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What are we getting in the mail? Jordy, are you going to open it or... I don't know what it is. Okay, you guys can guess. Something. What? What could it be? How many days is it until Christmas? Do we have that counter?
We should pull up a countdown if we have one. It'd be kind of crazy to have one, you know, before Thanksgiving and Halloween. It is a little early, but it would be nice to know how many days until Christmas. Wait, only 72 days? We're really fair game now. It's totally fair game. Totally fair game.
It's not even... it was funny earlier. Now it's just serious business. So, anyway, how was your weekend? It was great. Too long. Yeah, too long. Yeah, four days is way too much. I missed you. Yeah, I missed... I want... I missed the Ultra Dome, but I'm glad to be back.
We are back and yeah, it was a good weekend. I saw The Social Reckoning. Big drop, big weekend because I think it was opening weekend this weekend. The theater was completely empty. But it's interesting. Do you think that the Meta team tried to time up Muse Wonder, all the good news, to fight back like the Cheeky Pine appearance? Because they completely steamrolled the movie. They won. I don't know why they needed to because the movie got really panned.
The crazy thing is that I had zero desire to see the movie. I will not be going to the movie. And in many ways it's my job to at least go. I feel like... I figured you were going to go. Yeah. So I felt like we were covered. So I did go. It's crazy that I'm like... it's crazy how excited I am. Yeah. To go see the Nathan Fielder film. Yeah. And how little I even care to even know about... I don't even care about your review.
Okay. Well, you're about to care. Others might. My review is going to be riveting. Okay. Okay. So, it's Saturday. It's a little rainy in LA and so I'm like, I'll throw on this jacket. I'll get a little cozy. Film. I had to go to some other events. Went over to our friend's place and then I go to the movie. So I walk in and I think I'm looking good. I'm dressed for like a nice rainy day in LA. I walk into the theater. I sit down for The Social Reckoning and it stars, you know, it focuses on this Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz.
And in the movie, I'll pull up a picture of what he wears in the movie because I looked like a kid from Spider-Man who dressed up as Spider-Man going to see Avengers. And I was like, 'Wait, that's my exact jacket. My exact... I had the same jeans and boots too.' It was really, really striking. I just accidentally wore a costume to the movie. So it was very funny. And I was like, that is exactly my jacket. Like it's not even just the same brand. I think it's the exact same jacket. Anyway, that's so funny. It was a very funny moment, but it's not quite a sequel to The Social Network. Like it's not the same structure of protagonists, antagonists.
It's not really about the internal operations at Meta, at Facebook. It's very much about... So the Mark Zuckerberg character is now played by Jeremy Strong instead of Jesse Eisenberg. And it's much more peripheral. The story follows data engineer Frances Haugen and Wall Street Journal investigative reporter Jeff Horwitz. The whole thing feels very out of date in the scaling era. The race towards superintelligence so dominant in the minds of tech people right now. I'm not surprised that this movie is underperforming because it doesn't answer the questions that people are asking about tech companies right now.
Worldwide opening was nine million on a budget of 40 million. So it's gearing up to be a flop, but the game's not over yet. And Rotten Tomatoes has a 55% score across 215 reviews. The acting is fairly compelling, the lighting, and it moves quickly. The story ebbs and flows nicely over the two-hour runtime, but it feels like a time capsule from a completely different era. Mark Zuckerberg has so thoroughly reinvented himself that it felt like I was like, who is Jeremy Strong playing? And I'm like, 'Oh yeah, Mark was kind of like that in 2019, but since then it's like UFC, complete fashion makeover, change the company's name. They have a fashion line now with like glasses and so many different elements. And then AI, obviously, personal assistants. Like even hearing the word Facebook feels antiquated now because people have actually shifted to... well, Instagram's the more important social platform and then MSL and the AI stuff is really important, so Muse is a more important buzzword than Facebook. And then they renamed the company and stuff. So it felt like a blast from the past.
You know, people often say the job of media is to speak truth to power, ask the hard questions. And I came away thinking Alex Sorkin refused to ask the hard questions. There are so many hard questions to ask about Meta. You could ask, you know, will Muse margins be comparable to Meta's core ad business? But Sorkin doesn't ask that. Or you could ask like, does Muse Wonder jumping really good on the benchmarks? Does that change the underlying benchmarks? Is it benchmarks? That's a hard question. And even Cheeky Pine was pushing on that. Exactly. But corporate media... Sorkin completely drops the ball. Yeah.
Doesn't address the fact that if Muse Wonder is competitive, does that change the underlying frontier model economic thesis? Like that's the question that people want to ask. That's the question that media has a responsibility to ask and to investigate and to interrogate. And yet Sorkin completely shirks his duty there. Will the retention curve for Muse Smile? You know, right now there's a post by DD Dos showing that Muse, you know, there's a lot of excitement on day one. After 14 days, a lot of people have stopped using the product. Sometimes these things come back. What's going on there? Completely ignored by the movie. It was very, very odd. And so instead he focuses on old stories that have been settled in the courts essentially. But there were a bunch of other funny things. I was taking notes and it's hard because... Michael, are you here to give your review?
I have to be very careful because I'm a fan of Alex Sorkin. Okay. I think he's great. Okay. He has made a lot of great work. This did not feel like one of those great. What specifically was lacking? Because I thought the acting was pretty good and I thought like if it had been three hours I would have been like, that was a drag, but like two hours I thought it was okay. Was it just like too contrived? Because like I feel like my critique of it is very different than yours. Yeah, contrived feels like a good word. It just felt like all the character dynamics and the dialogue and everything just felt so forced. Yeah. And it felt like it was trying to be like an 80s journalistic thriller like All the President's Men or something like that. But it just felt like kind of out of place and it felt too polished to actually fit in that scope. I don't know.
It was a total glaze piece on the Wall Street Journal because Jeff Horwitz... maybe I want to watch it now. Jeff Horwitz. I mean, sure, he's in shape, but let's be honest, Jeremy Allen White, the guy is diced. He's absolutely shredded and they cast him as like the ultimate Chad. There were a bunch of other funny moments where Jeff Horwitz, the character, the journalist, shows up and he's like, 'I don't even have a Facebook. I don't know how to use the GPS stuff in my...' He's like the extremely offline guy.
And there's a whole bunch of funny moments where the benefits of social media are kind of revealed through this because part of it takes place during COVID and the Frances Haugen character is like, 'Oh yeah, I set up a Facebook group for all these scientists and everyone like really understands how serious COVID's going to be.' And the journalist who's like offline and doesn't care about tech is like, 'That's a bunch of mumbo jumbo.' It's like, wait, you're kind of pitching me the whole idea of like the internet. Like the biologists calling COVID so much earlier. Like there clearly are some benefits here. But there's a bunch of other stuff. What stuck out... oh, they have this funny moment where they're like Mark Zuckerberg has a bulletproof couch and they're framing it as like, look at how weird this guy is. And it's the meme, like literal coolest thing ever. Like this thing sucks because I'm watching there. I'm like, bulletproof couch, that's amazing.
A couch that's always watching your back. Yeah. So the idea is that you can hide under it and they kind of frame it as like he's being a coward by having it because like you should obviously charge straight into the hail of gunfire if you're being attacked. But... and they're like he would be hiding behind his... Did I not kind of call this like two months ago that no one would care at all about the whole premise of this movie anymore? Yeah. Like the whole narrative... even the media itself is so far moved on. Yeah. That I would have liked to see this kind of production on the current AI race. Yeah. Right. And I think we're getting something like that with artificial. Yeah.
But it's interesting because like The Social Network... Yeah. I don't know. I don't know if I can say this. This is a cult classic. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it was a box office success as well, but... box office success, but within tech, it's like it's a classic. It was so influential on the culture. Sort of had the opposite effect that the makers of the film maybe wanted it to have where everyone was like, 'I want to be like Zuck.' Yeah. I want to be that guy. At least on the inside of the industry. And in some ways like I could imagine that Zuck and his team were worried about this movie because the last one was like such a hit outside in the outside world and within the tech industry and they've had to...
It was like I'm sure hard to reinvent like Zuck or figure out who he was outside of... you know, at some point in the 2010s it felt like he was just becoming the character. He was looking more and more like the character in the movie in some ways like almost like becoming... Wait, when... this was like late... Yeah. And then PT has that idea that it's funny and ironic that Mark Zuckerberg became the Justin Timberlake character from the movie. Yeah. Or that was it. But it was like so influential on... it was so influential on the industry and especially the next generation of founders that it seemed like it had an influence on Zuck. I don't know.
Yeah. Yeah. That's funny. I mean it definitely feels like the post-2020 UFC like you know. Yeah. That was like, wait, who am I? Who do I want to be? Yeah. I have to figure out... and it created a ton of distance because the Jeremy Strong character it feels like it's a completely different person. And then Jeremy Strong is kind of older but he's playing a much younger character than what you see on Cheeky Pine who's like actually Jeremy Strong's age but has become something else. So yeah, there's a whole bunch of interesting weird things.
