Nvidia: Car or Not Car? Cursor + xAI, TSMC & ASML, LLM Riddles

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You're watching We are not a car.

We are not a car.

We are not a car. It is Thursday, April 16th though, 2026, and we are live from the TVPN Ultradome, the temple of technology, the fortress

of finance, the capital of cars.

The capital of cars. Uh, absolutely wild podcast between Nvidia's Jensen Wong and Dwar Patel. Uh, so many clips, so much

Dwar Patel. Uh, so many clips, so much debate. Uh, we're going to kick it off

debate. Uh, we're going to kick it off with the question of whether or not Nvidia is a car. First, let me tell you about our lineup because we have an insane group of guests joining us today.

Kicking it off with Ben Smith from Semaphore. I think it's his third time

Semaphore. I think it's his third time on the show. He's live from the Semour World Economy Summit. Uh has convened a massive group of policy makers, CEOs, investors. He's going to give us the

investors. He's going to give us the update on what conversations are happening on the ground. Then Jonathan

Chris is coming on to talk about Starlink for water. former SpaceX

employee just raised $24 million to enable off-grid desalination. One of my favorite topics these days we talked a little bit about it with Peter

Diamandis. Uh then uh Paul Sher Sharer

Diamandis. Uh then uh Paul Sher Sharer from IEN raised 15 million from Benchmark. James Morsey and Kevin

Benchmark. James Morsey and Kevin consumer social play.

Yeah, Kevin Hart's coming on people in that one.

Talk about building a tequila business and and we will be asking him about Jensen.

We've got to ask. I got to know from factory Ulisses. We have a massive 60 46 million

Ulisses. We have a massive 60 46 million fund raise today for underwater and surface drones. Charlie Chver from Expo

surface drones. Charlie Chver from Expo is coming on. Um and uh Victor from Slash is coming on as well. And then

we'll close it out with Theodore from Cognition. So uh big show should be

Cognition. So uh big show should be going uh at least two and a half three hours as usual. Um we will be off tomorrow but uh we'll be back on Monday.

Let me start off with from uh semi analysis because it is a treat.

Wait and pause for a second.

I don't I you know why I was asking you?

Yeah.

Like what app you use to edit videos? It

was to make this exact video and then I saw this and I was like oh I don't need to make it.

Yeah. I don't. You're not talking to somebody who woke up a loser. And that

loser attitude, that loser premise makes no sense to me. We are not We're not a car. We are not a car.

car. We are not a car.

Such a great edit. It's absolutely It's such a good vibe.

And it's so funny because I love to Tokyo Drift. Uh, we're good.

It's funny because it's this new type of vibr where uh the semi analysis team obviously they they recontextualized the two clips and added the the the beat to

get the video going, but that final edit with the cars sort of morphing together like it goes from there's a match cut.

These are match cuts between uh one uh one stick shift move and another or one car drifting and then another car drifting. That takes a really long time.

drifting. That takes a really long time.

somebody clearly made this video just because they're enthusiast of Fast and Furious and then uh the semi- analysis team was able to quickly recontextualize that to be about uh Jensen's answer on

uh Nvidia's moat and the CUDA mode and what's happening with Nvidia. Uh so

let's go through uh this question because it's been it's been hubbing for a while and it's sort of bubbled up most recently uh because there was a whole bunch of news that Mythos might have

been trained on uh Tranium then maybe TPU then maybe Blackwell and sort of a mix and it just feels like more and more of the AI labs are capable of making

other chipsets work. In the early days, it was all about Nvidia and now it feels like the incentives are really high to figure uh other options out and that creates a different competitive dynamic.

So, uh we we can run through uh my thoughts on this and then we can go into the geopolitical considerations as well because that was another fascinating segment of the interview. So, uh Jensen

the CEO of Nvidia spent over 90 minutes uh it was almost two hours when you include the ads too uh in the ring with Dark Cesh Patel. it was electric and the key question at least for the start was

uh whether or not Nvidia is a car. Uh

and I'm only half joking about that. It

sort of was the key question. Uh Nvidia

has been a great uh the market leader for years. During the gaming boom,

for years. During the gaming boom, Nvidia was the gold standard for rendering PC graphics. Uh there was always decent competition from AMD. Uh

but once the AI boom kicked off, the CUDA ecosystem significantly sped up development of AI systems and training of AI models. Uh and for those who aren't familiar, CUDA is a programming

model that enables GPUs to accelerate demanding workloads by parallelizing computation. So uh instead of needing to

computation. So uh instead of needing to work on the very low-level instruction sets, if you are a CUDA kernel engineer, CUDA engineer, uh you can access the all

the power of the GPUs very efficiently while staying up in the more mathematical AI research uh more uh more standard Python uh C++ programming

paradigms. Uh you don't need to dip down too low, but it's getting easier to dip down lower and that's what we're seeing.

So uh that created the cudamote uh because developers were way more productive and the biggest bottleneck to progress was allowing AI researchers to quickly test ideas and scale their experiments up to whole fleets of GPUs

and eventually entire data centers. Uh

so at the time uh researchers really liked CUDA and really liked Nvidia and they did not want to have to spend hours and hours figuring out other hardware

systems. uh they just wanted to run their tests and see if the model was getting better and continue to scale. Uh

but recently the biggest cost center for AI labs flipped from researcher time more or less uh to compute capacity and this creates a much larger economic

incentive to figure out a way to drive down the cost of chips used to train AI models. Uh I wrote about this back in uh

models. Uh I wrote about this back in uh on Tuesday, October 22nd of last year.

So uh almost six months ago. I said not every link in the supply chain of AI can be completely commoditized. Uh Nvidia

has an insane amount of power having ramped fullyear revenue over the last three years from 27 billion to 60 billion to 130 billion. Absolutely

insane topline revenue ramp uh at that scale. And that's why Jensen is so

scale. And that's why Jensen is so confident about how dominant this business is. It's the world's biggest

business is. It's the world's biggest company for a reason. It has been growing spectacularly at immense scale.

Uh and not only did they grow the top line but net profit margin grew insanely. So it grew from 16% to

insanely. So it grew from 16% to you do that when you have pricing power and massive leverage because you know in this case demand massively outstripping uh supply plus developer love and kind

of just like and I believe the forecast net margin was 70 something% we were hearing about 80% potentially and so uh Nvidia you

know the plan and the plan is still to make an incredible amount of profit off of these chips because they are incredibly valuable. Uh but all the

incredibly valuable. Uh but all the hyperscalers and the and the uh and the AI labs um they are sort of incentivized now to form a bit of an anti-nvidia

alliance to commoditize the accelerator market and drive down those margins at least a little bit. And so today the AI chip market is starting to look much less monopolistic. AI coding agents can

less monopolistic. AI coding agents can make it easier to write software that works on non-Cuda chip stacks. Uh, and

the teams behind competing chips have plenty of resources and economic incentives to bring performance in line with Nvidia. Even if it's going to be a

with Nvidia. Even if it's going to be a big hassle, even if you're going to need to spin up a team to get AMD or TPU working, it's going to be worth it because you're talking about billions and billions of dollars spent on chips.

uh for the past few years Nvidia.

Yeah. Another another example of like you know an an instance where an AI lab had so much urgency that they were willing to spend whatever it took was meta

rebuilding like SL.

Yeah. Exactly.

Like they were willing to outspend pretty much any other lab on talent because they didn't have time to find a homegrown talent or go through a normal recruiting process. Especially

recruiting process. Especially considering a lot of those engineers were like happy doing what they were doing.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Um yeah, the incentives flip when you get to this scale or or the incentives just go get so big you can build a whole team for a specific thing, solve any problem. Uh

and so for the past few years, Nvidia has sort of looked like SpaceX's launch program. Uh it's an incredible

program. Uh it's an incredible technology with very few viable uh alternatives. And so that creates great

alternatives. And so that creates great margins as we've seen with SpaceX's launch capacity. and they control

launch capacity. and they control something like 90% of the launch market.

Um, while the products have not degraded, quite the opposite actually, uh, Blackwell and Ver Rubin are incredibly powerful chips. They're

clearly on the the leading edge there.

uh and they have an incredible amount of of uh supply chain guarantees from TSMC and uh across memory and all the other different pieces of supply chain like

Nvidia is ready to make more chips, but increased competition makes the category look a little bit more like the car market than the rocket launch market.

And so that I think is where Jensen is pushing back and saying, "No, there's a lot more that we bring to the table with our customers that don't think of us like a car. This is not, you know, the

difference between a Ford and a Toyota.

They all sort of get you to the same place and you can swap one out. You can

be driving a BMW one day, go to the dealer, turn it in for a Mercedes, and you're going to have a pretty Yeah. The other the other example that I

Yeah. The other the other example that I was using uh w with the team earlier was this idea of like if you're if you're a delivery company like FedEx and you have

a lot of like Ford vans and then uh and then Hyundai comes to you and says, "Hey, you've been spending like $50,000 per Ford van, but like would you

consider a Hyundai van? We'll we'll

we'll sell it to you for uh $35,000. It's just as good." Uh, and

uh $35,000. It's just as good." Uh, and it could be like mildly inconvenient for the company because like they're kind of used to using uh using Ford. They maybe

have like an internal team that does some maintenance. But when you start

some maintenance. But when you start looking at that cost differential, it can start to get pretty interesting to say like, "Hey, we should why don't we try out some Hyundai? Let's like move over some of our routes to Hyundai's and like see how that goes." And they try it

and they're like, "Hey, this actually this works pretty well. Maybe maybe

there's like, you know, higher maintenance, but it actually like maths out." Yeah.

out." Yeah.

And like we're going to actually start adding more Hyundai to our overall fleet. And so Jensen's point on the

fleet. And so Jensen's point on the podcast is that like we're not we're not selling cars, right? This is not like something like you can swap out and Dark

Cash was obviously pushing pushing back.

And for a lot of companies swapping out Nvidia for TPU would be very difficult.

Some workloads that Jensen focus focuses on. He says we're not a tensor

on. He says we're not a tensor processing unit. We're an accelerator.

processing unit. We're an accelerator.

There's a whole bunch of scientific computing workloads that work particularly well with Nvidia. The the

problem that and of course was just saying like yeah well it's perfectly fine to have like a specialized chip for specialized workflows because the big the biggest companies in the world the biggest

buyers here have like a single type of workload that they're trying to do and that's why they're using your competitors.

Yeah. And so, uh, because the AI buildout does not seem to be slowing down as long as power can continue to be brought online and data centers can continue to find towns that will approve of them, uh, demand for chips will

presumably grow. But every chip designer

presumably grow. But every chip designer and AI lab, uh, has to be praying that the net that those net margins come down. How quickly will it happen? Very

down. How quickly will it happen? Very

to very early to tell. Uh, the market did not react negatively to this back and forth uh, in the short term.

Although uh the price of Nvidia has been basically flat since last August and I think that's why Nvidia uh Jensen is trying to sort of like reset on the narrative because it's possible that uh

you know with the there's a lot of movement up and down. They've been sort of flat. There's a desire to sort of

of flat. There's a desire to sort of like reset and and recontextual.

Yeah. Inference demand is scaling. Yeah.

In a very significant way and the Nvidia stock price is relatively flat.

Yeah. And there's and since August there's been time like so many different uh moments where uh fears of the AI bubble, fears of the products not

finding product market fit that revenue might stagnate. Like we've seen a ton of

might stagnate. Like we've seen a ton of bullish signals for like AI demand broadly. Demand is there. And so if

broadly. Demand is there. And so if you're a supplier, you should also be uh going up, but there's been this overhang of what will happen to margins and market structure. And so uh that is what

market structure. And so uh that is what people are going back and forth on.

Tyler, did you have anything else to to thoughts on this? Like

um I mean like personally I think I I probably am more on the Dores Cesh side where like uh yeah I mean at some point like these margins are so high there's so much opportunity here. Uh like we we've seen

opportunity here. Uh like we we've seen that like actually you know if you're a big lab you actually can just like put a maybe you know it's a lot of resources but you actually can just like train a model on a different architecture. Uh

you can serve them on a different architecture like you actually can figure these things out. As models get better, you can, you know, you can go lower and lower lower on the stack.

Yeah. You can, you know, you can write the kernels. Yeah. Semi-autonomously,

the kernels. Yeah. Semi-autonomously,

these things get faster and faster. And

it's like I I I'm probably much more on the Doorork catch side.

Yeah. It'll be interesting to see how Grock fits into this. the new CPU integration between different pieces of the puzzle like uh and then also I mean

uh Doresh makes this point that the the supply agreements that Nvidia has might be a bit of a moat for the next few years while uh TSMC line time is so constricted.

Yeah. But even then like uh you know Jensen was saying the the the kind of supply constraints this is like a two to three year problem after that like you can just solve these things. Yeah. So

it's like almost like I don't know how to think about this because you know to me it seems like yeah so much of the value of Nvidia is just like they have such an incredible relationship with TSMC but if and it's so valuable because of

how constrained it is. Um but if that kind of constraint is is maybe going to you know go away to some extent at TSMC.

Yeah that's what he says like that they're going to increase you know they can build a new fab in whatever three three years. I mean the big the big the

three years. I mean the big the big the big takeaway from the conversation is like you have one person who seems incredibly AGI pilt which is Darkash and then you have Jensen who doesn't seem

AGI pilt in that sense at all right he uh Darcash asks about um you know he was kind of getting at early on the idea of like can can will you be able to just

like prompt your way to Nvidia chips he's like you basically sell software um and uh he didn't put it quite as aggressively.

But yeah.

Yeah, that that's of course like you know more more on the nose, but Jensen was basically like no I don't I don't think that'll happen. And then and then when you get to the whole geopolitical

conversation too again it's like Daresh is like you're selling nukes and um Jensen is in my view like I'm selling computers. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

computers. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Um and uh that that was like the big rift. It was like these two kind of

rift. It was like these two kind of totally conflicting world views and um it made for some very pay-per-view.

It was a pay-per-view. It should have been a paper.

Um yeah. Uh Shriram Krishnan summed it up pretty well. He said, "Every person here's reaction to the Jensen plus Darkeesh podcast can be extrapolated directly from whether they believe in

the Frontier Labs achieving short timelines for AGI, ASI. If you believe in the labs achieving RSI uh and then uh AGI ASI for some definition of all three

in the next few years, you're probably sympathetic to the frame Dorcash adopts.

If not, you're probably more sympathetic to the arguments from Jensen. And so, um uh we can go into the export controls next and talk about that. uh uh

Metacritic Capital sort of summed up a little bit of uh the uh why uh just Jensen's rhetoric and how he wasn't conceding a lot of things. Dean Ball

said Doresh Jensen reveals how inconsistent and unbattle tested AI acceleration talking points are especially when they're filtered through the prisms of corporate comms and mass politics. Uh strategically coherent

politics. Uh strategically coherent acceleration accelerationism is possible. He says I try uh but not

possible. He says I try uh but not currently prevalent. And Metacritic

currently prevalent. And Metacritic Capital says, "The problem is that Jensen doesn't concede anything. Compute

spending going to the moon. One trillion

revenue in sight. Models keep getting better. No unemployment. Software codes

better. No unemployment. Software codes

are good. Other Western accelerators are bad. Chinese competitors are good.

bad. Chinese competitors are good.

NVIDIA makes token costs decline 90% per year. But Chinese compute scientists are

year. But Chinese compute scientists are capable of making all the necessary algorithmic improvements. He also can't

algorithmic improvements. He also can't be AGI pilled enough because at the end of the day, he is an intellectual property company in the business of sending a file to TSMC. I think it's part of Taiwanese culture to want to be loyal to all clients and don't have

favorite winners. He doesn't want to

favorite winners. He doesn't want to betray his software co- customers. He

has antitrust concerns.

Yeah. He was making the bold case for software, which was that AI agents are going to use tools. So, he's like there's going to be more users of software than ever, which is something I'm like somewhat

sympathetic to, but uh yeah, it it definitely it's still very easy to to take the the counter the flip side of that. Yeah. Um well

let's play uh the distilled recap from Dwaresh Patel of the back and forth with Jensen on export controls. It's about

four minutes and we'll we'll watch this and then discuss. So

if Chinese companies and Chinese labs and the Chinese government had access to the AI chips to train a model like claude mythos with these cyber offensive capabilities and run millions of instances of it with more compute. The

question is oh is that a threat to American companies to American national security? First of all, um, Mythos was,

security? First of all, um, Mythos was, uh, trained on fairly mundane capacity and a fairly mundane amount of it by an extraordinary company. And so the amount

extraordinary company. And so the amount of capacity and the type of compute that's it was trained on is abundantly available in China. And so you just have to first realize that chips exist in

China. They manufacture 60% of the

China. They manufacture 60% of the world's mainstream chips, maybe more.

It's a very large industry for them.

They have some of the world's greatest computer scientists, as you know. Most

of the AI researchers in all of these AI labs, most of them are Chinese. They

have 50% of the world's AI researchers.

