Trae Stephens on Anduril's Arsenal One factory, Thunder autonomous attack helicopter, and defense tech overhype

Speaker 1: CrowdStrike secures AI and stops breaches your business' AI. Their business is securing it. Head over to CrowdStrike. We have Trey Stevens, the cofounder of Andoril, general partner at Founders Fund. Trey, how are doing? What up, guys? Welcome back to the show. I don't know if you've met Tyler before. Jordy's Jordy's out today. Jordy's out sick. So we have a guest cohost, Great to see you. How are doing?

Speaker 4: I'm good. Can't complain.

Speaker 1: How is the market turmoil affecting you in the venture world? You mean the public market turmoil? The public market. I I mean, first time in my career that I've seen trillion dollar stocks, mag seven companies moving by 10% in a single day. That seems crazy of the situational awareness thing going on. Like, the public markets seem insane. And sometimes, you know, gyrations in the public markets reverberate into private markets. Sometimes, they don't. Sometimes, you're insulated as someone who can hold longer, who doesn't have to deal with that. But I'm I'm just wondering if any of that chaos is bubbling up to what you're seeing in your seat.

Speaker 4: Well, I think I think there's certainly, like, different places where that intersects. You know, one of the things that Brian Singerman, who's one of the former partners here at Founders Fund, he used to tell us venture capital is a micro game, not a macro game. What matters is that, have you invested in the generational companies in in every kind of era? And, you know, I think Founders Fund has performed incredibly well in that regard. We we have large positions in some of the most important companies of the last twenty years. But obviously, there's, you know, questions around things like, you know, SpaceX has gone public. There's there's been kind of a reset back to like basically the IPO price. Mhmm. The lockups haven't even released yet. So there's like all these questions about where that's going to stand as that kind of lockup happens over the next, really, years almost. Yeah. So I don't know, is I guess is the answer. I'm I'm not a finance person at at heart in any way. So I very I understand very little about the public markets. But Yeah. One thing that I hope happens is that as there's a reset on the public market side, I'm hoping that there will be somewhat of a reset on the private side as well because the the market, it makes absolutely no sense in venture capital right now. Okay.

Speaker 1: Is there is there a steel man here where where the CapEx intensity that we saw work out in hard tech companies like SpaceX, like Andoril. You know, this is a company that's doing something very important. It's gonna take a little bit more capital to actually build something really hard. It's not just a couple lines of code and then an elegant, you know, website that just prints money. You're going to have to invest some real money to make SpaceX work, to make Androle work. And that's coming for AI companies now. They have big training budgets. They have very expensive talent. Isn't there a reason why valuation should be higher because the the rewards that people are going after are so much more not just capital intensive but potentially bigger?

Speaker 4: Well, I mean, certainly, if the outcomes are these, like, multi trillion dollar businesses, then, yeah, you know, you can kind of blend that risk over over many rounds at higher prices. But that's the question is, like, is that necessarily the case? Are we going to have $10,000,000,000,000 IPOs, over the next five years? Or is it going to look more like a reversion to the mean where we have companies like Anthropic, companies like OpenAI, companies like SpaceX. But then a lot of companies that are really successful, really interesting companies that are, you know, Uber scaled or Airbnb scaled or even, you know, when Meta first went public. You know, those would be tremendous venture capital success stories, but not if, you know, you're pricing a seed round at a billion dollars. Yeah. Well, how do you how do you advise founders

Speaker 1: who might have the option to raise that billion dollar seed round? Because you're in this sort of conflict of interest territory where if I come to you and I say, hey, I I got an idea. I think I'm gonna raise a billion dollar seed round. You could be, you know, saying, I don't know. This doesn't seem like it's gonna be $10,000,000,000,000 anytime soon. Maybe you shouldn't do that. But then I come to you and I just say, hey, you're just the VC. You want a good deal.

