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EpisodeĀ 8-13-2026
Leaving Meta to start a new company. Building the TBD lab alongside Mark and Alex has been deeply inspiring and fulfilling. I'm proud of what our multimodal team accomplish across Muse Spark Voice Mode, Muse Image and Muse Video. And even prouder of the team that made it possible. Over time, I felt increasingly drawn. He's calling out his laurels, but he's not resting on them. Over time, I felt increasingly drawn to a problem that will matter deeply to humanity's future. That remains largely under explored. It now has my full attention. More to share as the work takes place takes shape. So, anyways, I wanted to take a quick, quick little victory lap because I believe it was Monday or Tuesday. The victory lap. No, Monday. Yeah. Anyways, Monday. Are you. Are you. Given the situation that you're in right now, are you more of a victory lap guy or pat on the back guy? I like victory laps. You don't like patting yourself on the back? No, I've always found it awkward. Yeah, it is sort of awkward to pat yourself on the back. A victory lap gets the blood flowing. It's healthy. More ergonomic. It's more ergonomic. More ergonomic. So take your victory lap. I forget what day it was. Maybe it was Monday or Tuesday when I was feeling a little spicy. But I was just saying that MSL is basically operating up against a clock, which is that they did this massive talent rate across all these companies about a year ago. Yeah. And when you're paying these people nine figures, ten figures, many of those people are going to basically spend a year and hit a point where they're like, okay, I have $100 million in the bank and I'm kind of good now. 25% of a huge pile of gold is still a huge pile of gold sometimes. Exactly. And a lot of those people are just going to basically see the number in their bank account and be like, am I happy doing what I'm doing? Is this fulfilling or do I want to go build a company? Maybe they've always wanted to build a company. And so in the case of Jahu, you, whatever package he had, clearly, clearly he's down to go take a risk. You could argue how risky is it for him to actually really start a company. I'm sure they'll raise a massive round out the gates. I'm sure he could always get Acqua hired in somewhere else too, even if the company doesn't work. So it's not like he's taking on, I would say, that much risk by going to start a company. Right now. But that being said, I don't think this will be the last of the exits that we see out of MSL over the next even one or two months. What if he starts the social network? That would be risky. What if he's like, I'm coming for it all? I mean, he says, I've felt increasingly drawn to a problem that will matter deeply to humanity's future. So maybe he's figuring out how to make aligned social media better reels. Social media safety. I like that. Yeah, well.
Financing this market for years. I think having more capital in here is just great for the sector. How have you been coaching people through? There's some folks that are like, I'm worried. This is like.com, there's other people that I'm worried about this being like the mortgage boom. What pieces are different this time? What pieces are, okay, we are actually borrowing from this particular build out. A lot of people go to railroads. There was, you know, a huge amount of value created. There were booms and busts in various times. What, how, how are you dealing with the various critics of the build out? So one of those points I feel like we talked about this last time I was on, I believe was depreciation or useful life of compute. And you know the, the variable that we were able to introduce and highlight in our earnings is the A100 SKU. Yeah, right. This is a 2020 SKU. And we still have clients coming in asking specifically for that sku. Right. It's not like they're asking for Hopper and like oh, we only have ampere or they're asking for Blackwell and we only have ampere. Right. Like they're saying, no, we want Ampere for workloads because that is the most performant platform for their workload. And we signed a contract in the quarter that goes out through 2029. Right. That is now an implicit. So be a nine year old chip by the end. Nine year chip. Right. And this is a take or pay fixed price contract and pricing on A1 hundreds for us have held solid since early 2025. Right. It's like, I think one of those big criticisms was, well, this is two or three year compute and it's useless after that. We've been very consistent that six year depreciable life is accurate for this infrastructure. And I think that there is really strong opportunity for it to have material useful life beyond that. And we see it every day. Right. And it's just in the way that AI workloads are being optimized across different SKUs. And it's this concept like there isn't one AI model to rule them all. There isn't one GPU to rule them all. It's just this matrix of different sizes of workloads relative to different sizes of GPUs where it's filling in across. Yeah. My thesis has been that there are AI workloads that get built out. Maybe a recommender system, a of bunch.
