Microsoft to Take On Muse, Trump & Xi Dinner, The Mansion Section | Diet TBPN

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

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

• 0:02John Coogan?

  We got some debates on the timeline. I identified four debates for it. You don't want to call them debates, though. You want to call them arguments?

• 0:09Jordi Hays?

  I thought arguments.

• 0:11John Coogan?

  Okay, we're throwing down. We're throwing down.

• 0:13Jordi Hays?

  Wouldn't, wouldn't someone rather listen to an argument than a debate?

• 0:16John Coogan?

  Okay, first one, Microsoft. Is Microsoft about to have their Muse moment? They've launched Copilot. Now they're launching a new product today. Is it going to be a breakout success? Is it going to compete directly with Meta and Muse? Or will it be a different thing entirely because it lives in the enterprise that lives in the Microsoft ecosystem? Let's go to Take Kim. Says shots fired. Pump, pump, pump. Microsoft will go after Meta's Muse from Alex Heath's interview of Satya Nadella. He's doing the rounds. Quote from Alex Heath. He wants to bring autopilot's AI chief of staff to your personal life, too. It's not staying in Excel. It's not staying in Outlook. It's going to be cooking dinner.

• 0:57Jordi Hays?

  Big move going from a copilot to autopilot.

• 1:00John Coogan?

  Autopilot, yeah.

• 1:01Jordi Hays?

  It says a lot about their intentions with the product.

• 1:03John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, it is actually sort of the like, is this AGI? Is this not AGI? Like, if you're in the copilot mode, you're sort of signaling, we're not really in the AGI era. Autopilot feels more like, although it's a term, it's a vague definition, it is significant in the brand term. So it's a hardened version of OpenClaw. The agent gets its own computer, workspace and memory to work continuously. Virtual machine for everybody. It'll have its own computer, workspace and memory to work continuously. When I ask about Microsoft's consumer strategy, he points to its 100 million plus consumer subscribers.

• 1:43John Coogan?

  Microsoft broadly, they're going all in with autopilot. Autopilot should also go to the consumer side. He sees consumer agents potentially cutting out today's middlemen, making that market more zero sum. In the enterprise, he thinks agents will make the market bigger than cloud by orders of magnitude. We got room to run. Satya said it himself. He's going to a 300T, 300 trillion dollar company.

• 2:11Jordi Hays?

  I like it.

• 2:11John Coogan?

  What do you think?

• 2:12Jordi Hays?

  So first thought is that, again, everyone is building the exact same thing. So we went through this for the last few years where everyone.

• 2:20John Coogan?

  Everyone had a chat app.

• 2:20Jordi Hays?

  Everyone's building.

• 2:21John Coogan?

  The funny thing is, is the lore on GPT-4, that was first available in Bing. GPT-4, the thing that, like, GPT-3, GPT-3.5 powered the original chat GPT. GPT-4 was only available through Bing. And then everyone was like, oh, I guess like Microsoft's going to make a play and Bing's going to be doing AI. And like, this is going to be a challenger to Google. And then they sort of like pulled back, but.

• 2:45Jordi Hays?

  Well, and at that time, when Microsoft was backing up the Brink's truck or OpenAI, they certainly, I don't think it was, it certainly was non-obvious at that time that they would be creating a company that they would ultimately compete with as much as they are, you know, partners.

• 3:00John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah. Peter Steinberger, the founder of OpenClaw chimed in. He said, Microsoft shipped a really compelling product on top of OpenClaw today. We worked with them since March to make the codebase ready for large-scale deployments. And of course, there might be some IP sharing agreement, right? Because didn't, oh, no, because OpenAI hired Peter, but they didn't acquire OpenClaw.

• 3:20Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, OpenClaw is a.

• 3:20John Coogan?

  Open source.

• 3:21Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 3:21John Coogan?

  So anyone can build on top of it.

• 3:23Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 3:23John Coogan?

  But what's odd is that I think Nat Friedman stated that they didn't fork OpenClaw. They built something from scratch. But there are just conventions. And so you wind up having similar.

• 3:35Jordi Hays?

