Inside Travis Kalanick’s Wild New AI Company

This is our full interview with Travis Kalanick. We discuss his new $1.7 billion funding round, why he's betting on industrial AI instead of consumer AI, how autonomous mining can increase productivity by 30 to 40%, why he believes AI will make food dramatically cheaper, what he looks for when hiring executives, lessons from scaling Uber, the future of robotics, AI regulation, and why he commutes to work on a jet ski. TBPN is made possible by: Ramp - https://ramp.com Public - https://public.com Cisco - https://www.cisco.com Console - https://www.console.com CrowdStrike - https://www.crowdstrike.com Figma - https://www.figma.com MongoDB - https://www.mongodb.com NYSE - https://www.nyse.com Railway - https://railway.com Shopify - https://www.shopify.com/ Codex - http://openAI.com/codex Sign up for TBPN’s daily newsletter at TBPN.com Follow TBPN: https://TBPN.com https://x.com/tbpn https://open.spotify.com/show/2L6WMqY3GUPCGBD0dX6p00?si=674252d53acf4231 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/technology-brothers/id1772360235 https://www.youtube.com/@TBPNLive

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00John Coogan?

  I forgot to ask Jason if he has opinions about resto mods for jet skis. I'll ask you. Is there a jet ski that you'd recommend for the?

• 0:09Jordi Hays?

  I saw a wooden jet ski recently. Like a really classic jet ski.

• 0:15Speaker 02

  Dude, don't get me excited. I'm into it. But these things go fast.

• 0:18John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 0:19Speaker 02

  I think I went 70 miles an hour on my jet ski to work.

• 0:22John Coogan?

  Wow.

• 0:22Jordi Hays?

  To work.

• 0:23John Coogan?

  That's faster than most people commute. They're stuck in traffic.

• 0:25Speaker 02

  I mean, I've got a five minute commute to work on a jet ski, unless it's raining.

• 0:29Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, unless it's raining. Yeah.

• 0:31Speaker 02

  And it gets a little weird. And you call an Uber.

• 0:34John Coogan?

  Is it helpful? Do you do your best thinking on the jet ski?

• 0:40Speaker 02

  No.

• 0:40John Coogan?

  No.

• 0:43Jordi Hays?

  Does it clear the mind?

• 0:45Speaker 02

  Guys, it's a fucking notch on the belt. It's like, who else do you know is jet skiing to work? Nobody. I'm the guy.

• 0:57Jordi Hays?

  You're that guy.

• 0:58Speaker 02

  I looked it up. I looked it up on your guys' application, OpenAI, you know, ChatGPT. On your guys' app.

• 1:05Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, our app.

• 1:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, on your app.

• 1:07John Coogan?

  You're welcome, by the way.

• 1:08Speaker 02

  Yeah. No, I want to thank you for all the great stuff that you guys are providing in ChatGPT. But I think there's like one or two other CEOs, but nobody at a major, nobody, nobody thousand person plus. It's a CEO is commuting to work.

• 1:25John Coogan?

  On a jet ski.

• 1:26Speaker 02

  On a jet ski.

• 1:26John Coogan?

  Only a Texas resident, right?

• 1:28Speaker 02

  Texas resident. That's right. Primary residence.

• 1:31John Coogan?

  Yes, yes.

• 1:34Jordi Hays?

  Before we start, the last time you were on here, that was, for me, the best moment of making the show ever. John and I, it was totally surreal and we had a, we really enjoyed the conversation. But to me, we left that and it was almost depressing because as somebody who, you know, started getting into startups in the 2010s, you were that guy. And then I was realizing with the show, we, we had that conversation with you and it was, you know, a significant day for you. But it was sort of depressing because I realized like a moment like that would never actually come again. Where I got to basically interview.

• 2:16Speaker 02

  It will happen, guys.

• 2:17Jordi Hays?

  It will happen. No, it'll happen differently. But, but you know, a childhood hero, having that conversation, that's one of one for me. I don't think it'll happen again. There'll be other, it was peak.

• 2:27John Coogan?

  It was good.

• 2:28Jordi Hays?

  But anyways, you've been busy since then.

• 2:31Speaker 02

  I've been busy.

• 2:31Jordi Hays?

  And we're.

• 2:32Speaker 02

  Look, I'm super excited. It's my first OpenAI podcast. I'm very excited about it. Also, I want to let you guys know that if you need therapy sessions for what it's like to be a made man in retirement.

• 2:46John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 2:47Speaker 02

  Like, if that's a thing, I can help.

• 2:48Jordi Hays?

  We'll call you.

• 2:49Speaker 02

  I can help motivate you guys.

• 2:50John Coogan?

  Isn't step one of therapy in this situation just get a jet ski?

• 2:52Speaker 02

  No, it's just, it's actually denial. You got to get over the denial part.

• 2:57John Coogan?

  Over the denial? And then the acceptance?

• 2:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's something, I don't know the 12 steps.

• 3:02John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah. Everyone just knows denial and acceptance. They don't know any of the other ones. Grieving, bargaining, there's a couple others in there, but you do go through that. It's natural.

• 3:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:11John Coogan?

  It happens. But then you start building.

• 3:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's good. If you guys need advice, you need therapy, I'm here for you.

• 3:16John Coogan?

  I love it.

• 3:17Speaker 02

  I mean, no, the retard maxing is you're not supposed to do therapy. I'm just saying, there are benefits.

• 3:21Jordi Hays?

  Especially with your new partners. They're like, if they're one thing, they rode into the fundraising round, they rode into the docs, like, cannot go to therapy.

• 3:28Speaker 02

  That would be amazing.

• 3:29John Coogan?

  Podcasts are modern therapy for men. This is what men do. They don't go to therapy, they just go to podcasts.

• 3:34Jordi Hays?

  You should have, you should have office hours for founders, but they have to just come out on a jet ski while you're going and you're going 70 miles an hour and you'll coach them.

• 3:43Speaker 02

  I'm, I am starting to teach many founders and people in tech world how to water ski, how to wake surf. A bunch of my engineers already. So there was one guy who didn't know how to swim, but I got him behind the boat, wake surfing.

• 3:57John Coogan?

  Whoa.

• 3:57Jordi Hays?

  Whoa. So you had a life jacket.

• 4:00John Coogan?

  The life jacket on.

• 4:01Speaker 02

  Life jacket. It sounds weirder than it is.

