I forgot to ask Jason if he has opinions about resto mods for jet skis. I'll ask you. Is there a jet ski that you'd recommend for somebody? I saw a wooden jet ski recently.
A wooden. That's like a really classic jet ski. Dude, don't get me excited. I'm into it. Look, these things go fast.
I think I went 70 miles an hour on my jet ski to work.
Wow. To work. That's faster than most people commute. They're stuck in traffic.
I mean, I've got a 5-minute commute to work on a jet ski. Unless it's raining.
Yeah. Unless it's raining. Yeah. No. Not in like it gets a little weird. And you call an Uber and is it helpful? Do you do your best thinking on the jet ski?
No. Does it clear the mind? Does it clear? I think going I think it's a it's a it's a it's a notch on the belt. It's like who else do you know is jet skiing to work?
Nobody. I'm the guy. I looked it up. I looked it up on your guys's application. Open AI, you know, chat GBT on your guys's app.
Our app. Yeah. On your app. You're welcome.
Um Yeah. No, I want to thank you for all the great stuff that you guys are providing in chat GBT. Okay. But I think there's like one or two other CEOs, but nobody at a major nobody at nobody thousand person plus a CEO is commuting to work on a jet ski.
on a Jesuit. Only a Texas resident, right?
Texas resident. That's right. Primary residence. Let's go.
Yes. Yes. Um, before we start, the last time you're on here, that was for me the best moment of making the show ever, John and I. Uh it was it was totally surreal and uh we had a we really really enjoyed the conversation but but to me we left that and it was almost depressing because as somebody who you know started getting into startups in the 2010s you were that guy and then I was realizing with the show we we had that conversation with you and it and it was you know a significant day for you but it was sort of depressing because I realized like a moment like that would never actually come again where I got to basically interview uh a childhood hero having that conversation, that's one of one for me. I don't think it'll happen again. There'll be other It was peak. But anyways, you've been busy since then.
I've been busy and we're Look, I'm super excited. It's my first Open AI podcast. I'm very excited about it. Also, I want to let you guys know that um if you need therapy sessions for what it's like to be a made man in retirement. Sure. Like if that's a thing, I can help. I can help motivate you guys.
Step one of therapy in this situation. Just get a jet ski.
No, it's just it's it's actually denial. You got to get over the denial.
Yeah. It's something I don't know the 12 steps.
Yeah. Yeah. I Everyone just knows denial and acceptance. They don't know any of the other ones. Bunch of grieving, bargaining, there's a couple others in there, but you do go through that. It's natural. Yeah, it happens. But then you start building. If you guys need advice, you need therapy, I'm here for you. I know the maxing is you're not supposed to do therapy. I'm just saying there are better with your new partners. They're like if they're one thing they wrote into the fundraising round, they wrote into the docks like cannot go to therapy.
That would be but podcasts are modern therapy for men. This is what men do. They don't go to therapy. You should have you should have you should have office hours for founders, but they have to just come out on a jet ski while you're going and you're going 70 m an hour and you'll I'm starting to teach many founders and people in tech world how to water ski, how to wake surf a bunch of my engineers already. So there was one guy who didn't know how to swim, but I got him behind the boat wake surfing.
Whoa. Whoa. Jacket life jacket jacket. Life jacket on. Life jacket. It see it sounds weirder than it is.
Yeah, but it was still very weird.
It's uh high risk. High risk.
Yeah, it was good potentially.
Uh okay, cool. The business business, dude. It's business time.
Yeah. Got to put on the business socks. Unfinished business.
Unfinished business. Um so yeah, I announced earlier today uh we did a $1.7 billion raise. There's some there's some noise that's going to happen.
Wow. You have one mallet.
That's just do another one from downtown next time.
Uh, so much noise. So much noise.
All right, but walk us through. I feel you came in very relaxed. Walk us through. I think it's been what has it been? Uh, four months since we talked.
Three or four months? Something like that. Yeah, I think did we talk in April or March?
Yeah. Oh, that's right. Yes. Four months. Four months. So, so yeah. So, what happened with the business to unlock the next round? Uh, I mean we continue to go up and to the right, but like the announcement of Adams was we are we are going to do physical automation, physical AI, what we are calling industrial AI to transform these industries one at a time. Yeah. We were we did food, we moved into mining, we're doing transport and it's working. And so that's how you go. Yeah. And then of course there's like going out of stealth. There's all the things and it was just the right time.
