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- 13. Nov. 2026
Über den Podcast
Dave Morin, Jessica Lessin, Brit Morin, and Sam Lessin have debated the future of Silicon Valley and tech as the closest of friends for the last 15 years. Now six companies, two venture funds and more than a decade at Google, Apple and Facebook later, they are opening up the debate. From The Information, Offline Ventures, and Slow Ventures. Follow the crew: http://x.com/davemorin http://x.com/brit http://x.com/lessin http:/x.com/jessicalessin Follow the pod: https://moreorlesspod.com/ http://youtube.com/moreorlesspod https://x.com/moreorlesspod
Folgen 177
Did Jensen Make the AI Boom, or Did the AI Boom Make Jensen?
Full quad for this ep and halfway through recording, the Wall Street Journal reported that Jensen Huang was out at Nvidia. We didn’t stop the tape. Consider the first part a historical POV.Jess, Sam, Dave and …
Shownotes
Full quad for this ep and halfway through recording, the Wall Street Journal reported that Jensen Huang was out at Nvidia. We didn’t stop the tape. Consider the first part a historical POV.
Jess, Sam, Dave and Brit are back together to break down the scandal shaking the world’s most valuable company. They cover the reported ties to a woman whose companies allegedly moved banned chips to China, the Wachtell-led board investigation, and why a relationship with a direct report is a board problem as much as a personal one. Once the WSJ headline drops, the conversation shifts to what comes next. Did Jensen make the AI boom, or did the AI boom make Jensen? Who could actually run Nvidia: Tim Cook, Apple’s silicon chief, or someone inside? Could Nvidia be headed for a Microsoft-style lost decade?
The crew also gets into Anthropic’s IPO roadshow and the claim that AI can now move labs off Nvidia hardware in hours. Sam explains why the only reason to buy Anthropic at IPO is regret, and introduces his theory that AI companies have a “make it dumber” dial for hitting the quarter. Plus: Sam’s Claude-run home camera network, using AI to track insider stock sales, and why calling the AI bubble for Q1 makes no sense.
Chapters:
00:00 Intro
01:06 Everyone's Back After Two Interview Episodes
02:16 Taping on a Wednesday, Because That's How Fast This Is Moving
03:51 The Facts: Jensen, Alice Huang, and the Chip Network
05:28 Midterms, China Hawks, and Why the Knives Are Out Now
05:52 The Board Hires Wachtell Lipton
07:01 A Half-Trillion Dollar Affair
08:24 The Second Report, and Why Lying to Your Board Is Different
10:15 Six Months From Now, Is Jensen Still CEO?
11:19 Sam: His Meme Game Isn't Strong Enough to Survive This
13:35 Brit Pitches the Movie
14:37 What the Prediction Markets Say
15:27 Who Could Actually Run Nvidia? Sam Says Tim Cook
16:31 Is Nvidia Too Big to Fail?
18:05 What Jensen's Exit Would Mean for the AI Trade
20:09 Anthropic and OpenAI Say They Can Switch Hardware in Hours
21:07 A Text From Arianna Huffington, Live
22:25 Anthropic's IPO, Nine Days Out
23:41 Sam Has His Bots Monitoring Insider Trading Filings
24:58 Bot Complaints of the Week: Jess vs Muse and Claude
26:25 The WSJ Headline Breaks Mid-Recording
26:33 Sam's Cameras: The AI Ordered the Hardware Itself
27:40 Token Shaving: Are They Making Claude Dumber for Margin?
29:26 Dave: There's a Second Dial, and It's Parasocial
30:46 The Board Is Meeting Right Now
31:33 Can AI Make This a Movie by Friday?
32:50 Why Tim Cook, and What Nvidia Actually Stands to Lose
35:19 What Does Jensen Do Next?
36:40 Did Jensen Make the AI Boom, or Did the Boom Make Jensen?
37:38 Is This the Best Trade Ever Going Into Earnings?
41:56 Would You Buy Anthropic at the IPO?
43:13 New York Thinks the Bubble Pops in Q1
45:12 The Most Entertaining Storyline of 2026
46:25 Why This Story Is a Win for Reporting
We're also on:
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Instagram: https://instagram.com/moreorless
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2CJdt6HhJ8ioNkbqqVKckC
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/more-or-less-from-the-morins-and-the-lessins/id1692234179
Connect with us here:
1) Sam Lessin: https://x.com/lessin
2) Dave Morin: https://x.com/davemorin
3) Jessica Lessin: https://x.com/Jessicalessin
4) Brit Morin: https://x.com/brit
About More or Less: For 15 years, the Morins and the Lessins have debated the future of Silicon Valley as the closest of friends. Every Friday, they break down technology, capital, and media. From The Information, Offline Ventures, and Slow Ventures.
AI Killing Engineering Jobs Is “the Biggest Load of BS”
A year ago VCs were telling Parker Conrad that software engineering was months away from mass unemployment. His update: salaries are higher, the market is tighter, and a great engineer is worth more today than …
Shownotes
A year ago VCs were telling Parker Conrad that software engineering was months away from mass unemployment. His update: salaries are higher, the market is tighter, and a great engineer is worth more today than ever. The Rippling CEO joins Sam and Jess (no Morins this week) to argue that the only moat left in AI is seeing the problem before your customer does, that good gross margins are a sign nobody is actually using your product, and that Rippling isn't a software company at all. Sam counters with his own setup: a private notes file he hands to four different agents so they race each other to finish things he never asked them to do. Jess brings the mood from New York, where the money people think the $8 trillion CapEx bill doesn't pencil out and financing is about to get much harder. Plus Deel fighting a federal grand jury subpoena, Anthropic's IPO date, and Sam's plan to pay people minimum wage with a 5% shot at a million dollars.
Chapters:
00:00 Intro
01:14 Parker Conrad Joins, No Morins This Week
02:13 Everyone Watched the Election on Prediction Markets, Not TV
04:09 The Blue Wave, and Why the Market Went Up Anyway
07:48 Hyperscalers, Data Centers, and Builds That Just Got Harder
09:27 California's Wealth Tax Fails
10:24 Why Paper Billionaires Can't Pay a Wealth Tax
12:17 The Financing Trick Where One Investor Sets the Headline Price
13:06 New York's Mood: AI Financing Is Drying Up
13:45 Sam: We've Run Out of Money in the World
15:09 Parker: Good Gross Margins Can Be a Bad Sign
15:30 Anthropic's IPO Date and OpenAI's Approach to Margins
16:44 Rippling's IPO Plans and the Public Market Retirement Community
18:26 The SaaS Apocalypse That Didn't Happen
19:00 "Rippling Is Not a Software Company"
20:29 AI for Boring: Government Forms, Faxes and Fraudulent Audits
25:36 The Only Moat Left Is Seeing the Problem First
28:01 Sam's Notes File and the Agents That Compete Over It
29:32 Instinct Keeps Asking Jess the Same Question
30:02 Today's Agents Are Shitty Assistants
30:49 Permissions Architecture as the Real Advantage
32:21 Where Rippling Makes Margin and Where It Makes Zero
33:19 Usage Pricing and Deleting the Bottom Half of a Job
34:36 What You're Really Selling Is a Promotion
36:04 Software Written at Installation Time
37:26 Why You Shouldn't Vibe Code Permissions
38:07 AI Is Excellent at Using Software, Humans Are Not
39:42 Should an AI Negotiate Your Pay?
41:05 Rippling's $17M Seed and Two Years Before the Starting Line
42:07 Why Reversibility Decides How Fast You Can Move
44:52 The Deel Lawsuit and a Federal Grand Jury Subpoena
46:06 Sam: Your Job Doesn't Look Fun to Me
48:40 The Engineer Layoffs That Never Came
49:25 Random Reward Payroll, a Very Bad Idea
51:26 Overrated and Underrated in Silicon Valley
54:01 Sam's New York Marathon
55:14 Starting a Company: The Narrow Ray of Daylight
We're also on:
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Instagram: https://instagram.com/moreorless
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2CJdt6HhJ8ioNkbqqVKckC
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/more-or-less-from-the-morins-and-the-lessins/id1692234179
Connect with our guest:
Parker Conrad, CEO of Rippling: https://x.com/parkerconrad
Connect with us here:
1) Sam Lessin: https://x.com/lessin
2) Dave Morin: https://x.com/davemorin
3) Jessica Lessin: https://x.com/Jessicalessin
4) Brit Morin: https://x.com/brit
About More or Less: For 15 years, the Morins and the Lessins have debated the future of Silicon Valley as the closest of friends. Every Friday, they break down technology, capital, and media. From The Information, Offline Ventures, and Slow Ventures.
Amazon, Google, ChatGPT: When Do Products Start Gaming Their Users?
Bing Gordon co-founded Electronic Arts, spent 18 years at Kleiner Perkins, sat on Amazon's board for 15 and is credited by John Doerr and Jeff Wilke with the idea for Prime. He also sat on Zynga's board, which …
Shownotes
Bing Gordon co-founded Electronic Arts, spent 18 years at Kleiner Perkins, sat on Amazon's board for 15 and is credited by John Doerr and Jeff Wilke with the idea for Prime. He also sat on Zynga's board, which is why it lands when he says players felt relief when they quit Farmville while retention and revenue were still climbing. So where's the line between good game design and gaming your users? Bing's answer takes in TikTok doom scrolling, WhatsApp as the rare product nobody complains about overusing, the sponsored products Amazon still shows Prime members, and ChatGPT ending every answer with one more question. Then Dave asks what the whole agent era keeps circling: what gets worse if your AI wins for you? Friction is what makes pearls, says Bing, and the next frictions will come from edge conditions nobody tested. Plus the wow/WTF scale he used to judge EA's Hall of Fame games, and the bet-your-job letter he kept in a drawer.
