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EpisodeĀ 11-6-2025
An equity portion for some federal backstop for chip investing. Exactly. And I think we're seeing that. I think the US government in particular has been incredibly forward leaning, has really understood that AI is almost a national strategic asset and that we really need to be thoughtful when we think about competition with, for example, China. Are we doing all the right things to grow our AI ecosystem? We're in a global erotica race. Are you talking to the White House about how to further formalize that kind of backstop? We are. We're always being brought in by the White House to give our point of view as an expert on what's happening in the sector, for sure. Should we, you know, is there something standing, any announcements? No. I love you, Sarah, but nothing to announce. Nothing that's going on right now. If you wanted to, we're here to listen. Yeah. Wild. She wound up clarifying her comments on LinkedIn. Elsewhere the same interview she did say the market is not exuberant enough. Yeah. In the same interview. Yeah. And she also said that they're not working towards an IPO yet. There were a whole bunch of scoops that came out of this particular event. Ben just texted tbpn, the Backstop programming Network. The Backstop programming network. So on LinkedIn, Sarah Fryer said she wasn't asking for a backstop for OpenAI's investments. She was just making the point that American strength in technology will come from building real industrial capacity, which requires the private sector and government playing their part. Before we move on, let me tell you about ramp.com, time is money, say, both easy to use corporate cars, bill payments and accounting and a whole lot more. So obviously OpenAI is so dominant in the zeitgeist that you know every comment, every sentence by uttered by an OpenAI executive will be analyzed to death. It's one of my favorite things to do. So that's exactly what we're going to do on this.
Right, yeah. And I would include those in the backstop. Like if Google overinvest or if Google, you know, is, is doing a training run on a variety of NIO clouds and they get over leveraged and there's you know, like the buck might not stop with one like, like there's a world where there's an overbuild and the people that get caught is some sort of like real estate investment trust or some sort of, you know, aggregator of private credit or some sort of senior debtor on some data center project. And that, yeah, it doesn't really affect the big clouds, but I don't see, I actually don't see a problem with the government behaving like it always has. I don't have a problem with that. I'm fine with a backstop and I wouldn't change anything about way the government works. And I'm serious about that. I'm not joking because I think that, I think that the alternative is actually worse. I think the alternative, if you go back to 2008 and you say okay, let's not bail out the banks, I think that you just extend the recession. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, but if in 2005, yeah, the banks were saying, and various players were saying, we're going to do a bunch of super risky lending that we're not sure is going to pencil out. And we just want to know that if, if things get really bad, you'll be there to bail us out, but we're going to make a ton of money in the process. Yes, there is. How would you feel about that? There is the problem of it. So my conclusion to my post today was America has a playbook for backstops. I don't think Sarah Fryer or anyone at OpenAI is asking to rewrite the playbook. But there's something that feels very moral hazardy about the CFO of the most important company at the center of a massive economic wave. Sort of telling everyone how the magic trick works. Why people are latching onto this I think is not so much the idea that if there's an economic boom and bust cycle and the government steps in at some point, that's not that big of a problem. But it is a problem. If you say I'm openly acknowledging the way the system works and I'm going to push it to the limit, that's a little bit rough. What do you think, Tyler? Yeah, I was just going to say the AB test of the.
