Weekly Recap: Tesla's Crazy Plan, USA vs. Google, Palantir CEO on Conspiracy Theories

28:03Because I'm like, I'm going to fuck these people. And the basic way I'm going to do it is going back to like dyslexic organization, orchestration, if we're going to have the best products, the best people, I'm going to recruit those people. I'm going to make sure they're the most valuable and I'm going to put them in enterprises that value us. And if you don't value us, go, go work, go, go work the people that hate us. Try them out. Yeah. Do you have advice for young people? I mean, you said like artists like people, not literally artists. You said, you said the company is like an artist colony.

28:32Yeah. They just become an artist. People underestimate like their artistry because like from a young age, you get huge benefits for conforming and you can say, well, I don't, I mean, the central advantage of being dyslexic, we can't conform. So that was that ends up being a huge because you just can't. So you're going to have to. So your basic thing, you do not conform. And by the way, the people who are telling you simplistic bullshit, that means, you know, like meritocracy isn't going to matter. You're not going to judge all these conspiracies. It's you can't do wealth accumulation if you're in this country, like in America.

29:05I think actually a lot of these things are true in other countries. But in this country, they're teaching you how not to learn, how to be complacent, how to give up your agency, how to fail, and how to blame it on anyone else. And if you're – so you have to say it's like all that – Reject that. Yeah, reject that. That's kind of – and then you have to really, really look at people and judge them by their fruits. The best way to learn is to look at somebody and say, okay, well, you know, it's like, you know, you work with somebody like the co-founding team at Palantir. So you have Peter, Joe, Stephan, Nathan.

29:34like part of what made us so good is it's like okay you can measure yourself it's like you know when i started at palantir i actually just because i just wanted to be left alone i was like yeah i'm gonna make some money i'm gonna move to berlin i'm gonna live a debaucherous life that was my goal like i'm moving to berlin i thought i needed 250k i was like a 250k is a minimum a million dollars a maximum i'm moving to berlin i'm gonna do like debauchery forever bergheim and yeah uh I had to like, yeah, so it's a remote office. But like you then measure yourself and it's like, okay, well, I'm highly differentiated on measure on, on managing complicated people who have to believe their opinion is their opinion, but still have to build a product that actually delivers value.

30:19That's my differentiation. And so like you, you, you surround yourself and then remember, you have to remember the So being persuasive and being right are not correlated. So you have to really look at people who are historically right, rebuttably give them the rebuttable presumption that they are right, and work back to discover if they're right or wrong. And all these things, for example, on the Palantir thing, it's a great lesson. Go listen to our critics. Whatever critic you love. We're a conspiracy theory. You can take the left-wing version, which is like, Like Palantir is stripping you of your civil liberties, which some people on the right believe.

30:57Palantir is a Jewish conspiracy run by a mutt somehow. Okay, whatever. You know, it's like, okay, well, go. Actually, how does the product work? Does the product protect data? How does it protect it? Is it better than any other company in the world at doing this? How do you build a company? Do you think it's just like an allocation based on a conspiracy? Why did we work? Yeah, just pick your conspiracy and that's the strategy. But then unpack it and learn for yourself. Like, did this work? How did this work? How did they do it? Assume that at every single decision, if it was a decision anyone else would have made, you would not have worked because that's a commodity.

31:31Commodities aren't valuable. And then apply that to your life. What part of this do you understand? Like, you know, what part do you not understand? What part do you understand better than them? What part could you do better than them? And the weird thing about LLM Ontology Foundry is this actually will work for anyone watching this podcast. If you're watching this podcast and you enjoy this, you've already passed the test. I don't care whether you're a welder, a plumber, a carpenter, an astrophysicist, or somebody who'd like to build a business or just want to get rich or you want to get enough money and move somewhere and do what I want.

32:08Move to Berlin. It's not the right place anymore. But any case, but you've already passed that test. Now go out and pass the test for life. Yeah. You said Germany is not the right place anymore. What is your current mental model for the state of the world order? like is is is america in decline are we do we need to bring things back like who are the power players america is power pair number one right now and like all this media bs it's like you know you got to compare america to and you can't compare america to some thing you're pretending in your head could be america compare it to europe yeah compare i don't know what you want to compare it to china like you want to have no rights you know i mean again i'm actually not anti-chinese culture but ccp you know it's like a compared to europe like no tech industry yeah everyone rich was born rich basically or with almost no exceptions the most important germanic company i hope someone from germany is listening to this uh comped aus palo alto is peter peter thiel und ish it's like the only german company since sap that's real like and what they won't listen to us like just think about that you have peter thiel like the most important venture person maybe that's ever lived.

33:17Co-founder of Palantir and you have me. It was like somewhat, you know, basically partially dramatics, did my PhD in German. And you have no tech industry. Wouldn't you have us on fucking speed dial? Yeah. I mean, like on speed dial. Like, you don't have to listen to what we're saying. You don't have to agree with what we're saying. Who are you talking to? Who are you talking to? You're talking to your, like, I don't know, expert that came here and studied us. Trust the experts. Trust the experts. It's like, so it's, yeah, it's like energy. Do you think they will? Do you think that there's optimism around the idea of somebody shifting?

33:49You still pick up the phone call, right? Oh, no, no. I mean, I pick up it's crazy who calls me. It's like, it's honestly like, I can't talk out of school who calls me. You'd be surprised when people come and I begin every call with, don't listen to me. Very few people have. I'm going to give you the freak show answer. You probably want to ignore it. This is what I think. And they're like, huh? Okay. Yeah. Huh? Yeah. Okay. Some call back, some don't. But yeah, of course, I would. I mean, I have a lot of, I mean, like, honestly, We have a huge retail, crazy thing about Germany is a huge retail investor.

34:16Sure. They don't admit it in public, but in private, they're like, keep going, keep going. But yeah, no, I'm just saying the point I'm saying is, you know, it's like, oh, so then it's like energy, technical talent, understanding how to manage the technical talent. That's an art. Like we have the right venture people, the right entrepreneurs, the right spirit. We have generations of people who are entrepreneurial here. It's like no tall poppy syndrome. Yeah, well, it's funny you mentioned that. That's like, yeah, like we were very, well, this is the thing. We have to fight for this. Yeah. Because that no tall pop.

