Jensen’s Spy Scandal Deepens, Ring’s Flying Security Cam, Anthropic IPO Roadshow | Diet TBPN

The stock market is crashing. Where did it all go long? That's from the chat. Thank you, Gold Rock. Like that one. No, we're talking about Wong. Alice Wong, because the spy gate continues. It's getting worse. There's a whole bunch more allegations. It's very dramatic, and she's going on the naughty list. Alice Wong is going on the naughty list. If you think there's no way it could get worse, well, that feels like it's on the table. That is on the table. But yes, let's pull up the naughty list because we put Jensen on the on the naughty list. But I think Alice has to go higher on the naughty list, because she's the one that is the spy, and she's working for the for the geopolitical rival, the near peer adversary. She's working essentially. Like she started it. But it's getting crazy. There are seven new accusations that some of them we touched on, some of them we have, and I can kind of take everyone through this. First is that Nvidia, these are all accusations. There's a varying level of reporting. Some of it's from wire and Bloomberg and the information. Some of it's confirmed. Some of it's speculative. So, you know, you have to take all of this with a grain of salt at this point. The story is still developing, but let's go through them. So, first, Nvidia may have interfered with a federal investigation. Commerce Department investigators were investigating mega speed for potentially smuggling and video chips into China. After Nvidia General Counsel contacted commerce, investigators faced unusual restrictions. They needed to route Nvidia inquiries through senior political, through a senior political pointee and avoiding and avoided references to mega speed, which is very odd. Two, Nvidia intervened regarding Alex Wang's detention. General Counsel Tim Teter called commerce under Secretary Jeffrey Kessler after Singapore detained Alex Wang. The question is whether Jensen was leveraging Nvidia's influence to help her. Also, third, Nvidia undercounted 50,000 GPUs sold to mega speed. Nvidia told regulators that its inspectors had accounted for the chips, but Bloomberg identified approximately 50,000 additional GPUs worth billions of dollars. Nvidia said it had had inspected additional warehouses. Fourth, the FBI Congress and Nvidia's border now investigating. Trump said the FBI was looking into Wang, but it was unclear about exactly what. It might be a different thing. Nvidia's border. The way the quote from yesterday made it sound like there's something else. Yeah, but there's so many things. It could be within that or separate or linked to it or something, but never want to be on the that side of the phone call with the FBI. And so Nvidia's board has opened its own investigation and lawmakers raised questions about what other Nvidia executives knew. I'm actually unclear on whether this will wind up with a testimony on the hill, like a congressional inquiry, like the famous Mark Zuckerberg we sell ads moment. Is that how this will play out or is it all behind the scenes? Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, so the entire country for the most part, except what that one place in North Dakota voted against AI. Sure. What do you think their representatives are going to be doing? Come January. Yes. They want to Jensen is one of the faces of AI. He's the most outwardly supportive of the administration. They will use him to put on an absolute show, right? Yes, the exact details of that and how it goes down. I don't think her obvious yet, but he will be starring. They're going to throw the book at him. It's going to be the Gerardian scapegoat. Someone must fall just like Sam Bankman-Free sort of was, you know, was the power law recipient of negative attention post crypto collapse? Like this could be like a lot of attention on Jensen, less attention on other people in AI potentially. But my question is like, if it really is like a level of national security, those might be just closed door hearings or closed door investigations. Like it might be like, there's still a conversation and your under oath, but it's not going to be televised on C-SPAN. I'm sure they'll figure out a way to televised some of it. Yeah. No, no. I think you're right. I would just probably handicap it. But yeah, I think we were talking with a friend last night. He studies history's greatest entrepreneurs. He doesn't really know much about the news, but we were sort of explaining what happened to him. Yeah. And I was like, is this the largest unforced error in business history? Yeah. And I think that it might be. No, no. I was going back to like, you know, Rockefeller, Henry Ford. Like there was never a crisis of geopolitical consequence, quite like this. It really is uncharted territory. There's been plenty of business scandals in history. There's been political scandals in history, but we were even going back to Clinton. And we were like, that was not, that did not reshape the geopolitical dynamic at the time. It was not like, okay, all of a sudden, you know, like Japan had more power than America because of the Lewinsky scandal. That was a separate thing. I don't know. I