• 4:03John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 4:04Speaker 02

  But it was still very weird.

• 4:05John Coogan?

  It's a high risk.

• 4:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was good.

• 4:07John Coogan?

  Potentially.

• 4:08Speaker 02

  Uh, okay, cool.

• 4:10John Coogan?

  The business.

• 4:10Speaker 02

  Business. Dude, it's business time. Got to put on the business socks.

• 4:14Jordi Hays?

  Unfinished business.

• 4:15Speaker 02

  Unfinished business. So yeah, I announced earlier today, we did a $1.7 billion raise. There's some, there's some noise that's going to happen.

• 4:29Speaker 02

  We're now. This is fucking, you guys are crazy. I'm hitting it next time.

• 4:37Jordi Hays?

  Come over the top.

• 4:43Speaker 02

  So much noise.

• 4:44Jordi Hays?

  So much noise. All right, but walk us through.

• 4:46John Coogan?

  I feel you came in very relaxed.

• 4:48Jordi Hays?

  Walk us through. I think it's been, what, has it been, uh, four months since we talked?

• 4:53Speaker 02

  Three or four months, something like that. Yeah, I think, did we talk in April or March?

• 4:57Jordi Hays?

  I think March.

• 4:58John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 4:59Speaker 02

  Oh, that's right. Yes.

• 4:59Jordi Hays?

  Early March.

• 5:00Speaker 02

  Four months.

• 5:01John Coogan?

  So.

• 5:02Speaker 02

  So, yeah, so.

• 5:03John Coogan?

  What happened with the business to unlock the next round?

• 5:08Speaker 02

  I mean, we continue to go up and to the right, but like the announcement of Adams was, we are, we are going to do physical automation, physical AI, what we are calling industrial AI, to transform these industries one at a time.

• 5:23John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 5:24Speaker 02

  We were, we did food, we moved into mining, we're doing transport. And it's working. And so that's how you go. Yeah. And then of course, there's like going out of stealth, there's all the things. And it was just the right time.

• 5:39John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 5:39Speaker 02

  So, um, so yeah, we just went to market. We said, when I originally went to market, I was like,

• 5:47Speaker 02

  these were separate companies.

• 5:48John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 5:48Speaker 02

  Okay, so our mining and transport was a separate thing. Food was a separate thing. And we had a bunch of other, you know, a bunch of subsidiaries doing cool stuff. And I said, which one do you guys want to do? Do you want to invest in mining? Do you want to invest in food? Do you want to invest in this? And they're just like, we want to invest in you.

• 6:06John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 6:06Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 6:07Speaker 02

  And we heard that, like, we took, like, the first five folks we talked to all said that.

• 6:13John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 6:13Speaker 02

  So then what we did is we put the companies together and then sold the equity in a singular entity.

• 6:22John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 6:22Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 6:22Speaker 02

  Uh, so just put, put it together. And it's much easier for me. I don't know how Elon does it with all the different companies.

• 6:31Jordi Hays?

  Different cap tables.

• 6:32Speaker 02

  It's wild.

• 6:33Jordi Hays?

  Well, no, the answer, the answer is what's been happening, right?

• 6:37Speaker 02

  It's like, it all comes back together. But he did, guys, he did it for 20 years, though.

• 6:40John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah. And he's still technically doing it with Tesla, basically. They are different companies.

• 6:44Speaker 02

  Boring company, Neuralink, like, he's still got lots of cool stuff.

• 6:48Jordi Hays?

  Lesson in there for investors is like, even with Elon companies, there's such an insane power law where you have a $10 billion company and then you have a, you know, a $2 trillion company, right? And it's like, you just want to expose, you want broad exposure. Ideally, you know, you could just invest in the one that breaks out, but you want broad exposure to the category.

• 7:08Speaker 02

  When things are first getting going, there is a lot of upside of having them separate.

• 7:14John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 7:15Speaker 02

  Uh, because if somebody wants to invest in a really cool thing, and this is what happened when we first got the transporter mining thing going.

• 7:21John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 7:21Speaker 02

  If they want to invest in that cool thing, they're like, I don't know anything about food. And by the way, food on its own is robotics, real estate, like restaurants, like, you know? And so they want, they want to be exposed to that one thing and they don't want to have to underwrite something going across all things. Um, and they're like, well, if you're losing money over here, I want you to lose money over here. So how much of the money I'm putting in is going to go to that? There, there has to be a theory of the case of how you put it together, how you allocate capital across. And honestly, once you're starting to get to profitability on one or more, then that conversation starts to get easier. And I think that's, that could be why, I can't, I can't speculate on, on, on sort of Elon's world,

• 8:05Speaker 02

  but certainly I'm super excited to have those pieces put together into a single, into a single puzzle.

• 8:12John Coogan?

  What does go to market look like in the mining industry for you?

• 8:17Speaker 02

  It's the frickin' best.

• 8:18John Coogan?

  Okay, because, but specifically, like, when I think of, when I think of your go to market.

• 8:24Speaker 02

  It's so good.

• 8:25John Coogan?

  Magic.

• 8:26Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 8:26John Coogan?

  It was deploying young people to a new city in Miami and they're doing a marketing stunt. And it's not like you're calling in favors or leveraging your network to get Uber up and running in a new city. That was something that was organizational design.

• 8:46Speaker 02

  So hold on, that's consumer.

• 8:47John Coogan?

  Exactly. So how is it different?

• 8:48Speaker 02

  Well, it's just like, well, all the food stuff we're doing is business, almost all of it.

• 8:52John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 8:52Speaker 02

  Really all of it. Mining's all business. So, so, so look, there is a big thing. If you go from doing consumer to doing business, and I think we may have talked about this last time, that's a whole other ballgame.

• 9:05John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 9:06Speaker 02

  I mean, that takes years off your lifespan doing it, like getting good at it and then owning it. But mining, go to market is cray cray.

• 9:17John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 9:17Speaker 02

  Like, so, I'll just give you an example.

• 9:19John Coogan?

  Going to the mining conference or something?

• 9:22Speaker 02

  Well, yes.

• 9:22John Coogan?

  How are you meeting CEOs?

• 9:23Speaker 02

  Yes, you do that. But, but, but, you know, I can a lot of times, look, when you have very efficient transportation, you can go places. So a month ago, I dropped into deep Amazon in Brazil. Okay, like deep northern Brazil, like Amazon.

• 9:45Jordi Hays?

  Places you can't even get a jet ski to.

