Week in Review | Neuralink Raises $600M at $9B Valuation, Judge Considers Curbs for Google in AI Arms Race, Jensen Huang Shifts Approach to U.S. Politics & More

0:00You're watching TBPN. today's friday may 30th 2025 we are live from the tbpn ultra dome the temple of technology the fortress of finance the capital of capital it's a remote show i am traveling how are you doing i'm good i miss you yeah me too we feel so close but so far it's brutal uh sleeping without an eight sleep it's the punishment worse than death it's a true torture it really is it's the worst it's the worst uh anyway exciting exciting week uh short week with the with the memorial day holiday but i feel like we did a good job making up for the lack of major tech news the lack of major announcements from ai companies although wwdc is coming up next week which should be interesting and that's where i want to start because uh john gruber has been writing about apple for years at daring firing daring fireball he has a show called talk show that he does at wwc and it's very interesting because he was one of the first people to do a talk show and interview show in the vision pro with um in vr they bring the pro cameras and you can stream it and you can watch it in the vision pro he went all in he's been writing positively about apple for a long time of course a couple months ago he wrote something is rotten in the state of cupertino talking about the the the difficulties with the rollout of apple intelligence and brutal they uh they didn't completely rug him but they didn't sign up fully so last year uh the talk show live from wwc 2024 uh had craig federighi greg uh jaws and john giandrea apple's head of machine learning and ai and this year he invited them all and they said no we don't want to participate no way yeah no way which is right they took it they took uh the rotten post yeah personally they took it personally it hurts and so i mean i was just reflecting on like what this means obviously we want to invite we want to you know interview these folks and so i i just kind of had this realization that truly apple intelligence is one of the most underrated products of all time totally totally and people are critical of it because it's apple and they're yeah they they always achieve perfection but i think they did i think they did it's a product that we use and love daily right when you text me when you text me john you text me this a couple paragraphs right cool idea.

2:37I actually like that Apple botches the summary because it inspires me to think, what would John think in this circumstance? Exactly. Exactly. What would John want me to think that he was saying before Apple kind of stepped in? And so I think you're totally right. I think Apple intelligence, criminally underrated. I agree. Honestly, John, I would take it a step further please just eliminate all original all the original text of every message and i message and only provide back and forth sort of ping pong summaries kind of like a game of telephone in some way yeah and just let apple intermediate everything because 100 you know if yeah and i think i think a lot of people were critical of the genmoji campaign but as as someone who's sponsored by adquick we love out of home campaigns and i think that that was also something that with the long arc of history we'll look back on as as as an iconic campaign exactly it was it was contrarian up there with 1984 i agree um and and so many of these other you know the ipod campaign right so so these type of iconic imagery and we spent a lot of time talking about the genmoji campaign right and we did and and uh many people would say all attention you know even though we we had some critiques but yeah but all attention is good attention and and um yeah when you think that's part of the show is like yes you could say we were critiquing but a lot of the show is humorous and so yeah i would now my message to apple is like those critiques those were the jokes this is the serious part yeah now i'm serious and i'm saying they've never done anything wrong everything's perfect and i want to interview so let's let's make it happen but you know the funny thing is that i was actually obviously we're kidding around a little bit but um i was i was reflecting on the fact that I am actually more bullish on Apple than John Gruber right now because after the state of Cupertino came out me and you were talking and I was taking the position that like Tim Cook because of how he handled the supply chain and the tariff stuff that was actually all back in one trade He made it all back in one trade.

4:40And so, you know, I think that yeah, the Apple intelligence thing it hasn't gone perfectly, but But the execution I mean, it's still massive company and they're doing great And I think that there's a world where they land this in a very interesting way with partnerships and they open things up. And there's some really, really interesting outcomes that could happen. So, anyway. The question is for Grubber, how much angrier does he get at Apple as he gets less and less access, right? Did they awaken, you know, a monster? Yeah, yeah. You'd think that you'd want to have him come on and kind of ask the hard questions and make your case and win him over.

