TBPN Live - Palantir's AIPCon 10, Ramp Hits $44B, 60 Minutes Considers Rogan | Diet TBPN

Episode Date: June 4, 2026

Diet TBPN delivers the best of today’s TBPN episode in 30 minutes. TBPN is a live tech talk show hosted by John Coogan and Jordi Hays, streaming weekdays 11–2 PT on X and YouTube, with each episode posted to podcast platforms right after.Described by The New York Times as “Silicon Valley’s newest obsession,” the show has recently featured Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, Mark Cuban, and Satya Nadella.TBPN is made possible by:Ramp - https://ramp.comPublic - https://public.comCisco - https://www.cisco.comConsole - https://www.console.comCrowdStrike - https://www.crowdstrike.comFigma - https://www.figma.comMongoDB - https://www.mongodb.comNYSE - https://www.nyse.comRailway - https://railway.comShopify - https://www.shopify.com/Follow TBPN: https://TBPN.comhttps://x.com/tbpnhttps://open.spotify.com/show/2L6WMqY3GUPCGBD0dX6p00?si=674252d53acf4231https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/technology-brothers/id1772360235https://www.youtube.com/@TBPNLive

We are live from Palantir AIPCon. Big news from Ramp. Today, massive fundraise. We're going to cover it in a little bit. But first, we've got to talk. Oh, is it still going? I like it. The Ramp song's back.

This was early days. We really stopped about Ramp so much. Turn it into a song. The topic of conversation in D.C. It's still in AI world, but instead of talking about approving models before they're released today, it's about the bio threat. Brandon Gorell wrote,

in the TPPN newsletter today. The great houses of AI have united behind the bio threat. There's actually a lot more to that because it was a big long list of signatories from AI, but also from the bio world and biotech and even startups, we've seen former guests of the show sign on. I'm excited to bring some of those folks back

on the show in the coming weeks and hear more about this because I have this belief that as AI advanced, we got cyber because it was such a tight feedback loop, such a tight verifiable reward, reinforcement learning works really well in that context bio has some similar characteristics and it was a very tangible Y2K style moment exactly where there was let's just say a powerful business strategy yeah is it yeah it was like is it over you start thinking about the consequences of this and you don't need to get to a GI super

intelligence god you can just have a really powerful tool that creates a new problem and that creates full employment for Nikesha rora over at Palo Alto networks who we had a chance to talk to yesterday and he's been very fortunate in implementing the solutions to this cybersecurity threats posed by new AI systems, some of the new AI capabilities that are rolling out. But bio might be next. And so it's exciting to see that the great houses of AI are uniting behind the bio threat. So let's take you through this. So in 1981, a group of researchers published the primary structure of the polio virus genome in the journal Nature.

So they were basically open sourcing the sequence for making polio, which just a few years earlier, Polio, I think, was on the decline by 1981, but a very, very problematic virus. It's an RNA virus, meaning that its nucleo bases or building blocks are ACGU, if you're familiar with RNA, adazine, cytosine, and urosil. Put more plainly, thanks Brandon Gorell. He says, when the researchers published the primary structure of the polio virus, they gave the world the literal sequence of polio virus building blocks in order from start to finish. by the mid-20th century, before mass vaccination, polio was paralyzing and killing more than half a million people per year worldwide. So you have this pretty deadly virus, killing more than half a million people per year worldwide, and you have just open-source it. What happens?

