Cambridge AI Safety Plan, Instinct CEO on Invest Like the Best, Zuck Hires MongoDB CEO | Diet TBPN

Diet TBPN delivers the best of today’s TBPN episode in 30 minutes. TBPN is a live tech talk show hosted by John Coogan and Jordi Hays, streaming weekdays 11–2 PT on X and YouTube, with each episode posted to podcast platforms right after. Described by The New York Times as “Silicon Valley’s newest obsession,” the show has recently featured Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, Mark Cuban, and Satya Nadella. 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/ 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?

  The most viral video I saw over the weekend was the parody of Dario Amadeo on SNL. That felt like it really took over the timeline. Martin Casado said, honestly, downplayed how ridiculous the rhetoric and broader situation is. It was a funny clip. There were a bunch of interesting nuance. I mean, first it's like, okay, clearly the AI rhetoric in the public discourse is getting to like a new height, to the point where like a lab leader of a private company can be, can even be parodied on SNL because the audience understands who that is.

• 0:32Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 0:32John Coogan?

  So it's interesting to see that like, okay, yes, like Dario has done enough on Oprah and CNN and NBC and ABC and all the major news networks to be relevant to the broader audience. And because it only really works, like you can't, like they could never pair, there's a lot of people in tech that we know that wouldn't work as, you know, SNL punching bags. But he's made it, he's made it.

• 0:55Jordi Hays?

  It says a lot that the, like the sweater vest thing is iconic enough to be like a part of a character.

• 1:02John Coogan?

  I wonder if he'll stick with that or switch it up because it's not, it's not his leather jacket yet. It's not his Hawaiian t-shirt yet, but there is such value into leaning into like a consistent thing, but I don't know, we'll see. The interesting like wrinkle here is that Dario is at the point where he is enough of a name that they can do this bit and make jokes and it's, it's relevant to the SNL audience. Obviously it went way more viral on X than I think it probably did on YouTube, but when Michael Che is introducing the segment, he sort of stumbles over Dario's name a little bit, like he's reading it from the cue cards and he says like, and this is Dario. And then he pauses and it seems like maybe Dario Amadeo is not fully a household name

• 1:44John Coogan?

  in the SNL writers room yet, in the sense that they were like, okay, who is this guy? Let's look him up. Okay, get him on the cue cards. I don't know, maybe I'm reading into it too much, but it felt like this was certainly like a crossing the chasm moment, like the first time everyone gets to know Dario. But very, very funny and it really illuminates a little bit of like the, the complexity of the discourse, the irony of saying, you know, somebody's got to save me from me, basically. But let's play a little bit of it and see what you think.

• 2:13Speaker 02

  You know, you know, you know, thanks for having me, Michael. I may have been alarming in my recent interviews, but I want to assure you that if we can pressure lawmakers to create guardrails, we will be able to stop me.

• 2:28Speaker 03

  Dario, can you just explain how your company isn't going to kill us?

• 2:32Speaker 02

  So, so, so, so, so.

• 2:38John Coogan?

  Not the most flattering depiction.

• 2:39Speaker 02

  That's a really hard question.

• 2:42Speaker 03

  It shouldn't be.

• 2:43Speaker 02

  So, you know, come on, Dario, come on, Dario, you can do this.

• 2:50John Coogan?

  Isn't that an explicit reference to like The Ring?

• 2:52Speaker 02

  Reassure me.

• 2:53John Coogan?

  Like Gollum, like where the voice is in your head?

• 2:55Speaker 02

  AI is the devil and I is maker.

• 2:58Speaker 03

  What?

• 2:58John Coogan?

  It seems like it, right?

• 3:00Speaker 02

  No, well, so, look.

• 3:02John Coogan?

  Well, AI is the devil and I is maker.

• 3:04Speaker 02

  All the major AI players, we have talked about this extensively and we are all on the same page here. We do not condone what we are doing.

• 3:13Speaker 03

  Shouldn't you be talking about the pros of AI?

• 3:15John Coogan?

  It's very, very tough to thread the needle on this messaging.

• 3:17Speaker 03

  Cure cancer?

• 3:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, so, put it this way, in 10 years, there is about a 10% chance that cancer won't be a problem for anyone.

