All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg - E171: DOJ sues Apple, AI arms race, Reddit IPO, Realtor settlement & more
Episode Date: March 22, 2024(0:00) Bestie Intros: Don't spoil Dune 2! (0:55) DOJ drops antitrust suit on Apple (23:36) Apple reportedly in talks with Google and OpenAI to power AI features on iPhone (32:17) NAR settlement: how i...t impacts residential real estate going forward (44:30) Microsoft's "Shadow Acquihire" of Inflection AI (48:43) How the besties would deploy $40B in AI as a sovereign wealth fund (1:01:57) Reddit IPO: is risk-on back? (1:07:17) Science Corner(s): Universe expansion, first pig kidney transplant in human, Neuralink Follow the besties: https://twitter.com/chamath https://twitter.com/Jason https://twitter.com/DavidSacks https://twitter.com/friedberg Follow the pod: https://twitter.com/theallinpod https://linktr.ee/allinpodcast Intro Music Credit: https://rb.gy/tppkzl https://twitter.com/yung_spielburg Intro Video Credit: https://twitter.com/TheZachEffect Referenced in the show: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.njd.544402/gov.uscourts.njd.544402.1.0_3.pdf https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-apple-monopolizing-smartphone-markets https://www.google.com/finance/quote/AAPL:NASDAQ https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-03-18/apple-in-talks-to-license-google-gemini-for-iphone-ios-18-generative-ai-tools https://www.macrumors.com/2023/10/11/google-pays-apple-billions-default-search https://venturebeat.com/ai/apple-releases-mgie-a-revolutionary-ai-model-for-instruction-based-image-editing https://twitter.com/chamath/status/1769751534940918234 https://nypost.com/2024/02/26/business/google-to-relaunch-woke-gemini-ai-image-tool-in-few-weeks https://twitter.com/Patworx/status/1760189582870536408 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNv9PRDIhes https://www.nbcnews.com/business/real-estate/national-association-realtors-settlement-changes-rcna143634 https://www.wsj.com/real-estate/realtors-settlement-change-buy-sell-homes-da45eb23 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-03-19/inflection-ai-plans-pivot-after-most-employees-go-to-microsoft https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-03-19/microsoft-hires-deepmind-co-founder-suleyman-to-run-consumer-ai https://inflection.ai/inflection-ai-announces-1-3-billion-of-funding https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/19/business/saudi-arabia-investment-artificial-intelligence.html https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/21/reddit-ipo-rddt-starts-trading-on-nyse.html https://www.wsj.com/economy/central-banking/fed-officials-still-see-three-cuts-this-year-0b039532 https://www.wsj.com/real-estate/commercial/americas-office-fire-sale-has-barely-begun-0c8d376f https://www.foxweather.com/earth-space/nasa-webb-telescope-hubble-observations-universe-expansion-rate-question https://www.massgeneral.org/news/press-release/worlds-first-genetically-edited-pig-kidney-transplant-into-living-recipient https://twitter.com/neuralink/status/1770563939413496146
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Has anybody else seen due to an IMAX? No, don't say anything. Oh,
don't say anything about Dune. I want to say about Dune. No, don't
say it is fantastic. And I want to see it again. I'm saying is
that it's worth seeing. I don't even want to know that you think
it's good. It's over. It makes me stop. He didn't. Sax didn't
see it. No, I saw Dune. Dune two. No, I saw it too. Dude too.
Yeah, I saw it.
It's over.
Okay.
Stop, stop.
Okay.
Stop everybody.
You both have the two.
Not already.
There's like five great scenes.
Sax the scene.
You guys are so annoying.
Let your winners ride.
Rain man, David.
let your winter slide. Rain Man David Saks. We open source it to the fans and they've just gone crazy. Love you best. I
mean Queen of Kin Waa. Alright everybody welcome to the All In
podcast with me again the chairman dictator Chamath Pali
Hapatiya, David Saks Men. Yeah. And Sultan of Science, David Freeberg, the true boy J Cal here
and we have so much to go through. The DOJ dropped a
Sherman X suit on Apple today right as we were about to tape
the program seems like Thursday's is the big news drop
day now. So this DOJ suit outlines five alleged
abuses and they claim obviously that those abuses reduce competition while limiting consumer choice
and raising the prices that consumers pay for their iPhone. We talked about this actually just
a couple of weeks ago when we talked about peak Apple. The five categories are very quickly
super apps, cloud gaming apps, messaging apps, smartwatches and digital wallets.
If you don't know about super apps, that's the one that's maybe you haven't heard of if you're
listening to this. In Asia, they mentioned how Alipay, WeChat and Paytm are super apps. What does
that mean? You get like five or six different functions in one app, social media, images,
purchasing, getting rides, you know, all that stuff.
And when you have that, you can move from one platform to
another super easily. And when it comes to messaging apps, we've
all experienced the green bubble friend. So the main argument of
the lawsuit, pretty interesting. They explain and it's a really
well written document, I read it this morning that
when Apple faces new competition instead of lowering prices for consumers or
offering a better deal to developers they would quote meet competitive threats
by imposing a series of shape-shifting rules and restrictions in its app store
guidelines and developer agreements I've faced this every time I've invested in
an app startup they complain about
the goalposts moving by Apple and Apple shares down about 3% on the news today. I'm sure everybody's
got some interesting thoughts on it. Chamath, you were talking about peak Apple just last week or
the week before, I think. What are your thoughts on the lawsuit dropped today. To be honest, I haven't read it
and I don't really know
like the odds of these things,
just because it seems like some of this stuff
is so clearly political.
And I think that these things have seasons to it
in the sense that there are moments
where these things are more likely
to go in the favor of the company
and more likely to go in favor of the government.
The one thing I'll say is that these guys have been losing
a fair number of these things. So they're kind of 50-50 in their fight with Epic. They've basically lost against their fight with
Spotify.
They definitely are in a moment where people are looking
at the profitability of these devices as the source of their
long term cash flow. And I think they realize that there's not a
lot of growth because they haven't entered a bunch of new
markets. So the real question is knowing all of that, did they do
something beyond what they've already always done to try to lock people in?
And can they prove it?
I think that that's really where the government's case
will come down to, because then it's clear that Apple
probably understood that their market was kind of solidifying
and they introduced these blocks essentially into processes
that forced people to stay.
That's probably bad news for them,
but I don't really know because I haven't read the lawsuit. Yeah, it's actually did you get a chance to read it?
Or do you have any thoughts generally speaking? I
Haven't read the filings, but I read some of the press coverage about it
I would say based on the press coverage that I read that there's not really a smoking gun here
At least the press hasn't reported one and what what I mean by that is, let me give
you a couple of examples that were in the press. One is that apparently the filing made
a point about when Tim Cook was confronted some time ago by a user saying, when I try
to send a video by text to someone with an Android phone, it just doesn't work very well.
It never works. It was a guy trying to send a video to his mom
and Tim Cook responded, well,
your mom should buy an iPhone.
It's kind of like a throwaway comment by Tim Cook.
Probably not a great idea for him to say that,
but that's an example of what the lawsuit brings up.
Another example is that the Apple Watch
doesn't work with Android phones.
It only works with iPhones, obviously. Again, is that really a smoking gun issue?
I don't think so.
I mean, it's, this is Apple's whole strategy is that all of its products work seamlessly
together and Apple hardware doesn't really work with other operating systems.
It never has.
So at least based on the press coverage, I've yet to see a single smoking gun example coming out of this lawsuit.
Now, I think what those examples highlight is what this lawsuit is really about is your view of interoperability.
What the government is saying is that Apple needs to make its apps and its devices more interoperable with other ecosystems. So the watch needs to be interoperable with Android.
Apple messaging needs to be interoperable
with Android messaging and so on.
What the government is saying is that Apple's refusing
to play ball with other applications,
other operating systems,
and that creates a monopolistic network effect.
What I think Apple would say is no,
the fact is that Apple from the outset
has always tried to do everything soup to nuts.
We've always done the hardware and the software together.
And that's what creates the magical experience.
And so Apple's entire product strategy
is based on creating a vertically integrated stack
that goes from hardware to operating system to
key applications.
And I think Apple has a point saying if you try to make us unwind all of that, the process
is not going to work as well.
It's not going to be the same product experience that everyone's used to.
So again, I think that how you view interoperability is at the core of this lawsuit.
I think that both the government and Apple make good points about that. And I'm a little bit skeptical right now that the government
has a smoking gun, at least one hasn't been reported in the press. And so I'm a little
bit doubtful right now that the government's gonna be able to win this case.
Freeberg, any thoughts?
Yeah, I mean, I think it's a function of consumer choice. If consumers want to have this closed
system where they can iMessage with other iMessage app holders and not be able to have
a seamless integrated messaging experience with Android users, they'll be happy if they're
annoyed they'll switch over to an Android. So you know, this has always been Apple's
orientation. I think I mentioned this to you guys, I has always been Apple's orientation.
