Nvidia’s “Super Bowl of AI”; Tesla Disappoints Fans; Meta’s VR Metaverse Is Over

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1:27It's not about cleaning files or fixing machines. It's about removing the friction that breaks momentum. CleanMyMac is the quiet presence that keeps creativity uninterrupted so that when you're finishing a pitch deck at midnight or exporting a large final product, you can trust your Mac to keep up. Experience all the app's optimization essentials in a sleek, user-friendly dashboard. Get tidy today. Try seven days free and use my code VALLEY for 20 % off. Brian, hello. Very exciting to have another way to talk to you when I'm not pinging you on Slack every five seconds. It's great because, you know, Slack doesn't have the voice part.

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2:26Welcome to Wired's Uncanny Valley. I'm Zoe Schiffer, Wired's Director of Business and Industry. I'm Brian Barrett, Executive Editor. This week on the show, we're diving into NVIDIA's annual developer conference, why some Tesla influencers are fleeing the brand, and why Meta has finally shut down Horizon Worlds on MetaQuest.

2:50So to start us off, this week, NVIDIA had its annual developer conference in San Jose. This is like the big event in the AI industry. Some people even call it the Super Bowl of AI. Developers go, CEOs, researchers, wired reporters, and we're all waiting to hear what CEO Jensen Huang is going to tell us about the future of the company. One thing that's interesting about the NVIDIA conference too is I feel like so much of it is business facing. Like it's not a lot of stuff that you as an AI consumer or someone who like plays around a cloud wouldn't necessarily connect with. One thing with a grain of salt, because this is someone who stands to make this money, but Jensen did say the revenue opportunity for artificial intelligence chips just at NVIDIA.

3:38might reach at least a trillion dollars through 2027. Pocket change. Pocket change. I mean, really, for NVIDIA at this point. One thing that was really interesting, he introduced a new product. I always like when there's an actual product tied to this rather than sort of the promise of a product. A while ago, NVIDIA struck a licensing deal with a company called Grok, not to be confused with the occasionally... It's Grok with a Q, crucially. Grok with a Q, not Grok with an undressing, unconsensual undressing problem. So they're going to pair NVIDIA's chips, which are good at processing AI, with Crocs chips, which have components that can put a charge into how NVIDIA's chips operate.

4:17So basically that$20 billion licensing agreement is bearing fruit. It's going to make inference quicker, less expensive. It's going to make things more efficient, basically, for NVIDIA customers. Right. Yeah. I mean, I was talking to a bunch of people in the industry about this this week. And one thing they pointed out, which might be totally obvious to AI researchers, but was pretty not obvious to me, is that we actually haven't had specific chips for AI yet. They've been using general NVIDIA chips for training and inference this entire time. And, like, this is basically the first year where we are going to see specialized chips for artificial intelligence.

4:52Well, and I'm old enough to remember, I know we joke about my age, but it's not that long ago. Nvidia got to where it is because it made GPUs for gaming PCs. Like the GPUs happened to be good at the things AI needed. So they were kind of backed into this. So yeah, it is a big moment. But Zoe, we've said inference a couple times so far. Go ahead and define it for folks so that we know everyone's on the same page about what we are talking about. Yeah. Okay. So if you're an AI researcher, you're like, Jan, this is boring. But it's not obvious to people outside the industry. So it's worth saying really clearly.

5:25There is the pre-training process where you let a model loose on like the corpus of the internet and it gobbles up all the data and it, you know, learns from it. And then there's a process of you as an AI consumer asking a question to ChatGPT or Claude. The process of you pinging that question and getting an answer in return is what we think of when we talk about inference. And actually now, like most of the investments that AI companies and big tech companies are making are being spent on inference, not pre-training. Because they've already eaten up the entire internet. And inference is just really expensive.

5:59Like serving all of those customers in real time is a really expensive process. Just for an example of how Jensen Wong talked about inference, there was a slightly bizarre AI animated music video that was displayed at the end of his speech. Let's listen to that. Well, once upon an AI time training was the paradigm. Sure, it taught the motto's how, but inference runs the whole world now. Vera shows us who's the boss at 35 times less the cost. Blackwell makes the token sing NVIDIA. The inference king. I sincerely hope that they used AI to make that and did not pay a marketing firm many millions of dollars.

