The Moltbook Uprising, NVIDIA’s OpenAI Pullback, Apple’s Conundrum

26:58They did a live interview on CNBC talking about the$100 billion. And yes, it was always sort of just soft circled or earmarked. Like in my original sort of writing on that topic, I noted like how weirdly squishy the overall sort of wording was at the time that they announced it because they kept saying it was up to$100 billion and that it was, you know, coming down the line. And, you know, at the time, it was all chalked up to the fact that it seemed like Jensen and Sam Altman basically hashed this out over perhaps a weekend trip with Trump somewhere, you know, overseas. And sort of they figured out like, oh, we're going to announce this big deal and let's do it right now, rather than having all the, you know, I's dotted and T's crossed.

27:43And so they just put it out there. still they did a they both did press releases around it they did this live interview and no one was like the whole point of it was to tout the 100 billion number like so they could say like oh it was never meant to be you know it wasn't for sure ever going to be that big that's what they were touting and now again they're they're coming out and saying like look we never had it fully you know agreed upon and uh it was always sort of a a moving target and and it's no big deal like the fact that we're changing it. It's a big deal. It seems like something changed, obviously, in the intervening months.

28:17There kept being these reports that noted that it wasn't, you know, the deal still wasn't finalized, right? And that seems sort of weird. And then fast forward again to the reporting last week, where it's basically like, yeah, actually, with OpenAI doing their new fundraise, it's more likely that NVIDIA is just going to be a part of that fundraise. But even that's weird, because why would NVIDIA want to take a worse deal at this new, much higher valuation when they agreed upon the deal still at when Open Ad was technically still at the old valuation, right? Like they apparently were going to do it in these tranches.

28:50And at least the first one presumably would have been done in, you know, a much better, a much better valuation. Now you could say Jensen doesn't care about that. It's not for the financial returns, but you still have a fiduciary duty to like, you know, take a better deal, a much better deal. And so there's all sorts of weird flags around this. And again, their response to it, sort of like the response when, you know, when Google's TPU stories hit and, you know, Jensen's like downplaying that. It's like, oh, it's no big deal. Don't worry. I'm not upset about that. It's like there's something obviously more going on behind the scenes here.

29:24And I sort of threw out a few ideas of like what it could be. Are they, was Jensen really mad about when shortly after they announced this deal, Sam Altman announced the deal with AMD, right? and that seemed like it annoyed Jensen at the time because he gave a comment that was like, yeah, it was sort of surprising. Like, I don't know why either side would want to do something like that. And, huh, okay. And then, you know, subsequently, there've been, you know, a few other things, obviously, that OpenAI has gone down, including, you know, potentially what's been going on with all their other cloud deals and whatnot and, you know, and chip deals.

30:03And so is that what's at play here? And it's unknown right now because Jensen keeps again saying that it's no big deal. Right. I mean, Jensen was in, I think, Taiwan over the past couple of days and was talking about how this was going to be a very big investment, one of the biggest investments ever, which is true. The largest investment we've ever made, he says. And then somebody asked him, well, what about the hundred billion? And he said something astonishing. He said, no, no, nothing like that. so yeah exactly is that money off the table it's no no nothing like that like like that's absurd even though they announced that like they were on again john fort's doing a live interview with with greg brockman i watched the thing sam altman and jensen and he talks to them about the hundred billion dollars and they're like you know touting like oh this is an incredible um an incredible agreement between two great companies like this is going to be you know push the future forward and and accelerate everything.

31:00And it was all predicated around that huge number. They're getting into the technical weeds of whether or not it was all going to come in all at once. And again, they never said that it was going to come in all at once, but now they're saying that it's never going to be$100 billion. And it's weird to not acknowledge that that was the reality and pretend again, like this is sort of gaslighting. It's like, yeah, that was not... What are you talking about? Come on,$100 billion? We're not doing that. No one's going to do that. It's like, just go read the press release that you put out there. You said you were going to do that.

31:33And, okay, of course, there's, like, the, again, notion, like, is sort of open AI more to blame for it? Like, Sam wanted to get the big number out there and, you know, tout it, especially because it was done, you know, maybe hashed out alongside President Trump. And, you know, that he likes the big numbers and let's put these out there and get everyone excited. But it also, like, really, you know, was big news for the stock market, right, as well. and now today, you know, it sounds like NVIDIA's dropping because it sounds like the stock market's like, well, what happened to that deal that you said was going to get done?

