Ashlee Vance on the Meta-Anduril reconciliation, Palmer Lucky's VR toybox returned, and Core Memory's global expansion

Bring him in. How you doing, Ashley? Oh, look. He's in the new studio. New studio reveal. Let's go exclusive. Let's go. Breaking news. Core memory interview Palmer Lucky. You're hearing about it here first, folks. You're cooking. You're cooking. It was a good good morning. It's uh Yeah. Palmer came.

I think he Well, he came in yesterday, I think, straight from there's this photo we posted of him and Zuck together. He's wearing the same clothes. I should have actually asked him, but yeah, I think he came straight from their their peacemaking accord. Yeah. What's uh what was your read on it?

How much of it was uh how much were you focused on like the technical side of the deal between Anderol and Meta to work on VR for the military versus just the the the the crazy full cycle narrative of uh the emotional journey? We kind of did both.

I mean, he's he sat here for a couple hours and from my memory, you know, I think the first 45 minutes was going into the deal, the backstory, all that.

you'll the press release on this is super thin on the the technology and the the Wall Street Journal story didn't have that much either and Palmer he went into some some detail on our podcast about about the tech and then yeah he got into the backtory I mean this is crazy this if I've been following Palmer pretty close for the last couple years I never would have imagined that this would have been possible given the uh the intense the depth of this like 9-year war that the those he and and Meta have had.

So, um yeah, I I did not fully see this coming. Is it accurate to describe it as a war between Zuck and Palmer or war between Palmer and Meta? I think it was like more Palmer and Meta.

You know, if you go back um Blake Harris wrote this book, The History of the Future, and he he spends like 40, I don't know, 40 or 50 pages laying out the the saga.

you know, Palmer put up this paid for this billboard and about Hillary Clinton and became a known Republican in public and and was fired from Facebook and and in you know in that book you see a lot of operatives within Facebook um kind of pushing Palmer out and and we talk about this on the podcast.

I mean if Palmer's being truthful in what he said, he didn't lay the blame directly at Zuck's feet. He he kind of felt like Zach was doing what he had to do to protect his company and and what the employees wanted. So um so I think it was more more meta directed. Yeah. Yeah.

It is it is crazy to think about the post Oculus acquisition time period at Meta and just not having Palmer report directly to Zuck. Like that seems like that's the real cardinal sin here more than the crazy stuff that happened politically.

It's just like how do you bring in someone who's like clearly the face of VR, a generational founder, like all these amazing things and like it would just have been so much easier to manage that relationship if there was no one else in between like no management layers in between. Yeah.

And like almost definitely I think Palmer's probably still at Meta making working on VR. I don't think 100% on Android, you know. Yeah. Didn't uh Jenkum from WhatsApp stick stick around for a long time? And obviously like the Instagram guys had kind of a rough go and they're upset about it now.

But like they I think they reported directly and like built that for a long time.

It was just odd that like VR was so important in meta that like you know reality labs huge investment and yet Palmer Lucky was not you know he should have been on the board like like he should have been added really really into the inner circle. It's been a while since I read Blake's 20s. Who cares?

Zuck was 19 when he started the company or whatever. Sure, you know, break the rules. And it's it's been a while since I read Blake's book, but yeah, I mean, he kind of lays out all these layers of management that were put between Palmer and and and Mark. So, but here they are taking photos as as friends again.

Have you gotten a demo yet? Any of the Ander hardware yet? I haven't gotten on on this headset. No. I mean, this has been an I I've been down at Androll doing some reporting and Palmer's always like you because this this is like an extension of this Ivas deal that that um that Androl took over from Microsoft.

So, I've been down there and Palmer's like, "Oh, my secret lab is over to the side and that's that's where these guys are working. " I mean, people should know.

One of the coolest parts about this, I think, is that I mean, yes, they're making this war fighter helmet of the future, like the sci-fi thing we see in every military movie that doesn't exist, but beyond the like VR AR data feed coming in. I mean, and Palmer talks about this in the podcast.

He's trying to like reinvent the helmet itself, right? To make it lighter weight, to make it uh the ballistics upgrade, all of that stuff. I mean, so he wants to build it's not just like the um the the sort of tech end of this. He just wants to make a better helmet for soldiers, too.

And and I know he's been spending a lot of time on all the materials and and things like that. Yeah. Have you been tracking any of the other developments at Meta. There was some there were some setbacks with the Llama team.

It seemed like they kind of went a little bit too far into the pre-training paradigm and maybe not enough in RL. And so Llama 4 has kind of fallen behind in some of the some of the benchmarks.

