Delian Asparouhov: Eastern Europe is the new tech frontier, zombie acquisitions are a temporary aberration, and Trump's AI executive orders are coming

right? Sorry, that's a muted dword over here. Uh give us the breakdown of what you Wait, first, what do you what do you what's what what do you what does Delian eat for lunch? Oh, yeah. Um I don't Sorry, I don't hear you guys. Sorry. This is This is funny to make fun of them and then I don't hear you. Cursed.

You're cursed. Cursed. You're cursed. You got to drink tap water, bro. Am I somehow messing something up? Oh, no. Volume. Are we Are we sending him stuff? The space man in outer space. I thought I thought I thought we could hear him.

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And we are back with Delhi and Aspiruha, co-founder of Varta, partner at Founders Fund. Uh he's been on a world tour and he's going to give us an update on what he's been up to over the last few weeks. How you been? Good to see you boys. Coming to you, you know, sort of live back from uh you know, sort of Los Angeles.

Excited to uh be back in the great old USA, but you know, went to go tour and figure out whether or not the decaying continent of Europe, you know, had any uh had any promise. And um you know happy to report back that uh you know all the way from Bulgaria to Poland doing great.

Anywhere else in Europe probably not so great. Okay. Give us I mean uh give us what are what are your reads? What are your reads? Is it is it the feeling in the office? You know we've noticed uh there's been some PR teams reaching out to us from from European companies.

Uh and they'll typically be like hey they can join tomorrow. If not then they can join two months from now. And you don't even really want to ask what what what what are they doing that two months, but I have an idea, but I'm curious what it felt like actually on the ground with these companies. Yeah.

I mean, God, like I I I visited a couple different US companies while I was both in Eastern Europe and then in France, and it's crazy just like how stark of a US difference it is. Like I'll just give you sort of two anecdotes. one in Eastern Europe.

I walked into this, you know, sort of office where it was like it was just total like uh, you know, construction zone raw, like, you know, sort of cement, cables, you know, sort of poking out, like, you know, windows, you know, not there, carpet not there, there's no conference rooms built, etc.

And I look at this like construction zone, I'm like, okay, if this were in the like United States, probably bare minimum, like you still got another like six to eight months of construction before anybody can move in or do anything productive here.

And I'm like, as the founder, I'm like, oh, it's like, what's your guys' plan move in date? Like when is this going to be ready? And he's like, three and a half weeks. And I was just like, "How?

" And he's like, "Literally, he's got like, you know, what looked like a bajillion gypsies working 24/7 basically, like non-stop construction. " And I asked him, I was like, "You know, do you have to like get like permits for like, you know, the like, you know, technical equipment that you guys have?

" And he was just like, "Do you think anybody in the government like knows how this equipment works? " Like, "No, like as long as like I have windows up and like, you know, sort of walls, etc. I can just like, you know, sort of build whatever I want. " And I'm like, you know, there's no like no like regulatory overhead.

They don't even know how to like regulate, you know, sort of me. I'm such like an advanced industry relative to what they're up to. I just had this moment where I was like, "Oh my god, this is why like they're able to sort of build this stuff and move so quickly is like the talent is there.

The like, you know, government is supportive. You don't have this crazy overhead. " And I'll give the caner example. I was like meeting with this, you know, sort of founder in France.

You this very interesting and I want to like, you know, overly reveal who it was, but he had this like robotic enabled consumer business and it was crushing great economics like the, you know, robots really worked like everything was, you know, sort of going well.

he just like couldn't quite you know sort of convince you know American VCs like he'd gotten you know sort of first couple rounds done from like you know sort of French and European VCs wasn't quite able to like you know sort of hit the series B you know sort of target that he wanted but like because the business was going so well there was a world where if he could just like cut his engineering team basically in half he could have just like operated the business profitably on like the you know sort of revenues that they had gross margin they had the issue was in France he like legally couldn't fire his team without like crazy amounts of like year-long severance like payouts etc.

And so even though like the robotics was working really well, the business was working really well, like the consumers loved the business, he literally had to shut down the entire business because he like couldn't no way that he wanted.

