Electric Air Taxis, Crypto AI Bets, AI Copyright Wars | Aug 4, 2025

0:13Welcome everyone to the information's TITV. My name is Akash Pastricha. Happy Monday. We have got a busy, busy week coming up for you. We have got earnings galore. Palantir is coming up tonight. Snap is tomorrow. Wednesday, we've got Airbnb, DoorDash, Uber, Shopify, Lyft. On Thursday, we've got Pinterest and Instacart. It's going to be a busy week, but we have got a great show to start things off. We have got some big news about Blade, the helicopter taxi company that is being, it is being bought by Joby Aviation. And we have got Joby executives coming on the show to talk about that deal. We are also talking about crypto and crypto treasury stocks with Pantera Capital.

0:55And we're also talking about the White House's AI copyright conundrum. I'm very excited for that discussion. Before we get going, a couple headlines for you. Tesla's board has approved a$23.7 billion stock award for Elon Musk, which he can claim two years from now. Just to remind you of a bit of the context here. Back in 2018, Tesla's board put in place a much bigger pay package that today would be worth something like$100 billion. dollars. The courts threw out that pay package last year because of a shareholder lawsuit. Tesla is appealing all this, but this smaller pay package seems to be kind of the interim solution that they've landed on.

1:34And so we will see how that ends up turning out. The second piece of news is that Lyft is getting into autonomous vehicles because, I mean, who isn't? The company is partnering with Baidu to test some of its robo taxis in Germany and in the United Kingdom. We, of course, know that Uber also said that it is testing robo taxis with Lucid, and that this is very clearly where ride-sharing companies are focused. That is some exciting news about Lyft. Okay, on to our first guest. If you live in New York, you might have heard of Blade, the fancy helicopter service that people have been using to commute to the airport and sometimes to the Hamptons.

2:12My colleague, Steve Levine, that the information reported this morning that Blade is being acquired by electric air taxi company Joby Aviation for up to$125 million. And I want to bring on Eric Alliston, the chief product officer of Joby Aviation, to talk about that deal. And just a bit of history before Eric comes on. I mean, Eric used to lead Uber's air taxi effort when it was called Elevate. Elevate was then sold to Joby Aviation back in 2020. That's where he ended up there, but now he's with us here on TITV. Eric, thank you so much for being here. I am so excited to have you. Yeah, thanks for having me today.

2:48So talk about it. Why is Joby buying Blade? Well, so Joby's building this vertically integrated air taxi company. So, you know, we're best known maybe for the aircraft that we're producing, but we're actually building all of the parts of that aircraft as well. So for instance, this flight computer we build ourselves right here in California, we're building the whole stack all the way up to the customer, including the technology. What Blade's done is build a fantastic customer experience. And they have a great set of customers that are using their service on a daily basis. And so bringing this together is really advantageous as we're getting ready to go to commercialization with the aircraft that we're building.

3:27So talk to me about what the long-term vision is here for the company, but also for this partnership. Yeah, so our vision is that flight air taxis can be a part of daily life. It's something I've been working on for a long time is what we worked on at Uber Elevate, what we're working on here at Joby. But to do that, we've got to solve some kind of fundamental technology issues. And that's what we've been working at Joby for nearly 15 years now. And some of those, the highlights of that are things like cost. So the cost of using one of these vehicles on a regular basis and noise. So what we've done with the technology we're building with that aircraft that you can see right there is that we've brought together the best of what's happening in electric vehicles.

4:09vehicles, applied it to aviation, built a completely novel architecture from the ground up that we are building and certifying with the FAA, and that we're going to be able to deploy to customers just like they use helicopters today with Blade, but with a much lower acoustic footprint, something that people are going to want in their neighborhoods as opposed to not wanting in their neighborhoods. And we think that that's an amazing opportunity to make life better, make travel better, make commuting better for people all around the world. So, I mean, you talked about, you know, some of the logistical difficulties like sound, for example.

