#154 — Elon Is the Best Financier of Our Generation
June 19, 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):
Sam Lessin: Anthropic's in trouble. Have you been following this?
Jessica: I think Anthropic's killing it. Like, you couldn't ask for better PR.
Sam Lessin: OpenAI burned 4 billion in the first quarter on revenue of 5.7.
Jessica: The thing that's so great about SpaceX is it's such an expansive story. Elon tried to mess with this a little bit with Dogecoin at one point. I saw this week, which I thought was quite funny, that Intercom, which renamed itself hilariously Fin AI, just got acquired by Benioff for, like, 3 billion.
Sam Lessin: Do you think the government should take equity stakes in AI companies?
Jessica: Like, why?
Dave Morin: 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.
Sam Lessin: Why, hello, friends. Welcome to More or Less. We're down two.
Jessica: It's less versus less. It's gonna be a real upper of an episode. Does this mean that I can't online shop for the entire thing?
Sam Lessin: I mean, I can monologue. I don't think the people want that, but you're welcome to, uh-
Jessica: The, the people don't know what they want.
Sam Lessin: Oh, my goodness. Okay. Well, the Morins... We actually have no idea where the Morins are, but they have a scheduled conflict, so no one should worry about the Morins. We're sure they're in good hands.
Jessica: Or just worry about them the same amount you'd worry about them normally.
Sam Lessin: Normally, yeah. This is our chance. I don't know, Sam, you missed the episode a few weeks ago where I got really spicy at Brit for her-
Jessica: I was ha- I was happy to hear that you did that
Sam Lessin: ... for her AI agent loving-ness. So I guess we, there's nothing to say 'cause we say it right to their face. But we are glad you are all here, and there's lots of news to talk about, so you are in luck. We've got the SpaceX IPO. We have the dra- uh, chapter number 10,000 in Anthropic's drama with the US government escalating quickly. Sam, you get to pick where we start. Where would you like to start?
Jessica: I mean, did anything happen other than the SpaceX IPO this week? I guess there's a Cursor acquisition, which is the same thing.
Sam Lessin: Which is the same thing. It turns out if your stock is really expensive... Yes, but let's go. Let's go, SpaceX. What, what's been your reaction to this epic IPO? We're at $2.5 trillion as of this taping.
Jessica: Trillies. Look, I mean-
Sam Lessin: Trillies
Jessica: ... for a long time, you could say love him or hate him, Elon's the best marketer of our generation. I think the new line might be love it or hate it, he's the best financier of our generation. Like, seriously, like, who's better at finance? Like, the reality is, is, like, this guy-
Sam Lessin: I think as CFO, Brett's pretty good, but yes, go ahead
Jessica: ... Brett, I'm sure, is wonderful, but, like, in terms... He's unbelievable what he's pulled off, right?
Sam Lessin: Yeah.
Jessica: Like, from a purely financial perspective. And so it's like, the thing I don't know, 'cause I've only met Elon in passing a handful of times in my life. I guess I had dinner with him, sitting next to him once when he was way less important, like 15 years ago, but is how intentional it is versus is it just Elon being Elon, that he's just so great in these lanes, right? And it's, it's a similar question I have with, like, Trump. Like, is Trump intentionally and strategically the greatest media mind of our generation, or is it just him being him works, you know, is, like, the upshot? And I, I think that's kinda my question with this-
Sam Lessin: It's a little bit of each. I mean, a little bit of each. But what-
Jessica: But it's-
Sam Lessin: As an investor, what impressed you so much about the SpaceX IPO? How, like they raised the money, price went up, like-
Jessica: Well, no, I mean, they, they, they hit all the notes, right?
Sam Lessin: Mm-hmm.
Jessica: And they controlled it beautifully out of the gate. They made everyone who tried to flip the stock in a day feel stupid, and a lot of people did kinda cycle it. And I mean, look, I think that ironically, like, I think Bill Ackman, I hate to give credit to Bill Ackman, but has the right line on this, which is like, it's val- it's, SpaceX is valuable because it's valuable, right? Which is the same story of Bitcoin. It's the same story of a lot of things, right? Um, and it's just a really interesting recursive thing. I saw someone joking on the internet about how, like, every junior PE analyst will now have in their slide that this thing will be valuable because it's valuable, right? But it's, it's an interesting... I don't know. It's just a wild... I mean, he basically, if you think about it, it's like he now has a currency that's massively-
Sam Lessin: Yeah
Jessica: ... valuable relative to any sort of DCF fundamentals of what he does, and his ability to leverage that is amazing. Like, you can start with, like, obviously Cursor is, like, the first obvious step. Like, you pay 60 billion for something. Remember when WhatsApp, WhatsApp got acquired for, like, 30, right?
Sam Lessin: Yeah.
Jessica: And that was, like, insane, right? This is-
Sam Lessin: Well, they had, like, 14 people.
Jessica: True, and Cursor has more than that, and they've raised more money. But nonetheless, I mean, it's, it's, this is another, like, it's an unbelievably huge number by any stretch of the imagination, except for when the denominator is 2.3 trillion and then you don't even notice it, right?
Sam Lessin: Yeah.
Jessica: And so it's just, like, a wild... I mean, that's an amazing move. I, the question for me is what else is he gonna go buy? 'Cause, and that, that really will make it the great financial move of the, of the century, right? Will be if you turn around, right, and use the excitement and the narrative, which by the way, again, narrative and th- th- there is, like, some reflexivity to this. But, like, you know, I, I wrote a long essay which seemed reasonably well received about, you know, different forms of value and how you have to take narrative value seriously financially now. And, and I, I think, like, it's just a really interesting story where the world decides that because of a story to give someone the firepower to then both fulfill the story, but then also, like, leverage in lots of ways, whether that's an AOL Time Warner or whatever it's gonna be, right?
