Big Technology Podcast - AI Device Wars Heat Up, RIP Metaverse?, Netflix Acquires Warner Brothers

Episode Date: December 8, 2025

Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover: 1) AI Device Wars are here 2) Apple loses its head of user interface design 3) Meta's chances in the AI device wars 4) Apple's Ai device will only be as good as the assistant 5) OpenAI's AI device could work? 6) Amazon's Alexa+ is underrated 7) Google Glass returns? 8) Is the Metaverse dead? 9) Code red at OpenAI 10) Anthropic gains in enterprise AI adoption 11) Netflix to acquire Warner Brothers Discovery 12) Kalshi and CNN team up --- Enjoying Big Technology Podcast? Please rate us five stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ in your podcast app of choice. Want a discount for Big Technology on Substack + Discord? Here’s 25% off for the first year: https://www.bigtechnology.com/subscribe?coupon=0843016b From Big Technology on Substack: The AI Device Wars Just Kicked Off In A Big Way https://www.bigtechnology.com/p/the-ai-device-wars-just-kicked-off Questions? Feedback? Write to: [e-mail] -- Wealthfront.com/bigtech⁠. If eligible for the overall boosted 4.15% rate offered with this promo, your boosted rate is subject to change if the 3.50% base rate decreases during the 3-month promo period. The Cash Account, which is not a deposit account, is offered by Wealthfront Brokerage LLC ("Wealthfront Brokerage"), Member FINRA/SIPC, not a bank. The Annual Percentage Yield ("APY") on cash deposits as of 11/7/25, is representative, requires no minimum, and may change at any time. The APY reflects the weighted average of deposit balances at participating Program Banks, which are not allocated equally. Wealthfront Brokerage sweeps cash balances to Program Banks, where they earn the variable base APY. Instant withdrawals are subject to certain conditions and processing times may vary. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The AI device wars are officially on as Meta Poach's top Apple talent. Is the Metaverse dead? It's code red for Chatchip-E-T and Netflix agrees to buy Warner Brothers Discovery. That's coming up on a Big Technology podcast Friday edition right after this. Capital One's tech team isn't just talking about multi-agentic AI. They already deployed one. It's called Chat Concierge and it's simplifying car shopping. Using self-reflection and layered reasoning with live API checks,

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including your AI agents. visit octa.com. That's okayta.com. Welcome to Big Technology Podcast Friday edition where we break down the news in our traditional cool-headed and nuanced format. We have a great show for you today.

We're going to talk all about the AI device wars now that meta has poached Apple's top design talent. We're also going to touch on the end of the Metaverse, or that's what it looks like, code red for chat chip, PT, and then we're going to break down this Netflix deal for Warner Brothers Discovery. We are here,

fittingly in studio at Spotify, and we're joined, as always, by Ron John Roy of Margins, Ron John. Welcome. I'm excited to be here in the studio at Spotify and talking hardware in just a moment. That's right. Not just chat GPT again, but hardware. That's right. And I say fittingly because it's Spotify Wrap Week. And I can say it's been amazing to get so many notifications from people who listen to and watch this show saying that Big Technology podcast has been among their top or has been their top show this year. I know I've received many of those. I think you have to.

I've received it from some friends. I loved hearing it. And it makes me feel good because my own Spotify wrapped is always kind of painful. I have a six-year-old son and K-pop Demon Hunters was my number one song. They have great songs. They do have great songs. It is actually, and when we get into the Netflix thing, I've actually dug into that whole story as well from a business standpoint. So we'll get into that.

But what was your listening age, Alex? I was 31, which made me feel good because I'm in the band, but maybe a little younger. How about you? Mine was 57, which was even more problematic that between the six-year-old songs, I listened to a lot of 60s, 70s music. Okay, so they're just averaging it out. We averaged out to 57. So without the kids, you'd be like 110. Yeah, it literally said, you are an old soul.

So I am. I love it. But not when it comes to technology. No, technology, we are youthful. and spry and ready to analyze all the stuff that's going on. But yeah, one more note on this. If you do see us and you're wrapped, whether it's on Spotify, YouTube, wherever, share it. We'll like it.

We'll try to distribute as many of these as we can. So thank you for that. Okay. This week, very interesting week. So much tech news, as always. But the big story for me was the fact that a seemingly ho-ha move turned into a much bigger story for me. And that was that Apple's head of, you know,

user interface design, Alan Dye, along with the deputy and maybe some other team members, went over to meta. Meta poached them. They're going to put them on their AI-enabled glasses, the meta-raybans, and the meta-raybans display, which, of course, has a screen in it. They're going to bring some Apple sensibilities over into these meta-glasses. It's complicated because, according to reports, it's not exactly the best talent that Apple's had, and we'll get into that. But I do think that this really does kick off the AI device wars. Now you have meta, you have Amazon, you have Apple, you have Open AI, and Google, all in the mix. And this is going to be a very, very big deal moving forward. So your reaction just briefly on the decision of these

Apple executives to move to meta and the significance of it. Yeah, we, I also like that you added Open AI to that actual roster, even though they have not actually announced their physical device yet. But they're teasing. We're going to get into. So we're going to go company by company. Yeah, we're going to go company. Yeah. So I thought it was incredibly interesting. Again, yeah, Apple executives going over to Meta and we're going to get into who these Apple executives are and an incredible gruber piece on that one. But we've been saying this for a while. Like meta is the coolest company right now in physical devices. I never. would have thought I would have said that meta raybans are probably from like a hardware standpoint,

the most interesting and useful hardware and physical device I have tried or I own a pair now in the last couple of years. So I think they are incredibly interesting. And also the fact that it's it's no longer the Metaverse, VR, like it's this whole new form factor and surface area. So it has to be interesting if that's what your specialty is. Yeah, I thought that these poaching, and again, we're going to get into the talent side of it. But it definitely took on this feeling of maturity of the space beyond just like this is a nascent thing with a bunch of kooky startups like You Main and the Rabbit R1 and the friend pendant. Like when you start seeing the poaching of top talent from one company to another, you know you're in a war and you know it's sort of like the starting bell of something very big that's about. to come. Yeah, and the fact that meta is going to be, like we said it maybe a couple of months

