more years, then we'll be at a point where like it would make sense for there to be like major geopolitical conflict just over the AI question. The people who were super like bullish on that idea I think are still. I don't think they've been fully like disproven yet.

[Ben Thompson]

Yeah, even if we wanted to sell Blackwell to China, would they even buy it? The more you buy, the less incentive you have to build local zero hash.

[James Allworth]

We talked about this briefly yesterday. MasterCard is set to acquire crypto startup ZeroHash for nearly 2 billion. ZeroHash powers most crypto to fiat on off ramps holding money, transmitter licenses and MSB licenses across the US. Most on ramps you use today likely run through zero hash. This is a pretty big deal. So MasterCard getting into the game. Please vote your Tesla stock. There is no one remotely close to my brother and no CEO on earth that would accept this package. It is a massive win for you as a shareholder every way you look at it. Elon says, thanks bro. These are the original technology brothers.

[Ben Thompson]

What is. Oh, you're true.

[James Allworth]

CEO gets 10% of the incremental value creation if they 10x the stock with a 2x hurdle. So shareholders get a 900% stock increase and the CEO gets an incremental 10%. The first Tesla plan incented Elon to 10x the value of Tesla. He achieved all the milestones and may never be paid for this.

[Ben Thompson]

There is no one remotely close to Elon Musk for Tesla. Like I'm totally in on that. I'm in on the idea of incentive packages. I like.

[James Allworth]

It's just that the targets are so aggressive that most CEOs don't think they would achieve them.

[Ben Thompson]

Like if I go to the CEO of Target or something and say like okay, you won't make a dime unless you 10x the stock. They're going to be like, what are you talking about? No way. He was the senior vice President iPhone software. Thirteen years ago he was apparently fired from Apple and after the disastrous launch of Apple Maps.

[James Allworth]

I am an Apple Maps guy.

[Ben Thompson]

Apple Maps was this kind of disastrous launch where it really didn't work as well anywhere near Google Maps. But eventually they turned it around and Apple Maps became a really great product for the iPhone. As someone with a bit of insider info, sorry for baiting. I can tell you that the current trajectory for Apple would likely have been better off if he ended up CEO.

[James Allworth]

I wonder what he thinks about iOS17. I keep getting ads for cocaine on Facebook. Oh yes, just using linktree as a cloaking page. Kind of surprised this works. And to that I would say who's gonna pay for the capex, right? You gotta.

[Ben Thompson]

We will see you tomorrow. It's Halloween. We have a special show for you. Please tune in.

[James Allworth]

Tomorrow's gonna be one for the books. Spooky. And I can't wait.

[Ben Thompson]

Goodbye.

[James Allworth]

Have a great evening.