It only takes a prick to pop a bubble

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang admitted to having a relationship with a woman named Alice Huang (no relation). Was she a business partner, or was she a spy sent by the Chinese government to steal secrets from the most powerful person in AI? The Verge’s Liz Lopatto explains everything we know about the scandal, what a spy might want from Nvidia, and what could happen next for both Huangs. Further reading: ⁠The future of AI hinges on… Jensen Huang’s sex life?⁠ ⁠What could China get from Jensen Huang?⁠ ⁠Here’s what Trump said he knew about Jensen Huang⁠ Subscribe to The Verge for unlimited access to theverge.com, subscriber-exclusive newsletters, and our ad-free podcast feed. We love hearing from you! Email your questions and thoughts to [email protected] or call us at 866-VERGE11. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00David Pierce?

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• 1:02David Pierce?

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• 1:50David Pierce?

  Hello and welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of corporate espionage. I'm your friend David Pierce and today on the show, we have to talk about Jensen Huang. So Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, news has come out over the last few days. He was in a relationship with a woman named Alice Wong, who was both a business partner of Nvidia and also maybe a spy for the Chinese government. There are a lot of moving parts to this story. Jensen Huang has copped to the relationship and parts of the business dealings, but says there are no national security things. There are some evidence that the government knew about this for a long time. Marco Rubio is involved. We have an awful lot to talk about and we're just going to try to figure out what's going on here and what it means for Nvidia, for Jensen Huang, for AI as a whole. Pure chaos, my friends.

• 2:34David Pierce?

  And when there is pure chaos, there is only one person we turn to, and that is The Verge's Liz Lopatto. Let's get into it. Liz Lopatto, welcome back to The Vergecast.

• 2:42Speaker 01

  Thanks, David. It's good to see you.

• 2:43David Pierce?

  You've written some about this over the last couple of days. You've been reading about it and talking to people about it. I think we should start with Alice Wong, who is kind of the, the new character in this story for a lot of people. What do we know about who Alice Wong is?

• 2:58Speaker 01

  Well, she's a former TV reporter. So like, first of all, nice work finding a job after journalism. Like, that's something that we're all thinking about, I think. It's like the industry is kind of circling the drain right now. But so this, her, her, her, her way out of journalism was, she became an executive at something called Megaspeed, which I'm not sure how closely you've been like looking into Megaspeed.

• 3:24David Pierce?

  Not very, Liz. I gotta be honest with you. Megaspeed, Megaspeed, I tracked, you wrote about something very sort of offhandedly about Megaspeed a while ago. And I clocked that as like, this sounds like the company founded by a villain in a Pixar movie and then just sort of moved on. And that's, that's about all I know about Megaspeed.

• 3:43Speaker 01

  So I, I've been reading a couple of Singaporean newspapers because there's, they theoretically have offices in Singapore. And it kind of feels like it might just be like a P O box.

• 3:57David Pierce?

  Interesting.

• 3:58Speaker 01

  So it's like, it's, it's, you know, like, if you look at like anything about the company, like the reporting we have here in the US is like, they're like, well, you know, they have contracts with Alibaba and then they have some ties to like the Chinese Defense Department. And then, and then you look at the Singaporean newspapers and like, we can't find the executives.

• 4:18David Pierce?

  Not great. What is this company ostensibly about? Like, what, what would Megaspeed tell you it is?

• 4:24Speaker 01

  Theoretically, it's a NeoCloud, so it's like CoreWeave, but its business model is that it's got these data centers all over Southeast Asia. And it, they're filled with Nvidia chips, like billions of dollars of Nvidia chips. And then they rent that out. And the reason this is useful to certain companies is because there are import restrictions on those Nvidia chips to China. And Alibaba obviously is like a major Chinese company. So if they're renting space to Alibaba, they're, this is like a way to circumvent the chip ban.

• 4:57David Pierce?

  Okay, so tell me what we know at this point about Alice Wong's relationship with Jensen Huang. And I just want to say, the, one of the funniest things about this is that every time anyone writes about these two, they have to write the parenthetical, no relation, which just, the fact that they have the same last name is just endlessly hilarious to me from just a pure like how to cover this story situation. But what do we know about how the two of them became intertwined?

• 5:21Speaker 01

  I mean, I, every time I write no relation, I think about like, for those of you who've read David Foster Wallace's infinite jest, John Wayne, no relation. So that's what, that's what I think about every time. But these two, I guess, they met theoretically when there was some sort of negotiation about these chips, because they started being seen in public together around the time of the first chip purchase from Megaspeed.

• 5:47David Pierce?

  Was it in 2024 when, when Megaspeed made that first deal? And Megaspeed at this point has bought, what, almost $5 billion worth of Nvidia chips?

