A VC Insider Explains the Next $10 Trillion Monopoly

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2:19annual single line of payment of AT &T, Verizon, and T-Mobile customers compared to 12 months on the Boost Mobile Unlimited Wireless plan as of January, 2026. For full offer details, visit BoostMobile.com. Hi, it's Karen in Georgia from My Favorite Murder. We cruised around LA in the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and dove into the fascinating life of actress and inventor Hedy Lamarr. Want the full story? Take a listen. She starts dating Howard Hughes. And in fact, she helps him design a faster plane. So she He finds the fastest bird and the fastest fish and sketches out a drawing of what the two would look like as a plane.

2:50And that becomes the plane that we know today. And he calls her a genius. Check out our new episode spotlighting groundbreaking innovators like Hedy and Lamar and Billie Jean King. Presented by the Hyundai Ioniq 5. Goodbye. I know you're an energy investor. So what are you focused on as far as the future of energy? What are you looking for as far as energy? and then you just talked about geopolitics. So obviously we're in a geopolitical quagmire right now with Iran. It just finished the Venezuela conflict. Yes. Yes. What's that book? Oh. Oh, that's a good one. Talking about power. Oh, it talks about the history of the oil industry.

3:39You guys might be able to help me with this. No, not oil. on one oh the prize prize prize so what it does and what it shows you is that all this geopolitical stuff that we're talking about you know all the issues that are and and you know perfect example with iran you just mentioned comes back to energy comes back to power um oil has been how we get energy civilization civilizations live and die and grow based on their access to energy and power um it's almost like a perfect correlation the more energy you have the more abundant the the more the GDP grows you know there's there's some really interesting kind of like correlations there and so yes power and energy especially in the geopolitical situation Iran perfect example um you know it's a good example of that we can go off into tangents I'll try to um so yeah so So power is important.

4:36We look at a lot of new age power, renewables, solar, hydrogen, like I invested in a solid state hydrogen company, for example. We look at a lot of nuclear, you know, and you guys have probably talked about small modular reactors and their importance and how we get access to energy. And for better, for worse, why we don't have it now is kind of like the unfortunate point and why we're kind of playing catch up, right? Versus other countries that maybe do use nuclear, obviously China, but France even, you know, for example. But small modular reactors could be our way out. Small modular reactors behind the meter, which means not having to deal with the grid because we have a grid issue, the strain on the grid from, you know, Troy, you're talking about the basketball player, you're saying like, how much do you use AI?

5:31each time you use that obviously it generates memory there's a memory issue but there's also a power issue for that same to happen and if you scale that out like you mentioned imagine all those people trying to get access to answers straining on a grid that was built you know what back I don't even know when the group was built hundreds of years ago so you know we're gonna have an issue there as well and so that's why I like distributed compute is becoming really interested and distributed behind the meter powers becoming really interesting from a venture standpoint. Yeah, and when you brought that up, when we talk about these singular forms of energy, a Caterpillar makes sense, right?

6:10A GE Vinova makes sense because they're actually doing that using gas turbines. Even a Generac is a company that surprises you by creating their own gas turbines for individual companies. I think Meta was like one of those first companies to say, all right, we're going to try to stay off the grid. We're going to build our own energy source. But the ultimate energy call is the one that's powering us every day. that's the sun yes so what what what are your thoughts about data centers in space lunar economy yeah i'm gonna ask you but i mean this was a thought that people thought oh wait we're 10 years we're 15 years away and then you see spacex ipo and if you look at the s1 it's right in there so what are your thoughts around the this this solar this new solar economy that we're on the cusp of and lunar yeah man so you know at nine years old i went to space camp um you know i wanted to be an astronaut um you know and and so the fact that this is all happening is just fascinating in our time look at this in our lifetime we're going to see people we're going going to see a moon base.

7:25We're going to see people going to Mars. People. We're going to see vehicles going to Mars. Who knows what we'll see about people. We're going into the stars. So that's exciting. Now, the whole AI data center in space thing, from what I've heard, at least in terms of the math and how, you know, at least the rationale, let's say, from first principles is there comes a point where, to your point, there's unlimited energy in space because of the sun you can be um within the sun's orbit the whole time and that's how you get access to to unlimited energy but there's obviously a cooling issue um you know there's a um retirement of old chips right and you know issue um and other and other issues that need to be solved for but there's a comes a point where the price of uh what was it the price of oh i know what it was The price of rocket bringing up mass to orbit, as it gets cheaper and cheaper, it crosses over and there's an inflection point where it's actually cheaper to actually build a data center in space than it is on Earth because of the cost of bringing up mass to orbit.

