All the crap you never needed

May 22 2026 Gavin Baker joins instead of Sacks Andrej Karpathy joins Anthropic Early OpenAI founder Tesla AI/Self Driving Learning and Education autoresearch andrej-karpathy-skills Might be doing pre-training at Anthropic He is similar to Google Fellows at Google who were there at every important wave This is a big hire Anthropic might have their first positive quarter soon (according to WSJ story) Clear proof that these companies are doing very well There is a lot of AI hate Story about father who is curing his daughter’s disease is a great example Lots of reasons People think tech gives leverage to smaller set of people - AI is extreme example of that There is some level of foreign influence operation of course AI is not very human - similar to what happened with the Copernican revolution and Heliocentricity - people don’t react well to it If we do try and slow down AI, then we lose balance if China wins - similar to nuclear arms race which was necessary for b...

May 15 2026 Marc Benioff joins the show! Trump - Xi summit First visit to China since 2017 7th face to face meeting with Trump and Xi China agreed Strait of Hormuz should remain open and Iran should not have a nuclear weapon China warned on Taiwan - asked US to basically stay away Xi committed to buy 200 Boeing jets, more soybeans, etc Trump was effusive in his praise for Xi Maybe both societies can avoid conflict given world should become less resource constrained Maybe good for Trump to take so many CEOs with him for the summit so that we can center the partnership around the economy These CEOs are our best salesmen in each category Xi has asked for a wider door Trump and Xi have a good relationship Salesforce is deployed in China through Alibaba - unique for them Elon is the only one who pulled it off that his cars are their directly Americans don’t care about China relationship right now but might care about second order effects such as job growth and economy US...

May 12 2026 (from NotebookLM) Company Overview and Historical Growth Massive Scale and Expansion: Since the 1960s, Koch Industries has grown from 300 employees to over 130,000 across 60 countries, multiplying its value by 9,000 times. If it were publicly traded, its revenue would easily place it in the top 25 of the Fortune 500. Early Days: Founded in 1940 by Fred Koch, the company originally focused on crude oil gathering systems and designing fractionating trays. Charles Koch’s Entry: Charles joined full-time in 1961 at age 25 after his father presented an ultimatum to either run the struggling company or have it sold. Despite having three engineering degrees from MIT, Charles felt he lacked practical engineering skills and instead focused on finding and applying business principles. Initial Turnaround: Charles immediately overhauled the management approach by replacing a top-down, bureaucratic president, focusing on creating customer value, empowering employees, and build...

May 10 2026 (from NotebookLM) Opening: The Debate and Strategy Fact-Based Debating: Pratt reflects on his recent mayoral debate performance, stating his strategy is simply to use facts and the truth to counter opponents like Mayor Karen Bass and Councilwoman Nithya Raman, whom he describes as "pathological liars". Legal Counsel: He attributes his calm demeanor to advice from his lawyer, who told him that having the truth is the best way to stay calm when arguing. The Catalyst: Surviving the Palisades Fire Lack of Warning: Pratt explains that his family received no official emergency alerts or sirens about the January 7th fire. Mismanaged Resources: He details multiple city failures: the LADWP had quietly drained a 5-million-gallon wildfire-protection reservoir next to his home, and Mayor Bass (who was in Africa) failed to call in fixed-wing air support. The Trauma: He watched his house burn down on his phone's security cameras while stuck in gridlock traff...

May 8 2026 BG back in for Friedberg LA Mayor Election Spencer Pratt team is working hard Elon leased all of Colossus 1 to Anthropic Chamath called this out just a few days ago on the Pod EWS = Elon Web Services 😛 It is clear that Anthropic and OpenAI’s revenue is not limited by demand - if they had infinite compute/power they would have even more revenue As Shaun Maguire said in a tweet, SpaceX is 5 layer cake Layer1 - Launch, Layer2 - Connectivity, Layer3 - Compute/Hyperscaler, Layer4 - Applications/Models, Layer5 - Other bets (Terafab, Moon, point to point, etc) This partnership with Anthropic derisks Layer 3 Amazing to see Elon and Anthropic working together This might be an acknowledgement that Anthropic has won AI (at least at this stage) Their acceleration is going crazy - they might be the most valuable tech company in history - they might be as much as the rest of the Mag 7 put together Unless something about their trajectory changes, they m...

