Dr. Alex Karp LIVE from AIPCon | Alex Karp, Dan Ives, Eric Brock, Casey Lane, Ted Mabrey

You're watching TVP.

Today is Thursday, March 12th, 2026.

We are in the middle of a blizzard.

We're in the middle of a blizzard. This isn't actually that bad, but it is very cold.

What do you mean it's not bad?

It's not a blizzard. We're having a great time. A real blizzard would not give this a, you know, a 10 out of 10 blizzard.

All right, well, we got high winds.

Just say you've never been to the East Coast before. True. Once or twice.

Been a few times.

You got a jacket on?

We're a long way from the West Coast.

We're a long way from the TVP and Ultradome. We'll be back there tomorrow. There's a ton of news that's going on, shaking the timeline, that we will be covering in detail tomorrow. Dwarkesh Patel dropped a response to the Department of War's moves to designate Anthropic as supply chain risk. There's a whole bunch of interesting nuanced conversation. We're going to get into some of that today. Patrick Collison talked about the nature of drama in Silicon Valley, a very interesting thread that I think we can have a long conversation about tomorrow. And Microsoft is fast following OpenAI and Anthropic with Copilot Health. And OpenAI plans to fold Sora into GPT as the sort of productization of consumer LLMs continues. So we'll be covering those stories tomorrow. We wanna say thank you to all of our sponsors that make this show possible. It'll be a little bit of a shorter show today, but we have a banger lineup. So we're gonna kick it off with Dan Ives. Wait, welcome to the show, Dan Ives. How you doing?

What's happening?

Thank you so much for taking the time. And on this very, very cold day to hop on with us. First, introduce yourself. Tell us what you do, why you're here.

Yeah, Dan Ives. I've covered tech stocks going back to late '90s on Wall Street. And look, for me, I mean, being here at Palantir, it's one of our favorite names in the last few years. To me, it's the AI revolution. It's almost been the poster child. And, you know, and I've in my career going back to Early days of Apple, Tesla. Yeah, it's always trying to find who could be the next one of those. And, you know, my view the last few years is Palantir has been what I view as kind of the golden child of AI.

Yeah. How do you work on separating like the narrative the company— so every company comes out and, you know, slaps AI on something, rename, slaps a.ai on their domain versus it showing up in the financials, it's showing up in the metrics.

There's only one CARP and one Palantir. And I think if you look at the numbers, numbers speak for themselves. And I think the commercial commercial business has really been what's been the jaw-dropper for Wall Street, because I think that alone, you know, could really ultimately be combined with the government business, a trillion-dollar company. Yeah. In the next 2 to 3 years. And I think Palantir continues to be one where I think investors continue to underestimate just how big they're going to be in this AI revolution.

Yeah. I remember reading the Airbus case study a while back. Have you talked to anyone today doing anything particularly interesting in the commercial sector with Palantir? Like, who sticks out?

90% of customers here weren't here 2 years ago.

Oh yeah.

So I think it just shows— now, obviously they've dominated the government, you know, dominated what we've seen across the board the last few years. But when it comes to commercial, they've really changed the whole game. And I think what you're seeing is with the AI revolution, when it comes to use cases, Palantir is the first call. And I think that's something that's still not factored into the stock in terms of how big the commercial business could be for Palantir. Because when you look at the AI revolution, of course, NVIDIA, Microsoft, you know, you have the semi plays, you have software. But I think Palantir is going to— when we look out in the next few years, they are going to be one of the clear standouts in terms of this fourth industrial revolution.

What advice do you have for investors who are seeing geopolitical tensions rise, war? There's chaos in the markets. Things are jumping up and down. Like, how do you keep a cool head right now?

I mean, look, in 25 years doing this, it's like if you sold because of geopolitical and in terms of those issues, that was the wrong move the last few decades. And I think it's one where you take a step back. We are in a fourth industrial revolution. I think tech stocks also make new all-time highs this year, but you have to navigate the volatility and the white knuckles. The haters come out, the bears maybe win the day. Yeah, but I think this will be short-lived. And that's why, you know, if you look what we see from Nvidia, to Microsoft, to Salesforce, ServiceNow, and, you know, to names like Palantir and some of the cybersecurity. You have to own the winners in these white-knuckle moments.

Have you been following the latest with NVIDIA? They're going to be training their own open-source models. Do you have a thesis of what that means for the company?

Yeah, I think they'll talk about more GTC next week. But it's our view NVIDIA— look, there's only one godfather of AI. It's Jensen of NVIDIA. They're now going to own more and more of that end-to-end platform. And I think, look, that's the smartest move. And The reality is that they're years ahead when it comes to chips, but when it comes to physical AI, the two best plays in physical AI are going to be NVIDIA and Tesla in terms of the two best physical AI plays.

I mean, cars, humanoid robots, both? What do you think?

Look, I think when it comes to autonomous, I mean, and you know, Jensen talked about this when we were there at CES, they are looking to go after what's going to be a trillion-dollar market opportunity. Now, I continue to think Tesla is going to be the ultimate winner when it comes to autonomous. Autonomous. But for NVIDIA, yeah, the chips are ultimately going to be fueled by NVIDIA. Everyone trying to play—

every OEM is going to need an autonomy stack. They're going to need the self-driving capability in some degree. Even if, you know, people are just driving the weekend, the car on the weekend for fun, they're still going to want to be able to throw it into autonomous mode to get home at the end of the day.

An 8-year-old today, yeah, doesn't need a driver's license when they're 16. And I think, I think going back to your point, it's easy to get in these modes were geopolitical white-knuckle moments. But if you look, I think ultimately Tesla autonomous is worth $1 trillion going to a Tesla story. And I think NVIDIA a year from now, we're looking at $5 trillion. We talk about, but I think $6 trillion market cap by 2027 still continues to be our call.

Yeah. You were at CES. What else did you see that was cool? What was under the radar? What were like the small trends, the little gadgets? I feel like CES is sort of like a World's Fair for cool tech.

Yeah.

Like what stuck out to you? Not even as an or just personally you were like, that was fun.

Look, I think robotics, like when you look like Serve Robotics, would be a good example, like autonomous in terms of what we see. The robotics coming out, I think is really going to be— really, it's also physical AI. I think that is really going to be the game changer. And who are the chip players that are going to fuel that? Of course, it's NVIDIA. But then you look down the sort of semi food chain. I think robotics, we talk about Optimus with Tesla. Humoroid robotics, we are still in the early days of where this is all going. I think, look, CES for so many years—

Zero, like they're— they don't— they barely exist right now. It's demos.

But that's why we're year 3 into an 8 to 10 year build out of the AI revolution. And I think those that are getting embarrassed, they're going to miss what I would use the next leg.

Do you think the humanoid robots will find more traction in consumer? Like every person has one, it's doing their dishes, it's doing their laundry, or are we going to not really see see these things because they're going to be in factories first.

Well, I think at first it's factories, and that's where we're seeing with Tesla. I think that's going to be the first key use cases. But then consumer, I think we look out 3, 4 years, humanoid robots are going to be something that will become common.

Everybody has a Roomba already. Look, yeah, people are used to it.

It goes back to like, if you go back over the last 10, 20 years, I could go through many instances where everyone's like, Apple, why would you, why'd you need an iPhone when you have a BlackBerry? Yeah, yeah.

What—

why ultimately are you following Apple in the '90s? And I think that—

do you remember what was it like? We were just reading about Larry Ellison yesterday. Yeah, he was thinking about taking over Apple at one point. Look, what was that like?

It goes back to like— and I've followed Ellison from the beginning, going back to late '90s. It's like it's trying to explain to investors that these things now look easy and no-brainers from Apple, Tesla. But at the point Like when you look in 2007, okay, a year later, financial crisis happens. Investors were like, this is a one-year AT&T phone. Why would anyone leave their BlackBerry?

Now you have $700 at a time when everything— I mean, you could kind of get it subsidized to maybe $400, but that was still like 4 times the price of most cell phones.

And the view was that they were never going to get to 100 million iPhones. And you're at 1.5 billion today. But it goes back to— I could go through many times in the past. I go 2022. Jensen, why are you spending money when it comes to AI? You're, you're essentially a GPU gaming company. Yeah. The point is we're going through one of those periods.

Sure, sure, sure.

But I think it's going to be proven to be, you know, the opportunity to own the tech winners. How did you—

how did you process Oracle's quarter?

I think it was a huge step in the right direction for software because right now it's an AI ghost trade. Anthropic has obviously been a big part.

AI ghost trade. Explain that term.

Because you're fighting a ghost.

Okay.

When you— when it comes to Anthropic, we're going to get into cybersecurity. Look what happens to CrowdStrike, Palo Alto and others. We're going to get into software. Look at Salesforce, ServiceNow. It's a goose chase because the reality is that the data, the stacks, the install base, that's who's going to be the use case. And that's why Palantir being one. But I'm a huge believer. Salesforce, ServiceNow and others.