5:20You know, they have a longstanding relationship. Also, did you say Grubber? It's definitely Gruber. Gruber, sorry. I like Gruber, though. That's great. But yeah, he was talking to Ben Thompson and saying he's kind of relieved because this was going to be one of the harder interviews because the expectation would be that he asks the hard questions, right? and that he actually pushes them because he has been a, although he's obviously been very, it's easy to be pro Apple over the course of his career because Apple's been on an absolute tear. And so if you're, like the correct analysis of Apple at every point in the last two decades has been, the stock's about to rip.

6:00And if you just kept saying that, you were right again and again and again. It sounded like you were glazing or being shilling, but like you were also correct. And so people look back and they're like, yeah, that's good journalism. buffett bought apple when it was already the most valuable public valuable company in the world exactly exactly it was not a uh you know there there were people making that same trade yeah just thinking oh i should just buy the biggest company and buffett was basically making the bet that it was undervalued at that point massively great well uh really quickly we we're gonna do some ads we're gonna tell you about ramp time is money save both easy to use corporate cards bill payments accounting and a whole lot more a lot more place uh we love ramp i'm gonna get to see the ramp founders this weekend it should be a lot of fun uh anyway let's rip through some news i want to give a little update on like what did happen this week because there were a bunch of small stories nothing really big that became the current thing um but but we should rip through this so uh elon musk's neural link raised uh 600 million dollars and 9 billion valuation this feels like old news to me.

7:07I don't know if that's just because I've been hearing through this, through the rumor mill, but I'm very excited for what they're building. We talked to Ashley Vance a little bit about Neuralink and the progress. And it's kind of underrated because the first, the first time it happens, it's like a miracle with that one Neuralink patient, but there's been a few and Ashley Vance has actually gone and interviewed others. And everything that I've seen is that this project moves slowly, like many, like, like SpaceX, where there's regulatory concerns and FDA approvals, but the foot is not off the gas.

7:38And it just continues to grow. The thing that stood out to me here is Neuralink raised$43 million in November, 2023. The fact that there was an Elon company with this much potential in the private markets being valued at$5 billion roughly two years ago is actually crazy. Granted, the round was effectively like an additional tranche that had been part of an earlier ff round but uh but still uh you know uh not not a bad bet yeah but just like insane concentration talent i mean we talked to the teal fellow who was working at neuralink and like that's the dma at that company and uh it's it's pretty remarkable to see like obviously all the focus is on like super long-term brain computer interfaces but when you talk to the neuralink team they're they're much more grounded in the immediate effects of what the technology can do which is like there are a lot of people who are paraplegic it's actually a lot of people that get in pretty horrific accidents like they're they're doing like cliff jumping or skydiving or something and something goes terribly wrong they break their neck essentially like sever their spinal cord and then they just cannot access their limbs and but they're alive and they're going to live out their life and you give them the access to play video games which is the most beautiful gift you can give someone in my opinion totally and so yeah it's always super inspiring and um i'm sure we should talk to some of the the neural link folks at some point what was the name of call in what was the name of uh of the teal fellow who was at neural link do you remember i don't we i mean we interviewed 25 people back to back but uh that was that was one of my favorite moments of the week i oh yeah the the his philosophy of so funny just trying to get two times cooler over and over and over.

9:28And you stack a few 2X wins like that back to back, starting to get pretty cool. So I thought that was an amazing philosophy of life. And he was just skill maxing. I mean, also his definition of cool. I kept expecting it to be like, and then I hit the gym and then I learned to race car. Now he's like building a trumpet from first principles. it's extremely cool it's genuinely cool yeah yeah anyone can uh anyone can hit the gym and uh learn to do a kickflip but yeah build a truck he'll get to he'll get to that those are those are they're down the road for sure down the road uh anyway other fundraising news realit raised 25 million dollars from sequoia to automate general ledger systems using ai for accounting departments sequoia's been big on this application layer value accrual in ai and the application layer Obviously, they have Harvey.

