Apple’s Most Ambitious Roadmap Ever? + OpenAI vs. Google vs. Anthropic Revisited

23:14They have new products coming. The AI first device just hasn't arrived yet. And so I'm curious, like, and I guess like with WWDC, Apple seems to have basically assuaged a lot of concerns with this new Siri that still hasn't fully rolled out yet, but people are starting to say, okay, it's good. Where does AI fit for Ternus and how comfortable do you think he should be with where Apple is today?

23:39M.G. Siegler:I think Apple is in a pretty good spot, honestly. Like, you know, when we've talked over just a year ago and over the past many months before that, obviously that was a very different story. And it was a, you know, a bit of a nightmare situation for Apple. It does feel like they've stabilized now. It feels I've been running the betas of the new OS, iOS and macOS and all the other products, and they're stable. They're good. Siri is not going to blow anyone away who's been day-to-day living with OpenAI and Anthropa and Claude, but it's certainly going to be good enough for the masses. And I think that they're going to get some new experiences.

24:17M.G. Siegler:Those are not as versed in AI that they'll like and more conversational Siri and whatnot. And so I think it's going to be, you know, a solid performer from that regard. We'll see what they have cooked, you know, cooked up for doing like more agentic workflows. I think that's stuff that will sort of roll out over time more so than, you know, be a focal point right now. But because I think we're early there and I think Apple, again, is sort of time that aspect of it. Well, you needed to have the conversational Siri. You needed to have Siri that could tell you the actual results of the Super Bowl and all the ridiculous stuff that Siri has not been able to do for years and years.

24:52M.G. Siegler:It seems like they fixed that, obviously, thanks in large part to Google. And so that's a good position to be in. And again, with these new devices coming out, with the foldable coming out and a bunch of other stuff in the pipeline, it feels like that will be there like at the table stakes level, right? Like you need to have this functional AI underpinning the operating system. The bigger question is what happens when, you know, the state of the art finally moves into the mainstream in terms of agentic use cases and some newer devices, you know, that potentially open AI and obviously meta with the glasses and everything.

25:26M.G. Siegler:And Apple's working on them like what that looks like will be a big test, I think. But for right now, it's table stakes. I think they're going to be OK. Now, you mentioned it and we should talk about it. There's new reporting again from Mark Gurman at Bloomberg about how much money Tim Cook is going to make. And I was sort of stunned by this. So now he's going to make$2 million as opposed to the$3 million he made as CEO and salary. Okay, so a little bit of a cut there. But then you look at the RSUs, and this is bananas, okay? This is from the Bloomberg story. In terms of restricted stock units for 2027, Ternus was given a target of$55 million on top of the salary and an unspecified bonus, while Cook will get$45 million.

26:07So$55 million for the CEO,$45 million for the executive chairman, that feels more like co-CEOs to me than it does. Like one person's the CEO and the other person's the executive chairman. I think the story had the previous executive chairman making like something under a million in our issues. So what's going on here? This is wild.

26:25M.G. Siegler:It is wild. It's and another important caveat from what the reporting states. I believe Cook's Yeah, targets don't include as much, if any, incentives versus what Ternus's do. So in other words, like Ternus has major targets to it in terms of the share price and different milestones that sort of unlock a lot of those. It's obviously a standard sort of CEO, big company CEO thing. Cook, it seems like, doesn't have it. He's just sort of getting going to get these these massive pay packages as long as he sticks around long enough to sort of, you know, vest all of them. And so that's super interesting.

27:06M.G. Siegler:Again, that speaks to like how important his role will be going forward. I do think a lot of that is the geopolitical stuff that Apple obviously doesn't want to play up for for clear reasons. But I do think that that matters. How that plays out will be fascinating if if a certain president in the in the White House right now is OK with continuing to talk to Tim Cook, even though someone else is the CEO of Apple. Historically, he's wanted to talk to the CEOs of the companies, the actual decision makers. So does President Trump, you know, is he OK with continuing to talk to his boy, Tim Apple? or does he need John Apple in there?

