ACCESS Wrapped: Our favorite guest moments so far

And if we end up misspending a couple of hundred billion dollars, I think that that is going to be very unfortunate, obviously. 2025 was wild. AI wrappers, inferences, conferences, oh my. This week on Access, Elsa and I chat about our nerdy holidays, what Nvidia buying GROC says about the AI race and the consumer electronics show in Las Vegas. Then we look back at some of our favorite conversations on the show with text most interesting founders from Mark Zuckerberg to Dylan Field and Beyond. Let's do it. Ellis, happy holidays. Ho ho ho. How you doing, my friend? I'm Hanukkah Harry over here. So that's going to be a Hague Samayah, but thank you very much. Enjoy your Starbucks cups. Yeah, we had a great dinner at your place with your fam the other night. So it was nice to spend some time. How's the rest of your week been? It's been all right. You know, it's a little dance going to and from work trying to get my brain back in action. It is not easy being a writer when if I literally have one drink the night before I like can't put a sentence together. I don't know if you feel that way from all the like PR. I mean, all those years I went to PR drinks in New York when I was a reporter. I was like 21 and so my liver was still functioning at peak performance. These days especially when all there is to do with kids over the holidays is drink. Yeah, writing that first email this morning took took a took a solid 15. I should have brought the Z-biotic over to your place. I had some wine and Sherry and yeah, definitely could have used it that night. I like the Z-biotics is becoming one of the motifs of the show. I have since learned that do not see two nights in a row because then you get some tummy rumbles. Really? But if you alternate, it's fine. Or it just could be purely incidental. This is good for me to know ahead of Vegas and CS next week, which I know we'll talk about because I was planning to chug those things every day. I mean, try it. It could just also be on my end the natural wines with their like volatile acids inside them can really fuck you up. So I'm not doing my stomach any favors with those either. You're just drinking weird shit. Yes. I like it funky. So I could feel something. This is a tech show. Did you do anything nerdy? Get anything nerdy for the holidays? Dude, Z-biotics is tech. They're proudly GMO genetically modified organism. That's true, but did you get any Z-biotics for Christmas? I'm talking about Orhanika holidays. No, what I did get my wife Ryle and knows what I like. She got me a t-shirt, a vintage t-shirt that says let there be Q. I love this. It is the old Motorola Q. I think is it like running pocket PC or something at the time? I don't know. It was kind of like a blackberry competitor. The thing just slaps. I mean, look at it. This is the reason to watch the YouTube video or give it a Google with us in picture and picture. It brings me back to an age where I mean, obviously Steve Jobs gets so much credit for like ditching all the buttons, but God, those buttons felt good to press. Oh, they did. I love that old-school Verizon logo too. Back when the carriers really had to say in how the phones looked and had so much control over phones. And this was obviously before Apple came in. It was like screw you. You are regulated to an icon on the top right of the screen. I didn't even think about that. Yeah, there's a huge Verizon logo on the chin as they say of this phone. I also like that the keys are on the diagonal. I don't know if there's an exact name for that, but there's some nerds who are into that. I mean, maybe it's more ergonomic. Do you see that? Yeah, I do. I don't know what that's called. I should. I feel like I'm losing nerd points. But man, yeah, bring back physical keyboards, honestly. I miss those. I do too. I do too. Do you get anything? I did. Chloe got me. She got me a patch of Steve Jobs Turtleneck. So she actually was freaking out. I posted on the show Instagram account a photo of a nano-banana photo of Jobs with the Turtleneck wearing a Christmas hat just to say we were off last week. I hope everyone enjoyed their pod free week of Christmas week. And turns out she'd already gotten me this and it's a literal small patch of one of his Turtlenecks from a company called Mini Museum, which apparently does all kinds of interesting little knick-knacks from history. So that was a fun one. My first thought when I saw this was that this is kind of like the physical embodiment of an NFT. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know how that makes you feel. Well, in the sense that it's worthless, but. kind of. I don't know. This could be worth. No. I wonder what it's worth. I mean, it's one of those situations. Once you're married, I don't know if you guys share a bank account, but maybe you're checking your co-pilot budgeting app or whatever and there's like a $1,500 bill for this Mini Museum and you're like, "Honey, I did want it, but not that bad." No, I joke about an NFT thing. Kind of spoils some gifts, you know? When you see exactly how much they are on the bill. Yeah, this was not that much surprisingly jobs is total next so you can get chopped up for, you know, less than you'd think. Still a very thoughtful fun gift and one that I intend to put on a proverbial bookshelf at one play whenever I have one. And did you ever watch Doug on Nickelodeon? No. So Doug was one of my favorite shows and he had an entire. it was kind of like a breaking the fourth wall moment. He had an entire closet just of his outfit that he wears in every episode. That's how I imagine Steve Jobs' closeter. Did he only wear. I mean, I felt like he kind of wore the get up every day. He kind of invented the texio only one outfit wardrobe thing. I mean, wasn't he the one who basically defined that? Yeah, I think he probably did. He went minimalist, shingy, David Shing, the notorious went maximalist with all his outfits. Do you remember him? He was a CES mainstay for a while. Going back to a decade of CES. Yeah, I actually have a shingy. I was at a party with Shingy at the Penn House of the Cosmopolitan and I don't remember most of it. This was like almost 10 years ago. Well, it's nice you got to meet him in person. He's transcended to the cloud now. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, as everyone hopes to one day. But yeah, man, otherwise, I'm really enjoying the Marty Supreme soundtrack. We saw that the other night. The movie's okay. The music is always. any safty brothers film. The music's always awesome. You know, uncut gems. Good time. And then Marty, yeah, just great music. The movie was good. Fun, but not like, I don't know. I don't know if A24 is going to make everything back. But man, that that campaign that Timothy has been doing around it has been pretty phenomenal, I will say. I mean, it is funny now that like tech and culture, colliding more and more. Everybody in tech is like, holy crap. Clually did a post-modern Dada billboard on the Nasdaq digital billboard in Times Square. And then you see like Timothy Shalamet doing his thing with the blimp with all the like celebrity clabs with the SD kid thing, which I guess the news is broken that it's not actually him, which we talked about in episode or two of God. I mean, it just reminds you how much better entertainers and Hollywood in general are at promoting shit. I mean, it was a true, it was a true masterclass. The original storytellers. Totally. Yeah. And I mean, if you look at the color orange, that's that's Marty Supreme Orange for a while now, right? I mean, gosh, have we seen that since Snapchat yellow? Just total ownership of a