I think I mentioned this to you guys.
I've been on a Mac since 1984 when the Mac original came out.
I still have my first Mac original, by the way, I keep it in my office on my shelf.
And Apple's, you know, always had like a really hard focus on the software that
they make available to their users to create an incredible product experience.
So I don't know if this is necessarily about market abuse as much as it is a
consumer choice.
If the consumers didn't like the product, they didn't like the fact that things
were not available, that things were very expensive, they would go elsewhere.
And you do see that in segments of the market.
And as we talked about a few weeks ago, you do see that X US most of the
smartphone market is actually Android driven.
Yeah. So this is a premium product that people are willing to pay a premium price for even if
that means limited access. I think developers are frustrated that they can't access this premium
market. But I'm not sure that Apple necessarily should be coerced to service developers. When at
the end of the day, the consumers are paying for the products.
And to your point, like, is it really the case
that a green bubble versus a blue bubble
is really that limiting?
You know, it's not the end of the world.
It's annoying, but not super limiting.
Yeah, I would say Apple has completely abused their power
every chance they get in order to capture this 30%
from the app store.
They blocked the ability for you to use Audible
or other marketplaces to buy books and media.
They blocked the ability to use other media players
like VLC, blocked the ability to use browsers.
And if you leave Apple unchecked,
they just keep abusing it.
And so I think this is kind of one of those lawsuits
that's like, if we don't stop them, they'll just keep making it worse. And when people file complaints,
then Apple will back down, which they did on media players. And they'll stand down. If you think
about this from the PC era to now, then you can see how pernicious their behavior is. When you
buy a laptop, the idea that you would have to go through an app store and pay a $30 tax to put a piece of
software on your computer would seem insane. 30% tax on your,
which would seem insane. Like if you buy a laptop, you should be
able to put whatever software you want on it. But they did
this magic trick where they said, oh, no, if you want to put
software on your phone, it has to go through the app store. It
has to be 30%. And that's really the anti competitive
thing here. I think this will be settled. And if you look at the
different issues here, I think this is going to be actually a
huge win for Apple, because if iMessage were to exist on
Android, they would get all of those users to download iMessage
and they would have all those users if they made the watch
compatible, they would open up many more people to buy the
watch. And you would get more watches. I think that Apple's thinking
way too short term about the lock in here and they should, you know, allow more of these apps,
allow more watches and they should allow the gaming thing. I think that they're being petty.
I don't think anything's going to happen here because it's taken them five years to file.
There's a at least a 50% chance that the administration is going to turn
over, which means that this lawsuit changes or goes away entirely. And then even if it does kind
of proceed, it's going to take 10 years of very detailed arguments for something to happen. And
frankly, probably in 10 years from now, we've already moved to a different compute platform,
and this is not going to matter. I mean, there is the coin toss of what the Trump administration would do here.
For sure, that's valid. But I think these things won't get settled. I think the settlement will be
iMessage releases. They allow the thing about the Apple watch. It's not just sacks that they're
allowing it on Android. It's would you allow Android watches to connect with the SDK directly
into the iOS operating system, which they block you
from doing.
I think they should just have a little switch in your Friedberg
settings that allows you to flip it and say,
I take responsibility for allowing third party stores,
and I want to be able to load any software.
It's your computer.
I don't think the government should regulate that.
I don't think the government should be able. I don't think the government should be
able to mandate. Yeah, I mean, I like the fact that everyone
is looking to the government to do things that they want as a
consumer. Make your choice with your dollars. Make your vote
with the product and service you want to buy. Instead of running
to the government and asking the government to come and do stuff
that way.
We mean price fixing and what content if like a group of
people price fix the price cost of a phone or like,
let's say the 30% from the app store, which just happens to be the same between two app stores.
Do you think price fixing is something valid for the government to come in on?
It's not the same.
Do you think price fixing is something the government should come in on is the question?
If there's limited access to products in a market and all the participants get together
to set the price in the market, I do think that's anti-competitive. And that's, there's a good role for the government to play there, but Google
and Apple don't price fix because Android is an open access system.
You can put any application you want, any way you want.
There are several app stores to put Android apps on your Android device.
Google operates an app store called
Google Play, but there are other app stores you can go to as well. And they all have different
prices and Google's app store costs, by the way, are not apples and they're not 30%. And
we talked about this last time I'll pull it up for you again, it's like 15 to 12 going
down to sliding scale. So there is competition in that market.
Generally, I think the point about if there's limited access to a market for products for
consumers, and everyone in that market gets together and sets a
price that is anti competitive, and there's a good role for
government to play there. But I don't think that having the
government come in and say, I want this feature to have this
button and this flip in my app is what I want my government
doing. I want my government protecting me from crime. And,
you know, defending the country.
And I don't want all the other stuff that the government does
to drive costs up, which is generally
what the government does.
So what do you think the role of the government
is here in terms of anti-competitiveness,
especially in the case, I'm curious,
your thoughts on a duopoly.
If you look at Google search monopoly,
pretty easy to understand, hey, they've got 90%.
But here you've got two players who have roughly 50% of the market each or 60, 40, they got 90%. But here you got two players who have, you know,
roughly 50% of the market each or 60, 40,
depending on where you are.
So what is the proper role of government here
and is this an overreach?
No, I mean, I actually think just to give the government
lawsuits some credit, I actually think it's good
to hold Apple's feet to the fire and make sure
they're not engaging in anti-competitive tactics.
One of the things I've said previously on the show is that I think the
government's been making the mistake of going after bigness for its own sake.
And I don't think that bigness in and of itself is bad.
It might be a reflection that the company's done an incredibly good job.
And that's why it has a lot of customers, a lot of market share.
What I've said is I think the government should prevent anti-competitive tactics.
I think that this lawsuit is good in the sense that it's targeted at the right types of things.
It's not just going after Apple because its market cap is so big.
It's going after specific things that it's doing to lock in its network effect.
Now, the problem that I see is just that the examples that we've been given so far from the
lawsuit just don't seem that compelling. Again, I'm kind of waiting to find out where's the smoking
gun here. But to Freeberg's point, I mean, look, I don't think you can just say that if you don't
like what Apple is doing, go to a different platform because the point is that there's only
two choices and they can both engage in
anti-competitive tactics and they can both create lock-in.
But Sachs, there are not just two choices. Android is an open
operating system. Google has a fork of Android that they put on
certain smartphones. There are other smartphone makers that use
other forks of Android. So Android has enabled and the
reason Google bought Android was to provide a counterbalance to exactly
the dynamic of one handset manufacturer having an operating system that could control access to the
internet and to apps. And so Google open-sourced Android, many handset manufacturers use their
own versions of Android to put their own experience on the phone. And then Android users can put apps
from anywhere they want. And other companies offer app stores. So there are many app stores to go to, and there are many
different handset manufacturers. And a lot of people, I think, incorrectly, look at the
operating system landscape in mobile and say, oh, there's Android and there's iOS, but Android
is an open platform. And there are many different forks of it run by many different companies.
So I think that it is actually a very competitive market.
Like we talked about last week, I think close to 80% of global handsets are run on
Android forks.
So, you know, it's not necessarily the case that there are only two choices and
Google does not control Android.
There are many developers that contribute to open source.
There, Google has their own fork that they do a lot of work on, but anyone can
take their own fork and do, I mean, you guys can, you know, when you, when you,
when you boot up a Samsung or Sony TV, that's running Android
and that's running their own version of Android.
Are you arguing that Apple doesn't have market power?
In the U S they do, ex U S they're, you know,
Yeah, I mean, I think, sure.
We're talking about the U S market.
I mean, I think the U S market, are they about 50 50?
We pulled this chart up last week, but I think they're
slightly more in the U S now it might be 55 45 right now. Yeah, something like that. I mean, I think the US market, are they about 50-50? We pulled this chart up last week, but I think they're about 50-50.
It's slightly more in the US now.
It might be 55-45 right now.
Yeah, something like that.
The issue is the cat and mouse that Apple is really good at playing, they will push
their advantage.
And so we see the five things that the Justice Department wants to go after here, but the
App Store is obviously one of them.
And before that, I mentioned some of the other categories where they do this abusive power.
They basically keep it up as much as
they can until they get checked. And I think interoperability is
actually in the long term going to be in their best interest.
They use interoperability when they need it. So Apple Music and
iTunes, they allow you to use Windows and Android. It's only
when they see an advantage. And that's really the hypocrisy of
Apple. And I think it's really important that the industry stand for more interoperability and
the ability for you to load any software that you want on your device.
This is a compute platform.
The ability for them to block you from installing your own apps on it, I think is a really terrible
precedent.
By the way, Jason, what you're saying is a very fair statement from a consumer point
of view and from an industry point of view.
