Big Tech's Ugly Week, Getting Rich At Anthropic, AI Costs Plunge

Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover: 1) Big Tech earnings go terribly 2) The market punishes the Magnificent 7 (except Microsoft) 3) Is Wall Street done with the AI trade? 4) Meta overtakes Google in ad revenue 5) Is being good at AI a curse for your flagship business? 6) Google and Reddit's weird relationship 7) The Amazon Bee Frontier 8) Dating with the Bee Frontier 9) Ranjan's Anthropic S-1 takeaways 10) Is the Anthropic compute math weird? 11) AI costs are dropping 12) Golden Goose or Golden Egg? Let's dress up for halloween. --- Enjoying Big Technology Podcast? Please rate us five stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ in your podcast app of choice. Want a discount for Big Technology on Substack + Discord? Here’s 25% off for the first year: https://www.bigtechnology.com/subscribe?coupon=0843016b Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's a big tech bloodbath as Wall Street turns on the AI buildout. Anthropic's S1 finally drops and a lot of people at that company are about to get rich. And meanwhile, Anthropic and OpenAI are dropping prices dramatically what's behind it. We'll cover it all on a big technology podcast Friday edition right after this. This episode is brought to you by Cribble. Quick question, is your IT budget growing 30% a year? Because your data is, and now AI agents are piling on, running investigations around the clock and running up three meters at once. Storage, queries and tokens. Cribble, the AI platform for telemetry was built for exactly this. Own all your data, query it wherever it lives and let Cribble route every AI request to the right model at the right price.

• 0:45Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 1:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  That's C H A R G E B E E dot com slash Alex. Welcome to Big Technology Podcast Friday Edition, where we break down the news in our traditional cool-headed and nuanced format. We have a great show for you today. It has been an interesting week, to say the least, in big tech land as companies like Google and Microsoft have reported their earnings along with Amazon. And the market is punishing some of them, especially Google mercilessly. We'll also talk about that Anthropic S1 document and how rich people within that company are about to get. It's pretty wild. And finally, we're going to talk about the actual numbers on the AI price drop. It's pretty dramatic when you look at it and we'll try to figure out what's going on and what it means.

• 2:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  Joining us as always on Friday to do it is Ranjan Roy of Margins. Ranjan, good to see you.

• 2:15Speaker 01

  Big tech bloodbath on the Big Technology Podcast. What could be better for a Friday?

• 2:20Alex Kantrowitz?

  Certainly an interesting week to be called Big Technology Podcast when the big technology companies lost nearly a trillion dollars in market cap. This is from the Financial Times. Big tech sheds nearly 900 billion in route over soaring AI spending. Big tech companies lost about a trillion dollars in market value after another sharp rise in their spending in the third quarter, which has turned some of the most profitable businesses in history into cash incinerators as they stake their futures on AI. Shares in the big four hyperscalers, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and Google all fell after revealing their third quarter results in which capital expenditures almost doubled and alarm bells sounded about slowing revenue growth in the core business.

• 3:04Alex Kantrowitz?

  Ranjan, here's my hot take here. You know, a lot of this has been borne by Google, which reported still strong, but not as strong as expected, search results. Search results, that's funny. Search earnings, right? They were supposed to grow 15%. They grew 12%. I don't really think this is a spending issue. I think Wall Street has basically given these companies the green light to spend and spend with abandon. But we're getting to the point where free cash flow is going from positive to negative. As we saw again with Google, two quarters in a row of negative free cash flow. And when that happens, the, um, the questions about the core business emerge. And so this isn't a question about AI spending.

• 3:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's really a question about like, is your core business going to stay around long enough? And that goes for Google with advertising and Amazon. You could call it the retail as their core business. You know, those are the companies we've had the questions with. If the core business goes away or shrinks, uh, then, then Wall Street seems to have some issues with all this infrastructure spending. Your thoughts?

• 4:08Speaker 01

  No, I completely agree. Think there are those two elements of it. And I, I do think there is an element of the AI spending and I'll get into it fundamentally changes what business all these companies are. And going back to, that's why it's so important that their core businesses at least seem reasonably promising. Because the moment Google and Meta created some of the greatest cash machines of all time, literally the greatest business models to like ever exist in humanity. Like the profit margins, the monopolized efforts in terms of no one else being able to enter these markets. And anything that shows that those are under threat makes us question, what is Google?

• 4:53Speaker 01

  Is it an AI compute business? Is it a enterprise services business or is it a search business? And Google themselves, I mean.

• 5:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's a golden goose, man. It's not a golden egg.

• 5:04Speaker 01

  Okay, okay, fine. Golden goose.

• 5:06Alex Kantrowitz?

  Lays a golden egg.

• 5:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  But yes, continue.

• 5:10Speaker 01

  Does the golden goose lay a golden egg? Is that the whole thing?

• 5:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  You would imagine. At least it lays an egg with the golden chicken side.

• 5:16Speaker 01

  I'm going to brush up on my childhood fables after we're done with this call. But let's get back to Google's earnings. So it is still, the numbers are, I mean, insane. Again, in one quarter, revenue is still up 25%. Operating profit is still up 30%. Operating margin is still holding strong around 30%. So this is still an incredibly profitable, incredibly fast growing business. But again, core search. And this is one thing that I found really interesting is Google has been touting, especially in like SEO, G E O land, where I spend a lot of time. Overall queries are actually increasing in Google search. So Google's like, search isn't dead.

• 6:00Speaker 01

  Everyone's still going in and searching things. But they finally themselves said AI mode is going to actually, it went 2% of all searches ending in AI mode to 8.9% of all searches. So it's dramatically increasing. I'm sure every listener starts to feel that and they don't know how to monetize that yet. They might figure out the right business model to monetize that, but it will be a different business. So to me, I think the core search business, this was the earnings report that reminded everyone. I don't want to say it's done. It's still giant, but it's never going to be what it was before.

• 6:40Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, so this is interesting. So cite the statistics again in terms of the amount of searches that have gone from AI overviews. Was it two to 8%?

• 6:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, two to 8% again. Yeah.