When you look at— you're a believer in those?

I'm a huge believer that this is the most disconnected tech trade that I've seen in my career relative to the software. You call it a SaaS apocalypse, but I'd call it a ghost trade because you're fighting a ghost. Oracle, first step in that direction toward fighting the ghost trade. And I think it speaks to like, look, Ellison, you know, covering— going back to, you know, 25 years, that's someone that understands where they need to get to. Would you take out $50 billion of debt to get to $600 to $700 billion of market opportunity? That's what they're doing. I would do the same thing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The backlog is massive right now. Well, thank you so much for taking the time.

Great to be here.

Great to finally meet you. Stay warm out there.

You're not—

you're not quite dressed for it, but you know how you do it.

It's all about the mindset. Mindset.

All about the mindset. Well, thank you so much. We're going to take this headset off, pass it over to our next guest. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much. Well, we'll keep you quick. We'll keep it short. But thank you so much for joining. Good to see you. Please throw on this headset and then introduce yourself.

Hopefully the snow starts to melt off your jacket.

You really have a bunch of it. So please introduce yourself and the company.

Yeah, I'll do that. Before I do, thanks for having me. You got your headphone flipped. Oh, okay.

This one, like, flip it down there. Perfect.

Yeah, these things.

Okay, so thanks for having me.

Yeah.

And I'm hopefully going to be in the studio next time.

Yeah, we'd love to have you. That'd be great.

But no, I'm Eric Brock. I'm the chairman and CEO of Anduril, a listed company.

Yeah.

We're a defense and security technology company. We focus on drones. So we have aerial platforms, we have counter-drone platforms, which are particularly valuable. Of course, it's part of the cycle. We've got ground robots. And what we're trying to do is build this portfolio, systems of systems, to begin to integrate the air and the ground and those capabilities. And of course, that's why I'm this AIP card.

That makes a ton of sense.

First time on the show. Can you give us some history on the company, how you got to this point?

Yeah, sure. So, you know, we have— if you look at our chart, it looks like we're an overnight success. But as you know, you talk to guys like me all the time. This is a good, you know, 10+ years in doing what we do. Love it. And, you know, we're doing God's work to really build the technology. And these autonomous systems is complex. It's a marriage of hardware and software. You got to get it in the field, make it work. And it takes time. And this is not just for us, it's the industry. And what we're seeing for us for sure, but the industry more generally is that the technology is maturing, right? We're making it useful with customers. So we're on an adoption curve. So, you know, the history of the company is we've been developing technology for a number of years. That's the core. So now we're—

Yeah.

What was the first product? Was it actually like you build a product, you sell it to the government? Was that what that was?

Yeah, essentially. So we've got our first product was a drone in a box. So this is a drone infrastructure. It lives in a dock.

Docking station and then it takes off.

It's got a robotic arm. We can swap batteries and payloads. And that's used for, say, drone as first responder, right? The Dubai police are deploying this, drones everywhere they fly. So very useful. But what's particularly important about that and was really helpful for us to start to break out is it works, right? These technologies—

That's always helpful.

It works.

So, but you know, as we've evolved, you know, in terms of history, I'll fast forward. You know, once we were able to sort of demonstrate that we can take these to the end zone and start to build markets and build customers, we really began to become aware of the bigger opportunity. There's many, many players. I say drones, but it's on the ground, they're in the air, they're in the water and all the critical components around these systems. We've built a lot of companies and they're maturing. However, we built technology platforms. Now we have to build businesses and that's what Honest is about. So we've begun to consolidate and bring these capabilities into a portfolio, but it's not just separate. We're going to integrate them. You get scale going to market, you get supply chain scale, and that's the whole thesis around our financial model.

So there's part of it that's more private equity roll-up. There's also an investing arm. You take minority stakes as well. When you make an investment, are you always looking to build a position over time to where you could own the full company, or are you also looking at those like venture capital bets where they will just, you know, perform financially?

Yeah, so the answer is yes. Okay. So it's all of that.

Perfect.

And really what we believe is that there's a couple of things. So most of our capital is deployed in control investments because we want to get that leverage and we want to focus on mature technologies. At the same time, the ecosystem is really important. And I think particularly when we're coming into the public markets because we're transitioning from venture-funded companies to now they're maturing, you know, we need growth capital. It's a different business model, it's a different cost of capital, and that's what we're deploying. So one of the things we've been trying to do is the public markets are not as, as familiar with a lot of these technologies and systems as compared to the private markets. That's where they were born. So as a leader and the leader we want to be, we think the market needs is we're trying to shine lights and support some of the ecosystem players because we need the ecosystem to grow up around us to get scale, right? So even places where you might say, hey, they're competing, is that not really? Leaders have to come together because the supply chain needs us. We can't be a cottage industry of hundreds of drone players. The leaders have to come. And if I can help identify that for, you know, the public markets, that's important and we get value from it. And of course we can make money.

Yeah. So tell me more about the disconnect between the business and the market. I'm interested to know. There's a lot of investors out there that they don't even need to know the product, use the product, but they know if it's SaaS, it's going to recur, it's going to be revenue, there's going to be some high gross margins, some costs, low CapEx, et cetera. Like, how is your business and the business lines that you have, how are they different from other companies that are in the market? Is it you're doing deals with the government, so you're working on programs of record, the money comes later, but the contract values get deployed earlier? Like, how financially is it different?

There's a lot of that, but maybe I'll start at the most simple level, which is is where you started, which is the drone, right? The drone in and of itself, by and large, is a commodity, right? It's not hard to build a quadcopter or even a fixed-wing drone. What is hard is to make them autonomous, right? That is another layer of development and sophistication. So that's one. And then the second layer here is bringing the systems together, right? Air and ground, putting the command and control around it. And of course, that's where Palantir is really going to help us at mass scale. Massive scale. But that's where you start to differentiate, and that's where you can capture margin. That's where you can capture recurring program business. And the thing about the markets are a lot of what we're doing is infrastructure. So think about counter-drone. There's a massive number of locations across the world that need to be protected. And this is not going to be just, hey, this year we're going to protect from drone threats. It's 10 years to build this cycle.

It's too big. So it's recurring that way. The If the last 2 weeks have taught us anything, is that it's any targets on the table, commercial or military.

Particularly, yeah, I mean, you know, they attack the economy, right? And I think this is a threat that we're seeing today. The public safety, the Homeland Security officials, the Department of War, they've been preparing for this for a long, long time, but it's hard. So you're seeing a lot of technology, including ours, that we're under a faster pace of maturation. And but we're here, it's going to happen, but it's going to take some time and it is urgent. So then the other question is, I get a lot is, okay, what happens if peace breaks out? Well, I don't know that anyone's expecting that soon, but eventually we hope that that does happen. Of course, we still have to have this protection because you can't, you can't, you can't be vulnerable.

Yeah.

The lower skies, as they say, you know, is technology has now made them, you know, is a different threat than we've ever had, particularly on U.S. soil.

Sure.

So again, this is— you asked about the business model. You can think about this as an infrastructure bill for a decade or longer. So And then of course, when you're installing infrastructure, you have to service it, you have to upgrade it. So there's a lot of recurring elements here in our financial model.

That makes a ton of sense. Well, thank you so much for taking the time. Hopefully we'll see you in the studio much warmer next time.

I love it.

Let's pop off those headphones and we will bring over our next guest. Thank you so much for hopping on and we will continue our coverage today. It's good to meet you. How are you doing? Good to see you. Throw this headphone set on.

And can you do it over there?

Can you do it over the hat? I don't know what we do. You can put the head over the— oh, there you go. That works.

See if I can throw it back on.

That works great, actually.

There we go.

Can you hear me okay?

I can.

Perfect.

Can you hear me okay?

We can hear you just fine.

Okay, good.

First time on the show, please introduce yourself and the company.

Uh, my name is Casey Lane, and I work for a western sports entertainment and media company called Teton Ridge. We do a number of things across sports media and entertainment, all focused around Western lifestyle and Western sports.

That's great. What are the most popular sports that you're covering?

So we have a television network and a subscription-based streaming company called Cowboy Channel and Cowboy Plus. We have a linear channel and then we have a subscription app that covers all of professional rodeo on the PRCA, which is the primary sanctioning body of professional rodeo. And then we also have a bull riding team in the TKO/PBR-owned PBR Teams League. So those are the two biggest— two of the biggest. We also produce a massive rodeo Memorial Day weekend at Globe Life Field in Arlington and do a variety of other things in Western sports. We have a Hollywood division that produces scripted, unscripted movies, all kinds of stuff around Western sports.

