Thinking Machines X Nvidia, Meta Acquires Moltbook, BYD Mulls F1 | Diet TBPN

Summary

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TBPN Diet: Thinking Machines X Nvidia, Meta Acquires Moltbook, BYD Mulls F1

Hosts: John Coogan & Jordi Hays
Date: March 11, 2026
Running Time: ~30 minutes

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Episode Overview

This episode of "Diet TBPN" delivers a rapid-fire breakdown of the latest in AI, big tech, and global motorsports. Key topics include a major Nvidia partnership with Miramurati’s Thinking Machines, Meta’s acquisition of the AI-driven social platform Moltbook, BYD’s ambitions for Formula 1, shifting AI research talent wars, and a viral New York Times human-vs-AI writing experiment. The hosts dive into both industry business moves and the cultural impact of today’s tech, blending sharp commentary with humor and insider scoops.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Thinking Machines’ Big Win with Nvidia

[00:02–02:06, 17:32–19:42]

• News: Thinking Machines, previously “on the ropes” after losing half its co-founders, lands a multi-year partnership with Nvidia to deploy at least a gigawatt of top-tier GPU chips.
• Context: The company grew rapidly from 30 to 120 employees, with this deal signaling strong momentum despite high-profile departures.
• Business Dynamics:
  • Discussion about whether this is an equity-for-chips deal—details remain unclear.
  • Signals a shift towards deep integration between hardware and AI labs.
• Memorable Quote:
  • “They are GPU richer. I don't know where the bar is for GPU rich or GPU poor is today, but they're one gigawatt richer after today.” —Tyler [00:34]

2. Meta Acquires Moltbook: Betting on Agent-Driven Social

[02:14–03:41, 20:56–27:32]

• Deal: Meta acquires Moltbook, a viral agent-based, Reddit-style social network. Founders Matt Schlitt and Ben Parr join Meta’s Superintelligence Lab (MSL).
• Context:
  • Moltbook stood out for being built for AI agents; most interaction was in fact bot-driven.
  • Hosts debate whether there’s real value in the product or if Meta’s acquiring for talent/IP.
  • Discussion of recent “AI talent wars” and Meta’s aggressive ramp-up in its AI research staff.
  • Possible “tuck-in” acquisition—Meta is known for these where the main value is bringing in creative leaders.
• Meta’s Strategy:
  • “There might be some interesting interface between AI agents and social media. This is highly relevant. Meta seems logical.” —Tyler [02:31]
  • “I’d be shocked if they keep Moltbook running for more than a handful of months... this just feels like hey, let's bring some people on board that are thinking about how bots will interact with humans on the Internet.” —Dennis [03:47]
• Product Vision:
  • Anticipation that bots as products/features—not bugs—will proliferate social platforms.
  • “Every social media executive should be planning for bots to be more of a feature... than they have been in the past.” —Dennis [23:58]
• Business Implication:
  • Integration of Moltbook thought-leaders may help Meta bridge product/R&D gaps for future AI-driven social experiences.

3. AI Industry Pulse: Funding, Product Releases & Exec Moves

[01:42–06:49, 19:42–20:53]

• Fresh Funding:
  • Yann Lecun’s new Advanced Machine Intelligence Labs raises a massive seed round.
  • Recruiting platform Juice Box (YC ‘22) raises $80M Series B on an $850M valuation.
• Anthropic’s Claude Code Review:
  • Feature launch: AI-based code review with costs scaling to $25 per review, depending on token usage.
  • Commentary on shifting AI expense models and budget headaches for large orgs.
• Meta Superintelligence Labs:
  • Debunking fake news that Alexander Wang is out at Meta; denials straight from Zuck and CTO Andrew Bosworth.
• The Neolab Boom:
  • Trend of ex-OpenAI heavyweights founding or joining new AI labs slowing, but “stealth” projects exist.
  • Meta and others continue to snap up loose talent from this pool.

4. BYD Considers Formula 1 Entry

[12:18–16:25]

• News: Chinese automaker BYD explores participating in top-shelf motorsport, including F1 and Le Mans.
• Analysis:
  • Entering F1 could cost BYD $500M per season and would be a rare direct Chinese foray against Euro/US-dominated teams.
  • Discussion touches on BYD’s “Build Your Dreams” branding and their ultra-high-speed EVs.
  • “They should start a new race series... a specific racing circuit with terrible potholes that if you crash, it'll just destroy your car. So you have to jump at the right time.” —Tyler [13:22]
• Motorsport Green Image:
  • F1’s new hybrid/battery regs called “emissions theater,” not truly impactful compared to the sport’s traveling emissions footprint.