Sam Lessin: Well, and also fact check, Facebook bought WhatsApp for an announced 19, and then it, when it closed it was about 21. So we're, we're in the same ballpark. We're in the same ballpark, right?
Jessica: We're 3X. W- Cursor's 3X WhatsApp. Now, what was, when you, if you wanna go, if you've got numbers in front of you, what was, what was Facebook's valuation at that point?
Sam Lessin: Great question.
Jessica: Right? 'Cause I think it was a much higher percentage. Obviously it was a much higher percentage.
Sam Lessin: Yeah.
Jessica: Right? But, like, that's the real math here-
Sam Lessin: Yeah
Jessica: ... right, to keep in mind is that, you know, Facebook paid whatever it was. If I had to guess, probably 10% of the company for WhatsApp at the time, 5%?
Sam Lessin: Yeah, about 10%.
Jessica: 10%. So that was a 10% at one. That was a huge deal. The equivalent- For SpaceX, we'd be paying $200 billion-
Sam Lessin: $200 billion
Jessica: ... for it or so.
Sam Lessin: Yeah.
Jessica: Right? So this is a steal, right? Like-
Sam Lessin: Yeah
Jessica: ... is the way to think about it.
Sam Lessin: Well, the obvious thing he's gonna acquire next is Tesla. I don't know what next is, but-
Jessica: Well, this is an interesting one, right? Because all of a sudden, you think about narratives, both T- Tesla and SpaceX are the two highest, I believe, like dollars per dollar of revenue or pro- whatever you wanna do, like things in the world, right?
Sam Lessin: Multiple? Multiple?
Jessica: Yeah, but there are different forms of multiple. There's EBIT-
Sam Lessin: Okay
Jessica: ... there's EBITDA, whatever. It's any, any multiple you're gonna come up with is the, the highest multiples ever.
Sam Lessin: Yes, yes.
Jessica: So now you're in this game of one narrative acquiring another narrative asset, where the interesting thing becomes in how those get combined is like which narrative do you believe more?
Sam Lessin: Right. Who- which narrative wins?
Jessica: Right. And, and the interesting thing with that, think about, think if you're like a retail trader. You're sitting there being like, "Okay, I think these things are gonna combine." Do you... What you wanna do is buy the one... You wanna buy the cheaper of the two.
Sam Lessin: Right. Right. Yeah.
Jessica: Right? Because you're gonna get marked up. It's just like a wildly interesting question of like if, if you have two narratives that are both Elon narratives, you think they're gonna come together, which y- I get how that happens, right? Plus, he'll love the ego of shooting for the world's largest company, which that'll end.
Sam Lessin: Right. Well, he's, he tweeted this week that they'll, SpaceX will reach a trillion dollars in revenue by maybe 2030. I have to check, but-
Jessica: Which again, like this is a classic like self-driving car buy whatever. It's like by the time it happens, like no one will remember he said that, right?
Sam Lessin: Yeah.
Jessica: This is like this interesting... Or they will, but no one will care because he'll have said 50 other things, which is the other beauty of the modern media, right?
Sam Lessin: Mm-hmm.
Jessica: Is, you know, the, the strategy is say as many things as possible because unlike, I mean, in, in the traditional media, which is gatekept, if you say enough stupid things, people stop publishing them, right? Or if you say wrong things, they'll remember. But, but in internet media, you can say whatever 'cause you can always issue a correction and always say another thing. So the only way, the way you unsay something is by saying another thing.
Sam Lessin: Yeah.
Jessica: Right?
Sam Lessin: Tesla's stock has been falling, which as this-
Jessica: Which is probably, which is probably 'cause Elon fanboys are moving into SpaceX, right?
Sam Lessin: Yeah.
Jessica: But the irony is, is that if you think they're gonna get merged, maybe you wanna be in Tesla.
Sam Lessin: Yeah.
Jessica: Right?
Sam Lessin: Well, it depends. It depends.
Jessica: What's, what's merging into what? Right? That's the irony of the whole thing.
Sam Lessin: Well, Elon has control of SpaceX.
Jessica: Correct. No, so he'll want it to merge into SpaceX 'cause he has more control. Which again, is wild. Like just think of a scenario like, okay, I have two things. One I control, one I do not control, right? I will wrest control of one of them by merging it into the thing. I mean, it's kind of wild, like the whole thing. But this goes back to the whole like it's the greatest financial strategery, and I just am not sure how intuitive it is for him, right? Or how, like... Like I'll give you an example, like Bitcoin. I would argue that a lot of what we're seeing right now in the market really started with Bitcoin, right? Because I remember back-
Sam Lessin: The, the narrative-driven
Jessica: Narrative assets.
Sam Lessin: Yeah.
Jessica: Like I remember this is in the early days, and every fancy person in the world, you talk about Bitcoin, right? And they'd say-
Sam Lessin: Hmm
Jessica: ... "There's no value because it, there's no cash flows, and like no way number go." Like they were just so-
Sam Lessin: Yeah, yeah
Jessica: ... like almost everyone. The, and the, the people who got rich on it were the ones who were taking the contrary and bet on the value of narrative, right? And the value of internet money and demand.
Sam Lessin: And it was valuable 'cause it was valuable was basically... And they didn't worry store value, medium of exchange, yada, yada.
Jessica: Well, yeah. Like I mean, people try to... Like if anything, the people who so who tell the story too much, like the, the Bitcoin's weakness, right, is because when you say it's valuable 'cause it's valuable, I understand that, supply and demand. The second like, "Well, it's a way to move money glo-" Like is it? It's kind of a shitty way to move money.
Sam Lessin: Mm-hmm.