And that's where that voice should
come from to force in the marketplace changes from Apple.
But having the government do this and having the government
involved, I think sets all these bad guys. They're
representing the somebody did it. They asked him cook to do it
and Tim Cook said, Pound salt, buy a phone for your mom.
No, but aren't they representing the people? Like, how do you
expect the people to organize like file a class action?
No, I think if enough companies boycott the Apple platform
and tell consumers to boycott, they'll,
I mean, consumers can make decisions.
That's not realistic.
Developers can make decisions
whether or not they want to develop for Apple.
No, that's not realistic.
You know that.
That's naive.
I don't think I want the government stepping in
to tell private companies what to do
because customers don't like what they're doing.
Wait, wait, wait.
Do you think that the government's just stepped in to prevent Microsoft from taking over the
browser, the whole Netscape case?
Bundling?
I don't know the case well enough.
I mean, I remember it, but I don't want to speak definitively on that.
I think there was a substantial chance that if the government didn't step in, then Microsoft
would have extended their Windows operating system monopoly to the browser.
They did have an absolute monopoly.
They did have an absolute monopoly.
They did have a monopoly on personal compute.
Oh, that's it.
Well, it wasn't an absolute monopoly.
I mean, you could use Macintosh using Macintosh.
I'm saying at the time, Macintosh was like 5% of the market was under 10% at the
time. Yeah, it was about four or 5% at that time.
Microsoft was 95% of the personal computing market.
So they did have an absolute monopoly on that
choice. You had a consumer choice. It wasn't a very good
consumer choice, but you saw the choice. You could go use
Macintosh. And you did you were you could afford it. Yeah. Okay,
but the point is that Microsoft had substantial market power and
what they were in the process of doing was the smart thing from
a business standpoint, which is you take your operating system monopoly, you use that to extend into the browser, you
kill Netscape, you take over with Explorer, you bake Explorer into your Windows operating
system so the two things are basically the same.
Then from there, hold on, from there, you leverage your control of the browser and the
home screen to control search.
Okay?
And so you think about like all the dominoes
that would have fallen if Microsoft had continued,
maybe if like Bill Gates had continued being CEO
and there would have been no Google,
there would have been no Yahoo.
They would have controlled the internet.
They would have controlled the internet.
And they were actively, you left out a big piece of it,
sex, which you'll remember the second I say it.
They were trying to break HTML in open standards
by creating active acts and using all this
funky code. That's right. And so you have to understand these
companies will if you give them an inch, they'll take the mile.
Right. And that's exactly what Apple does consistently. They
consistently try to squeeze. I think it's great. Sax is right.
Tactics is the way to go after these companies. These are five
recent tactics. I think the government's going to
win changing three of these. And that's when that's a win for me.
Yeah, the mobile operators tried to do the same at that same time.
If you guys remember, Verizon, yes, you can have a singular,
they you could only put their apps if you bought it through their store,
on their operating system on the mobile phones that they contracted to have made.
So they all had their own custom version of the handset manufacturers OS, which, and then
they did red share back with the manufacturers. And that's why Android was acquired. It wasn't
actually at the time to compete with Apple. Android was acquired to compete with all the
mobile phone companies that were trying to block access to the internet and apps.
Well Google wanted to maintain its search monopoly. Let's be honest.
That's why they bought it.
They knew users would be there and they wanted to have the default browser.
They didn't want to have the access to the internet blog by the handset.
And they wanted to be the default search and browser in the app,
which is what you have to agree to, by the way.
So if you don't want to talk about perniciousness and heavy handedness,
if you have an Android and you want to use the Android updates from Google, that's not correct. You have to give the bundle of apps. If you have an Android and you wanna use the Android updates from Google.
You have to give the bundle of apps
if you want the updates and support from Google.
You can fork it, but then you don't get their support,
which then breaks your phone.
If you want their version, that's right.
Yes, yeah.
So there's a little cleverness here, I think.
So you have two basic ecosystems in mobile.
It is a duopoly and both of them advantage themselves
in ways that grow over time.
And I think that if Apple were completely left unchecked,
it would figure out ways to boil the frog
and keep extracting more and more value
out of downstream applications.
Totally.
We didn't boil the frog, we're paying 1,600 a phone now.
Yeah.
How are we paying 1,600 a phone?
So look, I think it's good for the government
to hold their feet to the fire.
But here's the thing that the government's lacking is again,
that example they can point to that's really compelling.
I mean, with the Microsoft Netscape thing,
it was really obvious what they were doing, right?
The browser was the gateway to the whole new platform, which was the internet.
And if Microsoft could make that a feature of the operating system,
their dominance would extend into the new computing platform.
But you remember how they did it, Sachs?
Apple Watch is just not the same thing.
The Apple Watch is kind of an appendage of your phone that most people don't even want.
So it's hard to point to something.
Do you remember, Sachs, how they were getting the browser built in?
They were going to the OEMs, the Ds of the world, the HPs, and saying,
if you want this price for Windows,
you have to include the browser on the desktop.
It has to load, it has to ask for your credentials,
all this stuff.
Or you could pay $150 for Windows
if you want it without the browser bundled.
So they used this pricing to get the OEMs to bundle it.
And that was where- Well, isn't that what Google is doing with Android effectively?
Exactly. It's exactly right.
You can have your own version without Google search.
If you're willing to put up with all these headaches and these costs chain and
operating system, update the operating system. Yeah.
It's exactly what they're doing. So anyway,
I think three out of five of these get settled and it'll be good for consumers.
Ultimately, I would not financial advice, but I think
that Apple is going to be able to manage this and buy the
stock. I may buy more of the stock. I think that this will be
good for them long term. All right, listen, going even
deeper into Apple, and this Google relationship, big
questions emerged this week as Bloomberg reported that Apple was speaking to both Google and OpenAI about powering certain AI features on iOS specifically.
According to the article, this deal between Apple and Google seems much more likely than
the OpenAI one and could happen this year. As you know, we've talked about it on this
show before, Google has been the default search engine on iPhone for I think over a decade now. And Google pays Apple 20 billion
a year, that's pure profit for Apple. It's unclear what
features they would power with Google Gemini. Maybe it's like
the search deal and Google Gemini is on there. Maybe it's
built in. And Apple has been building its own LLM. It's
called Ajax. They've been doing some other open source stuff
called Maggie. What
do you think, Chamath? You were talking about this on Twitter,
you get a pretty good tweet and a pretty strong position. If
Apple is going to use Gemini, what does that say to you about
Apple and their view of the future?
I think it's them giving up. This is the most consequential
new development in technology and compute in probably 20 years, 30 years.
And so to be spending tens of billions of dollars of R&D and to not have enough allocated to this
so that you have a legitimate path forward to do it yourself, I think is a little inexcusable actually.
I think is a little inexcusable actually.
It's akin to IBM in the 70s going to Microsoft and basically asking them to build
the operating system for them.
When you're such a dominant company
in such a dominant position,
but you abdicate your responsibility to innovate,
I think that that's a really bad situation
for a company to be in.
It was like Yahoo adding Google search, right?
And then by the way, on the heels of like turning off cars
and losing these antitrust issues in Europe
and then being sued by the DOJ here,
to then be in a licensing discussion with a third party
for such a critical technology, I think is just says
not very good things about the state of the company.
Freeberg, your thoughts on this potential deal? We don't know what features this would power.
I don't know if it's Siri or it's just image editing or search or an extension of search,
maybe giving an answer. I have no idea. It seems to me like there's,
if Apple's doing the right thing, which I'm sure they are, they're probably building their own
alternative platform here, they realize it's going to take them some time in the
interim, they want to have a stopgap. And my guess is by going to Google, they're
probably going to get paid instead of having to pay someone else for the
technology. Because Google will realize some benefit from getting users over to search results and seeing
ads. So Google will probably benefit and pay them instead of them having to go pay someone
for access to some technology that consumers might want access to.
Saks, any thoughts here?
I'm sure Apple is going to make an investment in building their own models here.
Yeah, I mean, who would look at the launch of Google Gemini and say, I want that.
That launch was a total fiasco.
Another woke company. I think it fits the Apple philosophy pretty good.
I know. How woke would Tim Cook have to be to look at the launch of Gemini and say,
oh yeah, I don't see anything wrong there. You got that exactly right.
Yeah, absolutely. I want that.
Yeah.
Siri, show me the president of the United States.
I mean, apparently Tim Cook is the only person on earth who is impressed with the launch of Google Gemini.
I mean, I can't believe the story is true. It's just it can't be true.
I'm so excited today to launch Gemini on stage here at iOS 27.
Oh my God. Can you imagine him on stage doing searches live?
It's just the story can't be true because it'd be so strategically dumb.
