Big Technology Podcast - OpenAI and Microsoft Tension Boils, Amazon’s Job Automation, Zuck’s Spending Spree

Episode Date: June 20, 2025

Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover: 1) OpenAI and Microsoft's tension boils as business relationship grows complex 2) Is Microsoft being anticompetitive? 3) How much money OpenAI owes Microsoft 4) Who holds the power in the relationship? 5) OpenAI discounts ChatGPT enterprise 6) New study shows using ChatGPT leads to eroding critical thinking skills 7) Does ChatGPT help or hurt education? 8) Andy Jassy says AI will replace Amazon workers 9) Is this really just a ploy to get workers using AI tools? 10) Zuck hires more AI execs 11) Waymo arrives in NYC.... kinda --- Enjoying Big Technology Podcast? Please rate us five stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ in your podcast app of choice. Want a discount for Big Technology on Substack? Here’s 25% off for the first year: https://www.bigtechnology.com/subscribe?coupon=0843016b Questions? Feedback? Write to: [e-mail]

Microsoft and OpenAI have some major differences, and things are getting heated as Open AI moves to its next stage. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy says AI will reduce his workforce, and Mark Zuckerberg keeps spending for top talent. That's coming up on a Big Technology Podcast Friday edition right after this. Welcome to Big Technology Podcast Friday edition where we break down the news in our traditional cool-headed and nuanced format. We have so much to speak with you about this week because the AI news cycle, just rolls on with bigger stories each week. We have a fascinating battle between Microsoft and Open AI that's just really heating up

and might eventually prevent Open AI's for-profit conversion. I also have this very interesting memo from Andy Jassy about gendered of AI and what it might mean for Amazon's workforce. And of course, Mark Zuckerberg is spending that cash and doesn't seem like he's stopping. So we'll pick up that thread from last week. Joining us, as always, on Fridays to do this is Ron John Roy of Margins. Ron John, good to see you.

Good to see you. AI news doesn't sleep. Another week. Sure doesn't. Never a dull moment. And leading this week is this really interesting conversation that we've had on the show and we will continue to have because it could influence the future of the AI industry. And that is what's going to happen with Open AI and Microsoft. This is from the Wall Street Journal. Open AI and Microsoft tensions are reaching a boiling point. Tensions between Open AI and Microsoft's over the future. of their famed AI partnership are flaring up. OpenAI wants Microsoft's grip on its AI products and computing resources to loosen. And it also wants to secure the tech giant's blessing for its conversion into a for-profit company. Microsoft's approval of the conversion is key to OpenAI's ability to raise more money and go public.

But the negotiations have been so difficult in recent weeks that OpenAI's executives have discussed. What they view as a nuclear option accusing Microsoft of anti-competitive behavior during their partnership. That effort could involve seeking federal regulatory review of the terms of the contract for potential violations of antitrust laws, as well as a public campaign. Well, what do we call this, the not-so-gentle singularity? I mean, this escalated in a hurry.

So a few points on this. I think we'll definitely get into the for-profit company conversion. which is incredibly complex we've talked about for months and months and months. Like, let's not even forget, remember, Elon Musk sued over this conversion. They're getting hit from many different sides and the fact that Microsoft is actually kind of acting as a hurdle is definitely a big issue and that can prevent them from $20 billion of that sweet Masa Sun soft bank money. So that's going to be a huge issue for OpenAI this year.

But the federal regulatory review of anti-competitive behavior, I love this. I mean, they are saying that the deal that they struck is anti-competitive. From what I understand, like, what else could it mean? They're saying the money we took from Microsoft, and then that whole arrangement is bad for the industry and us, Open AI, as well. But can you read it another way? It is bananas. I mean, it's one of those things where open AI needed a partner like Microsoft to be able to get to the place where it is today because, of course, the most important ingredient in growing its products up until this point has been compute. And what did Microsoft had? Had that compute. What was Open AI? It was a nonprofit. I mean, it's interesting because the ambitions were artificial general intelligence. So it wasn't like Open AI wasn't thinking big. But it's almost like the company surprised itself with how, successful it's been. It's almost like it wrote in that clause in the contract that both entities wrote in that clause in the contract that Open AI and Microsoft's deal dissolves once

Open AI hits AGI. Not really thinking that that would ever be possible because now it's really coming into a place where they are going to, they're going to have to work through these issues. And we right now have Open AI owing, I think 20% of its profits to Microsoft. This is coming from the information. Open AI wants Microsoft to have. have roughly a 33% stake in the reshaped unit in exchange for foregoing its rights to future profits. If the companies don't change the 20% cut Open AI owes to Microsoft, Microsoft could be in line to get $35 billion in payments in 2030. When Open AI has projected, it will generate $174 billion in revenue. Now, Open AI is on track to generate $10 billion in revenue this year.