• 3:25Speaker 03

  For anyone.

• 3:27Speaker 03

  I don't like the way you're saying that, buddy.

• 3:30Speaker 03

  I mean, how is this a good thing?

• 3:31Speaker 02

  Look, so Che, it's simple. If you could drink a milk that made your life easier, but there was a 10% chance it killed you, would you drink the milk?

• 3:40Speaker 03

  No.

• 3:42Speaker 02

  Really?

• 3:43Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 3:45Speaker 02

  Well, what if there's a button that when you push it, everyone dies? Would you push the button?

• 3:49Speaker 03

  No.

• 3:50Speaker 02

  Really?

• 3:51Speaker 03

  Dario, are you okay?

• 3:53Speaker 02

  I'm sort of blacking out every time I talk. I'd love to start this interview over or better yet, you know, my whole life.

• 4:02Speaker 03

  All right, Dario, just tell us, what are the pros of AI?

• 4:05Speaker 02

  All right. Let's hit the plane, Dario. I can't. You can.

• 4:11Speaker 03

  We can hear you, Dario.

• 4:14Speaker 02

  No one can hear you, Dario. Say something reassuring. Like what? Try the milk thing. AI will stop that. Then try this.

• 4:26John Coogan?

  Is milk a reference to something or is that just random?

• 4:27Speaker 02

  AI is not a weapon. It's a tool. A tool for building weapons and I urge you to urge me to stop.

• 4:34Speaker 03

  Dario Amadeo, everybody.

• 4:37Jordi Hays?

  Going, going pretty hard on him in some ways. That being said, he's always like incredibly fascinating to listen to and he has incredible clarity of, of thought and he does, at times he'll like pause, you know, in a way that would maybe scare normal people a little bit. But the thing that I think he can do that will have the biggest impact is to stop.

• 5:00John Coogan?

  I agree.

• 5:01Jordi Hays?

  No, I actually like the, I like the, the, whatever kind of shawl sweater thing that is.

• 5:07John Coogan?

  Isn't it, is it Brunello?

• 5:08Jordi Hays?

  Probably, yeah.

• 5:09John Coogan?

  I think someone, I think someone talked it, right? It's Brunello. So, you know, it's nice, but it's quite luxury. And I feel like a power tie, some shoulder padding would go a long way. Anyway.

• 5:18Jordi Hays?

  The biggest thing he can do is to stop smiling when he's talking about really bad, devastating things.

• 5:24John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 5:25Jordi Hays?

  And so I'm sure that that's something.

• 5:28John Coogan?

  Yeah, there's something to be learned from like the way like Fed chairmen speak or the way, you know, the, the head of the FDA or the head of the military speaks. Like we've talked to some of these folks and like, they're very austere, very serious. And our show is very lighthearted and we just kind of have to like click into a different mode when you're talking to somebody like, like a Michael Kratzios or someone who's like dealing with the weight of something big and, and, and puts up a wall that is, it is a, it is a performance, but it serves a very valuable purpose, which is like, I take this very seriously. Or you can go the opposite way, the Mark Zuckerberg way and rip it and just be like, yeah, I'm having fun with AI, which is obviously like, it feels like people are like, yeah, I kind of want that energy a little bit, just give me the white pill.

• 6:13John Coogan?

  But I don't know.

• 6:14Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. And again, I don't think that Zoc's approach is at all appealing to the people actually pushing the frontier.

• 6:21John Coogan?

  No, no.

• 6:21Jordi Hays?

  Right? Like no, no one's gonna, no one's gonna take, no researchers like take.

• 6:26John Coogan?

  There are some researchers.

• 6:27Jordi Hays?

  Dating, dating back to basically Demas being like, you know, that moment where he realizes Zoc is just as excited about VR as he is AI, right? Anyways, I, I, I hope that.

• 6:41John Coogan?

  Maybe VR will be bigger than AI, Jordy. Maybe.

• 6:45Jordi Hays?

  Wouldn't you like that?

• 6:46John Coogan?

  I would love that.

• 6:47Jordi Hays?

  Wouldn't you like that, John?

• 6:48John Coogan?

  I would love that. But yeah.