10:18They're in some of the foundation models, but they're also looking for bets in kind of every vertical SaaS category now. So this kind of makes sense. The partner at Sequoia that did the deal said the general ledger is the beating heart of the finance function. And so asking a company to remove it is kind of open heart surgery. So interesting to see how this actually interfaces with some of the other Sequoia bets because they're in Ramp and they're in other companies. but there's certainly more stuff to do inside the enterprise, and there's a bunch of different places. So a$25 million bet makes sense there.

10:53What else is going on? Horizon 3 AI raised$100 million from NEA at a$750 million valuation. AI startup, Chalk. Yeah, lots of size gongs this week, honestly. A Databricks competitor raised a$50 million Series A from Felicitas at a$500 million valuation. there's a bunch of other stuff going on. Databricks, we've talked about the Neon deal, but it's becoming more and more finalized at this point. There's some venture fun news. There's also Clark, led by Brad Mendeziz, the first AI agent to build internal enterprise apps, raised$60 million, which I think we may have covered, but I wanted to give Brad a shout out because I wanted to get him on the show this week.

11:44We didn't end up having the time, but shout out to Brad and the whole team. Yep. So the big news in the technology world in the Wall Street Journal this week is this Google lawsuit that's been going on for a while. Judge considers curbs for Google in AI arms race. And this is kind of interesting because this started around Google search monopoly, which has been well documented. Obviously, they own like 90 % of the search market. They own Chrome and they're the default on Apple. And they have that very lucrative deal for Apple where they pay, I think, over$10 billion to be the default search in Safari.

12:21Isn't it 20 billion? Yeah, it's a lot. And it's just pure profit for Apple. It's pretty awesome. So lawyers are making closing arguments Friday in a landmark antitrust case. 20 billion in 2022. So it may have ticked it from there. Let's go. Size gone. Major size gone. Size gone. Let's hear it for the Apple shareholders. Yeah, you love it. And this is why you can't critique Apple. There's just nothing to critique because they're printing. They're absolutely printing. I mean, truly, they set themselves up with the perfect platform. And so whatever happens next, they make money. They didn't need to come in search.

12:57It's crazy. Yeah, they have the$20 billion search deal with Google. And because of that, they can offer Genmoji for free out of the box. Incredible. It's just that incredible consumer surplus that they're able to deliver. So U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta on Friday questioned how far he should go to limit Google's monopoly in Internet search, including putting curbs on how it competes in artificial intelligence. Then his query came at the beginning of closing arguments in the final phase of the Justice Department's antitrust lawsuit against Google. The judge questioned how questions underscore how much rivals such as OpenAI have already changed how people access information on the Internet.

13:35that have earlier found that Google is a monopolist in search and that it abused its power to maintain dominance. But the government's proposals for improving competition include curbing Google's ability to promote Gemini, its AI product that competes with ChatGPT. I wonder if that's part of the story around Gemini being hard to find. There's this constant critique on X that Google has incredible models, incredible products, but they're just not distributing or surfacing them well. And I wonder if it's less of a product management mistake, like the product manager made the wrong decision, or the lawyers came in and said, hey, I know that the product management best practices would be to roll this in.

14:20But if you do that, we're at antitrust risk. So we have to make it harder for you to sign up. Yeah, but I mean, this proposal from Judge Meadows is a proposal. it isn't it wouldn't the strategic thing to do as google is to just say like well we're going to promote this as much as we can until we're told we can't right no i so so yes i think they would preemptive idea of like the speed limit 60 you go 59 but i think internally at some of these companies that have been really scarred by antitrust and and legal battles sometimes the legal department says the speed limit 60 product managers everyone's going 45 because we are actively being tailed by a cop they don't have their lights on yet but but they could turn those lights on you know how people like you know start going five under ten under when there's a cop behind them that's i think that might be a little bit of a dynamic at some of the big tech companies uh i think bill gates talked about this at microsoft how uh part of the reason why he transitioned out and and balmer came in was just he got so tied up at antitrust legislation and and uh and antitrust fights that it became like a soul-sucking job and he couldn't do the thing that he wanted to do which was just like build computers and so there's this interesting dynamic where you could imagine a lawyer saying like i'm gonna get fired if we get a massive lawsuit or something like that and so to protect this i'm okay with us growing a little bit slower i'm okay with these new products being and it's because they're not comped on did you deal with the innovator's dilemma and find the big next wave, right?

