He's Building A Space Station For $1 Billion - EP 38 Jed McCaleb

if you were inducing infringement, like if you said like, hey, get Madonna's new song here, then that would be breaking the law. But if you were just like, hey, here's this open thing like BitTorrent or whatever, here's this thing you can download, you can share your own stuff, you can share other people's stuff, then that's fine, right? And so we were much closer to that where it's just, we weren't inducing infringement in any way. But yeah, but it was tough 'cause you can't grow the business. Like you can't, like there was all these other ideas we had that were like different than file sharing. Like we had kind of this Dropbox kind of idea.

I remember that, yeah.

But we couldn't really do it because, you know, What happens if the whole thing gets sued? Then that thing just gets swallowed up, right? Like you definitely can't raise money. Like there was just, it's just really hamstrung the whole operation.

So. What was the closest, like the best conversation you ever had with the recording industry where they might've actually started to see the light or inquiring about?

I mean, towards the end we did have like a lot of conversations with them where like, okay, how do we make this work? You know, we want to, we want to, you know, make this service where there's a subscription or, you know, we iterated lots of ideas, you know, and then there's some set of folks there that are like, on, you know, that are on board and like want to do this. But, you know, like a lot of business development, you just, you're talking to one set of people that are into it, but they're like, the corporation as a whole is just never going to go for it. So I don't think we're actually ever that close, although it kind of seemed like that to us.

Judd McCaleb, thank you for joining us. Yeah, appreciate it.

Yeah, it's great to be here. Yeah, thanks for having me on. Yeah.

You know, there, there was this period of when I was doing reporting and I, you know, okay, I'll set up a little bit of your background. I mean, it's, it's quite diverse. You were involved in the peer-to-peer file sharing days, heavily involved in the rise of crypto technology. Made quite a bit of money from that. And then, and then this is getting to the point of my story and then investing in all kinds of interesting areas, including space and AI and the whole wide scope of things. But that's— I felt like there was this— I don't know what it was like a 3, 4 year period where every time I would hear about some company that would really catch my attention and then I'd ask somebody who's backing it, it was always Jed McCaleb is backing. This company and then I, it's not like you were like a full mystery, but there wasn't a ton of information out there. You didn't seem like you kind of brag about these investments. You were, you know, I would just see your name pop up all the time. And so I was, I was fascinated by you and then never really had a chance to talk to you until we ended up at, was it, was it Frontier Camp? Yeah.

Frontier Camp.

Okay. Okay. So it was like one of these gatherings of, of hopefully interesting people and, and I think we had a chance to chat. So anyway, thank you for coming on the show. I want to talk to you for a long time.

Yeah, no, excited to be here. Yeah.

I was going to start, I mean, there's a million places we could go. I was going to start with your background just because I try to do a fair amount of research for these things and there wasn't a ton on some of the things that I'm always interested in, which is where somebody grew up and all that. I mean, I saw you're from Arkansas, but I saw nothing on what your parents did, what kind of childhood you had. Arkansas is unusual for a in tech land to find somebody from there. Yeah. I mean, tell me a little bit about where you grew up and what it was like.

Yeah, sure. Yeah. So I was born in Arkansas. I think for the first few years of my life, my mom and I just lived in this little cabin in the woods. And then, you know, as it came time for me to go to school, like, you know, first grade or whatever, we moved into Fayetteville, which is a small town in Arkansas. And I went there for a few years and then eventually moved to Little Rock where I grew up. Um, and yeah, I mean, uh, it was just me and my mom. So I, you know, I spent a lot of time alone, a lot of time reading, playing with Legos, things like that.

Yeah. What did she do?

She, uh, she was a reporter.

She was a reporter?

Yeah. Yeah.

What kind?

Uh, well, she worked at the, you know, just local paper and yeah, just did, covered all kinds of things. And, uh, eventually she became an editor at AP, but, but that was after I left home.

Okay. And did you, did you have siblings?

No, just me. I'm an only child.

Just you. Okay. And so, and when you say you were like in a cabin, I mean, Like quite literally?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, there was no electricity or running water. It's, you know, I didn't really appreciate it until I had kids, like how insane that was. But yeah, for like the first couple years of my life, she just lived out there in the woods by herself. So yeah.

And was that like a, uh, means choice, or she enjoyed—

no, I was like, you know, the back to the land kind of thing. Okay, definitely chose to do it. Okay. Yeah, yeah.

And does your family stretch back a while in Arkansas or?

No, they're originally from Louisiana. So, okay.

Yeah. Okay. But you're a Southern boy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

In some ways. Okay.

Okay. I grew up in Texas, so I know vaguely this part of the world. Yeah. And then you make the leap all the way to Berkeley. How did, what were you like as a kid? Were you sciencey and mathy and?

Yeah, I mean, I learned to, I got into computers like super early. I think in like third grade is like when I realized that you could actually program computers blew my mind. And, uh, and then so I started programming in like 4th grade and just was like doing stuff with them the whole time. And I was really into physics. I went to school like with the intent of doing physics, but yes, I went to Berkeley briefly. Uh, and then there I kind of realized, uh, I kind of don't want to be a physicist. So I already know how to program. So what's the point of going to school? Let's just like go do that. Go program.

So yeah. And like Arkansas to Berkeley seems like a culture shock. Maybe you want to get that.

Yeah. I mean, I was definitely ready to leave Arkansas. Yeah. Yeah, I was. You know, it's, it's, it's a, you know, it's interesting. It's a cool place to grow up. You know, there's lots of freedom and there's lots of advantages to it. But definitely living there is not for me. Like, there's, there's just not enough going on, I think.

Yeah. Yeah. And were you— I mean, were you like kind of an academic standout as a kid?

I mean, I know I was kind of like, you know, 3.5 GPA kind of guy where, you know, I just would do enough to get by. Uh, you know, I just, I, I've always kind of been really good at learning on my own, so I just, I read a ton on my own and, and, and was interested in that. So school always kind of seemed like a distraction, almost like a hindrance.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Do you do fiction, nonfiction?

Both. Yeah. I mean, yeah.

So just everything.

Yeah.

Yeah. Okay.

All right. Yeah. All right.

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Yeah. I mean, yeah, it was basically, I learned about Napster. I don't know. It was probably like the first few months it came out, uh, you know, it was an awesome idea. I was like, wow, this is a very cool idea. Uh, uh, but like clearly the guy was very new to programming. Like he didn't really know what he was doing. Like there's a very, a lot of very obvious things that you would do like to, to make it better. And so, you know, I was just like, well, let's just make a better version of this essentially. Right. There's, you know, you could, you know, hash the file so you don't end up with like the songs getting cut off half the way before you, you know, like, I don't know if you remember the experience, but it was like not very pleasant. Right. The songs would slowly get shorter because like people would like get their downloads cut off and then they would upload it to the next person, stuff like that. So, so, but you can avoid all that if you just hash the file. Right. So like, there's just very simple things that, that, that could be done to make it better. And so, yeah. So, MateyDonkey, it was like much better for like much bigger files because we hashed and we, we downloaded different chunks from different people and all this kind of stuff. So, so, uh, yeah, it was useful for like movies and things like that.

So. Yeah. I remember I would, I, right before I went to bed, I would set up like all these songs to download on Napster and then you'd wake up in the morning and you're like, what did Ashlee Vance do?

What did I get?

Yeah, man. And, uh, and it was like the internet speeds were not so great back then. It was, it was quite the struggle to make that all work.

Yeah. But it was a cool idea.

Yeah.

I mean, I don't know that, that whole experience is like fairly frustrating 'cause like, you know, towards the end of eDonkey, we were, we spent a lot of time talking to like the recording industry and like the movie industry because we're like, look, people want this. They just want, they're happy to pay for it. They just want the convenience of being able to like click on something and get the thing on their computer. They don't wanna have to go to like a record store or whatever. Yeah. 'Cause it's very hard, you know, this is all pre-Netflix and pre-Spotify and all this kind of stuff. And so we were trying to convince them that like, look, this this is the way you should go and just like, just charge people, they'll pay you. Like that's the only way eDonkey made money really is we just asked people to pay us for the software. It was all like voluntary.

Yeah.

