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- [00:00]
Will Hurd
You're watching TVPN.
- [00:02]
John
Today is Friday, September 19, 2025. We are live from the TBPN Ultra Dome, the temple of technology, the fortress of finance, the capital of capital. Thank you to everyone in the chat. It is teeming day.
- [00:15]
Jordy
Love to see it.
- [00:17]
John
The first message I saw was thank you to ramp for another TBT on Friday. Thank you to ramp ramp.com time is money save. Both easy use, corporate cards, bill pay, accounting and a whole lot more all in one place.
- [00:31]
Jordy
We have, we have new sound effects from the team. By the way, we do hit him.
- [00:36]
John
There we go. I'm hearing multiple things. This is getting crazy.
- [00:41]
Jordy
And we have a special guest today. Let's go. Let's go to the wide.
- [00:44]
John
Yes, we have our Turbo Puffer Puffer here.
- [00:47]
Jordy
Look at this.
- [00:48]
John
It doesn't show how 3D it is.
- [00:50]
Jordy
I mean this, it is absolutely stunning.
- [00:54]
John
Turbo Puffer clock.
- [00:55]
Jordy
And it's functional too.
- [00:56]
John
Core search every bite. Turbo Puffer. We're puffing. Serverless vector and full text built from first principles on object storage. 10x cheaper, extremely scalable. Go to the gong can. Thank you Turbo Puffer from supporting us. Excited to dig deeper into that company. There's some fun stuff to share at some point. Anyway, the big news. Colossus 2 xai. It seems like it's going well. People have been saying Elon spread too thin. Starships crashing into the firmament every two seconds. Starships landed, came back the haters. I mean, pull back from politics. It seems like there's a lot of.
- [01:41]
Jordy
The huge L for the firmament believers after the last launch.
- [01:46]
John
Yes, Elon made it to space and back. And as of making progress on Colossus.
- [01:50]
Jordy
2, the data center 10, 20 minutes ago, CNBC is reporting that Xai raised a fresh $10 billion at 200 billion. Wow, that just hit the timeline.
- [01:59]
John
There we go. Dylan Patel summed it up.
- [02:04]
Jordy
Did you put a headline in the newsletter? In the newsletter today?
- [02:08]
John
Yes. X AI if you build it, they will come. Because his plan is to build the biggest data center, the first gigawatt data center in the world. And Semianalysis says they have a unique RL methodology. It's focused less on these RL environments for specific business use cases. We're not hearing about them cloning doordash or Amazon or creating a unique browser use like Go solve a very specific. They're not trying to build deep research RL environments. They're building Annie the romantic companion, which is an RL environment that feeds off of human interaction. And so semianalysis is a very Interesting take harvest it Potentially. Potentially. But Dylan says every time you think Elon has lost his touch or is failing, he does some crazy stuff and you're like damn, he really still got it. How Elon is building the largest data center in the world faster than anyone else is amazing. Also what they're doing on the RL side is equally nuts. There's a bunch of, there's a bunch of posts here and a bunch of.
- [03:12]
Jordy
Interesting do not go data center for data center with a goat.
- [03:16]
John
You. Yes. So I mean he got into this game late. He co founded. It's going to be the 10 year anniversary of Co founding OpenAI. December 2015 is when he Co founded OpenAI and we're coming up on December of 2025 and he's about to have a data center that's on par. It's close to OpenAI, it's not yet bigger, but they're getting there. This is semi analysis breaks down the megawatts of IT capacity which is effectively the total AI training data center capacity. OpenAI is still ahead of XAI, but Elon's pulling out every possible trick play to catch up to the firm he co founded. They're now ahead of anthropic and meta superintelligence according to semianalysis data. You can go deeper and obviously subscribe and if you upgrade to the most high tier you get their data center model and they'll even tell you what Google's doing, which is much more complex because Google trains across multiple data data centers. So everyone loved Colossus 1 built from the ground up in 122 days. It had 300 megawatts of it power which is now small potatoes because the next one's three times bigger. Zuck has talked about Hyperion and Prometheus shortly after going on his MSL hiring spree. OpenAI is of course working on Stargate in partnership with Crusoe and Oracle and others.
- [04:32]
Jordy
Also in Alex Heath. Alex Heath's interview the other day was saying that I think it released yesterday that he believes we might be in an AI bubble.
- [04:43]
John
Zuck didn't say that. That was an interpretation of the Zuck clip.
- [04:48]
Jordy
Interesting.
- [04:49]
John
So I saw that post. We should pull up the actual clip.
- [04:52]
Jordy
Let's.
- [04:53]
John
Let's watch it and review what Zuck said because I believe that this was somebody adding a caption and interpreting the vibes that were coming off of that particular interaction between Alex Heath and who just launched a new substack and podcast. Let's listen to this interview with Mark Zuckerberg.
- [05:09]
Jordy
That's kind of my job for them.
- [05:10]
John
Yeah, you were talking about the capex in the data centers. You obviously see something on the other side of that that will warrant that being worth it. But I'm wondering, do you ascribe to these, these bubble fears at all that people are talking about that we're in this massive overspending, getting ahead of the skis bubble and maybe a company like Metal will be okay because you guys do have a core business that makes a lot of money. But how do you think about this bubble talk that has been going on for the last few months especially?
- [05:36]
Jordy
I mean I think it's quite possible. I think basically if you look at most other major infrastructure buildups in history, whether it's railroads or fiber for the Internet, in the dot com bubble these things were all chasing something that ended up being fundamentally very valuable. In most cases it ended up being.
- [05:54]
Sam
Even more valuable than the people who.
- [05:56]
Jordy
Were kind of pushing the bubble thought.
- [05:57]
Will Hurd
It was going to be.
- [05:57]
Jordy
But in at least all of these past cases the infrastructure gets built out, people take on too much debt and then you hit some blip. Whether it's some macroeconomic thing or maybe you just have like a couple of years where the demand for the product doesn't quite materialize and then a lot of the companies end up going out of business and then the assets get distressed and then it's a great opportunity to go buy more. So I think that, that it's not, it's obviously impossible to predict what will happen here. There are compelling arguments for why AI could be an outlier and basically just if the models keep on growing in capability year over year and demand keeps growing, then maybe there is no collapse or something. But I do think that there's definitely a possibility, at least empirically, based on past large infrastructure buildouts and how they led to bubbles, that something like that would happen here.
- [06:55]
John
He's going back and forth there. Not as strong as what Sam Altman said. Yeah, it's possible we're in a bubble is not the same as. Yeah, we're definitely in a bubble.
- [07:04]
Jordy
Yeah, but I think you're right. The post summer was that is right as well. And that it's much better to be in the position where you have a highly profitable advertising business that can support this. All of the AI capex could effectively never go to what we think of as like new gen AI products and it could just go to the core business. It'd be great.
- [07:29]
John
Yeah. I mean when we hear about meta spending 60 billion on capex like a lot of that is still core AI. A lot of that is still just recommend better ads, recommend better reels, that type of stuff and so lot less just tons more downside protection in a company like Meta vs. Xai which is using leverage using these deal shifting pawns across the having SpaceX and then SpaceX employees and Tesla employees are coming over and Tesla megapack battery packs are going over there like it is a crazy.
- [08:04]
Jordy
Crazy Kiretsu that Speaking of well placed ads, Tyler Ronge just shared this moment earlier. We got to pull this up in the timeline. Tyler clipped it for us. John delivered potentially the greatest host red ad in history. We're a little bit, a little bit biased obviously.
- [08:26]
John
Time is money save both. You can use corporate cards, bill payments, accounting and a whole lot more all in one place. Let's bring him on. Mark Zuckerberg live on tvpn. Welcome to the stream. How you doing Mark? Good to see you. You're ready. This is really just the pinnacle, truly the, the pinnacle of the bit that we started maybe a year ago, less than a year ago. I mean I guess we started doing ramp ads. I think we started doing ramp ads even before we had a deal with them. We just thought it was fun. But this whole idea of like let's be overly commercial, let's really push the ad reads. It was started as a joke and then it just became like our thing and we normalized it to a point where we can actually go and do an ad read, a host read, right before interviewing a Mag7 CEO. So it was a fantastic, fantastic day, fantastic week. We had a lot of fun. Anyway, continuing with what's going on with Xai, there's this thought provoking part of the latest semianalysis, that article that kind of breaks down how ONI and the romantic companion Chatbot actually flows. We can read through a little bit of this. I mean Elon is kind of extremely satisfied with how the build out's going. Semi analysis said XAI now has 460 megawatts of natural gas turbines installed and either operating or under construction. This includes 12 SMT130 turbines at Colossus 1 and 7 Titan 350 turbines at Mississippi. Those are extremely cool names for turbines. Titan 350 and Elon says still small fry at 1 gigawatt. For serious power in the 100 gigawatt continuous range, 1/5 of USA average power consumption consumption, it probably needs to be solar Battery powered. At 1 TJ solar battery is the only realistic option.
- [10:19]
Jordy
Elon's Elon company companies are so good at infrastructure. They should have bought the Fyre Festival IP because they actually, I believe.
- [10:26]
John
Oh, they could pull it off for sure.
- [10:28]
Jordy
They could have pulled it off on a barren island. They would have been able to do it. Might not have been super well, you know, easy on the eyes, but it would have. The festival would have run.
- [10:39]
John
Yeah, for sure. Restream 1 livestream 30 plus destinations we're restreaming right now. Multistream and reach your audience every day. Semi analysis continues. The location of xai's AI data center hub in Memphis is highly strategic as it sits at the intersection of three states. Tennessee residents are already frustrated with the environmental and noise concerns caused by the gas turbines powering the facility. To address this, Elon Musk simply placed the new turbines a few miles across the border in Mississippi, running a short transmission line back to the Tennessee hub. It is so crazy that he can even build a line a couple miles like that. How long does it take California to build a couple miles of railroad? Like a decade. The idea that you can actually build even a transmission line that quickly is remarkable.
- [11:23]
Jordy
I wonder if any crazy land deals got done in that two mile stretch. Because if he had to, do you think he owned all the land across lines or was there some section where.
- [11:37]
John
But it gets. Yeah, it gets more complex. So if Mississippi residents or regulators push back, well, no problem. He can just go a few miles west, build additional turbine plants in Arkansas and connect them with another short transmission line. Elon Musk has also confirmed that XAI is purchasing an overseas power plant to bring to the US to continue powering his physical AI.
- [12:00]
Jordy
In terms of buying a plant that's overseas and just moving it?
- [12:06]
John
I think so. I think just like pick it up and put it down. Semi analysis called it another 200 IQ first principles move by Elon due to pushback on the Tennessee from Tennessee over environmental concerns. He built it at this intersection of three states and kind of can kind of move between them. There's some really remarkable things. This genius trick, such a crazy move. And you have to think that he, he didn't run into this like later he thought about this, he thought that the state regulation, it would be complex and so picked that zone maybe a year ago and has been a beneficiary of it ever since. Such a fascinating story. And you can see some images from 200 megawatts to 1.1 gigawatts. And you can see the physical change of the. Look at this. The physical change of the site from March 2025 to August 2025. That's just a few months. And it looks like a completely different like terraforming the earth. It's absolutely wild.
- [13:06]
Jordy
Grok right now. Guess, guess. Groq's revenue on Sensor Tower. So the App store last month, $100 million, something like that last month.
- [13:20]
John
I would hope that they're at a billion dollar run rate, maybe less.
- [13:24]
Jordy
5, 5 million. So $60 million run rate in the App Store. Granted, they could have other people go to grok.com and sign up and that, that those signups wouldn't get counted towards this. Yeah, but this is counting and there's.
- [13:37]
John
A lot of people that use Grok within Axe. So they have an X Premium account and that gets them, that gets them access to Grok. But yeah, I mean semi analysis shares a lot of data around the AI lab. ARR external revenue. OpenAI is at a $14.5 billion run rate. Anthropics at a $7 billion run rate now. And GROK is not really showing up on this particular chart. There's some discussion in here about Elon going to the Middle east. There's the KSA's Kingdom Holding Company. They own 16.87% by the public by PIF Public Investment Fund. They owned and kept a 1.8 billion, $1.9 billion stake in Twitter when Musk took the company private in and also owned an $800 million stake in Xai prior to the merger. So they, they're building a position in XAI. The UAE's privately owned Vi Capital brought in 700 million in 2022 to support Elon's takeover of Twitter. It also invested in the XAI Series C alongside UAE State Fund MGX and Qatar's QIA. Also owned and kept a $375 million stake in Twitter and participated in Xai's Series C. And so according to the Financial Times, XAI is preparing a new round in the tens of billions, valuing the company close to 200 billion with Saudi PIs.
- [14:59]
Jordy
The CNBC broke that. That has allegedly been closed.
- [15:04]
John
Yeah, so Semianalysis earlier this week was talking about a raise as large as 30 billion. It sounds like 10 billion came in today.
- [15:10]
Jordy
And remember, Xai's lawyer was on the record, I think a couple of days ago, saying the idea that XAI is struggling with fundraising is entirely false.
- [15:22]
John
Yes, it was like they're good at fundraising, right?
- [15:25]
Jordy
They were performing well in fundraising is what they said. But the reporter was pushing them and.
- [15:30]
John
Basically saying, yeah, I mean you can give these labs like a little Bit of leeway because Anthropic wasn't making a ton of money. And then when they hit product market fit on the actual model, it ramped very very quickly. Same thing with OpenAI, obviously.
- [15:46]
Jordy
200 billion. Semianalysis says this is challenging because it is hard for most investors to justify XAI as having a valuation higher than anthropic.
- [15:56]
John
That is, that is tricky considering anthropic's at like a $7 billion run rate and growing very, very quickly. Anyway, let me tell you about one of our newest sponsors. Privy Wallet infrastructure for every bank. Privy makes it easy to build on crypto rails, securely spin up white label wallets, sign transactions and integrate on chain infrastructure all through one simple API.
- [16:15]
Jordy
The official Wallet Wallet infrastructure provider of tbpn.
- [16:19]
John
Proud to work with them beyond external capital sources, Elon could generate capital internally. Since merging X with XAI to form X Holdings. Semianalysis believes there's an ever growing piece of XAI's revenues are intercompany transfers. So when you call Grok Rock to Grok is this true on X To answer questions, X.com is licensing that LLM technology for, for functionality such as search, ad and, and even the, even the recommendation algorithm. Elon has said just today that he wants it to be entirely powered by xai. By artificial intelligence. No, they wants to rip out the older system, Tyler.
- [17:01]
Jordy
And remember in July the Department of defense awarded a $200 million contract to Xai.
- [17:06]
John
Oh yeah, that's right.
- [17:07]
Jordy
So that's significant.
- [17:10]
John
Yeah, significant. I mean you add that, you add the 60 million in sensor tower, there's probably a bunch more coming just directly, there's probably some coming over from.
- [17:19]
Jordy
But yeah, at the end of the year.
- [17:22]
John
But we're not seeing like the multi billion dollar revenue stream.
- [17:25]
Jordy
If you're a large scale allocator and you are having the opportunity to simultaneously invest in anthropic OpenAI and XAI OpenAI at somewhere 350 to 500 billion anthropic 160 or 170, whatever it is. And then XAI 200 billion. It's like you really gotta be riding with Elon.
- [17:48]
John
I'm ready to ride, baby. Semi analysis says it's moving, describes it as moving money from Elon's right pocket to his left pocket. This has happened a bunch though. It happened with SolarCity. He acquired that company and then we didn't really hear that much about solar from Tesla. There was this vision for a while that you would buy a solar roof and get solar panels installed in your house. Through Tesla. Tesla, that project, it was slow and then it didn't really reach breakout speed. But interesting to see how much like at this point it's been what, a decade since you want to hold on to your puffer fish. Are you very happy about that thing? It is so cool at this point. If Elon was really like, had changed his tune on solar, he very much could have pivoted and said like, now we're doing nuclear and we're not doing solar anymore. And you know, we're kind of slowly like the actual SolarCity acquisition was never that big and it's been sort of like written down over the time. No one's saying, oh, Tesla needs to deliver SolarCity, the original vision there for that to happen. But yet Elon still beating the drum of solar will be really important long term. So I wonder.
- [18:59]
Jordy
A lot of people were not happy about the SolarCity acquisition.
- [19:02]
John
Yeah. But over time it didn't matter because.
- [19:05]
Jordy
It didn't matter in the end. And that's why I've said, I think, I think if XAI eventually rolls into Tesla, I think that one Tesla will probably pop on that news in the fullness of time. It probably will not be. I think it'll be somewhat of a rounding error.
- [19:25]
John
Yeah, it would be interesting if it comes back and in another decade. Tesla or Elon Inc. Is a major player in solar power generation. They certainly aren't a material amount of total power generation. They're getting into a material amount of total AI IT capacity and data center capacity, kind of bootstrapping a hyperscaler, becoming a hyperscaler just through the XAI efforts. But it would be very interesting to see if we look back and we're like, oh, they actually did wind up installing a ton of solar. They needed an excuse to do it. Not just ground up adoption from everyday people putting it on the roof, but could happen. So Semianalysis asked the question, does XAI have a shot at becoming a frontier lab? XAI has been able to catch up in many aspects to the current frontier. Grok4 by some measures and evaluations was up there with some of the best models on release. Yet Semianalysis believes they're struggling to translate evals strength into revenue. So let's discuss the talent pool. There's a funny. There's a bunch of interesting things here. So XAI got folks from Google, DeepMind, Greg Yang and Tony Wu. Xai also has renowned researchers like Jimmy Ba co inventor of the Atom Optimizer. Since then, Xai has poached more talent from DeepMind Meta and in some cases Nvidia, which is interesting because they're buying a ton of chips from Nvidia. But they did get some folks. They got Ethan he, who was a senior engineer at Nvidia, working on their Nemo model series. My question is, is Ethan he him or is he just Ethan He? At this point, they have north of 1,000 employees and are continuously expanding with a new office stated to open in Seattle. They work really hard. It's famously hardcore. I like this phrase here. Part of this is the fast, extremely hardcore pace. XAI engineers nine nine six look easy. I think you're saying two XAI engineers, 996 looks easy. Often pulling what they call 996, 007, which is 12 to 12, seven days a week, which I think is just 24 hours a day.
- [21:36]
Jordy
No, if you're doing 12 noon to 12, well that's not that much more.
- [21:40]
John
Than nine to nine, 12 to 12. I think what they're saying here is that basically it's like you are 100% working even when you're sleeping. That's part of your job. The sleeping in the tent is you're doing that to enable your work. So you live at the office and you truly are working endlessly. But the talent exodus is a real issue with xai. People are churning out, but they keep finding young people to join. And two of their best data center folks just left to join OpenAI. But Colossus 2 keeps tracking forward, so they're able to backfill and they haven't been able to be fully destroyed. There's an interesting.
- [22:20]
Jordy
Yeah, I mean there's, there's just. There's a world where even if XAI ends up just leading on infrastructure and actually being able to deliver compute, there's a ton of value in that as well. Right. We were talking offline the other day. Is there some world where Oracle says, like, hey, we have this crazy backlog basically, like if you give us access to Colossus, we'll pay you a premium for it, but who knows?