15:59They're comped on how bad are things in the courts right now. And also, if you're a product manager and a lawyer on the team comes to you and says, like, legally, I'm recommending that we don't do this, it's very hard to push back on that. It's not the same as the dynamic between a designer and an engineer, where the engineer might say, oh, this is maybe better from an engineering perspective, and it's more of a discussion i feel like when when the legal team shows up it's usually like they are issuing a uh they're they're dictating what will happen and most people are just saying okay well legal said we have to do it this way so we're going to do it this way yeah but i don't know um the interesting dynamic here is around uh like the the case specifically is not directly shaping how google deals with generative AI and their new products, but it could have knock-on effects because they are proposing the forced sale of the Chrome browser and preventing Google from being able to pay Apple to be its default search engine and requiring it to share data with competitors.

17:02And now this is obviously bad for a number of reasons, but the interesting thing in the context of AI is that all the data that goes into Chrome and Google search from these extra search. It's not just about running more ads. Obviously, it is. Obviously, if they're paying Apple$20 billion, they're probably making$40 billion in ads off of those searches or something like that, right? But that's also really, really valuable data that they're going to be using to train the next generation of Gemini. And so if they lose a little bit of that edge in the flywheel to something like ChatGPT where people are going back and forth and the data flywheel is spinning up faster at OpenAI, that could actually put them at a place where the data is compounding slower.

17:47And so they're not able to stay on that Pareto frontier of the best model at every single price that they've been so happy with. The interesting thing to me is, have you heard the story of how Google originally built the algorithm for auto-complete? This is interesting, by the way. Yeah. i i don't think this would be the case for for our audience but safari apparently has 90 percent of the of the browser market share on iphone i imagine a lot of people listening have chrome installed and and prefer that but i use safari on iphone safari guy yeah i use safari it just feels like it's the it's the default i've tried to use chrome and the iphone keeps pump like pumping me back oh do you want to open this in safari and i've noticed that uh with the cookies if you're logged in in safari and then you're on the x app and you open a link that will open a safari web view it doesn't open a chrome web view and so the safari web view it's like an ios code module if you're logged in in safari that will log that will stay logged in even in when even even when you're in the Safari web view inside of Instagram or inside of X.

19:03And so that extra benefit is enough for me to use a second browser, even though on my desktop I use Chrome. And I'm losing that connection. It's like I want the mobile experience to be really cohesive. So I don't know if that's just like boomer mode, but it seems to be working for me. We need a boomer sound effect. So anyways, going back, you said the Justice Department, which brought the case against Google in 2020, has proposed forcing the sale of its Chrome browser, are preventing Google from being able to pay Apple to be its default search engine. The department says the uncommonly harsh remedies are supported by a legal standard created when the U.S.

19:38government tried to break up Microsoft over 20 years ago. All three of the DOJ's major remedies are aimed at helping generative AI providers take share from Google, says Paul Gallant, a policy analyst for T.D. Cowan. The government hasn't met the standard of proof for obtaining such drastic remedies. Google's lawyer, John Schmittleen, argued Friday, the Justice Department didn't prove that Google's exclusive contracts with device makers such as Apple were the primary cause of maintaining its monopoly. Yeah. You've got to be happy if you're Sam or Arvin from Perplexity right now, given that the DOJ is explicitly stating we are trying to help generative AI providers take care from Google?