And, and, uh, and, and, but they were just, they just couldn't wrap their mind around that. And then lo and behold, like this is the way the whole industry is now. So it's just, I don't know.

It's actually, it's one of my favorite parts of internet history. I was telling my kids what Napster was like and what this era was like. They could, their minds were blown. And I remember I, so I, I wrote a lot for a publication called The Register. Back then, which is a British tech site. And I mean, and we were quite, we were allowed to have quite a bit of freedom in our opinions. And, you know, I was just so anti-RIAA and what they were doing, especially for a lot of the reasons that you highlighted. I was like, you know, look, this is the obvious way forward. You guys are just so slow that you haven't even made anything to compete with this stuff instead of trying to sue everyone into oblivion. Why don't you actually, like, make something, you know? And it drove me crazy. I remember I would go to to, uh, Comdex, like the big trade shows. And, and, and I, I think it was like a Hewlett-Packard event I went to when they started selling an MP3 player, and they brought in like Alicia Keys and, um, all these famous musicians. And the musicians were up on stage talking how sad they were to have their, you know, they were losing money and all. I'm like, this is the most unsympathetic thing I've, I've ever seen, right? If you guys would just open your mind a tiny bit. Like, you know, there's a, there's kind of a future there. And so you, I remember there was like you guys, Napster, I think Kazaa. Those are like the 3 big ones that I remember. And so you, it must have been stressful though once things turned and they started suing everybody.

And yeah, I mean the whole thing was like, in retrospect, I don't know that I would do it again. Like basically the whole time, because Napster was getting sued like right when we were, when I was starting, right? And so, um, I was kind of the whole time I was just like waiting, okay, eventually I'm going to get sued, just kind of waiting for this. There was kind of this Supreme Court case, this Grokster case going on in the background for a few years while we were making Donkey. So we're kind of, we were waiting for the resolution of that. Like they probably weren't going to sue anyone else in the meantime. And we were hoping Groksha would win the case. And in fact, they did win the case. Right. So, uh, so it became clear that what we were doing wasn't violating the law. Uh, but, but still, or well, there was nuance to it, right? Like depending on how you, um, how you, uh, like represented the stuff, like if you were inducing infringement, like if you said like, hey, get Madonna's new song here, then, then that would be breaking the law. But if you were just like, hey, here's this open thing like BitTorrent or whatever, here's this thing you can download, you can share your own stuff, you can share other people's stuff, then that's fine, right? And so we were much closer to that where it's just, we weren't inducing infringement in any way. Um, but yeah, but, but, but it was, it was tough because you can't grow the business. Like you can't, like there was all these other ideas we had that were like different than file sharing. Like we had a kind of this Dropbox kind of idea.

I remember that.

Yeah. But, but we couldn't really do it because, you know, what happens if the whole thing gets sued, then that thing just gets swallowed up, right? Like you definitely can't raise money. Like there was just, it's just really hamstrung the whole operation.

So what was the closest, like the best conversation you ever had with the recording industry where they might have actually started to see the light or inquiring about?

I mean, towards the end we did have like a lot of conversations with them or like, okay, how do we make this work? You know, we want to, we want to, you know, make this service where there's a subscription or, you know, we iterated lots of ideas, you know, and then there's some set of folks there that are like, that are on board and like want to do this. But, you know, like a lot of business development, you just, you're talking to one set of people that are into it, but they're like, the corporation as a whole is just never going to go for it. So I don't think we're actually ever that close. Although it kind of seemed like that to us.

But what was it like for you when iTunes comes along and Steve Jobs finally unites all these labels?

And yeah, I mean, you know, we just obviously didn't have the power of Apple. Like I understand why Apple's able to do that and we weren't right. And so, you know, it made sense. But like I said, it just was kind of like, I'm like, dang, they should have just done this. Yeah. Years ago.

Yeah. So, so while you're doing that, you're, you're like what, you're like 20 years old?

This was in, yeah, I was probably like 25.

Okay. Okay. I mean, it's got to be like slightly scary to be, you know, possibly facing some horrendous lawsuit.

Well, I also didn't have anything to lose, really. So, you know, so that's like, you know, freedom is just another word for being left to lose. You know, like there's, there's not— yeah, there wasn't really any that much downside. I would just be back back to where it was.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I'm probably fast forwarding over some key things, but then, you know, when I do my research on you, the next big things that start to come up is like, is in the crypto era. It's like Mt. Gox, which you started and then Ripple. Yeah. Is that, is, was that the next big chapter in your life?

I mean, I definitely worked on some things in between, you know, eDonkey and Mt. Gox. None of it was that successful. You know, like I think a lot of my career I just like cast around for ideas and like, you know, some stuff works, some doesn't, you know, you just kind of keep, you know, rolling the dice and like iterating on things. So, um, yeah, so I was basically just winding down, um, this other company. I tried to make this online game. I, you know, people really loved it, the set of small set of people that played it, but I kind of decided, uh, basically when you're making a game, you're basically trying to make people waste as much time as possible. And so I started feeling kind of gross about it.

What was it?

It, it was this online game. It was kind of a cross between Magic: The Card Game and, and StarCraft where it's like Magic on a map. Yeah, it's still my favorite game, but what's it called? It was called The Far Wilds. Okay. Yeah. But, you know, so we had like a handful of players and the people that played would play for an obscene amount of time, like, you know, 12 hours a day or something like that. And so, but we never really grew it. So that was winding down. And then I kind of was just like reading on the internet for like random things and came across the, you know, Bitcoin white paper and blew my mind and, you know, yeah, got super excited.

When you like, Mt. Gox is this, so I'm not a crypto head, so I'm going to mess some things up, but I, you know, I know enough. Of the basics. But when, so Mt. Gox lives in crypto lore and infamy, I guess, because I remember it being kind of one of these first big exchanges, maybe the first big one.

Well, there were some other ways to trade. I mean, the reason why I built it was because I wanted to buy Bitcoin and also just kind of wanted to experiment with the technology and like understand it. But yeah, it was very cumbersome. The other stuff was like very cumbersome. It was definitely the first like 24 hours, like order book kind of like typical exchange. That's how I remember it.

But you You actually built it first for Magic: The Gathering to—

No, no, no. I just had the domain leftover.

This is like—

Okay. Yeah.

Okay.

So I had built the Magic thing like a long time ago, just kind of, again, just as like a, you know, something to do. Um, but, uh, yeah. And then I had the domain and, you know, I was like, when I was building the, the mount, uh, the, the crypto exchange, I was like, ah, I don't wanna register a new domain name. I have this one. I'll just use this.

Okay. But it was Magic: The Gathering Online Exchange.

That's what it stood for. Yeah. Yeah.

And that would, it would've been a place to trade Magic cards?

Yeah. Yeah. It was for, there's a, yeah. So after EDonkey, I was like burned out. So I played, played some Magic online and, and when you, the, the online version of Magic, there's a way you can like trade cards with people, but it's very cumbersome. So I was like, well, instead let's just make it where you like, 'cause you would have to like barter essentially. So let's just make a common currency and like have people like, you know, sell to the central thing and then that someone else can buy from the central thing. So it was a way to like make the whole thing like a much smoother. So. Yeah, yeah.

