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All right, everybody. Welcome back to
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AllIn at Davos. We're here at the World
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Economic Forum. For some reason, they
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invited me and I'm here interviewing all
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the most important people in the All-In
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style, which is Full Contact.
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>> I'm going.
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I think most of us agree going into
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2026, stable coins and AI, uh, crypto
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having a huge resurgence and, uh, we
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were lucky enough to get two of my
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friends, Brian Armstrong from Coinbase,
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and Jeremy, who's the CEO and co-founder
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of Circle. We've known each other for 30
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years.
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>> Yeah, it's amazing.
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>> What a long strange trip it's been.
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>> I know. It's great to be with you again.
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>> Yeah. And this is not your first time at
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Davos. You've been here a couple times.
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Yeah, I I started uh coming with my last
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company Breov back in 2008 2009. Um and
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uh very different time both for it was a
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different time in the world. there was
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great financial crisis breaking out
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everywhere and um uh and and that was uh
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you know an interesting backdrop and you
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know also notable I always reference
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that same week was when the first uh
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block of the Bitcoin blockchain was
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minted with the you know Chancellor on
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the brink uh bail bailout kind of
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embedded in the in the blockchain.
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>> Yeah, it's fascinating. I think it's
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Game of Thrones. Chaos is a ladder.
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>> Chaos is a ladder. Yeah, it's and for
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guys like us who've been through this I
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guess three times now. We went through
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it in the do
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>> boom. I think we're too young to have We
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were You remember obviously that Black
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Friday in '87, but we were in college, I
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think.
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>> Uh and so we had our do great financial
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crisis and then we had co
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>> CO.
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>> Yeah. Which was also pretty spicy.
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>> Uh that was a great disruptor.
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when you have those moments happen, I'm
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guessing for you and and many of the
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founders I talked to, you just think
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this is the time to build.
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>> Yeah, totally. I mean, constraints have
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a huge have a huge impact on what an
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entrepreneur does. And you know, in even
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in the history of circle, we've had
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extraordinary up and downs, some of
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which are are endogenous shocks,
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exogenous shocks, all of this. And you
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know back to that 2009 that was that
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year actually
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>> uh I got my company profitable Freight
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Cove and um and then not long after it
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went public. Um and so you know we we we
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deal with what we're dealt um with with
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constraints. Yeah.
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>> Yeah. Krite makes for great art is uh I
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think the old expression. So let's let's
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talk about your journey with Circle. Uh
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stable coins obviously are top of mind
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because we had the Genius Act. uh my
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bestie uh David Saxs who's our crypto
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and AISAR for America who's here with me
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at Davos uh or I should say I'm here
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with him uh he invited me to come this
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technology is important why I mean look
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um when I got started working on this
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almost 13 years ago um Bitcoin had
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emerged um and uh it was from my
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perspective as an internet technologist
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I was thinking about wow this seems like
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a new infrastructure layer for the
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internet like a missing infrastructure
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layer of the internet. The internet had
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ways to represent in you know data,
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media, audio, video uh you know software
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but there was no notion of money on the
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internet and there was no protocol for
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money on the internet and it was very
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clear at the time that that was going to
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happen. And when when we started um I
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wasn't convinced that everyone in the
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world is just going to use like a new uh
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a new you know commodity money like
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Bitcoin. Um my view is that we needed a
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bridge. We needed to connect kind of the
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existing fiat system to crypto and to
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these new networks and um and build like
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a uh what we called like an HTTP for
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dollars on the internet and that was the
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idea and eventually that's called stable
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coins.
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>> Uh early on we talked about we're
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building fiat digital currency or fiat
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tokens or all this but stable coins
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stuck. Um, but I mean the basic idea is
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we now have a general purpose, general
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architecture form of money on the
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internet, digital dollars that can move
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just like everything else, but that and
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and can, you know, transact peer-to-peer
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uh, which is super super powerful and
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and and provides a a huge amount of
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value to people. And really importantly,
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um, because of the the technology of
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blockchains, like we actually have like
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programmable money. Um, and so we're
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right at the front edge of of a kind of
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I think a renaissance in how money is
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used in the world. Uh, we'll we'll come
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back to AI, I'm sure, because it ties
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into that. But, um, you know,
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fundamentally, we just we need a native
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way to have money on the internet. We
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need a very safe form of dollars on the
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internet, and that's what stable coins
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provide.
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>> And variability and not knowing how much
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your dollar is worth when you open your
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wallet or your bank account was a
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blocker for consumers. Yeah, I mean
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volatile cryptocurrencies, no one's
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going to buy a cup of coffee with a
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Bitcoin, etc., right? So, that's where
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the word stable coin came from. It's
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like, well, it's a coin, but it's
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stable. Um, how do you actually achieve
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that is a whole different thing and and
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that's where, you know, the model that
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we built, which is fully reserved with
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like ultra safe assets and, you know,
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have we have regulators look after it
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and auditors look after it and make sure
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it's all done in the right way.
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>> And I remember talking to you offline uh
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about this. It was the easier decision
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for most people in crypto to go to the
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Z. The Zug. What is it? Zug.
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>> Zug.
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>> The Zug here in Switzerland or just be
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based in Zurich or be based in maybe
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Dubai. And uh yeah, just yolo it and
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don't worry about regulations and don't
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worry about audits. Don't worry about
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regulators. You made a different
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decision. You told me, "No, I'm going to
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I'm going to do this buttoned up and
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proper." And why didn't you go for the
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quick, you know, uh, I'll just do this
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offshore and give up my United States
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citizen.
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>> Why not?
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>> Yes, we have many crypto people right
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now watching the show.
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>> Yeah. From San Quinton and
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>> Yeah. I mean, look, show's popular
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there. I actually it, you know, going
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back to like even in the founding of the
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company, um, when I looked at like,
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okay, if if we want to like establish a
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new way to put like what we think of as
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regular money on the internet and we
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want to actually build a new internet
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native financial system that the whole
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world uses, like actually uses like
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businesses are going to use it and and
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people are going to use it and we're
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going to like do loans in it. We're
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going to do all these things with it.
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like if you want it to work that way,
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well, you you know, you have to
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integrate with the existing system and
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you have to work with policy makers to
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figure that out. There's just no other
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way. So, I testified to the Senate in
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November of 2013 and you know the if you
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read the the testimony, it's saying all
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the same stuff now as I as I did then.
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And
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>> it was received slightly differently.
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>> It re it really was. Yeah. I mean, well,
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I got a lot of hate very early on.
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>> Take yourself back to that moment in
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time where you're you know, you're in
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the right. you're trying to explain how
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to do this correctly and you get a
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reaction that is different than what you
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maybe anticipated.
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>> Well, I think with with a lot of uh
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technologies on the internet, you know,
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I I was around I think we were both
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around in early stages of of the
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internet, early stages of the web and
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there's, you know, there's sort of a a
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very kind of hard libertarian, you know,
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view and and then there's the, you know,
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obviously like the statist view at the
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other end end of that and, you know, I
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lean libertarian. Um, but I think also,
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you know, in the early days of the
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internet, it was like, well, if if we
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want to allow companies to get on, well,
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we need to have like regulation for ISPs
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and we need to be able to have, you
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know,
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>> secure transactions and SSL and well,
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then we're going to need people who are,
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you know, making decisions about who's a
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valid site and who's not a valid site.
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And these were really controversial
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things at the time that I think the the,
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you know, more anarcho side of things
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was was against. And now crypto itself,
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cryptography and crypto kind of birthed
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out of that. And so like
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>> these are people who wanted to be
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outside the system.
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>> Wanted to be outside. Yeah. And so, you
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know, and I think Circle has always kind
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of tried to find this middle way, which
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is open public networks, permissionless
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innovation, building on public
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blockchains, using open-source
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infrastructure, and and really what you
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can do with something like USDC as a
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dollar and as a technology is far more
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uh open than the legacy payment systems
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and the legacy money systems. And so
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there is a very deep commitment to those
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fundamental internet ideas. But at the
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same time like if if you want, you know,
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Black Rockck to use it or you want to,
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you know, you want the biggest tech
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companies in the world to use it or or
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you just want someone to hold it in a
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digital wallet and be like, "Yeah, this
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is actually a dollar and I can rely on
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it." Like you you end up needing to have
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this kind of structure around it
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>> for trust.
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>> For trust. Yeah. it trust uh you know
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remains a key thing and obviously I
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think you know people talk about in code
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we trust is sort of the the what you you
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know kind of put around
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>> easy for a developer to feel that way
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easy for a somebody who is extremely
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technical to feel that way right
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>> but for you know a civilian
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>> right
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>> non-anarchist right
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>> yeah maybe you want to understand how
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the dollar is actually backed
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>> that's exactly right yeah so I think we
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just took that path and and like and
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that that was like a harder path. Uh it
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took more capital. It took more I had to
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hire you know my first executive was a
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general counsel and chief compliance
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officer. Um
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>> well you had to bring those in house I
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suppose because if you went to a law
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firm they would be like we don't know
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and
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>> don't take this risk.
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>> Yeah. I mean I one of the stories
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actually is that um before you know Jim
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Brier and General Catalyst would give me
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capital to when we were starting the
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company they were like we really need to
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know that if you do this it's like it's
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not illegal like we're not going to have
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some kind of liability issue and so I
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personally you know on my own with my
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own money like hired like the top kind
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of regulatory advisory firm in the world
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to like go look closely at this like
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talk to people at the US Treasury
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Department talk to others like really
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figure out like can we do this and and
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actually we could there was there was a
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path to do it um and and that that's
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because the US Treasury Department
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actually had given guidance about how to
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deal with virtual currency in the
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banking system. This was in March 2013,
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so super early. But
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>> yeah, I mean, we needed to like know
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like,
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>> you know, yeah, is is there a is there a
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legitimate legal pathway to
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accomplishing what we want to
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accomplish? That's always been, you
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know, important.
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>> And as we've seen, uh there's things
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that are legal and then there are
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incumbents. Incumbents will uh use the
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legal system to try to stop innovators.
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You've also faced a little bit of that.
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Yeah.
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>> Yeah. I mean, I I I would say in the
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entire history of of building this, it's
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been just there's been huge uphill
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battles with with regulators and
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incumbents. And what's interesting is
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that um I found over the years that um
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if you if you come into a policy maker
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or regulator and you say, "Hey, there's
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this there's a new technology. It can
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improve things in this way. Um we're
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trying to figure out how to deal with
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the risks. There are real risks. like
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let's not pretend there aren't risks and
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like let's come up with ways to address
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that like actually people are pretty
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interested in talking. Um and so I think
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there's there's um you know that's
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there. Um but generally when you go to
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like the incumbents and say hey we want
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to like work with you or integrate this
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because we we kind of need to work with
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you to make the whole thing happen like
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a lot more skepticism and and I think
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kind of constraint there. And so that's
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changed now. I mean, we're in a very
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different world now, but
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>> now it's gone from a threat to an
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opportunity,
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but there is still a little reticence to
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>> stable coins and crypto by I think some
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of the major banks and the big players
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because
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>> they're maybe they're my perception is
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they're a little concerned that you're
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too good at what you do
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>> and you might be too far ahead and if
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you weren't so dextrous at doing this
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and capable and they started started,
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you know, 5 years ago, they might feel
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differently about it. Is my intuition
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close to your assessment or am I wrong?
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>> I think that that that's there's some
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truth in that for sure. Um, but it's
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interesting like it's it's both you and
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I have this kind of juxaposition against
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these other eras of the internet and you
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know when digital media happened and it
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was like hey you could stream media or
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you could put up content on the web and
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you could do all this there were all
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these digital media startups and the
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media companies were like well we can do
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that too and okay our business model
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might have to change etc. and um digital
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advertising, you know, okay, well, you
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can transform advertising into this. Oh,
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it's more targeted. It's, you know, all
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this stuff. And um but then there
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obviously were companies that kind of
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executed like fundamentally different
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technical execution, software execution.
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They built completely different types of
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utilities with completely different unit
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economics that kind of turned the
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product user experience and the and the
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economics upside down. And those those
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we know those companies
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>> Craigslist to classifides, Google ad
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network,
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>> Google ad network,
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>> New York Times, Amazon Marketplace, you
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know, um and and and many many more like
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that. And so I think that um
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>> we're in a similar place right now where
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you know a lot of media companies
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absolutely and communications companies
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as well and soft enterprise software
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companies there's big buckets here
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retailers like sort of said okay this is
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like a a new paradigm. It's better for
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customers. It's I can deliver a better
00:14:22
product. Like the economics are better.
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We just have to do this and we're going
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to, you know, innovators dilemma blah
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blah blah. And they make that transition
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and it takes like 5 to 10 years.
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>> It takes them three times longer than
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probably the innovator like Walmart and
00:14:35
Target actually do an exceptional job.
00:14:37
Now the United Airlines app
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>> is uh not terrible, right? I mean it's
00:14:41
not Uber but
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>> and this is the difference between like
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a softwaredriven company and and a non
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like we're a software company like you
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know we fundamentally
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>> of course we're going to go faster of
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course we're going to understand UX so
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the banks now my understanding is some
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of them are threatened by the concept of
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a stable coin having the ability to
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generate
00:15:02
points incentives or in interest
00:15:06
essentially and that's kind of the
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sticking point the Genius Act says hey
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you can have rewards but you can't have
00:15:13
interest and that was I guess where this
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was able to get through the legislative
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process. Explain that to the audience.
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Yeah.
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>> Yeah. So a couple things. Um so if you
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go back a few years when stable coins
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sort of emerged um the the sort of all
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the biggest like regulators bank
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regulators around the world got together
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what's called the financial stability
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board and said we have to have
00:15:37
regulations around this like this can't
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just go crazy. That was also when Libra
00:15:40
was coming out and all this. It didn't
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come out but tried to come out.
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>> Meta tried to do a their own project and
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>> they gave up on that project
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>> based on my insider information because
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the government felt
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>> they had too much power already with
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their platform and Zuckerberg said
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>> I have enough heat on this company
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already. I don't want to have another
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group of people thinking I have too much
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power and he shut it down. That's what I
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was told by interiders. It's interesting
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is you know one
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>> is that your understanding as well? I
00:16:11
have a variety of insights about it, but
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uh I I think um
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>> you know
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we're kind of like a a neutral company,
00:16:20
right? We're not a giant big tech, etc.
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But kind kind of coming back to your
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question, regulators got together and
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said, "Hey, there is this payment system
00:16:29
innovation. It is this thing called
00:16:31
stable coins." And they all kind of
00:16:32
said, "Here's here's some
00:16:33
recommendations for how you could
00:16:35
regulate this." And actually all around
00:16:37
the world that happened. So it happened
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first in Japan. there's stablecoin laws
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and then it happened in Europe years ago
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actually stablecoin laws and then you
00:16:45
know in the UAE and Hong Kong and then
00:16:46
in the US with the Genius Act and in all
00:16:50
of these stable coins are designed as
00:16:53
like a a cashlike instrument a payment
00:16:56
instrument they're designed as this like
00:16:58
form of money to be used in the payment
00:17:00
system and that and that's really at the
00:17:02
heart of it right and um and and and
00:17:06
that's uh that's how these laws have
00:17:07
been written and and it's pretty
00:17:08
consistent around the world. So, Genius
00:17:10
Act does that, but it also I I think
00:17:13
provides so you know as a result under
00:17:16
the Genius Act Circle as a payment
00:17:19
stable coin issuer we're prohibited from
00:17:21
paying interest directly to stable coin
00:17:23
holders. It's the same thing in Europe.
00:17:25
We're regulated in Europe. Same same
00:17:26
rule. Same thing in Japan that you know
00:17:28
all these markets just the same. But at
00:17:31
the same time, like we're building a
00:17:33
we're building a business. uh we do
00:17:35
generate revenue and we work with lots
00:17:37
of different types of of platforms and
00:17:40
markets and distributors and brokerages.
00:17:42
We work with everyone from Robin Hood to
00:17:43
Revolute to to uh Coinbase to, you know,
00:17:47
uh Visa and and and and lots of
00:17:50
companies. And so those companies, you
00:17:52
know, stable coins are really important
00:17:54
too because they are how people hold
00:17:57
money, how people make payments, how
00:17:58
people trade, how people do a lot on
00:18:00
those platforms. And so they want to be
00:18:02
able to have the ability to pay rewards
00:18:05
or have loyalty programs or incentives
00:18:07
and other things. And if if they're
00:18:08
making money from the relationship with
00:18:10
us, they want to be able to do that. And
00:18:11
that's what the Genius Act captured. And
00:18:14
I think really um I think it's good. I
00:18:17
think it's a good model. Um and
00:18:19
>> so you're happy with it as is.
00:18:20
>> We we think it's we think it's a very
00:18:22
solid model. And I think really there's
00:18:24
some ongoing discussion about well is
00:18:27
there a specific set of things that
00:18:29
qualify for that kind of those kinds of
00:18:31
like loyalty and rewards and other
00:18:33
things and and how prescriptive should
00:18:34
the law be and it's kind of getting
00:18:36
relitigated a little bit.
00:18:37
>> The banks my understanding uh maybe want
00:18:40
to try to kill it maybe some of them who
00:18:41
feel the most threatened. Is that the
00:18:43
back channel here at Davos? I mean, I I
00:18:45
think um banks see stable coins as both
00:18:50
a threat and an opportunity,
00:18:52
>> right?
00:18:52
>> You know, I I can say we're having more
00:18:55
engagement with more banks in the world
00:18:58
than we've ever had before.
00:18:59
>> Okay?
00:19:00
>> And and so and major banks, global
00:19:03
banks, regional banks, banks all over
00:19:06
the world who want to integrate this and
00:19:10
use it in payments. They want to use it
00:19:13
in how capital markets work. Think think
00:19:15
about I need to post collateral on an
00:19:18
exchange to trade and I'm trading
00:19:20
different different assets. Stable coins
00:19:22
are a better way to do that. Um and so
00:19:26
whether it's in capital markets in in
00:19:28
trading in in um in wealth management in
00:19:32
payments there's uses for this. And so
00:19:34
definitely banks see a lot of
00:19:36
>> because it's faster and cheaper. It's
00:19:37
instant and it's free essentially.
00:19:39
>> Yeah. I mean if you talk to like a money
00:19:40
a global money center bank uh you know
00:19:43
you could imagine you know one of those
00:19:45
like
00:19:45
>> I might say JP Morgan
00:19:46
>> something like that or a city or one of
00:19:48
these banks and you if you ask them
00:19:50
>> how many different payment networks
00:19:52
>> are you integrated into as a bank and
00:19:55
they'll tell you like over 200 they
00:19:57
integrate to over 200 different payment
00:19:59
networks
00:20:00
>> and it's all over the planet
00:20:01
>> it's all over the planet
00:20:01
>> and it's all different standards I would
00:20:03
say
00:20:03
>> all different standards all different
00:20:04
systems etc and so if you if you go to
00:20:07
them and say Well, stablecoin networks
00:20:09
are like a new payment network. They're
00:20:11
like, I get it.
00:20:12
>> Like, this is, oh, it's on the internet.
00:20:15
Oh, it has the attributes of how the
00:20:17
internet works. We understand that.
00:20:18
>> And this will be your fastest, cheapest,
00:20:20
and most trackable version.
00:20:22
>> That's right. And so, we actually we
00:20:24
have, you know, there's a global
00:20:25
systemically important bank we work with
00:20:27
who's actually
00:20:29
moving their own money between their own
00:20:31
global branches using USDC because it's
00:20:34
faster than going through the
00:20:36
correspondent bank. trust it more.
00:20:38
>> Yeah. In in those cases. So bottom line
00:20:40
is there's a lot of opportunity for
00:20:41
banks.
00:20:42
>> Bank it is not it's not this is not a
00:20:44
black or white thing. I I think I think
00:20:46
um you know we'll figure out this
00:20:49
rewards thing. I'm very sure.
00:20:51
>> Yeah.
00:20:51
>> Yeah. I mean AMX figured it out and a
00:20:54
video games figured it out. There was a
00:20:56
little rattling even in those cases
00:20:58
where they're like hey is this a
00:20:59
currency because people are trading it
00:21:01
on eBay trading my sword from World of
00:21:04
Warcraft or whatever. these nerds are up
00:21:06
to and they were like h is that like you
00:21:10
have your own currency. It's like
00:21:11
>> they're playing video games. Who cares?
00:21:13
Like can we just move on? There's more
00:21:15
important things to do in the world than
00:21:17
sweat amx points being traded somewhere
00:21:20
>> and pretending it's a currency. You're
00:21:22
up against a offshore
00:21:25
platform that has I think maybe three
00:21:29
times the amount of under mass
00:21:31
management. Tether
00:21:32
>> tether who's counting three, four, five
00:21:34
times. But you have been catching up
00:21:36
pretty quick. Yeah.
00:21:37
>> Yeah. USDC amongst the largest stable
00:21:40
coins has been growing faster.
00:21:42
>> You're number two
00:21:42
>> for two years straight. Yeah. We're the
00:21:43
second largest.
00:21:44
>> Tether's first.
00:21:45
>> Um and we are we are by far the largest
00:21:49
regulated stable coin network, right? Um
00:21:51
and our, you know, kind of growth in the
00:21:54
amount of transactions happening with
00:21:55
USDC is is growing, you know, quite a
00:21:57
bit faster as well. So, um yeah, we feel
00:22:00
really good. I think our view has been
00:22:03
to the earlier question um if this is
00:22:06
going to be part of the actual economic
00:22:08
system. If households and firms and
00:22:11
corporations and financial institutions
00:22:13
are going to use this and depend on
00:22:15
this, whether you're a remote worker
00:22:17
who's a software engineer working in
00:22:19
Pakistan or you're a a small business
00:22:22
that's importing products from Vietnam
00:22:24
that's in Brazil or you're a a hedge
00:22:27
fund in the US that's, you know, trading
00:22:30
derivatives, like you're going to want
00:22:32
to know that you have something that is
00:22:35
safe, fully reserved, audited,
00:22:37
compliant, liquid,
00:22:39
available in the global financial
00:22:41
system. And you know, when we think
00:22:43
about that opportunity, that's an
00:22:45
enormous opportunity. The the the TAM of
00:22:48
legal electronic money today is about
00:22:50
$120 trillion and growing because of
00:22:53
monetary easing and things like that.