• 5:56Speaker 01

  That's right. It's like, nothing to sneeze at.

• 6:00David Pierce?

  Yeah, these are big, these are large deals. Like absent all the other stuff, that's just the idea of Nvidia selling $5 billion worth of chips to a company that doesn't seem to have a lot of footprint, whose executive is a former TV journalist. There's just a lot of things about this that even before you get to the affair and spy of it all is weird, right?

• 6:20Speaker 01

  I, listen, personally, I think one should not have sexual relationships with people who are your business partners. But like, life happens. So if you do that.

• 6:32David Pierce?

  I think, to be fair, a lot of Silicon Valley would disagree with that assessment.

• 6:36Speaker 01

  That's one of the many reasons, it's like, one of the many reasons that I have not employed there. But you know, like, I, I just, I really think that like, in terms of like maintaining comfortable business relationships, like not sleeping with people that you do business with seems like, seems like good practice. But if you must, like, life happens, we're human. It does also seem like good practice to maybe disclose that and recuse yourself from the relationship. And obviously, that did not happen. Instead, we have all of these like couple photos and like the, the, the business deals simultaneously, which like, again, Silicon Valley, for those of you who are paying attention,

• 7:16Speaker 01

  anybody who might be listening who lives there, like, I don't know how to put this. So I'm just going to be blunt about it. None of us are that hot, okay? Like, if, if you meet a really good looking woman and she thinks you're really fascinating, I think maybe you should like, just like, look, I know it's exciting. Like, it's exciting when you meet someone hot who's into you.

• 7:42David Pierce?

  Absolutely.

• 7:43Speaker 01

  But you might just want to think about for a minute, you know, why is this person interested in me? Because like, you know, maybe in the case of like Jensen Huang, he was like, oh, it's my money. It's my power, right? Like, I, I don't think people are like dating Eric Schmidt because he's like gorgeous. Just being real about it.

• 8:07David Pierce?

  Money does make you hot, Liz. Like, this is just a fact of the world. Money does make you hot.

• 8:12Speaker 01

  Well, I kind of think it's the reverse, right? Where money means that you don't have to be hot. Like, money is like, money like lets you get out of the rat race of attractiveness.

• 8:20David Pierce?

  Yes.

• 8:21Speaker 01

  So, but, so, you know, like, you might say, oh, it's money. But like, you might just think one more beat and be like, is this person asking me a lot of questions about certain kinds of relationships that I have? And do I want to answer those questions? Because the answer is probably no.

• 8:42David Pierce?

  Yeah, you have to imagine this was very business focused pillow talk in, in a lot of cases. But to that point, actually, I am curious how you would characterize what somebody in Alice Wong's position might want from Jensen Huang? Because I think there are actually a bunch of possibilities. Maybe it might be several things out of all these possibilities. But can you just run through a couple of the things that if you're in Alice Wong's position, we should say she is, she is an alleged spy that we have not proven. Nobody's been convicted of anything. The Chinese government has vociferously denied it, which of course it would. But there, there is an awful lot of smoke suggesting that she is a Chinese spy. If indeed she was, what do you think she wants from Jensen Huang?

• 9:25Speaker 01

  Oh, there's so much you can get out of him, especially because he's so close to the Trump administration. So like, the obvious and easy thing is like knowing his schedule, knowing when he's meeting with Trump, getting a sense of what they're talking about. Like, again, this is the sort of thing that like, it's pillow talk, right? Like, oh babe, I'm so stressed, I'm going to be meeting with the president and he's losing his mind and I don't know if he remembers that like, I need him to like do the import restriction thing. You know, like the, the normal pillow talk we all have. So like, that's what, that's like the obvious one, right? Like, that's just like, your, your way into the, knowing what the administration is doing via this guy who's very close to it. Thing one.

• 10:03Speaker 01

  So thing two is that Jensen has an unusual corporate structure going on, where he has 60 direct reports. And for all of you who manage people, I'm just going to give you a second. Yeah, I'm going to give you a second to like, put your head around that. 60, that's like, that's just not real. That's not, that's not how that works. So.

• 10:28Speaker 01

  Basically, there's no part of the company that he doesn't touch. And this has always been, I think, put forward as a selling point of Nvidia, that you're like channeling this guy's brilliance, right? It also means that he has access into everything. And like CEOs have a lot of access for sure, but usually

• 10:50Speaker 01

  because of the way that delegating works, there's plausible deniability in places that they don't go and things that they don't touch. So you can say, oh, well, this part of the company wasn't really involved. We shouldn't worry about this, like, you know, there's no, none of that here. Like, this is the, the whole company is potentially compromised. And so like, you think about the Binance hack, right? And there was like, one of the things that involved is a compromised laptop. So again, imagine that you are on a business trip and you're meeting, you're a fair partner and you probably have a laptop with you. At some point, you are going to take a shower, maybe not with her. That's a compromised laptop right there.

