The Exchanges

Q Yeah. Here's a look at these smart lockers that you can see. You're just available for sale when you, when you go online, but yeah, these things are crazy and you've experimented with those as well. Didn't you have like a commissary concept in DTLA?

A Well, look, we, okay, so we've got a couple things. So we have in every one of our facilities and we've got, you know, hundreds of them. We'll have lockers there. So the courier then waves their phone in front of a camera, the right locker pops open, they get the food from there and they go. The courier pickup is asynchronous from production of food. You never, you don't have lines anymore. There's no more lines, which then speeds up delivery, shortens the amount of time, shortens is, it reduces how much money you spend on couriers. And we've got a whole other thing. This doesn't work in, it probably wouldn't work in China because well, for a lot of reasons, but let me explain what it is. It's called picnic where if you are in an office building, you order food, you go to a website, you order whatever it is from a hundred different restaurants. Those restaurants happen to be in my facilities and there'll be one courier that goes to one of our facilities and picks up 50 orders at a time, brings it to an office. Puts it, there's a shelf on every floor. You get notified when your food arrives, and it arrives the same time every day, and you just go to the shelf, get it on your floor, and dip it right back into your meeting. Saving people time at the office, giving them selection on food, especially in food deserts, but even going, like, there's a sweet green right down there in my…

AI assessment note: “So we have in every one of our facilities... We'll have lockers there.”

Q What do you think, Travis, about this whole Maha movement and just the food supply itself? So then what, how does that change? Do restaurants embrace more farm to table stuff?

A I think, look, I think what, like what we see with supply chains in a bunch of different industries, it's just going to get super wired up. So right now we're at the point of manufacturing, but what happens, so you go, okay, we're doing assembly. Then you go, okay, what about prep? Then you go further upstream, and you're like, what about supply chain, like Cisco, U.S. Foods? And then you go further up, and you're like, well, how does, how does the mechanization occur on farms and in agriculture? And then how does that all get wired up to serve the customer and sort of what they're looking for? So like, you really can know exactly what kind of wheat was put into that food. Whether it was organic for real or not, like what was the actual field that came from? Things like this. You can imagine like really getting tight about supply chain as it relates to dietary stuff. And as it relates to like Maha, like hell to the yes. I mean, I ordered a couple different, uh, I went to the, I went to RFK Jr.'s website and they have like the, he has merch. He has Maha merch. I have, I have the green Maha merch hat. I should have worn it today. I'm all about it.

AI assessment note: “supply chains in a bunch of different industries, it's just going to get super wired up”

Q Do you see people actually cooking in the future or does it become a centralized service and is it optimized to people's health and what do you think the implications to the food supply are if your vision holds? How do you think about all those things?

A Look, uh, people will cook in the future as a hobby. I sort of, I make a joke at the office. I'm like, I like horses. I love horses, but I don't ride a horse to work. And it's going to be a little bit like that. Whereas you can cook. It's, it's a soulful thing to do. It's just very human. But you know, it's late, you know, mom gets home late from the office, needs to get the kids, you know, a nutritious meal. She doesn't have to cook it now and she doesn't, she won't have to cook it and she won't have to go to McDonald's either. It will be high quality and convenient and low cost all at the same time. And yes, dietary preference, everything. Cause it'll be hyper personalized. Like the way the internet is in content. Plus, plus, plus in terms of your specific preferences for what you want.

AI assessment note: “people will cook in the future as a hobby”

Q But I mean, you, having known you for a while, I think, believe in the individual and their exceptionalism and, and trying to have a little ruggedness there. This is obviously the, the exact opposite. What's your take on what's happening in these pockets? Cause it's not national yet, but it's definitely notable.

A All right. I've, um, I've got, I've got sort of two aphorisms for us. Okay. First is truth and justice is the immune system for society. When the immune system is suppressed, all the social ills flare up. Okay. So if you're seeing us losing truth, like social media, mainstream media, whatever you call it, like that's an early indicator for bad things happening in society. Okay. And it's not just like social media, mainstream media. It's just everything around us. Um, and the same on the justice side too. If people commit crimes and there's no consequences, it's a nice early indicator. So you can kind of watch You can watch these things and say, is truth winning today or is it losing? Is justice winning today or is it losing? And what is the trajectory? We'll tell you, are we going to get worse or are we going to get better?

AI assessment note: “Truth and justice is the immune system for society. When the immune system is suppressed”

Q him and start talking. And he just like looked at me and he's like, uh, this is not generative AI. I, uh, only do generative AI. I think your company will be very successful. You will be very successful. Goodbye. And he just walked out. And that was like the end of everything. That's so great. Yeah. Well, that's all he's doing now. So this is the big bet, right?

