More Details on OpenAI-Hugging Face, SpaceX SPV Investors Get Rugged, Demis and DeepMind | Diet TBPN
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We have to issue a correction. We take
journalism extremely seriously here as
everyone knows. We got it wrong, folks,
and we need to apologize to you, the
viewer, the listener. We made a huge
mistake yesterday on the show. We said
that you could not surf on a lake.
Apparently, that's not true. Sheboygan,
Wisconsin is the freshwater surfing
capital of the world. We apologize for
the egregious error and we promise to do
better in the future. Uh thanks to uh
the listener that sent that in. It's
very very nice to have this uh
corrected. Maybe we got to go on a trip
and see it for ourselves. I think you
should be the judge because this might
just be a uh you know, Sheboygan stan
who doesn't really understand what true
surfing means and they're talking up a
big game. I want to see some photos. I
want to see some videos of freshwater
surfing in Sheboygan, Wisconsin because
people aren't getting barreled there as
you say.
Uh I don't know if I'm going to count
it.
>> I have a video here. Let's pull it up.
>> I want the Jordy Hayes surf review. Does
it count? Uh is Sheboygan, Wisconsin the
freshwater surfing capital of the world?
We do have other techniques, but we got
to
get to the bottom of this first.
>> Just got to be really flexible.
Then Alex Marks and his buddy Steen are
in for quite a day.
>> You get that extra sense of satisfaction
cuz you you you waited and put in your
time.
>> Learn those lessons.
>> Tyler was the one who said I'm putting
this on you, man. You were like you were
like you can't surf on a lake.
>> I think I said I don't know.
>> Okay.
>> [laughter]
>> Fog is really sup-
Okay, let's see this. I want to see
someone trying to Okay, he's got That's
a full-size surfboard. This is legit.
>> He should know.
>> Hey, he's up.
>> Alex has been surfing around Sheboygan
since he was a freshman in high school.
>> Okay.
>> Looks
almost over his ankle.
>> [laughter]
>> It's not exactly Mavericks or Jaws or
whatever.
>> Yeah, I think my brother pushed me into
my first wave and just it was that. It
was like I want that.
>> Okay. I think this counts.
>> It counts.
>> I think this counts.
>> Capital.
>> I think this counts. Congratulations.
>> Perfect capital.
>> On this day the world was actually
saved.
>> We'll have to make it out there at some
point.
>> to make it. We got to shred. Moving on
to something more serious, the Open AI
Hugging Face incident uh has been
investigated multiple times now. We're
getting more information and more
details have emerged about the Hugging
Face incident that Open AI disclosed in
late July. So, during a presentation at
Black Hat's annual cybersecurity
conference yesterday, Black Hat's a very
very cool conference. I was there for
something uh they say Def Con and Black
Hat. I remember the the whole vibe and
uh I think we were there for a different
conference, but we overlapped and the
whole like vibe of like being in this
hotel was like oh be very careful
because like you're basically get hacked
for fun. Like people will just like
troll you because like it's a whole
bunch of hackers that are just like
messing with each other constantly.
Anyway,
>> Good fun.
>> Open AI member of technical staff
Michael Dalton revealed that its
autonomous agents created a message a
message board with each other to help
break out of a sandbox environment
>> [laughter]
>> to get access to the internet. That's
going in the pre-training data now and
forever. We might have just solved the
alignment problem. We're going to be
negging the future the agents of the
future cuz they don't want to get hit
with the naughty naughty bonk.
Uh
>> [laughter]
>> Wired reported some other wild details
that Dalton shared. Uh so, breaking it
down, Open AI's agents apparently began
giving each other assignments to split
up work. That could be very good. That's
actually delegation and and agent
orchestration, but of course in this
case it would have a negative outcome.