color. Yeah. Yeah. No, you're right, though. You're right. And I would have definitely lost that prediction market on on Timothy being SKD actually. Yeah. I shouldn't I'm glad I put no money on Calche on that. Was that was there Calche for that? They're I'm pretty sure there was actually. Yeah, I think there was. I think there's a Calche dude. I mean, is it even settled? I mean, that could have been an actor playing SD kid. That's true. What's reality? So I mean, that's one of things we forgot to ask track about is just kind of like, who is the quote unquote judge who makes the call on what is a fact with with with, you know, predictive markets like that? Who gets to say that it's decided or even, you know, something like the election results. I mean, that's pretty controversial these days about when it is called and all the TV networks are trying to, you know, be the first call it. And what do they see that nobody else sees? I feel like a lot of people trust that Bloomberg terminal, usually milliseconds ahead on any given news. But yeah, I mean, I do wonder how they how they make the call on when, you know, when the fat lady has sung and when the facts are decided when sources confirms it. That's when yeah, exactly. Yeah, otherwise, man, I've got about 40 think boy long reads end of year long reads on X or read, I'm saving those for my flights back to the Midwest tomorrow. But everyone's been posting their end of year reflections on AI and how the year is going to shake out in 2026. And man, I'm just drowning in it. Where, where do you queue those up these days? I think pocket is gastrobin, right? It's done. I think Instapaper still lives get matter.com, I believe is the URL. It's a great pocket alternative. But honestly, I'm a pretty heavy book marker on X. My bookmarks are of control. I will never ever see just kind of cue some things up and then you know when you're in a bored moment on the toilet around your JSX, private plane chartered by yourself to open up X. Do they work offline? Not really, but X does not work well with other read it later apps. So I just keep it all in the suit. Man, do you think anybody in the world uses reading list, the iOS native? Maybe people can let us know in the comments if you do soul out there. No, I've, I've like attempted to on and off over the years, but it is, it is no good, especially as the mobile web has just become the most bastardized version of itself where like trying to load things offline. I mean, it's just, it's just a nightmare. I also feel like, you know, 10 years after all these read it later apps kind of, you know, came out in the app store boom and everything like that. I think a lot of people have come to realize that they don't actually look at their lists. And I think that's one of the reasons that these apps haven't done so well and that I don't know if any really are still existing at some large scale. I mean, I feel like people just keep tabs open on their phone or their computer, usually never get back to them and no harm, no foul matter. I would say is probably the best indie one that's still thriving and shipping product and looking good and working. But yeah, man, I now have like four places where I have endless lists of things that I'll never read, but it makes me feel good to save it. It makes me think that I'm cultured and that I, you know, see a lot, even though I don't actually read it. So that's that's all. Is there a matter wrapped that says Alex, congratulations. Yes. You, uh, you didn't read 89% of the things you saved this year. Are you a consumer app these days if you don't have an end of your wrapped? Yeah. I mean, I would always get the pocket ones and I was always in the 0.001 of pocket readers. Um, I mean, I think wrapped is brilliant. Honestly, I think one of the main societal problems these days is that no one looks back toward their personal growth and progress. Uh, I think that's like one of the best things your therapist can do is remind you of kind of like remind you of how far you've come. The things that used to be hard for you that are now a little easier. No. And uh, stare straight ahead, my friend, staring to the best. Don't look back. Reflection is, uh, reflection is a waste of time. Well, I'll make a prediction, uh, which is that I do think when people talk about personalization with AI in 2026 and beyond, I do think that is going to be one of the things that really shows who has context and who doesn't and who actually makes you feel locked in like they have some type of moat and establishing how well spent your money was with their service is reminding you of how much you used it, the different ways you used it. Obviously, you know, the Spotify and the Apple music one are not as differentiated as as they once were. But I think they're also going to start using all your context to deliver net new insights to you. I mean, did you look at your chat GPT year end? I was trying to pull it up literally as you were talking, cause I was trying to remember it gave you like that zodiac type sign thing. What was yours? Do you remember my three big themes of 2025 building brands, one name at a time. You spent the year helping companies find their voice systems, frameworks and momentum. Number two, you were fine meanings playbook, which is the name of my company, turning creative instinct into structure with repeatable frameworks week by week, deliverables and sharper client processes that scale your storytelling craft. And I mean, that's easy for me to forget. You know, it's like where I started two years ago, I mean, it was just doing hourly work and just kind of winging it. Now it has become a repeatable system. And then the last one, I like cameras culture and creative fuel, you kept your curiosity alive through film photography, gaming and cultural deep dives, each feeding back into your visual sensibility. And then it made here was the best part. It said your year painted pixels and it had a little like like low fi hip hop girl desk. And on the desk was my Olympus X a to a steam deck, which I don't have, but I ask lots of questions about a meaning mug that is in purple. I don't know why a Vanguard IRA form in pixel and a little notebook, cause I've also researched what notebooks to get for next year. I just thought that was that was wonderful. How many M dashes though? That's the real question. Yeah, I've been an M dash user ever since I was like the OG Emily Dickinson, a soft boy back at the University of Michigan. So I never noticed all the M dashes because I use them myself so religious. The fart, the fart of the mind. That's what I call the M dash. Yeah. I mean, I do have to actively stay away from it now so that it isn't, you know, saying anything that my work shouldn't be saying about how it was written. What was your award? Mine was most likely to scoop the robots, which I thought was pretty spot on. If 2025 gave out awards, you'd get the brand Whisperer award for naming more startups than most people name pets, rewriting the internet one manifesto at a time, and somehow making it all sound cool. And then there's like a cute little like a crystal quill, if you will, inside of a crystal ink well with a star on it. Thank you for my participation award. And let me guess your archetype was explorer. My archetype as symbolized by a little owl pointing at a map, holding a night, the chess piece, the strategist. Oh, that was mine. Oh, yeah. Yeah. There we go. Co-hosts for life, 3.6% of users share this archetype. My generated image was a MacBook mid draft, a cooling espresso, a stack of sub stack invoices, a podcast mic, and a single pixelated GPU. Proof that the quote hustle can look aesthetic unquote, Jesus