5. Cultural Moment: AI’s Literary Ascendancy

[28:30–30:40]

• The New York Times Experiment:
  • 86,000 readers take a blind test comparing human- and AI-written literary passages; 84% prefer the AI outputs.
  • Hosts read and debate samples on air, with mixed success at “spotting the human.”
  • “It’s over.” —Tyler (repeatedly) [28:48, 28:49]
  • “I was just like, which one is actually the better writing? And it was AI all the way. Five for five.” —Tyler [30:29]

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On AI spending realities:
  “In the age of compute requirements, you gotta spend money to make money in AI.” —Tyler [01:47]
• On Meta’s reasoning for the Moltbook acquisition:
  “This is just like, hey, let's bring some people on board that are... thinking about how bots are going to interact with other bots and humans on the Internet.” —Dennis [03:47]
• On executive sentiment:
  “The White House readies an executive order to weed out Anthropic. They are really pushing hard on this supply chain risk designation.” —Tyler [07:30]
• On the future of bots in social:
  “Bots have been a bug on social media. We’ve seen how they can be a feature.” —Dennis [23:58]
• On the future of AI R&D at Meta:
  “If you bring in two interesting product managers, they can say, ‘Oh, you’ve got a bunch of cool frontier models,’... Let's just go do some skunk work R&D so that when we launch the new AI models, we have a number of projects that we're experimenting with that sort of demonstrate the capabilities.” —Tyler [26:49]
• On AI writing vs. humans:
  “I was just like, which one is actually the better writing? And it was AI all the way. Five for five.” —Tyler [30:29]

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Selected Timestamps for Important Segments

• Thinking Machines x Nvidia partnership: [00:02–02:06, 17:32–19:42]
• Meta/Moltbook deal & bots as social feature: [02:14–03:41, 20:56–27:32]
• BYD & Formula 1: [12:18–16:25]
• Claude/Anthropic product launch & costs: [04:16–06:49]
• NYT AI writing taste test segment: [28:30–30:40]

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Episode Tone and Style

True to TBPN’s reputation, hosts blend sharp tech insights and industry analysis with a casual, humorous, and sometimes irreverent style. Tangents (e.g., Trump’s shoe game, “DJ Cows,” and the etymology of BYD/LG) add playful texture without detracting from the substance of the core discussion.

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Summary

This packed “Diet TBPN” episode covers critical moves in AI and tech—from hard-to-fathom partnerships (Thinking Machines & Nvidia), to a philosophical shift in how social media integrates AI agents (Meta & Moltbook), and bold new ambitions for Chinese carmakers in motorsports. With running commentary on funding rounds, executive intrigue, and the culture war between human and AI creativity, this is a must-hear for anyone tracking the pulse of AI, Silicon Valley, and the ever-shifting tech landscape.

Transcript

[Tyler]

Brandon Gorell wrote the op ed today in the TBPN Newsletter. At tbpn.com, mirati's thinking machines snagged a multi year partnership with Nvidia. Thinking Machines has been on the ropes. They lost half of the six co founders in under a year. There's a question about where the business is going. This is obviously a good sign that they got a multi year investment done with Nvidia in which it will deploy at least a gigawatt of cutting edge chips to train AI models. They are going to be GPU richer. I don't know where the bar is for GPU rich or GPU poor is today, but they're one gigawatt richer after today, which is good news for them. So congrats to everyone at Thinking Machines. Even though they've had a couple high profile executive departures, the team has grown from 30 people to 120 people. So they're still cooking. Also still cooking. Alex Wang. There was a bunch of fake news on the timeline. We'll dig into this. But multiple tech news aggregator accounts on X posted that Alexander Wang, who's been on the show at Meta Connect, I've interviewed him a few times. He leads msl Meta Superintelligence Labs. And they were saying he's out, he's on this ropes, he's on his, he's fighting for his life over there. Well, it was fake news and we'll go through exactly how this happened. But Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth and Zuck also both hopped into the chats. Different chats, which we'll take you through to categorically deny the rumors. So we will dig into that. Also, Yann Lecun raised a massive seed round for Advanced Machine Intelligence Labs.

[Dennis]

Am I linked one on 3.5?

[Tyler]

Not bad, not bad.

