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VENTURE CAPITAL & PRIVATE INVESTING
Recorded: July 10, 2025 Duration: 0:40:45Space Recording
Short Summary
The crypto landscape is witnessing a surge in growth, with all-time highs in market activity and significant fundraising efforts, including a $100 million Series B for Vlad Tenev's new venture. Discussions on tokenizing private equity reveal emerging trends that could reshape investment accessibility, while successful IPOs highlight a robust environment for tech companies.
Full Transcription
Thank you. Music Music Music
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Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Thank you. Hi, everyone.
Welcome to the venture capital and private investing space from Wolf Financial,
co-hosted by Self-Taught Success and Kyle as co-host.
My name is Alex.
I'm filling in.
I work on the Gigacast and Wolf Operations side.
How are you doing today?
Hey, thanks, Alex.
Appreciate you stepping in and helping us out today.
Excited to dive into things.
Awesome.
Awesome.
Well, thanks, everybody, for joining us.
We'll just get going and kick off our show.
My co-host, Kyle, will be here in about 30 seconds. He's
wrapping up a meeting. So just thank you everybody for joining us. This is our venture capital and
private equity space. We hold this every Thursday, same time, 5 p.m. Eastern. Usually have new
speakers, new topics we talk about, even though there seems to be a lot of conversation around
AI right now. And I'm sure we'll dive into that as well today.
So I'm your co-host, Jared.
I go by Self-Taught Success on the Internet.
And the meaning of that name is all the information you're looking for is out there.
It's just up to you to seek it out, find it, and apply it on the path to your goals.
And my connection to the VC space is I help founders and startups grow their brands on X.
We've done over 3 million followers, a billion and a half plus impressions.
And basically by helping them grow their brands, they can market to more people and make more
money.
So that's kind of my connection.
My co-host Kyle has a more traditional background.
I'll let him introduce himself in a second.
But I see we have some familiar faces here.
Ravi, Rob, and Christopher.
And I think we have Sam Baker,
too. Spaces are sometimes a little glitchy, so I can't see you on stage, but you might be up there,
Sam Baker. So Christopher, I'll pass it to you, then Ravi, and then Rob, if you guys want to
give a quick 15-second intro, who you are and what's your connection to the VC space.
and what's your connection to the VC space?
Yeah. Hey guys, I am a full-time angel investor.
So it's not quite a VC, but I work with a lot of VCs.
I write first checks into mostly Chicago founders.
And a lot of what I do today is helping the 180 founders
at the 100 companies I've invested in succeed.
And I'm also open sourcing my 27 years of angel
investing experience through Lofty Angels. And by the way, we actually are just, I don't know if I
shared this with you guys, but we just launched a angel summit, which is going to be in Chicago
on 8-11. So if anybody's interested, you can check it out at loftyangels.com. If you happen
to be in Chicago, we're going for it.
Awesome. Appreciate that, Christopher. And if anybody's interested in that,
feel free to send Christopher a DM. Christopher,
you got to be a busy guy with all those founders that you're always talking to.
So good for you for staying on top of that. Very busy with very little team.
Oh, there you go. That keeps for a busy busy day busy schedule but that that's a good good
thing it's good to have a busy day so ravi i'll pass it to you and then rob and sam if you guys
yeah hi everybody this is ravi here in fact you know i'm just driving into manhattan because
we have in you know india u.s uh venture event we're only looking at about 20 folks in the VC space
to look at this opportunity and it's a physical event, it's not an online event.
And so my background, I founded the India 2047 or the Invest Forum, which is to really look
at the India US opportunity.
Both ways, it's a lot of Indians who want to look at investing, especially in smart
manufacturing in US, but it's the other way around too. both ways. It's a lot of Indians who want to look at investing, especially in smart manufacturing
in U.S., but it's the other way around, too. So people are looking at, from U.S., people are
looking at the Indian startup space and some other companies. So it's really growing in,
you know, big numbers right now. And I was in a space yesterday at the Indian consulate.
It just reiterated the, you know, the thesis that this is definitely a growing a sunrise
opportunity apart from that I really look at the emerging market so I'm specifically interested
in East Africa opportunity because that's where the next wave will be my thematic focus is really
looking at you know sunrise energy opportunities such as biofuel, green hydrogen, solar.
