Mini Truck Boom, Kylie and Zuck vs Spiegel and RDJ, Europe Considers AC

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Today's Friday, June 26th, 2026. We are live from the TVPN Ultra Dome, the temple of technology, the fortress of finance, the capital of capital. Let me tell you about Ramp.com. Time is money, save both. Easy to use corporate cards, bill pay, accounting, and a whole lot more all in one place. And now they got two CEOs. You want to partner with a company that just has one CEO? No way, get out of here. You want to go with a company that has two. Kareem promoted. Very fun development. In the RAMP story—

Yeah, I was thinking about it. We've obviously had, like, tons of conversations with the RAMP team over the years, and it's, like, actually always been 50/50 Kareem, Eric. And so very natural move for them.

I mean, they've been working together for over a decade at this point across multiple companies and have always— and both founders and both major shareholders.

They're, like, following in our footsteps.

Yeah, yeah, this is the TV fan effect. We get to take credit for this.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Congrats to Karim on the promotion, the field promotion. It's very exciting. And go check out Ramp, of course. We're back.

Equally important, we're back.

France.

We miss you guys. We miss you guys a lot.

Yeah, it was rough.

It's actually, it's genuinely brutal.

It's brutal.

We feel deeply unwell by around 1 PM if we haven't gone live, regardless of the time zone.

Sweating and shaking is crazy. Yeah, it is a full withdrawal.

I mean, the— yeah, and the withdrawals. I mean, maybe it would get better after a few weeks, but yeah, the symptoms are brutal.

Anyway, it was a high-stakes trip. Of course, Jordi Hays has battled with French President Emmanuel Macron in the past. And then in what appeared to be a direct shot at me, France recently banned nicotine pouches fully. Very controversial.

Pretty much all oral nicotine products banned.

Yeah.

So as of April.

Yeah.

So we went over there, we went over there to make— We went over there to make amends. And right away it felt like, you know, they were sending messages.

Yeah.

Straight from the top.

Yeah.

Because we land in Paris.

Yeah.

And we have a connecting flight.

Yeah.

Nice. Yeah. Where, where the conference is. And, you know, we get in the airport, you know, we're, we're excited to be there. Yeah. Paris. Right. The sun is shining. Small issue is it's roughly 100 degrees inside the airport.

Coincidence. Interesting coincidence.

Yeah, you're there right when we show up, then it gets hot. Generational heat wave.

Yeah.

And, uh, questions. Of course there's no air conditioning, right? It's, it's legitimately 100 degrees. You look around, there's— everyone has their fans out.

Yep.

They're like sweating profusely. Uh, really, really messy situation. Uh, Go to a café, try to get an ice drink. They're out of ice. The whole airport doesn't have AC or ice in the whole airport. And then we go to get on our flight and we sit down and, you know, we're waiting, we're waiting, starting to feel like we're waiting a little bit too long to get off the ground. About 45 minutes in, they come over the intercom and let us know that the air conditioning on the plane is broken and they're working on fixing it. 30 minutes later, they come over again and they say, we've been unable to get the air conditioning working. We're not gonna be able to take off. You have to deplane. And, you know, we felt terrible for all the other passengers because clearly it was Macron sabotaging our flight. But for him to inconvenience, you know, hundreds of other people just—

Shows you how important it is to him.

Just to get at us.

Yeah.

It's just insane. To me, that crossed the line. It's like, if it's, you know, clearly it's personal.

Yep.

But figure out a way to, you know, come at us.

Be a little more targeted.

Yeah, more targeted.

Exactly. Why does there need to be so much collateral damage?

Exactly. And then, of course, on our next flight, we get to the airport, plane's ready, pilot's ready. And, you know, they tell us again, like, hey, we're just figuring out some stuff. We're gonna take off as soon as we can. We're bored. We decide, hey, is anything— any like World Cup games on? We should turn it on and see. So we're sitting there, and we're like, whoa, France is actually playing in the World Cup right now. What are the chances? And so we keep kind of checking in with the pilot. And he's like, yeah, we need a little bit more time. We're not really sure why. The plane's there. The pilot's there. They're ready to go. We're like, what's going on? A little bit later, like, we're ready to go. 10 minutes before, you know, it's like 35 minutes into the game. They're like, hey, we just need a few more minutes. The fuel truck's going to be here soon. Thank you for your patience. This time, by this point, we've been waiting for like an hour and a half. And halftime starts. 10 minutes later, there's fuel in the plane. We're ready to go. And we're just sitting there like, coincidence, coincidence. I think not. Anyways, a little bit of a journey to get there, but we had a good week.

Yeah, it was good. AdQuick was there representing. We saw some AdQuick billboards and Mercedes with AdQuick livery that looked pretty sick.

That's right. Who else was there?

Who?

With one of the best out-of-home placements of the event, Vibe.co.

Vibe.co.

Who announced a $1.4 billion acquisition.

Yeah.

To Walmart the first day, the first real day of the conference. That was really cool. So congratulations to the Vibe.co team. Pretty unbelievable. They— I wouldn't say they were under the radar because they were very loud with their advertising. Yeah. But, you know, not, you know, in a sea of just like AI exits, like they stand out as like one of the most impressive runs of the last couple years.

And I saw some people digging into the Walmart strategy around Vibe, and they have a whole host of other platforms for their ad platform that seems to be coming together quite nicely. Yeah, we should dig into it more and have the founder on to talk about the journey. Before we continue, let me tell you about MongoDB. What's the only thing faster than the AI market? Your business on MongoDB. Don't just build AI, own the data platform that powers it. Little history. Cannes Lions, it used to be mostly about creative advertisements, giving awards for creativity, mostly in consumer. They didn't really have a B2B focus until maybe a decade ago. Now it's much more broad, much more corporate. As you saw, we mentioned digital ad platforms have presences there. It's much more performance-oriented. And there's a big focus on the creator economy.. It really cuts across different media forms. Big networks and television will be there. The New York Times will be there. But then also small YouTubers, Instagram creators, a whole host of people will be sent there alongside some sort of brand on a brand trip. Spotify threw a big concert on the beach. John Summit played. Because they have a large ads platform primarily, it makes sense that Spotify would have a music guest. But they're there specifically to promote their ads product. Yahoo had Tiesto play. Again, basically to facilitate deals around their ads business. There are other activations from big tech companies and ad platforms. Athletes attend. Hollywood talent agencies host parties. It's not packed with A-list celebrities, but it feels like everyone has a following of some sort. And that was a big point of discussion. Like, there was one level of conversation that was just like, creators are the future. Everyone's heard this pitch a million times. But the bigger discussion was something that Andrew Ross Sorkin from Squawk Box CNBC Dealbook mentioned talking about the trade-offs between independence and consolidation. You've talked about this before, just the idea of a roll-up of independent substackers. Where is the right economy of scale in the creator economy? Maybe not everyone should be independent. Maybe not everyone should be with a large organization. And this trade-off's sort of interesting to dig into as we see both creators go bigger and produce more expensive shows. And then also the legacy media companies are getting better at social media type content. So we can kind of dig into this. Andrew's post was really widely discussed in creator circles, but we'll read it here. I'm flying back from Cannes. Something I've been thinking about. I was taken aback by how some of what I thought were most success— the most successful influencers say that they need to spend so much money to keep up that they're not making the kind of headline popping numbers we often read about. And he asks for thoughts. And a lot of people— High Yield Harry says, "Not surprising. You can't be at 80% to 90% EBITDA margins forever and expect to retain attention and scale. It's gonna bring in more competition." And that's a piece of what's happening. I think there's a few things happening. One is the big transition from independent creators pivoting from making content to making shows. And you can look at Subway Takes in this way, the other show. From, uh, is keep the meter running, much more high, much more produced, much more edited, much more costly to, uh, to produce. And then also, uh, but you're still faced with some of the awkwardness around how do you actually monetize that. There isn't a logical ad break, although I think there should be. In a 3-minute Subway Takes ad, or, uh, video, a 3-minute episode, uh, I think that it would be fine to have a 5 to 10-second mid-roll. In the middle of that, but that has not been done. Like, that floodgate hasn't opened yet. So most creators are doing, it's either a really polished vertical video about their own content, and then they'll do a promoted post that's another 30-second, 60-second, multi-minute vertical video in their same style, but purely sponsored content. And a lot of those videos don't go as viral. And so you have this awkward trade-off where the content that's great, that people want, can't be monetized, so you have to do like one and one. It'd be a little bit tricky. Like part of the way our show works is that we're just talking about whatever, and then we'll tell you about Cisco critical infrastructure for the AI era, unlock seamless real-time experiences and new value with Cisco. It would be different if we had to do every other episode, every other episode is just purely about Cisco, and then we go back to about just the news and talking. And so that's something that's like starting to evolve in those higher cost structures. I think that they still have more enduring value.

Yeah, Forbes came out with their top creators list and earnings. MrBeast was at the top with $300 million.

Huge.

I would imagine that, yeah, like earnings is not the right word here. It should just be gross revenue. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have no idea what Jimmy's, margins actually look like on that $300 million. But it would appear he's spending like—

He's obsessed with reinvesting for the growth.

Yeah, yeah, that's always been a part of it.

As opposed to Joe Rogan, who has these big deals, and he seems completely content to be in a tiny set.

Same team.

And yeah, same, same. And not really trying to buy anything to accelerate growth.

Dhar Mann was number 2 at $65 million. In top line, Stephen Bartlett at 52, Markiplier 38, Rhett and Link 37, Charlie D'Amelio 18, uh, Drewski 20, IShowSpeed 30. Uh, very weird that, that, uh, doesn't seem to be ordered by—

Oh, really? Just ordered loosely?

But they're just, yeah, anyways.

Yeah, Dhar Mann has production costs as well. He does these like short scripted stories, mostly for— he's huge on Facebook, but he's big on other platforms as well. And they have real costs because he has to go find a set, a location, real cameras, multi-camera shoots, editing, and real actors. Of course, all of it is like low-budget filmmaking, but there is cost to that. And it is, of course, increasing as the, as the competitive, as the competition heats up.

Trey says Rogan has a lot of peptide expenses.

I don't think you can spend $100 million a year on peptides if that's what he's bringing in top line. Anyway, the zero marginal cost era of yapping into your iPhone, it seems ultra competitive now. It seems like it's increasingly rare to see that scale in 2026. People are still breaking through, but they're breaking through with new, more polished products that of course have higher costs. Simultaneously, traditional media companies are starting to dial in content strategies for traditionally creator-led platforms. I think the New York Times has done a fantastic job here. "The Ezra Klein Show" and Ross Douthat, who are sort of like the left and right perspectives. And their shows have become really successful on YouTube, a lot due to the packaging. They understand how to get a good title and thumbnail together. The editing, the production values are really, really high quality. And so those podcasts do very well on YouTube in a way that other shows from legacy media companies, it's been hard for them to break through traditionally. But they certainly have, and it's interesting that it's recent. Another example is the Popcast. John Caramanica, who we hung out with, and his co-host Joe, they have really taken that show and made it very internet native to the point where they produce a ridiculously polished vertical video for Instagram and social media every week to promote the song of the week. And it's in a different location. And of course, there's cost associated with that, but What's really interesting about it is that you can be a new social media consumer who's blissfully unaware of the entire world that exists behind the NYT paywall, and you can still learn about it.

And their strategy was interesting. So a lot of the big platforms, the Spotifys, the Snaps, the Metas, the YouTubes, they would build this basically mini festival on the beach, where they'd take over an entire hotel. Popcast went a different route. They rebuilt an authentic dive bar just off of the Strip full of like actors and characters. There was a guy wearing a kilt. And so when you went, and when we went to have a meeting with them, it felt like we were in a French dive bar.

Yeah, we were like, wow, this actually feels like we're getting a taste of like what the real Cannes would be like.

Yeah, yeah, real Cannes. Yeah, it was cool. So I thought that was really cool.

Yeah, very, very cool of them to do that.

The other thing that was interesting, France appeared to put Brian Johnson on a pack of cigarettes. Pull up this image.

That does look like Brian Johnson.

Really out of pocket to take an asset.

It works pretty well, though. Don't die, don't smoke. It's his message. I think he would approve this.

I saw this, and I had to take a picture. Because I was like, is it actually uncanny? He has like a lot of pictures of himself.

It does look like that.

Laying down like that, eyes closed.

Also, this looks like a man being put in a body bag, but at the same time, it looks like just a man who got a, getting a beautiful night's sleep, getting tucked in after a nice couple of, yah, heaters. He ripped a couple darts, had a couple beers, crushed a couple cold ones, and now he's ready to get put to bed by someone.

Yeah, this is actually much more tame than some of the other ones.

Oh, some of them are gruesome. Like so gruesome showing like the X-rays of cancer patients and like black lungs and stuff. Like this is pretty mild. If you look like this guy after smoking a whole pack, like you're doing pretty well. I think it's fine. Anyway, the end state of this debate, it's interesting. There's a little bit of grass is always greener on the other side going on with independent creators thinking, ah, maybe it'd be better if I was with a larger organization. And then vice versa with a lot of the folks inside big organizations saying, ah, if I left, I could probably make so much more money. I don't think it's a one-size-fits-all approach here. I think it's more of a sorting process. Some creators will find elegant business models outside of large organizations. Like those 80 to 90% EBITDA margins still exist for certain categories, certain products.