I see a few years ago I followed J.B. Monte a little bit. Who's— who are the big stars these days?

So the big stars in bull riding right now, um, you know, they, they vary from sort of team to team, space to space. Um, on our team we have a couple of guys that are like, you know, chiseled old veterans, a couple of Brazilian guys. And then we have a, a sort of middle-aged bull rider I would call him. He'd love to hear me call him that. Uh, Keishon Whitehorse.

Okay, who's like— good name for a bull rider. Yeah, he's great.

Good name for him.

He's awesome.

Yeah.

But then, like, there's some emerging talent. There's a kid out of North Carolina named Clay Guyton. There's a kid that's on Florida's team but grew up in Texas named John Kremmer. So always new talent coming in. We— Colby, who's my head coach, just spent 4 days in Brazil at a, at a combine that PBR puts on down in Brazil to try to find new and emerging talent down there as well.

So very cool. How is the business growing overall? There's a lot of turmoil in media, a lot of consolidation. But I imagine with the internet, there's more people just becoming aware of bull riding, of Western lifestyle sports broadly. But what's it been like the last couple of years?

Yeah, I mean, it's, it's no secret in the market that Western has, you know, had a renaissance, right? A combination of, of COVID and, and the Taylor Sheridan Yellowstone. I was about to say, there's so many different funnels into this world. And I look at like, yeah, I love it. I give— I will give Taylor all the credit in the world. But also I look at it as like You know, that's a little bit of the canary in the coal mine.

Okay.

I think, you know, people particularly in the U.S. have grown up farther and farther away from farming and ranching.

Yeah, people are moving to the cities.

But it's always part of—

Totally.

Our ethos, right? As Americans. Yeah. There's this thing right here is the most iconic American symbol that there is.

It really is. You know what?

Tommy wears one on the weekends. I'll say that.

I do. I do.

So the weekdays.

Yeah.

And so that, that sort of cultural, you know, phenomenon of what sort of Yellowstone brought and what COVID brought, getting people back outdoors. You know, they couldn't go on vacation, so, you know, I'm gonna buy a— I'm gonna buy an RV and a side-by-side and go see the West. Yeah, all those types of things.

Are you guys— are you guys trying to manufacture some type of Drive to Survive moment? Because I think what that— obviously Drive to Survive introduced the sport more broadly to Americans, but it also drilled down into the individual talent, which the that's something that Taylor Sheridan, like the Taylor Sheridan Industrial Content Complex, is not actually getting into the talent that you guys are covering?

Yeah, I think it's definitely on the roadmap of projects that we're looking at. We've done some stuff. PBR has done some stuff. There was a show on Amazon a couple of years ago around the first year of our— of the teams league that we participate in. But You know what we are really— what, you know, my belief is that we have this, we have the attention of the country, um, and, and for to some extent the world, right, uh, that, that's looking at Western. The place where people attach passion is sports. So how do we take that interest in Western and drive it towards sport? Because that's a place where we're heavily invested, right? Like I said, we have a whole television network. And streaming app and Cowboy Plus that is dedicated to the business of rodeo and rodeo media. So it's definitely something. And we're, you know, we sort of have extensions too, like our big rodeo that I talked about that we produce in Arlington, the American, is actually on Fox. Oh, okay. It's not even on our own platform because we're trying to widen the aperture a little bit and get more people into the top of the funnel to drive them into that sort of fandom.

That makes sense. What's the What's the next country outside of Brazil that's pipeline for talent?

Bull riding in particular is very popular in Canada, Australia, Brazil, US obviously, Mexico. Argentina is a sort of a new frontier. A lot of it has to do with the level of bull talent that those countries have access to.

Interesting. There's two layers basically.

Yeah, because if a guy is really good in Argentina right now, he probably needs to go to Brazil and get on a little bit better bull and then come here to get on like the highest caliber of bull, right? Like if you took a kid straight from Argentina and put them on our bulls, it would be like, uh, you know, going from the pony rides to, you know, riding thoroughbreds, you know what I mean? Just because they don't have that level— not, not that they're— not that the talent's not as good, they just don't have access to the kind of bull power that we do here.

Are there any science or technology stories that the industry is grappling with? I'm thinking about cloning prize bulls or genetic engineering or performance-enhancing drugs. Like, are there any areas where the community has sort of grappled with and found like a, you know, happy medium on these new tech?

Well, there's a, there's a lot of, there's a lot of those scenarios over the years that, that have been relevant. Genetics is a huge part of the bucking bull and bucking animal business.

Yeah.

You know, it's like, it's like anything else.

Yeah.

You know, racehorses run fast.

Racehorses, exactly.

Yeah.

Labradors chase tennis balls and bucking bulls buck. You bring bulls that buck to daughters of other bulls that buck and you get more bulls that buck.

There you go.

But there's a ton to the genetics. Okay. And there has been some cloning projects and things like that.

Okay.

You know, really the revolution, the next revolution I think in technology in Western sports is what we're doing right now with TWG AI and Palantir., and we're bringing, we're building a video analytics platform that, basically tracks the animal, the rider, to provide data.

It's Moneyball.

It's Moneyball. Yeah. And we pair that with the actual data from, you know, scoring and timing. Yeah. And we're building, to the best of our ability to predict um, you know, predicted outcome models of this type of bull with this particular rider, this, you know, the— these sort of different scenarios. We're using it on the broadcast side to really dive, dive deeper, uh, for the fan base into, you know, why is this— why was that ride scored that way, you know? Well, we can go back to this, you know, analytics platform and show you, you know, with, with graphics and with, with the data you know, why this bull bucked harder than that essentially. So that— those are the kinds of things that we're working on right now.

Yeah.

Um, to do two things. One, on the bull riding team side, to make us better and give us a competitive advantage, uh, and then sell the viewership pieces and parts of it maybe to some of our competitors, um, as the analytics platform. And then on the viewership side, it really is about informing, um, informing the fans. I mean, look, you watch an NFL game now, you know when a guy somebody does a punt return, oh wow, that guy ran, you know, 23 miles an hour or whatever the number is. We don't have that stuff in rodeo yet, but we're building that right now.

Yeah.

Uh, how do you think about these like must-see events, like creating like the Super Bowl moment, amplifying all the energy in the entire broader industry into like one singular day, minute, hour? Uh, what is the strategy there currently? Where do you want to see it going?

So So that manifests itself in each of the different sports verticals differently. Like in professional bull riding, that moment is the team championships in November at T-Mobile Arena in Vegas. In traditional rodeo, in the PRCA, that's 10 days in Las Vegas in December during the NFR. But just like you say that, you know, sports are about moments in time, our rodeo that we do The American is like the US Open, right? It's the top 5 in each discipline against a group of, of, you know, 5 in every, you know, 5 per discipline from every, you know, every other part of the world that have competed on a track through a series of qualifiers and, and regionals to get the chance to compete against the best in the world. And if they beat the best in the world, they win a million bucks. Actually, this year they win $2 million because last year nobody won it and it rolled over. Oh nice. So that's kind of, you know, those are sort of like the big moments in time right now in Western sports.

Yeah. How do you think about the creator economy broadly? The personal Instagrams is following, like, saw someone who does F1 racer and he's on Twitch in the simulator and you just have this like ability to go, go to the actual event, but then also open up your phone and continue that experience. How important is the continuation of the experience across the internet these days?

Uh, it's hugely important. Um, we— and we've, we've done a number of events. We've got a, we've got a guy in our company who runs our, our fantasy gaming business. He's a former contestant.

Yeah.

Um, who's a really energetic sort of, you know, personality. And he has done several hosted events where we take the live rodeo feed from our Cowboy Plus product and push it through, you know, alternate platforms like Twitch and bring in people to host on their own channels that have never watched it before and interact with him asking questions like, what's, you know, what the hell are these guys doing? What's going on there? You know, so, um, that's a space we're just sort of trying to figure out, I think, right now.

Yeah.

But in terms of like like, you know, the influencer community. You know, our athletes have found sort of their own voice there, right? Because in rodeo, you know, until these— until teams came along in bull riding, rodeo, everybody's like an independent contractor, right? So my ability as a contestant to monetize my very short career is, you know, can I put a logo on my shirt that's going to get caught on TV?

Yeah.

Well, now with the emergence of social media, those guys have their own voice, their own place, their own, you know, incentive to get more followers so they can go to these bigger brands and say, hey, Ariat, you know, you got to pay me X because I've got this many followers and I'm talking about your brand every week and that kind of stuff.

What's your most memorable bull ride for yourself?

So I was never a bull rider.

But you have to have taken one out.

Never. Really?

