Jersey Mikes's IPO, AI Lab Nationalization, SpaceX AIPhone | Diet TBPN

Summary

TBPN "Diet TBPN" Episode Summary

Episode Title: Jersey Mike's IPO, AI Lab Nationalization, SpaceX AIPhone | Diet TBPN
Air Date: July 3, 2026
Hosts: John Coogan & Jordi Hays
Special Guest Contributions: Ben Thompson, John Gruber

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Overview

This episode of TBPN (Diet TBPN format) explores the rapidly shifting technology and business landscape with a fast-paced discussion on several headline stories: nationalization proposals of AI labs and what it means for innovation and society, Jersey Mike’s surprising IPO news, modernization milestones in federal government processes, and SpaceX’s hinted ambitions in the smartphone market. The episode blends technical insights, humorous banter, and cultural commentary with the hosts’ signature Silicon Valley energy.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. AI Model Release and Nationalization Debates (00:02–09:26)

• Fable 5 AI Model Launch:
  • Fable 5 is released but appears “nerfed,” raising questions about what is locked down for safety.
    • Quote, Ben Thompson [00:13]: “There’s always been questions about, you know, okay, you don’t want it to be able to build a bioweapon... but you should probably disclose that and be transparent about it.”
• Government Stake in AI Companies:
  • OpenAI reportedly in talks with the Trump administration to transfer a 5% equity stake; Financial Times and other commentators are divided over this model versus direct public benefit strategies.
  • Joe Wiesenthal suggests a tax approach; Dean Ball warns against direct government stake, calling it “akin to inviting rats to live and reproduce in the walls of your house, which is wild.” [02:27]
  • Distribution mechanisms discussed: Should benefits go to individual Americans or the government?
    • Quote, Ben Thompson [05:49]: “Having taxes go into your local government is great and can provide roads and schools...but it’s abstract. As opposed to the Ben Thompson proposal...all get checks for...$1,000 a month...direct payment...is going to be better received.”
• Comparisons to Crypto, Income Distribution:
  • Data on Trump’s earnings from crypto, outpacing major platforms like Coinbase and Hyperliquid.
  • Speculation on direct-equity distributions, with numbers run for American households: “$371 of equity per household.” [07:04]
  • Potential targeting of distributions (e.g. funds for children born in a specific year).

2. Jersey Mike’s IPO and Growth Story (09:26–13:00)

• IPO Announcement:
  • Jersey Mike’s files for IPO at a $12 billion valuation, up from $8B acquisition by Blackstone last year.
  • Notable company background:
    • Founder Peter Cancro bought Mike’s Subs at age 17 (not actually named Mike).
    • $125,000 loan in 1975 = ~$775,000 today.
      • Memorable Quote, John Gruber [11:17]: “Coach was like, this guy’s a star. I should give him a six figure SBA loan.”
  • Leadership transition to former Wingstop CEO Charlie Morrison; plans to expand internationally.

3. Federal Process Digitization: OPM Retirement Modernization (13:00–18:00)

• The (Literal) Paper Mine Problem:
  • Government retiree pensions took up to six months, processed by hand in “acres of file cabinets” in Pennsylvania mines.
    • Quote, Ben Thompson [14:26]: “We got to visit [the mine] in deep underground caverns...acres of file cabinets...”
• Tech Intervention:
  • Airbnb engineers embedded via Joe Gebbia's initiative; fired the existing software vendor and rebuilt.
  • Problems tackled: legacy COBOL systems, fragmented software, slow transformation cycles.
  • Quote, Ben Thompson [15:24]: “The primary skill these vendors have is securing government contracts. Huge moat. Delivery of quality product be damned.”

4. SpaceX/Elon Musk Phone Rumors and App Store Decline (18:00–25:01)

• Rumors of a SpaceX Phone:
  • SpaceX showed a thin, AI-focused prototype phone during its IPO roadshow; runs on Qualcomm, uses XAI tech.
  • Musk has publicly denied the project, but speculation continues.
    • Quote, John Gruber [20:31]: “You’re sitting there in your Apple Vision Pro, you see the video...I shouldn’t click it...and then you click it...They got me again.”
    • Musk quote via Thompson [20:38]: “The idea of making a phone makes me want to die.”
• The App Store’s Waning Moat:
  • AI chat apps and super apps are consolidating functions, reducing the need for specialized long-tail apps.
  • Apple isn’t reliably distributing small indie apps anymore; new consumer hit apps are rare.
    • Quote, John Gruber [22:45]: “We had 10 years of very real innovation...I still, I’ve said this a bunch of times on the show, but...I would expect there to be a lot more like net new hit apps in the App Store.”
  • The rise of “vibe coding” and LLMs could support new devices/platforms, but any Musk phone would likely be another walled garden, not an open platform.