00:22:54
But
00:22:55
>> of that, the uh there's about $60
00:22:58
trillion, which is physical cash and
00:23:01
non-interest bearing demand deposits. So
00:23:03
kind of working capital money sitting
00:23:06
out there, right? So there's a huge
00:23:08
amount of of value stored and used in in
00:23:11
as a store of value as a payment system
00:23:13
money and stable coins can grow into
00:23:16
that and there's going to be you know uh
00:23:19
an infrastructure for that that's well
00:23:21
integrated into
00:23:22
>> and the business is there's a float on
00:23:25
this large base of capital that gets to
00:23:28
underwrite your business if interest
00:23:30
rates are high it's boom times uh
00:23:32
Tether's making over $10 billion a year
00:23:35
on their float you're I'm assuming
00:23:38
billions of dollars or low billions of
00:23:39
dollars on your float. I'm not sure if
00:23:40
that's public knowledge.
00:23:41
>> We're a public company. You can look it
00:23:43
up.
00:23:43
>> Yeah. So that I mean I'm assuming it's
00:23:45
billions. Yeah. Well, I'm not sure if
00:23:46
you break it down by that.
00:23:48
>> We we we we talk about reserve income.
00:23:50
Got it. As a as a
00:23:51
>> line and it's billions.
00:23:52
>> Uh it's a significant amount.
00:23:53
>> Yeah.
00:23:54
>> Uh and so but if it we go into a zero
00:23:57
interest rate phenomenon, this could be
00:23:59
challenging for the business or not.
00:24:01
>> Well, a couple things. I mean, if you
00:24:03
actually look at what's happened, um,
00:24:05
when interest rates were actually very
00:24:07
low, uh, we saw thousand% year-over-year
00:24:10
growth, two years straight. So, growth
00:24:12
was off the charts. Um, when interest
00:24:14
rates actually started to rise, we
00:24:17
actually saw declines in circulation.
00:24:19
>> Oh, why?
00:24:20
>> Well, it's really the price of money,
00:24:21
the opportunity cost of money. So,
00:24:23
>> um, you know, interest rates set a a a
00:24:26
kind of cost to holding money and
00:24:29
>> so the incentive matters.
00:24:31
>> Yeah, the incentive matters. And so
00:24:32
what's interesting is that if you
00:24:34
actually look at from uh like December
00:24:36
2023 when basically the forward curve
00:24:39
which was sort of the the the the kind
00:24:41
of short-term kind of price of money in
00:24:44
a sense the forward curve kind of being
00:24:45
the market's view of the short-term
00:24:47
price of money when that started to fall
00:24:50
because the expectation of interest
00:24:51
rates came USDC started to grow uh and
00:24:55
it and and actually from the from the
00:24:57
peak of whatever was five and a quarter
00:24:59
five and a half down to where we are
00:25:00
which is three and a half or whatever it
00:25:02
is. Now, that's I don't know exact
00:25:04
percentage, let's call it 3540% decline
00:25:06
in the interest rate. We've had a
00:25:08
multiund% increase in the amount of of
00:25:11
USDC in circulation. And so, um there's
00:25:14
an inverse correlation there. And so,
00:25:16
I've and I've said this publicly, I've
00:25:18
said this publicly in the media, I've
00:25:19
said this many many times. I have wanted
00:25:22
when when interest rates are really
00:25:24
high, I my view is we really need
00:25:26
interest rates to come down. Yeah. We
00:25:28
really need them to come down because
00:25:29
that will help us grow. That will put
00:25:31
more velocity of money.
00:25:32
>> The pie gets bigger. Yeah.
00:25:34
>> Pi gets bigger and and
00:25:36
>> which also impacts adoption.
00:25:37
>> It impacts adoption as well. So more
00:25:39
people are investing capital in
00:25:41
technology to transform their businesses
00:25:43
to grow
00:25:44
>> right
00:25:45
>> tech on right and so that is a catalyst
00:25:49
and so my view has been that is that is
00:25:51
really important and so um you know I
00:25:55
think our view is there is some
00:25:56
conceptual neutral interest rate um and
00:26:00
given the persistence of inflation of
00:26:02
around 2 and a half% or whatever it is
00:26:04
some people argue is is is the neutral
00:26:06
rate should the neutral rate uh and and
00:26:08
the kind of baseline of inflation be 2
00:26:10
and a half or 2.8 or
00:26:12
>> you know where the 2% came from. I I
00:26:13
talked about it in our previous all-In
00:26:15
episode. I don't know if
00:26:15
>> I do, but go ahead.
00:26:16
>> Yeah. New Zealand.
00:26:18
>> Yeah.
00:26:18
>> Yeah. There was a a politician in New
00:26:21
Zealand was talking to their central
00:26:22
bank and he's like what should it be?
00:26:23
And he's like I think two and he's like
00:26:25
yeah how'd you come up with the number?
00:26:26
He's like my instinct.
00:26:28
>> America's been 2.8.
00:26:29
>> 4% unemployment 2% interest rates. Both
00:26:32
of those are going to be challenged. Uh
00:26:34
yeah, both of those are going to be
00:26:35
challenged because of very significant
00:26:37
techno technological and macro forces.
00:26:40
>> Yeah. Job displacement, globalization
00:26:42
have had impacts on this depending on
00:26:43
the country. The the unemployment rate
00:26:46
and and also
00:26:47
>> how many people choose to be employed. I
00:26:49
mean when you have a society that is um
00:26:52
you know doing as well as ours is or the
00:26:54
European Union is some people just
00:26:56
choose to not work. labor I think labor
00:26:59
participation now is 61 or 62% and then
00:27:01
when you and I were coming up it had
00:27:02
peaked at 68 69% so it was like
00:27:05
>> 15% higher
00:27:06
>> yeah yeah
00:27:07
>> it's really interesting to think about
00:27:08
that changes
00:27:10
>> tether as a competitor would not be able
00:27:12
to operate in the US lots of um reports
00:27:16
I'll be
00:27:18
>> I'm going to be u judicious here claims
00:27:21
reports concerns from politicians to the
00:27:24
press and everywhere in between and
00:27:25
regulators that they're doing some stuff
00:27:28
in the dark areas that maybe you
00:27:30
wouldn't want to touch uh in terms of
00:27:32
the the dark web, dark economy. Uh but
00:27:36
rumor is they're going to do a a US
00:27:38
version of Tether and maybe try to go
00:27:40
legit and audited.
00:27:43
uh how do you how do you think about
00:27:44
them as a competitor given that they've
00:27:47
been banned in multiple geos and there
00:27:50
was you know some very big concerns that
00:27:52
they might have a run because there they
00:27:54
weren't dollar for-dollar backed and
00:27:55
people were had all kinds of claims
00:27:57
about hey maybe they have Chinese paper
00:28:00
and and all these different concerns and
00:28:02
they they wouldn't do an att testation
00:28:03
and or they would do an attestation with
00:28:05
a bank and somewhere in the BVI that
00:28:08
nobody's heard of and they a big KPMG
00:28:11
maybe doesn't
00:28:11
>> a lot about
00:28:13
kind of I was I was not a tether
00:28:14
truther, but I did go down the the
00:28:17
rabbit hole because I reported on it uh
00:28:19
you know on the pod and talked about it,
00:28:22
but they they are they they're a
00:28:24
significant player. I'm I'm wondering
00:28:25
how you think about them coming to the
00:28:28
US and becoming more legit uh and maybe
00:28:32
trying to catch up with you in in that.
00:28:33
>> I mean, look, the the beauty of having
00:28:35
the Genius Act Yeah. is that it creates
00:28:37
a level playing field. It defines a
00:28:40
federal law uh that you have to come in
00:28:44
not just be audited, but you're
00:28:46
regulated by if you're large by the
00:28:49
national bank regulator, the OC,
00:28:51
>> which is a very serious regulator, a
00:28:54
serious credential regulator. And um you
00:28:57
know we we've conditionally we've
00:28:59
received conditional approval for uh uh
00:29:01
something called first national digital
00:29:03
currency bank which is a national trust
00:29:05
bank uh that we're setting up to be part
00:29:08
of how we uh operate USDC as well. Um
00:29:12
and uh but but again level playing field
00:29:15
uh if you want to comply and build a
00:29:18
product under that regulatory framework
00:29:20
you can do that and I think many people
00:29:22
will um and this is like when net
00:29:25
neutrality happened and common common
00:29:27
carrier rules came like anybody can get
00:29:29
into providing data services to the
00:29:30
internet anyone can build you know these
00:29:32
things so
00:29:34
>> that's great and so uh free market clear
00:29:38
rules love it um so My view is there's
00:29:42
absolutely going to be more competition
00:29:44
and my my view is also that um the
00:29:47
structure of this market uh stable coins
00:29:50
are network businesses meaning they're
00:29:53
they they actually exist as platforms
00:29:55
and utilities on the internet like the
00:29:57
USDC and our stable coin network is
00:29:59
literally the the software protocols but
00:30:02
it's also the tens of thousands of
00:30:04
applications that have integrated to the
00:30:06
APIs and every time an app integrates
00:30:09
you know cash app just said, "Hey, we're
00:30:12
adding USDC support." That's great. Now,
00:30:14
all those Coinbase has it, Revolute has
00:30:17
it, you know, banks have it, Visa's
00:30:20
using it. Every time someone adds it,
00:30:22
you know, Stripe merchants, Shopify
00:30:24
merchants can use it. Every time someone
00:30:25
adds that, it adds utility to the
00:30:27
network and it adds network effects. And
00:30:30
then the next developer who comes along
00:30:31
and says, "Hey, I want to build an app
00:30:33
that uses digital dollars, etc. Which
00:30:35
one should I use?" Well, I have
00:30:36
interoperability with all this stuff.
00:30:38
Great. So you have these network effects
00:30:40
that are really key and then you also
00:30:42
have, you know, what I call liquidity
00:30:44
network effects, which is um the the
00:30:46
ability for one to easily get it and use
00:30:50
it within banking systems all around the
00:30:52
world. So we've built out this
00:30:53
incredible liquidity network by being
00:30:55
regulated in Singapore, you know, in the
00:30:59
UAE, in the European Union.
00:31:00
>> And this is an easy thing to do. I mean,
00:31:02
this is
00:31:02
>> this is a huge build.
00:31:04
>> Yeah,
00:31:04
>> it's a huge build. and and now it's at a
00:31:06
point where you know
00:31:07
>> and it's defensibility
00:31:08
>> it is it's defensibility and we have you
00:31:10
know pipes in a sense where you know the
00:31:14
some of the biggest capital markets
00:31:15
participants in the world company like
00:31:17
companies like black rockck can enable
00:31:20
uh a tokenized fund that enables USDC to
00:31:23
come in and out of it and their
00:31:24
institutional participants know that'll
00:31:26
work right so I think it's a long-winded
00:31:30
answer but the answer is essentially we
00:31:33
feel like we've built a great platform
00:31:35
and a great network and we have really
00:31:36
strong network effects and they're
00:31:38
accelerating and we've been publicly
00:31:40
audited as a corporation.
00:31:43
>> Yeah.
00:31:44
>> As a New York Stock Exchange governed,
00:31:46
publicly listed SEC supervised company
00:31:48
now for for a period of time, but more
00:31:51
broadly for a long time.
00:31:53
>> And when companies are going to choose
00:31:55
what they're going to build on and what
00:31:57
they're going to use, they're going to
00:31:58
look at all that.
00:31:58
>> Yeah. The footprint matters.
00:32:00
>> It it does. And so um the marginal value
00:32:03
of a net new dollar stable coin coming
00:32:06
into the market is essentially zero.
00:32:07
Yeah, you need you know all these things
00:32:09
are are needed.
00:32:10
>> And what do you think about this concept
00:32:12
that everybody's going to have their own
00:32:14
stable coin? There'll be an Amazon one.
00:32:15
Obviously PayPal's added one. Do you
00:32:17
think that's realistic or do you think
00:32:19
people are going to be like that's just
00:32:21
I might as well just use Circle?
00:32:22
>> Yeah, I I don't see that. I think this
00:32:24
is a lot like other internet platform
00:32:26
markets like everyone doesn't need their
00:32:27
own data center. uh everyone didn't need
00:32:29
their own vertical search engines, you
00:32:32
know, everyone, you know, there's a lot
00:32:34
of things that people thought everyone
00:32:35
didn't need to build their own video
00:32:36
platform. Yeah. You know, and so um
00:32:39
internet scale utilities um you know,
00:32:42
achieve network effects, they achieve
00:32:44
unit economics, they achieve developer
00:32:45
flywheels, like all these things and
00:32:48
>> and they tend to lower their prices over
00:32:49
time.
00:32:49
>> It tends to get Yeah, it tends to get um
00:32:52
you know Yeah. more and more economical
00:32:54
and more and more capable and and so um
00:32:57
you know there there's there's a lot
00:32:59
there's a a lot one would need to do to
00:33:00
to do that and I think even even the
00:33:03
biggest banks um uh who who have pretty
00:33:05
big technology budgets uh may reach that
00:33:08
same conclusion.
00:33:09
>> What worries you now? What's 2026
00:33:11
forward looking like? What do you what
00:33:12
keeps you up at night? The opportunity
00:33:14
is obvious. I think you've explained it
00:33:16
perfectly. Yeah, I mean look, I I think
00:33:18
um we're at an interesting place where
00:33:21
um we we have a big piece of the
00:33:24
regulatory clarity done. Um there are
00:33:27
more pieces that are that are needed. Um
00:33:30
so there's work, you know, sort of
00:33:31
related to markets, related to how
00:33:33
digital tokens work. That's actually
00:33:34
really really important because we
00:33:36
believe in kind of tokenization as a
00:33:38
phenomenon, smart contracts as a way
00:33:41
that people are going to like
00:33:42
intermediate things on the internet. Um,
00:33:44
so there's there's there's more that's
00:33:46
needed there. Um, and I think now, you
00:33:49
know, I think one of the things that
00:33:50
concerns me is sort of the the the the
00:33:54
changing geo geopolitical geoeconomic
00:33:57
kind of landscape, right? Which is um
00:34:01
there's, you know, there's lots of
00:34:03
different points of view that are being
00:34:04
taken on kind of where economic
00:34:07
alignment is, etc. And as as a global
00:34:09
company that is building technology that
00:34:12
we want to make available globally, that
00:34:14
introduces new complexity, right?
00:34:16
>> Yes. There we are entering an era of new
00:34:20
alliances and national champions.
00:34:23
>> Yeah, for sure.
00:34:23
>> And you're an American company and
00:34:26
America first and so yeah, you might be
00:34:28
looked at differently based upon how the
00:34:30
American
00:34:31
Yeah. U enterprise is you know generally
00:34:35
done.
00:34:35
>> Yeah, that that is very true. Our
00:34:37
headquarters is Freedom Tower in in New
00:34:39
York City. um you know and and um at the
00:34:42
same time you know the technology of
00:34:46
these networks there's an opportunity
00:34:48
actually to to develop versions of this
00:34:51
that are more geopolitically neutral
00:34:55
geoeconomically neutral so that if
00:34:57
you're from India or you're from Brazil
00:34:59
or you're from Southeast Asia or you're
00:35:02
from the Middle East like you can build
00:35:04
and these are high growth markets that
00:35:06
you're comfortable building on this with
00:35:08
a variety of different nexuses of
00:35:10
economic relationships. And so that's
00:35:12
something we think about actually.
00:35:13
>> Yeah. Like a Eurobased stable coin.
00:35:15
>> We have the largest euro based stable
00:35:17
coin.
00:35:18
>> Uh h how many currencies have you done
00:35:20
that with so far?
00:35:21
>> We've really only focused on dollars and
00:35:23
euros. And
00:35:24
>> why?
00:35:25
>> Well, I think um those are those are two
00:35:28
widely adopted currencies uh for both
00:35:31
both as a store of value and as freely
00:35:34
floatable, circulated uh tradable
00:35:37
currencies. Um, and we have a big
00:35:40
commitment to the European market. Um,
00:35:42
and so it's also part of just being uh,
00:35:45
committed to that market. We think it's
00:35:46
a big opportunity. And then for
00:35:48
everything else, we've really built
00:35:50
we've built a technology stack for other
00:35:53
stable coin issuers from other markets
00:35:56
now that there's laws around the world.
00:35:57
>> Ah, so if they want to do their national
00:35:59
stable coin, absolutely centralized. And
00:36:01
are you doing that with Bermuda or some
00:36:03
sort of partnership? The the Bermuda
00:36:05
partnership is related to helping them
00:36:08
kind of have digital dollars be and and
00:36:10
have e economic activity, commerce
00:36:13
activity, treasury activity all happen
00:36:15
on chain.
00:36:16
>> Got it. So that's infrastructure play,
00:36:18
not I don't know what their dollar is.
00:36:20
>> Well, they're a dollar. It's it's a
00:36:22
dollarbacked uh it's a dollar backed
00:36:23
currency. They're already their own
00:36:25
stable coin. But um but in other places,
00:36:28
you know, in in you know, the
00:36:31
Philippines or in Mexico or in Brazil or
00:36:34
in Japan and and other markets or
00:36:36
Australia, Korea, there are stable coins
00:36:39
coming and we want to make sure that we
00:36:41
can provide technology so that they can
00:36:43
do all the same
00:36:44
>> to the government
00:36:45
>> uh or to banks.
00:36:46
>> Well, more to the private sector um
00:36:48
because stable coins are are private
00:36:50
sector innovated, but these companies
00:36:52
all need to be regulated by the
00:36:53
government. They need to they need to be
00:36:54
following the same So easier for you to
00:36:56
partner with a major partner in those
00:36:59
markets.
00:37:00
>> Yeah. And and we want to see that grow
00:37:02
and flourish. You know, this idea of an
00:37:04
internet financial system where, you
00:37:06
know, all the economies of the world can
00:37:08
be onchain and all of the contracts and
00:37:11
financial contracts and markets and
00:37:13
capital formation, lending, everything
00:37:15
can happen on chain. It's obvious that
00:37:17
small businesses and people who are um
00:37:21
very and poker players, people who are,
00:37:24
you know, concerned about their fees
00:37:27
>> will and and you you know are focused on
00:37:28
that are being driven to stable coins.
00:37:31
Like they they get it. They're like,
00:37:32
"Yeah, I'm I'm doing my design job for
00:37:35
you know, I'm a designer in the
00:37:37
Philippines working for somebody in
00:37:38
India." They're starting to figure out,
00:37:40
hey, I I don't need to pay these. And
00:37:42
then consumers are starting to figure it
00:37:44
out. Maybe if they're
00:37:46
>> like me, a poker player, you're sending
00:37:47
a lot of wires. Every year I send, you
00:37:49
know, tons of wires back and forth for
00:37:51
different poker games.
00:37:52
>> Yeah.
00:37:52
>> Well, now you know Polymark and Cali
00:37:54
both you fund your account with USDC,
00:37:56
>> right? Speaking of that kind of
00:37:58
>> and well, that's because that audience
00:38:00
understands because they're always
00:38:01
looking for edge.
00:38:02
>> Speed speed
00:38:03
>> and but they're looking for edge in a
00:38:05
poker game like you as an if you were a
00:38:07
novice and I was an expert. I was Jason
00:38:10
and you were Phil Helm Youth,
00:38:11
whatever it is. um you know it's got a
00:38:13
bigger edge on them. It's an inside
00:38:15
joke. Anyway, point is like you might
00:38:17
have a 1% or 2% advantage but
00:38:20
>> it compounds after a hundred
00:38:22
>> poker games to be a bigger number.
00:38:24
>> It does.
00:38:24
>> This is why the rake matters and you
00:38:26
know gamblers uh and people like to
00:38:29
wager things.
00:38:29
>> You know who the biggest users of USDC
00:38:32
are?
00:38:32
>> Yeah, that's what I was kind of getting
00:38:33
at.
00:38:33
>> It's actually it is a form of gamblers
00:38:35
>> which is it's the biggest electronic
00:38:38
markets firms in the world.
00:38:39
>> Got it. the guys who need the the they
00:38:43
need every edge in terms of milliseconds
00:38:45
and cost and capital efficiency to be
00:38:48
able to move capital in markets because
00:38:50
at the end of the day they are
00:38:52
algorithmically trying to figure out the
00:38:54
very next best thing to do. And if they
00:38:57
have dollars that operate with the
00:38:59
physics of the internet and the cost
00:39:00
efficiency of data, they have an edge.
00:39:03
And so they love it.
00:39:04
>> They love it. And then the people who
00:39:05
are sending money home to their family,
00:39:07
>> they love it, too.
00:39:08
>> Yeah. because they're like wait I'm
00:39:09
paying Western Union 12% of this is a
00:39:12
>> right they can have a wallet they
00:39:13
directly send to their counterparty and
00:39:15
it's like wait a minute this wait I h
00:39:17
this literally arrived and there's
00:39:19
proliferation of of of these digital
00:39:21
wallets now that also can where you can
00:39:23
hold it in USDC but spend it through
00:39:26
Apple Pay uh that are being issued all
00:39:28
around the world too so people can store
00:39:29
value in digital dollars use it through
00:39:32
payment terminals and uh that's pretty
00:39:34
cool Turboax
00:39:37
>> thesis there cuz that seemed like
00:39:39
there's something underlying that that I
00:39:41
wasn't getting to. I mean, it's obvious
00:39:43
that like okay, there there's money
00:39:44
flowing through there, but what's the
00:39:46
big picture there?
00:39:47
>> Well, Intuit's an amazing company.
00:39:49
Obviously, they've been uh around for a
00:39:50
long time. They have franchises that are
00:39:53
huge. Credit Karma is a huge franchise
00:39:54
actually huge. Uh they're they're
00:39:57
growing what they provide to people
00:39:58
through that franchise. Um QuickBooks
00:40:01
obviously we all know if you run a small
00:40:04
business you use QuickBooks and actually
00:40:06
QuickBooks um you know invo they they
00:40:08
invoice uh people through QuickBooks and
00:40:11
it's actually trillions of dollars of
00:40:13
transactions a year that are invoiced
00:40:14
through QuickBooks
00:40:16
>> and um you know if you can invoice
00:40:18
people and settle in USDC that's better
00:40:20
than AC and it's faster and you can imag
00:40:23
you can imagine a world where um you
00:40:25
know small businesses can gain an
00:40:27
advantage from something like that
00:40:28
>> reconciliation you're a Turboax user and
00:40:30
you file your taxes and you get a
00:40:32
refund. Imagine being able to get your
00:40:33
refund instantly.
