In short
The episode debates how AI is shifting from search to “agentic” browsers and always-on screen capture, and how that changes data privacy, enterprise ROI, and personal assistant feasibility. Guests also discuss AI infrastructure bets (Groq, Figure) and humanoid robotics valuations.
Guests/backgrounds
Nick and Clint are investors/operators in AI and private markets; they reference prior episodes, enterprise deployments, and infrastructure/inference economics. No other guest bios are provided.
Key claims
Web browsers (Chrome/Gemini, Perplexity, OpenAI) are becoming the new interface for personal tasks; always-on employee capture will accelerate enterprise training. Personal assistants are harder than work assistants due to customization and many “interfaces” (e.g., restaurant booking). Enterprise AI is lower risk because workflows repeat and data is easier to obtain.
Notable examples
agent-mode landscaper hiring; skincare ingredient safety via label photo; bike-dock navigation + coffee ordering; Groq’s 2M developers and $6.9B post-money; Figure’s $39B post-money humanoid robotics debate; mentions robo-wolves/Ukraine and “AI kills” timeline.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOThe Battle of Web Browsers
0:05 to 1:46
Discussion on the competition among various tech companies in developing web browsers and AI integration.
“So Gemini is their large language model.”
Data Privacy in the Surveillance Era
1:46 to 3:08
Exploration of the implications of constant data recording and surveillance by corporations.
“I mean, what this is, is this is just at the end of the day, for all the conspiracy theorists, tinfoil hat folks, this is the surveillance state.”
The Rise of Personal AI Assistants
3:08 to 4:00
Examination of the potential for personal AI assistants and the challenges they face.
“Cause it's going to be like always on data capture of everything you see here, say type, look at on a computer, all of it, right?”
The Future of AI in Work Environments
4:00 to 5:34
Insights into how AI is shaping enterprise workflows and the efficiency of work tasks.
“But are you familiar with any like kind of personal assistant AI companies that are out there yet?”
Challenges of AI in Daily Life
5:34 to 7:55
Discussion on the difficulties of implementing AI in personal life versus work tasks.
“We were always talking about universal basic income, right?”
Investing in AI Applications
7:55 to 11:20
Debate on the viability of investing in AI applications for personal versus enterprise use.
“So that's the way I think about it from a corporate perspective.”
Personal AI Applications Changing Search
11:20 to 14:00
Examples of how personal AI applications are transforming everyday search tasks.
“else and it kind of starts to dial that in perhaps.”
The Impact of AI on Personal Search
14:00 to 15:01
Discussion on how AI tools are changing personal searches and research.
“work and give me some sample reviews and it literally spit out you know a handful um and then I went and just called those and, you know, set up appointments.”
The Threat to Google and New Market Dynamics
15:01 to 18:25
Exploration of the competitive landscape for search engines and the implications for Google.
“And I don't know if you all would say, but I would imagine that Google searches, that verb, has gone down significantly since all these options became available.”
Investment Perspectives on AI Apps
18:25 to 18:56
Concerns over the viability of AI apps and potential competition.
“Like if OpenAI decides to do this, this company could be a zero.”
Show all 19 chapters
Grok's Market Performance and Valuation
18:56 to 23:52
Analysis of Grok's funding round, valuation, and market position.
“It's still picks and shovels all day long for me.”
Humanoid Robotics: Current Trends and Future Prospects
23:52 to 27:30
Discussion on the humanoid robotics market and its potential applications and limitations.
“Listen, let's hit on – I mean, I just – sometimes I wonder if I should just even bring up Grok anymore because it's – I don't – like, I just – I feel like I talk about it at least like every second or third podcast.”
Skepticism Towards Humanoid Robotics Valuations
27:30 to 28:01
Critical views on the high valuations of humanoid robotics companies and their long-term viability.
“So I can understand why it's trading at a discount right now.”
Valuation and Investment in Humanoid Robotics
28:01 to 29:08
Discussion on the valuation of humanoid robotics and investment considerations.
“And I think the valuation is just more of a reflection of how much capital they have to raise and have had to raise to get to where they are more so than a, you know, depiction of value here.”
Future of Humanoid Robots and Market Predictions
29:09 to 31:22
Exploring the potential future impact and market demand for humanoid robots.
“People are like, I can't believe that you got in to figure at 39 in 2005, you're a genius, right?”
AI and Societal Changes
31:23 to 34:29
Discussing the implications of AI on jobs, demographics, and society.
“I'm like, hey, when these start to come out, do you want to get one?”
Economic Drivers for Robot Adoption
34:30 to 36:54
Examining the economic factors that will drive the adoption of humanoid robots.
“But this is why I think humanoid robots are actually going to start to, you know.”
Robots as Solutions for Care
36:55 to 38:59
Insight into how robots could replace human roles in caregiving and household tasks.
“I think there's going to be like – there'll be use – Like, do I get an alarm system or do I get one of these?”
Investment Considerations in Robotics
39:00 to 42:00
Final thoughts on investment potential in the robotics market and required market developments.