There's also a bunch of things where you're like, 'Oh, that's not how things work.' Like there's this scene where Mark Zuckerberg is addressing the board and explaining how the algorithm will work and he's like, 'Emoji reactions will be worth five points and retweets will be worth 50 points.' And it's like seen as like, oh my god, he designed the algorithm for controversy. And it's like, you know the algorithm is like 12 levels deep. It's like he goes to Adami who goes to the chief technology officer goes to VP of engineering who says like, 'Okay, what are we doing?' And he's like, 'Well, we created this optimization pipeline for retention that balances all these things. It's a bunch of data and we have no idea what's going on in the black box, but we saw the retention went up.' There's no one at Facebook who's like, 'Add another three points to retweets or reposts or whatever, shares.' It's like more signal than can be humanly understood.
For sure. Also it's just a hilarious view of Hollywood's perception of tech that like the final shot of Mark Zuckerberg is him sitting in front of like a 42-inch TV in this war room and he's just sitting there like this and he's just watching code scroll by, just like really fast code scrolling by. And it's like, why would you be reviewing code at extreme speeds during... it happens during January 6th and it's like, that's not how you monitor a situation. Yeah, you could just open Instagram. Yeah. Yeah. And then also like they go through the Trump ban in this weird way where it's very much framed as like his decision. And it's like if you were paying attention on that day, it's like very clear that all of the different tech CEOs were in a group chat together talking about like, 'Hey, if we're going to do this, we all got to do it at once because otherwise we will be singled out as the one that did it.' So there's a bunch of interesting things.
And yeah, also very weird that like Alex Sorkin seems to be under the impression that Frances Haugen and Jeff Horwitz had a romance of some sort which they deny. And Jeff Horwitz was like, 'Alex Sorkin, please don't make it seem like it was romantic. She was my source and we just worked together on this but we weren't romantically involved.' And there's like so many scenes where you're like, 'Okay, they're kind of making it look like they're going to date.' And then they sail off into the sunset and you're like, 'Oh, so did they get married?' And you look it up and it's like, 'No, they were both married to other people the whole time.' Very weird. Anyway, funny movie.
But the big news, of course, is Meta. Zuck says Meta has reached the frontier with its new Muse Wonder Agent. What was the exact line? He said... let's get... we'll get into that. Let's back up. So this is from the Financial Times. Mark Zuckerberg says Meta has reached the AI frontier. FT interview: tech billionaire touts release of new Muse Wonder model after vast spending to challenge rivals in AI race. Let me tell you about CrowdStrike. Your business is AI. Their business is securing it. CrowdStrike secures AI and stops breaches. So yeah, yeah, yeah. So speaking with the FT as Meta released its Muse Wonder AI model on Monday. This is watermelon, right? Everyone's doing the fruit thing. There was strawberry and then there's banana and now there's watermelon. Internal code names. I mean, I guess the fruit code names are like hard to read into unlike the Greek mythology which is like laden with all sorts of pitfalls and you can be in hubris or a cautionary tale all of a sudden.
Anyway, he said the new system was going to allow much more sophisticated behaviors that are at the frontier of what's being done in the AI field. The Silicon Valley group claims Muse Wonder outperforms or performs better than comparable models released by Anthropic and OpenAI in some tasks according to technical benchmarks. The release marks a major milestone for Zuckerberg, who since last year has committed billions of dollars to shake up Meta's AI leadership, build vast data centers, and hire star AI researchers on multi-million dollar salaries, all in a bid to keep pace with OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. Quote: 'Getting to this point required both a large amount of compute and investment and a lot of very rigorous scientific work by the group working on it over an extended period of time.' So he's bullish. He's posting on X about it. What's your take, Jordy?
I was trying to understand how Mark and Alex really felt about the model by watching Cheeky Pine on the drive to work today. I was listening. It's great to have Cheeky Pine back. Yeah. I thought that they were all like... I mean, this was the most candid I've ever seen Zuck. Like he felt like he was just hanging out, having a beer, trying to have a couple beers. And so I thought it was great. Tyler cataloged it. He did. How many exactly, Tyler? I think that's... it was 1.4 pints here. 1.4. Okay.
Okay. And I will just go out and say as somebody who's had a couple drinks while recording a podcast, as we would celebrate whenever we would double back in the day. Yeah. I certainly... we always felt that the content just got worse. Totally. Like it was like each sip it was getting like a little bit worse. And so we basically... No, it's a funny idea. You'll all be looser. It'll be better content. But that's just not what happens. You're just not as sharp. You're just not as sharp. Like you're just period not as sharp. And yeah, it wasn't like suddenly it was like there's no reason we're here for three hours.
So if you're going to do it, you got to practice. You got to be drinking six. If I'm Zuck and I have to launch this new model family and talk about Muse and all these things, you got to give him credit because either one, he was practicing having like 10 beers a day so that when he had 1.4 he was still feeling like sharp. Yeah. I like to imagine... tolerance. He built up his tolerance. But either way, ballsy to come on and just start throwing them back.
So yeah, I was trying to understand... you know, the benchmarks are all amazing. Muse is a great product. Yep. People love it. They like... by being like later movers, they managed to solve a bunch of problems. Totally. And like created just a more compelling user experience. I thought it was cool. They're even talking about their experience with like OpenClaw. Sure. Which was cool. But I was trying to... if you actually listen to the wording, Zuck's wording, the quote that stood out to me and I had to play it back a few times to get the exact string of words. He said, 'This is the beginning of like MSL kind of being at the frontier.' This is the beginning of like MSL kind of being at the frontier. I mean, it's so hard... at the 24-minute mark. And then...
Brother Collison then said, 'So you think this is Astra or Fable level?' Yeah. And then Alex and Zuck kind of both fight over each other for a second, which you can't knock them for. We do the same thing. Yeah. But then they said, 'By looking at the benchmarks, one would conclude that.' Which to me is like, 'Yeah, we all see the benchmarks. They look amazing. But you've been accused of benchmaxing before and so we all want to know.' No, no, I don't think they've been accused of benchmaxing before. Oh, maybe like early Spark. Like everyone went through this with Spark, had a bunch of Sparks bench... you know... but it's not like...
And so to me, if it's like, so you think this is Astra or Fable level and then you answer by looking at the benchmarks, one would conclude that. So again, like I don't think that they are actually... it doesn't... based on a few of these factors, I don't think they're really at the frontier. Okay. And I think it will become pretty obvious that that's the case. Yeah. As people... I mean these things always... the crown goes back and forth so quickly. Like they've been working on this for a long time, they launch it, who knows what the other labs have up their sleeves to fire back, etc. But I do think the language is odd because it feels like there's pretty little downside to just being like, 'Yeah, this is a Fable-class model' and just use the Anthropic terminology because everyone has an idea of what Fable means. It's like big model, really expensive, and you're like, 'Yeah, we're giving this away. We're putting it in the same category, but it's basically free because it's integrated into the product.'
But here's what I think is interesting. And then people can quibble over like the... I think you have to be way more excited about what MSL is doing. Yeah. Than Google or SpaceX at this point. Yeah. And you have to give... everyone should be giving Mark credit for that because if you're thinking about rewinding a year, even after the talent raids, hey, a year from now you're going to be more excited and more interested about what MSL is doing than Google and xAI, SpaceX. Yeah. You know, this was pre-merger but... so yeah, they're competitive for sure. For sure. Yeah.
It is interesting that SpaceX has yet to launch a model. Like Elon's been very cautious with the words on like when the progress will come from that team on Grok, on different versions, but obviously they have Cursor, they have a great team inside, so you would think that there would be more progress there, but he's been sort of downplaying it a little bit more. But yeah, it's interesting. The big debate... the funny thing about the interaction with like the Meta universe in like the EA world is, I mean going back to the movie, there's this moment where somebody asks Frances Haugen like what percentage of teenage girls having a bad experience on Instagram would be acceptable to you, like developing body image issues, and she's like 2%, maybe 1%, she backtracks it and they're like, it's 34%. That's like a bombshell.
But from like an EA perspective, it's like, oh, so like potentially net good, if like 46% are positively impacted and only 34% are negatively impacted. It's like you take that trade all day long because it like maths out in the spreadsheet, not how people actually think about things. But it really goes to show you how different philosophically some of the worlds are right now. And this is like the AI safety world is colliding with Mark Zuckerberg right now. Like Andrew Curran summed it up. He said, 'Pacing is out the window. For it to work, every American lab needed to be on board. Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly made it clear that he is not interested. One defection among US labs breaks it all as the others will be forced to accelerate or get passed.'
'Mark has a staggering amount of compute and has been all-in on compute capex for years. Even in the face of some investor opposition, he never stopped building his infra once. He said on the earnings call a couple years ago that he'd rather overspend now and potentially even be wrong than not have the compute when he needed it for the next 10x. He's finally hitting his stride and he's not going to slow down for team pacing to solve a defection like this. They would have needed a supportive pro-pacing administration that was passing capability regulations and was willing to use the power of the federal government to enforce them and bring non-compliant labs into line. They don't have any of this. In fact, it's the opposite. Marquez has Trump's ear. President Trump, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jensen are all completely aligned on policy. It's full speed ahead. And if you want to pace yourself, go ahead, but don't tell anyone else what to do. This breaks pacing.'
