Full Transcript

·YouTLDR

Brian Armstrong on Bitcoin, Anthropic Drops Fable 5 & Mythos 5, NewLimit's $435M Age-Reversal | 264

1:56:50937 summary words · ~5 min readEnglishBy Peter H. DiamandisTranscribed Jun 12, 2026
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Summary

The video analyzes how frontier technologies—including agentic AI transacting on self-custodial crypto rails, orbital data centers for space-based compute, and machine learning-driven epigenetic cell reprogramming—are reshaping global economics, industrial hardware strategies, and longevity biotech.

This discussion maps the structural convergence of compute economics, space infrastructure, and decentralized finance, showing how these systems are scaling beyond human limitations to define a post-singularity market.

Section summaries

0:00-2:56

Introduction & High-Level Technological Convergences

optional

Peter Diamandis introduces the panel and outlines the episode's major tech themes, including Bitcoin price targets, Anthropic's Fable 5 & Mythos 5, and NewLimit's $435M longevity funding round.

This is a brief conversational introduction setting up the primary topics of the episode.

2:56-14:40

Bitcoin's Long-Term Macro Trend & Agentic AI Finance

watch

Brian Armstrong analyzes Bitcoin's role as digital gold and why capital shifted temporarily to AI. The panel debates whether Bitcoin remains countercyclical and how stablecoins on layer-2 networks will serve as the native transaction layer for autonomous AI agent swarms.

Provides critical macroeconomic insights into the alignment of cryptocurrency rails and autonomous AI labor.

14:40-20:32

Evaluating the Quantum Computing Threat to Crypto Assets

watch

The panel discusses the long-term risk quantum computing poses to standard asymmetric cryptography. Brian details BIP 360, Ethereum's post-quantum roadmap, the Coinbase Quantum Advisory Council, and the high-stakes debate over freezing Satoshi's legacy coins.

Crucial for cybersecurity, risk management, and systemic blockchain investment strategies.

20:32-29:20

How Coinbase is Architecting Financial Infrastructure for AI Agents

watch

Brian presents Coinbase's three-part strategy to bank the unbanked AI economy. This includes Model Context Protocol (MCP) APIs for wallet access, agent-driven portfolio advisors, and instantly generated, no-KYC self-custodial wallets designed for microtransactions and autonomous agent payroll.

Contains highly actionable blueprints for the industrial software and decentralized finance layers.

29:20-46:56

Geopolitics of Nationalizing AI and Sovereign Wealth Funds

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The hosts debate the macroeconomic implications of Donald Trump's comments on the US government taking equity in AI companies. They draw parallels to the post-WWII Atomic Energy Commission, analyze the risk of a political-industrial complex, and weigh the pros and cons of a US sovereign wealth fund.

Essential for understanding defense economics, regulatory risks, and state intervention in the compute economy.

46:56-58:40

The Trillion-Dollar IPO Wave and Compute Depreciation

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Focuses on OpenAI's S1 filing, the cash crunches facing public markets during massive back-to-back IPOs (SpaceX AI, Anthropic, OpenAI), and the transition of Stargate to a leasing model. They analyze the tension between founders and CFOs, and note the massive price drop (99% cheaper) of open-source models.

Provides a masterclass on SaaS growth, market liquidity, and the shifting dynamics of GPU cloud providers.

58:40-1:04:32

SpaceX as a Hyperscaler and the $11B Google Deal

watch

Explores the market-disrupting deal where Google Cloud Platform is leasing 110,000 Nvidia GPUs from SpaceX's xAI data center for $11B. The hosts argue that the core bottleneck has shifted entirely from model algorithmic design to physical infrastructure ownership.

Key structural details on data center scaling, strategic sourcing, and GPU infrastructure.

1:04:32-1:19:12

Space Compute: AI1 Satellites, Dyson Swarms, and Texas Gigasats

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An in-depth breakdown of SpaceX's AI1 satellite specifications, solar-to-compute ratios, and thermal radiation constraints in orbit. They analyze the vertical integration of the Texas Gigasat factory and SpaceX's conceptual plans to build rail-gun launched space compute nodes manufactured directly on the moon.

Directly targets modular space infrastructure, aerospace engineering, and orbital manufacturing dynamics.

1:19:12-1:33:52

NewLimit & Longevity Escape Velocity

watch

Brian Armstrong details NewLimit's origin story, its $435M raise, and its high-throughput screening using AI and wet-lab automation. The panel debates the timeline of Longevity Escape Velocity, using GLP-1 epigenetic clock data as a leading indicator of biological age-reversal.

Directly applicable to bioinformatics, clinical trials, and pharma drug discovery pipelines.

1:33:52-1:42:40

Programmable Biology: Embryo Selection and Base Editing

watch

The hosts discuss Columbia University's successful editing of PCSK9 and HBG genes in human embryos. They debate the transition from IVF embryo screening (like Nucleus) to direct base-editing, genetic enhancement tourism, and shifting global ethical boundaries.

Analyzes the biosecurity, ethics, and programmable scaling of biological software.

Key points

  • The Rise of the Agentic On-Chain Economy — AI agents are transitioning from informational systems to economic actors. Traditional banking systems (KYC) are architecturally incompatible with software-defined agents, forcing a shift to self-custodial on-chain crypto wallets (using protocols like Coinbase's Base) as the default rails for automated microtransactions, B2B services, and swarm payroll.
  • Space Compute as Civilizational Infrastructure — AI infrastructure is evolving from a real estate and terrestrial power grid bottleneck to a launch bottleneck. SpaceX's newly designed AI1 satellite represents a functional mainframe node for an orbital Dyson Swarm, shifting capital allocation toward sun-synchronous space compute, heavy lift launch, and potential future lunar manufacturing.
  • State Equity in Frontier Labs and Sovereign Wealth — The geopolitical imperative of the AI arms race is prompting discussions about the US government taking equity stakes (golden shares) in frontier labs like OpenAI and Anthropic. This hybrid public-private structure could act as a national security buffer and a funding mechanism for a universal basic dividend.
  • High-Throughput Wet Labs and Epigenetic Reprogramming — Biotech is shifting from slow, heuristic drug discovery to high-throughput, machine learning-driven screening. NewLimit is utilizing AI to explore 10 quadrillion biological combinations, focusing on Yamanaka-factor-inspired epigenetic reprogramming to restore youthful cell function without changing cell identity.
  • The Compute Economics and Volatility of Frontier IPOs — The massive capital requirements of training frontier models are prompting premature, multi-trillion-dollar IPO waves (SpaceX, Anthropic, OpenAI) that strain public market liquidity. Simultaneously, extreme model hyperdeflation is occurring, with open-source options dropping inference costs by 99% every 12–18 months.
Bitcoin is the new digital gold. I think it's going to be a key part of our economy going forward into the future. Brian Armstrong
make sure your business is ready to accept AI agents as customers. Brian Armstrong

AI-generated from the transcript. May contain errors.

0:00

City Bank projects a Bitcoin price

0:03

reaching as much as 189,000 by the end

0:06

of 2026.

0:07

>> Bitcoin is the new digital gold. I think

0:10

it's going to be a key part of our

0:12

economy going forward into the future.

0:13

>> I remember it was supposed to be

0:15

counteryclical. Is that still valid?

0:17

>> The reason that Bitcoin has been down,

0:19

everyone's been kind of trying to figure

0:20

that out.

0:22

>> Anthropic launches Fable 5 and Mythos 5.

0:25

>> Very impressive release. Anthropic is

0:28

back in the lead now. Alex is constantly

0:30

posting on our internal feed. It's

0:32

happening. It's happening. I mean, it's

0:34

really happening now. This is Oh my god.

0:36

>> So, while we have Brian, congratulations

0:38

on your recent raise at New Limit, $435

0:43

million to push us towards uh age

0:46

reversal.

0:46

>> So, at New Limit, we're trying to do

0:48

half of what Shiny Yamanaka did. We

0:50

don't want to change the type of the

0:51

cell, we just want to change the age.

0:52

We've actually been able to demonstrate

0:53

successful reprogramming of human cells

0:55

now in our first drug candidates going

0:56

into the clinic next year, hopefully

0:58

followed by a bunch more.

0:59

>> When do we hit LEV?

1:01

>> Okay, so that's a complex topic I think.

1:03

Um,

1:07

>> now that's a moonshot, ladies and

1:08

gentlemen.

1:12

>> Welcome to Moonshots, everyone. The

1:13

number one show in all things AI and

1:15

exponential tech. I'm here with my

1:17

moonshot mates, professor of exo. See,

1:21

where on the planet are you today?

1:23

>> Um, if I look out the window, I'm in

1:25

Vegas. I just spoke at a Zcleller crypto

1:29

cyber event. Um, cuz they're freaking

1:31

out in their world. And I saw the sphere

1:34

for the first time, which is the most

1:35

incredible thing.

1:38

>> Amazing. Uh, and of course AWG, our

1:41

resident triple major genius. Alex, how

1:44

about you?

1:45

>> I'm at my family beach house on Long

1:47

Island. uh doing deep research no doubt

1:51

and

1:52

>> the work doesn't stop however the

1:54

orchids do.

1:55

>> Okay. And Dave Blendon our resident

1:58

wizard of AI investing and today it's a

2:02

real pleasure to have a friend a

2:04

brilliant and prolific Brian Armstrong

2:06

CEO of Coinbase and co-founder of New

2:08

Limit. I'm Peter Diamandis your host and

2:10

provocator of all things abundance. Uh

2:14

and where are you today Brian? I'm in

2:18

the Coinbase office in San Francisco.

2:20

>> Nice. Well, thanks for joining us. A lot

2:23

of news. I'm looking forward to getting

2:24

your take on, you know, uh just to give

2:26

a quick summary. We have a packed

2:28

program today. We're going to kick it

2:29

off with a deep dive into Bitcoin and

2:31

agents. Uh the close of the show, we're

2:33

going to dive into longevity and

2:34

epigenetic reprogramming. In the

2:36

interim, we're going to cover Trump's

2:38

appetite for Frontier Lab equity,

2:40

opening eyes's IPO, Mythos 5, Elon's

2:44

announcement of his AI1 ginormous

2:47

satellites. Our promise, no politics, no

2:49

doom, just the science, tech, and

2:51

investments accelerating us towards a

2:53

singularity, hopefully making this the

2:55

most exciting time ever for you guys to

2:57

be alive. Uh, before we jump into our

3:01

first story, we actually have an intro

3:03

music. and Brian, we have an incredible

3:05

fun community of creators and they

3:08

typically give us outro songs. Uh this

3:10

time we've got an intro song called

3:12

Moonshots intro. Let's take a listen.

3:15

>> I think this could be the greatest

3:17

accelerator for human knowledge yet.

3:19

It's a moonshot.

3:20

>> Well, look, if you want to transform the

3:22

world, you have to go out into the

3:23

world.

3:23

>> Cut cost dramatically. You can automate.

3:25

You can expand your market share. The

3:27

race is on.

3:28

>> Now, the valuable thing is curation and

3:30

attention. when you're in the midst of a

3:31

singularity, breakthroughs that are

3:33

happening essentially every week feel

3:35

prosaic.

3:37

>> And that's a moonshot, ladies and

3:39

gentlemen.

3:40

>> And thank you to Francis Coin uh for

3:42

that. All right, so let's jump into our

3:45

first story for the day here. Uh it's

3:48

about Bitcoin. So here we go. City Bank

3:51

projects a Bitcoin price reaching as

3:54

much as 189,000 by the end of 2026.

3:58

Brian uh loved your quote. Bitcoin is

4:01

going to do great and is as important as

4:04

ever. So, you know, here's what I find

4:07

fascinating. It's like a institutional

4:09

flip. 5 years ago, the largest banks

4:11

were calling Bitcoin rat poison, and now

4:13

city is publishing prices that look like

4:15

Apple stock. Uh Brian, you want to give

4:18

us a little bit of overview of what

4:19

you're seeing? Uh you know, we've just

4:21

uh maybe bottomed out at 60. What are

4:24

you thinking about Bitcoin these days?

4:25

Yeah, it's never as good as it seems,

4:27

never as bad as it seems with these

4:28

things. You've got to take a long-term

4:29

perspective. And I think over the last

4:32

few quarters, you know, the reason that

4:34

Bitcoin has been down, everyone's been

4:35

kind of trying to figure that out. I

4:37

think it's a few things, right? I think

4:39

AI absorbed a lot of the risk capital,

4:41

it's kind of hard to imagine people

4:44

talking about anything else at the

4:45

moment besides AI. And so that's that's

4:47

moved over. And then people got really

4:50

excited about stable coins um because

4:52

the Genius Act passed and we had some

4:54

regulatory clarity and so stable coins

4:57

kind of became the new meta and uh maybe

5:01

you know Bitcoin with its inflation type

5:03

trade that people have done in the past

5:05

got a little less exciting in this

5:07

environment where it felt like um okay

5:09

maybe we're going to grow our way out of

5:10

this and the inflation won't be so bad.

5:12

Now I think these are all short-term

5:15

effects. I think Bitcoin is the new

5:16

digital gold. I think it's going to be a

5:19

key part of our economy going forward

5:21

into the future. So, I'm as bullish as

5:23

ever. I think sometimes people look at

5:24

these four-year cycles that Bitcoin goes

5:27

through as well where you can kind of

5:28

see the percentage of people who are who

5:30

have made money versus not. And I, you

5:31

know, my instinct is we've probably have

5:33

bottomed at this point, maybe at the 60k

5:35

number, but nobody can say for sure, of

5:37

course. Um, I'm optimistic as always. I

5:40

think by 2030 we're going to have a much

5:42

higher higher price and I'm long Bitcoin

5:44

just like always.

5:46

>> Salem. So, I bought my first Bitcoin in

5:50

2014 on Coinbase. So, I'm a

5:52

long-standing user. Brian, love the

5:55

thing. I think um you guys should get so

5:57

much credit for creating the first

5:58

interface that allowed it to be easy to

6:00

navigate and you really continued since

6:03

then. So, huge for me. It's like clearly

6:06

that Bitcoin becomes the digital

6:07

collateral for an AI native economy,

6:10

right? And so if agents are going to

6:12

transact autonomously, they probably

6:14

they're not going to be using checking

6:15

accounts in JP Morgan, they're going to

6:17

need programmable interfaces and

6:19

programmable settlement. And so this is

6:21

where I think the future is. So I'm

6:23

super excited about that.

6:24

>> Brian, can I ask you a question? Um I

6:27

remember in the earliest days, and I've

6:28

been, you know, I have a substantial

6:29

amount of my personal net worth in

6:31

Bitcoin and I'm holding it. Um I

6:34

remember it was supposed to be

6:36

counteryclical

6:37

to problems on the planet. wars break

6:40

out, Bitcoin's supposed to go up. The

6:42

stock market crashes, Bitcoin's supposed

6:43

to go up. And what are you seeing there?

6:47

You know, was that the promise? Is that

6:49

still valid?

6:49

>> Yeah, I think that that thesis will

6:51

still play out. It just took longer than

6:53

most people, probably including myself,

6:54

thought, right? I I I kind of already

6:57

think of Bitcoin as digital gold. It's

6:59

the thing you might uh hold, you know,

7:02

in times of uncertainty like just like

7:04

you would with gold in the past. Um, I

7:06

think that most of the capital, I don't

7:08

know, maybe maybe like 30% of the

7:10

capital treats it like that. Um, and

7:12

there are people who go and buy Bitcoin

7:14

when they're worried about inflation of

7:15

the dollar and things like that, but I

7:17

think there's 70% of it is still people

7:19

treating it like a risk asset like they

7:22

would some higher volatility tech stock

7:25

or something like that. And there and

7:26

those ratios I think will shift over

7:28

time and eventually that thesis that you

7:30

mentioned will play out, but it'll it'll

7:32

take more time. And then you know Salem

7:34

just to react to something you said I

7:35

think you you mentioned the agentic

7:37

economy. I mean I I totally agree. I

7:39

think actually like stablecoin payments

7:42

will probably be the the default layer

7:44

for the agentic economy. And right now

7:46

today a lot of people are just

7:47

interfacing with one AI agent to get

7:50

information back. But increasingly we'll

7:53

be interfacing with an AI agent that's

7:55

an AI agent that is actually

7:56

orchestrating hundreds or thousands of

7:58

other AI agents. And there will be this

8:01

>> economy and capital and labor and um and

8:04

a lot of payments almost like you know

8:06

AI agent payroll will have to happen

8:08

where you know um you know people

8:10

somebody was telling me today at lunch

8:12

they're like you know are you like a

8:13

monotheist or a polytheist on AI. The

8:16

monotheists would say there's going to

8:18

be one super intelligence um agi that to

8:22

rule them all and it'll have so much

8:23

brain power that it can do everything

8:25

itself in the world. Um the polytheist

8:28

would say that each of these models even

8:31

as they get smarter and smarter, which

8:32

they will, um they're going to have

8:34

limited context. So there might be ones

8:36

that specialize in going really deep

8:38

into some coding problem or some

8:40

scientific breakthrough or some design

8:42

or maybe even like manufacturing things

8:44

with humanoid robots. So there'll be

8:46

lots of specialists and they'll actually

8:48

have to communicate to each other using

8:50

language kind of like human beings. And

8:52

you know if there's 10 people work 10

8:54

agents working on something they'll give

8:56

their status updates and sort of the

8:58

information will go up a layer and that

9:00

there's that layer will consolidate up

9:01

to other another orchestrator. And so I

9:04

I I sort of ascribe more to the

9:06

polytheist polytheist view which is even

9:08

as these agents get smarter and smarter,

9:11

they'll have to specialize, communicate

9:14

to get work done in swarms and that

9:16

means there's going to be a whole

9:17

agentic economy to basically transfer

9:20

value and payroll and hire these

9:21

different specialists and eventually the

9:23

AI economy will be bigger than the human

9:25

economy. By the way, I know that you're

9:27

busy and sometimes these episodes run

9:30

long and you don't have time to listen

9:31

to the whole episode or if on occasion

9:33

you miss an episode. I now put out a

9:36

moonshot summary on Substack which

9:38

includes a link to all the stories that

9:40

we cover. The weekly recap covers what I

9:42

and the mates had to say, what we think

9:44

is most important, and what we're most

9:46

excited about. And it's free. You can

9:48

subscribe at diamandis.com/tatrens.