ago. I remember you said it and it had not occurred to me, but that meta is now going to be Apple's biggest competitor in the hardware space. And I never thought that that could be the possible or the case, but I really think that will be the case. And I think Mark Zuckerberg, ever since iOS 14.5 and Apple trying to kneecap meta and them actually coming out of it stronger than ever is probably just been waiting for this moment for a long time. That's right. Go right at Tim and Apple. They so hated the fact that they have to go through the iOS system to reach their

users that they have been dead set on building the next operating system, whether it was in virtual or mixed reality with their meta, with the Oculus purchase and the quest and all that, or now getting into AI. Let's briefly talk a little bit about Alan died. So obviously you see the head of user interface design leave Apple and you're like, oh, like major coup for meta. And to me, I think it's a little mean, but the best one-liner that I've seen about this move is that the IQ of both meta and Apple have gone up because of this exit. John Gruber, obviously, a friend of the show, somebody who is a very close Apple watcher has been for years, has been largely praised Apple frequently up until recently. recently. It did not have nice things to say about Alan Dye. He wrote,

Alan Dye is not untalented, but his talent, this guy who led user interface design at Apple, but his talents at Apple were in politics. His political skill was so profound that it was his decision to leave, despite the fact that his tenure is considered a disaster by actual designers inside and outside the company. And he says also, it's rather, I mean, this is, No punch is pulled here. It's rather extraordinary in today's hyper-partisan world that there's nearly universal agreement among actual practitioners of user interface design

that Alan Dye is a fraud who led the company deeply astray. It was a big problem inside the company, too. I'm aware of dozens of designers who left Apple out of frustration over the company's direction. I'm not sure there are any interaction designers at OpenAI working on this joint venture I.O. who weren't X Apple, and if there are, it's only a handful from the stories. I'm aware of the theme is identical.

These are designers, that these are designers driven to do great work. And under Allen Dye, doing great work, was no longer the guiding principle at Apple. Is it possible that both companies win here? Because META does get someone who may not be an A player at Apple, may have been great at Apple politics, but still has Apple design sensibilities, and Apple gets some fresh blood at the top of the user interface design. But the thing is, like, I'm having trouble with it because meta, the Raybans, as I said, actually have been done in a really interesting way.

Like the simplicity of it is what you want in a UI in any kind of new devices, trying to incorporate a bit of AI into it and just like making it simple, useful, which were the core Apple design principles for so long. But we've seen the last three to five, maybe seven years. I mean, everything about Apple UI has gotten more complex, messy, difficult. Like even, like, you know, Vision Pro aside, just the core iOS has just, it used to be this, like, simple thing that was a pleasure to use. Now anytime, I remember, like, using a friend's Windows computer and I had not touched Windows in a long time. And I was like, oh, wait, this is actually just as good.

if not better. So I think, like, is it going to actually be net beneficial for meta? Or will it actually bring potentially, like, problems to meta when they have momentum? What do you think? See, I guess I don't know exactly, like, what was he responsible for at what time within Apple? I mean, he basically, all these big initiatives within Apple, the design of the operating system of the Vision Pro, Vision OS, that was him liquid glass that was him see that doesn't that doesn't bode well i'm saying like if it was yeah the the johnny i vera or like the it's been a long time since apple truly from a design perspective has had like this like beauty and competitive edge and was just something just so different from the rest of the industry and that's what meta probably i know that's what they want but i don't

think this is going to bring that to that well i i still think it's a win for meta because I think that somebody who is steeped in the Apple design process, bringing a sprinkle of that into the meta-design process will be good. I will say liquid glass is terrible. I've had to turn off. I picked up the 17 Pro this week after speaking with MG C. Gler on Monday. Great phone.

Liquid glass sucks. I've had to turn off like as many of the liquid glass features as I can. What exactly is it? It's because I have not enabled. I'm still 15 Pro Max and actually not looking to upgrade. It is. It basically makes a lot of things look translucent. Yeah.

And I couldn't look at it anymore. I got sick of looking at the time on my lock screen, which was like it looked like it was etched in there and like a fifth grader did it. I just hated it so much. I turned it off. This is the thing that like so many of these little efforts that are so designing, like even Siri right now, like when you press it on your phone and you get the like the the border of your phone kind of like lighting up in this it looks kind of cool yet series more terrible than ever and we're far far away from improving so like it feels like yeah that a lot of the energy really went to not functional like use case utilization and making people's lives easier but just things that like just were so designery that that's and that's not going to help meta The raybans work because it really is clear that no one was overly precious about, like, trying to be too designing.

They're like, let's just make this brutally functional, which I think is a different philosophy. Okay. Well, you know, what's interesting about this? We're talking about user interface design. And of course, the Rayband meta displays, right, are this new pair of glasses that have a screen on them. And meta has obviously been working on the screen. But ultimately, an AI, what is an AI? device. We don't fully know what it's going to look like. No, we know. Is it going to be a hockey puck?

Is it going to be a pendant? Is it going to be a pair of a pin? Okay. Is it going to be a pair of glasses? Is it going to be the AirPods with their translation and Siri inside? It can be a variety of these things. But notice what comes to mind as I start speaking about all these various devices. It's not a screen. It's an assistant inside. Whoever has the best AI is going to have a real chance of winning gear as long as they package it correctly. Now, user interface design can also be design of a voice user interface, I imagine. But I think with that in mind, we should just go one by one with all the companies that have a push in the space and talk a little bit about whether they can win or not. And let's start with Apple. If Apple puts the same Siri in there, they're not going to

win. Doesn't matter who's running design. No. I think Apple is by far the worst position for this. Not only is Siri still just unbelievably terrible. This has been years now. I've been saying this, but I've seen no improvement. But they are a screen-first company. They invented the mobile screen, or at least, you know, like the mobile, brought it. That looks better than the BlackBerry. Yes, exactly.