Like Jamal said, even if Google Gemini were great,
you'd still want to invest in having your own thing because it's such a
strategic technology. Why would you ever outsource it to your main competitor?
But in this case, you know that Gemini was terrible. It was a fiasco.
And so the story makes no sense. I just can't believe it's true.
It's probably people knocking on each other's doors.
They spent $30 billion last year on R&D. 30 billion.
Apple, to be clear.
They spent $30 billion on R&D. What did they spend it on?
Catering.
I mean, you got to think Apple vision is
a big piece of that, right?
Chips.
I guarantee you like half of that is like the M3, M4 chips.
30 billion, like not a couple crumbs fall out
of somebody's pocket.
And so there's 50 million allocated to just like,
you know, mucking around with llama
or mucking around with Mistral.
What if they took Project Titan, the car deal,
that was 10 billion supposedly they had spent on that.
I mean, if they put that towards AI,
it would be Microsoft.
Again, it goes back to the people.
I don't think the person in charge of the windshield wipers
for Project Titan is gonna be the person
that figures out how to land a really killer LLM.
Yeah. That's a different skill set.
That is not even that expensive.
I mean, you're right. One's a mechanical engineer, one's a computer scientist.
So these are not the same people.
They're not fungible that way.
I mean, I guess the question here is Apple capable of building on a culture basis, Friedberg,
this type of software.
They're a hardware company.
It's not hard.
You're standing on the shoulders of the whole open source movement.
All you have to do, like Jamal said, all you got to do is take the latest Mistral
model or jump on hugging face and start working. I mean,
you're not starting from zero because of open source.
Not only are you not starting from zero, not only do you have
the foundational models that are excellent and available in
open source, you have probably the most prolific set of
training data that has ever been created in the entire world to
make these models kick ass.
Yeah, you have all the Apple photos, archive, I wonder if in their terms, see, that's the thing
is their terms of service is so privacy based. I wonder if they could even use that information.
And I just think, look, at the end of the day, the Apple brand is still exceptional.
And so if you're given a $10 million a year job at Google versus a $10 million a year job at Meta
versus a $10 million a year job at Apple, versus a $10 million a year job at Apple.
If you're like one of these killer AI people that get these kinds of offers,
I got to presume that Apple gets their fair share of these people.
Yeah, you would think.
And even in the worst case, you see Microsoft doing like pretty heavy-handed deals
with companies like OpenAI and just this week with inflection.
So it's not as if these deals can't be done, right?
And so it just kind of like leaves,
I don't know, it's just, it's quizzical
to spend that much money,
to not necessarily be willing to compete on the human capital,
to not necessarily be in the market,
acquiring these businesses. I
don't know, it's just it's just a question mark. Like what's
going on?
Jamoth asked what's going on over there. We have some inside
footage. Nick, you want to play tape?
What's going on here?
What are we watching?
I hope we didn't keep you waiting.
Mother Nature.
Mother Nature, welcome to Apple.
How was the weather getting in?
Oh, she's controlling the weather. This is so cringe. Yeah, they did this couple of... But this reflects their self-image. I mean, they released this.
They care about the plan.
No, it reflects that they think somehow this is an accurate reflection of the way they
do meetings.
No, I think it was the...
No, I think it was the...
The point they were making is they were trying to do a skit about like how they're doing
less packaging and including...
That skit was to tell you, you know, you're not doing the right thing.
You're not doing the right thing.
You're not doing the right thing.
You're not doing the right thing.
You're not doing the right thing.
You're not doing the right thing.
You're not doing the right thing.
You're not doing the right thing.
You're not doing the right thing.
You're not doing the right thing.
You're not doing the right thing.
You're not doing the right thing.
You're not doing the right thing. You're not doing the right thing. You're not doing the right thing. You're not doing the right thing. You're not doing the right thing. No, I think it was the, um, they were making is they were trying to do a skit about like
how they're doing less packaging and including that.
That skit was to tell you that you're not getting a charger in your next iPhone because
they, they don't, they want to say it was cringe.
I thought the intent was, yeah, maybe it's a little cringe, but yeah, I think it was
a little cringe, but I do appreciate that they are doing sustainable products and not
putting as much stuff in landfills. So I think
they should get a lot of credit for that. What I do think about
this deal, that's really interesting is, it's sort of
cementing the Google and the Apple Alliance against
Microsoft and Microsoft has big, you know, AI ambition. So this
is kind of interesting. If you lock in the duopoly of Google
and Apple, and then you lock in Google search monopoly,
and you start fighting Microsoft, I think that's what
we're, I think that's what's probably going on here is they're
trying to figure out how do we keep Microsoft away from running
away with this. All right, we covered that huge NAR lawsuit
back in December. And there has been a settlement big news for
the National Association of realtors, they've agreed to pay $418 million in
a settlement last week. And federal jury found that the NAR
and several large real estate brokerages conspired to
artificially inflate agent commissions. The settlement is
pretty, pretty big deal. People are freaking out about it. As
you know, the seller of a home pays the buyer's agent's
commission. So you have a buyer and a seller, 6% fee, typically, sometimes it's five, but
they split that 3% to the buyer and the seller. But the seller is paying that 3% to the buyer.
Now that can't be listed in the MLS anymore. And that deal cannot be done ahead of time.
Buyers are responsible
for paying their agents commissions going forward. So if you bought a million dollar
house, and you were the buyer, you would pay 30,000 to your buyer's agent or you would
choose to not have an agent or you would choose to negotiate it. And you have to have a signed
contract. This is a crazy, just shocking
shock to the system, according to most people who are in it,
I've seen a lot of real estate folks who are saying this is
going to be healthy, because you have this you have to have this
conversation between the buyer's agent and the buyer. But
commissions in the United States are $100 billion a year. And one
analyst projected the lawsuit lead to a 30% reduction in commission
payments. And that would eliminate about half of the 1.6
million active NRA members from the industry. You had a lot of
feelings on this Friedberg when we talked about a couple of
months ago. What are your thoughts on the settlement? Is
anything going to change? Is this as groundbreaking and
shocking as people seem to think it is?
Is this as groundbreaking and shocking as people seem to think it is?
Well, I would take this settlement along with a lot of the developments and advances in AI
as being the moment of catalyzing real change in the residential real estate agency industry.
It's an industry that's been known to have fixed pricing
and be very expensive to consumers, a real tax on the system.
And it's largely been wrapped around this idea
of mitigating your liability, reducing risk,
servicing the customer.
Many of those aspects over the last couple of years have been largely standardized through forms.
Digitized because so much of this information is no longer going to get paperwork from the courthouse,
but a lot of the information sits digitally and can be accessed in a democratized way.
And the fact that so much of the service and discovery, reading through documents,
understanding what they mean and what they say can be automated through AI and LLMs.
Much of this is kind of coalescing around what I hope and expect
will be a more seamless, automated, direct marketplace for consumers.
The challenge is that most consumers put most of their personal net worth into their home.
And so it is where most people's net worth is tied up.
And so because it is such a sensitive investment and it is their entire savings, they want
to have a trusted advisor by them.
So it's going to take some time before that trusted advisor becomes some piece of software.
But I do think that software is going to play more and more of a role in providing advisory
tools and services to consumers in this transaction marketplace.
And that's only gonna catalyze
and accelerate the fee reduction.
I do project and I do expect that much of what is charged
on a commission basis on a percent of home value today
will change to being a fixed fee.
And a flat fee basis.
So 5K, 10K for your buyer's agent.
Different services.
So you can have someone do.
A la carte.
Do the disclosure diligence for me for 5k.
You know, negotiate the purchase for me for 10k and you as a consumer will start
to pick from a menu of the services that you want to have rendered for you and
things that you're comfortable doing yourself.
I don't need someone to negotiate price.
I don't need someone to find me a home.
I've got redfin.
I can go do that.
I can arrange open houses on my own.
The lockbox is there.
I'll go walk around the property. I don't need someone to point out that the color is nice in a home. I've got Redfin. I can go do that. I can arrange open houses on my own. The lockbox is there. I'll go walk around the property. I don't need someone to point out
that the color is nice in a room.
And so I think that there's elements of what will happen here, which is a fragmentation
and then an automation of these services. And as a result, significant fee reduction.
And I'm in the middle of doing this myself right now with a piece of real estate where
I'm not using an agent.
And I've been using a direct listing service.
I've used all of these standard forms.
There's a lot of AI tools you can use to kind of read all the disclosures for you, make
sure everything's copacetic.
And these escrow agents, they'll handle a lot of what a lawyer will handle and they'll
get paid a fee, which is much less than the agent's fee.
So I do think that there's a big disruption happening in this industry. I think it's really important for consumers.