6:42Yeah. The quality is about what I would expect from AI. And just for folks, the references to Blackwell and Vera are references to various NVIDIA products. We also should say that Jensen announced NemoClaw, which was this enterprise platform for AI agents, basically like a secure enterprise version of OpenClaw. It's fun to watch companies scramble. So you've got NemoClaw now from NVIDIA. You've got the creator of OpenClaw, which then, what is the latest name for it? Yeah, because it was ClawedBot, MaltBot, OpenClaw. OpenClaw, great. So he's now working at OpenAI. And Meta has acquired MaltBook, right?

7:27Right. the social network for AI agents. So there's everyone scrambling to cover this and be on top of this, but it feels almost like so that they can say that they are, you know? Yeah, I was going to say, I feel like you can almost hear the backroom conversations that are happening where like Mark Zuckerberg needs to explain to his investors why they're actually like going to be ahead of the curve on this and like, wait, wait, wait, no, we're not being left behind because as soon as you see, you know, a trend pop up or one company doing something, they all try and replicate it as quickly as possible.

7:57Yeah, which is why I am working on my own AI agent social network. It's a small one. It's really centered on cooking. It's like a cook. Anyway, it's a whole thing. It's going to be a whole thing. The one thing, so I also wanted to mention, I am a little bit obsessed with people's obsession with space-based data centers. And similar to what we were just saying about having to meet the moment and tell your investors where you're at, NVIDIA also announced the Space One Vera Rubin module to the GPU and computer that is built for space. Or will be built for space because there's no actual timeline for development.

8:30Right. But they've got their best people on it, Zoe. I love this. I mean, this is like one of my favorite conversations to have with really smart researchers right now. Because, you know, people who understand physics immediately start sweating and swearing and talking about like, how the fuck are you going to cool a data center in space? Like, they just get so upset about it. And I think people who actually know about this think it's completely far-fetched. Like we're just so far away from being able to figure out how you would power and cool and operate these things. But again, it's a marketing ploy.

9:03And why is it a marketing ploy? Because a bunch of these companies are trying to go public. So I think we're going to see a lot of these like not NVIDIA, but we're talking OpenAI. We're talking SpaceX. We're talking Anthropic at some point. And so I think we're going to see a lot of these kind of far-fetched big announcements pre-IPO. And meantime, there is like some actual real world happening right now competition going on. A lot of this is focused on future state stuff, but we do have, you know, NVIDIA chips are facing competition. Google making its own chips. Cerebris is a startup that is making chips that specialize in AI.

9:39You know, we see Meta having its own adventures. Yeah. I was going to say, like a bunch of these companies like OpenAI and Meta are actually working, you know, with third parties to design custom chips. So I think like NVIDIA is having to defend its place as like the leader of this entire industry in a way it really hasn't had to for many, many months, if not years. Jensen Huang knows that and is making moves to, again, defend its position. Like, do I see NVIDIA like falling way behind or having to really worry about its business in the near future? Like, no, I do not. Do you think? No, I don't think so.

10:12So I think it's more what shape we're in that we've got all of our chips in this particular. All of our GPUs in this particular data center. Oh, wow. I know. Okay, speaking of failures, let's turn our attention to Tesla. And I say that, don't be mad, Tesla. No, I know. There are Tesla fans. Oh my gosh, in the pocket of BYD. This is not, I am, you know, big BYD over here. No, not Tesla generally, but Tesla did get in some trouble recently. I'm specifically talking about, you know, they had offered a limited time deal to transfer its quote unquote lifetime full self-driving service to new vehicles.

10:51We'll just say it's not really full self-driving. That terminology is controversial in and of itself. People are excited about the fact that they could just pay once and have it forever because it is pretty expensive. But then Tesla rolled that back, right? They changed the language of the agreement, saying that you need to have their new vehicle delivered by March 31st in order to swap their full self-driving from their last vehicle to the next one. That's a tall order for people. So people have been upset. I think people who are traditionally Tesla ride or dies, and they have a very vocal community who will probably come at me for saying connecting Tesla with the word failure.

11:27But they're starting to turn on Tesla themselves. There's a growing community of former Tesla fanatics and influencers who have started distancing themselves from the brand, which I think is interesting. And it's distinct from the sort of broader consumer pullback from Tesla that we've seen in UK and Europe in particular, but also in the US, people not fans of Elon Musk politics. These are Elon Musk fans who are saying, we're kind of over this. I think this is fascinating because, you know, we all know that Tesla's stock price has like often outpaced its business fundamentals. And part of the reason for that is that Elon Musk has specifically cultivated a rabid fan base that buy Tesla stock kind of no matter what.

