CEOInterviews.AIBen Thompson Joins, 5.6 Sol Reactions, Coatue Bets Big on Blue Origin at $130B

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Unknown0:00

I see a large IPO on the horizon. You're surrounded by journalists. Watch your position. Overnight success. The laser 3. It's 10:37 on Wall Street. Bonnie never sleeps. Use your theater, right? There's misinformation clearing order inbound. Let's just roll. We are surrounded by journal. Hold your position. Come, get up. Trust the experts here. We are experts. Founder Mal. I see multiple journalists on the horizon. Stand by. UAV online. Blaze. Double blaze. Triple blades. Double kill. Michael is 10:37 on Wall Street. Money never sleeps. You should We are experts. Triple blade. Let's just roll. Right. Clearing order inbound. You're surrounded by general. Hold your position. Strike one. Strike two. Activate golden retriever mode. Mark clearing order inbound. 5 I see multiple journalists on the horizon. and founder.

H

Host4:34

You're watching TVPN. Today's Wednesday, July 8th, 2026, and we are live from the TBNN Ultradom Template Technology Forces Finance, the capital of capital. Let me tell you about ramp. Time is money. Save both. Easy to use corporate cards, bill payments, accounting, and a whole lot more all in one place.

J

Jord4:57

That's right. It's great to be back.

H

Host5:00

Yes. The Invest Like the Best hype song really it it really has I don't know. It just burned its way. Yeah. Puts it in an incredible Yeah.

J

Jord5:10

mental state.

H

Host5:11

Uh 100% 100%. You know who else is in a good mental state? Jeff Bezos. because he's getting a markup on the 25 billion he's put in.

J

Jord5:20

He's marking himself up.

H

Host5:21

He's marking himself up

J

Jord5:22

alongside KOU.

H

Host5:23

Yeah. The news is that Blue Origin is raising outside capital for the first time. He's participating uh fund CO2 who he has also invested in through his family office is also participating. Um but there will be an opportunity for some other true outsiders to get their first slice of of Blue Origin. Uh Andrew Ross Sorcin had the scoop in the New York Times today. You have to wonder if this is gossip coming out of Sun Valley. Uh the company is raising 10 billion dollars. This is the first outside fund raise. Uh it's hilarious to think about this 25year-old company as being previously bootstrapped, but that's technically what it is basically. Uh one founders's capital just uh chipping away at a really hard problem for a quarter century. And now we are here. Uh Bezos has been funding this basically solo on his uh quest to visit the stars. Uh he's doubling down.

J

Jord6:19

People can't really complain about the valuation because he's a big Yeah. part of uh setting the price.

H

Host6:25

Yeah. Yeah. So uh he's doubling down. He's putting in $2 billion directly and CO2 is getting twice as much allocation, 4 billion. Uh there's another interesting CO2 tidbit I alluded to earlier uh from the New York Times piece. Bezos's family office is a major investor in CO2's innovative strategies fund which is focused on emerging technology startups. So I'm not sure if the money is coming out of that fund specifically but there is a connection there. He's been building a relationship with CO2 for a long time and they are optimistic about Blue Origin's prospects. The valuation is expected to be $130 billion uh big for a private company. I was uh listening to Gavin Baker and Travis Kalanick talk about how crazy it was when Gavin was at Fidelity and he wanted to value Uber at 14 billion and everyone thought he was crazy. The valuation turned into an auction came in at 17 and everyone was like this is unprecedented. We've never seen a private company this big. And now uh 17 billion even 60 billion in the private markets looks quaint by modern standards in an era where we have uh several trillion dollar private companies uh many up in the hundred billion plus range. Uh it's a wild wild time.

J

Jord7:38

Brian wants us to warm up the gong. We got to warm up the gong. Warm up the gong for Bezos. Give it a couple warm-up hits just to get it warm. Just to get it warm. Here we go. Yeah.

H

Host7:56

Fantastic.

J

Jord7:58

Nice and warm.

H

Host8:00

Yes. So, uh, the Elon bulls are saying, 'Oh, SpaceX is underpriced now.' Because you have to imagine, I don't know if there's an exact revenue figure that's leaked for Blue Origin, but based on the size of that business, it has to be small. And so, this has to be a very high multiple, but you're not really valuing this company on cash flow or even revenue. you're valuing it on the capability which is it's the second company in the world I believe to uh bring a rocket to orbit, land it successfully, you know, prove reusability. They got there before China which has been trying to copy SpaceX for years and so lots of really solid progress. Of course, there was that setback with the uh launchpad that exploded, but they figured out a solution to that and things are chopping along just uh just fine. Uh the company is estimated to burn five billion this year. So this looks like a pretty standard 12 to 18month fund raise at 10 billion. Um and it's burned something like 27 billion to date, which you know, a billion a year on average over 25 years. Not too bad for such an ambitious project. Still a lot of money. Uh but a big opportunity. And uh and you have to imagine um there are a number of other comps like A Space Mobile as you like to call them AS Space Mobile Space Mobile

J

Jord9:21

AS 272$28 billion

H

Host9:24

$30 billion company and I don't believe that they've gotten much to orbit yet they've done some experiments some tests they're still early but it's a huge market and we've seen how fast

J

Jord9:33

concepts of mass to orbit

H

Host9:35

Yeah. and and and we've seen how fast Rocket Lab and various uh it's a big really it's a really really big market and so when you're going after a big opportunity and you've been working at it a long time and you got Jeff Bezos funding it uh lots of reasons to be optimistic uh let me tell you about MongoDB what's the only thing faster than the AI market your business on MongoDB don't just build AI own the data platform that powers it um

J

Jord9:59

another comp uh investors would certainly look at would be Rocket Lab sitting at just under 50 billion and uh there'll be multiple players in launch. That is for sure.

H

Host10:12

Well, we have some heartbreaking news. Heartbreaking news. Apple has scrapped plans for a cheaper Apple Vision Pro display and is winding down work at Samsung. This is from Mac Rumors. Really hits me and the other three Apple Vision Pro fans particularly hard. Uh brutal. I did I Who did I talk to? I talked to somebody who said that they they actually are a daily user of the Apple Vision Pro. I thought I was in the top 1%.

J

Jord10:38

Was it the the founder that's making

H

Host10:41

Yes, that's right. that he says he watches it he watches he uses it every night or something like that. That's a lot of Apple Vision Pro use. Obviously, the the the the product never really found product market fit. Uh although we have one in the studio, we've been having fun with it. Uh I still think it's a it's it's an incredible piece of technology, but uh little bit of a chicken and egg problem. The developers never showed up and it was very expensive, very heavy, very cumbersome. It requires a lot to put that thing on to watch Lawrence of Arabia. But when you do, it's worth it. It's worth it. What did I watch most recently? I watched Dunkirk in it and I watched Godfather Part Two and Master and Commander. Master and Commander, that's a great movie, especially in Vision Pro. Really, you want to be in the cinematic feel, feel like you're on a on a on a warship. Uh so Apple has has reportedly stopped development on a cheaper display for a low lowerc cost vision pro. This feels like what the industry needs to move forward. The actual display was fantastic. It just needed to be cheaper and lighter so more people could get them. That at least was my thesis, but Apple disagrees with me. What do I know? So the supplier Samsung display expected to formally end the project by September. And if you remember, there were rumors of the crazy hoops that Apple had to jump through to get that incredible display because they really leaprogged Meta, who had been working with the acquisition of Oculus and they'd been improving the uh the the display fidelity. They got rid of the screen door effect. They were increasing the resolution per eye. Everything was getting better about that display, but on a very linear trend. And allegedly uh what Apple did was they went to Samsung and said, 'We know that you are working on next year's display. You're also working on displays 2 years out, 3 years out, four years out. Now, what's the problem with the one that's four years out?' Well, it's amazing, but it's not ready for manufacturing at scale. It's not on an automated line. It needs a lot of manual work to get it to actually produce, and there's crazy low yield. So in in in chips, in displays, yield rules everything. If you run the machine a bunch of times, you want to get 99.9% yield, 90%. In the early days, when you're prototyping a new technology, you might be getting just a few percent yield. And Apple said, 'That's fine. We'll just jack up the price and pay a ton for these cutting edge displays. Jump to the front of the category with the best display technology. We'll charge a fortune for it, but we'll have the best product.' And that will be our market entry strategy. And so I was waiting for that display technology to commoditize because it's been a few years. Uh I thought it would just naturally get cheaper. It probably has, but it has not solved the problem of virtual reality, augmented reality. Uh we haven't seen someone pick up.

J

Jord13:28

Do you think they're just bearish on the near term of people watching movies?

H

Host13:34

Maybe. Yeah. in in uh in VR because I don't they're they're certainly not stopping uh R&D on their specs and their and their sort of everyday glasses product

J

Jord13:47

and so it might just be that that they studied you and found that you're built different and you're one of one the only person on earth.

H

Host13:55

Yeah. No, no. I mean truly like sitting down and watching a full movie is a is a rare experience today. People aren't reading. They aren't watching movies. they're just scrolling and people seem to be satisfied with their phone. And also the the nature of a doom scroll is is somewhat interactive, somewhat multiplayer, although obviously people see it as brain rotting and very isolating. there is a game to uh to be played by uh actively scrolling which is something that doesn't require virtual reality certainly not enhanced by virtual reality but then also sometimes you want to read the comments sometimes you want to send it to a friend sometimes you want to fact check it and ask AI about it or spin off and do something else and go to someone's profile so I I think that the number of taps and user interaction experiences in a doomcroll session are obviously much much higher than watching a film which you just put on and hopefully you don't pause it at all because you're engrossed the entire time from start to finish. Uh and so if that becomes as scrolling means more and more maybe the the VR experience is less less and less relevant. So uh the cheaper display on the Apple Vision Pro or maybe the Apple Vision Slim or Mini or something. I don't know. They could have used a different name. Pro always always left the door open to just the regular Apple Vision at a more uh approachable price point, but the cheaper display that they were working on uh would have cut the headsets pixel density roughly in half. That's not what they need to do at all. They need to keep that pixel density because it's that's the best part of the experience. Uh the move likely reflects Apple's broader shift towards smart glasses. Bloomberg's Mark German previously reported that Apple uh paused work on a lighter, cheaper Vision Air. Yeah, that's the term. Uh in October 2025 to fasttrack its Ray-B band style glasses effort. Uh this does not mean the Vision Pro itself has been cancelled. Apple refreshed the headset in October 2025 with an M5 chip which does very little slightly better tracking. I think you can run some applications uh at slightly higher fidelity but it is uh by all accounts essentially an identical device but they are long overdue for a proper refresh if they were taking this seriously and thinking about this as a as a true growth driver. I think they they have recognized that this was an experiment that needs to be put on the back burner for at least a little bit. Uh and so this report only suggests the cheaper display project is no longer moving forward. So, the Vision Pro fans have hope. They It's not fully cancelled. Maybe there's something else going on. Maybe there's more in the works. But, uh, anyway, it's uh it's it's interesting. I I with all the acceleration in AI, I was hoping that we would get some some uh you know, advancements in this since it is an adjacent technology, but uh we've been few and far between on the updates. We got to get an update from the big screen VR team because they have done a great job creating highfidelity VR that's also lightweight but it needs to be tethered to a PC. It's a little more proumer a little more dev kit styling. VR really attracts these like visionary visionary chats that are willing to go that that seem No, no, I'm I'm actually uh I could make that joke, but I won't. But just just people that are willing to just continually look

J

Jord17:21

silly for a long time to ride through the hype cycles and just like keep building. I think Big Screen is an is an example of that. the founder that we had on that has a very cool glasses uh demo product. He's I from my understanding probably using uh AR and VR more than anyone else on the planet. Like so committed to just like winning. Yeah.

