00:47:12 · Jordi Hays, John Coogan, Ben Liu, S2, Mark Gurman
[00:47:12] S0: Yeah. I don't know if you know him. [00:47:14] S1: But they bought they bought like a like a restaurant review [00:47:17] S6: Yeah. [00:47:17] S1: Like brand. And so they have a ton of advantages there. They have Google Voice. They've done service to make calls on your behalf already, like years and years ago with AI. What what is Zagat. Zagat? Is that how you pronounce it? [00:47:29] S2: Z g a t. [00:47:31] S1: Yeah. And so they they have so much infrastructure, but they're always a little bit slower on the product side than like an Instinct, which is just a couple people moving really fast. So... [00:47:39] S0: Yeah. The crazy thing is compare Instinct. Yeah. Instinct, if they're raising at 30,000,000,000 to where Cursor was when they were raising at 30, which like massive competition from the labs. Yep. And some questions around how they would how... Yeah. How they would handle that that competition basically competing with their suppliers. Yep. Right? In some ways. But I believe at the time, Cursor had like north of a billion dollars of revenue. They're [00:48:04] S1: worried about the margins. [00:48:05] S0: Right? Yeah. Their margins weren't great, but at least people were giving them like billions of dollars. Totally. [00:48:09] S1: Right? And that's not [00:48:10] S7: happening. [00:48:10] S0: And so with instinct, part of what's jarring is that you have the same level of competition and potentially even more. Right? Because it's like you have the major AI players. There's like... You have the major AI players, then you also have Zach saying...
00:48:10 · Jordi Hays, John Coogan
[00:48:10] S0: And so with instinct, part of what's jarring is that you have the same level of competition and potentially even more. Right? Because it's like you have the major AI players. There's like... You have the major AI players, then you also have Zach saying... [00:48:23] S1: With Cursor, it was like Cursor was the lead IDE, and then you had Windsurf coming from behind nipping at their heels. But you didn't really have a product that was a direct competitor from OpenAI or Anthropic or Google, really. Right? In, like, the... [00:48:37] S0: Yeah. And so the ToClock code and codex. [00:48:39] S1: But those were those were terminal agents. And and they did disrupt. [00:48:43] S0: I'm saying they're ultimately competing out over the same Totally. Totally. You know.
00:48:43 · Jordi Hays, John Coogan
[00:48:43] S0: I'm saying they're ultimately competing out over the same Totally. Totally. You know. [00:48:46] S1: But, like, in terms of, like, the actual product experience, like, you wanted to at least review some of the codes, still be in that hybrid Centaur model, it was really... Cursor was far and away number one. And then Windsurf was kind of nipping at the heels, but no... None of the big labs had direct competitor products. And then all of a sudden, it was like... But flipping it around, if you're looking at the Cursor example, you might say, okay. Yeah. They don't have the revenue, but they have the the consumer adoption. And look at what happened with Cursor. Self felt crazy at 10 or 20 or whatever, but got the acquisition done. And you're looking at Amazon and Apple and saying, well, I see the money. They... There's the money to buy this company at a valuation above where I'm investing at 30, and so it could happen if Apple or Amazon make a crazy move. [00:49:37] S0: Yeah. [00:49:37] S1: I don't know. Maybe Google too, but the price is getting high. Yeah. You wanna... How would that [00:49:43] S0: work from an antitrust standpoint? Like, all these companies... [00:49:46] S1: It should it should 100% be allowed. It's the most competitive industry right now. It's like not a knife fight for the personal agents. [00:49:52] S0: Yeah.