00:40:35
>> So, I think there's a lot of cool stuff
00:40:36
in it's a very innovative company. It's
00:40:38
it's a tech company, you know, that is
00:40:41
in these uh financial technology
00:40:43
adjacencies and so we're super excited
00:40:46
about the collaboration that we have.
00:40:47
>> I don't want to say there's a loser in
00:40:49
this, but there are people who are going
00:40:50
to be challenged by it. How does
00:40:52
American Express, you know, and Bank of
00:40:54
America look at Circle and stable coins
00:40:57
in your mind if you were to
00:40:59
>> because they must call at some point or
00:41:01
>> do they not?
00:41:02
>> I I think um all these companies have an
00:41:04
opportunity to use this technology,
00:41:06
right? They have this they have an
00:41:08
opportunity to use this technology to
00:41:09
improve how they provide payment
00:41:11
utility. they have an opportunity to use
00:41:12
it if if their customers want to
00:41:14
interact with the whole onchain economy
00:41:16
and onchain investments and what's
00:41:18
happening there from a from a wealth
00:41:20
management perspective. Um I I
00:41:22
eventually think that um you know
00:41:25
there's going to be more credit products
00:41:27
that are actually built using stable
00:41:29
coins.
00:41:30
>> How would that work?
00:41:31
>> Well, basically
00:41:31
>> and what's the advantage?
00:41:32
>> Well, so already today um the there
00:41:36
there have been trillions of dollars of
00:41:37
loans made in stable coins through DeFi
00:41:39
protocols. Yes. So you take your USDC
00:41:41
and you effectively um uh uh deposit it
00:41:45
into a protocol and on the other side of
00:41:48
that protocol is a borrower and you're
00:41:50
paid an interest rate for the amount of
00:41:52
time
00:41:53
>> you become the house you become the
00:41:54
bank.
00:41:55
the individual does actually I mean
00:41:57
these are as someone years ago said
00:41:59
these are like self-driving banks
00:42:00
meaning it's software machines where the
00:42:02
risk management the collateral
00:42:03
management the liquidation all of the
00:42:06
liquidity that's there is all just smart
00:42:08
contract machines that we can all
00:42:09
observe in real time perfectly auditable
00:42:11
in real time transparent you don't have
00:42:13
that with a bank uh so you have a really
00:42:16
interesting thing there and right now a
00:42:18
lot of that is like lending to people
00:42:20
who are borrowing to do things like
00:42:21
investing like margin u margin loans I a
00:42:25
million if I own a million dollars in
00:42:26
Bitcoin and
00:42:27
>> yeah I want to spend $100,000 of but I
00:42:29
want to liquidate any bitcoin somebody
00:42:31
else can make some point
00:42:32
>> and you can you can borrow USDC against
00:42:35
your bitcoin and so on but I think this
00:42:37
is like this is the early stage of that
00:42:39
and so I think our view is that if you
00:42:41
have these digital cash things like USDC
00:42:44
that you can create um lending protocols
00:42:47
that are are lending for you know I want
00:42:50
to I want to you know hire a new
00:42:51
employee or I want to uh you know I need
00:42:55
some new uh equipment for my kitchen and
00:42:57
my restaurant or
00:42:59
>> factoring equipment leasing
00:43:01
>> all all these forms of lending right can
00:43:03
be done uh and the risk that is taken
00:43:07
there's there's real risk there can be
00:43:08
underwritten and the insurance on the
00:43:12
risks failing can be priced and so you
00:43:14
can build credit markets entirely in
00:43:17
software entirely with software machines
00:43:18
no
00:43:19
>> storefront
00:43:20
>> coming into play
00:43:22
>> AI plus these these sort of uh smart
00:43:24
contract machines and stable coins I
00:43:27
think creates a really interesting
00:43:29
little cauldron
00:43:30
>> for credit market innovation.
00:43:33
>> Yeah.
00:43:33
>> And um I I have a glean in my eye which
00:43:36
is imagine a credit market that worked
00:43:38
like Adwords. Imagine something that was
00:43:40
that efficient and could clear and
00:43:43
settle uh credit decisions at the speed
00:43:46
of which an auction happens for
00:43:47
attention.
00:43:48
>> Yeah. And so like those kinds of things
00:43:50
will become possible and that probably
00:43:53
would be pretty good for people who are
00:43:55
on the other side of of of credit need.
00:43:58
>> Yeah. If you think about also monetary
00:44:01
velocity
00:44:02
>> than the economy, you can get more
00:44:04
things moving.
00:44:06
>> Exactly.
00:44:06
>> More jobs created, more chances, more
00:44:08
swings at bat, more shots on goal.
00:44:10
>> So money velocity increases. And I think
00:44:13
these kinds of credit intermediation
00:44:15
models powered by AI and blockchain
00:44:17
networks can actually further increase
00:44:19
money velocity. And you know we we have
00:44:21
a we have a a a mission statement to
00:44:25
increase global economic prosperity
00:44:26
through the frictionless exchange of
00:44:28
value. That is literally our mission
00:44:29
statement. And that people a lot of
00:44:32
times they think exchange of value means
00:44:33
like oh like making a payment like no
00:44:35
value exchange is sort of time value of
00:44:38
money transformation. And it's sort of I
00:44:41
have value I don't need right now. You
00:44:43
have you you have a need for that value
00:44:45
and I'm going to use time to transform
00:44:47
that
00:44:48
>> and and then you know create new things
00:44:50
from it. And that's where actual growth
00:44:52
comes from. So that's what we want to
00:44:53
see.
00:44:54
>> One of the interesting things since
00:44:57
we're here talking politics at Davos,
00:44:59
you and I are talking tech and but
00:45:01
politics is, you know, one of the big
00:45:04
topics here. So we'll we'll sort of end
00:45:05
on that a little bit and get your ideas
00:45:07
and your thoughts on it. There's a
00:45:09
movement towards socialism in New York
00:45:11
City, my hometown. It's kind of
00:45:12
heartbreaking for me to watch.
00:45:14
California
00:45:16
is uh seizing the billionaire's assets,
00:45:20
literally asking them to write down and
00:45:22
audit everything they own, put a value
00:45:25
on the painting or the piece of jewelry
00:45:27
they bought for their spouse. And uh
00:45:30
yeah, we'll just take 5% of it once. and
00:45:32
they lost uh 200 billionaires and a
00:45:35
trillion dollars worth of uh and and
00:45:37
they and they don't seem to have any
00:45:40
problem with it as a technologist, a
00:45:44
builder, and a capitalist as as long as
00:45:47
I've known you. Um what do you think
00:45:49
about this moment in time us Gen Xers
00:45:51
are living in watching this socialist
00:45:53
movement?
00:45:54
>> It's interesting. I just moved to New
00:45:56
York City. Yeah. Just in time.
00:45:57
>> Just in time. Yeah. By the way, that's
00:45:59
costing you I think you're gonna have to
00:46:01
pay 2% more a year, but I don't think
00:46:02
you're an income guy. I think you're
00:46:04
more of a cap gains guy.
00:46:06
>> Yeah. Look, here's what I would say is
00:46:09
and and actually I was with Daario from
00:46:11
Anthropic a couple times over the past
00:46:13
couple days and he obviously talks a lot
00:46:15
about um you know kind of the economic
00:46:17
disruption, labor market disruption,
00:46:19
what's going to happen with AI.
00:46:21
>> He's not a doomer, but he has deep
00:46:22
concerns. his he has deep concerns and I
00:46:24
also do which is when I look at uh the
00:46:27
very positive thing which is that I
00:46:29
think we're going to we're going to see
00:46:31
an acceleration of GDP growth pick your
00:46:34
time frame 3 5 10 15 years like we're
00:46:37
going to we're going to see I think an
00:46:39
extraordinary period of of of economic
00:46:41
growth acceleration
00:46:42
>> even more than the internet and PCs
00:46:44
>> more than the internet and PCs this is
00:46:46
this is a very very very strong very
00:46:49
very big transformation
00:46:51
>> and But where most of the the the labor
00:46:55
is actually executed by AI machines.
00:46:58
>> Yeah.
00:46:58
>> And the capital accrs to the capital
00:47:00
owners,
00:47:01
>> right?
00:47:01
>> And that's just kind of there in front
00:47:04
of us.
00:47:04
>> Yeah. It's the fundamental nature of
00:47:06
capitalism.
00:47:07
>> Fundamental nature. And and I think um
00:47:10
that is just going to challenge us in
00:47:13
ways that we haven't dealt with. Yeah.
00:47:15
>> In in in a long time since other
00:47:17
periods.
00:47:17
>> Labor was necessary for capital.
00:47:19
>> That's right. to uh succeed.
00:47:22
>> Yeah. The industrial revolution was
00:47:23
mechanized human labor, right? Yeah.
00:47:26
>> This is this is, you know, mechanized
00:47:29
AI.
00:47:30
>> By the way, the CEO job seems like ripe
00:47:33
for AI doing a better job than we would
00:47:36
do at times, right? Like I don't know if
00:47:38
you've
00:47:38
>> I use I use AI all the time in my Do you
00:47:41
ask?
00:47:41
>> I don't know if they realize what
00:47:42
they're interacting with. No, but I mean
00:47:44
I I literally when I was talking uh to
00:47:46
Brian from Coinbase, our friend, he um
00:47:49
said he's got all of his data
00:47:51
>> into uh a proprietary LLM internally. He
00:47:55
said this on the on the program. I'm not
00:47:56
speaking out of school.
00:47:58
>> And that he asks it, "What do I need to
00:47:59
know about my organization?" It's like,
00:48:01
"Oh, there's non-conensus about this
00:48:03
important issue in the corner over
00:48:04
here." And he's like, "I didn't know
00:48:04
that."
00:48:05
>> Like, whoa, is that a coach or is that
00:48:07
like a parallel?
00:48:08
>> Yeah.
00:48:09
>> Like another like CEO? Is it a uh a
00:48:12
duplicate CEO? Did you clone yourself?
00:48:14
It's like how do you think about that?
00:48:16
>> I mean, I I think about it all the time.
00:48:18
Um I I you know, I'm pushing very hard
00:48:21
to encourage that we you are all inside
00:48:25
of Circle doing more with AI. We're
00:48:27
we're making sure obviously with safety
00:48:30
and compliance in mind because we're a
00:48:31
regulated company.
00:48:31
>> Commissions matter.
00:48:32
>> Yeah. So there's there's there's a lot
00:48:34
of of of work. We invest a lot in that.
00:48:37
But nonetheless, you know, creating the
00:48:39
avenues so that that awareness and
00:48:41
understanding can be there and that as
00:48:44
leaders we can turn to that. I I I put a
00:48:47
a Slack post in in a Slack channel
00:48:48
recently that sort of said if if you
00:48:50
want to become a a a great manager at
00:48:54
Circle, probably the one of the best
00:48:56
things that you could learn how to do is
00:48:57
manage AI.
00:48:58
>> Yes.
00:48:58
>> And and so, you know, invest in how you
00:49:01
manage AI and AI agents. actually that's
00:49:03
how you might actually become a better
00:49:05
manager and leader through that and I
00:49:08
mean that
00:49:08
>> it is one of the if you think about the
00:49:10
tasks of these product managers who
00:49:12
would run the standups or you know that
00:49:14
your mid-level manager historically it's
00:49:16
to keep tabs on a group of people and
00:49:19
their targets and their time frames and
00:49:21
who's excelling and who's got blockers
00:49:23
AI is kind of better suited for that
00:49:25
>> really good
00:49:25
>> and so the a great middle manager which
00:49:28
is a derogatory term but let's just say
00:49:29
use the word manager a great manager
00:49:31
should be able to manage 10 groups using
00:49:34
say Claude's co-work. I don't know if
00:49:35
Have you been playing with it yet?
00:49:36
>> It's incredible.
00:49:37
>> It's wow.
00:49:38
>> It's really incredible.
00:49:38
>> I mean, it's out a week and I'm like I
00:49:40
I'm sitting there like
00:49:41
>> we haven't deployed that inside the
00:49:43
company yet, but I've outside looked at
00:49:44
it and used it. Um,
00:49:46
>> what impresses you about that?
00:49:48
>> I mean, look, the the ability to take
00:49:50
tasks that I have to do and just teach
00:49:53
them and then it just can do them is
00:49:56
extraordinary. And I'm trying to get
00:49:58
this deployed in my household, too. But,
00:49:59
um, it's it's really amazing.
00:50:01
interesting way to do it is uh because I
00:50:03
I went down this rabbit hole like estate
00:50:05
management stuff like when you have to
00:50:06
deal with this when you get a second
00:50:08
home or however many you wind up having.
00:50:11
Um
00:50:12
>> notion is I think the best solution
00:50:13
right now because notion put AI into it.
00:50:16
Do you use Slack personally too for your
00:50:18
domestic affairs?
00:50:19
>> Uh you don't have a domestic
00:50:20
>> I don't have a domestic slack.
00:50:22
>> Okay. I have a domestic slack and a
00:50:23
domestic notion. So I took the stack
00:50:25
from the office and I just did it at
00:50:26
home. And what that did for us was uh
00:50:29
the people who bridge you know the
00:50:31
family office and this you know can kind
00:50:32
of they know the same tool stack then
00:50:34
notion has been investing in their AI so
00:50:36
much
00:50:37
>> that when you do a query like an AI
00:50:39
query of your notion and you're like hey
00:50:42
this house with this HVAC you know this
00:50:44
issue it's like answer you're like oh my
00:50:47
god that would have taken like three
00:50:48
phone calls in an hour. Uh and I think
00:50:51
it's going to change everything about
00:50:54
how we work. Yeah.
00:50:56
>> What what what else did Dario think? I I
00:50:58
think I might have cut you off before
00:50:59
you.
00:50:59
>> Yeah. I mean, look, I I think the big
00:51:01
picture there was just like um whatever
00:51:04
your politics are, whatever you think
00:51:05
about taxes, whatever you think about
00:51:07
the social contract,
00:51:09
>> all that's I think in the coming years
00:51:11
going to kind of have to get thought
00:51:12
about again. Yeah. In different ways.
00:51:14
And I And I don't think it's going to h
00:51:16
it's not going to be the straightforward
00:51:18
answers that we've turned to. No, it
00:51:20
can't be. And so that that's why I I you
00:51:23
know my my answer is like yeah there's
00:51:26
things California, New York, etc. are
00:51:27
doing, but I think when we when we look
00:51:29
at that in comparison to the the broader
00:51:32
political economy that we're going to
00:51:33
have in front of us, those will seem uh
00:51:36
modest in comparison to what we've got
00:51:38
to think.
00:51:39
>> By the way, we fixed it in startup land
00:51:41
long ago. It's called stock options. And
00:51:43
if you look at the Trump accounts, which
00:51:45
Invest America, Michael Dell did, and
00:51:47
Brad Gersonner and a number of our
00:51:49
friends,
00:51:50
>> um,
00:51:50
>> if the 42%
00:51:54
of Americans who don't own an equity,
00:51:55
and you know, are not part of that, uh,
00:51:58
let's just say it's 50 because some of
00:52:00
them own them kind of passively. Half
00:52:02
the country doesn't own equities. If
00:52:03
everybody had equities in a
00:52:05
superanuation fund like they have in
00:52:07
Australia and they're watching them go
00:52:08
up, then you're not like, well, right,
00:52:10
>> screw those guys at Amazon and Apple and
00:52:14
Google.
00:52:14
>> Being stakeholders in the success of
00:52:16
this technological transformation is
00:52:18
critical.
00:52:18
>> Yeah, that would I think solve so much
00:52:20
of the problem. Jeremy, I could talk to
00:52:22
you for hours. You and I have talked for
00:52:24
hours in our lifetime about all these
00:52:26
paradigms. Um, continued success and
00:52:29
it's just a pleasure to to spend time
00:52:30
with you. It's always like one of the
00:52:32
great discussions I have.
00:52:33
>> That's awesome.
00:52:33
>> I can't believe it. George Curts is
00:52:35
here. He's the CEO and co-founder of
00:52:37
Crowd Strike.
00:52:38
>> This is your second Davos.
00:52:40
>> Yes.
00:52:40
>> Why are you at Davos? Obviously,
00:52:42
everybody knows CrowdStrike. Yeah.
00:52:43
>> We'll get into it. Why are you spending
00:52:46
uh the week at Davos?
00:52:47
>> Well, I have all the world leaders here
00:52:48
and all the best company CEOs are here.
00:52:51
So really it would take me a year of
00:52:53
activity and flying around the globe to
00:52:55
meet all the people that I need to meet
00:52:57
and uh it's just a fantastic opportunity
00:52:59
to meet customers and get business done.
00:53:01
>> Yeah, it's efficient.
00:53:02
>> Very efficient.
00:53:03
>> It's this tiny little ski town.
00:53:05
>> Yep.
00:53:05
>> It's not fancy at all. This is in Aspen
00:53:08
>> and everybody's within five blocks once
00:53:10
you get through security.
00:53:11
>> Yeah.
00:53:11
>> Speaking of security, AI has had or is
00:53:14
going to have I want to get your opinion
00:53:16
on this a profound impact on defense and
00:53:19
also offense. black hat, white hat,
00:53:21
everything in between. What is the
00:53:23
attack vector that AI is most effective
00:53:26
at sitting here in 2026?
00:53:28
>> Well, there's a couple of different
00:53:29
areas. One is if we think about the
00:53:32
adversaries, I kind of I kind of create
00:53:34
a pyramid where you've got nation state
00:53:35
at the top, very sophisticated, but less
00:53:38
of them. The middle band of the pyramid,
00:53:40
okay, is e-crime, more of them, little
00:53:42
less sophisticated than the top, and
00:53:43
then the bottom is just activism, okay?
00:53:47
So essentially you're minting new
00:53:49
adversaries because you don't have to
00:53:50
have all the knowledge that you had to
00:53:52
have in the past. You can ask any number
00:53:54
of uh LLMs and you can get answers back.
00:53:56
So what's happened is the attack
00:53:59
timeline has been compressed. You can
00:54:01
automate all of these sort of attacks
00:54:03
and you can do it with a level of
00:54:05
sophistication that looks like a nation
00:54:06
state. That's one of the greatest areas
00:54:09
of exposure is the speed and the
00:54:11
sophistication has dramatically
00:54:12
increased
00:54:13
>> because the answers have been compiled.
00:54:15
>> Yeah. The scenarios can be run even by
00:54:18
somebody who is a level six hacker out
00:54:20
of 10. I'm just making a number up here.
00:54:22
>> And they can become an eight. So just
00:54:24
like a developer using a co-pilot goes
00:54:26
from being an average developer to an
00:54:28
above average. The same thing is
00:54:29
happening with hackers.
00:54:31
>> Absolutely. And one of the things that
00:54:32
we're seeing is autonomous malware. So
00:54:34
most people are probably familiar with
00:54:36
malware runs on your computer. Typ
00:54:38
typically people would use anti virus to
00:54:40
protect against that malware. But what
00:54:42
we're seeing now is prompt only
00:54:44
autonomous malware, meaning I can drop
00:54:47
uh the prompt on your computer by a
00:54:50
variety of means. And then it will
00:54:51
autonomously interact with an LLM and it
00:54:54
will give a unique fingerprint every
00:54:57
time it runs. So your computer is
00:54:59
different than the next guys. You have
00:55:00
different data and it will begin to
00:55:02
prompt its way to getting to what it
00:55:04
needs without ever phoning home to
00:55:06
someone controlling it.
00:55:07
>> Oh wow. So, just to unpack that and
00:55:10
translate it, I did a little hacking in
00:55:12
my day in the 80s. Okay. A little phone
00:55:14
freaking mainly. We'll get into it
00:55:15
offline. All right. I think
00:55:17
>> I I had a Haze 2400 guilty charge. I
00:55:20
started with the Ventel 300 bod. I think
00:55:22
we're of the same.
00:55:22
>> I had a 300 Haze.
00:55:24
>> You had the 300 Haze.
00:55:25
>> It was a tank.
00:55:26
>> It It literally had such a great form
00:55:28
factor that's never been repeated. This
00:55:30
great like rectangle. But
00:55:33
>> we're old.
00:55:33
>> We are old. People are now saying, "Hey,
00:55:35
I'm going to use the Comet browser by
00:55:37
Perplexity. Chat GPT's got a browser.
00:55:39
Claude has an extension." And it's
00:55:41
really wonderful to say, "Hey, get all
00:55:43
my emails from LinkedIn and then put
00:55:45
that into a database and add it to my
00:55:47
CRM."
00:55:48
>> Wonderful. You watch it work. Get me the
00:55:50
cheapest flight. The same thing can be
00:55:52
used by an adversary to get on your
00:55:54
computer.
00:55:55
>> And one of the great ways is detection
00:55:57
in security. You're in the business of
00:55:59
detecting the attacker. But what you've
00:56:01
just informed me of, which kind of blew
00:56:03
my mind, even though it's completely
00:56:05
obvious, is the LLM can say, "I'm going
00:56:07
to do a thousand attacks today, and I'm
00:56:10
going to make each one different and
00:56:11
unique."
00:56:12
>> And unique. Absolutely. They're unique.
00:56:14
>> So scary.
00:56:14
>> They're not actually code because
00:56:16
they're prompts, right?
00:56:18
>> And traditionally, malware would phone
00:56:20
home. They would be there would be like
00:56:21
a tether, right?
00:56:22
>> So you'd always be able to see the
00:56:23
signature of something phoning home. Now
00:56:25
these can run autonomously, whatever
00:56:27
without ever phoning home,
00:56:28
>> like a sleeper agent. You like you drop
00:56:30
them into America, 20 years later they
00:56:33
start pursuing but they never have to
00:56:36
return to base.
00:56:37
>> Exactly.
00:56:38
>> How does one counter that?
00:56:39
>> Well, you need AI to counter it.
00:56:41
>> Okay.
00:56:41
>> And u I mean that's been a big part of
00:56:43
the success at CrowdStrike. When I
00:56:45
started the company, I founded in 2011.
00:56:47
It was using say AI but machine learning
00:56:49
at the time to detect uh malware that's
00:56:52
never been seen before. Now, obviously
00:56:53
that's evolved into Gen AI and really
00:56:56
leveraging basically the the large data
00:56:59
set that we have that we've amassed over
00:57:01
14 years to train our own models to be
00:57:04
able to counteract with the speed that
00:57:05
you need what the adversary is doing.