H

Host17:43

Um and so I really appreciate that about the category. Yeah. Let's see how Apple's doing on the news. Are they trading up or trading down? I push the button. Will it come up? We'll see next time. Anyway, let me tell you about Figma. Figma agents. agents meet the canvas. Your AI agents can now create and modify your Figma files with design system context

J

Jord18:03

production swearing at the team chat.

H

Host18:06

Well, uh here is a crazy story. I mean, it's such a minor story, but uh it certainly grinds my gears. I think we're going to dig into it and see what you think, what I think once we dig into it. But uh Getty Images, we know and love them from their trove of Silicon of of Silicon Valley titans photographed at Sun Valley

J

Jord18:26

at Sun Valley, which is happening now. If you don't have a Getty Images subscription, sign up now because you're going to be first to know when the new Josh Kushner uh paparazzi photo drops.

H

Host18:37

Um but Getty Images was planning to merge with Shuttertock. These are two essentially stock photo sites. In theory, they should be absolutely decimated by AI image generation. Meta put out a new one. Muse Muse image uh Nano Banana Pro has been fantastic. Images 2 from OpenAI has been really good. And like they're they're honestly getting to the point where a lot of the example images are just like, okay, that's just a photo. I saw Adam Masseri posted some on Instagram and I was like, is this AI or did you just take this photo? Like it's just you. And then he did a couple with filters and hair and crazy hair and those were cool and and that breeds creativity. So I think there's a lot of value in the technology. But in terms of just like I'm trying to illustrate, I'm trying to make a point visually. Uh I need a picture of a forest. AI image generation is very very competitive with the stock image industry. And this should have this should be a business that's sort of affected like the way um you know uh

J

Jord19:42

yeah a lot of a lot of these business new their net new revenue over the last couple years is just working with labs that need licensing yeah all sorts of things. So

H

Host19:53

um certainly in the face of growing competition consolidation of an industry is very normal that makes a lot of sense. This doesn't this doesn't seem like it should raise any regulatory flags and yet it did in the United Kingdom. Uh Getty Images has called off the Shuttertock deal after the UK uh created some uh barriers around it. So the $3.7 billion deal would have created a visual content company able to offer a more expansive library to users, says the Wall Street Journal. So on Tuesday, Getty delivered a written notice to Shuttertock terminating their planned tie up, which was first announced in January of 2025 and res and received clearance from the Justice Department in America in April. So pretty quick turnaround in the United States. Uh the $3.7 billion deal would have created a visual content company able to deliver a more expansive library to users, helping meet booming demand for licensed images and videos as artificial intelligence disrupts the business of content creation. Getty stock slipped 1.7% in pre-market trading. Uh shares of Shuttertock ticked up 1%. So maybe the shutter shareholders are happy about remaining an independent company. The termination came after Getty last week said that its board voted to not proceed with the deal if it meant shut selling Shuttertock's editorial business, a condition required by the UK competition and markets authority. So the decision to uh uh by Getty to abandon its merger with Sutter stock was ultimately a commercial choice. So the chair of independent inquiry group that led the CMA's in investigation of the deal, the inquiry group found that a loss of competition between the two businesses would reduce choice for UK media outlets and could lead to higher prices. And I would I would assume that this would give them some sort of pricing power in the face of, you know, essentially unlimited free editorial images in the form of AI generated images. If you want to go with the real thing, you have to pay a little bit more, but that sort of offsets all the pressure of the customers that are leaving and no longer paying because they don't need to pay because they're generating them with generative AI. So, this felt like a very logical story. Um, and I'm I'm a little bit uh uncertain that this is a good decision for the UK to help these businesses. It feels like it's just going to wind up hurting both of them.

J

Jord22:17

Yeah. Are UK media outlets not allowed to use AI content?

H

Host22:21

I don't think that there's any broad rule against it. No. So they you would it would be a deliberate choice and I'm sure there's plenty I I imagine that the Financial Times does not use AI images and that's by choice and they make that very clear and there's probably a disclosure and if they of of course they will use an AI image if they're talking about the AI image industry but in terms of what you see on the front page of the Financial Times it's almost always editorial. Yeah, that image

J

Jord22:49

this is from Reuters

H

Host22:51

and and that is an editorial uh distribution and something that is licensed and uh and occasionally they need a photo for to illustrate something and um they might use AI.

J

Jord23:02

Okay. So I was trying to figure out why the the headline number here was 3.7 billion.

H

Host23:09

Yeah.

J

Jord23:09

Because it was based on the January 6, 2025 share prices, not today's prices which are far far lower. Yeah, shutter stock is sitting at $329 million market cap. Getty is at $340 million market cap. So these businesses have been really really beat up over the over the period since they decided, hey, we should tie up.

H

Host23:33

Interesting. So is there is there a potential? So the UK I think regulators are actually trying to just kick these companies while they're down.

J

Jord23:40

Is that what's happening or or is it a situation where Getty Oh, I mean that that is possible. I mean it could just be like a just a complete mistake. I mean as you go back to Meta and you think about uh the the the uh the UK the US regulators blocked Meta from buying a VR fitness company that they said would create a monopoly in the VR fitness industry. And of course like the VR fitness industry like never happened. Like it's not a it's not a not an industry worth monopolizing. And so if you think about um you know the business model of Quest like would it have been advantageous? Maybe. But it's worth letting Meta take a shot at that uh and see if having a VR fitness company in the portfolio will actually get that product to uh you know to scale. Tyler, what do you have to say?

T

Tyler24:28

Uh another interesting anecdote is um the UK blocked Meta from buying GY in 2022.

H

Host24:33

Yes.

T

Tyler24:33

So to prevent a monopoly in GIFs, I presume this could be pretty dangerous. Yes. Which is also odd. What What does Gy power the uh gifts that you see in iMessage? You know what I'm talking about? When you go to um you you go to there's Genoji, there's stickers and then there's also hashtag images and you can find images and you can send, you know, different pictures and and gifts. I wonder if these are from Gy or if

J

Jord25:02

it's powered by Bing, not

H

Host25:04

powered by Bing. Okay. So, there's competition in this market.

T

Tyler25:06

Yeah. I don't know. Uh, it's

J

Jord25:09

Manda says Canva doesn't label AI in their stock images. That's so annoying. So, yeah. I didn't even know Canva was a player here,

T

Tyler25:16

but uh it would make sense to like

H

Host25:19

you're you're in Canva and you want to, you know, have a picture of a forest on your greeting card and you can pick from a library. Some of them will be generated, some of them won't. And they probably also have a a generative AI tool where you can generate a new image. But if you're just go looking for a generic stock image that's already been described, you can probably pull from whatever library is out there. Anyway,

J

Jord25:39

yeah, Canva partners with Getty Images, but then they're also featuring generated images.

H

Host25:44

Anyway, let me tell you about CrowdStrike. Your business is AI. Their business is securing it. Crowdstrike secures AI and stops breaches. Uh there is another interesting article in the Wall Street Journal on the cover the front page of the main uh section the what do they what do they actually call what do they actually call the main section there's the business and finance section is this just world news I don't know anyway uh on the cover of the Wall Street Journal it's the world's creepiest office and people won't stay away this is the New York complex vacated by IBM has become a magnet for urban Explorers. We have a video of this place. And if you're a scrappy startup looking to expand, this might be the key to success. The ultimate lock-in factory in sort of rural New York, I think. We'll we'll get into it. So, this is in Summers, New York. I don't know exactly how far away that is from Manhattan.

J

Jord26:43

Yeah. So, if you were like a Neolab and your name was like ominous intelligence.

H

Host26:48

Yeah. There we This could be a great sort of HQ potentially, you know, your first uh little micro data center.

J

Jord26:57

Very James Bond villain sort of vibe. Uh and yeah, looks looks like you could make it, you know, really really homey.

H

Host27:06

Uh how far is it from Manhattan? Let's see. Okay, it is 1 hour. You can be in the city in an hour. That's

J

Jord27:14

Imagine walking these halls late at night after a long day at work. Yes.

H

Host27:19

It wouldn't be It wouldn't be creepy at all. Yes. Robert Carlton was getting the mail one day in April when he saw a group of teenage boys sprinting away from nearby woods. He cut them off at the road and raised his arms. I just said, 'Stop. It's over.' The 62-year-old retired engineer recalled. Soon, he said, 'Three pu uh pursuing New York State police troopers emerged from the treeine and arrested seven juveniles. The criminal charge, trespassing on the former IBM campus here, disrespecting international business machines. Don't do it, folks. The long vacant site has become a magnet for so-called urban explorers who prowl abandoned malls, hospitals, power plants, amusement parks, factories, and any other unused uh disused structure they can breach.

J

Jord28:09

Enough of the graffiti.

H

Host28:11

Yeah. Do you think put in here? We got to figure out how much

J

Jord28:15

dare they write all over the

H

Host28:18

former home of international business.

J

Jord28:21

Exactly.

H

Host28:21

Um what was the uh what was the IBM AI Watson? Watson the machine in

J

Jord28:28

was probably still at the frontier.

H

Host28:31

Still at the frontier. It it was super intelligent at uh at Jeopardy. Uh the global which is short for urban exploration phenomenon. Herbach isn't new, but it's been turbocharged by artsy videos on Instagram and Tik Tok that spur others to create their own posts, luring more curiosity seekers. Police in Livingston, New Jersey, recently warned people to stay out of the closed Livingston Mall property, Jacksonville Beach, Florida. Police issued a similar caution in April about the shuttered Adventure Landing amusement park going into an abandoned amusement park. That is thrillseeking at its best. Uh, we are aware of a Tik Tok challenge to explore to explore the property. Who's doing these Tik Tok challenges? And should they should they be allowed to post those? This is this is dangerous for some people. I mean, seriously, you go in there, there's a lot of broken glass and and you know, who knows about the structural integrity of a building that hasn't been inhabited in years or decades. Could be very

J

Jord29:28

Is it on the market?

H

Host29:29

Uh, well, we have some news about that. I don't know if it's actually on the market, but I imagine if you make them an offer they can't refuse, this property could be yours. Uh, so Sebastian Capital, the Manhattan company that manages the 723 acre site, that's a lot of size, uh, says it has beefed up security and appreciates helps from from police. So, I'm shocked by the YouTube comments, yes, that are wholly coming to the defense of this building. They're saying, 'I hate there's a class of people who see something like this and feel compelled to start breaking things.'

J

Jord30:04

Why do people vandalize these kinds of places?

H

Host30:06

Interesting. I can't believe these are all the top comments. I can't believe people go in there busting up the place. That's crazy. I I would have sort of expected people to be on the side of the urban explorers, on the side of the Tik Tok challenge uh challengers. Uh Andrew Proto, a defense lawyer, said a 15-second clip isn't worth a criminal record. Don't do it. If you've already been arrested, you're not the first call we've taken this month, and you won't be the last. Proto says he has represented or advised several minors arrested on the campus. The summer's town court uh town court clerk said some def defendants received a six-month adjournment in contemplation of dismissal, meaning charges will be dropped and their arrest will be sealed if they avoid trouble. Some explorers who have posted about the IBM site say they follow an observe and preserve ethos and reject vandalism. They say they're driven by curiosity, the thrill of roaming forbidden spaces, and a zeal to document discoveries, and that they're careful and know their limits. Quote, 'It actually gives me hope when I hear that kids are out there getting into trouble.' Um, said Bradley Garrett, a cultural photographer and author of the book Explore Everything: Placehacking the City about his own urbex adventures. He sees urban exploration as a gateway drug in a good way, sometimes into intellectual curiosity about history and culture. So you go, you break into this abandoned building and then next thing you know, you're an IBM consultant driving enterprise value for S&P 500 companies traveling a businessman could happen. Who knows?