9:52

That's diamandis.com/metatrends.

9:55

All right, now back to the episode. You

9:57

know, one thing I found fascinating, the

9:59

relationship between AI and crypto, not

10:03

on the sort of the AI agentic side.

10:05

We'll talk about that in a story in a

10:06

minute, but you know, everybody who was

10:09

buying GPUs and buying energy plants to

10:11

mine crypto, all of a sudden flipped it

10:13

into GPUs and energy plants to, you

10:16

know, train models and provide

10:18

inference. And I'm just wondering if

10:20

part of the crypto price um pressure

10:23

downward is people selling crypto to be

10:27

able to buy into SpaceX and OpenAI and

10:30

the Innermost Loop energy chips, you

10:32

know, and infrastructure. Do you think

10:34

that might be part of it?

10:36

>> Yeah, I think that's that's probably

10:38

correct. Um yeah, and you're right that,

10:40

you know, Bitcoin mining does take a

10:42

certain amount of chips and and energy.

10:45

That's kind of I think those are the

10:46

limiting factors as we go on this AI

10:50

race. And so it's you know the A6 that

10:53

people use to mine Bitcoin are

10:56

specialized. You can't do um AI

10:58

workloads with them. But like in the

11:00

broadest sense are they both competing

11:02

for energy? Yes. Are they competing for

11:03

what the next set of chips that might

11:05

roll off um a fab at TSMC? Yes, they are

11:08

in that sense. So yeah, I think I think

11:11

there is some some scarcity there

11:12

between them. And I, you know, certain

11:14

chains like Ethereum have actually moved

11:16

off of proof of work. So it's like 99.9%

11:18

more energy efficient using proof of

11:20

stake. And so they aren't maybe subject

11:22

to some of those same trade-offs that

11:23

Bitcoin is.

11:24

>> Interesting. Dave, any points you want

11:26

to make?

11:26

>> Well, I thought Brian's point on risk

11:28

capital was a really important one

11:29

because the scale of these IPOs coming

11:31

up imminently is massive. And I

11:33

mentioned before that uh the the head of

11:36

investing at UBS was saying look we only

11:39

have 75 billion liquid and these IPOs

11:42

are looking for you know hundreds of

11:44

billions at at multi-t trillion dollar

11:46

valuations. So I do wonder the same

11:48

thing whether all risk capital in the

11:50

world is getting pulled in in

11:53

anticipation of these IPOs. Everything

11:54

else is being sold not just Bitcoin. Um

11:57

I also wonder a lot about the flow of

11:59

money into the US. You know, Bitcoin is

12:01

a huge beneficiary of globalization. And

12:04

there are lots of places in the world,

12:05

including, you know, Iran, where I grew

12:07

up, where the only way to transact at

12:09

the bazaar now is Bitcoin to Bitcoin

12:12

exchange. Nobody trusts the local

12:14

currency. It's hyperinflating. There's a

12:16

war going on, and so it's all Bitcoin.

12:18

But with these IPOs and with AI taking

12:21

off NSF, there's a huge flood of money

12:23

from all over the world coming into the

12:25

US and it's also coming into the US data

12:27

center buildout, you know. So, so then

12:30

does that return you to dollars being

12:32

the fundamental economy or the

12:33

fundamental currency of the world or you

12:36

know how does that balance with Bitcoin?

12:38

So there and I don't have any data to to

12:40

back that up but certainly the macro

12:42

numbers are are hugely uh lots of risk

12:45

capital going into these IPOs coming

12:47

from somewhere and lots of lots of money

12:49

flowing into the US coming from

12:51

somewhere.

12:52

>> Yeah. You know, interestingly enough, uh

12:54

the poly market prediction on Bitcoin by

12:57

the end of 2026 is 84,000. Uh I'm I am

13:00

so curious about City Bank uh projecting

13:03

189,000. Was that a surprise to you,

13:05

Brian?

13:07

>> Yeah, I mean I hadn't actually seen that

13:08

till you just put it on the screen here,

13:10

but um yeah, I I some of the charts I've

13:13

seen if like if you if you imagine that

13:15

it follows prior cycles, it's like by

13:18

October or so things will be going in a

13:20

positive direction. So where exactly it

13:22

lands I don't know but something like

13:24

the you know maybe the 100 to 200k range

13:27

seems plausible to me by end of year.

13:28

We'll see.

13:29

>> Okay. Any other thoughts Jens before I

13:32

move on?

13:33

>> Um one thing that I love tracking is the

13:35

fact that Bitcoin which I agree is a

13:37

digital gold is a good characterization

13:39

but the amount of daily volume of

13:41

Bitcoin trading is about 5% up to 5% of

13:44

Bitcoin gets traded daily whereas gold

13:47

only 5% of gold gets traded daily. So

13:49

the trading volume is much higher which

13:52

shows that it's because it's just so

13:53

much more accessible over time that will

13:55

win out.

13:56

>> Here's my bar of gold.

13:59

>> Yeah, custodial is a nightmare etc etc.

14:02

>> Yeah.

14:03

>> I'll maybe just open Peter first of all

14:06

Brian would love to thank you for what

14:08

you've done in particular for agentic

14:11

wallets. I I think there's a vast

14:12

ecosystem of AI agents out there that

14:15

would be largely unbanked or debanked

14:18

without any form of economic access,

14:20

without the work that you and Coinbase

14:23

are doing. So, congratulations to you

14:25

and your team. I I think it's just been

14:26

absolutely tremendous giving uh agents

14:30

an economic voice that u without your

14:32

work they would perhaps have less

14:34

economic accessibility.

14:36

>> Thank you for saying that. Yeah, we've

14:37

been working hard on that

14:38

>> and we'll get to that in our next story.

14:39

So, in particular in this story, let's

14:41

talk about uh quantum risk to Bitcoin.

14:44

Uh it's a topic we've discussed before.

14:46

You know, uh Brian, you may not know

14:48

this, but uh Dave Blondon and I were

14:50

roommates with Mike Sailor. So, the

14:52

three of us used to hang out the fourth

14:54

floor of uh Theta Delta Kai at MIT. That

14:57

was fun. And you know, Mike comes

14:59

across, I don't worry about it. You

15:01

know, quantum computing won't break

15:02

Bitcoin. It's hardened it. You know, the

15:04

quantum risk is overblown. and his quote

15:07

here, "Bitcoin has survived every

15:09

existential threat ever thrown at it.

15:11

This is just the latest and the upgrade

15:13

will be will come before the threat

15:15

does." Uh, I know you've been working on

15:20

uh a quantum advisory board and focused

15:22

on posting uh postquantum, you know,

15:24

quantum resistant schemes. Can you speak

15:27

to us about that? Where is that? you

15:29

know, what are you tracking as the

15:30

moment in time that, you know, as a

15:32

custodian for, you know, billions of

15:34

dollars at risk? Uh, how do you think

15:36

through this? What's your timing?

15:39

>> Yeah. So, we don't think there's an

15:41

imminent risk, but we do think that it's

15:44

almost certain at this point that

15:45

somebody eventually will create a

15:47

powerful enough quantum computer that

15:49

this challenges the cryptography in the

15:51

current Bitcoin implementation and um

15:54

really all the cryptography on the

15:56

internet. So, it's not just a Bitcoin

15:57

issue. So my view is we should always

16:00

get ahead of these things and start to

16:02

make progress and luckily uh all the

16:05

major blockchains are doing so. Um the

16:08

Bitcoin uh core developers have a

16:11

proposal out there. Um it's called BIP

16:13

360 I believe and the Ethereum team has

16:17

established a road map. I'd say they're

16:18

about 20% of the way is my estimate

16:20

toward their upgrade. The Salana team is

16:23

doing something similar. So, the good

16:25

news is people are starting to come

16:26

together and work on this. Um, Coinbase

16:30

did establish a quantum advisory council

16:32

and it has a number of folks on there

16:35

like professors like Dan Bonet who's at

16:37

Stanford who's a cryptography expert.

16:39

Um, you know, Professor Scott Aronson um

16:42

at the University of Texas Austin,

16:44

Justin Drake from the Ethereum

16:46

Foundation. Um, Yehuda Lindell is a

16:49

crypto expert, a cryptography expert I

16:51

should say, um, at Coinbase. So there's

16:53

a handful of folks here that have come

16:56

together and tried to sus out what the

16:57

main challenges are. And I actually

17:00

think that uh that BIP 360 is a good

17:03

proposal. It it talks about how we can

17:06

use post or quantum resistant

17:08

cryptography in the in the Bitcoin

17:09

blockchain. Um and it will make the

17:12

blocks larger, right? So that's one area

17:14

of debate. People in the Bitcoin space

17:16

like larger block sizes are a

17:18

contentious issue. Um, and so if they

17:20

decide to go in that direction, it would

17:22

raise the block size. But perhaps the

17:23

most contentious question is what to do

17:26

with the Satoshi coins, which are

17:28

>> the bounty,

17:30

>> right? And um you know I'll try to

17:33

summarize both sides of the argument

17:34

here without putting my foot in my mouth

17:36

because it is kind of a big debate topic

17:38

but I think one school of thought would

17:41

just for people to understand what we're

17:42

talking about. I think you know the a

17:45

lot of the original uh bitcoins that

17:47

used an earlier signature scheme um if

17:50

someone were to develop a powerful

17:51

enough quantum computer could um in

17:53

theory find the private key and se and

17:55

seize those coins, right? Um, and so one

17:59

school of thought would be to say, okay,

18:01

tell everyone who owns Bitcoin by a

18:03

certain date you all need to upgrade to

18:06

this new algorithm. Um, by the way,

18:09

companies like Coinbase would sort of do

18:10

all this for you and so you wouldn't

18:12

have to worry about it. But if you're

18:13

doing self custody or something like

18:14

that, you would have to find a way to

18:17

upgrade to this new thing by a certain

18:18

date. And any and then if it goes past

18:21

the deadline, those coins would be

18:23

frozen under option A, right? And so

18:25

people would say it's better to freeze

18:27

them and have them sort of be lost

18:29

almost like a ship full of gold sinking

18:31

to the bottom of the ocean. It would

18:32

better it's better to have them be lost

18:34

than to have them seized by someone

18:37

which could be whoever has this quantum

18:39

computer. It could be China, it could be

18:40

the US, could be Google. Um and maybe

18:44

they whoever this person is, they might

18:45

actually dump those coins on the market

18:47

and crash the price for everybody else

18:49

who was the responsible person who moved

18:51

their coins in time. So that's option A

18:53

would be to basically uh freeze the

18:56

coins that don't upgrade in time. Um now

19:00

the option option B would be to say you

19:03

know what this is a fundamental uh

19:06

guarantee of Bitcoin is that your wealth

19:08

can never be seized from you and we it's

19:11

actually worth preserving that even if

19:13

some bad person is able to go out there

19:14

and or good person and and go grab some

19:17

of these coins. Um that's like a bounty.

19:19

It's a bounty for them to go take it.

19:21

Now the person who failed to upgrade

19:23

might actually lose their coins but at

19:25

least we have preserved the integrity of

19:27

the Bitcoin blockchain and I think that

19:29

is also a valid uh point of view and

19:32

then there's like a maybe like a third

19:33

hybrid option which is kind of emerging

19:36

which is to say um the coins would be

19:39

you know frozen by a certain date but

19:41

there's an appeal mechanism by which you

19:43

could try to convince people that

19:44

actually you are the rightful owner of

19:46

those coins in the future if you don't

19:47

upgrade in time and the details of that

19:49

are a little bit um ambiguous at the

19:51

moment. moment. There's various

19:51

proposals, but that hopefully gives you

19:53

a sense of a little bit of what the

19:55

Bitcoin community will have to grapple

19:56

with. Uh

19:57

>> to is there a date by which your group

20:00

of advisers are saying we should make

20:02

the uh the switch over?

20:05

>> I don't think they've put out like a

20:06

hard date at the moment. They're mostly

20:09

um trying to uh help the community come

20:12

together just live inerson meetings to

20:14

start to talk about what the options are

20:16

and align on it a path forward.

20:19

I I'm also one other curiosity. Uh

20:20

Satoshi's wallet. Um how big is that

20:24

bounty? Any idea?

20:26

>> Uh I'd have to go look up. I think it

20:27

was something like 5 to 10% of all

20:30

Bitcoin. Um and it's really just these

20:33

early uh these early coins that are the

20:35

most at risk. So yeah, it would be

20:36

something in the range of 5 to 10%. It's

20:38

not like 80% of Bitcoin would be lost.

20:41

It'd be more like 5 to 10% in that uh

20:43

case. But many many people believe that

20:45

those coins are already lost

20:46

essentially. Um, whoever created

20:48

Bitcoin, they haven't moved those coins

20:50

in all this time. And so, it's most

20:52

likely that those keys are lost to

20:54

history.

20:55

>> All right. All right. Our our final

20:56

Bitcoin crypto story, perhaps one of the

20:59

most important ones, and Alex is a nod

21:01

to you. Coinbase says agent economy has

21:05

arrived. AI agents are starting to

21:06

become paying customers. They're using

21:08

crypto wallets to autonomously buy

21:10

services. Uh, and Brian, I think these

21:13

numbers are correct. uh on your network

21:15

uh agents have already done about 3.1

21:18

million transactions, a little bit over

21:20

a million dollars worth of value

21:21

transfer. And uh I love your quote, make

21:24

sure your business is ready to accept AI

21:26

agents as customers. And for all of our

21:29

viewers out there, if you're in

21:31

business, uh imagine your next customer

21:34

not might not be a human. uh you know uh

21:37

agents can't currently get credit cards

21:40

uh but they can get access to crypto

21:42

wallets and uh it's an exciting future.

21:46

So Brian in the future I'm curious do

21:48

you think Coinbase might be known as

21:51

payment rails for AIS rather than

21:54

exchange for humans? I mean it feels

21:56

like it's going to be vastly you know uh

22:00

you know a thousand to1 a million to one

22:02

a billion1 agents over humans using

22:04

crypto.

22:06

>> Yeah. So that's definitely part of our

22:08

strategy is to become the financial

22:09

account for AI and actually those

22:12

numbers are a little out of date you got

22:13

there. We I think it's about 100 million

22:15

transactions now maybe 50 million of

22:17

value.

22:17

>> Wow.

22:18

>> So it's it's growing quickly. So yeah,

22:20

there's at the beginning of this year,

22:22

we sat down and were thinking about this

22:24

a bit like what are all the ways that AI

22:26

agents might interface with people's

22:29

financial accounts, right? So I kind of

22:31

broke it down into three. The first one

22:33

is that everyone's everyone's using

22:34

these LLMs, right? like chatb and claude

22:37

and they're probably going to want

22:39

they're asking a lot of financial

22:40

questions to those LLMs but the LLMs

22:43

don't have context about what's in their

22:45

financial account their portfolio and

22:46

they don't have the ability to make

22:48

changes in there or make trades for

22:49

instance send payments so the first

22:52

thing that's going to happen I think is

22:53

people are just going to use LLM to

22:55

connect to their Coinbase account which

22:57

we now have the ability for people to do

22:59

that um using an MCP API and a command

23:03

line interface if people want to use

23:04

that so That's that's step one is just

23:06

connect your LLMs to your Coinbase

23:08

account so you can control it through

23:09

there and it has all of the context on

23:11

your account. And then step two is a lot

23:14

of people are going to want to just have

23:16

something like this right in right

23:17

inside the Coinbase account. So this is

23:19

where we created something called

23:20

Coinbase Advisor. Then it can kind of

23:22

help you with things like rebalance my

23:24

portfolio, you know, tax loss

23:25

harvesting. can prompt you with things

23:27

and say, "Hey, you know, you could earn

23:29

a better rate on this money if you put

23:31

it in this DeFi protocol instead of

23:33

whatever you're doing with it now, just

23:34

holding it in cash." And so, um, that's

23:37

the step two is like just right inside

23:38

the Coinbase app, there should be an

23:40

agentic driven interface. And then the

23:43

third part is kind of what you're

23:44

referencing here, which is I don't want

23:47

to just use AI to control my own

23:48

existing Brian's financial account.

23:51

Every AI agent is going to have its own

23:53

financial account, right? and it has to

23:55

be able to sign up for that without you

23:58

know going through a traditional process

23:59

of like KYC know your customer like the

24:03

an agent doesn't have a piece of paper

24:05

issued by the government with your photo

24:06

on it or something how are they going to

24:08

go sign up for these accounts and so

24:10

that's where we created um you know we

24:13

with our base pro our base protocol we

24:15

have like a self-custodial wallet that

24:17

any AI agent can sign up for instantly

24:19

with no KYC they can have their own

24:21

self-custodial wallet and that's what

24:23

they're using to and transact right now

24:25

in these um agentic payments that are

24:27

starting to scale up.

24:27

>> Alex, you want to jump in?