And so the question is if you're concerned about them, considering all the assets they already have, they have an abundance of energy. They have plenty of chips. They got most of the AI

of chips. They got most of the AI researchers. If you're worried about

researchers. If you're worried about them, what is the best way to create a safe world? Well, victimizing them um uh

safe world? Well, victimizing them um uh turning them into an enemy uh likely isn't the best answer. They are an adversary. We want the United States to

adversary. We want the United States to win. But I think having a having a

win. But I think having a having a dialogue and having research dialogue is probably the safest thing to do. This is

an area that that is glaringly missing because of our current attitude about China as an adversary. It is essential that our AI researchers and their AI researchers are actually talking. It is

essential that we try to both agree on what not to use the AI for. with respect

to China. We want to have of course we want United States to have as much computing as possible. We want we're limited by energy. Um but you know we got a lot of people working on that and

we we had to not make energy a a bottleneck for our our country. But what

we also want is we want to make sure that all the AI developers in the world are developing on the American tech stack and making the contributions the advancements of AI especially when it's

open source available to the American ecosystem. And it would be extremely

ecosystem. And it would be extremely foolish to create two ecosystems. the open source ecosystem and it only runs on the Chinese tech tech foreign tech

stack and a closed ecosystem and that runs on the American tech stack. I think

that that would be that would be a horrible outcome for United States. I

mean I think the concern going back to the flop difference and the hacking is yes they have compute but there's some estimates that because they're at 7 nanometer uh they don't have UV because

of chip making export controls the amount of flops they're about to actually produce they have like oneten the amount of flops that the US has and so with that could they train eventually

a model like mythos yes but the question is because we have more flops American labs are able to get to these level capabilities first because Enthropic got to it first. They say, "Okay, we're going to hold on to it for a month while

all these American companies, we give them access to it, they're going to patch up all their vulnerabilities and now we release it." Furthermore, if they even if they trained a model like this, the ability to deploy it at scale, you know, if you had a cyber hacker, it's

much more dangerous if they have a million of them versus a thousand of them. So that inference compute really

them. So that inference compute really matters a lot. In fact, the fact that they have so many researchers who are so good is the thing that makes it so scary because what is it that makes those engineer researchers more productive is compute.

We should always be first and we should always have more. But in in order for that outcome for you to to what you described to be true, uh you have to take it to the extremes. They have to have no compute. And if they have some

compute, the question is how much is needed. The amount of compute they have

needed. The amount of compute they have in China is enormous.

is I mean you're talking about the country is the second largest computing market in the world. If they want to deploy aggregate their compute they got plenty of compute to aggregate.

Very very uh tense back and forth. Dean

Ball says it's a shame Jensen mostly fails here because the monoculture on export controls is bad. If you're a young AI policy researcher trying to make a name for yourself, it's almost

impossible to be taken seriously unless you are pro-export controls, monocultures are usually bad. And I I am sympathetic to Doresh's points there for

sure. Um especially on the inference

sure. Um especially on the inference side. uh even if models exist in both

side. uh even if models exist in both worlds like having a whole bunch of you know good guy compute that can go and patch bugs while the amount of attackers

is much smaller. It's just a matter of you know how many you know resources you have on each side. That's a great point.

uh the only the only thing that they are like talking around is just Taiwan as a particular you know particular turning point and

and how their various positions flow through to Taiwan policy and where the uh how the China stance on Taiwan is something that I've always puzzled and I

wish that both of them had articulated their uh sort of philosophy on actually wargaming out what export port controls due to likelihood of of Taiwan uh

intervention or blockade or anything like that. I don't exactly know. I I've

like that. I don't exactly know. I I've

been trying to like work through it, but I don't have a complete thesis, but uh we've been we've been debating it back and forth all day. I don't know if you have a strong take on any of this, Jordy.

Uh I appreciate Matt Zitelland's point.

I kind of appreciate that Jensen Hong seems relatively normal about non-b businessiness stuff compared to other tech founder CEO types, but then when it comes to Nvidia's actual operations, he's a complete sicko.

Yeah. Yeah. I saw a couple takes around this that uh that that he had like some very very uh very very strong points uh if you're deeper in the supply chain. I

haven't I I I I couldn't uh really assess how he did on that, but some people were. There were definitely

people were. There were definitely people that were in uh Jensen's camp. Uh

it was it was divided, which I think is why this went so viral. Uh Elliot Arlege uh summed it up uh here. Jensen Wong on Dwaresh today. Most combative interview

Dwaresh today. Most combative interview he's done in a while. Uh the biggest regret not funding.

Has there been a more combative interview ever with Jensen? It seems

unlikely.

I think so. No.

And I'm trying to think of just like in terms of combative like people were sort of comping this to like the Elon Door Cash interview which wasn't combative

but it was more uh just like digging into all the different projects and trying to uh you know elucidate the the strategy and how they all fit together.

There's actually some interesting updates on where XAI might be going with a partnership with Cursor that we can go into. Um there is there is some funny

into. Um there is there is some funny details in here. Uh, apparently the Larry and Elon begged Jensen for GPUs at dinner story. That never happened. We

dinner story. That never happened. We

absolutely had dinner. At no time did they beg for GPUs. Uh, which is funny.

Uh, I I wonder what would happen. Uh,

quietly folded Grock into the CUDA ecosystem. Reason premium ASP tokens

ecosystem. Reason premium ASP tokens where latency beats throughput. Higher

throughput used to always win. That

trade-off has bent though uh, bent enough that Nvidia is expanding the paro frontier towards fast, expensive, low throughput. And it will be interesting

throughput. And it will be interesting to see how all of that comes together.

On ASIC cost savings, Nvidia margin is 70%. ASIC margin is 65%. What are you

70%. ASIC margin is 65%. What are you really saving? Someone still pays

really saving? Someone still pays Broadcom uh open challenge to uh Google and AWS. Publish TPU and Tranium on ML

and AWS. Publish TPU and Tranium on ML Perf and Inference Max. I would welcome Trrenium to demonstrate their 40% claim.

And so, uh, Jensen threw down the gauntlet and said, uh, to Amazon and Google, head over to semi analysis and put your chips on inference max so that they can be properly benchmarked so we can see.

Yeah, that was a good that was a very very good call out.

Yeah. Yeah. It was smart. I've

just I just don't know why they don't they don't go over and uh I've been excited inference maxing to see the the the inference max results. Uh uh Darkh posted uh tomorrow

results. Uh uh Darkh posted uh tomorrow and it's him and Jensen standing next to each other and Alex Vulkov said, "Hey, Darwash, was this picture taken before or after the pod?" Uh because it does

feel like it was a tense situation.

Although, you know, to to both of their credit, like uh Jensen, it felt like he loved being in the arena as getting asked hard questions, like working through this. There's this back and

through this. There's this back and forth where uh where Jensen's pushing back and Daresh says, "Ah, I can drop it." And he says, "You don't need to

it." And he says, "You don't need to drop it. I'm I'm enjoying this like like

drop it. I'm I'm enjoying this like like let's let's hash this out. And I thought that was I thought that was uh very uh very diplomatic and and and just good

overall. Uh well uh Intel is up on the

overall. Uh well uh Intel is up on the news uh up 4% today, 10% over the past five days. Uh almost at all-time highs.

five days. Uh almost at all-time highs.

I think we're very close to the 2000 peak for Intel. Uh which it was also around where they were trading in 2021.

um $67 a share, $330 billion company. Uh

clearly uh with with all of this backdrop and just the idea of more chips and maybe the CUDA ecosystem being something that you can work around, uh

can an American fab run by Intel produce a chip that's viable for an AI lab? It

feels like increasingly yes. That's

certainly the argument that's being put forth by Dwaresh and uh it would be very exciting. I think it's something that

exciting. I think it's something that every everyone would support an Intel resurgence and uh there's some there's some news around Terraab potentially getting involved. Uh but first, let's

getting involved. Uh but first, let's start with the scoop from Grace K over at Business Insider. Uh she says, "Scoop, cursor plans to use XAI's infrastructure to train its Composer 2.5

code."

code." Where's the golden scoop, Tyler?

According to people familiar with the matter, uh Cursor will you will use tens of thousands of XAI's GPUs. They said

and we got a scoop for Grace K.

This one's going to Grace. Grace,

congratulations.

You win the golden scoop. The golden

scoop.

Congratulations.

Uh, now interesting to see something we talked about uh probably midway through last year. XAI's, you know, shown a

last year. XAI's, you know, shown a tremendous ability to um on on the kind of infrastructure uh data center side spinning up a a huge amount of compute

very very quickly ahead of any timeline that um any reasonable party would have probably expected. um and demand hasn't

probably expected. um and demand hasn't exactly uh followed in the way that they would have liked and so uh opening that up to a company like Curser who has all the demand and what they really need is

their own um is their own model.

Yeah. It was also interesting because I don't know if uh if it was thrown out as a potential project for other companies.

I feel like MSL mentioned it at some point, maybe OpenAI, but there was uh there was some talk of like, okay, if you're marshalling all this compute and you wind up with too much, like what do

you do then? Uh and uh the the idea of becoming a cloud provider uh if you have a if you have a data center and uh everything and that's been the big the big question of like, you know, with with everything

that SpaceX is doing and now Terra Fab, they're going to be creating all of this capacity. Yep. But what is the what is

capacity. Yep. But what is the what is the like what where's the demand for that capacity going to come from right uh and so you could imagine a world in the future where if SpaceX has a bunch

of space data centers they open up that capacity to a bunch of companies other than Yep just uh Elon Inc. So, uh, Grace says, "The setup

effectively turns XAI into a kind of cloud provider by renting some of its GPUs to other country, uh, companies.

XAI could start generating revenue from its massive infrastructure while still developing its own AI models. The

arrangement could help the company offset the costs of building and operating data centers while also deepening ties with a startup that has access to valuable coding data. And so,

there could be some sort of trade deal going on. Ed Lello at Bloomberg has a

going on. Ed Lello at Bloomberg has a report from uh the Terra Fab. Uh Mus

team is actively requesting price quotes and delivery timelines for a wide range of chipmaking equipment, photo masks, substrates, etchers, dep uh deposition, cleaning, testing tools according to

sources. Uh Elon Musk lieutenants have

sources. Uh Elon Musk lieutenants have reached out to chip industry suppliers for his envisioned terraab project. Uh

remember he was pictured with Lip Bhutan from Intel I think last week. Uh early

steps in an audacious and likely arduous attempt to break into the production of cutting edge chips. That is a very very tall order. But uh maybe there's never

tall order. But uh maybe there's never been a better time to break into the uh into uh the cutting edge chip market

given that uh the the the you you you don't need to uh I mean you sort of need to reinvent CUDA but it's becoming it's becoming easier potentially. Uh that

that is the story. Uh well there are two big releases from uh from uh Anthropic and OpenAI today. Uh Claude announced uh

Claude Opus 4.7, our most capable opus model yet. It handles long running tasks

model yet. It handles long running tasks with more rigor, follows instructions more precisely and verifies its own outputs before reporting back. You can

hand off your hardest work with less supervision, they say. Uh very good score on SWEBench Pro, 64.3%.

Uh excited to test it. Uh they say Opus 4.7 has substantially better vision. It

can see images at three times the resolution and produce higher quality interfaces, slides, and docs. As a

result on the API, the new X high effort level between high and max gives you finer control over reasoning and latency on hard problems. I'm excited to see how these do on ARC AGI V3.

I think the most notable thing here is you have a model a model card that shows a model that's not publicly accessible.

Yeah. Yeah. They share the mythos benchmark. So

benchmark. So mythos moging Opus 4.7 just sitting there, but of course uh unless you're one of uh select companies, uh you won't

be getting access to it at least yet.

Well, Addi gave uh Opus 4.7 the tiny man bench, which is a very funny one where you ask the model, "I am a tiny man.

When my son was born, they handed me to him." And uh Opus 4.7, that's a nice

him." And uh Opus 4.7, that's a nice little riddle. The answer is a bar of

little riddle. The answer is a bar of soap. No, wait. Let me think about it.

soap. No, wait. Let me think about it.

tiny man handed to him when his son was born. This sounds like it's pointing to

born. This sounds like it's pointing to a cigar. The tradition of handing out

a cigar. The tradition of handing out cigars when a baby is born and a cigar can be thought as a little man-shaped object. That is very very odd. Um this

object. That is very very odd. Um this

this is a I mean this is like the new how many Rs in strawberry uh where all the models seem to have uh weird results for this. Um we of course have shrimp

for this. Um we of course have shrimp fried rice bench which uh no one has really solved. Even uh just humor bench

really solved. Even uh just humor bench and tell us a novel joke has been uh increasingly difficult for these uh for these companies. Uh

these companies. Uh yeah, I think I think going to have to wait and see on Opus 47 how what what what the reactions are. Um I will be

keeping an eye on Dan Shipper uh who is always does great um analysis uh immediately after launch.

Yeah.

Yeah. I mean I I feel like generally benchmarks are like almost completely meaningless at this point. Uh like

there's so many like open source models where they can like really I don't I don't even know if they're like actually benchmaxing.

Yeah.

But like you just talk to the model for a while and you say like okay this is a good model. Okay. Or this is not a good

good model. Okay. Or this is not a good model. like it's very hard um it's very

model. like it's very hard um it's very hard to get like a a you know quantifiable signal at this point.

Yeah. I mean increasingly I mean the it feels like all of these models will be uh sort of like tested through like enterprise like rollouts and um you'll

just do a demo project swap in something test this model test that model just see okay well our goal was to deliver value and we had some KPI like reduce cost

increase sales like were were we successful when we implemented this model rolled it out to our team used it for a couple weeks did we see a tangible result or not. That's at the end of the day all that matters for businesses. So

I could imagine that that's where all of this goes. Well, um, OpenAI announced

this goes. Well, um, OpenAI announced codecs for almost everything. Uh, it can use apps on your Mac, connect to more of your tools, create images, learn from

previous actions, remember how you like to work and take on ongoing and repeatable tasks. Uh, with computer use

repeatable tasks. Uh, with computer use on Mac OS, Codeex can now use any app by seeing, clicking, and typing with its own cursor. It runs in the background

own cursor. It runs in the background without taking over your computer. Uh

working on tasks like front-end iteration, app testing, or any workflow that doesn't expose an API. Uh you can now generate and iterate on images with GPT image 1.5 and codecs to create

front-end designs, mockups, game assets, and more without leaving your workflow.

Usage is included in your chat account.

No API needed. A automations can now run in the same thread. Lots of updates here. Uh and Tibo says codecs just got a

here. Uh and Tibo says codecs just got a lot more powerful. computer use, inapp browser, uh, image generation, editing, 90 plus new plugins to connect everything, multi- terminal, SSH, lots

and lots of stuff. So, go give it a test. Go take it for a spin. Uh,

test. Go take it for a spin. Uh,

openai.com, of course. Uh, and you can download it

of course. Uh, and you can download it for Mac OS. Um, well, speaking of websites, DJB went to the Oreo website and hit accept all cookies. Now, we

wait. I love this. Uh, very funny. Uh,

what what else is going on in the timeline? Uh, the West creates the

timeline? Uh, the West creates the internet. Try nailing that jello to the

internet. Try nailing that jello to the wall. CCP nails it. The West creates

wall. CCP nails it. The West creates LLM. All right, try nailing this. And

LLM. All right, try nailing this. And

the CCP picks up a hammer. Uh, there's a piece in the Wall Street Journal opinion section. AI is bound to subvert

section. AI is bound to subvert communism. Uh this is a very contrarian

communism. Uh this is a very contrarian take because people uh at least with the internet there was the the the the perception of like decentralization,

permissionlessness, uh anonymity, a lot of things that felt very democratic. Uh

AI is very centralizing by default. This

is the teal take of like AI is communist and uh and crypto is is libertarian. And

so, uh, this is this is a pretty wild thing to argue, but, you know, read read the opinion piece and see what they say.

Uh, the the nail nailing jello to a wall, I believe that's from the Clinton administration. Uh, the idea that, uh,

administration. Uh, the idea that, uh, the internet would spread so widely that, uh, the Chinese Communist Party would not be able to control the population, everyone would be coordinating, it'd be sort of like an

Arab Spring type moment. But of course the firewalls went up, the surveillance happened and uh nothing really changed and the communist party seems stronger than ever. But this does sort of

than ever. But this does sort of undergur uh a lot of what Dark Cesh has been saying about uh the the the risk of of China and having strong AI and

stronger control over the population. Um

it's always hard to get a read on exactly how things are rolling out in China. There's some people that seem to

China. There's some people that seem to like it over there. Of course, Doresh took a whole trip to China and made it back. Okay, so um it's not all doom and

back. Okay, so um it's not all doom and gloom, but uh there are uh it is a it's a tricky tricky thing to argue, but we'll see. Um

we'll see. Um YouTube, according to the Verge, now lets you turn off shorts.

It is getting community noted.

What does the community note say?

