Sam Altman's Equity Proposal and Conclusion

Mark Zuckerberg says AI development is moving slower than expected as Meta thinks about selling off its excess compute. Open AI wants to give its equity to the White House and pale your CEO Alex Carp takes on the foundational labs. That's coming up on a big technology podcast Friday edition right after this. In the face of ongoing disruption and opportunity, TMT leaders need to deliver tangible results, not just ideas. When pace and performance matter most, PWC combines market insights and deep sector experience with AI, cloud, and emerging tech to accelerate your transformation and drive measurable ROI from strategy to execution PWC can help you anticipate what's next, outpace disruption, and compete. For more information, visit pwc. com Insurance isn't one size fits all And shopping for it shouldn't feel like squeezing into something that just doesn't fit That's why drivers have enjoyed progressives name your price tool for years With the name Y your prrice tool, you tell them what you want to pay And they show you options that fit your budget Enough hunting for discounts, trying to calculate rates, and tinkering with coverages Maybe you're picking out your very first policy Or maybe you're just looking for something that works better for you and your family. Either way, they make it simple to see your options. No guesswork, no surprises. Ready to see how easy and fun shopping for car insurance can be? progressive. com and give the name Your prrice tool a try Take the stress out of shopping and find coverage that fits your life on your terms Agressive casualty insurance Company and affiliates price and coverage match limited by state law. Welcome to big technology podcast Friday, dition where we break down the news in our traditional cool headed. And Nuance format. We have a great show for you today. We're going to talk all about meta deceiding that maybe it's time to solve some of that very precious compute. As Mark Zuckerberg says, AI agent development is going slower than expected. We're going to talk about what that means not just for Meta but for the broader AI industry will also talk about open AI, potentially giving some of its equity to the White House Whether that's advisable or not. And of course, Alex Carp, the CEO of Palander coming out and declaring effectively declaring war on the Foundational lab is really what it is. Joining us as always on Friday to do it is Ron John Roy of Margins, Ron Jan, Good to see you. Great to see you, Alex. I'm currently in London in a hotel room with Mediocre WiFi. Yeah, everybody, the fact that we're doing a show right now is somewhat miraculous. I just want to say thanks to Runchun for sticking with us, it's pretty late London time. So modern technology, that's what we do. That's what we do. Our top story this week is what's going on at Meta or what isn't going on at Meta and that is impressive AI development. and that was something that Mark Zuckerberg in an internal town haall admitted ly according to Reuters, Here's the headline Zuckerberg says AI agent development is going slower than expected. Meta Chief E executive Mark Zuckerberg told an internal town hall on Thursday that AI agent development over the last four months has not accelerated in the way we expected, according to a recording Zuckerberg added that the company the company's reorganization that included major job cuts was not as clean as it could have been, and that the company's bets on a new structure haven't come to fruition yet Meta is projected to spend as much as one hundred forty five billion on AI infrastructure this year A significant portion of Big tech's more than seven hundred billion dollars outlay on the technology And I might as well just share the second story here, which is that meta is now considering leasing some of its excess compute. The same way SpaceX did because it doesn't seem to have the products make use of it Bron Jon is this an unsettling sign that companies that are not Open eye and anthropic don't know what to do with their compute and are trying to sell it. I mean, meta, SpaceX Obviously Google selling its compute Microsoft selling its compute, Amazon selling its compute. For all this talk about how computer is such a scarce resources resource, it seems like there's two companies that need it and a lot of people supplying it. Let's separate out the two different parts of it selling excess compute, but first of all, what do you think it means that AI agent development over the last four months has not accelerated in the way we expected Be againain, remember Meta was the kind of poster child of tooken maxing. everythingthing we saw over the last few months was really around how AI is going to change everything within the organization. We obviously can get into the mouse tracking software and all of that. But like what are the AI agents that have not developed? would you think he's talking about I mean, for the life of me, I don't know. I mean, it's almost an admission that meta desespite the compute and the engineers just hasn't been able to put the pieces together And you know, I think that it also goes to basically our model versus product versus harness discussion It's like Meta Andrew Bosworth, the CTO of the company is going to tell me when we when we air this interview I had with him on Wednesdays upcoming Wednesday. They're already licensing models from other companies So it's not just metam models. So it's not a met model problem They also have the best model builders in the world or some of the best that they brought in for super intelligence labs, they also have No lack of compute So It may just be that the knowledge of how to do this is sort of sitting within the foundational labs and it's they're struggling and it's the other competitors are struggling to pick it up, which is bizarre to me because the guy that built Cloud Code is a former met meta manager, right B's Tourne What do you make of it What's so fascinating to me about this is Meta is the greatest organization in terms of productizing things that are already out in the world whether it's through acquisition, whether it's through copying, whether it' through you know, like they know how to build product, whether it's internal, whether it's external. so I think that's the most fascinating part for me as well. And I still I mean I think one thing to note, again, working in the area of enterprise AI, but specifically outside of software engineering and in knowledge work myself at Wyer like that distinction, I think is really important because what was more surprising about this kind of statement to me is Everything that I've read and that's been