• 6:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay. Okay, so think about this. Let's play this out. Google is seeing an increase in searches, all time increases in queries, right? Is it possible that these AI overviews make up, uh, most of those or even responses back and forth? Cause I imagine every time you ping like AI mode, uh, you get a response. So is it possible that we're just seeing, instead of like Google not being able to monetize AI mode? And this is an interesting point that Kevin Indig made on X. What if people are just searching less, right? So all the growth comes from AI mode potentially. And you know, you end up seeing far fewer searches because people are starting to search within ChatGPT, maybe Claude, maybe Grok.

• 7:34Alex Kantrowitz?

  I mean, ChatGPT has 1.2 billion users. That has to play into this.

• 7:39Speaker 01

  They're still saying search query is, overall aggregate search queries are growing on Google. Sundar said that before they reported it again. So they're still saying that that is not declining. People actually directly asking the question to Google in Google.com, not in Gemini. So it hasn't yet. I agree. I don't.

• 8:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  Wait, hold on. What counts as a search though? Like if you're in AI mode on Google.com, is that a Gemini or is that?

• 8:07Speaker 01

  See, I don't know. That's a good question.

• 8:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  They are counting that note because if they're counting AI mode as part of their search data, right? If it's grown from two to 8%, then AI mode counts as searches.

• 8:17Speaker 01

  Actually, you know what? So they actually said that overall search queries grew at their fastest year on year in five years. So they don't give aggregate total numbers. They don't break down what exactly qualifies as a search. I think that's a good point because to me, the idea that more people are searching more directly into the Google search bar. I agree. Like my, I mean, I know my personal behavior is probably not fully reflective of the average consumer, but overall it has to be going down. So I think that's a good one to push on overall. What is a search?

• 8:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  Because you know what? What do you do when you search? You want to go to a website and what are websites experiencing? You know, they're not experiencing.

• 9:04Speaker 01

  Well, no.

• 9:04Alex Kantrowitz?

  The traffic from Google search. Let me just read this. I want to put this out for sake of argument. This is from, uh, the Reddit CEO, Steve Huffman on his earnings call this week. He said, Google is crawling as hard as ever. The reality is that the AI mode does not drive traffic, not for us, not, not to anybody as far as I know. Google used to be a traffic driver. Now it's not. People want to, people still want Reddit. It's just Google is not sending them to Reddit the way they used to. We don't control Google. We only control Reddit. And then, uh, my favorite part of the whole thing, and I think this is most telling. Google is teaching people that if you want to come to Reddit, you need to come to Reddit. Uh, is it possible that right now we're seeing a behavior shift where like people used to

• 9:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  search Google to find as like, in fact, Google was an improvement on the portal, right? So you had Yahoo where you would click through a bunch of links to get to the website you want. Then you went to Google, you search for things, you went to things you wanted. Is, is what's happening now with AI, that if you actually want to go to a website, you don't search anymore. You just type in a URL. And so it's interesting, Google potentially by not sending referral traffic to sites like Reddit, sort of has potentially even disintermediated itself.

• 10:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know. I think this will happen across the board. I, I think, I think it was a year ago. When did we say the web isn't dead, it is in secular decline?

• 10:27Alex Kantrowitz?

  Every time, by the way, every time someone says last year, for me, it always means April. Because people can't like comprehend the fact that we've gone so far, like technology has developed so far from like where we were in January to where we are now, they always say last year, and last year always means March or April. So I think we probably said it in March.

• 10:44Speaker 01

  Wait, wait, wait. You're like a six month year guy?

• 10:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  I'm not saying.

• 10:49Speaker 01

  Six months?

• 10:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  I, I'm, yeah, I'm saying, yeah, we're basically living in a world right now where every six months has a year's worth of activity. You don't think so?

• 10:57Speaker 01

  I'm gonna, okay, from a technology standpoint, I agree. I mean, I don't even remember last month or two months this summer, that feels like ages ago, but, but all right, let's get back to especially Reddit. I think this was really interesting because why Steve, Steve Huffin made a really good point that Google is pinging and crawling Reddit more than ever, yet sending less search traffic, it's declining dramatically. What is that saying? That Google is extracting information from every website out there, the Reddits of the world, but no longer that deal. Remember, the original deal, why publishers, why everyone

• 11:36Speaker 01

  posting a website, let Google crawl their website was to, hopefully that will drive traffic and it did. And that was the entire foundation of like, the economics of the web for decades. So I think that fundament, this Reddit earnings call is really interesting because they basically are recognizing finally that that is completely broken.

• 12:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  But it's, it's more than that. Again, I'm trying to make the point here. And first of all, I should caveat, 12% growth, when you have a business worth tens of billions of dollars, Google made 63.3% on search and other advertising in the quarter, in the third quarter, 63, sorry, 63.3 billion dollars. That's huge. And to grow, to grow from a, you know, 50 something billion base, 12% to 63 billion, we shouldn't be sneezing at it just because they didn't do 15. But I do think, you know, and that's the reason why people are wondering now, is there was a projection that they would hit 15, they hit 12. And why is that? They talked to us about how some of these AI overviews are going to cut into revenue. And, you know, searches are probably up, but I bet some of that conversation, AI overviews counts.

• 12:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  But more than this, it's like, it's possible, you know, to, to have a search business, users need to click out. And this is what I'm saying. It's not necessarily the bargain is gone, which it is, but the bigger issue is, is Google training people not to Google and just to go direct?

• 13:00Speaker 01

  I, I still don't think, I don't know, I, again, as a heavy user of Reddit and still believer that it is one of the best places on the internet to actually like, find information and have human interaction, I am kind of happy because honestly, I would rather, there was like this brief period where Reddit was driving so much AI related traffic that every business out there wanted to post on Reddit just to try to optimize for GEO. I'm kind of glad that that's, we're moving past that. But I still feel the behavior of going directly to a website is going to be a relatively limited thing. But as I say that, maybe, again, in the shopping world where I spend a lot of time,

• 13:42Speaker 01

  it could, the more Google disintermediates the actual, and it gives less control and value to the end business, they will push to not worry about Google. Already, I can tell you, the idea that search traffic is the lifeblood of a business, everyone has given up on. So like, it's still kind of now one channel, whereas before it was the lifeblood in a big way. So I agree, but they have to, to Sundar's credit, innovator's dilemma, and they're, they're, they've chosen their strategy. So do you think it's the right one, though?