J

Jord31:36

Could happen. Reg wants to turn it into an Aman.

H

Host31:39

Aman would be good. Data center seems obvious depending on power. What about the first

J

Jord31:45

Aman with a data center

H

Host31:48

with some local AI both? So, quickly, you asked about the price. In 2016, IBM sold the property for $31.75 million and it's owned by a LLC that shares a Fifth Avenue address with Sebastian Capital. So, everyone suspects Sebastian's in on the deal. A plan to convert it to a private school foundered during CO and Sebastian said it is considered Yeah, foundering is like failing, but yes, uh foundered. So floundered would be, you know, another appropriate term for what happened. But uh it did not it was not successfully converted into a private school, obviously. Um but uh if you if you want to take a wild swing, go pick it up. Make Sebastian Capital an offer. Let's see. I wonder what it would trade for today. Lots of work to be done. Car and driver. quickly. Tyler had something on the IBM complex.

T

Tyler32:43

Yeah. So, okay. You planning to go 1.1 million square feet. Um, historically, you'd see like I think something like around 10 watts per square feet.

H

Host32:51

Okay.

T

Tyler32:52

Um, maybe it's a little bit higher tech, right? This is IBM 80s. Um, I an estimate I think is reasonable is around 20 megawatts.

H

Host33:00

20 megawatts.

T

Tyler33:01

Yeah. So, you're looking at a small data center.

H

Host33:03

Is there any natural gas in the ground? Can we frack? Can we put solar panels on the roof? Can we build a nuclear reactor there? What are our options if we want to get this thing churning out tokens? We want to turn it into a token machine. Um, interesting. We should go check it out. Anyway, let's move on to the New York Stock Exchange. Want to change the world? Raise capital at the New York Stock Exchange. Just do it. And Jordy Car and Driver says 2026 Lucid Gravity available with no interest due to no interest.

J

Jord33:36

What? uh several months after launching the 2027 Gravity, Lucid still has plenty of 2026 model, so it's offering customers an interestfree loan incentive.

H

Host33:47

Okay. I wonder how long there's no interest on the loan. Uh that seems like a good deal. The Lucid is a very well-reed car. Very luxurious interior, very polished product. Uh for some of the higher, more performanceoriented trims, incredible 0 to 60 times, incredible range. I think Larry David has one. Um, they're they're they're well-reed cars, but it's a electric vehicle which has high depreciation and then you're uh signing up to work with a company that a lot of people think might not be around forever. So, what does the maintenance and repair and flow of products and new parts look like in a decade? And so, that is a risk factor for a lot of people. But, uh, the Lucid Air gravity, I think it looks sort of cool. It's sort of like a It's a little bit like it wants to be a minivan. It's trying to do the job of a minivan, but they didn't just lean into the sliding doors. At least the Model X realized that what makes the minivan great is the is the accessibility of the doors, and they made them cool doors by making them go wing or butterfly doors.

J

Jord34:56

Yeah. The problem here is that when I looked up Lucid Gravity for sale, I'm seeing a 2026 with just 3,000 miles that's selling for 125,000

H

Host35:06

a lot of money

J

Jord35:07

dollars. That's a lot of dollars. And regard even if you're paying no interest, it's probably losing, you know, it's depreciating thousands of dollars uh a quarter and so it's still going to be a rough ownership experience.

H

Host35:23

Yeah. Yeah. um will be interesting to see where they end up. I know they already have some big investors and potentially some corporate partners. Uh it could eventually be rolled into another uh organization as sort of the EV strategy of a larger automotive group. Who knows? Um did you want to did you did you want to look at end of stay? Did you see this? We got to pull up this video because we were talking about exactly this. The 964 Cabriolet Jr. is a Porsche 964 that has been shrunk. Actually shrunk exactly what you said. Look at this video.

J

Jord36:05

This is what this is what you asked for. Uh fully customizable and look at this. It looks normal size, but wait until this guy gets in it.

H

Host36:14

This is amazing.

J

Jord36:15

So, it is a go-kart that has the bodywork of a Porsche. And so, you can get one of these. They go like 60 m an hour or something like that. Like they're pretty fast. Um. Yes. So, I think if you put a a governor on this vehicle, you'd have what you want, which is the the the vehicle for the kid that is fun, engaging, and uh highly stylized and made with precision. The group behind this is called End of Stay. Stay has uh periods after it. So, I imagine it's some sort of acronym. But uh what a wild

H

Host36:53

they did it.

J

Jord36:53

Yes,

H

Host36:54

they did it.

J

Jord36:56

They did it.

H

Host36:56

Uh I I'm interested. You can see the YouTube video here, the preview of the 964 Turbo Jr. high-performance version. It's an absolutely uh crazy crazy video that I uh got organically served to me and I was like, 'This is what we've been looking for for sure. This is exactly what we were talking about.

J

Jord37:16

I need one.

H

Host37:17

I think you do. Um you need one. Anyway, uh GPT FI uh GP Live, a new generation of voice models for natural human AI interaction launched today from OpenAI rolling out to Chatt starting today. Taking shots at that guy on Instagram who's unsatisfied with legacy voice models. Uh it's a lot smarter.

J

Jord37:38

I have a feeling he's going to find a way to keep using the old models.

H

Host37:42

Oh, maybe. Or he'll just become uh who's the Ply the Liberator? He's sort of the ply the liberator of voice models in that I know he's taking shots and he's like very unhappy with the quality of the voice models but at the same time he does a great job of actually exposing and finding limitations not necessarily jailbreaks but he he by watching those videos you can very clearly understand okay I understand what's going on here it's not it doesn't have tool use so it can't count it can't set a timer it doesn't have you know a long running context window that can stay with you for a long time so it gets It gets lost. They can't talk to each other. There's a whole bunch of different ways. And once you have all of those documented by just a he's basically like a white hack hacker. He's he

J

Jord38:27

found a bunch of benchmarks.

H

Host38:28

Oh, wait. What?

J

Jord38:29

He found a bunch of like good

H

Host38:30

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Basically benchmarks. Like if you can satisfy his his videos and run those experiments again in a satisfying way, you probably have a better product at the end of the day. So, I don't know. I think it's uh I think it's cool. I'm excited.

J

Jord38:43

Very Yeah, super excited for this one. I I wonder if the Yeah. the real time nature unlocks like under unlocks like almost like a new kind of like pod like real time like podcast format where you can just actually have a conversation about a topic. Yeah.

H

Host39:00

Right. Yeah. We should have it sitting right here. Uh it has a full duplex architecture which means that it can listen and speak at the same time. So it can jump in appropriately

J

Jord39:11

and it can also route

H

Host39:12

like certain questions to smarter models.

J

Jord39:15

Yes.

H

Host39:15

To run in the background, you can still have a conversation. Very cool. Which is great because my default flow like if I'm driving, which I don't think I should be doing, but I will tap the record button, not the voice mode, and I will dictate a really long prompt. And then I will click send, and then I will wait for it to cook. and then I will have it read that back to me and that's all just like a couple extra clicks, a couple extra steps to get what I really want which is um a conversation. I was interested about the idea of uh where this goes like is there is there a world where you are talking to a model and you can have sort of multiple threads of conversations going within one conversation. So you can say, 'Hey, I need you to go and do a deep research report on uh, you know, IBM Watson.' And it goes and cooks on that. And then while it's doing that, you're still talking to it and you're still having a conversation. But then you also might say, 'Well, catch me up on the latest news.' And it has that at the fingertips. So it can talk to you about the latest news. And then you can go and it can say, 'Hey, by the way, I'm done with the report or I'm done with the the code that I wrote, but you're talking to me about other problems in your organization, other decisions, other research projects that you have.' And it's all done in one continuous conversation like, you know, me interacting with you like, you know, we might we you might uh delegate something and then continue the conversation and then move on. Oh, I got to text this person. Okay, I'll text them. They'll do that. they'll come back to me in 20 20 minutes with the revision to the the the thing that we're working on. But in the meantime, let's talk about whatever else we got going on today. So interesting to see where this goes. In other OpenAI news, GPT 5.6 Soul along with Terra and Luna will will launch publicly this Thursday. Preview Access is expanding globally. Lots of people are having fun with this. Some people got early access. Other people were joking about uh clearly not getting early access but wanting early access. Um, but a lot of people are having fun. Tyler,

T

Tyler41:18

what did what did uh what did John Palmer say? What did he say? He's in here now. He he had uh he has one. He says, 'Uh, it seems I'm allowed to talk about 56 now. I wasn't one of the testers, but I heard it's really good. Again, I haven't used it yet, but this will probably be my default model from here on when I get access.' It's a good one. Uh, people are having a lot of fun. Uh, Kit Langton says, 'Uh, I can finally talk about GPT 5.6. I've been using it for many months, if not decades. And what is glaringly obvious to me now as I look back on my life is that you did not have access to it. Oh, it's very fun. Uh people are very happy with it. Interesting. There's a there's a little bit of a fork around like when how the the vibe around 5.6 six is different than Fable 5 when how interactive it is versus uh somebody said like uh Fable is like light speed across the galaxy and uh and Soul is like a Porsche the Nerburgg more engaging. I don't know. Uh it seems like we're we're entering uh some some fragmentation in like the right tool for the job.

H

Host42:25

Yeah. Ethan says my big takeaway is that both Soul Ethan had access. So he says both soul and fable represents represents jumps over previous models and have opened a large gap with the next best AIs. People will have preferences for one or the other, but if you're doing any work where better intelligence matter, uh these two those two models are your only choices. Dean says, I think for me the main takeaway with Soul and Fable is that I can't remember a time when the leading models were a so decidedly ahead of everything else and b so distinct from one another. So yeah, um so yeah, a lot of people are talking about how they're using the models uh together. It's probably a function of uh just tighter tighter distillation protocols. like there's less pollution. Like also like not everyone's training on the exact same data anymore because uh it used to just be everyone just trains on the entire web corpus and now uh each company has different data sets, different data brokers, different usage patterns that they can train on and then different sort of research tastes. So go give it a try. I forgot to mention this GBC 5.6 souls worldleading in computer use. It made me use it 100x more when we lost access to 56. it quickly started to go insane without it. So, yeah, people in the early access program obviously lost access for a couple weeks.

J

Jord43:41

Sure.

H

Host43:42

Uh due to the DC action. Um but yeah, I saw some people saying like, 'What are some good uses for computer use?'

J

Jord43:50

And it's like anything on your computer.

H

Host43:54

What do you use your computer for? They're not all going to be great uses, but

J

Jord43:57

yeah.