So that's one hell of a projection. It's a good projection. It's a good extrapolation. You got to extrapolate this. Kudos to the person who put together the spreadsheet and kudos to whichever investor believe the PowerPoint. Yeah. It really does come down to this.

It's like Open AI, again, they made the deal. They needed what Microsoft had. They agreed to like, all right, if we're doing really well, you're going to do really well. I don't see where Open AI has the wiggle room to back out of this. Well, they certainly have the wiggle room when Waymo comes to New York City and we declare AGI, which we'll get into later. But no, no, I agree that from a pure financial standpoint or a pure contractual standpoint,

they don't have a lot of wiggle room. They don't even have leverage, which is why I think that Hail Mary of the, whether it's through the FTC or that anti-competitive review, it feels like a Hail Mary, but it is because I don't think Open AI has much standing in any other direction. But again, I think going back to, as you said, they're on track to make $10 billion. They're losing tons of money. Microsoft's share is in the profit, not revenue. And there's no sign that they're going to be turning a profit, even though they're projecting

one by 2029. So I think in a certain way, a lot of this is moot anyways, other that, like from a financial standpoint, because the money is not going to actually change hands based on any kind of like current trajectory of revenue and profit. So it really is about control. And I think, like, it's telling that they are, they're competing incredibly directly. Like, we're seeing it more and more. They're going after the same use cases, customers, audiences.

I want to talk a little bit about the control part because that is, I think, crucial. So this is also a new detail that emerged in the reporting this week. The deal with Microsoft is that Microsoft get the right to use OpenAI's IP through 2030. which, by the way, if you do the math, is, like, well beyond a lot of these lab leaders' predictions for when we get artificial general intelligence. I don't know. I'm not bought in that AGI is going to be here by 2030, but we'll, luckily, hopefully, we'll be doing the show. And if it does, I'll, you know, eat crow on the air and put together my army of millions of agents to shame me on Twitter or whatever it is. But I'm going to create an agentic workflow just to shame Alex for when,

AGI is declared. I really wouldn't be very different from all the bots on Twitter that came after me for my perplexity acquisition take. But anyway, I digress. But there's another, this control is important because it's not just Open AI's IP. The areas that Open AI is expanding to also will end up competing with Microsoft and also are of interest to Microsoft to control. So here's another detail from the journal story.

Open AI at Microsoft are at a standoff over the terms of the startup. $3 billion acquisition of the coding startup, WinSurf. Microsoft currently has access to all of OpenAI's IP, but it offers its own AI coding product, GitHub co-pilot that competes with OpenAI. And OpenAI doesn't want Microsoft to have access to WinServe's intellectual property. I mean, if we think that coding is going to be

one of the big applications of GenAI in the near term, this is really bad for OpenAI because effectively the deal that it struck again serves to put it in service of Microsoft and not expand its own offer. You know what? Maybe I am starting to feel this anti-competitive posturing a little bit, because I guess it's true. They are competing incredibly directly. Like right now, even Microsoft co-pilot across the entire like 365 ecosystem competes very directly with chat GPT Enterprise, like basically this kind of always on assistant and agent, it's a direct

competitor. And I'm sure in like when salespeople are going in and there's been more reporting that salespeople at Microsoft have been complaining that they charge $30 per user per month. ChatGPT Enterprise, it's competing directly, but they could be discounting it, meaning they're trying to undercut Microsoft's pricing, which is kind of hilarious because they're heavily invested and part owned by Microsoft, but I think overall, it does present a good amount of problems in terms of they're trying to do the same things, going after the same customers, probably indirect competition when going through any kind of enterprise sales cycle. So at some point, something has to give.

And one could argue that Microsoft, by giving its compute because of its size as this tech giant is acting in an anti-competitive bullying fashion. So maybe if Lena Khan was still here, she might agree. But she's not. And let me point again to the fact that Open AI signed the deal. This is your deal. You signed it. You wouldn't be here without it. Wait, I'm trying to think of an example where a company ever took a lot of money and then calls that funding or acquisition anti-competitive. I mean, It actually, how could it happen? You know what you call that?

