The Exchanges

Q actually that they have a leg to stand on. Sort of says something about where AI has gone, which is that the tech has been cool, but still don't really know exactly what to do with it when you think about the totality of dollars invested. So I want to get your perspective when you look back at 2024. Does that seem right? And why do you think that happened?

A Yeah, I mean, I agree with some stuff in there. You know, my starting point is that just over two years ago, ChatGPT didn't exist. Uh, recently OpenAI told us that ChatGPT had three hundred million users a week. So to go from zero to three hundred million is really impressive and almost never happens, right? And along the way, they've started to generate huge amounts of revenue. And there are those who say, well, but they're not profitable yet, Casey, and therefore they probably never will be. And I just find this answer very naive and sort of ahistorical. You know, you look at the history of Silicon Valley, and it is a story of companies that were deeply unprofitable for a long time that are now some of the biggest companies in the world, right? I never thought Uber was going to turn a profit. Uh, Uber is now a profitable company. Some people will say, well, they still haven't made back the money that they took in from investors and like fair point, but I think they're probably going to get there, right? So when I look at AI, I see something that yes, is very expensive to train, but when you look at the fact that it's a general purpose technology and that we are finding more and more things to do with it, I do believe that at least one of these companies is going to make a massive amount out of one of these large language models.

AI assessment note: “I agree with some stuff in there. You know, my starting point is”

Q Oh, that is interesting. Uh, who do you think the candidate would be? I don't know. I really have no idea.

A I mean, the, the one that people always bring up is Apple. People have been sort of saying this for years, like, these companies just seem very, like, spiritually aligned, and Snap's business isn't very good. Apple could sort of immediately put their, uh, sort of AR tech into practice, and maybe advance their, uh, you know, AR hardware, uh, project by a few years. I think the challenge is just, it's really hard to imagine Tim Cook wanting to run a social network. There are so many issues on Snapchat related to child safety that I think he probably just doesn't want to deal with. Um, but like, I don't know, like Snap has just like not been a very profitable company for a long time now. They've gone through many, many rounds of layoffs. Uh, I, I just kind of wonder if 20, 25 is the year where Evan Spiegel says, yeah, I gotta, gotta do something drastic.

AI assessment note: “the one that people always bring up is Apple.”

Q cases are tough to find sort of like, what do we trust the computer to do for us? And now in an area like a B to B software company, when it comes to like fetching things or, you know, moving one job from one system to another, maybe that we, maybe we see some Asian progress, but my hunch says the hype around them fades. What do you think?

A Well, I mean, let me give you some examples for what this thing could do, right? Let's say that you, um, uh, gave Gmail, uh, you, you put some sort of agent inside Gmail, and you said, okay, Gmail, find every invitation in my inbox from the last month, and show me those. And, uh, and, and, and then from there, I'm gonna tell you which of these things I want to go to, and which of these things I don't want to go to, And you write the acceptances and the replies, and I just click send. That's, like, actually possible with the technology that we have today. Nobody has built the product, but, like, we already have that. That would be hugely useful to me. If I had that agent go through my inbox and say, like, show me everyone who has asked for a response from me about something, that would be very powerful, right? So I just think that there are some, like, core productivity use cases, um, that people are really going to, like, You know, I already use AI as a kind of thinking partner. Um, you know, there's like a kind of classic thing that happens in tech reporting where maybe you're writing about a new paper that's coming out, or there's a new product that's being released, and the company that you're talking to will, like, send you some materials about it. Um, I now upload that directly into a chat bot. Um, I ask, I essentially interview the PDF before I interview the person. Um, a…

AI assessment note: “I just think that there are some, like, core productivity use cases”

Q year. You and I both got a chance to try the meta Orion device, which is a pair of glasses that you put on your face and, you know, will take you into mixed reality without the big Headset thing. I mean, this probably isn't a 2025 thing. Maybe it is. I don't know. Do you think that we're going to see these things get any traction this coming year?

A So my understanding is that the Orion headset is, like, multiple years out, and that when it arrives, it won't actually even be as good as the glasses that we tried on this year, because in order to make the cost work, they're just gonna have to, like, rip out some of the components. So that is super unfortunate, and, you know, I, I mean, AR glasses has been, like, one of the first Snapchat spectacles come out, like, in Um, I truly feel like I've been waiting so long for these things to get good, and, like, I'm gonna be close to retirement before, like, Orion actually, like, arrives, but all that said, and I said this to the Meta folks when I was there, Orion is what I wanted the Vision Pro to be. Very high fidelity visual display, very easy to wear, it doesn't make me nauseous the way a VR headset does, had had obvious utility, You could just sort of walk around the world wearing these things on your face. You could take a video call and sort of, you know, see the person in the lenses of your glasses. It was cool. Again, you know, our, our, the whole conversation we just had about the Vision Pro is about what it can't do. When I think about the Orion glasses, I think about what it can do and how enjoyable it was to use. So I think they've really got something there. The problem is just that the glasses are like Extraordinarily expensive, and they cannot deliver a consumer vers…

AI assessment note: “my understanding is that the Orion headset is, like, multiple years out”

Q So we've done Apple, we've done, uh, Google and let's talk about open AI Microsoft. Do you think that relationship is constant, you know, still, I mean, it's obviously still consequential, but I guess there's all sorts of question marks about where it goes in the coming year. What do you think is going to happen with those two?

A I mean, my, like, possibly contrarian take is, like, they just kind of muddle through. Like, that's kind of what I think that they're going to do. OpenAI needs Microsoft for the compute, the data centers, the, like, infrastructure of making AI. They're not going to go out and build all of that next year. They can't go as fast as they want to if they don't have Microsoft in their corner. And Microsoft needs OpenAI for the tech and the product. Like, the Microsoft stuff that is being done independently is okay. Like, you know, maybe Copilot seems to be good if, if you want to write code. Outside that, it kind of just feels like they're nowhere to me. So they're gonna continue to look to OpenAI and tout this partnership of like, hey, look, we have by, you know, many estimates of the leading AI lab in our corner, and we're using their stuff in like in, uh, you know, uh, three 65 and all of our other consumer products. I think they're just gonna find a way to work together. Now, are they also going to be betraying each other continuously throughout next year in ways big and small? Like, yeah, probably. So, like, I think it's, like, just gonna be a fun story, um, but I think they both need each other.

AI assessment note: “possibly contrarian take is, like, they just kind of muddle through.”

Q dollars without tax. Like that's probably going to be closed, but do they, you know, potentially get banned? Do they have higher taxes put on them? Um, that could be a benefit to Amazon. The other side of it is that tariffs are really not going to benefit the company that's trying to sell you the stuff at the lowest cost. So where do you think Amazon fits in here?

A I don't know. You cover Amazon more closely than I do. Like, everything that you've described is very interesting, but, like, I don't know what's gonna happen to all of it. I wish I had a better answer for you. My, you know, my, my, my basic thought is always, like, whatever happens, Amazon will be fine. People love Amazon. They love their Amazon Prime. There's very little that really could happen at Amazon that would lead, you know, most people to cancel their Amazon Prime. So, you know, if tariffs happen, prices will go up, and, you know, maybe that creates some opportunity for Amazon if, You know, the situation that you described among, you know, Timu and Sheehan happens, but I just kind of don't know. What do you think is going to happen?

AI assessment note: “My, you know, my, my, my basic thought is always, like, whatever happens, Amazon will be fine.”