Podcast appearances and mentions of alex wang

Today, we check in a year after the first Unsupervised Learning x Latent Space Crossover special to discuss everything that has changed (there is a lot) in the world of AI. This episode was recorded just after AIE Europe, but before the Cursor-xAI deal.Unsupervised Learning is a podcast that interviews the sharpest minds in AI about what's real today, what will be real in the future and what it means for businesses and the world - helping builders, researchers and founders deconstruct and understand the biggest breakthroughs.Thanks to Jacob and the UL production team for hosting and editing this!Jacob Effron* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacobeffron/* X: https://x.com/jacobeffronFull Episode on Their YouTubeWe discuss:* swyx's view from the center of the AI engineering zeitgeist: OpenClaw, harness engineering, context engineering, evals, observability, GPUs, multimodality, and why conference tracks now reveal what matters most in AI* Whether AI infrastructure has finally stabilized: why “skills” may be the minimal viable packaging format for agents, why infra companies have had to reinvent themselves every year, and why application companies have had an easier time surviving model volatility* The vertical vs. horizontal AI startup debate: why application companies can act as the outsourced AI team for enterprises, why some horizontal companies still matter, and why sandboxes may be the clearest reinvention of classic cloud infrastructure for the AI era* The “agent lab” playbook: starting with frontier models, specializing for your domain, then training your own models once you have enough data, workload, and user behavior to justify the cost and latency savings* Why domain-specific model training is real, not just marketing: how companies like Cursor and Cognition can get users to choose their in-house models, and why search, domain specialization, and distillation are becoming more important* Open models, custom chips, and alternative inference infrastructure: why swyx has turned more bullish on open source, why non-NVIDIA hardware is suddenly getting real attention, and why every 10x speedup can unlock new product experiences* What it means to sell to agents instead of humans: why agent experience may mostly just be good developer experience by another name, why APIs and docs matter more than ever, and how pretraining-data incumbents are compounding advantages in an agent-first world* Why memory and personalization may become the next big wedge: today's models mostly reward frequency of mentions, but in the future, swyx expects product choice to be shaped much more by personalized memory systems* The state of the AI coding wars: why coding has become one of the largest and fastest-growing categories in AI, how Anthropic, OpenAI, Cursor, and Cognition have all ridden the wave, and why the category may still have more room to run* Capability exploration vs. efficiency: why the industry is still in a token-maxing, experiment-heavy phase where people are rewarded for spending more rather than less* Claude Code vs. Codex and the strange stickiness of coding products: why first magical product experiences may matter more than expected, and why the bigger mystery may be why only a few names have emerged as real winners so far* What the end state of the coding market might look like: two major players, a longer tail of niche products, and possible disruption if Microsoft, Mistral, xAI, or the Chinese labs push harder into coding* Where application companies still have room against the labs: why frontier labs are trying to expand into verticals like finance and healthcare, but still leave space for focused companies that own the workflow and the last mile* Why coding may be a preview of every other AI market: the first category to truly go parabolic, the clearest example of foundation model companies colliding with application companies, and a template for how future vertical AI markets may develop* Why AI valuations now feel unbounded: from billion-dollar ARR products built in a year to trillion-dollar market caps, swyx and Jacob unpack how the AI market has broken traditional startup intuitions about scale and durability* Consumer AI vs. coding AI: why ChatGPT's consumer category may have plateaued on frequency and product design, while coding continues to feel like a daily-use category with real momentum* The next product frontier beyond coding: consumer agents, computer use, and “coding agents breaking containment,” with swyx's thesis that 2025 was the year of coding agents and 2026 may be the year they begin to do everything else* Whether foundation models are really killing startup categories: why swyx is less worried for early founders, more worried for mid-size startups and traditional SaaS, and why building something ambitious may now be the best job interview for a frontier lab* AI vs. SaaS and the internal culture war around adoption: the tension between AI-native employees who want to rip out expensive software and skeptics who think quick AI-built replacements create fragile systems* Why traditional SaaS may be under real pressure: swyx's own experience spending six figures on event and sponsor management software, the temptation to rebuild it cheaply with AI, and the broader question of whether teams will trust custom AI-native replacements* Biosafety, security, and frontier model access: why swyx raised biosafety at a dinner with Anthropic's Mike Krieger, why Krieger argued security is the bigger issue, and what restricted model releases reveal about Anthropic vs. OpenAI* The era of giant models: why 10T+ parameter systems may only be a temporary rationing phase before bigger clusters arrive, why labs may increasingly keep their most powerful models private for distillation, and why scale alone no longer feels like a complete answer* Memory as the slowest scaling factor in AI: why context windows have improved far more slowly than people hoped, why million-token context still has not changed most real workflows, and why memory may be the key bottleneck for the next generation of systems* What swyx changed his mind on in the past year: becoming more bullish on open models, more convinced that the top tier of agent startups behaves very differently from the median AI company, and more optimistic about fine-tuning and specialized model adaptation* “Dark factories” and zero-human-review coding: the next frontier after zero human-written code, where models not only write the code but ship it without human review, forcing companies to rethink testing and verification from first principles* Why RL and post-training may matter more than people assumed: even if the resulting models get thrown out every few months, the data, workflows, and domain-specific improvements persist* Synthetic rubrics, Doctor GRPO, and multi-turn RL: why reinforcement learning is becoming much more domain-specific and multi-step than many people realize, opening the door to much deeper customization* The next frontier after coding: memory, personalization, and world models, including why swyx thinks world models matter not just for robotics or gaming, but for giving AI something closer to lived understanding* Fei-Fei Li, spatial intelligence, and the Good Will Hunting analogy: the idea that today's LLMs may know everything by reading it all, but still lack the lived experience that turns knowledge into a deeper kind of intelligenceTimestamps* 00:00:00 Intro preview: AI coding wars, startup pressure, and market structure* 00:00:28 Welcome to the Latent Space × Unsupervised Learning crossover* 00:01:17 What AI builders are focused on now: OpenClaw, harnesses, and infra* 00:04:33 Why AI infra is harder than apps, and where startups can still win* 00:06:39 Should companies train their own models?* 00:09:28 Open models, custom chips, and the new inference race* 00:11:25 Designing products for agents, not just humans* 00:16:49 The state of the AI coding wars in 2026* 00:19:27 Capability exploration, token-maxing, and why coding is going parabolic* 00:21:41 What the end state of the coding market could look like* 00:23:50 Where app companies still have room against the labs* 00:27:02 Why AI valuations and market swings feel unprecedented* 00:28:56 Consumer AI vs. coding AI, and why sticky products still matter* 00:32:28 What the next breakthrough product experience might be* 00:32:53 2026 thesis: coding agents break containment and eat the world* 00:35:27 Are foundation models wiping out startup categories?* 00:37:33 AI vs. SaaS, vibe coding, and internal team tensions* 00:40:01 Biosafety, security, and the politics of restricted model releases* 00:42:19 Giant models, compute constraints, and the limits of scale* 00:44:30 Memory as the real bottleneck in AI* 00:44:57 Why swyx changed his mind on open models* 00:47:44 Dark factories and the future of zero-human-review coding* 00:49:36 Why post-training and RL may matter more than people think* 00:51:50 Memory, world models, and the next frontier of intelligence* 00:53:54 The Good Will Hunting analogy for LLMs* 00:54:21 OutroTranscript[00:00:00] swyx: Isn't that crazy? That number is just mind boggling.[00:00:03] Jacob Effron: What is the state of the AI coding wars today?[00:00:05] swyx: We're in a phase of sort of like capability exploration. The general thesis that I have been pursuing now is that the same way that 2025 was a year coding agents 2026 is coding agents breaking containments to do everything else.[00:00:16] Jacob Effron: Do you worry about the foundation models just getting into a bunch of these startup categories?[00:00:21] swyx: Mid-size startups. Yes.[00:00:23] Jacob Effron: What do you think the end state of this market is[00:00:25] swyx: for the market structure to, to significantly change? There would be[00:00:28] Jacob Effron: today on unsupervised learning. We had a, a fun episode and what's really become an annual tradition, a crossover episode with our friends at Latent space.Swix and I sat down and we talked about everything happening in the AI ecosystem today. What we thought of the various changes at the model layer, what's happening in the infra world, the coding wars, and a bunch of other things. It's a ton of fun to do this with someone I really respect and another great podcaster in the game.Without further ado, here's our episode. Well switch. This is, uh, super fun to be back with another unsupervised learning, uh, latent space crossover episode.[00:01:02] swyx: Yeah,[00:01:02] Jacob Effron: I feel like a lot of places we could start, but you know, one thing I always find fascinating, uh, about the way you spend your time is you obviously are like at the epicenter of this engineering movement and community, and you run these events and conferences and put on these.Awesome talks and, and I think just have a great pulse on the zeitgeist of what's going on.[00:01:16] swyx: Yeah.[00:01:17] Jacob Effron: Maybe to, to start just what are the biggest topics people are thinking about right now?[00:01:21] swyx: Yeah, so I just came back from London, uh, where we did a IE Europe and we're doing roughly one per quarter now, which Yeah, you've[00:01:27] Jacob Effron: really up[00:01:27] swyx: the, hopefully[00:01:28] Jacob Effron: up the, up the pace.[00:01:29] swyx: It's trying. We're trying to match AI speed, youknow?[00:01:30] Jacob Effron: Yeah, exactly. The tops would be completely different, I imagine. Uh,[00:01:33] swyx: yeah. You know, I definitely curate the tracks, like you can see what I think. When you see the track list and the, the speakers that I invite, obviously Open Claw is like the story of the last four or five months, and then be, be just below that.I would consider harness engineering, context engineering to be two related topics in agents and rag. And then there's a long tail of Evergreen stuff like evals, observability, GPUs, uh, and uh, LM infra and just general, just in general. We also have other updates on like multimodality and, uh, generative media, let's call it.Um, but I definitely, the, the first three that I mentioned are top of mind people. Yeah.[00:02:13] Jacob Effron: I think harness is particular like, so interesting. Um, you know, there was this tweet from Harrison Chase, the, the lane chain, CEO, that, that caught my eye recently where he said, you know, it finally feels like we have stability, uh, around the infrastructure for, uh, you know, around ai.And I think what. He basically was implying his like, look over the past two, three years as a company at the epicenter of AI infrastructure, it was a bit like playing whack-a-mole, right? You were constantly moving around with, however, the building patterns were evolving[00:02:36] swyx: for Harrison for sure. Right? Like he's basically had to reinvent the company every year since he started Lang Chain.Right? It was Lang chain, Ang graph and LP agents and like, uh, I think he's like one of the most nimble, adept sharp people about this. Yeah. Yeah.[00:02:49] Jacob Effron: Saying now, now is finally the time stability[00:02:51] swyx: this. Yeah.[00:02:52] Jacob Effron: Yeah. Um, do you buy that or what have you kind of make of that take?[00:02:56] swyx: I think that. It, it's very expensive to say this Time is different sometimes, but when you're just writing code, like it's actually okay to just like try to make a call and I think it may not even matter if this call is right or not.Like I just don't even care that much because you can be right on a thesis, but if you don't, you don't figure out how to monetize the thesis, then who cares if you said something first that said, um, it does feel like, for example. Uh, we went through a lot of different ways of passion packaging integrations up with, uh, with agents.And it feels like we've landed at skills, which is like the minimal viable format. Yeah. Which is just a markdown file, uh, with some scripts attached to it, and I don't see how it can be more simple than that. And so there is some justification for. The stability around harnesses. I feel like there may be more adaptation with regards to maybe like the real time elements or subagents or memory or any of those like agent disciplines, let's call it in, in agent engineering.Uh, but if, if the thesis is that, okay, you just want agents are LMS with tools in the loop with a file system, what they can do. Retrieval with, with skills and all these like standard tooling that now seems to be relatively consensus then probably. That makes sense. Um, I just think like there's no point trying to stake your reputation on this thesis that we're there because if it changes again, just change with it.It's fine.[00:04:33] Jacob Effron: Yeah. It's always, you know, I've always been struck by how that is. Much more challenging for infrastructure companies and application companies. Like obviously I think, yeah. You know, on the application side you've seen, you know, Brett Taylor from Sierra Max, from Lara. Like, they're like, look, we build, you know, what's ahead of the models and we're willing to throw everything out every three months, you know, as the models get better and better.Exactly. Yeah. But the thing you at least have there is you have. Uh, you have an end customer, right? That's like decently sticky. Um, you know, they will mostly stick, you know, they'll, they'll give you a shot at least of, of building these things. What I've always found more challenging, uh, at, at the kind of like, you know, reinvent yourself every three months of the infrastructure layer, it's like, you know, developers are definitely a, a pickier audience maybe than an accounting firm or, uh, you know, a bank.Yeah. And so it's definitely a, a, a more challenging position to be in to, to have to constantly reinvent yourself.[00:05:17] swyx: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, and like when they turn, it's like. Very complete. Like, they'll leave to like the, the hot new thing, uh, because there's like no defensibility, I guess. Like e even, even if you are a database, like, uh, people can migrate workloads off databases.Like it's, it's a, it's a known thing. Uh, so I think like basically what we're talking about is the vertical versus horizontal, uh, debate in, in AI startups. And uh, the way I think about it also is just that like when you are. Um, Lara, when you are a bridge, like you are the outsource AI team, right? You, you are, your job is to apply whatever state ofthe art AI methods.[00:05:55] Jacob Effron: Yeah. Like this translation layer between model capabilities and your[00:05:57] swyx: own customers. Yeah. To, to the end customers and like, well, if they didn't have you, they would've to hire in house and they're not gonna hire in house so they have you. And like, I think that's like a reasonable, like very robust to any whatever trends and, and discoveries that people make in, in the engineering layer.I do think like there is, um. It like sort of useful horizontal companies being built, but they're all. Very much like, sort of like the reinventions of classic cloud in the AI era and the, the primary one being sandboxes. Yeah. Um, which like, it's another form of compute guys, like, let's not get too excited about it.But I mean, like the, the workloads are enormous.[00:06:38] Jacob Effron: Right.[00:06:38] swyx: Yeah.[00:06:39] Jacob Effron: It's interesting, and I feel like as, as part of this, you know, the questions that folks are asking around infrastructure, there's a lot around, you know, the extent to which companies should have their own AI teams and what they should be doing in-house.And, you know, uh, I think there's questions around should people be training their own models? Should people be doing, you know, rl, uh, in-house based on the data they have? I feel like, you know, one has to evolve their takes on this every, every three months with paces. But where, where are you at on this today?[00:07:00] swyx: I think, well, I mean actually all models have gone up. Um, and obviously I'm involved in cognition and also cursors doing, doing, uh, a lot of own model training. And I think that that is some part of the, what I've been calling the agent lab playbook, where you start off with the state of the art models from, uh, from the big labs and you, uh, specialize for your domain.But once you have enough workload and enough high quality data from your users, then you can obviously train your own models and like save a lot on cost and latency and all that, all that good stuff. Um, you also get like a marketing bonus of like calling it some fancy name and putting out some research[00:07:38] Jacob Effron: from my seat.I can't tell how much of it is like actual, you know, value that's provided to the end user. And how much of it is that marketing bonus? Right. It seems some combination of the[00:07:45] swyx: I think it's both.[00:07:46] Jacob Effron: Yeah.[00:07:46] swyx: Um, no, no. There, there actually is real value. Um, and you, you know that for a number of reasons. Like one, even when it's not subsidized, people do choose it as like one of the top four or five.This is both composer two and, uh, suite 1.6 I one of the top five models. Like in a, in a fair market? In a free market, yeah. In a, in a, in a model switch. Or people do choose it and like, it's not subsidized. Like, so that's as good as it gets. Uh, but beyond that, like domain specific models, for example. For search with, with both, which both companies have absolutely makes, makes a ton of sense.Everyone says like, yeah, we should always, always do this. And honestly like, I think the infrastructure for that is becoming easier with, um, like thinking machines tinker thing as well as primary like, uh, lab stuff. Yeah, I mean like, this is one of those like reversal of the, the bitter lesson where you first bootstrap on the large models and the general purpose models to get big.And as you get very well-defined workloads that are just high quantity but not high variance, um, then you just distill down to a smaller model and run that on your own. Right. Which like totally makes sense.[00:08:50] Jacob Effron: What I'm less clear on is the kind of DIY RL use case, which I think is really mostly around, you know, improved, uh, quality for, for different things.Obviously there's probably like more efficient ways to, you know, get a smaller model that's that's faster and cheaper. And it'll be interesting to see whether. You know, obviously you had, you know, uh, two, three years ago this whole case of companies that were, you know, pre-training and claiming better outcomes in, in their domains than getting kind of cooked as each model iteration improved.You know, I wonder whether that's a, a similar story plays out in the, uh, in, in the, our all space. Yeah, for the focus on, on on pure outcomes and quality, not the cost side, which clearly your own models for cost at scale makes a ton of sense.[00:09:28] swyx: I think there are this, there are two sides of the same coin.Like you basically always want to hold, uh, quality constant or trade off a little bit of quality for a drastic decreasing cost. And that's true for everyone. Uh, one element I wanted to bring out, which is very much in favor of open models, is custom chips. So this would be cereus, but also talu. And then there's a huge range of stuff in between.This has been a huge story this past year on just like everything non Nvidia is getting bid up, including like freaking MatX is working for, which is very, which is very rewarding for me, but I think one of those things where like, oh, like the suddenly, because the number of alternative. Hard, uh, hardware is increasing and the inference that you can get is insanely high.Like, um, we're talking thousands of tokens per second instead of less than a hundred. So the trade off for qua quality doesn't hold as much anymore because the speed is so high.[00:10:24] Jacob Effron: Have you seen a lot of companies go all in on the alternative chip?[00:10:26] swyx: So cognition has Yeah. On Cerebras, uh, and, and so has OpenAIUm, uh, and so no, I don't think so beyond that, uh, and that, do you think that's like a, that's mostly, that's foreshadowing of, that's, yeah. I used to be kind of a skeptic in terms of like, okay, so what if I get my inference at a hundred to a hundred tokens per second sped up to 200 tokens per second. It's only two X faster.It's not that big a deal. Um, but when you, uh, I think every 10 x does unlock a different usage pattern. Um, and you, we have proof in Talas and, and some of the others. That you can actually, um, drastically imp improve inference speed and what happens from there? I don't even really know, like it's, it's so hard to predict when entire applications just appear at once.Yeah. Uh, and it also isn't that expensive, right? So like, um, this is one of those things where like, I, I think the, the investment cycle is gonna be multi-year. Um, and I. Would caution people to not dismiss it too, too quickly.[00:11:25] Jacob Effron: Yeah. I mean, one other like infra question I was curious to get your thoughts on is obviously it seems increasingly a lot of the cutting edge infra companies are building for agents as the buyers of their product or users of their product, right?[00:11:35] swyx: Ooh,[00:11:36] Jacob Effron: and[00:11:37] swyx: another huge theme. Yeah. Yeah.[00:11:38] Jacob Effron: And I'm trying to figure out like what. What, what do you have to do differently about selling into agents? Um, are they just the ultimate rational developers? Uh, or is there, you know,[00:11:46] swyx: no, absolutely not. Um, I think they are easily prompt, injected and, uh, very tuned towards like, basically com compounding existing winners.[00:11:57] Jacob Effron: Yeah,[00:11:57] swyx: so like if, like, congrats if you won the lottery for getting into the training data right before 2023, because now you're like installed in there for the foreseeable future. But yeah. Uh, you know, one stat that Versal, uh, CTO Malta dropped at my conference was that there are now, uh, 60% of traffic to Elle's, um, like app arch, like admin app architecture for like configuring versal applications, uh, is bought.It's not, it's not human. Uh, so like your primary customer is agents now. Um, and it's mostly co like mostly coding agents, mostly people using CLI on CP or whatever. But yeah, I mean, I think. More. I, I think step one, if it doesn't exist as an API that agents can use, it doesn't exist. Right, right. Which I think is like, uh, it's a good hygiene thing anyway, to, to make everything API available, but not as like an extra, um.Push on like products, people to not only work on the ui, um, you should probably work on the on SCLI stuff. Beyond that, I think honestly there is like, so I, I come from the sensibility of, I think everything that you are trying to do for agents experience now, which is the term that Matt Bowman and Nullify is trying to coin, is the same thing that you should have been doing for developer experience.That you should have had good docs, you should have had a consistent API, uh, that is. Mostly stateless. Um, you should have, I guess, discoverable or progressive disclosure or like search or like whatever. And so now that people have energy in like finding these customers to do that, that's great. Um, do I believe in.Extending beyond that into something like a EO, um, for gaming The chatbots? Not necessarily, but obviously there's gonna be huge advantages when people who figure out the short term wins. Yeah. And short term wins can compound.[00:13:43] Jacob Effron: Do you think these compounding advantages to like the, the pre-training data cutoff companies, like, you know, obviously over some period of time, I imagine that doesn't persist.And so as you think about like. I dunno, three, four years from now what the, you know, selection criteria end up being. Do you think it still mirrors exactly what you were saying before? Like it's exactly what you should have been doing all along to sell a good product to developers?[00:14:01] swyx: It could be, except that I think in three, four years we'll probably have much better memory and personalization.So then general a EO or GEO doesn't really matter as much. So I think whatever memory or personalization system we end up with will probably d determine what you end up choosing much more. Than, than what is currently the case, which is just frequency of mentions, let's call it. Yeah,[00:14:26] Jacob Effron: yeah.[00:14:26] swyx: Uh, so you just spa quantity and I think that's, I mean, that's something I'm looking forward to.I do think, like, like, you know, I, I think that the fundamental exercise to work through for yourself is if you start a new, um, sort of. Uh, disruptor company. Now there's a, there's a big incumbent that everyone knows, like, like superb base. Super base is like, kind of like the Postgres, like database, uh, incumbent.If you wanna start like new superb base, how would you compete with them? And I don't necessarily have the answer, but I, I, I do think like people, like resend like relatively new. I think they would start like 20, 23 and still there was, there was a recent survey where like, people. Checked what Claude recommends by default.If you just don't prompt it with anything, just say, gimme an email provider and says, resent as in like 70, 70% of each cases. Like the fact that you can get in there with like such a relatively short existence, I think is, is encouraging.[00:15:14] Jacob Effron: Yeah.[00:15:14] swyx: I do think like. Um, you do want to do whatever it is to, to like to, to get in that Very short mentions this because, um, it's not gonna be 20 of them, it's gonna be like three.[00:15:26] Jacob Effron: No, definitely. It feels like, uh, you know, probably more, more consolidation than ever. Uh, or, or kind of like, you know, uh, a winner take most market than maybe the, the, the physics of go-to market in the past. Yeah. Might have, uh, enabled.[00:15:38] swyx: The other thing also is like, semantic association is gonna be very important, uh, in the sense that like, you want to do like the combo articles where you're like, use my thing with for sale, with blah, blah.And like that all gets picked up in a, in a corpus. And so that's. Probably one thing that you, you wanna do? Well, I don't know what else. Uh, it's, it's, it's, it's one of those things where like, I think I feel, I feel I'm behind, uh, I don't know how you feel about this, but like,[00:16:04] Jacob Effron: I think AI is just everyone constantly feeling like they're behind some, uh,[00:16:08] swyx: yeah.With,[00:16:09] Jacob Effron: I wanna meet the person that doesn't feel behind,[00:16:11] swyx: but like with, with ax, right? Like, so, so like, my, my stance was that exactly what I said before, like everything that you, that you should do for agents is something that you should have done for humans anyway. Yeah. And so. To the extent that you're just getting it more energy to, to do things for agents, great.But like, uh, it's hard to articulate what new thing apart from just like more spam, um, that you should be doing. Anyway, that would be my take right now. Um, I I, I do think like there, there will be more turns at this. I think the personalization turn that is coming, um, will be big. And I don't know what that looks like because like basically we're kind of, we feel kind of tapped out on the memory side of things.[00:16:49] Jacob Effron: Yeah. I, I guess since we last chatted, you know, you, you took this role over at cognition, um, and you've obviously have a, have a front row seat to the AI coding space today. You know, I feel like coding in many ways. You know, people view it as this, like, I mean, besides being like the, the mother of all markets and this massive opportunity, I think it's kinda a preview of like, what's to come for many other spaces.Both. Yeah. You know, I feel like agents are most advanced in coding. I also feel like the, you know, competition between foundation models and application companies, you know, and, uh, mirrors what we may see in other spaces. And so maybe for our listeners, can you just lay out like what is the state of the AI coding wars today?[00:17:25] swyx: Um, it is massive, right? Like, uh, and I don't think necessarily, last time we talked about this, we appreciated the size of what[00:17:32] Jacob Effron: No, I wish we did.[00:17:33] swyx: I state of AI coding wars today, um, both opening eye philanthropic have made it their p serials to competing coding. Um, and. Tropic is like 2.5 billion in a RR just from Cloud Code.The way they recognize a RR is. Opt for debate, uh, open ai. I don't think the, a public number is known, but let's call it 2 billion as well. And then cursor is like, rumored to be 2 billion, you know? And, and those, those are like the public numbers that are known? Yeah. Um, so like huge markets that have just been created in the past one year.Like, like anthropic, just like Claude Code just recently celebrated their one year anniversary, which is, yeah, pretty nice. Um, so, and then I think, like the other thing that I see is there's, there's some other people who are like, oh, here's like the, the sort of relative penetration of, uh, Claude use cases, right?Like, and it's like coding 50% and then legal, whatever. Health, uh, it's like the, the remaining ones. And there was a very popular tweet that was like, okay, I'll look at the, the empty space and all these other use cases. If you are a new founder today, you should be betting on the other stuff because on, on a sort of catch up Yeah.Theory and my. Consider my, my pushback is the same pushback that, uh, I had on app over Google, which is like, well, well why is this time different? Like, why, if it went from let's say 10 to 50% in the past year, why can't I keep going? Uh, and like getting that wrong is actually a very painful one because you could have just did, did the momentum bet.Instead of the mean reversion bed. So I, I, I think that that is the, the state of things now that people are very, very much into psychosis. Um, they're are getting rewarded for spending more rather than spending less. And I think we're not in that phase of efficiency. We're in a phase of sort of like capability exploration.So I think people who are more crazy, who are more. Uh, creative, um, get rewarded comparatively. Yeah.[00:19:27] Jacob Effron: Well, it's interesting. I mean, it feels like behind these like token maxing, leaderboards and whatnot is this, it's like the first phase of this transition from a workforce perspective is you just gotta show your employer like, Hey, I, I use these tools.