Goblin-Mode, Jon Gray from Blackstone Joins, Alex Epstein on OPEC, Trial Progresses

appear on the horizon. You're surrounded by journals. Hold your position. There's misinformation clearing order inbound. >> Let's just roll. We are surrounded by journal. Hold your position. Get up. Trust the experts here. We are expert founder Malcode. I see multiple journalists on the horizon. Stand by. >> UAV online. Blaze. >> Double blaze. Triple blaze. Double kill. Fight is please >> team deathmatch. We are experts. Triple blade. Let's just roll. Right. Marky clearing order inbound. We are surrounded by journalists. Hold your position. >> Strike one. >> Strike two. Another one. >> Activate golden retriever mode. >> Yeah. >> Walking inbound. Five. founder. >> You're watching TVN. >> Today's Tuesday, April 28th, 2026. We are live from the TVP Ultra on the Temple of Technology, the Fortress of Finance. We got a quick show because John Gray from Blackstone is joining in 20 minutes. We're going to run through a bunch of stuff. Uh I wrote about this incar surveillance thing. It's going viral. It's sort of fake news. We got to sort of truth zone it, but also it's coming and it might not matter because if you get in a robo taxi, there's definitely going to be a camera on you. But the fear is centered around this idea that there will be a requirement from the federal government uh that uh every new car sold in the United States will be required by law to have technology. Uh-oh. That puts constant surveillance on the driver. And this is happening sooner than you think. By 2027, that's just 12 months away. Uh AI in your car will determine if you're sober and fit to drive automatically turning off the vehicle. >> It's almost May, by the way. >> I know. We're we're we're what eight months away, I guess, from 2027. Uh this is the real AI 2027 problem. This is this is a big >> We are having audio issues. It's most likely a nation state >> potentially. >> Possible. We are under attack, but we are working on it. >> It's like watching a dubbed foreign film. Well, uh, maybe we can play this video of what happened the last time America tried to, uh, pull back on, uh, on driving a car while intoxicated. Uh, and some of the some of the response, some of the backlash from >> any attempt to restrict drinking and driving here is view. >> Can we pull this up? >> Okay, we're working on it. >> Production team is being humbled this morning. >> Humbled. Uh anyway, uh let me read through some of my take and then we'll play that funny video. So, uh uh sounds scary. Okay, John actually says, "Audio sounds good to me for what it's worth." Let's go. Let's see. How about this? >> Does this sound okay? Does this sound okay? Does this sound okay? Does this sound okay? Hopefully, it all sounds good. Uh you Yeah, let's play this video. >> Drinking and driving here is viewed by some as downright undemocratic. It's kind of getting communist when a fell can't put in a hard day's work, put in 11, 12 hours a day and then get in your truck and at least drink one or two beers. >> They're making it laws where you can't drink when you want to. You can't you have to wear a seat belt when you're driving and pretty soon we're going to be communist country. Communist country. >> What? What? When was that? Was that the >> Apparently that's real. I I always I I've seen that video before. I always thought it was fake. I didn't realize that that was real. That feels like 80s,7s, something like that. 80s. Okay. Well, uh there was backlash then and there's backlash now. Uh some of it's a little bit overblown. Uh this sounds very scary. You know, constant surveillance. The real the real crazy version is uh a camera that's watching you at all times. The government, the police, and the automaker can just turn off your car whenever they want. That sounds bad. What's actually being proposed? What's actually on the timetable? So, uh, the rationale for this is good and I I think most people would agree that that it is a reasonable, uh, thing to do to try and curb, uh, al uh, alcohol-related, uh, vehicle accidents, drunk driving. Uh, there's more than 10,000 alcohol-related deaths each year on US roads. That's a ton. Anything we can do to stop that, reduce that, totally worth working on, totally worth pursuing as long as it doesn't violate a whole bunch of other liberties or create more problems than it solves, right? We want net positive impact here. Technology is getting better at detecting intoxication and it's getting a lot cheaper. So, why not just ship drunk driver detection uh detect uh drunk driver detection system with every car from the factory? That's the proposal. Uh there are a bunch of potential downsides that we can get into, but it's important to get set the facts straight about set the facts straight about where we actually stand today. So the core concept here is generally correct. Congress did pass a mandate directing the NHTSA to create a standard for advanced drunk driving prevention technology in new passenger vehicles. Now the 2027 date that people are citing, that's not a hard deadline. Um the law was passed back in 2024 and in the actual law it basically allowed for delays. So they said you the NHT TSA will only issue a binding mandate requiring automakers to actually roll out this tech when the tech is ready. And the NHTSA currently says that the technology is not ready. So in theory, the tech feels close, but the scale of the problem is so big. You can see why there's a delay here. Alcohol detection systems exist and are typically deployed for drivers with DUIs. You're familiar with blowing in the tube probably. Uh hopefully not personally, but the problem is that those little hoses that you blow into, those are active systems. They require you to actually sit there and do that for a minute. The government doesn't want that. That's not what the proposal is. They want passive, which means breath sensing. So there's just like smellvision. Basically, if it smells alcohol, it doesn't turn on the car. Uh the other one is fingerprint reading. So, you put your finger on the start button and it scans into your finger and and and sees how many alcohol particles are inside. I guess that that sounds sci-fi, but we're close, I guess. Uh there's a couple other ways you can solve that. Uh and then camera system. Just look at the at the driver. If they look drunk, then don't turn on the car. So, uh all of these seem like they could be close to being roughly accurate right now. Like you can imagine an AI startup or a university lab putting something together at a hackathon that's 90% of the way there, maybe 99% of the way there, maybe even 99.9% of the way there. But the problem is that Americans drive a lot. The rough estimate is that there are almost a quarter trillion driving trips per year in America. It's basically every American, all 350 million of them basically, uh, taking an average of two trips every single day of the year. So 224 billion trips a year is what the rough back of the envelope I did was. Um, and what that means in practice is that if if this system is 99.9% accurate, you're still looking at tens of millions of incorrect results every year. And the fact that probably 99.9% of these trips are not inebriated. Like drunk driving is not 50% of trips. It's not 1% of trips. It's a very small amount. >> Think about how people would would abuse this new system. It'd be like students being like, "Sorry, I couldn't make it to the exam." >> Exactly. Do ate my lunch. My car wouldn't start because of a false positive on this. And so even if you're at 99%, you're still looking at tens of millions of incorrect results. The vast majority of those are going to be people who were sober. uh the you know somebody wants to get in their car for their morning commute. They're a little sleepy or they wore some cologne that triggered some sensor system flags them as intoxicated and prevents them from starting their car and it's infuriating. The tech will probably get there with enough time and effort. So it's worth looking uh into who supports this and uh opposes it. The mandate was actually bipartisan but there's starting to be a backlash from libertarian conservatives who are worried about Orwellian government controls. uh there's an idea that there will be a remote kill switch which leads to a bunch of dystopian possibilities. That is not in the current provision. Uh that's not what's actually being proposed right now. Um but you know it's possible that at the end that the end result of this process of back and forth, you do wind up with that exact capability. And so people are worried about the system going off while you're driving at speed on the on the roads and then the car just shuts off and you get in a crash and that's like actually more dangerous than potentially the alternative. And so the middle ground seems to be what's called pre-drive lockout. >> We need a tinfoil expert because haven't the tinfoil enthusiasts >> uh have been saying that the sort of remote >> are you using tinfoil enthusiasts to mean conspiracy theorists. >> I've never heard that before. It's good though. >> That's a that's a new one. >> Okay. Yes. >> So tinfoil enthusiasts. >> Yes. Will definitely >> well have been making have been have been claiming Yes. that the remote shut off button has existed forever. >> Oh yeah. Since the since the 1985. >> So when when when some sort of like, you know, uh witness or or something like that just gets in a very inconveniently timed high-speed wreck. >> Oh, >> that is shut down. Okay. I was unfair conspiracy theory. It's interesting though. Um but uh yeah, so I mean the current the current like consensus is around maybe pre-drive lockout being the more moderate solution than actually shutting the car off once it's driving. Still incredibly uh incredibly inconvenient if there's false positives. And then you also do still run into some potential negatives outcomes where you go to the beach, you have a couple glasses of wine, you're not planning on leaving, but then the tsunami warning goes off. You need to get back in your car and your car says no. >> Like I don't care that there's a tsunami. >> Oh, >> I don't care that there's a tsunami. you have had two glasses of wine. You're at 0.08. You can't drive right now. And you need to tell the car, well, in this case, I I'm okay with driving drunk because the tsunami is coming and I'm at the beach and I had a couple glasses of wine. >> And the car won't be able to, you know, potentially, you know, deal with that nuance, right? And there's a whole bunch of other Yeah. And there's a whole bunch of other scenarios that could potentially play out where uh the uh uh um just judiciousness is uh is difficult, but potentially unlocked. you know, AI agents, I don't know. You know, you ask these models, what would they do in some certain scenario? Maybe uh there's a solution. >> Yeah, I think there's a much uh much stronger argument for rolling this out as soon as the average vehicle >> is just full self-driving has has full self-driving capability. >> But then but then you don't need it because you can be as drunk as you want. No, I still I still think there's going to be this big window where where where you're not going to be able to >> Paul specifically because if you need >> I I don't know as long as somebody as long as somebody needs to sit in the front seat of their car over on in any type of situation. >> I like the idea of level four self-driving. You get in the car, there's one button you push to say, "Hey, just put it in self-driving mode. I've had a couple drinks. don't let me take the wheel. >> No matter how hard I try to negotiable. It's just play Playmobil level. Uh and then uh but then but then there's a second button. And for that you have to do a full blood transfusion. They take they they centrifuge your blood and make sure that you have the purest blood possible to take to take the wheel and be able to actually drive the vehicle. I don't know. >> Maybe something there. >> I did have I did have a take on this though. uh which is that uh Doug Demiro, friend of the show, uh founder of carsbids.com, has always talked about the eras of cars, you know, the air cooled Porsches, then you have the the fully manual, no uh no no electronic systems, no stability control, no traction control, those types of cars. Then you get into the the manual gear boxes, the no turbos, no hybrid systems, and then the modern supercar era is just a bonus if it's not a full electric car. It's like, you know, it's going to be a hybrid, but is it is it is it at least there's an engine of some sort. And that's what car collectors are sort of marking these moments where it's like it's the last manual. It's the last non uh you know, non-hybrid supercar made by Ferrari or something like that. Yeah. And there's going to be a world where you're like, "Oh, that was the last one that didn't have the camera that looked at you 24/7 or whatever." And I think it creates this like new class of like vintage >> investment investment grade. >> Maybe not investment grade, but certainly something that people I mean you can already see people reacting to this even though the post is like uh a little bit overhyped. Uh you can already see people reacting to it being like I got to buy a 2026 and hold on to it forever and keep it in great condition because I don't want that. But anyway, uh there's been a push back on this stuff for a long time. Tyler, do you have anything on on cars? Are you old enough to drive? I was just thinking like like what do you think the premium is for a car that you can still like drunk drive in? >> I think I think your car is is is going to go >> this is not this is not even worth joking about. >> Yeah. No. >> Anyway, >> bad joke. Move on. >> Moving on. Uh what else is going on? Uh uh oh uh we got to talk about the GBT 5.5 prompt for codeex which seems to have d a duplicated line trying to get it to not talk about creatures. Tyler, you dug into this. what is actually going on. >> Uh yeah, so it just seems like there's there was some like emergent property uh of the new model where it always tries to talk about like kind of creatures and goblins uh raccoons. >> Yeah, ogres are in there. >> Trolls, ogres, pigeons. >> And so >> so then they have to counteract this, right? You have to put in the system prompt to not do this. >> Um >> where where is this creatures? Do not do not talk about never talk about goblins, gremlins, raccoons, trolls, ogres, pigeons, or other animals or creatures unless it is absolutely and unambiguously relevant to the user's query. This reminds me of those old image prompts where like there would be a negative prompt that specifically said like do not put six fingers on the human's hand. But what a what a weird one. And what an odd what an odd line to throw into a coding agent. Like do we know anything else about this? Have people dug into like what is actually going on here? >> I mean it might not be just the coding agent. It's probably just the model in general, but >> it's the it's the it's the model itself. >> It's goblin mode. >> The model itself yearns to discuss creatures, goblins, raccoons. It is an emergent property of super intelligence. >> Uh Vi says they had to put this in due to my effect on the company. Goblins creatures sort of followed me in through the front door when I joined and we are only just now starting to understand the downstream effects of their presence. And Tibo says, "Never talk about goblins, gremlins, raccoons, trolls, ogres, pigeons, or other animals or creatures unless it's absolutely known. >> There's so many. >> If you know, you know." So, uh, somebody says, "My my 5.5 codec said goblin with a flashlight when referring to a bug fix yesterday." What? Uh, there's a billion goblins inside your model weights. You just have to get them out, says Tyler Cosgrove. Anyway, we can dig more into that. There's a whole bunch more open AI news that we can go in to throughout the show today, but we are very fortunate to be joined by John Gray. He is the president and CEO COO of Blackstone and he's in the waiting room and we will bring him into the TVP and Ultradome. John, how are you doing? Welcome to the show. >> Great to be with you guys. I've never had a preamble on ogres and goblins. Very exciting. >> We are in we are in odd territory, odd times with the AI boom. I'm sure we'll talk about all sorts of uh different elements of it, different minations in the global economy. Uh but I'd love to start with uh a little bit of background on you. I know you've been with Blackstone for a long time. I'm fascinated by