Google Raises $80B, Confidential IPO 101, OpenAI Expands Codex | Diet TBPN

Summary

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TBPN Podcast Summary

Episode: Google Raises $80B, Confidential IPO 101, OpenAI Expands Codex | Diet TBPN
Hosts: John Coogan & Jordi Hays
Date: June 2, 2026
Duration: ~30 min (Diet TBPN / Best moments)

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Episode Overview

This episode centers around seismic moves in big tech and finance: Google's $80 billion equity raise—the first in years—what it means for AI, capital markets, and competitive positioning; Berkshire Hathaway's strategic bets amidst market volatility; a hot take on confidential IPO filings as Antrophic and SpaceX make moves; OpenAI's Codex expansion; plus trending tech stories and a dash of trademark TBPN banter.

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1. Google/Alphabet Raises $80 Billion: Why, How, and the AI Money War

Key Segment: [00:00–10:38]

• Massive Equity Raise:
  • Alphabet (Google) announced an $80 billion equity fundraise, shocking due to rarity for mega-cap public companies ([00:00]).
  • The raise will be split into milestones, with Berkshire Hathaway leading a $10B tranche at a 6% discount ([04:13]).
  • Public market offerings and staggered common stock issuances follow through late 2026.

Industry Context:

• AI's hunger for capital shows; Google is flexing its ability to tap public equity just as AI investments surge ([00:21], [03:09]).
• "The ability to tap stock market capital is important again after a quarter century of being all but irrelevant." – John ([00:21])

Competitive Analysis:

• Opinion is divided: Is Google sucking up AI investment liquidity before forthcoming OpenAI/SpaceX/Anthropic IPOs? Or just raising at a market high while capital is cheap? ([04:50], [05:10])
• "Raise capital when it’s cheap." – Ben ([05:05])

Why Not Debt?

• Debt remains an option (and may be coming soon), but equity reduces risk while AI’s ROI remains uncertain ([05:10]).
• “Companies don't have to repay shareholders. If it takes longer to make money from AI, the company can simply wait it out.” – John ([06:48])

Shareholder Impact:

• The dilution for existing investors is minimal—a testament to Google’s massive $4–4.5T market cap ([08:47], [09:14]).

Societal Role of Stock Markets:

• The stock market is returning to its original function: funding massive infrastructure (now, AI and data centers, not railroads) ([09:31]).

Notable Quote:

• “For a long time, tech has been sort of cold on Google side projects, but they’re starting to bear so, so much fruit. You look at the progress with Waymo…just one win in Waymo will be a power law that will wash out all of the side chat apps that never went anywhere.” – John ([07:24])

Memorable Moment:

• Genetic mosquito project tangent ([08:10]):
  • “I'm excited about releasing, you know, billions of genetically modified mosquitoes...” – Ben
  • “Wait, they’re mosquitoes that kill mosquitoes?” – John

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2. Berkshire Hathaway’s Strategic Bets: From Google to Homebuilders

Key Segment: [10:39–15:56]

• Berkshire Buys $10B in Alphabet:
  • Following Apple precedent, Berkshire invests at all-time highs—another nod to Buffett’s evolving stance on tech ([02:47]).
• Taylor Morrison Deal:
  • Berkshire to acquire Taylor Morrison, a large home builder, for $6.8B, reinforcing their long-term bet on US housing ([10:48], [12:24]).
  • "Just the scale of these different things, like...buying an entire home builder and the other was buying like 0.01% of Google." – John ([11:02])

Housing Market Insight:

• Homeownership sentiment is unexpectedly resilient among Gen Z (over 75% of young renters still expect to own one day), with regional variation ([12:59]).
• Builders are discounting as starts, prices, and buyer confidence slide; however, long-term demand remains due to the 4M+ home shortage ([13:28]).

Memorable Quote:

• "It’s like, is this a work harder or work smarter, not harder, moment?" – Ben ([11:22])

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3. IPOs Explained: Confidential Filings & Modern Capital Flows

Key Segment: [19:59–26:14]

• Anthropic’s Confidential S-1:
  • Why are companies increasingly filing IPO paperwork confidentially?
  • “It lets companies run the SEC review process while keeping the sensitive financial details private.” – John ([21:16])
  • “It's a smoke grenade.” – Ben ([21:16])

Historical Context:

• 2012 JOBS Act enabled emerging growth companies (<$1B revenue) to file confidentially; expanded in 2017 and again in 2025 to include all issuers and some new offerings ([22:01], [24:45]).

Benefits:

• Test the waters, fix regulatory issues quietly, and avoid negative PR from failed IPOs.
• “No one wants to be running a company that publicly failed to IPO.” – John ([21:46])

Discussion:

• Confidential filings accelerate the IPO process and appeal to both VCs (liquidity) and public investors (access to new names), especially as companies stay private longer ([25:49]).

