Software’s Epic Comeback, Meta’s AI Layoffs Blunder, South Korea Stock Market Chaos

Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover: 1) Software is rebounding, is the Saaspocolyse over? 2) Salesforce delivers solid earnings and jumps 22% 3) Why was Dario sitting with Benioff? 4) All software stocks are rising 5) Disruption could still happen, but on a longer timeline 6) Meta's bungled AI layoff strategy 7) How much of AI failures today are cultural? 8) Meta pays billions in landmark addiction settlement 9) South Korean stock market volatility 10) The clash of AI belief and reality --- 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 Stop online threats before they become real-world attacks. Visit ⁠ironwall.com/BIGTECHNOLOGY⁠ and request a free Risk Assessment to see exactly how exposed your executives are. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Software rebounds and puts SaaS apocalypse speculation to rest, or does it? Meta tries to replace humans with AI and it doesn't go so well. And is it an AI bubble? Don't ask the traders in South Korea. That's coming up on a big technology podcast Friday edition, right after this. This episode is brought to you by Genesis. What does it actually take to put a Gentic AI to work across an entire enterprise? I recently spoke with Genesis chairman and CEO Tony Bates about why orchestration is emerging as a competitive advantage in customer experience and what companies need to get right in the AI era. Then I sat down with Adam Mitchell, head of enterprise business solutions at Voya Financial, to go inside a large scale agentic CX transformation, including the business decisions,

• 0:45Speaker 00

  trade offs and lessons along the way. You can watch both conversations now on my YouTube channel today. It's never been more challenging to get frontier compute. How do you know where to look, who to trust, or how much to pay? Akash is an open cloud that provides easy access, flexibility and peace of mind. That's how companies like Razor were able to cut their inference cost by 15 times. Visit akash.network slash Alex for a free consultation. That's akash.network slash Alex for a free consultation.

• 1:19Speaker 00

  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. We're going to talk about the state of the SaaS apocalypse now that software companies like Salesforce, Adobe and Microsoft seem to have rebounded from their SaaS apocalypse lows. Was this entire thing just an overreaction? We're also going to talk about a program that Meta tried to put into place to replace its human workers with AI and why it failed. And then we're going to take a look at the South Korean stock market and talk a little bit about why the fears of an AI bubble may be justified, but it might not be a market-wide bubble. It might just play out in certain areas like it certainly has with the South Korean stock market. So joining us as always on Fridays to do it is Ranjan Roy of Margens.

• 2:04Speaker 00

  Ranjan, welcome back. Great to see you.

• 2:06Speaker 01

  SaaS apocalypse is over. Benioff has ascended to the iron throne. It's a new day here, right before we, the summer ends.

• 2:16Speaker 00

  I do, I do want to say that I did wake up seeing a image of Marc Benioff and Dario Amade sitting next to each other, starting to shill this new, this new Anthropic and Salesforce partnership. And there was somebody writing my mentions, actually kind of addressed to both of us since we've been taking the SaaS apocalypse, you know, warning seriously. And this person writes, "Cantruts and Ranjan Roy caught, caught an ass whipping with the bit." Did you see this?

• 2:48Speaker 01

  Oh, I saw that.

• 2:50Speaker 00

  The two together. And I was just like, okay, all right. This is, you know what? Let's lead the show with this because maybe software really is back. So let me, let me at least introduce this.

• 3:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:01Speaker 00

  Okay. So this is from CNBC. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff says the SaaS apocalypse is nonsense and here's why. Basically Salesforce turned in some incredible earnings. The share surged more than 12% after the enterprise software giant delivered a strong quarter and issued better than expected guidance. Earlier this year, this is from, again, from CNBC. Investors feared that increasingly capable AI models could allow the businesses to accomplish more with fewer traditional software subscriptions, undermining the industry's pricing model. Wall Street also worried that companies could use AI to create the software tools they're paying for, and Salesforce shares went down 22% this year through Wednesday's close. But guess what? Salesforce has rebounded and so have many of the other software names.

• 3:46Speaker 00

  I guess what Benioff was saying and is trying to say, and what the market is finally accepting, is that if AI replaces software, it's going to be slow. It's not going to happen overnight, which to me has always been the case. I don't know if the fundamentals changed, but certainly the SaaS apocalypse is on pause. So Ranjan, I just want to get your broader reaction to this. You know, was it an overreaction by stocks and to be, yeah, by Wall Street in the beginning? And what do you think we can read into what's happening now?

• 4:16Speaker 01

  All right. I wanted to, this is very relevant to my life here in enterprise AI. So let's talk through this at a couple of different levels, but I want to start with the announcement itself on Claude Force and Dario and Mark sitting next to each other at a table. And I definitely want to get into the dynamics of that. But what's amazing to me in terms of the marketing chops of Salesforce and Marc Benioff is the actual announcement. I don't want to say it's a complete non-event, but you could already do this in Salesforce and Claude. At Writer, where I work, people connect to Salesforce and run all types of queries. It's actually one of the most valuable things I've found for my day to day. You can do things in ChatGPT.

• 5:01Speaker 01

  So, so the actual connecting Salesforce data with an AI entry point as a layer over it is not really news, but to package it all up, to have Dario sitting next to you and to have your stock pop 22%, God bless Marc Benioff, because that man can market like no other. To me, the most interesting part, and like, again, definitely want to get into the actual kind of what it means for each business, but seeing Dario sit next to him in that context, and that's every, the meme world got it, was kind of wild. Like Dario goes and says, you know, you know, my chief commercial officer was just demoing this for me where he asked what the biggest, biggest accounts at Anthropic is trying to

• 5:46Speaker 01

  close now. Talk me through the risks of each one. All that data comes from being managed in Salesforce. These are not things Dario ever says or talks about, like the most pedestrian mundane ways of using AI. Like, how do you think he ended up sitting there? Cause it really, that power dynamic and the way he was speaking shocked me.

• 6:14Speaker 00

  Well, Salesforce is a investor in Anthropic.

• 6:22Speaker 01

  Investor, but their stake, I believe, is five billion. Come on.

• 6:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:27Speaker 01

  You're going out at two trillion. This is not your lead here. This is, this is not, from a pure financial standpoint, in terms of who your investors are, this isn't a big deal.

• 6:37Speaker 00

  Can I tell you what I thought when I saw them sitting together?

• 6:40Speaker 01

  Yes, I want to hear.

• 6:41Speaker 00

  This is ridiculous.

• 6:42Speaker 01

  I'll get more.

