SpaceX’s Lunar Mass Driver, OpenAI Hires Meta’s Top Ad Exec, Zuck Builds CEO Agent | Diet TBPN

0:02John Coogan:Over the weekend, you watched this live, right? Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, the CEO of SpaceX, got some folks together, gave a big keynote presentation about his vision for the future. Basically something that looked like an ultradome. It did look like an ultradome. And so you watched this, right? I did watch it. I watched a little bit of it. And overall... And if you were taking a shot every time Elon said epic, you were not in any state to drive after about three minutes. Yeah, he's got so much going on at this point. I mean, he's doing sports cars, cyber trucks, Model 3, Model Y, just consumer cars.

0:42John Coogan:Model Y XL. Space internet, space data centers, space launch capacity. Point to point, he's going to take us on a rocket from New York to Tokyo. in an hour, 30 minutes. Neuralink, brain chips, tunnels. These Elon projects have just gotten bigger and bigger and bigger. Of course, he owns X and Twitter. XAI, training foundation models, trying to make a consumer app. We chat with it as well as solve math and physics. This was super rough. I listened to it and it was a rough delivery. He seemed a little like, just like, whoa, okay, got another thing to present. And so the cadence wasn't quite there and he wasn't able to get the crowd going.

1:26John Coogan:There was a lot of like waiting a little bit for the audience to like realize that that was the applause line or something. Key to slamer, never bet against Elon. True. I'm not dumb enough to bet against Elon. Yes. I'm not dumb enough to try to short any of his company. Yes, for sure. By now you should have learned not to doubt what his organizations can do. Yeah. And even though this TerraFab concept, you know, there's a lot of reasons that you would want to bet against it. I don't know that many people that are genuinely sold on the space data centers in the near term. It is not clocking for me, John.

2:03John Coogan:I'm a dad. I'm a husband. You're not getting it. It's not clocking to you. It's not clocking to you that I'm standing on business, is it? It's not clocking for me. That he's standing on business? It's not clocking. He's standing on business and it's not clocking for you. to me that he's standing he's standing on space data centers seemingly the first time he's put the the tesla xai spacex logos together sure uh no the tunnel project hyperloop was a blog post that he wrote and it appeared both on the tesla blog and the spacex blog at the same time and everyone was like who's going to be involved in this and it turned out it was like a couple people from both sides.

2:41John Coogan:It became its own company at some point. I'm not saying it's the first time. No, no. But it does feel like Elon Megacorp. He's gearing up for the Elon Megacorp. Yep. And yeah, so just overall, the pitch is he's basically saying like, okay, we're going to do TerraFab. It's this really hard project. And the evidence for why you should believe that it's going to work well, he's like, we've done a lot of hard things in the past. Talks a little bit about space data centers. And then he talks about needing something in the order of a thousand times more compute than he says to reach a petawatt, we'll build an electromagnetic mass driver on the moon with robots like Optimus and humans.

3:23No, but before the mass driver, he's talking about how, oh, we're chip constrained, which is true. Elon chip, chip constrained by a thousand X. Sure. And so we have to do this.

3:34John Coogan:Yeah, we have to build more fab capacity. He doesn't lay out like a super compelling case of what all the chips will be used for, right? Are they going to be, is SpaceX going to be a neocloud? Is it just for their own internal products like, you know, self-driving, humanoids? Again, again, my criticism is not of any individual company as much as the presentation I just came away. He kept saying like, if we can do this, it's going to be epic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there wasn't a really strong justification. There wasn't a strong justification other than it's going to be epic. And then he just closes out with this render of the mass driver, which is, again, it's tight.

4:13But what was the takeaway on what we're even going to use the mass driver for other than to get to a Kardashev III civilization? Which, again, all this stuff just feels so, so, so far out. He did drop the line turning science fiction into science fact. Science fact? Science fact. No way. It's a Josh Wolfe line. And it's funny because Josh Wolfe was like the hardest critic of Elon. Oh, that's right.

