Latest / Beat The Odds with Dre, Rodney, & Brylan / Weighted Planks, Medicare Fraud & The OpenAI Money Printer

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Weighted Planks, Medicare Fraud & The OpenAI Money Printer · Beat The Odds with Dre, Rodney, & Brylan

• Rodney: What's up, everybody? Dre: Yo, what's good, your week starting out? Rodney: It's okay, it's okay. Second day of the week, we're starting off on Tuesday today. I think overall it's been fine. Been working out with my brother every day, pretty much. Heavy lifts. Brylan Donaldson: What's your workout routine consist of? Cause I knew you were doing your walks and all that stuff. Like, yeah, what's it look like today? Rodney: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, so... I still do the walks about 10,000 steps a day, pretty much. That's pretty much like the, the minimum. But then, then jump rope for sure. We try to do a hundred, 200, a hundred at the minimum of like skips or whatever every other day or a couple of times a week, two, times a week. And then. And then we go to the gym every day. So we go to the gym every day. But we only do lifts two times a week. So it'll be like squats, dead bench, and then... and then these are the worst, weighted planks. So at the end, like those are like, those are probably like the absolute worst. Like they never, yeah, they never, they never get better. They never, they, they, you do two, they, they never get easier. Like that's out of all, like bench will go up, squat will go up, deadlifts will go up, everything will go up, but we do shoulder, shoulder press as well. And then the other days is just like, just different weights and machines and. Dre: Hmm. Brylan Donaldson: Like the weight on your back? you Dre: Yeah. Hmm. Rodney: Just different things that are in the gym. Dre: Y'all doing the core workouts didn't matter, honestly. Those are ones that matter. Presses, squats, bench press, honestly, just keeping that strong is really, really all you need for O'Farrell. Rodney: Basically. Yeah, basically. Facts, facts. And it happens quick. know, it happens quick if you just stay consistent. Brylan Donaldson: Yeah, now I got my this weekend, man. Yeah, yeah, this this second one, man. So we're hoping for better results. Rodney: ⁓ nice. Dre: Wait, is this the same Hi-Rox, right? Brylan Donaldson: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, once you get in that type of shape, you can't lose it, man. So, yeah. Rodney: ⁓ yeah? Dre: ⁓ 100%. Yeah, you probably in peak right now. How many miles are you running every day now? Brylan Donaldson: Man, I'm be honest, February I was down bad, man, because my asthma and stuff just kind of with the weather change was like messing it up. And so I didn't run as many miles. Yesterday was probably like my first time actually getting outside and running. So what did we do? We did about six miles. But one of the things I realized like I need to work on better is, know, because I'm working from home and sitting so much, like, bro, my my glutes, man, like my hips, I got it, I got to really strengthen that. And it's weird because Dre: Mm. Brylan Donaldson: Yeah, I was, I was doing some, some research into it and like, have a, have a pretty good, like strong So I was like, that's weird. but it was talking about like, you know, when you run a lot and, you sit a lot, you actually need to do quite a bit more to like activate your, your, your, basically your glutes before you start running. Because if you don't, if you don't, then it's like that strength doesn't even matter. Right. because you're basically going from zero to 100 and that's how you end up pulling a muscle or whatever. And so yeah, yesterday I felt that and I was like, oh man, I can't have that happen. But yeah, going into the competition, bro, I'm feeling good. I'm probably gonna do the New York one in June, but this one's solo, man. And so that's my goal, man. Rodney: ⁓ shoot. You made a good point about the leg thing because I've been targeting glutes more too for similar reasons. one the things that they say is like you become like quad dominant. for example, like I would be doing squats and I'd be like, like you said, like I got a squat, but like my quads is like huge. I'd be like, but my. Brylan Donaldson: Yeah! Rodney: glutes is not, I'm not activating my glutes. So yeah, that's a important thing. I didn't realize the connection between maybe like sitting down, but all I knew was that my glutes weren't connected. I didn't feel like I had like real connection there. So yeah. Brylan Donaldson: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I, it's, have you, heard of, I think it's called horse squat. Rodney: No, I haven't heard of that. I might have to look that up. Brylan Donaldson: So it's actually, if you've actually seen like karate folks or whatever, where they squat down and then they bring their head. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Basically, that's a horse squat. It's like a super wide like squat with your toes out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, but that is really good for like your hips because with all the sitting down that you do, your pelvis rotates of place. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that can. Dre: Yeah, me either. don't know why. was that? Rodney: ⁓ I've seen these. I've seen these. Yeah, so you can get like, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, bro, right. Brylan Donaldson: that can cause a lot of back pain and all that other stuff. So this helps basically realign it. And so like I've been doing that like every morning, probably like three sets of 30 seconds. like when I say, bro, it's crazy how you feel such a difference in the small things, man. Like, yeah, so I would definitely recommend that as well. Rodney: Okay. Right. Nice. Dre: Definitely adding that to the rotation for sure, We all want to start. We got a lot of stuff on the docket today. We could start with the sad war or start with the hyped up numbers because we got some crazy numbers to talk about. Rodney: Yeah Brylan Donaldson: Let's start with the war stuff, get it out of the way, because I feel like it's been going on and most of the narrative is pretty much the same, although there some new pieces. yeah, I'm we start there. Dre: Okay. Okay, I yeah, Rodney you want to take that when you got some numbers for the what's happening, right? Rodney: Okay. I'll just start with just one thing and then I'll let you all run with this. We have officially sent over 3,500 troops to the Middle East and it looks like we're preparing for an invasion of Iran. That's pretty much what I've heard. I think there's other things that we want to get into a little bit more detail, but. Dre: Sure. I think what I heard too is in total, maybe, I don't know, Bradley, you might have more insight, but what I heard in total is that there's like 50,000 US troops, I think, in that area right now. I don't know what the split is between Army, Navy, Air Force. I don't know what the distribution looks like, but I know in total, at least the number that's been floating out there on the media, in American media at least, is there's about 50,000. Brylan Donaldson: Yeah. Dre: That number could be underestimated. Obviously, it could be some strategic value to why they wouldn't give the exact number. But nevertheless, there are tens of thousands of military personnel in the region and more being deployed. And to your point, Rodney, I think most of it comes down to some invasion. I don't know what the strategic plan here is. I don't know what's going on. Trump is saying one thing. Iran is saying one thing. But then the military actions are saying another thing. know what I'm saying? So it's really hard to like... disseminate was actually taking place and was actually happening. I think a ground invasion will be catastrophic and really bad. I think Iran has like one of the largest ground forces in the world. Like they have like over a million men that they could easily deploy. They obviously are really good at creating ballistic missiles, drones, all types of things that unfortunately our systems don't always stop in this entirely. Yeah, I think this would be a brutal battle those soldiers that are deployed on the ground. So I hope that's not necessarily what's happened. I hope this is a deflection more than anything, but yeah, it's hard to say, Brylan Donaldson: Yeah, would know you're you're you're spot on kind of what with what I've seen. then I think the thing that I also want to add is like the cost. Right. And so one of the numbers that I heard out heard recently is, yeah, it's been going on for a little over a month or so now. And so some of the estimates put the cost between anywhere 13 billion to 20 billion dollars that has already spent, you know, within that month. And they're saying that some of the costs are rising to like a billion a day. And so, yeah, this, ⁓ Dre: Is this money I have a question about that and I don't know if you know the answer But is this money actually money does being spent in real time or is this money that's already being budgeted? There's already been allocated right because we already know like Congress is already authorized like what a true I think it's like a trillion dollars now a year in military spend if not a trillion close to a trillion a little over that so I'm like this number of like what it has cost like is it is it real is it actually meaningful Brylan Donaldson: Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Dre: You know what saying? Or is this just like already baked into the operations, right? Already, like just already baked into the operating costs. Do you know? Brylan Donaldson: Yeah, I genuinely don't know. my guess has to be that, yeah, that I think you probably can bucket it into a different buckets. The first one kind of being like, obviously the bullets and like the bombs and things of that nature, right? And so to me, those are treated very similar to like inventory of a company, right? you're not accounting for that cost until it's actually being right? And probably happening here as well. And then you also have the cost that is probably a little bit more real time. But that's okay, now that we've used this asset, like how do we get more of it? And then I think you obviously have the traditional cost that comes with like maintaining like our airplanes, our ships and things of that nature. But I think one of the things I've always, actually I was having this conversation a few weeks ago with one of my friends who works in finance. he was the first, that was just, this was the first time I had ever heard of like the black book. And was like, what the hell is the black book, bro? And he was like, yeah, look it up. And it's crazy because the Pentagon literally, like basically there's a black book that essentially no one knows how much money goes into it every year. No one what they use that money to like spend on. It is audited. every year, the Pentagon and all our national agencies have to be audited, but never in the history have any of them ever passed an audit. And the accounting of all this is already, nobody knows. Dre: So we don't know They probably don't even know, right? Like how much money is being spent. Money is just being spent. Brylan Donaldson: Correct. So yeah, I do. I do. I do think that's interesting. I think the other thing that is interesting is like, I was, I was taking a look at this and I was going back and forth with some of my finance homies. and I think looking at the war from a market perspective, right? I think when you, when you, when you take a step back and