Zuckerberg’s Disappointment, OpenAI’s Equity Gamble, Alex Karp’s Rally Cry

17:05Big Technology Podcast:well here's where we're kind of talking about these things with nuance like we try to do on the show sort of starts to wipe out your clean narrative right uh because the on the other side of this you do have rapidly advancing technology that open ai and anthropic are producing and there and the whole case is basically that that um the product continues to improve exponentially and the revenue will continue to grow exponentially and so that's the other side of what i'm saying is like, yes, there are two, there are, it looks more and more like there are two points of failure. But if those companies deliver, then, you know, the everything, like the bottlenecks will continue to bottleneck and compute will still continue to be scarce, etc, etc.

17:50Big Technology Podcast:So it is possible that they're able to sort of make good on the bet. But right now, it kind of feels like the entire economy is like a VC. And of course, I'm being hyperbolic, but a VC making a bet on one particular vision of one particular technology working out.

18:09Ranjan Roy:I don't think that's hyperbolic. Like, I don't know. I've talked to a number of people about this. And to me, the almost scariest part of this is all of the people making these decisions are effectively in the same circle or somewhat of a limited circle. So, I mean, this comes up all the time, like from like non-tech but investor friends where it's like, do you think, like why do you think the smartest people in the world believe that this much investment in data centers and compute capacity is required and like in the short term? And my answer a lot of the time really is like, and I'm curious how what you think about it is, everyone is talking to each other in this small group of people.

18:56Ranjan Roy:It's only a finite amount of companies that are even in this conversation. A lot of them are probably in the same WhatsApp groups and social circles and dinners and stuff like that. So it's like, to me, there really feels like there is a very big group think component of this, you know, like separate from any kind of like traditional forecasting other than if you just extrapolated out like a couple of months of activity. Do you think that's hyperbolic? I'll up your hyperbolism.

19:33Big Technology Podcast:Hyperbility.

19:34Ranjan Roy:Hyperbility. All right. Whatever the correct grammar is around hyperbolicness. All right.

19:43Big Technology Podcast:I will take a chance to answer this. I mean, here's the thing. The reason why I use the word hyperbolic is because there is evidence that it's working. Right? So it's not like this sort of... It's not... We can agree. It's not a mass delusion. We've seen great leaps in this technology's ability and in these companies' balance sheets. You know, well, at least their revenue numbers over the past few years. Undeniable progress on that front. And there seems to be the runway for these things to keep getting better because the way that they're being applied is just starting to flesh out. So this idea that like, all right, well, these guys are all...

20:28Big Technology Podcast:It's not... Okay, I'm sorry to our crypto friends. It's not like NFTs, right? NFTs, you could say, was just like a big delusional run-up. This is real. But the magnitude of the bet is sort of where you get into trouble. And it's almost like, well, you couldn't really see it out unless there was a bet this size. I mean, the amount of compute that's going to come online in the next couple of years is insane. So it could be one of those typical bubble, boom and bust cycles where the raw materials end up getting cheap. And then you end up getting the product, even though some investors get wiped out.

21:04Big Technology Podcast:That seems to me like potentially at this point, given where things are trending, the most likely case.

21:12Ranjan Roy:All right. I like that. And also I've confirmed that hyperbolism is a word. So I'm going to stick with that one and let's up our hyperbolism in this segment. But yeah, I think definitely like the scale of compute has been massive. The demand will be there, I genuinely believe. But like everything you read and the price of every asset within this entire value chain has been demand is outstripping supply. Demand is outstripping supply. I think like that this is a pretty important moment, the idea that like suddenly you're seeing, wait, let's like people are slowing down and realizing from a pure compute perspective, I think already people are understanding that it's again, it's not not just a straight line, the kind of exponential curve.

22:05Ranjan Roy:It might be a straight line, but it might not be an exponential curve, which I think matters a good deal. But I mean, the the vibe shift in terms of going from frontier models for everything, it's going to be expensive. It's going to be massively consumptive to what's the cheapest and most efficient model. We talked about this last week again, but every like, you know, Brian Armstrong at Coinbase, everyone is like now bragging about reducing their like per usage per task compute, you know, while still maybe increasing their overall compute. But everyone's talking about token efficiency right now.

