Pod Insights Equity Podcast Beanie Babies for the brainrot era About this episode On today’s episode of the Equity podcast, your hosts Kirsten Korosec, Max Zeff, and Anthony Ha try to understand why Labubu has become so popular and what it says about the collapsing divide between the internet and the real world. Are Labubus more than just the latest iteration of ‘90s Beanie Babies?
And listen to the full episode to hear more about:
Google’s cringey, celebrity-filled Pixel event
Self-driving startup Nuro’s $203 million Series A, with Nvidia joining as an investor
OpenAI’s attempt to woo the media after a rocky launch for GPT-5
A fresh $1 billion funding for AI startup Databricks
Why VCs are excited about robotic startups like FieldAI
As always, Equity will be back for you next week, so don’t miss it!
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Wednesday and Friday.
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Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 This episode of Equity is brought to you by Schneider Electric. Schneider Electric, your energy technology partner.
0:06 Speaker 01 Hello and welcome back to Equity TechCrunch's podcast about the business of startups. Today is Friday, August 22. I'm Kirsten Korosec, Transportation Editor at TechCrunch. And I'm joined today, as always, by our Senior AI Reporter, Max Zep, and Weekend Editor, Anthony Ha. And I have an important question for you, Max. And I'm wondering how you define cringe?
0:32 Speaker 02 Well, this week I would define cringe as Google's Pixel event, which was incredibly cringey. I couldn't keep looking at it for more than about 10 minutes before just viscerally cringing and my body shuddered away. They had hosts like Jimmy Fallon and Steph Curry was there and podcaster Alex Cooper was at the event as well. And it's really shocking because they kind of go for all these like very consumer-facing people. They try to make it very approachable. But what they actually do is alienate the real people who want to learn about AI models and smartphones. And it's shocking because Google is like ahead here. Like, they're doing so much better than Apple in terms of putting AI in their phones. And somehow, they just can't communicate it for the life of them.
1:16 Speaker 00 So as somebody who's watched quite a few cringe tech launches, tech companies often rely on throwing money at celebrities, dragging them out on stage and having them read a teleprompter. What made this worse than sort of your average celeb-filled launch?
1:30 Speaker 01 I'm going to say the very like QVC vibes to this. That really pushed me over the edge and I wasn't even really watching it. That, to me, was the moment. And I've been, like you mentioned, to many of these things. Like, this isn't anything new to have celebrities come out. I went to one at CES with BMW, which was incredibly cringe-worthy with Tim Meadows. But the shopping network quality of things, to me, was the worst.
1:59 Speaker 02 Yeah, it was kind of like they had like a basket of soaps or something that they were selling. And Jimmy Fallon was like, oh, how silky and smooth. You guys are like on the cutting edge of AI right now. You're investing billions to put AI in these phones. Can we like hear a little bit more about that? But no.
2:14 Speaker 01 No, he was selling soap. We do have other things to talk about on the show today. We have some deals of the week from Neuro and Labubu. Can't wait to talk about that one. And then we're going to get into the high stakes hype cycle in AI and catch up on robotics and talk about how they've gained a little bit of momentum.
2:35 Speaker 01 So Anthony, I want to talk about Labubu. Favorite topic. There's been so much written about it lately. And basically the headline is they're approaching a billion dollars in sales. But maybe some people in the audience don't know what Labubu is.
2:50 Speaker 00 Yes, and I should say that as the weekend editor, the generalist on the podcast, I'm often, I don't want to say stuck, but let's say stuck with sometimes the more random stories. So I did not necessarily know a lot about Labubu before we started researching this show. But it's actually like really fascinating. I mean, sometimes in a kind of a upsetting way, but just for starters, I don't have a Labubu. Do either of you have one?
3:14 Speaker 01 No, but I have people in my family who want a Labubu and are pursuing finding a Labubu, which for anyone who doesn't know is like a plush toy. So we're talking about toys right now.
3:26 Speaker 00 Yes, we're talking about a plush toy. And you may be wondering, well, why are we talking about that on Equity? But it is a relatively new brand. The first, I think, Labubu's launched about a decade ago. And they've kind of exploded, I think, almost entirely because of the internet. And they've become this kind of classic online, offline phenomenon. And so there are these plush toys that are, our colleague Amanda described them as like these ugly cute dolls, which I would agree with that. Like, I don't think they look like super, they're not like adorable in a traditional sense, right?