4:45It's not something I would have thought about. But, you know, talk about how hard is it to do electric vehicles in the air? I mean, we did it with automotive, so we're doing it, right? You know, we got away from gas. We were in EVs on the ground. How much of an added challenge is it to do that in the air? It's a huge challenge. So the performance necessary to actually make an aircraft that can perform this type of a mission, vertical takeoff and landing, fly like an airplane, and do it in a way that's cost-effective and kind of has a minimal acoustic footprint, the technology just didn't exist when we started.

5:23So we've been inventing this technology from the very beginning, whether or not it's electric motors. What are some of the, I mean, let's get specific here. What are some of the technical difficulties people might not think about as it relates to air taxis? Absolutely. So electric motors, for example, the kind of the power to weight ratio of an electric motor that you buy for an industrial application just doesn't work. So we've been inventing this from the very beginning. We're building these novel motors. They don't have any gears in them, for example. They just directly drive the propellers of the aircraft.

5:53So there's minimal moving parts. That's pretty hard for an aircraft compared to for a car. So we've had to invent all this technology and then make it meet the safety standards that the FAA has. And that's the certification process that we're going through and working hand in hand with the FAA to bring this to market in a way that is something people are going to want to get on and use on a daily basis. So Blade right now, I mean, they run all these flights here in New York City. You talked about the regulations from the FAA. I mean, is it a federal regulatory body that oversees all this? I mean, do you have to get sort of state-specific or city-specific permits?

6:30How does any of this work? Yeah, so it's actually regulated at every level. So I like to say that I think aviation is the most regulated industry, probably even more than pharmaceuticals, for example. So the aircraft themselves are regulated at the federal level. So that's the FAA. Right. And they're the ones that set the rules, the safety rules. And then they actually are working. it's a it's a pre-market approval and so they're working at signing off on everything as you go through the design process of these aircraft and then the production process as well but the state and local level actually permit the infrastructure and so that's one of the really exciting things about work this this this deal we're doing with blade where with their passenger business they've developed some unique access to infrastructure in new york city for example on the west 30th East 34th with lounges.

7:18And that infrastructure is regulated at both the city and state level. And so we're going to be able to access that infrastructure as part of this partnership with Blade, this acquisition. And that's really exciting because it gives us a jumpstart to start operating and get those customers into our aircraft as soon as possible. And Blade has actually been trying to get into electric aircraft as well, right? That's right. That's right, exactly. That it's, you know, we see the arc of where this overall business is going. And I think it's really great to bring those two visions together and do it from the perspective of a really great customer experience that they've built.

7:54And I'm really excited that we'll be able to take our technology, both at the vehicle level, but also the software level. So, you know, our vision has always been to build this full stack aviation company. We're going all the way to the customer. We've got a partnership with Uber. That was part of the deal that brought Elevate over to Joby four years ago. Right. As well as a partnership with Delta. And so we're building that technology, that technology foundation, and we're going to weave that into the work that that Blade's done. And I'm pretty excited about the possibilities. I want to ask you about who this service is ultimately meant for, because Blade is an interesting business.

8:24I mean, they've got this medical transport business and then they've got this passenger business. And, you know, I always thought of these types of air taxis as like a very luxury offering. Is this ever going to become accessible to, you know, everyday, you know, New Yorkers? Or is it going to remain a pretty upscale offering for the next five, 10 years? Yeah, I mean, our vision is everyday flight for everyone, right? That's what we're driving toward. And I think that this is, you know, certainly right now that helicopters, the nature of the machines are that they have a certain fixed cost to operate.

8:57And so you have to work within those economic parameters. But what we're doing, building the technology that we're building, is able to drive that down. So as we're able to introduce our aircraft into the system and start operating them, our vision is that we can start service with our aircraft, something like Uber Black pricing on a per seat basis, and then drive down toward UberX pricing on a per seat basis over time. As we kind of exercise that technology, drive our utilization up, and this deal with Blade gives us a jump start to be able to do that even faster. Are you guys looking at autonomous aircraft at all?

9:30So we certainly think that that is pretty interesting. And we actually acquired a company last year called X-Wing that's doing some really interesting work in autonomy. But that's not where we're starting. So we're starting with a piloted aircraft requires a commercial pilot. In fact, the FAA just published a final rule last year on how do you become a pilot for these type of aircraft? So that regulatory uncertainty was removed with that final rule. And so we think that's the right way to start. And then the arc of this technology, autonomy, is something that's, like I said, it's really interesting.