• 6:43Speaker 00

  I just thought, it's the last week of summer, nothing's happening. Dario's bored. Like, this is like the one opportunity that they got to get him with Benioff and they just did it because nothing was happening this week anyway.

• 6:56Speaker 01

  That is a very generous interpretation.

• 6:58Speaker 00

  What's your, what, no, tell me what your perspective is. Why do you think he's there?

• 7:03Speaker 01

  I think he's there because pre-IPO, I think this is the first time, and maybe this is reading too much into it, where Dario like has been influenced by the investors in the company. And they're telling him all this talk about you're the last private company to be standing and you're going to subsume and every company and scare everyone is bad for the IPO. So you need to go out there and put on a friendly face and show how you're not this kind of like Death Star looking to destroy all companies and are actually a friendly face and just sit next to Mark and this is a perfect opportunity to do that.

• 7:45Speaker 01

  I think this was like heavily influencing him pre-IPO.

• 7:50Speaker 00

  Okay. All right. Very interesting. So let's like, kind of back up a little bit, right? And kind of talk about what's going on here. So, so what, what happened? It was, you talked about Claude Force, right? Basically that's being the ability to use Claude to query your Salesforce records and get insights like, yeah, again, like, like we talked about, who are the accounts we need to close? If you're, if you're Anthropic, the worry has been from the software companies would be that you would go, basically you would, you would stop finding ways to make money, selling the models themselves, and you would need to go up market. So start to take over the things that, you know, Salesforce are doing. So what you're saying here is basically that like, instead of playing on those fears,

• 8:34Speaker 00

  what Anthropic is doing is saying they're going to play nice with enterprise software. If I'm in, let me just put it this way. If I'm an investor in Anthropic, why do I want that? Wouldn't I want this company to say, instead of that, instead of, you know, the vision that these multi-billion dollar companies are going to be okay? Why wouldn't I have the vision that that is my market? Like, wouldn't I be better suited having Dario basically introduce a, instead of Claude Force, Claude Customer Solutions where, and this is kind of a thing.

• 9:06Speaker 01

  Sales Claude.

• 9:06Speaker 00

  Right?

• 9:07Speaker 01

  Sales Claude.

• 9:08Speaker 00

  Sales Claude. That is a great name.

• 9:10Speaker 01

  Sales Claude.

• 9:10Speaker 00

  Here's the thing. Here's the thing.

• 9:14Speaker 00

  You know, the software, this is kind of the bottom line here. The software companies are getting a reprieve. Basically, the news is, okay, they're not going to be disrupted right away. But it doesn't mean the long-term disruption is off the table. It doesn't mean long-term. Like, long-term, wouldn't your AI assistant, if they hit AGI, you wouldn't need a Salesforce. You would just dump everything into your AI assistant. You would have it listen to all your conversations. You would have it do all your customer interactions. Like, you don't need Salesforce. That's the whole thing. So I don't understand what the logic is from your perspective of them having to play nice with business software.

• 9:48Speaker 01

  I, no, no. So I do think, and like, I definitely think this is pure PR and comms. I think the big risk that they've identified on the IPO is that everyone, like, the more evil and death-starry Anthropic seems, and the more evil Dario seems, that's a net negative. I think there was a moment six months ago where that played well. Like, Claude will destroy all software, and that the people were into it and liked it, and it was fun. That still needs to be the $2 trillion valuation story. So I think this was purely just to be like friendly-faced, "Look, he can sit next to another technology leader

• 10:33Speaker 01

  and smile and say, 'We can work together.'" I think that's it. I don't, because when you actually dig into the mechanics of it, and let's do that, I do think this doesn't make sense, really, for either company, the way they're pitching it.

• 10:48Speaker 00

  Right. So it doesn't make sense for either company because of the sort of, because of what I just brought up, basically, that like, this is going to be Anthropic's market over time, or why would you say it?

• 10:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay. So two levels. One, Anthropic, you nailed it. It's, you need to destroy Salesforce to get to $2 trillion market valuation. No, you do, like, you, the whole vibe code your CRM.

• 11:11Speaker 00

  That's exactly right.

• 11:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, no. I mean, it's, that is the story. That's been the story. That's what got all the hype in the market. So to walk away from that, I do think is not, doesn't make sense in the medium and long term. For Salesforce, what's so fascinating about this, the central question, even Dario started by saying, "Salesforce has all the data. It's basically a machine for managing your CRM." The way Salesforce is positioning themselves, if you give up the UI layer, I think that's a big mistake, because in reality, and this is a big question, whose data is it? Is it the customer's data, or is it Salesforce's data?

• 11:53Speaker 01

  Now, I do think there is an opportunity, and again, we think and talk a lot about this at Rider, like, there is a tremendous value, in fact, in terms of being the governed data layer, and the structured data layer, and Salesforce dominates and owns that. So there's definite value in simply being a secure, governed, structured place for all of the customer data. But how valuable is that? Is that valuable in the same way traditional software margins have been? I don't know. I don't think so. Maybe it will be, but, but in reality, in the end, it's the customer's data.

• 12:31Speaker 01

  So to kind of build the entire story around, "It's our data," and Dario even saying, "Salesforce has all the data," to me is just weird. Like, I don't know. I don't see, I'm still trying to figure out. I mean, Benioff is Mark Benioff, and I'm sure even to get Dario sitting next to him like that, obviously, the man can play the game well. But to me, what the bigger story is around this, by giving up the UI layer, is still kind of surprising or confusing to me.

• 13:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's right. I mean, I think you hit it right on the nail, the nail, right on the head with the UI part of the conversation, which is that basically like, all right, if you're Salesforce, now people are going to access your software by having conversations with an assistant, right? Is it that big of a leap to, over time, you know, say, "Okay, well, since Salesforce is the database, and Claude is the conversation, why don't we just move the database over to Anthropic with Salesclaw?" And then away we go.

• 13:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I mean, the whole, that was the SaaS apocalypse story, which is, again, going back to, it's kind of still, Salesforce stock jumping 22% in a single day, the second biggest jump it's ever had in its existence, when they're actually going to market with, and maybe it's not a dumb database now. They're going to say it's a smart database, but still, giving up that entire side of the way, the interaction point, where, what is someone opening in their morning to ask questions about, "What does my day look like?" It's, I still don't quite understand it, but it made the stock jump 22%, so something worked.

