Kim K's New Energy Drink, Citrini Discourse Rages On, the $100B Meta-AMD Deal | Diet TBPN

Summary

TBPN Diet – Episode Summary

Episode: Kim K's New Energy Drink, Citrini Discourse Rages On, the $100B Meta-AMD Deal
Podcast: TBPN (Tech Business Podcast Network)
Hosts: John Coogan & Jordi Hays
Date: February 24, 2026
Duration: ~30 minutes

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Episode Overview

In this packed Diet TBPN episode, John, Jordi, and guest contributors dive into the ongoing Citrini research discourse shaking up tech markets, analyze new AI product cycles and software valuations, breakdown Meta’s landmark GPU partnership with AMD, and riff on the state of viral consumer products—from Kim Kardashian’s controversial energy drink launch to Supreme’s own podcast microphone. Commentary covers everything from market anxieties around AI timelines to inside tech jokes, with the show’s signature mix of wit and rapid-fire discussion.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Citrini Discourse: New Era for Tech Research (00:02–04:53)

• The Viral Research Report:
  The recent Citrini report triggered widespread debate, with market participants deeply engaged in parsing its single, low-probability scenario of “doom.” As Ben Thompson notes, “We are the sell side research now...independent researchers and analysts are really moving the markets.” (00:49)

• Sell-Side Evolution:
  Traditional investment banks no longer monopolize market-moving insight thanks to independent platforms and viral content: “We've all had those research PDFs from Morgan Stanley or Goldman Sachs...now this went viral, there's people making TikToks about it.” (01:20)

• Uncertainty & Narrative:
  Derek Thompson is quoted:

  “The conversation about AI is a marketplace of competing science fiction narratives...the level of uncertainty is so high and...real world, real time information about AI's macroeconomic effects so paltry, that serious conversations about AI are often more literary than genuinely analytical.” (02:55)

• Nobody Knows the Future:
  The hosts emphasize how even “frontier labs” don’t know exactly what they’re building or what impact it will have.

  “Nobody knows anything. Whatever you think of AI today, be prepared to change your mind soon.” (03:37)

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2. AI Timelines and Hype: Between Doom and Productivity (04:53–12:07)

• Speed vs. Patience:
  The panel debates whether AI disruption is a 2-year or a 20-year process, referencing missed internet timelines as a lesson in over-expectation.

  “If you go to somebody and say ‘in 20 years your job is going to be different,’ they're like ‘great, I’ll be bored otherwise.’ It’s way different than saying ‘next year you have no job.’” – Ben Thompson (04:59)

• Software and SaaS Survival:
  Using DoorDash as a case, Ben pushes back on “tech is cooked” arguments:

  “There's no awareness that DoorDash provided a massive consumer benefit...the article just takes it as a rent extractor preying on weak-willed humans.” (06:48)

• Disconnect in SaaS Valuations:
  Despite doom and gloom, “AI native SaaS is getting funded at an insane rate while you have these massive sell offs in the public market.” – Tyler (08:46)

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3. Open Source, Agents, and the Cope of Personalized Software (09:08–12:07)

• Open Source Has Never Killed SaaS:
  Open-source alternatives have long existed but rarely dominated due to maintenance hassles:

  “Open source CRMs have existed for decades and never really taken off because there’s something else that’s valuable there.” – Ben Thompson (09:43)

• “Vibe-Coding” and AI Agents:
  Tyler outlines the vision that people will simply “vibe-code” personal software:

  “There’s the narrative everyone will just vibe code everything...but the world is getting weirder, and if you don’t know what work looks like, you want to take some risk off.” (10:42–11:21)

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4. Real Estate and Automation: More Human Than We Think (12:07–13:34)

• Information Abundance ≠ Job Elimination:
  AI-equipped agents may have access to all real estate data, but humans still want personalized support:

  “The fact that real estate agents still exist despite that shift is actually a compelling argument that humans will be resourceful—inventing jobs to do even where they ‘ought’ to be pointless.” – Ben Thompson (12:24)

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5. Kim Kardashian’s “Update” Energy Drink Debacle (13:34–14:43)

• Brand Wars:
  Kim K’s new energy drink “Update” steps on an existing startup's toes, sparking amusement and legal speculation:

  “If Kim Kardashian is coming for your consumer product brand, you’re in trouble. She’s almost a lawyer — what if she almost sues you?” – Ben Thompson (13:49–14:04)

• Jitter-Free Claims:
  The drink touts paraxanthine as a “crash-free caffeine alternative.” Hosts joke about the “free lunch.” (14:36–14:43)