Journey that cursor did. Over time, you become more and more incompetent, more competent in house, and you bring more of that expertise in house. Sure, sure. How are you processing the current price war? You have sort of the lagging labs starting to compete more on price. You have leading labs trying to make sure that they have competitive models at every part of the curve. But, yeah, anyways, what's your take and where does this go? Look, I think Jevin's Paradox. Not to be an annoying vc, but Jevin Paradoc is a freaking wonderful thing because what's happening is I see the data from all this stuff, right? Oh, there we go. Bam. Look, our companies, we see the margins going, their gross margins going up, because at the same time as, like, AI usage is going way up, but their gross margins are also going up because they are the beneficiaries of intelligence getting cheaper and cheaper to meter. On the other hand, I see this from fireworks. I see this from the model companies we're in business with. Their cohorts are getting better and better and better. So it's not like they're facing price competition and their businesses are going into the gutter. They have phenomenal businesses where because they're able to provide intelligence at increasingly cheap prices, their businesses actually get better and better. So I actually think this is an everybody win situation. Yeah, part of the, part of the challenge was with I feel like X trying to process the price wars and how open source is.
So capable at playing games and just shows you how much we've, how far we've come in terms of generality and. Yeah, yeah. Where are the shortcomings though? Because you know, I can think of one which is like with a game like you can you basically run an agent, have the agent play a game infinite, effectively infinite amount of times. It can fail a lot. It can learn things like that. One of the challenges is in the real world, like let's say someone was making a sales agent, like an agent that wants to help you get customers. You can't necessarily just let the sales agent run wild in the real world as a business at least because you know it's going to mess up a lot. A bunch of customers are going to have a bad experience and you could make, maybe the agent gets slightly better from that experience, but you could have lost like a bunch of potential customers or pissed a bunch of people off or things like that. And so how do you think about making the jump from agents that are very effective at playing these games in a generalized way to agents that can be effective at long running tasks in the real world that involve effectively complex groups that are third parties? That's a good question because most of the training today is done with synthetic environments. So you're building up these RL environments inside of your AI team and you're training the models with reinforcement learning. And so you kind of go for a simulation, you could say, and they're not really interacting with the real world when you're training them. And I think one of the big frontiers right now, one of the big developments you might see is actually the training moving into an online setting where the models are directly interacting with the users, with the companies that are using them. And as they're solving tasks, as they're figuring out what to do, we update the weights of the model. They get better and better. And it's a big research problem right now. So nobody knows how to pull this off in general. And the best agents, they're all, all been trained in simulation so far. But it's one of the things that we're working on at river AI. So if any of the viewers are interested in doing some research on this, reach out. Yeah, it feels like we're not that far, at least in the gaming sense, in the training.
Figma files with design system context. Instagram branded POG Rob says it's over. It's over. Instagram. The head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, just posted a new word mark after 10 years, leaving it unchanged. Adam says the word mark at the top of the app hasn't changed in 10 years. So it was time for a refresh. Cleaner and more modern, with references to the original and the simplicity and craft that's always made it Instagram. So, yeah, people don't like it. I don't have necessarily super strong opinions on it personally. Immediately. I do think the original Instagram wordmark here on the left had started to feel extremely dated. Mm. But it's still iconic. And I felt like. I feel like we're headed back to this sort of maximalism and branding. Right. Like, however, I don't know how many years ago it was like, five years ago, all the big fashion houses started going from their, like, historical word marks to updating them and making them, like, much more simple and just. Yeah, the Balenciaga. Yeah. Yeah. And there's like 10. 10 different examples. Yeah. And so this move almost feels a little bit, like, lagging in some ways, where I actually like that the Instagram logo was like. It did feel dated, but it was so distinct. All that being said, people see the Instagram word mark so much that this is gonna be normalized probably within days, and people will just forget about it. I sent a different treatment that I thought they should go with. Yeah, we can pull this up. It's right. I mean, it's not too late. They could. This is their first time updating it, but I could see them updating it again tomorrow if they like your version. So I think that would speak to me personally a little bit better. But, you know, their treatment, it's a choice. It's clean. No, I think this is. Trey says, look, I'm not a fan of change. This is a war on history. Blanket. He didn't change. I mean, that's actually. That's such a funny, perfect take because that's people's reactions to almost every logo change. It's like, look, I understand that you want a new logo, but personally, I'm just against change. I'm just against change. That's hilarious. Yeah. This seems like a pretty. A pretty minor iteration, so congrats to them, I'm sure. I think this will be well received. I wonder if there's going to be more brand.