And so the interesting thing is like, are we on the frontier? Are we not? There are benefits to being on the frontier from a product adoption perspective. Like people will be like, oh, I got to try the new model. It's Fable-class or it's Astra but it's cheaper or it's Astra but it's integrated by Instagram. People will be excited to try that. But if you actually say like, now we're on the frontier, we're the most important AI lab, it's like, okay, so what are you doing about the potential problems from AI? Like now you're the one getting the hard questions about that stuff. And so being like a strong second, a strong third actually gives you a little bit of cover because you can say, 'Oh well, the most dangerous stuff... yeah, like Muse Wonder is great at coding, but it can't build bioweapons.' Like that's not anything... we'll see that emerge at the frontier labs first. We'll see those problems confronted by Anthropic. That's one of the reasons why you can say like they're not at the frontier because the researchers that are at the frontier sometimes have this like stare where you're like, oh, you've seen things... that no, you've seen man-made horrors beyond all comprehension. Yeah.
Let's pull up this video. On Saturday, Zuck went live. He went back to the barbecue. Went back to the barbecue. Back to the egg. Wow. Let's pull up this video. Let's get some sound on. Yeah. Yeah. Tank, we're smoking sausage. Smoke whatever the we want. Wow. Okay. So, is this real? Bring me up to speed. I was just a boy during this era, but he didn't used to like post selfie videos during The Social Network. Well, he was in and out of going direct through the entire journey. Okay. So he like... because like part of the reason that the new movie doesn't hit... Yeah. is because you just see Zuck all the time talking to people. Totally.
And he'll go on podcasts a couple times. And you could do an impression of the new Zuck and make fun of him and do a more exaggerated version of this character and poke fun at the quirks of this character, but it's a completely different vector of like comedic attack than the previous arc. Yeah, so I mean early on he did an interview where he was talking to some interviewer and he was drinking a beer out of a solo cup and it was like very casual and funny. Then he went on stage with Kara Swisher and she was asking him like hard questions and he started like sweating and sort of pacing in his sweatshirt and it was like a really bad moment where it was like oh, he couldn't handle the pressure, he crumbled in the hot seat. And then... I'm sure he was just getting his steps in but... yes, and then there were a number of other things where he would start doing long posts on Facebook directly, writing blog posts. He tested like the live stream functionality with that smoking meats video and Sam Lessin is in that video and that was actually like a longer live stream. What?
So this new live stream was almost the 10th anniversary of that. It was on October 9th, 2016. Yeah. And so I think he tested it out with the Sweet Baby Ray's smoking meats thing, but there was like some backlash. But he'd live streamed like other presentations, other talks, keynotes and stuff. So he'd always been dipping his toe in and out of going direct and working with the media and being quiet. Like there's been arcs and ups and downs throughout the entire journey, but the Sweet Baby Ray's thing I think he embraced as a meme pretty quickly because in a future keynote or video he had a bottle of Sweet Baby Ray's on the shelf and was sort of like a nod and he's made jokes about that like many times and sort of leaned in. And so this is just further leaning in.
But anyway, let me tell you about the New York Stock Exchange. Want to change the world? Raise capital at the New York Stock Exchange. So, what else is important to review here before we move on because there are a lot of other posts. People really enjoyed the Cheeky Pine. I'm so glad it's back. And this is a really good format, doing like two interviews, one host. It turns it into a roundtable. We've seen Alex on David Senra, we've seen Mark on I think you did Sources recently. There's been a couple other interviews, but this roundtable format really works.
Oh, it is funny that they're talking about deploying capital for AI spend and Alex is like, you have to make this very large investment, you have to make big decisions about how you're going to invest and develop the technology before you know that there's data to support this. And it's funny because you go back and listen to Dario on Dwarkesh and he's like, there's these people that are just yelling and everyone's like, oh, he's talking about OpenAI, but it's like, oh no, he was actually talking about Meta too and it was absolutely the right thing to do. So it's just funny. Yeah, it seems that way so far. But this didn't... Yeah, the using like this line to try to criticize Zuck's management style is like he's always operated the business this way. He's always been willing to bet the company. He's always been willing to invest more. He did this with the metaverse. You think... like... it's... I don't think if you look back it's like... company if you're just spending on... Yeah. Not betting the company. Not betting. So that's not the right word.
He'll just be like, I have this cash machine and I'm going to spend it. He actually treats $10 billion like it's $10 because he makes $200 billion, you know, and like to him it's like a nice car. Yeah. And for other people... Yeah. And I just never thought that with the metaverse he was like, oh, this is 100% going to work, so that's why we're going to invest so much. It was like there's a chance that this is the next paradigm on a shorter time horizon than the rest of the world thinks and we're going to invest against that and it's okay if it doesn't work out. Clearly, the company has been fine.
It is remarkable how quick companies can catch up in AI, can get another foothold, can train a new model, can get near the frontier or to the frontier with enough effort versus metaverse and VR where Microsoft has HoloLens and it didn't really go anywhere and like Apple, when are they going to fire back with the next Visionire or Vision Pro or something. It's just a completely... when you're operating in the domain of pure software, things move so much faster. Anyway, speaking of Apple, Apple just announced Home View, a $299 smart home hub. John Turnis posted it on X. Let's play the video. And I want to know, are you in the market for this? Looks like a big Apple Watch, like the rounded rectangle or the rounded square.
You're spinning like it. Yeah, we heard about this and I thought it was going to be much more like the Pixar lamp, like with an articulated arm. It has a much simpler design to it. I think it just swivels and then you can manually adjust it up and down, but I guess it can follow you around the room if you put it on a kitchen island. And they're touting the new Apple Intelligence and they think that will catch up. It is interesting what they will have to do to catch up to Muse and Instinct and Dot and Grokbot. Like there are several AI agent products that are barely fully featured at this point and they all have pros and cons based on what they integrate with. Apple has an incredible integration point and an incredible model partner with Gemini. I think if you went to Noah Shin and said you can only use DeepMind models, he would... but they're free. He would say, yeah, game on. Like I can build a great product.
But it'll be interesting to see like when do they have the, hey, go and plan a birthday party, make a reservation, create the invite, send it out to all my friends and just come to me with the key decision-making questions and I don't want to be involved, I want you to actually do this agentically. That functionality, that ability feels far off. It screams, you know, it screams stagnation. Okay. And yeah, it's hard to get excited about this. I would be... So here's where I would get excited, John. Yep. If Apple actually, and maybe this is where they're going. Yep. But if Apple was committed to actually making this device be able to control all of the electronics around my house from like my gates to cameras to lights to HVAC, all that kind of thing.
I would be extremely excited because the current system I have in my house is like some random tablet thing. I don't even know who makes it. Sure. Attached to the wall and it controls everything and the software is really bad. Yeah. And if they were going to actually... Is that what they're doing or is this literally just like a half iPad, half computer that sits on your kitchen counter? Yeah, it's an iPad. And that functionality exists like Astra or Fable can like straight up reverse engineer the API to your garage door clicker and make it work on the smart home. But then they bump into the OS layer all over the place. But I think they're going to reverse engineer that too. I think the end state might be buy this and jailbreak it and run your own software that's instantiated on the fly or forked from something. But in terms of industrial design, looks pretty nice. Yeah. Really solving a problem that no one has.
Let me tell you about the New York Stock Exchange. Want to change the world? Raise capital at the New York Stock Exchange. John needed to break the ice. So he ran another ad for the New York Stock Exchange. Oh, sorry. Yeah. Solving a problem that I don't have. You know, when you're FaceTiming and you need the phone to follow you around the room and it's hard to hold it because you're cooking and you want the camera to follow you around the room. Yeah, we built the solution for that. So Meta had a product that competed with this called the Portal. Yeah. Same thing. And I was... I like that for the name. It's portal time, baby.
Yeah, I actually did get a bunch of them for family members during COVID and we used them like once and then they started collecting dust. They worked as like picture frames basically, but they did not become like the smart home. Although maybe they should bring that back now that they have Muse. Like they basically have a direct competitor to this pre-built. They just need to update some software and like they... Yeah, one of the other videos was highlighting Siri. Yeah, like the Siri integration here with Siri AI. And we know they're working on making a better Siri, but it actually made me realize I think they need to change the voice of Siri because at this point everybody has had so many disappointments using Siri that I just associate the name with like I tried to do something, it didn't work, or I accidentally triggered Siri. I definitely don't want to do that. And so I think they have to like rebrand.
You want Tim Cook. I want... Yeah, I want the chair. I want the chairman. Yeah. Speaking to me. That'd be great. Morning. Let's see. Is software actually... But here's the thing. Okay. Continue. Can you... So I use FaceTime with family members. Yeah. Usually like with the kids. Yeah. And like it's very chaotic. The kids are like jumping all around. Can you imagine trying to have a successful FaceTime with like the Home View with like a bunch of kids running around? It would just be getting kicked over. Yeah. You'd put it on the floor in the playroom and then they would get kicked over or they would need to be tall enough to stand and then at which case they could maybe just hold the phone. Yeah. It's odd.
Yeah. And I'd just be curious how Apple thinks about this. Is this like a, yeah, we have enough customers that like a million people will buy this? Like does it actually move anything? I would just like to... I would love to see that like really bold bet on like we are actually going to provide iPhone-level software. Yeah. For your entire home. I mean it would be... I mean Amazon has gone on a tear and bought like a smart lock system and they bought Ring cameras and all sorts of different... they have Eero Wi-Fi mesh routing and so it would be very cool. Like this could be so much cooler if it was like, oh yeah, Apple also has a garage door company and a smart doorbell company and they also have a product for the cameras in your home and they have a wide range of speakers and they make a TV and so like you can actually get all your consumer products from them and if you go all in you get a great experience but you got to be in the walled garden.