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4. OpenAI Expands Codex and Data Center Ambitions

Key Segment: [27:24–28:56]

• Stargate Michigan Announcement:
  • OpenAI to build a 1-gigawatt data center (“Stargate Michigan”), addressing environmental concerns (“water FUD”) with closed loop cooling, using water like only ten standard office buildings ([27:24]).
  • “They’re getting out ahead of the water FUD.” – John ([27:24])
• Codex Sites Expansion:
  • Users can now quickly turn plans into interactive web apps and share them – “This is very cool. This is what you asked for.” – Ben ([27:44])
  • “That’s exciting for virality and something else.” – John ([28:54])

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5. Tech & Culture Trends: Instagram Hacks, iOS 27, Whey Shortages & More

Key Segments: [16:04–19:45], [30:10–33:09]

• Instagram Hacked via Meta AI:
  • 404 Media reports hackers successfully used Meta's AI chatbot for account recovery—no proper security checks ([29:33]).
  • “Hackers simply asked Meta AI to give them access to high profile Instagram accounts. It worked.” – Ben ([29:33])
• Protein/Whey Shortage:
  • Observations on the rising price of whey due to high demand, tongue-in-cheek blaming Joe Weisenthal for his gains ([18:09]).
  • “It’s on the shoulders. It’s really crazy.” – John on Joe W.’s new physique ([18:24])
• Apple iOS 27 ‘Super Intelligence’ Bill-Splitting:
  • New Apple Wallet features for restaurant bill splitting by receipt photos; hosts poke fun at social behavior and the coming AI etiquette wars ([31:10], [31:54]).
  • “Every dinner should be a ruthless game...” – John ([31:56])

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6. Lighter Moments & Notable TBPN Banter

Select Timestamps:

• [00:18] Open with a running haircut joke (“I got them all cut”).
• [16:04] “He’s boarding this morning’s flight with an emotional support trout.” – Ben
• [16:39] “Is it inhumane not to let the trout see the curvature of the earth?” – John
• [33:09] “Let me have a porterhouse. Let me have three.” – John (on absurd bill splitting)

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• Google’s $80B Raise / AI Money War: [00:00–10:38]
• Berkshire’s Big Bets & Housing Market: [10:39–15:56]
• IPO Confidential Filings 101: [19:59–26:14]
• OpenAI: Stargate & Codex Expansions: [27:24–28:56]
• Social / Tech News, Whey Shortage, Apple iOS: [16:04–19:45], [30:10–33:09]

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Final Thoughts

This episode delivers a punchy, insightful glide across the biggest themes in tech/finance: AI, capital markets, strategic investments, IPO mechanics, and how it’s all blending with everyday culture. The tone is smart, fast, and irreverent—classic TBPN. The hosts balance deep market insight with commentary on everything from genetic mosquito gambits to emotional support trout and the existential dread of bill-splitting apps, giving listeners both expert analysis and laughs.

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Transcript

[John]

It feels so good to be back. You know who else is back? Google, with a huge fundraise, an equity fundraise. Surprising to a lot of people. You have raised equity in years and years and years. But they raised a cheeky 80 billion. The wall Street Journal has the story Alphabet's mega fundraising show.

[Ben]

Let's be honest John, the real story is that you got a haircut.

[John]

I did. I didn't just get a haircut. I got them all cut. I got them all cut. Hey, we got the team there. There we go. That's a new haircut. That's a new angle. I like that. Well, Alphabet in AI money talks, says the Wall Street Journal. The ability to tap stock market capital is important again after a quarter century of being all but irrelevant. So let's run through it. 80 billion stock based fundraising should be taken as a rebuke to those salivating over the forthcoming IPOs of SpaceX OpenAI anthropic. The search giant is showing its competitive advantage in an area that it increasingly matters for artificial intelligence, access to money. Ben Thompson has a great breakdown too of how capital is so important in the age of AI and the war for AI. In AI money talks, the biggest companies are paying out hundreds of millions of dollars to lure top researchers and tens of billions to build data centers while financing losses as they build their AI businesses. The money being funneled into AI is probably already making it harder for non AI startups to raise capital. With 61% of all venture capital last year going to AI.

[Ben]

That's was trying to heals low like based on, based on. But, but there's a lot of, there was a lot of hardtack.

[John]

Well, everything sort of gets wrapped into AI. I was talking to someone.

[Ben]

Yeah, that's, that's, that's why it feels

[John]

low how to have a conversation about AI. And it was like you can talk about sycophancy, you can talk about data centers and water and energy and being an eyesore and then you can also talk about enterprise sales and SaaS and you can talk about consumer. And it's, it just touches absolutely everything. It's almost, it feels like if you're trying to have the AI conversation Rude, rude about the Jared Isaacman, the years. We love Jared Isaacman.

[Ben]

I don't think that's rude.

[John]

I don't know.

[Ben]

Our great space leader Jared is incredibly handsome.