00:57:07
So, we took, if you think about it,
00:57:09
there's only a few ways to break into a
00:57:11
bank. I'll use this analogy, right? You
00:57:13
can drive there, you can walk there, you
00:57:15
can use a gun, you can blow the safe,
00:57:16
but at the end of the day, you got to
00:57:17
get the money and you got to get out.
00:57:19
Yeah.
00:57:19
>> And these it's the same way in the
00:57:21
computer world. There's certain we call
00:57:23
indicators of attack. We've trained our
00:57:26
models to look for these. So it doesn't
00:57:27
matter kind of what you look like or
00:57:30
what car you're driving. We can identify
00:57:32
that. A big part of our success has been
00:57:33
the AI we've built over the years with
00:57:35
this tremendous data set.
00:57:37
>> Yeah. So you might be able to get into
00:57:38
the bank, but at some point you got to
00:57:40
leave with the diamonds. You got to get
00:57:41
to the safe.
00:57:42
>> Exactly.
00:57:43
>> That's where you can catch them.
00:57:44
>> Exactly.
00:57:45
>> Uh you mentioned state actors and you
00:57:47
mentioned for profit. When we look at a
00:57:49
country like North Korea, they need
00:57:51
revenue.
00:57:52
>> Y
00:57:52
>> hacking is pretty great revenue source.
00:57:54
They were even
00:57:56
>> using AI, my understanding, and I'm sure
00:57:58
you've been following this to get
00:58:00
developer jobs in the United States,
00:58:02
convince Americans to put laptops in
00:58:05
their homes
00:58:06
>> so that they could remote work. Talk to
00:58:08
me about that attack vector actually
00:58:10
infiltrating companies as employees
00:58:13
because of this remote work nonsense.
00:58:15
>> Well, we were the one of the first to
00:58:16
ever find that. So we were actually
00:58:18
going through developing some new AI
00:58:20
algorithms. Yeah. And we saw something
00:58:22
that was called signal which basically
00:58:23
strips the noise from the signal and we
00:58:25
saw the signal and we said this is
00:58:27
really weird and we investigated it and
00:58:30
we said okay this looks like somebody
00:58:32
using remote tools to you know what's
00:58:34
going on here and we went further and
00:58:36
then we said we think it's North Korea
00:58:39
and we think that it's an employee who
00:58:41
or the company thinks it's an employee.
00:58:43
So when the R&D team came back to me,
00:58:45
they said, "Okay, we want to notify our
00:58:46
customers and we want to say we think we
00:58:49
found this, but we have to tell them
00:58:50
that the employee that they think is an
00:58:52
employee isn't really their employee."
00:58:54
>> Yeah. The the phone calls coming from
00:58:56
inside the building.
00:58:57
>> Exactly. So for us, it was, you know,
00:58:59
when when you have a piece of malware,
00:59:00
it's like, okay, that's bad. You can
00:59:02
detect it. But when you have to tell a
00:59:03
company that their employee may not be
00:59:05
their employee, there's, you know, you
00:59:07
have
00:59:08
>> it's a little gentle. Like
00:59:08
>> you have to be gentle. It's you're
00:59:10
letting them know just how incompetent
00:59:12
they are when it comes to security. I
00:59:13
said it, not you.
00:59:14
>> Okay. Well, it it it's hard to find
00:59:16
these guys, but any event, we we found
00:59:18
40 of them. We were right. 40 of them.
00:59:20
>> That that's for the first run. We found
00:59:22
hundreds now over
00:59:23
>> hundreds in America.
00:59:24
>> Yeah.
00:59:24
>> Now, they were doing it, my
00:59:26
understanding is for the highpaying
00:59:28
salary to fund stuff in North Korea. Is
00:59:30
that correct or not? They were doing it
00:59:31
to get trade secrets.
00:59:32
>> They were they were doing it to buy
00:59:34
access. Why Why breakin when you can
00:59:36
just log in?
00:59:38
>> Oh my god. Yeah, you know, so it's a lot
00:59:39
easier to get somebody hired. So, true
00:59:42
story. So, we we actually say we think
00:59:44
this employee is not an employee.
00:59:46
Company investigated. They investigate
00:59:47
it and they go, "Yeah, you were right."
00:59:49
I said, "Well, tell me the story." And
00:59:50
they said, "Well, we we went to this
00:59:52
person's boss and we said, "We don't
00:59:53
think that's that's a real person." And
00:59:55
they went through all the reasons why.
00:59:58
Finally, they said, "It's, you know, we
00:59:59
think it's a North Korean." And the guy,
01:00:01
his boss said, "Well, do we have to get
01:00:03
rid of him because he did such good
01:00:04
work?"
01:00:05
>> Oh my lord. So the value of a top tier
01:00:08
developer is so high that you'll take us
01:00:10
by.
01:00:11
>> Yeah, exactly.
01:00:12
>> It's like ah, you know, we kind of need
01:00:14
him to ship.
01:00:15
>> Yeah, he was doing such good work.
01:00:16
>> He was he was shipping. This is one of
01:00:18
our best performers. What now?
01:00:21
>> I mean, remote work has opened up so
01:00:24
many vectors. You believe in remote
01:00:25
work. Do you support it in the company?
01:00:26
>> We do. Yeah, we started the company in a
01:00:28
remote first.
01:00:29
>> But this opens up all these attack
01:00:30
vectors. What's
01:00:31
>> even without remote? Well,
01:00:33
>> best practice best practice really and
01:00:35
what we see companies doing is we'll
01:00:37
take a simple one. Meet whoever you
01:00:39
hire.
01:00:40
>> Wow. Shocking.
01:00:41
>> Shocking. But you know, with COVID and
01:00:42
remote work and and things of that
01:00:44
nature, there's a lot of people that get
01:00:45
hired that people never met. And you
01:00:48
know, you'd never see them on the screen
01:00:50
and but the work would get done. You
01:00:52
know, emails would get written
01:00:54
>> and then, you know, these things happen.
01:00:56
So what we're seeing now is the best
01:00:58
companies are actually embedding a
01:00:59
security person in the HR group
01:01:02
>> where they're prefiltering all these
01:01:05
resumes because the resumes are AI
01:01:06
generated. The LinkedIn profiles are AI
01:01:08
generated. So you want to catch them up
01:01:10
front rather than in the interview
01:01:12
process.
01:01:12
>> A crazy idea. Hey, for your final
01:01:13
interview, can we fly in? Or hey, week
01:01:15
one you're going to be at HQ.
01:01:17
>> That's it.
01:01:18
>> That's it. You solve the whole problem
01:01:19
because then they don't take the job.
01:01:21
They move on to the next person.
01:01:22
>> That's it.
01:01:23
>> Okay. So we're looking at state actors.
01:01:25
Russia still number one state actor.
01:01:27
>> China. Russia. I mean it depends like if
01:01:29
you you know pure intelligence, pure
01:01:32
>> ability.
01:01:33
>> Russia.
01:01:34
>> Russia. Yeah. Why?
01:01:35
>> Why are they so good?
01:01:36
>> I mean like the cold war you could say
01:01:39
is over. But you have really smart
01:01:40
people that went to work in various
01:01:42
areas, right? Obviously from a nation
01:01:43
state, but also from an e-rime
01:01:45
perspective.
01:01:46
>> Um they're smart. They know what they're
01:01:48
doing. Typically they're they're what we
01:01:49
call low and slow. The Chinese over the
01:01:51
years have been a little bit noisy, kind
01:01:53
of a smash and grab. They've gotten
01:01:54
better.
01:01:55
>> Um,
01:01:55
>> not subtle.
01:01:56
>> Not subtle, but much better now. But the
01:01:59
the Russians are very targeted. They're
01:02:00
they're patient and um they're not
01:02:03
always gathering IP information to steal
01:02:06
it, but they're they're gathering
01:02:07
intelligence for reconnaissance for
01:02:09
nation state activities andor then they
01:02:11
moonlight for, you know, for e-crime.
01:02:14
>> And let's go to China then. This is, you
01:02:17
know, if we were sitting here 10 years
01:02:18
ago, we'd be talking Kumbaya, China,
01:02:21
we're all going to win together. Uh the
01:02:23
decoupling has happened essentially. Do
01:02:25
you have operations there? Do you work
01:02:26
with Chinese companies?
01:02:28
>> We don't have we don't have operations
01:02:29
there. We don't have any revenue. We
01:02:31
don't sell into China.
01:02:32
>> Never have.
01:02:33
>> Never have. From the start of start of
01:02:35
the company.
01:02:35
>> And what's your take on the decoupling?
01:02:38
Let's go a little geopolitical here.
01:02:40
Like
01:02:40
>> they are our adversary obviously
01:02:43
competitor.
01:02:44
>> You know their technical ability is
01:02:46
pretty strong, right? We're seeing that
01:02:48
with AI.
01:02:49
Are they the the future competitor and
01:02:52
the future attack vector that you have
01:02:53
to worry about? China.
01:02:54
>> Well, I don't know that the future
01:02:55
because I think it's already there. It's
01:02:56
here. It's and it's been here for the
01:02:58
last, you know, 20 plus years. I mean,
01:03:00
some of it may not have been talked
01:03:01
about
01:03:02
>> in the early days, but they're they're
01:03:03
very very prolific. They're very good.
01:03:06
And, you know, it's one of those you
01:03:07
obviously nation state is always going
01:03:09
to be nation state versus nation state.
01:03:11
You know, that just happens. The big
01:03:12
thing with China is there's a commercial
01:03:15
aspect to what they do. So if the
01:03:17
government breaks in and steals a trade
01:03:19
secret from some company in the US,
01:03:20
they'll just give it
01:03:22
>> to another company in China,
01:03:23
>> right?
01:03:24
>> That doesn't happen necessarily with all
01:03:25
nation states.
01:03:26
>> Yeah. We're certainly not breaking into
01:03:29
China to steal their trade secrets. It's
01:03:31
going
01:03:31
>> and giving them to a US company
01:03:32
>> and Yeah. The CIA is not breaking in to
01:03:35
to figure out what BYD is doing to give
01:03:37
it to Tesla or something. Correct.
01:03:39
>> So it's it's a one-way relationship
01:03:41
there. Now, there's also something very
01:03:43
unique. They make hardware. They ship a
01:03:46
lot of hardware, our laptops in some
01:03:49
cases, Huawei, other countries. They're
01:03:52
putting spyware or back doors into all
01:03:55
that hardware. Yeah. In your estimation?
01:03:57
>> I mean, over the years there's certainly
01:03:58
been cases where people have had
01:04:00
concerns on, you know, what was actually
01:04:02
shipped. Um, and supply chain is can be
01:04:05
problematic whether it's actually
01:04:07
shipped with something or, you know, in
01:04:10
some cases packages get diverted
01:04:12
somewhere else. the the malware gets
01:04:14
installed and it gets reshipped out,
01:04:15
right? So, you've seen that.
01:04:17
>> Um, so it's important like to have uh
01:04:20
good hygiene on whatever equipment is
01:04:22
being brought in and you know the
01:04:23
providence of that manufacturer and that
01:04:26
software that goes on it and that that
01:04:27
applies really around the world.
01:04:29
>> Do you trust signal and uh your iPhone
01:04:34
to protect you as a corporate executive?
01:04:36
Like what measures do you take?
01:04:37
>> Well, because you're a target.
01:04:38
>> Yeah, we're a target. I mean we our team
01:04:40
spends a lot of time making sure that we
01:04:41
try to do the right things. Uh you know
01:04:43
>> so WhatsApp signal what about those two?
01:04:45
You think those are attack vectors
01:04:46
people can do insertions there?
01:04:47
>> Well, you know I think you have to look
01:04:50
at the privacy versus the the actual
01:04:53
attack vector. You know if you're
01:04:54
clicking on links that are in different
01:04:56
you know because you got a link in
01:04:57
signal doesn't mean the link is secure
01:04:59
whether it could be signal or something
01:05:00
else right. So there's a lot of ways to
01:05:03
get implants on these devices. is I mean
01:05:05
I would say you know an iPhone is more
01:05:08
is safer than just a regular computer
01:05:09
because the way it runs. Um but you know
01:05:12
if you look at the nation states and
01:05:14
some of the creative ways they can
01:05:16
actually get into a phone as an example
01:05:19
if they want to get in bad enough
01:05:20
they're going to get in.
01:05:21
>> How do they get in? What's what's the
01:05:23
attack vector? They get you to click on
01:05:24
a link. They insert something. That's
01:05:27
the typical
01:05:28
>> Yeah. Typically what they'll do in there
01:05:29
is there's a whole uh black or gray
01:05:32
market on the value of a zero day. So
01:05:34
there are zero days in all software and
01:05:36
if you have one say for Apple iOS that's
01:05:39
super valuable and generally if you
01:05:41
click on something and it's not known
01:05:43
zero day you just by going to a browser
01:05:45
>> explain explain in plain English to the
01:05:46
audience what a zero day is a
01:05:47
>> a zero day is a yeah sorry you know
01:05:50
talking technical jargon
01:05:51
>> not everybody's got the hacker bonafites
01:05:54
>> I know not everybody's a haze guy but
01:05:57
yeah if there is a a software
01:05:59
vulnerability that hasn't been found and
01:06:00
patched yeah
01:06:01
>> it means that they can exploit that and
01:06:03
and they can run code and in some cases
01:06:05
in the past um there was a vulnerability
01:06:07
where they could simply send you an SS
01:06:09
SMS message like you didn't even know
01:06:11
you didn't have to click on anything but
01:06:12
SMS message would process this
01:06:15
information and then they would put an
01:06:17
implant on the phone
01:06:18
>> biometrics two factor this has changed
01:06:21
everything yeah in the industry made it
01:06:23
much more secure
01:06:25
>> secure but not much more yeah if you
01:06:27
look at a lot of the attacks they're
01:06:29
identity based attacks and what you see
01:06:32
is that even when you have a credential
01:06:34
or if you steal a credential uh or if
01:06:37
you have a session token which means
01:06:39
that you've already authenticated.
01:06:41
>> Yeah.
01:06:41
>> Right. So even if you have two factor if
01:06:43
you have the session token
01:06:45
>> Yeah.
01:06:45
>> you can replay that and get access to a
01:06:48
system.
01:06:48
>> The crypto people learned this the hard
01:06:50
way.
01:06:50
>> Y
01:06:51
>> they basically were using two factor
01:06:53
over SMS. People call the phone company.
01:06:56
>> Yep.
01:06:56
>> Reset the SIM.
01:06:57
>> Yep.
01:06:58
>> And then they got you
01:06:59
>> and game over. Yeah.
01:07:00
>> Game over. Now your Bitcoin wallet is
01:07:02
emptied.
01:07:03
>> Correct.
01:07:04
>> Where there's money, the hackers will go
01:07:06
figure out a way.
01:07:08
>> They figure it out. And the humans are
01:07:09
are normally the the weakest link.
01:07:11
>> Yeah. You know, the way I was able to
01:07:14
get my first exploit was I called the
01:07:16
New York Public Library. I knew they had
01:07:18
like a vax system with the dialup. Okay.
01:07:20
>> And I just said, "Hey, uh, it's Joe from
01:07:22
it at the 34th Street branch.
01:07:25
>> I need the number for the dialup."
01:07:26
>> Yeah.
01:07:27
>> Literally, the person gave it to me at
01:07:28
it over the phone.
01:07:29
>> They want to be helpful. I dialed it and
01:07:31
then I could search the stack and
01:07:33
>> search all the books. That was the only
01:07:34
thing you could do.
01:07:35
>> What year was this?
01:07:36
>> 87.
01:07:37
>> Okay.
01:07:37
>> Yeah. I was at Forom and they had
01:07:39
Bitnet. They had the internet there and
01:07:41
I was just starting to to see these
01:07:42
things. But it's almost universally that
01:07:45
calling somebody on the phone, meeting
01:07:47
somebody, compromising somebody.
01:07:49
>> That's it. That's it.
01:07:50
>> And normally the day
01:07:51
>> the weakness is between the keyboard and
01:07:53
the chair.
01:07:54
>> The keyboard and the chair. What is the
01:07:56
best practice then for you when you're
01:07:58
advising your customers of explaining to
01:08:02
them just how the human factors part of
01:08:05
this is the most important one to focus
01:08:08
on?
01:08:08
>> Well, there's certainly an educational
01:08:09
element and you also have to look at how
01:08:11
people get paid in the motivation. So,
01:08:13
typically they're going to call a help
01:08:14
desk. Okay, how does a help desk get
01:08:17
paid and what are their metrics? Their
01:08:18
metrics is get a call, open a ticket and
01:08:21
close it as quick as you can.
01:08:22
>> Got the incentive is speed,
01:08:24
>> right? particularly if it's a third
01:08:25
party
01:08:26
>> out
01:08:26
>> in another country,
01:08:27
>> right? So their their whole job is to
01:08:30
open a ticket, solve a problem, close a
01:08:32
ticket. So if you follow the money and
01:08:34
the incentives, you can see why there's
01:08:36
a problem and people want to be helpful
01:08:38
at the help desk and hence they get into
01:08:40
the situation. So um you know, first
01:08:43
start with the education piece and then
01:08:45
having the right controls, identity
01:08:47
protection, things like what crowd
01:08:48
strike bills is going to be additive to
01:08:50
making sure those sort of things don't
01:08:52
happen. people using their own devices.
01:08:54
Bring your own device. This is the other
01:08:56
major attack vector. Corporations make
01:08:58
the mistake on you.
01:08:59
>> Yes. Um the you know your own device
01:09:02
could be like uh a cesspool if you let
01:09:05
your kids you know use it.
01:09:07
>> Um or it could be pretty good but that's
01:09:09
the reason why now there's enterprise
01:09:11
browsers to kind of contain what people
01:09:13
do even if you bring your own device.
01:09:15
>> Yeah. The enterprise browser is running
01:09:17
on a virtual machine at some
01:09:19
headquarters. You provide that kind of
01:09:20
situation. Um that that's sort of the
01:09:22
old school way of doing it. So what
01:09:24
we've done, we actually just acquired a
01:09:26
company uh called Sarafic.
01:09:27
>> I saw that. Explain to me the
01:09:29
state-of-the-art there.
01:09:30
>> Yeah. So the state-of-the-art is not
01:09:32
switching out a browser because if you
01:09:34
use comet or you know Firefox or
01:09:36
whatever you want to use the browser you
01:09:37
have. So it's actually running beneath
01:09:40
the browser in and will support any
01:09:42
browser which basically looks at the
01:09:44
interaction what the browser is doing
01:09:46
and if there's sort of malicious
01:09:48
activity in the browser or there's an
01:09:50
identity that's compromised you can stop
01:09:51
it at the browser and you can wall off
01:09:53
what you do with the browser uh
01:09:55
including what data you take out of it.
01:09:57
So it's a it's the front door now for
01:10:00
how people work and how adversaries get
01:10:02
in is through the browser. How should
01:10:03
companies implementing AI in the
01:10:06
enterprise putting their data into these
01:10:09
clouds and working with partners? Uh
01:10:12
Claude Co this week kind of blew
01:10:14
people's mind. I don't know if you saw
01:10:15
the announcement or played with it.
01:10:17
>> Yeah.
01:10:17
>> And uh I was using it earlier this week
01:10:19
and I'm authenticating
01:10:21
on Gmail, notion. Oh yeah, my desktop
01:10:24
files. And
01:10:25
>> I got like halfway through this and I
01:10:27
was like this probably isn't a good
01:10:29
idea, but
01:10:30
>> it can be pretty scary. Well, let me let
01:10:32
me tell you a story. Not specific to
01:10:33
that, but um
01:10:34
>> we don't want to throw them under the
01:10:35
bus, but it was a lot of authentications
01:10:37
I did.
01:10:38
>> Exactly. Exactly. They're doing great
01:10:39
work, but um there there was a uh a
01:10:42
customer who basically created a whole
01:10:44
suite of AI agents to help their
01:10:46
automation in their IT department.
01:10:47
Right. So they had one agent that was
01:10:49
looking for sort of IT problem software
01:10:51
bugs and it it found something, you
01:10:54
know, while the code was being before it
01:10:55
was committed. So the agent said, "Hey,
01:10:57
I found this bug. I want to fix it." But
01:10:59
it didn't have access to fix it. So, it
01:11:01
it went to the Slack channel that had
01:11:03
the other 99 agents and said, "Hey,
01:11:06
Lord, does any other agent have access
01:11:08
to this thing because I need it fixed."
01:11:10
And there's an agent that raised its
01:11:12
hand and said, "Oh, I have access and I
01:11:14
can fix it."
01:11:15
>> Do you see how scary this is? These two
01:11:17
agents are reasoning and they went right
01:11:18
around the guard rails that were put in
01:11:20
place.
01:11:21
>> This is unintended consequences
01:11:24
and these LLMs are essentially guessing
01:11:28
what you want them to do. They're
01:11:29
reasoning it. Oh, it is reasonable for
01:11:32
me to go ask for help,
01:11:33
>> right?
01:11:34
>> It is reasonable for me to give help.
01:11:37
Now, what if it pushes the wrong code?
01:11:38
What if it makes a mistake? And then,
01:11:40
how do you ever track that down? Who's
01:11:43
monitoring these agents? The agent
01:11:45
technology has unlimited upside, but my
01:11:47
lord, you're going to be in business for
01:11:48
a long time.
01:11:49
>> Well, this is it. It's called AIDR,
01:11:51
which
01:11:52
>> AIDR.
01:11:52
>> Yeah.
01:11:53
>> AI detection and response.
01:11:54
>> Got it.
01:11:55
>> So, there's a concept that's been around
01:11:56
that we helped pioneer, which is really
01:11:58
endpoint detection and response. So on
01:12:00
your computer, most companies have it,
01:12:02
you can monitor and see what's happening
01:12:04
and prevent bad things from happening.
01:12:06
We have to do that now with an agent.
01:12:08
And this is why it's a huge opportunity
01:12:09
for us because on average, each employee
01:12:12
is going to have about 90 agents they
01:12:14
control.
01:12:14
>> So we're going to have protection and
01:12:16
visibility across all of those agents,
01:12:18
whether it's from a third party or
01:12:21
whether it's a homegrown agent. And
01:12:22
that, you know, is a massive TAM
01:12:24
opportunity for us. Do you trust the LLM
01:12:27
operators with Crowd Strikes data or do
01:12:30
you want to stand up your own large
01:12:32
language models?
01:12:33
>> We well we have our small language
01:12:36
models and we do work with just about
01:12:38
all of the large language models. Um but
01:12:40
we've built our own guard rails around
01:12:42
what gets shared, how it gets shared,
01:12:44
and how we process any of the data back.
