TBPN

Elon’s go-to banker leads SpaceX IPO, SaaSination, Bejing’s robot Boom | Diet TBPN

31 min
Feb 11, 20262 months ago
Listen to Episode
Summary

This episode covers Michael Grimes returning to Morgan Stanley to lead a potential SpaceX IPO, the ongoing 'SaaSination' as AI threatens software companies, and China's aggressive push into humanoid robotics with 140+ companies and $26 billion in government funding.

Insights
  • Investment bankers are adapting by becoming deep users of the products they take public, with Michael Grimes playing Farmville for Facebook and driving for Uber
  • The SaaS apocalypse may accelerate when AI labs go public, allowing investors to rotate from threatened software companies to the disruptors
  • China's systematic approach to humanoid robotics mirrors their EV strategy - massive state funding, supply chain depth, and rapid commercialization
  • AI is creating a bifurcation in business models where regulated, liability-bearing, and physically-intensive businesses become more valuable
  • Forward-deployed engineering is emerging as a critical service category as AI capabilities outpace organizational adoption capacity
Trends
SaaS companies transitioning from seat-based to consumption/usage-based pricing models due to AI agentsPrivate equity firms avoiding software investments due to AI disruption risksHyperscalers issuing century bonds to fund massive AI infrastructure investmentsAI safety researchers leaving major labs after making significant financial returnsConsulting services rebranding as 'forward deployment' and 'deployed engineering'Chinese humanoid robotics industry reaching $600M run rate with real factory deploymentsInvestment banks requiring deep product expertise and user experience for tech IPOsAI commoditizing software development reducing barriers to competitive entry
Companies
SpaceX
Preparing for potential $40B IPO with Michael Grimes leading the banking effort
Morgan Stanley
Hired Michael Grimes as chairman of investment banking to lead major tech IPOs
XAI
Multiple co-founders leaving the company, with only three original founders remaining
Tesla
Referenced for Optimus humanoid robot at 5'11" height competing with Chinese robots
OpenAI
Expected to go public soon, part of the 'IPO Jubilee' with 8,000 employees
Anthropic
Safety researchers leaving, part of upcoming IPO wave with 4,000 employees
Monday.com
Stock dropped 21% after flagging AI agents as competitive threat in earnings
Apollo
Avoided software investments during high valuations, benefiting from SaaS decline
Salesforce
Example of large SaaS company with 87,000 employees potentially needing cuts
KPMG
Trying to pay auditors less due to AI automation of accounting work
Alphabet
Selling 100-year bonds to fund long-term investments, massively oversubscribed
Unitree
Chinese robotics company making G1 humanoid robot at 4'4" height
Facebook
Historical example of Michael Grimes playing Farmville to understand IPO thesis
Uber
Michael Grimes drove for the company before taking it public in 2018
Chipotle
Discussed quality degradation and employee discount hack using company hat
People
Michael Grimes
Elon Musk's banker returning to Morgan Stanley to lead SpaceX IPO
Elon Musk
Deciding to take SpaceX public after keeping it private, owns XAI
Kevin Kwok
Analyst who identified Grimes' move as signal for major tech IPO wave
Howard Hughes
Historical comparison to Elon Musk for starting Hughes Aircraft
Will Depue
Shared Chipotle employee discount hack using company hat purchased on eBay
Jack Clark
Commented on AI company departures with philosophical observations
Braden Peters
Streamer who had awkward encounter with fraternity leader at Arizona State
Quotes
"China is an ass kicker. Next level. To the best of our knowledge, we don't see any significant competitors outside of China."
Elon Musk
"I have a strange amount of conviction that they could cut up to 40% and not impact growth. In fact it would accelerate."
Buco Capital
"Your margin is my opportunity."
Jeff Bezos
"I used to get 90% of my calories from Chipotle at certain times in my life. The last time I pulled over to get Chipotle, it was like, this is going to be rough. The quality has degraded. I'd rather fast than eat Chipotle."
Jordy
"If AI commoditizes software, what's actually safe? Regulated, liability bearing businesses. Someone has to be on the hook."
Unknown
Full Transcript
5 Speakers
Speaker A