22:44Ranjan Roy:And it is crazy to me the speed with which that vibe shift happened.

22:50Big Technology Podcast:But I don't think any of that stuff matters as long as the technology delivers on the promise. The problem is that more and more companies have found that they've sort of put their effort, their best people on it. The resources you're supposed to, you know, be able to sort of, you know, you put this resource down, you're supposed to get, you know, X amount of return and they're struggling to it. And you know who's an interesting case on this front is also it's Google, right? Like Google made this ultimate hedge. Imagine this. If you think that compute will lead to, you know, just unprecedented gains or gives you the straight shot to AGI, why would you rent that compute out to other labs?

23:28Big Technology Podcast:But Google's done that with labs like Anthropic, and I think there's a deal with OpenAI as well, right? So they did a hedge where they're like, we're going to build our own stuff. We're going to give the DeepMind team a lot of compute, But just in case, we're going to actually speed run the metas and the SpaceX's here and grow our cloud business in parallel. And that's what Google did. Very interesting strategy, given where we are right now.

23:56Ranjan Roy:Actually, I've been wondering, have you been using Gemini much recently?

24:03Big Technology Podcast:I'm going to be honest, zero.

24:06Ranjan Roy:Okay, see, I'm actually traveling right now.

24:09Big Technology Podcast:But I thought no travel examples.

24:12Ranjan Roy:Oh, damn it. Oh, my God. I literally. All right. No, no, no. Come on. Let's hear it. Booking.

24:20Ranjan Roy:For regular listeners, I always get angry at Alex when everyone for the last two years across the industry always defaults to a travel example and travel booking for what is agentic. And it is one of my biggest pet peeves. And I'm now doing exactly that. But I think – but I'm going to go with it. So the most – it's been interesting to me. Like Gemini has – was got really good maybe eight to ten months ago, maybe a year ago, and suddenly was on par. I'm curious like how you remember the cycle. It is really not kept up with ChatGPT and Claude. like I feel like for pure consumer usages and that's why I'm saying in the travel context like it's still fine and it's doing it's telling me you know what pub is showing the U.S.

25:17Ranjan Roy:World Cup game at 1 a.m. and I watch it from my hotel I was like still exploring maybe I'm gonna go out for it but uh but it's still good for that kind of stuff but it hasn't really done anything different or improved, which has been kind of surprising to me. And then I think maybe is Google, as you said, are they hedging? Are they deciding like, we're going to, we don't know if we're going to be the be all end all of the actual application layer. So that's why let's hedge and also be

25:50Ranjan Roy:the compute seller as well. Yeah.

25:53Big Technology Podcast:It's possible that Sundar saw this earlier than everybody, which is that the progress would be a little bit slower than the open AIs and Anthropics were going to let we're letting people you know believe and said all right we'll make this bet where we think this is going to progress somewhat fast but we're not going to bet the entire farm on it and I will caveat for a moment I do use Gemini in AI mode in Google search that's actually pretty

26:18Ranjan Roy:good oh actually i will say and i honestly feel so basic like when i enter ai mode and maybe that's kind of like obnoxious being in the ai industry but like i'm using ai mode way more too so maybe that is where they're kind of like hedging their bets a lot more for really basic stuff again i'm going to stick with the world cup theme but like what was the score of a match and then asking a couple more questions about specific players. I'm in AI mode right now. So maybe they're realizing that that integrated product can be where the farm needs to be.