Yeah. So um so yeah, we just went to market. Yeah. We said when I when I originally went to market, I was like these were separate companies. Yeah. Okay. So our mining and transport was a separate thing. food was a separate thing and and we had a bunch of other, you know, a bunch of subsidiaries doing cool stuff and I said, "Which one do you guys want to do? Do you want to invest in mining? Do you want to invest in food? Do you want to invest in this?" And they're just like, "We want to invest in you." Yeah. Yeah. And we heard that like we talked like the first five folks we talked to all said that.
So then what we did is we put the companies together and then sold the equity in a singular entity.
Yeah. Uh so just put put it together and it and it I it's much easier for me. I don't know how uh how Elon does it with all the different compan it's it's wild the answer is what's been happening right? It's like it all comes back together. He did it guys. He did it for 20 years though.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And he's still technically doing it with Tesla, SpaceX. Like they are different companies. Boring company. Neuralink. Like he's still got a lesson. But the lesson in there for investors is like even with Elon companies, there's such an insane power law where you have a $10 billion company and then you have a, you know, a $2 trillion company, right? And it's like you just want exposure. You want broad exposure. Ideally, you know, you could just invest in the one that breaks out, but you want broad exposure to the category.
when things are first getting going, there is a lot of upside of having them separate.
Uh because if somebody wants to invest in a really cool thing, and this is what happened when we first got the transport and mining thing going. Yeah. If they want to invest in that cool thing, they're like, I don't know anything about food. And by the way, food on its own is robotics, real estate, like restaurants, like, you know, and so they want they want to be exposed to that one thing. and they don't want to have to underwrite something going across all things. Um, and they're like, well, if you're losing money over here, I want you to lose money over here. So, how much of the money I'm putting in is going to go to that. There there has to be a case of how you put it together, how you allocate capital across. And honestly, once you're starting to get to profitability on one or more, then that conversation starts to get easier. And I think that's that could be why I I can't I can't speculate on on on sort of Elon's world, but certainly I'm super excited to have those pieces put together into a single into a single puzzle.
What does go to market look like in the mining industry for you?
Okay. Because but but specifically like when I think of when I think of your go to market magic it was deploying young people to a new city in Miami and they're doing a marketing stunt and it's not like you're calling in favors or leveraging your network to get Uber up and running in a new city. That was something that was organizational design.
So hold on. That's consumer.
Exactly. So how is it different?
Well, it's just like, well, all the food stuff we're doing is business. Almost all of it. Really all of it. Uh, mining is all business. So, it's So, so look, there is a big thing if you go from doing consumer to doing business. And I think we may have talked about this last time.
That's a whole other ballgame. Yeah. I mean, that takes years off your lifespan doing it, like getting good at it and then owning it.
But mining go to market is cray cray.
Yeah. Like so I'll just going to the conference or something. How are you meeting CEOs?
Yes, you do that. But but you know I can a lot of times look when you have very efficient transportation you can go places. So a month ago I dropped into deep Amazon in Brazil.
Okay. like deep northern Brazil like Amazon places you can't even get a jet ski to guys. It's the Amazon of the Amazon. Okay.
Okay. And and like tiny airports you just like Yep. you kind of just dirt. You slide into the DMs. Except it's a tarmac. Okay. There you go. And a great pilot.
And massive iron ore mine that were operating in there.
Okay. And you see like we took we we were there for a couple days because we already have customers there.
Sure. A customer is called Valet. It's a massive mining company.
And um they uh it's it's like the world's largest iron ore mine. And you go and you get in a helicopter. Just going over one of the sites takes 30 minutes.
Wow. Okay. And it's fascinating. It's so fascinating. And you're learning how the system works.
you're sort of figuring out how do I you basically take a kit, you apply you you you install it onto a machine and that machine becomes autonomous.
And some of these machines are like 20 years old. Some of them are new.
Um and so there's lots of different kinds of machines as well and you're making the mine more productive. You're um you are making it way safer. It is super like they have lots of safety protocols, but like it is mining dangerous business. it is a dangerous business. Uh and the opex goes down all at the same time. It's kind of a beautiful thing. And then you know I went from Brazil and then straight from there dropped into the border between Iraq and Saudi on the Saudi side. So we have a phosphate mine that we're doing stuff there.
So we had to like my pilots had to land kind of like old school style like visual physical visual.
Is that because of the conflict going on in the region and just the general the vibes on the borders there? Yeah.
So, um but same story and so go to market is wild. You just end up in this literally go crazy places, but it's super needed. And so what's happened is the the pronto technology has got gotten past human productivity. Which means you go to a gold mine CEO, you talk about go to market, you go to a gold mine CEO and you say, "Would you like to have 20% more gold per year?" Absolutely. Good. We haven't heard no. Yes. Okay. Okay. But there but they say prove it. And that's where the rubber meets the road, right?