And so he had this like, you know, crazy frustration where he was like, "Nothing was wrong with me as a business.

I just literally couldn't do the basics of like executing a riff, paying out like a couple weeks or a month of severance would be reasonable, but instead my like liabilities on the severance alone was like more than my entire balance sheet. " And I even talked about this with the French government.

I tried to negotiate, etc. I was like, "Look, my business works. If you like force me to do this, my choice will just be to shut down so there'll be no jobs or if you let me do the riff, I can do like a 30% riff and then keep operating. Which would you prefer?

" And they're like, "No, you have to do the like 100% riff and pay out everybody. " And now the business just doesn't exist. And I just like had this moment where like those two things happen like two weeks apart from one another.

And it's like this is just such an insane dichotomy between like Western versus Eastern Europe. And there is a reason why you're seeing like Poland's GDP per capita is going to cross the United Kingdom over the course of the next two years. United Kingdom has basically just been flat for you know whatever since 2008.

So you know almost you know 20 years now versus Poland has been on an equivalent trajectory of the United States if not like growing on a percentage basis faster because they're obviously starting from a lower base.

And when you go to like Warsaw it's like this super modern city skyscrapers everywhere building happening clearly energy. you go to like shortage in London and it's like you know yeah there's a little bit happening but it kind of looks the same that it did you know sort of 15 years ago.

Um the other like interesting trend that like points towards this is like the amount of just like Eastern Europeans that are repatriating themselves back to their home country because just like the salaries and the cost of living make way more sense than it you know ever you know currently is you sort of making in Western Europe like the salaries are actually you know sort of growing at a rate that makes sense.

cost of living is, you know, sort of way cheaper versus in London, you're seeing this like crazy over financialization where you have all these like Chinese and Russian oligarchs coming in and like buying all this real estate, making it impossible for, you know, sort of people to actually live the lives that they, you know, want to live while salaries are basically flat.

And so, um, it's just interesting to see all these little like, you know, sort of micro trends that point towards like, man, Eastern Europe's making a lot of sense to me. Western Europe not so much. Okay, that, uh, is an incredible anecdote. Uh, honestly kind of depressing. Also worse than I expected.

Um, but we've talked about this split a little bit before. You just went over there. Did this exceed expectations or was this actually a step down from your previous expectations going into this trip? Well, I think you had a baseline strong expectations because you just led an investment over there. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, obviously, you know, I'm I'm predisposed to this, you know, bias or sorry, thesis and believe it enough that like, you know, put my money where my mouth is at.

But yeah, I think it only like emboldened the thesis further where you know, look, if you look at um uh uh all the NATO countries, but Europe in particular, everyone's talking about marching up, you know, their amount of defense spending and you know, most of these countries are going to be relatively, you know, sort of nationalistic on like they're going to want to spend it on domestic players.

But I have a feeling a lot of what's going to happen is like there will be, you know, offices in the Western European countries that are doing some of like the marketing, small scale R&D, etc.

, But like the production, the core engineering, like where those companies will largely be buying from, I think it's going to be in that like, you know, sort of, you know, Poland, Ukraine down to, you know, sort of Romania, Bulgaria, you know, sort of belt because that's where you have the engineering talent.

That's where you have people, you know, sort of moving more quickly and you have more of the ambition.

And so I think I came away feeling even more strongly about the thesis because you both have clear, you know, sort of spread between performance, but then also just these huge continental tailwinds of people are going to want to be, you know, sort of buying lots of drone defense, you know, sort of systems.

And I think a lot more of those are going to be produced in Ukraine than they are going to be in Germany.

And like you're already starting to see that there's like all these funds now that are popping up to basically like fund into like the Ukraine defense ecosystem because they just practically, you know, have obviously way more day-to-day problems there.

And so and they have an extremely motivated population to go solve these problems. And so I think you're going to see way more interesting technology coming out of there than you will out of you know sort of western Europe. So yeah feel more emboldened on the thesis.

Back to France quickly there was uh Mark Mark German was reporting that Apple was seriously considering Mistral as a potential acquisition.