27:01Big Technology Podcast:Yes. But again, I'm going to go back to my central point that I've been beating like a dead horse the entire event, the entire, sorry, the entire conversation. um google doesn't have this sort of centralized know-all assistant the same one that meta wants to build that apple wants to build that microsoft wants to build that amazon wants to build and so my my thought about slow playing is go ahead why would they not try to be building a personalized super intelligence when they have more personalized intelligence on every human

27:38Ranjan Roy:being in the world maybe meta is the only competitive one there no no no they are they

27:44Big Technology Podcast:are trying to build it but it's also been slower for them as well that's what i'm trying to say so i think they might have seen that this has gone this was going to go slower and and this is what i'm saying there's a systemic issue here that uh you know despite all the promises that like the progress would be fast in this specific area which everybody thinks is going to be very lucrative. It has not happened. And so you're now in this world where, at least in the near term, AI advances will be enterprise, which is sort of the same pivot that OpenAI made, which can be a good business, but ultimately is a little bit short on the vision because it's so task specific.

28:26Ranjan Roy:So basically, to all our listeners and everyone out there, there's going to be mass white collar knowledge work unemployment, but you won't have your personalized super intelligence. Is that what you're saying, Alex?

28:40Big Technology Podcast:No, definitely not. Look, I don't think that this mass unemployment narrative has panned out either. Right. And by the way, like, you know, Dario last year in May 2025 said, well, we might see this white collar bloodbath, you know, starting within a year to five years. Well, we're a year past. It hasn't happened. And so we got, what, four years left. And, you know, again, like it's weird to try to talk about this comprehensively because we're like kind of there's a large gap between the hype and what's actually happened. But that doesn't mean what's actually happened is not significant. It is.

29:17Big Technology Podcast:It just seems like, as Zuckerberg said, you know, it's going a little slower than anticipated. You could never meet that hype expectation, I guess.

29:27Ranjan Roy:but to say you can never meet that hype expectation i mean the valuations require that right

29:35Big Technology Podcast:well that's again that's where we might get into a real economic problem here do you think we do you think there's going to be systemic issues or do you think what let's say

29:46Ranjan Roy:I'm curious, like, let's play out, you know, the scale of like growth slows, the valuations are not realized, people look at the numbers of open AI anthropic, things don't look good, which we already kind of know they're not great. Like, do you think that leads to widespread systemic problems?

30:13Big Technology Podcast:I mean, I think you're much better positioned to answer that question than I am having been on a trading floor during the financial crisis. So I'll actually defer to you. What do you think?

30:24Ranjan Roy:OK, OK, I guess. Turn it back on me. I mean, I don't think it I'm not worried about that as much as I've probably been worried about other potential systemic issues in the economy. So maybe it's I still feel it'll be relatively contained, but I don't know. I think like it's it is we we are as economy. It feels like just diving deeper and deeper into this one way trade that if it unwinds, it's like how fast does it unwind? How many people are involved? How many kind of like countries are involved? I mean, it's like the entire South Korean stock market right now. So I do even, I mean, it's a good chunk of American stock market growth as well in the last six months or so.

31:13So I think that it'll definitely be painful, but I don't think like it's housing crisis 2008 level, but I think it'll be painful.

31:22Big Technology Podcast:No, no. Yeah. I don't think it'll be that either. All right. Meanwhile, at Microsoft, I'm talking about another company that can't get its act together on AI. This is from an interview that Satya gave last week with the journal. We can't let the AI giants eat the economy. The chief executive of Microsoft is joining a growing effort to take on artificial intelligence giants, OpenAI and Anthropic, outlining in an interview his vision for the next wave of the AI boom, one involving cheaper models, more user control, and political messaging that wins the public's trust. Nadella offered a blistering critique of how the race for AI supremacy has taken shape, with a small group of companies capturing the value of the world-changing technology as they make dire predictions about safety risks and job loss.

32:09Big Technology Podcast:You can't say, hey, all white-collar jobs are gone and this could even be a weapon and we will use all the power to build data centers, Nadella told the Wall Street Journal. The public, he predicted, wouldn't tolerate just a few models and companies doing all the learning for the world. I mean, this is rich, right? And again, this sort of goes with our conversation today. Microsoft is OpenAI's biggest shareholder. Microsoft has access to all of OpenAI's IP. And what has Microsoft done? I mean, it's grown Azure. Congratulations. But it's also grown Azure as AWS and Google Cloud have grown. And it's taken all that advantage.