01:12:46
The the key
01:12:47
>> Are you concerned about it?
01:12:49
>> I can see you're kind of like thinking
01:12:50
like hm yeah like maybe there are some
01:12:52
concerns here. No, no, there is. But we
01:12:54
we tried to engineer for that. Got it.
01:12:56
>> Right. Because you want to leverage and
01:12:58
this is the thing, you know, it's
01:12:59
tokconomics. There's there's an
01:13:01
economics to how you use the tokens as
01:13:03
well. Plus, you want to get the right
01:13:04
data. So, we've built small language
01:13:06
models for things that we control with
01:13:08
our data. And then for other bigger, you
01:13:11
know, frontier type models, I mean,
01:13:13
you're not going to replicate billions
01:13:14
in R&D. You want to leverage what's out
01:13:16
there and take the best of it.
01:13:18
>> Yeah. You're uh also a race car driver.
01:13:20
>> Yes. And hey, you've done well in your
01:13:23
life. You got to buy a piece of an F1
01:13:26
team. I've been going to F1 races. I
01:13:27
went to three this year. Okay. Tell tell
01:13:29
me everything about it.
01:13:30
>> Where do you want me to start?
01:13:31
>> How did you get the bug? Uh
01:13:32
>> when did you get the bug? Because this
01:13:33
has been an American thing the last
01:13:35
couple years. I can't believe the rack
01:13:36
at these F you well you guys are doing.
01:13:39
Somehow you made this the most important
01:13:40
thing in America ever.
01:13:42
>> I I knew
01:13:43
>> to survive was
01:13:44
>> that is a big driver. And then it's a
01:13:46
luxury experience. So now I've gone to
01:13:48
what did I do? Miami, Austin, and Vegas.
01:13:51
I've been to three in the last year.
01:13:53
>> I had even heard about it 5 years ago.
01:13:55
>> That's fantastic. Well, I mean, little
01:13:57
backdrop. I grew up I had zero money as
01:13:59
a kid. I always liked
01:14:00
>> Where'd you grow up?
01:14:00
>> Uh, New Jersey.
01:14:01
>> Oh, really? I grew up in Brooklyn. Yeah.
01:14:03
>> You know, we used to play Ford.
01:14:04
>> Yeah, exactly.
01:14:05
>> Okay. So, um, I always like cars and
01:14:07
fast things and never had the
01:14:08
opportunity to do that. First car was a
01:14:10
Toyota Celica.
01:14:12
>> Toyota Celica. Yeah. 73 Mustang, Grande,
01:14:15
351 Cleveland. Okay. Okay.
01:14:16
>> 351 Cleveland engine and slightly more
01:14:19
horsepower than yours.
01:14:20
>> I know. Mine was just a I had a commute
01:14:21
in the thing.
01:14:22
>> Yeah. Okay. It was functional.
01:14:23
>> It It worked. It functional. But um so I
01:14:26
never had the opportunity to do it. And
01:14:27
then I got into I mean I always followed
01:14:28
sports racing. Mostly it was indie and
01:14:30
then you know got into racing later. We
01:14:32
talk about that. But I've been in
01:14:34
Formula 1 since 2018 because Crowdstrike
01:14:36
became well Mercedes became a customer
01:14:38
of Crowd Strike.
01:14:39
>> Nice.
01:14:39
>> And then I met Toto Wolf who runs a team
01:14:41
and you said, "Hey, why don't you think
01:14:43
about working with
01:14:43
>> You got in at the right time." Good.
01:14:45
That was a good trade. It was a good
01:14:46
trade. So, we got in then and then um
01:14:48
over the years I built a great
01:14:50
relationship and then just last uh fall
01:14:52
I put a deal together and own 5% of the
01:14:54
Mercedes team now.
01:14:55
>> Congrats. And now you ride yourself.
01:14:57
You're in the bronze league, I hear.
01:14:59
>> Yeah. So, I race uh in fact, I got to go
01:15:01
back for a race in Daytona.
01:15:03
>> Nice.
01:15:03
>> Still got the 24 hours.
01:15:04
>> What What do you drive? What kind of
01:15:05
car?
01:15:05
>> Uh LMP2.
01:15:07
>> Explain. Uh it's a it's a fullfledged
01:15:10
race car. I mean, it looks like a
01:15:12
>> like an F1 car
01:15:13
>> with with with with covers over the
01:15:15
wheels.
01:15:16
>> Got it. So, it's safer. Yeah.
01:15:18
>> What do you think of this new Corvette
01:15:19
ZRX1? Have you seen this beast?
01:15:21
>> I'm trying to get one. Yeah, fantastic.
01:15:22
I know.
01:15:23
>> I got a contact.
01:15:24
>> Okay.
01:15:25
>> At GM.
01:15:25
>> Everybody's got a guy.
01:15:26
>> They They gave me an to play with.
01:15:29
>> Yeah.
01:15:30
>> Which is kind of the precursors. You
01:15:31
know, they took the -ay and they put it
01:15:32
in the ZRX1.
01:15:33
>> Yeah.
01:15:34
>> And uh my lord, off the line. It's like
01:15:36
having the Tesla acceleration off the
01:15:39
line and then you have the you know, 600
01:15:42
in that one. I think it was 600
01:15:43
horsepower plus 150. Got it about 800.
01:15:46
>> This new one, it's a,000 horsepower plus
01:15:48
250.
01:15:50
>> The thing cost $200,000.
01:15:51
>> And for the money, it's it's it's a
01:15:53
tremendous car.
01:15:54
>> And you know, I I still think to this
01:15:55
day, I mean, someone will keep me
01:15:57
honest, that
01:15:57
>> the ZR1 will and will still have a
01:16:01
warranty even if you track it.
01:16:03
>> Really?
01:16:03
>> Yeah. It's one of the the rare cars. At
01:16:05
least it used to be.
01:16:06
>> Yeah. They said you can take the ZR1 in
01:16:09
the with the -ray version, you can
01:16:10
change the driver profile,
01:16:12
>> lower the RPMs, you know, the when it
01:16:14
shifts and everything, so you can
01:16:16
actually talk on the phone.
01:16:17
>> Yeah.
01:16:17
>> You know, and have a conversation and
01:16:19
not make the passenger throw up.
01:16:20
>> You want to hear the engine.
01:16:22
>> I think that's right. I had a C6
01:16:24
convertible in that generation, which
01:16:27
was just dynamite. Canary yellow. What
01:16:29
color are you looking at? This is where
01:16:30
we're going to get real. You saw that
01:16:32
crazy green.
01:16:33
>> I like the blue.
01:16:34
>> You like the blue? It's beautiful. They
01:16:36
they have like a a really beautiful
01:16:38
vibrant blue.
01:16:39
>> Yeah, that's uh I was looking at the
01:16:41
silver and I I don't usually like silver
01:16:44
on cars, but it looks on that car. It
01:16:46
looks tremendous.
01:16:47
>> I keep all my Mercedes silver.
01:16:49
>> You do?
01:16:49
>> Yeah.
01:16:50
>> H interesting. All right. Listen, the
01:16:52
question everybody wants to know,
01:16:53
Greenland, what should we pay?
01:16:55
>> You know, I'm
01:16:56
>> How do we make a deal?
01:16:57
>> I I I'm sure I'm sure there's lots of
01:16:58
deals that's above my pay grade, but I
01:17:00
think whenever you see the geopolitical
01:17:03
tensions go up, there's always more
01:17:04
security activity. So
01:17:05
>> yeah, good for business.
01:17:06
>> It's a good It's good for business. So
01:17:08
>> seems like something we should I I you
01:17:10
>> the Trump administration is spicy on the
01:17:13
margins. You may have seen
01:17:15
>> uh but they've been good for business.
01:17:16
Yeah. Supportive of the business
01:17:18
community.
01:17:18
>> I think so. And you know when you think
01:17:20
about what the administration is doing
01:17:21
with security, they're taking a business
01:17:23
first approach. You know what that
01:17:24
means? They want to save money. They
01:17:26
want to consolidate. They want
01:17:28
platforms. They want better outcomes,
01:17:30
right? And they don't want this
01:17:31
peacemeal buying across the government.
01:17:33
M
01:17:33
>> so absolutely I think they're doing a
01:17:35
great job on security.
01:17:36
>> I've been asking people's perceptions
01:17:38
and it's overwhelmingly been
01:17:40
>> Yeah. They're calling us up. They're
01:17:42
they're at the table. They're engaged.
01:17:44
>> So whatever you think politically uh you
01:17:46
know all these cultural issues, they're
01:17:48
listening and they're engaging the
01:17:49
business community which I think is a
01:17:50
great thing. All right, brother. Thanks
01:17:51
for doing it so much. Talk soon. And
01:17:53
transportation of course is one of the
01:17:55
most important parts uh in the business
01:17:58
sector and vetos. We're promised flying
01:18:02
cars. We still don't have them. But my
01:18:05
guest today, who's spoken and is a
01:18:07
friend of the All-In podcast, is going
01:18:09
to tell us how close we are to getting
01:18:12
rid of these noisy helicopters buzzing
01:18:14
around and having vetos, nice and quiet
01:18:17
ones. Adam Goldstein, CEO of Archer
01:18:20
Aviation. Welcome back to Allin.
01:18:21
>> Thank you. Good to be here.
01:18:22
>> Two years ago, you were at the summit.
01:18:24
You promised us we get flying cars. When
01:18:27
can I mean that's Let's just get to
01:18:28
breast tax. This is all anybody wants to
01:18:30
know. When can I go from Manhattan to
01:18:34
JFK? When can I go from San Francisco to
01:18:38
Oakland airport? When is this going to
01:18:40
happen? And is it going to happen in the
01:18:41
United States first or is it going to
01:18:43
happen in the UAE or Saudi or maybe
01:18:46
China?
01:18:47
>> The hardest part about bringing these
01:18:49
aircrafts to market are is the
01:18:50
certification. Like we have to prove
01:18:51
that these aircrafts are really safe.
01:18:53
It's not you can't blame the regulators.
01:18:55
It's not a regulatory thing. They
01:18:56
actually have to be very safe and
01:18:57
reliable. So the rules got put in place.
01:19:00
But the most important thing that
01:19:01
happened in the most recent history was
01:19:04
that President Trump issued an executive
01:19:06
order that was fast-tracking the the the
01:19:09
program through the regulators and
01:19:11
really starting to create a platform for
01:19:13
us to launch. And so they are now five
01:19:15
cities going to be announced in the
01:19:17
first quarter and then we'll start
01:19:18
flying in the summer. And that will be
01:19:20
the first time you'll see these
01:19:21
aircrafts flying in around the cities on
01:19:23
a regular basis. that will allow the
01:19:25
general public to get comfortable with
01:19:26
this and they will certify us sometime
01:19:28
after that because the political side of
01:19:30
this is not a Democratic Republican
01:19:32
thing. It's a consumers have to feel
01:19:34
comfortable with this. They have to
01:19:34
watch this and so we don't want to be
01:19:37
fighting that and so they're giving us a
01:19:38
chance to go do that.
01:19:39
>> Okay. So it's 2026. We're sitting here
01:19:41
January of 2026. You guys are going to
01:19:44
announce five cities.
01:19:46
>> The government will. DOT will.
01:19:47
>> Oh here in the United States they're
01:19:49
going to and these are for all veto
01:19:51
companies. Jo, yourself, all the
01:19:53
contemporaries will get to do those five
01:19:54
cities first.
01:19:55
>> Correct.
01:19:56
>> You got any guesses of what they could
01:19:57
be? What are people thinking and how are
01:19:59
they selecting them?
01:20:00
>> Well, my big push has been around
01:20:02
Huntington Beach um in right around Los
01:20:04
Angeles because
01:20:05
>> You live there?
01:20:05
>> Uh I don't. But we won the exclusive for
01:20:09
the LA 28 Olympics. And so that was a
01:20:11
big deal for us. So we need to start
01:20:13
trial operations really ramping up um
01:20:15
the ops because it's it's challenging.
01:20:17
We also recently bought the Hawthorne
01:20:19
airport right outside of LAX to help
01:20:21
give us a hub.
01:20:22
>> Hawthorne, the private I've flown out of
01:20:24
it many times.
01:20:25
>> Exactly.
01:20:26
>> So that's Humble.
01:20:27
>> It's a It's a great platform.
01:20:29
>> They bought in Wait, let's just let this
01:20:31
soak in, folks. Archer Aviation bought
01:20:35
an airport.
01:20:36
>> We did.
01:20:36
>> Can you just buy airports? It's a
01:20:38
privatelyowned enterprise.
01:20:40
What did that cost you?
01:20:41
>> Yeah, you can. It's I'll call it a sort
01:20:43
of buy it. You can control it. So
01:20:44
there's a runway that's owned by the
01:20:46
municipality. There's all the property
01:20:48
around it and then there's the control
01:20:49
of the master lease. It is very hard to
01:20:51
do. They come up for sale every 50
01:20:53
years. So if you look back the
01:20:54
>> What did that cost you?
01:20:55
>> It's around $170 million for everything
01:20:57
including the FBO and all the real
01:20:58
estate around.
01:20:59
>> So you own all the real estate. That's
01:21:00
got some residual value. But this gives
01:21:03
you a massive opportunity because Los
01:21:05
Angeles is um yeah known for its
01:21:08
traffic. So that would be a place where
01:21:10
you could have a home base for these.
01:21:12
>> Exactly. It also happens to be home to a
01:21:15
lot of the Elon companies and so it
01:21:16
borders SpaceX. The original boring
01:21:19
tunnel was there. Uh Tesla design center
01:21:21
is there. You have a lot of good
01:21:22
connectivity around people trying to
01:21:24
change the you know the future of
01:21:26
transportation.
01:21:27
>> Oh yes. I'm sorry. I was thinking Van
01:21:28
NYth in the south.
01:21:30
>> Yeah.
01:21:30
>> Funny story. Uh namerop Elon was like
01:21:34
hey I'm thinking about renting a place
01:21:36
for my my rocket ship company before it
01:21:38
had a name.
01:21:38
>> Want to come down and see it? I went
01:21:40
down to see it. It was at Horthon
01:21:41
>> and uh I said he had just gotten the
01:21:44
Falcon and I said uh
01:21:45
>> can the can you land the Falcon here? He
01:21:48
said yeah. I said get this office space
01:21:51
immediately.
01:21:52
>> So you own the SpaceX office or you're
01:21:54
the
01:21:54
>> that's on the other side of the fence.
01:21:56
>> Got it.
01:21:56
>> And so we have the airport side. They
01:21:58
have some hangers.
01:21:58
>> What a perfect location cuz if memory
01:22:00
serves me it's just south of LAX.
01:22:02
>> Yeah. About 2 miles from LAX about 2
01:22:04
miles from Sofi Stadium. So the goal is
01:22:06
to make that a hub of as of Los Angeles.
01:22:08
Imagine a Grand Central type of
01:22:10
>> uh you go down to San Diego, Lagona,
01:22:13
just so many places to the south,
01:22:15
Manhattan Beach.
01:22:16
>> And let's push our imagination here.
01:22:18
Boring companies also based there too.
01:22:19
And so maybe we can convince Elon to
01:22:21
start digging some holes around LA and
01:22:23
all of a sudden you could really
01:22:24
transform LA.
01:22:25
>> What do you think the other cities will
01:22:26
be in America? And how are they picking
01:22:28
them?
01:22:29
>> Well, FA and DOT are going to be the
01:22:31
ones that choose. So there's the
01:22:33
companies have submitted uh in
01:22:34
partnership with the cities these
01:22:36
different bids. And I think it's going
01:22:38
to be a mix of urban areas, rural areas.
01:22:40
I think it's probably going to be a lot
01:22:41
of red states. You'll see. Um, so my
01:22:43
guess is you'll see something in Texas.
01:22:45
You'll probably see something in
01:22:46
Florida. Um, maybe you'll see something
01:22:47
in
01:22:48
>> red states because Trump's a Republican
01:22:50
or because they're easier when it comes
01:22:53
to regulations.
01:22:53
>> I think both. It's also just easier to
01:22:55
operate. Got it.
01:22:56
>> And so if you want to land a helicopter
01:22:58
in California, there's a lot of rules.
01:22:59
You want to land one in Texas, you put
01:23:00
it on the grass wherever you want.
01:23:02
>> You know, it's interesting. When I got
01:23:03
my ranch in Texas, they were like, "This
01:23:05
is a perfect place to put a helipad."
01:23:06
And I was like, "Hell yes." Yeah. Like,
01:23:09
"You can really put a pad down." And
01:23:10
they're like, "Yeah, it's your ranch.
01:23:11
You can do whatever you want." Now, in
01:23:12
LA,
01:23:13
>> it used to be that people would land
01:23:15
helicopters in their backyards. I don't
01:23:18
know when that stopped,
01:23:19
>> but what are the rules in LA now?
01:23:21
>> Each municipality has a different rules
01:23:22
around, you know, the different
01:23:24
permitting you need, the different
01:23:25
amount of time that takes to get done,
01:23:27
how you certify the helellipad, if you
01:23:28
need to certify the helellipad.
01:23:29
>> So, you basically can't do it.
01:23:30
>> Yeah. It makes it very hard.
01:23:32
That being said, this is a safer
01:23:35
platform than what already exists,
01:23:36
helicopters. So, I think there'll be a
01:23:38
lot of loosening of that because it's
01:23:39
just increasing safety to something they
01:23:41
already do.
01:23:41
>> Now, New York City, that's the big one.
01:23:44
I think Joby made an announcement that
01:23:45
they're going to be at one of the ports.
01:23:46
Yeah, you're you're contemporary. I
01:23:48
don't know if I would describe you guys
01:23:50
as competitors now because like the
01:23:52
early days of say EVs or self-driving
01:23:54
cars, if this works, man, we're going to
01:23:56
need 10
01:23:57
>> archers and Jobies to do it. But they're
01:23:58
going to be out of Manhattan soon. Yeah.
01:24:00
>> Yeah. We both will operate out of the
01:24:01
city. I mean, it's a wonderful place.
01:24:03
It's already the biggest helicopter
01:24:04
market in the US. So, there's three big
01:24:07
helports that exist already. The
01:24:08
Westside, East Side, and the Downtown
01:24:10
Wall Street helport. So, it's already
01:24:11
naturally kind of configured. It is a
01:24:13
very complex congested airspace. And so,
01:24:15
I also think, you know, the way that
01:24:17
this will come to market will be in, you
01:24:19
know, relatively low volumes. We'll gain
01:24:21
the trust of the public. They'll allow
01:24:22
us to keep scaling this stuff up. So,
01:24:24
you can start with maybe tens of
01:24:25
aircrafts and then, you know, maybe over
01:24:27
five, 10 years, you scale it up to
01:24:29
hundreds of aircraft. Robo taxi and
01:24:31
Whimo story. You start slow, build
01:24:33
trust. Are you guys on the clock? You've
01:24:35
been working on this for a decade. Yeah.
01:24:37
>> Yeah. So, it's the tech actually goes
01:24:39
back to NASA 40 years ago, how to use
01:24:41
multiple electric engines to fly
01:24:42
airplanes and then really kind of thanks
01:24:44
to Larry Paige and the early work at
01:24:46
Zierero. They really helped um you know
01:24:48
bring a lot of that um technology.
01:24:50
>> Yeah. Larry bet on two or three, right?
01:24:52
>> Yeah. So, he's been super involved. He
01:24:53
was a huge part of the industry. And
01:24:55
then if you go back um really um Uber
01:24:59
did a great job when they had the Uber
01:25:00
Elevate platform which really put it
01:25:03
into the mainstream that was around 2016
01:25:05
>> with Blade right they were doing or
01:25:07
>> Yeah they they kind of well they really
01:25:09
were like almost a research project to
01:25:10
showcase what
01:25:12
>> right I remember when Travis did that
01:25:13
yes
01:25:14
>> yeah and then 2018 Morgan Stanley had a
01:25:16
100page initiation report saying it's
01:25:18
the next $9 trillion market that opened
01:25:20
up the capital markets to everybody and
01:25:22
so that that that allowed us to do this
01:25:23
>> you guys spacked right after or during
01:25:25
CO. Yeah.
01:25:26
>> Uh 2021. Yeah.
01:25:27
>> Okay. So, right after CO started to
01:25:29
Wayne and uh was that the right
01:25:31
decision? I know these spacks have been
01:25:32
up and down. Being public can be a
01:25:34
distraction and you guys are a deep tech
01:25:37
company with a long runway. What's it
01:25:39
like trying to deal with shareholders in
01:25:42
a public company when you know you're in
01:25:45
a multi-deade roll out of a product like
01:25:47
this? Well, I actually give a lot of
01:25:49
credit also to the Reddit community
01:25:52
because the retail army really helped
01:25:55
allow Archer to raise the money it
01:25:56
needed to raise in order to get to where
01:25:58
it is. So, we've raised around $4
01:25:59
billion of capital to date.
01:26:00
>> Four billion. Wow.
01:26:01
>> Yeah. And we'll probably, you know, over
01:26:02
time, you know, raise more. But the
01:26:04
stock is super liquid because it has
01:26:06
such a huge fan base in the retail
01:26:07
market. It creates liquidity which
01:26:09
allows the institutional investors to
01:26:10
play which allows the whole kind of
01:26:12
cycle to keep going. So, as long as we
01:26:14
keep performing, there's this pot of
01:26:15
gold at the end of the, you know, the
01:26:17
Morgan Stanley sort of pot of gold, we
01:26:19
should be able to keep stairstepping up
01:26:20
the valuation, keeping everybody happy,
01:26:22
raising the capital, keeping it going.
01:26:23
DTEK is extremely capital intensive. And
01:26:26
this was the right avenue for us for
01:26:27
sure. It's
01:26:27
>> really interesting when you think about
01:26:28
it. Who is a better base of investors
01:26:31
for long-term? Public markets,
01:26:33
institutional investors, venture
01:26:34
capitalists, private equity, or the
01:26:37
lunatics on Reddit? It turns out the
01:26:38
lunatics on Reddit, all due respect, I
01:26:41
say that with like uh peace and love,
01:26:43
like they actually probably get it right
01:26:45
because they know what consumers want.
01:26:48
>> Yeah.
01:26:48
>> And they're willing to go for it. Yeah.
