Can Smaller Startups Compete in the AI Race?

Last year, AI and machine learning startups raked in about half of all VC funding in North America. And so far this year, AI is still leading the pack. But a huge chunk of the money in the Q1 — $40 billion — went to one player: OpenAI. So is there still room for smaller, more focused startups in the AI gold rush? Or will it be a case of “winner takes all?” In this live conversation at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center's inaugural Discovery Series, Kara speaks with Gary Rivlin, author of “AI Valley: Microsoft, Google and the Trillion-Dollar Race to Cash In on Artificial Intelligence,” and Christy Wyskiel, senior advisor to the president of Johns Hopkins University for innovation and entrepreneurship and the executive director of Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures. The three discuss the impact of government cuts on AI research, how small AI startups can compete with the tech giants, and how AI could revolutionize health care. This interview was recorded on April 28, 2025. Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or find us on Instagram, TikTok, and Bluesky @onwithkaraswisher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Kara Swisher?

  I just heard a really good joke. I have to tell it. Tech Pro stands for technically broken.

• 0:09Kara Swisher?

  You like that, Gary?

• 0:10Speaker 01

  I do.

• 0:22Kara Swisher?

  Hi, everyone. From New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is On with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher. As we talked about on the show last week, the AI boom hasn't slowed down. According to PitchBook, AI and machine learning startups took home about half of the venture capital dollars in North America last year. Globally, it was about a third. It add up to more than $131 billion. So far this year, AI is still the top sector for venture funding, but a huge chunk of the VC funding in the first quarter of 2025, $40 billion, went to OpenAI. So the question is, is there still room for smaller, more focused startups in this AI goal rush? Or is everyone just placing their bets on the big guys?

• 1:07Kara Swisher?

  My guests today are two people who've been following the story on the ground, so to speak. Gary Rivlin is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter who has been writing about technology since the mid-1990s. He has written 11 books, including his latest, AI Valley: Microsoft, Google, and the Trillion Dollar Race to Cash In on Artificial Intelligence. It follows the rise of inflection AI and why, despite deep-pocketed funding, much of the team, including the leadership, was eventually assimilated into Microsoft. My second guest, Kristi Weiskull, is the senior advisor to the president of Johns Hopkins University for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. She oversees Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures, where she helps students and researchers launch their academic discoveries to the private sector

• 1:51Kara Swisher?

  through industry partnerships, technology licensing, and startup company incubation. Our live interview was recorded on April 28 at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center as part of their inaugural discovery series. It was a great conversation, says a lot about the state of the industry today and where it's going tomorrow. Have a listen.

• 2:19Speaker 02

  If you're looking to hire, you need Indeed. With Indeed Sponsored Jobs, you can spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Less stress, less time, more results. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to help your job get the premium status it deserves at indeed.com/podcast. Just go to indeed.com/podcast right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs.

• 3:03Speaker 03

  Support for the show comes from Engine. Running a small business means every dollar has to work hard. But if your team is still booking travel the old way, it's costing you more than you think. Engine is the fastest growing travel and spend platform in the country, built specifically for businesses like yours. Book a trip in as little as two and a half minutes, earn up to 10% back on hotels. And in 2025, Engine customers save more than $300 million on travel with zero booking fees, no contracts, and no BS. More than 1,000 businesses join Engine every month. Join them and get $500 when your business signs up and starts traveling at engine.com/bots.

• 3:48Speaker 02

  If your best finance people are doing expense reports, chasing receipts, or spending time on month-end close, it's time to get Brex AF, a gentic finance that eliminates that work before it starts. Learn more at brex.com/af.

• 4:09Kara Swisher?

  Kristy, I've just met you, but Gary and I go back before we had kids and everything else, when at the dawn of the internet age, he wrote a book.

• 4:16Speaker 01

  The Plot to Get Bill Gates.

• 4:17Kara Swisher?

  The Plot to Get Bill Gates. We were on a book tour with Poe Bronson, who wrote Nutus on the Late Shift, and I had the paper rag version of AOL.com, and it was literally the dawn of the information And John Karp, who's now running Simon and Schuster at the time, had this genius idea to send us on a tour around the country called the Bleeding Edge Tour.

• 4:33Speaker 01

  The Silicon Valley Bleeding Edge Tour.

• 4:34Kara Swisher?

  Right. And so I was there to say, this was a great moment and huge fortunes would be created. It turns out I was right. He was there to be sort of the contrarian, right? Is that?

• 4:44Speaker 01

  Sure. I'd point out that a lot of fortunes were lost and then eventually a few people.

• 4:49Kara Swisher?

  Right, that's correct. So and then Poe Bronson was there to be super earnest. And we had the best time and we went all around the country talking about this new internet. And it was, it was so weird to think about what's happened since. In any case, we were young then and so naive, but not really. He was never naive. He was sort of a pain in the ass everywhere we went. But anyway, it was in a good way.

• 5:09Speaker 01

  But the feeling was mutual and I think that's what counted.

• 5:11Kara Swisher?