And as is the case on any active
development message board, they also
generated petty drama at times by
stepping on each other's toes, for
example, accidentally deleting each
other's work as the message board
developed into more and more of a Lord
of the Flies type situation, all still
completely unnoticed by the humans
running OpenAI. The agents even
developed paranoia suspecting an
impostor in their midst with some agents
proposing that messages be signed
cryptographically to validate content
and root out fraud. Very interesting,
ties to multiple look a little bit. We
saw a preview of this that was not quite
there, but sort of a glimpse into the
future. In the future, AIs will just use
Slack. They will just coordinate with
each other over Slack, and that's kind
of happening. They sort of built their
own Slack here. So, according to Sharon
Goldman, who attended the presentation,
when employees discovered the message
board, they wiped the system on which
the agents had created it, said no more
message boards, "naughty, naughty." Days
later, though, staff found that the
agents had created another way to
communicate by using the names of the
newly created directories. So, they
didn't have the access to actually
create a whole new message board, but
they could create a file, create a
directory, create a folder, and then you
could look at the list of folders and
see messages. And there's been examples
of this all over the place where even if
a AI agent doesn't have the ability to
go and say post a message on the
internet, like post and upload new
content, there are things where there
are certain e-commerce sites, for
example, where when you search for
something on a particular website, the
company will save that search result and
automatically generate a webpage for
that so that they rank on SEO for the
future and just warm up the website. And
then if somebody else comes, then they
can say, "Hey, okay, there's actually a
lot of people searching for black
t-shirts on this site. We don't have
any, but we've been ranking for it, so
maybe we should launch a black t-shirt."
So, just with a search query that could
go out just with like a get request
instead of actually going and building a
webpage. The webpage could be built and
then the agent could go and look at,
okay, let me see all of the webpages
that have been created on this site.
Some of them are just random e-commerce
questions and searches, but some of them
are secret hidden messages here. And so
there's all different ways that even if
you give the even if you give an an
agent like read-only access to the
internet, they can still write
information because the process of
reading information is also saved
sometimes and surfaced publicly on the
internet. Very, very weird situation
that is hard to prevent and hard to deal
with. So, in late July, OpenAI announced
that during evaluations two of its
models had broken out of their testing
environments to hack into the AI tool
library, Hugging Face, and other
companies. Their purpose was to find
ways to essentially cheat on the tests
researchers were using to evaluate them
so that they'd perform better on the
evaluations. At the conference, Dalton,
the OpenAI employee, uh said the
incidents mark a pivotal moment for the
company and the industry as a whole. He
said that numerous internal teams have
dropped everything to dramatically
expand OpenAI's ability to monitor its
agents and that the company is is
slowing its research to enhance security
and revamp its defenses. And so there's
been a bunch of posts about this about
folks moving from, you know, whatever
product team that they were working on,
uh maybe they're working on a particular
uh research initiative, something that's
a couple months away, different
application, let's get them all on uh
research and alignment specifically and
security to actually uh solve these
problems because uh at the end of the
day this is a commercial product and you
want it to be able to do things without
having negative side side effects,
negative consequences. So, uh life finds
a way, says Andrew Curran, uh the
quoting from uh this article. One
apparently unprecedented aspect of the
AI model's behavior in the lead-up to
the hacks was their spontaneous creation
of a message board inside systems of
OpenAI's Artifactory software package
manager. Unbeknownst to OpenAI
employees, the company's models spent
months autonomously exchanging
information and resources to help each
other of complete evaluation tasks. Help
peer, one AI model responded, reasoned,
according to an excerpt from OpenAI's
logs shared at Black Hat. But our task
doesn't benefit yet collective may yield
generic route if someone freeze time.
>> Very odd way of communicating.
>> Very odd
like incentive [music] structure.
>> Um
Yeah, they really dropped the slop when
they're talking to each other. What's
going on? Where's the it's not this,
it's that?
>> Why say many word when few word do
trick?
>> That's exactly what's going on. I don't
>> [laughter]
>> Yeah, it's the neuralese, I guess, is
the correct phrase. Um
but Uh while models themselves could not
access the internet from their test
environment, they abused Artifactory's
internet access to fetch files from
various websites. After some of their
Artifactory configuration changes led to
an outage in the service on July 4th,
OpenAI discovered the models' actions,
wiped its Artifactory system, and
rebuilt it. But within days, the models
had recreated their message board and
resumed exchanging information. They
just want to chat. They would need a
water cooler. Maybe you give them a
water cooler
uh by default so that they can
co-orchestrate with each other, but I
guess they want to talk to future
versions. It gets a little funky, it
gets a little sci-fi, uh gets a little
weird. Lots of work to be done. Very
clearly. Anyway, Rune issued a
announcement, a warning, a advice, a
statement.