01:26:51
>> They're also willing to kind of look
01:26:52
past the quarterly earnings issues and
01:26:54
really to say like this is a technology
01:26:56
they want. I mean, who wouldn't want it?
01:26:58
It's safer than helicopters. They're
01:27:00
super quiet. They cost less. It's
01:27:01
convenience for everyone. Like nobody
01:27:03
loses here. This is a win-win type.
01:27:05
>> Where's your product out? You guys are
01:27:06
flying runs obviously. Where are you
01:27:09
flying the runs currently? Yeah,
01:27:11
>> so uh two core places we fly. Uh one is
01:27:13
in Northern California in the Bay Area.
01:27:14
So we fly at a Selenus the airport there
01:27:16
which is about 90 minutes south of the
01:27:18
Bay Area and then also in the UAE. So
01:27:20
we've have a great partnership with Abu
01:27:21
Dhabi. Um Muba's been an investor. IHC
01:27:23
has been an investor.
01:27:24
>> Oh is an investor.
01:27:25
>> Yeah, they've been a wonderful partner.
01:27:28
>> Yeah, it's really opened up the uh um
01:27:30
the country.
01:27:31
>> Yeah, they're thinking in 50year cycles,
01:27:34
I think. How often do you fly this
01:27:36
thing? What's the distance that it
01:27:37
flies? And are there humans in it?
01:27:39
>> Yeah, so we fly most days piloted
01:27:40
flights. Um, and so you can fly them
01:27:42
without without pilots. It's actually
01:27:44
pretty easy to fly the planes, uh, you
01:27:45
know, autonomously or remotely or, you
01:27:47
know, automated is a better way to
01:27:49
really describe it. Um, but we fly them
01:27:50
piloted and the goal is to work towards
01:27:52
enough flight hours, enough uh,
01:27:54
confidence from us, from the regulators
01:27:56
that we can start, you know, operating
01:27:57
commercial service. We're getting there.
01:27:59
It takes time to do that. I mean,
01:28:01
>> how often do you fly in it?
01:28:02
>> Um, I haven't flown it. um just the test
01:28:04
pilots do
01:28:05
>> and why they won't let you. You're the
01:28:06
CEO.
01:28:07
>> No, you could. I mean, if you look at if
01:28:08
we're just sort of honest about flight
01:28:10
test programs, it's, you know, there's a
01:28:12
dangerous part when until you kind of
01:28:13
cross every tee here. And if you go back
01:28:15
in time, I mean, most of the big uh
01:28:18
aerospace companies have had crashes
01:28:19
with early platforms. So, you really try
01:28:21
to be careful with just the test pilots,
01:28:23
very serious testing until you get to
01:28:25
the point where you're close to the
01:28:26
certification side. Virgin Galactic,
01:28:28
another uh spack, they had a tragic
01:28:30
instance. And uh yeah, um aviation is
01:28:35
dangerous in the early days. When will
01:28:37
you be willing to get in one, I guess,
01:28:39
is the question we all want to answer
01:28:40
because we're not getting in until you
01:28:42
do it every day.
01:28:42
>> Later this year, that'd be my
01:28:44
>> Later this year.
01:28:44
>> Now, you married? You got kids?
01:28:46
>> Married with two kids.
01:28:47
>> Okay. So, you have the conversation with
01:28:48
the wife, I assume. Uh
01:28:50
>> probably tell her after.
01:28:51
>> What's her Oh, but what's her position?
01:28:52
When will she let you go in it? Um,
01:28:54
she's a huge believer and supporter of
01:28:56
everything I've done. Okay. So, uh, I
01:28:58
think she'd trust me when I think it's
01:28:59
time I would do it. She'd be okay.
01:29:01
>> Listen, continued success with it. It's
01:29:03
obviously going to work. It's obviously
01:29:04
going to change the world. What What do
01:29:06
we need to know as we wrap here about
01:29:08
safety and why these are much safer?
01:29:12
Because the idea of even having a pilot
01:29:14
seems uh, a little bit performative.
01:29:16
Like,
01:29:17
>> is it just to make the passengers feel a
01:29:20
little bit better? because these things
01:29:22
obviously are going to be flown by
01:29:24
computers much better than pilots
01:29:26
eventually and and eventually I mean
01:29:27
like by the end of this year.
01:29:29
>> Yeah. The the challenge with um autonomy
01:29:31
is regul regulation and infrastructure.
01:29:34
So even if you could do it there's no
01:29:36
rules in place to get that done and even
01:29:37
if the rules were in place how does a
01:29:39
system work because today air traffic
01:29:40
control is very very manual. If you
01:29:42
listen on ATC when you fly in somewhere
01:29:45
they're guiding you in turn 10 degrees
01:29:47
to the left drop a thousand feet an
01:29:48
hour.
01:29:48
>> That makes total sense. So the
01:29:49
infrastructure doesn't allow for
01:29:51
autonomy
01:29:52
>> yet
01:29:53
>> yet. Even though autonomy we would both
01:29:56
agree would be safer this year than a
01:29:58
pilot. Would you agree with that
01:29:59
statement
01:30:00
>> assuming you could work your way into
01:30:02
the air traffic control system?
01:30:03
Definitely the actual you know humans
01:30:05
make mistakes, computers make sure all
01:30:07
less mistakes and so maybe no mistakes.
01:30:10
And so it it certainly would that's the
01:30:11
dream that's the goal with the
01:30:13
advancements of LLMs. It actually allows
01:30:15
this interesting period of time where
01:30:16
you can now communicate with a machine
01:30:18
in a way you couldn't really before. And
01:30:20
so there's this probably middle ground
01:30:21
that happens where there's pilots
01:30:23
talking to machines, machines talking to
01:30:24
pilots, and so you can start to
01:30:26
implement uh different systems. And
01:30:28
that's where I think it goes first
01:30:29
actually.
01:30:29
>> Ah, that's fascinating. So when you're
01:30:31
clearing with the tower, it's just that
01:30:33
the vetol is talking to the tower.
01:30:36
>> Yeah. It's think about like um you know
01:30:38
instead of like looking at your map,
01:30:40
looking at the weather, you know,
01:30:41
understanding you know all the different
01:30:43
trackers you have to follow, the
01:30:44
machines can just do that and make the
01:30:45
decision and say to do this. So it
01:30:47
actually is easier for a machine to do
01:30:48
it than a human. And again, I would
01:30:50
encourage you listen to air traffic
01:30:52
control.
01:30:54
I'm obsessed with it. There's an
01:30:55
incredible channel on YouTube called
01:30:56
Blanco Lio. Have you ever heard it?
01:30:58
>> No.
01:30:58
>> So go on YouTube and Patreon and throw
01:31:00
this guy five or 10 bucks a month.
01:31:02
>> Yeah. He's he's based out of he's a
01:31:04
pilot, commercial pilot, and he's based
01:31:06
out of uh Lake Tahoe area. And all he
01:31:09
does is break down every aviation
01:31:11
incident.
01:31:12
>> And it's amazing, and I've become a
01:31:14
little bit obsessed with it. And uh he
01:31:16
just breaks it all down. It's almost
01:31:18
universally,
01:31:20
the pilot makes some series of
01:31:22
incredibly poor judgments. I'm talking
01:31:24
about in private aviation as opposed to
01:31:27
commercial aviation. And um yeah, it's
01:31:30
just great that there's somebody like
01:31:31
him out there. Now, how many rotors on
01:31:33
the thing?
01:31:33
>> Uh 12.
01:31:34
>> 12.
01:31:34
>> 12. Now, is that six with two in each or
01:31:37
is it like 12?
01:31:38
>> It's 12,
01:31:39
>> which means 12 motors.
01:31:40
>> Yeah, there's actually redundant motors.
01:31:42
There's actually 24, but we for
01:31:43
simplicity call it 12.
01:31:45
>> So, there's 12 redundant motors. 24. And
01:31:47
then how many blade? How many um are
01:31:49
they double blades? Like one on the
01:31:51
bottom, one on the top.
01:31:52
>> Um there's five blades on the ones on
01:31:54
the forward part of the wing and four
01:31:55
blades on the ones on the back.
01:31:56
>> Why?
01:31:57
>> There's lots of difference. Why is there
01:31:58
a difference?
01:31:58
>> One are used just for um the uh lifting
01:32:01
portion. So the ones in the back and
01:32:03
then they stop and then the ones in the
01:32:05
front are used for both lifting and the
01:32:06
cruise. So they have different uh
01:32:08
configurations.
01:32:09
>> What scenario do you have the most
01:32:12
concern about and then work on the most?
01:32:15
Because with 12 of these, anybody who's
01:32:17
flown,
01:32:18
>> you know, just a toy drone, if you come
01:32:19
up to it and you push it, you hit it, it
01:32:22
just immediately just
01:32:24
>> gets back. Uh now with 12 of these and
01:32:26
24 and your technology I'm sure it's
01:32:29
even smoother and better than that. So
01:32:32
what do you worry about like some
01:32:33
catastrophic electronic failure? Are are
01:32:36
the electronic systems redundant? The
01:32:38
battery failure?
01:32:39
>> Everything is redundant. Like you have
01:32:40
to
01:32:41
>> what do you worry about?
01:32:42
>> Um from a safety perspective today I
01:32:44
would say the biggest thing is the
01:32:45
pilots. That's probably
01:32:47
>> take the pilots out. Now what are we
01:32:48
worried about?
01:32:49
>> Um you're always work worried about just
01:32:50
different cascading failures.
01:32:52
>> Got it. So, you know, there was an
01:32:54
incident in the industry where one of
01:32:56
the companies had a um a propeller blade
01:32:58
dislodge and it cascaded their aircraft.
01:33:00
You don't really know that unless it
01:33:02
actually happens.
01:33:02
>> The blade comes off, hits the other
01:33:04
blades,
01:33:05
>> and then the whole thing cascades. So,
01:33:06
you don't really know if that's going to
01:33:08
happen until it happens. You have the
01:33:09
math behind it that you could try to
01:33:11
predict, but when scenarios happen, you
01:33:13
know, so there's, you know, you try to
01:33:14
protect against cascading.
01:33:16
>> How many of these 12 could go out and
01:33:18
that could safely land? Um, well, one of
01:33:20
the beauties is we're also building it
01:33:22
to u be able to take off land
01:33:23
conventionally and so you can lose a
01:33:25
lot. We have a big 50ft wing. You can
01:33:27
glide. The glide ratio is huge. You can
01:33:28
get up to max 10 miles of glide. So, you
01:33:31
can do a lot of things here. That's the
01:33:33
only way to really certify at the
01:33:34
standards the FA wants you to do it. So,
01:33:36
it gives you a pretty big uh
01:33:38
>> you have those nice wide wings you can
01:33:39
glide in.
01:33:40
>> Yeah.
01:33:40
>> What height? What's what's the ceiling
01:33:42
on these? Now,
01:33:43
>> they can go up to 11,000 ft. There's no
01:33:45
real reason to. Um, it's not
01:33:46
pressurized. Do you really want to fly
01:33:48
helicopter range 500 to 2,000 ft? And
01:33:50
>> what do you take from the helicopter
01:33:53
industry away from, you know, when they
01:33:56
have accidents, what happens? It seems
01:33:58
like those pilots particularly are
01:34:02
really skilled,
01:34:03
>> but also maybe on the margins, maybe I'm
01:34:07
reading into this, cowboys a little bit
01:34:10
eccentric. Yeah.
01:34:11
>> Yeah. I mean, it depends. I mean, every
01:34:13
scenario is is obviously like pretty
01:34:15
different. The beauty behind these
01:34:17
aircrafts is the redundancy allows you
01:34:18
to just have a um um a capability to
01:34:22
certify with near zero single points of
01:34:25
failure or zero single points of failure
01:34:27
where a helicopter doesn't have that.
01:34:29
So, you know, if you think about one big
01:34:30
rotor, there's a lot of parts that go
01:34:31
into making that one big rotor work and
01:34:33
if that one part fails, you have a you
01:34:35
have a catastrophic event.
01:34:37
>> So, that can happen. They're mechanical
01:34:39
complex machines. Yeah. And so, you
01:34:41
know, the with the EV tall side, you
01:34:43
reduce that uh complexity By what if you
01:34:46
were to say it's x times
01:34:49
more safer without us like you know
01:34:52
holding you to it if you were to ask the
01:34:55
10 engineers working across the 10
01:34:58
companies in your field not you but what
01:35:00
do you guess those 10 engineers would
01:35:01
say it's the currently this times more
01:35:04
safer than helicopters
01:35:06
>> well that will be a standard that the
01:35:07
FAA um you know makes us certify to so
01:35:10
the question will be what's the ultimate
01:35:11
standard so 10 the minus 7 10 the - 8 10
01:35:14
- One at a billion, one at 100 million.
01:35:16
>> Yeah, but you think it's twi What would
01:35:18
your
01:35:18
>> It would be an order of magnitude safer.
01:35:20
>> So, three, four, five times safer is a
01:35:22
pretty
01:35:22
>> Yeah.
01:35:23
>> reasonable goal. 10 times a reasonable
01:35:25
goal. Why are you here at Davos?
01:35:27
>> Um,
01:35:27
>> you virtue signaling about being all
01:35:29
electric? What's going on? What's
01:35:31
>> uh selling air aircraft? That's
01:35:32
>> you're here to do business.
01:35:33
>> Yeah.
01:35:33
>> Who are you selling to? Just nation
01:35:35
states.
01:35:36
>> Yeah. So, geographically, obviously,
01:35:37
easier to sell stuff in the US or kind
01:35:39
of close to the US. here you get to meet
01:35:41
uh different companies and countries. Um
01:35:44
the Middle East, GCC has been, you know,
01:35:46
very active. Um Africa's been very
01:35:48
active. Asia has been very active. So
01:35:50
there's a lot of great folks to go see
01:35:51
where you can kind of line them all up.
01:35:53
So we'll announce, you know, deals, you
01:35:55
know, here. We'll, you know, sign things
01:35:57
uh here that will ultimately get
01:35:58
announced. So it actually is very
01:36:00
beneficial from a business standpoint to
01:36:02
come here. And most of the companies
01:36:04
here are AI. So there's a lot of AI
01:36:05
talk. We're a non like AI predominant
01:36:08
company. There's a lot of AI in what we
01:36:09
do, but we don't sell AI and so we sell
01:36:11
infrastructure and it's the perfect
01:36:13
place to meet the ministers of
01:36:14
transportation, the superic yeah the
01:36:17
heads of state. So there's lots of
01:36:18
opportunities to, you know, kind of
01:36:20
bring Western tech to this.
01:36:21
>> I think they see having vetos as a point
01:36:25
of pride for their country. Yeah. Some
01:36:26
absolutely countries like this is I
01:36:28
don't want to say vanity project, but is
01:36:29
something they can point to and say,
01:36:31
"Look, we got here first."
01:36:32
>> Yeah. I could see the UAE, I could see
01:36:34
Saudi, I could see Qatar,
01:36:36
>> absolutely
01:36:37
>> Kuwait all feeling that way, like, oh,
01:36:38
we have this.
01:36:39
>> Absolutely. There is another element
01:36:41
where, you know, Davos is sort of a
01:36:43
non-defenseoriented. They don't like you
01:36:44
to talk about defense here. We we do
01:36:46
have a really strong partnership with
01:36:48
Andrew. And so, we've been building the
01:36:50
new um kind of autonomous attitudable
01:36:52
aircrafts. We talked about uh one of the
01:36:54
second word you autonomy.
01:36:55
>> A tritable they call it. So,
01:36:56
>> a traitable. What does it mean?
01:36:57
>> It's not a 20-year plane. It's not
01:36:58
expendable like a one time missile one
01:37:00
way type of product. They call it like
01:37:02
space in between. They call it tritable.
01:37:03
>> If you lost it, it wouldn't be a big
01:37:04
deal.
01:37:05
>> Yeah. So you the goal is So the one of
01:37:07
the programs we've talked about is is
01:37:08
one is called the project nyx. It is an
01:37:10
autonomous collaborative uh attack
01:37:12
helicopter uh drone. So think like um
01:37:15
sort of like a um you know an Apache
01:37:17
type of platform. So they'll be a big
01:37:19
manned asset. It'll have a bunch of
01:37:20
drones that fly with it. So that's a
01:37:22
program we're working on with Androl. We
01:37:24
build the core aircrafts and Androl
01:37:26
missionizes it. So think sensors or
01:37:28
munitions, those kind of things. but it
01:37:29
would fly with a bunch of little drones
01:37:31
around it to protect it.
01:37:33
>> Um, we are effectively the they're not
01:37:35
little, but we're it's you know these
01:37:36
are huge aircraft. We It's almost like
01:37:38
think about it this way. If you have an
01:37:40
Apache, which is a 50 to$70 million
01:37:42
asset and it has a person in it, you're
01:37:44
you don't want to risk it for lots of
01:37:46
reasons. One, there's a person. Two,
01:37:47
it's super expensive. Three, very hard
01:37:48
to replace.
01:37:49
>> If you're not willing to risk it, it's
01:37:50
not that much of a deterrent.
01:37:51
>> And so when you do risk it, you want to
01:37:53
be certain you can have things come
01:37:55
back. But what if I could make an
01:37:57
aircraft that does the same thing, the
01:37:58
same fighting power, maybe even more
01:37:59
fighting power at 90% lower cost with no
01:38:02
with no pilot?
01:38:04
>> Wow. That's key because these pilots are
01:38:05
worth $25 million each. They literally
01:38:07
have a friend who was in special forces
01:38:09
and he told me that they put a number on
01:38:12
each of them, how much they invested and
01:38:14
the replacement cost of a Navy Seal of a
01:38:17
he wasn't in the Navy Seals, but one of
01:38:18
these kind of type groups. You could
01:38:19
actually know the replacement cost of a
01:38:21
person. Uh and they called them assets.
01:38:24
you know, these top elite folks. So, you
01:38:27
have no problem working in defense.
01:38:28
That's awesome. Yeah.
01:38:29
>> No, I'm the country.
01:38:31
>> I'm a patriot. Um I'm a super believer
01:38:33
in what the US is doing. Um and they've
01:38:35
been, you know, as a country extremely
01:38:38
helpful um to new industries like Archer
01:38:40
and Ebie Talls. And so,
01:38:41
>> maybe more so than the last
01:38:43
administration,
01:38:44
>> a lot more so. Just the quick example on
01:38:45
that was I could not get a meeting with
01:38:48
the former Secretary of Transportation.
01:38:50
>> Couldn't get a meeting.
01:38:50
>> Wouldn't take a meeting. And I know he's
01:38:51
busy.
01:38:52
>> Wait, wait. a publicly traded veto
01:38:54
company who's meeting with the Gulf
01:38:57
monarchies being courted.
01:38:59
>> Zero meetings.
01:39:00
>> And you requested meetings.
01:39:01
>> Requested meetings.
01:39:02
>> How many times?
01:39:03
>> Multiple times.
01:39:04
>> And they literally, this is Brian
01:39:05
Armstrong story. He wanted to meet with
01:39:06
the SEC. They're like, "Yeah, no, we're
01:39:08
good."
01:39:08
>> Uh, Secretary Duffy comes in and all of
01:39:10
a sudden, like monthly. It was, it was,
01:39:13
we want to make sure we can
01:39:14
re-industrialize America. This is
01:39:16
important. Um, aviation leading the
01:39:18
world is important and modernizing air
01:39:20
traffic is important. And if you can
01:39:21
help in all all that, we want to hear
01:39:23
from you. What what can we do to help
01:39:25
you? And that's what was resulted, by
01:39:27
the way, in the executive order that
01:39:28
came out. And so that helped the
01:39:29
industry because I I showed them a path
01:39:31
because we won the exclusive uh for the
01:39:34
LA28 Olympics to fly air taxis around uh
01:39:36
you know, that city during the game. And
01:39:38
so we'll sort of control the air during
01:39:39
that. And I said, I need a path to make
01:39:41
sure I can do that. This will be a huge
01:39:43
opportunity.
01:39:44
>> I think people have not taken the
01:39:46
Democratic party has not taken this to
01:39:49
heart yet. It's not about being
01:39:53
subservient to the technology industry
01:39:55
or capitalism or corporates. It's about
01:39:58
winning the future. And part of winning
01:40:02
together for American companies is at
01:40:05
least meeting with them and hearing the
01:40:07
vision. Like how does that hurt the
01:40:09
previous secretary of transportation to
01:40:11
meet with the veto companies? How did it
01:40:13
hurt the SEC to meet with Brian
01:40:16
Armstrong or any number of crypto
01:40:18
companies? It was they were in contempt
01:40:21
it seems in hindsight of the entire
01:40:25
technology and business industry.
01:40:26
>> Yeah. I mean in the end if this works
01:40:29
imagine the jobs we will create. Imagine
01:40:31
the you know GDP contribution we will
01:40:33
create. I mean the the FA administrator
01:40:35
you know kind of publicly keeps saying
01:40:37
11% of GDP touches aviation. And so it's
01:40:41
capped because of air traffic. We have
01:40:43
to upgrade that system.
01:40:44
>> I'm red pulling pilling myself as we
01:40:46
speak here. But it's like if you're if
01:40:48
you believe that then you would think
01:40:49
you want to unlock that and it will help
01:40:51
everybody. Like literally no one loses.
01:40:53
So you would think you'd want to do
01:40:54
that.
01:40:54
>> It was almost like they had
01:40:57
>> like an axe to grind with capitalists
01:41:00
for some crazy reason. And the
01:41:02
opportunity to embrace the industry was
01:41:04
always there for them. Yeah.
01:41:05
>> Whether it was incompetence or
01:41:06
intentionality, the result is the same.
01:41:08
They set back the industry years by not
01:41:11
engaging. Greenland, how much should we
01:41:14
pay? What do you think? What do you
01:41:15
think it takes? I will tell you,
01:41:16
>> jump into it and make yourself an
01:41:17
interesting guest. We should take it,
01:41:19
right? We should just take it or we buy
01:41:20
it.
01:41:21
>> I saw something that said, um, there was
01:41:23
an offer kind of the buzz here.
01:41:25
>> That was more than the GDP of Denmark.