• 9:46Speaker 02

  Guys, it's the Amazon of the Amazon, okay?

• 9:49John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 9:50Speaker 02

  And, and like tiny airports, you just like.

• 9:55John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 9:55Speaker 02

  You kind of just.

• 9:56Jordi Hays?

  Dirt.

• 9:56Speaker 02

  You slide into the DMs, except there's a tarmac, okay?

• 9:59Jordi Hays?

  There you go.

• 10:00Speaker 02

  And.

• 10:00John Coogan?

  Free pilot.

• 10:01Speaker 02

  Yes, of course.

• 10:02John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 10:03Speaker 02

  And massive iron ore mine that we're operating in there.

• 10:07John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 10:07Speaker 02

  And you see, like, we took, we were there for a couple of days because we already have customers there.

• 10:13John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 10:13Speaker 02

  A customer is called Vale. It's a massive mining company.

• 10:16John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 10:16Speaker 02

  And, um, they, uh, it's, it's like the world's largest iron ore mine. And you go and you get in a helicopter, just going over one of the sites takes 30 minutes.

• 10:29Jordi Hays?

  Wow.

• 10:29Speaker 02

  Okay? And it's fascinating. It's so fascinating. And you're learning how the system works. You're sort of figuring out how do I, you basically take a kit, you apply, you, you, you install it onto a machine and that machine becomes autonomous.

• 10:46John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 10:47Speaker 02

  And some of these machines are like 20 years old. Some of them are new. Um, and so there's lots of different kinds of machines as well. And you're making the mine more productive. You're, um, you are making it way safer. It is super, like, they have lots of safety protocols, but like, it is mining.

• 11:05John Coogan?

  Dangerous business.

• 11:06Speaker 02

  It is a dangerous business. Uh, and the OpEx goes down all at the same time. It's kind of a beautiful thing. And then, you know, I went from Brazil and then straight from there dropped into the border between Iraq and Saudi, on the Saudi side. So we have a phosphate mine that we're doing stuff there.

• 11:26Speaker 02

  The signals were jammed. So we had to like my pilots had to land kind of like old school style, like

• 11:32Jordi Hays?

  Wow.

• 11:32Speaker 02

  Physical visual.

• 11:34Jordi Hays?

  Is that because of the conflict going on in the region?

• 11:36Speaker 02

  And just the general, the vibes on the borders there.

• 11:40Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 11:40Speaker 02

  Yep. So, um, but same story. And so go to market is wild.

• 11:46Jordi Hays?

  It's literally go to market.

• 11:49Speaker 02

  Crazy places, but it's super needed. And so what's happened is the, the pronto technology has got gotten past human productivity, which means you go to a gold mine CEO, you talk about go to market, you go to a gold mine CEO and you say, would you like to have 20% more gold per year?

• 12:04John Coogan?

  Absolutely.

• 12:07Speaker 02

  We haven't heard no.

• 12:08John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 12:09Jordi Hays?

  Okay, okay.

• 12:09Speaker 02

  But they're, but they say proven.

• 12:11John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 12:11Speaker 02

  And that's where the rubber meets the road, right?

• 12:13Jordi Hays?

  How long does it take to prove?

• 12:14Speaker 02

  It used to take a lot longer. Now, like, once you've proven it enough times, then it sort of gets its own momentum.

• 12:21Jordi Hays?

  Gets around.

• 12:22Speaker 02

  And so we're in that, we're in that place on pronto where that momentum is taking hold because there's enough proof points where it's just working in so many different places where people are like, all right, let's go, we're gonna, think of mining, autonomous mining, almost like, um, almost like enterprise software where you get a pilot. There's like a 10,000 person company and you've got, you, you, you got an enterprise startup and they're like, I got like eight seats, but it's this huge company. And if we get it, it's huge.

• 12:50Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 12:50Speaker 02

  And I've got this other 10 seats over at this other one. It's a pilot, but I swear it's gonna work. And they're out there pitching and trying to make it happen.

• 12:58Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 12:58Speaker 02

  But once it works, and in mining, that means human productivity, human level, better than human productivity. Once it works, it goes big.

• 13:09Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 13:10Speaker 02

  And they're like, okay, let's get across, let's get across all the vehicles. And so we're sort of in that mode with a bunch of different customers right now.

• 13:18John Coogan?

  How big is the opportunity to just increase uptime of mining operations? I imagine that there are mines that are trying to operate 24/7, but getting a night shift in the middle of the Amazon reliably, everyone showing up and being, you know, healthy and happy and eager.

• 13:39Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 13:39John Coogan?

  It gets a lot easier when it's like, yeah, we're still gonna have a bunch of people on site, but they're gonna be overseeing robotic workers.

• 13:44Speaker 02

  For sure. So, uh, so yeah, I mean, the, um, there's two parts to the productivity game. First is the machine per hour doing more.

• 13:54John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 13:54Speaker 02

  That's part one. Part two is hours and callouts and all of that stuff, uh, as well as just, you know, the safety protocols change when you have less risk.

• 14:06John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 14:07Speaker 02

  So there's a lot of things like this that pile on to each other. My guess is you could even end up 30%, 40% more productive at the end of all of it.

• 14:15John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 14:15Speaker 02

  And when you do that, the opportunity speaks for itself. Um, a gold mine that's doing 30 or 40% more gold per year is kind of, whoa, but that's for every mineral. That's lithium. That's like, we also go all the way down to quarries. Quarries are different because quarries are basically, it's about cement, let's just say. That's the main jam. There are others, but let's just go with that. Um, you can't, you don't just go do more rock because you need cement customers on the other side. They're only using so much cement.

• 14:47Jordi Hays?

  Like where to store it.

• 14:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 14:49Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 14:50Speaker 02

  And so, so that's more of an OpEx play and there are thinner margins there, but I'm in the game and it's kind of interesting. It's a lot of fun. And for that company, for pronto, they were super, Anthony Levandowski and the team there, super scrappy, true startup style, lean as hell, like so lean, like that Christian Bale movie. I can't remember the name of it.

• 15:16John Coogan?

  The machine is.

• 15:17Speaker 02

  Dude, he's like super lean. And I'm like, guys, we gotta go from lean to muscular.

• 15:21John Coogan?

  You gotta go to Batman.

• 15:22Speaker 02

  And that's what we're doing. Like, and you think of that, this in an enterprise.

• 15:25Jordi Hays?