32:06And if OpenAI were a public company, I would not want to be their stock right now today, but they're not. Instead, they're raising it, you know,$100 billion plus. And yes, you hit upon like the idea, the other way that they're downplaying this is like, look, it's still, and Jetson very specifically said, is probably their biggest investment ever. So it may or may not be, might be up to$100 billion. may or may not be. So it's probably their biggest investment ever. And yes, so that's still obviously a big deal. But there's talk that Amazon's going to do$50 billion in the round and SoftBank's going to do more.

32:38It's like, you know, this was going to be one of the biggest deals, maybe the biggest single, you know, amount ever put in from one company to another. And now all of a sudden it's not. And they're just sort of saying like, yeah, sorry, we didn't really mean that one. If I recall correctly, they also had a moment where they were touting about how it wasn't really done with bankers and it was just hashed out mano a mano. Might have been a sign that something was going wrong there. Maybe you want to get these deals a little bit more locked in before you announce them, I guess, in the future. Or in Jensen's favor, he could back out of it.

33:13Exactly, yeah. And that's what I wrote at the time, basically saying, look, let's not get ahead of ourselves here. There's a lot of wiggle room in this and there's ways that NVIDIA I certainly might not end up doing the full$100 billion because it was tied to specific milestones, it sounded like, at least verbally, that that's what they agreed upon. I think there's one other key element that sort of I, for whatever reason, hone in on, which I think is interesting and potentially at play here, which is that to me, when I first was reading about the deal, It seemed like a big part of it was basically OpenAI leveraging the relationship with NVIDIA and using the fact that NVIDIA is the most valuable company on Earth to basically be able to use that partnership.

34:01And there was subsequently reporting on this fact that they would use that partnership to be able to be able to raise debt, basically, in order to fund a lot of the infrastructure build out that OpenAI had wanted to do. And that's because OpenAI still is not a public company, let alone not a profitable company, was having a harder time raising the levels of debt that, say, an NVIDIA could. NVIDIA can basically raise whatever it wants because, again, they have the stock to back it up. They have all these assets to back it up. And they have the profits to back it up. OpenAI is not in that place, but they still wanted to be in charge of their own buildouts.

34:34And so how do you do that? You partner with someone on it. And they've obviously been partnering with Oracle and many others around those lines. But like, to me, that seemed like what a big part of this deal was. Basically, NVIDIA stepping in to be a, you know, a guarantor of the debt that OpenAI would need to raise. And what happens to that now? Is that off the table? Or do they decide maybe they don't need them for whatever reason anymore? Maybe this new funding, you know, helps with that. But I don't know. That's a weird part. That's fascinating. And that could be a big problem for OpenAI should that materialize.

35:04I don't think enough people are talking about that. One last bit on this. And this is a story that you had also written. We talked a bit on Friday about how Anthropic is now raising$20 billion and OpenAI is raising$100 billion. And the funding sources are sort of mixing and matching from places that you wouldn't think would typically be the source of funding for the specific companies. For instance, Microsoft putting money into Anthropic after being OpenAI's biggest backer and Amazon maybe putting$50 billion into OpenAI after being Anthropic's biggest backer. And I think the way that you frame this is really interesting, that there is effectively an anti-Google alliance forming out there.

35:46Whereas all these companies, the funders, the big tech funders, the VCs, and the labs, be it Anthropik or OpenAI, now realize they're in for the fight of their lives against Google. And they're just going to do whatever they can. And does, you know, old rivalries maybe go aside, they'll do whatever they can in order to be able to build some counterweight to the emerging force that Google is. Yeah, that's that's sort of, again, my high level read of it. And we had talked previously, you know, in previous conversations about Google's ascension, you know, after being sort of kicked kicked around and and, you know, being beaten down a bit as to why they weren't sort of meeting the moment.

36:27And now towards the end of last year, when they sort of, you know, when Gemini 3 rode in and even nanobanana and everything, right, it basically awoke in the beast. And now all of a sudden there was a code red from OpenAI. And, you know, everyone's sort of eyes are wide open to this realization that Google has everything they need to potentially, you know, take over this race. And I do think that a lot of their peer group in big tech probably recognizes the same thing. And I think the Microsofts of the world, the Amazons of the world, and the Metas of the world too, Meta's a little bit different of a story, which we can talk about separately, because they're not one of these ones that's funding these other companies.