34:50What that basically means, and people may not realize this, but in any other, every other culture I know of, and like, and I've lived abroad in Germany, Europe, incredible cultures. But if you, your head sticks above the line, it gets cut off. Yep. There's one culture where that doesn't happen is here. The only thing is we have to fight for that because the thing that unifies the woke left and the work right is they don't like the consequences of meritocracy they want to work back to the inputs so in that that like just will screw society it's like you've got to be able to allow people to succeed wherever they go now i was kind of still progressive you know it believes it i super would like the inputs to be fair yeah but the outputs those are the outputs yep the results of freedom okay last question we got to get you out of here um i walked by your office there were some kettlebells what what are the kettlebells for oh okay well this is slightly long i'll give you a short version so to be a cross-country skier you've got to train year round so you need substantial vo2 max and actually uh you need to be strong per unit of weight so as an example i do um uh three days a week of um kind of above and below lactate threshold running but mostly pretty far and then once a week kind of at and then i do uh two days of strength one day of like um endurance strength and currently the thing i'm actually really proud of is i i just started doing hang from a bar as a dead hang like four months ago and i i hit four minutes and 36 seconds four minutes and 36 seconds what's the goal for the end of the year what do we do well actually my goal for the yeah you gotta hit the soundboard this isn't just money No, I mean, my goal for the year was for actually the next 12 months was four minutes.

36:35Okay. But then there's the number two. We've got to get those numbers up. Well, no, but the number two, the second best mountain climber in Norway. I don't know if we know his name. But I have a picture. He did four minutes and 22 seconds. Ooh, there you go. What can I do? We did it part time. Thank you for having us. I appreciate your work. We'll talk to you soon. Have a great rest of your day. Congrats. My question is, uh, we're going to go through the timeline. Uh, Tyler Cosgrove has written out the full United States versus Google case timeline. We're going to dig through. Um, we're also going to go through Ben Thompson's, but my question that I want to answer is what do these, what do these pay for default deals look like going forward?

37:19Specifically in artificial intelligence, there is going to be a particularly odd dynamic around how LLM queries route on the iPhone by default. Like the last possible moment to start taking AI seriously and build like a serious AI foundation model lab, the last moment that you could credibly do that, I feel like was earlier this year. Like that was when the last train left the station. And who was driving that train? Mark Zuckerberg. And what did he do? He went and tried to buy everything that was buyable and hire everyone who was hireable. And everything that weren't buyable. Yeah, for sure. And what he wound up with was not exactly a dream team.

38:00He didn't get Ilya. He didn't get Dario. He didn't get Demis, but he got a really solid crew, right? And some great business guys. Some great business guys, some great researchers. He also just filled out the researcher tiers. He's got a ton of researchers. So I feel like I wasn't worried about salary caps. No, no, no, not at all. And so, and so we were debating yesterday, whether Alex Wang was a good pickup for Mark meta. And my conclusion is like, he is the best possible option. And I think it'll pencil out. I think it'll be a good deal. It is a big acquisition and it'll be interesting to see how we look on that in a decade.

38:34But I think the opportunity is so big, it makes sense. Um, at the same time, uh, like what would Apple even do if they wanted to compete in AI? Like everyone is taken off. All the pieces are off the board at this point. They don't have the DNA for mega acquisitions. So they're not going to go and try and buy Anthropic. Like that's just not how they work. They don't like writing hundred million dollar checks for talent. Tim Cook only makes$74.6 million a year. They're not going to pay some AI researcher a hundred million dollars. It's just not going to happen. And so everyone else sort of has a dance partner at this point.

39:08Apple wouldn't just be like trying to turn the cruise ship that is Apple. They're building an entirely new cruise ship. It's just not going to happen. So I don't think Apple is going to try and build a serious frontier lab. I think they're going to partner on this. And the question is, where does it leave them? They have something incredibly valuable. Do you know how many active iPhone users there are worldwide right now? One and a half billion. 1.4 billion. Isn't that a ton? That just, I feel like I was, if I had to just guess, I'd be like. Job's not finished. Truly. Truly. But, but so like that is incredibly valuable because it's not just, it's not just over a billion users.

39:47It's over a billion users that have money. They can charge$9.99 a month forever randomly. Yeah. Yeah. So many different monetization, but it was also, it's like, it's, it's the top 1 billion and really usually like basically of like earners because it's the most expensive phone usually. And so, and they also have that button on the side that right now activates something that should feel like AI, but is very clearly far from the frontier. And so the logical outcome feels like a partnership here, but what will the scale and structure of that partnership be? If OpenAI really nails agentic commerce, as semi-analysis suggests, tests, it wouldn't be crazy for OpenAI to pay Apple billions of dollars to be the default.

40:29And so right now we're thinking about if you push the Siri button, you trigger an LLM inference query that's very expensive. Every time I hit chat GPT, it's a couple cents. If I do some crazy reasoning things, some deep research report, it might be a dollar. I don't even know. It's expensive, right? If I'm sending off some agent to go and research every single different type of tennis You trained an aquifer somewhere. Yeah, that's what it feels like, right? It feels like every time you hit a query, it's expensive. And so, but that's going to flip. And I think each query is actually going to be monetizable.

41:02And they're all going to be, they're basically all going to be profitable like Google searches. And so if they are profitable, if every time someone hits an LLM, it's not a cost center, but it's actually a profit center, well, then OpenAI can pay to get more search volume, some more query volume. And so that means that maybe OpenAI will wind up paying Apple billions of dollars to be the default. And of course, they're going to try and build their own device. And there's a lot of other dynamics. But would they go with Gemini? Because they're already on Google for the search default. But would they do that?

41:39Or are they never going to be able to compete there because Gemini is so deeply integrated with Android? and the Android phones are over here kind of doing their own thing. So you can imagine - And over this year, there's been rumors bubbling up of Apple in conversations with Anthropic, with ChatGPT, with Gemini, right? And a lot of these companies have been throwing around some very big numbers with Tim and the Apple team. And I think they had, at least back then, they seem to have some stickers. So right now, it feels like the foundation labs are going to Apple and saying, every time we run a query, it costs us one cent, 10 cents, a dollar, whatever.

42:22You got to pay us to use our amazing intelligence. Yeah. To bring value to your users. But I think it might flip. And I think that each query might actually be profitable just at the query level, because there's going to be commerce that's triggered from those. So in the future, you'll pick up your phone, you'll press the button on the side, and you can instantly fire off a best in class OpenAI agent to do your bidding. So you'll say, order me some creatine and it'll just go do it. And that will be valuable. And that will actually drive, that will be a profitable query. And so OpenAI could potentially be paying Apple for the right to do that.