It's the Sam Altman special. Yeah, the Sam Altman special. Give me money. And then I'm going to go and say that you're bullying me for giving me that money and investment. But also, if you think about it, Microsoft holds Open AI's financial future in its hands as well. Because it's a capital intensive field, shall we say, to put it lightly, AI. You need money to build servers to grow. We have this Stargate thing that Open AI is trying to build.

your funders are not going to really be into giving you all that money if Microsoft really has control over your future or control over your a good chunk of your sizable profits. That's why I think SoftBink told Open AI you better convert to a for-profit or we're not going to, or we have the right to withdraw our money. So I just want to ask you this, Ranjan. I mean, what does Open AI have to stand on here? Again, funded by Microsoft, really built by Microsoft, competing with Microsoft, am I crazy that OpenAI shouldn't be able to dictate the terms to Microsoft?

Like, where in Microsoft interest is it to change this deal? No, no, okay. I agree. In any normal, like, flow of logic, they would have no right to dictate the terms given they not only took the deal, they probably pushed the deal themselves to work like this. because it basically, rather than kind of like traditional venture funding where they would have had to be growing even faster, seeing more returns more immediately, it really was this sweetheart deal where it was just kind of a lot of compute, a lot of like future looking projections and possible financial returns. But, I mean, it was a pretty sweet deal for them. to try to say that it was problematic or back out of it now,

again, is ridiculous, the Sam Maltman special, but it is becoming more, I don't want to say existential, but it's becoming more problematic right now the way this is unfolding. Do you think Microsoft may just say to Open AI, sorry, I know this is important to your future, but this is what we agreed upon. So even if you're worth a little less in the future

because of your inability to spend the money you need to get bigger. We're just going to keep it as is. Thanks for playing. Yeah, I think they're going to have to. And again, like, there's been a lot of chatter around in terms of the success of co-pilot products and whether they're actually working or how happy people are using them versus chat GPT Enterprise and OpenAI on the product side keeps swimming along. So at a certain point, maybe Microsoft does start to be a little bit anti-competitive and a little bit bullying,

and they have the deal in the contract to allow them to when Open AI sign that deal. So I could definitely see it start to, yeah, explode. I think this, the more I'm thinking about this, this is going to explode in some direction this year. And again, like I don't see how this is anti-competitive. I mean, it's simply a company trying to hold another company to the deal that it signed. And if you think about it, Microsoft has already been more than generous in allowing OpenAI to go and work with other companies for compute. It's allowed it to work with Oracle for Stargate. And there's recently news that it's going to work with Google to build the infrastructure it needs to run.

I'm trying. I'm trying here to take the other, in the interest of nuanced conversation, trying to figure out what could be anti-competit. but, I mean, I don't think it is in this context. In another context where, like, Microsoft, again, Microsoft using its ecosystem to push its own products in a preferential way, in any other context, you can start to see how that's kind of like classic anti-competitive behavior, but not when it's the company that you funded and gave them all the good terms and sweetheart and, like, I don't know, like, We will take, you know, projected profits down the road, even though you're losing billions of dollars. And that's all we're asking in exchange for giving you billions of dollars of compute and cash.

Like, I mean, yeah. I tried. I tried. I'm just imagining the meeting between Sam Altman and Sadia, where Sam Altman and Adela, where Sam goes, Satya, you helped Open AI become what it is today. We owe you billions of dollars. But here is a different idea. How about we owe you less billions of dollars? I mean, that is exactly what this is.

If anyone somehow could pull that off, I don't know. Sam Altman's pulled off a lot over the last few years, so who knows? I can just imagine Sadia Nadella just like hating this guy right now. Yeah. But also, let's not forget, there is a political element of this that could kind of start to filter in. And if they're serious and this really starts to kind of move into the realm of like federal review, let's not forget that Sam Altman and the Stargate announcement got some, got some good press for the administration is, I'm not sure at this exact moment where he stands with the

administration, but like overall, he's had some good moments. Satya, I don't think Satya was at the inauguration, right? Correct. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So like maybe starting to use that as a as a lever in this negotiation could be one way maybe but i think we like we started the trump administration with like zuck and sundar and bezos and musk all behind trump in the inauguration but he you know as tends to happen in politics he has bigger things to worry about right now the tariff stuff the trade war errone i don't think he even remembers who sam altman is and i think that's fair And now imagine, you know, you mentioned OpenAI and Microsoft selling the same thing, whether it's ChatGPT Enterprise or co-pilot, right? Very similar.