  They got a bunch of stuff, right?

• 3:36John Coogan?

  MD files. It's just like, if you build an ecommerce site, you're going to have a product detail page. You might have a similar site map and architecture. It doesn't mean that you forked Shopify to do that or whatever. So the debate point is, how big will this be? How, what is the actual impact to Microsoft? There is the cool macro tech story, which is just that the models have advanced to a point where there is a new use case. Like, they're useful in a new way, not just knowledge retrieval, not just go and write a bunch of code. They are useful, but that requires a new type of harness, just like when the models got good at code, the harness became very important.

• 4:17John Coogan?

  We saw Claude Code and Codex and Cursor and a bunch of other companies, cognition really like defined that era. Now the models are pretty good with personal agent stuff, sending text messages, talking to people, integrating with Slack, et cetera. So the harness and the integrations and the partnerships matter. So we're talking about partners with Amazon. Who's part, who's going to, who's going to be Amazon's dance partner? Who's going to be Walmart's dance partner? Who's going to partner with Shopify? How big is the open ecosystem? You need a different harness. You need different integrations and you need a lot of new user education. Because I think there's a lot of people, I mean, there's people that are still online being like, these things hallucinate. Like, they have a knowledge cutoff.

• 4:55Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, the main thing with this launch is that I don't think there's anyone on X that's seeing Microsoft launch and an OpenClaw powered agent and thinking, I gotta use that. I'm so excited. I really want it. I, that's, that's my view and I think it's correct and you're free to steel man it. That being said, they have such incredible distribution, they can still roll this out to a bunch of people who are going to try it and be like, wow, that's really cool and useful and helpful. And be the first way that they experience this new paradigm of agents, right? And so as much as like, I just think there's basically zero excitement from like the core insider agent maximalist. There's going to be just natural excitement from everyday Windows and Microsoft users.

• 5:37John Coogan?

  Yeah, it is, it is uncommon in tech and maybe it's uncommon in X to like run your entire organization, your enterprise on Microsoft. The default tech stack for most startups is Google Enterprise, Gmail. You set up the Gmail account for your, for your employees. And then you add Slack. So then you're in the Salesforce ecosystem. And Microsoft is there, but usually with like one-off Excel licenses here and there for the finance team. Does that resonate with you in terms of like how these products like fit together? There's usually some Microsoft, but you have to go to a financial company or like a real economy company to see like, okay, these guys are all in on Microsoft.

• 6:21John Coogan?

  As a tech stack, like Outlook down to Bing, down to, you know, the databases and like fully integrated Microsoft. It feels like it could be more successful than the old copilot. And a lot of that's driven just by capabilities. The models are better, the harnesses are better, the integrations are better. And so the big question is like, when is Google going to fire back? Because are they going to wait until the next I O? Like, that's a long way away, but they do love releasing on, you know, those annual schedules. So it's like, we might get a Google, like a crazy Google OpenClaw agent, personal agent in mid 2027. And then Apple's close behind in like 2035, something like that. Would, they would launch something?

• 7:04Jordi Hays?

  I mean, Google does have, there is Gemini Spark, which is like a 24/7 always on agent, but like no one.

• 7:09John Coogan?

  Does it have a VM? Does it have a real virtual machine?

• 7:13Jordi Hays?

  I mean, it says, even if your phone and laptops are turned off, it'll still keep working. But I've seen like very little, like no one's really talking about this.

• 7:20John Coogan?

  Anyway, it'll be, it'll be interesting to see if there's like, you know, a niche community of like, yeah, I'm a, I'm a Microsoft autopilot guy. I mean, the Cod integration could change things. It just depends on how you're positioning it. Like, if the brand, if you talk to somebody and they're like, oh, you know, are you a Claude guy? Are you a Codex guy, a Cursor guy? Like, all those things say certain things about you aesthetically. You're a Muse. Okay, we get it. You like the LaBoo Boo guy. But if you, if you come out and you're like, yeah, I'm actually a Microsoft autopilot guy, that could say two things. It could say Excel jockey, king of the financial markets, apex predator, predator of the economy. Or it could say, you know, dropping a nuke on Cod.

