Ben (4:32)

Remember when Sam was texting Elon? I think this was in 2023, saying, like, it pains me to see you attack OpenAI publicly. I think we can both agree it's important that Google doesn't own AI. And that's been one of the only things that throughout this whole process they've stayed in agreement on.

Alex (4:52)

Yes, yes. So they want to create a counterbalance to Google specifically. Elon did actually have the money to continue supporting OpenAI as a nonprofit. Would have been crazy, but technically could have sold down positions. But Elon clearly agreed that OpenAI should build a for profit. And that's why he wanted equity. He wanted to be CEO. He was interested in OpenAI joining Tesla. Tesla's a for profit. He wasn't saying, we're going to bring OpenAI over to Tesla and the whole thing is going to be a nonprofit. Clearly, Elon is no purist about nonprofit AI research. He runs XAI. It's a direct competitor to OpenAI. He started it as a benefit corporation, which meant it had an obligation to deliver environmental and social benefits. But after the merger with X, that benefit corporation status was dropped entirely. This whole lawsuit is clearly just corporate lawfare and the battle should be fought out in the financial markets, in the App Store, on the open Internet, not the courtroom. Let the best product win. Let the best AI model win. Let them, let them build, let them cook.

Ben (5:49)

This is what winning like today is what winning looks like for Elon. Doesn't really get me one step closer to Mars. Right. It doesn't necessarily align. So the wind state right now is just being disruptive. Right. Basically buying, buying x time putting OpenAI in a position where they are trying to go public. Right. And they've got this massive, high profile trial going on.

Alex (6:16)

The helmet is really adding a lot to this conversation. I love it. Now let's argue the flip side. Elon Musk will win the OpenAI lawsuit and he should, and he should, he should win this. Judge Gonzalez Rogers already rejected OpenAI's motion to dismiss. Judge said, I think there's plenty of evidence that Something happened here. OpenAI was trying to kill the case before the trial even started. They're trying to get rid of this thing, but it's clear that Elon is onto something here. Okay, just look at the emails. It's so obvious that the OpenAI squad was trying to fleece Elon and push him out without giving him a fair share. Elon said. Guys, this is a direct quote from an Elon email. Guys, I've had enough. This is the final straw. Either go do something on your own or continue with OpenAI as a nonprofit. Otherwise I'm out. I'm not donating anymore. If you're going to do the for profit, just go start a normal company and wind this thing down. And that makes a ton of sense. It was an open invitation by him to just go build a traditional.

Ben (7:18)

And this is part of the trial. Part of the trial. And this proceeding that I'm interested in is like finding out why they didn't just do that.

Alex (7:25)

Yeah.

Ben (7:26)

It's not like Sam and Greg couldn't have been like, cool. We worked on a nonprofit for a while.

Alex (7:29)

How do we set up a C Corp?

Ben (7:30)

How do we set up a C corp?

Alex (7:31)

How do we set up a C corporation?

Ben (7:32)

I was like, I own like a couple points of stripe.

Alex (7:36)

Yeah.

Ben (7:36)

I think they have something called Atlas. You can make a C corp. Maybe he forgot a few clicks. Maybe there was like a very, very specific reason.

Alex (7:44)

Yes.

Ben (7:44)

Like the nonprofit had developed some IP at that point. That meant that starting over or, you know, having to rebuild the team or whatever factor meant that that was like going to set them back years.

Alex (7:55)

Yes.

Ben (7:56)

That's, that's a big. That's a big deal.

Alex (7:58)

Yeah. Elon gave them an invitation. Just go out and build a traditional venture backed company. Maybe I'll invest, maybe I'll be involved, may I won't. But at least we'll have a clean slate to start from. But Sam told Elon that he remained, quote, enthusiastic about the nonprofit structure. That was enough to get Elon to donate more. But OpenAI wasn't all in on staying in nonprofit mode. They were on the cusp of restructuring OpenAI and taking the $10 billion investment from Microsoft. See the reality of modern philanthropy, it's not fire and forget you don't. Big donors like Elon in this case do have specific intentions and conditions attached to the gifts. It's not like he's just throwing 20 bucks in the Salvation army donation box around Christmas. This is 30 something million. If you give that to a university and you want a building, they need to build that building. They probably need to build it to your specifications. Even if you want Windows, you might.