• 14:21Speaker 00

  Well, part of this was Salesforce's earnings, right? So Salesforce is having good earnings, you know, even as AI is rising, even as AI capabilities are rising, and even as AI capabilities are rising, Dario's there with Benioff. And this is something that I think is worth talking about with this whole SaaS apocalypse thing, which is like, there's a certain level of craziness to how the market has been playing this. Because, you know, just because over time, people might have the capability to vibe code, you know, their own CRM, or the real threat that I think is, just because over time Anthropic may go up market to take some of what Salesforce is doing, doesn't mean it's going to happen overnight. Doesn't mean it's going to happen in a quarter. Doesn't mean it's going to happen in a year. Doesn't mean it's going to happen in two years.

• 15:05Speaker 00

  I think that's one of the things, that as people have seen some of the AI capabilities get better exponentially, they've expected the business disruption and the diffusion to happen just as fast. And there's a real gap between the rise in capabilities and how they get implemented, right? And how people decide to use them. Like, if you're a company that's using Salesforce for years, just because you can do some of your CRM activity doesn't mean you're going to go overnight to Claude. And so I think that, like, even if there was a Claude force, right, that was better. That's just something that takes maybe three, four, or five years. And so I think that's what we're seeing, we're going to see a lot of this, where like, there's going to be headlines. "This SaaS apocalypse is on." "This SaaS apocalypse is off." "This SaaS apocalypse is on." "This SaaS apocalypse is off."

• 15:48Speaker 00

  Where in truth, what we're really going to see is some volatility, but, you know, we're going to need much longer time horizons to actually measure what's happening here, and to actually see these changes meted out, both in the SaaS apocalypse, but also with everything in regard to AI's capabilities. Don't you think?

• 16:05Speaker 01

  Oh, no, I fully, almost uncomfortably agree to such a wholehearted degree that I need to come up with a reason to not agree so much. That this is, it's, I've said, I mean, it's a timeline issue. Like, this stuff will take a long time to play out. And in reality, it gives the Salesforce's of the world plenty of time to figure out a new model, or a better model, or what's their winning strategy. But Claude Force, to me, at least the way it's been positioned, like, I mean, when you dig into it, doesn't make sense for either company, to me, to go get this excited about it and make such a big splash around it.

• 16:46Speaker 01

  Obviously, the earnings mattered, but to me, again, the PR, comms, marketing side of it, like, to me, if you're Salesforce, it is incre, like, the power communication of Dario sitting next to you, talking about looking up risks around biggest, when's the last time you heard Dario talk about, like, commercial stuff publicly? Something so pedestrian and mundane and everyday, like, closing a deal. I've never, I don't think I've ever heard him, right?

• 17:21Speaker 00

  So, but I will say, he is, he is, like, when you speak with Dario about business, he is business-minded. Like, he knows the numbers. He's not like pure scientist. Like, he is definitely a business guy. But you're right, you haven't seen him, like, sit with, like, a SaaS company leader, even if it is Benioff, who's probably the most famous of them, and, you know, sort of go through, go through, you know, why their partnership is good. You know what? The more that we're talking about, the more I'm coming around to your, to your way of thinking in terms of, like, the marketing and branding of all this. It's, what you saw with the two of them is almost like the anti-Alex Karp, right? Where it's like, there've been so many CEOs, like, kind of sitting on their chairs, or standing on their chairs,

• 18:02Speaker 00

  and talking about how Dario is evil, that Dario is just like, "Get me one on the line, and let's go on CNBC together."

• 18:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, "Let's go sit down together. I'm friendly. Look it. I'm not pulling out, like, trying to attack Mark Benioff live on TV, and, uh, let's go IPO market. You can trust me." That's, that's my read.

• 18:27Speaker 00

  So from June 22nd, 2026, till today, August 28th, 2026, guess how much Salesforce stock is up? 72%. I mean, this is, this is, this is like, where we, it is amazing what we're seeing now in the stock market, where like, investors have really cooled on this idea, like, this disruption is going to happen overnight, which was always, like, like we said, kind of, kind of fanciful. And it's not just Salesforce, by the way. Like, if you look at IGV, the software ETF, IGV is up 19.68% over the past month.

• 19:08Speaker 00

  Salesforce, again, up 41% over the past, past month, and 72% since late June. Adobe is up 16.49% over the past month, and Microsoft's up 29% over the past month. So, you know, one of the interesting, and obviously not investment advice, but one of the interesting things that, you know, you'll be able to see in this moment is like, man, there's just going to be this, like, volatility, and investors running one way, and then, you know, because of some headlines, and then running right back because of some earnings. And, you know, there's a real opportunity there.

• 19:43Speaker 01

  Has anyone who ever said, "Not investment advice," not followed up with investment advice in the history of podcasting?

• 19:54Speaker 00

  I think like you have to, you know, you have to caveat it because if you're like, you don't want, you don't want people, I get it. I get it, but you just don't, you don't want people trading off of the, off of these, you know, observations, like trade based off of what your financial advisor tells you to do. It's like, I don't know. I think it's a, it's a worthwhile caveat.

• 20:16Speaker 01

  Any, anytime, not to be racist, but not to give investment advice, but.

• 20:24Speaker 00

  I'm just giving you. I'm moving on. I'm moving on.

• 20:29Speaker 00

  I'm moving on. Well, Ron, John, just because, uh, go ahead.

• 20:35Speaker 01

  No, no, I, I.

• 20:35Speaker 00

  Bash me.

• 20:36Speaker 01

  No, no, I, I think.

• 20:37Speaker 00

  What are you supposed to say? You're supposed to say trade on it. So the listeners come and they, they, they trade on it. And then when it doesn't go right, they sue you like, no, you, you don't, you need to, you need to give like the appropriate context here.

• 20:47Speaker 01

  Well, it's funny though, because I would say even that caveat so much of like, you watch the all in podcast or whatever else. Like, I mean, there's just so much investment advice that is just given in any kind of conversation nowadays that I, I do a pro. Okay. You know what? I appreciate the caveat where we don't want our listeners, as we'll get into the South Korea trading stories at the end of this podcast, um, ending up in any of these kinds of situations. All right. Pro caveat.

• 21:21Speaker 00

  So are you, are you going to, after, after hearing me talk, after hearing me talk, are you going to go buy IGV?

• 21:26Speaker 01

  I, I was already, Robin Hood's already open. It's already done. Just because you said it, Alex. I hold you responsible.

• 21:37Speaker 00

  Okay. Because this, I was going to say you're too late. The bounce already happened, but okay.

• 21:42Speaker 01

  That's more investment advice.

• 21:44Speaker 00

  The opportunity window has closed.