There's a whole bunch of interesting news. We're going to talk about Michael Grimes today. What Apollo's doing some new humanoids out of China? There was one piece in the Journal that I wanted to read for you. Streamer Braden Peters suffers awkward encounter with Arizona State fraternity leader Video of the interaction has drawn widespread attention Braden Peters, the online streamer known as Clavicular, found himself at the center of viral attention this week after a brief in person encounter with a fraternity leader at Arizona State University left him visibly diminished. This is news just today. Video of the exchange, which has circulated widely across social media platforms, shows Mr. Peters appearing noticeably uncomfortable as the unnamed fraternity member dominated the interaction through sheer physical presence and social confidence. Viewers noted that Mr. Peters, despite his considerable height, appeared to shrink during the exchange, struggling to maintain composure as the other man controlled the tone and pace of the conversation with apparent ease. The clip has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times now, with commenters largely agreeing that Mr. Peters was, in the parlance of his own audience, thoroughly outclassed. Neither Mr. Peters nor the fraternity leader could be reached for comment, but we'll be following that story, of course. Anyway, moving on. Michael Grimes, he's Elon Musk's banker and he might be the most important person in the SpaceX IPO that's probably going to happen this year. Kevin Kwok summed it up. He said Michael Grimes moving back to Morgan Stanley is the strongest signal so far that SpaceX, that the SpaceX OpenAI anthropic IPO Jubilee, it's a real thing. We're going to dig into it. A lot of people are actually very familiar with Michael Grimes. He took Facebook, Google, Tesla, uber, Spotify, Salesforce, LinkedIn, Workday, and literally hundreds of other tech companies public. He's been in the industry for decades.

0:00

Speaker B

He has a reputation because he becomes a customer or user.

1:47

Speaker A

Yes, that's a fun fact.

1:53

Speaker B

Of the different products, as during the kind of bidding process.

1:55

Speaker A

Yes, yes.

1:58

Speaker B

Talked about playing farmville. How many hours did he play farmville?

1:59

Speaker A

He didn't say how many hours he played. At some point we'll have to ask. He just said played hours of farmville in the lead up to the Facebook ipo. To understand the IPO thesis, the investment thesis for Facebook at that time, you had to believe that other businesses would be built on top of Facebook. So you had to understand farmville.

2:02

Speaker C

Yeah. So you would expect him to like, you know, spend hours talking to Annie, you know, for the SpaceX IPA.

2:18

Speaker A

For sure. For sure. Yeah, definitely. He also actually drove for Uber before taking uber public in 2018. And so he likes to dig in. He also has just a very, a very like perfectly aligned background for tech and tech banking. So he did the traditional investment banking thing. He was at Sahlin Brothers, then Bear Stearns, then Morgan Stanley, but before that he studied electrical engineering, computer science at Berkeley. And so he was like never really boxed in as this pure finance guy. And there's this interesting full circle moment where you know, many people could comp elon Musk to Howard Hughes who started Hughes Aircraft and sort of created like the aviation boom. And Michael Grimes actually interned at Hughes Aircraft in the Space and Communications group back in 1985. And what is SpaceX? It's like a space and communications company. And so you have this like very full circle moment, which I thought was cool. He's like truly a deals legend. He did a brief stint with the Commerce Department and people were wondering like, is he gonna be able to stay out of going back to deal land? Like there's so many good deals on the table right now. You got anthropic, you got OpenAI. Well, there's lots of SpaceX, there's deals in the government, but it's just a different environment. You know, there's so much red tape. And famously at Morgan Stanley, Michael Grimes was set up in a way that he at least reportedly was not really required to deal with all like the firm wide strategy. What's going on with the rest of Morgan Stanley? They were like, go hunt like you're a killer. Just go do whatever you need to do. Go fish. Go fish. They sort of cleared the agenda to just let him go do what he did best. And he obviously was extremely successful at that. He got pulled back to Morgan Stanley and he got a promotion. So now he's the chairman of investment banking, which is I guess higher than co chair of global technology banking, which sounded like the top, but there are levels and he's even higher now. And it makes sense if SpaceX, you know, they're on track to raise $40 billion in this IPO. You know, nothing's really confirmed yet, but that feels reasonable in the range. So what are the investment bankers going to have to do? They're going to have to talk to literally everyone with money. And the investment banking fees could be like $400 million. Right now people are thinking those will be split across the four lead banks, Morgan Stanley, bank of America, JP Morgan and Goldman. Either way, you gotta get ready for the roadshow of a century. It'll be interesting. What will Michael Grimes do to prove that he's ready to go to space? Will he go to space? Personally, I want to see some stunts. I want to see stunts pre roll.