I mean, the like touchscreen, bringing it to the world, making it a beautiful experience, that is the single core, like, you know, selling point of Apple. That's what they own. They have not shown the ability to actually come up with any kind of innovation on any other kind of true U.I. So I don't think they're well positioned. Okay. I don't think so either. I mean, what are they going to do?

They're going to run, right? They just, by the way, so speaking of Apple, palace intrigue, the head of Apple AI, John G. Andrea, he's gone. And now they brought in a new executive who had come from Apple, but had also spent 16 years at Google. And my hot take on that is he's there to do the Gemini integration. So are your smart glasses going to be Gemini glasses if you're Apple? Can you win that way? I don't think so. No.

Like Google will always have an edge over you unless, I mean, okay. That's the argument to build your own model. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I guess maybe there's a world where Google from a hardware perspective has always been a follower. Like they take Google or Apple? Google, Google. And they're actually, I kind of. want the new pixel fold phone i saw someone had it and i'm like obsessed with it now it's like

eighteen hundred dollars though so not diving in right away but still that's following on samsung and others like google has never shown true leadership in the hardware space google glass i mean i mean kind of i guess just 10 years too early 15 years too early um but uh yeah i think google like apple maybe that's their opportunity. If they can really start to figure out the actual AI side and still they just know hardware, maybe their screen first, but maybe that's the only shot they possibly have, but it doesn't look great. Yeah, now it could be that maybe the AI device that syncs so well with your phone that it's natural and you have to have it, that could potentially be like the way that AirPods syncs so well with the iPhone. That's a benefit.

Maybe even if Apple doesn't have the best model, it's because it syncs so well with the phone. But again, like, they try to do that with Apple intelligence. I don't know if it's- Wait, wait, wait. Hold on. Let's work through this one. Okay. I genuinely believe, like, one of the most important innovations of the AirPods were the W3 chip and how easily they sink. Bluetooth has gotten a lot better. So now, like, external earphones actually can sync very well. But, I mean, what was it? Seven, eight years ago, like, AirPods, the magic. of them was, you just put them on and they connected to your phone, Macbook, iPad very easily. So you're right. Maybe the connectivity can be something. I'm trying here. I'm trying for Apple.

All right. Let's not write them off completely, but it's going to be an uphill battle. Meta out ahead. We both have the meta-rayban glasses. We like them a lot. I would say my primary use for them is camera, photos and videos. But there are times where, I don't know, I feel like it's kind of like old school. Alexa, I'll ask it for the time. Maybe the weather. Rarely do I ever say, hey, what am I looking at and get anything interesting from it? But they are out ahead. They have a couple million in market. The smart glasses market, according to Reuters this year, tripled. So I would say that, you know, they have as good a chance as any, but they've also struggled on the model building front. If you're going to put the latest version of Lama in there,

you're going to be behind Open AI whenever Open AI releases, whatever it releases. Now, again, same with Raybans. Like, the AI functionality don't use it. Actually, asking it questions is not great. I do use the, what am I looking at? Like, with birds and stuff or like, especially like plants, whatever, you know, I'll check them out. I'll try to see what I'm looking at.

I'll admit it. I'll admit it. Yeah, that's going to live on the internet. Some kind of nature. I like it. But so they have a shot, but I also think that like, yeah, whoever owns the, like, the real estate on your face, on your head, whether it's going to be audio in your ear, whether it's going to be audio or visual through the glasses, like, that is where the battle takes place as the starting point, but then you have to deliver the actual intelligence side of it. And agreed. Meta, the AI side has work to do, but still far ahead. I have not, have you tried the new display? I haven't tried the Orion with the full display, which are pretty

amazing. But I haven't been able to try these new ones, but people say good things about them. Yeah. And I had tried the SNAP augmented reality like in developer, the developer environment there, augmented reality classes. So I am relatively bullish on the idea of kind of like, an AR displays, a little screen sitting there on your glasses, if they can win that and nail that, I think that's good. I think that they're well positioned. This is in a way that they would not have been just a few years ago. Here's my hot take on meta.

Over the next year, you will see meta bring in other AI models. You will see them partner with Google. You might see them partner with open AI. Didn't they just spend, God knows how much money on super? intelligence lab? I think they did. They spent a lot of money on talent. But for them winning the operating system is more important than having the model.

Wait, where you're calling the operating system. The OS on your smart glasses. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Okay. So I think as long as they have control over it. I mean, yes, if you bring in Gemini,

you basically license Gemini and bring it in the same way that Apple is going to do it with Syria. As long as you have the delivery mechanism, that means you own the device. I just don't see Mark Zuckerberg doing that, though. I think like they're too. two bought in and here's why I think he's going to do it. Yeah. Apple is going to release its smart glasses targeted at end of next year. Okay. You have to have a better, better offering than Apple, period. Yeah. And so even if you have to give up a little control on the agent side, you do it. Okay. Okay. Either way, well positioned. Well positioned. Let's go to Open AI.

Recently as last month, Sam Altman and Johnny Ive, who've, of course, came to the $6.5 billion dollar agreement to work together. Oh my God. I forgot the amount. It's a lot of money, a lot of money. They are building something that looks like a smartphone but has no screen. They say they've settled on a form factor and the rumors say that's what it is. Obviously, Open AI comes to it with one of the best models.

So what do you think? No, I think I'm going to say relatively well positioned from the model. And the reason I say that is voice mode works already very well. And actually, like, voice has become almost my primary way of interacting with AI. I use something called whisper flow. I love it's a, like you can kind of define your own dictionary. So it starts actually getting your dictation right. You can ramble and it'll condense it and clean it up.

