#146 — Elon Musk vs OpenAI Trial, Google Cloud Surge, Meta’s Blocked Acquisition, Anthropic Winning
May 01, 2026 · Listen · All episodes · Chat with the show's AI
Jessica Lessin, Dave Morin, Brit Morin and Sam Lessin debate the tech of the week.
Full transcript (AI-generated — may contain transcription errors):
Brit Morin: I also wanna call out Elon Musk's salary and comp package is now tied to the Mars colonization happening. So I feel like that bodes well-
Sam Lessin: Yeah, narrative, narrative, narrative, narrative
Brit Morin: ... in my favor for the 2040 bet.
Dave Morin: Brit's just worried about her bet with you, Sam. I'm counting on Sam's next secret project to pay for this bet. Yeah.
Sam Lessin: Listen, Brit, here's the beautiful thing. If Elon lands on Mars and hits that comp package, I will have made so much money that I won't even notice- ... the million dollars that I owe.
Brit Morin: Great. All I care is about the million dollars. If I-
Dave Morin: Well, that is a great emotional hedge to me.
Brit Morin: I feel like you just conceded. I feel like you just conceded the bet to me.
Guest: More or less. Is it no or is it yes? We'll debate the tech that's best. Will we get more or less? Dave and Brit, plus Sam and Jess. Put it all right to the test. More or less.
Jessica: Why hello, friends. Welcome to More or Less.
Dave Morin: Hey, Jess.
Jessica: H- what's cooking, Morins?
Dave Morin: Had the best, best music weekend ever.
Brit Morin: True.
Jessica: Stagecoach.
Brit Morin: And we got evacuated.
Dave Morin: We go to, we go to Indio, California for very different reasons.
Brit Morin: Then what?
Jessica: I go for tennis.
Dave Morin: No, Jess goes for tennis.
Brit Morin: I know. She goes to Coachella too. We're just the country crowd at Stagecoach. But it's not even just country anymore. It was a '90s reunion. We had Third Eye Blind, Hootie & the Blowfish. Who else?
Dave Morin: Wallflowers.
Brit Morin: Wallflowers. Oh my God, One Headlight, so good. Journey, but didn't get to perform because of the evacuation.
Dave Morin: And Ludacris.
Brit Morin: Ludacris and, and Pitbull. They stopped believing in Stagecoach. No, there were like 60 mile an hour winds. It was tornado style, and trees were falling on people. Some people got injured, so they just shut everything down. And then an hour later, the wind stopped. And so half the people left and didn't come back, but the rest of us did. And it was awesome. It was like Stagecoach with half the crowd, so that was really fun.
Jessica: Brit, I say this with, like, not as a leading question, but, um, tell me about, like how long did it take you to buy your Stagecoach outfits? Like, it just seems-
Brit Morin: Oh
Jessica: ... like you were dressed to the nines. Like-
Brit Morin: I was
Jessica: ... was this like a whole process?
Brit Morin: Oh, it was a process. I consulted with many fashionable friends.
Dave Morin: Very good outfits.
Brit Morin: But it's a thing at Stage- it's the Coachella and Stagecoach. And actually, all the fashion brands this week are doing, like, wrap-up reports and leveraging Stagecoach and Coachella fashion in my feeds. They're, they're tuning into new trends for summer based on Stagecoach and Coachella fashion that happened. So I might have been a trendsetter for summer 2026.
Jessica: Can you just cut to the chase then? 'Cause I, I don't think this pod audience is known as the most fashionable audience on the planet. But-
Brit Morin: Well, that's why I gotta bring this flavor into the group here
Jessica: ... but, but tell us. So what, what's gonna be on trend this summer?
Brit Morin: Well, you either go booty shorts or long jorts. Jorts are back, people.
Dave Morin: There were a lot of jorts.
Brit Morin: Yeah. Jean, jeans that actually look like shorts.
Jessica: So does a jort hit like mid-calf? Where does a jort hit?
Brit Morin: It's like right above the knee. It's almost like a Bermuda short, but, but jeans. Yeah.
Jessica: Okay, that's not a jort. That's a long short. Okay.
Dave Morin: We better get to the tech, you guys.
Brit Morin: Okay. Sorry. We're losing people.
Jessica: No, I don't think so. I think there are plenty of people who wanna know what to wear for summer. What? You guys are the worst. OpenAI or jorts? OpenAI or jorts? You wanna talk about OpenAI? Let's go.
Dave Morin: OpenAI or booty shorts? That's the real question.
Brit Morin: Just saying, I could talk about all kinds of categories today, so just throw it at me, Jess. I'm good.
Jessica: Okay. Brit, put it in the f- chat. I wanna know. Summer packing season is here.
Dave Morin: Brit, please don't convince my wife to buy jorts.
Jessica: I already bought some in Paris.
Brit Morin: I said, I said booty shorts. Booty shorts or jorts. It's, it's, like, both.
Dave Morin: Sam, I saw you posting hot photos of your wife on Instagram, and we, we've got some good outfits for her.
Sam Lessin: I try to be the, the cheering squad here. I will say, it's, like, my most viral Threads post ever. It was pretty funny.
Brit Morin: It's cute how much you post hot photos of Jess, Sam, I have to say.
Sam Lessin: Listen, I try to be supportive. I do think my wife's attractive and-
Jessica: You were very supportive, Sam.
Sam Lessin: I don't know if that's kidding or not, but-
Jessica: No, I, I am... I don't know sarcasm.
Dave Morin: That sounded sincere, Sam. I'll, I'll be in- your interpreter on this one.
Brit Morin: I give it, I give it 50/50.
Jessica: Brit, zip it. You're not invited.
Sam Lessin: Brit, Brit might have better information than you, Dave. You and I are just like golden retriever puppy dog. We don't know what the fuck is going on.
Jessica: Okay, guys, I'm looking at the docket. Here's the docket. We've gone, we've gone old school. So I was wrong, I know. It rarely happens. I predicted that there may be a rapprochement between Musk and Altman. I predict- I did. I, I'm gonna own, I am gonna own my mistakes. I make plenty of them.
Dave Morin: I was wondering about that. I was like, Jess said this was gonna be over.
Jessica: I said I thought, I thought it would... my guess would be, and my guess was wrong. Good to know. Good thing I don't guess for a living, I report. But the trial is underway, and we ha- we'll have to circle back to it because, um... or we'll have to get into it because Musk talked about the information from the stand today. Damn, you know it must be a hot, a hot topic when Musk is telling the jury that he learned about an important OpenAI fundraising from the information, not from Altman immediately texting him the article asking him, "Is this true?" So Elon, thank you for the shout-out.
Dave Morin: That was today?
Jessica: That was today. We-
Dave Morin: Oh, wow. I, I wasn't sure, were, are, was there going to be still, like, more, you know, stand talking and whatnot today or what the schedule is.
Jessica: Y- do you mean testimony, Dave? The testimony?
Dave Morin: Yes, testimony.
Jessica: Yes.
Brit Morin: Stand talking.
Jessica: The stand talking.
Dave Morin: I can't, I can't, I can't function. Guys, I haven't been to a music festival since before the pandemic, so just give me some grace.
Jessica: Dave, it is midweek. You are still hungover from a midweek... We are t-
Dave Morin: And I don't even drink, and I'm still so hungover.
Jessica: You know, I'm with you. I've, I, I, I can, I can relate to that. But no, well, let's catch everyone up on this trial. So it's midweek, so the trial's been underway since the start of the week. The... I was gonna say the jury was impounded. Is that what you call a jury- You don't call it impounding. Empaneled. Empaneled. The jury was empaneled. Sam Altman and Greg Brockman attended jury selection. Highly unusual. No one ever attends jury selection, so that was very interesting.
Dave Morin: Really?
Sam Lessin: It's not like they don't have anything to deal with on the home front.
Jessica: Exactly. That will be topic number two. Then we got to the judge putting a gag order on Musk, Altman, and Brockman using social media during this trial. What's the over under on that holding?
Sam Lessin: Well, here's the thing, is like, I don't... This, this, this trial is not on anywhere on Techmeme. It's not on Business Insider. No one cares about this trial.
Brit Morin: Oh, it's on the Today Show. The m- the general public care about the trial.
Sam Lessin: That's funny. Like, the tech world is, like, much more focused on other things. That's very funny to me that, like, if you don't let them tweet, how will anyone have... make money on the news media?