Speaker 4: Yeah. I mean, there's there's two kind of schools of thought. The first school of thought is to say, you should do that. You should raise as much money as you can at the highest highest price possible. Yeah. Build up a war chest and survive until you can justify that price. Yeah. And that might actually be the right answer for some companies. Yeah. I don't I don't wanna say that that's like always a bad idea. That might be a right idea. Obviously, the worst thing you could do is raise a very small amount of money at a very high price. Yeah. Because that's that's where you're gonna get yourself into trouble. But then the other side of this is like, can you build a financing strategy that allows you to grow responsibly over time? And that you will see continuous momentum with every fundraise. Yeah. And you're never gonna have your back against the wall. Yeah. That's been the approach from the very beginning with Andrew. This is what we've tried to do. Yeah. And I don't think we have any regrets about doing that. We could have raised at a higher price at every round. Sure. But it's been nice to be able to go back to our employees and our investors on an annual basis and say, look, we just did a two x markup. Look, we just did a two x markup. Look, we just did a two x markup. So it feels more sustainable and keeps us tethered to our company performance more than this belief that it's going to pay out at some point. You know, I'm sure you guys watch the HBO show Silicon Valley, but there's the hilarious scene where the the what's his name? Rich or whatever. The know the Trace Callumas guy. Oh,

Speaker 2: forget.

Speaker 4: Yeah. Where where he has that famous line where he says, no. Whatever you do, don't get revenue. Once you have revenue, you're going to be judged on the basis of your revenue. Yeah. Is is a billion dollar seed round

Speaker 1: is is is is too much capital like, is it is it increasingly intoxicating? Is the level of intoxication with overfunding at the early stage, is that problematic? Are there some founders that can work it out and not develop a culture that overspends early? Because your point was like if a bunch of money shows up, you need to actually have it as a war chest. If you just have it flowing out easily, you're just going to run out of it and then you're in a corner. But I'm wondering like is there a path to actually setting your company up for war chest mode as opposed to just, oh, we're just spending freely and we're just going to burn through this?

Speaker 4: I'm sure there is a path. You just don't see that discipline exhibited often. And you can see this in every bubble that's happened over the last twenty years is that, you know, everyone believes that they can have a billion in the bank and be responsible with it, and very few people can actually pull that off. So I think there is something there's something wise about kind of metering that out and having a plan rather than just kind of YOLO ing into the abyss. But, you know, it it's so it's so hard because like like I said, in some cases, it might actually be the right decision to raise as much as you can at the highest price possible. In in defense tech specifically,

Speaker 1: it feels like this was a category that was extremely hard to get revenue because you had to work with the government. The government is just a little bit slower than selling to your friend in b to b SaaS or something like that. And the and the traditional path that I remember talking to you about was SBIR and then at some point there's the valley of death and you try and get to the program of record. But following the new programs in the Department of War, it feels like there's more of a menu. There's more ways for hard tech companies, defense tech companies to work with the government just to get to revenue. Can you explain a little bit more of what you're seeing in terms of early, mid stage, different ways for defense technology companies to actually grow their business, prove what they're doing? And has it actually changed over the last decade that I I'm feeling like there's a change?

Speaker 4: Yeah. It really has. I mean, I was at Palantir very early. And, you know, that early era of the, you know, 2005 to 2015 range, where Palantir and SpaceX were really the only players that were doing this. I mean, it was the Wild Wild West. Like, both companies had to sue the government for contracts to go through on the basis of this thing called Title 10 Yeah. USC twenty three seventy seven, which is like a commercial preference authority. So there was really no path. It was like, you know, if you got to the point where you had a product that was worthy of going into production or going into scale with the government, they would do everything they could to block you and and go back with the primes. That's shifted. You know, that's not the case anymore. There are much better pathways. You know, in the early Palantir days, we worked with In Q Tel, which is a CIA's venture capital firm on these work programs. And that's the same way that we got started at Androle actually. And, you know, right around that same time, Raj Shah and Chris Kershoff were standing up the defense innovation unit and making that like a relevant contracting pathway. You know, all of the like, Softworks, AFWERX, Army Futures Command, they all, like, started developing pathways for companies to get, to get funded. Now there's stratify funding, which can come through, under the SBIR umbrella that allows you to get, you know, tens of millions of dollars in matching funds from the government as you're scaling. There's bridging funding to go from pilot to prototype to production. It's much better understood. But the problem is is that a lot of these are still at the end of the day funded out of the research and development budgets rather than production budgets. Mhmm. So, you know, the the US government has a history of kind of this let all flowers bloom strategy where they are always happy to give out low single digit millions of dollars to hundreds or thousands of different companies. But there's a big difference between having, you know, 10 to $20,000,000 of research and development funding and having billions of dollars of production funding under like major weapons acquisition programs, program offices, things like that. And that muscle is still