Compute constrained. We are absolutely using chips that have like a 100 equivalents that have been around like maybe six, seven years at this point in time. If that's the case, financing chips gets a lot easier. If the timeline on the chip stays short, that gets harder. And so this is where we're looking for an ecosystem of banks, private equity, maybe even governmental. The ways governments can come to bear. Meaning like a federal subsidy or something. Meaning like just first of all, the backstop, the guarantee that allows the financing. It'S like a ton of bricks. That can really drop the cost of the financing, but also increase the loan to value. So the amount of debt that you can take on top of an equity portion for some federal backstop for chip investing. Exactly. And I think we're seeing that. I think the US government in particular has been incredibly forward leaning, has really understood that AI is almost a national strategic asset and that we really need to be thoughtful when we think about competition with, for example, China. Are we doing all the right things to grow our AI ecosystem? We're in a global erotica race. Are you talking to the White House about how to further formalize that kind of backstop? We're always being brought in by the White House to give our point of view as an expert on what's happening in the sector for. For sure. Should we, you know, is there something funny? Any announcements? No. I love you, Sarah, but nothing to announce. Nothing that's going on right now. If you wanted to, we're here to listen. Yeah, Wild. She wound up clarifying on LinkedIn. Elsewhere, the same interview, she did say the market is not exuberant enough. Yeah. In the same interview. Yes. And she also said that they're not working towards an IPO yet. There were a whole bunch of scoops that came out of this particular event. Ben just texted tvpn, the backstop programming network. The Backstop programming network. So on LinkedIn, Sarah Fryer said she wasn't asking for a backstop for OpenAI's investments. She was just making the point that American strength in technology will come from building real industrial capacity, which requires the private sector and government playing their part. Before we move on, let me tell you about ramp.com, time is money saved. Both easy to use, corporate cars, bill payments and accounting, and a whole lot more. So obviously OpenAI is so dominant in the zeitgeist that every comment, every sentence uttered by an OpenAI executive will be analyzed to death. It's one of my favorite things to do. So that's exactly what we're going to do on this show. We're also going to be restreaming it. One livestream 30 plus destinations multi stream. Reach your audience wherever they are. So the big question here is should a federal backstop exist for large scale industrial projects, like when there's a lot of money floating around in the economy, should the government be ready to step in if things don't line up, if things don't pencil out? And I would argue that one already exists. And that's what Sarah was referring to. And so Sam Altman actually touched on a similar concept in his conversation with Tyler Cowan that was recorded, I think a few days ago, but also went live yesterday, which is just sort of crazy timing. But basically Tyler is talking about nuclear energy projects and how the government interfaces with them. And then Sam gives an answer that I think is a little bit more illuminating in this whole backstop of the AI buildout. So I'd love to play the clip of Sam Altman, not this year, talking to Tyler Cowen. Here's a very difficult question. As you know, both you and I were fans of nuclear power, but we also know the insurance for nuclear power plants is provided by the government. The plants might be quite safe, but people worry. They're nervous nellies. There's a lot of parties involved. So the federal government does the insurance. Do you worry that the future holds the same for AI companies where the feds are your insurer? And how do you plan for that? Again, even if AI is pretty safe, as with nuclear power, people are nervous nellies. This is fascinating because it's how will you insure everything? It's not necessarily a question about the.
Experience it is to be a shareholder. But what have been your kind of inspirations that have guided your guys strategy and who else do you admire in the market? Yeah, I mean that's such a. I love talking about this because, yeah, I mean our IR team, Chris Cagle, who leads IR from us, has been getting a lot of calls. I think he's become a little bit of a luminary in the how to engage retail shareholders using traditionally kind of like boring forums like earnings. And we've been on a journey ourselves. I remember watching our earnings call a year ago and you know, like many people I go on YouTube and I see, let's see who's talking about our earnings. And there were actually groups of influencers that watch our earnings live and kind of talk about it. And I sat through the experience and they were looking at for a long time just a slide deck with our logo in there. It wasn't even the new brand of our logo, it was the old one. And then it's just like, you know, we were on a Polycom, the analysts were on the call, nobody knew whose turn it was to talk. It was a bad experience. And we started just by wanting to clean that up. So we did our first video earnings call three quarters ago. And every quarter we've been thinking about how can we do a little bit more. And if you view it from the perspective of a retail shareholder, it can't just be we're reading scripts of information. It has to be engaging. And so it's video. It's getting more stakeholders that can ask good questions live on video if possible, asking those questions in real time. And you guys have figured it out in your forum. I think that what earnings is, is a community event and you should think about it as such. And I think the best CEOs, the best companies who really care about engaging retail have to move from thinking about it as a chore to actually one more event where you can get your brand and what you stand for out to as many of your stakeholders and community members as possible. We were thinking about it like thinking about it like a product. Like if you think about like the earnings call is like a product launch where.
But that's the part that people don't necessarily see because they're familiar with you and the company and the product. But you are taking market share every single quarter. Probably something like that. And we're still very small actually, in the grand scheme of things. Like, we have a third of a trillion of assets on the platform, which sounds like a big number, but there's going to be 120/trillion in assets handed down from older generations to younger over the next few decades. How many? Wealth transfer. What was the number? 120,000,000,000, plus in the great wealth transfer. That's wild. Robinhood currently is like less than a third of a percent of that. I think we've got a lot of room to run. And if you're a young person in this country, millennial Gen Z, soon to be Gen Alpha, you don't really want to do your finances at a brick and mortar store. You don't want to call someone on the phone. I mean, you'd like to have someone available if you do want that. But these are digitally savvy, digitally native people that are comfortable doing everything on the smartphone. So what they care most about is having great technology. And I think Robinhood is a real shot at being not just your primary but also your secondary financial account. We want to be both. So we're just marching along on that vision. Talk to me about how research.