• 11:34David Pierce?

  Yep. This really is like every, every Netflix spy movie. It all applies. Like every plausible thing that happens in one of these shows, and there are millions of them, are just down the middle of this particular set of interactions.

• 11:48Speaker 01

  I, I have been reading this, like, this is just like, this is for me, because I love John Lake Huray. This is like comedy John Lake Huray. Like, this is like, the first time, the Cold War tragedy. This time, farce.

• 12:07David Pierce?

  Yes. Okay, so I, both of those sound right to me. There's only one other one I want to throw in, which you touched on a little bit in, in your piece that I'm curious to hear about, is Nvidia selling chips to China, which, which, like you mentioned at the beginning, we have pretty aggressive export controls on that in the US that state that Nvidia is actually not allowed to sell its best chips to China. Jensen Huang has been on kind of a warpath to loosen those restrictions for some time. My question for you here is, how much do you think a, a relationship like this could affect those things? Because on the one hand, Nvidia has every economic incentive anyway to just try to sell more chips in China. They just want to sell more chips. I think it has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that everybody's only interest is selling more chips and they actually don't give a damn about much of anything else.

• 12:53David Pierce?

  Alice Wong, even if, again, if we go back to the, I would say increasingly far-fetched idea that MegaSpeed is a real company full of real people doing real work, they would also want Nvidia to sell chips to China. So is that, the, the, China's access to chips seems like either like the main, most important thing going on here or a total sideshow? And I can't decide which one it is.

• 13:15Speaker 01

  Well, let's, let's, let's pause for a minute and think about MegaSpeed's business model. Like, again, imagine it's a real company.

• 13:22Speaker 01

  Its whole business is predicated on the export controls remaining in place because all of its data centers are outside China.

• 13:31David Pierce?

  Right, if China can get the chips, MegaSpeed doesn't need to exist anymore.

• 13:35Speaker 01

  Right. Or it has to go build very expensive data centers in China, right?

• 13:39David Pierce?

  Sure.

• 13:41Speaker 01

  Because like, not to, like, I'm sure our audience knows this, but often being closer to a data center means faster speeds on the things you're trying to do. So, you know, that, that would be an improvement. It would be mega speed, if you will.

• 13:55Speaker 01

  Or even if you won't.

• 13:57David Pierce?

  Damn it.

• 13:59Speaker 01

  And so, you know, if this is a real company, like theoretically, the, the export controls are working for them. I will say, like, again, Nvidia does not like this. There's good reason why they don't like this. The reason is that they would like to sell more chips.

• 14:15Speaker 01

  What I think is interesting here is like, there have been, over the years, if you've been paying close attention, these occasional news reports where it's like, wow, Nvidia is not like checking up super closely on this chip sale. It seems like this company is kind of a P O box, right? Like, this is, this has happened a couple of times and it's like, ah, I see. So Nvidia is not that worried about selling chips to China as long as they have plausible deniability.

• 14:44David Pierce?

  Right.

• 14:44Speaker 01

  Which is, I'm sure what, what, what they thought was going on here, right? Like, again, MegaSpeed's business model does, insofar as it is a business, does look like it's like, ah, rent chips to Chinese companies. So I am interested in this particular piece of it because obviously China wants the chips. Obviously Nvidia wants to sell the chips. But also there is like Chinese chip competition. It's not like, you know, serious competition yet. But again, going back to like the idea that you might have a compromised laptop, let's say that you are a Chinese company that is trying to catch up to Nvidia. Would it be helpful to have some of Nvidia's chip designs to do that?

• 15:28David Pierce?

  I'm gonna say yes on that front.

• 15:29Speaker 01

  Probably yes. I mean, like, you know, obviously it's, it's difficult to make chips. You would need to like have like fabrication facilities that could do things with those designs. Like, I'm not, it's not like, oh, we get the, we get the designs and we're home free problem. But that doesn't, it doesn't hurt to have the design for these chips that are banned.

• 15:49David Pierce?