And then it evolves, evolves into crypto. And then Mt. Gox has this— I think you left before the shit hit the proverbial fan where, if I remember right, I mean, it gets, it gets kind of hacked and a bunch of—

Yeah. So yeah, I mean, it's pretty unfortunate story. So like, you know, I think it's hard for people to wrap their minds around what crypto was like back then. You know, first of all, there's just, there was just Bitcoin, you know, there was probably you know, maybe like 2,000 people that even knew about it or something like that on the order of that. You know, there wasn't very many people. There's a lot of just random projects. Most of the people that are into it were like very fringe, you know, it's a lot of like, you know, there wasn't, there wasn't very many like solid people. There wasn't, there definitely wasn't very many people that have built things before. So it was just a very like small pool of folks and it was very, no one knew if it would work or, you know, everyone liked the idea, but it's one of these things where you see it and you're like, oh, that's a cool idea, but this is never going to work. Like no one's going to adopt this, you know? So it was just just a very different world. And so I built it again, just kind of as a hobby, the way to learn what Bitcoin would do. And just like, you know, I thought it'd be cool for the community to like be able to buy and sell these things. You know, obviously it had a lot of traction right off the bat. It was like taking off. And then I was like, hey, look, this is not what I want to do with my life. I don't want to run an exchange. It's not an interesting problem. I like to work on like more technically difficult things, right? So I mean, there are like, when you get into scale, there's technically difficult things, but it's not in the same way, right? And so then I started looking around for someone to like take it over, because I didn't want to shut it down, because a lot of people in the community depended on it. And like, really, if you ask like any Bitcoin OG, like that's almost how they all got their Bitcoin, right? And so, you know, a lot of people are really thankful that it existed, right? And so, so I started looking around. The person I found was this guy, Mark Karpalis, who ended up being, you know, like he at least purported to be able to program and all this kind of stuff. And like, but and again, like there just wasn't a lot of options. There wasn't like a lot of people I could hand it to. So, so I basically handed it into essentially for free. Like I retained like 12% of the company or something like that. But otherwise it was just like, here, take this. Um, and, and then yeah, from there just had like continuous problems. Like almost from the time I handed it over to him, there, there was like problems. And like, he obviously like in retrospect just did not know what he was doing. Like super incompetent. And like in that first hack that, that you're talking about, um, you know, I remember the site was down, all these people were upset., you know, people that I'd met later, like Jesse Powell and Roger Ver, like flew out to Japan to help him and like just to get it all set up because it was such a core part of like the Bitcoin ecosystem. Yeah. And like, and he's just like, he's like on Friday at like 5 or whatever, he's like, okay, I'm going home. I'll see you guys Monday. And they're like, what are you talking about? The site is down. No one can get their money. Everyone's like freaking out. Like, why are you doing— like, it doesn't make any sense. Like, and so it's just a series of things like that where like, you know, I'm kind of me and them are like kind of shouting at this guy from the sidelines like, look, you're just totally messing this whole thing up. Like, you just do these simple things and it'll, you know, it was, it was a frustrating whole thing.

Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, at least the, and that also must have been a little scary though, that if you catch some strays by being involved, you, you know, as, as things start to get—

Yeah. I mean, I, I feel like Mt. Gox has been very net negative for me. Like, because I've, I have caught a lot of, like, people still blame me for all this stuff that's happened. Like, you know, the, the major hack happened like 3 years after I even like seen any of this code and like had anything to do with anything. Right. And so, but yet still I'm like the Mt. Gox guy or whatever. So yeah. Yeah.

But, and is it like, as you're describing some of this in the technical work you were doing, I mean, is that how you saw yourself back then? Were you a, um, like a very good coder? Is that, you approached problems differently to other people? I'm just, I'm like picking what you're getting interested in and Um, I mean, you know, I love programming.

I've, you know, again, like I've been programming since I was little, like, you know, I, I don't think I even like talked to another programmer until I went to Berkeley and even then not really. Right. Like until, until I moved back to the Bay Area the second time, like during the dot-com situation, that was like my first real interactions with other programmers. So I didn't really know where I sat in like the hierarchy of, of this stuff. I mean, eDonkey was a very, you know, it's like a distributed system. Like we eventually, we implemented the first distributed hash table, which is, which is the way like BitTorrent does search now and things like that. And so, so we did all these kind of like hard technical problems and yeah, so I, I think I like to work that area where it's, you know, there's this hard technical thing where it's, you know, involves programming, but, but, but isn't, isn't like, you know, uh, uh, like a CRUD web app or something, but it's like more of like a systems level thing.

Right. So, I mean, there's, there is, and I don't know if you identified with this or not, the, there is like a libertarian sort of freedom loving streak to, to both peer-to-peer file sharing and the early days of crypto? Was that stuff that was resonating?

Yeah, for sure. I mean, definitely when I— this is one of the things when I came across Bitcoin, I was like, okay, this is like very much in line with— it's very similar to file sharing, right? So it's a distributed system, you know, so these peer-to-peer interactions, you know, a lot of the problems are similar. And yeah, so yeah, I mean, I definitely think— I mean, I think freedom is like generally good and like the— if you can kind of, you know, lower these concentrations of power, it's just like better for society in general. So like, I definitely like things that push in that direction.

Were you part of like the whole open source movement proper and things like that?

Not really. Not until, I mean, you know, eDonkey wasn't open source actually. So, so not really, but I mean, you know, Stellar and Ripple both were open source. So yeah. So, you know, eventually got on that train, but yeah.

Okay. Okay. And then, and then just, and then I'm also just picturing, I mean, clearly you did not want like a corporate job or something. You were quite happy to like rely on yourself throughout.

Yeah. I don't, I don't think I'm very employable. What, why? Uh, you know, I have, I have opinions on how to do things and like, it's just, I don't, you know, it's hard for me to follow someone else's plan.

Right.

You know, I have my own idea of how things would go in the world and, and, uh, yeah. So I just, I'm pretty independent and just kind of want to make a thing happen. And if somebody else is like, well, now we should do this other thing, I just won't listen to them. So.

And are you like doing financially well through all this stuff or is, are these lean times?

No, I mean, no, eDonkey did really well. Like I was, you know, I, you know, I was even before that, I mean, I was working as a programmer and like random job stuff for never very long, but it was a lot from where I came from. Right. So, um, you know, I felt secure for sure. And also I knew that I could always just go work at a programming job somewhere. So it like, even though probably I didn't have very much money, I just knew that there was this essential safety net where like, okay, hey, if this eDonkey thing doesn't work, I can just go get another programming job somewhere. It's not a big deal. Okay. Yeah.

Well, I'm selfishly, I, I'm, I'm more into space than crypto, but I don't, so I'm, me too.

Okay.

So I don't, I don't wanna dwell too much, but I, I will, you end up, you end up like creating Ripple, which is, which is another huge, huge thing, right?

Yeah. So I mean, basically as, as, you know, so yeah. So in, in, in like when, during like the, the Mt. Gox time, I was thinking, okay, Bitcoin's awesome, but this mining problem is,, it seems problematic, right? There, there's, it's hugely resource intensive. Like maybe there's a different way to solve this consensus problem and kind of came up with the idea that led to Ripple. And at the time I was like, uh, I actually wanted to go work on AI stuff. Uh, but, uh, you know, so I was kind of like, okay, let me just spend a day thinking about this and see if I can come up with some idea. And I was like, and I came up with the idea and I was like, oh dang, actually this means I'm gonna have to go do this crypto thing rather than like dive into AI, which I really wanted to do. But so I was, I was a little bummed about it, but it ended up well, obviously.

So it did, not to be crass, but you make billions of dollars from Ripple.

Yeah, yeah, I did. But you know, yes, I mean, I think anyone that was in crypto early, you know, you know, honestly, like if I had just bought, if I had just like held my Bitcoin, I would've made more than any of this. Like, so sometimes like I should've just held Bitcoin. Yeah.

Okay. I remember I did a story on, on like the early days of the Bitcoin miners when they were creating this custom silicon to try to, Yeah. Speed up. And that was the first I'd heard about Bitcoin, obviously. And then always been like, oh, this isn't gonna be worth anything. And then I did this Bitcoin mining story and I was like, oh, whatever, I'll buy some. This seems like we'll just take a lark. And I went home to my wife and I was like, how much, on the assumption that this is all complete bullshit, it will be worth nothing. Like, how much are you willing, you know, for us to spend? And, and so I, I think I bought like like 8 or 9 when it was around $400 each. And yeah, I wish, I wish we had greenlit.

Everybody wishes they had bought one.

But man, I mean, it was scary even then. I remember we did a story on this guy and it was, I think, yes, it was a cover story on Businessweek. And we had sent a photographer to this guy's house and, you know, he had all his mining rigs set up and we're sending like a Businessweek photographer. It's kind of, it's a production. It's not like when somebody shows up with their cell phone, it's like they have lights and, and they have an assistant and, and, you know, they're photographing celebrities. Like, it's a thing. And, and so we take the photo, we run the story, and then the guy, the next day as the story hits, he's calling me, he's calling like everybody at Bloomberg, he's freaking out. He's like, you published my photo, people are gonna come and, and like try to kill me and like take all my— I was like, bro, what did you, what did you think was happening? Why did you let the guys like into your house? You didn't say anything, man. I mean, What did you think we were going to do with these photographs? But I remember it being this very, like, stressful time in this whole Bitcoin mining community was nuts. Yeah, it really was like Wild West-y feeling.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's definitely a lot of that.