“Clint, you hit on such a good point about how capital-intensive it is.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00Clint Sorenson:All right, gentlemen, we got Google Gemini. So Gemini is their large language model. They are making a whole bunch of iterations with Google Chrome. That's their web browser. Right. But this has been a hot space because like perplexity is talked about is doing a web browser. OpenAI has got a web browser. Anthropix got some stuff that they're doing in browsers. Right. So this is becoming like quite a thing. I'm also reading this week that open AI is going to start building solutions for companies to have like always on screen capture for employees so that the AI can train. It's like clearly. Remember, we talked about this a couple of weeks ago.
0:43Clint Sorenson:They're like talking about doing this now, like properly so that the AI can train off of like employees day to day activities and they can train the model, the AI models that way. Right. Right. Okay. So what do you guys think? This is my question for you guys. This to me, I think we're starting to see like some insight into where AI is going to go. Right. And in particular, the types of like devices that we're going to be using. And I'm putting the browser in there and the device category. Right. But it looks like you got phones listening, watches listening. You got the new metaglasses that came out.
1:22Clint Sorenson:Right. They have cameras on them. That's watching and listening and hearing everything you're saying. You now have web browsers that are going to be recording all the activity that you're doing. You have companies that clearly record everything that you do on your computer. There's firms like Granola and others that record all your meetings, all the things that you say on your meetings. So like there is no data. Agreed? Like Clint, no data privacy anymore is where we're going towards, right? None.
1:51Nick Fusco:I mean, what this is, is this is just at the end of the day, for all the conspiracy theorists, tinfoil hat folks, this is the surveillance state. You know, I mean, take it or leave it. At the end of the day, the data is valuable. And the appetite for data, as Nick and I have talked about, AI, this is where it's going to come to a head in terms of, you know, I would say the public opinion of it. is the voracious appetite for data is going to rise exponentially because that is what it takes to continue to have leaps in terms of its efficacy. And you're going to see, you've already seen boundaries crossed and you're going to see boundaries continue to be crossed until we all realize that the greatest heist ever conducted on people was the data heist.
2:46Nick Fusco:when we signed over all of our data and the rights to our data without understanding the monetary value of said data. And I think this is just another testament to that.
2:58Clint Sorenson:Okay. So, so I'm sure we can all agree that big corporations knowing literally everything about us and probably that's going exponential with all of what we're talking about here. Cause it's going to be like always on data capture of everything you see here, say type, look at on a computer, all of it, right? But let's just, let's just, just for argument's sake, because we could probably wax philosophical about how crazy that is and not maybe not good that is, but maybe we could talk about some of the good things of what will come, right? So like, so like Nick, like there's a whole bunch of AI app companies coming out, right?
3:33Clint Sorenson:As you can probably see on, on PM insights and new ones, I think coming down the pipe, I think a lot of them will be leveraging this data, right? Or have some kind of like proprietary data set. In this context, we're talking about personal AI data. I haven't seen any companies, were there any companies coming out and doing like a personal AI assistant yet? I'm seeing one or two really small ones, like just starting to emerge, right? But are you familiar with any like kind of personal assistant AI companies that are out there yet? Sure.
4:07Aaron Dillon:I mean, we had a false start probably two years ago with rabbit if you remember you sent us all the little uh so three three inch by three inch square
4:17Evan Cohen:cases it's a great paperweight now yeah and that's all it is it's the nicest most expensive
4:23Aaron Dillon:paperweight i have uh but but i i think you're right you know a lot of the ai tooling that we're seeing the agentic aspects are really built for work it's how can i replace a certain aspects of my work, if my work screen is going to be recorded. Because I think the AI assistant, as you're kind of describing or alluding to, is going to be harder to achieve. I can get something to work around an Excel spreadsheet a whole lot easier than tell me where the nearest Dairy Queen is, which is highly valuable for Nick Pusco, right? If you really think about it, I love that stuff. But that's a lot harder.
5:00Aaron Dillon:But that's where all the wearables, the tracking through the meta or Google Glass, all of that comes through to learn about what our natural habits are. Maybe it's part of Google Maps, which is better at tracking us now than getting us to our final location. So I think doing the personal assistant will be a hell of a lot harder than the work assistant, but there's no reason why. I mean, everything is moving so fast right now. That's going to be right around the bend. If we could figure out the work stuff, hey, maybe we won't have to work anymore. We were always talking about universal basic income, right?
5:38Aaron Dillon:But yeah, we got to chat through that, but it will be around the corner before we know it.
5:45Clint Sorenson:Okay. So to Nick's point, right, Clint, I mean, what you're seeing, I think on the enterprise side, and I've also been hearing a lot of people talk about these FDE, like forward deploy engineers, where you're sending a software developer on site to the client side to help them kind of bridge that last gap, right? That last five yards to get something over the, but to Nick's point though, those are like very specific workflows that are being automated, right? Within a company and which makes sense. And that's intuitive because companies have people that do like the same, like they make the donuts, right?
6:18Clint Sorenson:Like every week, every day they come and whatever the task is or whatever the process is, like someone does that work. So now an AI could do that work and that repetitive task can be replaced by AI. But like in a personal assistant context, that's, you know, I guess, I mean, I suppose there's some things that we all do, right? And you could probably start to chip away and automate those things, but that would be hard. I think that would be hard to have like a one size fits all solution, right? I mean, we have, like, I bet my, I have a different set of apps on my phone than you do than Nick does, right?