  Yeah, I mean, it seems like you, you can sort of see the long-term bet there, right? That like, and this is, this is what China did with manufacturing, right? The, the book, Apple in China, paints this story exactly, right? That you, you get the manufacturing there, they start making the things there. And what you do is you essentially teach the industry how to make these things and build the infrastructure for them to make them. They're able to get more access to the systems, more access to the designs. And all of a sudden, Chinese culture is, works in such a way that all of that stuff is just going to get spread far outside the confines of a company like Apple. Which if you're a company like Nvidia, you would think would be a thing you would not want to have happen. Of course, you want to sell chips to China. You want to sell as many chips as possible. But the idea of giving some of the trade secrets and knowledge

• 16:33David Pierce?

  and manufacturing capabilities to someone outside of your own purview seems problematic. And so that's where, like, maybe the, being a spy is more useful than just being a very good business partner. That there are, there are certainly lines Jensen Huang is too smart not to want to cross, even on that front in his job to sell chips in China.

• 16:54Speaker 01

  That's right. And like, one of the things that I think is true is that like Silicon Valley is very paranoid about stuff leaking.

• 17:04David Pierce?

  Yes.

• 17:06Speaker 01

  And typically, when we talk about that, we're talking about to us. Like, they're, they're paranoid about stuff leaking to us. You know, because that might screw up their marketing or whatever, right? Like, they have a launch planned, they have this whole thing. And if we get it early, that screws it up. We are the best case scenario of stuff leaking, okay? Like, we're, we're, we're the good guys here. Because there is this sort of persistent rumor out here. As I, of course, live in Oakland. And I don't know how true it is and I don't know how you would verify it. But there is this persistent rumor that this whole area is covered in spies and people who are looking to acquire trade secrets. And it's one of the reasons why these companies are so paranoid because they, they don't want, you know, Chinese spies

• 17:51Speaker 01

  or whatever other spies may be interested in their technology to get a hold of this IP. And so, again, it is another reason why, if you are talking to somebody who seems like they're kind of out of your league and they're really interested in what you have to say, you need to pause and think, am I that hot? Am I that interesting? Because the answer is probably no.

• 18:16David Pierce?

  It's honestly surprisingly good life advice across, across all, all walks of life. Yeah, it's, it's good. This is, my wife is utterly uninterested in what I do for a living and that's how I know I have a successful marriage. It's great.

• 18:29Speaker 02

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• 21:34David Pierce?

  Two more things. I wanna, I wanna mostly talk about what you think happens next. But first, I wanna talk about Nvidia's immediate response to this because this is just one of the great PR self-owns, like maybe of all time, over the course of the last 48 hours. Can you just take me through the way Nvidia as a company has responded to this story over the last couple of days?

• 21:58Speaker 01

  Well, so I'm just gonna, I'm actually gonna back us up a little further because Nvidia, this, this story has been like, these rumors have been circulating for a while. The New York Times has been reporting on this for at least a month.

• 22:10David Pierce?

  Yeah, there was a Times story a few weeks ago. I remember we were talking about it in Slack because it was, it pointed at Alice Wong and it pointed at, at her relations with someone in, some US citizen. And it was like, slightly unclear what was going on, but pointed at something big is happening here. And I remember we were talking about it in Slack, kinda like, what do we do with this story? It's a bunch of good reporters doing obviously good reporting who do not generally screw around. This is a big story. They've clearly, but, but there's like, there's some tie here that has not yet been tied. And it was Jensen Wong.

• 22:44Speaker 01

  It was a journalistic blind item, if you will, you know?

• 22:47David Pierce?

  Yes, very much so.

• 22:49Speaker 01

  So, okay, so Nvidia's like sort of first response is this is not an unusual relationship. Like, we have relationships like this with a lot of our customers, which I then came back to after Jensen Wong disclosed his affair. So I'd like to know who else he's fucking? Like, who else?

• 23:07David Pierce?

  Yeah, right.

• 23:08Speaker 01

  Who else? If this is not an unusual relationship, like who else?

• 23:11David Pierce?

  This is just how we do business.

• 23:15David Pierce?

  I mean.

• 23:16Speaker 01

  Can we get the list? Like, I just, I just want, like, I, both because I'm nosy and also because this is a matter now of national security. Like, who else is, like, who is he involved with?

• 23:28David Pierce?

  100%.

• 23:29Speaker 01

  You know, one of the least discussed downsides of having an open relationship or cheating on your significant other is the possibility that you could be passing state secrets to people. But it is, in fact, in this case, like, it is a thing that has attained. So, yeah, like, I don't-

• 23:47David Pierce?

  That should be a Hinge profile thing that people have to fill out when they go on dating apps. Do you have any national security problems?

• 23:55Speaker 01

  So, you know, that, that, that for me was like, just a genuinely incredible statement that I came back to. Like, this is not an unusual relationship. Like, it's not? Okay. Like, do we need to hear about the rest of them? Like, is, are they all Americans? Like, are they, who, who are the other, like, you know, and like, I, I'm sure John Rizzo, who's the guy who's been giving these statements, is having like, a tough day because like, generally, PR people do not enjoy lying. They don't want to do it. They know it kills their credibility. It's got their name attached. It's one of the reasons we put their name on their work. So, we can come back and be like, this specific person lied to us?