43:02So right now, OpenAI and Apple do have a partnership in place, but the reporting suggests that no money is directly changing hands, but I don't necessarily expect it to stay that way. So I don't know. What's your take? Do you think that this is reasonable that OpenAI could be paying Apple billions of dollars within the next, I don't know, five years? Or do you think it flips the other way and Apple is the one shelling out billions of dollars for access to frontier AI models from maybe Anthropoc, maybe OpenAI, maybe someone else? Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, The people that are paying for chat GPT today probably have a pretty insane overlap with iPhone customers.

43:45Like it probably looks something like this. I think that Sam recognizes, I mean, every consumer tech entrepreneur has like realized how important it is to integrate at the hardware level. Right. This is why Zuck is hell bent on winning in VR. Right. He's been sick of being at the app layer. And I know that Sam does not want to be in that same, why would he pay billions for Johnny Ive and that team? He understands the importance of the hardware layer and certainly will recognize the leverage that Apple is going to have over the entire ecosystem. I think the question is, a lot of this just comes down to, in my view, are consumers going to be paying for AI in the long run?

44:36I haven't been totally convinced that the everyday American is going to be spending, certainly not$200 a month. I don't even know about$20 a month, right? It's going to ultimately flip. And so I can see there being a period where OpenAI is willing to pay to be like the default intelligence product within the Apple ecosystem. But again, And it is just going to be a really, it'll be an interesting dynamic in partnership, right? Because it's going to, it's so, there's so much tension there because Apple is going to want to, Apple is already selling intelligence as a reason to upgrade the iPhone, right?

45:13And they've gotten lawsuits over this because they sold Apple intelligence. And then people are like, this isn't very smart at all. What did I just buy, right? And so are they going to be incentivized to say - Even 70 IQ is a form of intelligence. It's just a low level of intelligence. Yes. They didn't say Apple high IQ intelligence. They didn't say Apple super intelligence. They just said Apple intelligence. It has some level of intelligence. Apple room temp. Room temp intelligence. Room temp, iApple. What do you think, Tyler? Do you think that OpenAI will be paying Apple or do you think Apple will be paying other foundation labs or where will the flow of money go in the next few years?

45:54Yeah, I don't really see it flipping very soon to where like prompts or tokens are like actually super profitable. Because you need like both massive, you need like way better capabilities and it needs to be way more efficient. Because like if you just have more capabilities, still like right now most people are not paying for ChatGPT. They're just using the, you know, free plan. Free tier. Which is like, if you compare, I mean, if you compare 4.0, like, look at like five months ago, if you compare 4.0 to like 0.3, it was like massive, you know, difference. And people still weren't paying. In cost or in capabilities.

46:32Yeah. Yeah. And people still weren't paying. So you need to be like way better for people to actually start paying or you need to be way cheaper. Yeah. I don't know if I agree with that. I feel like 4.0 was definitely good enough. People were obsessed with it. People were like falling in love with it. Right. Even Meek Mill. Like, I understand. Meek Mill is defaulting. I, as a power user, like, didn't get that much out of it. Yeah, but I think you, like, if you ask normal people what they think of, like, AI, they're like, oh, yeah, this is not going to take my job at all. Yeah. When in reality, if you used, like, O3, and if they used O3 every day, if they were a power user, I think they'd be way more bullish on AI generally.

47:06Yeah. So I think that might be evidence that people, like, I don't know, are not. I think, I mean, one crazy dynamic is Apple says, I mean, if they were to do a deal with OpenAI, they could just say like, great, like we're going to sign up every, like how many paying subs do you have? Great, we're going to start heavily. If Apple just starts heavily pushing ChatGPT, they will by default get their 30 % from the app store, right? But they could work out. So like this could end up being like, even if OpenAI is not directly paying, Apple for it, it could end up generating. I don't think it's enough.

47:45You don't think it's enough. I don't think it's enough money for the value that, that it'll bring on. If it was actually integrated into like the Siri button at the low level, I can just press a button and say, order me creatine, order me creatine. And it knows my address. Cause it knows my home address from my contact in the, in there, it has my payment information saved. It does all of that. Like, I don't know if taking 30 % of my chat GPT subscription, if I subscribe and if I subscribed on mobile, but really most people are going to subscribe on desktop and open AI is going to be constantly being like, Hey, go over here and like use a web view to like subscribe this way and stuff.

48:24I don't know. Uh, it'll be interesting to see how it pencils out. I feel like there's going to be some new deal that, that, that, that's going to happen. Someone's going to, someone's going to pay. Someone's going to bid. Someone's going to pay out. Yeah, the Google team says, hey, we're already paying$20 billion. Why don't we double it to Gemini be the default? Can you imagine? I mean, if Gemini was the default on iPhone, that would be bizarre. But, I mean, it does kind of match with the search deal, right? Anyway, let's read through Ben Thompson. Maybe we go through the history first to get us up to speed, Tyler.

49:01Do you mind taking us through that? Take us through it. so this is the United States versus Google which started in 2020? 2020 starts in October 2020 so that's under Trump so yeah I think let's just go over like kind of the central claim of the actual case first so it's basically that Google is violating the antitrust act of 1890 it's wild to think about you know before Donald Trump was a technology founder with True Social there was a time where he was beefing with big tech Yeah, it's crazy. It feels so long ago. Instead of just competing. Oh, thanks for getting us up on VHS. We needed this. Fantastic.

49:40Only possible on Restream. One live stream, 30 plus destinations. Multi-stream your VHS tapes and reach your audience wherever they are. Head over to Restream. It truly is. Technology is incredible. Yes. Also, yeah, continue. Okay. So Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. I also put some of the victims, previous victims of this act. So we see Standard Oil. Standard Oil. American Tobacco Company, U.S. Steel, AT &T. This is what broke up Bell Labs. Probably set us back a couple decades. Do you know who founded Bell Labs? Who founded Bell Labs? Wait, is it like, oh, I don't know. Is it Claude Shannon? No.