3:58 Speaker 01 Right, exactly. But the thing that to me is fascinating and, okay, I'll date myself. Anthony, I know you also remember Beanie Babies. Beanie Babies was an equally huge, huge phenomenon that surpassed.
4:14 Speaker 01 A billion dollars in sales around 1998. It drove, I think, more than 6% of eBay's sales at one time. And it was all about the trading of the Beanie Babies. And these were $5. This Labubu seems to signify another moment in our society. And there's a great piece in The New Yorker, which uses the phrase "Labubu matcha Dubai chocolate," which is like this way to refer to this broader zeitgeist as essentially being like elaborately artificial aesthetic. Which, if you look at this little plush toy, it looks like a little monster. It's got these big bulging eyes. It kind of is like over the top fake. And I don't know, I think it does kind of in a way signify this moment where people
4:59 Speaker 01 are really leaning in fashion-wise and like with AI, like this embracing fakeness, I guess.
5:05 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, I think that, to me, Labubu really feels, like you said, Beanie Babies, but for the brain rot era, the kind of Gen Z internet culture era we're in, where like, it's just like there is a culture, but it's pretty much incomprehensible and it doesn't make any sense. And it's like basically fueled by like these TikTok trends that pop off for who knows why. But popping off Labubu definitely is. I think they said in their earnings that they're on pace to surpass a billion dollars in sales by the end of the year. I just want to put that in perspective to some of the companies that we spend a lot of time talking about on the show, like Cohere, for example, is an AI startup that we talk about all the time. Cohere is like on track to bring in $200 million in revenue next year.
5:48 Speaker 02 So Labubu, just by selling these like ugly dolls, has a better business than one of the leading AI startups in the world, which I just think is fascinating. And maybe we need to talk about, honestly, Popmart a lot more.
6:01 Speaker 00 And also in contrast to companies maybe we talk about a little less on equity, but are very relevant are Barbie, Hot Wheels. Apparently Labubu is outselling those as well. I don't know if that's necessarily true domestically, but it seems like probably on a global scale, because this is also, we should say, a Chinese company.
6:16 Speaker 01 Oh, yes. I just had this amazing idea where we could like combine all the things, which is to make a Labubu like a Furby. If you remember, a Furby was like a speaking ugly doll from the late 90s. And that would like be the ultimate merge, if you will. It would be a singularity in a toy. This is my great idea. Someone go do this, please. Let's get into one other deal, though, that I really want to talk about because I wrote about it. This is Neuro. You might remember, we talked about Neuro a while ago. They had this kind of like blockbuster deal with Uber and Lucid, which is the EV maker. And the idea here was that Uber was going to buy Lucid Gravity vehicles equipped with a self-driving
7:01 Speaker 01 system from Neuro and in a couple of years, launch a robot taxi service. And at the time, we knew that Uber had put in a bunch of money. They didn't disclose it at the time, but my sources told me it was essentially more than 300 million put into Lucid. So now, fast forward a few weeks, and Neuro has raised $203 million in a Series E. Part of that had already been disclosed, but this is a new batch of investors. Uber is part of it, but to me, what caught my eye was Nvidia, also a few other companies like Isos Ventures, Kindred Ventures. Nvidia, to me, though, was the one that got my attention, made me a little bit more interested in the deal.
7:40 Speaker 02 Kirsten, to me, this sounds like a pretty large funding round. And I'm curious if this funding is unique to Neuro or if you're seeing this more broadly in the AV space?
7:51 Speaker 01 So if you were to go back, and we've talked about this on the show before, and I've actually had a number of listeners and readers reach out to me and say, you're totally right. This reminds me of 2015, 2016. In Neuro's past, they were considered like a darling of the AV space. They got a ton of money, huge, huge rounds. SoftBank was a big one. And they were actually valued at $8.6 billion from their last round in 2021. They're now valued at $6 billion. So reflective of what's happened in the four years since. To me, what was really interesting is that there has been like just no money in this space for a while, and Neuro seems to be breaking through.