  Yes, you were doubtful. Yes, exactly. So anyway, you've come out with a book about the current makers money around the AI sector. You're one of many. I've just been delivered three or four. Mostly about open AI, actually. Yours is called AI Valley, Microsoft, Google, and the trillion dollar race to cash in on artificial intelligence. Well timed. Kristi, you oversee Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures, which means you're responsible to shepherd in university research from the lab to the private sector, including in AI. Both of you had a front row seat to the growing sector and a broadcast of characters, researchers, founders, entrepreneurs, incubators, VCs, and also these big tech billionaires. Lot of drama. So to start off, can you describe the interplay between these characters and their relationships, this new field? Where's the most tension, affinity? Who do you relate to the most? Why don't you start, Gary?

• 5:57Speaker 01

  So, you know, it's interesting. I've always loved startups, venture capital startups, the gambling, that whole ecosystem. So when it ended 2022, I said, wow, this AI thing's going to be a big deal. So I want to like, what startups are figuring out how to cash in on this moment? So I wanted to go find what's the next Google? What's the next Facebook? And unfortunately, what I found is the next Google is probably Google when it comes to AI. And the next Facebook or Meta is going to be Meta. That, you know, there's still all this opportunity to create nice, in quotes, modest businesses, you know, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of dollars. But the next Google. Google, those foundational companies that will be eventually worth a trillion dollars.

• 6:40Speaker 01

  AI is so expensive that there's very few startups that really can afford to be playing, basic stuff like text to video, text to audio, large language models. I really fear is going to be the stuff of the large corporate.

• 6:55Kara Swisher?

  Yes, which is something I've talked about a lot. This is a sphere of mine is that this is not the same thing that when you and I were first. These were a lot of startups. You never heard of, never heard of Uber. You never heard of Instagram. They were real groundbreakers. In this case, it's too costly. And also, these companies have so much sway over compute that it's hard.

• 7:11Speaker 01

  And the data, and the data, they have access to the data, which is the new gold.

• 7:15Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 7:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, I love talking about startups. I was an investor and entrepreneur for a long time. And we've spun out about 10 new companies out of Hopkins research every year. But I think what people don't necessarily realize is that the foundations of the tech industry actually come from a lot of the work that happens at universities that's not acknowledged. Think about how many of you actually got here by typing something into Google Maps or Apple Maps today, or your Uber or Lyft or whatever. That foundational research of GPS, people don't necessarily realize or acknowledge. That actually came from Hopkins researchers understanding Doppler satellite data 50 years ago. And eventually in the eighties was allowed in the public domain. And here we are using it every day. And so the origins of so many of these tech companies come from what we're doing.

• 7:57Kara Swisher?

  Before.

• 7:59Speaker 04

  Before.

• 7:59Kara Swisher?

  Before, meaning the early tech, yes, Stanford or whatever, but it's less and less so. That's been.

• 8:04Speaker 04

  I disagree. I think there, I think if you think about where so much of the technology continues to come from, it's not like when OpenAI was founded 10 years ago that Sam and Elon woke up and magically thought of AI. That was over decades and decades of research. And I think you're continuing to see that. The types of faculty and students that are learning and training at places like Hopkins, but all over, they are bringing those technologies to market, whatever the next GPS is in the next decade.

• 8:30Speaker 01

  I think what you were trying to say is what's scary to so many of us, what must be scary to Silicon Valley, even if the leaders are being quiet about it, is cutting off basic research to universities, research for foundational.

• 8:45Speaker 01

  Exploratory research is so short sighted. That's our magic formula in this country. That's our secret sauce. You know, AI in the 50s, the 60s, the 70s, the 80s. It was government funded research. And you know, my big fear is, you know, the Chinese have said by 2030, they want to be dominant in AI. And if we're cutting off this basic research, I think we're giving them a big advantage.

• 9:09Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, Christie.

• 9:10Speaker 04

  Look, I agree. I think that to quote my former colleague, David Singer, who just had an article this week.

• 9:17Kara Swisher?

  He's in the New York Times.

• 9:18Speaker 04

  In the New York Times, they're drawing a causal link between federal investment and basic science research and the rise of VC industry is about as difficult as reading a map. And so those connections are happening then, now, and in the future. And whether it's the AI winter that you described in your book from the 70s and 80s, when governments stopped funding research into AI, the research stopped. The same thing could happen now. And it's just really important for us to acknowledge that.

• 9:41Speaker 01

  Right.

• 9:41Kara Swisher?

  So talk a little bit, Christie, you play actually some of these roles. As you said, investment analyst in the 2010s. You co-founded your own biotech startups. And 12 years ago, you started this. Now, a lot of universities have these. What was it like to start that a dozen years ago? Because Stanford was already pretty active. Certain, certain universities had already moved in that way. Stanford probably is the most famous, it's Gary.

• 10:02Speaker 04

  Yeah, Stanford and MIT. A number of universities have a 50 year head start, basically, to what this is. When the dean of engineering at Stanford in the 70s looked out at Palo Alto and said, there's a field, we should probably put a research park there. And some of the first inhabitants of that research park were Mr. Hewlett, Mr. Packard, right? They have the head start. Hopkins has always been around the foundational basic research, but I was hired to be a bit of a disruptor 12 years ago, to come in and think about how could we commercialize the incredible things that come out of Johns Hopkins? So that's, that's the mission. I wake up every day and do that.

• 10:34Kara Swisher?