[John]

People like saying that about getting a haircut. I got my ears lowered. That's another dad joke. Got my ears lowered. Anyway. Yesterday Alphabet announced a massive $80 billion equity raise, says Brandon Grell in the TVPN newsletter. You can go sign up tvpn.com the raise will be broken up into a few milestones over the course of this year. Berkshire Hathaway, Greg Abel at the helm. Warren Buffett obviously still at the table.

[Ben]

There was a viral post yesterday. Somebody was saying, Buffett retires and they immediately invest in Google at all time highs.

[John]

Yeah.

[Ben]

What other company did they invest in at all time highs?

[John]

Was that Apple?

[Ben]

Apple, Apple, Apple. And look what they did.

[John]

I mean, for a long time, for what, 30, 40 years, Warren Buffett was known as like, not a tech investor. Couldn't wrap his mind around it. Valuations always too high business to too frothy or too high growth. Like.

[Ben]

Well, I think he knew vibe coding was coming for sure. And he thought, how are you going to. How can I value a software company when the cost of producing software is obviously going to zero? He was saying that back in 2010.

[John]

Yeah. He wanted to get in on Gen Moji a decade early. Yeah, no, obviously like the business was printing. It fit the Warren Buffett mold. I was actually doing this, this deep dive on like, where would Warren Buffett find value in the AI supply chain? I was trying to dig into, you know, if you apply that framework, because there's a lot of froth, there's a lot of excitement, there's a lot of high growth opportunities.

[Ben]

But where would Berkshire trade if Warren came out of retirement and just said, I'm coming out of retirement to invest in AI bottlenecks? Not only does Berkshire rerate, I think everything goes way higher.

[John]

I think so.

[Ben]

John, they want you to crack another Diet Coke.

[John]

Another Diet Coke. Here you go.

[Ben]

Boom.

[John]

Satisfying another one. When I did this analysis, the name that popped up was Buffett.

[Ben]

Saw Gstack and knew that the AI revolution was real.

[John]

It is God Mode after all.

[Ben]

It is God Mode in the memo. Well, it's like God Mode.

[John]

Berkshire is buying 10 billion worth of shares at a roughly 6% discount from Monday's closing price. Another $30 billion will consist of underwritten public offerings. And the last 40 billion will be staggered common stock offerings beginning in Q3, 2026. And overall, the dilution is very low. All the shares Alphabet will sell are brand new, meaning the plan is slightly dilutive for existing shareholders. But at their 4 trillion market cap, where are they right now? They're real. Way, way up. 80 billion just isn't that much dilution for the shareholders. Fortunately, a lot of opinions on the timeline about this deal this morning. Brandon Correll has seen a number of people theorizing that Alphabet is sucking up liquidity AI demand from investors before they'd be able to buy an anthropic or OpenAI IPO. Richard Reheard Jark gave a few less conspiratorial explanations.

[Ben]

Yeah, a lot of people were saying that about SpaceX.

[John]

SpaceX, yeah.

[Ben]

But the other, the more simple answer is you should probably raise capital when it's cheap.

[John]

Yeah. And we've seen liquidity pull out of other sectors of the market and so it has to go somewhere. Certainly makes sense that it would go into the latest and greatest technology. So Alphabet seeing demand for Gemini go up and so it's going to invest more in compute and scale. The first question is, why did Google issue equity instead of debt? So there's some rumors that debt might be coming and the equity is sort of a precursor to that. But Ben Thompson writes, debt is, all things being equal, the preferred instrument for investment. The proceeds of the latter pay off better than the former and existing equity holders reap all of the benefits. Equity, on the other hand, removes the risk of debt, but at the cost of giving up a future share of profits. That leads to why, what may be the Occam's razor, Google is going to start issuing a lot more debt as well, which is to say that that everyone continues to underestimate the amount of demand there is for compute. Of course, that's not far off from a more bearish interpretation. Google is uncertain about the return of investment of all of that capex and would prefer to share the risk along with the upside. If there isn't a substantial debt issuance down the road, then this might be the right answer. Yeah, I mean, COMPUTE is remarkably expensive. We're looking at even within the cogs or the cost of inference for the labs. We're seeing, you know, dollars per task. It's a lot of money, a lot of dollars flowing into these data centers. But when you actually run the numbers on the tasks that they are completing, comp that to other sources to get something done. You're seeing positive roi. So it's all just a productivity uplift, which is good to see. The Wall Street Journal continues and says bond investors think the hundreds of billions of dollars of debt being raised by big tech is pushing up the yield and other borrowers have to put pay and even. And it's even affecting government bond yields. The hyperscalers of Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon and Meta have become major bond issuers as they ramp up spending, with Alphabet alone raising 85 billion in a series of record breaking issues around the world in the past year. They might raise more in debt, but the stock market is the obvious place to raise capital to spend on the exciting bits of AI where the returns are unknown, technology is rapidly developing and business models are in flux. Unlike debt, companies don't have to repay their shareholders. And if it takes longer to make money from AI or never makes money, the company can simply wait it out. If it was financed by stock, though, investors would be very unhappy. Alphabet is one of a tiny number of companies capable of raising so much cash without tanking its stock, thanks to its near monopoly in online search and credibility with Wall street in new ventures. That's a really good point. For a long time, tech has been sort of cold on Google side projects, but they're starting to bear so, so much fruit. You look at the progress with Waymo and it's very clear that just one win in Waymo will be a power law that will wash out all of the side chat apps that never went anywhere or little software projects and April Fool's jokes that they launched. And some of them will become really big businesses as well. They have other stuff. Calico.

