Technology
OpenAI and AMD's Megadeal, Sam Altman and Jony Ive’s Bumpy Start. Meta vs. Apple
In this episode, we explore the groundbreaking partnership between OpenAI and AMD, which could see OpenAI acquiring up to 10% of AMD through a multi-billion dollar deal focused on AI data centers. We ...
OpenAI and AMD's Megadeal, Sam Altman and Jony Ive’s Bumpy Start. Meta vs. Apple
Technology •
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Interactive Transcript
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OpenAI and AMD sign a mega deal where OpenAI could end up owning 10% of AMD, Sam Altman
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and Johnny I have run into some turbulence in their quest to build an AI God device,
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Ann, Meta, and Apple and maybe the rest of the tech world are on a collision course.
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That's coming up with Spyglass's MG Seagler right after this.
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Capital One's tech team isn't just talking about multi-agentic AI. They already deployed one.
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It's called Chat Concierge and it's simplifying car shopping.
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Using self-reflection and layered reasoning with live API checks, it doesn't just help buyers
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find the car they love. It helps schedule a test drive, get pre-approved for financing,
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and estimate trade and value. Advanced, intuitive, and deployed. That's how they stack.
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That's technology at Capital One. Welcome to Big Technology Podcast where MG Seagler is here to
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make his first Monday of the month appearance. We have so much to talk about. We're going to cover
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the tie-up between OpenAI and AMD. The fact that in video and OpenAI's deal is really just a
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letter of intent. At this point, we also have Sam Altman and Johnny I have run into some bumps
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as they begin to build their AI device, Ann Meta and Apple, and maybe Amazon and Google all are
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basically on a collision course to build the same thing. We will take a look at how the progress
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is going on all fronts and who's winning. Right to see you again, MG, welcome back to the show.
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Great to be back, Alex. I know we say it every single time I'm on, but there's so much happening.
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There's always more happening. It's wild. This is sort of just playing out.
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I love how we catch up every month and I was looking at the headlines from just this morning.
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I said we could do a full show on that. Last month we were talking about the rollout of GPT-5
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and whether OpenAI has broken chat GPT with it. That is a distance memory.
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It feels like a decade ago.
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Let's begin, of course, with Sam Altman. A few weeks ago, you called out an interesting line
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in a post of his about abundant intelligence. It was seemingly a wink towards interesting things
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to come. First of all, Sam says in this post, very short post. He says, our vision is simple.
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We want to create a factory that can produce a gigawatt of new AI infrastructure every week,
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which is crazy. He says the execution of this will be extremely difficult. It will take us years
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to get to this milestone and it will require innovation at every level of the stack from chips
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to power to building to robotics. But we have been hard at work at this and believe it's possible.
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Over the next couple of months, we'll be talking about some of our plans and the partners we
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are working with to make this a reality. We have some interesting new ideas. He sort of left it
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at that. It seems like now with this deal with AMD, which we're going to get into the details of,
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which by the way, might have OpenAI ending up as a 10% owner of AMD. This is part of
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the interesting new ideas that Sam teased. Let's just start with the high level here. Are we
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starting to see Sam's plan come to fruition? It seems like this is part of it. It's so hard
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to analyze this in part because of what we kicked off with. Things are moving so fast.
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It's obviously impossible for us on the outside to know how much of these deals are coming together
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on the fly. There was the reporting about the Nvidia $100 billion deal, which led presumably to
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Sam's post there that you're talking about, that that came together while they were both on the
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overseas excursion with Trump and going around. They were able to hash out that deal one on one.
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With a deal like this now with AMD, you almost wonder, did a similar thing play out? Was Sam
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Lisa Sue traveling around somewhere? Did she pick up the phone when she saw that Nvidia deal and
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decide we need to figure out a deal basically over the next few days to be able to respond to that
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in some ways? When talking about Sam's post, it's unclear if he even knows all of the ways that
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this is going to go from his sort of nebulous talk about these interesting new ideas for financing.
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Also, that post, I felt the need to write about that both because I like the Sam Altman post
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criminology of it all and doing, breaking those down, especially when they're short as this one is.
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It's sort of I kicked off talking about it. It felt like this was basically written because Sam felt
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like, well, we just did a $100 billion deal with Nvidia. Someone should say something about it.
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It goes on for just a little bit with these very, again, nebulous and grandiose terms as he often does.
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But this was also tied to some other quotes that were coming out of this from other companies.
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I think one was, it's the new, one of the new co-ceos of Oracle also had alluded to these
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strange new financing mechanisms. Of course, Oracle's big partner with OpenAI too is everyone's
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big partner with everyone these days. But it's like, what's going on behind the scenes that all
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these folks are getting together and coming up with new accounting methods out of the blue that
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they're hinting at but not fully coming into? Yes, it's conceivable that this AMD deal is one of
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them or it's conceivable that this AMD deal came together at the last minute because of the other
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deals going on. I have to give Sam credit. He's someone who can write like we're going to be
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telling you about some interesting new ideas we have about financing and building. And most CEOs,
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I would say you would read that and be like, there's nothing there. But with Sam,
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we've seen that there is something there. And that's either, and maybe it's both of these options.
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I was going to say it's either a testament to his ability to turn momentum and ideas into business
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reality or a testament into the entire business world's blindly following this one man and putting
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so many billions of dollars behind what he's promising in the future that it's somewhat concerning.