know, we look at, know, where were we essentially almost a year ago. So April 2nd, when Trump announced, you he was going to be doing the tariffs to let's say before the war markets had grew, literally the S and P had grew 40%. So it's been on a tear, if we're just going to be honest, right? So it's been very bullish, but I think the thing that has been very interesting is like, since the war has started in a month, it's already dropped 10%. And the thing that has been intriguing is it's been this tug of war. And like, I pay attention to it every day where like, You hear this narrative of like the war impacting the everyday consumer. and I forget the guy who's on Trump's administration who came out and was like, markets are doing great, but consumers are going to get hit like, and they'll figure it out. which is like, bro, you know, majority of America are consumers, right? Like, we're going to be real. But I think the thing that is interesting is how much this market is, reacting. to the stories that are coming out of it, right? Because I think what you're seeing is going back to what you were saying earlier around a lot of contradictions where you're basically when things come out, like the straight-up form of roost is closed, energy is being impacted. You see markets starting to tank, right? Which I do think is rational. But as soon as Trump comes out on Monday, minutes before the market opens and says, we're taking a step back from the war or whatever his statement is. you see markets grow two to 3 % in a day or whatever, et cetera. And I just find that interesting because I'm very curious on how rational the markets are right now, just from the perspective of like, is nobody paying attention to the fact that like, what this man is saying is very contradictory. Like you said, he said something, Iran said something, and then his actions said something else. Or is it more so, people are trying to buy in because we don't know where the bottom is hoping that like, okay, one of these times he's right and this bitch is going to skyrocket. Like what could it be? ⁓ So yeah. Dre: Yeah. I'm seeing crazy, crazy swings in the market. Like, uh, I don't do a lot of individual stock buying, but I do have a little bit of holdings and I have sand disc, for example, which is a memory stock. There's been on a tear from just the AI boom and that shit has been fluctuating like 10 % a day. Like it'll, it'll drop, like, which has been crazy. It'll drop. Obviously wipe away a sand disc. Brylan Donaldson: Which stock is this? Dre: And then it went back up again 10 % today. I'm like, what the hell? 10 % is a crazy move. That is a crazy price action in a single day. And it's been doing that. It's been on a crazy uptake. I definitely, I mean, this is not financial advice, but I highly recommend people go out and look at some memory stocks saying this is only one of them. But it's been on a crazy tariff. But my point is that to what you were saying, Brylin, is that... Trump is, him coming out and saying certain things has been moving the markets like crazy and making them recover, making them drop, making them go up and down. So I don't know, man. There's a lot of crazy, weird stuff behind the scenes is happening. Institutional investors are loving it. They're making a shit ton of money. But retail folks are feeling it. I'm, I don't mean, again, I think last time on the pod, talked about it. I see it now and I notice it now when I go and fill up gas for my car. Like it is noticeably more money. Like before it was like, okay, just a little bit. Now it's like, no, it is noticeable now. It is impacting people on a daily basis and it's moving quickly. Like what it was last week or two weeks ago versus last week versus this week is constantly increasing. So these things are being felt. So whoever said that, ⁓ we're doing great because the stock market is doing good, it's completely out of touch with reality because these prices are impacting people daily and this is moving quickly. Brylan Donaldson: Yeah, I think another thing that I would add on that too is like I do I do think and I had been hearing this narrative for a minute that like The us that we live in today is k-shaped We're on one end of the k you have people that own assets and are doing phenomenal on the other end of the k You have people that don't and they're feeling the impact of all these different things like groceries gas you name it and I I just always kind of like go back to like So how does that reflect in our policies? Right. And it does seem like I, I need to go look up this guy's name from the interview, but like when you watch it, I'll drop it in a group chat. It is the perfect example of someone being out of touch with like the reality of like most people. and so I do think this is like setting up an interesting environment for like what we do have going on, you know, in the remainder of the year with like midterms and things of that nature. But I think, You know, to this point of like markets, And even, you know, back home and tying this all back to like what we're seeing now in I think, you know, these last few weeks really has been an inflection point. One, because we saw a lot of NATO and a lot of folks that we thought were friends not show up when we needed them to. Two, we're at a junx where now you have troops ⁓ that are sent to this, you know, the area in the magnitude of 50,000. Yet what is being told is we're not going to invade. Three, also Trump and Rubio both came out and said, we will be evacuating literally the Gulf and Iran soon. the rest of the world will have to figure out the straight of hormones. Like he tweeted that today. Right. And I think going back to how does this show up in markets? If any of those are wrong, if we do end up invading. If we do end up staying longer than we need to, markets have to start to question when he says something, how much am I willing to believe it? Right. Because I do think, I do think, I do think what could be happening ⁓ like, once again, you have people that are right now that are trying to stocks on discount right now. If they're, if they're right now, they're on discount. So people are buying it that way. Dre: Mm-hmm. Brylan Donaldson: But the other thing that I'm curious about too is like, I'm sure y'all read about this a few weeks ago, but I think it was one of the hedge funds like two Sigma, one of those quant funds that they taken court and basically they were shown to have manipulated the crypto markets. And it was because they own such large positions, they were able to drive up the price to signal to people that like, ⁓ this is about to go on a run. And then they sold all their positions and because they sold, they own so much of it, that thing just tanked and they were able to run put options capture on the direction. How do we know that that's not happening now? Given most those institutional investors own most the market. It is not your everyday person who may be holding it for retirement, et cetera. Dre: Hmm. Brylan Donaldson: And so, yeah, that's kind of like some of the things that I'm paying attention to, like as this continues to unfold. Dre: Hmm. So if you're, put a bow on it. I guess if you are a retail investor or everyday person, what do you do right now? Do you just leave everything as it is and just ride it out, ride the tide ⁓ yeah, guess do you make any specific moves? And again, we're not giving people financial advice. I guess it's just more of a general. Brylan Donaldson: Yeah, Yeah, great question. So I'm somebody that really pays attention to the charts just because I think market psychology is very important, right? And also I'm a trader investing. I leave that to my 401k. Yeah, like that's not me. And I think both the reason why I have to make that distinction is because both carry two different mindsets. And then even when you're a trader, it depends on if you're day trading, swing trading, or if you're leap trading, those are Dre: Mm-hmm. Brylan Donaldson: totally different horizons. I'm a leap trader, meaning I'm trying to buy something and make sense it over a year or two. That's what I'm doing. ⁓ would say right now, the thing that I would be paying attention to is if you just take, for example, like the S and P and NASDAQ, just to keep it simple. If you go look at their charts, they are very close to the term. So medium term is typically measured in 50 day moving average. And then term is typically measured in 200 ⁓ day moving they're very close to crossing. When you have the short term then cross into the medium term, oftentimes leads to like a very like, you know, months period of bearish direction. So right now, like when you go look at those charts and I have it pulled up right now, the prices have below the 200 day moving average. And the reason why that's important is because If you literally like literally when I was looking at Sandesk, right? And I, and I had that, chart pulled up to me. If I was looking at Sandesk, I'm like Sandesk right now is, is, is, is, is at an inflection point because literally what you see the stock doing over the last year is touching that 50 day moving average. So that average was the floor. And so I would probably have some confidence that like, even with the stock being down, I'm I'm continuing to buy in this. because its floor has been strong in the medium term. I would say I personally would probably be looking at specific plays. I have a few thesis. The first one is obviously going to be AI. So infrastructure, probably the most obvious one is probably going to be Nvidia. But also I do like the SMH and like just seeing how that plays out because you can basket everything if you don't want to go deep into it. The second thing that I would say is energy. Like all of this is tying back to energy. But I think what you have to pair energy with is metals. Right now, is happening in the market is you had gold taken off. You had gold, silver, copper, a bunch of ton of those metals taken off over the last year. They have significantly dropped in last month since this war has started. And it has confused people because typically in war, people go to safe havens, right? Because of inflation and things of that nature. If you go look at the charts, The charts are just telling you they're just testing the old floor. Like that is what is happening right now. And so I would probably be looking at looking at getting back into those because the reality is China's not going to stop buying gold because they want to switch the currencies. We need all these metals for AI. So demand is still going to be there. may not be there right now. And so these would be some of the things that I would be looking into. then, yeah, I haven't looked at Uber in a minute, but. Uber. I'm looking at Uber when it comes to like just what is happening at the intersection of AI transportation in like our world in general. So those would be some of the things that I'd be looking at and paying attention to and just looking at the charts to like confirm it. Dre: Mm. For sure. For sure. No, those are all good insights, All Where we want to go next. Rodney: Okay, well, Nick Shirley, Los Angeles. In Los Angeles, Nick Shirley, so real quick, Nick Shirley is this young dude who, this young kid who has been uncovering fraud in America. I think he started in Minnesota and he's now in California. and he's uncovering a lot of crazy fraud in Los Angeles. So essentially, he's claiming that there's over $170 million of fraud in LA. Some people are projecting those numbers to be a lot bigger than that. However, me kind of break down some of the schemes that were showing