Jessica: Like it's not like your future payment rails. And so like, and i- if anything, what always happens with Bitcoin, right, and a lot of cryptocurrencies is you buy the hype, right? So people get excited about the narrative, but then as soon as the thing happens, you sell the news, right? 'Cause everyone's like, "Well, we got ETFs or whatever. We got, you know, whatever, and it doesn't do anything," right? And so like there's this whole like understanding the cycle. That trained a lot of people, right, to think about these things. I think Bitcoin, you go from Bitcoin to obviously Eth and other cryptocurrencies, but that's how you also get GME, GameStop.
Sam Lessin: Hmm.
Jessica: That's also how you get meme coins.
Sam Lessin: Right.
Jessica: That's also how you get SpaceX. And so I guess the question for me is like-
Sam Lessin: But like some of those things have not ended well. Some jury's out. So what, what's your SpaceX prediction 12 months from now?
Jessica: I think the SpaceX... The thing that is so great about SpaceX is it's such an expansive story.
Sam Lessin: Mm-hmm.
Jessica: Right? It's like something people wanna believe in. Set aside the Elon antics, of which I think there have been less recently, but you know, there are antics. Here's the thing. If you said to someone carte blanche, "Do you want the next, first trillionaire in the world to be the rocket guy?"
Sam Lessin: Mm-hmm.
Jessica: You'd be like, "Yeah, of course I fucking want the rocket guy to be the trillionaire." Like that's the science fiction narrative we want, right?
Sam Lessin: Mm-hmm.
Jessica: And so like there's always like asterisks on everything, and it's complicated, but like I think if you just think about this stuff as like a scoped out thing, I think there's like a lot of depth. And there, there's also like interestingly the other th- the other lesson from Bitcoin, and candidly, I think Elon tried to mess with this a little bit with Dogecoin at one point, if you remember Doge.
Sam Lessin: Oh, Doge. I do, yeah.
Jessica: Right, and his obsession with that briefly, which is now like a tiny spitting like side, side quest, if that. The best way to get people to be loyal to you, to you is to make them a lot of money, right? It's the bread and circuses move, right? And so like everyone who looks at their... And like, why will SpaceX be valuable? Well, one, SpaceX will be valuable because it's, it's a great story, 'cause people wanna support it, people narrative, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But second, everyone and their mother was privately in SpaceX. Everyone held SpaceX.
Sam Lessin: Yeah, it's remarkable.
Jessica: Right?
Sam Lessin: Yeah.
Jessica: Everyone owned it. Like and so as a result, everyone's like, "Well, I kinda want it to work because I own it."
Sam Lessin: Mm-hmm.
Jessica: Right? So regardless of how I feel about X, Y, and Z or the narrative, it's like I've got a stake in the success. And like that is the, the ultimate move to bring people along is like, you know, people talk about platforms, right, a lot. The definition of a platform being that the people on the platform make more money than the software itself, right? So like the reason that's so powerful, the reason why like Facebook likes to have the small business army, right, or Google has its community or da-da-da, is because there's this whole ecosystem of people who are profiting on your success. You have people cheering for you, right? And the problem for big companies becomes the second you don't have people cheering for you, right, like you're in trouble. Now, the thing that's interesting about SpaceX, and to some degree Tesla, but really SpaceX, is from a like product perspective, I guess probably SpaceX has some ecosystem around it and actually growing at this point, but the ecosystem, let's take Tesla. The ecosystem of Tesla- ... is not that strong. It's not like Tesla's making all these other people lots of money, right? Tesla's making itself whatever it makes.
Sam Lessin: Yeah, far narrower.
Jessica: But the shareholders are the market, right? And so all of a sudden, you have all these Tesla shareholders, the Elon fanboys who bought into Elon and the cult of Elon, it's worked for them. They've made money on it, so they're completely excited about that, right? Like, it's, it's like they're a part... That is, the stock is the platform, right? And so for me, I think SpaceX is interesting 'cause the stock is the platform for retail now. But, uh, unlike Space- uh, unlike Tesla, and I don't know the details here, the net of private investors that have made a shit ton of money in the last week is so big, right? Because the capital base was so big, and then he looped everyone in and made sure that even the people that should've lost money, like on xData, don't, 'cause he fold them all in. You get to this thing where, like-
Sam Lessin: Right
Jessica: ... everyone's like, "Well, I guess we kind of want Elon to be successful," right? 'Cause it's kind of in our interest, too.
Sam Lessin: Yeah. I think there's a lot of truth to that, and also, I mean, that's the flip side of being private for so long. Like, we talk about, you know, all these companies staying private for so long, but they do amass, not sizable in terms of the whole TAM of investing, but in terms of the private markets, a lot of investors. Couple weeks before the IPO, when I was talking to the world's largest asset managers about the SpaceX IPO, they said, "Look, you know, we're gonna get as much as we can," because there just aren't that many 20X stories in the market now.
Jessica: But the idea that you could call something that, that's a $2 trillion story a 20X story-
Sam Lessin: And by then-
Jessica: Yeah
Sam Lessin: ... you know, the numbers were even, the speculation was closer to one. But point taken. No, it's wild, but it's also true that, you know-
Jessica: Yeah, yeah. This is a, this is interesting. You, you can put $100,000 into something and have 1,000X, right? You normally can't put a billion dollars into something and have any Xs, right? Like, and that's kind of like there are very few of those types of opportunities. That, that's just 'cause of the... This is like, I think other people say this as just like when you have the $23 billion TAM slide in their S1, which is hilarious. It's really funny, right? But it's also just like that's the story. The story is look at this beautiful picture.
Sam Lessin: I think there was a video, too, 'cause you gotta have videos in your roadshow deck.