So, okay, so you end up doing very well for Ripple and then, you know, again, you're into so many different things, it's hard to know what to pick. But my general impression is you kind swing to, to investing in things and following your, what's calling to you? Like you seem like somebody who's, who likes interesting, likes to help interesting ideas along is my impression.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't do that much investing actually, but, but I mean, I've done some, but yeah, I guess my general thesis or my general take now is like, you know, I can only, deal with so much money, right? I mean, I'm kind of saturated. Like, it's not like I need another billion dollars. It wouldn't change my life at all, right? So, but, but, uh, so the thing that I want to do now basically is just like make sure the world like moves forward and like, you know, try to increase like the ROI for humanity essentially. Like, like what, what are the things that, that are maybe big things that wouldn't happen otherwise, you know, or, or, or things that would have high leverage. Like if you can like make this one thing happen, then it like unlocks all this other stuff that would be very good for humans in general. Right. And so those are the things that I kind of look for now where it's, yeah, yeah. Just where, like, what are areas that I can push on that, that maybe the rest of the world isn't thinking about or doesn't have like the risk appetite for or, you know, things that, that, you know, if, if, if they did happen, like big if true kind of things.

Right.

Yeah. So, yeah.

Well, tell me if these buckets are right. I mean, space is an obvious one because you have made large investments and we'll get into your biggest thing where I imagine you're spending most of your time, which is Vast, in a second. It looked like AI was another bucket and then it looked like a bit of like longevity stuff. Is that, are those the three biggest areas?

Roughly, yeah. I mean, I, I've done a little bit of longevity things, but it, it actually seems like there's a lot of money going into longevity. So I, I haven't done as much as I kind of first thought I would do. But yeah, I, I do. So I, I think probably the biggest ones are that there's this company called Science, which Max Hodak, you should actually have him on. He's super interesting.

I have had him on the show.

Okay, cool. Yes. So yeah, he's an awesome guy. So like what they're doing is amazing. It's unbelievable. Brain-computer interface kind of stuff. I mean, basically my general thesis is that like AI is going to change our world really dramatically and we need to do what we can now to kind of like keep up. Like the only way humans are relevant is if there's some way we can kind of like uplift essentially where we get augmented by computers, things like that. Right. And so, so something like science is like super critical to that, I think. So, so I, you know, I'm I'm, I have, I think it was largest investor in that. And then, then I've invested in some other AI things. I have my own AI effort that I'm working on. And then, and then yeah. So then the other things, there's some like climate-related things that I've invested in over the years. And then space. Okay.

Since day one, the Core Memory podcast has been supported by the fine people at E1 Ventures. They are a young and ambitious VC firm in Silicon Valley. Investing in young and ambitious companies and people. Thank you so much to E1 Ventures for all your support. I think we've done more on science than just about anyone. Yeah, yeah. And Max, Max is a super fascinating character. Um, and then there was one time, I mean, as I was doing my research, it looked like in this moment where Elon was pulling his funding out of OpenAI, it looked like you were one of the people that helped, helped kind of prop it up for a while when it was very—

Yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah. Nonprofit. Yeah, I went back when it was still a nonprofit. Um, you know, I know Greg actually from the Stellar days.

Greg Brogman?

Yeah. Yeah. So, um, uh, he helped with like the Stellar launch and things like that. So I, we've been friends since then. Um, and so, yeah. And, uh, you know, I thought originally when he told me like, hey, I'm considering doing this OpenAI thing, I was like, wow, this is amazing. I was like very jealous because I wanted to go work on it with him. But, but, uh, but I was still at Stellar. So, um, but yeah, so, so when they were, when they were kind of like trying to figure out how to fund the thing, because it became clear that they needed like a lot more money than, than they originally had. Yeah, I, you know, had, I had some that I was able to donate to them. Yeah.

Do you have thoughts then on Elon's version of, of history and, and during this period?

Oh, um, you know, like, I, I understand both sides of it. I see where they're both coming from. Like, it is a little weird and like, yeah, uh, but, you know, I think that they were transparent about what was happening. I mean, I don't know that they had much of a choice, so, you you know, it is this very capital-intensive thing.

So no, I— well, so you're talking about the weirdness, I think, is shifting from this kind of open nonprofit to a more of like a money-making enterprise. And then— but they— but then they're, you know, sometimes I think Elon oversells how much money he had put in. Yeah, because yeah, clearly it did not have enough money to, to make this.

Yeah, well, I mean, it turned out that it needed billions, right? So like that, you know, I don't think he's ever claimed to do that much. But, but yeah, I think, I think probably it was the original sin was like setting it up as a nonprofit place probably. But, but at that time, who, who knew?

Yeah.

The direction would go, right? So, you know, like obviously all the companies since then, like even like Anthropic, which purports to be like the most like safety-focused one, they're still a for-profit company, right? Yeah. So yeah, I just think it's, I think nonprofits are not a great structure for, if you can avoid it. Yeah. Basically don't set up as a nonprofit. Yeah.

So I've been, I mean, I've been working on this AI book, OpenAI AI book for a while. I mean, what do you have thoughts on? There is like a bit of, um, um, I don't know if it's like a cult of personality, but you know, like each one of the major AI players has kind of like a point of view and they have a, a pretty powerful person at the, at their helm. They all seem to kind of think, um, it would be better if they're the ones who get to superintelligence first. Um, yeah, I don't know. I mean, I'm curious as to how you think this all plays out, or if this is a good model. Sort of like you talk about with Anthropic. I mean, I do think they have at some level, like, quite good intentions, but then the reality of the situation is like, yeah, well, you've got to take money from Google and Amazon. You're like everybody else, right?

I mean, the reality is they all have good intentions, right? I mean, they all— that nobody wants the world to get destroyed by robots or whatever, like, so like everybody has the same goal, uh, but they don't trust each other. You know what I mean? Like, if you talk to Anthropic people, they're like, oh, the OpenAI people, they're just going to destroy the world. And if you talk to the OpenAI people, they'll say the same thing, right? So it's just, it's kind of funny. Like, basically, they're like, well, I can't trust anyone else to do this but myself kind of thing, which in some sense makes sense because you kind of know your own motivations and know what you're going to do. And this is like this super powerful, potentially super powerful technology. So I definitely understand the urge of wanting to be the one that's like putting it out into the world, right? Not leaving that to other folks, right?

So yeah, I find this whole situation comical. I think from the outside, especially people not in the tech industry, there's this general like hatred of the tech industry now in Silicon Valley. And it's like, oh, I can't know if that's true or just media created. Um, I think it's true on some level. I don't know how deep it runs. I think there is, I think it's like the biggest industry. So it's, it takes the place of finance or energy or something. It's like, that's where people are going to put their attention.

And yeah.

And we I don't— I, I think there's some people who love it, and then there's some people in the— definitely, I think in the mainstream it's kind of like, uh, are these people like— are they really out for our best interests or not? Um, I do— I think it's— I think it's wrong on a pretty fundamental level that people are like, oh, Elon's evil, Sam's evil, whatever. And then we're actually in a spot where— we could be in a world where the person making this technology, like, didn't care at all about what happens. We happen to be in a spot where, like, kind of the 5 biggest players actually, in my opinion, do think deeply about this stuff.

Yeah, I think they do. I think it's a mistake to think that they don't. I think they all, they all definitely care.

So yeah, and then the question is, like, like, then I guess how does it play out? I do. And then, I mean, I think you, you summed ended up really— it is funny to me that they all kind of like hang out together, or at least did for a while, and then, but still like don't trust each other in the middle of all this. Do you, do you regret now not shifting over to work at OpenAI?

Oh, I mean, I don't know. I, it wasn't really possible at the time. I mean, I still was like very committed to Stellar, so I don't know how it could have happened. I mean, what was Stellar?

Remind me.