I looked at that and I was like knowing what happened with like Figma and Adobe and and how and how um how Europe broadly thinks about antitrust and then how how much of a national champion Mistral is.

In what world does the the French authorities say, "Yeah, let's let's let Apple come over here and just take all of our top AI talent and our national champion in AI. " It's hard to imagine that happening. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean it seems like a bad move on both sides where I'm not sure that buying the straw is going to, you know, so save Apple from the AI race. Like it's I mean obviously, you know, I think it's such a huge fumble and it's like the first major platform in a long time that Apple's totally missed, right?

Like they obviously crushed, you know, sort of the, you know, consumer, you know, sort of PC, you know, shift.

They obviously crushed the consumer mobile shift and it feels like they're just totally missing the consumer AI shift and like I don't think mistrol is going to be the solve to their, you know, sort of problems.

Well, the big question is, is it actually a platform shift yet or is it features that can be vended in a bunch of different places, right? And the argument is like if if if if AI itself was the platform, would OpenAI be so focused on building a browser. Yeah.

Yeah, I guess I mean I just see it as like the fundamental consumer interface has shifted so significantly where so many people are just going to chat GPT you know as like first line of defense that that could have significant implications for like what the like day-to-day hardware that everyone is using looks like over the course of second and obviously like you know meta you know clearly showing that they care about this the other like interesting insight from my time in France on like Mistrol was like they you if you look at the headlines from two three years ago it was thought of as like more of an a open AI competitor right it was they were going to do foundation models they had this consumer interface that was where they wanted to compete the like intel on the ground was basically it's just become this like anointed French palunteer is kind of how I would describe it where all their contracts revenues focus what they're doing is basically like the French government forcing the you know company's way into a bunch of just like the French enterprise to basically just be like an AI implementation platform so it's like you know go into LVMH go into you know sort of Airbus and Taly's etc and you know Mistro just becomes the preferred you know sort of you know vendor of choice choice when it comes to hey how does you know an aerospace company adopt AI and it sounds like everything at the company is totally reoriented towards that which is I mean it's you can definitely build a business on that and in some ways like the you know sort of French government can someways like force your success but it's like it it isn't like pushing the fundamental technology forward it's not probably participating in the platform shift the way that like it was you know hypothesized to two or three years ago and so that's where it's like on neither side do I feel like it makes sense like I don't think the French government would want to give up like you know their like darling unicorn Mcronone literally you like seems to basically almost like go to bat for them personally.

Um but then also doesn't seem like the right solution for Apple where it's like this isn't even the company that's pursuing the like consumer application layer which is what Apple really needs. They don't need like an enterprise AI implementation consultant. Yeah. Yeah.

It it reminds me of like the Tik Tok thing because um there's this perception of like I want to control AI.

So what that means as a world leader of an international non-American company or country is I need to have a data center in my uh in my country inferencing a model that I trained but it's okay if people access that through chat.

com which is controlled by open AAI like that's that's the same as like okay there's going to be a Tik Tok app that's going to run on Oracle servers but it's going to be you know Chinese way it's like like what matters is the aggregation theory of like the front end to AI and and and where you steer the user and how you interact with the user much less than the actual underlying infrastructure in my opinion.

So I I don't know it does seem like an odd odd choice with wi with all of these different like sovereign AI efforts.

It's like they might be it might be cool to build a data center like that might be good that might be good jobs that might be valuable but a little bit like you don't you're not really controlling like the way AI affects like free speech in your country necessarily because if no one's using let chat and everyone's just going to chat.

com um like you kind of lost the game anyway. Yeah.

Yeah, the only place where this stuff kind of matters is like the like open source models which I think we've talked about before where you know if a bunch of the like app developers or you know researchers etc start using deepseek because it's just like you know open source the weights are there etc but the deepseek open source weights aren't willing to you know confront the fact that tinman square happened now all of a sudden you do have this like soft power where you have like the Chinese AI speaking through all these various applications and so you know I actually kind of buy more into the like sovereign open-source model than I do like you know like closed source or you know caring about the data centers etc.