Jessica: And like by the way, the TAM is so big that we can argue that the TAM is... You know, again, the average, I always like use, make this point for other things, which is like, you know, there's a big difference between median outcome and mean outcome, right? And the median outcome for SpaceX might be negative, right? You believe the TAM is infinity, right? And you believe it can own all the things, and the mean outcome is actually quite positive. And so if you just think about it as like a gambling, which all this stuff is just gambling at some point, I mean, like in terms of how things go. You know, what you really just want is a really high mean outcome, even if it's low probability, because if number is infinity, like again, the mean of zero and infinity is infinity, even if the median outcome is zero, right? And like I think that's kind of what you see here, and everyone gets that, and everyone's terrified on a retail basis of missing the swerve, right?
Sam Lessin: Yeah.
Jessica: Um, which is how you get these values.
Sam Lessin: So I put this question to you over the weekend and I was like, "What does it mean? What are the second-order effects? What does it mean for other companies?" And you were like, "No, I don't think it means anything." Like, your point was that the Elon universe is the Elon universe. It operates based on the laws of Elon, and there aren't, like, broader lessons for other companies or broader impacts. Do you still feel that way? 'Cause I feel like there's a broader impacts, but what's your point of view?
Jessica: I think there might be a broader impact on the ways people talk about and the types of companies they start, right?
Sam Lessin: Uh-huh.
Jessica: Um, but I think it's, like, subtle. It's like, let me give you an example. Like I think in our generation, like so we were a year ahead of Mark Zuckerberg in college, right? And it's kinda wild. Like in our era, the number of Harvard grads that went on to found companies, some of, several multibillion-dollar companies, is like astronomical, right? And like there's a bunch of reasons for that. Some of them are timing and technological and blah, blah. But it, it, you know, uh, 2008 didn't hurt. But I honestly do believe there was like a Mark effect, right? Where he was like, "Oh, that's possible," right? So like, "Why am I toiling away at Katz and Bach Partners?" Right? 'Cause clearly that guy did it and I saw him in class, right? If that makes sense. So I think there's gonna be a bunch more people being more ambitious, right? And crazier in what they're doing. Now, that's actually, like, probably great. You know what I mean? Like I kinda want, you know, the, I kinda want more am-
Sam Lessin: Yeah, I like that.
Jessica: But I think that's the positive side, and I think there will be an effect there in terms of more ambitious things, more capital-consumptive things, which by the way, venture capitalists, at least real ones, don't care about. They want that, 'cause like that lets... They can be dealt in more, right? Like, so there's, like, gonna be like a bunch of effects that way. There'll be a bunch of people who go in completely opposite direction, right? Who are just like cash flow, cash flow, cash flow. This stuff is all crazy. I don't wanna be in, like, these crazy lands. But I think the middle drops out, right? Like I saw this week, which I thought was quite funny, that Intercom, which renamed itself hilariously Fin AI, just got acquired by Benioff for like $3 billion. I, again-
Sam Lessin: For the close listeners, Sam started an AI company called Fin. It wasn't AI, though.
Jessica: Well, it wasn't, we didn't... We called it AA- It was, we literally called it AAI, artificial, artificial intelligence. But it was a chat interface with a lot of really cool tech and humans li- By the way, we did a lot of the stuff Facebook's getting yelled at, which is monitoring tens of thousands of people to build workflows. Like we, we did all this stuff a generation ago.
Sam Lessin: They clawed some of that back, by the way.
Jessica: So like we did this stuff a generation ago, which I find very funny 'cause it's now something of the same name getting acquired, but whatever. We had a better domain name 'cause we actually had fin.com instead of fin AI. What's that?
Sam Lessin: Ugh.
Jessica: What I was gonna say is like my reaction watching that acquired, get acquired for $3 billion was like how unbelievably boring. You know what I mean? Like that was my reaction, like, looking at it. I'm like, okay, like in the era where the, where the week, this week's SpaceX IPO and like these people are playing these wild games, and then there's like wildly profitable stuff. I mean, how do you convince an engineer to work on Fin AI, Intercom, Benio- It's like just awful, right? And so like for me, that's the interesting thing is like the middle just drops out. I think it becomes incredibly hard to recruit for. E- And like it's also just like I don't know how you inspire anyone to do anything like that. You know what I mean? Like that was the, the brilliance of, of SpaceX There's a lot of brilliances at SpaceX early on, but one of them I think, and I don't-- Again, this goes back to the whole was this intentional or did this just happen? Which is there's a lot of people who love space and rockets 'cause they're awesome, right?
Sam Lessin: 'Cause they're cool.
Jessica: 'Cause they're cool. When Elon started SpaceX, what are your options? Your options are work for NASA, which is super prestigious, but must kinda suck, right?
Sam Lessin: Yeah.
Jessica: Or what? Nothing. So like even if you don't like Elon, even if you like don't really like Sp- you're willing to work, if you're into rockets, you're like, "I guess I'm gonna go work for Elon and work 1,000 hours a ni- you know, like I'm gonna work infinitely. My life's gonna suck, whatever." I can-- He can push people so much harder 'cause he's the only game in town if you really care about something, right?
Sam Lessin: Right.
Jessica: And that's like a very good place to be from a recruiting perspective. So I just wonder like with a lot of these companies, like you have to find your tribe of customers. You also have to find your like tribe of employees and team members, and I don't know how you do that for boring shit, right, in 2026. You know?
Sam Lessin: He's also got The Boring Company, but yes, maybe tunnels aren't boring. But no, I think you nailed it. I remember visiting SpaceX's... It was probably way more than 10 year, 10 years ago? No, more. Their Hawthorne facility factory and like it's just pretty cool.
Jessica: It's so cool.
Sam Lessin: What I remember from that interview is Elon had three different protein shakes over the course of it. Three diff- he went through three whole protein shakes that were delivered.