8:33 Speaker 00 And you mentioned Nvidia kind of sticking out to you among the new investors. I mean, obviously, I'm aware of Nvidia having a strategic investment and venture arm, but to what extent have they been investing in this space before?
8:45 Speaker 01 Well, a lot of what we've seen Nvidia do is what I call technical collaboration. So they've been a technical collaborator with Neuro for years. And I've seen this in the autonomous vehicle space for a long time, in robotics as well. You probably see it Max in the AI space, which is basically Nvidia is like, here's some GPUs. Here's the developer kit, use our stuff. And that is a technical collaboration. They might actually help a little bit on the development side. This is unique because it is actual physical investment. This is real capital. This isn't just assets into Neuro. And we have seen this a little bit, but to me, it marks a really interesting moment for Neuro because reminder, they did a big pivot a few years ago. They were not doing well in 2022 and 2023.
9:30 Speaker 01 They were laying off a bunch of people in hopes of preserving cash. They were trying to do this like low speed delivery robot, not quite a sidewalk one. It actually was on the road and they did a total pivot to then focus on licensing their tech, licensing their self-driving system to automakers and to ride hailing companies like Uber. So it seems like they actually have made some headway here. And I think that the funding and the deal with Uber is reflective of that. So it was a good bet on their part.
10:00 Speaker 02 Yeah, I feel like every few weeks we talk about a new AV startup that is somehow tied to Uber in some way. Uber's investing in them, Uber's tied up in them. We've talked about this a lot, but I'd love to hear your latest take on how Uber fits into the AV industry and what this investment in Neuro means for them and their AV ambitions more broadly.
10:22 Speaker 01 With every deal that Uber does, it feels like frenetic. I'm not going to use the word desperate, but I'm going to say this, like a lot of us know the early history of Uber with Travis Kalanick was running it. And there was this big idea about how they had to own self-driving cars or they would be left behind. That didn't work out. They ended up selling Uber ATG. Now we're in this new era, the technology has. Been pushed along and now it seems like Uber's like, oh crap. They see Waymo, they see Waymo scaling and they are literally just making deals with everyone. I think they have 18 or 19 deals already that crosses along delivery, robotaxis and it's global. So I think Uber is like, if we're not going to develop the tech, we have to be a part of this
11:07 Speaker 01 or we will be left behind. It's a bit existential for them, I think. At least that's the pace of the deals gives that vibe off. And I think that they're right in a certain extent. I mean, Uber is not going to be disappearing tomorrow by any stretch, but I think that they're trying to get ahead of things and thinking 10 years down the line, not just focusing on the human drivers that they have today. But I think that's all we have to talk about with Neuro because we have so much more to get to after the break. We're going to talk to Max about this very interesting dinner that he had and how that relates to this very high stakes hype cycle going on in AI right now.
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12:30 Speaker 02 So last week I had a really interesting dinner that I wanted to talk about on the show today. I sat down with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, COO of OpenAI Brad Lightcap and the head of ChatGPT Nick Turley. This was a really fascinating dinner to me for a lot of reasons, but largely just the fact that it happened. There were a lot of reporters that were basically called to meet with OpenAI executives just a week after GPT-5's launch. Kirsten, we talked a bit about this in anticipation of it and I think that you called out something interesting to me where you were like immediately skeptical basically of the premise of it. You were like, why are they inviting you to dinner right now?
13:11 Speaker 01 And that wasn't an insult to you, by the way. Like, it wasn't like,
13:16 Speaker 02 It's really.
13:17 Speaker 01 Why you, Max, not me?
13:19 Speaker 02 Why would they want to go to dinner with Max? I mean, that is a great question, you know, so yeah.
13:24 Speaker 01 Yeah, that was not what it was about. And it's not me being cynical. Let's just say it's my experience of being in this situation in the past made me curious slash skeptical as to why. And especially because of the timing. I think it's important to think about the timing of this. GPT-5 had just come out. Obviously, OpenAI had very high expectations for this, was really talking a lot about. There was a lot of coverage and the benchmarks just didn't quite match up with, I think, the hype leading up to it, which, to be fair, I think is really hard to do right now. But that was why I was questioning the timing of it. My question for you is, what was the tone?