A So, okay, so I need to, I need to bust a myth. I did not take money from Masa. So he begged me to take money for years, and we did not take it because he is a, he's a, what's the word I'm looking for? He's a, he's a promiscuous investor. So once he, once he invests in you, you should probably count on him and using your information and investing in all of your competitors. At least that's historically what he's done. So I didn't go there. But then he just kept investing in all my competitors, and they kept subsidizing these markets, and then I'm like, maybe I should have just saturated, soaked up the money that was there. So one of the things you should think about, like, when you look at like, oh, is OpenAI taking a lot of money from a Masa-type situation, is it's a little bit of like a double-edged sword, is if you don't take that money, it goes somewhere else. But if you do take that money, just know that Whatever intelligence they get when they go through the process of giving you the money, and maybe hanging around the board, or who knows what, is going to be used to do other things, and that is the nature of the MASA machine.

AI assessment note: “if you don't take that money, it goes somewhere else.”

Q I've heard theories the last couple days that big capital seekers are kind of f***ed right now because of what's going on in the Middle East with the Iran war. Dubai, Qatar, Saudis are kind of going to close up the capital flowing to the US right now, and is that real? I mean, do you think that's a real threat?

A So look, our Middle East business was supposed to go public in January, and the Saudi market Was went down 20% over like a two month period. And that was like a massive damper on the situation. Now part of it's part of that was because the oil prices had gone down so dramatically. And if you went into KSA, you went to the kingdom, everybody's like, we need, we need oil prices to go up. Uh, you know, that's the other side of the equation. So I don't know what hat, look, I don't, I'm not in the market raising money right at this moment. And this is a two week old thing that I, you know, look, I see the news just like everybody else. And I'm not out there calling wallet wars going on and saying, Hey guys, you got some money. Um, so I don't know exactly what's going to happen, but if you are an optimist and you're like, okay, this isn't, this is not going on forever. Just like the tariffs. It was the end of the world and then it wasn't very quickly.

AI assessment note: “I don't know exactly what's going to happen, but if you are an optimist”

Q Very quickly, you can impute the value of having a smaller footprint store with five of these things in a faceless warehouse with drone delivery or cars. You don't need the physical infrastructure. So then don't you create a wasteland of real estate or how do you repurpose all the real estate?

A Well, the way to think about it is like 90%, uh, well, it's probably a little lower than that right now. Let's say 85% of all meals in the U.S. are at home. They just are. And a vast majority of those meals are cooked at home. So, you know, like Uber Eats and DoorDash, they represent like 1.8% or two percent of all meals right now. It's very tiny. Right? So what you're doing is you're using real estate to an infrastructure to prepare and deliver meals to people at their homes. And so it's not The restaurants still exist. We're still going to want to go to restaurants. We're still going to want to go outside. We learned that during COVID. We knew it before. We definitely know it after. Um, and so I don't, it's not really like a decimating real estate situation. It's taking a thing we used to do for ourselves and creating a service that does it higher quality. You know, sort of, I like to say, you don't have to be wealthy to be healthy. And just infrastructure to get that cost down. And so you're doing something as a service that we used to do at home. I think in the super long run, you're like, what, where's the story on grocery stores? If you go to, like in, in 20 years, I think everybody agrees. You, you will have machines making very high quality, very personalized meals for everybody.

AI assessment note: “it's not really like a decimating real estate situation.”

Q How's China gonna operate differently than the U.S., Travis, from your experience, your point of view? Tell us a little bit about the culture and business ethics in China, particularly as it relates to AI.

A Okay, so, okay, so look, we, I had this thing, this is, I'm going back almost 10 years here, Uber day, we're running Uber China, and I mean, I cannot, there's no way I could express the frenetic intensity of copying that they would do on everything that we would roll out in China. And it was so epically intense that I basically had a, a massive amount of respect For their ability to copy what we did. I, I just couldn't believe it. We would do real hard work, make it, we dial it and it would be epic and it would be awesome. We'd roll it out. And then like two weeks later, boom, they've got it. A week later, boom, they've got it. And of course I use that to drive our team. And there's so many great stories. I mean, we had, we had like 400 Chinese nationals in Silicon Valley. At our offices in San Francisco, we had a whole floor for the China Growth Team, and it was primarily Chinese nationals. We had billboards on the one-on-one in Silicon Valley in Chinese. Uber billboards to join our team in Chinese to, to serve the homeland. Right. Um, it was like an all out war. It was really epic. It was epic. And by the way, when you went to that floor in our office, you were in China, like they rolled China style, like the desks were literally smaller, like the density of the space was, it was China. Okay. So, but what happens is when you get really, really good at copying and that time ge…

AI assessment note: “when you get really, really good at copying... it flips to creativity”

Q And so in this open AI context, Travis, I mean, like, just knowing what you know about AI, is this going to be a competitive advantage for Sam to raise forty billion? Where does it go when he's up against, we don't know what, in China, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Meta?

