It

was.

And, you know, the Sony Walkman came out in, was it 82 or 83? The original Sony tape Walkman.

And my doorman, we live in a building that had a doorman, which was not necessarily like a luxury feature.

We had a doorman.

He was murdered for his Sony Walkman coming to work one day.

It was a pretty bleak time.

navigating a fucking Waymo in the middle of Poland during that

Did this prove that the AI infrastructure boom still has legs? Can we finally put it to bed since Nvidia has gotten a positive post-earnings reaction for only the, the second time in the last eight quarters?

Yeah, I mean, um, if you look at it, 100 billion is, is real, and, you know, we're, we're very close to that number.

You know, it's expected to cross in the next quarter itself.

Um, so yes, and, you know, it's very heartening to see the forecast, not just about what happened, but, you know, the next year.

Uh, you know, they are saying that it's gonna be 70% more, the revenue overall, um, which, you know, the estimates was, like, 45%, 44%, so very promising times ahead.

W- what is it that you think changed between the earnings release and today that caused investors to decide that this was the report to embrace?

Um, I mean, you know, they, they, they have, they've, they've obviously taken time to digest the information, uh, you know, that's out there.

And, um, uh, it's great to see that, you know, after they have done that, you know, the markets have responded positively as well, as, you know, they, they find that, uh, those estimates are, um, you know, are accurate.

But because it's got, if it hits the numbers, almost $7 billion in quarterly revenue, Does the assessment of sort of this hyper growth company, is it a little bit different because it's not like this pre-revenue company that is only, I guess, an idea? There's real dollars and cents still behind parts of the business?

Yeah.

So, you know, if you look at in terms of the short term side of things, you know, in terms of how to evaluate the business, it is a mix of infrastructure, communication, infrastructure company and a typical SaaS company.

So it's somewhere in the middle of that.

And they have it's a visionary company.

They operate at they have targets at different timescales going all the way up to 20 years.

so yeah so you know from a valuation perspective yes you know you should in the short term look at it more as a combination of communication infrastructure plus you know your sas subscription kind of revenue somewhere in between

okay so we have seen i mean some of their competitors face i mean serious setbacks and limited launch capacities seen also still across the industry so then how significant is spacex's current lead and really can we see that advantage continue to widen from here

But how do you distinguish between those that are actually creating real long-term value with AI and those that are simply using it as a way to trim their costs?

Yeah, I mean, that's it.

That's a great question.

Right.

So it's, you know, from time to time, companies use a specific narrative which is which is of the moment.

So, for example, historically, if you look at it, you would see, you know, probably globalization was a reason or, you know, it could be related to efficiency.

It could be related to cloud.

Okay, and so where do you think the market is still overestimating the near-term impact of AI, and where do you see the greatest opportunities for those that may be underappreciating that narrative right now?

I

can't take credit for Argo's successes, maybe a little bit for its failure.

I came in year three of Argo, I think.

And eventually, my title was Director of Special Operations, which was a catch-all title the CEO asked me to make up because I basically reported to him and went and was kind of his fixer.

So I was the senior most executive living in Miami, which was the launch market.

So I got to meet all the local elected officials and transportation people and meet stakeholders and community leaders on the ground.

So whenever there was a ride for a VIP or anyone that important, I got to host them.

The

How are restrictions on things like chips and model usage and AI technologies reshaping how we view global competition?

So see, um, whenever a new model is released, um, you know, it's important that, um, you know, that it, it kind of gives capabilities to both good and bad actors, uh, uh, you know, in the world.

So, uh, having, uh, a way to be able to restrict, um, uh, you know, the usage of that gives governments control on, uh, making sure that it's, it's a safer environment for everyone involved.

So yeah, so it... you know, having that ability, we would see that, you know, the pace at which these models are evolving, that, uh, you know, the latest model perhaps is gonna be released in different regions at, uh, uh, you know, made available at a different time.

You know, coming out of the G7 and this, this AI framework here, are we moving, in your viewpoint, toward a, a more universally accepted approach to AI or are we moving more towards a fragmented one where we're going to start to see, uh, different regions operating under different tech stacks and under different regulatory frameworks? I mean, what's the, what's the end goal here?

Yeah, I mean, you know, we, it... you know, we should view it as ecosystems that are developing and, um, you know, each ecosystem would have nuances to it.

So for example, there is a US-led ecosystem that's, that's shaping up, and you have, uh, something in Europe, which is, you know, which is very, um, uh, very specific to Europe regulations.

You have, uh, China building an ecosystem separate from it.

So,

yeah.

All right.

So, you know, one of the things that's emerged is, you know, around what Moss did and I did and Peter Tesla has gone across too, is how you define a zero intervention or zero disengagement drive.

Because, you know, if there's someone in the car and they had to do any input, like what is that an intervention or disengagement? So a year ago, when I started doing these, I would classify them the way we classified them when I worked at Argo AI.

So you have two top-level types of interventional disengagements.

You have involuntary, which is the car gives you the red hands of death.

So like, technically speaking, if you had been alone doing this, the car could have left you, right?

Why did, why did the prior runs fail? Like, I'm sure they all failed for different reasons, but, uh, what did those look like?

like?...

So the first run was with, uh, t- at Tesla FSD 12564, about 13 months ago.

And on that one, we had, like, 21 disengagements for charging, 'cause the car, which is not back into a charger.

And the rest were, you know, system failures, you know, reboots, uh, wrong direction, uh, they had the red hands of death, what Tes- Tesla calls a, you know, a takeover immediately warning.

Yeah.

Um, I haven't seen...

I haven't, I have not yet seen anything that was pure electric on a track that was really fantastic, and it's mostly due to short-it-- I mean, there aren't enough OEMs making great electric sports cars yet that you could run head-to-head.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, what's so fascinating about the recent Porsche Taycan record is the Taycan's EPA battery, uh, E- EPA range is less than a Model S long range, which is what I drive.

However, the Electrify America network, which was a terrible charge network for years, um, went through upgrades recently, and if you buy the cheapest Porsche Taycan with the big battery option, in its lightest weight configuration, rear wheel drive only, and you can charge at Electrify America at speeds that are faster than any Tesla, the cliff in the Porsche battery will let you go, uh, I think at max charge rate all, all m- slightly beyond 50%.

Whereas a Tesla, their first cliff is at 20%.

So that's how the Taycan did it.

Less battery range, faster charging deeper into the battery.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, the other, the legacy OEMs have individual models that are okay.

Yeah, just over 30 minutes.

And there are people who've done it with less because they carried more fuel.

So we had like six charging stops, six gas stops.

Now, interesting thing about electric vehicles is that you have to because charging takes so much longer than refueling, you start thinking like Le Mans team managers, because it's like, okay, do you wanna go with like, do you wanna charge 100%? Because that would mean like 14 stops.

Or are we gonna go with a 28 stop strategy, which means charging at 40%.

So you have to be looking at the battery chemistry and the exterior temperatures, battery temperatures, and start optimizing for charge rates.

And every vehicle has a different charging curve, and the chargers themselves have different charge rates and reliability.

What's your experience with that?