I do a lot of work on agritech, AI for food.
I also co-watched a book.
So really, it's exciting to be back.
I just find coming to these spaces every Thursday is like homecoming.
So thank you so much and great to see Chris back.
And hopefully, Kyle and we were in the space yesterday on branding yesterday.
It was a pretty fantastic space yesterday too.
Awesome, always good to have you back, Ravi. Rob, what's your background?
What do you wanna share with us?
Yeah, great stuff there, Ravi.
We'll have to connect.
Yeah, we do a lot of work with Indian companies
and are actually even doing some de novo work of our own
with a partner there.
So yeah, we'll have to connect on that stuff.
But anyways, yeah, my name is Rob Farian.
I'm CEO of Flying V Group.
We're a demand revenue generation agency based in Newport Beach, California.
My tie to investing is actually through my marketing agency.
So we started to really look at how can we not only provide a service, but also be a
strategic partner, which then led to us also writing checks for certain companies and then
getting involved, yes, more in the VC space.
So Sam and I actually know each other.
Sam's local to where I'm at. He's with Mobility VC. I'll let him do his intro, but I'm actually an LP of Mobility VC.
deals and then we really try and build value you know for whoever we're working
with where hey we'll come to the table we'll bring money to the table we'll
bring resources value and then hey we'll make sure that we do our damnedest to
make sure that this business is a success you know and have our hands on a
lot of that demand revenue generation as I was talking so yeah really excited to
be here everything Everything I do,
pretty much industry agnostic. There obviously, yeah, it can be some consolidation as you start
to build portfolio, but we really focus on people, network, who's around us, what are they doing,
why are they doing it? And yeah, just want to win with good people. And I'm really excited to be
here and honored to speak with everybody else up here.
So thanks for having me again.
Glad to have you, Rob.
One of the beautiful things about Spaces and doing this is just being able to connect people.
And so I love getting to hear you say that, Rob, as far as, hey, I'll reach out to you, Robbie.
It's a cool thing to see in real time.
So Sam, I'll pass it to you and then I'll pass it to my co-host, Kyle, and let him start off the show.
Hey, everyone. Sam Baker here, managing partner at Mobility VC.
We are a venture capital firm investing exclusively in the transportation sector,
looking at emerging technologies that will affect everything that moves.
technologies that will affect everything that moves. We specialize in earlier stage companies
ranging in topics from connectivity, autonomy, sharing, electrification, hydrogen, you name it,
and transportation. We're interested in it. I live in California, but our team is around the
world in a lot of the key markets that are being disrupted currently in automotive and transportation.
of the key markets that are being disrupted currently in automotive and transportation.
And yeah, as an active investor and former entrepreneur in the space, I would say we're
unique in that we're really only specialized in that area. But of course, a lot of the things
that we've learned in investing in venture capital, I think transfer over to other sectors as well. So
other sectors as well. So thank you so much for the invitation to be here and I'm looking forward
thank you so much for the invitation to be here and I'm looking forward to the conversation.
to the conversation. Very cool. I think there's some topics we can definitely discuss
around the transportation side. There's been some news here this last week. So
excited to get the show going. Kyle, I'll pass it to you. Oh yeah. You guys know it is Thursday, 5 p.m. Eastern. We got our venture capital, private equity, X spaces.
Jared, thanks so much for kicking off the show. Sorry, everybody, for me being late.
Let me tell you, this week, I don't know if it's something in the air.
Jared, we talked last week about, you know, I've had some deals going with one of my businesses,
but it has been an absolutely bonkers week for me
in the best way.
We've got all-time highs all across the market
in the crypto space.
I feel like everybody's feeling pretty good.
So it's interesting to see
how the venture capital world responds.
We have a really great panel.
So I just want to shout out to everybody that's here.
Thank you for doing the intros.
Thank you for being here.
And everybody listening,
let's get into a good show.
As you know, this is weekly.
And I'm sorry I'm on the move if you hear some background ground noise there but uh we do this
weekly thursdays at 5 p.m so if you have somebody you want to join on spaces feel free to tag them
below or shoot them our way or or suggest any questions if you have for any of our fantastic
panelists but i'm just really excited to be here, Jared, because
venture capital is in such an interesting time between the Robinhood stocks and these mirrored
shares that have been coming out, where we might start to see some private assets getting public
market style valuations. You've got the crypto market, which continues to really succeed right
now, which is a great example of, again, public market valuations on a lot of these at venture capital industries that saw the most success are actually somewhat being forced to transition to almost some level of an active management company,
wealth management or a fund management platform, just as much as they are early stage venture because of the fact that liquidity opportunities are changing.
