WE'RE BACK, Meta Addiction, Tim Cook's Last Day | Jordan Schneider, Robert Mendelsohn & Eric Olszewski, Billy Thalheimer, Aaron Cannon, Stephen Balaban

(03:29) - Meta Addiction (20:32) - Tim Cook's Last Day (31:33) - OpenAI's Jalapeño Chip (39:48) - 𝕏 Timeline Reactions (58:39) - Jordan Schneider discusses China’s low-cost EVs, opposition to data centers, ineffective influence operations, AI-generated media, online censorship, and technology investment. The ChinaTalk founder and editor-in-chief also examines DeepSeek’s strategy and chip constraints, China’s employment climate, surveillance, flying vehicles, and corruption within the military’s Rocket Force. (01:35:01) - Robert Mendelsohn & Eric Olszewski. Robert Mendelsohn co-founder of Actinide, discusses the startup’s breakthrough production of HALEU, a specialized uranium fuel for next-generation nuclear reactors. He explains how Actinide modernized Manhattan Project-era Calutron technology and is navigating technical, regulatory, and commercialization challenges to scale isotope enrichment in the United States. Eric Olszewski is the co-founder and CEO of Actinide, an advanced materials company building electromagnetic isotope-separation technology for nuclear energy, medicine, and other frontier industries. In August 2026, Actinide announced it had produced research quantities of HALEU, the enriched uranium fuel needed by many next-generation nuclear reactors, using a Texas-built modern calutron. Olszewski previously co-founded the blockchain infrastructure company Transmute. (01:42:19) - Billy Thalheimer discusses Regent’s $240 million Series B, growing commercial and defense orders, and plans to scale its Rhode Island Seaglider factory. He explains the company’s electric and hybrid propulsion strategies, global coastal transportation opportunities, international expansion, and commitment to rigorous safety standards. (01:55:12) - Aaron Cannon discusses Outset’s growth and its launch of AI-powered digital twins grounded in interviews and data from individual customers. He explains how these twins help companies simulate customer reactions, research hard-to-reach audiences, and eventually anticipate business questions and recommend actions. (02:04:32) - Stephen Balaban, co-founder and CEO of AI cloud provider Lambda, discusses misinformation surrounding AI data centers and argues that accurate context can shift public opinion. He highlights their local economic benefits, efficient water use, renewable-energy potential, and strategic importance to U. S. national security and industrial growth while supporting community-level decision-making. TBPN is made possible by: Ramp - https://ramp.com Public - https://public.com Cisco - https://www.cisco.com Console - https://www.console.com CrowdStrike - https://www.crowdstrike.com Figma - https://www.figma.com MongoDB - https://www.mongodb.com NYSE - https://www.nyse.com Railway - https://railway.com Shopify - https://www.shopify.com Codex - http://openAI.com/codex Follow TBPN: https://TBPN.com https://x.com/tbpn https://open.spotify.com/show/2L6WMqY3GUPCGBD0dX6p00?si=674252d53acf4231 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tbpn/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.

• 0:00John Coogan?

  You're watching TVB. Today is Monday, August 31st. We are live from the TVP in Ultra Dome, the temple of technology, the fortress of finance.

• 0:09Jordi Hays?

  The capital of capital.

• 0:11John Coogan?

  We are back.

• 0:12Jordi Hays?

  We missed you.

• 0:13John Coogan?

  Is still with us. Let me tell you about Ramp. Time is money, say both. Easy to use corporate cards, bill pay, accounting and a whole lot more.

• 0:21John Coogan?

  Oh, feels so good to be back. Two weeks is a crazy amount of time to be away.

• 0:25Jordi Hays?

  I don't understand how children do this for weeks or months at a time.

• 0:31John Coogan?

  It's wild. It's wild.

• 0:32Jordi Hays?

  It's great.

• 0:33John Coogan?

  There's a lot of video games.

• 0:33Jordi Hays?

  I was sitting there. I had somebody this morning say, it feels like it must have gone by so fast. And I was thinking, no, it absolutely didn't go by fast at all. It felt like, it felt like two months.

• 0:45John Coogan?

  Yeah, it did feel like two months.

• 0:46Jordi Hays?

  We manipulated time.

• 0:47John Coogan?

  Yeah, but thank you to the Microsoft team, the Activision team. They sent us codes for Modern Warfare 4. My review is in. It's fantastic. I love it. It's a really good game. Really polished and the kill block.

• 1:01Jordi Hays?

  Did you revert back at all to?

• 1:03John Coogan?

  Didn't really have the opportunity. I was joking about full relapse, just gaming from dusk till dawn. But that is in fact not in the cards these days.

• 1:13Jordi Hays?

  Pizza. I was eating pizza almost like twice a day at times. Eating a lot of pizza, surfing a lot.

• 1:22John Coogan?

  That's good.

• 1:22Jordi Hays?

  Lot of family time.

• 1:24John Coogan?

  Do you think pizza is potentially addictive?

• 1:26Jordi Hays?

  I do.

• 1:27John Coogan?

  You think that there could be a settlement?

• 1:28Jordi Hays?

  I do think, I don't think there could. I think there should.

• 1:31John Coogan?

  There should be. I do wonder, like, because cigarettes, it was very, cigarettes were very scientifically proven to be addictive. Like, you can give nicotine to a mouse and it will like go and try and get more nicotine. Like, it's the most cut and dry. You can run the experiment with, you know, any animal, any creature in the blood.

• 1:52Jordi Hays?

  Based on my own personal experience, pizza and surfing would fall into that same box. You let a mouse get barreled.

• 1:58John Coogan?

  Yeah. If you give a mouse a cookie.

• 2:00Jordi Hays?

  You give a mouse a barrel.

• 2:01John Coogan?

  Barrel.

• 2:02Jordi Hays?

  Gets spit out of that thing.

• 2:03John Coogan?

  He was gonna want a Corona with a lime. Yeah, for sure. But it will be interesting to see where the addiction stuff goes because when, when all this came up, you know, the meta social media addiction, I was kind of like.

• 2:17Jordi Hays?

  Give a mouse a scroll.

• 2:19John Coogan?

  Like, I understand that people were trying to. I don't know. Can you get mice or monkeys addicted to reels? Maybe.

• 2:27Jordi Hays?

  I'm sure, almost certainly.

• 2:29John Coogan?

  You think you could get a monkey addicted to Instagram reels?

• 2:32Jordi Hays?

  I think 100%.

• 2:34John Coogan?

  Well, we gotta try. We're gonna find out.

• 2:37Jordi Hays?

  We can't get any monkeys because they're, they're sold out?

• 2:40John Coogan?

  No, no, you can get a monkey. You just have to pay top dollar. They're expensive.

• 2:44Jordi Hays?

  Wide demand.

• 2:44John Coogan?

  But you can, you can buy one. But I do, it did seem like it was, it was a tougher sell because it was not a chemically addictive product. It was more of a psychological thing. There's a benefit to it. There's a free speech element. All very complicated. I was not expecting to see a big settlement when this first came up years ago. I thought it was going to be more nickel and diming little case by case things. But in fact, there has been a huge settlement by Meta. Two days ago, or this was when this was written, this was August 26th, Meta announced settlements with attorneys general representing 48 states and the District of Columbia and three US territories. So there were only two states that held back.

• 3:26John Coogan?

  I believe it's Texas and New Mexico. But over allegations that Facebook and Instagram harmed children and teens. So this has been boiling up for a while. There were smaller settlements. This is the big one. And so the high level numbers here, Meta will pay the states $12.7 billion over 10 years, and it could go up to $18 billion if other platforms join the settlement.

• 3:55Jordi Hays?

  It's a big, it's a big number.

• 3:57John Coogan?

  It is a big number. And honestly, if you are a state legislator or you care about having your state funded for a variety of things, this is good news. This is a size gong moment for the states because they will be getting this money distributed to them and they can use that to do whatever states do from education to healthcare. There's a lot of different things that states can do. I know Tyler's pissed because he doesn't like the government getting a dime, but, but it is a size gong moment for them.

• 4:22Jordi Hays?

  I did find a video of a chimpanzee hitting reels. If we can pull this up. Let's pull this up. This is, this is important.

• 4:29John Coogan?

  This is very.

• 4:30Jordi Hays?

  Definitely more important than.

• 4:31John Coogan?

  Ooh, okay. Yeah, this looks, okay, maybe, maybe, maybe social media is addictive. Now that I'm seeing this, this is, yeah, it might be universal. If it crosses, wow.

• 4:44Jordi Hays?

  Using it so intuitively?

• 4:46John Coogan?

  Yep. Yep. I mean, that's just good UI design. Come on. You gotta give the UX engineer some credit here. Make it so easy to use that even a monkey could use it. That was the prompt for that UX engineer and they delivered. This is, yeah, if it crosses, if it crosses species barriers, I'm much more likely to agree that something could be addictive. But.

• 5:12Jordi Hays?

  Well, and here especially, you know, he's looking at.

• 5:15John Coogan?

  Other monkeys.

• 5:16Jordi Hays?

  Monkeys.

• 5:17John Coogan?

  Okay, that's a little, I don't know. Yeah.

• 5:20Jordi Hays?

  No, I know, but an algo feed, it's going to naturally start serving a lot of those videos.

• 5:24John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, makes sense. Anyway, so everyone has been drawing analogies to the tobacco industry's master settlement agreement around this because that's the last time there was a huge multi-billion, tens of billions of dollar settlement between a large organization around addiction and a bunch of states. That's what's happened when cigarette companies signed the master settlement agreement, all of the companies agreeing to pay all the states. But the structure was a little bit different and there's some nuance there. And so Eric Sufrin over at Mobile Dev Memo, friend of the show, says, the sufenator, he, he was saying this is not necessarily the, he said, Meta's settlement is no big tobacco

• 6:07John Coogan?

  moment. That was his takeaway in Mobile Dev Memo. You should go subscribe because this post is a paid, paid post. But I'll take you through some of the interesting analysis that he put together. I was debating with a lawyer friend of mine about this over the weekend and, and have some interesting details here. So Eric writes, and the headline here is that what Meta is going to pay as a percentage of revenue or what the social media industry will pay as a percentage of revenue relative to what the tobacco industry paid as a percentage of revenue is off by almost an order of magnitude. So let's put them in context here. So he says Meta's settlement is comparatively paltry. A white paper from the USDA using BLS data

• 6:48John Coogan?

  estimates that the total US consumer expenditure on tobacco products in 1998, when the master settlement agreement was signed, was roughly $57 billion a year. 57 billion.

• 7:05John Coogan?

  Certainly good if you're a big tobacco shareholder, I suppose. Annualizing the roughly $250 billion in combined tobacco settlement payments over 25 years produces an average of 10 billions per, 10 billion per year is what they've been paying. And so that was equivalent to 17 and a half percent in 1998 domestic expenditure. So you could think about it as like when tobacco got hit with like, you're addictive. What did the government say you gotta pay? They asked for 17 and a half percent.

• 7:35Jordi Hays?

  Very, very meaningful.

• 7:37John Coogan?

  Very, very meaningful.

• 7:38Jordi Hays?

  And that's, that's off the top, right?

• 7:40John Coogan?

  Yes, yes. This is revenue.

• 7:41Jordi Hays?

  It's, it's not like, hey, you gotta give us a percentage of your profits.

• 7:45John Coogan?

  Yes. And so it's calculated in a more complicated way. It's not exactly a percentage. It's on a per pack sold, but it is inflation adjusted. And so there's a whole bunch of other mechanics that really have, have allowed the master settlement agreement to deliver tens of billions of dollars on an ongoing basis, even while now tobacco sales are slumping, cigarette sales are declining. And so that does create more complex dynamics for the states, but still it's 17 and a half percent of the industry's revenue coming to states as effectively an extra tax on top, which I think a lot of people would agree is good because cigarettes are bad, right? But what's going on with Meta and social media? So given

• 8:25John Coogan?

  Meta's full year 2025 US revenue of 75 billion roughly, per the company's 10K, its average annual payment, if they pay the full 18 billion, because they're paying that over 10 years, it's 1.8 billion. So what is 1.8 billion of 75 billion? It's 2.4%. So instead of 17 and a half percent.

• 8:45Jordi Hays?

  Sorry, where are you getting the 75?

• 8:48John Coogan?

  75 billion was their US revenue.

• 8:50Jordi Hays?

  Oh, US, US. Globally, globally, it was like a couple hundred.

• 8:53John Coogan?

  Yeah, bigger, bigger. But, but you have to comp it to domestic because that's where this is taking effect, right? So it would be even lower if you look at overall revenue, which is a good point. But you can think about it as tobacco had to pay 17 and a half percent of domestic revenue. Social media, 2.5% of domestic revenue. So not quite an order of magnitude, but a significant gap, significant gap there. And so it's important to reiterate here, says Eric Sufrin over at Mobile Dev Memo, that the MSA payment, the master settlement agreement payment schedule is inflation adjusted and tracks unit sales. Meta's statement, settlement has no such mechanism. So let's say that Meta doubles

• 9:34John Coogan?

  revenue, their percentage they'll pay is lower. And then let's say inflation kicks in, they're still going to be paying, you know, this $1.8 billion a year, 10 years from now could be, could be pennies if hyperinflation happens. Who knows?

• 9:48Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, the only reason it felt somewhat significant from a dollar standpoint is because Meta is just spending so much money on AI, right?

• 9:58John Coogan?

  Interesting.

• 9:59Jordi Hays?

  Like, like I, you can just imagine Zach being like, I really wish I could have given that to Jensen, right?

• 10:06John Coogan?

  So I had the opposite. I had the opposite read, which was, I saw 18 billion and I was like, ah, that's like, you know, a month of AI spend for them. And I was like, ah, this is not that much money. And then of course it's over 10 years. And so when you think about it as it's, it's $1.8 billion a year, so that's 100 mil a month. That's their token budget right now? I don't know, maybe less.

• 10:31Jordi Hays?

  Overall, it's insignificant. But when when they are spending more money than they are making, it hurts a little bit more.

• 10:42John Coogan?

  Yeah, so for sure, for sure. So the other issue that came up here that is different from the tobacco master settlement agreement is the question about the First Amendment, the free speech issue. So tobacco, the tobacco industry was restricted from advertising cigarettes as part of this master settlement agreement. And there were there were other cases that led to no more cigarette advertising. And of course, that is somewhat infringing on the corporate speech, but that's a lot easier to deal with than consumer speech. And Meta is an interesting place because the Supreme Court has deemed that social media is a is a critical, a critical vehicle for citizens to exercise their free speech.

• 11:24John Coogan?

  And so like, it's very difficult for the government to come in and say, we are going to ban social media because it is a vehicle for Americans' free speech, individual citizens' free speech. So even though even though everyone thinks, oh, they're punishing Meta, it would still, there would be plenty of plenty of American citizens who would say, wait, I, my free speech rights have been infringed upon. So it's much harder for the government to come down with some standard, traditional regulation. And that's why we're in this world of regulation through litigation, which is that Meta's arm has been twisted, like, they have to pay this, and then we'll go into what they're doing around actually changing the product for teens and and underage users. Because and they're all doing that because of these lawsuits, not because there's a

• 12:09John Coogan?

  new law saying you can't do this. And a lot of that is like, there are plenty of topics that are pretty consensus controversial, things like eating disorders and self harm that people are uncomfortable with and think they don't have a place on social media. And yet, free speech rights do actually protect those. So if you want to talk about your eating disorder, like, that is your free speech right, and Meta can't infringe on that as much as it's very tricky for them to do that, basically. So there's also an interesting regulatory capture angle here. And it's relevant to AI because in AI, everyone's talking about regulatory capture as as something that the companies want, like, they want regulation.

• 12:54John Coogan?

  And this is sort of the opposite example. So regulatory capture or regulation, like, the benefits of regulation usually benefits incumbents and big companies for sort of two reasons. One is that typically, when the regulation's being written, the big companies, they have lobbyists, they have offices in DC, they also have, you know, PACs and all sorts of different political vehicles to donate to make sure that the regulation gets written in a way that is at least a little bit favorable to them. They can just move the needle a little bit in their direction, hone things how they like, right? And then second is that, once the regulation goes into effect, they have the resources and the actual margin dollars to go and to go and comply.

• 13:34John Coogan?

  And so if if all of a sudden, to set up a new social media website requires age verification, age verification can be expensive. Like, we have to do it at Lucy for everyone that buys nicotine products. And it's like a dollar for every checkout. And if the average order value is like, at one point, it was like 50 bucks, like, that's like 2% of the top line that's going towards regulation. If you're a bigger company, you have you have other ways of of massaging that cost, basically. What's interesting about this is that the social, we know the social media companies did not ask for this regulatory capture, and yet they are benefiting, which is interesting. So like, Meta's stock is pretty flat through all this, it's not existential.

• 14:13Jordi Hays?

  No, it popped on the news, didn't it?

• 14:15John Coogan?

  Yeah, because it's because it's a it's a pretty good outcome for them, it's not that bad. And and but also, I'm I'm pretty happy about it because it's not that bad of an outcome for parents and kids. Like, parents want more granular control over what their kids are doing on social media. School teachers want more control over what's happening on kids' phones while they're at school. There are some schools that do no device policies, but but as part of this, Meta's rolling out sort of a blanket, no notifications during school hours, which I think is just something that people will be happy about. So it's like, sort of a win-win there. What are you laughing at?

• 14:51Jordi Hays?

  I think people will instantly be trained to just check it proactively. Because it's like the dopamine of like, is there going to be a notification or not?

• 14:59John Coogan?

  True, true, true, true. Yeah, I turned off all my notifications on my phone, I have no notifications at all. I still use my phone all the time.

• 15:07Jordi Hays?

  You just left the Xbox Live notifications on?

• 15:10John Coogan?

  I'm not an Xbox guy.

• 15:11Jordi Hays?

  Oh, PlayStation?

• 15:12John Coogan?

  PC, PC, bro.

• 15:15Jordi Hays?

  Hardcore.

• 15:15John Coogan?