20:27Yeah, yeah, it makes sense. The data flywheel is interesting. I got to tell the story of the original Google autocomplete algorithm. They were, this was prior to transformer-based language models, but they needed a way to autocomplete on Google search. As you type, it fills it in. And what they found to be the most effective data set was, let's say you're searching for something like how to take the train from SFO to San Francisco, and you type it incorrectly, you misspell San Francisco, or you misspell SFO or something. What they found is the best way to generate a massive data set of auto completions is just look at when someone types one thing, and then they type a similar query immediately after within the next like one minute and because because if google fails and gives you and doesn't understand the query you'll typically the human will go and correct the query and be like oh i misspelled san francisco i need to spell it correctly i will go spell it correctly and but but how do you send that signal to google that that the what what is the correct way to spell san francisco or what is the correct search term whether what is the right way to phrase this question well they were able to create this massive data set just by looking at like one query a query b and then and then just telling you are you sure you don't want to just do the next query immediately so it's the same kind of predictive text but when you're at google scale that has incredible value and you can imagine that having a big data flywheel uh potential at google as they scale up uh generative ai um so anyways judge meta said uh said he expects to issue a ruling in august google which has roughly 90 market share of online searches proposed a narrow set of remedies that would modify its exclusive agreements with apple as well as mozilla and android to allow for more competition it has said it would appeal the judge's ruling uh sounds like whatever whichever way it shakes out yeah there's so there's so many different things going on here's the interesting thing too so google's already paying samsung and motorola to pre-install gemini on devices which is interesting so uh potentially uh uh you know counterpoint to what you were saying earlier around you know wanting to be if the speed limit's 60 stay at 45.

22:48this feels like you know basically being like the speed limit is 60 here but it's 80 over here let's go 80. yeah i'm surprised they even have to pay them because like samsung and motorola build off of uh build off of uh android so you would think it would just come pre-installed as like a default android app but i'm sure that there's a debate because uh uh samsung probably has their own foundation model and and and could auction that off and so it's kind of up for debate but that certainly wasn't the case with like the other stock features of android and there's so now with the new ones they gotta they gotta figure out the the deal But yeah, there's so many interesting things going on with Google with like absolute dominance in video generation, absolute dominance on YouTube.

23:33Like the YouTube model just seems like stronger than ever and compounding, compounding and like not going anywhere. Like just the absolute best business model. And then some weakness in search, which is obviously huge on overall earnings. Well, the funny thing is you could imagine search is getting more competitive naturally, right? as people use LLMs to do things that they would traditionally use a regular search engine for. And you can imagine two years from now, the Department of Justice taking this massive victory lap of being like, you know, we created competition in this market. You know, we did our job.

24:06And it ultimately was just from the creation of new technology that Google itself has played a big role in creating. So I'm much more in favor of letting the best technology win and the best teams win. And it's unclear to me right now if there really needs to be any meaningful intervention. Well, if you have the best technology, you need the best design tool, go to Figma.com, think bigger, build faster. Figma helps design and development teams build great products together. Go to Figma.com. I've been seeing a bunch of people starting to use Figma Make and realizing how powerful it is. starting to take hold i will try to pull i have the post in here somewhere yeah we'll get to it later but it's very cool to see uh yeah and angela leo says uh h-o-l-y-s-h-i-t which we will not say on the show friendly uh just got in just got access to figma make beta on our team account and i'm totally mind blown these are mocks that we one shot prompted and it's interactive buttons tabs prototype works all and all the react code is there to copy and paste into an application that's very exciting congratulations to the team um very very cool that they're getting this out into the world um anyway uh other deals that are going on uh the ray-ban maker uh how do you pronounce this esler i just know his luxotica luxotica uh luxotica i never i never had seen Essilor.