the decision to join, what the firm was like when you joined, and how it's evolved over your tenure. >> Well, I came here in 1992, straight out of college, straight out of Penn. Um, my >> my senior year in college, I I met a young woman in romantic poetry class and a month later, I got a job. And now 34 and 1/2 years later, same woman, same firm. So very simple, very boring. >> And when I joined this place, it was small. We had 75 people. We had a small M&A advisory business and then we had an investment business with 750 million of capital. >> Wow. >> And it was exciting because we were doing the private equity business and investing. And you flash ahead to today and we've got a firm that manages over $1.3 trillion. >> Um, and it's been a remarkable ride. >> Exactly. Um, it it it would be hard to imagine because when we started at the firm, when you go to meetings, you'd have to tell people what Blackstone is and what we do. And that's obviously changed quite a bit. And credit to the founders, Pete Peterson, Steve Schwarzman, who continues to drive things today. They just had a vision that they could do more. And the alternatives business, private markets was a tiny industry and it started in private equity. But Steve in particular had this idea that we could do other things. So we went into real estate where I moved after about a year at the firm. We expanded into hedge funds, ultimately into credit and later on into infrastructure and growth equity to the point now where we have this massive scale and can give almost any sort of capital solution in the private markets. And I'd say the key thing that's really changed is what was a very much of a niche business serving a small number of endowments and pension funds and just doing a a high octane investing in private markets, private equity, real estate, private equity has evolved today to serving insurance companies and individual investors and sovereign wealth and all different people around the world and doing things at high returning strategies and low returning strategies all around the globe. folks. So, but the most exciting thing I'd say is that the firm has stayed remarkably constant. That the commitment to excellence around the place, the drive, the entrepreneurial spirit, that's what allowed it to grow. And it still feels like even at this scale like we're running a small business which is not what maybe your viewers would expect but we still have tons of pride of ownership doing the right thing for our customers and we know at the end of the day the only thing that ultimately ma matters is that we deliver great performance. Yeah. >> If we don't deliver a premium to our clients they're not going to come back and so everything's focused around that and obviously operate with integrity as well. >> Yeah. I I want to talk about uh the entrepreneurial DNA of the firm. It feels like the partnership is extremely entrepreneurial. That's definitely uh a core value as Blackstone's grown from one strategy to 80 strategies, 80 plus strategies, I think. Uh what is the process for standing up a new strategy? How organic is that? We've seen venture capital firms go from they were doing series A's, now they're doing growth equities. They just sort of like bleed into the other strategy. And I'm wondering if if there's a more deliberate process where there's someone on the team who's going out and exploring, finding a new opportunity, or you notice that, hey, we're doing a type of we're engaged in a strategy and we actually need to sort of split this off and it's like cell division. >> I think it's all of the above. There is no master plan, but somebody comes along to us. In fact, yesterday we got a call about an opportunity in an area that's adjacent to something we do >> where we don't have a focus. It was somebody who wants to give us a serious amount of capital and said, "Hey, would you be willing to do a business?" So, in that case, >> it it came from sort of reverse solicitation. Obviously, when we were a smaller firm, you didn't get a lot of those, >> but I would say it was always this sort of basic idea of adjacency where we were doing something. you know, you're doing private equity, you're doing real estate, and infrastructure sits right in between those two. >> Or you're doing, you know, higher risk debt capital, but maybe we can move a little more senior. And then ultimately, you move to very senior capital. And the same thing in real estate, opportunistic, then more stabilized, then debt. And I think the key is can you use the intellectual capital? That's really one of the great assets. It's the people here and all the insights. And if you think about investing as pattern recognition, which is you connect dots. If you have a broader platform and you can connect a bunch of dots, then you can be better at these adjacent things and you end up serving the same customers who would prefer you to show up and say, "Oh, you can do private equity really well and you can do real estate and you can do credit. I'd love to work with you. We we really trust your organization." But the key is there's got to be a market opportunity. You've got to be able to deliver that return and then you've got to have the people to do it right because the worst thing is to say, "Oh, there's a great opportunity. I can raise money for Spack, right? And then you raise tons of money and you end up not delivering for the customers." So the standard has to be, can we deliver a premium return? Do we have the expertise? And do we have the people to do it? Yeah, I'm sure we're going to talk about artificial intelligence, but is there a second macro trend that you have locked on to that is an overarching thesis? I mean, we've been following the the the peptide boom and what's going on in GLP1s. Like there are big stories in financial markets broadly >> or manu manufacturing is another one. A lot of interesting >> and I'm just wondering if there's anything else that's actually >> Yeah, I'd give you a bunch. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and we spend a lot of time trying to be thematic. You know, one of the things I've learned over time as investors is you you're so focused on your model. What is page 52 of the model, this assumption, whatever. But when you look back over time, I often say it's the first paragraph that matters. What's the basic business, the industry you're going after? Definitely matters who your management team is. But doing it in the right theme, right? the theme, the right neighborhood makes all the difference. I don't care if you're the greatest investor operator in the world, if you buy department store chains or legacy media companies, right? There are just businesses where the winds at your in your face and you'd love to do things where the winds at your back. Now, you can still overpay. You could have the wrong business model in a good neighborhood, but your chance of success is much higher. >> So, as an organization, we're constantly saying to ourselves, what are those things? And so to the question, I'd say there are some basics ones. There's a global shortage of housing since the GFC. We've been investing against that. We've been selling goods obviously really now for 25 years, increasingly online. Owning last mile logistics has been an incredible business because every time you buy something from Amazon, it goes through one of these last mile logistics hubs. There are geographies. India has been moving towards capitalism. you know more physical legal capital markets infrastructure and so building a great team there investing in the right sectors that has been an unbelievably successful theme for us Japan has really reemerged in the last three or four years is a place that's open to foreign capital that's allowing companies to restructure allowing people like us to take companies private and that's creating a lot of energy and excitement you mentioned life sciences I mean if you think about this AI and a number of products that can be created and yet it's all still going to have to go through phase three trials and we've got a big business that does just that. We love that. That's an area where obviously human beings are going to continue to invest a bunch of capital. The physical world, the reindustrialization is massive. Probably the biggest theme beyond the data centers for us today which we can talk about is what's happening in electricity. I mean, all of the things, the data centers, the robots, the autonomous vehicles, that re-industrialization, it all needs power. >> And it's everything from LG to renewables to pipelines to electrical equipment to utility um services. The way to think about it is you try to find some great thing like data centers. >> Yeah. >> And then you turn it upside down and say, what are all the inputs that go into that? Mhm. >> Or today, sadly, defense feels like it's going to be a massive tailwind business, right? Every country around the world is going to be spending more on defense. >> And so, I think as investors, getting your heads around that and positioning your portfolio in private markets or public markets to say these are the areas I have the highest conviction. The best is when you can find something one derivative off. Cuz today, as you guys know, the hottest things tend to get really high multiples. But can I find that thing that's not quite as sexy? And for us, of course, the data centers have been an unbelievable way to play it. Then you get the benefit of this without necessarily having to pay a huge price. >> How are you grounding the your thesis around uh artificial intelligence and the growth there? Like are you obviously there's a million data points about revenue and and multiples and valuations and there's a lot of good news where no matter where you look, but do you ever zoom out and look at how you at Blackstone are using artificial intelligence, the value that you're getting for it, where it's working, where it's not working, and use that to sort of level set on how real, how impactful this technology will be? >> Absolutely. I mean I think the thing driving us is seeing the power of this technology as it gets deployed. Now I think all of us are frustrated that the technology is so powerful but getting it inside of companies is hard. Yeah. >> It's sort of the beaker to bedside problem in clinical trials, right? Like we've got this great medicine. How do we get it to the patients? How do we turn it into something usable? That is the challenge. But we are definitely finding more and more use cases. The first thing I'd point out and our company's their LLM spend and we have by the way we have 270 companies um 13,000 pieces of real estate. It's massive in its scale. Our company's spend on LLMs was up 15fold Q1 of this year over last. Now it's off a small base, but it tells you what's happening. >> And all of these companies are trying to find ways to be more efficient. We own an accounting firm. They're trying to make obviously tax and audit much more automated using this technology. We own ancestry.com and they're trying to do things with content creation which is telling an immersive story based on your family history as opposed to just giving you a bunch of dates and geographies and so forth. And by the way, content creation in a lot of ways is the easiest. You know, coding, music, movies, because it's not the rules aren't as important. probabilistic works better than you know software is great because it's deterministic there's yes or no >> but content is the easiest place we're seeing pickup but I could go through we have a company that does lab grown diamond grading and of course reviewing these things visually with the AI is improving the efficiency of that company >> at Blackstone we're trying to make our investment process better take in all this data from what we have in the outside world look at our historical memos, read the diligence that's here and say to the teams, these are the areas you should focus on. It's not making the decisions, but it's a tool that's making us much more efficient. So I I would say to us on the compute side, it still feels like it's very early days in the implementation, but we can see particularly in rules-based businesses, you know, transaction processing, legal, what is a billable hour going to be? This feels like the path of travel in a big way, but I think it's taking more time than most of us would hope. >> Yeah. How have you been processing uh the idea that certain moes might be eroded? there might be more comp more competition in certain sectors of the economy going forward. Is the moat section of every investment memo getting longer these days? How are you investigating that? I would say the uncertainty se section of every one of these uh memos is getting longer because investing is hard and what you did historically was look at uh you know 10 or 20 year history of a business and industry and it just may not apply right and we've seen this in the past right the yellow pages which I may be dating myself with you guys but you used to get a plumber opening up your yellow pages find them when the internet came along they disappeared Mhm. >> Um taxi cab business which still exists but obviously when Uber andyft showed up it changed the world in a really profound way. Now the issue is in 50 different verticals they're going to be impacts >> and how do I think about it? Autonomous vehicles which reduce the accident rate by 95% on serious accidents like won't that happen and what does that mean for collision repair? What does that mean for auto insurance? So I would say the areas of greatest risk today are obviously in sort of the white collar world. It's the software, it's professional services, information services and there you're spending a lot of time trying to understand what the world may look like. Mhm. >> And as a result, what you're beginning to see both in the public markets and the private markets, I describe it almost like the Red Sea Parting where obviously there are companies viewed as AI winners, could be LLMs, application software, could be the digital energy infrastructure. That's easy. Then there are companies in the physical world that are pretty unaffected. We took a company Medline public at the end of last year. It's in medical supplies, manufacturers, distributes them. no impact basically from this and that's easy to underwrite and I think what you're going to see I think you'll see a recovery for instance in an area like real estate that's been very much out of favor the last four years because of higher rates and a bit of overbuilding that's going to come back because people are going to say oh that warehouse that's going to exist that hotel is going to exist I think sports obviously and so I think there's definitely a tendency from investors now to look at this physical unaffected AI world, certainly the AI benefiting world. And then this other area is fascinating because some of these companies could end up being very attractively priced and they may need to change their business model, but they have real incumbency. So we have a business that does revenue management for hospitals, helps them with their billing, basically what do you charge for certain procedures. Now they need to incorporate AI into the business. But if they do that, they should be a winner because they have the trust of their customers. Yep. And that's super valuable. Yeah. >> So I would just say the risk levels on investing have gone up, but I also at the same time the opportunities have gone up as well, the upside. >> How's your recall on your thinking around the do era? There was very similar fears around uh how the internet would disrupt different businesses. is we had Rick Caruso sitting here yesterday and we were asking him about this and he's like I never I never thought re I never thought my my category of retail would go under even though at the time everyone was projecting that like hey no one's going to why would somebody go to the store to get something if they could get it shipped directly to their house. Um and so yeah I'm curious if you've reflected back on on that era when you started your career and and uh kind of tried to understand where you were where you had good intuition where you were maybe off. I I think it's a great analogy and Rick is a very good man. Um it's funny if you look at retail I think that does um resonate with what we're talking about in software. So if you go back 25 years ago um you know just as the bubble's bursting as Amazon's starting to become a marketplace for everything you could have said retail will be an apocalypse. And by the