• 21:46Speaker 01

  There's more investment advice.

• 21:47Speaker 00

  You are done. You're going to, you're going to get this show shut down because like some lawyer is going to replay this and be like, well, my client is now in shambles after shorting and then longing IGV after.

• 21:59Speaker 01

  Well, actually to, to, to bring it back.

• 22:01Speaker 00

  August 28th episode.

• 22:03Speaker 01

  To, to kind of, I think, wrap this. How much do you think Salesforce stock is up from the beginning of the year?

• 22:11Speaker 00

  Oh, oh, you want, okay. I thought you were going to ask me to predict something. I was like.

• 22:14Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no, no.

• 22:15Speaker 00

  Okay. Uh, what did it, maybe 3% maybe?

• 22:18Speaker 01

  It's down 1.94%. It's almost flat. So it's fascinating. I mean, again, in terms of thinking back through this year and this story, it is kind of a perfect round trip of software is dead, Claude code hype back in like February, March, April, vibe code, your CRM, and now back to, no one knows what's going to happen and we're back to flat for the year.

• 22:45Speaker 00

  No, I mean, I, I think that you could have your, your convictions in terms of where it's going to go. You just have to realize that it's not going to happen overnight. And that's like the case in point for our next story, which is that Meta had a very aggressive plan to, um, trim its workforce and transform its workforce based off of the capabilities of AI, only to learn a very difficult lesson, which is that it wasn't ready yet. Let's get into the story. Uh, this is from Reuters. Mark Zuckerberg had a bold plan to replace staff, Meta staff with AI. Here's how it imploded. In January, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his top lieutenants gathered for their annual leadership retreat at his Hawaii compound. There they hatched a radical plan to reimagine work at the social media giant in the age of AI.

• 23:28Speaker 00

  Codename project OT, short for organizational transformation. The plan envisioned an AI native future for the future owner of Facebook and Instagram. Okay. That's such a weirdly phrased thing for the owner. Okay. A Facebook and Instagram. Gosh. Anyway, dear Reuters. Okay. Let me just go through this. AI would take over much of the daily work performed by thousands of human employees. Virtual workers would be overseen inside Meta by smaller, talent dense cadres of human staffers. And then in scenario, uh, planning exercise, two of these people said executive explored slashing the size of many teams across Meta

• 24:07Speaker 00

  by as much as 60%. Sorry, a lot of reading here, but I feel like it's worth going through a little bit about what happened, uh, within there. So basically what they did was they set up this pilot, which had five, they had, uh, small tech pods, each consisting of two to three engineers and a designer, all equipped with AI tools. The groups would, uh, dispense with established processes for releasing new products, such as a fixed six month planning cycle. Instead, they would aim to build prototypes in four week sprints. Uh, the layers of middle management that would traditionally be there would be eliminated. Instead, the pods would report up to a single high level unit head. Agent assisted analysis would help set the day to day priorities. All right, Ron, John, how do you think this went?

• 24:51Speaker 01

  Okay. Before, I mean, I think we, we're, we can all guess how it went, but. The funny thing is like, as you actually, I'm glad you read that out in its entirety because it's like, in theory, or not even like, that is a good idea to me. That, I mean, if you separate it from the layoffs and all the other kind of organizational questions, like this is to me exactly what companies should be testing and doing and figuring out what the new operating model is and that teams should look different. So I, I honestly think any, as we get into, if it worked out,

• 25:32Speaker 01

  any indication of failure is solely attributed to the worst code name for a project ever. Project OT, short for organization transformation. Like, come on, guys. If you gave it some, even Spud would have been okay on this one, but if, uh, if you gave it a good code name, maybe this would have worked, but project OT sounds like worse than McKinsey.

• 25:59Speaker 00

  You know, when the word from on high came on that, uh, project OT was happening, do you know how it was announced to employees?

• 26:06Speaker 01

  How?

• 26:07Speaker 00

  One Meta employee ran into the break room and said, by golly, pause everything. Project OT is here.

• 26:15Speaker 01

  OT is here. I don't know if that gets a by golly. I was thinking about it all week of when, when.

• 26:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:22Speaker 01

  To save the by golly's for, I think we need another Leopold, uh, for another by golly. Though Salesforce up 22% in a day might get one, but.

• 26:32Speaker 00

  No, no. Salesforce doesn't get a by golly. Let's be honest. And the rules of by golly, Salesforce doesn't get it.

• 26:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. Okay. But, but let's. The by golly bylaws, by golly bylaws. It's got to be a bigger.

• 26:43Speaker 00

  Has to be trillion market cap or higher.

• 26:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:48Speaker 00

  Uh, we have, we have rules here. We have standards, uh, but let's talk about this though, because it is interesting, right? Cause like, obviously they were influenced by the fact that smaller companies were able to operate faster, uh, with, with AI, right? They've probably been influenced by the narratives that like, you could have a one person, $1 billion company. They've seen companies cut and be successful. I'm sure what Elon Musk did to X probably was in their minds, although who knows if that's a success or not. Probably not actually, now that we think about it. Uh, and they also were, they went to Asia where like things are much more advanced, places like Singapore. Okay. But what they found was that you can try to make your organization as AI forward as you want right now.

• 27:28Speaker 00

  The capabilities aren't there, right? So they're just starting to be there. Here's, here's, here's the, um, part where the rubber met the road. Internal data indicated, this is so interesting by the way, and I'm surprised that this story didn't get more, more play this week. Okay. Here's this, here's, here's what it says. Internal data indicated that the tech at the heart of the plan wasn't delivering. Employees' use of AI had resulted in a vast increase in the code they generated, but with questionable impact on productivity. For instance, code changes made to the internal software platforms and infrastructure that, uh, platforms and infrastructure employees use on the job were up, uh, 22, sorry, 220% year over year. But changes that led to new or upgraded features reaching Meta users were only up 36%.

• 28:12Speaker 00

  Uh, infrastructure teams were also warning of reliability warning signs caused by AI coding, the AI coding search. Uh, in April, uh, they said unchecked agents were performing large scale disruptive actions that humans are unlikely to execute. The result, major technical and security incidents, incidents such as service disruptions and possible data leaks spiked 40% from the previous year. Uh, and the time staffers spent firefighting them went up 70%, according to internal posts. Okay. This is like the, the holy grail or the, the epitome of all the criticisms of AI. You write more code, you're not necessarily more productive, you ship more, uh, and when you ship more, you have bigger security flaws.

