Venture with Grace
00:10:16 · Jerry Tworek
[00:10:16] S2: The thing I care about the most, and I brought with myself when I started this new company, is being the innovator and daring. OpenAI, for a while, was a company that had very audacious dreams of building artificial general intelligence. It didn't have that much idea how to do it, but it had a lot of conviction and a lot of confidence in going in that mission. And for many years, OpenAI did breakthrough research year after year, going towards that goal and being very strategic about how to build compute towards that goal, how to build a team towards that goal, and what's going there. We wouldn't have AI that we have today without OpenAI being there. And I think all of us who think OpenAI is a positive force in the world, should be extremely grateful for that. So daring high, having high ambition, and actually focusing your forces on innovative research is what I want to really take into that account. And just because times are different and place are different, I don't think a company like OpenAI is possible even today. It was possible in the day it started, but the landscape landscape has shifted a little bit. I am trying to take the best of the research culture of OpenAI and trying to add a little bit more of our own, the place where we are, which things move very quickly, so we need more sense of urgency these days. We are a bit more of a counterculture and underdog because we are betting against the existing paradigm. And we obviously are much smaller and have less resources. So we need to be much, much scrappier than companies of the past.
00:11:53 · Grace Gong, Jerry Tworek
[00:11:53] S1: I mean, you have $5.20 no. 532,000,000 for seed. [00:11:58] S2: That that feels very small compared to the budgets [00:12:01] S1: of some the labs. Where where do people spend the budget? And also, I I believe NVIDIA is your investor as well. Yes. So, like, does it just go straight back to... [00:12:12] S2: It goes straight back to NVIDIA. Wanna wanna buy the best GPUs on the market, and we wanna buy a lot of them. [00:12:18] S1: Okay. So just straight up GPUs? [00:12:21] S2: Yes. [00:12:21] S1: Spending money on anything else? [00:12:25] S2: We spend a little on the office, but not that much. [00:12:28] S1: Okay. And snacks. And snacks on that We have pretty [00:12:31] S2: weird and fancy snacks. [00:12:33] S1: Okay. Like what? [00:12:36] S2: Salty salmon skin. [00:12:38] S1: Salty salmon skin. Okay. It's it's it's popular in Asia. Yeah. Probably. Yeah. [00:12:44] S2: I haven't had that before, but someone... We had an agent that automated ordering snacks, and that that distribution was getting weirder and weirder all [00:12:51] S1: the It's a it's a very important task to hand it to the agents. [00:12:55] S2: But most importantly, it's not something you really want humans to be spending a lot of time on.
00:12:55 · Jerry Tworek, Grace Gong
[00:12:55] S2: But most importantly, it's not something you really want humans to be spending a lot of time on. [00:13:04] S1: What about, like, the business model? So, like, I feel like, you know, OpenAI and... I guess, like, there's two things. One is, like, one is, like, the strategy of the company, and then the other part is, like Yep. The business model side of things. I feel like nowadays, like... Oh god. So sorry. Apparently, whenever we're recording, people start making coffee. It's very important for people. [00:13:27] S2: A lot of people care about coffee. [00:13:30] S1: I guess, like, when you're thinking about the business model or, like, you know, the past, like the OpenAI Anthropic Solutions. So I guess OpenAI started with consumer driven product. I mean, from the news, it seems like it was not supposed to be as famous or as popular as it It wasn't flawed. But it became a very popular consumer product. And then on the other hand, Anthropic went to building a very strong work tool. And I'm just curious, from the business perspective, like, how do you think about positioning yourself, like, in the business arena? And then since you guys are... I guess, like, you guys are... I was, like, chatting with a lot of executives from, like, different AI companies. People were saying this is the last batch of foundational model getting funding. What's your opinion on that? Is there more AI labs gonna come around and why or why not?
00:14:29 · Jerry Tworek, Grace Gong
[00:14:29] S2: Yeah. I I do think we may be one of the last batch of companies getting founded mostly because of the runaway effects of AI and models being so good that it will be hard for for the startups to be able catch up and enter the ring. I do think that a lot of reasons why startups exist and can win is because larger companies are inefficient and larger companies are moving too slow and adapt in a place where a nimble player can in a rapidly changing landscape. What AI will do in the next few years is that the big companies will be able to move very quickly because they will not have to have all the political issues around them. They will they will just be able to move AI to direct resources. So I I do think that will I [00:15:23] S1: think we can keep going. So sorry. [00:15:26] S2: Yeah. I do. [00:15:27] S1: Whenever... Yeah. Like, this... Okay. So we're talking about, like, there... It needs a lot of resources for... Keep going. Sorry.
00:15:27 · Grace Gong, Jerry Tworek
[00:15:27] S1: Whenever... Yeah. Like, this... Okay. So we're talking about, like, there... It needs a lot of resources for... Keep going. Sorry. [00:15:39] S2: Yeah. So so the the story was, I think, the AI driven efficiency will likely make big companies be able to, like, compete much, much faster. And in some way, if there is a future without work and without labor, it's hard to imagine how starting up companies exactly will look like. There's probably some amount of risk taking that may take place. But I think it will be different. It's hard exactly to predict how the future will look like there. But yeah, what are largely focusing on for our models and what we are building is models that do work for you. Core Automation is not interested in building your friends, not your therapist. It's like the model that is meant to... You tell it what you want it to do and gets it done for you, generating value on the tasks that you care about and all the work you want to be done. And we don't even want to build the models that have that ability off the shelf that know everything you want. You teach them. You're like onboarding an employee. You take that model and show them, this is how my house looks like. This is how my computer looks like. This is how my data looks like. These are the things I want you to do. I will show you a few times, and then I expect you to be doing them for me. [00:16:53] S1: Would you say Core Automation is gonna become like an agent? That's like an agent replacement.
00:16:53 · Grace Gong, Jerry Tworek
[00:16:53] S1: Would you say Core Automation is gonna become like an agent? That's like an agent replacement. [00:16:58] S2: It is meant to be an agent, but it's... I think it will be a slightly different experience with an agent. I think it will be a bit more personal if the agent meaningfully adapts to you over time. [00:17:07] S1: Do you like my email that I'm sent by Instinct? No? Was it personal enough or no? [00:17:15] S2: I haven't paid attention. [00:17:17] S1: Okay. So I'm just curious, like, what is the difference between the current agent landscape of... Nowadays, everyone has five agents, whether it's RockBat or name your favorite agent. What's the core difference between them? And then Core Automation.