12:07It's one of the most widely held retail stocks on platforms like Robinhood. And so if you're in it for Elon Musk, like maybe the business goes through its ups and downs, but you're like going to stick with the company no matter what, which it gives him like a lot of personal power. If we're seeing, you know, again, and this might not be like a widespread phenomena among the Fionnibase right now, but even, you know, some big name people here and there who were really, really pro Tesla turn. I think that that's actually a really big problem for him. How big a problem is it, Zoe? Because I agree with your point, but increasingly, Elon Musk is saying we're not even really a car company anymore, right?

12:46Like we are a humanoid robot company. Oh, and a robo-taxi company. Sorry. I always forget the robo-taxi part, even though that's the part that's actually the closer to being real. Right. So is there a world in which none of this actually matters because, you know what, we've got optimist robots and we've got a fleet of self-driving Teslas and that's really what the future is. That's what the stock price is based on. Yeah, I mean, it might not. And again, like I think Musk is first and foremost an excellent marketer and an excellent storyteller. And so if the story he's telling now is that we're not a car company, we're a robot company and people buy that, then like, sure.

13:19But I think the point that we're making is that a lot of these people aren't necessarily Tesla car fans in a vacuum. They're Elon Musk fans. And they happen, you know, he happens to make this vehicle. And so then they choose the vehicle as like the thing that they're going to be obsessed with and pump and talk about on X all the time. Like maybe that transfers. But I think if his popularity among the fan base is waning, if he is doing things to kind of ostracize his own community, then like I think that's an issue. And I think that this started to happen with some people when he started getting into politics.

13:52Like I talked to a couple people for that Cybertruck story last year who said like, I love this car, but it's a bummer to go out in public and be a lightning rod. Like I didn't get it because I, you know, necessarily want to like tell everyone I support the Trump administration. And he didn't really give us a choice because he started getting involved with Trump and Doge. And all of a sudden when I drove this car around, people were yelling and screaming at me and kind of trying to drive me off the road. And if you haven't read Zoe's Cybertruck photo essay from last year, please do. She interviewed a bunch of Cybertruck owners who said some fascinating things, including one guy who's, quote, I'm going to get it slightly wrong, but it is printed in my brain indelibly.

14:32Women don't like the car. Women don't like the vehicle. Women don't like the vehicle. Wow, women don't like the vehicle. So in terms of Tesla owners who are turning around, Zoe, I think you have feelings about this, or I know you do because you've expressed them before, but I'd like you to express them on the podcast. How do we feel about people who have the, they're driving a Tesla, they bought it before all this, they have a Tesla, and they have a bumper sticker on there now that says, I bought this car before Elon went crazy or some such. How do we feel about these people, Zoe? I'm so glad you teed this up for me.

15:02I feel bad. I think this is embarrassing. I feel like you have two options. Either you drive your Tesla loud and proud, you don't put a damn sticker on it, or you sell your car, get a different electric vehicle. Like, they're not even the nicest cars on the market. I am genuinely confused. But the virtue signaling, which I live in the Bay Area, so like, I see these cars everywhere. I'm just like, you guys, this is the middle road and it is the worst one to take. Choose a different option. Fewer options than ever, though. You know, Honda had three EV models planned for the U.S. they've canceled them you know there are fewer options than ever a lot of a lot of u.s manufacturers are backing away from it so we are in sort of a weird place where tesla is you know increasingly one of the the diehards in this space here's a different choice that meta made this week meta announced on tuesday that starting march 31st horizon worlds will no longer be available in the quest store and then it's going to be shut down entirely on june 15th horizon worlds is Meta's metaverse play, right?

16:04It's the world that they've created that's supposed to be the showcase for the metaverse. And the way to experience it, if you are really committed to VR, is going to be the MetaQuest headset. You'll still be able to access it on your phone. But that's not really a metaverse. That's just a verse, I think, at that point. Right. Yeah. I mean, huge bummer that they changed the entire name of the company to be about this product. Incredible. Incredible choice. And I'd say less than five years ago. Like I was I looked that up when the news came. I was like four and a half years ago. I mean, look, Meta poured an absolute ton of money into this.

16:41And I think if you talk to executives and other true believers, they will say we were simply too early. Like, this could still happen someday. That ready player world vision of the future, like, could come to pass. But yeah, I mean, I think now they're seeing, like, wow, the actual thing that came to pass is that AI ate everyone's lunch. And so they're trying to play catch up there. And we still have yet to see like what's coming from all of the money that they've poured into their new AI labs that Alex Wang is running. So I want to talk about AI, but I want to stick with metaverse a little bit, too.