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But I think we should just talk a little bit about the nature of this deal because it's such an
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interesting deal between OpenAI and AMD. So this is from the Wall Street Journal. OpenAI and chipmaker
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advanced micro devices announced a multi billion dollar partnership to collaborate on AI
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data centers that will run on AMD processors under the terms of the deal opening I committed to
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purchasing six gigawatts worth of AMD chips starting next year. The chat GPT maker will buy the chips
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either directly through it or through its cloud partners. AMD chief Lisa Sue said in an interview
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Sunday that the deal will result in tens of billions of dollars in new revenue for the chip company
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over the next half decade. Part of this OpenAI will receive warrants for up to 160 million AMD shares
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worth roughly 10% of the chip company at one cent per share awarded in phases. If OpenAI hits
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certain milestones for deployment. I have to admit MG this latest one. It's got my head spinning.
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So let's just think I can we recap it is it is not an investment in OpenAI. It is OpenAI's
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commitment to buy AMD chips. But as it buys these chips it gets ownership in AMD.
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This is what makes sense of this is this AMD giving away the company for OpenAI to buy its chips and
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is that really a purchase or is it just like and so on you go ahead and this is struggling.
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And again this is sort of late breaking news. So I even had too much time to sort of go over the
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details of it but at a high level from what you know the report is here it does seem like there's
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a number of things going on as always. But so the 10% thing is super interesting right because that's
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also oddly the number that Intel was supposedly selling to the government right like for for
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their deal and there's you know there's other ownerships trading hands obviously between Nvidia
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and Intel and then a bunch of other stuff going on. So it's like it all feels like the same
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sort of general playbook just being executed in different ways where it's like now of a sudden
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ownership is sort of table stakes to these deals right even when it's a company that's technically
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still a startup in OpenAI own would be owning up to 10% of a very public long standing public
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chip company in AMD and what on earth does that look like from a finance perspective like their
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books like how it's from again from what the reporting is like they have the right to buy those
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shares I think in warrants and so like I'm not sure that they necessarily will or but they could
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and and obviously as you noted it's sort of dependent on you know the business agreements between
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these two companies and then there's like the other layer where as you just noted it doesn't
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necessarily have to be OpenAI that's buying the chips right it could be one of their partners and so
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I mean it could be Nvidia technically I guess you know that would be buying AMD chips to help put
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together one of the Stargate operation things like because that's a layer of this too right that
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again stepping back at the highest level it seems like OpenAI realizes that they need to control
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their own destiny in many ways but certainly on the cost front and to the ultimate extreme they
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probably can't be paying one of the massive cloud providers be it you know Microsoft has
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it's been today and then sort of Oracle too now all of them they need to be able to control their
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costs in a better way and doing that means eventually at some point sort of controlling your own
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data centers to some extent and so it feels like a lot of these deals are coming together to allow
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OpenAI to put in place the building blocks to build their own data centers quite literally
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and this AMD deal presumably is also a part of that but again the wrinkle of it being one of the
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partners doing it again I think that that's related just thinking on the fly here related to
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Stargate partners being able to use it in their own data center so like Oracle famously controls the
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one right now in in Abilene Texas that's the only one that's actually being built right now in the
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process of being built while the others are still just sort of being signed and squared away and so
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again like who gets what rights to purchase you know the the processors who gets what's rights to
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purchase the shares and AMD and is AMD simply doing this again because it's sort of become like
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the table stakes thing and by the way it worked in terms of the narrative of it right like their stock
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is up a huge amount right now is flying because yeah right so like obviously that comes into play
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too they all see that these deals get done and then the stock goes through the roof because investors
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are excited all of a sudden again about about AMD because they're doing a similar deal to you know
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what what Nvidia and Intel and all the other players have done just want to pause on the 27% we've
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seen this is the second time we've seen something like this happen right AMD is up 27% today Oracle
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of course blasted into orbit when it made its deal with OpenAI we're gonna we're really not going
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to focus on the stock market in this show we're going to talk mostly about product and partnerships
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but it is worth noting right like this exuberance in the stock stock market is based off of
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infrastructure spend and not revenue it's all based off of revenue projections and those
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revenue projections are extremely aggressive especially when you consider the fact that enterprises
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are moving exceptionally slow here this is a reflect to me and so that goes back to my post the
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reason I wrote you know again off of riffing off of Sam's comments because the only thing that I could
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think about you know in my head of like what they were you know presumably talking about with this
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new method of financing or whatever it wasn't actually new method of financing it's it's basically
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using debt in a way to sort of get a flywheel going so that you know obviously leveraging debt especially
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for for data center buildouts and things of that nature is not there's nothing new but what you what
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you're sort of talk alluding to here is exactly what might be the new element of it in that
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they these players are all trading revenue and and you know again it starts with OpenAI agreeing
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to do these massive deals with another partner but as everyone knows this has been widely reported
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OpenAI doesn't have the money to do these you know the deals to the extent they don't have the money
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in the bank literally to do the deals you know to the extent that these these are talking about and so
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now we get these other deals like the new and video one where it's like they are promising to
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you know commit up to a hundred billion dollars it doesn't have to be that much it starts with 10
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right 10 it sounds like is is maybe committed depending on how how committed these two are to
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actually you know finalizing this deal but it's like 10 comes in at first and then another 10 comes
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in over you know and basically over nine tranches they would they would get this a hundred billion
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but the timing of that all like is there actual money going into bank accounts to pay for
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something you know physically being built at some point or is it all just being based off of
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like lines of credit you know just be chips maybe OpenAI is going to pay for these AMD chips
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within video chips maybe they're just going to take one of 10 Cis trucks of chips
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private over to Lisa Sue and be like we'll take 10% of your company right now I mean if these chips
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are really at the shortage limits that's everyone's projecting like they're worth more than