Jessica: That's good.
Sam Lessin: And so if we were worried 10 years ago about his protein intake, we ought not to have been. It's a fascinating moment, like the, the hot takes and, you know, many of them are hot takes. Like I, I'm also, you know, in the lead-up to these IPOs, they're like the poster children. They're precedent-setting. They're gonna set the benchmark. You know, they're gonna set the roadmap, the playbook for Anthropic and OpenAI, which are waiting in the wings and privately whispering timeframes that are quite sooner rather than later. And now we're all-- But we're also like... Like I'm really pushing the information teams to say what it means, and I'm getting a lot of like, "Eh, it's Elon." I'm like, "No, I think there's more," but we'll see.
Jessica: I mean, I-- Look, we'll, we'll see what... I mean, I have a hard time... I think it'll be fascinating to see what happens with Anthropic and OpenAI, right?
Sam Lessin: Mm-hmm.
Jessica: The easy answer is number go up. Sure, like we can now do-
Sam Lessin: Yeah
Jessica: ... this at a multi-trillion. Like sure, you know what I mean? Like why not?
Sam Lessin: Yeah.
Jessica: Right? And by the way, there is some sort of weird wealth effect, right? Where like if you get rich on one, people like... Peop- on one hand, it's like the liquidity has to come from somewhere. On the other hand, when people's numbers are bigger, they invest more, right? And so there's like an interesting recursion in both directions. In some ways, the problem with like OpenAI but in Anthropic is they have real businesses, so people will-
Sam Lessin: Right
Jessica: ... value them as having real businesses.
Sam Lessin: So you can actually apply some multiple to cash flows and decide what it's worth. Yeah.
Jessica: Yeah, you, you like... Whereas the, uh... You know, and that's, I think, a lot of the fear-mongering of early OpenAI that's kinda become Anthropic and the, "Oh, whoever's ahead in 2026 will have this infinite flywheel," blah, blah, blah. That is the storytelling you have to add, right, to infinite TAM and to why isn't this just a business I evaluate as a cash machine, right, effectively? And like you're like, "Ooh, as a cash machine, that's a tough one." You know? That's like becomes the real question.
Sam Lessin: We reported, by the way, last night that OpenAI burned $4 billion in the first quarter on revenue of 5.7, so it will be a test. It'll be a test.
Jessica: But it's like, it's funny 'cause like even that, like y- people anchor on numbers. And when you're like-
Sam Lessin: Yeah
Jessica: ... "Oh, well, something's worth $2 trillion that does $20 billion in revenue," you're like, "I don't care if you spent $4 billion, whatever." You know what I mean? Like I think that becomes... Like there's like a very, um, like troglodyte, maybe troglodyte's not the right word. But there's like a very like, I don't know, like retard max version of all of this, where you're just like, "Whatever. Like enjoy. Spend a bunch of money. Like there'll be more."
Sam Lessin: I did ask i- in our back channel, like i- if the SpaceX IPO makes it harder or easier for other startups to go public. And the, I, I don't know what I was expecting, but uh, several people chimed in harder in the short term because the comps are kind of like not great.
Jessica: I mean, my company Teamshare is just listed today or maybe tomorrow.
Sam Lessin: How'd it go? They have listed or they haven't listed?
Jessica: You know, it's a SPAC transaction, so I don't really understand how it works. But like, so like the ticker hasn't updated, but I think the merger is complete. But it's, it's traded up. It's fine. It's tiny compared to... It's not even a month of, uh, of OpenAI's burn.
Sam Lessin: Yeah. There you go.
Jessica: I just think there's like two very different stories. There's like a cash f- there's like a real business story, and there's a narrative story, and right now we're open for narratives.
Sam Lessin: Okay. Open for narratives. I think you're right, too. I think looking at Tesla as an acquisition makes sense, but I think the other, another question is what else?
Jessica: Yeah, and I was, I was... I mean, the question for me is like, again, you have to protect the narrative, right? So you can't buy something that breaks the ambition and becomes a real company, if that makes sense. Like you have to buy, you have to only... You can't... I think this is part of the challenge of narratives is like you can't, you can't AOL Time Warner it, right? Like AOL Time Warner was you have like a massively inflated currency in AOL, and they buy a super real company, Time Warner, and merge them, and basically shift all the value from-
Sam Lessin: Right
Jessica: ... Time Warner to AOL. That, that's a very clever hedge, right? Like effectively where you hedge out your inflated currency into real assets. That would break the dream. He can't just buy a unionized whatever, right?
Sam Lessin: Right.
Jessica: That's like a cash flowing way. It has to be something that fits into the, the Spidey universe, right? That makes it. That's why Cursor works, because Cursor like it fits into the universe of things effectively in a productive way where, where it's not a real business either, you know?
Sam Lessin: Yeah. Well, I'm actually int- I think one open question is what is his like owned and operated frontier AI strategy versus data center strategy? Like is he gonna stay in the game of trying to make Grok a competitor to-
Jessica: Does it even matter? I mean, this is the question, like I gotta go back to like what mat- what actually matters. Like we're so obviously moving beyond the game where anyone thinks that like one model will rule them all. The future is multi-model. You mix them together. You think about routing to the right model in the right circumstance. Like there's no one God model. Like that's clearly where we're going, right? Like the Chinese open source models will be able to do 90% of the heavy lifting. Maybe you'll have some specialized models around thought to be slightly better at X, Y, and Z, but be 100 times more expensive and so you'll route to it. And like, and so it's just not... The question on narrative rotation is like, are we at a point where like it just doesn't, like the story of can I build the best, biggest model, like does it even matter anymore? Or is it like, yeah, you wanna own like the machines that do matrix multiplication 'cause it's infrastructure. There's value to like having the capacity to multiply large numbers. You wanna use all the models, kinda done, you know?
