Automattic's 33-Hour coup, and can AI labs police themselves?

0:00This episode is brought to you by Indeed. You're ready to level up your business, but the pressure to find the right person to make that happen is intense. Indeed Sponsored Jobs can help carry the load. It boosts your job post to help it reach quality talent fast. Cut through the chaos with Indeed Sponsored Jobs. Get a$75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now? Then this is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs.

0:30Sean O'Kane: After a week of concerns over AI safety, Dario Amadei says he has a plan to pace the frontier of AI development. We'll get into who's on board and who's pushing back. Also this week, WordPress parent Automatic is in full-on boardroom chaos after its board tried to sideline CEO Matt Mullenweg, and we're keeping our eye on a couple deals of the week, including a SPAC that could make a robo-taxi company the first of its kind to go public. Stick around.

1:00Anthony Ha: Hello and welcome back to Equity TechCrunch's flagship podcast about the business of startups. Today is Friday, September 18th. I'm Kirsten Gorosek, Transportation Editor here at TechCrunch. And I'm joined, as always, by our weekend editor, Anthony Ha, and Senior Reporter Special Projects, Sean O 'Kane. And what's up, you guys? What's been happening? Anything crazy happen over the weekend? You know, AI-related maybe? I don't know.

1:29Sean O'Kane: It was, I would say, from a tech news perspective, a pretty exciting weekend. And specifically, the CEO of Anthropic, you know, kind of continuing with this discussion we were having about whether or not AI will destroy us all. I'm not being hyperbolic. That's genuinely what they seem to be debating. He said that, hey, I have this plan to pace the frontier. The language was a little bit kind of reminiscent of what Sam Altman has also been saying. I mean, Sean, what do you think? Are we actually going to pace the frontier?

1:59Kirsten Korosec: I can't get it out of my head that that sounds for some reason like something from Point Break. You know, it's just a very California statement. Like, we're going to pace the frontier, bro. Like, I don't know. I will say I said on this show last week, I didn't think we were headed for a slowdown of any kind in large part because I don't think these companies are structured in a way where that works. And so this was a pretty immediate flip of what I said a week ago to hear this from Dario at Anthropic and Sam at OpenAI and even Elon Musk to a certain degree. And we can get into that, whether we believe that or not.

2:35I will say I don't think I was completely wrong because even with these sort of like loose plans that Dario laid out in a blog post and some of the other leaders have talked about, I don't know about you guys.

2:46Kirsten Korosec: I feel like we're still missing a lot of specifics here. not only on some of the claims about why these people think there are dangers and risks, but also specifics on what they mean by slowing down. Anthony, I know you read this stuff pretty closely last weekend as it was all popping off. So I'm curious if you're maybe more generous than I am as far as like understanding what it is they're trying to say here.

3:12Sean O'Kane: No, no, I wouldn't say. I mean, I also have questions. I mean, certainly what really stood out to me, and we should talk about the specifics of the plan in as much as they are known already, is the fact that so many people in the industry seem to coalesce around this fairly quickly. You know, even before Amadeh published his blog post, I was seeing other people kind of post some version of this just in the days leading up to it. My understanding is these are kind of suggestions that have come out of the AI safety community. These are things that have been kind of percolating for a while. They're not just things that he thought up on his own.

3:52Sean O'Kane: But yeah, it just seemed like a lot of people were kind of ready to embrace this. In some ways, it's encouraging to see that there's a consensus, but it also makes me a little skeptical that this would represent sort of genuine major steps towards a slowdown.

4:07Anthony Ha: Yeah, I mean, I would say this. First of all, consensus can be a good thing. Also, it can be the beginnings of forming a cartel. And so, you know, let's be clear who we're talking about here. We're talking about Frontier AI Labs, and that's specific and important. You did say a minute ago that the details aren't really clear, but we do know that the general idea here is that independent third party evaluators would come in that would work inside the company like Anthropic or OpenAI and monitor AI safety practices and incidents. But there is a lot of vagueness around that, like at what step would it be continuous, things like that.