Your debtor on some data center project and that, yeah, it doesn't really affect the big clouds, but I don't see. I actually don't see a problem with the government behaving like it always has. I don't have a problem with that. I'm fine with a backstop, and I wouldn't change anything about the way the government works. And I'm serious about that. I'm not joking because I think that the alternative is actually worse. I think the alternative, if you go back to 2008 and you say, okay, let's not bail out the banks, I think that you just extend the recession. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, but if in 2005, yeah, the banks were saying, and various players were saying, we're going to do a bunch of super risky lending that we're not sure is going to pencil out, and we just want to know that if things get really bad, you'll be there to bail us out, but we're going to make a ton of money in the process. Yes, there is the problem. How would you feel about that? There is the problem of it. So my conclusion to my post today was America has a playbook for backstops. I don't think Sarah Fryer or anyone at OpenAI is asking to rewrite the playbook, but there's something that feels very moral hazardy about the CFO of the most important company at the center of a massive economic wave. Sort of telling everyone how the magic trick works. Like, like why people are latching onto this, I think is not so much the idea that if there's an economic boom and bust cycle and the government steps in at some point, that's not that big of a problem. But it is a problem. If you say, I'm openly acknowledging the way the system works and I'm gonna push it to the limit, that's a little bit rough. What do you think, Tyler? Yeah, I was just gonna say, like the AB test of, like.
Is flow back and forth, but people are not into the AI one. So Joe. Wiesenthal says, what is the case against bailouts if winning the AI race against China is existential? I'm not actually making this argument or have this view necessarily, but public money backstops bailouts seem like the natural endpoint of how AI is discussed at these levels. Yeah. I mean, the case. Yeah, there is no case against bailouts. If winning the AI race against China is existential. America in every company should do everything possible. It should be the sole focus. The question is just like this idea of AI being existential and the AI race in China being existential is certainly decelerating because we're moving away from AI superintelligence. The prompt is invade Taiwan. And it just happens that doesn't feel like it's coming. And so people are like, well, let the Chinese have some slop. Who cares? It's not that big of a deal because it's more about diffuse little gains in the economy here and there. It's not. It's not. I feel like I should read through a little bit of this FT article about Jensen saying China will win.
Cool novel products but it doesn't give me more confidence that they can meet those commitments. Let me pitch you a recapsulation of everything we've been talking about. Keep the government out of the application layer, focus on the energy layer. Just work on driving down energy prices and let all the tech companies duke it out and they will be beneficiaries of cheaper energy. But I want tons of American jobs building everything from natural gas to that solar plant. I want 10 of those and I want it staffed by Americans. How about that? Yeah yeah yeah I'm on board with that. We could agree with that. I'm on board for the government financing the build out of every possible energy source that we can right? I hate looking so that's something we can agree on. I have another pitch for you. Super on board with that. The other thing is we are also looking for ways to more directly sell compute capacity to other companies and people.
If you are identifying the backstop before you get into trouble, it creates this moral hazard. And that's why people were so upset with Wall street. Because if you go into it being. Like the main thing is going out. And announcing it, we're too big to fail. Right. Announcing a trillion dollars plus of spending, obviously some on balance sheets, some off balance sheet partners, and then going out and not being able to answer the question convincingly on how you pull it off, and then a few days later saying the market's not exuberant enough. We think it would make sense for the government to get involved in some capacity when you're building functionally. Elsewhere in the interview, she talked about monetizing commerce, monetizing discovering products, monetizing the transaction. And so to be going out and suggesting something like that when you're building like OpenAI today, yes, it's a national lab, yes, it's strategic to the United States that OpenAI is being built here. But ultimately you're building a company that's just going to compete with Google and Amazon and a variety of other companies, right? Yeah. And I would include those in the backstop, like if Google over invests or if Google is.
Pro all of it when it comes to building semiconductor fabs in the United States. And I'll say well I've been a bit more negative I'm pro build out I think the power side is an area that could make a lot more sense that could benefit the average American a lot more which is like hey the government is going to help finance bringing a lot more power online and and we're going to be stay be able to stay at the at the leading edge and lead in AI and your power bill we're actually going to make your power bill cheaper over time that's something that people could could get behind but federal backstop so you can get more videos of your cat dressed up like a doctor I don't think people are going to be on board with that yeah. It'S tough let's. Keep let's keep reading this and then and then give it. Proper reaction so I move on let me tell you about cognition the makers Devin Devin's the software engineer crusher back.