reported The way Meta still looks at AI agent development, it's in the software engineering realm And maybe it's starting to kind of like bleed over into the other elements of the overall. kind of organization, but It's still, I think this is a really, really important moment because What happened in software development? I've said this a lot on the show what we saw from call its November to April in terms of that like insane logarithmic growth in terms of software development and coding Everyone is realizing is not the same straight line path with other types of work And again exactly is AI agent development, we don't know, but I think it's important because if meta is not figuring it out themselves, separate from foundation models and whatever else, this is a powerhouse company that is able to actually just you know, organizationally run things at a very high caliber. So I think I'm pretty surprised that whatever he is referring to exactly, I think, I think it's notable That's a really good point. So I think that when we talked a little bit in the beginning of the year about whether this would be the year of agents and the fact that You know, a couple months later, it seems like that's been delivered upon. A lot of that has been coding agents and there's been some cross application in things like W work like Caude Co work For instance U It is the the it is important to say But the level of agent development that Meta is taking on is much more ambitious, right? It's this personal super intelligence where the where the AI is knows your context and is helpful to you And that to me seems like a much more difficult problem, much more open ended problem to solve encoding And again, just to go through everybody that's tried to do it, Amazon, Google Microsoft to some degree, which we'll talk about No one's been I mean really nobody's been able to build this sort of personal super intelligence, personal general intelligence or even personal intelligence at this point. And so you really wonder where things will go from here. I actually think I think that's a really good point because The idea and I think this is exactly what Apple faced and with LMs in general, the idea that something is like perfectly executable and predictable with any kind of simple build. I think the entire industry is understanding that it takes a lot more So for meta and the types of things that they wanted to release. like if you are actually releasing to your billions of users something that and again, have you used meta AI, the actual app Yes, I have, but not a huge fan of it. Yeah, I mean, it's pretty bad. Like it's genuinely like the image stuff was actually kind of good for a little bit or it was on par, I feel with U openp AI and Google maybe a year ago. It's kind of like if you have metaayandans, you can you have to use it and that's where you upload your video, sir, but It's still like to translate all of the power that they have into anything kind of consumer facing. It's clear they're having a very rough time, but I don't know. it's still, to me, the more surprising thing, I think that you brought up was the fact that they are readily starting to use external models. open the land say this is part of our strategy now. do you think That's going to be part of the kind of like high level strategy going forward Yeah, for sure. I mean, defite it definitely seems like that is going to be something that many more companies do, especially You know, we talk about the companies that have struggled to do this and it seems like Apple has had success in a way. Now I don't want to crown them yet because Syiri isn't out I'm sure there'll be bugs that we'll have to talk about, but they've shown on the new beta version of Siri at least from You know, what we've been able to see has been has been pretty impressive compared to where they were. And again, that was probably the low floor, but It's easier for Apple because they have an operating system And meta, you know, the glasses is an attempt for them to build their own operating system So it does make me wonder, okay, well, is this replicable? Well, hold on. but Meta has, I don't know if it's an operating system, but It has the single stickiest user base any company, they essentially own the entire world in terms of pushing out Software I mean, remember, threads. I don't even what do you think it gets weekly average users, even though it has no cultural influence, like you want pro number or the fake number. R? Is just people getting people getting their threads notifications pushed on Instagram and clicking to get that number off the Instagram app Yeah, but that's what I mean that they have the greatest distribution mechanism of any company in the world. So if they just do something okay It would be everywhere and it'd be very good. So that's actually even more surprising to me that whatever they're trying to do that they haven't actually been able to do anything reasonable on the AI front on the consumer side. but I think I mean, the more we're talking, it really is clear there's no strategy Because like is it a consumer app experience Is it the actual Foundation model it seems like they're giving up on, which is actually crazy given how much money they just threw into it. Is it on the compute side, I think we should get into that, but I don't know. do what do you think is the bet for M met. okay Actually, I'm going to take a different perspective from you and say that this isn't a meta problem, that this isn' an industry problem And I do think the fact that like they don't if you have the operating system, you're sort of de facto plugged into a lot of apps and you can use the context side of generenative AI to make sense of them I think it's more telling. So I think the strategy for Meta and all these companies is to do something similar and I can't believe I'm saying this to the vision that we saw with Apple Intelligence. It's just that everyone has struggled to ship it And then of course like, you know you go from context to having the thing take action for you and that's sort of like the holy grail, The personal super intelligence, that's also an action layer on what you're doing. I can't believe I use the words action layer, but sort of seems like it makes sense But there's context layer. now it's about the action layer Okay, don't get on me too bad for this, but here's the thing, all right Um When you go around the horn and you see all these companies struggling And now you start to see them sell their compute It says something is happening in the AI industry which is where there once used to be multiple points of failure, it now seems like there's fewer points of failure It now seems