It's like the open source model feels like it's the only place where you really get like soft power. Yeah. Um let's talk about the these zombie acquisitions.

I'd love your take on kind of the postmortem of the wind surf story and specifically um what uh John Ludig has this uh formulation that like companies will take talent today over talent plus product uh in six months or in a year because of uh uh because of FT FTC review. What were your takeaways?

I'd love to know as like as like a founder or as a VC, do you back the founder? Is it important to think of the founders and the employees as a class like just what's updated? Yeah, there's a really interesting debate around what's what's you know found being founder friendly if the founders like I want to do this deal.

I want to do this deal and then as a firm you're like are we founder friendly? Do we back the founder? Are we going to go with what they decided is best for all the shareholders or do we try to push back and and is that even possible when something's happening in like you know a handful of days.

So yeah, what what's updated on your side? Yeah, I mean I feel like um it's one of these things where it's like as you start to see this edge case more, it feels like Silicon Valley doesn't have like the like policies or patterns or like default in place, right?

And I think about this where it's like um you know uh the valley for a long time didn't know how to think about companies that delayed IPOs, right? And you know stayed private, you know, semi- indefinitely. And that is only like a more modern trend.

And now there are sort of like default patterns on how that works where it's like okay well if you want to do that and you want to keep employees motivated around well you do have to kind of do like an annual tender process because you know if people are wanting to join this late stage of a company and that riskreward profile a part of what they like about those companies in the public markets is the liquidity for the you know sort of shares that they're getting and so I feel like you've started to see these like you know ways that Silicon Valley gets shaped that makes it you know rather than like a one-off for companies staying private indefinitely there is more of like a track and here are all the things that you need to do if you want to, you know, sort of stay on that track.

Um, it feels like this like zombie acquisition is like still so early and unknown that people don't really have a track.

Like I wouldn't be surprised if you start to see new term legal terms getting you know you know put into you know sort of term sheets especially of AI companies where I think relative to you know maybe other businesses like I think about like an aerospace it's like man could you really just go take out the like top 20 leaders of SpaceX and then like go build another SpaceX like man I don't think so like you need the facilities the hardware the regulatory approvals the DoD contracts etc.

So it's like it feels like AI is in this unique space where it's like well actually there's like top 10 researchers and because the field be super valuable as like talent alone and so I don't know that you'll see like a broad set of legal terms changing but you may see that obviously you know in AI.

I think also like I don't think it's totally fair to compare all these zombie acquisitions as you know sort of identical.

I think Windsurf was a particularly um special case where the way that the you sort of founding team and acquirer treated the remaining shell company was very poor in terms of both you know the liquidity to the remaining employees um you know uh how they you know dealt with vesting schedule acceleration of stock etc.

you know um can't talk too much in you know sort of detail but that you know fundamentally was structured very differently than the last handful of these that we've seen or at least the ones that you know sort of I've been somewhat you know sort of familiar with and so I think that's where you saw a huge revolt obviously from like the remaining windsurf team um and obviously I think they you know took a pretty brilliant move of you know um you know working with you know sort of cognition where um and you know now that combination of cognition plus the remaining windsurf team is I think a super super credible threat to the like team that Google got and so it's like you know sort of weirdly um you know weirdly Google may have actually enabled like a really formidable competitive team by the zombie acquisition but then from the Mag 7 perspective I kind of get it where it's like you look at the like you know Adobe Figma you know sort of deal and you know you look at the you know um team there having had to pay a billion dollar breakup fee because Lena Khan was never going to let that you know sort of go through it's like okay well you know you kind of you know you get this you know sort of fast track and you know don't get the you know sort of regulatory involvement for it's worth I feel like this may be like a very short window of opportunity where like there's just no way that the FTC is not going to put something out that starts to say that like you know even these minority acquisitions still require some sort of like regulatory oversight above some certain transaction size.

Um and so anyways I I I see all this stuff as like more temporary aberration and you're going to see controls put in both the like legal terms and term sheet regulators coming in from above and it's sort of going to get squeezed through the middle.