So Stellar is the thing that I started after Ripple. So, so it's, yeah, it's, it's kind of another cryptocurrency. That, you know, I think worked much better.

Okay.

Yeah.

Okay. So you were, you were deeply involved in that and had no choice. Okay. Okay. And then, okay. And when you were getting to space, but when you, you talked about a couple of things that I'm so fascinated by, I mean, so you, you kind of want to help humanity end up in a good place. You, I think, like, I think I'm pretty convinced on this. You feel that humans are going to have trouble keeping up with this next—

Oh yeah, for sure. Okay.

So, so you want to see a world where we are kind of fused with— I mean, if you look at something like science, I mean, this is— you would be trying to like increase the horsepower of the human mind. I mean, that's, that's kind of where you want things to go.

Yeah. I mean, I think that's kind of the only option, you know, kind of regardless of whether I want that to happen or not. I mean, I think that's, um, Yeah, I mean, these machines are going to get increasingly more capable and smarter and things like that. And I just don't see a world where we're not ceding more and more control to them, where it's, where, you know, they just kind of become kind of integrated with our society. And like, you know, big companies are relying on them more and more to make decisions and governments even and things like that. And so at some point, humans are just, don't even kind of understand what's going on, right? They're just, they're just like, okay, Okay, all this stuff, weird stuff is happening and we're not sure why. I've got this order to go do this. I'm fine, I'll do this. You know, and it's just, yeah, I think the only way we can kind of keep up, I think, is like, is kind of augment our brains with machines. So I mean, I know it sounds crazy, but I just, that just seems like where we're headed.

And are you outside of that? Are you, because I saw that you had funded some stuff along the lines of AI AI research, a couple bodies that tend to be more on the fighting existential risk side of things.

Are you—

when people talk about, oh, Anthropic's in the doomer camp, or the EAs were in the doomer camp, um, do you— yeah, did you come from, from that sort of world, or are you kind of like, let's also accelerate AI as quick as we can?

Yeah, I mean, I think, uh, I definitely I am sympathetic to the doomer point of view. I mean, I read a lot of LessWrong way back when I first moved to Berkeley and kind of went to some of their meetups or whatever. And this is obviously way before OpenAI, but I think one of the issues with it that I've always had is that we don't really understand the nature of how this AI technology is going to be. It's impossible to make a thing safe before you can actually understand what the thing is, right? So it'd be be like, you know, in the time before cars, like trying to design a seatbelt. It just doesn't even like, you know, how could you do this? You don't know what the vehicle is, right? And so, so it just seems like you can't really separate these, these like safety concerns with like capability. Like you have to actually understand like how the, the actual thing is going to be built. And, and I, I fully recognize that that puts us in like a very tight predicament where like, if, if it's a small window, right, exactly. So, so, you know, but I don't think I am, but I also think that like the world is like, there's kind of like too much, like kind of like the only way out is through, like you have to kind of keep going. Like you can't just like turn back and be like, okay, we're just not going to do this whole set of things. Like, like humans themselves are dangerous, right? Like there's, there's, there's all these coordination problems in the world. Like, like, like AI aside, like the leverage that humans have is just increasing. Like individual humans have is just increasing. And that leads to very chaotic dynamics, right? I think where if you have some kind of one rogue individual that can all of a sudden do all this bad stuff, then you just end up in a very unstable world, right? And so I just think in general, you want to improve kind of the collective wisdom of people. And so that is also what I'm kind of hoping with this BCI stuff is where it just improves our ability to coordinate and collaborate. Because there's so many things that happen in the world that literally no human wants to happen, but it still happens just because of coordination problems. Right. And so if there's— I just feel like there's got to be a way around that if we're just like wiser, essentially. So like, I just feel like humans are, you know, we evolved out of the Stone Age. Like, we're just not— we're not evolved to deal with this, like, increasing capability we have. We're like, literally one person can press a button and like destroy whole continents, right? Like, that's, that's not a sustainable world, right? AI aside, right? And so I kind of think that AI is kind of the only way out of this, is the only way out of this kind of dilemma that we're hurtling towards. And we just kind of have to like get more capable as a civilization writ large, like humans and machines, basically.

And I realize this is a basic question and it's one that billionaires get all the time, but you, so as you're like making your calculus on where you're going to invest your money and you're doing space, you're a couple of these things where you feel like it's giving humanity hope and new opportunity. Like how do you run that calculus in your head? Sorry, I know it's basic. I'm just curious. Like versus you said you do a little climate change.

Right.

You know, everyone always wants to know like why are you investing in the future stuff as opposed to just uplifting the worst off in society?

Yeah. I mean, it's not easy, right? It's like, I mean, there's, it's not easy decisions to make, right? Like it's, it's, it's, there's a lot to think through and there's not a clear answer essentially, right? So I think in general for me, like I started off where, well, as I started to make money, I would just kind of invest in random things because I was basically focused on my core businesses that I was like working on. And when I stepped back from Stellar, at that point I was like, okay, I've made a ton of money. What do I actually want to do? Like what? Like now, now, because before that it's like kind of you're playing this game of like who can get the most dollars and you're just trying to collect dollars, right? And you're just focused on that and you're like, well, I'm doing this for question mark, right? You don't really think about it that much, I think. But once you have it, you now are no longer in this world where it doesn't really, again, like it doesn't really benefit me to make more money. So then what is the best use of this like pool of resources that I have available to me? And yeah, and so then, so, you know, I could invest in like lots of random things, but I think for me personally, it's just, it's better to do kind of larger, bigger bets so I can kind of understand them more deeply and be more opinionated about what they are, things like that. And particularly in things that I didn't think would happen otherwise. I think particularly with Vast, no one else is going to spend almost a billion dollars to make a space station just right off the bat. No one's just going to trust some random company to do that. The only way that happens is if like some person just like puts their money personally in and does it, right? And, but I think it's like super important that the United States has a space station. We don't lose presence in orbit, right? And I think that would happen otherwise if Vast didn't exist, right? And so you kind of pick things like this where they're just, you know, there's a deletion test. Like if you didn't exist, would the world go this way or would it continue on this path, right? And so it's not really interesting to me to invest in things that are like, you know, it'll make some money, but like kind of who cares? Like it's just a SaaS product or something, right? So yeah.

Okay. All right. Well, you set us up nicely because I want to, I want to go deep on Vast. So for people who don't know, you, you, I think you're the chairman right now of Vast Space and the company is trying to build space habitats. We have this long-running partnership between the United States and Russia on the International Space Station. I don't know that the average person realizes how how decayed and frankly, like, in my opinion, dangerous that place is to be putting humans in these days. And then China has a space station. So it, you know, it looks in, the ISS probably should not be in space. If nothing else, its days are numbered. And then we've had past attempts to make space habitats to some degree. I mean, the most famous person in my mind Robert Bigelow, who ran Bigelow Aerospace for a while. This is not a great business to be in. Space is always, always tricky. But so when did you first like get interested in this idea? And I mean, tell us the fundamentals of what you're trying to do.

Yeah, I mean, first interest, I mean, I've always been interested in space. You know, I like, I've always had this urge to kind of explore things and like, you know, as a little kid when, you know, when they ask, what do you wanna do when you grow up? I would always be like, I wanna be an explorer, right? But you know, at some point you realize Earth is well covered, right? We know every nook and cranny. And so, you know, you just kind of look up at the stars and be like, oh, it'd be awesome to be up there and like go to other planets and like explore this world, right? And so, you know, as I grow up, I'm, you know, eventually I read this book called Mining the Skies, which is about asteroid mining. You've probably seen it.

I own it.

I don't think I've actually read it, but I do own it. Yeah.

Who wrote that? That's not Zubrin though.