5. Viral Culture & Branding: Empire State Climb & Brand Hijacking (25:01–28:35)

• Empire State Building Proposal Goes Viral:
  • Couple climbs the building, proposes, unfurls a flag—brands instantly pounce on the meme with their logos (most notably beverage brands).
  • Social media backlash: Jack Appleby calls out lack of originality; “Congrats. You put your logo on a flag. Really innovative stuff.” [27:05]
  • Quote, John Gruber [26:41]: “I would have liked to see them erect like a full size billboard up there. Something...more legible than the flag.”

6. Jensen Huang’s Leather Jacket Auction & Nvidia’s AI Dominance (28:35–29:43)

• Jensen’s Iconic Jacket Up for Auction:
  • NVIDIA CEO’s Tom Ford leather jacket is with Sotheby’s; expected to fetch $40–60k, but hosts predict much higher.
    • Quote, John Gruber [29:36]: “I’m not just buying your GPUs. I’m buying your old clothes.”
• Nvidia’s AI Token Revenue:
  • Meta reportedly consuming trillions of tokens monthly, costing billions/year, cementing Nvidia’s centrality in AI.
  • Innovative AI cloud revenue sharing and financing deals are reshaping “industrial era” tech.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• “There’s always been questions about... transparency [in] locking down AI intelligence.” – Ben Thompson, [00:13]
• “Akin to inviting rats to live and reproduce in the walls of your house.” – Dean Ball (as read by Ben Thompson), [02:27]
• "Having taxes go into your local government is great...but it's abstract. ...Direct payment...is going to be better received." – Ben Thompson, [05:49]
• "Coach was like, this guy’s a star. I should give him a six figure SBA loan." – John Gruber, [11:17]
• "We got to visit it in deep underground caverns...acres of file cabinets." – Ben Thompson, [14:26]
• "The primary skill these vendors have is securing government contracts. ...Delivery of quality product be damned." – Ben Thompson, [15:24]
• "You’re sitting there in your Apple Vision Pro, you see the video...I shouldn’t click it...and then you click it...They got me again." – John Gruber, [20:31]
• "The idea of making a phone makes me want to die." – Elon Musk, as relayed by Ben Thompson, [20:38]
• "I would have liked to see them erect a full size billboard up there. Something more legible than the flag." – John Gruber, [26:41]
• "I'm not just buying your GPUs. I'm buying your old clothes." – John Gruber, [29:36]

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Important Timestamps

• 00:02 – Fable 5 AI release, model safety, and regulation
• 01:50 – OpenAI/Trump administration equity stake discussion
• 05:49 – Local taxes vs. direct payments from tech profits
• 09:26 – Jersey Mike’s IPO and origin story
• 13:00 – Modernizing federal retirement with tech intervention
• 18:00 – SpaceX phone rumors and App Store insights
• 25:01 – Viral Empire State proposal, brand co-opting
• 28:35 – Jensen Huang jacket auction & Nvidia’s AI revenue

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Tone and Flow

The episode maintains a lively, irreverent, and fast-paced tone, with the hosts blending real-time data, sharp analysis, and dry wit. Dense with quips and cultural references, the show appeals to Silicon Valley insiders and curious listeners alike.

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For Listeners: Why This Episode Matters

If you missed this episode, you’re missing a snapshot of tech’s biggest macro forces: the intersection of innovation, government, finance, and culture. From AI governance proposals and grassroots wealth transfer ideas to the mythos of an American sandwich shop and the digitization of government, TBPN charts the next chapter of tech’s impact—served with a healthy side of memes and skepticism.

Transcript

[Ben Thompson]

Fable has been freed. Fable 5 is now available. Good news for the AI world, of course. The Wall Street Journal says the battle over how to tame AI has just begun. Obviously there's lots of back and forth on how these models get released. Who gets access? When people get access, will the government get access at certain points? How fettered is the intelligence? How unfettered is the intelligence? But there's a number of interesting news. The interesting detail that people are sort of pulling at is the new Fable 5 that is now released seems to have been nerfed in some ways. There's always been questions about, you know, okay, you don't want it to be able to build a bioweapon or hack a system. So locking down cybersecurity makes sense, but you should probably disclose that and be transparent about it. And then the question of how do you deal with the self replicating AI? If you just ask it to build an AI system that can build you a bioweapon, well then you have the permission.