like the AI industry is moving toward T points of failure AI and Anthropic and those businesses, you know, while we both would agree that those products are good Businesses are being kept afloat by financing and they're losing a lot of money And so when you see meta going out. this is from Bloomberg Meta is developing plans for a cloud infrastructure business that will sell access to AI computing power and models, setting up a new vector of competition with industry leaders like AWS, Microsoft, Azure, Google Cloud. When you see that happening, when you see it happening with SpaceX, when you see Microsoft who' effectively gone out and tried to build its own model with opening eyes IP All they've been able to do is been is be, you know, effectively a reseller and an implementer Uh, This is why I'm leading with this. It makes you wonder Is the health of the broader AI moment someomewhat in trouble I mean, I think it is. I think it's like But I guess this is something that's been very difficult to kind of square for a long time for me is And I've said this many times on the show. like I genuinely believe in the medium term, maybe long term There's going to be just, you know, like, Everything is going to be aentified. There's going to be massive need for a compute across the entire economy in the short term, I think there when this is exactly what we're seeing. meta saying AI agents aren't seeing the way like the development and scale that they had thought they would I think like we're very quickly seeing that These companies that like the entire CapEx, the entire compute trade is definitely not going to be the straight line that everyone thought it was. I mean, even today, I think I saw Sandisk Micron today was another down fourteen percent Yesterday was up at ten percent. like like the volatility around this trade is terrifying And I think it just shows that No one has any idea exactly how this plays out, but I do believe what like the momentum with which a lot of these stocks have moved is not sustainable. And I think we're starting to see those kind of cracks in a big way. Not only not sustainable, right? Like more and more dependent on the success of two companies And if those companies have a hicup or if they get into further trouble with the U.S. government Who knows where this whole thing goes, right Well, yeah, yeah. I mean, talkalk about openir phanthropic Yeah, in terms of the government, I think that's a whole otherther times but How do you see the entire compute trade playing out. because if you think about it, there's like a couple of Originally so memory is one part Then you have the actual kind of providers of the compute with which originally it would be we own the compute and we own the model slash product But very quickly BaseX was the first to go. now that is going as well saying, you know, we'll sell the compute because we have excess compute like Where is the money going to be made Because where do you think it's going to go? Well, here's where we're kind of talking about these things with nuance like we try to do on the show sort of starts to wipe out your clean narrative, right becausecause on the other side of this, you do have rapidly advancing technology that opening eye and anthropic ar producing and there and the whole case is basically that that Um continues to improve exponentially and the revenue will continue to grow exponentially And so that's the other side of what I'm saying is like, yes, there are two there are it looks more and more like there are two points of failure. If those companies deliver uh, then You know, everything like the bottlenecks will continue to bottleneck and compute will still continue to be scarce, etcetera, et cetera So it is possible that they're able to sort of Good on the bet Right now, it kind of feels like the entire economy is like a VC And of course, I'm being hyperbolic but a VC making a bet on one particular vision of one particular technology working out I don't think that's hyperbolic. L I don't know, I've talked to a number of people about this and To me, the almost scariest part of this is All of the people making these decisions are effectively in the same circle. or is somewhat of a limited circle. So I mean, this comes up all the time like from like non tech but investor friends where it's like Do you think like why do you think the smartest people in the world believe this much investment in data centers and compute capacity is required And like in the short term and My answer a lot of the time really is and I'm curious how what you think about it is Everyone is talking to each other in this small group of people. It's only a finite amount of companies that are even in this conversation A lot of them are probably in the same WhatsApp groups and social circles and dinners and stuff like that. So it's like To me that really feels like There is a very big group think component of this you know, like separate from any kind of like traditional forecasting other than if you just extrapolated it out like a couple of months of activity Do you think that's do you think that's hyperbolic? I'll up your hyperol hyperbolism. Hyperability Hyperbility. What's All right, whatever the cororrect grammar is around hyperbolicness All. I will take a chance to answer this I mean, here's the thing The reason why I use the word hyperbolic is because there is evidence that it's working. So it's not like this sort of it's not we can agree. it's not a mass delusion We've seen great leaps in this technology's ability and in these companies balance sheets You know, well, at least their revenue numbers over the past few years. undeniable progress on that front And there seems to be the runway for these things to keep getting better because the way that they're being applied is just starting to is just starting to flesh out. So This idea that like, all right, well, these guys are all, it's not okay, I'm sorry for to our crypto friends. It's not like NFTs NFTs, you could say was just like a big delusional run up This is real. The magnitude of the bet is sort of where you get get into into trouble. and it's almost like, well you couldn't really see it out unless there was a bet this size. I mean, the amount of compute that's going to come online And the next couple of years is insane. So it could be one of those, you know, typical bubble, you know, boom and busust cycles where you know, the raw materials end up getting cheap And then you end up getting the product, even though like some investors get wiped out. like that seems to me like you know, potentially at this point Given where things are trending, the most likely case All right, I like that. And also