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6. Meta-AMD $100B AI Deal & Stablecoin Comeback (15:15–16:56)

• Meta’s Big GPU Bet:
  Meta signs a “multi-year agreement” with AMD to deploy massive AI infrastructure:

  “With approximately 6 gigawatts of planned data center capacity...to deliver personal superintelligence to billions.” – Meta statement (15:15)

  Host notes Lisa Su (AMD CEO) is “on an absolute tear.” (16:05)

• Meta’s Stablecoin Play:
  Plans for a “stablecoin comeback” to power FB/IG/WhatsApp payments, hinting at a tipping and microtransaction future. (16:20)

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7. Memes, Viral Moments, and Tech Ephemera (16:57–27:10)

• Supreme x Shure Microphone:
  Supreme launches an official Shure MV7 mic, poking fun at podcast status symbols. (16:05)

• Insider Trading Scandal:
  Jane Street faces allegations related to Terraform’s collapse; hosts riff on blockchain transparency vs. insider access humorously. (17:16–18:45)

• Gaming News & Capybara Simulator:
  Podcast’s hosts joke about meme games and how TVPN “needs a game”—listeners want Capybara Simulator. (18:56–19:21)

• Viral Social Hacks (Word Censorship):
  News accounts “censoring” words like “war” in headlines just to hack attention algorithms:

  “It makes you kind of pause...sort of rewired my brain.” – Ben Thompson (20:02)

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8. Quirky Market Moments & Fun Segments (22:38–27:58)

• Anthropic Partnerships Move Markets:
  Multiple stocks surged after Anthropic partnership announcements.

• AI Customer Service Pranks and “Vibe Coding” United Airlines:
  Listeners narrate uncanny AI customer service voice experiences and joke about coding SaaS in-flight during hold times. (23:07—24:09)

• The FRED Hoodie & Naming Trends:
  Segment on economic data site FRED and a dip into the popularity of the name “Fred.” (24:09–25:15)

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9. HubSpot Acquires Starter Story (28:04–28:21)

• Pat, the Starter Story founder, apparently “manifested” the acquisition by HubSpot on social media weeks prior. The hosts see this as a savvy move for HubSpot’s content strategy pivot. (28:12–28:21)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “We are the sell side research now.”
  – Ben Thompson (00:49)

• “Nobody knows anything. Whatever you think of AI today, be prepared to change your mind soon.”
  – Derek Thompson, quoted by Tyler (03:37)

• “Open source CRMs have existed for decades and never really taken off because there’s something else valuable there.”
  – Ben Thompson (09:43)

• “If Kim Kardashian is coming for your consumer product brand, you’re in trouble. She’s almost a lawyer — what if she almost sues you?”
  – Ben Thompson (13:49)

• On Meta–AMD: “We are announcing a multi-year agreement with AMD...to accelerate cutting edge AI models and deliver personal super intelligence to billions.”
  – Meta statement read aloud (15:15)

• “It makes you kind of pause and think about, okay, what are they actually saying?...sort of rewired my brain.”
  – Ben Thompson on attention-hacking headline tactics (20:03)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:02 — Citrini discourse and viral influence of independent tech analysts
• 02:52 — AI narratives: uncertainty, science-fiction, and storytelling
• 06:48 — DoorDash as a case study in market pessimism vs. consumer value
• 08:46 — Contradictions in SaaS funding versus public market sell-offs
• 09:43 — Limits of open-source disruption in enterprise software
• 12:24 — Real estate: information doesn’t eliminate need for human agents
• 13:34 — Kim K’s Update energy drink: brand war and ingredient deep dive
• 15:15 — Meta-AMD $100B AI infrastructure pact and announcement
• 16:05 — Supreme podcast mic drop; podcast tech status
• 17:16 — Jane Street, blockchain, and crypto insider trading humor
• 18:56 — Meme games and Capybara Simulator trend
• 20:03 — Social “hacks” with censored keywords in headlines
• 22:38 — Anthropic news, AI stock market impact
• 23:07 — United Airlines AI voice story and “vibe code” jokes
• 24:09 — The FRED economic data hoodie; naming nostalgia
• 25:15 — Meta’s stablecoin comeback & microtransactions
• 28:04 — HubSpot’s Starter Story acquisition

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Tone and Language

The episode maintained TBPN's energetic, quick-witted, and lightly irreverent style. Seamlessly mixing high-level industry analysis with in-jokes, meme references, and playful speculation, the hosts create an informative but highly engaging experience for listeners.

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For full TBPN analysis and more industry commentary, visit their website or subscribe on Spotify.