32:46Big Technology Podcast:And it should be the one eating the economy.

32:51Ranjan Roy:So what do you think is – what do you think Satya is trying to do? I think this is actually one of the most interesting – like, I mean, the – is a Wall Street Journal editorial. Like, this is a big deal. I think, like, it's been interesting because a lot of these have been, you know, circulating and discussed a bit. But as you said, like, they are one of the critical parts of the overall AI story. not successfully, but still from an investment standpoint and like capital allocation standpoint, and obviously even an infrastructure standpoint, I mean, Microsoft is everywhere, like to come out and say this, and we're going to get more into the Alex Karp from Palantir interview as well, but it's pretty crazy to me that in the same week you have the CEO of Microsoft and then Palantir, which is the most, you know, like one of the most AI forward companies out there, both saying this exact story that like doomerism is kind of, I mean, Satya basically said it's a bit of a marketing story with all white collar jobs are going to be gone, but we're going to use this power to build data centers in a facetious way.

34:04Ranjan Roy:So yeah, like what do you think, let's start with Satya, what do you think he's trying to do here?

34:12Big Technology Podcast:Well, both him and CARP are both trying to sell competing services. So we'll get into CARP after the break. But this is the news for Microsoft this week. It's from the information. Microsoft memo details AI app overhaul to earn the right to exist. Microsoft is merging its consumer and enterprise co-pilot apps and cutting unwanted features to earn the right to exist in the eyes of customers. In a 1 ,200-word memo, Jacob Andreo, the executive vice president of Microsoft running Copilot, said the new unified app will also feature AI coding tools and a new AI agent that customers would need to pay extra for, according to a copy of the memo.

34:50Big Technology Podcast:The new agents, here's the great name, dubbed Autopilot. Come on. Aim to be always on, acting on customers' behalf to automate the mundane. Microsoft previously previewed one such autopilot agent scout that can organize people's schedules and monitor their inboxes to compile curated digests of received emails. Microsoft said in a separate announcement Thursday that it would put$2.5 billion behind the new AI consultancy arm that could aid Copilot. It's called Microsoft Frontier Company. The new arm will embed 6 ,000 industry and engineering experts with Microsoft customers to co-design, co-innovate, deploy and continuously improve AI systems.

35:33Big Technology Podcast:And by the way, one last thing I'll just say is I think Satya has been speaking approvingly of Chinese models like DeepSeek recently. I mean, him and Sam must have really had a falling out here. But basically, you know, they're seeing an opening here, which is, you know, we are, you know, we can't, we've struggled to build this co-pilot thing. I think this is what's happening. But what we can do is take another swing at that and attempt to compete by integrating AI apps, whether it's OpenAI or others, within our client base. And that will be our business. I mean, effectively consultants with compute.

36:13Ranjan Roy:Well, I mean, you have DeployCo from OpenAI, I believe it was. And who is it with? You know, there's been these number of partnerships around the deployment side to actually try to get people to successfully use these products. I don't know. I think the first part, though, let's go back to Autopilot. How do you think – because did you ever see that statistic around Microsoft? Microsoft has 78 different products with the name Copilot in it. Like how do you think they're – Oh, God. No, no, it is. I really wonder how these things must get done. And again, remember we used to have like, what was it?

36:59Like BARD, Google BARD, Google, what was it?

37:05Ranjan Roy:Duo. You know, like these companies have lots of competing products and internal issues in terms of like naming. But do you think Autopilot will be the breakthrough that kind of push agentic behavior to the average Microsoft user?

37:21Big Technology Podcast:No, I mean, I'm definitely in the please show me something stage of this. You know, I can't I cannot get excited about a rebrand to an equally bad name.