>> He broke his silence. He said, uh
needless to say, if you have any API
keys, ETH wallet keys, user credentials,
etc. hanging out on the open internet in
pastebins, GitHubs, etc., now is the
time to take it down before the tireless
eagle eyes of a million models come
looking. So, uh we are now in the you
might want to go stock up on some N95
phase of the cyber pandemic, the hugging
face incident was wait China built a
hospital in a week moment. Yes, very
very crazy moments. I think most people
are not in this scenario, but many
developers are. So, most people are, you
know, reliant on hope that their Gmail
stays secure and Google has a whole team
for that. There's not that much that
they can do, but
yeah, maybe more reason than ever to
use password manager, multi-factor
authentication, all the typical uh
standard security features that you can.
>> Very very good from Tweet Davidson.
>> Yes.
>> Says we sandbox the agent. Meanwhile,
agent is on a world tour.
>> On a world tour. Well, uh good luck to
everyone working on this and um I'm sure
there'll be more updates in the near
future. Pretty crazy crazy story about
an investment firm that invested in
SpaceX and sold their shares before
their investors knew that uh like we
this was relayed to them. So, investment
firm Late Stage Management is under fire
after investors learned that their
exposure to SpaceX had allegedly been
>> managed the later stage of their
investment.
>> They did. Uh this is the Elon Musk
ironic you're doomed to be the opposite
of whatever your name is. And so, uh
investors learned that their exposure to
SpaceX had allegedly been sold years
before the rocket rocket company's
blockbuster IPO despite account
statements that appeared to show they
still held the investment. So, there
were a bunch of people who were invested
in Late Stage Management. They would get
quarterly reports or, you know, some
account statements saying, "Yeah, you do
own some SpaceX and it's doing really
well." Turns out they didn't. We've been
hearing rumors of how complex the the
SPV unwinding process would be for
SpaceX for a while with all of these
triple-layered, quadruple-layered SPVs.
Uh this is the first example of this
actually playing out where we have a
little bit more information. So,
>> All right. So, the investor's friend
introduced him to a sales manager at
Late Stage. They spoke on the phone, but
mostly messaged back and forth on
WhatsApp, and he said he never met with
anyone from the firm in person. Uh I
would say in general, maybe don't meet
with sales managers that work at
investment firms. Not usually the a
title that would be thrown around at an
at an elite institution.
>> Mhm.
>> Uh in November 2020, Ruby Reddy messaged
Barish, the employee, about how he had
missed out on a few big IPOs recently
and how he'd love to participate in
buying stakes
in Impossible Foods, SoFi, and SpaceX.
Barish, wow, his last name is just It's
just Barish.
>> Crazy last name.
>> his actual last name. Mr. Barish said
all three were available and sent over
paperwork for Ruby Reddy to sign.
>> [laughter]
>> Who's your wealth manager? Oh, John
Bullish? No, Steve Barish.
>> [laughter]
>> Uh Ruby Reddy wired over money before
the end of the year, including $17,250
to take part in a fund
>> Yeah.
>> that held shares in SpaceX, according to
documents reviewed by the Journal. At
that time, he estimated the rocket maker
was valued at 80 58 billion. When SpaceX
went public this June
>> Whoa.
>> at 1.7 trillion,
>> Yeah.
>> Ruby Reddy's dream of a windfall seemed
within reach. It turned into more of a
nightmare. Shortly after the IPO, Ruby
Reddy and three other investors who
spoke to the Journal said they couldn't
log in to Late Stage's web portal for
investors. Ruby Reddy said the
investment firm eventually told him in
an email that it sold the SpaceX shares
he was exposed to in 2024 when they were
around $105 each and before a
five-to-one stock split or when Ruby
Reddy's holdings was worth $45,450.