Yeah, look at Obsession, right? It's like a low margin, highly competitive, but it's hits driven. So you can have one breakout hit.

That's a great example.

And, you know, have insane margins, right?

Yeah, and then there's also just, there's certain formats and certain shows that will be sticky and then also not scale with cost. Whereas like the MrBeast model of doing ever bigger reality TV show style stunts, that probably does scale cost with views over time. But you know, if you're going to be doing criticism or gaming creation or streaming or something, there are certain things like Rogan, you tell him, hey, go spend extra $10 million, like he doesn't really know what to do with it.

Whereas MrBeast— It's like how people imagine the SaaS business model, right? They're like, you can scale, revenue without scaling incremental costs, but it's actually true in the case of—

And there are some companies in software that have done that, and then there's some where you're just like, wait, really? They're still driving up costs? And it's because of their particular market. So I think it's more of this sorting process. Some creators will find elegant business models outside of traditional organizations. Others will probably wind up leveraging the possibility of going independent into more meaningful contracts within traditional media organizations. I think that might be a trend. Some shift in the mindset of traditional media companies where they realize that someone that they were paying as a journalist or as a reporter is now proper talent and could take their audience with them. And so there is a contract renegotiation, uh, because they don't want to wind up in the position of like the Vox, BuzzFeed, Vice, where all the best talent left and took their audiences with them. Um, and there's probably a meet in the middle where you're not paying them through the nose, but you're paying them more than what they were making just as someone who's like below the line, just like a content creator internally, once they actually break out. And so I think there'll be lots of mistakes along the way. No doubt some folks who should be independent will stay too long and vice versa. Some people who would be better suited for being inside a large organization, leveraging all of those capabilities, will go independent and then regret it and maybe go back. But it's increasingly clear that a one-size-fits-all approach, perhaps with a tagline like independent creators are the future, I don't think that fits quite, I don't think that quite fits anymore. To each their own. I think everyone sort of needs to find their own way and figure out what's right for them.

David Senra is in the chat. Hello.

Hey, what's up, David?

Hello, Senra.

Good to see you.

We miss you.

Founders Podcast and the David Senra Show. Go check it out. He's been on an absolute roll. Absolute tear, a generational run. Let me tell you about public.com, investing for those who take it seriously. They got stocks, options, bonds, crypto, treasuries, and more with great customer service.

You can go on there and, uh, someone else was saying, uh, doesn't seem like a coincidence that, uh, global markets were in free fall while we were gone.

That makes sense.

We weren't hoping for a swift recovery.

Yeah. You can make your own decision on whether or not you're buying the dip, but do it on Public.com. Smart glasses are inevitable, but what or who are they for? Says Christopher Mims in the Wall Street Journal. This is on the back of the new Meta glasses that launched. Chris— Christopher Mims says the deluge of smart glasses has begun. Has it? It feels like— I don't know if it's a deluge. It feels more like a— like just a trickle or like a steady stream, but maybe I've been following it too closely. I think that's all of my problems with analyzing this category, and we'll get into that. All my criticisms are like very odd technical problems.

Yeah, and it's, so Meta has been selling a lot of glasses. The products are—

Dozens, hundreds?

No, they've been selling, I believe they're already in the millions of units of not the—

Millions of units. Hundreds of millions of dollars? In revenue?

I believe so.

Okay.

Ben.

I think it's getting, I agree with you. I think it's getting material.

What I was gonna say is that it's for products that are functionally like a great pair of glasses with a camera attached, right? These are not like, I don't see a lot of people talking about like, oh, I'm replacing AirPods entirely with these, even if that is one function.

Is that just because?

And that is also with like having, being able to sell through a one-of-one ad unit on the greatest distribution platform in history.

But they're going up against stiff competition. Like, the Apple Vision Pro is so good that, like, you know, it's like, we are— Jobs finished. Like, we have the Apple Vision Pro.

Why should we— It was so funny. So I never tried the Apple Vision Pro until this trip. And I asked John, I was like, hey, can I take him for a spin?, and you were like, "Oh, it's kind of a hassle to set up." It is.

You have to put it in guest mode.

But John was like, "No, I want Jordi to experience this." Yeah. And so we go through this whole hassle of setting it up, and I'm like 20 seconds into the dinosaur demo, and the flight attendant comes up and is like tapping me on the shoulder.

Yeah, like actually getting me.

Taking me out of virtual reality.

I was like, "The audacity." And I think the question was just like, "Are those cool?" or something like that. It wasn't like, "Sir, you need to put on your seatbelt" or something.

It was like— I was fully immersed and it completely ruined it for me.

And what's funny is like the whole pitch for the Apple Vision Pro was like, you don't need to take it off to talk to somebody because it will show the eyes. And no, Tyler's on his way back.

You guys went to France for raising—

Raising Cane's.

Yes.

Raising Cane's. Raising Cane is good.

Yes. Tyler got left at CDG.

Yeah. Yeah.

But, uh, we got the answer for the Meta glasses. Timu.

Timu Tyler.

I have the answer for the Meta glasses.

Okay. Yeah. How are we doing?

So since 2025, there's been 7 million plus sold across OPPO and Meta. $2 million was just the Ray-Bans.

Okay.

Wait, 2 million units?

2 million units. Okay.

And that's the estimated gross retail sales was $2.1 to $3 billion.

That's pretty good.

Yeah. The way you were framing it, it was like, yeah, we've sold 7 million and you're like $7 million. And it's like, no, it's 7 million. Like, it's a lot of units. Yeah, a lot of units.

Yeah, it's getting there.

And there's some level, if it wasn't Meta, we'd be like, wow, this company has like insane insane product market fit.

Yeah.

Selling 7 million units of a new supercomputer.

Yeah, if it was Oura Ring or Whoop or something like that, we'd be very impressed. I think you're 100% correct.

And it would be like, it could probably be like a standalone public company.

But people would still be slamming it for it, for being like way worse than the Apple Vision Pro in terms of watching old films. I watched Master and Commander on it. It was great. It's a fantastic movie. Highly recommend. Godfather Part II, also good. Dunkirk. I did some damage on the back end catalog. Anyway, let's go back to Christopher Mims in The Wall Street Journal. He says, at the low end, there's a new line of Meta glasses which start at $299 and play well with vision benefit plans. Interesting. So you can buy them with insurance. For another $100, there's a pair aimed at fans of Kylie Jenner. We saw these in action and they looked great. They, they— I, I think reviews are very, very high quality.

If, if I hadn't seen the launch, I wouldn't have noticed that they were Meta glasses at all.

Yes, yes.

I would have just assumed they were like—

It has this jewel, you can see it, it's that small white like glint right there. And I was so confused by this, but this is purely a me problem because I assumed that that was a recording light or some sort of display. Because if you look at the Meta Ray-Ban displays, you'll see that there's slight grooves in the glass for forming the beams to show you the display. And so I was like, oh, that's a, that's a smart feature that is there for a functional reason. But it's in fact not. It's purely aesthetic. And people who are in the market love this. I was confused by it, but I think I might be the only person that is confused by it. So I don't think it's a problem whatsoever. But there's no screen. There is a voice assistant. Alphabet's Google and Samsung have teamed up to release their own competing lines due this fall from eyewear companies Gentle Monster and Warby Parker. For those itching to upgrade, there are glasses with in-lens displays. They cost more. Meta's is $800 and Spectre from Snap is $2,200. They are so chunky, they look like something you might see in a Prada ad and never in real life. Silicon Valley has been trying to make Smart glasses happened for more than a decade. Remember Google Glass? Facebook and Instagram parent Meta Platforms has captured more than 80% of this market. Not bad. But in 2025, that meant selling just 7 million pairs of glasses. By comparison, the world buys more than 100 million smartwatches a year and more than a billion—

What is it? What does it say about, like, the broad investor views on smart glasses overall? If Meta has 80% of this like emerging category that's selling 7 million units and they get like basically zero credit for it?

I don't know. I just think—

I don't know anybody that's like excited about Meta.

Well, it's not zero marginal cost. And I mean—

I know, but if it has even a 10% chance of becoming like actually a dominant consumer computing platform.

I don't think that's the case though. Like no one would say that the— the Apple Watch is a dominant computing platform. They would say like, yeah, it's a great accessories business for Apple and it's probably worth $50 billion or $100 billion. And that's just not that material one way or another to a $2 trillion company or a company that hopes to be worth $2 trillion. And so I think that it can get there. When I see 7 million pairs of glasses compared to 100 million smartwatches, I feel like this is perfect trajectory. Like, this is great.

Do you think that Meta ever makes a free pair of glasses that's ad-supported?

I don't know. I think that an ads business would actually be much more attractive. When you, when you say, oh, they're making $1 billion in revenue, that's not 100% margin. I think about, well, what is Threads revenue going to be? And that's going to be much higher margin. Threads is probably more exciting to the core business and to the, financial outcomes.

Yeah, I just think, I think if you—

I understand it's exciting. I like hardware. Like, it's cool. It's just like, it's hard to underwrite to, like, some, oh, it's moving the needle on cash flow. This is going to pay for another data center.

I would expect to see, just like we saw the ad-supported Kindle, I think we'll see the ad-supported MetaGlasses.

Are the ads on the inside for the wearer or on the outside for everyone looking?

For the user. So you're walking on a street, and you walk past a restaurant, it pops up, like, you know, get a free matcha.

I don't like that. I like the other way. I wanna be wearing the glasses and I want it to be barking ads at everyone around me while noise-canceling those ads to me. So I don't have to hear them.

You become a loud billboard.

Exactly. I pay for the no ads version, but you didn't pay and you're sitting next to me. So unless you pay, you get my ads.

So you would dress up as like one of those guys that goes on the street.

It's like a modern sign flipper.

You dress up as a guy on the street. Yeah. And you're pretending to do like, what do you do for a living interviews?

Yeah.

But then right when you get up, Instead of saying, what do you do for a living? You just activate the ads and you just try to bark like 4 or 5 ads.

What is your intelligent cloud provider? Is it Railway? Which one is it? Let me tell you about Railway. Railway is the all-in-one intelligent cloud provider. Use your favorite agent to deploy web apps, servers, databases, and more while Railway automatically takes care of scaling, monitoring, and security. That would be a great ad to bark out of your glasses on command. Anyway, so Apple is reportedly hard at work on its own smart glasses, although it's unclear when they might arrive. Gurman said 2028, 2029. '29, like we are more than a full year away, which is remarkably slow given that I feel like when Meta or when Apple enters this, they're going to do very well. I don't know, maybe the Apple aesthetics won't work in the glasses market, but I feel like they have the design lineage and capabilities. Like they make small, they make small devices. Like the technology is gonna be great and very integrated. And they just have to get the design right. But you can have multiple shots on goal with different styles and frames. So it doesn't seem like it will be hard for them to add that into your cart when you're getting a watch and an iPad and a phone. Even though they might cost a lot. I don't know what the Apple—

Let's get into the skepticism.

OK.

Since the start, even hostility.

The idea of a face-worn computer has garnered skepticism, even hostility, which is understandable when most of us are trying to reduce our time in front of screens, it seems absurd to mount them right in front of our eyeballs. And we should— and why should we be— why should we be okay with everyone we meet pointing internet-connected cameras at us? It feels like an assault on what little privacy we have left. This is why you carry a flashbang around. Then there's the built-in AI. Artificial intelligence lets these glasses identify objects in our field of view. That is not a very compelling use case for me.

Hot dog, not hot dog.

It's just like I'm looking at a building. What is this building? It's a building. What is this tree? What do you see? It's a tree. Like, I don't know. Do you care if it's a ficus tree or not? It's pretty rare. South African meerkat. How often are you running into an unidentified meerkat? Like, this is not that big of a problem. The bigger one is that you're just able to talk to an AI agent and have it look up things for you, have it do whatever you want in— on your phone, in your world, on— in your agent. But it's very rare that you're seeing things in the real world, "Oh my God, what can is this? What is this? I need to know." It's like, "Come on. I know what a Diet Coke is." And then—

Just say you're not 5 years old.

Yeah, yeah.

Just say you're not 5 years old.

But if I know what it is, then I don't need the visual part. I can just say, "Hey, I want some extra information about Diet Coke. I'm about to drink one. Can you Look up the latest aspartame studies.

Yeah, I do use— I learned about a kind of car from Renault called the Twizy that is quite popular. And I did take a picture of this.

Sure, sure. I have been doing that too.

And ask chat, what is this? But it's very— it's something that— pull up the Twizy.

Also, I was playing—

this is potentially the coolest vehicle on the road.

Yeah. I was playing a video game and I took a photo of the screen when I had to upgrade my character in this role-playing game. And I was like, how should I allocate my points?

Look at this.

It's pretty sweet.

Imagine you and your best friend—

I thought it was a smart car too. It's not.

Imagine you and your best friends have a fleet of these and you're just like, hey, let's go to the park.

It's the French dream.

Hey, let's go play some golf. And you pull up to the golf course.

And then one person—

And you don't even get out of your car. You just drive straight to the first hole.

They should be able to have like a series of tow hitches where you can create a road train out of them. And then one person drives and the rest can shell. That would be very cool. Yeah, we saw some kids bombing around in some crazy smart cars having a great time.

Goldrock says, business idea, pay people to blast your ads on JBL speakers in crowded places. I think you could— there's— you could potentially make a run at that before regulation came in.