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their weight in gold and so you know like they are somewhat of of an actual value store I guess
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in that in that way but but you know the thing you're talking about how this makes you uncomfortable
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the obvious elephant in the room that again everyone will know is like if even the smallest
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slowdown happens not not even like a massive correction if a slowdown happens in in several
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of on several of these fronts on any number of sorry I should say on any one of these like several
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fronts that are going right now it can start like it seems like it would start a cascading effect
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that would potentially bring down the entire thing and then we got debt being called and we got
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people unable to pay and we've got new you know contracts being renegotiated and people taking out
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you know are just the bank own you know do banks start owning start some of this stuff and
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and does the government have to step in as you know they basically are clearly open to doing
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and deals like with Intel as we talked about and so there's all sorts of weird things that are
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happening right now that I don't think that there's a ton of precedent for in history right and as we
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sort of danced around or even mentioned so far there was a very interesting line in the Wall Street
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journal story where the reporter writes the Nvidia deal isn't completed yet the two companies have
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signed a letter of intent and have yet to disclose specific terms in a regulatory filing so
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is that is that actually happening I mean yeah I mean so and so there's a few things here one
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that what is up with open AI's letter of intense like love now you know they did the Microsoft
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one they announced with a you know a couple dozen words that they they had a agreement to agree
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with Microsoft on new terms but they have no actual terms to agree upon yet and so it's not a
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done deal now this Nvidia one is also basically an agreement to agree to you know a deal and
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you know you have to sort of wonder if AMD didn't see that and think like maybe we should swoop
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in here before this is a done deal and sort of get something else done and and you know in the
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report there they do say like and and I think Altman I saw it maybe it was even a tweet or he said
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it somewhere else but he sort of makes it clear that Nvidia is still like a main partner right this
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isn't like this isn't them switching horses you know in in the middle of a deal being done but there
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is you know to continue the analogy there is some level of jockeying that it feels like it's
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happening here right where it's like again maybe Lisa Sue saw that this deal was not finalized and
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so she could sort of come in and say what can we do you know alongside this if nothing else if
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we can't take some of this business then there's a whole like this is apparently for inference and
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you know obviously Nvidia is in that game too but wants to be own that game like they do with
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with actual model training right now you know and so there's that whole element there's the element
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of the Broadcom deal that that OpenAI has which maybe kickstarted some of these Nvidia
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deal talks between OpenAI and Nvidia so that they didn't go down the path fully of making their own
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chips sounds like they're still doing it but maybe not as fast as they would have previously because
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again they want to hold the whole stack as we talked about so yeah a lot a lot going on I'm not
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saying it's going to happen but I do think that you could in your mind imagine a scenario where you
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connect all these dots looking backwards from you know in the future where there is a collapse here
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and you could say how did we not like I think this was a blatant collapse waiting to happen the
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letters of intense the losses the size of the investment the fact that enterprises struggling to
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implement this stuff yes chat GPT or OpenAI is going to bring in 13 billion this year at least it's
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on track to do that but it's going to lose according to reports 120 billion by 2029 again like the
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caveat we always say and I think this is it's a very freaking important caveat is that the technology's
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real chat GPT and and and all these GPT's are all these LLNs are getting getting better as we go
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but the financing definitely is is wonky say the least yeah and it feels a bit like you know when
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you do slow down for a second and try to think about this it feels like a shock and awe campaign
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meant to leverage speed and I do think that this is basically what OpenAI is running a playbook
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of of like leveraging the fact that as they keep talking about like this is a unique moment in time
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we need to move as fast as possible we have there's so much this is this is the race to AGI or
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super intelligence and and we need to do this right now we can't wait if you're waiting someone
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else is going to step in and do these deals like you're either in or you're out and just using
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that time pressure to basically force the hands of people into pretty uncomfortable what would
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normally be pretty certainly for a CFO a very uncomfortable calculation to to make in these
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situations right and I guess there is some logic to them doing that right and it is for sure
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it's the competition right and there's this there's this there's a count that I follow on on XR
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seems to pop up my timeline all the time you can't tell the way follow anymore because of our
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algorithmic overlords but it's a person's name is Borghoff and Borghoff says Google Anthropic
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and open AI are currently fighting a war of attrition the problem for the latter two is their
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cash comes not from clients but from investors while Google is profitable and no longer losing
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users add this to the fact that among the three only Google has its own infinite supply of GPUs
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for the price of peanuts and draw your conclusion on how this war of attrition will end now obviously
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this person is is very bullish on Google winning this this moment it's quite possible
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but I think maybe that's the sort of open AI fully understands the fact that it's managed up
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against them by the way also open AI also sorry meta and Elon and then you sort of see why we have
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this rush the way it's up it's yeah completely unprecedented to have this many massive players with
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this amount of capital being able to be put to work but I totally agree with that stance and I've
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written a little bit about this like the even before yeah the riffing off of Sam's newest post it was
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the the main thing I've been sort of dancing around and finally was able to put this down but it's
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like it really does feel to me at least at this moment in time given that meta obviously is struggling
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a bit but is trying to reboot the system Elon like they're losing a lot of people like there's a lot
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of weird stuff going on there there's a lot of spend going on there he can fundraise like no other
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of course so you know he's he's good for it now but like there's weirdness there and
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the topic is a different beast it feels like you know with their Martin their marketing campaign
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sort of plays to that like are they going to be now set up as the the anti open AI type play
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but at a lower level and then so to me anyway long winded way of saying it feels like this is
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basically right now as it stands a two horse race between open AI and Google and I do think that
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open AI looks at Google and just says like oh my god they have everything that they need to do this
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at scale while as you noted not having to burn investor capital they had they they're insanely
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profitable they can do this on their own and by the way unlike meta which is also profitable and
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zuck talks up like yeah we can we can fund this via profits which is true but they don't have the