Imagine your Open AI and you are going to go into Federal Court to argue or make some to argue Microsoft is anti-competitive and you're doing this. This is from the information. A software company that has, that had purchased Open AI models through Microsoft over the past years was in talks to sign a new agreement to spend $8 million on the models over the next three years, according to a Microsoft salesperson involved in the talks. But that firm notified Microsoft that Open AIA had offered it a 20% discount on the same models, reducing the cost over three years by $1 million. Microsoft salespeople asked the company's finance department if they could match the discount but were rebuffed.

As a result, the firm told Microsoft that it was choosing to buy the models through Open A.I. instead? I mean, this is exactly. This is exactly what must be happening now and is going to only grow and scale these exact kind of negotiations. And again, Microsoft is a publicly traded company that has to show like certain projected financial metrics. Open AI can light cash on fire right now. So they can they can be pretty aggressive and literally undercut at every step of the way using Microsoft's capital and cash and compute. Could you imagine being that salesperson? I mean, that's a pretty nice commission on an $8 million deal, I would imagine.

Yeah. Have that taken from underneath you, same model from Open AI. His partnership is in trouble. So let's just look ahead. Ron, what do you think is going to happen with Open AI and Microsoft? Like, what are the scenarios you're thinking about? I somehow still think Open AI comes out. ahead, mainly because the product at the consumer level, it's not going to just be crushed

by Microsoft in that conventional way anytime soon. I think from like a courtroom contractual legal standpoint, I think Microsoft certainly has both like standing and like the legal firepower to, you know, hold this over open AI. But I don't know. I don't see. I don't see. have what Microsoft can do to stop this at this moment like they can't be like just shut it down they can't be like don't you have a separate sales force but you are not allowed to undercut our pricing so what what could they do i think that they just say we're not making we're not going to budge an inch and we're not going to let you get this money we're not going to let you IPO unless we get some better terms stuff that like holds to the earlier agreements that we had and maybe

they end up owning 40% of the company or something like that and everybody just has to go about their business. But I don't think Microsoft, you know, made what some people called like the tech bet of the century in Open AI only to lose it because Open AI worked. Oh, that's a, okay. I can, I can agree with that. I think it's, yeah, I think that's a good way to put it. I have an idea why Sam Altman may have thought this would work with Microsoft. Go on. Go on. That is that he's using chat GPT too much because there was a study this week and written up in time that chat chepti may be eroding critical thinking skills.

Here's the story. Does chat chpity harm critical thinking abilities? A new study from researchers at MIT Media Lab has returned some concerning results. study divided 54 subjects, 18 to 39-year-olds, from the Boston area, into three groups, and asked them to write several SAT essays using Open AIs chat Chipt, Google search engine, and nothing at all. Researchers used an EEG. I guess that's, yeah, it's a machine that records riders' brain activities across 32 regions and found that of the three groups, chat GPT users had the lowest brain engagement and consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels over the

course of several months, chat chip PT users got lazier with each subsequent essay and often resorted to copy and paste by the end of the study. There were some people on X that were being like, look at the way that these people designed this study, they hate AI, they were trying to set traps for people to fall into. It studies garbage. My reaction here is totally not surprising. I mean, are we even going to debate that this is happening? Well, one, if Microsoft investing in Open AI was the tech bed of the century, I think you just nailed the segue of the century with that transition right there. I'm trying, man.

But, okay, so this study, I was thinking about a lot because how or if generative AI will totally alter our brains is something I have wondered about. But I always think of maps. And I literally, like, I grew up in the Boston area. And when I was first driving and before any kind of Google Maps, I literally knew how to get all over the city, all around my town, just by memory. I've been in New York for many years now and have a car now. And I cannot get to JFK or LaGuardia driving without Google Maps. Like, I don't know directions from driving.

But I think that's okay. I mean, if the entire, like, internet collapsed, I might be in a little trouble there. But the way I learned kind of location is completely changed. But I can now do it at a scale that it was unimaginable before. I can go into a new locality and, like, just move around and navigate. So it's a different way of using the brain. I think this is, again, writing an SAT essay was already, it's such a specific kind of mindless thing, I think. Like, in reality, the act of doing it is not actual, like, intelligence in my mind.