• 14:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right, yeah. I mean, the bet is basically that, it, well, this is kind of like what we've been talking about in the past, that Silicon Valley is making this all in bet, all in, literally, on like an unproven, uh, you know, new technology, which is, I guess, it's what they do. I mean, I guess I, I wrote a book called Always Day One, so I should be the one preaching this, you know, more than anyone. But it, to be relevant in tech is this constant cycle of reinvention, where you cannot hold on to what got you to the dance for too long, otherwise there's going to be a new dance and you're not going to be invited. And so what I think is happening across Google, Amazon, all these companies, Meta for, for sure, uh, maybe not Microsoft, we'll get into that, uh, is that these companies believe so strongly that AI is going to change the interface that they have to be like. You're right.

• 15:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's innovator's dilemma, and rather than be a relic of time, we're going to try to go for, you know, what's coming in. But in the near term, there are going to be rewards to those who aren't so good at it. Um, listen to this, this is an interesting reaction to the earnings from Steve Howe, an economist. He said, "Interesting idea. Everyone assumes Google will win the AI race, a complete 180 from a year ago." I don't know if it's everybody, but they have the number one model with Carbon, their new model they released this week, which is like, number one on the benchmarks. Um, and he writes, "Yet, winning AI may not be commercially good for Google, as they haven't figured out how to target ads well within AI mode. Well, Meta is pulling away

• 15:44Alex Kantrowitz?

  on ad revenue despite lagging on LLM." And then he drops this chart. And the chart is amazing, because in 2024, the leader in ad revenue was Google. In 2028, the leader in ad revenue is Meta, like by a good margin. And Amazon has gone effectively from like, kind of a distant third into a company that's now challenging, uh, Google for two, although still somewhat behind. But, but this is interesting, the fact that Meta, which has struggled with LLMs, um, you know, and hasn't really made that big shift to change its entire experience to make it AI,

• 16:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  it's pulling in the ad money, whereas Google, which is making this move, has fallen behind. What do you think?

• 16:30Speaker 01

  No, I, I think that's a really good point, because if you think about it, Google's ad revenue, their golden egg, golden goose, still.

• 16:39Alex Kantrowitz?

  Please don't call it a golden egg.

• 16:42Speaker 01

  I think it's a golden egg. Um, I think the goose lays the golden eggs. I don't think the goose is actually made, like has a golden sheen to it, but.

• 16:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  No, I'm going to add to Google's, uh, Google's search queries right here, and I'm searching it, so.

• 16:55Speaker 01

  All right. So while you're searching, I think.

• 16:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh, my God. Yep, the goose, this is from AI, AI overviews, a sub favorable, the goose and the golden egg, a classic story about a greedy farmer who kills his goose, which lays a single golden egg every day, hoping to get all the gold at once, only to find nothing.

• 17:13Speaker 01

  So you just, both were proven wrong, and you provided no value to the external web ecosystem, and received that information by some poor publisher that actually just put that information with their heart and soul out onto the web, and it just got AI overviewed.

• 17:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  No, you're wrong. The story comes from read.gov. It's a government site, so I've actually just been victim to a, uh, brainwash the masses type of campaign.

• 17:42Speaker 01

  No, no, this is the future of the web. The only publishers that will be left are in government.

• 17:47Alex Kantrowitz?

  But that's bleak and that's possible. I mean, seriously, maybe that's what happens.

• 17:51Speaker 01

  But so, God, oh my God, that's terrifying. But, okay, so what's interesting is Google's ad model is dependent on this entire web ecosystem. It's dependent on websites exist, they pay Google to direct traffic to them by keywords, and that's been the model. Amazon and Facebook, or Meta's with Facebook and Instagram, have closed ecosystem advertising models. The advertising all lives within, and honestly, Amazon showed like, how valuable that can be. Meta, their ads format is not going anywhere, it's only going to get more and more valuable. People are still

• 18:32Speaker 01

  going to scroll through Instagram and Facebook and see ads within there. So actually, more thinking about it, that open ecosystem of advertising is probably the most ready to be dis, or is being disrupted already, whereas it puts Meta and Amazon in a much better position.

• 18:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  Definitely. Golden Goose, by the way, is an Italian fashion brand, so.

• 18:55Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, those are those shoes. Have you, you know, the shoes, right?

• 18:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  No, I don't have them. But I, I would say that my read of the situation makes me at least a little bit more hip than you, given that you went to the read.gov site.

• 19:07Speaker 01

  All right. You're thinking of the $500 pre scuffed shoes.

• 19:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, Ron, get with the times, man.

• 19:16Speaker 01

  Days of golden eggs are over. It's only about Golden Goose sneakers right now. I think. So to me, the, I want to hear your take. The most interesting part of, I think this week was the moment that investors are recognizing these companies are betting on being a different business. We said they're disrupting themselves, but do you think that's what's happening? They are betting on being a cloud, a data center, compute provider business, which have unproven economics, which maybe they will win. They're very well positioned to win, but no one knows what they look like. And almost, I have to imagine

• 19:56Speaker 01

  definitively, there's no way a compute provider business model has the same attractive economics as search advertising. Do you think that's what's happening?

• 20:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, again, they, you take certainty versus uncertainty. Uncertainty is, you know, the search advertising business is working well. And uncertainty is your cloud business is going to power an uncertain AI, you know, takeoff. So that's the sort of, you, you factor in the risk and you make your decision. And then the other companies, like Amazon was very interesting, by the way. So this is, so this is from the Wall Street Journal, "Amazon's stock drops on Wall Street, missed despite biggest cloud growth in years." Right? So you would think that if, if the investors, well, you know, you're right. Investors are seeing these companies go in the, in this different direction, and they're not buying in 100%, which is very interesting. "Amazon.com reported its highest revenue growth for Amazon Web Services in years. That

• 20:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  wasn't enough to quell investors' concerns about artificial intelligence. Amazon Web Services brought in $46 billion in revenue for the three months through September, accounting to, for 39% growth year over year." Think about the retail business. The retail business is, and by the way, overall, revenue increased 12% to 201.9 billion.

• 21:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  The retail business is, it's, it's amazing because amazon.com was seen as like this, and it really was a revolutionary invention, for good or, for better or worse, right? It is sort of a cornerstone of the early internet and today. But, but it is changing in nature. Listen to this. "Groceries and Amazon's everyday essentials accounted for half of units sold on its Riesdale website in the quarter." Again, it's everyday essentials from Amazon, which are effectively white labeled products of like all these other products that you use in the house, and groceries, half of the units sold on the retail site in the quarter. So Amazon as the everything store is really, it's, it's a little bit different now. What did you, what did you say?