Instead it's like even if you go all in on Apple you just don't wind up... you're still going to have so many devices because they don't have a thermostat. Google has a thermostat but they don't have a thermostat and so you're going to wind up with like all these weird integration points where Google's like, oh well, yeah, we're happy to integrate with Siri AI but let's make sure you're logged into your Nest Google account or whatever and they're going to be fighting. So anyway, let's move on. Two, Console. Console built AI agents that automate 70% of IT, HR, and finance support, giving employees instant resolution for access requests and password resets.
People are going back and forth on software being dead. There's no moat. The moat is you, blah blah blah. The one that I wanted to cover was... Oh, did you see this spa sign? The AI-generated sign outside of the spa. That is a sign of a sign. I love it. They went... they really took me into a different world. And they zoom in because they generated an image of a sign and they printed it and put it on a sign. Sign-ception. Yes. They should add a 'not for you' tab. I want to see what the algorithm thinks I'd hate. That's funny.
This one had me dying. Well, that's a new one. My Mustang came back from a Turo trip fully tinted. Someone rented this guy's Mustang and they tinted it so that they could enjoy tint while on the Turo trip. It makes me think they were maybe doing something that... illegal. Very questionable. Very, very questionable. Very, very questionable.
People were going back and forth. Elon posted... Yeah. I think his mailing address just right on Main. Did he? He said, 'I asked Grok to research the most fun Lego Star Wars kits for young kids and order them. As easy as that.' But if you zoom in, you can see that he's sending product to somewhere and you know it has a shipping address and billing address and that's a crazy thing to post. And I don't know if this is true. Yeah, it's probably not, but somebody said like, 'I just canceled your order. Don't share your info online.' So they had the order number, all that other details. Who knows? Yeah, this seems maybe photoshopped because... and he says that's not my address and the order isn't cancelled. Yeah, got him.
But yeah, I mean, it's a tell because the first reply by the bot is, 'Hi, Elon. Thanks for waiting.' And it's like it wouldn't know that until you actually went and said, 'I'm Elon. Here's my information. Please cancel.' It would be potentially possible to do that with a bad prompt injection or something. But did you see this F1 camera transition? I did. Break it down for me. This elite, elite transition. Play this. So it goes from one camera to the next. And everyone thinks they're using AI to merge the two video feeds which is really, really cool. Way, way more immersive. So there's levels. We got to get the AI transitions in the Ultradome for sure. We got to figure out how they did this. But that is such a cool move. What are you drinking over there? OJ, orange juice.
Why does Mert think F1 is a scam? F1 might be the greatest scam of the decade. Totally unwatchable IRL. 50% oversupplied for Paddock tickets that are just random IBM and Oracle employees. That's a dream come true. Who else do you want to be hanging out with other than tech employees? It is completely unwatchable IRL. It's not about like following the race directly. Like you can still watch the...
TV or the map if you want. It's about like being there to feel the cars go by really fast. I think like... but it's really just like a, it's a big spectacle now.
Yeah. Like it's not about, it's, it's like a weekend and you're there to like watch the performance. Like you go to the practice sometimes, you'll take a ride on a vehicle and go on the physical track. It's like, it's much more experiential than like you're locked in like watching.
No. And, and the, and the biggest challenge with motorsports is that the viewers, live viewers, whether you're watching at home or at the event, you have no way of understanding what the drivers are going through like...
Oh, sure. Because... yeah, it's all abstract. You just...
Because it's so normalized, because the cars are going around and they, and they rarely crash, and so it doesn't feel nearly... and they're, and they're so precise. They're so technical. They're so highly skilled that they just normalize it very quickly even though it's completely ridiculous. Like it's one of the craziest things that we do as humans.
Um, and it's an insane workout, but, but again, like you don't, you can't tell that they're, they're, they have like the equivalent of like a ridiculous fever the entire time that they're driving, right? Like you can't tell that, that, um...
Not at all. Well, it gets kind of sniffy on the, on the comp sometimes. Yeah.
And that's, but that's the most you get.
That's it.
Uh, well, speaking of cars, Alfa Romeo launched a new car. I want your review. The Kuresco... Corores... Cororoso... uh, launched and they put up a YouTube video here breaking it down. There's also an article we can click through from Autoblog. But let's play the actual video. Uh, I think it's a cool launch and I want to know what you think about the front, the wheels, the back.
Let's play this video.
They almost forgot how to make a heart's race. But not us. Every Alfa Romeo has always been built around the same engine. Not the one beneath the hood, the one inside our chest. That's why an Alfa Romeo has never simply taken you somewhere. It has always taken your breath away.
As much as I want to keep watching this, we have our first guest.
Give us your review first.
Uh, I'm going to, I'm going to leave it as, as a cliffhanger.
Cliffhanger. We'll get back to it.
I think the, I think the front looks great. I think the side looks great. The back is a little crazy, but it's, it's pushing it.
Uh, let me tell you about MongoDB. Nothing feeling faster than the AI market, your business on MongoDB. Don't just build AI, own the data platform that powers it. And let's bring in our first guests of the day.
Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for joining. Uh, let's start with some introductions. So everyone knows who's who.
Hey guys. Uh, go ahead, William.
Uh, hi, I'm William Chu, um, the head of private equity over at Zurich Alternative Asset Management. Um, thank you guys very much for having us here. Longtime fan, first time joiner, Diet Coke enabled.
There you go. Cheers. Great to have you. What about these other two? Who are they?
Hey guys, good to see you again. Uh, some of you know me. My name is France Anjene. Friends call me An, and you guys should feel free to as well. And you got my partner Nagin over here.
Hey there.
Hey, Nin and Oliver. Nice to meet you guys.
Amazing. And where are you guys calling in from? Side of the road somewhere? Data center?
You can, you can probably see you.
Doesn't it look good? Isn't it obvious?
Isn't that the Golden Gate Bridge?
I mean, you, your hat was kind of blocking it, I got to say, at least at the start, but now, now I see it. I thought you were going to be somewhere down in like West Texas or something like that. But, um, it's amazing to have you guys.
Well, we are in, we are on federal land. We're at the Presidio SF, which is where our campus is. This is where AMP is headquartered.
And, uh, and so we just stepped outside for some sunshine and to talk to you guys. Thanks for having us.
Amazing. Well, why don't you kick it off and, uh, why are we all here today and, uh, why is this, why will this day be remembered throughout, why will it echo throughout history?
Yeah. Uh, well, um, as you guys know, compute is getting expensive and as sheriffs, um, in the AI infrastructure world, we started getting a lot of calls for help last year from startups who wanted access to compute at scale, but, uh, because they weren't, um, as rich as the hyperscalers, they were getting told they could not access the compute they needed. So they called us in. We're the cavalry and I'm excited to announce today that we're kicking off a hundred billion dollar, um, program called the Grid Trust that's being anchored by Zurich.
Uh, Zurich Asset Management is one of the biggest institutional investors in the world. They have over 300 billion of assets under management and they have anchored, uh, the Grid Trust program with a meaningful amount of capital that we are using to bring up capacity, compute capacity for startups all around the world. And, uh, we're really lucky that we had Nagin join us from, uh, AMD to lead this effort. When Neg was at AMD for over eight years and helped build the GPU business over there from scratch. So between Nagin and William, we're in pretty good hands.
That's great.
Where should we start from here?
William, I'm going to hand it over. I'm going to call on William a little bit to explain what, uh, Zurich does. I think the, the big question every time you guys have asked me on do you want to build out 2 GW, your question has always been how are you going to pay for it? And so the good news is we've got William to answer your question.
Uh, that's a, that's a heavy ask there. But, um, look, um, happy to, uh, give you some perspective from our lens here and just for some context as well, what I do here, uh, over at Zurich Alternative Asset Management. We are the alternative investing arm of Zurich Insurance Group. Uh, obviously, you know, it's a publicly traded company. I will slightly correct odds. We have a little bit more than 300 billion. It's actually 440 billion.
There you go. Here we go. Wow.
It's just a round, just a rounding error. 100 billion dollar rounding error.
Uh, you know, what's the, what's that among trends, right? But, uh...
Exactly 2 gigawatt. Isn't that convenient?
Um, you look, uh, we are super thrilled, super excited with our partnership here with AMP and, um, on to a dear friend of mine and the team as well. I've got to know them, um, for some time and really are excited about this ambition endeavor. Uh, super proud to have this opportunity and privilege to kind of showcase with you guys live today as you said. Uh, this is kind of a, a very memorable day for us and obviously for hopefully the future of compute. I mean, there's a number of reasons why we're super excited about this opportunity and, um, you know, I think from a perspective of what really kind of got us over, um, over the hump so to speak is a, a few reasons. One I would say is An has been kind of the lead, uh, catalyst around the whole world of compute. He's, he's looking to change the game in venture in, in the very core and what the essence of it is. I cannot be more excited about partnering with someone like that who is not just kind of be yet another venture firm because I think the firm, the reality is, you know, we've seen, uh, a lot of those folks out there, but I think for those that really kind of have an ambitious plan to really change the DNA of what it means to be a venture capitalist today in today's environment, I think that's one of the reasons why we're super excited.