2:24

Speaker B

Elon. I fell in love with Ani. You think that's we're starting a family?

4:51

Speaker A

Put Michael Grimes in the rocket.

4:55

Speaker B

Let's do it. Do it.

4:56

Speaker A

It's so much easier to underwrite the deal if you're like, I've been. I've been to space. It works.

4:57

Speaker C

It's nice.

5:01

Speaker A

I've driven for Uber.

5:02

Speaker B

I think everyone.

5:03

Speaker A

I played farmville. This is the best technology. Going to space is better than playing farmville or driving.

5:04

Speaker B

What if he says, put me in the mass driver?

5:09

Speaker A

And this was sort of a surprise to people. People thought, okay, Elon has run the AB test. He took Tesla public. He kept SpaceX private. He had a much better time with SpaceX doing, you know, secondary sales and fundraises very easily. He could do whatever he wanted, really. Like, much more control Tesla. He's getting sued by shareholders. All these different things, regulations, SEC stuff like, it's a headache, but the stock's doing really well. And at a certain point, maybe you cap out what's possible in the private market. So all of a sudden, Elon says, I'm going public. I'm merging everything together. I'm going now. I've made the decision. This week, Grimes put himself back in the middle of the action and in line to reap millions of dollars of fees. Morgan Stanley said Monday he was rejoining the bank as chairman of investment banking, a promotion from his previous role as head of global technology investment banking. SpaceX has long been considered a golden goose by IPO bankers. It skyrocketed to a 1.25.

5:12

Speaker B

Let's give it up. All the golden geese out there.

6:03

Speaker A

Golden geese, may they never be slayed. They must just continue laying eggs. Interesting. There's all this news about the XAI co founders leaving, but you're post acquisition. Of course the co founders leave, right? That's pretty normal.

6:05

Speaker B

Well, I think the reason that people care is because it was happening for quite a while now.

6:18

Speaker A

Do they need to just be near the frontier, or do they actually need to be doing research to advance the frontier? If they wind up, should you think about XAI more like a NEO lab that's trying to solve continual learning or some, you know, unsolved problem in AI research? Or should you think about them more like a hyperscaler, like an aws, or like a core weave or like a Lambda, like a NEO cloud that's just like capacity and more of an engineering task. And if they're able to build colossus and then build 10 more Colossus and then build a bunch of space data centers and they just have a lot of capacity. Like who knows, maybe they wind up working with anthropom.

6:23

Speaker B

I forget at what point last year we started talking about that possibility. But as the consumer products and the enterprise products have kind of fallen behind or failed to fully catch up, I don't know.

7:01

Speaker A

I'm seeing a breakout in Grok in the comedy category on Instagram reels. You can go check them out. There's some funny, funny interactions.

7:13

Speaker B

It is really wild. Yeah, you really have to find the different modes in the product, but finding the different characters going to the unhinged setting, it is about five times more unhinged than I would expect.

7:20

Speaker A

Totally, totally.

7:31

Speaker B

A product like this to be Talk trash about Elon.

7:32

Speaker A

It goes all over the place, honestly. Some of it is genuinely funny though, which is like high praise. It's a new benchmark for AI. It is sort of like doing it's a cheat code because no one else.

7:35

Speaker B

Part of humor can be truth seeking, right?

7:47

Speaker A

Truth seeking or just saying what no one else can say or be unexpected. You don't expect the computer to talk.

7:50

Speaker B

About it, but sometimes people can't say that there's certain topics you can't say the truth. The unhinged mode is certainly truth seeking.

7:54

Speaker A

Certainly unhinged as well. Will depew shared A little hack for everyone who's into Chipotle. We reposted a clip that is truly evergreen Jordy quote I used to get 90% of my calories from Chipotle at certain times in my life. It was something I would look forward to. But the last time I pulled over to get Chipotle, it was like, this is going to be rough. The quality has degraded. I'd rather fast than eat Chipotle. Taking shots at Chipotle?