00:49:52 · Jordi Hays, John Coogan, Mark Gurman
[00:49:52] S0: Yeah. [00:49:53] S1: Like like, you're going up against the monopoly guy, Mark Zuckerberg. Like, you're like, oh, wait. You're like Amazon. You're you're acquiring instinct, to to take a shot at OpenAI Yeah. Anthropic and Meta. Like, go go to town with that, I would think. But Yeah. Again, I can never predict Yeah. Antitrust. So, like, you might be right that, like, they might just say, no. You're big. You can't make a big acquisition. [00:50:18] S7: Yeah. Period. [00:50:18] S1: Yeah. Like, it it just... It it might be framed differently. But as a as a consumer, as an analyst of the industry, I see them as, like, this is the most competitive tech category we've had [00:50:30] S0: in the industry.... Out an upstart doesn't actually change the competitive... [00:50:35] S1: Yes. At the same time, we didn't see Perplexity get acquired. And that was a similar one where where Apple and and Amazon, they didn't really have, like, a chatbot experience. And, of course, Anthropic launched Claude, that app, and then Google launched Gemini, which was, like, a direct competitor to ChatGPT, the classic LLM experience, the chat app. Apple and Amazon never picked up. Just a consumer home screen chat app, period. So they might not jump at this category either. I don't know. But if they did, if they... Like, if if Apple bought Perplexity, I think there's other reasons why they might not. But if they did a year ago or two years ago, it shouldn't have turned antitrust heads. But, again [00:51:17] S0: Yeah. [00:51:17] S1: The FTC is very unpredictable on these things. Anyway, let
00:51:17 · John Coogan, Jordi Hays, S2
[00:51:17] S1: The FTC is very unpredictable on these things. Anyway, let [00:51:20] S0: me try... And the largest Apple acquisition in history was Beats. Right? [00:51:24] S1: That's right. Yeah. I mean, just... It's not in their DNA. And so, [00:51:27] S0: yeah, it's not in their DNA. Be a crazy... [00:51:30] S1: Ternus might just be like, I'm [00:51:31] S0: wild man. But Ternus [00:51:31] S1: I'm a wild man. [00:51:33] S0: He could be. Let's ask... We'll ask the Gurmanator. [00:51:36] S1: Yeah, we will. [00:51:37] S0: But, yeah, I I think, like, the the the challenge with with perplexity and instinct is, like, once you get in the 10 plus billion dollar range, it becomes like... You... It takes like a founder led company to make a deal like that. Right? We've seen this with Zach. Yep. We've seen this with, Elon. Right? With Cursor. Yep. I agree. And and so, like, doing these, like, talent acquisitions at north of 10,000,000,000 Yep. You have to have exceptional levels of control and conviction [00:52:06] S1: No. That's [00:52:07] S0: great. And be able to be very bold. Yep. And I just don't see that Jassy or Ternus doing anything like that. [00:52:12] S1: No. I completely agree. Because the shareholders will be like, wait, even if you're paying in stock, you're deluding me and I don't like that. Whereas Elon will be like, I don't care. [00:52:19] S2: Zach will [00:52:19] S0: be like, I don't care. No. It it was an amazing play.
00:52:19 · Jordi Hays, John Coogan
[00:52:19] S0: be like, I don't care. No. It it was an amazing play. [00:52:23] S1: And, critically, like, Grok did not have an enterprise motion. They did not have developer adoption. Cursor gave them that. Grok has Grok bot. Meta has Muse. Like, they don't need Instinct. So, yeah, where where it goes. But then again, you know, maybe the market's so big that they just become a really big player in personal AI agents and they figure out how to make 5% on every transaction through whatever. They do some ads. They do some credit card stuff that we've discussed. They do some, you know, they they they prove Eric Seufert wrong. Agent Commerce does not turn out to be a mirage and then they start printing it. Yeah. But who knows? Or maybe [00:53:02] S0: people pay for But it's very possible that the... Yeah, the aqua hire horse has left the barn. [00:53:10] S1: Potentially. Potentially. Speaking of horses, should we get to monkeys? [00:53:15] S0: Think it's not. [00:53:16] S1: Well, we're gonna bring in Mark Gurman in just a second, but one more fact. So Joe Lonsdale, who was recently pictured, we said it was a private jet that he was calling into CNBC on. We got a correction. We have to issue a correction. It was actually a private jet or it was a private bus. He was on a bus with a private jet Zoom background. I think that's what was going on. Right? Because it looked like a private jet behind him, but... [00:53:41] S0: You're you're you're accusing him of LARPing?