• 28:55Speaker 00

  And when those security flaws hit, you have to spend more time cleaning up after them than you would previously. And then the whole thing basically didn't work. Um, even Zuckerberg basically admitted that AI agent technology isn't at the point that he expected it. So what do you think about this, Ron, John?

• 29:13Speaker 01

  I think employee incentive is kind of like what's probably at fault here. Cause I'm guessing, given the timeline, um, this would be exactly when just use more and more AI as opposed to what is your actual end goal and then let them use AI in a much more lean team without middle layers of management.

• 29:39Speaker 01

  Again, like the way you've read out that first part around these, what an AI native team could look like, may, still makes a ton of sense to me. So if, but if you tell people you need to, you're going to be judged on how fast you move, how many tokens you consume, how much AI you do and use. Of course you're going to end up in those kinds of situations versus like, what is the actual task you're trying to do or project you're trying to execute on? And you do whatever you have to do to get there and we're going to eliminate all the middle layers of management.

• 30:12Speaker 00

  Right. And this kind of goes to the theme that we've been talking about really throughout this episode, which is that like, the capabilities can be there, but to think that there's just like a straight shot to like exponential growth or to this being implemented perfectly is somewhat foolish. Like these type of bumps in the road are going to happen for everybody. So there's going to be moments where like, they'll be like, all right, well, AI, you know, isn't, isn't working. It's not there. And, uh, and in some cases it really won't be there, but in some cases it will be there. It's just that the human side of things takes a long time to get right.

• 30:47Speaker 01

  No, completely agreed. I also, I mean, speaking of the human side of things, it is fascinating to me. Like, how do you think? These, that level of CEO, whether Zuckerberg or others, like, think about their employees and their teams. Like, they're, I see, I'm smiling for, well, no, but, but, but even if it was numbers, like, I don't know, like, so much of the communication, or even the way this reporting shows these kind of decisions being made, like, CE, these are the CEOs who chose the, like, hiring and growth trajectories of these companies since COVID.

• 31:26Speaker 01

  I mean, these companies have always been pretty heavy in terms of overall employment relative to the actual, like, cash generating parts of the business, whether it's Google or Meta. But, I don't know, like, it, it's, I still wish one of these CEOs would stand up and be like, I hired too many people, we are too bureaucratic. I am a star, like, I am a founder, I am Mark Zuckerberg, and like, I know how to run lean and fast businesses, and we are not that today, and we will be. And actually, sorry, he did that. That was a whole year of efficiency.

• 32:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, they feel like they've all done it. Elon Musk has done it too.

• 32:04Speaker 01

  I know, I know, but his always feels a bit more performative. When Zuck says it, I believe it. I believe it.

• 32:09Speaker 00

  Right.

• 32:10Speaker 01

  And he did his year of efficiency, but where, shouldn't it have already hap, shouldn't it have already happened by now, or?

• 32:18Speaker 00

  Well, that was before AI, and they did, they did lay off a lot of people there, right, at the expense of morale, in some cases. But, um, but yeah, I mean, they're trying again, but it just isn't working. And in fact, this is the end of the story. Right? So basically, they had a, a 10% cut, they went ahead with it, but they had a bigger cut that they were planned that was supposed to go on in November, and Zuckerberg called it off. He said that, uh, they, that, uh, employees should not expect other company-wide layoffs this year. And he expressed desire to give them stability. He did also say, uh, in a recording that Reuters was able to get from his remarks to the company, that like, you have two main expenses, uh, one is compute, and the other is, I think he called it people-related stuff,

• 33:01Speaker 00

  which is kind of like your salaries. And he said, when our compute expense goes up, your, the other part has to go down. So I think that's like, kind of what he's, what he's thinking about. But I, I, I think it's fair to say that the tech environment in 2026, you know, even if you made your cuts in 2022, is a completely different world than it was in 2022.

• 33:23Speaker 01

  But, okay, a fair point on that, agreed on that. Do you think Meta needs to lay off? Do you, like, that argument that as compute expenses go up, we're gonna have to find savings somewhere else, that's gonna be people? Do you think that's the right approach? And the right belief?

• 33:42Speaker 00

  I mean, if your people are good, then no, I think it's the wrong approach. I mean, also, like, I don't know, I might get sort of some criticism for saying this, but I always find it a little bit uh, rich when a ultra-profitable publicly traded 1.5 trillion dollar company with massive margins is like, we need to find cost savings. I mean, I guess, like, if you, if you, you know, obviously, it's important to perform for Wall Street, but, um, but I, I don't know, I, I, it's, it's sort of rich to me that, like, a company that's like, yes, spending billions of dollars for AI talent and billions more on compute, uh, won't spend, you know, some portion of that type of expense on people.

• 34:27Speaker 00

  Especially if it thinks the people are good. The only reason you don't do that is if you don't think the people are good.

• 34:32Speaker 01

  Yes, but that's, I mean, I think that's implicit in that, because when you're willing to spend, what did they pay for Alexander Wang again?

• 34:39Speaker 00

  I think 14 bill?

• 34:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:40Speaker 00

  Like, 15 bill?

• 34:41Speaker 01

  Clearly, he believes that if people are good, he will open his wallet. So, I agree. I think that's, that's, uh, implicit in any of these kind of decisions and Project OT.

• 34:57Speaker 00

  Okay, let's quickly talk about this Meta settlement, because you brought it up, and I, in our document, and I think it's worth talking about. You know, in its most recent earnings call, Meta said that, like, one of the big liabilities for this company is going to be that it is now exposed to all forms of lawsuits about its, uh, addictive, the addictive nature of its products and what it's been doing to kids. Well, um, Meta was in court with a bunch of uh, US states about this, this issue exactly. So there's the private citizen examples, and then there's also the states. And it just agreed to settle a suit that was asking for hundreds of billions of dollars for 18 billion. Let me read it quickly from Reuters, Meta agrees to pay 18 billion to settle US lawsuits over children's, uh, social media addiction.

• 35:41Speaker 00

  Uh, and it's gonna pay it over the next decade, uh, and strictly limit how teenagers use Facebook and Instagram under an agreement with nearly all US states to resolve claims it designed those social media platforms to addict children. The settlements announced on Wednesday end a federal trial over allegations Meta's products harmed children, and the company misled the public about their safety. Uh, they were seeking 200 billion in civil penalties, they get 18. Is it over? Uh, I'm curious to hear your perspective. Is this, is it over, or are we gonna continue to see these type of judgments against Meta, uh, over time?