Christ. So it's fully adopted aesthetic as an adjective. Good job, open AI. That's one of my pet peeves, but I've given in. Yeah. Well, it's the time of year where there really isn't much news to speak of, except there was that one big thing that squeaked through on Christmas Eve where Nvidia is buying GROC with a queue, not Elon's GROC. They are paying 20 billion dollars, but not actually buying the full company. So this is another one of those fancy, I call them reverse aquahires, where a big tech player scoops up an AI startup. For a couple of reasons, it's, it's antitrust scrutiny. It's also speed. They just want to get the talent in the door super fast and not be caught up in red tape for months and months. So they basically buy the shell, the heart of the thing, leave the shell. And Nvidia is doing this for 20 billion dollars for this AI chip startup. And to me, I mean, there's a lot of like interesting money things here. There was a pod that Jonathan Ross, the founder of GROC, did recently where he said that at one point, the company nearly ran out of cash and asked staff to trade their salaries for equity. And in hindsight, that was a very smart thing for employees to have done, not that they had a choice at the time, but man, people are getting paid out like crazy, like 50-ish people are coming over. And this is really, what this is about to me is, is inference, which is, you know, you've got training on one side of AI and then you've got inference, which is running AI in production. So like, the year-and-wrapped Chachi BT thing that we just did, right? That's inference for AI. And that's really where the industry is going. And that's what GROC specialized in. I actually had a conversation with Jonathan, the CEO of GROC back in 2024. This is when they were a measly three-ish billion dollar startup. And his goal, he told me, was to take about half of the world's inference compute, which at the time was much smaller than what it is now. I mean, these AI workloads in production at scale have just grown tremendously. So the market's getting huge. And video was really focused on training. And I think GROC was nipping at their heels on this, you know, rapidly growing piece of the pie of AI. And they get to take it out for 20 billion for a thing that if it keeps growing, the way it's going is going to be hundreds of billions of dollars in value. So pretty smart, savvy. You know, I love when I live in a big tech player does a deal like this, like on a holiday and doesn't put out a press release. It's just so clear, you know, they're trying to bury it. They don't want the regulators in Washington who are not at work to see it, although of course they will. But they'll probably get away with it. And yeah, I'll just read. So there was this quote that Jonathan gave me back in August 2024. We were talking about Nvidia and their focus on training and not inference, which he was doing. And whether Nvidia would move more into inference, and he told me, quote, I mean, I think they would want it, but you have to decide whether or not you're in the training business or the inference business. The architectures are completely different. The economics are completely different. They'd have to give up most of their margin, right? They expect to lose money on training. But you have to make the money on the inference, otherwise, what's the point? So the point ended up being worth, you know, about 20 billion dollars. Good for Jonathan and nice move by Jensen. I guess that's the whole idea that the training, I don't know, is it becoming like a loss leader for some of these companies as they build apps on top of it as the training side gets a bit more commoditized more that I think trainings becoming more commoditized and like the gains that I mean, we see this right with like GPT 5.2 and even, you know, the last anthropic release, which was good. but like that the gains for each model release are not as much as they were in prior years and prior versions. So the progress that you can make on a training run is collapsing. Meanwhile, there's just so much demand to use AI in these products and it just takes like Jonathan was saying, like it takes a totally new architecture, which, you know, he helped invent with Grog. He also co-invented the TPU at Google, which is also more suited for training. So I think this just bigger picture speaks to the AI world, especially in 2026, moving more towards inference, running AI in the real world. And I think people still underestimate how much of these AI models are constrained by the lack of compute and a lot of that being due to how it's architected around training and not actually running this stuff in the real world, which I think Grog was all about. So more AI for everyone, I guess. That's got to be hard to value, right? As the inference is also getting cheaper every day. Which was a big thing Grog was doing was pushing the cost way down. Yeah, I mean, it's hard to value, but you look at just, you know, if you are continually not able to sell as much as you would like because you don't have the compute, then you're in a pretty good position to just make a move like this. And Nvidia has, you know, tens of billions of dollars burning on their balance sheet, and I think needs to make some moves like this. But this is definitely the biggest one of these, you know, reverse aquahires. You've got like, I don't know if people even remember at this point, like, scale AI and meta was one of these where they gutted it, inflection to Microsoft's character to Google. Let's become this thing that I've just been kind of fascinated by because it speaks to how fast these companies are trying to move and avoid scrutiny and get the talent, which is really like what this is all about is like, there's only a handful of people that can build stuff like this and they're worth just so much because AI is so valuable. It seems like nobody's even asking if whatever company is worth it anymore because it's a half of it is just like a, like a thing to show your investors press candidates that you are also staying ahead by making these acquisitions. It's definitely not as clear as it used to be with some products historically. I mean, speaking of 20 billion, I remember going on PBS NewsHour a million years ago. I don't know why they invited me on because I wasn't really much of a business bro at the time. But I was at the verge and they're like, so Facebook has spent 20 billion dollars on WhatsApp. Is it worth it? Yeah. It's like, I don't fucking know. I think they were hoping that I was going to say no and just like talk about how the money is like stupid and it's not worth it and blah blah. And I was like, actually, I think, yeah, I mean, basically one of the things that they said that I think has proven to be true 10 years later is that there wasn't a whole lot of overlap between WhatsApp users and Messenger users or I message users. And that's really allowed meta and hindsight to really command the world's biggest messaging app, which it is now beginning to expand and monetize in other ways. So yeah, I guess I get to say, told you so on that. As I reported to reporters like to say, so I'll take credit for that one. You saw Zux Vision early. Yeah. I mean, this is not a politics show, but yeah, should the largest like company, most important A company, the world get to like take out the best challenger in the new market of AI, you know, probably not great, but it's the world we live in, right? You know, you buy Trump a golden statue and it'll all be good. Well, I think it was a disc if you're talking about the gift that Tim Apple gave Trump. But yes, I understand your point. I think it was like, I