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cloud infrastructure that Google does and they don't have the to CPUs that Google does and they don't
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have all of the sort of other various expertise to sort of scale this type of unprecedented massive
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build out scale that Google is able to do and so I think Sam and everyone else at open AI just says
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like there's a lot going on all these things are varying degrees of noise and some is real
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competition but Google is the one that really has the opportunity and so my headline idea was
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basically open AI needs to build Google Cloud before Google can build chat GPT right and that's
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how it goes yeah yeah a couple more things on this it's just so many interesting aspects to this
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and that and speaking of Sam Altman criminology let's take a look at the tweet that you referenced
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excited to partner with AMD to use their chips to serve our users this is from Sam he says this
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all incremental to our work with Nvidia and we plan to increase our Nvidia purchasing over time and
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a stuit ex-user said everyone is scared of jensen this post mentions Nvidia more times than AMD
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despite the deal being about AMD jensen might bump them down in the preference list due to this
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what do you think yeah and I'm glad you found that one because yes that I think I saw that quickly
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and that is a great point about it and and that's another thing that's at play here like and also why
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it felt like at least a part of why open AI and Nvidia struck that deal it's like
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right now if you want to be a main player in this game you've obviously got to work with Nvidia and
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as everyone knows like while they'll they say they don't play favorites like if they're going to
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invest whatever a hundred billion dollars into you like you're going to get access to their chips
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like they're not going to screw you over but if you did a deal with AMD you know behind their back
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like maybe you're not first in line for those chips anymore and so I think you have to sort of
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like you have to do with president trump you got to sort of do the public
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fealty and show and show who's really in charge okay here's my last question about this
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why would open AI want to own 10% of AMD I cannot figure out why it is advantageous for them other
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than I don't know you tell me what's the deal I'm sort of at a loss too for that I think like again
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the only thing I would come back to is what I said earlier it's like this is now become like a
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weird table stakes thing of like these companies trading ownership you know and quite high percentages
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of ownership within you know each other there's there's going to be subsequent reporting about this
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obviously as to why that part became a big part of it but it does it's like I think Lisa Sue has
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a quote in there of like saying that it aligns their interests because open AI you know well now
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obviously have a potentially have an ownership stake in AMD and so they'll be aligned about like
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you know making sure that they're along for the ride you know wherever that ride takes them I guess
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but like yeah that's it's a public company selling up to 10% of of their shares it's like and again
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it's a private company buying it's like very very strange I guess open AI might like it because
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it's like just something else to have on the balance sheet when if and when they go public and they
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can say like look we have these shares were 10% of AMD and it's worth X you know hundreds of
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whatever it is billions of dollars and I don't know I'm sort of drawing its draws here
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right and now Microsoft and Nvidia are going to own AMD as well for the money that they put in
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yeah help in directly open AI build a GI well if you don't get a GI you can get some AMD shares
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it's a not the best constellation prize but worth it's worth more than nothing
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so weird okay what is this compute going to be useful on the other side of this break
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mgni are going to talk about Sam Altman and Johnny ives attempt to build an AI device
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and but why that is running into trouble because of a lack of among other things compute we'll be
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back right after this capital ones tech team isn't just talking about multi-agentic AI they already
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deployed one it's called chat concierge and it's simplifying car shopping using self-reflection
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and layered reasoning with live API checks it doesn't just help buyers find the car they love
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it helps schedule a test drive get pre-approved for financing and estimate trade and value
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advanced intuitive and deployed that's how they stack that's technology at capital one
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what the hell is going on right now and why is it happening like this at wired we're obsessed with
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getting to the bottom of those questions on a daily basis and maybe you are too i'm Katie drummin
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the global editorial director of wired and i'm hosting our new podcast series the big interview
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each week i'll sit down with some of the most interesting provocative and influential people
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who are shaping our right now big interview conversations are fun i want a shark that that eats
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the internet that turns it all off unfiltered and unafraid so in a lot of ways i try to be an antidote
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to the unimaginable faucet of reactionary content that you see online to the best of my ability
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every week we're going to offer you the ultimate luxury of our times meaning and context true or false
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you Brian Johnson the man sitting across from me one day at some point as of yet undefined in the
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future you will die false tell me more listen to the big interview right now in the same place you
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find wired's uncanny valley podcast subscriber follow wherever you get your podcasts
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and we're back here on big technology podcast with mg seecler is the author of spyglass which you
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can find at spyglass.org lots of great stories and they're really an impressive September from
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umg it's just like going through the stories before we talked and i you are my go-to source for
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basically everything that's happening in this crazy world including this very interesting
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report that we have coming out really over the weekend today about how sam ultman and johnny ivar
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hitting some speed bumps shall we say with their secretive AI device i'll read from the ft
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briefly open AI and start designer johnny ivar grappling with a series of technical issues with
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their secretive new AI device as they push to launch a blockbuster tech product next year
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their aim is to create a pompous device with the screen that can take audio and visual and visual
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cues from the physical environment and respond to users requests. Open AI and i have yet to solve
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critical problems that could delay the device is released though these include deciding on the
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assistance personality privacy issues and budgeting for the computing power needed to run open AI
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models on a mess computer device and there's a person that tells the ft somebody close to ive
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that compute is a huge factor in the delay amazon has the compute for lexas so does google
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but open AI is struggling to get enough compute for chat gpt let alone an a i device they need to
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fix that first all right we're going to talk about the nature of this device because we're getting
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like a picture of what it's going to look like but first on the significance of somebody close to
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ive complaining to the ft that open AI doesn't have enough compute for this device to run
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that to me is pretty interesting and i think not a good sign and this is a multi billion dollar
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tie up it's not a good sign for the fact that somebody close to ive is saying this you know
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first story about the device hitting speed speed bumps what do you think mg?