just think I don't know enough about that to have a strong stance, although my assumption would be that. Not a coincidence. It was an American. Yeah, I know. I know. But like having a president, you know, be disgraced, obviously, it was a huge, huge story. But just purely from a business standpoint, like, you know, this, a, a screw up of this magnitude is, is with these kind of implications, eviscerating hundreds of billions of dollars of market cap. I don't see how, like, knowing that there's just like a lot, they're, they're, it doesn't feel like we're, we're hours away from a positive headline. It feels like we are months away from a, we're, we're years away from potentially, like, a real resolution to all of this, right? It's going to be this massive overhang on the business. Yeah. And it has been interesting to track people's perception of this whole thing from Saturday, or sorry, Sunday, people are like, okay, wow, he admitted to having an affair. And then it's just got worse and worse and worse to the point where I think most people, even if you believe that, that Jensen is the right person to run Nvidia, right, from a, from a value creation standpoint. Yeah. It's hard to imagine him staying in the seat. Yeah. Um, Nvidia's general counsel was a stone cold alibi as last, as last week. So this raises the possibility that we've got more, I'd get out of jail free card. If he's got, it might be on the table, you know, if they have one of those, it's going to be controversial. But, um, so there's a question. There's a possibility that also sounds bad. Yeah. That's it. If he, uh, yeah. So there's a question right now about, uh, did the senior executives knowingly misrepresent the relationship or were they misled by Jensen? Also, Jensen had quietly hired crisis PR firms, uh, or a year earlier. This is from wire. They reported that heller had been managing his behind the scenes communications since at least 2025. Uh, anyway, uh, the potential cover up creates personal liability for Nvidia's directors. This is a big deal. There's already a lawsuit filed. But if Jensen concealed the relationship from the board while Nvidia publicly characterized it as ordinary business directors could face more shareholder litigation, potentially depending on how that breaks. So there's, uh, there's a lot of complications there. Uh, also the information has a fantastic breakdown that goes way deeper into Alice Wong, the, the James Bond of, of AI, I suppose, uh, mega speed. And then there's this new company that, uh, they dug up century Lee Tong, uh, highly recommend reading this, uh, and they actually pieced together the puzzle a lot more. Uh, I was trying to show the connections between these firms. Remember I was saying like, okay, mega speed is related to seven road holdings. And then there's, uh, Alice Wong's hold co that's in the BB eyes. That whole thing. Remember that confusion. Yeah. You're like, I was tuned out for that. Most suspect. It was extremely size corporate structure, full time. Yeah, you shouldn't be able to raise a seed round if that's your structure. Uh, it's a more complicated structure. So there's Shanghai century Lee Tong, which was, uh, the founding, the founding soul shareholder exited June 2024. Then that's Shanghai century long tang, which is indirectly owned until June 2024. Then Shanghai Yunxi investment, which is own 99 percent until 2017. It's insane. Also, I didn't know Alice Wong is married. Uh, and so they're both actually married. Alice Wong is married to Kang Wei, who's the founder and major shareholder of Shanghai Hexie Capital, which was a shareholder in Zhijing, Century, Huatong, which is a shareholder in seven or all the whole things limited, which is, which formerly owned mega speed. So her husband was a shareholder in mega speed through like five layers or something. So I, and, and I don't even know is he stoked about this? He's like, good job. You, you, you honeypotted successfully. Like, that was the name of the game, or was it like, oh, I wasn't expecting you to honeypot like that. It's possible the marriage was like part of the whole corporate structure. Yeah, yeah, no one knows. Yeah, I saw a retail investor over on Instagram crashing out because they were big Nvidia holder. Well, Probably not a big video, but a lot of their portfolio yeah was was in video and they were talking about how how they bought the dip Friday how to great weekend and woke up to discover that they didn't even they weren't even referencing the CEO by name Right because it I don't think they're like that focus on it But but they were like and now I find out that the the CEO had an affair But not just a run of the mill affair like an affair with the alleged spy like and Anyways, it's just yeah, they're calling it the greatest unforced air in business history Featuality Hopefully not hopefully not Going on the nice list. We have our first nice list edition the United States Marines Happy birthday Marines today is the 250 first birthday of the Marine Corps and And Jackson over there wrote a very nice tribute in the newsletter to his grandfather Jackson take us through the story of Michael Fordice and And your grandfather Tom. Yeah, my dad