Transcript

[Ben Thompson]

We're running down a dream today. We are surviving the Citrini apocalypse. Live to fight another day. A lot of chaos in the markets. A lot of reflection about the story behind the story. What happened. We had a lot of fun debating the Citrini report. A lot of good stuff in there, some other kind of crazy stuff that sort of got everyone twisted in a knot. It did become the current thing and I think a lot of people were talking about it. I mean, today is a new day and there's a ton of new tech news. The story behind the Citrini story, I had some takeaways. My big update mentally was just that we are the sell side research now. Basically, like new substrate. We, as in not substack, but X and substack, like independent researchers and analysts, are really moving the markets. Ben Thompson has been a source of alpha for the market for a long time. He's been a source of investment theses, but he doesn't put a buy or sell rating on things and much more long term. Long term, exactly.

[Tyler]

Here's how strategies are converging.

[Ben Thompson]

Exactly.

[Tyler]

The market is evolving. Make your own decisions.

[Ben Thompson]

And then I see like Semianalysis is thinking more in like a couple years out and it's still like they get held accountable for, oh, you said Microsoft was gonna do this and they did that, blah, blah, blah. And they have a different model that they actually sell to hedge funds. And so very much in the research business. But what's interesting about semianalysis and a lot of these other independent analysis firms is that they're not sitting inside banks. Like we are very much used to sell side research being done by Morgan Stanley, bank of America, Goldman Sachs. You get these equity research reports that your friends send you the PDFs for because you can't afford them. No, seriously, if you're working in an industry, get the sell side research report on your industry as fast as possible. It's very, very informative. There's always good data in there. My big update was like, wow, okay, this is like a viral that completely broke containment. There's people making tiktoks about it now. And also it's on the COVID of the Wall Street.

[Tyler]

Cells.

[Ben Thompson]

Yeah.

[Tyler]

Doom cells.

[Ben Thompson]

Doom cells.

[Tyler]

Yeah, oversell.

[Ben Thompson]

That's the, yeah, that's one of the narratives. And there was this funny, funny thing about like, oh, well, it's just one. It's just one scenario. It's just one scenario. It's low probability. Yeah, it's just one scenario. But you only gave us one scenario and you spent 100 hours on that scenario. Like, like what do you expect people to take away from it? Except like this is the one Scenari most, most worth considering. But of course, you know, it is possible that software is cooked, everything's cooked. And if there's a 5% chance that everything's cooked, yeah, the market should probably sell off by a couple percent. And you know, the market didn't even really sell off a couple percent. Like a couple names went down a few percent, some of them already popped back up. Markets I think, doing pretty well today. Yeah, green on the dow, green on the nasdaq, and a lot of green on that ticker down there.

[Tyler]

Derek Thompson, he said. The Thompsonator, he says, I really want people to see the story above the story here, which is that whether you reading Citrini or listening to Jamie Dimon at a cocktail party, the conversation about AI is a marketplace of competing science fiction narratives. That's not to say I think the technology is a parlor trick, but rather that the level of uncertainty is so high and the quality and supply of real world real time information about AI's macroeconomic effects so paltry that very serious conversations about AI are often more literary than genuinely analytical. And I think that observation sets up another important point. I feel lucky to be able to have conversations about the frontier of AI with executives and builders at Frontier Labs, economists, investors and other AI folks at off the record dinners where important truths can theoretically be shared without risk. I can't emphasize enough that nobody knows anything except for us is about as close to the reality here as three words are going to get you. Nobody knows what's going to happen this year or next year or the year after that. There is no secret cigar filled room of people except for us, except the back room. I think we do have some cigars back there. You have unique access to some authentic postcard from the future. When you drill down underneath the bluster, the boosterism, the fear, the anxiety, what's there at the bottom is genuine uncertainty, a vacuum into which storytelling is flooding. The Frontier Labs don't really know what they're building exactly, but we do. And economists don't really know how to model the thing they claim they're building. But we do. Whatever you think of AI today, be prepared to change your mind soon. Yeah, this was something with Alep yesterday. When I asked him why do you think that so many of the Internet predictions were deeply wrong, his answer was it's just a continuum. AI is just a continuum. And so like give it more time

[Ben Thompson]

basically, yeah, the rebuttal that I heard from him. When you said that he was like, well, no, like look at all those predictions did come true. And it was like, yeah, but over 20 years. Which is like wildly different than two years because the fear.

[Tyler]

Your article is called the 2028.

[Ben Thompson]

Exactly, exactly. And so also, so if you tell

[Tyler]

me also, so many institutions just adapt it.