27:42M.G. Siegler:Johnny Appleseed, I think as some people have said, Johnny Appleseed in there to be able to have those conversations. It might be a hybrid. Maybe Cook sort of slowly ushers Turnusin to that role. But I do think that that's a big part of it and why that package looks like that. And obviously part of it is just like, it does seem like Cook will actually be very active. He's getting a new office. He's going to be on campus. It's not like the typical sort of executive chair. You brought up the previous one, Arthur Levinson, who's been in place for a long, long time since I think the Steve Jobs days.

28:15M.G. Siegler:And his compensation was, you know, more normal looking package for for that type of role. But he wasn't day to day. Right. Like he would do the board meetings. He'd lead the board meetings, chair the board meetings and then, you know, was not the executive chair. And that's, again, it's a new role for Apple. And I think that the pay package speaks exactly to what what they think it's going to be, because Cook, I mean, Cook, for all, you know, whatever you think of him, like he doesn't seem like the kind of guy that would like demand. He's only going to take the role if he gets like, you know, this massive comp package.

28:46M.G. Siegler:I again, I just view it as indicative of what they think he's actually going to be doing, which is still a lot of work. yeah 45 million a year to retire not bad clearly like not a retirement so uh let's i think we should breeze through some of the uh the products some some more of these products let's just do it quickly uh that we're going to see it see from apple this week um there's the iphone 18 and pro max i'm just going to read from bloomberg article the pro level iphones will look roughly the same as prior models other than a light blue and dark red color options the big new features are mostly internal a20 pro processors nlc2 modems better battery life and improved vapor chambers to prevent overheating they'll also come with camera upgrades including a mechanical aperture for fine-tuning light adjustments and depth control at least on the pro max i guess i'm curious do you think the foldable phone is going to take all of the because the 17 did so well i'm curious if the foldable phone will just kind of take all the attention away from the 18.

29:48M.G. Siegler:i i'm curious how Apple things about that, right? Like, how are they going to market these two next to one another, right? Like, obviously, if they're going to call the foldable the ultra, they're implying that, you know, that's the best one money can buy. But it's interesting. And I'm torn about this, because by all accounts, it's not going to have the best camera system, right? The pro will continue to have the best camera system. Largely, it seems like simply because of laws of physics, right in the way that the foldable is going to be more space constrained, you know, by the, by its nature.

30:17M.G. Siegler:And so it doesn't have the exact same optics. It doesn't maybe have some of these new features, um, you know, that the, the camera system will be beginning with the pro. And so I'm, I'm torn about that, right? Like I use primarily, I use, uh, you know, the phone first and foremost as a, as a picture taking device, especially as a, as a father of young children. Like I use that every single day all the time. Um, and I want to have the best camera on me. And if I'm really going to get the, the foldable slash ultra, like I potentially won't have the best camera on me. Now, it'll still be a great camera system, obviously, and it will be, I think, you know, good enough for everything, but it'll be in the back of my mind that it's not going to be the best one, right?

30:56M.G. Siegler:And that's a little weird from a marketing standpoint, if you're indeed going to call this the Ultra. And then maybe that's like some of the pushback against calling it the Ultra versus the Duo or, you know, the Fold or something more simple. And again, does Apple try to really, you know, play up the notion there? They have a new software feature coming in iOS where you can basically transfer your phone number from one device to the next super easily. So you could just say like, I'm using this device now and it will take your phone number and put it over. That implies that, you know, they think that some people will, obviously they historically have had two phones for different purposes, maybe work and pleasure or whatnot.

31:36M.G. Siegler:But this also might suggest that they think some people will buy the foldable and, and a regular, quote unquote, regular iPhone, which will be interesting. I think that that's a bridge too far for many people. But yeah, that's a lot of money. Three grand just for a phone. So, okay, so I guess we've done this, we've talked about this for like 30 minutes and I haven't asked you, so I'm gonna ask you straight up, which one are you gonna get if you're gonna upgrade? I'm gonna get the Ultra. I will miss the color. It sounds like it won't be as colorful, right? And that new like burgundy red looks pretty nice.