Um, and I don't think that it's going to be like, you know, my brother Pavle, for example, I think was tweeting some amount about how this like fundamentally breaks the like social contract of Silicon Valley.

Um, I feel like it'll be pretty rapidly repaired in a way where you won't see that long-term of outcomes where the joke is like why be a founding engineer um, you know, at a company when you can just be the founder and you know, you know, you put in your two weeks.

Um, you know, I think I think you'll you'll you'll probably see this stuff, you know, all these edge cases sorted out pretty quickly. Well, let's move to something less controversial. Donald Trump, you're uh hosting an event with him. Break it down.

In terms of tech, it really is less, it's probably easier to talk about having a having a chat with Donald Trump about artificial intelligence. I got I got a spicy question next. So, this is like a this is a layup.

And it was funny because you you announced the event and Will Manitis uh immediately commented and was like blah blah blah blah. And John and I were both like, "No, this is exactly the kind of event that Hill and Valley should do with Allin and Donald Trump.

" It's like for you and them and everyone involved, but give us the breakdown. What are what's actually on the agenda? Can people just DM you and get tickets? Is this even open? Um and then what do you hope to have come out of it? Yeah. Um maybe we'll start off with a, you know, back half of the question.

Obviously um the administration put out some early you know sort of executive orders when they you know sort of first got started talking about both winning the AI race and then um showing um the prosperity you know economic growth and jobs that would you know come out of it.

Um I think uh what uh both us and the administration are looking for coming out of this event is just you know there's going to be a whole set of executive orders that are signed you know sort of live that go into more you know sort of specificity across the various you know sort of areas of you know ensuring that we win um the uh AI race um and you know really communicating a message that there's both a commitment from the private industry you know sort of players that um are significant in this space um uh as well as from the government to really ensure that that you happens and again from the lens of like I do think there's been some you know sort of chatter about is AI going to be you know sort of job growth versus job destru destruction and while you know everything from the you know sort of steam engine to internet to mobile etc has always you know sort of done both on a net basis it's always been you know sort of net obviously super positive for the economy and super positive for jobs people just do different you know types of jobs and so um you I think you know making sure that that's you sort of very clearly also what's you know happening in AI rather than just like you know the I don't know you know contra narrative of all that's going to happen here is you know everybody that works in customer service is going to be you know sort of out of job.

It's like well there's also going to be you know sort of way more people um you know doing data center buildouts and you know sort of chips returning to the United States and um you know you know broader you know sort of energy you know infrastructure that needs to you know sort of get built.

Um we've publicly announced you know sort of some set of the speakers some of the bigger ones you know sort of Lisa Sue from uh AMD you know sort of speaking on you know sort of chips um but then there's also some you know sort of earlier stage players that focus on everything from you know AI factories um to data centers to uh energy um to you know industrial robots powered you know sort of by by AI.

So you'll see this theme of like it is a lot more like um what I call like real world or like physical you know sort of AI more so than some of the like traditional software platforms that are getting you know sort of a ton of you know sort of narrative um in the press.

Um and then uh yeah you know uh uh we um uh unfortunately you know don't have you know infinite space to have the entire broad public you know sort of come attend u and so you know sort of pretty you know sort of filled out but it will be you know sort of live streamed um so all the content you know sort of will be available and we're super excited for that and you know this is definitely you know pretty quick you know sort of turnaround we didn't have a ton of you know sort of upfront notice so uh thrown together but you know really thrilled obviously to be collaborating with you know the all-in guys um I think would have been you know basically impossible it's obviously do this you know sort of without them.

Um and obviously you know sort of saxs one of the best he uses is the you know sort of AI and crypto sar and um um Mike Katzios you know the you know I forget if his his title used to be at least CTO of the United States I forget what the new title is I think it's like head of um science and technology at the White House.

Uh but this is very much so you know sort of their their you know sort of brainchild and their policy priorities that are really going to you know sort of come to light and um we're super thrilled to have you know sort of Hill and Valley as a you know sort of co-host uh of this and obviously you know sort of builds upon um the event you know sort of earlier early in the year and I hope we're able to you do more things like this in the future irrespective of you know sort of who's in the administration.