[00:19:37] swyx: Here's my nu number of tokens I cost, and that's it. They don't care about the quality. Right. It is, uh, maybe distasteful to someone who cares about the craft and, and all that. Um, but directionally everyone just wants you to go up regardless. And so, um, there it is not very discerning. It's, and it's probably very sloppy, but I think it's net fine because we're still probably underusing ai just in generally.Yeah. Um, and so I think that's like very interesting. Like we had on the podcast, uh, Ryan La Poplar from OBI, who spends a billion tokens a day. Yeah. Um, and that's for those county home, it's like something like 10,000 worth, $10,000 worth a day of API tokens. If they, they did market rates, um, and like most of us can't afford that.Yeah. But like. And, and, and probably a lot of what he does is slop.[00:20:25] Jacob Effron: Right.[00:20:25] swyx: But like, he's going to dis, he's like, if there were a new capability, he would discover it first before you because he was, he was trying and you were not trying. Right. And like, you only do things that work like, well, good for you.But like the, the people who are going to discover the next hot thing are living at the edge.[00:20:42] Jacob Effron: Right and increase in living at the edge of just having the compute budget to like run these experiments. I mean, kind of similar to what living at the edge on the research side has always been. You know, it was constrained in many ways by the amount of compute you had to run these experiments.It feels similarly on the, almost on the builder or like actualizing these tools now.[00:20:56] swyx: Yeah. The other thing that's, I mean, very obvious is philanthropic is kind of like the high price premium player. Um, that where, you know. Restricting limits or restricting model releases even is like the name of the game.Whereas Codex is like, come on in guys, use our SDK, use our login and we don't care. We're gonna reset limits. Whatever you do want to try to exploit the subsidies where you can get it. And definitely Codex is super subsidized right now. Gemini also very subsidized. Um, and. Comparatively, like, I think you should make, Hey, I guess while, while that's going on, it's not that bad to be a capabilities explorer on just the $200 a month plan from Cloud Code or from OpenAI.Um, and, uh, I I, I, my sense is that people aren't even there yet.[00:21:41] Jacob Effron: How do you think this, like, market ultimately plays? I mean, it's obviously such a big market that, you know, any slice of that market is interesting for, for anyone going after it. But I think what, what makes people so interesting in the coding market particularly is it feels like it's kind of this.Foreshadowing of what will happen in other, you know, any other kind of application market that the foundation models eventually turn to and are all their models against and gather data around. And so how do you think, you know, like does there end up being room for lots of different kinds of players or like, what do you think the end state of this market is and is that, do you think that's applicable to other markets?[00:22:10] swyx: I feel like there will be, I mean. Status quo is probably the most likely outcome, which is there are two big players and there's a small range of longer tail people that, um, fit other use cases that the, the two big players don't. That feels right to me. I think that, um, for it to, for the market structure to, to significantly change there would be, there needs to be significant change in like the economics or like the, the brand building or like the, the, the, the value propositions of the, of the companies involved and I.Haven't seen any in the last six months that, that have really changed the stories materially. So I feel like they would just keep going until something, something else happens. Something else happens, meaning like Microsoft wakes up and like goes like. Guys, we have GitHub, we have, uh, you know, we, we, we'll, we'll do something much bigger here than other, other than just copilot.Um, and, uh, that would be a big change. Um, MSL has put out a model now, and I was in a breakfast with, uh, Alex Wang, where they were like, yeah, like, we, we really, really want to go after the coding use case. We haven't done anything yet, but like, don't underestimate them. Right. Um, and, and similarly for the Chinese labs.Um, I think they're trying to go after it. Like ZAI is doing stuff. GLM uh, ZI and GLM is same thing. Um, uh, and, and so it's, so like everyone's trying to get a piece of that pie. I, I feel like the, the status quo has been pretty stable for the past, like almost a year I'll say.[00:23:39] Jacob Effron: Yeah. And is the room for the, not like, you know, for, for the application companies more on like the enterprise side or like where do the, where do the, like what surface area do the model companies leave for application companies?[00:23:50] swyx: Yeah, that's a good one. Um. It's very much evolving. Um, it, I, I, I will say because opening I did not have this, the, this level of attention on coding. Yeah. Uh, a year ago. We just don't have that much history. Right. Um, and it seems like, for example, so the big push at Open I now is the Super app. Um, is that a consumer thing?Is that like a products like. Portfolio rationalization thing, how much is that gonna take away attention from coding at the time when they actually do want to put more coding? I think it's, it's very unclear. So I do think like there's, there's all these, like in both big labs, there's. Uh, sorry. Both of the, and, and drop and, and deep minus and XAI are are separate cases.Um, they are trying to see the other time expansion areas. So cloud code for finance. Yeah. Um, uh, cloud cowork, all those, all those things. Whereas I think cursor and cognition are like comparatively just focused on coding and so I, I do think they leave space and I do think for the other verticals that also means the same thing.Right. That, uh, that they're not gonna be that. Um, intensely focused on, on, on that domain. Except for, I, I think I would mark out finance and healthcare as like the next ones, um, that they're clearly going after. Uh, I, I would say comparatively, healthcare seems more thorny. There, there, there've been some announcements about it, but like, I would respect the, the finance work a lot more just because like the, the path to money is a lot clearer.[00:25:12] Jacob Effron: Yeah, no, I mean, obviously like, I, I think, you know, maybe similar to, to the space that's being left in these other domains, you know, there's obviously. Uh, a lot that's required to actually implement these tools in enterprises, uh, versus, you know, maybe just giving them, uh, giving model access to, to folks outta the box.[00:25:27] swyx: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So the, the agent lab thing is like, we'll do the last mile for you. Whereas I think the model labs tend to just trust the model and, and be minimalist about it. Both of them work.[00:25:38] Jacob Effron: Yeah.[00:25:38] swyx: I, I don't, I don't necessarily think one, uh, beats the other, uh, for every, for every use case. Um, all I, all I do know is that it does seem like.Uh, the large enterprises do want a dedicated partner that isn't just the model labs, which is kind of interesting.[00:25:55] Jacob Effron: We, we've been in this phase of, of pure capability exploration. And so I think nothing has been, you know, better for the large labs, right? I mean, they're always gonna be, uh, uh, the frontier of, of capability exploration.And so I think have a very good relationship with a lot of these enterprises. But ultimately over time, like. The, uh, the incentive structure of these labs is always gonna be maximal, you know, token consumption for, uh, for the end customers they work with. And there's just, I think, so few companies that have actually gotten to massive scale.Maybe coding again is the most interesting. So it's the first space that really is just completely gone, you know? Yeah. You must love it every day. Like absolutely insane. And. I think it[00:26:32] swyx: gets even. Okay. I mean, like, I think we, we say good things about crystal cognition, but the sheer liftoff of like both end UPIC and open ai.‘cause they, they, they have independent valuations. I mean, let's throw an XEI in there because it's now I ping at 1.2 trillion. That number is just mind boggling. Like I, I feel like in normal investing or normal startups, there's kind of like a ceiling market cap or valuation. Totally. That, that like you, you reach and you go like, all right, let's, it's gonna be chiller from now on.And these guys are not slow down. No.[00:27:02] Jacob Effron: Well, I also think the dynamic is fascinating about some of these later stage companies is, is, you know, in the past, I feel like in, in venture world, if you got to a certain level of scale, the question around you was really more a valuation question. And this is like why there was different phase, like, you know, types of venture people did and like the late stage growth people were just incredible at like, you know, a little bit of what's the ultimate market opportunity of this company, but also what's the right way to, to value it.Like we know it's, it's in some bands of an outcome that is like. Sure there's some variance to it, but it's like relatively understood what that bands is and then maybe you get over time surprised to the upside. Whereas any kind of like later, even the labs themselves, any later stage company, the bands of which that company might be worth right now, even in a year or two years are so massive because of how fast the ecosystem changes that it's like.Even for later stage companies, every three months could be an existential level event to the upside to the downside. Yeah. Um, and I think that, like, you are obviously seeing it in the, in the positive with code, which, you know, if you think about a company like philanthropic, you know, that. For a while, it was like unclear if they were going to have access to enough capital, um, to really stay in the, in the race, right?And then coding hit at the exact right time. They had the perfect model for it. They executed brilliantly. Um, and you know, now are, are, you know, uh, you know, one of the most valuable companies in the world.[00:28:13] swyx: Uh, at the same time, I, I don't find, I, I have zero sympathy for opening eye because they're crushing it and they're all rich.You know, this is like a high class champagne problem to have to, uh, to be number two at coding or whatever. Like, who cares? Like, you're, you're doing great.[00:28:27] Jacob Effron: Yeah. It's funny though. I can't even, I mean, you would be closer to this, uh, you know, even that you're in the AI coding space, but it's like a lot of people I talk to think Codex is just as good, if not better than Claude Code.Right. I think one thing that I've been really surprised by, and maybe, maybe Cloud Code is a better product in some ways, I'm curious your thoughts is just in consumer AI with chat GBT. You saw this big first mover advantage, right? Where admittedly today, like, I don't know, Claude Gemini. Great products.Not sure, not abundantly clear chat GBTs any better, but like. People stick with chat, GBT, it's the first thing to introduce them.[00:28:56] swyx: They stay, but they're not growing anymore. I don't know if you've seen[00:28:59] Jacob Effron: Right. But that to me is more of like a, a, a product problem than it is. They're not like, it's not like they've like lost share to someone else.My understanding is the overall problem with consumer AI today is much more of a how do you take this tool and, you know, for, for folks like us, like knowledge workers, it's like this incredible magic tool, but it's not necessarily a daily active use tool for a lot of people around the world today. And what are the like products?It's, it's kind of a category wide problem. Like in coding, for example, like. The entire space has gone parabolic. There may be some relative growth in, uh, in other consumer AI players, but it's not like consumer AI as a category is like going parabolic and they're not capturing most of that thing. I think it's actually the larger problem is much more, hey, the category has kind of hit a bit of a plateau of people haven't figured out how to bring, you know, tons more users on board.Yeah, yeah. Or increase the frequency of those users. And so it seems more of a category wide problem than it is, you know, a massive market share of change. I was gonna draw the comparison to, to the coding space where Claude Co is the first product, obviously, to introduce people to this magical experience.You know, by all accounts, codex is, is pretty damn close to as good, if not better. Um, but like still that first product, you, you would've thought that would not be a super sticky, uh, you know, product surface area. And it actually has, it turns out, I, it feels like the first lab to introduce you and experience really does, uh, keep a lot of, uh, a lot of the focus.[00:30:12] swyx: I, I think. M maybe it's like still, still early days. You know, Chad, BT is like three plus years old and Yeah. Cloud code is only one. Just turned a year. Yeah. So give it time, you know? Yeah. Like, yeah. I mean, definitely sometimes a lot of people have switched from to Codex. Maybe that will keep going. I, it's like really hard to tell.Uh, yeah. I, I, I do, I do think that. Because we are in this like, high volatility, high temperature phase. Um, the loyalty and stickiness to first movers and category creators, I don't think is as high as it might be in some other, uh, areas in our careers that we've looked at.[00:30:47] Jacob Effron: Yeah. Though, I mean, I've been surprised by the cloud code thing.I, I would've thought that, like, in many ways I always worried about the[00:30:52] swyx: enterprise. You think you would've been gone by now?[00:30:53] Jacob Effron: Not gone. But I would've, I I always worried that the, that the consumer business of these companies would be quite sticky. And then the enterprise API business. Uh, was actually like, you know, in some ways like your least loyal buyers, like they would, they would move to,[00:31:05] swyx: right, right.But, but they worked out that it wasn't the enterprise API it was enterprise product.[00:31:09] Jacob Effron: Totally. And maybe that was the, that was the secret that like, but the amount of lock-in or just default behavior that has happened in that space, uh, is, is more than I might've imagined with two products that by all accounts are pretty damn similar.Yeah.[00:31:22] swyx: No fight there. Uh, I will say I do think that Codex is still in like a catch up. Like in terms of personal experience. Um, the only thing I like out of, out of Codex is the, is like Spark and like yeah. Uh, the, I, I feel like the skills integration is a little bit better. I feel like, uh, the, the speed is a bit better.Maybe ‘cause it's in, is written in rust or whatever. Um, very minor things that you like. Almost like telling yourself rather than like objectively assessing between two, two of them. I, I, I do think, like vibes wise, I think that's going on. Um, the, the, you know, I, I feel like the, the missing questions, uh, in, in this whole debate is like, why is this so concentrated in only two names, right?Yeah. Like, um, how, where, like, where is the Gemini? You know, presence, where's the Xai presence? Um, and like they are trying, it's just they haven't made that much progress yet.[00:32:12] Jacob Effron: But what the, what the Claude Co moment does show, and it actually in some ways makes you a little more bullish on the potential for someone else to catch up because it does feel like if you're the first person to introduce some magical net new product experience, that that actually might be stickier than one might have imagined.[00:32:27] swyx: Right, right, right. Okay. Yeah.[00:32:28] Jacob Effron: And so it's, everyone can believe they have shot[00:32:29] swyx: that. What do you think that new product experience might be like? I, I, it's, it's like, and this is a failure of imagination on my part. Like, I always wonder, like, people always say this like, well, the, the thing that will save us is like being first to the next new thing.Like what is it?[00:32:41] Jacob Effron: Yeah.[00:32:42] swyx: It's like,[00:32:45] Jacob Effron: I dunno, something around like, uh, consumer agent, computer use, like hybrid. I think, obviously, I think we're like scratching the surface on the consumer side.[00:32:53] swyx: So my, my current theory is like the. Open claw is like a vision of things to come.[00:32:58] Jacob Effron: Totally.[00:32:58] swyx: Um, and uh, it's good that O open I has like the association with open claw, but by no means do they have the rights to win it.The general thesis that I have been pursuing now is that the year the same way that 2025 was the year of coding agents, 2026 is coding agents breaking containment to do everything else. Um, and so coding agents continue to still win, but because they generate software and software eats the world, so like, it's kind of like the trans.Associated property of like software, eat the world, coding agents, eat software, therefore coding agents eat the world. Um, which is like an interesting,[00:33:30] Jacob Effron: yeah, and breaking containment always an easier phase phrase in the consumer context than the enterprise one. You've seen people run these really cool, uh, experiments in their own personal lives.I think like,[00:33:37] swyx: yes.[00:33:38] Jacob Effron: Figuring out, you know, how you, obviously everyone's focused, you know, on the enterprise side now around how you create these experiences. I feel like the vibes, you know, people love to have these narratives of like, everything is completely shifted. It's like I actually, you know, open AI.Organizationally, uh, you know, volatility aside is, you know, great products, great team, great models like everyone else in the world is incentivized for there to be. Two, three more. Everyone would love more like great model companies. And so I feel like the, the natural forces of the world revolt when any one company, you know, is too much the star of the show, right?There's so many people in the ecosystem that are incentivized for that not to happen. And so I think I'd be shocked if we don't have. Uh, uh, reversion of vibes, not maybe completely the other way, but at least a little bit more equal at some point over the next six, 12 months.[00:34:24] swyx: I, I think there's just a kind of different stages when, when you talk about the world, one wanting more model companies, I talked think about like the neo labs.[00:34:30] Jacob Effron: Yeah.[00:34:31] swyx: And I mean, I don't know, is it fair to say none of them have really broken through in the past year?[00:34:35] Jacob Effron: I think that's totally fair,[00:34:37] swyx: which is rough. Um, and well, how are we gonna, how are we gonna grow that diversity in, in, in choice, like. Um, that's, this is it.[00:34:46] Jacob Effron: Yeah. It'll be really interesting to see what, what, what ends up happening with that.And you've seen, you know, folks like Nvidia, you know, very incentivized to make sure there's, there's a broader platform of, of other model providers.[00:34:57] swyx: I think, uh, I don't know people say this, but I, I, I don't think they try it hard. Nvidia tries harder to build neo clouds[00:35:05] Jacob Effron: Yeah.[00:35:06] swyx: Than neo labs.[00:35:07] Jacob Effron: Well, they try pretty damn hard to build neo Cloud, so[00:35:09] swyx: that's,[00:35:09] Jacob Effron: yeah.[00:35:10] swyx: But like, you know, let's call it like the, the core weaves of the world, much happier place in the, you know, than any neo lab built on top of them.[00:35:18] Jacob Effron: Yeah. That one might argue it's, it's easier to, to enable a neo cloud to be successful than it is. Uh, you can't will a neo lab into existence the same way you, soNvidia[00:35:25] swyx: has more direct control over it.Uh, for sure.[00:35:27] Jacob Effron: What else is kind of catching your eye today on the startup side? I mean, you worry, there's obviously this whole narrative of like, you know, the foundation models, you know, they announced a product and every stock goes down 15%. Like[00:35:36] swyx: Yeah.[00:35:37] Jacob Effron: Do you, do you worry about the foundation models just kind of eating into to a bunch of these startup categories?[00:35:43] swyx: Not really. I, I think actually like. As, uh, there's, there's, okay, there's, there's, there's the, there's the point of view of like being an investor in startups, and there's a point of view of like, do you wanna start something? And I think honestly, like the, the downside for all these is so. Minimal in, in a sense of like, the worst you do is you just get hired into one of these labs anyway.So I, I think the, the market for people who just do things and try things and try to execute in like a competent way, even if like it doesn't work out commercially, even if it just wasn't that great anyway. Like, but like that's your job interview to go into, into one of these things anyway, so, um, I don't feel that.From a, from a very, very small startup perspective, mid-size startups. Yes. Uh, I will say there's been a lot of dead, um, LM Infra, a lot of LM infra consolidation like the, the, uh, lang fuses of the world getting absorbed into, into click house. And I, I think. Like people have maybe worked out the domain specific playbook, uh, and like, I think that's okay.Um, and, and yeah, I'm not that, not that worried about, uh, okay. So, um, I, I would say I'd be more worried about traditional SaaS, like low NPSS. This is the whole AI versus SaaS debate that has, that's been going on. Uh, and, and like literally I'm going through that exact thing in my company where, so I like kind of.Thinking through this on a very visceral, visceral level, right? On one hand you have the people who say you vibe coders don't appreciate the amount of work that goes into A-A-C-R-M and like, yeah, you think you can rip out Salesforce? So did the 30 entrepreneurs before you, right? Like, like, you know, you classically underestimate the things that you don't.Deeply, no. And, and, and target audience is not you. Uh, at the same time, like we have never been able to build software so easily and customize software so easily and like Yeah, you're not gonna use 90% of the things in Salesforce. So like, yeah. What's the typical, so what have you, what[00:37:33] Jacob Effron: have you done internally?[00:37:34] swyx: So we have there the main SaaS that we do for event management and sponsor management. That's, and we paid 200 KA year for that. Not, not huge, but like chunky for, for, for my, my scale. Um, and like, yeah, I could probably spend 2000 and, and build like a custom version of that. Um, the, the, the trick has been dealing with my, the rest of my team and getting them on board.Yeah. ‘cause I'm the most ethical person on my team, but like, I can't make that decision myself. And I think in the same way I've been telling with other CEOs team leaders as well, it's like, well you can be super cloud pilled. You can be super LM psychosis and that you think that's okay, but you like you have to bring your team with you.And I think like there, the sort of widening disparity in LM psychosis in companies is causing real s real riffs because. And on one hand, on one hand, the people who are less AI native are not getting with the picture. They're not, they're actually like behind, they're actually not waking up to the fact that like you, everything you think is necessary is not actually that necessary.And in fact, exactly would be better of you if you just like held your nose and went in and when came out the other side. Yeah, only talking to agents in natural language and like your life would actually be better and you just, you're just like close-minded. There's that perspective. The other perspective is, oh, you vibe coder.You, you did this in a weekend and you got the 80% solution and now the rest of your employees. Have to pick up the rest of your s**t, right, that you, that you thought you were, you were such hot, amazing, uh, uh, at, but like, actually you didn't figure it out. And like, actually LMS are still useless at this and blah, blah, blah.So like, I think there's this huge debate going on in every company right now. Um, and like, um, you know, I have a small microcosm of it, but like, yeah, it, it's making me hesitate to, to pull the trigger. But like I will at some point, it's like maybe I've put it off for one year, but not like five. Yeah, but like, so, so like SaaS is definitely getting squeezed.Um, it does make me wonder, like, I, I do think that there's an opportunity for a more AI native, um, system of record thing that is not just Postgres. Um, or not just MongoDB, although both are very good. Maybe it's like a convex or like people Yeah. Bring up convex a lot. I don't know, like, like, I, I just feel like the sort of quote unquote firebase of, of AI apps isn't really a thing yet.Um, beyond what we have. Uh, which, which is fine. It's, it's, it's just. We could probably start in a more sort of rapid iteration cycle first before scaling up to like a Postgres or MongoDB, which are more sort of old tech. I was at a dinner with, uh, Mike Krieger, the CPO of en philanthropic, and, and he, we were just kind of going around the room going like, what are people most worried about?Yeah. And, uh, for me, uh, I, instead of security, I brought up biosafety. Yeah,[00:40:21] Jacob Effron: classic.[00:40:22] swyx: Um, actually, like I said, it was. Cliche and classic, and the rest of the table were, were like, what do you mean? Someone sitting at home can manufacture a virus that wipes out half of humanity,[00:40:32] Jacob Effron: almost like the OG Jeffrey Hinton.Like, this is why you should be scared.[00:40:35] swyx: I'm like, yeah, like the read the, you know, risk reports. Like this is like the thing. Um, I think, and Mike was just sitting there knowing he was sitting on Mythos and going like, actually it's security. Um, and I think like, um, I think the, there's, there's, part of it is.A very good marketing. Like too good. Yeah, like I would actually advise and topic to tune down the marketing because also it's, it is just a very good model and you don't have to make so many marketing claims around it. At the same time, it is not really a private model. If you give it to 40 companies.Each of whom have like 10,000 employees or whatever. Right. It's not, it's not private, it's, it's like there's bad actors in there.[00:41:18] Jacob Effron: Yeah. Hopefully, hopefully not as, uh, as bad as releasing it widely, but, uh, no, I mean, it's an interesting. You know, it's an interesting case study for how all, I mean, many model releases might, I mean, you know, this might be the first model release that looks like the rest of ‘em from from now on, right?[00:41:31] swyx: It, it, so it's, it's the, there's an overall product strategy, uh, for anthropic of like bundle, uh, you know, restrict access bundle, uh, product with model maybe.Whereas, uh, OpenAI has definitely been a lot more sort of. Philosophically aligned on like, we will just enable access everywhere and we don't know what you, what will come out of it. Right.[00:41:51] Jacob Effron: Right. Though, I mean, this current moment, uh, obviously the cynical take is also just ties to the amount of compute that both companies[00:41:56] swyx: Yeah.Right, right, right. Yeah, I think, I think that's true. I I do think like the, the, this is the, the, the scale, the dawn of like larger than 10 trillion parameter models is very interesting. I don't think it, I think it's a temporary phenomenon because we have much larger compute clusters coming online for everyone over the next like three, five years.It's, and this is like already written in, in the cards.[00:42:18] Jacob Effron: Yeah.[00:42:19] swyx: So to the extent that like, you know, will we have rationing of models, uh, above 10 trillion, uh, in like two years? I don't think so. I think everyone will have no, we'll just[00:42:29] Jacob Effron: have rationing of the next phase.[00:42:30] swyx: Right. Right. But like, that's as it should be almost like, um.My, my classic example, which I, this is just me theorizing, not anything confirmed by Google. When Google announced Gemini, they actually announced three sizes, which was Flash Pro Ultra. They never released Ultra. They only have Pro and Flash. Um, so my theory is they have ultra sitting in a basement and they just could distilling from it for, for flashing pro.Um, which like, yeah, I mean, I, I actually think that's. As it should be for any lab that they, that they do that.[00:43:02] Jacob Effron: Yeah. Just because those are the models that people actually wanna end up using. And it's just like cost prohibit.[00:43:06] swyx: It is more, yeah, it's cost. Yeah. It's, it's not the want, it's just, just, just the cost.Um, I do think, like, uh, it is interesting that, uh, for a while I was, I was considering the theory that models capped out at two, 2 trillion, and I think that's proving to be wrong. And well then if I'm wrong, how wrong? How wrong am I? Do we do 200 trillion? Do we do two quarter trillion, whatever? Um, and I don't think we have the straight answer to that, but like, uh, it's interesting that we are continuing to scale number of pers when everyone kind of assu like can see that we're not going to get like the next thousand or 1 million x from this paradigm.So like the others, like the alias of the world are working on other. Um, model architecture improvements. We need a different scaling law, I guess, because like, we're, I, I feel like people already already feel like we're tapped out on this. Like the, the end, the end state of this is we turn most of the world into data centers and like, I don't know.I don't know if we want that.[00:44:08] Jacob Effron: Yeah, I mean, uh, if the, if, if, if the return of intelligence are there, maybe, uh, maybe not so bad.[00:44:13] swyx: I, I, I think there, there's just a sheer amount of like, like un scalability that like is wrangling people's sensibilities right now. Um, especially in terms of like context lengths.Um, my classic quote is that context length is like the slowest scaling factor in, in lms.[00:44:30] Jacob Effron: Yeah.[00:44:30] swyx: Um, we, like, we took maybe. Three years to go from like 4,000 context length to a million and that's about it. Yeah. Like Gemini has had a million token context length for two years now. Um, and no one's using it.Like, so like yeah, it's memory. Memory is probably gonna be the, the biggest limiting constraint on all these things.[00:44:50] Jacob Effron: Yeah. Certainly seems that way. I guess I'm curious over the last year since you recorded last, like what's one thing you've changed your mind on?[00:44:57] swyx: I feel like I was kind of bearish on open models like last year.Um, in a sense of, like, I, I had just done the podcast with an Al[00:45:07] Jacob Effron: Yeah.[00:45:08] swyx: Of Braintrust where he, and he, I mean, you know, he has a good cross section of all the top AI companies and he says market share of open source is 5% and going down. Um, I think that's changed. I think it's going up. Um, and even if,[00:45:22] Jacob Effron: even though the capability gap does seem to be increasing.Spending on the[00:45:26] swyx: time. It's hard to tell. Yeah, it's, it's really hard to tell. ‘cause like, okay, for, for listeners, capability gap increasing is like on public benchmarks. And let's say you're comparing mythos versus like, I don't know, G-T-O-S-S or like GLM 5.1. And, um, it's, it is really hard to tell. ‘cause even if they were closing, you will also not believe that they were closing that much because it's very easy to gain the benchmarks.Yeah. So you just don't really, really know. Um, all you know is like. Uh, there's somewhat objective open router stats on like what people choose in a free market. And people do choose some of these open models in significant volume, except that a lot of them are heavily discounted. So you need to kind of like price adjust, uh, these things.So even if, even if that were true, which I, I'm not sure, like I, I, I feel like the numbers just up now instead of down. Uh, I think the. Separation between what the top tier agent labs