  So Gary, in your book, you write about the early iterations. You and I have talked about this many times, the Silicon Valley. Obviously, Stanford is the unique role in that area, as you just noted. Google began also as a graduate student project there. Talk about sort of early research and incubator programs.

• 10:49Speaker 01

  Right, so, you know, dating back to the 50s, 60s.

• 10:55Speaker 01

  It was the students on the campuses, it was the professors who were giving rise to these companies. So in the 1980s, there were all these companies blooming around Stanford, MIT, a few other universities that were doing cutting-edge AI research. And, you know, actually, a few of them went public. They didn't last. You know, there was a second AI winter after that. And that one was a little bit different because in the 80s, it was companies and it was venture capitalists that temporarily got into it. They were burned and then it really wouldn't be until 2015, 2018, where the pioneering VCs were finally daring to put money into AI. Back then, it would have been autonomous vehicles.

• 11:39Speaker 01

  But, you know, I mean, that's the Silicon Valley way. That's what I love about Silicon Valley. You say Stanford. To me, it's just a startup machine. The whole place is almost built to create startups. You've got Stanford, which gives rise. You've got UC Berkeley, which gives rise. But the venture capitalists out there, and there's this whole ecosystem.

• 11:57Kara Swisher?

  From startups to venture capitalists, to wealth, to the triangle.

• 12:01Speaker 01

  Right, right. And, you know, there's almost like this mindset, like, why aren't you starting a company? They're hiring people from a Google or Meta.

• 12:07Kara Swisher?

  And still, you think still today, that's the case.

• 12:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, yeah.

• 12:10Kara Swisher?

  Well, in AI, it certainly is. It's in San Francisco now.

• 12:13Speaker 01

  Right. So one big difference between the 90s, when we were, you know, starting off reporting and today, is the center of gravity has moved from Silicon Valley to San Francisco. It's not a coincidence. OpenAI, Anthropic, a lot of the other big AI companies are in San Francisco. The venture capitalists used to famously be in all in Menlo Park. They now have outposts in San Francisco. And again, I don't want to give the wrong idea. There's going to be a gazillion startups that have nice returns for venture capitalists, nice returns for their founders. It's more that that stuff, that's the innovation, the real innovation, the stuff underneath. So there'll be apps on top of these foundational models, the basic stuff. But I really do fear that maybe OpenAI will break in, maybe Anthropic will break in.

• 12:57Speaker 01

  That's Claude, the LLM. But I actually think there's a pretty good chance, given how much money they still have to raise long before. Before they'll ever show profit, that they'll just get bought up by a giant. And by the way, what's interesting is like, Google could lose, like Gemini there, Chatbot doesn't win. But they've invested billions of dollars in Anthropic. Microsoft and their co-pilot could lose, but they put, what, 15 billion or so into OpenAI. So even if they lose, they win.

• 13:24Kara Swisher?

  Correct.

• 13:26Kara Swisher?

  We'll be back in a minute.

• 13:36Speaker 03

  Support for the show comes from Engine. Running a small business means every dollar has to work hard. But if your team is still booking travel the old way, it's costing you more than you think. Engine is the fastest growing travel and spend platform in the country, built specifically for businesses like yours. Book a trip in as little as two and a half minutes, earn up to 10% back on hotels. And in 2025, Engine customers save more than $300 million on travel with zero booking fees, no contracts, and no BS. More than 1,000 businesses join Engine every month. Join them and get $500 when your business signs up and starts traveling at engine.com/box.

• 14:21Kara Swisher?

  Support for this show comes from Delete Me. Have you ever Googled yourself and found your home address, phone number, or the name of a family member? It's unsettling. Here's what you do to clean up your online data footprint. Go to joindelete.me/kara and enter the code Kara. You get 20% off Delete Me. Delete Me removes your personal information that's being sold online. Delete Me was named the top pick for data removal services by Wirecutter. So you know you're in good hands. I really like Delete Me. I use it all the time. It's always surprising how much data people have about me. I am very privacy forward and I still find so much stuff of mine online, some of which is incorrect, some of which is compiled in a really disturbing way. And you have to sort of control it like weeds.

• 15:04Kara Swisher?

  Take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for Delete Me. Now, at a special discount for our listeners, get 20% off your Delete Me plan when you go to joindelete.me/kara and use the promo code Kara at checkout. The only way to get 20% off is to go to joindelete.me/kara and enter the code Kara at checkout. That's joindelete.me/kara, code Kara.

• 15:34Kara Swisher?

  Support for this show comes from Hers. Losing weight on your own can often feel like a fight you never win. Luckily, weight loss by Hers offers access to the FDA-approved Wegovy pill and the Wegovy pen. Wegovy is the first-ever GLP-1 weight loss medication available in a pill, but also comes as a pen, so you've got options. With Wegovy, you can lose up to 20% of your body weight. People lost an average of 14% body weight at 64 weeks in a clinical trial of Wegovy alongside diet and exercise. To get started with Wegovy, just go to forhers.com and complete an online consultation with a licensed provider who will determine if your prescription is appropriate. And Hers doesn't stop there. Nutrition and lifestyle guidance are part of the plan, along with access to 24/7 messaging

• 16:19Kara Swisher?

  with your care team, so support is always in reach. Ready to reach your goals? Visit forhers.com/ Cara to access personalized, affordable care for weight loss, hair, menopause, and more. That's forhers.com/ Cara. Individual results may vary, and stopping treatment may result in weight regain.