37:32Ranjan Roy:Well, also, why, you know, organize people's schedules and monitor their inboxes to compile a curated digest and received emails that like this stuff still maybe this is worse than travel booking for me. Like you can do that. Like even Gemini is pretty good. They're like a chat GPT connected to your like whatever inbox and stuff like these are the most bait. There's a hundred YC startups that already solved this superhuman can do this, which was bought by Grammarly. Like, why do you think there's I guess most people just don't actually use these things. So they're still trying to go after this.

38:14Ranjan Roy:Like, why do you think they're being so basic about this rather than like, we can do some really cool shit?

38:22Big Technology Podcast:I don't know. I'm completely confused by their strategy, to be honest. I've tried to make sense. No, no, no.

38:27Ranjan Roy:Come on, come on. You are Satya. Outline to me the AI strategy.

38:34Big Technology Podcast:Okay. Let me, let me, I will do it. I'll try. I'll try. I'm Satya. I have completely failed to build competing. Well, I both benefited myself and hamstrung myself with my early deal with OpenAI. That meant that I had a good chunk of the leader of the AI moment, and that was great for me. But it also prevented me from developing competing services. Okay, so then I signed some new deals that said I can now build competing services, and I have OpenAI as IP. but it's not very easy to get that IP out of OpenAI and my attempt to build a competing service has not gone very well. So basically what I'm doing is, just like any other AI model customer, using the technology to try to bolt it on to my technology and that's led to a poor result in Copilot.

39:27Big Technology Podcast:So what are my options? My remaining option is I have a lot of compute, I have access to these models, and I have a lot of enterprise customers. and to me you know instead of trying to build build necessarily build my own thing what I could do is use my technical expertise to make a business out of helping those customers sort of use these foundational models to be better and when I go and do that who am I left competing with good old open AI and that's Microsoft's strategy right now talk down open AI and try to win those contracts and try to make the best out of a mess that I've in part created for myself.

40:08Ranjan Roy:Okay. I like that. I think that could be the Satya strategy. I was going to go a little more extreme though on this one.

40:17Big Technology Podcast:All right. Extreme Ranjan coming in hot on a holiday weekend.

40:22Ranjan Roy:No, no. It's a head of your July 4th, 250th anniversary of America. I think Satya...

40:29Big Technology Podcast:Ladies and gentlemen, you wanted fireworks on this podcast. You're getting your fireworks. Kaboom.

40:35Ranjan Roy:I think we have joked at times that like Google's greatest win in recent times was due to Sundar's McKinsey past and thinking about organizational change and merging Google brain and deep mind into actually something that was able to push something forward. Now, Microsoft created its Microsoft AI division, but it's so clear when you have 78 products called Copilot and it's clear this is just this like tangled web right now. And now they're creating Microsoft Frontier Company, which is a whole other thing, even though I would think deployment should be part of the overall Microsoft AI and cloud offering anyways.

41:16Ranjan Roy:I think he should just merge a bunch of these divisions together and say, like, I am ready to actually Microsoft is on every computer of every enterprise customer out there. But we are going to make a drastic change on our internal structure and actually build something that is useful and exciting for customers. So I think he should go full Sundar in the next six months. That's what I think.

41:45Big Technology Podcast:I like it. I like it. I mean, you got to take big swings now. My big swing, if I were to say it, might be to just bring back bad Sidney, the evil version of the Bing bot, which I think there would be a lot of appeal for.

41:57Ranjan Roy:Wait, Sidney? Wasn't it?

41:59Big Technology Podcast:Sidney was Bing's alter ego.

42:01Ranjan Roy:Ty was the racist Microsoft. Tay. Tay. That was pre-Bing.

42:08Big Technology Podcast:This is the original Bing that tried to take Kevin Roos' wife.

42:13Ranjan Roy:Oh, Sidney tried to take Kevin Roos' wife. Yeah. You know what? Bring all that back, Satya. Bring Sydney, bring Tay, bring the races.

42:25Big Technology Podcast:Don't bring Tay back. Let Tay be dead in AI graveyard.

42:30Ranjan Roy:But you gotta take some.

42:32Big Technology Podcast:You know what?