• 6:50Jordi Hays?

  Anyway, so, so from SNL headed straight into dinner with the president.

• 6:55John Coogan?

  Sunday. I mean, he wasn't actually at SNL, but yeah, it's like you wake up to that on, on Sunday morning and you have to imagine that Trump sees it, but Trump has been both, he's hosted, he's hosted SNL multiple times and he's also been made fun of on SNL for years. Like when he gets elected, they basically hire an actor to come and be him for four years for the entire tenure, because they're going to be doing the cold open with him, like basically every other week. And so maybe there's a little bit of camaraderie. They're like, hey, we've both been through this, Dario, it's not so bad. It's actually kind of, kind of funny. Or, or maybe they're both like, yeah, the news really is fake.

• 7:34Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. But yeah, as, as, as critical as it is, at the same time, I think it's something that all founders should aspire to, right? When you're starting your company and investors say, well, where do you, where do you see yourself, you know, where do you see yourself in the company and.

• 7:48John Coogan?

  Getting absolutely skewered on SNL.

• 7:50Jordi Hays?

  On the biggest stage.

• 7:51John Coogan?

  Perhaps, perhaps.

• 7:52Jordi Hays?

  Andrew Curran says, President Trump has personally invited Dario to a private dinner tonight. That was yesterday.

• 7:59John Coogan?

  So that happened on Sunday night.

• 8:01Jordi Hays?

  This will be the first time they've actually met one-on-one. Big chance to patch things up or crash the plane into the mountains.

• 8:09John Coogan?

  They're actually running it back tomorrow night, Tuesday night, there's a dinner in DC for all the AI leaders with the White House again. So, I mean, the pace of this stuff is really, really, really picking up. There's, there's meetings every, every week now, basically. And yeah, I mean, there's lots to work through and no one is going to get to put their, their head in the sand, not even the comedians at SNL, they will have to chime in as well as the politicians and the lab leaders. And so, yeah, despite Dario being excluded from, it seemed like he was excluded from that White House dinner with Xi Jinping and that basically every top tech leader was invited to, he was noticeably absent. President Trump, you know, followed up with a one-on-one dinner with Dario to hear his side of the story.

• 8:52John Coogan?

  And I wonder what type of leaks or reporting will come out of that. You would think that that would be going on today. Maybe there will be some news or maybe they'll put out a joint statement. Maybe everything went really well, but I mean, both.

• 9:03Jordi Hays?

  Or a joint, you could see Dario sign up for Truth Social.

• 9:06John Coogan?

  Or UFC courtside or ringside.

• 9:09Jordi Hays?

  Ringside.

• 9:10John Coogan?

  UFC would be pretty electric.

• 9:11Jordi Hays?

  UFC with, with the Don. I want to see Dana White, Dario, Trump.

• 9:19John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 9:19Jordi Hays?

  Just squatted up.

• 9:20John Coogan?

  You think he'd be doing slapboxing before too?

• 9:22Jordi Hays?

  Oh, yeah.

• 9:23John Coogan?

  For sure. You gotta do the full suite if you, if you go all in. Anyway, there's also interesting timing that I don't know if this, how timed up this was, but every day there's another proposal for how to manage AI safety. This one feels like the most formal concepting exercise from a group of top AI researchers. It's published through the University of Cambridge. You know, Sam was talking to, it wasn't Axios, he was interviewed and he was saying that like, maybe we're gonna sit down and get beers, basically. Remember this whole thing? Why don't you guys just sit down and have some beers? That was the, that was the proposal. And he was like, I don't want to leak anything that's gonna happen, but we are thinking about, thinking about it. And, you know, he's like, you can't just.

• 10:06Jordi Hays?

  Our personal agents are talking about getting together for a beer.

• 10:09John Coogan?

  Yeah. But it was very funny framing, but this is like the start of that, a start of more collaboration between the labs, between the academic community. And what's interesting is like, they go a little bit further. You know, Tyler over there, his criticism has been like, everyone comes out with an AI safety proposal and it's basically always like, we gotta talk about it. And this is a little bit more concrete. So the first one is they want to set in place the ability to monitor the level of AI-enabled R and D at labs. So what percentage of the code, what percentage of the dollars, what, like give us firm metrics on how much of the AI R and D is being done by artificial intelligence? Anthropic, OpenAI.