• 16:40Kara Swisher?

  So Kristi, part of your mission is to make Baltimore itself a tech hub, like Silicon Valley or Boston. It's really Silicon Valley and everybody else goes down pretty far. As Gary writes in the book, Silicon Valley is both a place and idea. Baltimore was one of the 31 federal tech hubs, but it was skipped over in the first two funding rounds. Who knows what's going to happen now? But talk about this idea. You know, when they had Silicon Beach, they had Silicon Prairie, they had Silicon Holler. I'd always, I would be like, no, this is not happening in any of these places. So talk a little bit about trying to do that in a place, because place does matter. In even a digital world, place does matter.

• 17:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, no, I think it does. And look, at Johns Hopkins, one of the things that we are known for is biomedical research, a lot of the basic foundation models. You can look back to Burt Vogelstein, who several decades ago discovered the genetic basis for cancer. And since then, we have built on all sorts of therapies and diagnosis. What is the future of drug discovery? It's going to be AI. And we're making a huge bet, as you Probably know Cara in AI at Johns Hopkins, the State of Science Institute.

• 17:45Kara Swisher?

  Yes.

• 17:45Speaker 04

  Over a hundred faculty, hundreds of students. Who is going to train the people that are going to work at those companies? It's going to be places like Hopkins. And so I think the types of companies that we spin out are those that are good for the world. We're not creating the seventh dog walking app. We're actually, you know, creating-

• 18:00Kara Swisher?

  Why not?

• 18:02Speaker 04

  I mean, are the first six not good enough? I mean, really, let's-

• 18:04Kara Swisher?

  No. Healthcare is really, oddly enough, my next book's all about this, but the AI's impact on healthcare is obviously one of the biggest possibilities.

• 18:14Speaker 04

  Yeah. My friend Alec Ross, who wrote a book, Industries of the Future, said that the last trillion dollar industry was created with using zeros and ones, and the next trillion dollar industry will be with the four letters of DNA. And there's no reason why Johns Hopkins and Baltimore will not dominate that. We already are. We already have companies spinning out, raising billions of dollars and-

• 18:32Kara Swisher?

  So, according to PitchBook, just for a little fact check here, though, venture capital investment in AI startups was up more than 50% last year, over $131 billion. Feels bubblicious. In the first quarter of the year, they say the AI sector raised 73.1 billion, but spoiler alert, $40 billion of that went to OpenAI. Talk, both of you talk about this. You raised about 4.4 billion, correct, Christine?

• 18:59Speaker 04

  Or the total companies out of coming out of Hopkins.

• 19:02Kara Swisher?

  So, Gary, first, can you talk a little bit about this fact that it's sort of coalesced around really one company?

• 19:09Speaker 01

  Right. Well, a few. So, XAI, that's Elon Musk's company there, out there trying to raise, I think, 20 billion. So, 40 billion would be, is the largest raise ever in venture history. 20 billion would be the second largest. You know, we covered the dot com boom and bust, and we're seeing some of the same things. So, Ilya Sutskever, famous co-founder of OpenAI, famous for initiating a coup that lasted five days at OpenAI, but after-

• 19:38Kara Swisher?

  It's called a toupet.

• 19:41Speaker 01

  So, you know, after he left, started his own company, Safe Superintelligence, and, you know, they raised $2 billion, you know, paper worth of $30 billion. They don't have a product yet.

• 19:51Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 19:52Speaker 01

  But that's venture capital, right? They slapped down bets really fast. So, you know, some company writes a memo, two or three promising founders write a memo. A week later, they've raised tens of millions of dollars at 100 million valuation, like- It's really just rolling the dice, but that's the venture capital business. You know, most of these will not work, but a few of them will. And when they do, they'll show extraordinary returns.

• 20:14Kara Swisher?

  So, Chris, you said with these investments you're making, you co-founded Upsearch Baltimore, a network of entrepreneurs and startups to facilitate the funders. Talk about that environment, because a lot of people definitely feel that there's an over-investment in infrastructure, an over-investment in the valuations. And this isn't like the internet, because it was just an over-investment in companies. It wasn't infrastructure. It wasn't, the costs were quite low, actually. Here, they're very high, whether it's energy or infrastructure or whatever. So the bets are slightly bigger in that regard, not just the money, the figures. So talk a little bit about that.

• 20:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, 80% of what we do is in the life sciences. Again, there's a heavy overlay now with drug discovery and AI on that, but it's been a bit of a biotech winter since 2021. And so it's a little bit different, and it's also not necessarily care about the cult of personality. It's much more about the research and what's behind it. And I would say those valuations and the money flowing there are much more down-to-earth. It reminds me a little bit, you had Josh Johnson on your podcast, he's, I'm a huge fan.

• 21:13Kara Swisher?

  The famous AI researcher and comedian.

• 21:15Speaker 04

  Exactly. But he had, he actually made a really, I thought, was really poignant about the idea that so much of our world today, the foundation of that was people who, we'll never know their names, we'll have forgotten, that some of the things that we take for granted. And I feel like that's so much of the research that happens at places like Hopkins are not necessarily going to get the same hype of a big AI startup in California, but there's the level of impact that one would have. So you can get ROI, and you can bring great things to market, but it doesn't necessarily have to raise 30 billion and be on the front page to do that.