China is the largest manufacturer, installer, and user of clean energy and electric vehicles., At the same time, it emits more greenhouse gasses than any other country. While efforts to work with the United States on climate issues have stalled in recent years, a combination of grass roots activism and long term government policy are driving China's environmental movement forward. How does China approach environmentalism? Can the United States and China resume cooperation on climate? Alex Wang joined us on April 1, 2026 to discuss these questions and share how climate policy differs between the United States and China. Alex's new (open-source) book Chinese Global Environmentalism looks at how and why China is approaching global green development. The book explores how China got from a period of environmental crisis to a period  of relative success and examines both both challenges and successes in-depth.  Read Alex's bio and watch the video here.

Nella nuova puntata del podcast, Pasquale Viscanti e Giacinto Fiore analizzano la vicenda che ha visto il CEO di OpenAI, Sam Altman, finire nel mirino dopo episodi inquietanti come attacchi alla sua abitazione, fino alle strategie sempre più ambiziose dei colossi tech. Tra queste, spicca Meta, che starebbe sviluppando una versione AI di Mark Zuckerberg capace di interagire direttamente con i dipendenti, aprendo scenari inediti sul futuro della leadership aziendale.La conversazione prosegue con un approfondimento sulle nuove mosse di Meta nel campo della superintelligenza, con il lancio di Muse Spark, un progetto multimiliardario nato per recuperare terreno dopo le difficoltà incontrate con i modelli Llama 4 e rafforzato dall'ingresso di talenti come Alex Wang. Infine, spazio alla crescita sorprendente di Perplexity AI, che continua a macinare risultati impressionanti, confermandosi uno degli attori emergenti più interessanti nel panorama globale dell'AI. Una puntata ricca di spunti che intreccia attualità, innovazione e visioni sul futuro del settore.Ti occupi di tesoreria? Ci vediamo online il 22 aprile qui: https://shorturl.at/HvFHe

Hey yall, Alex here, writing this from sunny London, at the first ever AI Engineer conference in Europe!What a show we have for you today! First, let me catch you up on what's important: Anthropic, this week announced a whopping $30B ARR up from 19B in Feb, while also telling us about Claude Mythos Preview their next gen HUGE model that they won't release to the public (yet?) that finds crazy vulnerabilities in existing code bases. Apparently OpenAI will follow up with a similar non-public model soon.The Meta Superintelligence Lab led by Alex Wang finally showed what they were working on, Muse Spark, the smaller of their upcoming models on a complete new infrastructure (MSL announcement, Simon Willison's deep dive on the 16 hidden tools).In other news:Z.AI released GLM 5.1 in OSS finally (HF weights), Seedance 2.0 finally available in US on Replicate, OpenAI testing out GPT-image-2 on LM Arena under codenames, HappyHorse from Alibaba takes the video crown, and Mila Jovovich (5th Element, Resident Evil) releases agentic memory plugin called MemPalace (Ben Sigman's transparent correction thread is worth reading).We had 5 guests today on the show, we kick off with @swyx the founder of AI Engineer and host of Latent Space. We then chatted with @petergostev from Arena (formerly LMArena) about Mythos and the compute wars, then Vincent Koc, the second most prolific contributor to OpenClaw, then our friends VB from OpenAI and Omar from DeepMind, both previously at HuggingFace. This is a busy busy show, and given the time-zones, I unfortunately don't have time for a full weekly writeup, but as always, I will share the raw notes and post the video (lightly edited).ThursdAI - Highest signal weekly AI news show is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.AI Engineer - LondonThursdAI came a long way since the first AI Engineer conference, but many who read this don't know, that was my big break. Swyx invited me to cover the first AIE in San Francisco in 2023, and I remember, I was in an Uber to the airport, the driver asked me what I do, and I, for the first time said “I host a podcast”. I (and ThursdAI) owe a lot to Swyx, and AIE team, and it's been incredible to see how big they've grown and how many great speakers this event hosts! The term AI Engineer has drifted in those 3 years, but also has the term Software Engineer. Swyx predicted this nearly 3 years ago, what I don't think he predicted, is that all engineers are now AI Engineers, and this includes domains like Agens (OpenClaw), Context and Harness Engineering, Evals and Observability, Voice & Vision all of which are tracks in this conference. I was really surprised to see how many of the talks/speakers here are native to London (after all, Deepmind is from here, OAI, Anthropic, Meta have offices here) and the latest boom in agents, OpenClaw, Pi were all Europe based as well, and they are joined the AI Engineer stage. Oh, and there's also a Giant Inflatable Claw at the entrance, yup, for pictures and vibes, and to show off how quickly the OpenClaw took over the mind-share. Anthropic announces $30B ARR and Mythos, their next model, will not be released to the public. The thing that everyone will tell you, is that Anthropic is on a roll, this is obviously connected to their upcoming IPO this year. We've been covering many issues on their part, but this week we saw them posting about a HUGE increase in ARR, from 19B in February to 30B in April, passing OpenAI at $25B. That last fact though, is kind of disproven because they report on ARR differently, OpenAI apparently only counts their cloud revenue from Microsoft per the information. The growth is undeniable though, and so is the most unprecedented release announcement, Claude Mythos Preview, which was rumored for a bit and now was announced proper. With project Project GlassWing, Anthropic has announced that this model is SO good at cyber security and finding bugs in code, that they cannot share it with the public, and through GlassWing they will share it with companies like Microsoft, Linux, CrowdStrike and a bunch of others, to harden their security. This is it folks, this is the first time, where a model was “announced” but deemed too risky to release. Now, is it truly “too risky”? Previously, folks thought that DALL-E is too risky, or cloning voice tech is too risky, and now it's everywhere. The capabilities catch up even in OpenSource. But the facts are, Anthropic says they've found a 27-year old bug in OpenBSD (famously very secure), and that this model is very very good at connecting the dots between several, seemingly inacuous bugs, to string them together into one coheren exploit. This is, indeed scary. Just last week, one of the top security researchers in the world, Nicolas Carlini, now at Anthropic, gave a talk at Black Hat, showing off these results, and saying that these models since December and definitely recently have passed him as a security engineer. If you haven't seen this talk, watch it, then try to estimate if Anthropic did the right thing by only releasing this model to enterprises first. But on the show, Peter Gostev from Arena gave me a take on this that I haven't been able to shake. Peter pulled up his Compute Wars chart live on the show — and the picture is that OpenAI is way ahead of Anthropic on compute, with Anthropic only recently getting a noticeable bump (which lines up suspiciously well with Mythos being trainable in the first place). His read: “it sounds cooler to say it's too risky to release than ‘we can't serve it.'” The official partner pricing is $25 / $125 per million tokens — 5x Opus 4.6 — but if you don't have the GPUs to serve it broadly, the price doesn't matter. In the year of the IPO, the company that cannot serve a model says the model is too dangerous to serve. Make of that what you will.This also reframes the whole rate-limit drama with OpenClaw. Anthropic didn't ban OpenClaw — I want to be very clear about this because the discourse went sideways. What they did is they made it significantly more expensive for Max-tier subscribers to use Opus through OpenClaw, which pushed a lot of people over to GPT-5.4 via Codex. Same root cause: they're out of compute. The freshly announced Anthropic + Google TPU deal (Google already owns ~10% of Anthropic) is them trying to fix this — though as Peter noted, it's pretty wild that Google is propping up a direct competitor to their own DeepMind team. Same pattern as their original $2B Anthropic investment ending up propping AWS Bedrock against Google Cloud. Big Google contains multitudes.Meta Superintelligence Labs ships Muse Spark — Llama is dead, long live MuseLlama is dead, long live Muse. This week Meta finally showed what the very expensive Meta Superintelligence Labs under Alexandr Wang has been cooking, and the answer is Muse Spark — the smaller of their new model family, built on a fully rebuilt AI stack from scratch in just 9 months. Nine months is wild for that kind of overhaul, and the headline number people are quoting is that they reach Llama 4 Maverick capability with over 10x less compute.Spark is intentionally small and latency-optimized — it's not trying to be the biggest, it's trying to be the first step on Meta's new scaling ladder. But the benchmarks in certain areas are nuts: 86.4 on CharXiv Reasoning (beats Opus, Gemini, GPT-5.4), and the one that really got me — 42.8 on HealthBench Hard vs Opus at 14.8 and Gemini at 20.6. They trained it with data curated by over 1,000 physicians and it shows. They also shipped a Contemplating mode which is parallel multi-agent reasoning, hitting 58.4% on Humanity's Last Exam with tools. Coding is the acknowledged weak point (77.4 on SWE-Bench Verified vs Opus 80.8) but for v1 from a brand new stack, this is extremely respectable.Meta is Back!The real story isn't any single benchmark though, it's distribution. Spark is rolling out across meta.ai, WhatsApp, Instagram, Threads, Messenger, and Ray-Ban Meta glasses — billions of users. Meta went from open Llama to a closed consumer model and they're clearly playing a different game now (though Wang says future Muse versions might be open-sourced).The deep-dive that's really worth your time is Simon Willison's post where he poked at the meta.ai chat UI and got the model to spit out descriptions of 16 hidden tools behind the scenes — full Code Interpreter with persistent Python 3.9, a visual grounding tool that does pixel-precise object detection (bounding boxes, point coordinates, counting — it located 8 objects including individual whiskers and claws on a generated raccoon), sub-agent spawning, file editing, and semantic search across Instagram/Threads/Facebook posts. It's basically an entire agentic harness baked into the chat UI. Jack Wu from MSL confirmed the tools are part of a new harness built specifically for Spark's launch. Meta stock went up 7% on this. They are very much back in the frontier game.Guest highlights We had an unprecedented packed show with 5 guests (also this is the shortest show we've everSwyx kicked us off with vibes from the AI Engineer floor — harness engineering as the dominant theme (gains are coming from the harness, not the weights), the rise of skills (English-as-programming-language) absorbing more of that harness work, and his thesis that supply-chain attacks like the recent light LLM and Axios incidents mean you should basically vendor everything — pip fork instead of pip install. We also chatted about how MCP has gone from “the most exciting protocol” to “settled and stable, therefore less interesting,” which is a great problem to have.Peter Gostev from Arena (you saw a lot of him in the Mythos section above) also dropped a bonus on us: Arena just released 3 years of historical leaderboard data and actual prompt datasets on Hugging Face. He used to literally scrape the arena website by hand into Google sheets to make those overtime leaderboards we all loved — now it's all public. Also: he confirmed that Seedance 2.0 jumped ~80 ELO points above the next video model on Arena, which is unprecedented — video models normally cluster within 10 points of each other.Vincent Koc — the #2 OpenClaw maintainer after Peter Steinberger — joined us fresh off the OpenClaw track stage. The OpenClaw codebase is now ~1.5 million lines of code including unreleased iOS and Android native apps. GitHub literally caps the issue/PR counter at “5K+” and they hit the ceiling. We talked about OpenClaw 2026.4.5 which ships /dreaming GA (Light/Deep/REM phases that defrag agent memory and write a human-readable Dream Diary to DREAMS.md), built-in video and music generation across 4 backends, GPT-5.4 as the new default, prompt-cache reuse improvements, and Control UI + docs in 12 new languages. Vincent's framing of dreaming was beautiful — “how do you explain agent memory to a mom? You call it dreaming.” He also gave my favorite line of the show on the GPT-5.4 personality problem: incredible at coding, but soulless. (For what it's worth, I came home after watching Project Hail Mary, cloned the Rocky voice, dropped it into my OpenClaw, and it was magical. That's the kind of thing you can only do when the harness and the model are decoupled.)VB from OpenAI told us Codex just hit 3 million weekly active users — up from 2 million last month. We talked plugins (the Stripe / Supabase / shadcn ones that ship as packages), sub-agents (yes, one is named Jason), and Guardian Approvals — an experimental mode that classifies each tool call by risk and only escalates the dangerous ones to you, so you don't have to YOLO-mode everything. The story that stuck with me though is his 9 AM Codex automation: every morning it reads his Slack mentions, cross-references Gmail and Calendar, and creates 5-minute pre-brief calendar events for upcoming meetings. None of that is “coding.” That's the super-app future hiding inside a “developer tool.” I'm stealing this workflow.Omar Sanseviero from Google DeepMind came on to celebrate Gemma 4 crossing 10M+ downloads with 1,000+ Gemma-4-based fine-tunes already on HF (and Gemma family total is now over 500M downloads). Gemma 4 is also the foundation for the next generation of Gemini Nano on Pixel/Samsung devices. Lama.cpp vision capability fixes are landing. Gemma 4 is also live on W&B Inference if you want to play. Wolfram (whose entire household runs on Pixel + Google AI Studio, including his 70-year-old mother on voice unlock) was in heaven.This Week's BuzzA short but spicy week from Weights & Biases:* W&B Automations are LIVE. You can now wire event triggers from your training runs (completion, eval thresholds, drift) into notifications, GitHub Actions, deployments, infra shutdowns — closing the loop from experiment to production. Pairs really well with the iOS app we recently shipped, so you can get a ping on your phone the moment something interesting happens on a run.* GLM 5.1 is live on W&B Inference (alongside Gemma 4 from last week) — the team is moving fast to host the best open models the moment they drop.* Wolfram published a deep dive on “more reasoning is not always better” on the W&B blog — the research behind his finding that giving models more thinking tokens can actually make them dumber on certain tasks. It's the in-depth version of what we discussed on the show last week, with all the data. Go read it on wandb.com.Also: shout out to everyone who came up to me at AI Engineer and said hi. The Wolf Bench mentions in particular made my day. If you're listening to this and you're at AIE — come find us, we'll be around tomorrow too.That's it for this week — newsletter is short because the show was long and London is calling. As always, thanks for reading and listening

