FULL INTERVIEW: Mark Cuban on Robots, AI, Self-Driving, and Advice to Students

Summary

TBPN Podcast Summary
Episode: Mark Cuban on Robots, AI, Self-Driving, and Advice to Students
Date: March 19, 2026
Hosts: John Coogan & Jordi Hays
Guest: Mark Cuban

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Overview

In this engaging and fast-paced interview, Mark Cuban dives deep into the current and future landscape of technology, AI, robotics, startups, the shifting information ecosystem, and practical advice for entrepreneurs and students. The discussion ranges from the quirks of cold emails in the AI era to the economics of Amazon knockoffs, the future of self-driving and humanoid robots, and the challenges and opportunities in healthcare innovation. Cuban also shares candid reflections from his time on Shark Tank and weighs in on AI fearmongering, business moats, direct-to-consumer healthcare, and critical advice for navigating uncertainty today.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Mark Cuban’s Daily Life & Information Diet

• Cuban is upbeat about 2026, unaffected by current ad rollouts in LLMs.
  • Quote: “I haven’t seen it at all, so it hasn’t ruined my life at all.” (00:29, Mark Cuban)
• Describes his approach to news consumption: starts with "Mimio Random" for a world update, then Drudge Report ("gives me the hyperbole"), and follows up with various newsletters and emails.
  • Quote: “My first stop is a site called Mimio Random... my second stop is Drudge Report because that gives me the hyperbole on everything.” (00:39, Mark Cuban)

2. AI & the Rise of Agents

• Mark automates much of his email workflow using AI tools and a “Mac Mini,” responding to AI with more AI.
  • “If you hit me with AI, I’ll hit you with AI right back.” (01:32, Mark Cuban)
• Sees a proliferation of “agents for everything” as the new pattern in startups—every vertical is seeing attempts to replace or automate industry functions.
  • Agents are the rebirth of SaaS, but traction is a bigger challenge than revenue or profit so far.
  • Many of these new businesses are “trying to get some traction at all” (03:19, Mark Cuban), not scaling revenue or profit yet.
• Cuban is skeptical these business models would catch on with the Shark Tank audience—too technical for prime time.
  • “Yes, they should be [on Shark Tank]. No, people won’t understand them and the other sharks wouldn’t understand them.” (04:15, Mark Cuban)

3. What Makes Compelling Entrepreneurship (and TV)

• For Shark Tank, entertainment value trumps business quality:
  • “If you don’t have charisma, you don’t have a compelling pitch that’s entertaining, it doesn’t matter. You could be selling dollar bills for 50 cents and it would fail.” (04:50, Mark Cuban)
• The Shark Tank formula is successful as it inspires the American dream more than it curates business quality.
  • “The message you’re communicating isn’t, ‘hey, here’s a bunch of businesses that are great’, the message is, that could be you on the carpet.” (06:06, Mark Cuban)

4. Robotics & Home Design—The Humanoid Fallacy

• Mark is contrarian on humanoid robots:
  • Predicts they’ll be “a five year lifespan and then they’ll fail miserably, maybe 10.” (08:10, Mark Cuban)
  • The future is specialized robots and human environments redesigned for their optimal function—not anthropomorphic devices.
  • “Warehouses... they’re not humanoid robots carrying boxes. They’re robots designed to fit the environment.” (08:17, Mark Cuban)
  • Expects future homes to adapt to optimal robots, e.g., pantry, fridge, laundry accessible for spider- or ant-style machines, rather than redesigning robots for human-like homes.
• Adaptation of human environments to technology will be incremental, overcoming regulatory friction over time:
  • “There’s always a transitional period where you go from the old to the new… we’ll find ways to adapt.” (11:08, Mark Cuban)

5. The Bandwidth Challenge & Video-Based AI

• The shift from LLMs to video/worldview AI will create major demand for bandwidth (satellite or 5G).
  • “I don’t think there’s going to be enough bandwidth when you’re working with video-based AI models.” (11:14, Mark Cuban)

6. Self-Driving Cars: Skepticism and Edge Case Worries

• Cuban has tried Tesla’s FSD, found it “scary as fuck” at highway speeds.
  • “I was like shaking… I ain’t trusting [Elon] that much.” (12:42, Mark Cuban)
• Highlights the security risk: adversarial graffiti or camo could trick AIs, akin to Roadrunner cartoons.
  • “There’s somebody somewhere trying to figure out how to fuck up self driving mode.” (13:42, Mark Cuban)

7. No AI Doom: Limits & the Two-Year-Old Test

• Dismisses AI doomerism due to lack of world modeling and true understanding in LLMs.
  • “AI right now doesn't understand the consequences of its recommendations. It has no idea what happens next. A two year old kid... knows if it pushes the sippy cup over... mom's coming running... LLMs can't do that.” (14:43, Mark Cuban)
  • Sees risk only in contained applications (e.g., military), not AGI takeovers.