H

Host43:57

Uh I'm curious. I still think it's worth it's worth it's always worth like popularizing those like uh genuinely useful um patterns. I mean like deep research was that in many ways just uh a very like it gave you a 20page PDF report on the topic that you were asking for and it did a lot of the work for you. And I still think the the uh come up with a good prompt idea, find the right uh reason to use AI is a problem for a ton of people. There there there are there are plenty of people that adopt the latest AI tools, immediately find what the model's good at, how to use it, how to use it profitably, effectively, not waste tokens, not waste their time. Um but other people need ideas. They need to know that there's a new capability. You see this with the with the chat app. And you see this with the voice mode where people are like uh you know like judging a model based on hallucinations that disappeared a year ago or judging a model based on some oh it has a cut off window and then that hasn't been a thing for a year but it still burned its burned its way into like the the memes of the online culture and thus uh people need to be updated on that. And so, uh, I'm I'm in favor of coming up with good computer use, uh, demos. The real one is just, can it play Counterstrike effectively? That's the real computer use test. Can it rank me up to global elite? Can it downrank me so I can smurf a little bit? This is This is the future. This is what I want. Anyway, let me tell you about Railway. Railway is the all-in-one intelligent cloud provider. Use your favorite agent and to deploy web app, servers, databases, and more. Well, railway automatically takes care of scaling, monitoring, and security. I'm extremely excited to welcome our next guest to the show. We have Vincent Vicer from Prime Intellect. He's the co-founder and CEO, and he has some amazing news for us. Tell us what happened, then we'll dig into the news, the market, the story, the company. But first, give us the news because Jord's already warming up over here.

V

Vincent Vicer46:05

Amazing. Yeah. So um we've announced that we've raised 130 million um at a billion with prim.

H

Host46:11

Wow.

V

Vincent Vicer46:11

To build um the open super intelligence stack.

H

Host46:16

It's fantastic. Congratulations. Uh yeah, what I what we were talking about before the show is is the the the the ratio between dollars raised to run rate.

V

Vincent Vicer46:29

Yeah.

H

Host46:30

Absolutely. Uh incredible. Yeah. How much have you raised before this round?

V

Vincent Vicer46:36

Um, just 20 million total. So, I think we've actually got to this runway on like less than 20 million in spend.

H

Host46:43

That's crazy.

V

Vincent Vicer46:44

Which is north of which is north of 100.

H

Host46:47

Yes, that's amazing.

V

Vincent Vicer46:49

Um, yeah, we we doubled it, I think, since we actually closed the fund raise. Yeah.

H

Host46:53

Um, to 100. So, basically um yeah, on track to um grow much more from here on. Okay. So uh reset me on the latest and greatest in the actual product offering. What customers are coming to you? Is it I have used a frontier model to you know figure out that AI can in fact do some agentic workload within my organization. I want to cut cost and you're going to RL an open source model for me fine-tune it. And then am I paying you for tokens? Am I are you getting me GPUs? what is the full suite of products that you offer customers these days?

V

Vincent Vicer47:29

Yes. So basically it is kind of like the

U

Unknown47:31

Full stack to do training, deployment, and continue improvement of models. I think customers come to us for compute, inference, the full RL and post-training stack to train models. We have customers from different buckets: AI natives, new AI labs, traditional enterprises, and sovereigns. There's increasing demand for having your own end-to-end software and AI stack, which complements frontier models and stacks.

H

Host48:52

And you're using 'sovereign' not just in the geopolitical sense but also if you're a Fortune 500 company you want to own your stack from start to finish potentially.

U

Unknown49:02

Exactly. There's been a lot of talk about this recently, with folks like Satya and Alex making those points. Enterprises want to build a compounding data mode and flywheel to create self-improving agents. The RAM example showed that within a week and under $50,000 in training spend, they outperformed a frontier model at automating spreadsheets at a fraction of the cost. These specialized agentic use cases are a big unlock, though you still need a big mega model for orchestration. Another trend is the explosion of new entrants taking model training seriously — hundreds of neolabs have been stood up in the last 12 to 24 months. We power many of them with our full stack, including large compute clusters. Nvidia joined our round, and we've operated large clusters since day one. We run 15,000 GPUs and scale to over 30,000, which is why we need so much capital.

H

Host51:23

Walk me through when you press the huge cluster button. Is that because there's broad demand for specific models that need inference at scale, or for training at cluster scale?

U

Unknown51:46

It's for all needs from training to inference. We abstract GPU complexity away so customers can just hit a button for post-training runs without managing bare metal GPUs. We're ramping up our own clusters to serve hundreds and thousands of customers in parallel.

H

Host52:37

So you're saying a customer with a $50,000 budget for post-training can deploy that across thousands of GPUs briefly, and you absorb the orchestration cost so the customer only pays for a slice.

U

Unknown53:11

Yeah, this is also a big unlock on the inference side — customers don't need to frontload hundreds of millions in capex. We serve a lot of inference. Our visibility into demand shows that GPUs are sold out for the next few months, especially for US data centers. The main bottleneck in AI is GPU supply, and we've scaled by partnering with almost every data center for over two years.

H

Host54:28

So you can stand up data centers in different geographies and orchestrate them globally.

U

Unknown54:33

Yeah.

H

Host54:33

Any predictions or forecasts for American open source over the next six months?

U

Unknown54:40

Great question. We joined Nvidia to help train Neatron as part of the Neotron Alliance. Leading American open source efforts are Neatron and RC with the Trinity model. We have our own models cooking and help many customers with theirs. I think there will be a huge resurgence of frontier open models from the US, led by Nvidia and our customers. The geopolitical question is what happens with Chinese open models. China might restrict exports, and there could be policy interventions on both sides. The motivation to push American open source forward is to reduce reliance on models that could be banned. Enterprises are realizing this dependence. We want everyone to have their own end-to-end open stack. There will be more neolabs releasing open models, like Poolside did. With hundreds of well-funded neolabs, there will be a resurgence of research and novel directions. We empower these new labs to move faster without building the same stack in-house.

H

Host57:54

When you hear of a major US tech company in the Mag 7 with extra capacity, do you reach out to them? Are you at a scale where a deal would be interesting, or are they looking for $10 billion plus opportunities?

U

Unknown58:20

For sure. We're sourcing large clusters, sometimes 5,000 to 10,000 GPUs. We look at every source of supply, turning every stone to find the last GPU on Earth. Orchestrating global compute supply efficiently has been a core tenet since the beginning. We optimize for fault tolerance and distributed training. We're definitely considering any spare GPUs available.

H

Host59:15

Back on China. Do you agree with my perception that if there's a lockdown on Chinese open source export controls, that wouldn't affect things because the weights are already out there? And are they mad that American companies are distilling or post-training their open source models by design? It was a goal of the project. Would they try to claw back access to models like Kimi or GLM that are already deployed? How do you see that playing out?

U

Unknown59:26

Yeah.

H

Host59:29

Are they mad that American companies are distilling on or post-training their open source models by design? I thought it was a goal of the project. But what I'm interested in is would they try to claw back access to Kimi or GLM any of those models that are already been deployed? Because once the weights are downloaded, it's out there. You could sue, but that's hard in American jurisdiction. Would it just be going forward, no more open source, and the CCP telling Chinese companies or some other shape of restriction?

U

Unknown1:00:17

Yeah, it's hard to know. A good example is Qwen, which changed its licensing and stopped open sourcing. I think there will be both company policy changes and state intervention. One can't rely on a steady stream of frontier open releases from China. Similarly, other sovereigns, including the US, don't want to build on China. We'll see a more multipolar open ecosystem of frontier models, which is a healthy balance. It's unhealthy to rely on a single ecosystem. There will be unpredictable changes in AI policy over the next few years.

H

Host1:01:54

Last question. Data center construction is deeply unpopular in the US domestically. AI workloads are latency-insensitive. This seems like a recipe for global competition, with aggressive data center expansion in countries that see it favorably. What's the state of non-US data center buildout?

U

Unknown1:02:43

We're building a lot of data centers outside the US, but there's still huge demand in the US, especially from regulated industries. Inference speed still matters for many use cases. There's a general boom in data center buildouts outside the US, limited to countries with geopolitical stability, energy, and space. The US has unique access to natural gas, which is hard to beat for quick energy. We see specific regions in Europe active in buildouts. New entrants like Armenia, Kazakhstan are making big bets. The US will continue to see a boom, but it's harder to get data centers in the US. There are policy risks and populism. Specific states are leaning in more heavily. We'll see global ramp-up, hopefully beyond Earth.

H

Host1:03:35

Yeah, the US has unique access to natural gas, which is great for bringing energy online quickly.

U

Unknown1:03:42

It's hard to beat.

H

Host1:03:42

Yes, and we're seeing this across Europe where specific regions are more active in data center buildouts, generally those with their own money to invest, cheap energy, and local support. Even places like Australia, New Zealand, Armenia, Kazakhstan are making huge bets on data centers while being US allies. Those will see the biggest boom. The US will also continue to boom, but it's harder. There are policy updates with elections and populism, and even sovereign influences trying to harm the US buildout. So there's a lot at stake for the US not to pull back. Specific states are leaning in more heavily.

U

Unknown1:04:55

Exactly. There are specific states in the US much better suited to ramp up data centers. We'll see them ramp up globally, and hopefully beyond Earth. I think this is the only way to really properly scale.

H

Host1:05:39

Yeah.

U

Unknown1:05:40

I think this is the only way to really properly scale.

H

Host1:05:42

I love it. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. Incredible progress.

U

Unknown1:05:47

We love seeing you and the team win.

H

Host1:05:49

Yeah, it's fantastic.

U

Unknown1:05:50

Fantastic. Have a great rest of your day. Say hello to Will for us and we'll talk to you later.

Cheers. Goodbye.

H

Host1:05:56

Let me tell you about Cisco. Critical infrastructure for the AI era. Unlock seamless real-time experiences and new value with Cisco. Our next guest is Ben Thompson, the founder of Stratechery. He's been on an absolute tear during a slow news cycle. Does it feel like a slow news cycle to you?

B

Ben Thompson1:06:15

I don't know. The summer is always slow. I slow down a bit myself. I feel like you've done a good job of providing insightful pieces during a slow time when I didn't know I wanted that.

H

Host1:06:31

I'm doing you a favor.

B

Ben Thompson1:06:32

Yeah, you are. Is that what I'm hearing? I didn't know I wanted you to adopt the voice of Mark Zuckerberg for 20 minutes, but it's not like it was driven by a specific scoop. It's more about resetting the meta narrative. I want to talk about that, but can we start with Xbox?

H

Host1:06:53

Sure.

B

Ben Thompson1:06:55

I want to reality check the story I tell myself about how Microsoft ended up in the situation with Xbox. I think it starts with DirectX, the graphics layer that allowed games to run on multiple graphics cards. That was a Microsoft licensed property, which is why we don't have the Chrome.

H

Host1:07:25

You want to go way back? We didn't get an Amazon or Google gaming console. Why is that interesting?

B

Ben Thompson1:07:36

We can go back. The main technology for 3D was OpenGL, but Microsoft came out with Direct3D as an alternative that was easier to use and more tied to the platform. The Xbox was part of Microsoft's three screens and a cloud strategy: the PC, the phone, and the living room. They thought they could own the living room via a game console. But that strategy failed because people buy consoles to play games, not as a portal to the internet. The actual living room portal was taken by things like Fire Stick, Apple TV, Roku. The Xbox 360 was competitive, but then the Xbox One was designed around the living room vision with Kinect and restrictive DRM, and gamers hated it. That console generation killed their momentum. I wrote over a decade ago that they should kill the program or spin it out because the stated goals were not achieved and it was continuing to exist just because it existed.

H

Host1:08:58

What is your review?

B

Ben Thompson1:08:59

Can we get a GTA 6 review?

H

Host1:09:02

No. Well,

B

Ben Thompson1:09:03

I feel compelled. Number one, I think Rockstar is charging way too little for this game. They're charging $80. This is a game.

H

Host1:09:11

You're going to get cancelled for this. This is a nuclear take.