8:01

Speaker B

Yeah, a couple, couple of the younger guys on the team like what's wrong with Chipotle? And I started shedding tears explaining how.

8:28

Speaker A

You back in my day, it was.

8:35

Speaker B

The when I was a boy, yeah, it was more fresh than the farmer's market.

8:37

Speaker A

I love, I love your But Will.

8:42

Speaker B

Has a good hack. He says. I bought a Chipotle hat on ebay once and I would walk to the Chipotle in Ann Arbor and wear it when I went. And they would just give me the employee discount every time. I didn't even ask. It was a $2 hat and I saved $7 on my $15 order every time.

8:43

Speaker A

This is thinking outside. He says. I used to be so into budgeting in Chipotle that I'd measure everything in Chipotle meals. Rent was four Chipotle meals a day. A nice hat was two Chipotle meals. I also groked it. And in case this is fraud, it was more than six years ago. So pass the statute of limitations. Can't get me. On second thought, I need to atone for my sins and repay chipotle the $21 I stole from them by purchasing $21 of their stock. I am sorry, Chipotle. Another resignation has hit the timeline. The co founder of XAI is out. You want to read through it?

8:56

Speaker B

Yeah. So he says, I resigned from XAI today. This company and the family we became will stay with me forever. I will deeply miss the people, the war rooms and all those battles we have fought together. It's time for my next chapter. It's an era with full possibilities. A small team armed with AIs can move mountains and redefine what's possible. Thank you to the entire X AI family. And Elon, thank you for believing in the mission and for the ride of a lifetime. Some of the executives at XAI were offered cash instead of staying around. And so it's possible he just said, cool, time to move on. This isn't looking good. And it's the original Xai co founders. There was 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. There's three remaining, Elon plus Manuel and Toby.

9:29

Speaker A

Jack Clark here. He said people leaving regular companies. Time for a change. Excited for my next chapter. People leaving AI companies. I have gazed into the endless night and there are shapes out there. We must be kind to one another. I am moving on to study philosophy.

10:15

Speaker C

Well, this was like in reference to. There was an anthropic researcher that just left and it was like this whole essay and then he ends it with this poem.

10:29

Speaker B

Yeah, yeah.

10:37

Speaker A

People get deep at these companies.

10:38

Speaker B

Head of Anthropic Safeguards Research just quit and said the world is in peril. And then he's moving to the UK to write poetry and, quote, become invisible. Other safety researchers and senior staff left over the last two weeks as well. Probably nothing. Yeah, there's multiple factors going on. You can't discount the fact that many of these people maybe made something in the range of $100 million in the last two years. And if you're AGI pilled enough, you believe that that will be, you know, many, many, many, many many, many many many many lifetimes worth of wealth. And so why not go to the UK and write poetry? There's obviously more dystopian sci fi vision where when this period of our lives gets turned into Hollywood blockbuster movies, this will be a moment where the safety researchers start peeling off and going all over the world to write poetry.

10:40

Speaker A

I just want one AI co founder researcher to leave and be like look, I got an allocation of an F80, I got a bus down coming good I'm Gucci I don't need I quit. I quit.

11:34

Speaker B

Moving on Apollo says it avoided the pain of peers by steering clear of software holdings.

11:51

Speaker A

Software? I never heard of it.

11:56

Speaker B

What's that?

11:57

Speaker A

I don't touch it. You know, people are saying the sass apocalypse or Sass magedon, but sassination was right there and I don't know why we're not just calling it the assassination isn't that bad.

11:58

Speaker C

I think assassination would be like SAS is assassinating something else.

12:10

Speaker A

Okay, but it's like your fund got assassinated assassin.

12:14

Speaker C

Like I would think it got killed by sas.

12:19

Speaker A

Yeah, I guess you're right.

12:21

Speaker B

Apollo says fees rise as company reports record quarter for deployment of capital the.

12:22

Speaker A

Group'S decision to avoid heavily investing in software companies during an era of strong of soaring valuations will bolster its growth as investors move their money to firms that avoided a sector now threatened by AI. Private capital groups would see a dispersion of returns depending on their exposure to software companies following growing fears of AI disrupting many IT businesses that triggered a recent sell off. Apollo would benefit after largely avoiding such deals within its private equity portfolio and curtailing leading to the industry over the past decade helping to bolster its performance of versus many rivals, he said during an earnings call. I expect that we will be along with a handful of other managers, prettier than we have been historically. They cut its exposure to software loans as IT grew increasingly bearish about the sector's prospects in the wake of rapid inroads made by AI. The decision appears to have been validated by a recent sell off in software stocks and the loans of many large IT companies amid rising AI fears.