[John Gruber]

You can just build me unfettered entire.

[Ben Thompson]

Exactly. So you have to Cambridge Analytica.

[John Gruber]

Unfettered, not limited by rules or any controlling rules. Wait, what did you say unfettered?

[Ben Thompson]

No, no. What source is this?

[John Gruber]

Cambridge.

[Ben Thompson]

You said Cambridge Analytica, which I don't think has a dictionary website.

[John Gruber]

They should launch a dictionary.

[Ben Thompson]

That would be good.

[John Gruber]

That would be great. Maybe the Cambridge dictionary, but the dictionary,

[Ben Thompson]

the dictionary definition of unfettered is not

[John Gruber]

limited by rules or any controlling influence.

[Ben Thompson]

So if there's intelligence, you're going to get regulated immediately.

[John Gruber]

Well, I just think like Neolab, like everyone wants to be the cool, friendly neolab. Yeah, there's space for kind of a sketchy villain.

[Ben Thompson]

Well, we have Vipul from Together AI building open source AI cloud infrastructure coming on the show. I'm sure he can talk about what's capable, what's possible, when are building unfettered intelligence. This is from The Financial Times. OpenAI proposes handing Trump administration a 5% stake. Joe Wiesenthal is pushing back already. He says, I don't know about this path. Rather than equity stakes, why not make companies pay 20% of all pre tax income to the federal government? And then instead of exercising shareholder influence, politicians and regulators could set rules on corporate conduct across industries. Interesting.

[John Gruber]

I like where he's going with this. Someone should try this, at least try it out.

[Ben Thompson]

Contrarian take, but yes. Dean Ball already chimed in on this news. He said there are two broad ways this can work. One, you divide this 5% over all U.S. households, handing each a direct stake or two, you give the stake directly to the government. One is fine, two is probably ruinous. Akin to inviting rats to live and reproduce in the walls of your house, which is wild. He says it will never stop.

[John Gruber]

Don't knock it till you try it. Dean. Yeah, there's some rats out there that can be quite excellent roommates.

[Ben Thompson]

Are you a rat guy? I thought you were a mosquito guy. I thought you liked mosquitoes.

[John Gruber]

No, I do like squirrels.

[Ben Thompson]

Squirrels, okay.

[John Gruber]

Squirrels.

[Ben Thompson]

Yeah.

[John Gruber]

I feel like I have a bond with squirrels.

[Ben Thompson]

They're sort of the aristocratic squirrel in my yard.

[John Gruber]

I look at it and I just salute.

[Ben Thompson]

People have said you have the mind of a squirrel.

[John Gruber]

They have, yeah. They've said that I have the mind of a rodent.

[Ben Thompson]

Yes. Dean Ball continues. He says it will Never stop at 5%. It will go on and on. The governance will become a nightmare. Political capture will be real, and it will generate precisely no goodwill with the public. Yeah, that's a good point. And we were talking about this before, this idea of like.

[John Gruber]

Yeah, one of the challenges is even the way this was phrased in the Financial Times, the assumption is that it sounds like they're giving shares not to a sovereign AI fund, which is, I think, what was actually proposed, but just giving it to the White House.

[Ben Thompson]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[John Gruber]

Which, given the disclosures that were made

[Ben Thompson]

earlier this week, sometimes not having fun with it. So Trump denies conflicts of interest, as filings show he made more than $1 billion last year. $1.4 billion of stocks bought, 432 million sold deals for watches and perfume. Yes, the Trump watch happened. I saw a crazy chart that said that Trump out earned Coinbase in terms of profit from crypto in the last 12 months or something like that. I forget the exact stat, but it showed all the different crypto platforms, and many of them were down because it's been a rough market. Some of them are up, but no one is up more than the President of the United States. Wild times. Wild times. But, yes, it seems like the green shoot here, the white pill. The optimistic outcome is that if there's lab nationalization, if there's some sort of distribution of equity to Americans, it happens through the Trump accounts, through Social Security number, through some sort of identity that the individual can have a stake in, as opposed to. As opposed to just going into some fund. We were talking about this with data centers where people are.

[John Gruber]

Tyler has the data. We can pull it up.

[Ben Thompson]

Okay, let's pull it up. Wait, do you have it or no?

[John Gruber]

Yes. So Coinbase made 1.2, 6 billion in income. But pull up this chart because it is pretty remarkable.

[Ben Thompson]

Yeah, but as I was saying, with data centers, you guys.

