Jan 23, 2025 · 1h 34m · tbpn
Project Stargate, The T Word, Ramp Treasury, Audience Ad Reads, See You at Davos
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In this episode of Technology Brothers, hosts John Coogan and Jordy Hays analyze the massive $500 billion Project Stargate AI infrastructure joint venture and its financial implications for OpenAI, Microsoft, and SoftBank. Alongside their deep dive into AI economics, the hosts discuss the tech sector's intersection with the Trump administration, startup entrepreneurship, and shifting cultural dynamics.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. The hosts hold 57.7% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
The hosts as informed peer 6.5 Guest teaching 2.2 Guest disagreement 1.7 The hosts pushing back 1.8
speaking balance: gold is the hosts, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 1:20:10 Rejecting the assertion that $10K cannot launch CPG
Hays and Coogan directly refute Max's tweet claiming no CPG brand can start with $10k, citing numerous counterexamples.
Hardest push from the hosts ▶ 1:21:20 Pushing back on CPG capital requirementsCoogan firmly pushes back against the notion that physical products require immense upfront cash by outlining supply chain tricks like pre-orders and net-90 manufacturer terms.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 53:20 Hays details systemic Manhattan street crime dynamicsHays educates Coogan on the realities of recent high-end watch robberies in New York and the demoralized responses from local police.
The host holds their own ▶ 34:25 Coogan outlines the silicon distillation roadmap for AICoogan demonstrates deep technical knowledge by mapping Bitcoin ASIC history onto future LLM silicon architectures to illustrate how inference margins will dramatically improve.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | The hosts as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | The hosts pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Announcing Project Stargate and the White House Photo Op | 6 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Coogan introduces the Stargate White House announcement and sets up the reporting context. Hays adds context regarding Masayoshi Son's commitments and background. | |
| Structuring Stargate: $500 Billion in AI Infrastructure and Joint Ventures | 7 | 3 | 2 | 2 | Coogan and Hays analyze the corporate structure of Stargate, comparing historical equity rounds to modern announcements stacked with venture debt and government pledges. Both demonstrate solid domain knowledge of venture capital financing mechanics. | |
| Elon Musk's Stargate Skepticism and the Art of Silicon Valley Posturing | 7 | 2 | 2 | 2 | Coogan and Hays dissect Elon Musk's skepticism over Stargate's committed capital and Satya Nadella's nuanced CNBC interview responses. Coogan explains the nuances of corporate theater and 'fake it till you make it' PR strategies in tech. | |
| Financial Feasibility and the Microsoft-OpenAI Alliance Strains | 8 | 3 | 2 | 2 | Coogan provides a deep breakdown of Ben Thompson's analysis and Gavin Baker's financial skepticism regarding SoftBank and Oracle's balance sheets. Coogan explains the technical and financial tensions between OpenAI's training demands and Microsoft's inference-driven timeline. | |
| The Geopolitics of ASI, LLM Pricing, and Silicon Distillation | 8 | 2 | 1 | 2 | Coogan draws an analogy between Bitcoin mining hardware evolution (CPUs to ASICs) and the future of baking LLMs directly into silicon to collapse inference costs. Hays and Coogan discuss pricing models and sovereign capital dynamics. | |
| Strategic Corporate Divergence and Debt Financing Risks | 7 | 2 | 1 | 1 | The hosts discuss Microsoft's model distillation strategy with DeepSeek versus OpenAI's frontier model pursuit, warning of the risk in debt-financing rapidly depreciating GPU clusters. | |
| Audience Ad Reads, Satirical Reviews, and Commercial Pitches | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | The hosts read listener-submitted satirical five-star reviews containing company advertisements, exchanging lighthearted banter about pitch decks and tech products. | |
| Tech Executive Fashion, Inauguration Opulence, and Manhattan Crime | 5 | 3 | 2 | 1 | Hays shares a personal story about a high-end watch robbery on the Upper East Side, transitioning into a conversation about policing morale, defund rhetoric, and tech billionaire fashion choices. | |
| AI-Drafted Executive Orders and the Monarchy vs. Free Market Debate | 7 | 2 | 2 | 3 | Coogan reviews Dwarkesh Patel's counterargument against Curtis Yarvin's monarchist ideas, discussing corporate competence versus autocratic selection mechanics. | |
| Ross Ulbricht's Presidential Pardon and Vacheron Constantin Watchmaking | 6 | 2 | 2 | 1 | Coogan and Hays debate the Silk Road pardon of Ross Ulbricht, discussing libertarian marketplace philosophy versus violent crime charges, before shifting to luxury horology. | |
| Gen Z Entrepreneurship, Defense Tech Hiring, and Social Media Transition Chaos | 7 | 2 | 1 | 2 | Coogan explains the technical server caching bug that caused confusion during the presidential Instagram account transition from Biden to Trump, alongside discussions of Gen Z hustle culture. | |
| Ramp Treasury Launch, Meme Coin Tactics, and Startup Hustle | 7 | 2 | 3 | 3 | Coogan and Hays push back on a tweet claiming CPG companies cannot be started with $10,000, citing Soylent, contract manufacturing, pre-orders, and net-90 payment terms. |
Statements from this episode (20)
Coogan: Trump is not committing federal money to Project Stargate
“The, like Trump is not committing money to this. He was just like, This is cool.”
