Altman’s Testimony, AI SPV Drama, Ebay Rejects $GME Bid | Diet TBPN

Diet TBPN delivers the best of today’s TBPN episode in 30 minutes. TBPN is a live tech talk show hosted by John Coogan and Jordi Hays, streaming weekdays 11–2 PT on X and YouTube, with each episode posted to podcast platforms right after. Described by The New York Times as “Silicon Valley’s newest obsession,” the show has recently featured Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, Mark Cuban, and Satya Nadella. Follow TBPN: https://TBPN.com https://x.com/tbpn https://open.spotify.com/show/2L6WMqY3GUPCGBD0dX6p00?si=674252d53acf4231 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/technology-brothers/id1772360235 https://www.youtube.com/@TBPNLive

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

• 0:02John Coogan?

  We have a great show for you today, folks. We have a bunch of guests and a bunch of news stories to go through. Of course, the trial is ongoing. Did you say that this might be the last week of the trial? I thought it was a four-week trial, but it sounds like it might wrap up.

• 0:14Speaker 01

  Are they ahead of schedule?

• 0:16John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 0:17Speaker 01

  Mike Isaac said it might end this week. I assume just because they're getting through the, like, you know, depositions, whatever, faster than.

• 0:23John Coogan?

  Yeah, I mean, it seems like Ilya has gone, Mira has gone, deposition of Sam Toner and Siobhan Zillis, and then Sam's on the stand right now, I think. Mike Isaac is live tweeting it, so we'll run through that. Sam Altman took the stand in the OpenAI versus Elon Musk trial this morning, just as a reminder. Here's what's at stake, per The Wall Street Journal. Musk is suing OpenAI and its leaders, Altman and Greg Brockman, for allegedly manipulating him into giving tens of millions of dollars to a nonprofit organization, only for them to turn the AI lab into a for-profit venture. Musk is also suing Microsoft, OpenAI's largest investor, for aiding Brockman and Altman in their alleged deception. So, a big turning point in the trial was last Wednesday, when former OpenAI CTO Mira Maroti and former board member Helen Tonner gave testimonies about the events leading

• 1:08John Coogan?

  up to the November 2023 failed board coup that were critical of Sam Altman's leadership style and candor. They call it the blip, where Sam was out and then back very quickly with a couple other people stepping into CEO for just a few days. But last week, OpenAI's side also began to land some punches on Musk. Earlier testimony from Siobhan Zillis and Greg Brockman also had already suggested Musk was not just defending a pure nonprofit vision. He had explored scenarios where OpenAI might become a part of Tesla, where Altman might help lead Tesla AI, and where Musk could retain deep control. Brockman also testified that Musk supported a for-profit conversion if Musk could control it, including a version tied to raising money for his Mars ambitions.

• 1:53John Coogan?

  Yesterday, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever took the stand. Satya largely buffed OpenAI's side, defending Microsoft's partnership with the company and saying that Musk never contacted him to complain about the deal violating any agreement Musk had with OpenAI's nonprofit, despite Musk having Satya's number. Ilya testified that he spent a year compiling a 50-page document documenting Sam's manipulative behavior, but also said he never promised Musk that OpenAI would remain permanently nonprofit. Also, it came out in the trial that Sutskever's stake in OpenAI is probably worth around $7 billion, which probably complicated how the judge and jury feel about his own motivations.

• 2:35John Coogan?

  So the story is, since Maroti, is first, the trial became a referendum on Altman's trustworthiness, then it became a referendum on whether the 2023 board was brave or incompetent, then Microsoft came in and tried to make it look like it was the stabilizing partner. Now Altman has to personally answer the core questions hanging over the whole case, whether OpenAI's evolution was a necessary adaptation to build Frontier AI, or a betrayal of the nonprofit mission Musk says he funded. The trial is expected to conclude this week, and you can

• 3:07Jordi Hays?