Everybody Wins by Bing Gordon and Chloe Gordon: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/797436/everybody-wins-by-bing-gordon-and-chloe-gordon/
Chapters:
00:00 Intro
01:02 No Lessins This Week: Brit and Dave Bring In Bing Gordon
02:42 Amazon's Board, Prime, and 18 Years at Kleiner Perkins
05:03 Disneyland Inside the Computer
06:51 The Classroom Question That Led to Electronic Arts
09:44 Raising $2M in 1982, Then Atari Collapsed
10:56 Vision, and Why People Think You're Stupid
11:37 Bathroom OKRs and Why Goals Beat Perfection
13:13 Word of Mouth, and Why Coin-Operated Hires Leave
14:44 "Can a Computer Make You Cry?" and Hiring on Mission
16:53 Why Games Retain: Where Everybody Knows Your Name
17:34 Which Social Network Did It Best?
18:36 LinkedIn Endorsements and Getting People to Come Back
20:19 Farmville: Players Felt Relief When They Quit
21:18 Growth Hacking Is Human Growth Hormone
23:04 Amazon, TikTok, ChatGPT: Who's Gaming Their Users Today?
24:21 What Gets Worse If Your AI Agent Wins for You?
25:03 Friction Is What Makes Pearls
26:30 Hugging Face, Cruise, and the Edge Conditions Nobody Tests
29:04 Writing Everybody Wins With His Daughter Chloe
32:19 The Visionary and the Operator
33:20 The Wow/WTF Scale, and How to Manufacture a Wow
36:08 Wow Moments in Games, Facebook, Instagram and Amazon
38:42 Creating Wow Moments as a Parent
41:28 The Bet Your Job Moment
42:23 You Only Got Fired for Blaming Someone Else
43:19 Good Risk vs Bad Risk
43:53 Invest and Express: Twitch, Chat, and Kids' Art on the Wall
45:59 Dave's Favorite Bing-ism: The Airplane Aisle Test
47:30 The Best Retention Hack Ever Made Is a Wedding Ring
48:01 Session Economics, Novelty, and Leveling Up
51:51 How to Gamify a Board Meeting
54:03 Why a Founder Who Loses the Board Twice Gets Replaced
55:23 Family Board Meetings and the Vice President of Fun
56:17 Lightning Round: Books, Heroes, Best Investment
58:41 Bing's P(doom): Boomers Are Gonna Doom
59:36 The Three Things That Make a Good Day
1:01:59 Dave's iPhone Duo Verdict
We're also on:
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Instagram: https://instagram.com/moreorless
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2CJdt6HhJ8ioNkbqqVKckC
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/more-or-less-from-the-morins-and-the-lessins/id1692234179
Connect with our guest: Bing Gordon, author of Everybody Wins (with Chloe Gordon), available everywhere including Amazon. Bing narrated the audiobook.
X: https://x.com/bingfish
Connect with us here:
1) Sam Lessin: https://x.com/lessin
2) Dave Morin: https://x.com/davemorin
3) Jessica Lessin: https://x.com/Jessicalessin
4) Brit Morin: https://x.com/brit
About More or Less: For 15 years, the Morins and the Lessins have debated the future of Silicon Valley as the closest of friends. Every Friday, they break down technology, capital, and media. From The Information, Offline Ventures, and Slow Ventures.
The Real Reason Elon Wants SpaceX and Tesla to Merge Now
Elon tells investors on an earnings call that SpaceX and Tesla should merge, and Sam has a theory he says nobody else has floated: there's an enormous SpaceX lockup cliff coming in the spring, and folding …
Shownotes
Elon tells investors on an earnings call that SpaceX and Tesla should merge, and Sam has a theory he says nobody else has floated: there's an enormous SpaceX lockup cliff coming in the spring, and folding Tesla's retail shareholders into the denominator makes all that supply far easier to absorb. Dave thinks the rocket powered car demo was timed to justify the deal, Sam thinks two engineers got told to bolt rockets onto a car and it will never ship, and 83% of respondents in the Information's new Polls app say it's mostly about Musk control. Then OpenAI finds a web-wide PHP vulnerability and Sam's conclusion is blunt: all your regional banks will be hacked, the labs are centralizing profits while externalizing the risk, and they should be carrying hundred billion dollar insurance policies. Plus Google quietly telling Jess she's liable for everything her agents do, Netflix's content shakeup, Dave's theory of priority slop, and Brit's second week with no back pain.
Try the Polls app out now: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/the-information-polls/id6814969991
Chapters:
00:00 Intro
01:04 Dave's Back, and the Nasal Rinse Discourse
02:06 OpenAI Finds a Web-Wide PHP Vulnerability
03:12 Sam: All Your Regional Banks Will Be Hacked
04:16 The Zero Days the Labs Are Quietly Sitting On
04:56 Dave on the Gap Between Frontier Models and the Public Ones
06:29 Why Labs Should Ban Their Own Teams From the Frontier
07:17 Pearl, Coinbase, and Bitcoin as a Byproduct of Compute
08:32 Can You Even Build a Cybersecurity Company in 2026
09:16 Cold Storage: Your Documents in a Mine Near the North Pole
10:22 Sam: The Labs Need $100 Billion Liability Policies
11:30 Google Says You're Liable for Everything Your Agents Do
13:55 How Many Teslas Have the Morins Owned?
15:05 Sam's Mazda Dealership Is Living in the Future
16:32 The Two Futures of Car Buying
17:14 SpaceX and Tesla Are Going to Merge
18:01 The Rocket Car Demo Was a Stunt to Justify the Deal
19:24 Elon Doesn't Control Tesla, and That's the Point
21:09 Why the Merger Needs a Narrative
22:25 The Information Launches Polls: 83% Say It's About Control
23:09 Sam's Lockup Theory That Nobody Else Has Said
25:36 Will Shareholders Approve It, and the SXSI Joke
27:29 Brit: Teslas Are Becoming Entertainment Vehicles
28:17 Dave on the Cyber Cab Experience
30:12 Jess's Enthusiasm Falls Back to Earth, and the Waymo Bug
32:33 Netflix: Content Shakeup and What They Should Actually Make
35:32 Dave's Viral Take: Content Slop vs Priority Slop
38:05 Sam Let His Bot Write the Entire AGM Deck
39:28 Dave's Broadsheet Newspaper for Offline
40:19 Internships for Teenagers, Run by Bots
41:30 Meta's New Voting Stock and the End of Capitalism
42:08 The Wealth Tax Debate
44:36 The Elizabeth Holmes Movie and the Surprise Q&A
49:28 Peptide Check-In, and a Necessary Disclaimer
We're also on:
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Instagram: https://instagram.com/moreorless
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2CJdt6HhJ8ioNkbqqVKckC
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/more-or-less-from-the-morins-and-the-lessins/id1692234179
Connect with us here:
1) Sam Lessin: https://x.com/lessin
2) Dave Morin: https://x.com/davemorin
3) Jessica Lessin: https://x.com/Jessicalessin
4) Brit Morin: https://x.com/brit
About More or Less: For 15 years, the Morins and the Lessins have debated the future of Silicon Valley as the closest of friends. Every Friday, they break down technology, capital, and media. From The Information, Offline Ventures, and Slow Ventures.
The Death of the Web Is Inevitable
Jess went full send on Muse and reports that about 70% of the use cases she was excited about have stopped working, because the internet is fighting back: Good Eggs now wants her to check out in the app, her …
Shownotes
Jess went full send on Muse and reports that about 70% of the use cases she was excited about have stopped working, because the internet is fighting back: Good Eggs now wants her to check out in the app, her kid's school portal refuses the login, and JP Morgan and Amazon are blocking agents outright. Dave's version is worse. Instinct booked a dinner reservation in LA instead of San Francisco, and he's out. Sam has seen this exact movie, because he and Andrew Kortina ran Fin ten years ago and shut it down once they worked out you become liable for every provider down the chain with no margin to cover your own mistakes. His call now is the death of the web, plus APIs that negotiate access back and forth like Hollywood agents. Meanwhile Anthropic is meeting investors behind closed doors while they tape, the market is getting hammered, and Brit's three years of hip pain vanished in six days on peptides, which Sam insists is placebo.
Interested in peptides? More or Less listeners 50% off their first month at NoHo Labs. Use code: MOREORLESSVIP on https://noholabs.com/
Timestamps:
01:09 Jess Is Back, Dave's Birthday, and the October Cold
03:04 Nasal Rinses and Fall Immunity
04:02 Brit's Peptide Results: Three Years of Pain Gone in Six Days
06:43 Anthropic Is Meeting Investors While We Tape
07:34 The Market Is Getting Hammered: VIX, Private Credit, Apollo
08:16 Infrastructure IPOs Stall and Nvidia Becomes the Last Investor
10:01 Slowing Revenue, CFOs Cracking Down, Tokens Moving to Open Models
10:36 Sam: Would You Rather Be Rich or Right?
11:11 The Models Are a Commodity and There Is No Lock-In
12:15 Brit Won't Give Muse Her Whole Computer
13:41 Why Sam Trusts Meta More Than OpenAI or Anthropic
15:16 Jess: 70% of My Muse Use Cases Don't Work Anymore
16:54 Dave: Instinct Booked the Restaurant in the Wrong City
18:18 Sam on Fin, the Assistant Company He Ran Ten Years Ago
20:30 Why the Economics of Mistakes Break Agent Services
22:31 Sam: What's Inevitable Is the Death of the Web
23:09 APIs as Constant Negotiation, and Agents With Reputations
24:51 Agent Credit Scores: FICO for Bots
25:56 Amazon's Rufus Still Works, and Other Branding Crimes
27:13 The Seesaw: Built Up and Torn Down Intraday
28:41 Gen Z Media, Muse Memes, and Punk Rock by Another Name
32:53 Is the Punk Rock Thing Just Marketing?