Shrek it up. Shrek that Twizy, please. Then. Okay, so, but there's growing unease with companies sticking generative AI features into any and all products and having a little AI jinn always whispering in our ear seems like a cautionary tale or a Twilight Zone episode. And yet there will be smart glasses. And you and I might even choose to wear them. Their technological inevitability, a new consumer tech arms race for the last and best real estate on our bodies. I envision that someday all glasses could be smart glasses, said a man who should know, Zaid, who heads the division of Qualcomm responsible for making the chips that go into the Meta, Snap, and Samsung smart glasses. Who are they for though? The problem with most smart glasses is that it remains unclear clear what exactly they are for. Steve Jobs once said that design is as much about what something does as how it looks. It isn't hard to imagine that were he still alive today, his critique of most of the smart glasses on the market would be scathing. Take the Snap specs. They are a triumph of engineering, squeezing a fighter pilot's helmet's— fighter pilot helmet's worth of optics and computing into frames that while not exactly svelte, or at least, at least don't require a chin strap. But for what purpose? Snap Chief Executive Evan Spiegel said they could be used for live translation, turn-by-turn directions, working on the go.

And has anyone made the— has anyone made the motorcycle helmet computer?

I think they do have fairly advanced helmets these days, snowboarders.

I want a personal computer that's shaped as a motorcycle helmet that I can just wear around.

That would be cool. It'd be like more cyberpunk.

Palmer was teasing a very thin, small pair of like aviators, of smart-ish looking glasses.

Yeah, it looked like they had bolted onto just traditional aviators, which were really cool. The catch, you have to be seen in public wearing these to get the most out of it. Your friends and colleagues would need them too. And that's assuming the software running on these lightweight computers can live up to the promise. I was thinking about like, yeah, like should you start with glasses that are woefully underpowered on the battery side? Like if you launch a pair of smart glasses and they're 30-minute battery or something, like very limited, but they're really light And so people actually try them and then, like, is it better for everyone to complain about how heavy they are or how light they are but the battery keeps running out? Because at least that's a signal that people are using it to the fullest if they complain. Like, if the VR headset's light and people are like, "Oh, it runs out of battery. I gotta plug it in all the time." It's like, "Okay, well, at least you got to that far. At least you enjoyed it fully." and then you needed, you know, like working on that extension feels like an easier path.

Senra dropping nuclear bombs.

Design is how it works. Steve Jobs. There you go.

Yeah, I continue to believe that the biggest market for smart glasses will continue to be people that need corrective eyewear, right? Over a billion people. In that market. And if you have to use glasses all day long, you may as well add some smart features. It's a tougher sell for people that aren't already dependent on glasses.

Yeah, I do think that they, I mean, in addition to the traction on the sales figures, which are impressive, I'm starting to see more content that's created organically by, Meta Glasses creators.

But you know what those people are doing? What? In large part.

They're faking?

They are jailbreaking the glasses to not show that they're recording. Whoa, I didn't know that. Because so many of those videos, if somebody just walked up with a camera in your face, they wouldn't get the same reaction. They'd be like, stop filming me.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But instead they have like a pretty organic moment.

So they turn off the light.

They turn off the light. It's very easy to like basically black it out, cover it up. I think people have jailbroken it. Them.

Probably just put like nail polish over it.

Yeah, but there's like actual jailbreaks that you can basically disable the light.

Yep.

And so a lot of those videos are just like people recording people without their permission or understanding. Yeah. And then just posting these like—

Violation of the social contract, but—

Yeah, yeah, no, not even just a little bit.

Like a complete and total violation And yeah, but just don't go out in public if you don't want to be filmed. Just never go outside. Just never touch grass. Yeah, I don't know. Well, Meta is working on a bunch of other stuff. They're working on artificial intelligence. You may have heard first, before we dig into this, let me tell you about the New York Stock Exchange. Want to change the world? Raise capital at the New York Stock Exchange. Zephyr says they seem to be pretty focused on coding right now. I'm pretty sure this is the largest coding training, training data generation effort in the world. They have the compute. 30 to 50% of engineers on core teams have been forcibly reassigned to data labeling in the ADO org, Agent Data Optimization. Powell McCormick convened the soiree, which capped a packed day of meetings across Wall Street, to deliver a message. Meta's radical plan to become a leader in AI will require vast amounts of capital, and her door was open to discuss innovative financing, financing structures and partnerships. They might wind up raising billions more to fund the buildout of MSL and Meta's AI efforts. One engineer told this reporter that the whole situation feels like the movie The Hunger Games, when tributes are randomly selected and then removed from their environment, environment to something completely different, except that many more folks are being affected with between 3 to 5 from a 10-person team going from building products used by hundreds of millions to giving human feedback on AI-generated GitHub repos over and over. So a wider impact than in The Hunger Games with less drastic consequences. Yeah, still air-conditioned with free snacks, which they are improving apparently. I don't know. It seems like—

Yeah, so what do you— What, uh— So, so, Doc is, uh, we're gonna have Meta Code.

Yeah, I mean, it seems like they're trying to have a model that they would sell it on the API or something. Yeah. And it's just, um, seems like it's, uh, I don't know, it's an entirely new motion. Um, they have done this before though. They, at one point they were trying to compete with Google Workspace and have like a Slack competitor effectively. Like you could run your company on Facebook Spaces and Facebook Messenger. Uh, and I don't think that ever really took off, So it is a new go-to-market motion, but it is simpler because you don't have to rip everything out. You just port over to this particular endpoint and—

Yeah, it's so interesting. It's so interesting because I would have expected, I was expecting Meta to spend enough money to get the Meta AI, you know, ChatGPT, Gemini cloud competitor to the top of the charts and keep it there. Because I expected Zuck to think, like, hey, if I get people asking questions all day long, I can just target them much better.

Oh, you mean the App Store charts, not—

Yeah, so I expected them to go super hard on consumer. They don't have background in enterprise. They bought Manus, but even Manus was, like, sort of unclear what they were going to do over time. Maybe they would integrate it into Ads Manager. But I expected them to just say, like, Zuck say, like, hey, I'm going to spend a lot of money., and I have billions of users already. I'm gonna do whatever it takes to get a consumer chat app to the top of the charts, keep it there, and over time just focus on this one thing. And the Meta AI app sitting at 17 in the App Store right now, you know, not nothing, but I don't, like, the market is not, is clearly not like, is clearly not sending signals like, hey, we're really excited for you guys to like pivot into enterprise and like spend hundreds of billions of dollars competing against Google, AWS, Microsoft, Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, SpaceX, you know, all the Chinese labs, SpaceX.

Like, it's a lot.

No, like this would be an absolutely incredible come from behind story. It would be one for the, for the history books if they can do it.

Yeah.

But I think it's reasonable that the market is saying like, no, they're not pricing it in.

Yeah, certainly. Well, there's other news. Zuckerberg directed Meta to build a prediction markets app, which is—

Mike Isaac with an incredible scoop.

Wild shift. The experimental app internally called Arena would be independent of Facebook and Instagram. It could compete for attention with Polymarket and Kalshi, the biggest prediction markets, says Mike Isaac.

Mike says, importantly, the app is currently experimental and will not include using real money, though insiders have not fully ruled out a future in which that could happen.

Do they have a—

Fascinating, fascinating, fascinating move. I think, I think sentiment is at near rock bottom.

Yeah. Wall Street Journal just had that exposé on Polymarkets advertising. And so, like, the vibes are getting, like, more—

Well, yeah. So, sentiment on prediction markets is, like, I don't know if it's at an all-time low. I think users actually, like, generally like—

It was way lower when it was like, oh, we're going to find out who the next president is. And now it's like, It's a gambling thing for sports. And it's like the vibe has very much shifted. Yeah.

And I think, yeah, I mean, a lot of people have benefited from using prediction markets as a data source.

A lot of people have benefited from sports betting. There's a story about a guy who won $6 million on DraftKings and built a mansion with a bowling alley in it. I'm not kidding. This guy's just like a great poker player. And he's won a $1 million— He's won over $1 million in fantasy sports, the Millionaire Maker fantasy sports tournament. He's won it multiple times. He's won it like 7 times.

So what I was saying is like prediction markets are—

It's a skill issue.

That's what you're saying. Revenue is exploding. I think that's a sign that users like the product. I appreciate them as a data source. I always have. But sentiment around them. Broadly is just like bad.

Yeah.

And then sentiment around Meta.

Yeah.

Is at almost an all-time low, at least in the capital markets from their employee base. Right. Like people are, you know, very, very unhappy.

Yeah.

And so maybe Zuck is just saying like, eff it. Like, we can't get it. I can't get any— can't— I don't think it can get any worse.

What's Okay, here's a steel man on Arena, the prediction markets app from Meta. If it doesn't use real money, there's way less risk of, like, yes, I saw this.

BLT, luck issue.

Yeah, instead of skill issue.

I've never heard someone say luck issue. Luck issue.

That's so good. Anyway, I knew you were gonna look at that. Very funny. Anyway, the Arena bull case. The Arena bull case is if it doesn't use money, you don't run into any of the controversy around like, oh, someone's gonna spend their last dollar, they're gonna get addicted to this, all this.

Yeah, I totally believe that they'll never turn on the real dollar.

But you can still, so the steel man is that they have not, they've gamified everything in the, Instagram and Facebook orbit, and they actually haven't added pay-to-play mechanics really. Like, it is all like aura farming. You're farming for like fake currencies, likes, followers, reposts, and tags, and story views. And there's all these different dopamine hits that you get, which of course there's this discussion around addiction and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but it's not actually money. And so you could imagine, if they can make Arena and getting points in the Arena as rewarding as getting 1,000 likes on an Instagram post or 1,000 views on a story post, if they can make people—

People love the status of like making accurate picks.

A good call, yeah, exactly. And so if all of that is integrated and you can go to someone's account and you can see, oh, well, they got this many views, they have this many followers, they're followed by all these cool people, and they also have run it up huge on Arena, this is like a high signal account and maybe I should follow it. So I don't know, it could be something that—

I think part of it is like social media is starting to be viewed as something that is as bad as gambling for society, potentially worse, right? Potentially worse than gambling.

Maybe.

And so part of it's just like, eff it, I think users will like this, they'll use it. And you can imagine, like, making Instagram already one of the most addictive apps ever created and just adding casino functionality to it. So you're gambling with your friends. I'm not, you know, I think it's, this move is like laughable, right? In many ways. Just because it's, just given the amount of fire that social media is already under, like, you know, this court case, right? The addiction court cases and that. Now it's like, okay, well, like, we're sorry, you know, we're sorry that like you think our app is like addictive. Like, you know, we're going to work this out in the courts. But while we do that, like, we're going to introduce gambling. Yeah, it's like it is. It is just like a very funny move. And I'm sure they just wish— I'm sure they wanted to like keep it, you know, under wraps. And it's probably an experiment still.

Yeah.

But, but, but, you know, not, not a, not a move that's like very defensible, right?

Unless, unless they stick with the no money thing. I'm actually, I'm thinking that, that if there's no money involved whatsoever, forever, I don't know that I have a problem with it.

It's, it's potentially If people get so addicted to the status game of making good predictions that they just stop doing real gambling.

That could be good. Maybe he's trying to— That could be good for society. Wow, I hadn't thought about that.

Yeah, they're like, "I don't care about making real money." Okay, okay, yeah, yeah.

I'm just trying to farm. I'm just thinking that like, yes, the fake currencies, virtual currencies, dopamine hits, like prestiging on Call of Duty is the same, XP in Call of Duty, like, Yes, you can get too addicted to it and you can just spend all night playing Call of Duty to try and prestige or level up or whatever. You can be hunting for a platinum trophy on some super hard PlayStation game all night and like that can be bad, but it's just a way different thing in terms of like what a crap, what hitting rock bottom looks like when you're not involving real money. Like you can hit rock bottom being like, wow, I was scrolling Instagram Reels 4 hours a day Or, "I was playing Call of Duty all night, was sleepy at work the next day." Like, it can be bad, not good, but it's nowhere near as big as, like, "I lost my college fund for my kid. I gambled it away," right? If there's no money, it's just a different conversation. I think you do need to put it in a different bucket.

Yeah, the other thing is, uh, Kalshi was reported as doing, like, over $2 billion of annualized revenue. They're growing very quickly. I expect them to be well beyond that. Like, if Zuck came in and he got 100% of the sort of like online gaming market, it could like maybe move the needle a little bit on— but this isn't like a winner-take-all market, right? A lot of people, like, even all the apps are available, they still use their like— some friend that has a sportsbook or whatever.

Sure, sure.

So it doesn't really feel like a move that you make when you're spending hundreds of billions of dollars on AI. Like you're betting the company on AI. This seems like it, like I'm starting to maybe see that even though Zuck is very good at monetizing applications, that it might just be for the pure love of the game.

Yeah, Rob Flaherty summed up of pushback. I'm at the child brain poisoning company. I'm at the gambling company. I'm at the combination child brain poisoning and gambling company. Uh, good reference to a Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, a famous one. Um, but feedback to the Kylie Jenner Meta glasses has been way, way better. Uh, wow, Silicon Valley finally figured out who controls consumer spending. Uh, this is not finally— Meta's been partnering with with great celebrities for a really long time. This does not come as a shock to me, but it is the right person to partner with.

