¶ Travis Kalanick: Officially exiting stealth mode, what he's been working on
I don't know if some of you knew I was an angel investor in some companies. On the count of three, what's my favorite angel investment of all time? One, two, three? Thank you. Give it up, Travis Kalinick. Thank you. Appreciate you. All right. Wow. Um on a big news day, Travis is here on a very big news day. You've spent uh wow, I guess like seven years. Just in the lab building. Last year.
Every year I ask you, Hey, you wanna come to the Olin Summit? You wanna you say nah? It's like I'm gonna just chill, I'm building. Next year, hey, you know, it's just always available to you. Yeah, stealth. I'm stealth. Nobody knows where I am. Nobody knows what I'm doing. The employees are not allowed to put the name of the company. on their LinkedIn.
Thousands of employees that weren't allowed to put the company name on LinkedIn. I mean incredible. And I'm like, okay. And their parents thought they worked for the CIA. Yeah. And then he's like, and by the way, J. Cal, you can invest. You can't announce it and you have to sign an idiot. You can't mention you're an investor. It's like, okay, no problem. I'm just happy to be on the cap table. Is he like kinda like secret saying what he wasn't supposed to say? Yeah, right.
Yeah, let's go. You're out. It's out. You're you came out of stealth today. Um It's so funny. It's so great. You came out of stealth? Well you you talked a little bit, you came to all in summit land. Is that true? Is that fair? You say you're coming out of stealth today? Is that right? Well look, let's just start with what that meant for our employees, because again Imagine if you're at a multi-thousand-person company and every single employee has stealth.
on their LinkedIn, including salespeople. Okay? Including recruiters. Like it was h they they were they were living life on hard mode. It's kinda fun too, right? I mean I mean yeah they it was like kinda cool. What the what's what is this? Why are there why is this massive density of stealth? Right. startup people in Los Angeles. What is happening over there? Yeah. Yeah. Also technically the name of the company in different countries was very
generic names of companies. I mean everything was designed to be stealth. Right. So we operate in thirty countries. In the US, the kitchens product is known as Cloud Kitchens. In Korea, it's Kitchen Valley. In the Middle East, it's Namah. In Latin America, parts of Latin America, it's Casinas Sequeltas.
I mean you get the idea. You can't even remember all the names and all the code words. Um but we have four in China. You know, it's like all over the place. Yeah. But things have gone really well. And you've been a little acquisitive. So tell us about the branding today that you're announcing and then maybe some of the acquisitions and evolution of the company. You're not just renting kitchen space. Those who
I mean, know how I thought about things in the Uber Day. A lot of this stuff's not surprising. I I would often talk about digitizing the physical world. I think I even did it all at Summit. the quick version of this, I'll try to do it quickly, but it's like uh we know the bits world, the computer world, the one that Michael Dell essentially invented for us.
CPU storage network, these are the three core computing resources when you go to computer science class your first day. Three core computer resources. CPU manipulates the bits, storage stores the bits, network moves bits from point A to point B. But if you're digitizing the physical world, you're treating atoms like bits. You're building an atoms based computer and I'll explain what I mean to say. I know this is a little a little out there.
CPU manipulates bits, what manipulates atoms? Manufacturing. Storage stores bits, what stores atoms? Real estate. Network moves bits from point A to point B, what moves atoms? That's transportation or logistics. So you have these three core computing resources in an atoms-based computer. The name of my company was very obtuse and purposely designed to be as boring as hell, was called City Storage Systems.
So that's digitized real estate in an atoms-based computer, our first computer being a food computer. What does that mean? Manufacturing real estate and logistics for food. And so you start to get there and the idea the the mission was infrastructure for better food. The idea was can you get a meal that's prepared and delivered to you so efficient That it starts to approach the the the cost of going to the grocery store. If you can do that, you do to the kitchen what Uber did to the car.