32:09M.G. Siegler:I have the cosmic orange, as they're calling, as they called it right now, which has been great. And I'll miss that. And I'll honestly like it'll be a bit jarring, right, to just have a different form factor after having this for years and years, the same one. That's the upside of it. But but I'm ready, you know, to try something new. And I think it'll be a good experience. But if not, maybe I downgrade, you know, to that that pro model again. But I think I'm going to I think I'm going to like it. But, yeah, it'll be it'll be take some getting used to. and it'll be an expensive proposition. And that's just, that's Apple.

32:43Yes, that is Apple. All right, I'll answer for myself. I'm going to stick with the 17 for one more year, I think, and make a determination. Usually I hold a model.

32:53M.G. Siegler:Go ahead, go ahead. Is that you feeling like, you know, the sort of standard Apple playbook of like, look, they often don't nail the first generation of something. And so let's see if they can work out the kinks first. Are you like interested in the foldable and want to get it, but you're just worried about it or price or what's weighing on you there? Good question. For me, I typically hold the phone for two years. So I had the 15, skipped 16, went 17. And I was even thinking of waiting till 18. But I'm so happy that I upgraded to the 17 because it's amazing. And I think that when I upgrade, I will upgrade to the foldable phone.

33:27But so part of it is like natural every other year upgrade. And part of it is just like, yeah, I do kind of want to see how this works before picking one up myself. Yeah. So we'll be able to ask you every month and we'll be able to get the feedback on how it's going.

33:42M.G. Siegler:I'm sure I'll be writing about this. It'll be like a live diary, I feel like, about using this thing. And regardless of if Apple nails sort of the hardware form factor, it does feel like that they'll, again, having this thing in the hands of millions of consumers, there are obviously going to be tweaks that they need to make certainly to the software side. And it feels like they'll learn quite a bit that they haven't been able to learn in sort of more closed testing internally. There's also, as I'm sure you've seen all the reports, a lot of reports suggesting that they'll be pretty constrained from a supply perspective going into it.

34:14M.G. Siegler:And so will this thing launch at the exact same time as the other devices or will it be delayed a little bit? They've done that a few times in the past where it's been maybe a month off. It doesn't sound like that they're anticipating a huge delay, but it does sound like it might be pretty supply constrained beyond all of the current supply issues going on, but related to them, too, of course. Yeah, that's an important call. Okay, briefly, there's also going to be MacBooks with touch displays, again from Bloomberg. After finally deciding around 2022 that it would enter the touchscreen laptop space, Apple is preparing the biggest overhaul to the MacBook Pro in half a decade and a redesigned model that sports a multi-touch screen OLED technology and the dynamic island element found on the iPhone.

34:55What do you think about this new MacBook? It sounds interesting to me.

34:58M.G. Siegler:It is interesting. It's overdue, obviously. and how Apple also deals with the marketing here will be fascinating because, of course, when they've been asked about this ad nauseum over the past several years with lots of Windows units on the market, touchscreen displays, they've said, like, look, we don't want a touchscreen Mac. We don't think you need one. We think we have the iPad. We've got the Mac. They're separate devices. Never till the two meet. And then, of course, behind the scenes, they were working on a touchscreen MacBook. But I think it'll be a marketing challenge after years and years.

35:29M.G. Siegler:But Apple's done that historically, of course, said that they weren't doing something until they come out to do it. I think the bigger issue is how they do macOS to deal with this touch element, because that's been part of the talking point, right, of like why they weren't going to do a touchscreen Mac in the past. It's like, it's just a different beast. There's different touch targets. Like iOS is, of course, and iPadOS are built for touch, and macOS is, of course, built for a mouse and keyboard. And so how do you do that? There's ways to do it. They've been doing things with the iPad where they, you know, in big in the touch area when you switch from the keyboard accessory into using touch.

36:08M.G. Siegler:So there's ways that they're going to do it. But it's conceptually, it's going to be, I think, a bit of a challenge for people because Apple just hasn't done it historically. And again, how they market this thing will be fascinating. Is this the MacBook Ultra? Is this the ultimate, you know, tier of the, of their personal computer. And what does that look like then for the iPad? Does it cannibalize the iPad pro market? Because all of a sudden you can have the best of both worlds potentially. Yeah. Okay. And the last thing I want to talk about, well, actually, there's two more products I want to talk about.

