TBPN — "Our Super Bowl Ad, Walmart hits $1T, Ken is Sick of Griftin"

February 4, 2026
Hosts: John Coogan & Jordi Hays
Guests: Dara Khosrowshahi (Uber), Mati Staniszewski (11 Labs) & Andrew Reed (Sequoia), Gergely Orosz (The Pragmatic Engineer), Mitchell Green (Lead Edge Capital), Simon Hørup Eskildsen (TurboPuffer), KJ Dhaliwal (Lotus AI), Nick Sharp (Adeo)

Episode Overview

In this high-energy, news-packed episode, John and Jordi discuss TBPN's own Super Bowl ad, the intersection of tech and mainstream culture through advertising, and a jam-packed slate of tech news. They analyze the current state of the "AI wars" as they break down Anthropic's provocative anti-ad Super Bowl campaign targeting OpenAI, and debate whether these edgy tactics will move the needle or create more noise. Celebrating Walmart's trillion-dollar milestone, they connect this to the shifting landscape for legacy companies embracing digital transformation. Deep-dive interviews with operators and investors—including Uber’s Dara Khosrowshahi and 11 Labs’ founder Mati Staniszewski—unpack the lessons from scaling, the competitive implications of new AI tools, and the evolving playbook for startups and incumbents alike.

Super Bowl Ads: Tech Goes Mainstream

TBPN's Own Super Bowl Ad

00:18 – 03:25

• TBPN aired a regional Super Bowl spot as a "love letter to our community" rather than pushing a product or CTA.
• Jordi: "It's simply what co-host Jordi Hayes calls a love letter to our community. That's really what it is. TBPN is nothing without the community, the people that join the show." (01:25)
• They featured logos of every guest from five-minute drop-ins to five-hour appearances, focusing on fun and community spirit over direct business goals.
• John: “I do think it’s an important opportunity to introduce the football community to technology, to business. That’s my goal with this ad.” (02:29)

The Anthropic vs. OpenAI "Ad Wars"

04:15 – 22:27

• Anthropic makes a dramatic entrance onto the Super Bowl ad stage, running a series of satirical, edgy spots critiquing the introduction of ads to AI platforms (implicitly targeting OpenAI/ChatGPT).
• Analysis: John and Jordi draw parallels to past ad wars (Apple vs. IBM, Bud Light vs. Miller), noting Anthropic’s campaign is more direct and "fake newsy" than typical tech feuds.
  • John: “The anthropic attack on advertising . . . goes too far. And I think that they should be supporting the advertising economy. Almost 10% of the American workers.” (05:59)
  • Jordi: “This is clearly like a particular moment in time, and it's insane. I mean, it's incredibly clever. It's also incredibly dirty.” (09:28)
• Ad Spot Examples:
  • Generative agents generate silly, even mocking scenarios (e.g., "Tri Step BoostMax" insoles ad and "Golden Encounters" senior dating).
  • The campaign implies that including ads in LLM responses is a dangerous conflict of interest, despite OpenAI’s repeated assurances about their ad policy.
• Jordi: “It's propaganda, imo. It really is . . . They're just calling out the category but implying that ads are going to [taint AI].” (22:20)
• John: “It’s fearmongering that the AI that you’re used to being truthful [...] is now trying to sell you some slop product.” (22:34)
• Memorable Moment: Comparing this rivalry to tech ad history, the hosts note, “If Claude had named ChatGPT, ChatGPT could have said, like, ‘We are suing you for defamation.’” (27:03)

Walmart Reaches $1 Trillion Market Cap

31:11 – 34:53

• Walmart joins the $1T club—evidence that digital transformation and investing in e-commerce, automation, and AI can fuel legacy incumbents.
• John (quoting Morgan Stanley): “The change at Walmart over the past decade, culminating with its trillion dollar valuation [...] has been seen as a profound shift at a retail company that we've ever seen.” (32:26)
• Noted comparison: Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, and Nvidia—all tech giants—with Walmart now holding its own among them.
• Discussion on Walmart’s secretive capabilities and how rebranding (jokingly) must have added “$600 billion to market cap.” (34:41)