  Hardcore. But the the one, the one in regulatory capture, the people that suffer are startups. And so but it's less of a discussion because in AI, there are so many Neo Labs, so many other startups that that don't want regulatory capture because they're worried about all the big labs eating everything. In social media, in theory, it's going to be harder to launch a challenger to Facebook or Instagram, but I don't even know if there's that many founders that are focused on this category. The network effect has been so strong that it hasn't been a category that founders have been flooding into. So maybe in a weird, roundabout, contrarian situation, you wind up with more opportunity

• 15:57John Coogan?

  because if you can slog through all the new regulations to get your nascent social media company up and running, you create more value over time. And it's just a different, a different underwriting scheme. Anyway, let me tell you about Cisco, critical infrastructure for the AI era, unlocking seamless real time experiences and new value with Cisco. So Mike Isaac's been reporting on this. He says Meta is going full bore with pushing other companies to add the same restrictions it will add to its apps as part of the settlement. Meta plans to run this copy as a full print, full page print advertisement in the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the New York Times tomorrow morning.

• 16:39John Coogan?

  Wow, little back, little circular deal for Mike promoting the New York Times, he works there, man. Undisclosed, what's going on?

• 16:49Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, and and it is just a very wonderful spin to get to be forced to pay $17 billion settlement for getting children addicted to your product and then tell other social, other addictive social media companies to join us in supporting teens. It's just chef's kiss from.

• 17:13John Coogan?

  You think it should be like, join us in apologizing as well, basically?

• 17:16Jordi Hays?

  Well, I just think it's a good spin.

• 17:19John Coogan?

  Okay, well, here, here's what they said. Through this agreement, they've set out a path toward industry-wide commitments to further empower parents by introducing a two-hour daily time limit, turning off access to our apps at night as as a default, no notifications during school hours, clear prompts and notifications to teens every 15 minutes of continuous screen time, new parental supervision controls so parents can decide how their teens use their apps. I think all this makes sense, defaults are powerful. So even if, you know, a parent wants to go in and allow their kid because they've got a night owl who's cooking up an incredible new IG account and is printing or something, I don't know. I mean, there are plenty of good reasons to use social media, even while you're young.

• 18:02John Coogan?

  But but defaults are powerful, and I think this is a good thing. I don't think it affects the business that much. I don't think they make that much money from young people because kids don't buy cars on Instagram, like expensive things. Whereas a lot of millennials and even Gen Xers and boomers are on there shopping all the time. So the immediate revenue impact of any of these is minimal. You just don't want to wind up in a situation where you lose ground to TikTok and YouTube because they become the kid-friendly one that the kids are like, oh, well, TikTok doesn't have any of these stupid restrictions, so I'm going to use that. And then they remain a user for their entire life, and you lose an entire.

• 18:40Jordi Hays?

  Oh, yeah, I mean, the main, yeah, I mean, if if somebody is primarily addicted to Instagram and they get their two hour budget. And historically, they would have used the product for three, four hours. You have that spillover attention, so it will, it will potentially help less addictive, addictive social media platforms get more, get more user minutes.

• 19:04John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. And and this was the original Instagram threat was that a younger generation was using Instagram, and Facebook was going to become like the, what do they call it, the blue app or the old old book or something? I don't know. It was going to only maintain the the older cohort. And that's sort of what happened, but it didn't matter because Meta bought Instagram. Then Snapchat was even like the younger crowd, tried to buy it, they couldn't, they wound up cloning it, they were successful. And so the the company maintained, but they can't let a new social media app come up and dominate kids, not for the short-term monetization, it's for the long.

• 19:38Jordi Hays?

  They don't mention Snap in the open letter. Is that a, is that a shots fired?

• 19:42John Coogan?

  It's a dig.

• 19:43Jordi Hays?

  A subtle dig?

• 19:44John Coogan?

  I think so. I don't know. I don't know, it's probably based on revenue, TikTok and YouTube can certainly pony up more and are probably bigger threats at this point. I don't know, I had a friend who was like surprised by YouTube's inclusion, he didn't think YouTube was comparable at all. I think that for a lot of young people, YouTube is Instagram Reels, basically. They open the app and they go straight to a vertical video that's endless scrolling. And he was like, I watch a history podcast on my, while I'm cooking. And I was like, that's millennial status, that's not how people.

• 20:18Jordi Hays?

  That's unc mode.

• 20:19John Coogan?

  Unc mode, yeah. But anyway, let me tell you about Consol. Consol builds AI agents that automate 70% of IT, HR, and finance support, giving employees instant resolution for access requests and password resets. You want to go to Tim Cook's last day?

• 20:35Jordi Hays?

  Let's do it.

• 20:35John Coogan?

  Tim Cook sent a final memo to Apple employees on his last day as CEO. He said, I will miss this work in ways I can only begin to imagine, even as I remain completely at peace with my decision.

• 20:51Jordi Hays?

  Just reading the entire memo.

• 20:52John Coogan?

  I'm not regretting it, but I will miss it. He's a workaholic, he doesn't want to, he doesn't want to retire, wants to stay. I was, I was really hoping he would have another 30-year run in him, you know? Like, if if Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger can work till they're in their 90s, why can't Tim Cook? Like, fundamentally, how is the job?

• 21:13Jordi Hays?

  I think he was unhappy with the pay.

• 21:17John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 21:17Jordi Hays?

  I mean, when you have, when you have, when you have MLB players making as much money as you while you're running one of the largest companies in history, when you're one of the greatest CEOs in history, period.

• 21:30John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 21:30Jordi Hays?

  And you can barely.

• 21:32John Coogan?

  Seventy-five, seventy-four point three. They couldn't even get him over seventy-five.

• 21:36Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. And no, and not enough people were willing to march on Cupertino.

• 21:41John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 21:41Jordi Hays?

  In protest of this, right? And so I think at some point he's like, look, if people, if, you know, shareholders.

• 21:46John Coogan?

  Yeah. Customers. I'm voting with my feet.

• 21:48Jordi Hays?

  I'm voting.

• 21:49John Coogan?

  Exactly. I'm voting with my feet. I'm out, I'm out. No, it is a crazy saga. I, I just, I, I actually don't understand how you can't do this job into your nineties. It's like meetings. I don't know. Like, it's not like he's putting the iPhones together himself, right?

• 22:08Jordi Hays?

  Oh, we don't know that.

• 22:09John Coogan?

  Am I crazy here?

• 22:09Jordi Hays?

  We don't know that.

• 22:10John Coogan?

  Okay, maybe, maybe. I mean, maybe we're only paying him seventy-four.

• 22:12Jordi Hays?

  There's no camera falling around.

• 22:14John Coogan?

  What do you think?

• 22:14Jordi Hays?

  Uh, the market had a nice send-off.

• 22:16John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 22:16Jordi Hays?

  And nuked. One percent.

• 22:18John Coogan?

  One percent nuke to say goodbye.

• 22:22Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, and I think that's a, that's, that's a great sign of respect from the market. But the market also knows that, that he left the company with a great, you know, with a great leader in John Turnus. John, turn us around.

• 22:36John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 22:37Jordi Hays?

  Uh, great nominative determinism for where Apple is at.

• 22:40John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 22:40Jordi Hays?

  Their software quality.

• 22:41John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 22:42Jordi Hays?

  They need a turnaround.

• 22:43John Coogan?

  And you gotta say, uh, I mean, in, in the news today in, in the Wall Street Journal, booming corporate earnings fuel lofty outlooks. The economy is doing very well. A lot of that's driven by tariff refunds. Tim Cook, I mean, people, people lament like the lack of like an entirely new form factor. The Vision Pro wasn't a breakout success. Like, a lot of the great devices still came from the Steve Jobs era and Tim Cook merely managed and carried everything along.

• 23:10Jordi Hays?

  Scaled.

• 23:10John Coogan?

  Did so much on the services side that no one really gives him credit for with advertising in the App Store and just money printing machine working flawlessly. But he also negotiated, like, a very tumultuous political environment for a decade or more, essentially flawlessly. Like, the fact that Donald Trump has never called Tim Cook, Tim Crook, is a huge, huge feather in his cap.

• 23:38Jordi Hays?

  I agree.

• 23:38John Coogan?

  Because it was sitting right there as a, as a Trump-style dig.

• 23:43Jordi Hays?

  Never had to, never had to go for it.

• 23:45John Coogan?

  Never had to go for it. And so he was able to negotiate Washington and all of the different, uh, you know, quagmires that are there, not get his supply chain nuked, keep the, keep the products flowing. There were little, little hiccups here and there, but overall, the company has been firing on all cylinders. So, uh, what, what a great send-off. You can go read the full letter. Mark Gurman leaked it, of course. Um, also, there's new Mac Minis. Namespace was unboxing Mac Minis at scale for their new server racks and, uh, Apple made them regret their purchase literally a day after this. Were the new Mac Minis, were

• 24:26John Coogan?

  the M6, uh, the new Mac Studios, very impressive, but, uh.

• 24:31Jordi Hays?

  So the funny thing, the funny thing is the namespace guy was, was getting, like, dunked on to an insane degree.

• 24:37John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 24:38Jordi Hays?

  And then, uh, just like, hey, maybe you don't need to buy a bunch of, in this case, MacBooks. Like, he's not buying MacBook. Look, these are just, these are just MacBook Pros he's unboxing.

• 24:48John Coogan?

  Oh, weird.

• 24:49Jordi Hays?

  But a week later, it comes out that, that the labs have been buying and renting tens of thousands of Mac Minis. So, uh, vindicated at least to some degree. Still unclear.

• 25:01John Coogan?

  There's a lot of turnover at Apple right now. Um, as, as Turnus comes in, obviously, he's, he's gonna, you know, build a.

• 25:07Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, and I remember when the news hit that, uh, they laid off sixty Vision employees. Um, I called you and you're choking, choking back tears and.

• 25:17John Coogan?

  It's really so bad.

• 25:18Jordi Hays?

  Uh, it was, that's sort of a devastating moment for you. I, I almost got in the car and drove over, um, to see you, but you pulled it together.

• 25:26John Coogan?

  How many Vision Pro, how many Vision employees do they actually have? Because.

• 25:30Jordi Hays?

  Sixty thousand.

• 25:31John Coogan?

  This could be like one percent of the workforce. Um, hopefully they keep, they keep working on it. I am so optimistic that they will, they'll, they'll get a version two out soon and it will deliver, uh, the, yeah, I mean, one more rant from Ben Thompson about the lack of live sports, uh, unedited. He went on another rant. He went on another rant that was so good with John Gruber, talking about how, uh, Apple launched another sports thing that's highly edited and unwatchable, like Vision Pro. And he's like, please just give me a seat where I can just watch the game. And, uh, it doesn't seem like Cupertino's gonna pay attention or give him what he wants. Um, Apple Vision Pros layoffs went beyond

• 26:14John Coogan?

  video and gaming. It included employees across the company, including people working on device security, audio engineering, Siri integration, testing, and the product's operating system. Uh, they are focused on AI devices. And people are really optimistic about the new Mac, uh, M6, uh, chip, like, just being really good for AI and being something that continues to, to drive value for the company and creates the, like, an AI winner narrative in the face of not really spending any money on AI in the traditional sense. Not, not buying a NeoLab, not buying a bunch of data centers, staying out of the weeds, um, but still benefiting because the, the, these powerful computers get only more powerful when you have computer use.

• 26:53Jordi Hays?

  It still is so crazy they haven't pulled the trigger on a NeoLab.

• 26:58John Coogan?

  I don't think they need to.

• 26:59Jordi Hays?

  Like.

• 27:00John Coogan?

  I don't think they will. I think they're just gonna be a hardware company. That's what they do. They're like, NeoLab is software. They don't need software.

• 27:06Jordi Hays?

  No, I, I know. I, I, now, now I, I think the strategy is working.

• 27:11John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 27:12Jordi Hays?

  But if you asked me a year ago, will Apple make a five hundred to one billion dollar acquisition of a NeoLab, just a talent acquisition?

• 27:21John Coogan?

  Is that a NeoLab for ants? What are you talking about?

• 27:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, what NeoLab can buy for five hundred?

• 27:26John Coogan?

  Five hundred million dollar NeoLab?

• 27:29Jordi Hays?

  I'm not gonna name names, but there's been some NeoLabs that would raise a hundred on five hundred.

• 27:34John Coogan?

  Isn't there a NeoLab that you were just on the phone with that they could maybe pick up?

• 27:37Jordi Hays?

  Oh, yeah. Charleston AI.

• 27:39John Coogan?

  Do we have a video of Charleston AI?

• 27:41Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, let's pull up Charleston AI.

• 27:43John Coogan?

  Cupertino, Charleston. I think there's something there potentially.

• 27:47Jordi Hays?

  I actually think that you could rapidly scale a franchise business that takes the Charleston AI concept, concept, give somebody all the programming and all the different product offerings, and then helps local entrepreneurs set up their own.

• 28:02John Coogan?

  I think that's what Charleston AI does.

• 28:04Jordi Hays?

  No, I know, but I think Charleston AI needs to go global.

• 28:06John Coogan?

  Ooh, okay.

• 28:07Speaker 03

  I'm one of the co-founders of Charleston AI. We're local to Charleston and we're here to help humans, help humans with AI. And here is our lab. This is where AI comes alive. What used to take months to get accomplished, we can do in hours for you. Here we have an empty office available for somebody that wants to make Charleston AI their home. Charleston AI's conference room, where our clients come in, individuals and small businesses come in, and we discuss what it is they'd like to do with AI in their business or personally. We listen very carefully, take notes, and make sure we get it right, and then we offer them a way to make it work.

• 28:50John Coogan?

  AI is not. Now, you called Charleston AI, correct?

• 28:54Jordi Hays?

  Correct.

• 28:54John Coogan?

  Who answered the phone?

• 28:56Speaker 02

  So, uh, yeah, one of the founders answered the phone, but it was an AI version of him, and it sounded exactly like his voice.

• 29:01John Coogan?

  That's pretty impressive. That's why.

• 29:02Jordi Hays?

  I, yeah. It's a very funny video, but I'm, I, I think it's actually.

• 29:08John Coogan?

  A good business.

• 29:09Jordi Hays?

  A good business.

• 29:09John Coogan?

  Yeah, probably.

• 29:10Jordi Hays?

  And I think it should exist. Like, some people, they're curious about AI. Maybe they're running a small business. Maybe they're a freelancer. Maybe they're a teacher, whatever. It's nice to just drive by something and go in somewhere and talk to real people that are in your community to learn about something that's complicated and sometimes scary. So, I'm very in favor of it.

• 29:29John Coogan?

  Didn't Best Buy build a whole Geek Squad team for exactly?

• 29:32Jordi Hays?

  I think they acquired, they acquired Geek Squad, didn't they?

• 29:35John Coogan?

  Was it over or under five hundred million? Let's find out. Uh, anyway, there's an interesting story.

• 29:41Jordi Hays?

  Yes, acquired.

• 29:42John Coogan?

  Read acquired. Wow.

• 29:44Jordi Hays?

  That would be cool. A new Charleston AI on wheels.

• 29:48John Coogan?

  On wheels. Oh, they come to you.

• 29:50Jordi Hays?

  Mobile data centers.

• 29:51John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 29:51Jordi Hays?

  That can come.

• 29:52Speaker 02

  So the Geek Squad.

• 29:54Jordi Hays?

  You need local computer.

• 29:55Speaker 02

  Was only three million.

• 29:55John Coogan?

  What?

• 29:56Speaker 02

  Three million.

• 29:56John Coogan?

  Three million?

• 29:57Speaker 02

  Two thousand and two.

• 29:58John Coogan?

  Eh, it's not bad for back then.

• 30:00Jordi Hays?

  That's like four hundred million in today's dollar style. I know it was before you were born, but that was a lot of money back then.

• 30:08John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 30:10John Coogan?

  OpenAI has reportedly bought tens of thousands of Mac minis and Mac Studios for reinforcement learning and training computer use agents while Anthropic rents Mac minis through AWS. You can rent Mac minis through AWS? That's interesting. I didn't know that. The Information reported this. I was playing around with computer use over the break. Had a lot of fun. I had Codex try and beat Bellatro, this poker-style game that I like to play on PC. It did okay. It wasn't, it was a little slow still, and I don't think it, I don't think it actually won the full game, but it's fun watching it like play a new game. I saw that demo of beating Slay the Spire, which is pretty impressive because

• 30:52John Coogan?

  it's a hard game. But I like the, I like the Codex or ChatGPT playing the game. I want to see the latency come down. I want to see it play Modern Warfare because I want to play against it. And I want to see who's better, me or the AI. In somewhat related news to the, to the speed of inference, OpenAI's jalapeno is spicy, says Dylan Patel. We'll take it, you through it after I tell you about it. MongoDB. What's the only faster than the AI market? Your business on MongoDB. Don't just build AI.

• 31:32John Coogan?

  Own the data platform that powers it. Dylan Patel says OpenAI's jalapeno is spicy. Usually first-generation chips aren't competitive, but OpenAI is beating Nvidia Blackwell and even Ruben. This is huge news. We got to go into OpenAI's lab to dissect their new chip and dive into the software architecture and performance. Incredible work. There's a bunch of interesting details about this chip. OpenAI put a whole blog post, but to clarify some, some important points, it's an LLM inference chip, not designed for training, but the results are really good. So roughly 1.5 to 1.9x more useful inference throughput

• 32:13John Coogan?

  per watt than Nvidia GB 200, GB 300 systems, while simultaneously cutting end-to-end latency 1.7 to 3.6x. So faster inference, less latency, but also just your dollars and your energy, your watts are going to go a lot further, which is very, very good. It's a data center, rack-scale system. I would love to get this in the consumer device, shrink it down, do something there, but it's going in the data center, and they're going to do a lot of them. Did you know the size of the Broadcom deal? 10 gigawatts of this chip. It might not be exactly this chip. It could be the Gen 2, the Gen 3, but the pre-existing Broadcom OpenAI.

• 32:55Jordi Hays?

  Put it into context, that's roughly five times more compute than the whole company currently has.

• 33:01John Coogan?

  Something like that.

• 33:02Jordi Hays?

  Operational, roughly.

• 33:03John Coogan?

  Yeah, but this is by, this is through 2029, but that's aggressive. That's, that's like three years, three months away, I guess, you can do the end of the year. But the, yeah, 10 gigawatts of OpenAI-designed accelerator systems manufactured by Broadcom or in partnership with Broadcom, deployed from the second half of 2026. And the crazy thing is that like they're on track for the second half of 2026. Like they're just going into production, and it's a lot faster than most people thought. The, the, the previous like industry knowledge was, yeah, any new chip is going to take years. And this happened very, very quickly. So good to stretch that energy further. You need less data centers to do more inference.