Jessica: Well, Information subscribers are getting their updates, but, but y- to your point, taken as briefs, not as major news, as briefs.
Dave Morin: I liked the quote from the judge. The judge was like, "Do I have to put a gag order on you?"
Jessica: That's true. But I think she officially banned it. She also... Like, Musk get- takes the stand and just starts talking. No questions. And he just looks at the jury, and he's like, "This... First of all, whoever's making this movie should be, like, channeling me at this mo-" But, like, he was like, "This is a case about whether you can steal a charity, and if this case is decided in their favor, every charity in America," or something like that, "is vulnerable." And the judge just says, "You don't have to listen to him. That is not a legal opinion."
Brit Morin: That's so good.
Jessica: So anyway, but we're on day, you know, a couple days into it. I think Musk is being cross-examined. Brockman and Altman will ultimately take the stand, but still more witnesses on the Musk side. I don't know, guys. The legal experts think Musk has a tough road here, so...
Brit Morin: Really?
Dave Morin: Why?
Jessica: Uh, just because of the letter of the law. Not the spirit of it, but the letter of it.
Dave Morin: Ah, yes. It does come down to the letter.
Brit Morin: How long is this case gonna last? Do we know? Is this weeks? Months? What are we thinking? Days?
Jessica: Uh, it's about, it's scheduled to last about a month, which I think m- maybe includes some of the expected jury deliberation. I'm actually not clear on that part. What-
Dave Morin: Is this a month every day?
Brit Morin: What if you're the person chosen for this jury? That'd be kind of sick.
Sam Lessin: I somehow doubt that Jessica will be chosen for this jury.
Dave Morin: So wait, Jess, what is the letter here? Like-
Jessica: They should just put arbitration lesson style.
Dave Morin: Do you have a sense for what the letter of the law is?
Jessica: Um, do I have a detailed sense of what the law is? No, to be honest. I mean, I, I, other than it's like... I mean, there are plenty of entities that have gone from being non-profits to having a for-profit structure. Remember, technically this is a for-profit nested under a governing non-profit, if we really need to bring up the flow chart. That is not an unprecedented... And I don't know legally how important this argument is, but OpenAI keeps on saying, "He wanted to convert it into a for-profit that he controlled, and he's only... And, and because we wouldn't make this a for-profit company that he could control that could potentially be merged with Tesla, he went off and started his own thing." So their point is that he was on board with the strategy.
Dave Morin: The facts that I've seen don't support that that was what, what was going on. There was a lot of, like, in the very beginning, you know, should this be a for-profit? Should this be a non-profit? Should we do both in parallel? These are, like, standard conversations that, like, literally everybody has at the beginning of any of these things, right?
Jessica: But there were... The, those conversations continued past the founding to this dispute.
Dave Morin: I see.
Sam Lessin: I think this is a classic scenario. If you always end up in lawsuits for, like, the thing that no longer matters. It's like-
Jessica: Yeah
Sam Lessin: ... OpenAI isn't even the biggest AI company anymore. It's just a classic, the law is always so laggy that, like, we're litigating a thing where the cat's out of the bag on all the data being stolen. Like, we're arguing about pennies in terms of what goes into a foundation or not. It's great WWE entertainment, but if they can't tweet about it, then, like, the entertainment value goes down. And, like, we're litigating the number two AI player now. Like, what, what are we doing?
Dave Morin: Sam, I think it's interesting, the, the data question is clearly not even part of the narrative.
Sam Lessin: I know. It's not, it's not... This is the, this is the spirit versus the letter. Like, we're not even having the right lawsuit.
Dave Morin: Yeah.
Sam Lessin: Like-
Dave Morin: Totally
Sam Lessin: ... it's fine. It is what it is. The right lawsuit will never happen.
Jessica: There are some other lawsuits that maybe we should follow, like The New York Times v. OpenAI, which you're reminding me, Sam, I should-
Sam Lessin: No, 'cause they're just gonna lose. It's like, it's one of the things where, like, this is the spirit versus the letter of the law.
Dave Morin: But isn't that the one... But Sam, isn't that the one that you care about, the New York Times one?
Sam Lessin: Yeah, but it's not gonna... But like, they're clearly gonna... I mean, like, look, the, that is the correct intellectual lawsuit, but that lawsuit, I just can't imagine that OpenAI, the cat's out of the bag. Like, it's just not gonna happen that that, that lawsuit will be successful. It's, like, a good... It's like standing on good moral ground, but it's like, that's never gonna happen. This is the wrong lawsuit. It's happening, whatever. It's like, it's kind of a sideshow. And then the, again, the backdrop is, is like, this is what always happens in the law is, like, you're litigating last year's issue, right? It's like this is not even the right company to be going after. If you care... I mean, I don't want to go after any company just for the sake of going after them, but it's very funny to me that the trial starts the week that what happens is what we said was gonna happen, which is that Anthropic passed OpenAI.
Brit Morin: But also, you could argue that Elon is doing this as, as a way to put a road bump in front of OpenAI.
Sam Lessin: Yeah, but it's like you're road bumping the second place runner. Like, he, he-
Brit Morin: I don't care. He doesn't care. He's trying to get xAI to be, like, a little bit further ahead and buy some runway.
Sam Lessin: No, no, uh, uh, well, he just... Elon's just ... flexing power because he needs to support the narrative that Elon always wins, which is, by the way, very smart for him. Like, I'm pro that
Brit Morin: But I also think he's trying to throw a little road bump in front of them. And meanwhile, OpenAI, as someone who follows, like, the general American... Well, has his own red bones, is also doing this whole press camp- I'm watching, like, the press campaigns around all of this 'cause I'm so interested in the marketing and PR strategy everyone's running. And, like, OpenAI is, like, Sam Altman also went on, like, the morning show circuit. He did in person, he did interviews. He's talking about, like, the future of AI and how good it can be for the world and curing Alzheimer's, and the foundation, and how much money they're pouring into curing diseases. And so I think it's just the timeliness of these things is super interesting when you look at the whole narrative strategy across the whole ecosystem right now.
Jessica: I agree. So let's talk, let's talk about the business horse race 'cause it's been all of six and a half days since we've last talked about this business horse race. But, but there have been some new developments. So The Wall Street Journal finally renewed their information subscription and read the articles that we have been writing over the last eight weeks which included everything from missing targets of ChatGPT users to debates between the CFO and CEO over IPO timing. They added the information that, which is pertinent, which would certainly be newsworthy on its own, that they have also missed revenue targets for ChatGPT recently, although we don't know by how much. Um, and we already knew that they missed the user targets, but revenue targets are important, so, so good detail, good detail. The markets have decided that this is sort of a catastrophe, I think. But Sam, what, what's your take on this, and why are you, like, very bullish on Anthropic besides your own Claude code usage?
Sam Lessin: I mean, I'm not... Like, I think I've, I've been using Anthropic a lot right now in Claude code, but, like, I actually just, as I've been saying all along, like-
Dave Morin: That's the car he's driving
Sam Lessin: ... it's the car I'm driving, but I also don't care about the car, the car.
Jessica: The, it's not the Miata, though. It's not the Miata.
Sam Lessin: Like, it doesn't matter to me. Like, this is the thing is, like, I think, again, the story of AI that made these things such huge valuation dollar things was that there'd be some, like, race to AGI whoever wins is worth infinity, and that's clearly not true. And I think being pa- being the leader for so long and then flatlining revenue while someone else passes you just proves that that's not true. Google's earnings proves that's not true. Like, it's just gonna be a highly competitive space where, like, I don't know where the margin comes from 'cause, like, I do use Claude code a lot. I love it. It's great. I don't give a shit. Like, I'd switch tomorrow. Like, it's all commodity to me. It's super useful. Like, I have amazing tools running, but it's just cost per token and how good it is, right?
Jessica: Yeah.
Sam Lessin: And I just don't see the world in which there's any differentiation on these things. So to me, like, the whole, like, OpenAI thing is less about... It has, again, it has nothing to do with reality. It's just narrative weaving, right? And, like, cap- and cost of capital. And, like, I just don't understand how if you once... We saw, I mean, we talked about this weeks ago on the pod when the number, you, you on Jessica's chart are like, "Oh, I know how this works." Like, Anthropic's clearly gonna cross OpenAI, right? And the point is not that, like, who's going for place one and gonna be the Uber. It's just like, no, actually it's all commodity, right?
Jessica: Yeah.