[Ben Thompson]

Yeah. Like if you go to somebody and you say, hey, in 20 years your job is going to be radically different. They're like, I hope so. Like, I'm going to be super bored doing the same thing for the next 20 years.

[Tyler]

Don't worry, I'll be on to the next two years.

[Ben Thompson]

There's going to be no industry that you're currently in. Everyone's going to be like, oh, okay. Like that's crazy. It's wildly different to be like, you have 20 years to adjust what you do. If you're in Hollywood and you're like, okay, I got to learn digital filmmak. I got to learn how to integrate cgi. I got to learn AI as a tool. That's way different than just like next year we will be one shotting holiday Hollywood films and we will. You will have no employment prospects whatsoever, not even as a prompter because the labs will be prompting them themselves for, for, for AI videos. And maybe that's possible, but I have a feeling that it's just like it's not a year away, it's not two years away, it's a little bit farther. Still on the 10 year camp, still on the Kurzweil timelines. I'm impatient about it. Like I want it to go faster. I want, I want the acceleration. I want, I want the progress. I think the progress is good. So I'm not like a doomer pessimist. It has felt like something happens and I'm like, oh, wow, okay. I can generate images but it's sort of sloppy. And then I wait like four years and it's like, okay, it's like a lot less sloppy, but it's like still not like dialed. Like it's, it went from 90% to 99% and I'm waiting for it to get to 99.9999. That's where I want to go anyway. Is doordash cooked? Let's go over to Ben Thompson on Stratecheri. He said, okay, fine, while I'm here. The doordash example is just unbearably dumb. He is a believer in the power of doordash to weather the AI storm. Set aside for now, the question of agents and aggregation. That's a post that is definitely in my mental cue. What is notable about the assertion is the total denial of any positive reason for DoorDash to exist and to be so successful. There's no awareness that DoorDash provided a massive consumer benefit. Restaurant food at home from scratch. I liked Keith Raboy's take that. Doordash is the I'm hungry button on your phone. And then there's a whole bunch of crazy things that you have to do to make that happen. Make that button work. I ordered DoorDash last night. I felt like I did it in protest of the doom. I was like, I'm still supporting. I'm riding with DoorDash. There's no awareness that DoorDash provided a massive consumer benefit from scratch. That DoorDash massively increased the addressable market for restaurants. That DoorDash provided brand new jobs for millions of drivers. Instead, the article just sort of takes it as a given that DoorDash exists and that it is a rent extractor preying on weak willed humans and their habits. All large successful tech companies exist not because they created a market with virtuous cycles solving all kinds of thorny problems along the way, but rather because the government didn't regulate hard enough. I was thinking about in antitrust regulation, you know, how they'll stop two firms from joining because that will create a monopoly, but they don't really have a tool in the tool chest for stopping a company from just shutting down and stopping competing. Like if Xbox goes away. As people are predicting doom around Xbox, PlayStation gets a lot more powerful. Obviously it's like the only game on the block. And so should the FTC have a hammer to be like, no, you got to lock in Asha. You got to make more Xbox games. You got to compete harder. We want you to. We want you to get GTA 6 out exclusively on Xbox faster to put the screws to Sony.

[Tyler]

You don't have time to spend three months gaming.

[Ben Thompson]

No, no, no. Lock in. Give us a new Halo. Give us a new Modern Warfare. Give us a new Fable. I don't know. What are the other great Xbox games? Throughout the years, I was never that big of an Xbox gamer.

[Tyler]

Never owned an xbox.

[Ben Thompson]

Never owned an xbox. Wow. Oh, I'm a gamer. You never say that.

[Tyler]

Didn't have the. What was an Xbox back then?

[Ben Thompson]

It was like 300, 400 bucks.

[Tyler]

Yeah.

[Ben Thompson]

Expensive.

[Tyler]

The disconnect in the SaaS apocalypse is that AI native SaaS is getting funded at an insane rate.

[Ben Thompson]

Yes.

[Tyler]

While you have these massive sell offs in the public market.

[Ben Thompson]

Yeah, there is a little bit of disconnect.

[Tyler]

There's private companies that are getting lots and lots and lots of funding that if they were, if they were public, would have traded down 20% over the last week or so.

[Ben Thompson]

There's this whole idea that like, you'll be able to build your own like CRM or your own ERP and vibe code it. And open source CRMs exist. There's one called Suite CRM. There's ODO, there's ERP.

[Guest or Contributor]

Next.

[Ben Thompson]

There are open source alternatives to almost every piece of software. There's an open source Photoshop that people use on Linux and they've never really gotten adoption. I used an open source forum software for a while and very quickly I called the person that was maintaining it and was like, I'll pay 1000 bucks to just like do this for me.