And I say this is someone who went through the process. It's like, it's, so to use that really specific thing, I do think is kind of misleading because taking a very mindless task. And then, of course, the person using chat GPT, it's not going to trigger the level of brain activity because it was already a mindless task anyways. And it's perfect for generative. AI. So for me, I think our brain, the way we learn is going to change. I think that's good. We have to adapt the way like learning is done for generative AI. But I don't think people are going to get dumber. Maybe that's optimistic. But I think this is one of the points is a lot of the stuff, let's say you're thinking about using this for work, a lot of the stuff that you're doing at work

will get your brain sort of deep into the material and help you think critically about a broader business activity. I'm just saying this for this sake of argument because I do believe LLMs could be like really useful in the workplace. I don't, I think less of that in education. Like if people are going home, not just writing their SATs, but like writing like essays for class, they're not going to retain anything because you actually, the pain that you endure in that writing is where you retain. But I actually like, just to sort of move from education to work, I wonder if this will make better workplaces if people are using more AI and whether it will make more competitive companies if people are using more AI because of the impact that it could

have on the brain. Hold on, all that. Just quickly on the education thing, I think it really is going to demand, like, rethinking how the classroom works. And I think that's good. Like, writing essays, as you said, it was the enduring the pain of writing is where you learned in the past. That potentially goes away. But like presenting the essay, having to be able to defend it, like more Socratic learning, like, do you think this is going to be net bad for education? Or do you think we just have to update the way we teach? I think we've had this discussion before. I am hopeful that we can find a way to teach better.

But I think if you marry this style of learning with our current education system, you end up getting a disaster. I won't argue with that, I guess. The flip side, then you also get into, to me, the most. optimistic part of this is the democratization of learning and, like, access to knowledge, learning tools. Like, now the fact that anyone in the world can, wherever you are just with an internet connection, can actually, like, create entire curriculum tailored to you. Like, I think it's going to really be good for learning at a large scale. I think in isolated cases, a couple of 18 to 39 year olds in Boston writing an SAT essay. Yes, that format is not going to be

good and it's going to be changed. Like people will just cheat their way out of it and not actually develop their brain. But I kind of look at this like what YouTube did for learning. This is going to be at like a thousand X scale. Yeah. So Dwar Keshe, after we turned the cameras off for our conversation on Wednesday, it was like, yeah, I just basically drop stuff like papers. I'm trying to learn and have chat GPT use the Socratic method and help teach me that way. So I think, yeah, hopefully we will develop new modes of learning, but I also think we're living at a time where we've known we need new modes of learning for a long as time. And we're still doing the rote memorization and spit back stuff that we've been doing forever. Now, I'm sure they're going to

be education professionals who are listening to this, who are going to know much more than me and say that there are areas where this is improving. I don't doubt that. But by and large, I think my generalization about the education system, really across the globe holds true. So let's talk about work because we have limited time today and we should definitely get it to this Andy Jassy message to Amazon employees about AI in the workplace. He says, we have strong convictions that AI agents will change how we all work and live. Agents let you tell them what you want, often a natural language, and do things like scour the web and various data sources, summarize results, engage in deep research, write

code, find anomalies, highlight interesting insights, translate language and code into other variants and automate a lot of tasks that consume our time. There will be billions of these agents across every company and in every imaginable field. There will also be agents that routinely do things for you outside of work, from shopping to travel to daily chores and tasks. Many of these agents have yet to be built, but make no mistake, they're coming and coming fast. Can I just pause here before we get to the fact that he's going to sort of now, you know, soon pledge to decrease Amazon's workforce to be like, come on. I mean, we've heard this promise for how many years now and it's not there.

And what makes him so confident? And of course, he's closer to the technology than I am. But what makes him so confident to think that this is going to happen? I would push back. I think the vision that's being presented is going to happen. In terms of like time scale when that happens, I think, uh, like again, the same way learning has to change. Work is definitely going to change. A lot of the repetitive things that we've all done over and over again, uh, start to be automated in some way. I mean, even thinking about like

this podcast, being able to upscale our audio, being able to, uh, edit very quickly, getting video clips from Riverside, like this is something that would not have been possible a few years ago, even like two years ago at the scale that we're able and quality we're able to do for our listeners. A little plug there. But, you know, like overall, I think it's definitely going to happen. I think I'll agree that it's in every CEO's interest to say this, especially if you're a publicly traded company. It just is kind of easy to say we're going to be getting efficiency gains and stuff. But I do think from a messaging standpoint, it's important because this will force the workforce to actually start learning how to use these tools. And I think that's whoever,