50:20Who founded Bell Labs? Oh. Bell Labs. Bell? Alexander Graham Bell. Alexander Graham Bell. Yeah, that's correct. yep alexander graham bell started bell labs let's go we don't know we don't know how to name we don't know how to name company i know i was looking at the name standard oil american tobacco u.s. u.s. deal what does the a in at &t stand for is that america american technology and me ask gemini okay what does at &t okay anyway continue okay microsoft of course it was a headache for bill gates for his entire career until he retired yeah oh that's so good american telephone and telegraph oh that's so good when you pick a name like that and you actually you understand the job and you're just like yeah standard oil i'm going to standardize oil i need a name for my telephone and telegraph company what about american american telephone and telegraph company founder okay okay anyway so okay so so basically the claim is that um they're legally monopolizing search engine and the advertising markets like in search.

51:23Yep. So they're locking up distribution. Okay. They're self-reinforcing barriers to entry. And they're like - And the evidence is that they pay billions to Apple and other vendors. Exactly. Probably hundreds of billions at this point because it's been like 10 billion for decades. Yeah. Yeah. So that is, they filed the case DOJ in 2020. wait should we start with the history of google search and safari and then through this yeah that might be better so yeah okay so so google search and safari so 2002 2002 this is pre-iphone yeah this is pre-iphone this is just on safari on the i guess the mac or whatever it was yeah so so google is the default there it's just like they just apple just picked that yeah it's just the best thing they just put it in yeah there's no so the google has been the default search engine on Apple devices since 2002.

52:16And we don't know specifics. Most recently, it was$20 billion annually, but it's been an over 20-year partnership. I mean, that's a crazy, it's crazy to go. I mean, Google was founded late September 1998. And then by 2002, you're the default on Apple, like the previous era, biggest computing company. I mean, I guess Apple wasn't like what it is today back in 2002, kind of pre-iPhone. It was certainly not like the biggest company the world, but still like pre Tyler too. I mean, three years, 2005, 2005. Hey, if you want to feel old, born in 2005. Okay. So anyway, uh, Sergey Brin, what does he do?

52:58So, so 2005, Sergey Brin suggests, suggest some kind of revenue share. They always call it a revenue share. Out of the goodness of his heart. What, what is he thinking? That's crazy. I have to assume there's, it's like, there's some competition he's seeing it on the horizon okay yeah um but yeah i like that he they always call it a revenue share they don't they're not paying sure be the default sure sure sure they're just helping a brother out you know and then um 2007 well yeah 2007 2009 these are like the real negotiations they're like it's like sergey bren says like oh yeah we do revenue share but then when it comes down to it he's like well you know let's slow down let's push the brakes a little bit the numbers are getting a little high um and then basically the actual like numbers are not public yeah um they really only show up yeah as a result of this case like them being oh after the fact so we learned this through the case we didn't know for years yeah so it's not really till 2021 so there was like a full decade where people were like yeah like uh google's probably paying apple something but yeah but hiding hiding a 30 million dollars 20 billion dollar line item and you're...

54:00You can do it if... I believe the disclosure rules in SEC filings are something like if it's a division of the company that reports to the CEO, then you have to break out the financials. This is like YouTube. This is the story of AWS when we first got the AWS financials. So if it's just something like some deal and it's just one deal, it's not even like a whole division of the company. It's a deal I did with Steve. Yeah, it's just like... Other income. Something like that. I don't know. Yeah, so 2021, it's kind of revealed, or estimated at least, that payments are around$20 billion a year. And then 2023, this is also a result of the case.

54:43Apple is confirmed to be taking 36 % of the revenue from Safari that Google makes. Okay. So it's similar to their App Store revenue, a little bit higher, 36%. And that's probably how they got to the number. that's pretty crazy making 60 billion dollars off of i never knew they got where they were getting 30 36 for the big man for the big man that's great yeah and then 2025 we're like we know you paid to be here but i'm gonna need a cut too yeah wow yeah okay so let's go through the full case the case so um september 2023 uh this is really the first like actual like trial um it's the bench trial.

55:25I don't really know what that is, but August 2024 is the actual initial judgment. So this is Google is, in fact, violating antitrust. Something needs to be done. We don't know what is to be done. But then we will eventually decide what the punishment is. But they are guilty. They are guilty. There's no results like what are they going to do, but yeah, they're guilty. and then it's not until April of 2025, so this is five years after it was actually filed. There's the remedies trial, I think that's what it's. Sure, yeah, figuring out the remedies. So this is like what is actually to be done. Sure.

56:03Now we know that they're a monopoly, what do we do about it? And then it wasn't until I guess yesterday that it was actually the verdict. That we found out what the verdict was, okay, got it. So I think we already went through some of the verdict, but it's that they the judge denied the DOJ's request for a forced divestiture of Chrome and Android they ordered Google to end exclusive distribution agreements so that's like I think we talked about this too with Apple you can't like just it can't be exclusive to Apple the like payments or whatever yeah what does that mean in practice it can't be exclusive so they have to pay like Xiaomi or something?

56:43Are we talking about other phone manufacturers? Are we talking about other, other search engines? Like I know that it like, like, it's not like if I go into my Safari settings, I, I can't pick bang. Like I, I can still pick other things. It's just the default that they're paying for. Uh, yeah. I dig into that. Jordy, do you want to look that up or Gemini? Okay, cool. I don't, yeah, it's kind of like legalese. Um, and then, then there's, uh, mandating Google to share search index and user basically sharing data with I don't understand the exclusive so so Google pays Mozilla yeah they Mozilla basically wouldn't survive without Google apparently it's like a very significant amount of their revenue which is funny because Google obviously competes with on Chrome with Chrome and then they do this with device manufacturers like Samsung that just makes make you know continue to make Chrome and Google search pre-installed.

57:41Sure, sure. OK. And then what's the last one? Search index, sharing of the search index and user interaction data with rivals. So what is that, Bing? Yeah. So I guess this means, these are all basically direct quotes from the actual file. But I assume it means that they have to just share some of the actual index data from whatever page rank is. They have to put it out publicly. So we've got to hammer the chief product officer of Microsoft today about Bing and what this means. Because, yeah, I mean, there's got to be a way to make money off this if you're Microsoft. This is the way to do it. Okay, anyway, anything else from the history?