37:08But I think these other major cloud players, at least the ones who have the rival clouds, specifically Microsoft and Amazon, realize that, yeah, they probably need to align around basically anyone who's not Google. Right. They don't they don't necessarily care if I mean, they do care. Obviously, they would hope that it's their their stuff that takes off and sort of wins the day. But at the end of the day, they can also be a huge shareholder in Anthropic, you know, and I think they'd be happy about that. They can maybe, you know, be a shareholder in even XAI and they can be happy about that as long as it's not Google, their chief sort of competitor and the one company that has all the pieces in place to take this over.

37:48Now, obviously, Google itself is a big stake in Anthropic, but that sort of predates, you know, this situation that we're in right now. And so, yeah, to me, the big eye opener was that Amazon 50 billion report. if they end up really investing$50 billion, you know, into open AI after being, they are the largest shareholder of Anthropic, you know, I was trying to think like, does that mean something that they're negative in some ways against Anthropic? I don't think that's it. I just think that they want to make sure that they are in a place where they can, you know, pick and choose what they want as long as it's anyone but Google.

38:25That's right. No, it's a great insight. And now it sort of explains this thing that I've been struggling with, which was like, why is this funding cross pollination pollination happening? And I think that's about as good of an explanation as any that I've heard. All right. OpenAI is eyeing an IPO. We have a date now that has been reported in the Wall Street Journal. We'll talk about when that is and why that is when we're back right after this. You want to eat better, but you have zero time and zero energy to make it happen. Factor doesn't ask you to meal prep or follow recipes. It just removes the entire problem.

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40:20And we're back here on Big Technology Podcast with M.G. Siegler. M.G. writes at spyglass.org. Highly recommend it. It's definitely a great place to go for all insights on AI and big tech. And M.G., of course, if you're new to the show, is here with us on the first Monday of every month. And given that it's Monday, February 2nd, we're here talking and we have some big stuff to talk about. We'll talk in this segment about OpenAI's planned IPO and why Apple earnings, despite being amazing, don't seem to be able to buy the company any credit with Wall Street. Let's talk about the IPO first. I thought personally there was no way OpenAI would try to go public in 2026.

40:59Obviously, Sam Altman made that comment to me when I spoke with him late last year, that he would hate being a public company CEO, something along those lines. And now I'm looking in the Wall Street Journal has this story. OpenAI plans fourth quarter IPO in a race to beat Anthropik to market. OpenAI is laying the groundwork for a public listing in the fourth quarter of this year, accelerating its plans as competition with rival Anthropic intensifies the$500 billion startup, is holding informal talks with Wall Street banks about a potential initial public offering, and is growing its finance team.

41:32OpenAI executives have privately expressed concerns about Anthropic beating the company to an IPO. On Friday, we had Stephen Morris, the San Francisco Bureau Chief of the Financial Times on. And we were talking about like, when you think about these numbers, the question is, where is the money going to come from? Is there enough money? Let's say OpenAI were to go public at like one and a half trillion dollars. Is there enough money on, you know, out there to fund an IPO like that? Especially if let's say an Anthropic comes out a month before, and then you're looking at, you know, the traditional, you know, IPO share buyers, just like having to decide.

42:09And then the amount of money that's available comes down. So I'm curious what you think. Is this a response to that? And just to them saying, well, there's a limited money out there. We better go get it. If so, maybe that's a smart move. Yeah. I wrote about this a little bit at the end of last year, around the time that, yeah, the rumors started that Anthropic was thinking about, you know, potentially going public in 2026. Because to me, it's sort of like that is the ultimate open AI squeeze. Because, right, we already talked about the fact that Google is sort of, you know, has woken up and they're sort of squeezing from the top, one of the biggest companies in the world.

42:42They're going after many different elements of what OpenAI's, you know, historic strong points have been in AI. Meanwhile, you've got Anthropic, which was always thought to be sort of the smaller player right across the board, maybe going more after enterprise, more focused on that. But ultimately, if they're both going to go public, you know, there's a sort of first mover advantage for sure, you would imagine, because you would hope that there's pent up demand or they would hope that there's pent up demand in the market for various AI bets. And the first one to go out there is probably going to have a better of a time, perhaps, especially if that first one to go out has better looking economics, or at least the path to better looking economics than the other one does.

43:30And that again, points to the notion at the time from at the end of last year that Anthropic was said to be, you know, maybe a couple of years ahead of OpenAI when it came to being able to turn a profit. And so again, if Anthropic were to go out and go public ahead of OpenAI and they have this direct path to profitability that's much quicker than what OpenAI can get to, that puts OpenAI in a very, very tricky spot when they were to go public as well. And, you know, they would really have to rely on the bigger picture, bigger growth narrative. And, you know, that's becoming workier by the day, right?