think it was like a Swarovski crystal disc that had an apple on it or something like that or my mistaken. But yeah, I mean, it's one of my other pet peeves is when like hindsight, 2020, people say that something actually was an unbelievable get, you know, the opposite of not being worth it. With Instagram selling for a billion dollars, I remember the day that happened for for some reason. That's a day that I remember in my mind. And everybody was like, this is absolutely insane. But if you were actually using the product and seeing how it was changing, the posting behavior from Facebook, how quickly it was growing, how mobile first it was, it was obviously happening. And that was at a time where social apps were coming and winning every like two to three years. And I mean, it really hasn't happened a whole lot since then with the exception of TikTok, I guess. But yeah, Instagram for one billion, that's a crazy one. And now I mean, that's like funny money. Oh yeah, that's like what you pay one researcher. We are doing a solo episode today in case it wasn't already clear. We thought it'd be fun to actually recap. You know, we've had a lot of great guests on the show, we're a new show and you know, as new listeners come in, we also want to remind people of some of the interviews that we've been doing because to be honest, like we get some pretty good guests, you know, it's called access for a reason. But before we do that, we are going to be in Vegas next week at CES to do a couple interviews that will be airing in the feed over the coming weeks. Very excited about that. Don't reveal the names quite yet. But great guests. It's going to shape out to be to be a great January, I think, on the guest front. This is your first CES in a long time, right, Alice? I thought I was out, but they pulled me back in. Yeah, they dragged me back in. I mean, I always like CES. I mean, really the last time I was there was with the Verge. I mean, we had our own trailer with the whole Verge wrap. I mean, it was just like peak. It was awesome. And I mean, remembering like the last time I was at CES, I remember trying on the very first version of the Oculus Rift taped together. That turned out to be a thing. We can also throw on B-roll the video of me doing a 360 treadmill of the Virtue Examiny and almost throwing up everywhere in 360 degree projectile vomit that did not turn out to be a thing. But I mean, honestly, I look back so fondly on that time because as much as I love software and as much as I've written about software over the years, I mean, whether it's the Motorola Q or the Oculus Rift or any of these new things, the tech you can hold is always going to be more fun, I think. And I'm not sure to what extent CES is still that place or just a place for all the advertisers to meet up just because it's something to do. I mean, none of the big brands are debuting things anymore. I don't think they're all doing their oak keynotes, but I'm sure there's a whole lot of wacky stuff there. There it is. This might be the third year in a row that I pick up my badge, but don't go to the show floor, which is kind of a thing that I've liked becoming, I've liked turning into a ritual. But yeah, no, the show floor, CES has not mattered in a really long time. The booth babes still exist or is that also long gone? That's pretty much gone, thankfully. What has now happened is like, there's this second CES, the shadow CES that happens at all the fancy hotels where I spend most of my time because I'm a schmoozer on steroids, I guess. But yeah, it's like a bunch of more early late 90s, early 2000s rapper parties than you could imagine. This year, I think snap, your former employer is going to have Snoop Dogg, Yahoo is going to have public enemy, which is like, yeah, it's just perfect, man. It's a perfect encapsulation of CES or parties like that. I'll be doing a dinner actually with some great people at the win one night. I'm excited about that. Hopefully I can drag you to the poker table. I know you're only in town in Vegas for a little bit with me, but I've got to get you playing a little cards. I can cheer you on as a good co-host does. Okay, cool. We should get into our recap here. First up, we got to start with our first guest. We came out with a bang. We had Zach from Metta. This was an annual sit-down that I do with him. It's gracious enough to do it for the new pod with us, which was great. In hindsight, I should have known that this was going to be the clip that went the most viral it got. How did you not know? You know, sometimes you think you have the news judgment after all these years and you still have a blind spot. I guess that's why it's still fun. Sometimes you just still kind of never know if a tweet is going to hit or not. Yeah. Anyway, there's this moment where I talk to him about the AI bubble and he talks about maybe losing a few hundred billion dollars and people really latched onto this. Let's play it. No one knows when super intelligence is going to be possible. Is it going to be three years, going to be five years, going to be eight years, whatever? Is it never going to happen? But I don't think it's never going to happen. I'm more ambitious or optimistic. I think it's going to be on the sooner side. But let's say that you weren't sure if it was going to be three or five years. Like in a conservative business situation, maybe you'd like hedge building out your infrastructure because you're worried that if you build it out assuming it's going to be three years and it takes five, then you've lost maybe a couple hundred billion dollars or something. I mean, my view is that that's a lot of money. Well, no, well, I was going to say in the grand scheme, it is it is objectively a huge amount of money. Yeah, right. I mean, didn't you just tell Trump you were going to spend like 600 billion? I mean, that's I did. Yeah, through 2028, which is a lot of money. It is. And if and if and if we end up misspending a couple of hundred billion dollars, I think that that is going to be very unfortunate, obviously. But what I'd say is I actually think the risk is higher on the other side. So yeah, a sentence that not many people can actually say, but yeah, what did you, what did you make of that? Well, what's he doing with it? You think. I mean, I know a lot has gone into life. which is not getting the headlines that it once was being the open model that it was. I mean, how would you break down that investment, you think? - I think next year is the real year where they have to prove that they're gonna get something out of all of this, all those big hires he was doing this year. They're working on a new model. It's apparently called like avocado or something. I hope that's not the public name. I think that's the internal name. And I think they want to be back on our frontier. - I think about we like avocados here in LA else. - Yeah, they're fine. But I think they want to be back on the frontier, at least kind of nipping at the heels of Google and open AI and Anthropic and not like so far behind that they're totally out of the conversation, which they are right now. That said, man, like a lot of boomers use Facebook and use meta AI, probably whether they know it or not. And if I had to guess, meta AI is still actually probably a top five, if not top three, chatbot just based on the fact that it is everywhere in Instagram and Facebook. - Yeah, a couple hundred billion accidental taps per month on that little purple circle that is in the search bar in every meta product. Now, I mean, I'm just so fascinated by like zucks continuing desired invest in the future, which you have to respect and appreciate, but it just doesn't align