Dave Morin: One of the more interesting things that I've been thinking about on this front is that the tokens are so expensive when you're using them at the sort of maximum amount that, you know, people that are on the frontier using tokens to build things, it's really expensive. Like, I've been telling people a lot that the best open cloud implementations, for example, are on the order of $1,000 or more per month. And you know, when you think about that as like a consumer product, that's wildly too expensive, right? But when you think about it in terms of replacing actual labor or doing a job, which is how a lot of people are thinking about these things, that's 36,000 a year, which actually seems quite cheap for, say, an assistant or something like that. And so what is Anthropic's actual incentive to charge a lower and lower price when actually what they're competing against is the price of labor? Like, don't they have a actual incentive to charge the maximum amount per token, not try to actually bring the price down? Which I think is kind of interesting. Like, do they have more margin there than it seems, Sam?
Sam Lessin: I'd also say, like, the thing for me that's very obvious is Anthropic is really expensive relative to everything else, and they keep having ways of making it more expensive.
Dave Morin: That's what I'm saying. Like, d- isn't there more elasticity here because people are thinking about it in terms of replacing labor, not replace, not being like a consumer thing.
Sam Lessin: Look, I don't even think it's that sophisticated. The open source model is getting really good. Really good.
Dave Morin: Yeah, totally. I work with them every day.
Jessica: What's the best one? What's the best one?
Dave Morin: Uh, Gemma.
Sam Lessin: Do you think so? I mean, like, I think we could debate which one of the best ones, but, like, literally everyone-
Dave Morin: Gemma, Minimax, Qwen. Yeah.
Sam Lessin: But to some degree, like, with Qwen, people are saying the embeddings in Qwen are better than they are in OpenAI. Like, like, like, so the stuff is, like, moving so quickly, and the open source is getting so good that i- if... Basically, let's pretend that, like, there was gonna be a general good, like, I care what I c- what the cost of tokens is type of intelligence, an open route or whatever. Like, that's most of what's going on. Most of what people need is super, super fancy calculators, right? It's not like-
Dave Morin: Yeah
Sam Lessin: ... the fucking... You don't need a PhD to be your assistant, right?
Dave Morin: Yeah.
Sam Lessin: And so the vast majority of tokens and spend in the market, the good marking, the Good Morning America audience is going to be going for cheap Qwen effectively-
Dave Morin: Yep
Sam Lessin: ... over time, and it's gonna be-
Dave Morin: Yep
Sam Lessin: ... because they care about the cost, right? Like, that's gonna be the audience.
Dave Morin: Absolutely.
Sam Lessin: There will be assholes like me and Dave who are like, "Actually, I want PhDs doing all the work, and I'm willing to pay five times as much 'cause I don't care," right? And like-
Dave Morin: Well, but we're building software and-
Sam Lessin: I'm messing around. I'm just saying, like, the point is, like, there's going to be a high-end token market, right, where you're like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah," like, "I just want marginally better. I'm not sure how much better, and I'm willing to pay five times as much."
Jessica: Yeah.
Sam Lessin: That might be the only part of the market that makes sense, and Anthropic seems to be very focused on that market
Dave Morin: Yeah, I mean, Anthropic is the luxury token provider
Sam Lessin: So yeah. So you can be the luxury... I mean, there might be a unthinking luxury token provider that actually does generate margin, and maybe that's what they're going for. But this idea of, like, you wanna be-
Dave Morin: I don't know. I don't think so, Sam, because I think they are today the luxury token provider. But, like, I think you're right, and this is what I'm seeing in the OpenClau ecosystem, is that the open source models are replacing every single use case-
Sam Lessin: Yes
Dave Morin: ... where they can.
Sam Lessin: Yeah.
Dave Morin: And they're doing it extremely quickly.
Sam Lessin: Right
Dave Morin: Because y- why would you pay? And so the... You know, and this is like left, right, all the way up and down the stack. Every entrepreneur in my portfolio is, like, swapping out open source models for everything. And of course you would, right? 'Cause that's your margin.
Sam Lessin: Well, right, right, right this second, I feel like there's still this world, though, of people who are like... Like, I, I've heard this from a lot of entrepreneurs. They're like, "In this moment we're experimenting. This is experimental budgets. We're spending way too much on Clauud, but we don't care 'cause later we'll just drop the cost," right? And I think that's, like, the right mentality. And look, again, I go back to, like, imagine they were humans, and let's pretend Clauud is, like, a triple PhD that's really expensive. Like, you're gonna... But, like, you're not gonna ha- you might have them do a little bit of stuff, but the, it's not the vast majority of your work, right? And so I think the reality is the vast, vast majority of work, everyone will just, like, go to cheaper labor and, and no one's gonna make money on it.
Brit Morin: E- even enterprise, though? Uh, enterprise and, like, 10% of luxury consumers is kind of like the TAM for Clauud.
Dave Morin: But you wouldn't in the enterprise either, Brit. Like, y- you'd want to... You know, y- you don't wanna, you don't wanna be this, like, what did I see? The Uber CFO or something a week ago being like, "We blew through, like, 100% of our token budget in 15 days of this month- ... for the entire year," right? It's like no CFO's gonna put up with that shit.
Jessica: K- related to this, have you guys seen the... I think Altman said on some podcast that they're looking at outcome, outcome-based pricing. What do you guys think of this? I- is this sort of one of the, I'm not gonna say the solves because that's really lame, but one of the solutions?
Dave Morin: Wait, so what did he say? I, I haven't seen this.
Jessica: I think he said they were just looking. But there's this concept I've heard more and more people talk about it, which, a- and Sierra, for example, only charges its customers if AI successfully completes a customer service interaction.
Dave Morin: That's smart.
Jessica: Um, and it's called, like, outcome-based pricing.
Dave Morin: It's not gonna give you the best business model. Like, right now what they're doing is charging luxury prices for luxury tokens and, like, getting away with, like, revenue murder, right?
Jessica: Well, it's more than that, Dave, 'cause they're also just charging for people who aren't using them because they're doing blanket seat licenses across companies when, like, 10% are active users and, you know, 30% are mid users and no one else is using it.
Sam Lessin: It's CPM versus CPA, right? Like, there'll be some CPA-type exercises where you can get a-
Dave Morin: What do you mean by that, Sam, for everybody that doesn't know?
Sam Lessin: Well, like a early... CPM, like, you charge for 1,000 impressions. It was an early internet, hard to instrument. You just charge for 1,000 tokens, whatever the fuck, right? CPA is like you start saying, "No, no, no, I only wanna pay for people who, like, sign up for my thing." And you pay more for the CPA, but, like, it's more aligned, right? And like, I, like I, I just feel-
Dave Morin: I think that's right, actually. And I, I don't know, this is the first time I've heard this this episode. I think that's probably right, that, like, there'll be a-
Sam Lessin: Oh, I just made it up.
Dave Morin: Well, I know, but I think that's probably right, like what Jess is saying, like, people paying for the outcome, like, incentivi- maybe that's, like, the new agent as a service model where it's like, you know, you pay me based on accomplishing the job I actually tell you I'm doing rather than being like, "You're gonna pay me some marginal price on top of the tokens."
Sam Lessin: It's just a race to the bottom, though. It doesn't-
Brit Morin: I would pay more for the, for the less revs I have to do to get the agent to do what I want it to do too, so more efficient paths to the outcome.
Dave Morin: Really?
Brit Morin: Yeah. It's so annoying to babysit these agents and be like, "No, I asked for this. I needed it to do these three things."
Jessica: Brit, your agent is supposed to babysit the agents.
Brit Morin: I know, but, like, I... my agent was making me a model today, and then it didn't, like, embed the formula, so I had to go back and be like-
Dave Morin: Yeah, Brit, you need Sam and I's agents.
Brit Morin: I have good agents, guys, and I have, like, a lot of them, so because they mostly get it right.
Dave Morin: By the way, this is one of my favorite things that Peter Steinberger always says to me, which is that he would rather that pull requests be prompt requests because his agents are so good they can just handle any prompt you throw at them. And, like, mine are pretty good. Sam's are pretty good. Like, it's an interesting new idea.
Brit Morin: I wanna rank all of our... How do we rank our agents on whose is best? It's like I want, like, Gladiator Agent Edition, and I wanna know who wins in the end.
Sam Lessin: Just tell them to hack each other and steal each other's token.
Brit Morin: I think this is the next big- ... entertainment thing on the internet.