- [22:48]
John
Yeah, yeah. I mean there is a question of like, it's super risky, there's debt, they're building out this massive cluster and there isn't that much demand from the actual API for Groq. And there's not this crazy compounding advantage in consumer. But at the end of the day, if you wind up with a 1 gigawatt cluster, there's a lot of hyperscalers that want a 1 gigawatt cluster. And so you could probably just go sell that to AWS or Google pretty quickly so it doesn't seem that crazy in terms of where the dollars are going. It seems like an efficient build out that creates capacity. But then we're talking about the dark fiber world where we couldn't find a use for this today, so we had to sell it kind of at cost or below cost. But it's not a zero. It's not completely spent on something that might not materialize at all. Anyway, let me tell you about Cognition, our latest sponsor. They're the makers of Devon Devin is the AI software engine Crush your backlog with your personal AI engineering team. Speaking of coding, coding is today the largest API use case for AI. Devin of course I can't get over the team to write code.
- [24:02]
Jordy
Cowbell and Cowbell's great. Hit that horn again Nick I love the horn.
- [24:06]
John
It's great. Grok 4 is priced at the same level of Claude Sonnet 4, yet does not show the same level of coding abilities for non coding applications. GPT5 is even cheaper and has better capabilities capabilities across the board. So Both Anthropic Sonnet 3.7 and Sonnet 4 are both at $4 per million tokens. Grok 4 is also at $4 per million tokens, but very quickly GPT 5 is at $2 per million tokens. GROK code Fast is much cheaper and a lot of the explosion over GROK code fast has been on open router. Semi analysis dug into the open router stuff and it said that there is interest in a small, cheap and performant model. But there's a catch. Semianalysis thinks that the spike on OpenRouter comes from Xai providing free voucher credits to Kilo code users who call XAI models via open router. Real demand will be clearer in the long run as voucher redemptions run out. So they've been doing a lot to just spur adoption. Hopefully those folks stick around. There was one very interesting statistic in here that they link to. So a survey from Netscope found that GROK is used in 23% of organizations. This is up from like.01% of adoption of Grok2 in enterprises that were surveyed. So massive, massive adoption of Grok in companies broadly 23% is pretty, pretty high actually. But 29% of organizations have just blocked GROK entirely, likely due to the Mecca incident and some of that stuff. So it's unclear how Elon's influence over GROK will persist in post training quirks. If you just want a model to optimize a manual workflow. You might not want it to take a strong stance on some political issue. You might just want it to put the tokens in the bag. On the consumer side, ChatGPT is truly, truly crushing. The 30 day app revenue index to ChatGPT at 100. Grok is at 2.6 relative to ChatGPT's 100. So 2.6% of ChatGPT revenue and then Claude is at 1.3% and Gemini is at 0.5%. According to Semi Analysis and Sensor Tao.
- [26:36]
Jordy
It is pretty wild that the Mecca incident happened in the very beginning of July and they were still able to announce the DoD contract for 200 million in mid July.
- [26:47]
John
Yeah, I mean those probably haven't happened in a long time. Yeah, it takes time. So everyone discusses AI's weakness from model and lack of business perspective, but it's important to recognize that they do have a unique method for RL reinforcement learning. Semi Analysis is continuing so Anthropics focused on code automated software engineering, digital productivity as a path to automate model research infrastructure improvements. This is clearly the best path towards revenue in the short to medium term, but XAI believes this is not a valid approach to AGI. A more generalized approach is required, says Semianalysis. While XAI is chasing code performance, they are also chasing other areas including emotional intelligence and empathy. ANI is key to this. This is interesting. Xai's ANI is set to be one of the most diverse RL environments. If the goal is to maximize engagement, then the model can attempt to maximize on that. While their idea of utilizing humans as an RL environment is a crazy thing, it will be commonplace as AI evolves. Once XAI implements RL on human environments, they could dramatically improve engagement and eventually turn to other goals as well. Becoming really good at slop is a potential path. I think we were talking about this earlier. It's just a fascinating concept of where this goes. It's a potentially very black mirror, very blackpilling, but could be could be very cool. Creating Creating many RL environments makes spiky intelligence, but if humans are the ones to optimize against, perhaps it will be general. It's debatable whether this leads to intelligence gains anytime soon, but if the goal is to expand beyond engagement, it could lead to impressive advancements. Or it could just lead to a dystopian future where people are addicted to some anime girl they talk to. Dylan Patel over at Semianalysis.
- [28:41]
Jordy
It's a wild so the next section, the future of XAI in the next two to three years xai's compute footprint will be heavily weighted towards training. Their inference demand is rising and will benefit the NEO cloud market, but in the short term it will pale in comparison to their multi gigawatt training expansion. While that situation isn't viable from a financial perspective, we think xai's integration into X will likely provide some cash cushion. X is already integrating XAI technologies into its core advertising engine to increase monetization per user. Again, you know that like X, Twitter has never been an incredible cash engine throughout its history. But it's. But it's something semianalysis says. But to support its LLM training build out, XAI will need to generate tens of billions of dollars of revenue and follow the path of anthropic an OpenAI. The core question is whether xai's success would take market share from them or create net new spending. We think it'll be a mix of both. Xai's ramp will enable GEN to reach a broader audience, but it also increases the financial weakness of the gen market and the risk of market turndown as training still outspends inference. For a precise breakdown of training inference.
- [29:55]
John
Capacity, the data center industry model.
- [29:58]
Jordy
Do it.
- [29:59]
John
Just upgrade, pull the trigger, Pull out the. Pull out the ramp card, put it down for the semi analysis giga tier and then hop over to figma.com think bigger, build faster. Figma helps design and development teams build great products together. Get started for free.
- [30:17]
Jordy
Let's go.
- [30:17]
John
And we have our first guest of the stream, our European correspondent, our UK correspondent course. I love this stuff.
- [30:39]
Jordy
We actually should license that.
- [30:40]
John
We definitely are going to get demonetized for that.
- [30:43]
Jordy
Great to see.
- [30:43]
Pippa
You know, it's my. It's my favorite sound. I'm back in the studio, got the soundtrack going.
- [30:50]
John
It's such a banger song. It really is. Give us, give us the weather report first. How is, how was summer? How was. Was it Wimbledon? You went to some tennis event. What did you do?
- [31:01]
Pippa
I had. I had a tennis. Yeah, I had a good tennis summer. I was actually U.S. open.
- [31:06]
John
U.S. open. Okay. Is that the same as Wimbledon? Are they. Are they the same thing?
- [31:10]
Pippa
I mean, they're technically the same on like, you know, seniority. But I would say, you know, as a proud Brit, that they are slightly different.
- [31:18]
John
Okay, got it, got it. And then. And then take us through this week. Why are we paying attention to Europe?
- [31:26]
Pippa
So I think, you know, the headline here, I know that Jordi sort of said UK correspondent, not European, is that we've had this huge state visit this week from, you know, the White House delegation. We also had a huge tech delegation come over, which really sort of marks the first landmark second state visit that a US President has been given, which President Trump likes to remind us lots of times. So it's the first time that a US President hasn't been invited for a second ceremonial visit to visit the Royal family. So you had the sort of pageantry of this big White House delegation to Windsor Castle. There was a big state banquet. You had Jensen even taking off his black leather jacket, putting on his white tie, which is, you know, one level up from black tie. You know, you get very.
- [32:17]
John
Horses. I saw tons and tons of horses.
- [32:21]
Pippa
There were a lot of horses. There was a lot of gold. We love gold. So, so we really had one day which was, you know, a showcase of diplomacy and tradition. And then you had a second day which was at Chequers, which is the UK Prime Minister's traditional sort of country home. Historical diplomacy is carried out there. And the focus on that was not just UK trade and investment. If you cast your mind back to May, I think I was on the show, we had the UK and the US come up with one of the first trade agreements, which, given the landscape of tariffs, I think was a demonstration by the White House that they're really keen to make trade deals where they can. So you had a continuation of that, but the real focus this time was on tech and innovation across both energy and nuclear. You had it across AI and quantum, and then also of course, defense and national security. So that's why you not only had the delegation from the White House and a lot of key politicians, but you also had some of Our favorite tech CEOs from Silicon Valley making the trip over and, and putting on the white tie and also announcing a lot of investment.
- [33:37]
Jordy
Who were some of the key names? Sam was there.
- [33:41]
John
Jensen.
- [33:42]
Jordy
Jensen Benioff. Right.
- [33:44]
John
But Palantir and a role as well. Yeah, yeah.
- [33:48]
Pippa
So I guess the main companies, you had Microsoft, so you had Satya there, you had Google, you had Nvidia. Also. Jensen was extremely bullish on the uk and we'll maybe come back to that because he's, he's sort of announced a multi layered investment in the UK over multiple years. You also had, you know, Karp here from Palantir, you had Brian Schimp from Anduril, and yes, Sam Altman from OpenAI. So it was really, you know, and there are a few others as well across, you know, Blackstone and Blackrock. You also had a lot of the large big pharma and healthcare companies. You know, gsk, for example, Glaxos Netherlands. Klein has announced that it's going to be investing a lot into US R&D. So it was really a big showing across major industries for investment on both sides of the Atlantic. But there was a huge representation from Silicon Valley and I mean, just some of the numbers are quite impressive. So. So Microsoft announced that it's going to put $30 billion into the UK over the next four years. You had Google also committing around 30 billion. $30 billion.
- [34:56]
John
So much? That's crazy.
- [34:59]
Pippa
You had Google announcing they're going to put $7 billion into a data center that they already established. But the real number here that was impressive was Nvidia. So Jensen really wasn't just taking off the black leather jacket for Nothing. He's put $670 billion into a UK cloud computing company called N Scale, which is really designed to help AI, sort of the UK become an AI superpower, as he called it. So. So that specifically is into to manufacturing and the infrastructure. And then he's also potentially talking about putting $500 million into Wave, which is the main autonomous vehicle company here in the uk. I don't know if you've had Alex Kendall. No, you can. He's an amazing founder, you know, brilliant, brilliant UK founder. So. So Jensen's really. I mean, he did a whole separate event where he met with Prime Minister Keir Starmer and really announced with a lot of enthusiasm, such as the Huang style, that the UK is going to be a superpower. So, a superpower.
- [36:08]
John
How should Americans be thinking about Keir Starmer as Prime Minister right now? Like, where does he fit in in the left right continuum? Or there's a lot of countries that have leaders who are leaning more Trumpian in their style or leaning more focused on innovation or leaning less lawyerly, more engineering focused. Like, how should people think about him who haven't dove very deep?
- [36:35]
Pippa
Yeah, it's interesting. So I think the first thing to know is that Keir Starmer came in on a landslide mandate, similarly to Trump earlier in the year. So so early in the year to Trump. So in the same way that you had a new leadership come into the US at the end of last year and then the inauguration earlier this year, the UK had a similar thing happen about six months before. So Keir Starmer came in, you know, his party, the Labour Party, had been in opposition for a very long time. You'd had Boris Johnson and conservatism for a long time. So it was a real big landslide change for the uk. So what that means is similarly to the White House, currently the UK Prime Minister has a pretty large mandate for change. So even though, you know, when I was sitting in, in the US at the end of last year, there was some trepidation around the fact that, you know, the party is traditionally more left leaning, it's called the Labour Party. However, what you've actually seen is one, a real ability to drive change. So, you know, the number one thing is can you actually get legislation passed? And number two, and this was a sentiment echoed by quite a lot of tech CEOs yesterday was a real pragmatism to actually getting stuff done. Now my personal view is that the uk, after leaving the European Union, is now very much standing on its own. It's been able to reassert its relationship with the us. It's been able to carve out its own opinion on things like AI sovereignty. It can be sort of pro AI. It doesn't get held back by some of the anti, or I should say more risk averse EU legislation.
- [38:10]
John
More cookie.
- [38:12]
Pippa
Yeah, exactly. So even though traditionally you would, you might think the Labour Party is more left leaning.
- [38:20]
John
Yeah.
- [38:21]
Pippa
In the uk everything is going to be slightly more central. Central as well. It's, you know, it's just a smaller country.
- [38:27]
John
Yeah.
- [38:27]
Pippa
And so I think that you're not going to see it as extremes. But you know, what I've been really, you know, happy to hear from a lot of the, the CEOs I've spoken with is that there's this pragmatism to, to getting stuff done and, and being, you know, a pro. A pro business open for business leadership within Europe.
- [38:47]
John
What I feel like, I feel like this is a new thing where like the entire, like America is going on tour. Like we saw this in the Middle east where it was like all of the tech CEOs and all the government people from the United States show up and they're like, we're all doing deals today. And then you see the Trump and.
- [39:07]
Jordy
It'S a little competition.
- [39:08]
John
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [39:08]
Jordy
Biggest deal.
- [39:09]
John
Yeah. And at the dinner it's like Mark Henderberg throws out a number and then Tim Cooks throws out a number. And it feels like it was the same thing this, this weekend, this week.
- [39:18]
Pippa
It was like that, but with, with frillier outfits.
- [39:20]
John
Yes.
- [39:21]
Pippa
You know, Tim Cook was also there. I mean, I'm gonna, I'm gonna tweet an interesting list afterwards, but I highly recommend if you have some downtime, just Googling some of the images from, from the last few days. Because they were really quite something. Yeah, you know, the pageantry is quite impressive on the uk.
- [39:39]
Jordy
Nobody does it. What are like the Royal Family?
- [39:42]
John
What are the top sort of like priorities just for the British government right now in the us? I mean there's a lot of focus on, on tariffs, immigration, the overall economy. The economy feels like running hot. Everything's at all time highs from gold to bitcoin to the stock market. At the same time we're seeing weakness in the labor market. How are things feeling over in the UK? Broadly?
- [40:06]
Pippa
I think the UK's main focus is on growth. There are definitely a lot of issues of course around immigration. I think some of the highlighted issues on places like X have showed that there are a lot of, I guess questions around immigration policy across Europe at the moment. UK is definitely part of that. I think, you know, from my perspective, a lot of the focus is really trying to drive a pro tech, pro growth environment. I think that traditionally a lot of the growth in the UK has come from the city. So traditional big finance players, it was a real hub for financial services. And I think that there's a recognition that the UK is actually, if you look at it, a really big hub for R D. You know, you've had, you know, Google DeepMind originated in the UK. You've had a lot of advances in both synthetic bio and big pharma come out the uk. You know, hubs not just in London, but you know, real R D centers like Oxford and Cambridge have really been leading for a long time. You've got the big semis company arm based in the uk. So in the last few years I think you've really seen governments on both sides of the aisle try and move away from purely financial driven growth into tech and R and D. So that's something that I think the White House and 10 Downing street are really aligned on. And this obviously was a big sort of PR campaign to also show that the special relationship as we call it goes both ways. And I think something that was significant, a lot of people have said to me, okay, what's in it for the us? We're obviously investing a lot of money into the uk, but I think that if you look at how the US thinks about exporting its own AI data stack across the world and you put that against some of the competition with the Far east and China. This was a really good opportunity for the US to kind of reassert its position as the dominant AI player. And they signed a really interesting memorandum. It was called the Tech Prosperity Deal. Lovely name let's give it up for tech prosperity. Yeah, exactly. Which basically allows the US to align on how data models are built and some of the very core things that the US cares about in terms of ensuring that the data stack is defined by the US and not by someone else.
- [42:34]
John
Take us through an update on the private markets in Europe, broadly in the uk, who are folks focused on at the growth stage. We were at the New York Stock Exchange. Was that last week? I keep losing track of time, but Klarna IPO'd successfully. Stock trader.
- [42:53]
Pippa
How was the mood? I mean, it's obviously continued to hold up pretty well.
- [42:59]
John
Yeah, the mood was good. Our takeaway was kind of interesting with the CEO is that it was just another day for him. He didn't bring his family, he just came, raised some money, got in, got out. It was a fundraiser, it was a fundraise. Whereas with Figma it was this huge moment because a lot of folks in Brooklyn use figma, in Manhattan use Figma. And so it's American company. It's an American company. They really focus on the story of Dylan. And with Sebastian over at Klarna, it wasn't as much of like everyone is a partner in this ecosystem, but in general it felt like a really good moment. People had been waiting for Klarna to go out for a long time and it was great to see them get out successfully. But who else is driving the market or the news?
- [43:46]
Jordy
Yeah. Do you expect any type of spinouts from DeepMind as well into more application layer companies or do you feel like the researchers there are just going to be content to double down?
- [43:58]
Pippa
So I think just on that front as well, as you mentioned, I think both Dylan and Sebastian, amazing founders, really exciting that we're seeing the IPO market off to a good start at the moment. And you know, I think although StubHub.
- [44:14]
Jordy
I think StubHub is down.
- [44:16]
John
StubHub had a hard time from listing.
- [44:20]
Jordy
Price yesterday, so it's okay.
- [44:22]
Pippa
Okay, well, we'll get it all back.
- [44:23]
John
In the next one.
- [44:26]
Pippa
But I think that, you know, in terms of names to watch here, the big elephant in the room for a long time has been Revolut. So for those not familiar in the US market, Revolut is really the largest fintech player here in the UK. Its last valuation I think was around $70 billion. The last employee, I think that was a secondary. So that's really been the main question. Some of the news stories around that have been around banking license over the years and whether they were going to go for an ipo, I think that one continue to watch on. And if you look at Jensen's comments, even on this trip, he's even said that, you know, Nvidia may also invest in Revolut. So he's really keen on the uk. We love, we love Jensen.
- [45:17]
John
He's pumping everything. It's great.
- [45:20]
Pippa
I think in terms of Google, DeepMind, I'm unclear if they're going to be, you know, spin outs. I think that, you know, the UK government has always looked at DeepMind as an example of UK companies that really should have been able to stay and prosper in the UK or within Europe. And so I think that you're going to continue to see a lot of focus on UK's own AI infrastructure, the energy stack, that's required for that. So we also had quite a lot of announcements around nuclear this week because of course the energy question is a big one for the uk. Interestingly, actually, one of the other things the White House got out of this week's negotiations was that there is a commitment to the UK from being completely unreliant on any Russian nuclear energy as well. So I think that you're really seeing both the UK shore up its energy stack and I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that UK really wants to try and make itself a great hub for AI talent, whether that be through Google, DeepMind or some of the other really exciting companies like Wave.
- [46:31]
John
Yeah, makes sense as Extra Context In 2021, Demis Hassibas over at DeepMind, co founded isomorphic Labs, which is a spin out, but still, I believe, private and owned by Alphabet and DeepMind. And they're focused.
- [46:47]
Jordy
Yeah, I meant artificial companies that owned that type of thing.
- [46:51]
Pippa
And he's still based in the uk, which you know, the Prime Minister always likes to point out, but he's still working with Satya and so with Google. Yeah, with Ruth.
- [47:01]
John
Well, thank you so much for hopping on the show.
- [47:03]
Jordy
Always great to get that.
- [47:04]
John
Always great to hang out with you.
- [47:05]
Pippa
Always fun to chat with you guys.
- [47:07]
John
We'll talk to you soon, Pippa. Cheers, bye.
- [47:09]
Jordy
Hopefully we can have a new tennis tournament sometime soon. So Pippa comes back to the us. I'd love it. Seems like that's what gets her over here.