  Max Zeph pulled out a quote from Ilya, explaining why OpenAI has a for-profit. And he's, I guess, yeah, was playing, I don't think intentionally playing into the meme potential, but certainly that's how it played out. Ilya said, under oath, in a federal court, "If there's no funding, there's no big computer", Max Zeph says, in the running for quote of the year.

• 3:33John Coogan?

  If there's no funding, there's no big computer, and you need big computer if you want big AI. Sam Altman takes a stand in Musk versus OpenAI. Mike Isaac has a live blog going on X under Rat King. Let's run through some of what Mike Isaac is finding. OpenAI begins questioning Altman, much in the same way that the plaintiff's side had questioned Elon Musk, establishing that Altman, like Musk, has been enamored with AI for years and wanted to build inventive things with it. This was a very interesting tidbit from that, that original, like, that viral quote from Sam, where he's like, AI will probably destroy the world. That happened in 2015 and it was an answer to a question of like, what do you think the key problems to solve are? And then the next sentence in that quote that always gets clipped out is like, and

• 4:17John Coogan?

  I'm starting a company. Oh, it's more of a nonprofit to work on this problem exactly. Yeah. But that doesn't make it in. But so they were clearly both very interested in building beneficial AI, although they ultimately butted heads. And they were also very worried about Google. Altman email from 2015. Been thinking a lot whether it's possible to stop humanity from developing AI. I think the answer is almost definitely not. If it's going to happen anyway, it seems like it would be good for someone other than Google to do it first. Altman said Musk once said he would potentially pass control of OpenAI to his children upon his death. I would love to know more about what that means because if you fracture it into like

• 4:59John Coogan?

  20 different children at a certain point, like that can create a whole different dynamic of like succession, right? There's an old email that says Altman might have joined the board of Tesla as part of old AI discussions, also came with a nascent threat of Musk doing this AI work inside of Tesla. Very, it would be a shame if you didn't accept my offer sort of moves. This Tesla offer is interesting, says Mike Isaac. Musk's offer, Musk offers a board seat. Altman says it was something he felt was to assuage concerns that Altman would have no direction over the development of AI if it were folded into Tesla. But Altman also said it appeared to be a nascent threat. If Altman had not accepted the idea, according to him, Musk hinted that he may have done

• 5:44John Coogan?

  work developing AI on his own at Tesla regardless. And Mike Isaac gives some more context here. He says, this sort of talk is fairly commonplace these days on the battlefield that is Silicon Valley. Mark Zuckerberg, Meta's CEO, has in the past made overtures to companies he's interested in acquiring. Though he is often more explicit about his intentions. If you don't take the deal, we'll come for you. Tony Soprano vibes. Altman is criticizing stack ranking of engineers across AI labs, something Musk loves to do across his companies, apparently, and something very common across big codes like Meta and Amazon. And also, Microsoft is known for the for the stack ranking. They almost like invented it, or certainly popularized it throughout the 90s and 2000s, I believe.

• 6:25John Coogan?

  Altman says AI engineering labs need more psychological safety. You have to be willing to let a researcher go off and try something random in the corner. Very bottoms up. This is where the deep research project came from and a bunch of other AI breakthroughs came from. Altman says there was a meeting at Tesla during the evening about folding OpenAI into Tesla for AI research, and then a long, long period of time with Elon showing us memes on his phone. And apparently, the court reporter asked Sam Altman to repeat memes on his phone loudly. I don't know why they didn't hear it the first time, but Rat King, Mike Isaac is laughing at this. I am going to have Sam Altman stating memes on his phone into a booming courtroom mic

• 7:10John Coogan?

  playing inside of my head on repeat for the week. Memes on his phone in all caps. Getting hungry. He only had a banana this morning. Mike Isaac is suffering. His stamina points are draining. And he says LOL email between Altman and Siobhan talking about how to handle Musk and Altman telling him about a Microsoft investment. So Microsoft's going to invest. How how should we tell Elon? Altman narrates the email verbatim. Hopefully, it's easy. Cross fingers emoji, because you have to read it out. So really funny to hear cross fingers emoji in the court record. Altman is going through his real first postmortem of his firing, appears to have gone through all five stages of grief multiple times over the course of five days. What are the five stages of grief? Stages of grief?