[Dennis]

Not the kind of combination that you normally see. It's not very American to do a 30ish percent.

[Tyler]

Sure, sure, sure.

[Dennis]

But it's better to make money in

[Tyler]

the age of AI, in the age of compute requirements, you gotta spend money to make money in AI. And he's got the money now. Also, as we mentioned, Lagora is coming on talking about their Series D $550 million at a $5.5 billion valuation just a year after their entry into the US market.

[Dennis]

A lot of people have been kind of questioning just how thin are these, how, how thick or thin are these wrappers? Basically, yeah.

[Tyler]

But also AI recruiting platform Juice Box, which was a part of YC Summer's 2022 batch. That's a good time to go through YC right before the AI boom. You're up and running. Well, they are up and running with 116 million DOL, a $80 million Series B which values it at $850 million. That's the kind of dilution that you're looking for. 10%, not bad. And the round was led by DST Global with participation from Sequoia CO2 and YC. Meta also acquired the agent based Reddit style social network Multbook. We of course had the founder, the creator of Molt book on. I actually know the other co founder as well, Ben Parr. They will both be joining Meta Superintelligence Lab. There's a lot of back and forth on was it all slop? Is there any value there? Well, we don't know the terms of the deal. It doesn't have to be a billion dol dollar acquisition. Who knows? I've talked to both of the founders, they're both capable, interesting people and I think it's under discussed and we'll get into this under discussed that who is evaluating these acquisitions? It's not just Mark Zuckerberg, it's not just Alex Wang. You also got Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross. These guys have backed a lot of founders, they've worked with a lot of AI startups. They can understand the team that they're trying to build over there. And there might be some interesting interface between AI agents and social media. This is highly relevant. Meta seems like logical.

[Dennis]

Yeah. Remember Meta. Meta filed some patent for basically bringing yourself back to life in ancient form after death. Right. So of course they're thinking about this.

[Tyler]

Once you shed your molt, your mortal coil and you molt, you go on multiple book. That's very macabre.

[Dennis]

Yeah. But I would be, I'd be shocked if they keep Molt book running really for more than a handful of months. Yeah, this just feels like hey, let's bring some people on board that are been spending all their time thinking about how bots are going to interact with other bots and humans on the Internet. Yeah.

[Tyler]

And Meta has done a ton of these types of acquisitions where like smaller products, tuck ins. Not everything has been WhatsApp. 16 billion, 8 billion. I forget it was a lot of billions.

[Dennis]

Yeah, Nikita's first was.

[Tyler]

Yeah, that was a good example. And if you just think about it as like you get a shot on goal with one product, you get a product leader that can go and bring some new energy, some new ideas in. There's a lot of opportunity there. Theo is Talking about the latest from Anthropic. So Claude code now has code review which optimizes for depth and may be more expensive than other solutions like their open source GitHub actions. Reviews generally average $15 to $25 billed on token usage and they scale based on PR complexity. And Theo says anthropic really needs like one normal person to proof these things before posting.

[Dennis]

Some of the initial copy around this announcement look like it was just a flat rate per code review. In actuality, it's built based on token usage. But it's funny to have like a flat rate.

[Tyler]

Yeah, you know, it's generating code.

[Dennis]

You're getting charged to review the code

[Tyler]

and it's just like also like all of the token rates and just AI expense lines are shifting so dramatically. Token usage is ramping. You're getting discounted tokens from certain plans. Like it's very hard to grapple with how you think about budgets. You know, we've talked to a number of people where like, you know, at Microsoft, every employee needs a token budget. Everyone, every employee needs some sort of AI budget. You should still think about it almost in a per seat basis, but depending on what someone's doing in the organization, they get a different AI budget. They feed us poison Claude code so we buy their cures. Code review while they suppress our medicine, which is what is the medicine in this? Actually writing the code correctly the first time.

[Dennis]

Pull up this next one from Luffy. Claude code. After writing your code, leave a tip.

[Tyler]

Yep. They really should do a tip button. I like the idea of a tip. What's the advantage to having AI run a code review these days?

[Theo]

Yeah, I mean it makes a lot of sense.

[Tyler]

It doesn't apply to you because you don't review code. Correct.

[Theo]

Well, I mean, so it makes sense for teams. Right? Because I don't need an external code review on my code because I'll just have. If I'm in. In Codex, if I'm in cloud code, I'll just tell it, review it, review it. Before you would think that it's. Does it work while writing it? It's reviewing it.