- [47:18]
John
Should we talk about Vanta? Automate compliance? Manage risk, improve trust continuously. Vanta's Trust Management platform takes your manual work out of your security and compliance process and replaces it with continuous automation, whether you're pursuing your first framework or managing a complex program. Back in America, we should talk about this house in Malibu. Johnny Carson's longtime Malibu home lists for $110 million. I've been to this house. An early investor in Jewel and a Hard Rock cafe Eris are selling the modern California house which the talk show icon owned until his death in 2005. It's 10,000 square foot, six bedroom house on roughly four acres. And we'll go through a little bit of this. For more than 20 years, Johnny Carson lived in a modern triangular shaped home perched on a bluff over.
- [48:08]
Jordy
I don't know that. How did you ever.
- [48:10]
John
I've talked to you about this.
- [48:11]
Jordy
You told me that Johnny Carson lived on the bluff in Point Dune.
- [48:13]
John
I definitely told you this as we were driving by it together. And you probably told you multiple times.
- [48:19]
Jordy
Interesting.
- [48:20]
John
Who knows, you might have been locked in, you might have been out of time. There might have been something more. There might have been a more pressing current thing to be monitoring.
- [48:26]
Jordy
You might have been monitoring situation.
- [48:28]
John
It's amazing. The property, which has changed hands multiple times since his death, has been redecorated and is going back on the market. The price tag is more than double what the sellers paid for it in 2019.
- [48:38]
Jordy
40 million in 2019. No.
- [48:40]
John
I know.
- [48:42]
Jordy
Every time you look back at things that you could buy before COVID it's painful. It really is.
- [48:50]
John
Yeah, it's crazy. The fame Talk show host Dollar bought the estate in the 1980s about a decade before ending his 30 year run helming the Tonight Show. He owned the proper at the time of his death in 2005. The current owners are the venture capitalist Rez Vellani, an early investor in the E cigarette maker Juul, and his wife, Hard Rock Cafe heiress Augusta Tigret. The couple paid 40 million in 2019, as you mentioned. Look at Johnny Carson looking great in of course, a Johnny Carson suit. Fantastic. Interesting story about this. Johnny Carson was so, was so dominant in the culture. I mean, the, the Tonight show was one of just a few late night shows because we didn't have the proliferation of the Internet. There were only a few things that you could watch every night. And he was absolutely dominant.
- [49:38]
Jordy
How many, how many viewers was he pulling nightly?
- [49:40]
John
I believe it was like tens of millions. It was massive. I might have that wrong, but the interesting story was that he was so focused on his craft, he was not interested in business at all, really. And so he had a business partner who said, hey, you wear a suit every night, we should get you a custom suit. We'll start a D2C apparel company, effectively Carson suits. And we'll sell those suits and then you'll be able to market them on the show. But he didn't really care about contracts or understand business. And so his you gotta get one of these.
- [50:19]
Jordy
You can find. I'm on ebay right now. In 1970s Johnny Carson suit for 170.
- [50:25]
John
You gotta get one of those. That sounds amazing.
- [50:27]
Jordy
I gotta get one of these.
- [50:28]
John
But his business partner set up the Carson suit enterprise and I don't believe he had equity in it. And so he would get free suits but he wasn't making any money off of it. And for years Carson was not monetizing well at all. But eventually he went back and renegotiated his contract, got ownership over the Tonight show and was one of the few late night hosts to actually own his own show, have full control over it. And then after he died and retired the Tonight show, the catalog and there's merch and there's DVD sales and there's greatest hits, all of those would be, would be sold and continue to generate revenue even though it was a daily show. But there were, you know, a lot of iconic comedy moments that happened on that show. So back to the house. Riaz Vellani and Tigrette also have homes in London and Northern California. They viewed this the estate as an investment property where they could entertain. Tigrette said they redecorated the two bedroom main house and had plans drawn up to add two new houses and another pool, but didn't end up building them. It is a remarkable property, how large it is and then it's just a two bedroom because. But it has all these big massive open spaces. You can see in those images. They are selling because they have decided to focus on real estate investments in Northern California. It was designed by architect Ed Niles. The main house is about 7,100 square feet. Triangles appear throughout the house. The dining room is triangular shape as is the wood glass, as is the wood and glass ceiling of the central atrium where mature trees are situated. The estate also has a two bedroom guest house, a tennis pavilion with two guest rooms and is said to have been a gift from Carson to Carson from NBC. Tigrette said one of her favorite parts of the house is an outdoor dining area with a large round table where guests would congregate, violating the triangle symbolism with the round table. Had so many important business meetings there. She said. The era is naturally shaded thanks to a coral tree and a pepper tree whose branches grew together over time creating a leafy canopy. And it is beautiful. There's a massive There's a massive tree inside the house. I don't know if you can see this in the images, but. And the tennis court.
- [52:41]
Jordy
View of the tennis court over the bluff.
- [52:44]
John
It's so crazy how big this tennis court is. It's wild. Yeah, you can see that. That's insane.
- [52:49]
Jordy
So insane.
- [52:50]
John
The property is among the largest in Point Doom, with where standard lot sizes are roughly one acre. This one is, of course, four acres. The main house.
- [52:58]
Jordy
Listing agent, Chris Cortazo.
- [53:00]
John
Yeah, friend of mine. Well, you know him.
- [53:03]
Jordy
I bought my house through his firm.
- [53:06]
John
Oh, really? That's funny. The main house is situated closer to the bluff than houses that can be built today. He noted the $110 million asking price is warranted by recent trades, he said, including a property that recently sold.
- [53:17]
Jordy
Yeah, so there's a house right nearby this. That's like a. I think it's like a two or two bedroom house that has similar views. That sold for 80. It's literally a shack that sold for 480 down the road. So this makes. That makes 110 for this spot look like an absolute bargain.
- [53:39]
John
It's great. You know what else is a bargain? Graphite.dev Code review for the age. The age of AI. Graphite helps teams on GitHub ship higher quality software faster. You can get started for free. Road. River Partners. I've never seen this account before. No profile picture says in the late 1990s, a pal attended a dinner for tech hedge fund CIOs.
- [54:04]
Jordy
All the top guys.
- [54:05]
John
All the top guys.
- [54:05]
Jordy
All the top guys were there.
- [54:06]
John
All the top guys. At the time, $25,000 of wine was consumed and portfolios were shared. My pal was sitting at 135% gain for the year and his performance was the worst in the room by far. A week later, he'd gone. He'd went 100% cash. He was the only one that survived the next three years.
- [54:28]
Jordy
Insane.
- [54:28]
John
Pretty crazy. You're looking around. Too much wine. I'm up 135%. I look like the idiot. Maybe it's time.
- [54:36]
Jordy
Yeah. The account here asking. Coward. Mr. Coward.
- [54:41]
John
Coward. Nut Lake.
- [54:47]
Jordy
But why did he go 100% cash?
- [54:50]
John
Because everyone else was up. Wasted more.
- [54:51]
Jordy
Yes. What if he just, like, gave up? He's like, I'm terrible at this. Selling to cash. He's gonna just like go distribute everything out and just quit. And then. And then he's just looking around like, wait, I'm the only one standing. Yeah, maybe.
- [55:04]
John
It's remarkable.
- [55:05]
Jordy
Well, no, I do know. My dad always told Me a story about one of his. One of his college buddies just went a hundred percent to 100% to gold like right. Right before the great financial crisis and just like ended up just absolutely printing.
- [55:23]
John
Well whatever asset you want to invest in, go to public.com. they got multi asset investing. It's investing for those who take it seriously. They got industry leading yields trusted by millions. You can unlocking.
- [55:36]
Jordy
We're not allowed to give financial advice but I think it's fair to ask you to take it seriously.
- [55:40]
John
In other news, we interviewed a lot of fun people at the Meta Connect 2025 event. The one that broke through on the Internet on Teapot on X was of course our interview with chief wearables officer at Luxottica, Rocco Basilico. Rocco Basilico. Malin says. I'm sorry, his name is what we live in a simulation dog and this got 3,000 views. There was another couple.
- [56:08]
Jordy
There were a couple other Background on Rocco 7.4.
- [56:14]
John
No relation to Roscoe from the Roscoe chicken and Waffles chain that we know of. But we really enjoyed talking to him.
- [56:22]
Tyler
Also no relation to Rothko the artist.
- [56:24]
John
Oh, Mark Rothko. Yes. I don't think so. People had a ton of fun with this. Where was the other post in here? Someone else was saying something about Richard. My name is Rocco's Basilisk and I'm making artificial intelligence that you put on your body.
- [56:42]
Jordy
So let's give some backstory. Tyler, do you want to give some backstory on rock?
- [56:45]
Pippa
Yeah.
- [56:46]
John
Yeah. What is the joke that people are making here?
- [56:48]
Tyler
Yes. So his name basically sounds like Roko's Basilisk.
- [56:51]
John
Yes.
- [56:52]
Tyler
Which is like this famous thought experiment. Experiment from less wrong in early 2000 and tens. I think basically the idea is, okay, so there's going to be some future super intelligent AI and you can do this kind of decision making where it's kind of similar to this Prisoner's Dilemma thing where there's two agents.
- [57:14]
John
Yeah. Pascal's wager is Pascal.
- [57:17]
Tyler
Where basically you can chart it out to where the idea is. You have this super intelligent AI by the time it gets to becoming instantiated, the idea is that it's gonna punish people that did not accelerate.
- [57:34]
John
Yeah. Did not help it be born.
- [57:37]
Tyler
And the idea is actually it's not.
- [57:39]
Jordy
Just like you didn't love me at my benchmarks. You don't deserve me.
- [57:45]
Tyler
Yes. So it's basically like the whole thing is like, it's like an information hazard. This like term Eliezer actually banned like discussion of the topic less wrong for like five years.
- [57:54]
John
Oh, because it's a justification for accelerating super intelligence.
- [57:59]
Tyler
I think so.
- [58:00]
Jordy
But also, you don't want to be the safety guy.
- [58:02]
Tyler
Yeah. But the whole thing is like, if you turn it out, basically it only applies to you if you learned about this idea. So if you knew about the idea of Roku's Basilics, then, and you didn't, like, start accelerating AI, then it's going to punish you.
- [58:17]
John
Yeah.
- [58:18]
Jordy
And this is why we covered Meta Connect and we covered.
- [58:24]
John
Isn't there some lore about Rocco's basilisk? And like, the whole idea is like.
- [58:28]
Tyler
It'S a basilisk because, like, if you.
- [58:30]
John
Look at the back, what is a basilisk? Is that a snake?
- [58:33]
Jordy
Yeah.
- [58:33]
Tyler
It's like in mythology, if you look at the basilisk in the eye, then you, like, instantly die.
- [58:38]
John
Yeah.
- [58:38]
Tyler
So it's like if you learn about this thing and you don't do anything, then you, like, will be punished by the future AI.
- [58:44]
John
Apparently, this is what originally brought Elon Musk and Grimes together. Musk was going to tweet about Rococo's basilisk, which is a reference to Rococo, the 18th century Baroque art style, and they bonded over that. He discovered that Grimes had made the same joke three years earlier and reached out to her about it. One can only speculate about. Very, very interesting thought experiment. Well, we should have, we should have asked him about it because I wonder, I wonder how aware he is. It can't be the first time he's heard that his name sounds like Rocco's basilisk. Right.
- [59:24]
Tyler
Yeah, I see that.
- [59:25]
John
He must be aware.
- [59:26]
Jordy
Well, tapped in.
- [59:27]
John
Yeah, we'll have to.
- [59:28]
Jordy
I mean, the story of him just like cold emailing Zach clears like, hey, I think we should to do some international business together.
- [59:35]
John
Let's hop on. A quick call.
- [59:36]
Jordy
You made it happen.
- [59:38]
Tyler
I wonder if Zuck knew about Netflix when he got that. Because then it's like you're getting an email from asking if you want to help accelerate AI.
- [59:45]
John
Yeah. You have to say yes.
- [59:46]
Tyler
You have to say yes, otherwise we couldn't be.
- [59:48]
Jordy
Yeah. I think it's one of the most under hyped partnerships of the last few years. Right. It's so strategic for both sides. Meta. This incredible durable advantage to be able to innovate on the technology side and not on the design side. And it gives Luxottica the ability to defend itself and actually thrive in a.
- [60:10]
John
World where, you know, we were, we were debating.
- [60:13]
Jordy
Everybody's wearing smart glasses. I think that's, that's actually, that, that's actually a thing. Right. It's like, there's people that don't wear glasses today that may or may not be using smart glasses in a few years. But Zuck brought this up. There's like 1 to 2 billion people in the world that wear glasses all the time and looking good.
- [60:33]
John
Yeah. I mean, people were debating with a few people about whether or not the meta AI glasses. Oh, I just triggered it. It's talking now whether whether you can immediately clock them, whether they look like tech nerd gear, or whether they. You can pass amongst normies, the unaugmented. As someone who's just wearing Ray Bans. And I was leaning in the camp of like, if someone throws on meta Ray Bans and they do have the cameras on there, but they're not recording, there's no light, you kind of don't notice. But other people were saying, I don't know, like, you can still see the camera lenses and it still reads. It's a little like tech nerdy, but.
- [61:18]
Jordy
I think it's like the specific. That's a specific frame, though.
- [61:22]
John
This is actually an Oakley frame with no sunglass in it. It's just eyeglasses. But the original meta Ray Bans, they do look exactly like Ray Bans. An iconic silhouette and something that people are very confident in wearing. And I think even with the cameras on there, even though you can see them, people are much more willing to throw them on when they go out. And yet you do, you do face a little bit of like, oh, like you're like a tech nerd. You're trying like the new thing. Like it's not as. I mean, it's like carrying.
- [61:55]
Jordy
Yeah, but think of the billion plus people that just wear glasses because they need them to see. They already wear glasses. And then you say like, hey, do you want a small display in those?
- [62:05]
John
Yes.
- [62:05]
Jordy
That can give you directions you can use to play music.
- [62:08]
John
Chunky frames are kind of in right now.
- [62:09]
Jordy
See messages come in on.
- [62:10]
John
It's kind of a vibe. And so I think, I mean, I agree it is an underrated partnership. It's a great partnership. I wonder, I'm like dying to know what the. Well, first off, like, what Apple's response will be like, because I feel like they could. I'm imagining that they're going to be white for some reason. I don't know why, but I just have like.
- [62:40]
Jordy
Well, I also think the clear one, like the old Max.
- [62:43]
John
Yeah.
- [62:44]
Jordy
Could see all the internals.
- [62:45]
John
They've really moved away from that aesthetic.
- [62:48]
Jordy
But if they brought it back, I think people.
- [62:49]
John
It just feels like they haven't even done black AirPods. Right. Like the, like the AirPods. Maybe they could do the Beats line and use some of that.
- [62:56]
Jordy
By the way, apparently the new phone scratches like crazy.
- [62:59]
John
I saw, yeah, I saw a picture of it cracking. People have been recording this but. Yeah, what was it? They went back to aluminum or something.
- [63:06]
Jordy
Yeah, people don't like that titanium. It was a good run.
- [63:09]
John
I don't know.
- [63:10]
Jordy
It was a good run.
- [63:11]
John
I think you already purchased it, so it's in the mail.
- [63:14]
Jordy
Yeah, this is, this is bullish for Apple. The fact that I'm not going to get it for more than like basically I'm going to get it in like three weeks.
- [63:21]
John
Yeah, well, they're selling Julius. AI, what analysis do you want to run? Chat with your data and get expert label expert level insights in seconds. Go to Julius.
- [63:31]
Jordy
Let's pull up this video of Matthew.
- [63:33]
John
Matthew McConaughey.
- [63:34]
Jordy
Right back.
- [63:35]
John
Matthew McConaughey says he wants a private LLM fed only with his books, notes, journals and aspirations so he can ask it questions and get answers based solely on that information without any outside influence. Now like that's impossible, Right. Just because you need to do pre training on something or other, right?
- [63:57]
Jordy
Yeah.
- [63:57]
Tyler
I mean unless his books are like the length of like the Internet.
- [64:00]
John
Yeah.
- [64:01]
Tyler
I don't think the model would be very good if you just train it on like.
- [64:05]
John
So really he's kind of saying like he wants something fine tuned.
- [64:09]
Tyler
Yeah. I mean it seems like he doesn't really understand how they're trained.
- [64:12]
John
Yeah.
- [64:12]
Tyler
But yeah, you could instantiate this I guess through fine tuning it.
- [64:15]
John
Let's play the Matthew McConaughey clip and see what he has to say.
- [64:20]
Matthew McConaughey
LLM where I can upload. Hey, here's three books I've written. Here's my other favorite books, here's my favorite articles I've been been cutting and pasting over the 10 years. And log all that in. And here's all my journals, whatever the people out and log all that in so I can ask it questions based on that.
- [64:41]
John
Right.
- [64:41]
Matthew McConaughey
And basically learn more about myself.
- [64:44]
Jordy
Right.
- [64:44]
Matthew McConaughey
You stand on the political spectrum.
- [64:45]
John
Right, Right.
- [64:46]
Matthew McConaughey
I'd like to know that's, that's what I'm would like to do. Which is sort of a glorified word document, but it still would hold a lot more information than just oh, can you find this term? I would be asking it and it would be responding to me on things that I've forgotten along the way. Load it with the information. I'd like to load it with.
- [65:07]
Jordy
Right?
- [65:08]
Matthew McConaughey
Yeah, Maybe even, like I'm saying in this, in the words of belief, in. In the. In the man I'm working to be, the man I want. Load it with that. Load it with my aspirations and then ask it. And it's giving me answers going, oh, this is. But before it's slowly learning about me through conversations then going, oh, I think, all right. I want the answers based on.
- [65:30]
John
Can you play the beginning of this? He uses some funny phrase. Well, what does he say at the beginning?
- [65:34]
Matthew McConaughey
I am interested, though, in a private LLM.
- [65:38]
John
Private.
- [65:38]
Matthew McConaughey
Where I can upload. Hey, here's three books I've written. Here's my other favorite.
- [65:45]
John
You can do this with customers.
- [65:46]
Matthew McConaughey
Here's my favorite articles. I've been cutting them.
- [65:48]
Tyler
You can do this with like a ton of rappers.
- [65:51]
John
Log all that in. That's what he keeps saying. Okay. Yeah, I love that. He says he wants to log it in. No one's talking about logging data into your private lls. Like, this is the future. No one's tried logging content into a private ll.
- [66:05]
Tyler
This has been possible for like three years.
- [66:07]
John
But no one is embedding your embedding. That doesn't sound like logging something in. That's what I want. I want to log it in. I want to log in my favorite book. I want to log in my favorite article. Log in the Holy Bible. Sounds like that's what he's doing.
- [66:23]
Jordy
He should hit up Salesforce for this. He's.
- [66:26]
John
Oh, true.
- [66:27]
Jordy
With what?
- [66:28]
John
Do they have Merlin AI or something?
- [66:30]
Jordy
Well, he's close to. He's one of the faces.
- [66:32]
John
He's one of the faces and they have Einstein AI. He should fine tune it. Fine tune it on my. On Matthew McConaughey mode that. I mean, Einstein AI. I feel like missed opportunity to personify the AI. Much more should have gone. You know, Microsoft's going to have Clippy. You know, we're getting ANI from XAI. Every company is going to need their own personified AI. And I'd be much more likely to use Salesforce's AI if I knew I was talking to Matthew. Matthew McConaughey.
- [67:04]
Jordy
In other news, Howard Lutnick is posting screenshots of his portfolio.
- [67:11]
John
Wait, really?