So I think it's a really, really interesting space.
And I can't wait to dive in today.
Jared, you did some great research, as you usually do, for our current events,
our Tech Pulse section. Do you want to kick it off with a headline that really stuck out to you
to get the conversation going? Yeah, I think you kind of led into it just perfectly there,
Kyle, because just less than an hour ago, 3.18, Vlad Tenev announced a new company that he has, and they are building super intelligence of the mathematical kind.
They raised, maybe it's not quite a new company because it's a Series B, but first time that I'm hearing about it here.
And I just pinned it here at the top of the space.
They just raised $100 million Series B at a $900 million valuation.
It must be a really nice thing when you're already a super rich billionaire and it's like, hey, I got this idea.
And because I'm Vlad Tenev and I am who I am, suddenly now I have a $900 million company that I just printed.
that I just printed. So that's got to be a pretty cool feeling to be at. But what I think is really
So that's got to be a pretty cool feeling to be at.
interesting about this, one of the comments under this post mentions that, hmm, there's a company
that may be interested in tokenizing that private equity and different shares and break that up.
Recently at the Robinhood event here, maybe a week, two weeks ago now, Robinhood, if you
were not familiar, they announced they're going to start tokenizing stocks.
So people overseas have better access to buy stocks.
And then they also mentioned they could tokenize other things, doing all that on the Ethereum
blockchain on a layer two.
So just kind of wanted to get the panel's thoughts on one, if you have any thoughts on Vlad's new startup here, but two, how does
tokenizing private equity, how does that change the industry as a whole?
It's a really great question. I think that tokenization, I think at the very least improves the cap table management
for underlying shareholders.
Now, here's the problem.
On the Republic shares, they're not actually direct on the cap table.
And this has definitely caused a lot of confusion and a lot of commotion around what these shares
actually own because these shares
in let's say an opening eye a SpaceX a neural link whatever you know and or
whatever hot startup that you want to point to getting access to those shares
is not as easy as going to the stock market and clicking buy there there's a
lot of people that want to hold them for a long time and so the secondary market for these things is pretty difficult to buy and i would imagine that the
retail interest from a distribution platform like robin hood is significantly going to exceed the
availability of supply of these types of shares to a company even as big as robin hood and this does
present an interesting concern where they're kind of issuing somewhat of a synthetic derivative
version of the product.
It's kind of like a safe note, if you're familiar with that structure in venture capital,
where you're not actually sitting on the cap table.
It's technically structured as a debt note, which means that you get equity exposure into the company,
which then maybe in the future could convert into direct shares.
Often it's on the next funding round.
In this case, I don't think
there's any conversion at all, as we've discussed, because of the fact that they don't actually have
the underlying asset exposure. And you're only getting the economic exposure. But again, the
question remains, if the company, you know, 100x's or 1000x's in valuation, how is a company like
Robinhood going to handle that cash position on the liability
for that change in price? And I did have a good opportunity actually to talk to Republic,
who's offering a similar product. They're called Mirror Shares. And they had an answer, which was,
yeah, we're going to backstop this with shares, but they wouldn't commit to me that they were
going to backstop it 100% all the time. And they certainly aren't planning to publish their treasury or their reserves or file disclosures on these underlying holdings.
So it does make me a little bit curious and a little bit weary of the actual underlying exposure of what you're actually getting here.
And if it's not just synthetic opportunity, I almost compared it similar to the betting markets of like you're almost just like betting on the price change in the valuation as opposed to actually getting exposure to the underlying economics.
So it's a very fascinating space.
OpenAI came out and said that they don't endorse this.
So I don't know.
What does the panel think about this process? Yeah yeah just to jump in there for a second um i don't know about much
later stage companies because it's not necessarily my area of expertise but this concept of kind of
secondary shares not entirely new of course maybe just the application in public markets but
a lot of early stage stock purchase agreements by default will expressly
prohibit this type of activity, whether you're directly reselling shares or you're reselling them
with exact languages, but if you're effectively reselling the rights, that's also prohibited.