way, Sears, Kmart, Toys R Us did not make it. >> Yeah. >> On the other hand, Walmart, I think it's up sevenfold. Costco's up like 25 fold. TJ Maxx is up 40 times and has a $180 billion market cap. >> That's crazy. And for those companies that won, they either had something that was infrastructure-like groceries or had a great value proposition, really understood their customers. They they found a way to navigate it. And I think that is the kind of way to think about what's coming to so many businesses, >> which is if they just sit and operate the way they have, they have enormous vulnerability. if they do something and have a market position that's protected, you know, they can end up doing much better. Um, in terms of my own accuracy, I think I probably at times may have been too negative on some of the retail if I look back at it. And some of it obviously ended up thriving and doing quite well. And so you try to have a little bit of um >> mental flexibility. >> Yeah. Well, it's good to have a mental model of like, am I looking at a am I looking at a Sears management team or a Costco management team? >> Yeah. And it makes all the difference in the world. I I've been the chairman of Hilton now for almost 20 years. And when Airbnb came out, which is an amazing business model they built, a bunch of people are saying it's the end of Hilton, whatever. You know, the stock has been a rocket ship. Kristen said the CEO has done an amazing job. It had a differentiated business model. it offered something fundamentally different and so both of those companies ended up thriving and doing great. So I do think that is the hardest part today because the technology is moving so quickly and is so capable it's making it harder. What I would say as investors is anything in this AI uncertainty world, we'll see these multiples come down because people are until there's a sense that there's terapirma that hey this business model is going to survive or may end up thriving but right now I think people are taking a step back and I do think there'll be some baby thrown out with the bathwater. They'll end up being some software companies that you could buy at very reasonable prices. But this is the sort of stuff. The other thing I would just point out for us because of the risk that exists, one of the easiest ways is to be in the picks and shovels. So invest in that electricity, invest in those data centers because you don't know who's going to win of the incumbents, who's going to win of the new model companies, but you do know they're all going to need AI factories, are all going to need power. And that for us has been really the biggest strategic pivot we've made and we think it's going to pay huge dividends for our investors. >> Well, we appreciate you taking the time to hop on the show today. We've kept you already 5 minutes long. Uh we would love to have you back and go way deeper. This was a fantastic conversation. >> Do it again soon. >> Have a great rest of your week. We'll talk to you soon. >> Hey, it was an honor to be with you guys. You have a great show. Take care. >> Thank you, man. >> Up next, we have Colleen Aubrey from Amazon Web Services. You know it is AWS. She's the SVP of applied AI solutions here with us in the waiting room. We'll bring Colleen in to the TBIN Ultradome in just a minute. Last question I wanted to ask, we didn't get a chance, was the barbell strategy. I wanted to hear his take on this idea that you have Josh Kushner buying the Giants, the most legacy thing possible, and then the AI labs, and then you have Ellison owning Bugs Bunny and a bunch of data centers. And it's this weird new normal of you buy the the the the the mo the oldest possible thing that is resistant to any sort of disruption and then uh the exact opposite. But we are joined by Colleen Aubrey from AWS uh in the waiting room. Let's bring her in to the TBPN Ultradome if we can. Let's give it a try. Hello. Welcome to the show. >> Good morning and thank you. >> Thank you so much for taking the time to join us. uh please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about what's going on today with AWS. >> Sure. So, Colleen Aubry been at Amazon for over 20 years now and joined AWS 2 years ago. >> Okay. >> And uh I've been on this journey of of looking at how can we bring to life some of the operational expertise that we've developed at Amazon into Aentic products and put them in the hands of AWS customers. And today was really sort of great to announce uh two new products, Connect Decisions, Amazon Connect Decisions, Amazon Connect Talent. We announced Amazon Connect Health a couple of weeks ago. Um and this really expands the family of Connect products that we have adding to Amazon Connect customer which is a 9-year-old product that we've been developing. >> So can you help me understand? I think most people will be familiar with the with AI chatbots and many people will be familiar with uh AI agents and coding agents that they fire off a prompt and maybe it goes for for five, six, eight hours sometimes and then comes back with a fantastic response. But um when you're deploying an advanced model, a frontier model, an agent into an into an enterprise system that's deployed on AWS, what are what are your clients looking for? How are they thinking about integrating uh an agent into a platform? Is it that they're they're vending the agentic workflow to their customers in turn? Can you walk me through some of the examples of how enterprises are actually deploying agents in practice when most people are probably familiar with the the the more point solution they type the prompt themselves. >> Yeah. Well, let me first by uh start by saying that I think um we're early in that journey. >> Yeah. And certainly in my conversations with customers, a lot of what I hear is people looking to automate processes. >> Sure. >> Um and so and it's for me what that triggers is um that the mental model is looking at how work gets done today and then putting AI to work to do that same process. And personally my point of view is that that misses the bigger opportunity. I think the bigger opportunity is much more transformative and we can't assume that how we work today is um the sort of gold standard for how we might work when we have this new capability in our in our hands which is um to be able to develop fairly complex agentic teammates. Yeah. >> Um that can work alongside people in the business. So we're really going after this this mission of how do you develop an agentic teammate which is in the business with people and is actually um transforming how work gets done and and do that in a way which is intuitive and natural so that transformation doesn't come with heavyweight um change management. And so we really have gone back to the drawing board and and trying to think about how will work happen in a number of different areas in decision- making within supply and demand planning um in healthcare um in recruiting and in customer journeys. >> Sure. Sure. I I feel like AWS's strong suit has always been uh uh understanding complex systems, being able to deploy a ton of resources, but then also being able to monitor, understand everything from cost to performance. H how is that changing in the age of AI agents? I imagine if I have a bunch of digital workers doing stuff, uh I want a water cooler where I can tap someone on the shoulder and say, "Hey, how's it going?" I want analytics on how different work processes, even if they are fully automated, are continuing and progressing. Uh what does the analytics stack look like in the future? Yeah, I think it's a good question and certainly in the agentic teammates that we're building. Um there's a good uh amount of thought that we put into the observability, >> the trustworthiness like an an AI's um energetic teammates's ability to explain why they've taken some action, why they've come to some conclusion, the the reasoning that they've gone through. And an example of that is in um Amazon Connect Health. In this case, we're working on behalf of providers preparing sort of summarization of a patient's history before they meet with a with a patient. And in that case, every uh reference, every conclusion is traceable. Yeah. >> Into labs into previous visits into medications. so that the um physician in this case versus a builder and SD has the opportunity to be able to observe the work to be able to reason over the work to be able to also course correct as necessary and so for me I'm really much more thinking about how I make an agentic teammate trustworthy and part of the team and that that observability comes to life in different ways of course under the covers we have to solve for price performance we have to solve for latency we have to solve for managing the efficiency of deploying many um agents under the cover to be actually be able to deliver the experience and that's something some of the hard work that we're doing on behalf of customers. >> Yeah, I I feel like it's potentially underappreciated uh and maybe this is a side uh uh an outgrowth of the fact that the first AI models that uh most people interacted with were sort of lowowered chat bots that did hallucinate. But the hallucination problem has, at least to my experience, basically gone away. And it feels like the next challenge is actually educating people on the reliability, the traceability that you mentioned. And uh, of course, I' I'd be interested to hear a few different there's a whole bunch of different um, uh, projects that you can embark on to to build confidence around the traceability and uh, reliability. I did have one last question though. I want since you've been with Amazon for 20 years, I'd love to know how has the company changed? How has it stayed the same? >> You know, I think certainly for me this sort of passion for inventing on behalf of customers >> has remained pretty consistent um through like the time that I've been at the company. Um and so really going deep to understand a customer problem, but then also pulling back and asking ourselves Is there a better way? Is there is can we invent a way of solving this problem which is meaningfully better than what exists today? And do we have a new unique point of view about how we would do that? And that's really what we're trying to do with this connect family of products is really you know ask ourselves honestly what is the unique capability the unique operational experience that we have that we can bring to life and I think that has remained consistent. Um otherwise you know Amazon's always evolving always changing and you know our our businesses go through inception they go through scale they go through reinvention and now is a great time for all Amazon teams to be thinking about reinvention and how do they deliver their products and services to customers now we have this new um AI capability in our hands and it's exciting to see the energy around that and I feel sort of like um uh sort of just freshness in the organization as we go through this next phase. >> That's great. Well, thank you for coming on the show and congrats on the progress. We'll uh kick it over to Anthony next. Uh have a great rest of your day. We'll talk to you soon. >> Up next, we have Anthony who is a VP and distinguished engineer at AWS as well to continue our segment on AWS and uh detail a little bit of the OpenAI integration and new stateful runtime for agentic systems. Um and so we have Anthony in the TVPR. Anthony, welcome to the show. How are you doing? what's going on? >> I'm doing great. Thanks for having me. >> Thank you so much for taking the time to join. Uh there's been a lot of discussion back and forth and I think we it'd be helpful to start with just like a oneon 101 of what is a stateful runtime? How are you thinking about agentic systems? I think everyone knows LLMs are next token predictors. Maybe they're stochastic parrots, but how are you thinking about the capabilities that come from this? >> Yeah. And then how does that tie into the announcements today around around uh some of the new models being available? >> That's great. >> Yeah, the best way I would describe it is that we've seen kind of an evolution of how folks interact with these AI models over the last few years. >> It started out exactly as you mentioned with just token prediction. Yeah. >> The early completions API from OpenAI was exactly this. You give it a string, it gives you some more strings. >> Yep. Um these APIs have advanced over the years to where that string starts to get parsed and you get tool calls. Yeah. >> Or you get reasoning or you get other kind of capabilities. And what we're seeing now with agentic development is that folks are taking those tool calls, executing tools, performing things like compaction or extracting memory. And this is a super powerful mechanism and this is really the thing that has caused at least like my career to dramatically change in terms of productivity and what what can be accomplished now. Um, and I think the the next phase for AI, I I truly believe, is taking a lot of what we've learned in the coding space where most of what's happening is happening locally on a person's laptop or maybe their development machine and making that uh be deeply integrated within the cloud where like real enterprise applications live and getting all those same benefits. And so what we announced with uh Amazon managed Bedrock or sorry Amazon Bedrock managed agents powered by OpenAI is a new API that really has three parts. So the first part um allows you to create what we call a runtime and you can think of the runtime as the definition of the agent. >> This contains skills which ex uh tell the model how to do new tasks. uh this includes uh like tools like MCP servers that you want to configure or other built-in tools and uh a memory policy so you can tell it how to maintain short-term memory or long-term memory or whatever new uh memory mechanisms might uh come over the time and then the next part and this part is really the special bit is the environment. Today when most people are using tools like Codex they're running them on their laptop and the agent effectively lives on your laptop that's good and bad. It means you can do all the things that that person can do. But it also means that agent doesn't have its own identity. You can't create agent specific policies. And a lot of uh enterprises are trying to figure out how to strike the balance of enabling these agents to work but also making sure that you can set the right guard rails on them. Environments in bedrock manage agents really solves this. It allows you to give a dedicated compute environment for that agent. It allows you to create specific policies around governance. And most critically, it gives that agent a unique identity within AWS. So as a as a security team or an administrator, you can create policies around what that agent can do. We think these things are absolutely critical to enable um agents to be used in real world enterprise applications. And then finally, there's the inference API, the thing that you actually talk to the agent through. And that API uh is very familiar to existing APIs like the responses API from OpenAI. Um, and so a lot of existing applications can just work once you've created this agent. >> Um, can you can you reflect a little bit as a uh as a distinguished engineer on >> Wait before we before we move on. >> If I'm a an AWS customer today, what should I do to experience what you just described? Because it was a lot of it was a lot of a lot of a lot of corporate lingo, which I love. I'm an enthusiast. But uh I want to I want to like what would be your recommendation of the you know given given this new set of capabilities what should I what should I try doing to start what kind of value might might be unlocked in the organization in a in maybe a more uh straightforward way. >> Yeah. Today bedrock manage agents is in limited preview and that will expand over the next coming weeks and so you probably have to wait a couple weeks. >> Got it. But in order to actually uh use this, it's really as simple as making two API calls. >> So you can uh go into your AWS account and make an API call to create a runtime. And then once you have that runtime, you decide what type of compute you want to associate with the agent. And then you make another API to create that environment. Once you've done those two API calls, that's it. You now have an endpoint that you can take an existing tool. It can be codeex, it can be like a web chatbased system or you can just use the open AI SDK and integrate it deeply within your application. But it's really that simple. It's just a couple of additional API calls and then you're off to the races. >> Interesting. Uh how are you thinking about the the different roles of engineers right now? there's been this trend of uh managers and CTO's becoming individual contributors at labs and then simultaneously there's been uh individual contributors who are effectively becoming the manager of many agents and so we're sort of going both ways but where is the highest leverage point for someone who is on the distinguished engineer path like the the the ultimate individual contributor but the world is changing. Yeah, I can tell you that like in my role, I am coding almost every day. >> Okay. >> Um I took the day off today to come and do this event, but I'm I'm spending almost all of my time coding. I'm having probably the best time of my career. >> Yeah. What my experience has been with all of these coding tools is that um uh once you make coding fast once you make the actual art of generating the code quickly what really matters is your understanding of algorithms and data structures architecture patterns and things like that. So I think what you're finding is that a lot of very senior IC's, folks that have a deep understanding of software architecture are now able to do really amazing things because they understand how to prompt these models in a way to be able to generate uh you know new things. >> Is it less frustrating? Are you having the most fun you've ever had? >> I've always felt in my career that I was limited uh by typing. >> Yeah. >> Like I don't care. I don't mind typing. I don't mind writing. I love writing code. Yeah. But you know, you can think about a problem and you can think about solutions and then you're like, okay, this is going to take me weeks to actually implement. Yep. >> And that's just something I had always become resigned to is that it's going to take me weeks to solve that problem. Now I think about the solution to that problem. I I do some prompting in codeex. Yep. >> And uh I have the solution by the end of the day. And that is so incredibly rewarding as an educator. >> Yeah. That's amazing. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to come chat with us. Absolutely. Great to meet you. >> We'll talk to you soon. >> Thanks for having me. >> Have a good one. Cheers. Goodbye. >> Up next, we have Colin Zema from Omni. He is the co-founder and CEO >> building the semantic layer powering AI driven analytics. Do I blink? >> Do you do you not blink? >> Apparently not, but I was blinking at them once I saw that. >> Oh yeah. You weren't I was communicating. >> Have you been picking up on the drink Coke with two thing? They they demand that you drink the I wasn't gonna I wasn't gonna do that. You you stared them down. Said no. But I I obliged every once in a while with the two-handed Diet Coke. If I see somebody who's like, "Oh, they're not reading the chat. Drink the Diet Coke with two hands." If you're if you're reading, I'm I'm going to sip a Diet Coke with two hands. Anyway, our next guest is in the waiting room. Let's bring him into the TVP Ultradome. Colin, how you doing? >> I'm great. >> Welcome to the show. >> I got a two in a drink for you. There we go. >> There we go. He's reading chat. This is great. Um, introduce yourself. Introduce the company. Tell us the news. >> Yeah, Colin Zema, uh, CEO at Omni Analytics. We are building the next great data platform. So, a product that can do everything from AI to spreadsheets to dashboards. Um, we're trying to consolidate all of BI into one tool. And we're doing it on top of a semantic layer. So, a a layer that can explain how everything in the business works so that AI does stuff reliably. >> How generalizable is the semantic layer? like this has got to be some trade-off because different businesses have different ontologies. How how are you thinking about creating something that's flexible but simultaneously uniform? >> So I mean on the one hand a semantic layer is actually pretty straightforward. It's just a bunch of text about the business. So if I'm going to go write a a semantic layer for chatbt or claude >> right now that is what the skills framework looks like. It's a document that has lists of stuff about the business and that is completely unique to every single company. Um, on the flip side, we've had semantic layers in data for 50 years at this point. >> And it's the specifics of how all the tables in a warehouse fit together. And what we're doing is just bringing that like bridging those two worlds together. Um, so it is completely specific to every business. Yes, exactly. Like a snowflake or a data bricks. >> Yeah. So are I mean I I imagine that there's still a world for databases in the future. How are you thinking about that? Do uh migrations get easier or changing schemas get easier in the future or does this get harder because the data is just so much more? How how are you thinking about the evolution of databases and how you'll use them? >> Yeah, I mean using uh sort of public trading as a proxy for this. It seems like the data warehouses have found like a nice middle ground in between the like the SAS apocalypse and the pure play AI companies. >> Yeah. >> Like we need somewhere to hold all of the data. Yeah. >> And so I I think that databases will probably be here for a long time. >> I I think what has gotten interesting is that picking up your data infrastructure from one tool and moving it to another tool has gotten substantially easier. Like SAS used to have a good bit more lock in than it does today. >> And yet you still need a database that's holding all the stuff, >> but the portability of it, I think, is the new question. >> Yeah. Is is there a piece of this pitch that's uh uh like cost driven? Because with some of the advanced models, it feels like if I just threw a million dollars of compute at a problem, I can have it go and parse through every PDF and turn use an API to turn it into text and turn it into CSVs and write custom Python for it and just to answer the question of like what was revenue last month, right? And that feels inefficient. It feels like this is a good solution, but is that is that the goal or is it something faster? Speed, cost, everything. >> I don't think that we started there. But I think that to your point, like savvy people are sort of coming around to this cuz on one side, these models are smart enough that you can just sort of throw it at, you know, Google Drive and Slack in your warehouse >> and you can actually answer every single question. So you can get 80% of the way there with literally no thought, >> which on the one hand is a little bit scary building a data company because it's sort of like >> again, why don't you do this? >> I think to your point, >> you probably don't want to reinvent your ARR metric every single time you query. >> Yeah. >> And ultimately, if it's a one-se dashboard on the fly every single time. So people are starting to come around to realize that this is a cost performance optimization problem. Yeah. >> And it turns out that the analytics products that have existed for the last 20 years or 50 years or whatever it is actually do have some sort of good solutions to these things. I think at the same time trying to fight the idea that you can just bring chatbt to the warehouse and get an answer is a naive version of building product. Now, every single person is going to compare your SAS product to sitting the thing on the warehouse or just setting it up yourself >> and doing it in in claude. >> Um, and so figuring out that balance is like the goal of every SAS company now. >> Yep. >> Um, and cost is a part of it. >> Okay. Uh, like bit of a bit of a hot take I want you to respond to. Um there there is like a muttering around like uh AI psychosis in the enterprise like people vibe coding like things that don't actually create value yet and there's a question about like where's the use what's the useful token spend versus just the explor explorative uh sort of performative token spend. I think there's a lot of real stuff to be done, but there's also some crazy uh uh just some crazy internal tools that are just like, you know, self-perpetuating. Uh and it reminds me of uh people had uh dashboard psychosis like a decade ago. I I worked at a company where somebody was like, "Oh, we need all the all every dashboard. We got to have every metric." And I'm like, you kind of just you you oftentimes you have a question and you just need to go answer that question. you don't need to be checking like what's the website traffic on my website every single minute like sometimes that's not useful. Sometimes there's already a dashboard for it. So how do you think about rolling out like dashboards or analytic products that are actually effective and like what coaching needs to happen versus just like raw consumption. >> It's it it really comes down to pragmatism. Um so the example I love to give is Guitar Center is a customer of ours. Okay. They have sent spreadsheets to every single store for the last 30 years that have every single skew and like the week over week, day overday sales. >> That's not a process that needs reinventing. Like they're going to send the spreadsheets to the stores for the next 25 years. You need products that can do that. >> You're also going to have a dashboard like I I want to know what our plan is and I want to go compare like our ARR on a weekly basis to where it is relative to plan. >> Yeah. you're also going to just have a question that you need answered that you didn't predict in advance and need to go answer questions. >> And I think the challenge is that every vendor sort of has this point of view that's like, you know, dashboards are the way or Tableau was visualizations are the way to do everything and then I was at Looker and semantic layers were the way to do everything. Y >> and I think what you see is that there's a little bit of truth in all of these things. And and quite frankly, right now it's AI is the way to do everything. And we're into, you know, how many billion tokens can you spend to go answer your question. >> We probably want a tool that does all of those things and actually makes them fit together. >> And it's sort of like the it's not the sexiest uh pitch. You know, every single thing that you are doing is right and you need a little bit of all of it. Yeah, >> but I I think that there is space for pragmatism in the world where we can invent things on the fly sometimes and that is a great way of doing it and we don't need UI and we have good UIs and they do things and you know websites are good and we can go back to them again. Um so it's both. >> It's not the sexiest pitch but it was sexy enough to get the series C done. How much did you raise? Tell me about the round. We 120 million uh out of 51 post >> massive >> massive >> quick can could you could you give us a quick history of the company? When did you actually start the company? >> Yeah. Uh February 22. So 4 years and a little bit old. >> Um we raised about $27 million as we got the company started. uh did our B about 12 months ago um at a 6 $650 million valuation. So >> we're building for about a year and a half and we've been selling for two and a half. >> Yeah. >> So business has been pretty good. >> Fantastic. >> And what were you doing? What were you doing before this? >> Uh I was at a company called Looker that got acquired by Google. So uh direct competitor to my previous company. >> You know, you know what you're doing. Well, congratulations on the progress. >> I love the the chat loves the pink, by the way. I love the pink. >> Great. Are you guys like fully just are you going to own pink? >> We embraced the pink. We We sort of fell into it. We >> We were going to a conference that was all blue and gray. >> Yeah. >> And uh one of our marketing leaders was like, "Hey, wear some pink. People will notice you stand out >> and then we just turned into a pink company, so we embraced it." >> Fantastic. >> I love it. Very smart. >> Well, uh congratulations. Thanks so much for taking the time to come show us. >> We'll talk to you soon. >> Thanks for having me, guys. >> Have a good one. Goodbye. >> Uh up next, >> interesting, uh username. I didn't get to ask him about it. at drink zema. It sounds like some type of like cool caffeinated beverage. >> Yeah, that does say Ziko coconut water. >> Get a very cool caffeinated energy. >> Maybe that's the next job. The next thing he can buy so bring it back. >> Up next, we have Alex Epstein, the author of Fossil Future, live in the TBP and Ultradome, taking us through what's going on in the world, what's going on in energy markets, what's going on with OPEC. Great to see you again, Alex. Thank you so much for taking the time to come on down to the TB Pin Ultra Dome. Please uh get us up to speed. What should we be paying attention to? >> Look at this black on black. >> You look fantastic. >> Good with with the with the hair, too. >> Oh my god. Do you guys remember what we talked about last time? >> Uh the straight. >> The straight. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> So, by the way, interesting fun fact about AI. So, um I think most of what I said last time was vindicated in terms of the main thing was >> this straight needs to open and there's no substitute for and there's all these other little things you can do, but nothing compares. And that's that's still true. I would add you need to enduringly open the straight. So if you cut a deal with Iran and they have control over it, they're even if they give you control for a year or whatever, that's not then you've actually made the situation way worse than it was before the war where everyone figured we really have control. Yes. >> Over the straight. But fun fact, since you're talking about AI tokens, so in preparation for that, in addition to consulting experts and thinking about the issue, I have my own internal AI called Alex AI Pro, which I've invested over a million dollars in. And uh Oh, yeah. It's it's nuts. So to talk about and one of the things I've invested in is I don't get enough comput. >> Yeah. Yeah. I don't get enough compute from offtheshelf AI. So you need you know if you can run your own agents then you can do it. So um >> that query which I think led to very valuable content was 48 kilowatt hours. >> Wow. >> So that's half a Tesla. >> Yeah. >> Wow. >> Think about that. That's that's three power walls. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> In for one query. >> That's a that's a ton. So, uh, yes, I know. >> How long was that running for? >> 10 or 20 minutes. >> What? >> Oh, that's crazy. And what is it doing? Like like pulling data from the internet, pulling it together, writing. >> It's really god mode. I'll show it to you sometime. >> Uh, well, actually, so here's an announcement for the first time. >> Uh, that a version of that AI is now free to everyone who works in government. So, it's gov.alexpstein.ai. No way. >> Yeah. Yeah. It's it's so at some point it's free. We're going to if you use too many tokens, we'll have to just charge you cost. >> Okay. >> Uh beyond that. But yeah, I mean I have my uh I have a a lobbying firm which is the only pro freedom lobbying firm, the uh Energy Freedom Fund, which is a 501c4 that I'm I'm the unpaid president of. >> And I figure like one of the best ways to spend those dollars is to give people a pro- freedom uh AI. So I'm not going to make any money off those queries, but we'll at least cover our our compute cost. So this is a real world example of I believe that if if you know how to intelligently integrate AI, you can make use of a lot of energy. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> And very profitably. >> Sure. Sure. Sure. Yeah. Of course. Because like the the the results that come from good research or good policies and good consulting fees and all sorts of >> but you need to you need to train it. So a lot of the work is just literally breaking down everything I do and my researchers do. So we just I just built one today which is the policy validator which is anyone is free to send us policies and we'll lobby for them in proportion to merit not not in not in proportion to payment. We don't take payment for this kind of thing. >> Interesting. >> But I needed to replicate hey I have these two really brilliant researchers and then I'm pretty good and we have some other pretty good people like how do you break that down? And there turns out there's about 25 questions you need to ask to get the credibility of the people uh is this a pro- freedom policy? Is this going to increase energy abundance? are there better ideas? And you if if you know how to really do it, you can get a and you you have human validators at the end of it. >> It's it's wild in terms of what what you can do. >> Okay. Uh let's start with there was a on the straight there was this interesting piece in the economist that was arguing that uh the market was simply not processing or digesting the fact that even if the straight were fully open today there's still a massive shortage of energy that is effectively delayed and that that would have ripple effects on the economy inflation all sorts of things. Uh how have you processed the the impacts the downstream impacts? I think a lot of people see it at the pump when they go and fill up their cars if they drive gas cars. Uh it's starting to show up in other places. But how are you thinking about just what's at stake, why the straight being open is important from first principles? >> Yeah, I'm I'm very sympathetic to that argument. Uh it would be just miraculous if it didn't get a lot worse in terms of in terms of prices. I mean, you're dealing with a situation we talked about last time. you have a certain amount of spare capacity. So, you know, we we international agencies released a lot a reasonable Yeah. Yeah. in terms of their oil reserves. But these are all very temporary measures. >> It's like 30 days here, 90 days there, 180 days. >> And there was already a bunch of supply. >> Yeah. No one's sitting on 5,000 days of oil. >> And the thing you have to realize is, you know, in America, we're very America centric. So, you know, we don't even think about Canada, let alone Asia. Okay? And a lot of what's happening with the strait is oil that is intended for Asia and Asian consumption. Now, the Chinese are in an interesting situation because they they did build up a bunch of spare oil. Now, there's questions of other things they need like sulfur and helium that go through the straight and I've I've heard interesting claims about that. >> But we're already seeing in Asia various shortages. And you know, one one analyst that I like likened it to, okay, you're starting like one part of the Titanic is starting to fill >> and not everyone on the Titanic realizes this is happening, >> but you're cutting off a huge whether it's 14% or 20% or whatever, you're cutting off a huge percent of global oil supply >> and that cannot last. >> And even if you solved everything today, it takes a while >> to bring it back. >> And right now we're in ceasefire mode. Yep. which is not creating enduring. Yeah. >> That doesn't enduringly open it up. >> Yeah. I heard uh I think it was Rahm Emanuel was saying that the the Gulf states do not want Iran to have a veto over the straight even if the straight is opened. Now the conversation has shifted to uh what what does it take that America is potentially responsible or or is being held responsible for removing that vetos right? Is that is that your perspective? >> Yeah, this my perspective is it needs to be enduring. So in advance of this there was the idea that hey if America ever goes into this to Iran obviously we're going to keep the straight open obviously we're going to prioritize that. That unfortunately did not happen to the extent that it did. I mean, you know, they're different people in the administration, but overall, I mean, we have to just be objective. I'll praise them where they deserve praise, but like they were not prepared for this in terms of whatever the final decisions were. I think >> within a week of our last interview, not because of our last interview, but I just talking to people in the administration, >> they all became very clear that Hormuz is non-dispensable. Before that, there had been people saying, "Oh, we have Venezuela, we have all the just all nonsense." Yep. >> So, they understand. >> We talked about that with Venezuela. It's like 1% maybe. >> Yeah. one. You might get to one. No. At some point >> might get to 1% and and we're talking about 20%. So we're talking about are there 30 Venezuel do do business with? >> Yeah. Yeah. So it's it's like they understand the importance but it's still in this mode where Iran now is known to have look Iran has proven that they can control the straight of Hormuz in a way that the US cannot obviously counteract. So if we cut a deal with them where they again where it's where they have where they can use the same power to stop us anytime they want then it's not open right open is a little bit ambiguous like it can be open momentarily but it's open on their terms so basically you need without giving any strategy because I don't know the exact strategy it needs to open on our terms that that's the only way you have a victory so >> sure >> you yeah that that's >> let's shift to OPEC can you give me a primer on OPEC. It's the organization of petroleum exporting countries. >> Yeah. Yeah. And now it's you know OPEC plus and >> OPC plus so yeah take me through the history and the impact >> cartels. I think the easiest way to understand this no it's important to understand cartels and I think >> people have a uniformly negative view of cartels which is plausible but a little bit exaggerated. >> So you take the >> people that aren't a part of cartels >> there's no like Yeah. Exactly. Well, you think about the the if we go look at the early oil industry >> where, you know, Rockefeller is criticized as a monopolist and we created this thing, the Sherman Antitrust Act and other things to prosecute so-called monopolists. Um, and I'm totally against these laws for for any number of reasons. I don't think the the government should not be able to create monopolies that it enforces by force, saying, "Hey, there's one producer. Nobody can compete." But nor should it be able to say, "Hey, you're really successful in this market and so I've decided that you're too good." And and one of the things that people will counter with is, "Well, what if >> economic dead weight loss?" >> What do you mean? >> Just the idea that if if if you actually do control 100% of a resource, you can charge dramatically above market rates, which are which reduce demand and wind up having like less human flourishing because you have less energy produced in fact. >> Yeah. So what happens in practice is like if you look at what happened with Rockefeller. So Rockefeller >> took he his focus was refining. You look at the pe the early people in the oil industry the different producers. What would happen is oil prices are decent. Then you get a flood of new oil on the market and people just get wasted. They get ruined. And so what does that do? That disincentivizes people from investing over time because the volatility is so high. So what Rockefeller was basically able to do is he said, "Okay, I'm going to buy you up. You're you're exposing yourself to way too much risk. I'm going to buy you up. I can run everything much more efficiently." And so in the long term, we can have something that is a profitable and b has much lower prices on average than the very volatile situation. And in fact, he dramatically lowered prices. So the interesting thing, so you could think of Rockefeller, they call it >> it's in a sense a cartel, but it's it's a free market cartel, which I think should be able to exist, but you can call it >> Yeah. And I believe that's in part that's in uh the Sherman Antitrust Act in some ways like you have to prove consumer harm and this is why >> there's later versions. I mean it's very vague. It's like no comp you can't do restraint of trade which what the hell does that mean? And then later they have these different things. And I have a lot of reasons for being against it, but it's it's notable that the volatility is a real a really really big thing in oil markets historically. And that's why people whether or not you think free market cartels should exist as I do. You have to understand why these things exist. Why any cartels OPEC is not a free market cartel but why these exist is because the volatility is just so so high and oil is so so valuable. So people want steady oil but and they want people to be comfortable being in the oil business instead of just getting wrecked all the time and getting thrown out. We had this era of Rockefeller and then that was broken up and then we have in the United the United States had something called the Texas Railroad Commission which basically cartilized America was the dominant producer and so they did these things that basically rationed how much everyone could produce. >> So the term that's often used is swing producer. The US was the swing producer which meant that they could basically control the supply in the world. So if there were, you know, in particular, if there was um, you know, a cut in demand for some reason, they could cut supply and if there's a huge increase in demand, they could increase supply. So that happens uh, until, you know, the Middle East starts to boom and then the Middle East starts to become the swing producer with the rise of Saudi Arabia and others having very lowcost oil. And so then you have the era of OPEC, >> but then you have fracking. And so for a little while, the US becomes the swing producer in the sense of we have unrestrained production. Yeah. We add a lot of oil to the market and what happens at a certain point crash. There's overinvestment. Our US consumers benefit hug usually from fracking. But like a lot of these companies just get wrecked and then they start doing what they'd call fiscal discipline which functions as a restraint on supply even though it's they're not doing any kind of cartel activity. They're basically saying, "Hey, we're not going to produce if prices go below this. we're not going to keep increasing our production uh etc etc. So the reason if you take OPEC right now and OPEC plus they have a lot of reasons even though there's a lot of unethical stuff and I don't think the government should own the oil and I think they stole the oil. So but if you just understand how they're thinking they do not want a they want to sustain a certain level of price. So you have the different swing producers particularly Saudi Arabia and then UAE who we're talking about they want to keep like what happens if if if there's excess supply on the market relative to demand they will cut this is the key they will cut their supply as a swing producer to keep prices high because if they don't then prices will go low and that will have a ruinous effect on many people including US shale by the way because we have higher production costs but including these economies that are dominated by oil. So you take Saudi Arabia, they're so dependent on oil and they have all of these alleged green ambitions that are totally fueled by oil and they have all these welfare schemes that are totally fueled by oil. UAE is a little bit less dependent. So the interesting thing about UAE saying they're going to withdraw is can they sustain this if there's a supply GL? Right now there's a supply shortage. So, it's easy to say we're going to leave OPEC cuz there's there's there's no there's no need from their perspective to cut supply and then everyone will take all the supply they get and Saudi Arabia doesn't really care if UAE produces more now. But when there's a supply glut, is UAE going to in is are they going to stay out of OPEC or is Saudi Arabia going to be able to pressure them back like they've done? because Saudi Arabia can say we've got the most oil, we can just flood the market, too. And ruin >> is there a history of major suppliers leaving and coming back? >> I don't know. I mean, there's at least been threats like Saudi Arabia has been able to use a lot of force. Now, the qu they've been able to do that in the past, but the argument So, there's an argument that the UAE won't stay out of OPEC because Saudi Arabia can pressure them back in when there's a supply glut. There's also an argument that UA has become more disentangled from oil now than it used to be because it's diversified its economy. It doesn't have all the welfare obligations of Saudi Arabia and therefore it can call Saudi Arabia's bluff. Now, now people will say both UAE and Saudi Arabia have incredibly low production costs. So, it's very cheap for them to bring a barrel up from the ground. But they don't just have the production costs, they have all the governmental costs of actually how they're obligated to spend that oil. Like if Saudi Arabia spends $5 a barrel on oil, say, that doesn't mean at $100 a barrel they get $95 profit because they have to finance all these schemes that they're involved in. So that that's going to be the interesting >> that's going to be interesting thing. The other interesting thing is so if UAE stays out, here's one. If if they stay out, they're going to increase production. Let's say on some timetable this Hormuse thing gets resolved, then it's plausible in the next few years at some point you'll have a supply glut because you'll have added a million and a half barrels a day on top of everything else and you won't have a corresponding increase in demand and you won't have some other decrease in supply. So, it's possible that they could that this could dramatically lower prices which would be hardest for US shale. >> Mhm. Now, long term, I believe what the best estimates I've seen is longer term, we're actually screwed in the other direction. We've had all of these anti- fossil fuel policies that have disincentivized long-term investment in oil. And oil is really hard to sustain. People need to remember oil depletes over time. So, you don't just take the same well and keep tapping at the exact same amount. You have to do what's called reserve replacement. And there are many credible arguments that our reserve replacement has been incredibly inadequate in the ESG era. And that takes a few years to show up. But that's actually my biggest fear. Like my biggest fear, I'm afraid of Tormuz keeping prices high, but I'm really afraid of insufficient reserve replacement with high oil demand. Cuz you're talking like $200 barrel >> drilling new wells or >> you have to drill so much. You have to replace so much. And the oil supply is so politically driven. Like there's so much oil in the world that you could harness if everyone had the policy of the United States under Trump and under a friendly Congress. But most of the world has these national oil companies. We've had ESG all over the place. It's been hard to finance things. I mean, as recently as 2021, think about this. The International Energy Agency said there should be no new oil and gas development financed. >> So, so like we could be really screwed in terms of higher prices. >> I mean, geographically, it's coming up on the map there. Uh the UAE is directly affected by hormoods. Like every barrel that they make will have to go through the street. >> Well, they have a pipeline. >> They do. >> They have one pipeline, but it's about a million and a half barrels. >> Okay. So, they can get some out. So, >> yeah. But they're they're Oh, yeah. >> So, if they become a swing producer, they are in effect they are in fact important even in a world where their straight is closed. >> No, it's it doesn't matter as much right now because they're saying we want the right to expand our production, but they can't. None of them can produce as nearly as much as they want. >> Okay, >> right now. This is why they're doing it now. They're not doing it in the time of a supply glut. They're doing it in the time of a supply shortage because nobody really cares. It doesn't doesn't really affect things for them to say, "Oh yeah, we have a million and a half spare capacity that we'd like to use and we're planning on using the future, but right now we can't bring most of that to market and no one can bring anything to market." That's different from a situation which we've had fairly recently where there's tons of supply on the mark. Like there's too much and US producers are saying, "Hey, we've got $50 a barrel of oil. This is really hard to sustain." Imagine then a million and a half new barrels coming on the market. >> Mhm. >> Uh who wins? Who saw the news this morning and was fist pumping? Well, I I don't think most people understand the consequences of these these things because I think many people think, "Oh, it's going to be amazing for the US." Like OPEC bad, US good. But like OPEC, the the way it's set up, it it in a sense favors our shell producers because they have higher they're one of the higher co set of higher cost producers in the world. If OPEC collectively decided to just massively increase supply and flood the market, they could do real damage to our >> and this has happened