- [67:11]
Jordy
No, I'm kidding. I mean, it's close. Pull up this next post. It's a picture from Trump on Truth Social of an AI slop of him sitting at his desk with bought intel at $20. Now it's $30.
- [67:26]
John
He's happy. Well, in other somewhat political news, TikTok sale announced buy we're tracking this on Polymarket. December 31st is now at a 79% chance that a TikTok sale will be announced.
- [67:41]
Jordy
And Polymarket also got a market up on Will Tesla acquire xai in 2020 so the market will resolve to. Yes, it is officially announced that XAI will be, has been or is being acquired or merged with Tesla.
- [68:00]
John
I could see that happening. I'm interested keep track. See in other XAI news, Nikita Beer says the goal for your X timeline is to get out of the mainstream algo and political crusades and find your niche. You should be able to post about your interests and have friendly, relevant people chime in. And I feel like, like I've been able to do this. Like you do have to be proactive about it still, you have to say I'm not interested in this post. You have to send a lot of likes and retweets to content that you actually like, engage with it, reply to people that you like in real life that you like in your niche. But my algorithm has been doing, doing well and I'm hoping that they continue to improve it. Elon says the algorithm will be purely AI by November with significant progress along the way. We will open source the algorithm every two weeks or so. I wonder how that like once it's purely a. It's driven by just weights. Are they going to open source the weights, open source open weights or fully open source the model? Like that sounds crazy. What do you think, Tyler?
- [68:57]
Tyler
It's kind of unclear what I mean by AI. Assume he means like LLMs because like if, if you just say like AI like it's kind of already done by AI.
- [69:05]
John
Yeah, it'd be very interesting to like open source the open source, the, the algorithm. And the algorithm is just like recommendation dot next, you know, parentheses like inference. The model is the Python code. It's like yeah, we didn't change. Still just goes crazy.
- [69:23]
Jordy
Breaking news, breaking news. Adding a hundred thousand dollar fee application fee for H1B visas in the latest crackdown.
- [69:33]
John
In other breaking news, fall AI, the world's best generative image and video models all in one place. Develop and fine tune models with serverless GPUs and on demand clusters. In the Wall Street Journal UAE project.
- [69:47]
Jordy
I want to add tbpn.com sounds and it's the digital version of our soundboard that people can use in their meetings.
- [69:57]
John
Ooh, I like that. Yeah, we gotta do that.
- [69:59]
Jordy
Given to me in a DM.
- [70:00]
John
Yeah. Soundboard @ home.
- [70:03]
Jordy
Yeah, just try to wrap it up in the next. Make it. Wrap it up in the next like.
- [70:06]
John
Don'T make mistakes and don't make mistakes. The United Arab Emirates is buying houses in Washington, DC. They have a $200 million collection now. The government's latest purchase is a $27.5 million spec home in McLean, Virginia. I don't know if I'm actually saying that correctly. This week it added a roughly 21,000 foot spec estate in Virginia, paying 27.5 million in an off market deal. The deal is the most expensive home sale to close in the capital region this year. The uae, directly or through its employees or royals, owns at least 21 properties in the area worth roughly $200 million. The Emiratis have purchased so much real estate at such high prices in recent years that they've helped reset values in the Gold coast region.
- [70:55]
Jordy
Let's give it up. Other resetting values.
- [71:00]
John
According to real estate agents, the house was recently restaged to give it a modern, minimalist look. Each time they purchase something, it's a big number, says a real estate agent of Compass. The estate is located near Langley, where the CIA is based, with a six bedroom main house and a pool house. It was constructed as a spec home by Ambar Homes, a luxury development firm headed by local dentist and entrepreneur Dr. Sonu Kakar. Kakar said he bought the land for 2.1 million, started construction in 2022. It took him four years to start construction. Completed the house four years, two years later. So he's selling this big house. It was first listed for $29,900. Came down a bit, but they got the deal done. There's a marketing video feature showing a motorcade of Cadillac Escalades resembling a diplomatic entourage heading up a winding driveway to the newly built modern mansion. Check this out.
- [71:55]
Jordy
They made a hype video.
- [71:56]
John
They made a hype video. A startup launch video for their house. It's funny, it's like they knew they were selling this to. They were like, we got this house and we're going to show a bunch.
- [72:05]
Jordy
Of a home hype video.
- [72:07]
John
Wait, did you guys scroll that that fast? It plays it that fast.
- [72:11]
Tyler
No, that's in the video.
- [72:12]
John
That's in the video. That's baked in. They're doing hype videos for sure. That's a vibreal if I ever saw one. The UAE's residences are dotted in large clumps across the capital region, typically on prime waterfront lots on Crest Lane. The country owns several homes on the bank of the Potomac, where that's where the Ambassador's official residence and guest house are located. Well, you got to go hang out in dc, do deals, and so you gotta have some big houses for your folks to come and hang out at. On Chain Bridge Road, one of the area's most upscale neighborhoods, the Emiratis paid just under 43 million in 2020 for a riverfront estate previously owned by AOL Co founder James Kimsey in 2020, the same year the country purchased a vacant lot nearby for 20 million.
- [72:58]
Jordy
Are they actually just buying these on the balance sheet?
- [73:01]
John
I think so. I think they got cash to spend and they want to come visit. When they want to come visit, they want to have a nice place to entertain host guests, do deals, all the above. If you're a startup, you got a couple hundred million dollars burning a hole in your pocket, you're doing deals in DC. Pick up a $23 million mansion.
- [73:21]
Jordy
Yeah, why not?
- [73:22]
John
Mark Zuckerberg did. Earlier this year, Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla chan purchased a $23 million mansion in Washington DC. Of course, that is much smaller than what the. What the Emirati has been picking up, but regardless, you got to get your brand mentioned in ChatGPT. Go to Profound reach millions of customers who are using AI to discover new products and brands. TJ Parker has.
- [73:46]
Jordy
Yeah, that's a good post. The bull case for Apple and AI is they're going to completely avoid enormous amounts of capex spend, get most of the consumer value from intelligently integrating Gemini, and get paid a boatload of money from Google for doing so. And I agree. I think, I do think it is frustrating as a user that Apple has moved slowly and somewhat ineffectively on AI, but I don't think they're in a bad spot from a business standpoint.
- [74:14]
John
No, no, nothing's gotten me to consider moving off of Apple. Like, even if iPhone Air doesn't have the right battery life or iPhone Pro, you know, Craft, if I need a case on it, it's like, I'll solve all of that. I'm sticking with.
- [74:29]
Jordy
And that's a big question.
- [74:30]
John
Sticking with Cupertino.
- [74:32]
Jordy
Big question with the meta. The new Meta displays is, is there a world where. Because right now when we demo the displays, you can get an Instagram DM, you can get a WhatsApp message and it will pop up in your display. Nice little notification. But the question is, will they be able to to figure out a deal with Apple so you can get imessage piped into there?
- [74:54]
John
So yesterday Meta Connect continued and they did talk about the developer kit, the SDK, how Developers can integrate and they had a couple of integrations. They did one with Twitch so you can live stream from the devices from the Meta Ray Ban displays. They did one with Streamlabs and Disney and there were a few others. They're still pretty niche and they're all partnered with like pretty big, big companies. The type of companies that would do like pretty big press junkets for these but some cool demos. I thought that they were interesting. I'm very interested in the Twitch demo. Obviously we live stream on Twitch. Thank you to Bobby Cosmic in the.
- [75:35]
Jordy
Twitch chat holding, holding it down.
- [75:37]
John
But it seemed like the live streaming capability, which we didn't expect to launch very quickly is going to launch. It is going to be live. You are going to be able to live stream from the glasses. But the amount of time that you can actually spend live streaming is pretty short. It didn't seem like something where you could be streaming for hours. It was probably minutes. There were different timers that popped up when I was looking at the video kind of showing. Okay, you know, if you keep streaming at this, at this scale, it's going to. The chips are going to be on fire. You're going to run out of battery life pretty quickly. And so there might be all day battery life, but that's more like all day battery life for the occasional picture and the occasional Meta AI LLM query. Not all day battery life. Stream your entire life. Like you were mentioning that the AI mode was maybe an hour max. Live AI live AI was maybe an hour max.
- [76:29]
Jordy
There's lots of using it to translate.
- [76:32]
John
Real time and I think it's also taking pictures of what you're seeing while it's doing that for the actual. For the extra context there. Anyway, whatever. If you're planning to build a product that integrates with Meta AI display glasses, you got to get on Linear. Linear is a purpose built tool for planning and building products. It's a double kill. You can plan and build the products, meet the system for modern software development, streamline issues, projects and product roadmaps. Jeremy Giffon has a post. Wouldn't be surprised if this was printed in the legacy media soon. But now we're seeing it on.
- [77:07]
Jordy
Wrote it by hand, wrote some drafts out on a piece of paper and then transferred it. Had maybe a member of his team, one of his guys actually post it for.
- [77:18]
John
Yeah, so he says the chief of staff is overrated. We need more confidants. Eminence Grizzies. I don't know what that is. Visiers Praetorians There is a phalanx of different guys you can have at your side. You don't need to copy the president. Consider the king or the priest or the emperor. Instead, Banger must have the title grand in front. I think we gotta, I mean we do.
- [77:42]
Jordy
We do this pretty well.
- [77:43]
John
He needs to be a confidant or a grand vizier. I think a vizier is a good, is a good title. I mean, we recently.
- [77:51]
Jordy
Our first hire was a vice president.
- [77:53]
John
Our first hire was a vice president. We have a wheelman. We have a VP of logistics.
- [77:56]
Jordy
Debbie.
- [77:57]
John
We have a few other folks, a cio, of course. Chief Intern officer, Tyler Cosgrove over there holding it down.
- [78:03]
Jordy
Yeah. Jim Cramer says that 30 year treasury better start behaving. That is bar. He also posted a picture of him hugging Tim Cook saying, own it, don't trade it.
- [78:22]
John
I love this. He said this 10 years ago. We reacted to his, his interview with Tim Cook on Squawkbox or on Mad Money. A decade ago, the stock had sold off. They'd hit earnings. They beat earnings. They generated something like 10 billion in free cash flow. But it wasn't enough for the street. Kramer did a very interesting interview with Tim Cook where he explains that he is excited about the company. He personally is bullish on the company, but he has to get, he has to get the story straight for what the street is saying. And the Wall street traders were saying, apple, will this company go the way of HP or Compaq or IBM? Have they reached stagnation? And Tim Cook says, no, we're going to keep growing. We're going to keep compounding. You don't even know how much revenue we're going to make off of the App Store. And he kind of teases. He says, hey, services are going to be big. The iPhone could be very big. And he was 100% right.
- [79:21]
Jordy
Got a great toll road going. Based 16Z.
- [79:25]
John
Speaking of toll roads, the tax is a toll road on your business. Don't waste any time with it. Head over to Numeral hq. Put your sales tax on autopilot.
- [79:33]
Jordy
That's right.
- [79:33]
John
Numerl is the platform for sales tax and VAT compliance.
- [79:39]
Jordy
And we have Sam from numerl, the CEO, joining in just a little bit. Looking forward to that base. 16z just shared a screenshot of CNBC. They said new York will soon send its quote, first ever inflation refund check checks to taxpayers.
- [79:55]
John
The state or the city?
- [79:57]
Jordy
The State of New York. State of New York giving you a refund for inflation.
- [80:00]
John
They're, they're, they're paying back.
- [80:03]
Jordy
Concerning. Concerning. Well, we'll see what else we got here.
- [80:08]
John
There's news about OpenAI. OpenAI has approached Gore Tech, which assembles AirPods, HomePods and Apple watches, to supply components such as speaker modules for OpenAI's future products. One of the products OpenAI has talked to suppliers about making resembles a smart speaker without a display. The people said, would you carry this with you? Would you have this in your home? OpenAI has also considered building glasses, a digital voice recorder and a wearable pin, and is targeting late 2026 or early 2027 for the release of its first devices digital voice recorder. You know who really convinced me who was really convincing at the Meta Connect event? Was it the VP of wearables? He was saying he believes in kind of lindy form factors. You wear a watch, he had a garment on. You wear glasses. People don't wear a lot of pins. Maybe if you're the hand of the king, you wear a pin, maybe a crown, a cane. Smart cane is an interesting idea, but it does seem like it's harder to get people to wear.
- [81:18]
Jordy
Yeah. So it's interesting that OpenAI is saying we're going to do a speaker or at least that's read between the lines. That's what they would do here. But Apple is. Remember, they're building the Smart Lamp for your.
- [81:31]
John
Are they?
- [81:32]
Jordy
Well, this was teased.
- [81:34]
John
Oh yeah. It's not really that it's an ipod. It's an iPad on a robotic arm that can follow you around the room in the kitchen.
- [81:41]
Jordy
I know. I mean, I just meant more of the Pixar lamp.
- [81:43]
John
It does feel Pixar Lamp esque and I'm actually very excited about that product. I think it'll be very cool. But maybe they should. There was a post a couple days ago from someone saying like Apple should lean into. They should make just an actual lamp. You don't need to throw crazy AI. It doesn't need to be iPhone level internals. Just apply your design skills to industrial design. All over the home.
- [82:08]
Jordy
We've asked for this stuff. The tv.
- [82:10]
John
The tv. But it's not going to happen. It's not going to happen unless you have the full flywheel of. You can take a cut of everything that happens on that device. You have an app store, you have all the downstream stuff, you have a solid replacement cycle. When was the last time you upgraded your TV? Happens like once every five years, 10 years. And yet people upgrade their phones, they lose their AirPods, they get new AirPods, they get the latest iPad Imac.
- [82:33]
Jordy
If Apple made it a battery powered TV and you'd be forced to replace. Replace your TV every.
- [82:38]
John
I think you're talking about the Apple Vision Pro, which is the vision for where that goes. Well, speaking of Hollywood visions, Nier is shouting out Alibaba's Character swap via WAN 2.2 animate. Very impressive. And free and open source, by the way. This lets you insert yourself as the main character or anyone. Here we go. Let's play it.
- [83:02]
Pippa
Mr. Sorkin, you are five minutes late. Is there a reason why I should let you in?
- [83:09]
Will Hurd
I'm just trying to ditch the cops, okay?
- [83:11]
Jordy
I don't really care if you let.
- [83:12]
Will Hurd
Me in or not.
- [83:12]
John
This is gonna be pretty viral. Mr. Spectre will be right with you. This is gonna definitely launch some startup videos. Someone's gonna use this to do a startup launch video very soon. Pretty cool. Swapping yourself in it really. It really does it flawlessly. Remarkable. Look at that. I'm a fan.
- [83:34]
Jordy
I have to know.
- [83:38]
John
Yeah. Another tool in the toolkit for video creators. Much like Fin AI, the number one AI agent for customer service. Number one in performance benchmarks, number one in competitive bake offs, number one ranking on G2. We have another, the Mansion section today, it's Friday in the Wall Street Journal.
- [83:55]
Jordy
Another one.
- [83:56]
John
Kara Ross, the ex wife of billionaire Steven Ross, who created Related Properties, the man who created the strip mall. Essentially, she is putting her New York home on the market.
- [84:06]
Jordy
The gemologist and jewelry designer bought the Lenox Hill co op around the same time she filed for divorce from the Miami Dolphins Owner, Caroline.
- [84:15]
John
9.75 million. She's asking. She bought it for 5.6 million in 2021, around the same time she filed for divorce. She tapped the lauded designers Tony Ingrau and Randy Kemper, who worked on the couple's former home in Columbus Circle, to reconfigure and redesign the apartment. The apartment is 2,500 square feet, has two bedrooms and a large terrace. The terrace is 2,000 square feet, so she referred to it as a diamond in the rough. Of course, a play on words. Because she is a jewelry designer.
- [84:46]
Jordy
Gemologist.
- [84:47]
John
Yeah. She is a jewelry designer. They've been worn. Her designs have been worn by the likes of former first lady Michelle Obama. And so if you're looking to pick up something in Manhattan, give her a call. It was a classic old apartment with hallways and drop ceilings and beams and all in beams in all the wrong places. They focused on opening up the layout so that the terrace is visible from the entrance to the apartment. Even removing one of the three bedrooms. Now the expansive living area has a backlit onyx bar that can change color to fit the mood.
- [85:17]
Jordy
They've really got to swap out the current furniture and just redo the interior because this place is not it does look good as it came looks homey.
- [85:26]
John
It doesn't look like you could just hang out here and crash. In a short time that she's lived there, Kara says she's hosted several events, including her daughter's engagement party. I love to have friends and family over to create a nice environment for them. The co op market has been soft in recent years, but listing agent expects to see demand for this property because it is newly renovated. Apartments like that sell for a premium because time is money. Homes that require renovation are still trading at a discount. In 2022, Stephen Ross sold the couple's former condo near Columbus circle for about 40 million, a significant discount from its original 75 million dollar price tag. That building was completed in the early 2000s by a partnership that included Relayed, so he used his own firm. Steven, who acquired the dolphins around 2009, has since launched a new company focused on development in West Palm beach, which is very, very popular. And if you're looking to grow your business, get on Adeo Customer Relationship Magic Adeo is the AI native CRM that builds scales and grows your company to the next level. Ben Lang has a good purchase best.
- [86:31]
Jordy
$25 purchase a Bluetooth device to connect AirPods on any plane.
- [86:35]
John
A couple people post about this.
- [86:37]
Jordy
This I put this in here not for this use case but to bring up this sort of funny state of the world where every single like hospitality esque business just like adopted usb. Yes, at the worst possible everything is usbc. Usbc. So I was on a plane the other week. They had a usb A USB A. It was a charter that I got through Preston Holland. Preston Holland and I was just like the plane had been refurbished in like 2020 and it still had USB A. I was like what's going on here? And then we were at the hotel for Meta Connect the other day and it's like great. I'm glad I have USBA charging here next to the and it seems like you could create a business just like going around to like a lot of these different types of companies that have installed USBA and just be like look like this is not a real this is no longer an amenity. In fact it's a frustration because I check into a hotel room and I'm like great. I'm glad I Could charge a USB a device here. Thank you for this.
- [87:54]
John
Hopefully USB C is the final. The final format. Although you know that There are like 12 different standards for what goes in a USB C cable. So USB C is the shape, it's not actually the data transfer.
- [88:10]
Jordy
The final shape I just wanted, which is fine.
- [88:13]
John
But there are slow USB C ports. There are fast USB C ports. There's Thunderbolt 4, which is a faster, faster protocol that goes over USB C. It's all a mess.
- [88:24]
Jordy
Well, we have an iPhone. Review from Joanna Stern. Let's pull up this video. I thought this was important for the audience to see. So she has a new iPhone.
- [88:34]
John
This is the new iPhone. This is the air.
- [88:35]
Jordy
This is the air.
- [88:36]
John
I feel like the air had round edges. It has sharp edges.
- [88:41]
Jordy
That looks like the air to me.
- [88:42]
John
She's cutting cheese with it.
- [88:43]
Jordy
She's cutting the cheese.
- [88:44]
John
She has a little viral sense. Go. She, of course, is the tech reviewer.
- [88:48]
Jordy
Over at the Wall Street Journal. Well, without further ado, we should bring on our second guest and our first in person guest.
- [88:56]
John
Let's go, Aaron. Welcome to the show. How you doing, Aaron?