25:42Essilor Luxottica is buying Optegra in a medical AI push. So Luxottica partnered with Zuck on the Meta Ray-Bans and they're getting more into AI and smart glasses. Interesting to see the game. Optegra operates eye hospitals in the UK, Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, and the Netherlands. So interesting. You think of Luxottica as a consumer product company, but this is a very different kind of business to integrate yeah it's such an interest it's such a different approach to the meta ray-bans like the the the reason it made so much sense for luxotica to partner with with meta on the meta ray-bans because it's a fashion item like you put it on your face and meta doesn't need to recreate an iconic silhouette it's really really hard yeah iconic silhouette for sure and and meta i mean the quest looks okay but it has not reached anywhere near the kind of final form factor that the ipod had or the iphone had like the the silhouette as you as you mentioned and so to to jump into and it's on your face so it's not even something that's like oh yeah it's a little bit of an awkward device like it looks like a wallet but i put up with it because i'm only using it when i when i'm when i pull it out it's like no these are going to be on your face all the time they need to look good and the ray-bans are so iconic it made a ton of sense and they're able to draft off of ray-bans marketing and brand and they have asap rocky is their creative director there's real momentum there they don't need to reinvent uh fashion while they try to create a new technology platform yeah yeah but it's a little bit different when you're talking about um uh like medical ai where i think you would think that like like like a branded product would be a little bit less important but i guess uh optegra operates a network of over 70 eye hospitals and diagnostic facilities across the uk czech republic poland slovakia and the netherlands its offering comprises ophthalmic treatments and effective vision correction procedures supported by artificial intelligence in the pre and post op phases the transaction details were not you want to know something interesting so since doing the show my eyesight has actually gotten better really and i think it's because we spent we spend a lot of time looking at screens which probably isn't good but typically it's screens that are far away guests on they're far away so my vision is actually getting better narrative violation but i didn't even realize you could i thought your eyes only got worse i didn't realize you could get your eyes better he's like going to the gym for your eyes basically you can you can yeah you can effectively work out your eyes it's just a lot of people get a lot of people get into routines where they're either looking at their phone computer um and there's not a lot of like you know intensive exercise at other sort of consistent ranges i think yeah yeah interesting anyway uh report from the information says every vc backed ipo in the past 12 months has been a down round uh silence yep this moment of silence is brought to you by adquick out of home out of home advertising.

28:50Anyways, back to the news. But there's an interesting wrinkle here. So there's some good data in this article by Corey Weinberg in the information. And there's also some good news, which we'll get to. So when banking app Chime goes public next month, it will mark the eighth straight venture capital backed IPO in the last 12 months that has been valued less than it was in private fundraising rounds. Chime was valued at$25 billion in 2021, but its bankers have been discussing pricing its shares at roughly an 11 billion valuation. That's a pretty significant down around less than more than 50 % off.

29:22Startup valuations are far lower than several years ago. So a lot of these companies, they raised big rounds during the Zerp era. Now they got to get out, got to get liquidity. And so they're willing to take a little bit of a haircut in trade for actually being able to do some distributions. Because even though the most recent backer might be taking a little bit of a haircut, a lot of the early Backers are still like, well, yeah, I invested at 10 million. I'm happy with an$11 billion. Yes. An example is the founders are happy. The employees are happy. Forerunner did the seed round. They probably invested in a bunch of other rounds.

29:54Yep. But their entry is so low that I imagine they're going to do fine. Totally. If it gets priced at 11. Kristen Green's on the Midas list for that specific deal. Yep. Among others. But yeah, many investors are facing losses when companies go public at lower valuations. Yes, but again, these are later stage investors where even the LPs might have the assumption that they'll hold a little bit longer. And that's what this article gets into. So quickly, let's go through some of the IPOs that have gone out and where they're pricing. So Chime was$69 a share in 2021. Upcoming, we know that it's down about 50%.

30:30Circle, last private round, was at$42. The IPO is predicted to be at$26. so down 38 percent hinge health went from 77 in september 2022 to 32 down 59 that's a pretty steep haircut mntn uh which was actually a little bit better just down 30 percent from peak yeah e-torro 66 percent core weave down 15 although i feel like core weave has lifted uh service Titan down 16 % Tempest down 35%. Now there are a couple I bought a and rubric did pop after the IPO or at least price higher than the previous round. So let's hear it for rubric and I bought a but what's interesting is that the information shares some data on companies that went public at discounts to the last fundraising tended to perform strongly in the public markets.