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yeah yeah the behind the scenes element of that is super interesting you have to wonder
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it to me it sort of felt almost as if it's you know probably i don't want to say it's an intentional
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leak but i do feel like it's directionally interesting that they're basically telling the
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market that this device is not going to be on time like it because their original reports right
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where that it was going to be probably sometime at the end of next year the end of 26 and so you
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this to me signals that this is more like a 2027 type thing now and i think that that sort of quote
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maybe helps that you know get out there so people aren't expecting you know have a countdown
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all of a sudden for a year from now when when this device doesn't hit the market but i also think
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like there's a lot in that in that report including yeah like what this device you know potentially
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is they don't come out and say it directly but you know a lot i think a lot of us who read those
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original like reports when the when the two sides both started working together but then obviously
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when the acquisition happened which also feels like 20 years ago but was only a few months ago
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uh which is again wild um but i think you know we all sort of zeroed in on it being not necessarily
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awareable even though that was you know what meta and you know others were working on
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but that it could be some sort of thing that's um you know a voice first device that uh you carry
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around alongside at least a start certainly a smartphone so it's a complimentary device to a
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smartphone and um so there's there's that element of it and then yeah the data element of like
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what would be required to make this work it's sort of i'm i'm curious why that compute complaint
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is in place other than the general compute complaint that we're seeing with Sora and everything
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else right now right like they're always compute constrained to some degree and you know right now
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they're rate limiting the creation of Sora videos uh they they just jumped it down i saw recently
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from a hundred in 24 hours because i keep hitting it uh to now it's 30 uh and so they're really
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feeling constraints it feels like or feeling the the compute pressure on that and so
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with it this presumed voice first device the the report is that there will be cameras involved with it
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too like is that really going to be that big of a data hog and maybe the part of it that is is
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the fact that it's apparently always listening it's always on always maybe recording um so that's
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maybe part of it but um it's it's a curious it's a curious bit of reporting that that's like the
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issue one of the main issues right and i think what you're getting at is the compute shouldn't be
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the main i mean obviously it's an issue it shouldn't be the main the main thing i would stop a rollout
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yeah they could just limit it was yeah right and even if it was and you and someone from Johnny
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ives team wanted to leak out that we're having some issues um you know the fact that
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they the leak was not just we're delayed but finger pointing to me points to the idea that these
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teams aren't working well i mean like if you have a sports team and they collapse right a sports
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team that loses a couple games you hear the athletes and they're always like we need to do better
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as a team we need to get better and then let's say they lose six games in a row and i'm familiar
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with this because all of my teams lose six games in a row that's when they start finger pointing
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and they say well the defense wasn't holding up it's part of the bargain or you know we we really
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you know our our hitters at the bottom of the order need a need to come through and for them to say
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open a i is struggling to get enough compute for chat GPT let alone an a i device they need to fix
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that oof that is that the fact that someone would go to the ft with that is is i think fairly
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concerning hearing you say that now it sort of brings into my mind like the idea of sort of what
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we were talking about with Sora because that's like the the prime example of of their compute
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constraint at the moment at least forward facing wise but it sort of feels like okay there's all
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these different things going on at at open a i in the moment and now famously they brought in
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another CEO to help to help deal with all that in in fiji cemu cemu and uh um so it feels like
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there's maybe some jockeying happening for making sure that each team gets their level of compute
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that they want to get or feel like they need to get in order to uh to fully be able to to bring
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their product to market and again like that happens to be the time when soira is really sort of
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just blowing up their servers at the moment but obviously they're working on other models and
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there's other needs for compute that are going on behind the scenes there's other products there's
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all the agentic work that they're doing um and uh you know it feels like maybe this is just a way
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to ensure that like hey you guys spent a lot of money to bring on the ioteam we need art to make
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sure that we have our uh our resources to yeah i think that's what they feel like they're not
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getting them for some reason now that you contextualize it i think that's that's the exact right read
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and it sort of sparks in my mind the fact that this has always been an issue at open a i
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teams fighting for compute and i think the safety teams you know of yesterday that got upset and left
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uh got upset mainly of over the fact that they didn't have uh enough compute to either steer the
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product road map or do the checks that they wanted to or the experiments that they wanted to so
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let's say and it's also like what what microsoft you know remember like that's what open ais main
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complaint about was was with microsoft like that they're not getting the resources that they need
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and they feel like they're you know microsoft's working on their own projects and why aren't you
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being fully committed to helping us and and you know so now it's moved internal right and uh let's talk
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a little bit about what this device is because we we did get some interesting detail about what it's
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going to be so this is from the ft report it's roughly the size of a smartphone users communicate
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with it through a camera microphone and speaker it is designed to sit on a desk or a table but it
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can also be carried around by the user the device is always on rather than triggered by word or
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prompt its sensors gather data through the day uh that would help it build its virtual assistance
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memory um one issue uh it is ensuring the device only times in when useful preventing it from talking
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too much or not knowing when to finish the conversation an ongoing issue with chat GPT it's
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interesting um it sort of reminds me of the the friend dot com pendant yeah uh for sure friend
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limitless there's a but there's a few others right and obviously humane r ip and uh and and rabbit
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which also feels like decades ago that that came out um but yeah there it does again this
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it feels a bit obvious that this is the path that they were going to go down um i i feel like this is