already. Yeah. >> Right. This has happened in previous years. >> Yeah. Like you were saying, if you're if you're uh uh in in shale and you're trying to make money at $50 a barrel is like very you're really hoping what what's the what's the sweet spot again? It's like somewhere between 70 and like 90. >> Yeah. I mean they they Yeah, sweet spot is interesting, right? because they'll they'll take whatever they can get. But yeah, if they get to 70 80 90 it's it's a lot more profitable and basically not much changes about their cost structure when prices go low. So it's almost pure profit. I mean a little bit they can squeeze the what are called the oil field service companies. But you have to think when you're thinking of oil and particularly oil you're just thinking like every $10 it goes up that is almost pure profit for them and every $10 it goes down that is almost pure loss of profit or loss >> in in absolute terms. Now, in terms of policy, look, I think we should forcibly reopen the straight and and I don't believe that the US government should be directly trying to favor or disfavor its shell companies, but but it's just important for people to understand these these dynamics and it's it's not and also you have to understand the UAE is doing this at an opportunistic time. They're not doing it at a time when there's already a supply going. >> Sure. Sure. Uh shifting gears, where do you want to go? >> I I wanted to ask you about uh beaming sun. I had the exact same question >> into uh solar panels or something >> in space. >> They're going to put a mirror in space that s that shines light onto a solar array so that they can get 247 power to a data center potentially. >> They're going to do it on Earth. there that the the the re the recipient of the light will be on Earth, a solar panel next to a data center, but there will be a mirror in uh there's a specific orbit that is always in the sun and so in and the sun will hit the mirror and the and the light will bounce down onto this particular solar panel in their solar array and so they will be able to get power from their solar panels 247. There's no weather that interferes with this. >> Weather might interfere a little bit. >> Okay. So, I have not >> close to closer to 247 than current. >> I mean, so here's here's the dynamic is the obviously in space you have 247 solar. >> Yeah. >> And it's really hard to do things in space. Yeah. >> So, all all credit to people who are willing to invest their own money to try to do this. It's not There are a number of variables that might make it succeed or not. I mean, the more you're talking about chips that are evolving very quickly on Earth because we don't have this moon colony yet, right? You're talking about you're replacing chips every you're doing these very logistically difficult things in orbit. That tends to disfavor the energy advantage you're going to get from having the stuff in space. If you're doing something that some of these solar things work if the energy cost is high and you don't need to change a lot about it, if it can run a long time. So my view is like my view of solar is always you need to recognize its its strengths and limitations and use it accordingly. My argument continues to be on earth with the solar that we have right now. Solar is primarily a fuels saving technology not a real ondemand power source and I wrote a long article about this >> and it is if go to alexepign.substack.com substack.com to check it out. >> And so, by the way, that means that in some places, solar is a lot more valuable than uh others. And in particular, it's in valuable in places with very high fuel costs, which the United States is not really one of those places because we have really cheap natural gas and could get cheaper natural gas. But like in general, what what we don't have, what the holy grail would be is if you got solar and batteries so cheap that you could have self-sufficient solar by sufficiently overbuilding the panels and having multi-day battery storage. So overbuilding the panels means let's just say round numbers uh you know you you have uh 100 megawatts of demand in a given location. So onetenth of a gigawatt. Well, if you overbuild it by 10 then you have a gigawatt. Well, even when the solar is fairly the sun is fairly low, you're going to be able to meet your demand and then you can you can get right and then you can get rid of it and then you can charge uh the batteries. So, you have more to charge the batteries. But then to make that work because sun is not around at night, people really underestimate this as a problem. Night is a big it's it's not as much of a problem for wind, but it's a big problem for sun. Like night is a huge huge huge problem. So, you need to then and you know, think about a winter day like we had during winter storm fern. Even in Phoenix, you can have storms that disrupt the sun for a week. So, you need lots and lots and lots of batteries and you need lots and lots of overbuilding. And the question is, how cheap can you get it? And China's not even nearly there yet, let alone the US, >> but it's not a bad path to pursue. It's it's not bad to pursue because batteries are valuable anyway. Batteries are valuable number one to store reliable power and dispatch it like that. And Elon is in favor of that. I've said on the show before, I'm in favor of that. So, it's good to get the cost of solar lower. It's good to get the cost of batteries lower, but you have to recognize primarily it's a fuel saving play, not a replacement play. But if you could, if we had 24/7, all bets are off. Then you get the benefits of solar all the time. That's the space mirror. >> But so I hope that as long as they're doing it in a safe way, they should be free to try. And it's interesting. The schemes I've seen in the past haven't worked. And I don't know if they have better energy people than they used to at Meta. So, we'll see. >> We'll see. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show, man. Good to see you. >> Yeah, I wish you had a great rest of your day. >> All right, anytime. >> Our next guest is already in the waiting room. We have Shira Lazar from What's Trending, who's the co-founder and host of What's Trending, and we'll bring her in to the TVPN Ultra Dome in just a minute. Welcome to the show. How are you doing? >> What's going on? >> Good. We're just diving in. I love it. >> Yes, of course. That is the nature of the show. We dive right in. Why don't we dive right in with uh an introduction on yourself? How are you introducing yourself these days? How what can you tell us about the shape of what's trending the platform? >> Yeah, so I've been in the uh digital med Yeah, sorry. I think there's a delay, but um I've been in the digital media creator economy space for almost two decades. >> I'm aging myself. We started what's trending actually was a live streaming show in 2011 News. Cool. >> So we were playing around with this tech and these tools way back. one of the first to live stream in a really high quality way. But, you know, the space in some ways wasn't ready. It was us, the Young Turks at the time. >> Al Jazer was doing uh a live stream and we had a weekly show. We went daily actually with YouTube. >> No way. >> Oh, shoot. Am I like >> what? >> Oh, is it I I look like I'm paused right now, but I don't know if that's We can hear and see you just fine. Okay, I'll continue. Welcome to tech. In the future, I'll stop by your studio. Um, but yeah, then we went daily with YouTube and then it seemed like live just the platforms and the audience weren't ready yet. And then we went more into on demand, >> grew more as a digital media brand and publisher. And that's who we are today. And we cover news, views, and culture for the social generation. And now, oddly enough, like seeing your success and what you're doing, >> starting to rethink like how do we maybe go back to that? Who knows? >> Yeah. Yeah, timing. Timing is so important. I mean, there's been um >> uh like Jason Calacanis had TVPN effectively back I don't know the first year that he did it, >> 2007, I think. >> Yeah. Very very early. Same same kind of era when you started, but um yeah, people need to be ready for it. >> Yeah. Uh I'm interested to hear about uh what is changing right now, what you are tracking. I was reading a a piece in the journal about sort of a K-shaped dynamic that's emerging with brands only want to partner with the biggest celebrities, the biggest podcast and there's sort of a winner take all market. Are you seeing that or is there a way for sort of middle class of of uh creators to emerge these days? >> Yeah, that's really interesting. I actually think that there's two extremes of opportunities. I think that definitely people that have skilled audience and those big names that are the the new wave of celebrity are definitely getting the deals as long as there's I would say conversions >> and they have that fandom audience. They're the new names that a lot of brands want to partner with. And of course these streaming services or the podcasts like to really have a successful I would say at scale podcast or platform >> you need to have you know that audience that big name. However, that doesn't mean that's the only way to succeed, >> right? So, we're seeing, as you might know, a lot of smaller creators that have niche audiences, the B2B creators now that are becoming big, the LinkedIn creators, the knowledge creators, and they've hunkered down >> on a very specific audience, and they're seeing high conversions even though they don't have a skilled audience. And so that creates a lot of success too where they could have you know or be making half a million to a million a year possibly they're relying on brands they're maybe having uh courses they're maybe having you know paid events etc. So what I think is really interesting right now is we are at a time that there could be opportunity for big names but also not such household names. >> Uh but again it's really about understanding your why as a brand and what you're trying to go after. >> Yeah. Do you like the term Nimell? Niche internet micro celebrity. That's been a one that's been ded. >> I've never I've never heard. >> You never heard that? Yes. Like an Yeah, it is a weird knockoff. But I I I think it does capture something that is real, which is that in there might be someone who is incredibly influential in a particular subvertical or industry and and they might be a household name gets stopped for autographs at that industry's conference, but never at a random Starbucks, right? And so this is just an interesting uh who who was it? It was uh Colin Samir we were talking with and they said that something like 80 to 90% of the next generation maybe Gen Alpha is a super fan of someone that no one in their high school has heard of. So they all have individual relationships with some someone that they're a super fan of, but they don't cross over. It's not everyone likes Tom Cruz, it's everyone likes their own individual unique Tom Cruz or whatever. >> Uh yeah. >> Yeah. I was talking about that with someone actually recently because it it creates I think again so much possibility but then it's harder to figure out like if you can just find one name that everyone knows that will have that popularity again like in the past there were how many cable channels or even before cable you know TV channels cable channels and then um shows that you watch you know we have such a fragmented audience right now and so there could be someone that is so popular and you might have never heard about them and that's like the beauty of social media uh and the internet right now and actually, you know, you were mentioning the middle class. I do think there's something about the middle class that is difficult right now when it comes to the creator economy because I see people when they're at the 1% making a ton of money. I mean, not everyone is Mr. Beast, right? And then niche creators are making a lot of money. When you're kind of stuck in that gray area, that's becoming, I would say, more and more of a challenge because you're getting underpriced. Um but then also, you know, the prices that you want, they're not necessarily being able to hit it because they're keeping that for like more of that macro creator. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah. The the other the other challenge is that uh there's going to be new creators that are growing that are growing quickly that are that are that are hungry that maybe have figured out formats so the algorithms are rewarding y more intensely. And if you're in that middle zone and you don't adapt quickly, you can quickly become irrelevant. I used to Yeah, >> I used to talk to YouTube creators that would try to this was back in 2018 that would try to set pricing based on the number of their the number of their uh subscribers because there was a period where you could basically say like I have this many subscribers like you can assume that >> at least half of them will like click through and and and watch the video. There was a moment like that and then it changed pretty rapidly and I would I would talk to them and be like, "Hey, like unfortunately like you over the last couple days take your last 10 videos and take the the average and like that >> for some creators that's higher than their subscriber base, but for a lot of creators it's 20% of their subscribers actually opening the videos." >> But then, you know, I think pricing is really important to talk about because, you know, I do think there's different types of creators that require different things. like, you know, now there's a lot of the affiliate creators and I liken that to like a QVC host, right? They're really good at selling through and having that affiliate model and that's the only way they work and they're really good at that. I don't think that's for everyone. And just because something works in the creator economy for a group of people doesn't mean it needs to be the end all beall. >> Do not tell that to Gary Vaynerchuk. If you get him going about Tik Tok shop, it's over for you. He will like not everyone is meant to be a Tik Tok shop. >> I agree. I agree with you completely. >> And then where's Wait, on that note, I love Gary. Where's Gary Ve's Tik Tok shop? I want to see him and he >> like, okay, so Tik Tok shop is hot. What are you selling? I want to see you selling which he does these moments where he'll be selling or he'll go live for a week or okay, we're doing this again. Wife TV and like okay by week two or three he's like okay I have other [ __ ] to do. >> No no 100%. I mean I he he he does he I I think part of his benefit is that he's he's sampled from the smorgus board of content creation and can speak to okay well there there is a gap here for some people but not it's not all going to be one sizefits-all u just like I don't think everyone's going to be uh you know doing IRL streaming in the future even though that's having a moment and we could see many more creators do IRL streams outside of the the the kick streamers and the controversial folks and the political folks You could see that instantiated in a whole bunch of other categories, but it'll just take time to get there. We've been seeing with TBPN, people have made a version of this show for car dealerships or what's going on in Europe or what's going on in crypto and there's like all these different twists on this format and that happens whenever there's a new thing, but it's not going to be perfect for every single vertical. But yeah, >> exactly. And that's they'll jump on it because it's a trend and then there's a difference between the people that jump onto something and then build it as actually like a substantial career. >> Yeah. So, for instance, like I like to say like I'm looking at a career like I'm here in the digital space. It's something I'm very passionate about and now on my personal brand I cover creator economy trends, emerging tech, AI, even mental health. We could get into that when it comes to the digital space. But I've been now working in the space for 20 years. I get to look at trends and how they've changed and not just report on them, but I've actually lived through them. So, it gives it a different uh approach at least for me and an edge when it comes to my coverage. I also think just sidebar, if you're a creator or someone looking to be in the space, like I do believe as long as you get the right representation, agents or managers are important as long as they don't take advantage there's a lot of predatory behavior out there because they have other talent. They could see cont. >> How