14:07 Speaker 01 Because you mentioned a couple of things in the article, and I want to tease that out a little bit, which was, it seemed like they weren't necessarily defending GPT-5 so much as trying to, I don't know if it was a distraction, but trying to get reporters at the dinner to think more about the future as opposed to the current product.
14:26 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think that my main takeaway from the dinner was that for a very long time, OpenAI has been defined by their AI model breakthroughs. They had GPT-4 come out in 2023, and that was kind of this revolutionary moment for the tech industry and the AI industry and definitely for OpenAI. And I think that there's been so much anticipation for their next model. And everyone's been focused on, can the model push capabilities forward, you know, to the same degree that we saw GPT-4? I don't think that happened with GPT-5 exactly, but nevertheless, models are a lot better today than they were in 2023. But I think that OpenAI really wanted to at least communicate to reporters at this dinner that we are not the same company we were in 2023.
15:11 Speaker 02 We are not defined by our best AI model. We have this massive consumer business. We have a growing enterprise business with partners like Cursor and Windsurf. They're supplying their models to. They also teased some new apps that they might have coming out. It's been reported that they're working on a browser. It's been reported that they're working on a social media app. We kind of talked vaguely about all these ideas at the dinner. They're clearly things that Sam Altman is interested in. And I think that that was a really kind of fascinating decision to just immediately say, look, GPT-5, we kind of messed up some things with that launch. They were very upfront about that. And then they immediately were looking to, but here are the bigger things on the horizon. So don't miss the forest for the trees.
15:55 Speaker 00 Yeah, and I want to encourage everybody who's listening who hasn't read Max's piece to do so because it's also just like a really fun piece. I think at TechCrunch, we don't necessarily do a lot of these kinds of features that have like scene setting and food details and things like that. And there's a lot of really fun stuff in there. But I think reading it and like just hearing you talk about it now, I mean, it also makes me feel, it's hard to escape the feeling a little bit that OpenAI is moving the goalposts a little, doing a little bit of like rhetorical sleight of hand. Like in the past, how there's been all this talk about, oh, when are we going to get to AGI, which is like a pretty wild goal already. And then Sam Altman was like, no, no, no, don't worry about getting to AGI. And he said, we're already there. And on the one hand, making these promises about how amazing the AI future is going to be. And then also saying like, don't worry too much about whether the technology we just launched is that good because it's already amazing.
16:39 Speaker 02 Yeah.
16:40 Speaker 01 The thing I was thinking about, and Anthony is right, the article is great and there's great scene setting there. But I was wondering if this is like the playbook or is this going to be the playbook that other companies are going to do? Are we going to see more? Is Max going to be invited to more dinners and more outings? Is this how AI companies are one of the ways that they're going to stand out amid the hype, which is to bring reporters in and try to recast or reframe exactly what they're doing? This felt a little bit like a Tesla moment, I will be honest with you, which is Tesla, especially right now, is intent on having shareholders think of them as a robotics and AI company,
17:21 Speaker 01 even though 80% or more of their revenue comes from selling vehicles, which aren't doing as well as they have historically. And it's all about reframing every single time. It's like, look over here, don't look at our present business. Let's talk about the future. And talking about the future is fun. So Max, I'm wondering if you think this is going to be another tactic that AI companies or just kind of a random one-off? And here I am at dinner.
17:49 Speaker 02 I don't think I'm gonna get invited to any more dinners. I think this was the last one. No, I think that this was an interesting moment for OpenAI because the hype leading up to GPT-5 was so great, in no small part because of them. I mean, they really did a lot to hype up the launch of GPT-5 over the last few years. But I got the impression that OpenAI was just happy to move past this moment because the expectations were almost like unmeatably high. You know, it's been reported that they considered calling a few other models before GPT-5, calling those GPT-5 because they wanted to get this model out sooner, but it just couldn't meet the expectations. And finally, they launched the thing, it still didn't really meet the expectations. So yeah, I think it was just a tough moment for them that they put themselves in.
18:33 Speaker 00 Putting you on the spot a little, Max, so they were trying to sell you this narrative essentially that, hey, maybe GPT-5 was not as successful technically in terms of consumer reception, you know, on a number of metrics as we might have hoped, but that doesn't really matter. The what we're going to achieve as OpenAI is still like marching forward. Did you, at the end of the dinner, feel like, oh yeah, like this isn't as catastrophic as maybe it looks from the outside?