• 7:54Jordi Hays?

  Cope, seethe.

• 7:55John Coogan?

  Cope, seethe, mulled. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Yeah, that is that is actually cope, seethe, mulled, munt, something.

• 8:10John Coogan?

  The five day period is what is referred to internally at OpenAI as the blip, since it was a brief intermission, for what it's worth. He said, Altman said, "I had poured the last years of my life into this. I was watching it about to be destroyed. There was something appealing about going to work at Microsoft. I was also very angry, hurt and upset. It felt like an incredible betrayal. It was definitely one of the hardest times in my life." Altman finally broaches the issue of his widely rumored untrustworthiness. "Clearly, there were misunderstandings and a breakdown of trust," he said. But with what comes of a bit of a practiced humility in his voice, quote, "I was not trying to deceive the board. I feel badly for the misunderstandings, but that was never my intent." This goes to the heart of how Musk's counsel has tried to portray Altman across the entirety of the trial.

• 8:55John Coogan?

  A fundamentally slippery operator who says one thing to one party and something else entirely to others. OpenAI's rebuttal to that line of thinking has been to depict a board of directors at OpenAI rife with dysfunction. And as Microsoft Satya Nadella put it earlier in this week, "Directors who were operating from amateur city." Interesting. Taking shots at the board. Okay, Sam is giving the full jury Sam treatment again, trying to bat back against Musk's picture of Altman as a serious liar. "If I knew how difficult and painful this was going to be, I never would have tried, but I'm very glad I did." OpenAI is done. Cross-examination begins. Steven Molo, lead Musk counsel, who has the flair for dramatic, will probably give us fireworks. And this is continuing.

• 9:40John Coogan?

  Says, "Oh, my God, Molo, are you completely trustworthy?" Altman says, "I believe so." Molo says, "Do you always tell the truth?" Wow, this is getting heavy. It's all about Musk counsel painting Sam as a liar. Brutal. Altman is on the defensive, but taking more of a muted tone with some attempt at humility in his voice. It's very clear contrast with how Musk appeared combative on the stand. Interesting. Cross-examination is basically Musk's lawyer, Molo, reading off a list of questions, saying, "Hey, bro, do you remember, do you remember all this messed up stuff you did?" And Altman saying, "No, I don't know. Not true." No?

• 10:13John Coogan?

  Absolute chaos. Well, you can follow along @MikeIsaac. He has a whole thread and he's live posting. And I believe that there's a New York Times Live blog as well that you can follow along with.

• 10:23Jordi Hays?

  Should we talk about SPVs?

• 10:24John Coogan?

  Cover this. Yes. Let's move over to SPVs. The special purpose vehicles.

• 10:30Jordi Hays?

  Post from.

• 10:31John Coogan?

  Rocking the valley right now. People are raking in the dough with SPVs.

• 10:37Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, so.

• 10:38John Coogan?

  Not everyone's happy about it.

• 10:39Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, we can actually go down a little bit and pull up this post, which has since been deleted.

• 10:46John Coogan?

  Oh, really?

• 10:47Jordi Hays?

  The post said a few days ago, "Simply brokering an anthropic secondary deal made me more money than my entire net worth from working in my twenties. This is insane. It is especially insane because this is not legal. It is insane to post."

• 11:05John Coogan?

  Is it not legal?

• 11:06Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, so you need a broker dealer license to broker securities.

• 11:10John Coogan?

  Yeah, that's right. That's right. Well, I mean, she didn't say that she doesn't have one. She might.

• 11:15Jordi Hays?