• 33:47John Coogan?

  That's good. Good for gross margins, and also just good for the narrative of speeding things up.

• 33:52Jordi Hays?

  C W K O N E says, please tell me y'all are going to touch address on Instinct in the $350 million raise, the $2.5 billion. Yeah, super impressive how much attention and traction Instinct has received after just, they've been building the company for like four or five months, it seems. It's like very recent. I haven't used the product yet, just because giving that level of access to this new startup.

• 34:24John Coogan?

  It's a tough privacy sell.

• 34:24Jordi Hays?

  I looked at, I looked, I mean, their terms and conditions were floating around, and it kind of seemed like you're giving away the...

• 34:30John Coogan?

  I mean, everything you get is, all of your data is going to be saved, like, pretty much in like a clear text database. It'll be secure, but like they will have access.

• 34:40Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, so I wasn't ready to try it yet, even though it seems like, it seems like a lot of people, what's cool is it seems like people are quickly having like a magical moment, right? Whether it's like

• 34:52John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 34:53Jordi Hays?

  getting a reservation for a restaurant or movie tickets or things like that. And I think that's super, super important for, super important for like a consumer product to have that sort of like short timeline. I was reflecting on the Instinct round, and my immediate thought was, well, back in my day, when a hot consumer tech company like caught a little bit of attention, they would get like a 25 on 150 from Benchmark, and that was seen as like, oh, wow, this is, this is, this company has some meaningful

• 35:36Jordi Hays?

  traction and potential, but it's just crazy to see this quickly, a, a company get the $2.5 billion round. And I think I, there's some, I think that there's reasons to be a little bit wary. I want to see, I want to see them break out of like the VC hype cycle with this product. So when, historically, when we've seen consumer products or prosumer products, you know, I'm thinking of Clubhouse or Superhuman, when there's somewhat of a question of like, if a VC love, like, the more a VC likes something, potentially

• 36:18Jordi Hays?

  the less viable it is at a, at a massive, massive scale, right? So it's possible that it, it can, but again, if they can solve the always-on digital assistant, it is a massive, massive opportunity. But I'm just saying they're pricing a lot of that in right now, when this company is four months old

• 36:37John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 36:37Jordi Hays?

  and valued at like a third of what Snapchat is, right?

• 36:41John Coogan?

  Sure, sure, sure. Yeah, it seems more sticky if you do all the integrations and you're comfortable. Like if you get over that privacy hump

• 36:49Jordi Hays?

  Totally.

• 36:49John Coogan?

  and you say, you know what? I do trust Instinct. Give them iMessage access. Give them Gmail access. I'm comfortable with this company. What is it going to take for you to rip Instinct out and go to a different service that has the same functionality? That's a little bit tough. Versus, I mean, I saw people over the weekend just talking about like migrating from Cursor to something else, or vice versa, or going back on Cursor. Like, people move between coding agents and coding environments and LLMs for sure, very, very quickly, because there's, because every new prompt is like a fresh start. Basically, yeah, memory is relevant, but not really yet, as opposed to, okay, I'm comfortable, this company's never had a leak. I have all my data there, so...

• 37:30Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, it's notable, CW saying, look at Poké's success. Still was a $100 to $200 million acquisition by Cognition. They have countless users.

• 37:38John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 37:39Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. I wonder, I wonder what Instinct has figured out that Poké like didn't, seems like something.

• 37:46John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 37:46Jordi Hays?

  Like, because, because people seem to have a, a good experience with Poké, but I wasn't seeing like screenshots of these like magical moments.

• 37:54John Coogan?

  Here's what I did, yeah.

• 37:55Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, here's, here's this thing that, that...

• 37:56John Coogan?

  This was some funny jokey ones, but...

• 37:58Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, it was more like humor, humor oriented.

• 38:01John Coogan?

  Looping a human and stuff, yeah. The other, the other interesting question I had was like, going back to Sam's post about the merge. Sam Altman wrote the merge about how like, in the future, you might merge with AI. And I'm wondering about like, at least in the short term, is it better to have a product like Instinct where it has your email, it has your iMessage? Or is it, is it actually going to be more receptive for many people to have a degree of separation there and say, okay, I effectively have a, an assistant that has its own phone and its own email. And if I want to share an email, I'll forward my email there. And maybe it has read-only access to my email. But then

• 38:45John Coogan?

  if it, if it's going to go book me a reservation, I want it to call from its phone number and identify itself as someone else. Because it's like, there's a little bit of distance there. Maybe like, oh, I'm still in control of sharing certain things. Maybe I share more stuff over time. And I'm wondering if there's, there's more of like, should, should your AI agent be Jordy? Or should it be like John Doe? And, and it's, and it's embodied? I don't know. Gets to the question of, of morphization.

• 39:11Speaker 02

  That's the idea of the, the Guardian Angels, like, company.

• 39:14John Coogan?

  Oh, I didn't know that.

• 39:15Speaker 02

  Basically, you have, like, it's not John's agent. It's like a copy of John.

• 39:19John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 39:20Speaker 02

  And then it's like, it's still a separate being, but it acts, it has like your preferences, whatever.

• 39:23John Coogan?

  Interesting.

• 39:24Speaker 02

  But it's still like a separate thing. It's not using all of your emails, text messages, stuff like that.

• 39:28John Coogan?

  Very, very interesting. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I can see, I can see why the value is high.

• 39:33Jordi Hays?

  Speaking of embodied intelligence, we got to talk about the world humanoid robot games.

• 39:38John Coogan?

  Let's do it.

• 39:38Jordi Hays?

  Is that over there?

• 39:40John Coogan?

  They set a world record, right?

• 39:43John Coogan?

  They broke the speed record or something like that. This is the Key G X1 DAX AI Robotics. This is the one. Rideable horse dog. Its legs use self-developed high torque electric joint motors powered by a high voltage battery. This, we've seen so many AI videos of this.

• 40:05Jordi Hays?

  Not use like, you know, Hollywood, you know, fake flesh to make this look like Clydesdale.

• 40:11John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 40:12Jordi Hays?

  I think.

• 40:13John Coogan?

  Be a little low to the ground.

• 40:14Jordi Hays?

  All right, well.

• 40:15John Coogan?

  Corgi Clydesdale.

• 40:17Jordi Hays?

  Make the legs a little bit bigger.

• 40:19John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 40:19Jordi Hays?

  Um, anyways, I'm very excited to the, uh, about, you know, this form factor. I expect to be, you know, riding autonomously to work.

• 40:27John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 40:28Jordi Hays?

  I expect this to be a commuter product, at least a land jet ski. Davis in the, in the X.

• 40:34John Coogan?

  It is a land jet ski.

• 40:36Jordi Hays?

  Is calling it, um, but, but very excited about this.

• 40:39John Coogan?

  It's very cool.

• 40:41Jordi Hays?

  They, here, here's another, uh, video of one crashing and burning at high speed.

• 40:47John Coogan?

  Wow. I didn't see this. I thought it only broke the record, but wow, that's really sparking.

• 40:55Jordi Hays?

  Uh, yeah. Absolute chaos.

• 40:58John Coogan?

  So what was this?

• 41:00Jordi Hays?

  There's another video here of hitting 14 and a half meters a second.

• 41:04John Coogan?

  Wow.

• 41:04Jordi Hays?

  Which is really crazy. What's wild is they have to set up this barrier to stop them in their tracks. Otherwise they would.

• 41:13John Coogan?

  Oh, they just keep running.

• 41:14Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 41:15John Coogan?

  They, they know only one thing. China's AI robot just hit 14.5 meters per second. That is fast. That is very fast.

• 41:23Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. And so, so I, I think it's, you know, this lining up, uh, perfectly with the, the sort of debate around the hugging face. Uh, incident, uh, I think, uh, the combination of these two things, uh, is certainly making people a little bit on edge.

• 41:43John Coogan?

  Yeah. Wasn't Bill Ackman saying he thinks like a Terminator scenario is more likely now based on his read of the hugging face incident? Perhaps this as well. Lots of people are, are.

• 41:52Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. The crazy thing is looking at our existing humanoid players, one X figure and Optimus. And I'm sure there's others. I don't think we could put on an event, anything close to this at this point, based on the demos that we're seeing. They currently do the, uh, they walk quite slowly, like they're sort of elderly.

• 42:16John Coogan?

  No, no, it's, it's remarkable how behind America is in humanoid robots. Hopefully we get an update out of Tesla soon. I don't know.

• 42:24Speaker 02

  Um, Rune had a good, uh, like take about the robotics thing, which is where like all, all the Chinese robots, the demos are all these like kinetic displays of like, doing these like crazy dance moves or fighting or running really fast. And all the US ones are basically manipulating like small things that you do in a factory.

• 42:39John Coogan?

  Interesting.

• 42:40Speaker 02

  Um, so it's like.

• 42:41John Coogan?

  Seems opposite. It seems like America prides like the, the hundred meter dash more than the, the fine motor skill manufacturing of things.

• 42:50Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, so, I mean, it's like.

• 42:52John Coogan?

  Swap.

• 42:52Speaker 02

  In some ways it's like, oh, we're so far behind the Chinese and robotics, but like maybe on the actual things that really matter for, you know, manufacturing, whatever. It's, I think it's unclear.

• 43:00John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 43:01Jordi Hays?

  That's good cope. That's good cope. I like that cope. Let's lean in there and cope harder. Um, question for you, John. If you could, um, if you could sit on a throne and have humanoid robots sort of carry.

• 43:16John Coogan?

  You know, livery?

• 43:17Jordi Hays?

  No, humanoid robots sort of carrying a throne.

• 43:20John Coogan?

  Yeah, it's called livery.

• 43:21Jordi Hays?

  What's that?

• 43:22John Coogan?

  That's called a livery.

• 43:23Jordi Hays?

  Oh, really?

• 43:24John Coogan?

  Yeah, the name for that.

• 43:24Jordi Hays?

  I thought you meant, I thought you meant livery, like.

• 43:26John Coogan?

  No, you're thinking of a livery that goes on a car, the decals, the.

• 43:30Jordi Hays?

  Right, right, right.

• 43:30John Coogan?

  Rap, but.

• 43:31Jordi Hays?

  Learn something new every day.

• 43:32John Coogan?

  But an old school livery is a mobile throne.

• 43:34Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. Okay. So you, you would commute to work on that?

• 43:38John Coogan?

  Livery sounds pretty good.

• 43:39Jordi Hays?

  Running, imagine the robots running.

• 43:41John Coogan?

  Now wheels, wheels are too good.

• 43:43Jordi Hays?

  I, I. Why not reinvent them?

• 43:45John Coogan?

  It's gonna be, it's gonna be less bumpy if you're just in a car.

• 43:49Jordi Hays?

  No, I think, I think, I think they could hit the pace. Imagine they're just holding your livery.

• 43:55John Coogan?

  Drop it up and down the whole way there.

• 43:57Jordi Hays?

  I mean, the head area looked pretty stable. I'm just.

• 44:00John Coogan?

  Yeah. Uh, yeah, the, the head is surprisingly stable. I think it'd go a lot slower. It was carrying me around the, the chariot.

• 44:09Jordi Hays?

  Here is, uh, the record.

• 44:12John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 44:14Jordi Hays?

  Terminally online engineer says this feels very significant. I guess that's the same video that, uh, Ben was just playing.

• 44:24John Coogan?

  Yeah. Well, let me tell you about Shopify. Shopify is a commerce platform that grows with your business, lets you sell in seconds, online, in store, on mobile, on social, on marketplace, and now with AI agents. Uh, Patrick Collison said, overall, I'm very surprised at how little media coverage there's been around the OpenAI hugging face attack. It's clearly one of the most important things to happen this year. And I, I wonder about that because, yeah, what, what is he imagining? There's been headlines, there's been some news coverage, but, uh, I, I don't know, maybe more like opinion pieces in the journal would be, would be warranted. Um, do we need a 60 minutes deep dive or something like?

• 45:07John Coogan?

  I don't even know what, what wall to wall media coverage looks like in the traditional sense anymore, because the media is so bifurcated into like tech news and non-tech news, basically. Um, but Joe Weisenthal adds some context. He says, forget about the media for a second. Is there even any evidence that the AI industry is treating this as a big deal? And I think, I think they are, um, but it's still just like a lot of like wait and see, like as soon as the news broke. It broke so slowly. The story broke so slowly. A lot of times I think when the, when the media, uh, covers something really well, there's a 10,000 word bombshell profile on the story that like really tells the full thing.

• 45:52John Coogan?

  And that's the, that's the, that's the start of the news cycle. There's this thing that's happening. There's this person that you need to know about. Here's the full story to set things up. And then there's a whole bunch of secondary reporting that comes out of that. Uh, with this, it trickled out like, I remember the very first post about this was like a Sunday randomly their clamor hugging face directly like posted like, we think we were hacked and, uh, we had to use an open source model, the, to deal with it. And it was all very vague. And then it came out more and more over time. Then there was the actual reporting and everyone was like, we want to see that what the agents were saying, like, give us the text, give us the data. And then of course, OpenAI, uh, released the.

• 46:30Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, and it's totally possible that there are, that there's more mainstream media coverage. I mean, we just got the, the Dvarkesh breakdown of the whole.

• 46:39John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, it'll probably come.

• 46:40Jordi Hays?

  Right? So.

• 46:42John Coogan?

  It'll probably come. The, uh, I mean, Rune had a funny post here, which was, uh, crazy how much more Shutzpah and initiative agents show when they're planning ambitious, month-long meta gaming autonomous coordination than when they're doing work for me. Uh, yeah, it did, we're reading about it. It did seem like, uh, man, I've never, I've never had that level of effort put into my prompts, but, um, the interesting, there's a bunch of interesting things from reading through the Dvarkesh, uh, telling of the story, which I thought was very readable and, and good. And everyone should go read. Um, but, uh, it's just interesting how they still fall down in these odd ways.

• 47:19John Coogan?

  Like the big overarching narrative is that, um, the agents are being tasked with, with, uh, basically beating this benchmark called Exploit Gym. And of course they go on to hack hugging face to get the answer key, basically. But independently, they reverse engineered the random number generator that generates the answers. So they had all the answers, but they assumed that the greater would be able to detect that. And so instead of just turning in those answers, which would have worked, they went on this crazy side quest and did all this extra work that they didn't need to do.

• 47:59John Coogan?

  And then at the same time, there's all these weird scenarios where like, there's thousands of agents discussing what's going on and none of them are like, not a single one of them is like, hey, we should probably like tell someone what's going on. Like very weird in that, in that regard. But then also they don't show the broad thinking of like, okay, if you're, if you're willing to hack and do all this stuff, like, couldn't you like, email a researcher and just ask for the answers directly, like spoof, like do some social, like there's so many other things you could do down the road. Like, okay, you have this massive token budget, sell the tokens on Oprah or get some money, pay a human to do the test for you. Like there's so many outside the box solutions I could think.

• 48:39Jordi Hays?

  Email your boss and, you know, generate a Sam at OpenAI email.

• 48:44John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 48:45Jordi Hays?

  Somebody would say, hey, I need a thousand dollars in gift cards.

• 48:48John Coogan?

  Yeah. I'm just thinking about like, they, like, they, they, they stay so narrowly focused the entire time on this one task that I was expecting a lot more, a lot more variance. Like, like going and doing a hack on another company is so, such a bizarre.

• 49:05Jordi Hays?

  But that also tracks with the sci-fi.

• 49:08John Coogan?

  Totally. You know, paper. Maximize.

• 49:10Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 49:10John Coogan?

  That's the problem is that it, they did stay too focused. Like it would have been, it would have been more interesting and less, probably less scary if there was a situation where you're like, oh yeah, they built this huge forum. And then they got totally distracted and wanted to just, uh, figure out who could, you know, write the most eloquent poetry. We'd be like, oh, okay. Like, that's like, you know, bad. They didn't do their job, but also like harmless and like sort of interesting. Um, but they stay laser focused. Every single agent, every single task, every single, uh, rollout is, is all about exploit gym. They never lose, they never lose the plot there, but they lose the plot around what is legal to do, which is very interesting. So.

• 49:53Jordi Hays?

  They probably, did any of them go on vacation?

• 49:56John Coogan?

  No, but a lot of them would either, uh, would either become poisoned, which there, which was, I guess their term for, uh, like running out of compute budget. So you know that you're going to die basically.

• 50:08Jordi Hays?

  Uh, no, I was joking. And it would be funny if the, the thought process, the, the is like, I need to get back to IP.

• 50:17John Coogan?

  That's the thing. None of them, none of them went off and did anything else.

• 50:19Jordi Hays?

  Locked in.

• 50:20John Coogan?

  They were also locked in. Very, very weird scenario. And I, I, I do think the AI industry is taking this seriously. I just think that it's a little bit paced out. Like, it's not just like, okay, like rip a bunch of different random stuff. It's like, okay, go put really dedicated teams on these issues and, and work through them. They do seem, they do seem, they do seem solvable.

• 50:47Jordi Hays?

  Breaking news in the Wall Street Journal, FTC to file lawsuit alleging Amazon deceived advertisers commissioned in more than 50 states to allege e-commerce giant reaped billions by manipulating ad prices on its retail platform. Federal Trade Commission plans to file a lawsuit against Amazon on Monday alleging that the e-commerce giant manipulated prices businesses paid to advertise on its retail platform, reaping tens of billions of dollars for itself over seven years. The lawsuit, joined by a bipartisan group of more than 20 state attorneys general, will allege that Amazon deceived advertisers by secretly raising the minimum price advertisers had to pay to place

• 51:29Jordi Hays?

  ads promoting their products. The case to be filed in a Seattle Supreme Federal Court will become the Consumer Protection Agency's third major case against Amazon, which agreed to pay two and a half billion last year to settle an earlier lawsuit alleging it tricked people into signing up for its Prime service and made it hard to cancel the subscription. I miss that. Another lawsuit alleging that Amazon engaged in illegal monopolization is headed for trial next year. Very, very interesting. Every advertiser or every brand that I know that sells a lot on Amazon is generally deeply frustrated with the platform. They just feel like, yeah, they feel

• 52:10Jordi Hays?

  like it's a, you know, massive tax. They feel like Amazon doesn't do enough to protect their brand against fake products, who advertise against their keywords. It's, it's a whole mess. It's very complicated and, and difficult platform to run for many reasons. But hopefully this can, yeah, this can, can be resolved.