8. Navigating Business Amid Geopolitical Uncertainty

• Reflects on post-9/11 America vs. today: centralized gatekeepers have been replaced by algorithm-driven, individualized feeds, eroding consensus reality.
  • “We really only consume what the algorithms show us, you know, and each one of us has a different algorithm. Like the three of us, our algorithms are like fingerprints—no two are alike.” (17:23, Mark Cuban)
  • Finds this “scary”: we can’t trust what we see, particularly with deepfakes and AI-made video, leaving us to “hope and pray” about world events.
  • “It's almost impossible to really do anything but just hope and pray.” (19:05, Mark Cuban)

9. Cost Plus Drugs and Healthcare Disruption

• Cuban explains the business model: radical transparency in pharmaceutical pricing, 15% markup, and direct contracts with providers.
  • “With only a 15% margin... we're almost always the cheapest option for anybody.” (19:51, Mark Cuban)
• Secondary business model: direct negotiation with hospitals—public contracts posted so any business can piggyback.
  • “We created a site called costpluswellness.com and… any business… can reach out and get the same pricing.” (21:45, Mark Cuban)
  • Goal: teach self-insured companies and providers to lower costs without insurers’ “stealing.”

10. Most Underrated / Overlooked Business Opportunities

• Most underrated: Streaming/Internet broadcasting, which Cuban pioneered with Broadcast.com.

  • “This was the most obvious thing I'd ever seen in my career.” (23:33, Mark Cuban)
  • Paid $8,000 for broadcast.com domain, then snap-registered traffic-heavy domains like baseball.com and sandwich.com (25:33).

• Business he wanted to work but failed: Hoverboards—stymied by unexpected pre-existing patents.

  • “There were so many more patents already in place… we couldn’t get past them and it failed miserably.” (26:41, Mark Cuban)

11. The Widget Dilemma: Amazon, Clones, & Policy

• It’s now very difficult to profit from new physical widgets—overseas clones, especially from China, overrun categories on Amazon.
  • U.S. sellers limited to one Amazon company; Chinese are not, and don’t have a tax nexus. U.S. sellers are “screwed.” (28:29)
  • Proposes legislative reform: require foreign sellers to post a bond and establish a process to challenge IP infringement.
  • This would protect innovation, deter clones, and “American manufacturing skyrockets.” (29:36, Mark Cuban)

12. Managing Mark Cuban’s Likeness & AI Avatars

• Mark is an early investor in Synthesia (AI-generated video avatars) and cleverly routes usage of his avatar to promote Cost Plus Drugs.
  • “At the end of every video that used my likeness, it showed the logo for Cost Plus Drugs... we've seen a bump as a result.” (32:08, Mark Cuban)
• Amused/frustrated at “ridiculous” deepfake uses (“pictures of me like doing lines of coke and shit”). (33:08)

13. Advice for Students & Young Builders

• Strong encouragement to learn Python and experiment with agentic AI—especially valuable for small- and mid-sized businesses.
  • “Kids coming out of school today… teach yourself all the agentic stuff and then go to small businesses because they're not going to understand how to do any of that at all.” (16:52, Mark Cuban)

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• “If you hit me with AI, I’ll hit you with AI right back.” (01:32)
• “You could be selling dollar bills for 50 cents and it would fail.” (05:06)
• “Warehouses… they're not humanoid robots carrying boxes. They're robots designed to fit the environment.” (08:17)
• “There's somebody somewhere trying to figure out how to fuck up self driving mode.” (13:42)
• “A two year old kid… knows if it pushes the sippy cup over… mom's coming running. LLMs can't do that.” (14:43)
• “Like the three of us, our algorithms are like fingerprints—no two are alike.” (17:23)
• “Streaming… the most obvious thing I'd ever seen in my career.” (23:33)

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Timestamps of Notable Segments

| Timestamp | Segment/Topic | |-----------|----------------------------------------------------------------| | 00:32 | Mark's current information diet and approach to email | | 02:47 | The rise of “agents for everything” startups | | 04:50 | What makes a compelling company for Shark Tank | | 08:10 | Mark’s skepticism on humanoid robots | | 11:08 | Human infrastructure adapting to new technology | | 12:30 | Cuban’s hands-on self-driving car anxieties | | 13:42 | Adversarial attacks on AI (Roadrunner graffiti analogy) | | 14:43 | Why Mark isn’t worried about AI “doom” | | 17:23 | How algorithm-driven news destroys shared reality | | 19:51 | Cost Plus Drugs explained—core business and contracts | | 23:33 | Streaming as the most underrated investment | | 25:33 | Domain name collecting in the 90s | | 26:41 | Hoverboards: a failed bet and the patent wall | | 28:29 | The Amazon copycat and foreign seller advantage | | 32:08 | Mark’s avatar/likeness and Synthesia investment | | 33:08 | Deepfake Mark: both a business and practical headache | | 16:52 | Advice to students: learn Python and agentic AI |

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Additional Highlights

• Mark describes the core problem in health insurance as hospitals acting as “subprime lenders” due to high deductibles and patient debt.
• Open and amused about use of his likeness for viral AI-generated video, but puts limits: costplusdrugs.com appears at the end of every clip.
• He remains a non-believer in the boom of non-FDA approved peptides and supplements ("not a participant"), but sees legitimacy in regulated pharma (34:03).