joined the Marines right out of high school. He Went to the Middle East was in Goal four served an operation desert store my grandfather also went to the Marines out of high school Was sent off to Vietnam I fought in the battle of kason which was I think one of the most kind of grueling and bloody battles of the Vietnam war Got his arm shot off unfortunately, and he has um, why do he explain it to me today. It's called um a myo Myoelectric hand so he thinks and it moves and picks up things interesting He actually has like the Luke Skywalker arm. That's incredible. I asked him how it works. He says I don't know it just does That's amazing. I love it But that's it. They're awesome guys. I love the tone and I appreciate their service fantastic Yeah, thank you for their for their service. We love them And happy birthday to the Marines go out on the night list Let's dig in to more posts from the timeline Uh, I'm near over at the information gives more context on Alice Wong says forget the role of mega speed forget the word mega speed mega speed doesn't matter It's almost a distraction her real story is her role at China-based Shanghai century leetong which I mentioned before in a very confusing Chart which became a preferred and video cloud provider provider or partner in mid 2023 and facilitated over seven and a half billion dollars in Nvidia chips Shipments including securing ban chips remember the chips act that's Biden era pre-Trump Oh, well after Trump won before Trump too the chips act restricted the A100 the H100 and so eventually NVIDIA came out with the H20 which was sort of the nerfed version of the Of the flagship chip but Sentry leetong was still able to get the the unearthed chips the best that NVIDIA had to offer Exactly what the government didn't want to happen and now there is a world where you get duped And you accidentally sell something to someone who is exporting it and going around export controls and that would be the The opposite smoking gun the nothingburger right if there's clear evidence that he was duped along that way And it really was like well, I I went to their facility in Shanghai. I'm not Shanghai Sorry Singapore. I went to the Brazilian Singapore. I talked to the companies that were there They were not involved with the CCP or in China at all and so it was totally fine And like I had done all the checks and we had all of our teams checked that the GPUs were staying there And they were not going to be used internationally. I know Ellis was detained by the Singaporean government. We have a lot of evidence that it's worse than that So even if even if it was given what we know even even if they were originally tricked There's been a year since that Detention where they could have been Yeah, like front running this story. Yeah. Yeah, not not not good So Alice Wong and her sister and her husband have built a labyrinth of companies Spanning China and Singapore to acquire Nvidia chips According to people who know Alice Wong and corporate registration records at the center of that corporate network is Shanghai Century Li Tong a China-based company that was founded in June 2023 And by October was added to Nvidia's list of preferred club partners. That's vast To start a company and and rocket and actually get on Nvidia's radar I mean, I feel like you know, you talk to start up founders all the time who are like Ah, I would love to get a meeting with a big company Like I'm six months in they won't they want to answer my emails not so in this case so There's other news When a shipment of band and video chips could not be obtained from Nvidia's distributors Alice Wong stepped in one of the people who knows her said Her role was to secure the chip orders when they got stuck in the supply chain She told some colleagues and customers that she could always get the supply citing her close relationship inside Nvidia And with distributors and other person who knows her said Rough anyway, what what where where should we go next to Matt Levine or over to negligible capital Imagine telling someone six months ago during the SaaS apocalypse that Microsoft will have a greater market cap than Nvidia by November It is it is remarkable that Nvidia was actually the biggest company in the world Right as this was all happening. So he it's literally You know the target number one for a geopolitical rival like there's no other CEO that you would go after It's these it's truly the most the most important And here we are here we are but uh, that's why it's a black swan It's a black swan for sure the question is like can Jensen while he's under investigation from multiple groups Continue this sort of like deal making spree Or does a lot of that have to just hit pause Yeah And part of you know people talk about modes all the time But like if people are willing to be honest and modes are just like you know the people running the show and and that the overall talent density yeah and So much of Nvidia's like moat was just like jensen's Incredible tenacity and work ethic and and basically like schemes right you know when you when you look at like the neo cloud space and like how he's approached Those relationships and and supplier relationships. I