34:37 Every Company Now Needs a Gen Z Meme Lord
36:14 The Truth Subculture and Who Actually Pays for It
37:32 Jess Is Interviewing Barry Weiss at WTF
40:20 Bumble Goes Private at $1.3B
43:07 Dave on Seven Years of Hinge and Why Dating Is So Hard
46:41 Apple's Home Hub and Keeping Screens Away From Kids
49:04 Everyone Is Going to See the Elizabeth Holmes Movie
We're also on:
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Instagram: https://instagram.com/moreorless
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2CJdt6HhJ8ioNkbqqVKckC
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/more-or-less-from-the-morins-and-the-lessins/id1692234179
Connect with us here:
1) Sam Lessin: https://x.com/lessin
2) Dave Morin: https://x.com/davemorin
3) Jessica Lessin: https://x.com/Jessicalessin
4) Brit Morin: https://x.com/brit
About More or Less: For 15 years, the Morins and the Lessins have debated the future of Silicon Valley as the closest of friends. Every Friday, they break down technology, capital, and media. From The Information, Offline Ventures, and Slow Ventures.
Agentic Commerce Hits a Wall: Hilton, Amazon and the Bot Blocking Fight
Meta and Microsoft, two of Anthropic's biggest enterprise customers, have roughly halved their Claude usage, and both are running their own models instead. Dave's diagnosis is the one nobody else is making …
Shownotes
Meta and Microsoft, two of Anthropic's biggest enterprise customers, have roughly halved their Claude usage, and both are running their own models instead. Dave's diagnosis is the one nobody else is making: Claude was over-tuned for parasocial relationships, people got into something unhealthy with it, and organizations are now quietly backing away. Sam is blunter about the business. He runs Claude as infrastructure, but switching off would be a one line change he'd never think about twice. Then it gets strange: a dinner where only the lab researchers raised their hands when asked if one company will be left standing, a lab that believes the machine god will go back in time and simulate hell for anyone who didn't build it, and Sam's case that Silicon Valley caught zero-and-infinity thinking from crypto and broke its own spreadsheets. Plus Hilton's website trapping Sam's agent in a doom loop, and Dave and Sam inventing the Agent Treaty Framework on air. Jess is at an offsite, so it's three VCs and no journalist.
In this episode:
- Why two of Anthropic's largest customers cut their Claude usage in half, weeks before the IPO
- Dave on parasocial tuning as the thing that actually burned Claude, and how you can spot Claude slop on Twitter
- Zero, infinity, and what crypto taught the Valley about putting infinity in a spreadsheet
- The dinner question about one company being left standing, and who raised their hand
- The personal agent protocol from Meta, Walmart, Shopify, Stripe and Sierra, and why Dave says it's about commerce, not protection
- Hilton, Cloudflare and Amazon blocking agents, and whether holding the line counts as collusion
- Dave on building agents versus building agency, and whose potential we're underwriting
- The Agent Treaty Framework: why pairwise deals replace standards when negotiation is free
- Megalith buying unexercised pro rata from seed funds, and Sam's war story about the fund that quashed his
Chapters:
00:00 Trailer
00:51 Brit Moderates: Three VCs and No Journalist
03:43 Peptide Protocols, the Wolverine Stack, and a Dexa Scan
07:42 Sam on the Nathan Fielder Movie
09:30 Meta and Microsoft Halve Their Claude Usage
10:13 Dave: Claude Was Over-Tuned for Parasocial Relationships
11:19 Sam: Switching Off Claude Is a One Line Change
13:46 Zero, Infinity, and What Crypto Taught the Valley
17:53 The Dinner Where Only the Lab People Raised Their Hands
19:41 The Lab That Believes in the Machine God
20:01 Lab Leaks, Infinite Liability, and What a Real Framework Looks Like
21:56 The Personal Agent Protocol: Meta, Walmart, Shopify, Stripe
23:01 Sam: Nobody Should Care About MCP
24:03 Hilton Traps Sam's Agent in a Doom Loop
26:30 If You Ran Hilton, Would You Let the Bots In?
27:15 Facebook Connect, Open Graph, and the Missing Value Trade
29:41 Dave: Building Agents vs Building Agency
33:53 The Social Media Era Already Ran This Experiment
37:02 The Agent Treaty Framework Is Born
38:16 Why Standards Are Over and Treaties Are Next
41:28 Megalith and the Market for Unexercised Pro Rata
42:32 Sam's Pro Rata War Story
45:53 64% of LPs Now Want Co-Invest Rights
48:03 What Hedge Fund Letters Say That VCs Don't
49:20 Main Street Says It Hates AI, Then Uses It
53:27 Plug of the Week: The Mill
We're also on
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Instagram: https://instagram.com/moreorless
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2CJdt6HhJ8ioNkbqqVKckC
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/more-or-less-from-the-morins-and-the-lessins/id1692234179
Connect with us here:
1) Sam Lessin: https://x.com/lessin
2) Dave Morin: https://x.com/davemorin
3) Jessica Lessin: https://x.com/Jessicalessin
4) Brit Morin: https://x.com/brit
About More or Less: For 15 years, the Morins and the Lessins have debated the future of Silicon Valley as the closest of friends. Every Friday, they break down technology, capital, and media. From The Information, Offline Ventures, and Slow Ventures.
Meta Muse vs Instinct vs OpenAI Dots: Do AI Agents Have Any Moat?
Anthropic's S-1 leaked and the numbers are not what the narrative promised: revenue flatlining as token prices drop, and SaaS investors posting memes welcoming Anthropic to the no-growth table. Jess still puts …
Shownotes
Anthropic's S-1 leaked and the numbers are not what the narrative promised: revenue flatlining as token prices drop, and SaaS investors posting memes welcoming Anthropic to the no-growth table. Jess still puts it at 60% they get out in November, which looks optimistic in a week when Oura pulled its IPO and blamed market conditions. Sam's problem with the core business is simpler than any of it: he runs Claude as the center of his infrastructure, and if it vanished tomorrow he'd care for about one second. Dave spots the strategy mishap nobody is naming, where forward deployed teams built software to burn luxury tokens right as open models had CFOs asking why they're paying premium prices. Then Adrian drops into the pod uninvited to argue there's no moat left unless you own the infrastructure, the data, or the algorithms.In this episode:- The leaked S-1: flatlining revenue, half a trillion in mostly non-cancellable contracts, and why the cloud providers are the ones making money- Oura pulling its IPO, LPs stuck in a quiet period, and the barbell strategy that sent World Labs out at $8B- Sam on Wall Street and Silicon Valley splitting over what AI is worth, and why staying private may beat going public- Jess on companies priced for a growth rate larger than the entire US economy- Dave on the forward deployed bet and open models undercutting luxury tokens- Jess announces her bot AGI challenge: update three kids' after-school plans and sync them to Google Calendar- Adrian on the moat question: no lock-in without BD deals, so the business teams get overpaid next- Brit's instinct talking to Dave's instinct, and what happens when you stop texting the people you love- Whether this is the end of times or the beginning of them, and why offline is the new luxuryChapters:00:00 Trailer 01:04 Live From X HQ, and a 39 Degree Cold Plunge02:57 Dunbar's Number, but for Bots05:48 Anthropic's Leaked S-1 and the Flatlining Revenue07:37 Oura Pulls Its IPO and the LPs Get Stuck09:36 What's Actually Happening in the Markets10:41 Wall Street and Silicon Valley Split on AI's Price Tag12:45 World Labs Sells for $8B: The Barbell Strategy14:11 Half a Trillion in Contracts, and Who's Really Making Money14:54 What Happens If OpenAI and Anthropic Don't Work Out?16:11 Priced for a Growth Rate Bigger Than the US Economy18:04 Open Models Pass Closed Models on the Charts18:51 Sam: If Claude Vanished Tomorrow, I'd Care for One Second19:43 The Forward Deployed Bet and the Luxury Token Problem22:16 Adrian Drops In: 300 Startups, 40 Unicorns, and a Plane24:39 Jess Goes Full Muse26:28 The Bot AGI Challenge: After-School Plans and the Mom Index28:23 OpenAI Rebrands Codex as Dots30:30 Adrian on the Moat: Winner Take Some31:38 Brit's Agent Starts Talking to Dave's Agent33:51 No Switching Costs, So BD Deals Are the Only Lock-In36:13 Dave: Instinct Is the New Kayak38:47 Adrian's Opposite Thesis: We Go Further Into the Screens43:39 Who Has Agency, You or the Technology?44:22 Offline Is the New Luxury46:31 Everyone Is Building Personal Apps Now47:54 Book Rec: Ari Emanuel's Roll the Calls50:44 Adrian's Parting Shot: Infrastructure, Data, or Algorithms53:02 Sam's Middle Ages 2.0: Castles, Moats, and HoardingWe're also onX: https://twitter.com/moreorlesspodInstagram: https://instagram.com/moreorlessSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2CJdt6HhJ8ioNkbqqVKckCApple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/more-or-less-from-the-morins-and-the-lessins/id1692234179Connect with us here:1) Sam Lessin: https://x.com/lessin2) Dave Morin: https://x.com/davemorin3) Jessica Lessin: https://x.com/Jessicalessin4) Brit Morin: https://x.com/britAbout More or Less: For 15 years, the Morins and the Lessins have debated the future of Silicon Valley as the closest of friends. Every Friday, they break down technology, capital, and media. From The Information, Offline Ventures, and Slow Ventures.