And I think from the specific opportunity set here, I think a few reasons. One is I'll break it down into a few categories. I'll try to be brief, right? But, you know, the spending curve one is people often think about the frontier AI labs, um, and the compute is always speculative, but frankly the infrastructure side behaves a little bit more like a utility than a startup and that's I think a testament to what An has been kind of evangelizing and we're a believer as well. I've obviously some data and research has kind of shown that I think model capabilities have improved. I mean, we know the obvious ones particularly on the frontier side and likewise higher compute consumption has followed, right? So labs may compete, models come and go and change, but the demand frankly for the compute has followed consistently. So as investors, institutional investors at that, we're looking for a pattern of spending that's durable and observable, right?
A few other things I'll just highlight. You know, I, I think that we've seen what, uh, Jensen's been doing particularly around the Nvidia chips and really just kind of making a big splash around in all the various different parts of infrastructure being now financable because of this pattern of spending, right? And there's demand and you get reasonable confidence in that. So that helps. We're not relying on any single model provider to win the game. And this is going back, going now into my third piece of it why we're super excited which is pooling. Pooling actually reduces the risk. So instead of kind of putting all the eggs in one basket where you have a single tenant build out, you know, you're basically going for the hail mary, one customer run, more roadmap, one growth trajectory. Actually changes the economics, it actually helps diversify. Um, and from a risk perspective as you can imagine, I work at an insurance company so risk is a, a natural big theme. This is actually an incredible diversifier here. So, and last but not least, you, well, I would say why does it matter? I think we all know like, look, AI is not a fad. AI is longstanding here and we're, we're investing here not just in, in the promise of compute and what it can bring but, you know, in terms of the high utilization that it of course compute can deliver over a long period of time. And so we're super excited and of course it starts with AMP and our partnership with them. They are. I mean, An doesn't need yet again yet another plug. You know, if you, if you follow An, he's successful in his own right. Uh, he's well spoken and he's got his X account for those that, uh, don't follow, they should. Uh, it's quite entertaining on many levels.
Um, but I think what's important as well is there's a lot of players in this space, but you have to have the right one. And I think AMP is the partner of choice for Ross and, and, um, they're one of the very, very few that we are doing business with.
Yeah. Very cool. Um, how are you thinking about timelines here? You have a bunch of portfolio companies. You're going to have, uh, a lot more in the future. You also have, I'm sure, companies reaching out to you all the time. An, we don't work together yet, but I need compute. Uh, you're looking to bring 2 gigawatts online. That's not going to happen instantly. But how are you communicating the timeline, uh, today?
Typically I, uh, introduce them to Nagin and then she takes over. So why don't I turn to her because, you know, at AMD the last thing Nagin helped, um, assemble over there was the 2 gigawatt partnership each with OpenAI and Anthropic and I think those will, um, be looked on as templates for scaling across the ecosystem. But, you know, again, how would you answer that question?
Yeah, I mean, I think, um, it is going to take some time and as An mentioned, my focus is really to figure out how we get the 2 gigawatts online in a reliable way. Um, you know, one of the things that, uh, William talked about, pooling for the end customers. Um, there's also value in having multiple cloud providers and neo clouds on the grid. So our customers are now, you know, have a little bit more security and they're less dependent on a single cluster and have, have, uh, more of a reliable vision of where the capacity is going to come online and whether it's one or the other kind of doesn't matter. Um, when people come to us looking for compute, I mean, we have compute live today. The grid works. We have people running on it. It's been unbelievable. We have Nvidia and AMD. Our hope is to get, um, all chips onto the grid because that's what's really going to make this fungible for, for people. And, uh, you know, we've got capacity coming online between now and say 12 months from now that we have very clear line of sight to where it's going to be, how much it's going to be and it's a, a process to educate our customers on how best to utilize that capacity because our goal is not to have them lock it up, um, and just sit idle. The goal is to make sure we get the most utilization out of those GPUs that we have on the grid. So that's really what my focus is. I've spent my entire career in the semiconductor industry focusing, uh, the last eight years just on the infrastructure side for AI. And so, uh, that's what's complimentary with what Anra is bringing to the table and, uh, looking, you know, looking forward to getting this built out and getting our labs access to GPUs at the way they need it really when and where they need it.
Amazing. So, next time any of our friends listening in want to know exactly when their next cluster is going to come online, all you have to do is message naginpbc.com.
You no longer need to go. I'm no longer the bottleneck as many will, uh, testify.
Uh, I hope you don't mind me sharing your email, but news is most people won't know how to spell it. We'll be good. We're good. Yeah.
No, the motivated ones will find out.
Yes, the motivated ones will find me.
Um, John, what were you going to say? Uh, I'm, I'm interested to know about, uh, how do you think about the diversification, the spreading of risk across different customers at different levels? That seems like it's important to the philosophy here. Uh, obviously there's a number of labs and hyperscalers and neoclouds, but then there's also startups. But how do you think about actually spreading out the long tail of demand across all the potential customers? Is there like a portfolio strategy in place?
This is a great question. So if you go to the website nationalcomputee.com, which is where the grid is hosted, you'll see it says the grid is now in public access, public sector access. You know, we, we started with a public mission, which means the, the compute, the infrastructure that's being built out has to go on the grid to people who need it the most. Today, that means for edu users, gov users, users where as far as we're aware we're one of the only places where these folks can access live like hundreds of chips on demand at subsidized rates.
You can get an AMD chip there, an MI355 for three bucks an hour and you can get, um, a B200 from Nvidia for about four bucks. The commercial pool we have, there's over 60 different commercial labs also on the grid. Um, they pay a much higher price. So, we've had several, uh, millions of dollars being spent on MI355 at about $12 an hour as of yesterday. And so, just to give you a sense of the spread, commercial customers do pay higher for on-demand access, but public sector users get the compute at subsidized rates. And, and the benefit of pooling is we get to essentially load, load balance across these different customer types and ensure folks who have need access the most can get it, um, at prices that don't sort of exclude them from the market.
Does that make sense?
Yeah, totally. Um, last question from my side for now. How, like demand planning? It feels like the, the greatest challenge for application layer companies, even, even obviously the labs as well. But is this something that can be solved or, or like it feels like this is the solution where you just get the most number of chips in a single sort of platform all over the world and because it just feels like, it feels like demand planning for, for these companies is entirely unpredictable. You have like an instinct moment where suddenly you go from obscurity to, you know, overwhelming demand or, or you've seen labs release a new model and, and it's, you get that new capability increase and suddenly you have customers that, um, you weren't even imagining. And so this feels like the only solution, but what are you guys seeing the smartest companies do around, around forecasting? Is it really just napkin math and sort of like guessing or, or is this a new kind of core skill?
I, I think each company on their own is doing the napkin math and guessing and they're looking at their neighbors like they're looking at what is this guy doing, what is that guy doing and trying to like extrapolate that. Um, I think the beauty of what we're doing is, is that our grid members are sharing their napkin math with us so we get visibility across a larger number and then we're the ones taking the bets on some of the unknowns, right? Like, like the instinct moment you mentioned, you know, we're going to plan for that so that there is capacity for those that didn't know better than to plan. Um, and the idea is that if you have enough users across it, um, some may plan too high, some may plan too low, but you should be able to sort of smooth out that demand curve and make sure that the people who need it most have access to GPUs at the time they need it.
And, and, uh, like everybody else, we also use AI. So the first thing you'll see when you log into nationalcomput.com is our agent called Marshall. Marshall is named after, uh, you know, the, the, the general who helped unite the United States and Europe post World War II, um, after the Marshall Plan. And Marshall is an automated system that input, ingests all of that data that Nine was talking about and then actually does demand forecasting for us. Um, and every grid member can go talk to Marshall. Do, you can kind of think of Marshall as your chief AI compute officer. Um, and we're using reinforcement learning to improve it. Um, and over time, I think this will really unblock a lot of bottlenecks for folks who don't have their own infrastructure teams, their own procurement teams. You know, it's not uncommon today for the, the largest labs to have 100 plus people doing this job, but I don't see why we can't relieve some of that stress through automation.
Fantastic. Well, thank you so much coming on down. Amazing milestone and, and, uh, so excited that a lot more companies will, will get access to this, uh, to this compute. And, and yeah, it feels like we had this beautiful sort of hacker moment, hacker culture emerging and then the sort of like financial realities of like how do you access massive amounts of compute as a small team kind of you run into that. So yeah, very excited about this and, and congratulations on the partnership.
Fantastic.
Well, a big shout out to Zurich. It takes a village to raise AI infrastructure. And as you can see between William with this background and us over here in San Francisco, William's actually based in New York. We think this has to be a cross-country scaling approach. Um, and we're really lucky to have Zurich believe in us at scale.
I love it.
Amazing. Well, looking forward to having all three of you back on the show soon and, uh, good luck out there.
Have a good rest of your week.
We'll wear our cowboy hats next time.
See you.
Cheers.
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 Neil Stevenson, the fantastic author you know and love. His latest book is Deheavy Water.
Here he is.
Welcome to the show, Neil. How are you doing?
I'm good. My voice is still working cuz this is day one of the book tour. So, you got me in a great time.
I'm sure.
How have, uh, book tours evolved? I imagine your book tour now is like eight podcasts a day for two weeks.