• 10:55John Coogan?

  They've all sort of like mentioned this in blog posts that it's happening, but there's also this like vague jockeying because it's better to be further along on the RSI curve for financial reasons. So there's not really an apples to apples. Like, no one really feels like they have a strong handle on like whether there's more RSI going on at OpenAI or Anthropic. Like, it feels like they both have very different metrics. Like, OpenAI says like, we have a intern level. And then Anthropic will say like, we had Claude spin up a thousand ideas. And like, you can't really apples to apples those. The proposal's like, let's get some metrics in place so we can actually monitor this thing. Then they also have, again, it's sort of like, we need to talk about it, but they want the government to create

• 11:39John Coogan?

  firm plans for responses to potential theoretical bad scenarios. So like, if there's a big cyber attack, and an agent goes rogue and brings down the internet and hacks into a bunch of stuff, like, what will the government do? What's the equivalent, like FEMA? Like, we have a response for like, there's a big hurricane, it's town, you bring in people, there's food, there's shelter, there's like, a plan. And we don't really have that for like, the internet went down because like, an agent took it down. Same thing for bio security. They have a couple others, even like, economic dislocation, that type of thing. So they want, they want the government, they're not proposing the solutions to those

• 12:20John Coogan?

  yet, but they're saying like, this is where the government should be prepared. So, I don't know. It's a good read.

• 12:27Jordi Hays?

  Did you see that China has places you can go to simulate being in a disaster?

• 12:34John Coogan?

  No.

• 12:35Jordi Hays?

  Like, high, you know, super high winds and

• 12:38Speaker 04

  Flash floods.

• 12:40Jordi Hays?

  Flash floods, things like that. Should we have, like, AI disaster simulations where you can be in a data center that's going rogue and kind of work to shut it down with friends?

• 12:53John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 12:54Jordi Hays?

  Just to kind of like, live action roleplay through it?

• 12:56John Coogan?

  I like that. I like that. I'm kind of treating Modern Warfare 4 like that. I feel like that's getting me enough cycles of like, the simulation of, you know, you're already playing against bots, you're already shooting AI, basically. So, getting some drills in.

• 13:09Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I know, it's a joke, but I wouldn't actually be surprised that a future first person shooter, or like, one of these open world games is centered around the Terminator scenario.

• 13:20John Coogan?

  There was, there was a game, there was a game, I forget what it's called, but like, you drop in with three people and you're on this like, planet. There's one that's Starship Troopers themed, so it's like, the bug planet. And then there's another planet that you can drop into that's like, the Terminator planet. And you're going up against like, they basically like, ripped Terminator's intellectual property. Like, they look exactly like T-800.

• 13:41Jordi Hays?

  RX says, why is Tyler not back in school?

• 13:44Speaker 04

  I turned it down.

• 13:46Jordi Hays?

  He's doing the longest internship in history. He turned it down.

• 13:47Speaker 04

  I turned it down.

• 13:48Jordi Hays?

  He actually turned it down, just to grind for this.

• 13:51John Coogan?

  Yeah. Things will never be chill again, the doomers who shaped the AI safety freak out. The Wall Street Journal has an article here about some early Anthropic employees who are considering buying remote land in the United States to relocate to if AI goes seriously wrong. They're getting bunkies. They're going bunker mode. Employees also train doomsday scenarios and preparation plans in a private Slack, while Anthropic workers have their own office space inside Berkeley's Constellation AI Safety Community. The wider safety scene has discussed iodine pills, remote islands, and electromagnetically shielded desert bunkers.

• 14:25Speaker 04

  This is like, an interesting example of, like, actual answer to the Teller Cowan question, which is like, if you're, if you really care about Doom, why aren't you making financial

• 14:33John Coogan?

  This is a financial one.

• 14:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 14:35John Coogan?

  You want to lever up, get a lot of debt, and buy a bunker, buy remote land with a massive mortgage.

• 14:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, because usually the answer to the Doomer thing is like, well, I'm not going to be able to get to my bunker because the, you know, bioterrorism will already have killed me or something. This is an interesting instantiation of this.