- [89:01]
Jordy
Welcome to the show. Announces series A today.
- [89:06]
John
Congratulations. Good to see you.
- [89:08]
Jordy
Welcome to the ultra dome.
- [89:09]
Aaron Slotov
Welcome.
- [89:09]
Jordy
You got a mic here. Keep it close.
- [89:12]
Aaron Slotov
Hello.
- [89:13]
John
Introduce yourself. How's it going?
- [89:15]
Aaron Slotov
Aaron Slotov, CEO, Atomic Industries.
- [89:19]
Jordy
Very, very few people have sat here at this table with us.
- [89:22]
Aaron Slotov
I thought this was appropriate, right? I mean, yeah, it's great.
- [89:25]
Jordy
You got a round to announce.
- [89:26]
John
What's the news today?
- [89:27]
Aaron Slotov
Well, the first news is I got some merch here.
- [89:31]
John
Let's see it.
- [89:31]
Aaron Slotov
The first. First of kind merch. And you can take a look at hats.
- [89:35]
John
Some of the shirts do it wild colors.
- [89:38]
Jordy
I'm going with brown. Brown is the most underrated graded color on earth.
- [89:42]
Sam
Clay.
- [89:42]
Aaron Slotov
We got a good clay.
- [89:43]
Jordy
Oh, a clay. Nice. Here we go.
- [89:45]
John
Industries.
- [89:46]
Jordy
Very, very cool.
- [89:47]
Aaron Slotov
Well, the inspo for these.
- [89:50]
John
Yeah.
- [89:51]
Aaron Slotov
So these are obviously not like our official logo. And I have. I'm gonna have to airdrop you some hoodies, I guess, too, but do it. I had a great guy on Instagram who basically takes corporate logos and, you know, vintageifies them and.
- [90:07]
Sam
Yeah.
- [90:07]
Aaron Slotov
So Special.
- [90:08]
John
Special edition 2019.
- [90:10]
Jordy
It's overnight success.
- [90:11]
John
Yeah, yeah. We actually met in Pasadena. We got coffee. Probably 20, 21, something like that.
- [90:17]
Aaron Slotov
Yeah.
- [90:17]
John
Broke it all down.
- [90:20]
Jordy
Absolutely brutal to start an American dynamism business like four years before the word was. Yeah.
- [90:26]
John
For sure.
- [90:27]
Jordy
The trend was created.
- [90:28]
John
Yeah, yeah. Break down the news today.
- [90:31]
Aaron Slotov
All right, so series A.
- [90:33]
Jordy
You can hold this.
- [90:36]
Aaron Slotov
Oh, my. So we Have a lot of gong hits. Yeah, a lot of gong hits.
- [90:41]
John
We put that through its paces.
- [90:43]
Aaron Slotov
So this is kind of a bunch of great market validation. We're going to dump this into R and D. A little bit of expansion on the footprint. And actually, if you want, instead of doing a fancy render, I can actually show you guys a little clip of the new factory.
- [91:03]
Jordy
Yeah, let's do it. We have a video poll already.
- [91:06]
John
Let's pull it up. Wait, this is in Detroit?
- [91:09]
Aaron Slotov
This is in Detroit.
- [91:10]
John
Making Detroit.
- [91:11]
Jordy
Bring it to Midwest side at least.
- [91:13]
John
This is. Wow, that's huge. That is huge.
- [91:16]
Jordy
You make a lot of things in that.
- [91:18]
Aaron Slotov
Yeah, it's a lot of. We're gonna keep the floor dirt like that.
- [91:21]
John
We had you call in and you were walking around the. The previous facility. It didn't look small. What. What goes on the floor. Are you like at the point where you're like copy pasting the same work cell over and over again?
- [91:33]
Aaron Slotov
Not quite yet, but, you know, the idea behind what we're doing is we started kind of software first, right. To kind of prove the concept that we could actually design something in the same clip that like a trade expert could. So we did that first. That was enough proof to actually get the first factory off the ground. And then the design software started saturating into to the molds that we would make. Right. Like at that factory. Now we're kind of moving into the actual production of parts. So this facility we're going to basically have factory one and two. That's the footprint that we're using. Factory one makes the molds. We ship it to factory two to actually make the parts. So that facility will just be nothing but part making.
- [92:15]
John
What's the wheelhouse part that you make? What's the canonical example? Name every part. Yeah, name every part. Every part.
- [92:23]
Jordy
You make parts. Name every. Every part.
- [92:25]
Aaron Slotov
We got a lot of parts here. Yeah. I mean, basically what we're doing is trying to focus on taking like specialist shop knowledge. Right. Like, you would go to a shop that's really good at doing like automotive parts or aerospace parts and generalizing that same capability like across the board. So our envelope or constraint is kind of like size instead of industry or part. So we can't do something like the size of the table, obviously, but. But we can work up to that. So for now, we're kind of like parts that are a couple shoeboxes are smaller.
- [92:58]
John
What was the thesis for your pitch? To have every person who works in manufacturing wear a pair of meta glasses and start collecting data how would that actually flow through?
- [93:08]
Aaron Slotov
So I started a lot of my earlier career in self driving cars. Right. I worked at Google 15 years ago doing this. It's actually insane. I don't even like thinking about that.
- [93:19]
Jordy
Were you like 15 years old?
- [93:20]
Aaron Slotov
Yeah, I was 10. I was wonderkin. And you know, a lot of the kind of like idea behind that is controlling a system well enough. Right. Like a human would control a car. Same principles kind of apply to a factory. Right. If you're producing the same thing over and over again, you can dial a factory like Elon does, right. And it's just like ultra efficient. The holy grail is being able to take a factory and kind of adapt to different things, you know, over and over again. And mold making is kind of like that because every part has a unique geometry. So ultimately the shape drives like the construction of every mold and it's a little bit different. Right? But yeah, ultimately that whole.
- [94:03]
John
Yeah. I mean actually pulling data from someone who's working on a line, I mean they're going to see, you're going to see someone using a screwdriver one day and then a hammer and then different tools and then pushing buttons and maybe sitting in front of the computer like taking notes. Like isn't that just like a ton of messy data? Like how do you actually compress that into something that's actionable?
- [94:21]
Aaron Slotov
So the self driving analogy is very similar to that. Right. Like being able to actually intuit like a mechanical task or I don't know anything like, like programming a machine or something like that. Right. If we have the ability to actually collect the data seamlessly and relatively easily, that's kind of a floodgate to being able to do a lot of these things. Processing them is a different problem depending on how general they get. But I do think that that's actually a pretty interesting use case for them.
- [94:54]
John
Yeah. Give us the update on reindustrialization. Broadly.
- [94:59]
Jordy
There's been some headlines on the job side this year that have been not super thrilling to look at actually reduction in manufacturing workforce. But what's actually.
- [95:11]
John
Yeah, a lot of energy in the vibe.
- [95:13]
Jordy
What's the vibe like on the ground?
- [95:14]
Aaron Slotov
The vibe on the ground actually.
- [95:15]
Jordy
And to be clear, I want to get a sense of like what the vibe is like legacy manufacturing and then like the re industrialized crowd.
- [95:25]
John
No way. You got to take that.
- [95:27]
Aaron Slotov
I can't, I can't do that right now.
- [95:28]
Jordy
You can wait.
- [95:29]
John
Take it, take it. Right.
- [95:29]
Sam
He'll call back.
- [95:30]
Aaron Slotov
He'll call back.
- [95:31]
Jordy
That's actually, I mean, I Don't know if you're fucking with us.
- [95:34]
John
Yeah, I don't know if you're messing with us, but it's crazy big if true.
- [95:40]
Jordy
Big and true.
- [95:42]
John
The.
- [95:43]
Aaron Slotov
Yeah, I mean the vibe on the ground for this stuff is it's interesting, right, because there's a huge need for it and like economic data, you know, numbers go up and down all the time and people will panic. Businesses might not actually take on more because Capex is ultra expensive or something, right. At the end of the day, stuff still has to get made, right? And there's a lot of work that we're doing right now with the admin, which, you know, maybe we'll talk about someday. But people are very aware of this problem, right. And we need to pump resources into the industrial base in a really meaningful and fast way. So ultimately there's a huge demand and need. Even without the tariffs, it was still there, right? And I mean, yeah, starting this company when I did was a really interesting moment in history and like I was trying to front run that problem and ultimately I didn't really do anything for, you know, 2020 at all. But yeah, I think people that are actually churning out parts and components are extremely happy with where things are at. But overall, this is something that we have the same conversation about over and over and over again, which is factory jobs and manufacturing jobs. A lot of people don't know if that actually means a specialist CNC machinist, a cam programmer, like somebody just pushing a button on a machine on a line somewhere and ultimately you'll kind of see, you know, a collapse or you'll probably see, you know, a little bit of condensing of skilled trade labor as like technology flows more into the industrial base and we get more efficient factories that are cheaper. Ultimately. It's not a zero sum game, right? It's like Jevin's Paradox for stuff. If you can figure out a way to make more, we're going to make more.
- [97:37]
John
I feel like there's a ton of energy. Like the biggest American dynamism story or the biggest re industrialization story has oddly been like the XAI Colossus, like the Neo clouds, what Crusoe is doing. It feels like there's an immense pull from the industry to build big things and they're building multibillion dollar projects in America. It's very much assembling parts from all over the place. We just got a report that Elon's potentially buying a power plant internationally and then just rebuilding it in Memphis or Mississippi. But do you think that that actually translates to going down the stack? Or do you think that like all the AI energy will just wind up resulting in just build a big data center but still continue to make the transformers wherever they need to be made or make the, you know, the networking equipment wherever it needs to be made. I mean the chips, like the, the actual energy around moving chip production back to America, it's, it's a multi decade project.
- [98:50]
Aaron Slotov
Yeah, I think, I think there's like a secret plan here that nobody's really talking about, which you've seen Elon and like Jensen hint at this, right. In some of their public stuff that they've said they're all driving for applying AI to like the physical.
- [99:08]
John
Oh sure, right, yeah.
- [99:10]
Aaron Slotov
Obviously we have to play with LLMs for a little bit and like cool video and image tools and stuff. But ultimately I think that like, you know, we saw what was that like a week ago, Elon talking about making transformers now, like just going straight for the kill. I think that ultimately, and like how Jensen talked about like, I mean SpaceX.
- [99:28]
John
Vertically integrated a ton of part making internally because they were fed up. But what does that mean for your business?
- [99:36]
Aaron Slotov
Right, so ultimately what it means is that like you're going to have a trade off where skilled tradespeople are kind of like, you know, the replacement rate is very low. So you might actually see some kind of conglomeration or agglomeration of these trades kind of forming a foundational layer of building blocks where we can make components and parts and the technology is applied to that. That's what I was saying. Jensen, his whole thing is like using tokens for whatever, right?
- [100:05]
John
Sure.
- [100:06]
Aaron Slotov
If we can apply that to the part making layer, it's just foundational kind of stuff and then from there you can build, build whatever you want.
- [100:13]
John
Yeah. Are there. I remember early on when we were talking one of the interesting use cases for AI in a manufacturing context was you have a part that needs to be injection molded. You need to build the casting for that and you need to figure out where you drill the holes to dissipate heat. And the example you gave me was if you're molding a bumper for a car, it's a very odd shape. It's not just like something you can roll out on a sheet or stamp or do anything else. Right. You need to actually mold it. And does that have any indexing towards what goes on in the data center? Are there parts that are benefiting in the data center context from that type of injection molding optimization work?
- [101:03]
Aaron Slotov
Potentially. I mean it's going to be a lot of racking and componentry. So if there's some kind of weird new form factor, what? Probably not, but yeah.
- [101:12]
John
Most of the data center just feels like it's vertical racks just bolted together very like. I mean Zuck's building data centers intense. Now they're not going with like bespoke, like beautiful like you know, custom shapes or anything like that.
- [101:26]
Aaron Slotov
I think a lot of it, like whenever you need to form a part of some kind, right. You have to pick what type of methodology you're going to use. Like whatever is most cost efficient, effective and also meets the requirements. So if it's a bunch of metal stuff, you're probably going to stamp it or you know, it'll be made out of sheet metal or CNC or something. And then if it is a plastic thing that you can actually blast out in high volume and it's, it's actually worth it, that's a great problem to solve.
- [101:46]
John
Right.
- [101:46]
Aaron Slotov
And what we're doing is actually trying to lower that barrier and not everything can be a plastic part and people don't want that. But if you actually lower that barrier then you know, engineering changes actually because now you can actually re scope what is plastic, what is metal and consider a different production method for it.
- [102:04]
Jordy
How are the capital markets treating manufacturing businesses and especially tech enabled manufacturing businesses today? I'm assuming you're not getting AI multiples, but hopefully there's plenty to go around.
- [102:19]
Aaron Slotov
Well, that's the thing, there's no comp for this. Right. Nobody's actually done this before, you know, TBD on that. But I do think that even, even like announcing the raise earlier. Right. It was a huge mistake on LinkedIn, you know, just because I now have gotten probably 100 different emails and texts from you know, people on the other side of venture. Yeah, yeah, they're just like loans, you know, it's just like it's a wellspring of money. There's an ocean of capital on the other side of this if you can prove something viable.
- [102:48]
John
Where's the, where's the business? I mean you said $25 million series a massive facility that you showed us. How are you tracking with like revenue headcount? Anything else that you can share?
- [102:58]
Aaron Slotov
Yeah, so with that kind of progression of going like software to mold making to part making, we picked up like our first couple big part production contracts. So interestingly enough it's kind of like SaaS. It's just like, you know, I need a widget for five years. Like you're in charge of making the mold and the part now.
- [103:18]
John
Yeah.
- [103:20]
Aaron Slotov
So we're gonna start stacking like multi year production programs. So we're kind of in the mid eight figure range for that right now. Let's go and let's give it up.
- [103:29]
Jordy
For the mid eight figures. It's. It's an amazing place to be underrated. Right. People already to always talk about nine figures being in the mid eight figures.
- [103:37]
Aaron Slotov
The next time I'm back here, we'll be. Will be. Will be at, you know, nine figures. So.
- [103:40]
John
Fantastic.
- [103:41]
Jordy
There we go.
- [103:42]
John
Go.
- [103:42]
Jordy
There we go.
- [103:42]
Aaron Slotov
And then. Yeah, we're kind of come back tomorrow.
- [103:44]
Sam
Yeah, yeah, we'll be back tomorrow.
- [103:46]
John
Yeah. Answer that phone call.
- [103:47]
Aaron Slotov
And then roughly 50 people right now.
- [103:51]
John
Oh, wow.
- [103:51]
Aaron Slotov
And it's, it's interesting too, because most.
- [103:53]
Jordy
Includes people that are like in, in the factories themselves. Like. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [104:00]
Aaron Slotov
I mean, it's, this is one of the main reasons we actually wanted to build in Detroit.
- [104:03]
Will Hurd
Right.
- [104:03]
Aaron Slotov
Because, you know, even though I love California, that talent just not here.
- [104:09]
John
Yeah.
- [104:10]
Aaron Slotov
So we do have to kind of like rely on that initially to build out the footprint there. And then once we actually have, would.
- [104:16]
Jordy
You come to California?
- [104:17]
Aaron Slotov
Yeah, for sure.
- [104:18]
John
But is California anywhere near the top of the list? I feel like Texas, there's other, I mean, what's happening in Memphis and in Mississippi? Like, there's so many other states that are more like, please bring your business.
- [104:29]
Sam
Yes. Yeah.
- [104:31]
Aaron Slotov
I mean, we're gonna have to take a look at statewide, you know, incentive packages and see how that's looking. But that's kind of the model.
- [104:39]
Jordy
Right.
- [104:39]
Aaron Slotov
Is like 80%.
- [104:40]
Jordy
Does California offer incentives for these kind of things?
- [104:43]
John
Disincentives.
- [104:43]
Aaron Slotov
Yeah, disincentives. Yeah.
- [104:45]
Jordy
If you come here, we'll make your life hell. But the weather's great. I was so funny. I was looking at, I was looking at the weather report yesterday and I was like, this is why we do what we do. 75 today in Malibu. 75 in sunny, then 78 in sunny, then 77 in sunny, then 79 in sunny and 79 and then 79 and then 77.
- [105:06]
John
I'm sure it's not that bad in Detroit right now.
- [105:08]
Sam
It's summer.
- [105:09]
Aaron Slotov
It's probably same exact forecast.
- [105:10]
Jordy
Fall everybody talks about.
- [105:12]
John
Don't talk about winter in California.
- [105:14]
Jordy
People don't talk about fall in Detroit.
- [105:15]
John
Fall in Detroit. I mean, in Chicago it's the same thing. Chicago has fantastic summers.
- [105:20]
Aaron Slotov
Yes.
- [105:20]
John
It's the windy.
- [105:21]
Jordy
People call Detroit the St. Tropez of America.
- [105:24]
John
It is, it is. Anyway, congratulations. Thanks so much. For coming on the show. Dude, thank you for the gong.
- [105:30]
Jordy
Yeah. Hit that as hard as you can. That was a good hit. You kept it. You kept it in. That's a true test of strength. Being close to the gong and still getting that contact. Congratulations.
- [105:42]
John
Yeah thank you so much for all the progress.
- [105:45]
Jordy
Go, go take that call.
- [105:47]
John
We will talk to you soon. And we have Ariana coming on the show in just a few minutes. In the meantime, let me tell you about 8sleep8sleep.com get a pod 55 year warranty 30 risk free trial free returns.
- [106:03]
Jordy
I put up a shipping. What did I do?
- [106:06]
John
You did well.
- [106:06]
Jordy
I got a 94 last night. 7 hours 50.
- [106:09]
John
Oh it's a 94 eh. 94. 98. 98.
- [106:16]
Jordy
98.
- [106:17]
John
Put that that phone down. I beat Jordy Hayes.
- [106:23]
Jordy
Great. The great sleep off. We should run a weekend like weekend average see how yeah see how we do sleep off.
- [106:33]
John
Anyway, there's a new paper that claims LLMs are better at selecting founders than venture capitalists. Someone introduced VC Bench, the first benchmark for predicting future for founder success and venture capital. This is from the University of Oxford and Julia Hornstein shares thinking about this quote. But for Andreessen, there is one job that AI will never do as well as living breathing human being. His think I'm kidding. On an A16Z podcast last week, Andreessen opined that being a venture capitalist may be a profession that is quite literally timeless when the AIs are doing everything else. He continued that may be one of the last remaining fields that people are still doing. Does Vlad say something too singularity. You just invest for a living.
- [107:22]
Jordy
I agree with the sense that the high level point which is that humans will raise capital, machines will probably deploy it.
- [107:37]
John
Yes.
- [107:37]
Jordy
But I do, I do wonder. I would love to we should dig into this VC bench thing more because I do think if I just like ran you could basically run a model against like a deck.
- [107:49]
John
Yes.
- [107:49]
Jordy
And even you can even analyze things like how fast a founder responds. Right. I would love talk about people talk about some of these like smaller data points like founders that respond fast like.
- [107:59]
John
Generally outperformance like outperforming. I mean I'm not exactly sure how what the outperformance was but being in the 60th percentile venture capitalist does not matter. You still do very poorly. You need to be at the long tail of the power law. I'd be fascinated to know brand is.
- [108:18]
Jordy
Like one of the biggest drivers of.