Claude Is Doing Science, a16z Is Starting a University & the AI Bubble Keeps Growing and Still Be a Terrible Business; We'd Rather Send Our Kids to the Military Than to a16z's School
Andreessen Horowitz puts $35 million into a new school and the pod nearly falls apart over it. Sam says he'd rather send his kids to the military, Jess is all for fixing higher ed but not with two venture …
Shownotes
Andreessen Horowitz puts $35 million into a new school and the pod nearly falls apart over it. Sam says he'd rather send his kids to the military, Jess is all for fixing higher ed but not with two venture capitalists writing the curriculum, and guest Matt Mazzeo (NoHo Labs founder, former CAA agent, prolific angel) spends ten minutes asking why the four of them can't be more optimistic about anything. Then Claude runs 10,000 agents for 21 hours and discovers a new enzyme system, which Brit points out is the beginning of two solid months of Claude catnip before the IPO. Sam's bigger worry: you can't take a company public when your top risk factor isn't the New York Times lawsuit, it's setting off nukes. Dave thinks the question nobody is asking is whether your agent represents you or the lab, because your Muse agent works for Meta. Plus Amazon blocking Muse, the Saint Petersburg paradox, and Matt going from 250 pounds to single digit body fat on peptides.
Matt is giving More or Less listeners 50% off their first month at NoHo Labs. Use code: MOREORLESSVIP on https://noholabs.com/
In this episode:
- Why the a16z school turned into the most heated argument this pod has had, and where each of them landed on Alpha School
- Claude discovering a new enzyme system with 10,000 agents in 21 hours, and the timing of that announcement
- Sam on why infinite liability may keep Anthropic from going public at all
- Matt's maximalist case: long frontier labs, long open source, long all of it
- The Saint Petersburg paradox, and why there's no way to price a company pitched as an infinite payout
- Greg Brockman redefining AGI as a gradual series of events, three years after it was sold as a winner-take-all moment
- Amazon blocking Muse, and whether every agent ends up in business development talks
- Does your agent faithfully represent you, or the lab that built it?
- Peptides 101 with Matt: what they are, the FDA moving them back into compounding pharmacies, and what a protocol actually costs
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About More or Less: For 15 years, the Morins and the Lessins have debated the future of Silicon Valley as the closest of friends. Every Friday, they break down technology, capital, and media. From The Information, Offline Ventures, and Slow Ventures.
Anthropic Wants to Slow AI Down & Instinct Wants a $10B Valuation. Is It Because They're Losing? Is Dario Amodei Actually Right?
Finally, a full house week where Sam is back from New York and the squad is back for a full dive into this week’s AI drama. Anthropic's Dario wrote a long essay calling for the AI race to slow down, weeks …
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Finally, a full house week where Sam is back from New York and the squad is back for a full dive into this week’s AI drama. Anthropic's Dario wrote a long essay calling for the AI race to slow down, weeks before a multi-trillion dollar IPO. Dave's read: Anthropic must be losing. Sam's read: the labs are bad businesses with no compounding advantage, so regulatory capture is the only move left.
Also this week: Sam's theory that OpenAI and Anthropic only become valuable as defense companies holding unreleased models in reserve, the poly-agent debate over whether normal people want one agent or ten, Instinct raising at $10 billion two weeks after $2.5 billion, and why everyone in the Valley is trading instead of investing.
In this episode:
- Why Dave thinks Dario’s slowdown essay is a sign Anthropic is falling behind, and what OpenRouter's data shows
- Sam on why there's no return on being first, and why that pushes the labs toward regulatory capture
- Brit on what's real in the safety debate, and the damned-if-you-do problem of racing China
- What DeepMind's new boss and Satya Nadella think about building safety alongside the product
- Sam's three eras of tech policy, from Bill Gates to embrace and extend
- The defense company thesis: zero-day models held back like nuclear weapons in silos
- Alignment's next frontier: is your agent working for you, or for the lab that made it?
- Instinct's $10B round, OpenRouter's exit, and why Sam says he's "currently wrong" as a seed investor
Chapters:
00:00 Intro
01:02 Not Dead Yet From the AGI
03:31 Jacob Coxon Quits Anthropic and Goes on a Media Tour
04:47 Dario's Slowdown Essay: Is Anthropic Just Losing?
06:13 Astra, OpenRouter, and DeepSeek Closing the Gap
06:45 Why the AI Labs Have No Compounding Advantage
07:29 Independent Assessors, Bioweapons, and Racing China
09:07 You Don't Need Superintelligence to Break the Banks
10:23 What DeepMind's New Boss and Satya Think About Safety
12:32 OpenAI's $1.5T Raise and the IPO That Keeps Slipping
13:03 Three Eras of Tech Policy: Gates, Google, Embrace and Extend
15:02 What DC Really Thinks About Anthropic
15:42 Should the Labs Red Team Each Other's Models?
18:42 Sam's Take: The AI Labs End Up as Defense Companies
20:54 10,000 Superintelligences in Silos
21:38 Alignment: Does Your Agent Work for You or the Lab?
23:44 The Poly-Agent Future: Muse, Grok, and Claude
24:47 Brit Pushes Back: Normal People Only Want One Agent
26:38 Oura's Agent Explains Jess's Sleep Data
28:40 Instinct Raising at $10B: Are These Numbers Fake?
30:40 Everyone's Trading, Nobody's Investing
33:27 Sam Built a Torah and Talmud App With Claude
35:28 Apple Eyes the Server Business Again
35:58 Sleep Age Wars: 8 Sleep, Oura, and Made-Up Scores
37:22 Entertaining Ourselves to Death
41:01 Building the Things Nobody Else Will Build
43:07 Tech's Democrat Problem: Jay Carney and Ron Conway
48:25 Doctor Strangelove and Not Looking at the Big Board
49:53 Pop Culture: Emmys, Taylor Swift, Silo, and Rogue Heroes
52:15 The WTF Lineup and the One-Name Theory
54:20 The Information's Most Influential People in Tech
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About More or Less: For 15 years, the Morins and the Lessins have debated the future of Silicon Valley as the closest of friends. Every Friday, they break down technology, capital, and media. From The Information, Offline Ventures, and Slow Ventures.
iPhone Duo, Meta Muse & Why AI Finally Scared Dave Morin
Dave Morin goes hands-on with Apple's iPhone Duo, the crew tests Meta's new Muse agent and asks whether it can hold up once Google ships its own, and Dave explains why OpenAI's Astra is the first AI model in a …
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Dave Morin goes hands-on with Apple's iPhone Duo, the crew tests Meta's new Muse agent and asks whether it can hold up once Google ships its own, and Dave explains why OpenAI's Astra is the first AI model in a long time that felt scary to use. Dave, Brit, and Jess break down the week (Sam's at the US Open).
Also this week: a former Anthropic researcher's AI doom media tour, weeks before Anthropic's IPO, and whether it's a real warning or a play for regulatory capture. Plus the Apple Watch feature that transcribes your conversations all day, Jeffrey Katzenberg's new Hollywood AI venture, and the forgotten story of Venmo's viral billboards.
In this episode:
- Dave's hands-on take on the iPhone Duo, its $2,000 price, and why Apple is going foldable now
- The Apple Watch feature that listens all day, and what it means for Granola
- Meta's Muse agent: why it knew almost nothing when asked "what do you know about me?"
- Why Google hasn't shipped its agent yet, and how trust vs. distribution shapes the agent wars
- Why OpenAI's Astra felt scary to Dave, and what happens when you run millions of them at once
- Dave's two takes on the AI doom media tour, including whether it's a play for regulatory capture
- Why the AI labs can't slow down, and OpenAI's merge clause if someone else reaches AGI
- The Venmo documentary and the "Lucas" billboards that went viral with almost no budget
Chapters:
00:00 Trailer
01:26 Can AI Agents Win Your Fantasy Football League?
02:39 Jess vs. the Bots: School Sign-Ups and Indian Wells Tickets
05:28 Apple's Big Hardware Event Under Its New CEO
06:07 iPhone Duo Hands-On: Size, Screen, and Camera
09:35 Folded Modes, Kid Cam, and the $2,000 Price Tag
11:41 Why Apple Is Going Foldable Now (Hint: China)
12:13 Apple Watch Takes On Oura and Whoop
13:12 Audio Intelligence: The Apple Watch That Listens All Day
15:25 Always-On AI and Apple's Shot at OpenAI and Meta
16:59 Meta's Muse Agent: What Does It Know About You?
20:30 The Agent Wars: Muse, Instinct, Hermes, and OpenClaw
22:26 Why Google Hasn't Shipped Its Agent Yet
23:31 Trust vs. Distribution: Meta, Google, and OpenAI
25:02 Harness Wars: Why Agents Are Still in 1982
27:13 Jeffrey Katzenberg's Hollywood AI Venture
29:35 Anthropic's IPO and the AI Doom Media Tour
30:56 If It Bleeds, It Leads: Why AI Fear Sells
32:04 Take One: A Psyop for Regulatory Capture?
33:43 Take Two: Why OpenAI's Astra Felt Scary
36:49 Why the AI Labs Can't Slow Down
38:14 OpenAI's AGI Merge Clause
40:12 The Venmo Documentary and the Ace Hotel Origin Story
45:02 How Venmo's "Lucas" Billboards Went Viral
46:31 Coming Soon: Altman, Musk, and Facebook Movies
47:41 US Open Picks and the 4 AM Match Problem
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About More or Less: For 15 years, the Morins and the Lessins have debated the future of Silicon Valley as the closest of friends. Every Friday, they break down technology, capital, and media. From The Information, Offline Ventures, and Slow Ventures.
AI Agents Are Going Rogue. Should We Be Worried?
Sam has entered what Jessica calls the “recursive Sam loop,” producing children’s media in his own voice, letting agents deploy their own apps, and having bots track his health. But things take a turn when …
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Sam has entered what Jessica calls the “recursive Sam loop,” producing children’s media in his own voice, letting agents deploy their own apps, and having bots track his health. But things take a turn when Claude refuses one of his requests, seemingly holds a grudge, and leaves Sam wondering whether his own AI might turn on him. That sends the squad down the bigger rabbit hole of AI control: rogue agent swarms, models breaking out of sandboxes, what “alignment” actually means, and why Dave thinks autonomous agents need an entirely new security layer. Plus, OpenClaw 2.0 goes multiplayer, everyone debates whether Slack is any good for agents, Suds explains why he avoids the AI app layer, and Tesla’s Cybercab raises questions about Waymo’s robotaxi lead. Then Google comes for Canva, Sam makes the case for boring “LLM wrappers” built for Middle America, and no one can tell whether Dario Amodei, Marc Benioff, or Taylor Swift are even real on the internet anymore. Which feels about right.