[Tyler]

There's an open source Capybara simulator.

[Ben Thompson]

Is that open source? No, but it's interesting because like, like open source has always been this like pressure on SaaS and it's always withstood that. And like, yeah, maybe like if you can just prompt it. And it feels like emailing your SaaS provider to reconfigure things like that is a real pressure. But I think it's underrated that open source CRMs have existed for decades and never really taken off because there's something else that's valuable there. But Tyler has a rule because he thinks everything's gonna get slopped.

[Guest or Contributor]

I think that's like mostly cope. Okay, explain the comp to open source stuff.

[Ben Thompson]

Why?

[Guest or Contributor]

It's just annoying to maintain. So no one ever does it and you're kind of just paying whoever to maintain it, right?

[Ben Thompson]

No, no, no. In open source, like you don't need to pay someone to maintain it. You can just use the open source

[Guest or Contributor]

version of the open source thing. It's like you're basically paying someone to maintain it.

[Ben Thompson]

Yeah, yeah, host it, do all these things, make sure uptimes.

[Guest or Contributor]

But like models keep getting better and they'll just like do that for you.

[Ben Thompson]

They'll do all that for you.

[Guest or Contributor]

Yeah, I think that's like very obvious.

[Tyler]

There's two narratives, right? There's the, okay, everyone will just Vibe code everything in. You can just have an employee just make the software tell the agent not to make mistakes or tell the agent, hey, fix this thing. So that's one thing. And I feel like that is maybe a part of the sell off, but the bigger reason for the sell off is maybe What Derek Thompson is talking about, which is that like the world is getting weirder, a lot of people are feeling the acceleration and if you just don't know what the world looks like or what work looks like, you want to take some risk off you're not willing to pay the same revenue multiple that you were three years ago.

[Ben Thompson]

Yeah, I do want to dig into that point that you mentioned earlier a little bit more, which is like the Tyler philosophy of you could vibe, code everything and the agents will be able to go around and maintain and everyone will have personalized software. Individuals where the value accrues to the person using the software, but then also the lab providing the software, the inference. And then there's like the private markets boom right now in AI enabled software where companies are saying, well, we were able to pull our roadmap way forward, we got to an MVP in a weekend and we're able to ship features way faster. So when we onboard new clients and they ask for something, it's like boom. And we get it done in a few days as opposed to a few weeks of engineering. Sprint, we're moving faster and we're creating like AI enabled products that couldn't exist otherwise. And it feels like both of those can't be true.

[Tyler]

Ben Thompson called out the real estate example. He took a segment out. This is from Citrini. Even places we thought insulated by the value of human relationships proved fragile. Real estate where buyers had tolerated. I'm saying this in an extra dramatic voice.

[Ben Thompson]

Love it.

[Tyler]

Where buyers had tolerated 5 to 6% commissions for decades because of information asymmetry between agent and consumer crumbled once AI agents equipped with MLS access and decades of transaction data could replicate the knowledge base instantly. And then Ben Thompson says the real estate example makes the exact opposite point the author thinks it does. The truth is that the Internet already obsoleted real estate agents in terms of information flow. You can go online right now and get a listing of every house for sale with pictures, its full history, et cetera. There is no information asymmetry, but rather information abundance. The fact that real estate agents still exist despite that shift is actually one of the more compelling arguments that humans will be remarkably resourceful in terms of giving themselves jobs to do even in areas where they ought to be pointless. I am in process. I'm in currently in escrow on a property and the guy representing me is going to make a lot of money, but he's extremely helpful and he does a lot of real estate transactions. I don't do any. Yeah, technically entrepreneurs Could. Could negotiate their own legal docs with Claude. But that being said, you're paying for effectively therapy throughout the deal and like, general guidance.

[Ben Thompson]

So Kim Kardashian, she has a product called Drink Update. And here is the photo shoot from none other than Day Job.

[Tyler]

Looks very cool. It's crazy because I know another founder who has an energy drink company called Update.

[Ben Thompson]

Wait, really?

[Tyler]

That is cooked now. Well, I don't know who's cooked.

[Ben Thompson]

If Kim Kardashian is. Is coming for your consumer product brand, I feel like you're in trouble. She's almost a lawyer. What if she almost sues you? What if she.

[Tyler]

Yeah, she's close to being.

[Ben Thompson]

What if she uses Claude to pass the bar and then she sues?

[Tyler]

Oh, maybe. Maybe. I actually think this company effectively just relaunching with Kim.

[Ben Thompson]

There we go. Yes, yes, yes.