- [108:19]
John
That brand's super important. But also I think I mean you read 0 to 1. The value of secrets, like secrets are not in the training data. And so there's so many decisions that are made in a business partnership or backing a founder that are secrets that never make their way onto the Internet. They never make it into the weights whatsoever. Maybe they make it into a biography after someone passes away, like decades later. But so much of decision in venture capital and decision making in business is really on the backbone of whisper networks and understanding being able to accurately predict the future. It's not just accurately predicting the future. I feel like accurately predicting the future broadly. AI is not that bad at that. But AI doesn't necessarily know all the different secrets that are going into a business.
- [109:20]
Jordy
But if you were running, let's say you're running a model generally, and you asked in 2017, do you think that bright young people in Silicon Valley are going to want to work in defense tech in seven years? A model might be like, people have like, pretty bad taste in their mouth, like Google and protesting even having any contracts. Right?
- [109:42]
John
Yeah.
- [109:42]
Jordy
So it just depends on.
- [109:44]
John
I mean, yeah, the LLMs right now are not designed to be contrarian machines. Like, they're, they're very much consensus focused and just getting to a model that thinks independently or can take a contrarian position that isn't just take your conclusion and add a minus sign.
- [110:01]
Jordy
It's like, what if the average Redditor was deploying capital?
- [110:06]
John
That's certainly the bear case for this. At the same time, potentially, the average Redditor is deploying capital and that might actually define the VC industry pretty accurately. Accurately right now. And so I'm not surprised. Tyler, what's your take?
- [110:20]
Tyler
Okay, so I'm looking at the actual, like, benchmark.
- [110:22]
John
Yes.
- [110:22]
Tyler
So basically, so there's 9,000. The data set is 9,000 anonymized founder profiles. And then basically they're either labeled like success or I guess like failure, depending on do they return capital or something. Yeah, if they exited IPO'd over 500 million or raised over 500 million. And then so it has like, some of the stats are like tier one VCs are at predict 23% and then deep seek chat is at 80%. It's kind of like, it seems hard to like anonymize these correctly where, like, you're still encapsulating like what made them a good founder, but also still like different enough that a model can't just like be like, oh, that's just Mark Zuckerberg. Totally his name.
- [111:06]
John
Totally.
- [111:06]
Tyler
So like, yes, he's successful. Yeah, I think it's.
- [111:09]
Jordy
The other thing is like VC is. The issue is like VC is not about identifying the great founders. You have to identify, identify them and win allocation at specific moments.
- [111:19]
John
100% that and then. Yeah, and then also it's identifying the next great founder, which is usually breaking a pattern. I mean, Paul Graham has a famous example where he over indexed on Mark Zuckerberg met a founder who literally looked like Mark Zuckerberg, wrote a check and it was one of the most underperforming investments he's ever made. And he was like, yeah, I was just like, this guy is like, went to Harvard, dropped out of Harvard, looked like Mark.
- [111:43]
Jordy
We have Ariana in the Restream waiting room. Let's bring her in.
- [111:47]
John
Let's bring her in to tvp Mold company Ultradome. How you doing?
- [111:50]
Jordy
What's happening?
- [111:52]
MoldCo Founder
Hi, Jordy. Hi, John. Great to be here.
- [111:54]
Jordy
Great to meet you. Okay, I will start this off by saying I hate. I hate mold. I'm one of the number one haters. I had a rental once that had a mold problem. I got terribly sick and it ended up being this crazy saga where I was like fighting with my landlord because they were saying like, there's no mold problem. I was showing them test results that showed there was a mold problem. They were kind of pushing back. I think it's a huge problem. I went down this rabbit hole. I think a bunch of people are kind of like waking up to how prevalent the issue is, especially in like specific regions and even specific like, like local communities. So excited that you're building this and excited to hear about it.
- [112:43]
MoldCo Founder
Thank you. Yeah, there's definitely a cultural awakening happening. You might have even seen HBO shows and Netflix and throughout the Reddit forums, Facebook communities, influencers on Instagram, et cetera. Like, it feels like there's this groundswell of education and awareness happening beyond even our company.
- [113:00]
Jordy
Yeah. Yeah. How did you, how, why, why did you start the company? Personal story.
- [113:05]
MoldCo Founder
Yeah, super similar to yours. Went through that journey with my landlord as well. And prior to starting moldco, didn't have health issues. Then experienced debilitating symptoms and actually developed something called chronic inflammatory response syndrome, which is the more formal name for mold toxicity or mold related illness. Just in a six and a half month timeframe of being in my Miami unit, which was quite moldy.
- [113:28]
Jordy
Crazy. What, what is the. I have an easy to tell what the company does at a high level, but like, how are you? How are you kind of like tackling the problem? What does the business look like?
- [113:40]
MoldCo Founder
Yeah, we're tackling this in a few different ways. So the vision is to drive the standard of care for mold treatment and mold labs. And what we do is offer labs both for health and the environment. So that includes, includes four different tests available on our website today, specifically a three panel and a 16 panel for the LabCorp lab draw. And that's based on our 30 years of research in the field. So we have on our founding team the world experts, the folks that not only pioneered the space but also define chronic inflammatory response syndrome, came up with the biomarkers, came up with the treatment all in their lifetime, which is an extraordinary effort. So we have that. We also have something called HLA haplotype testing to see if you have a genetic susceptibility to mold related illness. And that impacts 1 and 4 here in the US and we also have a test which I frankly love over even a home inspector at times. It's just a quick litmus test, low cost, use a Swiffer pad to wipe down your surfaces. So we have that on the lab side and then on the care side we have our own in house providers and we built a platform to treat patients at scale and that includes concierge care in our patient portal and that includes a distillation of something called the Shoemaker protocol, which is the only published peer reviewed treatment approach in this space. There's hundreds of publications making the mold health connection. There's really just a small body of work that demonstrates treatment and what's effective for patients. So that's what we've done. We've translated that into a virtual care clinic and we've done a lot of creative things to make that scalable for patients so we can keep the costs low and affordable.
- [115:16]
Jordy
What if somebody, I guess like, what is your recommendation? You meet somebody like randomly, they hear about your business, like what is the first step? Because I think a lot of people, you talked about people having like genetic susceptibility. This, this is I think important because it means that like a few people could be living in a house and like some people aren't having necessarily any issues or symptoms and like one person could be having a super adverse reaction. And that I feel like can make people like just like not really be aware of the problem. Because if you have, if somebody's in college and they have some roommates that are doing fine and they're struggling, it can end up being confusing. But what do you recommend to people? Where do you recommend people start if they're kind of concerned that they might be dealing with an issue yeah, absolutely.
- [116:07]
MoldCo Founder
So we have testing options to meet patients where they are. So it really just depends on where they are in that journey. And you touched upon a really important topic and that's the canary effect. There could be others in your household that start experiencing symptoms before you even experience symptoms, but it really just depends on where the patient is. Have they already made the mold health connection? Have they conducted a battery of lab tests to validate that? If so, those patients are often great to start care. If the patient hasn't even made the mold health connection, but they're sure that there's mold in their home, they can probably skip the dust test and even a visual inspection or having that musty, earthy odor is sufficient. So for that type of patient, we may recommend even the starter panel, which is one of our three lab panels and that has the highest signal biomarkers. Based on the research that we have today, which I'm sure will evolve, we actually have an R and D ARM with the largest data set in the world for what we're doing too. So we're looking to advance that and really drive the standard of care. Or if a patient doesn't know if they have mold in their home, but they're having the indicative symptoms, which includes brain fog, fatigue, gastrointestinal issues, etc. It's normally a multi system, multi symptom issue, non specific, but affecting multiple systems. Then we would recommend a lab panel such as the starter panel or a complete panel.
- [117:21]
Jordy
Would you guys help like clients, customers with like legal? Because I ended up having to hire a lawyer when I was going through my issue because my landlord was just like, like completely just like basically like gaslighting me. Not. Not. Is that something that, that you guys would ever help people with or is that outside of kind of the wheelhouse?
- [117:45]
MoldCo Founder
It's currently outside our scope in terms of the next evolution of the company. The parent company is actually called the Immune company and our vision is to spin out Lime Co and Long Co next. Our thesis is that the data set we've collected, which is looking at these microbial insults, mold and biotoxins that lead to innate immune, immune system dysregulation leading to chronic inflammation, can actually have the underlying research to help solve some of these other biotoxin related issues. So we're more so going that direction versus expanding to horizontally within the mold economy. But I think there's definitely opportunity there for founders.
- [118:18]
Jordy
The mold economy. We're here. How are you guys acquiring customers at this point? Is this, this feels like the kind of thing that. That one. There's a lot of influencers that have dealt with this and that'll talk about it, but also feels like you could have an organic TikTok or real strategy or something along those lines.
- [118:40]
MoldCo Founder
Yeah, we're doing a lot of different things. We actually just launched something called a content farm. We had 7 million views in the last week or week and a half or so just off of that. So we are tapping into TikTok and Instagram and doing some fun things there. We had a Reddit AMA with Dr. Shoemaker, the Messiah of mold, our founding physician, and that went viral in Reddit.
- [118:58]
Jordy
Messiah of mold. Yeah, you got some good coinages here. The mold economy. The messiah of mold.
- [119:07]
MoldCo Founder
Thanks. I don't have bots on my cap table though, so maybe next. But yeah, so we've done that. We've done. We've had shout outs from patients. At least 15 of our patient base is based on referrals and we haven't even optimized for that yet. I've been on at least 30 podcasts at this point, so. So we're tapping into a lot of different ways to reach patients and increase education and awareness. But there already is a large portion of the US that has made the multi health connection. So it's been pretty streamlined targeting those patients and onboarding them into our care.
- [119:37]
Jordy
Would you do anything. Last question I have. I'm curious. Would you do anything around helping people make decisions on like specifically the moment in time where somebody's either buying a home or considering renting a property? Because. Because the thing that's like tragic about like kind of the mold crisis, if that's what you want to call it, is there's a lot of homes that are brand new and they will literally have like a, like a significant mold toxicity problem on day one. On day one, because of the way they were built, or you think about it, it's like houses can take a long time to build. They could have leaks, they could have a bunch of weather, all these different things. And then you move into a house that you think is brand new and it already is going to like make you sick, which is just tragic.
- [120:24]
MoldCo Founder
Thank you for touching on that misconception that new builds don't have mold issues. They definitely do. The building materials are left outside in the rain. The energy efficiency standards often have a trade off for having more microbial growth in the home. So I think there's a lot of dramatic irony there for home buyers and renters. It's not something we're targeting at a deep level right now. I often say that the environmental side is a off more intractable than the healthcare side just because the healthcare side already has the solution available. And every home is unique, every rental is unique. So we offer free educational guidance. But I think that's also another opportunity for a builder in the space if they want to help essentially renters and owners better navigate which homes have mold and to avoid that. And there's also novel materials coming out like Sirewall too, to prevent mold in the first place.
- [121:13]
Jordy
Awesome. Well, congratulations.
- [121:15]
John
Give us the fundraising news.
- [121:16]
Jordy
What's the fundraising news? You announced it yesterday, right?
- [121:19]
MoldCo Founder
Yeah. Yeah. So we raised earlier this year a bit of a delayed announcement with Kantos and Cloud Fund as our lead and. Yeah, there we go.
- [121:29]
John
How much did you raise?
- [121:31]
MoldCo Founder
8 million total.
- [121:35]
Jordy
There you go. Congratulations. Congratulations. Great names, great names. Love to see it.
- [121:42]
John
Thanks so much for having me on the stream.
- [121:44]
Jordy
Thanks for jumping on.
- [121:44]
John
We'll talk to you soon.
- [121:45]
Jordy
Cheers.
- [121:46]
Pippa
Bye.
- [121:47]
John
If you want to get away from your moldy old home, head over to wander.com.
- [121:51]
Jordy
That'S right.
- [121:51]
John
Book a wander with inspiring views, hot grade amenities, dreamy beds, top tier cleaning and 247 concierge service. It's a vacation home, but better folks.
- [121:59]
Jordy
Better.
- [122:00]
John
Our next guest is Will Hurd from Chaos Industries. He's the chief Strategy officer, former CIA, former congressperson. Welcome.
- [122:08]
Jordy
What's going on?
- [122:09]
John
How you doing?
- [122:10]
Will Hurd
Doing fantastic. It's great to be on with y'. All. I feel like I'm on with the Shaq and Barkley of tech reporting. So thanks for having me.
- [122:19]
John
I'd love to hear that. Thank you.
- [122:20]
Jordy
Let's go. Fun fact, we don't know about sports, but those sound like some big names.
- [122:24]
John
Fun fact, I endorsed you for president. I said everyone else who's running is a lawyer. You're the only computer scientist. Talk to me about your journey studying computer science through working in the government. I want to get a little bit of backstory before we go into what you're doing now.
- [122:42]
Will Hurd
Sure. You know, it was funny when I was in high school, I had the opportunity to do an internship with a woman who was at Southwest Research Institute. They are one of the largest private research institutions, entities in, in the country. And I fell in love with, with computer science and decided to go to Texas A and M University, Giga Maggies and you know, study computer science, you know, and, and when I, when I first, when I first got to college, I thought I was going to go work at IBM and then.
- [123:13]
John
Let's give it up for international International business Machines. We love international business and machines.
- [123:22]
Will Hurd
And. And. But I had this guy who was a guest lecturer in one of my classes that was a former CIA officer.
- [123:28]
John
Yeah.
- [123:29]
Will Hurd
And he told the most amazing stories. And I was like, I want to do that. And so when I graduated from college, I joined the CIA, and my. I was a case officer. So my job was recruit spies and steal secrets. It was. It was the best job.
- [123:44]
Jordy
Yeah.
- [123:44]
John
And that's.
- [123:45]
Jordy
That's an important.
- [123:45]
John
Thank you.
- [123:46]
Jordy
That's an important distinction because I think people think about CIA agents, but those are the people that are recruited by the case officers who are doing the puppeteering.
- [123:58]
Will Hurd
That's right. Or you could say the spy master.
- [124:00]
Jordy
Yeah, the spy master. Spy master.
- [124:04]
John
So, yeah, please.
- [124:06]
Will Hurd
Look, it was an awesome gig, Right. Two years India, two years in Pakistan. I did some interagency work in New York City around counter proliferation, and then a year and a half in Afghanistan, where I managed all of our undercover operations. And in addition to collecting intelligence on our threats to our homelands, I had to brief members of Congress. And I was pretty shocked by the caliber of our elected leaders. So I decided to run for Congress. And that's kind of how that started.
- [124:31]
John
That's amazing. We had Dan Wang on the show recently. He wrote a book, Relentless, and he talks about. I hope I have that right. I might be messing some of that up, but the basic thesis of the book is that China has an engineering mindset and they employ a lot of engineers in the government, whereas America has become the lawyerly society, and we have a lot of lawmakers who are lawyers by training. And I'm wondering about your thoughts on the direction America should be going in terms of empowering folks who can think from first principles or have engineering mindsets to actually go and build things like high speed rail or we got to the moon. And we're seeing a little bit of this with Doge and more engineers in the White House. What's your overall view on the level of engineering talent in government and the benefits and costs of that?
- [125:25]
Will Hurd
Look, I think that thesis is actually correct. I've spent the last 25 years of my adult life in some form or fashion connected to national security, whether it was CIA in Congress. I was on the House Intelligence Committee, seeing how things are threats to our nation evolve. I was on the Appropriations Committee making sure that we were spending trillions of dollars in the right way. I've been on the National Security Agency Advisory board. When I was at Allen and Company, the New York investment bank, I was working with technology Companies and here's been one similar throughput through all these, this. The Chinese government has made it very clear the way they're going to surpass the United States of America as the global superpower is by mastering a number of different technologies. It's about 15, 16, 17 of them. Everything from AI to, to hypersonics. And with that as the overarching goal, there is a desire and interest in order to win. Let's look. You mentioned the space race right now where there's, we're, we're rushing to go back to the moon and the Chinese are going to do, the Chinese are going to do it the exact same way we did it in the past.
- [126:36]
John
Right.
- [126:36]
Will Hurd
Shocker. They're going to steal all of our plans and ideas and replicate them. You know what? Crazy.
- [126:43]
Jordy
For the first time.
- [126:45]
Will Hurd
Exactly. But, but, but we're also seeing that in whether it's, it's AI and how they're trying to dominate. They, we saw them dominate 5G. The fact that, you know, the 5G infrastructure now is, I think it's like it's over a third in the world is, is, is Chinese tech. The, in AI. The issue of AI, they're trying to make sure by 2030 every six year old is AI conversant. And we're still having debates here in the United States of America about whether AI should be included. And then I'll even tell you about what's happening on the battlefield. Right. You know, we're seeing, they're learning from Ukraine, they're figuring out how to use autonomy in air, on land and in the sea. Their focus on electronic warfare and how to disrupt our systems. They're trying to not only build more than what we have, they're also looking forward to making sure that they have mass and autonomy in warfare. And so this is the world in which we're living in. And we need people that actually understand technology to make sure that we can make it happen. Perfect example. No company cannot figure out, they don't know that what their budget's going to be next year or what their plans for sales is next year. But within the federal government, you know, we don't know necessarily from year to year what the funding is going to be. And for a trillion dollar enterprise, you can't do that. I think at a minimum you should have a two year budget and appropriation so that you can, you know, with some certainty of where you need to go and not trying to go month to month to try to get things done. And I think that's that's right now one of the issues that I think a lot of venture Capital and Venture VC backed companies are trying to change with DoD. It's slow, it's going, it's moving, it's changing. But we have to have that, we have to bring that mentality to government.
- [128:42]
John
Yeah, talk about your path to chaos. It's a, it's a wild name for a defense tech company, but you're doing some very cool things. How did, how did all this come together?
- [128:52]
Will Hurd
Look, I didn't think slinging radars was good. It was on my bingo card, right? But when, when I got to meet Dr. Bomar, one of our co CEOs and founders of Chaos, he had also previously founded Epirus. John Tennant, another one of our co CEOs who I've known for some time, and he's like, look Will, we're doing something interesting. Why don't you come to LA and see our product? And I was blown away. First off, unbelievable team. These are engineers that have been quoted in, in Nobel prizes, right? You have real operators in government, Navy Seals, folks that worked in Delta Force, CIA. You know, you have operators that have been in the system and you're working on some of the most cutting edge technology, right? Like, you know, we have figured out a thing called coherent distributed networking. This is taking multiple things in, talking to, talking to each other. And we figured out how to do that to the picosecond. Now a picosecond, you know, first for some references, one picosecond to a second is like a second is to 32,000 years. That's really fast. And by figuring out how you have this time transfer work, we're able to build a more powerful system and a cheaper system. And so that amazed me and ultimately the vision of the company since let's call it the end of the Korean War, America and our allies have had air superiority. And that air superiority has given our troops the ability to look forward, not above their heads, at swarms. It's allowed commerce to whip around the world. And those days are over. Right. Because of autonomy on the battlefield. 70% of casualties in warfare right now are from autonomous systems and drones. And the time to detect and do something about it is shrinking. And ultimately what chaos is doing is we're giving the war fighter more time, a time to understand what's happening, time to decide what to do and time to act. And so for me to get back to my roots of national security, it was exciting. And so that's how I ended up. That's how I ended up at chaos.