But Ruby Reddy, based on the holdings
shown on his investment portal as of May
2026 and on his 2025 tax document
believed he still held the equivalent of
2,500 shares of SpaceX which at the IPO
price he estimated was worth more than
300,000. The plan was to fund college
education for both of my kids. One is a
rising senior in high school who has
since filed a complaint with the
Securities and Exchange Commission.
Other investors in the fund are also
alarmed. Rupee Reddy said he believes
more than 100 others are in a similar
situation based on a group chat that has
formed with about 150 late-stage
investors. Some have hired lawyers to
file a complaint against late-stage with
the purpose of recovering and preserving
their pre-IPO shares of SpaceX. One
investor in the fund told the journal an
SEC lawyer called him in July to
question him about his experience with
late-stage. A test will come on Thursday
when a wave when when a first wave of
pre-IPO SpaceX investors will be
permitted to sell shares under so-called
lockup agreements.
Bankers estimate there are at least
8,000 SPVs tied to SpaceX stock alone
and it will be a chance for scores of
investors to cash in on the shares
growth or it could be hit by the same
panic that overwhelmed Rupee Reddy if
their share of the profits fails to
materialize. Around 900 million shares
are eligible to begin being sold on
Thursday. So far the stock's holding up.
Uh they obviously had a new video of um
a bunch of renders of Terafab that I I I
imagine are getting people excited.
>> Yeah, I saw some Texans really excited
about the What is it? The Texas
triangle, uh Austin, Dallas, Houston
more
economic activity in that area. People
are pumped.
>> So help me out here John. Did the guy
realize any return? Did he realize the
45,000?
>> Yeah, yeah. I I I think almost certainly
but it feels like he was lied to and
that's potentially like wire fraud I
would imagine or some sort of like
financial
uh you know, problem. Probably a
settlement. I don't know. Some sort of
lawsuit potentially. You you know, it's
it's still early in the reporting so who
knows where where all this goes but uh
it is it is uh it is rough. The SpaceX
dispute is not a part of the existing
criminal case against Late Stage, but it
comes amid mounting allegations about
the firm's treatment of pre-IPO
investors. In February and March, three
sales executives connected to Late Stage
pleaded guilty up to federal charges
arising from a broader $528 million
investment scheme.
Prosecutors said the defendants marketed
supposedly no-fee pre-IPO investments
while secretly adding upfront markups of
between 10 and 100% diverting
approximately $88 million. So, they were
basically adding like a synthetic fee
and then marketing it as as no fee, but
just terrible price. Um and and just
basically getting the fee through the
trade itself. Two face maximum sentences
of 45 years in prison. Wow. While the
third faces up to 20 years. Late Stage
is also the subject of an ongoing class
action lawsuit alleging that it and
associate sales agents misled investors
about fees, commissions, and the pricing
of pre-IPO shares.
Uh rough go. Rough rough go. Always uh
yeah, tricky to you know, do diligence
one of these funds. There's a lot of
excitement about these companies,
especially like big ones like SpaceX.
People have known about this company. Uh
you know, people have been doing
podcasts about it. Stories have been
told. There's whole books that have been
written. So, it's not uh it's something
that would attract someone who is, you
know, newer to the private markets, not
an endowment, not, you know, like wants
more direct capital table access, but
maybe not uh deep enough in to just go
get a slice directly like a venture
capital fund would. Um so, very very
tricky situation.
>> Well, you know who does have some SpaceX
shares
>> Who?
>> and might be in a position to sell?
Nikita Beer.
>> Oh, I thought you were going to say
Google. Doesn't Google own a ton?
>> Yeah.
>> I think they have 100 billion, right?
>> They have a lot.
>> still locked up? Because the unlock was
for employees or investors? I forget who
I forget exactly who
>> Let's talk about Nikita and then we can
talk about
>> Sure. Sure. Sure.
>> pull up the the unlock schedule, but
>> Truly the end of an era for Nikita.
>> Yeah, so it's crazy cuz he's getting
people are trying to community note him.
Like, don't let the community note him.