So in 2002, researchers synthesized infectious polio virus from its publicly available sequence data. So they didn't actually need any of the polio virus RNA to start. They didn't need it on hand. It's not like they took a little sample and they just cloned it up and made it bigger. they just took the data and they made the actual virus. So this is the shape of the threat. If there's a new virus or an existing virus or a forgotten about virus and you have the code to it, you can potentially print that RNA and then have the virus in your hands even if you don't have a sample. Instead, these researchers in 2002, they were able to take the published sequence,

chemically synthesized short DNA fragments, assemble them into a full-length DNA copy of the poliovirus genome, and then use the DNA to make the viral RNA to fully recover the infectious virus. So in 2005, researchers used these same technologies to reconstruct the Spanish flu, a virus in 1918 that killed 675,000 Americans and had a 2 to 3% mortality rate among those infected, very, very dangerous stuff. So basically, these two reconstructed viruses showed that having a physical virus on hand was no longer necessary as source material to create viruses. All you needed was the blueprints, as long as you have the code,

literally just like taxed in a text file, a bunch of ATGU, you can go and make this as long as you have the equipment on hand, but that is getting democratized as well. And that's what this AI letter is all about. So that's a situation that we're still in today, except now that we have AI, there are easier ways to potentially reconstruct DNA sequences that could create new viruses. So yesterday, Demis, Heshabis, Sam Altman, Dario Amadeh, Alex Wang, and dozens of other high-profile leaders across AI tech policy nucleic acid synthesis and biotech signed an open letter called in support of mandatory nucleic acid synthesis screening and record keeping you might have seen it on the timeline and at first glance brandon here assumed and i assume the same thing assumed it was another

press release from a frontier lab claiming it had just discovered new capabilities in one of its internal models that would ultimately lead to catastrophe a lot of this like do fear-based marketing has been happening so that was sort of the natural reaction and that's what brain some people's reaction would be, were we not doing record keeping here already? That's a great question. And Brandon actually did answer that. But it's not just a PR stunt. And it's not a new capability. They're not saying that the models can just create a novel virus, you know, one shot, like that that is solved yet. It's not there, but they see it as something that's coming down the pipe. And this letter is not this dangerous new capability.

It's more asking the U.S. government to force nucleic acid synthesis companies to screen orders for sequences of concern. So, hey, somebody just ordered this looks a lot like a virus. Like, what are we doing here? You said that you were trying to treat cancer or you said that you were, you know, trying to make a new peptide and all of a sudden you're asking for polio virus or something that looks like polio virus. Like let's let's dig into this. That's where they're going with that. They also need to verify the legitimacy of the customer and to keep a record of what they're sending and to whom that's a crazy one that I'm sure you're like, wait, would they weren't keeping records? were a little bit, he gets into this.

So he says, the reason the letter is coming out now is that the threat of nucleic acid synthesis sequences, sequencing, getting into the wrong hands has been enhanced by AI. So anyone with an AI tool in the future could in theory, if the models don't have safeguards on them, could create a sequence, and then they go to a nucleic acid sequence company,

get printed, send it to them, mix it up, boom, they got a virus, not going to go. So most of the global nucleic acid synthesis industry has already signed up some of this. They did they started this in 2009 with what's called the international gene synthesis consortium and roughly 80% of commercial synthesis is on board but membership a great so 20% are just hanging out now we're good. 80% of nuclear weapons are safely stored. Don't ask about the other 20%. That's kind of what this letter is getting at because 80% it was a

good first effort 2009 it's been 16 17 years. We haven't had to yeah but there's a new reason to to go further, let's get that last 20%. That's what they're asking for. Membership is not a strong guarantee that they're actually screening or keeping records of their customers because it's voluntary. The 80% number is also self-reported, for example, and a bunch of other factors contribute to the relative flimsiness of agreement. So it's not government-ver- So you can opt into this program by just saying that you're opting into it, but then even the reporting once you're opted in is voluntary. So I think the way this works is the International Genith Synthesis Consortium is probably a a nonprofit NGO, you know, non-governmental organization. All the companies, they volunteer,

80% of commercial synthesis volume has opted into this. And then this organization, the International Gene Synthesis Consortium, they say, hey, we've looked at the market and we're covering about 80% has opted into this. We're on board with 80%. And the government isn't coming in and checking the records. They're not actually saying, okay, well, we have a different number because we're the government and you have your this number let's verify this number it's self-reported by that organization but there's no reason not to trust that organization necessarily bunch of other factors contribute to the relative flimsiness of this agreement HHS also has guidance in place around the issue but

again it's voluntary meaning that the possibility of bad actors getting their hands on dangerous nucleic acid sequences at least from American companies still cannot be ruled out overall it's good to see industry leaders signing this letter and doubly refreshing that the letter is not yet another warning of a apocalyptic AI Doom, which I think the public has unfortunately come to expect from announcements like this. Hopefully, the relevant legislators are paying attention and can make this happen in short order. So I thought that was a good, a good breakdown. And I agree with a lot of that. Andrew Curran also has some deep dive on this with some more of the signatories.