• 24:36Speaker 01

  So, he's probably not having a great time because my guess, my guess is that he did not know about this. But I'm only guessing because Wired reported something really interesting, which was that last year, Johnson looked into a PR firm that specializes in sex scandals.

• 24:59David Pierce?

  And this was also right about the time that we think the government was starting to become aware of something going on here, right? Like, this has been floating around in circles of people who know things for some time here.

• 25:11Speaker 01

  Given the sheer volume of photos, I'm guessing that there were a lot of people who knew about this at that point. You know what I'm saying? Like, like, they're just, the more photos just keep popping up and they're all public. So, God only knows what was going on in private, you know? Or like, if you've gone to dinner with these people and you notice that they're like, you know, lovebirds and they're like, canoodling a little, like, I think a lot of people knew about this. Like, I think a lot of people saw this.

• 25:43David Pierce?

  Yeah. So, the, the state of things right now is the investigation is ongoing. Jensen Wong is still the CEO of Nvidia throughout it all. Nvidia's new statement is that, yes, all of this happened, but no national security or Nvidia secrets were compromised. That's their direct quote. I would say, one, do we have any reason at all to believe that is true? Or even that Nvidia knows whether that's true? And two, what do you think happens to Jensen here? It seems to me that the odds of Jensen Wong not being the CEO of Nvidia at the end of this are very low, but maybe not zero. What do you think?

• 26:18Speaker 01

  How the fuck do you know that, Nvidia? Like, how do you know?

• 26:23David Pierce?

  This is what I'm saying.

• 26:24Speaker 01

  You don't.

• 26:25David Pierce?

  36 hours ago, it was a normal business relationship.

• 26:27Speaker 01

  Right. Which is one of the reasons why you wanna be very careful what you tell your PR people to lie about. Because like, because that, that credibility is now shot. As I'm sure John Rizzo has told somebody at the top of his lungs recently. That's thing one, is like, I don't think Nvidia has any reason to know this. And if Nvidia does have reason to know this, and they have checked this, and they have already sort of checked their IT systems, there's then a question of like, how many shareholders are going to sue them for withholding this important information? Because this does seem like the sort of thing that rises to the level of securities fraud. And like, oh,

• 27:10Speaker 01

  Grant, like, Matt Levine will tell you, Bloomberg columnist, we're all a fan here, will tell you that everything is securities fraud. But this is something that is like, particularly serious. Like, this is like, potentially, you know, something that ruins relationships with the government. It's something that potentially ruins Nvidia's, like, public profile. In fact, arguably, it already has. So, like, if Nvidia knew and didn't disclose that to their shareholders, like, that's a lawsuit and that's an expensive lawsuit. So, that's like, one of the things to keep in mind here. The thing is, I feel like the other thing that I've been thinking about as I've been like, looking at that statement

• 27:55Speaker 01

  is that it feels like the outcome of their investigation has now been like, preordained. Like, they've told us that they are not gonna be investigating it that closely.

• 28:05David Pierce?

  Yeah, what's to investigate if you already know that no secrets were compromised and everyone actually has, has acknowledged that the affair existed? What, what is, what is to investigate?

• 28:16Speaker 01

  Right. So, the fact that it's an internal investigation at this point should be raising some people's eyebrows. Like, I think they've contracted someone to do it, but still, like, I'm gonna wait until I hear from the national security apparatus to, to, to make my judgment about whether or not anything got passed to the Chinese through this relationship. Because Nvidia, at this point, like, they're, they want to clear Jensen because they can't get rid of him. Like, his, the company is like, based on him. This is like, the key man problem.

• 28:50David Pierce?

  You think he is just like, too big to fail, essentially?

• 28:53Speaker 01

  I mean, that has been, what has been coming out of Silicon Valley for the last, like, couple of days, is like, all of these guys are like, well, it's a real shame he cheated on his wife like that. Very sad, very embarrassing, but you know, he's so key to this whole AI thing that I think we should just forgive him and move on. And it's like, I wish it weren't my business that he was cheating on his wife. I would rather not know these things.

• 29:23David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 29:24Speaker 01

  But if your whole deal is that this man is so key to the AI build-out that you can't get rid of him, and he is potentially compromised by a different nation-state, you're in trouble. Like, you're in very real trouble. And I don't know that this is like, something that has really like, put, gone through these guys' heads because, again, we don't know what, if anything, was compromised. But also, like, boys, those are your emails that we're talking about.