Speaker 1: it's still needing to be developed. It's it's early days. When when you say the let all flowers bloom strategy, I I'm thinking back to when we talked about like this idea of the Andoril for axes Andoril. There's a lot that Andoril can solve. At the same time, you've partnered with companies like Dirac. You've partnered with other new startups in the hard tech, defense tech space broadly. And I'm wondering if there's maybe more opportunity now, now that we're maybe a decade into the defense tech boom, maybe five years, a couple we're deep into this. There's a path. You've charted it. Is there more opportunity for new entrepreneurs to pursue deeper in the supply chain opportunities, see an Andoril as a customer maybe instead of the government as a customer?

Speaker 4: Absolutely. I I think not only instead of, but also in addition to. Oh, sure. You know, I I think a lot of these companies that are working down the supply chain, they have relevant government customers. They have old, like, legacy customers, like the primes that are still, needing to to correct some of these problems or become more efficient Mhmm. As well as the big successful tech companies like the SpaceXs, the Teslas, the Andorils, things like that. So I I think that the opportunity is definitely there. It's just a matter of like, you know, having a novel idea and being really passionate about driving that single thing forward. And I I fear that when you look at the defense tech industrials kind of ecosystem right now, it's a lot of hype. It's a lot of like, you know, people that want to be part of a moment. And the reality is is that's not how tech investing or tech startup creation has ever worked. You know, once that thing is a category, it's kind of too late. If you were a SpaceTech investor and you didn't invest in SpaceX, you probably lost money. If you're a crypto infrastructure investor and you didn't invest in Coinbase, you probably lost money. I I think that we're like nearing kind of a overhype of volume in defense tech that is going to make it very difficult to separate signal from noise. I assume you're referring to on the venture side specifically.

Speaker 1: I'm interested in an idea of, like, is there an opportunity for an entrepreneur who says, Look, I'm not building a next trillion dollar company. I don't want money from Founders Fund. It's not a fit, but I need some private equity dollars to go buy an old factory, and I'm going to make drone motors, small drone motors in America pretty cheaply and efficiently, and I'm going to sell them to a bunch of people. And it's going to be a $50,000,000 revenue business after a decade, and it's going to continue chugging along at 10% growth, and the EBITDA is going to be reasonable. We're going to pay back the debt. And we're never going to IPO it, but it's going to, at the same time, provide a career and jobs but also a financial return for the right person. But we're not going after the, you know, oh, hype and venture funding and the big raises and all of that.

Speaker 4: Well, I think the intersection of both of our points is that, yes, I think there's a ton of room to do that. Mhmm. And secondly, all of those companies that are doing the things that you're mentioning are trying to raise oodles of venture capital dollars. So if someone actually wanted to build this business in like a a a more like normal financial structure, yeah, I think I think it makes a lot of sense. But, you know, there's 20 of the companies that you just mentioned. They've all raised tens of millions of venture dollars, and I'm not really sure what the end game is. Yeah.

Speaker 1: I guess we'll find out. Take me through of the recent Andoril announcements. I I wanna know about the Thunder autonomous attack aircraft. How did that come together? What is the what what what is the program? What is the scale up? What's the manufacturing look like for that?

Speaker 4: Yeah. So Thunder is, an autonomous attack helicopter that we just announced at Farmborough in The United Kingdom last week. You know, the proliferation of drones has turned the near surface fight, into like a robotic kill zone. And so crewed helicopters or crews, they're at risk. And so, basically, the same way that we approach Fury, the collaborative combat aircraft that we can we can talk about as well. We just Yeah. Rolled our first unit off the line to the Air Force, earlier this week. But the same kind of concept with collaboration with manned crews is what we're talking about here except with helicopters instead of with fire planes. So that that process is, you know, fully in flight. We have we've been working on this project for years now. We've completed test flights with a full scale Surriet.

Speaker 2: And we'll we're planning for Thunder's first flight for next year in 2027. And What what is like the the shape of the autonomy? Is it like you have one person kind of overseeing a bunch of these different crafts? Or like how do you guys think about that?