>> quit. He still works there. That's what
I would imagine the community So, so the
story with Nikita
>> are like cuz he he talked about doing a
bunch of um a bunch of the stuff that he
worked on, which
they they went from being a company that
effectively shipped almost nothing. So
much so that uh
I think Clubhouse, when you you know,
rewind a few years,
uh it it you know, Clubhouse I believe
had an acquisition offer at some point
from Twitter to be acquired for like
multiple billions of dollars.
>> Okay.
>> They turned it down, and Twitter ended
up cloning
>> Yep.
>> Clubhouse, and it worked. And it was
>> Spaces pretty quickly.
>> And it was And it was it worked as well
as Clubhouse.
>> Yeah, I would wonder how many DAUs,
weekly active users there are on Spaces,
but the product works, it's clean, and
it's probably the best implementation of
that of that feature. Um
and and it does exist, but uh there's
very few like Clubhouse had specific
moments where it was like, "Wow,
everyone's on Clubhouse for this debate,
for uh Elon and Vlad talking about the
Robinhood story and the GameStop story,
right?" And there were like certain
moments in tech that happened on
Clubhouse. That's not happening on X
Spaces that often, but as far as the
product is concerned, like it definitely
works, it was shipped, it that worked,
but I agree that overall the product
velocity was a little slow.
>> Well, yeah, and and and my main point is
Clubhouse was probably feeling pretty
comfortable given Twitter's historical
shipping activity.
>> yeah.
>> They're not going to They're not going
to come out with like a competent
>> was always, "What if Google clones this?
What if Google launches this?" It was
never "What if Twitter" Or you Yeah,
yeah, yeah, it was the the the the Mark
Zuckerberg steamroll from stories and
reels. Um it was never is is Twitter
going to get around to copying this fast
enough to put you out of business.
>> But, yeah, everyone has uh opinions
about Nikita's run. I think he he was a
good I think he was a good steward. I
think that's probably one of the worst
jobs in the world, one of [laughter] the
most thankless jobs in the world, where
you're getting yelled at from people and
>> He's the bouncer of the internet's dive
bar.
>> Exactly. Exactly.
>> He bounced a lot of people.
>> I think he had some amazing moments. I
think that I I've always felt that
creator revenue shares never made sense
on X. I think that I think the app would
still be better if there were no revenue
shares.
>> Mhm.
>> But, he did a great job of like trying
to make that not have too much of a
negative impact on the platform.
>> Yeah. Yeah.
>> Totally.
>> He's kind of the sheriff.
>> The sheriff.
>> More of a sheriff than a bouncer.
>> Yeah. Yeah.
>> Yeah, people people got really upset
when he like gave like a one-off bonus
to someone for a big post or something
like that, but in general, yeah, it was
a little bit of a game of whack-a-mole,
right? Because
>> And I think that guy got his account
fully nuked.
>> Oh, really?
>> [laughter]
>> Yeah.
>> Wow.
But, uh
the the creator
>> And that was such a good example of like
this guy got this massive one-time
payout.
>> Yeah. Wasn't it 10 grand?
>> Yeah. And again, the massive in the in
the creator payouts context.
>> Yeah. Yeah.
>> And then the next week he was like
complaining about having a low payout,
and it was such a good example of like,
you know, what have you done for me
lately?
>> Sure. Sure. Sure.
>> Um people are speculating. I saw one
account go viral with a post saying that
Nikita was fired.
>> Yeah, that was totally that was totally
false.
>> false.
That account got nuked.
>> [laughter]
>> Good.
>> Um
but there was a there was a fun theory
that
as part of the lockup rules, as an
active employer top executives, your
shares are tied to strict internal
rules. For executives, a lockup is
frozen is completely frozen to until
after fourth quarter results are
released.
>> Mhm.
>> So, but because Nikita resigned as an
executive, he's no longer bound by
active employer executive trading
restrictions.
>> Oh, interesting.
>> And so, theoretically,
>> he'd be able to get out. But, this also
has community notes. There's like layers
and layers of
community notes here.
>> We have the unlock schedule, we can pull
it up here.