Instagram branded pog. Rob says it's over. It's over. Instagram. The head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, just posted a new wordmark after 10 years, leaving it unchanged. Adam says the word mark at the top of the app hasn't changed in 10 years. So it was time for a refresh. Cleaner and more modern, with references to the original and the simplicity and craft that's always made it Instagram. So, yeah, people don't like it. I don't have necessarily super strong opinions on it personally. Immediately. I do think the original Instagram word mark here on the left had started to feel extremely dated, but it's still iconic. And I felt like. I feel like we're headed back to this sort of maximalism and branding. Right. Like, however, I don't know how many years ago it was, like, five years ago, all the big fashion houses started going from their, like, historical word marks to updating them and making them, like, much more simple. And. Yeah, the Balenciaga. Yeah. Yeah. There's like 10. 10 different examples. Yeah. And so this move almost feels a little bit, like, lagging in some ways, where I actually like that the Instagram logo was like. It did feel dated, but it was so distinct. All that being said, people see the Instagram word mark so much that this is gonna be normalized probably within days, and people will just forget about it. I sent a different treatment that I thought they should go with, but it's declined. We can pull this up. It's right. I mean, it's not too late. They could. This is their first time updating it, but I could see them updating it again tomorrow if they like your version. So I think that would speak to me personally a little bit better. But, you know, their treatment, it's a choice. It's clean. No, I think this is. Trey says, look, I'm not a fan of change. This is a war on history, just blanket eating. I mean, that's actually. That's such a funny, perfect take because that's people's reactions to almost every logo change. It's like, look, I understand that you want a new logo, but personally, I'm just against change. I'm just against change. That's hilarious. Yeah. This seems like a pretty. A pretty minor, minor iteration, so congrats to them, I'm sure. I think this will be well received.
Instagram branded. Pogr says it's over. It's over. Instagram. The head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, just posted a new wordmark after 10 years, leaving it unchanged. Adam says the word mark at the top of the app hasn't changed in 10 years. So it was time for a refresh. Cleaner and more modern, with references to the original and the simplicity and craft that's always made it Instagram. So, yeah, people don't like it. I don't have necessarily super strong opinions on it personally, immediately. I do think the original Instagram wordmark here on the left had started to feel extremely dated, but it's still iconic. And I felt like. I feel like we're headed back to this sort of maximalism and branding. Right. Like, however, I don't know how many years ago it was, like, five years ago, all the big fashion houses started going from their, like, historical word marks to updating them and making them, like, much more simple. And yeah, the Balenciaga. Yeah, yeah. There's like 10. 10 different examples. Yeah. And so this move almost feels a little bit, like, lagging in some ways, where I actually like that the Instagram logo was like. It did feel dated, but it was so distinct. All that being said, people see the Instagram word mark so much that this is gonna be normalized probably within days, and people will just forget about it. I sent a different treatment that I thought they should go with. Yeah, we can pull this up. It's right. I mean, it's not too late. They could. This is their first time updating it, but I could see them updating it again tomorrow if they like your version. So I think that would speak to me personally a little bit better. But, you know, their treatment, it's a choice. It's clean. No, I think this is. Trey says, look, I'm not a fan of change. This is a war on history, Blanket change. I mean, that's actually. That's such a funny, perfect take because that's people's reactions to almost every logo change. It's like, look, I understand that you want a new logo, but personally, I'm just against change. I'm just against change. That's hilarious. Yeah. This seems like a pretty. A pretty minor, minor iteration, so congrats to them, I'm sure. I think this will be well received. I wonder if there's going to be more brand unpacking around this. Is this. Is there a message like, will this. Will this new logo ultimately be tied to, like, Mark Zuckerberg's vision for AI is there more. Is there more discourse that will come from, like, what the future of Instagram means, what the mission and values of the company are in this era? Is there something deeper here? Yeah, the interesting thing is, like, they really just. They just tried to combine, like, a new logo and the old logo. It's very readable. I think it's fine. It has a little bit of articulation, a little bit of special treatment. Yeah, I disagree on the readability part. Like, the S, which they're taking from the historical wordmark, is way less readable in the new version. But again, it's such an iconic. A lot of people are saying the R looks like a Z. Oh, interesting. When I see the. When I see the S, I see the Tor logo for some reason, I see an onion. You can pull up an image of this. Yeah, I do, too. Little bit like an onion sitting there. Yeah. Onion mode. What are they trying to message us with? That's subliminal messaging, right in Stagzan.