[John Gruber]

Okay, I know it's 4th of July weekend coming up, but there we go.

[Ben Thompson]

Look at this. Okay, scroll up a little bit.

[John Gruber]

Let's get it a little centered.

[Ben Thompson]

There we go. Core science.

[John Gruber]

Let's lock it into the center galaxy. Let's lock.

[Ben Thompson]

There we go.

[John Gruber]

And there we go. Amazing. Thank you.

[Ben Thompson]

Out earned. Biggest listed US Crypto firms. You have to imagine that is hyper liquid doing better. I feel like hyperliquid was on a tear for a while. I don't know how they're doing recently, but anyway, staggering chart. But as we were talking about with data centers, there's one idea which is just tax them, increase the tax base. But having taxes go into your local government is great and can provide roads and schools and pay for things and balance the budget. And that's great. But it's abstract. As opposed to the Ben Thompson proposal, which was data center shows up in a small town. It's in a sparsely populated area. There might only be 5,000, 10,000 residents in the city, but they all get checks for. He ran the numbers and it was like $1,000 a month for some of these data center projects where they're making so much money and the town's so small, they can do a meaningful check to the individuals. And that sort of direct payment, I think is going to be better received than this abstract. Oh, yeah, my government's better funded. But are they going to cut my taxes? Are going to successfully build that road? I don't know. And it doesn't help me pay my bills, which I think is what people want. What are you saying?

[John Gruber]

Trump did, in fact, out earn hyper liquid?

[Ben Thompson]

He did.

[John Gruber]

By a meaningful margin. Hyper liquid generated 908 million in total fees in 2025.

[Ben Thompson]

Brutal.

[John Gruber]

Yeah. So just like running very quick numbers on the opening, I think. So if it's like 5%, let's say it's at a trillion or something, that's 50 billion. If you're giving it to households, like, like this idea, there's like 130 million households. So that's like $371 of like, equity per household, which I think is like, sure, maybe that's.

[Ben Thompson]

That's meaningful.

[John Gruber]

But it doesn't seem like that's really gonna, like, change people's perceptions of the labs. If that's like, part of the goal. Right.

[Ben Thompson]

Well, I think if it's.

[John Gruber]

I mean, so maybe then they do the right parlay. With that.

[Ben Thompson]

So, I mean, the nice thing about the Trump accounts is that they are set up in a way that you can elect to donate to just children born this year. And when you segment by that, the denominator gets a lot smaller and so the impact gets a lot bigger. So you could be all of a sudden looking at something like a few thousand dollars for every kid born this year or something like that. You can narrow it down. You could do every kid under 5 or you could do everyone under 18 and that type of. I mean, you're right, it's not going to move the needle as much as broad distribution for everyone, but you can be a little bit more targeted with it. I don't know. There's different approaches.

[John Gruber]

Ryan says, wait, Does America get 5% of TBPN?

[Ben Thompson]

Yes.

[John Gruber]

I was never thinking about that.

[Ben Thompson]

Yes, we podcast for you, America.

[John Gruber]

That's right.

[Ben Thompson]

This is the funniest outcome is the most likely and that's exactly what's happening here.

[John Gruber]

Community ownership of this show.

[Ben Thompson]

Somebody called me a fed based on this news and I said, I don't even know what to do with that. But I guess it's somewhat true. The actual story here, just to reset OpenAI's apparently in talks, according to the Financial Times, with the Trump administration to give a 5% equity stake in the company. The Financial Times describes the talks as early conversations, but the plans seem to involve other frontier AI players apportioning stakes in their companies as well. The obvious context around this story is at least on a straightforward read that AI companies need at least to stem the seemingly ever growing negative sentiment around AI and data centers. Doing business with a Trump admin has turned out well for other companies like intel and Dell. Intel's the big one where post government stake. I think the Stock is up 200 or 400%, something like that.

[John Gruber]

400.

[Ben Thompson]

400%. Very, very strong performance for intel and being difficult to do. Being difficult to do business with the admin has been unambiguously bad for others. And now there's a vehicle with the Trump accounts that can facilitate equity transfers from corporations to average Americans. Again, these are early conversations, so we're very light on the details, but we'll be discussing this news, of course. In other news, Jersey Mike's is filing for initial public offering. Jersey Mike's is going public. The sandwich chain Jersey Mike's filed for IPO today. It's looking for a $12 billion valuation after being acquired by Blackstone last year for 8 billion.

[John Gruber]

Let's give it up for Blackstone.

[Ben Thompson]

Yeah, they needed a win. They're getting a nice 50% markup in just a year.