Sam Lessin: So I kind of get that. At the same point, like I don't really see this like erosion of open source and other models into the market share of the frontier models yet. And I feel like it's coming. I, I, because the cost of the frontier is so high, and that vision of the world like makes a lot of sense to me. But I think you can look at the last several months and see the opposite pattern, which is that the frontier is actually gaining share.
Jessica: I don't know that that's true. I think these, all these studies are like quite flawed, right? Like is my sense. I, I don't... I would love to get to the ground truth of what the dynamics are that are happening, but here's what I can tell you.
Sam Lessin: Are you seeing companies swap in open source? Is that-
Jessica: Everyone's talking about it, and my sense is that-
Sam Lessin: I know, but are they doing it?
Jessica: I think so, but like not in like... I, I think it's hard to measure is the honesty. I w- I will say that like OpenRouter, which is probably the poster child-
Sam Lessin: Yeah
Jessica: ... for this, is growing like crazy, and the valuation's way up and is looking good. There's companies like DigitalOcean. Talk about another... Sam, I'm so bad at trading stocks. It's like wild how bad I am at trading stocks. You have been talking about DigitalOcean for like eight months, and how like it's the core engine I use and whatever else.
Sam Lessin: Yeah, you helped set, you set me up on it.
Jessica: Look at the stock price. Probably should've bought some.
Sam Lessin: Okay. Well, we can analyze your trading habits.
Jessica: 'Cause people just in the last like month, they came out with great guidance, and they re- they basically got recast from being a slow-growing infrastructure provider to like an AI platform, which I could have told you 'cause I was using it that way the entire time, and the stock is like ripping, and now I'm behind the ball on it. But like-
Sam Lessin: I think you just have to believe in yourself, Sam. Just believe.
Jessica: Yeah, I know. I... Who knew that my problem is a lack of belief in my own self?
Sam Lessin: Yeah. Yeah, who knew?
Jessica: But look, what I was, what I was gonna say about them is like they just o- opened up a whole new set of endpoints, which are just like mixing models, right? Where like yeah, just like let us front them into... And the, the physics of it makes sense, right? Like-
Sam Lessin: Of course
Jessica: ... if you just think about the physics of all this, like you're multiplying big numbers, the open source is catching up. There's no cost to shipping it like energy. There's no regulatory capture. Like of course you're gonna mix them for the lowest possible cost, you know?
Sam Lessin: Yeah. I agree. I'm just curious why it hasn't happened yet. And maybe it is happening or-
Jessica: Or maybe it is, but the measurement... I, I think the measurement's really suspect on what's happening on a lot of this stuff.
Sam Lessin: So what's the right measurement? Like tokens generate, like-
Jessica: No, 'cause the to- not all tokens are the same, right? So it's like very hard to like baseline. I mean, th- this is really the economics problem of the entire thing, right? Which is we don't have the right language for top- measuring it. We don't have the right measure language for talking about productivity. Even we don't even have the right language for actually doing like what type of problem is this. Is this like an asymptotic problem, or is it an exponential problem? What's the value of being right versus wrong? Like I, I, I wrote a little mini essay about this, but I, I really believe like if I were in, in college, one, I'd be taking economics, and two, I would be doing a ton of research and trying to like, you know, write papers and get involved in the question of like tokenomics, not like, like true tokenomics, the economics of tokens, because I think that is gonna be like an enormous area of financial breakthrough, but also like it's a great way to win a Nobel Prize.
Sam Lessin: Yeah. Amen. Good topic to study. Two quick other AI topics. Should we discuss what's going on in Meta? I think we need to discuss it.
Jessica: What's happening at Meta?
Sam Lessin: Seems like tough times over there. Wired had a great story that kinda morale is low in AI, people are leaving, a lot of all hands where executives are promising to improve morale and better snacks. Like what is this? Put, con- put this in the cycle for us.
Jessica: Well, I don't really know any of the details, and like, as you know, I will like... I'm a huge Facebook bull long term. But I ha- had to really go say, like here's what I think is probably happening, is like I wonder how it feels to be like a product engineer at Meta right now, right? Like if you think about it, like I'd actually argue in terms of narratives, remember Meta had Facebook at the time, had probably one of like the best possible narratives. Remember "Make the world more open and connected"?
Sam Lessin: I do.
Jessica: That was awesome, right? Like if you think about like in, like I worked at, at Meta, at Facebook in that era.
Sam Lessin: I also remember the era of increasing empathy in the world. Do you remember that?
Jessica: Yeah, that was, but that was less compelling. I mean, that like-
Sam Lessin: Yeah
Jessica: ... if you think about like narratives, like companies that are old go through several of them. But like if you think about it, the early Facebook, which was so inspiring, everyone worked so hard and really believed in it, right? Was this like mantra of like, what are we doing? It's like we're making the world more open and connected. And that was not inspiring to everyone, but that was deeply inspiring in that era to-
Sam Lessin: Yeah
Jessica: ... the people who worked there, who worked-
Sam Lessin: Definitely
Jessica: ... really hard and really cared about that narrative. And I do wonder like if the problem, when you think about morale, like you can make people work really hard and do really shitty things if they believe in what they're doing. Like if they're like, "I'm here and I'm, I signed up for this"-
Sam Lessin: This would be the Elon playbook.
Jessica: This is the play... Well, this is-
Sam Lessin: Yeah.
