Sources with Alex Heath
00:06:58 · Alex Heath, Tony Zhao, Ellis Hamburger
[00:06:58] S2: It's mostly iPhone. I mean, you've got people from all over the world. Right? So there are actually a decent Android content... Contingency. You could do so many good slideshows, like the dignitaries slipping on ice, as they walk down the promenade. Here, the horrible taglines on the on the houses. I mean, they take this little ski town and, like, the companies build these huge facades on the front of them for one week only that become... It's kind of... I mean, it's like CS a little bit, but, the only store... Original store that is still intact and not... Has not been taken over is Rolex. And that's that's when you know, like, the clientele is a bunch of billionaires. I put this in the newsletter, but it is the only place in the world where you're in the line for the bathroom and it's like a tech billionaire founder and a head of state and, you know, Matt Damon. And that that is kind of like this place in a nutshell. I mean, at a party tonight, I literally watched like the co founder of a very famous payment startup have to go like stand in a alt like, wait line because he didn't have the QR code to get in. The dude's worth, like, $9,000,000,000. It's just, like, it's it's absurd, man. This this place is absurd. [00:08:10] S0: Fucking [00:08:11] S1: love to hear that. Everyone should wait in a line once in a while.
00:08:11 · Ellis Hamburger, Alex Heath, S3
[00:08:11] S1: love to hear that. Everyone should wait in a line once in a while. [00:08:16] S2: But every... I mean, I will say, like, topic wise, everything here is AI. And... But it's like AI, it's a bunch of people talking about AI who don't actually know how AI works. So there's a people who do, you know, like Dario from Anthropic here. I was watching him in a couple talks today, like Demis who... From Google who I interviewed for Sources, some of the OpenAI people, like, they're like gods. Right? Like, are just all these hanger ons and people just waiting... Just like, tell me about, you know, the impact on the economy. And it's like, none of them actually know the impact on the economy. Right? But they're here to talk about that. And I don't know. It's just a sign of I think how much money and power is intact these days. [00:08:57] S1: Is there a drug of choice at Davos or just trade... Trading, GPU credits? [00:09:02] S2: I'm sure there is. I haven't run into it yet. I'm probably not at the right parties. For me, it's Tylenol and and vitamin zinc. But, there are stories, of course. I'm sure that's happening. I I did have... I had a good bourbon tasting tonight. There's lots of good wine, but, I don't I don't know. I mean, the Swiss are... They don't seem like a druggy culture. I mean, maybe I'm wrong, but I don't I don't... I haven't really sussed it out enough to know. [00:09:30] S1: Hard to be precise when you're lagging behind. [00:09:38] S3: This episode is brought to you
00:09:38 · S3, S4, S5, Ellis Hamburger
[00:09:38] S3: This episode is brought to you [00:09:40] S4: by Accenture. When your advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows. Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales, using automation, analytics, and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business. The result? Less time spent on operations, more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most. Learn more at accenture.com slash Spotify. [00:10:09] S5: This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. They can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50 page restoration block or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini in Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses, setup required, compatibility, and availability varies 18 plus. [00:10:39] S1: Well, back here in The States, we've had some interesting news, some of which I've read on your newsletter. Feel like the one that was most interesting to me was the one that I knew the least about, which was Thinking Machines seemingly quasi imploding before it even launches. Can you tell me some more of that?
00:10:58 · Alex Heath
[00:10:58] S2: Yeah. This is Mira Murati. So she was the CCO of OpenAI. She was the CO for, like, two days, when Sam Altman was fired a couple years ago. She started this new NeoLab, is doing, you know, foundational research in AI and has been kind of just kind of puttering around. I mean, they released something, but it was an academic thing. And they've hired really good engineers. They've raised a ton of money. I think the largest seed round in tech history, like, billion dollars. And, basically, there was this implosion where two of the cofounders left, around six employees have left out of, like, a team of 40 to 50. And when AI researchers are, you know, trading like NBA athletes, like, I guess that matters a lot more than it used to. So people were super interested in this. And I think it's because a lot of people also look at companies like this that are pre product, pre revenue, but are like a talent play in AI and, like, what are you actually gonna do? And if your company is your talent and your talent leaves, what is left? Right? And so, I don't know, man. I think it just says, like, how fragile all this is and there's so few people at the frontier and, like, you know, they all boomeranged back to OpenAI. The people who left, they all came from OpenAI. They just went back. And now this really buzzy AI lab is, like, thrown into into disarray. So, I don't really know what happens next but, I do... I I don't think there's gonna be as many, foundational kind of frontier AI labs that are doing well, in the future. I just think there's gonna be consolidation. It's it's too expensive and there's too much attention on it and, drama, you know. There was like drama about like, there was a relationship that wasn't disclosed or something and I'm like, hello?
00:12:46 · Ellis Hamburger, Alex Heath
[00:12:46] S1: Always is. [00:12:47] S2: Come... But come on, like, every AI researcher in San Francisco was in, like, a polycule. Like, this... Like, arguing that that's the reason you would let go of someone. I mean, I remember, like, one of the OpenAI cofounders, like, got married in the office. Like, this is just I I don't know. There's just a lot of, drama and, like, dirt being slung around in the press on what happened. And I I I think it's just, there's just so much money at stake. [00:13:13] S1: Are you talking about yourself? Dirt being slung around in the press? [00:13:17] S2: I don't think I contributed any of the, salacious details, I will say. I said people were leaving, which is true. But then some others reported like, oh, it was about a relationship or there was misconduct, but wouldn't say what the misconduct was. Very clearly coming from, you know, The Thinking Machines camp. I don't know. When you've been doing this as long as I have, you can very clearly see where narratives are coming from. And Murati's camp was very, like, I think vehemently trying to, push back on the fact that her company was imploding by, like, saying, like, oh, there was a relationship that happened months ago and we're just now, like, doing something about. And it's like, okay, like news at eleven, like people in AI labs are in relationships with each other. I don't know. Just didn't seem that big of a deal to me. [00:14:05] S1: Yeah. It's interesting given that they haven't really talked about much about what they're building yet. Right? I mean, I
00:14:05 · Ellis Hamburger, Alex Heath, Tony Zhao
[00:14:05] S1: Yeah. It's interesting given that they haven't really talked about much about what they're building yet. Right? I mean, I [00:14:11] S2: feel like this is one of I don't think they [00:14:12] S0: know what they're building. [00:14:13] S1: Right. And this is like one of the refreshing things I feel like about having Tony on the pod who we're gonna cut to in a minute here, is that... I mean, he's like humble about it. And as you'll hear, you know, I've like known him for a couple years, but like I first Working with met Yeah. And when I first started working with him, he was being super humble about having this, apparently this goaded research paper that a lot of people were ripping off and that they really were on the frontier. And he isn't super loud and proud about it, but it's like, wow, someone actually with academic background and a technical innovation here. And now a couple years later, they have an impressive product and brand that just kind of feels like the full story. And that's at a moment where it feels like a lot of companies either have some very fuzzy technical idea or they don't have a technical innovation at all. And it's just a pure, you know, vertical play or an audience play or some type of rapper play. And, yeah, it seems unusual these days.