Apr 17, 2026 · 44m · more-or-less
Allbirds Pivoted to AI Data Centers | SpaceX $1.5T IPO, Anthropic $800B, $175M Seed Rounds
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In this episode of the 'More or Less' podcast, hosts Jess, Britt, and Sam explore the high-stakes world of AI infrastructure pivots, SpaceX's shifting financial landscape, and the inflationary bubble currently hitting venture capital seed rounds. The team provides a mix of deep financial analysis and personal anecdotes, covering everything from the 'memo wars' between AI labs to the future of autonomous vehicles and airline bunk beds.
Statements from this episode (38)
Jessica Lessin: Waymo finds faster routes in the Bay Area than rideshares
“And the internet is skeptical of this claim, but as someone who's commuted to my office for a long time, twice a day, Waymo's find faster routes. Every day they are optimizing the Bay Area traffic with some AI stuff in ways that's faster.”
Sam Lessin: The average Uber driver is worse than autonomous vehicles
“The average Uber driver is worse than the computer at driving”
Lessin: Waymo will be everywhere by the LA Olympics
“And I also predict by the Olympics in LA, Waymo is just gonna be, like, everywhere.”
Sam Lessin: Fund Started Selling Allbirds at Series B
“Then it was the B. Because it was getting so, it was great product. Like we love the product. Great, great products. But the math became simple, which is the only way it made sense to hold it is if you believe that Allbirds was the next Nike. And we're like, w…”
Jessica Lessin: Allbirds Sold for $40M to Pivot to AI Infrastructure
“Was once valued at more than four billion, sold this month for about forty million, and this shell company for shell listing has informed people via a regulatory filing, it is going to pivot its business To AI compute infrastructure with a long-term vision to …”
Sam Lessin: Buying a Penny Stock Can Beat IPO Costs
“It's just a cheaper way to spec. I mean, like this is the thing is like, it's still expensive to get public. And there's a bunch of people who want to be public for cheap access to capital. I've actually looked into this and like, honestly, like buying a penny…”
Sam Lessin: Structured shell company deals offer investors asymmetric downside protection
“The reality is there's all sorts of like covenants and deals that go into these types of situations where like, if you really want to be wonky about the finance of it, it's pretty hard to lose money. And there's a ton of asymmetry on them, right?”
Sam Lessin: Boom Supersonic's original plane business could never work practically
“Like in terrible business, it's like a very nice vision in the Elon style, like cool, like Concord two point out, but like from a practical perspective, it's like no fucking way is this going to work. No way is this going to work.”
Lessin: Boom Supersonic pivoted to supplying turbines for AI data centers
“And then AI, I think AI probably helped them with this, that they have a turbine they can use to run data centers, power for data centers. So they're not a supersonic company. They're just a jet engine company because they couldn't get anyone to sell them jet …”
Lessin: Boom Supersonic investors will probably make a fortune from pivot
“People who invested in it are actually gonna probably gonna make a ton of money, but completely for the wrong reasons.”
Lessin: Energy reporter believes AI energy crisis narrative is overblown
“She thinks this whole, like, energy crisis is way overblown, and that we are only using half of the energy we have in the-”
Jessica Lessin: Public market investors are trimming Mag 7 for upcoming mega IPOs
“And I gotta say by and large, and it's anecdotal, but there are enough of them. They are very, very excited about these companies and they're selling down their mag seven positions a little bit to, or preparing to like go all in on these companies.”
Sam Lessin: Capital gains taxes create an artificial floor under mega-cap stocks
“I'd rather just be long it and hold it, because you'd have to believe, not only is SpaceX overvalued, you have to have the opinion that it's so bad, right, that it's gonna underperform the rest of the market by 50% from where it is, for it to be worth taking t…”
Lessin: Returns concentrating in tax-exempt endowments harms the long-term economy
“Universities or people who are not taxable get to do way better moves in the market than anyone who's taxable, right? And this is because it's a weird thing, which is very bad, I think, for the economy long term, that all the money and returns will pull up in …”
Morin: Investing in SpaceX at $1.5T requires believing it reaches $5T to $10T
“I mean, investing as a new investor at the current valuation, you have to believe this is a five to 10 trillion dollar company, I think.”