Jessica: The funny thing is, this was the Mark playbook. I mean, Mark, "Make the world open and connected," which I believe was him personally, like great, right? And like when you have that narrative, like you just have such tailwinds on everything, right? And the problem with people, right? Or like smart people who have options, right? Is you're like, "Okay, like I'm at Meta. I signed up in some form 20 years in because I believed in social software, helping people connect, or helping people," you know, whatever, whatever it was that brought you, which was not as crisp in 2026 as it was in 2010, right? Post-Cambridge Analytica and whatever other scandals. But like if you think about that, like you're like, "Okay, now we're working on AI." And you're like, "But do I wanna work on AI? Like do I believe-"
Sam Lessin: Right.
Jessica: "Like didn't I, wasn't I here to work on social software? Like what am I doing?" Right? And I think that's like kind of the thing- I mean, I've talked about this before as, like, the meaning gap with AI, but, like, I just think people need to do things they really, really care about. This is the thing I always talk about with startups too, is I'm like, you know, when people come and pitch baby companies, sometimes they sound like business school cases where you're like, "That's a good business, but why on earth do you care about this?" You know? Like, what, like, what? Like, who cares, right? You really need that level of passion to keep an organization happy and successful and make it win. And like, I mean, you have that with the information. It's like you can-- Lots of people are gonna have different opinions, but ultimately, like, the reporters who work at the Information, like, deeply believe in what you do, which is why they do it.
Sam Lessin: Yep.
Jessica: Right? And why they work for you, right? That's like the, I think the big differentiator is you, you just have to have... You either have to pay people so much money they don't care, right?
Sam Lessin: Mm-hmm.
Jessica: They believe in getting rich. Like, that's the Wall Street or the hedge fund answer, right? Or you know, one of my favorite examples, if you find founders who are working on, like, online gaming, right? It's fine as long as they're in it and they're like, "I'm here to make maximum money," and if they're honest about that, right? Like they're like, "Oh yeah, that's what I care about. I'm here for money." And then you get a certain type of people that do a certain set of things based on that belief. Ri- But, but if you're not doing that, y- your job is to filter to the people who, like, actually give a shit about your mission, understanding that most people don't, right?
Sam Lessin: Yeah. Okay. That-- We'll watch Meta. I feel like there are gonna be more shoes to drop there without knowing anything. It just seems like a tough time.
Jessica: They just need to find what that crisp mission is and then, like, resort their human capital to people who are like, "I'm in," you know? Is my sense.
Sam Lessin: Well, the mission around AI that Mark used to successfully recruit a lot of top talent a year ago was this idea of, like, a personal super intelligence. Like, he really-- And he talks publicly about this all the time, that, you know, so many of the frontier AI models are focused on, like, productivity maxing. But he thinks that humans are gonna find far more use cases and gravitate to more use cases of AI.
Jessica: Look, and I say this as a huge, enormous fan of his and believer in him and, like, the whole thing. I just... It's not as crisp as make the world more open and connected.
Sam Lessin: Yeah. I agree. I agree. Anthropic's in trouble. Have you been following this?
Jessica: Are they, or are they doing incredible at marketing?
Sam Lessin: Yeah, we're talking about them again and again and again and again.
Jessica: I think Anthropic's killing it. They've successfully released a mo- Like, you couldn't ask for better PR, right?
Sam Lessin: Well, they haven't released the model.
Jessica: Even better, they don't have to pay for it.
Sam Lessin: No, we can't use it. We can't use Fable.
Jessica: But isn't that even better? Like, the best-
Sam Lessin: So they're not-- Their, their servers aren't burning right now.
Jessica: That would be the equivalent of, like, Elon getting to say, "Oh, I definitely can go to Mars, but I'm not going to because someone told me, told me I'm not allowed to."
Sam Lessin: Oh, yeah. That's pretty.
Jessica: It's like the best possible marketing. Like, it's like-
Sam Lessin: That's pretty funny
Jessica: ... I would love to release things that everyone believes are so powerful that I'm not allowed to release them, and therefore don't have to pay for them, but you're gonna sign up and use my other stuff.
Sam Lessin: And you're right. The second that thing comes out, we're all gonna be like, "Oh my God, what was so great about it?"
Jessica: They literally have little things on their-- I saw this 'cause I happened to log in to the actual website, uh, Anthropic recently, and, like, they have a little thing being like, "Fable 5 is disabled." I'm like, "That's the greatest marketing I've ever seen." Like, they should literally be making ads being like, "Fable 5 is disabled 'cause it's too good," right?
Sam Lessin: Yeah.
Jessica: And you're like, I don't know. What more do you want? Like, I think people, that people are much smarter than, like, the public gives them credit for, right? Like, a lot of times, I think people, like, overread into things and think that, like, there's some great strategery when there isn't. In this case, it's like, I mean, this is perfect, and I'm sure they're doing it 100% on purpose, you know?
Sam Lessin: Yeah. Well, it's fascinating. We had a story over the weekend that Amazon had reached out to the government finding some vulnerabilities, and then someone else reported they only reached out to the government after Dario didn't pick up the phone call, which makes no sense. And then someone else reported it was part of their regularly scheduled meeting with the government. But now you have Anthropic's own partners that are involved in kind of talking about, you know, this model. Although they weren't necessarily talking about the power of it. And I think one of the most interesting things to come of this latest round with Anthropic in DC is the growing scrutiny on foreign nationals inside AI companies and what they can have access to. The government's now said that foreign nationals inside Anthropic can't have access to it. I kinda worry about that. I, I, I think we'd be in a very bad place if all of a sudden the software you have access to working on is dependent on your nationality when you're employed by a US company. That seems bad.
Jessica: It's probably bad for the US companies, right? Probably, right? Like, I think that's the only way it's bad.
Sam Lessin: Yeah. We've benefited from talent around the world.
Jessica: Yeah. It really just depends, like, if you actually think these things are, like, uniquely powerful or not, right? If you're like, "Ooh, we've invented dark matter," and, like, it's impossible for someone else to invent it unless they steal it. If it's, if it's, um... Oh God, what's the, um-- God, why am I blanking on this? Who stole fire from the gods?