31:28And so So Reddit went out at a lower valuation than their previous private market round, but then they went up 221 % since IPO. Same thing with CoreWeave, went out at a slight haircut to the last private valuation and is now up 164%. MNTN is also up 63%. ServiceTighten up 59%. Tempest up 47%. HinchHealth up 22%. eToro up 19%. And so it's not all bad news. And there might be some sort of narrative where, you know, there's been this there's been this story of the Zerp era that the private markets went crazy, that the valuations were super, super high, like crazy revenue multiples. And so you go out to the market, you talk to your banker and you could do your IPO roadshow and you say, hey, look, we're taking our medicine.

32:14We are going out at a price that is a discount to our last private valuation. But we've grown so much. It's been three years. The business was sound. These businesses weren't frauds. They weren't bankrupt. They weren't like no users. They were just a little hotly valued for a while. And they say, hey, retail or whoever's buying in the IPO, we're giving you a discount to what the investors paid in the last round. And then that sets them up for an actually like new, new, new resets the valuation, gets them into a like a like a liquid position where they can actually grow and build up earnings, beat earnings a couple of times and then go on an absolute tear, a generational run, potentially run.

32:56Yeah, it's good. It's good. We, you know, having a number of IPOs end up, you know, you want the the the retail or. or institutions coming in to not get hosed every single time. Yeah, yeah, totally. And if you, yeah, I mean, that was the other story. The ZERP was that, like, there were a lot of SPACs that went out, that went way down. And so it's almost better to go out at a discount and then build back up, especially if there's a hold period, lockups for various investors, like you want to be growing in the public markets. You don't just want to get out a super high valuation. You know, an example, a company that went out in December 11th of 2020, Airbnb is actually if you just bought the day that it went out, you'd be down 8 % after five years.

33:42So again, priced very efficiently. It did pop. But then it's just been effectively flat to down since then. Yeah. Well, if you're thinking about taking your company public anytime soon, you got to get on Banta. Automate compliance. Manage risk. Prove trust continuously. Banta's trust management platform takes the manual work out of your security and compliance process and replaces it with continuous automation, whether you're pursuing your first framework or managing a complex program. They make compliance a joy, John. They make it a joy. It used to be painful. Now it's joyful. It's joyful. Go to Vance.

34:18Another big read in the information about Jensen Wong. He used to delegate politics until Trump's return. We've been talking about Jensen going on an absolute tear, going to all these different conferences. His picture is absolutely wild. Paralago visits and a budding relationship with President Donald Trump to reopen a path to China, which demands his attention too. So big, big questions about how NVIDIA can maintain some position in China while obviously there is a decoupling going on. Yeah, it's interesting to see. I was too fixated on this image, which is iconic, albeit a bit silly. Yeah, since the start of this year, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang has been thrust into an unexpected new role, chief lobbyist for his company, forcing him to carry his hopes, suggestions, and pleas directly to President Donald Trump.

35:11Many of Huang's conversations with Trump have happened at Mar-a-Lago, Trump's residence and private club in South Florida, and Huang has made far more visits there than have been publicly reported, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter. uh indeed these uh yeah i don't even know i don't even know how to say that but the next line is interesting nvidia executive to remark on uh wang's absence from the company uh we see a lot less of jensen he's been traveling to florida a lot but i mean this is what we this is what we were commenting on even a few weeks ago just i mean this guy's conference schedule alone ignore the lobbying is you know feels like a couple a week sometimes more yeah and it makes sense because like like as we saw with how tim cook handled the tariff situation with apple even if there is going to be a decoupling having insight into how that will unfold and what the speed limit will be in one month in six months in 12 months like we know jensen's going to go one under but what is the speed limit going to be so you don't get caught with buying a car that goes 200 miles an hour and the speed and the speed limit 65 so uh i'm sure it's i'm sure it's top of mind for him but it also seems like there's there's the flip side of this like this this is this story is being told from the perspective of like the bear case of like china going wrong for nvidia but there's also the flip side which is like trump is clearly reopening relationships with new countries saudi arabia uae Qatar potentially.