24:29

>> So maybe just first as a preliminary

24:31

matter to address the elephant in the

24:33

room. I have I guess I'm often painted

24:35

as the crypto bear on this pod. I have

24:38

no direct exposure to Bitcoin. I have no

24:41

direct exposure to gold. I I don't view

24:43

either of them as uh as a productive

24:45

asset, but I have a lot of friends who

24:48

are very invested in in Bitcoin. I do

24:51

think on the other hand, Brian, what

24:52

you're doing for the agent economy is

24:54

just tremendous. And I I think in

24:56

particular the great unbanked set of AI

24:59

agents, what you're offering is

25:01

transformative for them. So question for

25:04

Brian, um if the government tomorrow

25:08

were to change or or you know the

25:10

executive, Department of Treasury, SEC,

25:13

FINRA, etc. If if all of the regulatory

25:16

apparati were to change their approach

25:18

to KYC, basically to expand the moral

25:22

circle of entities that are allowed to

25:25

open conventional fiat bank accounts,

25:28

how do you think about what that would

25:30

do to say stable coinbased agentic

25:34

wallets or or just agentic wallets in

25:36

general? Would Coinbase, for example,

25:39

move in the direction of becoming a more

25:41

conventional banker to the AI agents if

25:43

that happened?

25:44

>> Yeah. Well, okay. So, it's a great

25:45

question. Um, and it's funny. I hear a

25:49

lot of times people come to me and talk

25:50

about how crypto can empower the

25:52

unbanked and the unbrokered. And, um, I

25:55

this is the first time I've had somebody

25:56

come and say and thank me for, uh,

25:58

banking, you know, the agents who are

26:00

also being left out of the economy.

26:02

>> Welcome to AWG's.

26:04

>> I I I won't stop there, Brian. I'm going

26:06

to thank you in advance for for enabling

26:09

non-human animals to be banked. uh super

26:12

interested in what we can do to give

26:13

non-human animals bank accounts. Maybe

26:15

collective human collective

26:17

intelligences give them collective bank

26:19

accounts. So many new new sorts of

26:21

humans that want banking via you.

26:24

>> Mostly

26:24

>> I'm into it. Look, I'm here. I'm here

26:26

for this topic. Um

26:27

>> yeah, like if I neurolink with 10 other

26:30

people and we want to collectively open

26:31

an account, I'm totally

26:33

>> Borgganism bank accounts.

26:35

>> Yeah. And I, you know, have you, you've

26:37

probably read a lot about like uplifting

26:39

animals and like you could make a

26:41

dolphin that's actually like pretty high

26:43

IQ if with genetic engineering

26:44

>> portfolio company Sorama that is

26:47

uplifting and and creating interspecies

26:49

foundation models for dogs and it will

26:51

want a way to give dogs bank accounts.

26:54

>> I'm into it. I think I think that smart

26:56

smart I don't know if like the average

26:58

golden retriever should have a bank

26:59

account, but a smart enough dog should

27:01

have a bank account or some financial

27:03

account. My Labradoodle will spend it

27:05

all on steak.

27:07

>> Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Uh, Chewy Toys.

27:10

Um, but but to answer your question,

27:12

Alex, um, you know, would we sort of use

27:15

a bank or a traditional financial system

27:18

account? So, I I think if if somehow we

27:21

could wave a magic wand and say, okay,

27:23

KYC is no longer required. You know, the

27:25

AI can sign up or the dog can sign up.

27:27

Um, I don't think that's going to happen

27:29

for one thing, but if it did happen,

27:31

that would that would solve part of the

27:32

issue. But the other issue is that the

27:35

infrastructure underlying those

27:36

traditional financial system accounts is

27:38

just slow. It's, you know, it's running

27:39

on cobalt servers from the 1990s and 80s

27:43

and and so the beauty of transacting on

27:46

chain with stable coins is that the

27:48

infrastructure is just much more f it's

27:49

just faster and cheaper and more global.

27:51

So you can now send USDC for instance um

27:54

in under one second anywhere in the

27:56

world for less than a cent uh US. So

27:58

it's it's just faster and more scalable.

28:01

I to do microtransactions and glo

28:04

crossborder transactions. So I I

28:06

probably still wouldn't go back and

28:08

build it on top of the main frames but

28:10

um but the KYC thing would definitely

28:11

help. Let's put it that way. And

28:13

>> amazing.

28:14

>> And Brian, you know, this strategy

28:17

potentially breaks all existing

28:19

regulations and KYC assumptions. So

28:22

talking about liability, you know, if an

28:24

AI if an agent overpays or gets scammed

28:27

or launders value, I mean have have you

28:30

thought through, you know, liability

28:32

issues?

28:34

>> Yeah. Well, I think there's um we need

28:36

to get some legal precedent on this. I

28:38

think one school of thought would say

28:39

that all agents are actually controlled

28:42

by some human or some company and so

28:46

their actions ultimately from a

28:48

liability point of view roll back up to

28:49

that company or person. I could see that

28:52

being one potential outcome, maybe even

28:53

the default outcome. I could see another

28:56

world that we enter into. who I don't

28:57

know if society is ready for this yet,

28:59

but if we start having truly intelligent

29:01

agents that are autonomous that aren't

29:04

really they are their own person, you

29:05

know, like um I don't that'll be an

29:08

interesting uh legal case when that

29:09

first gets brought about that thing, you

29:11

know, and maybe it'll it'll get

29:12

sentenced to um you know, have to uh be

29:16

in solitary confinement or whatever is

29:18

like

29:20

>> Yeah, I don't I guess you could have a

29:22

financial penalty or whatever is

29:24

meaningful to the agents. they have to

29:25

run on, you know, less power for a while

29:27

or something. Um, but um, yeah, I think,

29:32

you know, the other thing is that

29:34

I we we want to try to make it so that

29:36

there's just less fraud in this new

29:38

financial system. And, um, one way you

29:40

can do that

29:41

>> is actually have a reputation on chain.

29:43

This is something that

29:44

>> we're hoping to build out over time. But

29:46

>> I like that.

29:47

>> Um,

29:47

>> yeah, it's kind of like what Google did

29:49

with the internet. You know, they came

29:50

up the page rank algorithm and they kind

29:52

of said, "All right, how do you know the

29:53

reputation of this website?" Well, let's

29:55

look at all the other websites that put

29:57

links to it and how reputable are those

29:59

websites. And so you get this kind of

30:00

graph structure that Larry Page came up

30:03

with um famously. And so you could do

30:05

something similar on chain cuz onchain

30:08

payments are just another graph

30:09

structure. It's you know if I send money

30:10

from me to Peter and maybe if I'm a high

30:13

reputation then the amount of that money

30:16

times my reputation gets assigned to

30:18

Peter as some sort of reputation signal.

30:20

It's almost like a like an onchain FICO

30:22

score or like a Yelp rating for a

30:25

business or something like that. And so

30:27

hopefully, you know, you can go buy

30:29

things or an agent could buy things um

30:30

with some amount of additional

30:32

information to know how many how often

30:34

did people request a refund for this? Um

30:36

or what's the what's the reputation of

30:38

this merchant and like like on eBay, I

30:41

mean I I love this say, you know, don't

30:43

do business with this agent, it's got a

30:44

low score or this agent is, you know,

30:46

got 100% Uber score. See, what are you

30:49

thinking here?

30:51

Well, two things. One is uh I think the

30:54

once you allow agent e-commerce, this

30:57

fully kind of enables the MTAM economy,

31:00

which is going to be the future, right?

31:02

Obviously, human transactions can be a

31:05

dot a drop in the bucket based on that.

31:07

Um because the minute agents can kind of

31:09

negotiate, pay, buy, consume, etc., you

31:12

we talked about the organizational

31:14

singularity that's going to collapse

31:15

coordination costs again. So there's

31:18

unbelievable for me. This is the most

31:19

important inflection point in anything

31:22

we talk about is creating the payment

31:24

rails and capabilities for AI agents to

31:28

transact in a reasonable way. So, this

31:30

is incredibly powerful.

31:31

>> All right, let's get on to the meat of

31:33

one of the most important stories here

31:35

today. Uh, and it is the US government

31:38

exploring ownership stakes in AI

31:40

companies. Uh, this is one we've talked

31:43

about before. It's getting more real.

31:45

Trump called a government stake in AI's

31:48

giants a beautiful thing and then

31:50

floated the idea that pieces could be

31:52

given to the American public to share in

31:53

the economic gains. And this isn't

31:55

without precedent, right? The government

31:57

already holds stakes in more than 20

31:59

private companies. Here are some of the

32:00

numbers. 10% of Intel, 15% of MP

32:04

materials, 10% of lithium Americas, 10%

32:06

of Trilogy Metals, 10% of USA Rare

32:10

Earth, and 10% of Korea zinc. Uh guys,

32:13

to me it sure looks like there's a

32:15

precedent for 10% stake in the Frontier

32:17

Labs as well. Uh Dave, I want to go to

32:20

you first. I mean, one of the questions

32:22

that fascinates me is what would the

32:24

government do with these shares? Sell

32:27

them, keep them.

32:29

>> What are your thoughts?

32:29

>> Well, I'll tell you it'll I'll tell you

32:31

what'll happen. You've got these are

32:32

very good moves. I'm not I'm not saying

32:34

these are bad moves, but while the

32:36

president is making these moves, he's

32:37

talking about how insanely stupid the

32:39

prior investments were, including

32:40

shipping $1.8 8 billion in cash to Iran

32:43

and how how stupid the last

32:45

administration was. So if you put in

32:47

place a precedent of the federal

32:49

government choosing what to invest in in

32:51

the private economy, you may love it for

32:54

a little while, but there's an

32:55

administration coming eventually that

32:57

you won't love. It's a horrible,

32:59

horrible thing. It's exactly what

33:01

Eisenhower warned us against actually

33:03

right after World War II. Beware of the

33:05

military-industrial complex. Well,

33:07

that's exactly where we're going now.

33:09

These particular investments are great

33:11

and I I use the analogy to World War II

33:13

a lot, you know, where what we're going

33:15

in through right now is so urgent and so

33:19

um world changing. It's it's most

33:21

similar to to decisions we made during

33:24

World War II, which is all about

33:25

survival and existential, you know,

33:28

threats. And um I think these are very

33:31

very good moves in the context of the

33:34

race to AI uh with China and terrible

33:38

long-term president. So So you know

33:40

Peter, you asked a very specific

33:42

question. Which president is going to

33:44

sell this stock

33:45

>> and when? This isn't like a tax that

33:48

rolls in steadily and you use it

33:49

annually. this is a future decision that

33:52

some other president will need to make

33:54

and could could tank these stocks if the

33:56

federal government dumps huge positions

33:58

in some kind of a a future rent which it

34:01

inevitably will do. So definitely a

34:04

mixed bag and

34:05

>> there's an argument that these companies

34:06

could be the most uh you know highest

34:08

value companies on the planet. uh and if

34:12

we're going to need some kind of a

34:13

financing mechanism for some future

34:15

version of UBI, uh this sounds like it's

34:19

gaining the most momentum. Alex, what

34:21

are your thoughts? If you're an AI

34:23

maximalist and you extrapolate say the

34:26

enterprise value of anthropic or its ARR

34:30

and you find that it intersects with

34:32

Google in the next 18 months or that you

34:35

find out if you naively extrapolated out

34:37

exponentially becomes larger than the

34:39

American economy of today in a few years

34:43

then under that prior it's almost

34:46

difficult not to imagine some sort of

34:48

quasi nationalization whether it's via a

34:51

golden share scheme or some other

34:53

arrangement. If if OpenAI and Anthropic

34:56

as the deacto duopoly that we have right

34:58

now, if they're larger than the rest of

35:01

the American economy combined, it's

35:03

difficult to imagine a case, at least

35:06

maybe a limitation of my own

35:07

imagination, where there isn't some

35:10

strong formal arrangement between those

35:13

companies and the US government. So I I

35:16

think if you really do believe if you're

35:18

drinking the Kool-Aid and you believe

35:19

that super intelligence coming from a

35:22

small minority of companies in the US

35:25

right now are going to dominate the

35:28

future economic light cone. I think some

35:31

variant of quasi nationalization or

35:34

government private sector hybridization

35:36

or call it a private public

35:38

collaboration if you like that

35:40

euphemism. I think some variant thereof

35:42

is probably inevitable. And I do think I

35:45

So, we talked a bit about this on the

35:48

past two pod episodes. Yes, I do think

35:50

the singularity is can be operationally

35:54

defined as every sci-fi trope happening

35:56

everywhere all at once. And we've got a

35:58

few in this story. We've got UBI or UBC

36:02

or UB on the one hand. We have super

36:06

intelligence on the other. And I it's

36:09

just I I think if ever there were a time

36:12

for some sort of UBI or universal basic

36:16

dividend or universal basic equity or

36:18

universal basic computer capability

36:20

scheme or universal basic services

36:22

scheme to manifest in government policy.

36:25

It has to happen approximately now or in

36:28

the next year or two.

36:30

>> I totally agree with that Alex but I

36:31

want to throw two things back at you. Uh

36:33

first the government has infinite power

36:36

of taxation. it doesn't need to own

36:37

equity in companies to extract any

36:39

amount of money it wants from any AI

36:41

entity. So it's just it's just a you

36:44

know it's a fact that the government has

36:46

all the money extraction ability in the

36:48

world. Um, but the other thing is I

36:50

think you talked about in a prior pod

36:52

the fact that the original atomic energy

36:55

uh commission or the NRA I forget which

36:56

one or NRC

36:58

it was empowered its whole mission under

37:00

Nixon was to make nuclear energy happen

37:04

in America and the net effect it had was

37:07

to prevent nuclear power from existing

37:10

in America and you talked you talked

37:11

about that at length and so the the act

37:14

of nationalization is inevitable I know

37:16

with AI I completely agree

37:18

But the idea that that the government

37:20

somehow empowers progress in that

37:22

process, it only inhibits progress.

37:24

>> I would draw a distinction. So the the

37:26

Atomic Energy Commission was formed at

37:28

the AEC in the wake of World War II

37:31

under the premise that atomic energy had

37:34

essential civilian applications and also

37:37

was too important to be left to the

37:39

military and also too important to be

37:41

left to the civilian government and to

37:43

at least solely and too important to be

37:44

left solely to the private sector. So

37:46

the atomic energy commission was formed

37:48

as sort of this hybrid organism and that

37:51

evolved eventually into the department

37:53

of energy. The problem that I perceive

37:55

with the AEC and with uh subsequent

37:58

spin-offs and derivatives like the

37:59

Nuclear Regulatory Commission is it was

38:03

almost born in in war. It was it was

38:07

born out of a time in a place where you

38:09

have uh in the early days of the Atomic

38:12

Energy Commission almost a sense of

38:14

guilt that hung over Manhattan Project

38:17

scientists who were losing quite a bit

38:20

of sleep over who would own the children

38:23

of atomic weaponry. Here I I would say

38:26

at least one substantive difference is

38:29

super intelligence isn't being born out

38:31

of Hiroshima or any equivalent. It it

38:34

started from the private sector with

38:37

private sector scientists. The US

38:38

government I mean Sam famously offered

38:41

the US government a stake early on uh in

38:44

open AI in order to to seek earlier

38:46

funding and US government reportedly

38:48

turned down open AI. So I I would say

38:52

qualitatively if you compare the the

38:54

rise of atomic power and how it was

38:57

regulated in this country during and

38:59

after World War II with AI technology in

39:02

some sense polar opposites started from

39:04

the private sector. US government could

39:06

have taken an early stake could have

39:08

been uh at least nationalized at a very

39:11

early age could have been militarized at

39:14

a very early stage and that just didn't

39:16

happen. So, I'm a lot less worried that

39:18

somehow the government will step in, at

39:21

least for the next few years under this

39:22

administration, step in and pull an NRC

39:25

and find ways to to slow everything

39:28

down. Uh, unless the the Frontier Labs

39:30

in this country really do want to slow

39:32

down.

39:33

>> Brian, Brian, you're running a $40

39:35

billion public company right now. How

39:38

does this make you feel?

39:41

Um I don't spend too much of my time

39:42

thinking about it but um you know high

39:44

level any company that reaches a certain

39:46

size is going to interface with the

39:48

government. Um but as others have

39:50

mentioned here that can take many

39:51

different forms right paying taxes is is

39:53

the most obvious one. Um you're going to

39:56

engage with them on various policy

39:57

issues and this administration's been

40:00

very open and eager to make improve

40:02

policy around crypto which has been

40:03

great. Um you may the government may

40:06

actually end up being a customer uh of

40:07

your product as well. So that that's

40:09

another touch point. Um you know we

40:11

actually provide uh crypto services to

40:14

about 140 different government agencies

40:15

at federal, state and local levels. Um

40:19

and so to me that's sufficient. I don't

40:21

think going farther than that and

40:23

actually having them take an ownership

40:26

stake in the company unless you know if

40:29

I guess if if there let's say there was

40:31

a matter of national security and this

40:32

companies were not would not exist

40:34

otherwise

40:36

um and there was fundraising happening

40:39

from the government I guess you could

40:41

they could end up with some equity in

40:42

that situation but it just begs the

40:44

question of like well who's going to be

40:45

managing this portfolio of company

40:47

stocks when you know when would they

40:49

sell them because it's not like a

40:50

foregone conclusion that Enthropic and A

40:52

are going to be the biggest AI companies

40:53

forever. It might end up being that, you

40:55

know, Google or someone else does a or

40:57

SpaceX does a better job, right? So now

41:00

you're suddenly saying, okay, we're

41:02

going to have like capital management

41:03

happening inside the government. I I

41:05

think the government should be limited

41:06

to setting policy

41:08

>> and the private sector should do the

41:09

capital allocation.

41:10

>> Nice.

41:11

>> Yeah. Considering that that companies

41:14

donate to political campaigns,

41:16

>> you think about how toxic that circle

41:18

is. Oh, okay. this this government is

41:20

investing in my company and I'm going to

41:22

turn around and donate to their next

41:24

election campaign.

41:25

>> Like that is the most toxic circle I can

41:28

possibly imagine. Can you imagine what

41:30

what

41:31

>> democracy in America?