B

Ben Thompson1:09:15

No, they should be charging like $200 for this. GTA 6 is like the last great game, the pinnacle of AAA craftsmanship. I feel compelled to buy it even if I don't play it. $80 is ridiculous. They should charge more.

H

Host1:10:11

We had one of the youngest people on our team commenting on people complaining about the price, saying you couldn't save up $80 in 10 years.

B

Ben Thompson1:10:24

Seriously. Kids do lemonade stands and clear $100.

H

Host1:10:32

Nothing will make a kid's day better than 'I'll keep the change.' But with inflation, it's sort of expected now.

B

Ben Thompson1:10:43

So anyhow, the console era. The way I think about Xbox is Microsoft had three screens and the cloud: they already owned the desk via PC, wanted to own the pocket via mobile (they didn't miss mobile, they just had the wrong model), and the third screen was the living room. They thought they could own the living room by creating the Xbox.

H

Host1:11:02

And the idea that we're going to we already own the desk. via the PC were going to own the pocket via the phone. And people always used to say Microsoft missed mobile. Microsoft did not miss mobile. They like they came up with like Windows CE in like 1999. Like they were in mobile. They just had the totally wrong conceptual model because they were basing it around, you know, as an extension of the PC. But then the third screen was the living room.

B

Ben Thompson1:11:27

How do we get in the living room?

H

Host1:11:29

Well, people have consoles plugged into their TVs. If we can get in and own the console, we can own sort of the gateway to the living room. And we need to earn permission to be in the living room. We will do that by creating a a g the Xbox, the game console.

B

Ben Thompson1:11:44

And what's interesting about this is this is a strategy that totally failed. And it failed for a kind of an obvious reason in retrospect, which is first and foremost, people buy consoles to play games, not to have a portal to the internet in their living room. And so you're selling a multi00 sort of console to people who want to play games, but people who don't want to play games arent going to randomly start buying consoles. What actually ended up taking that over was things like the Fire Stick or, Apple TV. Now, the Apple TV's price got jacked to the moon, but the Fire Stick is probably the big one. It's not that it's a classic Microsoft thing. They were actually right. There was this new front page to online services to be built. They just took totally the wrong approach with Xbox. And what's funny is that this approach actually became this uberos of self mutilation because the Xbox didn't succeed in achieving this because it's a games console that's way too expensive to achieve this. But then also they killed the Xbox where Xbox 360 was pretty competitive and it's that generation is actually the most interesting console generation. I'm happy to expound on that if you want to. But they come out after that with the Xbox One, which was super expensive because it had the connect built in and more restrictive DRM. It was designed around realizing their vision of owning the living room. Gamers hated it. So they rejected it. So their vision which they didn't achieve also killed their console. And so my I wrote over a decade ago and the whole Xbox saga is filled with regrets I think first and foremost for Microsoft but also for me because from the beginning I said they need to kill this program or spin it out because the stated goals which made sense from a corporate perspective were not achieved and it is continuing to exist because it exists.

H

Host1:14:08

And I was actually sympathetic to that. I worked at Microsoft from 2011 to 2013 when Microsoft was in the dumps and the one thing the employees had was at least we have Xbox, all the cool kids over there. It was such an important thing to corporate culture to have Xbox, even though it was a totally failed division.

B

Ben Thompson1:14:43

Yeah. What do you think the naming scheme says about that project? Xbox, Xbox 360 (the third, actually the second), Xbox One (the third), Series X (the fourth). It's a mess. Why didn't they just go with Xbox 2, Xbox 3, Xbox One?

H

Host1:15:10

Maybe it shows I worked at Microsoft. You're asking the wrong guy about naming things. But yeah, total mess. They called it the 360 because it was coming out the same generation as the PlayStation 3 and they wanted to be on the same level with a three in the name. What's interesting about the PlayStation 3 is it was Sony's big misstep. They had the Cell processor and they wanted to get Blu-ray off the ground. But the PS3 was way too expensive and ran hot. The extra capabilities were not used because the shift to HD and 3D games made developers use game engines like Unreal, so they needed to be on all platforms. That was the 360's best generation because developers targeted everywhere and the 360 had a simple, PC-like architecture. Then the next generation, Microsoft pushed Kinect and the living room vision, while Sony learned their lesson and focused on exclusives by buying small studios. That crushed Microsoft.

B

Ben Thompson1:17:33

Exactly. The PS4 had exclusive games like Spider-Man and Last of Us, and they just wiped Microsoft out because for all the cross-platform games like Call of Duty, they ran everywhere. So Sony's strategy was to limit their studios to their platform and recoup via licensing fees from third parties. That continued to the PS5. This brings us to the Game Pass disaster.

H

Host1:19:19

Yes. So let's jump forward to that.

B

Ben Thompson1:19:21

I didn't want to ramble too long. I was going to give you a chance.

H

Host1:19:25

We love it. I have a bunch of other questions not related to gaming, but I love this history.

B

Ben Thompson1:19:33

The console history is fascinating because it tracks technological change and strategic shifts. You can draw parallels to model releases in AI over the last couple years. So, Microsoft decides to try a new business model: Xbox Game Pass. Instead of buying games individually at $60-70, you pay one price per month for all games in Game Pass. But no publisher wants to participate because they make money upfront from their biggest fans. Microsoft bought Bethesda and others to force games into Game Pass, but the idea was to expand the market with the cheaper Series S. The problem is no independent developer would go for that, so they bought Activision. But all they did was cannibalize their existing business without expanding the market. They expected 75 million Game Pass subscribers by now but have about 30 million, and it's decreasing. Phil Spencer retired, new leadership came in, and now there's a reset with layoffs and a critical decision about what to do.

H

Host1:24:50

What did you read into their approach of laying off 1,600 people now and keeping a 1,600 person rift? It seems like a terrible idea because morale suffers.

B

Ben Thompson1:25:15

I have some sympathy. I appreciated the note because they stated clearly how much trouble they are in, and if they only cut 1,600 people, everyone knows more cuts are coming. They tore the band-aid off as much as they could. Now they can be overt about it and talk to employees about their work. Given the employment climate, people are less likely to bail. Hopefully they can do better cuts by doing them in the open. I don't envy Xbox's leadership at all.

H

Host1:26:29

Probability of a spin out?

B

Ben Thompson1:26:32

I think it needs to happen. This is my regret: I said for years they should spin it out, then gave Game Pass a chance, and it didn't work. I don't see it now. They hired Matthew Ball as chief strategy officer, so I'm curious what he's thinking. But maybe they could write off the acquisitions and make Call of Duty exclusive to Xbox to test the power of that exclusive. That would be a good pricing test.

H

Host1:28:02

Switching gears, we keep seeing AI companies that seem hot, then you don't hear from them for months, and then they come out with hundreds of millions in revenue. The 10th best company in a category is having the financial performance that would have been the leading company five years ago. What do you make of that?

B

Ben Thompson1:28:47

This is a thing in tech in general that has always stuck out to me. I think back to when Apple bought Beats for $3 billion. Everyone was writing thought pieces, but Apple was a $500 billion company. Who cares about $3 billion? And now Apple is much larger. The numbers are so inflated, I just let them go. It's hard to keep track of the inflation in tech numbers.

H

Host1:30:13

On mergers and acquisitions, Getty Images called off the Shutterstock deal after UK regulators required selling the editorial business. It seems odd to block a merger in an industry under attack from generative AI. Consolidation seems like the natural defensive move.

B

Ben Thompson1:30:48

This happens every time. The natural response to an external threat is consolidation. It's the only way to defend yourself, get synergies, etc.

U

Unknown1:31:03

Companies are pretty established, so it's actually fairly easy to price exactly what things are. It's a much like if you have growing companies, you want to merge them or acquire them. It's really unclear because how do you sort of price out the future? These companies are declining. So it's very easy — you could do a discounted cash flow and understand exactly how much they're worth. It's a very straightforward negotiation. It makes total sense for them to consolidate. But precisely because they're knowable and understandable,

It's very easy for regulators to block them. And you see this happen again and again. You see pushback on you saw this with TV and like different networks getting together and the various pushbacks happen to that or in telecoms. This happens — this is a natural pattern. The moment that a company or an industry wants to consolidate, needs to consolidate, is the moment regulators are most likely to stop them consolidating. Whereas the actual time when action would matter — when it's growing and a company is making the right acquisitions to take over an industry —

Regulators don't do anything, and also rightly don't do anything, because you're dealing with the future and it's unknown. You don't want to screw it up.

It raises the question of what use do regulators sort of do anyway in broad strokes. I used to be — I've sort of, you know, I think that they probably do more harm than good as far as a lot of these sort of blocking mergers and things go. But I don't know. I'm the one that just said maybe Microsoft to take Call of Duty exclusives. So who knows?

Moment because we were looking — it's a $3.7 billion deal. But I'm like, how is this a $3.7 billion deal? These are two 300 million-ish market cap companies. And it was because the deal was priced back in January of 2025, and so both companies had declined so much.

Combined market cap over the last 18 months.

So maybe they should do the deal anyway. I don't know.

I mean, it could be worse. You could be Netflix and have the stock market sort of make a bid for Warner Brothers that the stock market hates, abandon the deal. But they already decided — you did the deal because you're desperate and you're screwed anyway. So yeah, they don't even get what you bid for. So maybe that's what happened here. I don't know.

H

Host1:33:17

Oh, well. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to come chat with us. Have a great summer. Enjoy the break, and we'll see you soon.

U

Unknown1:33:26

Yeah. Good luck with the lemonade stands.

Yes. Try to make it. Don't go into debt.

You're going to run up on a kid that has Clarina.

Raise some money. Yeah, I know. Exactly. Claron lemonade stand.

Clarimate stand. Five easy. Silken Valley free. Interest free. It might.

H

Host1:33:42

Well, thank you so much, and have a great rest of you. We'll talk to you soon.

U

Unknown1:33:46

Talk to you later.

H

Host1:33:46

Have a good one.

Let me tell you about Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform that grows with your business and lets you sell in seconds online, in store, on mobile, on social, on marketplaces, and now with AI agents. And our next guest is Rodrigo Leang from Samban Nova. The co-founder and CEO is here with us in the TV realm. Rodrigo, how are you doing?

R

Rodrigo Leang1:34:07

I'm doing good. How are you guys? We're doing fantastically, but it sounds like you're doing better. Give us the news. What happened?

Well, we're super excited. We did a big funding announcement today with a billion dollar round that we did a first close on at an 11 billion valuation. So super excited about announcing that.

H

Host1:34:26

Incredible. There we go. There we go. This is reminding me — there was somebody who posted like a couple weeks ago something to the effect of every day there's a new billion dollar deal in chips from some company you've never heard of. I guess the trend continues. Yeah. Is this an overnight success? When did you start the company? How long has this been overdue?

R

Rodrigo Leang1:34:56

It's an overnight nine-year success. I've been building chips for 30 years — a high performance processor. We started this company in 2017. So no, but it's been a great journey. It's just so noisy — there are so many companies out there doing awesome things. But look, inference is now right in front of us. It's kind of broken everything open. It's what we do and it's been what we've done for a long time. So it's the new training run. People who were thinking about building just for training — well now it's the time for inference, and this is where we shine. Investors are putting all their money behind that, and we're excited about that.

H

Host1:35:39

How, walk me through the phases. You have some of the biggest companies in the world you're working with. JP Morgan Chase selected you for secure on-prem AI inference. I'm interested in the thought process that large Fortune 500, Fortune 100 companies are going through right now. I imagine there's a lot of explore with frontier models very expensive, they're token maxing, then they shift to okay this agentic workflow is working, let's use an open-source model that is caught up and can do this task. Maybe there's a fine-tune or some RL on private data that makes the system perform better. When is the conversation shifting to actually optimizing the inference stack, the hardware? What are the savings people are focused on?