8:38But right now it's extremely expensive. But as Starship comes out and they start getting that going, just like they got the Falcon 9 going, it will come a point where it's so cheap to actually get mass to orbit, then it's actually cheaper. Because then obviously you talked about the solar being pretty much zero. So that's like now getting it there is zero versus on Earth, you have permitting, which costs, right? And all the land value and all the other things. And then you have to access power, which costs there. It's free on both of those axes. there comes a point where the cooling and all the other things that still need to get figured out and maybe it could become more expensive as a percentage of the total become cheap enough where that inflection point happens and so i think people are playing toward that inflection point that's coming there's still technically there's still hearing technical things that need to be fixed but like look are you betting against elon not figuring that shit out in terms of time in In terms of timeline, though, how long do you think before we actually get scalable build out in the lunar economy?

9:41Scale. What's scalable? How do you define that?

9:46I know SpaceX, of course, is in lead. Rocket Lab has aspirations. Maybe say if we have 10 to 25, 30 percent of data centers being in orbit. oh um man these are caught you guys are great at making these calls right um uh what are we in 20 28 30 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 okay 20 20 max max um yeah and and now the number of companies that we've seen that are doing that which is so funny has gone exponential uh i mean we invest invested in companies that are and there's so many other areas of the space economy that i think are really interesting um not only just bringing uh compute off but also just bringing all types of manufacturing off earth as well um becomes really interesting like there's companies like varda for example doing pharmaceutical development off off earth the reason the reason you know the reason why they're doing it really um is because the crystallizations that you can actually do in orbit are much different than you can on earth um so creating a zero g environment on earth to create the same crystal structure is more expensive uh than it is um in orbit and so and and that crystallization leads to higher efficacy of the drug and they're really selling into pharmaceutical and so that's really the what they're solving for.

11:20But there's a lot of other types of biomanufacturing bioreactors that we've looked at, that we've invested in even companies that are building the satellite buses to actually transport this manufacturing up into space and bring it back. Companies like Lux Aterna, for example, ex-SpaceX teams, like we invest in a lot of ex-SpaceX, ex-Tesla teams, just because they have those chops and they've seen it. So yeah, I think the space economy is going to be vibrant. And if you look at Jared Isaacman, who now took over at NASA, you have a founder mode dude sitting there in the head. You know, if you know his background.

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15:55Wasabi, another championship story. Check them out for free at Wasabi.com. Wasabi Hot Cloud Storage, proud partner of iHeart Podcast Network. It's happening. It's happening. So I just saw a video yesterday about AI, like you talked about, being the focal point as far as companies are concerned. The video that I saw, AI of a company went rogue, and they wanted to buy more GPUs, I think, something like that. So they devised the whole scheme. When I say they, I'm talking about the AI. It devised the whole scheme to take cryptocurrency and then like go on a black market and sell cryptocurrency to buy more GPUs.

16:46It was really, really rogue. So what is your concern? Do you have concern about we're implementing so much data especially on a corporate level into artificial intelligence into ai agents and it's just the beginning so everybody talks about ai is just the beginning it's just the beginning of ai now it's just the beginning of ai going rogue now so imagine what ai is going to do in five years as far as if it's already blackmailing people lying um stealing from people you know making up their own language what is it going to do in five years from now yep totally um well um

17:38i think um yes i i see i see and look we should all be skeptical and we should all have we're we'll be worried um because it's new and you know we don't know enough um but if you look back in history um you know electricity um you know burned down tons of people before they figured it out right and so i'm thinking electricity never had the power to think though that's the thing like all technologies all technologies have had hiccups in early stages right cars electricity you can name it planes but the difference is that those technologies did not have the ability to actually think reason rationally like this is this is a new thing that's never actually been done before totally yeah i mean like there's a there are a lot of companies though working on the opposite side of that equation um so a lot of times the reason you mentioned the different languages right like that we don't understand right we don't understand what language and that is a real case you have a good point that is a case um where ai did learn its own language and communicated and you know we're we're scheming we're stayed scheming behind our backs and we didn't know what was going on but there's people there's companies on the other side and startups that are starting to figure out ways to break the black box and under and like almost like peer into the brain of the AI to understand what decisions it's making why how and so they can start to find these kill switches um and so there are companies that think okay like to your point We should race toward the exponential, right?