No, it's not Zubrin. I should know this, but yeah. But anyway, I was like, oh, this is awesome. You can actually like go and do this and like, I want to do this., and I would just, and then I got a bunch of other books about like, you know, satellite design and all, like, you know, propulsion and like just trying to understand like how you would actually do this. How old are you when you're doing this? This is in my early 20s. I was probably like 22 or something like that. Okay. 20, 21, something like that. And you know, the people I was living with at the time were just kind of like joking. Like, you know, they didn't take me seriously. I was like, I'm going to do this. Um, and you know, I was kind of half joking, but in the back of my mind is like, hey, if I ever have the resources to do this, I'm, I'm, this is important. I think humans need to get out into space. So yeah, so basically I just think it's like, super important for humanity to get out into the solar system. If everyone is stuck on Earth, the world just becomes very zero-sum and it leads to all these bad effects. People start fighting over things more. The human psyche needs a frontier, right? This is the way we evolved. There's always been new lands to explore. And I think without the promise and the reality of being able to move out into the solar system, we're kind of It's bad. So, and besides that, it's like, it's just economically like very useful. Like there's like many Earths of resources outside, you know, beyond Earth and like we should take advantage of that, right? And so for all those reasons, I just think it's important that like billions of people live in the solar system. And so again, so like when I took a step back from Stellar, I was like, okay, this seems like the time to do this. Like Starship is on the horizon and that's going to change like the whole economy up like drastically. It's gonna make a lot of stuff easier. It's gonna unlock tons of economic activity. Like now seems like a good time to get involved in this. And so I started asking around for, again, 'cause I'm from software, I've never done hardware things. I started asking around like, hey, who's the smartest person you know that—

Welcome to hell.

Right, yeah, exactly. Like that knows about aerospace or like building things in space. And so I like kind of, you know, got introduced to someone and then I asked them and they would get introduced to another set of people. And then eventually I found this like set of folks that were like ex-SpaceX guys. They all seemed like super sharp. They knew what they're talking about, very practical. Like it could, you know, because there's a lot of people in the space world that have these kind of like far out ideas, you know, that probably are close physically, but they're like science experiments and like, you know, they're not ready for like prime time. And there's a lot of those guys and it's cool. I mean, it's kind of like the O'Neill cylinder thing where like people have these like grand designs signs for what could be, you know?

No, well, but yeah, the worst— a wealthy person coming to visit those people, this is very dangerous.

Right, right. They get very excited. My reporting historically. Yeah, they get very excited. But yeah, so, but this set of guys was, again, like very practical. They all were ex-SpaceX, so they're kind of steeped in that way of doing engineering and the way of building things, which I think is has obviously been super successful and the way to go. And so kind of teamed up with them and started building the team and landed on the idea of, okay, if you want a billion people living in space, what are the steps to get there? What are the path? And the first step is obviously getting mass cheaply to orbit, which again, I think Starship is going to achieve. And even Falcon 9 is way cheaper than before. And then the next step is human habitation. How do you allow people to live for long periods of time? So we kind of started to explore that and like figure out what we would need to do.

So, and I never, I never dug in deep on Robert Bigelow, but I mean, he, he was like trying to build space habitats for a really long time. Right. So were there lessons? Did you look at that? What did you learn? And they, I think they're out of business now.

Yeah. They, they went bankrupt. Um, yeah. Uh, I think, you know, I think again, like I applaud the, the effort and like, it's like, again, one of these few people that is willing to like kind of put their money where their mouth is and like to like try to make this happen. You know, I think, uh, he, I mean, I don't know the details of it, but I assume it's just probably the wrong team. Like space is very hard. You've got to get the, really the challenge is getting the right team. And if you don't do that, then it just goes off the rails. There's so many, like there are so many failed rocket companies before Elon came and made SpaceX. And it's just, you just, if you just don't have the right folks to do it, it just won't happen.

Yeah.

So yeah.

And I, you know, there's details on your, on the Vast website for people who want to go look, but you know, for people who haven't described, describe what you're building first and then Yeah, yeah.

So the plan is, so like you mentioned, ISS is getting old. It's scheduled to come down in 2030, right? So, and NASA's looking for, they put out this called Commercial LEO Destinations where they're looking for private companies to build the next ISS essentially, right? And so our plan is, because we're relatively new, we started like 3 and a half years ago, so we're pretty much an unknown in aerospace world. So the only way to, and kind of the goal is to win this contract, right? And so the only way to do that is to prove that you you can actually like operate a space station and like that you know what you're doing, right? And so, so our plan is to, to essentially launch an MVP space station, which is called Haven 1. It's launching next year on Falcon 9. So it basically just fits right inside the Falcon 9 fairing. It fits 4 people, you know, can support 4 people for, you know, the, the, the nominal mission plan is 2 weeks, but it can go longer or shorter, right? So, so, um, uh, so what happens is Haven 1 launches up there with no people. Eventually Dragon comes, which is the crew capsule that brings people back and forth to ISS. It docks to Haven 1, and then so There's 4 people that kind of cohabitate Dragon and Haven 1, right? And so it gives you a lot more space than just a free-flying Dragon.

Oh, so Dragon stays attached.

Yeah, Dragon has to stay attached because we're kind of— again, we're trying to build like the simplest thing we can. And so we're actually depending on a lot of the life support from Dragon. So we work closely with SpaceX to get that to happen. So yeah, so that's kind of the first step. And the idea is to get that up before NASA makes a determination of who, who they're picking to build the next ISS, right? And so the hope is that we'll be the only company that's ever operated a space station before, you know, first commercial company to ever do this. Like, it'll, it'll just make us a very credible candidate to win this contract.

And you said, sorry, that was 2028. Is that for that launch?

No, '26. '26.

Oh, right.

Next year.

Right, right there. And then, and then you're already— it looks like you're already working on at least the designs for a bigger one.

That's right. Yeah. So, so we're, we're We're kind of like roughing out the design for what we call Haven 2, which is like the NASA, the CLD winner, right? Okay. So, so it's, you know, it's more modules. It's probably bigger modules. If Starship starts rolling, then maybe we'll have some Starship modules, but at first it's just Falcon 9 modules. And, and so you connect several of these together and you can satisfy the requirements of CLD.

And it looked like almost like Legos, like you had this thing in the center and then you're talking about these modules that you can go out almost like legs off this central thing? Like, am I interpreting this right? That it's flexible and like big?

Yeah, it's very flexible. So each one of these modules is like, 'cause like Haven 1 is like this independent spacecraft essentially. Like it's got its own propulsion, its own power, you know, it can just move around and do its own thing. And so the idea is that each one of these is its independent thing. So you connect 'em in one configuration and then if you need to, like, so first, the first goal is to connect 3 of these kind of in a row. So you have like this line of things and eventually we want this core module in the middle so you you can do like a couple spokes off of it. And then you can remove, move these modules around if need be, things like that. So yeah.

And it would be a mix of NASA-style astronauts and then with Haven 2, and then you would have private people who want to go spend a couple weeks up there.

That's right, yeah. So yeah, even for Haven 1, we're targeting mainly national astronaut programs. So, you know, like, you know, NASA, sure, but also other countries. There's lots of astronauts in the world that are not from the US. And so we're targeting those and then some private individuals as well. Okay.

And, and, and you've said that— I think I read this. I mean, you would put $1 billion into this to just try and make it go.

It's around there. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like that's how much you have put in or that's how much you would put in?

A little bit short of that. Yeah.

Okay. Okay. So this is no joke and I should know this, but that, that NASA contract you're talking about, is that meant to be, again, a joint US-Russian and—

No, it's just NASA.

So NASA is there. Okay. So they've totally outsourced this. They're not trying to build an ISS.

They're not trying to build it. Yeah. So they basically want to do what they've kind of done with like with Falcon 9 and launch and stuff like that, where they just essentially like find commercial alternatives that can do this, you know, with— they don't want to be the sole funder. So they want us to have business outside of NASA as well. So that kind of keeps you honest to some degree because you have to have a product that's like commercially viable. And the hope is that we can slowly, like, wean off of, like, governments having to support this whole thing.

So, and I'm total space dork, but I've— I have— space habitats is the thing I fell behind on. I mean, isn't there— there's like Axios is a—

so Axiom.

Axiom is a competitor that they're also trying to make space habitats.

Yep, yep. They, they've, they've, they started many years before us. It's, uh, it's a— it was sort of started by, like, ex-NASA folks.

So, okay. Yeah, because they're based in Houston, I think. And, and how many competitors do you expect to have for this contract?