42:34Ranjan Roy:I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say, Tay just reminds us when a time when AI was pure. It's like your racist grandparents and uh you know before llms had advanced very much and you know it's just when it was it was just an llm trying to predict the next token and it didn't know what and didn't know any better and it just reminds us of a pure time of ai before all this all this chaos and compute and data

43:03Big Technology Podcast:centers and everything else so i miss tay i know this is a joke but i i can't get on board the tay train i can't i can't but kind of an ai that once you pressure tested enough gets horny for you and tries to do wrong things i mean it's not for me but i'm saying there could be something there

43:24Ranjan Roy:actually maybe satya the greatest pivot of all time open ai gave up on the adult erotica chat bots. That's right. Maybe it's time. That is your opportunity. Satya, go for it, man. This is it.

43:38Big Technology Podcast:We need to take a break. We're going to, we'll be back right after this.

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44:39Big Technology Podcast:Oh, God, I'm laughing as we come back from break. All right, we're back here on Big Technology Podcast Friday edition. We've gone places we never thought we would go. And let's continue on. We have two more stories to hit quickly. Actually, since we were talking about this enterprise software situation, or this sort of enterprise AI application. Let's get to this Alex Karp interview. So the CEO of Palantir, Alex Karp, was on CNBC this week and he said something has gone completely wrong with how AI is sold. He says what the technical customers want is control over their compute, their models, their data stack, and their alpha.

45:16Big Technology Podcast:They want to know how they own the means of production and it's not being transferred to someone else. He's saying they should ask who wants the data. Is it being cached? Are the prompts secure? Is this being transferred to you? and basically his point is he is arguing that if I can summarize his words that the AI foundational labs have so lulled their customers into a state of comfort that what they're doing is selling their technology at a loss so they can copy their customers IP and build it out in their own products. David Sachs of the White House, an all-in podcast, said this as much on X.

46:03Big Technology Podcast:He said, look at Figma. Anthropic blindsided its then business partner with the launch of Claude Design. Figma's founder said Anthropic has not been consistently honest with them. This isn't an isolated example. Anthropic has launched Claude Science, Claude Security, Claude Legal, and of course, Claude Code. Dario has argued that the open source models that open source models powerful enough to compete with the Anthropic are dangerous, but dangerous to whom? Not to enterprise that want to retain control over their data and workflows. Dangerous to a business model that benefits from customers having few real alternatives at the model layer.

46:40Big Technology Podcast:So basically, what do you make of this? And this was a very popular interview. It made the rounds. What do you make of this idea that the models are training off of their customers' IP and then just trying to regulatory capture all competitors out of the way so that they can therefore make good in their investment and win.

46:58Ranjan Roy:So I watched all 18 minutes of the Karp interview. I'm not like a big Alex Karp fan, I would say, but he really captured the state of the current market and kind of like current political situation, I think, really well. And the current incentives that a lot of, again, the Figma example is such kind of a brutal one that we all just kind of gloss over. But all of these of connect to our system, feed us all of your data, and then suddenly we will launch competing products. And remember, that was the thesis behind a lot of the kind of like valuation growth around they're going to subsume more and more of the overall software ecosystem.

47:48And I think, I don't know, like there's still this kind of like general assumption that Anthropic at the enterprise level, OpenAI are not training on the data that is fed through them.

48:03Ranjan Roy:But then – Really?

48:04Big Technology Podcast:Because they say straight up they'll train on your data.

48:07Ranjan Roy:No, no, no. Chad, like – Oh, the enterprise.

48:10Big Technology Podcast:On the enterprise side.

48:11Ranjan Roy:Yeah, on the enterprise level, which I guess like a Figma would be if the average user is connecting Figma through Claude, then all that stuff's getting sucked in and like being – I mean there's no worry there. But it is to me overall like it's interesting that like that has not been a real concern for most people yet. And like the fact that David Sachs of all people, also Alex Karp, like, you know, before I feel that would have lived in the conspiracy theory side of the world. But the fact that they are saying this is happening at the enterprise level is pretty nuts. Like, I think it's like, I mean, whether it's just living as kind of accusation and they're just not happy with Dario and whatever kind of like interpersonal conflict there is.