Seamless real time experiences and new value with Cisco. Cisco. Matthew says, lol. Jordy just never learned cursive. The original logo is cursive. I'm saying that that is, to me more readable than this Frankenstein, but it'll be fine. Did Louis Vuitton ever do the clean rebrand? It looks like they might have. Is this the actual Louis Vuitton logo? I mean, they still have the classic lv, but I think they did. But the word mark is. I think they were a participant in the new word mark in like the clean sans serif font. I think it's time to move away from that and I think, you know, they're taking risks here. I'll defend it and I think it will grow on me. It's also not the, like, Instagram's been through a number of rebrandings and iterations, so we'll see. But speaking of Louis Vuitton, Louis Vuitton collaborated with Singer and created this insane Singer x Louis Vuitton collaboration for a 911 that looks like a handbag. They're calling it. They're calling it the most tacky car. I was. I didn't know where you were going to go. I knew. I saw this all over the. All over the feed. I knew we were going to be talking about it, but I didn't know where you'd sit. Yeah. So why is it tacky? It looks pretty. Yeah. Let's. Let's play this video. This isn't that tacky. I like the color. You don't like the color. The blue wheels are tacky. This part looks nice. Well, okay. The bag interior is just brutal. The stick is pretty cool. The hood with the straps, extremely sort of crazy. Yeah. This part's helmets. I. I don't hate the helmet. There's. There's two, there's, there's multiple cars. Yeah. There's another version that doesn't have blue wheels. It's a little more subdued, but it is. So to me, part of the reason why it looks like, you know, a monstrosity is that it feels like they just. It feels like AI slop irl. Oh, interesting. I was. And to me, it's not. It's not actually. Wouldn't surf with that surfboard, Jordy. But the problem is like, the problem is like, I think that if Porsche had collab with LV mate, there would have been like, it would have been toned down, like, a lot and probably be. They did. Right. Didn't Porsche do a collab recently? And we asked, we talked about this. You're talking about the Toy Story collab. Oh, that one was really good. I like that one, but I'm going back further, but I'm just saying, like, this is not sanctioned by. This is, to me, like a tacky, unauthorized collab. And I know exactly the kind of person that would buy this. I'm happy for them. We're sorry this happened. This. When I saw this car, I was thinking that it feels less like something that you would drive and more like an art piece that you would put in a house that has glass that you look through. Vladimir says that the singer looks like BDSM plus Hampton's inheritance, minus taste. Oh. Because of all the leather straps. Wow. That is wild. Maybe they just don't believe that taste is the new moat and they're just, like, fading that whole take. This is the one I was thinking of. It says buckles on the hood. Lol. Perfect for a pilgrim. It was the Amy Leon Door Ald Porsche 993 Turbo that we discussed, and I think you were skeptical about as well. Not big on these collabs. Yeah, I think the main thing is they just went, like, 300% too hard. They did, yeah. It is very aggressive. It's not subtle. It is very aggressive. How do I add this? Avery says the shift boot is pretty bad. Not gonna lie. Let me see. Yeah, the ALD was much more subdued. Now that I'm looking at it, we can pull up these images. Look at this. People are saying, next level. Gluttony, aspirated slop. People do not like it. Well, it's not for everyone. It feels more like an art piece that you put in a luxury apartment that has glass between a seating area, like a poker room and a garage. Like something that you like. Dubai. In Dubai, yes. Probably. Oh, it's Chubai. That's what you're referring to? Yes. This is Chubai. Yes. Okay, I understand now, but, yeah, pull up the Pictures of the ALD Porsche. That was on the official Porsche YouTube channel, so must be real. Someone else says that's the ugliest display of good craftsmanship I've seen in years. Yeah. What they've accomplished, clearly, was incredibly difficult, and they executed their plan seemingly very well. It's just that the plan was way too much. Okay, pull up the ALD Porsche 993 Turbo collab video, because I want you to see. I want you review. You gotta pick one. You're either driving Louis Vuitton or ald. Which one you going with? Jordy. I mean, this was a Actual collab between ALD and Porsche. And it was much, much, much more subtle. It was more subtle and very well done. And the creative is well done. Yeah, I thought this was. I don't own anything from. From ALD to my knowledge. I've never been a part of. Been a part of that brand. But I liked this collab a lot. Okay, within this video, so you're going ALD over Louis Vuitton over LV. Correct. You're going ALD over LV. If you had to pick between those 200% within this video, are you going ALD 911, or are you going flock of sheep? Which one would you take? If you're offered, you can either have the flock of sheep or the Porsche. How many sheep? Look at how many sheep there are. There's at least 20. Look at those. I think you got to go. I think you got to go with the sheep. You got to go with the sheep. Okay. I don't know. I don't know how much. Honestly. I'm hoping that. I'm hoping that the flock is quite a bit bigger. But if you. If you throw in the sheep dogs and with the sheep, I think you got to go with the sheep. Okay. How? Michelle says sheeps are useless. Trey says those are nice sheep. I agree. They look like fantastic sheep. Okay, we're gonna find out how much a flock of sheep costs. Ben says that was a very wolf answer. Okay. About 50 ordinary sheep in California, you're gonna spend about $20,000. That's for 48 breeding pounds. So you're saying I should take. Okay, so you're just saying I should take the ALD 911, put it on, bring a trailer, and then you can buy 500 sheep. A billion sheep. Not a billion sheep. No, but I would lever up. I would love her up on the flock. You're leveraging up. Okay. Let me tell you about Codex. Codex is a powerful workspace for getting work done.
