No Priors: Artificial Intelligence | Technology | Startups
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
00:25:04 · Sarah Guo, Andrew Feldman
[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 [00:25:12] S0: and I think, you know, I I talked to the guys at at Cognition. Right? They bought Windsurf over a weekend. Right? I I think many of the things that we thought were speed of light weren't. Mhmm. Right? Could be done much faster. And I I think, you know, the the rate at which Elon has been able to build data centers, right? Everybody's, oh, you can't do it that way, except if you're him, in which case you can, or you can't buy a $300,000,000 company in three actually, you can. You can't do a deal like this in in twenty four days. But if you work on it every day Mhmm. For eight or ten hours a day, you can. And I I think the art of the possible has been expanded by this push in a way I'd never have expected. And I [00:25:56] S2: think it's a huge advantage to have the ambition for speed if you believe it is possible. [00:26:00] S0: That's right. I think we have seen some extraordinary operators in this market build amazing things. Mean, the guys at Cursor and Cognizant, see sort of growth we've never seen before. You can't grow that fast. Well, actually, you can. You can't build data centers. You can't do deals. Those were sort of truncated aspirations, which is interesting. [00:26:25] S2: Speaking about these companies like Cog and Cursor and such, the growth of the open source ecosystem has enabled a generation of companies to do really impressive things.
00:26:25 · Sarah Guo, Andrew Feldman
[00:26:25] S2: Speaking about these companies like Cog and Cursor and such, the growth of the open source ecosystem has enabled a generation of companies to do really impressive things. [00:26:37] S0: Super, super impressive. [00:26:39] S2: You know, Devin on Cerebras is a really magical experience. Coding on Cerebras is like like, performance at massive speed is really special. How do you how do you think about, you know, open source and post trained workloads and and your perspective on that going forward? [00:26:56] S0: They have fed this market. Right? When closed source was was too expensive, the open source community has sort of kept the interest alive and kept the flame going. And I I think that that the and pushed the the closed source guys. I I think the the sort of techniques that we saw by some of the Chinese makers, like, woah. We we gotta stay ahead of that. Right? We we can't rest on our laurels. We we can't depend on the fact that we have bigger training clusters and more data. And I think that's made for an extraordinarily vibrant ecosystem. Right? I I think it's made for creativity or and allowed creativity to to to take root and and really produce interesting results. And that's fun to be in the midst of. Right? It's fun to see other people's ideas do interesting things on your hardware. And that's if you don't love that, your infrastructure is not right for you. You gotta love other people's ideas to take flight on on what you built.
00:26:56 · Andrew Feldman, Sarah Guo
[00:26:56] S0: They have fed this market. Right? When closed source was was too expensive, the open source community has sort of kept the interest alive and kept the flame going. And I I think that that the and pushed the the closed source guys. I I think the the sort of techniques that we saw by some of the Chinese makers, like, woah. We we gotta stay ahead of that. Right? We we can't rest on our laurels. We we can't depend on the fact that we have bigger training clusters and more data. And I think that's made for an extraordinarily vibrant ecosystem. Right? I I think it's made for creativity or and allowed creativity to to to take root and and really produce interesting results. And that's fun to be in the midst of. Right? It's fun to see other people's ideas do interesting things on your hardware. And that's if you don't love that, your infrastructure is not right for you. You gotta love other people's ideas to take flight on on what you built. [00:28:08] S2: When you think about experiences you imagine will be possible only on cerebris, is there anything you're excited about in a couple years from now that we should all look out for?