Transforming Tech and AI: Key Interviews

11 Labs — AI Voice Revolution

35:08 – 48:58
Guests: Mati Staniszewski (Co-founder/CEO), Andrew Reed (Sequoia Board Member)

• Mati announces: $500M Series D at $11B valuation, with Sequoia leading. “We got to 330 million [ARR] in 2025 [...] took us 20 months to get to first hundred million [...] 5 months to get to 330.” (37:07, 39:31)
• Growth Drivers: Voice agents for enterprises, real-time interactions, scalability (e.g., working with Deutsche Telekom, Revolut, Square).
• Vision: The future of AI is voice—AI as interface for all technology.
  • Andrew: “For the first time, the customer pull is there. People want AI voice interfaces ... Agents are only limited now by what people think they can do.” (47:03)
• Industry Frustrations: Media hasn’t fully leveraged AI voice—reading articles as audio, etc.
• Anecdote: Working with the government of Ukraine on citizen support call agents.

The Pragmatic Engineer (Gergely Orosz) — Developer Experience & AI Agents

61:12 – 81:31

• Gergely shares insights from veteran software engineers navigating the “existential crisis” of their own automation.
• Quote: “What we were doing is kind of automating other people’s jobs… now this is the first time in history where the stuff that we build could potentially automate our work.” (62:39)
• Ninja tip for landing jobs: "If you want a job as a software engineer, build a piece of software without asking." (72:26)
• Gen Z and interns are a "bull market": Shopify, Cloudflare, and others discovered interns using AI tools push whole teams forward (see story at 71:35).
• Advice: Dual skillsets and “taste” (product, design, business) are more valuable than narrow coding expertise.

Dara Khosrowshahi (Uber CEO) — Business Model Reinvention, AVs, and Platforms

82:38 – 107:47

• Uber’s "blowout" quarter: 15B ride run rate (+22%), eats at $100B run rate (+26%), $9.8B free cash flow.
  • Dara: “Profits is defined by EBITDA. We're up 35% on a year, on year basis. And then we threw off almost, almost $10 billion of free cash flow.” (82:58)
• Keys to success:
  • Uber is a “supply-led” platform: focus on recruiting more drivers, couriers, and merchants.
  • Unique dual platform for rides + eats, cross-selling within the app, and 46M Uber One members: “Customers who shop on both eats and rides spend three times than the ones who don't.” (87:52)
• On autonomy: AV rollouts drive additional market growth and new customers—robotaxis are additive, not just driver replacements.
• On AI risks: As agentic interfaces rise, Uber’s unique, global, fragmented supply (10M drivers/couriers) gives it defensible differentiation: "As long as the off-app experience doesn't exceed the in-app, we're fine... As the experience on app remains leading, we keep the most engaged audience." (93:52)
• Career advice:
  • “Pick the right people to work for... exceptional people stay exceptional.”
  • “Most important skill in life is a skill of working freaking hard.” (107:47)

Mitchell Green (Lead Edge) — Investing Wisdom in the AI Era

108:39 – 131:47

• On SaaS/EAI: Warns that "coding was never the main challenge; distribution, maintenance, trust, and integration matter more." (111:32)
• Notable quote: “If all the SaaS companies are going to disappear because you can just Vibe code, well then can’t the next AI company Vibe code that AI company?” (109:12)
• "Bull market in interns"—interns are the real productivity unlock for orgs adapting to AI workflows.
• Contrarian investing: “Do the opposite of everyone else. The market causes the greatest pain to the greatest number.”
• Hedge fund vs VC mindset: Hedge funds win in the short term, but VCs with vision win over a decade. (132:36)
• On becoming a great VC: “Find an apprenticeship with the best, don't rush to be a solo GP.” (126:29)

Emerging Tech: Orchestration, Coding Agents, and New Workflows

53:06 – 59:10

• Gastown: Open-sourced, "vibe-coded" multi-agent orchestration platform for serious developers—automating entire workflows by delegating to multiple specialized “agents.”
  • John: “You could potentially do weeks of software engineering work autonomously.” (56:59)
• The hosts predict "orchestration" will become the next big buzzword in dev tooling, as multi-agent/LLM setups become norm for complex outputs.