I've confirmed that hyperbolism is a word. so I'm going to stick with that one and let's up our hyperbolism in this in this segment I think definitely like The scale of compute has been massive. the demand will be there, I genuinely believe, but like everything you read and the price of every asset within this entire value chain has been Demand is outstripping supply, demand is outstripping supply. and I think like This is a pretty important moment, the idea that like suddenly you're seeing weight Let's like people are slowing down and realizing from a pure compute perspective, I think already people are understanding that it's again, it's not not just a straight line. kind of exponential curve. It might be a straight line, but it might not be an exponential curve, which I think matters a good deal. But I mean the vibe shift in terms of goingo from frontier models for everything, it's going to be expensive. It's going to be massively consumptive to What's the cheapest and most efficient model? We talked about this last week again, but every like Brian Armstrong, coin. Eone is like now bragging about reducing their per usage per task compute you know, while still maybe increasing their overall compute, but everyone's talking about aici token efficiency right now. And it is crazy to me, the speed right with which that vibe shift happens. But I don't think any of that stuff matters as long as the technology delivers on the promise. The problem is that more and more companies have found that they've sort of put their effort, their best people on it, the resources you're supposed to be able to sort of you you put this resource down, you're supposed to get know ra amount of return and they're struggling to it. And you know who's an interesting case on this front is also, it's Google Like Google made this ultimate hedge. Imagine this. if you think that compute will lead to Uh, you know precedented ges or gives you the straight shot to AGI Why would you rent that compute out to other labs But Google's done that with labs like Anthropic, and I think there's a deal with open AI as well, right? So they did a hedge where they're like, we're going to build our own stuff. We're going to give the deep mind team a lot of compute. But just in case we're going to actually speedrun the my the the metas and the spacexs here and grow our cloud business you know in parallel. And that's what Google did. veryy interesting strategy You know, given where we are right now I actually I've been wondering, have you been using Gemini much recently or I'm going to be honest, zero Okay, seent I'm actually traveling right now. What I thought no travel examples Oh damnit. Oh my go I literally All right, no, no, no, come on, let's hear. For regular listeners, we I always get angry at Alex when everyone for the last two years across the industry always defaults to a travel example and travel booking. for what is agetic and it is one of my biggest pet peeves and I am now doing exactly that, but I think But I'm going go with it. Um So The most it's been interesting to me like Gemini has was got really good maybe to ten months ago, maybe a year ago. and suddenly was on par. I'm curious like how you remember the the cycle It is really not kept up with Chat GPT in Claude Like I feel L for pure consumer usages and that's why I'm saying in the travel context, like It's still fine and it's doing. it's telling me you know what pub is showing the US World Cup game at one AM? And I watch it from my hotel. I was like still exploring, maybe I'm going to go out for it, but It's so good for that kind of stuff, but hasn't really done anything different or improved, which has been kind of surprising to me. And then I think Maybe Is Google, as you said, are they hedging? Are they deciding like We're going to we don't know if we're going to be the be all end all of the actual application layer. So That's why let's hedge and also be u Oh God the compute seller as well Yeah, it's possible that Sundar saw this earlier than everybody, which is that the progress would be a little bit slower than the opening eyes and anthropics were U going to we're letting people, you know, believe and said, all right, we'll make this bet where we think that this is going to progress somewhat fast Um, but we're not going to bet the entire farm on it And I will caveat for a moment. I do use Gemini in AI mode in Google search. That's actually pretty good Oh, actually I will say And I honestly feel so basic like When I enter AI mode And maybe that's kind of like obnoxious being in the AI industry, but like I'm using A mode way more too So maybe that is where they're kind of like hedging their bets a lot more for really basic stuff. Again, I'm going to stick with the World Cup theme, but like what was the score of a match and then asking a couple more questions about specific players I'm in AI mode right now, so maybe they're realizing that that integrated product is can be where the farm needs to be Yes, but again, I'm going to go back to my central point that I've been beating like a dead horse the entire event the entire sorry, the entire conversation Um Google. doesn't have this sort of centralized no all assistant The same one that Ma wants to build that Apple wants to build that Microsoft wants to build that Amazon wants to build And so my thought about slow playing is Gohead. Why would they not tried to be building a personalized super intelligence when they have more personalized intelligence on every human being in the world. Maybe Meta is the only competitive one there No, no, no, they are. They are trying to build it, but it's also been slower for them as well That's I'm trying to. So I think they might have seen that this has gone, this was going to go slower And this is what I'm saying. There's a systemic issue here that U you know, despite all the promises that like the progress would be fast in this specific area, which everybody thinks is going to be very lucrative has not And so you're now in this world where At least in the near term, AI advances will be enterprise, which is sort of the same pivot that Open AI made, which can be a good business, but ultimately is a little bit short on the vision because it's so task Pcific So basically to all our listeners and everyone out there There's going to be mass white collar knowledge work unemployment, but you won't have your personalized super intelligence. Is that what you're saying, Alex No, definitely not. Look, I don't think that this mass unemployment narrative has panned out either. And by the way, like, you know, Dario last year in may twenty twenty five said, we might see this white collar blood bath You know, starting