A Well, look, I think this goes to some of the things that Shamath is saying, which is like, if, if constraint is the mother of invention or, or whatever that, that euphemism is, the, the, the aphorism is, if that's the case, you get into a real weird spot when you get over capitalized. In the, in the Uber model, like the war was subsidizing rides for market share. Essentially being the wrapper for transportation and using the parlance we were using earlier to, uh, in the, in, in this discussion. So it was necessary. You're screwed. If you don't, the, the question is, is do you get to this place of overcapitalized too big, you know, too bureaucratic, too loose, too weak, too soft. And with, when you have an open source model, that's very smart and it's a thousand flowers blooming, lots of innovation happening everywhere. Could be an overwhelming force. Uh, now I think there's going to be different sectors treated different ways where like going full stack in certain industry sectors is going to matter. And then in other places, having like a very sort of chaotic, everybody does a little slice, uh, it's going to be okay in other places. And I think we could probably spend days or hundreds of dozens of hours just talking about the nuances there.

AI assessment note: “you get into a real weird spot when you get over capitalized.”

Q So what does that mean for commercial? Like how do you like navigate around that? Because you gotta evade the falling knives first.

A So, okay, so let's just go down ride-sharing lane. So autonomous ride-sharing lane. You go down that lane, car ownership, which is already dropping, drops like a knife all the way down, and there's this thing in cities which takes up 20 to 30% of all the land. It's called parking. It's no longer necessary because cars are getting utilized. The cars that exist on the roads are getting utilized 15 x more than they were before per car. So you need Hypothetically, one-fifteenth the number of cars. Maybe you could say one-fifth or one-tenth because you want to be able to surge to, like, rush hour and things like that. It depends on what kind of carpooling and things like this that are going on. Let's just call it 10 X fewer cars, one-tenth the land necessary for parking. At least one-tenth. Like, maybe it's less than that, ok? So now you're opening up, you're opening up 20% of the land in a city that just goes fallow.

AI assessment note: “opening up 20% of the land in a city that just goes fallow”

Q What do you think about it? And do you think that's the future of transportation and how does Uber play into the, uh, self-driving car business now?

A I mean, look, it's funny because as you guys know, back in the, back in the day, 2015, 1617, we had our own autonomous vehicles out there. And I remember the first one of ours that I took. And I got in the back and all I had was a stop button, a big red stop button that I could push if things got weird. And, uh, I remember it was in Pittsburgh where we had our robotics division and autonomy division at Uber. And I got out of that car and literally it's like, I got off a rollercoaster ride. Like my legs were, I could not stand straight. Like I was like a little wobbly because I was so freaked out and the adrenaline was pumping. You get in a Waymo today, and it's like, you're not even thinking twice. You're just like, it's all good. You just get in, you get out. Now, part of it's just the normalization. It's like, It's just working and it, that normalizing matters in terms of the psychology around it is it, we're just there. So it just works. Now, is it a optimized experience for ride sharing? No. Like the cyber cab is sort of the ultra sort of destination for what it means to get transported across a city in a vehicle that is not meant for a human to drive. No steering wheel. You know, folks potentially been facing each other, you know, just a whole bunch of different formats. The, the technology works. We know that there are different ways to get to the technology. I think that…

AI assessment note: “You get in a Waymo today, and it's like, you're not even thinking twice.”

Q Doesn't, doesn't Meituan do drone delivery and stuff?

A Like, here's an example. If you went to offices, like let's say Shanghai, um, Beijing, any of the major cities, Hangzhou, et cetera. The office buildings have hundreds of lockers around their perimeter. So that everything that you get, whether it be food or anything else, but especially food is just the, the couriers drop them off in these lockers in the, at the office buildings. And then there are a whole other set of people that are sort of like inter office runners, runners that then bring it to your office. As an example, like, and when you see it, you're like, and it's epically efficient, and it's, you know, they're taking advantage of their economics on labor and things like this. It wouldn't exactly work that way here, but a lot of the innovation you will see coming out on Uber Eats or DoorDash Like the stuff that's coming out now is stuff that existed three years ago, four years ago in China, maybe longer. So like eventually you cross that threshold of copying and you are innovating and then you're leading. And I think we see that in a, in a, in a whole bunch of different places.

AI assessment note: “Like, here's an example. If you went to offices, like let's say Shanghai”

Q How do you judo flip OpenAI? Because they are marching steadfastly towards a billion Mao, then a billion Dao, It's a juggernaut. So how do you use the better product in a moment to judo flip the less better product?