[Tyler]

They have the mosquitoes right now.

[John]

The mosquitoes are crazy. That was a weird, weird headline.

[Ben]

I didn't know business. I'm excited about releasing, you know, billions of genetically modified mosquitoes into the environment to try to kill all the mosquitoes.

[John]

Wait, they're mosquitoes that kill mosquitoes? They do. Oh, okay. They're like infertile or something. Basically something.

[Ben]

I'm excited because there's like, almost certainly could never possibly be any unexpected downside to disrupting the circle of life.

[John]

Who knows? Who knows? People have been studying this for like 20 years, so I'm optimistic.

[Ben]

It would be one of those things. Like, yeah, one of those things would be amazing if we can just nuke all the mosquitoes off the map. But I got a feeling they're doing something important.

[John]

Yeah. Should we be selling the bug repellent industry short right now? Should we be going turbo short? All mosquito repellent companies, they're probably gonna go out of business if they get rid of all the mosquitoes, right? This is Finance 101 right here. Anyway, I can keep reading.

[Ben]

Don't give our little retail trailer over there any ideas.

[John]

He's going to go short. While 80 billion is huge, it amounts to less than 2% of the market value of a company trading at $4.5 trillion. The stock was down just 2.6% in pre market trading. There seems to be an unlimited supply of willing buyers to fund AI. If it turns out there is a limit, Alphabet can only benefit by going first. From a societal standpoint, says the Wall Street Journal, the purpose of the stock market is to funnel money from millions of savers into giant projects, just as, as in the 19th century railroads. For the past 25 years, that role has been less important as private capital funds grew large enough to finance companies for much longer before they needed to go public. AI's vast consumption of cash is beyond even the capability of private markets, however. Sure, there are other reasons to list, such as allowing employees to cash out their stock options. 30 billion. You mentioned this earlier. Today, 30 billion of Alphabet's stock issuance is earmarked for paying tax on employee stock awards. But the ability to tap stock market capital is important again, after a quarter century of being all but irrelevant. As we move into a new era of capital heavy industries, the stock market stops being merely a way for private investors to exit, but an attractive source of capital. The bear in me worries that all this equity raising is also about taking advantage of record stock prices and could be a sign that the top is near, says the Wall Street Journal in the Journal.

[Ben]

Today, Berkshire is convinced the American dream of home ownership will stay alive. Berkshire is convinced the American dream of homeownership will stay alive.

[John]

Let's go.

[Ben]

Under its new chief executive, Greg Abel, Berkshire raises its bet on a market recovery by adding another housing company to its portfolio.

[John]

Fantastic.

[Ben]

Berkshire Hathaway $6.8 billion deal to acquire. What are you laughing at?

[John]

I'm just laughing at the fact that like, like, you know, they did two $10 billion deals and one was buying like an entire home builder and the other was buying like 0.01% of Google. And just the scale of these different things, like, it's an extremely cool deal. We'll get into it. It's very interesting, but at the same time, it's like total peanuts compared to like the AI build app.

[Ben]

Well, yeah, it's like, what is that? Potentially like a work harder or work smarter, not harder moment. Like, we'll see which one of these ends up generating a better return.

[John]

This seems extremely important. I'm extremely excited.

[Ben]

Yeah, yeah, this is important.

[John]

Like one data center or an entire home builder. That is their entire business and probably very storied. We'll get into.

[Ben]

Well, we don't know. He might be pivoting it into a data thing. Maybe that would be the ultimate.

[John]

Maybe black two by fours. Rack them. You know, Meta's Using tents. Maybe the next data center looks like a house a lot less controversial. You know the nimby. If you just see a nice craftsman home next to you, you're like, yeah, whatever, it looks nice. You know, I don't, I don't have a problem with that. You know, oh, they're chimney smoker. That's the diesel generator.

[Ben]

There's a data center among us.

[John]

This might be the solution. Tyler, what you got?

[Tyler]

I was going to say like these two deals are still small compared to like the actual cash that they're holding.

[John]

Yeah. What do they have?

[Tyler]

I think most recently it was 397 billion.

[John]

That's so much.