whichever companies like figure that out. And I've thought about this a lot. Like, are the winners of the next like decade going to be AI first AI native companies or is it going to be giants that actually are able to transform themselves? And right now it feels like it could be AI-native AI-first companies. So I think the Giants got to get moving a bit more. Yeah, you're hitting on it. So here's, here's Jassie's another paragraph from me. He says, as we roll out more generative AI and agents, it should change the way our work is done. We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today and more people doing other types of jobs. It's hard to know exactly where this nets out over time. But in the

next few years, we expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company. Wall Street Journal comments on this, the real message Andy Jassy is sending to employees on AI. Jassy's memo likely has another aim. More tech leaders are propagating the view that job security in the age of AI means learning to use it fast. Jassy echoed this belief in his memo to workers this week, imploring them to be curious about the technology. Those who do will be well positioned to have a high impact and help us reinvent the company by effectively threatening a pink slip to those who don't Jassy at least guaranteed that the AI workshops at Amazon's offices will be humming. A little cynical.

Well, actually, you left out. I was thinking about this when you dropped in this quote. So the quote, you're not going to lose your job to an AI, but you're going to lose your job to someone who uses AI. It's attributed here to Jensen Huang, who's told the Milken Institute in late May. I feel I've been hearing that for years now, haven't you? Yeah, that's not like a Jensen exclusive. I know. I was trying to figure out. I was actually looking up like who the original, like who we can actually give that quote to.

But because I feel that if you want to sound smart in AI conversation, just look at someone very seriously and say, people aren't going to lose their jobs to an AI. They're going to lose their jobs to somebody who uses AI. And you will sound like the smartest person in the room. So. Sounds right to me. It's brilliant. It's brilliant. It's the future. So I guess like going, let's just tie this section up. Do you think that, do you really feel that Amazon is going to contract because of AI? And if it does, will it be AI in the headquarters or will it be AI sort of in the form of robots in the warehouses? I think he's talking to headquarters employees here. But I think it's still a better chance that you'll get like robots with better dexterity that replace people in the fulfillment centers.

versus reducing workforce. See, I would actually disagree that Amazon, in the front line side of it, had brought AI in automation at such a level that is unparalleled versus other companies. So they already got this out into the frontline workers. So I think this is more geared at HQ. And maybe he's just telling them

to roll out Alexa Plus because I bought an Echo Show after your episode episode and I'm still waiting for Alexa Plus. I think you are as well. So maybe that's the real message here. I mean, he mentioned Alexa Plus in his memo. And I was like, well, where is it? Well, well. But I do think that we're going to see more CEOs with messages like this. And I think this Wall Street Journal writer is totally right. That more than an imminent downsizing, it's just going to be like, please use the tools. Because like you meant you hinted at earlier, it's a lot of these co-pilots or whatever are just kind of sitting dormant. And that's why like I read Jesse's

like big like vision setting paragraph about the agent. He also talks about how agents will help work, you know, the work workforce and therefore, you know, you won't need as many people. And I'm just like, I'll believe it when I see it at this point. It's like Apple Intelligence for me. Ah, okay. See, I'm still going to, to me, if you have an AI illiterate workforce, you're not going to see it. The technology is not going to be enough to actually make it successful. So maybe again, the like the implicit message in the, this is just become AI literate because then you'll be able to actually build these agents, build these workflows, do all of this.

You know, I'm going to agree with you here. I do think, I think we both agree. There's a tremendous amount of power in AI today if you learn how to use it right. And if I was a CEO of a big company like that, I would definitely be imploring the workforce to, you know, get their hands dirty and get using these products. Now would I say, I'm going to fire you if you don't? Probably not. But I do think that it's a good thing to be like, hey, you should.

should, you should start using these. And there are ways to do it. Maybe, I mean, if you have to go to the workshop if you need to, but they, they can already help tremendously in certain workflows. Yeah, do learn how to use it. Otherwise, we're going to do an aqua-hire position of your biggest enemy and nemesis and, and be wary. That's right.

All right. So we're going to go to break and come back and talk about Mark Zuckerberg's latest on his hiring spree. Before we do, I just wanted to say that we've seen some ratings come in, and I definitely appreciate everybody rating the show. I know I ask often, but again, it's the only publicly available metric to show our size and the fact that we have an engaged listenership. So if you could rate five stars on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, that would be much appreciated. I try not to ask too often. Sometimes we get someone that will listen to the show once and come in and drop a one-star review, and obviously it's never fun to see that.