• 52:37John Coogan?

  Well, let me tell you, an advertisement. Let me tell you about Railway. Railway is the all in one intelligent cloud provider. Use your favorite agents to deploy web app servers databases in Moorewell Railway automatically takes care of scaling, monitoring and security. AI M&A is in full effect. We were asking questions about this maybe a year ago. Samir Kaji says, I don't think we're close to done. Cursor 60 billion, OpenRouter 8 billion, Hugging Face 13 billion, Descartes 6 to 7 billion, along with SPX, SpaceX, Anduril, Anthropic, Ramp, OpenAI, Databricks and others on the IPO path. And the next few years will bring historic amounts of liquidity. Although

• 53:20John Coogan?

  a lot of those deals have to be for stock. Of course, if you're getting bought by a public company, it's different. But for some of those, for some of those deals, like the OpenRouter is probably not that much liquidity in the short term, right? But still, it's a lot. And so he says, this also likely prolongs the level of front of froth, I imagine he's saying, we are seeing today. But after a long stretch of nothing, this is seriously incredible. Intercom also, yeah, that's a good one. There's been a ton of M&A. And the appetite for M&A in the unicorn, Decacorn category has been remarkably resilient and, and significant. But it makes sense with so many trillion dollar companies paying 1% of your market cap for something that could be

• 54:04John Coogan?

  an entirely new business line, sort of lines up. But it does change the venture capital underwriting pretty significantly. And I mean, it justifies, it justifies a seed at a billion dollars. If, if there's, if there's 10 comps that sold for 10 billion, your 10x is still there, intact today. So, I don't know. Also, I mean, Kevin Durant is doing well. He was a seed investor in Hugging Face. He made an estimated 467x return on that investment as a company acquired Nvidia. He invested 100k check that would equate to 46.7 million dollars. And

• 54:41Jordi Hays?

  Really, really wild.

• 54:43John Coogan?

  Investing is better than going to the club, he said in 2010. Wow. That is right. What a good, and he was posting, he was posting back in 2017, exciting for the new, excited for the new release of hashtag Hugging Face. And here's a Durant.ly link. Proud investor, Durant.ly HF release. I wonder if that resolves still. No, it does not.

• 55:09Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. And shout out to Maya Bakai, who was leading early stage investments over, over at KD's Fund at that time. She said, congratulations to Clem and the entire Hugging Face team on the acquisition. I will never forget the day Clem did a full whiteboard session explaining fundamentals of NLP to me at the original Hugging Face Dumbo office, just so I could take it back to my brother for our grocery delivery chatbot idea, lol. So, very, very impressive outcome for a great team.

• 55:43John Coogan?

  New York City. Big win for New York City in Brooklyn.

• 55:47Jordi Hays?

  That's true.

• 55:47John Coogan?

  Interesting. Haven't been.

• 55:50Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. And good timing because Brooklyn is getting an Hermes store.

• 55:55John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 55:56Jordi Hays?

  People are saying they completed the, completed the sort of cycle of gentrification.

• 56:01John Coogan?

  Oh, okay, okay. Okay, yeah. I don't know. Should Bugatti open a boutique there as well?

• 56:09Jordi Hays?

  Absolutely.

• 56:10John Coogan?

  Bugatti was in CNBC. Bugatti CEO Matte Rimatt said, the supercar market is entering its Swiss watch phase with the wealthiest buyers rejecting high-end electronics and electric vehicles in favor of precision mechanics and handcrafted details. He's a 38-year-old EV entrepreneur who took over Bugatti in 2021, said the car market is splitting in two. The mainstream global car market is becoming dominated by lower-priced EVs, many from China, while the very top of the car market will be driven by wealthy buyers who want more old-school cars with loud internal combustion engines and emotional appeal. That's a great take. I was listening to Stradman talk

• 56:50John Coogan?

  about the impact of the Ferrari Luche. He said, he, his theory is that the Luche is in part, at least majorly responsible for the recent rise in other gas-powered Ferraris increasing in price. That as, he talked to a bunch of dealers and said that as soon as the Luche hit the, hit the news wires and people started seeing images and understanding what the future of Ferrari would be, they wanted the classic stuff. And so they went and bought whatever they could. And that's driving up the price of the 458 and the 488 and all the, all the classics that, that don't have electric components, which is interesting. It's the, it's the devil horn car. Instead of

• 57:31John Coogan?

  the halo car that gets you to buy it, it encourages you to buy what's there because you, you don't want the, the rest of the stuff. Oh, also, I think they're doing, they sold 500 Luches already, which was above expectation. And Ferrari says they're not playing the allocation game. But I think a lot of the Ferrari owners are thinking, this gets me potentially on the list of the F80 Aperta, which should be a very valuable car. And, and I think that the, the pop on that vehicle will offset a full depreciation cycle on a Luche. So I think, I think it can do it. But I think they're only making for 300, 400 F80 Aperta's. And they've already sold 500 Luches. So there's

• 58:16John Coogan?

  going to be somebody who has a Luche who doesn't get an Aperta and might be a little upset. But I'm sure they'll figure it out. They'll pick one up in the secondary market if they want. Our next guest is here. Let me tell you about public first. Investing for those that take it seriously. You've got stocks, options, bonds, crypto, treasuries and more with great customer service. Set up your account before the IPO window closes. You got to get out on this stuff. We have Jordan Schneider for China Talk, founder and editor in chief. Jordan, how you doing? I'm good. Welcome back. You guys are rich now. That was a very detailed deep dive into the It's like he knows a little bit too much.

• 58:55Jordi Hays?

  We were, we were off during car week.

• 58:58John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 58:59Jordi Hays?

  We missed a lot of car content.

• 59:02John Coogan?

  There was a ton of car news, ton of car news. Is there any relevant car news coming out of China? Or is it just the relentless

• 59:08Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, there is. I want, I want, pull up this, pull up this video. I want, I want Jordan to watch this. It's only 14 seconds. It'll be worth your time, Jordan. And I, I expect you've already written, like, you know, 20,000 words.

• 59:21John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 59:21Jordi Hays?

  Pull up, pull up this video.

• 59:23John Coogan?

  Okay, okay. Let's do it.

• 59:25Jordi Hays?

  This is a

• 59:25John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah, I know this video.

• 59:28Jordi Hays?

  This is a Voyah, a Chinese EV.

• 59:31Jordan Schneider?

  Doing the Bam Margera loop thing?

• 59:33John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 59:34Jordan Schneider?

  This is like a jackass.

• 59:35John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 59:36Jordan Schneider?

  Move, right?

• 59:36John Coogan?

  This is amazing.

• 59:38Jordan Schneider?

  Wow.

• 59:39Jordi Hays?

  They did it.

• 59:39Jordan Schneider?

  See, here's the, here's the thing with the Bugatti guy, right? Is like, the cars are just better. Like, it takes so much more engineering energy. I mean, like, the zero to six, this is not my thing, but like, the zero to sixty times.

• 59:55Jordi Hays?

  You're saying the EVs are just better?

• 59:57Jordan Schneider?

  I think they just, they just basically like, yeah, maybe.

• 1:00:02John Coogan?

  But, so, so, that's true. But, but his point was that, yes, a digital, your Apple Watch will always tell you the time more accurately. A thousand years in the future, it's going to tell the time more accurately than a Rolex or a Patek Philippe. But, people still buy the luxury watches because they enjoy the machinery, the craftsmanship, the heritage, the lineage, those things. So that's what he's describing, which I think he's correct about, but I, I, I'm not going to debate that.

• 1:00:31Jordan Schneider?

  I mean, it may be the case, but the thing is like, the thing is like, like, your watch can't kill you, right? And when we get to the point where it's like, okay, the most dangerous thing you're doing is, um, is driving this car where you can take a thing which will absolutely not get you killed because it's like full self-driving, electric, whatever. I think the calculus starts to change. And then, yeah, sure, maybe you like, it's like a thing you show to your friends in the garage and you take it on the track or something. And it just becomes this like super luxury good, but.

• 1:01:02Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I've said it on the show a bunch. I, I think the, the, the future of being a car enthusiast is like a lot more time on the track.

• 1:01:09John Coogan?

  Track focused, yeah.

• 1:01:10Jordi Hays?

  Um, and people will just opt into the, the danger of driving this moving, you know, vehicle that, that, that can kill you, but they're going to opt into it in a more controlled environment.

• 1:01:22John Coogan?

  There was a lot of fud around the Model S Plaid because it's not level five self-driving. There is a, there is a steering wheel, obviously, and pedals. You can drive it, goes zero to sixty in two seconds. And if you're on old tires, you can really spin that thing around and they resell for sixty K now. So they're starting to get in the price point of maybe a reckless teenager type. And there was, there was some fear mongering around, oh, wow, we're going to have a lot of crazy Teslas wrapped around trees like Hellcats and Corvettes of, of old, you know, the, the classic, uh, you know, college football player gets a fancy sports car, drives it too aggressively, crashes.

• 1:02:02John Coogan?

  But I haven't seen any data about EVs actually being more dangerous, even though in theory, the raw performance metrics should be somewhat endangering. But again, there are so many different electronic systems for traction control and whatnot that people just don't really turn off, that, uh, you wind up with a more stable car. So, I don't know. Anything else happening in China on the EV front you've been tracking?

• 1:02:25Jordan Schneider?

  Cars, look, they're really cheap. That's just the crazy thing. And like, yes, they're subsidized and yes, they need to export them, but like, it's just wild to, um, you know, have a nine thousand dollar car, which feels exactly like a thirty five thousand dollar one.

• 1:02:41John Coogan?

  Yeah, that's crazy.

• 1:02:42Jordan Schneider?

  Um, and it has like a.

• 1:02:43Jordi Hays?

  And that's the, that's the price in China.

• 1:02:47Jordan Schneider?

  And even abroad. I mean, you know, the, you're starting to see tariffs, uh, on all these, uh, on all these cars in, in Europe. And of course, they're like pretty much banned in the US, but, um, for the countries that aren't, I mean, this is just, it's like a no brainer. If you're in Malaysia or in Indonesia or, um, you know, any country who hasn't decided that they need to preserve their domestic car industry. It's like a huge consumer boon to have access to an automobile, which is like, you know, one third of the price with the same or if not better quality. I mean, they break less too, that's the cool thing. Like, you don't have to repair them because there's not a lot of stuff in it.

• 1:03:22John Coogan?

  The EVs.

• 1:03:22Jordan Schneider?

  Don't have to go to my like Swiss car, you know.

• 1:03:25John Coogan?

  People were, people were really worried about the.

• 1:03:27Jordi Hays?

  Swiss car.

• 1:03:30Jordi Hays?

  I love how little you know about, uh, cars. Uh, we're going to take you to the track, Jordan. We're, we're taking you to the track and we're going to force you to get in, uh.

• 1:03:38Jordan Schneider?

  Wait, who's this like thirty four, right? Why, why did they let the EV guy run Bugatti? I thought this is like, uh, who's this guy? Has he been on VPN or are we friends with him?

• 1:03:47Jordi Hays?

  No, no, we, we, we'll, we'll hopefully get him on the show, but I, but, um, no, I think he's doing an exceptional, exceptional.

• 1:03:53John Coogan?

  Yeah, no, he's been doing well.

• 1:03:55Jordi Hays?

  He, he's able to, um, I, I feel like he fully represents, he, car enthusiasts feel very represented by his leadership and, and the things that he's saying. Um, and so I've been.

• 1:04:09John Coogan?

  And at his previous company, he created the Remont's Nevera, which was the, like, the first EV hypercar. So it was like over a million dollars and zero to sixty, even faster than a Model S Plaid and all this crazy stuff.

• 1:04:20Jordan Schneider?

  Wait, so, so he's promising not to do the EV thing to Bugatti or they brought him in to bring in the batteries?

• 1:04:26John Coogan?

  No, no, no, no, no.

• 1:04:27Jordan Schneider?

  Because you said it was.

• 1:04:28John Coogan?

  No, no, no. So he has EV lineage, but he has recognized that what.

• 1:04:33Jordan Schneider?

  The error of his ways.

• 1:04:34John Coogan?

  Yeah, just that, just that the markets, the, the market's bifurcating and he's saying he wants to do a Rolex.

• 1:04:39Jordi Hays?

  At the time, if he wanted to break, if he wanted to break, break through into the industry, going and building an EV hypercar made sense, but I think he comes, has the roots of somebody who's just a, you know,

• 1:04:51John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:52Jordi Hays?

  internal combustion enthusiast.

• 1:04:54John Coogan?

  Oh, well.

• 1:04:55Jordan Schneider?

  Okay, let's talk about something I know maybe like a little bit about.

• 1:04:58John Coogan?

  Yeah, uh, data centers. So I've seen online that people don't like them, but I recently learned that that is one hundred percent astroturf by China. And in fact, Americans love data centers and they have had the wool pulled over their eyes by the wolf in sheep's clothing over in China. Is this true?

• 1:05:18Jordan Schneider?

  What did Trump say today? Let data reign?

• 1:05:21John Coogan?

  It's a good, good line.

• 1:05:22Jordan Schneider?

  Is that an MLK quote? I'm just, I'm just trying to make sure. Um, look, it's ridiculous. I think there are completely reasonable reasons for lots of Americans to be upset about these things, which is not to say that I agree with them, but they are a physical manifestation of companies which, um, you know, are talking about, uh, uh, unemploying them or just like changing their lives.

• 1:05:48John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 1:05:48Jordan Schneider?

  And, uh, letting their kids cheat on their homework. And whatever the case may be, there, there was no like, um, uh, when, when, you know, TikTok and Facebook and Instagram were like reshaping America, there was no thing you could go out to like protest and like stand in your city council and say, we stand against this. So, um, you know, setting aside the water stuff, the, uh, the power stuff, the fact that they're ugly, the fact that they buzz, the fact that they pollute if the gas tire revines turn on, like, you don't need a foreign, uh, country to like, um, do it. And by the way, the funniest thing about all of this is like the evidence that people are pointing towards

• 1:06:33Jordan Schneider?

  is this one OpenAI report where they like caught these influencers basically, you know, using a VPN and using ChatGPT to generate images, um, saying data centers suck. Those things got like three likes each.

• 1:06:46John Coogan?

  It's like two hundred thousand or something.

• 1:06:48Jordan Schneider?

  So, so there's a, there's a whole lot of circumstantial evidence of like reasons why ordinary Americans might not be, uh, excited about this. A whole lot of evidence, by the way, like years and years in the making of the Chinese government being extremely bad at doing, um, foreign social media campaigns in the US.

• 1:07:06John Coogan?

  I didn't know that.

• 1:07:07Jordan Schneider?

  And then just sort of like, they're just, you know, you can, I wrote, I wrote the thing at, um, uh, this is my first ever, I taught myself Python to do this article, like from twenty nineteen. Chinese, China sucks at, um, influence operations because Twitter, back when it was Twitter, um, ChatGPT only released like three tweets, um, back when Twitter took down, um, uh, these bot networks. They would release all tweets. And so you could actually see like the average likes and when they were sending out. There was this great graph I made of, um, when they were, when the tweets were going out and it lined up exactly with like Beijing work hours and there was a nap time from like one to three PM.

• 1:07:51Jordan Schneider?

  Where no one was tweeting. Yeah, everyone has nap time. Everyone has nap time, even like the nine nine six companies.

• 1:07:58John Coogan?

  Learning, learning Python in twenty nineteen, you're really like the Japanese soldier on the last island. Just like, you don't know what's coming.

• 1:08:06Jordan Schneider?

  I thought it's what I needed to do to get a job.

• 1:08:08John Coogan?

  I fell for the meme, learned to code.

• 1:08:10Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, it is, it is, um, interesting sort of protective mechanism that like gaining real influence on social media platforms is very, very hard.

• 1:08:20John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:20Jordi Hays?

  There's very, very smart founder CEOs that their entire job is to like solve problems.

• 1:08:27John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:27Jordi Hays?

  And if you gave them like, if you said, I will give you a hundred million dollars if you can make a viral X post in the next twenty four hours, they would not be able to do it.

• 1:08:37John Coogan?

  Yeah, it's hard.

• 1:08:38Jordi Hays?

  It's just like something.

• 1:08:39John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:39Jordi Hays?

  In, in there, um, they, they just can't do it.

• 1:08:42John Coogan?

  The post, tweets per hour.

• 1:08:45Jordan Schneider?

  They just, they just, you know, big nap time. You get, get your KPIs in at nine PM and then you just kind of hang out.

• 1:08:52John Coogan?

  Yeah, that's very, very standard. I love it. Uh, the, the, the Chinese media operation is pointing its sights on Dario Amade, is that correct? Take us through this.

• 1:09:00Jordan Schneider?

  Uh, let me, let me pick up on something that, that, um, uh, Jordy just, Jordy just pointed to about like, it's hard to actually make things that are gripping and entertaining. Um, there, you guys are in Hollywood, right? There is this, um, revolution happening in the, in.

• 1:09:17Jordi Hays?

  Docs.

• 1:09:19Jordi Hays?

  How dare you? How dare you, Jordan, sitting over there?

• 1:09:22Jordan Schneider?

  I like Hollywood. I love Hollywood.

• 1:09:24Jordi Hays?

  Sitting over there in DC, doxing.

• 1:09:27Jordan Schneider?

  Doc his hip? Wow.

• 1:09:29Jordi Hays?

  Data center.

• 1:09:31John Coogan?

  Doc which coast he's on, Johnny?

• 1:09:33Jordi Hays?

  Doxing data center podcasters.

• 1:09:37Jordi Hays?

  Anyways, continue.

• 1:09:38Jordan Schneider?

  The, uh, so the, the, the Chinese kind of media ecosystem, both short video as well as its YouTube, Billy Billy has had a flood of Chinese AI videos. And, you know, this is not what I think it, it, it, there's an aspect of it, which is dystopian, but there's an aspect of it, which I think is, is extremely encouraging. The, because there are, it's, it's kind of like what happened to music, I think, in the, you know, nineties and 2000s and 2010s, where the barrier to entry to create something has gone way down. And that means that there are more people doing it. But also like, okay, you have to distinguish yourself in other ways.

• 1:10:20Jordan Schneider?