up. And I kind of also want to point out some of the visuals that I saw on social media, some of the things I saw in some of these videos. He would go into these empty lots and he's not like going into the empty lots like, is that a daycare center or is that a hospice center? He's going to government websites, because all this information is public. Anybody can look it up. Going to the addresses. he'll go into these parking lots. And they have BMWs, Rolls Royces. It's like... crazy stuff sometimes in these parks. Not all of them, but in some of these, it's just these crazy luxury cars. It is LA, so that's kind of a common thing in LA. But in these types of environments where they're kind of run down, looks like nobody's really there, cars are kind of dusty, kind of just odd. But he's often going to these lots, going to the address, finding that a lot of these lots are. empty like this. There's the they go to the doors. There's no actual business there. They go to some of these last don't have any cars and it's at least 89 hospice companies that are doing this. And and there's also even more CBS found over 700 of 1800 of LA's hospice. had red flags that could potentially be fraud. And this is important because has ⁓ hospice dollars coming in, or California has more hospice dollars coming in than nearly % of the rest of the country. And that's like a ridiculous number. And ⁓ California huge, probably the biggest state, if not top three biggest states in the country, but. That's an number. And I know I haven't said it exactly, but for those that don't know, hospice is essentially when you, the has determined you're probably going to make it or you're going to need constant hospital care outside the hospital. Usually it's when you a terminal illness of ⁓ some sort. And they this stuff. a little bit more detailed too is that, they would sometimes pay elderly people for their information so they can use those to build a government. Sometimes they would trick elderly people into getting their medical identifier number or whatever the exact number is so that they can turn around and have these organizations, these buildings that have an address, and then they start billing hospice. And then they just take the money. There's nobody. then some of these people, have pull up, Nick has up to their house and and they're like, I had no idea. Like I'm alive, I'm doing fine. I'm alive, I'm doing fine, I have a house. But their number is being charged. And I'm sure that some of these people were maybe not even alive. There'll be some of these numbers and they're getting charged. this is kind of a big deal. Not even kind of, it is a big deal. But the question is though, like, I mean, there's many questions, but one of my questions would be, How can the system be so just fragmented or this could even happen? You would think that some of these systems will be more tied together so that this couldn't even happen to begin with. I'm not trying to take away the responsibility of these individuals that are scanning tax dollars taking away hundreds of millions, potentially billions of dollars that could be used towards more services. Dre: Yeah, crazy, man. I as caught up on exactly what was happening in California. I knew he had exposed some fraud. So I figured it was a continuation of Minnesota, but I didn't know the details. So that's actually very interesting. And that's only in Los Angeles, right? So we're not even talking about other areas in California. That's only in LA. So I can only imagine what it looks like across the entire state of California. Rodney: Yeah, exactly. Dre: Like probably insane. I think part of it is, mean, again, you never know, right? I think it's multifaceted, but I think part of it is like the incentive side of it, right? Which is government funding to a lot of organizations. The government makes it so easy, right? For commercial businesses to be able to work directly with them and to deploy capital. So for example, I've been able to work with Brylan Donaldson: Facts. Rodney: Yeah. Dre: the federal government to secure an SBA loan. So typically how that works is the federal government is securing a certain amount of capital for a bank. They might insure, let's say 80 % of the loan, right? So from a bank perspective, the risk that they're taking to deploy capital to a business like myself is minimum, right? Because 80 % of that loan, if I default on that loan is automatically going to be paid for by the federal government. Right. So the risks that they're taking on is just smaller. Right. That's just one example of how federal, how federal funds work. Right. But when they work, when, when you're talking about like to nonprofits or whatever the case may be, usually there's a mandate that those funds have to be deployed. They have to be spent, right. They have to be distributed. And I think because of that to have to mentality, unfortunately, it seemed like it's been easier than ever to get access to those funds. And because there's not like a risk side to it, because again, these are federally backed funds, right? It's not like it's their money. It's not like it's money coming from the city, right? A lot of this is coming from the state or federal government. I feel like there's just a lack of oversight. There's just a speed or need to like deploy capital because then you can go and get more money, right? That's kind of like the incentive is like, well, I'm not going to give you money if you haven't deployed the money I already given you, right? But if I see you deploying the capital and then you come back and you request some more money. then it's like, all right, then obviously there's a need because you've been able to find a home for that capital. But if you haven't been able to find a home for it, then what am I going give you more money for? Right. And so I think you get in this cycle of like the incentives are forcing this fast deployment of capital without proper checks and balances. And then the more you deplore it, the more capital can secure. And it just lowers the barriers. And unfortunately, it just, it's just rampant through the system. But nevertheless, I think Nick Shirley is a hero. He is a journalist. I'm gonna give him the title that other folks won't give it to him because maybe he don't have the press credentials. He is a journalist. He is doing the work of journalists in this country. This is the purest journalism there is, which is exposing corruption and fraud to everyday working people who, know, unfortunately at the end of the day, it does become their money because if there's a state money or federal money, then this is tax-based money. So if you work a job and pay taxes and this is your money, and we all should be concerned about that. Brylan Donaldson: you Dre: But nevertheless, I think what he's doing is noble and I hope he gets more backing and resources to go and find and uncover fraud. This happened at the state level in California, but in other states as well. I think he should come to Texas, Florida, Michigan, Ohio, all these states because there's probably tons of fraud that need to be exposed. Rodney: I think he should run it up. I think he should run it up. This young guy, I don't know what made him do this. I know initially, but Minnesota, maybe he, it seemed maybe that he was doing it at a time where he was playing into, like, I think he was miscast early on in the early stages of it, because Minnesota had so much things going on with. that whole conflict down there in the National Guard. I think he got thrown into that bucket of, but when you look at the fraud as in LA, it has no gender, it has no ethnicity, it has no color. These are like, for example, one, there was one LA building that had 89 hospice companies. Like just one building had 89 companies registered to it. Like that's insane. And then, and then also additionally, LA hospice bills more than double the national average to Medicare. And then another thing too is Those incentives that you mentioned, that could point to some really sinister stuff because that could potentially point to some internal fraud in the government where people in the government say, hey, look, have to get rid of this money and need friends or family, et cetera, or whatever. And they're spinning up companies and somehow that money's funneling back to them in some way. Hopefully that's not the case, if, I mean, that kind of seems like one of the things that would happen if you have to deploy a billion dollars or something like that. I mean, what are you supposed to do? Like just advertise it to everybody and then hope everybody comes and grabs it? To me, it seems like there was a group of people that know about the secret. They've been eating off it for a long time. And I understand that people, I mean, Brylan Donaldson: Thank Rodney: Trust me, kids, thing, people, ain't, it's not easy to get rich out here. Like it's possible. We live in America, so you can get rich. You can get wealthy. You can make things happen in America. I believe in that. So I understand people looking for these, you know, for different like shortcuts and quick ways to get it. But the thing about government services though, is that we scam government services, typically government services. Brylan Donaldson: Okay. Rodney: are things that we've agreed that are important because we have some type of moral duty to fund it. Like public schools, or in this case, hospice. In the case of Minnesota, it was childcare. So a lot of these things, when you're scamming the government, these are not just like you're scamming McDonald's. I'm not saying that's right, but I'm just saying it's not, these things are. typically taking from things that we all have pretty much kind of voted for and agreed that we should be putting money towards. And so when you take from it, it is kind of like taking from not just your taxpayers, but in a way, this money could have been allocated to the other public things that are important like homelessness or. Dre: Mm-hmm. Rodney: whatever it is, more public school funding, et cetera. So yeah, I do think there should be more, hopefully he continues to to more ⁓ and, ⁓ Dre: I want Nick to investigate the EBT fraud in Michigan. I'll just leave right there. That's what I want to do. I'm going to throw the carrot out there. I think there's a huge opportunity, Nick. Take a look at what's happening in Michigan with the EBT card situation. That's what I'm saying. Rodney: ⁓ no, no, don't do it, don't do it. Don't do it. No, don't do it. Don't do it, don't do it. Don't do it. Dre, Dre, Dre, no. No, don't do it. Bro, better get, look, look, don't do it. ⁓ Brylan Donaldson: You're funny. So! So, so, the, the, the, the, the, No, the other one I would throw in there is the foster care system, right? that ⁓ that one for sure. But the question I have is, yeah, ⁓ because haven't been paying attention to this and this is just new to me, but like, yeah, what have been like the charges and kind of like the consequences so far of like what he's discovered? Rodney: ⁓ geez. That's fair. It's fair. Dre: Yeah. Rodney: I think there has been another exact number, but they closed down significant. Let me see if. They closed down a significant amount of hospice centers that were deemed to be. So one operation was closed. I have no idea how many of actual hospices. And then I think, oh, and then there's another one that was, they were all registered in this one LA building called the Merabi Plaza and they closed 72 of them down. out of 89 in that building. So the majority of them just had, they were just horrible, I guess. So it's pretty bad. And another thing