He shares screenshots of all of these. And it really is everyone. Yeah, Y Combinator. Patrick Collison. DeepMind, Microsoft, Interconnects, AI, Harvard, tons of stuff. and then over in the nucleic acid synthesis industry of twist bioscience, ANSA Emerald Cloud Lab, and Kathleen McMahon from Valthos is on here. So good news, but obviously, and just an early step, this is just an open letter to the government saying,

hey, we think you should, we want to support this. We think that the government should start thinking about this. The other news in the bio world. Yeah, I mean, the news is just that there's incredible momentum in biotech. It feels like it. It feels like it. After. Yeah. Momentum, but not like volume, not scale yet.

Because you're looking at three trillion dollar IPOs going out this year, potentially. So much news in AI, microns at a trillion. Every chip stock is, you know, in the hundreds of billions trillions. This is much smaller, but. But it's notable because biotech had been left for dead in some ways. We had a biotech investor on probably 14, months ago at this point who said I don't even know I mean just looking at the return so far I don't know why you would invest in this asset class yeah but of

course every asset class goes through that kind of phase and clearly there's a lot of momentum and they should be you would expect that biotech would be similarly power law driven maybe not as extreme but if you pull out SpaceX open AI andthropic from power law capital yes but I feel like the biotech community has a little bit more of like a culture of like base hits doubles triples where they flip companies pretty frequently. Yeah, we had that, didn't we have a guy on that had sold like three companies. We didn't have money. We were to die in it. Yep. And then he joined

another company and sold it for three billion like the next day. Uh, and so that, so anyways, you have isomorphic labs spun out of, uh, deep mind, uh, coin base, uh, or not coin base, but, but Brian spun out or like founded new limit. Uh, you have retro biosciences. They just raised a new round. We're going to get Jacob on the show as well. Um, Altos Labs, uh, Jeff the Chad from Amazon as this post puts it. And then, uh, Anthropic obviously acquired coefficient bio as well. But Jensen and Larry Ellison and Oracle are also doing stuff. So there's a lot of activity.

It's very fun. And I hope we're going to be able to cover this a lot more in the new future. Yeah. At what point do the, uh, at what point does like a Pfizer or Johnson and Johnson and Johnson start joining the press release economy of just coming. I'm not saying it'd be a good thing, but coming out and saying we believe we're right at the... Because there are partnerships all the time that happen and they're always just like

tucked a little bit deeper in the Wall Street Journal because AI is dominating and even private credit takes the front seat to the bio news but there's a whole bunch of deal making going on. Anyway, there's other deal making going on in FinTech we're going to talk about ramps raised today. What's going on in Rampland? $44 billion valuation. Whoa. Really, really solid traction just, you know, every 12, 18 months, sometimes much quicker. Sometimes they do two rounds in two weeks, but really solid progress. They raised $750 million at a $44 billion valuation. Last time we grew this fast, we were 120th of the size. Yeah, this is the most notable thing to me. Yeah. Lots of chatter on the timeline around, you know,

other fintech valuations. You compare... Apocalypse. Yeah, well, yeah, you compare them to like, you know, Ramp is now worth more than PayPal. Okay. PayPal has 32 billion of revenue. Yeah. But PayPal certainly has, I would say, you know, probably negative momentum. Yeah. Whereas Ramp has incredible momentum. And this, this is the standout line. They were 120th the size the last time they were growing this fast. And so, yeah, just really, really, really, really impressive execution. Yeah. And, incredible opportunity still yeah so eric took to the timeline posted an essay about the third pillar comparing the previous eras of value creation the two pillars uh people and vendors dating back to 600