Speaker 4: Yeah. You can kind of think about the the helicopter pilot, whether it's, you know, an Apache or whatever. They're like Ender in Ender's Game. And they have this, you know, fleet of autonomous vehicles that they can kind of command and control from the cockpit of their own aircraft. And, you know, there's this really cool anime video that's the third in a series that just came out when we did the launch last week. And it kind of explains the concept of operations for this, which is, you know, you don't want to be putting the Apache and the the human beings helicopter in harm's way when you're engaging with all of these autonomous assets that are creating risk out out forward. So you want these to be able to go out and take shots, give you a better sense or view of things, or even become a triple and take the shot for you that you're not the one that's eating that missile they are.

Speaker 1: We talked years ago about the idea of not of not building a tradable systems, not building capital assets, these huge aircraft carriers, these exquisite systems. But if I'm charting the size of what you're building year over year, we go from the anvil, we go from a very small drone, something bigger and bigger. If I chart it out, it looks like, you know, C-one 130 is coming up any day now. Am I off? Is there a limit to this? Or is there a is there a world where, you know, everything up and down the stack is on the table?

Speaker 4: Well, at some point, it becomes non attributable. Right? Like Sure. You know, the the danger of an aircraft carrier is that there are 5,000 service members on a 20 plus billion dollar vehicle that can be destroyed by a single missile. Yeah. That's a bad trade. Yeah. We don't wanna we don't wanna be doing that. Yeah. But, you know, to the extent that there are assets that are physically larger but will be better suited to robots, yeah, I think that's very much in play. You know, the the DOW has been talking for a long time about autonomous tanker aircraft for aerial refueling. Mhmm. That's the sort of thing that if you could actually get an autonomous system to do that really well, logistically it becomes easier. It reduces risk in theory if you can get it to work really well. And, you know, it also is kind of like a prime target for risk reduction. So I think there are larger assets where it does make sense, but the trade off is really in human lives and total cost because at some point, you know, in either of those calculations, these things are no longer considered to be attributable. Yeah.

Speaker 1: Talk about Fury, the Ohio production line, Arsenal one. How did that project like, what eighteen months from start to finish, I I I think is roughly the number. But was that the original plan? Were there setbacks? Were there was there a risk of not hitting that? Like, what did it take to actually nail that? Because that feels incredibly quick.

Speaker 4: Yeah. It was incredibly fast. Yeah. We kind of did the the ribbon cutting for the the land that we were building on in January. I think it was, yeah, January of last year of twenty twenty five. Yeah. And then factory is up and running in May 2026. We rolled our first fighter plane off the line on Monday of this week with the governor. And so, you know, things things were very, very rapid. Yeah. We can talk about this for a long time. There there are a lot of advantages that we had going in. We had an existing building, an 800,000 square foot building. It was just a shell, just concrete shell. But we weren't starting totally greenfield. We had utility support to the site. JobsOhio, which is the economic development agency for the state of Ohio, was partnered very closely with us on making sure that we had the resources that we needed Yeah. To get that facility up and running. But of course, there is like a tremendous operations effort that had to go into build it, like designing the facility, building out all of the office space, setting up the factory line. And that's still a work in progress. We're not totally done with Building 1, but we've already stood up the shell of Building 2, next door. So that that would be in flight as well. You know, internally at Androle, the person that eats all of the garbage around this is Matt Grimm, our COO, my co founder. Yeah. So I would hesitate to pretend that I know what I'm talking about. But Grimm, Grimm is the the man that that made this really difficult project happen alongside his team on the the manufacturing side, on the operation side. They they really put off a heroic effort. So

Speaker 1: are there is there I don't know if you can actually share this, but are there long lead times for specific machines that you that you sort of needed to think about sourcing and even signing contracts with, like, years in advance? And then you're like, okay, we have the site so we can go drop this one expensive machine in the facility and get going faster. Because when we hear when we talk about like semiconductor supply chains, like everything stretched out twenty four, thirty six months And it feels like if you were to sign, get the building, and then start ordering things and actually building the production line, you'd be behind schedule on day one.