How long does it take to prove?
It used to take a lot longer. Now be like once you've proven it enough times, then it sort of gets its own momentum around. And so we're in that we're in that place on pronto where that momentum is taking hold because there's enough proof points where it's just working in so many different places where people are like all right let's go we're going to it think of mining autonomous mining almost like um almost like enterprise software where you get a pilot there's like a 10,000 person company and you've got you you got an enterprise startup and they're like I got like eight seats but it's this huge company and if we get it it's huge and I've got this 10 seats over at this other one. It's a pilot, but I swear it's going to work. And they're out there pitching and trying to make it happen.
But once it works, and in mining that means human productivity, human level, better than human productivity. Once it works, it goes big.
And they're like, "Okay, let's get across let's get across all the vehicles." And so we're sort of in that mode with a bunch of different customers right now.
How big is the opportunity to just increase uptime of mining operations? I imagine that there are mines that are trying to operate 247, but getting a night shift in the middle of the Amazon reliably, everyone showing up and being, you know, healthy and happy and eager. Totally. It gets a lot easier when it's like, yeah, we're still going to have a bunch of people on site, but they're going to be overseeing robotic work.
For sure. So, uh, so yeah, I mean the, um, there's two parts to the productivity gain. First is the machine per hour doing more. Yeah, that's part one. Part two is hours and call outs and all of that stuff. Uh, as well as just, you know, the safety protocols change when you have less risk.
So, there's a lot of things like this that pile onto each other. Mhm. My guess is you could even end up 30% 40% more productive at the end of all of it. And when you do that, the opportunity speaks for itself. Um, a gold mine that's doing 30 or 40% more gold per year is kind of wo, but that's for every mineral. That's lithium. That's like we also go all the way down to quaries. Quarries are different because quaries are J basically it's about cement. Let's just say that's the main jam. There are others, but let's just go with that. Um, you can't you don't just go do more rock because you need cement customers on the other side. They're only using so much cement like where to store it.
And so, so that's more of an opex play and there are thinner margins there. But I'm in the game and it's kind of interesting and it's a lot of fun. And for that company, for Pronto, they were super Anthony Lewendowski and the team there super scrappy. true startup style. Lean as hell. Like so lean. Like that Christian Bale movie. I can't remember the name of it.
Yeah, dude. He's like super lean. And I'm like, guys, we got to go from lean to muscular.
And that's what we're doing. Like and you think of that this in lean to muscular.
That's a good that's a good You just want to be muscular.
And so you think about enterprise go to market. Part of our go to market is is um building credibility with our enterprise customers that we're going from lean to muscular because they the demand is there. It's ready to go. They're like we need you to be muscular. We need the protein powder and the whatever else.
What what holds you back? You go to the gym, whatever. What holds you back from scaling? Let's say you do a pilot. It works well. you're attaching hardware to existing systems and hardware that they're using and they say, "Okay, we're getting more out. Maybe we want to place orders for more machines." Are those I imagine the lead times on some of this mining equipment could be insane. How much of the stack do you want to own?
Um, say the question again. I'm sorry, I just blanked. Go for it one more time.
Right now you're taking existing mining equipment and you're augmenting it with you're bringing you're you're making it AI enabled making it autonomous. You're making it more efficient and they say great this is working. We want to scale up our operation because maybe we need less or we can do more with the same you know human headcount. Um but what's the I imagine there's some things that are out of control for for you at that point where they're like okay we need more of this heavy mining equipment. Let's let's add it to the site. But is there like a lag time there?
The real lag time is getting So you have to you're So let's say we want to get a bunch of machines that are in the Amazon up and running. Yeah. Okay. How do you do that? So I've got to ship a bunch of sensors, a bunch of compute, a bunch of equipment and mechanical systems, let's just say, so that a team can then go install it.
Yeah. So you're basically building a data center on site.
So it sort I wouldn't put it that way. I would say I mean if you considered a machine with sensors and compute a data center I mean you could but it's really think of those there are servers but I wouldn't say a data center. It's not some operations bring like an armada style like shipping container sized level of volunteer as one. So you bring in the stuff.
um you have to like bring it up and make sure okay this is a new place how does does this machine work properly in this new place and calibrate and make sure it's safe and all of this. So there's like a process of getting up then there's change management because that that site's going from there are people that show up in the morning. there's all this very regimented process uh to make sure everything's going exactly as planned and people are exactly where they're supposed to be because otherwise weird things happen on a on a mining site.