• 14:53Jordi Hays?

  The thing that always, the thing that always just like, breaks down with these scenarios is like, you know, every, every guy has like, sort of played out the scenario in their head, right? And where are you going to be best off? In some like, remote area where you don't know any people that actually live there, right? Let's pick a, let's pick Wyoming, right? You really think that the world is like, falling apart, and you're just going to head over to Wyoming and set up shop in a community that knows you've been building your bunkie there?

• 15:22John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 15:23Jordi Hays?

  Right? And they're just going to be like, oh yeah, like, there's a bunker over there. It has everything you need in it to survive.

• 15:28John Coogan?

  You know, you know what?

• 15:29Jordi Hays?

  But, but, you know, they paid us to set it up years ago. And, and, and let's not, we shouldn't, we shouldn't just go occupy said bunker for ourselves.

• 15:37John Coogan?

  So the prepper community has a term for this. They say, don't be a loot drop.

• 15:41Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, it's a loot, it's a loot drop.

• 15:44John Coogan?

  You're a loot drop if you do this. If you go and set up a really luxurious bunker with a bunch of supplies, but you don't actually know the community, you're not integrated into like, everyone else.

• 15:53Jordi Hays?

  The fabric of

• 15:54John Coogan?

  Yeah, the fabric. So ideally, it's like, you want your team and everyone else to all be in it together. And so, you know, there's no, there's no squabbling. But yeah, you can just set up a loot drop, and then everyone's like, oh yeah, I installed a crazy safe over there. Let's go get that as soon as the crisis happens. Yeah, I mean, there's a whole bunch of fun game theory that you can play through there. I would, I would personally, I think we need to regulate, because I would personally, I would hate to be in a self-defense situation with, with a bunch of rogue agents. And imagine if all the Waymos went rogue and we were just forced, because of self-defense reasons.

• 16:26Jordi Hays?

  You and all your best friends.

• 16:27John Coogan?

  All of our, just drive around and just have to shoot them out of the windows of our cars, like, all day long. Like, that would be, that'd be a nightmare.

• 16:34Jordi Hays?

  That'd be a nightmare. You would never, you've never even

• 16:37John Coogan?

  If I was in a self-defense situation, I would do it, but it would pain me.

• 16:41Jordi Hays?

  Totally.

• 16:42John Coogan?

  Totally.

• 16:43Jordi Hays?

  Let's talk about some personal agents.

• 16:44John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 16:45Jordi Hays?

  Noah Shin jumped on, founder of Instinct, broke his silence finally, with none other than our friend and legend, Patrick O'Shaughnessy. Patrick pulled out the highlights. He said, a list of surprising and mind-boggling stats from this conversation. One billion a year in transaction volume, still invite only. I can't remember if that's total, I think that's actually total volume to date. I don't think that's like, run rate volume. Growing 10% a day.

• 17:15John Coogan?

  I read that as one billion dollars of annualized, that they are at one billion dollars of annualized transaction volume.

• 17:24Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 17:25John Coogan?

  But I guess it's maybe even higher? I don't know.

• 17:27Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 17:28John Coogan?

  Interesting.

• 17:29Jordi Hays?

  Growing 10% a day, spend $0 on marketing. They have this, you know, pretty amazing flywheel where people post screenshots all the time. That's doing a lot of marketing.

• 17:39John Coogan?

  A lot of the, but a lot of the screenshots are like, horrible accidents. But maybe those actually drive curiosity and like, people being like, well, I'm not going to make that same stupid mistake, and the service is probably getting better. You think those actually help?

• 17:53Jordi Hays?

  I think those help.

• 17:54John Coogan?

  Yeah, they probably do. People are curious, and they're like, oh, I want to see it. And I'll be saying, if I won't give it my login details, but I'll still

• 18:01Jordi Hays?

  No, and it can't be said enough.

• 18:04John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 18:05Jordi Hays?

  A lot of people within tech have experienced AI doing things for them.

• 18:08John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 18:09Jordi Hays?

  Like, making a product.

• 18:10John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 18:11Jordi Hays?

  Most people outside have not experienced that yet, and it's just a magical thing.