mean he's the sort of like jensen discount that you have to put on Nvidia Even the possibility of it is like extreme yeah, and and then the impact for the private markets is like I think a lot of EC's were basically like you know shoot for the moon But even if you miss like jensen will give you another up round or or he'll you know buy your buy your company I mean even even I was sitting here looking at Looking at core weave as it's been beat up being like jensen There's no world where this company fails because Jensen I don't think we'll let it happen and there's so many more questions around How he'll approach running the business You know, I can imagine as long as he's CEO. He's probably gonna like stick to his guns and keep doing what he's doing But he it's just like his entire strategy of like being everywhere all the time Just being again like he's not actually like Switzerland in practice right like Nvidia is very aggressive You know wants to do everything you can to win but but generally being like I'm gonna fund everyone right this sort of like Switzerland You know sort of like neutral approach. He just wants AI to grow and he wants people to buy Nvidia GPUs And if that's happening he's happy right he's gonna support all the you know the the neolabs like There's like a ton of neolabs that have raised like a billion dollars right and a lot of them now have to be they were they were hoping like If we can just prove out that we are like on the path to making something commercially viable or interesting Like we can probably count on a Nvidia for like half a billion or or a billion dollars or to anchor around And and it just like as we've gotten into this period where it feels like capital is the primary constraint to the build out right A lot of people want to build data centers right a lot of people will think that there's gonna be you know exceptional demand for Compute regardless of the midterms right and but and if capital is the if we're all realizing like hey, you know You know the rates that that developers and everybody in the in the sort of seven layer cake are having to pay now to finance Different you know their own cat-backs whether they're on the bottle, you know the sort of AI infrastructure side all the way to like the real estate and Powered shell side You know one of the biggest financiers of this entire build out is like effectively you can't lean on them anymore in the same way that you could And that's why I just think we got a major reckoning right we got to do stimulus stimulus checks It is it is such a black swan and it's interesting because we lived through a very crazy moment with the situational awareness That still didn't feel like a black swan because there were so many people from day one being like oh this is not gonna work Or this is so this is so risky. It's too good to be true and that and that puts it in like it was it was surprising and it was It was a very rough moment and it was it was tough to watch and it was sad, but it was not as much of a black swan as this We're a Tyler you You had a comment and then I want to know where the prediction markets are. >> Yeah, that's what I was going to say. So they're up almost 10% from yesterday, if Jensen is out before July of next year. >> Up next year. >> Almost 40% right now. >> 40% yeah. >> And yesterday it was around 30, 31. >> Yeah, I've heard a lot of chatter about people saying like he can't stay, but at the same time there's not a very clear succession list and it's a crisis. >> Yeah, it is, it is just a crisis. Anyway, there is so much more Nvidia news, but we should probably move on. The, the, and theropic news, there's a ton there, they're on track for IPO. They put out their perspectives and offering documents and videos and they have a whole host of, of ways to interact with their data. And also Fable 5.2 came out and is doing very well in benchmarks. And people are starting to show demos of that and that's very promising. Really rough timing because Jensen is sucking a lot of the air out of the room. At the same time, it is sort of a vindication of their positioning that. The geopolitical conflict with China is extremely high stakes, extremely serious. And will be taken to the extreme. >> Yeah, they have a new 80 billion AR number. I think there's like a lot of, like, there's still a million reasons to be bullish on Anthropic. >> They also cut the valuation. >> And if you were bullish, if you, yeah, the valuations cut, you have a better entry point if you do want to invest. And so I think in hindsight, I think a lot of people will be like, wow, this was like sort of a golden opportunity and that there was so much bad news. Yet, Anthropics business was still working in the way that it has been. And that creates, you know, an opportunity for everybody participating. And my assumption is that, like, retail will be able to get massive exposure at the IPO. >> Did you see that on their website? They have, like, a whole, they have a whole, they have like a bunch of case studies of companies that are using Anthropic. But then they also have a section where it's like, how can you participate? And it says, like, click here to know the Charles Schwalbrow, click