Well, yeah. Of course, that's obviously new. During the time I've done it, uh, it used to be like the first book tour I did, and it was old school and they would sort of put you on like drive time shock jock radio programs and you'd try to explain your book, uh, to a, you know, a shock jock in 30 seconds. It was pretty challenging. Um, I like this better.
Is there a trade-off between talking the book too much and not leaving enough for people to actually go and convert versus like talking about anything? Talking about other topics, anything that just gets people interested? We've talked to some people, I think it applies more in non-fiction where someone has a thesis and then they lay out that thesis on like a three-hour podcast and then people are like, 'Well, why would I get the six-hour audiobook if I can just listen to you for three hours?'
I kind of had that experience with sometimes with non-fiction books like business advice books, you know, it's like, okay, I, I get it. Um, I don't need to read it. Obviously, you don't want that as an author. Um, I think with fiction you've got a big advantage in that if you can kind of set up the general, um, the general thesis of the book, um, that, uh, you know, that hopefully gets people interested in the story and gives them a reason to actually pick it up and read it.
Yeah. Yeah, makes sense. Uh, what do you, how do you think about the, how do you think about the responsibility that like, do you feel like science fiction, science fiction authors have a responsibility and, and do you think like how much of a weight do you feel like there is to the work because, uh, like in my view, you guys, you're sort of predicting the future and you're entertaining but then also it inspires so many people that you, you impact the world in a very unique way just, just with your words. And I think you have to assume that like something about it, these ideas just sort of like weed their way into people's consciousness and it affects their actions and it affects the products that they make. It affects the weapon systems that get built in the future. Um, and there seems like there is some weight to it.
Yeah. I mean, I, I think, uh, the, the good thing is that, um, to tell a, a story that intelligent readers will actually enjoy, you need to be realistic. You need to include some of the actual complexity and ambiguity of the real world otherwise it just comes off as kind of a one-dimensional, you know, screed. And so, um, so I tried to do that. Um, you know, the last book I wrote that had some of that potential was, was Termination Shock, which was about geoengineering. So I mean, it depicted people doing geoengineering and one of the main characters was a big advocate of geoengineering. But there are also characters in the book who took a different view and who, um, were ambivalent or openly hostile to the efforts that were being made in that area. So I think if you, to begin with, that just made it a better book. Um, but, um, you know, if you're reading a book like that with an eye towards, you know, starting a company or something, then hopefully you notice the fact that, um, there's different points of view on it. There's complexity, um, and you take that into account in your decision making going forward.
Do you believe in nominative determinism?
Well, in, um, in, in novel writing, sure. Because you get to pick the names. And so the, um, uh, so Dickens, for example, you know, was, was really good at, at giving his characters names like Scrooge or Uriah Heap or whatever that immediately gave you a clue as to the nature of that particular character. Uh, whether that really translates into real life, I'm a little less certain.
Yeah. Well, how do you grapple with it as an author? It, it, it can sometimes be tempting to say the main character's name will be, you know, Chad, good man, and the bad guy will be named like Evil Doer. Uh, and it can be a little bit on the nose, but sometimes it's...
Yeah. Yeah. Hero protagonist is a great one. But how do you, how do you personally deal with that balancing act?
I mean, it's just a question of, um, trying to have a little bit of a light touch, you know, make it a little funny, a little witty. Uh, if, if it feels like you're hitting the reader over the head with something obvious, then they're not going to take that very well. Um, but on the other hand, if you can kind of slip it in there, um, and have it be, uh, sort of, sort of clever and funny, then, um, the reader feels like, 'Okay, I'm in on the joke.'
Sure. Sure. Uh, can we go back to 2013? I'd love to know how you met Sheamus, uh, Blackley, who sort, I think sort of kicked off this arc. Do I have that correct?
Yeah. Yeah. Um, I've known Sheamus, uh, I don't know, since the late 90s probably. Um, he, uh, after he left, uh, uh, Microsoft, um, he got interested for a while in trying to help gamers fund their projects. And that I think led to him being, uh, kind of running the game, uh, division of CAA, uh, the, the big Hollywood talent agency. And at the time my, um, my agent in LA, Richard Green, was working at CIA. Sure. And so one day Rich said to me, 'Hey, you know, um, if you're in town, there's this guy Sheamus, you know, uh, you guys should meet.' Uh, so we went out, had lunch, and immediately kind of I think understood each other and became friends. And, um, so we're, we've been in touch ever since. I saw him just, uh, two weeks ago when I was down in LA.
Yeah, he book, right? Sorry.
Yeah, he, um, uh, he, he made me aware of the existence of, um, of some of the story content that, that this book is based on, specifically the, the, uh, the Earl of Suffach. And so since then, uh, he and I have sort of traded notes, uh, as, as the occasion warrants about, you know, when we come across some interesting piece of information, we'll, we'll email it back and forth to each other.
Um, how are you thinking about the current moment in video games and AI? There's all of these mashups that are happening. People are using AI to decompile video games. And it feels like we're at a moment where fan-made video games are going to be more of a thing, like a fan-made Halloween costume. I can imagine that fans will turn many of your works into AI-generated video games. There's obviously a lot of intellectual property discussion around there, but how are you, how are you churning through it? Is there a part that excites you, part is nerve-wracking? How are you dealing with that moment?
Well, I'm more of a just hands-on guy. So, um, I, um, I'm a co-founder of a startup called Win Air that's actually working in kind of in this area. Not exactly what you're talking about, but, you know, the, the premise is to allow fans of story worlds to tell stories in their favorite, you know, fictional universes by, uh, giving them an environment, uh, that, that, you know, represents part of that world and, uh, a script editor that, that they can use to determine what they want to, to see happen. Um, so, and, and we've, uh, actually just last week made an announcement. We've been working with a company called Dreamlands.ai that, um, has made some incredible strides in this area and made it possible for a tiny team like ours to generate environments, realistic high-quality, you know, video game environments that, uh, a few years ago would have cost, you know, a million dollars plus. So that's kind of the way I come at this. Um, if I, I, I haven't followed the, you know, the, the mashup scene very much though.
Yeah. Jody, please. So you published Snow Crash in '92 and then we went through a period of like what, what in hindsight feels like total stagnation where you get, you know, the, the, the internet, uh, becomes big and, and that's cool but it sort of just extends, it extends a lot of existing technologies. And then it feels like the 2020s, like I, I think like generally people have felt the sort of acceleration and this and the speed up and, and new capabilities. From your view, having, you know, written about a lot of the things that we're starting to like see in the real world and experience today, even in, in small ways, did it feel like a period of, you know, 20 years of, of stagnation and then, and then a, and a real acceleration or like what was your sort of lived experience? Because it just feels like such a big, it feels like a big gap where like if reading the Wall Street Journal or reading the mainstream media has at times felt in the last year like you're reading science fiction and, and it certainly didn't feel that way. Like in some ways the early 2000s and the 2010s was like, great, we have new database software and we have more wars and it didn't, it didn't feel like there was any, it didn't feel like it, the news...
I know what you mean. I, I, I kind of wasn't even aware of it, you know, but now that you point it out, it's like, yeah, yeah, it was sort of that way. And I mean, you know, the internet came along. It was big. It was very important. And there was kind of a period of consolidation I think where it changed from, you know, sort of like, um, you know, rampant grad students, you know, stringing things together to big business and the consolidation, uh, of power and influence on the internet by the, you know, the, the, the FAANG companies basically. And, um, so, um, so yeah, I think gradually over time you, you begin to, you get tired of it, you begin to, uh, lose the sense of, of wild excitement and, you know, big things happening and the sense that, um, hey, there's, uh, uh, I could do something, you know, there's opportunities here that I could grab, uh, that, that starts to, um, to fade after a while. And now it's sort of back, uh, because of the, the things that you mentioned.
How are you thinking...
Yeah, and then, and then on that, like as you're, I, I don't know what your process is like for, you know, um, generating ideas for, for future work. But like, do you feel like this is a time where you can open the newspaper and start to like, cuz, cuz what's been interesting is like many people in the, in the technology industry, like the people closest to the frontier of AI have started writing their own science fiction, right? So, you have, uh, work like AI 2027 which is like...
Uh, and, and AI 2040 where it's like, hey, let's look at the, the technology that we have today and sort of just try to extrapolate it out quarter by quarter and see where this goes. And, and you have to, you basically have this series of like compounding assumptions that lead to these really insane outcomes. But in some way like that's, you were kind of running that same kind of process but over maybe a larger time scale where it's like if you assume the technology we have today is going to improve this way and take jumps in this way, then I can imagine this whole world where this would be the way that you travel around the earth or, or, or this would be the way that individuals interact with, you know, corporate, large corporations, etc.
Yeah, I haven't read the, uh, the things you mentioned. Um, I wasn't aware of them, but I'll, you know, now I am. I'll check them out. But I think, um, you know, to make a, a good yarn, uh, that, uh, you need to, um, there's some elements that you need to include in the story that give it a feeling of, um, of, of realism. And, uh, one of those is, um, you know, it's, it's one thing to posit a new technology and think about what you might be able to do with it just on a pure engineering level, but in addition, you know, real technologies, uh, answer to other masters as well. So you've got kind of the social and creative side, you know, what do people do, um, with new technologies that's unexpected, like electric guitars. Um, you know, we had electricity. Uh, everyone knew there was going to be light bulbs and washing machines, but electric guitars were kind of an unexpected thing that came out of, of a more social and cultural milieu. And then there's the business side. You know, you've got to, um, you know, you've got to have a plausible business plan for why, uh, some future technology in a science fiction book actually makes sense and can get funded. So, um, so those are some elements, um, that I think, um, in a way it's, it adds some additional work and some additional challenge to the process of writing science fiction, but it, it more than pays off because what you end up with is something that feels a lot more organic and realistic and as such can do a better job of drawing the reader into the story.