• 29:54David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 29:55Speaker 01

  Like, those are your texts on his phone. Like, you are potentially very much also in trouble because this important key figure in our AI build-out is, is compromised. Like, this is a, this is a huge deal.

• 30:08David Pierce?

  Well, and to that point, I'm like, you've spent a lot of time over the last year or so, sort of painting the picture of all of the ways in which Nvidia, not only is it the center of the AI economy, but in many ways is the AI economy. Like, there's just a lot of money circling around and most of it, in some way or another, is Nvidia's money. So, I think that a lot of people have looked at this over the last 48 hours. And the people who aren't saying, you know, we have to forgive him and move on, which I think if you, if you make the list of who those people are and who has a lot of money invested in AI, those lists are going to look very similar. The flip side is a lot of people saying, well, this is how the bubble pops. The minute, the minute Nvidia becomes anything other than completely unstoppable and impenetrable, this all falls apart because the house of

• 30:53David Pierce?

  cards is just Nvidia. Do you buy that? Is that, is there a real outcome here that this all just kind of unravels around Jensen Wong?

• 31:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, you only need a prick to pop a bubble.

• 31:05David Pierce?

  You've been, you've been sitting on that one, haven't you? Be honest.

• 31:07Speaker 01

  I have, yeah.

• 31:08David Pierce?

  You've been waiting for that.

• 31:11David Pierce?

  We're gonna run that as the title of this episode.

• 31:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, listen, I, listen, I feel I should be complimented for my restraint because I didn't do that one immediately.

• 31:19David Pierce?

  I'm psyched that it took you this long to get here. I'm very proud of you.

• 31:23Speaker 01

  But like, yeah, that's the thing, is like, Nvidia is so central to this build-out and so central to NeoClouds. It is, it is, like, take CoreWeave, our, our personal favorite.

• 31:36Speaker 01

  CoreWeave, Nvidia is an investor. At the time of the IPO, I think it was their second largest customer. And they, Nvidia helped support the IPO itself when it was in danger of failing. So, you know, like, I, I think of CoreWeave as essentially being like, an Nvidia client state. And so, the moment, like, and CoreWeave, by the way, you know, they have these crazy loans on their chips, which have a lot of, you know, interest. They're, they're expensive loans. And let's say, the interest rates go up. And now, I know the interest rates going up is like, not like, the sexiest thing on earth, but like, it may very well happen. It's one of the ways that you curb inflation. So, the Fed ratchets

• 32:21Speaker 01

  up the interest rates and the loans that CoreWeave has, they also become more expensive.

• 32:30Speaker 01

  Which means they're spending even more money paying these loans off, which makes it even more difficult for them to get out of the hole. And as I think we have demonstrated, they are already in a place where they're not like quite making enough profit to to dig themselves out. The only way that they can keep going is with more debt. So one of the reasons why I have not been like, oh, Corey was doomed. And here's the date is because up until this point, I've been like, well, Nvidia can bail them out. Like if, if, if things go wrong, Nvidia just infuses cash. And then Corey sort of like slaps the Band-Aid on the hole and keeps going.

• 33:13Speaker 01

  But if Nvidia is in trouble, and it may be in trouble, it's probably not in a position to prop up these companies in the way that it's been doing.

• 33:25David Pierce?

  Right.

• 33:26Speaker 01

  And this ecosystem is so interconnected. It's so tightly connected. All of these people have deals with each other that I worry that if one of these companies falls, a lot of the other ones go with them. Now, I'm not talking about like Amazon and Google and Meta. Like those companies are probably fine. Like they have other sources of income. But, you know, I worry about all of the Neo clouds. I'm not sure that that's a great business model. I'm a little worried about Oracle because it has basically pivoted to being a Neo cloud. And even though it has other lines of business, it also has taken on really an incredible debt load.

• 34:11Speaker 01

  So things maybe don't look so hot for Oracle. And then I just, you know, I wonder what that means for the frontier companies, because there's, they're also renting this, the space. And my guess is maybe nothing, because you imagine the banks repossess the chips. And like, but they keep the data centers running, right? It's just like, there's a change of control, basically of who runs the data centers. They change the locks on the data centers. Corey can't get in anymore. They auction it off to the highest bidder, who is probably somebody picking it up for chump change, you know? So maybe nothing, maybe this is nothing. But also maybe there's a business disruption, because when you have that change of control,

• 34:56Speaker 01

  you maybe have a change of employees, you maybe have things that go wrong. Maybe there are like interruptions to service, hard to know. So, yeah, I think that things just got more unstable. And I think the fact that Jensen Huang is so key to Nvidia, and Nvidia is so key to this ecosystem, makes this a remarkably dangerous situation for anybody working in AI, which is why you have all of these executives out here like, well, who wouldn't fuck a Chinese spy? I mean, that's just how it is. Like, how are you supposed to say no to that?