• 22:00Speaker 01

  Well, overall unit, half of units, I feel is a bit misleading because if these are cheaper products that are-

• 22:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  So each cucumber counts as like a-

• 22:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. When you do a Whole Foods order, it's, they're going to count it. But they want to show growth there because that's like a habitual purchase. So I think that's what they're trying to show with that. That's like, kind of a, feels like a bit of a massage number to investors. But I have to say, do you know what the crazy thing? My son, seven years old, he, because he'll get toys on Amazon, people will send him gifts through Amazon, he, when he sees someone, a delivery person with an Amazon vest, he looks at them like Santa Claus. Or when he sees an Amazon truck on the highway, he's actually like, "Look, Amazon truck." I got, no, no, I mean, I gotta say, Amazon, Andy Jassy, you guys have a foothold

• 22:54Speaker 01

  in the, the consumer of tomorrow, where they're not looking at you as this like Nathan crushing mom and pop stores. They're looking at you as kind of Santa Claus at scale. So it's crazy to see his eyes pop up.

• 23:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh, yeah. I mean, the, I will say, just, this is a bit of a divergence, but like, the, the Amazon branding on their trucks is incredible. Every truck you see has this, like, it's not even the most clever face, phrase, but it just reminds you of the value to Amazon. And they have that big footprint and they're using it for branding pretty effectively.

• 23:31Speaker 01

  Which does remind me, I actually had to go check right now. My, my Halloween costume has been delayed a few days. It is out for delivery now. But Andy Jassy, we're cutting it close, man. We're cutting it close.

• 23:45Alex Kantrowitz?

  We're having a very spooky big technology podcast. It's October 30th when we're recording, and we have just hours until Ron John-

• 23:53Speaker 01

  Needs my blue mighty morphin- No, no, blue mighty morphin Power Ranger. We're, we're doing the Power Rangers as a family. It's apparently made a comeback. I didn't realize there's like new-

• 24:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  I like that.

• 24:03Speaker 01

  Iterations of it. So old meets new, mighty morphin Power Rangers. What are you, what are you gonna be?

• 24:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  I am not dressing up. I'm taking it easy Saturday and trying to run the marathon on Sunday. So, folks, if you don't hear me on the feed next Wednesday, Friday, you know what's happened to me. I've been swallowed up by the miles. New York on, on Sunday.

• 24:28Speaker 01

  Oh, it's this Sunday?

• 24:29Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yes. And the weather is going to be beautiful. So my fingers are crossed. But I, I will say, I've definitely been in physical therapy the last couple of days, trying to work the kinks out of this old body to see if I can tune it up to get it going. So it's, I think it's about 50/50 right now, but I'll give it a go.

• 24:46Speaker 01

  Oh, I'll be out there cheering for you. I, I thought it was the next weekend and I'm going to be out of town. All right, Sunday.

• 24:52Alex Kantrowitz?

  All right, folks.

• 24:53Speaker 01

  Listeners, get your signs out. Get your signs out. Let's track Alex.

• 24:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  Please don't. You're gonna see me running very slow and hobbling.

• 25:01Speaker 01

  Crushed.

• 25:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh, God, destroyed. All right. One, one last Amazon thing I want to talk about, which is, you know, if you go to amazon.com these days, the biggest piece of real estate on that site is, any guesses?

• 25:12Speaker 01

  Alexa for shopping.

• 25:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  No, the B Frontier. The B Frontier. The B Frontier is a wristband that you can wear. It's $74.99. And Amazon, sort of, Amazon pitches it as a wearable personal AI that grows with you. It's confidential by design, and it transforms conversations into actionable summaries. I, I hate this thing. I, I, I'm getting more and more annoyed at AI wearables by the day. I just think that, like, I don't want to live in a world where everything is recorded. Because when everything is recorded, everything becomes performance. Everybody thinks about their words. Everybody realizes that someone's going to go back and, just

• 25:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  like the Black Mirror episode, they'll want to do a replay of their memories. Why are we running towards this future? It just makes me upset.

• 26:05Speaker 01

  Oh, okay. Hold on. Well, one, I'll still, Alexa for shopping now at least takes up a third of my screen every time I open it on desktop. They're certainly pushing that, but that's it. Because we've never really talked about the B Frontier. And that was definitely, they're, they're, they're making this bet on what is the future of their AI hardware ecosystem. Do you think it's, personal feelings aside, do you think it's a smart bet? Because I remember from what I read, it, now it's going to connect into the overall, like, say, ecosystem. And there, it's certainly, they have it out there. We're still waiting on whatever OpenAI pin and Meta Tamagotchi. Do you think it's smart, Amazon's going down this direction?

• 26:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, it's hard, it's hard for me to, it's hard for me to fully take my personal feelings out of it because I do hate the Muse Buddy and the B Frontier, just in general. I don't want to be, imagine you're at a party. You're talking to somebody for the first time. Imagine, okay, sorry. Imagine, imagine you were single and you're, you're having, you're at a party and you're having a conversation with somebody. And you see the B Frontier on their wrist.

• 27:21Speaker 01

  No, you don't talk to them.

• 27:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh, you see, you see it listening. It's just like, can you imagine? When you, when you were single, okay, when you were single, you know, I, I'm sure it was very easy for you. For me, it was, I had some difficulty. Okay. Just think about all the conversations, right, of, of potential flames. And, and you're, you're like, what went wrong there? You're replaying. Imagine like the B Frontier is with you at the party. And you're like, you're like, have a great time on a Saturday night, and she doesn't text back on Sunday. And like, you walk by your Echo show, and it's like, just a bit too aggressive last night.

• 28:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  We just can't move to this reality. I can't deal with it.

• 28:06Speaker 01

  Wait, wait, hold on. I actually love that because I have the Echo Show in my kitchen. I use it while cooking, but it is very thirsty. Like it, it's one of those where, and actually, going back to the grocery and everyday essentials, do you know what they do? It will, I mean, again, it's interesting to me technologically, like because if I shop at Whole Foods, it knows my order. And then I'll be like, oh, I need a recipe for so and so. And it's like, okay, here's a recipe. I saw that you bought these butter and potatoes today. So let me try to use that. Like it definitely does this stuff awkwardly. So if any AI ecosystem would tell you, hey, Alex, bit too aggressive last night.