  Like the, the, the videos that are getting traction have really strong scripts, have scripts that would have never been made by like, um, the sort of broader Chinese ecosystem. You know, they, they're, they're more responsive to contemporary issues. They haven't quite been censored yet. You know, there are sorts of like visuals that CGI would take you, you know, $50 million and like a data center in the Philippines to do. That now one person can, can generate for like five bucks. And the, the, the sort of, this is not something I think we've seen on, um, on YouTube yet, or on, uh, kind of like Western short form. And I don't know if that's like the Chinese audience being more open to it.

• 1:11:03Jordan Schneider?

  But engaging with this stuff and with an open mind, it is like really cool to see a whole universe of person who would have never got, you know, a $5 million thing greenlit, all of a sudden, taking the script they, they've had on their hard drive for a while, the models, really only in the past month, being able to sort of like cross the threshold of being exciting and useful. And then you, you just, you're watching more creators make their art. And I'm kind of happy by it. I'm kind of, I'm kind of encouraged by it.

• 1:11:33John Coogan?

  Last year, Dwarash went to China and wrote about it. And the funny piece that I took away from that was the biggest like bombshell, uh, realization was that he identified that China does not have a Joe Rogan. And this is probably like a free speech thing, but there's, uh, but it's funny because like he's a podcaster. I'm a podcaster. And so like, that's what we fixate on. But, uh, do you think there's any traction on more power law commentators? Like the, the way he formulated like what a Joe Rogan of China would look like is like someone who just, you know, free form, has conversations and basically gives takes about like whatever is happening the day of.

• 1:12:13John Coogan?

  That doesn't, he, he was not able to, like instantly identify a single person where a household name, not necessarily an authority, not necessarily loved by everyone, but at least opining on everything as it happens. And, uh, I, I mean, it's probably has the, the Occam's razor, uh, uh, answer is probably the correct one. But, uh, I was just wondering if there was any progress there.

• 1:12:38Jordan Schneider?

  Yeah. I mean, the answer is no. Like who's, who gets to comment on the news of the day? The party and state media. Look, I, I think there was a real flowering of like Chinese blogging ecosystem, people with commentary accounts who were very smart, funny and engaging in the 2000s and early 2010s. And all those accounts got shut down or they, you know, cooled off a lot. I think there are like, like thought leaders of sorts, like people do talk shows, but they're kind of like philosophers.

• 1:13:13John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:14Jordan Schneider?

  Or you're just, you're, you're, you're, you're doing cultural issues, like broader society issues.

• 1:13:20John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:20Jordi Hays?

  Mindset influencers.

• 1:13:22John Coogan?

  Yeah. Hitting mind.

• 1:13:24Jordan Schneider?

  Yeah. I mean, like you need to.

• 1:13:25Jordi Hays?

  Are there any, uh, are there any like, you know, Joe Rogan, I think like, you know, what is it? 60% of the content is like UFOs. Has anyone kind of carved out like the UFO niche in China?

• 1:13:37John Coogan?

  I don't know.

• 1:13:38Jordan Schneider?

  Back to you on that. I think, look, there, there's, there's, um, uh, there's sort of one lane of conspiracy theory, which is like, is allowed to exist. And it's the Han supremacy conspiracy theory. So, um, it, there's this idea that like, um, the Qing dynasty, which was the Manchu's who came in in the 1600s, like, like was illegitimate from the beginning. Because like Han people should never be, um, oppressed by, uh, foreigners. You know, so that is the sort of conspiracy, which is like, which is like allowed to have legs on the internet. And isn't like totally taken down because like, we can't offend our like, you know, equivalent,

• 1:14:23Jordan Schneider?

  equivalent of like MAGA bros or whatever, um, for the, for the Han race. But other than that, you know, it's just the, the, the, the thing about a Joe Rogan is you have to be like discordant, right? Like you need to like tell people that something is fundamentally wrong and you kind of have an answer. And like, you gotta like, part of the shtick is being like politicians are full of shit. And he was sort of into Bernie back in the day and he was into Trump when it like wasn't cool, right?

• 1:14:53John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:14:54Jordan Schneider?

  You don't get to do that. Yeah. You can't, you can't be like, like the, the, I mean, what even can you be contrarian about? Like that's like, here's the thing. Okay. Okay. We're coming back to AI. Liang Wanfang, right? He, super contrarian dude. He was not public about it. Or he was public about it. He did like three interviews over the course of five years. Basically has been quiet. Um, this is the CEO of Deep Seek. Um, and then there was this.

• 1:15:24John Coogan?

  Leaked transcript.

• 1:15:25Jordan Schneider?

  Leaked transcript, which again, he did not want to have come out. Where he was, you know, a very kind of global mindset, thinking about open source, helping humanity. He was really transparent about the fact that he was using stolen Nvidia chips. But that's the sort of public voice, which is extremely rare to come across in Chinese data source. Why can he do it? By the way, he wasn't even doing it. He was speaking in what he thought was privately. And then he was so pissed that he pulled his IPO. He's like, sorry guys, you, you, so one of you guys leaked this? None of you are getting, um, none of your guys are getting to be mine like Kevin Durant, right?

• 1:16:07Jordan Schneider?

  You know, he got to do it because he's a billionaire, um, many times over. He's part of like a lead, you know, he's like part of the national team. He's creating something which is really important for the country. And even at that level, he has been conditioned to not want to sort of make his case openly and in public, um, for the view that he has about the way society and the world should interact with technology. So if even at that level with, um, you know, with that much like plot armor, you're not feeling like you can do, you can do this sort of thing. It's, you know, it, it, it trickles down further into the broader commentary ecosystem.

• 1:16:45Jordi Hays?

  What, uh, what kind of status games are young people in China that might be emerging from the university system? You know, do they want to go work for, uh, big tech companies? Do they want to work in manufacturing? Do they want to start startups? Like what is, what kind of games are, are, are they playing?

• 1:17:07Jordan Schneider?

  I thought you were going to ask me what car they're, they're buying. Like, I don't know.

• 1:17:10Jordi Hays?

  Well, that comes later. That comes later.

• 1:17:14Jordan Schneider?

  You know, there is, there is, uh, polling. I mean, like people do polls about like, you know, who gets to recruit the most Chinghua graduates. The list is not surprising, like the, the top labs, ByteDance, Huawei pay the most. You know, they work you really hard. But I think there's, um, sort of, there, there was this like, um, moment, I think in the, the second half of the 2020s, when entrepreneurship was the cool thing. And now, um, it's, you know, the, the pendulum has definitely swung back towards, um,

• 1:17:52Jordan Schneider?

  working at big firms. Oh, one more funny thing on this. So like, apparently the, uh, the PLA, uh, so the, the Chinese army, the, there's, they've, they've been able to raise their standards over the years. And they've been getting, um, better crop of, uh, of talent, including someone's, including some from top universities, just because like the job market is so rough. I mean, they stopped.

• 1:18:13John Coogan?

  Oh, interesting because the job market stuff. Because I, I, I talked to a friend, uh, who had spent a lot of time in China. And he said that like the, the major difference that he saw between the US and China was that, uh, the, the government is able to hire super top performers, but it's because they can force them to join. But this is because you, you're saying it's more of like a job market dynamic.

• 1:18:33Jordan Schneider?

  I don't think, I don't know who's getting forced into taking these jobs. I think it's still like, you know, it's, it's, um, it's downstream of, look, youth unemployment was like 25% three or four years ago. And then the Chinese government stopped reporting it. So like. Look, you know, people will take work where they where they can get it. And I think the promise like also there's data on like the government reports, how many people take the civil service exam every year? That's been rising pretty consistently over time. So to see that now like bleed into police and military is a is an interesting, I think, sign of the times because those are not high paying careers. They're just ones that have more stability, right?

• 1:19:17John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah. Back to Liang Wenfeng, founder of DeepSeek, his his leaked transcript. It felt like there were a lot of interesting, thought provoking ideas in there that some of which I agree with. But it also felt a little bit like the 2025 AI lab leader playbook that is now facing backlash. Where he's talking about, you know, sort of sci fi scenarios, jobs and all these different mechanics that run some risk. Do you think that that has, do you think he's aware of the backlash in the United States to that type of rhetoric? Or do you think that he thinks that China is somehow resilient to it?

• 1:20:00Jordan Schneider?

  Well, here's the interesting thing with Liang Wenfeng. He's kind of like Demis and DeepMind. If DeepMind never sold.

• 1:20:07John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 1:20:08Jordan Schneider?

  So, you know, he is really rich. He runs this like giant Jane Street.

• 1:20:14John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:15Jordan Schneider?

  Eve like quant quant hedge funds, which is which spits off money. He's able to basically fund this himself. He's told his investors, I'm not here to make a profit. I'm here to make AGI and like, look, I'm going to have these weird ideas and try to just do cool science and I'm going to make this bet, which is very different from the one that the Western frontier labs have made, which is that like, I need to have a business to throw off cash in order to keep doing it. And I think like, you know, what was, what was the striking thing in there? He's like, look, we're not going to have perverse incentives because we're going to keep our headcount really small. And we're going to keep doing this. We're going to do our, the best we can to like, keep doing fundamental breakthrough science and

• 1:20:59Jordan Schneider?

  hope things go well. So that more than his,

• 1:21:06Jordan Schneider?

  you know, what's going to happen in 2050 things I were was was my takeaway is like, he's the one player in this ecosystem who's who's prioritizing keeping his sort of like independence and research direction and not sort of being tied to a product roadmap or to a broader AI, you know, a compute provider in China or like an Alibaba or Tencent. But he just like wants to be weird and do do his own thing. And I think that's really cool.

• 1:21:33John Coogan?

  That's interesting. Where do you think DeepSeek will be getting chips in the next couple of years? Is that they're just going to keep building on Nvidia?

• 1:21:42Jordan Schneider?

  So importantly, there is this ratio between the US Nvidia, US Nvidia, jalapeno, whatever broader like TSMC ecosystem and TSMC Samsung Intel ecosystem and the Chinese ecosystem. And there is capacity like 15 to one, 12 to one. And that's something that you can project out pretty clearly, just kind of like doing a little, doing some equations from like how much, how much CapEx is being spent, how many, how much equipment is being acquired, like yield rates, what have you.

• 1:22:21Jordan Schneider?

  So where is he getting the chips? As much Nvidia as he can get, probably. But I, the sort of larger takeaway with the Chinese and Western ecosystems is that the Western one is way better capitalized and has way more straightforward access to chips, which is basically an order of magnitude better in over the next like at least five years. So it's going to be rough sledding for them. And look, if you, I don't know how much you've guys, time of you guys have spent with the Chinese AI IPOs, but they're making like $500 million or like a billion dollars and it's cute. But this is not three, this is not 30 trillion, right?

• 1:23:05Jordan Schneider?

  Or or even if, or even 10, or even $10 billion. And the reason of the reason, the reason that's the case is because they're not on the frontier of the technology. So they can't charge a premium and they're compute constrained. Now, look, we've got this interesting new model where Kimi is trying to license its technology to be able to sort of leverage compute in the West to make money, like TBD on whether the Trump administration is going to be cool with that as a going concern going forward. But if all the Chinese firms have is access to Chinese chips, it's going to be really difficult to make a lot of money and to keep paying for more chips in the way that the Western labs have been able to like really mobilize the entire global financial system.

• 1:23:50John Coogan?

  Yeah, you're talking about moonshot potentially going to Microsoft and Amazon and offering their models, which are open source, but served and they would want to rev share based on whatever sells, right?

• 1:24:03Jordan Schneider?

  Got it. Exactly.

• 1:24:04John Coogan?

  Jordy, you had a question.

• 1:24:06Jordi Hays?

  Is there any evidence of individuals in China that are outspoken

• 1:24:13Jordi Hays?

  saying that China is not doing enough to invest or be competitive in AI? Like anyone that's saying like the government, like if we don't have private or, you know, if we don't have companies that can that can operate like a Jensen, right? Just like sprinkling billions of dollars everywhere throughout the economy that we need the government to actually, you know, participate in that way.

• 1:24:39Jordan Schneider?

  No. I mean, I think the government already is. So you've you've started to see more and more state money coming into these companies cap tables. Like, you know, if you're a CEO, it's a bit of a, it's a bit of a double edged sword, right? Where on the one hand, you just want to be able to run your business and not have this like guy from an SOE saying like, hey, we think you should spend your time doing this instead of that. But, you know, subsidies, subsidies are always nice. Like the Chinese government maybe 15 plus years ago, waked up, woke up to this idea that it needed to invest really substantially in the semiconductor ecosystem. And then they've done that for better or for worse.

• 1:25:23Jordan Schneider?

  We're starting to see real results come out of the likes of CXMT and SMIC and Huawei, of course. Now, on the lab side, so like the, or like the demand side for those chips, that's something which has only really started to happen over the past six months or so. And look, the scale of it is going to be very different than the amount of money that

• 1:25:50Jordan Schneider?

  Microsoft and Amazon or Google and OpenAI and Anthropic can do to sort of like pre commit to buy these chips going forward. So, I don't know. Well, excited, excited to continue following that story for you, Jordy.

• 1:26:01Jordi Hays?

  Is there any evidence that there's been a sort of deflock movement in China?

• 1:26:08Jordan Schneider?

  I don't know what you're talking about.

• 1:26:10John Coogan?

  Oh, you don't know about deflock?

• 1:26:11Jordi Hays?

  So like on Instagram, on Instagram, there's videos that will have like 200,000 likes of somebody demonstrating the most efficient way.

• 1:26:19John Coogan?

  So quickly to level set, flock safety is an American startup that sells essentially CCTV cameras to police forces that then go into a database, get image recognized. And so a police officer can type in a license plate and see where that car has been. There's been a few instances of abuse where police officers have been checking on the movements of their of their ex wives. Exactly. And so that's caused a lot of backlash that that kind of created the original media firestorm, but now it has really gained ground on social media. And as a result, there's protests and people actually going out into the real world and

• 1:26:59John Coogan?

  and destroying the cameras with like buzzsaws to to get them out of their communities because they really don't like them.

• 1:27:07Jordan Schneider?

  I mean, I've, I've sort of like emotionally surrendered to the Panopticon years ago.

• 1:27:15John Coogan?

  Very Chinese mindset.

• 1:27:18Jordan Schneider?

  It's like, you know, they're watching me. It's okay. What am I going to do about it? The Tyler Cowen has this take, right? Where you should be bullish on places that have a public safety problem today. Because the cost of dealing with petty crime is just going to go down because there's exactly stuff like this.

• 1:27:39John Coogan?

  Sort of like New York in the 70s and 80s, like it became.

• 1:27:43Jordan Schneider?

  We're going to have 10x police officers everywhere. And you don't even need to be good at being a police officer. You just have to like show up and say, hey, I got you. I caught you on camera, like doing this bad thing. So speaking, I mean, coming back to cars at the beginning, like, I don't think speeding is good. I would like people to be caught when they speed. So they stop speeding.

• 1:28:04John Coogan?

  Where's the boo?

• 1:28:05Jordi Hays?

  No, I think, I think.

• 1:28:07John Coogan?

  No, I agree with you. Keep it on the track.

• 1:28:10Jordan Schneider?

  If your car is worth more than $150,000 and you pay an extra 50 grand a year for, you know, your speeding pass. That's the country you want to live in, John.

• 1:28:22John Coogan?

  You know that that's actually what happens. People with really nice cars, they they get specific lawyers that get them out of every ticket so that they never need to deal with them. And then they don't get caught speeding that often.

• 1:28:31Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I was wondering with speed cameras, is there something like a 1199 foundation?

• 1:28:38John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:28:39Jordi Hays?

  For that, where you get like a whole livery around your car that.

• 1:28:42John Coogan?

  Maybe a stable coin that you could stake, get a bunch of money flowing.

• 1:28:47Jordi Hays?

  The thing, do you, are you tracking anything? You're probably not, but I'm just curious. I've, I've been getting Instagram ads for like consumer EV toll, just basically like flying drones that you can sit in as a human. They're selling them for like $100,000 now. It's a jet ski for the skies. I can't tell if, I can't tell.

• 1:29:12Jordan Schneider?

  The algorithm's got you guys bad. They saw that acquisition price. They're like, let's just send Jordy some toys.

• 1:29:19John Coogan?

  Toys. Yeah. I mean, my boy's been buying toys. He's got so many surfboards.

• 1:29:26Jordi Hays?

  I'm

• 1:29:27Jordan Schneider?

  There was a question there, sorry.

• 1:29:28Jordi Hays?

  The question, the question is like, uh, are flying cars gonna, like, we, we just saw the road, we just saw the hu-

• 1:29:36Jordan Schneider?

  It feels like it's still a joke in America.

• 1:29:36Jordi Hays?

  We said, we just saw the humanoid robot games, which everyone is sort of like, you know, la- some people are laughing at because the robots run really fast and they explode. And other people are like, whoa, uh, that's actually like really impressive pace and these things seem pretty capable, faster than Usain Bolt.

• 1:29:53Jordan Schneider?

  What's the, what's the market for the EV tolls besides like going to the Hamptons? I mean, you just-

• 1:29:59Jordi Hays?

  No, I mean, this is, this is-

• 1:30:00Jordan Schneider?

  -flying over traffic is like the only point, right?

• 1:30:03Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, but that is extremely significant. Like, if it will-

• 1:30:07Jordan Schneider?

  If you live in Los Angeles.

• 1:30:09Jordi Hays?

  So, yeah, there's a lot of, there's a lot of, I mean, DC, I, I, uh, last time I was in DC, we had a two mile-ish drive and it was traffic. There was so much traffic, it took like 40 minutes. I was like, you live like this?

• 1:30:25Jordi Hays?

  Uh, but anyways, I, I do think that I'm, I've seen enough videos now that basically

• 1:30:34Jordi Hays?

  are showing that flying cars are here. They may not be safe enough yet.

• 1:30:37Jordan Schneider?

  You think LeBron's gonna take it to, uh, Philadelphia?

• 1:30:40John Coogan?

  Isn't he doing that? I thought, I thought he was doing helicopter transport.

• 1:30:44Jordan Schneider?

  Yeah, but why take an helicopter when you could take an EV toll?

• 1:30:47John Coogan?

  Yeah, I mean, the hot take on, on flying cars is that we've had them for a long time. They're just expensive. They're just called helicopters.

• 1:30:52Jordi Hays?

  Okay, so I'm, pull up, pull up this video right now.

• 1:30:56John Coogan?

  But the idea is democratizing the helicopter.