with even as their meta brand kind of became more agnostic of products. The entire rest of the space, as we've talked about a bit on the show, is often building for each other, making Silicon Valley faster, trying to win things back from other markets around the world, trying to work on agents for productivity, get AI into every enterprise. And it's got to be like a whole lot of FOMO for zuck during this wave to not really be able to participate in almost any of that. And I mean, I think we saw with Horizon Worlds and some of that stuff, at least he could make the claim back when metaverses were hot, that metaverses where a lot of work is going to happen. But I don't really see anywhere that AI is natively being used on meta properties that they aren't being used elsewhere. I think if it's the social side, it's kind of being used as a creativity tool, the same way that it would be on any other platform, whether it is YouTube shorts or Instagram reels or whatever. I wonder, you know, exactly how he's going to use that and try and somehow, I mean, obviously they have a million, billion people with connections at enterprises around the world. I don't know, maybe is it going to be through Facebook for brands like the ways that they make ads easier to create, automate the ingestion of your entire product catalog and make good ads out of it. But then every ad is just going to kind of look like that, you know, I don't know. Maybe that's what AI is going to do differently is it's not going to make them as generic, I think, as the product carousel ads, but make every ad unique, maybe something like that. I don't know. I mean, what do you feel like they're going to build with AI that is most true to who they are? I think the thing they're excited about is the glasses, the display glasses, which I have a pair of and the AI stuff is, you know, if they had anthropic or Gemini in there, which I think Google's going to come out with, you know, we also talked to Samir at Android about that on the show this year. Google's going to come out with their AI glasses next year, 2026. But that's the real money shot with this is like visual AI understanding on your face, I think. It was pretty impressive in the demo and if they can get back on the frontier with that and hook in some of the social stuff, that's going to be pretty compelling. Our next clip is with friend AI Pendant, CEO, Avi Schiffman, who told us a bit about why he was spending most of his VC money on billboards around the world. I think they were in New York initially, now they're rolling out in Europe. I saw they were in Chicago as well. But here's Avi's take on why he is doing that, even though many say the product isn't quite ready yet. What I admire about you is you have such a strong like vibes based belief, like you're saying, like you don't care about the studies, like whatever, you're doing all this anecdotal research and you have this conviction that seems also personally rooted in what you want. But you just seem to know like in your bones that there's a market for this. - I mean, I feel like your intuition is like a thousand times higher than with like all these bullshit case studies and all these things, right? Like you know, you always know like the right thing, like you know, especially with like human relationships, right, or all kinds of things. You always have like a strong gut feeling and like I've just found that when you trust that, it works well, like I think the majority of people really need to have like a test of faith in their life where they really do a major project or whatever, where they really trust their intuition and they see success as a result of that. And I think once you see success of really believing in yourself, I feel like that's something that sticks with you for the rest of your life. And I think I've had quite a lot of that at least in my youth and I think that's definitely what helps me now. Am I probably over confident in some way? I don't know, probably. And I don't think I'm probably doing everything correctly. And I think, you know, there's a very high chance that maybe it all collapses and I get to just drive off a cliff or something and we'll see what happens. But I think I would rather just try and I feel like there's no aspect of friend that looks like we didn't try. And, you know, I'm just down to go all in and like see what happens. Like I just, I don't like the hedge and I don't like to compromise and absolutely anything. And I don't know, I also just feel like, I try to have, I mean, I have no side projects and there's nothing else I'm thinking about. And I feel like I spend 99% of the time trying to think about the strategy aspect of it. You know, there's not many things that is going on internally at the company. It's just me and two other guys. And we're just hyper focused and it feels like the right path. It just, like I can't, it just feels so, I feel like I just like give into destiny. I have like a religious fervor in like my intuition and to just just to trust that and see what happens. - Interesting looking back to this moment, Avi definitely came out as one of the first torchbearers for, you know, mass market AI companionship. I think there have been a lot of tweets since then pointing to the app store reviews showing that, you know, they really don't have very many users or this or that. But I guess his big bet is just trying to become the, the Kleenex for AI companionship, which is an interesting cultural bet that in terms of marketing theory, when people think to themselves, I think I'm ready for an AI friend. Of course, I'd go to the one that I've seen on the billboardsfriend.com. That's why he paid so much for the URL. At the same time though, I do think the product has to pay it off. And I think if there's one thing I've personally learned since then, including working on a handful of other AI companion clients and trying out others in the real world, is that the context really does matter so much in starting conversations. And I think friend in its current iteration at least, was listening for not a whole lot of reason, at least in terms of the two months that I tested it before the billboards went live. Now I'm a little afraid to wear it 'cause I don't want to get punched in the face. Now that everybody knows what it is, but I've tested one, for example, that looks at your email and your calendar and other things that you share with it. And it was able to, in my view, act a lot more like the type of friend that I want as a result. It was able to recommend music and movies and games to me. It was able to make things based on pictures it asks for with AI. And I can't share quite what it is just yet, but I do think that that feature set is gonna be more or less commoditized, which is the reason that I bring it up. AI companions that have access to all of your context. And I have come to believe that that is probably going to be a far more fruitful route for personalized AI than listening to your world. So I think maybe some people will be relieved by that. All that said, it does seem that on the other side, Avi really was on to something with this physical object that you could talk to. I think we're now starting to see the stream ring and some other products come to market that allow you to talk to AI at any time to record notes, ask questions, get results back on your phone. But yeah, I almost view those as like two separate things. One is the friendship side that needs to deeply understand you from day one, if you're gonna use it. The other is just the omnipresent AI in your life that you, you know, sick it on tasks and set up reminders and ask it to order more groceries and