B (2:48)

And how low can they go? I mean, your story mentions the idea of the one person company. Is that a feasible thing that we're going to be seeing in the future?

C (2:57)

According to some folks in Silicon Valley, it is very possible. You have folks like Sam Altman who has touted this idea, and with the rise of AI agents like OpenClaw, that was very viral a few weeks ago, this personal AI agent that can do a lot of things on your behalf, it's very likely that you have millions of these agents working on behalf of one person and then you start generating the revenue like a billion dollars. And so it's very possible, but there's a lot of technical infrastructure that needs to be built before we get there.

B (3:27)

For companies that have more than one person right now, when they're talking about getting lean, are they talking about keeping their headcounts low from the beginning or are they talking about firing people?

C (3:37)

That is also a possibility. I spoke with a startup called Forethought that realized it needed to pivot and so went through a round of layoffs and is now tracking revenue per headcount. And so you don't need to necessarily be lean from the get go. From what I've heard from these startups, you can also take on the lean Persona.

B (3:54)

Keeping revenue per person high obviously sounds great to investors, but what are some of the drawbacks to keeping your employee base this small?

C (4:03)

One investor that I spoke to said that it can really hamper growth from the start. And investors do also like seeing growth. Efficiency is important, but growth is also essential. And so in areas like sales, enterprise sales, specifically. So selling to large companies, that's a place where you still need people to cater to the whims and demands of large enterprise clients. And so that isn't changing anytime soon. And then another startup I talked to said that they realized their people were under resourced, they were at capacity and so they needed to hire more. So that's certainly a downside, is your people are working the 996 hustle culture and maybe they're not too happy because of it.

B (4:45)

That was WSJ reporter Val. Is AI making your workplace more efficient? If you're a listener on Spotify, be sure to let us know in a comment coming up why a patch of land north of Phoenix has become one of the hottest places for American tech. That's after the break.

A (5:08)

What are the biggest gaps companies Struggle with in AI governance. Here's Workiva's Steve Soder.

D (5:13)

I think it's tempting for organizations to wait for perfect rules. Most employees want clear guardrails because they prevent problems later. The better approach is to act quickly, set reasonable boundaries, monitor what works, and then continuously adjust as AI usage changes. Comfort with change management is really going to become the keystone of how this gets adopted and used effectively.

B (5:40)

For years, the Trump and Biden administrations vowed to beef up America's tech manufacturing capabilities, particularly when it comes to making chips used to power most modern devices. The argument is that doing so would help the US Compete with and insulate itself from the Asian countries that have cornered the market of production. Now it's finally happening. Tech factories are being erected throughout the US And Apple is showing up at the doors as a customer. WSJ reporter Rolf Winkler recently hit the road to get inside these new plants. Rolf, you've recently toured this new chip manufacturing plant being constructed in Arizona. Can you set the scene for us? What did you see and hear happening down there?

E (6:24)

Oh, it's huge. It was just one of the facilities that I toured. We started at a wafer facility in Sherman, Texas. We went to TSMC in Arizona. We saw an Apple Foxconn facility in Houston. It was really quite the trip. But I will say TSMC is the highlight there. It's so big, it's so epic what they're building there in Arizona.

B (6:43)

How big are we talking? Can you put it into context for us right now?

E (6:47)

One chip fab is built and operating. Another one is almost completed. A third is a steel beam skeleton. These are massive, massive buildings. They're building in one spot, but they've acquired a total of 2,000 acres in that area. And, you know, if everything is completed, if all six chip fabs, if the advanced packaging facilities, they do the R and D center, everything is built. You know, we're talking 2,000 acres, which is more than twice the size of Central Park.

B (7:15)

So why is the world's largest chip maker, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, building a base in the American Southwest? How did we get to this point?

E (7:25)

Yeah, I should back up. I mean, the reason we were there is Apple took us on an exclusive tour of some of these facilities. Apple is the world's largest buyer of chips. And so they have a lot of leverage to say we want some of that manufacturing to be in the United States because today it's almost exclusively in Asia, a lot of it in Taiwan. And, you know, pressure from the US Government, plus they want to diversify their supply chain. Says, all right, let's at least move some of this to the United States.

B (7:52)

This site, like you said, it's absolutely humongous. But I wonder how it compares with those in Taiwan that TSMC and other companies operate out there.

E (8:01)

Much smaller, as big as it is, and $165 billion would be one of the largest construction projects in the United States. If they ultimately spend all that and build everything there, it's going to be maybe a decade before this one facility reaches the volumes that TSMC has multiple facilities in Taiwan operating at. And moreover, there's the level of sophistication of the chip that they make in Arizona doesn't match Taiwan. What's made in Arizona is five years behind and will continue to be five years behind because there's no way Taiwan is going to allow the best technology off the island to defend against Chinese invasion. It's called the Silicon Shield. Does China want to invade the island that actually makes the world's most advanced ships, like all of them, that would be ruinous to the world economy. So it's a very good deterrent.

B (8:49)

For the best part of a decade, we've had two presidents pushing for more tech manufacturing in the U.S. what are the main challenges involved with doing so, and what factors are tech companies and other stakeholders pointing to as obstacles in this push?

E (9:05)

Cost and capability. So China has a couple great things going for it. China and India and Vietnam, which are places that Apple has expanded to, they have, first off, very cheap labor. It's gotten more expensive. Labor in China is no longer as cheap. Vietnam and India are more competitive in that regard. But they also have very skilled labor, people machining metal and all of the talented engineering it takes to make the parts. I mean, smartphones are intricate devices, and there's a lot of expertise that China has built up over years that puts them ahead. We just don't have that in the United States anymore. So you combine lots and lots of workers coming from rural areas who are happy to work inside an assembly plant by the hundreds of thousands or millions, and with the skilled labor that exists there. That's an advantage that a place like China has that the US can't match. If you're going to try to do it in the US you wouldn't have the workers, and they would cost more. It's just not plausible to do that unless you wanted to pay $10,000 or whatever for your iPhone.

B (10:14)

So, you know, with all that in mind, I mean, what do you think the story of this plant and the others that you've been touring kind of says about where American companies are at with bringing manufacturing here.

E (10:26)

It shows there's a start, right? There's actually stuff being built. It's the beginning. We have a long way to go and we will probably never catch Asia without a generational investment and focus on this as America. But it's not nothing.

B (10:41)

That was WSJ reporter Rolf Winkler. And that's it for Tech News Briefing. If you're a listener on Spotify, be sure to take this episode's poll or leave us a comment. Today's show was produced by Julie Chang with supervising producer Katie Ferguson. I'm Katie Dayton for the Wall Street Journal. We'll be back later this morning with TMB Tech Minute. Thanks for listening.

A (11:09)

What does proactive AI auditing look like in practice? Here's more from Steve Soder, vice President and Industry Principal at workiva.

D (11:17)

Well, I think auditing has traditionally been a backward looking exercise. The reality, though, is that the value that an AI auditor and this type of governance is going to bring to a business is looking forward. The paradigm shift is being able to proactively address risks by skating to the puck as opposed to ending up being behind the curve as the risks emerge. One is proactive, the other is reactive, and it's the proactivity that's going to make this successful.

A (11:44)

Visit workiva.com to see how top organizations are tackling AI governance and leading with clarity.

C (11:50)

This content was created by custom content from WSJ, a unit of the Wall Street Journal Advertising department.