here for the Robin Hood route, click here for the e-trade route, and they all have, like, you can click your brokerage and like, go through a flow. And so that felt, I don't know, it felt like down to earth or something to see. I mean, maybe it's standard practice, but it seemed like, I don't know, it was kind of like, it wasn't, it wasn't high full gluten. It felt very like, yeah, like we're. >> Well, I think a lot of people's mental models is still like a company goes out and they raise $4 billion. >> Yeah. >> On their IPO, right? And there's, and there's just like, plenty of big investment banks who will fund that. And now it's like, yeah, you can carve out $10 billion for retail or more, right? >> Yeah. >> Bill Bishop is just showing the Bishopinator. >> The Bishopinator is doing a bunch of, a bunch of punditry. He says, Nvidia execs ran a smear campaign against proponents of chip export controls, bully people on the hill. They made so many enemies and now no one is afraid of them. I think we are still in the tip of the iceberg phase of what is going to come out. He thinks that there's going to be many more shoes, the whole closet full of shoes dropping over the next couple of months maybe. >> Imagine they open the closet and like, 300 nothing burgers spill out. >> Wow. >> Yeah, yeah, fire up the grill, we're cooking up a nothing burger. >> I haven't seen anyone post that nothing ever happens. >> Yeah, yeah, you got to post that. >> You have one of the all time worst nothing ever happens right before the start of the Iran War, I believe. >> Yes, correct. >> Wow, true owl for you. >> Fade Tyler. >> True owl, but that's what you come to TPPN for. >> Hot tigs. >> Travis Kalanick chimed in with a vague post sort of, I mean, everyone knows what it's about. He's talking about in video, but he says had a little time on my hands this morning to do some writing, send along to someone you know who may benefit. Practical principles to counter a modern day coup, siop, struggle session. Own what you did, but fiercely resist accommodating the mob. The op is not about your past actions about, it's about your enemies and this event as their opportunity. No matter how bad it gets, nothing is as bad as it seems. He's saying it's a mindset issue. The sort of, the interesting thing is like going from where every single day that's passed, well it's only Tuesday, the last couple of days. Every single day it seems it's actually worse than I originally thought. >> True, yeah, it does seem to be getting worse before it gets better, but hey, nothing burger could be coming in a minute, any minute. Well, it does seem like Anthropics on track to IPO next Thursday, which will be very exciting. I believe SpaceX went out on Friday and didn't really start trading or moving around much later in the day. So we'll be covering it, it's potentially landing on GTA 6 launch day, so we're going to figure out the schedule. But it should be a fun day tracking how the market reacts to that. I'm pretty optimistic, but we'll see what happens. It'll be, also we're going to tomorrow X next week and we're going to be talking to a bunch of like the most qualified people, many anthropic investors, many of the folks who are underwriting the IPO. So be sure to tune in next Tuesday and Wednesday because we have an all time line up to cover this IPO and understand what's happening, both with the AI trade and Anthropics specifically. So it should be a really, really great week of coverage. >> Well, here we go. Amazon unveils a flying home security drone. >> Got it. >> Ring Robotics has two autonomous security devices, a $250 flying camera for homes. A $1000 roaming robot for businesses. The ring drone cam flies preset routes indoors, automatically investigates triggered alarms and records 2K video. It's AI pilot maps rooms and navigates around obstacles. The rover cam autonomously patrols businesses, investigates disturbances and records up to 4K video. I think this is quite cool. We have a security system in the office. The cameras are at like very specific angles. It's not, I would love for a drone to launch when there's an intrusion. >> And ship with Kamikaze mode, is that an add on that you have to subscribe to? Or do you have to use a zero day in a model to root it and then side load your own operating system? >> Also, they should just come as a swarm. So you should be able to get thousands of these drones. >> If you probably can, you just get a whole bunch of these. >> All coordinate because yeah, once you unlock Kamikaze mode, you don't want to be limited to, you don't want to be like, you know, just have one shot. >> Yes, so very cool. I think this will be maybe successful. I don't understand why it's indoors. Don't you want outdoor patrols, outdoor security? Don't you want the drone on your roof docked and then kind of like flying a little patrol every once in a while based on cameras? Like, it feels like, why are you waiting till there's an intruder inside to like launch this little drone that can just swap, swap away? >> No, I mean, it's like, if you get an alert that there's been some sort of intrusion. I think default assumption should be that it's not actually, like if