10:03We have that team from X-Wing still working on that. And we're pretty excited about how that all comes together in the long run. But where we're starting is with the pilot and operating just in that same way that a commercial aircraft operates right now. I want to close out by talking a little bit about, you know, we're talking about New York. We're talking about the US. I mean, this is a global challenge that many teams around the world are trying to target. I mean, outside of the U.S., what locations, what countries should people be paying attention to as it relates to electric robo... What are we talking about?

10:38Electric air robo taxis? Electric air taxis? Electric air taxis, yes. So we actually have a number of deals and work that we've been doing in a number of different countries. So I'll just give you two examples. One of them is Dubai. So the UAE has been very forward leaning on this space for quite a while. And we actually announced a deal last year with Dubai where we're going to be the air taxi provider for Dubai. And that's pretty exciting. And we actually have been working with the equivalent of the FAA called the GCAA in the UAE to be able to kind of accelerate the final approvals for our aircraft and potentially launch in Dubai before anywhere else.

11:16So that's pretty exciting. And then, of course, we've got an amazing partner, our largest outside shareholder with Toyota. And we've been doing some great work in Japan. And that's a really exciting market as well. And I guess I'll add one more bonus. We announced a deal with Virgin Atlantic earlier this year. And we're pretty excited about the UK as a market. So I think there's so many places where this technology can benefit. And that people want to be able to move faster, more easily than they move today. So sky's the limit. And some of those countries are actually ahead of the U.S. in terms of sort of allowing some of these aircrafts to be up in the air?

11:54Well, the U.S. is the leader, the premier certification agency in the world. So the FAA sets the gold standard. The UAE is one where they are actually working on basically taking the work that the FAA is doing and then doing their own final approvals before the FA approvals maybe are 100 % complete and signed off on. And so that's one place where, you know, they're able to devote extra resources to do that, still holding to the same gold standard, but maybe accelerating the entry into service a little bit. Cool. Well, Eric, thanks for coming on the show. I appreciate it. It's not a deal that I thought we ever would have seen, you know, so quickly here on TITV, but we want to thank you for coming on and talking about it.

12:38That is Eric Allison, the Chief Product Officer of Joby Aviation. Okay, crypto venture capital isn't what it used to be, but plenty of investors are still making big bets. Pantera Capital has been all around the sector, and its latest investment came on Friday. The company backed SubZero Labs, which raised$20 million. Joining me now to discuss that deal is Paul Beradita Kit, managing partner of the firm. Paul, it's good to see you. Welcome to the show. Hey, great to see you again, Akash. It's been a while. It has. Glad that you're having me. I think last time we spoke, I mean, you know, it was when I was covering crypto 2022.

13:14It was a very different time. It's a very different time. I mean, we've recovered from the largest event that you could sort of imagine that could try to bring us down. But we're back and we're stronger than ever. Well, I'll tell you what. I want to get to, you know, the hottest topic of the moment, which is crypto treasury stocks. But before we get there, I want to talk about this investment that you made on Friday, SubZero Labs. What does this company do? Yeah, SubZero Labs is basically bringing a more scalable and more developer user-friendly blockchain to the masses. So the team behind SubZero Labs is the former sort of most technical folks at this company called Niston Labs or SUI, which is a, you know, sort of Facebook alumni creating a much more usable blockchain.

14:02These guys said, well, look, I mean, Facebook and the guys were able to do it at Sui. They were able to make it very scalable, but let's just really make it a lot more usable. Have oracles built into the system, make it very easy in terms of development language, etc. So that just really just shows that we are being very active right now in either new infrastructure or maybe even AI. We actually just launched a fundraising round today on a company called OpenMind, which is bringing robotics onto the blockchain. Huh, interesting. And I mean, well, tell me about that. I mean, let's zoom out a bit.