17:13You mentioned a ton of money. Reality Labs reportedly lost$77 billion. So painful. Over four years or whatever. And I guess that's the idea. You just keep making bets and something will be bad. Do you want to hear my unifying theory about consumer technology? I absolutely do. It's not very good, but it is everything is 3D TV until proven otherwise. Okay, I'm going to need you to unpack that a little bit. So back when 3D TVs were a big thing, there was a period of like two years when every TV company was saying, 3D TV is the next big thing. People love this. Everyone's going to want one. You could not buy a high-end TV that did not have 3D baked in.

17:50Every TV that was high-end had, it came with like six pairs of 3D glasses. So for two reasons, everything to me is 3D TV into a program. One, companies will insist that something is the future, despite all available evidence, until they lose$77 billion and have to sort of capitulate. So never believe what companies are saying in the future. And two, people don't like to wear things on their faces. Right. So the metaverse, unfortunately, and Horizon Worlds checked both of those boxes. It was a thing that on its face was not going to be fun and created more separation than unity, which is Facebook's whole thing.

18:26It's like bringing people close together. well. I would say it has not done that either. But I just think that this vision of the future where everyone sits in their little like individual houses with their headsets on, interacting with virtual avatars of their friends and family or strangers or whoever is, I mean, I hate to get on a moral high ground, but I guess this is one that I actually feel strongly about. I think that is such a grim, tragic vision of the future. And it's one that clearly did not resonate widely with people. So back to the AI part, not to bounce around, But, you know, Meta and other companies are making an even bigger bet on AI, right?

18:58It is tempting to have a sort of deja vu moment where it's like they're all saying this is the future. Billions and billions, hundreds of billion dollars, data center buildouts, sort of dwarfing the amount that Reality Labs ended up losing. What's the difference here, though, Zoe? Why is AI different from Horizon Worlds or the metaverse? Why is AI not 3D TV? I mean, I guess I find it a little difficult to compare those two technologies. I think AI is kind of like a thing that you can, an innovation that you can build a lot of other things with. You're not necessarily locked into one platform. It's like a new paradigm in that way.

19:36Whereas with the metaverse, like, sure, you could build games and other experiences within this universe, but ultimately you were buying into like meta's platform and this vision for the world. You don't need to necessarily buy into a new vision for the world to like build with AI. You can build B2B products. You can build consumer tech products. You can build immersive world products. But you could also just like build a new payments platform. Like I think there's a broadness that makes it more viable. It's almost more of a service. And I think even more importantly, it is something that people have proven to get use out of.

20:09Right. It is there is already, you know, how much that use is worth and whether it's worth all this investment ultimately and all that. Those are still questions that have to be answered. But AI is good at a lot of stuff, right? It has sort of passed that first hurdle of, does anyone actually want this? Yeah, like a lot of people actually want this. And it also doesn't make you wear anything on your face for the most part. So, so far, feeling pretty good. Again, whether it's worth all of the money that's going into it and all of the other societal effects and stuff is a separate question. Yeah, but I think like just the simple question of, is it helping you do something you already do, but making that thing better and easier?

20:45Like just for me personally, what I used to Google, I now often will ask ChatGPT, like it's not perfect. You definitely still need to fact check it. But in terms of a search engine, I think the experience is far superior as long as you know what you're dealing with. With Meta, like there was no, oh, I'm, you know, looking at a tiny screen in my home and would like to look at a more immersive screen. It was asking you to do something entirely new and different. And that new and different thing did not appeal to me or apparently to many other people. Yeah. Apple made a really big bet on headsets, too.

21:17And that bet also felt like it really did not pay off. And I think that's another version where it's like, in order for that to work, in order to completely change the computing paradigm, it needed to do what you can do on a laptop so much better. And frankly, it just didn't. Like, there were cool things like, you know, watching a movie and it was very like high definition or whatever. But like, it is just genuinely easier to use your laptop and phone than it was to use those headsets and kind of like wave your hands around in the air like Apple wanted you to. I like that we, and I fully endorse this, talk about the Vision Pro in the past tense.

21:52I know. Even though... Wait, are they still shipping them? Yeah. They updated it like a few months ago, like in a very small way. Oh my God. You can still try one on at the Apple store, I think. They're still out there. That's amazing. Coming up after the break, we're going to share our wired, tired picks for the week. Stay with us.

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