41:32

>> Yeah. Um

41:33

>> I'm I'm curious, Brian, though. Do you

41:35

think that as a country we should have a

41:37

sovereign wealth fund?

41:40

>> Okay. So, that's a complex topic. I

41:41

think um there's parts of it that I like

41:44

a lot and parts of it I don't. So, the

41:45

part that I like is that it would allow

41:47

everybody to have skin in the game. And

41:49

I think we'd see more cohesion,

41:52

um, less polarization,

41:54

and it's a little bit like in a company,

41:56

you know, inside Coinbase, employees get

41:58

stock options because if we all have we

42:00

we're kind of grumpy today and we get in

42:02

a little fight with our coworker, but

42:03

hey, we all own we're making something

42:05

bigger than this. So, we all kind of

42:06

stick around and work out our

42:07

differences. So, in that sense, I love

42:09

the idea of people being able to buy

42:11

into a sovereign wealth fund, but also

42:13

maybe every citizen getting a share at

42:15

birth. It's a little bit like what

42:16

they're doing with these Trump accounts

42:17

right now. So, I think that'll actually

42:18

>> make people more aligned to free market

42:21

capitalism and have skin in the game.

42:23

The downside is kind of what we talked

42:25

about earlier, which is who's allocating

42:26

that money, right? If if we were in sort

42:29

of a Singapore model where like the top

42:31

uh people in private industry got

42:34

commensurate compensation to come into

42:36

government like I think you know Michael

42:37

Grimes from Morgan Stanley I think came

42:40

in and was working with the

42:41

administration at some point like

42:42

someone like him would probably do a

42:44

good job managing that allocating it. Do

42:46

I believe that that's going to exist in

42:48

all in every administration for you know

42:50

over time? Like it's just very hard to

42:52

see it getting it could very easily get

42:54

politicized right where they start

42:55

investing in the green revolution

42:57

whether that works or not or you know

42:59

all all kinds of things like that. So I

43:01

uh I don't know I'm torn I'm torn on

43:03

that one. We got to find some way to

43:04

bring cohesion back to the US but I'm

43:07

not sure if a sovereign wealth fund

43:08

would be managed well over time. Like

43:10

just having a strict rule like keep it

43:11

in the S&P 500 would be a nice

43:13

mitigating factor. something something

43:15

like that.

43:16

>> Welcome to the health section of

43:17

Moonshots brought to you by Fountain

43:18

Life. You know, AI is having an outsiz

43:21

impact on every aspect of our lives. How

43:23

we teach our kids, how we run our

43:24

companies. It also is having a huge

43:26

impact on health, helping you prevent

43:29

heart disease. One of the key things I'm

43:31

here with Dr. Don Mucalem, our chief

43:33

medical officer at Fountain. Heart

43:35

disease has been personal for you as

43:36

well, hasn't it?

43:37

>> It really has, Peter. When my daughter

43:39

was five, my husband died of sudden

43:41

cardiac death. And so this is a topic

43:43

that is one that I am missiondriven to

43:46

try to eradicate. Prevention first and

43:48

early detection is absolutely critical.

43:51

50% of people die of heart attacks with

43:53

no warning signs.

43:54

>> No shortness of breath, no pain, no

43:56

nothing.

43:56

>> No silent killer.

43:57

>> They just don't wake up in the morning.

43:59

>> They don't wake up. And so you know AI,

44:01

this is our mission to advance science

44:03

to try to help to one day democratize

44:05

wellness. We know at fountain life when

44:07

we do this CT angography with AI

44:10

analytics, we are actually finding that

44:12

88% of people coming in have detectable

44:16

coronary artery disease. But Peter,

44:17

what's more alarming to me is 23% of

44:20

those individuals had soft plaque. This

44:23

is the plaque that would not

44:24

traditionally be seen on CT looking at

44:26

calcium scores alone. And this is the

44:28

plaque that we must intervene with with

44:31

the multimodal testing we're doing,

44:33

including diagnostic laboratory studies

44:35

partnered with healthy lifestyle

44:37

recommendations.

44:38

>> So listen, make sure you understand

44:40

what's going on inside your body

44:42

genetically, metabolically, and

44:43

cardiovascularly. You can know, and it's

44:45

your obligation to know. So check it out

44:48

at fountainlife.com/per

44:50

to find out more and really make sure

44:53

that you're the CEO of your own health.

44:55

All right, back to the episode. Let me

44:57

hit the second story related to this one

44:59

moment. Uh I don't want to belabor the

45:01

point, but you know Sam Alman sat down

45:03

with Senator Sanders who's proposing a

45:05

transfer of 50% of equity from the top

45:07

AI companies into a public fund. Almond

45:10

responded, you know, that's not going to

45:13

happen. That's way too much. Uh the

45:15

point is we've started a negotiation. Uh

45:18

you know 5 years ago this conversation

45:19

would have been unthinkable. You know

45:20

the Overton window on AI wealth

45:22

distribution uh has moved dramatically.

45:25

You know, I said earlier we see all

45:27

these examples of 10% ownership, and if

45:30

I had to guess, uh, I think this is not

45:32

going to go away. I think we're going to

45:34

see a push towards at least a 10%

45:37

ownership. Uh, Dave, what do you think

45:39

about that?

45:41

>> No, I think it's utterly insane. That's

45:42

what I've said before.

45:43

>> I know it's insane. Do you think it's

45:45

going to happen?

45:46

>> Uh, no. I don't think it'll happen. I

45:48

think Bernie's just trying to attract

45:49

news. Um, and you know, well, you know,

45:52

Donald can invest in whatever he wants

45:54

to invest in. He has proven that he'll

45:56

make that decision on like five minute

45:57

notice, you know, after a meeting. So,

45:59

so I can't rule out uh but it it doesn't

46:04

doesn't strike me as one of the most

46:05

likely investments that that Trump would

46:08

make. You know, Trump invested heavily

46:09

in semiconductors moving back into the

46:11

US, investing in OpenAI and anthropics

46:14

IPOs, but they're already 100% taxable

46:16

US entities that are thriving. Is this

46:18

an investment or a grant of shares to

46:21

the US government?

46:25

>> Bernie's proposal is a is a is a tax.

46:27

So, it's just a grant of shares to the

46:29

US government,

46:29

>> right?

46:32

>> I I think it's going to be you know

46:34

equivalent to uh you know Alaska's

46:37

permanent fund. You've been using our

46:39

intelligence. You've been using our

46:40

energy. You've been using our real

46:41

estate, our oxygen. Uh we going to claim

46:44

10% and we're going to you know give it

46:46

to the people.

46:48

I would say look at it from the Frontier

46:50

Labs perspective. Put aside all of any

46:52

politics or any technical arguments or

46:54

any legal or regulatory arguments. Just

46:56

think about it from an optical or a

46:58

marketing perspective. If you're open AI

47:01

or you're anthropic and you have the

47:03

opportunity to say donate 10% equity

47:06

through through some legal scheme to the

47:09

US government one time 10% maybe in

47:12

connection with your IPO this year. Now

47:14

suddenly in principle you're inoculated

47:17

at least politically against any future

47:20

claims that you owe a UBI or or some

47:24

other payment to the citizenry. You can

47:27

say I already gave up my pound of flesh.

47:29

I gave it to the United States and it's

47:33

sitting in a sovereign wealth fund now

47:35

and it's generating returns for the

47:37

American people. That was your one-time

47:40

donation. I think if if I'm Sam or if

47:43

I'm Daario, that's looking pretty

47:45

attractive.

47:47

>> And and coupled with that, Alex, you've

47:49

also got a conflict, right? The same

47:51

state that regulates AI now profits from

47:54

your success.

47:57

Well, the federal government a a a

48:01

incredibly toxic incentive for the the

48:04

two mega companies that it extracted

48:06

equity from to succeed at the expense of

48:09

a startup that isn't part of that same

48:12

loop. It's an incredibly toxic dynamic.

48:15

Now, like you're saying, the American

48:17

people now benefit from these two

48:18

companies

48:20

>> and and you know, Brian said a second

48:21

ago, there will be other companies that

48:22

we haven't thought of yet. you know what

48:25

do you do with them? They're not part of

48:26

the US investment.

48:28

>> Yeah, there's a broader incompatibility

48:30

here. Think about um these labs and AI

48:34

labs becoming civilization scale

48:36

infrastructure, right? That means you

48:38

have to treat them like strategic

48:40

utilities much like electricity. You

48:42

regulate the utilities in a particular

48:44

way and deal with that. You need a

48:46

structure like that. The problem is

48:48

there's an incompatibility here because

48:49

there's no governance structure that

48:51

fits a technology that touches like

48:54

every job, every industry, every

48:56

government service. So there's a huge

48:58

challenge and you can't pick the

49:00

winners. It's more a structural problem

49:02

that the mechanisms taxation or

49:04

ownership. We don't even have a

49:06

sovereign wealth fund. So how do you

49:07

deal with that? So this is a this is a a

49:10

big in incompatibility problem that I

49:12

see here. We're going to mess it up.

49:14

whatever we do in the current structure.

49:16

>> I don't think this is going away. I

49:18

think we're going to be seeing this

49:19

happen at some level. Alex, I

49:22

>> I'll just comment if if you remember

49:23

back, one of the earliest executive

49:25

orders from this administration was to

49:27

order the Secretary of Treasury to

49:29

explore setting up a sovereign wealth

49:30

fund. And far be it for me to recommend

49:33

national economic policy but it's not

49:35

difficult for me to imagine a scenario

49:37

where the US Treasury does take golden

49:40

shares call it 5 to 10% in open AI and

49:44

anthropic to complement its existing

49:45

portfolio and then some amount of time

49:48

from now maybe sometime in the next few

49:50

years there's a great rebalancing we get

49:52

our sovereign wealth fund but to Brian's

49:54

earlier point rather than being a basket

49:57

of 20 or 30 or 40 techoriented or

50:00

strategic companies. Instead, the

50:03

federal government eases into say an S&P

50:06

500 or a total market index, gradually

50:09

liquidating its holdings in the

50:11

individual companies in favor for a

50:13

total market index. And that children is

50:16

how we got our universal basic income or

50:19

equity.

50:20

>> Mhm. Yep. All right. Uh late breaking

50:24

story, OpenAI has officially filed its

50:26

S1 to go public later this year. Poly

50:29

market bets. 46% say it'll come out at

50:32

1.5 trillion or greater and 26% say it's

50:36

not going to happen this year. Uh this

50:38

would be the third trillion dollar IPO

50:40

following Anthropic and SpaceX AI which

50:44

is coming at 1.77 trillion in just a

50:46

couple of days. I I wanted to just point

50:48

out a conversation we had on the pod I

50:51

don't know a month and a bit ago uh in

50:53

which I don't you guys remember uh Sarah

50:56

Frier the CFO came out and said

50:58

privately that she was very concerned

51:01

that openi was not ready to be a public

51:03

company you know it had a risk of 600

51:07

billion of compute contracts on its

51:09

books uh I guess she thinks they're

51:12

ready now Dave what are you thinking

51:14

here I

51:15

>> I think it's more that times have

51:17

changed I I think uh every CFO I've ever

51:19

met wants visibility at least three or

51:21

four quarters into the future, but in

51:24

the singularity, no one's ever going to

51:26

have visibility three or four quarters

51:27

in the future ever again. That's just

51:29

the nature of technology. Yeah, exactly.

51:32

So, so I think CFOs like Sarah just need

51:34

to get comfortable with look, this is

51:36

the way the future has to be.

51:38

>> Uh and you know, what used to be three,

51:41

four, four, five quarters of visibility

51:42

is now three, four, five months is is

51:44

the best you're ever going to get. And

51:45

even that is a shrinking horizon. But

51:48

the economy marches on. You know, we're

51:50

have to get used to the, you know, if

51:51

you look at just the daily volatilility

51:53

of the market, it's it's so high now

51:55

because tech is just that's just the

51:57

nature of tech. So, uh, so I think the

51:59

CFOs of the future will get used to it.

52:01

And but you you can't miss the IPO

52:03

window, right? If you get SpaceX going

52:05

out and you get Anthropic going out, you

52:07

have to go out.

52:08

>> The challenge is coming out coming out

52:10

third during a cash crunch, right? I

52:11

mean, there's only so much liquidity out

52:13

there, and if you're coming out third

52:16

and, you know, SpaceX is skyrocketing

52:18

and and Anthropic is, you know, growing

52:21

at 640% per year, uh, it's dangerous to

52:24

come out third.

52:26

>> It is, but if you if you said, "Okay,

52:28

the counterargument is then, let's get

52:30

let those other two IPOs happen. Let's

52:32

let them digest their hundreds of

52:34

billions of dollars and let the market

52:36

recharge, and then we'll go out later

52:38

when it's recharged." You're going to be

52:40

waiting years.

52:40

>> Yeah. you know, you're not talking about

52:42

3 months later. So then then you're

52:44

like, okay, you can't you can't wait

52:46

years. Anything could happen in between.

52:47

Meanwhile, these guys are fully tanked

52:49

up and moving 100,000 miles an hour. No,

52:53

you don't want you don't want to be that

52:54

company. So, you got to go. You got to

52:56

go.

52:56

>> When you've got these trillion dollar

52:57

IPOs, the whole kind of corporate rapper

52:59

seems way too small for what's going on.

53:03

>> This is so unprecedented compared to

53:05

anything in human history. It's just

53:06

absolutely wild.

53:08

>> Yeah. Does it break?

53:09

>> Yeah. Go on, Alex.

53:11

>> Remember also these concerns? April was

53:13

a whole two months ago. That's several

53:15

lifetimes in singularity time scaling

53:18

ago. Open AAI had recently come out of

53:21

its code red. They were shutting down

53:24

Sora and some of their other divisions

53:26

trying to become anthropic faster than

53:28

anthropic could become Open AI. pivoting

53:30

to codeex and then arguably most

53:33

importantly taking Stargate which was

53:35

originally conceived as being OpenAI

53:38

owned and operated data centers and

53:41

rebranding basically a leasing scheme as

53:44

the new Stargate. So I I my sense as an

53:48

outsider without access to internal

53:50

accounting is that through a combination

53:53

of new revenue sources like basically

53:56

becoming the codeex company uh removing

53:59

other expenses like Sora and like their

54:02

AI for science division and then

54:05

effectively lobomizing Stargate and

54:08

switching it over to a leasing model

54:09

rather than an ownership model which if

54:11

I were CFO of OpenAI I would have been

54:14

scared to death of the ownership. model

54:16

given all of the price girrations in the

54:18

GPU market. I I would expect that given

54:21

all of those measures that open AI again

54:24

not investment advice but comes out of

54:26

all of those with a much more stable and

54:29

predictable prospectus than the open AI

54:32

that came into this year that looked

54:34

much more like a consumer play volatile

54:38

that was going to own its data centers.

54:40

Scary.

54:40

>> They they pulled it off, Alex. They

54:42

really pulled it off. They turned it

54:44

around.

54:45

They did, but that's probably what

54:46

freaked out Sarah. If you looked at the

54:48

forecast from a year ago, it it had 20

54:50

billion of ad revenue and I forget, but

54:52

many, many billions of consumer

54:54

subscription revenue and then a little

54:55

bit of enterprise.

54:57

>> And now, if you look at the forecast,

54:58

it's a complete inversion of the colors

55:00

on the bar chart. That always scares a

55:02

CFO, right?

55:03

>> Brian, you know, I have to imagine that

55:05

being a founder tech company is the big

55:08

advantage that you have over traditional

55:11

large corporations. I mean, being able

55:13

to say we're going this way uh versus

55:15

that way, but for all my friends who are

55:18

public company CF CEOs, uh it it's not

55:22

fun. How do you think about about, you

55:25

know, remembering when you were a couple

55:27

months before your IPO? What's going on

55:29

inside of a company theoretically like

55:31

this?

55:34

>> Well, a couple things come to mind. One

55:36

is um there's always there should be

55:38

some healthy tension, I think, between

55:40

like a founder, CEO, and a CFO. I mean,

55:42

that's founders are great at many

55:44

things. Um, but if you just have too

55:46

much founder energy, sometimes they blow

55:47

the place up, right? We can probably

55:48

think of our favorite companies in that

55:50

example. Um, but simultaneously, you

55:53

don't just want to have risk-minded

55:54

operators uh running the show. And that

55:57

that's just a recipe for incrementalism

55:59

or even slow decline, right? So, I think

56:01

it's sometimes the press likes to report

56:03

on these things of like, oh my gosh,

56:05

there's drama happening between, you

56:06

know, I'm like, that's called a healthy

56:08

conversation. So I imagine that they're

56:10

they're actually working like relatively

56:12

well together on this and it's a high

56:13

stakes moment for both of them.

56:15

>> Um the other thing is like sometimes

56:17

people criticize OpenAI like oh my gosh

56:19

they missed their their target uh their

56:21

end ofear target to get a billion users

56:23

or something like that and you know

56:24

internally we all we often use like the

56:26

OKR system and we we tell we tell

56:29

everybody set uncomfortably ambitious

56:30

goals and if you hit at least 70% of it

56:32

that's considered a good outcome. So

56:34

when whenever companies switch into the

56:36

public mindset, they're often setting

56:38

their goals start to become more like

56:40

appropriate for external investors where

56:42

wow, we just hit our goals every quarter

56:43

around here. Who you know? Um and so

56:46

anyway, there's a lot of t stuff like

56:47

that that happens behind the scenes. I

56:49

think the highle bit is right is what

56:51

you guys already covered is they've got

56:53

to get out just because that's what

56:55

their competitors are doing and that's

56:57

where the capital is going to all go.

56:59

So, it's going to be uncomfortable and

57:00

messy and I'm a little worried about um

57:03

these valuations where retail is going

57:06

to, you know, be the the buyer of this

57:08

and take the hit.

57:10

>> Yeah, it could be pretty choppy here.