R

Rodrigo Leang1:36:39

Well, I think what people are starting to realize after they started using ChatGPT and the frontier models is, look, there's a bunch of things I can do there and it's great. It's going to be part of their business for a long time. Hyperscalers are offering all sorts of different services with different TPUs and GPUs. What's happening now in the next phase of production is people are realizing: what happens to the stuff that I'm not comfortable releasing to these models — my private data, my security, the stuff that I want your models to learn and become part of global knowledge? So what do I do with that? My client's banking information, regulated information. People are realizing there is a whole other class of workloads, applications that you have to go and do privately. With someone like JP Morgan, they are the top of the top when it comes to enterprise and IT. They selected us to come into their environment, do full on-prem secure private — they can bring their open source models, fine-tune them, deploy privately securely, and control the models forever. So we're starting to see the landscape steady. Some things you use the frontier labs for, some things you use the hyperscale clouds for, and some things you say let me run on prem and control the outcome, especially since I don't know how the regulatory environment will settle. Let me just be secure, safe, and run those things on my own models in my own environment.

H

Host1:38:27

Yeah, you can think — a pharma company would love for all the other large pharma companies to share their data with a frontier lab. Totally.

What does a partnership with you look like for a large organization? If I have a large IT footprint already, I probably have data centers but they might be more CPU based. Maybe I have some GPUs but I'm not doing frontier inference. Are you consulting with them at the level of where they should be buying land for their next data center, how they set up a powered shell, who they should partner with? How deep in the stack will you go?

R

Rodrigo Leang1:39:16

Well, if you look at the AI ecosystems up to date, we've been really focused on hyperscale clouds, the neo clouds, the frontier models. We're focused on building those out — gigawatts here, megawatts there. Just this large scale deployment. Then you think about how to get as many tokens out per megawatt. We're very focused on that. We run the big models really fast — that's what we're known for. Huge models, the trillion multi-trillion parameter models. We run that faster than anybody else. But then you flip it to the enterprise — for them it's about data privacy, security, having capacity when they want it, low latency. These are things they've always wanted.

H

Host1:40:22

Right, they always wanted low latency, high performance, security and privacy. And so what we know is that our rack is a 10 kilowatt air cooled rack.

R

Rodrigo Leang1:40:33

Compared to traditional GPUs that are 140 kilowatts per rack. We're 10 kilowatt aircooled rack producing state-of-the-art AI.

H

Host1:40:40

Sure. Now you can go into your existing data centers. You don't need to buy new data center. Roll out the old gear, bring in the new gear. Off we go. You're running the latest and greatest models at great performance. That's exciting. They're first and foremost our customer, buying racks and deploying them. But broadly they're also a co-developer when it comes to enterprise secure AI for enterprise. They are the most knowledgeable in deploying these applications, so we partner with them to bring the enterprise on board. There are three classes of AI clients: the model makers,

R

Rodrigo Leang1:41:22

Right, you got the clouds, and people forget enterprise is just waking up. Historically they have been a massive amount of spend. They're just waking up. You see JP Morgan, banks, some retail starting to come on board. I think that's going to be a part of the ecosystem.

H

Host1:41:42

Yeah. Last question for me. Jordan, you can take whatever after. Walk me through the pre-ChatGPT era for your company. I imagine since 2022, 2023, it's been on fire and demand has been through the roof. But how did the company survive from 2017 to 2022? What were you doing? Who were the customers? Did you have revenue? Was it all R&D and venture funding? What was the early history?

R

Rodrigo Leang1:42:17

Being in chip design for a long time, you always know this is a long-term investment. Back in 2017, we were still trying to recognize cats and dogs on the web. Is this a cat or a dog? We were figuring out what to do with this thing. We built recommendation models for people. But the reality is, what OpenAI did just flushed out all that noise pre-OpenAI,

H

Host1:42:46

Y.

R

Rodrigo Leang1:42:46

And focused all the value around let's start here. It doesn't mean images aren't important, voice isn't important. But it focused us as a global market to say let's start with language. That's a very good place to start. It allowed us to come together — hardware, software, models — focus on language as the use case. Now we have so much production traction, we can focus on other things like voice and video. The ability to sequence these in production so you can actually see value has been incredibly important.

H

Host1:43:25

On that note, going forward, how are you thinking about reacting to customer needs? This partnership with JPM and your other new customers feels like reacting to a real-time need: we understand the potential, we're willing to invest, but we have criteria around how to roll these products out versus skating to where the puck is going and making predictions about R&D that will pay dividends three, four, five years out.

R

Rodrigo Leang1:43:55

When you're in chip design, it takes two years to design. You go through TSMC, build wafers, build systems — a three or four year cycle. So it's always a blend between engineering and fortune-telling. But here's the difference with enterprise. Not only do we have JP Morgan, last month we announced a huge partnership with Vista Equity, which has 93 portfolio companies building applications. The biggest thing we run out with AI is we don't have takes.

H

Host1:44:31

We don't have a takes. So now what you're seeing is the JP Morgans of the world, the enterprises, the Vistas — all these applications, SaaS companies turning into AI-first companies. You're seeing demand pull through. What we're excited about is not only do we have the chips and the data center connection, but the next thing is connection with the end user, the off-taker that applies AI into something useful for your businesses. So we're super excited about that picture. That's our mentality — what are people using it for? Solve that problem. Everything underneath follows.

Mhm. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Congratulations on the massive round.

R

Rodrigo Leang1:45:12

9-year overnight success.

H

Host1:45:14

Can't wait to talk to you again soon. Have a great rest of your week.

R

Rodrigo Leang1:45:18

We'll talk to you soon. Goodbye.

H

Host1:45:20

Let me tell you about public.com. Investing for those that take it seriously. They got stocks, options, bonds, crypto, treasuries, and more with great customer service. Our next guest is Alana Palmo from Paradigm.

A

Alana Palmo1:45:33

Hey guys, what's up?

H

Host1:45:34

What's up? Welcome to the show.

Our last guest raised 1 billion. You had to one-up them. You had to two-up them with 1.2. Tell us about the new fund.

A

Alana Palmo1:45:45

Oh man, thanks for having me. Really great to be here. We're super excited. We raised 1.2 billion to go after the new opportunity set.

H

Host1:45:55

Frontier.

A

Alana Palmo1:45:59

Thanks for warming that up for me. It sounds nice and warm. Fantastic. So,

H

Host1:46:05

All right. Continue.

A

Alana Palmo1:46:06

Continue. 1.2 billion for investment.

All right, guys. We're going big. We're going after all frontier tech. We're really excited about it. Obviously, we got our start in crypto back in 2018. This is our fourth fund. Yeah.

H

Host1:46:22

Pretty excited about it. But I feel like this is being somewhat positioned as an expansion of the vision or the thesis, but I feel like Paradigm's been investing in broader frontier themes for years now. Can you talk about the history of expanding beyond crypto and the key moments in the fund's history that woke you up to broadening the thesis?

A

Alana Palmo1:46:49

Yeah. Well, I think in 2018, crypto was the most interesting frontier to be investing into, and that really was the heart of how we started building the firm. It was the thesis behind being the sort of researchers, builders first — how do you get really close to the tech to be able to understand and underwrite these things from first principles. Then over time it's become obvious that it's not the only frontier, and hard to ignore what's happening in AI. But actually it's more than that — the world itself has started to blend together, and drawing concrete lines is no longer applicable. Even something that called itself a crypto project years ago — things are on the periphery, tech is all touching each other. When you try to separate it, it doesn't work that way.

H

Host1:47:42

How are you thinking about the early stage? There's been some chatter about, oh, every VC just wants to pile more money into the biggest private companies, the trillion dollar private companies. Why would I waste money talking to an early stage founder? How are you thinking about opportunities at early stage, mid-stage, late stage? What even is mid-stage now? Is that a $10 to $50 billion company early stage now?

A

Alana Palmo1:48:09

Yeah, I think stages is a hard thing to define. What are we really talking about? The stage of the company, the valuation? It's impossible to not be backing some of the earliest founders who are coming out with new great ideas. So for us, it's talent-led. You find great people, often in their early 20s. I don't think you can ignore the early stage, but you also can't ignore the power law of what's happening with larger later stage companies and how much they're able to capture and compound.

H

Host1:48:45

So I think it's like you have to do both. From an actual product standpoint, are you breaking out the fund? Is there some amount segmented for early stage, some for growth, some for incubation? And how should founders be thinking about the new vehicle?

A

Alana Palmo1:49:04

It'll be truly stage agnostic. So we're going to invest in everything from super early, seed stage, even pre-seed in some cases, all the way into growth markets. We also have a core flagship fund which is an open-ended vehicle, so we invest into public markets too.

H

Host1:49:21

Oh interesting. Very cool. What is the effect of this year's IPOs? What have been the internal learnings from the height of the opening of the IPO window? It feels like it's sort of open but maybe not fully wide open. We've got a lot of exciting IPOs that have done well. How is that affecting the fund and your feeling around the market right now?

A

Alana Palmo1:49:45

That's a good question. I think it's a hard thing to answer. One of the interesting dynamics happening in IPOs is Hyperliquid and some of the trading activity we've seen in advance of the IPOs. It's been pretty fun to see the 24/7/365 markets really come alive, which has been a long-term thesis the crypto markets have had. Jeff Low at Hyperliquid has done an incredible job. The Sarah Bruss IPO, SpaceX IPO — all of this trading activity going into those events provided a lot of transparency on pricing in advance of the IPO itself.

H

Host1:50:29

How accurate was the on-chain pricing relative to what these IPOs actually opened at? Do you feel like — surprisingly accurate?

A

Alana Palmo1:50:41

Yeah, surprisingly quite accurate.

H

Host1:50:45

And have you heard of any institutions starting to — you know, bigger firms on Wall Street — if they're planning to invest in an IPO or trade it after it opens, actually start their activity on-chain? Is that something you see happening in the future as we get more evidence that on-chain trading tracks real life after these IPOs?

A

Alana Palmo1:51:13

Yeah, it's a good question. If I were them, I would be doing that. I don't know what the rules are and what the playbook is for them today and the liquidity and depth of those books. But I think that's the thesis for what 24/7/365 markets look like in the future — you're going to have a lot more institutional activity. Certainly we're seeing that in perps as a derivative product themselves. They're a much more efficient pure play product for big hedge funds. The same can be true in prediction markets — some people are relating to prediction markets as an institutional product for getting exposure to things and bets that they want to place that is much more precise than we've had in the past. The future holds a lot of white space in how these markets will evolve, but we continue to be really excited about it.

H

Host1:52:04

That's great. What do your internal meetings look like? Do you have a meeting once a month where you pitch new frontiers you're kicking around? What does forming a thesis look like? Is it partner driven or more collective?

A

Alana Palmo1:52:28

Well, top down, thematically we're investing into areas that are structurally long AGI first and foremost. What are the things that will have a natural tailwind? We don't run a top down process to a particular investment. Oftentimes you try to gain conviction and do sprints on individual areas where there's a particular founder we're excited about. The process is more organic — each partner may have a different thing they're excited about. Fundamental to our thesis is we have to be close to the tech, go really deep, understand these things down to lines of code. A lot of folks on the team are computer scientists or physicists.