58:22Okay, so just to be clear, they prevent exclusive contracts. So Google is barred from entering or maintaining exclusive contracts that give its search engine, Chrome, Google Assistant, or Gemini app a monopoly position on a device. So basically they can't go to a smartphone manufacturer and say you just can't host any other. Sure, sure. In the chat, Pericleet says, Google's only gonna share their search data with other top three companies. It's still remaining a monopoly. Interesting, and people enjoy the VHS. So thank you for tuning in. Also, so these rules also apply to like Gen AI stuff. So all this also applies to like Gemini if they wanna do the same, if they wanna lease it to Apple or whatever.

59:04all the same rules apply about if you've been enjoying the whiteboard segments we are thinking about getting a smart whiteboard where we can put up a fig jam from Figma of course we're sponsored by Figma think bigger build faster Figma helps design development teams build great products together you can get started for free Figma.com let's run through Ben Thompson's take so he kicks it off with Google's remedy decision Alphabet Inc will be required to share online search data with rivals while avoiding harsher penalties including the forced sale we know this Google statement was short and sweet.

59:36Earlier today, US court overseeing the DOJ's lawsuit over how we distribute search issued a decision on next steps. Google closes says, as always, we're continuing to focus on what matters, building innovative products that people choose to love, choose and love. That's a good line. That's a statement of a company that lost some battles, but won the war in my estimation, says Ben Thompson in Stratechery, which you should go subscribe to. There are some cursory objections to Judge Metta's decision, but by and large, that statement exudes relief and rightfully so. The company is truly breathing easier today, however, is Apple.

1:00:15Apple's actually breathing easier because they're getting that sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet, 20, 36 % off the top. 99 % margin, 20 billion a year. The first set of remedies were the ones that Google proposed and has already implemented, namely ending the exclusive agreements that were the foundation of Judge Mehta's original finding of liability. Let's see. I want to know what these actual remedies are. Here we go. Again, this is literally illegal behavior. What we should just highlight again. So Google will be barred from entering or maintaining any exclusive contract relating to the distribution of search Chrome assistant in Gemini.

1:00:56Google shall not enter or maintain any green that conditions the licensing of the Play Store or any other Google application on the distribution preloading or placement of Google search Chrome assistant. This is the bundling thing. So a lot of the antitrust cases hinge on bundling. You say, oh, you can't have the Play Store on your Android phone unless you're defaulting to search, or you have to have Chrome pre-installed if you want access to search. All of that stuff is seen as anti-cognitive. And so Ben says, again, this is literally illegal behavior, so ending it was the bare minimum. Antitrust precedent, however, dictates that judge Meta go further, again, from the opinion.

1:01:37This is from Meta. Yeah. Oh, this is good too. So So they cannot enter or maintain an agreement that prohibits any partner, either Apple or Samsung, from simultaneously distributing any other search engine, browser, or Gen.AI product. So Google can't go to someone and say, hey, in order to have search as your default or Google search or whatever deal we're doing or whatever we're paying you, you can't have Anthropic pre-installed or you can't have Mozilla pre-installed. You can't be in the contract. Yeah, can't be in the contract. And that is illegal behavior. And so ending it is the bare minimum, says Ben Thompson.

1:02:23Antitrust precedent, however, dictates that Judge Mehta go further. Again, from the opinion, the question now is what to do about Google's violations precedent requires fashioning antitrust remedies that effectively pry open to competition a market that has been closed by a monopolist's illegal restraints. Denying the fruits of the violation is a valid objective, and so too is ensuring that anti-competitive behavior will not recur in the same or related ways. the court has broad discretion to impose remedies to accomplish those aims. Judge Mehta laid out four fruits of the violation. The court found that the agreements had four main anti-competitive effects.

1:03:04They, one, foreclosed a substantial portion of the relevant markets, thus impairing rivals' opportunities to compete. Two, denied rivals access to user queries or scale needed to effectively compete. Three, reduced the incentive to invest or innovate in search. And four, enabled Google to increase text ad prices without any meaningful competitive restraint, thereby allowing Google to earn monopoly profits to secure the next iteration of exclusive deals through higher revenue share payments. These effects did not persist independently. Together, they enabled Google to widen the moats and pull up drawbridges to ward off competition.

1:03:38Great analogy. Judge Meta attempts to address number two necessary scale by forcing Google to share various types of data, including Google search index, but not the actual data from the web pages and the index or the output of Google's page rank algorithm. Competitors, which explicitly include Gen AI providers, will get a one-time snapshot, not an ongoing one, and only need to pay Google's marginal costs for providing the information. User click and query data showing what results users clicked on. Competitors will get this data at least twice, but the final number will be determined by the technical committee.

1:04:13The court will set up and oversee. Do you fully understand? like yeah that's a very very odd odd like change and and and remedy like i i i guess it like lets people catch up to where things are it feels like the remedy is like like there has been this this unfair advantage for google for years we're letting everyone catch up and then we're creating like a fair race but we're restarting the race and then everyone can go out and do whatever they want Current thing is big numbers. $200 million for the free press. Barry Weiss's media company to CBS. People did not like the quiet in the chat. They said, scream.

1:04:56$610 million for the browser company. We talked about that a little bit yesterday. Ramp hit$1 billion in ARR. Let's hear it. For Ramp. Great hit. Great hit. $600 billion in Meta CapEx. And$1 trillion potentially on the table for Elon Musk at Tesla. So we're going to go through this. So the Free Press is one of the most impressive media companies built in the last decades. It's Austin Reif from Morning Brew, correct? Yes. Huge congrats to Barry Weiss, Nelly Snoozy Weiss, this is a funny name, for building something truly different. This is, I think, still rumored. I don't think it's fully confirmed at this point, but it's all but confirmed.

1:05:42Yeah, it was hard to tell which side was leaking the news. Yeah, there's this dynamic where media likes to talk about media, and I feel that 100%. It's super interesting to hear about the business of Joe Rogan or the business of Huberman or any of the experts. So obviously, also, you're surrounded by journalists, literally, if you run a media company, so they all talk. I've heard that one before. But you're surrounded by journalists. And so obviously everyone talks and the media leaks out and the news leaks out. And it could be interesting ways for either side to put pressure on getting the finish line.

1:06:21Exactly. Getting what they want out of the deal. Yeah, yeah. And so there's a series of takes. I was talking to a buddy who works in media who was coming at me with like, it's a crazy number. And so that's kind of level one. Level one of the take is like on a price per subscriber basis, seems high. I think they have about a million free subscribers,$200 per free subscriber. Feels like a lot, I guess. Kind of hard to tell if you think about long-term value for CBS. But then others are complaining about the political implications of the deal. Is this something that's like a give to Trump to help get the de-merger, the spin-out approved, something like that?