49:02Ranjan Roy:I think like for both of the frontier labs, I think this actually is a pretty interesting big issue that if we start to realize like, actually, yes, they are training on your data. And the goal is to kind of subsume your business model, which it's clear, non-enterprise, a Figma plugin, receiving all of that data and understanding how people design and then using that to create cloud design. I guess it's crazy. Like that just happened and it's done. So, yeah, I think will everyone be OK creating the next cloud plugin? Like where do you see this playing out?

49:42Big Technology Podcast:well it all ties into sort of where i was at the beginning of the show and i sort of haven't deviated from which is that we are we may be entering a world where the entire the entire bet here is not dispersed but concentrated right and when that happens you are gonna start to see some of this stuff come out from companies that would surprise you for speaking out about it and speaking out against it. And there is, I mean, there is this possibility that if it does, okay, so that's like, you know, that's one situation. And now if it does go right, right, if it does become a situation, like Sam at the end of the year last year told me that if a company, you know, is AI native versus bolt on, then the AI native company is going to be the one that wins.

50:30Big Technology Podcast:There's a big economy of companies that it would be bolt on for. and you would imagine that they would sort of, you know, they would come out of the woodwork and start to protest. And by the way, we haven't exactly seen a summer of companies building on these platforms. In fact, most of the value, it seems like most of the value being captured by these platforms, you know, is being captured by them versus companies built on top of them. So this is where the competition starts to heat up, where when it's these two single point of failures and everybody else seems like they view themselves as potentially picking up the scraps, then it is open season on these businesses because I don't think it's anthropic and open AI is sucking up the data of their enterprise customers and building their applications for them.

51:23Big Technology Podcast:I think it's different. But I also think that you're going to start to see these companies try to peck on against these bigger foundational labs, even if they're not in the perfect position. And Palantir, by the way, isn't exactly the best actor when it comes to freeing your data that you put in there.

51:42Ranjan Roy:Well, no, I know. I mean, that's what's almost like comical about it. I mean, you said these like against these big frontier labs, but it is, let's just take a moment and realize when Satya, Alex Karp and David Sachs are all echoing the same message that like concentration among open AI and anthropic is dangerous. That's, that's pretty remarkable. I think like these are very different personalities. These are very different. They have very different like vested interests and constituencies. And like, they are all in the same week echoing the same message. And as we kind of go into this summer, it's the group.

52:25Ranjan Roy:Okay. Maybe this is like the non-data center investment group text. On one of them, they're all like, got to buy more and compute.

52:32Big Technology Podcast:Zuck will have the same message.

52:35Ranjan Roy:Oh, I like that. Okay. You heard it here. In the next week or two, does Zuck come out and say something similar about the danger of concentration across two frontier labs? That will be something.

52:50Big Technology Podcast:Yep. and that's like the perfect lead into our final story which is this new story that's come out that Sam Altman is from the Financial Times Sam Altman has suggested that the White House potentially take a 5 % equity stake of OpenAI or the US government take a 5 % equity stake of OpenAI and that would also he also suggested this is again it's not clear that it was a formal proposal but he also suggested Anthropic and Meta and Google also give this 5 % to the government And that's like, I mean, talk about coming, you know, you sort of, you're in this position, you want to entrench yourself as the winner, right?

53:28Big Technology Podcast:To say, oh, government, take my, you know, a chunk of me. And by the way, you know, wink, wink, when I have a model ready for approval and wink, wink, when I have a competitor ready for approval, their model ready for approval. You know, it's like, you think the government won't want to look out for its own investments? Of course it will. So that's sort of an interesting coda to this entire situation.