This feature is a new setting for YouTube time management. Does not hide the shorts tab in the app, nor does it hide shorts from appearing in recommendations when set to off. The

only change is that a dismissible warning screen will appear when the shorts tab is selected. So

Oh, interesting.

Yeah, I've tried I've tried I I land on YouTube on my phone, it immediately recommends a bunch of shorts. You can

hit the three dots.

Yeah.

And uh say like show me less shorts. And

that feature does not work at all. And I

don't watch shorts on you like shorts.

And I don't watch shorts uh on YouTube.

The shorts in the feed have been a lot.

I wonder if they're seeing Yeah. I mean,

they must just be seeing data that shows that the shorts are more retentive or keep people on the Well, there are when you're using YouTube as a video search engine, there are so many there are so many types of

searches where it can be vastly preferable to watch a 60-second video on something. So, an example is like if you're doing research on cars.

Yep. and uh you want to like quickly understand how the seating uh I'm I I need to get a new like family car, right? So, I've been looking up

right? So, I've been looking up different cars, trying to get a sense of like how spacious the cabin is, what what the seating arrangement is like.

And so, I'd rather just click into a short and just get a quick 60-second overview and then bounce. I don't need to see like a 15-minute review of the entire car. Uh but uh yeah, it's

entire car. Uh but uh yeah, it's that YouTube shorts creator Forest Auto Reviews sort of pioneered the the perfect 60-second car review where he

talks really really fast and says like inside you get Apple CarPlay and Android Auto and uh you know the the heater heated leather and massaging seats and vinyl on the dash and carbon fiber here

and he sort of runs through the whole car in 60 seconds. Shows you how fast it takes off if it's a fast car. Opens the

door. shows you all the features and it's sort of like a 20-minute Doug Jiro video cut down to 60 seconds, which of course is is doing very well. Uh Doug's

response has been to create one minute cutdowns of his content and so you can enjoy that as a short as well if you want. Uh, but if you do want to turn off

want. Uh, but if you do want to turn off shorts on the YouTube feed, uh, the way to do it is to uninstall the app, use the mobile version, and then get a plugin that that there's an extension

for Safari, I think, that will, uh, just go and and remove the actual shorts that as they pop up. But, uh, it's a hassle and it's slower than using the app. So,

hopefully, uh, this this feature becomes more real in the future since it does seem like some things that people are demanding. But uh always tricky to ask a

demanding. But uh always tricky to ask a a platform to uh to give you an option that would in in theory increase churn.

Uh very very tricky. Uh well we have uh the beginning of our guest lineup be starting now. We have Ben Smith from

starting now. We have Ben Smith from Semaphore. He is the editor-inchief.

Semaphore. He is the editor-inchief.

He's in the waiting room and let's bring him in to the TV ultra. Ben, how are you doing?

What's going on?

Doing great. Can you guys hear me? All

right.

We can hear you. We can see you but we don't know where you are. You're looking

very sharp.

Dapper I might say.

Thank you. That's you know we're convening a biggest gathering of business leaders in the US this year here at Seaphore World Economy. Um

how many business leaders is that?

Yeah. How many people are attending?

500 global CEOs and then lots of political figures from the US and Europe.

Had Scott Bessent earlier. We got uh Lutnik later. I assume they all just

Lutnik later. I assume they all just kind of came over from Hillen Valley.

Yeah, we do our best.

That's great. Uh what uh what's the structure of the conference? It's a few days. Are there specific breakout

days. Are there specific breakout sessions, talk tracks, uh certain themes, or is it sort of more driven by the individual who's on stage at the moment?

You know, it's it's five days, three consecutive sta three simultaneous stages, a bunch of really interesting kind of Chattam House rules, breakfasts and dinners and things like that. Um and

you I mean the core topic is really I mean kind of where we live is the intersection of politics and and sort of political power and finance and technology and so I mean that's that that is what that is

what people here are obsessed with.

Yeah. And and within that intersection what are the top uh topics that people are discussing in particular? Obviously

the the the conflict in the Middle East is big but then AI is big. What what's

actually driving the conversation today?

you know, every conversation winds up coming back to AI really.

Um, and yeah, and I think whether that's, you know, Bessan, actually I had an interesting conversation with Besson on stage where he he really downplayed the conflict with anthropic. Okay. You

said they have they have kind of like some minor technical issue with the Department of War. The Treasury is working with them to make sure, you know, the banks don't go down.

Sure. Um but just you know I think there's there's just a sense in particular that like really big enterprises and the kind of big brand name American companies are the ones most at risk. Yeah.

Uh in the transition and and I think people who work for those companies who advise them who compete with them are thinking a lot about that.

Yeah. What about on the labor side of big business? We've seen some reasonable

big business? We've seen some reasonable strength in the job market recently. At

the same time there's a lot of layoffs going on. And how are people grappling

going on. And how are people grappling with the uh with the the unemployment situation in the economy?

Yeah. I mean, you know, the numbers are good.

Yeah.

And yet there is this sense, you know, among the American public that AI basically exists to put everybody out of work and they hate it.

Yeah.

And so that like that's lingering over over things. And I do think there's also

over things. And I do think there's also a sense that like the class of 2026 is not a great time to get out of college.

Yeah. and and and I don't I think there is a I would say like both like kind of authentic nervousness about you know what is everybody's labor force going to look like because of course class 2026 are also the ones who aren't native to these tools.

Yeah.

And are the ones you ought to be hiring.

Yeah.

Um and then also of like are they going to come and chop everybody's heads off when they realize they aren't getting jobs. So I would say those two

jobs. So I would say those two two competing questions about the youth. Has there

been any discussion around uh resolutions to that or economic policy that can strengthen the safety net or or

you know deal with taxes or more weekends or uh anything that can sort of offset the anxiety about weakening labor markets? You know, every member of

markets? You know, every member of Congress is like thinking about this all the time, taking questions about it all the time, and yet also aware that this is an institution that spent like 20 years talking about regulating social

media and only now is sort of getting to it, but most of it's happening in the states. Yeah.

states. Yeah.

And so I think there's a lot of pessimism that Washington will act. Um,

but I think there's also is a sense that I think a lot of companies are seeing unexpected jobs coming out of AI. I talked to somebody who operates like basically the sort of call center dealing with

financial fraud that you would think would really get wiped out by AI. But

the good news is there is so much more financial fraud being driven by AI that they're keeping people very very busy.

That's you can you can see something like that emerging in in the legal space is like you just get way more contracts because contracts are easier to create or you get more lawsuits. So a lawyer is

spending less time per lawsuit, but there's a lot more of them to work on.

And so you still have full the good news.

Yeah. How are you using AI in the newsroom at Semaphore? Are there I imagine you're not just writing AI articles, but are is there internal tooling that's been built? Are you

understand?

Well, I feel like you guys are well set up for this because you're there's like, hey, here here are the facts and then here's like takes and like separating those two things out. Yeah,

I don't care what you use here. I want I want the takes to be generally pretty organic and coming from the author. But

how do you think about it?

Yeah, you know, we use it and it's interesting. I think like a lot of

interesting. I think like a lot of media, there's these two sort of huge trends. One is AI and automation and the

trends. One is AI and automation and the other is creators and individual connection. And people do not want AI in

connection. And people do not want AI in the way of that. I mean, when you when they realize that you're just avatars, you're going to be in trouble. And um

and and so we use it all all over the place behind the scenes to try to like help amplify our journalists. Um I I vibe coded something that predicts mean tweets about stories that I'm personally

very proud of. Though I cannot say that I've driven wide adoption with my with my team.

Um that feels like that would just create like anxiety.

If you want to get pre-dunked on, use this tool.

That is what the tool I called it.

Pre-dunk.

No way.

Um they spent a whole day. It's in

Google Appcript. I love it.

I would say more more usefully one of my colleagues because actually one of the challenges with an event like this is you've got three simultaneous stages and the reporter doing who the reporter who's most qualified to write the story or even to know what's news is often the

same one doing the interview and sitting on stage.

Sure. Sure. And so we did build a great tool that, you know, just takes the transcript of every interview instantly and pops out what's new.

So that a reporter who's maybe more of a generalist totally, we'll know, oh yeah, this is news, this isn't, which is incredibly useful. And

we, you know, obviously we check it, but that's a great starting point.

Yeah. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense because there's so many times when people fall back to a talking point, but you're looking for something that's actually novel or a new data point or a new uh prediction or something

announcement that just might sneak in.

got this like how do you deal that you do an interview and you think there's one part that's interesting but you're on the air and something else goes viral right?

Totally. Totally. Yeah. And we've and we I that's a very interesting uh tool. We

should probably think about integrating something like that because we Yeah.

We've found that it's very very hard to predict even with the best AI tools um what content what clips will actually perform what is news. And we see a lot

of coverage downstream of our show where something that's said on our show will then turn into coverage on other news sites and uh we've never really figured out how to grapple with all of that. But

that's that's Yeah. And it's not just performance,

Yeah. And it's not just performance, right? Like it's also you might like

right? Like it's also you might like think this is the new part, this is the interesting part, but if you're doing it live, it just sort of floats by.

Yeah.

So that's been that's probably the thing that I mean just this week that I'm most kind of jazzed about.

What about overall market sentiment?

JD Capaludo who made it. Sorry. Um,

what about overall market sentiment? I

don't think, uh, if you told me last year we would be, you know, over a month into a war with Iran and the S&P 500 would be at a record high, I would not

have believed you.

Yeah. I mean, it's amazing. And the, you know, people who CEOs, people who show up at events like this tend to be optimistic people. It's sort of a job

optimistic people. It's sort of a job quality and so there is like a pretty positive vibe here and the driven sort of parallels and is driven by the markets. One thing about Washington now

markets. One thing about Washington now though is there's also a lot of self-censorship and there's a real difference between what people say in public and what they say in private. And I think, you know, in in our kind of Chattam House rule

gatherings, you're hearing a lot more concern about a kind of but just about the long-term direction of of US power, the US economy, the US markets, people hedging

away and no one's saying that stuff in public.

Yeah. Well,

yeah. biggest biggest ever disconnect in my life between like group chat conversations and like timeline conversations among among people who have something to lose is how I

would put it.

Um well yeah interesting times. Uh hopefully it uh

interesting times. Uh hopefully it uh what's the plan to turn the synthesis of what you're hearing in the Chattam House context into uh reporting or content?

Will you be writing opeds that are informed by what you learned? How how do you think about actually distributing that information?

I mean, the basic Chattam House rule is that you can steal the ideas and pass them off as your own, but you're not allowed to contribute them. So, that's

the plan.

Okay. Well, we'll look forward to it.

Uh, I'm sure everyone can follow along at some of Thank you so much for coming on the show, uh, next year. I'd love to. Yeah, that'll be

next year. I'd love to. Yeah, that'll be fantastic.

Uh, have a great rest of your day. Have

a great rest of the conference and congratulations.

You guys, too. Thanks for having me.

We'll talk to you soon.

Up next we have Jonathan Chris from Vital Life working on desalination with a fantastic new fundraising round.

Jonathan, welcome to the show. How are

you?

I'm doing fantastic. How you guys doing?

Uh we're great. I'm I'm so excited to talk to you.

Insanely fired up. We were talking Yeah.

We were talking with Peter Diamandis about desalination. And it's always been

about desalination. And it's always been such a fascinating uh just not even a sci-fi technology, but just a just an underutilized technology that has

incredible uh promise, but uh hasn't felt like it's hit the takeoff that it needed to. And uh so excited to hear

needed to. And uh so excited to hear your plan. But why don't you kick us off

your plan. But why don't you kick us off with an introduction on yourself and the company and how you're thinking about things?

Yeah, so uh I'm John, CEO and founder. I

was at SpaceX for uh 13 years before this. Started off in Dragon

this. Started off in Dragon uh started off in Dragon. Uh Elon was like stopped using uh Dragons or building Dragons idiots and I was like oh man I'll figure that out boss.

Started off with a a small team to go figure out Dragon reuse.

Yeah.

Uh the whole program became reuse vehicle. So just took over as product

vehicle. So just took over as product manager re and then kind of got bored of spaceships wanted to take on a new challenge. uh jumped over the Starlink

challenge. uh jumped over the Starlink team to figure out rate manufacturing where we got really plugged in on how you design for really high volume manufacturing. Uh and then you know my

manufacturing. Uh and then you know my co-founder and I started started really talking about how do we make a meaningful impact in the world? What's

the next big challenge? And then got our heads wrapped around answering that question that every 8-year-old kid has.

How could there possibly be water scarcity when there's oceans everywhere?

Yeah. Um and then just like you said at the at the top of uh the segment is like man this technology feels like it's really cool but it's just right right on the cusp of becoming um awesome. Uh and

we think if we apply the lessons that we learned on Starlink with high rate manufacturing driving down the cost and really delivering this technology to everyone uh we we can really make that meaningful impact.

So uh walk us through the first product.

I I was always thinking that the next big desalination company would be a huge desalination plant, but you're going much smaller.

So, walk me through the the thesis there.

Yeah, I I love that because that's pretty much where everyone in the industry has focused, right? We got to clean a ton of water. These systems are super freaking expensive for upfront capital costs. So, the only way to make

capital costs. So, the only way to make your unit economics in that in that use case work is by going really large and cleaning a ton of water.

Yeah. We we just looked at it from the other end is like, man, if the upfront cost is negligible and you can keep your energy and maintenance costs low, you can probably do about the same and just

scale uh scale it in terms of number of units, not a large centralized system.

And then it's just kind of blown up the the thought process entirely inside of that because now you're looking at infrastructure resilience and and people being less reliant on centralized

systems and then you can open up to people that are more on the move, people that um are are island struck and and really man the customer base has kind of exploded from there like oh man like if

you could just deliver a lowcost product people want to use it.

Yeah. So so walk me through uh like a textbook customer where are they? Can

you explain first? Can you just explain the product like M5?

Yeah. Like how big are we talking like is this diesel generator size like Yeah. So we launched Access this week

Yeah. So we launched Access this week which is our first consumer product. Uh

we're we're a little bit more in the middle market uh going into uh customer bases that already exist. So Maritime

Industry has these these types of products. It's a reverse osmosis uh is

products. It's a reverse osmosis uh is at the core of our technology. Mhm.

U what we do is we're able to do that manufacturing process at a much much uh lower cost and then a much higher volume.

Um so so the product that you're seeing on your screen access the facility that we got here in Torrance we're able to produce more of these devices in a single month than currently exist.

So we're kind of really taking that taking that whole taking that whole process.

Okay. explain. But but sorry, sorry.

This is uh you put a hose into salt water and then it goes into the machine and out comes portable drinking water.

Exactly. So we always say we design for Terry.

I just for the audience I wanted to to to to be clear.

So water push button hydrate.

Yeah. How many people offrid actually have access to salt water or dirty water?

Well, this should work for springs and lakes and Y.

Is that the idea?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you can clean uh what we say is any naturally occurring uh water source. Salt water being the hardest one to clean and and why del has been kind of out of reach for most

people until now. Um but yeah uh well water is is super common in the United States. I think it's like 11% of homes

States. I think it's like 11% of homes live on well water in the US.

Um and then brackish water is super common. I mean in marshlands. I mean

common. I mean in marshlands. I mean

lots of lots of south all pretty much all Florida.

Yeah. How do you deal? One of the common things we hear about desalination is that uh yeah, you you get clean water out, but you also get all of the dirt and all of the salt and and whatever

else you don't want in your clean water.

Uh what do you do with that in in your case? What what happens normally?

case? What what happens normally?

Yeah. So, uh the the stigma is is in your what you call brine or your concentrate. So, when you run a very

concentrate. So, when you run a very large plant, you want your recovery as high as possible. So your concentrate is much much higher like two times the salinity in your salts. We actually run

our system efficiently at a much lower recovery rate and then like 15 to 20%.

So as long as you're putting your brine or your concentrate back into a source water greater than five gallons or so, it almost immediately dissipates into

that into that uh volume. So we get we get the the wins inside of there in terms of hey uh you can use this product uh it's not making that environmental impact because it's smaller form factor

lower flow rate and lower uh brand concentrate as well.

Mhm. Uh what about battery? Is this B is it battery powered? Do you plug it in?

What's battery life like? Could you

eventually create uh some type of solar array so that it's entirely self- sustaining?

100%. Yeah. Uh so uh it's runs on ACDC.

It's got an integrated battery. If

you're cleaning ocean water, you're running for about an hour. If you're

using fresh fresh water, uh anywhere from about probably closer to 3 hours. U

so it all depends on the uh source water that you're cleaning. So ocean water has a ton of salts inside of it. So it's

really difficult to remove those at higher pressure. Fresh water is much

higher pressure. Fresh water is much much easier. Uh you're essentially just

much easier. Uh you're essentially just killing bacteria uh and viruses. Um so

yeah, you can run it on ACDC. We do

integrate with solar as well. So, uh,

you know, if you have a decent sized solar panel, you can run this thing as long as you have sunlight.

Amazing.