Ben (8:55)

Put your name on it.

Alex (8:56)

Yeah, they might even put your name on it. And you can dictate these things in a nonprofit donation and you can ask that they. That the donation is contingent on those results. You can pursue specific directions. He has every right to demand results. So a big part of this if and why Elon is going to win, why he should win, is that you can't just have corporate structure, remorse OpenAI. You can't pull the plug on promises made OpenAI's own certificates of incorporation. Talk about creating a company quote exclusively for charitable purposes with the technology being intended to benefit the public. What's exclusively charitable about raising venture to build a subscription app with ads. That's not charity. Why are you doing that? Elon's right. Not only should Elon win this case against OpenAI, he will win this case. It's simple. Bunch of people, bunch of San Francisco elite tech guys, their fancy cars, promised to build AI for Humanity. They took $38 million for from one of their co founders based on that promise, then turned around and built a $500 billion for profit empire with Microsoft. It's a straightforward bait and switch story that will play well to 12 regular jurors in Oakland. And so that's the case.

Ben (10:12)

I mean, this is gonna be the big challenge, finding 12 regular people in Oakland extremely offline.

Chris (10:18)

How illegal is it to try to be on a jury?

Alex (10:22)

Extremely. Stop trying to get on the jury.

Ben (10:24)

Stop trying to get on the jury.

Chris (10:25)

Look, I said this. I'm gonna vote. I'm gonna vote in favor of whoever arc AGI score.

Alex (10:29)

Okay?

Chris (10:30)

I'm just pro AI progress.

Alex (10:31)

Yes, yes, yes.

Chris (10:32)

I don't care at all about who wins. I just want better models.

Alex (10:35)

You just want better AI?

Ben (10:36)

Yeah.

Alex (10:36)

Whoever will build, whoever's scaling faster. It does feel like it won't be existential and it feels like it's more of a vibe war than maybe a true economic war. You could go back and argue that Elon should get pro rata equity at what it was effectively like a pre seed round that was done as a nonprofit. And that's 38 out of 120 that was raised in the nonprofit. Something like that. So you give him.

Ben (11:01)

Is there any precedent for a company going for a blockbuster IPO while having this lawsuit that is really going at the foundation of the entity itself.

Chris (11:12)

Elon actually didn't directly donate to OpenAI. It was basically indirectly through a donor advised fund through OpenAI's fiscal sponsor, YC. And so because it's not direct, the idea of the the specific charitable purpose doesn't actually like, doesn't hold up. And that it actually just defaults to OpenAI's.

Alex (11:37)

Yeah. Because you donate to one entity and then that entity would have to make that Claim so their direct communication doesn't necessarily pull as much weight.

Chris (11:43)

And then so there's like, there's a bunch of pages about the history of like how you actually define these things. So it seems like it's going to be just come down to like extremely like esoteric legal definitions of like trust.

Ben (11:56)

The last thing I would say there is. Part of OpenAI's defense is that through their actions they've created one of the most well capitalized foundations in history. Right. And I think that they're going to continue to lean on that. Novo Nordisk has a foundation themselves focused on biomedical research. And it's like it has. The estimate is that they have $167 billion.

Alex (12:18)

Okay. So that's why we, that's why we're using the term one of the best funded. Because it's possible that the OpenAI nonprofit might not be the best funded in history. Although if the stock continues to rip, they will probably become the best funded in the, in history. There's a whole bunch of leaks news in the timeline. There's so many documents that hit the timeline that it brought down all of X and X actually crashed because so many people are logging on. The other interesting thing is that do we know where Sam Altman sits in terms of equity? It's been going back and forth. Yeah. 7.

Chris (12:49)

There isn't a number. But in one of the documents I lost it, but it said he had indirect exposure via yc.

Alex (12:55)

Okay, okay.