Sam Lessin: Oh my God, I hope not if that's what we're left with. I mean, like, look, I do think-
Brit Morin: Elon's definitely gonna go there
Sam Lessin: ... it, I just... Look, I, the smart people I talk to are all like, "Look, this is classic." You know, people, people always argue about, like, people are too obsessed with Adam Smith and the invisible hand. They're like, "No, you can never make money on anything 'cause efficiency." That's obviously not true. But I would say I think this one's tending towards the cost of energy much faster than anyone wants to admit. And look, that's why, again, like the cynical take on an OpenAI or some of these people who have been, like, raising gajillions of dollars and then plowing it back into just-
Dave Morin: It's not just OpenAI, Sam
Sam Lessin: No, no, no, I'm just-
Dave Morin: ... it's Anthropic too. I think Anthropic's peril is actually much more obvious.
Sam Lessin: Well, they're both... But the basic point is, like, these companies that went out with these narratives and raised very high priced money to then buy 20 cents of infrastructure, like the infrastructure's worth not zero. It is infrastructure. Like, you're gonna run something in it, right? But, like, it is, um... it's a commodity business, right? And it's a great one. I really enjoy it, but it's definitely, like, commodity business with tech multiples.
Dave Morin: It, it is interesting. One of the things that I've been thinking about a lot is how much all of these things are just abstractions for inference. Like, the more, the sort of deeper you get into building harnesses and building, you know, stuff that kind of sits right in front of the inference layer, the more you realize that all of these things are just, like, terminal UIs and things for, like, pure inference costs, right?
Sam Lessin: In the end of the day, we're just multiplying big numbers, man. It's just a big calculator.
Jessica: So if you're OpenAI and Anthropic, what is your pricing strategy in the enterprise? Because you know that Open source is getting to parity on many things.
Dave Morin: It's not clear that's obvious, Jess. Like, it... I, I, I actually think this is not being talked about enough.
Jessica: But didn't you just say open so- uh, but wait, I thought you said open source is good.
Dave Morin: It is, but what I'm saying is that, like, I don't know, I don't know of anyone ta- I, I don't see this as in, like, the public m- narrative and conversation right now. Like, what are they gonna do, right? Like, but I'm sitting there-
Jessica: Oh, no, but that's why we're having it, because we're, we're ahead of-
Brit Morin: We're ahead of the times.
Dave Morin: I'm not totally sure. I mean, I sat there, I sat there at this... I got invited to a founder event last week to give a talk and, and then I watched lightning talks from, like, mm, 10 to 20 founders in a row about their-
Jessica: Mm
Dave Morin: ... AI implementations. And like, these are, like, very sophisticated businesses. We're talking businesses on the scale of, you know, anywhere from tens of millions to hundreds of millions in revenue per month. And everyone is trying to switch out as many open source models as possible across their entire stack. Like, that's, like, the active conversation.
Sam Lessin: Switch in is obviously ... Yeah, 'cause like Quin- Yeah, Quinn's on the rise.
Jessica: No, no, I think you mishear- misheard me. If so you're Anthropic and OpenAI, and open source is a real threat. So what do you do from a pricing standpoint?
Dave Morin: Well, what I'm actually hearing is that they're trying to make open source illegal at the federal level.
Jessica: Oh, my goodness. Dave, you just broke big news on the pod.
Brit Morin: Ooh.
Sam Lessin: The classic regulatory capture move?
Brit Morin: More litigation.
Dave Morin: I'm not... This... I'm not tell- this is not... This is being talked about on Twitter. This is not just me.
Jessica: Oh, okay.
Sam Lessin: There's like, there's like two models. One is if you have a utility-
Brit Morin: Jess, break it.
Jessica: I, I just did. I mean-
Sam Lessin: If you have a uti- a low-cost... If you have a competitive utility, you can, as I've pointed out and we've talked about before, it's like this is so much worse than a power company. At least with a power company you can't ship power around the world globally, right? This is like being in an unregulated utility business where you have no regulatory barriers and no physical barriers, so you compete with everyone globally. You're fucked, right? And so yeah, of course, one is create regulatory capture, where we say, okay, instead of PG&E, it's like you can only use OpenAI in California, 'cause the only safe model, right? Like, that's option one.
Dave Morin: Yeah, exactly. And this is very real, by the way, in the United States. Like-
Sam Lessin: Either... So, so it's that or if you have a utility that you convinced everyone was worth tech multiples, there's the South Park answer. Which is, what is it? You start up, you cash in, and you bro down. Like, you gotta get out.
Jessica: Okay, Sam-
Brit Morin: The South Park model?
Jessica: Explain that a little bit more, Sam. Give me a little bit more.
Sam Lessin: This is the South Park model of business building. You, you start up, you cash in, and you bro down, and, like, these guys are moving from cash in to bro down right now because, like, they're-
Brit Morin: What does that... What does bro down mean?
Jessica: What... Can you... No, but I... Not can you say it again, can you draw your analogy more clearly?
Dave Morin: Guys, one of the ways, one of the ways that I know how things are going in the city with c- the cashing in part is what kind of cars I see on Highway 1 every day.
Jessica: Just Waymos. Not on Highway 1, actually.
Dave Morin: No, no, no.
Jessica: Not on Highway 1.
Dave Morin: I saw a, like, diamond-encrusted super car on Highway 1 this morning. Like, it was literally full of gems.
Sam Lessin: Yeah. I mean, like, this is called Miami Crypto 2000 whatever.
Dave Morin: I mean, I, I've never seen anything like this. I literally was like, "What was that?" It was so bright.
Sam Lessin: The problem is, the problem is with all this, this is, like, the thing that kind of blows everyone's brains, is two things can be true-
Dave Morin: When did this become LA?
Sam Lessin: Two things can be true at the same time. Thing one is this stuff is so fun to build software with, and I have better software for myself than I've ever had, and I'm loving it, right? Two, it's actually a bad business, right? And, like, that's very hard for people to wrap their heads around that both things can be true at the same time.
Dave Morin: I mean, at least we're talking about both things being true at the same time now, Sam, because we know people are tired of us telling them that it's a bad business. So we have to figure out how to get from here to there.
Brit Morin: You've been saying this every episode. I don't get what's new about any of this.
Jessica: It's a little more nuanced, because I think it's very possible that An- Anthropic and OpenAI could prove to be bad businesses. And by bad businesses, that means very low margins, not that much revenue. But this era is... D- we... If this were, you know, a year before the Meta IPO, or a couple years before the Meta IPO, we'd be talking about whether Meta could ever make any money.
Sam Lessin: That's not true at all. Meta made money the whole way through. That's like from w- Meta was highly profitable from, like, almost year two.
Jessica: Okay. We would be talking about a scale of numbers, fair enough, that was much smaller than 20 billion, 30 billion in ARR. So I do think you have to give these a... You can look at the existential landscape and the competition and everything and say it is still an open question how good these businesses are. I think that's true. But you also have to give them credit for the business they built.
Sam Lessin: Can I sell you a dollar for 90 cents? I mean, the, the, the problem is, is that, like-
Jessica: Well, but that's saying that the valuations are the problem.
Dave Morin: But Sam, something's happening. You know, I think Jess is right. There's, like, something happening worth analyzing d- more deeply. And, like, look, here's the reality of the open models, right? Like, they're not as good, right? Like, under 70 billion parameters-
Jessica: But you guys just said... You named three that were good.
Dave Morin: Jess, just-
Jessica: I don't know
Dave Morin: ... let me finish.
Jessica: Fair enough.
Dave Morin: Under 70 billion parameters, you know, they don't... It's very hard to get them to talk for a num- you know, any number of turn... It, it's just uninteresting to talk to for a long period of time. Their tool calling is like, mm, it's okay.
Sam Lessin: It'll get there. And give it a little trajectory.
Dave Morin: It'll get there, but, like, you have... Sam, each time the big models come out, all of our expectation is raised, right, for what's possible at the high end. And so you have this thing where open source is also always going to be lagging the frontier. And so it's not going to be, like, a total replacement. And so Jess, that's the answer to your question, which is what are you thinking at the, you know, at the strategic level if you're a frontier lab? Well, you're trying to make the next model happen, right? Because that raises the bar for everybody in the whole world as to what they expect is possible. And then On the open source side, you're trying to do regulatory capture, at least in the United States, right?
Jessica: Yes. Which is where we were g- starting this, yep.