4:46Anthony Ha: And then there's another proposal to have major AI companies in democratic countries coordinate on safety standards and limits. And then this international coordination piece. So those are the general ideas around this. I'll also add that there's been very considerable pushback from very specific people. And surprisingly, some people I didn't think that would push back on this. So, you know, the obvious ones, I guess, would be NVIDIA's CEO, Jensen Wang, who, you know, had some pretty choice words. I don't know what either of you think of that. Pretty interesting beginning of the week, some of his comments and the call he took from President Trump on stage.

5:33Kirsten Korosec: Yeah, I mean, listen, I think Jensen understands that to a certain extent he is seen as the adult in the room here. which is interesting because like that's a dynamic that I think has changed right like if you were to ask people a year almost two years ago now who was playing that role as these AI companies were really sort of starting to blow up in big ways I think a lot of people would have pointed to Microsoft and Satya Nadella and I feel like Microsoft has sort of for a number of reasons that we don't need to get into right now lost that kind of grip on being the sort of adult in the room.

6:12Kirsten Korosec: I think certainly in part because Nadella said he was going to make Google dance and then that never happened. And in fact, the opposite happened, I think, in a lot of ways. And so Jensen, I think, understands not only that he needs to be sort of pleasing the most amount of people. And so he wants to say sort of the most measured thing. But he also, I think, is like one of the most useful liaisons between like this sort of field and the this administration, you know, to the point that they had. I don't know what you guys think about this as far as whether this was really as organic as it was, but to the point that he's getting a call from the president while he's on stage at this very, you know, well attended and sort of high profile conference that, you know, allowed him to sort of allow the both of them to sort of respond to all this mess over the weekend earlier this week.

7:08Anthony Ha: Yeah, I want to mention that because your point about him being the adult in the room and the liaison, he is in a position where he could do that. But in my view, I would say that which did feel a little staged, went a step too far. And really, to me highlighted the fact that Nvidia greatly benefits from AI, you know, moving forward in an unpaced manner. And, you know, I hate to be cynical about it, but that was sort of my initial reaction to it. But you're correct in that he is in a position in which he is directly or his company is directly in the middle of everything that is going on, on the open weight side, and on the more proprietary, like closed frontier side.

7:56Anthony Ha: And so, you know, he is in a good position to be a leader here. It just felt, you know, like that moment felt so a little staged. And so I became a little bit more suspicious of the messaging just since, you know, NVIDIA will, you know, benefit financially, obviously.

8:12Sean O'Kane: Right. I mean, NVIDIA, it's in NVIDIA's interests. And also, I think it's just, I think, frankly, you know, sucking up a little bit and getting on the good side of the Trump administration, which, you know, even before that, you know, reporters were starting to ask Trump about it. And he was like, I mean, you know, if companies want to take some safety steps, they can. But we don't, we can't slow down. We can't slow down. China, China, China, China, China. And so I think like Trump and Huang's interests are aligned. And also he's kind of telling him what he wants to hear. I did think some of the things he was specifically focusing on are worth unpacking a little bit.

8:50Sean O'Kane: I mean, first he talked about, again, this idea of we are not going to have a slowdown. Again, I mean, I think it's interesting just that phrase, slowdown, which has come up a lot. But at the same time, you know, both Altman and Amadei, they'll use the slowdown language, but the word they like to use more is pace, right? And so, and these three proposals, like the ones you described, Kirsten, in theory, they could result in things slowing down. But they're not saying that explicitly, right? It's saying, hey, we're putting or we're sort of make tape making some like basic safety measures and having some people kind of keep an eye on us.

9:29Sean O'Kane: But none of those things are intrinsically saying that things are going slower, have to go slower than they are now, at least as I understand it.

9:37Anthony Ha: So I have a question for Sean, because I mean, wouldn't you couldn't you argue in a free market society that a we have existing regulations in place and also a competitive environment in which there isn't protectionism, that if there is something unsafe that is released by a company that they would no longer be able to be a viable company and there are legal, you know, regulators in place today that could go after these companies? Or do you reject that idea? Because that is an argument that's being that's being made in terms of why we don't really need to do the steps that Dario and Sam Altman have sort of talked about.