Chris (12:55)

Yeah.

Alex (12:56)

Into the for profit as well.

Chris (12:57)

Yes.

Alex (12:58)

Okay, so look through exposure there. But then in terms of like an actual grant, is there a number that's been thrown around?

Ben (13:04)

To my knowledge, nothing has been shared publicly other than the sort of idea of him getting around 7%.

Alex (13:11)

Okay, okay. But yeah, that still feels low for co founder of a.

Ben (13:16)

You know, but that was happening. That's like, that's like a lot of happened by that point. I mean, yeah, if anything these, these files make a lot of Elon's kind of antics like more understandable. Like he's been the one saying that they're morally bankrupt. And here they just straight up say pretty morally bankrupt to steal the nonprofit from him. Yeah, like I don't think anyone ever expected their, that language come out that was this specific about their moment to moment thinking during that point in time. You look at the run that Sam has gone on and you could imagine a situation where they're sitting at a table and saying this boardroom ain't big enough for the two of us. Right.

Alex (14:00)

Yep.

Ben (14:00)

And it really feels that way big egos.

Alex (14:02)

Yeah. Alex read through thousands of Pages in Musk vs Altman so you don't have to. We'll go through some of the summary here. Sutskever voiced his worry over text with Mirati and others. Sutzkever My trepidation around open source is that we're treating it as a sideshow. For example, def not going far enough to really hurt stability. So they're not taking it seriously. And if open source takes off, everyone could standardize on that.

Ben (14:28)

Vergov says Bro scooping harder than a Ben and Jerry's employee.

Alex (14:32)

Let's go. This is good. This is good. Alex he he's scooping harder than a Ben and Jerry's employee. We're going to use that from now on. This is fantastic. So Miramoradi said we're missing the opportun to set standards with this massive growing group of developers. People are hungry to build things and we should lean in and bring our tech to as many people as possible long term. Maximize our chance of maintaining lead, reducing competition. OpenAI leaders were divided over early investor Reid Hoffman's decision to start a rival AI lab inflection Altman here's how I'd summarize my thoughts on this Pros he supported us in a moment when no one else would, and it was pretty existential. Okay, so we're learning more about his the existentialness of certain donations when they came in during the OpenAI nonprofit era. I think OpenAI would have been pretty effed if he hadn't stepped up. Also, he was instrumental in getting the first Microsoft deal done and has generally been quite helpful with Microsoft related stuff. And he's generally a good board member. Satya Nadella was worried about Microsoft's position in AI when he started looking at OpenAI.

Ben (15:36)

Stripe was in 2017, Stripe was valued at 9.2 billion.

Alex (15:41)

Bunch of wee lads. From Satya Nadella's deposition, the question to Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, did you feel that your progress was moving more slowly than you had liked? And the answer Satya Nadella says, I mean always as a CEO of a company, I feel my job is to sort of be dissatisfied with the rate of progress at all times. And so yes would be the answer, which is both in the absolute sense, which is can we build products that are more capable in any particular domain know vis a vis competition? And so Satya Nadella was obviously motivated to invest and now he has a huge stack of OpenAI shares. On Wednesday, August 24, 2022, with the Pacific Northwest summer, showing all of its beauty, Bill Gates hosted a dinner at his home in Lake Washington. Satya suggested the gathering, which included Chief Technology Officer Kevin Scott and a handful of top researchers. Food and drinks would be served, but the main entree was a hush hush demo by OpenAI co founder Sam Altman on a forthcoming release of ChatGPT, powered by GPT4, an AI built on large language models. Bill had long encouraged researchers to develop a truly accomplished AI assistant, but had voiced his skepticism about this particular approach.

Ben (17:00)

This sounds like I'm listening to an audible.

Alex (17:03)

Thank you. Microsoft beat out Amazon when it initially started working with OpenAI. Elon Musk was opposed to working with Jeff Bezos and wrote the following in an early email to Sam Altman. He said, I think Jeff is a bit of a tool and Satya is not. So I slightly prefer Microsoft, but I hate the marketing department. Altman responded that Amazon had started, quote, really dicking us around.