• 8:01Jordi Hays?

  Prestige Max.

• 8:02John Coogan?

  Prestige Max, don't you think?

• 8:04Jordi Hays?

  I agree.

• 8:04John Coogan?

  We spent way too long on that. We got three more and our first guest is joining in noon, so we're going to breeze through this.

• 8:10Jordi Hays?

  We got to figure out a way to make the tensions go up and actually get an argument going here.

• 8:15John Coogan?

  We were fighting a little bit.

• 8:16Jordi Hays?

  That was too friendly. Yeah.

• 8:17John Coogan?

  Too friendly. Okay, well.

• 8:18Jordi Hays?

  You wanted to argue that everyone, all the tech insiders were, couldn't wait to get their hands on autopilot. That was your stance, right?

• 8:26John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, it's a tough one. Tough to steel man that. Anyway, Doge Designer shared a photo from a dinner that happened at the White House featuring important tech people and none other than Xi Jinping, the Chinese president. So Elon Musk, President Trump, First Lady Melania Trump, China's First Lady, AMD CEO Lisa Su, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, and Apple's Tim Cook got the prime seating right in front of Donald Trump. And they were at the prime table together. No translator that I can see in this image, although there is an empty chair. So it's possible that there was a translator at this.

• 9:08Jordi Hays?

  The empty chair would almost certainly be for Donald.

• 9:11John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 9:11Jordi Hays?

  That would be.

• 9:12John Coogan?

  Yeah, that's right. Okay.

• 9:14Jordi Hays?

  So we're going to, we're going to put the translator just between Xi and Melania.

• 9:18John Coogan?

  Yeah, because, because Xi Jinping is, whenever he speaks, he, he, he gives his speeches even in America in Chinese. But he seems to be able to hang with Tim Cook, Elon, Lisa Su, Jensen, although maybe those tech leaders at least know that one important phrase. If you want to really ingratiate yourself with a Chinese speaker, what do you say to them?

• 9:40Jordi Hays?

  Well, Han Shiwa Pi Zhou, right?

• 9:44John Coogan?

  That's what you got.

• 9:45Jordi Hays?

  Always worked for me.

• 9:46John Coogan?

  If you're ever seated with Xi Jinping at a dinner at the White House, just throw that down and he'll be like, one of us.

• 9:52Jordi Hays?

  One of us.

• 9:53John Coogan?

  Now it's time to make a deal.

• 9:54Jordi Hays?

  Notable that Elon and Tim, no plus one, they're locked in.

• 9:59John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 10:00Jordi Hays?

  No time for, no time for, no time for guests for them.

• 10:04John Coogan?

  What's interesting is that, is that Dario wasn't there. He sparred with the administration before, we've seen this. He's also attended plenty of meetings in DC. And Tom Brown, the co-founder of Anthropic, has been on a reset with the administration and even went as far to praise Trump's let data rain post on Truth Social. This was September 1st. He said to Howard Lutnick at the G20 Innovation Ministerial in Chapel Hill, quote, "I really loved President Trump's post from earlier this week." And so there's clearly olive branches going out, but they haven't been fully received

• 10:46John Coogan?

  because the dinner invite was maybe didn't materialize, or maybe he turned it down. We don't actually know. But I was offered 15 plus ones, maybe 10 plus ones, maybe five plus ones. And he decided to lock in and grind for the, grind for the ASI.

• 11:02Jordi Hays?

  Well, you know who was there?

• 11:03John Coogan?

  Who was?

• 11:04Jordi Hays?

  Lynn Martin.

• 11:04John Coogan?

  Lynn Martin.

• 11:05Jordi Hays?

  From the president of the New York Stock Exchange, our friend.

• 11:08John Coogan?

  To see it. But yeah, it was a stacked, stacked list. There's a lot of folks. Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Anna Brockman, Sergey Brin, Satya Nadella, Sundar Pichai, Cristiano Aman from Qualcomm, our guest this week, made it to the dinner, came back from Hawaii, David Solomon from Goldman Sachs, tons of other folks, Exxon Mobil. It was really a who's who of the global economy.