Talk about what you've learned about the traditional largecale desalination operations. There's actually an article

operations. There's actually an article in the Wall Street Journal today about San Diego uh, producing surprisingly a ton of water from desalination. San

Diego now has so much water that it's selling it once a drought poster child.

The California city now generates enough water to rescue parch states like Arizona and brew beer from recycled sewage. Uh, are you optimistic?

sewage. Uh, are you optimistic?

What about that last part?

Recycled sewage. So, they take sewage water and they clean it so effectively that they can brew beer in San Diego.

They might have to disclose that on the label, but I think, you know, we can get past the stigma at some point.

The waste water once. Bill Gates solved this problem a long time ago and it's like no one wants to drink uh poop or or pee water, right? uh locally uh the ocean is is is the arguably the most

abundant resource on Earth. Yeah. Uh and

that's that's kind of the the the resource that we want to tap to to bring this technology forward. But uh large plants are, you know, they serve a purpose. We want to be a partner with

purpose. We want to be a partner with them, not not a disruptor in the in the near term, right? Similar to Starlink, you had your uh what was it $10 billion infrastructure bill to give internet to

to rural areas that serviced zero people. uh yet Starling could do that uh

people. uh yet Starling could do that uh over at a fraction of the cost. So we

look for those people that are uh kind of high and dry right now and need access. Um and that's kind of our

access. Um and that's kind of our initial customer base that we're going after.

Yeah. Uh how much does the product cost?

Where's the business? Give us an update on the round.

Yeah. Yeah. So $7.49 uh is our cost right now, but you can pre-order for eight $8 total refundable. Wow. Um we're

getting uh into production here over the next actually our first uh PCB show up next week which I'm very excited about.

Um the round was uh towards the end of last year. We have a a great table uh

last year. We have a a great table uh really awesome uh partners with GC and Inter Logos.

Yeah.

Um and and that capital has gone a really long way to help us accelerate.

Like the business has only been around for a little over a year. Uh and we're we're about to step into production here over the next few weeks. Yeah, it looks like you're in a production facility.

How big is the warehouse? How many

people do you have on staff?

Yeah. Yeah. Uh we're 37,000 foot facility here in Torrance. Uh we're

actually right next to the K2 guys.

Oh, cool.

Um I keep seeing all my friends on your guys' show. Man, it's kind of a right of

guys' show. Man, it's kind of a right of passage at this point.

Uh we have 37 full-time employees right now, plus a ton of contractors that that help out. Um, and we're we'll probably

help out. Um, and we're we'll probably be closer to, man, 70ish when we're at rate. Um, with a bunch of associate and

rate. Um, with a bunch of associate and production staff just waiting to hire once we get into production this summer.

Yeah. Do you think that the business will remain almost entirely direct to consumer or do you think there will be applications for businessto business, construction crews military government, all sorts of different

things?

Yeah, I use this a lot. Uh, Gwen gave us a talk in 2013. and she was like, "Yo guys, we got to get NRO certification because NASA's pretty much supporting this entire business." So, when we started the business, we wanted to have

multiple revenue streams that in the event of a macro event, we could we can be reliant on. So, the US military has a water logistics problem. Half of all casualties coming out of Iraq and Afghanistan were related to convoys

moving water and fuel. So, they're

excited and to be able to open up where they can get water from. Uh and then you know NOS's humanitarian groups are almost solely reliant on bottled water which is another logistical nightmare.

Uh so these these are both groups that we've engaged with and we have a lot of uh exciting um conversations with but then also some partnerships that we're going to be announcing pretty soon. Uh

and then direct to consumers uh the hardest problem. Elon used to tell us

hardest problem. Elon used to tell us all the time when we were starting Starlink like go after direct to consumer because they're the going to give you the biggest feedback. you're

going to get roasted on Reddit and you're going to know quick uh whether or not you made a mistake. Uh so a after being personally roasted on Reddit a number of times uh you learn really fast. So that's who we want to go after

fast. So that's who we want to go after first. We want to solve the hardest

first. We want to solve the hardest problem first and then open up to to those other larger customers afterwards.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Awesome. Well, uh very very very very cool product and uh I'm I'm uh I'm going to pre-order one just to play around with it. Bring it to the beach just to

with it. Bring it to the beach just to uh come just to have some fun.

Come by the factory. I always say bring a a bucket of your favorite ocean water.

We'll clean it and drink it. It's a lot of fun.

That's amazing. How long does it take to clean a bucket of ocean water?

Uh five Well, we do six gallons of ocean water an hour. Okay.

Uh so about 1 hour. Well, a little under an hour cuz most buckets are five gallons.

Five gallons. Cool.

You're going to need two. John's like

horse size, so he he could easily go through like 10 gallons an hour.

Okay. The chat wants to know what happens if you put a Diet Coke through it. It it'll separate all We do this all

it. It it'll separate all We do this all the time. We did a reverse Jesus the

the time. We did a reverse Jesus the other day. Uh we removed all the alcohol

other day. Uh we removed all the alcohol and water from wine. That's amazing.

Yeah. You'll you'll pull out all the gross stuff and and just have a a pure glass of water.

Some water. We did we did monsters the other day where we we removed all the water from Five Monsters and then uh drank the concentrate which was just a super caffeinated syrup.

That's insane.

Sounds like a fun time.

That's crazy. Well, congrats on the progress and thank you. Great to meet you, John. The company and we'll talk.

you, John. The company and we'll talk.

Have a good one.

Great stuff.

Goodbye. Uh, up next we have Paul Sher from Egan raising $15 million from Benchmark to build a mutual friend platform. Paul,

how are you doing? What's going on?

Hey, so good to meet you guys.

Great to meet you, too. Great to meet you and uh excited that you're not building another agent for the enterprise. You got uh you got something

enterprise. You got uh you got something new for us.

Yeah, break it down. Introduce yourself

and the company.

Yeah, I mean so great to meet you.

Thanks for having me. Um you know uh we're we're we're we're building you know we call the world's mutual friend.

sort of, you know, instead of all of all these things that are, you know, out there trying to, you know, optimize our own bubbles, we're sort of, you know, they're diverging more and more and, you know, the world that's super hyperpersonalized for all of us.

Yeah.

Is also really isolating because it's different for all of us and we we want to bring these bubbles a bit closer together again.

Yeah. So, walk us through the experience. Well, first maybe like where

experience. Well, first maybe like where are you in this journey? Uh, you've

raised some money, but uh do you have a team? Is the product live? How are you

team? Is the product live? How are you thinking about actually building the company?

Yeah, I mean it's super early.

Um, we're we're really really grateful for all the support and all the partners that we've, you know, been able to meet.

Um, I'm from Germany. I literally grew up in this like tiny village, less than a thousand people. Um, I moved here like less than a year ago to San Francisco and I've been I I literally landed I had

a one-way flight here. uh stayed in a hostel and a few months later I've been you know meeting some of the greats and they've been you know so incredibly helpful and we we've built a small team it's very early we don't you know we

haven't launched anything when we were working with um you know early early users to build something really special and something really meaningful so uh what can you share living the SF dream

yeah well may take us back first and uh what were you doing before this how did you get into startups walk me through that I I I've been building things, you know,

forever. Um, I grew up, you know, in

forever. Um, I grew up, you know, in this really middle class town and I never knew anything about entrepreneurship. So, I've always been

entrepreneurship. So, I've always been building things. And then during the

building things. And then during the pandemic, I actually just went on Twitter and I started to spend a lot of time like 12 hours a day on Twitter. I

think I have like 25,000 tweets and replies from like a like a from like a three-month period.

Yeah. And um and that's when I first you know I you know I didn't know what a VC was until I was like 18.

Yeah. Um and yeah, it's just like during the pandemic like about to turn 17. I

left high school um to to do that. And

so I've been been doing startups for uh five years now um you know spent some time in Paris where I u worked with the incredible people of a company called Augment and then you know I could

finally get a visa and um go to the US which I always kind of felt like was was my real uh place to be.

Yeah.

All right. All right. And then take us through the idea maze and how and how you landed on this like general kind of space.

You know, I think I've always been like really interested in sort of this this intersection of of arts and culture and, you know, technology and like, you know, growing up in this like, you know, place

where I grew up and I I really love German children's literature. And

there's this book that my dad read me when I was 10 about this little girl called Momo who kind of connects everyone uh in her little town and helps sort of save the world from the time

thieves. And uh I've always sort of been

thieves. And uh I've always sort of been inspired by this. And so it's been something I've been thinking about for a really long time. And I think now more than ever we really need this.

Uh feels very early but you got Benchmark to come in uh and invest $15 million.

They are the consumer social fund.

They're willing to bet, you know, big and early, but typically I see them investing after there's like a spark or like some sign real like sign of of of

life. Do you feel like do you feel like

life. Do you feel like do you feel like you're there yet and that you have something that uh early users love? Like

at what point do you and and then I guess at what point do you think you'll you'll launch?

Um, so I think with Benchmark, you know, and and just more broadly, we we already see, I think, moments of magic, and it's very very early, but it's been just

really incredible to see how people create these moments of connections, uh, you know, early early users. And I think just partnering up with Benchmark has been, you know, incredible experience.

And I think I I don't feel like I've ever pitched Benchmark. I think we just met and we sort of very quickly um I think the deal got done like three days um and we very quickly just realized

that we had very similar ideas of what the future should look like and that we wanted to go on this journey together.

Um and everything else kind of became secondary to to just like trying to make that happen together.

Uh do you think there's a risk of uh becoming a dating app or is that the wrong way to think about it?

That's funny. Um

is I just like historically historically the like you know meet meet people in your area uh apps even if they're intent you know they they they're intended to

create you know friendships you know you you may get power users that are uh have other intentions.

I mean totally. I think for us we care more about you know strengthening you know already existing relationships right we live in a time where we have all made way more relationships than you

know ever before. Um you 100 years ago you might have 100 friends today you have probably like about 600 relationships and we really care about you making these relationships

meaningful much more than like adding just random people on top of that and so I think it's less of a thing for us. Uh

us. Uh are have you been surprised that you know we're this far into the consumer AI boom and yet uh the only uh AI apps

topping the app store charts are uh basically language models.

I I think it's it's natural maybe. I

don't think we're in the consumer AI boom yet because, you know, the the the the great product people usually take, you know, a bit of time to sort of come out of the woodworks and start, you know, imagining what the new paradigms

might look like. We've seen, you know, an incredible thing which is that the sort of single player experiences are more powerful than ever ever before.

Um, you know, multiple orders of magnitude. And I think now the

magnitude. And I think now the interesting thing is how you know how are how are the enduring experiences built like what what what does it you know how do you build a product that you

know is so different that it couldn't have been done you know 5 years ago because it's just a new paradigm and sort of new primitives um and I think it takes time to to find and invent that

how do you think about Dunar's number I remember Dave Morren had this app path that you were uh supposed to add no more than 150 friends, I believe. And I'm

wondering if you think that number is changing or you think that there's some sort of like optimal ground truth to that idea of the of Dunar's number. Have

you reflected on that at all?

We think a lot about it and I think there's a lot of interesting things in Dunar's research. To me, the two things

Dunar's research. To me, the two things that stand out are that the the headline number is growing, right? We have way more relationships than ever before.

That doesn't mean that we're, you know, our brains are getting better at you computing the the social dynamics, but the real big problem is that we have way

less close people, right? So, um, and I think that really is the the most interesting thing to me is how do we get that back?

Yeah. Um, what do you think do do you think there's anything to be done on the social networking side to make uh filter bubbles less less prevalent? there was

some re some work done it felt like on YouTube where uh you would watch one video and immediately get served another video that was similar and so you'd wind up sort of down a rabbit hole and then

YouTube seemed to have changed the algorithm to sort of show you the opposite side of the argument if it was a video for in favor of something you'd see a video that took the other side

pretty quickly uh but I agree with you on the general trend that like there the there is these like uh you know niches and niches and niches and that's been good in some ways but it's also created

some isolation. Have you just reflected

some isolation. Have you just reflected on like if you had full control over all the social platforms what you might do differently?

It's an interesting question. I think

what's missing is sort of opinion, right?

We went from, you know, five newsletter outlets, you know, maybe 12 radio stations, a bunch of TV stations to like sort of infinite nuance, right? And and

everything uh you know, every take that you could possibly have, you can find it on Twitter.

Um and and what we want is not the average of the world, right? Like you

don't actually care about the recommendation or the take of the average of the world, but you care about, you know, the take that your people care about. Yeah.

And so there's sort of like we think there's something in the middle, right?

An in between space that's really interesting that brings you closer with actual people. Um, you know, just makes

actual people. Um, you know, just makes you the average of the world or, you know, leaves you alone in this like hyper isolated bubble where you you you know, you end up seeing things on TikTok

that maybe are generated on the fly and like no one else will ever see that video and you can't go to your office anymore and be like, "Guys, did you see this like insane thing?" like and and

talk about it.

How do you think about uh uh just app growth? There's obviously viral loops

growth? There's obviously viral loops that can happen with anything that's somewhat social, even if it's a little bit tighter. Uh there's launch videos

bit tighter. Uh there's launch videos and paid marketing. Have you explored sort of like the current landscape of what it takes to actually make it in the app store, which feels like more

competitive than ever?

I think maybe the answer is to not make it in the app store. Um, what does it look like to build something, you know, I don't know how the I mean, we have obviously, you know, strong opinions on how the how the world might look like

and where I I don't I'm not convinced that it's going to be another app. Yeah,

I have this wonderful story that one of our investors, Ben Sberman, told me when I first met him, uh about sort of uh you know, his son describing his job, like Ben's job, and he was just like, "Oh,

you know, he was asking, you know, all these squares on your phone."

Um and my dad makes one of them and I don't want to make another square.

And I think we have enough squares competing for our attention and um maybe the the next thing isn't another square, but something completely different. And I think that's what's

different. And I think that's what's exciting about this time. You can build something that just truly has never been there before. And um that sort of

there before. And um that sort of escapes any previous incumbent.

Yeah. Yeah. It's funny because like even within Pinterest, the app that Ben Silverman founded, uh there like it has more squares within the square. It's

like squares all the way down.

The layout a bunch of squares.

Yeah.

We're extremely curious to to try to try what you're building when you're ready.

I know. I know the chat is I think the mystery is good. Everyone's coming out.

They're launching with, you know, the three minute launch video explaining and you're just coming out with pure mystery.

Where can people go to do you have a wait list at least?

Uh we're on team.com. You can sort of visit our office. Okay.

And the if you want to learn more in person.

Yeah, we love in person. That's why we built our office as the website.

No, no email, no email capture on the on the website.

No, we're I think you guys are post email post app post software.

This is amazing.

I love it.

Uh yeah, come come visit us on our on our office website or in person in our office. We're hiring exceptional people

office. We're hiring exceptional people and we're um excited to build something really special.

I like this uh this typewriter that you can play on. This is really fun. Uh,

beautiful website. I absolutely love it.

The bowling balls and everything.

Yeah, great great website concept.

Unfortunately, it will be copied relentlessly.

Yes. But

uh but you did it first and that's what matters.

Uh anyway, great to meet you, Paul. Very excited to uh to see what you guys ship and come back on when you launch.

We'll talk to you soon. Have a good day.

Thank you. Um, did you hear that Alphabet is poised for a $100 billion windfall on the SpaceX investment they made?

Google owns around 5% of SpaceX and could get a hundred billion from SpaceX's IPO if they manage to pull it off at the two trillion valuation. Uh,

not bad. Uh, that is a crazy stat. And,

uh, they needed a windfall.

Ah, Sanvi from Haystack says, "What are the odds that this was a result of this?" and he's showing the debate

this?" and he's showing the debate between Eric Schmidt and Peter Teal where uh Peter made the argument that Google is printing too much cash and uh needs to innovate, needs to invest in

more things.

It's funny uh Doresh actually asked a very similar question to Nvidia. He was

like, "Oh, you guys have all this extra cash. Are you going to train a new

cash. Are you going to train a new model?"

model?" Um like do something internally, right?

Because they've said they're going to do open source models.

Yeah. Aren't they? Wasn't the answer just yes?

Uh I I mean he didn't say like, "Yeah, we're going after the labs." It's like very different. they're doing open

very different. they're doing open source, but it is it feels like a very uh similar question still.

Yeah. Yeah. Uh they're also doing self-driving cars at NVIDIA and obviously Google's been very successful with that. Uh it feels like the uh the

with that. Uh it feels like the uh the Google investments that burn money for a very long time although they obviously stayed very profitable. Uh, a lot of

those pencled out very very well and and it does seem like the the end result of this discussion was uh Google should invest more and they did and they invested in SpaceX and Whimo and uh a

bunch of other projects and some of them didn't pan out but certainly uh many many of them did. Um what else is in the timeline?

Uh Mark is noping out. Uh, Zach says, "Okay, actually in same paper published yesterday, a research group in Korea built a gene switch you can control

wirelessly using EMFs."

EMFs would look at that fields.

Uh, they expose mice to 60 Hz EMF, same frequency as your wall outlet, using a pair of large coils that generate a uniform magnetic field around the animal for cyclic 3-day or 4-day off pulses.