Ben (17:25)

Yeah, such a crazy line.

Alex (17:29)

So the upside on Microsoft's initial $1 billion investment in OpenAI was capped at 500 billion. Hopefully they hit that gap. From a filing written by Musk's lawyers in November 2018. After dinner with Sam Altman, Scott told Nadella that OpenAI's new corporate structure offered both, quote, a commercial vehicle for monetizing OpenAIP and investment returns capped at 500 billion. That's not bad. A 500x bagger is gonna move the needle for Microsoft for sure. Altman claimed the nonprofit would eventually benefit because though OpenAI has yet to make a single dollar in returns, if OpenAI ever does get to 500 billion in returns, the over that goes directly to the 501C3. That's exciting. Microsoft's board initially approved a capital investment of 2 billion, but ultimately decided to limit its initial investment to 1 billion in the hopes that a smaller investment would impress OpenAI to commercialize Satya.

Ben (18:25)

Hey, we got it. We can't give them too much.

Alex (18:26)

Let's put a little fire under them. Let's make sure that they're thinking about dollars, dollars and cents. The second update to Microsoft's partnership with OpenAI in 2021 included another $2 billion investment that wasn't reported and came with a lower upside. This is also a filing from Musk's lawyers. In March of 2021, Microsoft quietly invested another $2 billion in OpenAI. Neither OpenAI nor Microsoft publicly announced the investment, which was subject to a lower 6x return multiple. In place of its 2019 license to a single OpenAI model, Microsoft secured rights to commercialize any OpenAI model developed to during the term of the agreement, except AGI. This could have saved OpenAI from Elon. And it's a diary with Locke on it. I think the diary framing is like, woefully wrong. That's probably the worst part of this whole thing is because most of the thoughts that Greg's putting out are completely reasonable. Elon says they stole a charity, plain and simple.

Ben (19:23)

They're really on the, on the. For all the jurors, they're really going to have to. I imagine you get if it's Oakland, 12 people on the jury, I'd guess like four of them are driving Teslas. They're really going to have to go check all the cars, make sure they don't have the bought this before Elon went crazy bumper sticker on they're going to have to throw those. Those candidates.

Alex (19:44)

Well, they should also throw out any jurors that show up in Koenigseggs. They're probably in the Koenigsegg owner meetup and they're at Cars and Coffee.

Ben (19:51)

If I were grading this purely as an analyst, not as an OpenAI model, the documents are legitimately bad.

Alex (19:58)

I was asking Claude about this and it was very funny because you can't not read into it like you're talking to someone at Anthropic because it's taking shots at both of them being like, oh, well, like, you know, Elon has Xai and that's a for profit, so he's a hypocrite. And like, maybe that's just objectively true and the model's just, you know, accurate. But it's funny just reading it in Claude voice being like, Claude sitting there being like, I don't like either of these companies.

Ben (20:32)

Huge congrats to Goldman Sachs. I've been following them a long time. The whole team and culture is so impressive. I can't wait to see where they're going and what they do next.

Alex (20:42)

Yes, yes, yes.

Ben (20:43)

Goldman's really just getting started.

Alex (20:45)

There are some absolute dogs over there. We talked about it a bunch, but one of the most legendary things going into the financial crisis, they know that real estate is going to sell off. They sell their corporate headquarters and lease it back for 10 years. They're not exposed to the financial risk.

Ben (21:01)

Of their building breaking with the United States. Canada has agreed to cut its 100% tariff on Chinese electric cars. In return for lower, lower tariffs on Canadian farm products. China will reduce its total tariffs on canola seeds. A major Canadian.

Alex (21:21)

Okay, yeah, canola oil. They're getting seed oils. They're like, we gotta have them.

Ben (21:26)

Okay, okay. Maybe this is part of a grander strategy. Oh, he's like, yeah, this is our version of fentanyl.

Chris (21:35)

So he actually did. Carney said that Canada's partnership with China sets US Canada up well for the new world order. So this is the sea. Doors are the first steps.