I don't know, we'll see. I mean, um, they did, they We did a phase 1 of this, like right when Vast launched. So we couldn't bid for it yet 'cause we didn't have the team yet. And I think there was like 3 winners of that. So maybe those folks will probably, there was 3 winners of that. And then also Axiom had a contract from before, so they couldn't bid. But so there might be like 4 other people, 3 people. But again, like none of them really have, Axiom has some hardware, but no one else really has hardware. It's all just been paper design. Whereas we have like a primary, like a qual unit built that we've like, we're testing in Mojave right now, but our primary structure's gonna be done quite soon. You know, there's actual stuff, right? Like again, we're launching in a year, right? With or without CLD, we're launching. So yeah, so I think we're just like way further ahead technically.

Are there any of the traditional like Boeings and Lockheeds trying to get into this?

I think Northrop has some, but yeah, it's Voyager is one of the bidders, Yeah, Blue Origin might, they won the original thing. It's unclear what they're gonna bid in the next one. I don't, we'll see. Like the RFP hasn't come out yet.

Okay. Yeah. And when you, and the company's based in Long Beach?

Yep.

And so you've been building hardware in Long Beach and then when you do the test at Mojave, where do you, do you go out too far or what do you do? Do you have a, like what kind of tests happen in Mojave for a space station?

Sure, yeah. So it's basically a pressure test. So we've built this, we took over Virgin's facility out there.

Oh, that was a nice place.

Yeah. May it rest in peace. So it's by the airport out there. There's actually a lot of like random like space companies testing stuff out there. It's kind of cool. Oh yeah.

No, no.

I've been, I love that spot. Okay, cool. So we built this big test stand, like this like structure to hold the module up, right? So the module's like stood up on end and then we pressure test it to make sure it can hold pressure and like we put all these loads on it to like simulate launch and make sure doesn't like Spring Lake or whatever. And we've been doing that for the last few months.

Oh, I remember this now. So Virgin Orbit was going to be a rocket company that sent satellites up to space and they went bankrupt and then their assets got split between you guys and Rocket Lab, I think.

I think so.

Yeah.

Okay. Right.

And so, so you got the— I went out to the test stand with George Whitesides, the original CEO. I mean, it was a glorious little facility. Yeah. So, so you guys, you run that now?

Yep.

Yep.

We took that over.

Okay. And so, and then if you fly in 2026, How long after it's up there does a human get sent there?

Probably around 3 months, maybe.

Okay.

Yeah.

Okay. And then, and SpaceX, I'm sure, is like excited about this. I mean, do you talk to Elon or Gwynne or somebody directly about all this?

Yeah. I mean, I've talked to Gwynne about it. I mean, we work with them a lot. Our teams are very collaborative because again, like we're using Dragon. Like, so we have the engineering teams have to very, very much be in sync. And I think, you know, for them, like, we are like the perfect customer for Starship. So, I mean, you know, the hope is that we, you know, build this, get this contract, build this station, and like are launching modules, launching crew, launching like resupply, things like that. So we'll be using Starship a lot if we, you know, if we get to that level. So, you know, they, you know, I would assume that they're like very excited about it. That's what they seem to be.

And just some context for people outside of the space who don't follow this, I mean, so Starship is SpaceX's much, much, much larger rocket. And the idea is that you could just carry way more stuff than we have before. And so, and do so more economically. So you can start putting big industrial scale things up there. So it makes something like this, the math check out a lot better.

Yeah, it really does. So not only is the launch cost, I mean, they haven't really announced the official launch cost, but kind of what the rumors are, not only are the launch costs like way lower, they're like, you know, maybe a couple order magnitudes lower than the current ones, But the fact that the launch cost is cheaper means that you can build your stuff at it. You're not as mass constrained anymore. And so most of the cost of like space infrastructure, like satellites and things like that, is the fact that there's some mass constraint, right? There's some mass constraint and it's harder to replace things. So you have to kind of over-engineer everything and kind of try to shave off every little gram. But if you don't have to do that anymore, then all of a sudden everything is like way cheaper. So it's kind of, it's got this cool feedback effect where it's not It's not just that the launch cost has gone down, but it cascades into all these other things where it just makes the whole project way cheaper. And because it's cheaper, you can iterate faster. You don't really care. It's less of a catastrophe if your thing blows up. So maybe you can launch 3 of them rather than 1 of them and have lower tolerances on everything. So it really will lead to not just for us, but just for the whole ecosystem being able to do a lot, lot more in space. So I really think it's going to unlock things tremendously.

Yeah, I'm not convinced I believe the launch costs on Starship yet.

Well, it was— I mean, you know, uh, I— it will be lower than Falcon 9 for sure. Yeah. So, okay, I don't know if it'd be like $20 a kilogram or anything, but, you know, even getting down to like $600 a kilogram would be, you know, that would be totally game-changing.

So, okay, and there's this— there's part of this where you just want this to happen, you think it's good for humanity, you're putting up an enormous sum of money, like, do you spend a lot of time trying to turn this into a profitable business, or really it's just you want this to happen?

No, no, I mean, it has to be a profitable business. Like, that's the whole thing. Like, you know, I mean, I have a lot of money, sure, but I don't have like infinite amount of money, and like, I don't really have a lot of money to like, for space station business, like ISS costs like $155 billion, you know, like, I don't have that much, right? So it definitely has to be like a commercial concern, right? I think it's just, it takes a lot a lot of money to like cross this like activation barrier. But once you're there, like it, it should be like this viable business. And that's, that's really the, the future of space has to be market-driven. Like it has to like, there has to be like a market reason why all this works. It can't just be like people like me that just like really are passionate about it. Like it has, there has to be economical and there has to be an economic engine that's driving this whole thing.

And so you'd get this, this government contract, you would have governments that want to send people up there for research, all sorts of different programs. And then, and then do we have any idea what a person might pay for 2 weeks on, on the station?

I mean, it depends. So, uh, I mean, right, right now it costs, it's, uh, like $62 million for, for us. But, um, you know, that will hopefully go down as, as like if Starship starts carrying crew, then that would, should go down a lot. Um, yeah, so it's, it's, yeah, it's obviously like quite expensive right now. And again, this is why I think, but it's not linear, right? Like, so if you drop the price in half, it's not like now twice as many people wanna go, it's probably like 4 times the amount of people wanna go. Yeah. And so like, if they're able to really drop it by 10 times, it's gonna be like a lot of people that wanna go.

Yeah. But you must have done math on some of this stuff. What, like, what, I mean, if you could tell me what's, what's your most optimistic scenario? Everything goes right. Starship is, is cruising along.

Yeah.

You've got, you've got this, the second station up and running. I don't know, call it the year, call it the year 2035 or pick 2040.

Yeah.

If you want, how many people are going to space? Space at what price to stay there?

I mean, I mean, it's kind of doesn't make sense to, I mean, for me, like I just want to pick like directional things. Like clearly there'll be a lot more, there'll be a lot more economic activity, there'll be a lot more people, there'll be more reason to go to space. Once if all of those are directionally correct, like putting the exact numbers on them, I mean, you're just kind of doing random, you're just guessing the spreadsheet essentially. It doesn't really tell you much.

You're not going to humor me with my question.

It would just be a random number. I mean, you know, I think definitely, you know, if Starship is working and it's like, let's say like a 10th the price of Falcon 9 and it does crew, I mean, we'll easily have like thousands of people that wanna be in space at the same time. So yeah.

And you have not gone the route of, you know, I used to hang out with Mark Shuttleworth a lot. He was like one of the first space tourists. He went to the ISS. I think he paid around $60 million or something if I remember. I remember Jared Isaacman has done all these crazy things, getting rides on Dragon and been part of this whole beginning of this like private astronaut movement. But you haven't, I don't even think you've, you haven't been on Blue Origin even, right?

No. Yeah, I mean, you know, that's not my prime motivation. I mean, I think it would be awesome to do. And I'm very thankful that people want to do that because I think it unlocks a lot of this stuff. But it, you know, it's not why I'm doing Vast so I can like go to space and see stuff. I mean, I think, you know, I'll be interested if we can go to another planet, but, you know, and I think probably one day I will, but it's, again, it's just not, it's not what's like driving me to do this.

Okay, so you're not, are you a pilot or anything?

No.

