The Exchanges

Q What countries are you not working in? You guys have extreme global reach.

A We're not working in China. China's the only country that I think we probably won't be in maybe ever, but certainly anytime soon. Um, sometimes people say that's because we do defense work. That's part of it. Um, sometimes they say, well, you know, IP restrictions. That's, that's part of it. Um, but yeah, all of that combined equals we don't have, you know, we don't, we don't have a presence in China, but everywhere else we do, and most of the areas of the world, we already have some presence. Our most recent kind of expansion has been Australia. Uh, we opened also in India and UK offices last year, about 18 sites globally. Um, I think as we kind of look at the future, you know, Australia could be one of those, you know, countries where we're doing driverless trucks, and we're doing a bunch of different, you know, ports, and suddenly you had that full connection happening, where that, that efficiency is unlocked in a real way. Um, but, uh, I think what I want to really do, and if we, if we can do it, it's a little bit of our goal, Is once we get into automating, you know, parts of ports, then we could go to a LatAm country, and, uh, we don't have anything in Latin America right now, so maybe a Brazil, or enter that region through mining, and so you can see we're kind of hopscotching like a board game throughout, throughout the planet. I think probably the furthest out is Africa…

AI assessment note: “We're not working in China. China's the only country that I think we probably won't be in”

Q So what else are you reading right now?

A Like literally at this moment, and I always have to keep reading new stuff because if I get an interview, I can't be recycling, uh, recycling books. The non-technical books I'm reading, which are interesting are, uh, Society of Captives, which is about the American prison system, and then it's written in the 19 fifties. Really good book. They also, I recommend to founders to read stuff which is outside of our industry to give you like some, you know, like reflection on like, how does this kind of apply here? Uh, I'm, I'm reading the current, the, the, the courage to be disliked, which I think people think is hilarious because nobody thinks that I don't mind being disliked. So it's like, uh, that's a great book I'm reading. I'm also reading something else and I, I just, uh, it, it, it, it, it skips my memory. I'm constantly reading.

AI assessment note: “Society of Captives, which is about the American prison system”

Q Okay, so to bring it to current day, we're at the RAISE Summit in Paris. AI is buzzing all around us. It's like a big expo. What are the trends that you're seeing in the room and around what's going on right now in AI?

A Obviously the broad stuff that we don't need to talk about are things about the IPOs that are happening and kind of just how some companies are, you know, sucking up lots of revenue, super positive that that proves that there's something there. It's not hollow. Uh, I think the below the surface, which is like the rumblings is what's that reconciliation and then that reconciliation in enterprise, the world that we, we are, we're an enterprise company is like, Budgets and cost consciousness is becoming like a more core theme. Um, whereas let's say if we were talking 12 months ago, there was way more of Give me everything and I'll take five of it. And now it's like, what are you giving me and how much I'm going to pay? And I think that reconciliation will have downstream impacts, uh, on everybody. Now, not only the big companies going public, but also the small startups that are trying to find their little niche groups. I think that's a big talking, uh, in the physical AI world where we're at, uh, the, the way to think about physical AI versus let's say it's like the large language model, uh, uh, universes. The diffusion is slower, because you're dealing with safety, you're dealing with physical machines in the real world, and so it's way more linear, so that you don't have these, like, big spikes and crashes, there aren't, like, new entrants that come in, and it's just because it…

AI assessment note: “Budgets and cost consciousness is becoming like a more core theme.”

Q merge.dev. Founders scale faster on Deal. Set up payroll for any country in minutes, hire anyone anywhere, get visas handled fast, and get back to building. Visit deal.com slash sorcery. That's D-E-E-L dot com slash sorcery. What do you think about the new competition and the new entrants that are coming with this, like, I guess resurgence of the AI wave? How do you feel about the playing field now?

A Yeah, I mean, ah, in many ways, we're one of those folks. We, we really, ah, you know, got the zeal and adopted self-driving kind of in a post-transformer universe in an end-to-end world. I think if you look, if you look at Waymo, ah, Waymo used to be in self-driving trucks, and then they closed that team down because the old way of building self-driving, those are, those are two almost discrete systems. Different sensor placement, you know, different vehicle type was enough To make it actually just distinct enough where they had two separate teams. Today, you know, we have the same team, actually, the self-driving and all these different form factors. We don't have like this discrete team for these discrete form factors. So we're, we're one of the entrants for the lack of better word. And, uh, then I think it's been a huge kind of tailwind for us. Honestly, we've, we've been able to build more efficiently, both in terms of data, And more efficiently, both in terms of dollars, uh, and more efficiently in terms of people. Like, you can do a lot more today than you could three or four years ago. And so, I, I said for a long time, because we sold tools for self-driving, that the best time to start self-driving was like in 20, 22, 22, 23. And after you say that so many times, it's like, if nobody wants this opportunity, we'll just pick it up as well and, and, and make it. And I thi…

AI assessment note: “in many ways, we're one of those folks. We, we really, ah, you know, got the zeal”

Q So what's your hot take, and what are your favorite books?

A I don't know if it's necessarily a hot take. I mean, we did the, kind of a Q&A, like, uh, Berkshire Hathaway, and the person I'm quoting is Charlie Munger, uh, rest in peace. But, um, I don't think there's, you'll meet, you know, very, very successful people that don't read a lot. That don't read a lot. And specifically, and I think, uh, Mark and I share this, this, this view independently, but Um, the best books to read are the old books, so over 25 years, over 50 years, because time has filtered all the kind of noise, and you really get a lot of signal, and you, frankly speaking, you only get, I mean, in your life, how many books are you going to read? You're going to read maybe, most people are going to read a very small amount, but even if you're a kind of an avid reader, a thousand books? I mean, there's not many, and there are lots to pick from, so Just pick the really good ones, because what you read does impact your view of the world, and, um, you know, you want to read diverse books that are not just kind of what, you know, your friends are telling you to read, so they really kind of challenge your existing views, and even if you come back on the other side and you still have that view, then either maybe you have a better argument against, against that view, but, uh, yeah, I'm, I'm a huge, huge fan of reading. I think there's also something, again, a little old school,…

AI assessment note: “the best books to read are the old books, so over 25 years”

Q Isn't it right you barely touched any of your funding?

A Yeah, we're still in that phase, which is great, which is great, which we're super happy about. I'm less, it's less about, Like the ego of saying that I think it's more about, we have a lot of resources to put towards any opportunity that we think is worth deploying a billion dollars towards or deploying multiple billion dollars for. And so, uh, yeah. And I think we have some big announcements, uh, coming in the next, like, like the biggest announcements in the company's histories. Yeah. Yeah. So I can't say in, in my notes day, they said, Whatever you do, don't talk about X, Y, and Z, because internally it's something we've been working on for a long time. A couple of things we're working on, product side and the customer side. Uh, but you know, that's the way I always think about our company. We're a thousand engineers. We have some resources. Our mission is to put, you know, make, put intelligence on, on a billion machines. So how do we do that in the most effective way possible within the context of everything happening in the summit and everything happening in the competitive world, everything happening with our customers.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, we're still in that phase, which is great”