Sam Lessin: No, I don't know. Um-
Jessica: Oh, come on. This is, like, one of the most important Greek myths. Um-
Sam Lessin: Sorry, I don't have all the-
Jessica: But I'm blanking on it
Sam Lessin: ... Prometheus.
Jessica: Prometheus, thank you. It's like, if this is, like, a Promethean thing where, like, the gods have fire and your only job is to make sure that Prometheus doesn't steal it, then sure, keep the foreign nationals out. Reasonable. But, like, I don't f- Like, I think it's much more likely that it's kinda like the four-minute mile, right? Which is like, once you know it's doable, other people can do it, and they will do it. In which case, like, that's a stupid strategy, right? 'Cause, like, they'll just make their own fire.
Sam Lessin: Yeah. Well, that's what's happening in chips and China.
Jessica: And this is like, look, if you go back, like, I remember the, before Nvidia, like several years ago, people really poo-pooed Nvidia 'cause they're like, "Ah, yeah, they're ahead, but it's easy. Like, we can all make these chips," right? And, like, it turns out, like... And, and like everyone's like, "Ah, whatever. It doesn't, you know, they're, they'll be fine. Like, it's a 12-month trade, and, like, it's not gonna sustain." And, like, that actually abstractly might eventually be true, right? But it's turned out to be not true on a several year basis. Like, it's turned out to be much harder, right? And, like, there's com- more compounding people realize. So I think this is, like, this is the big balance in, like, a lot of these things. I mean, the same thing with rockets. I mean, like, you know, you brought up Elon. It's like Elon week. It's, the last few have been. It's like, are the rockets a moat? Right? It's like, on one hand, they shouldn't be, right? But on the other hand, it's like Bezos' shit keeps blowing up, right? And so, like, maybe they are a mode, you know? Like, and that, that becomes the question is, like, what actually is competitive and defensible and what isn't? And, like, your belief system around that is, like, highly... then drives your activities around, like, do you keep foreign nationals out or do you, like, let them in? Like, what do you do? Like, all these things are downstream of that.
Sam Lessin: Do you think the government should take equity stakes in AI companies?
Jessica: No, because I don't... Like, why, is, like, kind of the upshot, you know? It's like, it's not, um... Like, I don't understand the rationale for doing it in them and not in other things, if that makes sense. There's lots of critical infrastructure.
Sam Lessin: Yeah. Well, they- they've ended up with positions from bailouts and that kind of thing.
Jessica: But then they get rid of them. Like, they don't like-
Sam Lessin: Yeah. Yeah
Jessica: ... they, like, they buy them out, and that was, like, a big no-no at the time. That was, like, a huge deal, like-
Sam Lessin: I guess Intel would be
Jessica: ... I, I don't know. I think, to me, it's like what's the... Like, okay, if you told me, from a sovereign wealth perspective, if you said, "Okay, the government's gonna get 80% of the company or something."
Sam Lessin: Full-on China style.
Jessica: And it's not gonna fuck up the company. Actually, the company will just keep growing. It doesn't need... You can have, give it 20% and give the government 80%, and, like, God bless, it goes to a 10, $100 trillion valuation because that's the future we live in and the timeline and the nar- F- fine. That's not gonna happen. Like, maybe it's, like, 10, 20% slice max or something, right? At which point, like, it's meaningful, but it's not that much money. And even if it compounds, it's like what... You're not, like, setting up America for life.
Sam Lessin: There's no, like, sovereign wealth angle. Buy shares in the companies if you want to, like... You can, you know, it, it's a control thing.
Jessica: It just seems like a weird bridge to cross, right?
Sam Lessin: Yeah.
Jessica: Like, I don't understand how it makes any, like, logical sense given, like, what we do as a society, you know? Like-
Sam Lessin: I mean, I spent the beginning of my pr- reporting career, uh, uh, very heavy on China tech coverage, and, like, you know, those were not the models that the US was aspiring to in terms of ownership. And obviously, taking a stake is different from being a state-owned enterprise, but-
Jessica: Well, has it even worked for the government in China? Like, it's not even clear-
Sam Lessin: Well, you know
Jessica: I don't know
Sam Lessin: ... that censorship thing, still kind of in effect over there.
Jessica: I, I just think it's kind of like a red herring to some degree, this whole, like, you know, thing.
Sam Lessin: Okay, Sam, I've asked all the questions. Give us our last topic.
Jessica: I mean, I'm gonna go work out. I don't really have anything more.
Sam Lessin: You've got no other-
Jessica: What el- what are you excited about? Well, you're reading some book you like.
Sam Lessin: I am. I'm reading Culpability, which is a good book for the tech-minded, recommended to me by Reed Hastings. Um-
Jessica: Ooh, fancy.
Sam Lessin: And it, some parts are a little, like, on the nose and, like, very much AI. Like, it, sometimes it feels, like, a little bit close to my day job, but I'm really enjoying it, and I don't wanna give too much away. But anyone who wants to discuss either Culpability or Yesteryear, which turned really dark-
Jessica: You didn't like the ending.
Sam Lessin: Did not like the ending of Yesteryear, but I'm really happy to talk about either of those. They're very different.
Jessica: Okay. I'm gonna go work out.
Sam Lessin: And one... Okay. Well, great. Um, this is, you know, when Sam does the ghost goodbye when there are three other people, it's not as awkward, but, um, I will say thank you to listeners for sticking around, and I hope that you enjoyed this conversation, and we promise the Morins will be back and more very soon. Have a good one. Bye-bye.
Jessica: Bye.
Brit Morin: If you enjoyed this show, please leave us a virtual high five by rating it and reviewing it on Apple Podcasts, 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.