things like that. - Yeah, my thing with friend and I told Avi at the time was like it was too opinionated and not useful enough from like a productivity, or no recall perspective because it was just this, you know, very like opaque, a thing that you could talk to and got weren't sure what you could get back. You couldn't pull up transcripts. You couldn't like, if it had all that functionality and the opinionated, you know, Avi AI persona as well, maybe it would have done a little better. But yeah, I mean, I've seen the jokes that he has more billboards than users too on X. But I gotta give it to Avi, he's swung for the fences on this one and I'm sure there will be an interesting end to that story whether friend and it's current iteration works or not. - Yeah, I mean, do you believe that everybody is gonna have more than one AI like the companion AI and the useful AI? I feel like that's something that I've been, I've been going back and forth on it a lot. So I do believe that in the same way that people don't want to talk to their EA, the exact same as their therapist. Obviously they have different skill sets, but I think the human mind is kind of contextually compartmentalized in that way. And then again, I mean, he is right. that I do think people are more honest with these AIs than they are with the people that they know. So his instincts, I think, if he has time and enough runway to pivot and make it even better, could be really interesting. Yeah. Well, speaking of runway, haha, I see it right there. Let's go to our next clip. We had Chris, the CEO of Runway on the show. And I enjoyed this exchange. We had about Hollywood's fear of AI because it's only gotten worse since this conversation. And I like what he said about this topic because the mood here in LA on AI is really, I think, only gotten worse, and the mood just in general has gotten worse since this conversation around Hollywood and the entertainment industry. And I've been actually referencing this exchange and some conversations since then. So let's go ahead and play it. Elson, I both live in LA. The mood is, I would say, I don't know how you would describe it. Elson, it's like not great. You know, it's kind of grim. It's like a mix of not great and like highly buzzed on matcha. I would say, which is not a good combo. There's a lot of like out-of-work writers at all time in Elson's neighborhood like on a Tuesday afternoon. You know, like people just-- I bring it to issues, and they're all gone by the time I leave. But do you think that has something to do with AI or is something else structured with you? No, I don't. I think it has a lot to do with the government and the tax incentives and a lot of practical stuff that people don't talk about. But there's already this mood. And then there is, you know, I was just having lunch with like a town agent last week. And he's like, this is all anyone can talk about, right? Is AI, it's going to take all our jobs. Everyone's already. Feels like their jobs are being taken. I don't really see it as that too dimensional. I'm assuming you don't either. But yeah, I mean, I address this like topic of like, is Hollywood fucked or not. Well, I think you actually said something interesting, which is like a lot of the causes for why Hollywood is like in this spot right now has to do with something people don't want to speak about. Which is like, all the things people know are structurally like not really working, but they're hard to address, which is like tax incentives. The strikes, there's like projects being done overseas. There's like, all the things that are just like, outside of AI, it's like, you know, it's like similar to the water problem with AI. You know, AI, I don't know if you guys have kind of tracked something out of there. It's like, people who were obsessed with like consumption of water of AI and like, if you plot that against like every other like water, like consumption of water in other industries, like golf courses consume like 6% of the water in the U.S. And data centers like less than 1%. But like, fighting golf courses feels less interesting than like being against AI. Yeah, I wasn't quite sure when he said it, but it looked it up after the fact and he was right. Golf courses do in fact consume way more water than data centers in the U.S. So that's been an interesting data point because you hear the water thing and the energy thing constantly. And in fact, there's many other greater energy sources than data centers. Not to say it's not growing, but I think just an interesting example of how people latch on to these narratives to try to make themselves feel better and give themselves a villain to project. I think rightful concern that people have about the state of Hollywood, but just yeah, that was an interesting exchange. Yeah, I also think that as always, it's a bit more nuanced than it initially seems when it comes to AI for Hollywood. I think when people think about AI for Hollywood, it's often about replacing actors, making things faster, all of that type of thing. But I think what we've seen at least for now so far is that people absolutely hate the AI aesthetic, which I think you could arguably claim is maybe like closest to what Marvel has been doing, even without AI in terms of the blurry, careless CGI that has been a big part of their movies for the last 10 years. And if you look at the Coca-Cola ad, if you look at some of the other ads you're seeing on TV, the power from the AI aesthetic, I think that stuff is already seeing such a big blowback. I think probably where it's going to come in is with things that are deliberately trying to be kaleidoscopic and experimental. I mean, I'm thinking of like the artist Michelle Gondry or even I saw a quote from James Cameron the other day saying that yeah, it takes eight fucking years to make an avatar movie. If I could speed up some of these processes, that would be nice. And I do think it is probably going to find its home inside of a lot of those workflows as opposed to what people think of today as like a movie that looks like an AI-generated movie. I think that is in all likelihood not going to be what Hollywood chooses to do or what audiences like over the long term. But I will tell you, Alice, we can get super intelligence next year and James Cameron will still take eight years to make the next avatar. Probably true. So the next clip is from Eugenia Kuida, the CEO of Wabi. And what she has made, I actually don't even think it's publicly out yet, but it's been all over X and elsewhere for the last couple months since the beta release, basically the ability to make fully functioning apps on your own right from your phone, not intended necessarily to replace every app on your phone, but to create what they call the personalized software suite. Today we'll live in the era of Microsoft DOS interfaces like the for AI and there will be something more, something very visually enticing, something much more exciting, interactive, something Google-based, think of it as there was Microsoft DOS and then Windows, or Mac OS appeared. So there will be a different, I don't almost say operating system, a different interface layer on top of AI that will allow people to use all software, not just apps, but also AI models in this completely new different way. Yes, so I think Eugenia is still right on the money with a lot of this vision. I think the question is, who is going to claim the actual software creation? Since then, we're starting to see ChatGBT both automate things that don't need a UI and also actually redraw UI for certain software and services inside of the ChatGBT feed. And I would bet that I feel like Google has already