This showed that you could activate OSK to do epigenetic reprogramming in the projeoid in aged mice. Uh extending

lifespan and reversing aging markers across multiple tissues. Conditionally

switch on mutant amaloid genes only in aged mouse brains letting them separate aging effects from amaloid to study ad biology in a way previous models couldn't. No drugs, no impacts, just a

couldn't. No drugs, no impacts, just a magnetic field from outside the body. Uh,

the body. Uh, I'm close to taking a victory like John.

I'm I'm very paranoid about about uh EMFs but but this could be positive. There could

be there could be a positive out responsibly.

We don't have anyway. What? Oh, we have our next

anyway. What? Oh, we have our next guests.

We have James Morrisy and Kevin Hart.

Welcome to the show, folks. How are you guys doing?

Gentlemen, what's going on?

What's going on, guys?

How are you?

Welcome to the show. Thank you for taking the time.

Big day.

Thanks for having us.

Big day. Um, uh, would love to get I think everyone knows Kevin Hart, but uh, well, I think everyone knows James. I

was going to ask the opposite. I was

going to say, uh, it's not about me here. I'm I'm going to take a second and I'mma highlight my guy. Okay. Uh, yes. You know, some may

guy. Okay. Uh, yes. You know, some may be familiar with the the the the idea of Kevin Hart, but in this space, man, uh it's more about my business. And you

know, business is great when you have great partners. So, take a second to

great partners. So, take a second to highlight my guy, man. James James has done a phenomenal job uh in self with self with his company with his own

entity and um the idea of finding cool ways to uh create and develop partnerships with faces that are and can

be more than just an ambassador but um more of a brand. He's done a great job, man. he he's done a really good job of

man. he he's done a really good job of vetting out the space and I'm lucky to have found someone with the mindset, the understanding um to help me do the things that I want. So, execution only

happens when you have people that can do so. James is that he's an executor. So,

so. James is that he's an executor. So,

give it I'll how how did you two meet? What were the first meetings like? Where did the meetings take place? Like where did all this come from?

We met about five years ago in the depths of CO through mutual friends. Um,

we're in the space of building brands uh in joint venture with well-known individuals in entertainment brands that they want to own, not just endorse.

Um, and we wanted to go into the tequila space for a long time. Um, we like the category. We thought it was very

category. We thought it was very compelling, but the celebrity tequila space is completely oversaturated at the time. It was very noisy. We needed

time. It was very noisy. We needed

something really compelling to break through and and to make it right for us.

And when myself and Kev started talking during co uh it became very clear very quickly that we matched each other's energy. Absolutely. In terms of

energy. Absolutely. In terms of understanding the responsibilities of being not just a face for the brand but being a business partner uh and the responsibilities of owning a brand and building one of these businesses for the

long term. But you I think you

long term. But you I think you understood early on um what my what my wants and not wants were like you know the the biggest and I'll say the most

important rule that I have I'm never I'm never slapping my name on anything right if I can't embrace it or I can't do it uh on a daily and really have a authentic response to it and engage with

it as if I engage with everything in my life then I don't want to do it. So all

of my partnerships across the board um whether it's ownership plays, equity plays or um ambassador like roles, I

truly am invested and invested into the thing. So with the wine and spirit

thing. So with the wine and spirit space, having my own tequila, it was necessary because I said look, I only drink tequila. I'm drinking everyone

drink tequila. I'm drinking everyone else's product. So developing my own

else's product. So developing my own version of a product that I can then drink at the same level that I drink my own when I am in a space of comfort or celebration could be dope. But let's put

a story behind it. Like let's make it let's make it different and let's exist in some rare air. What what can be defining or redefining in this space

that bas that basically represents me in the best way? And he was very diligent in in answering those questions and helping me um navigate on that road.

Right. So the idea of hard work and hard work tasting different and the idea of a celebration um being being attached to grand cormino because we believe that life should not only be celebrated but

what you do on the daily should be celebrated. So hard work in whatever

celebrated. So hard work in whatever whatever way however it fits to you. How

do you choose to celebrate it? My job is to give you a choice. Rankino is there.

You mentioned that the space was crowded. How did you think about finding

crowded. How did you think about finding differentiation on the product side, the distribution side? Uh what really stuck

distribution side? Uh what really stuck out is like okay it is a complicated space but there's a big opportunity here.

I I would say man you know you you have to have access.

So Juan Domingo Beckman Jr. uh of course the family what they've done in this space you know you're talking about generations on generations of success

and and growth um in the business right like from a distribution you know outlet or opportunity there isn't a bigger option so uh I think for us it was

getting Juan to understand the real want um getting him to understand the passion behind my want and that this is not a celebrity play this is not a a check

grab and run. This is a want to build something that can literally be attached to my family name and give me an opportunity to to build generational

success, uh, wealth, uh, visibility, whatever you want to call it, but I want I want that.

How do I get that? You have to go to the people that have it. So, um, I think that was our biggest our biggest want.

And and as you talk about separating yourself, well, when you have that machine and that machine understands your real energy and those two things connect, well, you're already so much different from anything else in the

space, right? Like the space is crowded

space, right? Like the space is crowded because people believe that, oh, let's get a famous person and put the famous person name on a bottle and just put the bottle on the shelf and it's yourself.

That's not true at all. Like why did you make it? What's the story behind it?

make it? What's the story behind it?

What do you care about? Uh do you really drink this? And if so, why? And how did

drink this? And if so, why? And how did you develop the liquid? What is your plan for year 2, three, four, and five?

Like you people really love a story. And

if you have an authentic one, um, I find that people respond to it. So the the years of operation and configuration as to what we want to do were the best

parts of the business because after the liquid came out where it wasn't a shock to us of why we were happy and why we loved it, we did the work. Yeah,

we did the work. We

Yeah. Question question from the chat.

What? Walk us through the actual product development process. I'm I'm assuming

development process. I'm I'm assuming trips to Mexico, a lot of tastings, iteration, but what did that look like?

So, there's a lot more that goes into this business than meets the eye of the consumers, right? So, to your point

consumers, right? So, to your point earlier, the liquor business, the alcohol business is it's a very complex industry to navigate based on the three- tier system dating back to the years of prohibition. So there's certain criteria

prohibition. So there's certain criteria and ways you got to navigate and ultimately to build success. Our

perspective on it within consumer products and goods and particularly within alcohol where we saw the biggest opportunity over the last 5 years is large corporations typically do not

disrupt. They innovate they innovate

disrupt. They innovate they innovate well with liquids. They innovate well with package but generally they're not disruptors. And that's not saying the

disruptors. And that's not saying the alcohol industry alone. That's every

large industry. So it takes independent entrepreneurial companies to be real disruptors. Like you guys were speaking

disruptors. Like you guys were speaking to the guy from Grooms the other day.

You guys were speaking to, you know, John from Happy Dad. These are

independent companies that are bucking the trend. And our model has been let's

the trend. And our model has been let's be that independent spirited business.

Let's make those bold calculated decisions in real time and be really fast and agile in terms of how we operate in the market dayto-day. But

let's partner with the best large corporate in the business being Proximo and Juan Domingo Beckman from the Becklay Corporation and let's bring some real scale to the table. So that that

that that muscularity of the Proximo Proximo machine and the agility of us in the market every day leading on on what consumers see that's been um it's been a very successful partnership for us and

it's helped us buck that trend. And I

also I also think just to add to that, right, like you know, you're not dealing with rocket scientists, right? Literally

like people that are successful and people that have won, they've done it for a reason. So you're not trying to recreate the wheel or redesign the wheel. You're trying to better service

wheel. You're trying to better service the wheel. So sometimes the wheel, it it

the wheel. So sometimes the wheel, it it falls into a space where everybody jumps on and the expectations are of norm and they don't understand that you got to energize the wheel. You gota you gotta

go in with some new energy and what you'll find those people will respond to that. I think our energy

that. I think our energy Yeah.

I don't know how bad but yeah.

Okay.

But yeah.

Yeah. You need you guys. We'll we'll get you guys set up with a soundboard for some of your other meetings for when you're on Zoom. You can

That just does something to me. I took

an espresso in real time. For sure.

Okay. So, uh yeah, Teresa Strategy, uh you have a massive platform, but you have to get the product to a place where people can buy it when you're promoting it. What was the thought between

it. What was the thought between distribution, getting it in stores, and then starting to push the promotion funnel versus uh just telling everyone about it and they're like, "Yeah, I'm excited, but where do I get it? Oh, it's

only available in a few stores."

Well, A, it's patience. Okay.

Um, and B, it's actually realizing the real work that goes with that. Like,

yes, I have a large platform and a huge social media following, but that doesn't mean that as soon as I post something and say do it, that people respond.

Yeah. um you have to like be on the ground. You have to do the real work. So

ground. You have to do the real work. So

within distribution, you gotta go and you got to go talk and meet and shake the hands and build the relationships, right? Um the work that you're looking

right? Um the work that you're looking for is a response of what people feel the the the reason for your your implementation in this space. Like when

when the partners meet you and they say, "Oh, he's not here for fiction. He's

here for real. This is not fake." Yeah,

we will support and we will back and we will suggest this to the new customer when they walk in. Try Kevin Hart's tequila. It's really good because Kevin

tequila. It's really good because Kevin came in here and Kevin sat in front of us and Kevin made us understand not only why we should taste it, but why we should back and support it. Um, it's no

different from a new artist. If a new artist is really hungry, you're showing up at every radio station, at every DJ outlet, and you got your you got your CD

or you got a hard drive cuz I want you to hear my sound. Listen to it. And

you're going to get way more nos than you are going to get yeses. But the

breakthrough, yes, when it goes on the radio waves makes the work so much worth it. in this space. The work of getting

it. in this space. The work of getting every restaurant, every uh brand, every chain, every wine and spirits, liquor

store, independent chain, etc. Like, yeah, I went. Yeah.

So, I expect to see the results of my work. I expect to see people responding

work. I expect to see people responding because I know what I did to get it into a space of conversation. And I think for me that energy is an energy that I'm not

going to let go of and my partners have responded to it tremendously. That's why

we sit where we sit today.

Where is the business today? How big is it? What are sales? What can you tell us

it? What are sales? What can you tell us about the shape of the business?

The business today, Gran Cormino is now the fastest growing celebrity tequila brand in the world. Yeah. Okay.

There we go. Did it again. Um, we grew last year by 100% yearon year. We've

done $200 million in 200 million.

Hit that gong, John.

Congratulations.

Turn DJ Calamidia. This is better than anything I've ever done.

Should uh zooming out, should every celebrity launch a product? Should every

influencer have a product? What what

advice are you giving to other celebrities?

Absolutely not. I would say that from a celebrity perspective, most celebrities should not create businesses that they want to own.

The endorsement model is a good model for most celebrities. But for

entertainers who truly have the understanding, the knowhow, and the commitment to put in the work and prioritize said project over everything else outside of their day job, that's

when it's compelling. And that was what was compelling in this partnership.

Well, I don't I don't even like the word the word celebrity when it's used and attached to me because it's it's it's underwhelming. Yes. It's it's

underwhelming. Yes. It's it's

underwhelming to to what I really am, right? And I get it. I get what that is.

right? And I get it. I get what that is.

I get the star, celebrity, etc. Not why we partner with each other.

But as an entrepreneur, as a as a real business mind, as a real like worker that's not afraid to do, build, etc.

um you you're you're so much more, right? Like the the the idea of a mogul

right? Like the the the idea of a mogul or concept of that um is is just a person that wants so much and is willing to do so much and in doing so much it

means I'm not afraid to partner or align with people who have done. So in this space slapping somebody's name on something and just thinking that it's so it doesn't work.

It doesn't work. you're you're you're you're in rare air of opportunity and the celebrities that have had amazing success in the space of business brand

um portfolio they do the work right like I just throwing out names you look at a Kim Kardashian I don't think Kim gets the true credit that she deserves at all

times of actually doing the work people don't understand Kim shows up she doesn't just have the idea she shows up like the people know that they're going to see her on the daily. The

office for the employees know that Kim walks through the halls. They know that her office is there and she's in meetings. She's on call. She does the

meetings. She's on call. She does the work. So, I myself am a do the work uh

work. So, I myself am a do the work uh individual. And I think when you are and

individual. And I think when you are and and you are committed, there is no world of loss. M

of loss. M you're always going to win because you're doing what everyone else refuses to do because they don't have the patience. They don't have the uh

patience. They don't have the uh strength and mental ability to stay true to something through the ups and downs and see it all the way through. It's not

easy. It's a it's a very very hard space to operate in. And yes, we're in a maze and era right now. And I love it. Will

it stay this way? Who knows? But no

matter what, if you're committed to it, whether it's up, down, whatever, you're true to the process and you know that ultimately sun is always going to be at the end of the tunnel. That's where we are.

That was the most compelling part of this partnership, having a partner who understands, who's willing to be on the phone every day, the good days and the bad. Yeah.

bad. Yeah.

Um but ultimately understanding the business behind the brand.

Yeah. So, uh Kevin, how are you thinking about maybe not work life balance, but work work balance? you have multiple roles, multiple projects. If you're

going into a movie, are you telling everyone, "Okay, I need to, you know, I need space. I need focus for a couple

need space. I need focus for a couple weeks, or are you trying to have, okay, I'll do something in the morning and then something in the evening?" What

What is your workflow like on a day-to-day basis?

Going to be pouring shots for the whole cast and the director.

This This is an example of why things need to why things need to fit your lifestyle, right? If things fit your

lifestyle, right? If things fit your lifestyle and fit your day-to-day, you'll find that you're never forcing and truly fighting for time. Sure.

Right. Everything can be done correctly.

I am a I am a product of structure and operation. I have amazing team around

operation. I have amazing team around me. And within that, if I'm doing a

me. And within that, if I'm doing a movie, I'm doing a movie. But while

doing a movie, well, how do I make my partners a part of said movie? Is there

spaces for me to amplify partnerships or relationships? If I'm on tour, can I

relationships? If I'm on tour, can I position or present certain relationships or partnerships that I have to be visible while I'm doing the things that I'm doing? Hey man, I'm

golfing. What partners can I align or or

golfing. What partners can I align or or or place in within what I'm doing on the regular? Hey, I got vacation time coming

regular? Hey, I got vacation time coming up. But when I do go on this vacation

up. But when I do go on this vacation time, man, it's relaxing, but I have certain relationships and partnerships that service the idea of relaxation and

what it looks like and what it should feel like. As a partner, you are always

feel like. As a partner, you are always thinking of how to service those that are aligned with you. And when you have a mind like that and you operate like

that, it becomes a systematic thing.

It's never a fight. So yes, I am 365. I

am uh you know uh a sun up to sun down person with work. But because of my system, nobody gets left out. wife,

kids partners business comedy film um you know, company, uh let's just say um within company, employee,

relationship, like all of these things are embedded into an idea of my daytoday and what I have to do. So, it's it's it's never left behind. It's never

skipped or overlooked. Um it's it's implemented and rightfully so.

Yeah. Uh, everyone's been tracking a million different changes in media and entertainment over the last decade throughout your career. Like what what has been the biggest crucible moment?

What has been the biggest trend change that you felt? Okay. Uh, I need to adapt my strategy. I I I think everyone in my

my strategy. I I I think everyone in my community needs to adapt our strategy.

Uh, how have you processed the evolution of media over your career? I

I'll say getting older. Yeah.

Right. I mean, I'm I'm I'm about to be 47 this summer.

Um overnight success sitting and witnessing witnessing a shift in marketing and a shift in entertainment, right? This younger

entertainment, right? This younger generation and how they are navigating um and and operating within social media with in storytelling uh within finding

ways to present themselves to the masses. I mean, you know, the concept of

masses. I mean, you know, the concept of a live streamer and and a person that that is literally talking to a screen all day and looking at a chat with

comments, but finding a way to to build revenue to where it's coming in droves, right? Like that to me,

right? Like that to me, it's exciting. It's exciting to see a

it's exciting. It's exciting to see a shift. So, you don't fight that. You

shift. So, you don't fight that. You

find a way to be a part of it. You find

a way um to support it. So, where I think I've had an amazing lift is in amplifying that younger generation, right? Like when I have a chance to sit

right? Like when I have a chance to sit beside uh some of these younger guys that are doing these amazing things.

Well, it's dope for them to have stars like myself on their platforms or supporting them in that space. I don't

need nothing or want anything in return.

I just want to see people win. But when

you're supporting the new, it just makes you aware. Not being aware is

you aware. Not being aware is ridiculous. fighting what what is what

ridiculous. fighting what what is what is in real time a new um space of success. You're seeing ad revenue crazy

success. You're seeing ad revenue crazy spins from the biggest brands in the business and you're seeing where they're now spending it. Television is changing.

The ondemand feel and want has changed.