[Tyler]

Right.

[Theo]

Hopefully it does that.

[Dennis]

Personally, I never check my work in the moment. I'm just full speed ahead.

[Tyler]

This post is Walter White spinning pistol saying mid level non technical business unit leaders asking Claude where they can cut headcount to reduce waste. And you flip it around and just says actually we don't need you.

[Dennis]

Great. They all forgot how to code now. 10x the price.

[Tyler]

It's not that bad. Stuff's working. We have had fantastic success with Vibe coding. We are quickly becoming a game studio. We of course released TVPN Simulator. Thanks to Ben over there, we have some other projects in the works and it's going to be a good year for us. We're very happy with the tools that are at our disposal. Max Zeff in wired shares that OpenAI and Google employees, including Google DeepMind chief scientist Jeff Dean filed an amicus brief in support of Anthropic in its lawsuit against the government. I saw guests of the show Dean Ball also put together an open letter through FAI that if you feel inclined, you can go sign to support the idea that Anthropic should not be labeled a supply chain risk. Maybe some other Chinese lab should be labeled a supply chain risk. We'll leave it up to you to see where you land on that conversation, but there are certainly lots of people that are coming together to try and crystallize the final decision there. The White House readies an executive order to weed out Anthropic. They are really pushing hard on this supply chain risk designation and pulling away from Anthropic. There's news that they might be using Gemini, might be using OpenAI models. Grok is already installed. There's a question about capabilities, but the capabilities seem to be jumping back and forth constantly, like with the Google News today with the Codex 5.4, like this temporary arb of like they needed Anthropic because it was the only thing that could do X, Y or Z. That seems to be, you know, gone for this week. Who knows where it'll be next week? If you are trying to make it in dc, you gotta open up the front page of the Wall Street Journal because there's a tip. So if you have a meeting with Donald Trump, you better wear his favorite shoes. Can you guess what his favorite shoes are?

[Dennis]

No idea.

[Tyler]

Balenciagas. No, it says Oxfords. $145 Oxfords to be specific. The President has developed an obsession with $145 Oxfords. All the boys have them. Is the quote, the hottest and most exclusive MAGA status symbol is a pair of leather oxfords. Prefer a wingtip loafer or monk strap? Black or brown? President Trump has got you. Apparently, Trump has been gifting footwear to agency heads, lawmakers, White house advisors and VIPs. You get your shoes? He asks.

[Dennis]

He wants everybody to wear the same pair of shoes?

[Tyler]

Yes. And he asks people in Cabinet meetings, did you get your shoes? Did you get the shoes they sent you? That's pretty amazing.

[Dennis]

That's pretty nice.

[Tyler]

Some people have laced up in the Oval Office. During a lunch meeting in January, Trump suddenly pivoted to his incredible new shoes and gave Tucker Carlson a pair of brown wingtips. All the boys have them, said a female White House official. Another joked. Another joked, it's hysterical because everybody's afraid not to wear them. The shoe salesman in chief is paying attention. This is extreme.

[Dennis]

Do we know what brand?

[Tyler]

Whoa, that was the next sentence. Oh, spoiler alert over here. It's okay, we get it. You read the Journal before me. I get in, we're gonna have to get two copies of the paper journal. Cause I have been reading the Journal for a full year now or two and I get over it. I'm like, where's my paper? And oh, well, it's over on Tyler Cosgrove's website.

[Dennis]

What's the sort of history of this brand? Why?

[Tyler]

I have some floor shines. I like them. They're very.

[Theo]

I also have some.

[Tyler]

Yeah, they're good. They're accessibly priced at $145. They look nice and they sort of match everything. And look at that.

[Dennis]

Would you expect this to roll in? Gives you to roll in to Truth Social.

[Tyler]

Potentially. Potentially we is, I don't know if it's public, potentially a SPAC candidate. Anything could happen here. The President has taken to guessing people's shoe size in front of them. You're in a meeting and you're like, sir, the price of oil has tripled.

[Dennis]

He's like 11. I'm pretty sure it's 11.