Dave Morin: Yeah. And I think that's, like, actually a really interesting question because my experience from working on an OpenClaus is that the Chinese innovation in open source models is really rapid and really impressive. Like, these guys are doing extremely good work extremely quickly, and by the way, there's no great open source American model that is truly open source. Like, Google's putting out a good one, but that's Google, right? And so I think it's an interesting, like, foreign policy problem that, like, we have no American models, and all of the American models are massively for profit. And so I think that, like, that's, like, a really serious community question we should be answering. And people will dive into this and be like, "Oh, this is about ideology and safety. Like, there should be no American model because it's not safe," right? And so there's, like, all these aspects of this that, I don't know, kind of aren't being talked about and are the real things.
Sam Lessin: You know what we should do? We should do what Europe did to us on the internet. We should put some GDPR shit all over the Chinese models. You know, some things to click on.
Jessica: Okay, so do we think that Anthropic is gonna try and block open source in the US or that that will even happen? I think it's gonna be a tough sell.
Brit Morin: Wait, has that hap- has, is, is there precedent for this in any other, like, industry?
Dave Morin: There's literally bills that have been proposed.
Sam Lessin: Guys, we can't even block TikTok in the US. How do you think we're gonna block this?
Jessica: Right.
Brit Morin: Guys-
Sam Lessin: And like, it's like-
Jessica: We haven't talked about TikTok in a while
Sam Lessin: ... it's like, I just, I hear you. I actually... Look, I actually could get behind the theory that, like, there are dangerous models and, like, what Sam Interesting. I'm gonna have to think on that one. Look, I think that's actually, the thing about it is, like, the, this, the, the, the, the Neal Stephenson book version of this would be that. It's like we can't defend ourselves from cheap open models, and they're subverting our country. Forget... Like, you think, you think that the Chinese social engineering budget, like, around the US is subverting the US? Wait till they get into the models, right? And you're like, "Okay, our only logical solution is to assault."
Dave Morin: That's what they are doing. I mean, that is what they're doing, right? Like, the benchmark, there were a bunch of benchmarks that came out two, three weeks ago that show that Qwen specifically, which everyone is saying is the best, the best, the best, I'm using it, is by far the most biased. Like, the, the model is extremely biased.
Sam Lessin: Yeah, yeah. I get it. I get it. I get it. I just think it's a really... Like, it's kind of like the, the algorithmic social media problem on, like, massive steroids, right? If it's distributed, you can't even stop it, right? And so it's like someone told me this week, I don't know if this is true or not, but it was an interesting fact. I was in a meeting. They were saying that the Chinese are running an $80 billion a year social engineering budget for so- b- against the US right now, right?
Dave Morin: Wow.
Brit Morin: Social engineering?
Sam Lessin: And the US, like... So the US has, like, an $8 billion bud-
Brit Morin: Like, what are they doing? Like-
Dave Morin: TikTok.
Brit Morin: Oh.
Sam Lessin: So, like, we're running, like, an 8, like, a two orders of magnitude less in terms of whatever the relevant unit is that's, like, the, the... Again, like, who knows if this is true or not or the details of it, but the idea is, like, this is very organized and at scale. And like, I'm like, "Oh, this is an even bigger battlefield." And you're like, you just can't... There are no borders, and so the only answer is gonna be algorithmic warfare.
Brit Morin: Does this put, does this play into the Manus block at all that came out this week?
Jessica: I'm sorry, but this was the most obvious news.
Dave Morin: It was, but it took a while. It's surprising how long it took, right? Like, 'cause presumably they would have done some amount of integration already, and so how do you unwind that?
Jessica: They were trying, but they summoned the team back from Singapore and then wouldn't let them work. I mean, for people who are following, so-
Sam Lessin: Wait, wait. They actually went back from Singapore to mainland China?
Dave Morin: Yeah.
Jessica: They did.
Sam Lessin: And they went?
Brit Morin: They had to.
Dave Morin: Yeah, they had to.
Jessica: They had to.
Sam Lessin: What do you mean they had to?
Jessica: They have families, Sam. Sam, they have families.
Sam Lessin: Wow.
Dave Morin: This was like spy game stuff, Sam.
Jessica: So for people who haven't been following, Meta acquired... Well, let's go back. I remember Benchmark invested in this Singapore-based but Chinese-run-
Dave Morin: And did a big lick the cookie lap on it
Jessica: ... a- agent company, right? And they were like, they were so... They did a lick the cookie lap, and it was like, they were like, "Oh, guys," like, "cross-border investing's back." And this is the height of... That's how Benchmark speak. No, I don't
Dave Morin: No, it's actually you took a risk, you lose.
Jessica: And this was exactly at the height of, like, TikTok ban. Like, cross-border investing wasn't back. There was no window. Like, not at all.
Dave Morin: No, it wasn't. It was extremely risky.
Sam Lessin: It's only back if Elon says it's back.
Dave Morin: This, this investment was extremely risky, like, at the time.
Jessica: This was extremely risky, but of course they made it, and then they-
Dave Morin: Like, it was a Hail Mary, and now it, it fully missed. Yeah.
Jessica: It, it, it has... Yeah. And but anyway, and then the company chugs on. Then you have Meta, and we'll get to earnings later because I know you guys listen to us for earnings. It's the only reason. But you have Meta-
Dave Morin: I mean, I sure do.
Jessica: It's how Dave knows what companies are doing. No. So Meta is on the hunt for a new agent strategy, a new business model, just, like, new, new, new, new things. It's talking to a lot of places about acquisitions. They get very excited about Manus. Okay, interesting deal. You're watching this, and you're, like, setting your clock for when China is gonna be- Interfere. And of course, they interfered, and they did quick soon after in terms of sort of challenging the deal, calling back some of the key team to China. So they were in clear integration limbo, and now the, the deal is off and they're sort of unwinding it. But-
Dave Morin: They did integrate it already, though, which is kind of wild.
Jessica: I think some of it. I think some of it.
Brit Morin: What does that mean, though? Like, does money go back to investors? Are they, like-
Jessica: Yeah
Brit Morin: ... still invest-
Dave Morin: Does code go back?
Brit Morin: How do you unwind it?
Jessica: These are great questions. I don't know the answers to all of 'em. I've seen some headlines.
Dave Morin: Brit, did you change your hair color?
Brit Morin: I did, thank you. Back to my roots.
Jessica: Yes, Sam, we talked about this earlier. Well, let's circle back to that topic.
Dave Morin: I like it.
Jessica: Let's circle back. It looks great. Brit, because of you, I'm gonna start brushing... I hurt my shoulder, so I can't brush my hair, so that's why I have to apologize to everyone for my appearance. But-
Brit Morin: Just wing it. It's fine
Jessica: ... Brit is just, like, crushing it.
Brit Morin: This will convince people to tune into the video stream who are only on audio.
Jessica: Guys, you can just... You can rate Brit's hair versus my hair every Wednesday and we'll see how... One of these days, I'll get it done. I don't know the particulars of it, and you've gotta give Meta, like, points for trying. I mean, you, you... They gotta get points for trying. But I do think back to being told that cross-border investing was back just as NVIDIA chips were getting banned in China and DC- DeepSeek researchers were having their passports confiscated as reported by the information, and here we are. So we're back to exactly where we knew we were. Guys, Google, this is where we turn to the pod, ripped on an earnings report of greater than expected profits.
Dave Morin: I can't believe I don't own Google stock.
Brit Morin: It's my alma mater, and I've been long Google since the beginning. Just gonna lick that cookie, thank you.
Dave Morin: The good news is every time Sam told... said he loved Google, I bought.
Jessica: Good, Dave. Way to go. Smart man.
Dave Morin: At least one of us is making money, but it's like- ... there's, like, two things I regret in life. One is I remember, like, early on... Financially in the public markets recently. Early on, do you remember, like, when, um, there was this really funny situation where Nancy Pelosi's husband right around New Year's bought, like, an insane number of NVIDIA calls? And there's this, like, joke about how Nancy Pelosi's husband is, like, the greatest trader in the history of the world. And I was like, "That's actually pretty good. Like, I don't own any NVIDIA stock. I should probably copy the Nancy Pelosi tweet." And I really thought about it. And, like, I did the math on it. It's insane. Like, I think he probably made, like, $50 million on, like, a million, two million bucks out. Like, good for him. And the second is this fucking Alphabet thing, where I've been calling forever that people are miscounting Alphabet, and yet I don't pull the trigger 'cause I'm bad at this.