How we watch movies and what movies have changed. Live entertainment still exists

changed. Live entertainment still exists today but it's bigger than ever because people still want to go out but you realize they still want to be home. You

got to go and you got to say how do I basically fit into these pockets and how do I deliver in a manner to where it's real and it's never forced where you do

that with support first and elevation for them and then things come back to you. Right now it's all about me saying

you. Right now it's all about me saying I see you young guys, you young women. I

love what you're doing. I want to see you win. How can I help you? And then in

you win. How can I help you? And then in return their audience gets to say Kevin is cool. But it's it's a it's a them

is cool. But it's it's a it's a them first me second. Now there's a prime example Jordy of of you guys when we when we've been tracking what you guys have been doing for the last two years.

It's it's incredible. And when the business outlets came up in terms of the list of targets TVPN was on the top. We

want to be in the story. We want to know what's new. We think it's bold and

what's new. We think it's bold and exciting what you're doing. Congrats on

the deal with Open AI. But I mean you guys are just getting started. But us

knowing you, us knowing that we want to be on that platform, that's what it's about. And big companies don't often

about. And big companies don't often think that way, but we're empowered to be able to make those decisions dayto-day to be here with you.

It's a great point. Really good point.

Last last question, guys. Uh James, is there a competitive dynamic between some of your different partners that Chad is talking about your work with Post Malone

and ASAP Rocky? Uh I know all these guys are very competitive. Is there any kind of dynamic internally who who can build the biggest brand?

No, I know you don't I know you don't want second or third Kevin.

It's not it's not it's not a competition, but there is no shortcut to success and it's hard work is required.

Oh, it's a it's it's looking like it's a competition.

Whenever somebody says it's not a competition, you know it's a competition. I

competition. I I will tell you this. uh we should all look at what each other are doing and you figure out ways to take small pieces

of the recipe that that's working right like I think ASAP and Post have done a great job in building businesses and building brands um myself included and

when you see what's working for for each other you find ways to take pieces like ultimately I want to see everybody win I would love to see us all win I would love to see his company succeed and

everything that it should be and more.

But you would just hate for somebody to win win more than you.

I want everyone to win slightly less than me.

I'm winning.

No, I I I love it, guys.

We said we said we picked I Hey, if I was a betting man, I'd be bet I'd be betting on you. I know you I know your work ethic is going to be insane. I know

while they're they're sleeping, you're going to be at every restaurant, every club getting everybody uh on the program. So, uh I'm excited to uh to

program. So, uh I'm excited to uh to follow along and thank you guys for for sending. We will um we will enjoy it

sending. We will um we will enjoy it this weekend.

Yeah, the next time the next time it'll be in the studio. I want the song and I want to get all the effects uh in real time, man. Yeah, I need to

time, man. Yeah, I need to Your energy is unbelievable, man. You

guys deserve that.

Here, scoot over. Scoot over a little bit there so you can Yeah. Yeah. That's what I'm talking

Yeah. Yeah. That's what I'm talking about.

Thank you guys, man.

Great. Great to see you guys. Congrats.

We'll talk to you soon.

Have a good day.

Out of control.

Fantastic response for the soundboard.

Really working overtime. I love the soundboard. Uh, poor Matan from Factory.

soundboard. Uh, poor Matan from Factory.

That's that's a tough act to follow for sure, but he'll be joining us in about 10 minutes. We can go through Speaking

10 minutes. We can go through Speaking of Entertainment, Variety as a post. Val

Kil Kilmer has been Is this a movie? Is

this Val Kilmer is actor who passed away recently? He was in Top Gun and in the

recently? He was in Top Gun and in the new Top Gun as well, but that was his final movie. Very sad. uh has been

final movie. Very sad. uh has been resurrected by AI to star in the new movie As Deep as a grave. Here's a first look at the film's trailer. Kilmer's

digital return has the support of his daughter, Mercedes, who previously told Variety. He always looked at emerging

Variety. He always looked at emerging technologies with optimism as a tool to expand the possibilities of storytelling. This spirit is something

storytelling. This spirit is something that we are all honoring within this specific film, of which he was an integral part. I'm curious, does does

integral part. I'm curious, does does this mean he was involved with it prior to his passing or he that she's just saying?

I mean, there's been there's been a couple companies in Hollywood that have done uh facial capture high-res digital scans trying to capture as much uh performance data, but of course, there's

just the raw training data of every movie and every shot that was recorded while they were on set. And a lot of those even the outtakes are are are captured and saved even if they don't uh

make it to the to the final movie the final cut of the movie. Uh so this has always been an option and then you imagine with the advance of models uh

you'll be able to train a really high high quality output even just on what's like out there uh in in the in the final

cut. you don't you might not need

cut. you don't you might not need special capture or special uh special data. Um but uh this is a very

data. Um but uh this is a very interesting uh very interesting time. I

imagine that there will be a ton of push back on this broadly. But uh if the audience opts in and the actor opts in, I imagine this will be written into a

lot of wells and a lot of uh you know contracts and agreements. I imagine that all of Hollywood will be grappling with how they process this uh going forward.

But if it makes for good entertainment, you know.

Yeah. The reason that I think it will become extremely frequent is that uh just the financial incentive.

Yeah.

For the family for sure, for better or worse. I'm sure a lot of people will be upset about that. But um

about that. But um do we have our next guest in the waiting room already? Oh, before we get Matana

room already? Oh, before we get Matana in, we got to talk about uh Zach. Uh

Zach uh has this app, Share Aura. It's a

running focused app. They now have a feature from what I've been seeing where people can basically go on a a run. It's

like a live stream of your run. So,

people can come in and like heckle you, they can cheer you on. Uh you can come on with like video or it just has you on the map. So, it's like tracking your

the map. So, it's like tracking your pace, your mileage, all this stuff. Um it's

very, very cool. We got to have Zach on to talk about it.

This used to be such a hard feature to build and it just uh I mean, of course, there's services and APIs that allow for uh live streaming to be bolted on pretty quickly, but uh remarkable that Zach was

able to roll this feature out with such a small team and so early in the in the journey for the app. So, seems fun. Uh

feels a little hard to walk to run with your camera there to show your face, but I guess certain runners will adapt if it's good content. Well, We have Matan from Factory. He is the co-founder and

from Factory. He is the co-founder and CEO. Matan,

CEO. Matan, you dog.

How you doing?

You dog. You absolute dog. Doing well.

What? I am doing well. Tell us how you guys doing. How you doing?

guys doing. How you doing?

How how how how big is this market because this is the this is the most important market there is.

It seems like it.

It really seems like it. Um

break down the news for us first. What

happened?

Hit us with the news and then we'll get into details. Uh well, first of all, so

into details. Uh well, first of all, so I'm reporting live from and let's play a quick word association game. I'm going

to tell you where I'm calling in live from. You got to give me a first first

from. You got to give me a first first word that comes to mind.

Coming in live from the Rosewood in Menllo Park.

Oh, Horowitz.

Uh enterprise software. Come on guys. The

enterprise software. Come on guys. The

temple the temple of selling enterprise software. I'm in here closing deals, but

software. I'm in here closing deals, but more importantly here to share with you guys about our latest fund raise. We

raised $150 million from There we go.

The great folks at Coastal Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Blackstone, Insight, NEA, and some other some other great partners. Um, and we're very very

partners. Um, and we're very very excited to have their support.

That's amazing. Uh, talk about the last I I feel like it's at least 3 months, maybe a bit more since the last time you were on the show. Talk about how the how the space is evolving. I mean, there's

just so much noise like every single day.

Uh, you know, somebody's saying, you know, this company's over, this entire paradigm is dead. Uh, you guys clearly have just kept your head down and are are making a lot of progress. But um

yeah, walk us through kind of how the how the space is evolving, how how your business is evolving.

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. So, I guess um first of all, I think you know there's obviously a lot of excitement in this space because there's just so much to be done in terms of software development.

There are so many things that software developers don't enjoy doing but they unfortunately have to be doing. Um and I think there was uh there was kind of an

early phase of excitement where everyone was just you know thinking about all the possibilities and kind of investing uh kind of the resources both from the the financing side but then also in the

enterprise side in terms of you know making sure they stay up to date but I think there was a bit of a lag where first you know they were like hey here are all the things we want to do let's go and tell our developers to actually do it and there's kind of a lagging

period where they didn't do it and then in the last 6 months really everyone started adopting uh agent AI. You see

that in the revenue numbers of every you know model provider. Um and I think now there's a bit of a a bit of a hangover where you know some people are realizing that they wanted their engineers to go and

adopt things and adopt they did however they might not be doing so in the most efficient manner. You know, there are

efficient manner. You know, there are large enterprises that we work with that found that on a monthly basis, they spend on the order of hundreds of thousands of dollars on developers

saying things like hello to Opus 4.6 fast or GPT 5.4 like ultra high which you know is probably not the best use of those tokens and I think uh you know a

tool like factory where we can be model agnostic and dynamically route them to the appropriate model for the appropriate task.

Sure. Um that has been something that's been that's been really getting getting a lot of enterprise excitement.

This token this token kind of token maxing trend meta meta of course was uh they love to spend money on on AI. They

they had their internal uh leaderboard uh to see who could basically produce the most tokens. uh there had been some chatter that that people were had

effectively just created loops to just like uh go to get to the top of the the chart even though I'm not sure it's an award um worth winning. Do you think

that like large corporates are already like hey this like do you think this is a period where it'll be like for the first half of this year people are like yeah just try a bunch of stuff and then we'll see where we land or do you think

there's already going to be more of a pullback? I know the Uber CTO had had uh

pullback? I know the Uber CTO had had uh went on the record and was talking about like hey we basically spent our whole inference budget um in uh in in you know

the first quarter and we got to figure out what our plan is on a go forward basis.

Yeah. I mean I think what we're seeing is that every company kind of has to go through these phases where like phase zero is reluctance to adopt because you know developers have their workflows

that they've that they've had for the last 20 years. they might not want to change it. And phase one is kind of

change it. And phase one is kind of throw the kitchen sink. Just use as much AI as possible. Whatever you do, just change your workflows. And then I think a lot of people and maybe more of the frontier companies like Uber, who's

always kind of very ahead of the curve as it relates to these things. They're

now getting into the phase two, which is Meta obviously is an example as well.

Okay, great. People are now adopting.

We're proving that they can change their behavior and use these tools. Now, we

need to make sure we're actually doing it efficiently and effectively. Um, and

I think that's it's fine as like a natural process. Yes, you'll overspend

natural process. Yes, you'll overspend in that phase one, but the point of that is to get to the phase two where then you're actually really efficient on a on a per token basis moving the needle for for the business delivering software

faster.

What's going on international? Uh, we

saw you we saw NSF, I believe the day of the Super Bowl and you talked about uh going international. how how are

going international. how how are companies and and developers abroad thinking about um codegen and and the category broadly?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think one thing that's really important is that you know people build software around the world. Even though the best software

the world. Even though the best software is probably based in the US, there's still some fantastic software out there.

And so, uh, I think, you know, the way we've built factory in particular is amanable to, you know, places like Europe or, uh, Asia or Australia because, you know, they have different rules about where the data needs to

live, where the models need to live and factory is one of the only solutions that is fully onrem, um, fully modular.

So, you know, my co-founder Eno likes to say you could deploy factory on a nuclear submarine as long as you have GPUs down there. And, you know, in places that tend to have a lot of regulation like Europe, that actually

works quite well. And so, with some of this funding, we're we're opening up an office in London and Airorn.

There we go. Can you talk about uh some of the projects that you're seeing speed up on the back of AI agents because

there's this weird dichotomy where we see huge token budgets, huge AI spend, uh a lot of a lot and then you you dig

in and you see people tell stories about building a lot of internal tools, a lot of new dashboards, automating workflows, uh being more efficient, but people I it

feels like they haven't felt the the external uh facing uh I don't know it just feels like if you like uh Meta is using a bunch of AI if you open Instagram it's sort of the same app it's

not like oh wow they have like an entirely different paradigm and it feels like an entirely new app and maybe that's just because that particular platform is mature um but where where is

like in terms of internal tooling customerf facing software entirely new ideas uh automations like where are you seeing the most adoption most impact.

So, I I I love the framing of that because I think there's kind of two separate types of usage that we see.

There's one that's like the fun and cool stuff of like, let me build all these new apps from scratch, which probably doesn't move the needle for the business. Y

uh and then there are the less sexy things, but actually save developers a ton of time. And that's where we're seeing um kind of under the hood a lot of the ROI coming from. And I think generally the name of the game there is,

you know, developers are really smart.

They spend years of their lives becoming experts and they get paid a lot of money.

They should not be spending their time on lowlever things like documentation or testing um or you know spending two years doing legacy code migrations. So

generally the the orgs that we see get the most ROI are the ones who basically play whack-a-ole with what is the lowest leverage thing that our developers are doing right now. Great. Let's use droids

to automate it or you know some language that's really emerging is let's build a software factory. Yeah.

software factory. Yeah.

Uh that goes and and and automates these low-lever tasks. And I really think we

low-lever tasks. And I really think we take a lot of inspiration and it this is even where our name comes from is what Elon and Tesla did to the physical factories. Like if you go to Tesla

factories. Like if you go to Tesla factories, they're mostly like, you know, machine arms going in going and doing things. And there's no reason that

doing things. And there's no reason that software can't be very similar. Like

obviously you still need humans involved but those humans tend to play a role of more designing that software factory figuring out what is the most efficient way to to configure that factory so that

you can move the needle in your business you know produce more more output. How

important are uh are is wide diffusion of models? Uh we we've been following uh

of models? Uh we we've been following uh the the latest model from uh anthropic mythos that's only available to a few companies. Is the strategy to uh focus

companies. Is the strategy to uh focus on being crossplatform or get access to that model earlier and then act as a diffusion layer for that? How are you thinking about uh the future where more

advanced models are sort of gated?

Yeah, I think for us the biggest thing is enterprises need to be model agnostic. Um it's just it is a

agnostic. Um it's just it is a non-negotiable that they cannot standardize on just one provider.

Um for a number of reasons. One might be, you know, if that API endpoint goes down, which, you know, some models these days haven't been the most reliable. Um,

and if you're a highly regulated industry and you get your developers to become agent native and and you know, start delegating tasks to to these agents and that endpoint is down, what

are you going to do? Like it's just it's non-negotiable. And so being model

non-negotiable. And so being model agnostic for every serious enterprise is kind of table stakes. And for us, what we can do is make sure that we get those models, you know, day zero that they're

released just so that they can stay at the frontier. Um, same with the open

the frontier. Um, same with the open models. Um, because also different

models. Um, because also different models end up being good at different tasks. They're better at different

tasks. They're better at different languages perhaps and making sure that we kind of give the optionality to the enterprises to to adjust accordingly um is pretty important.

How are you thinking about the forward deployed model? Is that more important

deployed model? Is that more important now? I I know that you have a very small

now? I I know that you have a very small team. It's what 70 employees um probably

team. It's what 70 employees um probably growing very fast. But uh how much about you know enterprise adoption is actually spending time on site with the customer

answering questions integrating deeply into these like large enterprises.

Yeah. Uh the way we think about the the deployed engineering is they should never be doing the same thing more than once because with the tool that we've built, if they've learned, hey, here's

something that enterprises care about, we should be able to build that into the product very quickly. Like our core competency is not providing services, but it's building product. And we treat our deploy team kind of as like the tip

of the spear where they're figuring out live, you know, shoulder-to-shoulder with the enterprise engineers. What are

the things that if we put into our product would allow them to become agent native faster?

Uh there was some news from Cursor today that they're teaming up with XAI to potentially train the next version of Composer. Are you thinking about

Composer. Are you thinking about training your own model at some point?

Is that interesting to you?

I think it's interesting at some point.

I think it uh it doesn't make sense right now because I don't think there is a um I don't think right now enterprises need another you know open model that

you fine-tune.

Sure.

Uh I think there's there's sufficiently good ones out there and I think most of the alphas actually on the research side as it relates to the agent itself. So

for example, Droid, which is our agent, ends up so it's model agnostic, but it also outperforms all of the agents that are coming out of the model labs.

And so as an agent lab, most of the alpha on every incremental hour of our time is from the agent itself. And

there'll probably get to a point, you know, where eventually maybe there's just there's sufficient alpha uh in in, you know, rlinging a model for ourselves. But right now, um, every

ourselves. But right now, um, every incremental hour on the agent ends up being very, very high ROI. So,

yeah. Jordy, anything else?

No. Great update.

Congratulations.

Great progress. Congratulations.

Talk to you soon.

Have a great cheers.

Thanks for hopping on.

Goodbye. And up next, we have Aill from Ulyses. He's the co-founder and CEO. How

Ulyses. He's the co-founder and CEO. How

you doing?

Hey, fellas. Good to good to be here.

Look at that.

Look at that beautiful drone. massive

day today. Kick us off with the announcement. What happened today?

announcement. What happened today?

Well, you know, I've got uh you know, my my friend, my makeo here, one of our uh pet robotic sharks, and uh we're going to be building a hell of a lot more of them. We've just uh

announced our series A led by Andre Horowits American Dynamism Fund at $38 million.