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and and i'm somewhat biased because i've like long written about this dating back a decade where i
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thought that there would be like you know these vocal computing devices not just Alexa but like yeah
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on the go and and always on you type things um and it hasn't played out exactly that way yet but i do
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again i feel like it's just a matter of time until someone nails these and i do think that
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when when opening i rolled out GPT 40 and alongside that they did the voice element of it which
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obviously they famously got in in trouble with for the scarlet joe handsen voice which is what
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mainly what people remember now but if you remember back then you know it was about a year a little
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over a year ago i think it was um it was just insanely impressive like voice technology right
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compared to what the state of the art had been up until then and it's been you know getting better
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and now obviously jiminai and everyone else has it integrated uh within their systems as well but
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it feels like Alexa and seary and the first sort of versions of these these types of vocal computing
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devices they focus so much on like the individual devices and the sort of rudimentary utility stuff
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i just triggered all of my devices in my office here but um and so once once they did that it's
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sort of held them back from being able to do like the newfangled versions of these obviously they
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couldn't have known at the time where l alums would go and and how this would uh how this would
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evolve but it feels like with that GPT 40 rollout all that time ago and now the continued evolution
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the voice computing element is there where it needs to be for a device like this to work but the hardware
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part is now the hard part which is always the hard part but you know companies like amazon or apple
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or google can figure that out because they have their massive companies at scale question is if open
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AI can do it with the team that johnny i they acquired with johnny ives team and the team most
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importantly that he brought over from apple who has done this at scale for decades and this brings
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me to this idea that they're all sort of all these products are consolidating in some way yeah
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like we just named a bunch of companies open AI amazon google facebook apple uh they're all it
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seems like they're all building the same thing and and so the hard the hardware might be the tough
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part but then you sort of well you'll eventually probably differentiate based off of the assistant
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inside and this was your take about uh what's what's going on with with the opening i device compared to
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the apple apple device uh that we're going to see so so you write just imagine a world in which johnny
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ives introduces opening eyes first hardware a small screenless digital companion for your life
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at the same time that apple unveils their next hardware a pair of glasses with cameras on your face
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and perhaps a screen in your eye one runs on chat GPT the other on seary that would be quite the
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dichotomy and it's sort of angling that way right like these the timelines are sort of starting
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to line up especially with what we're talking about with delays you know potentially it's a open
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AI's device and where we know that apple from the you know most recent markerman report is uh
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is dropping sort of vision pro work to to go for a full steam ahead on these these smart glasses
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to compete protect you know presumably with meta um and meet them in market and there's the whole
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subtext thing going on with johnny ive being you know perhaps upset about the world that he helped us
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are in right with screens and and everything else with the iPhone and the fact that not only is apple
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now you know going full steam ahead on on glasses with cameras but if they're the you know
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again the reports are that they're going to go down the path that metadjust did with with the screen
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in the eye like now we've screens in our eyes uh and and johnny ive is making trying to make advice
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with zero screens um and so that is a very interesting budding a budding of heads i i would well the
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only other thing i would add to that that i didn't write about in there but i would be i'm slightly
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concerned that there's too much focus on it being a screenless device perhaps right like
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i'm not saying that it needs to be another smartphone certainly and i do think that there's probably
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a world and i think there's increasingly a world where people are maybe you know happy to move
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at least a bit away from from being reliant on a smartphone but i'm also worried a little bit that
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it would be harder to use with zero screens you know like there's sometimes when you just need a
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screen for something to showcase versus doing it orally or um or via another mechanism now maybe
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they could say well they'll send a notification to your phone if they if there's something they need
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to show you or something like that but i'm a little worried that it's uh it's it's trying to do it
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just to make a point about anti screens uh at the same time the other the flip side of that would be
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a screen as everyone knows is the biggest battery draw of any of devices and so like if they could
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do without a screen they can do a lot better in a all day battery life and maybe weak battery life
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i think they're all gonna go screen i remember when amazon announced the echo device and it was
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so cool because it glowed at the top and talked to you and we had uh panos pene from amazon had
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of devices and services on the show in march and he be seached me to go get the echo show with the
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screen and said the experience wasn't gonna be the same without and i think all these devices will
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end up getting there and it's just kind of interesting how they're all converging in their own way
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let me see if i get this right you have open a i pushing apple on the assistant device you have
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met a pushing apple towards glasses you have amazon getting pushed by everybody to have a better
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Alexa you have google kind of standing out there to the side but it has uh ambient gem and i in
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is also working on glasses and amazon apparently is amazon work on glasses
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yeah is the is the tech world's just is all our all tech products and services just converging to this
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you know eventual yet to be named singular interface with assistant inside
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um that actually reminds me of one one sub point of of my piece which was um
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while i just said you know the the negative side of like the no screen thing i do think it's
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interesting that open i is trying to go down at least a little bit different of a pet like
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you won't see presumably unless there's success from it from someone be it open air or someone else
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i don't think you'll see apple do like yeah like a screenless a i device i don't think you'll see
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except for the glasses they could do the glasses with no screen that's true and it sounds
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like the first version will be but i mean like um a third sort of a secondary piece of hardware
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yeah like exactly what is rumored to be you know what open air is working on it feels like they're