Uh, at the same time, uh, there's some really amazing, uh, VR demos that are coming down the pipe, like the Orion, uh, augmented reality glasses, and then even just like the Next Quest headset, I feel like is going to be incredible because all that work that Apple did to get those incredible screens into the Vision Pro.

Well, like Zuck's probably going to be able to buy that for the because it's two years later now. Uh, it seemed like that was something that was unique to Apple, but only for a small period of time, and Apple kind of whiffed on actually getting that into the hands of millions.

If it's in the next Quest, it could be really cool. So, any takes on what on what Meta has been doing in VR or AI lately? I mean, I I do not follow them as closely as I do some other companies.

The thing that's always stuck out to me was when they bought Control Labs, which was doing this weird take on a brain computer interface by reading the motor neurons in your in your wrist.

And and you know, we've seen uh Meta do some demos around this kind of like new interface using your body and to and your brain to navigate computers.

I actually think that's like the under um you know it's probably one of the hardest things they have to pull off but it's it's kind of under reportported in some ways because um I mean if you look at what trying to read the tea leaves on whatever Open AI and Johnny IV are doing you know we're we're clearly we're lurching every some companies are lurching toward a new kind of computer.

We've been on the same basic computer for decades. Well, to be clear, the OpenAI thing, they were just they were pretty clear that they said it's a third device besides your phone or your computer that will work with those devices. With those Yeah. Yeah. No, that is fair. That is fair.

I just I still feel like we're this everybody wants a new toy. Give us a new toy. Somebody will figure this out. I am confident. I I'm old enough to remember like, you know, when I first started reporting. Yeah. It was like exciting. People had different operating systems.

They had different takes on computers all the time, you know, and and I just feel like we've lost that. So I This is like What are you talking about? The new iPhone. It has a button on the side. There's an extra button now. We We can only We can only refine the bezel so much.

You know, you're looking a gift horse in the mouth, Ashley. Come on. This thing is awesome.

I have I have a bone to pick with you guys which is you know you got this glowing profile in the information about your new media empire and I was quoted in the story and they didn't even bother to mention my new media empire I mean no boom sorry sorry I hit the wrong effect I hit the wrong effect yeah I mean it was it was half like complete glazegate like just so over the top like lavishing praise on us for genius and reinventing media as a whole from the ground up.

And then the other half was like a complete hit piece. It was brutal. And I guess you balance those out and it's like, you know, kind of a kind of a nuance take. But yeah, they did they did some people dirty. They put our quotes. They put us in quotes. They put us in quotes.

But this will be the last time TVPN ever appears in quotes and the last time that Ashley Vance has ever quoted in the information without mentioning core memory. Memory. com. Go subscribe right now. That hurt. That hurt.

I uh I like that everyone wants you guys to be the Ringer or Grantland and neither of you seem to know. I don't know what those things are. But it's it's even worse than that cuz people are like, "Oh, it has like you know Sports Center. " Like haven't watched that. But Squawkbox also haven't watched that.

Can you cop it to something? We're reinventing the wheel. We're reinventing the wheel. At TVPN we're focused on reinventing the the media's wheel. Yes. I love it. But yeah, give me the give me the broader update on Core Memory. I know you have a bunch of different products.

You're you're you're filming movies, you're writing books, you're doing uh short documentaries, like give me the give me the overview and I want to know specifically about the latest update with Neurolink as well. Yes. Okay. Yeah. I mean, we've launched a bunch of stuff. I'm writing on Substack. We launched a podcast.

Palmer is on it today. Um, and then, you know, I think the thing that we're maybe most proud of or one of the things is, yeah, you know, I used to make a TV show for Bloomberg and and we did very well there and we kind of killed that, built our whole team from scratch.

And so on our YouTube channel and on our Substack, we've got um I don't know, they go anywhere from like 8 to 20 something minute episodes that are um you know, dives into different inventors and scientists and startups and then so anyway, please go check.

You're kind of telling the story of these like various brotopias that are existing all over Silicon Valley. You know, unlike some people that only leave Brotopia, we we do do many female scientists. Um but you know, we're going all around the world really.

So we we just went to so far the early episodes were Silicon Valley based just cuz I had to get this up and running really quick, but we just went and filmed in Switzerland for a couple weeks.

And so part of that was to your other question, you know, we're working on a movie about brain computer interfaces and and Neurolink is at the heart of that and so we're following this journey for for many months, years maybe. And then um and then we filmed a couple episodes with some Swiss companies. Yeah.