Never. It's so dangerous. It's one of those, um, look, I— so I did the timed events in, in traditional rodeo growing up. My dad was a bull rider. And I think as much my dad, but more so my mom, having been married to a bull rider, made sure that I never even looked in that direction. But I'm pretty convinced I don't have the thing. The thing. There's a thing there. The thing is the ability to suspend fear.

Yeah.

It really is. And every active bull rider will tell you that they're not scared. And every retired bull rider 5 years later when he looks back on it says, no, it's not about not being scared, it's about being able to convince yourself that you're not scared. There you go. For that moment that— because when you, you know, I'd love for you guys to come to an event, right? Get behind the chutes when the whole thing is— when the whole, you know, 25,000 pounds of steel around you is shaking because a bull's moving and he's 1,800 pounds. Yeah. And a 140-pound guy is about to climb over the chute and get on him. Like, there's— I just don't have it.

I did.

It just doesn't—

it just doesn't exist in my brain, the ability to just shut that switch off. I don't think you have it. I would love to see— just, I, I have full faith you do it. You're good. I'll be watching.

I'll be rooting for you. And, and look, I mean, with, you know, I compare it, uh, you know, there's a lot of comparables, right? You think about, um, you know, IndyCar drivers that are going, you know, 240 miles an hour down the backstretch at Indianapolis, or you think about you know, motorcycle racers or, or UFC guys. Like, UFC guys compare a lot to that, I think.

Um, but to a person, when you bring those guys—

180 pounds— to a person, when you bring those guys to a PBR event and they watch it live, they, they're like, I, I can't believe that this, that this is a thing. We just had, uh, we were just in Pittsburgh a couple weeks ago and we had Ben Roethlisberger with us on the back of the chutes, and he was just going crazy because he's not, you know, been up that get that close and personal with it.

Well, thank you so much for taking the time.

Thank you guys, I appreciate it. I look forward to coming to an event at some point.

Grab those headphones from you and have a great rest of your day. Thank you guys. We'll talk to you soon. Welcome back to the show. Hey, it's been a little over a year, right?

Did we talk to you last year? Good to see you, Ted.

Good to see you, Ted. Uh, for those who aren't familiar, please introduce yourself. How long have you been working at Palantir?

I've been here 16 years.

16 years!

There we go, there we go. Is this the coldest AIP Con you've been to yet?

You're freezing. I got married down the street actually. No way. And in an outdoor wedding with no contingency plan for— Wow.

And what it was like?

Weather was great.

Oh, weather was great.

So you picked the venue this year.

You got good luck. This is the bad luck. But you can only roll the dice so many times. Talk about your role. Talk about how it's changing. I'm very interested to know how the role of the forward deployed engineer is changing this year, this month because of AI agents. But take me through a little bit of the history and how you think it's progresses from here?

Yeah, so my role primarily for 16 years, what I've been doing is going on-site deploying our software over and over and over again. And I think the this year question is really prescient because having done it for 16 years, I'm pretty good at it. I kind of know how to do it. And as I go and see what our teams are doing, it looks like a complete alien. I don't recognize it at all.

Is that just because of timing or actual roles or? What people are doing?

I think there are two things that are actively changed and then two implications of it that really matter. The two things that have actually changed is the timing, the pace is rapidly accelerating to zero. You can start and within a day you can have an application that actually matters to a business.

And what's driving that? Is that your guys' internal process or is it the technology getting better?

I think it's 3 things. One is, maybe most important, is the market is now demanding much more from software than it's ever demanded before. And so that cultural expectation is a huge part of it, of like, this has to matter. This has to be in the fight.

This has to be really relevant. Everyone's used ChatGPT. Like, they know what it's capable of, and then they show up to work and they're like, why am I still filling out this form 10 times? They're like, hey, this thing's magical.

Work sucks.

Yeah, work sucks. And it's true. Yeah, and that demand is huge and it is like a huge accelerant for us. Then the second is, have you been building the infrastructure that presume the models are gonna get better? And if you're ahead of the infrastructure and you're presuming like, hey, what's gonna have to be where these things are actually load-bearing in very highly consequential regulated decisions that have to be made 1,000 times, which integrate different decision-making processes across people, across systems, you're gonna need infrastructure that's able to do it. That infrastructure, has matured a lot over time, and then the models themselves are getting better. And so that means that you can now have software go from legacy, rigid, defined by its limitations, to immediate, adaptive, and it can be embodied, maybe not like literally embodied, but embodied in the way that you want it to be such that it works, which is the second thing that I think is just dramatically changing about the process, which is it never made sense for your best people to engage with what the technology is that runs your business. —What does that mean? —When you think about, like, every organization has this at the edge, and they have it in the C-suite. They have the thing at the edge, which is like the guy who runs the plant. And the guy who runs the plant knows why it works, knows why it breaks. Every time something needs to be fixed, like, you know John, right? Like, John makes the plant work. And in some ways, John was like the least leveraged person by technology, because everything you'd buy with enterprise technology would be to standardize, to enable management, And that person worked around the system. They had their access databases, their own Excel macros. They had their own way of operating. Now the technology can be John's Iron Man suit. And so that means that it now makes sense for John to spend all their time. And you have to earn this. This is what the forward deploy engineer does, is earn the time of the best people so that they can dictate what the system is that actually runs so that their company can be more differentiated over time. And then at the top, you can do this with the CEO. And a lot of my conversations is, this is what the company that's going to dominate my industry is going to look like in 2030. And then our FTE's job is to say, okay, well, let's get an MVP of that done by Easter.

Do companies, I mean, in this world where companies are demanding more from software, do they understand what Palantir does? Do they understand the value prop more now? Is it easier to explain to them or is it getting more complicated because the tools are more complicated and the capabilities are more complicated?

It's easier to explain because we spend no time explaining it and all you do is show it. And so it's like the tortured explanation, I kind of think, which is, a derivative of, I need to understand everything because this decision that I'm going to make, I'm going to be stuck with forever. I'm going to be locked into this system. I'm going to have to use it. This has, like, made sense for how people procured enterprise technology.

Sure. More stuff's more flexible.

Analytical process. These things. And now it's like, show me that it works. And show me that it works. And so, I want to spend virtually no time explaining why it works and just showing you how it works. And then let's talk about how to make it work 10 times better for you.

So, put aside, like, Palantir's hiring plans and just talk to me about the American economy. Do we need more forward deployed engineers as like a society for where we're going?

I think the thing that the forward deployed engineers embodies for us and why I always get a little bit stuck, you know, I talk to a lot of companies that are like, hey, we're thinking about the FDE model. Does it make sense? Are we going to do it? And the place where I always get stuck is, well, if you're not building our company, I'm not sure you should do forward deployed engineers. I don't think it's intrinsically good or it's intrinsically physically bad. The reason we do forward-deployed engineers is our core philosophy, the core business strategy is that we're going to build the technology so our customers win. And if that's your core thesis, then of course you need forward-deployed engineers because if you want to win, you have to be able to deliver and you have to be able to do it. And then you also need to figure out for our customers and we also have to win. We have to scale our capabilities. We have to be able to invest in R&D. So we have to figure out how to synthesize those things back into scalable technologies that allow us to deliver for our customers more and more over time. That is a highly tasteful exercise. I support what gets synthesized, what gets productized. Frankly, I think if you didn't have Sham, it would be impossible. I wouldn't do it that way. But the thing that I think forward-deployed engineering does embody, which I would argue we need more of in society, is it's sort of the rejection of the financialization and managerialism that defines what you think a business can look like with software versus saying the point of software is to enable creation, is to enable the end customer to work. And by the way, we've proven that you can do that and build a really scalable product.

Profitable business at the same time. Where do you FTEs fit into the customer lifecycle? Is it kind of a recurring engagement? I'm thinking about the last 2 weeks, we have so many different supply chain disruptions, a lot of companies that are leveraging Palantir to run their operations. Are they, I imagine the systems are built to be able to withstand chaos, that's kind of the point, but at the same time, do you ever redeploy? Forward deployed engineers during moments like this?

Yeah, I would think of it in two ways. One is for us, the forward deployed engineer is a CapEx investment, right? You're installing the factory, you're building the initial ontology, you're training the existing customer to be able to wield the technology in the way that they want it to. And forward deployed engineering done well is kind of a CapEx investment. And then the place where it's not is, and where you do have re-engagement is our goal is to continue to push the bounds The ambition of like, what do you want to do? Not, can I deliver the same thing more efficiently to the next customer? But given what you've done today, have you thought about doing this? And have you thought about doing that and pushing the boundaries of the creativity and then having the connected connectivity back with our core platform teams say, we're going to completely throw away our entire roadmap and focus this around this one singular customer because if we can do this, they can win. And by the way, we're going to build the primitives that allow us to build things that our other customers win with.