China will win a race with America, says Nvidia chief. We can go through that in a minute, but let's keep reading. He's like, he's like China's going to win the AI race. We need to sell them as many chips as we possibly can right now, please. They're going to win if we don't give them even more chips. Remarkable. Obviously his position is that we want to get China dependent on on American AI infrastructure so that we can pull it back at any time. But saying they're about to win the AI race when he's also advocating for selling them as many as many chips as as they can produce doesn't really sit sit that I'm honestly the other thing is like how, how, you know, let's talk about we need to, we need to better define what the AI AI race is like. Gurley earlier this year I think made some good points.
Put, put the weight of the US government behind this project. Yeah. And I just think there's no public appetite for this. Look at the state, look at the state of the, of the, of the average American. I think you're right. They can't afford a home. They can't even afford McDonald's. Yeah. And they're scared of losing. They're scared of get, they're, they're, they're already worried I might get a job and then I might lose it to AI. Yep. And you have people working in AI that are already talking about job displacement. We had it, we, we had a VC on our show very recently. He was saying, you know, talking about what a large opportunity investing in AI is because, because this is labor displacement. We've been breaking news. Sama has tweeted, addressing the backstop. First, before we read that, let me tell you about privy wallet infrastructure. Wallet infrastructure for everybody.
Like, in the moment. Agreed with the interviewer's point. Yeah, it's, it's interesting because I feel like it is true that there is a government backstop. Whenever there's $1 trillion of spend going on, there is a de facto backstop. Like, this happened in 2008. There was a global financial crisis. Banks were leveraged on housing. The government came in and acted as the lender of last resort. Like, tons of people hated this and it created Occupy Wall Street. Like, people argued that it should not have happened, but economists would say that the alternative was worse because the economy would just continue to spiral. You'd see more and more bank failures. And so in that moment, it was the rational thing to do. Now, the problem is that if you are identifying the backstop before you get into trouble, it creates this moral hazard. And that's why people were so upset with Wall street. Because if you go into it being like, the main thing is going out and announcing we're too big to fail. Right, Announcing a trillion dollars plus of spending, obviously, some on balance sheets, some off balance sheet partners.
I feel like they're kind of two distinct buckets. I think there's several buckets behind the scenes. Over the last four to five years, we've built out a real substantial offering of models. We've built ourselves. We have over 400 models, teams that are building everything from cutting edge voice and tech safety models, teams that are building models that auto translate, teams that are powering our search and discovery models. We are starting, and very shortly we're going to offer what we call inexperience 4D generation, which is literally the ability to make a game that you or I are playing in. And we can prompt and ask for some type of vehicle, for example, or some type of dwelling and literally build it as we're playing. So it's a little bit of a wide open field here as far as what types of games are people going to build when they have unlimited AI, not just for the creators, but for everyone who's playing in that game. And I do think the future spec, which we think about, which is an enormous technical spec, is can we host one to 100,000 people together? Can they be either photorealistic or cartoony, whatever the developer wants? Can they all be talking, listening, interacting with each other? And can they dynamically change the environment? Can one or two or many of them essentially be dungeon masters? And changing the environment dynamically with AI, that's a huge technical lift, but it's what we're working on. So when I think of the Roblox business and people are very excited about AI and gaming, I view not to kind of gas you and the team up too much, but I view you guys as having the kind of communication layer, the user base, the distribution. It gives you such an insane advantage. Because if I'm somebody who wants to create a game, I can create a standalone game. I could go to another platform or things like that, or I could go to Roblox.
Business news. So I love your multimodal streaming strategy, and it was great seeing you guys two days ago. Every day, about 150 million people now come to Roblox and they play, they communicate, they hang out not in games made by Roblox, but literally in experiences made by a huge creator community. So everything on Roblox is built by the community. And we've shared about a year ago, we believe Roblox will get to 10% of all gaming running on the platform. We're at about 3% right now. Just came off a great earnings call last week. Our year on year bookings is growing 70%, and our year on year DAUs are growing 70%. So, I mean, I asked you this before. I'm gonna ask you again because it's a funny question. It feels like you.