- [131:15]
John
What's the, what's the highest priority threat that radar can help mitigate? Is it, is it these autonomous drones these days?
- [131:25]
Will Hurd
It is. Look, there's a lot of conversation right now around Golden Dome. And Golden Dome is, is, is something that we need to have, we need to be able to defend against nuclear tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles.
- [131:38]
John
Yeah.
- [131:39]
Will Hurd
Right from our adversaries, primarily China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. And this is a phased approach from detecting it when it, when it launches from their homeland to trying to identify it in space. The, the, the, the technology that has evolved and what we're able to do now, sensing in space is pretty fantastic. And this is an important, this is an important problem. But the reality in my, the most recent threat, like the threat we're most likely to see is a, a sub sonic cruise missile or a drone. And, and this can be, this can be shot from a plane off the coast of California. It could be a van that is filled with a number of explosive drones. These are the things that we're going to see more likely than a nuclear, nuclear weapon. And, and we call these under layer threats. These are things that are happening under 50,000, 50,000ft. And that's something that radars is, is able to help detect. And, and one of the things that we're learning because of some of the technological advances we've made, we can see big, high and far and low, small and near at the same time. And, and I always remind people, I think, I think pretty much everybody in America watched Maverick, Top Gun 2, Top Gun, of course that's a real thing. Flying below the radar is a real thing. And so we're able to see below that, below that level. And that's something that is going to be helpful against this drone threat which we've already seen. We've seen what the Ukrainians did in Russia, we've seen what Israel has done in Iran and all of that. Being able to take out this, this exquisite infrastructure. Right. And exquisite is actually a, has a unique phrasing or definition in government that means big ass expensive systems. And so you're able to take these systems out with a system that costs a billion dollars, with a drone that cost 20k. Right. So that cost asymmetry is one of the things that, the right radar and what we're doing in multi static radar is something that's one of the reasons why we're getting traction and excitement within DOD and the rest of, and militaries around the world. To be honest, I don't know if.
- [134:05]
Jordy
You can say anything here. But are you guys doing anything on the counter narcotics side?
- [134:10]
John
Yeah, we've been seeing some stuff here.
- [134:13]
Jordy
I've, I've watched a bunch of YouTube videos on narco subs. Aren't true submarines, but designed to be hard to detect.
- [134:23]
Will Hurd
Look, this is, this is an issue that's actually, you know, close to my heart. When I was in Congress, I represented a district that was 29 counties, two time zones, 825 miles of the border between Texas and, and Mexico. I had more border than any other member of Congress. And so what the narco trafficantes, the drug traffickers are doing, they're sophisticated. The narcos in Mexico alone are making roughly, and this is a conservative number, $60 billion in one year. The entire U.S. intelligence budget is $60 billion. Right. And so you add up all the.
- [135:01]
Jordy
All the foundation model lab revenue and you don't get any.
- [135:04]
John
You don't get there. It's bigger than AI. Yeah.
- [135:07]
Will Hurd
It's wild. And so, yes, it is known in the end of last year, I think beginning of this year, Border patrol testified in front of the Senate that there were something ridiculous like 41,000 drone sightings in just one sector of the border. So we know the narcos are using the drone warfare against themselves, right?
- [135:33]
John
Like against rival gangs, basically.
- [135:36]
Will Hurd
Absolutely, absolutely. It's like the drone warfare you're seeing between Ukraine and Russia. They're adapting some of these tactics, techniques and procedures to that fight. And then we also know the only way you get $60 billion worth of drugs into the United States of America is by you're bringing them in volume. And there is likely some coming via autonomous system, air and sea. And we've had conversations with authorities in order to help with this project. And so once we learn more, we'll come back and I'll give you a report on some of the things that we're seeing.
- [136:15]
John
Can you give me some. Describe the shape or the physicality of what you're building. You know, there's been, you look at those like Anduril submarines, they're square now. They look like they just fit in shipping containers. There's a lot of logistics that you get out of the box. If it fits in a shipping container, you can load it onto a boat, an autonomous boat, you can load it on a truck. There's also stuff that can be mounted on an aircraft or something. That's getting into exquisite territory, exquisite system territory. Where do you see the opportunity to deploy new radar systems?
- [136:47]
Will Hurd
So one of our products we call Vanquish is an expeditionary system system. So the three of us can. Can carry that. It can fit on the back of an ATV and go into to.
- [136:57]
Jordy
Is that an invite?
- [136:58]
Will Hurd
Rough drink.
- [136:59]
John
Is that an invite? Are we going atding? Let's do it.
- [137:02]
Will Hurd
Hey, you know, hey. I think we're just right around the corner from y'. All.
- [137:05]
John
So amazing.
- [137:05]
Will Hurd
So next time. Next time we'll take out. We'll take him out.
- [137:09]
John
That'd be great. And.
- [137:10]
Will Hurd
And so. So that one is. Is low form factors small that can be deployed in difficult environments. We have another system called astria, which we were just celebrating. We had a major finance award from the US Air Force about this product that we're deploying in Eglin Air Force Base in Florida.
- [137:31]
John
How much was that deal for? We like to ring the gong around here for big numbers.
- [137:35]
Will Hurd
There we go. Hit it.
- [137:37]
John
How much was it?
- [137:39]
Will Hurd
So 2 million.
- [137:41]
Jordy
Boom.
- [137:44]
Will Hurd
We got. Got one more.
- [137:45]
John
We got one more. Give it to us.
- [137:46]
Will Hurd
The House of representatives put in 10 million in the defense bill.
- [137:50]
Jordy
There we go.
- [137:53]
John
Congratulations. I love it.
- [137:56]
Jordy
I love to see it.
- [137:58]
John
We like to celebrate big contracts around here. What else are you or defense tech companies or the United States government focused on in terms of actual deployment? There's been a lot of talk about, you know, the Ukraine war. It's been going on for a long time. Very sad. It's unfortunately become a serious business for many companies. There's also Anduril announced what, a $1 billion deal with Australia. There's deals going on in Taiwan, obviously in the Middle East. Where else in the geopolitical realm should founders be thinking about understanding the nature of the changing warfighter and the changing battlefield and then building solutions for.
- [138:46]
Will Hurd
If you're a defense tech company and you have an operator aren't operating in Ukraine, that's going to be a problem if you're investing in companies. If I'm going to be an investor in a defense tech company, my first question is, does your stuff work and has it worked in Ukraine in one of the most difficult environments on the planet right now.
- [139:05]
John
Now.
- [139:05]
Will Hurd
And that environment is going to make the first island chain, if we get into a conflict with the Chinese, look like a playground, by the way. And so we've been in Ukraine. We've been tested against the electronic warfare systems of the Russians. Ukrainians have asked us to come back. We're working on being able to do that. We were deployed in the Middle east during the 12 day war. We saw Shahid drones going back and forth between Israel and Iran. So we've been deployed there. Of course the potential for geopolitical conflict and in the Indo Pacific is an important place where we're having conversations to be able to deploy against there. So we've been.
- [139:46]
Jordy
How quickly can you guys set up in a new region? Right, because like CENTCOM has been quieter but feels like that could bubble up again at any point.
- [139:59]
Will Hurd
Look, so, so our, our system deployed, you know, once it comes off the truck, we can put it up in about 15 minutes. Right. And so, so doing that is something but, but changing the flow with, within the, within the US Government. Look, the, the, the, the value of, of a company in light chaos when we have, you know, basically half a billion dollars in our bank account from all of our, all of our raises is we're able to operate in these long sales cycles or potential changes within the, within the federal government. And so part of us is just understanding where the threat is, making sure we're deploying. And one of the reasons we're kind of, you know, been a little bit more active in the public is that our stuff works and we've been deployed and it's operating. We have a year of consistent deployment in really tough places. And so that's one of the things that's important for us. And we're going to go wherever the war fighter needs us.
- [140:54]
John
You're building a sensor. There are other companies building effectors. There are companies that want to integrate sensors and effectors. I'm thinking of Palantir, I'm thinking of Lattice from Anduril. Are those out of the box integrations? Are those partnerships that you're talking to? Obviously you're super close with a lot of those folks. What does building a product that integrates with everything else? Because I can't imagine that you're saying oh, on day one we want to, to, you know, we, we, we, we don't we want to be the only defense tech company. No, you're part of the ecosystem. You're building. You know, one solution. How do you think about integrating with the rest of the part of this.
- [141:29]
Will Hurd
And what the US Government needs and wants is, is completing the kill chain, right? So you can sense and do the effector and, and one of the areas. Holy grail may be too strong of a word, but getting to an effector, that's cheap, right? Or inexpensive is, is the word what I should use. And so that integration, integration is important. And so we've already demonstrated ability to integrate with our, our friends at Anduril. But Palm and I go way back when I was in, in Congress, I was talking about having a smart wall, right? And, and I get this phone call from some dude named Palmer Lucky and, and I'm like, you know, he's like, I got your smart wall. And that began, that began a, a relationship and, and helping and those guys again. Same with Palantir, right? You know, I've seen Palantir here for a really long time, you know, even back to my days when, when I was in the CIA. So our ability to integrate and work together and, and, and, and the unique thing about some of the technology that we're working on, this cutting edge stuff is it actually can potentially be a force multiplier for other systems as well. And so, so the name of the game is to be able to integrate and make sure the command that we fit into the command and control each infrastructure and ultimately our sensor can make every effector better. So, so this is, you know, exploring those areas as we explore the kill chain and, and all of our suite of products, making sure that again, at the end of the day we see farther, right, we see farther than everybody else and we give that war fighter more time. And when you have more time, then you can decide, wait a minute, which tool in my toolkit do I want to use in order to deal with this threat? And the more time you have, the better it is. And when you have bombs dropping on your head or people shooting at you, Even if it's five to 10 more minutes, that's an eternity. And to be able to give that time back to the war fighter is what we're focused on.
- [143:23]
Jordy
What's it like for people that are starting their career on the public sector side, whether it's intelligence or something like down at the border, like do they, do they have a feeling that they have like the tools are great or are they still? Or is the sense if you're actually the one needing to operate and use these tools that they can and should be a lot better?
- [143:51]
Will Hurd
Look, it depends on which entity you're talking about. An organization like the CIA which is geared towards helping the pointing into the spear, whether that's the case offer that's collecting the information or the, the person doing a, a covert operation. There is a, there is a belief in that. You have entities like in Q Tel which is focused on bringing in new technologies in to help the war fighter. You know, when you look at some of the special forces units that are really good at adapting and making sure that our, our boys and girls in those units have what it needs, but it's not uniform. And we always talk about how the procurement cycles of getting the right thing in the right hands matters. And here's where some startups that are VC based or coming out of Silicon Valley don't get wrong. We talk about these long cycles, but guess what? The stuff has to work out of the box when it comes to getting in the hands of our military. It has to work every time, time and, and so the, the training and evaluation matters and that's what adds to some of that time of getting those, getting those equipment and it has to work within our system. So I think if you talk to someone on the border or first in their, in their, early in their, their career, they may be frustrated with the lack of some of the tools. But some of the problems is that that tool has to be, you know, be tested tested and it has to have the cybersecurity defend against the Chinese government.
- [145:26]
John
Talk to me about the path to program of record. You have this radar contract, more money coming from the House approval. The typical story that I hear from a lot of defense tech startups is they get a sbir and then they sprint towards program of record. Obviously over the long term you want that durability of record revenue that you can underwrite a massive manufacturing facility. So you can be making this and improving it every year. What is the net, what does the future of the company look like for you?
- [145:55]
Will Hurd
Well look, all those things are true and we're far down, we've engaged with all of the branches on this. We're at certain levels of the buying process. It starts with a user wanting your thank. And if you have users wanting your thank you, then it makes it a lot easier in order to connect the.
- [146:16]
Jordy
Dots and say put the thing in.
- [146:18]
Will Hurd
The bag that you need. Right. And so look, I use the annual example when they did their first border technology, that was a ten million dollar appropriation in the budget, right. That led to one of their first program record. And so that's an example of how you get it. If you have a product that works, works. If you have a product that is doing something unique and you have a user wanting it then, and you've demonstrated that capability in the most, the difficult environments to operate, then guess what? Finding that path to program a record is not as difficult. And again, I'm not trying to act like it's, like it's easy, it's not. But, but being able to line up all of those things is something that we, that we have experience with.
- [147:07]
John
Yes. Well, congratulations. Thanks so much for coming this Was super fun.
- [147:11]
Jordy
The chat, the chat.
- [147:12]
John
The chat loves you.
- [147:13]
Jordy
Everyone's going crazy and Will Hurd's my dog.
- [147:18]
John
People are visiting.
- [147:19]
Jordy
Thank you for joining. Come back on you have more news or if there's something in the world happening that you want to chat about.
- [147:24]
Will Hurd
Would love to do that. Thanks, fellas. I really appreciate y'.
- [147:26]
John
All. We'll talk to you. Have a great weekend. Let me tell you about AdQuick.com out of home advertising made easy and measurable. Say goodbye to the headaches of out of home advertising. Only Ad Quick combines technology, out of home expertise and data to enable efficient seamless ad buying across the globe. We have our second in person guest. Welcome to the stream. Looking good in the suit. Our second guest. Thanks so much for sharp. Oh, fantastic. We love hats here.
- [147:55]
Jordy
I'm throwing it on.
- [147:55]
John
We got our second guest. Introduce yourself for the stream. For those are who who don't know.
- [148:00]
Jordy
350 million dollar man.
- [148:03]
Sam
Hello. How's it going? I'm Sam, co founder CEO of Numerl.
- [148:07]
John
Which you know of course because which.
- [148:09]
Jordy
You know and love.
- [148:09]
John
You have been partnered with numeral for a number of months now. Kick us off with the news of the day.
- [148:14]
Sam
News of the day is we've raised 35 million on a 350 post.
- [148:18]
Will Hurd
Congratulations.
- [148:19]
John
Take this. Hit that gong as hard as you.
- [148:23]
Jordy
Subtle despite firm.
- [148:26]
Sam
Not too hard.
- [148:28]
Jordy
Coming off Series A from Benchmark as well. Was that earlier?
- [148:31]
Sam
Exactly. We did a series A from Benchmark earlier this year. And so just following on there, you know, capitalize on all the momentum. Who did the series double down? We did it with Mayfield.
- [148:40]
John
Mayfield. Classic fun.
- [148:41]
Sam
Got a classic fun.
- [148:42]
John
Got to keep it old school business for generations. For decades. We got to update Jordy's ad read for probably the first 50 AD reads. He was a benchmark Series A. We had a lot of fun.
- [148:53]
Sam
Don't forget YC is YC.
- [148:54]
John
YC. Love it.
- [148:55]
Jordy
When did you do YC?
- [148:56]
Sam
We did YC beginning of 2023. I was actually working with my old boss at Airbnb, Gustav. So it was fun to get to work with him again.
- [149:03]
Jordy
No way. When did you know you wanted to automate sales tax?
- [149:08]
Sam
Oh man, since the womb actually I've been dreaming about it. You know, for me I was similarly as you guys actually running e commerce businesses still own a vitamin gummy shop doing 10 plus million a year.
- [149:20]
John
Amazing.
- [149:22]
Jordy
So what is it about gummies that just sell better than any product on?
- [149:26]
John
People love gummies. They don't want to buy.
- [149:28]
Sam
It's the best e Commerce business because you know, you get that repeatability, it's easy to predict. You take two a day and I think people don't like pills. Americans, we love sweets, we love candies, little treat.
- [149:41]
Jordy
That's great. We discovered the problem through that business.
- [149:43]
Sam
Exactly. So my co founder there and I of the gummy business, we were just dealing with sales tax compliance for all we have to register in 40 plus states. And so I was dealing with local parishes in Louisiana and on the phone with some women in West Virginia and I got an argument about penalty waivers and I'm like, this is insane that I'm trying to spend my time on growth and marketing or product and things like that. And instead I was wasting hours. Just dealing with the IRS compared to these states is like working with Apple or Google or some amazing company like Department of Revenue Alabama, like give them a call. And it's insane. And so I think the thesis was you had these incumbent tools that have been around for 20 plus years. The most famous one is this one called Avalara. And the problem with them is it's kind of this very narrow tool and you have to spend hours and month dealing with them. So you get physical mail from the states and then you have to figure out what to do with it, how to call the state and they won't even pick up. They're owned by private equity, so they don't even up pick, pick up the phone when you have an issue. So for us it's, you know, we're not really trying, you know, it's software, but we really, if you're a customer, we really want it to feel like service more than software. Because, you know, with AI, since we invented AGI, you know, we're using, we're.
- [150:58]
Jordy
Using sales tax, AGI.
- [150:59]
Sam
Sales tax, AGI. Right. And so no. Well, yeah, with AI you can deliver what feels more like a service, but you know, fundamentally it's still a software business.
- [151:09]
John
What was the fundraising process like? I want to know, know, just take the temperature of like you just went out and did a fundraising round, you talked to a lot of VCs.
- [151:17]
Jordy
Were people trying to, assuming you didn't.
- [151:18]
John
Necessarily get the story out of you? Was it vibe round, Accel round? Like what is the focus of Silicon Valley VCs right now since AI has become a tool that pretty much every company's pulling off the shelf? Just what was the, what was the vibe on the roadshow?
- [151:34]
Sam
That's a good question, I think. Yeah, you have to, AI has to be, you know, front and center any Friend that is raising and not putting their fund in the center. It's hard to actually get a meeting or be taken seriously. My sense is it's starting to get maybe a little too far over the edge. I've seen some insane markups. We intentionally actually took a lower markup than we could have just because I just tend to run these things a little bit more incrementally and don't want to overextend yourself. I've seen and I've been in startups where we went a little too crazy and like, you know, it's easy, it's easy to kind of just. You have too much money, you spend too much.
- [152:10]
Jordy
So.
- [152:11]
Sam
But, but yeah, it's. If you, if you. I think too, if you have like some good AI logos of companies you're working with or seeing. I've been seeing some like 100x200x multiples out there. It feels a little bit.
- [152:22]
Jordy
Just because they have, they're working with like a lab or something like that.
- [152:25]
Sam
If you. Yeah, exactly. If you can close a lab, a couple labs, like you're going crazy. I mean, in some cases it's worth it, right? Look at Merkor, right?
- [152:32]
John
They're growing so fast and that's their core business. That makes sense with Mercore. But yeah, if you're more of like a software tool that could be used by any company not directly indexed revenue wise to the lab revenue, which is growing very fast. Yeah, it's a little bit of a. Just like it's a good, you know, they're obviously cutting edge businesses, they probably select the best software.
- [152:50]
Sam
But it's definitely starting to get a little frothy. You know, I'm not putting a ton of my own money into.
- [152:55]
Jordy
Yeah.
- [152:55]
John
Do you think that AI is changing any of the fundamental physics of the business models? We covered the story with Notion. Notion said they normally have 90% gross margins, now they have 80% gross margins. But they're growing and so it's mathing out. I feel like as we enter the SaaS apocalypse where the legacy SaaS players aren't moving fast enough and we see a new generation of companies come up, I'm wondering how much people should update on the actual legacy, like foundational. Like is there something changing about the monopoly thesis, how companies accrue value, the margins, what the actual long term cash flows will be. It feels very much like it's a big opportunity to build something new, get new customers on board, grow a big business. But it doesn't necessarily change the actual structure of the Business. But what's your take?