Agents are going to be hands in the air telling you, this is ridiculous. You need someone to help
you. You need an advisor. That will continue for a good chunk of the market for a very long period
of time. But I do think that it's for the benefit of consumers over time to see these fees come out
of the system and see those savings go back into consumers
pockets and for the value of their real estate to go to go in their pockets, not into an agent's
pocket. Is it going to change the profitability of a realtor pretty meaningfully, right? Both
realtors won't be able to be in business, right? I think the sellers will do fine. And they might capture more of it because they'll, they'll, my
understanding is the set the, the seller will maybe do both
sides of the transaction.
No, that's not what's gonna happen. And there's also going
to be limits on that. But but here's what I will say. If you
look at the number of people, there are 1.4 million members of
NAR today, the national association of realtors.
If you look at the distribution of earnings, you guys know this, my guess is probably 10% of those
realtors make 40% of the fee income or 50% of the fee income. So there's a long tail. So there's
probably a third of those folks who are already kind of sub living standards in terms of income, maybe half of them won't
be able to make enough money in this new fee regime that it'll no longer be an attractive
proposition to be a real estate agent for maybe half a million to a million people over
time that are agents today.
Yeah.
You know, it's interesting.
The sellers are going to be faced with buyers
who just show up having seen something on Redfin and don't have a buyer's representation.
And so they think from the stuff I've been reading that the seller's agent might be pointing
them to, Hey, go to these services and be acting as like one broker, essentially representing
both sides.
That's what people are saying is the potential downside.
I don't think that's going to, yeah, that's not going to happen for a couple of reasons.
But let me ask you guys a question.
If you guys wanted to go buy a new house, currently you just go, you know,
sign up an agent or a buyer's agent and they go walk with you and eventually
they'll get paid by the seller's agent.
So now you have to negotiate a fee with them upfront.
Would you negotiate a fee and say to a buyer's agent,
hey, I'll pay you 2% of whatever home I buy?
Would you be comfortable doing that or 3% or 4%?
How would you have that conversation?
What would you say, Sachs?
I mean, forget, I know you've got a different situation
because you've got real estate people working for you,
but if you were to go out and get,
would you go out and get an agent
and negotiate a fee with them?
It is not worth it to the buyer to pay 2 to 3% of the purchase price to make
appointments. You can see all the houses on MLS through Zillow or Redfin or
whatever.
And what about handling closing and disclosures?
No buyer would ever voluntarily agree to pay this massive commission.
It's not worth it. So it's game over for the realtors
if buyers are forced to pay their own broker's commission.
The only reason this system works
is because the seller is forced to pay for it.
Yep.
And when you sign the listing agreement
with the seller's agent,
you can negotiate a little bit at the margins.
Sometimes you can get the 6% down to 4 to 5% for a big listing,
but 50% of it will always go to the buy side.
I mean, I've said to these guys, the buy side agent doesn't do anything.
Why don't you make it 2% for yourself, 1% for the buyer?
They won't do that.
They just won't take your business.
The seller will not represent you.
They have like all sorts of rules against it.
So the whole thing is like protect.
It's like a racket that's protected.
And now it's been cracked.
Well, I still am like a little bit skeptical
that this is going to work out exactly the way we're saying,
because it is just such a death blow to the industry
if buyers are forced to pay their own commissions,
their own buy-side brokers commission.
And in the articles, they're saying there's still like some gray area about what's going to happen, but that is what should happen.
Buyers should be responsible for paying their own brokers.
And if you do that, I think you'll knock out half the fees of this industry.
Here's an idea.
Why don't you charge an hourly fee as a buyer's agent?
There will be people doing that, J. Cal.
$200 an hour, $300 an hour.
Doesn't this impact home prices as well?
Like if you if the
buyer had to pay all of a sudden their affordability effectively
goes down because if they have to pay an extra $100,000 for a
home, then that's $100,000 they can't pay less than they can
pay for the house itself because they have to pay an agent. So
but it all comes back into home prices. No, it nets out because
the seller's agents no longer paying 6%, they're paying 3%.
And so now the seller's agent has 3% more that
they'll take it out.
Your net's the same.
Yeah, but net, net.
I think it's good for buyers and sellers
because the transaction costs of trading go down.
Exactly, the money goes back in consumers' pockets.
Yeah, create a more fluid market.
And I think it's a great opportunity for startups,
I'll say this right now, like I think there's going to be a lot of startups that are going to
come out of this ruling that are going to launch a la carte services leveraging AI to
make these services available direct to consumers without needing an agent. And they're going
to be pretty compelling services and they're going to show up real fast. I mean, a lot
of people will not list their home or sell it because that 6% might put them underwater.
So if it's now down to two or three.
Totally.
Yeah, people might be like,
It's always been crazy to me that anyone would pay
a percent of absolute value.
It makes no sense.
I bought a home for a million.
I'm selling it for a million one.
So I've made a hundred thousand dollar profit,
but I got to pay $60,000 of my total gross to an agent to sell it for me.
Yeah, 60% of the profit goes to them.
I just gave them 60% of my profit on my home.
Right.
It makes no sense.
And the crazy thing is that a bad sale of your home would be, let's call it 900,000
or a million, and a great sale would be 1.2.
So exactly.
There's a very small margin
where they actually have an impact
based on the quality of their effort,
but they get compensated for the whole thing.
Yeah, for the whole thing no matter what.
Yeah, they should get compensated.
No matter the outcome.
It should be that you get a flat rate, $10,000 at a million,
and then you get 10% over a million or something
you could give just like you might with a salesperson.
The incentive comp should be variable based on performance, whereas the guaranteed part
of the comp should be, like you said, a flat fee.
It's kind of like the salesperson has an OTE.
Exactly.
It's a base variable.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, you could say if you said 1% up to a million, so that's 10K, and then 10% for
the next 100K, and then 10% for the next 100k and then 20% for the next 100k
So you it's you know, that 1.2 million is really hard to get
Yeah, I'll give you 20% of that incremental hundred that would be a much better deal
You'll be getting paid for the actual performance. So really interesting, you know, Jake
I have an idea for the National Association of realtors. Oh, here we go
If they want to stop being perceived as an evil monopolist, all they got to do is put out a cringe ad
talking about the environment, everyone's gonna love them
again. Absolutely. They should do an ad where they have a
diverse cast of people. And that diverse cast could talk about
like putting sustainable forestry around it. All I got to
do is say something something landfills everyone will love
them again. They can charge. Absolutely. Absolutely.
Virtue signaling, right? They can change something landfills everyone will love them again. They can charge. Absolutely. Absolutely. Virtue signaling, right? They can change something landfills.
Yes, absolutely. All right, let's keep the train moving here.
The AI landscape shifting yet again. Microsoft is just did
another one of these shadow aqua hires this time of inflection
AI bizarre deal. Microsoft has hired most of the team at
inflection AI, including the CEO Mustafa, who everybody
knows, I just actually had him on this week in startups.
He was the co-founder of DeepMind.
He worked at Google for years and now he's going to be the CEO of a new company called
Microsoft AI.
It's essentially the consumer AI division of Microsoft, but they did give him the CEO
title for background.
Inflection have raised 1.5 billion over the last
two years, it was one of these giant fundings that occurred to
build a foundational model. Like open AI is doing like in
propic is doing data chat bot called PI very similar chat GPT
was supposed to remember your history and build a relationship
with you. That's all getting shut down. Reid Hoffman, who is a major investor
in this company, and who's on the board of Microsoft and who's
so linked into Microsoft, played an important role in this deal,
according to reports, and the inflection investors included
Bill Gates, Eric Schmidt, and a bunch of other interesting
folks. But this was an acquirer, which is the weird thing,
Chamath. They hired all the employees, they leave the
shell of a company, the company is going to go do some
enterprise stuff. And investors get to keep their equity
inflection. But I guess that might be worthless. There's
something going on here that we don't know about this deal
structure. When you saw this deal, and you see Satya taking
the entire team like he threatened to do with opening eye, if you remember the same exact kind of thing, I'll acquire everybody if you don't take the deal.
What is your take of what's going on here? Why did this occur like this, instead of just buying the company?
I mean, it occurred like this because Reed and Bill are inexorably tied to Microsoft. So they were able to get a deal for investors that would have
never happened otherwise. And so good on them. I think they did a very good job protecting the
fiduciary interests of the investors of this startup. No conflict, no interest.
Yeah. I mean, we say that a lot. This is so weird though. Why not buy the company,
Sachs? Is it because of antitrust? Actually, that's a good theory. It's just as hard for Microsoft
to get anything through at this point. So probably they're just
like, why even deal with the antitrust? They don't really
need the assets. So I think they license the core tech from the
inflection C Corp, and then they hire away all the talent. And
then the investors get made whole. So I think it's like an
aqua hire with a little bit of tech along with it that they get through the
licensing deal maybe that's just to protect them from an IP standpoint. My
take on this is that this was a bailout. This was a bailout of the investors. I
don't think investors got ripped off here. I think the investors were like
thrilled to get their money back for whatever reason this company wasn't
going anywhere and it raised hundreds of millions of dollars.