too, Nick has had to for more security, which is very expensive because people are like, people are going to protect their money. Like the thing is, is like they've created these systems and once you start scamming millions of dollars, tens of millions of dollars, Like you can't just like let that go. So people are on Reddit and coming together and in telegram groups and they're like, Hey, we see Nick, sir, really here and there. Like there's a paranoia and there's a protection around. And I just find that odd though, because I just find that odd. That's just odd to me because we're talking about hospice. These are, this is money that's supposed to be like given to people who. are at the end of life and they need all the money possible to make that go like better and smoother, et cetera. We all would hope that if we ever got to that point, we would have the resources and everything that's needed. these, people are like, I don't know. I don't understand. The only thing I can think of, even though I don't think it's the only reason, the only thing I can think of is, is. just that they must be partying in on it or they're just naive like they must just be naive. Dre: think it's systematic, bro. I think to your point, you mentioned something that I think is key, is that it has to be government involvement. It absolutely is. It absolutely is. I think if you work at some of these government agencies, like I have family to work for the government in Minnesota, I am sure that they were aware of what was happening there. Now, if they chose to do something or not, it's different. But to me, if you're aware and nothing's being done, then you're just as complicit as the person Rodney: Right. Dre: who's actually initiating the action in my mind. You know what I'm saying? So I think it's so systemic to your point that I think people are willing to risk everything in order to try to shut him up, right? Because there's a lot at stake, right? You got the individual actors on the ground who are building these, you know, facilitating these transactions. Like in the case of Minnesota, had video of people who worked at these daycares. Well, those are the people that just worked there. You know what I'm saying? They're not the people that's orchestrating at the top. You got people at the top that's orchestrating it. Rodney: Right. Dre: But then you got people that's politically attached to that. This probably being voted in, being financed, being backed by these individuals. So you start going up the chain of command and it starts to get pretty interesting there. And that's just in one case. And so I think there's a lot to protect there. So it's like, yeah, if we can remove Nick from looking into this, you know, I'm sure every state is probably on pins and needles right now, right? Every, every organization is probably on pins and needles wondering like, damn, is Nick gonna come here? Like I caught out the Michigan EBT situation. We all know that's a real thing. You know what I'm saying? So, you know, Hey, so, I'm all for exposing the fraud and the systems. Brylan Donaldson: Thank Rodney: Yeah, leave that alone. Leave that alone. ⁓ Brylan Donaldson: You're funny, bro. Rodney: Yeah. I just want him to be... So one, a guy. So he probably is... I think he is a bit naive about the powers that be. And I think now being exposed a little bit more to the threat of it. I still think he's young enough to where... he might have that still that invincibility type of feel to him where even though he recognizes that there is important work that he has to do, he's just gonna get security. But I think if it's as as we're essentially alluding to, that security is, I mean, that helps, but like. Dre: Yeah. Rodney: You know, like, if it's as deep as what we're talking about, that, that, that, that, that ⁓ leave it alone. He should really ⁓ leave alone because you know, it's. Dre: Yeah, it's not gonna get it done. It's not gonna get it done Brylan Donaldson: So the thing, so the thing that I'm curious about it here is, I was just looking this up, but in California, what they had said, this is kind of what Newsom put out, but they said before Nick had came, they were basically already doing their investigations. Like they were already on it. ⁓ and they, they, they, they said they already had arrested 109 individuals related to hospice related fraud. Rodney: Come on, man, come on now. Brylan Donaldson: 280 plus hospice license were revoked. literally days before that video dropped, they already had arrested seven people in that who had billed $3.2 million in fake services. And then they arrested woman who was recently sentenced to three years in federal prison for $14 million hospice fraud LA. And so that's, that's what California and it seems like Newsom is coming out and saying is like, we basically were already doing it. Like here are the numbers showing we are already doing it. Rodney: Nusim is saving face. Nusim is saving face. absolutely, let's just be honest here. How is a government site or government paperwork or anything allowing almost a hundred hospice sites in one building? This, like, we can, like, build software for a living, right? I build, I build tech. Dre: Yeah. Brylan Donaldson: Yep. Rodney: I built these systems for a living. I understand how they work. You can write line of code that pops that up as a red flag. One of code, one line code. if you don't if you're listening, even you don't know what code is, one line of code would prevented, would have at least have said, pay attention these, pay attention to these. Brylan Donaldson: Okay. Rodney: Maybe don't crack down the hammer immediately, but maybe you should take a look at these because yeah, this is not usual, right? So Newsome, what he's really doing, and I mean... Brylan Donaldson: Flag it, flag it. If address is used more than five times. Rodney: Right. If there's more than five companies in the address, flag it for human review. And then now the reviewer, if he accepts that, then you going down. going down. You will have to explain why there's so many. This is just as simply just not giving a fuck about people's tax dollars. This not giving a fuck about the money that people are putting towards good causes, by the way. Dre: Okay. Brylan Donaldson: Yeah, yeah. Dre: Mm-hmm. Rodney: We're talking about good causes, by the way. We're talking about causes that we have all agreed that should come out of our taxes. Everybody talks about this stuff. We all talk about this stuff. Democrats, Republicans, everybody always is like, man, where are my taxes going to? are going to the roads? Are they going to the public, like the schools? Am I getting healthcare? And are good causes, child care. Hospice, these are good causes. are not like you're taking, are, these are, these these have a special ⁓ in people's hearts, think. As I asked for, think. So hopefully, go ahead. Brylan Donaldson: What? I want to add something to this because it's funny that we even brought in like the software angle because it really is that freaking simple. it but it actually gets me thinking that this was literally a few years ago. yeah, my my ex, her her dad is really big within like the probation system in Oakland. Right. Rodney: This was one line of code. Go on. Brylan Donaldson: And so he basically, he owns a ton of real estate basically through the church and the real estate, he offers a lot of like, post reconciliation, kind of like housing and stuff for folks. and so they came to him with the project, came to him with the project and essentially what the probation officers in the city of Oakland were trying to do was build a system. was basically a CRM to better one track. like all the information, because they were still doing this by hand. two, basically onboard all the different vendors that, you know, it could be, you know, helping them get healthcare, helping them, you know, find employment after this stuff, whatever, into this one system, because it was like fragmented all over the place. And basically they put out a bid for the project. So there were a multitude of folks that were working on the project. I kid you not, bro. I'll never forget when we went. They had a day where they went through the proposals and TLDR, like the city ended up like canceling the project, but I'm pretty confident we would have won this. But as each company was like demoing what they had built, bro. In mind, in mind you, this was like, like, I don't even think GPT four had came out. So people were still using like 3.5 DaVinci to like, people probably weren't even using chat GPT to code, bro. Um, but When I was seeing these projects, bro, and just like, was random folks out of like the middle of fucking South Dakota or Utah that were like, they just, that was what their business was. They would identify these niche projects and like just bid on them. Bro, people building software, I would probably say for state and especially for local, they're not building the best software, bro. So like it honestly does not surprise me that. these type of like things that are just like obvious to us aren't obvious to them because even the people who are judging these projects, they don't have the background knowledge that we have to critique it. And honestly, most of them don't even really truly understand their use case or the experience to really fulfill that use case. They're just, tech. Rodney: Yeah, we probably need to up more money for higher technical talent in the government and just need to do it and get it over with. The reason why the best talent is not coming to the government to work, or if they are, they're not there for that long. And as you mentioned too, these are just contracts that people are filling. that the money is not big enough for the smartest people and the most talented people. And there's not enough, this is not enough. And I think that if going to be paying for software whatnot through the government, then we should be knowing that it's quality. Government shouldn't be paying for nonsense. It just shouldn't. So this is story that we're going to follow. I like Nick's, what he's doing. think he is not who he initially, who they were trying to paint him as in the Minnesota conflict, it kind of turned into a political thing. think it turned into a, I think it also turned into a ethnicity thing where he's trying to. you know, find Somalis stuff like that. And he seems to be just primarily focused on fraud. doesn't care who you are, your background, your age, your gender, your ethnicity, et cetera. He's just saying, hey, look, like, I'm just trying to figure out why is it so easy? I can literally just go on a site and then pull up to this building. And so arrogant that... They will literally have empty offices, in cases they'll have luxury cars, gathering dust, Rollers Royces, luxury cars in a lot for hospice. like, there's a of arrogance there that comes from being and honestly not thinking they will get caught. They're just not thinking they're to get caught. And so that's actually what's, it was actually probably making it easy. Dre: and Rodney: for him to, it doesn't even seem like he's trying that hard. It kind of seems like he's showing up. And so it's not even that hard. So I'm forward to seeing more of this get shut down at the same time. So anybody doing fraud right now, if you happen to this, pull that back and maybe they might spare you. They, you know, if you're doing, if you're doing, if you, if you made $200,000, just quit while you're ahead. You know, say like, just quit while you're ahead. You know, we've all seen the drug dealer stories. We've all seen, we've all, you know, some of us know, some of us know that some of these people personally don't, don't let that greed get to you. You, you, you eventually the greed will do you in. Just stop. You up, you good. Just like even with the, the, the, the PPP loans. Look, I understand guys, get the money. Dre: you Brylan Donaldson: Hahaha! Dre: Mm-hmm. Rodney: get it, get it. They made it easy, grab it. But you notice that some people, ain't gonna let off the hook. Everybody, ain't gonna let off the hook. Some people really went down for PPP loans. And I'm not even conundrum this stuff. I'm just saying, if you already don't want that path, because you're desperate or whatever the case is, just stop. Stop now. Nick is out there. And honestly, he's getting so much attention, it wouldn't shock me if more Germans started doing this as well. we... Dre: Yeah. Rodney: We do have more to talk about. Dre: Man, let's switch gears to where I want to go. want to talk about open AI? Brylan Donaldson: favorite. Rodney: so... Dre: We got to go on to that. This is the largest private fund they're on in history. Their last fund they're on, I think, was set a record. But this one was even bigger. This was like, this was the big dog in the room. So they raised, just announced today, $122 billion funding round at a post valuation of $840 billion. 