bcc if you're not thinking in millennia what are you doing here tokens emerged as the third pillar in twenty twenty six ad and he calls it the quadrillion token blind spot boil down 500 years of finance and it's really just three questions who spent what was it worth it what's the bill next month I mean people get caught up and all these crazy things I mean you see this is like marketing I'm sure and and ad buying where people will do all these crazy analyses and R OAS and all those other stuff and like and it's always useful to zoom out and just be like okay we spend a bunch of money did the bank balance go up in this company or not all all personal and business finance finance at the end eventually comes down to are we making more money

when we're spending yeah and i think uh yeah eric is is right to dive super deep into like token optimization and thinking about the tools that they're building but then at the same time like not not don't get lost in the sauce and like actually zoom out and try and understand like what is the core value that you're delivering to your customer it is answering that question so fantastic news over there there's some other fundraising news sabi the beanie bc i company is getting preempted at 35 million at 500 million post this is a leak from arfor rock we'll see where it goes this is huge for you why because you are a beanie guy i do like beanie you love to throw out a beanie a beanie in the morning keeps it together yeah

yeah like a beanie uh very very i it's interesting i think that uh this format of course i'm sure they can adapt it to other types of hats yeah but this format certainly maybe makes it harder to build momentum in places like California, at least Southern California, Arizona. Biggabunks creative directors though. Yeah. Huge. Huge. Huge potential. Silver Lake, silver like every. It's not too hard to change your beanie into a hat, a cowboy hat. Like that's just extra leather around it. You can wrap the beanie in the in the in the cowboy hat. You can here's what's interesting though. So Arfer Rock. Yeah. Usually it's pretty dialed, pretty dialed pretty dial. It's almost like he has inside information. It's almost like,

like he somehow got, but I mean, we've talked about the game theory of like, do, does he work at a real like tier one venture capital firm that's saying is like, what's the benefit of leaking everything? Is he a lawyer that's seeing all the docs turn to turn around? I mean zero benefit for a lawyer. Right. Um, the rush of getting likes on the timeline is pretty universal. That's true. That's true. Just like, I need a banger. At a fund. Okay. For sure. Yeah. And, uh, I don't, I don't know anything else. Um,

but he's always taken the view that it can be helpful to the founder to build. Because a bunch of people are going to see this, that this didn't sort of land in their deal flow, land on their desk, and they're going to reach out. So it does create momentum, but it can certainly be annoying for teams as well. This was notable, though. So 200 million of LOI from B-to-B customers. And so very curious what the enterprise play is here. Does that mean like through hospital networks or through like the health care system?

Or is it like Mark Zuckerberg wants to go further? He wants to track the brain waves of the employees. Yeah, we're going to track your screen and your brain. I mean, it could go either way because like you imagine like NeuroLink has had a bunch of traction and a bunch of amazing. I saw Nolan the first patient P0 on Rogan talking about playing cod with the neurolake. And you can imagine that a certain point like sort of partnership. They have multiple hat form factors. There we go.

We're good. I was getting really hung up on the beanie. And like there's so many different enterprise or B2B context you're in a, you're in a warehouse in Dallas, Texas in the summer. Yeah, you don't know, maybe this is $200 million LIs from REI or Patagonia. You know, you don't know. Who makes beanie's? What's the Carhart? Carhart makes a great beanie.

There you go. You don't know any of this. stuff. You're completely out to lunch. I went through the Beanie economy. Beanie Market Map. It's a Goldman. Extremely optimistic. What they said? Goldman expects SpaceX's AI revenue to surge 100 times by 2030.

Huge. Big, big number. I looked at this title and I was thinking like, okay, what's GROC's actual revenue today if you take out? Yeah. What is their AI revenue today? Is it just GROC subscriptions plus GROC tokens? Do you include X subscriptions? Do you include cloud vendor and neocloud contracts? There's a bunch of different ways to measure it. The smaller the number, the easier it is to 100x, but we have seen other AI companies, 100x revenues over two years, over three years, four years.