Reed and Bill obviously are wired in there on the Microsoft board and this company did
have some talent that Microsoft wanted.
So they basically did a giant aqua hire and it bailed out the investors.
Freeberg is that your take?
This is a bailout or do you think this is a new interesting and run around antitrust where hey if
Adobe wants to buy the next figma just buy the team
Do a license of figma some focacca lunacy or do you think this is a bala? What was your theory here?
Freiburg and what does it say about Microsoft's approach to the AI space? I don't think this is some
Runaround antitrust. I think
obviously, like a lot of companies, there's been a
realization on how quickly foundational model development
is commoditizing and how quickly costs are escalating, and how
many folks are chasing it. So having some unique advantage in
the particular plane of the market, where they were participating as a startup, maybe
became difficult and untenable and negotiations and
conversations between all these parties who all know each other
very, very well and are all very friendly. You know, this ended
up being kind of the best way to move forward.
All right, they have the folks in other related news, the
Saudis are planning a $40 billion AI fund according to
the New York Times reps from the public investment fund in Saudi
have spoken to a number of firms about partnering on it. This
would be the second largest venture fund of all time behind
soft banks $100 billion vision fund one which you remember was
also backed by the Saudis and some other folks in Middle East
region, this new fund would reportedly invest in AI startups,
chip companies and data centers. So we thought we'd do a little
quiz here. If you were given the 40 billion, David Sachs, how
would you allocate the 40 billion in AI in today's market
2024 going on if they put you in charge of this $40 billion
of fund, I fund, where would you deploy it? Same question will come around the horn to
you freeburg and then you tomorrow.
Well the first thing is I wouldn't be in a rush to deploy all 40 billion at once because
that's the recipe for spraying a lot of money into unproductive or overhyped things. So
I would take my time, first of all.
But second, in terms of kind of the framework, I would think about the different levels of the stack
of AI and try to figure out where the value capture
is gonna be.
And I think there's maybe four different layers of the stack.
First, you've got the silicon, you've got the chips
where Nvidia is dominant.
Then you've got the foundation models where it's open AI
and then there's some open source models.
And then you've got kind of infrastructure, dev tools, vector databases, things like that.
And then finally you have the applications sitting on top of that, which are just getting
started.
I think it's really hard to know from what we're seeing today exactly who's going to
capture the most value in the stack.
You could make an argument for or against pretty much any layer of the stack.
I guess if I had 40 billion to deploy,
what I would do is try to identify who are the leading companies at each level of the stack,
and then who are the most promising challengers, and I would make a bet at every layer so I'm
covered. That's not what I personally do because I'm just not a hardware investor. I'm not really
an infrastructure investor. I'm more of an application investor. So I'm going, you know, I'm just not a hardware investor. I'm not really an infrastructure investor. I'm more of an application investor.
So I'm going to focus on that fourth layer of the stack
and distrust that there's going to be enough value there.
But again, if I was managing a $40 billion sovereign wealth
fund, then I would play at every single level.
And I would hire the best people who know each layer
of that stack.
Sacks, I think you did a good job of sort of showing
the four layers of the stack.
I think open source, the application layer, and specifically robotics are huge opportunities
that are under invested in right now.
So I would take the top open source projects, I'd find those top contributors, take the
top 20 or so open source projects and back them to the tune of, you know, significant
money, 50 million, 100 million, whatever it takes, and try to own the top 20
or have insights into those top 20 open source models
and own those teams.
Look for the top contributors, really easy to do
on GitHub and Hugging Face and Repl.it
and other places where they're active and empower those.
Then obviously there's verticals.
We're working on people who are doing screenplays
and tax just like you are, Sacks. And that's a fantastic place to
deploy money. But then I think robotics is going to be super,
super compelling here. And that takes a lot of money. And so you
do have the capital as a weapon. And you know, the 20 year view
of this and making a general person, purpose robot like Elon
is doing with optimists, or figure AI is doing with their robot.
I think robotics is a major place. You can probably buy it. I don't know who owns Boston Dynamics.
Now I know Google sold it. So you can probably buy some robotic companies and then put the AI on them
and really take a 20 year view of robotics. Freberg, your thoughts? How would you deploy
the 40 million? The bottom three stacks are very difficult right now
to find a footing, obviously.
I think SACS, it's I think the generally accepted framework
for how to think about how the market is broken apart.
But on the application side, I think
is where you could think about finding more traditional
business model advantages.
So I think your point about robotics is a really interesting one.
Is there a enterprise-like sale of robotics tools that have positive ROI for enterprises?
And is there a business that's working there and that is scalable?
Vertical solutions in
labor and automation and productivity gains are probably the best sharp ratio, good alpha
lower beta and a good place to kind of deploy competing in chips competing in infrastructure
competing in models.
It's such a, you know, as we just talked about with respect to what happened with inflection
and Microsoft this week, it's such a rapidly changing environment.
It's hard to have high confidence in where things are headed there.
So I do think that we do know that there are enterprise markets.
We know that there are segments of things like food, medicine, you know, manufacturing.
These are markets that aren't going anywhere.
And they could all certainly benefit from unlocks in software or in robotics and
automation and hardware. So that's probably where I would
think about concentrating capital. But you know, 40
billions, a lot of money. So you probably think about
deploying it over what period of time is a 10 billion a year
over four years. And then is it broken apart? And what way over
those sectors and over what geographies and, you know, then find good managers to help you get it employed.
Trimoth, you're batting clean up here, you got to hear everybody's answers. Before giving your own, what are your thoughts on your other besties answers and what's your plan to deploy 40 billion for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is public investment.
The kingdom of Saudi Arabia is public investment fund. The most important thing that fund managers get wrong is not having appropriate reserves for your winners.
And if I look back, the real profit dollars that I leaked was not investing enough up front,
but when I didn't have enough reserve to do the full pro rata or even super pro rata and the ones that worked.
So the first thing you have to do, and when I do the regression on all of my funds, you really need to reserve between 40 and 50%
of a total fund size for reserves. So take 20 billion off the table. And now you have a smaller
problem, which is how do you deploy 20 billion? Because the other 20 billion is purely meant for
the winners, where you cram the money into the few that are winning so that you can make the most money. Of that 20 billion, I would probably take two thirds of it,
and I would go to all the hyperscalers
and anybody that's providing cloud compute
and essentially buy out all of the compute credits on GPUs
so that I could tell any startup in the world,
you will do a safe with me, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
I will give you free compute on pick your cloud provider,
pick your model, I don't care.
So if you wanna run Llama on Grok, great.
If you wanna run Mistral on GCP, great.
If you wanna run OpenAI on OpenAI, fantastic.
But we will pay for all the compute in return,
we get 7% upfront. And you have to tell us some benchmark of how this model is improving.
And then you are hiring a team of people whose job it is, and you can probably train a model to do
this as well, to ingest the reporting in a systematic way to understand if it is as you guys said a robotics company there are measures of the quality of a robot a robot's dexterity or vision or manipulation or tax completion rate.
If it's a search engine, it's a different thing if it's a consumer facing app, it could be users if it's a drug discovery app, it's the number of legitimate protein synthesis.
If it's a drug discovery app, it's the number of legitimate protein synthesis passes that pass, whatever it is.
So now you've scoped the problem to 20 billion is in reserves, 15 billion of it is tied up
in credits.
And then the 5 billion, I do think it's what David said, what SAC said, which is a billion
and a half to the hardware, a billion and a half to infrastructure, a billion and a
half to some of these discrete ideas, you probably need a 30 or 40 person team
total no more. But that business can could make a
trillion dollars if it was set up that way. But the key is to
get the credits out to people. So that the reality is what the
commonality across every single AI startup is that they will
have to run on a model and
That model will be hosted somewhere in a cloud and all of that compute will need to be paid for
so Saudi Arabia should pay for that compute get six or seven percent upfront and
Retitle the safe not as the what is a safe call Jason?
simple agreement for future equity. This should be the Saudi Saudi agreement for future equity.
I love it. That's what they should do.
Well, there you have it, MBS. The all in KSA $40 billion fund.
Give us a call. We'll fire it up and we'll deploy the 40 billion for you.
My kid. Maybe.
Actually, I'm curious, you guys, since everyone kind of seems to agree with the framework
of the four levels of the stack, where do you guys think the value capital is going
to be?
Do you think it's going to be by the chip companies, the foundation model companies,
the infrastructure companies or the applications?
I'll actually change my answer in a little bit.
I don't think it's necessarily new technology companies per se that are going to benefit most, but I think that it's businesses in traditional industries that are going to be able
to leverage these tools, whether they're using open source tools or third party technology
capabilities that they're buying as a service or as a piece of software.