H

Host1:53:33

About down to the metal. You guys have a little data center in the office just humming away.

A

Alana Palmo1:53:38

No data center in the office. I mean, I like orbital data centers — are they the future? I don't know. What do you guys think?

H

Host1:53:45

I don't know. I think you guys should get on the next SpaceX rocket and run a little experiment.

A

Alana Palmo1:53:54

I think it's all just — I'm on the Elon timelines, which is take whatever he says and multiply by three, and that's probably true — which is still going to happen, but just not next year. I think Elon will things into existence.

H

Host1:54:11

With enough time, you will get there. Yeah, almost always.

Absolutely. But it takes time. Anyway, thank you for taking the time to come chat with us and congratulations on the new fund.

A

Alana Palmo1:54:20

Yeah. And excited to meet all the new founders joining the portfolio.

H

Host1:54:23

Great portfolio already.

A

Alana Palmo1:54:24

Yeah, super pumped about it. We got some great folks on there. I love Zipline. Evan Rogers — Keller is amazing at Zipline.

H

Host1:54:32

Fantastic. Super excited. Have a great rest of your day and we'll talk to you soon. Great to have you on, Alana. Cheers. Bye.

Let me tell you about Codeex. Codex is a powerful workspace for getting work done with AI agents. Whether you're writing code, analyzing data, creating content, or automating business workflows, Codex helps you move projects forward from start to finish. Our next up is Byron Boots.

We got boots on the ground. Boots. Let's bring in Byron Boots from Overland AI. Welcome to the show. How are you doing?

B

Byron Boots1:55:00

Oh, great. Thanks for having me on, guys. It's really exciting to be here.

H

Host1:55:04

Yes. Great to have you. We're very excited. Can you reintroduce the product and then take us through the latest news and the contract you just signed?

B

Byron Boots1:55:12

Yeah, sure. I'm working here out of our factory in Seattle. You can actually see the product that we have. We're building autonomous ground vehicles for defense — robots for the battlefield. Do you guys want to see it?

H

Host1:55:29

Absolutely. Walk through it a little. Give us a tour.

B

Byron Boots1:55:33

So here's one of them — our Ultra product. It's a large off-road ground vehicle. Sensors in the front — stereo cameras and LIDAR. Big wheels with long travel suspension. Down here is a payload deck for big payloads. Onboard power, compute below the deck, comms in the back. That's a brief overview. The contract — we're the first ground autonomy provider to get a production contract with the US military — $20 million contract with the US Marine Corps.

H

Host1:56:22

It's fantastic. I'm thinking that truck needs a gun. What does the payload look like? It seems very modular. Is that delegated to the Marine Corps? They decide, they partner with other primes, or do you have other relationships to bring the configuration to them?

B

Byron Boots1:56:44

We've put 30 different payloads on these vehicles. Designed to be modular — easy to attach things. Everything from kinetic payloads like remote weapon stations, drones, EW. It depends on what the customer wants. We can help integrate anything onto this vehicle.

H

Host1:57:07

Dogs as a form factor. There's been a bunch of sort of creepy robot dogs. There was a video of a robotic dog that seemed to have solved some recoil challenges. How are you thinking about that form factor? Your product is better for high range, but how do you think about it?

B

Byron Boots1:57:48

One reason we love this form factor: it's large enough for a serious payload — 1,000 to 2,000 lbs depending on configuration. Wheels give good energy use, can drive 100 miles. Robot dogs are cool — I had a lab with robot dogs. But wheeled vehicles are where we get the most.

H

Host1:58:25

You're saying the wheel is underrated and doesn't need to be reinvented.

B

Byron Boots1:58:30

Yes. With squishy tires you can drive up and down stairs. It's simple if your tires are big enough.

H

Host1:58:39

How big are the tires on that truck?

B

Byron Boots1:58:46

38 inches. Pretty big.

H

Host1:58:49

38. Fantastic. I love it. What does the actual manufacturing process look like? You're a well-funded company, $100 million round recently. How hand-built are these? What does the automation story look like?

B

Byron Boots1:59:11

The Ultra vehicle is based on a Polaris Razer chassis and drivetrain. We get that from Polaris and upgrade the suspension. We add a flat payload deck, compute, sensors, wiring, power. We do all that in our factory. We're field forward — test in the field every day. This is a completely autonomous robotic system — it perceives, plans, controls. A user can tell it where to go and what payload to execute. It doesn't need teleoperation. One user can control multiple vehicles.

H

Host2:00:16

There's high demand for both teleop and full autonomous mode. People want to be able to port in for a particular mission and also draw waypoints on a map.

B

Byron Boots2:00:30

When people first use a vehicle like this, they want precise control, but quickly realize you can just tell it where to go on the map and it will go there. It's safer, more efficient, and allows force multiplication. War fighters are embracing that.

H

Host2:01:07

Any plans to make a dual use version for Malibu? If you have a bunch of surfboards, load them up and say 'I'll meet you there in 5 minutes.'

B

Byron Boots2:01:18

We are dual use — using this for wildland firefighting. Maybe soon we'll get you one.

H

Host2:01:30

The day party market. The Aman taking you around the hotel property. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. Fantastic news. Congratulations. We'll talk to you soon.

B

Byron Boots2:01:41

Incredible. We appreciate what you — thank you so much. Really appreciate it.

H

Host2:01:44

Have a great week. We'll talk to you soon. Goodbye.

Let me tell you about Console. Console builds AI agents that automate 70% of IT, HR, and finance support, giving employees instant resolution for access requests and password resets. There's a scoop on the timeline. Perplexity is quietly building an AI coding tool that takes on Cloud Code, Cursor, and Codex potentially. It's meant to build software end-to-end. The tool is being internally used for now under the code name Teammate. Perplexity has been bouncing around from different — Steve here says: what happened to the Bloomberg terminal killer? They were working on that for a while, then they launched Bloomberg Computer, which was sort of a computer use agent and saw incredible growth. It feels like one of those examples of a company that people were sort of like — one of the challenges, and then all of a sudden there's some new good news.

Perplexity has a ton of revenue. They're taking a ton of shots on goal just like every other company to be clear. But I think the difference is that Perplexity doesn't have a product that's being used heavily by tech insiders. So people see them as running around without something that's a hit in enterprise that they can fall back on while they keep taking shots at some of these more enterprisey products.

Yeah, it's interesting. I feel like Fun Prince — remember they fired up the Perplexity Investment Fund investing in other startups. I don't know what they invested in, but he has good access. It's possible everything in that fund is just on fire because the market is doing so well. That could be an interesting portfolio. This teammate makes me think it's maybe something else. I could see them seeing Lovable's growth and having a lot of overlap and saying let's make a more consumer leaning product. It will be hard to get a foothold.

They are more adjacent than you think. You go to Perplexity to look up information, get nice UI. The Joe Rogan partnership seems to be crushing. Joe can say 'Hey Jamie, build me a CRM during the show.'

I don't think Joe Rogan has any interest in a CRM. I think he does everything over text message. So if you're going to be on the show — before we have our next guest, Grok 4.5 is out.

Some reviews, benchmarks. Looking good on the benchmarks. I wonder how Michael Truell has a SpaceX AI badge yet. Is the Cursor team involved in this heavily? I know they were doing consulting while the deal closed. They still have to go through post-merger integration. I wonder how deep that team was integrated.

I think they're still going to be running under the Cursor umbrella for a long time. It's much easier to sell Cursor through the enterprise. And they have a separate model. Cursor did say they partnered with SpaceX to train Grok. I really wonder if there will be any gap in capabilities — Grok will be good at writing something more X native, and Cursor will be more code-driven, or will we see consolidation.

Anyway, excited to dig into that. Always love a new model launch. But we have our next guest in the waiting room. We have Will Mayer from Cult Holdings. Welcome to the show. How you doing, Will?

W

Will Mayer2:05:52

I'm doing well. How are you guys?

H

Host2:05:53

Thank you so much for taking the time. Great to have you on the show.

Great to have you on the show.

What do we got in the background here? Oh yeah. Is that real?

W

Will Mayer2:06:01

That is real. Yeah. That's like various artifacts from the past.

H

Host2:06:06

Very cool. Webbly Awards. I think the spring. Isn't that a Webby Award?

W

Will Mayer2:06:10

That is a Webby Award.

H

Host2:06:12

Congratulations. Give us a little background. Give us a little bit of the journey. Introduce yourself for those who are watching who might not be familiar with your work.

W

Will Mayer2:06:20

Yeah, of course. I am Will Mayer. I'm the co-founder and high priest at Cult Holdings. Background came from making skateboard films at a young age when I was like 14 for companies like Vans. Became deeply obsessed with brands and what they represented. Moved from there into advertising, working with brands like Nike and Netflix, and then started working more and more with startups, incubating companies, and fell in love with cults and religions and believe that many of the best brands are some form of a religion. I remember early in Silicon Valley I was working on a company and people were saying like 'oh, you don't want your product to have a cult-like following' and I was looking at Cult of Mac — the website that tracks Mac, they refer to it as a cult. It's a great way to think about things.

H

Host2:07:08

A case against not wanting a cult.

W

Will Mayer2:07:11

Oh, just that cults are bad — they often lead to terrible outcomes in the literal sense. And also, you probably don't want psychos following you. You want just normal customers in reality. And that's what Apple wound up getting — a huge amount of normal consumers, but they do have a cult-like fan base. They needed the cult to get them through to the truly hit consumer product.

H

Host2:07:36

Yeah.

W

Will Mayer2:07:37

I mean, before the 1970s, the word cult was actually neutral. It just meant a new fringe group. There was a period in the '60s and '70s people refer to as the fourth great awakening — a huge boom in spirituality. Things like Reiki, Children of God, but also brands like Blue Ribbon Sports which became Nike, or Apple from Jobs. In that period, the word cult went from being neutral to negative, and conservatives started to use it to demarcate and delegitimize new movements. So today, sociologists mostly refer to cults as NRMs or new religious movements.

H

Host2:08:08

Okay, got it. Interesting. But you're reclaiming it. You're taking it back. Talk to us about — you have a couple different things going on in your world, but I'm interested particularly in advertising video production. What does it look like to work with you? How long are you on a particular project? The Polymarket ad went very viral, and I'm wondering what that process looks like from start to finish.

W

Will Mayer2:08:33

It really depends on the type of folks we work with. With Polymarket, we've been working with them since January in a bunch of different capacities. The team and I have been working on strategy, a bunch of the brand work and out-of-home stuff. That campaign came together in an insane timeline and was driven a lot in partnership with their internal team. I got a call like 3 weeks before the World Cup. And if you guys know, people now are working on Super Bowl ads — it's like a six-month process. Normally that whole thing from concept to production to post to being online and routed for TV was like three and a half weeks. So it was insane.

H

Host2:09:06

What, how did you process all the different reactions? I think I saw the Rubin ad like while watching UFC. I watched it too and I was like, 'Whoa, Rick Rubin in the prediction market ad.' The ad was obviously very cool. A lot of people were surprised. I brought it up to you. You were like, 'Rick Rubin came out of the rap game. Why is it surprising that he would do a prediction market on UFC?' So I feel like it was very mixed reactions. Not on the creative — I think that was universally awesome — but how did you process people's reaction to it?

W

Will Mayer2:09:43

I mean, I feel like a lot of the best campaigns are pretty controversial. In our time with Equinox, we banned membership sales on January 1st, and that became the most heated moment that business has ever had, but also the most successful campaign in history for them. So with someone like Rick, what was great is there's nobody that represents questions better than him for those who either the creative act or anything else. So we felt like a great fit.