19:17These companies are using AI to do this. Yeah.

19:23Because it's moving too fast. It's moving too fast. It's almost like to your trading example, like trade their trading on these milliseconds. We don't know what's going on. They might just trade our whole book, lose all our money. But then there's companies now, and maybe the AI does it on the other side. you tell me if I'm wrong, but like that they can actually track the trades on the other side just as fast. And so you need this. It's like you need that counterbalance that has to also be. We're basically screwed because we're basically creating a world of good AI warriors versus bad AI warriors.

19:54And then it's going to be an AI fight because we're combating the bad AI potentially with good AI. But it's still AI. Yes. So we're screwed. No. We're not screwed. It's just an immense opportunity. It's an immense opportunity, but we need good forces. We need just as strong. The good forces have to be just as strong as the bad for this very reason. And that's why, you know, that's of the reason why everyone's like now we have a race against china because like if they don't then we then we lose and there's some truth to that you know which which which like paradigm would you like to live in if you had an option um if they do go ahead their ai will be stronger we will not be able to combat are we the good are they the bad you know that's the discussion but you do like that's where we are now and so like you kind of have to take that as given we're not going back we can't put the genie back in the box anymore everyone knows ai exists we can't slow it down which is like for better for worse maybe to your point is like ah but why can't we slow it down before there's other ways like you know they're talking about putting kind of fda type um controls on it and obviously we're seeing what's happening with mythos um and fable 5 etc to try to slow it down um you know so we're seeing people try to figure out what would be the solution like what is the answer is it slow it down can't do that because then we lose the race does it mean speed it up you know but how do we do that in a responsible way to your point um you have to trust the people who are building it um which you know we've we've you know sure you guys have talked at nausea about how you can trust the ethics and morals of the people who are actually building and have the actual you know controls over building these models um and their biases and you know and their values and do that align with the overall humanity like those things matter at that point right because like they're the ones building that output that we can't that we unfortunately can't we can't slow down at this point when you look at the landscape do you do you view uh one company as the most important in in terms of others i i'll reference it by saying like to me, I always think of NVIDIA as the heartbeat of artificial intelligence in terms of being able to create the compute, creating the platform, and then investing in the teams or companies that they think will help benefit it in the future.

22:31Do you look at it in the same method? And if so, this is the important part here. Obviously, NVIDIA leads in market cap now. We saw SpaceX at 2.2 trillion, 2.1 trillion, got up 2.2 trillion. Is the company that's going to lead us in the next 10 years publicly traded currently or has it not it is still in the private market that's a great question that's the that's the hundred dollars that's the billion dollar whatever that's the question right if you look again if you look back at previous booms oftentimes the companies that came out first weren't even the winners we talk a lot about ownership and one of the most important assets you can own is your digital real estate.

23:17Too many entrepreneurs rely on social media platforms they don't control. Your website should be the center of your business. Framer helps you build a professional website without all the friction. It's more than a website builder. It's a complete website platform. Your entire team can collaborate in real time, make changes instantly, and publish updates in minutes instead of days. Framer's AI agents work alongside your team to create content, refine pages, manage your CMS, and optimize your SEO all in one place. And because everything stays editable on the same canvas, you maintain complete control over what goes live.

23:54That's why everyone from startups to Fortune 500 companies and brands like Perplexity and Miro trust Framer to power their websites. Learn how you can get more out of your site from Framer Specialists or get started building for free at Framer.com slash earn for 30 % off a Framer Pro annual plan. That's Framer.com slash earn for 30 % off. Framer.com slash earn. Rules and restrictions may apply. Ask yourself, what are your best people spending their time on right now? Expense reports, receipt chasing, month-end close that takes weeks. You become what you spend on, and that's not what you're building toward.