36:36The last thing that's going to come out this week is the first smart home hub with a screen. This is from Bloomberg, Apple's other major new product category due in the next few months is the home hub with a square. Oh, so it might not come this week, but it's a home hub with a square roughly 7-inch screen. Siri AI and facial recognition abilities, which will serve up personalized content to the person looking at the device. It'll come with versions that could sit on a nightstand or be affixed to the wall, run widgets, clock faces on apps and apps, and allow for both FaceTime and smart home control.

37:11The product will represent Apple's biggest push ever into the smart home market. That's interesting. You know, to me, that's just a sign of confidence that they have in their artificial intelligence that, like, they're willing to make this push again. Obviously, AI is going to be central to any device like this, and Apple must feel good about it.

37:30M.G. Siegler:Well, and this is one of those devices that's apparently been on hold forever because AI wasn't ready, right? Siri was so bad that they had to postpone the release of this and maybe a few other devices, including new versions of the HomePod and Apple TV. And so they've had these things just sitting on ice awkwardly, you know, by multiple reports at this point. And so it does speak to the point that they feel like the series finally in good enough space to be able to launch this. It is interesting how they'll actually dole out with the cadence of this event versus do they do an October event. It feels like it's set up nicely to have, you know, this new this iPhone event.

38:07M.G. Siegler:You've got the foldable. You've got the new pro models and then maybe one or one other thing there. But then you've got potentially a home event, right? Like with this home hub, an Apple TV, HomePod, maybe they intermix them, you know, depending on availability and components, I would imagine is a huge, huge part of that, right? The supply chain stuff. And so maybe they intermix them a little bit, but it's setting up nicely to be that one, two punch sort of in September and October for all of these devices. But from the high-level strategy of the HomePad, some people are calling it, device, I do think – HomePad.

38:43M.G. Siegler:I like that. HomePad. I think FacePod, HomePad. There's all sorts of fun things that they could go there with. But I think it's setting up the foundation of what they've long been trying to do, which is making basically Apple products the foundation of the home. There's all the talk now that they're going to roll out security cameras and a bunch of other stuff. And so this will be the base sort of layer about it. And I think people will be interested in it depending on what price points it is at, because I do think it's sort of an interesting conceptually idea to have it as like the main hub of the home, maybe iPad-like, but sort of running a new fangled version that they'll call HomeOS.

39:23M.G. Siegler:And the most interesting thing about it, honestly, might be if you're, you know, part of a family and the rumored features where it can basically have visual detection to be able to switch between users, which is something people have wanted forever on an iPad, right? Just be able to switch between users if multiple people use it in the home. And they've historically not done that, even though they have it on the Mac and, you know, they've had it other places. They haven't done that there. So this will be nice for that. And it's, yeah, it's setting up a foundation, it feels like. Okay, so here's the roadmap for 2027 and beyond.

39:55So Apple is also working on, aside from the things that we've talked about today, AirPods with cameras, an in-home security sensor and system, smart glasses, a tabletop robot version of the smart hub, and potentially a pendant with a camera for artificial intelligence. This does not seem like the Apple of the last 10, 15 years. This seems like an Apple that is willing to take much more chances on products than it had previously. And now maybe part of that is sparked by AI or pressured by AI. But it almost seems like a completely separate company from the one that Tim Cook has been running for a while.

40:35And we know it's not all John Ternus, or maybe it is, right? That Ternus, as part of the vision for CEO, is, hey, look, I'm going to release many more products. And obviously, it comes from a hardware engineering background. but it just seems to me like a major strategic shift for Apple and I'm scratching my head a little bit because I'm curious where this is coming from. So what do you think, MG? What is the deal with this new Apple, the one that ships many products and is willing to finally take some risks?

41:05M.G. Siegler:Well, I think it's a few of the things that you mentioned sort of all coming together at the right point. Like, you know, when you're talking about that, I'm again thinking through, And we've talked previously about when Microsoft transitioned from Balmer to Nadella. And, you know, one of the first moves that Nadella did was introduce Office for iPad, right? And everyone's like, oh, my God, it's a whole new Microsoft. And obviously that had been in the works for a while. They didn't just code that overnight and be ready to roll with it. And the same thing here. Of course, a lot of these products have been in the pipeline under Cook for a while.