  Very, very unlikely. It's very burdensome. Just the compliance to actually get your own broker dealer. Even there's people that I know that just do secondary transactions. They don't even have their broker dealer license. They work under a firm that does. They basically like contract with a firm. So they're kind of like, almost like a real estate agent working under a broker.

• 11:35John Coogan?

  I'm smelling an intern challenge. Tyler?

• 11:39Jordi Hays?

  Get your broker dealer. Figure out a way to use AI to bring down the compliance burden.

• 11:44John Coogan?

  Slash goal. Throw that slash goal down. Get me a broker dealer license.

• 11:48Jordi Hays?

  X high.

• 11:49John Coogan?

  X high, 5.5 codex.

• 11:51Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 11:52John Coogan?

  And try and try and get your broker dealer license.

• 11:54Jordi Hays?

  And so.

• 11:55John Coogan?

  Let's see what it does.

• 11:56Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, turns out that if you want to broker securities.

• 12:01John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 12:01Jordi Hays?

  Transactions.

• 12:02John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 12:02Jordi Hays?

  It is, there's a big regulatory burden.

• 12:06John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 12:06Jordi Hays?

  For good reason, right? We're talking about, you know, transactions that are at the scale of high end residential real estate in this case.

• 12:16John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 12:16Jordi Hays?

  You know, if this individual was maybe getting like a 5% fee on the deal. Paid in cash. Who knows?

• 12:24John Coogan?

  No.

• 12:25Jordi Hays?

  It could have been, you know.

• 12:26John Coogan?

  Wait, there is another take here, which is that there's the term brokering, which requires the broker dealer license. But there is also the format where you set up an SPV. The SPV takes in money from an investor and then buys secondary from someone who has the right to sell it, maybe an investor who is not subject to the form that we saw Anthropic put out. Right? And in that case.

• 12:51Jordi Hays?

  We'll get to that.

• 12:52John Coogan?

  We'll get to that. But hypothetically, there are SPVs that they are not technically brokering the secondary deal, but they are facilitating it and they do take a fee. Right? Because SPVs often have fees associated with them. And that does not require a broker dealer license.

• 13:09Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 13:09John Coogan?

  So it's possible.

• 13:10Jordi Hays?

  But the straightforward interpretation of the post.

• 13:13John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 13:13Jordi Hays?

  Is that they had some sort of side letter, which was like.

• 13:17John Coogan?

  Or they just got paid.

• 13:17Jordi Hays?

  If I can find you. Yeah. If I can find you a buyer. If I can find you a buyer for 100 million of your shares, you give me 5 million dollars.

• 13:24John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 13:25Jordi Hays?

  That that happens a lot, but it usually and hopefully is happening through.

• 13:31John Coogan?

  Legal channels.

• 13:32Jordi Hays?

  Dealer. So this seemingly prompted both.

• 13:37John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah. I think this is what started it. Right? This must be what started it because that post really, really.

• 13:42Jordi Hays?

  More specific language.

• 13:44John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 13:44Jordi Hays?

  On their site saying Anthropic said unauthorized Anthropic stock sales and investment scams.

• 13:50John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 13:50Jordi Hays?

  And said, you know, basically saying any transfer or sale of Anthropic stock or any interest in Anthropic stock that has not been approved by our board of directors is void and will not be recognized on our books and records.

• 14:02John Coogan?

  Mm hmm.

• 14:04Jordi Hays?

  And so, yeah, typically.

• 14:08Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, typically like these are, there are so many ways to like transact.

• 14:14John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 14:14Jordi Hays?

  Without informing the company.

• 14:16John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 14:16Jordi Hays?

  Right? A common one would be, you know, futures contract.

• 14:20John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 14:21Jordi Hays?

  Basically selling the right to

• 14:25John Coogan?

  Yeah, and so

• 14:25Jordi Hays?

  The right to the investment and the future performance.

• 14:27John Coogan?