any within a year to five years. Well, where a year passed it hasn't happened. And so we got what four years left and againain, like it's weird to try to talk about this comprehensively because We're like kind of There's a large gap between the hype and what's actually happened But that doesn't mean what's actually happened is not significant. It is. It just seems like As Zuckerberg said, you know, it's going a little slower than anticipated It could never meet that hype expectation, I guess. But to say you can never meet that hy expectation I mean, the valuations require that, right Well, that's again, that's where we might get into a real economic problem Do you think we do you think there's going to be systemic issues or do you think what let's say I'm curious, like let's play out you know The The scale of like growth slows The valuations are not realized. People look at the numbers of open AI anthropic. Things don't look good, which we already kind of know they're not great Um Do you think that leads to widespread systemic problems I mean, I think you're much better positioned to answer that question than I am having been on a trading floor during the financial crisis So I'll actually defer to you. What do you think? Okay, okay, I guess turnurn it back on me. I mean, I don't think it I'm not worried about that as much as I've probably been worried about other potential systemic issues in the economy. so mayaybe it's I still feel it'll be relatively contained, but I don't know. I think like It's it is We are as economy, it feels like diving deeper and deeper into this one way trade that If it unwinds, it's like how fast does it unwind? how many ople are involved, how many kind of like countries are involved? I mean, this's like the entire South Korean stock market right now. So So I do even it's a good chunk of American stock market growth as well in the last six months or so. so I think it'll definitely be painful, but I don't think like It's housing crisis two thousand eight level, but I think it'll be painful. No, no Yeah I don't think it'll be that eith U All right, meaneanwhile at Microsoft I'm talking about another company that can't get attacked together on AI This is from an interview that Tata gave last week with with the journal. We can't let the AI giants eat the economy. The chief executive of Microsoft is joining a growing effort to take on artificial intelligence giants open and anthropic open outlining in an interview his vision for the next wave of the AI boom one involving cheaper models, more user control and political messaging that wins the public's trusts. Nadeela offered a blistering critique of how the race for AI supremacy has taken shape with a small group of companies capturing the value of the world changing technology, as they make dire predictions about safety risks and job loss. You can't say, hey, all white collar jobs are gone and this could even be a weapon And we will use all the power to build data centers in the Dalatoldld the Wall Street Journal, the public picted wouldn't tolerate just a few models and companies doing all the learning for the world I mean, this is rich, right? And again, it sort of goes with our conversation today U Microsoft is Open AI's biggest shareholder. Microsoft has access to all of Op AI's IP. And what has Microsoft done? I mean, it's Gown Azure. congrratulations Um But it's also grown azure as AWS and Google Cloud have grown. And it's taken all that advantage and and It should be the one eating the economy. So what do you think is What do you think Sata is tryed to do? I think this is actually one of the most interesting Uh, like, I mean, the is a Wall Street journal editorial This is a big deal. again get I think like it's been interesting because a lot of these have been, you know, circulating and discussed a bit, but as you said, like, they they are one of the critical parts of the overall AI story not successfully but still from an investment standpoint and like capital allocation standpoint, and obviously evenven an infrastructure standpoint, I mean, they Microsoft is everywhere like come out and say this and we're going to get more into the Alex Karp from Palanteer interterview as well, but pretty crazy to me that in the same week, you have the CEO of Microsoft and then Palantir, which is the most, you know, like one of the most AI forord companies out there both saying this exact story that like Doumourism is kind of a you I mean Satya basically said it's a bit of a marketing story with all white collar jobs are going to be gone, but we're going to use this power to build data centers in a facigious way Um, so yeah, like what do you think Let's start with Satya. What do you think he's trying to do here Well, both him and Carp are both trying to sell competing services. So we'll get into Carp after the break, but This is the news for Microsoft this week. It's from the information Microsoft memo details AI app overhaul to earn the right to exist Microsoft is merging its consumer and enterprise co pilot apps and cutting unwanted features to earn the right to exist in the eyes of customers, In a twelve hundred word memo, Jacob Andreo The exxecutive vice presresident of Microsoft running Copilot said, the new unified app also feature AI coding tools and a new AI agent that customers would need to pay extra for according a copy the memo The new agents herears the great name dubbed autopilot Aim to be always on Aing on customers's behalf to automate the mundane. Microsoft previously previewed one such autopilot agent scout that can organize people's schedules and monitor their inboxes to compile curated digests of received emails Microsoft said in a separate announcement Thursday that it would put two point five billion med a new AI consultancy arm that could aid co pilot. It's called Microsoft Frontier Company The new arm will embed six thousand industry and engineering experts with Microsoft customers to co design, co innovate, deploy and continuously improve AI systems. And by the way, one last thing I'll just say is I think Saudia has been speaking approvingly of Chinese models like DeepSek recently I mean, him and Sam must have really had a falling out here. But basically, you know, they're seeing opening here, which is you know, We are, you know, we can't We've struggled to build this co pilot thing. I think this is what's happening But what we can do is Take another swing at that and attempt to compete Bye integrating AI apps, whether it's open A or others within our client base and that will be our business. I mean, effectively consultants with compute Well, I mean this is you have deplloy C from Uh Open AI, I believe it