[Tyler]

So even then it's like oh wow, you know, he's so white, he's turbo long but you know, he's still cash chad right now.

[John]

Oh, hopefully inflation doesn't get him. We'll see.

[Ben]

Anyway, continue with an all cash agreement Sunday for Taylor Morrison Home Corporation. The Omaha based conglomerate is poised to become a top five US home builder, adding to its growing portfolio of housing related companies. Berkshire's homebuilder deal is a sign that a prominent investor thinks the housing slump will eventually pass and it wants to be positioned to take advantage of any market turn. More than 75% of young renters still think they someday will own a home. That is great. Glad that. I would have thought it was less than that given, given like sentiment online and so it's great.

[John]

There's been a bunch of, there's been a bunch of weird studies where like when you zoom out, you look at Gen Z home ownership and it's actually pretty high. But that's driven by non coastal cities because people move to San Francisco. Obviously house prices are through the roof and a lot of people are like, yeah, I want to rent and go to some local house party. Like I want to be in the mix. And then at some point people make the decision. So it's more about like family planning. But of course there's all sorts of affordability issues.

[Ben]

This investment is grounded in a long term belief in the strength of America's housing market and its underlying fundamentals which we see as enduring over time. Berkshire is raising its exposure to a housing market in its fourth year of dismal sales. High mortgage rates, job market uncertainty and the rising cost of living have kept many prospective buyers on the sidelines. Builders have been forced to offer incentives such as paying part of buyers mortgage costs just to unload their inventory. Builder confidence is low. Single family home starts declined 9% in April. The steepest drop dropped since August, a third of builders said they had cut their prices last month. Moreover, many Americans now think homeownership is beyond their budget. More people are renting for longer or putting their savings into the stock market rather than investing in a home. Analysts say the U.S. housing shortage of more than 4 million homes means new homes need to be built. They expect more buyers will return to the market once mortgage rates, which recently hit a nine month high, come down and trigger pent up buyer demand. Berkshire has agreed to pay a 24% premium to Taylor Morrison's closing stock price of 58. That's an incredible bargain on Friday. Analysts see the price as a good deal for Berkshire because the actual value of the builder's home portfolio bellies its lagging stock price. That is an incredible bargain, says Tony Avila, chief executive of Builder Advisor Group.

[John]

This is a quote by Warren Buffet. This is the first deal for Abel. Greg Abel, the new CEO of Berkshire Hathaway and Warren Buffett said gave a quote to the Journal he has launched. He has launched I love it on Monday. Then they talk about the Google deal. Taylor Morrison is a safer bet in a precarious home building market. The company tends to focus on the higher end of the market, which has performed better. A significant part of its business is built around buyers looking to upgrade to nicer homes rather than entry level buyers who are struggling the most. In addition, the company is part of a smaller segment of builders that have leaned into so called build to rent communities of single family homes constructed for the sole purpose of renting. Congress recently threatened build to rent developers with a proposal that would force them to sell their properties within seven years of building them. But House lawmakers removed that proposal in an attempt to rescue the burgeoning sector. The Taylor Morrison deal is the latest example of consolidation in the residential construction industry. Last month, Avalon Bay Communities and Equity Residential agreed to merge in the largest multifamily combination on record. Years after sluggish profits. This puts pressure on others to find a dance partner, says Alan Ratner. Interesting. Well, we'll continue following up on that.

[Ben]

Well, let's get to James Walker.

[John]

Okay, what's James Walker up to?

[Ben]

He's boarding this morning's flight with an emotional support Trout.

[John]

Is this AI? Is this real? This is insane.

[Ben]

Honestly, I don't think AI could nail this era of Instagram filter.

[John]

Is the fish alive? This is crazy. Bringing a fish on a plane is hilarious. That does not feel very humane. It feels like a very uncomfortable situation for a fish. But I guess if you gotta get somewhere. You gotta go in the tube.

[Ben]

Think about it though, Jon. Think about the things this fish will have seen that many fish would never see in a lifetime.

[John]

Yeah.

[Ben]

Is it inhumane or is it inhumane not to let the fish.

[John]

Yeah. If you got a trout, it's like, I think the Earth is flat. I've never seen the curvature. You're like, well, you're going into 747 and I'm showing you out the window.

[Ben]

Know this was a good post from Key. He said, this dude is effing Sherlock holmes. Somebody says 100%. This ad is sponsored by OpenAI.

[John]

From the OpenAI.

[Ben]

From the official OpenAI account. It's not even sponsored. This app hosted. It's just by OpenAI.

[John]

It's not even marketing. It's just communications. This is a wild pose. It's so funny. Terence Tao AI creates more room to experiment, test unexpected paths and discover what might otherwise stay out of touch. Terence Tao, goat mathematician from ucla. Very fun to see him talking about his process where he's still seeing value, how he's using models. He talks about this a lot. A lot of times it just allows him to flesh out his work, build a chart that he wouldn't otherwise build. Very synergistic. Fully in like the Centaur. Centaur. Centaur era. What else is going on in the timeline? Joe Weisenthal has something. The price of whey is going bananas. It's a protein crisis. This is not good. What's going on?