How are you thinking about AI in the process of researching, writing, fact-checking, proofreading, uh, and the trade-offs of using tools that might atrophy your own skills? How have you grappled with all the different opportunities and risks?
I think you answered the, the question. Um, I'm not real big on, on atrophying my, my skills. Um, so, um, I do think that it's, uh, you know, it's, it's, uh, a little bit difficult to explain, but there's something about the, uh, serendipity and the randomness of, um, of doing it yourself that is very productive in the end. And so, um, like when I was writing my Baroque Cycle series of historical novels, I would just make notes by hand in comp books. I had a huge stack of these notebooks and it was all hodgepodge. You know, it wasn't organized. It wasn't searchable certainly. Um, and so I would have to flip through them trying to find stuff. You know, I think it's somewhere in here kind of deal. And in the course of doing that, I would stumble across things I'd forgotten about or connections would get made, new ideas would emerge. And so, um, so for me, um, having that work done by a research assistant whether it be a human or an AI would actually be counterproductive and I'm just not interested in it at all.
Um, but, um, uh, I mean, I already know how to write books so I don't need help.
Yeah, that's a good point. Uh, is there a, is there a science or technology that you think is underrepresented or underexplored in science fiction? Like there's a lot of space stuff explored. There's a lot of robots basically. I mean, we maybe need to advance that, but is there something that sticks out to you as, as potentially fertile ground or underexplored?
I mean, I think, uh, a lot of the story of the next, uh, half century or century is going to be how we, um, get carbon out of the atmosphere.
And, um, that is a straight-up technology engineering project that's going to have to be carried out on a really large scale. So, um, I'd like to see more about that for sure. There's all kinds of different, uh, carbon sequestration technologies that are being talked about. Some are biological, some are kind of industrial facilities, um, some are, uh, like enhanced weathering of stone and so on. So there's a lot of ideas floating around right now and, and we haven't really settled on what the right one's going to be. Uh, but, um, but it's an interesting, uh, area right now of, of engineering ferment. There's like bright people going into it. Um, and, um, um, so I hope that, uh, hope that we'll be seeing more in that area.
Mhm.
What about, um, would you ever write something about, uh, algorithmic social feeds? Like it, it seems like, uh, it, it seems like an idea that you would have imagined and maybe you have, like, you know, uh, a decade ago or two decades ago, where this idea that like everyone would be spending, you know, four hours a day, you know, immersed in this device that is showing them entirely different sort of worldview and, and set of facts and all these different things. I was scrolling, um, I was scrolling on X over the weekend and there's this new, I mean, it's not really new, but it seems to have gotten worse where people will just share fake image, you know, fake, uh, fake news, fake images and the only, and, and these things have, you know, 10 million views and I can see that it's in the process of getting community noted and you can click in and see that like, oh, this is not a real image, this never appeared or whatever. Um, but, but AI is making it. We've had this technology for years now, but it's so much easier. And if I wasn't in the, if I wasn't in the like community notes program, I never would know that. I would just be scrolling past these things seeing fake news. And so there's the sort of fake news element that, that is still underexplored, but then also this idea of like I'm just seeing...
Living in a filter bubble.
I'm living in an entirely different online world than, than somebody next to me in traffic. And then what are the downstream implications of that?
Yeah, I kind of went there briefly in, um, my book Fall; or, Dodge in Hell, and it's sort of a minor sideshow to the main story. So, um, uh, but it kind of depicts a semi-near future in which big swaths of the country have been kind of colonized by the, the sort of thing you're describing with, uh, the results that the, that part of the country in my book is, is called Amirstan. And, you know, it's this kind of war-torn, uh, place inhabited by people who, um, who have absolutely no idea what's going on, but they're, they're, they're sure that they do. Um, and so, um, um, it's, uh, to, to me, to me, I mentioned carbon before. To me, the two big problems facing us right now are carbon and what you just described. And with carbon, I can see, you know, that's an engineering problem straight up. The, um, the, the other problem, people living in their own realities, is you could address it with, um, with, with engineering or, you know, by, by blowing up a few Yandex server farms. But...
It, you know, it's, um, uh, it's a harder problem because people like it, you know.
You have... Yeah. So that means you have to police.
What are you gonna do? Start policing? Like it can get kind of dark if you're like, okay, well now the government is going to decide, oh, they're going to try to enforce a rule set around what can be seen and shown. And it's this weird thing where like you said, like the fake stuff just naturally is absurd often. So it gets more engagement. It is more entertaining. People spend more time. They get served more ads. But at the same time, if you have government intervention and so, yeah, it's like we're much, the human, the human race is so much better set up for like engineering problems where like we have this monumental problem that we're, that we're facing.
At least we all agree on it.
But, but in that situation, you have one hacker, you know, theoretically hacker in their garage or at some university lab or whatever, and they can, they can have this one breakthrough that can then get global adoption because there's an incentive to have that global adoption. And right now on with this like problem of us all living in our own world, there's no obvious incentive structure that, that will fix it. If anything, there's an incentive for it to get worse.
And in some ways, the videos and the images are, uh, to, for me it's, it's a little easier to look at those, at least at the current stage of technology, and say, 'Yeah, I don't think that's real.' But what's more insidious in a way is lots of posts, uh, underneath that video, you know, by, uh, by, so mostly by bots, right? And so in a way that's a sneakier way that the same bad actors can influence the way we think because you read these things and we tend to think, oh, well, there's a real person out there somewhere who's actually typing this when, you know, that's, that's not actually the case at all.
Yeah. Um, I know you've studied the fall of Rome a lot. How do you compare those problems that you just described to the problems that were faced by Rome? They feel extremely modern, but is there some connection that we could actually learn lessons from the past here?
Yeah. Well, you know, there were two falls of Rome. There was the fall of the republic, um, you know, which finally bit the dust around the time of Julius Caesar, and then there was the much slower fall of the, the empire. And they're kind of different, uh, phenomena in the way, uh, it's easier to get a grip on the fall of the republic because you can just see what happens. Just certain people like Marius and Sulla, you just decided that they were going to sweep aside the, the norms that until then all of the, the important people in the Roman Republic had agreed to, to observe. Um, and, uh, and they just decided to, to, to flout those norms and, um, and do what they wanted to do. And that's a little bit I think where we are right now, uh, in, uh, in modern, um, society. Um, the, the fall of the empire is a, you know, slower and more complicated process that it took, you know, another 1500 years to fully, you know, reach its, reach its end. And, um, and there you're talking about a lot of things like migration and, um, and changes in religion, uh, and so on and so forth that, um, uh, make for good reading. I, I recommend, you know, studying this, but I don't know if I have a quick, um, answer for you.
Well, one solution for algorithmic feeds, picking up a book, D Heavy Water is available.
I wanted to ask you before you leave, uh, who do you think is the most, who do you think is the most underrated science fiction author that you think would resonate with our corner of the internet, our, uh, small corner of reality? You're, you're, you're, you're among like venture capitalists. Uh, you might laugh at this, but you're certainly the most widely recommended and, and read. You know, ask, if you ask any of them, they're, they'll tell you.
I mean, if I just had to pick one off the cuff, first thought is Matt Ruff, R-U-F-F, who wrote, um, uh, he wrote Lovecraft Country, which got turned into a TV series. So, that's his, um, most widely known book. But, um, every book he writes is different. Um, and, uh, they're all great and, uh, he's got one that he's winding up now called Black Sheep, but I don't think it'll be out real soon, but I know he's, he's, it's about AI. So, um, so if I had to pick one, that's, that's my first thought.
Well, thanks for the recommendation. It was great to meet you. Thank you for coming on the show and congratulations on the book launch.
Yeah. Good luck keeping your voice over the next couple weeks.
Yes. Good luck.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Talk to me in two weeks. We'll, we'll know.
Thank you.
Our next guests are already in the waiting room. We have Robbie Gupta and John Hugman from Ithaca Holdings, the co-founders, co-CEOs here to discuss the landmark deal. Welcome to the show, guys. Thank you so much for coming on and hopping on such a big day.
Look at us. You put a smile on our face. It's great to see, dude. It's good to see you guys. But sorry, before we get started, why are you guys so bundled up?
It's 70° in LA. It's the coldest it's been in... And I am dressed as the, as the gumshoe journalist from the social reckoning. Uh, there's a Wall Street Journal reporter. He wears this. Exactly. And we were doing a movie review earlier. So...
I got... And you're just cold cuz it's 70.
It's freezing. It's freezing. It's, it's, uh, it's a... Yeah, it's the t... It feels like the tundra.
It's only 72 days till Christmas, so, you know, you got to warm up inside. If a Yule tide is here, we want to warm our hands by the hearth. Um, but things are heating up in the world of deal making. You are buying Bumble. Take us through.