A Look, yeah, I mean, here's the thing, right? So you do the Elon way. So you ha you get a bunch of missionary, like full on missionary engineers that work twice as hard. And you have a culture that is ultra fierce, truth seeking. And you don't, you don't get caught up in politics, bureaucracy, BS. And you just, you go for it. And, and I think, you know, that that's where, you know, and then you go, wow, scientific breakthrough, scientific method. Like you start winning on truth and that will start. I believe that will start to give the product awesomeness of open AI a run for its money, but like the product of open AI, the product department, those guys are rushing. They're really good. They're not only ahead of the game, but they feel like it just, they're just leading in a lot of different ways. But if you are better at truth, you will eventually, you'll eventually have an AI product manager.

AI assessment note: “So you do the Elon way. So you ha you get a bunch of missionary”

Q Well, the deal was basically that you could partner with Uber, license in the pony technology, and essentially start a competitor, I guess, to Waymo and Tesla?

A Let me work on this one. Okay. So, so in the US we have Waymo. We see the Waymo's in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, coming soon to Miami, coming soon to Atlanta, coming soon to DC. They're even talking about New York. Tesla's sort of like the, you know, they're doing it the hard way, you know, classic Elon style, like let's Let's do this sort of in a fundamental, holy shit, let's go all the way kind of, kind of approach. Uh, and it's unclear when it gets over the line. Of course, he, he launched sort of a, a semi, semi pilot of sorts in Austin recently, but there's no other alternatives. So what happens is, is some of the folks who are interested in making sure there are alternatives to Have reached out. They, they've reached out to me and they're different discussions that get going because they're like, Travis, you did autonomy way back in the day. Got the Uber autonomous stuff going in. Maybe there's something to do here to create optionality. Maybe like I'm of course very interested on the food side. I talk about autonomous burritos being a big deal because if you can automate the kitchen, the production of food, and then you can automate the sort of logistics around food, you take huge amount of costs out of the food Out of what's going on in food, and that's, of course, near and dear to my heart. There's folks, of course, that want to see autonomy and mobility. That'…

AI assessment note: “I'm of course very interested on the food side.”

Q Travis, what do you do? What company do you start today? If you start a company today, Given where the world is at, given the open source models, like what do you do?

A Oh, I'm getting so excited. Um, look, I, I think the first, the first degree out is it's what you got. Is there a rapper company? Okay. So of course, maybe those companies already exist. And then is there a tools company? Right? So in a funny way, even though Facebook could be the rapper, they have A tools business that these, you know, that the, that Deep Seek is basically challenging, going full open source and like putting something out there that's really good. And what has to happen is meta has to decide, like, we are going to embrace and extend this. We're going to make sure that all the developers come to us, that all the cool applications get built here. So I think it's like, there's a tools business and then there's the wrapper business. Um, and then You know, look, when AI, here's the one thing on the NVIDIA thing that I would counter with a little bit of what's been said here, is like when AI gets cheap, you know what's going to happen, guys? There's going to be a lot more AI, right? I don't think, I think the price elasticity on this one is actually positive. So as the price goes down, the revenue usage, everything's going to go up. This is the history of tech forever, since like Bill Gates said, I don't know what to do with more than 64 kilobytes of memory. You know, the question is, did we-

AI assessment note: “So I think it's like, there's a tools business and then there's the wrapper business.”

Q Uber, the, um, the tragedy in Arizona where somebody was playing candy crush when they were a safety driver. You know, what, what is your outlook on this stuff rolls out and somebody gets hurt. And then that, you know, tens of thousands of cities that you brought Uber to, how receptive are they going to be towards this? And what do you think the regulatory framework will be like?

A You know, I think similar to how you get normalized, it's like you're used to getting in a car. It's normalized psychologically and in the sort of public sphere, the public mindset, you get used to it. So like we're getting to a place where these vehicles are provably safer than human driven vehicles. So yes, there are mistakes, but they're just provably safer and people are just getting used to it. And that's a big part of the cycle. So I think we're getting out of the hysteria and we're getting into like, yeah, it's just great. Like talk to people who are using it and they feel safer from, uh, of course, like I, I, I feel like we're going to get in less accidents, but also I feel safer. Cause there's like, there's less chance of like an interpersonal problem that does happen, especially, you know, late at night, you know, when people are out Parting and things like this. There's just like, there is a level of safety on many different aspects to these vehicles. For the driver.

AI assessment note: “we're getting out of the hysteria and we're getting into like, yeah, it's just great”

Q What do you think is gonna happen in California?

A It's pretty messed up. Look, I, I grew up in Cali, like I grew up in Los Angeles. My parents were born and bred in Los Angeles, which basically makes them the founders of LA. Okay. But, um, so I have a lot of heart, like my whole family, everything, you know, it's pretty, it's pretty, it's a, I don't want a lot of us feel that way. I don't want to get the violin out, but it just, but it's heartbreaking to play. It totally. It's just a place you grew up. It's your home, you know, When you have to leave, ah, but it's getting weird out there, and ah, it feels like it's getting weirder, and at some point, that's, it's just too weird.

AI assessment note: “at some point, that's, it's just too weird.”