was and who was it with? You know, there's been these number of partnerships around The deployment sites actually tried to get people to successfully use these products Um I don't know. I think the first part though, let's go back to autopilot How do you think because did you ever see that, you know, statistic around? Microsoft, Microsoft has seventy eight different products with the name co pilot in it How do you think they're no ye. Yeah, no, no, it is. I really wonder how these things must get done. And again, remember we used to have like Uh, what was it like barard Google Barred, uh to go Uh what was it duo know like these companies have lots of competing products and internal issues in terms of like naming Bb Do you think autopilot will be the breakthrough? push eentic behavior to the average Microsoft user No, I mean, I'm definitely in the Please showow M me something stage of this. you know, I can't I cannot get excited about a rebrand to an equally bad name Well also Why organize people's schedules and monitor their inboxes to compile curated digests and receive emails That like this stuff still Maybe this is worse than travel booking for me. You can do that Like even Jebini is pretty good. like HAGBT connected to your Uh like whatever inbox and stuff. like these are the most big there's a hundred YC startups that already solve this superhuman can do this, which was bought by grammarly like Why do you think there's I guess? Most people just don't actually use these things, so they're still trying to go after this. Like why do you think they're being so basic about this rather than like we can do some really cool shit I don't know I'm completely confused by their strategy to be honest. I've tried to make sense. No, no, come on. You are Satya outlined to me the AI strategy Okay, let me let me I will do it. I'll try Ultraltra ye I have completely failed to build competing. Well, I I both benefited myself and hamstruck myself with my early deal with openp AI That meant that I had a good chunk of the leader of the AI moment and that was great for me, but it also prevented me from developing competing services Okay, so then I signed some new deals that said I can now compet build competing services and I have open AI's IP But it's not very easy to get that IP out of open AI. and my attempt to build a competing service not done has not gone very well. So basically what I'm doing is just like any other AI model customer using the technology to try to bolt it on to my technology, my technology, and that's led to a poor result in coopilot So what are my options? My remaining option is I have a lot of compute, I have access to these models, and I have a lot of enterprise customers. and To me, you know, instead of trying to build build necessarily build my own thing, what I could do is use my technical expertise to make a business out of helping those customers sort of use these foundational models to be better And when I go and do that Who am I left competing with Good o open AI And that's Microsoft's strategy right now. talkalk down open AI and try to win those contracts and try to make the best out of a mess that I've in part created for myself Okay, I like that. I think that could be This idea strategy I was gonna go a little more extreme though on this one.. All right. I was thinking Ereme Ranjan coming in hot on a holiday. No It's head year july fourth, two hundred fifeth anniversary of America I think ladies and gentlemen, you wanted fireworks on this podcast. You're getting your fireworks. Kabom. I think We have joked at times that Uh like Google's greatest win in the recent times was due to Sunar's McKinsey past and thinking about organizational change and merging Google Brain and deep mind into actually something that was able to push something forward. Now Microsoft created its Microsoft AI division, but it's so clear when you have seventy eight products called C pilot, and it's clear this is just this like tangled web right now and now they're creating Microsoft Frontier Company, which is a whole other thing, even though I would think deployment should be part of the overall Microsoft AI and cloud offering anyways I think he should just merge a bunch of these divisions together and say like, I am ready to actually Microsoft is on every computer of every enterprise customer out there But we are going to make a drastic change on our internal structure and actually build something that is useful and exciting for customers So I think he should go full Sundar in the next six months That's what I think I like it. I like it. I mean, you got to take big swings. Now my big swing. If I were S it might be to just bring back Bad Sydney evil version of the Bing Bt, which I think there would be a lot of appeal for. Wich Syidney Wasn't it? Sidney was was the race altern. I was the race Tai was the racist Microsoft T T T T right T That was pre bing This is the original bing that tried to take Kevin Rooce's wife Oh Syne tried to take Kevin Nse's wife. Yeah. Yeah. You know what? Bring all that back, Sacha. Bring all bring Siddney, brring Tay bring the races. L Just Why don't bring Doney back. Let T be dead in AI graveyard Noobody got to take something. You got to have a As you know what? I'm going I'm going to go on a limb here and say T just reminds us when at a time when AI was pure Little there is like your racist grandparents and uh you know, before LLMs had advanced very much and, you know, it's just when it was it was just an LLM trying to predict the next token and it didn't know what end didn't know any better and It just reminds us of a pure time of AI before all this chaos and compute and data centers and everything else. So I miss Tay. I know this is a joke, but I can't get on board the T train. I can't I can't. K kind of an AI that once you pressure tested enough gets horny for you and tries to do wrong things I mean, it's not for me, but I'm saying There could be something there Actually maybe Sata, the greatest pivot of all time. Open AI gave up on the adult Eerotica Japot. That's right. Maybe it's time That is your opportunity Asacha the go for it, man. This is it We need to take a break. We're going to we'll be back right after this. This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a fifty page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online makes sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set upp required compatibility and availability varies eighteen plus When it's time to scale your business, it's time for Shopify You get everything you need to grow the way you want. like all the way Stack more sales with the best converting checkout on the planet. Track your