41:35M.G. Siegler:But again, it's interesting that it's Ternus who's been the guy who's likely overseeing them at the level just below Cook on hardware engineering. And so he's the guy who got a lot of credit for the MacBook Neo. And he's going to get, I think, the rightful lot of credit for all of these new touchscreen MacBook, as we talked about, the foldable iPhone. He's been overseeing a lot of that work. And so it's sort of a perfect position for him to be elevating in the time that a lot of this work is coming in. But the other stuff that's not being released, you know, necessarily this year that you're mentioning, you know, that stuff that's going to be really interesting to see how it plays out under his leadership, because these will be, you know, the first like not just new devices, not a new version of them.

42:20M.G. Siegler:Even the touchscreen MacBook is a new version of the MacBook. We're talking about things that are totally new to Apple that they've not had before in terms of wearables, in terms of AI first devices. and there's a lot of ways that those can go wrong and there's a lot of ways that they go right. And so how Ternus actually deals with that, how does he coordinate software, engineering, everything to come together to make these sort of the perfect polished gem that Apple likes to ship? Yeah, I'm gonna say it, I like it. I mean, I think this is the direction that I've been hoping that Apple would take.

42:50And when I say hoping, I mean like when I'm thinking through the business strategy, to me, this seemed like the way to go, which is take more risks. We're no longer living in a slow moving technology ecosystem. Things are faster and you're going to need more devices. Otherwise you're going to fall. And Apple, I think felt that a little bit and the company for whatever, however it happened, there's been a spark and it is rejuvenated.

43:12M.G. Siegler:And I think part of it is like, they realize like, look, they're looking at the AI revolution. I mean, they tried once to sort of come in there, fell on their face a little bit, but also took a step back, maybe, you know, not by choice and was forced to take a step back and realize like we still have the hardware advantage that no one else has. And so how do we actually take advantage of that? Not only with iPhone, with Mac, but also new devices that we can do. We have not only the prowess to be able to do this and the expertise in-house, but we also have the retail channel that no one else has.

43:43M.G. Siegler:And so how do we leverage that to be able to be truly successful here? And I think that's what we're gonna see all of next year. Yeah, no, it's a very interesting moment for the company. And there's been some interesting plays on words in this episode. you know, Johnny Appleseed. I like that. The, the home, what was it? The home pad? Uh, pad. Yeah. That's one of the rumors. And, uh, on threads, I saw this and I think, uh, because I saw it and I haven't been able to get out of my head. I'm just gonna, you might've seen it too, but I'm going to share it with everyone that, what was it? It was Steve did the job.

44:14He let Tim cook. Now it's John's turn and it's God, that's so cringy, but just stuck in my head. Yeah, nice work. Okay, so after the break, we're going to talk a little bit about the competitive dynamics between OpenAI, Google, and Anthropics. So much news on that front that, of course, we can't sign off without having a discussion about that. So we will do that right after this. You know those pieces in your closet that you find yourself wearing on repeat? The sweater that goes with everything, the perfect pair of pants, or the tea you somehow always reach for first. Those are the pieces that make getting dressed easy, and that's what Kintz does best.

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47:35The link is in the show notes. And we're back here on Big Technology Podcast with M.G. Siegler of Spyglass. You can find Spyglass at spyglass.org. Highly recommend you sign up for the newsletter. Lots of good stuff. Lots of what we're talking about today. Stuff M.G. has covered on Spyglass. M.G., let's talk a little bit about or kind of pick up from our last discussion. So you may remember last time we spoke, we talked all about like the weird stuff going on within Google and the fact that I read this story about Google basically giving up on the frontier race. And it seemed crazy at the time.

48:13But then just a few days or hours later, we had finished recording. We haven't even published the episode yet. Demis Asabes stepped down as the CEO of Google DeepMind. Now, of course, he is involved within the company, but it really does, you know, when you think about the competitive dynamic, and we'll start with Google, between Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic, it makes you wonder. And while you were covering this, you cited a semi-analysis post that I thought was very interesting, where it definitively said, and I'll just read it, for all intents and purposes, we believe DeepMind is no longer a frontier lab.