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the only ones besides those startups as we mentioned that are going down that path at least right now
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now you could say alexa it kind of trigger it again is sort of like that um in a way right but it's
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but obviously meant for to be plugged in and and you don't take it with you um but i think you're
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right obviously everyone is is sort of coalescing around these same ideas including the startups all
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working on the things that we noted um and the answer to that is like i just think everyone is
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still trying to figure out like what the next device is despite all of the a i hype and and
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everything that we've been talking about and obviously everyone you know we're real believers in
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it but we're unsure about the the financing models for it but everyone believes in the technology
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angle of it but it's still at the end of the day people are looking for the next device because
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they think that this can be the next thing that becomes like the massive platform in the next
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iPhone right and um i'm still of the mindset that's the more boring mindset that's like nothing's
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ever going to be the scale again of of what the iPhone achieved and instead it's going to be all
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of these devices all a bunch of different devices including glasses including your smartphone
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and maybe you know potentially including a a chat pin walk around thing desktop device whatever it
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is um and and several other things you know along those lines um so yeah i think that they all
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just feel like they need to have these initiatives you mentioned amazon because they as you noted
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like they they sounds like per reporting they do have a glasses project as well but they hired the
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j-allard which was the name i hadn't heard in years and years out of microsoft to work on you know
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these new some sort of new ideas around devices and and a i and whatnot yeah but they do have this so
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here's a plug for for an upcoming episode pannos play is going to come on i just recorded with him
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in new york following the amazon devices event and we do talk about that workshop that they have
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where they're trying to figure out the future of the new ai device and uh get a really interesting
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interaction it's kind of fun where i said well what do you think about pendants and he goes oh
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really trying to go all over the place here and he goes pendants hmm you know so anyway i encourage
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people to tune into that because uh it does seem like they're at least considering uh
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appendent there um but you know what's going to be interesting it's going to be the design
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philosophy of all these companies like you wrote in a post about how amazon said let's just get it out
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let's get alexa plus out there after they saw that apple uh you know didn't uh uh release or
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get as much of apple intelligence out out there and they got killed for it uh i'd actually i
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want to end with a couple thing first of all i want to get your take on well second of all i
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want to get your take on the vision pro before we leave because uh we've said on a couple times
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a couple times on the show that apple has deprioritized that so we should at least take a moment
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talk about what that means uh but before that you know it's just very interesting to see meta uh
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pushing apple in these directions and so i'd be curious to hear your perspective on like where the
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you know it's really a blood feud in my perspective maybe that's too strong of a term but where
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the meta versus apple uh uh product war stands and how you think each one of those companies uh
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product philosophy will be an advantage or a disadvantage as they move forward trying to ship
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these AI devices yes so i've written about this a number of times dating dating back a few years now
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basically you know once um once apple tried to destroy meta's advertising business uh it felt like
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that was the kickoff of a real cold you know not even cold war a hot war in in many ways that's
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that's been happening i think at the highest level for meta you know zuckerberg has said it multiple
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times from jarrogens podcast no less like talking about how they feel like they're in a just
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terrible position because they're beholden to apple and to a lesser extent google in terms of
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the smartphone you know needs for their products and it's not just for distribution of their apps
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anymore it's now for things like their glasses where they feel like they can't have the same level
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of connectivity that like an apple watch does because they're not first party hardware um you know
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and they and they can't tap into the the iPhone the same way that apple itself can um with you know
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low level um bluetooth and all these other things that they use for connections and so
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i think that meta has been trying uh basically anything uh to make you know something that could
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again replace that smartphone as the next computing device and again zuckerberg has not been shy
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about talking about that i'm super skeptical as we just talked about that anything we'll ever get
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to that scale but i do think that meta has done a good job and an admirable job by the way of
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sticking with it right like lots of companies famously google you know with google glass and
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and their own vr efforts like they just do something and then when's not working they back away
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and you know there's something to be said for that too but a lot of these new fangled devices it
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just feels like they will never work unless someone just continually pumps in the billions required
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to sort of be in the right place right time right so much of this is based around timing as
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so many things in in the world and uh i just feel like a lot of these devices uh have never worked
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because they're not right place right time and people give up before they would ever be in the
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right place because you can't really time the markets right you can't know that it's going to be
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the right time for it you can you know do as much as you can to try to make it the right time for you
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but um but again meta to their credit is for almost maybe a hundred billion dollars now into their
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efforts um you know in terms of the quest headsets but now also with the glasses and and all the other
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projects and the AR glasses that they're working on so credit to them for for still trying to do it
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i'm still a little bit skeptical about what scale they can get to with that and if they can ever
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fully truly break uh yeah the the need to be paired up quite literally with apple and or google
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um and it feels like it's going to be a long time at the very least until they can get to the
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let that split that part i haven't used the new glasses yet curious if you have but like
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you know they're impressed it sounds like they're impressive it sounds like the technology is
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is impressive but it also doesn't sound like the type of thing that's at you know people are
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going to leave their smartphones behind anytime in the next five to ten years yeah i haven't used
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them yet but um i actually want to pick up on a on a item that you put in a recent post about it