Hey all, Happy new year! This is Alex, writing to you for the very fresh start of this year, it's 2026 already, can you believe it? There was no live stream today, I figured the cohosts deserve a break and honestly it was a very slow week. Even the chinese labs who don't really celebrate X-mas and new years didn't come out with a banger AFAIK. ThursdAI - AI moves fast, we're here to make sure you never miss a thing! Subscribe :) Tho I thought it was an incredible opportunity to finally post the Will Brow interview I recorded in November during the AI Engineer conference. Will is a researcher at Prime Intellect (big fans on WandB btw!) and is very known on X as a hot takes ML person, often going viral for tons of memes! Will is the creator and maintainer of the Verifiers library (Github) and his talk at AI Engineer was all about RL Environments (what they are, you can hear in the interview, I asked him!) TL;DR last week of 2025 in AIBesides this, my job here is to keep you up to date, and honestly this was very easy this week, as… almost nothing has happened, but here we go: Meta buys ManusThe year ended with 2 huge acquisitions / aquihires. First we got the news from Alex Wang that Meta has bought Manus.ai which is an agentic AI startup we covered back in March for an undisclosed amount (folks claim $2-3B) The most interesting thing here is that Manus is a Chinese company, and this deal requires very specific severance from Chinese operations.Jensen goes on a new years spending spree, Nvidia buys Groq (not GROK) for $20BGroq which we covered often here, and are great friends, is going to NVIDIA, in a… very interesting acqui-hire, which is a “non binding license” + most of Groq top employees apparently are going to NVIDIA. Jonathan Ross the CEO of Groq, was the co-creator of the TPU chips at Google before founding Groq, so this seems like a very strategic aquihire for NVIDIA! Congrats to our friends from Groq on this amazing news for the new year! Tencent open-sources HY-MT1.5 translation models with 1.8B edge-deployable and 7B cloud variants supporting 33 languages (X, HF, HF, GitHub)It seems that everyone's is trying to de-throne whisper and this latest attempt from Tencent is a interesting one. a 1.8B and 7B translation models with very interesting stats. Alibaba's Qwen-Image-2512 drops on New Year's Eve as strongest open-source text-to-image model, topping AI Arena with photorealistic humans and sharper textures (X, HF, Arxiv)Our friends in Tongyi decided to give is a new years present in the form of an updated Qwen-image, with much improved realismThat's it folks, this was a quick one, hopefully you all had an amazing new year celebration, and are gearing up to an eventful and crazy 2026. I wish you all happiness, excitement and energy to keep up with everything in the new year, and will make sure that we're here to keep you up to date as always! P.S - I got a little news of my own this yesterday, not related to AI. She said yes

Ho Ho Ho, Alex here! (a real human writing these words, this needs to be said in 2025) Merry Christmas (to those who celebrate) and welcome to the very special yearly ThursdAI recap! This was an intense year in the world of AI, and after 51 weekly episodes (this is episode 52!) we have the ultimate record of all the major and most important AI releases of this year! So instead of bringing you a weekly update (it's been a slow week so far, most AI labs are taking a well deserved break, the Cchinese AI labs haven't yet surprised anyone), I'm dropping a comprehensive yearly AI review! Quarter by quarter, month by month, both in written form and as a pod/video! Why do this? Who even needs this? Isn't most of it obsolete? I have asked myself this exact question while prepping for the show (it was quite a lot of prep, even with Opus's help). I eventually landed on, hey, if nothing else, this will serve as a record of the insane week of AI progress we all witnessed. Can you imagine that the term Vibe Coding is less than 1 year old? That Claude Code was released at the start of THIS year? We get hedonicly adapt to new AI goodies so quick, and I figured this will serve as a point in time check, we can get back to and feel the acceleration! With that, let's dive in - P.S. the content below is mostly authored by my co-author for this, Opus 4.5 high, which at the end of 2025 I find the best creative writer with the best long context coherence that can imitate my voice and tone (hey, I'm also on a break!

Alex has been steadily honing Pinevictus all year. Though Pinevictus has been around since November 2021 during his days at UMD as a Leatherback,  2025 is the year where the robot has been on a meteoric rise. It started the year strong by reaching the Semifinals at February NHRL with a Judges Decision loss to Silent Spring followed by solid runs at Motorama and Hive Hysteria. After designing and debuting a new version only two weeks out from Finals, it was a gamble that paid off to win the distinguished Golden Brett at the NHRL World Finals! Let us know what questions you have for Alex! To watch the podcast live check out https://www.youtube.com/@jakemaximizer/streams on every other Thursday at 7pm EST! Otherwise, it should be available on all the podcast places later in the week! Follow us on Facebook: facebook.com/behindthebots Rate and review us on Apple Podcasts Tell a friend about the show; we really appreciate your support!

In this episode, Allan McKay sits down with Alex Wang, the Visual Effects Supervisor for the acclaimed HBO series The Last of Us, to break down the monumental VFX work behind the show's highly anticipated second season. Alex pulls back the curtain on the incredible challenges and creative triumphs of bringing the post-apocalyptic world to life, from the massive scale of the infected horde to the intricate details of hero creatures like the Bloater. He discusses the crucial balance between practical and digital effects, the importance of building trust with showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann, and the seamless collaboration with world-class VFX houses like Weta, DNEG, and ILP. This conversation delves deep into the specific hurdles of Season 2, including a massive battle sequence Alex likens to "Helm's Deep," the complexities of a dramatic stormy water episode, and the creative pipeline from concept art to final shot. Alex shares how the team learned from Season 1 to push the boundaries of world-building and create environments that are both epic in scope and grounded in reality. This is a must-listen for any fan of The Last of Us and for visual effects artists and supervisors interested in the high-level strategy and creative problem-solving required to execute VFX on one of television's biggest shows. Topics Covered: The VFX of The Last of Us Season 2 Alex Wang's Role as VFX Supervisor Creating the Infected Horde and the Challenges of Crowd Simulation A Deep Dive into Season 2's Massive Battle Sequence Asset Creation for the Bloater and Other Infected Balancing Practical Effects with Digital Enhancements (Pyro, Weather, etc.) World-Building and Large-Scale Environment Extensions The Complexities of Creating the Stormy Water Sequence Collaboration with Showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann Managing Multiple VFX Vendors (Weta, DNEG, ILP, Rise) The Creative Process from Concept Art to Final Shot Quotes: On the massive battle sequence: "I thought to myself, 'Craig, this is your Helm's Deep.'" On designing the infected horde: "These are civilians that became infected... their own story. So repetition is not something that we want." Resources: The Last of Us on HBO Weta FX DNEG Rise VFX Important Looking Pirates (ILP) Naughty Dog

Hey everyone, Alex here

Hey folks, this is Alex, finally back home! This week was full of crazy AI news, both model related but also shifts in the AI landscape and big companies, with Zuck going all in on scale & execu-hiring Alex Wang for a crazy $14B dollars. OpenAI meanwhile, maybe received a new shipment of GPUs? Otherwise, it's hard to explain how they have dropped the o3 price by 80%, while also shipping o3-pro (in chat and API). Apple was also featured in today's episode, but more so for the lack of AI news, completely delaying the “very personalized private Siri powered by Apple Intelligence” during WWDC25 this week. We had 2 guests on the show this week, Stefania Druga and Eric Provencher (who builds RepoPrompt). Stefania helped me cover the AI Engineer conference we all went to last week, and shared some cool Science CoPilot stuff she's working on, while Eric is the GOTO guy for O3-pro helped us understand what this model is great for! As always, TL;DR and show notes at the bottom, video for those who prefer watching is attached below, let's dive in! Big Companies LLMs & APIsLet's start with big companies, because the landscape has shifted, new top reasoner models dropped and some huge companies didn't deliver this week! Zuck goes all in on SuperIntelligence - Meta's $14B stake in ScaleAI and Alex WangThis may be the most consequential piece of AI news today. Fresh from the dissapointing results of LLama 4, reports of top researchers leaving the Llama team, many have decided to exclude Meta from the AI race. We have a saying at ThursdAI, don't bet against Zuck! Zuck decided to spend a lot of money (nearly 20% of their reported $65B investment in AI infrastructure) to get a 49% stake in Scale AI and bring Alex Wang it's (now former) CEO to lead the new Superintelligence team at Meta. For folks who are not familiar with Scale, it's a massive company in providing human annotated data services to all the big AI labs, Google, OpenAI, Microsoft, Anthropic.. all of them really. Alex Wang, is the youngest self made billionaire because of it, and now Zuck not only has access to all their expertise, but also to a very impressive AI persona, who could help revive the excitement about Meta's AI efforts, help recruit the best researchers, and lead the way inside Meta. Wang is also an outspoken China hawk who spends as much time in congressional hearings as in Slack, so the geopolitics here are … spicy. Meta just stapled itself to the biggest annotation funnel on Earth, hired away Google's Jack Rae (who was on the pod just last week, shipping for Google!) for brainy model alignment, and started waving seven-to-nine-figure comp packages at every researcher with “Transformer” in their citation list. Whatever disappointment you felt over Llama-4's muted debut, Zuck clearly felt it too—and responded like a founder who still controls every voting share. OpenAI's Game-Changer: o3 Price Slash & o3-pro launches to top the intelligence leaderboards!Meanwhile OpenAI dropping not one, but two mind-blowing updates. First, they've slashed the price of o3—their premium reasoning model—by a staggering 80%. We're talking from $40/$10 per million tokens down to just $8/$2. That's right, folks, it's now in the same league as Claude Sonnet cost-wise, making top-tier intelligence dirt cheap. I remember when a price drop of 80% after a year got us excited; now it's 80% in just four months with zero quality loss. They've confirmed it's the full o3 model—no distillation or quantization here. How are they pulling this off? I'm guessing someone got a shipment of shiny new H200s from Jensen!And just when you thought it couldn't get better, OpenAI rolled out o3-pro, their highest intelligence offering yet. Available for pro and team accounts, and via API (87% cheaper than o1-pro, by the way), this model—or consortium of models—is a beast. It's topping charts on Artificial Analysis, barely edging out Gemini 2.5 as the new king. Benchmarks are insane: 93% on AIME 2024 (state-of-the-art territory), 84% on GPQA Diamond, and nearing a 3000 ELO score on competition coding. Human preference tests show 64-66% of folks prefer o3-pro for clarity and comprehensiveness across tasks like scientific analysis and personal writing.I've been playing with it myself, and the way o3-pro handles long context and tough problems is unreal. As my friend Eric Provencher (creator of RepoPrompt) shared on the show, it's surgical—perfect for big refactors and bug diagnosis in coding. It's got all the tools o3 has—web search, image analysis, memory personalization—and you can run it in background mode via API for async tasks. Sure, it's slower due to deep reasoning (no streaming thought tokens), but the consistency and depth? Worth it. Oh, and funny story—I was prepping a talk for Hamel Hussain's evals course, with a slide saying “don't use large reasoning models if budget's tight.” The day before, this price drop hits, and I'm scrambling to update everything. That's AI pace for ya!Apple WWDC: Where's the Smarter Siri? Oh Apple. Sweet, sweet Apple. Remember all those Bella Ramsey ads promising a personalized Siri that knows everything about you? Well, Craig Federighi opened WWDC by basically saying "Yeah, about that smart Siri... she's not coming. Don't wait up."Instead, we got:* AI that can combine emojis (revolutionary!

Alex Wang is the CEO and co-founder of Scale AI, a leading data platform accelerating the development of artificial intelligence applications. Founded in 2016, Scale AI provides high-quality training data for AI models, serving clients like OpenAI, Microsoft, and the U.S. Department of Defense. A former software engineering prodigy, Wang dropped out of MIT to build Scale AI, which is now valued at over $13 billion. Recognized on Forbes' 30 Under 30 and TIME's 100 Most Influential People in AI, Wang is a prominent voice in shaping the future of AI innovation and deployment. He advocates for responsible AI development and policies to ensure ethical and secure AI advancements. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: ⁠https://www.roka.com⁠ - USE CODE SRS ⁠https://www.americanfinancing.net/srs⁠ NMLS 182334, nmlsconsumeraccess.org ⁠https://www.tryarmra.com/srs⁠ ⁠https://www.betterhelp.com/srs⁠ This episode is sponsored by better help. Give online therapy a try at ⁠betterhelp.com/srs⁠ and get on your way to being your best self. ⁠https://www.shawnlikesgold.com⁠ ⁠https://www.lumen.me/srs⁠ ⁠https://www.patriotmobile.com/srs⁠ ⁠https://www.rocketmoney.com/srs⁠ ⁠https://www.shopify.com/srs⁠ ⁠https://trueclassic.com/srs⁠ Upgrade your wardrobe and save on @trueclassic at ⁠trueclassic.com/srs⁠! #trueclassicpod Alex Wang Links: Website - https://scale.com Scale AI X - https://x.com/scale_ai Alex X - https://x.com/alexandr_wang LI - https://www.linkedin.com/company/scaleai Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today on Moment of Zen, we're sharing a conversation from the 2024 Hill and Valley Forum with the founders of Scale AI, Anthropic, and AI Fund on the urgent race between the U.S. and China in AI innovation. Moderated by Senator Cory Booker and featuring Alexandr Wang, Jack Clark, and Andrew Eng, the panel covers why American AI leadership is at risk, and how smarter policy and faster deployment are critical to maintaining a competitive edge. (Note: that this conversation took place before the DeepSeek breakthrough.) Keep an eye out for the 2025 Hill and Valley Forum on Wednesday, April 30 — and subscribe to the Hill & Valley podcast in the episode description to listen to every panel. Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/39s4MCyt1pOTQ8FjOAS4mi Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-hill-valley/id1692653857 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@HillValleyForum --

This week on No Priors, Sarah is joined by Dan Hendrycks, director of the Center of AI Safety. Dan serves as an advisor to xAI and Scale AI. He is a longtime AI researcher, publisher of interesting AI evals such as "Humanity's Last Exam," and co-author of a new paper on National Security "Superintelligence Strategy" along with Scale founder-CEO Alex Wang and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. They explore AI safety, geopolitical implications, the potential weaponization of AI, along with policy recommendations. Sign up for new podcasts every week. Email feedback to show@no-priors.com Follow us on Twitter: @NoPriorsPod | @Saranormous | @EladGil | @DanHendrycks Show Notes: 0:00 Introduction 0:36 Dan's path to focusing on AI Safety 1:25 Safety efforts in large labs 3:12 Distinguishing alignment and safety 4:48 AI's impact on national security 9:59 How might AI be weaponized? 14:43 Immigration policies for AI talent 17:50 Mutually assured AI malfunction 22:54 Policy suggestions for current administration 25:34 Compute security 30:37 Current state of evals

Andy talks with Alex Wang, the founder and CEO of Scale AI, to discuss the rapidly evolving landscape of artificial intelligence and its implications for national security. Forbes says Alex, at age 25, is the world's youngest self-made billionaire. He describes the three foundational pillars of AI—data, compute, and algorithms—and how advancements in each have driven recent progress. Alex discusses how AI advancement could enable adversaries to pose new threats to US national security, and the guardrails the technology may need. 

Guests: Varun Mohan, CEO & Co-Founder of Codeium; and Leigh Marie Braswell, partner at Kleiner Perkins“A lot of people are really bad at knowing what good is,” says Codeium CEO Varun Mohan. Specifically, he's thinking of startups that hire based on a “logo” — a well-known company on the résumé — rather than exceptional talent. Codeium is based in Mountain View, CA, and Varun believes that it's incumbent on any new startup to hire in the San Francisco Bay Area, because of how exceptional talent is concentrated there. “When you hire someone that's 10x better,” he says, “you can't replace them with 10 1x people. Because the the 10x person is going to be thinking of ideas that none of these 1x people are ever going to think of.”Chapters:(01:05) - Ludicrous growth (03:54) - Seizing opportunity (07:29) - Product-market fit (13:05) - Scale AI & MIT (17:42) - Coding efficiency (22:58) - Larger companies (25:20) - Varun and Leigh Marie's working relationship (29:51) - Pivoting to Codeium (34:00) - Giving away the product (37:01) - The code-gen landscape (42:20) - Annual reinvention (45:00) - Picking a problem (47:07) - Bipul Sinha's help (50:43) - Ambition (53:13) - Building in Silicon Valley (55:11) - Spotting talent (59:11) - Who Codeium is hiring (59:43) - What “grit” means to Varun Mentioned in this episode: Graham Moreno, Wiz, ChatGPT, Google, Nuro, Goldman Sachs, Waymo, the DARPA Challenge, Alex Wang, Douglas Chen, Safeway, Equinox, Carlos Delatorre and MongoDB, The Qualified Sales Leader by John McMahon, GitHub Copilot, Microsoft, Exafunction, Mamoon Hamid, Figma, JPMorgan Chase, Starlink, SpaceX, Rubrik, Michael Dell, Stripe, and John Doerr.Links:Connect with VarunLinkedInTwitterConnect with Leigh MarieLinkedInTwitterConnect with JoubinTwitterLinkedInEmail: grit@kleinerperkins.com Learn more about Kleiner PerkinsThis episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm

Alex Wang, Director of Brand Marketing at L'Oréal Group, joins Amanda Ma, CEO & Founder of Innovate Marketing Group, to unlock how L'Oréal is disrupting beauty marketing. Tune in now on EventUp! About the guest: Alex Wang is a passionate advocate for inclusive marketing, currently shaping the beauty landscape as Director of Brand Marketing at L'Oréal Group, where he has overseen go-to-market, strategy, and operations on iconic brands like Maybelline New York and Garnier. Recently, Alex spearheaded a first-of-its-kind partnership between L'Oreal and the non-profit Gold House to strengthen authentic and affirming Asian American & Pacific Islander (AAPI) representation in beauty.  Prior to L'Oreal, Alex was Brand Manager for Sally Hansen, the #1 US nail color & care brand, where he developed the brand's strategic partnership with GLAAD. Alex began his career in finance across CPG leaders including Unilever, Newell Brands, and Coty.   Alex earned a MBA from New York University Stern School of Business and holds a BS in Applied Economics & Management from Cornell University. Follow Alex Wang on LinkedIn! EventUp is brought to you by Innovate Marketing Group. An award-winning corporate event and experiential marketing agency based in Los Angeles, California, serving nationwide, creating immersive event experiences to help brands connect with people. Visit Innovate Marketing Group to learn more! Follow us! Find us on ⁠⁠LinkedIn, ⁠⁠⁠⁠EventUp Podcast⁠, and ⁠⁠Instagram

What if the key to unlocking AI's full potential lies not just in algorithms or compute, but in data? In this episode, a16z General Partner David George sits down with Alex Wang, founder and CEO of Scale AI, to discuss the crucial role of "frontier data" in advancing artificial intelligence. From fueling breakthroughs with complex datasets to navigating the challenges of scaling AI models, Alex shares his insights on the current state of the industry and his forecast on the road to AGI. Resources: Find Alex on Twitter: https://x.com/alexandr_wangFind David on Twitter : https://x.com/DavidGeorge83 Stay Updated: Let us know what you think: https://ratethispodcast.com/a16zFind a16z on Twitter: https://twitter.com/a16zFind a16z on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/a16zSubscribe on your favorite podcast app: https://a16z.simplecast.com/Follow our host: https://twitter.com/stephsmithioPlease note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures.