much should you share with a manager? Like 90% or or where they want Well, they want more. No, I'm kidding. No, no, no. Um, usually agents, and I'm going to say this, someone said, "Don't talk about this." I was on a panel at the NAB show last week, and someone's like, "Why are you revealing?" And I'm like, "These aren't secrets. These are kind of industry standards and we need to talk about things more and not cut people off from information. Like, I am not I do not want to be that person." So, yeah. So, agents typically take 10%, managers 20%. Mhm. >> But again, this day and age, managers, people are just becoming sales people and they're saying they're managers, which is crazy. >> Whereas in the past, a manager would actually build your strategy and help you with your career and like your longevity. Now, they just run your email inbox and like that is not a manager. But anyway, that's just my hot take on on that. But um I think things are, you know, things are changing. What? >> Yeah. No, no, no. I like it. It's a good point. And I think it is important for these to for the yeah just the benchmarks or any sort of relative information getting out there is always good. Uh Jordy, anything else? >> What's your outlook on clipping? It feels like the legacy media >> that >> it feels like the legacy media just just woke up to this. >> Well, it just started. The first clip I think went out like last week and so that's why everyone's talking about it. >> The first clip from a legacy media company. >> We're joking. clipping's been around for years and it's now like having this big moment and it's just sort of funny to reflect on this thing that everyone's been aware of for a long time. >> Yeah. So I I it's interesting because I think when you Google even clipping and I was trying to find the uh platform that does it. There's like two sides of clipping. It's like the you're clipping up all your clips obviously and distributing them at scale across everywhere. And then there's the clipping farms like where they'll you can pay people to post on their platforms and try to get views. Those are kind of two sides to the >> clip industrial complex. >> Yeah. And I find that fascinating. Like a lot of the streamers are doing that. Yeah. >> Um I show speed and >> well for a long time >> Joe Rogan would be clipped but just by people that were watching the show and were like this was an interesting moment organic authentic farm tot clipping. Now you got the industrialization of clipping. And so thousands of people are being paid to to to clip a single streamer and it's part of a marketing process but it seems to be effective for people. So it is becoming a trend and people are paying attention >> and that how like is it clvicular? >> Clvicular has been a massive beneficiary of the clip industrial complex. Apparently he has a hundred people working for him. >> Yeah. It's interesting because people like analyze his whole strategy and they put like they seemingly put like 80 90% of the of the of the success and the growth of his personal brand whether you believe it should grow or not. >> On the strategy when when he was a unique figure and a controversial figure and if you I if he had been saying there just uh yeah a little bit of sleep, diet, exercise, don't worry about it too much. you're going to be fine. And he had a billion clippers. No one would know his name. Instead, he's out there with the craziest hot takes possible, the craziest stunts, crazy getting in jail and stuff, like insane stuff. And and so the clips really amplify that, but there's a seed of virality there already on day one, whether or not the Clippers are paid or not, I think. >> Yeah. No, that that is the thing. So, I think it's interesting as a new marketing strategy that I it'll be interesting to see if traditional media jumps on board. I don't think they will because they have a hard enough time building out their social strategy right now, let alone doing a whole like I would say clipping strategy like that. I think that definitely benefits the individual personal brand, the person that's willing to take the risk. Again, there's still money that you need to spend on this, but if you want to become a social media celebrity, one, yeah, you need to have the basic, I would say, controversial hot take and then being able to tap into this other stuff. But it it's something to look out for in terms of the phenomenon of social media right now. Uh, and putting more out there, right? And how do you do it faster? But then some of these, I would say I use Opus for instance, I know the team there. Uh they're great if you have long form video and you want to cut it up, but some of these tools, they do need to be better. It's like you can't just throw it in and spit it out. >> Yep. >> There's still >> Yeah, we tried a number of the tools early on and couldn't get any of them working. We ended up building our own internal software, >> which which helps with the the cutting of the footage, but does not do the selection for you. The selection is still editorial. That's still human, which is interesting. >> Exactly. Yeah. So, you know, a lot of creators are still worried about or anyone about AI taking their job or this or that, >> which is real, which is why I think that you need to lean into like having a a voice and a an approach to things where you're not just being told what to do, but you can take a piece of content as an editor and be like, I'm going to make this the best it can be, like better than AI right now. I'm personally excited for when I could throw a clip in and it could spit it out for me and be awesome. We are not there yet. It would save me so much time. So, as a creator, I'm excited for these tools. I am not >> scared. >> Clip super intelligence. >> It's got to happen. It's got to happen. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show. Have a great rest of your day. >> Yeah. Great to meet you. Come back on whenever you have I I love all I love all the spice. Come back on whenever. >> Oh, I will be back. Maybe I'll be in studio. It's easier. And I want this tech. I'm just being a freeze frame right now. Thank you. I appreciate it. >> You came loud and clear. Great to hang. >> Fantastic. Amazing. >> Goodbye. >> Talk soon. Flashbang out. Uh our next guest is Anrol Gupta from actively AI. He's the co-founder uh he is the co-founder and president. I think I got it right. Welcome to the show. Last minute switch. Introduce yourself and the company please. Sorry for being >> John. How you doing? >> Yeah. Thanks for having me guys. Good to good to meet you. Big fans of the big fans of the show and congrats obviously on the >> the Yeah, a lot of folks on our team have switched from Sports Center to to you guys. So I think that's a >> I didn't realize we were pulling people from sports center. I like that. >> Yeah, this is the new sport the sport of enterprise revenue workflows. Tell us about it. >> Amazing. So yeah, quickly I'm on one of the co-founders of actively as you guys mentioned and we build agents for for go to market teams and effectively are the only platform that proactively guides revenue teams >> on what to do next. Yeah. and then actually helps them do it. And it it's it's based off this notion that we've built called an agent for every account. So this concept called per account agents. So the idea is as a rep you're stretched really really thick >> on all the possible actions that you could be doing to drive revenue. And so what actively does is we've created these agents that live with every single one agent that lives with every single account for the life cycle of that account across the the funnel from you know top of funnel through close through through expansion. Um that are maintaining all of that context and as well as guiding you on what you should be doing next and then actually doing the doing the work. uh which stands in stark contrast to you know a lot of the solutions that require a human being to go point and click to to to to kind of decide what they what they want to do and our fundamental belief is that there's going to be and you know it's true with our customers there's going to be a lot more agents than than sellers right and so how do you build and plan for that uh world and that reality >> is software sales the beach head or are you selling to car dealerships or Rolex ads or HVAC salesmen like there's so many different people that would benefit from an agent on every account, but I imagine that you'll be accelerated in certain verticals. Have you narrowed down or are you going broad? >> It's a it's a it's a great question. I think for for us ultimately, you know, the ICP is very clear, which is we make revenue teams way more productive. The larger revenue teams you have, the more impact that we can make. You know, >> to your point, however, um the beach head very much is within within software sales, but we're starting to see organic demand from some of these other other verticals. Maybe maybe not car dealerships uh yet and that's you know hopefully a good maybe a good thing. Um but you know >> watch the the watch brand ads they could just be like >> hey this person tell this person they're not >> hey I scraped your Instagram and I noticed that you had a bare wrist when you were going swimming. Do you need a dive watch? uh potentially uh talk to me about the what it actually takes because obviously you're you're scraping the emails, you're scraping the calendar invites and probably transcriptions, understanding what's going on uh with the interaction between the company, but are you also looking at like product analytics? I feel like so many times you sell a software product, they're like, "Great, we did the demo. Cool. We we're rolling it out. Yeah, it's going great." And you're like, "We see that no one's logged in. We need to intervene." Is that part of what the agent's working on? >> Yeah. For for us, we we view the bright line as being very, you know, plain and clear, which is full and complete context. And so to in order if the the way I try to analogize it is if I had unlimited dollars and I was a CRO, I would put >> uh one seller, ideally, I would figure out a way to clone my best seller and put one seller each and every one of these accounts. And so as part of that, if they're doing their job, John, to your to your question, they would be looking at every single data point, which today sellers don't do because to your point, it's in so many different different systems, right? whether it's product analytics, calls, information that's not in your in your database. And so our account agents are kind of becoming the sort of continuously updating source of truth across all of those different different areas. And so, you know, because we're very enterprise focused, we have to build integrations into a pretty large uh large set of uh kind of technologies housing this information. >> Tell us about the round. >> Do you track Last last question. Do you do you track how long it takes to generate one of your customers their first like a a a dollar of revenue that you can attribute back actively? Like what what what metrics matter on your side? >> Yeah, it's it's it's a really good question. Yeah, I think I think ultimately we are in the business of helping increase, you know, seller productivity, revenue revenue per rep. And so that's ex, you know, we we we track um based off our account agents sort of what what are they able to what are they able to drive and attributed kind of pipeline uh conversion rates, downstream revenue, uh expansions. Um but then also there's there's some interesting or change dynamics that as a result of having these really powerful agents, we're starting to see, you know, we work with many publicly traded companies that um as they're starting to see efficiency gains, they they can rethink their the the levels of um maybe uh middle management that you have the maybe the the levels of ratios between AES to to to BDRs because as you gain more and more uh efficiencies with these with these account agents, you don't need as much in sort of those those different those different supporting functions. Um but I think like you know the the other point that that I'll that I'll make is it's not just about uh the metrics that you're driving. It is a fully different way of doing go to market, right? Which is every single other solution out there only works when the human goes into it and decides I want to do this or I want to do that. But like what about when they're asleep or what if they're not thinking about asking that question? That is where um and there's a huge disparity in terms of seller uh performance in terms of a players and the in and the rest. And so it's it's kind of this broader transformation that we're trying to trying to drive. >> Very exciting. Tell us about the round. >> Yep. Um, do I wait for the gong? Wait for the big old >> Tell us. Tell us. >> $45 million series D. >> There we go. >> Congratulations. >> Thank you. >> Thank you so much for coming on the show. We will talk to you soon to meet you. Congrats to the team on the milestone and uh we'll see you at the sea. >> Yeah. Have a good one. >> Talk to you soon. Goodbye. Up next, we have a Porva from Avoka, the founder and co-CEO, working on AI agents for the service economy. Baby, let's go. >> A lot of capital being deployed today. >> It is a boom time >> being announced. >> It's a boom time. Well, uh, we are very fortunate to have our next guest. We are in the TBP Ultradom. How are you doing? Welcome to the show. >> Hey guys, I'm doing well. How are you? >> Thanks so much for taking the time. Beautiful. >> We are doing great, but I don't think we're doing good as you today right there. Uh yeah, introduce yourself and the company please. >> Yep. So my name is Apurv. I'm the founder and co-CEO of Aoka. Um yeah, we're basically building AI agents for physical service businesses primarily for example home services where we've seen a lot of traction and um my co-founders Tyson and um we started this business together in 2022. >> Cool. Uh >> 2022 what did you see? >> Yeah. >> What what >> were you thinking just like SAS and then it just got a lot better with the AI tailwind? Well, well, it's kind of interesting. So, this kind of happened during the time that the models that created CHABT had come out, but CHAGBT itself wasn't yet out. >> Yeah. GP3 was getting a lot better. Like 3.5 was like basically out. Da Vinci like stuff was starting to work, but it was a little bit rough, but you could see glimpses. >> Exactly. Yeah. So, this is the time when like Da Vinci was out. Um, but then you didn't really have the consumer adoption of chatbt yet. And yeah, during that period of time, something interesting about both me and my co-founder is that we both came from backgrounds where, so I grew up in Michigan, Tyson grew up in Pennsylvania. We basically grew up in backgrounds where our moms own these service businesses and we actually used to do the this kind of job every day where we'd have to actually be picking up phone calls, booking customers, figuring out how to properly book them and all that fun stuff. And so we essentially after we did that, I think when I saw AI was getting really good, I was immediately like, wait, I feel like businesses like that will have so much value and no one's really looking into it. And so we were like, what does it look like to bring value here? And we thought, let's start with the phone call. >> Okay. Oh. Oh, the phone call. Okay. Yeah. I I I want to know more about uh just the data ingest points because you can imagine like you know ERPs, custom ERPs, uh CRM, there's a lot of different touch points and you could even go into photos and 3D scans of things that are going on in the physical world. Uh but but where is the beach head? Where's like the light bulb moment for your customers? Yeah. So, it's kind of like multiple phases. I would say for our customers, if you think about it, like our customers, their customers are basically just like us. You know, anytime we need like a new job for plumbing, new AC, etc., things like that. Um, they're coming through a lot of sources. So, phone calls is actually how many businesses get most of the revenue, but then there's also like lead aggregators. Some people are texting. And so AOA we want to first our first phase is like essentially responding and closing every lead which is like how do we get you any lead that's coming from like Angie's for example people often think of as like a war room because now every single person's like fighting for that person. So we can have an AI that'll