[John Gruber]

Jersey forced out of buying single family homes. Yeah, they have.

[Ben Thompson]

That's not true at all. There hasn't been any, there hasn't been any regulation around that whatsoever.

[John Gruber]

Joking.

[Ben Thompson]

They do own 95% of homes, apparently. Something like that. No, it's like, it's like half or something. It's low. But Jersey Mike's has 3,300 locations across the US and Canada. Plans to open 300 shops in the UK and Ireland. Peter Cancro, Jersey Mike's founder, who's not named Mike, you would assume he was, but the founder of Jersey Mike's is in fact named Peter. He started the business in 1975 when he was 17 years old. Wow. Young. Overnight success. He actually founded the business when he purchased a sandwich shop In Point Pleasant, New Jersey called Mike's Subs with a $125,000 loan that he got from his then football coach who was also a banker. So you're playing high school football in New Jersey and you have an idea to buy a sandwich shop.

[John Gruber]

Coach was like, this guy's a star. I should give him a six figure SBA loan.

[Ben Thompson]

Also, $125,000 in 1975 is like $25 million by today's standards, isn't it?

[John Gruber]

Also, that's just such a, such a, at Least personally, at 17, if I had a couple thousand dollars in my bank account, I was feeling like the king of the castle. So $125,000 to buy a sandwich shop. We don't really know what the financials were of the sandwich shop. It's very possible that it was just such a slam dunk deal that even a 17 year old could operate it.

[Ben Thompson]

This is a no brainer.

[John Gruber]

It might have just been a no brainer, but clearly

[Ben Thompson]

$125,000 in 1975, just using inflation, not investing in the market, not compounding using the general CPI inflation numbers, that gives you $775,000 in today's dollars. So if you're a 17 year old football player, just go to your football coach and say, hey, can you, can you loan me three quarters of a million dollars?

[John Gruber]

Ch in the chat says, coach, I need a one hundreds. Yeah, you might be able to go to your coach and you know, basically get the financing to set up some type of neo class.

[Ben Thompson]

So we grew the company for almost 50 years, 1975 to 2025, basically, before transitioning to chairman this April, former Wingstop CEO Charlie Morrison now leads the company. The ticker will be JMKE Jersey Mike's. So go check it out. The other news the Office of Personnel Management opm, otherwise known as Other People's Money, is ending taking other people's money via paper for retirement. OPM ends paper based retirement process. The US Office of Personal Management says it has digitized by vjooqic the retirement process for government employees. This might seem like a boring news item, but the story behind it is actually kind of wild. Up until now, the process for government employees and U.S. veterans to retire and start receiving their pensions could take up to six months. That's a long time. This is because it's entirely paper based and manual. Spike Brehm, who helped with the effort, described how crazy this turned out to be in reality. And in a post on X they said that they did it. The mad lads actually did it. I never talked about my time at Doge last year because it was so controversial and contentious. Early last year, Joe Gebbia, founder of Airbnb and current US Chief Design Officer, recruited a handful of his most trusted early Airbnb engineers to embed at the Office of Personnel Management to solve the retirement paper problem. So processing a federal retirement took months. And in the extreme, retirees could wait up to six months for their full pension to arrive. What was the holdup paper? Remember hearing Elon talk about the mine in Pennsylvania? We got to visit it in deep underground caverns blasted out of limestone. There were literally acres of file cabinets. As far as the.

[John Gruber]

I'm going to go ahead and say this was a feature, not a bug.

[Ben Thompson]

You like this?

[John Gruber]

I think people generally yearn for the mines. And so it's possible that. It's possible that it wasn't the most efficient way to do business, but it was the most fun way.

[Ben Thompson]

But now you're like a single issuer voter. Like, we got to return, we got

[John Gruber]

to go, we got to bring back the mine.

[Ben Thompson]