• 28:51Speaker 01

  Maybe tone it down. Maybe try, ask questions about her. It would be the Echo Show.

• 28:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  Alex, just imagine you were a honeypot. Use the Ron John method.

• 29:07Speaker 01

  I mean, for honeypots, the B Frontier is actually, that's, that's the target demographic. That's where they've, they're experiencing their initial surge in growth. The increase in honeypots directly correlates to sales of the B Frontier.

• 29:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  Trying to lure a multi-trillion dollar hardware CEO into delivering his thoughts directly to Beijing. Use the B Frontier to record every conversation and get notes on your Echo Show as you cook dinner.

• 29:34Speaker 01

  I'm making an AI video commercial of exactly this moment we log off.

• 29:39Alex Kantrowitz?

  I just want to correct the record here because I don't think my B Frontier in my dating days would have been like Alex too aggressive. I think it would have been like, you need to not turn into a corn cob every time you like.

• 29:51Speaker 01

  Get out there. Well, hold on. Do you think we're going to have to rethink societal norms around? Like, I agree. If I sit down and someone, I at least would, I appreciate the fact that the B Frontier is hopefully visible. So you know what's going on, but I feel like, do you have to sit down and be like, are we recording? Kind of like if you're on like a Zoom call or something like that.

• 30:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  I mean, isn't it clear that the B Frontier, which is this bracelet that sits along your wrist, is just not going to be the final form factor. It's going to be a impossible to detect microphone that you like hide under your shirt. And so we're not going to know who's recording and who is. This is why I just don't want this stuff to take off. And I do think there should be some stigma around, you know, showing up to dinner with your muse buddy or one of these things. Who wants to live in a world like that?

• 30:40Speaker 01

  I mean, it is true. As someone who loves my Meta Ray-Bans, be, take photos and video and do it in a responsible manner. It is interesting that, I mean, the stigma around that certainly took off. And Meta actually removed the photo capabilities in a lot of models. So, so society has a shot. We got a shot.

• 31:04Alex Kantrowitz?

  Do we? I, I hope so. All right. Let's, let's just like summarize or not summarize, but I, I want to see if we can kind of get to sort of a conclusion here on this one. Because if you look at the S and P 500, it's up 10% on the year. On the year, Alphabet is, is, oh, it's down 11%, right? It had, it was up slightly when I was in with Sundar and now it's down 11% on the year. Meta is down 4.5% on the year. Amazon is up 5.5% on the year, trailing the S and P 500. Microsoft is up 10% on the year and it doesn't, it hasn't really been praised at all for its AI initiatives.

• 31:45Alex Kantrowitz?

  When you look at it all together, and we won't even throw CoreWeave into the, into the.

• 31:50Speaker 01

  Doesn't count. Yeah.

• 31:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. But Nvidia is also trailing the S and P 500. Is the market in 2026 telling us that the companies making the biggest bets on AI are simply too, too risk hungry to, to bet on, right? Is it saying, we don't want that. We don't believe in it.

• 32:11Speaker 01

  So that, that's why I think the connection to how will Anthropic's IPO perform is so fascinating. Because I agree, the market has effectively told big technology companies that, listen, you guys are going free cash flow negative. You're investing this much. Good luck, but we're going to invest in the Cheesecake Factory and Chili's, whose stocks are up above the overall kind of composite of big tech companies. So, so I think in the public market companies, it's become clear. But also these are gigantically valued market cap companies anyways. So it's just saying, well, maybe things will just temper off a little bit.

• 32:55Speaker 01

  But is, in the private markets, it has not slowed down. We are still seeing again, Anthropic, and we'll get into the numbers, but talks of a trillion and a half or two trillion are still very, very optimistic things. That I think we still see that divergence.

• 33:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yep. Okay. We should take a break. And when we come back, talk a little bit about that IPO because we did promise a S1 emergency episode. We got that with Dan Primack on Monday, but we want to hear Ron John's thoughts as well. And we're going to talk, of course, about the business, but also about how much money the people within Anthropic stand to make because they're going to be very rich very soon. All right. We'll do that when we come back right after this. When you're at work, you never know when you'll be interrupted. But with the Dell Pro powered by Intel Core Ultra with V Pro, no matter what distracts you, your laptop won't. It's battery optimized for the way you work with built in intelligence that quiets distractions when you need to focus.

• 34:02Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 34:17Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 35:02Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 36:18Alex Kantrowitz?

  And we're back here on Big Technology Podcast Friday Edition. It's Anthropic S1 week. Ron John, it's interesting. We're, we're about five days past. I don't think we'll spend too much time on the S1 this week, but it was really a Rorschach test, I think for people in terms of if you, if, if you believed in Anthropic, you found plenty of evidence to show you that the company was very healthy. Booming growth, they went from 1,500 customers in December 2025, spending 100,000 or more to 11,900 in June, right? So that's massive increase. They also increased their customers spending a million or more. They had something like 110 billion cash on hand. So if you thought Anthropic was, you know, just going to incinerate all its money

• 37:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  and desperately crawl to the IPO, obviously that's not what's happened. They're making 6.6 million per employee. So, you know, they're very efficient. Their efficiency was going up. They used to make 40 cents for every dollar of compute they spent. In the, in the S1, they showed that they are now making $2.08 for every dollar of compute they spent. So they're, they completely flipped that on its head. But the detractors will point to two things. The fact that Q3 revenue was not included in the S1 and Q3 revenue is, is, looks like it will massively decelerate from something like more than 100% quarterly revenue growth to in the 40% quarterly revenue,

• 37:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  quarterly revenue growth field. And of course, that spells the end of tokenomics. And then there's also the half trillion or so that they've committed to spend, much of which is non cancelable. When you looked at this blot of ink on the paper, what did you see?