4:40John Coogan:Yeah, that's right. Like he basically had to stop at some point. Yeah, of course. But yeah, he kept saying these lines that he was like expecting like kind of laughter. Yeah, it was really hard. I mean, doing like the actual delivery of a speech on stage. I mean Jensen just went through this with a keynote at GTC where he didn't have a teleprompter and he was able to deliver moments and get the crowd going and the crowd size at GTC is really big and so even if you just have a couple hardcore fans that really get you and have listened to every Jensen keynote, they know. Yeah, they start clapping and then everyone starts clapping because it's infectious and then pretty soon everyone's clapping.

5:20John Coogan:This is how it works. So yeah, yeah. I mean, the comedic timing, the delivery timing of like when to clap, when to be, whoa, that was a little tough. I don't know, I actually know who was in the audience. It might have just been employees. It has a certain aesthetic to it. Interestingly about the tariff app, this is something I was advocating for back in 2022. So when the Biden Chips Act happened, there was this question about like, what's going to happen with Intel? Intel should be at the center of the Chips Act because the whole pitch for the Chips Act was that America is not on the leading edge of semiconductor fabrication.

5:52John Coogan:And so we need to sort of pull our weight with our intellectual property laws to stop Taiwan from exporting them. Remember, Taiwan is its own country. They should, in theory, be able to sell their products anywhere. What say do we have over, you know, if Japan wants to sell PlayStations to China or anywhere, why do we have authority over them? Well, it comes down to the intellectual property. There's a lot of patents that have been licensed to ASML, to TSMC. And so we do have the ability to pull levers and strings to sort of limit those, especially if they're packaged by NVIDIA, an American company.

6:28John Coogan:We have export rules, but it's a stretch. But the whole thesis was, America's gonna lose to China unless we do this. And so Intel was a very logical one. And I remember there was like 60 billion or something up for grabs around the Chips Act. At the same time, elon was marshalling around 60 billion for to buy out twitter something like that 40 something billion and then uh intel's market cap what their 220 billion dollar company now i think that they were lower back in 2022. i think it makes total sense for elon to make chips yep i think uh i think it will make sense over time for xai to start offering cloud services to other companies Yeah, having computers is valuable.

7:13But still, this seems like just kind of a blatant sci-fi pump going into the IPO.

7:20John Coogan:Maybe. I will take the other side of that. The other side of this is that it is good to have a long-term vision, even if it is decades away. And that's what mass driver on the moon is. It's not going to be realized this quarter. It's not going to be realized this year. Probably not even this decade. Elon, interestingly, didn't really put a date on it. Did he say something specific? He said, I hope to see it in my lifetime. Yeah. Which is like, I mean, he's 54. He's got a while, right? Yeah. If he's a radical life extension guy, he could be like 300 years from now. Who knows? That's a very vague timeline.

7:55John Coogan:Whereas in the past with Point2Point, with Roadster, with Cybertruck, with Space Data Centers, all the other Elon pitches have been very focused on, we think we can do this in five years. And he always gets criticized for being Elon math, too aggressive. but then history's shown that you know he he over promises under delivers but he typically does deliver eventually and and if the technology is completely new no one else was going to build it and he's the first one to build it it's fine because starlink works it was the first leo constellation for satellite internet had turned into a huge business wound up being a great technology and so uh now the mass driver's a lot crazier i was uh going back and forth tyler about this trying to get him to nail down a prediction.

8:40John Coogan:We started with 100 years. Do you think it's possible to put a mass driver on the moon in the next 100 years? And you said yes. So it's possible. Yes. There's all sorts of qualifications. I think the thing, it was like 300 metric tons. Okay. There was an interesting moment last year when everyone sort of like came around to the same AGI predictions or the same superintelligence predictions saying eight, ten years, George Hots, Dwarkesh, Karpathy, Sam Altman, there were a number of people that were all saying in various words, like Sam said, a few thousand days. Dwarkesh had this probability distribution that said 2032.