Brit Morin: By the way, Google IO is coming up very soon, and I think, I think there's gonna be a ton of new Gemini stuff that's coming in. And we haven't talked about Gemini in a long time. I know we talked about Gemma just now, but-
Dave Morin: What a formidable company. It's such a formidable company. It's crazy.
Brit Morin: I think by the end of this year, Gemini is, is much higher in the rankings.
Dave Morin: Even just the returns that they're going to see from their SpaceX and Anthropic investment is insane.
Jessica: But you do because you see an AI overview or two if you're still ever using-
Dave Morin: No, to be clear, I just... I use Go- Like, it's funny to me, like, the entire chatbot paradigm is just so uninteresting. Like, I don't use any of them anymore, right? Like, I'm deep in other stuff. But, but it does seem like from a Good Morning America perspective, Gemini is in a good place.
Brit Morin: Good Morning America.
Dave Morin: Which, by the way, Sam, I think that's one of the big opportunities that nobody's paying attention to right now, which is that there's only something like... I think I saw it was, like, 3 to 4 million Codex users, which means there's also in, you know, single digit millions Cloud Code users, yet everybody in town thinks that this stuff is broadly out there and that everyone's realizing what's going on.
Brit Morin: It's game over. Anthropic's winning everything. Nope.
Dave Morin: There are, like, 6 billion people that use software in the world, and there's only 50 million total software engineers, single digit millions doing all this stuff. Like, there's literally, like, a 5 billion person market out there for figuring out how to bring agents to the normal person. Or maybe you, you don't have experience them and don't use them that much.
Brit Morin: Also, by the way-
Dave Morin: I don't know
Brit Morin: ... there's probably... Claude actually projects there's 1.8 to 2.5 billion people with Google accounts in the world. So, like, 30% of the global population have Google accounts.
Dave Morin: I just asked, I just asked, what's the... So basically, 50 to 100 million people use terminal or c- CLI interfaces at least oc- occasionally. So maybe it's 1 in 10 right now, Dave.
Brit Morin: Mm-hmm.
Jessica: But what... Let's see. So the reason Google, Google's earnings outperformed is really cloud growth. And the reason I think Microsoft that had decent numbers but the stock is down is 'cause cloud growth, I think, was around expectations, but, like, expectations are so high these days that, like, if you just hit them, investors aren't happy. But, like, h- I, I, you know, have a team of 50 reporters who could presumably help answering this question, but I still don't understand how Google Cloud is growing so fast. Like, are they bu- Like, what are they bundling? Is it the TPU moment? Is it-
Dave Morin: Yeah, it must be
Jessica: ... the Gemini moment?
Dave Morin: Or is it just... Honestly, or is it just... You know what the funniest thing is? I looked into this recently. You know my number one line item changes in terms of my costs of, like, the infrastructure I run for myself since all this agenda? It's actually curious. Dave, you're the only one with a prayer of getting this right. What do you think I spend the most-
Jessica: DigitalOcean.
Brit Morin: Thanks.
Jessica: I don't know.
Brit Morin: Thanks, Sam.
Dave Morin: Dude, but what? It's, it's in DigitalOcean 'cause I love DigitalOcean.
Jessica: Oh, I got it right.
Dave Morin: No, no, no, but, but there's a specific thing in DigitalOcean. Like, where am I actually spending money?
Jessica: I got the biller on the credit card.
Brit Morin: It's not a token?
Dave Morin: Where am I actually spending money? It's not... It's definitely not tokens.
Jessica: Memory. Storage.
Dave Morin: Yeah, basically, Jess. I will give it to you.
Jessica: Oh, 242.
Dave Morin: I'll give it... The answer is it's Postgres. My Postgres bill is the thing that's gone up the most. It's databases. So that's the irony of this whole thing, is, like-
Sam Lessin: It's not... The actual place that someone like me, and again, I'm a pretty aggressive user and I've built a lot of apps and, like, I think it's great, but I use it in a very specific way. The thing I'm actually spending a ton more money on, which the, the Wall Street's already figured out because they priced this in, is actually storage and database. It's not the actual agents. 'Cause, like, all of a sudden all this data that used to be not that useful is super useful, and so I'm like, "Okay, well now we have to save everything." And, like, that's the place where there's actually leverage in the system. So you know, I know they've already run up a bunch. Another missed trading opportunity, if you understood this early, is, like, it's the storage companies. Storage companies are gonna crush.
Dave Morin: No, just pure storage. But I mean, you're seeing this, right? Like, storage all the way up and down the stack is, like, sold out worldwide.
Sam Lessin: It's Seagate. It's, like, people like that, like, that are really-
Jessica: By the way, as a no- So as the, like, dumbest user of Cloud code i, in the category of least experienced technically, that is the thing that constantly surprises me about these services. Like, the, the, the thing that, like, my brain thinks they should do automatically that they don't is remember things. Like, it is counterintuitive to me that I actually have to tell them that, because no other service that I use operates that way. Like, I type in a Google Doc and, like, the concept of saving anything was erased a decade ago, but, like, we're back to it again, and I forget to do it a lot, and it's really annoying. Can you ask it to save everything it does automatically?
Sam Lessin: Yeah, I do that. I have it log everything. I also have... Like, every single request I make, I have it log all this data. I actually, hilariously, I briefly was spending $100 a day on a Twitter API by accident because I was having it log everything- ... and I had to, like, be like, "Oh, you don't need to do quite this much." But yeah, I mean, like, and look, the reality is it's kind of wild that Western Digital, Seagate, these stocks are ripping. They're up, like, you know, 1000%, right? Not 1000%, but they're up 100X, 100 to 101X in, like, the last month, right? Because everyone's kind of coming to Jesus that, like, actually this... It's gonna be energy and memory. Energy and memory is where the money is made.
Jessica: Oh, guys, here's some real-time analysis from the information team instead of just shooting my mouth off. Apparently Google Cloud is up because of Anthropic. There you go. So maybe this is all a little more circular than we thought.
Brit Morin: Well, and they just did a big... They just put 40 billion into Anthropic too.
Jessica: They're just servicing them.
Dave Morin: Or, or they're, they're service... They're serving the... They're serving TPUs into their cloud basically.
Jessica: Yeah. So b- They also are investing more, as is Amazon, and we have talked about my favorite battle of the week, guys. But what's also happening, and I don't know if this is the case with the Google Cloud deal, but Anthropic is so underserved in Compute that they're buying, like, in last-minute deals and on the spot market and all that kind of stuff, which is bad for their margin, but is good for the provider. So... And I don't know what percentage of Google's so-called beat, uh, is, is that... Is the... But if, if there... It could be some Anthropic overage in there, which is really interesting.
Sam Lessin: Well, this is, like, the big thing about all these prices and, like, you know, these values. Like, I do just need you to understand that people... This has been true for a while, but, like, there's just... People are just investing in stories. They're just narratives, and how strong the narrative is. They've no financial backing, like, to reality in most cases, and, like, Elon is the absolute king of this in terms of, like, what's going on. But it's like there was a... Did you see the Paul Tudor Jones thing today that was floating on the internet?
Dave Morin: I did see that.
Sam Lessin: I haven't actually watched the whole thing yet, but I watched part of it. It looks excellent, and he's basically like, "You can't invest in the S&P 500," right? Like, his basic thing is like-
Dave Morin: I wanted to ask you what you thought of this, Sam, and, and if you saw it.
Sam Lessin: It's makes total sense. He's like, "Look, you know, yes, on a 100-year basis, like, the S&P 500 has been a good bet," but at 22 times earnings or whatever, again, like, I don't want to misquote it although I'll misquote it. Like-
Dave Morin: It was 21 or 22. Yeah
Sam Lessin: ... it's, like, insane. Like, it's like we're so far off the standard that you need the six... To get to a positive, you need to be at 6 times every once in a while, and, like, we're so out of whack. So then what happens? Everyone's like, "Well, I have a bunch of money and it has to be stuffed somewhere, and I can't put it into the economy because it doesn't make any sense. So I'm just gonna store it in stories," right? And the way you store it in stories is with Elon or with Anthropic or whatever. So number-
Dave Morin: But that's also not good investing, which I think is perhaps what's dangerous right now, right? Like-
Sam Lessin: The question is what's dr- what's investing and what's trading anymore?
Dave Morin: If you can't be long the S&P 500 right now, then, like, what-
Sam Lessin: I don't... I think that's the thing is that you can't... Forget value investing. Like, you can't be long financial returns in any logical sense. And so as this thing-
Jessica: Hmm
Sam Lessin: ... spins out of control, you're just long narrative, right? And, like, everyone's a trader.