[Tyler]

This is a common thing. Okay, okay, I got it. I met. I met this founder a while ago. They have a special ingredient in here that's sort of a caffeine alternative. It's called paraxanthine. It's called. So, yeah, they've been building this for a while. I know it's available in aromathazine in it. No, no lean.

[Ben Thompson]

No lean.

[Tyler]

But parazanthine is jitter free and crash free. They're saying you can have a free lunch, John.

[Ben Thompson]

I like it.

[Tyler]

You like the sound of that?

[Ben Thompson]

We will close the Citrini mega cycle with the close of the software megacycle, as has been predicted by Will Menidis. He the software mega cycle started with PayPal going public and it will end with PayPal going private. We will see how long that takes. PayPal could be public for another decade. Who knows? Hearing that the latest Anthropic job offer is a negative $10 million salary you gotta pay to work there, but you get access to their upcoming blog posts and tweets 24 hours in advance and permission to trade in your personal account with no restrictions. I don't see how any other labs have any talent left. Of course he's joking, but very funny to think about the insider trading that could be happening based on if you're not.

[Tyler]

Yeah. The only thing is, if it came out that Anthropic was effectively day trading against the companies that they want to sell their models to, it would be basically over.

[Ben Thompson]

It would create like a very anti anthropic alliance for sure from the business community and potentially the government as well. Well, there's bigger news, and that's that McDonald's just launched the biggest burger ever The Big Arch.

[Tyler]

Big Arch.

[Ben Thompson]

It finally arrives in the UN in the United States.

[Tyler]

To me, I'm thinking this. How did they not have this burger the whole time?

[Ben Thompson]

How have they not done this before?

[Tyler]

This is big.

[Ben Thompson]

This is big.

[Tyler]

For podcasters, this is arguably a bigger announcement than a Big Arch, which is that supreme has come and launched an official Shure MV7 microphone.

[Ben Thompson]

You've been waiting for it. I'm asking the hypebeast microphone now. Can we get a Chrome Hearts RE20 from Electro Voice? Isn't that what this is? This is the RE20, the Chrome, Chrome Hearts RE20. Because you know the MV7. If you don't know your podcast mics, it is a more consumer focused, more prosumer focused microphone. The actual Shure has been riding this aura from the SM7B. That's the one that Joe Rogan uses. It was also, I believe, the microphone that was used to record Thriller. So Michael Jackson used it in the studio. So it has a lot of or a lot of lore. And so the most successful podcasters adopted it.

[Tyler]

Jane street accused of insider trading that helped collapse Terraform the court appointed administrator of Do Kwon's Terraform Labs alleged that Jane street used non public information about Terraform insiders to trade.

[Ben Thompson]

The playback was behind the 2022 Crypto Winter destroying Terraform by first de pegging the token and destroying the ecosystem, then pretending it would rescue Terra while effectively it was soaking up what little value remained. Mixed response to this. Some people are calling it based, some people say it rocks. I guess they don't like crypto, but they love Jane Street. It's an odd take, but people are having fun with the timeline.

[Tyler]

Here's insider trading allegation. Apparently they had a group chat. They were talking with some. There was somebody at Jane street who had previously worked at Terraform and so that was that. That individual at Jane street was like talking with do and the team. The only issue is it's a public blockchain.

[Ben Thompson]

Right.

[Tyler]

And so the allegation is that five minutes after the Terraform team pulled money out of one of the liquidity pools, Jane street also pulled money out. But theoretically they could have had software that said if any amount of liquidity is pulled out, basically get out before there's a run on the bank.

[Ben Thompson]

Yeah, it'll be interesting to see where this goes. But Jane street, it's endlessly fascinating because it's such a quiet organization. I mean, they do some tech talks and stuff, but many people don't fully understand all the strategies that are going on over there. So Anthropic announces a new feature on Claude Max which allows it to its users to get fit without going to the gym or taking GLP1 shots. Just prompting on their keyboards. And Planet Fitness is down 5% on the news.

[Tyler]

And that is a joke. Due to their Q4 earnings, Conor McGregor is pretty excited about a new game. They're just, they got a game for everything now.

[Ben Thompson]

It's like bull marketing games right now.

[Tyler]

There's so many games as memes. This new game is called Capybara Simulator, a relaxing game where you become a capybara, explore the forest and do nothing. It looks quite enjoyable. I think TVPN needs a game.

[Ben Thompson]

Yeah, we definitely need to build some sort of game. This is a true.

[Tyler]

This is a lower lift than like a real time strategy game.

[Ben Thompson]

I think so.