• 11:33Jordi Hays?

  A lot of people are saying Tai Lopez was snubbed.

• 11:36John Coogan?

  Yeah. I would have liked to see a Jaco Willink, I would have liked to see a Joe Rogan on this list, sort of disappointing that they didn't include podcasters, except for David Sacks. He did make it and also.

• 11:48Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, he's a podcaster and a venture capitalist.

• 11:50John Coogan?

  Secretary Kennedy is also has a podcast. There's actually a fair amount of podcasts.

• 11:53Jordi Hays?

  Brad Gerson, podcast.

• 11:54John Coogan?

  Sam Altman ran the Y Combinator podcast years ago, startup school, so former podcaster. The question is like, should, should Dario have been invited? I think even though they're having beef with the administration, like it's such an important company, it's important that he's in the conversation. He's also has like a very, very hard line on China and I would feel better about his positions on China if he's like, yeah, I met Xi Jinping, I really do hate him, or something like that. I don't know. You know, it's informed from like a 30,000 foot view.

• 12:26Jordi Hays?

  Wait, Dario?

• 12:27John Coogan?

  Yeah, Dario's like.

• 12:28Jordi Hays?

  He worked at Baidu.

• 12:30John Coogan?

  Yeah, but, but since then, his positioning has been like, we got to win the race against China, we have to, you know, dismantle authoritarian regimes, et cetera. Maybe he looks Xi Jinping in the eyes and gets a stare and is like, oh wow, I had you all wrong. You never know.

• 12:45Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 12:45John Coogan?

  But I want to see the sit down happen. Has the AI slop gone too far this time? That's our third debate, the third debate that will shock you. So we can pull up this Kalshi ad, it's their latest direct to consumer, direct response

• 13:00Jordi Hays?

  For everyone at home, this is a karaoke moment.

• 13:03John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 13:03Jordi Hays?

  You're sitting in the office.

• 13:04John Coogan?

  This is going to be on the.

• 13:05Jordi Hays?

  Open floor plan, don't be afraid to start singing.

• 13:08John Coogan?

  Yeah, add it to the Spotify playlist. So Brian Pempest says, this Kalshi ad is among the most dystopian ones I've seen from any betting app. And you can sort of hear the AI song over the Pixar inspired AI generated video.

• 13:31John Coogan?

  The lyrics are also odd, not to nitpick, but it says like, he sends his girlfriend money and then he's handing her money every month, I send her money from groceries. So there's a lot of like, it lacks the polish that removes something from slop. Every once in a while you see a video that is AI generated, but you're like, okay, there's enough attention to detail there. This was, let's just rip it. This is actually a popular format of AI slop that's been going very viral. Starts with a really dramatic hook. In this case, the man thinks his partner is having an affair.

• 14:03Jordi Hays?

  But actually she's just hedging food prices on Kalshi.

• 14:06John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 14:07Jordi Hays?

  Because she has inside knowledge on the market from working at a bakery in the morning.

• 14:13John Coogan?

  Yeah, so that even though egg prices are going up, she's able to net out and remain even because she is profiting on trading the egg futures market on Kalshi. I don't know how deep the market is, I don't know how real those markets are. Do they really have egg futures markets on Kalshi now? That's kind of interesting. I don't know if you can actually hedge your groceries. I want to see a version of this ad from the Chicago Board of Trade where she goes a lot further, gets a Bloomberg terminal, establishes a relationship with JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, she's visiting the Chicago Board of Trade regularly, trading in size. She's talking to counterparties, Millennium Citadel, you know, she's on the phone constantly

• 14:56John Coogan?

  moving huge volumes of commodity futures at scale, kind of elevating herself past just the prediction market, small ball, getting into the big leagues. That's the future.

• 15:07Jordi Hays?

  Shane says, would you rather your girlfriend insider trick egg futures or cheat on you?

• 15:11John Coogan?