  Yeah, and so I think the futures, the economic exposure enthusiasts or the futures contracts teams would say that,

• 14:38John Coogan?

  well, we didn't, we, there was no sale of the stock. We didn't transfer the stock and it's not a direct interest in the stock. And so it doesn't need to be approved by the board of directors and the board of directors would say, absolutely not. That doesn't count. You think you found a workaround and it doesn't count in this world, but that is going to be, you know.

• 15:00Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. So the funny thing is there's, there's these sort of digital asset equivalents, like people making like basically meme stocks around that, that are trying to track overall interest or the overall valuation of these companies. They sold off, which is funny because I don't believe they're actually tied to any

• 15:18John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 15:19Jordi Hays?

  Real underlying equity.

• 15:20John Coogan?

  And, and even in the case And even, and even in the case that they were like saying that they were tied, it was typically like it had one, one to 5% of the fund in Anthropic or OpenAI or SpaceX and, and they were like already well disconnected from the fundamentals of the book value, right?

• 15:37Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. So I'm, I'm trying to think through how this plays out and overall, I think the reaction from the internet was being more dramatic than maybe, maybe is necessary because already like if you're, if you're, let's say an early investor in Anthropic and you at some point sold your shares, you didn't go to the board and get permission, but you structured some deal to sell your shares.

• 16:04John Coogan?

  You get your shares back.

• 16:05Jordi Hays?

  That is so, so

• 16:07John Coogan?

  Win, win.

• 16:07Jordi Hays?

  Waiting, well, waiting for, for that.

• 16:10John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 16:12Jordi Hays?

  On one hand, neither party, if you bought the shares or you sold the shares, neither party is that incentivized to go to Anthropic board and be like, hey, I'm really sorry. Like, we did this. It was against. Because on one hand, like, there's probably some scenario where the investor or the Anthropic employee could get their shares, like, voided or reclaimed in some scenario. So they don't necessarily want to do that. The investor is like, well, I bought these shares and now they're worth a lot more, so let's just, like, be chill and let this play out and we'll all forget about it, right? But there is a scenario where the seller tries to then make the case of, oh, actually, I'll just give you the money back because now the stock is appreciated so massively.

• 16:55John Coogan?

  Sure, sure, sure.

• 16:56Jordi Hays?

  There might be a weird. But what ends up happening is like, there's sort of this, like, legal tension, right? Tension between both these parties. And then there could be some incentive. Again, the person that bought the shares of lower valuation wants to just let it ride.

• 17:11John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 17:12Jordi Hays?

  But then, but then, somebody might be like, well, I kind of would happily ride up another 20x or something like that. But then if this starts going, if, once it goes into, like, an actual complaint or a lawsuit, then it becomes public. And then you have this third party in there, which is Anthropic, which is like, gonna just be like, hey, like, you guys have been messing around. Like, this isn't, this isn't cool. This is against, against, you know, multiple sort of agreements and, and terms. So, anyways, it's gonna be very messy, right?

• 17:43John Coogan?

  So, there's, there's, there's already been- This blog post is also, these blog posts are not new rules. It's merely they are publicizing rules that are probably already in the stock documents.

• 17:52Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. Because if you invested earlier, you're an employee.

• 17:56John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 17:56Jordi Hays?

  You should know all this.

• 17:57John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 17:57Jordi Hays?

  Which isn't a surprise, right?

• 17:59John Coogan?

  Well, it's possible that very early investors don't have transfer restrictions for some reason. I don't think so.

• 18:04Jordi Hays?

  No, no, no.

• 18:04John Coogan?

  It's pretty standard.

• 18:05Jordi Hays?

  No, you always, you always set this up as a company because, imagine you have an early angel investor and your company does well, and they just sell it to somebody who you don't like. Like, part of the reason to be private is you can control who-

• 18:18John Coogan?

  I just mean, like, every deal is unique and every deal gets negotiated points. And there might be at some point when some investor or employee was like, I'm not joining unless you give me this. And they're like, okay, yeah, we'll give, we'll pay you less, but we'll give you this.