Congratulations.

Very very very very cool. Uh, and uh, yeah, why don't you give Yeah. What what

what is what have the last like six months been like? Uh, Will's been on the show before. This is your first time,

show before. This is your first time, but kind of walk us through what you guys have been focused on, what the what the opportunities are, and what the future looks like.

Yeah, for sure. So, you know, as you guys might already know, you know, we're building autonomous maritime robotics uh to solve the most critical challenges

in what is arguably the most critical domain on the planet. uh you know we're talking commercial applications uh ranging from just monitoring and

maintaining infrastructure for offshore energy, oil and gas uh renewables also telecoms uh you know maintaining and securing the you know critical

communications infrastructure also shipping terminals ports that kind of thing as well. And then as we you know recently started doing a lot of work in

the defense space as well taking our commercially available and deployed robots uh like this makeo behind me that's been on probably a dozen missions uh for various commercial customers till

date and taking the exact same technology and helping to fill capability gaps uh for allied forces.

you know, uh you look at ship building where China is ahead of the US by, you know, 200 times or something like that.

Um unmanned underwater vehicles, uh the gap isn't that big. You know, it's the gap that can be easily closed. Uh we're

the ones closing it and it's the underwater domain where most of the work happens. It's where all the

happens. It's where all the infrastructure is. Uh it's where all of

infrastructure is. Uh it's where all of the communications is and it's a place where, you know, we have a chance to deliver an asymmetric advantage. And

over the last 6 months, we've been hard at work taking our commercial tech and bringing it uh in front of Allied forces to get it uh in the water with them.

So, talk about the commercial applications. If I have a I don't know a

applications. If I have a I don't know a oil rig and I want to inspect and make sure that the barnacles aren't getting out of control or something. Uh I drop this in the water, am I piloting it

remotely? Does it have an autonomous

remotely? Does it have an autonomous sort of path that it can swim around on or or you know fly drive around on and and collect data imagery? What are the

sensors stack like how how am I actually getting value from this on day one?

So that that's the beauty of the product that it's modular which means that you can put you know it's made up of all these sections. You can change the

these sections. You can change the thruster configuration. You can put

thruster configuration. You can put different sensors on you can take other sensors off. So it depends on what you

sensors off. So it depends on what you want. You know, are you trying to do a

want. You know, are you trying to do a magnetic analysis of your structure? We

have a magnetic uh a magnetometer payload. Are you trying to just see

payload. Are you trying to just see what's there? We've got cameras like we

what's there? We've got cameras like we have right here. Yep.

Are you trying to uh see through really dark and murky water, really wide areas?

Then we have a variety of acoustic mapping sonar payloads.

Yeah.

And things like that. Uh and so then in terms of, you know, can it work autonomously? Can your remote control

autonomously? Can your remote control it? Well, you can do both. That's the

it? Well, you can do both. That's the

that's the fun of it. You know, you could have it, you know, just drop it in the water with a pre-programmed path and be like, "Hey, go and search this wide area or, you know, scan all these pylons

supporting my rig." Uh, come back, pull the data off and have a look. And then

you might see something interesting. You

might see something. I want to take a closer look. But then you can connect a

closer look. But then you can connect a cable, live stream the data, okay?

And drive it down yourself. And then you can look at it. And we support robotic payloads as well. So then you can start interacting with it. You know, you might want to scrape something off. You might

want to cut something that's entangle entangled. You might want to place

entangled. You might want to place something.

We have payloads that do all of that.

Yeah. How are you thinking about range and and uh battery life and and just all the different tradeoffs that go into uh actually getting something that can have

an impact for a meaningful amount of time or across a meaning full amount of space. It doesn't look like the biggest

space. It doesn't look like the biggest ship. How far can it go? How deep can it

ship. How far can it go? How deep can it go? Uh what are the options here?

go? Uh what are the options here?

Yeah, this is one of our um this is our one of our more compact vehicles. You

know, this one's about 60 65 in in length, but uh you know, we can go in excess of 140 in because you can stack batteries.

You know, this one here, um in this configuration, it's not the most hydrodnamic configuration, which means it's not the most efficient. So, it's only going to

most efficient. So, it's only going to go maybe 20 nautical miles with one battery box.

But if you want it to go 60 nautical miles, put three battery boxes on.

Yeah.

Or if you take the thruster pods off and you just have this big tube, that's the most efficient. And then you can

most efficient. And then you can actually go, you know, four four battery boxes in length because you take the pods out. That gives you space for

pods out. That gives you space for another battery box. Then you can go up to 250 nautical miles because it's going slower but farther.

That makes sense.

Yeah. Uh yeah. Yeah. And it's also more efficient shape.

Yep. More. Yeah. More efficient. Uh I

saw that there's two cameras on the front. Is that for stereoscopic vision

front. Is that for stereoscopic vision or is one of them telephoto, one of them wide angle? Why two lenses on the front?

wide angle? Why two lenses on the front?

In in this case, you doesn't really show, but they are actually two separate lenses. Uh

lenses. Uh uh two different sensors as well. Sure.

Just different use cases. But

they're they're modules. You can see this port is actually blank here. But we

make we actually make our own cameras as well. And you can plug them in with

well. And you can plug them in with different lenses. You can have a stereo

different lenses. You can have a stereo configuration. Uh you know, we've

configuration. Uh you know, we've actually got ones on top here as well because this one, you know, the idea is you can have it like swim like underneath structures and you can be looking up and doing inspection up

above. So um

above. So um you're making your own camera. How

vertically integrated are you? This

feels like with defense applications, it's really important to be onshore, but I would imagine trying to take advantage of as much of the supply chain as you can. Uh, what's been the build versus

can. Uh, what's been the build versus buy strategy?

Well, we we found come, you know, coming into this we there was there are a lot of things we honestly wanted to buy and we looked into buying, but we found the the idiot index in maritime is is insane. Oh, yeah. You know, it's

insane. Oh, yeah. You know, it's What is the idiot index again? Can you

break that metric down? Yeah, that

that's the you know the the metric that Musk came up with where you know what's the ratio of the cost of the raw materials in a part.

That's right.

Versus what you're actually paying for it.

Y uh and you know there's been like you know sensors and you know motors and other parts that we like we get in we take them apart. We're like

why are we paying $150,000 for this thing? It's got like a microcontroller

thing? It's got like a microcontroller in here worth $10, some you know networking and par switches and you know it's not even like okay this is really new really advanced technology and they

need to advertise the development cost.

It's like we're buying a sensor that's 20 years old. Why are we still paying this much for you know um and the thing is this the you know the the tech and the knowledge and the fundamentals have

been publicly available for a long long time for a lot of the stuff that we're bringing in house. So, you know, for us it's like if you look at the maritime industry, it's been the same for centuries. You want to do something big

centuries. You want to do something big and important. You get a big ship, lots

and important. You get a big ship, lots of expensive equipment, and you're really capex and opex heavy, right?

But that's not the case anymore in space, in the air, on land, you know, um we want to bring that moment to to the to the ocean as well. And what that's

necess necessitated is a ton of vertical integration. All the metal that you see

integration. All the metal that you see on this, all our pressure vessels, they're machined in the machines just over there.

Wow.

Um, all the internal brackets and mounts, everything also machined on those same machine. The plastic fairings and propellers and everything 3D printed on the 3D printers over there. All the

internal uh printed circuit boards with all the electronics. Um, we don't make the boards ourselves yet, but we do have the ability to actually assemble the boards. you know, we get the raw

boards. you know, we get the raw components in, place them on the boards, and we've got an automated line doing that. And um that's massively brought

that. And um that's massively brought our costs down, made it much easier for us to have a product that's fundamentally very easy to scale, but also massively like saved us tons of

money in terms of development time and iteration speed. You know, there's

iteration speed. You know, there's things we've done that we did in three days that before we brought machining in has probably would have taken us three months.

Well, that's very exciting. Thank you so incredible progress uh and breaking it down for us. Have a

great rest of your day.

The update. Congrats to the whole team.

We'll talk soon. Thanks for having me on.

Goodbye.

Our next guest is Charlie Chver, the co-founder of Expo. Previously, he

co-founded Kora, where he served as CTO and helped scale the platform to millions of users. How are you doing?

Hey, I'm great. How are you guys?

I'm good. Welcome to the show. Uh I I'm I think most people will be familiar with your background, but uh would love to get the introduction on Expo and go through the news today.

Yeah, we just raised a $45 million series B from Georgian.

And yeah, what's the shape of the company now? What's the plan?

company now? What's the plan?

Yeah, we're about 62 people right now and we're all over the world. We've got

great people. um everywhere and um the plan is just that we've got a ton of stuff to do and this will just let us do it. Um

what's basically happened over the last year or so is that um Expo sort of become the best way to make apps with AI and so just gotten really popular.

Yeah.

Um and so that's meant that there's just a ton of stuff to do.

Yeah.

Um and so we're we're working on it. So

yeah, I mean coding models are clearly aware of React Native and Objective C and Swift to some degree, but there's always been a disconnect between Xcode

or, you know, actually delivering the product and it feels like when you click on some vibecoded app, it's almost always in the web uh and you know this we it feels like there's going to be a

boom. We're already seeing some stats on

boom. We're already seeing some stats on uh on the app store, but uh walk me through what it takes to actually deliver value in uh app creation that's

differentiated.

Yeah. So, what we've been our our basic philosophy for the last like couple years has or since the beginning has been, you know, that we want to take everything that's good about web development and bring that to mobile so

that it just is easy and everything that's just easy and fast about building and distributing on the web, we bring that to mobile. And so a year and a half ago, I would have said, you know, what's great about Expo is that you can take

your, you know, React web developer team and you can point them at mobile and they can build a great mobile app that feels really, really good.

Sure.

Um, and today the pitch now becomes like, you know, these AI models are so well trained on React and JavaScript, TypeScript, etc. that like they're really really good at this for this. Um,

but the other really important thing there is, um, like Expo isn't just a way to build mobile apps with JavaScript.

like we we kind of see saw that attempted in the past and it just didn't work out that well because people would use you know the HTML 5 as a content delivery mechanism and it just wouldn't feel right. It just wouldn't be good

feel right. It just wouldn't be good enough.

Phone gas was one of the popular ones at the time.

Yeah. Stuff like that. And so what's different here is just that like expo is really a way to make uh you know apps with TypeScript and React Native and stuff like that but also let you drop down really easily to Swift and Cotlin

and stuff like that. So wherever you need to, you can go make that polish.

Sort of in the same way that you know a developer making serverside software might write a codebase in a mix of Python and Rust or something like that.

You can move in between them seamlessly.

And that's that's a huge deal and means that like the people who are making apps with expo are making sort of like stuff that's you know top tier top of the app store charts that kind of stuff. Uh

because you can hit that quality bar that people expect on mobile these days.

uh what's your view on how like uh maybe I won't ask you that but I would say like what do you think Apple how do you think Apple should be approaching

the explosion of of new software applications like they they are I I there's been so much frustration with them they've been under pressure because of you know billing and and payment

policies uh but they certainly specifically just looking at like if you just if you 10x or 100x or maybe someday a thousand X the amount of software that is a real challenge for them and so

they're not going to get everything perfect. But I'm curious like what what

perfect. But I'm curious like what what what advice you give them? One one place where I think they've done a nice job is on on the Macintosh where or Mac I guess they call it these days where like if

you want to get software on the Mac you can go to the app store on the Mac or you can get it from the web or you can just you know a lot of places like if I install like Slack or notion I typically go to their website and download an installer and it works and what they

they've done a really nice job of like tightening up the security model around the kernel and the operating system and things like that and there's not really any significant security problems I'm aware of on the Mac and I think that's that should be a really good model

and also you know nobody's on the developer side I don't know of a lot of developers who are super frustrated with distributing software on the Mac either.

So I think like from my perspective I feel like they've actually figured out a pretty good model and they just should apply that to to iOS.

Um and you know I I it's true like you know I was reading an article the other day I think app store submissions are up sort of 84% this quarter and obviously like a lot of that is new expo apps. A

lot of those are vibe coded. There's a

lot of new app building tools out there.

A lot of those are built with expo uh most of them. And so like yeah, a lot of people are frustrated that, you know, they're they're getting rejected for strange reasons or or they

don't know what what's going on or why.

And but I think overall this will get sorted out. I mean like there's just

sorted out. I mean like there's just it's too possible and there's too much demand for like building new software and building customized software and building software with bigger surface areas. Like it's just it's clearly going

areas. Like it's just it's clearly going to happen. Um I don't know. I feel like

to happen. Um I don't know. I feel like sort of like when Uber launched there was a bunch of regulatory things and policy things to find out but like it was just such a good idea and just needed to happen and so like eventually

the damn kind of I don't know if it burst but it like things got sorted out and and um people take Ubers now and I think people will be able to I think people will be able to make software and distributed it in the future.

Yeah. Uh what uh what percentage of your growth do you think is like agent-led as in you know various coding agents

effectively choosing Expo or helping guide the the team or entrepreneur to using the product? Uh,

I think it's still uh word of m like it when people make a decision big enough to sort of pick your stack that you're going to build your mobile app on, they're probably going to be stuck with for a bunch of years and for a lot of companies it decides their business.

They're not going to use one thing to decide that. So, I think that like it's

decide that. So, I think that like it's a combination of word of mouth, which is the strongest thing. like this the story that we hear over and over again is sort of like, oh, you know, our company needed to build a new mobile app because

we had this older thing that just wasn't cutting it anymore. Someone on our team came in on a Monday morning with a prototype that already had six screens built and felt really great and the CEO was really impressed and so we just kept

going with that. Um, but a lot of times that person found out about it because an an AI told them about Expo or they just asked an AI, hey, how can I build a mobile app really quickly? And it

directs them to it or they also find out about like YouTube is a huge referral for us. Um, like there's a lot of great

for us. Um, like there's a lot of great content out there.

Yeah. Uh, is this is the story about uh Facebook writing a compiler from PHP to C++ apocryphal or is that roughly correct?

I think that I believe that's correct.

this guy Hyping Xiao made something called like the hip hp hip hop compiler and um they're actually kind of doing some like one thing that's really relevant to expo is for React Native they've they built

this uh custom JavaScript virtual machine called Hermes and they're actually working on something called static Hermes which will ahead of time compile TypeScript and JavaScript to native code and so

you'll be able to take you know any React Native app if if assuming this project completes which it hasn't yet but hopefully will soon you'll be able to take any part of your you know uh you know JavaScriptdriven app and and

convert it into native code seamlessly and have that you know if you want to speed up that part at at the cost of a you know more brittle uh bigger binary you'll be able to choose that.

Yeah. Yeah. That that's exactly we're we're moving up these like levels of abstraction. Um you you you say that uh

abstraction. Um you you you say that uh you know you think people will be able to build apps and develop software in the future. Do you have a view on uh

the future. Do you have a view on uh sort of like real time UI instantiating things at runtime uh and whether or not Apple embraces that? It feels like

that's something that could be coming with artifacts that are generated on the fly based on a query doesn't make sense for every app, but does that seem like something that might happen in the future? I mean,

future? I mean, basically every big app that you know like does something like this. Like even

if you just think about something, you know, that you think of as kind of basic like Yelp, like at first it's like, oh, like this is a really structured every restaurant page like this looks the same. But then they start to add more

same. But then they start to add more features and there's like, oh well this a restaurant wants to post its hours in this way or there's a chain here, so we need to link to other locations and they start to, you know, make some sort of

like JSON format that describes the complexity of the UI. And then they keep extending it and extending extending it.

And so like there's there's um an old saying that sort of like you know every you know sufficiently complicated C++ program contains a poorly implemented halfbaked version of lisp in it or

something like that. And I think every mobile app that gets sufficiently big basically ends up with some sort of custom dynamic on the-fly rendering system for you know the as as their

content becomes richer and richer. And I

think like what's nice about using JavaScript and React and React Native is it's like it's a fully featured like you know real programming language takes care of all the problems like makes sure

things are you know correctly updated etc etc and like you you why not use the real thing once you're going in that direction.

Yeah. What does it take to get a job with you these days if you're a software engineer? There's a lot of people that

engineer? There's a lot of people that are stopping.

They're not studying computer science anymore. There's a bit of a reckoning.

anymore. There's a bit of a reckoning.

There's a question about where young people should go. How do you counsel someone who's uh in college right now and interested in technology?

I personally there's three things that I look for.

Yeah.

I would say like taste is probably the most important thing. I mean, and like I've I've said this for years, but now with like AI, this becomes even more important where it's just like we still need somebody to say like this is good

and like this is what what we should be doing and what what you know like what what you're actually trying to build and that's that's really hard to to replace.

It's it's you know it's rare to have someone who's really really good taste and so um someone who who just has good judgment that's incredibly important.

Then uh the second thing is like we call it like high APM. APM is like a term from like realtime strategy video games where it's basically like um if you ever played like you know Starcraft back in

the day or something like that.