Let's go. Yeah, we signed it. We signed it. We announced it this morning. So, we're pumped. Uh, we are partnering with Whitney Wolfe Herd, who's the founder of Bumble. Yeah. And we are taking it private. It's the first thing that we're doing as Ithaca. And John and I are, uh, pretty pumped.
Yeah. Take us through the thesis because I mean we talked about the, the, the idea for Ithaca, the structure and there's so many different ways this fund could have gone. There's so many different activities, the different funds and different, uh, teams are working on...
Different opportunities. Why is Bumble the right move right now?
Yeah, well, listen. The first thing is, I'm going to tell you, so we're not a fund, we're a technology company, you know. So, you know, so the first thing is, what we're looking for is companies that matter, right? And companies that are going to matter even in an increasingly AI, you know, abundant world.
Right. And so when you think about that, it's actually pretty hard, right? Because what consumer value propositions are going to endure.
But when you think about human connection and you think about meaningful relationships, you think about bringing people closer to love,
we think that's only going to get more important.
And so in like all the companies we've looked at in the last six or seven months, Bumble was crazy unique.
And the thing that's pretty cool about it is Whitney saw that 12 years ago. And so this starts with her. Yeah. I mean, she founded this company. She started a movement. You know, millions of people have better lives, right? Have found their spouses, have, you know, had children and because of Bumble. And so we think about important missions. You know, John and I had the best jobs in the world before we started this. I came on TVPN that day if you guys remember, you know, huge. And like you got to work on something that's a worthy journey. And there's nothing more worthy than Bumble. And then I think John, you should talk about it, but we think that we can actually really help and really make the product even better than it is now.
Oh yeah. So, you know, AI is not going to replace human relationships, but we do think it can play an important role in just making the product a lot better and helping people connect with other people. Not just that they're going to swipe right on, but that they're going to have a great conversation with, that they're going to, you know, go on a great date with and hopefully form a lasting meaningful relationship. So just really excited about the opportunity to work on an important problem and one where we think we can do a lot to help people.
Yeah. So I feel like one of the main benefits that's always touted about a take private of a public company is that you have an opportunity to actually rethink the business model basically from first principles as long as you have the cash on the balance sheet. And I feel like there's a lot of different monetization paths that have been tried. And you could imagine everything from the product's free the whole time, just ad supported, obviously you have experience there, to, you know, what would people pay to actually find the one? Like people pay, what are they called, matchmakers, like $20,000.
What would you have paid to find Jordan? I want to know that. I want to know what would you have paid.
It is, it is like, it is, it is, it is a marriage.
To find a real spouse is incredibly valuable. And so there's this wide gamut of business models, but then there's also just, hey, maybe it's time to bring in some new operational talent and keep the business model the same and just be more operationally efficient. What are you thinking that might change? What's going to stay the same? What are you excited about?
Yeah, I mean, so I think the number one priority is just on making the product create more value for people and getting more people to use it. And like, I don't think we're at all worried about ability to kind of grow revenue and monetize better over time if you can do that. I think there will be plenty of good opportunities, but yeah, it's such an important problem to people where like, you know, if you have the best possible version of the product, that is like, it's priceless. And so, you know, I think there will be great ways to monetize that over time.
Yeah. The other thing I was, it's so, it's so funny. This is going to be a reference. I don't think it's made very often on TVPN. Okay. But I was watching The Post this weekend with our family, with my wife and our boys, and there's a line where Katharine Graham is writing it down and it's like, you know, profits follow quality.
Listen, like you have to actually help people find amazing dates. You got to have them find amazing relationships and like the monetization will come. And one of my favorite things about John is like John was responsible for $200 billion of revenue at Meta, right? I don't know. I don't know if we're going to hit the gong, but that feels like it could get the gong. It may, we hope, but like we'll get the thing that gets you that. What'd you say?
We'll get to the gong. So, okay, good. Please. We appreciate it.
I think the only thing that gets you that is if you actually provide value for people, right? And so ultimately for us, like the monetization will come, but what you actually have to do is be great at getting people great dates, getting them matches that they wouldn't have gotten, and getting them matches that are the best matches that they could ever get.
So what's the low-hanging fruit on the product side? Do you need to like kill off more bots or bring new people in with top-of-funnel advertising? Like where, how do you make the product actually better?
Yeah. I mean, I think those are some of the themes. You know, I think we can do more to improve the matching algorithm so that it's showing you matches that you're not just going to swipe on, but that will lead to, you know, great conversations, great dates. You know, I think there's, you know, I think more work to be done to make sure that, you know, all the profiles you're seeing are high quality. You know, I think there's been some good work on that already. And yeah, and then I think there's room to kind of integrate AI in kind of more ways over time too, that will, I think, facilitate that whole process and just make it work better for people.
Yeah. Yeah. And I think on that, guys, one of the things that I think Whitney started it with the quality reset, right? This idea of like, we are going to make sure that we have only the best profiles, only real profiles on Bumble. Like that's a hard decision that's courageous and she did it as a public company CEO, which is baller.
And then the other thing I would tell you that I get some inspiration from is like, listen, like I see Instagram ads and I think they're magic. I can't imagine how they understood what I wanted, right? And that was Sean and his team when he was there. And I think that what you hopefully want people to feel is that same kind of magic, but even more important, right? Because it's on a much more important problem, right? That they get to feel because of the matching algorithms and because of some of the work that we hope we can do in the product.
How have you guys thought about developing your own internal thesis around AI winners versus losers? Because over the last year, we've just seen in the public markets, it's extremely violent, right? Like the general investors, like you sort of bubble up there. There's the more of sort of like broad ideas like SaaS is dead there and maybe you want network effects, but then there's also like looking in all these, all these, you know, subcategories. In the public markets, like even if you don't think a company's an AI loser, other people might and then you probably should at least get out of it. Whereas you guys can take a longer term view and actually apply more rigor and I think that's an advantage. But like how much of that, like you've looked at hundreds of companies since starting Ithaca and so like what are your sort of like updated models there?
Well, so the best part for us is concentration actually is extraordinarily helpful, right? Look, we're not trying to build a portfolio. We're going to go, we have signed an agreement to buy Bumble. We're going to go operate it. John and I are going to be the co-CEOs. So there's a real like look into the whites of each other's eyes of like, do you really want to go do this for a long time? That actually is extraordinarily helpful because on a lot of companies, it's not that we're like, oh, we know that this is going to break this way. It's honestly that we don't know. It's uncertain, right? But if it's uncertain, that's good enough for us of like, well, we're not going to go do that, right? We better be, if it's not a hell yes, it's a hell no, right, for us. And so that really helps.
I think the other thing is, you know, one of my favorite things about working with John is like despite being so smart, like there's just a lot of humility. So a lot of times I'll ask him like, hey, what do you think's going to happen here? And he just kind of like, I don't really know, you know, I don't really know how to think about what the way that's going to go. And I think that's kind of missing from a lot of people's perspectives on the markets right now because they're sort of trying to take a strong point of view. And the reality is on a lot of businesses, nobody knows, right? The reason that we think Bumble's unique is we do fundamentally believe, and we believe this with all of our hearts, that like humans want relationships with humans, right? And they're going to want relationships with humans and those relationships are going to be even more important in the future. And what we hope is that this is pretty obvious in retrospect as AI has advanced the way it has. So it's like betting on...
Betting on the, betting exclusively on the why and being okay with not knowing exactly the how, right? Is that like another way to put it? Because like there's software companies where like their why is the how. It's like we create like a database and then we sell that to companies and this is like a very... and with this it's like if human connect, the company exists to drive human connection, but how exactly you do that, whether it's like opening up, you know, digital twins or agents or whatever it might be, or just better matching algorithms, like that feels like all of that can be figured out in time, but knowing that like the end goal of the company will never change is like something that you feel like you can lean on and like bet the next chapter of your career on. Is that...
Yeah, I mean, I honestly, I'll be, I will do this for John rather than him having to do it himself. I think we are more confident in the how, right? And I think specifically maybe I would tell you, I think that listen, like, you know, I sort of think like John, like couldn't you, couldn't we fix this? What about this product? What about this product? I think this one has a pretty good overlap with stuff that I think John has done in the past. And so I think we do believe that the matching algorithms and maybe just like the way that you actually go and show people people they might really like, I think we can do that really well. We really believe that we can do that. And I would say like that's very difficult, you know, to do, but we think we're uniquely suited to do it.
I think the thing that is more of a question that we think will follow the why is the monetization, which is like we will figure out how to make sure that people feel like they're paying for something that's fair, but the most important thing is that you actually deliver the value. And I would tell you that we have real confidence that we can deliver this value in this sector and that people are going to want this value for a long time. You know, so I agree on the monetization side, but on the product side, you know, we feel confident. I'm using we liberally because of my co-founder here, John.
Well, congratulations. Thank you so much for coming.
No, it's great. You guys are a fantastic, fantastic duo and yeah, I can tell that there's so many things like with John and I where I'm just like, yeah, I never would have been able to do this if we didn't have what John is so capable at. So just so fun that this happened in consumer. Like I don't, I think everyone was like, oh, they're going to buy some database thing or something. I'm so happy you said that and I think that's the thing for us is like it's got to be fun. If you want to get the best people in the world, it's got to be fun and this one's going to be fun. So we appreciate it and we appreciate you guys. Yeah. Thank you.