Lightning Startups & Updates

TurboPuffer (Simon Hørup Eskildsen)

139:53 – 151:50

• Open-source, ultra-fast vector search engine powering many leading GenAI products; focus is on handling “petabyte scale” for agentic workflows (search, legal, codebases, etc).
• Simon: "The world’s puffing... every vertical starts by pushing things into context, but what they want is to allow the agent to search by itself, and that’s where Turbopuffer comes in." (141:18)
• Commentary on “logo crimes” in startup marketing: Be careful about which team or partner’s logos you put on your homepage—honesty and permission matter.

Lotus AI (KJ Dhaliwal)

163:31 – 173:10

• Direct-to-consumer AI-powered primary care: handles intake, gathers health data, and loops in real clinicians for diagnosis and prescriptions.
• Monetization aimed at optional ads/premium, partnerships with employers; not reliant on affiliate fees due to healthcare regulations.
• KJ: “We’re really giving [doctors] the technology to supercharge their capabilities… bringing the cost of care down by a factor of 10.” (166:51, 169:00)

Adeo CRM (Nick Sharp)

173:29 – 181:02

• Announces "Ask Atio," an AI-powered conversational interface for CRM, surface insights, and recommends daily workflows.
• Bet on open ecosystems and deep SDK integrations.

Other Highlights & Quick Takes

• Google’s Gemini: Reports 750M MAUs, 10B tokens/min.
• Intern Bull Market: Cloudflare, Shopify hire 1000s of interns—boosting internal AI adoption.
• Logo Wars: Don’t misrepresent customers/partners on your deck or site.
• Tesla, Ferrari, F1 Racing: Cars, racing, and tech intersect in both serious business and banter.
• Political Side-Eye: Ken Griffin (“sick of griftin”) calls out Trump admin’s self-dealing with reference to UAE GPU sales controversy. (181:02 – 186:03)
• Fun Moment: Putin’s absurd G55 XXL G-Wagon featured as mark of taste and “not AI-generated.”

Notable Quotes & Moments (with timestamps)

• “We believe in doing things purely for fun, so we're certainly having fun.” – Jordi (01:25)
• “The anthropic attack on advertising, it does cross the line for me. It goes too far.” – John (05:59)
• “It's propaganda, imo. They're just kind of calling out the category... implying that ads are going to [taint AI].” – Jordi (22:20)
• “Advertising is the greatest business model ever. Companies don’t want your data, they want conversions.” — John (28:47)
• “What we were doing is automating other people's jobs... now what we build could potentially automate our work.” — Gergely Orosz (62:39)
• “Shopify hired an intern for every single team—because interns using AI pushed whole teams forward.” — Gergely Orosz (71:35)
• “If all SaaS companies disappear because you can just Vibe code, can’t the next AI company Vibe code that AI company?” — Mitchell Green (109:11)
• "Most important skill in life is a skill of working freaking hard." — Dara Khosrowshahi (107:47)
• “The world’s puffing... coding was the first vertical that really started puffing really hard.” — Simon (TurboPuffer) (141:13)
• "We're really giving doctors the technology to supercharge their capabilities." – KJ Dhaliwal (Lotus AI) (166:51)
• “Bull market in interns. The interns are back—the real productivity hack.” – John (160:23)

Closing Thoughts

TBPN’s Super Bowl-themed episode captures a snapshot of tech’s clash with mainstream culture as AI and software shift from inside baseball to front-page news. The hosts and guests reflect on the playful but high-stakes drama between competing labs, the durability of business fundamentals, and the creative—and sometimes mischievous—spirit roaring through the new agentic AI era.

Next Episode: More tech, more culture, and much, much more VIBE.

For guests, company links and full episode notes, visit TBPN.com.

This summary skips advertisements outside of substantive content, intros/outros, and non-content banter to focus on the episode’s ideas and discussions. Timestamps are included for key quotes and segments.