So I don't know if by OpenAI saying we don't endorse this, they might actually be saying
something even more stronger, which is like it might not, it might actually be saying something even more stronger, which is like,
it might not, it might actually be prohibited legally in the underlying documentation for
all we know. And that's a larger concern that I would have is that many early stage companies,
this is not legally possible to do, I think. Right. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I was going to
say. I was going to say, first off, wouldn't touch that with a 10-foot pole. Secondly, Kyle, to your point, liquidation.
Because, I mean, if you look into Harmonic, it's basically Vlad saying that we're going to super compute AI and fix hallucinations, right?
And just solve a GenTech and deploy by solving mathematical equations at quantum levels, right? And just solve a GenTech and deploy by solving mathematical equations at
quantum levels, right? So obviously, like, okay, yeah, that sounds awesome. And that's great in
theory. But similar to the AI question right now is how are these companies with these huge
valuations, even, you know, ChatGPT too, right? How are they making money? How is Facebook or Meta and how
are Google justifying these just insane investments from a dollar and cent standpoint
into something that no one's really figured out in terms of how to make actual real money?
Because at the end of the day, I mean, what we're seeing more than anything is
people are using it. Yes, sure. But
it's still not replacing. It's supplemental. And they're still going back to the old ways of doing
things. Or it doesn't work within the system and the structure that they do the work within, which
I know sitting here as a bunch of entrepreneurs and whatnot is sometimes hard for us to comprehend.
But 99% of the people are just
going to stick within what they do, how they do it, how they've always been told to do it.
So yeah. At least for Zuck, he's just deploying money that he actually made, right? I feel like
he's the easiest one to give credit to because Facebook is such a cash cow and Instagram that
if he wants to blow a couple billion dollars on the next hottest tech
trend, just in the event that maybe it's game changing, I feel like it's easy for a shareholder
to write that off as like, ah, you know, it's research that's, you know, future opportunity
and maybe a defensible, if like, if OpenAI could take market share, you may as well take their
employees. And then like, you know, it lessens their chance of hurting Facebook's advantageous
position. I think your perspective on some of these other ones makes a lot more sense, though.
When you're spending LP capital, it is a good question.
At least with Vlad, it's interesting because I'm sure that they deployed a lot of his own personal money
into this business to get it to a $900 million valuation.
I'm sure that this isn't just a pre-seed pitch deck startup with no product,
but it does seem hard to wrap your head around.
But I saw a couple of their hands up.
I don't want to take anybody else's thunder.
Yeah, I just want to ask a follow-up to the...
...that's been made there.
Hey, guys, do I have a bad connection connection or is that self-taught?
Yeah, he's all around.
Hey, Jared, try it again.
Okay.
If companies start tokenizing their private equity, how does that change the IPO market?
Because it'll be a lot easier to access you know basically tokenizing on the blockchain
than it is to go public how does that have the IPO market also if those shares start to get traded
in the secondary markets accessibly through blockchain how does it affect going to risk
future rounds or future round
to invest, but then they look at
well, why are so many people selling
on the secondary market
and not holding? How do you guys see the
future of that playing out?
Christopher, I know you want to hop in.
Do you want to hop in.
Do you want to hop in?
No, no, go ahead.
I can certainly share some perspective if nobody has any thoughts.
Jared, I mean, this is exactly where you and I had talked.
Oh, Sam, if you have some thoughts, feel free to jump in.
I didn't know if you wanted to get in here.
Yeah, sorry.
Yeah, no worries.
No, just to share, like, I think, to think to be honest like on a practical level for again speaking about
sort of earlier stage founders and it's called like you know seed series a series b maybe even
no i'm probably up to series b um you know being a private company and not being subject to market
forces has a lot of advantages i'm sure you guys guys know your own personal stories or others in the
entrepreneurial journey. There's so many ups and downs, and sometimes you just got to put your head
down and things change a lot. And to not have to think about what your share price is, is a huge
gift kind of early on and be swayed one way or another when you're just trying to figure things
out. And so one of the things that I would wonder is like, if all of a sudden, you could be getting
sort of market input in real
time in theory, as a really early stage company about what you're doing one way or another,
I would wonder how that would affect the psychology of founders, and maybe sway them
sometimes in positive ways, but maybe also sometimes in negative ways, to be honest, to say,
don't do that. That's too risky. It's not clear what you're doing. Like, as we all know, like some
of these things, they take years to mature. And we don't know what the founders are doing for a long period of time. It's just, it's super
unclear whether it's going to work out. So I think that's one of the concerns that I would have
at a high level about not protecting these younger companies in that way that they are right now,
to some extent. It's a great point. And it's one of the big risks of a company going public in the first
place is that most public companies are not like Meta or Google, where they can basically
or Apple, these big companies that are just like, screw you guys, you're welcome to follow
us or not. We're not going to be beholden to the quarterly swings of our earnings and announcements, we're picking a long view.