- [153:44]
Sam
Yeah, I think each business is different. So yeah, with the gross margins even we've seen some compression because. Because we're spending so much on running agents and yeah, we have. You know, if you have a state.
- [153:57]
Jordy
Portal, so many people aren't willing to admit that no one asked them. They're like. And it's like, it's actually a good thing if you're spending a lot on inference because it means you're actually using. You're not just saying you're.
- [154:06]
John
Well, a lot of people are also on credits for a long time and so they were doing or the credits were really discounted, but now we're in more of a stable inference cost. $4 per million tokens if you're doing something serious.
- [154:18]
Sam
Yeah, our AWS bill I think doubled like relative to our revenue.
- [154:23]
Jordy
Right.
- [154:23]
Sam
So it's like our gross margins have actually compressed. But I think our product has gotten a lot better. And you know, the hope is eventually over time, you know, these inference costs go down, the models get more efficient. And so I think to me that's like a little neurotic to worry. So I mean it depends who you are. But to me that, that's like a neurotic thing to worry about. Like the short term gross margins. I think for me, at least for my business, where I'm excited is the services economy is like at least an order of magnitude larger than the software economy. And so a lot of what we're starting to replace now is not really there's these legacy software providers. But again, as you bigger companies, usually they don't even work directly with them. They'll hire an accounting firm to manage Avalara or Vertex or these old school solutions.
- [155:05]
Jordy
They're like, the software is so rough, I don't even want to let us hire somebody to that.
- [155:10]
John
I've literally been in that position trying to buy by the competitor product years ago and being like it's expensive and also I don't have the manpower to do it. So we'll just continue to just like file whenever we can. And it's very rough. It's all done in a spreadsheet.
- [155:25]
Sam
Yeah, I mean we are the official. I have the real one. Yes, I got the tin here. The official tax provider of Lucy, of.
- [155:31]
John
Lucy, my D2C nicotine.
- [155:34]
Sam
They're gonna get it right. We love Lucy.
- [155:35]
John
We are powered by numeral. It's fantastic. Yeah.
- [155:38]
Sam
And so it's interesting, right? So, so for example, we started, we filed taxes for someone this week in Tanzania In Kenya. And like we're the only software provider on earth that's I think ever filed taxes in Tanzania. And. And so let's go. So I think let's go. Tanzania.
- [155:52]
Jordy
Hit the gong for Tanzania. There we go. You can, you can send that to the office there chatting with.
- [156:02]
John
Yeah, yeah.
- [156:02]
Jordy
What. What you guys are scaling quickly and it's a category that's like not. It's an interesting one because it feels like like investing in e commerce infrastructure was at its hottest like maybe like four or five years ago.
- [156:21]
Sam
Yeah.
- [156:22]
Jordy
And so is. Do you like that? It's like a bit overlooked as a category and like where is most of the growth? Is most of the growth coming from like online retail companies or. Or SaaS and what's that split?
- [156:35]
Sam
Yeah. So we started the business fully focused on E commerce. That's where I was coming from. I'd worked at software businesses before I was a PM at Airbnb. But we started just in E comm and I think yeah, that market's been really dry for people servicing the e commerce space, like the software providing for that space. Because the TM is somewhat limited. E commerce growth is something like 5% year over year.
- [156:59]
John
This is a problem. Eventually. Yeah, you saturate and then you're growing at 5, 5% and no VCs are giving.
- [157:04]
Sam
Exactly. Most of the good businesses I've seen being built are either bootstrapped or more like a venture light model. Which makes sense just because the TAM is going to be more cap.
- [157:11]
John
More like an app in the Shopify app store. Plug and play, do something minimal scale it. But it's not really going to become like a public company.
- [157:19]
Sam
Exactly. I think we were the first company benchmark funded that's actually been servicing, you know, E commerce merchants. Right. But again, and was that.
- [157:26]
Jordy
Do you think they had a sense of like this numeral? While it looks like a Shopify plugin or just like an E commerce infrastructure tool, it's really going to be eating into the services revenue from these legacy tax.
- [157:41]
John
I mean it's so crazy. With Lucy, we did not rip out and replace to get on numeral. We went from nothing. And this was like a 7, 8 year old business at the time.
- [157:50]
Sam
Yeah. And so yeah, so like just to benchmark, like our partner Chatham, you know, when he was early in his career, he actually did an analysis on Avalara. You know they were started in 2006 I think Avalara. And so they were just going public or something. He's like, wow, this business should be amazing. He checked back 10 years later and it was just being operated really poorly. That's why they had a private equity takeover, because they weren't operating well. So I think he had seen this category and was like waiting for there to be someone to go and challenge. We started fully E commerce. Now it's a closer split. We have a lot more, more SaaS and E commerce businesses, especially with our international, with our international service, with the. The only player in the space that can actually go and register and file in 60 plus countries.
- [158:32]
Jordy
And so if you're like, if you're, if you're making some consumer AI app and you're selling to users that are in Tanzania or something.
- [158:38]
Sam
Exactly right. So Lucy's probably not selling a lot in Tanzania, but you know, we have like these, these hot AI companies that, like the one in Tanzania, they're. They're like a year. A year old, but they have $100 million of ARR. And so you have customers around the world and your stripe dashboard is blowing up with all these warnings and people don't. They get freaked out, but they don't.
- [158:58]
John
Know what to do.
- [158:58]
Sam
So they just kind of kick the can for a long time. But sometimes you can do that and not get in trouble. But some places will just. You don't want to mess with those countries. You don't want to mess with Mexico, the authorities there.
- [159:10]
John
Yeah, it is a pretty new phenomenon that, that. I mean, there were a lot of apps in the last boom of software that might be internationally distributed because of AWS and because of Google on day one, but they weren't necessarily taking money from individuals in that country on day one. It's more like there's ads that are being shown there, but the companies that are paying are in the United States or they're doing something else and they're just like, oh, we'll monetize it later. No, these companies that are doing new AI products or something like they're putting the credit card down in that local country on day one and then you need to actually process that.
- [159:48]
Jordy
Right. This round. This round got. This round got leaked by our For Rock.
- [159:53]
Sam
Oh, yes, they did.
- [159:54]
Jordy
What was that? What do you think?
- [159:56]
John
Who do you think are. For Rock is.
- [159:58]
Jordy
What was the impact? What was the impact from that? Like, did that help Was it helpful at all?
- [160:02]
Sam
Hard to know.
- [160:02]
Jordy
I mean, closed when it.
- [160:04]
Sam
The route. The round had already closed by then, so it didn't really matter. But you know, it was a little bit low on our revenue. So I did retweet.
- [160:11]
Jordy
Oh yeah, you were as they clocked the revenue.
- [160:14]
Sam
They clocked the revenue. Not like crazy amount low, but you definitely seven figures low. And so give me some credit. Yeah, I was like, come on. Like we have the most ARR of all the sales tax startups in the space and the most, most customers, the most money raised. And so you know, you always want to be a little bit cocky there because it's hard to know.
- [160:31]
Jordy
Yeah. What do you like like projecting out a few years like what do you think happens to the category? Can the category support number of players? Do you think some of these venture backed competitors will just end up being like a decent little business?
- [160:47]
Sam
Good question.
- [160:49]
Jordy
Do you think. I mean there's a bunch of massive, massive tax prep, big consulting. So maybe it can support multiple billion dollar players.
- [161:00]
Sam
So when you look in the public markets right. You have companies like Avalara who is taking, you know they're gonna go public again next year. People are saying like 1.1, 1.2 billion of revenue. Thomson Reuters has a subdivision doing like indirect tax. Yeah. Called one source secretly a billion dollars of revenue supposedly. And like nobody, it's like it's company thing nobody's looked at. You know it's like a plug into SAP and Oracle. And so the tool looks insane. Like it's built in the 1970s but you know, if you're some big, if you're IBM, if you're IBM or whoever you might be using it. And there's another one, Vertex Inc. Founded the 1970s, another public company sales tax software. You know it's. But companies like DoorDash still rely on Vertex and they rack physical service in San Francisco to get the right tax rate. I think they updated with like a CD rom.
- [161:48]
Jordy
So are you, how much time are you spending, how much time are you spending basically doing these much bigger high level partnership stuff where you're going to these sort of scaled software companies and saying look the way you're doing this is insane. It's going to take time to switch over. But there's a better way. Is that where you're spending a lot of time?
- [162:06]
Sam
Yeah. So we started more in the kind of SMB E commerce space. And so that's where a lot of our early traction's been. Now we're starting to have conversations and starting to see customers with hundreds of millions of revenue work with a customer of. You guys ate sleep, right? There you go, that's another unicorn. And so we're starting to work with bigger and bigger businesses. Still really focused though on software kind of startups and direct to consumer businesses. We haven't gone and started talking with legacy businesses a lot. That's working with accounting firms and things and like the big four. That just takes a long time. And we've obviously had some of those conversations, but it's just not our focus.
- [162:44]
John
What's the ladder for signing bigger and bigger customers? Do you have a rule of thumb, like never jump more than one order of magnitude? Like if you have a company that's doing 100 million in sales, you feel like, yeah, we could probably do a company with 800 million in sales. But if a company with 8 billion showed up tomorrow, that's gonna be after we sign the $800 million contract. What do you think?
- [163:05]
Sam
Yeah, good question. I think, yeah, order of magnitude seems high. You know, you try to go a little bit conservatively. Right. Because. Because we are running their tax engine and you want to make sure that doesn't go down and lots of money on the line. So we try to have it. Yeah, like 4x, roughly double 4x. Or you scale up with folks. We've never had an issue with outages and stuff. I think in 2025 it's not that hard to scale your servers and these type of things.
- [163:33]
Jordy
But.
- [163:36]
Sam
We do a lot of hype marketing, but we're still kind of, we're very conservative with the way we run our product just because it is a compliance product. And so we'll make a lot of noise, but when it actually comes down to the details, you gotta be pretty uptight.
- [163:46]
John
Is it tricky to use AI in a compliance context? What kind of guardrails do you have to put on the LLMs that are doing work? I can imagine a bunch of places where it's fine to have non deterministic, just data ingest or something where there's a human in the loop. But where have you, where have you shied away from putting it in place?
- [164:08]
Sam
Yeah, what we think about it is like there's still usually a human that does the last mile. So give you a couple examples. Like one is we read for clients and you get physical mail from every state and country and you'll get like a stack every month. And it's exhausting to have to read through all this physical mail. So we get it, we scan it and we have AI take a first pass reading it. And most of the mail, you know, it's like this is like you can.
- [164:30]
Jordy
Take physical mail that was going to somebody like the amount that I would. I actually should find a personal service. Like I never want to get mail. Like at my house, like I used.
- [164:41]
John
A service years ago, you send all your mail there, they scan it and then you get like an email inbox basically. Obviously that's way better now with modern AI and I can imagine that be part of the workflow.
- [164:53]
Sam
Well, it's like you get a letter from California or someone and it's like, oh, sometimes you get a, like I get a, you know, Joel, like Joel of stress. Right? Cortisol. That's the word I was looking for. You read my mind. Yeah, you get a little cortisol from the IRS or whoever it is. But half the time it's like we got one last week for a client. It was breast pumps in California are tax exempt for the next three months. And Lucy probably got this letter. And so you got the stress for nothing. But then sometimes it is maybe a letter, hey, there's a lien on your business. There's a big issue here. And so anything that requires human intervention, we have like a mail team of six people that literally will go, they open up the. They'll read the letters and they'll go and like actually handle the last mile compliance. Similarly, on the tax research side, you know, how do you know that? Juneau. I'm making this up. Juneau. Alaska has a 4 cent soda can tax law. Often it gets passed in some city council notes. And so the way these legacy providers do it is they have hundreds of lawyers and researchers just reading this stuff by hand. And like we hired some. We have a couple lawyers on staff. We asked him like, how would you figure out the taxability of. I think it was like bagels in California. And he's like going to the California control f bread bagel. Like it didn't work. Okay, Baked goods finally worked. And so this is like such an obvious thing where AI is able to go and do that first pass of like we put in bagels a category, okay. It finds all the baked goods. It makes the best first guess. But any single piece of tax research, it's not even that we have like one human lawyer look after we actually have to have two legal opinions on any single fact. But it really makes them like hundred x lawyers. So all the busy work they were wasting their time doing, they don't have to spend time. And then the things that are really complex that requires going through huge adjudications and things like this, they can really use their legal minds for.
- [166:31]
John
Are you rating scrapers yet to scrape every local law that's passed and then at least pipeline that in to say hey, maybe we still need a lawyer to look at this. But we notice that something changed.
- [166:42]
Sam
Exactly. That's 100% what we're doing. Right. So yeah, we have a lot of like this, we have a tax research group and yeah, that's like where a lot of the fun work is getting done.
- [166:49]
Jordy
The real AI research that we need.
- [166:53]
John
This is important.
- [166:54]
Jordy
How are you thinking of scaling headcount? This feels like a business where obviously you probably will grow the team quite a bit post B. But it feels like the kind of business that you should be like, you know, not running in the red for, for 12 years in a row. You can probably start to make real profit pretty good.
- [167:14]
Sam
Hopefully. Yeah. So I mean even like our raise, right? It kept 10% dilution. We could have raised like a bigger, louder round. But I think for us I've seen excess before and like excess hiring. So we don't have. So we started the year 25 folks. We're up to 65.
- [167:31]
John
That's great.
- [167:33]
Sam
But even that everyone, it always feels like tight, you know, there's no office manager, nothing like that. I was plunging the toys yesterday. We'll post some footage someone got of me like they brought. So I think yeah, so there we go. So I think though the point is though, I think we always try to run these things as lean as possible. I think still the hardest area to scale exponentially or like that tends to scale more linearly is your go to market sales team. It's just, you know, we have some self service stuff we're building out but I just think in general AI has not replaced salespeople. It's still a very human endeavor. And so that's probably we and that.
- [168:06]
Jordy
And obviously AI can eat steak, play a round of golf. Not yet gonna stay that way.
- [168:11]
John
We're getting there.
- [168:13]
Jordy
You should cap off the show with us. Let's check the timeline and see if there's any breaking news before the weekend. Usually these companies wait until the second they see we go off the air.
- [168:24]
John
Yeah.
- [168:25]
Jordy
And then they, I mean the big.
- [168:27]
John
News that we haven't covered yet is Nvidia did one of those zombie acquisitions. They bought this company in Fabrica and they paid $900 million. They hired the CF, the CEO and they licensed the startup's technology. The CEO is Roshan Sankar, the guy behind Broadcom's Avgo tomahawk switches. So Nvidia is now getting into like the app.
- [168:48]
Jordy
Some clear chat.
- [168:49]
John
Yes, yes, yes.
- [168:50]
Jordy
Nvidia isn't just buying talent. They're locking down the AI. Data centers, networking backbone.
- [168:55]
John
Well congrats. Dylan Patel is really invested.
- [168:57]
Jordy
Somebody should make it, somebody make an AI text blocker for your browser so that it detects like chat, GPT, gener.
- [169:05]
John
It does feel like it's pretty detectable at this point, but for some reason it's not. What else is is going on in here? Oh, J.P. morgan put out a report on Nvidia, Nvidia's investment in intel. Nvidia put 5 billion in, marked up the US taxpayer, marked up Leopold Aschenbrenner. Let's hear it. Let's hear it for Leopold and the US taxpayer. Fantastic. But JP Morgan's analysis said more value will be is seen accruing to Nvidia in the intel collaboration. There's still no commitment to Intel Foundry. So Intel's still going around trying to get enough of those customers to justify their next big fab. Nvidia is going to benefit a bunch from this. So even though, so it's just interesting because there was one framing of this story which was like Nvidia is making this investment as like an olive branch. They just have 60 billion sitting around. They're gonna throw 5 billion into intel maybe just because they think the stock will go up or maybe they'll basically give 5 billion away as an olive branch to support this American chip manufacturer and then they'll trade something and they'll be able to sell into China or something like that. Well now JP Morgan's here saying that yeah, Nvidia is actually going to get a lot of value out of this deal, which is kind of.
- [170:22]
Jordy
Yeah, or they just, right day after the announcement they just nuke the chart and market sell 5 million. We got a post here from Nat Eliason who I saw in the chat earlier, I don't know here, says the reason you can so easily pull all nighters in college is because you're supposed to be having kids at that age. 25,000 likes. That is a true, true gigabanger. You don't see that very, very often.
- [170:47]
John
Tyler, do you think that DeepMind solved Navier Stokes? You see this post from Google DeepMind. We're announcing a major advance in the study of fluid dynamics with AI. And then they put the water emoji in a joint paper with researchers from Brown University, NYU and Stanford. They're announcing an announcement. They haven't actually announced this. What do you think? Are you familiar with this problem? Can you explain the, the significance of Navier Stokes? Because Sam here says, don't tell me they figured out Navier Stokes.
- [171:19]
Tyler
I don't know that I can do a really good explanation, but I did see in the comments, it's like, I'm pretty like 90% sure. It's not, it's not like some random math problem. Okay, well, not that interesting, so.
- [171:28]
John
Well, still, let's, let's hear it for random math problems. We want to solve all the math problems. Problems. Come on, let's do it. We also have some news in the chat. Netflix is trying to buy Warner Brothers Discovery. We thought. Wait, Ellison was bidding and Netflix might be trying to bid. This is from Puck News. Thank you to regav for sharing that news. Hopefully you guys don't figure out that we'll read basically anything you put in the chat because you could put some crazy fake news in there if you wanted to.
- [171:58]
Jordy
We talked about paramount's up another almost 6% today, 40% over the last month.
- [172:07]
John
We have one Last ad read getbezel.com your bezel concierge is available now to source you any watch on the planet. Seriously, any watch you get a series B, you got to pick something up and get bezel.
- [172:15]
Jordy
Yeah, you deserve a little treat.
- [172:17]
John
And we'll close with this question. How long is this guy messaged me to quote hop on a quick call. How long are those supposed to. Supposed to typically last? Somebody asked you for a quick call. How long do you think that lasts? What's.
- [172:31]
Sam
I mean, it's supposed to be 15, but it always ends up being 30.
- [172:34]
John
15 to 30.
- [172:35]
Jordy
Okay, well, chat GPT says quick call can last anywhere from five minutes to two to four months. Some quick calls have even been going on since the early 1900s with ancestors continuing the conversation to loop in key stakeholders and ensure cross generational synergies with a warm handoff. But this would be a lot easier to to explain over voice mode. Do you have five minutes to hop on a call? This hat. This is clearly photoshopped, but absolutely hilarious.
- [173:02]
John
Hilarious. I wasn't familiar he has access to. Is the ChatGPT 5 instant a real feature? I don't have that. Mine just says ChatGPT5 usually when I.
- [173:12]
Jordy
Go to ChatGPT, but who's getting access to instant?
- [173:14]
John
This seems like some new feature. I don't know if it's all Photoshop, but clearly very clever Photoshop.
- [173:19]
Jordy
You guys should hop on a quick call with the weekend.
- [173:22]
John
With the weekend.
- [173:23]
Jordy
Thank you for hanging out with us. Thank you for joining Sam. It's been an honor to have you and the progress is tremendous. And everybody in the chat, everybody listening. Have a fantastic weekend.
- [173:35]
John
Thank you for tuning in.
- [173:37]
Sam
Thank you.