1:06:58um yeah and i mean this is an eight billion dollar deal this merger and media companies are now entirely like media companies at their best are personality led yep and paying 200 million dollars to bring on you know a face for cbs one of the most important properties makes sense yeah that's my, that's my like level three, like final take, which is that, um, you sort of have to put a, put aside the price per subscriber, uh, you know, take, and you have to put aside the political implications of the take. I just think about it from, it's a big company, 8 billion. You said something around there, uh, does bringing a younger, more entrepreneurial talent into the organization, move the market cap by 1 % or 2 % over the next few years.

1:07:51Like I, it seems like the same math that we're doing for buying a very expensive AI researcher. You're paying a lot of money in terms of like what, what like a salary would count, but you just can't get that level of talent on any sort of normal overall property. Exactly. Exactly. And so I was the, the, the person I was talking to who was like, this is a ridiculous price. I was like, yeah, but dude, like if, if you were at CNN, you could probably add$200 million of value to that organization pretty quickly. And so it's just a matter of time until like the market and the board of directors and the shareholders kind of wake up to that dynamic of how power lost certain people are and actually go and figure out how to get the deals done.

1:08:33And David Ellison is doing deals, right? He just did a deal. So there's a lot of big numbers flying around. And there's an interesting dynamic where the premium, right? We saw this yesterday with the browser. Oh yes, Yes, yes. You do get a big, fantastic outcome for having the thought at the beginning of the name. Maybe we should just be the business production network. Drop the technology. Technology's over. The hype cycle's peaked. We're just the business production. We're in the trough. We're in the trough. We have some fun stuff coming in terms of the hype cycle soon. But it's interesting because many companies just cannot justify putting someone on staff for$100 million W2.

1:09:15We've seen this as Apple with Tim Cook, you know, the CEO pay. Once you get into the eight, nine figures, it just gets hard. Thank you for bringing that up. No, thank you. No, seriously, thank you for bringing that up. Oh, yes. Thank you. Apparently, Tim Cook, we'll try to pull up this video in a bit. Apparently, he said thank you 12 times in two minutes when talking with President Trump last night at the dinner. Yeah. He's very grateful. Um, so the, so yeah, Meta is like the first company to really like break this trend of just like, yeah, we're willing to pay a hundred million dollars in salary.

1:09:50We will do the crazy acquisitions and the aqua hires to get really talented people in the org. But, uh, I don't think other companies are in that world where they could go out and hire somebody like a Barry wise just for a hundred million dollars. Uh, it's gotta be done through an acquisition. That's what gets board approval. That's what gets shareholder approval. And so you're kind of wrapping an individual, an influencer, someone who's incredibly talented and entrepreneurial around an organization just to actually get the cashflow to flow through. It's making me think about CBS news for the first time in decades.

1:10:25Yep. So, yep. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. It's true. And even if the, even if like the, uh, subscriber numbers are like a little low, I mean, honestly, a million is a ton. It's a great job. Um, but even if they are a little low, it's like, well, what is it? What are they compounding at? What will the free press be able to be at in a decade with the support of CBS and the financial backing of CBS and Barry Weiss's execution strategy? Could be$100 million. I don't know. It could be really, really big, but you don't have to raise money for it. You can just focus on growth. Anyway, similar story at the browser company,$610 million from Atlassian.

1:10:58Very interesting deal. The timeline was not a fan of it. They came from the land down under with a Brinks truck. Yes. And so a lot of people are asking, is this some run around by the Australian government to try and influence the browsing habits of Brooklyn hipsters? Yeah. I don't think there's much to that. Try to control the narrative. Exactly. As a way to say, what if we could get all of the data from Brooklyn hipsters, all their browsing information, their communication. Yeah, they're known for drinking PBR, but what if every time they went to PBR on the ARC browser, the DIA browser, it just automatically rerouted them to Foster's.

1:11:35Yeah. Or the AI assistant on the side pop. Oh, you're in DIA and you're asking, oh, what should I do this weekend? And it just auto-populates. Oh, yeah, we're using AI. Why don't you throw another shrimp on the Barbie? Yeah, and if you search, is it true that kangaroos are extremely violent, it'll start spinning it and saying, well, actually, they're only violent when provoked. Provoked, yeah. They're actually quite peaceful. Yeah, your dog actually tried to bark at the kangaroo, and then the kangaroo went after it. Exactly, exactly. I think this is really smart from Australian, from Atlassian.

1:12:13From people pulling the strings in Australia. Pulling the strings, right. Yeah, to get a little bit more influence over the Brooklyn hipster and the Ark and Dia user. Yes. Zeb did not like the acquisitions. Pull this up. Me uninstalling Ark as a certified Atlassian hater. There is a wild gap between the vibes. And so some people had this take that like it was a vibe acquisition. They acquired better vibes with the next generation of founders. I think this is funny, but I think that from what we've seen, Dia, they're going to continue to operate independently. I bet they're going to build some beautiful enterprise browsing experiences like they always have.

1:12:53Yeah. And they should build in, restream one live stream, 30 plus destinations, multi-stream and reach your audience wherever they are. So you should be able to stream from your DIA browser, from your ARC browser. So my take on this was, so basically right now the team is saying we're going to stay independent. We're going to go. But my question is, are they going to stay? Are they going to stick with that narrative of like stay independent? And this is very rare for pre-product market fit acquisitions. I haven't seen a ton of examples of that where a company was acquired that wasn't like clearly on a, you know, just dominant path.

1:13:31Instagram was bought for a billion dollars. Yes. And almost everyone involved at the time thought that it was crazy. They did. Yeah, that is true. At the same time. And it was like a key threat to Meta's business, right? Like the user growth was insane. saint. I mean, I would love to look at the, uh, the retention metrics for Dia versus Instagram because it's totally possible. I don't know. Do you know how many DAUs or total downloads Instagram had at the time of acquisition? I know it was small, but was it sub a million? I feel like it might've been a little bit bigger. Can someone look that up?