9:18John Coogan:And so everyone was sort of in the in the seven to 10 year range. And it was just this interesting moment in the AI industry, at least, where everyone had a clear definition of like what super intelligence would be. Simultaneously, everyone was like, yeah, it's not this year. It's more like 10. But there's way, like we are so far away from consensus around mass driver timelines. I thought it'd be interesting to start developing thought process around what is a mass driver, what does success look like, and what are reasonable timelines here. We have to define what a mass driver actually is. In simple terms, it's an electromagnetic launch system fixed on the lunar surface that converts energy.

9:55John Coogan:So you put down some solar panels, you take energy, that's the electromagnetic so you're not putting up fuel and then because that's extra cost you once you're there you can just repeatedly get sunlight turn that into energy and it's going to successfully accelerate a payload to lunar escape velocity which is one-fifth of Earth's escape velocity you got to be going 5 ,000 miles an hour to escape the moon's gravity well you have to be going 25 ,000 miles per hour to escape Earth's so from an efficiency and energy efficiency standpoint, it's much better to leave from the moon than to leave from Earth.

10:30So then the payload

10:32John Coogan:needs to go somewhere useful. Like you make this thing in this in this video, he's talking about making satellites on the moon. That's even farther away. But those have to go somewhere. So you can't just launch them into deep space. I mean, unless that's where you're going. Usually you would go to a lunar orbit or an Earth orbit or some point in between the moon and Earth. Gabe says, what is this mass driver you speak of spacex is getting in the supplements game that's a great name they should make it they've done the tesla tequila exactly yeah they should make a mass gainer that they release now and say hey if you buy this you'll get priority access to the mass driver on the moon i like this i like this a lot i would definitely be a daily driver of the mass driver and so that yeah there's this question of like you you set up this thing that's going to take forever be really expensive what are you actually pushing into space uh you probably start with basic materials so rock literally rocks uh metal oxygen water a lot of useful space what if the asteroids that we get into our atmosphere is just an advanced civilization somewhere else just mass driving mass driving i saw i saw like yeah we're down range guys relax i saw a hilarious take that the first ufo that will arrive on earth will just be a car guy from another galaxy who like got into building a crazy, you know, supercar effectively.

11:56John Coogan:Taking it out on a cruise. And somebody's like, you can't get to Earth in that thing. That's too modded. That's too crazy. You're going to break down. There's no way. And he's like, I'll show you. You're going to be too old by the time you get there. I'll show you. I've modded this thing. You can also potentially get propellant from the moon. If you can extract water from ice, from the moon, especially near the poles, that water can support people because you can drink it. Here are the four conditions I think need to be met in order to say, yes, we have a working mass driver on the moon. This is how I'd formulate this bet with Tyler Cosgrove over there.

12:27John Coogan:One, you need a permanently installed electromagnetic launcher, and it has to be on the lunar surface. This should be obvious. Two, it has to launch at least 300 metric tons over a 12-month period. This means it's driving significant mass, not just test payloads. Let's aim for 95 % mission success and at least 200 launches per year. Failures are gonna happen. but we want to get this reliable and at commercial scale. And that means that it can't be breaking down all the time. Lastly, the mass launch from the moon has to actually be put to use. You can't just have this demo unit that's just blasting rocks into the sun.

13:04John Coogan:It's gotta go to something useful. And that could just be water that's going somewhere else or rocks that are going somewhere else. But it needs to be like, we're catching them somewhere. There's a reason that it's going there. Once all four of those conditions are met, It will be hard to argue that we're in some sort of demo phase or publicity stunt. How long will this take? You should put the goalposts on the MassDriver. The way that you keep moving them. Okay. I'm moving the goalposts. I put the over under at like 15 to 20 years, which is about as aggressive as I could get. I think Tyler's going to take the other side of this.

13:40Well, I'm going to take the over.