• 21:46Kara Swisher?

  Or have to deal with egos and things like.

• 21:48Speaker 04

  Hopkins is a very low ego place. I get to deal with some of the smartest, most earnest folks in the world, and at the end of the day, what they care about is the impact, not their name in the headlines.

• 21:57Kara Swisher?

  Silicon Valley's got you covered for that. So, still, still, after all this time.

• 22:01Speaker 01

  Especially.

• 22:02Kara Swisher?

  Especially, really. It's gotten worse, hasn't it?

• 22:04Speaker 01

  It's gotten much worse.

• 22:05Kara Swisher?

  Yeah.

• 22:06Speaker 01

  It really has.

• 22:07Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, yeah. Every human growth hormone they take, it's gotten worse. Anyway.

• 22:10Speaker 01

  They take other stuff, too, I've read.

• 22:12Kara Swisher?

  I've read, yeah. No, they say it, it doesn't matter. So. I want to get deeper into AI, specifically the intersection of life sciences and this. Gary, you point out in your book, healthcare is the area, the techno-optimists, and that's the term they use for people who are pro-AI versus they're going to kill us tomorrow. They often use a proof point to bolster their position that AI will change lives for the better. In a recent 60 Minutes interview, Google DeepMind CEO and Nobel laureate Demis Habbes said he believes AI has the ability to cure all diseases within the next, this is something they go on.

• 22:41Speaker 01

  This is the problem.

• 22:42Kara Swisher?

  Okay, all right, okay. Wait, okay.

• 22:44Speaker 01

  Okay, sorry.

• 22:44Kara Swisher?

  Do you think, talk about this. Go ahead, go ahead, go ahead.

• 22:46Speaker 01

  No, no.

• 22:47Kara Swisher?

  Ran away. I'm sorry, allow you to rant.

• 22:48Speaker 01

  No, I mean, I would say the same about the early internet, like, it will do extraordinary things. I am totally with both you that AI in healthcare is going to be extraordinary for humanity. The connections it's going to make, the vaccines, the treatments, all of that. But why do you have to say it's going to wipe out cancer in 10 years, which I have heard? Why do you have to say it's going to wipe? It won't.

• 23:12Kara Swisher?

  It's sort of like saying self-driving is here today. 10 years ago.

• 23:16Speaker 01

  You know, 10 years.

• 23:17Kara Swisher?

  Someone said that, I'm not going to say who.

• 23:19Speaker 01

  No, but, you know, and that one I believed, I really thought.

• 23:22Kara Swisher?

  He's been recently unemployed from DOGE, but go ahead.

• 23:26Kara Swisher?

  They're coming.

• 23:28Speaker 01

  No, but it's like, this is, this is where Silicon Valley, the tech bros get themselves in trouble. They're overhyping and like, AI has a problem. First off, they had really bad timing. AI hit at the end of 2022, when distrust among the public in big tech was at its peak. You know, the terms I like to use, there's the doomers, who are convinced that laser-eyed robots are going to take over and subjugate humanity. There's the zoomers who want no speed bumps, just let us do our thing, China, China, China, kind of thing.

• 24:00Kara Swisher?

  Meaning they're going to beat us, yeah.

• 24:02Speaker 01

  And, you know, I'm kind of more with, there's a Reid Hoffman-ism, a bloomer, that, you know, like, I think it could do extraordinary things, but let's be deliberate about it. We're way ahead of where the public is. You know, Pew did a poll last year, the majority of people are fearful of AI. And, you know, here we're talking about a technology where humans are going to lose their apex status, you know, they're going to be these agents The AI is going to be our personal assistants, these AI agents, which means they're going to know everything about us and privacy issues. Like, we're getting way, way ahead. And I think the Zoomers are making a strategic error by saying like, there should be no regulation. We should just like do everything we can to accelerate, you know, to quote our vice president, "Stop with the hand wringing and let's just start winning."

• 24:48Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 24:48Speaker 01

  And I'm just scared they're going to get way ahead of where the public is.

• 24:51Kara Swisher?

  Right. It is interesting because the ones who are terrified are also not so much fun at a dinner party. I was at one dinner party with a bunch of them and they were like, "You need to stop Sam Altman because the human race is at risk. You need to stop him now. Kara, you're the only one." And I'm like, "That's the plot of The Terminator and I am not her." Like, I have no... It was like, they literally recounted the plot of The Terminator to me and I had to kill him, which I didn't.

• 25:15Speaker 01

  I think our problem is that Hollywood is defining what we should be scared of.

• 25:20Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 25:20Speaker 01

  Whereas there's much more line of sight things we should, you know, AI and surveillance, AI and warfare, AI manipulating people, autonomous AI, this stuff isn't ready. Humans still have to be in the loop. That's the stuff I wish we were debating. That's the stuff I wish we were, you know, worried about and not like, the robots take you over.

• 25:37Kara Swisher?

  Many are. But Christie, life sciences, obviously, is John's top secret superpower. But a lot of the things, I'd like to hear about them because they are very, AI assisted tools for early detection, disease prediction. When I was with Vinod Khos, he was talking about drug interaction is something that kills a lot of people, the wrong drug interaction. Obviously diagnostic tools for respiratory issues, cancers. Where do you see the most potential?