So, like, I believe voice is going to be the primary way people do interact with AI. And Open AI has already shown that, yeah, from a model perspective, from like South Park, you know, kind of like making fun of it. Yeah. But it's because it's so good. That being said, my concern with Open AI is just focus. And like, I mean, more came out this week around them, like, in their code red and what projects they're going to focus on and what they're going to delay.

Like, they have too much going on. So, like, hardware, my prediction is it's going to be this kind of like side project that is going to cause internal political turmoil. And, like, you know, it'll just not, there's a lot of ego. There's a lot of the Johnny Ives of the world are involved. And, like, it's just, it can't be front and center when they have revenue and profitability challenges and cap, like all the core challenges, it's not going to make or break their business anytime soon.

So it will get deprioritized, and that's going to cause issues. Yeah, I think there's going to be a couple of false starts there before they get it right. Um, some of this like high mind, maybe, I don't know, some of this high minded design talk that you hear from Sam and Johnny just like, the more I hear of it, the more I'm like, you're going to have some trouble, uh, when you release. They, I watched an interview of the two of them where Sam said, well, Johnny told me that we know the device will be ready when you're going to want to take a bite out of it. And, uh, the first time we liked a prototype, but we didn't really want to eat it. And now we have one that you want to take a bite out of it. That is actually how I evaluate all my technology. When I go to the, you know, Apple store when I go to the Google store, when I was buying my meta-raybans, the poor store associate, just me gnawing on the thing to the side. I have to do this. Yeah, it's just Johnny, I've said it. But in a way, though, let's say, let's, their advantage in this is, I do think starting from scratch, when you think about what is the hardware for the AI era going to look like is an advantage, not having any legacy, it's got to be glasses, it's got to be a screen,

just really starting from like, I hate saying first principles, but I'm going to say, like, I mean, and just really being able to reimagine what that is and what's the purpose of it is a cool moment to really rethink design. And I do think it gives them at least a little bit of an advantage, I guess. Right. But let me ask you this. If it, device is smartphone style, has no screen. Why isn't it just an app? Because it's got a, I mean, I don't know, but actually, hold on, I saw, so Plod, P-L-A-U-D, they have, they have basically a pin and like a notebook, a business card size thing that's basically just a recorder, an AI recorder. I just saw that they're at like 250 million in revenue. I've been looking at them, like,

So already that form factor of having a separate device that's just a recorder and can maybe do some other things and like just gets your context, processes it, maybe is able to do it on device. I think there's something there. Yeah. I'm just smiling because I'm just waiting for Sam and Johnny to come out with the device and it just looks like a donut. It's a chocolate donut with sprinkles on top. You're kind of love it and it will record everything you do. I always bite my devices. Yeah, well, then you are the world's top, you're on par with the world's top design talent.

So, you know, one company that gets overlooked here is Amazon. Remember, Amazon has hundreds of millions of echo devices. It has, it actually has smart glasses, which might surprise many of you. They're called the echo frames. There was a while, they were throwing echo into everything. Yeah, echo microwave, echo wall clock. Yeah. But they do have smart glasses.

And I will say a couple of months ago, Panos Penae from Amazon, had devices and services, sat in the seat you're sitting in, told me that Alexa Plus is going to roll out to everyone. I don't know if it's fully rolled out yet. I have it. But I have it. Yep. I have been surprised.

I think it's better than a lot of the reviewers have given it credit for. So I, so, okay, Amazon, it's an interesting one. First of all, I went back to Alexa and the Amazon Echo. I still have my lights hooked up to Siri, but, like, I had gone full home pod for a while, and my God, problem. Plus your heart. Yeah, I know. But so now I have the Echo show. I have, like, a small Echo with a display.

Alexa Plus using it a lot. In my kitchen, that's become my, like, cooking companion, it's good. It's not great. It's not, I do not think it's on par with a Gemini voice mode. open AI and chat GPT voice mode but and it gets a lot of stuff wrong like weirdly i posted about this on twitter the other day like it gets NFL scores wrong it's like come on you got to get like these these just basic deterministic questions right but the follow-on conversation mode is pretty good so just from a device ingrained in people's houses standpoint they're positioned yeah i think the

personality in it is great. I mean, I just am always attempting to do crazy things with these bots. And I was like, you know, Alexa, I want to have an insult competition with you. And it's like, I don't really want to say anything bad with you. I was like, just do it for fun. Come on, let's trash each other. This is what you do. This is sort of what I do for fun at home. And we went back and forth. And it was actually quite good. And then we got into like a little rap battle. And it owned me, completely owned me. I mean, I'm just asking like, what's the optimal temperature for dark meat in turkey and stuff like that. Yeah, I mean, I don't know if I would trust it with that, but, but having a little

phone with it, like my wife was like, you know, Alexa, like, why does my husband have a shopping addiction? And it's like, you guys are Alexa. We're all the way. We're all in. And it gave good answers. This is your new companion right now. Yeah, Alexa was like. Alex is your companion.

It's my companion. Yep, it's our third. It said something like maybe he thinks like hitting the, um, free shipping button means that the whole package will be free and it's just not it's not free shipping so it continues to roast me i think it's very good i think they have i think they have a better chance than a lot of people are no i i agree just from a standpoint of it's already there and actually again actually going back to the voice interaction that is the single device and company that people already have a comfortable voice relationship with like voice modon chat chpt is like kind of like

Some people use it. Some people don't even know about it. Alexa has been voiced first for a decade plus now. People are used to it. So if they get that right, they're okay. Yeah. And they could again package it in all these different form factors. Okay, lastly, Google, like we talked about the originator of the Google Glass.