April 8 2026 First Quarter: Tip-Off and The PA Playbook The interview tips off with some lighthearted banter as the host rolls an old VHS tape of Governor Josh Shapiro playing basketball in the 1990s, followed by some immediate trash talk about the Knicks and 76ers. The host quickly pivots to policy, attempting to set up a rivalry by contrasting Shapiro's success in Pennsylvania against Gavin Newsom's struggles in California. Shapiro politely declines the comparison to focus on his own stats: Pennsylvania has cut taxes seven times and boasts an unemployment rate below the national average . Shapiro outlines his signature "Get Stuff Done" (GSD) strategy, heavily emphasizing his "money-back guarantee" on building permits . He notes that out of 40 million permits issued, the state has only had to refund five, and he scores a major point by explaining how cutting the wait time for a barber's license from 20 days to a single day puts thousands of dollars d...

April 6 2026 (from NotebookLM) Introductions & The Early Days of Palantir The Meet-Cute: Trey and Shyam recount how they first met. Trey interviewed at Palantir in its early days, wearing a full suit and CIA cufflinks. Despite the fashion faux pas in a t-shirt-heavy startup, he was hired to help build their government business. Palantir's Origin: Shyam explains that Palantir started post-9/11 with the thesis that privacy and security shouldn't be a zero-sum game. Their goal was to expand the "efficient frontier" so society could have more of both, initially focusing myopically on counterterrorism. The Philosophy of War & Silicon Valley's Awakening Deterrence is Key: Trey states that war is "categorically bad," but to protect your interests, you must build capabilities that are so intimidating that adversaries never consider picking a fight. Silicon Valley's Forgotten Roots: Shyam points out the irony of the tech sector looking do...

April 29 2026 (from NotebookLM) The Introduction and Background The Setup: The hosts introduce Steve Hilton, a British immigrant and Republican candidate leading the polls for California Governor. Origin Story: Hilton explains his background as the child of Hungarian refugees who fled communism. He details growing up in a working-class family in England and being heavily influenced by Margaret Thatcher, who he credits with saving the UK from the "winter of discontent" and union dominance in the 1970s. "All In": Hilton mentions he moved to California in 2012 for his wife's career in tech. He proudly shares that he renounced his UK citizenship to become an American citizen, fully committing to his new home. Tax Policy and Economic Vision The Tax Pitch: Hilton unveils his cornerstone policy: no state income tax for individuals earning under $100,000, and a 7.5% flat tax for everyone earning over $100,000 . This is designed to provide immediate relief t...

May 1 2026 Fun with names OpenAI revenue and growth issues Apparently missed user target, revenue targets (internal) Reported issues between Altman and Friar - prompted joint statement maybe They are almost trading at the price equal to their spending commitments On the other hand, GPT-5.5 is doing very well and it seems their compute commitments may be saving the day for the coding use case in Enterprise The key chokepoint is power - they don’t have enough to get tokens out Too much red tape 40% of data center jobs have been canceled recently - why won’t that negative trend continue? This will benefit the Hyperscalers - Oracle, Microsoft, Meta, Google, Amazon This could help Elon with xAI/SpaceX/Cursor 4 : 2 : 1 typical market share of a mature market Cool MIT paper shows we could reduce inference cost by 10x with no loss of accuracy This could increase usage Maybe Google has cut into OpenAI’s consumer market share Clearly these compan...

April 24 2026 Sacks moved the pod back an hour due to POTUS meeting SpaceX Cursor deal xAI and Cursor collaborating on new AI coding model $60B price for company OR will $10B for collaboration fee/break up fee Cursor revenue $2B end of Feb 2026 - projected $6B eoy SpaceX revenue $22-$26B rumored SpaceX trying to IPO soon Seems the way the acquisition is structured is to not slow down the IPO Grok usage has plummeted This is a complementary acquisition - xAI brings compute and a foundational model - so Cursor brings training data, enterprise clients, expertise and product People are realizing that writing software is where all the value is Thoma Bravo - might divest Medallia Apparently too much debt Maybe TB got their money out and are done with dealing with the company - so debtors are screwed and the equity is impaired Rumors on X that sales team at Medallia missing their targets Maybe AI and agents are hurting There might also be a deflati...