A new MP3 sermon from River Valley Reformed Church is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: The Death of Sarah Speaker: Alex Wang Broadcaster: River Valley Reformed Church Event: Sunday Service Date: 7/28/2024 Bible: Genesis 23 Length: 23 min.

Jolim Chiu is an aspiring physicist and philosopher from the University of Illinois. He is one of our close friend and one of the deepest thinkers that we have met on campus. In this episode, we tackle the question, "What is the meaning of life?" Jolim has spent the better part of the last few years trying to get to the bottom of this question. He has created numerous models that has helped him make sense of subjects like faith, the after-life, and our goal as humans, some of which we uncover in this conversation. Jolim talks about how he gravitated towards video games and the numerous problems that he wants to find the answers to in his lifetime. We learned a lot from him during this conversation and shared a lot of our perspectives on these deep topics too. Due to the depth of the conversation, we decided to split the episode into two parts, with the other part currently published on the Clips Channel. Sit back, relax, and enjoy our conversation with Jolim Chiu. EPISODE LINKS: Pascal's wager: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_wager OUTLINE: 0:00 - Introduction 1:16 - What do you think about at night? 3:03 - The Interactive Action Model 11:26 - Life as a Christian 16:59 - Video Game Addiction 20:00 - Knowledge: Invented or Discovered? 27:32 - Becoming Agnostic 34:58 - The Afterlife 39:26 - The Art of Collaboration 46:47 - Should you follow your curiosity? 55:25 - Serendipity 1:05:05 - Vulnerability 1:08:22 - The After Life 1:12:18 - Alex Wang's secret 1:15:48 - Advice for young people SOCIAL: Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/uiuctalkshow⁠ Twitter: ⁠https://twitter.com/uiuctalkshow⁠ TikTok: ⁠https://www.tiktok.com/@uiuctalkshow⁠ Spotify: ⁠https://open.spotify.com/show/3ezoc4xJa4DrGq7N4lhqQn⁠ Apple Podcasts: ⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-uiuc-talkshow/id1611427075⁠ Full episodes playlist: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1H9UJqXvJXr3qlx9c89Rv76c6IpnwGeC⁠ Clips Channel: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@UIUCTalkshowClips⁠ What is the UIUC Talkshow? Our goal with this show is to introduce you to the most interesting people with the most interesting ideas from the UIUC campus. Learn more about Juan David & Aaryaman: Aaryaman Website: ⁠https://www.aaryamanpatel.com/⁠ LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaryamanpatel/⁠ Twitter: ⁠https://twitter.com/aaryamanpatel⁠ Juan David Website: ⁠https://www.juandavidcampolargo.com/⁠ Twitter: ⁠https://twitter.com/jdcampolargo⁠ LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jdcampolargo⁠ Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/jdcampolargo/

How could AI change the global balance of power? What could the US and allies do to preserve national moats? To discuss, ChinaTalk interviewed the CEO of Scale AI, Alex Wang. In a blog post announcing Scale's $1 billion fundraising success, Alex wrote that Scale is aiming to grow into the world's data foundry for AI. Alex grew up in Los Alamos, New Mexico, with two physicist parents who worked in the national labs, and he started Scale in college. I am particularly excited to have Alex on the show because he is perhaps the only private-sector AI leader working with the DoD and thinking seriously about the national security implications of AI. We discuss: The three key factors limiting rapid AGI takeoff, and how quickly these barriers will be overcome; China's strengths and weaknesses in the race for AGI; National security implications for winning (or losing) the AI race; Prospects for AI net assessment and the case for a Manhattan project for data; Methods to prevent AI espionage without kneecapping innovation or profiling immigrants. Outtro music: Zach Bryan - Pink Skies (Youtube Link) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How could AI change the global balance of power? What could the US and allies do to preserve national moats? To discuss, ChinaTalk interviewed the CEO of Scale AI, Alex Wang. In a blog post announcing Scale's $1 billion fundraising success, Alex wrote that Scale is aiming to grow into the world's data foundry for AI. Alex grew up in Los Alamos, New Mexico, with two physicist parents who worked in the national labs, and he started Scale in college. I am particularly excited to have Alex on the show because he is perhaps the only private-sector AI leader working with the DoD and thinking seriously about the national security implications of AI. We discuss: The three key factors limiting rapid AGI takeoff, and how quickly these barriers will be overcome; China's strengths and weaknesses in the race for AGI; National security implications for winning (or losing) the AI race; Prospects for AI net assessment and the case for a Manhattan project for data; Methods to prevent AI espionage without kneecapping innovation or profiling immigrants. Outtro music: Zach Bryan - Pink Skies (Youtube Link) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Alex Wang is the Founder and CEO @ Scale.ai, the company that allows you to make the best models with the best data. To date, Alex has raised $1.6BN for the company with a last reported valuation of $14BN earlier this year. Scale tripled their ARR in 2023 and is expected to hit $1.4BN in ARR by the end of 2024. Their investors include Accel, Index, Thrive, Founders Fund, Meta and Nvidia to name a few. In Today's Show with Alex Wang We Discuss: 1. Foundation Models: Diminishing Returns: What are the three core pillars that can meaningfully improve foundation models performance? Why is data the single largest bottleneck to the performance of models today? What data do we need to capture that we do not currently, that will have the biggest impact on model performance moving forward? Will we see the largest companies in the world revert back to on-prem with the increasing security challenges of migrating all customer data to foundation models? 2. AI: A Military Asset in Global Conflict: China + Russia Why does Alex believe that AI has the potential to be an even more powerful military asset than nuclear weapons? If this is the case, should we have open systems? Do we not have to have closed systems? Why does Alex believe that the CCP's approach to industrial policy is better than anyone else's? How does Alex evaluate the rise of Chinese EV car manufacturers in the last few years? Does Alex really believe that China is two years behind the US in the AI race? 3. "I Get Fairer Treatment in Congress than in the Press": Why does Alex believe that the best PR is no PR? Why does Alex believe that he got fairer treatment in congress than he does in the media? Why does Alex believe that all founders should look to own their own distribution channels today? 4. Alex Wang: AMA: What are some of Alex's biggest lessons from Patrick Collison on the impact that a hot company brand has on the ability for that company to hire the best? Does Alex think Trump is going to win? What would be the impact if he were to? Why does Alex believe that enterprise software will be changed forever in the next few years? What question is Alex never asked that he thinks he should be asked?  

Tune in to today's special episode airing a recent panel with the founders of Scale AI, Anthropic, and AI Fund who gathered in Washington DC to discuss China as an adversary. They argue that the papers out of Tsinghua University are just as impressive as those coming out of American universities. China is just as creative, but maybe even more motivated. While discussions of regulations have encompassed certain restraints, Alex Wang, Andrew Ng, and Jack Clark argue that we're not moving fast enough (moderated by US senator Cory Booker). This session was recorded live at The Hill & Valley Forum in 2024, a private bipartisan community of lawmakers and innovators committed to harnessing the power of technology to address America's most pressing national security challenges. The Hill & Valley podcast is part of the Turpentine podcast network. Learn more: www.turpentine.co RECOMMENDED PODCAST - The Riff with Byrne Hobart Byrne Hobart, the writer of The Diff, is revered in Silicon Valley. You can get an hour with him each week. See for yourself how his thinking can upgrade yours. Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6rANlV54GCARLgMOtpkzKt Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-riff-with-byrne-hobart-and-erik-torenberg/id1716646486 SPONSORS: Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) is a single platform for your infrastructure, database, application development, and AI needs. OCI has four to eight times the bandwidth of other clouds; offers one consistent price, and nobody does data better than Oracle. If you want to do more and spend less, take a free test drive of OCI at https://oracle.com/cognitive The Brave search API can be used to assemble a data set to train your AI models and help with retrieval augmentation at the time of inference. All while remaining affordable with developer first pricing, integrating the Brave search API into your workflow translates to more ethical data sourcing and more human representative data sets. Try the Brave search API for free for up to 2000 queries per month at https://bit.ly/BraveTCR Head to Squad to access global engineering without the headache and at a fraction of the cost: head to https://choosesquad.com/ and mention “Turpentine” to skip the waitlist. Omneky is an omnichannel creative generation platform that lets you launch hundreds of thousands of ad iterations that actually work customized across all platforms, with a click of a button. Omneky combines generative AI and real-time advertising data. Mention "Cog Rev" for 10% off https://www.omneky.com/ CHAPTERS: (00:00) Intro (03:29) Assembling the founders of Anthropic, Scale AI, and AI Fund (04:45) Predictions for AGI (08:21) Navigating AI innovation amidst regulation (16:15) Global AI competition and the urgency of Innovation (24:34) Empowering future generations

Generative AI is advancing at a breakneck pace, prompting questions on risk and opportunity, from content creation to personal data management. In a special live recording, we delve into the ways AI can augment human work and spur innovation, instead of simply using AI to cut costs or replace jobs. Host Jeff Berman joined a seasoned AI researcher, Intel's Lama Nachman, and a young start-up founder, Scale AI's Alexandr Wang, on stage at the Intel Vision event in April 2024. They explore topics like AI's disruption of creative industries, mitigating its biggest risks (like deepfakes), and why human critical thinking will be even more vital as AI technology spreads.Read a transcript of this episode: https://mastersofscale.comSubscribe to the Masters of Scale weekly newsletter: https://mastersofscale.com/subscribeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Alex Wang is a VFX Supervisor. He started his career in visual effects at The Orphanage on THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW, right after graduating from Ringling College of Art and Design in 2003. He then joined Image Movers Digital to work on THE CHRISTMAS CAROL and MARS NEEDS MOMS. In 2010, Alex joined Digital Domain for TRON LEGACY, and then he worked on TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON, JACK THE GIANT SLAYER and FURIOUS 7. He also served as a CG Supervisor on FAST AND FURIOUS 7 and then VFX Supervisor on DEADPOOL. In this Podcast, Allan McKay interviews VFX Supervisor Alex Wang about creating the post-apocalyptic practical and visual effects of the Emmy-nominated HBO show THE LAST OF US, the skills of a VFX Supervisor, staying relevant by keeping up with technology, how AI is changing VFX pipelines and so much more! For more show notes, visit www.allanmckay.com/437.

A year-end compilation of some of the best nuggets on all things AI from the Aarthi and Sriram Show._Show notes:(00:00) The state of AI's progress ft. Alex Wang(02:00) Advice for AI founders ft. Marc Andreessen(03:00) Ethics of AI ft. Emad Mostaque(06:10) Society's model of computing ft. Steven Sinofsky(07:50) How smart Can AI Get? ft. Marc Andreessen(08:55) What if AI takes 'control'? ft. Stephen Wolfram(11:08) AI in the Metaverse ft. Emad Mostaque(13:26) What if AI goes rogue? ft. Marc Andreessen—Other episodes you might enjoy:Bonus: Marc Andreessen's Advice For Founders And StartupsEP 63 - Lessons From Networking In Silicon ValleyEP 61 - The Reality of Raising Kids in the Tech IndustryEP 59 - Why We Moved to London, The Elon Musk Book, Should You Get An MBAEP 55 - When To Quit Your Job: Advice From Silicon Valley VCs

Ý thức được là Sáng Kiến Vành Đai và Con Đường – Belt and Road Initiatives BRI không còn sức lôi cuốn ban đầu, tăng trưởng và đầu tư của Trung Quốc « có hạn », Bắc Kinh đi tìm « một làn gió mới cho Con Đường Tơ Lụa Mới ». Nhưng làm thế nào để thuyết thuyết phục các đối tác của Bắc Kinh rằng BRI không đẩy thế giới đến gần một cuộc « Chiến tranh lạnh toàn diện » như nghi nhận của kinh tế trưởng ngân hàng Pháp Natixis, Alicia Garcia Herrero ? Đánh dấu 10 năm khai sinh Con Đường Tơ Lụa Mới, dự án đã được 150 quốc gia và 30 tổ chức quốc tế hưởng ứng, Bắc Kinh tổ chức Diễn Đàn BRI trong hai ngày 17 -18/10/2023. Trong số các khách mời ngoài sự hiện diện của tổng thống Nga, nguyên thủ Indonesia, thủ tướng Hungary và của nhiều nước châu Phi, trong lúc nhiều thành viên khác như Thổ Nhĩ Kỳ, Ai Cập hay Qatar, Nam Phi Achentina …và nhất là của hầu hết các nước châu Âu chỉ gửi phái đoàn đại diện ở cấp chuyên gia. Điều đó làm dấy lên câu hỏi : BRI có còn sức thu hút như hồi 2013 khi ông Tập Cận Bình đọc diễn văn tại Kazakhstan đã khai sinh Sáng Kiến Vành Đai và Con Đường hay còn được gọi là Sáng Kiến Một Vành Đai Một Con Đường ?Thành công về chính trị của Tập Cận BìnhCột mốc 10 năm BRI diễn ra trong bối cảnh kinh tế Trung Quốc đang tăng trưởng chậm lại, đầu tư nước ngoài vào Hoa Lục sụt giảm, cuộc đọ sức Mỹ- Trung không có dấu hiệu thuyên giảm. Dù vậy trên đài RFI Pháp ngữ Eyck Freymann, nghiên cứu sinh trường Harvard Kennedy School, tác giả cuốn, One Belt One Road, Chinese power meets the World -Một vành Đai, Một Con Đường, Quyền Lực Trung Quốc với Thế Giới  (NXB Harvard UP, 2020) giải thích vì sao đối với ông Tập BRI là một thành công. « Theo tôi thì có ba mục tiêu. Đầu tiên và quan trọng hơn cả là ông Tập Cận Bình muốn củng cố vị trí của mình về mặt đối nội với một chương trình đầy tham vọng. Con Đường Tơ Lụa trở thành một khẩu hiệu mà tất cả các cơ quan trong guồng máy của Đảng và Nhà Nước phải quảng bá và ca tụng. Chủ đích thứ nhì nhằm áp đặt kỷ luật và trật tự vào lúc mà các ngân hàng Trung Quốc bắt đầu vươn ra quốc tế. Ông Tập vẫn muốn tiếp tục đặt các định chế ngân hàng này dưới sự lãnh đạo và kiểm soát của nhà nước và nhất là của Đảng Cộng Sản. Điểm thứ ba là Tập Cận Bình muốn thế giới hiểu rằng dưới sự lãnh đạo của ông, Trung Quốc càng lúc càng chiếm một vị trí quan trọng trên sân khấu quốc tế và Bắc Kinh muốn rằng ảnh hưởng kinh tế đó sẽ tạo dựng ảnh hưởng về chính trị của Trung Quốc với các đối tác mới, đặc biệt là với các quốc gia đang phát triển (...)  Khi thông báo dự án Một Vành Đai Một Con Đường, Tập Cận Bình và nhiều nhà lãnh đạo khác đều mặc nhiên dựa trên giả thuyết là kinh tế Trung Quốc sẽ tiếp tục tăng trưởng vững mạnh trong nhiều thập niên sắp tới. Nhưng chỉ một chục năm sau, chúng ta thấy tăng trưởng của Trung Quốc đang bị chựng một cánh đáng kể. Cũng rất có thể là Trung Quốc rơi vào một chu kỳ tăng trưởng chậm trong nhiều năm. Điều đó có nghĩa là Bắc Kinh sẽ không thể tiếp tục cấp tín dụng dài hạn hàng trăm tỷ đô la cho thế giới. Ông Tập Cận Bình đã phải rà soát lại và thu hẹp những tham vọng của mình. Tuy nhiên, đầu tư vào cơ sở hạ tầng và cấp tín dụng cho các đối tác chỉ chiếm một vị trí khiêm tốn trong Sáng Kiến Một Vành Đai một Con Đường. Bởi theo tôi, BRI chủ yếu theo đuổi mục đích chính trị và ông Tập có một mục tiêu kép đó là vừa mở rộng kiểm soát của Đảng và Nhà Nước đối với hệ thống tài chính ngân hàng Trung Quốc, vừa khẳng định ông là một vĩ nhân trên bàn cờ quốc tế. Hơn bao giờ hết quyền lực của ông Tập đã được củng cố tại Trung Quốc ».Trong báo cáo công bố cuối 2021 cơ quan tư vấn Mỹ AIDDATA ghi nhận đã « có tổng cộng gần 13.500 dự án đầu tư với tổng số vốn lên đến gần 1.000 tỷ đô la đã được thực hiện trong khuôn khổ Sáng Kiến Một Vành Đai Một Con Đường ». Trong Sách Trắng về BRI công bố ngày 10/10/2023 Trung Quốc tự hào đưa ra những thành tích như là « tổng kim ngạch trao đổi mậu dịch với 150 nước tham gia BRI đạt 2.900 tỷ đô la năm 2022 (…) và trong tháng 6/2023 Bắc Kinh đã ký hơn 2.000 thỏa thuận hợp tác » với các bên tham gia Con Đường Tơ Lụa Mới.Điều đó không che dấu được một thực tế đó là đầu tư của Trung Quốc trong khuôn khổ BRI giảm mạnh từ sau đại dịch Covid 19 nhất là khi nhìn vào thống kê các dự án Trung Quốc đổ đổ về châu Phi. Theo báo cáo của đại học Mỹ Boston, tín dụng cấp cho châu Phi đang từ 8,5 tỷ đô la năm 2019 đã giảm xuống còn chưa đầy một tỷ vào cuối 2022.Nhưng trong 10 năm qua, nhờ Sáng Kiến Một Vành Đai Một Con Đường Trung Quốc trở thành chủ nợ chính của nhiều quốc gia. Cũng vì những khoản nợ khổng lồ những dự án phát triển cơ sở hạ tầng, đường thủy, đường bộ …  mà nhiều nước như Sri Lanka hay Zambia và trong một chừng mực nào đó là Lào đã bị « cột chặt » vào với Bắc Kinh. Theo thống kê của AIDDATA 35 % các dự án hợp tác với Trung Quốc trong khuôn khổ BRI đã đặt ra « rất nhiều vấn đề » cho các đối tác của Bắc Kinh. Sri Lanka bị rơi vào « bẫy nợ » Trung Quốc. Pokhara thành phố lớn thứ nhì của Nepal không biết phải làm gì với phi trường quốc tế mới tinh nhưng không có bóng người qua lại.Từ BRI đến Con Đường Tơ Lụa DigitalCũng vì tránh mang tiếng là đã « giăng bẫy nợ » cho các nước nghèo với những công trình xây dựng khổng lồ nhưng vô bổ, tại diễn đàn Bắc Kinh vừa qua ông Tập Cận Bình đã nhán mạnh đến khái niệm một « Cộng đồng có chung định mệnh ». Trả lời RFI Pháp ngữ giáo sư Trần Kiến Phủ (Chen Chien Fu) giám đốc Viện Nghiên Cứu Trung Quốc -Đại Học Đạm Giang (Tamkang) Đài Loan ghi nhận nhiều thay đổi trong chính sách của Trung Quốc về dự án Con Đường Tơ Lụa Mới so với những mục tiêu ban đầu hồi 2013 :« Mười năm vừa qua dự án BRI đã có nhiều thay đổi. Trung Quốc càng vững mạnh, nhất là sau khi thành lập Ngân Hàng Đầu Tư Cơ Sở Hạ Tầng Châu Á – AIIB năm 2016, nhiều nước châu Âu bắt đầu tham gia vào ngân hàng này. Có thể nói đấy là thời kỳ vàng son của chương trình Một Vành Đai Một Con Đường, về khía cạnh ảnh hưởng của Trung Quốc. Dự án sau đó đã tiếp tục có nhiều chuyển biến khác. BRI không chỉ còn tập trung vào các chương trình phát triển cơ sử hạ tầng mà đã mở rộng đến nhiều lĩnh vực khác như là các dự án xây dựng đường ống dẫn dầu và khí tự nhiên. BRI bao gồm luôn cả các nguồn nhiên liệu hiếm. Với châu Phi chẳng hạn thì Trung Quốc chỉ có một mục tiêu đó là bảo đảm các nguồn cung cấp về khoáng sản hiếm và xây dựng căn cứ quân sự tại châu lục này ».Từ 2020 ngoại trưởng Trung Quốc Vương Nghị đã bắt đầu đề cập đến « Con Đường Tơ Lụa digital (DSR Digital Silk Road) : Bắc Kinh xem việc kết nối Hoa Lục với phần còn lại của thế giới về công nghệ kỹ thuật số là « một ưu tiên trong các chương trình hợp tác » trong tương lai. Nhưng không chỉ có thế giáo sư Trần Kiến Phủ đại học Đài Loan giải thích tiếp :« Trong tương lai sẽ còn có nhiều thay đổi khác nữa. Chẳng hạn như BRI sẽ không tạo cảm giác đây là một công cụ để Bắc Kinh mở rộng ảnh hưởng về ngoại giao bằng những chương trình đầu tư hào phóng. Có thể là Trung Quốc sẽ nhắm đến những mục tiêu chính xác hơn và mang tính cách lâu dài hơn, thí dụ như là các chương trình liên quan đến quyền của phụ nữ, hay các chương trình phát triển năng lượng xanh. Rất có thể Một Vành Đai Một Con Đường không chỉ tập trung vào các dự án đầu tư cơ sở hạ tầng mà sẽ chuyển hướng sang các dự án mang tính xã hội hay… Mục tiêu là nhằm cải thiện hình ảnh của Trung Quốc với các đối tác nhận tài trợ của Bắc Kinh ».BRI mượn tay doanh nghiệp Trung Quốc vì một trật tự mới ? Về phần nghiên cứu sinh trường Harvard Kennedy School Eyck Freymann thì BRI trước hết là một công cụ để ông Tập Cận Bình vừa củng cố vai trò của các doanh nghiệp Trung Quốc ở hải ngoại, vừa vẫn kềm tỏa số này trong vòng kiểm soát của Đảng và Nhà nước :« Khi ông Tập Cận bình lên cầm quyền, ông thừa hưởng chính sách đẩy mạnh đầu tư của Trung Quốc ra nước ngoài. Tuy nhiên đó cũng là cơ hội để nhiều doanh nghiệp Trung Quốc chuyển vốn ra khỏi Hoa Lục và như vậy thì đâu có phải là vì lợi ích quốc gia. Đó là lý do vì sao ông Tập Cận Bình đã nhanh chóng giành lại quyền để định hướng lại chính sách phát triển và đầu tư của Trung Quốc ở hải ngoại. Bắc Kinh đã loại bỏ những dự án không có lợi cho Nhà nước Trung Quốc (…). Trong chiều hướng đó, những mục tiêu của Sáng Kiến BRI đã thay đổi theo thời gian. Trung Quốc thích nghi, học hỏi và cũng đã phạm phải nhiều sai lầm : trong những năm đầu Con Đường Tơ Lụa Mới còn lỏng lẻo trong cách tổ chức. Giờ đây, mọi người ý thức là túi tiền của Trung Quốc cũng có hạn và Bắc Kinh thì chủ trương thu hoạch những thành quả về mặt chính trị tối đa với một số vốn phải bỏ ra ít chừng nào tối chừng nấy. Nói cách khác Trung Quốc đang mở ra mối quan hệ với các đối tác của mình dưới một góc độ khác hẳn và cũng đang tìm kiếm những dự án khác ».   Song cũng không thể chối cãi là nhiều đối tác của Bắc Kinh thất vọng vì BRI. Nhiều thành viên trong Liên Hiệp Châu Âu từng hào hứng đón nhận đầu tư của Trung Quốc, đứng đầu là Hy Lạp hay Bồ Đào Nha và nhiều nước ở Trung và Đông Âu. Phần lớn đã rất « kín tiếng » nhân lễ mừng sinh nhật BRI 10 năm tuổi. Ý thì đang chuẩn bị chia tay với dự án được ông Tập Cận Bình coi là tủ kính của nền ngoại giao Trung Quốc từ khi ông lên cầm quyền.Small is beautifulChính vì thế mà trong diễn văn khai mạc Diễn Đàn BRI ở Bắc Kinh vừa qua chủ tịch Trung Quốc cam kết tiếp tục đầu tư 100 tỷ đô la cho Sáng Kiến Một Vành Đai Một Con Đường, chú trọng nhiều hơn đến những dự án phát triển sạch, chú ý hơn đến môi trường xã hội của các đối tác cùng làm ăn với Trung Quốc. Có điều như nghiên cứu sinh Harvard Kennedy School, Eyck Freymann, rất có thể là chu kỳ tăng trưởng mạnh của kinh tế Trung Quốc đã qua do vậy Bắc Kinh hô to khẩu hiệu Small is beautiful một phần là tránh để phải tiếp tục chi ra những chương trình đầu tư hàng chục triệu đô la. Tuy nhiên theo kinh tế trưởng ngân hàng Pháp Netixis, bà Alicia Garcia Herrero, chính vì cuộc đọ sức Mỹ Trung không có dấu hiệu thuyên giảm nên BRI lại càng là công cụ để Bắc Kinh lôi kéo thêm đồng minh về phía mình. Hơn nữa Nga, Iran đang bị Hoa Kỳ và phương Tây trừng phạt, cộng đồng quốc tế đang bị chia rẽ sau hơn 600 ngày chiến tranh Ukraina. Gần đây hơn, mọi chú ý đang dồn về Trung Cận Đông nơi mà tình hình được ví như một « thùng thuốc súng » từ sau đợt tấn công phong trào Hồi Giáo Palestine Hamas tiến hành trên lãnh thổ Israel, một phần thế giới Hồi Giáo và Ả Rập đang phẫn nộ. Đây lại càng là cơ hội để ông Tập Cận Bình đã nhắc nhở rằng Trung Quốc là một « yếu tố hàn gắn » những chia rẽ trên thế giới hiện. Trong cương vị chủ nhà lãnh đạo Trung Quốc tại diễn đàn BRI vừa qua đã nhắc lại những thành tựu đã đạt được trong thập niên vừa qua trong khuôn khổ dự án Con Đường Tơ Lụa Mới. Bắc Kinh đưa ra hình ảnh một nước Trung Quốc bảo vệ mô hình kinh tế toàn cầu « rộng mở » chống lại mọi chủ trương bảo hộ, mọi biện pháp dùng đòn kinh tế, thương mại « đơn phương trừng phạt hay uy hiếp các quốc gia khác », mọi quyết định làm xáo trộn chuỗi cung ứng toàn cầu. Một nhà ngoại giao châu Âu nhận định : với phát biểu này, không hiểu là lãnh đạo Trung Quốc muốn « chỉ trích đường lối của chính quyền Biden hay của chính ông ? »Nhà báo Alex Wang, cây bút trên tạp chí chuyên về địa chính trị Revue des Conflits đi xa hơn khi cho rằng tiếp quan khách nhân Diễn Đàn BRI lần thứ ba tuần trước, ông Tập Cận Bình để lộ rỏ những ưu tiên về kinh tế, chính trị và địa chính trị : ông không chỉ chuẩn bị công luận trước viễn cảnh « một cuộc đối đầu với Hoa Kỳ mà còn trình bày với thế giới về một mô hình phát triển khác, hấp dẫn hơn đối với các nước đang phát triển so với những gì mà phương Tây đã đề nghị với các quốc gia này từ lâu nay ».Đành rằng sau 10 đi vào hoạt động, BRI không hoàn hảo và là một « bẫy nợ » nguy hiểm nhưng Trung Quốc là một chủ nợ hiếm hoi cấp tín dụng cho những quốc gia bị các chủ nợ phương Tâ coi là những điểm đầu tư « không an toàn và những đối tác không đáng tin cậy ». 