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Conclusion

Mark Cuban's clarity, wit, and skepticism drive this wide-ranging conversation, mixing practical tactical advice with big-picture tech takes. He champions vertical AI agents, criticizes humanoid robotics hype, and calls for both innovation and tougher policy against overseas IP infringement. For students, his message rings clear: get technical, get agentic, and fill the knowledge gap in legacy industries. For entrepreneurs and founders, Cuban’s entrepreneurial pattern recognition and historical memory — from Broadcast.com to today's healthcare moonshots — serve as an invaluable compass for navigating AI-powered disruption.

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Transcript

[Interviewer]

Good to see you. How's your 2026 going? We haven't talked this year yet. What's life like?

[Mark Cuban]

I'm loving life. I got no complaints whatsoever.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, that's amazing.

[Mark Cuban]

Yeah, I'm loving life.

[Interviewer]

That's great. Are you. So you're not disappointed about the rollout of ads in LLMs thus far? That is. That hasn't ruined your year because I saw the first ad, it was for the Wall Street Journal and it was just a little. Little bubble at the top. Hey, you might want to check out the Journal. Seemed innocent enough to me, but how are you feeling?

[Mark Cuban]

I haven't seen it at all, so it hasn't ruined my life at all.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Co-host]

What's your information diet? Because it's hard not to log on the Internet and not start Blackpooling these days.

[Mark Cuban]

Yeah, no shit. So my first stop is a site called Mimio Random, which kind of gives me an update on all the. What's happening in the world. My second stop is Drudge Report because that gives me the hyperbole on everything that's happening in the world. And then after that, all the different newsletters and emails that I get, just that try to keep me up.

[Co-host]

How are you processing the flood of cold emails that appears to be thoughtful, but is AI generated? Actually, AI generated because you are notorious for your response rates and getting back to so many people that have reached out, but it feels like maybe an impossible task now.

[Mark Cuban]

No, I do what everybody else does. I bought a Mac Mini.

[Interviewer]

You did?

[Mark Cuban]

You know, yeah, yeah, for sure. And I'm still learning.

[Co-host]

So you're just like, you hit me with AI, I'll hit you with AI Back right away.

[Mark Cuban]

Right back. Right. It's not even like the cold emails because that's pretty obvious.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Mark Cuban]

You know, it's pretty easy to see. It's people subscribing me to shit. And, you know, the good news is Gmail has an unsubscribe button, so you just gotta train it to hit the unsubscribe button. Then I just review it and all that shit. So it's still a work in progress, but at least I have a path.

[Co-host]

Well, the issue with us is that historically, if you had a podcast and somebody wrote you an email and said, hey, I really appreciated this moment where you're talking about this one thing.

[Interviewer]

Totally.

[Co-host]

You're like, oh, they actually tell like, hey, at least they press play and at least they found a moment. But now AI just does it instantly. So there's no way to clock whether something.

[Mark Cuban]

Whether it's real or not. And that's okay.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Mark Cuban]

Because they're going to. The response rates most likely will be so low. We're in that trial and error phase where people are like, we're going to try it, see what happens. Maybe we'll get lucky and then they'll get bored and then it'll drop off.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Is owning a Mac Mini a green flag for entrepreneurs these days? Talk to me about what you're seeing in early stage startups in this AI era. Like, where are the interesting builders? What patterns are you seeing that are like, oh, I didn't think that this person would be going down the founder road, but they are now.

[Mark Cuban]

Yeah, Agents for everything.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Mark Cuban]

You know, it's just because once you figure out how to do agents, then you can do them a little better than most other people and then you can turn that into what would have been a SaaS business in the past is now, you know, we'll create your own marketing team and we'll, you know, do all these different things for you that you no longer have to do and we'll charge you X number of dollars a month. That's it. And I'm seeing dozens of those, you know, typically one for every industry you can ever possibly imagine.

[Interviewer]

And are they growing revenue faster? Are they growing profit faster?

[Mark Cuban]

Neither. They're just still trying to get some, just trying to get some traction at all.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Mark Cuban]

You know, because if you're growing revenue quickly, you're probably not coming to me yet.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Mark Cuban]

You know, you're. Because, you know, the marginal cost to start is so low and it's so fast and you're using the agent. So if they can get anybody to give them a credit card, you know, or sign up or, you know, now there's a little bit of a battle to use USDC for payment as the payment rails, you know, to make it so that, you know, just give me your wallet and that's, you know, it's going to end up being a scam and a lot of people are going to get ripped off there. But, but I think the real thing right now is agents for vertical verticals and trying to turn that into replace all your employees so you can start up or you can cut costs.

[Interviewer]

Do you think any of those agent focused, sort of like niche, at least niche to start businesses would be a fit for Shark Tank?

[Mark Cuban]

Yes and no. Yes, they should be. No, people won't understand them and the other sharks wouldn't understand them.

[Interviewer]

Sure.

[Mark Cuban]

But yeah, I mean, effectively anything you

[Co-host]

can do, but you only need one shark to understand.

[Mark Cuban]

Yeah, yeah, right. And I'm not on the show anymore.