There's an incredible set of advances that are going to be realized in things like chemical
manufacturing, drugs, general manufacturing that have existing scale and infrastructure that are the
fastest to move to adopt these technologies are going to benefit the most.
And I think that's probably where most of the value will accrue is not
necessarily a chip company, but in other businesses and traditional industries
that can transform themselves using AI.
So your answer is at the application level.
Application level, yeah.
And then within application level,
you could divide it up between existing companies
and startups.
Yeah.
And existing companies that are able to leverage
AI innovations that are lower in the stack.
Another way to answer your question, Sacks, is
which is the most, which spaces are the most crowded already?
And so obviously chips are super crowded,
lots of incumbents, lots of people going after it it and the foundation models are very crowded as well and the application level is yet to.
Sort of be built out right cuz we're in year zero year one of that so i do think application levels where there's a lot of value but i also think.
The hosting and the development of these various niche models is going to be a huge
opportunity.
So just once again, those open source models being put into cloud computing environments
and optimized, that could be a whole new level of AWS is in Google cloud and Azure's.
So there's an opportunity for somebody to compete with those incumbents by just being
better at those models that are open source and having the team
that's doing those updates, and then optimizing that cloud. So I
would go with the cloud level for those open source models and
providing that as a service like VMware does, or other folks do.
WordPress would be a tiny example of an open source
project like that. And then I just something tells me this
robotic space, which has been a false start over and over and over
again. I think this is the time where actually it's going to
work. And so I love that hardware robotic space.
I think you're right, sex. I think it's kind of bookended in
my mind. I think the the folks that are building fundamental
hardware will make a lot of money over the next five to 10
years. And then the folks that are building the fundamental application level experiences will make a lot of money over the next five to 10 years. And then the folks that are building the fundamental application level experiences will make a
lot of money as well.
And then who knows?
The thing that we're not talking about enough, and I don't understand it well enough is the
entire way in which apps are built needs to fundamentally be rethought from first principles
because you essentially basically have these clients,
server apps, where you have all of this business logic
that's sitting back in some server somewhere.
And I don't think that that's how apps get built today
in a world of AI.
And so it doesn't need to work that way.
So I don't exactly know what that means,
but it just seems like most of the architecture
of how the internet works today doesn't make much sense.
So that would then support Freebrook's point
that all of the legacy things that we all know and trust
also get rebuilt.
And so that could create an entire wave where
networking value gets recreated and everything.
So my gosh, I mean, it could be very, very transformational.
Yeah, I mean, the idea that you would just
talk to a computer or in a chat interface and you wouldn't use an app interface. Gosh, I mean, it could be very, very transformational. Yeah, I mean, the idea that you would just talk
to a computer or in a chat interface
and you wouldn't use an app interface.
You would just ask it questions, it would give you answers.
Ask it questions, it gives you answers.
Give it a task, it gives you a result.
This is why- It's pretty compelling.
This is why like Saudi needs to basically make a bet
that there's just developers that are swarming around ideas.
Let them show you what's happening
because paying 800 million a year of fees is not the best way to generate a
return on $40 billion.
If this is where you want to be investing, I don't think 800 million could
pay for a lot of credits, which probably gets you one step closer to the, to the
answer.
Or Reddit when public today, they have 800 million in revenue.
Company is worth over $8 billion. In
trading, it's a 50%. What do you think? Chamath, this is the
opening of the IPO window again. So so one off gets tribe
coming. And what do you take from it popping 50% on the first
day?
I don't know. I really haven't looked at the company. I haven't
looked at the the financials haven't looked at the, the financials.
But like this last three or four weeks, I think people have been so excited and rearing to go.
We're in the middle of another meme coin craze.
Oh God, don't bring it up.
We are all getting pulled into that nonsense.
I think the point is that I think there is a speculative party going on right now. And I'm not saying that
Reddit is part of it, but whenever these things are so mispriced, it just means that people are
ready to gamble a little bit. There's definitely a lot of gambling in the system as we've seen,
and we're recording this on Thursday. So who knows what the stock price will be tomorrow.
Generally, I mean, by the way, sorry, the other thing is like,
Powell did say finally, it looks pretty likely
we're gonna get these three cuts.
So we're gonna be down to 4.5 to 4.75 on Fed funds
by the end of the year.
It probably means that we'll get another 50 to 75 basis
points through 2025.
So people will look out to the end of 2025 and look at a Fed
funds rate that's sort of like 375 to 4%. So they're getting pretty excited and frothed up.
So this is the beginning of the beginning in terms of that kind of speculation.
Yeah, we saw crypto go bonkers the last couple of weeks. Yeah. What's your take on all this? Saks, does it feel like people are in gamble mode again?
And does that concern you, I guess, after what we just experienced?
Well, I think they're pricing in these rate cuts as if they're definitely going to happen.
Like Jemaw said, I think the market's expectation is with, let's call it 70% certainty that you're
going to get three rate cuts this year.
And it still seems to me that that's a little bit up in the air because inflation has not come down
to the Fed's target of 2%. It's still right around 3%, 3.1%. So it's been sticky around 3%. It was
coming down pretty fast last year, but it's still there. So people I think are maybe gambling in the sense that they're counting on
rate cuts that haven't happened yet, but they liked Powell's dovish rhetoric
yesterday and they seem to think that that means that the rate cuts are
definitely coming.
I don't know how Powell can promise that without inflation coming down, unless
he's trying to create a Biden put.
There it is, folks. Which was my theory going into this year is that, yeah, is that we would get a Biden put from the Fed.
Absolutely. And it's looking like Biden has a clear path to victory based on the lowest
unemployment of our lifetimes and this roaring stock market records.
Yeah, it's just an easy Biden victory.
Freiburg, what do you think about the risk on?
I don't know.
Biden is incredibly unpopular.
If you look at his actual polling,
he should not win the election.
But that's in spite of, you're right,
the economy seems to be doing pretty well
and the stock market's certainly doing pretty well.
A president with these fundamentals would normally get re-elected, but Biden currently
is not, his polling is not the polling of a president who's going to get re-elected.
It is pretty amazing.
If Powell comes through with the rate cuts, that will help him.
It's pretty amazing how horrible a job he's doing that he's made Trump look like a better
candidate to some people.
That is an extraordinary
achievement by Biden and we'll have to agree there.
Look, I think the the bigger economic issue to be talking
about was that buried article in the Wall Street Journal about
commercial real estate. Do you see that article?
That was crazy.
So this Wall Street Journal article reported that of the 36
billion of office loans that came due
in the commercial mortgage backed securities market
last year, only one quarter were paid off in full.
That's according to data from Real Estate Analytics
from Cred 10.
Is that extend and pretend strategy that you see there?
Oh yeah.
I mean, only one quarter of the loans got paid off.
So 75% didn't get paid off in full.
So there's tons of buildings that are underwater right now,
but nobody wants to foreclose and then sell them at a fire sale price.
So yeah, everyone is, it's pretend and extend.
Yeah. Kicking the can down the road. Nobody wants to take the medicine.
So yeah, well, they're hoping,
they're hoping that rates will come down fast enough and occupancy rates will go up fast enough
that no one has to foreclose.
But if rates don't come down, then you have a real problem.
I mean, again, everyone is just assuming
that inflation will continue its path from 3% to 2%
and then we'll get these rate cuts.
And they're hoping they can cling on.
Landlords are clinging on.
And I think the banks that loan them all this money are clinging on for dear life.
But if rates stay higher longer,
then you're going to see some real distress.
Yeah, including the regional banking system.
Freeburg, you had a science corner here.
A couple of different things came up.
The Hubble telescope, 3D printed.
Oregon's what where do you want to go with this? things came up the Hubble telescope, 3D printed organs,
what, where do you want to go with this?
I mean, do you guys want to talk about how the universe is
expanding at an accelerating rate and expanding
differentially everywhere we look and we don't understand how
or why?
A hundred percent and Saks needs to use the loo.
So yeah, definitely.
He's all, he dropped, he dropped.
I love science quarter. Let's do it.
Freeberg, it's your time to shine.
Well, well, well.
Tell us what's going on with the universe.
My favorite topic, astrophysics.
My favorite topic.
My favorite topic.
The tax is back.
Are we headed for Uranus?
We're actually dead set on it.
We're dead. It's a collision course with the Anus.
He disappeared again.
He's just going to drop in and do Uranus jokes.
I hear him giggling with his camera off.
He's with his writers.
He just went to the writers room to get an update on the Uranus jokes.
It's long been known that our universe is expanding.
We've all heard about the Big Bang theory.
And. Couple decades ago, scientists began to observe We've all heard about the big bang theory and.
Couple decades ago, scientists began to observe the brightness of super novi or exploding stars, and then by looking at their brightness, we
could tell how far away they were.
And then looking at the shift of the light, whether it's getting red or
blue, you can tell whether the light, the supernova is moving away from us or towards us and how quickly.