So we know we have engaged listeners if you're listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and can rate us. That would be great. And either way, we appreciate you being here. All right. We'll be back right after this. Hey, everyone. Let me tell you about The Hustle Daily Show, a podcast filled with business, tech news, and original stories to keep you in the loop on what's trending. More than 2 million professionals read The Hustle's daily email for its irreverent and informative takes on business and tech news.

Now, they have a daily podcast called The Hustle Daily Show, where their team of writers break down the biggest business headlines in 15 minutes or less and explain why you should care about them. So search for The Hustled Daily Show and your favorite podcast app like the one you're using right now. And we're back here on Big Technology Podcast Friday edition where we are happy or intrigued to report that Mark Zuckerberg is still spending the money. And this week, last week, we had the $14 billion aquihersition of Alexander Wang and the Scale AI. I don't know, leadership, talent, crew. This week, the money doubles.

Zuckerberg tried to spend $32 billion on Eli Sitskever's AI startup Safe Super Intelligence. Satskever ultimately turned meta down. This is according to the information, but the company is now in talks to hire Safe Super Intelligence's co-founder and CEO Daniel Gross.

And earlier this week, there were also reports that META was in talks to hire Gross, as well as former GitHub CEO, Nat Friedman. Meta is also reportedly talking to taking a stake in Friedman and Gross's joint venture firm NFDG, which was invested in prominent AI startups such as perplexity and character AI. Gross and Friedman could significantly beef up Meta's AI superintelligence lap. So this idea that I brought up last week that it's about the talent. You can now you're getting to the point where compute matters, but talent is starting to matter more. It seems like, you know, this is really coming to

fruition and Zuck is just going to spend until he has this team of all-stars. I think Aquahir-Zition, while said in a bit of jest last week by you, is going to go down as one of the bigger trends of the year. We're seeing it again. And I mean, in a way, even like the deep-mind acquisitions of long ago in AI with the big tech giants, maybe aqua-hiresition has been the modus operandi this entire time and is going to continue to be like, rather than we're going to buy your customers, your product, it's actually we're just buying the talent, and that's all that matters.

So, yeah, I think we could see more of this. It's going to be interesting, but also at a certain point, when do you have enough talent? Like, what's the inflection point that you're like, okay, we got everything we need. We're like $100 billion down. we have a team of AI Avengers, what do we do now? I mean, you optimize the models and you try to come up with new techniques and all these talented leaders will have people working underneath them that will be able to execute, you would think, the new strategies that they try to pull off.

But I think it's kind of notable that he wasn't able to get Ilya. I mean, it's a moon shot. Yeah, $32 billion for a pre-product startup. Right. Not a bad deal. That's a moonshot to try to get him because we know that he's definitely, I would say, like fairly ideological, left Google to go to Open AI because of the promise of the safety work, left open AI after some weird stuff happened with Sam.

And I think Kevin Ruse from The Times has a pretty interesting take on this. He says the problem with trying to buy your way into the AGI race in 2025 is that top-tier AI researchers are already rich. I think we have like one to four years before super intelligence and don't want to spend those years building AI companions for Instagram for Instagram. Actually, okay, that's a good point. I mean, first of all, I think Ilya is worth $32 billion just for the branding of super intelligence and bringing ASI to market and letting us move past AGI.

But I think that's fair that, yeah, I mean, if you're already a researcher by like disposition and you are worth a couple hundred mill, you don't want to build like an ad optimizer for Facebook and Instagram fake companion, a Chloe Kardashian, like replica. You would like to be getting to your ASI. So that makes sense. It's going to be a bit harder, which makes more sense that like a Nat Friedman, GitHub CEO, that persona of like a true business builder, they're the ones who actually are going to be more open to this kind of thing, I think. Now, in theory, there is a separation between the research side of meta's AI efforts and the product side. And I believe there is. But it's clear that in companies like meta, like companies like

Google, the research and product sides are coming closer together. So it could be like, yeah, you come, come in, like even to the researchers that he's going after, come in and we'll give you money and you can try to build the best AI model. I think there'll probably be some reluctance, at least at the beginning, to believe that. I mean, especially you saw what ads came to WhatsApp after the promise. I think there was a promise never to bring ads onto WhatsApp. They're there now. I'll just say this one thing.