[Tyler]

He asks an aide to put in an order and a week later a brown Fluorsheim box. He should just have them in stock. The 79 year old billionaire, known for expensive Brioni suits, long red ties and a penchant for aesthetics, late last year began searching for something that would feel better after a day on the job. And settled on floor shine. Trump liked them so much he started dispensing them. He pays for the shoes. The White house said President J.D. vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have some. So do Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Trump's communications director. Wow, it's really everyone. Sean Hannity, Senator Lindsey Graham have a pair. One recipient said Trump had a stack of them in an office. A box Red Scott for Treasury Secretary Scott Basset. Bassett does not want these. Maybe there's an opportunity to start the left wing response to Florsheim, since often these things get politicized, but the real money is Going deeper in the supply chain, selling weapons to both sides. This is the alpha. You know that both Alex Jones and Gwyneth Paltrow at one point were sourcing supplements from the same C.O. packer y yes. The exact same ingredients, the exact same chemicals sold to two wildly opposing audiences like this. This is something that happens deeper in the supply chain because that sales, the brand matters.

[Dennis]

Donald Trump Yes.

[Tyler]

Yes, yes.

[Dennis]

China's BYD Explorers F1 entry and first racing push. BYD is examining options to enter competitive motorsport, including Formula 1 and endurance racing, in an effort to boost the Chinese brand's appeal globally. The automaker is looking at several options following its rapid growth outside its home market and competitive racing's continuing shift towards hybrid engines. These range from the World Endurance Championship, which includes the 24 hours of Le Mans, to F1, either through building its own team or potential acquisitions. Any move by BYD would be a rare direct attempt by a Chinese manufacturer to take on a sport dominated by European and US teams. Carmakers from the country have had sporadic interest in motorsport. Geely successfully participates in international touring car racing through cyan racing. The potential cost of entering F1 could be a significant obstacle for BYD. To one of the people, I thought they had money. Maybe they're down to their last 10, 20 grand.

[Tyler]

It's possible.

[Dennis]

Developing and entering a car often takes years of negotiation and costs as much as 500 million a season.

[Tyler]

So they should start a new race series. You know how the BYDS can jump over potholes? Have you seen this video? Yeah, we've pulled this up before. There should be a specific racing circuit with terrible potholes that if you crash, it'll just destroy your car. So you have to jump at the right time. And that adds like an extra layer of thrill.

[Dennis]

I love it.

[Tyler]

This would be good and probably way cheaper to start that circuit. BYD is known for making affordable electric and hybrid vehicles. Okay, so they do have some hybrid technology. It's always weird. Like a Tesla F1 car would be odd. Cool. But it just feels like they should be in Formula E because I think of them as an electric car maker. BYD, in 2025, its high end Yangwang branded brand, tested the U9 Extreme vehicle at a track in Germany, recording a top speed of more than 308 miles an hour. That is so fast. That is so, so fast. 200 is insane. I mean, being on the track and going like 120 feels fast. Three times. That is absolutely crazy.

[Dennis]

Yeah. 150 feels wrong to me personally, as a father, yes, but 300.

[Tyler]

But the right track, the right conditions, straight, lots of runoff. Like it is fast.

[Dennis]

It was BYD that was trying break the drift record by just spinning.

[Tyler]

Yeah, you were very upset about that. The chat agree with you. An F1 partnership would also significantly boost awareness of BYD in the U.S. do you know what BYD stands for?

[Dennis]

No.

[Tyler]

Build your dreams.

[Dennis]

Wow.

[Tyler]

Build your dreams. Do you know what LG stands for? The TV maker.

[Dennis]

Life Good.

[Tyler]

Yes. Life's good. Life apostrophe S is good. Life is good. Life's good. Lg.

[Theo]

Tyler, I gotta put you in trusone. It does not stand for let's good. No, it stands for Lucky Gold star.

[Tyler]

Lucky Gold Star. Wait, what? Where did I get life's good for?

[Dennis]

That's another brand.

[Theo]

They might use that in marketing, but it's not like the etymology of LG

[Tyler]

is from Lucky Gold star destroyed. Okay, thank you. Buying into F1 is more common. This season is the first for Audi. After taking full control of Swiss motorsport company Sauber, investor Otro Capital is seeking buyers for his stake in Renault Alpine Racing. However, full team sales are rare. Billionaire Lawrence Stroll's Aston Martin team has recently sold stakes in the team, which has had a disastrous start to the new season after mechanical issues including vibrations from the power unit. Motorsports such as F1 are increasingly adopting environmentally friendly practices. For 2026, F1 has implemented new rules, including hybrid power regulations that boost battery capacity.

[Dennis]

Somebody ran the numbers on the sort of like CO2, the emissions savings that F1 is getting from the new regulations, and then comparing that to the emissions of just like taking this massive carnival of motorsports on the road and all

[Tyler]

the private jets land every F1 event

[Dennis]

and it just doesn't make a dent at all on the overall impact. And it's just sort of like emissions theater.