1:14:07Uh, but basically look that up, Tyler. I'm also curious about YouTube as well. YouTube was bought for roughly three times, uh yeah and again our the dollar isn't what it used to be yep yes so when instagram was acquired um estimated around 860 000 so less than a million dAUs okay okay so yeah so yeah use though yeah yeah but still i mean we're in the same ballpark here very interesting instagram people that have yeah yeah yeah if dAUs is wildly different than total downloads users okay okay Yeah, yeah, yeah. But still, I mean, we're in the rough ballpark where you could, where at the very least, we have to take what Atlassian is saying and what the browser company is saying at face value.

1:14:51They are saying, we're going to continue building this browser. We're in it to win the AI browser. We're going broad. We're going consumer. This is not, we're acquiring this browser. We're going to bake it into Trello and we're going to bake it into a JIRA. No, I actually disagree with you here. All the messaging was that they're not going to be focused on consumer. Like from Atlassian CEO was that we're going to build great enterprise browsing experience. Oh, okay. Okay. So there's nothing in there that I saw from the Atlassian side that said, we want to win in the consumer. Oh, really? Really?

1:15:29Okay. Interesting. Yeah. They know their business, right? Okay, yeah. So it's very interesting. I can't imagine having like a work browser, but maybe that makes sense. I mean, people have work laptops, but I feel like the trend has been, you have like one phone that you do work and life on, and then you have separate apps, and maybe you have an enterprise software product installed on your phone. But really, the trend seems to be more people using like Gmail and Google email at work. and it seems like there's less and less like, oh yeah, like I have a separate work computer with a separate operating system.

1:16:04Chrome is very set up. Chrome is already very set up to have like profiles, like personal profiles and work profiles. Yeah, I have two. I have a personal one and I have a VPN one. So I don't know. Yeah, we'll have to see. I mean, the founder is saying like, we're gonna keep working on Dia, but maybe that means in the enterprise context. Anyway, we'll have to keep an eye on like where they wind up going. So Mike said, again, I said this yesterday with Dia Browser, we're going to collectively redesign the browser to help knowledge workers kick butt in the AI era. And so that to me kind of reads a little prosumer, right?

1:16:45I don't think they're, but it feels like, you know, very much oriented towards people that are working in the browser. Oh, yeah. OTP says, get Sagar on here to give pushback on TFP. Bye. He's going postal about it. I should text him and see if he wants to hop on. We will. Yeah, we'll definitely get him on when he's ready to go live and have some takes. I also invited Barry Weiss. I'd love to hear her side of what's going on and what her plan is. It's a fascinating story. Of course, these are still leaks, so most people don't want to talk until there's finalized information. Anyway, if you're trying to design a browser, you got to do it in Figma.

1:17:25Think bigger, build faster. Figma helps design and development teams build great products together, get started for free. And the third big number of the day, Ramp has crossed 1 billion in revenue. Sheesh, says Tyler Hodge. A key question is whether it's gross revenue or not revenue. I think it's gross revenue or he goes back and forth on this. But anyway, they've been on a tear. as David Senra likes to say it's a great example of taking a simple idea and doing it deadly seriously taking a simple idea deadly seriously I think David was quoting someone but I attribute everyone's quotes to David's now we should pull up these videos from the dinner at the White House last night I only have one question for Eric which is is the job finished?

1:18:13so we will figure that out today are you going to call him? he is busy I'm going to All right, play this video. Oh, yeah. Please. You've done an incredible job with Apple, a little company called Apple. Thank you, Mr. President. Very, very few people have been able to do what you've done. Congratulations. Thank you, sir. That means a lot to me. Two thank yous? I want to thank you for including me this evening. It's incredible to be among everyone here, particularly you and the First Lady. I've always enjoyed having dinner and interacting. I want to thank you for setting the tone such that we could make a major investment in the United States and have some key manufacturing, advanced manufacturing here.

1:18:59I think that says a lot about your focus and your leadership and your focus on innovation. I also want to thank you for helping American companies around the world. This is a very key, key thing. And I really enjoy working with your administration on those topics as well, because I think they're so important to the country. I want to thank the First Lady for focusing on education. Wow. There's nothing more important than education. It is the great equalizer. Triple. And always will be. And so thank you so much for including me. We are all different in some ways, but we all believe in the power of technology to improve people's lives.

1:19:48And that is the thing that binds us all together. And, Tim, how much money will Apple be investing in the United States? Because I know it's a very lot. And it's, you know, you were elsewhere, and now you're really coming home in a big way. How much money will you be investing? $600 billion. $600 billion. Whoa. There we go. We're very proud to do it. That's great. Thank you very much. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you, sir. Wait, is that 10? Thank you. I think it was 12. Somebody else had counted it as 12. I was around 10. Yeah. Crazy. But still, we should. Why wasn't Christina from Vanta there?

1:20:25I feel like that's key to the U.S.'s tech strategy. I agree. Automate compliance, manage risk, prove trust continuously. Vanta's trust management platform takes the manual work out of your security and compliance process. All right. We've got to pull up this video of. with continuous automation of Zuckerberg. This was our fourth big number of the day. Zuckerberg says he will invest around$600 billion by 2028. Zuckerberg says Meta will invest$600 billion in AI infrastructure by 2028. Meta has already guided capex of$70 billion in 2025 and $100 billion in 2026. So that's a big ramp to go from 70 to 100.

1:21:00And then they still got$430 billion to do in 27 and 28 to actually reach 600 billion. Spending would need to jump to 200 billion in 2027 and 300 billion in 2028. That's a lot of dollars. Video in the timeline. Let's play it. This is quite a group to get together. And I think all of the companies here are building, just making huge investments in the country in order to build out data centers and infrastructure to power the next wave of innovation. So it's, you know, we don't often get together as the CEOs of the different companies, but it's good to see everyone. How much are you spending, would you say, over the next few years?

1:21:47Oh, gosh. I mean, I think it's probably going to be something like... $601 billion. At least$600 billion. Whoa! In the U.S. That's amazing. No, it's significant. That's a lot. Thank you, Mark. It's great to have you. Thank you. Well, thanks for hosting us. That's awesome. So does anybody in the chat know which of them went first? Yeah. Because that number does not align with Meta's stated. Yes. It doesn't appear in the SEC filings yet, but it is very forward-looking. No, it was 2028. 2028, which is something that they might not actually put out or might not be demanded by Wall Street, but that is hilarious.