Jessica: Yes. How does that end?
Sam Lessin: Badly.
Dave Morin: It doesn't seem good. Yeah.
Sam Lessin: Badly unless it doesn't. Like, that's kind of the thing, right? Like-
Jessica: Badly unless it doesn't.
Dave Morin: I think that is the truth is that people are betting to the upside of that trade.
Jessica: Is this what we would call a risk-on market? What would we call this? Is by using... No?
Dave Morin: It's, it's not risk-on.
Sam Lessin: Yeah.
Jessica: Okay.
Dave Morin: Because the, the-
Sam Lessin: It's risk precursor
Dave Morin: ... the fundamentals aren't there. Yeah, the fundamentals aren't there, and so the only possible explanation is that people have convinced themselves that the demand for tokens is infinity and will continue to go up, and so put all money in that narrative. Like, that's basically what's going on.
Sam Lessin: Well, and the reality is the price of any of these things you're investing in has nothing to do with reality. It only has to do with the price that it already was and then where it's going, and therefore it's all just on story, right? Which is really scary because there's no global liquid fundamentals against that. But I also... Some of these stories, like the Catholic Church did okay for a few hundred years on stories. Like, you, you can have these, like, story bubbles.
Jessica: Hmm.
Dave Morin: Yeah.
Jessica: We had my colleagues, uh, um, we hosted an event on the New York Stock Exchange on Monday all about where we are, and it's specifically on financing AI and data centers. So wonky stuff, good sentiment stuff, and everyone's like, "About to burst, but we don't know when."
Dave Morin: Sam, I hadn't cons- Where did Sam go?
Brit Morin: Sam is... There he is. He's back.
Dave Morin: Sam, I had not con- I had not considered the ... idea that the Catholic Church's narrative that was so successful for multiple, whatever, many hundreds of years, was a doomer narrative, and that the Anthropic doomer narrative basically uses the exact same fear trick in order to create a similar narrative, and that maybe they have actually chosen the correct narrative technology to win.
Jessica: Dave, I'm gonna make an observation. You really wanna talk about Anthropic.
Dave Morin: I do.
Jessica: Is there more you wanna say right now?
Dave Morin: No.
Jessica: Okay. No, it's good. But, like, I think it's reflecting some sentiment that is broadening in the industry.
Dave Morin: I think it's just good to be balanced on all these things.
Jessica: I see, the good old balance hack, yes. Okay, we got through earnings. We talked AI pricing. What... And we got our trial. What else is happening in the world right now? I will say, for tennis fans, I interviewed Maria Sharapova this week, five-time Grand Slam champion, and she didn't wanna talk to me about... I wanted to talk to her about tennis and the status of Alcaraz's wrist. She laughed at me. She does not care about the status of Alcaraz's wrist. Hopefully it'll be fine for Wimbledon.
Brit Morin: I don't even know what that means.
Dave Morin: Alcaraz's, Alcaraz is hurt, Brit. He's been out.
Brit Morin: Oh.
Jessica: He's out. He's out for Roland-Garros. But anyway, she has a new podcast that we should plug here. It's called Pretty Tough, and I think it's pretty good. It is, yes, a sort of girl bossy women in business podcast. I'll tell you why in a second. But it's... I listened to the first interview, and it did not feel like-
Dave Morin: Why do athletes need podcasts?
Brit Morin: Everyone's trying to... Everyone's doing a podcast.
Sam Lessin: Jessica just listens to all of them, Dave.
Brit Morin: I don't have time for that many podcasts.
Jessica: I used to be... I, I probably listened to three podcasts a week, and I'd just rotate.
Brit Morin: I want an agent that can, like, take the 20 podcasts I care about and, like, cut the best parts of them into one good podcast.
Jessica: But that's not why I listen to podcasts, though. I listen to them to kill time. I listen to them for entertainment, not information.
Brit Morin: Yeah, but you just, there's so many.
Sam Lessin: Le- I gotta say, you should, um, for your boys, so you guys, I actually... I'll send you the link, lessonboypodcast.ai. I actually now... I've listened to more podcasts than I have in a long time because I just decided to make them for our kids. So now whenever they want to listen to something in the car, I just email my bot. I say, "Make a podcast on how Minecraft was made," or how, the history of Nintendo, or how EA Sports FC Mobile '26 was made, or Jetpack Joyride.
Jessica: It's pretty good, guys. I, I gotta say.
Sam Lessin: It's awesome. I've learned so much.
Jessica: Would you rather listen to, like, the same, you know, shitty kids podcast or be like, "No, I do wanna learn about this thing"? It's really good.
Sam Lessin: How Baseball Nine was built, it's so fascinating. And, like, I would never-
Brit Morin: It's kind of like a, the Acquired Podcast, but Lesson Boy style.
Sam Lessin: So I just basically, but I was like, I got sick of listening to my kids' stupid stuff, so I like literally now we just get in the car and I'm like, "What do you wanna learn about?" And then I just prompt it, "Make a podcast on blank," and within five minutes it's boom. And I will tell you, I've really enjoyed them.
Brit Morin: I like the one about Tetris, the inventor of Tetris. I wanna do that one.
Sam Lessin: It's great. They're all, like, five to 10 minutes, and they're really interesting.
Jessica: Sam used ElevenLabs voice, so it's sort of him but with some modulation. And I actually think putting some in our kids' voice would also be cute for them.
Brit Morin: Hmm.
Jessica: Like, they're like-
Brit Morin: That's a good idea
Jessica: ... they, they wanna hear them.
Brit Morin: But then your kids' voices are gonna be uploaded to the internet forever.
Sam Lessin: Yeah, I don't think we want that for their banking security, but...
Jessica: Okay, sorry, we don't... No, that's true. I didn't think about that, but-
Brit Morin: Just Sam's, Sam's voice for his banking security is fine, though. Wait.
Jessica: I mean, his voice is on the internet. That, so, like, unfortunately, but, like-
Brit Morin: Speaking of media and content, can we talk about the New York Times did the 30 greatest living American songwriters roundup, and I-
Jessica: I watched all the Taylor videos. They were excellent.
Brit Morin: I, me too. We also watched Jay-Z. I also wanna shout out Dolly Parton, Paul Simon, Bob Dylan. There's so many good... Bad Bunny. I thought that it was a really great sort of collection and package of content that I highly recommend people check out.
Jessica: Completely agree. I thought it was great, and I, you know, Taylor slayed. Like, she was so interesting.
Brit Morin: Yeah, she did good. I also wanna call out Elon Musk as his salary and comp package is now tied to the Mars colonization happening. So I feel like that bodes well in my favor for the 2040 bet.
Dave Morin: Brit's just worried about her bet with you, Sam.
Brit Morin: 2040 bet.
Sam Lessin: But you're still losing that.
Brit Morin: One human steps on Mars is the bet, $1 million.
Dave Morin: I'm counting on Sam's next secret project to pay for this bet the other direction.
Sam Lessin: Listen, Brit, here's the beautiful thing. If Elon lands on Mars and hits that comp package, I will have made so much money- ... that I won't even notice the million dollars that I owe you. So, like, we're all good. We're... That is a great emotional hedge to me.
Brit Morin: I feel like you just conceded. I feel like you just conceded the bet to me, so I'll take it.
Sam Lessin: No, it's an incredible emotional hedge. I'm either getting paid $1 million by Brit or I'm massively rich by 2040.
Jessica: I just really don't... Sometimes I don't have things to say, so maybe I shouldn't say them.
Sam Lessin: Well, you can say mean things. I can take it.
Jessica: No, no, it's not, it's not about that. I have more incoming reporting confirming this really is an Anthropic bounce.
Dave Morin: Bounce? Oh, on Google.
Jessica: For Google.
Sam Lessin: Bounce would imply it was down. I'd say it's a moon.
Jessica: It's a Anthropic... Okay. Well, what do, what do you guys more inside have cooking this weekend? Like, what, what's happening? You got any more concerts?
Sam Lessin: Wait, before we do that, can I tell you one other fun Anthropic story?
Brit Morin: Oh, gosh.
Jessica: Sure.