[Co-host]

It's time to go back. It's time to go back.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. What was the anatomy of? I think we talk about what makes for a great company all day long. We'll talk about that throughout the show today. But what makes for a company that will put on a particularly captivating Shark Tank appearance?

[Mark Cuban]

You got to remember, it's for tv. You have to be entertaining. And if it's not entertaining in some shape or form, it's just not going to work. Regardless of the quality of the business. If you don't have charisma, you don't have a compelling pitch that's entertaining, it doesn't matter. You could be selling dollar bills for 50 cents and it would fail.

[Interviewer]

Interesting. How important is, like, the visual component? There's a lot of physical products, but at a certain point it gets too big for the studio. How important is it, like a physical product presentation?

[Mark Cuban]

Well, the good news is the producers will work with you on that, and they make them practice over and over and over. And of the hundreds, if not thousands of pitches I saw in 15 years. Yeah, we only had one. Really just. Just choke right where they couldn't spit it out. Maybe two, which is amazing. It's a testament to Mindy and the producers there how hard they prepare them.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. How do you think Shark Tank and shows like it will change in the era of AI video generation? Endless content. Is it stronger than ever because it's a known brand or is there some weakness there? How do you see that playing out?

[Mark Cuban]

It all depends on platform. It's like you guys, right? It really just depends on reach of the platform and quality of the product. I think for Shark Tank, it's not going to have to change because of AI or technology, simply because you're really communicating to a family audience. And the message you're communicating isn't, hey, here's a bunch of businesses that are great. The message you're communicating is that could be you on the carpet. The American dream is alive and well, and so that's really what makes Shark Tank successful, not the quality of the businesses.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. What about sports? I've seen some. Some robots playing tennis. They're going to be playing basketball soon. I don't think I'll be watching robot basketball. But how do you think live events, sports, basketball, will change over the next decade?

[Mark Cuban]

I mean, maybe for the referees, like you've seen in tennis, but that's it. I think in reality, more people will want to go to in real life events than before. Because if, you know, if you're just managing agents, looking at output, looking for exceptions, you're going to want some human touch. Right. You're going to want to be able to engage. And I think that's really, really important. And I think that's where sports will grow. I mean, you're starting to see that now with what happened with the Olympics. The World Baseball Classic became much more popular because people want that disengagement from all the, the stress that's happening right now.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. At the same time it feels like there's almost an opportunity for, not to bring it back to targeted advertising. But AI can tell me, okay, my favorite team's in town, I should go to this particular game. I should remind me at the right time instead of just signing up for.

[Mark Cuban]

Yeah, but that's not AI. Yeah, that's not really AI. Yeah, that's just targeting. Right. And I'm going to tell you what, in terms of I'm going to take it down a different path because I'm contrarian on this. And that's with robotics. I think everybody's making this push for humanoid robots. I think they might have a five year lifespan and then they'll fail miserably, maybe 10.

[Co-host]

You mean the companies or the device or the individual physical robots or both.

[Mark Cuban]

Right. Because I think everybody defaults to, well, we live in a human world and humanoids will take the place of humans for, for various functions, particularly in the home. And I think there's just no chance. I think if you look at warehouses and what Amazon does, they're not humanoid robots carrying boxes. They're robots that are designed to fit the environment. And I think, you know, I've heard people say, well, a house is a house, you need a humanoid. I think houses are going to be redesigned completely so that whatever the optimal robot is that allows it to simplify the house, that's where houses will go. So I'll give you an example. If we had robots that look more like spiders, that could, you know, but had hand, you know, the ability to carry and lift things, whatever, more like ants I guess. Maybe. Right. But. And you could create a house where the pantry and the refrigerator and the washing machines were hidden behind the garage, if you even have a garage. And that way you could redesign it so all the living space was for people. Because you know that the robots aren't going to be full form humanoids. They're going to be whatever the optimal shape is and they're kind of co designed you design the house to fit the robot and you design the robot to fit the house. And I think you could go.

[Co-host]

The other thing is, you know, the humanoid founders will tell you, you know, how do you solve stairs? Right. Like, it doesn't work for wheels, but if the robots are really great people, you could put like a mini robot elevator, right? Like if it's on wheels, like you can just put it. Yeah.

[Mark Cuban]

Like you see, like the old house. Dumb. Wait, dumbwaiters, right. Where there's just the thing where you pull it, you put it in there and you pull it up and it goes up to the next floor and somebody opens it up and you're going to see, you know, a mechanized equivalent to that, right. Where the, it recognizes the little, you know, ant robot that's coming up and it opens up a little door that's, you know, that leads to the size of whatever it is, it needs to carry or whatever. And then it goes up the dumbwaiter, does this thing on the next floor, the next floor, the next floor, and does what it needs to do. I don't think, you know, stairs are an issue at all.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. How do you think about just these types of ideas? AI products generally getting rolled out and then hitting it, bumping up against like human guardrails. Like when I hear that, I think, like, that sounds incredibly sci fi and potentially possible from an engineering perspective. But then, you know, you try and, you know, remodel your house and you're stuck in permitting for two years. And so that tends to slow the progress down a little bit.

[Mark Cuban]

Is that technology okay? Yeah, of course it is. But that's all technology during the interim period, right?

[Interviewer]

Sure.