Speaker 4: Yeah. I mean, if we're comparing it to the semiconductor supply chain, nothing like an ASML EUV machine or anything like that, To be clear. Yeah. But, yeah, of course, there's there's all sorts of things you have to figure out in the supply chain. Not only the the tooling, but also the materials that go into construction of of the products that we're building. So, you know, natural resources are very challenging. Mhmm. Rare earths are very challenging. Mhmm. And we're working closely with the Department of War to ensure that we have offtake agreements to get those natural resources that we need to build the things that are important for them. They've been a great active partner with us in that. Yeah. And in addition to that, I would say that, labor becomes a big bottleneck. You can't, you know, say eighteen months ago, yeah, when we're ready to open the factory, when everything is built, we're gonna start hiring people. No. We started hiring people the day we announced that we were That's right. We were doing this. Yeah. And we had them work out of our headquarters in Orange County. Mhmm. The entire team of people that are building Furies at Arsenal One in Columbus, Ohio today, we're doing the exact same thing a few months ago in in Orange County where where our headquarters is located. You So have to really get ahead of every aspect of this, and it's a very complicated task. But, again, we're we're really happy to see that we have things up and running and, rolling off the line today. Speaking of jobs,

Speaker 1: what is your pitch for mandatory civil service engaging, solving the the jobs crisis that may or may not be coming? Walk me through your latest thinking on the role of civil service in the modern American society.

Speaker 4: Well, you know, I've actually had this thought for a long time. For probably close to twenty years now, I've been kind of beating this idea around. You know, it's not like a super contrarian idea actually. Like, are a bunch of countries across the world that have some version of mandatory civil service. In fact, we have aspects of this inside of our own society. If you think about things like jury duty or being subpoenaed for court, or, there are instances throughout the last even fifty years where people were called into service, to to do things like road construction and maintenance. So, I understand there there are all sorts of questions that you would have about the thirteenth amendment. I am not in a position to adjudicate those complicated constitutional issues, but I think that there's something really, important about ensuring a sense of civil duty into our next generation. And I think don't that needs to be in the military service. I think it could just as easily be like going and working as a as a clerk at a county, you know, courthouse. Mhmm. There's all sorts of things that we can do to pull people in and have this feeling of shared progress that that we all owe a responsibility towards. And I think if you were to go to Singapore or to Israel and ask them like, is this a societal good or has this been a disaster? Is it forced labor? Is it involuntary servitude? Think I they would all say, no, this is actually pretty great. You know, it was it was a difficult thing that I did and I'm glad that I did. I learned a lot. I met a lot of people that, are still part of my life today. And I think that it would be wise for Americans to take a hard look at ourselves and say, is what we're doing right now working? Like, are we happy with the path the pathways that have been created for our own kids? Yeah. Are we happy with the political tribalism that's resulted from a lack of civic duty? I would say, no. I'm not particularly happy with this. Is my particular recommendation the right answer? I don't know. But I think we should try things. Yeah. No. I love it. I have a hot take I want you to react to.

Speaker 1: I believe that the TSA is underrated. I think people complain about the TSA constantly, say it slows me down. I'm just trying to get to my airplane. But when I look at the record of the TSA, it seems pretty much flawless. It seems like they've done a great job securing our airways. And when I actually experience and think about the people there, I've had positive interactions. I haven't actually been offended by anyone or anything. It feels like a great yes, maybe it's a jobs program, but it feels like a great job. It feels like people, they're going and they're working in a clean, air conditioned building. They're interacting with other Americans, meeting other people. Think that TSA might need a reevaluation after being the butt of every comedian's joke for two decades.

Speaker 4: I mean, are aspects that I would I would probably agree with you. I still do think it's sort of a jobs program, but again, that's maybe not the worst thing. Mandatory

Speaker 2: think that it's Yeah.

Speaker 4: Well well, yeah. How does it fit in with with like mandatory civil service? Yeah. I mean, could definitely be into something like that. Yeah. I mean, the reality is like it's actually gotten pretty efficient. It has. Like, I don't know if any of you this is this is CBP, not TSA, but I'll I'll use it as a similar Yeah. Kind of counter. I don't know if any of you have gone through a global entry at one of the large international airports, but Yeah. You just literally walk through now. It's amazing. It's it's unbelievable. Yeah. Like, you know, I I think that we have the ability to lead the world in the way that we, you know, process travel safety, that we handle, you know, visas, that we handle immigration. And

Speaker 1: I think the Department of Homeland Security has actually done a pretty remarkable job despite all the criticism that they've been levied. Yeah. I think that there's there's two steps to the argument, the discussion around any sort of mandatory civil service is first, you know, yes or no. And I think you made a good case for for yes in some capacity. But the second stage is, okay, what will these civil servants be doing? We'll we'll have a new a new labor force, And how will how will, you know, we democratically decide to deploy these folks? Will they be repairing potholes or building parks or Building data centers. Building data centers potentially. That would be great.