14:42So, I mean, are all the hot new crypto investments, do they have intersections with AI and robotics? And are they trying to take advantage there? You know, crypto is intersecting so many different sectors right now. We start off with artificial intelligence. We start seeing things like AI and robotics, and we're starting to see the decentralization of the intake of data to be able to have better, more executable data for AI, and then be able to have things like identity, like WorldCoin, and now hopefully AI agents that will be able to trade trillions of on-chain assets on your behalf and basically acting on your best interest to be able to sort of interact with all these assets, using stable coins for payments, things like that.

15:33So I'd say AI, robotics, scalability, and also stable coins. I mean, payments are going to be redone using the blockchain. Right. So those are two investments you made. One of the topics I've been very interested to talk to you about is crypto treasury stocks, because you've actually written about it in your newsletter. Sure. Look, I just don't get it. I mean, the reason I don't get it, and maybe we'll put this into context. My understanding of crypto treasury stocks are these companies like MicroStrategy, or I guess the company is now just called Strategy, am I right? Strategy, yes. It's just Strategy, right.

16:15So you buy a bunch of Bitcoin or you're another company, You buy a lot of Solana or a lot of Ether. And then you're a public company and you just become a proxy for the cryptocurrency. The reason I don't understand this, Paul, and I want to get your take on this, is that crypto has long been on this idea that we need to make it more accessible. We need to make it easier for people to use crypto. And so this is like, okay, people need to own crypto. But then on the other hand, you've got crypto treasury stocks, which are saying, well, we just want to make it easier for you to invest in the stock market.

16:47and have exposure to crypto. And we want to do ETFs and you can expose yourself that way. And so these seem like two conflicting ideas. Help me understand this. I think there's two reasons to invest into crypto right now. One is really asset diversification. You want to basically get exposure to something that will have maybe a bit less correlation to the S &P 500 and will have very, very strong sort of fundamentals disrupting so many different sectors. And then the other part is really getting exposure to the companies themselves, using the use cases, being able to use crypto for payments, things like that.

17:26And the DigiAsset Treasury companies is doing the former, which is really trying to provide institutional access through ways that institutional investors are used to getting access to certain sectors. ETF is one way to do it. But these digital asset treasury companies, it's taking ETFs, but using the financial markets, using known financial instruments to be able to accumulate more assets per share. And then, of course, like there's other things around, you know, the native blockchain around getting yield and being able to do other things that accumulate just more and more assets per share. And so these companies are providing a very comfortable way for the public markets to really get exposure to now single assets, but, you know, soon probably like different types of indexes around crypto.

18:18But don't you see it as a little bit counterproductive if the end goal is to, you know, for people to use crypto, they have to own crypto to be able to use it. If people could just buy stuff on the stock market, what incentive do they have to really, you know? You know, I think it's one of those things where, you know, once you get a little bit of crypto in, you start experimenting with crypto and you start learning more about crypto. So to be able to get institutions this exposure through crypto, I think will allow them to hopefully educate the broader sort of team around. Let's try this use case in crypto.

18:53Let's do this new product in crypto. So it's just, you know, probably the second entry point behind the ETF of just getting more and more exposure to crypto for their companies. How do you think the crypto treasury stocks, you call it, you know, you refer to them as digital asset treasuries, you know, I call them stock market crypto. How does this end? I mean, how long is this going to go on for? You know, we believe that it's similar to venture where, look, I mean, there's money to be made, but there will be winners like strategy out there that will, you know, again, maybe one or two winners in each of these different assets.

19:30and maybe you have different other sorts of instruments, but there will be winners that continue to produce really great returns in the long-term because it is a better way to get exposure to an asset than the ETF because these companies can be a lot more nimble in terms of gathering assets. Right. Well, Paul, thank you so much for coming on the show. I'm fascinated by your portfolio. We talked about Sub-Zero Labs. We talked about the robotics play that you did today, and I'm looking forward to bringing you back on next time you have the AI agent blockchain play to discuss with us. That is Paul from Pantera Capital.

20:05Thank you so much for being here. Before we get to our next guest, I want to highlight for you a great story that we published on Friday about the challenges that OpenAI is facing with its GPT-5 release. The context here is that GPT-5 is coming, and according to our reporting, there are going to be some real improvements, especially around math and coding. But the The caveat here is that the margin of improvement for this model won't be as significant compared to other models that we've seen. And it kind of gets to this idea around, you know, is there a plateau to how good this technology can be?