Yeah, okay. Okay. You're. You're in the mines. A controversial position, but enjoy it. Storing files detailing federal employees employment and pay stub history. A simple case might be a quarter or a half inch thick, but really complex cases filled up whole filing cabinets. One famously took up a whole pallet. I wonder what was going on with that particular federal government employee that they had a whole pallet. Were they jumping around from job to job or something? I don't know. Each case was handed, was hand processed by caseworkers and cubicles deep underground. So you clock in at the ultimate lock in factory, in the mine, in a cubicle underground processing someone's pension. They checked calculations, made sure forms were filled out properly. Many weren't been handed the long tail of complex issues. We watched as they keyed data into a black and white terminal transmitting to the COBOL mainframe built many decades ago. We gotta keep the COBOL flowing for sure. We can't update that. It's such a good programming language. It just sounds so cool. Cobol. No one wants to write Ruby on Rails. You want to write cobol. Since cases were processed by hand, there were multiple rounds of human review and additional rounds for complex cases. Case files were walked around between one worker's outbox and another's inbox. Sometimes it would sit in place in one place for days, waiting to be picked up. To OPM's credit, they'd done multiple rounds of digital transformation spanning decades, so some systems were newer than others. Then there was a big effort in the mid-90s, but the systems were desperate or disparate and it was a total maze getting them to talk to each other. There was a big effort to build a web app where employees applying for retirement could digitally fill out the forms necessary just to be mailed to the mine and stuffed into the paper file. And a few federal agencies were even using it. When we arrived, OPM was midway through a fresh attempt at digital transformation delivered by a software contractor. The black pill was seeing the entire the terrible quality of the software and interaction with the contractors coming from Silicon Valley. I couldn't believe how low the talent quality bar was for selling software to the government. It's clear, as the OG USDS people explained to me a decade ago, the primary skill these vendors have is securing government contracts. Huge moat delivery of quality product be damned. We fired the vendor and took over the project. They'd been working on it for more than a year and there was another year before they were going to deliver it. At first we tried to bend it to our will to actually connect all the various data sources and get decent UX for caseworkers in the mine to use. But we soon realized we were going to have to rebuild the whole stack from scratch. It was around this time I had to go back to New York. I had a new job waiting for me, a four month old. The wife whose patience was running out. But I got to watch from afar as the team cranked day and night, hitting early milestones. Now they've fully done it. Huge congrats to the team. Wow. Yeah, very interesting. There's other news. SpaceX apparently is maybe working on a phone at the very least. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that during SpaceX's recent IPO roadshow, before SpaceX went public, they were showing investors a prototype of, of something sort of like an iPhone, AI enhanced, maybe thinner. The Wall Street Journal has some reporting around it and it's an interesting story. Elon's denied this a bunch, but the reporting seems pretty good at this point that at least it was a demo.

[John Gruber]

It's hard to see why he wouldn't at least take a shot at is kind of my is my point of view. He has one of the greatest telecom companies ever created.

[Ben Thompson]

Yep.

[John Gruber]

Global satellite network. Theoretically over time, any person on the entire planet could have an Internet connected SpaceX device with Starlink. It makes a lot of sense. The other factor that I've just continued to think is quite interesting is the App Store as a moat is being diminished by AI. There's just so many things. There's so many things. There's so many apps on my phone that like five years ago I used a lot of. Today I don't use at all. So an example being like, I don't even need like the weather app. I can just be like, I can ask Chad, give me the weather for the next week. Obviously not beer app. Yeah. And I don't even need that because I can just be like vibe, code me my own beer app today. But obviously it's not like an efficient way to use. It's probably better to just open the weather app, but at the same time I'm very used to it. The other thing is like even things like surf reports, like I'll just pull a surf report in chat.

[Ben Thompson]

Yeah, yeah.

[John Gruber]

And so there's a lot of like the long tail of apps are no longer like a lock in to the iPhone for me and I assume a lot of other people.

[Ben Thompson]

Okay, yeah, we got to have a chicken and egg debate about this. Let me finish reporting the SpaceX news and then I want to ask you to dig into the source of why that's happening. But first, SpaceX developed an early prototype of an AI focused handset. The device is said to be slimmer than the iPhone, runs proprietary operating system, uses XAI technology built around Qualcomm's Snapdragon chipset. So they're not vertically integrating the chip like Apple silicon just yet, but Elon has fab chips before for Tesla. So not out of this, not out of the question. Elon Musk reportedly demoed the prototype to potential investors during SpaceX's recent IPO roadshow. The product fits with, with Musk's broader everything app vision. But it's still early and may never ship. Rumors about a Musk built phone have circulated for years. There's videos on YouTube with like tens of millions of views that are like, the Tesla PI phone is coming next week and it's all just completely fake clickbait. But the demand gets you every time. It doesn't get me every time. Stop it. But Elon's actually, you're sitting there in

[John Gruber]

your Apple Vision Pro, you see the video and you're like, I shouldn't click it. I know it's fake. I shouldn't click it. I know it's fake. And then you click it and you're like, ah, they got me again.

