No Priors: Artificial Intelligence | Technology | Startups
00:19:22 · Andrew Feldman, Elad Gil
[00:19:22] S0: Accountable to your own thinking. Yeah. If you understand why it's not working, right, if there are some things that that you can articulate that have to change Yeah. In order for it to work, and and you can put some sort of time frame on it. But that is an extraordinarily hard question. And I I think it's probably the case that lots of efforts ought to be truncated. Yeah. And those people sort of redeploy their efforts to new and different ideas that they have. [00:20:00] S1: Yeah. It's kind of like I view it as opportunity cost on life. For some people, it's the best moment of their lives in terms of productivity or things they could do. And so the cost of time is extremely high. In your guys' case, obviously it worked out. What made you all decide to go public? Similarly, there's differing opinions on when to go public, why to go public, what's the benefits, what's the drawbacks. What was that in your mind, and what made you decide to go out now? First, sort of
00:20:00 · Elad Gil, Andrew Feldman
[00:20:00] S1: Yeah. It's kind of like I view it as opportunity cost on life. For some people, it's the best moment of their lives in terms of productivity or things they could do. And so the cost of time is extremely high. In your guys' case, obviously it worked out. What made you all decide to go public? Similarly, there's differing opinions on when to go public, why to go public, what's the benefits, what's the drawbacks. What was that in your mind, and what made you decide to go out now? First, sort of [00:20:23] S0: going public is exchanging some professional investors, venture capitalists who specialize in technology investing for a different class of investors, in so doing, reducing your cost of capital a little bit. Right? This is really what's happening. Suddenly, we go from pros like you to my dad. Right? That that that's sort of the trade off. And in return for that, you have to agree to to be governed by a set of extraordinarily stringent rules. I think your question is complicated by the fact that there have been, for the first time in history, four or five companies that can raise huge amounts of money without going public, that this was never a thing before OpenAI and Anthropic and Databricks. [00:21:11] S1: Do you know where the option package timeline from for Silicon Valley comes from? It's like a four year timeline. [00:21:16] S0: It used to be how long it would take you to get public. Exactly. Yeah. Used to be four years. Right? It used to be four years. And that was the way you got evaluation in the hundreds of millions. Yeah. Right? But I I think
00:21:16 · Andrew Feldman, Sarah Guo, Elad Gil
[00:21:16] S0: It used to be how long it would take you to get public. Exactly. Yeah. Used to be four years. Right? It used to be four years. And that was the way you got evaluation in the hundreds of millions. Yeah. Right? But I I think [00:21:28] S2: Now people have a tender cycle. [00:21:30] S0: That's right. [00:21:30] S2: At a certain scale. [00:21:31] S0: That it took us 10. And I I think that changes a lot. Right? What we did is we opened up the secondary market and let people sell, right? If you're gonna bet big chunks your career with us, we thought it would be perfectly reasonable for you to find modest liquidity as you went along. I think you have to think very differently if it's gonna take you a decade. [00:21:53] S1: Mhmm.
00:21:53 · Elad Gil, Andrew Feldman
[00:21:53] S1: Mhmm. [00:21:54] S0: But I think for a very small number of companies, those three in particular, they've been able to raise sort of public market money at public market valuations in the private market. I think for the rest of the world, if you want super high valuations, if you want the legitimacy that comes with it, historically, large companies like doing business with other public companies in The US, and you get a credibility and a legitimacy from having your books audited, from them being able to see who you are, that is different than when you're private. And I think all of those are reasonable reasons. I also think we could offer the public market something unique. Right? We would be the first and only for a period of time, AI pure play. We are the only company that you can, a 100% of the revenue, comes in this exact market. There's no gaming. There's no graphics. There's no PC. This is it. And that was an opportunity, a differentiator that that we thought was interesting. I I think there are ways around all the other things. You you can deliver returns to your investors. I I think both Elon and Ali have been really creative about allowing employees to sell and and allowing investors who who have ten year funds to to to find some liquidity in the process. But I I I think more than anything, for us, it was an opportunity to to graduate from corporate adolescence to corporate adulthood.
00:21:54 · Andrew Feldman, Sarah Guo
[00:21:54] S0: But I think for a very small number of companies, those three in particular, they've been able to raise sort of public market money at public market valuations in the private market. I think for the rest of the world, if you want super high valuations, if you want the legitimacy that comes with it, historically, large companies like doing business with other public companies in The US, and you get a credibility and a legitimacy from having your books audited, from them being able to see who you are, that is different than when you're private. And I think all of those are reasonable reasons. I also think we could offer the public market something unique. Right? We would be the first and only for a period of time, AI pure play. We are the only company that you can, a 100% of the revenue, comes in this exact market. There's no gaming. There's no graphics. There's no PC. This is it. And that was an opportunity, a differentiator that that we thought was interesting. I I think there are ways around all the other things. You you can deliver returns to your investors. I I think both Elon and Ali have been really creative about allowing employees to sell and and allowing investors who who have ten year funds to to to find some liquidity in the process. But I I I think more than anything, for us, it was an opportunity to to graduate from corporate adolescence to corporate adulthood. [00:23:28] S2: Can you talk a little bit about I'm so curious. Like, how did the opening ideal happen? What do you think was the point at which you knew that you were a good fit for them?
00:23:28 · Sarah Guo, Andrew Feldman
[00:23:28] S2: Can you talk a little bit about I'm so curious. Like, how did the opening ideal happen? What do you think was the point at which you knew that you were a good fit for them? [00:23:41] S0: I think I spoke to Sam in sort of middle of summer in in '25, and he said for the first time he he said, we're we've been trying so hard just to keep up with demand. We we now see the importance of fast inference. That produced a set of trials and some testing that that was done, and we were so much faster than the than the competition. It felt really good. And when we love talking to super smart customers. Right? I mean, I I can't I know you do consumer too. I I can't do consumer. I have a rule that if my my mother buys it or uses it, I don't wanna make it or sell it because I I I really want super smart customers who are doing really interesting things with our stuff. And so we got in with some of their guys, and they were like, woah. This is we understand now. And at Thanksgiving, the night before Thanksgiving, we signed a term sheet. And, you know, four weeks later, on the December 24, we signed a big master agreement. And so That's [00:24:49] S2: incredibly fast. [00:24:50] S0: You know what? They can fly. And, you know, we were working seven days a week. I mean, they had several law firm I mean, was a huge For a $20 plus billion deal to do it in four and a half weeks was exceptional. [00:25:04] S2: I actually think that's like a crazy characteristic of this market that I've not personally experienced before, which is everybody's trying to keep up with demand. I and