• 38:00Speaker 01

  What I saw was a business that is doing very well. And I think like actually met a lot of the heightened expectations. What I didn't see, and the most frustrating part of this to me, all I want is to understand the unit economics of Anthropic's business, to give a reflection of what a great AI business can look like. And I did not get that. And I'll tell you why. So I actually don't think the Q3 numbers, again, a lot of people are, there's like a lot of conspiracy theorying going on, I feel around like, it actually makes sense,

• 38:41Speaker 01

  like audited financials, it would, a quarter would have ended September 30. So there's, they're going to release it based on, I think it's November 11. If they don't IPO before then, which they likely won't, they're going to have to release Q3. So we'll get those numbers. We'll, we'll see what. To me, the numbers actually were so good that that actually raised questions for me. And what I, what I mean by that is, again, I mean, you, you kind of started to say it, but like, the whole story has been that like, cost of compute is going to be so dramatic. And that's why we need to just raise so much money.

• 39:23Speaker 01

  And that's why we need like, it's a very expensive thing. And that's why this is all going to be very expensive. They lowered their cost, compute as a percentage of revenue in Q1 was 71.6% to 48.1%. It was 225% of revenue a year and a half ago. So like, all these numbers show us that actually the economics are almost magical. Like, compute is decreasing, revenue is increasing, compute as a percentage of revenue is decreasing. To me, I don't think we yet understand what the actual true cost of compute was relative to their revenue.

• 40:03Speaker 01

  And the reason being, the most glaring example was like, there's all this talk around the $80 billion loss. Is it real as an accounting treatment? Within that, part of, the big part of that was, it was the increase in value of convertible notes from Amazon and Google. But we talked about this two, a year and a half or two years ago, actual calendar, year and a half, two years ago, not Alex's six months is a year framework.

• 40:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  I just want to say, I don't mean six months is a year. I just want to say that when people say six months is a, when people say that happened last year, they really mean it happened in April. They've lost the ability to keep track of time.

• 40:40Speaker 01

  Well, well, the only reason this was actually related to, I think it was like summer 2025 convertible note issuance, but remember, we were, actually, this was back in late 24. Amazon's putting in $4 billion. They openly are saying part of this is heavily discounted compute. A lot of the deals with Broadcom, with all these other people that are both investing into Anthropic, they're receiving significantly discounted compute. And it was just a reminder, I think what we're seeing here is not reflective of what this is actually going to cost. And we're still not getting a good representation of like, what are the unit economics? That's my only frustration.

• 41:22Speaker 01

  I think like, which also is going to be really important because when we talk about these 500 billion, what is it, 325 or five, whatever the future committed spend is.

• 41:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's in the neighborhood of 500 billion, yeah.

• 41:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, we still don't know what, what does Anthropic's business look like? Like, if they were paying market rates for compute relative to their revenue, we know they aren't, but we don't know how much that discount is. So my, my ask for investors is to demand that they disclose and provide a better understanding of actually what they were paying over the last number of quarters and year and what kind of discounts they received. Otherwise, we still don't know what is the actual kind of like picture of this business.

• 42:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  But wouldn't you agree, by the way, that, you know, if you think about the amount of money that Anthropic has raised, they still have 100 plus billion dollars in cash. So it couldn't have been that much, right?

• 42:24Speaker 01

  No, no, that, that, that's exactly what I'm saying. It's actually like insanely efficient. It's so feel, for everything we've talked about for the last two years, suddenly you look at this and you're like, wait, this is the most cash efficient, compute efficient thing imaginable. Like, the, the numbers that they've only burned nine and a half billion dollars in this entire last few years is actually like, we know it's not exactly correct because they receive below market rates as part of these investments, but we don't know how much less. And we know they're not going to continue.

• 43:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  Let me press you on this. Google said it was going to invest up to 40 billion in Anthropic. We don't know if they've invested all 40 billion. Amazon said they were agreed to invest 25 billion. So let's say that was all Amazon and Google giving Anthropic compute for free.

• 43:23Alex Kantrowitz?

  You know, that's just $65 billion. They have 100 plus billion in the bank.

• 43:27Speaker 01

  No, no, but, but they spent five and a half billion in compute last quarter, three and a half billion in Q1, eight billion total in the first half of the year. So like, if they're investing, if Google and Amazon are discounting by in the order of magnitude of billions, that fundamentally changes the margins of what Anthropic's business is. So the cash on hand, I think is separate. This is what should they have paid and what would their actual expenses ratios look like relative to what they are able to charge?

• 44:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  So your suggestion is that Amazon and Google both invested in the company and, you know, not dollar for dollar, but just said, we want you to grow. And so we're, you know, outside of our investment, we're also going to provide you with discounted compute.

• 44:12Speaker 01

  I mean, Amazon, that was explicit in their convertible note. Like, they said, and we talked about this way back and it was kind of a joke. Like, we were like, and, and back then, I remember we were like, is it cash or is it credit? Is it like, but now you're actually seeing the, the result of that is, is we still don't know of what is Amazon's business going to look like going forward. And I think, to me, that's the only, otherwise, everything looks so good, it's almost like unbelievable. And that's why, to me, they should disclose around, here is actually like our average, what this discounting looked like in the past, so people can understand what it will look like in the future.

• 44:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  I know it would be like kind of criminal to do this, I guess. I mean, I don't know if we've seen weirder things, but is there a chance that Amazon is, you know, giving Anthropic this discounted compute, booking it as full revenue? And that's why you see the 39% growth? Is that like a totally out to lunch conspiracy theory? Probably.

• 45:13Speaker 01

  I, I mean, actually, I don't, I don't know. Like, I'm sure could have, I feel that, that would probably be pretty aggressive on the accounting side. I think, I, I wouldn't worry about that as much. Again, to me, this is not like, the numbers were great. It's, it's, but to invest and at what rich valuation are you investing? That's the question. I think they have not given enough information. Also, I have to say, whoever is planning those revenue leaks is a communications genius because, again, there was no surprises in them. Everything was out there. When we get 16 to 17 billion for Q3 revenue, it's already out there and we know growth

• 45:57Speaker 01

  is decelerating and all that's out there. So there'll be a little hubbub, but like, they're, they're leaking financials like in a pretty incredible way.

• 46:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yep. Somebody on X named Andrew Benson started putting together the list of who gets rich if Anthropic lists at 2 trillion. I think the talk is it'll list at, at 1.5. But if you assume 2 trillion, it's 199 billion. Guess this is the equity breakdown to the seven controlling founders. Then there's 28 billion for Ben Mann. So I guess they would all get, who's another founder who I guess is sometimes a founder, sometimes not. So they'd all get 28 billion. 100 billion to the Anthropic Public Benefit Fund.

• 46:39Alex Kantrowitz?