And so what scientists have used those observations to deduce several decades ago and for which
a group won the Nobel Prize is that our universe is expanding, meaning that everything is
moving away from itself. It's almost as if we're all in a
cake. The best analogy I've heard is that there's raisins
in the cake. And as the cake expands in the oven, all of
those raisins look around and they're all moving apart from
each other. So the distance between everything is getting
wider, space is expanding.
From the central moment of the Big Bang.
That's the theory is right.
This all started in the Big Bang.
And it's not like, you know,
we're all in the middle of the universe
and the universe is moving away from us.
It's that the entirety of space is expanding itself.
And so everything is moving away from everything else.
The challenge in the data was that recently
we saw that different types of stars
that were observed with the Hubble space telescope had actually a different
rate of expansion of the universe than what was previously thought from the
supernova that we saw and everyone thought there was something wrong with
the Hubble space telescope data.
So, you know, in a final print published last month, the James Webb Space Telescope, which
showed much higher resolution of imaging and as a result, much better data.
Here's an image of it.
You can just see the difference between what came out of James Webb and what was used in
Hubble.
So that shows one star that was used to calculate the rate of expansion of the universe.
And what the star showed is that the rate of expansion of the universe
as measured across a thousand of these stars called Cepheid stars in five different galaxies
had a value that didn't match the value that we see when we look at exploding stars very far away.
And so it once again confirms what the original Hubble data showed, which is that the universe is expanding at different rates in different parts of the universe, which totally doesn't make sense.
And there's no really clear answer as to the physics of why.
If there was a Big Bang and the universe started to expand, it should be expanding the same everywhere.
There's no reason that different parts of the universe should be expanding at a different rate than other parts of the universe.
So there's differential expansion happening across the universe.
And it really tells us that there's very little we know or understand about this large scale structure of the universe and why these things are happening.
There was one group that put out a theory where they said that the local universe, where we see these Cepheid stars that this data is based on. There's almost like a little bubble.
And on the outside of the bubble, there's galaxies and they're pulling
stuff out faster than what's happening where there's not as much density.
So there's a lot of different reasons and explanations for why this might be
happening, but it's kind of a big story because it basically confirms that we
see a lot of differential expansion happening across the universe and we
don't know why just another big mystery of the universe. And we don't know why.
Just another big mystery of the universe. So super kind of interesting confirmatory data from James Webb this week.
Joao, do you want to talk about the, the, the pig kidney?
I mean, I think it's, it's really incredible.
They took a kidney from a pig and then they use CRISPR Cas9 to edit out the certain subset of the pig genes and edit in a
certain useful subset of human genes and then they transplanted that kidney into a 64-year-old man.
I say, and he apparently seems to be doing well. It's really incredible. And this is a guy that
was at end-stage kidney disease and my father went through this. But when you're at that end-stage kidney disease. And my father went through this, but when you're at that end-stage renal disease,
you're getting dialyzed every three days
for up to four, five, six hours,
trying to basically have a machine
that does the job the kidneys for you
to keep your blood clean.
But it's just, it's kind of a death sentence
and it's like a slow moving death sentence at that.
So the idea that you could now use this effectively infinite source of organs
seems really compelling. Pretty amazing. I don't know.
What do you think?
Definitely where we're headed. I don't even think they're going to need to see.
I don't even think they're going to need to see. Yeah.
Speaking of medical breakthroughs, did you guys see the, the guy who got the
neural link chip and his brain?
He's using the force.
Yeah.
That was awesome.
The force.
Yeah.
He described it as he was playing chess and he said, like, I love playing
chess and I've learned to use my mind to move pieces around.
And he said, like, it's like having the force.
I mean, wow.
Amazing.
I watched the live stream and he said that he was a quadriplegic from the shoulders down, but he loves chess.
He wasn't able to play chess.
Now he's able to play chess.
He was able to play civilization, the game, which I guess was really hard.
In the absence of having this, this chip, and now he can do that.
It's, it's incredible. I mean, it's really cool that they kind of went public with it. Or, I mean, obviously he agreed to go public with it.
I think Trevor is his name.
It's pretty amazing.
And there's more amazing stuff coming.
They're making significant progress over there.
I was talking to somebody who works there and you know, it's,
it's, it's going to be.
Yeah, it's, it's going's gonna be a process but they're making significant progress and they're gonna have
I think even bigger announcements in the coming year they're getting it done.
My kids were really blown away by it you know it's it's interesting to me what like penetrates
their cynicism bubble
and like what they get actually impressed or excited by.
And they thought this was really cool.
You know, it's so funny.
It's like people are breathlessly like looking at
the Elon Don Lemon video and they're trying to opine
whether he had a good interview or a bad interview.
And it's like, he actually had one of the best weeks
of his life. Yeah, Starship 3 made it out. Starship had an incredible performance last week. And then
this thing this week, I mean, what an incredible seven day run. It's more than most of us will
have in our lifetime.
It's also nuts. That Dalman interview, like there was actually some really interesting
topics discussed, but I felt like this was like, this was the
perfect, like, baton passing between old media and new media,
where he was constantly trying to do a gotcha journalism thing.
And Elon was trying to engage in good faith and like an
interesting discussion. And then every time the discussion got
interesting, he kept trying to go back to like, sensational
gotcha journalism. And it was a totally wasted opportunity.
If he had just, Don Lemon had just stayed in the moment and like engaged in good faith.
Instead of trying to get this like clip, it was a really bad performance by Don Lemon.
I thought it was really getting interesting at moments in time.
He's obviously trying to get a job back at some mainstream media company.
Maybe this is his, this is his resume.
If he can basically get some clip of Elon saying something
that he can twist into something that it doesn't mean.
And he can say, I got Elon Musk,
then he can get his job back at CNN
or one of those places.
I mean, he got paid out in full, like 20, 30 million bucks.
And by the way, those jobs are not,
they don't exist anymore.
Like Tucker and him were like the last of that generation to get those huge
paydays.
Don Lemon got paid $30 million by whom?
I think CNN, the report was CNN paid out his full contract. The
same thing happened. I think with Tucker, they both got paid
their full contracts, whoever negotiates those contracts with
the networks over the last couple of decades is awesome
because it's pay. It's pay for play. Like whether you are on air or not, you get paid and the,
and then they don't let you go to a competitor. That's why both of them are doing internet
stuff X or whatever carved out stuff.
I just wanted to give a shout out here at the end of the pod for the guys at all in
talk. Chris and Spencer did an amazing job. The team over there from Good Future Media
of creating just that amazing fan account
now that we're growing up here at All In
and we'll have a CEO announcement at some point.
We have taken over the accounts
and we're starting to make our own clips.
So thanks to them for supporting us and helping grow it.
If you want to see the four of us,
go to YouTube and type in all in podcast
and then subscribe. We're almost at 500,000 subscribers and we decided that if we hit
1 million subscribers by the end of the year, we're going to throw a party. And we all will
be invited. We'll have as many people at the party as possible. So go ahead and find us on
TikTok, LinkedIn and Instagram, just do a search for in, and you can search for all of us,
Chamath, David Friedberg, David Sachs, and Jason Hallecanis.
Thanks again to the super fans for helping us build up this amazing audience.
Couldn't have done it without you.
And yeah, we're just posting clips, I think, every other day on the YouTube channel.
And so if you go in there, you can subscribe, and then right next to it, there's a little alarm bell.
You hit the bell, you'll get an alert
and you get to see our faces and know what we look like.
We also put a lot of graphics.
So if you hear us referring to charts,
that's all on the YouTube channel.
For David Sachs, my Pai Hopatea, David Freiburg,
I am Jason Kalakiannis.
And we will see you next episode.
Love you, boys.
The world's greatest moderator.
You forgot your timeline.
Oh, yes. And the host of This Week in Startups. So search for my podcast, This Week in Startups, Jason Calacanis and we will see you next episode. The world's greatest moderator. You forgot your title.
Oh yes, and the host of This Week in Startups.
So search for my podcast, This Week in Startups.
We're an interview startup founder.
Just gotta get a plugin for that.
No, some people don't know I have another podcast.
So please search for This Week in Startups
and subscribe to that as well.
We'll see you all next time.
Bye bye.
Love you boys. We'll let your winners ride Rain Man David Sack
I'm going all in
And instead we open sourced it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it
Love U West, the queen of Ken Wives
I'm going all in
Let your winners ride
Let your winners ride
Besties are gone
Go 13
That's my dog taking an audition for driveway sex
Oh man
My avid Azure will meet me at Blitz
We should all just get a room and just have one big huge orgy cause they're all just useless
It's like this sexual tension but they just need to release them out
What? You're the bee
What? You're the bee
What? You're the bee
We need to get merch.
I'm doing all in.
I'm doing all in.