  Lean to muscular. That's a good, that's a good phrase.

• 15:29John Coogan?

  You just wanna be muscular.

• 15:29Speaker 02

  And so you think about enterprise go to market, part of our go to market is, is, um, building credibility with our enterprise customers that we're going from lean to muscular.

• 15:42John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 15:42Speaker 02

  Because they, the demand is there. It's ready to go. They're like, we need you to be muscular. We need the protein powder and the whatever else.

• 15:52Jordi Hays?

  What, what holds, what holds you back from?

• 15:54Speaker 02

  Go to the gym, whatever.

• 15:55Jordi Hays?

  What holds you back from scaling? Let's say you do a pilot, it works well. You're attaching hardware to existing systems and hardware that they're using. And they say, okay, we're getting more out. Maybe we want to place orders for more machines. Are the, I imagine the lead times on some of this mining equipment could be insane. How much of the stack do you want to own?

• 16:18Speaker 02

  Um, say the question again. I'm sorry. I just blanked. Go for it.

• 16:25Jordi Hays?

  Like, like right now, you're taking existing mining equipment.

• 16:28Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 16:28Jordi Hays?

  And you're augmenting it with, you're bringing, you're, you're making it AI enabled, making it autonomous, you're making it more efficient.

• 16:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:36Jordi Hays?

  And they say, great, this is working. We want to scale up our operation because maybe we need less or we can do more with the same, you know, human headcount.

• 16:43Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 16:43Jordi Hays?

  Um, but what's the, I imagine there's some things that are out of control for, for you at that point where they're like, okay, we need more of this heavy mining equipment. Let's, let's add it to the site, but is there like a lag time there?

• 16:55Speaker 02

  The real lag time is getting, so you have to, you're, so let's say we want to get a bunch of machines that are in the Amazon up and running.

• 17:02Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 17:03Speaker 02

  Okay. How do you do that? So I've got to ship a bunch of sensors, a bunch of compute, a bunch of equipment and mechanical systems, let's just say, so that a team can then go install it.

• 17:18Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. So you're basically building a data center on site?

• 17:21Speaker 02

  So, it's sort, I wouldn't put it that way. I would say, I mean, if you considered a machine with sensors and compute a data center, I mean, you could, but it's really, think of those, there are servers, but I wouldn't say a data center. It's not really like that.

• 17:35John Coogan?

  Some operations would bring like an Armada style, like shipping container sized level of.

• 17:39Speaker 02

  You're just.

• 17:40John Coogan?

  Palantir has one.

• 17:41Speaker 02

  You're, so you bring in the stuff.

• 17:43John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 17:43Speaker 02

  Okay. You have to install it.

• 17:46John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 17:46Speaker 02

  Um, you have to like bring it up and make sure, okay, this is a new place. How does it, does this machine work properly in this new place and calibrate and make sure it's safe and all of this. So there's like a process of getting it up. Then there's change management because that, that site's going from, there are people that show up in the morning. There's all this very regimented process, uh, to make sure everything's going exactly as planned and people are exactly where they're supposed to be because otherwise weird things happen on a, on a mining site.

• 18:17John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 18:18Speaker 02

  So you have to go from that to, okay, we're now running a autonomous mining operation. It's just a very different thing. So the, the installation and the bring up and what we call commissioning are sort of like the things you have to do. Um, and you know, like, why does it take a long time to install? Because that machine may not even be drive by wire.

• 18:41John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 18:42Speaker 02

  So you have a mechanical system, like if you turn the steering wheel, like it's, you know what I mean?

• 18:46John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 18:47Speaker 02

  It's a, it's a mechanical system, a hydraulic system.

• 18:51John Coogan?

  So you're bringing effectively an actuator that might push a physical button.

• 18:54Speaker 02

  You're, yeah, you're, you're trying to make electricity then do a physical thing. So then you need physical actuation.

• 19:01John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 19:02Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 19:02Speaker 02

  To do the things because it's not, these machines are not natively drive by wire.

• 19:07Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. So that, so that, that sounds, that sounds, uh, incredibly difficult, but necessary because you're not going to get a mine to rip out tens of millions of dollars of equipment that they already have. But would you eventually go full stack, like build the entire?

• 19:23Speaker 02

  I mean, look, we ultimately, I mean, if you go in the mining industry, there's like this, this term, it's called no entry mine. A no entry mine is a mine where there are no people in the pit.

• 19:36Jordi Hays?

  Lights out factory.

• 19:36Speaker 02

  Yeah. Kind of like that version, a version of it. There might be people in a control center. There might be, but like in that pit, no human.

• 19:44John Coogan?

  And it's a wildly different calculus from a safety perspective, I imagine.

• 19:48Speaker 02

  Totally different, obviously. And so there's drilling, there's blasting, there's loading, there's haulage, uh, there's crushing. I'm just going through the different parts of the mining operation. Um, and what you do is you start somewhere and then you start extending to those other areas to get to that no entry thing. And the no entry thing is you can have an autonomous thing, like, like our haulage system is autonomous. If you're getting into a new place, you can do remote control and move into autonomous. If you want to go super no entry or lower entry mine, if that makes sense. Um, it's,

• 20:29Speaker 02

  it's super fascinating. And then you're talking about, you're talking about loaded a two million pound machine that's moving potentially 35 miles an hour down the road. And it's, it's an off-road thing.

• 20:44Jordi Hays?

  Two million pound machine moving 35 miles an hour off-road.

• 20:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, dude.

• 20:52Jordi Hays?

  This is why you have to jet ski to work.

• 20:55Speaker 02

  This is the ultimate ATV. So no, you get in it and you can, you know, you can experience it. Like, I mean, it's not like there's like a amusement park for this, but like I've certainly experienced it where I can get in the, I get in the machines and, and check out what's going on.

• 21:09John Coogan?

  This is like the dump truck with 20 foot tires, this actually.

• 21:12Jordi Hays?

  Are any of these, are any of these companies like acquisition targets? Where you would, you would be able to come in and say like, you're doing a lot of stuff well, but here's all the stuff that you're never going to figure out like us and.

• 21:24Speaker 02

  I mean, look, I would say the way we think about it is the, the haulage part of a mine is where most of the vehicles are. And so, and we think of haulage as the cardiovascular system of a mine. So we're obviously very connected to all the other machines, but we don't do all the other machines. So we're like in an ecosystem. So we can work with them where like there's APIs. Cause like if you're doing haulage, you need to know where the other machines are and what their status is, as an example, there needs to be orchestration coordination there, which is pretty interesting. In terms of like acquisition, like, you know, I, I do, I have to sort of admit, like the Uber mentality, my mentality, let's just say.