H

Host2:10:05

Yeah. I've been feeling over, you know, we're sort of at peak marketing content and yet it feels like advertising has never been in a worse place. I don't know if you feel the same way. The campaign with Polymarket — it is a campaign. It feels like the craft of advertising, and that's why I think it broke through as much as the creative was good. Do you feel the same way? Do you have launch video fatigue? It used to be that maybe a company would come out with a video, but they were really just hoping for a TechCrunch article. Now it's like, well, we're definitely doing a video, and it'll look exactly the same as every other video, and then maybe we get a TechCrunch article, but it feels like people are trying to create their own artifacts.

W

Will Mayer2:10:55

I mean, dude, I don't want to point it back at you, but you guys created like the OG launch video, I feel like, for TV. I remember that was my first experience at TBPN was like you guys on a helicopter or something. So I'd say —

H

Host2:11:08

No, and we you'll appreciate we had 20 other videos planned and then it started this snowball where everyone was launching videos and we were like this is no longer a good way to break through and get attention. We just switch. We had we literally had the whole —

U

Unknown2:11:25

The production team was geared up for weekly video shoots with different songs, but it got tiring, so we stopped.

T

Tyler2:11:35

We should have made 10 and launched one day at a time. What do you think about the oversaturation of things and how fast the internet moves when you want to revive something old?

U

Unknown2:11:51

It's tricky. The average American saw 500 ads a day back then, now it's over 5,000. We get hit up every day for launch videos. I think taste and a contrarian point of view will cut through. The polymarket work resonated because we took people who wouldn't normally be part of a prediction market campaign. For Equinox, we hired photographers who only shot fashion and designers from museums. Hiring people out of category brings new ideas.

T

Tyler2:12:48

When a campaign hits, do you think the value comes from a great idea or the execution?

U

Unknown2:12:59

The great idea is what sticks, like making it impossible to sign up for a membership on January 1st. I don't remember the visuals, but the idea made it a great campaign.

T

Tyler2:13:18

We spent less than 1% of the normal budget on a January campaign with just black and white text. Brand actions cut through more than anything now. AI will democratize creativity, so the concept and what the company does will be most important.

U

Unknown2:13:45

Actions speak louder than words. How is working with Brian Johnson different? It feels like a massive owned media influencer. How did you approach that?

Brian and Kate hit us up late 2024 because they heard we were focused on building religions. The brief was to build a religion for 'Don't Die'. We collaborated on the doctrine and rituals. There are five core tenets of building a cult brand: doctrine, ritual, symbols and language, a charismatic leader, and an enemy. Brian has done all naturally.

T

Tyler2:15:26

Walk us through the five tenets. How do they apply to Blueprint?

U

Unknown2:15:30

Doctrine is identity before features, like a sacred text. Ritual is forming habits that become identity, like joining a run club. Symbols and language create in-groups, like CrossFit's 'WOD' or Equinox's 'clubs'. A charismatic leader, like Brian or Palmer Lucky, iconizes themselves. An enemy, like Apple vs IBM, evolves into a concept like conformity that can't be defeated.

T

Tyler2:17:35

If you were branding a golden retriever, what would be its enemy?

U

Unknown2:17:45

The tennis ball. No, hunger. I don't know. What do you think?

T

Tyler2:17:56

The opposite of peace. In defining your enemy, you define yourself. Who's the nemesis of TBPN?

U

Unknown2:18:09

We mapped it out: geopolitical rivals, people who block data centers, short sellers. We have a sheet of terms and memes.

T

Tyler2:18:46

How do you think about scaling a craft business?

U

Unknown2:19:09

I have no desire to scale the agency much larger. We incubate startups. Only a third of clients pay cash; the rest pay in equity. We helped create a credit card company called Built Rewards.

T

Tyler2:19:42

I found our actual list of enemies: HVAC repairmen, DJI drones, TikTok, undermonetized podcasts, leaf blowers, fantasy football.

U

Unknown2:20:02

This is from the original printout of the TVN. We'd write down bits and update the sheet. Allies included job creators and bubbles.

T

Tyler2:20:23

Very good. Great exercise for any brand. Thanks for coming on. Jordy, anything else?

J

Jord2:20:39

Next time one of your founders comes on, flag it to us. Excited to meet them.

T

Tyler2:20:45

Yeah, we'll talk to you soon.

U

Unknown2:20:46

Awesome. Sounds good.

T

Tyler2:20:47

Have a good one, guys. Cheers.

U

Unknown2:20:48

Have a good one. We'll talk to you soon. Goodbye.

T

Tyler2:20:51

The old term sheet, the size gong timeline, some personnel news. We haven't done that in a while. Speaking of advertising, I want to watch this SKH Heinix advertisement that Tyler dug up. Let's play it. I want your reaction, Jordy.

J

Jord2:21:13

To an ad for SKH Heinex. Okay, don't. So, we're also being extorted by others. Exported. Time went by. He's dressed up as the chip, as the HBM. He's dressed up as the memory. Can't you just be cool? How have you been doing? Why is he frozen? Some prop comedy. I like it.

T

Tyler2:22:04

Wow. No idea what that means, but I love SK Hinex.

J

Jord2:22:08

I think that ad has like 80 million views.

T

Tyler2:22:10

Wow. For good reason. Makes me want HBM. Our next guest is live in the TVPN Ultra Dome with us. We have Tucker Brown from Compound Creative Holdings. He's the managing partner, friend of Py McCormack. We're very excited to have him here.

J

Jord2:22:28

We're back.

T

Tucker Brown2:22:30

This is quite a set.

T

Tyler2:22:31

Yes. Welcome. How was the rest of your trip to France?

T

Tucker Brown2:22:35

France was hot. Difficult but productive. There was a lot of energy.

T

Tyler2:22:44

Were you doing deals?

T

Tucker Brown2:22:45

I was trying to do deals.

T

Tyler2:22:46

Back of the envelope or napkin math guy?

T

Tucker Brown2:22:53

You have to combine both.

T

Tyler2:22:55

Both like a DCF and spreading comps.

T

Tucker Brown2:23:01

You have to be creative with the deals. Anyway.

T

Tyler2:23:09

Take us back. What was your first can?

T

Tucker Brown2:23:13

My first can? This year. I went to the film festival.

T

Tyler2:23:17

You waited until it was productive.

T

Tucker Brown2:23:20

Exactly. Make it worth the money.

T

Tyler2:23:24

Take us back early in your career. How'd you get here?

T

Tucker Brown2:23:27

I was at CIA for 15 years, the talent agency. Then at Evolution, our investment bank, working on M&A and capital raising. I did that for a long time.

T

Tyler2:23:57

When does Evolution get tapped for a transaction?

T

Tucker Brown2:24:15

We focus on larger deals, $50 million plus. We worked on the sale of the Sacramento Kings in 2011. We're a smaller team, about 20 people, with a sweet spot of $50-$500 million.

T

Tyler2:24:50

Does that organization look like a standard investment bank?

T

Tucker Brown2:24:50

We provide the same service, but we sit within CIA so we have strategic connectivity. Less public markets coverage. We don't do capital markets.

I started working on creator deals a couple years ago. Dude Perfect was a creator business scaling nicely for 16 years on YouTube. They were growing at 50% year-on-year and had a diversified business.

T

Tyler2:26:16

Their audience is 8-16 year old boys, but they also grew up with them. They're now 38. They built a live entertainment business and sell out arenas.

T

Tucker Brown2:26:37

Yeah.

T

Tyler2:26:38

What's unique about that deal? They have multiple revenue streams: ads, partnerships, tours, and they're building a Disneyland-like park.

T

Tucker Brown2:26:53

Dude Perfect World. Yes. I saw the mockup of an amusement park. They wanted to build a next-generation Disney for sports, kids, comedy, family. It was a real media company, not just YouTube.

T

Tyler2:27:27

We took that to market and executed a large private equity transaction. It wasn't easy. It's a new category with no case studies. There's keyman risk and platform risk. But their YouTube revenue was a small percentage, so less platform risk. Finding the right partner was crucial.

T

Tucker Brown2:28:57

I often wished I was the buyer. I understood the talent and could structure deals better than typical buyers. So we started Compound Creative Holdings, an independent fund to be that unique buyer. We raised good money and aim to be the predominant buyer in the creator category.

T

Tyler2:30:04

Do you find that creators organically grow their businesses like a garden or brick by brick? The Disney flywheel is a beautiful napkin sketch, but it was drawn just two years before Walt died.

T

Tucker Brown2:30:45

The best creators are creative geniuses but not always cohesive. They focus on building a rapid audience and engagement. Once you have a captive audience, it opens up opportunities beyond the core product. For Dude Perfect, it was trick shots on YouTube, then live events, products, and Walmart.

T

Tyler2:31:52

How permanent is the capital? Is there a world where creators go public?

T

Tucker Brown2:32:20

It's possible. The creator economy is the fastest growing segment of entertainment. Permanent capital is important because creators don't want to be forced to sell quickly. We want to be long-term partners, not interfering with creativity. We look for profitability, diversification, and scale. We believe many of these businesses can become billion-dollar plus and potentially go public.

T

Tyler2:39:17

Would an index of top creators be more stable than individual creator businesses? Like a manosphere ETF?

T

Tucker Brown2:40:12

That's partially what we're trying to do. Institutional capital is eager but scared of single assets. A basket of creators is more attractive. Dude Perfect itself is a bit of a basket with multiple on-camera talent. We have a pipeline through CIA's 308 creator clients and are open for business.

T

Tyler2:42:21

How much time are you spending in New York versus LA?

T

Tucker Brown2:42:25

LA. I've been back and forth. I spend winters here. We'll have headquarters in both. Creators are everywhere.

T

Tyler2:42:54

How has the influencer industry evolved in China?

T

Tucker Brown2:43:05

Massive population, huge numbers. But transacting with China is tricky. Live shopping is different there; it's more like buying groceries, while in the US it's often gambling-like unboxings. China doesn't have a Joe Rogan-type commentator because it's politically risky.

T

Tyler2:44:30

What about Hollywood and the trifecta of creator-led movies like Obsession, Back Rooms, Iron Lung?

T

Tucker Brown2:45:00

It's a component, but not a reliable business model. It's a great trend for IP development. Podcasting and YouTube are cheaper ways to test audiences, then monetize long-form. We talked to Alex Herozi about this. It's hard to underwrite such moonshots.

T

Tyler2:46:33

What about Substack and new platforms?

T

Tucker Brown2:46:38

Substack has built nice businesses. We're looking at it for investments. The same migration from video to Substack and vice versa. There's a lot to do in that category. I wonder why there's no Substack for video, but Substack itself will probably do it.

T

Tyler2:47:33

Timeline to first deal announcement?

T

Tucker Brown2:47:36

I hope by the end of this calendar year. We have a running start with warm relationships. We want to be thoughtful and pick the right partners.

T

Tyler2:48:31

Amazing. Let's hit the gong for the fund. I want Tucker to hit it. He's a gigachad. You can hit it as hard as you want.

T

Tucker Brown2:48:41

It's warmed up. Break it.

T

Tyler2:48:47

Well, thank you for coming on the show. We can wrap there.

J

Jord2:48:52

Can't wait to do this with your first deal.

T

Tyler2:48:55

Yeah, we're excited. Leave us five stars on Apple Podcast and Spotify. Sign up for the newsletter at tbp.com. See you tomorrow.

J

Jord2:49:02

Flash tomorrow. Goodbye.

T

Tyler2:49:04

Cheers. Love you.

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