[Ben]

Here's what's a little funny.

[John]

Okay. Break it down.

[Ben]

We know why the price of whey is going bananas.

[John]

Same.

[Ben]

So we don't need Joe to tell us because Joe is going bananas.

[John]

Yeah.

[Ben]

On his weight consumption.

[John]

Oh, you think he's responsible?

[Ben]

I think he's the problem. He's like, we're all trying to figure out who did this.

[John]

He has been looking bigger, much bigger. His traps specifically. They've been eating his head.

[Ben]

Yeah, yeah.

[John]

And he has those Death Star delts on the caps.

[Ben]

Yeah.

[John]

It's on the shoulders. It's really crazy. In the lats. When he does the lat spread on odd lots, it gets aggressive. It's a little too much. So cooler with the way Joe. But here we have some news in earlier May, in early May, a supplier delivered bad news to baking and beverage company hello Amino. It had run out of whey protein. Canada based hello Amino uses the ingredient all of the 30 high protein baking mixes it sells. Founder Ali Swift found another supplier, but it means importing whey protein isolate from the US at a price that's 50% higher and due to increase again soon. The new whey protein delivered other complications that dried out the company's baking goods due to the manufacturer's different processing methods. That's true. A lot of different ingredients will change the the output not always created equal. Our pancakes came out like sawdust. Swift said the company plans to reformulate using different combination of proteins. Protein has really leaked into everything. I have not, I have not found. I. I've been surprised whenever I see the trend pieces about like proteins packed with everything, everything has protein in it. I don't know, I haven't like it hasn't snuck into that many of the things that I eat throughout the day. Like there isn't protein in my diet Coke. I don't know, I don't know what else I consume. But this whole trend of like protein packed like cereals and you know, salads and lunches and dinners and protein packed pastas and stuff, I never really kind of stuck with the normal stuff.

[Ben]

Yeah, the idea that, you know, if you eat one, you know, two to three solid meals a day, you have some protein that you also need to be snacking on protein in between. It's just insane. Yeah, it's completely unnecessary.

[John]

Well, I had another question come up from a friend of the show about why are companies filing IPOs confidentially? It's an interesting question and I sort of tugged on the thread. Liz Hoffman was talking about this a little bit. So Anthropic confidentially submitted a draft S1 registration statement to the SEC June 1st. That was yesterday. Liz Hoffman said reminder that the ability to confidentially file an IPO was 2012 rule change meant to ease small companies, meaning less than a billion dollars of revenue into the markets. And it was later expanded to what

[Ben]

we're meant to be like. Like a smoke grenade.

[John]

A smoke grenade lets you talk to investors before you get out. Do we change the camera? But I. So she asked the question of like what are we even doing here? And I was curious like what are we doing here? Like why. Why do all these companies file confidentially? And then the S1 comes out. This is what SpaceX did. It's not like Anthropic's unique in this. This is very much standard practice at this point. But how do we get here and why is this good? Do I like this? I don't know. Let's find out. So first, the basics. Confidential IPO filing. It doesn't mean that you IPO in secret. It means the company submits a draft S1 to the SEC for private staff review. SEC employees.

[Guest Speaker]

Yes.

[Ben]

It's a smoke grenade.

[John]

It's a smoke grenade, yeah. Great analogy. Before releasing the prospectus on Edgar, which then every hedge fund can download, anyone can download, it becomes public. So this lets companies run the SEC review process while keeping the sensitive financial details private. And there's a few reasons why you might want to do that. So any regulatory stumbling blocks can be dealt with in advance. And so the final filing is clean and ready to go. SpaceX did the same thing, filing a draft submission confidentially before the public S1 dropped a week or two ago. After the 2008 financial crisis. This is where this all starts. There's a lot of regulation that results from the. The fallout. Sarbanes Oxley is the main one. And the financial markets slowly built back and started opening up as the economy rebuilt. So post Dodd Frank, post Sarbanes Oxley, you get a lot of regulation. And then over the next few decades, certain pieces get relitigated, renegotiated, and different paths open up to slightly less regulatory, burdensome pathways in the financial markets. And so before 2012, the S1 became public early in the process, which was great for journalists who wanted to report on IPOs. It wasn't really that beneficial to very many other people, but it raised the stakes for companies because if anything was off, it could result in a botched ipo, which would be damaging for morale. You hear that your company filed publicly and immediately something comes up and you can't fix it. So then you have to pull back and it's seen as. Seen as damaging, seen as weakness. No one wants to be running a company that publicly failed to IPO. And so in 2012, the Jobs act passed and they created a new class of company with some relaxed filing requirements. These are called emerging growth companies. It's defined by the SEC. They're called EGCs. And EGCs were defined as any company with less than a billion in revenue. Later, it was inflation adjusted to be 1.235 billion. But that doesn't really matter, though, because in 2017, staff at the SEC under Trump 1 expanded the confidential filing flow to include all issuers, not just EGCs. So anyone, no matter how much your revenue was, you could go through this process. And so the JOBS act was driven by Republicans, but broadly supported. And the 2017 change happened under Trump 1. But again, it didn't face strong opposition. So private market investors, like IPOs for liquidity, VCs love to come on the show and do a victory lap when they take a company public. And it's great to return capital to LPs and then on the other side, public market investors like access to more names. So it's sort of win win. In 2017, this was a huge year for huge, large growth stage companies. These decacorns, you had Uber, Airbnb, Doordash, Palantir, they were all well past the billion dollar revenue threshold. But there was still a lot of uncertainty about how the market would value these companies because they had sort of new business models. There were some questions about different margin profiles, how the market would price these. There weren't direct comps to Uber and Airbnb already in the market. Are you going to just trade Airbnb like it's a hotel chain? Not really. It's asset light. So the market needs to digest that. And confidentially filing was beneficial and it was encouraging to these companies to say, yeah, we'll go try the IPO thing because it's less burdensome.

