All the crap you never needed

July 10 2026 Friedberg out on vacation, Brad Gerstner in IPOs SpaceX - already 7th largest company in the world OpenAI, Anthropic expected IPOs hoped to be quite successful (Brad is an investor of course) Intelligence is the largest TAM we have seen in the history of the world Inspite of the open source buzz, frontier models are getting higher share of enterprise spend Case for open source Some companies won’t have the revenue growth to justify frontier model cost Some countries will be happy with the just good enough open source and will prefer sovereignty Case against Complicated to setup open source (bittensor, openrouter, etc) Meta released Muse for coding Sacks joins the show CTOs are trying to control token cost Jesse Zhang Decagon boss had a good blog post on this - how to think about optimizing model costs (when stuff is new you want the best model, when stuff is mature you want to use the cheap model that you have fine tuned) Nikesh Arora tweets were also ...

July 9 2026 Andrew Feldman is back Cerebras CEO Crazy Data Center buildout here Data centers are getting power of the order of small cities Demand is way outstripping our ability to build data centers Cerebras has a $25B backlog - and others are in similar position AI regulation is tricky AI progress will be amazing Robin Rombach Co-Founder and CEO of Black Forest Labs Based in Freiburg and SF Formerly worked at Stable Diffusion Co-invented latent diffusion Reported partnership with Martin Scorcese Human in the loop is very interesting use case - instead of making long full movies with AI, you can parallelize your brainstorming with AI Same multi modal model could not just do image/video processing but also be deployed in a robot

July 3 2026 Palantir Nvidia partnership announced Karp appearance on CNBC went viral Made the case that companies don’t trust the big labs AI Sovereignty importance highlighted Jason has been making this case for months Sacks made an interesting case on X too Karp’s case in succinct terms (from Palantir X account): Palantir CEO Alex Karp on what customers actually want, the real business of frontier labs, and the importance of open source models: "What the technical customers want is control over their compute, their models, their data stack, and their alpha. They want to know they own the means of production, and it's not being transferred to someone else." Apparently Figma got rug-pulled/blind-sided by Anthropic in this way (their stock has fallen 50% after Claude Design) Claude Design, Claude Code (apparently started after noticing Cursor’s success), etc all seem similar plays This is like the Microsoft play Google also did something similar in the pa...

June 29 2026 Nate Silver interviewed by Jason and Friedberg Knicks chat CA election - specifically LA No evidence of fraud Very partisan state Election system is bad - unacceptable that it takes so long Partisanship is the gravity that dictates every election in the US We can predict 43/50 states with 97% accuracy likely at this time itself for the 2028 election Democrat Party intra politics 3 kinds of Dems according to him Left wingers - Bernie Abundance libs - Ezra Klein Resistance lib faction - Gavin Newsom 2028 prognostications NY is more successful than CA because its more practical Gavin Newsom not doing well 2026 mid terms predictions Democrats are 80-85% chance to take the House and 40-45% chance to take the Senate Only thing Trump can do to help the Republicans is to get gas prices down

June 26 2026 Friedberg out, Travis Kalanick/Gavin Baker in Socialists Sweep NY Democratic primaries 10th district - Brad Lander 13th district - Darializa Avila Chavalier 7th district - Claire Valdez Clear response by voters to their message - its working DSA platform is quite “out there” - mainstream Democrats seem to have lost their party DSA co-chair is quoted as saying they are using the Democratic Party as a ballot access vehicle How related is this to importing mass migrants in the previous administration? Did South American right wing election winners win because USAID got defunded? Truth and Justice are an immune system for society When the immune system is compromised, social ills go on the rise Communism is in all of us have you ever been lazy and wanted something for free If this is the way you want to live your life - you get Communism Voting base of DSA is downwardly mobile wealthy educated white liberals They are losing votes ...

June 23 2026 Friedberg interviews Trying to acquire Ebay Started Chewy First started a jewelry website Then figured out gap in pet industry (neighborhood pet stores, PetCo/PetSmart, Amazon pet offerings weren’t working great till then) Lot of competition ( Pets.com in the background) Sold in 2017 for $3.35B You have to stay on top of everything 24/7 as a founder Will > Skill You have to attract fellow “psychopaths” who are passionate Went public for $20B a few years later Gamestop Started investing post Chewy Was asked to join the board by the CEO to help fend off other activist investor Then covid post crash made him buy more than 5% and had to file D (active) or G (passive) - chose D Then he and some associates joined the board, the stock went vertical, bunch of shorts got wiped out, got rid of all debt, raised $1.7B or so Hired a CEO and more ecommerce people thinking it would be run like Chewy Turned out to be wrong strategy Had to learn about physical ret...

June 19 2026 Great American Politburo This is being formed right now in the US New oligarchs are taking their seats and forming their rule The leaders who elect themselves to dictate the economy Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Ro Khanna They want to seize the means of production, control education and the media They lose to their minds any time someone builds something new They are the rising evil empire This is against the spirit of economic mobility in the US - the government giving you things takes this away - you become an indentured slave of the government Human agency is limitless - any time you make a system where the government gives people stuff, you are taking away that agency We are getting to the point where there is no longer any private property in the US Illinois set to begin taxing Bitcoin, Crypto transactions SpaceX IPO Cursor deal $60B consummated Chamath called it $135/share Raised ~$85B Incredible ride over 2 decades Wealth comes from the m...

 Jun 12 2026 Anthropic releases Fable5 Mythos with guardrails very powerful even Nikesh Arora approves Huge backlash Retaining data for 30 days which is not ZDR (zero data retention) They can nerf the model without telling you They surveil you and they get to decide if you’re worthy Where is the auditability? They are writing blogs to argue for government regulation and setting up an FAA style agency We should be adjudicating the output of AI, not its use, limiting the tools themselves will deny us amazing opportunities Alternative is hard to build because data center costs have gone up 25x Pushing fear will cause China to pull ahead because regulators here will stop you Apocalyptic rhetoric is pushing folks to make their own models or use Chinese open source Meta clearly fumbled that bag here with failing their open source initiatives Liquidity vs Summit LA Mayor Race There is no election? Some reported vote count issues System is operating as designed ...

May 29 2026 Bill Gurley joins the show! Becoming AI Native 2 kinds of people - Using AI to learn faster and more than you ever could and those who use AI to avoid learning Proficiency in Claude is the most single most marketable skill right now (maybe just a short term arbitrage) You can even have a dialog about a prompt with Claude Pope releases encyclical on AI Warns business leaders to protect humans from AI Anthropic co founder Chris Olah joined Question is how much power do you give the government Leo the 13th warned about the industrial revolution - he got the whole thing dead wrong clearly Work week 60hr → 34 hrs globally real wages 8-10x adjusted for inflation median worker now earns more than a doctor did in 1891 global GDP per capita went from $1500 → $20K Child labor in US went from 18%→ 0 Work place deaths fell by 40x Life expectancy went up 60% global poverty went from 75% of humanity to < 10% All this happened because of technology, innovation and...

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...