10:19Kirsten Korosec: I mean, in a vacuum or sort of in a market that is not being distorted by a whole bunch of different external pressures, then yeah, I think there's an element of that. But we have, you know, a federal government at this at the moment that certainly does not seem eager to enforce regulations, broadly speaking, let alone specifically speaking here. to me it does not seem like there is a ton of consumer choice driving this market in the sense of like okay if one of these companies does something really bad then you they will see an impact in how many cancellations there are or whatever is so much especially now as they have moved into enterprise and they're making so much more of their money from from these selling their services to companies it's just naturally harder to vote with your dollars there like corporations are not going to sort of pack up and move between codex and cloud code just because they disagree on principle with like something that OpenAI did.

11:23Kirsten Korosec: And then they're also just sort of being floated by so much investment money that it makes it easier for them to absorb any of those losses if they actually do face them. So I think it's a nice idea in theory, to a certain extent, but I feel like in practice, it's just there's none of that really happening. And we wind up in the same situation that I feel like you and I paid so much attention to recently, a few years ago with Boeing, where we really got a firsthand experience, and a tragic experience with what happens when an industry just allows self regulation, with government monitors of some kind who check in from time to time, and don't really get the full picture or have the full understanding of what's going wrong and then seeing that break really bad.

12:06Sean O'Kane: Yeah, well, I think that also then brings us back to these specific suggestions. And I do think like the second and third about the idea of safety standards, you know, agreed upon by companies within democratic countries, and then sort of agreements between, again, lots of scare quotes, democratic companies and authoritarian companies, by which he means China. Those are vaguer. And so, I mean, we can definitely talk about those, but it seemed like the thing that was getting the most traction, the most immediate agreement that there's going to be some version of this is this idea of independent evaluators within these companies.

12:38Sean O'Kane: And I guess there's been, there was also some mention about how there's precedent for this within, you know, banking. And I'm curious to what extent, you know, you guys think that is something that could be effective. Is this going to be, you know, Sean, you mentioned the Boeing example, something where they're still not really going to know what's going on or are there steps that have to be taken to make sure that is effective?

12:59Anthony Ha: Yeah. I mean, I would say in like, in the federal government, if I were to turn to automotive and transportation, which I'm obviously very familiar with, there are regulations in place and there are evaluators that can step in. But a lot of what these regulations are based on self-certification. And if companies self-certify, let's say, around like automotive standards, which you could, you know, let's say an AI lab could do the same, then the federal government comes in as a secondary step. But they're not there in the beginning. That's why that whole idea about independent evaluators to me is so interesting, because Is at what stage are they proposing this happen?

13:37Anthony Ha: And Rebecca Balan had a really interesting story this week, which is, will they really be independent, first of all? And will this be a continuous process? Will this be at the very beginning? And more importantly, if they're testing on the safety of, let's say, an AI agent, could the AI agent be crafted in a way to pass the test? But that doesn't necessarily make it safe. So these are all pretty top-level questions. I just don't really see necessarily an immediate future in which the federal government is going to like set up something of third party evaluators. I could see it happening more in the private market.

14:16Anthony Ha: And I don't know if that really achieves what the end goal is.

14:20Kirsten Korosec: Yeah, I don't know how effective that could be. I think it's worth trying. I will say one signal this week in my mind is there because everything is culture war these days, there has been an effort to turn the existing independent researchers who have been following the risks of this stuff and evaluating when they when things go wrong into a culture war issue. You know, I think it was the New York Post ran a whole front page with pictures of all these people from one of the research institutes calling them sort of like woke AI scolds. And it's just like when that stuff starts kicking up, you're kind of like, OK, I wonder if that's happening because some of these people believe that there could actually be an impact from these people doing their work.

15:02Kirsten Korosec: And therefore, they're doing culture war about them. Or is it just a reflex at this point? Like, it's kind of hard to tease that out.