chChings from every channel, wride in one spot, and turn real time reporting into big time opportunities Take your business to a whole new level. Switch to Shopify. Start your free trial today Oh God, I'm laughing as we come back from break. All right, we're back here on B teechnology podcast Friday Eedition. We've gone places we never thought we would go And let's continue on. We have two more stories to take quickly. Actuallyince since we were talking about this enterprise software situation U let's let's or the sort of enterprise AI application. Let's get to this Alex Carp interview Right, So the Co Poundeer Alexy Carp. I was on CNBC this week and he said something has gone completely wrong with how AI is sold. He says what the technical customers want is control over their compute, their models, their data stack and their alpha. They want to know how they own the means of production and it's not being transferred to someone else. He's saying that S asku owns the data? Is it being cached? Are the prompts secure? Is this being transferred to you U and basically his point is Um He is arguing that if I can summarize his words, that the AI Foundational labs have so lulled their customers into a state of comfort what they're doing is selling there All right technology at a loss so they can copy their customers' IP. and build it out in their own products. And David Sachs Um, of the White House all in podcast said this said as much on X. he said look at figma Anthropic blindsided its then business partner with the launch of Cloud desesign Figamous founder said Anthropic has not been consistently honest with them. This isn't an isolated example thropic has launched Cloud Science, Cloud seecurity, Cloud Legal, and of course clawed code. Dario has argued that the open source models O that open source models powerful enough to compete with anthropic are dangerous, but dangerous to whom? Not to enterprise that want to retain control over their data and workflows. Dangerous to a business model that benefits from customers having few real alternatives at the model layer So basically, Um What do you make of this? and this was a very popular interview It made the rounds. What do you make of this idea that the models are training off of their customers IP and then just trying a regulatory capture all competitors out of the way so that they can therefore they can therefore make good in their investment in win So I watched all eighteen minutes of the carp interview. I'm not like a big Alex Carp fan, I would say He really captured the state of the current market. and kind of like current political situation, I think really well and the current incentives A lot of again, the Figma example is such kind of a brutal one that we all just kind of gloss over, but all of these of to our system Feed us all of your data. And then suddenly we will launch competing products. And remember, that was thesis behind a lot of the kind of like valuation growth around, they're going to subsume more and more of the overall software ecosystem And I think, I don't know, like There's still this kind of like general assumption that pic at the enterprise level, openAI are not training on the data that is fed through them But then really? it is Be they say straight up, they'll train on your data. No, no, no Chads like the enterprise the enterprise side. Yeah, on the enterprise level, which I guess like a figma would be if the average user is connecting figma through clud, then all that stuff's getting sucked in and like being I mean, there's no worry there, but but it is to me overall like Interesting that like that has not been a real concern for most people yet. And like the fact that David Sachs of all people, also Alex Carp, like You know, before I feel that would have lived in the conspiracy theory side of the world The fact that they are saying this is happening at the enterprise level pretty nuts. L I think it's like, I mean whether it's just living as kind of accusation and they're just not happy with Dario and whatever kind of like interpersonal conflict there is. I think like for Both of the frontier labs, I think this actually is a pretty Interesting big issue that if we start to realize like actually yes They are training on your data and the goal is to kind of subsume your business model, which it's clear, non enterprise a figma plugin receiving all of that data and understanding how people design and then using that degrade clloud design, I guess, it's crazy. Like that just happened and it's done. Um So yeah, I think Will everyone be okay creating the next cld plugin Like where do you see this playing out? Well, it all ties into sort of where I was at the beginning of the show and I sort of haven't deviated from, which is that We are we may be entering a world where ent the entire bet here is not dispersed but concentrated. Right? And when that happens you are going to start to see some of this stuff come out from companies that would surprise you for speaking out about it. Um, and Speaking out against it And there is, I mean There is this possibility that if it does, okay, so so that's like That's one situation. And now if it does go right, Right. If it does become a situation like Sam at the end of the year last year told me that if a company, you know is AI native versus Bolt on then the AI native company is going to be the one that went There's a big economy of companies that it would be built on for and and you would imagine that they would sort of come out of the the woodwork and to start to protest. And by the way, we haven't exactly seen a summer of companies building on these platforms In fact, most of the value, it seems like most of the value being captured by these platforms being captured by them versus companies built on top of them So this is where the competition starts to heat up where when it's these two single point of failures and everybody else You know, seems like they they view themselves as potentially picking up the scraps then it is open season on these businesses because I don't ne I don't think it's anthropic and open AI sucking up the data of their enterprise customers uh, and building their applications for that I think it's different. but I also think that like You know, sort of You're going to start to see these companies try to peck on against these bigger biger foundational labs, even if they're not in the perfect position. And Palanteer, by the way, isn't exactly the best actor when it comes to freeing your data that you put in there Well, no, I know. I mean, that's what's almost like about it. I mean, you said these like against these big frontier lives, but it is let's just take a moment and