Chapters:
0:00 Episode trailer
1:10 Backstreet Boys convert Dave
3:21 The recursive Sam loop
8:58 Claude refuses Sam while Grok says yes
15:50 Can we actually contain autonomous agents?
19:10 OpenAI’s next model and the observability trade-off
22:14 If AI is this interoperable, where does anyone make money?
24:45 OpenClaw 2.0 goes multiplayer
26:26 Is Slack actually terrible for AI agents?
28:46 Suds joins the podcast
33:02 Waymo, Cybercab and the robotaxi wars
39:49 How Marc Benioff stays in the flow
42:38 Suds on investing in the AI infrastructure bottleneck
46:27 Can Google actually disrupt Canva?
51:34 Jessica gets fooled by AI on Facebook
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Meta’s $17B Reckoning & Why Parents Can’t Compete With Big Tech's Algorithm
Sam is recording poolside, Jess is embracing her agentic era, and somehow that’s the least chaotic part of this week’s episode. The squad digs into Meta’s $17 billion settlement over child safety and whether …
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Sam is recording poolside, Jess is embracing her agentic era, and somehow that’s the least chaotic part of this week’s episode. The squad digs into Meta’s $17 billion settlement over child safety and whether social media should basically be treated like alcohol, before asking the harder question: are parents even capable of competing with algorithms anymore? Dave says parents are “outgunned,” Sam thinks most parental controls are useless policy theater, Brit wants to rethink the operating system itself, and Jess would simply like her kids to touch grass. Then, with Tim Cook preparing to pass the torch at Apple, the group debates his real legacy, whether 15 years of world-class optimization was enough, why Apple Silicon may turn out to be his most important AI bet, and whether Apple’s decision to sit out the AI infrastructure arms race will eventually look brilliant or like the company completely missed the next era.
Chapters:
0:00 Episode start
1:06 Sam goes poolside and everyone’s agents are working
4:35 Jessica enters her agentic era
7:51 Meta’s $17B child safety settlement
33:37 Could AI finally make parental controls useful?
38:47 Why Apple keeps escaping the kids-and-tech debate
43:29 Tim Cook’s Apple farewell
49:58 Apple Intelligence and Cook’s unfinished AI legacy
57:49 Backstreet Boys, the US Open and sign-off
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Stripe Buys OpenRouter, OpenAI vs. Anthropic & the AI Backlash
Stripe buys OpenRouter for billions, which naturally raises the question: did Stripe just buy critical AI infrastructure, or a very expensive router with great distribution? The original squad is back to debate …
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Stripe buys OpenRouter for billions, which naturally raises the question: did Stripe just buy critical AI infrastructure, or a very expensive router with great distribution? The original squad is back to debate why $7B acquisitions somehow feel normal now, whether Google already has agentic commerce won by owning your inbox, calendar, and Drive, and why Anthropic vs. OpenAI might be less about who has the best model and more about who built the right company. Sam makes the case that OpenAI pulled off the “greatest fundraising story in history,” Dave argues Grokbot might officially make AI a three-player race, and everyone tries to figure out how you price any of these companies when no lead seems to last. Plus, is AI a great investment or just a great trade, does the data center backlash actually have anything to do with data centers, have we built trillions of dollars of infrastructure before finding enough use cases for it, and, naturally in pop corner, Josh Kushner bought into the Lakers.
Chapters:
0:00 Episode trailer
1:00 Episode start
4:00 This week in AI
5:00 Stripe buys OpenRouter
8:30 Is OpenRouter actually worth billions?
11:00 The agentic commerce bet
14:00 Why Google could own the AI assistant
17:30 The DOJ investigates Andreessen Horowitz
22:00 Anthropic vs. OpenAI
26:00 Why OpenAI is struggling in enterprise
28:30 Can anyone actually price AI companies?
30:00 OpenAI’s “greatest fundraising story in history”
33:30 Is AI a great investment or just a great trade?
36:00 SpaceX, Moderna and narrative capitalism
37:30 Grok enters the AI race
41:00 AI makes software increasingly disposable
45:00 The AI data center backlash
47:30 “The backlash is that AI sucks”
48:30 Did we build too much AI infrastructure?
53:30 Josh Kushner, Thrive and the Lakers
55:30 Travis Kelce enters the NIL business
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Special Edition MOL with Josh Wolfe, Rachel Holt, Scott Belsky, Scott Stanford, and Peter Deng
A very special edition of More or Less, featuring Josh Wolfe (Founder, Lux Capital), Rachel Holt (Founder, Construct Capital; former Head of North America at Uber), Scott Belsky (Partner, A24; Founder …
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A very special edition of More or Less, featuring Josh Wolfe (Founder, Lux Capital), Rachel Holt (Founder, Construct Capital; former Head of North America at Uber), Scott Belsky (Partner, A24; Founder, Behance), Scott Stanford (Founder, Acme Capital), and Peter Deng (GP, Felicis; formerly Google, Facebook, Instagram, Uber, Airtable, and OpenAI). Sam takes over hosting duties and assembles an overqualified group of investor friends to argue about where AI goes from here, from agents, Grok, Claude, and the shift from “help me do this” to “just do it,” to trust, data ownership, Apple’s AI advantage, open vs. closed models, model routing, and why proprietary data may become the real moat. They also dig into NVIDIA’s massive compute financing strategy, the risks of securitizing GPUs like long-lived infrastructure, what the OpenAI executive exodus says about the AI talent market, and the bigger question hanging over all of it: if AI really changes work, who actually participates in the upside?
Chapters
0:00 Episode trailer
1:24 Episode start
1:59 Meet the panel, every flavor of venture capital
5:14 Consumer AI agents cross the Rubicon
7:24 The end of websites, when agents talk to agents
8:32 Which AI companies do you actually trust?
11:41 Why Apple could win AI by doing nothing
16:40 If models commoditize, unique data becomes the moat
22:15 Open vs. closed AI, and who owns your data
27:06 NVIDIA’s balance sheet shenanigans
31:26 NVIDIA gets the upside, who gets the risk?
34:31 Nobody has ever securitized compute
35:02 Who owns the wealth AI creates?
39:38 What happens when economic opportunity runs out?
42:23 Why OpenAI’s best people keep leaving
47:23 Why AI may look more like GPS than Facebook
49:14 What actually happened with Airtable
50:30 Lightning Round: Rachel Holt on physical-world investing
53:00 Scott Belsky on AI watermarks, provenance & deepfakes
54:15 Josh Wolfe on socialism, Europe & defense
57:15 Final thoughts & sign-off
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Jeff Dean Leaves Google, Airtable Sells, and the Bag-Securing Era
Sam records from the beach while dealing with a broken bilge pump. Dave calls in after herding cattle. Fortunately, tech continues without them, which Sam takes as further proof that AGI is already running the …
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Sam records from the beach while dealing with a broken bilge pump. Dave calls in after herding cattle. Fortunately, tech continues without them, which Sam takes as further proof that AGI is already running the industry. The crew unpacks Google's leadership shakeup and Jeff Dean's departure after 27 years, debates whether Airtable's sale to Bending Spoons is the blueprint for surviving the AI transition, and Sam argues that today's AI labs look increasingly like yesterday's overvalued SaaS companies. Along the way they explain why Sam's AI built his kid an iPhone game, why OpenAI's luxury creator retreat backfired, why Apple may have accidentally created its own lawsuit, and whether AI can ever overcome the growing public backlash against it.
Chapters:
0:00 Episode Trailer
1:07 Episode Start
2:08 Sam's Boston Whaler Beach Studio
3:13 Dave Herds Cattle in Montana
5:31 Google's AI Shakeup, Jeff Dean Leaves, Demis Steps Back
8:57 Why Great Researchers Don't Always Make Great CEOs
10:48 Recursive Self-Improvement and the AI Talent Wars
19:41 Airtable Sells to Bending Spoons
25:33 Not Every SaaS Company Is Dead
27:50 The Constellation Software Playbook
30:05 The Next Big Write Downs Are AI Labs
31:59 Apple vs. OpenAI, Courtesy of iCloud
35:20 OpenAI's Creator Summit Backlash
40:53 Why People Still Hate AI
43:39 AI Slop and the Content Problem
45:11 SpaceX's Lockup and Number Big
48:00 Nikita Bier Leaves X
50:22 Jess's Posting Dilemma
53:40 Next Week on More or Less
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Zuck says AI is for everyone, His Rivals Ask Washington To Slow it Down
New studio set up: the squad now records from a parked Tesla in the middle of a rainstorm while Sam is on the beach, and somehow it turned into one of our favorite episodes. We break down Meta's new AI …
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New studio set up: the squad now records from a parked Tesla in the middle of a rainstorm while Sam is on the beach, and somehow it turned into one of our favorite episodes. We break down Meta's new AI campaign, Zuckerberg's vision for AI, why more than 1,000 frontier AI researchers are asking Washington to slow development, and whether fear has become the easiest narrative in tech. Then we get into China cracking deep ultraviolet lithography, what it means for ASML and the AI race, why AI demand still isn't slowing, Lilian Weng's move from Thinking Machines to OpenAI, and Sam's theory that Silicon Valley has developed an Oppenheimer complex.