15:10Sean O'Kane: Yeah, it's really interesting how AI both does and doesn't fit into sort of the kind of existing culture or political spectrum stuff in that on some level, there is an element of, yes, like you can say that pro kind of AI safety, AI regulation is kind of a liberal issue. issue and Trump is much more kind of like, no, none of that. And, you know, boo, like trying to make AI woke. But it's not entirely that. And that there's certainly, I think, a lot of conservatives who have a lot of concerns about AI, about data centers and things like that. And that, you know, conversely, like even Musk, who is obviously a very pro-Trump right wing figure himself, like was like on board with this.

15:51Sean O'Kane: And so these kinds of culture where things do come up, but they're not quite as predictable as they are on other issues. This episode is brought to you by Indeed. You're ready to level up your business, but the pressure to find the right person to make that happen is intense. Indeed Sponsored Jobs can help carry the load. It boosts your job post to help it reach quality talent fast. Cut through the chaos with Indeed Sponsored Jobs. Get a$75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now? then this is a job for Indeed Sponsor Jobs.

16:27Kirsten Korosec: Well, I don't think this is the last we're going to be talking about this. And speaking of wars, there was another pretty big war in Silicon Valley this week, which is one of those stories. I always love a story that just spins, you know, faster than the news cycle is already set at. And that was Automatic, the parent company of WordPress and its board pushing out CEO Matt Mullenweg and then him returning to that post 33 hours later, you know, from a sort of enforced paid leave. And there's a lot to unpack here because that's only the beginning of what happened with them this week. And it follows a whole bunch of other drama that Automatic has been involved in over the last couple of years, which includes a whole bunch of layoffs, some legal disputes, some of that may even be related to this.

17:13Kirsten Korosec: What'd you make of this, Kirsten?

17:15Anthony Ha: So to me, what I'm very interested in is what happened during that 33 hours. I mean, there's a lot of boardroom intrigue that was happening before and after. And Sarah Perez, I should say, has been like all over this story and been first to it and has all these great details. So we will include links to all those stories in our show notes. But during that 33 hours in which Matt was no longer, you know, part of the board, some, let's say, shenanigans, some golden parachute shenanigans took place in which the people who are no longer on this board, who have now been forced out, both signed each other's, you know, basically their golden parachute agreements.

17:58Anthony Ha: And so they are leaving in a much better financial situation than they were before. And to me, that is just, wow, does that raise more than just questions? I think that we can all pretty concretely say that that was an abuse of power. And I'm very curious to see what happens and if there's any recourse from now the company to go after those two individuals.

18:26Sean O'Kane: Yeah, I mean, that's definitely not a good look for sure. I mean, for me, the other thing that felt so familiar about it that gave us a stage drop, it was like, of course, that it felt like in some ways a repeat of the open AI situation a couple of years ago, which I guess a lot of people now call the blip, when the board tried to push Sam Altman out. You know, he was sort of gone for a little while and then came back. And again, everyone who tried, who basically staged the coup ended up being gone. And I'm sure that, you know, I think when we dig into the details, they're not, you know, perfectly parallel situations.

19:02Sean O'Kane: I think generally it feels a little bit less heightened around automatic because there's, again, not a bunch of people who think they're building like the most important dangerous technology in the world. Because I think we're still in the early days of just like, what is going on? What happened? Like, what was the deal? So and my hope, and I guess maybe some of the responsibility that falls on us is like figuring out like and finding out what actually happened. I mean, hopefully Sarah or someone else will have more to share in the days to come, because it does seem like, again, a situation where as much as, you know, when you're on the board and you're involved in the company, there's your own money at stake and things as well, but that there was some sort of feeling like this is not the right person to lead the company anymore.

19:45Sean O'Kane: They took dramatic action and it did not work.

19:50Anthony Ha: And they financially helped themselves in that 33 hour window. And, you know, so there's nuances and differences. Yeah. I think that that like undercut maybe their argument. The question for both of you is, you know, you compared it to OpenAI. I would say arguably when Sam Altman returned, he returned more powerful. And is that the same situation that's playing out here over at Automatic. And it seems like in the early steps that Matt clearly has control again. And will he end up with actually more power than before as a result of what's happened over the last few days?