But in the Uber day, the roads were there. The cars are unused. You just had to put an app in the app store. It wasn't that easy, but kind of that easy. In this world, you can't do this on a restaurant. Restaurant doesn't have when I left Uber, 13% of all San Francisco miles were Uber miles. You can't get and that was ten year nine years ago. You can't get there.
on food, on restaurants. They they have like twenty percent capacity. Uber Eats and DoorDash fill it, but the infrastructure to do high capacity, high scale sort of industrial production is just not there and the logistics just not there. It just doesn't work. That's why on e commerce you go through Amazon big ass warehouses. With awesome logistics, you've got to do the same thing when food, when food goes to e commerce. That was a lot. Yeah. Okay. So bottom line is.
It's awesome. We do this food computation stuff. We're doing more computers now. And so the name of the company is called Adams. And it's let's say the mission uh is um is uh physical automation to transform industries and move the world.
¶ How to automate the physical world, markets to go after
And so we have our food computer talked about, then we do we're doing mining. Mining as in mining minerals. Data mining. We're talking about Adams guys. Yeah. So well of course you do some mining data mine too, but the point is is physical mining, so automation of mines. And uh the mission there is m uh more productive mines to power Earth's industries.
Right? So it's got this industrial atoms vibe to it. And then on the transport side, it's uh wheelbase for robots. Because if you're doing specialized robots, not humanoids, specialized robots. You need to be able to move and act in the physical world. But the minute you're moving You gotta have a wheelbase. So it's just part of the equation.
And a lot of people go look at Tesla, it's great. Look at uh look at Waymo, awesome. They're cruising around Austin, of course. But there's so many things that move. It's not just a ride sharing thing. Um and so um obviously including mining equipment that's doing its thing. So you guys th that's the general sort of idea and we acquired a company on the mining stuff, a company called Pronto.
Or it's about to close. It's we're we're inches from closing is the right way to put it. What were they doing? What was their business? Pronto. Automating mining equipment. Were they based? Uh, they're based in San Francisco. So you and I were starting to talk about this backstage, but there's some folks I talked to in the mining industry who mentioned, you know, like the the the big issue with mining
Number one is just surveying, like finding the the the locations, right? Is there an advantage to be created there?'Cause I know there's a couple of startups that are trying to be really smart about selecting locations to get the targets out of the ground. Yeah. And then the other one is like, well, can you go deep? Because pretty much anywhere on earth you can get whatever you want if you're willing to go deep enough.
the cost is ener is distance squared, right? So the energy cost is like how deep are you going to the s to to the second power. So it becomes you know geometrically more expensive to go deeper, but the deeper you go you're the more you're able to kind of not worry about getting the right location. So does automation unlock that capacity? Automation definitely does. I mean did you have I mean then also it's like, man, does Boring Company have some good stuff going?
Like I hope we've l we're like we're doing the mining thing like and Boring goes makes you know, some good tunnels for for cars to do the thing. But like there's some kind of boring mechanism, automated tunneling to do some of this. But to be honest, there's there's you know, they have this this thing is like rare earths. I don't know why they put plural rare earths. Isn't it rares earth? I don't know. But the
But rare earth. Yeah, but the it's not rare. Uncommon mineral. Guys, it's not rare. It's what you have to do to the land is aggressive. And what's rare is the is is where the where are the places they'll let you do it that you can also sort of get people to. When you automate, you can go to a lot of places. Uh well first is all the mines that exist are way more productive. Um and the second is you can then sort of justify going to places you wouldn't have been able to go before because
Um, you don't have as much of a labor footprint or a safety issue or a whole bunch of other things that then inhospitable, if it's regulated, if it's like I don't want to live there, it's the end of the earth. Yeah. You can send robots and have people monitoring them remotely. Yeah. And and yeah, this is like a a future that feels like a little bit like science fiction. Look, we're here in Austin. sort of bl break down the physical AI stack.
includes not just like, oh yeah, computation and I've got to have physical AI models and I've got to all the things you sort of think of. What about land development? That should be in that stack. What about chemistry? That needs to be in the stack. Manufacturing needs to be a stack. When you look at the stack, you're like, damn, Tesla's got this shit.
They are they are the Google of this era, which is what I mean by that is in the two thousands, if you were doing a startup in the two thousands, the first question you would get. is uh why isn't why isn't Google gonna kill you? Or why isn't Google just gonna do it? Why Google they're not gonna know that y they killed you. And before that Microsoft And before that was Microsoft in late ninety.