Ben (21:46)

Yeah, that was a crazy quote.

Alex (21:48)

In other electric car news, Ford and BYD are in talks for car batteries. Let's give it up for some talks. US Car makers need Ford. The US Carmaker needs more batteries for hybrid vehicles because it's shifting away from the full EVs. You know, they canceled the Ford Lightning, but they are going to do a lot of hybrids and so they need a lot of batteries and they're calling up BYD to help with it. The American carmaker would buy batteries from the Chinese auto company for some of Ford's hybrid vehicle models, according to people familiar with the matter. The two companies are still discussing how the arrangement would work. One idea is that Ford would import batteries from BYD to Ford's factories outside of the U.S. some of the people said talks continue and it's possible a deal won't materialize. The tie up, if completed, would pair Ford with the largest Chinese car company that has struck fear in much of the auto industry over its ability to produce affordable models that carry sophisticated technology. For Ford, it solves a problem. As the company pulls back from electric vehicles and ramps up its lineup of hybrids. It needs a battery supplier and BYD is able to produce high quality car batteries. We talk to lots of companies about many things, a Ford spokesman said. A BYD spokesman declined to comment. That's a good comment. President Trump's trade advisor, Peter Navarro criticized the idea on X. He said, so Ford wants to simultaneously prop up a Chinese competitor's supply chain and make it more vulnerable to the same supply chain extortion. What could go wrong here?

Ben (23:29)

The day has finally come not to see ads in ChatGPT. But they're coming, they're coming, they're coming. We're talking about. In the coming weeks, OpenAI plans to start testing ads in ChatGPT free and go tiers. It's go time, they said. We're sharing our principles early on how we'll approach ads, guided by putting user trust and transparency first as we work to make AI accessible to everyone. They say what matters Most. Responses in ChatGPT will not be influenced by ads. That is, there's a firewall, there's a.

Alex (24:02)

Firewall editorial is over here. Ad sales is over here. They don't interface with each other at all. And so the models that generate the responses will not be aware of who's advertising on what. This seems extremely easy to do technically. Extremely good for product reliability. It's what the consumer wants. They want. You want to know when you go to Google, if you scroll down far enough, you eventually get past the ads and you see the real results. And you're going to want that in your LLM. Even if there's an ad up at the top or in the middle, as long as it's clearly labeled, which they say they will be. So ads will always be separate and clearly labeled. Your conversations are private from advertisers.

Ben (24:42)

Yeah. So people have been so concerned. Specifically Mark Cuban. We obviously had him on the show to talk about this last year about this idea of ads showing up in the results. And part of it, the reason I was never that concerned is like, if I just search Best backpack for men, which is kind of a joke in itself because it's gonna tell you Ridge, but, well, a man shouldn't wear a backpack in the first place. So sorry to any backpack superfans out there. Well, you're not a man yet. You're not 21.

Alex (25:13)

Oh, true.

Ben (25:14)

When I search Best backpack for men, I can scroll down and find a Reddit result from. It's the second result after Nordstrom.

Alex (25:21)

Sure.

Ben (25:22)

But I can all. They also serve me a bunch of ads. I don't assume that the Best backpack for men is the first ad. Right. It's not like when it's clearly labeled and separated. I just assume this is an ad for somebody that sells backpacks. Yeah, people seem to be really riled up about this. I'm seeing a bunch of comments on the post. They're upset. I don't get it at all. The whole point is that ads have made it so that wonderful services on the Internet have been free for decades. They're generally aligned. Even target people report they like targeted ads.

Alex (25:55)

I agree.

Ben (25:56)

This is funny. Somebody in here says some poor fifth grade teacher grading the worst World War II paper ever turned in when it suddenly starts talking about World of Tanks in north.

Alex (26:08)

Copy pasting the ads.

Ben (26:10)

Honestly, maybe that's a feature though, you know, because you get two impressions.

Alex (26:15)

Two impressions.

Ben (26:16)

My understanding is they will use what they know about you to offer better targeted ads to advertisers. They're just saying they won't explicitly be like, hey, we have. Here's this person's email and here's what they like and actually sell that specifically flowers.