6:53Clint Sorenson:as an example, and I kind of view it that way, like you're still going to have, everyone seems to be very customized. That's going to be hard, I think, to kind of do a proper AI assistant, right?
7:04Nick Fusco:I mean, I like the, that's why you record, right? I mean, I think one of the greatest lessons when you're, you know, I think about like entrepreneurs operating system when you're running a business and you're thinking about setting up the business, all the formation aspects and then the operational aspects of running the business, the tech operations, the products, all this stuff, right? Compliance, legal, finance, etc. Those core functions, those core operating processes, you start off documenting those by just having employees record what they do on a day-to-day basis. You're trying to get to the meat of the process.
7:41Nick Fusco:I think that's where this adds so much value, is it's really just getting down to recording the necessary things. And then AI will just help you filter that into what are your core processes that you got in your business successfully. So that's the way I think about it from a corporate perspective. When I think about the AI, my personal assistant now is ChatGPT, like using the agent, about to fly overseas, asking it what I needed for that. It goes and does all of it. Then it asked me if it wants to do daily reminders, right? I do my morning routine now is centered instead of me doing it all on my own.
8:19Nick Fusco:My morning routine, like the things I'm doing that day, they're all automatically delivered to me through ChachiBT now because I've trained it to say, hey, these are what I want every morning at 7 a.m. Like might be an uplifting message. It might be like my top things I need to do for the day. I've helped. It's created me like daily checklists that I need to do to stay productive. one win, one worry, like all these cool little things that it's kind of just learned for me that I gravitate towards. It's now my personal assistant. Travel bookings, researching planes, like there are plane tickets.
8:53Clint Sorenson:Have you like connected it into your email and calendar and other things like that? Or are you just, this is just interaction that you've had back and forth.
9:00Nick Fusco:So on my phone app, it'll just go right to my phone app in the morning, gives me an alert and says your weekly leadership checklist is here. Got it. It kind of uploads it.
9:11Aaron Dillon:I'm curious on this, though, right? So if I think about two things I do pretty much every day, I don't think it's going to work, and I'll go into what those are in a minute. But when you're interfacing in this realm, you're either interfacing with what's your schedule or let's say you're doing accounting, you're only dealing with like a zero or Intuit QuickBooks, And there are only like two dozen ways to interface. But let's say that you want to book a restaurant outside of one of the core interfaces like a Yelp or a Google Maps or Toast or whatever you used to book. All of a sudden, that thing has a hard time.
9:49Aaron Dillon:And I know that this was showed off in, I think, one of the Apple demos five years ago. Watch. We'll call a restaurant. It will do it. But if I have to interface with 1 million possible restaurants around the world, that's where this thing starts to get real hard. So my core routine, what I would love is I cycle to work on a city bike every day. Tell me where the dock is because constantly if I'm racing, I need to know that there are only two docks left and there's a 10-minute gap between me getting there. Those two docks are going to be gone. So have the AI tell me the most appropriate path and how hard I need to peg it to get to that dock.
10:28Aaron Dillon:And then while I'm doing that, I hate to admit it, I'm ordering coffee at the same time, typically when I pass 60th Street, so that by the time I get to the appropriate dock, I walk into the coffee shop and the coffee's waiting. so if my ai could do that which i think is like years away which is hilarious i want to dock a bike and order a coffee that's way harder than doing my accounting but it's yeah in my world that's true because it's like so it's the way you're interfacing and the number of people that want that routine is pretty few so i don't know maybe i'm just going tangential on this but i think that's part of the problem like not enough people want the same things when it's your personal life or everybody's not interfacing the same way.
11:11Clint Sorenson:I think that's true. I mean, but to Clint's point, there could be something in this space where you're recording activity. Like it's watching everything you do on your phone and your geolocation and everything else and it kind of starts to dial that in perhaps. Well, I want somebody in my ear like a rally driver.
11:29Aaron Dillon:Like I'm at the freaking dock car and he's saying, right, left, yeah, go right. There's one more dock.
11:35Evan Cohen:Get there. Get there fast. And then motivational messages while you're pedaling to get you to go faster.
11:41Aaron Dillon:I think that's when it starts to become fun because if it's work, it's efficiency. And it helps you do your job either more efficiently, more accurate, what have you. But if it's personal, I personally want something fun. And it's just going to gamify whatever I'm doing for the day. So it's a different world.
11:59Clint Sorenson:As an investor, this is where I'm obsessing over AI apps. Like I'm more confident about investing into an AI app company that's focused on the enterprise than I am on personal use for all the reasons that we just discussed. Right. Like I do think it's going to be easier for a company to force employees to have all of their activity tracked. Totally. Like if they have to throw on a pair of meta glasses and wear it around the office all day long, they probably wouldn't want to do that outside of work. But they'll do it inside of work because the company wants them to do it. Right. So fine. I'll wear them.