They are doing partnerships with Samsung and Warby Parker for a mixed reality version of Gemini. Could they come out on top? I mean, everybody wrote them off in the beginning of the AI. and look at where they are now. So maybe they get the glasses right as well. Yeah, I think, so I had like a pixel nine that I had not used in a long time. It was just gifted it a while back. And like, I plugged it in because I was like,

I want to just start seeing what it's like to have Gemini around all day. And it, I actually think glasses aside, just what Siri's supposed to do on the iPhone. Like every Android device out there having Gemini is your voice interaction. layer is a huge advantage. The same way echoes in everyone's house gives them a natural starting point, it gives Amazon a natural starting point. I think Google, I think that's where they're going to make a dent. And that's why if they really push people to talk to Gemini through your phone at the, at the like system level and not opening the app, that really opens up a lot of opportunity

for them. Okay. Lastly, as we think about this, uh, category. There have been many failures so far. The Humane PIN, the Rabbit R-I-P-U-Main. R-I-P. Now you're at, you're an HP. I can't believe they went to H-P. Speaking of these lofty introduction videos, reminds me of the Salmon, Johnny I've introduction video. Should we count HP in all this? No. No. I can't. I swear I'm telling you, I want to throw that printer that I have out. We got, we picked up the printer on the sidewalk for free. It worked for about of year, and then, uh, and I want to throw it out the window. So I'm not putting HP in there. Um, but, uh, we have seen these failed devices. Friend.com, I don't know if that's going to

work. Doesn't seem like it. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Does is that, is that, is that just like the, the early startup energy finding a category that's going to work failing and sort of waiting for big tech to come in and pick it up? Or is that, uh, a sign of, of something, uh, much worse. maybe the fact that, yeah, all these companies have an AI device initiative, but maybe it won't work. Maybe this is just a bunch of wheel spinning and we're sort of talking our way through something that's not really going to work. Now, see, I think the humanes of the world, the raps of the world, were actually victims of hype and of the cycle that at like a proper startup having time to kind of like work through, get it into the hands of early adopters,

have people test buggy devices, be happy about it. They never had that because they got so hyped up so fast. They raised so much money. They came out big with lofty videos and these devices did not work well to start. So I don't think, again, I'm not, I really think the AI first device battle is going to be one of the most interesting stories of the next few years. And speaking of hype that hasn't panned out, the Metaverse. This is from Bloomberg. Mark Zuckerberg plans deep cuts for Metaverse efforts. Meta's Mark Zuckerberg is expected to meaningfully cut resources for building the so-called Metaverse an effort he once framed as the future of the company and the reason for changing its name from Facebook Inc.

Executives are considering potential budget cuts as high as 30% for the Metaverse group this year, which includes the virtual world's product, Meta Horizon Worlds, and its Quest virtual reality units. that high would most likely include layoffs as early as January. It's amazing seeing the names of these products, Horizon Worlds. Never forget. What the hell do those products look like today? Like, are there anybody, is there anybody roaming around the actual Metaverse anymore? I would say, except for meta employees, but even then, even actually, hold on. Now, like, that makes me wish I don't own any meta VR products.

tried all of them uh i want to like put it on and just go into horizon worlds and see who's there like you're just going to find some random guy just holding on bosses in there just yeah just yeah just i hate to say it i mean i shouldn't even say it but you could imagine there are some unscrupulous making their way around horizon world actually maybe it is kind of like an amazing blade runner style dystopian plates right now end of society yeah the wild west goes down mad max blade runner this is like, now I'm kind of interested. Yeah, but do you think this is, okay, so they're going to cut 30% potentially. Is this the end of the Metaverse?

Seems like it. Seems like that's over. And it's good because like, again, an augmented reality layer in their glad, like, whatever was supposed to happen before did not. It didn't work. I think moving to all these other new form factors and opportunities, the fact that they're going all in, hiring the Apple execs, it's good. It's good. I think it's over. I think virtual reality should go back to niche use cases, gaming, hopefully keep improving, be this kind of like product that's maybe a reasonably big market, but not the way everyone interacts with life. Right. We just had Nick Clegg back on the VP of the former head of global affairs at Meta. And to prepare for that interview, I listened to the time that I, I interviewed him at Davos and like four years ago.

And back then, he was telling me about how great it was that he was able to have a meeting with his direct reports in a virtual conference room and feel presence and the fact that like they might be in separate cities or countries and they could all feel together. I think in theory, that might have sounded like a good idea. Did anyone really do that? I think Meta might have done it a little bit, but did you guys really do that? come on. I just like,

did these meetings ever take place in reality? Like, yeah, I so wonder whether, because, yeah, no, it's funny you bring that up.

Like, that actually would be kind of a fun. I'm going to go on YouTube and start looking up those old interviews because, like, it's going to sound. It sounds preposterous. Proposterous right now. Again,

we could sound preposterous five years from now when you're all listening to me and the replays of talking about pins and whatever else. Big, blocks that just record your voice all the time could sound ridiculous. Yeah. All right. So overall, Metaverse dead, but good pivot for meta because they were able to put a lot of that technology into this AI glass classes, which is actually showing promise.

Do you think Mark Zuckerberg should more directly say it was a mistake? Yeah, I think he should. I think he should, too. He should say it was a mistake. We're Facebook. We're back to Facebook. We're back in a big way. We actually figured out and are leading this next revolution in our.

hardware. And you know what? We tried. We took a bet. It failed. But look at us. We're like agile and enough to actually keep going versus the well, there's so long where they were like trying to like conflate the AI development with the metaverse. Just like refusing to acknowledge it was over. Right. If I'm thinking about the name, maybe keep meta actually because the Rayban meta is a good name. The Rayban Facebooks would be weird. I don't know. Oh, you're right. Meta Rayban has maybe grown on me even though it's embarrassing. No, you're right. Like in meta, it doesn't necessarily

mean the Metaverse. It's just kind of, it's meta, you know. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, but no, no, you're right. Rayband Facebooks would have been terrible. Rayban meta, I say it all the time. Totally naturally. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So Metaverse dead, but meta is alive.