And it's so, it's fascinating 'cause we were trying to estimate like how much Meta spent on this like partnership campaign. I was putting it at like somewhere around like 50, I have no information on it.

Million?

Like 50 million, yeah, yeah. How much does it cost to get the top, influencer.

Yeah.

In the entire world to do a campaign like this.

Yeah.

And launch a product with you.

Yeah.

You know, maybe something like $50 million. Then Alex Heath.

Yeah.

Ethan Ader. Yeah. We were with the Scoop Athlete. Scoop Athlete.

Yeah.

Comes out and scoops that Snap is working on a deal with Robert Downey Jr. to spend $100 million. Yeah. Potentially for a partnership there.— which is deeply confusing. OK. For, like, you know, a lot of reasons. Like, the Kylie-Meta campaign makes a lot of sense. Kylie is, like, one of the— like, probably the or one of the top influencers on Instagram, right? So it's a deep existing partnership.

You don't know that this couldn't be— this isn't deep. It could be a super deep integration. We could be looking at like Iron Man 4 Snap Spectacles, and the whole movie could revolve around Iron Man taking off the suit and only using the Snap Spectacles to stop Thanos for the 5th time in a row.

And I just don't believe that, as cool as Robert Downey Jr. is, I don't believe that people are gonna spend $2,195 on, these specs because he is in a brand campaign with them.

Yeah.

Whereas I do feel like Kylie could potentially drive well more than $50 million of sales.

Totally.

Of her.

No, 100%. Kylie informs purchases at a very different rate. Like, I'm a fan of Robert Downey Jr. I like his movies, but it's very hard for me to close the loop from like, okay, he looked good and was in this suit and so I should go buy that suit. It's just such a—

the other thing is like The Meta Glasses are a content creation product. Yeah. Like that's their primary function.

And she's a content creator.

Kylie is the number one content creator.

Yeah, but you're completely discounting the possibility that Avengers 12 could be filmed entirely on the Snap Spectacles. What do you think about that? It's possible. If it is, it could be worth it. But yes, it's hard to underwrite at $100 million. That's a lot of money for, It's not a lot of money for Meta at $1.5 trillion in market cap. It is a lot of money. $1.4. It is a lot of money for Snap.

That's last week's numbers.

An $8 billion company.

Last week's price is not today's price. What's Snap's market cap? Snap. Snap.

$7.2 billion. Not bad. It's only off 5% in the last 5 days off of this Snap news. It's down 25% over the last month, though. It's had a rough go. But I don't know. I like that the product shipped. I like that there's experimentation and competition in the wearables market. And I do think that like Christopher Mims is correct that like there is an inflection point here, that wearables are this new battleground that a lot of companies are facing. And there's a lot of opportunity with how slow Apple is moving in the category. You can go and potentially win. Like, I mean, just watching your reaction to the Meta Glasses launch is it doesn't seem like you're in the category of this is going to get steamrolled by Apple immediately as soon as they launch it. You're like, they might come in and compete, but they are ceding so much territory that that 80% maybe goes to 50% if Apple really succeeds, but it's not gonna be a flip overnight because there's so much brand value, so much style, so many partnerships to the silhouettes of the Frame.

Yeah.

And so many learnings on the, actually, like what people are using these for.

So Snap sitting at $7.18 billion market cap with a projecting 2026 revenue of $6.76 billion. Mm-hmm. So anyways, let me tell you about Codex.

Codex is a powerful workspace for getting work done with AI agents, whether you're writing code, analyzing data, creating content, or automating business workflows. Codex helps you move projects forward from start to finish.

New family of models. Oh yeah. Previewing today, GPT-5.6 Soul.

Soul.

Next generation model.

Named after Soul, bro? That's crazy.

Yeah, I don't know about that one. Anyways, preview.

Do you think it's a $100 million brand deal? It's a Robert Downey Jr.? No, it's named after the celestial bodies, Sol, Terra, and Luna. Cool.

And putting up the design.

And do they go in size? Like, 'cause I would assume Sol is the biggest, then Terra, Luna is the medium and then Luna's the smallest in terms of the model size.

So we're kind of large, medium, small. Let me pull it up.

It's gonna take a second for people to learn the new language there. I have enjoyed the dropdown in the ChatGPT app is just like, how much reasoning do you want? Instant, medium, high, extra high, or pro. And I don't really think of them as separate models now. And I've been a fan of that. Just use the right tool for the job behind the scenes. Anyway, you can dig into that. See if it's going well.

And of course, by US government directive, access is limited to only 20 pre-approved companies.

20?

That's so small. Which is brutal because our very own Dan Shipper will not be able to do a vibe check on it, at least yet.

He's got to get back to us soon. But a lot of this comes on the back of the distill gate that's happening. Anthropic says Alibaba has distilled Claude many, many times. And I saw a chart of the amount of tokens that are getting resold off the back of that API, and it is staggering. It's a true— somebody was like, they professionalized fraud, which seems accurate. And so having really tight control, it makes sense in the distilling world. It's still very unfortunate.

To go back to your other question, so SOL,, is the frontier model. Terra is a balanced model for efficient everyday work. And then Luna is a fast and affordable model for high-volume work.

Okay, cool.

You had it right.

Uh, well, Rockstar energy drink founder Russ Savage— what a name—

what a name—

he put 5 homes on the market, uh, for a combined total of just shy of $300 million in hopes of attracting attracting newly rich buyers right after the SpaceX IPO. He says, "People got liquidity, and you are my exit liquidity." You are my exit liquidity, buy my incredible properties. So Rockstar Energy Drink founder, creator, and real estate investor is putting 5 homes he owns in Los Angeles, Aspen, Park City on the market for a combined total of $297 million. He's betting that a wave newly rich buyers will be looking at for luxury homes. We're entering a new stratosphere of top ed wealth where there's no limit, said Savage, who's been buying, renovating, and selling homes across the country for a decade. Where are they gonna buy properties? They're gonna want a ski house and they're gonna want a house in the sun. Savage is asking $85 million for a 7-bedroom home on Aspen's Red Mountain in Los Angeles. He's listing 2 estates, one for $85 million, another for $34 million. Park City, He's listing properties for $55 million and $38 million. Where is he going to live? Uh, some he's listed before, but others he's putting on the market for the first time since buying them. Paul Benson, one of Savage's listing agents, is already seeing the impact of these anticipated IPOs across the markets he works in, which includes San Francisco and Seattle. People employed by SpaceX or OpenAI or Anthropic are being approached by banks and funds with upfront investment cash aiming to lock in early connections. With these soon-to-be ultra-wealthy clients because newer construction luxury homes have already been selling well. This will put further strain on supply and I believe it will drive up prices, he says. Savage is also betting on the economy, believing it will be strengthened by peace deals. He's long America, falling interest rates and a stock market that continues to hit record highs. Savage, 56, sold his beverage brand to PepsiCo for around $4.7 billion in 2020 and lives in Florida. He started investing in high-end real estate after he founded Rockstar Energy in 2001. He said buying luxury homes, redoing them, and living in them until he decides to move somewhere else. He was formerly, he was formerly named Russ Weiner, but took the name Savage in honor of his father, political commentator. Michael Savage?

Wait, what do you mean took the name? Wait, in honor of his father?

Michael Savage. Michael Allen Weiner, born 1942, is known by his professional name Michael Savage. He's an American author, political commentator, and activist, former radio host. He's best known as the host of The Savage Nation, a nationally syndicated talk show that aired on the talk radio network across the United in the United States until 2021, was the second most listened to radio talk show in the country with an audience of over 20 million listeners. Wow, he's sold books.

Yeah, Dr. Michael Savage has a PhD in nutrition science.

He's conservative, he has two children, he's still alive, and his son is Russell Goldencloud Wiener. Who now goes by Russ Savage. That is crazy. What an insane. So his name now is Russ Golden Cloud Savage. He really created a golden cloud with his company. He started Rockstar in 2001. What is this?

Golden packaging.

Rockstar energy drinks. Yeah, it was golden. It was golden, or it is. He's also the founder and CEO of his own company. He was, Oh, he just barely snuck in the Forbes list of 500 richest Americans. He's number 494 with an estimated net worth of $3.4 billion. In 2025, his estimated net worth is $5 billion. He's done fantastically. This is very interesting. He bought the West Hollywood home of basketball player Carlos Boozer for $10 million, listed another home. He lives in Delray Beach. Fascinating. Well, good luck to him. Hopefully, if you have some SpaceX liquidity, you can go pick one of these up. They all look fantastic. And he's certainly done a great job.

Let's work on getting Russ on the show. I would say—

He's an absolute savage.

I would say, Nick, work on it. But somebody is not in the UltraDome today.

If you're trying to build luxury properties, you got to know that there's going to be a small group of hungry savages coming after you. Hungry savages. Cursor's $60 billion SpaceX deal. It prices off of the 7-day weighted average of the SpaceX closing price before close. The lower the SpaceX stock, the more SpaceX for cursor holders. The deal was announced with SpaceX at $211 per share. Now it's at $155, but very stable today at $152. Curser holders are rooting for the stock to keep falling until close. Somewhat. I can't imagine that they're rooting for it to go down all that much, but all that much. But that is an interesting dynamic that's playing out. Also, SpaceX is eyeing a bond sale for the history books, and the Financial Times doesn't like it. Allianz, the insurer, they're sounding the alarm. SpaceX is greenlight for 52 or for $25 billion bond sale is a clear sign of bubble territory. I mean, at the same time, they got, what, $80 billion in cash on the balance sheet at this point. Seems like a reasonable debt-to-equity ratio. But let's hear the bear take from Allianz. SpaceX decision to launch a $25 billion bond sale shortly after raising $86 billion in a record-breaking IPO is a clear sign that the markets are entering bubble territory. Uh-oh. The investment chief at insurance group Allianz has warned big investors have grown increasingly nervous. The companies rushing to raise money in a flurry of big equity and bond deals, seizing on record high stock prices and credit spreads close to the tightest in decades, could signal a top in frothy markets. SpaceX raising debt so soon after a blockbuster equity issuance was a good example of markets shifting from healthy boom a stretch boom into bubble territory, said the chief investment officer at Allianz, which manages $800 billion of assets.

Elon is hoovering up.

He really is cash.

Someone else was saying, how is X money paying a 6% yield? You know, people have learned to ask where is the yield coming from? But of course, X.com The space company, whatever cash that they have deposited in Xmoney, I'm sure they're able to use that to—

Build data centers.

Build infrastructure. Yeah.

No, no, I mean, that is the thesis there. And I'd be very interested. They say it's up to $10 million is insured, 6% yield. That's higher than Cash App and many of the other— Wait, you're—

You confirm that up to $10 million?

This was in the tweet announcing it. I don't know exactly what level of insurance.

So they actually are— this is not just like—

They said insured. I didn't see FDIC insured.

I'm not sure. No, but that signals that they're not viewing this as like, oh, this is just like a perk to get consumers.

Yeah. Oh, put in $1,000. It's like, no, like random investors can be like, wait, I'm earning 4% in my bond account with my bank, I should move this over to X money and just get the 6%? There's a lot of yield hunters and credit card points maxers who just are always hunting for, oh, this account gives me a good rate of return. And where is the yield coming from? It's a different equation when you have $100 billion on the balance sheet. Seems like you can make all the discussions over bubble territory or overvalued, but as At the same time, like you're at the top of the cap table of a really well-capitalized company. And so you're probably gonna get that yield. At the same time, SpaceX is gonna potentially raise billions of dollars through this. If for every 100 people that put in $10 million and clip that 6% coupon, they get $1 billion. So could you imagine 1,000 people signing up for that, putting $10 million in? Getting 6%, and then that's a $10 billion incremental raise for SpaceX. That seems pretty doable. That doesn't seem like crazy math to me. It's a very different go-direct strategy. We've seen other hyperscalers issue corporate debt at those rates, below those rates, around those rates. So it doesn't seem crazy. It's just interesting that it's going through this direct channel for the first time as opposed to the more traditional Wall Street path. But the Wall Street path, they're complaining. So go direct, I guess. That's the strategy. Anyway.

Minute Moolah says, are we done talking about AI restrictions? I feel like that's low-key a big deal.

Yeah, we have some pieces in here about it. We'll go through this. First, let me tell you about CrowdStrike. Your business is AI, their business is securing it. CrowdStrike secures AI and stops breaches. There's more data center backlash. Data centers, how do they work? Theo Vaughn says, "Nobody wants a data center, dude. And the people that want them, to me, they seem kind of evil. Nobody wants this. One of these companies is going to own all this information." He had some very funny takes about—

He said emotional credit score.

Emotional credit score would be weird. Yes, the data center issue needs to be messaged much more clearly.