• 22:08Jordi Hays?

  My Dune.

• 22:08Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. It's like not, I guess Uber is different today, but in my world, we didn't acquire shit. We just built.

• 22:14John Coogan?

  Yeah, that's right.

• 22:15Speaker 02

  I don't know if I have an opinion yet. I'm not like religious about it, but if we feel like we can build something, we do. But that, but sometimes people have differentiated awesome stuff and you're like, let's partner. We're open to it, you know?

• 22:28John Coogan?

  How would you pitch me if I was a young person, Stanford, CS, new grad worried about software engineering not being the easy path where I can bounce around from Google and maybe Uber had a cushy job for me? Pitch me on going to the Amazon and building AI for mining.

• 22:50Speaker 02

  I mean, that's awesome. I thought I just did. I mean, that was the pitch. That was the pitch.

• 22:55John Coogan?

  Do you think, do you think, uh, young people are receptive to this pitch yet? Are we about to be receptive? Why should they be receptive?

• 23:02Speaker 02

  It's really interesting because I only run into the young people that are receptive.

• 23:05John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 23:06Speaker 02

  Like I'm not out there pitching like lame sauce dude who doesn't want to work.

• 23:09John Coogan?

  Sure, sure.

• 23:10Speaker 02

  Like I don't end up, I don't end up in the same room as this guy.

• 23:14Jordi Hays?

  Do you want to, do you want a, a job where, do you want a laptop job? Or do you want to be dropped in to a mine in the Amazon and like build, build, you know, science fiction?

• 23:23Speaker 02

  This is the thing, right? This is why the Adams thing is cool.

• 23:28Speaker 02

  Because you're not dropping a, you're not dropping a fucking app in the app store. You're like automating a two million pound machine going 35 miles an hour carrying gold.

• 23:42Jordi Hays?

  Do you, do you watch, uh, do you get, do you get a?

• 23:44Speaker 02

  There's a lot of profanity happening today. I don't know why it's happening, but it is.

• 23:48Jordi Hays?

  No, it's let it flow.

• 23:49Speaker 02

  Just wanted to acknowledge it.

• 23:50Jordi Hays?

  Do you, do you watch, uh, sign, do you, do you get inspired by science fiction at all? I can, I can imagine like watching Dune for you. You're just like texting pictures to the team.

• 23:59Speaker 02

  Of course. I'm like, uh, I'm, my fave is, is Asimov. He's my fave.

• 24:07Speaker 02

  You know, the iRobot series is like just so epic.

• 24:12John Coogan?

  What is your takeaway from the iRobot series with regard to AI safety doom generally? Have you ever had moments of, uh, maybe we won't figure it out?

• 24:24Speaker 02

  Won't figure what out?

• 24:26John Coogan?

  The alignment problem broadly, like the, the iRobot, the three laws of robotics. This was sort of an elegant solution. It's tested, obviously, but, uh,

• 24:35Speaker 02

  I love.

• 24:36John Coogan?

  I would love to come back to a world where, where everyone, both the doomers and the AI builders agree that yep, the three laws of robotics will be sufficient.

• 24:44Speaker 02

  But I mean, in some ways, well, in some ways in the series, the three laws don't always work out.

• 24:50John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 24:50Speaker 02

  So I think there's a lot of, I, I thought there's a lot of nuance to those three laws, even though the laws are sort of so simple.

• 24:58John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 24:59Speaker 02

  I love the intention of those laws.

• 25:03Speaker 02

  I, I sort of think of it a little bit differently, which is I have been entrepreneur-ing for a long time, like a long time. And I have failed. And when I think about why I failed, it's usually because I was building something that nobody liked.

• 25:23Speaker 02

  So if you build something that people don't like, I don't think you're going to succeed. So how does that relate to your question? He's like, please tell me because I'm not connecting the dots at all. What are you talking about? Well, if you make something that is anti-human, if you make something that doesn't serve people, I don't think you're going to make it. I don't think you're going to make it. And by the way, like, yes, we're using AI to help us make decisions, et cetera. But what do those AIs really, really want to do almost too much? They want to please us. So I just think if you're not making stuff that humans want, it's not going to work out. And that's kind of obvious, obviously, but I think it keeps going.

• 26:07John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 26:08Speaker 02

  And yes, there's the dangers and the things and the this, but that's my, that's my starting point for how I think about these things. And we can't control all the things.

• 26:17John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 26:18Speaker 02

  And I do think of course you have to have safety situations and there's collisions of like, what do I, what do I prioritize first and how do I do it? Which is I think where Asimov's laws go. But, um, I, I, I, instead of writing sci-fi books, I'm just doing the thing and I'm making sure that, that the machine stays on the road.

• 26:38John Coogan?

  Yes. And, and related to that idea of like doing the thing, making the machine stay on the road. I imagine that your, your worldview is somewhat informed by your contact with reality, the fact that you can see the progress of diffusion, how long drive-by-wire systems take, took to roll out and the need for AI to be deployed in like tactile ways that, uh, that that, that you, you just see it as more positive sum, more upper, there's more opportunity.

• 27:08Speaker 02

  I feel like you're deploying robots that people want. Right now, robot, I mean, look, there's some point where robots have their own bank accounts and their citizens and all this. We're just not there yet.

• 27:17John Coogan?

  Sure, sure.

• 27:17Speaker 02

  And before we, until we get there, that robot is owned by somebody.

• 27:22John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 27:23Speaker 02

  And that somebody has a bank account and they are paying based on the value you're bringing them because they like your stuff. So if you are doing things that humans don't like, you're done.

• 27:34John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 27:34Speaker 02

  And trust me, I've done it. I've built things that nobody liked and it sucked.

• 27:40John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 27:40Speaker 02

  I don't recommend anybody do it. If you can avoid it, you totally should.

• 27:45John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 27:47Jordi Hays?

  On the business model side, what are you doing now in mining? And where do you think it could go over time? Cause if you're able to bring in a system that helps someone increase their yield 30 to 40%, I, I imagine eventually you just do some type of JV so that your guys have line incentives.

• 28:05Speaker 02

  Well, look, there's, there's, you know, and the, the instinct should be how do enterprise company, enterprise software companies do it? Start there and you guys will know that. Like you, you know that.