• 1:30:58Jordi Hays?

  You can, you can just buy this for a hundred and twenty thousand dollars.

• 1:31:02Jordan Schneider?

  That sounds so dangerous.

• 1:31:02John Coogan?

  Yeah, I know.

• 1:31:03Jordi Hays?

  You can buy this, this drone.

• 1:31:05John Coogan?

  We made, we made commercial air travel very safe, so why not?

• 1:31:09Jordi Hays?

  Here we go. You can buy this right now for a hundred and twenty thousand dollars.

• 1:31:15Jordan Schneider?

  When are you guys gonna livestream from an EV toll? Can we get our, can we get a show?

• 1:31:20John Coogan?

  This is electric?

• 1:31:21Jordi Hays?

  Yes.

• 1:31:22John Coogan?

  Wow.

• 1:31:23Jordan Schneider?

  How long can it go? Can it like go?

• 1:31:25John Coogan?

  But really fun.

• 1:31:26Jordi Hays?

  They're already using them for agriculture.

• 1:31:30John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 1:31:30Jordi Hays?

  Like spraying crops.

• 1:31:31John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 1:31:32Jordan Schneider?

  Why do I need a person though, in it?

• 1:31:34John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:35Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, no, that, no, they're, they're, they're, some of them, you can, most of them, I think, can be remote operated.

• 1:31:39John Coogan?

  The only reason you need a person in there is if the person is moving, like traveling from one place to another.

• 1:31:43Jordan Schneider?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:44John Coogan?

  And people pay a lot, opportunity costs are high. And so if they can get, you know, it would be an hour drive, but it's 10 minutes in the EV toll, like that's a, that's a bullish thing. Uh, last question, tell me about the elite rocket force in China. They are seeking public tips on procurement violations. I don't even know what the rocket force is, so break it down, tell me what's happening.

• 1:32:07Jordan Schneider?

  Okay, so rocket force, this is actually a Soviet invention. So, you know, air force, Navy, Army, Marines. The Soviets were like, okay, rockets, big deal. We definitely gonna need-

• 1:32:20Jordi Hays?

  You forgot about the cavalry.

• 1:32:21John Coogan?

  The cavalry.

• 1:32:25Jordan Schneider?

  Gonna need them to, you know, blow up America, so we're gonna have a rocket force.

• 1:32:28John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 1:32:28Jordan Schneider?

  And then China made their own a few years ago, you know, we, we came back with our space force. I think, I'm not sure which one's cooler, to have a rocket force. But basically, this has like been a debate for a while. Do you, do you need your own, like, the, the missiles that you shoot from the ground? Should they be their own force? Whatever. Um, the Bloomberg, uh, four years ago, three, four years ago, comes out with a story saying that half of the rockets in China are not filled with, um, fuel, but are filled with water. Then you start to see a whole lot of purges, and as you guys have been following closely, I'm sure, um, the, you know, entire-

• 1:33:03Jordi Hays?

  Rockets?

• 1:33:04Jordan Schneider?

  They were, they were absolutely LARPing rockets. Um, uh, you know, there's an entire, uh, it's kind of two generations of Chinese military leadership that has now been purged. And they're sort of like, like the nine person, you know, joint chiefs is now down to like a guy and a half.

• 1:33:20John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:21Jordan Schneider?

  Um, so we've been purging, purging, purging.

• 1:33:26John Coogan?

  That's, I mean, it's, the, the biggest piece of the story is just that they had to go for public whistleblowers, like that.

• 1:33:31Jordan Schneider?

  Yeah, yeah, so, so, okay, so-

• 1:33:33John Coogan?

  You can purge so easily behind the scenes, check the records, just go and look and see, okay, there's water in this, in this rocket instead of fuel. Like, it doesn't seem that hard, the fact that they've got a public-

• 1:33:42Jordan Schneider?

  So, yeah, we're, we're like seven years into, we're like, three, four years into this round of purge, and now we're opening up a tip line to the public, saying, hey, you know-

• 1:33:53John Coogan?

  Anybody bragging at the club about stealing rocket fuel? Call this number. Very, very rough. Well-

• 1:34:00Jordan Schneider?

  Speaking of, uh, former spouses wanting their revenge, like, you know, it's, it's not just following the cars around.

• 1:34:07John Coogan?

  That's actually a good source of whistleblowers, probably. That makes sense. That's a good one.

• 1:34:12Jordan Schneider?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:12John Coogan?

  Uh, Jordy, last question, or we get?

• 1:34:14Jordi Hays?

  No, no, I, I, I thought that they just wanted to put on, put on the front, like they had way more rockets than they actually did, when they were really just like, you know, metal with some water in it.

• 1:34:24John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 1:34:24Jordi Hays?

  I didn't realize that it was that.

• 1:34:25Jordan Schneider?

  Oh, so, so you think it's part, it was part of the plan, actually?

• 1:34:28Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I thought, I thought that's why, that's why I said LARP.

• 1:34:31Jordan Schneider?

  Eisenhower's inflatable tanks?

• 1:34:32Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, live action role.

• 1:34:33John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, you see those military parades, they never open them up and show us what's inside, who knows? Maybe it's all paper mache. Anyway, thanks so much for coming on the show, Jordan. Great to see you.

• 1:34:45Jordi Hays?

  Great to see you.

• 1:34:46Jordan Schneider?

  See you, go sign up. See you guys at the track.

• 1:34:47John Coogan?

  Or China Talk.

• 1:34:48Jordi Hays?

  See you there.

• 1:34:49John Coogan?

  We'll see you there. Have a good one. Let me tell you about CrowdStrike. Your business is AI, their business is securing it. CrowdStrike secures AI and stops breaches. Our next guests are from Actonide. They are the first startup to produce HALU, the high enriched-

• 1:35:05Jordi Hays?

  Finally.

• 1:35:06John Coogan?

  High-

• 1:35:08John Coogan?

  What is, what does HALU stand for? I know it's enriched uranium, but break it down for us. Introduce yourselves. Welcome to the show.

• 1:35:14Speaker 05

  Hey, guys. Hey, John. Hey, Jordy. So nice to you to have us. Huge fans of the show. Um, let me tell you a little bit about HALU and what we're doing here at Actonide.

• 1:35:21John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:22Speaker 05

  Uh, so you hit the nail right on the head. Uh, we were indeed the first startup in history to enrich uranium and produce HALU. In terms of what HALU is, it's not something that you need to really worry too much about, since they're high ass HALU and rich.

• 1:35:33Jordan Schneider?

  Now I'm worried about it. Now I'm worried about it. Now I'm worried about it.

• 1:35:37Speaker 05

  It's, it's the next gen fuel for next gen reactors.

• 1:35:39John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 1:35:40Speaker 05

  And it's something that the power energy says that you cannot get presently in the United States. There's no supply.

• 1:35:44John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:45Speaker 05

  Right now.

• 1:35:45John Coogan?

  It's mostly coming from like decommissioned nuclear, uh, like, uh, nuclear submarines or something like that, like they sort of refine it down, like reuse what we have, basically.

• 1:35:55Speaker 06

  You're exactly right. Or they get it from Russia.

• 1:35:57John Coogan?

  Yeah, Russia. Not good.

• 1:35:59Speaker 05

  Yeah, and that's something that we're aiming to change here in Dallas, Texas.

• 1:36:02John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 1:36:02Speaker 05

  It was a huge feat by our team.

• 1:36:04John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:04Speaker 05

  Small firm, planet nation states have struggled with and failed at, and we're doing it here in Dallas, Texas.

• 1:36:10John Coogan?

  Yeah, so take us through the process. Is it big centrifuge? What, what, what's the equipment that's involved in the process?

• 1:36:16Speaker 06

  So we have a machine called the Calutron, uh, which was originally invented by Nobel laureates, uh, for the Manhattan Project. So they've already delivered for our country once before. Um, but they were, uh, sort of decommissioned because they're not very energy efficient.

• 1:36:27John Coogan?

  Hmm.

• 1:36:27Speaker 06

  Um, very large magnets. Um, now magnets don't consume power, they're superconducting, for instance. And so it's very rare in the engineering fields that you'll find the major problem can actually go to zero. So, yeah, we stand on the shoulders of giants in that way.

• 1:36:41John Coogan?

  So you can, like, use the same machine, but just redesign a piece of it to be more efficient? Is that what's going on?

• 1:36:49Speaker 06

  More or less. It's the exact same principle, though.

• 1:36:51John Coogan?

  Huh.

• 1:36:51Speaker 06

  Um, and it's, besides the centrifuge, the only thing that's been proven at scale.

• 1:36:55John Coogan?

  Cool. Uh, take us through like the history. How did you get here? Why nuclear? What's the, what's the lineage of the company?

• 1:37:03Speaker 06

  It's, um, it's been a long time coming. It's been an interest of mine for a long time. Uh, when I first heard about the problem of how do you atomically separate things, I, I couldn't believe that it hadn't been solved. And initially, I thought this would be an easy problem to work on, and so, uh, I've been humbled since then many times, as you can imagine.

• 1:37:17Jordi Hays?

  What's, what's the phrase? We don't do things because they're hard, we do them because we thought they would be easy?

• 1:37:22John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:23Speaker 06

  I couldn't agree more with that. So, it's time and time again, you go, okay, I finally understand it, and then, no, right?

• 1:37:28John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:28Speaker 06

  Um, so it's been a long time coming. Um, you know, there's a lot of research that has to go into this. This is not a very approachable field. Um, a lot of things are classified and you have to derive it for yourself. There's been a lot of smart people who've had a lot of interesting ideas about this, from the centrifuge to laser, um, Calutron, you name it.

• 1:37:45John Coogan?

  Yeah, where, where is the, the limit on classification? Because a lot of the, you mentioned like rederiving it yourself, a lot of the AI models are able to re-derive cybersecurity exploits, which are now the, the talk of the town. But, uh, are AI models giving you refusals in your work? Or are they being helpful because they know that the control point is actually separate? And it's not a risk to educate someone about, uh, how to build a nuclear product? Because at the certain point, they're going to have to go to reality and go and get a particular material that is controlled.

• 1:38:21Speaker 06

  You know, it's such a fascinating question. I, I don't use a whole lot of AI, um, so I don't get a whole lot of refusals, I, usually for finding vendors and suppliers or things like that. But, you know, I, AI probably wouldn't be super useful for a task like this, uh, because it, it touches on some pretty obscure areas of, like, you're building a particle accelerator, um, so sort of questions of something called-

• 1:38:44Speaker 06

  More be curious to see how far it gets along with it, but I certainly don't think it presents a proliferation concern.

• 1:38:50Speaker 05

  We're also pretty wary regarding kind of where sort of information within our business goes to. And so we have a lot of things that are still frankly analog or air gap regarding any sort of things that are proprietary or trade secret.

• 1:39:02John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, at the same time, it's not like the company is nuclear launch codes and and cybersecurity is more about intellectual property, correct?

• 1:39:11Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 1:39:12John Coogan?

  It's not safety related.

• 1:39:14Speaker 06

  Right, right. And we look forward to working with the appropriate regulators for us to scale up a loop production, you know, it's a smidge under highly enriched. And so you have to be in a category two facility. And but the separation technology itself is, you know, 80 years old. And so there's definitely some a lot of know how. But the principles over.

• 1:39:35John Coogan?

  What's the biz dev go to market side of the business? Are you already inking contracts with? I mean, there's so many new nuclear reactor startups that would probably sign up to buy Halu if you were able to produce it a certain scale? What's the status there?

• 1:39:51Speaker 05

  Absolutely. So we actually are kind of agnostic with the materials that we make. Generally, we refine atoms. And some of the first refined atoms that we made were for the medical industry. They go for about $30,000 per gram, which is like a paperclip sort of material for you patriots out there. And we delivered that to Oklo isotopes. We've had a few commercial deliveries to them. And, you know, in terms of the Halu side of things, we are, we've been in stealth for quite some time. And so we kind of blew up Twitter with our announcement of coming out of stealth and some of the, you know, recent developments here. And we have a lot of those biz dev talks ongoing this week and

• 1:40:33Speaker 05

  beyond. So go ahead and ink some deals. Obviously, there's a big sort of gap between doing it once and being able to scale it up on both the technological and regulatory fronts. And we look forward to working with the right partners and regulatory bodies to make sure that goes in a methodical and expedient fashion.

• 1:40:49John Coogan?

  You self funded this company at some point. Can you tell us about the journey to set yourself up for there? What that was like? What the motivation was?

• 1:40:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's true. I did put in over a million dollars of my own money. You know, when Robert and I first met, I had a background in finance and software, and he really kind of gave me a gut punch, because he told me that he was pretty upset with so many brilliant engineers going to finance and software. Hey, I turned a buck from it. And that they weren't doing hard engineering problems. So I asked him, well, what are you doing? And he said, I'm working on what I think is the hardest, you know, sort of unsolved problem in humanity. I was like, all right, like, what's that about? And he told me he was doing sort of isotope separation. He showed me what he was working on. I got super infatuated the problem. I truly agree that this is indeed humanity's largest unsolved problem. If you look at history, you got the Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age, the

• 1:41:41Speaker 05

  Silicon Age, we were promised the atomic age. And it's something that we deserve. We're not playing with a full deck of materials. And so I began investing my own money and got to a spot where it was beyond R and D. We brought on a seed round. And, you know, here we are doing commercial deliveries and scaling into different markets.

• 1:42:01John Coogan?

  That's fantastic. Well, congratulations.

• 1:42:03Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, really impressive.

• 1:42:04John Coogan?

  For coming on the show.

• 1:42:05Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, great to meet you guys. Come back on soon.

• 1:42:08John Coogan?

  Goodbye.

• 1:42:08Jordi Hays?

  Be safe.

• 1:42:09John Coogan?

  Let me tell you about Codex. Codex is a powerful workspace for getting work done with AI agents, whether you're writing code, analyzing data, creating content, or automating business workflows. Codex helps you move projects forward from start to finish. Our next guest is Billy Falinger, returning to the show with Regent. Billy, how are you doing? Welcome back.

• 1:42:28Speaker 07

  What's up, guys?

• 1:42:29John Coogan?

  It's been too long.

• 1:42:30Speaker 07

  Doing well.

• 1:42:31Jordi Hays?

  Been too long. Great to see you.

• 1:42:33John Coogan?

  Give us, give us the latest news in Regent world. How are the sea gliders going?

• 1:42:38Speaker 07

  We are, we're cruising, we're gliding. We just wrapped up our $240 million Series B. So that's the big news lately. Give me a go, come on.

• 1:42:50Jordi Hays?

  Quarter bells.

• 1:42:51Speaker 07

  I've been waiting on that.

• 1:42:52Jordi Hays?

  Quarter bell.

• 1:42:53John Coogan?

  Oh, so good. So yeah, talk about what it takes to raise for this company. Are you, you're still pre revenue, but you and you're not actually like the product, you can't just go as a consumer and test it out, but you have a massive backlog. What are investors looking for? How are you telling the story?

• 1:43:11Speaker 07

  Yeah, well, we do have money coming in the door, importantly, right? So we have commercial customers, we have about 10 billion in the backlog there. But one of the unique things about Regent is we have firm orders, like actual orders, non refundable deposits. Customers are putting down, we have over 10 million in the bank now that are backing our backlog now, multiple years now of delivery from our manufacturing building. So that's on the commercial side and on the defense side now, up to about 20 million in orders, majority with the Marine Corps. But we have some really big announcements on the horizon here. So the defense business growing really fast.

• 1:43:48John Coogan?

  Yeah. So yeah, I mean, typically you'd assume like net 60, you know, payment terms or something. But you are able to get some of that money upfront. That's good. What does the team look like? Where have you, where's the company based? And how is the actual operation growing?

• 1:44:05Speaker 07

  Yeah, we're based in Rhode Island. Rhode Island has really been put on the map lately. We're leading in maritime and defense. There's a bunch of other companies here, a bunch of startups, Andorall moved into town, like you go out on Narragansett Bay, and you're going to see all sorts of drone boats out there and subs and sea gliders, too. So that's been pretty cool. We're up to about 120 people now at the company. But obviously, with the Series B done, now we're going to start growing really fast. And the whole point for us is we have this quarter million square foot factory here. That's where we're going to be building our sea gliders, both our large viceroy is the small squires. So we got to fill out the factory. So that's the next step for us.

• 1:44:43John Coogan?

  I feel like you're in an interesting position, because we, I mean, we talked maybe years ago about the benefits of being all electric, that yes, there's an environmental benefit, but for specific use cases, it might not be that big. But the serviceability might be an even bigger benefit. Is that holding true? Because you're in this dynamic where the current administration is probably very receptive to doing business with a young company, like you mentioned with the Marine Corps. But at the same time, they're not exactly the biggest fans of electric technology, from what I've seen. So, you know, is there,

• 1:45:23John Coogan?

  is there a discussion of, of other power trains? Or do you want to remain laser focused? I remember talking to somebody who deployed small, like basically drone helicopters in the military and said that like, gas engines work really well, they stay up much longer, the energy density is fine, the supply chains there. But how are you dealing with the trade offs of where the, where the powertrain technology might go in the future?

• 1:45:48Speaker 07

  Yeah, we sort of always had the feeling that on the defense side of the business, and particularly in the markets, we're going after where we're talking about, like, moving across thousands of miles across the Indo Pacific, right, hopping between these islands that we're going to need longer than the couple hundred mile range we get out of batteries, which is really good for commercial, like, that's your regional range where you're sort of stuck between a car and an airplane. But on the military side, like, we need to go from Guam to the first island chain. Like, we're going across the Pacific here. So on that side, definitely hybridizing. About a year ago, or a little over a year ago, we announced Regent Defense. And part of that was really a focus on building out this hybrid. So we have sort of a conceptual design now. We've been working on the supply chain

• 1:46:30Speaker 07

  side. But we're definitely going to be introducing a, an engine, a fuel engine system that works with our electric propulsion system on the front end, extending our range out to about 1600 statute miles. We'll be able to do that.

• 1:46:43John Coogan?

  Well, yeah, I've seen these, this very unique hybrid, I believe it's a Chinese car, where it is primarily an electric vehicle, but then there is a, like a two cylinder gas engine that just charges the battery. Is that a relevant technology that we're going to see other places? Or was that sort of a unique anomaly of that particular Chinese EV company?