• 36:18Speaker 01

  All right, I'll get into is it over in just a moment, but I am very excited by this news. The reason being, the, how to fix social media is something I've written about and thought about for a long time. Um, I'm excited, because in August 2nd, 2019, I'd written a piece for the margins five-point plan to fix social media. And two of the things that I've been shouting about for years now are, one, to demetricate, to remove like counts, and to actually the numbers that kind of drive people towards obsessing over, uh, obsessing over their performance, especially for just everyday people, if you're not a brand.

• 36:59Speaker 01

  And one of the settlement, part of requirements of the settlement was to turn off like counts by default for minors. The other, this is my favorite, like, I honestly think all feeds should just be reverse chronological order. No algorithm. And I think, like, the way TikTok just destroyed this, I wrote this in 2019, like, TikTok came along and just said, not only are we not going to just add some algorithmic logic to how posts get shown, we're gonna do away with the feed, it's just gonna be one big algorithmic injection of content into your, to your veins. So, part, another part of the settlement is that

• 37:40Speaker 01

  this will at least give teens the ability to use a non-algorithmic or chronological feed. I still think that should be the default for everyone. I still use Twitter slash X with the following feed more than the for you feed, but I, I was, I was excited here to see that at least some of these ideas are getting put into practice. I think there's a lot of others, there's a default two-hour-per-day usage limit on users under 18, they can't use it from midnight to 6 AM, no notifications during school hours. So I think, like, specifically for teens, I think this, there's a lot of good things here. But I honestly think this should apply to everyone, not just teens.

• 38:24Speaker 00

  Ooh, that's a very interesting, I mean, that would never go forward, but as a parent.

• 38:28Speaker 01

  But it should.

• 38:30Speaker 00

  Do you feel better having a kid in the world with this, this type of, um, these type of restrictions? It seems like, seems great news. Now, part of it is on the parents, but part of it's on the technology companies, and I think this is helpful for parents. What do you think?

• 38:43Speaker 01

  No, no, I, I, as a, as a parent of a seven-year-old child, I'm hoping we kind of solve some of this by the time he's like 13 and 14, getting a phone. I, I am hoping this stuff gets solved a bit more. Um, and I don't think, like, putting the responsibility on the parents, I think it certainly matters, but especially for teenagers, like, of high school age, the idea if everyone is obsessed with this, the idea of going into school and, like, restricting it while everyone is just kind of like, looking at each other's like counts and seeing what the most popular kid, I mean, how do you fight, that's, that's the technology, that's the tool that was designed to do that.

• 39:26Speaker 01

  Like, that's the, to me, the crazy part of all this is, like, this is by definition what Instagram is designed to do. Like, that's, I mean, that's, that's from a business perspective, from a product perspective, which to argue against that is crazy, so, I don't know. I, I think overall, this is the right direction. I mean, why Meta is doing this? I think I have a bit of a theory around, but I at least am glad it's the right direction.

• 39:53Speaker 00

  Hit me with the theory.

• 39:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, so, one of the other things that came out was, apparently, there was conversation that they would be willing to move down to a one hour, one hour-per-day limit if TikTok and YouTube were to follow. My read on this is, Meta knows as a business, like, it's already in the whole AI game, there's a lot of different opportunities there. They know that they, like, in terms of diversifying, they have a lot, and maybe teens, especially from an advertising perspective, there's already a lot of protections around that, even if teens are just addicted to using it. So, from a business perspective, maybe you can limit the damage.

• 40:35Speaker 01

  But YouTube and Tik, TikTok is much younger skewing. YouTube, my God, is like, everyone pretends it's not an algorithmic social network, but in reality, it's the same dynamics that addict YouTube from, I mean, I'll say that, like, I have to, I actually, like my son, I will put on a YouTube video, and like, the one rule is you cannot hit any of the recommended right rail videos. And whether he always follows that or not is up for debate, but like, to me, that's like, step one of Rabbit Hole, suddenly, he's like, alt-right or, uh, flatter thing, or whatever it is, uh, just 12 videos later, but, but I think, like,

• 41:17Speaker 01

  I think this was just a straight shot at TikTok and YouTube.

• 41:23Speaker 00

  He's telling people that they, uh, they shouldn't follow his investment advice right before recommending a stock.

• 41:28Speaker 01

  No, no, no, he, he actually, when, when he's talking trading tips and his Robinhood account on YouTube.

• 41:35Speaker 00

  He means it.

• 41:36Speaker 01

  He's saying, follow me, put your money where my mouth is.

• 41:40Speaker 00

  He's not hedging at all. He's not hedging.

• 41:42Speaker 01

  The seven-year-olds don't do that. They know, they, they know what they're doing. They're a little more honest about it.

• 41:49Speaker 00

  He's triple levered on SK Hynix, and he's going all the way.

• 41:54Speaker 01

  Oh, we laugh, we laugh.

• 41:56Speaker 00

  I respect that.

• 41:57Speaker 01

  Um, yeah, no, but do you, do you, do you think they're going after Tik Tok and YouTube here, especially YouTube to me?

• 42:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, they know everybody, it's, it's amazing how, uh, how YouTube has become this, this force that's eating into everything, eating into cable TV, eating into Netflix, of course, eating into the social networks. And I would even go further and say, there's no such thing as social networks anymore in this world that you're hoping for, where there's no reverse chronological order, or there's no, there's no algorithmic feed. Uh, it, it, it's long past, uh, the point in time where that was even a possibility. And I think that, you know, social media was a moment, but it's now just all entertainment. Meta knows that Tik Tok knows it, YouTube knows it, and they're all competing on the same product, which is effectively shorts.

• 42:42Speaker 01

  Actually, I'm curious, is your, I, I was like, talking about this with my wife this week, actually, cause, uh, in terms of like using Instagram, none of my friends post, like no, it's as middle aged males, no one's really posting anything. So the entire feed is like entertainment and there's a lot of good stuff in there. I forget that, like, out of my wife's friend group, a lot of people are still posting their families, trips, kids, everyday life. And so like, actually, her feed is still, there is a social network element where my feed is, it's zero. What about?

• 43:24Speaker 00

  Right.

• 43:24Speaker 01

  For you?

• 43:26Speaker 00

  Well, I think the stories are certainly posts from people, but I would also argue that, you know, even if she's posting and even if some of her friends are posting, uh, the amount of time that you spend on your friends and family content, you know, to use some meta terms, I, I would be stunned if it was, if it was more than 10% of your total Instagram.

• 43:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then I could see it, cause actually you would just run out, like even with people posting.