48:47We said as much a few months ago, and we said as much a few months ago, due to the large numbers of departures from their reinforcement learning teams and poor compute allocation. Google will continue meandering on and releasing models, but their odds of reaching state-of-the-art again have dropped to zero. Furthermore, the biggest beneficiary of today's news is neither, and it's talking about Demis, is neither Anthropic nor OpenAI. It's Google Cloud. Whereas Gemini and Google Cloud Platform used to desperately fight for compute allocation, it's now clear that thomas kurian the head of google cloud platform has won we expect google cloud platform revenue to grow meaningfully as and to to growth to meaningfully accelerate as a result that's a fat i mean fascinating two paragraphs so the argument is basically like they're no longer on the frontier they're all about you know the platformization of of ai and selling compute to others which they think is a big business which is very um kind of interesting direction to take.

49:50So what's your reaction here? And what do you think about the state of Google?

49:54M.G. Siegler:I mean, I do think that that post is a little bit overzealous, perhaps. You know, I think that they didn't come out and refute it directly. But I think, you know, there's been lots of whispers of a bunch of stuff going on. You know, and I should note, obviously, I used to work at Google, but I have no inside information. I've been gone for a couple years. And so I don't know what's actually going on there. But I do think just reading the tea leaves and sort of trying to triangulate based on all these different reports, it does seem like they just flopped when it came to 3.5 Pro Gemini 3.5 Pro, which was announced on stage at IO this year.

50:33M.G. Siegler:And they got it, you know, they got flack, including from us, right when it seemed like it wasn't going to be released then and it wasn't and they talked about, well, it's coming next month. And that would have been in June, I think, right? And it's now September. We still have no 3.5 Pro. They haven't come out and said that it's dead, but I think it's dead. I think that now they only talk about four, Gemini 4 in training and that that's shaping up well. They've launched all these flash models, which by most accounts are good, but they're not frontier, right? They're not at the cutting edge of where Google was before with Gemini.

51:06M.G. Siegler:And so, you know, they're competitive in different ways, but again, they're not what was promised. And in some ways it harkens back to what happened to Meadow with Llama, right? Like where they said like this behemoth Llama is coming and they're going to be at the frontier. And then obviously next thing we knew, they're resetting the entire company to basically, you know, acquire all these people and get a new team in place and go back behind the scenes and catch up again. And so I don't think that we're going to see that level from Google of reset, but clearly a reset happened, you know, hours after we sort of spoke about it and it felt like it was in the brewing.

51:43M.G. Siegler:You could tell that something was happening behind the scenes with all of the various reports about them falling behind. And will they be able to get back to the frontier? I mean, it seems pretty clear, again, from the reporting that from Demison down, they were getting pretty interested in world models. They were seeing like maybe the LLM race is sort of maybe not winding down, but we want to go in a different direction to make sure that we're in the right direction of where the state of the art is heading. And maybe they just made a wrong call there. Maybe they were too early. We'll see about that.

52:13M.G. Siegler:But can they get back to that actual frontier? It's an interesting time, right? It feels like that they're everyone's like rate varying degrees of racing, pausing, you know, rolling out things, holding back on others. And it's a very weird moment in time for this quote unquote race. Yeah, and I'm absolutely not going to count Google out. But if there was an intentional decision to basically say, you know, we have compute, we can use it to build new models, or we can use it to, you know, basically make bank right now with Google Cloud Platform, and we're going to do the latter. That's a very interesting strategic decision.

52:48M.G. Siegler:And it also feels like that's a bit how Microsoft has played it, right? Like they obviously famously had the OpenAI deal in place. They sort of renegotiated that and that, you know, all the talk was that that would unlock them to go after the frontier. There is talk that they are, you know, they've been doing that with Mustafa Suleiman trying to go for it. But we haven't seen them release anything yet on the frontier. They've released some smaller models. And all of Satya Nadella's talking points now seem to be about just being this, you know, quote unquote, Switzerland of, you know, the clouds for AI.