36:47And those are new markets as the diffusion rule gets phased out. And those are major, major drivers of GPU buying. And if there's a Stargate in every new country that Trump visits and opens up diplomatic relations with, rolls out some trade deal, that's hugely incremental. Yeah. The other thing is Jensen is continuing to embrace and NVIDIA are continuing to embrace China. I mean, they're setting up new, they're investing more in this facility in Shanghai, more into on the ground R &D. So it doesn't feel like, well, while Jensen is having to sort of massage the relationship with the White House, he's not pulling back from China in any meaningful way that I can see.

37:36Yeah. I mean, what's interesting is like we were talking to Aaron again about this idea of uh of standardizing on the american ai stack and we were only talking about the jump ball countries right it's like saudi arabia is gonna want gpus those are either going to be from huawei ascend chips or nvidia there's really no no one else in the conversation they're either going to be running llama or open ai code or deep seek and manis right yeah um And what's interesting is like, is there a world where standardizing on the American AI stack in China is the right move? That's a very controversial thing to say or even explore, I think.

38:22I probably default against it. But I wonder if there's some sort of good ending there where keeping China reliant on American technology is actually better than them developing their own tech tree. Like out-competing Huawei in a free market could work. I'm like 1 % on that. But I want to hear from other people. yeah i mean jensen is finessing the situation i'm looking right now at the polymarket largest company end of 2025 nvidia is actually in the lead right now at a 37 37 chance at with microsoft at a 36 chance wow so um pretty uh people believe in the leather jacket man anyway uh let's take a quick second to tell you about linear linear is a purpose-built tool for planning and building products meet the system for modern software development streamline issues projects and product roadmaps go to linear.app john asked me this week if we could also use linear to plan and track our workouts we're gonna do this we're gonna do this i didn't ask you for permission i told you what's gonna happen show but uh you know using you know bodybuilding is you know potentially i'm sure linear would say you know that's not a core focus small market small market but you know i think we can show them that that bodybuilding is you know potentially you know an entirely new opportunity um yeah it's the next big tam expander for them especially when you think about how linear has agents you're gonna have an agent constantly going out there finding the next trend in science-based lifting, figuring out exactly what workouts you should be doing, building that into your linear plan.

40:18Then you show up to the gym, just open your linear app, start checking off the issues. Oh, put in a ticket. Oh, my delts aren't 3D? My traps aren't eating my head? Okay. Kari's going to text us and be like, guys, guys, I know it's funny, but please don't tell the market that we're getting into bodybuilding. But we can use, it's an open ended tool and we're gonna we're gonna push it to the limits yeah other news in the information vc funds are for sale at a discount we were talking about this a little bit um 2025 was supposed to be a year of cash windfall for venture capital backers as companies that had delayed going public finally made the leap we were tracking some big uh deca corns that had hired cfos that had previously taken companies public the ipo window was supposed to be opening up the market it was ripping then we had the tariffs news and the martin and the ipo window kind of shut a little bit now it's opening again but there's still a you know more demand than ever for liquidity and so and the taco looks like some funds are trying to sell the taco meme is really putting you know putting us in a in a precarious position that the trump always chickens out uh uh whoever whichever journalist asked Trump about that to his face, you know, potentially could be responsible for another freeze in the IPO markets, but hopefully not.

41:45Yeah. So. So the information writes, that hasn't happened with a roller coaster stock market delaying many anticipated IPOs. LPs and VC funds have been finding new ways to cash out of their stakes in private tech firms. Some are selling their ownership of VC funds. The VC funds in turn have been putting their own startup stakes up for sale. That means ownership of hot startups like Stripe and Databricks are sometimes up for grabs. The takeaway, Nokia pension plan plans to sell. Nokia pension plan sells VC fund stakes. Lee Fixel's family office sells dozens of early stage fund stakes. Buyers hunt for fund stakes at steep discounts.