Joe Wiesenthal has recently transitioned to a tilted crying face emoji. I've actually, I don't. I don't dabble in the tilted. I do, I do the tears. I do the tears and the straight on. Wait, do you do the streaming down the face? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, I need to mix that one in. The most popular emoji of 2025. Yeah. I went through maybe a decade where I wouldn't, I wouldn't touch any of the crying. Oh, any of the crying ones. You do a smiley. But I've been laughing a lot the last couple years, mainly because we've been doing this show. I'm having a good time. I like that in imessage you can do the ha ha but then you can also throw the crying emoji. But I got to experiment with the tear streaming emoji. Do you ever go with the cat versions? No, I never larp as the cat. Never go. Never go cat. But expect a cat emoji from me soon. Tyler in our group mass in our group chat because might be underrated. There might be some alpha there. I don't know. Anyway, there was click.
Instagram branded pog. Rob says it's over. It's over. Instagram. The head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, just posted a new wordmark after 10 years, leaving it unchanged. Adam says the word mark at the top of the app hasn't changed in 10 years. So it was time for a refresh. Cleaner and more modern, with references to the original and the simplicity and craft that's always made it Instagram. So, yeah, people don't like it. I don't have necessarily super strong opinions on it personally, immediately. I do think the original Instagram word mark here on the left had started to feel extremely dated, but it's still iconic. And I felt like. I feel like we're headed back to this sort of maximalism and branding. Right. Like, however, I don't know how many years ago it was, like, five years ago, all the big fashion houses started going from their, like, historical word marks to updating them and making them, like, much more simple. And. Yeah, the Balenciaga. Yeah. Yeah. There's like 10. 10 different examples. Yeah. And so this move almost feels a little bit, like, lagging in some ways, where I actually like that the Instagram logo was like. It did feel dated, but it was so distinct. All that being said, people see the Instagram word mark so much that this is gonna be normalized probably within days, and people will just forget about it. I sent a different treatment that I thought they should go with. Yeah, we can pull this up. It's right. I mean, it's not too late. They could. This is their first time updating it, but I could see them updating it again tomorrow if they like your version. So I think that would speak to me personally a little bit better. But, you know, their treatment, it's a choice. It's clean. No, I think this is. Trey says, look, I'm not a fan of change. This is a war on history, Blanket change. I mean, that's actually. That's such a funny, perfect take because that's people's reactions to almost every logo change. It's like, look, I understand that you want a new logo, but personally, I'm just against change. I'm just against change. That's hilarious.
Like anthropic and OpenAI and XAI are growing at a pace that nobody has ever seen before. But even if you remove them, this next cohort of companies open evidence, glean factory, they're growing at rates that we've just never seen before. One of the most interesting things that's happening right now is we used to have this separation in our heads of there's the foundation model companies and then there's the application companies. And I would say, like one of the most interesting things that's happening now is that all the application companies are starting to build their own research capabilities, their own labs. And it's kind of like this concept of democratized intelligence. So I would say it's not only revenue that's not just accruing, only the first at the top two players, it's the production of intelligence itself. Seems like it's very much democratizing. Yeah, we were, I don't know when Dylan was on, maybe it was last week, but Dylan from figma? Yeah, we were talking to him. I was like, I want figma to work on the problem of design. Yeah, Basically slop is like, has been this, like, you know, it's been. Slop has been getting better and better, but you know, it's basically like you have a new breakthrough and then for two months it's like, wow, it's so good now. And then you realize that it can only do like one style over and over and over. And I feel like there's all these application layer companies that are in such a great position to work on some of these fundamental problems that for better or worse, the labs are not able to focus enough on maybe it's only a billion dollar revenue opportunity. And so if you're a lab and you're adding billions of dollars of revenue a month with your core business, why would you work on a problem like that? And so I think there's so many examples of that from Figma to some of the other ones you mentioned. Totally. And I think if you look at it from the perspect,
Another good one. Can I. How do I drop this in the timeline? Microsoft in 1995, 1996, published a wine guide. This is from the corporation, the hyperscaler, the Mag 7 company, Microsoft. They released a wine guide. The essential. Click to the next image and then the next one. There we go. Okay. The wine guide came on cd. The essential reference from vine to glass. If you wanted to know about wine, this is where you had to go. You had to get the official wine guide from Microsoft, the software company. Fascinating. Know your audience moment. A lot of Microsoft fans, customers 1996. If you're implementing Microsoft in 1996, probably enjoy a glass of wine every once in a while. So why not? Why not? Well, John, I'm going to read a Buco Capital bloke post that I think applies to this exact moment right now. He says, I think we're very close to the point where caring about AI or talking about it a lot is a bit embarrassing. Move on already. Who cares? Move on already.