12:27

Speaker B

Monday.com had earnings and the stock went down 21% after they flagged AI agents as a competitive threat on their earnings.

13:25

Speaker A

Call, issued weak guidance as IT grapples with rising concerns that artificial intelligence is disrupting software business models. I imagine it's seat based right now, Monday.com and they have to transition to some sort of consumption base, some sort of usage base, something outcomes based, I.

13:35

Speaker B

Suppose yeah, you'd think at least some would say like we actually love the seat based model. In the era of agents, every agent will require a seat. You know, again, you might have 100 employees, but then a bunch more agents. Maybe you can't charge nearly as much on a per seat basis, but we'll see how this nets out.

13:51

Speaker A

Yeah, it seems pretty easy just to be like you have one agent that goes into the software and does everything that it needs to and then brings it out to your organization. It's like I need to use the tool.

14:09

Speaker B

There's one agent whose sole job is to pull.

14:19

Speaker A

Yeah, everyone gets a prompt box and then that agent has one seat and uses the tool and brings you back the results.

14:22

Speaker B

Buco Capital is out for blood. He's you worried about stock based comp me? These businesses only need half their employees.

14:28

Speaker A

Oh, so he's bullish. I believe he thinks that the SaaS apocalypse is overstated. Headcounts for assorted company Salesforce is at 87,000, ServiceNow 32,000, Workdays at 23,000, Zooms at 12,000, DocuSign Famously Large at 8,000, OpenAI's at 7, Octa's at 7,000, UiPaths at 5, Sprinklers at 4 and Anthropics at 4,000. The flip side of this is that the company's do need employees to go deploy AI.

14:36

Speaker B

Correct to BuCo. I have a strange amount of conviction that they could cut up to 40% and not impact growth. Buca says in fact it would accelerate.

15:03

Speaker A

Yeah, KPMG is trying to force its auditor to accept less money since accounting work can be significantly automated by AI. But KPMG makes money from accounting, so this looks like a company accidentally announcing to the world that its business model is under attack. Matt says auditing can basically be done by AI. So why should we pay for it? It's not a crazy thing for most companies to think or to say to their auditors. But it's a crazy thing for an auditing firm to say to its auditor. That is. That is wild. KPMG should be paying Grant Thornton more. In these crazy AI times, everyone needs to pay more for trusted human auditing. We'll go first. I guess that's what Grant Thornton said.

15:09

Speaker B

It seems like they'll have to switch to value based pricing too, like everyone else. And the value, even if it can be one shotted with a prompt by some superintelligence, is non zero. It is very valuable to have an external party verifying your work and the numbers that you're reporting. So the other dynamic is you have like basically legacy. You know, the big brands in the space, they adopt maybe a more Coke and Pepsi model where like Coke and Pepsi both could. You've talked about this getting an insane price war, cut down, compete on price so aggressively that there's just no money to be made anymore. But they have sort of like somewhat of an equilibrium where it's not really in any group's interest to compete prices to zero.

15:47

Speaker A

Coke and Pepsi, it's a duopoly, not an oligopoly. So there's no third player that can be, oh, we're 5% of the market, there's so much to gain. Let's go be the bull in the china shop. Just doesn't happen. And then also there's lock in around the brand and then there's also lock in around the distribution because Coke and Pepsi have trucks that go to every, every store where it needs to be distributed. Auditing might not be the same structure.

16:29

Speaker B

Let's pull up this clip of Gerstner on cnbc.

16:55

Speaker D

To the degree it is, as we've discussed on numerous occasions, is it overdone at times you've said yes. The last time we were together, you said something like 90% of the companies, the software companies that were down the way they are deserve to be. Those, I think were your, your exact words words. Where are we?