1:22:36Anyway, whatever they do, they're going to have to do it on Graphite. Graphite.dev, code review for the age of AI. Graphite helps teams on GitHub ship higher quality software faster, get started for free. Yeah, so meta-guided CapEx of$70 billion in 2025 and$100 billion in 2026. So to get to$600 billion spending, we need to jump to$200 billion in 2027 and$300 billion in 2028. Yeah. What's interesting is that these numbers are insanely big. And obviously, it looks like a big acceleration relative to past CapEx numbers. But I'm so inured to big numbers now because of the fast takeoff crowd that was like, oh, yeah, like trillion dollar build out data center like next year for sure.

1:23:17like ai 2027 like it's going to be 10 trillion it's going to be 100 500 billion uh and so uh like when i hear 600 billion i'm like yeah yeah that sounds like totally reasonable like i think they'll definitely hit that uh and and i don't know but they probably will like it doesn't seem like uh there's many barriers in the way like it's just continue to grow the core business run more ads dump the profits into capex build some more data centers uh semi-analysis uh uh Doug O 'Loughlin over at Fabricated Knowledge has a good deep dive today on the glut of lagging edge chips that I think we might have a chance to get to in a little bit.

1:23:55But it was a fun dinner. Are there any other videos that we should play from the White House dinner? I like the idea of this is kind of a new podcast format. Just have a dinner with everyone. Have some cameras there. And just yap. Just yap. Yeah, that's good. What's up, Tyler? I don't have another video, but there is a photo that came out. I'll send it to the chat. but it was like the full dinner and right at the very edge I'm pretty sure it's Dylan Field it is yeah yeah yeah yeah so someone had the full breakdown here it's in the deck much deeper let me let me pull it up where is it uh the full list of people who attended the dinner is wow there's a lot of stuff okay so Ed Ludlow has it the full list of attendees at President Trump's dinner with tech leaders.

1:24:39The president, the first lady, Susie Wiles, Sergey Brin, Gerilyn Gilbert Soto, Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Anna Brockman, Safra Katz at Oracle, Gal Tarash, Jason Chang, Meredith O 'Rourke, Natalie Dompe, Tony Fabrizio, Dylan Field, John Herring, Jared Isaacman. Jared Isaacman, oh, I guess he was... You're missing one. Yeah, Elon didn't go, but Chamath. Oh, Chamath is in here. So, uh, Sonny Madra, Satya Nadella, Chamath, Paliha Patia, Sundar Pachai, Mark Pincus, Vivek Ranadeve, who owns the Golden State Warriors. And I believe Vivek Ranadeve is the, the, the, like the guy who worked with Chamath in the first SPACs and Vivek Ranadeve kind of like pioneered that format almost.

1:25:28Um, did you say Lisa Su from amd lisa sue made it david sacks shamsankar from palantir uh we missed him yesterday he was at this dinner in dc uh jamie siminoff uh alex wang sanjay marota tim cook david limp mark zuckerberg and bill gates what a crew jensen didn't make it so the fact that jensen and elon are not there i feel like you shouldn't read too much into it it's kind of just like trump catching up with a people, but I don't know. There's also like this, yeah, I don't know. They, they have like falling out, but it seems like they've kind of patched it up. I don't know. Uh, always, always hard to read too much into this stuff.

1:26:08But speaking of Elon Musk, he didn't need to be at the White House because he's setting up a$1 trillion pay package. 975 billion. Oh, it's not a trillion, just a a little bit shy. Okay, so the update is Tesla's board has greenlit a fresh pay package for CEO Elon Musk. If he hits$400 billion in adjusted EBITDA, he deploys 1 million robo-taxis for commercial use, ships out 1 million energy storage units, produces and delivers 20 million vehicles, secures 1 million of ongoing FSD subscriptions, aim for a$8.5 trillion market cap, The golden retrievers are bargain. Commit to at least seven and a half to 10 years in the CEO role.

1:26:53The starting share price is$334.09. The package includes 12 % of company stock divided into 12 segments. And so Signal says this is a masterclass in how to design incentives. This deeply ties Elon's upside on the world, radically improving. If he actually hits those milestones, the value unleashed for society dwarfs his payout. Most CEO comp is rent-seeking. This is moonshot seeking. I completely agree. Every pay package for executives should be this absurd on both sides for the company and the individual. And this was exactly my take. It's like bet on yourself. He's done this before. And Dan Primack, when the pay package, the most recent pay package came into under like legal scrutiny, Dan Primack was like, I like this when it was announced.

1:27:41And I thought it was crazy. And everyone thought it was impossible that he would pull it off. And he did. So he deserves it. And so it was this crazy legal battle, but it was actually aligned with exactly what a CEO should be doing, creating shareholder value. This should be a model for CEO comp going forward, in my opinion. There's another side of this, which is increasing a founder CEO stake by doing aggressive stock buybacks. But this is a way cooler because it incentivizes bold investments and huge capex on factories, moonshot technology, gambles, and generally thinking in decades. So I'm super stoked about it.

1:28:16I think it's good. I hope it holds. It's a good way to signal. I mean, they're very much signaling to the base, the Tesla army, that there's a lot of potential upside. Chris Camilo said earlier, been tracking XAI's accelerating cash burn, flattening user growth monetization and fundraising struggles since the beginning of this year. And I don't see how they last another 12 months without a Tesla or Elon bailout. I mean, saying, I don't see how they last another 12 months without the founder bailing them out. It's like, that's kind of the founder's job to just continuously bail out the company.

1:28:54But I thought this was relevant because I do think that part of this, part of setting up this pay package could set up a scenario where XAI gets just merged into Tesla and it becomes a standalone. It just all gets rolled in. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, Tesla has, I mean, Carpathia worked there. Like it's a fantastic AI organization and it makes sense that there would be a lot of overlap in what they do. I guess there's probably less of - And I mean, if X, the everything app was part of a public company again, how does that get valued at less than eight and a half trillion, right? That's a good point.

1:29:30And so with Elon having that ace up his sleeve, the fact that we're all addicted to this app. Yeah. I mean, I guess it's good that there's other milestones in there that that you can't just like uh merge everything together because it is it is it is funny to think about some of the different milestones though it's like shipping out one million energy storage units feels like wildly like does this even need to be included if you're going to deploy one million robo taxis for commercial use yeah that one seems a little bit uh i don't know easy sandbag who knows