Hays: Masayoshi Son claimed he overdelivered $500B pledge to Trump
“And Masa had very much framed it as before he, you know, apparently the conversation went, if you get, if you win, I'll bring you a hundred billion dollars. And Masa was saying like, I came back with 500.”
Hays: Stargate's $500B Plan Dwarfs Total 2024 US Startup Funding
“The companies are committing a hundred billion to the venture with plans to invest up to five hundred billion over the next four years, which actually seems- To put this into perspective, in twenty-twenty-four, I believe there was a hundred and sixty-eight bil…”
Coogan: Stargate's First Texas Data Center to Be Run by Oracle
“Stargate's first data center will be in Texas. The site which started construction last year will be operated by Oracle and used by OpenAI.”
Coogan: Goldman Sachs Estimates Big Tech Will Spend $1T on Capex
“Goldman Sachs has estimated that all the American tech giants collectively will spend an estimated one trillion on capital expenditures in the next
And so, that will include large outlays on data centers, chips, and power, and the power grid.”
Hays: Stargate consortium lacks even 20% of $500B committed
“It's clear to everyone involved that they certainly don't have 20% of the five hundred billion just sitting in an account. Like, that money has clearly not been committed.”
Coogan: Humanity will invest half a trillion in AI by 2029
“If you just ask me, like, Will humanity invest half a trillion dollars in AI over the next four years? I'd be like, absolutely.”
Hays: OpenAI uses anon accounts and leaks for narrative dissemination
“Open AI I think is the best in the world at disseminating their story and the things that they want people to believe through a complicated network of terminally online and on accounts internal employees, leaks, you know, stuff like that.”
Coogan: Unprofitable AI labs must separate software and infrastructure vehicles
“OpenAI is a software company with different long-term cost structure than that of an infrastructure company. That's fine if you're at Microsoft scale and profitability, but for entities that are losing money and looking to raise more, it makes sense to be diff…”
Coogan: AI training scaling laws show diminishing returns since GPT-4
“When you 10 X the energy and tokens and data and all the work on the training, you do get a smarter model, but the increases have been diminishing. So as you spend 10 times more, It, you don't get the same increase from GPT three to GPT four.”
Coogan: Elon Musk will have to out-raise Project Stargate
“I think it's going to be incredibly interesting to see what Elon's reaction is going to be because he's definitely going to have to out raise.”
Coogan: Ads in LLM responses make sense and will work fine
“I think it actually makes a ton of sense to put ads in LLM responses, and it'll work just fine, and it's actually very easy.”
Coogan: Microsoft Will Run Compressed OpenAI LLMs Across All Core Products
“So Microsoft is going to figure out how to slot the OpenAI API and the models into Excel, Word,
Outlook, all their products, and then it's going to be an, it's going to be co-pilot on the desktop software.
Everywhere there's a Microsoft product, there will be …”
Coogan: AI-assisted executive orders unlikely to cause unintended legal errors
“I'd be surprised if we wind up learning that, that the executive orders being written with chat, with the help of chat GPT wind up causing an unattended effect, right? Where it's like, oh, they didn't proofread it. It hallucinated. And now it's illegal to drin…”
Hays: Ulbricht's family ran a phenomenal marketing campaign to rebrand him
“The Ross family led a phenomenal marketing campaign to reposition the guy as somebody who wasn't the largest drug, like a drug trafficker.”
Coogan: Online earning opportunities make Gen Z founders more business-savvy
“I think there's basically the opportunity for really young people to make more money. It's just bigger than ever, and what that means in terms of business savvy is specifically like, You get to a certain point, you're gonna have to learn about taxes, lawyers, …”
Coogan: Meta's presidential account unfollow issue was a server-side bug
“What happened was the unfollow demand was so high that the unfollow requests weren't going through on the server side. So then it looked like I unfollowed it. And then I was like, cool. I unfollowed it because it updated on the front end. It didn't update on t…”
Coogan: Platforms should abolish generic handles like @POTUS and @VP
“It's a terrible system. It makes no sense. They just shouldn't have at POTUS or at VP. It should just be Trump or Biden, right?”