17:00

Speaker E

So when you and I were together on January 6, I said, you have to understand the difference between earnings and revenue and stock price. Okay. And what's happened in software is hard for people to get their head around because the stocks have been cut in half. But that's not what it's got. The market is looking into the future and saying in the past three years ago, I could, I could buy 35 years worth of Salesforce's free free cash flow into the Future, give them 35 times free cash flow. Because I had that level of predictability, it was like a government bond. It was a sure thing. You definitely were going to get those. And then we have. I do what I has done over the course of the last several months and people just said something very rational. I can't see as far into the future. So I'm going to pay less for the terminal value. I'm going to pay less for those future free cash flows. So the only way that reverses, Scott, is those companies have to accelerate their core revenues and show that they are beneficiaries of AI.

17:18

Speaker B

I think the real SaaS apocalypse might not start until you have some of the labs public and people can actually really rotate out of software fully and say I don't want to own this thing, that I don't fully understand how AI is going to impact it. When I could own the disruptor, the anthropics, the OpenAI's.

18:13

Speaker A

Yeah, yeah. People were asking like where, where will the 50 billion come from? Where will the 100 billion of capital come from? And we see this in China too, where one company will go public and you actually see a drop in the previous Baidu's or whoever the legacy company is because there just isn't that much liquidity in the market. So it needs to come from somewhere.

18:30

Speaker B

Yeah, I just don't know how the narrative around SaaS flips positive because the models are not getting worse. Right? They only get, they only get better.

18:48

Speaker A

Yeah.

18:57

Speaker B

We actually need to see some type of plot like SAS would benefit from a model plateau. Right. It's like, hey, there's sort of a set of capabilities. SaaS companies can deploy this. But if the models just keep getting better and better and better and agents get better and better, better. Where's the bottom for SaaS other than some type of like minimal free cash flow multiple?

18:57

Speaker A

Well, it's like refocusing on a narrative that has durability even in a world where software R and D is essentially free.

19:19

Speaker B

I guess what I'm saying is like if you see a business actually really accelerating growth, accelerating, then it's possible to get excited about that one company. But it's hard to get excited at any point about SaaS broadly because the models are just going to keep improving and that just seems to be more and more of a threat.

19:29

Speaker A

Yes, but within SaaS there will be companies that reveal to the market and correctly message that they are in fact like AGI resistant because of ad networks, because of lock in effects, because of regulatory moats. There will be a number of categories that emerge. Like when we talk about the payment, the payment rails, those feel like yes, you could maybe vibe code it, but are you going to vibe code your bank charter and all these other things that you need to do and get all the customers like the distribution, the lock in. So I think within SaaS there will be things that are pretty easy to just rip out and replace with something directly like a model. And there will be other companies that are old in our legacy, but you're just like, oh yeah, that's actually, that can't be assaulted by a model. It's impenetrable because it's actually a different thing. And so those companies will wind up sort of rebounding, I would imagine.

19:45

Speaker B

This is one of the most underrated observations in tech right now. If AI commoditizes software, what's actually safe, regulated, liability bearing businesses? Someone has to be on the hook. Oh sure, anything touching the physical world, hardware, manufacturing, energy, that's the kind of Tesla.

20:40

Speaker A

Yeah, These are the subcategories of things that are sort of SaaS businesses now but will reveal themselves as being not.

20:56

Speaker B

Actually that asset light, proprietary data sets. AI makes your data more valuable, not less. Marketplaces and businesses with network effects, operationally intense businesses, the bad businesses become the best ones. And cybersecurity and physical security, more AI equals more attacks surface.

21:04

Speaker A

You know, it's the famous Bezos quote. Your margin is my opportunity. And so small company comes in, sees high SaaS margins, can actually go attack them. Now instead of needing to raise a billion dollars and do five years of R&D, they can raise 10 million and do one year of R and D and have a competitor that's ready to go head to head on a battle card against an entrenched like public company SaaS Company. And maybe they're only earning 30% margins instead of 60% margins, but they're happy with that because hey, it's a new business and they started it from nothing. And if they make $10 million they get to take a lot of that home and stuff.

21:21

Speaker B

And so she says the greatest rebrand in enterprise software history is calling consulting, revenue forward deployment, deployed engineering. I do wonder if a year or so from now we'll see companies that, you know these companies that went from 1 to 10 or 1 to 20 million in revenue really quickly. It just turns out like hey, like they were just kind of like they were doing about $10 million work of worth of engineering work and it wasn't actually again a lot of them are setting it up. We're like hey, we're going to come and build a bunch of software for you and then we're going to charge on an ongoing basis or based on usage. But, but still, I'm sure there's some examples where it really is just like effectively consulting or you're running like a software development in agencies.