Kevin est Senior Data Scientist et formateur sur les métiers de la data. Il est surtout l'un des plus gros influenceurs data en France, avec +7K abonnés sur LinkedIn et 1K abonnés sur TikTok. Dans cet épisode, je me mets dans la peau d'un étudiant ou d'un profil en reconversion et lui pose les questions essentielles afin de lancer sa carrière en data.On aborde :

Visual Effects Supervisor Alex Wang joins us to talk about their work on the HBO TV series The Last of Us. The Last of Us Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdcXP-groXc Executive Produced by Daniel Miller and Monika Ditton Artwork Designed by Piotr Motyka Music by ELPHNT Contact: creativeindustryinsight@gmail.com

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to 'The Last of Us' visual effects supervisor Alex Wang about orchestrating the massive VFX effort on the show, including crafting post-apocalytpic environments, the clicker creatures, and working with and building giraffes.

The BTS team is joined by VFX Supervisor Alex Wang to discuss how The Last of Us blends practical and CG effects, the collaborative relationship between VFX and storytelling, and of course, why we love Bill and Frank.

This week on Sinica, an Earth Day special: Kaiser chats with Marilyn Waite, managing director of the Climate Finance Fund; Alex Wang, a UCLA law professor who specializes in China climate and environmental law; and Deborah Seligsohn, a political scientist at Villanova University who served as the Environment, Science, Technology and Health Counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. This episode was taped live on Thursday, April 20, as a webinar from The China Project.5:24 – Taking stock: Where have we come since the first Earth Day in 1970?14:24 – Is the Inflation Reduction Act an unalloyed good for the environment and climate?17:17 – The good and the bad of China's recent record on climate20:45 – The unmet need for climate finance globally, and what China's PbOC is doing right27:54 – Should we roll our eyes when China speaks of “ecological civilization”?31:57 – Embracing the JEDI approach in addressing climate change35:30 – Can the U.S. and China harness competition to drive better climate outcomes?39:54 – Why pushing each other won't work, and cooperation is still needed45:15 – Addressing hard-to-abate sectors like agrifood50:30 – Balancing cooperation and competition between the U.S. and China on climateA complete transcript of this episode is available at TheChinaProject.com.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

On this episode of Free Range, host Mike Livermore is joined by Alex Wang, Professor of Law at UCLA, co-director of the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, and expert on the law and politics of Chinese environmental governance. Beginning with Wang's initial experience in environmental issues in China, the US, and the NGO community, he discusses the generational and globally formative transformation he witnessed over his three decades in the field (1:37 - 9:36). After China's entry into the WTO, there were some expectations for a broader economic and political liberalization. While there has been an increase in marketization and economic freedom, the Communist Party has maintained tight political control (9:37-14:26). Although formal political freedom is limited in China, Wang emphasizes that there are many mechanisms through which politics occurs; he also discusses important developments in the state's administrative law and responsiveness to citizen demands in the past several decades. Wang discusses protests, concessions, and accountability that operate through less formal means, which can be effective at mediating social conflict, even if lacking traditional procedural fairness (14:27-22:18). The conversation highlights the difference between the US and China in regard to responsiveness to recent large-scale protests which also speaks to the extremity of Chinese policy. While rapid change is possible in China, it is core to the design of the US political system to diffuse power, which limits capacity for rapid change (22:19-35:24). Over the last two decades, there has been a large shift toward greater prioritization of eco-civilization and environmental protection in China. This transition is at the intersection of environmental, political, and economic change. Pollution began to be seen as a governance and social stability problem. Regarding the shifting geopolitics and the changing relationship between the US and China, the level of respect towards China has gradually changed throughout Wang's experience over the past three decades. Globally, China has taken on a much more substantial leadership role, and power in the global system has shifted away from the United States and the single dominant player. Politics, energy security, and economic opportunities played a large role in China's investment into green technologies, where they are now dominating the supply chain (35:25-53:47). Wang covers the human rights story, symbolic politics versus implementation, and the issue of achieving climate goals in light of economic consequences (53:48-56:41). The US and China may be in competition for the foreseeable future, so maybe this competition can be socially beneficial. But is it an open question whether this proxy battle will be enough to fuel serious decarbonization (56:42-1:04:59).

Becoming VFX supervisor on HBO's The Last of Us has fulfilled a lifelong dream for movie and game fan Alex Wang. In this podcast, Alex tells Chris about his journey to this hugely prestigious position via his work on movies including The Day After Tomorrow, Sin City, Tron: Legacy, Deadpool, Fast & Furious 8, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and Dominion, and Terminator: Dark Fate. Alex also shares some of the key lessons he's learned throughout his career, including whether it's better to work on animation or VFX, how working in-house compares to being employed by a studio, and the benefits of technical versus artistic knowledge. Chris and Alex also discuss the growing prevalence of AI in the VFX industry.  

Enacted in 2021, China's National Carbon Market based on tradable performance standard, was promoted as a new effort to engage with international climate policy. It's too early to assess the emissions reduction impact of the so-called biggest carbon market in the world. Despite of the essential differences of market design, contextual institutions and the mild effects of the California's system in delivering carbon emissions reduction and environmental justice, Professor Alex Wang of UCLA School of Law explains why China may still learn from California's Greenhouse Gas Cap-and-Trade Program. In this episode, the discussion also touches the new direction of climate policy in the context of EU Green Deal and U.S. Inflation Reduction Act. Professor Wang shares his opinion on the academic exchange challenges facing scholars from both U.S. and China.  

In this episode, Aarthi and Sriram talk to Alexandr Wang is the founder and CEO of Scale AI. Alex is a 25 year old dropout from MIT, and is the youngest self made billionaire. Scale AI is the data platform for AI, providing high quality training data for leading machine learning teams. In this episode we talked about Alex's background and upbringing, how he stumbled onto the idea for Scale while building a camera in his refrigerator, the state of artificial intelligence, YCombinator (YC) program, department of defense and AI contracts, US vs China, use cases for artificial intelligence, how to solve for attribution and monetization for artists' IP in the world of AI, advice for founders. how to develop active thinking, company building and culture building.

For much of 2022, the entire planet has been struggling to cope with extreme weather events, ranging from brutal heatwaves and severe droughts in some regions to record rainfall and catastrophic flooding in others. Despite this, in early August, Beijing suspended ongoing U.S.-China talks on climate change in response to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan. While some climate experts have argued that what matters most in the fight to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is for the United States and China to take action domestically, the suspension of talks represents a shift in the effort to shield the climate agenda from geopolitics and has implications for the ability of each country, and the world, to meet essential reduction targets. In conversation with Alex Wang on November 1, 2022, Michael Davidson and Joanna Lewis discuss the significance of the downturn in U.S.-China relations on multilateral climate action. 2:22 How will U.S.-China tensions affect COP27? 6:24 How important is U.S.-China cooperation to global climate action? 9:18 Can the U.S. and China cooperate after COP27? 15:00 Will U.S.-China competition benefit or harm climate action efforts? 25:30 How can the U.S. support domestic climate action initiatives? 30:38 Why is energy security so important? About the speakers: https://www.ncuscr.org/event/us-china-climate-action/  Follow Michael Davidson on Twitter:  @east_winds Follow Joanna Lewis on Twitter: @JoannaILewis Follow Alex Wang on Twitter: @greenlawchina Subscribe to the National Committee on YouTube for video of this interview. Follow us on Twitter (@ncuscr) and Instagram (@ncuscr).

Alex Wang is a Vedic astrologer who's background is in mathematics.  He made a dramatic shift from tech consulting to astrology under the guidance of several teachers including Sanjay Rath.  Hillary Lin is a tarot card reader who has performed tarot readings for a wide range of clients helping them with decision making, mindfulness and understanding their true selves.  Today we do a live reading on the show as we explore astrology and tarot for the first time.  We discuss its rise in popularity and how it might help us find answers. ____________________ If you enjoy this show don't forget to leave a rating! Follow Us On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thehonestdrink_/ Email: thehonestdrink@gmail.com Join Us On WeChat: THD_Official Find us on: Spotify, Apple, Google Podcasts, YouTube, Ximalaya, 小宇宙, 网易云音乐, Bilibili or anywhere else you get your podcasts.

Alex Wang is a Vedic astrologer who's background is in mathematics. He made a dramatic shift from tech consulting to astrology under the guidance of several teachers including Sanjay Rath. Hillary Lin is a tarot card reader who has performed tarot readings for a wide range of clients helping them with decision making, mindfulness and understanding their true selves. Today we do a live reading on the show as we explore astrology and tarot for the first time. We discuss its rise in popularity and how it might help us find answers.Don't forget to leave a rating and subscribe!Add us on WeChat: THD_OfficialEmail: thehonestdrink@gmail.comInstagram: thehonestdrink_Find us on: Apple, Spotify, 喜马拉雅, 小宇宙, 网易云音乐, Bilibili, YouTube...

The idea of artificial intelligence (AI) may appeal to many businesses for its cost-saving potential, but ARK believes in its ability to enable scaling reaches far beyond. Today, we are joined by the CEO of Scale AI, Alex Wang, to talk about the problem Scale was born out of, and its mission to enable every organization to utilize AI technology. In our conversation, we touch on everything from Scale's origin story and its success in improving data set curation systems for machine learning algorithms, to the involvement of humans in the trajectory of AI systems. Alex breaks down the paradigm shift from human as author and editor to AI as author and human as editor, before explaining the market-enabling potential of AI. We discuss the geopolitical relevance of AI and what would could be required for any country to take the lead as an AI superpower. Listen in to find out more about the scaling potential of AI for businesses and the role Scale AI is playing to help make this possible for organizations all over the world! “If you solve the data problems and the data foundations of AI, that's going to enable almost everyone in the world to be able to build great AI and transform their businesses.” — @alexandr_wang Key Points From This Episode: Introducing Alex Wang, CEO of Scale AI. What Scale AI does and who they serve. Alex shares the origin story of Scale AI. The exponential gains Scale has driven in the efficiency of data-producing systems for machine learning algorithms. The paradigm shift from human as author and editor to AI as author and human as editor, according to Alex. Alex's prediction for the involvement of humans in the trajectory of AI systems. The market-enabling potential of AI. The notable rate of improvement in the AI field. The magnitude of scaling Scale AI enables for its customers. Alex's view of the broader trend TikTok reflects, in terms of AI efficiency in a business context. The role AI could play in national security, and why Alex believes regulation is essential. The importance of AI from a geopolitical standpoint. The gulf of understanding between Silicon Valley and DC regarding AI, as told by Alex. Alex explains how Scale fulfills its mission to enable every organization with great AI technology. How Scale communicates the true value of AI to its customers. Examples of the use of AI in various industries. The challenges traditional companies face when it comes to embracing AI. What differentiates Scale from its competitors.

John and Craig welcome VFX supervisor Alex Wang (The Last of Us) and VFX producer/writer Addie Manis (Foundation) to pull back the (green screen) curtain on the visual effects production process. We ask the VFX experts to break down a sample scene, line by line to explain how they'd turn scene description into an actual scene. From their first read to the edit, they describe how the script guides the visual language for their projects. In our bonus segment for premium members, John and Craig talk about friends, both how to make them and how to keep them. Links: Follow along with the sample scene here. Alex Wang on IMDb Addie Manis on IMDb and Twitter The Perils of Audience Capture by Gurwinder Bhogal Craig's Favorite Laser Pointer Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt! Check out the Inneresting Newsletter Gift a Scriptnotes Subscription or treat yourself to a premium subscription! Craig Mazin on Twitter John August on Twitter John on Instagram Outro by Aguilera (send us yours!) Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao and edited by Matthew Chilelli. Email us at ask@johnaugust.com You can download the episode here.

Oggi vi raccontiamo la prima parte della ricerca "60 AI Leaders" disponibile qui https://www.60leaders.com/ai che ha coinvolto alcune tra le persone più influenti in ambito A.I. di tutto il mondo. Abbiamo selezionato le migliori risposte a queste domande:1. Come spiegheresti l'Intelligenza Artificiale a un bambino di 5 anni?Risposta di ALEX WANG, Data Science Consultant DELOITTE • AUSTRALIA2. Qual è il curriculum accademico essenziale per una carriera di successo come professionista dell'IA?Risposta di ARUNA KOLLURU Chief Technologist, AI, APJ DELL TECHNOLOGIES • AUSTRALIA 3. Qual è il compito più impressionante che l'Intelligenza Artificiale può svolgere oggi?Risposta di JORDI GUITART, PHD VP of Artificial Intelligence - AIZON • USA4. In che modo l'IA influisce sul modo in cui operano le aziende?Risposta di EDWARD PYZER-KNAPP WW Research Lead, AI Enriched Modelling and Simulation IBM RESEARCH • UK5. Come potrebbe trasformarsi un'azienda "convenzionale" in un'organizzazione basata sui dati e basata sull'intelligenza artificiale?Risposta di RICHARD BENJAMINS - Chief AI & Data Strategist, Telefónica • Co-founder and VP of OdiseIA - BOARD MEMBER OF CDP EUROPE • SPAIN6. Le aziende hanno bisogno di un Chief AI Officer?Risposta di DR. SUNIL KUMAR VUPPALA Director, Data Science ERICSSON R&D • INDIA7. Qual è lo "stato dell'arte dell'intelligenza artificiale"? Quali sono le tecnologie di Intelligenza Artificiale più avanzate là fuori?Risposta di DIMA TURCHYN - Artificial Intelligence Product Marketing Lead, CEE Region - MICROSOFT • CZECHIA8. L'IA è già ovunque e sta crescendo rapidamente in termini di potenza e adozione. Qual è l'impatto sulle nostre società e sulla vita di tutti i giorni?Risposta di ANGELIKI DEDOPOULOU Public Policy Manager, AI & Fintech META • BELGIUMLink utili:www.iaspiegatasemplice.itwww.aiplay.itE su tutti i social network!