53:19M.G. Siegler:and they're happy to use anything, be it open models from China, be it any of the competitive, you know, the frontier models products. They don't necessarily care what you use as long as you're using it on Azure. They're a cloud offering. And so Google in some ways probably has to think about that, right, in relation to all of this too. It's like, that's Microsoft strategy. Amazon is a sort of similar strategy. They've long had it where, again, they want to be the Switzerland, they want to be the platform for their cloud, for AWS. And, you know, they're working on their own models, but not necessarily at the frontier again.

53:51M.G. Siegler:And so is that where Google is moving? Yeah. And it's also, it's different for Google because they have TPUs. And I guess Amazon to a degree has Tranium, but the TPUs have shown that they can be used to build real state-of-the-art models. And if you look at Google, so Google's market cap, as we're speaking today, you know, is$4 trillion. And NVIDIA's market cap is$5.5 trillion. Now, I'm not saying Google's going to equal NVIDIA, but if you make this strategic pivot, and Dave Kahn on the show made this suggested a couple of weeks ago. If you make this strategic pivot and you say, basically, AI models will commoditize to a degree or will always need compute to work.

54:25And so what we're going to do is be the part of the value layer. We get effectively a tax whenever someone uses AI, whether that's through the cloud or through our chips. Maybe you're looking at a company that its potential, I mean, let's say Anthropic is going to be a$2 trillion IPO. Well, if you're going after the$2 trillion opportunity or the$5 trillion, maybe you want the$5. I know that's overly simplistic, but it is an idea. And maybe that's what Google's doing.

54:55M.G. Siegler:Yeah. We've long talked about it. Google's in a unique position versus everyone else because of the basic things that they have in-house to be able to do. And you talk about TPUs. And again, Amazon is some of it, but Google has been operating at a different level from a technical standpoint on some of this stuff simply because like they have the search revenues that's fueling it and the profits most importantly. Amazon of course is also an awesome business but doesn't quite have the level of profits that Google does given their underlying business and it was AWS that became sort of their giant profit center right and now if Google has search which is obviously you know sort of the continued money maker but not as vital as it was in yesteryear And now they have cloud up and coming and they're sort of layering on all of these layers to become like the biggest company in the world, you know, potentially if they have an NVIDIA-like opportunity in TPUs or in chips in general.

55:55M.G. Siegler:Like what's to stop them from doing that? I mean, just themselves, big company problems, right? Bureaucracy stuff. And so, you know, would I count them out? Of course not. And I think that like so many things, all these companies sort of ebb and flow, right? They go. they're hot and then they fall back and it seems like are they finished are they cooked like and then they come roaring back and then they're cooked again and so i feel like we're in a little bit of a of a down cycle as much as you could be as a four trillion dollar public company but it feels like they'll be back at some point soon and they'll have sort of all these these narratives that are compelling again and speaking of this like cycle of they're the leader are they cooked they're back to the leader again uh it seems like open ai has just gone through one of these where They definitely have.

56:38They were in code red. Speaking of where they were versus Google, what was it, nine months ago, they were in code red and trying to fend off Google, then falling behind Anthropic. Now they've released GPT-6, Astra, Jensen Wang from NVIDIA has called it AGI, although folks, Jensen has said that we've reached AGI like months ago and nobody paid attention. But anyway, I'm not here to be the arbiter of that. But what do you think this latest model release does for OpenAI and its competition with Anthropic in particular. And on that note, why everybody's making these like 3D models and saying it's AGI, which is interesting.

57:14So what's your general read on why that's happening?

57:18M.G. Siegler:I wrote about this a little bit at the end of last week. My general read on AGI of Greg Brockman proclaiming it with Astra is that it's full on marketing now. Before we've joked that it's marketing, but now it's like full on marketing. They're just deciding that they're going to to declare it willy-nilly, Jensen, willy-nilly. It's like, what does it mean? It never really meant, it meant different things to everyone always. I think we probably talked about that two years ago and now it's just full on in there, especially because OpenAI, as noted, no longer has the AGI clause with Microsoft. So they can sort of do whatever they want now and just declare AGI here or there.