12:32Clint Sorenson:Right. You know what I mean? So I can see companies and employees buying into that and everything. It's much easier to get the data. And then probably most importantly, like you guys said, there's just repeatable things that you could do. There's one accounting system that the company uses. There's not 50, for example. Right. So like, you know, those things I think matter in terms of getting kind of good ROI out of out of. Out of AI solutions. So like this is like, I don't know, am I ever never in quest to kind of like dial in on like what AI app companies to focus on? Like this is now like I don't know if I'm like so sure about personal use AI apps like to me, I think the next obvious.
13:16Clint Sorenson:Well, maybe not obvious, but the next kind of more tangible risk-adjusted return investment opportunity would be like enterprise-focused AI apps, right? What are your thoughts on that? Anything? Makes sense? No?
13:29Nick Fusco:Makes perfect sense. It's changing. I'm going to counteract that a little bit on the personal side. It is kind of changing search for me on the personal side, though. Like I was looking at a landscaper, for instance, and usually I would Google and read reviews. this time I just went into the agent mode and I said hey I want you to find I live in this area this is the type of work I'm looking for I want four star higher reviews on Google or you know Angie's list or whatever give me a list of uh landscapers who specialize in this type of work and give me some sample reviews and it literally spit out you know a handful um and then I went and just called those and, you know, set up appointments.
14:12Nick Fusco:But that was, that would have taken me a lot longer in the old days to do that. My daughter's obsessed with skincare. So she was wanting to research like the safety of ingredients in skincare. I can't pronounce it. I am too. I can't pronounce, I'm, I'm, I'm obsessed with hair care.
14:32Nick Fusco:I couldn't figure out how to like read these names, let alone, you know, tell her which ones are safe. So I took a picture of the label, put it in there. I said, give me a list of all the ingredients in any medical research that has suggested that they're harmful. And they did it all out. Made me realize we're going back to making our own soap. But at the end of the day, it was it was pretty incredible. So I think for personal use, it's changing search. And I think that's why you see these browsers and things changing from that perplexity, the hype around perplexity. Right. It's definitely changed search for me.
15:09Nick Fusco:And I don't know if you all would say, but I would imagine that Google searches, that verb, has gone down significantly since all these options became available. Totally.
15:21Aaron Dillon:I mean, we were at the beach earlier and there was a family speaking French and I was kind of hearing what they were saying, but not really understanding it. And there was blah, blah, blah. Open AI. Something, something, something. Open AI. Perplexity. I'm like, OK, this is the new Facebook. You know, if we go back 20 years, everybody was talking about Facebook anywhere you went. what is this? Well, this is really, or 25 years, right? But this is the new big thing. This is the turning point where Google is under threat for that. And this is definitely part of the reason why they have to change the idea of how they're working with Chrome and immediately integrate Gemini and try to keep that capture on because now they have competition and they haven't had competition since Yahoo, right?
16:13Aaron Dillon:30 years ago.
16:14Clint Sorenson:But listen, this is where I think, I think, you like clint you're onto something here because i do i can see like for personal use have this be more like ai or i'm sorry app driven like we have today like there's an app store so there's maybe ai agentic apps that can do certain tasks and then like the person fits into the task whereas i think on the enterprise side like the ai fits into the enterprise right it's like a different it's a different entry point. So like, you know, that's a, that's a much more consultative approach, I think on the enterprise side, whereas perhaps on the personal use side, you're going to see, you know, you know, more, I suppose, just canned solutions, if you will, which would make sense.
16:58Clint Sorenson:Right. And, but that, that's a different investment approach. You know what I'm saying? Cause which I guess isn't too different than maybe what you've seen in the past. Right. But I think maybe less SaaS, I suppose, on the enterprise side and more like custom solutions, like what Palantir and those guys have been doing, which, you know, and that would look, I think, dramatically different than what we've had historically, right, on the versus the enterprise and the personal side. So I don't know. This is, I still haven't quite, I actually had an advisor today ask me to do an investment in an AI app.
17:31And I don't want to say that I, no, no, for a client, like a group
17:36Clint Sorenson:of clients.
Read the full transcript
17:37Aaron Dillon:I don't want to tell for like a personal use or institutional commercial.
17:42Clint Sorenson:It was, I won't say the name of the company. Cause I don't, I think that's not nice to do that. Right. But it was, it was, I would say it was an enterprise focused app, but I didn't feel like the company had like a very strong moat. And I had actually heard their CEO talk. And he basically said the guy, I asked him straight up, like, what's the motive of your company? And he He goes, I just think this is too specific for OpenAI or Anthropic to focus on it. And I was like, oof, bro, like you got to come up with a better answer than that.
18:11Evan Cohen:You know what I mean? The CEO of Zoom might have said the same thing. That's just like, I mean, I hope you're right. You know what I mean? It was like kind of one of those things.
18:22Clint Sorenson:But I don't want to say I convinced them not to do it. But I was like, look, this is just to be straight up. Like if OpenAI decides to do this, this company could be a zero. and I think there's a better than, it's like a 50-50 chance that that could happen. So like, I'm just not there yet on AI apps.
18:38Nick Fusco:Yeah, that's the risk to all these apps. Like, do I think they're going to be prolific? Absolutely. Man, there's a lot of... Who's going to be the winner? There's a lot of risk to the downside. Yeah. Yeah. Like, how do you establish a remote in such a fast-changing environment, especially when compute is everything?