13:41John Coogan:You're going to take over 20. 15 years is, I think, kind of crazy. 15 years is a blink of an eye. I think I'm a bit more HCI pill than you, Tyler. Okay. Okay. Okay, well, let's go through the six steps. Just say you lost faith. The six steps. Six steps. Okay, so first off, we got to get to the moon. We can't really get to the moon right now. We're pretty close with really small payloads. We need reliable, heavy lunar launch capacity, and that's going to take some time. So Starship needs to be refueling in orbit, landing on the moon with and without crews, because you're probably going to need some humans up there, some robots, and we need to start routine cargo flights to the moon.

14:19John Coogan:So this is straight up like three to five years away, like minimum. Then you need to build the power infrastructure. So that's another couple of years because once you're actually going up and back, you have to put down a bunch of solar panels, store it in batteries, and then the batteries need to be able to deliver a lot of power all of a sudden. Now this is what the Tesla does, right? Robotic construction capacity. You got to get autonomous construction, rovers at least up and running to lay the electromagnetic track. Then you actually have to build the mass driver on earth. The good news is that once you build it, once you've built it, like the benefits are really good.

14:49John Coogan:Like you don't have an atmosphere, there's no drag, no weather, no air resistance, and of course gravity is a lot less. So you still need a plan for where the mass goes after it's driven. You got to catch it kind of and that's a whole another problem. But and and when you add all these projects up you start easily getting into the decades. I mean if you think about this in like the most grand project you can imagine which is like the Dyson sphere basically solar panels directly around the Sun all the way around the Sun to capture all of its energy you're gonna need to send a lot of solar panels to the Sun making those on the moon is lower cost potentially than making them on earth that's the theory I'm seeing a tourism angle when the mass drivers pointed back at the earth to be in a little like Bob bobsled type thing yeah little pod to be launched at the earth and then you kind of break through the atmosphere and then you parachute yeah that could be good for like gender reveal birthday parties you know potentially

15:49yes this needs an elon-esque figure to accomplish yeah yeah i'm thinking more in that 50

15:56John Coogan:50 year over 50 or under 50. we gave tyler exactly i changed i'm going 30. 30. whoa What changed? I was just like, AGI is basically here. There's no way it's going to take that long. There we go. It's like everything will be so cheap. I was thinking five years. Five years? I had ever had a suspended cap. What do they have to say? Are they bullish on? Is suspended cap bullish on the presentation? Suspended cap says, TerraFab is a blatant pump. It actually disgusts me. There will never be leading-edge chips from them. There will never be data centers in space. It's such a blatant effort to IPO SpaceX on the back of some pie in the sky BS and then merge with Tesla, do humongous raise and keep blah, blah, blah, blah, blah for five years.

16:42John Coogan:Not a fan. Decel. Suspending caps to Decel. There was an obituary in the Wall Street Journal for David Simon. He was a mall king who was both feared and admired. He had ruthless negotiation tactics, an obsession with details and the sheer force of will that turned his family's real estate business into the largest mall owner in the country. He passed away on Sunday after a cancer diagnosis in 2024. He was 64 years old. During his more than three decades as Simon Property Group's chief executive, the inveterate dealmaker gobbled up competitors and defied critics who said malls were obsolete. Over a decades-long buying spree, he cobbled together an empire that spanned 250 properties and 206 million square feet, giving Simon control of more retail space than anyone in the world.

17:34John Coogan:His success helped propel the family to the wealthiest echelons with an estimated net worth of$11.6 billion, ranking number 38 on Forbes magazine's list of the richest American families. At a time when malls were failing and retailers were filing for bankruptcy, Simon invested in his properties, beefed up their luxury offerings, and added non-shopping tenants such as high-end fitness centers, high-tech mini golf courses, and upscale residents. I feel like that has been the secret to success with the modern mall. There's a lot of malls that have sort of mid-tier or low-end retailers where it is actually pretty comparable to shopping online.

18:10John Coogan:You go in, there's no one that's really going to talk to you. The stuff's just there. It might be on the floor. It's messy. But then there are certain malls that have leaned into the higher-end experience and oh, would you like a drink? Let's talk about what you're thinking. Let's you know show you all this stuff try this on and it's much more It's just in a completely different tier than e-commerce shopping And so I feel like those properties and those chains have done very well along with partners He snapped up ailing retailers including aero pastel nautica Eddie Bauer JC Penney forever 21 lucky brand and Brooks Brothers The arrangement propped up the chains, prevented large vacancies in Simon Malls, and turned out to be moneymakers for the company.