go respond to that lead immediately. We can have an AI that picks up every single phone call and sticks to the script does what you need and close that customer. Then there's kind of like a second phase which is like how do you you know figure out your capacity and get new customers. So basically based off of what kind of availabilities and jobs you have, can you go reach out to the existing base? Who should you target to kind of you know fill up your board? >> Yeah. Uh are are voice models at a chat GBT mo moment now? Uh I had a really great experience booking a restaurant reservation at Fog Chow Bane Capitalbacked. No surprises there. But uh uh but it but you know like I have grown up my entire life like do not talk to the robot. Do not reject the clanker, demand the human, press zero a bunch, but it feels like we're starting to see glimpses of magical experiences. How close are we? Have we crossed the touring test? Do you have data on any of this? Like how is it going on that front? >> Yeah, absolutely. So, we have now crossed a point where like if you wanted to for the first 30 seconds to a minute of a conversation, people would not be able to tell that they're talking to an AI because the models have just gotten so good. But still to this day, we are not yet at like the point where we're at with text where you could literally have, you know, minutes long conversations because eventually the AI sounds robotic. It takes like extra 100 milliseconds to respond, interrupts you when you're speaking, all those kinds of things. So, we're not yet at the moment where it's like, oh, everything is going to switch over, but we're at the moment where in fact, you can have very good conversations. You can pick up the phone within a second and super efficient. Like, these average calls actually last about 30% faster than calls that um humans would take. So, it's even more efficient. >> Okay. Yeah, that's great. Uh, tell us about the round. >> Any any any of these different is there is there you have roofing, HVAC, plumbing. Is there a category that is more resistant to AI? Like are plumbers like nah, I'm good more than electricians or HVAC or is it is it pretty un like and and what is general sentiment um across the board? >> Yeah, I mean it's a great question. So I think like you know the initial thought would be that oh people are probably not too excited about adopting AI or whatever AI is evil. But in fact the nice part about our business is that the AI is not the main character of the job. What the main AI is doing is just making sure everything gets booked, making sure their customers are happy, making sure, you know, you're always getting new customers, but the main characters are actually the plumbers, the technicians, the, you know, HVAC guys. And so they are actually, I mean, I would split them split them into multiple buckets, but a lot of them are very hungry and eager to actually adopt AI right now because they already see the overhead of like, oh shoot, I forgot to follow up with that customer, or oh wow, I can't believe we dropped that customer on their phone call. And so an AI can go in and solve that. They can do their job. they're still running the show and the AI can help facilitate that. So, still seeing actually really good adoption there. >> Cool. Tell us about the round. You raised a bunch of money. What happened? >> Yeah, so we actually this is our first time going public. So, we're very happy and honored to be here. We've now raised 125 million at million valuation. >> Congratulations. >> First time going public as in coming out of stealth, right? >> Yeah. I mean, we were all all over LinkedIn, but we had never did a single press release. So, I'm fortunate. >> Got the exclusive. Let's go. >> You're like, let's just wait. Let's just wait till we till we hit a billion. >> Very impressive. Very, very good. Good progress. Congratulations. And thank you so much for taking the time to come hang out. >> Yeah. Great to meet you. Congrats. Awesome. >> Goodbye. >> Cheers. >> Up next, we have the non joining. We have Bubble Boy. I believe Bubble Boy is in the waiting room. Let's bring Bubble Boy in to the TVPN Ultra Dome. We have some important questions. >> Another one. >> Uh >> uh. He's coming. He has been on an absolute tear. There he is. >> Bubble boy. I like this photo of the golden ret. >> Hello. Hello. Hello. >> Hello. Hello. Okay. So, you said, "Yo, TBN, put me on the show to talk about semis. I will make your listeners rich." >> Go make our listeners rich. Tell us about semis. Let's start like uh why why do you still have a normal job at this point? >> Let's start there. >> Yeah. So, someone actually asked me this recently and I think the uh answer I got was a lot of my ideas come from working on the same problems these engineers are actually trying to solve. So I really don't think I could have actually called Intel or called a lot of these other companies like SanDisk if I didn't have that experience and knowhow and expertise. So I actually think uh having a job is a bit of alpha believe it or not. And I think uh a lot of the uh engineers who are actually just making a killing in this market. I mean these are just real experts in their field and we look at the market every day and we just see um you know big divergences. I don't think the finance bros really understand what advanced packaging is or what yields really mean. They understand it maybe from a financial uh aspect but not from a competitive standpoint. Mhm. >> Uh re rewind rewind to a year ago. Where did you think we were in the overall AI cycle >> and where do you think we are today? >> Yeah, probably the start. I I I think um at the beginning of the year at the beginning of the year uh every hypers basically said that they're going to spend >> 680 billion. >> Yeah. >> So, I mean we're just at the start. I think we have at least three years of capex growth going crazy from my estimates and from there I mean tokens are just looking like the new oil or electricity. I think uh at this point I actually can't live my life without a token. So yeah, I think we're just at the start. I think um right now is really when things are going to be going crazy. Um, if you actually look at the data center buildout, we're nothing's actually been completed yet. >> We're just at the beginning. >> How do you how do you think uh everyone having access to LLM's, you know, these incredible research partners is changing the markets? Like does that do do things get priced in faster when everyone can can uh is maybe asking the same questions? Absolutely. And that's a good question. I just need to shout out GPT 5.5, my preferred model for um you know, stock research. I think um I I know for um sure that the number one consumer of these tokens is these hedge funds and financial institutions. >> Um they are absolutely running through a bunch of research and it allows you to get up to speed quickly. Um, if you really think about it, like 5 years ago, if I wanted to make a bet on like chemical epoxy for semis, that would have tooken 6 months of my life um, and been a bit ridiculous. >> And then and then and then so so share share your post yesterday, which went incredibly viral, turned into news. You were just you were basically just showing that you could just make up stuff on the timeline and and uh, I think you moved >> I think you moved the market, but Give us the backtory. >> Yeah. What happened? >> Um, so I was actually just researching these um chemical suppliers and I just realized um you know, you could really you could really talk to an LLM and get it to say whatever you wanted to say. So I uh I just picked a random company honestly in Japan and I just said, "Hey, try to really uh pitch this as an AI bottleneck." Um sadly it's not a bottleneck, right? But I I think um they're doing well either way. >> Yeah. >> Um they can I mean we're in a good place. You know, data centers will be built out. We don't need to wait for sumit bake light to uh get their epoxy resins at the scale. But >> yeah, so I I guess that's a harm. Um people need to definitely do their own research. I've seen a lot of people just piling into things they don't understand. Um, so very interesting place to be in. >> What's your Intel thesis right now? >> A great question. I think up to this point, Intel was a talk. Intel's thesis was really a fab turnaround. It was about 18A and 14A, which is coming. I think really now I've completely changed my logic. It's about advanced packaging. Advanced packaging to me is the new Moore's law. You kind of are already seeing this with Vera Rubin um where they can't actually do four dyes on one package. They actually had to change that last second. If you look out to fineman, I mean this packages, the packaging of the silicon is a huge bottleneck. It already was a bottleneck in 20 in 2025. Nvidia was 60% of TSMC's advanced packaging. So everyone else was out there to fend for themselves. Um so any kind of advanced packaging that comes to market that allows people to scale compute way more than I think just shrinking a node. I mean shrinking a node's great but the way Nvidia's timeline and I think all the hyperscalers as well they want more HBM they want more radical size dies and they all want it in one package. Mhm. >> So that's really where things are headed towards and I think the market's not pricing that in. I think this is a real sea change to the semi-industry. This really is just happening over the past year or so. >> What's the story with the dog? >> Oh, well, this is just kind of like how I look on the day-to-day basis when I'm sitting at my desk sipping on a diet. Well, Pepsi in this case, but I just like to, you know, spread joy. Yeah. No, I think u this is kind of like how you look when Intel beats on earnings and goes up 30% in a day and you've been proven right after a year of being told you were wrong. So, >> yeah. >> Uh what's any any any uh non-financial advice predictions for uh the this tech earnings cycle? What are you expecting tomorrow? Well, I think we have Sandis reporting soon. I think that's kind of been telegraphed that Sandis can just increase the price of Flash until the customers cry. Um, so I think yeah, they they will be fine. I think uh the other story is people think there's a CPU shortage. >> Yeah. >> Um I think that this is going to be we're going to get a yes or no definitely in this earning season. Um, can people actually just price up CPUs 25 30%. And will people take it? >> When when you uh when you post a picture of your a screenshot of your returns on X, do you ever get worried that that it's a sign that you should uh at least go to cash somewhat or does does it just >> Absolutely not. That's never Absolutely not. I've never thought of going to cash. I I actually took some money out last year for taxes and is the biggest mistake of my life cuz that money, who knows where how much it would be by now. I see this as we have a three-year run at least and now's time to really pull the trigger. If anything, I'm trying to borrow money at this point to go bigger. >> And that's why they call him bubble boy. >> That's why they call him bubble boy. >> You used to pray for a bubble like this. >> Yeah, I I definitely did. Yeah. and it's come to fruition. So, we can all >> What can people What can people expect from you? You You say that having a job is alpha. Uh I'm sure you're getting people are trying to pitch you on new job opportunities. >> Uh but what what can people expect from you this year besides um making a lot of calls all the time and to date >> often being quite accurate? >> I think you'll I think I'll give a hint. you'll see me in the flash business somewhere somehow maybe at a pretty established flash company >> in supply chain. So >> I think uh flash is one of these technologies that I think um scales a lot higher than the market expects and I always have this joke I say like if you want to like change the world you can cure cancer or you can come up with new kinds of memory. So, I can't work on the first one. So, I'm going to look at the number two for now. >> And that would this be an early stage company? >> You get exposure. Yeah. >> Um, potentially. Or it could be really partnering with a very very large company. >> Cool. >> So, there's some advantages to both. >> Well, good luck wherever the future takes you. And >> this was fun. I I've I've deeply I've deeply enjoyed your your posting. Uh and uh and yeah, you're clearly having a lot of fun and it's fun to watch. Great to meet you. >> Thank you guys both and uh big fan of the show. So, thanks for having me on. >> Thanks for helping out. >> It's been an honor. >> We'll talk to you soon. >> Cheers, Bubble Boy. We'll talk to you. >> Cheers. Have a good one. >> Bye. >> We should close with an example of why memory is so expensive. Uh Star Wars meets pawn stars. Have you seen this video? Have you watched this, Jordy? >> I did. You learned something crazy. I saw the first second. I haven't watched the full thing, but I think it's >> pretty incredible. >> I have items to burn. >> All right, let's see what you got. >> Okay, so these are lightsabers. >> Correct. >> So, uh, where'd you get them? >> Estate sale. >> Estate sale. It's so funny that you can clock it by the audio more than the video. >> It's very weird. >> Been a collector for many years. It is a great passion of mine. Each lightsaber has a story and he's telling you there is a certain thrill. >> I guess the character is CGI to begin with. >> So it's easy. It's hard to clock. But even he's probably fully AI >> video or maybe it's edited together. I don't know. >> But yeah, you're 100% right. It's the audio that's off. still my collection. >> That's rough, man. How much are you looking to get for him? >> 100,000 credits. >> Look, I'll give you 50 bucks for him, >> you fool. >> It's interesting that uh the uh like why that's popular is because it's this mashup between two intellectual pieces of property and they're not being compensated for that. And so there's like this thing that can only exist in the piracy world. basically like if someone if you had recreated this without leveraging Star Wars IP or Pawn Stars IP uh doesn't go viral, right? And so the the business case for AI video is still a little bit more narrow and I think it will be tucked in the tool section. I was I was uh yeah looking a lot at like the the AFLAC project that he sold to Netflix and some of the background replacements some of the VFX stuff like it feels like the way even though this is like this oh it's like oneshotting entertainment uh it feels like the next the next moment of like AI in Hollywood is very much like tool driven uh you know leveraging things like you know green screen removal and uh object replacement VFX workflows and just sort of speeding up remote like wrote tasks. But uh people will continue to have fun with these uh mashups and I'm sure we'll see many more of them on the timeline. Anyway, >> uh the other news, uh Mike Isaac and his team over at the New York Times are in the courtroom live blogging. >> They're blogging. They went >> they're blogging. They're blogging. Uh it is >> there's some crazy moment. >> There's some crazy crazy moments already. >> We'll try to put some of them together. The judge is doing the judge is doing bits. >> Apparently, uh Elon's lawyer's microphone turned off four times in the course of his opening state. >> Maybe like the screen turned off at one point. I saw some different on that. >> Apparently on the technical issues, >> fifth or so time, the judge says, "What can I tell you? We are funded by the federal government." So >> that's wild. >> She's running she's running bits. Uh but uh highly recommend going over and uh Mike Isaac posts are still >> rolling in. >> Uh it's a lot to go through because it's it's it's hours and hours and hours of content, but we'll try to pull out some of the highlights and go through it on tomorrow's show. >> The other thing you should listen to is uh Patrick Oanosy had Paul Tudtor Jones, one of the greatest macro traders of all time on Invest Like the Best. It's an hour and 11 minutes and you should go listen to it. So, go take a listen. It already has 5,000 likes, 1.7 million views, not nearly enough downloads. So, go add it to your podcast player right now and uh enjoy that for the rest of the day. Enjoy the rest of your day and we'll see you tomorrow 11 a.m. Leave us five stars now podcast, Spotify. Sign up for our newsletter, tbn.com. >> Can't wait to see you tomorrow. Have the best afternoon of your life. We love you. >> Goodbye. Flashbang. Flashback >> out. Goodbye.