• 35:33David Pierce?

  It's a good note to end on. Liz, thank you as always. Good to see you.

• 35:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, me too.

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• 38:26David Pierce?

  All right, before we go, we have one more thing and one more person. Jen, too. Hello.

• 38:30Speaker 05

  Hello, hello. I'm back.

• 38:32David Pierce?

  You are once again in New York. This is just, this is what you do now.

• 38:35Speaker 05

  I know, I live here now.

• 38:37David Pierce?

  I like you, you sent your kid to college in the fall and you're like, screw this, I'm going to New York.

• 38:41Speaker 05

  Every week.

• 38:43David Pierce?

  You're here once again for more Amazon related shenanigans.

• 38:46Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 38:47David Pierce?

  Two, I would say, pretty splashy new devices you got to see this week. Tell me about them. What'd you see?

• 38:54Speaker 05

  Yeah, new is a stretch.

• 38:58David Pierce?

  Fair.

• 38:58Speaker 05

  They are reincarnated Amazon Ring devices, but they are quite splashy. So yes, finally, Ring is shipping its, oh, well, is shipping its autonomous drone camera for your home. If people who have been following Ring for the last few years recall, 2021, they announced the Always Home Cam, which was a drone camera that could navigate your home when you're away. And the idea here is it, a camera that can go places and see things in your home without you having to have multiple cameras set up in order to see. They've announced the new version, which is the Ring Drone Cam. So that is going to ship January 27th, 2027.

• 39:43Speaker 05

  Jamie Simonoff looked me in the eye and said, it's shipping January 27th. I've, we've had this conversation before, I said.

• 39:51David Pierce?

  Any idea why it took five years?

• 39:53Speaker 05

  Yes, they, it's completely new. They've completely redone it. It's gonna, it's still $250, which is a good price.

• 39:59David Pierce?

  Especially for right now, yeah.

• 40:01Speaker 05

  For right now. And that is that their big, that was his big selling point is that we could have shipped this five years ago for $5,000. But we had to put a lot of engineering effort into making this an affordable product. And the big change is they have shifted all of the technology out of the drone and into the cloud. So they have a new AI pilot, cloud-based AI agent that flies the drone. So all it needs is wifi and then the ability to land on the actual device. There's no sensors or processors or anything on the actual device. It's tiny. I got my hands on it. Very, very light, has a 2K camera, and it can fly set paths in your home, or it can respond to events.

• 40:45Speaker 05

  So if you have like a leak sensor and the leak sensor triggers, it can fly to the leak sensor and show you whether it's your toilet overflowing or your cat just knocked over their water bowl.

• 40:55David Pierce?

  Got it.

• 40:55Speaker 05

  So that's the concept. It's actually a concept I've always really liked, because I've personally experienced, I've left the house, did I leave the stove on? I've left the house, I get an alert that the back door opened. And I don't have cameras inside my house unless I'm testing things, and I don't want them inside my house. This would then just pop up out of its little case, go to where the incident is, send you video, you see what's wrong, you know whether you need to react. When it's not flying, its camera lens is covered, so there's no chance anyone's spying on you. It's very loud, so it's also not going to creep up on you. And it's $250, which is a lot for a camera, but it's a lot cheaper than buying,

• 41:37Speaker 05

  it's not a lot cheaper than buying six cameras, because you can actually buy cameras for like 20 bucks now. But, you know, for sophisticated cameras that have AI capabilities. So that's the new, that's the big, the big thing that they showed off. And I was surprised that it, that they had taken, basically, they basically threw out the old model. This is a completely new design. So that, they just said, you know, we got to the point where it was just too complicated. Every time we added a new sensor or new technology. The device got heavier and more expensive. And so they just started from scratch. And then, oh, the one other thing is it only can fly for five minutes. So it can't go for very long. Five to eight minutes.

• 42:18David Pierce?

  I like when it's not a very good gadget is actually part of the selling point of the device. This is good.

• 42:23Speaker 05

  And it can fly upstairs. So, you know, it's got those, it's got a lot of those robots beat. Is this the kind of thing you'd put in your home, David, or no?

• 42:32David Pierce?

  So I'm with you in that the very basic theory of it makes a lot of sense, especially when it is a thing that exists only for when I'm not in the house.

• 42:40Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 42:41David Pierce?

  I, of course, do not want a flying thing running around my house while I and my family are at home.

• 42:46Speaker 05

  You're actually in the house.

• 42:46David Pierce?

  Just not interested.

• 42:47Speaker 05

  No.