[Mark Cuban]

There's always a transitional period where you go from the old to the new. Like back in the day, you know, there wasn't enough electrical outlets for your PC. There wasn't enough, you know, you had to go into the walls to run all the ethernet cables and all that shit. Right. You know, and so the houses and offices weren't designed for that because it wasn't considered when they were built. But they adapted. You found ways to adapt. And it'll be the same thing with homes, it'll be same thing with offices. We'll find ways to adapt. I think the biggest challenge going forward is going to be as we go from an LLM world to a worldview world of AI where we're taking in video and learning from the video and extracting rules from the video. A lot of the things that we're going to do are going to be outside and are going to have to consume in the interim at least either satellite bandwidth or 5G bandwidth. And I don't think there's going to be enough bandwidth when you're working with video based AI models.

[Interviewer]

Interesting, interesting. You mentioned maybe a garage not existing in the future. Is that a way to say that you're excited about self driving cars? What are you thinking is going to happen there?

[Mark Cuban]

I played around. I have a Tesla and I upgraded for a couple months. And. And it terrified the shit out of me. Not that I didn't trust it. Oh my God. Because like when you're going 25 miles an hour, it's no big deal.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Mark Cuban]

You go on a highway and you're going 70 miles an hour and there's a median right there in the middle of the highway. I was like shaking. Like I like I don't, you know, Elon's cool for whatever, but you know, I ain't trusting him that much. Right.

[Co-host]

You know, And I'm mad, you know about Mad Max.

[Mark Cuban]

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. You know, but you can set a delimiter where it's like how much above the speed limit are you willing to go? And if the speed limit is 65 or 70, you know, you gotta go the speed limit. And it was scary as fuck trying to go 70 miles an hour. And I don't wanna be there when somebody paints some adversarial. You know how there's graffiti in the weirdest places? Wait until there's adversarial graffiti.

[Interviewer]

Oh yeah, yeah.

[Co-host]

Like somebody. If somebody paint it. It's the roadrunner brick wall.

[Interviewer]

It's roadrunner.

[Co-host]

Paint it to look like the road. Roadrunner.

[Interviewer]

Wile E. Coyote is good.

[Mark Cuban]

No, that's like ridiculous. Right?

[Interviewer]

Wiley Coyote's gonna paint the tunnel and then you slam into it.

[Mark Cuban]

There's somebody somewhere trying to figure out how to fuck up self driving mode. Right?

[Interviewer]

For sure.

[Mark Cuban]

Because it's just taking video input and what it could be some pattern. And all of a sudden you're seeing this pattern on medians or overlaid on stop signs or whatever. Because you know somebody's got to do that because it's just too easy not to.

[Interviewer]

Hyper realistic. Camo wrap gets confused.

[Mark Cuban]

Whatever. Right?

[Interviewer]

You wrap your car in camo and if the camouflage is effective, you're going to confuse the AIs.

[Mark Cuban]

It's a risk. Just my. And there could be a predator, right? Alien versus predator predator could show up. Right. And if Arnold isn't there to save us, it's possible.

[Interviewer]

I Mean, speaking of Arnold, are you, it sounds like you're in a good mood, you're optimistic about things. Does the question of AI doom come into your mind? These runaway robotics, Are you worried about that at all?

[Mark Cuban]

No. Not even. Least for the reason I just mentioned, right. In order to like right now, LLMs are basically bimodal with some video, right? Where it's almost all text and pictures. With some video, you can't model the world with that. You just can't. AI right now doesn't understand the consequences of its recommendations. It has no idea what happens next. A two year old kid with a high chair and a sippy cup knows if it pushes the sippy cup over off the high chair, mom's coming running and the kid's going to start laughing at mom. Right? Large language models don't understand every time, every time, every time, right? And there's no funniest thing ever, ever, ever. And it's hysterical, you know, unless your mom. Right, but, but you get the point, right? The large language models we have today can't do that. And so we have to evolve to models that can capture the world and physics and deal with the latency of capturing or not being having access to video that you can't see. And so you have to try to model that. And not only does that take up a lot of processing power, but it takes up a lot of bandwidth as I mentioned before. And so the Terminator's taking over. I just don't see how it's going to happen. Now you can have localized brains for military applications and power get better and manual dexterity will get better, all that, but that's not going to allow you to take over the world, right? That's going to be application specific. So I'm not afraid of that at all. And I also think that, you know, we're talking about agentic applications, I think particularly for small, medium sized businesses. And some large businesses, they're not going to have that skill set. It's not going to be natural for them to do that. And I think kids coming out of school today that have taken some Python, don't have to be comp Sci majors but have done agentic AI like when I go talk to schools, that's what I tell them, you know, get into Claude, you know, teach yourself all the agentic stuff and then go to small businesses because they're not going to understand how to do any of that at all.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, that makes a ton of sense.

[Co-host]

What, what advice are you giving to friends, portfolio companies, etc, around Navigating as a business leader during a time where we have, you know, major global conflict. I don't know what exactly you're working on in 2002, 2003, 2004, but there's so much. I mean, right now everyone's hoping for a quick end to the conflict, but it's hard to lean on that.