18:54Clint Sorenson:I'm just not there yet. I'm just not there yet. It's still picks and shovels all day long for me. Speaking of picks and shovels, fella, grok closed around this summer and it was big man so they were they raised the number the amount that they're raising 750 million 6.9 billion post money it's already trading it was trading up already in the secondary market from the initial announcement back in july but i have them at 8.1 billion now in valuation but this round they had blackrock neuberger berman um deutsche bank right Deutsche Telekom, excuse me, right? D1, Ultima. This is like a great list of investors.
19:34Clint Sorenson:And then they also announced 2 million developers are using Grok Cloud, right? 2 million developers. That's an insane amount of developers. So I don't know. I don't want to say like, I love this company. So I don't want to spend a ton of time on it because I feel like I talk about it all the time. But Nick, any thoughts on just Grok and how they stack up? I mean, this is as far as I mean, I know there's Cerebus out there kind of thinking more broadly about like the broader semiconductor space, but I don't hear a lot about any other semiconductor companies outside of Grock and Cerebus in the private side.
20:09Clint Sorenson:Right. Sure. Am I missing a few?
20:12Aaron Dillon:i will have to well to break some news look look back at our site in a month and we should be able to find a lot more comparable contacts or companies to existing private companies which will be really really fun or sleeves within public companies that have similar uh similar assets so that will be fun very spoiler alert um but no no i think this is where grok is is shining and it's a support mechanism for everything that everyone wants to do. I think you talk about inference a fair bit and how important that is. But I think the numbers within the secondary space tell a pretty good story. The news is breaking where this is coming, and immediately the market is reactive and overcompensating to a certain extent.
21:00Aaron Dillon:And that's very different than some of what we've seen. And I know we've brought up Revolut quite a bit, a very different company. But Revolut announces a round that sounds sensationalist and it actually takes a little bit of time for that round to come around but then it eventually does you know grok put that puts that out there or other ai uh driven companies put that out there and it's a lot faster there's much more reactive and there's a lot more exciting excitement and also it's i mean this isn't like a 10 or 20 or 50 billion dollar company you know that's right there's there's to have as much excitement and as many users and actually very high agency users on a platform like that means a lot.
21:41Aaron Dillon:It means a lot more than an individual user that's a low cost or low throughput like a Figma or something. So I think it's certainly got a lot of room to run, and it could also be an acquisition target until it gets big enough that it won't be gobbled up. And it sounds like they want to take in as much information, sorry, capital as possible to keep that momentum and kind of get through. But a great CEO once said, you got to be at least$15 billion so no one takes you out. I think that sounded like an astronomical sum. But for names like this, it sounds reasonable. Oh, for sure.
22:23Clint Sorenson:So Clint, these guys, to Nick's point, they've got a huge customer base. they're growing really fast right um they have this this round was a 13.8 x revenue multiple right which i thought was low but like what's your take on that on kind of the valuation i also think anything sub 10 billion dollars right now on this company's a gift right but like what's your take what's your thought on it right on a perhaps more macro level i mean this
22:51Nick Fusco:This company gives me the fastest path to a 10 plus X return in the space, in my opinion, still sticks with the kind of necessary infrastructure to make it a real thing. Right. I mean, AI is wonderful when you think about the leap it's giving humanity and the potential productivity boom. But there are some significant hurdles and bottlenecks that we have to deal with. And in order to make it a reality, you have to invest heavily in infrastructure. We talked about this at Link. I think the government's going to have to print a ton of money to put into infrastructure in the space. And when you think about inference and that necessity for scale, Grok makes a ton of sense.
23:36Nick Fusco:So, yeah, I think this is a great diversifier for people holding NVIDIA or other chip names in the public markets. I think it's great valuation from my perspective, and I think it's got a tremendous amount of upside.
23:52Clint Sorenson:Okay. Listen, let's hit on – I mean, I just – sometimes I wonder if I should just even bring up Grok anymore because it's – I don't – like, I just – I feel like I talk about it at least like every second or third podcast. So, okay. Figure. Let's talk about Figure closed their round, right? So, they had a$39 billion post-money valuation. They raised a billion dollars. And like this, you know, that's early. That's a big valuation for a company that has no product in the marketplace and no revenue. Right. But Brookfield Asset Management came in. NVIDIA came in and Intel Capital came in. Right. They're inside VC arm.
24:33Clint Sorenson:I mean, those are like pretty respectable group of investors. Right. Which I think, you know, gives some credence to this thirty nine billion dollar valuation. so that's what i wanted to hit on with you guys it is trading down a little bit in the secondary so you can get it at a discount right to that 39 billion dollar round um so maybe we could talk about that because there's not too many stocks that are trading at a discount but but you know maybe nick like what do you think about just humanoid robotics as an asset class right because there's like one x right which doesn't have a lot of secondary trading figures obviously out there there's like clone robotics there's aptronics right there's a couple interesting really interesting companies that are out in the space um but you know like i don't i don't know we live in manhattan right i haven't seen a humanoid robot walking down the street yet right so like what do you think of this space humanoid robotics what do you think of this round closing up and
25:34Aaron Dillon:kind of doing so well well i i know we're segwaying away from a company that's a decently under 10 billion that probably is more important um in a lot of ways like currently um but humanoid robots will be a thing you know everything that we saw in the jetsons with dorothy running around getting everything ready oh yeah um but i but i think we we've discussed in the past and it could look So the next incarnation of how this looks could be very, very different. So it doesn't have to look like us. It could be a dog that comes and brings your medication or breakfast in the morning, but gets your coffee going.