• 28:18John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 28:18Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 28:18Speaker 02

  What's the answer? Let's just say you're enterprise software company, you're making a company more productive. What do you do?

• 28:24John Coogan?

  Raise prices, subscription.

• 28:26Speaker 02

  Or you, the price goes up when you prove that productivity. So there's baseline and then based on outcomes, you get a little extra juice.

• 28:35John Coogan?

  Sure, sure.

• 28:36Speaker 02

  And you could say.

• 28:37Jordi Hays?

  Or you're always trying to make sure that like, you want to be producing, creating more value than you're capturing, but there's this sort of cat and mouse game where you're always trying to, you don't want to give away maybe too much value.

• 28:49Speaker 02

  Here, totally. But here's the thing, you never go to a customer, I don't care what you're selling. Okay. I don't care if it's enterprise software. I don't care if it's widgets. I don't care what it is. You never go to a customer and say, give me a percentage of your stuff.

• 29:01Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 29:02Speaker 02

  You go to a customer and say, here's the price of our stuff. And if it does really well for you, we think we should get a little more scratch, kachish, stuff, you know, whatever. I, you know what I mean?

• 29:15Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 29:15Speaker 02

  Yeah. And it's that simple. Don't be crass about it. And, you know, partner with folks and they're down. They want to win too, you know? But it's, it's literally an enterprise, it's an enterprise software style negotiation or approach to the whole thing.

• 29:31John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 29:31Speaker 02

  And the more differentiated your value is, the more you're going to get.

• 29:35John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 29:35Jordi Hays?

  What is your process for hiring executives today?

• 29:40Speaker 02

  Pray.

• 29:43Jordi Hays?

  I was hoping, I was hoping you had the Kalanick system to achieve a 99%

• 29:48John Coogan?

  I know, but why would I tell you if I did? Why would I tell you if I did?

• 29:52Speaker 02

  No, I mean, look.

• 29:53Jordi Hays?

  No, but I, I think you can, this is one of those things, you can tell people exactly what you do and they're not, they're not Kalanick, so they're not, it doesn't, that doesn't mean they can compete with you.

• 30:02Speaker 02

  You know, they could, they, yeah. Okay, so, how would I put it? Um, look, the, I think, no matter who you go, nobody's nailed executives all the way. It's, it's, it's weird, because what will happen is, executives talk a fucking awesome game. And there's two things you want an executive to do. You want them to be able to organize at scale, organize and manage at scale, lead at scale. You also want them to be epic problem solvers, the most strategic badass problem solvers alive. This is like being left-handed or right-handed. And there's very few people that are ambidextrous. But you need that.

• 30:46Speaker 02

  Now, somebody's, they're always leaning a little bit one side or the other. The best executives are the ones that are doing both well. But I have come to the conclusion, over my years doing the stuff, is the problem solving is the most important thing. If you get somebody who organizes and manages well, but cannot solve a problem, they're going to be doing ridiculous stuff in a super organized way. And so that's, the, and, and, and sort of my theory, I, I, maybe there's a couple theories on how I manage or how I lead, is that the only constraint on your imagination is management capacity. But what is management capacity? It's really problem solving at scale.

• 31:27Jordi Hays?

  Sure.

• 31:28Speaker 02

  Cause if you are doing super well over there, guess what? They're problem solving there, I can create other awesome problems.

• 31:34Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 31:35Speaker 02

  Like, I love creating problems.

• 31:37Jordi Hays?

  Sure.

• 31:38Speaker 02

  Go solve those too.

• 31:38Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 31:39Speaker 02

  But if I don't have the management capacity, then I'm F'd.

• 31:41Jordi Hays?

  Sure.

• 31:42Speaker 02

  So, um, the, the management style that I do is sort of problem solver in chief, which is, I take the most impactful problems that are not being solved, and that's on my desk.

• 31:56Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 31:57Speaker 02

  Or desk, or room, or whatever you want to call it, that's where I'm spending my time. So people go, oh, what do you spend your time on? I'm like, it depends what the frickin' problems are that matter. And it can change. And that's how, how I roll. But it means, once you have a problem solver in chief mentality, that flows downward. That means any direct report of mine must be the deputized problem solver in chief. And they've got their, cause there's only 24 hours in a day. I can only solve so many myself. They have to then take that for their world and do the same thing, and then do the same thing to their people.

• 32:30Jordi Hays?

  Yep.

• 32:31Speaker 02

  So, the bottom line is, you gotta prove that these folks can solve actual problems and aren't just talking the talk, that's the number one.

• 32:39Jordi Hays?

  And then.

• 32:40Speaker 02

  And then, I, on the interview process, simulate what it's like working together, so that day one is, really feels like week two. And day one, you better be excited. So if you're excited in day one, after simulating what it's like working together in the interview process, then day one is really week two and you're still excited, ah, you took a lot of risk out of the system. That's all I got for you.

• 33:00John Coogan?

  I have a question about regulation. Uber famously went city by city.

• 33:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:06John Coogan?

  The AI labs are duking it out over federal preemption. Did you ever have, develop a theory around when federal preemption is better than state by state regulation? Do you have a philosophy around this? I, I, it, it seems like the labs go back and forth on what they want, it's hard to see where the chips are falling.

• 33:27Speaker 02

  Federal preemption is good when you are pro regulatory capture.

• 33:32John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 33:33Speaker 02

  When you want to squeeze others out, you should get federal regulatory bigness going for you.

• 33:43John Coogan?

  Yeah. Cause then you don't have to do the ground game that you went.

• 33:45Speaker 02

  Well, no, you're squeezing others out.

• 33:47John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 33:48Speaker 02

  It's just the whole point is to squeeze everybody out.

• 33:49John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 33:50Speaker 02

  I never did that, like, we never did that Uber. We basically never, ever proposed or pushed any rule that would be beneficial to us versus somebody else.

• 34:05John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 34:06Speaker 02

  We always were trying to open up the market, and we said, let the best man win, and we just went for it.

• 34:10John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 34:11Speaker 02

  But, uh, I think, we gotta be careful of some of these closed weight things that are, um, creating situations where they need to be regulated. And they want it. I'd be very, I'd keep an eye on that.

• 34:27John Coogan?

  Yeah. Well, you gotta have customers that love your product and are willing to.