Alex (26:30)

No way. Reacting to the screenshot that flowers hint at math before numerals, pottery made by people of the Halifian culture who inhabited northern Mesopotamia between 6200 and 5500 BC painted flowers with 4, 8, 16, 32 petals. Some of them have 64 petals. They were obsessed with exponential growth. They were obsessed with compounding. The power of compounding.

Chris (26:59)

It's the Claude logo.

Alex (27:01)

It is the Claude logo. That's hilarious. I love it. It's amazing.

Ben (27:07)

Had dinner with wife at a Mexican restaurant last night. Looked at the menu. They were trying to raise prices from $18 to $24 for her favorite entree. Wife was like, I think we can have Claude make this old waitress trying to google to gouge us. They done one week sprint. Claude cloned and replaced coaching each of a bill and carnitas restaurant manager freaks out. How do we solve this? This is going to happen so much in 2026.

Alex (27:37)

Just telling the restaurant owner that you're going to do it at home.

Ben (27:40)

We cloned your entree. Every year these kids come back with a new annoying quirk. Clawed boys are apparently the new thing in my 10th year of teaching, mostly freshmen. Ever since the pandemic, there's always a new thing students bring to school that they learned over the summer from the Internet or wherever. The newest thing here is a flock of self proclaimed Claude boys who carry AI on hand at all times and constantly ask it what to do. They have their entire personality revolve around Claude prompting an AI. When we went around doing an icebreaker, four of the five kids, some variation of I live by Claude and die by the Claude. Just about an hour ago, when I assigned the first assignment of the school year, one of the Claude boys was bold enough to say if Claude says I do it. Otherwise I don't. I told him if he asked Claude he would be getting a call home on the first week of high school. He asked it anyway and it said to do the homework. California based unicorns being routed to the glue factory. The horse metaphor mincing words. We will protect the unicorns. Unicorns are horses. We will protect them. They are California started with the Gold Rush and might end with the Golden Exit. It has been underreported how much wealth has left California because of the asset seizure tax being proposed. It's important that we continue to call it the asset seizure tax. A private poll was conducted amongst affected individuals a few days ago and 80 to 90% surveyed. They'd already left California in 2025 or will leave in 2026 if the ballot measure looks likely to pass. Two to two and a half trillion of assets gone, representing 20 billion of annual annual revenue for the state government and likely hundreds of thousands of jobs now at risk. Less reported is the bigger exodus underway from folks who are not directly affected but worry, as they should, that this law will quickly transition from billionaires to everyone else. The initiative actually gives California legislators the right to take anyone's post tax assets anytime in the future, based on a majority vote. This isn't about billionaires. It's a new tax system that simply destroys private property rights in America. All private property is now public property. Even after paying your taxes. It's not legally your property anymore. It's the government's. You're just borrowing it. Not just tech, not just AI, not just billionaires. But the core engine of California's prosperity since 1847 is unraveling. And states not in crisis will declare enough is enough. Individuals in those states will refuse to pay their federal taxes. Why pay for other people's mistakes? Some states may try to secede from the union and a constitutional and civil crisis will erupt. I know this sounds crazy, but I think at some point states will just say, like people. Citizens will be like, why am I sending 30% of every dollar I make to bureaucrats in Washington that hate me? I think this sounds wild, but I don't. I don't think it's as far fetched as one might be.

Alex (30:27)

Yeah, it's very dark.

Ben (30:29)

It's nothing like a little Friday Black.

Alex (30:32)

We just. The answer, the answer is clearly just AGI pilling all of the California regulators. AGI will solve the deficit. We will just ask AGI to fix the debt, fix the fiscal crisis, fix the pension liabilities, fix the budget deficit, don't make mistakes. And so much value will be created by AGI here. Just the income taxes. We'll pay for that 1000 times over. Don't worry, it's going to be fine. AGI is here to save it. That's the solution. Got to pitch them. Hope you have a great day. Thank you for being here with us and goodbye.