Meta is alive. All right, we're going to take a quick break. And when we come back, we're going to talk about the code red inside Open AI regarding Chad CPT, what the implications are there, whether ChitPT is actually losing users, whether Anthropic might be gaining in the enterprise world. And then we are also going to break down this big deal that was just announced this morning.

Netflix is planning to acquire Warner Brothers Discovery for $72 billion, and the deal may or may not go through. I think it won't. All right, we'll be back right after this. Finding the right tech talent isn't just hard. it's mission critical. Hiring great engineers isn't just feeling roles. It's how you outpace competitors, and that's where Indeed comes in. Tech hiring tip of the week brought to you by Indeed. 83% of tech professionals say career development is a must have in a job offer,

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breaking down the week's news. Earlier in the week, I thought this was going to be our lead story, but so much has happened since that, you know, we pushed it to the second half, but it's still important. OpenAI declared a code red within the company as Gemini threatens. ChatTPT's lead. Here's from the information. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

On Monday, told employees he was declaring a code red to marshal more resources to improve chat GPT as threats rise from Google and other artificial intelligence competitors. As a result, Open AI plans to delay other initiatives such as advertising. Altman said we are at a critical time for chat GPT. Altman said the code red surge to improve chat GPT meant open AI would also delay progress with other products. such as AI agents and Pulse, which generates personalized reports for ChatchipT users to read each morning. How dire is it for ChatchipT? I mean, there are some reports that they lost like 6% of users to Gemini. I don't know if I fully buy that.

I don't think everybody just ran away to Gemini right away. Maybe they were trying it. But how dire do you think the situation is for ChatchipT right now? So the numbers around 6% was sourced from Similar Web. So, like, I take that with the grain of salt because that's not going to be. capture actual app utilization. And that's just like web traffic, which I mean, I have to imagine at least my own personal life. And I'm guessing most the app is like the core entry point for their chat GPT usage. But I mean, certainly Gemini 3 has come on strong. And we talked about

this last week that just being as good poses not an existential threat, but a significant one for Open AI because Gemini is going to be everywhere. All the people who have never used chat GPT, 800 million is a lot. It's not, what is the world that now? Seven billion people, whatever it is. So I think that is important. But also, what was really interesting to me was what you just read there. Like, it's going to, you know, is it going to pause its ad product? Is it going to, even the fact that they said, like, pausing agents, like, which, because to me, still agentic is even chaty BT what's happening underneath is agenting in its nature but whatever they were advertising before about kind of building these more agentic workflows or their agent builder which

they launched and you never heard about again and then pulse which we talked about a little bit but it's an ad product that that's a confirmation that's a ad product yeah all of this and what we were saying about their consumer devices they have been launching everything like non-stop over like i mean and everything always kind of looks pretty good their browser atlas i've tried it used it it's as good as comet from perplexity um they've launched all these things but is that the right approach like to you know the spray and pray and hope you find like the winning product or you just focus on chaty bt and the core product and just distribution getting people using it maybe there's like a marketing campaign, something like that.

What do you think? Well, they're going to have to spend, they're planning to spend $1.4 trillion on developing infrastructure for future model building. And the reason why they've had the money to be able to do that is because the world, by and large, thinks that they're the best at building AI, at building AI products. The second that sheen goes away, all of a sudden, your ability to raise these ungodly amount of money goes away. It go completely.

Right? Like Mark Benioff had an interesting quote this week. where he was just like, AI models are a commodity. I just find the cheapest one and plug it in. Who has said that, Mark? Who's been saying that for years right here? He's been on the show. Yeah.

And maybe he's listening. But I do think that if the world starts to pick, and obviously Benioff praised Gemini, if the world starts to pick up on this signal and all of a sudden chat GPT is one of many, or Open AI and chat GPT models, are one of many as opposed to the leader, then the open AI story.

gets much, much harder to put together. Yeah, and then I had actually seen this thread, and it was really interesting to me, it was that, like, Open AI, and I've said this for a long time, too, from a product, and actually we've spoken, we're speaking about, like, hardware UI for all the early part of the episode, from a software UI standpoint, they have built beautiful products. They've built usable products. They created the whole chat UI was not really a true thing. and now like they led the way and all Google has to do is just copy everything they do

wait for them to innovate release just copy because UI is not patented you I's not going to be like and like whatever new features they're releasing in that interface Google just replicates it it's not overly complicated stuff and then Google that just keeps them on par and I think like that actually thinking about it that way was even more terrifying for me in regards to open AI. Yeah, I'm looking at some data from the FT here. It looks like Gemini is getting very close to the number of monthly downloads that ChatsyPT has. It surpassed it in average time spent, which of course is a tricky metric.

But that's pretty worrying, I think, if you're open AI. What are you going to be? Because again, and we're going to talk about this in a moment, you've effectively, I wouldn't say you've ceded enterprise AI, but you're losing. enterprise AI too anthropic somewhat seeded it yeah you have to you have to you cannot allow Gemini to surpass you here otherwise the the company is built on a story if the story falls apart the company falls apart no no you're right like and that story is we are just better we're the best we're i super intelligence yeah you see and you're right like for what is it now oh three years

just a week out from the third anniversary for call it two and a half there was no one even close like even the clods of the world, like among more tech forward people, they would find things. And I mean, we all found like certain things Claude would do better. But yet, no, they can't lose that reputation and feel in the market that, especially in the consumer space, like they own it. Okay, we talked about this last week. What do you think they do in this code read? Like, what do you think they do to make chat GPT better? And does it potentially involve pulling some levers that they were reticent to pull or hesitant to pull previously in terms of personality, sycophancy? Oh, yeah, yeah. Stickiness and, you know, optimizing,

engagement maxing, as it's called. Where are you going with this, Alex? I think I know. Love, erotica. Erotica. No, it doesn't even have to be. I'm just saying, like, what do you do? No, no, I mean, And clearly, Alexa is your companion. But I think- Thank you for reminding us all of that. While I'm just taking photos of birds with my meta-glasses. We're hip. We're cool.