And I think—

There's such a wide gap between the water and The power is— I'm assuming he starts this way, but then he says, "I'm gonna be switching to distributing my podcast on CD." That's such a bad counter take because truly like the data centers that are required to power the YouTube and podcast stream, it's like so, so small compared to what AI is doing in terms of data center construction and the power requirements and the build-out requirements I mean, like you fire off one AI agent and you're using like, it's equivalent to YouTube for like 10 years probably. But yes, you know, the internet powers lots of things, but people have to understand the benefits and the value of these things, unless otherwise they're just like, "Why? Why don't we just use the data centers we have? Why do we need new ones?" And then they also need to be constructed in remote locations away from housing. Quietly with clean energy, with, you know, not with the closed-loop water system. Like there's a bunch of boxes that if you check them, people will be okay with it. But it's certainly slow to actually build up the narrative. Amir over at The Information has a little bit of a narrative violation. AI data centers apparently are a godsend for some communities and produce a lot of jobs. Union leaders are saying they're great. For instance, 3 large Wisconsin data center campuses Microsoft, Meta, and Oracle are building. They're supporting almost 10,000 jobs during the building phase, which began in 2020 and lasts through 2028, according to Mandala Partners. When they are fully operational, the facilities will support 6,000 permanent jobs. Nearly a third will be in-house, highly skilled roles, including 770 technicians managing critical mechanical and electrical systems and 700 data center technicians. The rest are in the supplier network that provides these facilities. And meanwhile, in West Memphis, Mayor Marco McClendon recently told me it was, quote, a stagnant city before Google broke ground last year on a data center just outside its boundaries. The company's investments are now making it easy to recruit other businesses in the city and also figuring out the correct tax strategy for the data centers. Seems to be the next sort of domino to fall because Virginia has benefited a lot from the data center buildout from AWS. And I believe property taxes are like unnaturally low for Virginian residences because the government balance budget, the government budget is balanced towards getting revenue from, from the data center buildout that's happened in Virginia. And so they haven't been been so, uh, such a big deal. Um, anyway, we should move on to other stuff in, uh, AI bans, what's going on. There's a Wall Street Journal article we can read through here. Uh, OpenAI limits access to new models, citing government security concerns. Company says White House review of AI releases shouldn't become long-term default. Ban on Mythos model remains. Um, OpenAI said it's limiting given access to its newest artificial intelligence models after discussions with the Trump administration, but warned that the recent trend of the White House restricting industry activity on national security grounds on a case-by-case basis shouldn't become the norm. The maker of ChatGPT— yeah, I saw a lot of like safety people being like, this is the worst of both worlds. It's not some sort of like broad-reaching apply, you know, just like the rule exists and then everyone can easily apply. It's like the highest-touch government intervention, and it makes the government have much more power over AI, which is something the safety folks, I think, at least the ones that I saw talking about this, were not a fan of.

But yeah, it's also just like, you know, there's the new, uh, it's GLM 5.2.

Yes.

That people are loving.

Someone was talking about how they didn't love it in the chat. I don't know what the reviews are. We'll have to talk.

I don't know. In general, there's been a lot of excitement, a lot people saying like, "Hey, I could use this as a daily driver." Yeah, and all the lab leaders have said open source is like 6 months behind.

And so now we're like approaching 6 months past like the last jump in paradigm and like massive cyber capabilities. So those cyber capabilities are coming to fruition in the open source world. There's an interesting dynamic between the risk of like bio stuff and, cyber stuff. So if you have a model that can hack a system, it can usually patch that system for that hack in far less than 6 months, like probably in like an hour. It can see, oh, there's an exploit here and we shipped the code, merged it in, and now that exploit is closed. And so the gap between like finding, like you create the Hack Machine 9000, you can hack everything, but instead you use it for legal reasons, for economic reasons, to patch all the systems, that's great. The problem that I'm worried about now is if there is a world where building the counter, like the good version of something, takes longer than 6 months. So the example I'll give is in bio. So let's say that you have a next-generation model. It's really good at finding viruses that, if created, would wipe out a ton of people. It's also really good at building early warning detection systems and, you know, counteractive, like, take this pill and you'll no longer, you know, be susceptible to that deadly virus that is now possible. That's fine, as long as you continue to roll out the bio security initiatives first, you should be good. Because by the time the open source hacker, nefarious actor, state actors get access to the Bioweapon 9000, you've already patched your society so that you have bio risk security, early detection, all the different medicines that you need to fight back. But if manufacturing all of that and actually deploying the biosecurity, the biorisk, the good version takes a year, but the frontier is only 6 months behind, you could wind up in a situation where manufacturing the virus is much shorter than manufacturing the antivirus. Now, I don't know exactly how all of that works, if that's real, what the level of risk is there, but that's maybe a unique problem especially if it's a situation where you need to make a lot of the antivirus and you only need to make like a small amount of the virus. And so I don't know, I think that's interesting.

Well, and is that not exactly how?

It's possible, I don't know, we'll see. We'll need to talk to more people that understand biosecurity risk and see where this goes. It's also just harder to like, to create, bioweapons, it's less like, like you can, you know, with a sufficiently advanced model, you can hack into a, you know, corporate database from your laptop. You do need something like a biolab, which is not nearly as distributed as laptops, which everyone has. So the shape of the question is—

But it feels like every 6 months they discover like some like unauthorized biolab somewhere in the US. Totally. That, you know, has a bunch of existing viruses. So, yeah, very concerning.

Yeah, very risky. Well, let's go back to the OpenAI news. OpenAI followed a similar process with versions of GPT-5.5 like Cyber, which demonstrated an ability to discover vulnerabilities in software that could be used in cyberattacks. The similar capabilities of Anthropic's Mythos models prompted the White House to increase its oversight of the industry and overhaul its light-touch approach to AI. There was, of course, that news that the NSA commented that Mythos was able to hack into a bunch of their systems. That was during a red teaming exercise. Like, like, so they had a red team deliberately try to hack the systems, probably from within the network to some degree. Still scary, but not some unintended behavior, which I think is good news. The unprecedented intervention led Anthropic to halt all access to comply with the new rule. Anthropic had previously worked with the administration on a limited rollout of an earlier version of Mythos, and OpenAI said it hoped to make 5.6 generally available in the coming weeks and that the government's current approval process represents a transition period while President Trump's recent executive order on model oversight is implemented. Quote, we don't believe this kind of government access process should become the long-term default. It keeps the best tools from users, developers, enterprises, cyber defenders, and global partners who need them, the company said in a blog post. We are taking this short-term step because we believe it is the strong— strongest path to broader availability. The latest Anthropic models have been shut down for 2 weeks. There was a move in prediction markets, which controversial but very useful sometimes. It seems like Fable might be coming back. The market's like jumping all over the place. So someone seemingly knows something, but it does seem like all of these delays are being worked through actively, especially as the open source frontier advances. It feels less and less reasonable to keep closed source models locked away.

Well, why is the open source model frontier advancing? Is because the models are widely available.

Well, is that what's going on?

Because distillation.

Yeah.

Like, like a minute in the chat says, I think we're headed toward a future where frontier models will just be completely cut off from everyone else. National security asset treatment, no distillation from anyone allowed. Like if you make these models available, like clearly if you make the models available through everyday consumer subscriptions, there will be groups that will create networks of thousands of accounts and distill the models, and then you're giving away this advanced capability. Now, whether or not that causes these sort of doomsday scenarios, it's not entirely clear, but it's clear that the open-source frontier will just, continue to lag the closed-source frontier until the distillation problem is solved.

Yeah, I was listening to Ian Bremmer on the Foreign Policy podcast. He just wrote a piece about—

Bremenator?

The Bremenator. We gotta have him on, he's fantastic. But he was pointing out a problem with the sort of like individually targeted regulation of AI. Bessant brought all the bankers together because America is very strong in the banking sector to address AI, but that doesn't include infrastructure because our global infrastructure is not particularly— we don't have the largest infrastructure companies in the world.

Do you think?

So we're very piecemeal on this. And he says that he's calling for much more integration between what what's happening in commerce and what's happening in the finance world. And then also what's happening in all sorts of—

You think Meta's stock would pop if Zuck could go get a preliminary ban on some of their new models?

The aura farm of the ban, it does seem to be working. It's too powerful. You gotta ban the next version of Diatone.

Rick Goth says, "I love these boys-only episodes. Classic TBPn." So do we. So do we. We might need to run a no interview week.

That'd be good.

An interview cleanse.

Yeah, we could do that. Yeah, I don't know where it goes. It's tough because some of those problems that you identified about the advancing open source frontier, mass distillation, that doesn't seem like there's a regulatory solution for it that maintains open access. Like that's the trick. Is it like?

Yeah, no, there's a scenario where it's, there's only, you know, you have to be only the largest, most trustworthy companies in the world. And that feels like a really dark—

You know who did actually push back in an interesting way was Bill Gurley. And he, I mean, he was taking aggressive shots, but one take he had that was somewhat, resonant with me was he said, you know, if these models are so smart, can't they detect distillation attacks? And so there is a world where the closed source frontier advances to a point where you can mitigate distillation attacks much more effectively. And instead of a whitelist, you have a banlist. And so you're banning organizations that are trying to distill, but the models are still what, pretty much widely available. You're still playing whack-a-mole constantly, but you have AGI doing the whack-a-mole. And so you have, you know, the best possible model going around and understanding, wait, that's a weird behavior. Why is that person asking for that, for those tokens over and over and over again? Let's ban them. And maybe the bans are happening all the time, but on an individual basis and the ban list is huge, but the allow list is generally available and so most companies and individuals can just sign up. That would be an interesting outcome.

Well, I think we should switch gears and go through the new SoftBank—

Yes, a lot of people have been talking about this for a long time. Masa kind of tied it up in a bow for everyone. Where do we get started with Masayoshi Son from SoftBank?

He—

He says that the true source of value is golden egg factory inside of these.

Let's pull up the deck though and just go right from the beginning.

Okay.

Go through the whole thing.

Okay.

Let's get it up on the big board.

Group.softbank. Group.softbank. They have a TLD? What? That's a cool TLD. They just own .softbank? Can you just go to www.softbank?

We are getting it up on the big board. South Bank Group.

ASI, artificial superintelligence. JPY, 1 quadrillion. What is SBG? South Bank Group. 50-year life plan. 20s, get acknowledged.

You got to wait.

The team is pulling it up.

You got to wait for—

They're working on it. They're working on it. They'll get there. Oh, we updated this. Here we go.

Here we go.

Pull it up. Yeah, this is good. Okay, next slide. Next slide.

All right, all right. So, uh, Ben, if you could read through this while we get set up.

No, don't go to the next one. ASI, artificial super intelligence, is happening, baby. You got, you got this.

And I don't— so, so notably, I think that, uh, this looks like This doesn't necessarily look like it was generated. I think this is a vintage asset.

This is Shutterstock, right?

Yeah, this is Shutterstock. I think he's trying to say like, hey, the image models are good, but they're not image superintelligence.

Also, that's like 5,000 neurons. Like that would do absolutely nothing. That's like worse than like a fly brain if you actually count the connections.

Anyway. Some people have said that I have 5,000.

JPY, 1 quadrillion. What's the plan to get to 1 quad? 1 trillion is out. We're going to quads. That's the next slide. Anybody? There we go. Keep going.

Keep going.

What is SBG? Keep going. I want to see the 50-year life plan.

What is—

get acknowledged.

Okay.

Finance War Chest. Forties take on a challenge.

What is— what is the Wikipedia version where it's like rise to Power.

Yes, yes, yes.

Like, uh, you know, like, yeah, controversy, yeah, downfall, uh, expansion of power. Anyways, okay, so 30, he's getting his finance war chest.

It's early life, rise to power.

He didn't even decide to take expansion of power, regime, coup, trial, and execution. So no, notice here, he didn't even take on a challenge until his 40s.

Wow, um, it's never too late. But he did finance a war chest during his 30s.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, but that wasn't a challenge for him.

I like that. '60s handover business.

'50s, just fully complete the business.

Complete.

Job's finished. Complete. The job was finished. Okay, but he hands it over.

Hands it over to the next generation. But then go to the next slide. Plot twist.

'60s.

Oh, the 60-year life plan. He's not handing it over to the next generation. He is continuing at the reins. Next slide. He wants to realize ASI in the '70s.

He's like, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not done yet.

The real challenge begins.

ASI platform provider, the real challenge begins.

Again, not AI generated. This is Shutterstock. He knows it. He goes into PowerPoint manually, picks an image.

He's trying to send a signal to the OpenAI team that there's still room for improvement.

Constraint on humanity's evolution, intelligence, and execution, healthcare, education, research, caregiving, cybersecurity, all good markets, that makes sense. What's the next 30-year vision? Bring the brain computer to life.

This is from June 25th, 2010.

Wow. So coexistence with intelligence.

16 years ago.

Yeah, he's getting there. ASI brain computer, physical ASI intelligent robots. He basically nailed it. We got the brain computer. AI that answers, AISX.

Workflow automation.

This is way more.

Okay, so I'm starting to kind of feel like some of this is AI generated. So you can kind of see him getting a little bit more AGI pill as the deck goes on.

But he does need a huge amount of credit for calling the shot on ASI like a decade before AI 2027. Everyone's like, oh, they nailed it. There's gonna be government conflict in mid-2026. That was like a 12-month prediction. This guy was calling it a decade ago.

He kind of hyperstitioned it.

He did, potentially.

That's the manifestation.

Yeah.

You were saying this is manifestation for the bad. Manifestation.

Humans will not be replaced. They will evolve through ASI. Okay. All right. Physical AI, robots for high-risk work, rescue from disasters, solve labor shortages. They have the AI model, OpenAI, have the semiconductor, Arm. AI infrastructure and robot. Just robot is the next one. New intelligence. We need to skip to the golden goose. That's the highlight of the slide. Oh, so they're doing 10-gigawatt Ohio project, 5 gigawatts in France, robot. Yes, keep going a little bit more, a little bit more, and then wait here. Keep going, one more, one more. This one. Oh, the text actually looks pretty good on this one. This on this screen. On my screen, it's really hard to read, but this is hilarious, just the level of like highlight, Ctrl+U, underscore that. It's like, in terms of like design, like, and putting the white text over the white robot, very edgy design consideration.