• 18:30Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, maybe.

• 18:30John Coogan?

  There's always, like, horse trading, like, double trigger, single trigger.

• 18:33Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, but it would be, it would be like-

• 18:34John Coogan?

  People negotiate for different things. I, I, I agree with you. I agree. I agree. I agree with you.

• 18:38Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. Who knows how many transactions there's actually been? I don't know, there could be like, when you actually look down through all the trees of SPVs and

• 18:45John Coogan?

  A lot, a lot.

• 18:47Jordi Hays?

  There could be, what, what?

• 18:48John Coogan?

  A lot.

• 18:49Jordi Hays?

  10, over

• 18:50John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 18:51Jordi Hays?

  20,000.

• 18:52John Coogan?

  It's not, it's not like taxi cab driver telling you about the SPV that they got into yet, but it's like close to it. I mean, there was the story of the guy who was like selling his house for Anthropic Secondary, right? Like, there's a lot of examples of this, like.

• 19:06Jordi Hays?

  Oh, that's bad, too. Imagine, imagine the, the, the, like, record updates.

• 19:12Jordi Hays?

  Like, like, you'll be able to look at the deed or whatever.

• 19:15John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 19:15Jordi Hays?

  Oh, who's the new owner? Oh, you work, you're an early.

• 19:20Jordi Hays?

  Like, so that transaction, that whole transaction doesn't really work?

• 19:22John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah, that's extremely public.

• 19:24Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 19:25John Coogan?

  It's way more complicated, yeah. Well, let's break it down for the Frog and Toad fans, the children in the audience, because Frankie over at Paradigm put it in terms even a child could explain, potentially a four, five-year-old. So, if you're familiar with just Frog and Toad and you don't know anything about all the buzzwords we've been dropping for the last five minutes, you can think about it this way. Frog and Toad, the loved children's book. Frog put the shares of Anthropic, or OpenAI, in an SPV. There, he said, now we can transfer these shares freely.

• 19:57John Coogan?

  But Anthropic can still exercise its transfer restrictions, said Toad. That is true, said Frog. The Frog and Toad, it's a great one. Anker says, if Anthropic deems all secondary sales of Anthropic stock should be voided, does that mean the original buyer retains financial interest even after selling it away? Lawsuit territory, yeah, there's gonna be a messy thing. People have been talking about unwinding SpaceX AAA or SPVs for a long time.

• 20:23Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, that's gonna be a billion-dollar, that's gonna be almost a billion-dollar industry.

• 20:26John Coogan?

  Yeah, we need to get the Mac, we need to get the MacGrim clip up again. It goes viral every time we talk about SPVs. What does Mike Isaac say? He says, "Yeah, look, all the Privcos draft this language to scare employees who don't know better from trading on secondary markets and from buyers seeking those shares. And yet SPVs find a way. Funny to see the saber rattling and Twitter accounts doing hyperbolic posts, though." And so it'll be interesting to see, like, how far does the legal implications, how far do they actually go? Well, over at a different AI lab, Mira Maroti, who was just, was Mira on the stand? She was actually testifying in person, or was she just a video deposition?

• 21:09Speaker 01

  When I saw her, which was last Wednesday, it was just a deposition. I don't believe she actually has testified in the trial yet.

• 21:16John Coogan?

  It was Siobhan that was on the stand?

• 21:17Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 21:17John Coogan?

  Got it. Okay. Well, Mira is cooking over at Thinking Machines Lab, TML launch, interaction models with a delightfully concise YouTube video that we should play so that we can watch this. Mira Maroti says on X, "Today, we are sharing our work on interaction models, a new class of model, trained from scratch to handle real-time interaction natively instead of gluing it to, onto a turn-based one." Let's play the video.

• 21:47Speaker 03

  Hey, I need your help with something today. You ready?

• 21:49Speaker 04

  Absolutely. I'm ready. What's up?