Most public companies can't do that.
If you start getting into that kind of a mindset as a private company, that's just a net negative
for the world because there's going to be less innovation in that case.
You're going to be having to worry about revenue nonstop, which is not a bad
thing to worry about revenue, but that can't be the focus, especially in the early days. I totally agree.
All right. Well, that's, I think, a really good conversation and fair points all across the board.
I mean, it could present a really interesting dynamic for fundraising, but it's maybe something that should be left for more mature companies, which I think leads us into another great topic.
companies, which I think leads us into another great topic. I've been actually a really big
bull and full financial advice because I do take my media position pretty seriously. I don't own
any shares of this company. I'm just a huge bull on the business. I was pretty psyched to see
CoreWeave go IPO. And we saw that they just had an agreement to acquire a Core Scientific,
which allowed them to do so in a stock deal, right?
Because now they've got a pretty liquid share price.
So it's stock, but I'm sure a lot of those shares will be sold to cash.
Anybody have any thoughts around the current IPO market and what that means for startups, for venture-backed businesses, for tech companies?
I'm a big believer
that tech companies belong in the public sphere. And I know that's inconvenient often for a lot
of startups, or even mature tech companies that would prefer to stay private. But I just feel
like from a capitalist perspective, it's healthy when the free markets can decide the valuation
of these things. I mean, we can get disclosures on what's going on within these businesses.
It also does present a really interesting opportunity for M&A activity
where you can raise debt or use your stock much more effectively
in acquisition opportunities like what CoreWeed is doing.
Is anybody watching the IPO market or have any thoughts here?
I know, Ravi, you and I talk about the IPO markets often.
Some of our VC guys on the panel, whether it's Rob or Sam, what are your guys thoughts
around acquisitions and certainly IPOs are nice because it's really the only exit opportunity
as a VC that a founder can directly control.
Do you see this as a pretty bullish sign for the economy that we've seen some really successful
IPOs between CoreWeave, Circle, and some of the others.
Anybody have any thoughts there?
Or do you want me to just keep riffing?
Would love for some thoughts.
You guys are... Yeah, I mean, I think I agree with you just in terms of, hey, playing it out in the open market, right?
I mean, obviously, with that being said, there's still a lot that goes on in those markets, too, with these stocks.
I mean, I think, you know, tech playing out and being able to see how these companies are making moves.
Obviously, the creativity of the M&A markets, right?
You're seeing that a lot, I think, with the AI space, right?
Moving, okay, AI companies from an M&A perspective into some of these other businesses to quickly facilitate.
So that's where I think you're seeing quickly some of these valuations that make some sense.
And then they just work them
strategically. But yeah, I mean, I would agree. I don't I wouldn't say I keep particularly close
eye on the IPO market. Right. But I think, yeah, general sentiments that you have there, Kyle,
I would agree with. And yeah, I mean, I think it is exciting from an M&A perspective,
for sure. And that's a that's that's an angle that's an angle I'm always looking at as well,
regardless, private, public,
because obviously you can accelerate things
so quickly through that type of channel.
Some of the limited experience that I have
with public companies,
I've learned that there's a lot of benefit
through the rigor that comes with being a public company, which is sort of the flip side of what I was saying before, reporting requirements and heightened scrutiny around the metrics.
That's kind of a moment of truth for many companies historically.
I do think, though, that that doesn't have to be only for public companies.
There can be general sort of market expectations that companies that are going through funding rounds, whether it be a public liquidity event to go to IPO or even just a private round.