• 42:47David Pierce?

  But for the leak sensor thing you described is a perfect example. I, I think I and a lot of people will be suspicious about the idea of this thing being entirely remotely controlled, which just feels worrisome in a way that a more local thing is less worrisome.

• 43:04Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 43:04David Pierce?

  That's, that's a lot of access and a lot of trust to give to a machine, especially one that operates mostly when I'm not home.

• 43:10Speaker 05

  Right.

• 43:11David Pierce?

  But I'm, I'm willing to see this one through because I think there is, there is something to the use case that will actually work for people. So we should see, but that's one robot. What's the other robot?

• 43:21Speaker 05

  The other robot has wheels, so it can't go upstairs.

• 43:25David Pierce?

  Is this Astro?

• 43:26Speaker 05

  This is, Astro has been reincarnated.

• 43:28David Pierce?

  Astro's back.

• 43:29Speaker 05

  Welcome back Astro, yes. Although with no personality this time, which is rather sad.

• 43:36Speaker 05

  It is the Ring Rover Cam. And this is basically the drone cam, but on wheels. So it's, it's an Astro. It looks, it's the same hardware. They, they admit it. It's exactly the same hardware with a few tweaks and modifications. And it has a 4K periscope cam. So it can do the same thing, go pre-programmed routes around your home. Or if there's a trigger of some kind sensor that says there's some incident can go to that spot. It is a thousand dollars. And they did say this is not really aimed at homes. It's more for small businesses, but you could put this in your home. Maybe it can travel up to 5,000 square feet. So if you have a really big home.

• 44:19Speaker 05

  But yeah, it's, it's, it's the same robot without any of the Alexa, which was what was in Astro. And then they've added a tower light that shines a light up on the ceiling. So if, if you're wondering where your robot is, you can look up on the ceiling and it's, it glows.

• 44:35David Pierce?

  It's like shooting a flare up to find you.

• 44:36Speaker 05

  It's shooting the flare saying, here I am. Come and see me.

• 44:40David Pierce?

  It's adorable.

• 44:41Speaker 05

  But yeah, it has two-way talk. So you can be watching, you can talk to anyone that, you know, you encounter. It also works with Ring's virtual guard service that you may not be, may not remember, but they launched this a few years back. So where they have live agents that can actually check in on your property for you. But again, very much designed for businesses. But what, this also runs on this AI pilot agent in the cloud. And this whole product launch was now also the time they announced a new brand, Ring Robotics. And I did ask Jamie, you know, and it's Jamie Simonoff, who's the head of Ring. I asked if this means, you know, are we working towards more robots in the home? Are we potentially looking at a humanoid?

• 45:25Speaker 05

  I know there's been a lot of rumors and interesting acquisitions by Amazon over the last few months that point towards perhaps they're developing some type of home robot to follow up from Astro. I think this move makes it clear that whatever's coming from Amazon is not going to be Astro related. Astro has been repurposed and has found a new, a new life as a home security robot. But yeah, it's, it's interesting. It's going to be really interesting to see what Amazon does in this space. I feel like a home robot is, is probably the next big thing we're going to see, we're going to see from the company.

• 46:01David Pierce?

  The next thing to ruin Jen's home life is going to be just a bunch of humanoid robots just bumbling around your kitchen.

• 46:08Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 46:08David Pierce?

  I cannot wait. This is going to be great. All right, well, once you get one of these things flying around your house, you're going to have to report back because I think this is going to be one people have a lot of questions about. So we'll, we'll have to talk about this. You said January, right?

• 46:18Speaker 05

  Interesting one. So yeah, the drone cam is January 27th and the rover cam is December 19th. So next month.

• 46:26David Pierce?

  Got it. Awesome. Jen, thanks for coming on. Good to see you.

• 46:28Speaker 05

  All right, thanks.

• 46:29David Pierce?

  All right, that is it for the show. Thank you to Jen for being here. Thank you to Liz for being here. Thank you to Jensen Wong for what I assume is going to be a tremendous amount of very good content. If you have thoughts, questions, feelings, other spies you'd like us to talk about, you can always get at us. [email protected] is the email. 866 verge11 is the hotline. We love hearing from you about anything and everything. The best way to support everything we're up to here at The Verge is always to subscribe to The Verge, theverge.com/subscribe. It gets you all of our podcasts ad free. It gets you all of our exclusive email newsletters. It gets you all of our coverage of Jensen Wong, which presumably there is going to be a lot of. All of it. Theverge.com/subscribe. Thank you in advance. Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. The show is produced by Josh Kahas, Eric Gomez, Brandon Kiefer, and Travis Starjuk. See you tomorrow. Rock and roll.

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