44:07With all this stuff going on with not only Claude Code, but now Claude Cowork, and, you know, all these other things that are going on at the moment in AI. I do believe that there's, you know, that that seems like it would be a natural outcome of this would be, yeah, OpenAI trying to race to beat Anthropic. There's one other element to this, which is even more sort of in the news in the past few days, which is XAI. if they really do merge with SpaceX, which it does sound like now is going to happen and may even be announced this week, which is insane how fast that that came together if it comes together in that way.

44:45That's sort of an interesting end run around by Elon to all of a sudden have potentially an AI play rather than just the space play to go public in, you know, as rumored in June or maybe July of this year, so well ahead of when there's no way that that Anthropic or OpenAI can meet that timetable right now. I think SpaceX is way ahead of them in terms of where they are in the process. And so what if Elon does the ultimate end run around and gets XAI out before either of these companies and becomes the ultimate first mover AI play? I mean, he would love to hold that over Sam, wouldn't he? Oh, of course.

45:23That's part of the that's part of the strategy that has to be part of the strategy here for sure for sure unbelievable i for the for the record i do not think open ai is going to go out 2026 2027 probably 2026 i don't either i agree i i agree with that you know we talked about my predictions last let's go around that was one of them that i didn't think that any of the major uh ai companies would go out in 2026 even though they're all talking about it xai though might just proved me wrong by this merger, I guess. But yes, in terms of OpenAI and Anthropic, I just think that beyond where their businesses are at and with these now massive fundraisers, as we're talking about, I think that it will push it out a little bit.

46:07And the real wildcard is obviously, as it always is, the macro story, right? Like what ends up happening? There could be so many things that sidetrack or at least delay any sort of rush. But again, if it really is a full on sprint for open AI to get out ahead of Anthropic. There's a window which they do that, but I think it's still probably a 2027 thing. Yeah, agreed. Okay, one last story before we go. Apple turned in, I think, the best earnings report in its history. It brought in$143 billion in revenue over$138. Estimated iPhone revenue was$85.27 billion, beating the estimate by$6 billion. The estimate was$78 billion.

46:50That's 23 % growth in the iPhone category year over year, which is insane. Remember, they were struggling to grow iPhone for a while. They also beat on profitability. Yet, Wall Street did not seem impressed. The stock is up a tiny bit, but mostly flat since the earnings announcement. What does Apple need to do to get that story turned around? It's been flat for six weeks or so. I think this is, again, this is going to be the best year in Apple history. But of course, the AI story is something that is not really working in its favor. Yeah, so there's a few things there. First and foremost, I do think that some of that apprehension about Apple is related to just what's going on with memory chips and everything, right?

47:36And that it could ultimately end up squeezing their margins. The margins were incredible this quarter, which was sort of a surprise to many given everything going on. But it does seem like Apple's sort of been savvy in terms of like potentially hoarding memory chips, which is not something that Tim Cook usually likes to do. He likes to get this inventory as streamlined as possible. But we're in a weird sort of macro environment for this. And that's in no small part because of the AI revolution that's happening, right, and is changing all of those equations. And so I do think the broader picture, though, yes, is that the market sees what Apple is doing with Google and they applauded it right when it was first announced that like, oh, it's like, oh, they're teaming up with one of the leaders in AI, if not the leader in AI now in Google.

48:23and Gemini will finally fix Siri and we're going to have a great situation for Apple. But I do think like ultimately they might be looking at this as like, well, look, we have Meta over here that's spending$130 billion in CapEx, whereas Apple is spending much closer to zero. It's something around like, it's like$18 or$20 billion in CapEx because they're not building out, obviously, the massive infrastructure in order to bake their own cutting edge AI. And so, you know, I think that there's a little bit, maybe a lot of apprehension that while Apple may be fine in sort of the shorter term for the longer term, if they are not one of the key players in the AI space, and if you believe AI is going to revolutionize everything, including hardware businesses, potentially, like, then Apple's in a tough spot.

49:13Now, Apple would counter that, look, this is the short-term stuff. We're doing this partnership short-term. We're going to fix Siri, and we're going to continue to work on it behind the scenes to eventually roll our own AI. But again, the cap back spend that they're showing right now is so small relative to not just Meta, but Google and Amazon and Microsoft and everyone else, that it feels like there's a world in which they're behind right now and that they can never catch up. And that would be obviously the real fear. Now, I do think you're right. Like, and we've talked about this previously.