[Mark Cuban]

You know, it's funny, in 2002, when we attacked Iraq, I created something called the Fallen Patriot Fund, which, you know, was just money available that I funded myself. Money available for the families of soldiers who didn't return or soldiers that were horrifically injured or disfigured or whatever it may be. And we paid out millions of dollars. But the bigger point was the way the media world was back then. We kind of just trusted what was presented to us by the gatekeepers. You could have an opinion whether it was right or wrong, but hey, there were WMDs, weapons of mass destruction, and we kind of trusted. Now there's so many information sources and social media, and we really only consume what the algorithms show us, you know, and each one of us has a different algorithm. Like the three of us are out. Algorithms are like fingerprints. No two are alike. And because of that, everybody's got a different perspective on what's going on in Iran and what's happening around the world. And to me, that's scary. Right. It's hard to know what's real and who to trust. And now with AI video, you know, what's been created. And we really are in our cross our fingers and hope things work out for the best. Because I don't know that there's a way for anybody to really participate in decision or make a good decision.

[Co-host]

Yeah, we're all trying to predict the future together. Well, based on wildly different kind of influences.

[Mark Cuban]

Exactly. You know, we don't have access to the information we truly would need in order to make a cogent decision or even have a decent opinion. I mean, we just don't. And we spend more time trying to filter and determine what's real and what's not, so that it's almost impossible to really do anything but just hope and pray.

[Interviewer]

We have a couple questions from the chat. The first one is about cost plus drugs. Can you give us an update there?

[Mark Cuban]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

How's it going with synthesis?

[Mark Cuban]

Cross seated?

[Interviewer]

Yeah, fantastic. But give us a sense of scale, give us a sense, a reminder of the strategy, reintroduce the company.

[Mark Cuban]

Sure. So what, you go to costplusdrugs.com and you put in the name of the medication, if it's one of the thousands we carry, then we actually show you our actual cost. Then we show you that our markup is only 15% and we charge you $5 for shipping and handling and then the credit card fee and in doing so with only a 15% margin, where unless it's like a $4 Walmart drug, we're almost always the cheapest option for anybody. So if you're underinsured, if you don't have insurance, you know, even to compare it against your co pay or co insurance, we may be cheaper than your co pay. And because of that our business is just skyrocketing. So that's part one of our business, part two to our business. For my company, for my, my employees and their families. I went around and Talked to the CEOs and CFOs of a lot of hospitals and found out where they were getting ripped off by the insurance companies. You know, if you think about this, and I don't think many people do, if whatever your deductible is, if something happens to you and you can't afford it, even if you have great insurance, you might have a 1500 or $2500 deductible, which is big company good insurance. But if you don't have that money and 40% of people don't have $400 for an emergency, when you go to the hospital as an example, they literally end up loaning you the money. And that as a result we've turned hospitals and providers into subprime lenders. Think about that, right? And then you have the denials and then they underpay late pay callback. So anyways, so I went to local hospital, Baylor, Scott and White, who's a really forward thinking hospital system and I said look, I understand where you're getting ripped off by the insurance carriers. I'll pay you on time, I'll pay you what we committed. I won't claw back, I won't lay pay. In exchange I want two things. I want a better price. I want it as a reference price of Medicare, 100 to 100% of Medicare unless it's really complicated. And more importantly, we created a site called costpluswellness.com and we are going to post this contract on costpluswellness.com so that any business, you guys, TVPN, anybody, any size that wants to direct contract can reach out to Baylor, Scott, White and get the same pricing that we get. And it's just blown up. I mean it's just incredible. We have more than 9,000 providers. And what we're trying to do is teach companies who self insure in particular that they can take control of their expenses. You don't need to be dependent on the insurance company to. To come up with the right deal because they won't. They'll steal from you.

[Interviewer]

Did you ever. I mean, it's such an interesting, such an interesting company for you. Because I feel like when. When you have as big of a presence as you do, it could be a book or a course or a protein powder. Did you look at anything else or have you burned out on that stuff?

[Co-host]

Creatine protein powder, the cubinator protein stack.

[Interviewer]

I'm in the. But no, this is obviously much more, much more important.

[Mark Cuban]

Yeah, I just thought, you know, nobody looks at health care and says, you know, the economic side is great. Yeah, we're doing it the right way in this country. It's the exact opposite. And so if you're going to try to disrupt, go big or go home. Right.

[Interviewer]

Another question from the chat. What's the most underrated business you've seen in your career? I think they're talking about something that, like, you, the moment you saw it, collect and you were like, okay, this is like a wildly mispriced asset or something that could really fly.

[Mark Cuban]

Streaming.

[Interviewer]

Streaming.

[Mark Cuban]

Yeah. We called it Internet broadcasting. I sat down with a buddy of mine in 1995 at a California pizza kitchen, and he was like, how can we listen to Indiana basketball in Dallas, Texas? And this is right when the Internet just started. Right. It was brand new to everybody. And I'm like, let me figure it out. And so we started a company called Audionet and got the rights to, you know, hundreds of schools, hundreds of radio, radio stations, TV stations. Back then, the copyright laws were different. Created our own Internet jukebox and unlimited number of Internet radio stations and started streaming until we sold it to Yahoo. That was the most obvious thing I'd ever seen in my career.