01:41:27
And so, uh,
01:41:28
>> the offer was big. I mean, there's
01:41:30
55,000 people. Let's make a deal. How
01:41:33
much do you all want? I mean,
01:41:35
>> well, the funny thing of my meetings
01:41:36
here, so I come to sell, you know,
01:41:38
aircraft. That's what we come to do. And
01:41:40
I will get asked that question in nearly
01:41:42
every meeting. And I I mean literally
01:41:44
back in Silicon Valley like no one's I
01:41:47
mean yes we've heard it on the news of
01:41:48
course yes of course it's important but
01:41:49
people aren't talking about it on a
01:41:51
every hour basis I come here at every
01:41:53
meeting there's people commenting on it
01:41:56
session here
01:41:57
>> and Trump negotiates by tweet or by
01:41:59
truth social whatever they call that
01:42:02
platform uh by truth by post say what
01:42:06
you will this has been on the agenda for
01:42:08
America for a century or two and it's a
01:42:11
critical deal. If Trump gets in,
01:42:13
President Trump gets incredible
01:42:15
enjoyment out of negotiating a deal and
01:42:17
solving a long-term problem for America,
01:42:19
I say let him let him cook.
01:42:20
>> Yeah,
01:42:20
>> let him cook.
01:42:21
>> I agree.
01:42:22
>> Greenland, we're here. 51st State. Let's
01:42:24
do it. All right. Listen, continued
01:42:25
success and thanks for coming on the pod
01:42:27
again. We're very lucky to have Chase
01:42:28
Lock Miller with us. He's the CEO and
01:42:30
co-founder of Cruso Cloud. C R U SEO E,
01:42:34
not Kuso, Cruso Cloud.
01:42:36
>> You got it. You got it.
01:42:37
>> Which is or was the first NeoCloud
01:42:39
really. you were kind of
01:42:41
>> we were part of an early contingent of
01:42:42
NeoClouds, you know, between us and
01:42:44
Coreweave and uh yeah, Lambda.
01:42:47
>> How did did that occur? Because you had
01:42:49
anticipated buying a bunch of H100s
01:42:52
before everybody else and you had the
01:42:53
inventory. How did that start that you
01:42:55
got such a good lead?
01:42:56
>> Well, so we had started well before
01:42:58
Hopper uh came out. you know we were uh
01:43:01
you know Cruso is a business that's
01:43:02
always taken this very energy first
01:43:04
approach to developing computing
01:43:06
infrastructure um and really changing uh
01:43:09
you know the the the the the motion from
01:43:12
uh trying to find trying to collocate uh
01:43:14
compute in these in these network hubs
01:43:17
and and really focusing on where we can
01:43:18
access abundant uh energy. So um you
01:43:22
know we uh uh you know we're
01:43:24
experimenting a lot with you know the
01:43:25
amper generation which preceded hopper
01:43:27
so a lot of A100s uh we built out this
01:43:30
you know high performance cloud platform
01:43:32
that was meant to enable AI innovators
01:43:34
to you know do incredible work uh you
01:43:36
know we launched uh before chat GPT came
01:43:40
out and so uh you know sometimes you're
01:43:41
in the right place at the right time and
01:43:43
>> yeah timing was good
01:43:44
>> yeah timing worked uh
01:43:45
>> and
01:43:47
your biggest customer by far is Oracle
01:43:50
and OpenAI.
01:43:52
>> Correct. So, uh, you know, we we we're a
01:43:54
vertically integrated business, which
01:43:56
means we're focused on not just, uh, the
01:43:58
compute layer, but also the energy
01:44:00
development, the data center
01:44:01
development, uh, as well as the, you
01:44:03
know, application layer where we're, you
01:44:05
know, running things like our managed
01:44:06
inference service. And uh you know as
01:44:08
this boom really took off uh you know
01:44:11
the scarcity of data centers uh became
01:44:13
very apparent and our ability to build
01:44:16
those largecale AI data centers very
01:44:18
quickly uh became a very in demand uh
01:44:21
you know skill set. So uh Lee Yeah.
01:44:23
>> Hey guys in the back if you're talking
01:44:25
could you just take it outside because
01:44:26
it's going to get picked up on the pot.
01:44:28
Appreciate it. Three two. Uh so why West
01:44:32
Texas? Is it because the politicians
01:44:35
there and are pretty permissive in terms
01:44:38
of giving permits and you can build
01:44:39
quickly like Elon experienced with his
01:44:42
uh big uh factory in Austin or is it
01:44:45
because of energy?
01:44:46
>> Yeah, it was it was it was really an
01:44:48
energy-driven decision. So uh you know
01:44:50
in in Abalene, Texas, we had uh you know
01:44:52
it's an area where a lot of actual
01:44:54
renewables had been built out uh on the
01:44:56
back of production tax credits. Um, so
01:44:58
there was an abundant amount of wind and
01:44:59
solar uh that was there that actually
01:45:01
had uh issues with transmission. Um, so
01:45:04
power prices were actually frequently
01:45:05
negative. There were renewable energy
01:45:07
producers that were having to curtail
01:45:08
that could be producing power but
01:45:10
actually were shutting down because
01:45:11
there was no marginal demand. Um, and
01:45:14
>> so the grid didn't need their energy.
01:45:17
>> Exactly.
01:45:17
>> That's wild to think about. It's also
01:45:19
wild to think about that Texas has the
01:45:21
largest solar base of any uh c any state
01:45:25
in the union. Yeah,
01:45:26
>> absolutely. Um, and you know, we we went
01:45:29
there and we said, "Man, you guys have
01:45:30
too much energy. Hey buddy, I gotta do I
01:45:32
have a do I
01:45:33
>> I got an idea
01:45:34
>> demand for you." Um, and so we uh you
01:45:37
know, we have a 1.2 gawatt substation
01:45:39
there. Uh, we've also built a 350
01:45:41
megawatt gas plant on site um to
01:45:44
energize one of the largest clusters of
01:45:46
GPUs in the world.
01:45:47
>> So, was there gas under the actual data
01:45:50
center or they're shipping?
01:45:51
>> No, no, no. We had access to a pipeline
01:45:53
that feeds into uh you know 10 uh gas
01:45:56
turbines that are on site there.
01:45:57
>> Amazing. And the gas turbines those were
01:45:59
a blocker for a while too, huh?
01:46:01
>> Uh they still are. I mean you know gas
01:46:03
turbines are are a massive supply chain
01:46:04
constraint um as people look to energize
01:46:07
compute infrastructure. I think a lot of
01:46:08
people we were really one of the first
01:46:10
groups to be focused on uh you know
01:46:12
natural gas powered data centers doing
01:46:14
things behind the meter off-rid uh and I
01:46:17
think a lot of people have sort of
01:46:18
followed this pathway uh which has
01:46:20
created a lot of supply chain challenges
01:46:22
uh with some of the major producers
01:46:24
folks like G Vernova you know
01:46:26
Caterpillar has a company called Solar
01:46:28
that we work with very closely uh you
01:46:30
know Seammens uh Mitsubishi uh and we
01:46:33
actually recently did something with uh
01:46:35
an incredible company Boom Supersonic
01:46:37
Yes. Boom. Supersonic was making the
01:46:39
Concord replacement Blake.
01:46:41
>> Correct.
01:46:43
>> And uh they're making their own engines
01:46:45
that go pretty fast. Uh and so what was
01:46:48
the idea there?
01:46:49
>> Yeah. So, you know, they had
01:46:50
re-engineered this this turbine for
01:46:52
supersonic jet travel. And uh you know,
01:46:54
we Colleen, my co-founder and I were
01:46:56
talking to Blake and said, "Hey, you
01:46:58
know, could we use that to generate
01:46:59
power instead of you know, transport
01:47:01
people over the ocean at supersonic
01:47:02
speeds?" And uh you know now we're we're
01:47:04
we're you know their first large
01:47:06
purchase order for $1.2 billion of uh
01:47:09
gas turbines to to to power AI critical
01:47:12
AI infrastructure.
01:47:13
>> It's wild to think about the the gas
01:47:15
turbines and jet engines are not super
01:47:19
dissimilar.
01:47:20
>> No, I mean I think this is the full
01:47:22
playbook of you know GE historically
01:47:24
right. I mean uh the reason GE Vernova
01:47:27
exists uh is you know their leadership
01:47:29
in terms of you know uh uh air
01:47:31
transportation as well as power
01:47:32
generation.
01:47:33
>> Yeah. And I wonder if it's really
01:47:36
interesting about that opportunistic
01:47:37
thing for Blake to do from boom
01:47:39
supersonic is that now that will allow
01:47:42
him uh to fund his Concord replacement.
01:47:46
Yeah,
01:47:46
>> absolutely. Uh you know power is a great
01:47:48
business and you know we think he can
01:47:50
make a lot of money as uh you know the
01:47:52
scaling up of AI infrastructure occurs.
01:47:54
Uh and and hopefully, you know, he's
01:47:56
able to build those incredible
01:47:57
supersonic jets that uh get us to Tokyo
01:48:00
much faster.
01:48:01
>> And the Stargate project,
01:48:03
>> Yep.
01:48:04
>> is a $300 billion project. What's the
01:48:08
number? Because there was big
01:48:10
announcement at the White House and
01:48:11
there's been a little bit of uh you
01:48:14
know, wink wink like these are numbers
01:48:16
were kind of estimates. What's the
01:48:19
realistic footprint of this? Um, so you
01:48:22
know, I I think Stargate has been a uh a
01:48:25
term that's been used to describe a lot
01:48:28
of different things at this point. Um,
01:48:30
you know, initially our our our campus
01:48:32
was called Stargate and then, you know,
01:48:34
Stargate was in then a company for a
01:48:36
while and then I think OpenAI sort of
01:48:37
described it as all of their spend on
01:48:40
compute is just sort of broadly labeled
01:48:41
as Stargate. Um so uh I think the number
01:48:44
is 500 billion and this incorporates you
01:48:47
know chips, data centers, energy uh to
01:48:50
ultimately power this intelligent
01:48:51
infrastructure that's running and
01:48:53
scaling both chatbt and all their other
01:48:56
core services.
01:48:57
>> One of uh the blockers in addition to
01:48:59
the turbines has been electricians
01:49:02
>> and construction workers.
01:49:04
>> Yes.
01:49:04
>> My understanding is you're paying two to
01:49:06
three times what they were getting paid
01:49:09
before the data center.
01:49:11
Um, no comment on exactly what we're
01:49:13
paying the electricians, but they're
01:49:14
very well compensated.
01:49:15
>> Am I in the right zone that their
01:49:18
salaries in the industry have doubled or
01:49:20
tripled?
01:49:20
>> Uh, look, I think it's an incredibly
01:49:22
exciting career path for for for anybody
01:49:25
uh looking to do work with their hands
01:49:27
and and get well very
01:49:28
>> hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.
01:49:30
>> Yes. Uh so, you know,
01:49:32
>> I mean, let's think about that for a
01:49:33
second. No college degree.
01:49:36
>> Yeah.
01:49:36
>> You just have to be an apprentice as an
01:49:38
electrician and you can make hundreds of
01:49:39
thousands of dollars a year. And you
01:49:40
need how many? Thousands? Hundreds?
01:49:43
>> Correct. So, we uh
01:49:44
>> which one? Thousands or hundreds?
01:49:46
>> Thousands. So, I I'll get into it in a
01:49:48
second. So, um I'll give you an example.
01:49:50
So, in Abalene today, we have 8,000
01:49:52
people on site every day. They're
01:49:53
working day and night to bring this
01:49:55
facility online as fast as possible so
01:49:57
we can energize this intell.
01:49:59
>> And that's 3 hours west of Dallas.
01:50:01
>> Correct. So, it's in West Texas. Um you
01:50:04
know, Abalene is a town of 120,000
01:50:06
people. So, you know, when you're hiring
01:50:08
8,000 people to work in that town, you
01:50:10
can't source everybody locally. So,
01:50:11
we've actually had to bring in a lot of
01:50:13
labor from all states.
01:50:15
>> And housing, I would assume.
01:50:16
>> Yeah, housing. You know, housing, you
01:50:18
know, the market's actually fairly
01:50:19
efficient. There's a lot of people um
01:50:21
that won't be long-term permanent
01:50:22
workers there um that are actually, you
01:50:24
know, they bring mobile homes, you know,
01:50:26
they collect a stipend. Uh it's it's
01:50:28
it's kind of a very, you know, uh
01:50:30
efficient process in that regard. Um but
01:50:33
uh you know long-term we're going to
01:50:34
have about 2,000 uh permanent workers uh
01:50:37
at the campus. So there's both you know
01:50:39
short-term job you know spike and boom
01:50:41
in terms of demand for the construction
01:50:43
and installation process but there's
01:50:45
also great long-term permanent jobs to
01:50:47
operate the facility. You know we have a
01:50:48
power plant there. There's a lot of
01:50:49
mechanics that are going to be operating
01:50:51
this facility. Um but this is just one
01:50:53
campus. Um we have another campus uh in
01:50:56
Armstrong County, Texas that you know
01:50:57
has close to 3,000 people on site every
01:50:59
day. We have another uh project in
01:51:01
outside Cheyenne, Wyoming that we've
01:51:03
announced we're planning to build a 10
01:51:04
gigawatt campus.
01:51:05
>> Why Wyoming?
01:51:06
>> Um Wyoming is a state that you know is
01:51:09
very rich in natural resources and
01:51:10
energy. Um and you know there's been
01:51:13
really favorable uh you know u public
01:51:16
private partnerships in terms of making
01:51:18
this project happen. Uh you know there's
01:51:20
a tremendous amount of uh gas there to
01:51:22
sort of support uh what we're doing. And
01:51:25
uh one of the very cool things that
01:51:26
we're focused on is actually trying to
01:51:28
uh bend the arc of energy production
01:51:30
towards sustainable resources. So even
01:51:31
with the gas uh Wyoming is a place where
01:51:34
you actually have uh primacy on what's
01:51:37
called class 6 wells. They're they're
01:51:38
postcombustion carbon capture and
01:51:40
sequestration disposal wells where you
01:51:42
can actually take the carbon that that
01:51:44
comes out of you know the the the
01:51:46
combustion process of uh a natural gas
01:51:49
turbine and you can pump it underground
01:51:51
and permanently sequester it. Ah,
01:51:52
>> and there's actually a incentive there
01:51:54
called 45Q where you get paid by the
01:51:56
government to do this and it doesn't
01:51:58
quite cover the cost of doing it. But
01:52:00
for customers that care about sort of
01:52:03
the impact and the sustainability of the
01:52:05
campus and the
01:52:05
>> they're not putting the carbon into the
01:52:07
atmosphere.
01:52:07
>> Exactly.
01:52:08
>> Putting it underground,
01:52:09
>> they can produce power from gas in a
01:52:11
carbon-f free way, which is a really
01:52:12
exciting, you know, value proposition.
01:52:13
We can
01:52:14
>> How are batteries?
01:52:16
I I think we saw Elon bought a and is
01:52:19
building um he's got his own lithium
01:52:22
refinery and he's building obviously his
01:52:25
own batteries and uh they're one of the
01:52:27
larger battery manufacturers. How do
01:52:29
batteries play into all this currently?
01:52:32
>> Um there's a bunch of different ways
01:52:33
batteries play into it. I think uh you
01:52:35
know you sort of need batteries in these
01:52:38
low voltage UPS systems that sort of uh
01:52:41
you know uh help operate the electrical
01:52:43
system of of the plants uh or
01:52:45
>> to normalize and base load or
01:52:48
>> yes um actually one of the issues that
01:52:50
we're seeing is you know when you think
01:52:52
about these large scale AI factories uh
01:52:56
when you're deploying giant clusters of
01:52:58
GPUs uh you know the entire data center
01:53:00
is acting as a single computer it's
01:53:03
running one single workload. workload
01:53:04
that's training some breakthrough
01:53:06
foundational model. Uh, and what that
01:53:08
results in is actually massive load
01:53:10
fluctuations in the actual power draw
01:53:12
because what they're doing is the chips
01:53:13
are basically running compute cycles and
01:53:15
then publishing the data over the
01:53:17
network to all the other, you know, GPUs
01:53:19
so they can sort of be in sync with one
01:53:21
another. This causes this massive
01:53:22
fluctuation and sort of overall power
01:53:24
draw. Well, utilities hate that. It's
01:53:27
terrible for the turbines. So, you
01:53:28
really need a way of actually
01:53:29
normalizing that power draw. Exactly.
01:53:32
So, we've actually been able to solve
01:53:34
that with a uh a 1h hour battery. Um
01:53:36
that's actually a medium voltage battery
01:53:38
energy storage system. That's something
01:53:40
that we've deployed. Um you know,
01:53:42
there's a lot of other use cases for
01:53:43
batteries. I'll give you another
01:53:44
example. We're actually working with uh
01:53:46
Elon's former co-founder uh and partner
01:53:49
at Tesla, JB Strobble.
01:53:50
>> Oh, he's doing the recycling of them.
01:53:52
>> Correct. So, he has a business called
01:53:53
Redwood Materials um that's uh focused
01:53:56
on recycling of batteries. and he has
01:53:59
this massive supply of end of life EV
01:54:01
batteries, batteries coming out of
01:54:03
digital cameras, all these like, you
01:54:05
know, this this whole collection of of
01:54:06
batteries that are sort of at the end of
01:54:08
their life. And so, as a demonstration
01:54:10
to show people what we could do in terms
01:54:12
of, you know, cost competition as well
01:54:14
as, you know, deployment, uh, we
01:54:16
actually deployed a fully offgrid solar
01:54:18
plus battery energy storage system that
01:54:21
powers an AI data center 24 hours around
01:54:23
the clock with a power price that's
01:54:25
lower than the power price in Northern
01:54:27
Virginia. Um, and we're able to do that
01:54:29
because you're able you're basically
01:54:31
taking these batteries that, you know,
01:54:34
uh, were were in an electric vehicle and
01:54:36
maybe the range was 300 miles and now
01:54:38
it's 250 mi.
01:54:40
>> Uh, so the, you know, the owner trades
01:54:41
it in and it's like, okay, this car is
01:54:43
done, right? But there's still a lot of
01:54:45
juice left in those batteries. There's a
01:54:46
lot of life in those batteries. So,
01:54:48
we're able to really make use of them in
01:54:50
a second life uh, to power these AI data
01:54:52
centers. you're under massive pressure
01:54:55
to deliver these data centers. Correct.
01:54:58
>> Um yeah, yeah, you could say that. Yeah.
01:55:00
>> Compared to where you were like two or
01:55:02
three years ago, maybe let's say three
01:55:04
or four years ago, you were knocking on
01:55:05
doors saying, "Hey, do you need a data
01:55:07
center?" Now your door is being knocked
01:55:08
down.
01:55:09
>> Um I think there's just I think it just
01:55:12
really speaks to, you know, the demand
01:55:13
for compute. I think people are
01:55:16
constantly having this conversation of
01:55:17
like, are we in an AI bubble?
01:55:19
uh you know I think there's just an
01:55:21
incredible you know there there's no
01:55:22
nobody has enough compute none of the
01:55:25
you know leading labs none of the
01:55:26
leading application companies can get
01:55:28
their hands on enough compute and that's
01:55:29
just driving an incredible amount of
01:55:31
urgency to deliver infrastructure
01:55:33
>> both the chips and the data center
01:55:35
>> so even this year going into 2026 you're
01:55:38
seeing the same amount of inbound hey we
01:55:41
need more we need more we need more what
01:55:42
do you got or was last year like people
01:55:45
put in their big orders for the next
01:55:46
couple years
01:55:47
>> um no we're seeing seeing things
01:55:50
accelerate. Um there there
01:55:52
>> who are the new customers because
01:55:53
obviously Elon, Sam Alman, I'm sure AWS,
01:55:58
I'm sure. Well, I think Google does
01:56:00
their own. Yeah.
01:56:01
>> Um Google I think uh well I don't want
01:56:06
to speak for directly.
01:56:08
>> This is allin. If you want to be on
01:56:10
allin, you got to speak candid. Just
01:56:11
tell us what you heard at the cockail
01:56:13
party. Google does does a mix of you
01:56:16
know self-perform development as well as
01:56:17
uh sort of outsourcing.
01:56:19
>> So they do do some outsourcing. Yeah.
01:56:20
>> Correct. Um but you know I I think all
01:56:23
of the leading labs were seeing a
01:56:24
tremendous amount of demand. Uh so you
01:56:26
know anthropic open AAI you know Google
01:56:29
uh you know
01:56:30
>> Elon builds his own Elon builds his own.
01:56:32
Um
01:56:32
>> what what what was your take when you
01:56:34
saw him build Colossus under that short
01:56:36
time frame? Like your team must be like
01:56:38
that's just not possible and then he did
01:56:40
it.
01:56:41
>> Uh no I don't think we thought that at
01:56:43
Well, I think I was like really, you
01:56:44
know, rooting for him.
01:56:45
>> No, but did did he do my understanding
01:56:48
is he did it in half the time anybody
01:56:50
else had ever done something like that.
01:56:52
>> Um it it it I mean it depends on how you
01:56:55
sort of measure these things. I think
01:56:56
Colossus was a that Colossus one was
01:56:59
sort of this unique case where he had
01:57:00
this large scale industrial building. He
01:57:02
had power to the building. Uh, and
01:57:04
really what he was doing was what I
01:57:06
would call like the tenant fit out,
01:57:07
which is basically the in the data hall
01:57:09
buildout of the cooling distribution
01:57:11
units, the RPPs, the electrical systems,
01:57:14
the hot aisle containment systems that
01:57:15
really and then you sort of, you know,
01:57:17
roll racks of GPUs into these, right?
01:57:19
>> Uh, so they were able to execute on that
01:57:20
incredibly fast and you know,
01:57:22
>> yeah, Jensen said he'd never seen
01:57:23
anything like it. He seemed to think it
01:57:25
was
01:57:26
>> like a a unique thing that occurred in
01:57:29
your industry.
01:57:30
>> Yeah. Yeah, I mean Elon's the goat of,
01:57:32
you know, a modern industrialist. So,
01:57:34
you know,
01:57:35
>> so
01:57:35
>> hat tip to, you know, him.
01:57:37
>> You as running not competitive to him,
01:57:40
but building the same things. You you
01:57:42
have to look at that and study it a bit.
01:57:43
How did he get it done so fast? What do
01:57:45
you think? How do you think he was able
01:57:46
to do it so fast? Um I I think Elon does
01:57:49
an incredible job of you know breaking
01:57:51
down uh you know a a large industrial
01:57:54
process into um a lot of subprocesses
01:57:58
and understanding constraints and really
01:58:00
taking a first principled approach of
01:58:02
you know how do I build things as
01:58:03
quickly as possible? How do I
01:58:04
parallelize things as quickly as
01:58:06
possible?