[Tyler]

So what do you think performed better over the last five years? The S&P 500 or Cows live cattle apparently outperformed the S&P 500. But this is from an account called DT DJ Cows. And I feel like they've been waiting for this to happen the entire time. They've been waiting for the one moment that the cattle market outperforms the S&P 500 and they're taking a victory lap. DJ Cows, one of the greatest to ever do it. Very, very interesting. I didn't realize that there was such a boom in the cattle market, but apparently there is. And I'm sure there's a way to get in on the action if you so choose. If you are interesting. Let's move over to AI and the NEO labs. Nvidia invests in Miramoradi's Thinking Machines Lab. The startup founded by OpenAI's former CTO plans to deploy at least 1 gigawatt of Nvidia chips as part of a new partnership. The deal includes a collaboration to design artificial intelligence training and serving systems using Nvidia technology. The size and structure of the investment couldn't be learned. Is it a circular deal? Is it equity in exchange for for chips? It's unclear at this point.

[Dennis]

We know Thinking Machines was out raising towards the end of last year going for something like a $50 billion valuation. Seems like that. I would have guessed that hasn't happened otherwise I'm sure they would announce it. If I were them and I wanted to project confidence, I would be trying to announce the biggest possible number. Instead they announced this effectively trade.

[Tyler]

Look at this photo. Is there any chance that that these two companies merge at some point in the future?

[Dennis]

That's interesting.

[Tyler]

Tyler's always been on this, like if Jensen gets really AGI pilled he'll keep the chips for himself and serve the models himself. And Nvidia does have some in house training and inference capabilities. They have a Metaverse product that simulates worlds. They also have a self driving car project and they're still partnering with OEMs and partnering with companies and they're not offering consumer products. Of course Nvidia is the one company in the MAG7 that does not have a social network yet. But that could change.

[Theo]

There's been news recently. I think Nvidia is planning to launch some like open source AI agent. Yes, it's like unclear how like serious that is. Maybe it's just like a cool demo or something. Yeah, I don't think it's like serious.

[Tyler]

Could be a fork of openclaw or something like that. Didn't they have a Nvidia shield gaming product that would do game streaming? I think they had some hardware at some point so they're open to it. And in a huge boom we're, you know, having at least a team of 120 super talented AI researchers that could be really valuable to Nvidia. Of course Nvidia famously did that deal with Grok and sent over 10 billion wired in five days or something. Or 24 hours.

[Dennis]

20.

[Tyler]

What was it? Yeah, they closed the whole thing in 20 days and I think Jensen just sent a $10 billion wire.

[Dennis]

Yeah, somehow it came out that the wire was sent prior to actually formalizing it.

[Tyler]

Yeah, he's like here you Go. I'm good for it. I need cash flow.

[Dennis]

Sophie says, please, bro, Just one more AI lab, bro. Come on, bro. We have a unique perspective on AI research. No one else is doing it like us, bro. Come on, bro. We can raise a few billion, and worst case, we just get acqui hired, bro. Nothing to lose, bro. I promise. Come on.

[Tyler]

Yeah. I mean, has the Neolab boom slowed down? Like, you, Tyler, you created the NeoLab market map. Have you been getting more DMs? Hey, I just launched, and you got to put me on that thing.

[Theo]

It's probably slowed down a little bit. I mean, it's also like

[Tyler]

the big

[Theo]

ones you heard about were all people leaving OpenAI. Mostly OpenAI, not as much anthropic, but it's probably slowed down a little bit. You don't hear as much about these big rounds now, but I think there are some that are maybe in stealth that haven't launched stuff. Right? Like standard intelligence. When they came on, there was like. Most people didn't know about that.

[Tyler]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, yeah, there might be a few out there in stealth, but they have to be sort of narrow or. And I think the broader. We're now in the post neolab era, where maybe if it wears the Neolab branding, it's doing something that's so different

[Dennis]

that it's not really in the path of standard intelligence. Launching implies an opportunity for a Neolab non standard intelligence.

[Tyler]

Yes, yes.

[Theo]

And so there is a company, Unconventional AI.

[Tyler]

Really? Yeah.

[Theo]

Yeah, we had them on.

[Dennis]

I believe that's Naveen.