The best way to make this work is to build a product that works. If they can really start advancing the status quo, then they'll get more people involved and, you know, it snowballs. But I think, yeah, you have to do that with talent and he's doing going out to the talent. So I think the strategy is smart. I will agree that they have the distribution in place. so that's not going to be an issue so maybe it is fair that they have to put their entire bet on just improving the model significantly in the short term and definitely not falling behind

and then they can win solely on distribution okay one quick rant on WhatsApp what's app yeah do the what's that bads thing all over New York last like in the high line in New York there's these huge out-of-home marketing activation of like it was just kind of ridiculous it was like WhatsApp, we don't read your messages. WhatsApp, we can't see anything. Like, there was kind of these blurred out, I don't know, big, like, plastic things that you would stand behind and they would take a picture of you. It was just weird.

First of all, any time you're told over and over, we don't read your messages, I'm just asking, why are you having to shout this repeatedly? Are you reading my messages? My other favorite thing is they also just in the corner had a little waiver that by taking part of this activation, you are releasing the rights to be filmed for marketing purposes, which is classic meta. But what I loved was, so I started seeing this a number of podcasts I listened to. These ads started showing up. There was like big billboards in Times Square showing this. And then a week later, WhatsApp announces it's going to be launching advertising within the app for the first time in its life.

Oh, there you go. Yeah, yeah. Never change meta, never change. Okay, one more thing I want to talk about. I just saw a report that meta discussed buying perplexity before investing in scale AI. Hey, get off Apple's lawn. All right. This is Tim Cook's deal to do and Tim Cook's alone.

You lose your finder's fee if meta gets them. That's true. I know I actually been DMing with the chief business officer of perplexity who told me that the deal is not likely, but the meta scale deal was so unlikely that I feel we, and I feel we aren't living in a world of likelies. I read that as a maybe, but also he told me that Apple and perplexity haven't had no MNA discussions. So if this meta thing is true, Mark Zuckerberg has done more M&A discussions with perplexity than anybody else. I think if meta can get perplexity, it should do it. I think that would be smart. It would. I mean, speaking of anti-competitive, though, I mean... Meta doesn't have any search. Actually, that's a fair point, and suddenly search becomes more competitive, and this pushes back against Google. All right. Approved. Okay. Thank you. That was a very easy. I approved process.

And I expect that it would be the same level of ease as we would see with the federal regulators. Okay, sorry, I said one last thing. One last thing on this, I got a text from someone who listens, who said, What is Facebook doing? These assholes couldn't get along at OpenAI as it was. I think they're going to get along thin meta. I mean, of course, it's a disparate group, right? It's not exactly all Open AI alumni. But that is one of the biggest risks when you bring in big personalities

is that they will be too big to, like someone on Twitter floated, like, wait, Ilya's going to report to Alexander Wang. What's the idea here? Oh, my God. I would love to. That's just the reality show. and podcast-worthy content to give us material alone would be worth the $32 billion. Oh, yeah.

I mean, I would love to, I mean, I think our numbers would double immediately with weekly reports of how things are going. Do it, Mark. On inside there. Do it, please. For the sake of big technology listenership. Thank you, everybody, for listening. All right, let's end here with the closest sign that we're nearing AGI.

Waymo is about to start testing in New York City. We also have Tesla starting to roll out its pilot in Austin. I think that's coming in the coming days. It's going to be with safety drivers. And Waymo will also be with drivers in the front seat until they get approval to drive. But like we said, if Waymo starts rolling around New York without any drivers, you and I here on the show will declare AGI. Yeah, we said there's currently the ARC AGI benchmark, which is one of the industry standards. We've proposed the win AGI W-I-N-W-I-N-W-M-O in New York benchmark.

You roll through, like, Broadway and 34th in a driverless Waymo. AGI is here. Cancel the Microsoft OpenAI contract. A-G-I is declared. It's done. And what a storyline that would be if we see Waymo's going down Fifth Avenue. And then Sam Altman follows along and says, I'm free. You later, son, yeah. ChatGPT is half off this week.

Greatest marketing stunt of all time. I could see it happening. All right, Ron John, great to speak with you as always. Thanks for coming on. All right. See you next week. All right, everybody. Thank you for listening next week on Wednesday. We should have legendary investment analyst Tom Lee coming on.

So stay tuned for that. And then Ranjan and I will be back next Friday. Thanks for listening. And we'll see you next time on Big Technology. podcast.