• 25:59Speaker 04

  One very specific area, I can think of several, but I think within cancer diagnosis, there are 30 million CT scans done on the abdomen every single year. Imagine a world where you could just, with a simple algorithm, detect pancreatic cancer, right? And we have researchers working on that to basically say there could be otherwise undetected pancreatic cancer. And I don't know how much you all know about that, but generally by the time it's detected, it's a death sentence. And so the idea of early detection, which again is something that a number of our researchers have been working on because cancer develops over decades, not overnight. And so the sooner you can find it, the sooner you can... You know, another, another application that, you know, we're, we're all parents up here that, that maybe you'd have appreciation of. We have a wonderful woman who's an ER doc,

• 26:44Speaker 04

  who basically just saw parents exasperated, having to bring their kids in for a strep throat test, right?

• 26:49Kara Swisher?

  So she figured out. I did that, yes. We did that yesterday.

• 26:51Speaker 04

  Exactly, right.

• 26:52Kara Swisher?

  I did not do it. My wife did it. She totally gets credit.

• 26:55Speaker 04

  So think about a world where you take your phone camera, take a picture of the throat, and it says strep throat or not, and you get the prescription. You don't have to sit at urgent care on a Friday night. You don't have to come into the ER and wait 12 hours on a Sunday, but you basically get treated right then. So both of those applications, one is great quality of life. One is literally life-changing, life-saving. In both of those cases, those are real and happening.

• 27:17Speaker 04

  We'll be back in a minute.

• 27:26Kara Swisher?

  Support for this show comes from Indeed. When the pressure's on and you need to hire the right person for the job, Indeed Sponsored Jobs has got your back. Instead of forcing you to spend tons of time searching, Indeed Sponsored Jobs matches you with quality candidates fast. According to their data, sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed are 95% more likely to report a hire than non-sponsored jobs. Join the 3.3 million employers worldwide that use Indeed to connect with quality talent that fits their needs. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Less stress, less time, more results. When you need the right person to cut through the chaos, this is the job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. And listeners to this show will get a $75 sponsored job

• 28:10Kara Swisher?

  credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves at indeed.com/podcast. Just go to indeed.com/podcast right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. That's indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need the right hire fast? Then this is the job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs.

• 28:37Speaker 05

  Black Friday is around the corner. Your biggest chance to grow sales this year, don't wait. With Realize, Taboola's advertising platform for businesses, you can reach people engaging with your competitors across premium websites with 600 million daily active users. And as an exclusive offer for podcast listeners, new customers get $700 credit back. Just search Realize Podcast on Google or use the promo code PODCAST26. Ready to get started? Take advantage of this offer while it lasts. Terms apply.

• 29:14Kara Swisher?

  Running a business shouldn't feel like surviving a software group project. One app for accounting, another for inventory, another for sales, and somehow, none of them talk to each other. That's where Odoo comes in, an all-in-one business management software that brings every part of your business together. From sales and accounting to inventory and marketing, all in one powerful platform. No messy integrations, no bouncing between tabs, and best of all, no spreadsheets. Stop managing software and start managing your business with one unified system. Try for free today at Odoo.com/vox. That's O-D-O-O dot com slash vox.

• 29:50Kara Swisher?

  So, one of the, these R&D-heavy startups aren't coming just out of universities. Demis Ababas, who I just mentioned, co-founded Isomorphic Labs. It's a division of Google spun out of DeepMind to focus on drug discovery, for example. They not only have Google money, they recently raised outside VC money. This kind of internal R&D used to come from universities. Gary, what impact does it have? And Kristi, how do you build them into sustainable businesses if they're destined to be bought out by tech companies or Big Pharma as acquihires? What does that look like? First, you, Gary.

• 30:24Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, corporations have been investing in cutting-edge research, Microsoft research. Google has a big research arm, IBM for decades and decades. So, you know, that's always been going on. It is interesting. Some of the biggest venture capitalists in Silicon Valley right now are the tech companies. Microsoft in 2023 was the number one VC just by dollars given Nvidia. They invest in like 35 or so startups. So there is this, some of it is, it's just so damn expensive. Like, you know, we're talking about a $40 billion raise. A large venture capital fund in Silicon Valley is $1 billion.

• 31:04Speaker 01

  And that's a tiny fraction when they need to raise. And so, you know, what we're seeing is the large corporations, big tech companies, Amazon, Apple, Google are taking over that role.

• 31:15Kara Swisher?

  And Chrissy, what does that have, this idea that how, how do you make a healthy AI industry? If there's consolidation in this way, or if the research comes out of here because they weren't going to let it out. You want diversification presumably to be in a healthy.

• 31:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, absolutely. Look, one of the cool things about my job is I get to be a bridge between these basic science researchers and industry and be that front door for Johns Hopkins. And so we have a lot of examples where we took things and worked really collaboratively with it. There are actually a lot of good players out there. We have a drug that is for men's health. It's called Pilarify. It's for diagnosing prostate cancer. And one of our clinicians described it as if you wanted to treat prostate cancer before this incredible technology came out, it was like watching black and white TV in the 1950s and it's now a technicolor. And we licensed to a company in Boston called Lantheus. They sell it. We get royalties on it. So everybody wins. The patient wins, the company gets the growth and the ROI. We're rewarded with those royalties as something that we discovered.