A couple of years ago, during COVID in particular, there was just some crazy funding rounds that were going on with, you know,
probably most people on this call know that you'd be shocked at how little diligence was being done on the businesses
and sort of off-the-cuff decisions being made, not really backed with scrutiny.
And I think that not just in the public markets, but in the private markets, I've seen a really sort of going back to basics and more scrutiny in private businesses and the requirement for teams, founding teams to justify valuations and business plans and why things are off track or not off track. And I think overall that that's a very healthy thing for the market. So I guess what
I'm saying is seeing more IPOs is good because it brings some of that transparency to light.
But I think that we don't have to just limit it to companies that IPO. I see it as very positive
that that scrutiny is extending into other parts of private markets as well. And a little bit of
a cleanup is happening, frankly speaking, with some down rounds
and valuations that didn't make any sense
and back to sanity in some regards as well.
And I'm speaking about this also from both sides
because I've got the founder experience
as well as now an investor's side.
And so I can see that it needs
to be a little bit more balanced, right?
Yeah, Sam, you bring up a lot of good points
on that note.
And similarly, we actually just did a deal with a micro cap.
And it was.
It was a breath of fresh air because it's like, okay, what are we raising?
What are we raising at?
Great.
Why should we do it?
Well, go look at the last five years of financials and we're good to go versus some of this stuff
in the private market, especially over the last five years, early COVID days. I mean,
Sam's exactly right. I mean, it was a pitch deck with an idea and people were writing $100,000
checks at that point. And I think, you know, we know where a majority of that went, especially
if you, and then you take a look at what happened in the crypto space. I mean, my goodness. Yes,
of course there were some winners, but more or less, it was a bloodbath as well.
So, yeah, I think Sam's got it spot on.
And, you know, I think that's part of the due diligence.
That's part of the expectation.
And I think that's for good investors, right?
I mean, I think at the end of the day, regardless of whether or not we invest in a deal, I think the founders, the CEOs that we talk to, they walk away saying,
hey, thank you, because at least now, right, I understand, you know, what gaps we do have,
right? And why, you know, wow, I'd never thought about that when considering my valuation. And
maybe it's because they're not good on the financial side. And we just went and laid out
an 18-month pro forma and said, this makes no sense, right?
So, you know, a lot of those things help prepare them for when they are having those conversations.
So I think there's a lot of diligence, too, on the investors that needs to happen.
So, yeah, Sam nailed it.
Brings up a lot of good points to just further emphasizing those.
But, yeah, micro cap for me has actually been something that's been interesting.
Because, I mean, in certain interests, I mean, you're, you know, you're able to talk directly
with the CEO.
Investor relationships can be a bit better.
Again, strategic relationships happen faster.
So that's been that's been fun to fun to play around with a little bit.
So but yes, great point, Sam.
Awesome.
Jared, do we have you back, brother?
I'm back.
I'm back.
I'm in a new place, got a new patio chair trying to enjoy some sun.
But apparently the Wi-Fi says, no, you're not.
or not. So back inside I am. But yeah, I'm back. And another topic from this week that I think is
So back inside I am.
But, yeah, I'm back.
interesting and it'd be great to get your perspective on Sam as somebody who focuses
on transportation is Elon talking about how Grok is going to be put in Teslas here soon.
So Sam, I guess the question to you and then we'll pass it to the panel is what's the reasoning for that?
How does that impact driving? How does that impact cars?
Is that just for, you know, self-driving stuff or is that going to be a broader spectrum?
What are your thoughts on that?
Yeah, so there's this concept of, you know, in a future world of autonomy where we maybe
don't have to drive ourselves through hours and hours of traffic.
In California, I know exactly what this is like.
Transportation can become a shift from essentially a time where you're frustrated and have to
focus on the road to a time where you can relax, maybe entertain yourself, catch up with loved ones on a video chat, do some work.
And so you're completely turning time, but I can imagine that all the services that we profit from on our smartphones and on our computers,
in terms of, you know, AI and entertainment, et cetera, are going to be available in vehicles increasingly,
if this is the case that the vehicles are going to be driving themselves instead of us.