No, he, you know, the slides are funny because it's such a big company. Yeah. And they seem like relatively unsophisticated, but they work. They communicate ideas.

They do.

In a simple way.

Okay, let's keep going. I want to get to the golden goose. Oh yeah, here we go. Okay. So he's planning for a quadrillion of value or something like that. Okay.

Okay, so yeah, 16 years ago, equity of value of holdings, $5 trillion.

The golden goose, 5 golden eggs. This is such a great, the net debt shareholder value is 3 eggs. It's such a good metaphor. Goose was not valued. See, this is something people have been saying. People have been saying, this has been like a VC talking point on the podcast circuit for a long time. It's nice to see Masa like put it out there, but like Anand's been tweeting this for a long time.

Yeah.— and a lot of VCs realized that the goose was not valued either. And so they started raising, you know, selling secondary.

It was in a lot of LP decks. A lot of decks were saying goose was not valued.

Yeah, so now LPs are saying, hey, I'll buy some of the management company.

It was kind of like a meme in Silicon Valley. People would just say, oh, goose was not valued. Yeah, we're so early. Goose was not valued.

Or, yeah, you'd have an exit in your portfolio, and people were like, how was it? You'd be like, it was good, but—

Goose was not valid. Goose do not lay eggs. Eggs do not lay eggs. That's the next slide. Eggs do not lay eggs.

It was the goose that created the value, which is hard to deny.

Do we have a clock on the board?

No, we gotta get it. We gotta get a goose. We gotta, we gotta Brutal. We got the rest of the farm, but we gotta get gooses up there.

Shareholder value, 15x in 16 years, 25x in 16 years. They're at $74 trillion. What matters is not the eggs, it is the goose itself.

It is the goose itself. The power to keep laying eggs.

The power to keep laying eggs. The eggs. Over the next 16 years, he's going to one quad.

I actually, What I actually want to get this like, like as a print to put up, maybe not in my home, but maybe in the garage.

Yep.

Because like the statement, what matters is not the eggs, it is the goose itself, the power to keep laying eggs. Like if you're going, if you're waking up in the morning, you go to get in your car and you just see that as a reminder that like, it's not about like, like the value is in yourself, right? The power to keep laying eggs. It's really like having that like—

Jocko Willink.

Yeah, having that goose mentality to start the day.

Goose maxing.

Priceless.

Yes.

Priceless.

The true source of value.

I love sprinkling in just like the goose and egg slides with like nav slides and projections. Like, it's very—

Keep going. One more. There we go. This is beautiful.

The golden egg factory inside the goose.

What happened here?

Is the true source of value the golden egg factory inside the goose? So the golden egg factory, of course it's inside the goose. The goose is what lays the eggs. It's an internal mechanism.

It's also not a biological process. It's an industrial process.

You can see here, it really is like, yeah, it's an internal mechanism in the goose. And you have this sort of like automated conveyor belt. Producing these ASI eggs.

Yeah. ASI are the eggs. It's interesting.

Let's go to the next one, 'cause I think it kind of clarifies how to understand the market capitalization of SoftBank Group. You know, you need to, he's feeling like, okay, like you're just valuing me for my eggs. I want you to value me based on my egg value and my goose value. That's the path to the quadrillion. Yeah, right.

This is something they, uh, they don't teach you this at Harvard Business School. Realizing AI, this is his plan, and it is an optimistic message. Happiness for everyone through ASI. Uh, it is funny. I mean, a lot gets lost in translation. He has a very funny aesthetic, but, uh, you know, I don't know. I agree with a lot of this. Like, there's like, like, the models are good, stuff is valuable. I don't know. It's very funny to see one of these, some of these slides, but it's a good time. SoftBank Group always delivers. Always delivers. It's funny. You have to imagine that there's like someone over there who's been like, maybe we should like punch up the design aesthetics, and just like, nah, we got a good thing going. I mean, maybe it's like the Warren Buffett version of like the Berkshire Hathaway website never needs a rebrand, doesn't need to go with the linear aesthetic. At any point in time. Anyway, if you're making a deck and you're taking a different path, you probably want to open up Figma. Agents, meet the canvas. Your AI agents can now create and modify your Figma files with design system context. Masa, if you're listening, jump on Figma for the next one. We'd love to see it.

And not even because we want you to change the aesthetics of your decks or the style or the way ideas are communicated, but purely because it'll make it faster and more efficient your team.

Yes.

And you'll be able to collaborate more efficiently.

Yes. Uh, anyway, there's—

speaking of DeX, Character AI DeX from 2021, it's been floating around.

Okay.

Uh, which I guess came out in a lawsuit.

Yeah, I wonder why. But this was from 2021, December 8th, a lifetime ago in artificial intelligence, just 5 years. It's crazy. 2-year run, acquisition acquisition by Google, 2 years there, now GNOME is over at OpenAI, about GNOME. And this is another good deck. Are you seeing this? This has the same— it has the same— it has similar level of aesthetics in the sense that it's like, like very simple in its design.

No, the lesson in here, and, and, uh, I, I've always said when working on decks, like, if the deck is not compelling when it's black black and white and there's not even any visuals inside, the final product, even if designed beautifully, will not be compelling, right? So like the actual content, the words are what matter most. And here you have Naum being—

Says he was always into AI. Early days of Google, he created the spell checker, Did You Mean, first targeting system for AdSense, a topic clustering model, and then other large-scale ML systems. Gnome and LLMs. In 2016, he predicted that large neural language models are the future. Wow.

Goated.

Goal: invent critical innovations and make them available to the world. Guts of the transformer architecture, distributed computing strategy, high-performance sparsity optimization, fast decoding long sequences. He also says the goose was not valued. That's interesting. I guess he's been— he said that earlier. Wow. He was talking about in 2016, the lack of goose value.

Yeah. I mean, he said, what matters is not the eggs. It is the— what matters is not the models. It's the architecture. It's the goose itself.

Yes.

True value is the power to keep making models.

Yes. And, uh, but, uh, this is a funny— I think this is a dig at OpenAI, but it's also a testament to his contributions. GPT-3, according to to several OpenAI employees. OpenAI was directionless, attended Noam's talk in 2018, took notes and implemented. This became GPT-3. Continued to monitor and implement many of Noam's papers. And he also referenced—

So funny.

Kevin Lacker says GPT-3 can't quite pass a coding phone screen, but it's getting closer in 2021. GitHub Copilot based on GPT-3 about Daniel. He talks about other products and it's just a fun read. To see, you know, starting a company, want to capitalize on future innovations, left Google a month ago, lots more inbound interest from top people, lots of interest from angels and VCs, taking first seed note. Yeah, vision capabilities. His use cases are interesting too. Says version 0, a million use cases, fun and interesting conversations, companionship, recommendations, foreign language practice, practice social situations, assistive writing, The whole idea with character AI was that you'd be able to pick an individual person to talk to. I remember I demoed it and I was like, I wanna talk to Joseph Stalin and try and convince him that capitalism is the best system or something. I wanted to like have a debate with the economy.

Weren't you successful?

No, it was very funny because the base model was so RL'd against like communism and socialism and like all the famine and Russian expansionism that had happened in World War II, that it was sort of, I was very quickly able to convince Stalin that he was bad.

Yeah, I know, you were successful.

Yeah, I was basically successful.

Take full credit.

And I was like, that doesn't feel like actually what it would be like. You 1v1'd him. Yes.

And you came out on top.

Yes, but it was an unsatisfactory experience because it felt like I was talking to an American sort of lark. Working as Stalin instead of like the real Stalin. But it was interesting. Talks about life coaching, customer support, personal assistance, home automation, all things that are coming to real life either through base models or application layer products on top. The mode is just quality, quality, quality. The best research engineers, the most intelligent products, the highest usage, and large compute cloud. He says it cost $1 million to train GPT-3. Smarter model is more expensive. Company plan, buy some GPUs, evaluating buy versus cloud, train a GPT-3-sized model in 3 weeks. Total spend, $20 million to $30 million in the first year. Anyway, lots of fun there. Where else should we go? There's other OpenAI news. I mean, the chip Jalapeño launched, designed with Broadcom. Jalapeño is purpose-built for LLMs. LLM workloads powering ChatGPT, Codex API, future agentic products. Very exciting.

Crazy, crazy, crazy timeline here.

What?

Just how quickly they were able to.

Oh yeah, yeah. A lot of people are saying like this is the first chip designed with AI agents in the loop so you can write the instruction set much quicker. Sort of unclear exactly.

You gotta give a lot of credit to the humans on both sides.

Probably involved, but it is Which is cool because for a long time it was like, oh, it'll take 5 years to launch a chip. And now companies are clearly doing it faster. And so the, the, the, the go-to-market cycle is tightening for a variety of reasons. Also, apparently OpenAI made deals to purchase 40% of the global raw undiced DRAM wafer output until 2029. Millions of raw DRAM wafers that cannot be used until they're processed. Paul Buchheit says smart move going deeper and deeper into the supply chain. Always, always interesting moves from the deals guy at the top.

Speaking of timelines.

Yes.

People are comparing GTA 6 with the Burj Khalifa. Mm-hmm. Burj Khalifa was built for $1.5 billion and took 6 years. Wow. Apparently GTA 6 is $2 billion and it's taking 12 years. But at the same time, people really see I've said, like, it is the Burj Khalifa of video games.

It's kind of two Burj Khalifas.

I, um, we are gonna have a very special episode on launch day, so I'm looking forward to that. Yeah.

Let me tell you about Console. Console builds AI agents that automate 70% of IT, HR, and finance support, giving employees instant resolution for access requests. Password resets. Uh, we gotta think about this, uh, this, this LED lamp.

Okay, so Philips introduced Skylight, a ceiling-mounted LED panel that makes windowless rooms feel like they have a sky-facing window. It uses Signify's Nature Connect tech to create the depth, brightness, and color shifts, okay, of natural daylight. Philips also follows the sun throughout the day, moving "From cool, warmer light to warmer evening tones." So yeah, do you think they can basically understand your location and where you are and your orientation with the sun to actually make— actually track where would the sunlight exactly be? Yeah, so this got so much hate because the obvious solution if you don't have sunlight is to go get some, walk outside, touch grass.

Or just carry a flashlight around.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Carry a flashlight around and just point it at your face is one solution.

No, if you're in a dark room and you want to see something over there, point the flashlight at it.

It's easy. But I have my first apartment when I moved after college was a very funny room. The only window in the room opened up to a public courtyard in the apartment building. Which made it just completely not a viable window at all. Like, why do you want— it felt like actually being in a fish tank. Yeah, it was terrible. Probably would have like enjoyed having one of these. We also, uh, are in a wind— a bit of a windowless room here ourselves. So I saw this and I was like, yep, whoa, we should get a bunch of these. Yeah. Um, and so yeah, I was, I was, uh, seeing all the, all the hate for this and like sort of getting it, but I think I think even throughout my life, I've just realized that humans are like advanced cats. We sort of just migrate to where there's some amount of light.

Totally.

I think the question is, if you're in a building that has these, does it actually make— does it trick your animal brain into feeling like, yes, I'm in a sunlit room, I'm getting the benefits of sunlight, or will people still try to congregate around the areas with natural light.

Yeah, I mean, it seems like an upgrade, even if it's not 100% of the way there. It's maybe 80% of the way there, and it feels good. I don't know. How much are these? Do we know yet? I'm very interested to see how much they charge for this. There's some cool stuff here. Let's see what people are saying. I'm prepared to buy 20 of these. I've been looking for something like this since I moved into a cellar.

Well, this person, he's obviously joking. I know, it's amazing. $580 USD.

That's from David, from Waveform.

Just under $600.

$600 bucks. Yeah, I think, I don't know. I think that there's a very simple swap out of those can lights, those can LED, you know, the can LEDs go into ceilings. Normally, it's pretty standard in a modern house. You go and you click a button on the wall and there's just a bunch of can LEDs. And the alternative to that was those fluorescent tubes that you see in old office buildings that was really bad. But I could imagine just having these even in rooms with windows, it's probably just a nicer light source than a canned light or a fluorescent panel, but probably not a full substitute for a nice window with a view that's actually reality. But why not put these all over the place if they look good and they're effective? I bet you, you must be able to use them as like normal lights at night too, right? Or is it just for taking a somewhat dark space during the day and brightening it up?

Yeah, you can use them to trick yourself into thinking it's daytime.

Turn it into like a casino.

Even when you're in a 48-hour video game bender.

Yeah, if you wanna make your house more like a Las Vegas casino where you can't tell what time it is, suck a little bit of the oxygen out. They should make an add-on for that. Reduce the oxygen level and then keep the lights. You know, there's that one in Paris, or not in Paris, it's called Paris, I think. In Las Vegas, and it has this weird blue sky that they never turn the lights off in. So when you walk through the casino, you're just like, oh, it feels like 2:00 PM. And so you never leave, never leave.

Bernie Sanders is taking shots.

Tim Cook. So Apple raised prices on basically everything. They held back on a few devices, but Bernie Sanders is mad about it. He says corporate greed is Tim Cook, the billionaire CEO of Apple. Not anymore. He's on the way out. Soon to be ex-CEO of Apple, claiming that hiking prices on Apple products by over $200 is unavoidable after it made $112 billion in profit last year and spent $310 billion on stock buybacks.