900 million weekly active users of chat GPT, 50 million paid subscribers. Brylan Donaldson: was the largest. Dre: about billion in revenue a month is what they're earning right now, which is crazy. And I mean, the people that really matter in tech are in this round. Microsoft, of course, is Amazon, I think, put the most. They put 50 billion into it. SoftBank also co-led the round. They put in $30 billion. NVIDIA is committing 30 billion into it as well. A16Z is involved. Microsoft again is involved. All the big PE firms are involved. I think there's some BlackRock involved. Everybody's involved. Everybody who's anybody wanted to be involved in this round. Again, you don't raise $122 billion in a private market and not have the most sophisticated institutional investors ⁓ behind But nevertheless, is the largest private round in the in history. The last record, I believe it was $40 billion. And again, this one is $122 billion. and their whole case is they're investing in more infrastructure. That's going to help lower costs, lower costs. It's going to lead to more usage, more usage allows them to better invest in a product. And you just continue this flyer. I don't even know what to say. I mean, we've talked about it a lot. This company has clearly hit an escape velocity that we've never seen before. at a speed that we've never seen before. So I'll stop right there. What do y'all think so far about the fundraising announcement? Rodney: This is going to turn into like, the podcast, we do it for an hour and we have, we've been doing it for about 50 minutes so far, but this conversation is going to turn into, it's going to go left. It's just going to go left. I think, I think the facts are clear. This is the largest private funding round. in history is unprecedented. You've never been seen before. It's not just, it is not just valuation. As Dre said, there is $2 billion being made per month or so in other words, $24 billion per year. being made. And that's if assuming that there's no growth each month, if there's even a 1 % growth each month, 2 % growth each month, that's still a very, very large number that's being made per year. But I would argue that it's probably closer to a few percentage points per month that they're still maintaining as far as momentum. Another key piece is that they did take in about $2 billion on that round, $2 $3 billion on that round. They allowed some retail investors invest mostly through ⁓ these private and... wealth divisions. So not just like you could go on Robin Hood level. So it's not like IPO or anything like that. there was outside these large firms, et cetera. That was a piece that I thought was interesting, but not the typical message. So it's not anything like that. But I thought that was something that was very interesting as well. So they're getting other people kind of like, getting closer and closer to the public. And I that's a strategic move. We do know Claude is, in topic is gearing up for IPO, we actually know that that OpenAI is has that one as roadmap at some point too. But this kind of shows just the amount of belief ⁓ that the private markets in this company, not just the private markets. Look at the big players, and all the like SoftBank, pretty much every tier one fund that you can think of is backing And this is a guarantee of success, but this type of funding round is a marker of is undeniable. So, Like I said before, I suspect this conversation is going to go left because Brian is going to, I don't know what he's going to say, but I'm going to give him, I'm going give him, you know, I'm going to give him because I don't know what he's going to say, but I look forward to seeing his response to all this stuff. Brylan Donaldson: Yeah, gonna be honest, this round is quite impressive to the least. mean, raising that kind of money is not easy. I think the fact that they have achieved that and even the previous one of raising $40 million definitely is not easy. And I mean, ⁓ yeah, hands down, don't think anyone can argue. that they have like the most dominant consumer product, Now with that being said, ⁓ with that being said, yeah, think I still a little skeptical. I know they are making efforts to diversify their revenue one by ⁓ continuing to down on Rodney: Okay. Brylan Donaldson: Yeah, like codecs and like their APIs to was it they made over nine figures in a month or something just off of like ads. so seems like ads is probably going to have like, you know, some legs there and Rodney: Yeah. 20 million a week 20 million a week 20 million a week this pilot on a pilot Brylan Donaldson: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So ads, ads, ads may end up having, having some legs. Rodney: On a pilot. Brylan Donaldson: But also they have scale. They also have scale. like, so, ⁓ also have the right person running that division. like she was, you know, executive over ads at Meta for a very long time and then brought ads to, you know, Instacart and made that a big revenue channel as well. Rodney: Last year. ⁓ she was, they got the Instagram. They got the, ⁓ that's smart. Brylan Donaldson: Yeah, she's basically running, she's the one who's running the major pivots right now at OpenAI. Like the consolidation, the cutoff of all the, know, the Sora's. She's the one that's dictating a lot of that. And so they have the right person. I'm not saying team, they have the right person. Now with that being said, think I am just gonna continue to be curious is, Rodney: See you. Okay. Brylan Donaldson: They also came out and said that they want to double their headcount. think, correct me if I'm wrong, they're either at like 2000 or 4000 employees or something like that. I think it is like 4000. It's pretty large. And they want to double that, which I think is going to end up putting them around that 8 to 10 or something like that. Well, shit, your OpEx just went up. The other thing too is, once again, we just kind of glossed over this. They still are on, you know, they still... are on the fence about $1.3 trillion in data center commitments that they have made. And so those still have to be paid. And yes, they have to be paid over time, but like those still have to be paid. The other thing too is Nvidia. Yes, Nvidia participated in this round. But if you remember months ago when I think it was the $40 billion round was announced or whatever, originally it was communicated that Nvidia was going to invest up to a hundred billion. And then literally it was either January or February, Jensen came out and said, that is not true. We will not be putting that in. So yes, Nvidia participated, but they participated at less than half of what they were originally committing to. And then the other thing, the other thing that is very interesting about this too, is like, think you're now starting to deal with a different of investors where I think when you usually hear about startups, and this is why I would argue that. Open AI is not a startup, that investors have to make 10X their money. When I am playing the growth game, which is what the stage they're at, borderline IPO, I don't need to 10X my money for my return to be good for my institutional investors. Because once again, if you think about it from the perspective of like, this is going to be a company that will IPO you know, maybe north of a trillion dollars. Shit! If I own if I own 10 % of a trillion dollars, I got a hundred I got a hundred billion dollars back a co2 you name it. There are small positions is going to return that fund regardless. And so I don't know. Like I actually want to question how much of this is bet the belief of the company verse like This is just a good bet as an investor because the narrative is so strong. You know, you're like here in a few months, you're going to be looking like the greatest cause that return is going to come back and it's going to return the whole fund. And so how much of it is a math play versus like a fundamental technology business and go to market motion that is really building this gigantic machine that over time is really going to be against that. And the reason why I would call that out is Once again, all these, like what is very interesting is all these investors, I would probably say outside of Adresin Horowitz are not investors all investors in Anthropic, Nvidia, ⁓ Microsoft, CO2. CO2 even had a slide that was ⁓ that showed that like they, ⁓ they literally communicated this to their LPs. They anticipate Anthropic getting to $26 billion in revenue by the end of the year. So that $26 billion in revenue would surpass OpenAI. And so you have a company that literally just co-led the round say, we anticipate the competitor passing you. And then on top of that, you have them going back and telling the people who's funding and giving them their money saying, we anticipate Anthropic being profitable in 2027, mid 2027. Rodney: Okay. still want to ⁓ Braylon, Braylon, Braylon. ⁓ Brylan Donaldson: Now, OpenAI, they get, once again, because they're in it, because they're, hold on, I got a caveat. Because they're an investor, because they're an investor in OpenAI, they could have a similar story to their LPs. We don't know. All that was leaked was what they're telling about Anthropic. And so I think we got to be a little skeptical because I think if I'm an investor and I'm looking at returning money back to my LP so I can go get some more, this is a good math, the math. Dre: How many software companies you know that are doing 20 billion plus in revenue? How many? Go ahead and run that through Perplexity real quick. We should get an answer back real quick. Go ahead run that through Perplexity. Let's just see what it come back with. What does it say? Let's just look at it. Brylan Donaldson: Let's do it. How many companies are, you said 20 billion. Dre: 20 billion won't even need to look at the private markets because ain't nobody in the private markets even doing that So we really we just talking public companies at this point should have all this data, right? They got they got the best models ⁓ right. ⁓ what it say would it come back with let's just see Rodney: Four companies, Five. Less than ten. Less than ten. Brylan Donaldson: They got the finance, they got the finance. They said they said there are about 10 to 15. So you have obviously your big ones, Microsoft, Oracle, Adobe