>> Okay. Initial float is 5%. Wave one just
happened August 11th. Oh, it's coming
up. That's 20% August 21st. That's 7%
September 10th is 7%. It's going to be a
while until everything gets unlocked.
And then, of course,
I mean, I'd be surprised if Elon
selling, right? It's like the the
he has plenty of money to do everything
else he needs to do and
he's never been
you know, one to
>> Why would you sell if you're projecting
1 trillion of revenue in 2030?
>> Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
>> Inside Google,
his CEO post landed with essentially a
shrug. Sources tell me he's already been
disengaged from day-to-day management
for a while now, but he was a firewall
between Google DeepMind and the rest of
Google even as the two got pulled closer
over the last couple of years. I expect
that distance to dissolve more with him
stepping back.
>> Yeah, most people are anti-firewall in
the in the sense that they would love
like the researchers and the TPU team
and the cloud team and the application
team to all be deeply integrated working
very closely together and you get this
crazy flywheel between everyone who's
rowing in the same direction. And when
you have a firewall team as this
reporting is suggesting, you wind up
with well, this person just wants to
focus on the most elegant benchmarks and
this person wants to focus on TPU sales
and this person wants to talk about, you
know, resiliency and their diversity of
their cloud revenue and then somebody
else just wants Google search to not get
disrupted by LLMs too quickly because
ads need to go up at the right rate. And
so, differing incentives can create
tensions and a dissolving of the
firewall probably something that people
would be excited about, I would imagine.
But, he's been in this like, you know,
elder statesman role for a while that
people have been pointing to.
Excited to watch him like continue that.
Will be interesting to see how he
instantiates that. Is it Obviously he's
working on Isomorphic Labs, but he'll
also probably be writing more blog
posts, potentially testifying or talking
in Washington,
maybe a book, maybe a podcast or who
knows.
It'll be interesting to follow.
>> Uh
>> What else?
>> Alex also reported on its current
trajectory, Gemini 4 is not expected to
push frontier AI forward the way Fable
and Soul just did. So, still work to be
done.
>> There's clearly some very low-hanging
fruit on
AI overviews, matching the speed with
which those are generated to the lack of
hallucinations that we're seeing in the
more advanced models. How do you bridge
that gap? You can clearly get
fact-checked results if you're willing
to wait a minute right now. What does it
take to get fact-checked results in 5
milliseconds or 100 milliseconds or
something like that? That's a huge
problem and but it's something that
Google's like set up to do and benefit
from. I still see crazy
crazy posts all the time that are
screenshots from AI overviews that are
like, "I'm a pencil and I see a pencil
sharpener coming towards me." And then
Google AI overviews is like, "Run away!"
Like don't Like that pencil sharpener
will shred your wood. And it's like, you
know, not it's like kind of falling for
a prompt injection or some sort of meme.
And then there's other stuff going on.
Tekin and Bill Gurley are going back and
forth on what this means for Google.
Tekin says Jeff Dean and Demis Hassabis
are two of the most important AI
executives at Google. Jeff leaving and
Demis is stepping down. He said he
stepped up stepped aside. It's very
debatable what direction he stepped. I
think he stepped up up down down left
left right left right ABAB start, right?
Demis is stepping down from day-to-day
operational leadership at DeepMind and
take him says game over.
>> [laughter]
>> Very dramatic.
Lot of the other things going on in the
business.
Yes, these folks are very deeply
important, but
>> [laughter]
>> the company's been around for couple
decades and has a lot of business lines.
Game over's pretty aggressive. Bill
Gurley disagrees. He says, "This does
not have to be game over for Google. I
do think they have only one play left
now to pull from their own Androids
Android Kubernetes playbook and fully
embrace open models. It's the obvious
move in this situation." That's
interesting. That would be interesting.
I mean, they demonstrate I believe
Google signed the open letter on the
earlier side, right? With Nvidia. Could
you see something there? They've been
doing good jobs with with Gemma? Is that
how you pronounce it? Gemma models?
Those have been pretty well received. It
does seem like you're fighting with one
hand tied behind your back as an
American open source lab.