We've always tried to keep you know sort of Hill Valley really you know sort of bipartisan and so you'll definitely see a lot of you know sort of dem um uh both participants um you know in audience and you know democratic leaning founders on stage.

So um always want to make sure this is something where yeah we're you know sort of um you know a forum that is you know sort of here to just you know be the meeting of minds between you policy makers um and you know sort of folks in the US you know technology ecosystem.

Yeah, it should be it should be an easy topic to keep bipartisan, I would imagine. Like it has to be one of these.

I mean, obviously everything's super partisan in general, but uh artificial intelligence like you have a ton of Democrats running labs, working at labs there, but then you know there's a job story if you're building out a you know a massive you know data center in a red state that then the red states folks support it.

So I I it doesn't seem like it should break down traditional party lines.

I am interested to hear about um what is the what is the actual relationship between the administration and AI companies that are doing buildouts like there was this story just yesterday uh Donald Trump said 20 leading technology and energy companies are announcing more than $92 billion of investments in Pennsylvania.

This is a triumphant day for the Commonwealth and the United States of America. Google said it'll put in 25 billion. Uh Blackstone promised another$2 billion. Cororee's doing a $6 billion investment. You love it up for big business.

My my my my my question is like um is this just Trump like celebrating what's the free market is doing and just drawing attention to you know a great thing and just giving the the free market like a pat on the back or or are uh are these big companies are the deals getting so big that um there's actually like hey we're we're you know when Amazon was picking where their headquarters was it's kind of like a debate um and and is there some back and forth where the administration can actually help out on something or or stimulate like capex.

Do you have an idea of like what the shape of those discussions is like? Um yeah, I also I'm going to touch on that. I want to you quickly do just like a go back on like the bipartisan you sort of nature of um you know some of the sort of topics.

I'll just talk about two representatives in particular on the Dem side in California that I think have been you know sort of proponents of a lot of the topics that are going to be on stage.

Representative Ted Lou from California and Congressman uh George Whitesides from California from you know Ted Lou more focused on the AI side.

you know, whit sides more on all things aerospace, industrialization, but have been you big proponents of the, you know, sort of, you know, abundance, I think, caucus is what they call it. Sure.

Talking about a lot of these topics where it's like, you know, you the way you're going to get through economic prosperity is through leaning in on technological progress. And then hell, even Obama basically, you know, sort of came out, you know, in support of this, you know, sort of recently, right?

Saying that like, you know, at the end of the day, our, you know, party's platform doesn't work if you, you know, can't afford housing and people refuse to, you know, sort of build it, right?

And so he came out as like you know clearly an extreme you know sort of gimi which is you know not you know at least the like default you know coastal commission of California you know sort of position. So and he's got you know I think the highest Democratic you know party approval rating.

Like I saw something where it's like he's at like 96% and then like I think the next best was like Hillary Clinton at like 65.

So it's like you know if Obama's coming out you know in support of this I think it's going to be a huge momentum shift on the you know downside which I think is generally very good for the country where you know more and more of these topics become more and more bipartisan and a meeting of the minds.

um on the like uh you know uh announcements around data centers. Um I admit that I don't know the like capex programs in that specific subindustry as well.

But I'll talk about two industries where I do know that the you know sort of government um has been you sort of leaning in on um uh one around um uh you know sort of forestry and natural resources and another one around you sort of DoD.

In both of those, you know, areas, um, there are like net new government programs and budgets to basically, um, you know, provide these more like, um, you know, higher bookto value guaranteed, you know, lending programs at lower cost of capital for people that are fitting, uh, for whose, uh, for companies whose projects are fitting into the policy priorities of the administration.

Um, and so that's everything from, you know, building out, you know, sort of huge new re-industrialized, you know, sort of defense, you know, related, you know, sort of factories and manufacturing lines.

Um and then for folks that are building everything from you know sawmills, processing plants etc on like you know from you know sort of natural lands um or national forests um as well as on the you know mining side.