Salesforce. Actually those are the, yeah, yeah, yeah. Dre: Okay. Okay, so make that mean It's a it's a very few right very few very few So I don't care what the thesis is if you are an investor and you have the opportunity to invest in one of fastest growing company in history But more importantly it is rising to become potentially the largest software company in the world Brylan Donaldson: Okay. Dre: not putting your money in that. Brylan Donaldson: Like said, like I said, if I'm an investor, no, no, no, as an investor, as an investor, yes, I'm putting my money in because the math makes sense. Dre: I'm just asking a question. I'm just asking a question. Rodney: I'm gonna go get some metal. Right. Right. that I don't even know why anything else after. Dre: Right. So what are you? Yeah. What's the question? So, you, cause you, you, you questioned the valuation. was like, yeah, this valuation you and Josh, y'all was in the chat. Y'all was in the chat. Just what ⁓ mouth is gone in the chat. I'm just like, all right, cool. These niggas doing 20, bro, they doing 25 billion in revenue. What are we talking about? I would argue that the valuation actually, I would argue that they're actually undervalued. Brylan Donaldson: No no no no no Rodney: Yeah, they'll get me started on jobs. Brylan Donaldson: Hey man, I was trying to stir y'all up. Dre: The trajectory is clearly there. There are only a few companies that are even in that tier of revenue. That is a top tier. We've never seen that before. They have the revenue. The losses don't even matter to me because, that's self-inflicted to degree. They're intentionally taking losses for the purposes of growing revenue. This is obviously why they're doing that. So that doesn't even matter. Rodney: Yeah. Right exactly. Dre: What matters is growth and momentum. And we all know that. So if you got 25 billion in revenue, you have a momentum and a growth curve that just is, I mean, it just far out to see the competition. Right. And we talked about this last time. They're playing a different game to me than what Anthropica's playing. So I don't care what OpenAI does from they've done so far, tactically has seemed to yield the right results. The textbook. Results that you would do we is any founders would want to achieve and we should just highlight that we should just commend that There's no need to hate on that. There's no no need to bash that there's no need to treat that any other way that is spectacular results on any metric on any scale at any time a day we've all been founders and we would all kill to be in a position to Sam is in because I mean It's the best position to be in he's one of the greatest founders there is period period Brylan Donaldson: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Rodney: Alright. it's, I find it strange how, how people, I find strange with this whole thing, right? The one thing to add on to point, this is the fastest growing startup in history to, And to what Brian said about the company maybe not being defined as a startup. I guess that is up for debate because different definitions of it. PG is not the main, he's not the only one that defines what a startup is. But PG's definition is when company is still in hyper growth mode and once the growth changes to linear growth rather than explosive, then it is no longer a startup. based on the numbers that Sam has posted and OpenAI has posted as a team, They still are growing in a hyper growth and they're not optimizing for a proven revenue model at the moment. They have shown different things. They can make money on consumer. They can make money on. they can make money on the API, they can make money on ads, but they have not chosen a specific one to specifically optimize and build the whole thing around. And so I think PG has the, and the reason why PG is an important one is because he is somebody who Sam learned a lot from and he ran Y Combinator. He ran YC. So think Sam is just taking all that he knows from YC and playing it out as an example of the fundamentals and the teachings that he's learned over the past decade. or maybe even a little bit more than that by building startups, advising startups and investing in startups. And he got an opportunity and he's showing that he is a top player. There is nobody at this level. And then what I find interesting is, how people are determined to still critique his results. cannot believe it. I understand that the results are unbelievable, but at this point, just back and see it because we have people well, they're not profitable. Well, then I can't. So that's why I point to, say, well, okay. Well, they said the same thing about Jeff in Amazon. They say the same thing about Travis and- And Uber, they said the same thing about Facebook. the to all those things was Amazon was with big retailers like Walmart, Barnes and Nobles, and other bookstores were taking more short-term profits. And they seemed to be these better businesses because they were taking more profit and they could give investors more returns right away. There were these safer bets. And then you also had Uber that was subsidizing their growth. And I know Brian early, thought that wasn't a good example because Travis got fired, but imagine if Travis did it. I think he actually might've been, I think Travis is a similar, I think Travis and Sam have a similar DNA. And I think Sam was just smart enough to figure out how to, not even smart enough, Travis was in a more vulnerable moment than Sam. Because Travis was going through a lot of family stuff, depths in the family, et cetera, close calls with his dad almost passing away as well. think he wasn't able to be as clear minded as Sam was when he got fired. And I think that these people, they seem reckless. They seem like gamblers. They are gambling. They're playing a winner take, they have a winner take all mentality. They're not joking. And I think that we got to remember investors do get punished for investing in companies that seem like easy bets. all took was to go and the that is showing an obvious and clear path to profitability, it would be just extremely easy to almost, I mean, why invest in else? Why invest in the company that's the money in infrastructure? and the company that's subsidizing their growth and they're not taking as much from the customer. opposed, and I keep focusing on the fact that in topic, for example, the numbers of profit, nobody's arguing that they're making, that they might make $26 billion this year. That's not even an argument, but I'm talking about the mechanics behind it. They are saying, okay, let's create tighter uses limits. Let's a lot for Opus. And that is the reason why their profit is higher because they're not saying, let's get as many people on it as possible. And we don't care if we're losing money per token, per, that is like, they're not saying that they're not, they're not go for the all costs. They're like, okay. And then Dario and I talk about this all the time. Dario is not Sam. He's not Sam. Dario is Dario. Dario is a scientist and Dario is intelligent, he's smart, he's all those things. But he was never this person who was gonna come out and play the game in the same way. He is the lift in this situation. He is lifting the situation. You know how Lyft has that nice front brand and that nice safe brand that's safe and everybody likes Lyft and they had the funny weird. mustaches on the car and they're playing around and not toxic and all these other things. Does anybody care about that today? Nobody cares. Nobody cares. That's thing that everybody gotta learn. People don't care like y'all think. Y'all think that people care because you think people actually care that endopix stood up for something. That lasted for a week. Nobody cares. Everybody already forgot about that. Like nobody cares. What's gonna end, like in the end, it's gonna be who played it big, who gambled the most, really said, you know what, fuck it, we're onto something. Let's full steam ahead. And I think that is not just hope. I think it's real dollars coming in, as Dre pointed out. $24 billion ain't just hope. That's real dollars. And then additionally, when you spend those dollars, when you spend those dollars, I hate that. didn't remind y'all that those dollars are going into continuing to grow the business. The employees don't cost that much. Like thinking about how much money they're making per employee. got to be like, it got to be at least $10 million per employee. And I'm talking about after the salary, you know, like, like after they've already calculated what the salary is going to cost, they're making tons of money per employee. And then with thousand employees, what's the math on that? Like, They're making a ton of money per employee. It's crazy. So they're very efficient and they have defined a category. And I hate to break it to you, Brian. They are going to be MySpace. They are going to be, don't get me wrong. Actually not going to be MySpace. I'm sorry. That's the struggle. That's the struggle. They ain't going be MySpace. Cause it's obviously going to have a strong business actually. They're going to have a strong business. They're not going anywhere. Brylan Donaldson: You Rodney: I'm just simply saying they're not going to be the main dominant force in AI. It's either going to be open AI or Google. And that's it. Brylan Donaldson: Okay, I hear you. So go into your fund, much revenue they're making per employee. So yeah, like we said earlier, so they have about 4,500 employees, they're doing what, 25 bill. So that actually puts them at 5.6 million revenue per employee. That's still a lot of money. Rodney: Son of money. Brylan Donaldson: What do you think, Anthropics at? Rodney: Probably similar, probably similar. Dre: They probably have a small, much smaller hair count though, right? Probably what? Half, half as many or less? Rodney: Maybe like... Yeah. Yeah. ⁓ Dario's just not that aggressive. He's just not that aggressive. Brylan Donaldson: Yeah, we'll try double. double. they're, know, Sam is doing a nice little 5.6 revenue. ⁓ Yeah. Yeah. So, so, so, so Anthropic is doing 12.7 million per employee. And then Rodney: That's nice! That's nice! That's nice! That's nice! That's nice! Dre: You tell my double part employee. Rodney: But you don't never, but don't you never do though? You always conveniently, no, no, no, always, no, no, no, you've done this, you've done this in the chat, you've done this on the podcast, you've done this in the chat, you've this on the podcast. Brylan Donaldson: Hold up. have a third of the employees OpenAI has doing similar revenue. we talking about it. It just was reported 19 billion to the 24 billion we just did the math on. Dre: Bro, their revenue is not similar. Bro, their revenue is not similar. Stop it. No, no, that's false. That's fake. That's That's fake. That's fake. Rodney: So look, but Brian, why do you keep ignoring this one simple, you keep, cause if you were to acknowledge this, you wouldn't, I know, I know, but if you were to acknowledge this one fact, everything will fall apart. And that's why you keep dodging it. This is one fact that, this is the one fact. Claude and Anthopic. Anthopic is charging more for their model. And additionally, Claude has, has tighter uses limits. Brylan Donaldson: about efficiency. It's showing up. What's the one fact? What's the one fact? Rodney: Those are easy things that OpenAI could just simply change. If OpenAI raised the price of the API and then also made their product have higher limits on their product, their revenue would exceed clause. It would exceed the entropic. You cannot skip past that fact. You you keep