18:55 Speaker 02 I certainly got the impression that OpenAI, they mentioned that their enterprise business is really doing quite well right now. I mean, they are now the default model in Cursor and a lot of other vibe coding apps, and those are important deals for OpenAI's enterprise business. The users in ChatGPT are growing a lot. So even though they've kind of made it seem like this group that was upset was like a small subset of users on X and Reddit that's very loud, but it's not really core to them. I will say that OpenAI has been very focused on AGI. GPT-5 was supposed to be a significant step towards AGI, but you're seeing them focus more on their business. Another company that's focusing really heavily on their business right now is Databricks. Databricks is
19:36 Speaker 02 kind of like, in my mind, the AI startup that's a hedge against AGI. Their CEO, Ali Gotze, he talked to Julie Bort, our senior venture editor this week, and she basically reported that Databricks is not focused on achieving superintelligence. They are like, we want to make agents that practically work for people. And they're becoming just this massive business, like very quietly just steamrolling competition right now. And they just raised another big round.
20:02 Speaker 01 Yeah, they raised a billion dollars at a hundred billion dollar valuation. So that's not a small amount of money. That's a lot of labubus. But they, to me, seem like the counter choice amid this hype cycle. If we're going to just like put a big umbrella, AI hype cycle. Databricks feels like the counterpoint to what you just said, actually, to like what's happening with OpenAI and things like that. Against this backdrop, though, there is still this kind of not huge pool of talent that all of these companies are fighting for. And there was a quote that actually stood out in Julie's story with the CEO. And he said that raising the extra cash, first of all, is going to be used for two AI projects.
20:47 Speaker 01 But it was also so that they could get into the AI poaching wars. And his quote was, as you know, it's pretty expensive to hire AI talent right now. So to me, that was really interesting. And I'm wondering what these folks who have kind of, they can pick where they want to go. Where are they're pulled more towards? The Databricks of the world or of this sector or the OpenAIs? I don't know, Max, if you have a sense of this because you're pretty deep in it. I mean, you're getting invited to dinners for crying out loud, so maybe you do. What are you hearing from the like AI engineers?
21:20 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, I think the AI researchers and engineers I talk to, I mean, they can make basically whatever amount of money they want at all these places. Money is becoming a much less motivating factor for them these days. I think that what's really motivating to them is the mission of a place and the ability to do interesting work in pursuit of what aligns with their own goals. So while Databricks has a very strong business, I think that they're probably better positioned than a lot of new AI startups right now to really be a lasting company. But I think that their mission is not super inspiring. Like, I think if you're a researcher who's like in your twenties, who's highly sought after, it might be a lot more fun to go chase AGI than build databases for agents.
22:05 Speaker 01 What about robots? Is that something that is compelling? Because there's a lot of money right now. And that brings us to our second theme, going towards robots right now.
22:15 Speaker 02 Robots are compelling. I mean, yes, that's definitely compelling.
22:19 Speaker 01 Okay, well, what I was leading up to our teasing is there was one deal, but it really got me thinking about like, what else is going on in robotics? And Field AI raised 405 million to build universal robot brains. I like to equate this to what sounds like an operating system or a self-driving system that can go into various different kinds of robots. And that actually matters because a robot that walks is different than a robot with wheels that is only for the indoor environment, which is different from maybe a robot that is for an outdoor environment and delivering burritos. So this was kind of interesting, significant company. But they're not the only ones raising money recently.
23:01 Speaker 01 And I don't know if you two have noticed the pace of money going into robotics, but it's certainly gotten my attention.
23:09 Speaker 00 It definitely seems like there's just more headlines, more announcements around funding that it had gotten quiet for a little while, partly because I think there've been a lot of investments that hadn't worked out. These are generally very capital-intensive companies. My sense is that robotics has essentially been caught up in this general fever around AI. And that, and the same with Field AI, right? It's in the name, but also that it's less about these breakthroughs in how you build a robot necessarily. I mean, maybe there are exceptions, but really the excitement is that, well, if we're making all these breakthroughs in AI and computer vision and things like that, then maybe we are going to get the next generation of robots.