No, hold on, that's a really good question. What could they do or what should they do? Because, like, I'm going to throw it out there. They need them good marketing campaign. I still, so my parents over Thanksgiving, It's very cute. They're just like, what do I do with AI? I'm trying to show them, trying to show them, like, voice mode, especially like my dad has trouble kind of typing on the phone. I'm like, this literally will be amazing for you. And it's just conceptually, it's still difficult to understand. Like, what do I do with this? It's a blank screen on a chat. Like, that's my call. Like, educate the 6.2 billion people that don't really understand. what how to use AI chat and that's your opportunity and so what what would you put in the marketing campaign i think they've done a little bit of this they do like fitness and diet not oh yeah no

that was a good that was a good campaign i think it's amazing for fitness yeah i use it like as my fitness coach no no like as you can tell viewers it's paying off that's why lex is so interested Again, it was good. It was like, I remember it was like someone's cars broken down. It's like, help me fix my radiator. What should I do? Whatever. Like, there's an opportunity there.

I think the product is good enough. There's still that entire additional world of people that do not use it, focus on them. But I really don't understand how they're going to, they've so much going on right now. They have to have so much going on. I said it last week, like, the math still doesn't work to me of, like, what does their cloud business look like? What does their consumer devices business actually look like? But they have to focus, and I don't think they will, but how do they save themselves?

I don't think it's a marketing campaign. Here's the way I think that you can make the product better and not resort to sycifancy. Improve memory. Memory to me within Chatsypt has been the killer feature. Does it work for me? Chat Chip-T is remembering much more about me in a way that I find not creepy, very useful. I've been planning this trip coming up in December, and we've been talking about logistics a tremendous amount.

And it really does a great job of pulling from past conversations. And again, like losing this gold-fresh brain that so many chatbots have, starting to get to know people better. I mean, does it make you more, make it more of a companion? Yeah, because it knows you. But I think that will make it unbelievably more useful. And that's the direction. No, okay. I agree.

And I actually, I agree with the caveat that, like, I have found it to the memory to actually be not good. Like, it's supposed to retain memory within a project, but across multiple chats within a project, it does not, like, very clearly. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn't. at the kind of like when you get out of the project layer into the main chat, it sometimes randomly remember stuff. So I think they got work to do. But I, okay, I like that.

Just imagine that that got 50% better, which I think it can. And if you had like granular control over what is remembered, what's not remembered, where is it remembered? Like sometimes like if I'm like doing some like funny create song lyrics here and then in another chat where I'm trying to do something more professional. like it'll pull in that random prompt I was creating like like giving users granular control over that is interesting but I do they got so much going on over there I don't see how like that's one of those things that it all hands on deck lets win memory in context that is interesting but can they pull it up I think so code red I like the code red you see you have a problem and you're you're going to attack it did you order the code red Sam did yeah Okay, let's talk a little bit about Enterprise before we move to Netflix. We could talk about this briefly.

Ramp has this AI model adoption rate where it talks about businesses, and Anthropic is really gaining ground on open AI there. Let me take a look here. So they say that Anthropic has grown 2.1 percentage points over the past month. And they say at a business level, API spend by business, business is larger than typical enterprise chatbot contracts. It's also probably getting stickier over time because business users are starting to figure out

which models are best for which tasks. APIs are also more reliable revenue generator than consumer AI usage, especially as consumers have an increasingly numbers of free options at their disposal. So I'd be pretty happy to be anthropic right now. It's an underrated business. If you're looking at consumer,

of AI tools and business use is their most important revenue generator, its customer-based indexes to the tech sector, but that's changing as rapid adoption grows and moves across sectors. So there it is. Anthropics bet on enterprises is really paying off. No, I mean, I think it is. And again, like, as I work in Enterprise AI at writer, like for us, the big opportunities actually business users building workflows and like bringing AI into the way they work and anthropic i still feel i mean from everything i've heard and they've made claims that they're getting more into the actual business side of things but one coding and two api usage it's still a developer first company like even the way i actually have been working like playing

around with claude skills very developer driven so they're going all in on like i t engineering and the business, that side of the enterprise, like, I think it's actually great for them and I think they're going to crush Open AI in that. So I think overall, they have shown, I think as a revenue scale from like one to six billion, a lot of the coding they nailed. I mean, just being this API first offering, they nailed. So I think they're relatively well positioned, but I actually don't think the way this article called like API spend sticky, I don't think it's sticky. Really? No, I think like that's actually almost more having worked with this stuff.

I mean, just switching out what you're calling. Like truly, this is where even as at one point, if Opus 4.5 is better at coding, cost is going to be the driver, especially in the enterprise and being able to switch the moment you see that there's another model that can actually do the work at a, like, on par is a very easy thing to do. Okay. All right. Well, the battle will continue.

Let's talk a little bit about this Netflix Warner Brothers deal. All right. So this is from the Wall Street Journal, Netflix to buy Warner Brothers after split for $72 billion. Netflix has agreed to buy Warner Brothers for $72 billion after the entertainment company splits its studios and HBO Max streaming businesses, a business from its cable networks, a deal that would reshape the entertainment and media. industry. The deal was announced Friday, and the two sides entered into exclusive negotiations for the media company known for the Superman and Harry Potter movies, as well as TV shows,

hit TV shows such as Friends. It seemed like it's going to be this big deal for Netflix. I just think that if you get Warner Brothers Discovery, and of course it's pending review by the Justice Department, which may not like this deal, The early reports are the Justice Department hates this deal. I may not let it go through. I may sue to block it. But the bottom line is that this is going to create a streaming powerhouse. Netflix already extremely powerful, the number one streamer and HBO coming together,

along with other Warner Brothers Discovery properties. I think at Netflix, it's a risky thing. They don't usually do deals this big, but at $72 billion, the price is right and you couldn't let anybody else snatch up Warner Brothers discovery. What's your take? I think it's that last point is the most important. You can't allow anyone else to get, pick that up. I think like they are in, they're still, you know, kind of the leader in this entire space. They don't have to like manage legacy businesses combined with the streaming arm that gives some advantage but also plenty of disadvantage. And so to kind of pull that this entire

gold mine of a catalog into your universe, I think it's like, yeah, it's not defensive in a negative way. It's defensive in a like strong way. Like we are trying, we need to do this. And it's going to put us in a better position relative to competitors. Yeah, I think Netflix needs to do this from a business standpoint, smart move. I do want the government to stop it. Now, the government might want to stop it because they preferred that Warner Brothers Discovery go to Paramount Plus. Fair enough. Why is that? Well, because of politics. But the other side of it to me is like, even though, you know, as a Netflix subscriber,