you have a home security system. >> Sure. >> Over the course of a decade, you're going to get a bunch of notifications that are an intrusion. Probably, hopefully, 99% of them are like, you know, somebody came home and like that lives there. I didn't know it was armed and, you know, whatever, right? So there's going to be a lot of false positives. So the drone is how you quickly determine, is this a false positive or not? Without having like, I'd rather have a drone than like 20 indoor cameras. >> Yeah, you don't want indoor cameras. When Nat Friedman said that he had a series of indoor cameras and he was able to get his open claw to like kind of bully him into drinking water. Remember that strike sessions? I was like, that's, it's very cool that he's such an early adopter of this, but I don't know if I want a bunch of indoor cameras. So having the ability to snap your fingers, put a camera anywhere in your house without needing to install always on cameras that immediately become worse spyware than your smart TV potentially, that is very cool. But I want to see what these things can do outside. Can these things run around outside? Can you trick them into thing there inside when they're actually outside? Because the outdoor patrol seems like the thing to get. But maybe, maybe an opportunity for a startup. >> It is funny that there's sort of contrast between these two things. Like the drone seems kind of like sinister, it's the matrix. You know, we're living in a sort of a dark sci-fi future. >> Sure. >> And then the little home robot is like very wally coated. >> Yeah. >> And it's like, maybe you could have made the drone like a little bit more friendly. >> Oh, I would have gone the other way, made the rolling robot a little bit more intimidating through some more wire on that thing. >> The crazy thing is like, how do you, this product launching right now is tough timing because of all the new cyber security risks? >> Oh, yes, it takes it all. >> I wouldn't even have thought twice about it. >> Totally. >> Call it like six, 12 months ago. >> Yeah. >> Whereas now I'm like, do I want something that can take off in my home and fly around? Or at the very least, like, you got a really, really, really trust ring. >> Yeah, totally. And Amazon. Which is, you know, in the top five most trusted companies. >> No, they can spend more on cyber security for this product than any other totally, totally security company. >> But yeah, it is still, like, there's always like a human in it. >> But I, but I so, so. >> It's like giving password away or something. >> With the, with the ADT acquisition. >> Mm-hm. >> Like, I expect them to. >> Mm-hm. to introduce a bunch of products like this. And that's what I want out of these security companies. I've talked a lot about the pitch for humanoids as home security deterrence product. I think it's gonna be far easier to have a humanoid be disruptive to a home intrusion than it is for a humanoid to do laundry, like fold laundry well, or do the dishes, right? - Yeah. - So bullish on this category. - Yeah, no, it's cool to see that ring is still innovating even inside of Amazon. It seems like they're making good progress. - More fireworks has been hacked. - Infraints, platform hacks, obviously railway. It's been going through it. Fireworks has been hacked. Open code was another that was dealing with a bunch of cyber issues. Basically, a month ago, various groups decided like we are going after the infant inference providers. Like one, you can potentially like get access to compute. Yeah, you can get access to compute, but you can also expel trade weights. And this fireworks incident is the first example where I think they were not able to expel trade all the weights. And again, fireworks is hosting open models that have been, you know, host trained by companies like Whitney Davis, so there's a lot of reasons why people would want those. But fortunately, it seems like they only got some small percentage of the weights. And they caught it the same day. So again, I kind of expect it to be kind of like roving efforts where like we're going after startup, like scale up, inference providers, and then it'll probably go to another category of company. Yeah, it seems like, I mean, Ilya Setskyver sort of predicted this back in September. He said, "Neoclouds have limited cybersecurity. Next time agents successfully go rogue, they'll try taking over a neocloud to run more copies. This is bad. Thus, neoclouds should greatly strengthen their cybersecurity and every company with strong cyber models should help with that." Well, we'll said, "Never wrong, just early." And yeah, this wasn't quite that because I don't think they got access to all the compute but they stole a lot of data, stole a lot of weights. I mean, they were not able to fully take control of neocloud. I mean, yeah, also, I think Ilya here is talking about like rogue agents. And this was not, I mean, I don't think we believed that this was that. But we're like, you know, he's like, this is a proof point in the step in the chain that an inference provider was able to be hacked is a novel and new, new problem. Well, there's one more thing. Cisco. (laughs) (upbeat music)