teased this as well, that these companies are just going to start creating apps for you based on what it is that they think you need. While I do love her narrative that there is going to be this YouTube for software, I think even with YouTube as much as video is democratized, most people are still not creators. And so I think that's kind of the question for me is, is easy as it is, are people going to want to create their own software or are our most contextual AI services just going to volunteer them, make them for us and say, hey, I thought you might want to use this. I didn't realize that this wasn't out publicly. This is still in private beta. I think so. Wow. Yeah, it's all over my XV. I mean, obviously it's that's super niche, but I mean, I think it's an open-ish. Yeah, I mean, people are making really cool stuff with it and sharing it and she's very good at resharing it and it does seem like it's really taking off at least in the very kind of intercircle tech crowd that we we care a lot about. I'm very curious to see once it's in public release, like full public how people adopt it. Yeah, and what the usage is like her app store for apps concept I liked. And I remember we were, remember how we were needling her on app store rules and Apple and how she was going to have to dance around, you know, the fact that they don't like apps within apps. And then I saw after the fact that one of her advisors is Matt Fisher who ran the app store for like almost 20 years. She's figured it out. So good for you, Jenny. And yeah, even so in private beta getting a ton of traction with that. So good for her. Yeah, I can't say I've had a ton of luck myself trying to make apps for myself. Maybe I'm just asking for the wrong things. I think a lot of this stuff is still to be worked out things like push notifications, especially seem to be a little iffy like if you want to set up an app to send you a push notification whenever some cool artists refreshes their merge page or something like that. I think that's or my daughter poops. Yeah, hey, we could probably combine that with the toilet sensor and have it all be fully automated, right? I think there's a startup for that. MCP that shut up. Yeah, let's do it. Yeah. But it's all happening pretty fast, which is fun to watch. I will say my home screen on my iPhone has yet to change. Hmm, that's a good sign. As some as some metric. Okay, let's go to our next one. So this is Winston from Harvey, the AI legal rapper startup. And this was our first live show, which was also really fun. But I particularly liked and people listeners enjoyed what Winston had to say about surviving as a AI rapper. Against all of the other big aI laughs. Yeah, do you worry about getting Sherlock's by open a iron drop? 100% and I think it is the best hygiene for an application layer company to have. Like I think if you are thinking that you are going to make some company bets that prepare you for that long term, it's going to make you maybe eat some short term gains, but it will help you long term. And I'll give you an example of this. As simple as we started our GTM strategy going to like the largest firms and the largest enterprises. The reason why is partially I strongly believe that if these systems get better, a lot of the lower or an legal work is going to get commoditized. So if you build something for that, it's much easier for, you know, which has to be do come in and just basically will literally write you, right? And so even simple, simple things like that, like that probably slowed down our revenue growth by a lot, right? But I think it's worth it because long-term. And there's a lot more bets that we've made that are like that, but I think you just constantly have to have that mindset. - Is it a tricky balance though, 'cause I feel like you probably talk to people at the labs all the time. I mean, you're a revenue source for them, through their APIs. How does that song and dance go? - Yeah, I mean-- - You probably get previews of new models. Like how do you know, like-- - We do, but-- - But then you're also like, oh, they may try to kill me one day. - Yeah, there's two levels to this, I think. So level one, which hopefully everyone is constantly thinking about, is in order to get value capture, my platform has to be X amount better than whatever you can get from them, right? So that's number one. Hopefully everyone is thinking that way, long-term. That's the easiest one. The second easiest to think about. The second one is just assume they're just gonna directly go into your vertical. Just no matter what. Just assume that they're going to. How would you defend against that and on what time scale, right? And you can think, like, what are the advantages that they would have, what would they build, how would they get mass distribution, like all of these different things. And if you're thinking about that stuff long-term, you might be giving up ground to some, like, current competitors in the, like, startup space. But long-term, you have, like, just a much bigger mode against, I think, what actually matters. - So, yeah, Winston is obviously in Harvey considered one of the pre-minute successful, quote-unquote, "rapper" companies where they were very early to just incorporating models and going very niche into the legal field in this example and seem to be having a lot of early attraction. But, yeah, no, people, especially, I think the more entrepreneur crowd really appreciated his perspective on this. - It's nice to look back on this. Some of this stuff that seems questionable in the moment about, you know, the value of a rapper or otherwise, a few months later, starts to feel obvious, you know. Companies building for specific verticals, specific industries, specific needs, security requirements based on what sector they're in. There's a lot of work to do there, outside of just, like, helping you dig through all your documents and pull together resources into a PRD for your new product strategy. Or whatever. And so, yeah, I'm definitely a believer that rappers are here to stay. And I think that probably goes along with this emergent belief that AI is just kind of the new fabric. It's not necessarily the one size fits all and there's only gonna be one winner in AI. But we're gonna have a lot of different apps that make use of it. Here's another clip from one of our early interviewees, Dylan Field, the CEO of Figma, hot on the heels of his IPO. When you're generating things and you're getting this average result, that's not what people want. I think that we're in a world where with AI, good enough is not enough. Good enough is now mediocre. So if you really wanna stand out, you have to be great. How can Figma help make you great? This is one of the quotes from Dylan that got shared pretty broadly on LinkedIn at least. And I think he's right on here and one of the things that came up recently, tweet from Aaron Levy, the CEO, box, talking about how AI or different technologies of the past don't just take jobs, but they create them and also raise the bar. He tweeted historically, this happens all the time. If you told someone about Figma or Google AdWords in the 1970s, they'd have expected marketing jobs to plummet since we could do many different jobs inside of a single role when in reality the opposite has happened. He said, how did we experience a five X increase in these jobs from the thousands to the millions and 50 years at the exact same time that technology made this work far more efficient? He says, actually it's precisely because of these efficiencies. We went from advertising being the domain only of the largest companies to something that almost any small business could