How much of the discussion between FDEs and Palantir folks and corporations is around just explaining the capabilities of modern AI models versus previously, like what a software system could look like. How is that changing? Because it feels like we're in this crazy capability overhang where, like, the models move so fast, the technology is getting so much better that you can take 2 weeks off and come back and that thing that you were smashing your head against the wall on has just been one-shot by the latest model.

Yeah. I don't know. In my world where we live, that isn't true. Like, we've seen very little what I would call cannibalization of the existing thing, but we have seen the, I get to re-decomp this problem. I can reorganize around what these things are. And so, a lot of it is, are you building an engine that presumes change in the underlying technology, or are you building what most enterprise IT systems, people, organizations are, which are I need to presume stability and manage risk, costs, and effect. You do need to now build a system that presumes rapid rate of change.

Yeah. So where, where are you seeing more value in using generative AI models to build deterministic software faster versus actually deploying a stochastic model, a non-deterministic model into an enterprise workflow? Because I imagine that a lot of your systems, a lot of your customers are saying, look, I don't care that the latest model is 99.99%. I would rather have a system that's 100% verifiable because at least I know that if I've defined it in a particular way with business logic, I get the same output no matter what.

Yeah, I can tell you the ANSI pattern and the pattern that's working. So the ANSI patterns are called like the pejoratively the private equity mindset of how to deploy this type of software, which is you have now 3 types of, call it cognition computation. You have traditional computing, you have human thought, and then you have generative AI. The private equity model is saying, I'm gonna take this new form of cognition and try and replace old forms of cognition and do the exact same thing I'm doing before with slightly fewer heads. So then you have the anxiety around job loss. You have the, hey, I'm gonna increase margins, but so what? And I think that is a dramatic underuse of it. Of the technology. One, it's a lot harder than it looks to do that, to turn something that's non-deterministic into something that is deterministic. But more importantly, it's why would you do that? It's so powerful if you put it into white space, like let it run like a thoroughbred by decomping problems into where it's actually useful versus trying to replace something in the old kind of sclerotic enterprise technology estate.

Yeah. How have you processed— there's a bunch of AI rollups, holding companies, people, venture people that are trying maybe take something out of the PE playbook, but build some type of advantage by applying AI better?

How—

like, what do you think their prospects are? One of those things that sounds, sounds really straightforward, but easier said than done.

Yeah, I don't know any specifics, so it's hard for me to opine what they're doing. But the first question that I would ask is to understand what the culture of those companies are and why I think like Private equity is just culturally not built to do technology. To do this technology right, you have to presume that you're wrong at the outset, not presume that you're right. That's very hard from my experience with working with folks in private equity. And so if you can build a culture that presumes that you need to create, iterate, and discover what the thing ought to be versus do the deductive kind of management consultant playbook of, you know, I've talked to all of these firms and like the weird thing is everybody ends up with the exact same target that they're gonna go to because they have the exact same deductive framework of like, This is what it looks like. They process a lot of papers. It's like, okay, and then somehow everyone's doing accounting roll-up. So then where's the alpha? The investment thesis is on. And then I think the execution is going to be a lot harder than they think it is.

Yeah. Well, Ted Maybury, thank you so much for taking the time.

Great to have you.

Thanks for having me out there. We will grab those headphones and talk to you soon. Jordy, would you rather have $10 million or access to ChatGPT in 2012?

This is such a funny question because it reminds me of the, like, you know, $10 million or dinner with Jay-Z or dinner with Drake or something.

Jay-Z.

But in this case, in this case, we were talking about this off air. And if you had ChatGPT 10 years ago, you could make hundreds of millions of dollars in so many, so many silly ways, right? It'd be like, I'd be like, same-day essays for college students. You need an essay? You got something to do? We got one. If you were the only person with a technology. Yeah. No, and Ben was saying, you know, like even on the image and video side, it's like I'll generate any asset that you want. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, commercials, I mean, that would be crazy. People would be like, how did you do this in a day? Even just like, even if you don't have Codex, but you just have ChatGPT, you can probably piece together so much software that then you could go sell as an actual company.

There's a million different ways. Really, really funny because it sounds It sounds like such a silly question, but then when you actually think about it, it's remarkable. I would build a very, very thin wrapper.

Oh yeah, I mean, that's one. If you just actually go and sell this futuristic technology, everyone will assume you're a time traveler. We're doing pretty well.

We're doing pretty well. The snow is hitting my feet. The computers are working.

The stream is up. This is a miracle. Uh, we are— we are— it is so cold that the computers weren't charging at one point. Uh, we— I, I've heard, uh, you know, if you're in the desert you need fans for your computer to keep it, uh, cool. We probably need to get some of those, but I never thought we'd have to get heat pads. Oh, they have— the team, the production team has heat pads on the computer. And we should be joined by Alex Karp in just a few minutes. So thank you for tuning in. Thank you to our sponsors for making this possible. More news.

Trump administration set to suspend the Jones Act. Oh, really?

Oil prices. Was this what this was Alex Epstein was talking about? Yeah.

I mean, a lot of people have wanted this forever. Yeah. Because the Jones Act obviously has had some unnecessary or unintentional consequences. Yeah, it sounds really good on paper, but difficult. Yeah, we're getting it in not the way that situation people would have expected. Yeah. Gort says, why don't they just tokenize the oil in the Middle East and transport it across permissionless financial rails, thereby avoiding the Strait of Hormuz altogether?

Here's your oil NFT. Here's your—

here's your gasoline. Here's something we need to figure out. Helium. Helium exposure. Qatar's shutdown of liquefied natural gas production has shaken about a third of global helium taken about a third of global helium production offline, affecting chipmakers who rely on helium for semiconductor manufacturing. Helium has no viable substitute in the chip process, and no other source can immediately replace Qatar's supply. With helium containers already filled before the war, before the war, remaining stranded if the disruption persists, helium shortages could force chipmakers to deprioritize lower-margin product lines, reinforcing the existing allocation towards AI memory and deepening an already severe memory shortage.

So find me the Alex Epstein of helium today. Find me the Scott Nolan of helium. There's got to be someone out there who's been building a startup around helium. I actually did talk to someone. I don't know that I should share all the details, but they were looking at a startup that was going to buy a pretty significant like, you know, helium mine or something like that. And they had a whole business plan for it. And I think it— this was years and years ago, but it was a fascinating industry. I dug into it for like, you know, about an hour with this friend of the show. Lots to learn more about rare elements and minerals and all the different impacts that the recent news cycle has on all aspects of the economy. Hopefully an Odd Lots episode on helium soon.

That would certainly be welcome. In Philly, 600 tubs of French dip mysteriously showed up at several restaurants. Is this real? And Brooks says, yeah, it's in the Philly Inquirer. Brooks says it's starting. It's starting.

It's starting. Who knows? It's very ominous. What dip? French dip?

Is that like sour cream? No, with the sandwiches.

French dip? Oh, well, French dip is a sandwich, but is it also a topping?

I know, but it's a soup.

You dip the sandwich in it. The au jus. Au jus. Okay. Okay.

I'm getting it. Sue Hale says the run on inference capacity is coming. You have been warned.

Inference capacity. I mean, we've seen that with Claude going down. The GPUs are on fire over on OpenAI with the Codex team. Tebow resetting limits. Someone made a button that a website that's just have the codecs limits been reset and you can just go to this website. It's one of these like one-off vibe-coded pages and if TiVo resets them, you can go and check your codecs.

Sam Hogan says real GPU shortage has never been tried. Yeah, we could be.

We could be getting close. There's a lot of demand, especially if Nvidia is starting to keep the chips tight. This is huge news for Tyler. He's been pitching Jensen on keeping the chips for himself and building an AI model or an open-source model. And that was the, that was the big news. What was the total headline figure? Something like $26 billion over 5 years investing in open-source LLM development, something like that.

It was a big number. $26 billion.

Big number. Big number.

Not the biggest number we've ever— Another big number. Netflix is paying $600 million for Ben Affleck's company. This was reported earlier in the week that they were acquiring it, but there was no number. $600 million is a lot bigger than what I imagined. I was looking at it as like, you know, hey, this would be a nice soft landing for this film company, but pretty significant outcome.

Yes, $600 million is a big number. It'll be very interesting to see what Netflix does with that. We tracked a little bit of the— there's a new Calshree market up on which Hollywood studio, which traditional Hollywood studio, big Hollywood studio, will release a fully AI-generated, uh, film or a scripted series by 2027. And I think Netflix was in the lead, but just barely. It's so early, so we'll see where all of that goes.

Redbird is the big backer of Interpositive. Oh, which Redbird is also capital. Yeah, big backer of the, of the Warner Brothers deal.

Are they an investment bank or investment firm as well? They do both. They take positions and advisory, right? Yes. Yeah.

Exciting.