So to me, part of the reason why it looks like, you know, a monstrosity is that it feels like they just. It feels like AI slop irl. Oh, interesting. I was. And. And. And to me, it's not. It's not actually. Wouldn't surf with that surfboard, Jordy. But the problem is, like. The problem is, like, I, I. I think that if Porsche had collab with LV May, there would have been, like, it would have been toned down, like, a lot, and probably be. They did. Right. Didn't Porsche do a collab recently? And we asked. We talked about this, talking about the Toy Story collab. Oh, that one was really good. I like that one. But I'm going back further, but I'm just saying, like, this is not. This is not sanctioned by. This is, like, to me, like a tacky, unauthorized collab. And I know exactly the kind of person that would. Would buy this. They're happy for them. We're sorry this happened. This. When I saw this car, I was thinking that it feels less like something that you would drive and more like an art piece that you would put in a. In a house that has glass that you look through. Vladimir says that the singer looks like BDSM plus Hampton's inheritance, minus taste. Oh. Because of all the leather straps. Wow. That is wild. Maybe they just don't believe that taste is the new moat, and they're just, like, fading that whole take. This is the one I was thinking of. It says buckles on the hood. Lol. Perfect for a pilgrim. It was the Amy Leon Dore Ald Porsche 993 Turbo that we discussed and I think you were skeptical about as well. Not big on these collabs. Yeah, I think the main thing is they just went, like, 300% too hard. They did, yeah. It is very aggressive. It's not subtle. It is very aggressive. How do I add this? Avery says the shift boot is pretty bad. Not gonna lie. Yeah. The ALD was much more subdued. Now that I'm looking at it, we can pull up these images. Look at this. People are saying, next level. Gluttony, aspirated slop. People do not like it. Well, it's not for everyone. It feels more like an art piece.
Of her AI And Jordy already has the gong ready, so just tell us the fundraising announcement. I guess. We just managed to raise $1.1 billion. Awesome. He broke the gong. He broke the mallet.
In Wired, REESE Rogers says McDonald's built a 515 page dossier on me. It says I'll never stop eating there. He requested a copy of my data from the McDonald's loyalty program and received an extensive personalized report that algorithmically predicts my next purchase. This is. Take me through it. Amazing. Pulling up the. The actual article. The actual article. McDonald's secret sauce is really commercial surveillance, says Jeff Chester, executive director at the center for Digital Democracy, a group that advocates for consumer protections. Privacy experts I spoke with said this level of detail may feel invasive, but it's fairly standard for how large companies in the US run their loyalty programs. The report contains specific pieces of personal information about you that were identified by searching McDonald's systems, which contain information about our customers. Tyler, you had the conclusion, what does McDonald's actually know about you? What does McDonald's know about an individual that they like hamburgers. That's basically the takeaway, right? Like the takeaway is like the number one. Most this guy likes hamburger product is a large Diet Coke, then the spicy snack rack, then the Grinch McShaker fry large. We should figure out other companies that, that have these types of, that have this type of data and request full reports. Yeah, we need our own reports. I would love to read. You want your 10,000 page report on what you like from Erewhon? Yeah. You're really going to go there Because I couldn't possibly know by looking at previous orders. Glass bottled water, McDonald's anthropic.