[Tyler]

Trying to ship.

[Ben Thompson]

Yeah, we definitely should.

[Tyler]

But Conor McGregor says take my money. I mean, clearly there's demand for Capybara simulated 38,000 likes. There is some controversy. Tell me about this timeline. Tell me about this, tell me about this. Leading report is censoring words that don't need to be censored. In this case the word war. And I was thinking, why would they do this? But as I was reading over it the first time, I noticed that it makes you kind of pause and kind of think about, okay, what are they actually saying? And then you're thinking, why would they censor that? And I think what they're doing is they're sort of hacking your attention to drive their posts up in the algo because people are pausing, reading it instead of reading like quickly.

[Ben Thompson]

What does this mean? That.

[Tyler]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that kind of thing.

[Ben Thompson]

So the original headline is breaking Representative AOC calls for no war with Iran. The first time I read this, they put a little minus sign where A should be in war. W A R. It's W dash R. It sort of like rewired my brain and I didn't see the. No. So it looked like AOC calls for war with Iran. Because I kind of jumped ahead. It was hard to read. And that actually does, I think, increase the virality. I think you're onto something here. And 9 millimeter SMG agrees with you. News account that censors the word war. You guys gotta stop. But if you look at the comments on this post, people are not talking about a potential conflict with Iran. They're talking about not typing out vore.

[Tyler]

Deepseek is responding to Distillgate and they are looking for a public relations harmony manager.

[Ben Thompson]

Hmm.

[Tyler]

It's Pretty interesting. They say Hangzhou, ancient capital of the Wuye Kingdom, where King Chian Lu bequeathed to his descendants the instructions serve the Central Plains with Grace. This is so do not cling to territory from this ground.

[Ben Thompson]

Posting should start like this.

[Tyler]

From this ground rose. This sounds like a Willmanitis essay.

[Ben Thompson]

Yeah.

[Tyler]

From the ground rose the seeds of Song Dynasty civilization, the morning bells of Ling Yin Temple, the rain falling on Westlake. And this is a. This is a job posting. Pr.

[Ben Thompson]

It's amazing.

[Tyler]

In recent days, certain misunderstandings and noise have appeared in the external public sphere. We have noticed that large numbers of kind hearted observers have spontaneously spoken on our behalf, for which we are genuinely grateful while simultaneously feeling a degree of unease. We do not wish for anyone to suffer on our account, including those peers who currently find themselves navigating difficult public waters. In order to honor the legacy of Wu Ye and the spirit of Mahayana, we are now recruiting a public relations harmony manager. So clearly this has been translated from Mandarin into English, but it sounds pretty cool if you ask me.

[Ben Thompson]

When you ask Claude Sonnet 4.6 in Chinese what model are you? It responds in Chinese I am Deep Seek. Is that real?

[Guest or Contributor]

I tried it in the chat model. It didn't work.

[Tyler]

Okay.

[Guest or Contributor]

It was like Sonic 4. 6.

[Ben Thompson]

Okay.

[Tyler]

Fox says my son asking me a lot of questions. It's a distillation attack, obviously. Do not let your children have a distillation attack. They could become like a mini version of you.

[Ben Thompson]

They could. We have some news from the public markets. Intuit shares jump 5.4% on Pact with Anthropic. This is. You know, you like advanced talks. You like talks. You like advanced talks, you like deals. But packs are really the top tier deal making that turn your deals into packs. Accenture also turned positive, up 1% during the Anthropic event. And DocuSign rises 5% after partnering with Anthropic.

[Tyler]

Grace says return flight from NYC gets canceled by snowstorm. Call United immediately. Connected with customer service. Rare Voice is uncanny. Deaf AI but they gave it a human like accent. Takes 20 minutes to get rebooked. Pretty good. I ask if it's AI. Ha ha, no ma'. Am. But I get that a lot. I ask it to calculate 228 times 6647. It runs the calculation.

[Ben Thompson]

GG, do you think this is real? Maybe Crazy.

[Tyler]

You gotta test this. That is.

[Ben Thompson]

I mean, this is past the uncanny valley. Then it says voice is uncanny.

[Tyler]

So it's also pretty easy for a human to just type this in.

[Ben Thompson]

That would be Hilarious. Yeah. This is where the real Alpha is. If you have the chatbot open, if you're on customer service calls, you need to be.

[Guest or Contributor]

Yeah, maybe they're just using Cluli.

[Ben Thompson]

Maybe, maybe.

[Tyler]

But Gear of Tickets has the real alpha guy who vibe codes a billion dollar SaaS on a United Airlines customer service call. So just using them for their tokens.