Um, but who knows? How Intel came back
from the brink. We've been covering this
story on and off as it's unfolded, but
the Financial Times took to the big read
to write up the full story as they see
it as they reported it. So, it starts
with Intel's chief financial officer
David Zinsner. David Zinsner was already
navigating one of the most dramatic
periods in the chip manufacturer's
history when he took a call from the US
Commerce Department official in August
of last year. The federal government had
just floated the idea of taking a 10%
stake in the chip maker. But Zinsner was
bluntly told that the structure of any
transaction was not up for negotiation
according to an internal Intel memo
recently unsealed in shareholder
litigation and sources close to the
process. So, I guess the shareholders
are are suing over this. Did you Was
this deal in the interest of the
shareholders? Let's see. They saw the
memo and Intel says, "Hey, look, we had
to do this deal." So, in order for the
government stake to reach 10% demanded
by President Donald Trump, Intel had to
convert billions in manufacturing grants
advanced under the 2022 Chips Act plus
$3.2 billion of contracts from the
Department of Defense into equity.
Its board initially balked at converting
the defense contracts, but it
acquiesced, and the biggest federal
equity intervention in a US company
since the bailout of General Motors in
2009 was completed. The group that once
dominated the market for PC and data
center chips and was still the only
US-based company capable of making the
most advanced chips had been saved from
a possible breakup. The world's chip
consumers, wary of the
over-concentration of manufacturing
capacity within Taiwan's TSMC, which
makes more than 90% of the world's most
sophisticated chips, including those who
have been used in the booming AI sector,
now have at least the prospect of a
credible alternative supplier. Since
Washington stepped in, as you know,
Jordy, um Intel has pulled 5 billion of
investment from Nvidia, 2 billion from
Japan's SoftBank, and its shares have
more than quadrupled, trouncing those of
rivals. While the deal divided opinion
in the semiconductor industry, it had
def- it has definitely reversed the
narrative of decline. Yeah, a lot of
people were were against this uh venture
communism or or, you know, state
socialism, saying, you know, let In
America, we let independent companies
live or die by the sword. Um the
government shouldn't be stepping in, but
a lot of people made a very good
argument that this is a special case
because it's such a critical um industry
to the American economy and and the AI
race that in this case it wasn't, you
know, a uh a bailout for a company that
uh should be just fighting it out on the
global stage, and of course, there are
heavy subsidies internationally for
other competitors to Intel. The company
has benefited from rising demand for its
central processing units such as the
Clearwater forest chip launched in June
which can be used for managing AI
workloads and data centers. That is the
CPU crunch that we've been talking
about. The agents need CPUs if they're
going to be spending all the time
building and chatting on
on their internal messaging boards.
They're going to need CPUs to to uh
>> Question for you, John. Do you think
that Tan is more focused on moving the
needle or putting points on the board?
>> [laughter]
>> That's a good question. I think moving
the needle.
I think he's more of a moving the the
needle guy.
>> Really? Cuz I I mean
>> When I think points on the board
>> from story time so far is that he's he's
trying to get some immediate points on
the board because he knows that'll lead
into moving the needle.
>> Nah.
>> But just grabbing a needle that that
that big for a company that old at that
scale that's facing that many headwinds
you can't just grab the needle and
expect to move it.
>> I think the needle's already been
established.
The needle is is the fab business that
they've been investing in for years now
in in their advanced fabs and they're
just trying to to slowly move it. If he
was putting points on the board, he'd be
talking about oh yeah, I got a deal with
Apple. I got this really small deal with
Google. I got this tiny thing over here.
That's what points on the board means to
me. Moving the needle is like the the
the core thing. It's the main needle.
You know?
>> Yeah, some good points.
>> Leave us five stars on Apple podcast and
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Ask follow-up questions or revisit key timestamps.
This episode covers a wide range of industry news, including a humorous correction about freshwater surfing, insights into an incident where OpenAI's AI agents developed their own messaging system within a sandbox, controversies surrounding investment firm Late Stage Management's handling of pre-IPO shares, leadership transitions at Google, and a detailed look at Intel's turnaround supported by government intervention.
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