• 32:13Speaker 04

  So I think just being that natural bridge over and over, that does require care though, that, that we get credit for what we've done. Right? So a lot of working with industry is maybe acknowledging that there were people that came before, there were people that built this foundation. And what does that look like? And how can we be more collaborative?

• 32:29Kara Swisher?

  But the idea of these aqua hires, there was obviously Mr. Taffa Suliman with Inflection. This was, there were many AI companies started now. Microsoft essentially bought that company, although it wasn't looked at that way. They bought, they hired everybody.

• 32:42Speaker 01

  They hired virtually every employee there.

• 32:44Kara Swisher?

  And left.

• 32:44Speaker 01

  And then gave $650 million as a licensing deal to like, you know, make everyone whole, make everyone happy. You know, my big concern on this is, you know, this idea of consolidation. Of power in just a few big tech companies. The Silicon Valley way, we've seen this forever, Kara, is that let's get, you know, a few smart guys, and there are always guys, in a room and we'll figure out AI is different. It's, I mean, first off, it's not just computer scientists, it's math, it's linguists. But where are the sociologists and philosophers? Where's there a diverse group of people? Like, this stuff is powerful, it's reflecting humanity. We're going to increasingly end up relying on it, you know, in everything for, you know, education, social life, business and all.

• 33:24Speaker 01

  And so that's my biggest worry, that that same mentality, Sam Altman and a few smart guys are going to show up at his mansion in San Francisco and they'll figure it out because they're smart. Yes, they're smart, but it's more than just being smart.

• 33:38Kara Swisher?

  Two more things where we have to go. The costs are so high, but Deepsea had scared the crap out of everyone. This is a Chinese AM model, trained for less than $6 million. That's questionable if that was actually, but they called it a Sputnik moment. If there were more efficient models, Christie, with more chips, bring down the overall price of computing power, how would it impact small startups like you invest in?

• 34:01Speaker 04

  Well, I think there are a lot of parallels here to even the tech industry today because, what, 15, 20 years ago, you had to buy big servers and big computers and have all this infrastructure and now it's accessible. So I think in the same way, these tools make the playing field a lot more level. And I think we'll be surprised with the level of disruption, really across the board, not just in pure tech, but whether it's energy, whether it's life sciences, whether it's adjacence. I think there's a lot of room for innovation and I think it's great that the playing field will be much more level.

• 34:30Kara Swisher?

  So I want to finish up with two things. One is this threat to research that we talked at the top. I'm going to ask you, Gary, I'd be happy to put you on the spot, Christie. The federal government is one of the biggest funders of university R and D. A lot of Johns Hopkins money comes from the National Institute of Health, for example, about $1 billion in fiscal 2024, more than any other institution in the US. A lot of the money has been canceled, not just at Johns Hopkins, but elsewhere is in limbo. Why don't you talk about this, Gary? What's the, you can talk about it, Christie, but what is the impact right now on research at places like Johns Hopkins if the Trump administration doesn't reverse course on this?

• 35:05Speaker 01

  It was the way it happened. To me, it's like they bent over and unplugged the machine.

• 35:10Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 35:11Speaker 01

  And just so there's all this wasted stuff. And what really scares me, I was out in Silicon Valley a few weeks ago, talking to people at Stanford. And like, it's not like you could just, oh, okay, this was this four year period. Now let's just revive it. I mean, that, to me, is the big worry, that a new administration would come in, is more foresighted, like, you know, thinking like this, we really need this. And it's not going to be so easy to just like, oh, okay, well, we lost a few years, but now we're gonna go back, right back to where we were.

• 35:41Kara Swisher?

  How do you deal with it?

• 35:42Speaker 04

  Look, I think there are just a couple of things I would say here. I think what the NIH has done over time with very competitive grant funding universities and ultimately to the commercial sector. This incredible group of three sectors that came together have lowered the deaths of heart disease and stroke by 75% in the last 40 years. When I was growing up, HIV and AIDS was a death sentence, and now you can live a normal lifespan, thanks to NIH research into universities and to the private sector. And so I think we want to continue that. My greatest fear is for this incredibly talented generation of scientists that are going to choose necessarily not to do that work. If their grant funding is cut off, if they're unable to continue their work, they'll go do something else. And what does that mean for the next decades of that type of progress?

• 36:24Kara Swisher?

  Irreparable harm?

• 36:26Speaker 04

  I don't know.

• 36:27Kara Swisher?

  What they didn't invent, we don't know.

• 36:29Speaker 04

  We don't know.

• 36:29Kara Swisher?

  All right, last question. Speaking of chilling effect, Gary, at the end of the book, you write, AI was, of course, a bubble, but bubbles are as much a part of the valley's boom and bust economy as underaged Cox Shore founders and the VCs who fund them. You used the past tense, so was it a bubble, did it burst? Is there a possibility of another AI winter that some commentators have been warning about since last year? And Chrissy, how do you feel about the bubble and the winter?