  No, so this is not insider trading. Like you can actually do this, you can be a baker and realize that prices are going up and trade the commodities markets. In fact, the commodities markets are designed specifically to give that signal and that, and that, that is the purpose. The purpose is to, is to understand, okay, the weather is bad, people can trade that. Fundamentally, there's, there's no law against insider trading in commodity markets effectively. But there's a question of like, is this a consumer ready product? Like, is this something that someone who is maybe doesn't have, you know, a desk and a research team and a Bloomberg terminal.

• 15:53Jordi Hays?

  One interesting thing is I found egg prices up in September, the market right now, there's a 72% chance.

• 15:59John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 15:59Jordi Hays?

  But there's only $417 of volume.

• 16:03John Coogan?

  Yeah, but if you're only buying $20 of eggs, that's enough depth. So it is a viable use case. It's not, it's not fraudulent. I think most people are responding to just like the sloppiness and like the, the clickbaitiness of like the weird hook.

• 16:18Jordi Hays?

  My current concern about the state of the hyper casino that our world has turned into is that like as an adult, I feel like confident in my own decision-making ability and the ability to see ads for gambling all the time, everywhere, and still make the call that it's not for me, I'm not interested.

• 16:39John Coogan?

  You've never lost a dollar?

• 16:44Jordi Hays?

  I've tried.

• 16:45John Coogan?

  One weekend.

• 16:45Jordi Hays?

  John, John got to witness me one weekend. I was like, look, I think I should, I think I should try this gambling thing. It seems super popular, I gotta get to the bottom of it. So I tried it, I'm running in the, running in the red.

• 16:56John Coogan?

  And this is, and this is generally true for being adults.

• 16:58Jordi Hays?

  But that being said, like, you know.

• 17:00John Coogan?

  Stuck in your.

• 17:01Jordi Hays?

  As, as a 30 year old, I'd been advertised gambling products for a decade now.

• 17:06John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 17:07Jordi Hays?

  And my concern is that while adults have the ability to just make the decision like, hey, this isn't for me, and you have like more.

• 17:14John Coogan?

  Yeah. If you start young, you're more likely to stick with it for a long time.

• 17:18Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, but, but, but young people today are going to go through, that are growing up on the internet are going to go through this, just like, they will probably be served like a million gambling ads by the time they're 18.

• 17:27John Coogan?

  It's a lot.

• 17:28Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 17:28John Coogan?

  Yeah, I guess I didn't get served.

• 17:30Jordi Hays?

  It's so, so normalized, it's so a part of society now, it's instantly accessible. If you're getting advertised stuff like this, that's basically saying like, you're sending this message that like, this is your way out.

• 17:41John Coogan?

  The deep irony is like, the way out is to not participate and be one of the people that makes it through without forming the addiction.

• 17:48Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 17:49John Coogan?

  But we, maybe we need to rent a slop ad about that. We want to do a slop ad like this where it's the same, same premise. Oh, I think my partner's having an affair and low and behold, they're just watching TVPN for three hours every day, getting informed about technology and business news. What do you think about dopamine sites though? Because dopamine sites, which is where.

• 18:11Jordi Hays?

  Explain this.

• 18:12John Coogan?

  Dopamine sites are fake shopping experiences. It's an e-commerce site where you can buy luxury goods, but you don't actually have to pay them and they don't arrive. So this is from an article shared by Adonis on X. The final frontier of consumerism has arrived in South Korea. Quote, "This week I placed orders for a $44,860 Patek Philippe hand engraved watch, a $12,500 Hermes bag, a $9,800 Tiffany diamond ring." Ching, ching. Oh, I like, I didn't realize that was the analog one. That's great. And a $7,350 Cartier love bracelet in yellow gold. I don't need any of them, I certainly can't afford them.

• 18:57John Coogan?

  Thankfully they'll never arrive. Instead of Amazon, this individual spent the past week browsing a new breed of website known as dopamine sites, a trend that emerged in South Korea. These sites, these websites like dopamine shop and food never comes recreate the entire ritual of online shopping. You search for products, compare reviews, add items to your cart, enter a shipping address, place an order and even track your delivery, but it's all imaginary. Is this not as bad as sports betting? Is this not bad at all? What is this?