Lessin: SpaceX share supply will stay low post-IPO while index buying drives demand
“There's going to be less supply and you think of shares, right? And then the demand for shares will have much less to do with like a specific thesis They will be like, yeah, you kind of have to buy it because it's huge, right? Like if you're indexing a bunch o…”
Lessin: Top tech hedge funds are actively targeting retail wealth
“I hear a lot of hedge funds targeting retail now, because they think that there's certain, I mean, I, the top tech hedge funds have all told me this. They think that the institutional or stubborn wealth is sort of fixed, and they'll, Fight for a slightly more …”
Jessica Lessin: Starlink is almost three times larger than SpaceX launch business
“Three times as big almost as space launch.”
Morin: Starlink is Musk's way to put AI data centers in space
“And I think this is like Elon's way of getting data centers in space and everything that we need to power the AI future that we have.”
Lessin: SpaceX IPO will be seen as a bellwether for Anthropic and OpenAI
“The other thing I hear that wasn't obvious to me is how much this will be seen, this IPO will be seen as a bellwether for Anthropic and OpenAI”
Morin: Anthropic is raising at an $800B valuation
“And Anthropic this week, I heard, is also now raising at an eight hundred billion.”
Lessin: Leaked OpenAI memo targeted Anthropic's ARR math and compute investment
“There was a memo that was leaked from OpenAI, an OpenAI memo that was leaked. I think it was in OpenAI's interest for this memo to be out there. I also think it was written in a way where they wanted it to be out there, where they came after Anthropic. Both fo…”
Morin: Portfolio companies showed full migrations to Anthropic by December
“I I've been in board meetings a lot recently with companies who are like, yes, we're fully moved over to Anthropic. And it's like, they show the chart of when everything moved over. And it was like in December”
Jessica Lessin: Pricing will push enterprises toward cheap AI models
“But I also think at some point pricing will play a way, way bigger role in this. And these total anthropic and open AI bills, like don't acknowledge that for many, many things you're going to use cheap models.”
Morin: Every company will orchestrate local cheap models and premium models
“Every company is going to have to orchestrate their, like, local cheap model, their super, like, luxury, fancy, but quick and smart model.”
Morin: Uber and Meta rank engineers by token usage leaderboards
“Uber and Meta are actually doing on leaderboards right now in their engineering departments.”
Morin: Companies must cultivate AI-native habits before optimizing token efficiency
“Instead of asking the person I'm going to ask the agent is a habit your brain has to learn and switch into. And for people in engineering, I think that's more native right now or product, but for people in sales or HR or, you know, even some just non-technical…”
Lessin: Ronan Farrow probed serious allegations against Sam Altman that were unpublished
“Ronan Farrow had been working on a profile of Sam Altman for, I think he said, 18 months. I caught wind of it a little over a year ago, just cause he was calling everyone, And the word on the street was that he was like probing some really serious allegations,…”
Lessin: Altman and OpenAI board were very anxious over 'nothing burger' profile
“Sam was very, very anxious about the piece. The board was anxious about the piece. So, yeah, from my point of view, it was sort of a nothing burger, but I say that as probably the person in the media who follows this story the most closely, so.”
Morin: Frontier AI labs run opposition research teams planting hit stories
“There's truly oppositional research teams inside each company that I've now heard about for probably five to 10 times, like for different stories and companies that have been planted by the other. And it's like the nastiest PR setting I've seen in all of tech.…”
Brit Morin: Venture capital is currently in the bubble of all bubbles
“Truly we are in the bubble of all bubbles and I don't know how like sustainable this is.”
Carta data shows top 5% of seed rounds exceed $175M valuations
“Now the top five percent of seed rounds are topping a hundred and seventy five million dollar valuations.”
Carta data shows median seed rounds reaching $45 million valuations
“And even the 75th percentile or 50th percentile, we're talking about like forty-five million dollar seed rounds, which is insane.”
Top 10% of startup valuations are 200% to 300% above 2021 levels
“The top 10% of startup valuations for Series D, C, B, et cetera, are now like 200 to 300% higher than 20 21.”