Like the 100X has become, it's not a one of one scenario. It's happened multiple times. And so we have seen these charts many times. And if they execute well, this is entirely positive. possible it is extremely other other notable data points from the road show yeah they the forecast anticipates SpaceX making about 360 billion of capital expenditures through 2028 jensen somewhere this pumping very excited about that number be a new hyper scaler should be unsurprising but very aggressive yeah and the new invidia foundation model is also live

we'll have to go to check it out and look at the model card soon see how it's benchmarking. But we got to move on to benchmark because there's new news in the benchmark world. So, Benchmark. Moment of silence? Moment of silence. For the end of an era. I guess they have been very focused for decades.

The last tier one, there was a pure venture capital. What did they get called again? Internet boys or something? Soft boys. There's some book about that. That was very funny. But E-boys was a E-boys. E-boys is a hit Pee Boys.

of a book title but the subtitle makes up for it and it's a fantastic book and it's a very interesting story where they actually let a journalist come in and see how they be boys the true story of the six tall men yeah see they they you clearly wrote the subtitle and was like I got to take the edge off of this it's too glazy I got a day I got to take it down a notch and so he threw the e-boys in there but anyways big moves from benchmark what's going to Clark has a scoop in the journal benchmark has raised Two billion. Two billion.

Two new funds. Wow. And most notably, their first ever dedicated growth fund. Hmm. Did they hire anyone who has experienced growth investing? Who could possibly do growth investing there? Someone who's maybe like a bond capital and then founders fund, then maybe Kleiner, like someone with that. Yeah, somebody with that kind of background, I think would be fantastic.

Pretty good for growth investing. Now that you say that, though. Yeah. Ev Randall. Ev Randall. That's right. They did pick up that Randall. They did pick him up.

They were almost thinking. two steps ahead there. Are they building their fun strategy now, their entire platform strategy around Ed Randall? Potentially, potentially. Austin based podcaster, Joe Rogan, reportedly being considered for 60 minutes. 60 minutes. They're going to have to call it 200 minutes, but oh, because he records long podcasts in 60 minutes. Is it enough for hundreds? It'll just be called hundreds of them. Barry, if you're listening, put us in, put us in the ring. We're ready to go. You need tech correspondent, business correspondent, someone who can just, chop it up for 60 minutes we do 60 minutes three times a day we're ready to go this is going to be

light work for us mary i'm ready i'm ready you can do 60 minutes right now you can do 60 minutes tomorrow you can do 60 minutes easily we're putting up to a thousand minutes a week it's no problem we did consider that at one point early on we should we do basically a morning show oh yeah take a two hour break and come back yeah yeah another show late night show yeah maybe anyway we should talk about the new outie the new volari Is this real? Motor one? This seems real. It's real. It's a big deal. It's the brand's first supercar since the R8,

twin turbocharged 4-liter V8 hybrid, 217 mile per hour top speed. That is 10% faster than a Kyan Turbo GT. What is the Kyan Turbo GT market doing right now? Is it tanking? Depreciation must be just through the roof on this news because you have a car that's 10% faster. And so everyone is going to be rotating out of T's. I mean, I think they did it.

I think the new Valari. It's a really cool design. It's a really cool design. Feels like somewhat cyber truck. Cyberpunky, futuristic. I don't know. It just checks the box for like the next supercar for me. And in a way that the-

Ben says it can't touch the R8. Oh, can't touch the R8. Okay. Okay. Well, it goes zero to 16 and 2.6 seconds. Thank you for tuning in with us today. Folks. We will be back on Monday.

Yes. And we look forward to it. Some business to do tomorrow. see you Monday leave us five stars on Apple Podcasts and Spotify sign up for the newsletter tbpn.com and have a wonderful weekend we'll see you love you goodbye goodbye