• 19:32Jordi Hays?

  It's sort of strange and sad and a reflection of our society that is so infatuated with pure consumption instead of creation.

• 19:43John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 19:44Jordi Hays?

  And it's dystopian, but I don't think it's-

• 19:47John Coogan?

  We should do a dopamine side for TVB ad merch because you never sell it. He just didn't work on creative card. So, our fourth debate, our fourth and final debate. To what degree is the AI buildout driving interest rates upwards? People are going back and forth about this. Interest rates are spiking. Specifically, the 10-year yield has jumped 12%. So, it's actually, what is that, 1,200 basis points or something? Because you're trying to, you're trying to explain the move in the rates. So, it's not that we're at 18%. We're at 5.18%, but we were, you know, down much lower in the fours earlier. And it's causing nervousness, you know?

• 20:29John Coogan?

  Last time interest rates went up, the venture capital world collapsed and nobody likes high mortgage rates. Can you afford a home? There's a lot of knock-on effects. The vanilla explanation is just the Iran war was unexpected. It caused an energy crisis. That caused inflation. That caused interest rate hikes and expectations for future interest rate hikes and thus interest rates are higher. AI is important in driving the economy, but mainly a sideshow in this, in this story around interest rates specifically. But in tech, there's a view that the data center debt is simply too good to resist. And so, the capital markets are flooding over there. But there's a lot of debate around this.

• 21:12John Coogan?

  So, Rune said Iran oil prices is short-term driver, but broadly, this is due to demand pressure from extremely attractive AI capex opportunities that are borrowing at nation's scale. They're certainly hoovering up trillions of dollars. I think the total data center capex hyperscaler debt is now almost 20% of what the US government is, is buying something like that.

• 21:33Speaker 02

  No, so it's actually higher. I looked this up. So, basically, hyperscaler and Nvidia-like debt issuance as a percentage of like total treasury bond issuance through 2026 has been like 70%.

• 21:44John Coogan?

  Whoa.

• 21:45Speaker 02

  So, and I think 2025, it was like around 30.

• 21:47John Coogan?

  Yes. And so, Astrid Wild says, this is correct. Global yields will continue to go higher because why would you invest in literally anything other than data centers when they have such a short payback period and you can throw tens of billions at it? I mean, we saw ClusterMax 1, I think, had a few dozen NeoClouds. ClusterMax 3, which we talked to Jordan Nannos about yesterday, had 326 NeoClouds. And they reviewed, I think, or they rated 200 and something of them. And then, that's not to mention that there are also data center construction projects from the actual hyperscalers. The labs weren't on there. And then, the chip companies, Jordan called out.

• 22:27John Coogan?

  He said like Cerebrus will have a NeoCloud and Positron and Etched will have NeoClouds. And so, there's going to be a lot more of this. At the same time, there's, there's the flip side of the argument. Deep Dish Enjoyer says, this is definitely currently not true. Those opportunities are not riskless. And importantly, you can't use private illiquid AI capex as collateral. So, if you're a bond investor and you're looking at two different markets, are you really shifting out of government treasuries that are historically the risk-free rate? That they have a monopoly on violence? They have the ability to tax their citizens to pay back the debt? A NeoCloud that's doing a data center, they go bankrupt, you might actually suffer a

• 23:12John Coogan?

  capital impairment and, and get back 70 cents on the dollar, maybe 90 cents on the dollar. So, there, i- it stands to reason that there is more risk associated with the, the AI buildout. And so, they're not completely apples to apples. But I still think that there's probably some sort of effect here. He said, it's true that as real GDP growth increases substantially, rates should rise though, but we aren't there yet.

• 23:36Jordi Hays?

  Colin in Roche says, lots of scary talk in bonds these days, but it's mostly recency bias. Since 1960, the 10-year has averaged 5.8%. We're, we're at 5% below average. If you'd fallen asleep 20 years ago and woke up today, you'd think nothing happened in the bond market the entire time. Ignore all the sovereign debt crisis talk. Inflation expectations are adjusting to something more historically normalized. Carry on.