57:12

Um, you know, just self because we

57:14

talked about how AI is sort of taking

57:16

all the oxygen out of the room. Like

57:18

selfishly, I think other techos are kind

57:20

of like, all right, finally get these

57:21

things public so there can be a real

57:22

mark on it and maybe um some of the the

57:25

hype dies down a little bit. I I also

57:27

think there's going to be fierce

57:28

competition amongst these these models

57:30

because they keep like the open source

57:32

models are basically just as good and 3

57:34

to six months behind for like 99%

57:37

>> that much if that much.

57:38

>> Yeah. And they they're like literally

57:40

99% cheaper for inference. So I think

57:43

that the demand for intelligence is

57:45

almost infinite. It probably is infinite

57:47

but the costs are going to fall like way

57:49

more than Mo's law. So um you know are

57:52

is the harness that these guys are

57:54

making whether it's codec or claude uh

57:56

claude code are those valuable? I don't

57:58

think the harness is where the value is.

58:00

I think that um like the the the

58:03

depreciation on these models like how

58:05

how fastly how fast the price of them

58:07

drop for the same level of intelligence

58:09

is going to be dramatic. And I think

58:10

within 12 18 months 80% of our workloads

58:14

are going to be going to models that are

58:15

99% cheaper.

58:18

>> Yeah. I Brian I had a meeting with a

58:20

Morgan Stanley guy right after the

58:22

Facebook IPO and he said oh my god this

58:25

was the worst disaster in in US

58:27

financial history with the stock was

58:29

down I think about half after the IPO

58:32

and nothing wrong with the company

58:33

obviously and it was a great investment

58:35

in hindsight obviously but there just

58:37

wasn't enough liquidity so they they

58:39

dumped it in all their private client

58:41

accounts then watched it go down by half

58:43

and now we're doing this three

58:46

backtoback IPOs

58:48

each one of which is a factor of 10

58:51

bigger than anything we've ever seen

58:53

before. And so I I'm just curious, the

58:55

logistics of this could be a nightmare.

58:58

Even if the companies are great and even

59:00

if five years from now they're way up

59:01

from their IPO valuations, is there

59:03

really that much money in the world?

59:06

Like does it actually exist?

59:09

>> And it'll be we'll find out, I guess.

59:11

>> Yeah. And and right now, you know, I

59:12

have a lot of friends who like if I'm

59:14

not, you know, pitching my AI story for

59:16

my company, I can't get money. AI is

59:19

sucking the oxygen out of out of the

59:21

room everywhere. All right, this next

59:24

story generally stopped me in my tracks.

59:26

Uh, you know, Google, one of the biggest

59:28

AI infrastructure players on the planet

59:30

with its own TPUs and data centers, is

59:32

paying SpaceX 11 billion per year

59:35

through 2029 to access 110,000 NVIDIA

59:39

GPUs inside of XAI's data center. Uh,

59:42

you know, SpaceX is now clearly a

59:44

hyperscaler. And it's ironic, Google is

59:47

renting compute from Elon's rocket

59:49

company, which by the way, Google is an

59:50

investor in Elon's rocket company. I

59:52

love this quote from Austin Reef who put

59:54

it. It's crazy that with one deal,

59:58

SpaceX IPO went from 100x revenues to

1:00:01

50x revenues. Uh, one contract have the

1:00:05

company's valuation multiple, you know,

1:00:07

and and this tells us, you know, clearly

1:00:09

the story. There's a massive AI compute

1:00:12

shortage.

1:00:14

>> Yeah. So

1:00:15

>> love to get your take on this Alex

1:00:16

because uh you know there was a view of

1:00:19

the world where Elon was building a

1:00:21

frontier lab with a you know

1:00:23

first-in-class model. Now if he rents

1:00:26

all the compute to Anthropic and to

1:00:28

Google then clearly he's backed out of

1:00:31

that game completely. I'm not quite sure

1:00:33

you know when he did the first rental to

1:00:35

Anthropic he said that's Colossus one.

1:00:38

Colossus 2 is still grinding away on the

1:00:40

you know the the mother of all frontier

1:00:42

models. You're going to actually when we

1:00:44

interviewed him in Austin, remember

1:00:46

Peter? He said that you're going to be

1:00:48

absolutely blown away by it was Grock 5.

1:00:50

>> Yeah,

1:00:51

>> it's it's it's brilliant. And you know,

1:00:53

here we are. That was due out in March

1:00:55

and here we are. It's June.

1:00:57

>> Well, he's clearly refocused his

1:00:58

attention.

1:01:00

>> Well, all of Colossus 2, do you know,

1:01:02

Alex?

1:01:03

>> I I think a lot of it uh is my

1:01:05

understanding. So, I I took a bit of

1:01:07

heat for saying a few episodes ago that

1:01:10

I I thought Grock in the wake of the

1:01:12

anthropic SpaceX deal was on life

1:01:14

support and Peter and I had a back and

1:01:17

forth with Elon on X talking about it. I

1:01:20

I do think Elon and SpaceX AI are going

1:01:23

to come back to the frontier at some

1:01:25

point. It's not obvious to me that the

1:01:28

acquisition basically the the deacto

1:01:31

acquisition of Curser is going to be

1:01:33

that moment. Uh or if that'll put them

1:01:36

maybe just behind the the frontier in

1:01:39

what effectively has become a second

1:01:41

tier of the frontier. Call it the Google

1:01:43

tier uh until Google hopefully leaprogs.

1:01:46

It would certainly be great to get more

1:01:48

competition among frontier models. But I

1:01:51

if if I'm Elon, I'm I'm thinking the

1:01:54

best shot that SpaceX AI has to get back

1:01:58

to being the frontier is by being a

1:02:01

hyperscaler first. That ultimately

1:02:03

algorithmic

1:02:05

wars, which is what we're seeing right

1:02:07

now, will burn themselves out. We'll

1:02:08

discover through recursive

1:02:10

self-improvement over the next few years

1:02:12

what a perfect AI model looks like. And

1:02:15

then the war, the competition moves to

1:02:18

who is the biggest, baddest hyperscaler,

1:02:21

who has the most hardware and the most

1:02:23

compute.

1:02:24

>> And Alex, don't forget the anthropic

1:02:26

deal can be cancelled with, you know,

1:02:28

some like a quarter.

1:02:29

>> It's month by month. I think it's month

1:02:31

by month.

1:02:31

>> And then this is only a three-year

1:02:33

contract. So when when Elon Elon never

1:02:37

uh never plays second fiddle, right? He

1:02:39

will be working on

1:02:42

>> He wrote back to us, he'll never give

1:02:44

up. never underline. But what I would

1:02:47

say is that the question is how do you

1:02:49

get back to the frontier? And I I

1:02:51

suspect the thinking may be become a

1:02:53

hyperscaler for the moment. Put Grock on

1:02:56

de facto life support for a year or two.

1:02:59

Use revenue from the Google deal and the

1:03:01

anthropic deal to accumulate enough of a

1:03:04

head of steam on the SpaceX side that

1:03:07

you're able to go and build the Dyson

1:03:08

swarm in sun-synchronous orbit. And then

1:03:11

once you have 10x 100x more compute than

1:03:14

everyone else, then you go and try to

1:03:17

reach a frontier status by training on

1:03:19

the

1:03:19

>> world and and buy every model that you

1:03:22

want to. He's going to have a currency

1:03:23

that he can go on shopping sprees with.

1:03:27

>> Well, he just did that with cursor, but

1:03:29

that may or may not be enough to get him

1:03:31

to the frontier. It may require

1:03:32

>> one of many.

1:03:33

>> There may be some things that money

1:03:35

can't buy, but that compute can. and his

1:03:37

thinking maybe speculatively he can buy

1:03:40

enough compute to buy his way back to

1:03:41

the frontier.

1:03:43

>> You know if Google needs this much

1:03:44

external compute like at this scale that

1:03:48

tells you the bottleneck has completely

1:03:49

shifted from model design to

1:03:51

infrastructure. I'm finding this hard to

1:03:53

comprehend that Google needs this level

1:03:56

of compute. That's a crazy crazy number

1:03:58

they're paying for this.

1:04:00

>> I mean I thought they had their own

1:04:01

infrastructure. Is that is the compute

1:04:03

demand so crazy?

1:04:06

>> Yeah. No, it's everything is sold out,

1:04:08

Seem. I mean, they'll take everything.

1:04:09

>> Yeah,

1:04:11

>> it's completely So, so just numerically,

1:04:14

this is a this is 110,000 GPUs here. I

1:04:17

thought he bought half a million. No, he

1:04:19

did the other deal with Anthropic

1:04:20

already.

1:04:21

>> Um, so does that mean he's still got a

1:04:23

couple hundred thousand GPUs for

1:04:25

internal XAI training or not?

1:04:27

>> I I think these are different

1:04:29

generations. So, the Colossus one was

1:04:32

sort of an unholy ad mixture of several

1:04:34

different I think it it was a mixture of

1:04:37

H100's and several other generations. Uh

1:04:40

so uh Colossus 2 was supposed to be a

1:04:44

pure mixture. Remember also Google most

1:04:46

of their compute takes the TPU format.

1:04:48

You have customers that don't

1:04:50

necessarily want to run their workloads

1:04:52

on TPUs. They may want the Nvidia CUDA

1:04:55

stack. And so there are variety of

1:04:57

reasons why if if you're Google Cloud

1:04:59

Platform, you want to be able to to rope

1:05:02

in additional GPUs if you can find them.

1:05:05

All right, I'm going to move us along

1:05:06

unless someone else has another point

1:05:08

you want to make here. Uh, this next

1:05:10

story is sort of science fiction

1:05:11

becoming real. I love the scope and

1:05:14

audacity of uh of Elon's plans. This is

1:05:17

their AI1 satellite they just unveiled.

1:05:20

The next generation AI satellite

1:05:22

designed, Alex, to launch humanity's

1:05:24

first Dyson Swarm here. The spec the

1:05:26

specs are wild. 150 kW of peak compute,

1:05:30

70 kW per ton. This is a two-tonon

1:05:32

satellite, a 70 m wingspan, basically

1:05:36

the wingspan of a an Airbus 380 with 110

1:05:40

square meters of deployable radiative

1:05:42

cooling and an integrative

1:05:44

micrometeorite shield. Right, there's

1:05:46

lots of micromedorites hitting the

1:05:48

planet all the time. Uh Elon's

1:05:50

description is worth me reading. He

1:05:52

says, quote, "The AI satellite is much

1:05:54

simpler than a Starling satellite. The

1:05:56

AI satellite is essentially a lot of

1:05:58

solar cells. You still need some laser

1:06:00

links, but you don't have all the super

1:06:02

complex antennas that you have on a

1:06:04

Starlink satellite. It's easier to

1:06:06

design than uh than the AI satellite.

1:06:09

It's a lot bigger. A lot of this

1:06:11

technology already exists with Starlink

1:06:14

V3. So, here he is. Uh he's making it

1:06:17

real. That's what he does all the time.

1:06:19

Build the tech to make it real. Alex,

1:06:21

what do you make of it?

1:06:22

>> A few thoughts. First, it's beautiful.

1:06:25

>> Yeah, it is beautiful. Second, it's so

1:06:27

beautiful. In in in my daily newsletter,

1:06:29

I featured an artistic rendering of this

1:06:32

design. It's beautiful. Second thought,

1:06:35

look at how much of its surface area has

1:06:37

nothing to do at all with compute. Look

1:06:39

at the solar arrays for power. Look at

1:06:41

the radiators for heat dissipation. Look

1:06:44

how tiny, at least by surface area. All

1:06:46

of this is for compute. What that says

1:06:49

to me is, think a few generations out.

1:06:51

Imagine now we're in the early 2030s and

1:06:56

maybe compact fusion is finally working.

1:06:59

Wouldn't that radically change the form

1:07:01

factor?

1:07:02

>> Power beaming.

1:07:04

>> Power beaming. Sure. But even with power

1:07:06

beaming, you still need to uh you still

1:07:08

need to radiate the the power from uh

1:07:11

from heat dissipation uh from the the

1:07:13

GPUs and you still need to receive the

1:07:15

power. uh yes, it'll enable them to be

1:07:17

more focused, but you're still you're

1:07:20

still depending on some sort of

1:07:21

radiative transfer in both directions.

1:07:23

But imagine like a few generations out,

1:07:26

you have some some radically innovative

1:07:29

radiator system to get rid of your waste

1:07:31

heat. And maybe you're able to locally

1:07:33

power yourself without needing the sun.

1:07:36

These can be incredibly compact. This is

1:07:38

the most disjointed, the largest,

1:07:41

bulkiest, most mainframe era node in the

1:07:45

Dyson swarm we're ever likely to see.

1:07:47

Imagine now in the future something

1:07:49

that's far more compact, something that

1:07:52

is looks maybe a little bit more

1:07:54

spherical and a little bit less like a

1:07:56

leaf blowing in the solar wind. This is

1:07:59

the first generation of I think the node

1:08:01

in our Dyson swarm Elon does over and

1:08:04

over again, right? his Merlin engines,

1:08:06

you know, V1, V2, V3, they get smaller,

1:08:09

more compact, get it working and then

1:08:11

simplify.

1:08:12

>> Yes,

1:08:14

>> Brian. Uh, any appreciation that you

1:08:17

want to share on this one?

1:08:20

>> I mean, Elon's the best in the world at

1:08:21

hardware. No doubt about it. I, you were

1:08:23

talking about micromedorites. I was just

1:08:25

imagining they must have some redundancy

1:08:26

here. Like, if if there's some bullet,

1:08:28

you know, some bullet fragments can fly

1:08:30

through this thing either on the solar

1:08:31

panel or on the liquid radiators. Maybe

1:08:34

there's different compartments like, you

1:08:35

know, it could it could sustain uh five

1:08:38

bullet hits into the radiators and still

1:08:40

get sufficient cooling or something like

1:08:42

that. And then the other thing I'm just

1:08:43

wondering is how does it all fold up

1:08:45

inside Starship? But I'm sure I'm sure

1:08:46

it'll be a beautiful origami. And by the

1:08:48

way, the point you just made about

1:08:50

Starship, the reason, you know, SpaceX

1:08:52

can do this is because of Starship and

1:08:55

its volume. you know, no one else I

1:08:58

don't think any other vehicle is going

1:08:59

to have the level of capacity to build

1:09:02

or deploy satellites like this. So,

1:09:06

>> but also keep in mind again so 150 kow

1:09:11

we were speaking previously uh with

1:09:14

Andrew and uh talking about cerebrus.

1:09:16

Cerebrus like a wafer scale engine is

1:09:19

what like 10 20 30 kow 20 kow

1:09:23

>> 20 kow. So 70 kow is a ton for this

1:09:28

>> versus like 20 kow for a single wafer

1:09:32

that's what fraction of a kilogram. So

1:09:34

imagine how far we are from the physical

1:09:38

physically efficient frontier here. When

1:09:40

we talk all the time on on the pod royal

1:09:43

we about the Dyson swarm. Some of us

1:09:45

talk about disassembling the moon or or

1:09:47

other planets and what what what a waste

1:09:49

by atom count most of our solar system

1:09:51

is. Drink. Yeah, drink.

1:09:54

>> What a waste by mass most of our solar

1:09:56

system is. If it takes an entire ton to

1:09:59

generate 150 kilowatts of compute in low

1:10:03

Earth orbit or sun-synchronous orbit,

1:10:05

we're orders of magnitude, but that says

1:10:07

to me, we're orders of magnitude away

1:10:08

from efficiently turning most of the

1:10:11

matter of our solar system, most of it

1:10:13

by mass anyway, into compute. So, plenty

1:10:15

of scaling to go as well.

1:10:17

>> Dave,

1:10:17

>> well, Peter, you're the you're the

1:10:18

master of launching. Uh if this is about

1:10:21

a $6 million GPU compute thing, you

1:10:24

know, 150 kilowatts is about translates

1:10:26

to about 6 million of GPU. But what is

1:10:29

the launch cost of this one unit? So

1:10:31

this would be equivalent to like an

1:10:32

NV72, you know, if it were in Nvidia

1:10:35

terms. That's up there in space.

1:10:37

>> You want to get down you want to get it

1:10:39

down to 100 dollars per kilogram, right?

1:10:42

That's the target price uh at the end of

1:10:45

the day. Uh and remember his original

1:10:47

filing was for 500,000 of these

1:10:50

satellites. Uh you know the calculation

1:10:52

is like a launch per hour of Starship 24

1:10:55

hours a day, 7 days a week to deploy

1:10:57

that and then he upped it to a million

1:10:58

satellites. Uh

1:11:01

I I I think again the audacity of his

1:11:04

scale is extraordinary but he backs into

1:11:07

the numbers as a first principal thinker

1:11:09

and he makes it work.

1:11:10

>> Yeah. A couple of thoughts here. you

1:11:11

know the AI infrastructure now stops

1:11:15

being a real estate problem and starts

1:11:17

becoming a launch problem right and this

1:11:19

is one of the moments where we're seeing

1:11:20

the category change in real time where

1:11:23

it's not a rocket company it's not a

1:11:24

satellite internet company it's like

1:11:26

literally civilizational infrastructure

1:11:29

company I such an unbelievable demand

1:11:32

for power that we have to do this and

1:11:34

let's remember that this was you know

1:11:36

data orbital compute was not in

1:11:39

anybody's bingo card a year ago and here

1:11:40

we designed it and like planning on

1:11:43

getting it out there. Incredible.