• 34:31Speaker 02

  So when you guys, when you guys, uh, you know, decide to tell your own hacker to hack the thing, and then go to somebody, then go to the federal government and say, then go to the federal government and say, um, dude, we saved the day, like, you know, you don't have, you don't have.

• 34:53Jordi Hays?

  TK's watching.

• 34:54Speaker 02

  You guys don't have to do this, you guys don't have to do it.

• 34:57Jordi Hays?

  Uh, on regulation, I'm sure you saw the trial lawyers that are fighting back against autonomous vehicles, because they're worried they're gonna be too safe.

• 35:05Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 35:06Jordi Hays?

  Um, I'm sure that's not surprising to you.

• 35:09Speaker 02

  No, so, look, every bad thing that you see in transport, like, systemically, and any, anything in transport that you view as systemically bad, was most likely pushed by the trial lawyers and the insurance companies.

• 35:24John Coogan?

  Wow.

• 35:25Speaker 02

  Every single, bad rule that's weird and dumb.

• 35:31John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 35:32Speaker 02

  The insurance companies and the trial lawyers were in the game, big time.

• 35:36Jordi Hays?

  Uh, where, where do they align?

• 35:38Speaker 02

  What do you mean?

• 35:41Jordi Hays?

  Well, because trial lawyers, I imagine, want more accidents.

• 35:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:45Jordi Hays?

  Insurance companies.

• 35:46John Coogan?

  Insurance are the ones that pay for it. Wait, yes.

• 35:48Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, so.

• 35:49Speaker 02

  No, no, remember, insurance companies make margin on accidents.

• 35:51John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 35:52Speaker 02

  If there's no accidents, there's no insurance company. They, in a weird way, they love accidents.

• 35:57John Coogan?

  Cause the premiums go up.

• 35:58Speaker 02

  As long as it's in their actuarial table, they're pumped.

• 36:01John Coogan?

  Wow.

• 36:02Speaker 02

  Right? Though what they don't like is accidents they didn't plan for.

• 36:05John Coogan?

  Sure, sure.

• 36:06Speaker 02

  But accidents that they planned for, whoo, big insurance outcomes.

• 36:12John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 36:13Speaker 02

  They love. Like, I remember, we went to DC, and the taxi system, the, the liability on a ride, if you took a taxi, it might still be this way to this day, was like $25,000 in a taxi. But we went to, we being Uber at the time, went to DC, and they pushed a one and a half million dollar policy per ride. Okay? So what does that mean? That means, well, this, you know, accidents are gonna happen, we're probably, like, Uber's probably safer.

• 36:46John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 36:47Speaker 02

  But, it just, do you think the trial lawyers weren't pumped about that? You think the insurance companies weren't also pumped about that?

• 36:54John Coogan?

  Cause then they can go get up to them.

• 36:55Speaker 02

  Because, by the way, the insurance company might be on the other side.

• 36:58John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 36:59Speaker 02

  And they're like, oh, there's a, there's a one and a half million dollar bank account here that I can get access to on a random accident.

• 37:05Jordi Hays?

  Right. Uh, what can you share on the transportation side of the business right now? How much are you, how much is that business in service of mining or food versus?

• 37:17Speaker 02

  It's number one. So, number one is it's, it's, so I call it wheelbase for robots, which is, if you're gonna do specialized robots, that move and act in the physical world, they're either humanoids, which we're not, I'm not anti-humanoid, I'm just non-humanoid, specialized industrial robots, right? So that's, it's high scale, industrial scale tasks, which means you would not have a humanoid ever do that. Um, that means you gotta be on wheels. So we gotta build wheels. So that means, okay, well, when food, when supply chain is going into our facilities, that's a freight vehicle, we probably should just turn that into a robot that moves stuff

• 38:00Speaker 02

  and actually interfaces with our facility in a really cool way. When the, when the food is coming out of our facilities, there's probably like a, a machine that holds food at temperature, that's like a box on wheels, I call them autonomous burritos, and it brings it to your home. And it costs 75 cents instead of like, the $12 per drop that it costs like an Uber Eats or a DoorDash today. So, it's serving, remember, I, I'm taking, I'm sort of going through an industry and saying, how do we transform it full stack? How do we automate full stack that entire industry? So, okay, that's the food thing.

• 38:41Speaker 02

  Obviously mining's pretty obvious, but you can imagine, there's a lot of other machines that move. Like, I talked about haulage, but what about like, what about grading the roads? The dirt roads, you gotta grade them. That's a machine.

• 38:55John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 38:56Speaker 02

  What about the, you spray water, so there's not a lot of dust all over the place? That's a frickin' machine.

• 38:59John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 39:00Speaker 02

  Like, what about the material that ultimately goes somewhere beyond the mine? Well, that's a freight machine.

• 39:06John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 39:07Speaker 02

  Like, there's lots of things moving.

• 39:08John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 39:09Speaker 02

  Um, you know, I saw something that was like, think about, uh, just forklifts.

• 39:15Speaker 02

  I know a company or main unnamed that's spending three and a half is on the supply chain side, three and a half billion dollars a year on forklift labor in their facilities.

• 39:29John Coogan?

  That probably shows up in an SEC filing if we want to get creative and figure out what company you're talking about.

• 39:34Speaker 02

  Just saying, but you see what I'm saying?

• 39:36John Coogan?

  Yeah, big opportunity.

• 39:37Speaker 02

  If you just solve the forklift problem.

• 39:38John Coogan?

  Yes, but on solving the problem, what do you think about this, this distinction between jobs versus tasks? Like, a lot of people would have assumed that there would be no more marketing people because the job is just writing marketing copy, but the job is actually much more, writing copy is one task. I was looking at automated trucking and I found some stat like, I think 30% of truck drivers are armed, they carry weapons. And so, driving the vehicle is one task, but in that job, you are also providing security for that payload and you are also doing other things, refueling the vehicle, maybe some minor maintenance.

• 40:20John Coogan?

  And so, just the, just the steering and gas and brake pressure is just one task that you're doing. How do you think about that in the context of all this?

• 40:30Speaker 02

  This really gets to the jobs question, I think.

• 40:32John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 40:33Speaker 02

  Which is basically like, okay, well, if I do everything that we are imagining on food, which is I have industrial real estate, which is manufacturing and logistics, I automate the manufacturing, which is production, robotic food, robotic food machines, robots, and I have robotic couriers, what happens? Food, the price of food goes down.