[Ben]

So Stripe should file confidentially for ipo, but then never actually go.

[John]

I think that's a collison brother nightmare. I think they wake up in cold sweats. I took the company public. What happened?

[Ben]

No, I know, but it would be kind of funny to like confidentially fill it file.

[John]

Yeah.

[Ben]

Then just pull it back. Let it, just let it just kind of sit there for another decade.

[John]

Troll. Troll IPO. So the confidential filing rules were expanded again in 2025 under Trump two SEC staff to include other financial offerings. So new issuance of stock, other classes of securities. These things can be reviewed before going out in the market. This allows companies to test the waters on follow on financings, spin offs other capital markets transactions. You can go and test the waters. So there's no question that companies are staying private longer. Everyone knows this. Private markets are incredibly deep, driven both by mega fundraisers from the largest venture capital firms, crossover investors from like hedge funds coming into the market, and then also plenty activity, plenty of activity from the hyperscalers and strategics who can write a $10 billion check into a private company, no problem. So the end result is that the public markets have been. The public markets have been losing companies to private markets for years. Exchanges don't want this. Public markets investors don't want this. And so there's a huge demand to make make going public less painful. Confidential filings don't fully obscure investor protections because all the traditional data needs to be released before any money changes hands. But it speeds up the time to market and increases coordination between private companies and their future shareholders in public markets. And so that's why companies are allowed to file confidentially. And I don't know, after reading that, I don't really have a problem with it, but you let us know. What do you think? Should it be illegal? Should it be straight to jail if you file confidentially? I don't know. We can roll it back.

[Ben]

Couple more notes before our first guest, Joe Weisenthal is reporting that on the eve of the IPO, SpaceX employees are organizing. More than a thousand current and former SpaceX employees have banded together to negotiate with wealth management firms for better pricing and access to sophisticated tax saving financial products ahead of the ipo.

[John]

Interesting.

[Ben]

I imagine the wealth management firms are thrilled about this. One more note. Friday IPOs, Alibaba, Uber big Ones and Meta, all on Friday.

[John]

Okay, very interesting. I think there's going to be a lot of fanfare. If the Images in the S1 weren't anything to judge. I think that like the actual coverage will be a spectacle. We will see Starbase in full force. It will be a lot of great entertainment and a pretty wild day. Pretty wild day for financial history. OpenAI announced that they're breaking ground on Stargate Michigan. A 1 gigawatt data center utilizing closed loop cooling. And they're getting out ahead of the water. The water FUD. They say it uses water at the rate of a 10 typical office building, creates thousands of unions.

[Ben]

Not an office building that I'm in.

[John]

No, I know you're drinking a lot of water. You're not drinking tap water. You're bringing in the glass. Bottled water, potentially the RORA water.

[Ben]

Rora's, you know, getting thousands of gallons a day.

[John]

AI pivot for rora, filtering the water that goes into the data center, make

[Ben]

sure it's only filtering the gpu.

[John]

I'm sure that there's a water filter. I'm sure that there is a water filter system in these data centers.

[Ben]

In other OpenAI news, there's now sites in Codex. You can turn work ideas plans into interactive websites or apps your team can explore, use and share. This is very cool. This is what you asked for.

[John]

Yes, the first it was my sort of like benchmark, my hello world test. Like can I go on my phone into any of these AI apps and have it generate me a link to a website that I can share with a friend? Because I can generate a big deep dive text thread and I can share that link with someone. They can go in the app and see what I've been texting back and forth. That's very useful. You can generate an image and then you can save that to your camera roll, send that around. It's very portable. And when I demoed Meta AI, the latest launch, one of the suggested prompts is like vibe code a video game. And it actually does a really, really great job building a little miniature video game. And it gives you a link, but the link is like trapped within the Meta AI. And I'm like, oh, we're so close. It's such a minor thing to have a, to have an actual hosting service there. But I think that that's exciting for virality and something else.