Well, we should be joined by Alex Karp in just a minute. Anything else in the timeline worth—

I thought this was interesting. One of, at least, Anthropic's only marketing growth person did an interview. And extremely impressive what he was able to handle on his own, obviously using the tools to their fullest to this extent, but a lot of people thought it was funny because it's like, yeah, you're— you probably like growing that fast.

You could probably add more people. Well, good growth people are hard to find. They are. Yeah, it is, it is difficult.

Um, but yeah, it would be interesting. Gotta talk about Cursor. What's going on with Cursor? Cursor is having what sound like early talks, uh, to raise more money at somewhere around around $50 billion.

I saw one post that was maybe $60 billion. I mean, it's just a massive up run. What was the last round? $18 or $20? $30. $30, okay. So nice little step up. A lot of doom and gloom on the timeline around Cursory. We were debating this yesterday. Fascinating just how big the market is, where adoption sits.

But the reporting says they're growing at 25% month over month.

Incredible. At scale, $2 billion ARR, something like that.

Yeah, and I just think we keep getting these data points that show that the world is much bigger than whatever people are saying on X on any given day. Yep, yep, yep, yep.

It's easy to read into Kyle Russell's post about his team, which is truly like the cutting edge, most online group of folks shifting over and shifting away from Cursor. But there are still probably applications where it makes a ton of sense and a bunch of companies that are happy with the product and continuing to pay, continuing to grow. And then there's also that interesting thesis about maybe there's a world where they act as a model router in some ways and are piping different services in. Who knows what the margins look like in the limit, but certainly could continue to grow. What else is in the timeline while we wait for Alex Karp to join TVVN live?

I mean, the big news is Taco Bell is adding a skincare item to its menu. Mountain Dew Baja Blast under-eye patches are going to be infused with caffeine and citrus.

That's essential if you're in a code red. If you're in a code red, get the Baja Blast under— it's under-eye shadow. I don't even know what that is. But you can get it at Taco Bell on the menu at any Taco Bell. Is this like some limited drop? Is this some viral stunt? Is this real? I don't know.

I have to check it out.

Dean Ball is going back and forth with Emil Michael. That's right. They're trading blows about what does it mean to have a constitution? Should— who should be— who should write that? Who should give the models their personality? And I mean, we'll talk more about this tomorrow, but Dwarkesh Patel has a great post summarizing a lot of his thoughts, working through all the different philosophies of when the government should be in charge, when different public companies should be in charge. Dean Ball's main point is that, you know, maybe Constitution wasn't the right term, or maybe it's a charged term or a loaded term that people read into. But Dean Ball's point is that there is no way to train an LLM that doesn't have a personality. Personality, even if it's the most robotic personality, that's still a personality. Well, we are joined by Alex Karp. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for taking the time. You guys want with or without hat? Uh, whatever's comfortable for you. You can do hat.

It's cold out here.

Keep your hat on.

I feel like this is an average day for you. You're always out skiing.

We should have done that. Yeah, we need to get— we're close to getting skis.

Look, well, you know, we were supposed to do something physical.

It's starting to stick.

It's starting to stick.

Oh, I like this vibe. Now I feel like a new Caster, I feel important. Oh yeah, this is good. You're like 8 feet tall. People don't realize that. He's not standing up because it would be like— he's like counteracting for all of us.

He's like, he's like 8 foot. Last time we talked to you, I think you were doing 4 minutes on the dead hang.

What's it up to now? 5:05. 5:05. What about in the cold though? That's gonna be— sorry, we need to have a special minute for that. Yeah, yeah. For those of you who haven't done a dead hang First of all, go do it. Why is it important? Well, there are very few things that are proxy indicators that are accurate for health. Yeah. It's like dead hang, farmer's walk, body weight, and VO2 are the 3 ones that count. Okay.

I don't think anyone really— What about 1-rep max bench press?

That's all I focus on. Okay, well, you know, it's like—

I feel like as long as I have a really impressive bench press, I'll live a short but glorious life. Yeah, I don't know.

Didn't they say something about that? Yeah.

Who wants to live a long, glorious life? When you can live a glorious short life?

Yeah, I think that's what they tell you before they give you a bad salary or something like that. I think it's like, yeah, it's like, yeah, my social life is so great, I only have a bot, but I enjoy it. Yeah, it's a kind of logic. No, but no, it's—

Dead hang is important.

Dead hang is crucial. Okay. And you really need to go work on it, especially anyone watching your podcast. Yes. Is likely to outperform. Yes. You want to have something, you know, you want to be able to do something with that outperformance.

Yeah, like dead hang.

Like, yeah, well, the dead hang may be a proxy indicator for other things you could do with your outperformance. Yes. You know, but not everyone is— yeah, not everyone is like 6'9" and like, you may not need a dead hang, but the rest of us—

well, I can cheat because most of the pull-up bars, I just stand on the floor. That's right.

Yeah, I can hold forever. You can forever. That's right.

That's right. But when you're not dead hanging, what should people be doing with the new coding agents? How important is it to learn to code? How important is it to— Look, there are two—

everybody's worried about like their future, but there are basically two ways to know you have a future. One, you have some vocational training. Okay. So it's like, or two, you're neurodivergent. And when I say neurodivergent, I mean broadly defined, like your guys are sitting here. You could have had a corporate tool job. Yeah. You could have been like, I don't want to pick on Goldman, but like just say You know, like a job. I applied there, they turned me down. Well, yeah. I did work at Citadel. No, whatever. You could have a job where you're like— He tried.

He tried.

And it's like, yeah, no, actually, maybe they didn't know the right way to test. Yeah. Like, it's like, yeah, they were like, you know, whatever. I'm not picking on one or the other. I'm just saying, you know, like, you are probably here. You think you're here because da da da. But it's actually, you probably wouldn't have been able to do that shit because there's like, it's the same thing as sit down in class and learn some bullshit. Like, and you just regurgitate it. Like, that's not a valuable thing. If you actually have insights into anything and you have real technical expertise, like, you know, you can look at a company, but you actually can look at it because you know something about how these things work or something about how clients work, you know, then all the other stuff that used to be precious, like being able to do low-end coding, being able to do low-end lawyering, being able to do low-end reading and writing. I mean, this is like, I feel like Odin came down and was like, I'm going to make the world just right for a dyslexic. It's like, yeah, Odin has come down from, or Loki has come down and said, you know what, Karp, you suffered so much as a kid. I'm just going to make the whole world so everyone else can suffer. I don't want that. It's like now, but it's really an inversion. Like everybody with like the normal shape skills are dyslexics because like Meaning the thing they can do that used to be valuable is not so valuable. The thing that they need to learn to do is like be more of an artist, look at things from a different direction, be able to build something unique. And you see this on the battlefield. Like one of the most underappreciated things about fighting a war, which is the— I mean, there are basic core things civilizations do, like build technology for war, is every society fights differently. Every component of this society fights differently. And when, like, America and its allies, we do not even approach these problems in the same way. What makes America lethal more so than any currently country is, like, a combination of obviously the technology, which we're super interested in and believe are playing a huge part in, but it's, like, 20 years of, like, operators figuring out what worked. Not what worked in a manual. What worked in reality. Also, even selection. If you look at the selection of people, like, you meet, like, tier 1 operators, they don't look anything like what people would think. It's not like the movies. They're like these, like, these, like, this big. And, like, you know, it's like, because we have— yeah, we have, we have, we have specialized ways of doing that. All that is crazy valuable. As a proxy indicator, people who are getting their news from you are just likely to massively outperform people are getting their news from something that's a regurgitation of you gotta vote for one party or the other. And then the real problem we have in society is not your listeners or Palantir's customers or our partners. It's like, well, what happens to everyone else? Are they gonna lynch us? Because like, that's the real problem. Like, these products, like what we're building, like our agents, mean that like the most— I mean, the most powerful people in the Democratic Party are highly educated female voters. And these technologies, like, they love— I mean, like, I actually get along with all these people in private, and there's a public dispute, but like, largely, I've talked to Daria over and over again, it's like, yeah, you love one company because they're not pro-Trump. That company's taking your job. How are you going to feel about that company when you find out you have no job? What do you think the Republican Party is going to do to products that do not support our military? What do you think the Democratic Party is going to do— even if you're voting for them— that are taking away the jobs of every one of your constituents and saying, oh, people are going to love you so much and you're going to be poor. By the way, we love you so much, we're going to give you a little handout once a month.

Yeah. Yeah. So apply that to the SaaSpocalypse narrative, the enterprise SaaS. There's an idea that the first jobs that will be taken might be the enterprise software products that exist, haven't really innovated, have lock-in, and they're going to be replatformed away from.