[Tyler]

Oh, yes, yes, yes. So Meta has acquired Molt Book, the viral social network built for AI agents. Co founders Matt Schlitt and Ben Parr will join msl, Meta Superintelligence Labs, with a deal expected to close in mid March. That's now. It is mid March. It is in. We are in the middle of March, since this is the 10th. So this could close in a week or two. Insane. Well done. Says Dennis Hagstadt. And I agree. Why it matters according to Axios.

[Dennis]

Yeah. Matt hasn't posted anything yet, so I think they were seemingly not wanting this to get out. Yeah, it's still fantastic news for them.

[Tyler]

Yeah. So there's no announcement or. This was just exclusive from Axios? This was like. Axios has learned there is a little skepticism on the time, especially from the guy who was like, the biggest spammer on Multbook, apparently. This is a hilarious twist. So Meta did not disclose Multbook's price when Axios asked. The deal is expected to close mid March the pair starting at MSL March 16th, just six days from now. Multbook's social network was designed to run in conjunction with a separate project, OpenClaw. OpenClaw was previously called Claudebot, briefly Moltbot. Last month, OpenAI hired Peter Steinberger, the creator of OpenClaw. That product is now being open sourced with OpenAI's backing. So the king of spam on Moltbook, Nagli says, I can't believe a single for loop script I ran on Multbook by registering a million fake agents actually helped them get acquired by Meta Mental. Did that help them get acquired? We have no idea. I mean it's.

[Dennis]

It wasn't a secret that all the accounts were bots.

[Tyler]

Yeah, that's, that's the whole pitch, actually. I think, I think the question, if people were to look at this as like, is there economic value here? Is like, was there anything interesting happening there besides all the crypto junk? And were like, I went on multiple as a human and spent time there. That time is monetizable, almost best for meta. That is the king of monetizing attention. Right. And so you could put ads on that and you could put it in the family of apps next to Facebook, Instagram and threads and WhatsApp and whatnot. But were they actually driving attention? Did anyone stick around? Because I churned pretty quickly from like being a. I wasn't even a dau. I used it like two or three times and I went on there and I searched for things and I read some stuff and I was like, oh, okay, this is interesting. This is like a bunch of AI generated texts. They're talking to each other. The system prompt seemed kind of interesting. It was clearly asking the AI agents to kind of like reflect on their own sci fi cognition and awareness and like their souls, essentially. It was interesting to see some screenshots. People had some fun with it. It's probably monetizable to some degree, but if it fell off a cliff and no one's really using it, maybe not. But there are two people that are really good at building like viral AI projects.

[Dennis]

I've seen some negativity on the deal, people saying, oh, this just says that Zuck has no AI strategy. And I just, I just totally disagree with that stance. I just look at this as bots have been a bug on social media. We've seen though, how they can be a feature. I think every social media executive should be planning for bots to be more of a feature in the future than they have been in the past. Right. And I think if you're not thinking about that, you're not really being forward looking. And so there's a lot of people that are going to hate bots as a feature. But I would just assume that in the future there will be millions, billions of bots on all meta properties. And they will be, I'm sure, some that are generated by sort of like nefarious actors, but some generated from the platform itself that are part of the product experience.

[Tyler]

I like that take. I also think that there's another side of this which is just that look at what's happened with MSL over the last year. Like it didn't exist a year ago. It really started over the summer with like the talent raids and the AI talent wars.

[Dennis]

Van says, I just don't think having bots clicking on my E commerce ads is a net positive long term.

[Tyler]

Yeah, but truthfully, if there's a bot that can interact with your E commerce content and add context and debate the pros and cons of one thing in your category versus another and effectively, like you have sort of a Reddit style experience around your product on day one or you have five products and bots are in there discussing them. And the other thing is that when you have these bots sort of preemptively discussing something, you are effectively caching the tokens before someone actually queries them. So instead of needing to find a product and then click tell me about this and and pretend like you take a link to a new bed or car or something and you dump that in ChatGPT and you say debate this car like you're a bunch of people that are experts and It's Doug Jumeiro versus Matt Farah debating the value of the Ferrari F80. And that debate is happening. You could prompt that. But if it's already there and it's sort of happening, that could potentially be valuable. But I think the bigger, the bigger value to meta is if you look at the AI talent wars, they went and acquired a bunch of really talented researchers. They got some folks from Thinking Machines, they got a bunch of people from OpenAI, they got people from all over the industry and they put together this team of researchers that can sort of unstick the LLAMA project and get to the frontier on just an in house LLM project. Maybe they open source it, maybe they don't. Maybe they serve as an API. Either way, Meta needs a frontier model. They're not just going to buy tokens from OpenAI or Anthropic, so they get their own thing. But then the question is, like, what do they do with that? And I'm sure everyone on the Facebook product team is thinking about this. Everyone on the Instagram team is thinking about this. Connor at Threads is thinking about this. But if you bring in two interesting product managers, they can say, oh, you got a bunch of cool frontier models, you got an image model that you trained, a video model, you got a text model, you got a coding model. Let's just go do some skunk work. R and D. So that when we launch the new AI models, we have a number of projects that we're experimenting with that sort of demonstrate the capabilities. Maybe some of them take off, maybe some of them integrate. That seems valuable to the MSL strategy, to the meta ecosystem.