Zoe Kravitz caused quite the stir over the Oscars. She didn't win anything, but she reminded many people and exposed people to the scandals of one of her closest friends, Alex Wang. For the majority of this episode, Alexander Wang = Company Wang = The Person Contact, Comments, Concerns, Suggestions, etc.: ⬇️ https://www.mostfashionablecrime.com/contact Website: ⬇️ www.mostfashionablecrime.com Newsletter: www.mostfashionablecrime.com/newsletter Social Media Handles: ⬇️ Twitter @MostFashionable Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok @MostFashionableCrime Join the Communities: ⬇️ Facebook Group: www.facebook.com/groups/mostfashionablecrime/ Reddit Community: https://www.reddit.com/r/MostFashionableCrime/ Sources:  https://medium.com/@ifashionseo/alexander-wangs-spring-2019-show-pays-homage-to-his-asian-american-identity-52db43c4a8cc https://www.harpersbazaar.com/fashion/designers/a768/alexander-wang-interview/ https://www.businessoffashion.com/education/rankings/2017/schools/central-saint-martins?type=bachelors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Wang_(designer) https://www.businessoffashion.com/community/people/alexander-wang https://www.vogue.com/article/cfdaemvogueem-fashion-fund-finalists-just-the-ten-of-us https://www.racked.com/2015/7/29/9067959/alexander-wang-balenciaga https://www.elle.com/uk/fashion/news/a31773/alexander-wang-autumn-winter-campaign-instagram-kylie-jenner-tyga/ https://www.vogue.com/fashion-shows/fall-2007-ready-to-wear/alexander-wang https://www.wmagazine.com/gallery/alexander-wang-squad-models-fashion-week https://www.launchmetrics.com/resources/blog/influencer-marketing-alexander-wang https://cfda.com/members/profile/alexander-wang https://www.vogue.com/article/alexander-wang-new-york-fashion-week-spring-2018-show-vogueing-video-shoot https://i-d.vice.com/en_uk/article/mbege3/alexander-wang-is-fashion39s-youngest-over-achiever --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/mostfashionablecrime/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/mostfashionablecrime/support

Zoe Kravitz caused quite the stir over the Oscars. She didn't win anything, but she reminded many people and exposed people to the scandals of one of her closest friends, Alex Wang. For the majority of this episode, Alexander Wang = Company Wang = The Person Contact, Comments, Concerns, Suggestions, etc.: ⬇️ https://www.mostfashionablecrime.com/contact Website: ⬇️ www.mostfashionablecrime.com Newsletter: www.mostfashionablecrime.com/newsletter Social Media Handles: ⬇️ Twitter @MostFashionable Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok @MostFashionableCrime Join the Communities: ⬇️ Facebook Group: www.facebook.com/groups/mostfashionablecrime/ Reddit Community: https://www.reddit.com/r/MostFashionableCrime/ Sources:  https://medium.com/@ifashionseo/alexander-wangs-spring-2019-show-pays-homage-to-his-asian-american-identity-52db43c4a8cc https://www.harpersbazaar.com/fashion/designers/a768/alexander-wang-interview/ https://www.businessoffashion.com/education/rankings/2017/schools/central-saint-martins?type=bachelors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Wang_(designer) https://www.businessoffashion.com/community/people/alexander-wang https://www.vogue.com/article/cfdaemvogueem-fashion-fund-finalists-just-the-ten-of-us https://www.racked.com/2015/7/29/9067959/alexander-wang-balenciaga https://www.elle.com/uk/fashion/news/a31773/alexander-wang-autumn-winter-campaign-instagram-kylie-jenner-tyga/ https://www.vogue.com/fashion-shows/fall-2007-ready-to-wear/alexander-wang https://www.wmagazine.com/gallery/alexander-wang-squad-models-fashion-week https://www.launchmetrics.com/resources/blog/influencer-marketing-alexander-wang https://cfda.com/members/profile/alexander-wang https://www.vogue.com/article/alexander-wang-new-york-fashion-week-spring-2018-show-vogueing-video-shoot https://i-d.vice.com/en_uk/article/mbege3/alexander-wang-is-fashion39s-youngest-over-achiever --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/mostfashionablecrime/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/mostfashionablecrime/support

Alex has been practicing real estate in the Silicon Valley Bay Area since 1999. Embracing his role as a Real Estate Evangelist, he strives to move the industry towards a model of smaller business with stronger fidelity to clients, while combining focused negotiation, innovative technology, and reliable real estate practices.   Brett Jennings is the owner and founder of Real Estate Experts. Brett is an award-winning luxury home marketing specialist and also holds a certificate in negotiation from Harvard Law. The Wall Street Journal recognized Brett and his team as one of the top 250 real estate groups in the United States. With over one million agents in the country, this prestigious award places Brett in the top 1/10th of the top 1% among his peers. 

Tech Crunch reports that DeepScribe has landed $30 million in Series A funding, primarily from Nina Achadjian at Index Ventures. Existing investors Stage 2 Capital, 1984 Ventures and Bee Partners, plus newcomers Scale.ai CEO Alex Wang and Figma CEO Dylan Field, are also in the mix.

With COP26 set to kick off at the end of the week and President Xi's attendance looking unlikely, we were joined by three experts for a panel discussion on China's efforts to combat climate change - and what a successful COP 26 would look like. All three panellists have worked closely with China on climate change. Former Climate Change Secretary Amber Rudd led the UK's delegation at COP15 in Paris, Isabel Hilton founded the influential ChinaDialogue, and Alex Wang is a Professor at UCLA and Faculty Co-Director of the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, having previously worked for an American NGO in China. The discussion touched on China's long-term attitude to climate change, the effectiveness of Western pressure and the false dichotomy between cooperation and competition. The three panellists also discussed how China and the West's standing with lower-income countries could shape the outcome of the Glasgow summit. Read the full transcript here on our website. Further reading: Analysis: Where does China stand on climate change ahead of COP26? by Chris Cash, Researcher at China Research Group The Chinese government's new '1+N' policy framework for achieving carbon neutrality (EN).

Alex Wang has been practicing Real Estate in Silicon Valley Bay for the past 17 years, embracing his role as a Real Estate Evangelist. He strives to move the industry towards a model of a small and mighty business with a strong fidelity to clients while combining focus negotiation, innovative tech, and reliable Real Estate practices.  Alex has been ranked by the Wall Street Journal as one of the Top 100 Real Estate Agents in the country. He and his wife Lily have been married for the past 16 years and have three kids. Alex is also a part of the Dad Edge Business Accelerator Mastermind.  Today's podcast is centered around giving yourself advice from a future you's perspective. For example, what advice would you give yourself before you got married, got your first job, or had your first kid? Another piece of advice to take away from today's podcast is, "If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together." Alex gives us very sound advice on why working together will bring you much more success and meaningful relationships than working alone. For the show notes and exclusive links mentioned in this episode go to https://gooddadproject.com/friday11/ ———— Join the Free Dad Edge Facebook Group at gooddadproject.com/group. Apply for The Dad Edge Alliance at gooddadproject.com/alliance. Watch this interview on YouTube gooddadproject.com/youtube. Follow us on Instagram at @thedadedge! FREE RESOURCE – 21 Days to an Extraordinary Marriage

There’s been a lot of hype surrounding cryptocurrency recently, but many people still find this market difficult to access. Alex Wang, CEO and Co-Founder of Ember Fund, has found a way to solve this challenge. Ember Fund is on a mission to fundamentally transform access to cryptocurrency investing and make investment products used by sophisticated investors available to everyone.Ember Fund is also one of the Republic portfolio companies that successfully raised funds on our platform. We invited him to discuss the work Ember Fund does to make cryptocurrency investing accessible for everyday investors, the reason they chose to crowdfund on Republic, and their plans to democratize the world of finance. Key points discussed The mission behind Ember Fund (00:00)This is what gives Ember Fund a competitive edge (04:49)Why they choose to crowdfund on Republic (05:57)Choosing the investors at their cap table (08:45)Lessons learned through crowdfunding (11:23)Why Alex decided to establish Ember Fund (14:45)What’s next for Ember Fund (16:07)Additional resourcesLearn more about Ember Fund and their work here:https://www.emberfund.io/To keep in the loop for the latest developments in crowdfund investing, make sure to follow this podcast and listen in every week. Leave a rating and a review and let’s bring profit back to the people together.Ready to start investing in your future? Then head over to www.republic.co and find a startup you’re passionate about.This content is provided for educational purposes only by Republic. Nothing discussed should be construed as legal, tax, accounting, or investing advice. The views of the presenters may not be the views of Republic and its affiliates. Always consult with trusted professional advisors before making investments. Private investments are inherently illiquid and may result in a total loss. All rights reserved.

This week on Sinica, after an eventful week of climate-change-focused meetings, including U.S. special climate envoy John Kerry’s trip to China, the U.S.-hosted Leaders Summit on Climate convened on April 22 and 23. Kaiser chats with China climate policy specialist Angel Hsu, an assistant professor in the Public Policy Department and the Energy, Environment, and Ecology Program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Alex Wang, a professor of law at the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law, and a leading expert on environmental law and the law and politics of China. They provide insights into how China and the U.S. can continue to make progress on reducing greenhouse gas emissions even while competing on other fronts. 4:24: John Kerry’s mission to China17:08: Fighting for leadership on meeting climate goals 27:25: Will climate collaboration with China fall by the wayside?43:01: The Green New Deal and China’s environmental policiesRecommendations: Angel: Blockchain Chicken Farm by Xiaowei Wang.Alex: The Environment China podcast, Working: Researching, Interviewing, Writing by Robert Caro, and the highly informative Twitter feed of carbon analyst Yan Qin.Kaiser: The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War, The Steven Spielberg movie called Ready Player One.

On April 22, 2021, the National Committee held a virtual program with Angel Hsu, Jonas Nahm, and Alex Wang to discuss the future of U.S.-China climate cooperation in a conversation moderated by China energy expert Joanna Lewis. The program was held in partnership with the Penn Project on the Future of US-China Relations, which is sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for the Study of Contemporary China.

Did you know you can start earning interest on your crypto currency? And a lot of it at that. The Talk2Much Podcast is back in your life with one of my best episodes. This week, I interviewed the BlockFi Vice President, Shayne Mullens, about BlockFi's recordbreaking interest paid out to investors in the month of February. I also interviewed 6-Figure crypto investor, Alexander Wang, about the market and about his crypto newsletter. The first part of the interview is with Shayne Mullens. The second part of the interview is with Alex. We touched on a variety of crypto topics, including the price of Bitcoin at the end of this year, the crypto to invest in, and the emergence of BlockFi as a dominant company in the crypto space in the last 7 months. Alex's Crypto Newsletter Talk2Much Instagram If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with anyone you know and subscribe to my channel! All support is remembered along my journey! #Blockfi #crypto #bitcoin

The sound of SVBKVLT.

Dr. Alex Wang is a Family Medicine Resident particularly interested in preventative medicine, primary care, and sports medicine. He is a CEO of a startup called ScreenMe where they are dedicated to improve and incentivize pre-diabetes and pre-hypertension screening. Website: https://healthscreenme.com/

Dr. Wang is the Co-founder and CEO of ScreenMe, which was created for people who don’t get regular health check ups and are unaware of the devastating effects chronic diseases such as diabetes and hypertension can have on their lives. He hopes that ScreenMe can be part of a solution to increasing preventive screening rates as well as raising awareness and reducing health care costs.

In this episode of CRYPTO 101, brought to you by eToro, we speak with Alex Wang of Ember Fund, which is revolutionizing investing for the everyday consumer. With a deep background in artificial intelligence, mathematics, and computer science, Alex shares secrets about how he outperforms the market. He also discusses how you can reap those benefits by becoming a part of Ember Fund, a decentralized hedge fund. Sponsored link: http://etoro.com/crypto101 Guest Links: https://www.emberfund.io/ https://twitter.com/Ember_Fund Show Links: https://crypto101insider.com https://CRYPTO101podcast.com Patreon: www.patreon.com/user?u=8429526 Twitter: https://twitter.com/Crypto101Pod https://twitter.com/BrycePaul101 https://twitter.com/PizzaMind https://instagram.com/crypto_101 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/101Crypto https://www.facebook.com/CRYPTO101Podcast **THIS IS NOT FINANCIAL OR LEGAL ADVICE** © Copyright 2019 Boardwalk Flock, LLC All Rights Reserved ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ Fog by DIZARO https://soundcloud.com/dizarofr Creative Commons — Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported — CC BY-ND 3.0 Free Download / Stream: http://bit.ly/Fog-DIZARO Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/lAfbjt_rmE8 ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

In this episode of CRYPTO 101, brought to you by eToro, we speak with Alex Wang of Ember Fund, which is revolutionizing investing for the everyday consumer. With a deep background in artificial intelligence, mathematics, and computer science, Alex shares secrets about how he outperforms the market. He also discusses how you can reap those benefits by becoming a part of Ember Fund, a decentralized hedge fund. Sponsored link: http://etoro.com/crypto101 Guest Links: https://www.emberfund.io/ https://twitter.com/Ember_Fund Show Links: https://crypto101insider.com https://CRYPTO101podcast.com Patreon: www.patreon.com/user?u=8429526 Twitter: https://twitter.com/Crypto101Pod https://twitter.com/BrycePaul101 https://twitter.com/PizzaMind https://instagram.com/crypto_101 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/101Crypto https://www.facebook.com/CRYPTO101Podcast **THIS IS NOT FINANCIAL OR LEGAL ADVICE** © Copyright 2019 Boardwalk Flock, LLC All Rights Reserved ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ Fog by DIZARO https://soundcloud.com/dizarofr Creative Commons — Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported — CC BY-ND 3.0 Free Download / Stream: http://bit.ly/Fog-DIZARO Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/lAfbjt_rmE8 ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

In this episode, part of Sinica's California series, Kaiser chats with Alex Wang, a professor of law at UCLA and an expert on China's environmental law. Just back from the COP25 meeting in Madrid, Alex provides an informed and dispassionate assessment of China’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.8:26: China and the EU on climate change21:42: Is coal making a resurgence in China? 26:22: The carbon impact of the Belt and Road Initiative30:15: How California collaborates with China on climate change39:21: Predictions for the 2020 UN Climate Change ConferenceRecommendations:Alex: The report Accelerating the low carbon transition, by David G. Victor, Frank W. Geels, and Simon Sharpe, and The Science and Politics of Global Climate Change: A Guide to the Debate, by Andrew Dressler.Kaiser: The Netflix miniseries Trotsky, available with subtitles in English.

On the Startup Showcase Scott Kitun is joined with the CEO & Co Founder of Ember Fund, Alex Wang. Ember Fund is a cryptocurrency hedge fund for everyone. At Ember Fund, they’re fundamentally changing the way people invest in cryptocurrencies. To invest in Ember Fund click here. [audio

NAMM 2020 has just ended and Don Alder returns to All About Guitar with a special post NAMM wrap up!! We take a look at a brand new Don Alder Signature model fanfret guitar by Mayson, with a scalloped upper fretboard. Mayson also released a new harp guitar and we will be looking at that. Alex Wang of Mayson Guitars also joins us to talk about these magnificent instruments!! Don shows us a new battery/multi-channel mixer made by Elite Acoustics! And Tad Brown joins us to show us his latest archtop guitar!! It's a night of some great gear, great guitar playing, and more!! Link for Don Alder: http://www.donalder.com/index.htm Link for Alex Wang and Mayson Guitars: https://maysonguitars.eu/ Link for Elite Acoustics: https://www.eliteacoustics.com/ Link for Tad Brown Guitars: https://brown.guitars/

NAMM 2020 has just ended and Don Alder returns to All About Guitar with a special post NAMM wrap up!! We take a look at a brand new Don Alder Signature model fanfret guitar by Mayson, with a scalloped upper fretboard. Mayson also released a new harp guitar and we will be looking at that. Alex Wang of Mayson Guitars also joins us to talk about these magnificent instruments!! Don shows us a new battery/multi-channel mixer made by Elite Acoustics! And Tad Brown joins us to show us his latest archtop guitar!! It's a night of some great gear, great guitar playing, and more!! Link for Don Alder: http://www.donalder.com/index.htm Link for Alex Wang and Mayson Guitars: https://maysonguitars.eu/ Link for Elite Acoustics: https://www.eliteacoustics.com/ Link for Tad Brown Guitars: https://brown.guitars/

In this episode I talk with Alex Wang, a birder and conservation biologist living on the Big Island of Hawaii, who is home to visit his family in Tacoma.  His Dad, Art Wang was my guest on Episode #14 so be sure to check that out too. We talk about many conservation issues for birds on the Hawaiian Islands, the inclusion of Hawaii into the ABA area, and Alex's birding story.  Enjoy.   This is a link to the Hawaii Birding Babe home page where you can likely find Alex to take you on a day of birding on the big island if you visit there.  https://www.facebook.com/Hawaii.Birding.Babe/ This is the Hawaii Audubon webpage where you can read about birding in Hawaii. http://www.hawaiiaudubon.org/birding-in-hawaii Be sure to look for my post on BirdBanter.com for a blog post with photos Alex provided of many of the native Hawaiian birds, literally in his hand from banding work.  http://birdbanter.com/index.php/blog/ Wish me safe travels in Asia, and I hope to find great guests to talk with there for future episodes.  Until then, Good Birding.  Good Day!

Alex Wang is the Founder & CEO @ Scale, the data platform for AI providing high-quality training and validation data for AI applications. To date, they have raised over $123m in financing from some of the best investors in the business including Founders Fund, Index Ventures, Thrive, Spark and Coatue and then also some of the world's best operators and founders of Dropbox, Instagram, Quora, Github and Twitch to name a few. Prior to founding Scale, Alexandr was a Tech Lead at Quora, directly responsible for all speed projects and before that a software engineer at Addepar responsible for building and maintaining financial models. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Alex made his way from growing up in Los Alamos to being one of the hottest founders in the valley with Scale's new round giving them a unicorn valuation? How did growing up outside the ether of the valley shape Alex's operating mindset today? 2.) Why does Alex believe that AI is under-hyped relative to the state of technology today? Would Alex agree that most projects claiming to be AI are merely rebrandings from actuarial science, data science etc etc? What questions does Alex ask to determine true AI or BS? 3.) How does Alex think about how AI can deal better with ambiguity of data? What other core areas would Alex like to see meaningful step-function improvements in? How does Alex think about the value of data-set size? How does he think about the utility value of data reducing with every incremental data point? How does Alex think about the rise of synthetic data? How does this change the landscape? 4.) What are Alex's biggest lessons on what it takes to hire incredible people before you are a hot company? How does Alex determine whether someone has the right risk profile and desire to work in a startup? What questions reveal that? Where does Alex believe that many go wrong in the early days of hiring? What would he do differently now? 5.) For the $100m Series C, how did the round come together? What did the process look like? How did this round compare to the other rounds? How does Alex think about and approach the element of investor selection? How can founders build relationships with investors in these hyper-compressed fundraising timelines? What have been Alex's biggest lessons when it comes to CEO growth and then also board management? Items Mentioned In Today’s Show: Alex’s Fave Book: 7 Powers: The Foundations of Business Strategy As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Alex on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.  

Artificial intelligence can seem like automated magic, but it takes an army of human data labelers to do the trick. Their work may appear  monotonous, but Scale CEO Alex Wang, says that for many around the world, it’s a welcome opportunity. “It’s really hard for us being in America to fully grasp this, but around the world the reality is in a lot of areas there are really, really poor employment opportunities. . . . as our platform scales and as the Internet scales in the world, many, many people are getting access to jobs and employment opportunities when otherwise they simply wouldn’t.” Get email updates about new episodes.

Alex Wang, a Taylor student, preaches on Malachi chapter 2.

Having put in 17 years as a real estate agent in the Silicon Valley (one of the fastest markets in the world), Alex Wang has been around the block a time or two when it comes to understanding the world of real estate — and his experience shows in his numbers. In 2018 alone, Alex made 56 transactions for a whopping $80 million in sales, a jaw-dropping half of which was generated online. Wow. Just wow. As the Real Estate Evangelist, Alex has a deep passion for the real estate profession, and he’s a firm believer in the value of being “The Digital Mayor.” Alex works towards this goal in his Palo Alto market by producing authentic content that he uses across a variety of online platforms, going so far as to hire a videographer to follow him for a year to chronicle the daily life of a real estate agent. Emphasizing the need to be real and individualize yourself online, Alex believes that a well-developed personal brand and regular community interaction on social media will go far in helping you stay top-of-mind with clients. In today’s episode, Alex discusses the multiple marketing methods available for real estate agents and shares why he thinks an online presence is key — from social media and a personal website to Yelp and Google My Business. He also candidly outlines how a focus on building relationships can help you beat out the big names of the real estate industry in your local area.  IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL LEARN: How to be authentic in the online content that you produce Why it’s important to take your real estate farming game to the online arena How to choose the best way to market your real estate brand What social proof is and why’s it’s important to your success in the real estate world Why your website needs to reflect your personal brand How to build credibility and social proof on Google My Business How to get customers and clients to leave you reviews Why building an online presence is about more than just lead conversion How to differentiate your real estate presence from big-name competitors in your local market LINKS FROM TODAY’S EPISODE Ready to grow your business in the new year? Check out the new  which helps you get more Agent referrals, convert more clients and build your online presence. Want more free content to help you succeed? Join our Facebook Group 

Don Alder gave me a call just after the holidays and was excited about some new guitars and wanted to do a show on them. I didn't have a Monday open around the NAMM Show, which they were attending, so I pre-recorded this upcoming show to take a look at these amazing instruments. Alex Wang and Van Chan from Mayson Guitars and Martinez Guitars join me and Don and we take a look at their beautiful and affordable instruments. Don also brought a Timberline Guitars harp guitar, a unique low strung Kevin Amy Muiderman guitar and a Tad Brown Guitars archtop guitar. It's a night of some really beautiful instruments, great tone and something you need to check out!!