20:37Another hurdle that OpenAI is facing is that some of the researchers that have left for meta, they were closely involved with GPT-5. And so that is a hurdle that they are trying to overcome. I will link that story in our show notes. Again, that is our in-depth feature on the challenges that are going on with the release of GPT-5. Okay, for our final guest, Washington, D.C. has been making waves with its AI action plan, but my colleague, Sylvia Varnum-O 'Regan, published a story this morning talking about how the White House has had some mixed messaging on AI copyright. Sylvia, welcome to the show.

21:13Thanks for being here. You are in New York City today. Thanks, Akash. Great to be here. It's great to have you. So look, let's talk copyright. right? I mean, how did you land on this story? Yeah, so as you mentioned, the Trump administration released its AI action plan in July. I came on the show that day to talk about it. And later in the day, Trump gave a speech as part of this release to a group of people, including many in Silicon Valley. And this speech got my attention and got a lot of people's attention because in it, He weighed into this very contentious debate in the industry around AI copyright.

21:50So a lot of people were, their ears perked up when he talked about this because he essentially said that he basically kind of came down on the side of the companies in this debate. And just to step back very briefly, this debate is between the musicians, artists, book publishers, and news publishers who create content that AI companies then use to train their models. And there are many, many lawsuits about this and whether it amounts to copyright infringement or whether it amounts to fair use, which is essentially a legal doctrine that says in some situations you can use copyrighted material without the permission of the rights holders.

22:35So Trump basically made these comments where he said, you know, you can't be expected to have a successful AI program if you have to pay for every article, every book, and so on. And so that essentially aligned with the company's position. Now, what I thought was interesting about this was the fact that there was no mention of copyright in the AI action plan. And so I decided to do some reporting to try to find out, well, why was that? And what I learned was that essentially the group behind the action plan, and there were a lot of agencies involved, had considered including something on copyright, which would have been quite significant.

23:09But it was difficult, they found, to really land on any one policy recommendation because the law here is quite established. And then, as I mentioned, there are a lot of cases or disputes going through the courts. So it was omitted in part because of that. I also learned that there was a lot of behind-the-scenes conversations and sort of lobbying from the music industry, from the film industry, from the news industry, who had already engaged with the government about the plan, but they actually got wind that copyright was going to be mentioned. And so they really said in these meetings and these conversations, you know, we really think that you should leave this to the courts.

23:44That was their position. Right. So, I mean, tell me a little bit about, you know, the impact of all these lawsuits right now. I think you said there's something like, you know, a few dozen lawsuits that publishers have filed. What's at stake for these AI companies? Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, there are more than 40 lawsuits. Some of them are very high profile and you see them in the news a lot. For example, the New York Times case against OpenAI. I think that, you know, copyright sounds a little bit wonky, but this is actually a very fundamental issue for the AI industry. You know, these decisions are being closely watched and they could really have a big impact on the direction of the industry.

24:24And there's so much at stake, right? Not just for the AI companies, but for the publishers, for the content creators as well, for all these different industries who are really battling over who should have to pay here, you know. So for the AI companies, there is a lot at stake in terms of dollars and cents because we're seeing some decisions come through in these court cases. And remember, court cases, you know, take a long time. But some decisions have come through in favor of the AI companies and said, yeah, this amounts to fair use. But we did see recently a judge in July say that a group of book authors could proceed with a class action against Anthropic.

25:02And depending on how that goes, I mean, that could amount to billions of dollars in penalties. So there's certainly a lot on the line here. So, I mean, from what I'm understanding from you is that, I mean, you have these lawsuits, but really it's, you know, no one seems to have the upper hand here. It seems to be like, you know, on a case-by-case basis right now. Right. Well, I think that that would sort of depend on who you talk to. And people have very strong opinions in all this. But yeah, exactly. I mean, these cases are going through the courts. So, you know, we don't really have a definitive body that can say one way or the other where it's all headed.