57:54M.G. Siegler:And it doesn't impact anything beyond public perception. But there's a risk in that too, right? Like people, I think, have been, spent the past years sort of being hyped up about AGI is coming and it's going to change everything. And instead, like AGI is here apparently and nothing all that much has changed beyond 3D models. And, you know, I don't know. I still can't get grandma home from the airport. So how good is AGI? There was some cool stuff where this guy was building like his own simulated world where, you know, the agents with a bunch of agents inside of it and they started talking to each other and they started building their own simulations.

58:32So I think there is some cool stuff, but the whole situation is a little bizarre. And I do wonder, so I kind of foreshadowed this at the very beginning of the episode. I do wonder if a lot of what we're seeing now is just going to be the claims, the hype on the claims will just escalate as the IPO window opens. And we know that Anthropic is sort of on the way there. And I'm curious if this big push from OpenAI has something to do with that. Although, I mean, the benchmarks look good, but I do wonder, what do you think?

59:03M.G. Siegler:Yeah, I mean, a huge part of an IPO is obviously the marketing and the story behind it, right? And so, as you're noting, like all these companies continue to battle. It does feel like OpenAI has had a resurgence after being downtrodden and sort of, you know, falling behind Anthropic because, you know, they obviously were more consumer focused. Well, Anthropic recognized the opportunity with coding and sort of have basically used that to slingshot ahead of OpenAI. And now all of a sudden they're going to go public before them and everything's looking good. It's very interesting what Anthropic will do leading up to that IPO.

59:39M.G. Siegler:Presumably we're going to get the S1 any day now. It could be this week, could be next week. And the offering might be next month. And, you know, what do they do to that marketing and product end ahead of that? What do they do to keep momentum? Because it does feel like, again, OpenAI has taken back some of it with this Astro push. But obviously, Anthropic just released, you know, a new version of Mythos and Fable right ahead of OpenAI doing that. And the backdrop, of course, behind all of this now is everything going on with security and these breaches that are sort of being disclosed left and right.

1:00:18M.G. Siegler:And these companies continue, again, to sort of talk about the notion of the future is here and AGI is here. But at the same time, you know, writing blog posts and talking endlessly about, like, all the security implications of it. Very strange dichotomy. Certainly not helping the messaging around this as, you know, it's like, what is the public to believe here? Is this the absolute future of everything and the future is going to be great? Or is the future going to be terrifying? and all of these guys, like they really need to sort of figure that, figure out what the, what the appropriate talking points are going to be.

1:00:52M.G. Siegler:And you would think that they do that before going public, but apparently not. No, clearly not. And I do think that they're, they're both, both Anthropik and OpenAI are going to need some like big reveal before they do their IPO, just like, you know, a real one more thing moment. There's some chatter on Twitter that maybe Maybe Anthropic will solve a Millennium Prize problem and sort of push that out right before the IPO or somebody is going to come up with some scientific breakthrough. I don't know. As we get closer to the public market, it is getting tougher to be able to discern what you should trust and what you shouldn't trust.

1:01:29M.G. Siegler:I want to know who is going to choose AGI as their stock ticker symbol and who gets stuck with RSI. Oh. That'll be the battle. Ah, well, Anthropic has the first try at this. What do you think their symbol's going to be? It could be A &T. OpenAI will be AGI, I'm pretty sure. Yeah, they'll want it at least. Maybe some smaller company can take it and make OpenAI pay millions of dollars to get access to it, like a jersey on a sports team or something. oh my god mg the the silly season is just beginning isn't it yep yep all right folks check out spyglass.org it's always great to have mg with us to kick off the month uh mg i'm sure that we're gonna we say this every week every time and every month every time we talk but i'm sure that like by the way we're recording on monday i'm sure none of this will hold for wednesday and the month ahead is going to be even more insane than this past one there's going to be some breaking new like the iphone ultra will be left in a bar or something and someone will have it all of a sudden and we'll know everything about it before the event yep definitely all right mg thanks again great talking to you as always thanks alex talk soon all right thanks everybody for listening and watching and we'll see you next time on big technology podcast

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