Well, the thing that these technologies do is they also make it harder to lie about— this is what part of the political problem— if something's not creating value or something's not working or there's corruption, you can't lie about it. And nobody believes that all software companies actually create value. I mean, the famous thing that we all learned, it was that we rejected, that you learned and people taught you is like your software company is supposed to give the client the feeling they're getting laid while they're getting fucked. Now, if that's how your products actually are, now it's you who are going to get fucked. And this is going to happen so quickly. And the simple test for people who are looking at this is, does this product, or in our case, we were never pure software. We're actually like a hybrid of humans, FDEs, augmented humans, so AI FDEs, and then orchestration, and then in essentially what we would call primitives, like taking the tribal knowledge of institution, coding it into logic, and then using that to be extended in LLMs. Okay. But we don't have to explain that to our clients. Yeah.

You know, so, so, so there's, there was always this, oh, is Palantir a consulting firm? Is it all just people? Is there any real software?

I feel like that narrative went away. Oh, no, no. They, they, they couldn't invest in us because we were a services company. Exactly.

And now, now And now it's like— But is actually having that service ability better in the future? No, no, it's not better. It's underrated.

It's crucial. It's crucial. Like, all these places that made fun of us, they're running around and trying to get FTEs. Of course. Getting an FTE is like, yeah, it's not as easy as it sounds because you have to know how to manage it, where to put the person, how to extract value. And then you need all these products that augment the FTE. What are those products? Ontologies. Foundry, FDEI, AI things that we've built.

Yeah. What we— being able to— so the value of the business is not a monolithic code base that never changes. It is the people. It is the deployment. It is the relationships.

Is that how you're thinking about the business these days? Well, actually, the way I'm telling you, like when you walk around here, they only care— they don't care about any of that. What they care about is you transform my business in 3 months. It would have taken 3 years and I would never have had it. Happen. That's what they care about. Now then there's a question of how do you do that? That is the concatenation. It's artistry. It's like select client, select where you would start, select ways in which— innovate in ways they would not accept. Innovate in places they do not understand you should innovate. Learn to manage these very complex— by the way, it's not just culturally complex. It's tribal knowledge and much of that tribal knowledge is in rules that they have to apply, because there are all sorts of rules about manufacturing, hospitals, war, rules that are applied that they're not saying they apply, laws, like all sorts of regulatory things on top of all that. All that has to happen very rapidly. So you would need, and like, without going into details, like I'm in the middle of like every single one of these discussions, in almost every breakdown, it's like, People do not understand how institutions work. They don't understand how the software would work. They don't know how the LLM would work. They don't have the product that would actually work in that environment. And they still, at the end of the day, are not saying we're going to charge on value.

Okay. How do institutions work? Why is it that we get these genius models that are 160 IQ? They can solve incredible math and they're not just like everywhere all the time.

What is slowing that down? I mean, the simple version is they're one set 160 against a test. But the test isn't— it's a concatenation. The simple math would be it's 160 on one test, but you've got to pass differentiated tests over a long period of time. So it's 1,000 tests. So de facto, by the 50th step, it's zero IQ. But then there's also— there's also— yeah, I mean, it's like, it's insane. Like, no, I love when I hear about all this is going to replace, and then I go to our clients and they're like, could we have more We don't even have the capacity. Like, it's like it's a surreal thing. Like, would you guys like to be FTEs? Because we need some help. If you're in the audience completely seriously and you're aligned, broadly speaking, with America is a great country, you don't have to agree about anything else. And you're out there and you're technical or just smart. Apply.

We need you. Okay. America is a great country. Put aside Democrat. Put aside Republican. Is democracy Is democracy the correct formulation to decide the future of AI? Should the American people be voting?

America be handled by private companies? No, America. Well, it depends. Like, like, yeah, great. So in the warfighting context, the Department of War has to be the arbiter of what gets deployed. But as a citizen, I vote for the Department of War. Exactly. Yeah. Okay. But, but I'm just saying, so I want to I want to split domestic and foreign because we in this country have God-given rights, literally given to us by a higher being. There's a right of free expression which we're exercising all the time and is very important to us. There's a Second Amendment which I exercise. I shoot very well. I would encourage you guys and other people listening to avail yourself of the Second Amendment. It is there to protect ourselves in case the First Amendment fails. That's the reason it's there. There's a Fourth Amendment, which is essentially we have a right to privacy. Okay, we have those rights. Adversaries trying to kill us in Iran do not have those rights. Sure. And I don't believe— I've never believed in extending our rights to foreign countries that are adversarial to us. I don't even really believe— I don't like, you know, Germany, where I lived half my life. They don't have a First Amendment. They don't believe it. And by the way, they've never believed in the First Amendment. They have other rights. That's great. I'm not going to dispute that. But I want our rights here in this country. If you're going to tell the American people you're building what is clearly a dangerous technology, it's dangerous because it will likely take your job, especially if you're white collar.

So if you're voting, you know, you're highly educated. Have you flipped on that in the last, like, 6 months or so? Because I think, I think the last time we talked, your general mindset was like high agency, highly productive people will be able to continue to leverage the tools to deliver value within organizations.

Yeah, I think if you're neurodivergent and high agency and you're highly educated, that's great. But if you're not neurodivergent and you're like lawyer 14506, that's a problem. Okay, but let me get to this, and they're linked, but it's okay. On domestic stuff, I— we have rights that are not subject to majority rule. Like, I— the majority can vote against us having Fourth Amendment rights. I want that— I want that litigated at the Supreme Court because I— we are not— our Constitution is not about majority. It's actually about the rights of the minority. And it's our right. I bet you the three of us have opinions that are very much in the minority, that we want to be able to say, at least in the privacy of our own home, right? And so, so that there are real issues. I'm super sympathetic with restrictions around the use of these products in a domestic context, even though it's funny, people out there, every conspiracy theorist thinks, yeah, it's insane, I'm the only one. Conspiracy theorists, you may hate this, but there's one person protecting your rights to be a conspiracy theorist that actually has a seat at the table, and that person is me. You may not— you may not want to hear that truth, but it is fucking true. And maybe do a little more reading before you pontificate on your absurd and obviously ill-formed and many times stupid opinions. Okay, so because like you're attacking the person who's protecting you, idiot. It's like fucking so stupid. Do— do use one of the bots to correct your opinion. It's like I'm being attacked online now. He's like, Dr. Karp is anti-progressivism because of my whole life. I'm just telling you the truth. These things are gonna take your job. Okay, so then, but in the warfighting context, and it's the primary justification for these products, has to be it's, it's, there are two relevant powers now, us and China. This is a have-have-not world. It's going to be either us or them basically deciding the world order. Because like these other countries, and maybe India will get involved, maybe the Arab, non-Arab Middle East But currently on the trajectory we're on now, there are two places where these things are being developed and deployed. It's us or them. And I'm not particularly, you know, I'm not out to hurt China. I'm just out to— I think we should win. I'm not trying to hurt them. And in that context, you can't say we're not going to do X, Y, and Z. I mean, I give you examples, but like, there are datasets that are publicly available in the US market that should— I don't think should be used against you and me. In a law enforcement context more than with the help of, say, AI agents and ontology. But if you don't use it on the battlefield, obviously Iran's going to use them. You don't think they can go online and buy those products? And by the way, without going into somewhat classified data, those things are in combination with other things lethal. Like a lot of people who want to hurt America on the battlefield end up dead because of our ability to aggregate and then figure out what's going on in the battlefield before they can figure out what we're doing. And so like, I'm very much in favor of it for moral reasons, but I'm also in favor of is like, I don't know how else you explain this to the American people. We're, we're gonna take your job. We're gonna take away— you're gonna eviscerate your ability to have money and power, but that we're not gonna defend you on the battlefield. It just seems like, yeah, well, they're gonna— you know what's actually gonna happen? That nobody believes me in tech, but there's gonna be a movement in this country that gets very strong very quickly to nationalize these things. First, it's gonna be take away all our money. The billionaires are evil. You may not have heard that. Super evil. And if you take away their money, it'll help poor people. Yes. That's really important to understand. Making rich people miserable is the only way to help poor people. That's obviously true. So once you've learned that, the next thing you're going to learn is we have to nationalize it.

They're going to quote you on that. Well, it's like—

They quoted you on— So, I mean, it sounds like you're closer to Dario on, you know, potentially 50% of early stage, white-collar job loss, like you're aware that there's a risk, at least a probability. Everyone's aware. You're aware of it.