April 17 2026 Mamdani Tax Pied-a-terre tax Dumb because second home will be taxed and thats the most elastic part of the market - so no one will buy second home in NY This is like a dog whistle - asking for United Healthcare CEO type shooting or Sam Altman home firebombing Maybe this is good for hotels This hurt London - land banking - so maybe it will work out for NY Maybe the solution is building more housing - like in Austin Its obviously good for the city to have billionaires park their money in these cities They also don’t consume resources but pay property taxes so its profitable for the city So this will hurt With the London situation rich people moved to other cities in Europe Transaction costs in LA and SF are too high (could be 13% of property) Your property is not safe in blue states - wealthy people will realize that - the political class thinks they can take a chunk of it OpenAI Internal memo shows targeting Anthropic and going after their market shar...

April 10 2026 Brad Gerstner back in for Friedberg Just do stuff - build and don’t ruminate Works at all levels of society and desires Anthropic Mythos Found many security vulnerabilities Good job setting up Project Glasswing - signed up a bunch of amazing companies like Google, Apple, etc to find vulnerabilities before hackers exploit them OpenAI and Google will likely do the same thing with their upcoming powerful models While Anthropic has a track record of scaring people alongside their product releases or fund raising - in this instance it does seem they have been very responsible Frontier Model Forum cooperates and coordinates on items of such high importance Why did they contact these software giants and NOT nuclear reactor makers, airplane manufacturers, airline operators, etc? Anthropic ankles OpenClaw Switch to API usage instead of $200 bundle Are they giving themselves an unfair advantage? Apparent competitors for OpenClaw Hermes Anthropic Claude ...

 April 3 2026 No Sacks 😟 SpaceX IPO $1.75T reported valuation Should merge with Tesla to reduce noise and overhead for Elon Moon manufacturing and logistics might be simpler - lower gravity, no atmosphere, make it easier to move things around without friction Could be a fraction of the cost of doing the same on earth Robots will help move Humans to the moon Could be a fundamental parallel technology infrastructure This is enabling other amazing entrepreneurs - like Vast making space stations, etc This will unleash a huge economy of things that we have no idea about Last mile logistics needs to be built Space garbage collection needs to be figured out Power generation is being worked on Intersection of autonomy, robotics and space travel will expand humanity’s potential Rebuttal to socialists on earth who are trying to stop everything More 2026 IPOs Anthropic, OpenAI, Databricks Maybe Stripe, Canva, Cerebras Riskier the further down the IPO chain you’re in Cla...

E265: March 27 2026 Anthropic on a generational run Jensen called Opus 4.5/6 an inflection point (similar as Michael Dell) Anthropic releasing features out the wazoo - incredible pace Company made an early bet on coding/agentic coding - working really well for them They make the best coding products People pitting Anthropic and OpenAI just for drama Both companies seem to be accounting revenue differently and the businesses are quite different Emil Michael apparently smeared in article about his involvement with Anthropic and potential rivals - classic deflection by leftists OpenAI losing share? Risk is low because its very well established Could become the default consumer AI app - like how people pay for phones and electricity - OpenAI could be there Could be new platform like smartphone App store Google has a strong position here - they could release their own OpenClaw - people already trust them Impact of AI on valuations One thing that can help is looking at ho...

March 23 2026 (from NotebookLM) Interview 1: Michael Intrader (CEO of CoreWeave) Company Background: CoreWeave didn’t start as an AI cloud company. They started in 2017 as an algorithmic natural gas hedge fund, pivoted to crypto mining (Ethereum) using GPUs, and then moved up the complexity stack to CGI rendering and medical research. The Pivot to AI: In 2020/2021, they bought A100 GPUs and donated them to a volunteer open-source project called EleutherAI. When those researchers went back to their day jobs, they demanded CoreWeave's infrastructure, which launched their AI training business. Their first large commercial client was Inflection. Where They Sit: CoreWeave operates "above the Nvidia GPUs but below the models," focusing solely on the infrastructure and software integration needed for purpose-built AI clouds. Thinks of Inference as monetization of the training of the model The "Box" Financing Model (Important Concept): Intrader explained how...