• 43:49Speaker 00

  Done. Right, exactly. Some of those are brands, but more so like, the whole experience, I think is just to get you in that reels feed.

• 43:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. A social network is dead. Shorts are, shorts are where it's at. Even on YouTube, do you watch, when you open YouTube, are you?

• 44:06Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 44:06Speaker 01

  Are you shortsing or are you, uh, uh, horizontal videoing?

• 44:12Speaker 00

  I'm watching horizontal video, but my shorts feed is kinda, kinda broken on YouTube. It's like, they must know that like, I'm like, uh, you know, I, I have an account, an active account on YouTube and I'm posting there, cause like, it's like every short that I get is like, use this sound to get a million views.

• 44:27Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You're in hustle bro, like content creator land.

• 44:31Speaker 00

  I wish I was in hustle bro content creator. I'm in this like terrible rabbit hole of like the worst bottom of the barrel content with the same song and the same title on each one of them. So I would have, I would happily sign up for a full day long of Gary V shorts compared to this.

• 44:47Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 44:48Speaker 00

  I would.

• 44:49Speaker 01

  Never, the words have been uttered before, but you just said it.

• 44:54Speaker 00

  I like them.

• 44:54Speaker 01

  I actually, I feel like watching a horizontal video on YouTube kinda feels like watching, like listening to music on vinyl. There's just something classic about it, 20 minutes.

• 45:07Speaker 00

  It's good. It's nourishing.

• 45:10Speaker 01

  It's nourishing, it's just that, that's, that's old school. Yeah. I said, I'm getting caught in the shorts feed is a little bit, I'll say. My shorts feed is a good mix of cooking content, music, uh, some video editing stuff, but overall, it's reasonable.

• 45:27Speaker 00

  Yeah. I gotta, I gotta find some way to get you on my shorts feed for like an hour to reset my algorithm to Ron John content. So I'm out of this terrible, terrible rabbit hole I'm in. Okay, we need to take a break. We need to have to take a break and we have to come back and talk about, uh, a topic that we've addressed on the show, but we haven't, uh, gone into the depth that it deserves, which is the volatility, the collapse and the rebound of the South Korea's stock market. So we'll do that right after this. This episode is brought to you by App Point. Everyone's racing to roll out AI right now. Co-pilots, chatbots, agents doing real work. But here's the part nobody loves talking about. All that AI runs on your data and most teams have no single way to see it, secure it and prove it's under control.

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  That's ironwall.com slash big technology. Learn how to stop online threats before they become real world attacks. The link's in the show notes.

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  Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com slash big tech. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. That's Q U I N C E dot com slash big tech. And we're back here on Big Technology Podcast Friday Edition, joined as always by Ron John Roy. Ron John, uh, I think it was maybe two months ago where you talked about how like basically people in South Korea were like, you know, triple levering on SK Hynix and driving Ferraris, uh, and living life. Well, uh, they've certainly lived a few lives since then, because the South Korean stock market has crashed and rebounded somewhat. And, and I think this story that I'm going to read in a little bit of it from the Wall

• 49:22Speaker 00

  Street Journal is another indicative story because like, you know, people, um, who listen to and watch the show say, why do you talk about the AI bubble? There's no bubble. Even if there's no bubble, let's say, let's take that as granted. If there's no bubble as a given, um, there could be, and there are already little bubbles and investing behavior that is putting people at risk. So I don't think it's completely worth dismissing. And that's why I think it's worth bringing our listeners and viewers and all of you at home up to speed on this story in South Korea. This is from the Wall Street Journal. The world's craziest stock market has turned into a fright ride. Uh, South Korea now hosts the world's craziest stock market, showcasing a stomach churning volatility not seen in major markets in years.

• 50:07Speaker 00

  The benchmark Cosby index has more than tripled in value, driven by faith in the AI boom. Two South Korean companies, memory chip maker, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix soared to trillion dollar valuation and became twin forces pushing record market gains. Then the index plummeted around 40% over six weeks in June and July, burning hundreds of thousands of investors. A sober warning to those betting big on the AI industry, the roller coaster ride has continued. Uh, the Cosby has since rebounded about 20% from its lows. Now, just, you know, going down 40% and up 20%, it doesn't sound too devastating if you're not levered, but that is the problem. A lot of people have, uh, been levered.

• 50:51Speaker 00

  So, um, this is just very quickly, the, the pain fell hardest on South Korea's individual investors who account for 60% to 70% of the index's daily trading volume. Uh, they are known as ants, weak individually, but capable of collective power and fed the market with a deep faith in Samsung and SK Hynix and buying those, uh, largely, well, not largely, but you know, with, with a healthy appetite for levered, uh, ETFs and the ETFs are single stock. So some of them are double or triple levered. So if you bet on Samsung in a double levered, uh, when Samsung goes up 5%, you're up 10% or triple lever, when it goes up 5%, you're up 15%.

• 51:34Speaker 00

  But when it goes down 5%, you're down 10 or 15%. And so when it goes down 40%, you're wiped. And that's sort of the problem that we're seeing in South Korea right now. Ron John, uh, you talked about how things were roaring, uh, within South Korea now? Not so much. What's, what does this tell us?

• 51:54Speaker 01

  I think this, to me, the most fascinating part of the story is actually first, this term ants. I kinda, when I was reading this, I was looking more into it. Apparently it started in 2020 in the COVID stock trading boom. Um, but definitely kinda took on its own, uh, form during this latest hype cycle. Um, but I mean, to me, the most fascinating part of this is the connection with Leopold and situational awareness. Cause like, you are massively levered in a concentrated form on one side over here in the US with Leopold, even though like plenty of US investors were definitely involved and in the trade.

• 52:34Speaker 01

  But also, but, and then you have this army of ants and the South Korean traders all pushing this up. And timeline wise, it is fascinating, cause knowing that it was the like double and triple levered ETFs came out end of May, like you just start to see how this all maps perfectly. And as you said, up 40%, then down 20% net might not seem that bad, but I mean, you're getting cleared out if you're levered on this kind of stuff. So I think like, I don't know, it's, there's the trade itself in the medium and long term. And we've talked a lot about timelines today, but also wondering like,

• 53:16Speaker 01

  I don't know how these trades come into existence. How's information being shared? What people are going back to not investment advice? Who is convincing everyone that they're missing out on SK Hynix? And the other levered ETFs also, I think, is pretty interesting here.