20:31Kirsten Korosec: Yeah, I think you nailed it. I think the biggest difference between the two, other than the technology they're working on, like Anthony said, is here, this happened so quickly that, you know, it's hard to even say if this would have happened. But because of the speed of this, we did not see what we saw with OpenAI, where there was this like crush of support from the employees and threats to leave. You know, that that few day period of uncertainty really defined that moment a few years ago, whereas this was like a lightning speed run of that. But the biggest similarity is, you know, just like you said, control.

21:06Kirsten Korosec: I think the thing that's so interesting to me here compared to the open AI situation is this is a company that is adjacent to a nonprofit that all sort of work together that create this like, you know, fundamental technology or fundamental platform that so much of the Internet works on and runs on. I mean, our own what our own site works on WordPress, right? Like it's just it's all over the place. And I think that the question of control is just so much more interesting when you're talking about this situation where you're you're dealing with a technology that leans more open source that has that in its DNA.

21:42Kirsten Korosec: And so if Matt really is sort of consolidating even more control now than he did, because we should say, you know, like when there was this big fight with WP Engine a little over a year ago, I think, where he went after this other company, you know, for sort of behaving in a way that he didn't feel like was proper for sort of how WordPress operates itself. He really made that a pivot point for automatic employees and said at the time, you know, at the time when also they were the biggest the company has ever been, here's the door, here's a really generous severance package if you want to leave, you know, so they're not just like cutting bait, but like, here's the door and walk out.

22:22Kirsten Korosec: And so I think in some ways he's already consolidated a lot of power over this. And this seems like a chance to take that further. And so what does that mean for this technology that is so important to an open web that's under threat by a lot of other technologies at the moment is kind of a scary question. Yeah, it's really definitely just made me, I guess this is kind of just an obvious, almost

22:46Sean O'Kane: dumb question, but just really made me ask, what is going on over there? Like, it feels like this is something, and, you know, maybe a company and a technology and a platform that we kind of take for granted that I, you know, just thought of like, here is something that's like fundamental to sort of the plumbing of the internet. And it works, you know, well, it sort of advances, there's ways to customize it, but it doesn't feel like there's that much going on. And suddenly, you know, as of, you know, a year or so ago, like suddenly they're like involved in these legal battles. It seems like things have like, you know, just the drama has escalated dramatically.

23:22Sean O'Kane: You know, and Matt Mullenweg himself, I think, previous to this, had this very kind of warm and fuzzy reputation. It's just like this guy who believes in open source, believed in the open web. And then now he's sort of embroiled in these weird fights that it just always feels kind of like what's actually going on here? because it just seems like the level of intensity of the battle seems so disproportionate to like what the stakes seem to be from the outside. And so the whole situation just feels very confusing.

23:54Anthony Ha: Well, okay. So before we move on to deals, I will make this one point, which is that both of you have poked on the edges of what I've been thinking about with this. And it's, I think, a good lesson for founders out there, which is, you know, be aware of who's on your board. But I actually think that because WordPress engine automatic are essentially the plumbing of a lot of what the internet is, the stakes are actually quite high. Anytime there is a technology that actually has a lot of power when you think about it, when you really start breaking down how many different websites are using this, then I think sometimes people behave badly and that you get a little bit of drama in the mix.

24:38Anthony Ha: I like to say that open source and all this stuff brings out the best in people, but also there's massive implications over who controls automatic. So far, it seems like Matt has not only won, but seems to be consolidating power. How many more of these are going to keep popping up though? I think it's sort of my, my longer term question.

25:00Sean O'Kane: Well, should we move on to deals?

25:02Anthony Ha: Yeah, we should. All right.

25:05Sean O'Kane: So the first one is Maymobility, which is apparently going public via SPAC. I think this is one that is, I think, squarely in both of your coverage areas. Who wants to tell me about Maymobility?

25:17Anthony Ha: SPACs are back. Well, Sean wrote the story, but SPACs are back, question mark? I mean, here's my two cents just, and then Sean can get in the details. So there was a time where there was like a million EV SPACs. And over the past few years, we've seen more autonomous vehicle companies and specifically robotics companies going SPAC as a means to, you know, gain capital. Whether May Mobility is ready for being a publicly traded company, I think Sean's in a better position to talk about that.