Okay, anyway, let's do, let's do some other stories. New bombshell reporting from the Wall Street Journal reveals that North Korea has built a secret workforce inside American companies, using stolen identities, AI and accomplices in the United States to cheat its way into remote jobs and funnel hundreds of millions of dollars back to Kim Jong Un's regime. It's a fascinating story. The the Wall Street Journal article is posted. It's a 30 minute documentary. They spent over a year investigating this. The FBI says that there are thousands of North Korean IT workers applying for jobs, applying for jobs across America. After a year long investigation, the Journal obtained a trove of leaked browser histories, emails, calendars and screen recordings from one cell of workers, providing a remarkable look at how the operation actually works. The North Koreans apply for jobs at enormous scale. One cell tracked by the Journal applied to more than a thousand companies over just three months, using AI at nearly every step. And in the documentary, they show a product that is basically cluly. They will leave a voice agent running while they're being interviewed in a technical interview. Give the answer. When asked about a particular technology, if they are proficient, they will simply have AI look up the answer. Give the answer to the interviewer who get the get the job. And in some cases they're using real Americans as frontmen. Basically, they will do the interview and then they will ship a remote laptop to say, hey, you're our new remote worker. You are qualified to work on our software engineering team at this small company. We'll send you a laptop and then you just collect a check, send half of it to the North Koreans and you don't have to do any work. So it's like passive income free money for you, the Americans. So you said they're real Americans, but they're not patriots. Yeah, that's what I'm hearing. The documentary is pretty gut wrenching. Like the individual who they talked to, who was participating in this, obviously is probably going to see some legal consequences for this. But it did seem like he had a very, very tough go and got into a very rough situation to be in that situation. It was certainly his first choice. Ryan in the chat has a hot take. Kim Jong Un is such a lovable rascal, it's hard to stay mad at him. Boo hoo hoo boo. The operation also relies on help from inside the United States. North Korean IT workers pay American facilitators, they're called facilitators, to host company laptops in the United States, allowing the actual workers overseas to remotely connect to them. While appearing to be employees working domestically. Also, the North Korean workers, they go to non extradition countries. So they'll go to China and Russia and a few other countries. And then from there they will be remoting into an American laptop. So it just looks like, okay, the web traffic is coming from. It's not coming from North Korea, but it's coming from a country where if the FBI says, hey, can you send us this person? They're a criminal. That country says, no way, we're not sending them to you. So for one job paying $75,000 a year, he said he and the North Koreans split, split the salary 50, 50. The workers also use stolen American identities to pass employment screenings, often juggling multiple identities simultaneously and holding down several jobs under each name. This all boomed during COVID and the remote work boom. And the scale of the operation is enormous. Some North Korean IT workers earn as much as $300,000 a year. The Treasury Department says North Korean says the North Korean government can seize as much as 90% of the wages earned by its overseas IT workers. And recently that these operations generated nearly $800 million in 2024 alone. Pretty, pretty big. So the Journal's 30 minute documentary titled North Korea's Secret U.S. workforce follows the operation in detail. It's a fascinating watch and I highly recommend that you check it out. So go take a look. I feel like it's important to ask, like, are they doing a good job? Like, Cause presumably they're not just like hacking. Wow, really? You're gonna steel man this. Okay, I see where your loyalties are. No, it's like there's like the skit where it's like, oh, we're going to rob the bank and we're going to get a job there, and over 30 years, they're going to deposit the money straight into our bank account every two weeks. And what happens at the end? Yeah, we walk out the front door. It's like, oh, they're like hacking and they're stealing American dollars by working at the companies. Yes. So there are sanctions. And because of those. Yeah, like, clearly America is not allowed to do business with North Korea in any capacity, including this one. So this is sanctioning, but like, seemingly it could be much worse. Right? They could just be like hacking the company. That's true, that's true. But they could also be doing both because once you let a North Korean IT worker in your systems, they could be planting all sorts of spyware. A very dangerous situation to be in. But yeah, a wild, wild, wild story. So everyone, if you're running a small business with some remote headcount, make sure to ask everyone to post something negative about Kim Jong Un every day. To prove their loyalty, I guess, or something. But it opens with a very, very funny clip of someone doing a remote zoom interview and asking someone to say something negative about Kim Jong Un. And the guy's like, oh, I can't hear you. I can't hear you. I can't possibly say that. Anyway, let me tell you about the New York Stock Exchange. Want to change the world, raise capital at the.