• 18:14John Coogan?

  Yeah, totally.

• 18:16Jordi Hays?

  Forty percent of users shared a personal credit card with Instinct within three weeks. Compute demand is doubling roughly every week. At 5% to 8% daily growth over the months it takes to bring new compute online, Instinct would reach about 100 million users. On Instinct's own AP test, it matches OPUS 5 performance at a fraction of the cost. Noah spends about 40% of his time on compute. Buying compute at the last minute costs 3 to 4X more. Makes sense. Background work runs on setups that are 3X, 5X, and 8X more efficient on the same compute. 50% of Instinct's transaction volume is travel.

• 18:52John Coogan?

  That's a crazy stat.

• 18:53Jordi Hays?

  Instinct plans to take a cut of what users buy, take rates. Shopify is 2.5% to 30%, Amazon is 15%, Apple is 30%. Noah's personal goal is to keep Instinct free for everyone for life. Some small businesses run their entire back office on Instinct. That's interesting. Users who connect at least one piece of sensitive information retain at about 80%. Just give me one piece. Just one piece. Just give me one piece of sensitive

• 19:23John Coogan?

  Tell me your darkest secret.

• 19:27Jordi Hays?

  Some users send more than 90% of their messages

• 19:29John Coogan?

  What kinds of skeletons do you have in your closet?

• 19:30Jordi Hays?

  To Instinct by voice. Say, an app makes 70% of its money from ads and 30% from actually selling you things. Agents could wipe out the 70%. But Noah thinks that 30% gets much bigger because people buy more when buying takes zero effort. This is a big question for me, right? Because already, buying something on a Shopify store takes close to zero effort. Like, the checkout is actually down to, if I land on the website and I know what I want,

• 19:58John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 19:59Jordi Hays?

  I can check out within, and, and, again, Shopify doesn't have an ads business, so that's fine.

• 20:05John Coogan?

  There are things that are not fun to shop for, though. There's a lot of stuff, especially if it's like, I was thinking about like, cable management. I wanted to get some cable management stuff for my desk. And like, I don't really care about the brand, I don't care about the flow. I just want like, you know, a suite, I needed some like, command strips maybe, like a little tray, like, whatever like, the modern solution is to like, a couple cables, a power brick, like, just go and get something that's well-reviewed and like, a suite that will figure that. What kind of voice are you doing?

• 20:38Jordi Hays?

  Instinct launched to about 200 friends and family. Invites have sold on eBay for around $300. More than 50% of Instinct's traffic doesn't run on iMessage. Instinct has proactively called Noah three times. That's like when, when it's doing something and it, and it has like a deadline. It's like Noah gave the example of like, hey, you really have to sign this like within the next five minutes. Are you available? It'll just call you.

• 21:01John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 21:01Jordi Hays?

  Uh, which is cool. Raised one on 10.

• 21:06John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 21:07Jordi Hays?

  Uh, yeah, less than a month after raising two and a half. So Noah is 23. So very, very good, uh, summary.

• 21:14John Coogan?

  Also same colleges that I went to. He went to Northeastern.

• 21:17Jordi Hays?

  There you go. This is the whole Instinct pitch deck, by the way, and it's Christian Kyle saying, my three-month-old son is now twice as big as when he was born. He's on track to weigh seven and a half trillion pounds by age 10. Very funny, but-

• 21:30John Coogan?

  Such a viral post. This, this is like, this went super viral on Reddit. It goes viral like every couple of months on Reddit and stuff. It's a, it's a wild post, but I did want to set some like, uh, some comps around the Instinct growth numbers that are interesting. So a billion dollars a year in transaction volume. We're not exactly sure if that's annualized or, or to date, but it's kind of the same. For reference, it took Stripe around 18 months to hit 1 billion of annualized transaction volume, although Stripe also spent two years building in beta before launch. Instinct got to 1 billion transaction volume in closer to six months, but it's important to note that with Instinct, the transactions flow through third-party cards.

• 22:15John Coogan?

  So they're not making any money off of these transactions yet, but it's very clear to imagine where monetization might happen.

• 22:22Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. At the very least, they could just launch a credit, like their own card.