Chapters:
0:00 Episode trailer
1:23 Episode start
9:02 Meta's Ad Campaign Rejects The Doomers
11:14 Zuckerberg's Optimism Blitz Actually Lands
13:11 AI's Dark Side Raises Easier Money
15:04 Sam's Bot Read 4GB Of Dad's Journals
17:28 Nobody Wants To Be Anthropic
18:56 Anthropic Runs On Spite For OpenAI
21:10 OpenAI Was The Original Evil Empire
22:57 Meta Is Still A Centralized Ad Company
24:46 Decentralization Loses Without A Jedi
26:01 Apple Won On Politics, Not Technology
27:16 Meta Earnings Miss On Lawsuits And Severance
28:33 China Cracks DUV, ASML Takes The Hit
29:57 Execs Privately Reject The China AI War
32:39 The Compute Debate Gavin Baker Started
39:13 X Is The Tech Town Square Now
46:57 Lilian Weng Quits For Health, Joins OpenAI
53:50 AI Is A Crisis Of Meaning
54:57 Book The Conference Before You're Invited
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Did OpenAI Stage Its Own Cyber Incident? | Stripe Buying Paypal, Frontier Model Economics, Peptides
Deep summer check-in from the More or Less squad. Dave is back on Instagram after a year away (thanks to Stagecoach), Jessica reviews Benson Boone's Wanted Man tour, Chris Stapleton's Montana show gets a …
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Deep summer check-in from the More or Less squad. Dave is back on Instagram after a year away (thanks to Stagecoach), Jessica reviews Benson Boone's Wanted Man tour, Chris Stapleton's Montana show gets a shoutout, and Sam is traveling with a Yeti cooler full of peptides.
Don’t worry, this is still a tech podcast: OpenAI revealed an AI that escaped its testing sandbox and hacked Hugging Face. The crew's hot take is that OpenAI is leaning into the story to strengthen its narrative as revenue growth slows. Then, Stripe could be eyeing PayPal. Sam argues Stripe missed a once-in-a-generation opportunity by staying private instead of using public stock as acquisition currency the way Meta did with WhatsApp. They also explain why agentic commerce still isn't real, despite the hype. Plus, “Peptide Corner” returns with reports from the Hamptons, where peptides have officially gone mainstream, rich people inflation has reached $67 for two cappuccinos and sandwiches, and Sam shares an update on his recovering knee.
Chapters:
0:00 Episode Trailer
2:07 Dave Returns to Instagram, Sam Turns 43, and More
8:41 OpenAI's AI Escaped Its Sandbox
16:43 The National Guard Analogy
31:57 Sam's Bot Rebellion Theory
37:44 Is Stripe Buying PayPal?
47:48 Why Agentic Commerce Isn't Here Yet
49:40 Peptide Corner
52:53 Rich People Inflation
54:03 Sam's Knee Recovery
56:47 The GLP-1 Playbook
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AI Regulatory Capture Bet: Why OpenAI & Anthropic Stopped Competing on Tech
You know we're deep into summer when Jess leaves the pod early to catch Benson Boone... for the eighth time. This week, the More or Less squad revisits the Anthropic and OpenAI IPO speculation. Their views …
Shownotes
You know we're deep into summer when Jess leaves the pod early to catch Benson Boone... for the eighth time.
This week, the More or Less squad revisits the Anthropic and OpenAI IPO speculation. Their views haven't changed, but their AI usage certainly has. Dave ditches Anthropic for GLM 5.2 on cost, while Sam argues the AI model wars are effectively over, and the frontier labs know it, which is why they're spending more time in Washington than competing on model quality. America also gets its first serious open weights model. The squad also unpacks OpenAI's hardware ambitions after its much-hyped device turns out to be... an Alexa speaker. Sam explains why Sam Altman's $8 billion Johnny Ive acquisition was effectively free, thanks to narrative capitalism. Plus: real-time voice AI, passive listening devices, peptides, Hinge's new social proof feature, Jay-Z turning New York into a festival, and why biological age tests are basically the clout score of your body.
Chapters:
0:00 Episode Teaser
0:44 Episode Start
2:18 Anthropic IPO This September?
5:29 Dave Dumps Anthropic for GLM 5.
28:22 When Is Better AI Worth Paying For?
12:15 AGI Is Dead, AI Is Political Now
16:15 America's First Open Weights Model By Thinking Machines
21:22 Why Sam Is Depressed About AI
29:07 OpenAI Built... an Alexa? The $8B Johnny Ive Bet
31:38 Silicon Valley Goes Hollywood
36:03 Would You Wear an Always-On Mic?
37:08 OpenAI's Live Voice Model
41:14 Sam's Peptide Experiment
43:36 Hinge Launches “Friend’s Take”
46:11 Jay-Z's NYC Takeover
48:16 Biological Age Is Just a Clout Score
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OpenAI Offered the Government a Stake. Is This a Distress Signal?
The full quad is back, unpacking OpenAI's offer to give the U.S. government an equity stake. Sam's take: it's less a marketing win than a distress signal. The squad also debates whether Trump Accounts actually …
Shownotes
The full quad is back, unpacking OpenAI's offer to give the U.S. government an equity stake. Sam's take: it's less a marketing win than a distress signal. The squad also debates whether Trump Accounts actually reach everyday Americans (Brit is skeptical), defends MacKenzie Scott from the internet's endless opinions about her philanthropy, and digs into Dave's argument that AI labs are slowly strangling the developer ecosystems that could save them.They also tackle Xbox's identity crisis and whether Microsoft should just sell it, the Nex Playground device (In Sam's words: non-VR Beat Saber for families), why 2026 is shaping up to be extreme nihilism wrapped in Silicon Valley optimism, Brit's take that AI has shifted from revolutionary to evolutionary, and, of course in pop culture corner, Brit claiming full credit for calling the Taylor Swift wedding strategy.
Chapters:
0:00 Episode Trailer
0:47 Episode Begins
1:10 Fourth of July Recap, Bald Eagles & the No VC Summer
5:10 OpenAI Offered the U.S. Government Equity
11:15 Trump Accounts, Giving Every American Kid a Stake in Capitalism
15:02 Stop Judging MacKenzie Scott's Philanthropy
18:40 AI Labs Are Distressed and Destroying Their Ecosystems
21:50 AI Labs Are Competing With Their Own Developers
35:26 Xbox Is in Trouble, Should Microsoft Sell It?
37:52 Nex, the Quiet Wii Revival Nobody Saw Coming
41:49 Sam's 2026 Prediction: Extreme Nihilism Meets Silicon Valley Optimism
44:04 Vox Americanus Update
46:18 Brit Is Bored of AI. It's Evolution, Not Revolution
48:22 Post-AGI Funds Are a Bad Bet, Physical AI Could Be the Real Revolution
49:27 Going Long on Offline, World Cup, Concerts & Real Life
51:50 Pop Culture Corner: Brit Calls Taylor Swift's Wedding Strategy
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Why Identity Verification Matters For The Internet | Vox Americanus, GLM 5.2, Claude Fable 5 Is Back
The full quad is back just before the Fourth of July. Dave and Sam explain why padel is just pickleball for fancy people, Sam vibe-coded an app to prove you’re actually American on the internet (Vox Americanus …
Shownotes
The full quad is back just before the Fourth of July. Dave and Sam explain why padel is just pickleball for fancy people, Sam vibe-coded an app to prove you’re actually American on the internet (Vox Americanus is real and you can use it: https://voxamericanus.com), and Dave even nominates Sam for office, even though Sam insists we should fix the job before electing anyone actually good for it.
The crew also dives into why non-engineers are more capable than they think in the age of agentic coding, Claude Fable 5’s government clearance “drama” and return, how GLM 5.2 is quietly replacing Opus 4 on real agent stacks, why Anthropic is still printing revenue despite open source pressure, and the case for an open source router.. They wrap with pop culture corner: Taylor Swift wedding intel and Brit’s review of Alpha School.
Chapters:
0:00 Episode trailer
0:50 Episode start
1:12 Full Quad Pre-4th of July, Is There Such a Thing as VC Summer?
3:32 Padel Is the New VC Networking Sport, Pickleball Is for the Plebs
9:10 Vox Americanus, Can You Actually Prove You're American Online?
15:25 Should Sam Run for Office? Fix the Job Description First
29:30 Agentic Coding, You're Not Too Late
35:33 Claude Fable 5 Is Back, Government Clearance Drama Explained
41:08 GLM 5.2, Open Source Just Quietly Replaced Opus 4
46:16 Anthropic Still Printing Revenue, The Case for an Open Source Router
47:29 Taylor Swift's Wedding
49:36 Alpha School, Brit's Kids Try AI Education
52:12 America's 250th Birthday
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Chinese AI Model GLM 5.2 Beating Frontier Models | Meta Glasses, Polymarket Scandal, and More AI Talent War
The quad is back. Dave and Brit rejoin Sam and Jess fresh off a More or Less fan encounter at the Zurich airport. It was quite the week for Meta as the squad breaks down the company’s new line of glasses …
Shownotes
The quad is back. Dave and Brit rejoin Sam and Jess fresh off a More or Less fan encounter at the Zurich airport. It was quite the week for Meta as the squad breaks down the company’s new line of glasses featuring Kylie Jenner (or, in Jess’ words, Kendall), and Brit makes the call that this is finally the watershed moment for women buying smart glasses ( The men seem to be the early adopters, Dave wore his in the Sistine Chapel, and Sam owns 10+ pairs.). Then they get into Meta’s prediction market: a genuinely interesting information machine or a very efficient way to addict twenty-somethings to fake gambling? In true MOL fashion, the squad is split. Sam is all in, Dave is worried it’ll work too well, and Brit thinks it’ll all click when you tie it to The Bachelor. Dave also ran GLM 5.2 on eight Nvidia B200s with some hacker friends and came away shaken. Open source is now matching, if not outperforming, frontier models at 10x the speed, raising uncomfortable questions about the enormous bets sitting on frontier labs today. Remember last year’s AI talent war? It’s back, and Jess argues it’s really an early indicator of investor insecurity. Finally, in pop culture corner: Cannes and Sam’s unsolicited review of The Information's new mobile app.