Speaker 4: But That would be politically spicy.

Speaker 1: It might make people like it a lot more. They're like, hey, I got a hard day's work. I feel good. I feel like I accomplished something. The building's there. I don't know. But anyway, another random take. Oppenheimer or the Odyssey? Which one did you like more?

Speaker 4: I liked the first two thirds of the Oppenheimer better than I liked the entirety of the Odyssey. Okay. But I I liked the Odyssey more than the last third of Oppenheimer. Oh, interesting. Okay.

Speaker 1: That's good.

Speaker 4: What can you tell us about They're both at the bottom though of the Christopher Nolan canon

Speaker 1: alongside Tenet, I would say. Oh, you were gonna put Tenet at the bottom. I like Tenet. I think it's so I to

Speaker 4: I Tenet is inarguably the worst Christopher Nolan movie of all. What's the best one? Dark Knight?

Speaker 2: Interstellar. Interstellar. I gotta go with Interstellar. That's a good What did you not like about The Odyssey?

Speaker 4: I didn't I I'll I'll be very clear. I didn't say that I didn't like it. I just said it wasn't as good as any of his other movies other than Tenet. Okay. Yeah. If it was any other director, I would have came out of the movie theater and been like, that was great. I'm glad that I watched that. But it was Christopher Nolan. So my expectations were much higher. Totally. It was the same thing. I was like, that's obviously the best picture. I can't think of any other movies that are gonna be better than that this year. At the same time, I don't know if I'm gonna rewatch that this year. I don't I I you know I don't know that I would rewatch it. I don't think like, I watch Interstellar every year. I don't know that I would watch the Odyssey,

Speaker 1: you know, again ever. I don't know. We'll see. Yeah. Also, there is just it's a type of film. It's like a moment. It's a whole experience. You gotta see it in IMAX. It's three hours. It's a you know, it it's very much a slog whereas, you know, you could throw on the Dark Knight and it's just like a it's like a party almost. It's like a very entertaining it's a popcorn movie. For sure. This is not a this is a whole, like, journey that you're going on. That's the point and that's the experience. Oh, Anyway, what can you tell us about the future of Founders Fund? SpaceX, we were talking about LP in Fund two yesterday. I think you said it's, like, potentially the best fund in human history. Are you resting on your laurels? Are you going to be incubating new things, bringing on new partners? You signed some new talent. Tell us what's going to happen with Founders Fund over the next couple of years.

Speaker 4: Yeah. The worst thing about, fund two at Founders Fund is that I was not at Founders Fund. So I I do not benefit from from that fund. But, yeah, it might actually be the greatest fund in venture capital history. That's

Speaker 1: a lot of booing.

Speaker 4: Yeah, because the fund is doing really well. We, you know, we we have a a main venture fund and a growth fund. We have awesome names in both of those. We're still very bullish about the, again, micro level of the companies that we're investing in, even if we are a little bit more bearish on the macro. We just added Ryan Beiermeister the team as a partner. She she and I worked together when we were in our early twenties at Palantir and then she went off to Meta. Yeah. And then to OpenAI. Yeah. And we just got her to join us over here. So really excited about what the future holds. We have a great team. We're we're all vibing really well. Everyone wants to know, is Mafia

Speaker 1: an official part of the Founders Fund recruitment process now?