21:56

Speaker A

Yeah, it's funny thinking about OpenAI. I think they're at 8,000 employees and wasn't the report that they're hiring something like 800 for deployed engineers? So you're going to have a 10% of an AI lab that's focused on AI research. Curing cancer is going to be like four deployed engineers and you have to imagine that was basically zero, you know, five years ago. I think the forward deployed engineering is going to be important. Important like the AI diffusion question. It's a lot of sticky systems, a lot of people that don't have time. The fact that we see these, these, these like spikes in attention during long weekends and holidays. It's like that's when people have time to go do the new project and stop doing the same system again and again and again. And a forward deployed engineer comes into your organization and just is able to do that hard work that you don't have the slack capacity for.

22:35

Speaker B

China is going all in to beat the US on humanoid robots. Beijing is showering companies with support, but some fear a bubble.

23:25

Speaker A

And they're getting taller. Chinese humanoid robots are getting taller very, very quickly. The Unitree G1 is the robot that most people think of when they think of Chinese humanoid Robot. The Unitree G1 has 23 joints and it's 4ft 4 inches tall. That's something you can drop kick across the the room. It's probably pretty safe. But they're getting taller. The Unix AI Panther has 34 joints and he's 5 foot 3. The Ubtech Walker S2 it has 52 joints and it's 59. We're getting, we're getting short king status now then, now they're now the a the AI squared robotics alphabot2511.

23:32

Speaker B

Wait, that could be some regulation that I could get behind.

24:13

Speaker A

Yes.

24:15

Speaker B

All humanoids should be capped at a certain height.

24:16

Speaker A

Yeah.

24:19

Speaker B

So that if, if, if any, any people out there are a little bit on the shorter side, they get to feel tall.

24:19

Speaker A

Yeah.

24:25

Speaker B

And then, but in general a lot of the average person should mog the robot.

24:26

Speaker A

Yes, yes.

24:30

Speaker C

On door Keshe Elon said The Optimus is 511 as well.

24:31

Speaker A

511.

24:33

Speaker B

Yeah.

24:34

Speaker A

That's a very reasonable height. China's going all in to beat the United States on humanoid robots. Of course they have a ton of industrial advantages. So Elon Musk has been telling investors for months that Tesla's optimist humanoid robot will revolutionize the world and create a new mega industry. But most of it could belong to China. He has warned China is an ass kicker. Next level. Musk said in January, to the best of our knowledge, we don't see any significant competitors outside of China. China is moving quickly.

24:34

Speaker B

Shots fired at figure and 1x.

25:02

Speaker A

But humanoid robotics companies are sprouting up from Shenzhen to Suzhou. There's 140 different companies. They Got a market map over there. We have five and they have 140. They're tapping a vast ecosystem of parts suppliers and engineering talent. They're starting to produce humanoid robots at.

25:04

Speaker B

Scale and actively introduce humanoid running a bit right now. That's how you run.

25:20

Speaker A

They're actively introducing them into real life scenarios in factories, hotels and offices.

25:26

Speaker B

John?

25:31

Speaker A

Yes, Grok.

25:31

Speaker B

Unhinged voice mode in an Optimus.

25:33

Speaker A

Very intimidating.

25:36

Speaker B

Hanging out around the office, just running business.

25:37

Speaker A

It would actually be hilarious.

25:39

Speaker B

It would actually be hilarious.

25:40

Speaker A

Get ready. I mean, you're going to be able to do that in like two years. Is that like Skin Over a Humanoid? Not a fan of that. Since late 2024, Beijing, Shenzhen and other cities have established investment funds totaling more than 26 billion. That's right. That's 1,000 times as much as France is investing. The moves closely track the way in which China built up other industries, such as electric vehicles, which benefited from incentives from buyers to help stimulate demand. Now China has many of the world's most notable EV makers, including brands that are eating up the market shares of General Motors, Volkswagen and other.

25:42

Speaker B

Seeing the people doing that, I'm outside in the byd.