And so at least there um there's like literal direct you know program offices line items etc that are actually like influencing um the capex spend and making it sort of you know you know putting their thumb on the you know sort of private you know sort of markets to make the cost of capital and like the you know debt available to these companies even cheaper than maybe what the private markets could bear.

Um which for what it's worth it's like you know if you look at you know Fanny Freddy you know um on the you know sort of you know consumer housing side of things it's obviously the government something that the government does there for you know mass you know sort of single family homes um you know below a certain price point um they obviously you know uh uh provide a sort of guaranteed loan program and so um it's something that the you know sort of government has used before to you know sort of prop up other you know sort of markets um and so they're clearly doing this around these um uh other uh administration priorities.

I wouldn't be surprised. I mean, I haven't dug in, but I wouldn't be surprised if there's something similar in the data center, um, you know, and AI, you know, sort of market as well. Yeah. Uh, quick question for you. I know we have a couple minutes left. Uh, who wins in a bar fight?

Global birth rates or grock companions. Ah, man. Uh, tough, you know, uh, anime girls in, you know, sort of short black skirts with sort of ponytails or, uh, teaching you quantum physics. Yeah. Teaching you quantum physics for everyone's, you know, sort of weak spots.

So, um, man, you know, I I I am wondering like, you know, what's behind, you know, Elon's promotion of it where it's like, do they just need a certain amount of money? Here, here here's my thesis. I think it could very well become the fastest growing consumer app of all time.

Like legitimately, like you combine Elon saying, "I endorse this. " And you're buying from an Elon company. Same I created this company. I also created Tesla. And it's basically massively TAM doing a basically TAM expan expansion which is like babe I didn't subscribe to Gro heavy for companions. I use it at work, right?

I pay $300 a month because I need a long context window and I need to, you know, uh I need to help I need help I needed help writing emails.

And so I think that those factors of just like basically um promoting that kind of product on a global scale, a really high price point with something that humanity will pay for could mean that this is a billion dollar run rate product like within the next like couple years. Yeah. my girlfriend's name, Grock Heavy.

It's not like it doesn't it doesn't sound it sounds like a SpaceX term like heavy from Falcon Heavy. I don't know. I do think you're just going to see more and more of this like AI induced psychosis where just like, you know, it tells you what you want to hear.

It like, you know, perfectly, you know, has these feedback loops. You're already seeing this stuff from like, you know, teenagers, etc.

I think like no there's there's a there's a Reddit thread we were looking at earlier identifying all the words that people use once they're in sort of LLM induced psychosis and there's like eight or so words that start coming up in that person's dialogue really rapidly that we've seen uh recently like uh recursive mirror structure these words that get used over and over and when you uh I think people are combining them with drugs which is insane and then They're going down a single basically prompting like 7,000 times in a row with like the same dialogue and uh it's easy to imagine how that would drive you insane.

One last question. Uh how do you think uh Jensen is doing juggling US interests and China's? Well, it's interesting that you know Singapore somehow you know buys whatever 15 billion dollars of chips for you know sort of small island nation. Um I think it's biology. Yeah, it's all biology.

It's his uh network state is getting, you know, sort of really really powerful. He has great networking equipment. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, man, I look uh I was at this you sort of fun conference up in Idaho last week and um you know there was you know various geopolitical talks including one that included an expert you know sort of from Taiwan and it's just you know we are in like you know by far the most you know physically risky geopolitically you know sort of risky environment that the world has been in since the fall of the Soviet you know sort of union um and I think it's you know sort of really hard to figure out how to interact in the environment when you're somebody like Yensen that has like revenue from China, significant infrastructure that you're dependent on in Taiwan, but you're based in the US.

Um, I don't envy his position. I don't global global equity market. He's basically holding the global equity markets up like, you know, my my hope is that it it's a stabilizing force. My my hope is that it's a stabilizing force. But thank you so much for stopping by. We'll let you get back to your work and your lunch.

We'll talk to you soon. Have a good one. And before we bring in our next guest, I will tell you about Finn. ai, the number one AI agent for customer service, number one in performance benchmarks, number one in competitive bakeoffs, and the number one ranking on G2. You can get started at finn. ai.

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