26:11But also there's, you know, an integrated smart home.
26:16Aaron Dillon:so at what point does does the barrier between a smart home or an ai assistant or you know all the things that don't need to look like a human uh hence the humanoid aspect um outweigh something that that is not it's purpose-built for as many things as possible but it's never going to necessarily do everything to the best degree but then right all of a sudden i mean you look around the world and it's starting to or continuing to be a pretty dangerous place so you've got you know these uh robo wolves that were presented in the chinese military parade those are already at play in ukraine right now um so sorry that's the that's like a stream of consciousness here i i actually do think there's a place in the world for humanoid robots um i just don't know if they will come on as fast as the other technologies that they are coming to represent.
27:13Aaron Dillon:If they're here to help us and help out with regular things, they're already probably at play in an Amazon warehouse moving carts and cranes around. But there's so many things of the interconnected home that are probably going to replace a Humanoid robot. So yeah, I'm less on the hype of it. So I can understand why it's trading at a discount right now. But I'm supportive. Like I love hearing the news of them running marathons and races and stuff like that. It's kind of cool.
27:43Evan Cohen:Yeah. Yes. Clint, what do you think? Do you kind of second Nick there or have a different thought about Humanoid? Yeah, second Nick.
27:51Nick Fusco:Not a big fan of these valuations on these companies. And I think Evan, to speak from his past, he's not a big fan of these hardware companies too. And I think the valuation is just more of a reflection of how much capital they have to raise and have had to raise to get to where they are more so than a, you know, depiction of value here. Like, this is just because these are capital intensive businesses. And look, I know we've got a lot of money floating around. There's a lot of money chasing AI in general. but I could think of a lot of other places I'd rather put my money than humanoid robots at this time.
28:33Nick Fusco:Doesn't mean it's not real. Doesn't mean the figure's not a great company. Doesn't mean they're not doing really cool stuff. But we need AI to be able to scale and get heavily customized. We need a lot of power. We need a lot of things before this becomes a reality, an everyday reality. So I'd rather bet on those things now.
28:52Clint Sorenson:Yeah, I mean, this is a company that definitely, if you invested in Figure at this price point, this is going to be one of those where if we do, in fact, have billions of humanoid robots on the planet and Figure has 500 million, a billion of these on the planet and the company's worth a trillion dollars, People are like, I can't believe that you got in to figure at 39 in 2005, you're a genius, right?
29:25Evan Cohen:You know what I mean? That's what this company is.
29:29Clint Sorenson:I think you're definitely believing in the theme that there's going to be billions of these robots. And that's why you're making the investment right now. But to Nick's point, it's like, when does that happen? like you kind of go through the you go through the mental cycles of like thinking through like step by step on how that would all come together you know and it's interesting because you almost be like all right henry ford the henry fords of the world you just pull something out there that's like so inexpensive that everyone gets one right um you know i yeah maybe it's like evs right but you know evs i think have a different application because they're already cars, gas-powered cars that you could buy, right?
30:16Clint Sorenson:There were no cars. It was a horse and buggy versus a car, right? So those are kind of very different things. So it's interesting to think if people would find utility in this. I mean, obviously, I see businesses finding utility in it, right? There's some obvious things there. You could replace some humans in factories and whatnot.
30:36Aaron Dillon:Do the Ford analogy. I think Ford is worth less than$10 billion more than figure is right now. What's going to be around in 50 years? Probably something's going to boast figure, you know? Yeah. Like what's it, Boston Dynamics or something like this? Dynamics, yeah. I mean, for Ford to be worth a few billion more than figure, that's a tough bet. Like if one of them is going to go 5X, it's probably fake. But at the same time, like, yeah, that's so hard to grasp. Like 5X, that's the value of Coca-Cola or something.
31:16Evan Cohen:So, yeah, I mean, it's it's it's it's going to be interesting.
31:21Clint Sorenson:I don't know. Like, I talked to my wife the other day. I'm like, hey, when these start to come out, do you want to get one? Right. Right.
31:28Evan Cohen:You're trying to find your own replacement. Well, you have to eat yourself out of the job. You got to eat your own cooking. Right. Come on. Like I'm telling people we should invest in these things because they're going to be real. Like you got to do it. You got to buy one, right? So it kind of – but it's kind of like she's like, well, what would it do? I'm like, I don't know yet. We got to wait and see, right? Until it doesn't. I mean I don't know if you guys saw the Unitree video. There was a new Unitree video that I saw this morning and they were literally kicking the shit out of this robot.
32:01Evan Cohen:There were four guys running it, punching it, kicking it, throwing it on the ground, and the robot pops right back up. It was incredible. It was incredible.
32:13Aaron Dillon:We're saying this with a smile now, but 10 years' time, we're dead.