25:49Kirsten Korosec: How much time do you have, right? I think the narrative around the big SPAC boom six years ago, five years ago, was that certainly in defense of doing a SPAC merger for these companies, a lot of them were sort of framing it as, hey, this is free money. We can't pass it up. It's sort of too good to be true. The cost ended up being that a lot of them weren't ready to be public companies. And that's why a bunch of them failed. like in the most fundamental way, you know, sort of across them and for different reasons specifically. But that was like the big thing that really brought them down. So we'll see.

26:22Kirsten Korosec: I mean, we learned in this announcement this week that May Mobility generated$10 million in revenue last year. They burned almost$100 million last year as well. This deal would give them at least$120 million. The number I'm watching is there is$217 million in a trust that is part of sort of like what got raised by this SPAC in the run up to the merger. And that is always the question with SPAC mergers is, have you done enough to convince these people who bought in at$10 a share or whatever the flat fee was when it was just SPAC, that they should stick around with this company once it's public?

27:04Kirsten Korosec: Or are all those people going to redeem, you know, their sort of stake in that trust and, and, and buzz off and leave May with significantly less than, you know, the sort of total that they could raise from this, which is like over$300 million. And I think that's a big question. You know, this is going to take months to close. This is certainly not like right around the corner. But I think that's, that's the thing I'm already kind of keeping an eye on now.

27:29Anthony Ha: Yeah, I think that you're spot on on that, which is we've seen this happen before where, you know, companies on paper, it seems like initially like, oh, they're getting a lot of capital. And those lockup terms are very loose. And, you know, a lot of these investors bail right away and it puts them in a weird position. we should say that Maymobility, it seems like is going to be the first robo-taxi SPAC, but they're not commercially, really commercially deployed in the same sense that like Waymo is. Are they a first really in the industry then? Because there are other, like I mentioned before, AV companies that are SPACing, right?

28:10Kirsten Korosec: Yeah. I mean, they positioned this in the announcement this week about being, you know, this sort of quote unquote, first US publicly listed company focused on autonomous ride hailing, which is sort of like saying I'm like, you know, the tallest person in my family. You know, it's just, it's a very narrow set. I understand why they're doing it. Yeah. You know, like I understand why they're doing it because they're trying to set themselves apart and you know, they are operating what is arguably a more unsexy version of autonomous vehicle company than, you know, compared to some others, their whole thing is essentially like building, you know, building the vehicles and then essentially transferring those over to fleet operators.

28:50Kirsten Korosec: They want to be very asset light, which is, you know, very interesting in its own ways and challenging in its own ways. But I do think, you know, there are many other companies that are public already that are, that are autonomous vehicle companies, especially on the trucking side. And we have, you know, companies like Tesla and Rivian that are working on this technology as part of a portfolio of other technologies. I think, you know, on the one hand, like, yeah, I think they're maybe trying to like dress it up a little bit. On the other hand, I think it shows that we learned something from the last SPAC boom, which is that they're not going public saying, hey, we're going to make a trillion dollars in year one and we're going to have five billion robo taxis in 120 cities.

29:29Kirsten Korosec: Like there was actually a relatively reasonable. I kept looking through the investor deck thinking, OK, where's the thing that they're saying where they're way out over their skis? And I don't really see that. Certainly not in the way that we saw five or six years ago.

29:42Sean O'Kane: I mean, I guess, yeah, if we're, again, sort of grading them on this curve, it still seems kind of wild to me that a company is like trying to go public when it brought in, you know, 10 million in revenue last year and, you know, lost way, you know, an order back to more. There's revenue.

29:55Anthony Ha: There's revenue. We've seen SPACs pre-revenue, just to be clear.

29:59Sean O'Kane: So what a, yeah, what a wild time that was and what fun it will be if that comes back. Well, let's move on to one other deal that we wanted to talk about, which is this company Wonder, which announced, you know, basically a$425 million deal with DoorDash. Wonder is a delivery company, but sort of like really focused on building, not just doing delivery from existing restaurants, but kind of building new kind of restaurant brands that are just focused on delivery, kind of ghost kitchens. Have either of you actually tried it out? Do you dug into the company at all?