• 24:01John Coogan?

  Carry on. So, Wall Street Journal is, is sort of putting the higher bond yields in context, saying, the robust US economy powers through rate hikes and rising bond yields. The US economy keeps powering through inflation, tariffs and higher borrowing costs, defying a run-up in treasury yields and a Fed rate increase that has the bond market spooked. The usual economic brakes aren't slowing growth, hiring or an AI investment boom that looks to be unstoppable. To some, AI's potential return seems so bright that even steep interest rates won't slow down tech companies' investments. And it does seem like the, the math on the AI buildout is wildly different. I was talking to somebody who was saying like, he knows a lot of people that are falling

• 24:45John Coogan?

  in love with the spreadsheet. And so, they want to start NeoClouds and data centers because the payback period is shorter. I also saw an Instagram sort of like course hustler talking about how he bought a bunch of GPUs and is renting them to a data center and, and saw that as an attractive opportunity. Allah, like, oh, I bought a multifamily apartment complex.

• 25:05Speaker 02

  You must have watched the Dylan Patel interview, the recent DoorDash one.

• 25:09John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, this is, this is all related to that for sure. And, and also, a lot of the AI buildout, a lot of the AI companies were very much born in the era of higher interest rates. I do believe that if you're a software company trading at 100x revenue multiple and you weren't forecasting real earnings for 10 years or something like that, like the traditional SaaS playbook, and interest rates go from 0 to 4%, that's a lot more damaging than, okay, you were already born in the era of higher interest rates and interest rates go from 4 to 6% or something. It's just not going to move the needle in the DCF that much because like you were already discounting cash flows in the future, 4%.

• 25:51John Coogan?

  And so, as opposed to zero, you're basically counting future cash flows as today's dollars. So, anyway, that's the take from the Wall Street Journal.

• 25:59Jordi Hays?

  America's newest trophy asset is a country home in the Cotswolds. Cotswolds, can never pronounce that properly. Harry and Meghan's return to the UK has put the region in the spotlight. A bevy of US buyers are looking for homes in the area. Not very American to buy or invest out here. Strange to see that it's becoming a sort of an American investment trend.

• 26:23John Coogan?

  Well, everyone saw what Paul Graham did and they said, I want to be like that, you know?

• 26:27Jordi Hays?

  That's right.

• 26:28John Coogan?

  I want to putter.

• 26:29Jordi Hays?

  Are you interested?

• 26:32John Coogan?

  Absolutely not.

• 26:33Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 26:34John Coogan?

  Next, next story. Moving on. A modern home in Silicon Valley, though.

• 26:41Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 26:42John Coogan?

  Lists for 44 million, sort of the Cotswolds of America.

• 26:44Jordi Hays?

  That's right.

• 26:45John Coogan?

  Silicon Valley, five-bedroom house, which features four distinct courtyards, a pool, and is the most expensive listing in Palo Alto, California. Now, I want to do a little tier list. As I read you the various features, I want you to put them in buckets from F tier to S tier. So, I'll read through the article and I want you to quickly assign each feature of this 44 million dollar Palo Alto home a tier. So, for years, tech entrepreneur Asher Waldfogel and his wife Helen McLean dreamed of building a modern house in Palo Alto. The couple, however, worried about clashing with the Mediterranean-style architecture typically associated with their neighborhood of old Palo Alto. So, they tapped an architect to design a home that paid homage to its surroundings

• 27:29John Coogan?

  with stucco, mahogany and titanium zinc plating. Where does titanium zinc plating go for you? Kick it off. You like it? A tier?

• 27:39Jordi Hays?

  A tier.

• 27:40John Coogan?

  A tier, okay. We're leaving some room for an even better feature. They spent 20 million over several years building the house, completed in 2005. So, now, looking to be closer to their adult daughter on the East Coast, they are putting the five-bedroom home on the market for 44 million. The couple purchased the roughly 0.4 acre site in terms of lot size. Where are you putting 0.4 acres? Is that enough?

• 28:00Jordi Hays?

  F tier.

• 28:01John Coogan?