How do you think about Oh, sorry. Journey. What's uh what's happening in Switzerland? It's kind you know, it's always like this mixed h Oh god, you're going to get me on like a Europe rant. I'll try to contain myself. Um, Switzerland is my second favorite country in the world.

It's like, you know, if you're going to go with the well-made museum uh version of Europe, it's it's it's great. They do have some I think a lot of Well, okay, they have a lot of good biotech stuff coming out from pharma and and just like a incredible education system.

Um, and they have finance stuff, but we went robotics, you know, I went to a couple university robotics labs. I the it's interesting.

They're always doing pretty cool stuff and then it's always hard for them, I think, to make the leap into forming a startup and and like really getting money behind that and sort of the same ambition that you would see out of a similar Silicon Valley company.

But yeah, we met a bunch of young kids who were doing cool um we you will see it coming up in a future episode. We had a a robotic uh swan um robots robot swans dancing in a lake shooting water and lights and and we were up till 2 in the morning filming that. So they actually have a fantastic gun on them yet.

They actually have a fantastic robotics gun on the robot swan. I'd love that. The over in Switzerland they they you got to do a profile on this. They have a fantastic robotics industry all around telling the time. And so they have these hu amazing companies.

You should do a whole profile on Phipe, Adamar Pig, Vashron Constantine. Uh, it's it's like this machine. It's it's basically robotics, but just to tell the time and so I can imagine an Ashley Van style deep dive on those companies being really really good. It's hard tech. I would I would enjoy that.

I think that'd be great. Yeah. But yeah, it was cool. It's cool. They have they got good energy.

you know, they they the Swiss government really backs uh EPFL and ETH, these two universities kind of on a level that I don't know you you I've been all over Europe filming the TV show and I'm always I'm impressed when I go to Switzerland.

Do you think American investors should be posted up in Geneva just slanging checks? Is the is are they ready for American industrial venture capital? They go from spending just the entire summer there to spending some time during most of winter and most of winter.

And most of winter, ski season, so ski season, summer, but then they could also spend some fall and springtime there. It's I mean uh I try and you know, I don't want to overgeneralize and crap on an entire continent. But um you know I do think I do think there's opportunities there.

But then sometimes you walk through the European startups and and the energy level is is not the same as you would you'd find in the US. They're not sleeping on the floor of the factory over there. We have we have billion dollar companies where the teams are sleeping in tents. Yeah. Yeah.

We're about to talk to a billion dollar company where the founder is sleeping out in Abalene, Texas where you got Chase. Have you been to Abalene yet? I have. I went with Sam and Oh, yeah. I'm going to I'll name drop. I went with Sam and Greg a couple weeks ago and got the tour.

That was like a big Everyone in Europe was asking me. They're like, "Are we hosed on AI? " And I was like, "Wow, I just went to Abalene and each one of those buildings cost about $50 billion and they have a lot of them and you guys have precisely none of them.

" So I mean it it was kind of like a harsh I I gave a talk in Poland as part of this trip and people were not aware of the scale of like the investment even though wasn't MGX setting up a data center in France. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean the the overall Stargate project is available to other countries and and those deals are being negotiated right now because obviously Nvidia wants to sell chips and you know Cruso will want to sell energy and there's a lot of different companies in the Stargate supply chain that want to be a part of that even if it's in another country.

So, but from what I like from what I was gleaning from chatting with Sam on that trip, it sounds like France is the only country that's kind of ready to to pony up at the we would like to participate level. Interesting. Is it going to be like luxury AI LVMH GPT like branded tokens? Yeah, LV artistal tokens.

That is what they do best. Anyway, this has been fantastic. Thanks so much. We'll talk to make it a regular thing. Thank you, boys. Thank you. I would love that. Yeah, I I'll see you this weekend. All right. Thanks, guys. Bye. Cheers. Up next, we have Chase Lock Miller from Cruso Energy coming in the studio.

Welcome to the stream, Chase. How are you doing? Welcome. Where are you in the world? Are you in Abalene, Texas? Nine. It might be. I don't know. It might be in San Francisco. Oh, we don't have him. Oh, okay. He is not here yet. I thought we had him, but we can do some timeline. What do we got? Oh, this is interesting.

Uh there's a shakeup at AI in uh in in terms of who's in charge of AI at Meta. And I want to go deeper here because we're a a little bit of an AI day is coming together uh in uh on Thursday. We have OpenAI and Anthropic on board. We need someone from Meta. So this is a uh little call out.

If you work in AI at Meta, let us know. We'd love to have you on the show and duke it out with the rest of the foundation model company