• 21:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, so we're giving an announcement today, and I've got two of my friends coming to help. Every time one of them enters the frame, I need you to say, "Friend."

• 22:01John Coogan?

  Look at those speakers.

• 22:02Speaker 04

  Got it. I'll say "friend" whenever one of them marries in.

• 22:05John Coogan?

  Absolutely insane setup, audio file.

• 22:07Speaker 03

  Cool. So we've got a new system for full duplex audio and video, which means that you can stream input into it in real time, and it can respond to you even while you're speaking to it simultaneously. How does that sound?

• 22:18Speaker 04

  Sounds like a solid setup. Full duplex with real-time interaction is super useful.

• 22:29John Coogan?

  It seems faster than the original voice mode, which was lamented by viral Instagram reel producers.

• 22:37Speaker 05

  Can you translate to in English in real time for my friend and for audience?

• 22:44Speaker 04

  Absolutely, I'll translate as you go.

• 22:49Speaker 04

  Today, we're taking a look at our preview model.

• 22:52John Coogan?

  I saw, or I heard about, a version of this in China that's a mask that you wear that translates everything you say out of a speaker on the front. And I was hearing this and I was just like, why is this not in America? This seems so sick. Like, we hear about the AirPods, but then you... So, the example was a mom in China teaching her kids English. And so she basically wants to be talking to them in English constantly, but she doesn't know enough English to teach them, but she wants them to learn. And so she will, I think, wear...

• 23:24Jordi Hays?

  Put on the mask.

• 23:25John Coogan?

  No, it's literally a Bane mask. It looks exactly like a Bane mask. Yeah. Yeah.

• 23:32John Coogan?

  You merely adopted English. She was born in it, or born in the AI translation minds. So she wears this Bane mask that does the live translation out to her kids. Her kids speak back to her in English. Smart headphones translate back.

• 23:47Jordi Hays?

  Have like metal that wraps around?

• 23:49John Coogan?

  I don't know. I couldn't find it. I was listening to it on a podcast, so I didn't have any visuals. But we gotta find this thing and get a pair in America because in theory, we could do the whole show speaking Chinese to each other and the audience would hear Chinese, but we would be hearing English that we talk to each other.

• 24:06Jordi Hays?

  Whoa.

• 24:07John Coogan?

  Isn't that cool?

• 24:07Jordi Hays?

  Powerful.

• 24:08John Coogan?

  So I would be hearing English on a massive delay, probably, but I would be speaking Chinese as it comes out of my Bane mask. And it was just a whole story. The whole thrust of the New York Times Daily was like the optimism of AI, optimism in China around AI. Just tons and tons of examples of, you know, everyday people being like, "Oh yeah, like AI is amazing. I'm teaching my kids English. They're gonna have a great life." And like, I would not... Be able to do this before and now I can just do this. And there's like so many examples of that. It's the exact

• 24:42Jordi Hays?

  David says the moment Jordy gets a live translation button, it's over. Yeah, we're not that far away from me.

• 24:47Speaker 01

  We're working on that right now, actually.

• 24:48John Coogan?

  Wait, really?

• 24:49Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, for, I guess.

• 24:51John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah, for gas.

• 24:52Speaker 01

  For that mask, I would actually be very surprised if that's like real or at least if the audio sounds very good. No, because like you can just look at like, okay, what are the best like real time translation models? What are they like API prices? They're like not super cheap. So you can't do it locally, which means it's somehow in the cloud, right? And just like even the best models are, there's still some delay and they're just basically now getting to a point where it like sounds like a real person and not like super computer like digitized audio.

• 25:19John Coogan?

  It has a, it has a clanker dialect.

• 25:21Speaker 01

  Okay. So yeah, maybe, but, but just like getting the latency down is like extremely difficult because people have been working on this for, I mean, this is like

• 25:28John Coogan?

  You don't think you can do it on device at all? What if you basically bake a phone?

• 25:31Speaker 01

  At some point you can, but I think it's still like very

• 25:33John Coogan?