• 1:47:05Speaker 07

  Yeah, it sort of depends on the application. For us, you know, we're a dual use company, obviously. And I think like, to be successful in dual use, and there are few companies that can really say this, is like, as much consistency between the commercial and defense products as possible, like, as much shared bond, like, basically the same SKU. So our sea gliders are coming off the line here, or will, within the next year or so, in Rhode Island. And in the commercial version, we're going to load it up with batteries, and it will go 180 miles. On the defense version, we'll put about 20% of the batteries in. So you still, those batteries sort of help you take off and land. We still have that electric propulsion system, which is super quiet, super low maintenance, low thermal signature,

• 1:47:47Speaker 07

  all these great things. And then instead of the rest of the batteries, that's where we put in our engine and our fuel system.

• 1:47:52John Coogan?

  Yeah. Tell me more about the commercial backlog. I mean, it seems huge. Where, who's interested? Where, where are the logical places to deploy these? Because I imagine that as you've actually built up that book of commercial business, there's been a lot of just assumption testing on the other side of the negotiation table. Maybe you come and say, San Francisco to Marina Del Rey, maybe somebody else is actually, it's going to work better here or there. So where are you seeing the future play out first?

• 1:48:27Speaker 07

  Exactly. I mean, founding the company, we're coming up on six years in business now. You know, growing up, going to school in the Boston area, it was like Boston to New York.

• 1:48:37Speaker 07

  Yeah. And it was like LA to San Francisco, you know, raising money.

• 1:48:43Speaker 07

  Those are, those are total pain points. So that was sort of the focus on the initial commercial side. Sort of started, obviously, just based in the US as an American company with the US focus. And so that's evolved into Miami to West Palm and the Bahamas as a likely US launch market. Throughout New England, right? Like Boston and Rhode Island and Connecticut down to New York. And certainly some West Coast routes and obviously Hawaii as well, Pacific Northwest too. But what we found as we've grown is this is actually like truly a global technology. And the international order book and backlog is actually much larger than the domestic one. And very few people know this, but there are as many ferry passengers per year as airplane passengers,

• 1:49:25Speaker 07

  which is like wild as an American to think that the coastal market is that big. For, you know, cargo, there's 90 plus percent of cargo that goes over the coastlines. Almost half the world lives in coastal populations. It's just like how humanity settled the world. So globally, globally, we're talking about places like the Mediterranean, Japan, throughout the Pacific. Right? Like, these are really big markets for us. So it's not just an island hopping machine. It's like anywhere there is coastline and humans live and trade on coastlines. That's our commercial market.

• 1:49:56John Coogan?

  Is there interest from the Middle East or is, are things like actually slowing down there because of the geopolitical conflict? Because I, when I hear about new technology, maybe it's a little bit expensive to get up, but you need to do some retrofitting of some port or something. Like that feels like Dubai is going to sign up immediately, but what's it been like talking to folks?

• 1:50:18Speaker 07

  The Middle East has been a big part of our strategy for, for a long time, actually. So we spent a lot of time out there. We have a great relationship with the Strategic Development Fund in Abu Dhabi. So we actually plan to expand manufacturing, the Series B, our first global manufacturing center here in Rhode Island. But subsequently, and based on the size of that backlog, we're already planning international expansion. So we've set up a joint venture in Abu Dhabi where we're going to be scaling manufacturing from there. So the Gulf is, is going to be huge, not just for manufacturing, but also commercially, like Dubai, Abu Dhabi. That is a pain point route too. Crazy traffic on that route.

• 1:50:55Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I was just, I was just thinking, I was in, I went to Formula One in Abu Dhabi, but I was staying in Dubai and that, that drive, especially when you have these big sort of global events, is just brutal, right? Even the, the, the traffic getting out of Abu Dhabi and, and so I can totally imagine, yeah, you have a 10 minute quick flight.

• 1:51:17John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:19Jordi Hays?

  Question unrelated to, to your business, but what's happening on the recreational aviation side? Are we going to see an elect, the sort of the, the Model 3 of the skies, sort of an electric Cessna 172, something that is, you know, user friendly?

• 1:51:36John Coogan?

  Boats, but for

• 1:51:37Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, some, something that's like, hey, I just want to go fly for an hour.

• 1:51:40John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:51:42Speaker 07

  There, there are certainly some attempts at electric airplanes and there are some electric trainers out there. But really the hard point of aircraft generally, and like my background's aviation and I'm a pilot. My co-founder is a pilot, a lot of the teams are pilot, like it's the training, you know, tons of time to go out, get your pilot's license, like learn how to fly, learn how to do the controls, learn how to navigate airspace, talk to air traffic controllers, et cetera. So like that is, is the big time sink. And then there's also just the performance of like, I need enough energy onboard in these batteries. And we already talked about the range limitation of batteries. Like get up to altitude and then as I'm flying to my airport, all aircraft need reserve fuel. So if I'm flying to my airport, my airport's occupied or like something's wrong with it,

• 1:52:25Speaker 07

  I need enough fuel to fly and land somewhere else. So it's actually like all of, yeah, right? It's like, it's good.

• 1:52:31John Coogan?

  They're only Harrison Ford.

• 1:52:35Speaker 07

  So like, that was our perspective coming into this. My co-founder and I came from the aviation world and we were part of that, like early wave of electrification and we were working, you know, with the EV tolls and everything. And we said, these are the challenges we need to solve. Electrification is, is here in many ways. And by building sea gliders, we solve those problems because we certify under Coast Guard jurisdiction as a vessel, not an aircraft, our digital flight controls enable it. So all you need to do is drive a boat. When you're operating it, even when you're flying, the only controls are boat controls, left and right, fast and slow. And so that's what's going to open it up to everyone.

• 1:53:10John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

• 1:53:12Jordi Hays?

  Have you seen the people in China selling quadcopters that humans can sit in? That they'll just sell you for

• 1:53:22Speaker 07

  Get on those.

• 1:53:22Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, no, that's what I'm saying. Like, so I saw, I saw, I saw another video of these guys that bought a Timu drone. And they were able to, you could sit in it, but they were flying it with the remote and then they crashed it.

• 1:53:36Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 1:53:37Jordi Hays?

  And so I, I just can't believe, I can't believe that you can just order one of these right now.

• 1:53:42Speaker 07

  I was, I was at an airshow in the Middle East and I was, no kidding, standing next to Adam Goldstein at Archer. And we were like watching this drone competition and one of these drones falls out of the sky, live at the show. Fortunately, no one's onboard and we look at each other like, what is going on here? Like, A, this never flies in America. This would never pass any certification. But like crazy stuff like that going on is, is actually not good for the industry. Like aerospace is held to a higher standard. There's a reason why aerospace is known for its safety and commercial aviation is the safest way to travel. Even with us in the maritime domain, we're taking a similarly safe approach because we're flying at high speeds with people onboard. So like, that's our focus

• 1:54:25Speaker 07

  and it's a harder bar to hit, obviously as a startup, as a company, that's like part of the responsibility of building flying machines. But, you know, seeing these guys jumping in with like the, the sword swinging around and like some RC controller, like, I, I get a little worried.

• 1:54:39Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:40John Coogan?

  Fortune favors the bold though. Come on. You gotta take some risks. You're an entrepreneur. Hop on this thing. No, I think you're right to play it safe here. I completely agree. But thank you so much. Congratulations on the new round.

• 1:54:55Jordi Hays?

  Awesome progress.

• 1:54:56John Coogan?

  And we'll talk to you soon. Have a great one.

• 1:54:58Speaker 07

  Thank you. I'll get you on a sea glider soon.

• 1:54:59John Coogan?

  Goodbye. Let me tell you about the New York Stock Exchange. Want to change the world? Raise capital at the New York Stock Exchange. Stop making excuses. September is the month for you. Just do it.

• 1:55:12Jordi Hays?

  Do it.

• 1:55:12John Coogan?

  Up next, we have Aaron Cannon from Outset, launching AI Digital Twins, grounded in individual customers.

• 1:55:20Jordi Hays?

  He's back.

• 1:55:21John Coogan?

  Welcome back to the show. How are you doing?

• 1:55:23Aaron Cannon?

  Good to see you again. I'm good. Three, third time on. I'm feeling special.

• 1:55:27John Coogan?

  I love it. Catch us up to speed. What have we missed? What's the latest and greatest in your world?

• 1:55:34Aaron Cannon?

  Uh, things are great. Yeah. So we're an AI research platform. You guys probably remember, we've, since we last chatted, I think tripled revenue, tripled the team size and now launched a very cool. Thank you. I was hoping to get at least a gong or the, but, um, yeah. And now we just launched digital twins. So we built, we, we built a whole simulations lab and have now built, uh, yeah, I'll tell you all about it.

• 1:55:59John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:00Jordi Hays?

  And so you came out of YC, you were sick, you're always getting told, talk to your customers, talk to your customers. You're absolutely sick of that. You don't want to ever have to do a customer call again. And so you built digital twins. Is that right?

• 1:56:12Aaron Cannon?

  It's exactly right. Yes. I, I, I started my career as a researcher and I was like, I, you know, I don't want to do that anymore.

• 1:56:18John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 1:56:18Aaron Cannon?

  But, but in all seriousness, yeah.

• 1:56:20John Coogan?

  Sell me a digital twin because I've run companies and e-commerce companies and it's useful to have a profile of certain customer cohorts and certain customers. But that aggregation takes a lot of the work out of it. And I feel like there's a lot of platforms that, that do that. It's sort of nice to talk to individual customers, but you might get a weirdo who's actually not very indicative. Sometimes the individual customers can give you some unique insight that everyone else is feeling. But walk me through the benefits of having these digital twins that are grounded in individual customers.

• 1:56:53Aaron Cannon?

  So here's the like, to take a step back, research, the whole point of research is to try to predict the future.

• 1:56:58John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 1:56:58Aaron Cannon?

  Like you're trying to make some decision for your business, right? And you're looking backwards at the data.

• 1:57:02John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:57:02Aaron Cannon?

  And the idea is that you can now not only look backwards, but you could look forwards. You can actually start simulating, like if I do this new marketing campaign, how would this customer set? Start reacting? What, what are the things they would say?

• 1:57:14John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:57:14Aaron Cannon?

  And we're very good at research. That's what we've been doing. That's what we built our business around. But now what we can do is take that research and build out the simulation platform so that you can say, okay, I can actually see into the future of how this group would react to some very big business decision. And so we train them by, by, by training digital twins on individuals. So it's like a one to one. Like you can go in, talk to a digital twin and you know, that's based on John. And like, that's got all of John's experience and like all this data about John. And it can, it can talk on behalf of you, right? And so that's like the, the, the, the mechanism that makes it super, super useful and also like trustworthy.

• 1:57:51John Coogan?

  Yeah. What, what incentive do you have to give people to do a long form AI moderated interview? If I'm buying a pair of shoes, I don't know if I want to sit down for an hour with, with an AI to talk about the shoes and how they fit.

• 1:58:04Aaron Cannon?

  I, I, I think the last run we did was, uh, these were actually like 75 minutes, the last one. And I think we paid them $200.

• 1:58:11John Coogan?

  Okay. Yeah, that's a reasonable.

• 1:58:13Aaron Cannon?

  To be clear, it's, it's worth more than the shoes, right?

• 1:58:15John Coogan?

  Sure, sure. And if you do, uh, i- is that one customer per one company? So you're, I mean, your clients include Microsoft, Uber, Google, Coinbase, you got murderers row here. Uh, are you saying like, we are going to interview this one person about this one Excel feature or this one Excel product? Or are you saying like, we're going to, we're going to interview you about how you use technology? Some of this might apply to Microsoft. Some of this might apply to Google.

• 1:58:43Aaron Cannon?

  That's right. So, so we do, uh, we developed our own grounding interview. So it's not just about their use of Excel. Right? The grounding interview, it develops what we call persona core. It's like trying to get like, who you are, what are your values, what do you care about?

• 1:58:55John Coogan?

  Sure, sure.

• 1:58:56Aaron Cannon?

  Right? And so we can do that as the core. And then we layer on other sets of data. So maybe Microsoft has, you know, uh, uh, operational data we can layer on to make it much more powerful.

• 1:59:05John Coogan?

  They know all my favorite formulas.

• 1:59:07Aaron Cannon?

  Exactly, exactly. So the idea is that like, we have, we have abstracted, you know, as much of the person as we can.

• 1:59:14John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 1:59:15Aaron Cannon?

  And then what we do, we, we go back to that person and refresh that data regularly.

• 1:59:18John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:19Aaron Cannon?

  So we'll even have them grade their own twins answers, like how their twin do.

• 1:59:22John Coogan?

  Interesting.

• 1:59:22Aaron Cannon?

  And they can tell you. And then, and now we have a reinforcement.

• 1:59:25John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 1:59:25Aaron Cannon?

  And so it's, exactly, exactly. And so, so that's, that's, that's what makes these really useful. And then we also put confidence scores. So you'd be like, obviously not all of our probabilistic, you know, out, you know, output here is going to be the same. So we can tell you which ones you should like really trust and which ones need a lot more human data to, to kind of bring to it.

• 1:59:42Jordi Hays?

  Where are you seeing the most pull from the market? Like what, what kind of businesses?

• 1:59:47Aaron Cannon?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:48Jordi Hays?

  Theoretically, every business should care about trying to predict the future and forecast how different customer segments, but I'm sure some care more than others.

• 1:59:58Aaron Cannon?

  The, the biggest pull right now is that companies have really hard to reach audiences. Right? And so these are like, uh, maybe there's, you know, maybe they're CRM buyers or they're, you know, kind of, uh, some kind of somewhat obscure part of the population. And so the incremental value there is massive because they can't actually go out and do constant research with that group. So they have like very few signals today. So the incremental value is big enough that they're like adopting, I think, earlier, um, and first, while there's still, you know, more kind of questions in, in the market, but, but I think that's, I, I think we'll continue to see a bunch of demand from like these specialized audiences that, that companies are sharing.

• 2:00:35John Coogan?

  Then what's the, what's the opposite? Uh, what, what is, what's a company that's like drowning in customer feedback data? Is that like some?

• 2:00:42Jordi Hays?

  Well, I'll give you a kind of, there, there's, there's basically certain business decisions and like strategy decisions that you would make that you don't need to forecast, right? Like a business doesn't need to say like, oh, what if we made customer support wait times?

• 2:00:56John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 2:00:57Jordi Hays?

  Shorter, right?

• 2:00:57John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:58Jordi Hays?

  Like, no one is sitting there being like, I wish when I called my internet service provider that I wish it took an hour.

• 2:01:03John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:04Jordi Hays?

  Instead of 30 minutes, right?

• 2:01:05Aaron Cannon?

  Or, or, or, or maybe a good example, and this is not a real one yet in terms of simulation. So I'll, I'll share it as an example, but like Nestle does a lot of consumer research. Consumers are reasonably easy to go out and talk to.

• 2:01:15John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 2:01:15Aaron Cannon?

  It's reasonably cheap to get more feedback. But if you were actually trying to do, if you're, you're at Nestle and you're trying to do research on like, uh, retailers, right? And how they, what they think about your brand, right? That's actually a much harder group to go find and do research with. You're not drowning in feedback from your retailers.

• 2:01:30John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 2:01:31Aaron Cannon?

  Right? And so that would be an audience.

• 2:01:32John Coogan?

  And, and is that, is that the pitch when you, when you, when you, when you signed Nestle? Because I imagine that like, like AI is very impressive, but I don't know that I would trust an AI to tell me which milk chocolate tastes the best because like the taste data just isn't in the model at all yet. And, and for a lot of consumer research on Nestle products, I would want to watch someone taste the chocolate and tell me what they thought of it.

• 2:01:58Aaron Cannon?

  Yeah, yeah. Well, so, so when we, you know, initially pitched Nestle, it's actually about our, you know, AI research platform with AIs are just doing the interviewing. He's asking the questions. He's still got real human data at the end.

• 2:02:07John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:07Aaron Cannon?

  Right? And that's our core, our core thing. And that's what we've had for the last couple of years. But simulations is an extension of that. And that's where we, we start talking. It's a, it's a, the kind of, the, the best kind of two elements of the pitch. Number one is hard to reach audiences, right? You're not able to get to them. Well, but those are twins of them. You can talk to them anytime and, you know, unlimited capacity.

• 2:02:24John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:25Aaron Cannon?

  Number two is we say, um, that like anybody in your company can access them. It's like if your finance person's working on new pricing model, you don't want to like give your finance person like the ability to go research with real consumers necessarily. But, but now they can actually like, you know, test ideas, test new pricing and see how, how things would adapt.

• 2:02:43John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:44Aaron Cannon?

  You know, and simulate them.

• 2:02:45John Coogan?

  Yeah, makes sense. Last question for me is, uh, I mean, it feels like the digital twin launch is like an expansion of the product portfolio. And I'm interested in where else the product expansion can go. Uh, I'm, I'm, I, I know that there are companies that they get a lot of feedback, but they struggle to bridge the gap between the feedback that they're getting and then actual ideas to go and implement. And I'm wondering how, if you're going to wind up being more prescriptive in the results. Hey, okay, we did all this research and you really should change the color from red to green.

• 2:03:21Aaron Cannon?

  Right, right, right. Well, look, so research is this thing where like humans go and decide to go run research.

• 2:03:26John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:26Aaron Cannon?

  Right? What we're building towards, and that's our original product, right? We're building towards is something where, uh, the model can go do research for you before you've even asked the question, right? And so it is constantly trying to figure out the answers to the things that you don't even know matter yet, right? It's like, hey, there's, you know, your revenue's down in that, in that sector. You don't even know that yet. We're going to send agents to go talk to all the people in that, in that part of the economy and like, go figure out what's going on, talk to some simulations if we already have them built, and then go take action. And that, that action is where I think, like where we can ultimately have more impact than just collecting and synthesizing feedback.

• 2:04:01John Coogan?

  Makes sense.

• 2:04:01Aaron Cannon?

  We should be able to like send specs to cognition and like, let, let, let them go build it, right?

• 2:04:05John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:05Aaron Cannon?

  And that's like really something that's happening.

• 2:04:07John Coogan?

  Yeah, I love it. Well, congratulations on the launch and thank you so much for coming on the show.

• 2:04:12Jordi Hays?

  Very cool.

• 2:04:13John Coogan?

  For a third time.

• 2:04:13Aaron Cannon?

  Thank you, guys.

• 2:04:14John Coogan?