  Three hundred thirty one billion in employee options in RSUs. Uh, that covers five thousand three hundred employees, an average of sixty two million each. Uh, but he continues, when you joined, uh, really matters. Uh, and again, this is back of the envelope math. I think it's directionally accurate, but of course, there could be some problems with it. Um, but if you had joined in twenty twenty three, you're looking at a hundred ten million to four hundred million each. If you joined in twenty twenty four, he says, four, um, which is like four hundred forty to six hundred forty people hired. Two hundred million to three hundred million each. Twenty twenty five, at least seventy million. Twenty twenty six, ten million to twenty million. Imagine you got hired this year, you're already looking at ten to twenty million dollars uh, in compensation.

• 47:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  Um, you know, you wonder why people don't leave Anthropic. Of course, part of it is, is the, uh, the mission, but uh, this is also a pretty good argument, don't you think?

• 47:31Speaker 01

  I, I'll admit, I, I can't even stomach hearing these numbers, working in the IA industry for a company that's doing well, and I'm happy, but like, my god, the wealth creation is, i- it's actually, what's more surprising to me is what you just read. I'm actually more surprised that, and we got elections on Tuesday. I'm surprised that has not become like one of the biggest headlines and like every, if I'm, if you're a politician out there, you got your talking points right now. I mean, the numbers are insane.

• 48:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  Uh, listen to this, Anthropic, by the way, this is also coming from the company whose CEO said that half of, uh, white collar jobs will be.

• 48:14Speaker 01

  Yes, just play the two clips.

• 48:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  That's the, yeah, um, this is from Sam Par, uh, Anthropic will make one thousand employees worth a hundred million. Uh, at least a hundred million at a two trillion dollar market cap. There are eleven thousand Americans worth, uh, with a hundred million in investable assets. So something like one in twelve Americans with a hundred million dollars liquid will be from Anthropic, and if you add in OpenAI, it could be one in seven.

• 48:41Speaker 01

  It is shocking. Again, when I saw those, I literally am like, I'm, yeah, I am speechless.

• 48:49Alex Kantrowitz?

  I have two reactions to it. I mean, of course, they've earned it. They've built, to a degree, right? They've built this technology that is, uh, you know, going to be, you know, has a good chance to be world changing, put it that way. But the other side is like, they're also telling you that it might kill you, and like, they're gonna protect you, and it's like, really?

• 49:08Speaker 01

  Well, well, they.

• 49:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  You're saying it's gonna potentially wipe us all out, and you have to develop it because you can develop it safely? But then you're also walking away with something like the richest people in history?

• 49:18Speaker 01

  No, but that's what I've always said, and, and that's actually, again, why, to politicians, you got four days right now. If you, this is a pretty easy talking point, and you might as well, you might as well push it, but I also, actually, on the existential risks to humanity, I also have to admit, I actually wasn't that interested in the whole risk factor side of it. I know I saw you tweeting them out and you were discussing them with Dan, but like, to me, they were, I don't know, I, they almost just feel like they're like, just fucking with us, like.

• 49:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  Dude, I have a conspiracy theory on that.

• 49:53Speaker 01

  All right.

• 49:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  They had like the longest risk factor section I've ever seen in my whole life. Like, I tweeted eighty of them, and then I was like, I tweeted one post with eighty of them. And the funny thing is, I stopped at eighty. I don't even remember how many there were, because there were so many. And I think what they did was, they wanted to bury the existential risk, uh, risk factor in like the most boilerplate shit imaginable, so you would miss that and just be like, oh, well, they have all these other capital risks.

• 50:20Speaker 01

  But we know the existential risk, and everyone covered the existential risk, like, I guess to me, that was like, normally S one risk factors, the whole point is to like, recognize risks that exist, that especially likely disclose things that investors don't already understand. And like legally, also that you are recognizing, so, I mean, it has to be in there, but like, I mean, he's been saying it for years, they've all been saying it.

• 50:47Alex Kantrowitz?

  I'm just saying, it was so long that they were just like, all right, you'll get exhausted and no one will pay it. Well, anyway, I think you're right, that they have, it's been talked to death. All right, here, here's a risk factor for us to talk about before we leave today, which is, um, the price, you know, we talked about a price war coming for L L M's, and man, has it happened. This is from Max Wolf, OpenAI and Anthropic cut their L L M prices by up to eighty percent within a few months. Why? Uh, I'll just read a little bit from Max, um, July thirtieth, twenty twenty six. OpenAI announces that they're gonna cut GPT five point six Luna by eighty percent, the prices. August tenth, twenty twenty six, Anthropic says their temporary Sonnet five price cut, uh, is permanent.

• 51:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  August twenty one, twenty twenty six, OpenAI announces they are cutting the price of GPT five point six Soul by twenty twenty, by twenty percent. September twenty twenty six, OpenAI announced GPT fi, just sorry, GPT six Soul at a shocking price that halves the input and output price relative to the temporary discounted GPT five point six Soul. They simultaneously released GPT fi, GPT six Luna, also at half the input and output prices of the previous version. On the same exact day, Anthropic announced Claude Opus five point five, and the total cost reduction for that Max calculates was forty to sixty percent for a model that's even better than Fable five. Uh, this is not just a price war. Uh, this is not just the, the, sorry, this is not the, the rumor of the price war, this is the price war.

• 52:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  Some reasons for Max, um, he says, if you've been testing agents with new L L M's as they are released, it can be very difficult to differentiate them outside of subjective vibes. Since last November, that launched the hypergrowth of agentic L L M's. Um, the models have become more of a commodity, and it's now trivial to try a new model on your codebase with just a toggle harness like Open Code or using something like Open Router. As a result, there is little moat. That's just part of the reason that he gives. Um, we've talked a lot about the commoditization of L L M's and how that could lead to a price war. Is this it actually happening, Rajan?

• 52:50Speaker 01

  I mean, it is, that, that's the other part again, like, the, the moment we're in, in the next few months, we're already seeing the actual like, cost, yeah, I mean, we were, we've talked about the cost of compute, we've talked about the actual ability of them to charge, but also, I guess, the, if the aggregate demand increases and everyone is agenticifying everything, this does become moot, and I think that's what they're gonna have to kind of pitch on the story, but I agree that this is, this doesn't help the overall business story that like, intensive frontier models at high margin are going to be what differentiates them, and the main thing,

• 53:31Speaker 01

  I don't, I still don't like, again, in the enterprise side of it, the number of people talking about or working on routing models across whatever the lowest cost best model is for the task is definitely increasing, so, so I think it's still, it certainly presents a threat, but it hasn't affected them yet, it looks like.