• 22:26John Coogan?

  Yeah, of course.

• 22:27Jordi Hays?

  And-

• 22:27John Coogan?

  You sign up.

• 22:28Jordi Hays?

  Then they are getting that interchange fee and they don't need to get, they don't even, they don't even need to get anyone to opt in.

• 22:32John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 22:33Jordi Hays?

  And they might be able to-

• 22:34John Coogan?

  Yeah. And it's an easier pitch too, because you're, you're onboarding this AI agent and you're like, I've heard some really crazy stuff about this thing. Like, yeah, I'd actually like it if you used your card as opposed to like my-

• 22:44Jordi Hays?

  It already has basically a computer, a phone number, email.

• 22:47John Coogan?

  Yep. Give it a credit card.

• 22:48Jordi Hays?

  Give it a credit card.

• 22:49John Coogan?

  And so I'm sure they're working on that. And when they do, they're not going to make 3% because you do have to pay Visa and Mastercard, like the underlying rails, but earning 1%, half a percent, quarter percent, even, even 0.1% on, you know, they grew to a billion, you know, you're talking about, um, getting into, you know, tens of millions of dollars of revenue pretty quickly. And the team's just 14 people. Uh, and so you can sort of see why they raised a billion, 10 billion from Benchmark, Sequoia, Co2. Uh, there's, you know, yes, you have to believe that, that they won't be, you know, killed by Muse and that they will continue to scale. But, uh, if, if, you know, any of the growth rates sustained for any, even a limited amount

• 23:31John Coogan?

  of time, it's going to be a lot of transaction volume, great business, and you can underwrite it pretty safely. And then there's still the, there's still the off, the offshoot into Amazon world, uh, I, I think, because Amazon doesn't really have a, a strong play there, but, uh, could fit in very well with this.

• 23:48Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, they have a lot of potential dance partners and ultimately things grow really fast because they don't just like grow really fast for no reason.

• 23:57John Coogan?

  No.

• 23:58Jordi Hays?

  Right? So-

• 23:59John Coogan?

  No, good product.

• 23:59Jordi Hays?

  Other people, uh, the chief economist at Apollo is warning that mass adoption of AI agents could trigger a bank run as they optimize user investments. Uh, Gary Genzler spent his last few years as SEC Chair, warning that the exact same problem will hit the markets. The pursuit of algorithmic perfection at scale destroys system stability. Personal finance agents making simultaneous optimal decisions could potentially cause a massive flash crash. Agent, a causal coordination with no messages passed between them will show up in a lot of places. Markets will get the big headlines, but the huge number of clever advisors making very similar choices will impact all of human society. And blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Uh, human laws were not written for this.

• 24:44Jordi Hays?

  They were not written for a lot of what is coming.

• 24:46John Coogan?

  You have to apologize.

• 24:48Jordi Hays?

  It is, uh, it is about to start happening very fast. Uh, credit to Satriani-

• 24:52John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 24:53Jordi Hays?

  For basically being the first-

• 24:54John Coogan?

  That was a different thing, but yeah.

• 24:56Jordi Hays?

  I don't know. It's the exact-

• 24:57John Coogan?

  It's similar, but it's-

• 24:59Jordi Hays?

  No, it's just, it's like, it's the idea of like, there's a lot of aspects of our economy that are, that like businesses that work because of friction.

• 25:06John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 25:06Jordi Hays?

  That friction in some ways will be removed when you have an always-on agent that says, hey, you haven't touched this product in very long time. Do you still want to be paying for this?

• 25:17John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 25:17Jordi Hays?

  Et cetera, et cetera. I, I don't think this is, I don't know. My, my banker will just hit me up and say, hey, I'm gonna, I'm just clearing this with you. I'm gonna sweep funds into-

• 25:28John Coogan?

  Yep, money market.

• 25:28Jordi Hays?

  Money market account or, or T-bills. Like, it's not like, like a good banking experience is already doing this proactively for you.

• 25:37John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 25:37Jordi Hays?

  Now there's of course people that maybe they just are set up with like a simple checking account and they could be moving those into a higher yield account of some sort that aren't doing it. And maybe the agent starts doing that, but like, like fundamentally a great banking experience, they're like doing this on your behalf. When Sim says, dang it, if ordinary people get fair deals and aren't ripped off, it's the end of the economy.