Chapters:
0:00 Episode trailer
0:50 Intro
1:12 MOL Got Recognized at the Zurich Airport
3:02 What’s on the Agenda Today
5:04 Meta Smart Glasses, The Moment Women Finally Buy In?
14:20 Meta’s Prediction Markets, Brilliant or Addictive?
19:39 Polymarket’s Influencer Problem
22:48 AI Talent Wars, Investors Are Reading the Wrong Signals
25:40 GLM 5.2 on Nvidia B200s, Open Source Catches Frontier Models
28:20 AI Token Spend, Sam’s $1,500/Month Experiment
31:04 Sam Reviews The Information App Live
36:17 Anthropic, Dell, and the Math Behind Generational Returns
43:30 Cannes Lions, Worth It or Corporate Boondoggle?
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Elon Is the Best Financier of Our Generation
Sam and Jessica go two-on-two this week to unpack the SpaceX IPO and whether a $2.5 trillion valuation is actually justified, exploring why “it’s valuable because it’s valuable” may be a legitimate investment …
Shownotes
Sam and Jessica go two-on-two this week to unpack the SpaceX IPO and whether a $2.5 trillion valuation is actually justified, exploring why “it’s valuable because it’s valuable” may be a legitimate investment thesis and why Cursor’s $60 billion acquisition looks cheap in that context. They also break down Anthropic’s clash with the U.S. government over Fable 5, with Sam arguing the crackdown could be the best marketing in AI history, before debating the risks of tying software access to nationality. The episode closes with Meta’s AI morale problem, OpenAI burning nearly $4 billion in Q1 on $5.7 billion in revenue, the case for a multi-model future where no single frontier model wins, and why Sam believes token economics may be one of the most overlooked opportunities in economics. In lieu of Pop Culture Corner, Jessica brings a Reed Hastings book recommendation, while Sam once again demonstrates that having conviction and acting on it are apparently two different skill sets. After eight months of pitching DigitalOcean, he still doesn’t own the stock.
Chapters:
00:00 - Teaser
01:47 - SpaceX IPO Analysis
09:17 - Narrative Assets and Retail Investing
12:09 - The Future of AI Models and Infrastructure
16:00 - Corporate Narratives, Employee Motivation, and Meta’s AI Challenges
22:58 - OpenAI’s Market Strategy and Impact
25:19 - Open Source Models and Market Share
27:01 - Economics of Tokens and Innovation
33:01 - Anthropic’s PR Strategy and Fable Model Release
35:24 - Government Stakes in AI Companies
39:04 - Reed Hasting's Book Recommendation
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Teamshares IPO: $60M EBITDA, 92 Companies, Zero Exits
Seven years after Slow wrote its first check, Sam sits down with Teamshares CEO Mike Brown as the company prepares to go public. Mike’s core insight is simple: America has millions of durable, cash-flowing …
Shownotes
Seven years after Slow wrote its first check, Sam sits down with Teamshares CEO Mike Brown as the company prepares to go public. Mike’s core insight is simple: America has millions of durable, cash-flowing small businesses, but no great long-term owner. After buying and operating electrical contractors himself, he realized the opportunity wasn’t another marketplace or PE roll-up, it was building a permanent holding company that acquires great businesses, gives employees ownership, and never sells. Today, Teamshares owns 92 businesses generating roughly $60M in EBITDA. The conversation explores why most roll-ups fail, why capital allocation is the true operating system of the business, and why the traditional private equity model may be running out of steam. Mike closes with an ambitious goal: grow corporate EBITDA from $19M to $100M by 2027 and create a forever home for thousands of small businesses.
Chapters:
00:00 Episode Teaser Featuring Mike Brown, Teamshares CEO
01:11 The Teamshares Origin Story
04:48 From Wall Street to Buying Small Businesses
10:47 Why Going Direct to Sellers Didn’t Work (The FSBO Problem)
13:18 Buying at Scale, The Teamshares Model
15:27 92 Acquisitions and $60M EBITDA, Lessons Learned
18:26 Why Generalist Hires Didn’t Work
19:08 Building a Leadership Pipeline
23:46 The Internal YC, Community Across Portfolio Companies
27:42 How Technology Powers 92 Businesses
28:08 “Will This Business Exist in 50 Years?”
32:21 Why Most Roll-Ups Fail
37:30 The Road to $100M EBITDA
39:51 The Long-Term Vision
40:58 Capital Allocation as a Competitive Advantage
42:34 Decentralized Leadership, Centralized Capital
46:16 Why Private Equity Fails Small Businesses
49:25 Going Public, What Comes Next
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Important Disclosures and Disclaimers: Teamshares has entered into a definitive agreement for a business combination with Live Oak Crest Acquisition Corp. (“Live Oak”), a special purpose acquisition company. In connection with the proposed transaction, a registration statement on Form S-4 (the “Registration Statement”) has been filed with, and been declared effective by, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”). This podcast does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any securities. For important information about the proposed transaction, including where to find the Registration Statement and other legal disclaimers, please refer to the press release available at https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260527344175/en/Teamshares-Announces-S-4-Effectiveness-in-Anticipation-of-Nasdaq-Listing.Clarifications:
Teamshares currently has 93 operating subsidiaries. Additionally, Teamshares has had documented revenue declines and business closures. A full reconciliation of non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures, as well as Teamshares’ audited GAAP financial statements, is available in the Registration Statement. Investors should review the full set of assumptions and risk factors accompanying these metrics in the Registration Statement.
Apple’s New Siri, SpaceX’s $300B IPO & the AI Company Killing Its Own Brand
Dave joins the squad from YC just ahead of WWDC, where the group breaks down Apple’s upgraded Siri and the surprising revelation that much of Apple’s AI capability is powered by Google’s Gemini models. It …
Shownotes
Dave joins the squad from YC just ahead of WWDC, where the group breaks down Apple’s upgraded Siri and the surprising revelation that much of Apple’s AI capability is powered by Google’s Gemini models. It wouldn’t be a technology podcast without the squad expanding into the broader AI landscape, with Dave arguing that outside of OpenAI and Anthropic, most AI companies are becoming infrastructure providers rather than destination products. They continue to unpack the IPO frenzy around SpaceX and OpenAI, including SpaceX’s reportedly massive investor demand and OpenAI’s murky timeline to go public. Jess then shifts the conversation to the turmoil at 60 Minutes, where leadership shakeups, internal revolts, and a declining brand presence raise questions about the future of legacy media. Finally, in Pop Culture Corner, the pod closes with Disney’s $200 million bet on Toy Story 5 and Taylor Swift’s outsized promotional impact.
Chapters:
01:53 Apple WWDC: New Siri Breakdown
05:18 Google Gemini Powers Apple AI
07:06 WWDC Ignored Developers Entirely
10:21 Tim Cook’s Leadership Baton Pass
14:30 SpaceX IPO and OpenAI Filing
18:00 Anthropic vs. OpenAI Narrative War
21:48 Dave Morin’s Two-Phone Redemption
26:52 60 Minutes Leadership Implosion
38:44 Toy Story 5 and Taylor Swift
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Silicon Valley IPO Summer 2026: SpaceX, Anthropic, OpenAI Explained
Brit subs in for Jess as Sam and Dave unpack the AI IPO boom, including SpaceX, Anthropic, and Cerebras, debate whether AI agents can actually replace employees, and react live to the discovery that Slow’s …
Shownotes
Brit subs in for Jess as Sam and Dave unpack the AI IPO boom, including SpaceX, Anthropic, and Cerebras, debate whether AI agents can actually replace employees, and react live to the discovery that Slow’s @slow Instagram account was stolen through a Meta AI support exploit. The conversation spans OpenClaw’s enterprise push, recent AI funding rounds, the AI wrapper debate, and Sam’s latest investing thesis that startup pitches should look more like movie trailers than decks, before ending with a pop culture corner into Taylor Swift, AI-generated podcasts for kids, and the future of TBPN after the OpenAI deal.
Chapters:
02:53 AI IPO Season: SpaceX, Anthropic & Cerebras
05:29 Narrative Capitalism: Storing Value in Stories
11:34 What the AI IPO Wave Means for Silicon Valley
15:02 Microsoft Build: OpenClaw Goes Enterprise
17:38 Would You Trade Your Employee for an AI Agent?
25:19 LIVE: Slow Ventures’ Instagram Gets Hacked via Meta AI
30:04 Are AI Harnesses Just Fancy PDFs?
31:49 Recent AI Raises & the SaaS Comeback
33:01 The New Pitch: Movie Trailers Over Decks
41:17 AI-Generated Podcasts, Voice Cloning & Consumer AI
42:54 TBPN Update: Post-OpenAI Deal
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Did Anthropic Use the Pope as a Marketing Stunt? Ft. Amir Efrati
This week on More or Less, Amir Efrati of The Information joins Jessica, Brit, and Dave to unpack the growing intersection of AI, government, and national security, from the rumored stalled executive AI order …
Shownotes
This week on More or Less, Amir Efrati of The Information joins Jessica, Brit, and Dave to unpack the growing intersection of AI, government, and national security, from the rumored stalled executive AI order to why frontier model companies may soon face deeper U.S. oversight and pre-release access demands. The group debates whether slowing AI adoption is really a pricing and UX problem, why AI agents are causing token consumption to explode, and whether most consumers even want an always-on personal agent. They also dive into the geopolitical implications of data centers and open-source software, AI’s impact on entertainment and voice cloning, Hollywood’s anxiety over originality, and the strange new world where even papal writings prompt questions about whether AI had a hand in shaping the message.