• 53:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  Another potential interesting reason is infrastructure. Here, he writes this. Another less cynical factor that could explain the price cuts is that L L M infrastructure has improved over the past few months. When Anthropic said Opus five point five requires less compute to serve than Opus five, and its pricing reflects that, I believe it. One outcome that would be genuinely, uh, genuinely ironic is that if these models are more compute efficient, it reduces the need for these massive data center build outs, which could cause cascading economic failures. Interesting, your thoughts?

• 54:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, i- it's a great point, because right now, the, it feels like the, we just said, the entire first part of this podcast was around big tech and data center investment, and like, the economics of that, no one has any idea, and if it's, if everything becomes far more compute efficient, which it looks like it is becoming, that fundamentally changes the entire data center story. If the whole, again, if the whole world gets agenticified, maybe it all works out, but I, I think all of this, it's still, there's just so much risk, and clearly, the market with big technology firms has already recognized it, but it is, uh, it's a bit terrifying, cascading economic failures.

• 55:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  Don't like the sound of that at all. I mean, the other, the final explanation is like, the IPO is coming, and they want to so, show usage increases, but like, I know, they also, they really want to show revenue increases, so, I don't know. Sometimes companies try to show real growth ahead of the IPO, but I don't think tokens is the growth that Wall Street cares about.

• 55:28Speaker 01

  It's revenue and low costs and mask the true costs as much as possible in a GAAP compliant way.

• 55:35Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, a couple of, a couple of things before we leave. First of all, um, I love that you said Cheesecake Factory earlier in this episode, because our SEO is now gonna be off the charts, giving.

• 55:46Speaker 01

  But no one, no one actually searches anymore, so it doesn't matter.

• 55:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  Uh, that's true. Uh, okay, you got me, you got me there. Um, do you want to spend a couple of minutes on, uh, You Can See Everything?

• 55:58Speaker 01

  I haven't seen it yet. I have not seen it yet, and I really want to see it. I was like, I read, how do you say, John Kerry Rue?

• 56:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  John Kerry.

• 56:09Speaker 01

  The book, Bad Blood.

• 56:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yep.

• 56:10Speaker 01

  Kerry Rue?

• 56:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yes.

• 56:11Speaker 01

  Wait, incredible. I was definitely a bit obsessed with the idea of Sonny Balwani back in the day and, uh, the whole there or no story, so.

• 56:19Alex Kantrowitz?

  Why Sonny Balwani?

• 56:20Speaker 01

  Uh, he was the most fascinating character in the entire story to me, just because like, he was mysterious, there's almost nothing on the internet about him, even though he was a co-founder of the company, and, uh, I don't know, just their relationship, it was just so weird and odd, so, I, uh, I still, I'm, I think Sonny, Sonny, the evil of Sonny is not commonly recognized. Is he in the movie?

• 56:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  He's not in the movie. I, I won't do any spoilers.

• 56:51Speaker 01

  All right.

• 56:52Alex Kantrowitz?

  But, I mean, it's, it's a crazy one. I have to say, it is a crazy one. I enjoyed it very much.

• 56:58Speaker 01

  Is, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna challenge you to explain what makes it so good without spoiling. Go.

• 57:06Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, if you have watched anything from Nathan Fielder, you just know that the guy's mind works differently. And part of it is like him and them trying to figure out why they brought him in in specific. Uh, and then of course he takes it on like, you know, Nathan Fielder's style divergences from the main story. Um, I don't know, I just real, I, I quite enjoyed it. It's, I'll, I'll say this. It's the least absurd of anything Nathan Fielder has ever made. Uh, which is crazy.

• 57:37Speaker 01

  Okay, so that's like what makes it truly different, or why everyone's reacting so strongly in a positive way that it

• 57:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, well, another thing is that Elizabeth Holmes is this, she is, you know, and this, I, I'll try and really, it's hard for me to say much more than this without spoiling it. But she is, you know, by her own doing, or by societies, and probably a little bit both, a media creation. Right? And how often do you get to see someone who is a media caricature effectively? You know, basically with given complete access to, to cameras, even with the weird.

• 58:16Speaker 01

  All right, I gotta, I gotta, I have not been able to

• 58:19Alex Kantrowitz?

  That's interesting to me.

• 58:20Speaker 01

  Convince my wife and Amazon obsessed seven year old son to go watch Nathan Fielder yet, but

• 58:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  I know you texted me, big techno, we should do a big technology private showing of the movie. We really should have. That's, that's my, that's on me.

• 58:35Speaker 01

  Well, actually, uh, that's what I heard, that there's like VCs out there doing kind of like private portfolio company showings, which I don't know how I feel about that anyways. That's, it's kind of weird in the Theranos context, but.

• 58:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  I would feel good about it. Those are fun. Yeah, I, I don't know if you've ever been to one of those, but I've been to one. I enjoyed it very much. So.

• 58:58Speaker 01

  Okay, okay.

• 59:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  All right, man. Well, I know I, you know, though, uh, I plan to take it easy tomorrow. I now have an idea for my Halloween costume. And for those of you who are thinking that I'm gonna be part of this Elizabeth Holmes, Nathan Fielder costume thing, no, I'm not. I'm gonna be the golden egg. So if you see a golden egg running past you in New York on, on the first, uh, just say hi and be like, I listen to the show.

• 59:26Speaker 01

  I love it. For the first Guinness Book of World Records, first golden egg to ever complete America.

• 59:34Alex Kantrowitz?

  I, but you know what? There is, sorry, I don't really want to go, go labor this, and I know you need to go. But there is a saying, you don't kill the goose.

• 59:43Speaker 01

  That lays the golden

• 59:45Alex Kantrowitz?

  The golden eggs.

• 59:46Speaker 01

  Let's end there.

• 59:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  Let's end there. Great to see you, Ron John. Thanks, everybody for listening. Uh, we'll have Tristan Harris on the show on Wednesday to talk about AI risk. Thank you, Ron John. Thanks to all of you. We'll see you next time on Big Technology Podcast.

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