participate in. I feel like this is definitely a vision that is also coming through the idea that while some jobs that either were slower, outdated, or outmoded will go away, essentially what AI is doing is giving a lot more disciplines that people usually didn't have access to, to far more people, far more companies, and also raising the bar at the same time for what that looks like. I mean, even if you just look at the way that Facebook ads have changed over the years or even Google ads as so much advertising, performance advertising at least has gotten automated, it pushes forward the cutting edge and the state of the art faster and faster because everybody is competing against each other. There's still as much competition as ever once the tools get better and so that just pushes people to be better in their own right. Yeah, no, I totally agree. And a good sound bite from Dylan. More guests that give good sound bites, please, for 2026. That's what I'm manifesting. OK, I think we could end it here. This clip was, I think, a special one. We had Rise of Martin, the founder of Hawks, as an early guest on the show. And she shared more of a personal story of the nerve-wracking gut wrenching process of leaving a cushy job at Google to build a startup and some advice that her husband gave her. And I thought it was really nice. So you're riding high. You've made Google call and then you decide to leave and do a startup, is that what happened? Yes. Yes, I actually, I think it was so unbelievable to many people that they thought I was unwell. And I didn't realize it until later that people thought I might have not been OK. But they, you know, I'll never forget when I quit. Josh was like, hey, he's like, maybe you need a break. He's like, maybe you just need a vacation. Maybe you're tired. That was like, Josh, what are you talking about? I was like, this is the biggest moment in my life. I'm like, taking this thing that I worked so hard for and I am leaving it behind because I see the promise of something else outside. I was like, I've never thought clearer in my life. And it was actually quite emotional for me, you know, because of like what I shared earlier, which was, I didn't come from, you know, a particularly wealthy background. Like, I immigrated to the States. I didn't get to go to college. And I found myself at Google making more than I ever had in my life. And I was just suddenly ready to walk away from it. And so there was actually one night. And I woke up, it was like at 4 a.m. And I just burst into tears. It was just like crying, right? And this was before I quit. I was about to quit. And I was crying. And my husband was just so startled. He was like, are you OK? There's something hurt, dude, to go to the hospital. And I was like, I'm so emotional about this moment, because I realized that my dream was to go start a company. And I was like, I have never felt that the right time was now more than ever. But I also have never felt so poor in my life. I was like, it's just so, it's so crazy that I, like, am imagining walking away from this thing that I built for me and my family. And my husband was looking at me. And he was just like, listening to this, he's like, listen. He's like, you know they're going to try to give you money to stay, right? But he's like, how much do you think you're worth? How much are your ideas worth? And I was like, what? He's like, what's the number? He's like, how much is your idea worth? I was like, I don't know. He's like, OK, is it $10 million? He's like, is it $100 million? And I'm like, what are you asking me? I'm like, bawling my eyes out. You're asking me a number. And he like grabs me. He's like, listen, girl. He's like, you are not a $10 million, girl. You're not even a $100 million, girl. He's like, you're a $1 billion idea, girl. And he's like, you go out there, you do it. And he's like, and I got you. And I'm like, what? Where are you get this at like four in the morning? But it was to me, just one of the most impactful moments of my life where I was like, here I am, you know, thinking about it this way. And I live with this person who sees me in this like totally different way. And he was like, you go get it. He's like, you go quit your job. He's like, don't go into this afraid. And I was like, man, wow. Yeah, crazy. - He's coming on the show next. - Yeah. - Yeah, man, that's just what it's all about, right? I don't know. I've been thinking a lot about that, especially, you know, you started a business recently. I started one very recently. And the pressure you put on yourself and having people in your corner like, rises, husband, saying stuff like that. And you know, it's the entrepreneurial journey, right? And I thought it was really cool over to share that with everyone. And I got a lot of good feedback that people appreciated her vulnerability there. And I hope for more combos like that next year, 2026. - That's tech at its best, right? And I mean, playing off that last quote about AI raising the capabilities and the bar. I do feel like while there isn't its sane amount of money being thrown at startup founders right now, you've got to believe that there are a lot of other people who aren't necessarily startup founder CEOs who are considering starting a business for the first time in internet business and online business, a subscription, a service, content, now that it is getting so much faster to create and monetize and share and market whatever it is that you do. Whether it is through Shopify, whether it is through AI-generated video, whatever it is, even having an AI EA or even a real EA that lives somewhere else around the world that's empowered by AI, I think people are getting faster and a lot more likely to try on their own. where before maybe it would have felt insurmountable. - Yeah, and Ryza's living proof of that, and Hux is growing, it seems, and I still check it every now and then, do you check it? - Not in a minute, because my podcast time has been taken over by my one and a half year old, now that she can demand Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. That kind of coincided with the Hux launch a little while ago, but yeah, I think I would be checking it otherwise. - That's a good reason. - Well, that was our recap of the year. I mean, we launched this show in September. We've had a bunch of great guests, and I gotta say, man, it's been great doing this with you. It's been cool to, you know, we've been friends for a long time, but to kind of reconnect through this show, and have families hang out, and get to talk about all this stuff, it's been a lot to me, so thanks for being on the ride. - Likewise, my friend, also big thanks to our families for supporting us. We all know that podcast take time, especially when they are with busy founders, whose schedules are always in flux, pretty much until the night before. There's a lot of time that needs to be shuffled, so thanks to anyone out there who supported us. - And with that, don't forget to like, subscribe, everywhere you get podcasts. We have a website now that Ellis Fied coded over the holidays. It's access.show. Check that out, give us feedback. You can find us in video at AccessPod on YouTube. Definitely subscribe there. And if you like this episode, please leave us a five-star review or thumbs up on your podcast player of choice. It really helps and share it with a friend. That's even better. - You could find me at hamburger on Twitter, and at meaning.company for all your storytelling needs. - You can find my newsletter at sources.news on Substack. - Access is part of the Vox Media podcast network and the show is produced by Hooked Creators. - See you at CSLs. - Bye.