  F tier. Wow, okay. You need at least three acres to really make a, make a splash and earn S tier. They demolished the circa 1930s Spanish colonial home. The house they built pinwheels around a central staircase. What do you think about houses that pinwheel around central staircases?

• 28:19Jordi Hays?

  I like classic California, one-story ranch-style homes.

• 28:24John Coogan?

  You don't want a staircase, staircase at all?

• 28:26Jordi Hays?

  No.

• 28:27John Coogan?

  Because the alternative is two staircases. You have a front staircase, a main entryway, and then a back staircase.

• 28:31Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 28:32John Coogan?

  This is a central staircase, but you're no staircase guy. So, where is pinwheeling around-

• 28:36Jordi Hays?

  Once, once, once the kids are, are-

• 28:38John Coogan?

  Older.

• 28:39Jordi Hays?

  Grown up.

• 28:40John Coogan?

  Then you introduce the staircase.

• 28:41Jordi Hays?

  I could explore it, but for now, I'm putting it, staircases in general going in D tier.

• 28:46John Coogan?

  D tier, okay. Staircases are out. It has, it has 7,900 square feet of livable space. Where does that go?

• 28:55Jordi Hays?

  Split across multiple floors, I'm going B tier.

• 29:00John Coogan?

  B tier, okay. Four distinct courtyards. Are you a courtyard guy?

• 29:04Jordi Hays?

  Problem with courtyards is like they're, they're very cool in theory, but how often are you actually like, it's really just like a, it's really just, it's like a feature that goes unused.

• 29:15John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 29:16Jordi Hays?

  I feel like the average courtyard gets like five minutes of someone's time annually.

• 29:20John Coogan?

  So, I'm hearing like a C tier?

• 29:22Jordi Hays?

  Uh, D tier.

• 29:23John Coogan?

  D tier. Brutal for the four courtyards. What about the pool? It's got a pool. Where are pools for you?

• 29:29Jordi Hays?

  Uh, pools are still underrated.

• 29:31John Coogan?

  Okay, so what tier?

• 29:33Jordi Hays?

  A lot of people would say pools properly rated. Everyone thinks they're great. I think they're better than, than the average person thinks a pool is.

• 29:40John Coogan?

  I'm hearing S tier.

• 29:41Jordi Hays?

  S tier.

• 29:42John Coogan?

  Pool is S tier, okay.

• 29:43Jordi Hays?

  We need to, I want to see what the pool looks like.

• 29:45John Coogan?

  Key feature of the home is a cast-in-place concrete wall or spine. What do you like, do you like a spine in your house? Concrete wall. Two stories high, 80 feet long. There's a little bit of-

• 29:56Jordi Hays?

  I like it. I like it. Some sort of a continuous theme through the home.

• 30:01John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 30:02Jordi Hays?

  I'm into it.

• 30:03John Coogan?

  B tier?

• 30:04Jordi Hays?

  B tier.

• 30:05John Coogan?

  B tier, okay. He said his wife and him are thinking of the next phase of life. They also have a home in Sun Valley, Idaho.

• 30:11Jordi Hays?

  S tier.

• 30:12John Coogan?

  Second home in Sun Valley is S tier.

• 30:14Jordi Hays?

  S tier.

• 30:15John Coogan?

  Okay. Right now, they're trying to emotionally let go and decide what to do next. Palo Alto is the center of venture capital and tech startups in Silicon Valley and home to some of the country's biggest tech titans. Sales volumes and prices are rising with a median sale price of $3.5 million for the three months ending in August, up 5.8% year-over-year.

• 30:34Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, it's tough to get excited about this home in LA. This is like a probably 12 million dollar home.

• 30:41John Coogan?

  In LA.

• 30:42Jordi Hays?

  Depending on where it's located.

• 30:43John Coogan?

  But over there.

• 30:44Jordi Hays?

  But over there. Apparently, it's S tier.

• 30:46John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 30:47Jordi Hays?

  Apparently, it's S tier. We'll see you Monday, folks.

• 30:50John Coogan?

  See you. Goodbye.