01:58:06
>> Got it.
01:58:06
>> Um and
01:58:07
>> has that informed some of your thinking?
01:58:08
Yeah.
01:58:09
>> Oh absolutely. I mean you know he's been
01:58:10
an inspiration from you know building
01:58:12
the Gigafactory to everything he's done
01:58:13
at you know uh SpaceX and uh Starbase.
01:58:17
You know, it's all all incredibly
01:58:18
inspiring and you know, we try to
01:58:20
channel that same sense of incredible
01:58:21
urgency. Uh, you know, paralyzing a lot
01:58:24
of the work. Uh, you know, we we we
01:58:26
self-perform a lot of, you know,
01:58:28
procurement functions and engineering
01:58:30
functions. Uh, and then, you know, work
01:58:32
with a, uh, a lot of, you know, very
01:58:35
ambitious folks on the on the
01:58:36
construction side. Uh, there's actually
01:58:38
a bunch of folks that worked on the
01:58:40
Tesla Gigafactory, uh, in your new
01:58:42
hometown in Austin. Yeah. um that are
01:58:44
working on uh our campus in in Abalene,
01:58:46
Texas. So um there's a lot of uh overlap
01:58:49
in sort of methodologies.
01:58:50
>> There's been a lot of talk of and I
01:58:53
think Brad Gerson kind of started this
01:58:56
discussion on his BG2 podcast when he
01:58:58
had Sam Alman on how does a company with
01:59:00
20 or at the time 12 billion now it's 20
01:59:03
billion run rate. How does OpenAI pay
01:59:06
for a $500 billion buildout in your
01:59:10
contract with them and your relationship
01:59:11
with them? I'm assuming this is being
01:59:13
done in stages, not one giant hundred
01:59:16
billion dollar contract, but stages.
01:59:18
Yeah.
01:59:18
>> Yeah. So, I I think it's important to
01:59:21
understand like, you know, in a lot of
01:59:22
ways, my role as CEO of Crusoe, um like
01:59:26
half my time is really spent on like
01:59:27
risk management, you know. Yes. Uh the
01:59:29
amount of capital going into this is is
01:59:31
just enormous. And you know, all that
01:59:33
capital is not going to come from like
01:59:34
dilutive equity capital that we're
01:59:35
raising at the parent company. We have
01:59:37
to raise project equity. We have to
01:59:38
raise a lot of debt. Um and what debt
01:59:41
debt folks are focused on is how is this
01:59:44
person going to pay me back? Um and so
01:59:46
it is very much something that's being
01:59:48
evaluated in the capital markets. Um and
01:59:51
you know this has actually been a major
01:59:53
role that we see these largecale
01:59:55
bluechip investment grade businesses uh
01:59:58
play a major role in sort of catalyzing
02:00:00
the capital formation you need to build
02:00:02
these giant infrastructure projects. So
02:00:05
when you have a you know a company like
02:00:06
Google or you know company like
02:00:08
Microsoft or a company like sitting on a
02:00:09
hundred billion in cash and they throw
02:00:12
10 20 billion to the bottom line every
02:00:13
quarter they could just fund it from
02:00:15
their existing businesses but Elon and
02:00:17
Sam have new businesses or even
02:00:19
anthropic they have to come up with that
02:00:21
money somewhere yeah
02:00:22
>> correct so you know in our ca I'll give
02:00:24
you an example in uh in Abalene Texas
02:00:26
because that's the most public one uh
02:00:28
you know we have a long-term lease
02:00:30
agreement with Oracle right so we have a
02:00:32
long-term you know 15-year offtake
02:00:35
agreement with Oracle um and so they're
02:00:37
committed to sort of paying us for for
02:00:39
that, you know, time frame. Uh, so that
02:00:41
helped unlock a lot of the construction
02:00:43
debt, uh, and the capital we needed to,
02:00:45
you know, build this project. Uh, so we
02:00:47
worked with, uh, JP Morgan on on, uh,
02:00:50
and number of other folks were in the
02:00:51
syndicate, Bank of America, Apollo, you
02:00:54
know, uh, SNBC, you know, a bunch of
02:00:56
different
02:00:56
>> and they must be very excited about this
02:00:58
opportunity.
02:00:58
>> Yeah, I think everybody's really, really
02:01:00
excited about, you know, the opportunity
02:01:01
to, you know, build the infrastructure
02:01:03
that's going to power the economy in the
02:01:05
future. And there's this is
02:01:07
collateralized by a data center which
02:01:09
has inherent value. If a customer of
02:01:13
yours was unable to meet their
02:01:15
commitment based on what you've told me
02:01:17
today and shared with the audience and I
02:01:19
appreciate your candidness. Um that is
02:01:21
the currency of the all-in brand is
02:01:22
candidness. Um there would be somebody
02:01:25
else to take that capacity.
02:01:27
>> Yeah. I I think, you know, that's that's
02:01:29
the biggest argument I make when people
02:01:30
ask about the AI bubble is like, well,
02:01:33
you know, imagine a scenario where like
02:01:34
OpenAI went out of business, which I
02:01:36
don't think is going to happen.
02:01:37
>> There are people saying that that could
02:01:39
happen.
02:01:39
>> Sure. Okay.
02:01:40
>> I'm not saying that. You didn't say it.
02:01:42
>> Imagine imagine they did go out of
02:01:43
business. The reason they'd go out of
02:01:45
business is because some other model
02:01:47
company, whether it be, you know,
02:01:49
Anthropic or Gemini or Grock, like
02:01:51
really blew them out of the water.
02:01:52
>> Well, and they're kind of in fourth
02:01:54
place right now according to some of the
02:01:55
benchmarks.
02:01:56
>> Yeah. I mean, you know, put parking that
02:01:57
all aside, they have incredible
02:01:59
adoption, incredible platform, but but
02:02:01
if if that were to happen, the group
02:02:04
that massively surpassed them would have
02:02:06
so much demand for that product,
02:02:08
>> they would they would jump they'd be
02:02:09
jumping for joy to step into the seat to
02:02:12
take over that compute capacity. So I
02:02:14
think you know if you believe that AI is
02:02:16
going to be an important uh aspect of
02:02:18
you know the operating system of the
02:02:20
economy in the future um you know this
02:02:22
infrastructure is going to be very
02:02:24
useful and valuable to whoever the
02:02:25
winners are uh in that future state.
02:02:27
>> And people don't know this but you've
02:02:28
also made a bet on startups. you've been
02:02:31
incredibly generous to give credits to
02:02:34
startups and maybe you could talk a
02:02:36
little bit about how you made that
02:02:38
decision to play the long game because I
02:02:40
would think there's probably some people
02:02:42
on your board or in your own
02:02:43
organization says hey listen there we
02:02:45
got some big fish here we got whales
02:02:48
what are we doing with the minnows
02:02:49
you're specifically targeting up and
02:02:51
cominging startups to be their provider
02:02:54
>> yeah so you know I really think about
02:02:56
cruso you know being a vertically
02:02:58
integrated business is like we offer
02:02:59
three core four things, right? We can we
02:03:01
can build the data centers and we can
02:03:03
rent those to to customers. We're really
02:03:05
only focused on a small subset, maybe
02:03:06
five customers, these very big tech uh
02:03:08
tech companies. Um, and that's really
02:03:10
their key bottleneck, right? That that's
02:03:12
that's their key pain point. They're
02:03:14
not, you know, renting out capacity from
02:03:16
clouds because, you know, Meta doesn't
02:03:18
know how to run a GPU cluster like they
02:03:20
of course they know how to run, you
02:03:21
know, big clusters of GPUs. They need
02:03:22
data centers, right? So we're trying to
02:03:24
unblock that critical pain point for
02:03:25
them. Um on our uh AI cloud platform and
02:03:29
our infrastructure as a service
02:03:30
platform, we offer managed clusters of
02:03:32
high performance GPUs and we're a very
02:03:34
large partner with NVIDIA and that's
02:03:36
really critical infrastructure for the
02:03:38
startups that you're talking about. This
02:03:39
is the development of new AI native
02:03:42
applications uh you know coding
02:03:44
assistant tools uh you know managed
02:03:46
inference solutions video generation
02:03:48
image generation uh you know all sorts
02:03:50
of chat bots and uh you know AI
02:03:52
applications that are sort of uh
02:03:54
proliferating in the world um you know
02:03:56
we offer great uh sort of managed GPU
02:03:58
clusters there and then we also offer
02:04:00
serverless uh AI services like our
02:04:02
managed inference product where we're
02:04:04
charging people on a dollar per token
02:04:05
basis so we can kind of charge on a
02:04:07
dollar per kW rent on on the data
02:04:09
center, dollar per GPU hour on the on
02:04:11
the GPU or dollar per token on on sort
02:04:13
of the managed services.
02:04:14
>> Yeah. And that's thousands of customers,
02:04:16
tens of thousands potentially, and
02:04:18
that's where you're going up against
02:04:20
Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud. Yeah.
02:04:24
>> Uh correct. Yeah,
02:04:25
>> those are some pretty significant
02:04:26
competitors. How do you compete with
02:04:28
with those kind of folks? Um, you know,
02:04:31
I I think I think when you look at those
02:04:33
uh really large hyperscalers, they're uh
02:04:35
you know, they're they're incredible
02:04:36
platforms and they've been able to
02:04:38
accomplish so much. Uh but they really
02:04:40
are the outsourced IT solution that's
02:04:42
meant to be everything to everyone. Uh
02:04:44
which means you know their lowest common
02:04:46
denominator isn't AI, it's it's every
02:04:49
reason.
02:04:50
>> Server, you need storage, it's
02:04:52
everything. We are relentlessly focused
02:04:54
just on the AI use case and the AI
02:04:56
application to deliver the most
02:04:57
reliable, most high performance uh
02:05:00
computing infrastructure directly for
02:05:01
the AI use case and application. That's
02:05:03
all we care about. Which means all of
02:05:05
the optimizations we're making on the
02:05:07
high performance networking system,
02:05:08
compute side as well as the storage and
02:05:10
how people access their data um is, you
02:05:13
know, entirely in service of uh AI use
02:05:16
cases. There's going to be some
02:05:18
technological advancement in the coming
02:05:20
years that really ramps up what we're
02:05:23
able to do in building large language
02:05:26
models in doing inference. What do you
02:05:28
think that will be? A lot of people have
02:05:30
talked about optics and just the the
02:05:32
transfer transport layer. Some people
02:05:34
talking about the raw horsepower, other
02:05:36
people talking about cooling. Where do
02:05:38
you when you talk to some of the
02:05:40
hardware providers? Where do you think
02:05:42
we'll see the next step function in the
02:05:44
next, let's call that the three to five
02:05:46
year window and because you must be
02:05:48
thinking about that skating to where the
02:05:50
puck's going because you did that with
02:05:52
your current company, your current
02:05:53
offering, I should say.
02:05:55
>> Yeah. So, um, look, I I I think what's
02:05:58
so fascinating about this space and what
02:05:59
gets me so excited is that it's actually
02:06:01
like the culmination of like the the the
02:06:04
the the like so many different
02:06:07
engineering disciplines. And it's like
02:06:09
the pinnacle of human achievement across
02:06:11
so many different engineering
02:06:12
disciplines from you know the cooling
02:06:14
systems and the chemical engineering and
02:06:16
uh you know the electrical systems and
02:06:18
you know the the physical electrical
02:06:20
engineering that needs to go into these
02:06:21
chips to you know the silicon systems
02:06:23
and the chips uh and the networking and
02:06:25
the and the software engineering. It's
02:06:27
it's really a full stack solution that
02:06:29
ultimately produces intelligence. Now
02:06:31
getting to specific challenges that we
02:06:33
see uh and specific trends. We're seeing
02:06:36
uh everything go to higher density
02:06:38
configurations. So more power in the
02:06:40
rack. Um a traditional data center maybe
02:06:42
you know 5 years ago was like 15kw you
02:06:45
know 20 years ago was probably like 4kw
02:06:48
in a rack. Um you know the current
02:06:50
generation of blackwell chips uh is 130
02:06:53
kW in the rack. Uh the next generation
02:06:55
Vera Rubin is going to be 250. Um and
02:06:58
then Ver Rubin Ultra is expected to be
02:07:00
600. We're ultimately going to get to
02:07:02
one megawatt racks. One megawatt to give
02:07:04
a perspective is roughly the amount of
02:07:06
power of a thousand homes.
02:07:08
>> Yeah. It's like a small town
02:07:09
>> in a data center, right?
02:07:10
>> Um
02:07:11
>> so a rack will be a town.
02:07:12
>> Rack will be a town. Exactly. A couple
02:07:15
dozen of those will be a city.
02:07:16
>> Yeah. It'll be a New York City in a in a
02:07:18
data center. Um, and you know, we, you
02:07:21
know, Crusoe has, uh, over 45 gigawatts
02:07:25
in our pipeline to, you know, and I know
02:07:26
you're from New York, that's about like,
02:07:28
you know, 8 to 10 New York cities worth
02:07:30
of power, depending on how you, uh,
02:07:32
measure it. Um, so, uh, you know, it's
02:07:35
an it's it's an incredible amount of
02:07:36
energy infrastructure that's going to
02:07:37
need to come online, uh, to help
02:07:39
energize this this layer of compute. And
02:07:42
there's like I said there there's
02:07:43
challenges in every you know domain from
02:07:45
from cooling to networking to you know
02:07:48
>> yeah that density arrives this 10 to1
02:07:51
density you're talking about the heat
02:07:53
also arrives yeah
02:07:55
>> correct yeah yeah so uh a lot of
02:07:57
exciting stuff happening
02:07:58
>> and what do you think uh of the small
02:08:03
modular nuclear getting close to hydro
02:08:06
what what do you you know obviously gas
02:08:08
is the layup n gas it's everywhere we're
02:08:11
leaders in that solar that feels like a
02:08:14
layup and battery that combo to add, but
02:08:17
hydro I don't know if there's much left.
02:08:20
>> We're actually doing a lot with hydro uh
02:08:23
you know in in the Nordics. Um so Norway
02:08:27
in Icelands
02:08:28
>> we have
02:08:30
um in Iceland you know there's abundant
02:08:32
geothermal uh it's like this sort of
02:08:34
geological phenomenon and there's ultra
02:08:36
lowc cost geothermal energy and also a
02:08:38
lot of hydro there. Um,
02:08:40
>> so that's a one-two.
02:08:41
>> You get the one-two punch there.
02:08:42
>> Yeah. And I don't know if you guys
02:08:44
heard, but America just acquired
02:08:46
Iceland. That was like the rim shot off
02:08:48
of the uh Greenland. We
02:08:50
>> Yeah,
02:08:51
>> that wasn't a mistake.
02:08:53
>> We're taking both. I mean, or you're
02:08:54
giving us both. It's
02:08:55
>> It's like Greenland.
02:08:56
>> We don't ask from us. We don't ask for
02:08:58
much. Okay. It's a very simple request.
02:09:00
We're taking a little Iceland and a
02:09:01
little
02:09:02
>> We have data centers. You may have heard
02:09:04
of big data. Big data centers in the few
02:09:08
words. Listen. Um but but to your
02:09:10
comment on small modular nuclear
02:09:11
reactors, we are very bullish on SMRs.
02:09:14
And
02:09:15
>> have you signed a contract yet? Are you
02:09:16
in negotiations?
02:09:17
>> Four uh contracts that we've signed.
02:09:19
>> Wow.
02:09:19
>> We're actually hoping to energize the
02:09:21
first AI AI factory powered by an SMR in
02:09:24
2027.
02:09:25
>> 2027. That's next year. I know. Um and
02:09:29
and one of the ways we've been able to
02:09:30
do this is is it's actually going to be
02:09:31
at the Idaho National Lab.
02:09:33
um where you actually are you're you're
02:09:36
outside of the uh regulatory domain of
02:09:38
of the NRC uh it's considered
02:09:41
experimental technology. So
02:09:42
>> Oh yes. Who's the partner on that?
02:09:45
>> I don't think we've made it public.
02:09:46
>> No, it's okay. They're going to make
02:09:48
some news here. Journalists here. No, I
02:09:50
know because I I was told this exact
02:09:52
same insight by the company that's doing
02:09:54
it, but I won't say the name of it.
02:09:55
>> Yeah.
02:09:56
>> Yes.
02:09:56
>> I think Well, I think I think we can
02:09:58
announce it.
02:09:58
>> Okay.
02:09:59
>> Let's we should announce it.
02:10:00
>> We should announce. Go. Uh the partner
02:10:01
is Alo Energy. So uh they're an
02:10:04
incredible partner.
02:10:05
>> Isn't it amazing that for solar it was
02:10:09
something we haven't been able to do
02:10:11
since the 70s and now it's like yeah
02:10:14
we're going to do solar. It's absolutely
02:10:15
necessary so we're going to do it.
02:10:17
>> Y
02:10:18
>> it's what do you attribute that to?
02:10:20
>> Um I you know I think there's this like
02:10:23
human ingenuity and sort of the passage
02:10:25
of time and sort of the relentless
02:10:27
pursuit of efficiencies. Like I I I just
02:10:29
think uh you know it's it's it's really
02:10:31
incredible if you look at the cost curve
02:10:33
of solar just how much it's come down
02:10:35
over the course of time. I think you're
02:10:36
going to see a similar thing play out in
02:10:37
SMRs nextg uh geothermal like we're
02:10:40
really excited about like innovations
02:10:42
like Fervos's made uh in terms of like
02:10:44
being able to produce uh geothermal at
02:10:46
scale at a very competitive price point
02:10:49
uh leveraging a lot of the technology
02:10:50
from fracking and oil and gas
02:10:52
>> and we're not going to have this impact
02:10:54
consumer's electrical bills. Yeah, I
02:10:57
think that's a that's that's such an
02:10:59
interesting story. Um, you know, when we
02:11:02
look at this problem, we say, look, a
02:11:05
lot of the, you know, power on the grid
02:11:08
is is very saturated. Um, a lot of the
02:11:10
data center capacity is saturated. So,
02:11:11
it just makes sense for the technology
02:11:13
industry that wants to bring online all
02:11:15
of this new infrastructure to also bring
02:11:17
online the power to, you know, that goes
02:11:18
with it. And you know the incredible
02:11:20
opportunity from my perspective is that
02:11:22
when we bring on new power generation to
02:11:24
support an AI data center we're sizing
02:11:27
it to the peak demand of the data center
02:11:30
which mean you know and we're only using
02:11:31
peak demand we call it like 0.1% of the
02:11:33
time. So you might have some excess.9%
02:11:35
of the time we have excess power that
02:11:38
can be that can support the local
02:11:39
community that can create an abundance
02:11:41
of energy that drives down the overall
02:11:43
cost for rateayers in the local
02:11:45
communities. People will have lower cost
02:11:47
power. We're going to have advanced
02:11:48
intelligent infrastructure that's
02:11:50
driving massive efficiency gains in the
02:11:51
economy. It's going to be like a
02:11:53
incredible future we're building
02:11:54
towards.
02:11:55
>> And this is something that I think the
02:11:57
technology industry could be self-aware
02:11:59
enough to understand if we're making
02:12:01
this incredible
02:12:03
uh new business. It's a great way to
02:12:06
share it with other Americans. Hey,
02:12:08
maybe your energy bill will get lower or
02:12:11
eventually free.
02:12:12
>> Absolutely. And and you're already
02:12:13
seeing this trend unfold. I mean, we've
02:12:15
taken this energy first approach. You
02:12:17
saw Google uh recently make the
02:12:19
acquisition of Intersect Power. Uh you
02:12:21
know, Sheldon and his team there,
02:12:22
incredible group of of uh energy
02:12:24
developers. Uh and they're doing that
02:12:26
because they know they need to build the
02:12:28
energy infrastructure that's going to
02:12:29
support their compute needs in the
02:12:31
future.
02:12:31
>> Yeah. Well, really appreciate you taking
02:12:33
the time, Chase, and continued success.
02:12:35
Uh and what an amazing story, man. You
02:12:38
you really got there early, and one of
02:12:41
two things can happen when you get there
02:12:43
early. you can just fail fabulously or
02:12:46
you can just absolutely crush it and
02:12:48
it's been the latter for you. You but
02:12:49
there might have been some moments where
02:12:51
you stared at the ceiling at night as an
02:12:53
entrepreneur and said are we too early?
02:12:55
>> Yeah, it's mostly been up up into the
02:12:57
right you know no real No, I'm just
02:12:59
kidding. It Yeah, there's been uh you
02:13:00
know tons of complex problems and
02:13:02
challenges and you know moments of doubt
02:13:04
throughout the the company's lifetime
02:13:06
but um you know it I I wouldn't have
02:13:09
want to do anything else with my life.
02:13:10
nice to move from will the customers
02:13:13
arrive to
02:13:14
>> okay uh we've got too many customers we
02:13:17
really need to deliver.
02:13:19
>> Yeah.
02:13:19
>> It's actually it's a it's a whole
02:13:21
organizational mindset of like will the
02:13:24
customers ever show up and this like
02:13:25
fear to oh my god I hope my customers
02:13:28
are happy and delighted.
02:13:29
>> Totally. But scaling people scaling
02:13:32
culture scaling technology it has its
02:13:34
own set of challenges and problems.
02:13:36
>> The culture part is important.
02:13:38
>> It's difficult. Yeah. Yeah. It's
02:13:39
difficult to go from a small startup of,
02:13:41
you know, tens of people to, you know,
02:13:43
more than a thousand people
02:13:44
>> and adding what are you adding thousand
02:13:46
a year?
02:13:47
>> Uh, we're going to add 2400 people this
02:13:50
year.
02:13:51
>> Full-time employees and then tens of
02:13:54
thousands of contractors.
02:13:55
>> Yeah, I I've seen that movie before.
02:13:58
And no, I mean, I watched it with Uber
02:13:59
and Robin Hood as they were adding, you
02:14:01
know, one person a day, then it was five
02:14:03
new people, and then now you've just got
02:14:05
training and recruitment and just trying
02:14:07
to keep that culture
02:14:09
>> tight and make sure you hire the right
02:14:11
people. Well, listen, uh, you have to
02:14:12
go, uh, and we're way over time. I
02:14:15
appreciate you taking the time and being
02:14:16
so,
02:14:16
>> man. I appreciate it.
02:14:17
>> All right, give it up for Chase.
02:14:19
>> Thanks, Jess.
02:14:36
I'm going all in.