Gabe says this product is banned from the Ultra Dome. Can't be giving the boys a sense of time.

So yeah, the price hikes aren't unavoidable, they're unacceptable. And so apparently Apple spent $90 billion on stock buybacks in fiscal 2025. But he's like, correct. I think Apple's reduced— I think Apple has returned $1 trillion to shareholders. So my number would actually be north of $310 billion. But we live in a competitive market and this is an opportunity for other companies because if Apple's raising prices, that's a better value prop for a Chromebook or someone else who figures out how to optimize memory and not have a price hike or—

I just think like saying that like corporate greed is Tim Cook when the guy's barely clipping $35,000 a year after taxes.

It's true.

I think it's rude and unnecessary.

Yeah, but the reason is, of course—

I didn't see Bernie marching on Cupertino when Tim was on his run, generational run, being dramatically underpaid relative many of the other CEOs. So I just think, I just think crazy, crazy person to put in your crosshairs.

Joe Weisenthal summed it up well. He says, market cap is up $150 billion today. Apple's market cap is down $210 billion. Almost a perfect, perfect value reallocation hinging on memory. Memory is expensive. And so everyone is rotating over, uh, to, uh, to Micron from Apple. Um, here are the actual facts from the Germinator. Uh, Apple raises Mac, iPad, Home, prices to counter memory shortage. The Apple TV got hit hard. It went from like $130 to $200 or $250. So it saw the highest percentage price increase, which is odd because I didn't think that the Apple TV was a particularly memory-intensive product, but it's certainly not Apple's core. So maybe they offset a little bit of the pain there. The company is increasing prices of the MacBook Neo, Neo, which is the new laptop that was, uh, the cheapest MacBook ever made, $500 with the educational discount. Uh, the MacBook Pro is going up in price, the MacBook Air, iPad Air, iPad Pro. Um, starting price of the MacBook Neo is rising to $700 from $600 while the MacBook Air is increasing to $1,300 from $1,100. So a $200 price increase for the MacBook Air. Uh, the entry-level 14-inch MacBook Pro is moving to $2,000 from $1,700, while the 11-inch iPad Pro is increasing to $1,200 from $1,000. iPad Air, mid-tier tablet, now priced at $750, up from $600. The price hikes are global. And, uh, congratulations to— no, Ben Thompson lost his bet to John Gruber. Gruber won. They had a bet over whether or not Apple would raise prices due to all of the memory price spikes.

Yeah, the CEO of Micron was sort of like hinting at some basically negotiations that had happened years ago. Apple is very aggressive in their supplier negotiations. And he was basically insinuating that it was like Apple's like very, sort of aggressive negotiating that made it impossible for Micron to be reinvesting in increasing production. I think this was like in like 2021.

Yeah.

So anyways, complicated.

Interesting. Well, gamers are already mad at AI about driving up the price of GPUs and memory. And now you will have the Apple fanboys potentially upset as well. So I don't know, Bernie, why not, you know, some subsidies? Subsidize Apple, keep those prices down. No, the answer is obviously to build more, build more capacity, build more memory, bring the price down, let the market clear as quickly as possible. Micron, of course, is a trillion-dollar company headquartered in Boise, Idaho. Very cool.

We gotta talk about small trucks.

Small trucks.

It's time to talk about small trucks.

OK. First, let me tell you about Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform that lets you grow with your business and lets you sell in seconds online, in-store, on mobile, on social, on marketplaces, and now with AI agents. Trucks.

Trucks. Before we talk about the Slate truck, we got to talk about Rio Industries.

Oh.

Started in 19— this is the week of— this is maybe the year of the small truck. Yeah. Rio Industries started in 1905, reborn in 2026. They are undercutting the Slate. They're starting— they're starting at $21,500 for a 4-cylinder gas engine. Yeah, they heard you, John. John has been— this whole week, John's been thinking, man, that Slate truck is awesome. But what if it— what if it had a gas engine? They're coming out. It's a 4-cylinder, 4-cylinder gas engine, manual and automatic transmission, body on frame, 4-wheel drive, 600-mile tank.

Brand— they have their head-to-head with the Slate Truck, Texas-built.

Yeah, Texas-built. So it's the Texas— the Texan response to the Slate Truck. Not a lot of other information.

But, uh, scroll down on the website, you can see that there's a how it stacks up, the Rio Runabout versus the Ford Maverick versus the Slate truck. They claim to be cheaper, more proven with their gas engine. Yeah, so haters, 600 miles on a tank.

Haters and critics of the small truck boom are pointing to the, uh, are you trying to get Brandon's attention? Yeah, Brandon is bringing him out here, not in the room anymore, I guess.

Oh, he had to Run, he's scared.

Yeah, he's scared to have this conversation on air. But yeah, the haters and critics of the small truck boom are saying the Ford Maverick XL already exists.

Yep.

Has a lot of the bells and whistles.

What is the Ford? Is the Ford Maverick XL a 4-door? Yeah, right?

Must be.

I think the Ford Maverick in general is a 4-door, right? Because every two-door truck has failed. There are no successful two-door trucks. Two doors is something people think they want. They look at it, they say, "Oh, that's so compact, that's so easy." And then they realize that they will want to easily put their family in the back without sliding the seats forward. And so the demand just never shows up and everything winds up being four doors. And that's why you get these weird things where like the bed is so small relative to the seats. I think it's—

you can't really say there's never been— they've all failed. Because like, name one. The Ford Ranger was produced for many, many, many years. It's a two-door truck. My grandpa—

not around anymore.

My grandpa— well, it's around as a four-door. No, it's around as a two-door. My dad still owns my grandpa's old truck.

No, I mean, it still runs perfectly. I mean, are they still selling them?

They produced the first-gen Ranger from 1983 to '96.

A successful vehicle like the E-Class S-Class Mercedes is still on sale, like what, 50 years later, right? The BMW 5 Series is still on sale. Like certain cars, they go through iterations, they have facelifts and new designs, but they stay around.

I'm seeing— I'm seeing hundreds of, of two-door.

You're looking at used cars. That doesn't count. I'm talking about a company that's been in the market and decided, yes, it makes sense to keep this in the model lineup for the next provision instead of going only 4 doors. And so that is the problem that a lot of these cars will see. There's a lot of demand, a lot of stated preference, but the revealed preference is always for the 4-door configuration, at least in America. I do think that there might be something interesting with shortening the nose. It's a very odd aesthetic decision, but if you actually want a small truck with 4 doors and a full-size bed and you're going electric, you could in theory remove the front engine, the front trunk, and push the cab much further forward. It would look a lot more like a bus. People would probably not like the aesthetics, but in terms of functionality, you kind of get everything you want there because the front area of a Rivian truck is kind of doing nothing. Like it's a nice extra storage space and they put a bunch of equipment there, but that equipment can be distributed throughout the rest of the vehicle. But I don't know, it would be a big uphill battle to make that look cool because it would look like a Volkswagen ID.Buzz.

Yeah, so the Slate, so the bear case for the Slate is twofold. Maverick XL already exists.

Yep.

And it's $27,000. The Slate is sort of bundling in, I think, some of the taxes and like fees into their price. So it's not an entirely fair comparison. But they're doing a lot of stuff really well. I think the way that they take basically one SKU and make it so customizable that it can feel like an SUV, it can feel like a Jeep, it can feel like a basic truck. All I can say in terms of how successful this will be is I think I'll get one. Just because it seems like a fun car to drive around on the weekend. And there's just a bunch of fun—

Are you going to go track only?

I wish. I wish they had a track only.

It's just an extra $400,000.

And yeah, so who knows how—

Start with a $25K base and then add a $400,000 track only package.

Who knows how this will go, but I think that the— infinite customization so that people can make it feel fun. It means a very cool company.

It's very cool.

Yeah, make it feel like really like their own.

And the wraps are like $1,000 or something. Like they will be like sort of nickel and diming you, but it's truly just a nickel and just a dime to add a different feature. And so you can probably go crazy in the configurator and wind up with a whole bunch of add-ons. But the fact that you can pick exactly what you want, much, much more fun buying experience. You can create something really interesting. You can also add on incrementally. I believe you can buy the truck and then upgrade to the SUV seating arrangement later. And you don't necessarily need to do that on day one. So you can sort of walk, crawl, run. What is the range on this truck?

200-ish.

Wow. Brandon Garel in shambles. He was spreading fake news.

So Brandon came in this morning.

He said it was like 45 miles. Of range. And I was like, it can't possibly be 45 miles.

He said it's only 200 if you're pushing it for after 90 miles.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. He said 90. And I said, no, it's at 200. I don't know if it was ever 90, but 200 is plenty for a daily commute in a normal city. Also just for going around quick errands, it's not gonna cost you anything. You're gonna charge it. Seems fine. I don't think that demand for the 300 range 100+ range. A lot of people who are in that category, this won't be their only vehicle. They'll have a gas engine that basically has unlimited range, right?

Yeah.

But this can be—

And you're basically going to hold off on any real judgment until we get its time on the green hell.

Yes, that's very true.

So we'll see there. My only thing with the Slate is I actually think the actual customization software on the website is very janky., and I find it very hard to seamlessly actually design different styles.

Interesting. Ford is doing it.

So it feels like they did the hard— They're what?

Ford is doing a $30,000 electric pickup truck next year. It'll have 4 doors, probably longer range, faster charging, and it'll definitely have more power windows default, speakers standard, like a bunch of just the basics that you you get from the Ford platform. So there's a question about that. The hybrid Maverick also starts at $30K. So interesting challenge. I think it's cool. I think the best thing about it is that it's just a fresh design. It looks very cool. I think it's a unique choice. And people can have a lot of fun with it and just experiment with a new thing. But it does seem like a brutally competitive market. Space. And, and it's, it's a little bit, I don't know, there's something about this where when I see a new Chinese EV, I see them breaking constraints in like crazy, crazy ways where you're getting like supercar performance for $50,000 or some ultra luxury, like it looks like a Rolls-Royce Cullinan, but it's $70K. And there's some real crazy innovations going on inside. This is a different sort of simple, much more simpler utilitarian take. I think it looks cool though, and I like that there's so much optionality there. It feels like an interesting, interesting play. I really hope it's successful.

Yeah, I'm interested. Right now I can see it as kind of like a leisure, like weekender car, at least in my own life. I'm interested if they can crack the like first car market, right? They are competing with the Tesla Model 3, which is like, you know, $12-ish K over what the Slate is set to start at. Tesla Model 3, you're getting, you know, self-driving, more range, arguably more function for a lot of people's like daily use. A lot of people, you know, like the idea of having a truck but only use the truck bed, you know, twice a year, something like that. So like you said, competitive, but I'm excited for it.

Going to Micro Center now feels like going to a jewelry store, says Tae Kim, because everything's so expensive. Wow, $4,000 for a cutting-edge GeForce gaming graphics card. That is a lot of money. Used to be over, like going up in $600, $800 for a graphics card was like, ooh, you're paying big money. Now it's real big money.

I thought it was funny that the AC in Europe debate really kicked off right when we landed, we were experiencing it. And right as we landed, we were asking, like talking with chat, like, okay, so like, is it, like, why isn't it more? Popular at this point, and there were not a lot of great reasons. I was thinking huge opportunity to start the air conditioning company of Europe.

That'd be good.

I'm normally against that naming structure, but I kinda like it here.

You're gonna have to lobby Macron or something, because isn't there a law that says you can't air condition a building to less than like 79 degrees?

I think that's like a government building. Public spaces. So if you're in a government, imagine, imagine you're at your office job, you know, working on like the, you know, uh, blocking AI in Europe, and you're just sitting there at your computer and it's 79 degrees.

Is there no environmentally friendly refrigerant out there? Because you have to imagine that you could have cheap solar panels powering AC in a building and have a pretty good business, sort of like SolarCity for AC or something all across France. It's just odd that the market hasn't solved that in some way since I would imagine the demand would be very high. But I don't know, maybe if you just grow up without AC, you never demand, you never long for it. Who knows? Anyway, Lee Kuan Yew, "Air conditioning was the most important invention for us, perhaps one of the signal inventions of history. It changed the nature of civilization by making development possible in the tropics. Without air conditioning, you can only work in the cool early morning hours or at dusk. The first thing I did upon becoming Prime Minister was to install air conditioners in buildings where civil service worked. This was key to public efficiency. People start to struggle indoors once indoor temperatures exceed 73 degrees. Yeah, 72 is perfect. Sleep efficiency goes sleep duration goes down, work productivity goes down, school learning goes down. Wow, really, really crazy. Patrick Collison is chiming in. Also, Patrick Collison funded a cure for the flu. This is going to be as big as the cancer thing.

The tech industry really needs to do this right now.

Yes, yes, yes. Need a win that is broadly understood.

Yeah, I think it's Stripe, OpenAI, Anthropic, and some others.