Speaker 4: It is definitely not. Okay. And the joke that I made on X about this is that Ryan got crushed in game one of Mafia. If it was actually a, like,

Speaker 1: you know, a a recruiting tool, that was not a great interview. At the same time, I feel like she she entertained. She seemed like someone you would wanna meet with and do business with. For sure. She's she's very good. She's actually incredibly talented in Mafia. She just had a bad an unlucky run. It could be you you could go into a game of mafia and display that you're gonna backstab a founder that you're working with, and that might be disqualifying, maybe. I don't know. That's true. That's true. Although, it's not the whole point of mafia is to backstab other people. Yeah. Yeah. So I kind of want the backstabber on my side just so I work with them. Exactly. What about RIA? Are you are are you happy that Founders Fund has stayed in the private markets? Or do you wish you could be just writing just playing Micron a little bit right now with a little bit of No. No. I'm I'm so so happy that we've stayed true to our to our origins.

Speaker 4: Yeah. We are a venture fund. We invest in early stage companies and support founders throughout their entire journey. And And I think there's all sorts of cool stuff that's happening. Andreesen's doing, that Thrive is doing, that General Catalyst is doing, that Sequoia is doing with their evergreen funds. These are all very cool concepts. It's just not us. You mentioned Thrive.

Speaker 1: Any plan to buy a sports team?

Speaker 4: Today, baby. Let's go. Hopefully.

Speaker 1: Hopefully soon. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. Wait. Okay. Last question. What is is that sword behind you? This is Andoril. That's Andoril. Oh. Oh, yeah. Okay. Sword Yeah. Yeah. Lord of the Rings. Sore. Andoril. Andoril. Yeah. Yeah. Beautiful. There is there a criteria for getting one? Is this, like, five years of the company and you get a sword? Is there any are there any Andoril, like, totems or artifacts that come You can just go online and buy one of these guys. You don't have to don't have to work with Andoril.

Speaker 4: Are there any totems? Well, I mean, we do have an internal, like, exclusives gear store. Oh, yeah. And I should point out that I'm also wearing one of our external available swag. Yeah. So this is at gear.andoroll.com. You can pick up this sweatshirt and a bunch of other, a bunch of other cool gear including our partnership with NASCAR. So there's also some Androol NASCAR gear up as well. Yeah. Right now, there's an Androol Hawaiian shirt. Yeah. You know, hearkening back to Palmer's love of Hawaiian shirts. Yeah. So Miller Times has been cooking. Jeff

Speaker 1: Miller has been cooking. Jeff Miller is cooking. No doubt about Bunch of good stuff. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to come chat with us. Sorry we kept you a couple minutes late. Have a great weekend and we'll talk to you soon. It's all good. Cheers. Take care. Have a good one. See you. Let me tell you about Codex. Codex is a powerful workspace for getting work done with AI agents, whether you're writing code, analyzing data, creating content, or automating business workflows. Codex helps you move projects forward from start to finish. And when you're finished, head over to the New York Stock Exchange because if you wanna change the world, you gotta raise capital at the New York Stock Exchange. Up next, we have Blake Resnick from Brink Drones. He's gonna be in the show in the TBP and Ultradumb in just a minute. Where do you stand, Tyler, on Oppenheimer versus Odyssey? I'm going Oppenheimer as well. You're going Oppenheimer? Yeah. Yeah. I rewatched Oppenheimer within a couple days and of seeing it the first time, and I I think it's the movie that I will come back to more frequently. But also, think I like the story more because it's more recent history and it's it's easier to draw on, I suppose. Sure. I don't know. I don't know. Let us know in the chat. Derek Thompson had a funny post here. He said, I went back and read some criticisms of big tech in the twenty tens, and it's amazing how many of them bemoan big tech's cash hoarding as a major failure of late stage capitalism. This is the the PT point. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He literally Not innovative. Peter Thiel stood on stage at a Forbes debate, I think, with Eric Schmidt Eric Schmidt. From Google and said, you have a $100,000,000,000 on your balance sheet and you don't do anything with it. You don't you're out of ideas. You're you're chopped, basically. And and now the hyperscalers are deploying the cash and no one's happy. What's going on? You can't have it both ways. So like you said, just a few years ago, popular criticism of software giants indeed of American capitalism was that big companies hoarded their cash piles and refused to reinvest their profits in new ideas, but that era is over. Today, those same companies have depleted practically all of their cash flow to thicken the irony. Capitalism's critics seem to hate this new era of unprecedented corporate investment even more than they hated the era of corporate cash hoarding. So fascinating. It's a it's a, you know, between a rock and a hard place, I suppose, for American big tech companies. Well, let me tell you about public.com.