[Interviewer]

What was the domain name negotiation like? Jordi's a big fan of great domain names.

[Mark Cuban]

Great question. Great, great, great, great question. So when we started, it was Audionet and I just registered it. Nobody had it. But then.

[Co-host]

Wait, audionet.com or audio.net no, audionet.com.

[Interviewer]

okay, I like it. Yeah.

[Mark Cuban]

Because we were just doing audio in 1995.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Mark Cuban]

And then by 97 we started to do video, and audio net wasn't going to cut it. And So I found Broadcast.com because we wanted to broadcast everything and anything and found the guy and paid him $8,000. And he was thrilled to get the $8,000.

[Interviewer]

Wow. Yeah.

[Mark Cuban]

This is 1997.

[Co-host]

Did he ping you after that? Did he ping.

[Mark Cuban]

Yes, you did. Yes, you did. But wait, it gets better. But wait, there's more. Right? And so I'm like, oh, shit, this is nothing. Right? It's an automatic traffic generator. And so I started going out there and just glomming up and just grabbing all kinds of URLs so that we could put content on them and then drive it back to broadcast dot com. So, literally, I own Final four dot com. I own baseball dot com. I own sandwich dot com. You name it, I bought it. I bought it for. I would buy, like, just packages of URLs, right? And just.

[Co-host]

And this is because people were just going to their browser and being like, sandwich.com and they would type it in.

[Mark Cuban]

Google didn't. Exactly, exactly, exactly. Everything was a portal, right? Everything was a front door. And so I was like, anything that generated traffic, and I've done it since like, I own Mr. President dot com. I own democracy dot com.

[Co-host]

He privatized democracy private.

[Mark Cuban]

I was worried.

[Interviewer]

That's the most American thing I've ever. I've ever heard. I love that. That's incredible. Okay, the last question for the chat, and we'll let you get back to your busy day. I want to flip it around. What's a. What's a business that you've seen in your career that you wanted it to work so well, but for whatever reason, the business just didn't achieve what you had in mind and why? Yeah, and you don't need to be specific about this particular company. I mean, like a technology or maybe an anonymized company, something like that.

[Mark Cuban]

Yeah. God, I'd have to think about it. You know what was not the motorized skateboards. They weren't called. With the two hoverboards.

[Interviewer]

Hoverboards.

[Mark Cuban]

Hoverboards.

[Interviewer]

Hoverboards.

[Mark Cuban]

So a buddy of mine, hoverboard future,

[Interviewer]

everyone traveling on hoverboards everywhere.

[Mark Cuban]

Yes. So a buddy of mine, his son was an engineer, and I was like, okay, this kid could try to come up with some new ways to do hoverboards, make them safer, et cetera. And so we started a company that did hoverboards, and there were so many more patents already in place than I ever imagined. We couldn't get past them. And it failed miserably.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was a very interesting boom. The hoverboard boom. It sort of came out of Shenzhen fully formed because there was a map, massive supply chain and they were all over, but there was no one brand. They were like a ton of different brands because really what was going on was there was one amazing supplier in China that had like 20 different companies that were reselling it all and they

[Mark Cuban]

were making a killing.

[Interviewer]

Oh, yeah, they were.

[Mark Cuban]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Co-host]

Is it still possible to create a widget and make like $100 million from it? Or does the co. Or do the clones come? Because I, I know the guy who made like the, the, the fidget spinner, like his claim to.

[Mark Cuban]

Right, right. That's cool.

[Co-host]

But, but he didn't.

[Mark Cuban]

It got knocked off like that.

[Co-host]

Yeah, I mean, it was, it was the kind of thing that like was a hit product.

[Mark Cuban]

All on Amazon. All on Amazon.

[Co-host]

So it's.

[Mark Cuban]

Right, so. So I started talking to some Amazon resellers like Mid24, because I was just curious about some things. I see some things on. On X. And as it turns out, if you're an American seller, they may have changed. So correct me if I'm wrong. If you're an American seller, you can have one company that sells on Amazon. Right. For your. But if you're Chinese, there's no limit and you don't even have to have a nexus. So if you're that American company and you're making sales and making money, then you have to pay taxes and define your Nexus. And you know.

[Co-host]

Oh, so you're just screwed because you. Because you're screwed.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, yeah.

[Mark Cuban]

Because so these Chinese companies, to this day, as far as I know, these Chinese companies don't have to have a nexus, don't pay the taxes even though they're supposed to. Right. You can literally have a Chinese bank account and Amazon will send the money right. To that Chinese bank account. And I was proposing to these guys and talking to some legislators at the time that Chinese companies should have to post a bond before they can sell the product and post it on a website that whatever, whatever.gov so that, you know, the fidget spin guy, spinner guy could come in and say, you know, we have an agent now that continually continuously checks to see if there's a knockoff of their product and then can challenge it. And then at least there's that $10,000 or $25,000 bond that offsets the risk for that fidget spinner.