49:47Like, I do think this will be a good year overall for Apple because I think it's no small part because like we've talked about before, the iPhone Fold and some of these other devices that they have coming out, I think will end up doing well for them. But again, the bigger picture, the longer term time horizon stuff is AI. And right now they're just they're showing no real energy around being that they need to have a sense of urgency around it other than cutting deals, which is just not typically what Apple does, whereas they want to own everything in house. Yeah, I was on CNBC last week right before Apple earnings, and I kind of stuck my neck out for the company, which I don't typically do.

50:26But I was basically like, here's where the bull case for Apple sits. They are going to sell the latest model and probably the next model like crazy through the year. Meanwhile, there's no killer AI app or device yet that is threatening to disrupt their core business. If you think about it, we may get some AI devices this year. my prediction is they're just gonna they they will be underwhelming they won't be a threat to smartphone growth yet two three years four years five years from now definitely but at least in the short term uh it's going to look really good for apple because the sort of immediate threat to them from ai is not materializing the intermediate threat uh is still there but maybe the market doesn't care about it maybe they're more long-term focused and not quarter by quarter like we like to dig them for.

51:16Yeah. And I mean, the one thing that I agree with right now is that there is a path in which Apple looks very smart in, say, a year or two years from now in not having spent all of this capex to do these massive build outs, right? If the model's fully commoditized and all that, you know, that they're just sitting there and they can sort of pick and choose what they want to use and also pick and choose which path they want to go down. Again, though, I go back to the idea that like, they're just not doing the other stuff behind the scenes in order to be able to eventually sort of, you know, take over their own control of these AI models.

51:50Like they just don't have the infrastructure in place. There's talk that they're building out data centers, that they're building out their own chips to be able to train these, but the spend isn't there relative to their peers where it would seem like they're really taking this seriously. Now, again, maybe there's a world in which like LLMs sort of end up being not the be-all, end-all path, and there needs to be other mechanisms and other methods of doing AI. And so maybe Apple can sort of come in at that point and sort of catch up. But everything we're seeing right now is that that's not the case and that they'll need to, at some point, spend a lot more money than they are if they really want to have their own sort of AI that's built in-house.

52:32Yeah, it definitely does seem that somewhere inside that company, there was a decision made, maybe from the very top that was like, let's sit this out for now and just figure it out afterwards. Like you said, that might turn out to be a good decision. On the other end, very risky. Very risky. Yeah. And it's not like the alternative is Apple has so much cash. They finally made an AI acquisition, as you and I have long talked about. Not perplexity. But it wasn't for a, no, it wasn't perplexity and it wasn't for a frontier model company. It was for interesting technology. DisclosureGV was an investor in, so it sounds where I previously was a partner for a long time.

53:12So I think that that's probably a savvy play, but it's a$2 billion investment that's reported. And they have, as you noted, they're doing record profits right now. What are they spending that money on? They're spending that money on buybacks, and they're spending that money on things that are not moving the ball forward with regard to AI, except in very small ways. And so, you know, I don't know what the what the counter argument is. I'm not saying that they have to spend 100 billion dollars in CapEx, but I'm saying maybe they should spend 50 billion dollars if their peer group is spending 150 billion dollars on CapEx a year.

53:50Maybe it's it's at least worth it to do something that's, you know, just in case scenario. right i agree you gotta you gotta at least start spending a little bit because even if you have conviction that ai will be a you know maybe not as revolutionary as people imagine you have to hedge a little bit because of i mean what we're seeing right now all the ais hanging out together in mold books warming and plotting out to overthrow humanity so you know tim cook come on throw throw a little more skin in the game geez yeah yeah that i i want to go into a chat room and see Tim Cook's molt bot there and chatting away with other Apple executives.

54:30Oh, my God. And somebody using that exploit to take over their computer. That'll be a story. All right. The website is spyglass.org. Our guest, M.G. Siegler, joins us the first Monday of every month. It's always great to speak with you, M.G. Thanks for coming on. Thanks as always, Alex. Talk soon. All right. Looking forward to doing this again next month, folks. On Wednesday, Joel Pino, the Chief AI Officer of Cohere, will be here with us to talk about the latest in AI research and where the cutting edge is heading. So we hope you tune in for that. Hopefully the AI bots won't take over the world between now and then.

55:04So if humanity remains in charge, we'll see you next time on Big Technology Podcast.