53:49Ranjan Roy:I mean, I think this is where it is getting kind of out of hand in terms of like we talked about systemic risk earlier. And actually, you know what, I'll try to be nuanced on this one. It's like on one side, I think this is absolutely ridiculous, absurd. And like, you know, like the idea if it's actually being pitched actively from the open AI side, I think that's like a bit depressing. but also on the other hand again you have the u.s government currently under the administration buying intel and whatever else but also like i think like one thing we haven't talked about is the we're going to be heading into midterm season very soon i mean we very very soon um we know data centers we know anti-ai sentiment is going to be the center of a lot of this Like, do you think some of this is these companies trying to at least not be all in on one thing, the same direction in trade and try to be like at least create some, I don't want to say diversity, but some kind of, you know, like, like it's going to be a massive issue.

55:00Ranjan Roy:And it feels like people are starting to not all speak the exact same tone on this right now.

55:07Big Technology Podcast:Yes. No, there's definitely a certain degree of desperation that's involved there, which is just like these companies being like, please like us. Please approve our models. Please don't, you know, become our enemies in the public because it's going to be tempting.

55:23Ranjan Roy:I want David Sachs on a commercial, like a highly produced Rick Rubin polymarket commercial, cross-legged and thinking, and then it's going to air during the World Cup final. I'm not happy until that happens.

55:37Big Technology Podcast:All right, I want to end with this because we do some serious journalism on the show. You know, despite the laughs, we definitely need to get into the most important things influencing our world. And there has been some confusion about a major event happening this week that I think we need to dig into. This is from Cosmo. There's growing evidence that MSG is a ruse and Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey's wedding is elsewhere. At this point, even the New York Times is reporting that Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey's wedding is taking place at Madison Square Garden tomorrow, July 3rd. So this will happen on Friday.

56:12Big Technology Podcast:I mean, the Thursday story. And there's a lot of evidence, like, you know, the fact that tons of decor is being loaded into the arena as we speak. But a small corner of the Internet has remained convinced that MSG is an elaborate ruse to keep everyone's attention off of Taylor and Travis's real wedding location. And honestly, there's growing evidence to support that theory. Now, Ranjan, we don't have enough time to go through all the evidence here. But basically, I want to get this on record. Do you think this big MSG wedding has been a head fake all along and that in time it will be revealed that Taylor and Travis just got married somewhere else despite all the stuff they've shipped into MSG?

56:51Ranjan Roy:No, I think this is real. I think Taylor recognizes the kind of like, you know, perilous state of the overall AI trade, the overall kind of, you know, American political infrastructure right now. And she recognizes on this July 4th, she needs to do something. Travis Kelsey is along for the ride. And I think she is going to bring this message of unity, peace and love to the world. I'm excited for this Madison Square Garden wedding. Do you not think it's for real? Well, I'm not.

57:28Big Technology Podcast:I think they will tell the world that they got married at MSG and never show up there. And meanwhile, maybe they'll send some body doubles and the entire thing will happen on Rhode Island. That's what I would do.

57:42Ranjan Roy:No, no, no, no, no, no. People, you can't piss off 20 ,000. you can't piss off 20 ,000 friends, fans, whatever you want to call them no. Taylor she knows how to kind of like they only have a thousand people going to that thing it's in MSG what do you mean that's how do you only have a thousand people

58:04Big Technology Podcast:well you just you don't have to fill the stadium just because you've rented it you're the richest people on the planet well maybe not the richest but close to it

58:14Ranjan Roy:Trillionaire Elon then he would fill the stadium but I don't know. I still think I think it's for real. We'll find out in a day or two but I definitely think Taylor and Travis at MSG, they've recognized after the next one that that is a magical place right now. They want to be in New York and I think I'm excited for it. I think it's a good thing for America.

58:40Big Technology Podcast:Okay, well Ronjan thank you again for bringing the fireworks this week. You know, we went big, we went small, and then we got to the serious stuff at the end. So, always great. Always great speaking with you. Thanks for making the effort to do this all the way from London. Appreciate it. All right. See you next week. All right, everybody. Thank you so much for listening, and we'll see you next time on Big Technology Podcast.

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