So you can imagine all of the economic opportunities that that unlocks because it's
really unclear whether people are going to be traveling less or traveling more into those
circumstances. I personally don't think that we're going to be staying home and doing most
things remote. I still think that there's going to be this concept of going out into the world and
seeing places and meeting people in person. And in that scenario, we're going to be this concept of going out into the world and seeing places and meeting
people in person. And in that scenario, we're going to be doing a lot of trips still. And
many of those trips will be autonomously dribbling. And so we're going to still be
spending hours in vehicles. It's just now we're going to be able to benefit from all the services
that we have at home in the vehicle as well, because it'll be almost like a third space that
we're in. So yeah, I definitely see the opportunity there. This is a whole other side
tangent we could talk about another time, but I still think we're super early in the autonomy
field. And there's a lot of road ahead of us, but it's exciting to think about the potential there.
Yeah, real quick on that. We've actually been looking at the application even prior to the
Grok announcement of
what the AI does from marketing advertising, right? So it's like, okay, lowest barrier of
entry on monetization of AI into intelligent vehicles isn't necessarily driving or maybe
driving you to and from certain areas, but it's, hey, you're driving by, ad on your way.
Do you want to stop?
Hey, Starbucks is offering a $5, $10 off coupon, and it knows you're next door, right?
And you like going there and your order and whatever else.
So yeah, it's going to be crazy.
Yeah, that's a good point, Rob. I actually think that that's going to be huge even before
autonomous becomes widespread. I mean, I literally had this experience the other day, I think
it was in Waze or Google Maps, I can't remember, but one of those apps in my car in the heads
up display, it was like, hey, I was navigating somewhere to eat and then it proposed an alternative
location with a promotion that was on the way because it knew where i was going it's like oh don't go to lunch
here go to lunch here and it's like cheaper or something so absolutely like that stuff's not like
as complicated technologically as the car driving itself but it's like there's a lot of economic
value there right and knowing what the user needs are yeah maybe maybe you guys are going to, maybe this sounds like I'm a five-year-old, but my
mind goes to the five-year-old concept of people just getting thrown in little tubes and being
spit out somewhere else after they type in a button when I think of atomic transportation.
So probably a long ways away from that, but it definitely is an interesting proposal, I guess, of if basically you can save a bunch of time, how does that impact your life?
Obviously, in a pretty big way.
So I think it's pretty cool.
Does anybody else want to chime in and add on this subject here?
Yeah, I just have an interesting thought because, you know, growing up, I always used to ask my father why he drove.
And he said, you know, that's what the drivers should be doing.
So we grew up with drivers.
And I really agree with Sam's point because this is where we're looking at.
Because any time where you get to sit and do some work, you want to get into more efficiency and profit.
So I'm very, very eager to know what happens with the GROC and its, you know, functions.
eager to know what happens with the Grok and its, you know, functions.
And as you said, you know, the definitely, as we as humans, if we get more time, we can do much more with it.
It was simply doing nothing to doing something which was extremely effective.
But I have a question, too, because, you know, on the transportation and the whole, you know, with the big, beautiful bill,
and we have this whole question mark about the, you know, electric vehicles, right? So, Sam, I don't know, how are people reacting? And
because in India, I was dealing with three deals on EV and on lithium, because as you know,
we have a huge lithium find recently in two locations in India, right? So, what is your
take on the future of EV in the U.S.?
And really, it's linked to Tesla, too, because we've seen the shares and how it's impacted.
Right. So just some thoughts on that.
Yeah, sure. So I'm certainly consumers are not going to be happy with the news just to hear that there's
this subsidy that's not available.
But I think if you just like at a larger picture, the US has been limiting the importation of
electric vehicles from more competitive brands for forever.
Right.
I mean, so, you know, you guys know the, you know, BYD,
I'm sure you're familiar with,
it's a major Tesla competitor in China.
They can sell cars at a fraction
of the cost of what Tesla can sell.
And, you know, that's, and they're super competitive,
not only in China, but in other markets around the world,
but they're not able to sell in the US market currently.
And that's, you know know arguably like an artificial protection
um that the u.s car makers are benefiting from um there's still demand for evs there's more and more
being sold every day i don't see that going away um i think that the the the the killer application
so to speak for evs is um you have like solar panels on your
house at home and you charge your car in your garage that you can park and you always have
access to yourself and you know frankly speaking like a lot of markets in the us are perfect for
that because single home ownership is high and people can charge their harms at home at home in
a private location where the ev stuff kind of like breaks down in terms of the user experiences in sort of dense urban environments where you don't.