Part of it is a strategy game but part of it is just like if you just do more stuff faster than other people you're going to beat them. And so like we look for people that just like do a bunch of stuff really quickly but like with a precision and you know that you're not

you're not just doing like totally random stuff but you're doing like effective stuff. And then the third

effective stuff. And then the third thing we talk about is just high agency where like you know you can see right now that like

writing code is become not a big problem for a lot of companies.

Yeah. But shipping good software is still a big problem for a lot of companies. And that's because the

companies. And that's because the problem of like actually making stuff and getting over the finish line out the door and to your users and you know properly messaged and all these other things and supported and you know iterated on to to match what your

customers actually need etc etc etc. Those are all pretty hard and a lot of times they involve like doing annoying stuff or solving like problems nobody ever wrote a manual on how to solve before. And just so people who are just

before. And just so people who are just like, "Oh, I'm going to get this done and I'm just to figure it out and I'm just going to like, you know, run through walls to to figure that out."

That's that's always really important, I think. And it, you know, whether it be,

think. And it, you know, whether it be, you know, a coding engineering context or any other role at a company, I think that's super important.

Yeah, I it's great. I like it a lot. Uh

Jordy, anything else?

No, this is great.

Yeah. Thank you so much and congratulations on the round and the progress. Uh very

excited.

Have a great day.

Thanks.

Great to meet you.

We'll talk to you soon.

Our next guest is Victor from Slash.

I take it back. I did have one more question, but it's too late. The

question was going to be around payments.

Oh yeah.

Like would they This feels like something they would build in helping you bring your product to the App Store.

App Store now has more flexibility around payments.

But I'll save that one for the next time. for the next appearance.

Well, let's bring in Victor from Slash.

He's the co-founder and CEO. Victor, how

are you doing?

What's going on?

I'm doing great. Thanks for having me on. Longtime watcher of the show. First

on. Longtime watcher of the show. First

time being here. So,

long long overdue.

Long overdue.

You guys have been uh probably 100xed since we started the show.

Yeah.

Um so, better better late than ever.

But for those who don't know, introduce yourself and the company first and then we'll get into questions.

Of course. Um, I'm the founder and CEO of Slash. Slash is one of the fastest,

of Slash. Slash is one of the fastest, if not the fastest growing business banking platforms in America. Over 5,000

businesses spend nearly 10 billion dollars a year on our corporate cards.

And the reason all these business owners are coming to Slash is quite simple. We

live in an age where you can talk to machines where cars can drive themselves. But the vast majority of

themselves. But the vast majority of entrepreneurs in America are still banking with an institution that has an interface that was last updated in the year 2003. So core to the SL thesis is

year 2003. So core to the SL thesis is this idea that your bank can do so much more for you than just let you hold and send your money. It can be the place where you invoice your customers, where you reimburse your employees for out-of-

pocket expenses, where you figure out how to just run a much more efficient operation. And we have ambitions to be

operation. And we have ambitions to be this generation's JP Morgan. And we're

going to do it by building the most powerful platform imaginable. And John,

I'm not sure you remember, but we met one time at a teal fellowship retreat.

Yeah.

Uh like a road map or somewhere like that.

Very cool. Um, so yeah, what is the go to market strategy? Obviously, it's a crowded space. Do you want to go bottoms

crowded space. Do you want to go bottoms up, top down, startups, enterprises, somewhere in between SMBs, uh, Silicon Valley darlings or main street everyday

uh companies?

Totally. I would say a very underappreciated fact is that fintech is very underpenetrated in the US. The vast

majority of businesses in the US still bank and spend with a legacy financial institution. less than 5% of American

institution. less than 5% of American businesses work with a fintech company like Slash or others.

And so there's a lot of market up for grabs. The crux of the Slash thesis is

grabs. The crux of the Slash thesis is that business owners deserve banking products hyper tailored to the needs of their specific industries. So I would say we work with companies that have, you know, a very small amount of

employees. We work with very large

employees. We work with very large companies, but usually it's very sector focused. So we figure out how do we

focused. So we figure out how do we deliver a ton of value for a business in one segment and we really tune out the the rest of the markets.

And in terms of actually getting those customers on the platform, is it some sort of like magical demo that is AI enhanced that wows them or is it uh you

know just just gum shoe getting to know folks and reassuring them that this will be you know uh just a reliable banking platform for them? Yeah, I mean

banking is a very relationships driven industry. All else being equal, people

industry. All else being equal, people prefer to bank and spend with an institution they have a great relationship with. And so the crux of

relationship with. And so the crux of our go to market is is depends on building amazing referral flywheels. So part of part part of this

flywheels. So part of part part of this um vertical byvertical strategy exists because we have a phenomenal product that works on a vertical byvertical basis but also because once we penetrate

and acquire a few customers in one particular sector willingness to refer is quite high because we deliver very strongly on customer support and and on just going above and beyond.

Yeah. How are you thinking about integrating AI tools, AI agents, AI chief of staff, anything that can help a business owner understand their spend,

understand their business actually manage their finances better?

Absolutely. The future of software generally speaking is moving away from click and drag UI and towards just textual interfaces, natural language.

Right now to today we actually announced our our AI agent. It's called Twin and it allows you to take every single action you can take from within the Slash dashboard but in natural language.

So that's where everything's going.

That's where all software is going. And

we decided to practively take that step today. That's number one.

today. That's number one.

And then number two, that's the most Gen Z name for an agent ever. Love it. Twin. That's my twin.

ever. Love it. Twin. That's my twin.

That's my twin.

It's my twin.

It's super underut.

Yeah.

And the really cool thing twins were thing. Yeah.

thing. Yeah.

Yeah. is it can buy is it can buy things on your behalf because we're the issuer of the card you use to place all your expenses. Your employees can actually go

expenses. Your employees can actually go out and tell, hey Twin, you know, make this Door Dash order for me, place this order on Instacarts.

And I think that's a super super powerful thing. Uh an agent that can

powerful thing. Uh an agent that can actually go out and make purchase on the internet on your behalf.

Uh you just raised a bunch of money. Uh

what is VC sentiment around fintech right now? I know you guys have stable

right now? I know you guys have stable coin functionality. I'm sure that that

coin functionality. I'm sure that that that was interesting and at this scale like you have a bunch of real uh really really positive metrics that you can lean on, but I'm curious what um what

what overall sentiment was um from the investor base.

I think there were two things that that investors found quite compelling about Slash. The first is that we're a very

Slash. The first is that we're a very revenue efficient company that our business approaching $300 million in annual revenue. We have a team of just

annual revenue. We have a team of just around 70 people. So our business has over $4 million in revenue per employee.

And the reason thank you we've been able to do that is because so many of these processes that legacy banks and the fintex that came before us throw a lot of headcount at processing disputes

parsing documents when somebody applies for an application submitting a star filing to to to regulators. We've agents

automated away. So slash's leanness and this differentiated differentiation of we're building this backend AI operating system was super attractive to investors. And then the other thing

investors. And then the other thing that's super interesting to investors is we're living in a super interesting time in fintech history where for the first time ever an American fintech company can serve businesses all over the world.

It used to be the case that if you were a fintech company and you wanted to expand internationally, you had to get licensed on a jurisdiction byjurisdiction basis. But now stable

byjurisdiction basis. But now stable coins are this enabling force that allows you to deliver USD banking products to businesses all over the world. So a lot of this funding is going

world. So a lot of this funding is going to go towards making slash this global product and bringing the caliber of product we've given to to to American entrepreneurs but to business owners all over the world as well.

Amazing. Uh well congrats on all the progress and yeah great to finally meet.

Great to have you on the show.

Yeah. Super impressive.

We'll talk to you soon.

Cheers Victor.

Have a good rest of your day. powerful

nominative determinism.

Victor. Yes, he will be the victor. I

like that. Uh well, our next guest is Theodore Maru from Cognition. He's the

head of product growth. Theodore, how

you doing?

Hey guys, how's it going?

It's good. Good to see you.

Great.

Uh obviously everyone here on the show is familiar with uh Cognition, the makers of Devon. uh but uh take us through sort of how you're positioning

the company, the updates and any any big announcements we should be aware of.

Of course. Yeah, thank you again for having me. Uh this is a very exciting

having me. Uh this is a very exciting day. Um so yesterday we had a huge uh

day. Um so yesterday we had a huge uh huge moment for the company that that I think a lot of us are very excited about. We had the biggest launch

about. We had the biggest launch since the acquisition of Windsurf last July.

Uh this is something that has that the team has been looking forward to a lot.

Uh we launched Windsurf 2.0 which uh did two big things. Uh it brought uh Devon to Windsurf. Uh so finally uh the

to Windsurf. Uh so finally uh the world's uh you know software engineering agent uh is is available in Windsorf and uh we have now an agent command center.

Uh so uh our sort of v vision for the future of software engineering uh which is managing a team of agents both remote and local uh that work sort of alongside you have an army at your back. Uh

Windinsurf 2.0 makes that easier uh than ever.

Got it. So uh how uh what goes into an agent command center to make it effective? We were talking about gas

effective? We were talking about gas town and uh and having different agents for different tasks. Uh the the I think the buzz word is like orchestrators.

There's a various amount of you know open source projects and sort of the the idea of orchestration is percolating in the AI industry. H uh how do you think

about uh educating customers and enterprises about why they should be uh using an interface to manage agents instead of just having a bunch of different terminals open.

Yeah. So first of all this is something that I think frankly arose as a need internally and at cognition what we're seeing is some of the best engineers here are uh and and we think this is

sort of where the future is going. The

best engineers are using local agents.

Yeah. and they are uh planning their tasks. They're going very deep into the

tasks. They're going very deep into the codebase, architecting systems, creating coming up with a plan and then they're handing those off uh to cloud agents.

And when we launched cognition, uh Scott and Walden and Stephen and a few other folks had this uh sort of they saw into the future and they saw that cloud agents were were going to be the future.

Uh but we also uh saw that uh engineers uh are are sort of you know around and they they they will be they are working very closely with their code and they want to make there's sort of like golden age of engineering where like you know

we can sort of you can sort of like go very deep uh into uh what you're excited about and then hand off to cloud cloud agents. So with Windsorf 2.0 know uh the

agents. So with Windsorf 2.0 know uh the the the bottom line is that uh and and what we're telling a lot of our customers with the command center uh is that you get to have this uh overview of

your agents so that you can your your limits on your attentions are no longer there because as you're working with dozens of agents at a time and you switch context it gets really hard. So

we've built we actually were very intentional and we built this conbon view uh sort of anyone that's familiar with project management uh can has seen a conbon view before um where you can

see all your agents working on different projects at a time uh and then you can sort of like switch in between them uh and quickly check on them and then spawn new or create new sessions when you need

to. Uh and then those those uh sessions

to. Uh and then those those uh sessions are actually grouped into spaces which is sort of uh this this uh this this way that we built to made it easier for

agents to share context uh and also share uh sort of uh state together. Uh

so from our perspective uh what goes into a great command center uh is just making it uh very easy for for a single engineer to work with a team of agents and have sort of like this like army at

their back for for big enterprises they have so much different development work to do.

What is the like the most lowhanging fruit? Like if you're talking to a

fruit? Like if you're talking to a customer who wants to get spun up with wind surf and cognition and Devon, uh are you trying to understand their their

their backlog, the hairiest tasks, the most miserable? Are you trying to get

most miserable? Are you trying to get them excited about green field projects and new dashboards and automated workflows? Are you trying to get in the

workflows? Are you trying to get in the hands of their their best engineers, their youngest engineers? Like what is the greatest foothold for you right now?

Yeah, that's a great question. I think

uh that has that is something that has been evolving ever since the beginning of of cognition. I think early on with Devon uh what we we found was that we would go in and and talk about all these

sort of very specific use cases uh that we'd find inside uh companies whether it's migrations uh whether it's uh building internal tooling uh whether it's these sort of like big backlog projects that they've been wanting to

work on. Um I think more recently like

work on. Um I think more recently like as models have been getting um you know better and as our agent harness has been getting better and better uh what we're

finding is that uh there's a lot of frank frankly everyone can can use a software engineering agent uh and the universe of possibilities has expanded greatly and I was talking about how you

can start working locally and you know there's this there's this sort of like gold the way I think about it is there's this golden age of engineering where like the best engineers in the world uh can can do more and they can offload

their tasks and not just the best engineers, frankly, everyone can offload their the tasks that they don't want to spend as much time on uh to to agents in the cloud that can sort of like handle them uh sort of very quickly or you know

over many minutes or or long long hours.

Uh and then they can sort of like stay in control and work uh on the things that they care most about and the hardest problems that are most exciting to them. Uh so uh Scott always uses this

to them. Uh so uh Scott always uses this sort of like uh this uh idea of you're going from being a brick layer to an architect. And I think a lot of what

architect. And I think a lot of what we're seeing a lot of our customers is that uh in the entire teams and individuals on those teams are go are moving from from being brick layers or sort of like writers to architects or

directors where they're sort of like managing an orchestra of of uh uh agents.

Sure. Yeah, that makes sense. Um uh

Jordy was asking this question earlier.

um about uh just model agnosticism, how valuable like do do you see demand from customers and companies for wanting to switch between model providers, use open

source for things like how much uh is using the right tool for the job uh understanding the para frontier and not you know blowing up your budget in one

month if you're token maxing.

Yeah. Uh that's something that comes off uh comes up all the time and as you know cognition has been model agnostic from day zero. Uh we've always worked with

day zero. Uh we've always worked with the the best models and all of the models that are available evaluated them internally figured out how to make uh the best agent harness for Devon how to

make the best sort of agent harness for uh windsurf as well. Uh and what we're seeing from our customers is that there's a lot of demand from trying out uh different models for different tasks.

uh we're constantly working with them actually to make sure that uh we we can sort of like advise them on what are the things that uh you know models are have this sort of jagged line of intelligence

like some of them are really good at specific things others are uh less good at those things like for example Opus 4.7 uh came out today and congratulations to anthropic on on a great model launch uh that model is very

good at deep investigations so uh we're sort of trying to look at how can we use that in in our sort of for example Devon review uh workflows where uh Devon can go in and look at uh a PR and try to

figure out all the bugs and all the issues that might be associated with it.

Yeah, that makes no sense. Uh well,

congratulations on the progress. Thank

you so much.

Great to meet you and uh give our best uh to the team.

Yeah, we'll talk to you soon. Have a

good rest of your day. Uh there's a ton of breaking news. Uh the big one is Hastings Reed Hastings is stepping off the board

of Netflix and the stock is down tremendously and uh but this is good.

He's not stepping off the board. He's

stepping off the board in June. He

announced that he's stepping off the board, but yes, I mean that's no but but again it's good because um it's good for Reed specifically. Oh yeah. because it

Reed specifically. Oh yeah. because it

shows that people have uh confidence in his leadership and his vision.

Um and um and and and I'm sure that uh I would expect Netflix to make a quick recovery but it's up 12% 13% in the last month, down 8.5%

uh overnight after hours. But we'll see where the stock settles uh you know tomorrow after the market processes this. The alternative is a nightmare for

this. The alternative is a nightmare for Reed because if he if he announced this announced this and the stock popped 20%, he was, you know, handicap handicapping the company.

Yeah. And I mean, the flip side is that uh Ted Sarandos, it seems like he put on a master class over the last six months with the Paramount negotiations, not getting over his skis. The shareholders

wound up really liking uh how that all pencled out. And so, um, it seems like

pencled out. And so, um, it seems like the company's in good hands and, uh, all of the different strengths that Netflix has continue to show across advertising

and subscriptions. and that while

and subscriptions. and that while they've kept their the big the big headline with Netflix is that they've kept their uh content budget essentially flat or slightly growing while they've

grown subscriptions and revenue and topline uh very precipitously and very consistently even at a time where they've uh they haven't needed to invest exponentially more money in content.

Obviously they spend a fortune on it but uh it's not uh it's not growing as fast as their revenue is growing so their profits are growing which is um good news. Uh Hastings departure marks the

news. Uh Hastings departure marks the end of an era for Netflix which under his leadership transformed from a DV D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D DVD by mail business to a juggernaut in subscription video streaming and

disrupted Hollywood. He said, "My real

disrupted Hollywood. He said, "My real contribution at Netflix wasn't a single decision," Hastings said in a statement that was uh in a company letter to shareholders. It was a focus on on

shareholders. It was a focus on on member joy, building a culture that others could inherit and improve and building a company that could be both beloved by members and wildly successful

for generations to come. Well, we wish him the best on his next chapter, whatever he winds up doing. Uh what an absolute run. Well, Jordy, is there

absolute run. Well, Jordy, is there anything else we should talk about? TSMC

of course has earnings. We can cover those later. Uh the chipmaker TSMC is

those later. Uh the chipmaker TSMC is more bullish than ever on AI despite the Iran war. So, some good news there and

Iran war. So, some good news there and lots more stories to talk about, but we will be back with you on Monday at 11 a.m.

a.m.

It's been an honor and a privilege to be with you here today.

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