23:44 Speaker 01 Yeah, I love the fact that you mentioned that Field AI has AI in its name. And I've seen a lot of robotics companies and autonomous vehicle companies sprinkle in AI, either in their name or in their mission statements or whatever. Even companies that have actually been working on this for a long time, and they are literally working on AI or a physical AI. So I think you're correct that that is reflective of All of the buzz around AI right now. To me, that what's really interesting about robotics and what I kind of like to see is that a few years ago, it was, and I know that this still exists, there's a lot of hype around humanoid robots and this idea of the optimists or the
24:26 Speaker 01 agility robots walking around and interacting. But there is actually quite a bit of money and interest going into industrial automation and companies like, for instance, GM using cobots, which is robots that work side by side with humans. They might not look like the sci fi version of the humanoid robot, but they have a real use case. And they are making factories safer or lifting heavier things and reducing the load for the human worker. There is money going into that as well, which I think, sure, not as exciting, but real. And I do like to see that within the industry.
25:08 Speaker 00 And when you say real, are these robots actually on like a number of factory floors now at scale?
25:13 Speaker 01 Yes, I would say that there are a number of robots that are industrial in design. So a child wouldn't be like, that is the robot that is in my brain, you know, like, they don't necessarily look like robots, but they are absolutely being used in factory floors at scale. Then there are companies like Gecko Robotics. This is a company that raised about 125 million earlier this year, and they have combined robotics with drones. They're all about being able to visually surveil industrial sites for those companies. So in drones, they say they can fly and swim, and that is kind of an interesting application to robotics
25:55 Speaker 01 in the industrial setting. So that's what we're seeing. Maybe not at massive volumes, but certainly notable and popping up in industrial and in commercial settings, for sure.
26:05 Speaker 02 I continue to be fascinated by how many robotics companies are out there chasing like the humanoid robot form, which it seems like field AI is doing too. Whenever I see these startups, I just can't help but think that is the human body really the optimal shape for a robot? I feel like it looks cool, and that's kind of what you think a robot should look like. But I just, I remember a longtime TechCrunch hardware editor, Brian Heater, always talked about this. It's like, why is the human body, like, why are they all obsessed with making a robot that can wear jeans and a t-shirt?
26:36 Speaker 00 I mean, I suspect it's not entirely rational. There is a sort of emotional excitement about that idea. I guess like the defense that I've read in like some science fiction at least, right, is that it's not that the human body is actually the ideal form, but it's the ideal form for interacting with all the tools that we've made. So that like, if you're not going to build a specialized robot for a specific role in the factory floor, but instead a robot that can handle all the other machinery on the factory floor, the human body is actually like a reasonably good form factor for that.
27:06 Speaker 01 But very difficult for humanoid robots is all of the dexterity. And if you talk to anyone, like you kind of understand how special the human body is, which is our ability to pick things up and do multiple things and not fall over on the floor. And this is something that people who have been working in robotics have been struggling with. It's a huge challenge is just to get the hand, to have the correct dexterity, to be able to pick up things, to have the fine and gross motor skills. Really fascinating. I do want to mention one thing before we leave, which is you mentioned robots wearing jeans. And I just got pitched. I just got pitched and I'm forgetting the name of the company,
27:47 Speaker 01 but they test jeans wearing on the interior of cars. And like, the robot actually does wear jeans. So I'm just going to leave you with that. I know you were like, making like a fun point, but it's real. Like, there is a robot out there wearing jeans.
28:04 Speaker 00 I just want to make sure I understand this. So it's robots who are testing jeans by wearing them on the insides of cars?
28:10 Speaker 01 No, they're testing actually like how jeans sometimes will like mess with car upholstery, apparently. So it's actually like being used to test the durability of car upholstery.
28:21 Speaker 02 You've heard of software as a service, but have you heard of robots wearing jeans as a service? RWJAS, that's the hottest next thing. And we're covering all of that on Equity.
28:32 Speaker 01 Yes, and maybe next week I'll come equipped with the name of this company because it's escaping me. Equity will be back next week. Until then, you can find Equity under the handle at EquityPod on X and Threads.
28:47 Speaker 03 Equity is produced by Teresa Locum-Solo with editing by Kel. We'd also like to thank TechCrunch's audience development team. Thank you so much for listening and we'll talk to you next time.
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