[Co-host]

I know, I know one, I know one widgets company that bought the next five most popular widget companies in the category that were knocking them off.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Co-host]

And they just continue to operate them, but they have enough Ranking on Amazon and they have scale.

[Mark Cuban]

But it's just wrong. It's just wrong that. Yeah, because any, whether it's China or Vietnam, any country, if you're outside the United States, you immediately have a cost advantage. Not the manufacturing, but just from an IP from and from an Amazon cost perspective. Why in the world is it cheaper for a Chinese or Vietnamese company to sell on Amazon and to easily knock off than it is for an American company to sell the original product? That makes no sense. And legislatively you could fix it in a heartbeat. You got to post a bond, $25,000 bond, depending on the size of the market, maybe more. And then give everybody 90 days to check it. And all of a sudden the whole industry changes and American manufacturing skyrockets. Because that cost of knockoff isn't just about the cost of losing sales. It's the administrative, the, the, the legal cost that there's just so many nuanced things that you have to spend money on.

[Co-host]

We have a, we have, we have a knock. We have knockoff issues. And like we, we spend thousands of dollars to have our lawyer like chase him down and send take down from our merch.

[Interviewer]

Like just T shirts and stuff.

[Mark Cuban]

Yes. Oh yeah. Merch is crazy. And then I be too, right? All the DMCA takedown notices, because they're just scraping and you know, reposting all that shit. Right? That's easy to fix if, you know, someone has the guts to do it.

[Interviewer]

What is the anatomy of using your likeness once you've made an investment? What does the best relationship look like? I imagine it's very open and transparent. But I imagine that anyone who's been associated with you at all is trying to like slap your face next to their product and like it all over. And maybe you haven't invested yet and you just said, oh, it looks nice. And then they're like, clip it. He said it looks nice, you know.

[Mark Cuban]

Yeah, I mean, it depends on the company. You know, usually I don't even care. But two things. One, you know what Synthesia is? Synthesia IO?

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Yeah, I think so.

[Co-host]

Yeah, they've been on the show.

[Mark Cuban]

Yeah, they have the avatars there. Victor and all those guys. Well, I was their first investor, so I send them there.

[Co-host]

Your dog, Your dog. That's a unicorn.

[Mark Cuban]

Come on, dude. And I gave them like a lot of money. Yeah, I gave them a lot of money. This was 10, 12 years ago. Way ahead of the curve. Yeah, there we go.

[Interviewer]

Okay, so Synthesia.

[Mark Cuban]

Yes. So this is. So I'll Push them to them or like I'll just. Around like you saw with Sora, they had. So I just. I put one picture of me out there, but I was playing with it because I want to learn all this stuff. And they. Sora had this thing where you can put conditions on how when it can be used. And so I made the. Yeah, so I made a condition. I made a condition so that at the end of every video that used my likeness, it showed the logo for Cost Plus Drugs.

[Co-host]

So.

[Mark Cuban]

Cost Plus Drugs. So smart. And it's been used like hundreds of people thousands of times. And I know we've seen a bump as a result.

[Co-host]

So smart John did the less commercial thing. He said, portray me as a bodybuilder.

[Mark Cuban]

It's funny. But of course, the store is kind of falling behind now, so they kind of. I don't know if they'll.

[Co-host]

It's good. It's gonna. It'll just get added into chat gbt and then you got a billion people just, just pumping Cost plus drugs.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. And it's always.

[Mark Cuban]

It's always crazy to me to see it. Like I tell it, you know, don't you know? Because it has terms of service, cancer drug use and da, da, da, da. And so there's pictures of me like doing lines of coke and shit. And I get, you know. So it's kind of crazy, but ridiculous. What.

[Interviewer]

When is the right time for a company to apply to Shark Tank?

[Mark Cuban]

Anytime. You just don't know. I mean, they have open auditions all the time. So if you go to Shark Tank's website, it'll give you all the information there. And you just got to go out there and have fun.

[Interviewer]

Go out there and have fun.

[Co-host]

How are you processing the peptide boom? Both FDA approved.

[Mark Cuban]

Non participant. Non participant. I'm not a believer in that shit at all. Like every single LLM that I put it into and asked for. Show me the trials and show me the research.

[Co-host]

You mean the non FDA approved just the stuff coming off the boat or

[Interviewer]

are you short Eli Lilly?

[Mark Cuban]

No, no, no, no, no. The insulin. Like the real. Because when people talk peptides, you're talking supplement type stuff, right?

[Interviewer]

Yeah, right.

[Mark Cuban]

But Eli Lilly stuff.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Not Ozempic that's running Super Bowl.

[Mark Cuban]

No, no, no, no, no.

[Interviewer]

Very heavily regulated. Yeah, that makes sense.

[Mark Cuban]

No, because that stuff's going to come down in price. And now, you know, Lily and Novo are smart now with their GLP1s.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Mark Cuban]

They're working around the PBMs and doing direct to patient, direct to company. And that was brilliant. That was really smart.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Yeah. That's very cool. Well, thank you so much for taking the time, Jordy.

[Mark Cuban]

Always fun. Have a good one, guys.

[Interviewer]

Enjoy the rest.

[Mark Cuban]

Appreciate it, guys.

[Interviewer]

Goodbye.