  Phone ASIC for this one model, you take the Lama three version of it, you bake it down, the huge battery pack. You're wearing a whole jet pack full of batteries to power the H100 in the back. It's on device inference, but they didn't say how big the suit is. You have to wear the connects for the mask. Like

• 25:50Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, it's like the Nathan for you. No, it's like the Nathan for you, the chili suit.

• 25:55John Coogan?

  Yeah, but it's an NBL 72 that you're just like dragging behind you like a washing machine. Anyway, GameStop is going to need to level up if they want to successfully take over eBay because eBay has rejected GameStop's $55 billion takeover bid. The online marketplace, that's eBay, called the cash and stock proposal, quote, neither credible nor attractive. The New York Times has a story here, the online marketplace rejected the proposal. This news should surprise no one since the odds it would accept GameStop's brash offer were infinitesimally remote. There is another media deal going on right now. Byron Allen is buying BuzzFeed,

• 26:39John Coogan?

  investing $120 million in the digital media company and will become the CEO. This is a very interesting story because I don't know how familiar you are or the audience is with Byron Allen, but he had a fascinating career where he was originally, he jumped straight into late night talk show host. He was, he became a late night talk show host and then eventually. Had this very interesting business where he would buy-

• 27:06Jordi Hays?

  Zero to yap.

• 27:08John Coogan?

  Basically. He would buy the rights to broadcast on TV in certain slots, in certain hours, and then he would independently go sell advertising against the programming that he would put together. And so the money would flow from the advertiser to him, and then he would pay to air his content on traditional TV.

• 27:34Jordi Hays?

  Interesting.

• 27:34John Coogan?

  Very interesting.

• 27:35Jordi Hays?

  He was on the hook for the airtime, basically, but any difference-

• 27:39John Coogan?

  But he was paying for the airtime. And then he eventually bought the Weather Channel and a number of other, sort of, traditional, over the air TV stations, and sort of grew. He's also, will be taking over the time slot from, I believe, Stephen Colbert, post that changeover, with a show called, what is it, Comics Unleashed? It's a roundtable conversation. It's sort of just a podcast with a bunch of comics. Allen Family Digital, a company associated with Mr. Allen, will pay $120 million for 52% stake. And this is a huge jump from where BuzzFeed was trading. I think BuzzFeed was trading around, like, 40 to 80 million market cap or something, so it's like almost a three-axe premium,

• 28:22John Coogan?

  and we can get into the share price in a minute. But, yeah, I'm sure there will be more developments on what happens with BuzzFeed as-

• 28:29Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I'm so curious what the plan is. I don't think it's a good brand at this point. Certainly has name recognition, but I don't know anybody that wakes up in the morning and-

• 28:39John Coogan?

  Homepages is it?

• 28:40Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I gotta know what BuzzFeed is talking about today. Granted, there's probably a lot of people, and Byron is a media tycoon.

• 28:50John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 28:51Jordi Hays?

  So, now, that's why I'm curious. Like, what is, what's the play here?

• 28:55John Coogan?

  No, I think he sees opportunity.

• 28:57Jordi Hays?

  If you, if you had $120 million to just build a new media property- You wonder, hey, what could you actually do? So is there some massive audience that's still sneakily more engaged? Maybe he sees a pivot to prediction markets.

• 29:16John Coogan?

  Oh, I don't know.

• 29:17Jordi Hays?

  You know, I don't know.

• 29:18John Coogan?

  Let's open the cover of BuzzFeed today. Let's check it out. BuzzFeed.com. 50. Why would you put that thing in writing photos that prove people are the worst? That's the number one trending article on BuzzFeed. 41 celebs people used to love and now can't even stand to look at. 22. They really go, they love the listicle and they're getting longer. I was joking about five key reasons. That would be, I would never make the cut at modern BuzzFeed. 22 stories about boy moms and their sons that will make you cringe into oblivion.