No, no, so you don't do that path or anything like that?

Yeah, I mean, I think it's cool. It just, it doesn't suit my personality.

Okay, do you, so do you find yourself in SoCal a lot? Are you there on like a day-to-day? Is this kind of like your primary where you spend your time?

I spend maybe, A little bit less than half my time on this. So, so yeah, I'm not there day to day. I'm, I'm, uh, I was in the beginning, I was spending almost all my time on it, but, but now, now there's a full-time CEO who's doing an awesome job and, and he, he, he like, he runs it day to day and I, you know, check with him. I've talked to him every day, but it's Matt. Matt, right? Yeah.

Yeah. He's an interesting character.

Yeah.

Yeah. And then, and then you're also an investor in Firefly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, yeah. Yeah. I mean, Astera, this, this foundation I set up invested in it technically, but yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah.

I think you came in, I wrote a lot about Max Poliakoff Yakov, you know, one of who saved it from bankruptcy. And then I think you saved it when they—

right, right. Yeah, yeah.

When Max had an unceremonious exit from Firefly.

Yes.

Yeah. Um, okay, so, and then, and then how else do you divide your, your time these days then?

Yeah, so most of it I spent— I have this small AI research lab. I spend most of it.

And what was it called?

Uh, it's called Astera. Yeah, yeah. Astera Institute. It's like a private that I, you know, started in Berkeley.

It's got an awesome group of people who work there. What are you guys, is it mostly focused around trying to make sure this goes okay or?

Yeah, yeah, basically it's doing like some frontier science things that, you know, again, like things that I don't think would get funded otherwise that I think are important. But mainly we're focused on like, okay, if we think the world is gonna change drastically like this and we're going to this like crazy AI future, how do we navigate that? How do we make sure make sure that humans still have a role. Like, you know, we're, we're kind of brought along for the ride and it doesn't go bad. So yeah.

And I run into like a group of people who seem convinced we have to model the brain much more deeply, simulate the brain, and then somehow infuse that into these AI systems so that they have like, I don't know, humanity at their essence. Like, like I philosophically and conceptually understand this. Seems also that there's a lot of vagaries that need to be worked out. I mean, is that at all anything that you're interested in or, or do you have, when you start thinking about how you want this to end up positively, um, yeah. Do you, do you have a, when you're saying that like there's some things other people won't invest in, do you have a path that for safety that you feel is unique for you guys?

I mean, I think, I mean, for the safety stuff, again, like I think safety is very hard to work on at this stage because we don't really know how these things are going to work. I mean, we do have some safety efforts and I think they're different than what other people are working on and I'm excited about them. But yeah, it's very hard to make progress on that. I think, like, you know, the main safety effort is really just trying to understand how these models work and like, like what's actually going on.

Okay.

So, and then I think maybe if you understand how they work better, then you have some chance of like making them safe. Um, but, uh, but yeah, I mean, yeah, there's like, in terms of like, do you want to infuse like the human mind into these things? I mean, I mean, you don't, you definitely want them to have kind of the same val— like general values as humans. But, you know, again, there's no one human.

That's the part I never get, because which values are there?

There's definitely, there's definitely humans I strongly disagree with. But, but I think, uh, you know, honestly, I think the way this is gonna go well is if there's like a multiplicity of these things. Like, like, I think again, if you just have one central thing, it's just very easy for it to go wrong. Uh, so you kind of need like a whole like ecosystem of enough different agents essentially that are, you know, maybe they have their own drives and maybe some of them are kind of doing things you don't like, but there's enough people that are like agents that are, that, that it makes up for that. I mean, you just need this checks and balances essentially. You can't just have like one thing.

So, okay.

Yeah.

I think we're in this interesting moment. This is the last couple questions.

Yeah.

These can be vaguely rapid fire, I guess, of this, but go wherever you want. Um, you know, I feel like when ChatGPT came out, suddenly we had this sense like, oh, by the time we get to ChatGPT-5, like that's maybe superintelligence. And then, I don't know, this field, it's progressed in funny ways to me where it's both dramatic and not at times. And then it feels like right now we're in this almost like fine-tuning epic where we're seeing steady progress, but it's not some, you just wake up and there's some crazy great leap forward. And then yet a lot of people I talk to who are very smart and are in this field are like, nope, for sure, 3 years, you know, superintelligence, however you want to define it, is here. I don't know. Yeah, everyone's always looking for dates on these things. I mean, do you ever put a guess on?

I mean, I definitely put many guesses, but, you know, I think I sort of agree with what you're basically what you're saying is I think both are true, basically. Like, things are improving. Like, you know, GPT-5, I'm sure will be awesome. Maybe it'll be groundbreaking or not, but I don't think just scaling that thing up is going to get us to superintelligence or general level of intelligence. I think there's just some fundamental things that are missing with it. This is basically what we work on is what are these fundamental things and how do you make those things? And I don't really think, I haven't seen any good answers for what they are, but at the same time, I think that we are probably like 3, 5, definitely 5 years away from this AGI thing because there's just so many people and so much money and so much attention on this space that people are going to figure out what these algorithms are. They're going to discover this stuff. There's just too much focus on it right now. Before OpenAI, essentially, there was a few people working on it. So that's why timelines were just very vague. It could be, you're just waiting for some random discovery. Discoveries. And now we're still kind of waiting for some random discoveries, but there's just so many people like focused on finding these things out and there's so much economic motive to do that. It's just, it's going to happen, right?

Yeah.

And it's gonna happen pretty soon. Yeah.

So, okay. Yeah. Totally unrelated to having you on the show. I was, I was just being an idiot with all my AIs a couple nights ago and I just randomly, I did deep research on Gemini, Claude, and ChatGPT, asked them to tell me if they could only pick one person who was Satoshi. And they, they like, I tried to, tried to prompt it, try to put some constraints. I was like, you can't weasel out of this. You have to pick one. Who would you pick? And I, I think this means nothing, but I found it funny. All three of 'em picked somebody different. I was actually surprised, surprised by, yeah. I, I feel like I would, I'd be doing myself a disservice if I did not ask you, do you, who's, who's Who was your best Satoshi?

Um, yeah, I don't remember the guy's name, but there was, there was some article where someone actually finally did the convincing, like deep dive on, on who it was. It was like, I think some like grad student that has now died, that has now died.

So, okay.

Um, but I, I don't remember the guy's name.

So you're not even, it's not like a, uh, it kind of doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. I, it doesn't matter. I also find it, the world doesn't have like that many mysteries where something like I love this one.

Yeah.

And this is like, this is kind of like different to the other ones because I assume this person must be dead because if they're not—

I hope they're dead.

Yeah. If they're not dead, then this is like the only person in history who could like actually keep a secret of this magnitude. So this person would be like a— I actually think it makes it more interesting because this person would be such a unique figure.

Yeah.

So, but to you, it's just not, not important.

Yeah. I mean, you know, I, yeah, it doesn't seem that important to me, but okay. I mean, it'd be cool. It'd be cool if I knew them, but like, yeah, it's just, yeah. Like I said, I think it's, it's probably just like, yeah, some random researcher that has now died. Yeah.

Okay.

Okay.

Well, Chad, Chad McCaleb, thank you so much for your, you're in so much, so many interesting things. Um, I'm envious of like all the worlds you get to explore and, and, uh, Um, and, and I think if I'm not wrong, we have like an invitation to come film Vast sometime, right?

Yeah. You should definitely come down. It's way more interesting than me. It's like actual hardware. You can see, you can see.

And should we, should we Long Beach and Mojave or, or mostly Long Beach?

Um, if you have time, it would, it'd be cool to see the, the testing. Yeah. But, uh, yeah, definitely Long Beach and then yeah, maybe Mojave.

Okay. Okay. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. We'll make that happen. And, and yeah, thank you for your time.

Yeah. Thanks, Ashlee.

The Core Memory Podcast is hosted by me, Ashlee Vance. It is produced by David Nicholson and me. Our theme song is by James Mercer and John Sortland, and the show is edited by the John Sortland. Thanks as always to Brex and A1 Ventures for making this possible. Please visit our Substack, YouTube, and podcast channels to get more of what Core Memory makes. Thanks, y'all.