18:48John Coogan:Effective Monday, Simon's board appointed Eli Simon, one of David Simon's five children, as its CEO and president. The mall king was both feared and admired and could be both charming and terrifying. Simon unleashed a tirade at coach executive Todd Kahn during their first meeting in the decade of the 2000s after the handbag maker tried to renege on deals to open stores in Simon Malls. There was no shortage of profanity, Khan said. The two came to an agreement and became friends. Nothing like a screaming match to kick off a lifelong friendship. David's word was his bond. You could have bang-out meetings, but if you came to a resolution and you shook hands, it was golden.

19:29John Coogan:That's a good way of doing business. Well, RIP to the mall king. OpenAI is offering private equity firms a guaranteed minimum return of 17.5 % as well as early access to models not yet in public release. There was a lot of chatter on the timeline going back and forth like, is this some sort of weird guarantee? Is this not normal for private equity dealing? Market participant had a breakdown to take you through it. So why don't you read through some of this? Many are saying OpenAI's$10 billion private equity joint venture is giving a desperate feeling. A lot of people are throwing up the red flag emoji.

20:06Vendor financing dressed up as venture capital. Guaranteed returns that smell like a Ponzi, a company burning$14 billion this year. Buying distribution it can't earn organically. I'd push back. TPG, Bain Capital, Advent, and Brookfield put up$4 billion. They get preferred equity with a 17.5 minimum return, board seats, and early access to OpenAI's newest model. OpenAI gets instant distribution into hundreds of portfolio companies. No traditional enterprise sales cycles. No selling company by company. The part people are missing, a huge number of software companies are privately held. Tomo Bravo alone owns 75 software companies generating$30 billion in annual revenue.

20:40PE firms collectively did$1.8 trillion in buyouts last year. These companies are shifting to heavy token consumption. AWS knows this. They run a dedicated PE sales function.

20:49John Coogan:Talk about a dream job. That, oh, I would go for that. Yeah, if you love private equity, hard to imagine anything better. Advisory programs, transformation consultants, the whole apparatus. Azure and GCP do the same. OpenAI is running the cloud distribution playbook. Wholesale tokens to PE portfolios at scale. The difference is exclusivity. AWS doesn't ask PE firms to put up$4 billion to take board seats. They give the advisory away. OpenAI is asking for capital commitment, which buys preferential access. Dedicated forward deployed engineers and a financial incentive for the PE firm to actually push adoption across its portfolio.

21:23The PE firm that invested$4 billion in this JV isn't running a parallel RFP with Anthropic. That's the point. The 17.5 % return looks like a red flag until you look at it closely. It's preferred equity hurdle, not a coupon on debt. This is the main thing that the hundreds of posts I saw are missing. Priority on returns before a common shareholder. So it's preferred equity plus a return on top of that. Open AI is buying captive distribution channel into enterprises. they'd otherwise spend years trying to reach. Anthropic is running a parallel deal with Blackstone, Hellman, Friedman, and Permira.

22:01One billion common equity, no guaranteed return, more of a Palantir-style consulting venture. Both companies doing this simultaneously tells you where enterprise AI is heading. The bear case is real. 95 % of enterprise AI pilots fail to deliver ROI. We've already gone... Yeah, that's not true anymore, but... Yeah, that was one study.

22:19John Coogan:and again, every 14 billion in projected losses this year, profitability not expected until 2029. All true in opening eyes, enterprise business is already 10 billion of 25 billion in revenue, 40 % and growing to 50 % by year end. The distribution problem is what's left to solve. And anyways, it goes on and on. But yeah, overall, I think like people are taking one data point out of context, kind of spinning it into something that looks quite extreme and concerning when in reality is just giving them a preferred return. Financial Times had some reporting Saturday, OpenAI to double workforce as business push intensifies.