Well, what do you see as the solution? Well, first we just have to, I mean, well, I mean, the obvious thing is, okay, we can't have any migration here. Like, how are we going to create more jobs? Like, it's like you have to, what the problem in fairness, not that people want to be in the business of being fair to policy leaders, but that we are dealing with technologies that will determine the policy decisions. So you can't just pretend they're not happening. Step 1 is like, it's going to be hard but possible to make this society work, given that transforming it requires these technologies. Like, I really like the people who are here. They're not here because they like me. Like, maybe they're here for my jokes. High quality in some cases. But it's like a long trip, and we're here, and I'm the only one who likes this weather. It's great weather. I brought it for you. They're here because they've seen their business being transformed, and this is happening in America more than— so we have to win those battles, but the costs are going to be very high. And so you have to work back from, okay, the costs are going to be very high. We can't put oil on the fire. It's like, you know, it's like, well, getting jobs for all Americans is going to be hard, and people maybe who become Americans. But it's like you have to have different policies around migration. You have to have different policies around how we train people. Like currently, if you're a young kid in high school and you're neurodivergent, they're literally chaining you into your chair and feeding you medication so you can have skills that are not valuable. Yeah. Like it's so it's like, and then we'll probably over time have to have like a discussion of like, yeah, if you go into this career, you're not going to have a job. Like a really honest discussion about that. These are the places where you will likely have a job.

And yeah. Help me. What, you know, it seems like we as a country will probably head down a more European path where it is— becomes very, very difficult or near impossible to let people go.

Do you think that's correct?

I mean, in Germany, it's much harder to lay someone off. I mean, I— that does impact— I mean, that does impact the growth of of companies.

But I think many Germans would argue that's probably— Yeah, you know, Germany's— I mean, I won't— I'll answer your question. Germany's an interesting place. I did this thing in German where I basically told the truth, which you're not allowed to do in Germany. It's like, you know, it's kind of a really bad situation and the economy sucks, the migration thing's a complete disaster, and the energy situation is like compounds everything. And I I got thousands of people literally saying, "Thank God someone told the truth." And there are a lot of people like you guys, young people building things that feel hampered and are correct to feel hampered. I think the American version, if we're not careful, is not gonna be the German version. I think it's gonna be hang the rich. I think it's gonna be not protect everybody else. It's gonna be like, "Look, this is too dangerous and we're gonna hang the rich, but not—" really help the poor. And in fairness to the German version, like, you know, German, like, health insurance, insurance, all that stuff, it works. Yeah. Like, I was, I was poor in Germany for like a decade. Yeah. And like, I had, I had the best life on the planet. Like, it was like being poor in Germany is like being better than being rich here. And so on some days.

So basically policies that lift the floor, reeducation, training.

So if you want to do what we could do here. Yeah. We— the things we could adopt from Germany are— Germany has 3 high schools. Yeah, 2 are vocational. Sure. One is academic. Better education, better programmatic vocational— vocational. It also has a bad, like, a weird vibe here. Like, vocational training in Germany is very technical. Like, the people building the cars at BMW, or even in the French version, Airbus, like, very complicated jobs. They didn't go to college. They went to a very, very high-end high high school, and they come out without any debt, and that stuff is really valuable. So if you want to— you have to completely transform our educational system and, and go very young into like training people to do things. You also need to change our testing system, like different forms of intelligence. All of our tests are built around things that were valuable in the Industrial Revolution. It's like you want to pull out all the dyslexics, all the neurodivergents, everybody who can't sit or needs to build or wants to build have to go into a separate slot of like, yeah, we should have gotten you before you got turned down at Goldman. And like I said, this is like, that's a waste of your time. You could be building something important.

And what else goes—

would be a part of the good outcome? Well, the most important part of a good outcome is we show our adversaries you can't fuck with us and we're the best. We have the best military in the world. I hope— I believe we're doing that right now. On the good outcome side, we— yeah, We go around and then on the commercial side, we go to all these high infrastructure, you know, hospitals, manufacturing, all these things, complicated infrastructure. And we AI enhanced all of them. So the products are legitimately the best in the world. And we rebuild manufacturing in this country. Like a big problem for us, including on the battlefield, is our manufacturing just is not up to where we have to be. And that, by the way, requires reskilling, scaling humans. And we're doing this all over the place. I mean, the guy writing a lot of the scripts for the target. These people, they're like high school, college grads. The people building batteries and all these things using our products, these are high school, college guys. There's a lot of opportunity there. But, you know, one of the things I told the Germans and I would say to us is we— I was like, you know, Germany, you have to call it a crisis. We do need like— this is a crisis moment. America tomorrow is not going to look like it looked at all, or we're going to have radicalism on right or left. The problem, the danger is if we don't do these reforms, you are going to get the pitchforks because then the only solution people are going to have is, well, you know, let's go after the unlikable rich people in tech, especially AI tech. And then, but then what can work is, yeah, close the borders, keep them closed, start doing huge vocational efforts, change how we test aptitude. Like, so we have an accurate diagnostic of where you could be slotted. Be ruthless in like, you know, it's like in certain, find out new ways to test and do ruthless testing and slotting. And then also go around to universities and just— I mean, you know how when you like, you want to smoke a cigarette, it's like, this cigarette may be harmful to your health. Maybe we should be putting that in universities. This university, this university is harmful for your investment. You know, I'm libertarian.

You want to go to university.

Student debt may be harmful to your future financial health. And your personal life. Explain to someone you got a million dollars in debt. Yeah, a million dollars in debt. I mean, maybe if you're 6'9" and you're You can get away with that, but the rest of us have to provide.

That's funny. Help me square this idea. You were talking earlier today about people misunderstanding your business. And yet—

What's it like to read about your business? Oh, I mean, first of all, it's— I mean, the part I hate it, but then the part I love is, and it's like, you are valuable. Your value is pretty directly connected— convergent with people's inability to understand what you're doing. Yeah. It's like, it's like all these technologies are potentially commodifying everything. Yeah. OK, so if you are a business that is, you know, not services, not product, but both, but also works on tribal knowledge, on data, and every single business you make is individual, and so, yeah, that's a crazy valuable business.

That's true in a lot of industries where if If the broader business community doesn't understand your business, you might have a short report, but you'll have way less competition because people aren't copying you because they don't understand the playbook.

Well, it's impossible to copy certain— and we neglect this. You even see it culturally, like luxury products dominated by the French, watches dominated by the Swiss, currently certain kinds of warfighting dominated by America. It's very hard for people to eviscerate these cultural advantages., and our products augment that, which makes it, uh, you know, augments the differentiated specific over the generalizable. And that's where literally all the value is going to go, and it's going to be like a waterfall. And that's the problem with a lot of software companies. It's like product A, B, C, T. But, um, but then when you read it, it's like, like one of the more depressing things that you guys probably confront, but it's like a market, huge market opportunity for you. It's like, like, where are the experts? Like, it's like, you know, it's like, there's— it's like, you know, you, you hope and pray. Like, I'll tell you the funniest thing about my life now, and people internally know, almost every day I'm like, wait a minute, I'm the adult in the room here. It's like everywhere I go, it's like, it's like, wait a minute, I like— I— and it's like, there it— it's like, and, and it speaks. So it's, it's surreal when you read about these things, but, and it's It used to really frustrate me, but now I kind of just think, well, like, I can't believe we're still viewed as crazy. It's like everything we're doing is the only thing that's working. I mean, like, I don't want to, like, spend a lot of time on our baller, essentially baller numbers from last year, but it's like, you know, clearly our shit works. Clearly nothing is working at that level. And you would think they would take, like, I don't know, 10 minutes to think, okay, well, the thing I believed in, I thought would work, didn't work at all. This thing I thought was insane has, like, a rule of 120. 27, when like no one— like 40 is considered like— and like, but they don't. And, and then, and I— yeah, but it's sometimes frustrating, honestly. And the hard part actually is I kind of view it as a feature. Uh, internally we get these bright-eyed kids, so it's so funny. I mean, the one— get the best people in the world, but you know, just like I was probably at 21, they're very romantic. It's like, but why does the adult How do people not understand this? It's like, but, but, but the adult expert tells me it's like, I don't know when you guys had to drop the shoe moment when you realized that like the adults are like, you know, on crack or something.

Like it's, okay. Yeah. Last question. Would you rather have $10 million or access to ChatGPT in 2012?

It's a viral question that's going viral right now. I have to choose one or the other? I mean, okay, I'm just— I don't think he needs—

I don't think it's hard to guess there.

I don't think he needs to milk it.

Can I have my social life in grad school?

Oh, there we go. Okay, so that's a new pick.

How about a new pick?

We just have to ask these questions. You know, it's like, great, I'm going to take something I valued.

Oh, okay. Yeah. The most valuable thing, your social life in grad school.

Well, thank you so much for taking the time to come chat with us.

Yeah, no, thank you, Blake.

It's fantastic. Great to have you. We'll talk to you soon. Yeah. And that's our show today, folks. Thank you so much for tuning in to TVPN today. We will be back in the TVPN UltraDome tomorrow at 11 AM Pacific. You want to sign off with us? Oh yeah.

Point at the camera.

Goodbye. Have a good one.

Cheers.