32:18Nick Fusco:Did you see what was floating around? I'm sitting here trying to find it. I can't find it. I thought I bookmarked it. Maybe I just saved it as a picture. but there was this thing floating around on x and it was um talking about what would like what ai is going to kill you know like what's going to be dead did y 'all see that no no no tell them so i'm full of it's pretty awesome i just have so the first thing was what dies and how it happens first one was driving right it said 2028 to 2030 driving's done second one was doctors so it says AI diagnoses better, prescribes perfectly, never forgets symptoms.
32:57Nick Fusco:MDs become liability managers. 2027 to 2032. But I'm going to skip to the last one, which has to do with the figure. Two down, the testative figure. AI-controlled drones and robots fight wars. So soldiers are what dies. And now you have AI-controlled drones and robots that fight wars. Humans become collateral damage, not combatants. I thought that was pretty cool. So maybe... And when you think about, you know, this has a lot of macro effects, right? You think about deglobalization and we were facing a demographic crisis across the world. No one's facing it worse than China, right? Lost 100 million people, their populations because of the one child policy slated to be cut in half by 2030.
33:42Nick Fusco:That's significant. That's a huge problem. Problem. Well, look at robots coming like right on time. Solutions. All of a sudden, you know, humanoid robots make a lot of sense.
33:54Evan Cohen:Listen, there's no joke.
33:56Clint Sorenson:There is something to that, I think, Clint, like it's like a necessary.
34:01Nick Fusco:Yeah.
34:01Clint Sorenson:It's like a societal requirement, right, that we need these things to work.
34:06Nick Fusco:Society fights immigration, right, which is the bathroom. We need immigration, but we need it in a responsible fashion. So, you know, I can understand why people throw up when, you know, immigration just becomes, oh, just let them all in. versus let's come up with a methodical fashion to acclimate. I get both sides of the argument, but we absolutely have to have immigration. Our population's not growing here domestically, globally.
34:31Clint Sorenson:That's the same thing.
34:33Nick Fusco:That's the harsh answer.
34:34Clint Sorenson:But a few people acknowledge that fact. But this is why I think humanoid robots are actually going to start to, you know. Look, I'm a big believer. I'm a capitalist. I'm a big believer that there's always an economic driver behind literally almost everything, right? Including people not having children. I think that's also economic driven, right? So, but I don't want to get into that because I'll start talking forever on that. But like, I do think like the adoption of humanoid robots will be an economic driven thing. And in households too, right? And like, it will be less expensive to have a humanoid robot take care of your elderly parent than it will be having a human nurse.
35:13Yeah.
35:14Evan Cohen:So like, there will be like these decision points that people can make oh you know my elderly parent can stay in their home uh which they
35:22Nick Fusco:really want to do 20 grand one time versus you know 20 grand a month and like this is this this
35:28Evan Cohen:is the stuff i think people like like situations will present themselves like this of course and
35:33Clint Sorenson:like companies will be founded that will have a you know uh you know elder care humanoid robot You know what I mean?
35:41Nick Fusco:It could perform CPR, first aid, with perfection. One of the other things on that document was talking about surgeons. Surgeons, they already use robotic surgery where a doctor is sitting in a hospital, a professional, and saying, hey, let me monitor it. And it does it without tremor, with perfection. Less risk of infection, all kinds of benefits for the patient. Imagine having a nanny that's a humanoid robot that can read the symptoms of the child perfectly, call help if needed, like not relying on the judgment of a teenager who's scrolling on Instagram.
36:21Clint Sorenson:100%.
36:21Nick Fusco:You know what I mean? 100%. And that combined with the idea of always remembering, oh, I remember that the kid is allergic to this, and it's a different babysitter next time.
36:34Aaron Dillon:Right, right, right. Remember, or the elderly care, they swap nurses in and out, in and out, just because it's a 24-hour rotation. It's so beneficial. And anyone familiar with any sort of elderly abuse, you could fix that pretty damn quick. I just – but guys, I can even see things where like –
36:57Evan Cohen:Like an alarm system.
36:58Nick Fusco:Perfect alarm system.
37:00Evan Cohen:Yeah. Right. But this is what I'm saying. I think there's going to be like – there'll be use – Like, do I get an alarm system or do I get one of these?
37:07Clint Sorenson:Right. Like, I think they'll just be, there will be use cases that will make it obvious that this is a, like a robot is a better solution than the current, than the alternative, or maybe the historical solution has been. And that's when things, these things will start to get adopted. And I don't think it's going to take, oh, I'm definitely, I'm definitely going to get one. Yeah. I'm more about like, which, which one do I get? It's like, you know what I mean? Like I definitely, and that's going to be like, my wife wants me to get a dog and like have a dog come around. Like, no, you know what? I think I'm going to hold out for that humanoid robot.
37:40Clint Sorenson:Just bring that thing around everywhere I go.
37:42Aaron Dillon:I would do the, you know what I mean?
37:43Clint Sorenson:The robot.
37:44Aaron Dillon:I would actually do the robot dog of, of all things.
37:47Evan Cohen:The robot dog? That's the way to do it. Like a nice compromise, right? A robot dog. Absolutely.