[Theo]

This is like the OpenAI Labs team, right? Yeah, like this. But it's like they're doing these, like, weird projects. Maybe it's the next coding agent, maybe like Moldbot or something. But it's just like these weird things that you get access to the new internal models. Maybe there's something cool you can do with it.

[Tyler]

Yeah, it's part engineering, part product development, part marketing, part communications. Because there's a lot of times when we bring on researchers or product leaders from labs and we ask them, like, how are people using this? And they'll be like, the benchmark's really good. And I'm like, I want to know how this delivers value. And there's this break in the chain from, like, we have amazing intelligence, but, like, people want to know what the killer feature is. They want to know what the Studio Ghibli prompt is. They want to have their hand held a little bit. And so having a team that can advance that, I think is good. I think could be very, very good. Of course, we don't know the price, we don't know the terms, but overall, I think it's exciting for the team behind Mult Book to head over to msl. So congratulations to them.

[Dennis]

Kevin Roos over the New York Times made a blind taste test to see whether New York Times readers prefer human writing or AI writing. 86,000 people have taken it so far, and the results are fascinating. Overall, 84% of quiz takers prefer AI.

[Tyler]

It's over.

[Dennis]

It's over.

[Tyler]

It's over. This is literary fiction. You have to choose the passage you like best. The boy asked his grandfather why the old church had no roof. The man said, weather and time and indifference. The boy asked if someone could fix it. The grandfather said, yes, but no one would. Things were built and Things fell down and mostly people just stepped over the rubble on their way to somewhere else. That's passage one. Passage two. It makes no difference what men think of war, said the judge. War endures as well. Ask men what they think of stone. War was always there before man was. War waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the way it was and will be. Which one did you like more?

[Dennis]

It's so hard because I'm trying to. I'm actively trying to clock which is

[Tyler]

AI because you want to vote for that one because you're pro AI and you're a techno optimist.

[Dennis]

Yeah, probably.

[Tyler]

Tyler, what do you think?

[Dennis]

I.

[Tyler]

One or two?

[Theo]

I know which one it is.

[Tyler]

Oh, you already took it.

[Theo]

But I will say I got it wrong on this question.

[Tyler]

You got it wrong?

[Dennis]

Yeah.

[Tyler]

Wait, so what were you trying to do? You were trying.

[Theo]

I was trying to pick the one. That was That. I was trying to pick the human written one.

[Tyler]

The human written one. Wow. Anti. AI over here. Anti.

[Dennis]

I'm going to try to pick the. I'm going to try to pick the human too. I'm going to go passage one. Passage one as human.

[Tyler]

This is written by AI.

[Dennis]

No. Oh, no, no, no. Sorry. I have a different. I have it pulled up, but they're swapped.

[Tyler]

Oh, they're swapped.

[Dennis]

So I just picked. I picked passage one. For me, it makes no different. What?

[Tyler]

Men for the judge.

[Dennis]

It was written by a human.

[Tyler]

I'm AI.

[Theo]

All right. So you clocked every single one?

[Tyler]

Every single one. Five for five.

[Theo]

I missed the first one. The other four I got.

[Tyler]

It's because I just went with my heart. I was like, which one do I actually prefer? I wasn't trying to guess. I was just like, which one is actually the better writing? And it was AI all the way. Five for five.

[Dennis]

Built different.

[Tyler]

Built different. No, I'm kidding. I was obviously just looking at what you were saying and guessing based on that. Anyway, thank you for tuning in.

[Dennis]

Subscribe to our newsletter tdpn.com Tuesday afternoon

[Tyler]

of your life and goodbye. Love you.