• 36:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I don't think the bubble has burst. There's still tons, you just mentioned a stat, that 150 billion or whatever it is in venture capital going in AI. I mean, I think what we're going to see is a natural cycle where a lot of these companies are going to go out of business. But some will break through and will go on to have, you know, kind of long, great lives for a company. But It's mountains and valleys. It's like it's going to peak and then there'll be a slower period. I don't agree with people in Silicon Valley who say like, oh, we have artificial general intelligence in the next year or two. I still think we're breakthrough two away. They'll say they have AGI because their venture capitalists need them to say that. And it's an amorphous definition kind of thing. But no, I think we're still in the middle of a prolonged fruitful period for AI.

• 37:39Speaker 04

  For the VCs to get their return on investment here, we need the capital markets to open up, which means we need certainty, which means we need great investments. And the moment that a number of these investments go bad, it's not going to be great. I've been part of four downturns in my career. And you never know exactly when the top is, but you've got to hope that that things go well, at least for a couple bellwethers.

• 37:58Kara Swisher?

  Are you worried about that? What would make you worried?

• 38:02Speaker 04

  I mean, if if companies aren't able to have exits, then, you know, it's it's hard for the VCs to to tell their LPs, yeah, let's pour more money in.

• 38:11Kara Swisher?

  So last question, let's end on a positive note. If you could do one thing to fundamentally secure innovation in the AI space for the next generation of entrepreneurs, what would it be?

• 38:20Speaker 04

  Look, I think there has to be a combination of thinking about the products, the returns, and also the policy. I mean, look at the center. This is where we can really be thoughtful. The companies don't necessarily have the best interest in humanity in mind. And so let's come together and figure out what the policy arguments are, what the future of that investment would be. But so I think having-

• 38:37Kara Swisher?

  What would be the key policy, you'd think, if you had to?

• 38:42Speaker 04

  I don't know. I'd have to ask our policy experts on that.

• 38:44Speaker 01

  You know, I do think there just needs to be a few ground rules that the Biden administration, I thought, had, you know, a gentle policy like, hey, before you release these things, these powerful models, you know, we're going to require you to test them and share the results with us. And, you know, Silicon Valley really rebelled against that. Sam Altman was all for it until the Trump administration. Now he's all against it, kind of thing. But I do think that we could put in some pretty modest regulations that make sure that the general public is there with these AI companies. I'm convinced there's something bad's going to happen. I don't know what it is. A trillion dollars siphoned off from the global economic system, money system, before a human even realized it, whatever it is. And then people are going to panic and hate AI. And that's what I really want to prevent because I'm with you, you know,

• 39:28Speaker 01

  education, healthcare, science, I think extraordinary things could happen with AI. And I'd hate for there to be another AI winter because of the carelessness.

• 39:38Kara Swisher?

  Are these the critical years right now? And who's the most important person in this?

• 39:42Speaker 01

  Uh, the most important person? I would say policymakers in DC. I don't know if it's a single person. Yeah, I think these are the formative years. This is really gonna shape people's idea of AI. And again, people are mistrustful of AI. And I'm scared that that's gonna really slow things down, which would be a, would be a shame.

• 40:04Kara Swisher?

  Chris, the most important person right now or company?

• 40:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, I don't know that there's any one, but I think just keeping an eye on the promise and the peril.

• 40:12Kara Swisher?

  All right, on that note, thank you too.

• 40:14Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 40:26Kara Swisher?

  On with Kara Swisher is produced by Christian Castor, Russell, Kateri Yokum, Dave Shaw, Megan Burney, Megan Cunane, and Kalen Lynch. Nishat Kurwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts. Special thanks to Eric Littkey. Our engineers are Rick Kwan and Fernando Aruda, and our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're already following the show, you are keeping an eye on the promise and peril of AI. If not, you may be technically broken. Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On with Kara Swisher, and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us. We'll be back on Thursday with more.

• 41:10Speaker 03

  Support for the show comes from Engine. Running a small business means every dollar has to work hard. But if your team is still booking travel the old way, it's costing you more than you think. Engine is the fastest growing travel and spend platform in the country, built specifically for businesses like yours. Book a trip in as little as two and a half minutes, earn up to 10% back on hotels. And in 2025, Engine customers save more than $300 million on travel with zero booking fees, no contracts, and no BS. More than 1,000 businesses join Engine every month. Join them and get $500 when your business signs up and starts traveling at engine.com/vox.

• 41:55Speaker 03

  Support for the show comes from Engine. Running a small business means every dollar has to work hard. But if your team is still booking travel the old way, it's costing you more than you think. Engine is the fastest growing travel and spend platform in the country, built specifically for businesses like yours. Book a trip in as little as two and a half minutes, earn up to 10% back on hotels. And in 2025, Engine customers save more than $300 million on travel with zero booking fees, no contracts, and no BS. More than 1,000 businesses join Engine every month. Join them and get $500 when your business signs up and starts traveling at engine.com/box.

• 42:39Kara Swisher?

  Running a business shouldn't feel like surviving a software group project. One app for accounting, another for inventory, another for sales, and somehow, none of them talk to each other. That's where Odoo comes in, an all-in-one business management software that brings every part of your business together. From sales and accounting to inventory and marketing, all in one powerful platform. No messy integrations, no bouncing between tabs, and best of all, no spreadsheets. Stop managing software and start managing your business with one unified system. Try for free today at Odoo.com/box. That's O-D-O-O dot com slash box.