I might be happy to get some HBO content in Netflix because I subscribe to both services. We know how cable companies work. You know, they've worked as monopolies. They don't treat customers well. They jack up the prices. There's nothing you can do about it. This might just create like one internet cable company.

And, you know, over time, it's going to harm the people that are using these services. So I'm against it. It's 100% going to. I mean, if you've, I actually did this exercise recently and like went through my streaming bills.

Like, it is insane. Like, I mean, the price has just been increased and increased and increased. So I'll admit, I like took an HBO Max Disney Hulu bundle with ads and it is the weirdest feeling to watch HBO with ads. Like, I feel so, I mean, just,

horrible about myself but I'm still just going through this exercise right now but like I mean it is like they've just been increasing but introducing these services at a heavy loss getting people in hooked on them and then just increasing prices regularly and agreed like from a consolidation standpoint Ted Sarandos called this like pro innovation pro consumer it's not it's not it's not but but still I mean from yeah purely Netflix standpoint, good move for consumers. It's all bad. Okay. So let's end on another future of media story, which is that CNN is going to end up in a partnership with Kalshi, which is a prediction market. This is from Axios. CNN has struck a partnership with Kalshi, the world's

largest global prediction market, company bringing Kalshi's data to its journalism across television, digital and social channels. The first major news partnership for Kalshi as it looks to establish itself as the most authoritative source of information about real-time probabilities of major cultural and political future events. Plus and a minus here. The plus is that prediction markets have been ahead of the pundits on news events. Talk about elections, talk about other probabilities. So you might want to bring it close to home if you're a news operation. Second thing is, I think there was a Kalshi executive this week that was talking about how they wanted to make everything bedable.

Everything that has a potential disagreement about some future outcome, they want to make that. Betable. I think we've already seen some of the dangers of sports gambling and how it's really destroying people's lives. And I think that you're going to see that again here. And I wonder if CNN is making a mistake mainstreaming this. So having worked on a trading floor from 2002 to 2009, I can tell you, can be bedable. I lived in a world where literally any little disagreement, and it was funny because the Cal She founder, that's what he was talking about, like any, like basically trying to

bring structure to disagreement, I think he said, like, that's what would happen. You just disagree with someone, let's put money on it. And I have always loved the idea of prediction markets. There was actually an early one in the 2000s called Trade Sports that started introducing politics. I mean, every step of the way recently as prediction markets have like come in, I think they add a true element of like context and have people having money versus punditry. I think they are better. I think from a gambling standpoint and Kalshi tries to say they're not gambling, I think it's hugely problematic. Like I think there are certain things like weather futures, which I think Robin Hood is going to introduce. This stuff exists for like institutional customers and like hedging

your business against potential weather issues is, it makes sense, combining contracts that allow you to hedge against potential risk. That's the thesis of it, trading for fun and just being like, yeah, I want to make or lose money, the more it's out there is problematic. But I actually think this is kind of cool. I just don't like the idea that a news operation is bringing this gambling closer to people. I think it's ruining, for instance, daily fantasy sports or fantasy sports is ruining the, you know, fan duels and stuff, ruining sports.

No. They're cheated. People are cheating. People are taking their student loans and putting them into these apps. Yeah, but no, no, okay. But that is the end user. Like, the perfect world, you have some number of well-informed, well-capitalized people in these markets, which is what financial markets are supposed to be.

And like, they're the ones. actually driving and towards this kind of prediction and potential outcome, which in the political context is really interesting because my God, I was home over Thanksgiving and my parents have CNN on and I forgot how terrible it is watching 10 people because I never do it, just talk and argue around a table, like versus here's some interesting data. And if you think about it, polling is an interesting science. But like this. This is another way of approaching that. But you on the show have talked about how it's gameable, how let's say somebody wants

to get a candidate elected, you know, they might spend $100,000 on the SuperPack or they might just put it on their names at Calci and then CNN's going to be like, oh, candidate Y is doing so well. That is why normally this stuff would have happened in well regulated, well established, well monitored, like exchanges where the SEC or the like others are CFTC. are monitoring this. This is not that. So I recognize this is kind of a bastardization of what in principle I do love. But like, and I really think is valuable. So I agree. Like on that side, my God, I'm sure these things are the most gamable things. And I agree. It's a problem where

you game the Kalshi. They start sending some awful tweet about that. It goes viral. Everyone starts thinking this outcome is an inevitability, maybe someone drops out of a race. I think that stuff is terrible. Regulators go, try to take a look at this. Let's build this in a responsible way. That would be nice. Can't happen. No, I know. I know. All right. Well, speaking of predictions, it is getting close to the end of the year. So you and I should come back and do some predictions one of these weeks and tell folks what we think is going to happen next year. And then put money on it. And then put money on it. prediction market

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All right, but that'll be a fun episode coming up. Rajan, always great to have you on, and it's great to be able to do this in person once again. Always fun. See you next week. All right, 57 and Music Taste. Yep. I'll take my 30-1 to the face. I'll take my creaky knees out of here right now. All right, everybody.

Thank you, Ron John, and thank you all for listening and watching. We'll see you next time on Big Technology Podcast.