• 53:35Speaker 00

  Well, I think this is important to discuss because remember we talked a little bit ago about how fantasy football and online sports gambling have been presented to people as the, you know, sort of the only place where you can have agency, where everything else feels rigged, where you don't have an opportunity to buy housing, where you don't have an opportunity to really save for retirement. You can't see an economic future. So people go that way. A lot of those same dynamics are out play at play here. And I would say that even though mostly, you know, the story we're talking about is in South Korea, it's something to be aware of, you know, everywhere else. Let me, let me just read a couple of stories of individual investors within South Korea who ended up getting cleaned out by this situation. Yoon Kyung-min, a 44-year-old sound engineer, said he still can't believe the financial disaster

• 54:18Speaker 00

  of the past two months. After quitting his job, he had invested half of his severance pay into semiconductor stocks and saw $7,200 evaporate in a week. If my wife finds out, I will be in serious trouble, said Yoon, who said he confessed only to a bit of bad luck without giving details. Yoon thought the market would rise forever. Then there's Lee Kai-yong. Lee Kai-yong, a 25-year-old software developer, said she lost all the money she made when stocks soared this year. She started investing into December, when her first paycheck from her new job left her convinced she would never earn enough money to buy a home. She seeded a trading account with around $14,000 from her savings and crypto gains. She invested all of it into SK Hynix and later into single-stock levered ETFs.

• 55:02Speaker 00

  She started her own Instagram to document her ride to riches. See Ranjan? People are still poking, still, people are, are, are still posting. By May, her account was up more than 58%, and her posts were drawn, drawing an average of four million views. But however, her holdings are now worth less, 5% less than when she started in December. Her investments multiplied so fast and vanished so quickly. It felt like it was all a dream. I got greedy, she said. I kept thinking, what if I climbed higher, even higher after I cashed out?

• 55:39Speaker 00

  Concerning.

• 55:40Speaker 01

  I think this is kind of a interesting tie-in of all of our stories into one place again. Cause like, again, both, do you think she gave the not investment advice disclaimer?

• 55:53Speaker 00

  Or she did? On her Instagrams? Certainly not.

• 55:56Speaker 01

  She was like, this is pure investment.

• 55:57Speaker 00

  Follow me to riches.

• 55:59Speaker 01

  But, but, but, but again, the same addictive mechanisms and the same move away from friends and family content to entertainment content, and that entertainment content being investment content and algorithmically being shoved in front of people and then them feeding into the actually buying the stocks. It is kind of an amazing, terrifying way of seeing it all come together in, in one place.

• 56:25Speaker 00

  So when people say, you know, this is AI is not a bubble, don't stop talking about this type of idea. Do you think it's fair to kind of point to these examples and be like, you know, even if we don't see systemic risks, like we do talk about systemic risk more often than we do like, you know, risk to individual investors if they have conviction. I think, do you think it's still worth, worth kind of covering and talking about? Just so people are aware of like what could happen if it goes south? Cause you know, it's happened here, but maybe it happens elsewhere.

• 56:55Speaker 01

  No, but this is the main thing about any kind of, and, and even the word bubble is all relative. Like once is something a washout or a downturn versus a bubble is always kind of difficult to like, I think that's more just like how cleanly packaged it is in the narrative eventually. But to me, like Leopold and situational awareness, these stories, this is the early part of any kind of bubbles ending cycle. And again, having lived through the 2008 on a trading floor, like 2007, there was these, there was Countrywide and Bear Stearns and before, long

• 57:35Speaker 01

  before Lehman, like there was, what was those hedge funds name again that collapsed back in like March? There was, you know, there, there were these like bits and pieces coming out. And I do think it's, it's very important because both at a human and individual level. And like, I think the big difference from 2008 was like, for the average person and individuals, your, the price of your home and your home equity was the kind of like exposure. Whereas whatever is happening in this cycle, way more people, thanks to Robinhood and Democratize Investing are exposed. So whatever we see happen, I mean, there's a lot more people with skin in the game right now.

• 58:19Speaker 00

  Yeah. Can I, can I try to really wrap it up here for us?

• 58:21Speaker 01

  Wrap it up.

• 58:24Speaker 00

  The, we've, today we've talked about basically three stories of a belief that, that the line that you're seeing in AI will happen rapidly and will happen immediately and exponentially. Right? So we talked a little bit about cesspocalypse, right? The belief that so, that software was about to be annihilated by AI. Then we talked about Meta's attempt to use AI to replace work. And now we're talking about, basically this is a story of people believing that the memory crunch was, was never going to let up to the point that like Samsung and SK Hynix are worth betting on, you know, triple or double levered to the point like one of the traders said, I thought the market would never stop going up.

• 59:11Speaker 00

  Even when it can feel like you're in the middle of an exponential and things are just going to keep going and, you know, the demand will keep going and there is never going to be any let up. There are going to be air pockets here and it is going to be turbulent, right? And I think that's kind of the lesson of this show, right? It's basically just like, you know, no matter how much conviction you have and what's going on with AI, no matter how much it's progressed and accelerated since 2022.

• 59:36Speaker 00

  It's not worth, it, it, there's a, there's a Goldilocks zone between going all in too late and all in too early. And, and there's, there's real risk in going in all in too early because of the human side of things and the bumps and the fact that there is some turbulence along the way inevitably.

• 59:56Speaker 01

  I think you may have just achieved the most difficult thing to do in any kind of podcast. Tie up everything neatly at the end. We never do that and are never good at that. And usually just trail off and whatever tangent we went into. And I, I think you nailed it. I think you got it there. Stuck the landing.

• 1:00:21Speaker 00

  Thank you. State of AI in 2026. I'm not going to buy Gally, but, but I want to. So anyway.

• 1:00:28Speaker 01

  No, save, save your buy galleys.

• 1:00:30Speaker 00

  I keep the by gally in the holster. We wish you a great weekend. Wow. It's almost September. I'll see you in September, Ranjan.

• 1:00:37Speaker 01

  See you. Summer's over. We have to lock in for what's going to be an interesting September.

• 1:00:43Speaker 00

  This, the rest of this year is going to be absolute chaos and I can't wait for it.

• 1:00:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. All right. See you.

• 1:00:49Speaker 00

  All right. See you next time. Thanks, everybody for listening and watching. And we'll see you next time on Big Technology Podcast.

• 1:00:56Speaker 02

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• 1:01:25Speaker 03

  How many discounts does USAA Auto Insurance offer? Too many to say here. Multi-vehicle discount, safe driver discount, uh, new vehicle discount, storage discount, legacy discount.

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  How many discounts will you stack up? Tap the banner or visit usaa.com slash auto discounts. Restrictions apply.