37:51Aaron Dillon:It's great to your family, but if someone breaks into your house,
37:55Nick Fusco:you're not wrong. Here's my question. Like I need a robot. I don't want to pay for a seat for it. like how do i fly with my robot uh you check it goes into the seat for you man yeah man they
38:07Evan Cohen:get one that it becomes they get one that folds up it comes the suitcase put in the overhead
38:12Nick Fusco:robot i can carry my man and everything this is gonna be i'm on top of this i'm not investing
38:17Clint Sorenson:no clint you know what you do you just get the robot i'm sure there'll be like a like a rental car you'll just get a rental robot right you just log into the rental robot you get to wherever
38:27Nick Fusco:Just a big economy where people rent their own cars now. I forget what the app. Was it Toro or something like that? Yeah, Toro.
38:33Clint Sorenson:Yeah.
38:34Nick Fusco:We'll rent a robot.
38:35Evan Cohen:You can rent your robot out. I'm telling you, man. We might be going too far.
38:39Aaron Dillon:We're saying we don't think there's an investment promise and figure at these rates. Oh, no, no, no. However. I do. Just as long as you underwrite it.
38:49Evan Cohen:I do think there's an investment and figure. You just have to underwrite it the right way. You have to believe that this is going to happen.
38:54Nick Fusco:It's hard to get to 10X for me on that company. as fast as 10x on ground.
38:59Clint Sorenson:You have to believe that there's going to be billions of these on the planet, and then$39 billion makes sense.
39:04Aaron Dillon:Clint, you hit on such a good point about how capital-intensive it is. They can't afford to be raising it at lower valuations. I think that's fair.
39:13Evan Cohen:It's the same thing with the AI companies. The AI platform companies. Yeah, it's$200 billion.
39:19Nick Fusco:You're like, come on.
39:19Aaron Dillon:But with this, you have to have such incredible foresight or really just build up the bravado and confidence in and around those valuations. Because if you haven't mapped it out right, and you have to keep raising at higher and higher valuations, and then if the staff that are really backing it have that equity, and then all of a sudden they're getting over diluted, it's a super, super delicate balance when you're operating with no revenue for many, many years and have to look forward 10 and 20 years. So it's - No, you're not wrong. It's very, very impressive. They got to start driving revenue.
39:54Aaron Dillon:What they're doing.
39:54Clint Sorenson:They got to find a couple of use cases. You're right, Nick. They got to get some use cases. They got to get some robots out in the market, right? Start driving some revenue. Yeah, that's going to be... I mean, even the robots in China don't really have use cases yet, right? I mean, there's like five or six really great robotics companies there, but they're not quite where I think they... They're not quite towards monetization. Right. So yeah, like in the next couple of years, you're going to need you're going to have to see some like robots with some actual real use cases that can scale. And there's a huge target addressable market for this stuff to like continue to make sense.
40:30Clint Sorenson:But I do think we're going to get there for what it's worth. And I do think that we're going to have like billions of these on the planet, frankly, for the reason that Clint said. It's because population is going down everywhere.
40:42Aaron Dillon:I'm totally behind that. We are environmental terrorists to this planet. And having one kid and one robot, that's not bad. And then we figure out how to repair and make it a better planet for that one kid or two kids, whatever it may be. Yeah.
41:00Evan Cohen:Well, it's going to be weird.
41:03Clint Sorenson:I will say this. I do hope people have children. I just don't. Because I don't want to have like 8 billion robots on the planet and like 2 billion humans. You're just looking around and playing catch in the backyard.
41:14Evan Cohen:That's my son. Yeah, that would be disappointing, right?
41:18Clint Sorenson:I'd rather see like, you know, I don't know if you guys watch Foundation. It's on, I think it's on Apple TV, right? But it's an Isaac Eisenhoff book, if I'm believing. I might be speaking inappropriately, so hopefully no one gets salty with me on this. But they're like, you know, humans have conquered the universe, right? kind of thing or the galaxy and there's trillions of humans spread out across all these different planets like i hope i hope that's in the in the cards for us right um you know versus the robots
41:52Aaron Dillon:being three-fourths of the population and i thought we went an entire episode without talking about elon musk or spacex but to get interplanetary we gotta we gotta give the man some credit
42:03Evan Cohen:you can't ever get away from him you can't get away from the guy so all right fellows well this was a good one. I appreciate you guys. Thanks for this.
42:11Clint Sorenson:You got it. All right, I'll talk to you later. Okay. Cheers.
From the publisher
Nick Fusco = CEO at PM Insights, a pre-IPO secondary market pricing company
…X - @TheFuscoKid
…LinkedIn - www.linkedin.com/in/nickfusco
Evan Cohen = Founder/COO of withVincent.com, a media company focused on alternative investments
…X - @evvcohen
…LinkedIn - www.linkedin.com/in/evcohen
Clint Sorenson = Chief Investment Officer at WealthShield, an outsourced CIO and investment research company
…X - @clint_sorenson
…LinkedIn - www.linkedin.com/in/csorensoncfacmt
Aaron Dillon = Managing Director of AG Dillon Funds, pre-IPO stock investing for RIAs
…X - @AaronGDillon
…LinkedIn - www.linkedin.com/in/aarondillonnyc