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that uh i think exorla lexatica actually balked at the idea of naming the latest generation
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raybans because they were bulky and then metta sort of floated some money towards them and not all
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the sudden right that again another another tech company that owns an ownership stake in a in a public
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company exactly and and so i think what i draw from that is what might be playing in metta's benefit
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here is they don't have a standard you know they don't have to worry about decades of a design legacy
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that they have to uphold to make something feel metta-ish you're just like like all right if these are
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ugly as hell oakley glasses that you know talk back to you and some people like them let's just do it
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and that sort of i guess spaghetti at the wall type of approach um i i think is a very interesting
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contrast to the it has to be perfect way that apple is developing things yeah and one riff off of
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that idea is i do think the smartest thing that they did was partner with exorla lexatica because
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the the biggest strength that apple obviously has beyond all their in-house expertise is also the
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retail channels right like they can move product because they have stores around the world and they
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can ship something and it be in every single country basically around the world side from i guess
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russia and maybe a few other places but um but uh metta has has one store or a couple stores right
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and even google has just a few a handful of stores like no one else has that capability so metta
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smartly it's not just the design of the glasses which obviously mattered too like you know and
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getting to use the ray band brand but it's also the the foot the retail footprint that they can get
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from that partnership is was a hugely smart thing and it's something that i've been wondering
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about when thinking through the what what apple does with smart glasses like do they also do some
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sort of partnership there not because they need it from a distribution perspective but more because
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like metta has now set a standard in a way that look you're wearing the same brand that you wore
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for your regular sunglasses or your regular glasses but now they have these these tech-enabled things
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and like apple as great as they are at design like do people you know like there's the difference
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between wearing an apple watch which is you know well designed and stuff but it sort of resides
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under your shirt and there's a very different thing between something that's right on your face
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all the time and obviously google ran into that headfirst pun intended you know with with google glass
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and i think again metta was very smart in in out of necessity they had to be smart about that
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partnership and so what does apple do there with do they have to cut a deal to do a partnership
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in a similar vein okay a couple more minutes left let's just do the reclume for the vision pro
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i remember back in the day uh hearing apple make lofty promises about the future of
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uh spatial computing wasn't the metaverse spatial computing right uh as big vision and now
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the vision pro has been a disappointment but not only that it seems like it's going to be
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deprioritized within apples sweet of products and you even suggest in one of your recent posts
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that this might be it for yeah and i you know uh german and others have said like look they're still
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committed they're obviously about to release a new version which is an upgraded chip it's
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apparently going to have a slightly better headband which is nice because the current one is not
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any good but um but beyond that it will just be a chip upgrade um the one that you're talking
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about of course is that they're they're gonna at least put on the back burner the idea of a vision
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air or just the vision without the pro part of it the slider the smaller lighter and potentially
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less expensive um you know version to actually scale this thing and i think that they just
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probably looked at the market and said like obviously where we're at right now with the vision
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pros now where we want to be um but even if they did a quote unquote vision or vision air
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and say it was like even a thousand dollars do you think it's going to be a massive scale
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you know hit device i don't think that it would be and so i think that they're being realistic about
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that and you know as you're talking about metta sort of showed them what the market is like at least
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for the foreseeable future in terms of a wearable on your face um and again others had tried we
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talked about google snap of course was was an early mover with spectacles and still trying it um
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but metta really sort of nailed i think both sort of a technological um perspective ease of use
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uh the partnership angle and timing again and i think the for the vision pro when we talk about
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does it ever ever go anywhere i don't think that it's gonna go anywhere anytime soon and so it's a
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matter of if apple does hit with something like the smart pair of smart glasses and the next version
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of it i i wouldn't be shocked if they do just back burner the notion of the vision pro it's still
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there is like a legacy product it's all roped into this vision quote unquote vision umbrella
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of like well this is just the the high end of what we always wanted to do and and you know we're
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working at it on multiple fronts it's too bad because i do feel like they've started to come into
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their own it's with some of the content and they're getting better about it but the device itself
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is just way too bulky way too heavy everything about it is just inconvenience to use and it's just
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the time the market completely wrong and obviously they couldn't have known AI was coming as
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in as hot as it did but like you know they they went all in on this product and they probably
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shouldn't have done that and now we said to start this episode that the past month or 30 days or
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whatever it's been has been crazy and so uh it's hard to possibly capture all the action that's
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and and i i think that we'll we'll have the same thing repeatedly month month on end because
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none of this seems like it's slowing and uh mg it's just great to be able to break it down with you
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every month so so thank you so much for coming on the show of course thanks as always Alex
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I know see in a month see what's right see you in a month and folks uh remember to check out spyglass.org
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you can set up sign up for mg's newsletter there become a pro subscriber like i am and get the
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added added articles and insights which I highly recommend all right on on Wednesday and
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thropic chief product officer my Krieger is going to be on of all goals according to schedule
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talk about the company's latest model and to and discuss the fact that we've gone from
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san at 4.0 to 4.5 in a very short amount of time and whether the AI product recycle is
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beating up thanks again to mg thank you all for listening and we'll see you next time
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on big technology podcast
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what the hell is going on right now and why is it happening like this at wired we're obsessed with
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