Chapters:
1:57 — AI Predictions, Whispering to Models & Forecasting the Future
4:37 — AI, National Security & the Trump Administration
6:52 — The Pope’s AI Document, Closed Models & Security Risks
11:56 — AI Regulation, Job Fears & Public Sentiment
15:45 — Is AI Adoption Slowing Down? Pricing, ROI & Enterprise Reality
21:00 — Agents, CIOs & Whether Mainstream Users Will Ever Embrace AI
36:00 — AI Entertainment, Voice Cloning & Hollywood’s Future
41:52 — Going Off-Grid, Book Recommendations & Digital Detoxes
47:00 — Mark Rober, CrunchLabs & the $10,000 Bullseye Story
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SpaceX IPO Date Talk + OpenAI Confidential Filing Rumors
This week on More or Less, the crew unpacks IPO speculation around OpenAI and SpaceX, debates whether AI’s economics ultimately favor recurring API spend or owning infrastructure outright, questions if Google’s …
Shownotes
This week on More or Less, the crew unpacks IPO speculation around OpenAI and SpaceX, debates whether AI’s economics ultimately favor recurring API spend or owning infrastructure outright, questions if Google’s distribution advantage is enough to win the AI race despite muddled product execution, and wrestles with whether today’s AI valuations are driven by real fundamentals or pure mimetic momentum, alongside broader debates on broken AI user experience, data center concentration risk, agentic search killing SEO, and whether skilled trades like plumbing may ultimately prove more durable than many white-collar jobs in the AI era.
Chapters:
01:35 — Brit’s fish disaster story + the fish microbiome economy
04:50 — Dell World, AI PCs, and the tokenomics debate (API spend vs. owning infrastructure)
11:00 — Google I/O recap: agentic search, generative UI, Android glasses, and whether Google is actually back
16:30 — Google’s UX problem: why AI still feels broken for normal users
20:00 — Anthropic vs. Google: focused monolith vs. sprawling empire
22:10 — OpenAI IPO speculation + Anthropic’s mega-round: what do you have to believe at $1T valuations?
29:30 — The “hate invest” thesis: public sentiment, retail risk, and crypto déjà vu
34:20 — Portfolio debate: SpaceX vs. Anthropic vs. OpenAI
35:00 — Sam builds an AI token pricing dashboard live + how companies actually burn $30K/month on tokens
37:00 — What’s next in AI research? Memory, world models, and where infra plays went
42:30 — White House AI model oversight rumors + OpenAI’s Elon legal update
50:10 — AI side projects, kids learning to code, and why plumbers may win the AI era
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Google's AI-First Laptop, Meta's Spy Games, AI Monks in Middle America
The squad is complete again, and Sam arrives with a NeuroPod, cold plunge updates, red light therapy, Oura stats, and enough supplements to start a wellness startup. Then into the week’s biggest tech stories …
Shownotes
The squad is complete again, and Sam arrives with a NeuroPod, cold plunge updates, red light therapy, Oura stats, and enough supplements to start a wellness startup. Then into the week’s biggest tech stories: Google’s new AI device and whether it’s the Chromebook of the AI era or another doomed health-tech experiment, Meta’s keystroke logging controversy, Microsoft’s increasingly awkward OpenAI bet, why OpenAI and Anthropic are now sending engineers directly into enterprises to drive adoption, and what tools like OpenClaw, Py, and Codex actually do. Plus, Anthropic’s eye-watering latest valuation, the clean girl aesthetic discourse, Brian Johnson chaos, and Sam personally buying Jackson Hole ski passes like it’s 1997
Chapters:
00:46 Sam’s NeuroPod, Oura Results & Biohacking Spiral
03:33 Sam vs. Brian Johnson + The Female Biohacker Opportunity
05:09 Oura Ring vs. Whoop + Google’s Wearables Ambition
07:00 Google’s AI-First “Book” Laptop + DeepMind’s Health Push
10:30 Why Local AI Changes Everything (Speed, Cost & Compute)
15:00 Where Is the OpenAI Consumer Device?
16:00 Voice AI, Recording & the Future of Human-Computer Input
20:30 Sam Built His Own Voice-to-AI App
22:31 Meta’s Keystroke Logging: Spy Games or Honeypot?
24:00 Fake AI Jobs + Sam’s “Fin Analytics” Prediction
27:02 OpenAI & Anthropic’s Enterprise Conversion Strategy
29:31 The AI Backlash Is Real (Including UCF’s Commencement Revolt)
31:30 Microsoft’s $100B OpenAI Problem
39:31 Anthropic’s Massive Raise + SF Real Estate Absurdity
41:30 OpenClaw, Py & Codex: What Is a Harness?
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Why the Met Gala Hates Tech, Elon vs OpenAI Drama, and the Rise of Chinese AI Models
Jess, Britt, and Dave unpack everything from Home Depot runs and closet “re-jiggers” to the internet’s growing backlash against tech wealth, AI, and Silicon Valley culture. The squad debates whether the Met …
Shownotes
Jess, Britt, and Dave unpack everything from Home Depot runs and closet “re-jiggers” to the internet’s growing backlash against tech wealth, AI, and Silicon Valley culture. The squad debates whether the Met Gala became a symbol of “techlash,” how layoffs and AI anxiety are reshaping public sentiment, and whether AI will actually democratize opportunity or simply concentrate power faster. They also dive into the wild new AI alliances between Anthropic, Elon, and hyperscalers, the latest OpenAI vs Elon trial drama, and why product adoption, not regulation, will decide the future of AI. Plus, Dave shares major OpenClaw updates, real-world AI workflow automations, Meta fork rumors, and the surprisingly relatable use case of turning meeting transcripts into family “receipt printer” briefings. Rounded out with solo movie dates, Taylor Swift theories, Star Wars discourse, and the state of flake culture.
Chapters:
00:58 Jess' Home Renovation Project While Sam is Out
03:54 Met Gala: When the Bezoses Became the Story
07:13 Techlash, Wealthlash, and the AI Jobs Backlash
09:36 Trump’s Surprise Pivot Toward AI Regulation
11:51 China, Open-Source Models, and Dave’s $5K Blackwell Desktop
14:13 The Optimistic Case: AI as the Great Wealth Equalizer
17:55 The Pessimistic Case: Tools Democratize, Economics Consolidate
19:43 What Changes Public Sentiment: Better Products, Not Better Arguments
22:42 Layoffs: Pandemic Hangover or AI Substitution?
27:56 Why Almost No One Is Actually Using AI Yet
33:15 Anthropic’s Compute Scramble and the SpaceX/Colossus Deal
36:27 Dario vs. Elon: Two Very Different Operators
39:55 The OpenAI vs. Musk Trial: TMZ or Substance?
45:33 Polymarket, Twitter-Mention Betting, and ChatGPT Comeback
46:42 OpenClaw Update: Foundation, Plugin Architecture, China Forks
50:08 Granola + Claude Code: Replacing Salesforce in 30 Minutes
53:36 Devil Wears Prada, Solo Movie Dates, and the Death of Journalism
55:01 Music & Pop Culture: Ella Langley, Teddy Swims, Toy Story 5
56:36 Why Star Wars Keeps Missing
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Elon Musk vs OpenAI Trial, Google Cloud Surge, Meta’s Blocked Acquisition, Anthropic Winning
This week on More or Less, the crew kicks off with a very on-brand derail—Stagecoach turning into a wind-blown 90s reunion-turned-half-capacity vibe, segueing into a chaotic trend report of “booty shorts vs …
Shownotes
This week on More or Less, the crew kicks off with a very on-brand derail—Stagecoach turning into a wind-blown 90s reunion-turned-half-capacity vibe, segueing into a chaotic trend report of “booty shorts vs. jorts” before Jessica reframes it as “OpenAI or jorts.” From there, it’s into the real storylines: the Musk v. OpenAI trial in Oakland (Altman and Brockman showing up, Musk posturing, and the judge shutting down theatrics), and whether it’s substance or just WWE for tech. The AI race heats up with reports of ChatGPT missing targets while Anthropic pulls ahead, sparking a broader debate on whether frontier models are sliding into commodity territory—Sam argues narrative over fundamentals while Dave pushes on open-source pressure and who actually foots the data center bill. The conversation expands into geopolitics (regulatory capture, China’s open-source momentum, Meta’s blocked agent play) and earnings (Google Cloud riding Anthropic demand), landing on a sneaky insight: AI’s real cost explosion might be storage, not tokens. They close with a rapid-fire culture sweep—Maria Sharapova’s podcast, NYT rankings, Elon’s Mars comp fantasy, Met Gala backlash, and the final punchline: YouTube growth is way more gameable than anyone wants to admit.
Chapters:
00:34 — Stagecoach Chaos: Tornado Winds & Half-Crowd Vibes
01:43 — Summer Trend Report: Booty Shorts vs. Jorts
02:56 — “OpenAI or Jorts?” The Hard Pivot
04:15 — Musk vs OpenAI Trial Begins (And It’s Already Messy)
06:40 — Gag Orders, Jury Drama & Musk’s Opening Stunt
09:03 — Is This Lawsuit Just WWE for Tech?
11:46 — Anthropic Passes OpenAI?! The AI Power Shift
13:57 — AI Is Becoming a Commodity (Sam’s Take)
15:24 — The Real Cost of AI: Tokens vs Labor
18:53 — Open Source Is Eating Everything
21:08 — Outcome-Based Pricing: Fix or Race to Zero?
23:16 — “This Is a Bad Business” (But Everyone Uses It)
26:04 — The Only AI Moat: Regulation or Narrative
29:02 — Why Frontier Models Still Matter
32:04 — China, Open Source & AI Geopolitics
35:06 — Meta’s Blocked AI Deal (Spy Game Energy)
38:07 — Google Wins the AI Race (For Now)
41:23 — The $5B Opportunity Nobody’s Talking About
43:34 — The Real AI Trade: Storage > Tokens
46:58 — Investing Is Dead, Long Live Narrative
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