The clean sans serif font. I think it's time to move away from that, and I think they're taking risks here. I'll defend it, and I think it will grow on me. It's also not the, like. Instagram's been through a number of rebrandings and iterations, so we'll see. But speaking of Louis Vuitton, Louis Vuitton collaborated with Singer and created this insane Singer x Louis Vuitton collaboration for a 911 that looks like a handbag. They're calling it the most tacky car. I was. I didn't know where you were gonna go. I knew. I saw this all over the. All over the feed. I knew we were gonna be talking about it, but I didn't know where you'd sit. Yeah. So why is it tacky? It looks pretty cool. Yeah. Let's play this video. This isn't that tacky. I like the color. You don't like the color? The blue wheels are tacky. This part looks. Well, okay. The bag interior is just brutal. The stick is pretty cool. The hood with the straps, extreme parts. Sort of crazy. Yeah. This part, helmets. I. I don't hate the helmet. There's. There's two. There's. There's multiple cars. Yeah. There's another version that doesn't have blue wheels. It's a little more subdued, but it is. So to me, part of the reason why it looks like, you know, a monstrosity is that it feels like they just. It feels like AI slop irl. Oh, interesting. I was. And to me, it's not. It's not. Actually. Wouldn't surf with that surfboard, Jordy. But the problem is, like. The problem is, like, I think that if Porsche had collab with LV May, there would have been, like. It would have been toned down, like, a lot, and probably be. They did. Right. Didn't Porsche do a collab recently? And we asked. We talked about this. You're talking about the Toy Story collab. Oh, that one was really good. I like that one. But I'm going back further, But I'm just saying, like, this is not. This is not sanctioned by. This is like, to me, like a tacky, unauthorized collab. And I know exactly the kind of person that would. Would buy this. I'm happy for them. Or sorry this happened. This. When I saw this car, I was thinking that it feels less like something that you would drive and more like an art piece that you would put in a. In a house that has glass that you look through. Vladimir says that the singer looks like BDSM plus Hampton's inheritance, minus taste. Oh. Because of all the leather straps. Wow. That is wild. Maybe they just don't believe that taste is the new moat and they're just, like, fading that whole take. This is the one I was thinking of. Says, buckles on the hood. Lol. Perfect for a pilgrim. It was the Amy Leon Dore Ald Porsche 993 Turbo that we discussed and I think you were skeptical about as well. Not big on these collabs. Yeah. I think the main thing is they just went, like, 300% too hard. They did. Yeah. It is not subtle. It is very aggressive. How do I add this? Avery says the shift boot is pretty bad. Not gonna lie. Yeah. The ALD was much more subdued. Now that I'm looking at it, we're. We can pull up these images. Look at this. People are saying, next level gluttony, aspirated slop. People do not like it. Well, it's not for everyone. It feels more like an art piece that you put in a luxury apartment that has glass between a seating area like a poker room and a garage. Like something that you look in Dubai. Yes, probably. Oh, it's Chubai. That's what you're referring to? Yes. This is Chubai. Yes. Okay, I understand now, but. Yeah. Pull up the pictures of the ALD Porsche that was on the official Porsche YouTube channel. So must be real. Someone else says that's the ugliest display of good craftsmanship I've seen in years. Yeah. What they've accomplished clearly, was incredibly difficult, and they executed their plan. Plan seemingly very well. It's just that the plan was. Was. Was way too much. Okay, pull up the ALD Porsche 993 Turbo collab video, because I want you to see. I want you. I want you review. You gotta pick one. You're either driving. Driving Louis Vuitton or ald. Which one you going with, Jordy? I mean, this was a actual collab between ALD and Porsche, and it was much, much, much more subtle. It was more subtle and very well done. And the creative is well done. Yeah, I thought this was. I don't own anything from. From ALD to my knowledge. I've never been a part of. Been a part of that brand. But I. I liked this collab a lot. Okay. Within this video. So you're going ALD over Louis Vuitton over LV. Correct. You're going ALD over LV. If you had to pick between those 200%. Within this video, are you going ALD 911, or are you going flock of sheep? Which one would you take? If they're. If you're offered, you can either have the flock of sheep or the Porsche. How many sheep? Look at how many sheep there are. There's at least 20. Look at those. I think you got to go. I think you gotta go with the sheep. You gotta go with the sheep. Okay. I don't know. I don't know how much, honestly. I'm hoping that the flock is quite a bit bigger. But if you throw in the sheepdogs and with the sheep, I think you gotta go with the sheep. Okay. How? Michelle says sheeps are useless. Trey says those are nice sheep. I agree. They look like fantastic sheep. Okay. We're gonna find out how much a flock of sheep costs. Ben says that was a very wolf answer. Okay. About 50 ordinary sheep in California, you're gonna spend about $20,000. That's for 48 breeding. So you're saying I should take. Okay. So you're just saying I should take the ald. Put it on, bring a trailer, and then you can buy 500 sheep. A billion sheep. Not a billion sheep. No, but I would love her up. I would love her up on the flock. You're leveraging up. Okay. Let me tell you about codex. Codex is a powerful work.
Thanks for having me. Thanks for hopping on the show. Welcome. Congratulations on the fundraise, but maybe let's go back in time. Tell us a little bit about your history and journey to starting River AI. And Jordy already has the gong ready, so just tell us the fundraising announcement. I guess. We just managed to raise $1.1 billion. He broke the mallet. The chosen one. You are chosen one. Okay, so see if it works out. So, thank you, guys. I started my career as a physicist. I was really interested in understanding the universe, but.