So you have to go from that to okay we're now running a autonomous mining operation. It's just a very different thing. So the in the installation and the bring up and what we call commissioning are sort of like the things you have to do. Um, and you know, like why does it take a long time to install? Because that machine may not even be drive by wire.
So, you have a mechanical system like if you turn the steering wheel like it's, you know what I mean? It's a it's a mechanical system, a hydraulic system. So, you're bringing where you have an actuator that might push a physical button. You're Yeah. You're you're trying to make electricity then do a physical thing. So, then you need physical actuation. Yep. Yeah. to do the things because it's not these machines are not natively dry by wire. That's not all machines.
That sounds that sounds uh incredibly difficult but necessary because you're not going to get a mind to rip out tens of millions of dollars of equipment that they already have. But would you eventually go full stack like build the entire
I mean look we ultimately I mean that if you go in the mining industry there's like this this uh term it's called no entry mine a no entry mine is a mine where there are no people in the pit out factory yeah kind of like that version of it there might be people in a control center there might be but like in that pit no humans and it's a wildly different calculus from a safety perspective I imagine totally different obviously and so there's drilling, there's blasting, there's loading, there's hage, uh there's crushing. I'm just going through the different parts of the mining operation. Um and what you do is you start somewhere and then you start extending to those other areas to get to that no entry thing. And the no entry thing is you can have an autonomous thing like like our hollage system is autonomous. Mhm. If you're getting into a new place, you can do remote control and move into autonomous. Mhm. If you want to go super no entry or lower entry line, if that makes sense. Um, it's it's super fascinating. And then you're talking about you're talking about loaded a 2 million pound machine that's moving potentially 35 miles an hour down the road. And it's it's an off-road thing, but like 2 million pound machine moving 35 miles an hour off-road.
This is why you have to ultimate ATV. This is the ultimate ATV. So, no, you get in it and you can, you know, you can experience it like uh I mean, it's not like there's like a amusement park for this, but like I've certainly experienced it where I can get in the I get in the machines and and check out what's going on.
This is like the dump truck 20 foot tires essentially. Are any of these are any of these companies like acquisition targets where you would you would be able to come in and say like you're doing a lot of stuff well but here's all the stuff that you're never going to figure out like us. And
I mean look I would say the way we think about it is the the h part of a mine is where most of the vehicles are and so and we think of hage as the cardiovascular system of a mine. Mhm. So we're obviously very connected to all the other machines, but we don't do all the other machines. So we're like in an ecosystem. So we can work with them where like there's APIs because like if you're doing hollage, you need to know where the other machines are and what their status is. as an example, there needs to be orchestration, coordination there, which is pretty interesting in terms of like acquisition like you know I I do I have to sort of admit like the Uber mentality my mentality let's just Yeah. Yeah. My dune.
Yeah. Yeah. It's like not I guess Uber's different today, but in my world we didn't acquire [__] We just built.
Yeah, that's right. I don't know if I have an opinion yet. I'm not like religious about it, but if we feel like we can build something, we do. But that but sometimes people have differentiated awesome stuff and you're like, let's partner. We're open to it. You know,
how would you pitch me if I was a young
Person, Stanford, CS, new grad, worried about software engineering not being the easy path where I can bounce around from Google and maybe Uber had a cushy job for me. Pitch me on going to the Amazon and building a mining.
Awesome. I mean, that's awesome. I thought I just did. I mean, that was the pitch. That was the pitch.
Do you think young people are receptive to this pitch yet? Are we about to be receptive? Why should they be receptive?
It's really interesting because I only run into the young people that are receptive. Like I'm not out there pitching like lame sauce dude who doesn't want to work.
Like I don't end up in the same room as...
Do you want a job where do you want a laptop job or do you want to be dropped in to a mine in the Amazon and like build, you know, science fiction?
This is the thing, right? This is why the Adams thing is cool because you're not dropping a app in the app store. You're like automating a 2 million pound machine going 35 miles an hour carrying gold.
Do you watch... do you get... there's a lot of profanity happening today? I don't know why it's happening but it is.
Just wanted to acknowledge it. Do you watch science... do you get inspired by science fiction at all? I can imagine like watching Dune for you is you're just like texting pictures to the team like...
Of course. I'm like, my fave is Asimov. He's my fave. You know, the iRoot series is like just so epic.
What is your takeaway from the iRoot series with regard to AI safety, doom generally? Have you ever had moments of maybe we won't figure it out?