[Ben]

It should be a bull market for simulators.

[John]

Yes. Because you'll be able to, I mean there are a lot of people who, you know, they, as much as they want the Mac mini and the MacBook Pro with the lid cranked open at all times, they want to Vibe code something or build something on their phone and then send that to a friend. And if they build something interactive, they want that to be shareable. And this is exciting, exciting development.

[Ben]

Speaking of Meta, they had.

[John]

What else is going on with Meta?

[Ben]

I think a pretty insane.

[John]

Oh yeah, is this real? I saw this and I was like, this cannot possibly be real. But it is important.

[Ben]

It's certainly real. I've seen a number of people that I know that have one word usernames that got hacked.

[John]

Okay, so basically this is from 404 Media. Hackers simply asked Meta AI to give them access to high profile Instagram accounts. It worked. I'm sure they're rolling it back. I'm sure they're on top of this. But the exploit shows the extreme risk of offloading technical support to AI. I guess the AI was able to deliver account recovery information to anyone who asked. And it wasn't segmented, it didn't do the property validation. Hackers say that they use Meta AI Chatbot to break into a host high profile Instagram account.

[Ben]

Here's a video of how it worked. Okay, pull it up.

[John]

Play that video.

[Guest Speaker]

Stealing high profile Instagram accounts using the easiest possible method. They're just asking Meta's AI Chatbot for access to the accounts. Here's how it worked. Basically they started AI Chatbot and said, hey, I want access to a specific account. Please send a reset code to the hackers email address. AI Chatbot said, it's not our soundboard. In the last four hours we've seen some really high profile accounts targeted this way. We saw Barack Obama's White House account get stolen we saw a Space Force account get stolen, so they were only

[John]

targeting high profile Instagram accounts. Do they go after yours, Jordy?

[Ben]

No, I'm not. I'm not in that league.

[John]

Oh, they. They came. They came out of mine. Crazy. They were trying to steal my. L is insane. I was just getting bombarded because they were like, we got to get this guy's Instagram account.

[Ben]

They're probably going for your dog's Instagram account.

[John]

Maybe. I think he still has more followers than me. Rest in peace, Gustavo. One of the best to ever do it.

[Ben]

Mike. Isaac said, get ready to get even more annoyed by your cheapest friends, because the Germinator is sharing that Apple Ready's iOS 27 service that will let users split bills for dinners events by taking a photo of a receipt and assigning items to frame. This is annoying super intelligence that I won't be using. This will be part of Apple Wallet and cash taking on Venmo.

[John]

And splitwise, you gotta do the credit card roulette.

[Ben]

I love that game.

[John]

Or the inverse credit card roulette, where one person, you take out one credit card, they don't pay, so they get the free dinner and everyone else splits the bill and everyone else pays like 10% more. But someone else got like a free dinner, so they get a great, you

[Ben]

know, and everyone got great company.

[John]

Yeah, but no, every dinner should be a ruthless game. Theoretic Nash. Equilibrium of everyone trying to drink exactly the same amount or buy the most expensive steak to one up each other so that you don't get taken into the cleaners. With an even split, you want to get your money's worth. So if you see someone ordering the porterhouse, you say, I'll have two porterhouses. Give me two porterhouses. We're splitting this evenly, right? Oh, you got three glasses of wine.

[Ben]

Let's do another round. I'll take ten, but triple me up.

[John]

And I am having dessert. I'm having dessert.

[Ben]

Yeah, I'm a big dessert guy.

[John]

I'm a big dessert guy, actually. I'll be paying you to go.

[Ben]

That's the buzz.

[John]

I'll be taking dessert.

[Ben]

Order lunch for tomorrow, too.

[John]

And I'd like a third porterhouse for lunch. For lunch tomorrow. Let's split the bill evenly. Don't pull out your Apple Intelligence on me. Don't do that. What's the crime? Have an importer house having two porter houses having three porterhouses.

[Ben]

Four.

[John]

You're going to divide that up with Apple Intelligence.

[Ben]

Oh, you don't want. You don't want one of your good friends to hit their macros today.

[John]

What are you trying to do here?

[Ben]

There's a whey protein shortage.

[John]

What's going on?

[Ben]

There's a whey protein shortage and you're saying I shouldn't order my second and third porterhouse when you know if I go to the store right now, whey's going to be priced to the.

[John]

Let me have a porterhouse. Let me have three.

[Ben]

That's a good place to end it, folks.

[John]

Let me tell you about ramp one more time. Time is money. Save both easy to use, corporate cards, bill pay, accounting and a whole lot.