[Ben Thompson]

Yeah, no, it is ridiculous. But Elon has had to comment on this many times. He said the idea of, the idea of making a phone makes me want to die. He said in October, but if we have to make a phone, we will. Funny way to say it. In February, he denied a Reuters report that SpaceX was building a phone that could connect directly to Starlink satellites. Posting on X. We are not developing a phone and no one is commenting on this right now. So very, very early stage. My question about apps, I think you're right. The number of apps, it used to be every month there was a hot app. Every year there was a hot app. Specific apps for specific things. What is driving the collapse? Because when we talked to Mark Pincus yesterday, he said that Apple is not pushing small apps. Like Apple is not a. The App Store is not a reliable source of distribution for Vibe coded apps for games, for anything. And so back in the day, he was able to grow Zynga on the Facebook platform, which was very open. And you could go viral within Facebook for a completely separate piece of software, not just content. And then you could keep that customer relationship, monetize that customer relationship off platform forever. Not the case anymore. Also just discovery people don't open up the App Store as much, I think, and say, oh, what are the top apps? Oh, what are the recommendations? I would love a new entertainment app.

[John Gruber]

They're like, no, I got one new app, please.

[Ben Thompson]

One new app. They don't. They don't. That's not a behavior. But why?

[John Gruber]

Let me go to the App Store. I would like one or two new apps, please.

[Ben Thompson]

Yeah, yeah. But why?

[John Gruber]

Doesn't happen.

[Ben Thompson]

So, so, so why is it not happening? Is it because the super apps are getting more super in the sense that you don't need you used to need. You needed Snapchat for stories, you needed TikTok for vertical video, you needed YouTube for long form. Now Instagram can satisfy a lot of those things. If there's some new feature that pops up, Instagram will add it very quickly. As you mentioned, ChatGPT and the AI chat apps can do a lot of other things that you might need a separate app for. But is it that the apps consolidated or is it that Apple pushed that?

[John Gruber]

It's a good question. I mean, I think part of it is we had 10 years of very real innovation around what types of applications were possible or needed on a powerful mobile device. And so I think that you just had like saturation. Right. I still, I've said this a bunch of times on the show, but given that, you know, rewind to the chatgpt moment, I would expect there to be a lot more like net new hit apps in the App Store. And today if you look at the top charts, obviously dominated by World cup related things, but it's yeah, sports betting, like streaming apps, the Trump accounts are doing very well. And so it's not like if I'd fallen asleep at the chatgpt moment and woken up today, I'd expect to go and be like, okay, there's probably a bunch of new popular hit consumer apps. And it just turns out that AI is an extending innovation for a lot of existing apps. And so I just think the combination of LLMs and chat apps being able to just do so much for you and going to continually be able to do more for you and Vibe coding is again a positive tailwind for anybody building potentially a new device. Even if it was, you know, especially if it's based on Android, but even if it was like an entirely new operating system. Elon built a new operating system for

[Ben Thompson]

Tesla, but that's not the Elon Musk goal. He's not the open platform guy. When Twitter, when he purchased Twitter, the API got smaller.

[John Gruber]

Yeah, I'm not saying that, I'm not

[Ben Thompson]

saying Tesla's not saying ecosystem. You can't, you can't deploy a different self driving system onto your Tesla. It's a closed system, it's a competitor to the Apple ecosystem, it's an equally walled garden. But it would be his.

[John Gruber]

I'm just saying it's, it's, it doesn't seem out of the realm of possibility to take a crack at a new

[Ben Thompson]

device that, oh, there's a huge incentive to. I completely agree with that. You don't, no one wants to be locked in The Apple ecosystem. So you want to build your own ecosystem or your own walled garden. But the idea that it would be a. Not a non walled garden is sort of. It would be an uncharacteristic strategy, I think.

[John Gruber]

I agree.

[Ben Thompson]

Yeah. Anyway, there's another story. There was a couple that climbed to the top of the Empire State Building yesterday. Did you see this?

[John Gruber]

I did.

[Ben Thompson]

And they put up a flag and they got married or they proposed or they got engaged and brands have immediately jumped on it. Let's go. Let's give it up for some advertising. No, there's backlash already. Jack Appleby said. This is so, so embarrassing. These brands think they really did really think they did something. Loverboy is the worst. Congrats. You put your logo on a flag. Really innovative stuff. The lack of originality and clever thinking in modern social media is just ridiculous. Everyone had the exact same idea. There's a meme we got to get on the action. And what's interesting is that a lot of these are beverage brands. It looks like Drink culture, Pop drink. Hi Yo Drink. Loverboy. Drink Spritz. Bulletproof. I guess that's bulletproof. Coffee Fashion Nova. New York City. Just the account. New York City. I don't know. Petco. Stop breaking treats in two. It is a fun meme format, but brands always. It's very, very hard to break through if you're just piling on the top meme.