30:33Anthony Ha: I have not used Wonder, but they are popping up quite a bit. And you're right, there's this idea of a chain of ghost kitchen food halls that are designed for delivery. And the idea here is that Wonder is taking this one-size-fits-all approach to fast, casual dining. To me, I'm much more familiar with DoorDash. What my take is on this is that DoorDash just seems to be everywhere right now. Like they're, you know, doing sidewalk delivery bots and they're, you know, experimenting and launching like out of their labs, R &D labs, autonomous drones. They're partnering up with Wonder and investing money.

31:14Anthony Ha: Like they just seem to be really spreading their bets widely right now.

31:18Kirsten Korosec: I will say I don't have any experience with Wonder. I will say our producer Teresa says the burrito bowls are mid. which is, you know, I guess, isn't that like the best case you can hope for these days with these sort of tech forward food companies? The one thing I'll say here is like, I don't think this is too tinfoil hat, but like, I think this is more, this is another example of how we're seeing a sort of real, slowly increased competition between DoorDash and Uber, in a sense of not Not only is DoorDash trying to do a lot of the same things that Uber is doing with sort of like autonomous vehicle partners and, you know, this sort of distributed bets model that you just mentioned, but Wonder is doing basically what Travis Kalanick has been doing with Cloud Kitchens.

32:07Kirsten Korosec: It's like the same idea of like, can we automate the process from like food order to food creation to food delivery? And Kalanick's new thing, Adams, is being backed by Uber. he has a proximity to that company that he hasn't had in a long time since he was ousted. And so, you know, I'm not saying that's exactly what's going on here. But I think it's, you know, it would be foolish to ignore that that dynamic is at play.

32:31Sean O'Kane: Yeah, I mean, it was striking, like reading just like how much wonder, at least what they seem to be pitching as part of this deal is this kind of increasing move towards automation and the idea, oh, like you could get like food delivered that like no human hands have touched. That's not actually the phrase they're using. But that's essentially the vision that they're selling. And there's a part of me that's definitely like, yeah, who wants that? No, I mean, I want to.

32:55Kirsten Korosec: So it's really hard, you know, it's like people have been trying this even with the most advanced tech that's out there now. And it's just really, really hard.

33:02Sean O'Kane: Yeah. And I think what I do wonder about is this, like, to what extent are we just seeing this kind of like, like schism or division segmentation in the like food where there, you And the converse of that is definitely going to some restaurants that are trying to like make all these deliveries while also like creating like a good in-person experience. And sometimes it does seem like the really stretched spin trying to do both. So in theory, I could imagine that like maybe like having things that are focused on one like delivery and things that are focused on a person kind of makes sense. But I think that would just be a pretty like rough transit transformation of that entire business.

33:43Anthony Ha: Well, and part of what is driving sort of these like, kind of weird experiences between like a ghost kitchen experience and then like the human delivered gig economy stuff is that there's also been a lot of consolidation. I mean, Wonder might not be a household name, but it owns some household names. I mean, they acquired Grubhub last year for$650 million. They've added to their portfolio brands, Blue Apron and Tastemate. They're not some small little experiment here. And so the interesting thing is that the consolidation piece of this, of what's happening in the marketplace around food delivery is making it, I'm not really sure where it's headed, but when you start folding in ghost kitchens and also sort of like the human-driven gig economy stuff, it starts getting pretty interesting.

34:38Sean O'Kane: Well, I'm sure we'll have more to say about consolidation in the industry in the weeks to come. And of course, and burrito bowls.

34:45Anthony Ha: And burrito bowls.

34:46Sean O'Kane: That's true. Actually, if there's one takeaway is that I just think I agree that, you know, all this fast casual delivery, like just why can't the food be better? The food needs to be better. But anyway, I'm hungry nonetheless. Equity will be back next week, of course. And you can follow us at Equity Pod on X and Threads in the meantime.

35:15time.