Sam Lessin: I had to text... I recently texted someone who used to work for me, um, 'cause someone was trying to get something fixed at Anthropic. I was like, "Oh yeah, this person works at Anthropic." And I texted him. This is a person who worked for me a long time ago. And when I pulled up the text thread, it was hilarious 'cause the last texts I'd had with him were, like, 18 months to two years ago, and he was deciding between two offers, one between Anthropic and the other, uh, like it was a st- a smaller startup, and he's, like, comparing the comp packages and what they were, the valuation of Anthropic. So I have all this data from him. And it's really funny 'cause I'm of course like, "Well, I think they're both overvalued," blah, blah, blah. And then I'm doing the math, I'm like, "Good for you. You just made a lot of money."
Jessica: I like that. Anything else cooking? We've got birthday parties and a tennis tournament over here.
Brit Morin: We- we've got birthday parties, and the Devil Wears Prada 2, and yeah.
Jessica: Maybe I'll go see that.
Brit Morin: Yeah.
Jessica: Maybe I'll go see that.
Brit Morin: You should.
Jessica: Um, I think I've seen-
Brit Morin: And the Michael movie. By the way, the Michael movie is apparently crushing even though the ratings are bad. It did like $100 million in opening weekend.
Dave Morin: What is a Michael movie?
Brit Morin: The Michael movie is about Michael Jackson, and his nephew or cousin or somebody actually plays him. But the whole Jackson estate is, like, split on this because, you know, the narr- they actually stopped the narrative by n- the '90s, so they didn't go into-
Dave Morin: No way. They are not split
Brit Morin: ... they didn't go into the craziness about what happened later.
Dave Morin: They are super excited about how much money they're making.
Brit Morin: Mm. No, there's some of the Jackson family that claims they were molested by Michael, like his nieces and nephews and things, and so they're like, this-
Dave Morin: Good times
Brit Morin: ... the other r- part of the family is just cashing in, and this guy was so messed up and... But then they're just telling the good part of the story. So anyway, I wanna see that one too.
Dave Morin: Who actually owns the IP? I mean, like all of the-
Brit Morin: The Jackson estate
Dave Morin: ... do they really?
Brit Morin: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Dave Morin: There's no private equity or no, no big- no large scale family offices involved in this capital stack? Like, I don't believe it.
Brit Morin: The Val Kilmer estate is the first to legally license his name and likeness into AI, and he's gonna be in an upcoming movie.
Jessica: Oh, guys, the Met Gala's next Monday. Have you heard the controversy?
Brit Morin: No.
Jessica: The, the Met Gala's no longer cool. I read it.
Brit Morin: Why, 'cause Anna's out?
Jessica: Well, Anna's, like, a toe out the door. I don't think she's really out the door, but there are a lot of people upset that Lauren Sanchez and Jeff Bezos, or Lauren Sanchez Bezos and Jeff Bezos are hosting this, and there are gonna be a lot of protests, a lot of anti-tech sentiment, and apparently they're not selling, uh, uh, tickets.
Dave Morin: Oh.
Jessica: I, I would still buy a ticket for the record if allowed to buy a ticket.
Dave Morin: Do, do they usually sell tickets to this?
Jessica: Yes. You pay a lot of money to go to the Met Gala.
Dave Morin: I thought you paid for a table.
Jessica: You can do either, yes. They're not selling tables or tickets.
Dave Morin: What are they selling?
Jessica: Well, they're not, they're not sell- they're not hitting their goals. They're not hitting their goals according to this article.
Dave Morin: Oh, I see. I see. People aren't buying. They're for sale. I'm like-
Jessica: Correct
Dave Morin: ... what is the business model?
Jessica: It is, it is a fundraiser for the Costume Institute. Anyway, I will be on the Instagram looking at the outfits, so I'm doing just fine with it.
Brit Morin: I'll be on.
Jessica: I just would like, you know, just to catch everyone up on that fact. So okay. Well, it's nice chatting with everybody. We have a whole quad here for the whole episode.
Dave Morin: Do you think Jason's son will go to the Met Gala next?
Jessica: Jason's son?
Dave Morin: Isn't he the Tron guy?
Brit Morin: I don't know what you're talking about.
Jessica: Oh, that guy. I don't know. Y- okay, yeah
Dave Morin: ... Justin's son.
Jessica: I see.
Dave Morin: Yeah, he backed the Tron, and then he bought all the Trump coins, and he, like, there's all... I just feel like he'll be the next person.
Brit Morin: I like when Sam does pop culture predictions. Probably, yeah, Sam, that's probably right.
Jessica: Well, dear listeners, thank you for joining us for another episode. We would love your feedback. May take it, may not, but, um, we appreciate it anyway.
Dave Morin: Or leave it 'cause that makes the number go up.
Jessica: And make number go up.
Dave Morin: By the way, you guys see that I bought us a bunch of subscribers on YouTube?
Jessica: Oh, no.
Dave Morin: It's so cheap. Wait, you did what? We have, like, 30,000 followers or more, maybe 40 now.
Brit Morin: No, we have 57,000 subscribers.
Dave Morin: And it's like, and what I figured out-
Jessica: What? How did you pull all that?
Dave Morin: It's, like, it cost, like-
Brit Morin: Welcome random followers
Dave Morin: ... $300. Here's the thing. It turns out, I tested this, if you put up... We should probably just buy, like, a few million. It's so cheap.
Brit Morin: Well, then we can charge for ads.
Dave Morin: Yeah, exactly. That actually makes me wonder about all of YouTube. No, no, the subscriber number on YouTube is clearly fake 'cause I just, like, literally paid 300 bucks. Now, Dave, I did figure something out important, which is I just tested for... I just, all I did is hit the promote button on four videos. Unsurprisingly, Brit and Jess massively outperform us on clicks. Hmm. Perfect. Right? That makes sense. We're putting you guys in front more. 100%. Like, you guys gotta be every thumbnail, and, like, we can just have whatever number of subscribers we want to invent on YouTube it turns out.
Brit Morin: That makes me sad for YouTube.
Dave Morin: Yeah, I thought YouTube was less gameable than this.
Brit Morin: Well, but let's game it while we can, and then we'll figure out monetization later.
Jessica: I just also wanna say I'm impressed with this gang. We do business by talk... The only times we talk about business are in one or two text messages a month where we ponder whether we should build one, or at the end of our episodes- ... to which I sometimes respond to the text message, "Who wants to put 15 minutes on the calendar to talk about making money for the podcast?" And everyone thumbs it up and then never responds. So-
Brit Morin: Jess, you know I'll get on a call with you to talk about that
Jessica: ... that's true. Brit proposes things we should spend money on, and I propose that we should make money before we spend money.
Brit Morin: I like to make money too.
Dave Morin: For what it's worth, I also, like, when I hit the button to promote these things, I actually have no idea whose credit card is connected to it. It's probably mine. I literally have no idea. I think it's mine.
Brit Morin: Who made the channel? That's through the credit card.
Dave Morin: I don't know, but whoever, like, you're gonna have a few hundred bucks of, like, tens of thousands of subscriber buys.
Brit Morin: It's less than all of our tokens, so it's fine.
Jessica: You know, that's an even better business model is not knowing who's paying. With that, don't listen to us for business advice, but do listen to us for tech advice 'cause most of the time we know what we're talking about, and we'll see you back here next week.
Dave Morin: Guys, we have, in the 200 bucks, 10,000 subscribers. This is unbelievable.
Jessica: Okay, I'm gonna end before we reveal some fraudulent behavior going on. Goodbye.
Brit Morin: Okay, bye, guys. If you enjoyed this show, please leave us a virtual high five by rating it and reviewing it on Apple Podcast, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Find more information about each episode in the show notes, and follow us on social media by searching for @moreorless, @davemorin, @lesson, @jlesson, and as for me, I'm @brit. See you guys next time. I also wanna call out Elon Musk 'cause his salary and comp package is now tied to the Mars colonization happening. So I feel like that bodes well-
Dave Morin: Yeah, narr- narrative, narrative, narrative
Brit Morin: ... in my favor for the 2040 bet.
Dave Morin: Brit's just worried about her bet with you, Sam.
Brit Morin: 20-
Dave Morin: I'm counting on Sam's next secret project to pay for this bet. Yeah. Listen, Brit, here's the beautiful thing. If Elon lands on Mars and hits that comp package, I will have made so much money that I won't even notice- ... the million dollars that I owe you.
Brit Morin: Great. All I care is about the million dollars. In fact-
Dave Morin: Well, that is a great emotional hedge to make
Brit Morin: ... I feel like you just conceded. I feel like you just conceded the bet to me