[John Gruber]

What do you think? Yeah. So this whole thing was when I first saw the video of the flag going up and they kind of botched the flag. I'm not going to lie. It seems like they didn't fully anticipate the wind conditions that day. The flag was quite hard. The writing on the flag was quite hard to read. I would have liked to see them erect like a full size billboard up there.

[Ben Thompson]

Something permanent.

[John Gruber]

Yeah, something more permanent and certainly more legible than the flag. And then the quote was, when the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace. But then they were just kind of making out and proposing. That's kinda cool. And yeah, just it felt like it has.

[Ben Thompson]

It has a little bit of like the AI cadence to it or like the don't love your job job, your love.

[John Gruber]

Yeah, I mean that's, that's, that's, that's.

[Ben Thompson]

It make a lot of sense. Yeah.

[John Gruber]

Yeah.

[Ben Thompson]

Could be a little more terse, I suppose.

[John Gruber]

But anyway, I just don't know if they were.

[Ben Thompson]

I'm still impressed. It's just hard. It was quite impressive with, with a climbing. How did they climb up from the sidewalk or did they take the elevator and then hop out and then start climbing? Because this wasn't like an Alex Honnold from the base. Free climb, free solo attack.

[John Gruber]

How fast is this helicopter going, by the way?

[Ben Thompson]

That's just the lens, baby. This is a 600 millimeter lens. Lens compression. Jordy, you're learning optics. Optics. This is looking through a telescope. Basically.

[John Gruber]

Dave says, quick tip for goth couples from the Matrix. Make sure to account for wind speed. Yeah, I agree.

[Ben Thompson]

I heard some, some recording of the helicopter pilot who was dispatched sort of emergency response nypd. And I think with helicopter pilots, like, they're like, alert, sir, we have two individuals on the top of the Empire State Building. He's like, that sounds cool. He's like, that's awesome. Why are they up there? They're like, oh, they're not supposed to be. They're trespassing. He's like, oh, okay. Bummer. But still impressive.

[John Gruber]

Anyway, yeah, good story. Good story for them. I don't know if it made the sort of maybe political impact or whatever impact they were trying to have, but happy for them. And congratulations to. To the couple.

[Ben Thompson]

Yeah.

[John Gruber]

You know what I need, John?

[Ben Thompson]

What do you need?

[John Gruber]

Jensen's signature black leather jacket. Yeah, his leather jacket by Tom Ford is being auctioned off. I'm so curious how this ended up with Sotheby's. Did Jensen pass it along? He needed a few. And he, he needed a few bucks and just said like, you know, wanted to use it as a way to raise some capital or did someone else get their hands on it and take it to Sotheby's? So the estimate from Sotheby's is 40 to 60 thousand dollars. I just think this goes way higher. I think there's so many people that would love to own this just for the novelty of it. It's a very unique item that will be a part of history. And so 40 to 60 just seems way too low.

[Ben Thompson]

What's funny is a lot of the people that can afford this are like competing with Jensen and probably don't want to glaze them too much. Like, you don't see Mark Zuckerberg pulling this up probably because he's like, I'm going to be the best. I'm going to have the biggest market.

[John Gruber]

I'm going to spend the most money with you.

[Ben Thompson]

Yeah.

[John Gruber]

I'm not just buying your GPUs. I'm buying your old clothes. Yeah, I'm buying your old clothes.

[Ben Thompson]

We got to close out maybe with this, with this Jensen Meme from Andrew I wake up not a loser. Infinite Money because meta employees consumed 73.3 trillion AI tokens in a single month, which roughly costs 221 million a month or around 2.65 billion a year. I thought it was higher. That sounds low based on what I thought they were spending in terms of tokens. Might even be higher, who knows. But it is very interesting. Nvidia has also partnered with AI cloud firms with revenue sharing taking circularity to a previously unseen level. I don't know. Sale and leaseback, all sorts of these financial deals. These happen all the time in other industries. It's just sort of new seeing it in tack because we are in this industrial era. So very interesting news but Good news for Nvidia. Anyway, thank you for watching TVPN. We are off tomorrow. It is 4th of July so we're having a long weekend folks. Believe us. Five stars on Apple Podcast and Spotify. Sign up for our [e-mail] and we'll see you on Monday. Cortisol Rising have a good we love Bye.