Don Alder gave me a call just after the holidays and was excited about some new guitars and wanted to do a show on them. I didn't have a Monday open around the NAMM Show, which they were attending, so I pre-recorded this upcoming show to take a look at these amazing instruments. Alex Wang and Van Chan from Mayson Guitars and Martinez Guitars join me and Don and we take a look at their beautiful and affordable instruments. Don also brought a Timberline Guitars harp guitar, a unique low strung Kevin Amy Muiderman guitar and a Tad Brown Guitars archtop guitar. It's a night of some really beautiful instruments, great tone and something you need to check out!!

Alex Wang (@alexander.a.wang) is a practitioner of movement, student of the body, and a dear friend of mine.  In today's dialogue, Alex reveals to us his myth. We then chat about the influence of our parents, the challenges of daily interactions, skillfully navigating conversation, friendships and relationships, and how we can improve and grow in these departments. Finally, Alex shares his journey to bodily fitness before we dive into personality tests and pipe-dreams of #vanlife / #tinyhome living. Alrighty then...! Settle yourself in and enjoy the words of my dear friend, Alex Wang! Love, David   Show Notes: Follow Alex on Instagram Access Early Podcast/Blog Content: Subscribe to Patreon: bit.ly/twdpatreon Subscribe to the Blog: bit.ly/twdblogsubscribe Connect with David: Blog, Stories, Podcast & More: thinkingwithdavid.com/ Instagram: @stay.in.alive Read my memoir: The Trail Provides

In 1975, Steven Spielberg brought us the terrifying film JAWS. 40 years later, Alexander T. Wang brings us his claustrophobic parody FLAWS. Join Mike & J in a cool pool […]

Alex Wang has been a real estate practitioner in Silicon Valley since 1999, working as a Realtor, team leader, and founder of an independent brokerage, which was later acquired. In 2017, Alex closed over $100M in sales and is recognized by the Wall Street Journal as one of the top 250 agents nationwide. In this podcast Alex will focus on sharing with you his Social Proof strategy which he uses to grow his business and develop a competitive advantage through a rock solid online presence. Youtube link referenced in the video: https://youtu.be/YCjE3nUaa4Q

Paper by Alex Wang, Amanpreet Singh, Julian Michael, Felix Hill, Omer Levy, and Samuel R. Bowman. Sam comes on to tell us about GLUE. We talk about the motivation behind setting up a benchmark framework for natural language understanding, how the authors defined "NLU" and chose the tasks for this benchmark, a very nice diagnostic dataset that was constructed for GLUE, and what insight they gained from the experiments they've run so far. We also have some musings about the utility of general-purpose sentence vectors, and about leaderboards. https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/GLUE%3A-A-Multi-Task-Benchmark-and-Analysis-Platform-Wang-Singh/a2054eff8b4efe0f1f53d88c08446f9492ae07c1

On the last day of fashion week, Jenné Lombardo (MADE Fashion Week and The Terminal Presents) and Matt Scanlan (CEO & Founder, NAADAM) joined Simon Collins and our friends at NeueHouse for the FCD Salon Series; an unfiltered conversation on how to start and maintain a fashion business. From how to measure success, the good that comes from failure, Alex Wang throwbacks and crossing the Gobi Desert, Matt and Jenné tell all on what it really takes to make it in this industry. In case you missed the live conversation or want to hear it again, listen here.

Today we celebrate the 100th episode of The Onion Juice Podcast! Three of my favorite people, Dustin Brohm, Tyler Zey, and Jerry Potter, join me to reminisce about how the Onion Juice Podcast got started. In addition to giving me a hard time about the Onion Juice name, they also chime in on why it is crucial for Real Estate Agents to use social media and create a personal brand. Join us for this entertaining and informative conversation and the opportunity to hear the roasts and kudos sent in by listeners and former podcast guests! Why you need to create your own brand and become a media company instead of buying leads Many of the big Real Estate teams buy their leads from Zillow or Realtor.com. But this is not a good long-game plan for lead generation. Find out why on today's episode of The Onion Juice Podcast as Dustin Brohm, Tyler Zey, Jerry Potter and I talk about the future of Real Estate and why you need to focus on providing value at the local level. Listen in for lots of great content in the middle of an entertaining celebration of our 100th episode! Why you need a Real Estate website and what it can do for you Do you have a Real Estate website and Facebook page? If not, according to Tyler Zey, you are missing the boat. On this centennial episode of The Onion Juice Podcast, Tyler fills us in on the future of where websites are going and why you need to have one to be successful. And, by the way, episode #72 with Tyler Zey is the second most downloaded episode of the podcast! He and Easy Agent Pro have so much to offer and have been a great part of this podcast. Listen in to hear specific ways that Real Estate websites are getting better and better at helping you build relationships! How The Onion Juice Podcast has opened doors in my Real Estate career On this centennial episode of the Onion Juice Podcast, I get to chat with three long-time friends about the history of the podcast. One fun thing that we talk about is how The Onion Juice Podcast has affected my career in ways both planned and unexpected. It has been a true adventure in being a media company that happens to sell Real Estate! Listen in to get the juicy details and think about ways that you can use media in your Real Estate business. Roasts and kudos from The Onion Juice Podcast listeners on the 100th episode To celebrate our centennial episode, I invited listeners and past guests to roast me with audio clips. Some sent roasts and spoofs, others graciously shared what they have learned from and appreciated about the podcast, and I get to appreciate and affirm them as well. Join the fun and listen in to this celebration. And then get ready for the next hundred episodes! Happy ear-guzzling!   Outline of this great episode [0:30] Welcome to the centennial episode of the Onion Juice Podcast, with Dustin Brohm, Tyler Zey, and Jerry Potter! [7:47] What do you think about when you hear “Onion Juice?” [13:18] Looking back to the SnapPack group. [16:42] Which episodes have had the most downloads? [19:30] Being a media company -- from a fringe idea to necessary personalization. [21:49] Lead-generation strategy - Providing value on a local level will allow you to survive. [23:28] Social media is the long-game for lead-generation. [26:32] Why you need a Real Estate website and what it can do for you. [29:48] How The Onion Juice Podcast has opened doors in my Real Estate career. [32:20] Check the Onion Juice Facebook group to hear my infamous radio jingle. Roasts and kudos sent in by listeners and past guests: [35:09] Sonja Figueroa [37:59] Rory Pitts [40:42] Eric Larken. [41:44] Mark Carlson [42:19] Shannon Milligan [43:05] Amy Wudel [43:47] Sue Pinky Benson [44:45] Joe Marks [46:29] My wife and daughter [47:36] Keith Gilmore [50:17] Alex Wang [51:04] TJ Kelly from Mxt Media. [52:56] Bob Wahl [54:11] C Ray Brower [54:49] Kyndra Sweat Resources and Links mentioned in this episode SnapPack Live Facebook group The most downloaded episode: Episode #51 with Jason Frazier, Why You Need to Be Yourself to Sell More Houses The second-most downloaded episode: Episode #72 with Tyler Zey, Real Estate Facebook Ads That Work Our sponsors: www.KnightBarry.com www.EasyAgentPro.com/OJ For free pdf business plan, text “roundbox” to 44222 To get the 11 question listing presentation, text “listing” to 44222 Roundbox Coaching Join the Onion Juice - Ideas for Real Estate Agents Facebook Group RealtyExecutivescs.com Follow Neil on: Snapchat Instagram Facebook Twitter Leave a rating and review on iTunes

Can you use online reviews to build a Real Estate business? My friend, Alex Wang, heard that I was getting back into sales and gave me a call to offer this helpful idea. I knew immediately that I needed to get him on the show to share this with you. Alex is a Realtor in Palo Alto, California, doing extreme volume in a luxury market. But, like Onion Juicers, he is attracting business by being authentic and vulnerable and being a media company that happens to sell Real Estate. Listen to my interview with Alex to learn how he uses online reviews to build his business. You can build your Real Estate business off of online reviews Online reviews are a form of social proof. On this episode, Alex Wang and I talk about what social proof is and why it works. But what if you get a bad review? Alex gives a great response to this concern as he talks about developing your online presence. Do you know the best site for your reviews? Listen to this episode to find out and to learn how online reviews can help build your Real Estate business. If you can't solicit for reviews, how do you get them? Most online review sites do not allow you to solicit for reviews. So how do you get them? On this episode, Alex Wang describes how he gets reviews and how it helps him build his Real Estate business. We also discuss how to use client testimonials and when not to use them. Alex has been very creative in the way he uses his reviews and gives us a link to see what he did with them. Listen to this episode to learn how to get reviews and use them to build your business. How to get started on your online presence If you are not currently using the web for your business, this podcast episode is for you! My guest, Alex Wang, says that “if you don't embrace online presence, you will become extinct!” Alex shares some great ideas for how to establish your online presence and use your reviews to build your Real Estate business. He gives practical tips for those who are new to doing business via the web and explains the value of making your content mobile friendly as well. Listen to this great conversation to learn what you need to get started online! Go incognito to see what others see when they search for you or your business What do people see when they search for you or your business online? Alex Wang's advice on today's episode is to open an incognito window and search on yourself to find out. This can give you great insights on the improvements that you can make to your web presence. Alex also tells us how to set up a free Google My Business listing. Listen to this great interview to learn about effectively creating your online presence. Outline of this great episode [0:27] Intro to the Onion Juice Podcast and this episode with Alex Wang. [2:08] Thanks to our sponsors, Knight Barry Title and Easy Agent Pro. [3:32] Roundbox Coaching information for new agents. [5:00] Who is Alex Wang? [6:57] Social proof: building your business off of online reviews [8:15] What if someone gives you a bad review? [11:45] Creative ways to use your online reviews. [15:25] If you can't solicit for reviews, how do you get them? [17:38] How online reviews affect Alex Wang's business. [18:16] How to get started on your online presence. [20:15] Go incognito to see what others see when they search for you or your business. [23:13] Why is Alex Wang sharing his secrets? Resources and Links mentioned in this episode Alex Wang Reviews Video Alex Wang's website Square Space Google MyBusiness page Wordpress Website grader powered by HubSpot Google Page Speed Tools Our sponsors: www.KnightBarry.com www.EasyAgentPro.com/OJ For free pdf business plan, text “roundbox” to 44222 To get the 11 question listing presentation, text “listing” to 44222 Roundbox Coaching Join the Onion Juice - Ideas for Real Estate Agents Facebook Group RealtyExecutivescs.com (example of Easy Agent Pro website) Search Salt Lake (example of Easy Agent Pro website) Follow Neil on: Snapchat Instagram Facebook Twitter Leave a rating and review on iTunes

Episode 82 takes us to the Silicon Valley where we chat with Alex Wang of The Sereno Group. Alex embraces technology and "evangelizes" for his customers, bringing a passion for negotiating and service to his buyers and sellers.  Enjoy Alex's story and be sure to check out his site at AlexWang.com.

In this episode of The Snapshot, we talk to Alex Wang of The Sereno Group in Palo Alto, CA. We revisit the topic of Snapchat, because there is still so much to talk about!  You'll learn: 1. What type of content Alex is posting on Snapchat. 2. Why Alex combines personal and professional content on Snapchat. 3. Who is using Snapchat. 4. How content unrelated to real estate is helping Alex's real estate business and the profession in general. 5. How Snapchat can lead to referral business. 6. How to use Snapchat for internal communications within an office. 7. Why The Sereno Group loves Homesnap Pro! Links mentioned: Waze Charlie Evernote Start Snapchat Video Guide              

China has declared “war on pollution” with several new environmental laws and the willingness to take action against climate change.  Awareness of the severe and lingering environmental problems in China is increasing, both domestically and externally.  Does this truly mean that China will finally take meaningful, active steps to combat air, water and land pollution, or are the initiatives merely aspirational with other issues continuing to take precedence despite much promising rhetoric?  In this podcast, Myanna Dellinger interviews three law professors with unique insight into Chinese environmental law and its potential enforcement. Joseph W. Dellapenna is a Professor of Law at Villanova Law School.  His research focuses on water management (national and international) and international and comparative law.  He has previously taught at several universities in the United States and abroad.  He is the only person ever to be a Fulbright Senior Lecturer in Law in both the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of China.  Professor Dellapenna has also served as a consultant to numerous private entities and foreign governments, including the World Bank, the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the People’s Republic of China, as well as the Republic of China.  Professor Dellapenna lived for two years in China and still returns several times a year for professional purposes.  He lived in China for two years and speaks Mandarin. Joel A. Mintz is a Professor of Law at Nova Southeastern Law Center where he has taught courses related to environmental law since 1983. Before entering academia, Professor Mintz was an enforcement attorney and chief attorney with the EPA in Chicago and Washington, D.C. Widely viewed as one of the nation’s leading legal academic experts on environmental enforcement, Joel Mintz has testified before the United States Congress on the subject and published three books and numerous book contributions and law review articles regarding it. Professor Mintz is also the author or co-author of six other books regarding environmental law, sustainability, and municipal debt financing. He is a recipient of several awards for his work as an attorney, teacher and scholar.  He is also an elected member of the American Law Institute and a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation. Alex Wang is an Assistant Professor of Law at UCLA School of Law.  His research focuses on Chinese law, politics, and environmental regulation. Professor Wang previously served as senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) in Beijing and as the founding director of NRDC’s China Environmental Law & Governance Project. In this capacity, he worked with China’s government agencies, legal community, and environmental groups to improve the environmental rule of law and strengthen the role of the public in environmental protection.  He helped to establish NRDC’s Beijing office in 2006. He was a Fulbright Fellow to China from 2004-05. Professor Wang was a fellow of the National Committee on United States-China Relations (2008-10) and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Advisory Board to the Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations.

Keynote and panel discussion - Evan Osnos, The New Yorker; Alex Wang, UCLA; Yunxiang Yan, UCLA; and Jeffrey Wasserstrom, UCI

Keynote and panel discussion - Evan Osnos, The New Yorker; Alex Wang, UCLA; Yunxiang Yan, UCLA; and Jeffrey Wasserstrom, UCI

Alex Wang, Co-founder of Carapace Wet-suits - Alex figured out a way to disrupt the wet-suit world! Find out how Alex took a booming product and made it BETTER!Gregory Markell - How do you get the most of Search engine optimization? Gregory is our Business Insider expert on all things SEO! Keith Boesky, Boesky & Company - Keith shares his story of starting his business. He went through all sorts of trials and tribulations, but eventually got on track. Find out how you can do the same with your business! Patrick Rettig - Patrick is our CMO or Chief MacGyver Officer! If your business is in trouble and needs to be fixed Patrick is your man!

'TRY TO KEEP THE CLOWNS IN THE CIRCUS TENT!' TOK THOMPSON (Ancient Aliens, The History Channel etc...) MARK RYAN (Black Sails, Transformers 1,2,3,4 and at some point 5!) SALLI SAFFIOTI (Watchmen, Resident Evil, Monster High) QUINTON FLYNN (Robot Chicken, Spiderman etc...) DIETER JANSEN (of Monstroville and Das Raad) BOB SUGAR BEAR DAVIS (Of Carozza Surfboards) Director DAVID ZUCKERMAN (Afterworld) MARIO BUENO (who was BATMAN at our 'Combat Radio Christmas Event For Homeless Children!') Producer NOLAN MOON, CHELSEA TAYLOR LEECH, DJ CHANDLER COATES (Combat Radio's Resident DJ), SAVANNAH COATES and the team from The Pizza Press, ANDREW PARK and ALEX WANG of Carapace Wetsuits www.carapacewetsuits.com all in studio! Get the show here: latalkradio.com/Combat.php *In addition to opur appearances at USC, UCLA, UNLV, You can catch us at the TULARE SCI-FI CON -benefiting the Children's Library- March 28th! facebook.com/tularescificon **AND...........'PREPARE TO REPEL BOARDERS.......!' Combat Radio will be making a special 'LIVE' broadcast appearance from the 'MARKED MEN PARTY' on the decks of the H.M.S. Surprise (used in 'The Pirates Of The Caribbean' and 'Master And Commander') during San Diego Comic Con! Friday night 7.25.14....! Details on how 'YOU' can be a part of the action here: latalkradio.com/Combat.php (Not to be confused with our appearance at San Diego State the following night.....)

'TRY TO KEEP THE CLOWNS IN THE CIRCUS TENT!' TOK THOMPSON (Ancient Aliens, The History Channel etc...) MARK RYAN (Black Sails, Transformers 1,2,3,4 and at some point 5!) SALLI SAFFIOTI (Watchmen, Resident Evil, Monster High) QUINTON FLYNN (Robot Chicken, Spiderman etc...) DIETER JANSEN (of Monstroville and Das Raad) BOB SUGAR BEAR DAVIS (Of Carozza Surfboards) Director DAVID ZUCKERMAN (Afterworld) MARIO BUENO (who was BATMAN at our 'Combat Radio Christmas Event For Homeless Children!') Producer NOLAN MOON, CHELSEA TAYLOR LEECH, DJ CHANDLER COATES (Combat Radio's Resident DJ), SAVANNAH COATES and the team from The Pizza Press, ANDREW PARK and ALEX WANG of Carapace Wetsuits www.carapacewetsuits.com all in studio! Get the show here: latalkradio.com/Combat.php *In addition to opur appearances at USC, UCLA, UNLV, You can catch us at the TULARE SCI-FI CON -benefiting the Children's Library- March 28th! facebook.com/tularescificon **AND...........'PREPARE TO REPEL BOARDERS.......!' Combat Radio will be making a special 'LIVE' broadcast appearance from the 'MARKED MEN PARTY' on the decks of the H.M.S. Surprise (used in 'The Pirates Of The Caribbean' and 'Master And Commander') during San Diego Comic Con! Friday night 7.25.14....! Details on how 'YOU' can be a part of the action here: latalkradio.com/Combat.php (Not to be confused with our appearance at San Diego State the following night.....)

Talk by Alex Wang, UCLA Law School

Dr. Alex Wang, Sachin Desai, and Jisung Park discuss prospects for balancing environmental protection and economic growth in China.

Red Alert: China Time, China Scale Peter Greenwood, Executive Director of Strategy, China Light and Power Group Stephen Leeb, Co-author, Red Alert Alex Wang, Visiting Professor, UC Berkeley School of Law Julian Wong, Attorney, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati; Former Advisor, U.S. Department of Energy The four China watchers assembled for this Climate One panel debate the motives for, and the implications of, China’s domestic climate action, particularly its abundant clean energy investments. Stephen Leeb, co-author, Red Alert, is the panel’s contrarian. “I don’t think China does anything with the world’s interest at hand; I think they do everything with China’s interest at hand. Climate change is very much a mixed bag for them. Much more important to them is the issue of resource scarcity.” Leeb was suspicious of the intent of China’s renewable energy investments. China, he says, aims to control the solar market to the detriment of foreign players, including the United States. Julian Wong, an attorney with Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, agrees with Leeb, up to a point. Yes, energy is a pivotal issue in China’s economic growth, he says, and scarcity issues are “high in the minds of China’s leaders.” He also cites the increasing importance of environmental protection in preventing unrest. “Ultimately, this Communist Party is in power as long as the people allow it to be. If you are getting protests by citizens, by residents, on very fundamental needs, that’s going to get the attention of leaders.” Alex Wang, a visiting professor at the UC Berkeley School of Law, emphasizes the importance of the environmental protest movement, citing events this summer at a chemical plant in the city of Dalian and at facilities operated by Jinko Solar. “People are getting more wealthy. They are getting better educated about environmental issues, and they realize that is impacting their health, their children’s health,” he says. Counter to Stephen Leeb, Peter Greenwood, Executive Director of Strategy, China Light and Power Group, says we should vaunt not vilify China’s investments in wind and solar. “It’s not actually, necessarily, a bad story for the rest of the world. Wind turbine prices have fallen in the last couple of years by about 20%. A lot of that is due to the efficiency and scale of Chinese manufacturing,” he says. “What does that do? It means that wind projects that were previously uneconomical become economical. Sites that were previously not feasible become feasible. Subsidies that might otherwise have to be paid by Western and other governments can perhaps operate at lower levels. That’s a beneficial story.” This program was recorded in front of a live audience at The Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on October 12, 2011