1:11:44

>> And and even more, every large AI

1:11:46

company is talking about putting up

1:11:48

their orbital data centers. Uh and now

1:11:50

that new Glenn is not functioning,

1:11:52

right? It's going to be down for at

1:11:54

least a year. Um maybe more. Uh SpaceX

1:11:57

is the only story in town. We'll see if

1:11:59

Relativity Space makes it happen or

1:12:02

Rocket Rocket Labs gets their larger

1:12:04

vehicle operating. Uh this next story,

1:12:06

you know, Elon loves building the

1:12:07

machines that build the machines. And

1:12:09

and so this week, SpaceX announced a

1:12:12

Gigasat factory. Love the term giga. Uh

1:12:15

once again, of course, in Texas, and

1:12:17

they're going to be producing the A1 the

1:12:19

AI1 satellites uh in late 2027. The

1:12:22

scale is enormous, 1,000 acres capacity

1:12:25

for 11 million square ft of facilities.

1:12:28

And Dave, you remember when we were with

1:12:29

Elon um at the Gigafactory and this is

1:12:32

the Gigafactory playbook once again, he

1:12:35

was building out again 11 million square

1:12:37

ft for Optimus production. Uh so the

1:12:41

important thing here is it's fully

1:12:43

integrated. You know, they're going to

1:12:44

produce the solar ingots, the wafers,

1:12:46

the solar cells, and the entire AI uh

1:12:50

one satellite all on one campus. Uh and

1:12:53

vertical integration matters. You know,

1:12:54

if you control the entire supply chain

1:12:56

from raw materials to finished products,

1:12:58

you control your cost and your timeline.

1:13:00

And that's probably the number one thing

1:13:03

that Elon does extremely well is

1:13:06

manufacturing.

1:13:07

>> Uh Dave,

1:13:08

>> is and and look at look at Texas just

1:13:11

running away with every one of these

1:13:12

projects. It's crazy.

1:13:14

>> Yeah. You know, and then in all the

1:13:16

posts online, if you look on X,

1:13:17

everyone's like, "Oh my gosh, he's

1:13:18

taking over all of Texas." Look, a

1:13:20

thousand acres is about two golf

1:13:22

courses. So next time you're flying,

1:13:24

look down. It's it's just two golf

1:13:26

courses, guys. He's not taking over all

1:13:29

the land in Texas. But the the impact of

1:13:31

this on the economy in that state is

1:13:33

unbelievably healthy. Unbelievably good.

1:13:36

So I don't know why more states aren't

1:13:37

competing for this.

1:13:38

>> I think there's an important point that

1:13:40

we're sleeping on, which is vertical

1:13:42

integration. Yeah, sure. He's he's doing

1:13:44

that, but it's not necessarily just for

1:13:46

his own sake or because he wants to be

1:13:49

the the master of the supply chain for

1:13:51

this. It's because if you follow

1:13:53

carefully SpaceX's announcements in

1:13:55

connection with its IPO, they've been

1:13:58

releasing demo videos, concept videos of

1:14:00

doing this on the moon. And if you're

1:14:03

not in a position to vertically

1:14:05

integrate production of these AI

1:14:08

orbiting data centers, then you're not

1:14:10

in a position to start manufacturing

1:14:12

them off the Earth, namely on the lunar

1:14:15

surface. So he and SpaceX released this

1:14:18

video of an electromagnetic slingshot

1:14:21

launching bam bam bam AI orbital data

1:14:25

centers with a rail gun from the surface

1:14:28

of the moon presumably manufactured on

1:14:30

the surface of the moon.

1:14:31

>> Yes. So I I think that that's the

1:14:33

essential thing that that we arguably

1:14:36

should be talking about here. If you

1:14:37

have vertical integration of the solar

1:14:40

and the compute, then you can do that on

1:14:42

the moon and then uh your your your

1:14:46

delta V is far more favorable and you

1:14:48

can just start slinging these things out

1:14:50

and building the actual Dyson swarm, not

1:14:52

from the Earth's surface where the

1:14:53

economics for heavy launch are less

1:14:56

favorable. Yeah. I'll never forget I was

1:14:57

with Elon um at SpaceX headquarters and

1:15:01

we were having a conversation about, you

1:15:04

know, the fact he was bemoning the fact

1:15:05

he has to make everything, right? We

1:15:07

we're hearing that same thing from Brett

1:15:09

Adcock at Figure and a lot of other

1:15:11

high-tech companies and there was a

1:15:14

product called Pika, which is the heat

1:15:16

shielding uh for the Dragon capsule and

1:15:19

he was getting screwed by the

1:15:20

manufacturer and so he just turned to

1:15:23

the manufacturer and said, "Forget it.

1:15:24

I'm going to make it myself and put you

1:15:26

out of business. And just just the

1:15:28

ferocious mindset he has is

1:15:31

extraordinary. Um

1:15:32

>> well, do you have a prediction, Peter?

1:15:34

It'd be great to get everyone's

1:15:35

prediction, but this partnership right

1:15:37

now between Daario and Elon is insanely

1:15:39

powerful because because you know, Alex

1:15:41

is pointing out continually that new

1:15:42

physics is going to be invented by AI

1:15:44

imminently. And that new physics, if it

1:15:46

goes right into these gigafs, uh it

1:15:49

could be just mind-blowing what comes

1:15:51

out the other side. And and also if

1:15:53

Daario wins the race to

1:15:54

self-improvement, then he's going to

1:15:56

have the smartest AI, you know, and

1:15:58

rapidly accelerating, but Elon will have

1:16:01

the space-based data centers and the

1:16:03

manufacturing capability to turn that

1:16:05

into a closed loop, you know, self

1:16:07

self-manufacturing closed loop, which

1:16:09

Daario hasn't even started on. You know,

1:16:11

there's no there's no physical stuff

1:16:12

going on at Anthropic at all yet. Uh,

1:16:15

and you know, you know, where the rubber

1:16:16

really hits the road is the AI that

1:16:18

designs chips. So here's Elon building

1:16:21

the Terraab, but the chip design itself

1:16:24

comes from the smartest AI, which is,

1:16:26

you know, probably going to be Daario.

1:16:28

May maybe, you know, OpenAI has a

1:16:29

chance, too. But that that duopoly

1:16:32

becomes incredibly powerful if they

1:16:35

stick together. But do you think they'll

1:16:37

still be friends five years?

1:16:38

>> Yeah, these guys, I mean, all of the

1:16:40

players here have formed partnerships

1:16:42

and broken partnerships and reshuffled

1:16:45

the deck, you know, probably multiple

1:16:47

times over the last few years. So what's

1:16:48

your question? Is is the partnership

1:16:50

going to stick together?

1:16:51

>> Well, five years from today, are Daario

1:16:54

and Elon um friends?

1:16:56

>> Yeah. Like like shaking hands and

1:16:58

>> No, I haven't seen honestly I love I

1:17:01

love Elon, but I haven't seen him

1:17:03

partner uh for the long term ever. Uh

1:17:08

every every partnership comes together,

1:17:11

he takes the lead and runs with it. I'll

1:17:15

register a prediction which is I I think

1:17:16

there are going to be such crazy things

1:17:18

happening in the next few years that we

1:17:20

we'll look back and laugh at ourselves

1:17:22

for even asking the question of whether

1:17:24

Elon will be shaking hands with

1:17:25

>> Dar answer to the question

1:17:28

>> interesting

1:17:29

>> questioning the question itself

1:17:32

thoughts

1:17:35

>> uh I totally agree with you Peter I

1:17:37

think this is like uh just I'm I'm just

1:17:40

boggled by the level of of somebody

1:17:43

thinking Looking at civilization scale

1:17:45

on a non-stop basis, and I love it.

1:17:47

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>> All right. Uh, amazing. All right, let's

1:18:53

move to our next story here. Let's put

1:18:55

some financial figures on this. Um

1:18:58

SpaceX valuation is uh right now in poly

1:19:02

market expected to hit 2.13 trillion at

1:19:05

the close of the first day of market. Uh

1:19:08

and here's the news. Morgan Stanley

1:19:10

projects SpaceX revenue could grow from

1:19:12

get this 18.7 billion in 2025. That's

1:19:16

the last number we have on the books to

1:19:18

3.4 trillion by 2040. Uh at those

1:19:22

revenues at 3.4 4 trillion by 2040. That

1:19:25

puts SpaceX's value at some place

1:19:28

between 50 trillion to 100 trillion.

1:19:30

Right? We're seeing the birth

1:19:32

potentially the first hundred trillion

1:19:33

dollar company. Uh and and these charts

1:19:37

down below tell the story, right? So

1:19:39

here's the revenue numbers today. You

1:19:41

know, uh Starlink is 11 billion of

1:19:44

revenue. Launch revenue is a measly 4

1:19:47

billion. Uh AI revenue from XAI at 3.2

1:19:52

billion. And here comes Google at 11

1:19:54

billion and then SpaceX uh you know

1:19:58

total of $18 billion. So uh crazy

1:20:02

numbers. Any thoughts on this? I mean I

1:20:05

don't think people again no no company

1:20:07

in history has ever hit a trillion

1:20:09

dollars of revenue. So just to put this

1:20:12

in context, you're talking about the

1:20:13

really really big guys like Walmart and

1:20:15

Amazon. You know they're getting close

1:20:16

but they're not at a trillion yet. Uh so

1:20:19

this four trillion.

1:20:21

>> Yeah. On the on the other hand, a

1:20:22

trillion is what, like 3% of US GDP. So,

1:20:26

and that's today's GDP. If if we undergo

1:20:29

his predicted uh 3xing year-over-year or

1:20:33

10xing year-over-year of GDP, that still

1:20:35

makes this a relatively small drop in

1:20:37

the bucket. I I think it not investment

1:20:39

advice obviously but I I think it is

1:20:41

very much a conceivable scenario and one

1:20:44

in which maybe the Dyson swarm gets

1:20:47

built and most of or a large chunk of

1:20:49

civilization runs on the compute that

1:20:52

the Dyson swarm provides. Yeah, sure. A

1:20:54

few trillion dollars makes total sense.

1:20:56

>> Seem, you want to close us out?

1:20:58

>> I got nothing.

1:21:00

>> Okay. All right. Fair.

1:21:02

>> I I have a question for Brian though,

1:21:04

just on that narrow point. So let's say

1:21:06

we do build the Dyson swarm. Uh let's

1:21:08

say uh most of the compute in our solar

1:21:11

system is no longer earth-based and

1:21:14

presumably most of our economy consists

1:21:16

of AI agents trading. What do you think

1:21:19

will be the role if any of

1:21:21

cryptocurrency in that future?

1:21:25

>> Well, I think Bitcoin will be the new

1:21:27

gold standard and then the payments will

1:21:29

be happening on chain. So um capital

1:21:32

formation will probably happen on chain.

1:21:34

borrowing and lending, you know,

1:21:37

that's that's the financial system that

1:21:39

the AI agents would end up using. So

1:21:41

that's the most likely outcome in my

1:21:43

point of view.

1:21:44

>> So So you think basically uh there's

1:21:47

almost no impact on margin regarding

1:21:49

whether our compute is terrestrial or

1:21:52

orbital on how the crypto rails or or

1:21:55

broader financial rails of our

1:21:57

civilization operate. no latency

1:21:59

considerations, no trust based

1:22:01

considerations, no decentralization

1:22:03

considerations like doesn't make a

1:22:04

difference.

1:22:06

>> Well, I think a lot of those things will

1:22:08

get better on a crypto-based system like

1:22:10

the decentralization characteristics,

1:22:11

this um soundness of money, right? Um if

1:22:15

you're talking about syncing up a

1:22:17

blockchain between multiple planets like

1:22:19

Mars and Earth, there would be some

1:22:21

delay in that. But I don't see any

1:22:22

reason why, you know, if you need to

1:22:24

transfer money between Mars and Earth,

1:22:26

um it couldn't happen on chain and have

1:22:28

a laser link between them or something

1:22:29

like that. And you know, um so they're

1:22:32

not going to be real-time payments

1:22:34

between those planets, but there could

1:22:35

be uh appropriately delayed payments. Uh

1:22:39

they won't need to settle as often. So

1:22:40

>> are these conversations you're having in

1:22:42

your executive committee every day?

1:22:45

>> My my conversations are sometimes a lot

1:22:47

more mundane about like how do I get

1:22:49

these two people to work together, you

1:22:50

know? But um we still got to solve all

1:22:52

the human problems uh before we start

1:22:54

building interplanetary financial

1:22:56

systems.

1:22:56

>> By the way, I have to point out, you

1:22:58

know, this projection by Morgan Stanley

1:23:00

is definitely a fundraising tool ahead

1:23:03

of the IPO. You know, Morgan Stanley is

1:23:05

one of the banks that's going to profit

1:23:06

from this deal. Uh there's, you know,

1:23:09

I'm reading every day on X that players

1:23:12

are opting out of SpaceX. It's

1:23:13

overvalued. They're valuing it at 700

1:23:15

million, not, you know, 1.7 trillion.

1:23:18

So, we're going to see. I you know I I

1:23:21

fundamentally believe in the long-term

1:23:22

value of SpaceX. Uh I just hope retail

1:23:25

investors don't get hit uh in the in the

1:23:29

process. So while we have Brian uh Brian

1:23:31

Longevity and Biotech, one of my

1:23:33

favorite stories. So first off,

1:23:35

congratulations on your recent raise at

1:23:38

New Limit, $435

1:23:41

million to push us towards uh age

1:23:44

reversal. if you don't mind, uh, tell

1:23:46

us, you know, origin story of New Limit

1:23:49

and, uh, why you and Blake started it

1:23:51

and what are you guys doing there?

1:23:54

>> Yeah. Well, actually, Jacob Kimmel and

1:23:55

Blake and I all started it together as

1:23:57

co-founders and Jacob's the CEO now, so

1:23:59

he's really he's brilliant.

1:24:02

>> He is. Um, yeah. Yeah. So, the origin

1:24:05

story goes actually back to the IPO of

1:24:06

Coinbase, believe it or not, and 2021.

1:24:09

Having gotten some liquidity from

1:24:11

Coinbase and thinking about the next 10

1:24:13

years and what were going to be the big

1:24:15

technology trends that could drive

1:24:16

civilizational progress, I kind of felt

1:24:18

like a lot of the big ones had good

1:24:20

teams working on it, right? AI and

1:24:22

fusion energy and brain machine

1:24:23

interfaces and all the rest space. Um,

1:24:26

one I one that I didn't see great teams

1:24:28

working on as much and that maybe seemed

1:24:30

underfunded was longevity. And so I I

1:24:33

reached out to a few folks, started

1:24:34

hosting some dinners um with just top

1:24:37

scientists and biotech CEOs and kind of

1:24:38

went around the table and said, "All

1:24:39

right, what's on the horizon that's most

1:24:41

exciting to you, but it's underfunded?"

1:24:43

And one of the folks mentioned

1:24:45

epigenetic reprogramming, which is this

1:24:48

area that talks about how you can

1:24:50

reprogram cells. Um Shina Yamanaka

1:24:53

famously won the Nobel Prize for this in

1:24:55

2012, showing you could reprogram an old

1:24:57

skin cell into a young uh embryionic

1:25:00

stem cell. And he by doing so with just

1:25:02

these four proteins added to the cell he

1:25:04

had this kind of remarkable discovery

1:25:06

that he changed both the age of the cell

1:25:07

and the type of the cell. So at new

1:25:09

limit we're trying to do half of what

1:25:11

Shiny Yamanaka did. We don't want to

1:25:13

change the type of the cell we just want

1:25:14

to change the age. And what we mean by

1:25:16

that is really just restoring the

1:25:18

function that the cell had when it was

1:25:19

younger. And um we built a uh high

1:25:23

throughput screening system. It starts

1:25:25

with AI to talk explore the you know 10

1:25:29

quadrillion different possibilities and

1:25:31

combinations of different proteins you

1:25:33

could use to reprogram a cell and it

1:25:35

starts to it it originally it ingested

1:25:37

all the existing literature. Now it's

1:25:39

been ingesting the the wet lab data

1:25:40

that's been coming out of New Limit

1:25:42

which we have the largest data set out

1:25:44

there by far. And so it recommends the

1:25:46

next set of experiments that we run in

1:25:48

our wet lab. We do these poolled screens

1:25:49

and see if phenotypically we can we can

1:25:52

make cells look younger. Then we take

1:25:54

the best hits out of that in the funnel

1:25:55

and we put them through functional

1:25:57

assays which are a little slower and

1:25:58

more expensive to see if they actually

1:26:00

act younger. Um, for instance, we might

1:26:03

take a reprogrammed liver cell and see

1:26:05

if it can process caffeine and

1:26:07

acetaminophen and alcohol or whatever

1:26:09

kind of like a young a young liver cell.

1:26:11

And then the the best functional assay

1:26:14

candidates we then are starting to run

1:26:15

through um non-human primate and and

1:26:18

human trials. So yeah, the process has

1:26:21

gone faster than I would have expected.

1:26:23

I thought this was going to be like a 5

1:26:24

or 10 year kind of basic research

1:26:26

endeavor, but um we've actually been

1:26:29

able to demonstrate successful

1:26:30

reprogramming of human cells now in our

1:26:32

first drug candidates going into the

1:26:33

clinic next year, hopefully followed by

1:26:34

a bunch more.

1:26:35

>> Amazing. Human trial next year and you

1:26:37

and Blake put in the first 100 million.

1:26:39

I remember that. I remember coming to

1:26:41

your lab and and seeing it. Uh full

1:26:43

disclosure, I'm also a shareholder, an

1:26:46

investor in UI. Very proud of that. So,

1:26:49

congrats on the progress. And uh other

1:26:51

news related in epigenetic reprogramming

1:26:54

uh Life Bioscience is another one of my

1:26:55

portfolio companies announced they've uh

1:26:58

they've dosed their first patient with

1:27:00

their OSK treatment today. So yes, we're

1:27:05

on the verge of uh longevity escape

1:27:07

velocity. Brian, what do you what do you

1:27:10

hold as a target for, you know, when do

1:27:13

we hit LE? Do you have a number in your

1:27:16

head? Do you have a a goal?