realize when Sata Alex Carp and David Sachs are all echoing the same message. that like concentration among open AI and anthropic is dangerous pretty remarkable, I think. like these are very different personalities, These are very different. They have very different like vested interests and constituencies and like They're all in the same week echoing the same message and as we kind of got to beexa this summer, It's the group. Okay, maybe maybe this is like the non data center investment group text. On one of them, they're all like gott to buy more compute Zakas will have the same message Oh, I like that. Okay, you heard it here. in the next week or two, does Zuck come out and say something similar about the danger of concentration across two frontier labs That will be something And that's like the perfect lead into our final story, which is this new story that's come out that Sam Altan is from the Financial Times. Sam Altman has suggested that the White House potentially take a five percent equity stake of open AI U S. government take a five percent equity stake open AI and that would also he also suggested this is again, and it's not clear that it was a formal proposal, but he also suggested anthropic And meta and Google also give this five percent to the government. And that's like I mean, talk about ing, you sort you're in this position, you want to entrench yourself as the winner, right? to say, oh, government, take my know a chunk of me. And by the way, you know, wink, wink when I have a model ready for approval and wink, wink when I have a competitor ready for approval, theirir model ready for approval. You know, it's like you think the government won't want to look out for its own investments, off course it will So that's sort of an interesting coda to this entire situation I mean, I think this is where it is getting kind of out of hand in terms of like we talked about systemic risk earlier and ually, you know what I'll try to be nuanced on this one. It's like on one side, I think this is absolutely ridiculous, absurd and like you know, like the idea if it's actually being pitched actively from the open AI side, I think that's like a bit Deppressing Also, on the other hand, again, you have the US government currently under the administration buying Intel and whatever else, but also I think like one thing we haven't talked about is And we're going to be heading into midterm season very soon. I mean, we very, very soon um We know data centers, we know anti AI sentiment is going to be the center of a lot of this I do think Some of this is these companies trying to at least not all in on One thing u the same direction and trade and try to be like at least create some I don't want to say diversity, but some kind of, you know, like like it's going to be a massive issue and it feels like People are starting to not all speak the exact same tone on this right now. Yes No, there's definitely a certain degree of desperation that's involved there, which is just like U these companies being like Please like us. Please approve our models. please don't You know, become our enemies in the public because it's going to be dempting I won David Sachs on a commer like a highly produced Rick Rubin polymarket commercial cross legged and thinking and then it's going to air during the World Cup final. I'm not happy until that happens All right, I want to end with this because we do some serious journalism on this show. You know, despite the laughs We definitely need to get into the Most important, things influencing our world. And there has been some confusion about a major event happening this week that what I think we need to dig into. This is from Cosmo There's growing evidence that MSG is a ruse And Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey's wedding is elsewhere At this point, even the New York Times is reporting that Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey's wedding is taking place at Madison Square Garden tomorrow july third. so this will happen on Friday I mean, the Thursday story. And there's a lot of evidence, like, you know, the fact that a tonons of decor is being loaded into the arena as we speak. But a small corner of the internet has remained convinced That MSG is an elaborate rouse to keep everyone's attention off of Taylor and Travis' real wedding location And honestly, there's growing evidence to support that theory Now Rajan, we don't have enough time to go through all the evidence here But basically I want to get I want to get this on record. Do you think this big MSG wedding has been ahead of fake all along and that in time it will be revealed Taylor and Travis just gotten married somewhere else despite all the stuff they've shipped into MSG No. I think this is real. I think I think Taylor recognizes the kind of like perilous state of the overall AI trade the overall kind of, you know, American political infrastructure right now and she recognizes on this july fourth. she needs to do something Travis Kelsey's long for the ride. and I think she is going to brring this message of unity peace and love to to the world. I'm excited for this Madison Square Gar whatard garden wedding do not think it's for real? I'm not. I think they will I think they will tell the world that they got married at MSG and never show up there. And meananwhile, maybe they'll send some body doubles and the entire thing will happen on Rhode Island That's what I would do No, no, no, no, no, no people. That is what I am. You can't piss off twenty thousand. You can't piss off twenty thousand. friendriends, fans, whatever you want to call them no. Taylor, she know knows. I only have a thousand people going into that thing It's an MSG. What do you mean?'s How do you only have a thousand people Well, you just you don't have to fill the stadium just because you've rented it. You're the richest people on the planet. Well Oh not the well, but close to it Tllionaire Elon then he would fill the stadium, but I don't know. I still think u I think it's for real. I we'll find out in a day or two, but I definitely think Taylor and Travis at MSG, they've recognized after the next one that that is a magical place right now. They want to be in New York. And I think I'm excited for it. I think it's a good thing for America. Okay, well, Ron Joon, thank you again for bringing the fireworks this week. You know, we went big, we went small, and then we got to the serious stuff at the end. So always great speaking with you. Thanks for making the effort to do this all way from London. appreciate it. All right, seeee you next week. Hi everybody. Thank you so much for listening and we'll see you next time on Big Technology Podcast