attributing that to a failure. That's a strategic, that's, that's, that's that's an strategy. Brylan Donaldson: be honest with you. don't, I don't think so, bro. Going back to what, what, no, literally what I said before. Once again, I do agree that they're playing two different games, but what I'm hearing you say or kind of the, the, the game you're using to compare them on consumer. It's consumer. We have never, bro, you name, name one enterprise or one business that uses Claude and has reported ⁓ ⁓ Rodney: What? No, I'm not. No, I'm talking about systemic. Well, first of all, know, every enterprise different pricing. is Anthropix actually not. ⁓ Brylan Donaldson: No, I'm saying limits. Has any of these companies came out and said, Hey, I ran into a cloud limit and I have the business plan or I'm an enterprise on whatever. Not a single one. We only talk about limits in terms of consumers. You would be a hundred percent right in terms of open AI. they, if they implemented what cloud has in terms of limits and higher pricing on consumer, you're a hundred percent right. You're a hundred percent right. But the reason why it wouldn't work for open AI is because Rodney: The thing is, the thing is, no. Brylan Donaldson: Their audience isn't trained to experience that. Anthropics trained you from day one. Rodney: So the issue is that this, you can reach limits the enterprise plan. ⁓ may not be hearing about that, but you can do it. cannot speak on exactly how I know that, I just think easily verify. The second thing is that API costs, and that's something that you're skipping over. Cloud Opus is significantly more expensive per token than GPT 5.4. ⁓ especially in coding, it doesn't perform as well in coding and it's not as fast. But it is a high quality model, but it's very expensive. And so they're getting tons of money off these API costs. Cloud Code is a huge. Brylan Donaldson: But, but why do you think, why do you think that is? Why do you think that is? Rodney: It's a quality model. It's a quality model. Brylan Donaldson: would, no, we zoom out and look at the finance, once again, this dude told us the equation. He said, when you have this money. Rodney: We'll stop at OpenAI from raising the price. Brylan Donaldson: No, no, no, we're at the price level. We got to zoom out to the CapEx. You have a decision to make in terms of do you want to spend that CapEx on training or do you want to spend it on inference? Most of their most of their money right now is going towards training. And there is a reason why Claude has not only caught up, but people would probably argue that OpenAI has lost its lead when it's come to model quality. They're playing two totally different games when it even comes to capital allocation because the reality is even if you allocate a lot of money towards inference and you buy these chips, these chips depreciate fast. And so I think it's a lot more complicated than just like, there's a usage or like, ⁓ there's price. Yes, that is the simple revenue, but there's like, you have to take into consideration like the investment that they're making. And at that scale in the infrastructure required to train and serve these types of models, they're just making a bigger bet right now on Like they can continue and it's working because we can just go look at the numbers and look at the narrative and look at the trends. that they are out innovating open AI right now and is showing up in terms of the products and the models that they're releasing. Have those limits changed much? Probably not. But at some point, trust and believe when they flip that switch, will be able to flip that switch, but it will be done economically and that will matter. Rodney: The Arguably 5.4 is number one on the benchmarks, arguably, especially in the coding category and it's also cheaper. And so what, I'm just saying, I'm just saying, I'm just saying, I'm just saying. But I mean, cause it's hard because it's like, could otherwise we're going to be talking about subjective. Like we're talking about model quality, right? It's like, should we talk about? Brylan Donaldson: Are we really talking about benchmarks now? Nah, let's talk about numbers! Like, actually, let's just ask Drake. Drake told us at the beginning he was a top 10 anthropic. We- Rodney: Because why, I'm not going to speak for Dre, but let me just say my guess of what that is. Cause Claude has a good product, right? But I've told you a thousand times that this is not about Claude having a good product. Nothing is stopping OpenAI. cannot answer what stop, if OpenAI is charged. Nope. ⁓ Dre: Mm. Brylan Donaldson: They have a good product and a great business. What is stopping, what is stopping OAI, this isn't stopping, this isn't stopping OpenAI, but it's a very crucial decision that we're seeing. The assumption is they are continuing to double down on their edge, their edge being awareness and the fact that they have so many people across the globe that are using it. Claude is, Anthropic is going to have a tough time catching up to 900 billion a week. That's, that's just real. That's just real. And so, ⁓ to because they're in that position, they cannot afford to take budget from inference and put it towards The only way they could continue. No, no. Short, short, short, short. They just raised this large round and so maybe money goes towards that. But I'm willing to bet based off of just this narrative that they just said. Rodney: What? They can't afford it? afford it? That's what you're going ⁓ You said maybe. Where'd the money go? Brylan Donaldson: it's to, it's going towards inference because the is if you're, you won, ⁓ got no, no, no, no, it's, it's going towards inference, bro. Rodney: We can go towards anything that's necessary. That's the war chest. Dre: Yeah, it's going towards no, no, bro. You're being too targeted is going towards infrastructure and infrastructure to them will be however way they see it fit However, what do you see it fit? Brylan Donaldson: But but but you have to look at it is is it being going towards infrastructure? No, Dre: However, wait, no, bro. It doesn't matter. It's however wait. No, you're not listening, bro It's however way they see fit It's simple. It is however way they see fit brylon You don't think they're smart enough brylon. You don't think they're smart enough to understand the depreciation of the chips They're buying you don't think they're smart enough to understand where they should allocate capital Sam is one of the best fucking capital allocators we've ever Rodney: Hahaha Watch this. Brylan Donaldson: Nope. Let's get specific. Rodney: He doesn't think they're smart. He doesn't. Dre: scene what more do you need to see other than the man that raises 122 billion dollars and you're trying to tell him how he should allocate capital bro bro come on stop it stop it you don't get to 122 billion dollars if you don't know how to allocate capital so all the assumptions you're making unfortunately are wrong they will make the right decisions they need to make because they've done it so far Rodney: You Yes, that's what he's saying. He's trying to tell me, he's saying... Brylan Donaldson: That is true. That is true. That is true. Rodney: Yeah Dre: You don't get to this point if you aren't, Brian. You have to acknowledge that it doesn't. I can respect the speculation you're making, but you have to believe these are sophisticated individuals. These are not people that are going to blow a hundred million dollars on an asset that they know is depreciating and not think, Oh shit, we got to invest in the other side of the infrastructure. Bro, come on. This shit is already figured out, bro. You don't get to that level without it. Like just give them the benefit of that. Like just get them that, just get them that benefit of that. That's all I'm saying. Rodney: Right? Brylan Donaldson: Yeah, yeah, yeah! Rodney: I'm so, so that's the one thing I understand. I know what that is to you, right? Bradley is just skeptical. Cause what we're seeing is so unprecedented. It's like, it's so, it's, it, I get it. It's hard to believe it really is. Dre: And I get it. I get it. I get it. You got to have in the room. I get it. At every point, you got to have some people that's like, wait a minute, is this actually real? Is this actually happening? But I think at some point, we got to give credit where credit is due. In order to get to where they got to, you are an amazing allocating capital. Otherwise, they wouldn't have done it. Otherwise, are we saying A16Z is stupid? Are we saying the people at Code 2 are stupid? Are we saying BlackRock is stupid? Isn't Nvidia stupid? Rodney: I think it is Everybody's stupid. Dre: Is Microsoft stupid? Everybody's stupid. Everybody in the room is an idiot. Come on, man. Like, we know that's not true. We know that's not true. We know that's not true. Rodney: Bro. Brylan Donaldson: I would agree with that. I would agree with that. Where I'm going to... Rodney: And Topper's gonna have a good business. They're gonna have a good business. Dre: Now Sam may not, I'm not saying Sam is the smartest person in the room. I'm not saying that. He might not be, but there are other highly intelligent people in the room as well. And we got to give them the benefit of doubt. They know how to allocate capital. You don't get to this point if you don't know how to allocate capital. We've never seen it. You don't get here if you don't know how to do that. That is skill number one. Brylan Donaldson: No, you're, you're, you're spot on. You're spot on. I think specifically how they allocated is going to end up matter in the long run. And I think going back, ⁓ I, what what I said, I think this is. Rodney: and the big dogs. Dre: 100%, 100%. Rodney: That's why he's raising so much. He's raising so much. It gives them the freedom to say, know what? Okay, we messing up over here. Let's put some bread over here. When you have hundreds of billions and you're also making, and you're also making 2 billion a month, you have the freedom to say, you know what? Okay, the strategy that we were doing that month, ain't working. So you know what? We got a hundred and something billion dollars. Let's go ahead and put. Dre: Yeah. Rodney: It's not as if they're capital constraints. thought is Dario is moving more responsible and that's actually going to hurt him. I actually think that's going to hurt him. See, the why the Travis counties get taken down fired is because they seem reckless. They seem out of control. people don't like that. of Uber's own investor pulled Travis down. And because seem reckless. Sam was the same way. They're looking at it like, this guy is crazy. This guy is insane. So let's fire this guy. He's ⁓ He's this. It's all the same stuff. Or just don't understand his vision. They don't understand these guys' vision and ⁓ the that they're seeing, the game board. It'd be different if we were seeing that opening eye was struggling to raise. If we were seeing that, then I feel as though your skepticism would be justified because we could. Brylan Donaldson: you to hold that point. I want you to hold that point. Just wait until it's public. Wait until it's a public company. Rodney: Right, okay. Bro, you're gonna keep clicking the can down the road, bro. Even if- Dre: Look look Bro, it doesn't even matter bro. Look look look it doesn't even matter. There is not a company that's ever been built bro. That hasn't made a strategic mistake It doesn't matter like that's the part of the game That is part of the game Is making mistakes bro. That is part of the game. I'm not saying they're too big to fail. I'm not saying I don't believe I don't