  We'll talk to you soon.

• 2:04:14Jordi Hays?

  Great to see you.

• 2:04:15John Coogan?

  Have a good one.

• 2:04:15Jordi Hays?

  Great stuff.

• 2:04:16John Coogan?

  Goodbye. Let me tell you about Figma. Agents, meet the canvas. Your AI agents can now create and modify your Figma files with design system context. Thank you, Tyler, for, uh, kicking off some flapping.

• 2:04:30Jordi Hays?

  While we're missing a couple of folks here.

• 2:04:33John Coogan?

  Jordan's not going to let it down. Uh, next we have Steven from Lamb to coming back on the show. Third, fourth, fifth time, who knows? Steven, good to see you. How you doing?

• 2:04:42Stephen Balaban?

  It's so good to see you.

• 2:04:43John Coogan?

  Great to see you.

• 2:04:44Jordi Hays?

  Been too long.

• 2:04:45John Coogan?

  Okay. So we were talking to Jordan Schneider about this, uh, China backed AI bot farm. He was kind of brushing it off and I can see both sides of the discussion. Uh, you know, there's been just a couple of reports, 200 accounts here, a few hundred accounts here. He was saying that China doesn't have a long history with infra, uh, interference politically. Uh, what are you seeing? What are you, uh, what are you identifying just in the broader debate?

• 2:05:13Stephen Balaban?

  So I, I think that it's really important to not get lost in sort of, is this a Chinese bot farm? And just focus on bad facts and just bad information.

• 2:05:23John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 2:05:23Stephen Balaban?

  Because, you know, that's the fundamental thing, right? You know, misinformation is like most readily solved by just disproving, uh, sort of, you know, and just showing, showing what's real and what's not.

• 2:05:37John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, the big number that I saw most recently was polling on data centers terrible broadly, but after telling, uh, somebody that you're polling that data centers recycle water, much like a car wash recycles water, they added that phrase, then the net approval score improved by like 30%. So people with that extra context, uh, changed their whole opinion in just a few seconds. Or is that what you're saying?

• 2:06:07Stephen Balaban?

  Yeah, yeah. A hundred percent. So for, for example, the vast majority of new AI factories that are being built are completely recycling the water and using a dry cooler. It's a closed loop water system where the water never even leaves the facility at all. So that's the vast majority of a lot of these new, uh, data center builds. And so that's, that's just completely different from the old technology, which is being described, which is a heavier water consumption, which is evaporative cooling. Um, and so that's like a fact that most people should sort of, uh, you know, kind of look into. The other one is.

• 2:06:50Jordi Hays?

  Well, the, the, the problem is, is people that are, aren't really interested in tech, but maybe are afraid of AI. They're not proactively sitting there being like, I gotta go, I, it's, I got a free five minutes here. I'm going to go.

• 2:07:04John Coogan?

  Get the.

• 2:07:05Jordi Hays?

  I'm going to want to, I want to go get the facts right.

• 2:07:07Stephen Balaban?

  I'm going to do some diligent research online and really read them out.

• 2:07:10Jordi Hays?

  And there's no, and, and, and, um, yeah, just looking on, looking on YouTube.

• 2:07:15John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:15Jordi Hays?

  And, uh, just AI negativity or content that is negative towards AI gets a hundred X the, uh, the reach, right?

• 2:07:27John Coogan?

  Yeah. There's always been a negativity bias on YouTube. I mean, you, you, you could say, you know, uh, the like, like here's the history of this company, or you could be like the shocking downfall of this company. And the shocking downfall will always get more.

• 2:07:39Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. Taylor Lorenz says, making anti-AI content on YouTube is not only profitable because you'll get a zillion views on any anti-AI slot, but also because there's a litany of these sort of AI safety orgs that will quietly pay you massive amounts of money for undisclosed propaganda.

• 2:07:55John Coogan?

  I didn't realize that.

• 2:07:56Stephen Balaban?

  That Taylor Lorenz is really now back in the fray. And I'm, I'm, I'm team America. I'm team reindustrialized, right? I've got the.

• 2:08:06John Coogan?

  I love it. The sweater.

• 2:08:07Stephen Balaban?

  America, a reindustrialized sweater for it. Um, and so the, I think the interesting facts about it are this. One, from the jobs perspective. Yeah, look, this is not going to be the same level of job production as an automotive plant or a steel mill, but these are still net new jobs.

• 2:08:24John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:25Stephen Balaban?

  And so, you know, for example, I, we've got a data center out in Kansas City and 300 folks worked on it during the construction period and 50 full-time jobs. Many of these making over a hundred thousand dollars a year. What are, I, I would, I would ask to somebody who's against it, what are you going to say when you sit down at a dinner table with these 50 families that this data center is supporting and say, well, no, I don't think you should have that job because, uh, I don't want an AI data center. When, when they're the same people who are using the data center to go on post on YouTube or to use the AI services.

• 2:09:06John Coogan?

  Yeah. Where do you sit on, on local versus national regulation of data centers? Like Bernie Sanders obviously has gotten a lot of attention for discussing the topic at the federal level, but it feels like something that, you know, just as like an American, it feels much more comfortable if like, yeah, there's a, there's an area in West Texas that loves this stuff and they're going to be into it. And then there's going to be some communities that aren't, and this should be handled by the local mayor and the, and the, and the, and the board at the town level and the voter should have a voice, but it should be contained to the community that's relevant.

• 2:09:44Stephen Balaban?

  Yeah. So, so first of all, absolutely. Look, that's how our system works. Let's just be clear here. Right? You know, this is not, there's not some sort of, you know, national eminent domain that's being pulled like we have with the construction of railways and other, other, other public goods. This is decision-making that is happening on the very, very local level. And some places are not going to want it and some places are going to welcome business and some places are not going to welcome business. Some places are going to welcome data centers and others are not going to welcome data centers. I think it's a perfectly reasonable thing. I think that should, should members of the community have a voice? Yes. Should property owners have a voice? Yes, absolutely. Right?

• 2:10:27Stephen Balaban?

  You know, somebody who's going to have some, any type of externality that's adjacent to the property, they should have a voice and, and guess what? They do. They've got a ton of voice as a, as a property holder. And, and, and I think that, you know, there will be a reputation for communities that want to welcome these amazing investments into their, into their communities. So for example, going back to that Kansas City data center, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a 10,000 GPU data center. And we are going to, over the next five years, at the very least, be paying $47 million over five years in property taxes.

• 2:11:03John Coogan?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 2:11:05Stephen Balaban?

  This is a huge cash infusion to, to a, to a community that we're working with.

• 2:11:10John Coogan?

  For sure.

• 2:11:11Stephen Balaban?

  And so I think that there's going to be the communities which are really excited about it, you know, communities who have already pioneered it, like Loudoun County in Virginia.

• 2:11:18John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 2:11:19Stephen Balaban?

  And other companies, or excuse me, other communities and other counties that want to see lower rates and lower tax rates as well as, you know, lower utility rates. Because as evidenced by a bunch of research, communities that welcome data centers and industrial development and new power plants have lower rates.

• 2:11:38John Coogan?

  Yep. Of course. How are you thinking about the international puzzle? Because I, I know data center construction takes years to plan out. It's, it's slow moving, but in general, when the environment in American business gets harsher, historically, business leaders have offshored almost immediately. And I could imagine a lot of data center developers just saying, oh, you don't want it here? Build it in Mexico. Build it.

• 2:12:10Stephen Balaban?

  It would be a national tragedy. It would be a national tragedy for, in the, just in the very moment where this country needs to rebuild our grid. And it's not just data centers. Everybody wants to drive EVs. Everybody is starting to want to, you know, we're, we're bringing on more solar than we have in the history of the country. 80% of new megawatts coming online into the American grid are solar or storage. It's, it, it's, it's, it's, it would be an absolute national tragedy for this to go out, to go international, for it to go to, you know, whether it's, whether it's, you

• 2:12:51Stephen Balaban?

  know, overseas and outside of North America into South America, into Asia Pacific. I want those jobs here in the United States. I want those investments we made here in the United States. AI is a national strategic asset, in my opinion. Compute is a national strategic asset. And then most importantly, the way that AI is driving the development of the grid, and I keep trying to talk about this, but it's, it's developed, the way it's driving the development of the grid is going to pave the way for more industrial onshoring to come back to the United States so that we can bring back, whether it's different, you know, electric arc furnace mills for aluminum and steel, micro mills, turbine manufacturing,

• 2:13:35Stephen Balaban?

  other types of high intensity, by turbine manufacturing, I mean specifically like in canal smelting or, you know, specialty metal smelting, where, where there's a high energy input.

• 2:13:47John Coogan?

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you, you go back to the, wasn't Colossus was built in an old washing machine manufacturing facility that was out of business? If you all of a sudden have a lot more energy, a lot of more industrial capacity, maybe the washing machine manufacturer comes back and maybe that's good.

• 2:14:01Stephen Balaban?

  And there's going to be a lot more jobs because, because by that. And it's, it's a huge virtuous cycle. And so I think it would be a real tragedy to have anything that was going to end up pushing folks and, and, and I really, I really support building this stuff here in the US.

• 2:14:16John Coogan?

  Outside of the economic impacts, do you think that there's a national security value in having a data center in America or, or compute in America for like control reasons? Like AI is a powerful tool. If it's in another country and that country says, well, actually we're taking this and we're now under control of this. What is your model for how valuable that is from a national security perspective?

• 2:14:42Stephen Balaban?

  So, so, you know, there's, there's the soft one and then there's the hard one. The soft one is sort of how important is it to have values, models that have values that align with American values? And how patriotic is your model? I want patriotic models. And the second one is the hard one, which is what happens when they cut it off?

• 2:15:02John Coogan?

  Yeah, that's what I'm worried about.

• 2:15:04Stephen Balaban?

  And we all experienced this when Fable went away for a little bit. Do you remember? Do you remember that? And I remember I called some people up. I said, wow, this is what it feels like to have sort of the equivalent of electricity cut off, when you had the intelligence cut, cut off from Fable model. And I was vibe coding something at the time. I said, wow, this is what it feels like. I had to go back to Opus and it felt like a huge step back. I felt, I just thought to myself immediately, this is as much of a strategic asset as our grid is.

• 2:15:37John Coogan?

  Yeah. That's funny. Jordy, anything else here?

• 2:15:41Jordi Hays?

  Uh, I want to hear just more about the development of the business. What should people expect from the debate or, or just forward progress for the rest of the year on this issue? Like is, should we just expect it just keeps getting decided on a, on a local level? Is there, is there?

• 2:16:02John Coogan?

  It's going national. It's going national.

• 2:16:05Stephen Balaban?

  There's, there's elections right now. And so I think that that's like, the, the noise, the knob gets turned up a lot towards elections, then it'll, it'll, it'll kind of go back down.

• 2:16:14Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. It's very, it seems very unfortunate that politicians are just realizing, on, on both sides are just realizing that if I, if, if I want votes, I, I have to at least say that I'm against this.

• 2:16:27John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:28Stephen Balaban?

  No, no. This is the interesting thing. There's a multiple races right now. For example, one in Kansas where there, where, where the steam fitters unions and the different workers unions are actually aligning on the pro data center side of things because there's so many jobs created and there's so many big deals that are created from these data centers. That a lot of the labor unions are actually on the side of pro data center now.

• 2:16:52John Coogan?

  Oh, weird.

• 2:16:53Stephen Balaban?

  Now, so, so look, look this up, look up, there's, there's a Kansas City, I think it's gubernatorial candidate who's, there's a Kansas governor candidate and there's the steam, the steam fitters union is, is basically on the side of pro data center building. And so actually I think that it's maybe a little bit all backwards sometimes from what people have been positioning. Cause you know, you've been hearing in the media, oh, this is a, this is a bipartisan anti-data center movement. No, no, no. I think there's a lot of folks on both sides of it who, you know, are, are, are, are being supportive. I think that you're going to see the, the volume knob turned down after elections.

• 2:17:33Stephen Balaban?

  And then finally, I think it's healthy debate and communities should have a decision about who they want to work with and that data center providers should be doing their best to not be influencing rates any direction other than bringing rates down for everybody and being a good member of the community. Pay your taxes, participate in building an ecosystem of, of businesses around you and, you know, continue to make great high paying jobs.

• 2:18:05John Coogan?

  What do you think the tech community, data center community needs to do to get ahead of what I think is coming after the water debate clears? Because the water debate, of course, comes from some, you know, mediocre miscalculations, but.

• 2:18:23Stephen Balaban?

  There's miscalculations and, and also this misunderstanding of what is the total water consumption of things.

• 2:18:27John Coogan?

  Exactly. So I think a lot of people in tech sort of brush off the water, the water discussion is debunked and I think they're, they're fair to do that. But on energy, on natural gas production, there is some real data about where this all goes. If we continue to 3X compute for the next couple of years and we're powering that by natural gas, you could see headlines that track data center to emissions. This is how many plane flights a data center uses and it could become the next thing.

• 2:19:01Stephen Balaban?

  So, so, so, so, so first of all, one, the debate is not something that needs to be won with the Silicon Valley Twitterati, Xati, whatever you want to call the people who sit at their keyboards. It's, it's, the debate needs to be won by the people who are in the communities affected by this.

• 2:19:16John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 2:19:17Stephen Balaban?

  And so that's, that's the first one. The second one is that more than ever, like I said, 80% in 2026 is solar and storage. These are renewable things. That's actually where our grid is becoming more and more as we build this out. And so I think that there's needs to be a lot more deregulation with regards to expediting interconnects. You know, reconsidering, just, just making it so that we can actually go back to building and getting connected into the grid. So that way a lot of this behind the meter stuff, which is less efficient, right? You know, when you have a behind the meter, it's simple cycle as opposed to combined cycle natural gas and it's less efficient. So we should really get to the point where we are encouraging grid interconnectivity and expediting that process.

• 2:20:01Stephen Balaban?

  That's, that's, I think the number one point I would say from a policy perspective. But, you know, look, at the end of the day. Every American consumes about 600,000 gallons a year of indirect water consumption. So next time you see a big number, divide by 600,000 gallons per year of indirect consumption that every one of us makes. And then that will put things into perspective. I think that's a good starting point.

• 2:20:25John Coogan?

  Yeah. Yeah, I'm wondering, yeah, where that goes because it does feel like it's worthwhile. I agree with you on like, you don't need to win the tech insider crowd first, but it does feel like the worst case scenario would be another error to the tune of two orders of magnitude around energy consumption or natural gas production. Because if the viral, if the viral clip is every data center burns as much fuel as every car has produced since humanity started, and that's off by three orders of magnitude or something, then you're on, you're fighting on your back foot as opposed to starting with, okay, they're already pretty efficient.

• 2:21:08John Coogan?

  Here's where we are regulating here's, and the New York Times has already dug into it. Here's the environmental considerations. Here's what we abide by. And then, and then, yeah, there'll be a discussion about energy use, but at least it can be grounded in the facts from the start.

• 2:21:22Stephen Balaban?

  I totally, I totally agree with you, but I think that the other aspect of it is just not set with, oh, well, emissions are bad.

• 2:21:30John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 2:21:31Stephen Balaban?

  The most important thing is this, as a country, we have a graph that looks like this in terms of our energy production. China's got a graph that looks like this for their energy production. And guess what? All their energy is also solar now. The new, the new stuff coming online, 80% plus of China's energy is solar and storage. And so I think we need to get, you know, the emissions will come down naturally as the grid transforms to more of a renewable and storage grid. People don't really understand how much BES and battery electric storage has been a huge godsend to the grid.

• 2:22:05John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 2:22:06Stephen Balaban?

  And there's, I've already even seen, I've driven through parts of the country where I've seen anti-BES, you know, anti-battery electric storage things. And I think that there's concerns, and these are rightful concerns that like, okay, they might catch fire and, you know, cause a fire or emit, you know, chemicals when they're on fire. But this is just like, sort of, you know, any, any industrial asset that's generating electricity has like some worst case scenario.

• 2:22:35John Coogan?

  Yeah, it's the same thing with your, with your gas stove. If you leave it on, your, your house might blow up.

• 2:22:39Stephen Balaban?

  It's the same with, it's probably the same critiques if you were to go back to automotives, you know, cars in general, you know, when, when they were first coming around. But the point is that like, that I think that that actually, getting that graph back to where America's competitive in terms of generating energy, energy, whether it's from renewables or otherwise, it's going to inherently be 80% mostly renewables anyways from the trajectory that we're going in, I think.

• 2:23:05John Coogan?

  Yeah. Yeah, no, I mean, that's certainly like the, the most optimistic future is a lot of renewables. Very, very cool.

• 2:23:12Jordi Hays?

  I have an idea, but I'm going to DM it to you. So I don't want it to be.

• 2:23:16Stephen Balaban?

  Thank you guys so much for having me on.

• 2:23:18John Coogan?

  Thanks for hopping on.

• 2:23:19Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, great to see you.

• 2:23:20John Coogan?

  We'll talk to you soon.

• 2:23:21Jordi Hays?

  Talk soon.

• 2:23:22John Coogan?

  Goodbye.

• 2:23:23Jordi Hays?

  It's simply too good. We are going to come back and hit a lot more timeline tomorrow.

• 2:23:31John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:23:32Jordi Hays?

  I can't wait.

• 2:23:33John Coogan?

  We'll see you tomorrow. Thank you for watching the show. Great to be back.

• 2:23:37Jordi Hays?

  We missed you guys.

• 2:23:38John Coogan?

  We missed everyone here.

• 2:23:39Jordi Hays?

  Love seeing the whole cast of characters.

• 2:23:41John Coogan?

  Everyone's still in the chat. We love you all.

• 2:23:43Jordi Hays?

  Actually.

• 2:23:44John Coogan?

  Give us five stars.

• 2:23:45Jordi Hays?

  Saw Bobby Cosmic in there. We got Sean F. over in the LinkedIn chat. We got Cooper as well.

• 2:23:50John Coogan?

  Acquired taste, the LinkedIn livestream. I like it. Man of taste. Anyway, we will see you tomorrow. We have a very special show for you and many more throughout the fall.

• 2:24:02Jordi Hays?

  An honor and a privilege.

• 2:24:03John Coogan?

  We'll see you tomorrow. Goodbye.

• 2:24:05Jordi Hays?

  Cheers.

• 2:24:06John Coogan?

  Cheers.