OpenAI, Anthropic, Stripe, and Bill Gates are putting $500 million into funding a new organization called Intercept. Intercept's goal is to prevent the common cold and the flu and eventually eliminate all respiratory viruses completely. Incredibly cool project. Incredibly, yeah, just like an incredibly cool, like tangible thing. I saw a stat that, I saw this chart chart of how many, it was like, what percentage of weeks are parents sick with something viral generally as a function of how many kids they have? And it's like a fast takeoff curve. So it's like one kid and you're sick like 25% of the year, you have like some virus in your system, a cold, a flu, something. And then as you get to like 2, 3, 4 kids, it ramps to like 50% of the year, "You are sick." And people will feel that if they're like, "Yes, I'm getting less sick, it's working." Yeah, when the podcast optimizers that struggle to have 2 drinks and continue podcasting, like they are so woefully unprepared for having children.

Fortunately, most podcasters don't have, tend to go down that path of having families.

But—

It's a monastic practice. But if they did, we could potentially see the strategic podcast reserve decline meaningfully, just because if you're sick half of the year— I remember, for some reason, it felt the worst when we first started the show. And between us, we had, I guess we had 5 kids at the time.

Blow my nose, achoo, and then, okay, back to this.

Yeah, so with 5 kids, it's like, okay, one of the kids is always sick perpetually. And then that means one of us is either like sick or starting to get sick. And then I'd just be, we'd be looking across the table at each other being like, I've got maybe 36 hours until I'm feeling the exact same thing.

Oh, here's a hack from Tyler. He says he has 3 kids, just sauna every day, 24 minutes at 205 degrees. That's some serious sauna, you know?

Wow.

Our sauna does not go that high right now. And I don't know if I'm putting in 25 minutes.

I haven't hacked my sauna to be able to go that high.

Yeah, you gotta overclock it.

You do.

Something, I don't know. Anyway, I bet this James Bond-inspired spec mansion has a sauna in it. It's listing for $85 million, spanning roughly 23,000 feet. Villa Skyfall features a glass-walled auto gallery, a wellness center, and a Himalayan salt room, 95-foot-long pool. Uh, give me a review. Is this loud opulence? Is this you? Would you ever live here? Would you raise a family here, or is it too over the top. It does look like Minecraft a little bit. Real estate developer Aldo Stark is so much of a James Bond fanatic that 007 influences everything from the way he dresses to the cars he drives. I don't think there's a week in my life I don't play a James Bond movie. Real cinephile. I like that.

There we go.

So it was, uh, fitting that Stark's latest spec project in Delray Beach was inspired by Skyfall, both the 2012 movie and the fictional spy character character's childhood home in Scotland. I seem to remember in Skyfall, the home in Scotland is not like this at all. It's a— isn't it abandoned? It's like really dark. It's like a cottage, right? OK, I don't get that at all. Anyway.

Yeah, I mean, amazing option for a supervillain that wants to move to Florida.

It does feel like a supervillain. Pull up an image of the— yeah, any of this feels very, very supervillain.

If you were running like a gambling, like children's mind poisoning company, this could be.

The walls and the ceilings are covered with wood, backlit onyx, and rare stone or glass. The house also has a salon inspired by Parisian Cartier boutique, and a glass-walled auto gallery, and a rainforest-inspired wellness center. The wellness center sounds cool, but it's a lot, it's got a lot going, a lot of reflections. It feels very bright. I feel like I'd need like sunglasses. Glasses in here. Outside, there's a 95-foot-long pool, waterfalls, fire features, plus putting green, pickleball, soccer field, cabanas, and botanical gardens. There's something to see everywhere. It's quite a sensory overload. He says this. I like it. Okay, I agree with him. At least he's calling, he's playing, he's not trying to, he's not trying to lie to everyone. Uh, design homes, he runs it with his wife.

I think this might be the kind of space that is, uh, actually nice nicer to be in. Like, it, it will feel better in person than in the pictures. Like, sometimes it's inverted where the pictures look amazing and then because they've like, you know, yeah, the lighting is like perfect. But, uh, with these, this doesn't feel—

with these images, it just feels like, it feels like an LVMH, like, yeah, it feels like this is a house if you're like throwing parties professionally, your entire world organizes around like these large dinner parties and celebrations. And you have the New Year's Eve party.

I do love this. I do love this sunken pool. Sunken pool is cool. There's a lot of conversation. Fireplace.

That's really cool. If you scroll down to the front, this looks particularly Minecrafty with this waterfall coming out here. Yeah, look at that photo, Jordi. That is Minecraft central. It's very in these days.

There we go.

Doesn't that look like Minecraft?

Honestly, I would just, I would— it needs like, it needs way more like a much bigger waterfall.

Yeah.

Like I want to, I want to see the equivalent of like 20 fire hoses just like shooting water out.

Wait, huge news. Apple Vision Pro and smart glasses chief is leaving for OpenAI's hardware division. This is literally— this is my Christmas. This is amazing.

I, I, I, this is obviously— I'm like, no, I never really felt like we were in a simulation until now.

Vision Autism Capital say Vision Bros right now. We can't keep getting away with this. It's so good. That is very exciting scoop from Mark Gurman. What a lovely scoop.

Anyway, it's literally Christmas for John.

Christmas for John. Malibu mansion seen in The O.C. and Austin Powers asks $90 million. It's on the cliff. You gotta tell me, this is in Point Dume, 9 bedrooms, 20-vehicle garage, and 176 feet of bluff frontage. So explain to me the bluff dynamic, because this feels like not, you're not just gonna walk out on the beach. So how do you actually go enjoy the ocean other than just looking at it, obviously?

There, like very, very, very close to this is a path that just takes you down to the beach.

Okay.

All I'll say about this property is every time I'm surfing below this, I look up and think, damn, that house is not long for this world. Oh, really? Because it's really like, you can just see that like—

Oh, you think it's gonna fall off the cliff or something?

Not really. I mean, clearly there's plenty of backyard. Yeah. But—

The erosion does seem—

The erosion is— Over years. Yeah, it's more so that you're gonna just have to like probably change the backyard. But then once somebody starts changing it, then like Coastal would get involved and they would probably make you change it pretty drastically.

But every day you wake up and you're like, "I'm defying Mother Nature, I'm challenging God." And that is empowering in a certain way.

For some people.

Yeah, you wake up thinking like, I am Icarus and I will be flying close to the sun today. And that's gotta be inspiring. That's a certain vibe. You wake up in the James Bond house, you think you're James Bond. You wake up in this house and you think, I'm tempting fate. And that's inspiring.

You saw the 85-year-old man was arrested after allegedly street racing at over 100 miles per hour in a sports car while smoking a cigarrito.

Cigarrito.

When confronted, he reportedly told police he was just having having a little ride in my favorite car.

Okay. What's the charge, officer? Having a little ride in my favorite car. That's very good. Oh man.

I hope this story is true. Did you see this? Seems a little too good to be true.

After winning millions on DraftKings, we mentioned it earlier, he built a mansion with a bowling alley. Texas home of Michael Cohen, who won the Millionaire Maker fantasy sports tournament multiple times. The New York Times has hidden rooms in a creepy library, according to him. He recalls—

What makes a library creepy?

Let's find out. The first time Michael Cohen won $1 million on sports betting site DraftKings in 2015. He's the meme. He's like, you know, 99% of sports bettors quit right before they hit it big. He's the one who dug until he hit the diamonds. Skill issue. Tell us— send this to Sagar and Jetty.

It's not a bad luck issue.

Luck issue. That's true. He hired, okay, so he wins $1 million in 2015. He's having a wedding. He wants some musical talent. Who does he hire to come play his wedding, Jordi? Lil Flip, rapper Lil Flip. Never heard of him? No. Big in the Texas scene, I believe. And then he wins another $1 million in 2017, 2 years later. He buys a Tesla Model S. That's a pretty like reasonable, thing. If you win a million bucks, buying a Model S feels like sort of responsible. I don't know, doesn't seem crazy. But then the third win in 2019, stock trader bought 14 acres on a private street in the suburbs of Houston and built a 14,700-square-foot home. What are you laughing at?

Techno Chief says send this to Sauger.

Inspiring, inspiring. Sauger, I don't know.

Sauger is gonna pretend that this never got published. Yeah, I'm going to pretend this is not a real story.

Inspiring story of gambling gone right. The— it's kind of a go big or go home kind of attitude, said Michael, 43. Let's, let's flip to M8 and keep reading this. There's some, there's some funny quips in here. He says, he says he has won $1 million or more in two subsequent DraftKings contests. He just keeps winning. It's crazy. If you are going to have your own street, you might as well have a big-ass theater and you might as well have a bowling alley. This is his quote to the Journal before moving in.

Is this some like sneaky content marketing from DraftKings? It seems like it. Do they have this guy, do they have this guy win like 2 of these contests that are, you know, what are the odds of winning like 2 of these random little contests and then going on this crazy press tour?

He won in 2015, 2017, 2019, 2022, and 2024. He's estimated he's won over $6 million on DraftKings over the years. His approach to sports betting is analytical, not emotional.

You know, I think we actually should send this to Sager and he should do an investigative deep dive. Maybe, because maybe it seems like a little too heartwarming to be gambling that long and just winning on seemingly like random like sweepstakes style things. Yeah, it's not like he's— like, if he was playing games of skill, they would have banned him.

It is a game of skill. It's— it's— wait, no, it's fantasy sports. That's luck, right? Where's that skill?

Is that skill?

Hey, is it regulated as a skill game? I think it is. I think fantasy sports is regulated as skill. It's not pure luck. It's not like—

do you think that, that, that he's so good, but He loves attention. And so DraftKings was like, keep letting him win so that he goes on this press tour.

Maybe, maybe.

Heartwarming story. Local man.

It's potentially true.

Achieves financial freedom through fantasy sports.

Off the kitchen and living room is an entertainment wing, which their designer dubbed the Dave and Buster's wing. It has a massive kitchen, a theater with a room for 180-inch projector screen and a two-lane bowling alley. There's a room with outlets for arcade or vending machines. The house has an elevator shaft should someone want to add one. Interesting. You put in the shaft before you put in the elevator. Why not just do the elevator? Apparently home elevators are incredibly dangerous. It's a huge source of risk to your health. Be careful.

Not for this guy. He does not have luck issues.

He has good luck, I guess. I'll just sometimes make a joke and then somehow it becomes reality. In the Dave Buster's wing, there's a bar with a pass-through window that opens to the outdoor pool area. If you're gonna have a party, you're gonna have a party, right? He said, might as well do it right. The house has several hidden rooms, including a safe room. In the dining room, a hidden door and hallway lead to a room Cohen calls a creepy library. There's actually nothing creepy about it, said the listing agent. The listing agent's like, hey, can you cool it with the weird language? He has a very expensive treehouse. You could be drinking cognac out of Waterford crystal, smoking cigars on a Chesterfield couch. Anyway, I don't know. He said whoever buys the property will be someone local, potentially an athlete or celebrity. If someone wanted an even larger home, they could easily add another 3,000 square feet.

Is he selling the home to put it all on black?

Maybe.

Maybe. MrBeast is hiring a senior ML AI engineer.

No way.

San Francisco. Peter Wildford says, I locked 100 AI researchers in a data center until they solved alignment. Absolute banger.

That'd be a good—

That would be it. That would potentially be his biggest video.

People talk about the need for new media and tech. That's maybe that's the final boss when MrBeast gets into it.

Less— a much more sad story, Om Malik.

Oh yeah, the leak from GigaOm. This was like right around TechCrunch, The Verge. When I got to Silicon Valley, GigaOm was like a source of incredible takes and analysis around technology and startups, beloved in the venture community, and he passed away very sadly.

Hodinkee wrote, "In loving memory." of Ohm, colleague, friend, writer, venture capitalist, and ever the believer, Benjamin Clymer. Oh yeah. Wrote a really nice piece. That's cool. I never had the pleasure of meeting Ohm, but he clearly touched a lot of lives.

Okay. Let's move over to Figma news. They're hosting Config 2026. We couldn't be there because we were traveling, but there's this crazy launch Figma motion design. It took this individual 4.5 seconds to make this. And really, really cool for— if you've done motion design, you know how long it takes to hang out in After Effects. Even just having a starting point, something to tweak, something to build off of. Who knows if you're going to be able to completely one-shot it or you want to do more and inject your own taste to stand out. But I thought this was a very, very cool launch and something I would love to put to work in adding overlays to our YouTube Shorts. Something like that could be very, very cool. There's been a few of these products that are very, very interesting.

Let's pull up this video of Elon telling Lex about being The world's first trillionaire.

I know what you're going to post, and this is so silly. This is the impression? This is the impression?

Tyler's not in the studio today, so the app is falling apart and won't load.

Ridiculous.

Should we skip it?

Yeah, we can skip it. We can move on to this watch. It's about that time, says Cheapy13. This watch would— don't you think this watch would actually be cool if it just told the hour hand and the glass and the tab moved around in a circle? Like, that would be possible, right?

Anything's possible, John.

I think that's cool. And then at noon, it's beer o'clock and you can pop it open.

I was just thinking it was like, it was only good to make the sound once. You just kept it on. Oh, just chimes in case you needed to any sort of strategic moment. But I think this is a good place to end the show.

Yeah, that sounds good.

It has been an honor and a privilege.

Yeah, it's been great.

And I can't wait for Monday. 5 shows, at least. More? 4.

We have a day off tomorrow or next week?

Oh, 4th of July maybe?

Oh yeah, 4th of July, we'll be off Friday. All right. We have a light show on Thursday, so we'll be hanging out anyway. Leave us 5 stars on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Sign up for our newsletter at tbpn.com and we will see you.

Have a wonderful weekend.

Goodbye.

We love you.