• 40:57John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 40:58Speaker 02

  Okay, when the price of food goes down, remember, robots don't have bank accounts. When the price of food goes down, what happens? More people have more money. Yeah.

• 41:06Jordi Hays?

  Jevon's paradox.

• 41:07Speaker 02

  What do they do?

• 41:08John Coogan?

  You start eating more, you just start having 10 burgers a day.

• 41:11Speaker 02

  No, that's not where I was going, dude. That's hilarious.

• 41:13John Coogan?

  Everyone's getting fat because of you.

• 41:14Speaker 02

  This is hilarious. That's not what I'm saying.

• 41:16John Coogan?

  You're the problem.

• 41:17Speaker 02

  That's so funny. That's not what I'm saying. No, what I'm saying is, what I'm saying is, when, once you...

• 41:23John Coogan?

  Jevon's paradox.

• 41:25Jordi Hays?

  I'll take, I was gonna get three pizzas, I actually take thirty.

• 41:28Speaker 02

  You're like, one cent the price. No, no, no, so what happens? You have more money to do other things, but remember that money is only ultimately going to humans.

• 41:38John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 41:39Speaker 02

  So, it's, it's, the things that get automated go down in price.

• 41:43John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 41:44Speaker 02

  Which then creates surplus.

• 41:45John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 41:46Speaker 02

  To do what?

• 41:47John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 41:48Speaker 02

  To do other things.

• 41:49John Coogan?

  Yeah, this is the bomb.

• 41:50Speaker 02

  So, it doesn't always have to be, oh, marketing's automated, but sort of, and there's still people doing it. It's like, whatever, there's gonna be a hundred other new things that come out because there's this excess of capital and progress continues.

• 42:02John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 42:03Speaker 02

  And as long as humans still have things that we do that robots cannot, it's go-go time, man. It's gonna be super prosperity. We talked about the plumber that is paid like LeBron last time.

• 42:17John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 42:18Speaker 02

  It's gonna be across a thousand categories. In some categories, we don't even know.

• 42:21John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 42:22Speaker 02

  Like, we don't even know what they are today.

• 42:23John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 42:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:25Jordi Hays?

  You raised 1.7 billion. Why didn't you raise more?

• 42:28Speaker 02

  That's a good question.

• 42:30Jordi Hays?

  Because last time we were here, you talked about like, oh, well, what you, if you were doing something and it was easy, you weren't going hard enough.

• 42:37John Coogan?

  Seems pretty, going pretty hard, but unpack it.

• 42:41Speaker 02

  Look, you have to stop somewhere.

• 42:43John Coogan?

  Even I have my limits.

• 42:46Speaker 02

  No, it's like, but like, look, as you can imagine today, my phone's blowing up. I mean, I'm pumped, like, A16, these guys, we should have done business at Uber.

• 42:56John Coogan?

  That's right.

• 42:57Speaker 02

  If we did it, business at Uber, my 2017 would have been a different year.

• 43:00John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 43:01Speaker 02

  Okay?

• 43:02John Coogan?

  Totally.

• 43:03Speaker 02

  So, that's why I called it unfinished business. And so, but yeah, like, my phone's blowing up, like, we're probably just gonna do a second, we'll do a second close.

• 43:16Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I figured.

• 43:17John Coogan?

  We'll come back for the second close.

• 43:20Speaker 02

  Run it back. No, I mean, we're not gonna do a big announcement on the same close, but like, you know, those people who are, who are texting me and hitting me hard right now.

• 43:29John Coogan?

  We got room.

• 43:32Speaker 02

  You know, well, we'll see.

• 43:34John Coogan?

  We'll see. Depends.

• 43:37Speaker 02

  You know, we'll see.

• 43:38John Coogan?

  Depends on what the previous text message was.

• 43:39Speaker 02

  If you're a homie, we definitely have room.

• 43:41John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 43:42Speaker 02

  If we're not a homie, you should talk to one of my homies.

• 43:44Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I did come away from the last conversation thinking, all right, there's a lot of exciting companies in physical AI and you could spend years and years and years trying to find all the best teams, or you could just give TK a big pile of cash and just say, go cook. And, you know, sometimes the easier route is better.

• 44:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I think there's this thing, physical AI, people are like, well, is that a humanoid? Is that a world model? Is it? And so, on this one, I sort of dialed the language a little bit and am calling it industrial AI.

• 44:16Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 44:17Speaker 02

  It's like, okay, this is a full stack, software, robotics, sensors, machinery, like, a full stack solution to automating an industry. And that's kind of how we think about it. And it's industrial. Yep. So, it's like heavy Adam stuff. Yeah.

• 44:37John Coogan?

  Well, thank you so much.

• 44:38Jordi Hays?

  This is incredible.

• 44:39John Coogan?

  You wanna get a signature? Can we get an autograph?

• 44:41Speaker 02

  Sure, why not?

• 44:42John Coogan?

  Can we get something?

• 44:43Jordi Hays?

  They can figure it out back there. Oh, we got a gong.

• 44:46John Coogan?

  We got a gong right there.

• 44:47Jordi Hays?

  We'll have you sign this gong. We'll hang it in the raft.

• 44:49John Coogan?

  We wanna hang it in the rafters. We're trying to build our repertoire here.

• 44:52Jordi Hays?

  Museum of business.

• 44:53John Coogan?

  The museum of business grows one gong stronger today.

• 44:56Jordi Hays?

  And we will, we'll see you in Austin.

• 44:59John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 45:00Jordi Hays?

  Next time you're on your commute, if you see two jet skis moving out of, out of your, you know, out of, out of sight coming in, it's probably us.

• 45:08John Coogan?

  That's us.

• 45:09Jordi Hays?

  If it's not, you're...

• 45:10Speaker 02

  Guys, let me know if you wanna learn how to slalom ski.

• 45:12John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah?

• 45:13Speaker 02

  If you wanna learn how to wake surf like, well...

• 45:14John Coogan?

  I've only been water skiing once or twice in, it was 20 years ago.

• 45:19Speaker 02

  I go at 7:30 in the morning, every morning, and I'd say half the time I'm out there at 8:30 when I leave the office.

• 45:26John Coogan?

  That's amazing.

• 45:28Speaker 02

  So, that's what we do.

• 45:29Jordi Hays?

  Beauty of summer.

• 45:30John Coogan?

  Thank you so much for coming on the show. Always a pleasure. Have a great rest of your day.

• 45:36Speaker 02

  For sure. Good to see you guys.