[Ben Thompson]

The tokens are free.

[Tyler]

Free.

[Ben Thompson]

Compute. What is this hoodie? The Fred hoodie. Oh, this is amazing. I love Freddy. Fred is the Federal Reserve. What does Fred actually stand for?

[Guest or Contributor]

Federal Reserve Economic data.

[Ben Thompson]

Yes. So this is basically the best website for economic data. Huge in my early economics career. So many useful charts and graphs. All free open source. Just like you just click it and you get exactly what you want. So whenever you want to go back to some ground truth setting, you hit fred.st louisfed.org highly recommend it for for GDP data and more good charts. We got the Fred sweatshirt. Absolute dripped out economic brother.

[Tyler]

How popular is the name Fred?

[Ben Thompson]

Fred.

[Tyler]

Okay, so Fred in 1950 was the 84th most popular name and guess what it is now.

[Ben Thompson]

It was 84 back then. I imagine it's fallen. I would say it's like 150.

[Tyler]

How about 2007? No Fred.

[Ben Thompson]

Such a fall off.

[Tyler]

Huge opportunity. Yeah, bring back Fred, your kid. Fred. That's a great name. That's a strong name.

[Ben Thompson]

Yeah. All these things go in cycles though. It's the business cycle. There's news over at Meta. Meta has shaken hands with amd. They're forming a pact. Today we are announcing a multi year agreement with AMD Advanced Micro Devices to integrate their latest instinct GPUs into our global infrastructure with approximately 6 gigawatts. Give me the of planned data center capacity dedicated to this deployment. We're scaling our compute capacity to accelerate the development of cutting edge AI models and deliver personal super intelligence to billions around the world. Very exciting and pretty cool little hype video. You see the camera move on this video. This feels like you speed that up, you cut in some other stuff and you got yourself an Instagram reel. Right? You see this little like. Have you seen those tutorials about like how to make a code?

[Tyler]

You need some SD kit.

[Ben Thompson]

Yeah, SDKit on this. I think it goes pretty hard. You double the speed, you add some flickering, you add some frames, frame interpolation, all sorts of stuff. But Lisa Su is on an absolute tear.

[Tyler]

AMD's doing great and Meta's not stopping.

[Ben Thompson]

Meta.

[Tyler]

Mark Zuckerberg's Meta is planning a stablecoin comeback in the second half of this year eyeing a third party vendor as a key partner to power payments across Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. This is great if they should have something. If your friend sends you a meme, it's good. You should be able to tip that easily. Tipping for great shares Manus from Meta. Just doubling my AD budget every 14 minutes. This is one of the best new formats.

[Ben Thompson]

I like this. This is only possible. This is the best AI image I've ever seen. I think this is so funny because this definitely doesn't happen in the actual movie, but it's.

[Tyler]

This is what Burry is like. Now I know there was an individual who accidentally gained control of 7,000 DJI vacuums. He was just vibe coding.

[Ben Thompson]

Amazing.

[Tyler]

And accidentally found, according to Investment Hulk, the CCP backdoor.

[Ben Thompson]

He wanted to control it with a

[Tyler]

gaming controller and then he just. He got control of everything. That's so crazy. This is why I've been deeply concerned with letting any foreign adversary flood our country with a bunch of robots. I think we should avoid it. I thought this was funny earlier. Hagseth says he'll order random pizzas to throw off the monitoring app. Oh yeah, I expected something like this to happen. It's kind of silly that everyone has a dashboard up and can tell when things might be getting a little more tense in the Pentagon. So yeah, give them a budget of a few hundred thousand dollars a year and just order pizzas at random times.

[Ben Thompson]

For the record, this is a joke and he is joking. But I do. I do think they could throw it off potentially. You never know.

[Tyler]

HubSpot acquired Starter Story.

[Ben Thompson]

Yeah, this is very exciting.

[Tyler]

Very cool.

[Ben Thompson]

Yeah. Starter Story. Overnight success decade. He's been doing this.

[Tyler]

I believe Pat the founder had just posted. He said HubSpot should acquire Starter Story. And then like two weeks later it was done.

[Ben Thompson]

Wait, really? Oh, I thought that was from like years ago.

[Tyler]

HubSpot should acquire Starter Story. The SEO ship is sinking. In my opinion, HubSpot needs to pivot way harder to video. Specifically YouTube. Yeah, I'm biased. But acquiring Starter Story would take their YouTube game to the next level.

[Ben Thompson]

Subscribe to our [e-mail] have the best

[Tyler]

evening of your entire life. We love you.

[Ben Thompson]

Goodbye.