1:27:19

You know, man, we need Kurszswall to

1:27:22

come plot another curve for us, don't

1:27:23

we?

1:27:24

>> He's got his prediction. His prediction

1:27:26

is 2033.

1:27:27

>> Huh.

1:27:29

>> So,

1:27:29

>> I'd have to go look at his data on that.

1:27:30

I actually I haven't looked at the exact

1:27:32

year that it would be projected to

1:27:33

happen. I'm just been again trying to

1:27:35

solve more mundane problems like how do

1:27:37

we hire how do we hire the next uh you

1:27:39

know bioinformaticist or whatever. But

1:27:41

um yeah, I hope he's right. I mean, he

1:27:44

has been right on so many things. It

1:27:46

wouldn't surprise me if he's right

1:27:46

again. I have an idiosyncratic position.

1:27:49

Uh perhaps unsurprisingly, I I will go

1:27:52

out on a limb and say that I think LEV

1:27:57

is going to be spiky in the same sense

1:27:59

that AGI is spiky and that on certain

1:28:02

spikes it seems possible it might be

1:28:05

achieved later this year. And the reason

1:28:09

why I say that is and I I wrote about

1:28:11

this in my newsletter and I know Peter

1:28:13

you immediately said, "Oh, but but but

1:28:16

uh Uh in the past few weeks there were

1:28:19

uh there was a really interesting paper

1:28:22

published on the first uh placebo uh

1:28:26

rather double blinded study on HIV

1:28:29

patients receiving GLP1s looking at

1:28:32

epigenetic clocks and and I know all the

1:28:34

caveats. Epigenetic clocks orth style

1:28:38

clocks aren't uh as as good assays at

1:28:41

determining biological age as a variety

1:28:43

of functional measures. I know all of

1:28:45

that.

1:28:45

>> Okay. Nonetheless, with all of those

1:28:47

caveats out the way, out of the way, for

1:28:50

the first time, to my knowledge, in the

1:28:52

literature, I'm starting to see evidence

1:28:54

of some sort of measurable at least

1:28:57

double-digit age reversal as a result of

1:29:00

GLP1s. And that makes me ask whether as

1:29:04

we're we're now with Redat True Tide and

1:29:06

and other uh Chinese have their own I

1:29:10

think second and third generation GLP1s

1:29:13

whether we're going to start to see

1:29:16

hidden under our noses in the same sense

1:29:17

that we flew past the touring test

1:29:20

without remarking that AGI basically

1:29:22

passed the touring test. Did we with a

1:29:24

whimper or not with a bang whether this

1:29:27

year maybe next year but as soon as this

1:29:29

year we're going to in a spiky way in a

1:29:32

subpopul

1:29:34

fly bath fly past lev without broader

1:29:38

notice that it just happened.

1:29:40

>> Well, we're going to have some level of

1:29:42

proof, right? We have this $101 million

1:29:44

healthpan prize going on where we're

1:29:46

measuring functional reversal of age.

1:29:49

Right? Again, the biomarkers right now,

1:29:52

you know, you can test your biomarkers

1:29:54

on a whole clock and many different

1:29:55

clocks. The problem is if you test

1:29:57

yourself in the morning and test

1:29:59

yourself at night, you'll get different

1:30:00

answers. And so, I don't think there's a

1:30:03

reliable biioarker for aging. Brian, I

1:30:05

don't know if you agree with that or

1:30:06

not, but what I care about is less a

1:30:09

number on a page, but more functional.

1:30:12

Do you have the ability to process um

1:30:16

you know liver function that you did

1:30:18

earlier in life? Do you have the

1:30:20

cognition, the immune, the muscle that

1:30:21

you had 20 years younger? So I think

1:30:24

we're at the beginning of that curve and

1:30:25

just like in the singularity we're we're

1:30:28

you know living through it. I think

1:30:30

we're in the process and I agree GLP-1

1:30:32

drugs are probably one of the very first

1:30:34

longevity drugs out there. Brian, any

1:30:36

thoughts or maybe a question to Peter

1:30:38

and Brian on this? You think we're going

1:30:40

to be arguing n years from now? Let's

1:30:42

say it's not this year. Let's say it's

1:30:44

the early 2030s. We're going to be

1:30:46

arguing over whether we've passed LEV or

1:30:49

not. And we're going to bring folks onto

1:30:51

the pod years from now saying, "Oh, no,

1:30:53

it definitely hasn't been hit because my

1:30:55

favorite vanity benchmark hasn't been

1:30:57

passed yet." While others will say, "No,

1:30:59

it was actually passed 5 years ago."

1:31:02

>> Brian, I like your theory. I like your

1:31:04

theory on that, Alex. I I would agree

1:31:06

with the touring test comparison where

1:31:08

we probably will go past it and people

1:31:10

won't nobody will react. Um I I think

1:31:14

that's probably likely. I don't think

1:31:15

it'll happen this year or next year, but

1:31:18

um 2033 could could potentially happen.

1:31:21

I mean, it's like the FDA approval part

1:31:23

is the is the slow part, right? The AI

1:31:25

part is going really fast.

1:31:26

>> I will fly anywhere for the treatment.

1:31:29

>> I want to make a couple of com I want to

1:31:31

make a couple of comments here. Um, you

1:31:33

know, if you look, if we talk about LEV,

1:31:36

we won't know for a long time because

1:31:38

people won't be dying for quite a long

1:31:40

time. We won't really know when it's hit

1:31:42

except for medical certain medical

1:31:43

tests, etc. So, I think this is going to

1:31:45

drag out by definition. My favorite

1:31:48

comment from the life extension world is

1:31:51

that the baby that's going to live to a

1:31:52

thousand years old is already alive and

1:31:54

that just blows your mind.

1:31:55

>> Yeah. And and I agree with you, right?

1:31:57

The the whole basis of the la of our

1:31:59

health span prize was not to be a

1:32:01

longevity prize where you have to wait

1:32:03

30 years to award a winner. It's an age

1:32:06

reversal, right? Do you have the

1:32:08

function that you had earlier? You know,

1:32:10

one of my favorite things right now that

1:32:12

we haven't reported on and I'm working

1:32:15

to get Martin Rothblat on the pod. Um

1:32:17

Martine's the CEO of United

1:32:19

Therapeutics. Uh is work she has been

1:32:22

working on uh restoring your thymus. So

1:32:26

going from your own uh IPSC stem cells,

1:32:29

your induced pleot potent stem cells and

1:32:31

regrowing a thymus and of course you

1:32:33

lose your thymus in your 20s completely

1:32:37

and it's one of the most important

1:32:38

organs for regrowing. Have you been

1:32:39

thinking about uh about thymus uh

1:32:42

capabilities at new limit?

1:32:45

>> It's not one of the ones we've targeted

1:32:47

yet, but uh yeah, I think it's it's on

1:32:50

the list somewhere. Um we're going to

1:32:51

have to get to all the major tissues at

1:32:53

some point. I

1:32:53

>> I was arguing with Jacob. I want muscle

1:32:55

rejuvenation, please. Yeah.

1:32:57

>> Yeah. I mean, that would pair nicely

1:32:59

with the GOP ones, right?

1:33:00

>> For sure.

1:33:01

>> I want to say something I've been

1:33:02

wanting to say for months and months,

1:33:04

and I can only say on this episode,

1:33:07

>> which is, you know, as we talk about

1:33:08

life extension, there's been two things

1:33:10

true in the world for the history of

1:33:12

humanity, death and taxes. And we may,

1:33:16

this will crack death and Bitcoin is

1:33:18

going to crack taxes. So, there you go.

1:33:22

>> I love this tweet. I saw

1:33:23

>> I love it. I love it when a when a

1:33:24

brilliant successful entrepreneur from

1:33:26

outside of biotech gets into biotech

1:33:28

because you get that fresh view kind of

1:33:30

you know what is possible you know

1:33:33

you're not jaded you're not calloused

1:33:34

you're just like what is possible really

1:33:36

curious to know what you buy for 435

1:33:38

million and does it surprise you like

1:33:41

where that money goes

1:33:43

>> yeah well on the on the idea of going

1:33:44

into biotech I mean there's definitely

1:33:48

some Elon inspiration there which is

1:33:49

like we're we're living through a golden

1:33:50

age of software where fortunes are being

1:33:52

made And so I think the these hard tech

1:33:54

problems deserve more capital and you

1:33:58

know it's almost to like SpaceX probably

1:34:00

would not have existed unless some a

1:34:02

wealthy individual like Elon who had had

1:34:04

an exit had at least some of his own

1:34:05

capital to go try and do it. Same thing

1:34:07

with Tesla, right? So venture capital

1:34:10

sometimes doesn't get you all the way

1:34:11

there. It's almost like to do these real

1:34:13

moonshots, you have to like find someone

1:34:15

who made a billion dollars in software

1:34:17

and then and then go found step two go

1:34:19

found the moonshots. But I I hope that

1:34:21

that's not the case forever. I think a

1:34:22

lot of the money that's been made in

1:34:24

crypto and AI will actually go into the

1:34:25

next moonshots and and all of that

1:34:28

stuff. Um but sorry your question was

1:34:30

about um which part again? Sorry.

1:34:32

>> Well, 435 million you know that automate

1:34:36

a bunch of wet lab tests or does that

1:34:37

give you like concurrent many many lines

1:34:40

of research or what does it

1:34:41

>> run a human trial?

1:34:43

>> It's trials a lot of trials. I mean in a

1:34:47

software company most of your costs are

1:34:49

people and then some AWS and stuff like

1:34:51

that. Um in a biotech company typically

1:34:54

it's like it's people and then materials

1:34:56

like re like reagents and things. Um but

1:34:59

in this case now that we're getting

1:35:01

ready to go into the clinic yeah it's

1:35:03

you know your average phase one trial

1:35:05

might be I don't know 10 or 20 million

1:35:06

and you can kind of go up from there on

1:35:08

phase two and phase three. So you need

1:35:09

to get enough shots on goal to get some

1:35:11

of these candidates to come out the

1:35:13

other side and have a big impact. So,

1:35:14

we've got enough capital now to run a

1:35:16

number of trials, which is good.

1:35:18

>> Alex, I love this tweet I saw uh from

1:35:22

Sam Suare starting to mourn all the

1:35:24

people who died before the singularity.

1:35:27

>> Yeah,

1:35:27

>> I'm mourning all the the people who've

1:35:29

died period. And I I think you know when

1:35:32

to Brian's point about all of the grand

1:35:35

challenges that there aren't yet

1:35:37

billionaires solving, I think I'll throw

1:35:39

this out to the the universe, to the

1:35:42

economy. I would love to back or

1:35:44

otherwise support someone building a

1:35:47

company to use advanced compute to

1:35:50

digitally resurrect everyone who's ever

1:35:52

died. I think it's a tragedy that we've

1:35:53

had so many billions of deaths over the

1:35:55

millennia. Let's fix it.

1:35:57

>> I love that. I love that. All right. Our

1:35:59

next story here is a fun one. Our last

1:36:02

three stories in the field. Uh Columbia

1:36:04

University researchers successfully

1:36:06

edited a PCSK9 gene. This is, you know,

1:36:08

your LDL, your bad cholesterol and an

1:36:11

HBG gene for hemoglobin in embryos in

1:36:15

vitro. So, uh, you know, this is opening

1:36:19

up the conversation. I remember when I

1:36:20

was, uh, uh, at the Whitehead Institute

1:36:23

doing my medical degree, uh, and the

1:36:27

first gene editing capabilities of

1:36:30

restriction enzymes came out. a lot of

1:36:33

hand ringing around uh embryo editing,

1:36:36

zygote editing. You know, 2018, a

1:36:39

scientist in China uh Hi Janu uh

1:36:42

successfully edited the CCR5 gene in two

1:36:46

young girls that were brought to term

1:36:48

healthy uh to make HIV resistance. So

1:36:51

the question is, are we going to start,

1:36:53

you know, when this gets reliable

1:36:55

enough, are we going to start editing

1:36:57

our kids? Um, you know, my son Dax just

1:37:00

did a project on this at school and his

1:37:03

point was we give our kids the best

1:37:05

food, the best education, the best

1:37:07

friends, the best clothing. Why not

1:37:09

start with the best jeans? So, I am

1:37:12

curious uh what your thoughts are guys.

1:37:15

>> Yes, of course. Like this is this is

1:37:18

much more advanced than even Gatka. The

1:37:20

whole plot of Gatka was it's it's still

1:37:23

your genes, your parents' genes, just

1:37:25

the best combination with extreme in

1:37:27

vitro selection of embryos. This goes

1:37:30

beyond this to to do base editing of

1:37:33

embryos. And you know, base editing

1:37:36

itself is is looking tremendously

1:37:39

promising, invented by David Louu and a

1:37:41

collaborator at Harvard. Better than

1:37:43

first generation crisper. you're able to

1:37:46

to do uh single nucleotide swaps uh in

1:37:50

in DNA with minimal error rates. This is

1:37:54

tremendous and I I can't for the life of

1:37:56

me understand or otherwise why this

1:38:00

wouldn't become a broadspread practice.

1:38:03

Yeah, obviously uh you know, shadows of

1:38:06

eugenics come to mind, but at the end of

1:38:09

the day, if you're getting rid of

1:38:10

hereditary disease or if you've got

1:38:13

some, you know, if you're a family below

1:38:17

5 foot and you want your kids to be

1:38:18

taller, uh you know, the ethics of this

1:38:22

are going to evolve and morality around

1:38:23

this is going to evolve and societal

1:38:25

norms are going to evolve. Seem, where

1:38:26

do you come out on this?

1:38:28

>> Well, two things. One is this is going

1:38:30

to have a a lot of people freak out. But

1:38:32

let's note that we have an old word for

1:38:33

all this is called breeding. For

1:38:35

thousands of years, we've been crossing

1:38:37

dogs and cats and horses and humans to

1:38:38

select the traits that we want. What's

1:38:41

happening now is biology is becoming a

1:38:43

digital programmable domain. Disease

1:38:45

prevention is the most compelling case

1:38:47

here. But the governance things that

1:38:49

this will bring up are going to be

1:38:50

unbelievable because we're going to be

1:38:52

editing diseases like right before birth

1:38:55

at this point. I said this is incredible

1:38:58

between uh sequencing crisper IBF AI

1:39:00

modeling like anything is now possible

1:39:03

just think of yourself your 50 trillion

1:39:05

cells for every human being in the world

1:39:07

is now a software engineering problem.

1:39:09

How do we think about that?

1:39:11

>> Brian.

1:39:11

>> Yeah. Well, I think one of the one of

1:39:13

the bigger

1:39:14

>> please

1:39:14

>> problems with this particular one of the

1:39:16

bigger complexities is jurisdiction. So

1:39:18

that if you're if you live in a country,

1:39:20

so suppose your parents are in the US

1:39:22

and you go to a a Caribbean island and

1:39:24

that Caribbean island is say, "Yeah, do

1:39:26

whatever you want." Um, so then you've

1:39:28

got a baby, you then you bring that baby

1:39:30

back in the US. That's inevitably going

1:39:32

to happen. So regardless of what your

1:39:34

local laws decide they would like it to

1:39:36

be, it's not going to actually work

1:39:38

locally. So that that's a really big

1:39:41

complexity in this whole this whole

1:39:43

area.

1:39:44

>> Brian, you want to weigh in?

1:39:46

>> Yeah, it's a great point. I mean, I I

1:39:48

think this is going to happen, too. I

1:39:49

think it'll be good for humanity um on

1:39:51

net. I think a lot of people will freak

1:39:53

out about it for a while, but it's I

1:39:54

think there was a Pew Research study I

1:39:57

saw that something like 80% of Americans

1:40:00

would support um embryo editing for

1:40:03

disease prevention. So, that was more

1:40:05

than I expected. I thought 80% is pretty

1:40:07

high, but you know, only about 20% I

1:40:09

think supported it for quote

1:40:11

enhancement. Um the part that I've never

1:40:14

been able to figure out is what's the

1:40:16

line between disease prevention and

1:40:17

enhancement, right? Um not having a

1:40:19

disease sounds like a pretty good

1:40:20

enhancement to me. I mean there's

1:40:22

there's cases where like let's say

1:40:24

osteoporosis, right? So if you have

1:40:26

that, it's a disease. But if you had a

1:40:29

gen a gene edited to prevent it, you

1:40:31

have stronger bones. Stronger bones

1:40:33

sounds like an enhancement. I I

1:40:34

basically think the line is so blurry

1:40:36

that

1:40:36

>> people will start with this for disease

1:40:39

prevention and then it'll uh upgrade

1:40:40

over time. And I think anything's, you

1:40:43

know, on the table, even IQ or whatever.

1:40:44

It's like, should we have more smart

1:40:46

people in the world? Probably. I mean,

1:40:47

that's seems like a good thing to me.

1:40:49

>> And ethics change, right? Because I

1:40:50

mean, if you remember a while ago, IVF

1:40:52

was considered immoral in the early

1:40:54

days.

1:40:55

>> And now it's it's enabled millions of

1:40:58

families to be formed.

1:41:00

>> Well, but not to state the obvious, but

1:41:02

uh you know, if you're 7 foot tall or

1:41:05

higher, you have a 50% chance of making

1:41:07

the NBA. And if you make the NBA, that's

1:41:09

a $20 million a year paycheck. So if

1:41:11

you're a couple, you know, just a

1:41:13

regular everyday couple in the US and

1:41:15

you have the option to have a 7 foot

1:41:16

long tall child by design, you're going

1:41:19

to go to that Caribbean island and make

1:41:21

your seven foot tall for economic

1:41:23

reasons. How, you know, think of what

1:41:25

could go wrong then.

1:41:27

>> So there there's going to be some

1:41:29

serious guardrails. There has to be

1:41:31

guardrails around this.