26:15

Speaker A

Oh, yes. Is that a Drake line? China is once again mobilizing state support, supply chain depth and rapid commercialization to build a new strategic sector. Success will depend on who can best solve the myriad technical problems associated with humanoid robots. Skeptics say humanoid robots are a bubble and may never find a true use case. What? It's like the most obvious use case. They're already doing it.

26:20

Speaker C

Yeah, like anything a human can do. I can't think of any good use case.

26:45

Speaker A

Who said this?

26:48

Speaker B

Horse says cars may be a bubble.

26:49

Speaker A

Bad news. Chinese makers of humanoid robots, which include human like machines with wheels as well as those with legs, announced orders worth more than 300 million in the second half of 2025. So the Chinese humanoid robotics industry is at a $600 million run rate. It's not bad. Like, that's pretty significant. That's not, that's more than just like demos.

26:53

Speaker B

It's hard to, like, you know, take every Elon projection at full face value. But he's talking about being able to make up to a million humanoids in the, in the X and S facilities in Fremont.

27:15

Speaker A

Yeah, the run rate right now is $600 million. Morgan Stanley is predicting up to 100,000 humanoids shipped in 2026. If there's not significant increases in price for these, that would be $6,000 per humanoid. It must be higher based on this Morgan stanley prediction of 100,000 humanoids shipped in 2026, you would expect revenue for the industry to be in the billions for sure. Because I have to imagine that the average selling price of a humanoid is like more like 20,000. It's more like a car. The firm's general purpose humanoid called Alphabot is currently used in factories including LCD television.

27:25

Speaker B

This implies there's a firm called Sigma. Bottom Sigma, somewhat antisocial, doesn't actually like.

28:00

Speaker A

That humans and looks out when a rainy day.

28:08

Speaker B

It's just plotting, scheming.

28:11

Speaker A

Here's another wild story. Alphabet is selling 100 year debt. You can buy a bond from old Google. Sundar's paying you in 2126. You'll be getting a payment from Sundar. They did a big bond sale. They're gearing up to sell bonds that won't come due for a century. You don't get your money back for a full century.

28:13

Speaker B

Someone who is Google $1,000.

28:31

Speaker A

They're going to pay you a little dollar every once in a while and then you get $4,000 back in 2126.

28:33

Speaker B

Sorry, I don't know if this is fake news, but somebody was saying that out of the Dow of 30 in like 1930, like none of those companies are publicly listed anymore.

28:39

Speaker A

Thinking in centuries potentially underrated. You know, for a long time if you were worried about the AI bubble, the easy counter was, hey, it's just all this build out stuff. It's just being funded with cash flow from these super profitable companies that have been around for decades. Worst case, they take a bath on some cash flow. It's like what happened with Meta and Reality Labs. Mark Zuckerberg drew down a ton of the free cash flow from Meta's incredible advertising business, launched some VR headsets, didn't really get crazy traction went back to printing free cash flow. Right. It was no problem. Well, now the hyperscalers as a class are all going all in on AI and spending all of their free cash flow on AI. And that's where people start to get a little bit more worried. I'm sure we will be hearing more about the potential fears of an AI bubble. People are broadly very excited about this. Like I believe that this, this $25 billion debt offering was massively oversubscribed. People are excited about, you know, buying these Alphabet bonds. It's such a robust business. Been around for a very long time. Yes.

28:49

Speaker B

This is crazy. There's a ATM in China that melts your gold.

29:51

Speaker A

Wow.

29:57

Speaker B

Cash at 1200 degrees Celsius and transfers money straight into your account.

29:57

Speaker A

I mean, I've seen those ATMs where you put a bunch of change. Have you ever done one of those? Have you ever saved up?

30:01

Speaker B

Oh, I used to do that when I was a kid.

30:06

Speaker A

Yeah.

30:08

Speaker B

Piggy bank.

30:08

Speaker A

You put a coin in the bank?

30:09

Speaker B

Piggy banks really fell off, I think.

30:10

Speaker A

I mean, the death of the penny does not bode well for the piggy bank maxers of the world. Although the real alpha was not using those ATMs because they take a cut of the counting. So.

30:12

Speaker B

Yeah, they're getting piggy banks.

30:23

Speaker A

They are.

30:25

Speaker B

Yeah. So you get preying on young pig.

30:25

Speaker A

Yeah, you get the.

30:27