believe there's any company that's too big to fail I don't believe that at all, but I believe they're too big to be knocked off their square easily Brylan Donaldson: You're right. So you're saying they're too big to fail. Rodney: I think they are. I think they are. I think they are. Dre: I believe they have incredible momentum. I believe they're incredibly smart individuals. I think they're smart at allocating capital. I think they're smart at allocating resources. I think they're smart at getting the smartest talent in the room. I think they're smart at empowering that talent. Yeah, I think they've made a lot of good decisions. That doesn't mean that they can't fail. Absolutely they can't fail. But I haven't seen anything that goes against what they've... mean, the momentum is clear. I mean, it is what it is. And again, I'm saying is that... Every company that has ever done anything well has had strategic failures. Like, so look, maybe they're leaning all the way into consumer. Maybe they lean too much into that. OK, maybe you it didn't work out the way they thought it could work. OK, cool. Maybe ads didn't necessarily pan out the way they thought. OK, cool. So what? Nigga, they just raised $122 billion. They got time to figure it out. What's the number one thing for a startup? Runway, right? Rodney: Yeah. Yeah, and they're iterating and they're iterating. They're in and they're iterating. Dre: They got runway. That's it. That's Sam's job. That's all Sam got to do, bro, is literally create runway. That is the number one job of a CEO. That's it. That is his job. Create runway and hire the smartest people and give them the time and resources they need to do their fucking job. That's what he's doing as a CEO. We should all commend him for that. Rodney: I commend him for it. I commend him for it. And I honestly think that he's doing is going to work. I think that he is kind of too big to fail in the normal way. You could fail to reach their ambitions, but... He's not going to fail in any normal sense. Like there's too many people, too many big players, too many big investors. The whole, basically the whole tech scene is invested in the success of these guys. You know, so it's, I can't see it. And then there is this situation where Brylan Donaldson: What if that's what's holding them up? Rodney: So, and, ⁓ the one thing I noticed is that when OpenAI does the right thing, the people on the outside are still critical. So for example, they drop Sora, right? It's like, ⁓ look, they dropped Sora, they failing. It's like, that is the right move. If is not working, drop it. Like why, it's like, if you do, if they do the right thing, it's looked at as, ⁓ look, that's proof that they, that they, that, that, that, that, no, they are getting more focused. To me, this stuff of dropping this and dropping that, and this, I don't know if you guys noticed that the mobile app is redesigned. They are getting more focused and streamlined. To me, that's a sign ⁓ of adaptability. Dre: Mm-hmm. Brylan Donaldson: changed about the competitive landscape to force them to do that. Rodney: competition is good. maybe, maybe, maybe they did get unfocused cause they were dominant. Maybe they did get unfocused. Nobody's questioning that. No one, nobody's saying that there's not competitors in the other sharks in the room. There's competitors in other sharks in the room. Nobody's not saying that. And we can give, I can give Darryl his credit for making the game more competitive so that Sam doesn't get complacent. I like that. That's not a problem to me. I just don't think Dario gonna win. But I think that Dario, yes, he made Sam a little bit more, okay, me stop doing all this, all this other stuff that we doing. Let's zone in and let's get more focused. And still can do that. We still have the mindset, it's still in the culture. And so he's aligning that. So yeah, Dario might've scared Sam a little bit, maybe. Maybe. Dre: I think a topic is going to be a great company, bro. just my position. ⁓ think they could easily be 50 billion, maybe even a hundred billion dollar company, but I don't see them as a hyperscale company. Right. When I say hyperscale, I mean, category defining company that is clearly leading in a way like alphabet is leading, like Apple is leading, like Amazon is leading, like Netflix is leading entertainment. I'm talking about that. Right. When you look at like the solo picks of the category. Rodney: Yeah, no, Truly, truly. Dre: The ones that you got to pull out like the Nvidia's, Tesla's to say, hey, this is a category leading company. That doesn't mean that every other company in that category is not doing well. They are doing well. But again, the one that's actually leading, I don't necessarily see that being Anthropy. But then again, that doesn't mean that they aren't a great business. Bro, again, any of us would kill to run Anthropy. We'll kill to run a $50 billion company, $100 billion company. That's a fantastic fucking company. And that's a fantastic return for those investors. Rodney: Yeah. Dre: But again, think it's just two different conversations. Again, I think they both can have great outcomes. I just think the outcomes that they're aiming for are just fundamentally different. And you can kind of tell that in how the companies are being ran. that doesn't mean for one company to do good, the other company has to suffer, right? I just, so, you know. Brylan Donaldson: I'd agree. Rodney: I agree with that. look, everybody hates AI. Everybody doesn't want to take their jobs. blah, blah, blah, blah. Watch almost everybody buy at least one stock of open AI when it drops. Watch. Watch. Almost everybody going buy one stock. People that don't even buy stocks is going to buy one stock. Watch. Watch. It's going to be... This is not normal. Dre: You have to. Yeah, you got to. Rodney: You know, this is not normal. People who don't even buy stocks are going to be like, Hey, should I buy that chat? You're like, should I get that chat GBT stock? Should I, should I, can I get one stock, two stock? Like what, like they're going to be asking people like, watch your mom going to ask you, your dad going to ask, like grandparents. I'm telling you when that AI IPO comes, we live in a time where it's going to be on TikTok. It's going to be on X. It's going to be on LinkedIn. It's going to be on the news. You're not going to be able to escape it. This is how. big this company is and that those billions I forgot how many users it is but hundreds of millions of users it is not going to it's not gonna be no joke and it's not gonna be no joke the IPO is gonna it's gonna be I I would even go so far as to say it'll be the biggest IPO of the year Probably in 2027, it'll be the biggest IPO of the year. And additionally, it'll probably be the biggest IPO in history. I'll actually, you know what? Top two with SpaceX. Top two with SpaceX. I'll put SpaceX up there. So it'll be the biggest, it'll be top two. It'll be either one or two with SpaceX. That's how I see it. let's not, let's, let's, let's, look, Dario, look, I don't know what you see in Dario per se, but. and he's doing well, but if you're gonna compare him to just like, it's, I know you respect intelligence, but sometimes you gotta respect raw talent sometimes. you just gotta respect raw talent. Like, sometimes it ain't just ⁓ the smartest guy the room. Like sometimes it's about like, who's the most talented and then showing that back to back to back. Brylan Donaldson: Talented at what? Rodney: clearly at raising money, off jump, off that. ⁓ The best fundraiser in history, so off that, off that. Who better? Other than Elon. Dre: Allocating resource allocated resources Rodney: Other than Elon, there's nobody better! Dre: And this goes back to what we talked about. If you try to compete with Google, you got to be the best at fundraising. really do. You have to be. And ⁓ giving a master class in how to fundraise. Rodney: He's world class. He world class. He's better than Adam Newman. He's world class. Like he's better than Elizabeth Holmes. He's world class. He's better than everybody that we've seen. Like if he was a fraud, like first of all, like here's a product that works. like we can't sit here and say it's just all story. Like, you people use this product every day, but look, I knew this was going to end up being Dre: You Brylan Donaldson: You Dre: Thank Rodney: an hour because I knew Brian was going to take it left. ⁓ But don't know man. Look, we're end on this but look, Brian, I really Brylan Donaldson: be Dre: you Where's Gemini in all of this? Is Gemini still around? still, they good? Rodney: I like Gemini. I like Joe. Yeah, now, the conversation itself. so, Riley, I just want you to know, don't feel no, like don't die in your pride. Like don't let, just don't die in your ego. It's okay to turn around. It's okay to turn around. If, if like, it's okay. Like don't feel like you got to stand on business and like forever, bro. Brylan Donaldson: You Dre: I heard none about Gemini in a minute. I'm like, he good? Okay. Rodney: ⁓ Brylan Donaldson: Hey, hey, when the S1 drop for both of these companies, we can have a great conversation. Rodney: Bro, bro, bro, look, bro, it's going to, bro, you know how painful it is to keep kicking the can down the road? Like you've been doing this for 18 months. 18 months. It's been changed, bro, thing that you do is you always change the goalposts. Like, they're like, no, bro. ⁓ Dre: I can't wait, I can't wait. Brylan Donaldson: No, no, no, no, because I don't I don't think my position is going to change No, you're- you're- what you're gonna say is, you took my open AI is going to be dead comment. Are they dead? They're not. They're- they're- they're- they're doing great. Rodney: No, it's not just that. No, it's not just that. No, it's not just that. It's not just that. But that is, can't forget about that either. We can't forget about that, bro. Bro, for 18 months, you are like, it's like, you're like, it's like, when you're 50 something years old and open AI has a bad day, you're gonna come back, you're gonna call me and Dre, and you're gonna say, look, I told you. And it's gonna. Dre: you ⁓ The stock is down. ⁓ Rodney: You're right. It's like, told you they're gonna fall. It's like, bro, at some point, yes, some point, bro, some point, but bro, please turn around before that. Please, please. Dre: Bro. Amen. Brylan Donaldson: Hold on, on, hold on. I'm reading this right now, but I gotta see if the source is credible. Rodney: Please turn around. And if I'm wrong, I'ma come online. I'ma say it, bro. If I'm wrong, I'ma come online. Brylan Donaldson: Hold up, hold up, hold up, hold up. I'm gonna leave the conversation with this and then we can wrap up. But, and like I said, I gotta validate the source. But it's saying internal projections show the $122 billion they raise give them 18 to 24 months of operational runway. I think we should just leave the conversation here. ⁓ think we should just leave the conversation there. So, ⁓ think we should just leave the conversation there. ⁓ Rodney: Alright. more than enough. And it's more than enough. More than enough. What you think? What you think? You think they're gonna run out of money? You think they're gonna run out of money? You think they're go back for... You think... Okay. Dre: Okay. Okay. We'll see. Yeah. ⁓ Brylan Donaldson: You saying is all I'm saying is no no no no all I'm saying is all those investors once they have that liquidity of it where you gonna go knocking to? Dre: We'll see. We'll see. We'll see. We'll see. Well, let's wrap it up there. We went over time. Brylan Donaldson: All right.