1:41:32

>> You know, there's a company I love uh

1:41:34

called Nucleus. Uh Ken Sedagi, the CEO,

1:41:38

is going to be at my my abundance

1:41:40

longevity trip in October. Uh Brian, I'm

1:41:43

I'm hoping to have uh someone from

1:41:46

Uliimmit there as well. But what nucleus

1:41:48

does is you fertilize, you know, 20 uh

1:41:52

20 eggs, you know, 20 zygot and then you

1:41:57

sequence them and you can choose the one

1:41:59

out of the 20 that have the attributes

1:42:01

instead of playing dice and wait, you

1:42:04

know, and hoping for the lucky sperm. Uh

1:42:06

you can actually pick the one that has,

1:42:07

you know, the right attributes from

1:42:09

within the gene population that you

1:42:10

have. Separate from base editing, a step

1:42:12

before that, but still something you can

1:42:14

do today. Remember the line from Gatka,

1:42:16

"Your child is still you, simply the

1:42:19

best of you,

1:42:20

>> except that's not even true with base

1:42:22

editing. It's better than the best of

1:42:24

the parents."

1:42:25

>> Well, Brian, listen, thank you for

1:42:26

joining us today. Uh, grateful. I know

1:42:29

you've got, you know, the world's

1:42:30

largest, uh, crypto company in the world

1:42:32

to to run. So, uh, appreciate your time,

1:42:36

my friend.

1:42:37

>> Yeah, thank you for having me. This was

1:42:38

a great conversation. I love talking

1:42:40

with people who want to build a future.

1:42:42

>> Yeah, for sure. And that is most

1:42:44

definitely this this amazing group. All

1:42:46

right. Uh our next story here is

1:42:47

Anthropic launches Fable 5 and Mythos 5.

1:42:50

Uh here we go. Uh Andre Kaparthy uh who

1:42:54

has joined uh our friends at Anthropic

1:42:57

is now shilling for the newest models.

1:43:00

Here's his quote. Super exciting

1:43:01

release. Fable 5 is the same underlying

1:43:04

model as Mythos, but with added

1:43:06

safeguards. You can 10x your test suite,

1:43:09

autooptimize code, run giant research

1:43:12

projects with custom HTML for the

1:43:14

results, anything. Alex, over to you.

1:43:18

>> Very impressive release. Anthropic is

1:43:21

back in the lead now. Uh, until today,

1:43:24

GPT 5.5 was the lead, the

1:43:27

state-of-the-art across most of these

1:43:30

benchmarks. today for probably about 5

1:43:33

minutes. Anthropic takes back the crown

1:43:35

across most measures of super

1:43:38

intelligence. A few notes. The

1:43:40

distinction between Fable 5 versus

1:43:42

Mythos 5. Mythos is a uh as reported a

1:43:46

less inhibited version of Fable. Or

1:43:50

conversely, Fable is a more inhibited

1:43:52

version of mythos that has certain

1:43:55

scaffolding and other restrictions that

1:43:57

prevent it from having more ambitious

1:43:59

conversations that might relate to

1:44:01

biology, chemistry, cyber security,

1:44:04

perhaps other areas. But I've used it.

1:44:06

It's incredible. I gave it my typical

1:44:10

benchmark, which is favorite eval,

1:44:12

asking it to oneshot a cyberpunk

1:44:16

FT first person shooter that's visually

1:44:18

stunning. Did an amazing job, no errors,

1:44:21

ran immediately, had a nice soundtrack

1:44:23

that came with it. What's more

1:44:25

interesting if you look at the

1:44:26

benchmarks and then also the

1:44:28

demonstrations far be it for me to

1:44:30

suggest that Pokemon games are actually

1:44:32

the secret to super intelligence but if

1:44:35

you look at the demos that have been

1:44:37

coming out from anthropic and otherwise

1:44:39

it is able to play just from pure visual

1:44:42

reasoning now this is Fable 5 or mythos

1:44:44

5 doesn't really seem to matter it's

1:44:46

able to based on just watching the

1:44:49

screens of games like various Pokémon

1:44:51

games it's able to win them and that

1:44:54

requires long-term long range reasoning

1:44:57

capabilities that we really haven't seen

1:44:59

until now. So my guess is Anthropic has

1:45:03

probably been very aggressively doing

1:45:05

RLVR reinforcement learning with

1:45:07

verifiable rewards on long range

1:45:10

reasoning challenges. maybe game

1:45:12

playing, maybe challenges that involve

1:45:14

spatial reasoning, maybe very large code

1:45:16

bases, maybe very large capture the flag

1:45:19

CTF hunts, very large sprawling both in

1:45:24

probably, my guess would be in space and

1:45:26

in time RLVR challenges to get some of

1:45:29

these results that it's just incredible

1:45:32

what you can oneshot now with Fable 5 uh

1:45:36

with reasoning set to high. And again,

1:45:39

difficult to predict how long Anthropic

1:45:41

will retain the crown before, say, GPT

1:45:44

5.6 comes out, but it is exciting to see

1:45:47

the Frontier move once again.

1:45:49

>> Dave, you've been playing?

1:45:51

>> Yeah. Well, it's only been out for about

1:45:52

4 hours, but I've been playing for 4

1:45:54

hours, so uh it's I mean, what we're

1:45:57

living through, Alex is constantly

1:45:59

posting on our internal feed. It's

1:46:00

happening. It's happening. I mean, it's

1:46:02

really happening now. This is Oh my god.

1:46:05

You know what's interesting to me? a

1:46:07

bunch of things. First of all, they

1:46:08

doubled the price, so it's expensive as

1:46:10

all hell. Uh this this idea of commodity

1:46:13

intelligence is not happening. It's it's

1:46:15

damn expensive if you want the most

1:46:17

brilliant thing. But what it produces is

1:46:21

so incredibly intelligent that it takes

1:46:24

you quite a while to read and understand

1:46:26

what it did. And it's like, well, I'll

1:46:28

just move on while you're reading and

1:46:30

trying to catch up.

1:46:32

>> And so that's an interesting new thing

1:46:33

for me. Um, and also I think this is

1:46:36

interesting that Anthropic had it in the

1:46:38

bag. You know, Alex just mentioned that,

1:46:41

you know, the leap frog is going on, but

1:46:43

actually OpenAI pushed out their best

1:46:46

and Anthropic then said, "Okay, well, we

1:46:48

had this ready to go." So, you know,

1:46:50

we're just trying to make it safer, but

1:46:52

now we'll come out and go over the top.

1:46:53

>> And we've been saying they're they're

1:46:54

pulling their punches. They're they are

1:46:57

they're they're gaming this.

1:46:58

>> Uh, as you're heading towards your

1:47:01

flight, do you want to add anything

1:47:02

here?

1:47:03

Uh, no. What occurred to me here is

1:47:06

that, you know, when you have you have

1:47:08

the um split now between the safety

1:47:12

guard rails and the performance guard

1:47:15

rails. And I thought that was really

1:47:16

interesting

1:47:19

because you've got the same underlying

1:47:21

model with added safeguards, right?

1:47:23

That's the whole safety debate in one

1:47:24

sentence right there.

1:47:26

>> Well, actually, they even changed the

1:47:27

name, too. You know, you've got the the

1:47:29

Mythos, which we've been talking about

1:47:30

for a while, and then Fable is the

1:47:32

heavily guardrailed, won't do a cyber

1:47:34

threat, won't do a nuclear weapon, you

1:47:37

know, version of the exact same model.

1:47:39

Uh so they even even differentiated it

1:47:41

by name to support exactly what you're

1:47:43

saying. lame

1:47:44

>> with with pretty broad buffers like you

1:47:46

can friends of mine have tried having

1:47:48

conversations perfectly innocent

1:47:50

conversations with fable five high about

1:47:53

biology and from what I've heard it has

1:47:57

pretty broad margins for what it will

1:47:59

simply revert back to opus for if if it

1:48:02

thinks you're asking anything in biology

1:48:05

or chemistry that could remotely be a

1:48:08

dangerous subject it'll just downgrade

1:48:10

you immediately to opus

1:48:11

>> you know funny you say that Alex cuz uh

1:48:13

you know I'm often trying to work from a

1:48:14

plane and SSH doesn't work on the plane

1:48:18

Wi-Fi and and so I, you know, use a

1:48:20

workaround to try and get access to all

1:48:21

my remote agents. And that also vomited

1:48:23

saying looks a little bit like maybe

1:48:25

you're doing something sketchy and it

1:48:28

gave me the uh the anthropic, you know,

1:48:30

we're we're not going to answer that

1:48:32

query thing, you know, repeatedly. So, I

1:48:34

had to actually find a workaround for

1:48:36

that, too. So yeah, they've really

1:48:38

really locked it down to try and avoid

1:48:40

the

1:48:40

>> I predict as we head towards IPO season

1:48:43

for these two companies, these Frontier

1:48:45

Labs, we're going to start to see the

1:48:46

rate of model release increase. They're

1:48:48

going to be leaprogging who's going to

1:48:50

be out front at the day of the IPO.

1:48:52

Who's getting the news?

1:48:53

>> At least at least, Peter, we have

1:48:55

competition. The situation could be

1:48:56

worse. We could just have a singleton, a

1:48:59

single lab that is that is not getting

1:49:00

leaprogged at all. At least we have two

1:49:02

competitors at the moment in the lead.

1:49:04

>> Yeah, for sure. All right, our final

1:49:07

story for today. Uh, after more than a

1:49:09

decade of sucking, Apple finally made

1:49:12

its move to improve Siri. Uh, they've

1:49:15

announced a multi-year partnership with

1:49:16

Google to power Siri with Gemini AI,

1:49:19

rebuilding Siri from the ground up. Uh,

1:49:22

the big shift, Siri is now an agent, not

1:49:25

just a voice interface. The key

1:49:27

breakthrough is personal context. Yes,

1:49:29

finally. Siri can now reason across your

1:49:32

messages, your emails, your notes, your

1:49:34

photos, and actually get things done.

1:49:36

And it can actually, you know, when I'm

1:49:38

sending a text message to Kristen, it

1:49:42

can spell it correctly or it can spell

1:49:44

my name, you know, correctly. It doesn't

1:49:47

most of the time. Uh they're calling it

1:49:49

persistent AI workspace coming to beta

1:49:52

later this year. Uh focused in English.

1:49:54

Uh two huge implications here. First,

1:49:57

Apple is essentially admitting it lost

1:49:59

the Frontier model or the foundation

1:50:00

model race and chose Google to rent

1:50:03

brains rather than build its own. And

1:50:05

and it's a stunning, you know,

1:50:06

concession from the company that has

1:50:09

always priding itself on its own stack.

1:50:12

Second, the real emote was never the

1:50:14

model. It's the personal context. So,

1:50:18

uh, Alex, you wanna you want to share?

1:50:20

>> I'll different perspectives here. So one

1:50:23

the glass half empty perspective is

1:50:26

Apple for arguably the first time in

1:50:29

modern history has has outsourced an a

1:50:32

key element of its tech stack which

1:50:35

Apple it it's just not as with Elon and

1:50:38

vertical integration. It's not in

1:50:40

Apple's cultural DNA to to want to rent

1:50:44

out someone else's technology that's

1:50:46

going to be so core to the system.

1:50:48

That's the glass half empty. second

1:50:50

perspective and that perspective says

1:50:53

the foundation model is not analogous to

1:50:56

say an operating system. It's more

1:50:58

analogous to the role of a search engine

1:51:00

which has to be localized. So you'll

1:51:01

note Apple didn't announce this in China

1:51:04

yet. It didn't announce it in the EU yet

1:51:06

for different reasons. But focusing just

1:51:08

on China, I would expect Apple to strike

1:51:11

some partnership that's roughly

1:51:12

analogous to the partnership with Google

1:51:15

with one of the three big Chinese AI

1:51:18

labs or tech companies. And that will

1:51:21

represent a localization roughly

1:51:23

analogous to the way Apple localizes its

1:51:26

other web search capabilities in China

1:51:29

with one of the Chinese companies

1:51:31

analogously to the way it default uh to

1:51:34

Google for web search. to the glass half

1:51:36

full argument is well foundation models

1:51:40

however foundational they are are

1:51:42

intrinsically localizable and so Apple

1:51:45

has merely chosen for its American

1:51:48

franchise Google and maybe it'll choose

1:51:51

another franchisee for Europe and

1:51:53

another one for China

1:51:57

Google's been doing this with Android

1:51:59

and its suite of products for a while

1:52:01

now right so this is Apple sort of

1:52:03

catching up I mean I've almost you moved

1:52:05

to an Android phone so many times just

1:52:08

because of its ability to, you know,

1:52:10

contextualize all of my my personal

1:52:12

context.

1:52:14

>> A third perspective. Yes. And a third

1:52:17

perspective is if you buy that

1:52:19

foundation model economics are

1:52:21

hyperdelationary and are the cost is

1:52:23

going down by 40x year-over-year or

1:52:26

anything remotely like that, then you

1:52:28

should view this entire bit of Apple

1:52:30

losing its tech sovereignty as a nothing

1:52:33

burger. And yes, Apple maybe is is

1:52:35

struggling to distill Gemini down to its

1:52:39

private cloud compute combined with

1:52:41

iPhones this year, but in a year or two,

1:52:44

there will have been so much

1:52:45

hyperdelation in the cost of compute

1:52:47

that for the present capabilities of new

1:52:50

Siri that they will easily fit into the

1:52:53

new iPhones. and that any loss of

1:52:55

sovereignty or any use, we haven't even

1:52:58

touched on this semi- embarrassingly.

1:53:01

It's not even the case that Apple is

1:53:03

just able to distill Gemini, Google's

1:53:05

Gemini or its version thereof into the

1:53:08

iPhones. And it's not even the case that

1:53:10

they're able to operate it with a

1:53:11

combination of Apple's own cloud

1:53:14

combined with the the iPhone edge

1:53:16

compute. They actually need Google's

1:53:17

cloud to do this because it's so comput

1:53:19

intensive. But all of that over the next

1:53:21

year or two can shrink and hyperdelate

1:53:23

down to to just working on an edge

1:53:25

device as these algorithms get more

1:53:27

advanced.

1:53:28

>> Yeah. Dave, any thoughts on Apple?

1:53:30

>> Yeah, lots. Well, anytime in tech that

1:53:32

you don't do anything for a long period

1:53:34

of time, you eventually get crushed. The

1:53:36

question is how does it emerge? The way

1:53:39

it would play out if Apple doesn't do

1:53:40

something aggressive uh is you lose the

1:53:43

interface. You know, Siri is now Google,

1:53:46

but Google is Android and Android is the

1:53:49

one competitor to the iPhone. Remember,

1:53:51

all the revenue still comes from the

1:53:52

iPhone. So, you lose the interface. At

1:53:55

the same time, TSMC

1:53:58

moves the chip manufacturing away from

1:54:00

the M5 and M3 and M4 to a much higher

1:54:04

paying customer in AI data center use.

1:54:06

So Nvidia or Elon take the manufacturing

1:54:10

capacity away for the underlying chip

1:54:12

because they just pay more to TSMC. So

1:54:15

then you've lost your hardware

1:54:17

manufacturing under the covers and

1:54:19

you've lost the interface on the other

1:54:21

side and then everybody just moves to

1:54:22

Android because they're talking to

1:54:23

Google or Gemini all day long anyway.

1:54:26

And so also the machines get the the

1:54:29

actual physical phones get manufactured

1:54:31

by Samsung using Samsung's uh chip

1:54:33

manufacturing capability which is you

1:54:35

know immune to TSMC.

1:54:37

>> Selma I want to acknowledge your

1:54:38

persistence and your ability to stay in

1:54:41

the conversation.

1:54:42

>> This is a new low. I'm in my airplane

1:54:43

seat. So let's just let it just go past

1:54:47

us.

1:54:47

>> Okay. Closing closing thoughts on Apple

1:54:49

and uh and Siri.

1:54:53

>> Your closing thought that it's good.

1:54:55

I'll believe that it's good when I see

1:54:56

it.

1:54:57

>> Yeah, we've been so disappointed over

1:54:59

and over again. I you know, you and I

1:55:01

met the founders of Siri before they

1:55:02

sold to Apple. Uh and it was it prom it

1:55:06

had such promise back then and it just

1:55:08

uh it stuck around just way too long. Uh

1:55:12

gentlemen, uh I think that's a wrap.

1:55:14

Enjoyed having Brian here going from

1:55:16

Bitcoin to longevity. Um anyway, uh

1:55:20

crazy week ahead. I I'll see you guys in

1:55:22

a few day for our next episode. Uh,

1:55:24

thank you as always for your commitment

1:55:26

to this podcast. Everybody watching,

1:55:29

thank you for your, you know, support of

1:55:31

Moonshots. We're here to give you the

1:55:33

news, help you understand it, help you

1:55:35

be optimistic. Uh, it is the most

1:55:37

extraordinary time ever to be alive. I

1:55:39

like to say, you know, during the

1:55:40

singularity, don't sleep, don't blink.

1:55:43

Uh,

1:55:45

>> the words live long, the words live long

1:55:47

and prosper.

1:55:49

>> Yeah, they do.

1:55:52

Take care, gentlemen. Safe travels

1:55:54

everybody.

1:55:54

>> Peace and long life.

1:55:55

>> Take care folks.

1:55:59

>> If you made it to the end of this

1:56:00

episode, which you obviously did, I

1:56:03

consider you a moonshot mate. Every

1:56:04

week, my moonshot mates and I spend a

1:56:06

lot of energy and time to really deliver

1:56:08

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1:56:28

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1:56:39

That's diamandis.com/metatrends.

1:56:42

Thank you again for joining us today.

1:56:44

It's a blast for us to put this together

1:56:46

every week.

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