• 26:01John Coogan?

  Yeah. Um, I, yeah, because I, I, I wonder like the, personally, AI agents are taking off, but like, we're still in like single-digit millions of people doing them. It's going to take time for people to adopt them and then they need to actually authenticate and add these things, link their bank accounts. And then presumably the first version of this will be the agent coming to you and saying like, hey, is it okay if I do this? Second order will be like, I just did this. I know it's okay. You trust me. And that relationship, that trust, I feel like that's going to take like years to build up and diffuse through. Um, there, there are still like, there's still plenty of friction in the economy. I think, uh, I think it's going to take a while for people to, to onboard, onboard to this fully.

• 26:44John Coogan?

  I mean, people were, it's the same, it's the same idea of like, when ChatGPT came out, people were like, Google search is dead. Like Google, no one will Google search. Google's search revenue is going to go to zero like next year. And it was like, yeah, it was a reasonable replacement, but it took a little bit longer, even though it was growing so fast, faster than any consumer product ever, incredible revenues, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It would still wasn't that fast. And so it's the same thing where it's like, okay, if this happens over like a couple of years, like banks adjust, money market funds adjust, like it's not the end of the world potentially, but we'll keep monitoring it. Anyway, 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. Well, Railway automatically takes care of scaling, monitoring and security.

• 27:29Jordi Hays?

  Zuck.

• 27:30John Coogan?

  What happened?

• 27:31Jordi Hays?

  We believe super intelligence will create significant new opportunities for all people and businesses. Meta already serves billions of people at scale and helps hundreds of millions of businesses reach customers. Today, we are starting the next major pillar of our business, Meta Enterprise Platform, to help businesses use AI to grow and transform in new ways as well. Meta Enterprise will use our strengths that few other companies have, advanced models, leading agents, large-scale infrastructure, and years of working closely with many businesses. Initially, we will focus on bringing our full technology stack, including the Muse Agent, Meta Business Agent, Muse API, Muse Code and more to businesses and developers to help them grow. To lead this effort, I'm excited that Shuritan CJ Desai, former guest of the show, will join

• 28:16Jordi Hays?

  Meta as Chief Enterprise Platform Officer, reporting directly to Zuck. CJ is an experienced enterprise leader with a track record of building full-stack software and delivering results in AI, infra, business applications and security. Uh, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Anyways, uh, so here's how I think this is going to go. I think that they created this new business unit. They still have a lot to prove on if they can-

• 28:41John Coogan?

  Sorry, if you scroll down, there's some wild comments. Anyway, continue.

• 28:45Jordi Hays?

  Uh, anyways, they created this new business unit.

• 28:47John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 28:48Jordi Hays?

  They're talking about apps and agents and all this stuff. I think what's really going to happen is they're going to do a big compute deal.

• 28:53John Coogan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 28:54Jordi Hays?

  And then, and then it's going to look like the, the sort of unit is doing, it, it'll quickly go from let's say zero to $10 billion a year-

• 29:01John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 29:02Jordi Hays?

  -of revenue. They can sort of use that. They don't have to necessarily break out where that revenue is coming from, but they can say like, our enterprise platform is, is gone from zero to 10 billion in-

• 29:13John Coogan?

  Yeah. This was like the jokes, I mean, Alice was sort of trolling with around like, oh, like all the growth in Google Cloud Platform is selling TPUs. It was like a little bit more nuanced than that, but, uh, but there's a bunch of ways to like wrap up revenue into a, uh, into like an enterprise platform that could be tokens, could be doing inference, could be selling compute, raw, bare metal deals, could be, could be actually selling services. Uh, will be interesting to see where it goes.

• 29:42Jordi Hays?

  Thank you.

• 29:43John Coogan?

  Leave us five stars, Apple Podcasts, Spotify. Sign up for newsletter, tbpin.com. We'll see you tomorrow-

• 29:48Jordi Hays?

  Boing flashback.

• 29:48John Coogan?

  For a big event. Goodbye.

• 29:50Jordi Hays?

  Can't wait.