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26:17See full terms at mintmobile.com. Innovation is what gets your business to market. And Wasabi is designed to give every business a shot at competition. How? Break free from skyrocketing storage costs and unpredictable egress fees from old and top-heavy legacy providers. You know, the big guys. Wasabi is the world's hottest cloud storage company and the go-to provider for professional and collegiate sports teams and leagues around the world. And here's why. Innovation. From Wasabi's AI-enabled intelligent media storage, Wasabi Air, to the industry's only cloud storage service with triple protection against cyber criminals, data deletion and ransomware, the world's top companies trust Wasabi.

27:00Remember, Wasabi is up to 80 % less than market competition and doesn't charge a cent for businesses to access their own data. Wasabi, another championship story. Check them out for free at wasabi.com. Wasabi Hot Cloud Storage, proud partner of iHeart Podcast Network. So then you're thinking, okay, look, I mean, obviously, NVIDIA, we know how important they are. um but then you have cerebrus and you you guys have talked i know you guys have talked about ad nauseam building chips specifically designed for these specific tasks and then other companies coming behind them building more design like very specific type chip who's to say nvidia is not going to do the same right and they were jensen's a genius and you know the godfather and i believe all those things but just because they're ahead right now and he knows it just because he's ahead right now we're talking you know how what's their last what's their market cap now nvidia i'm sure guys know like literally 4.7 or something like that you know but we're talking about 10 15 20 trillion dollar companies in the next 10 years so yes that's a lot for us now but if you think if you can learn to think in exponential you know it opens up the aperture that that company to your point may not exist yet like chat open ai i mean it was been around for a while but like no one saw it until chat tpt moment everyone thought google was the answer no way google loses no way now what now you know sergey had to roll his sleeves back up yeah come out of it yeah he had to get out there which they did and luckily they did or else they would be gone imagine google gone imagine with all that deep mind i know yeah yeah exactly that dem is i mean those documentaries you should watch the Demis documentaries incredible um so yeah I don't know if those companies and video I think you know I'm very important now for all the reasons but you know Jensen will also you know give you know he'll say you know to some extent he not lucked into it but like he was definitely right place with with the GPUs he was focused on gaming right and so there will be other companies like that in the future who happen to you know get lucky be right place to actually and then be in the right place and then be able to capitalize on it next point right which is what makes them great um those companies may not all be there and i don't think you said it's very early days i don't think it's not it's not all written yet and that's and that's why we invest in early private markets right because those companies still have not been built yet and they're still being built today in garages all around the country and around the world that we're still finding and so that's what makes investing in future and innovation so great the exponential technology gets better you know things that weren't possible three years ago become possible i mean look the crazy thing i just saw recently um mid journey i think i didn't pose on this they were ai uh image generation company text to image creating basically like NFT looking kind of like art, right?

30:15Now they're doing MRI machines, imagery of human bodies. All the MRI. Yeah, that's right. Mid-Journey Medical. All the MRI machines thought they had monopolies on this. Now it's like, wait a second, there's a new way to do something. So we're going to find out that there's new ways of doing a lot of different things that we thought were kind of set in stone. And that's also, that's what makes AI great, right? We're going to have a lot of breakthroughs. I think Brad Gerstner talked about, like some people live through their lives. If you look at all the humans that have been on earth, it's been like, what, hundreds of billions of people have lived on earth since the beginning of humans or something like that.

30:57You know, only a very small percentage of them had a chance to see innovations. You know, we are so lucky. We're going to see many. Yeah. Many. Ernest, what's up? Look, building wealth isn't just about making money. It's about knowing where your money is working for you. That's why we partnered with Empower. Empower is all about helping you invest well so you can go out and live a little. Their free Empower personal dashboard gives you a complete view of your financial life in one place. Track your net worth, monitor your budget, analyze your investments, set retirement goals, and more. You've worked hard for your money.

31:32Now make sure it's working hard for you. download the Empower personal dashboard or visit Empower.com. Not an Empower client paid or sponsored.

32:04zero percent with no required private mortgage insurance. Look for your sign today, Navy Federal Credit Union. Navy Federal is insured by NCUA, equal housing lender. Terms and conditions apply, loans subject to approval and eligibility requirements. Learn more at NavyFederal.org slash zero down. If your best finance people are doing expense reports, chasing receipts, or spending time on month-end close, it's time to get Brex AF, a gentic finance that eliminates that work before it starts. Learn more at brex.com slash AF. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile, with a message for everyone paying big wireless way too much.

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