Uber had a time, 2010. Yeah. What if Uber puts that in the app? Come on. It was like, dude, this is Uber. I'm like, but you know, I think in the physical AI space that's a that's sort of a Tesla thing. Um, but there's so many things to do. You gotta shoot your shot, gotta do some stuff. And rumors that um hey, you might not be done with self driving, something that you were very early on. How do you think about what you're seeing in the playing field of self driving? Because
¶ Return to self-driving: Tesla, Waymo, and the autonomous race
My lord, you know, Waymo's making great progress. Tesla's making great progress. Pick a winner. Like pick a winner between Tesla Tesla, Waymo, Uber. Or or like Uber seems to be building a network of stuff. Yeah, I mean the number of Pick a winner. The number of players in this space is crazy now, right? Like, yeah, look, there's I think there's more noise, if there's more bark than there is bite right now. Um
Look, I think Waymo obviously is ahead. The existence proof is there. Their issue is manufacturing and scale, um and urgency and fierceness, like let's Come on. Let's go. Yeah. You know, Uber had an autonomy project back in the day. So and they have a different strategy these days. I haven't been there for a while. So but the but the point is is that you so you got Waymo, then you've got Tesla. Fundamentals Science
Hard mode times a hundred. And the question is do they get there in what time scale? If if they and like honestly everybody's like, could happen tomorrow, could happen in five years. And I think that it's like when does the chat GPT moment happen for vision? Is basically the thing, let's call it vision without other sensors.
So super inspiring, but like w what's the timeline on it? Yeah. Um, those are the base this is basically the and then there's a lot of other little guys that don't really have the stuff, I believe, yet. There's nobody standing out just yet of of the others. Do you think we're at a point now, like obviously now that you're getting into more of these kind of autonomous systems that move around, like do we have these vision language action models?
tuned and ready for prime time. There's there's been a conversation like who's gonna have the Android, the operating system for vision language action where I can use my voice tell it to do something and it knows what I'm saying and then it identifies the objects and does the thing in the physical world. Do those models exist today or are there still work? And is that like a Google
OS or like where does that OS come from? Look, I think there's a there this is an area of a lot of energy, a mix of research and implementation. I think there's a lot of hope and interesting stuff. I mean, the high level is We all remember what happened when you used ChatGPT 3.5. And you're like, holy sh Yeah, it's legit. Whoa. And then it went to four and you're like, Okay, like some stuff just changed. The world just changed and I can sort of connect some dots and sh getting real.
Is it about to happen? Is it about to happen for physical AI? And that's what this is about. Yeah. And the fun part about it is machine learning, deep learning, this kind of thing for many years, decades was like inscrutable. I don't know what the thing is thinking. It just spits out an answer and I know it's correct. Well now you can have a conversation with it.
Right. Like imagine if it's driving your car and there's different agents and one's just driving, the other's like, yo, look out over there. Yeah. It's like, oh, just like how we roll. Somebody does that, you're like, you're like Honey that's like Two hundred meters away. Jason and I don't call each other honey, but I gotcha.
Sweetie. You know. Yeah. Okay. So anyways, uh that was odd, wasn't it? Okay. Okay. I didn't mean it that way. I didn't mean it. Yeah. Yeah, you know, I meant it. Okay. Language is a beautiful compression mechanism. that humans use a hundred watts of energy Like And you put that in the scheme of things of like AI training, AI energy, the power plants that are built to do the thing that isn't even at human strength yet.
Okay, the Waymo machine takes a hundred times more energy to drive a Waymo than a human does to drive a Waymo. So so language, we there are still things that humans are great at and that unbeat like the goat. We're still the goat at certain things. Language is this epic compression. And um we need to find ways to compress because like when you think about how how we first started looking at the physical world, is we saw everything.
And you know what guys, and this is sort of obvious, like it doesn't matter what the cloud is doing if I'm driving. But like the car doesn't know that. It's pulling in every freaking data point and processing everything. And it's it's, you know, look, they've been about sort of carving out the things that don't matter and things like this. But
There's ultra awesome versions of this and you can imagine how you can use language or things that look like language to communicate either amongst agents or sort of safety systems with a driving system to sort of get very efficient answers and to identify safety issues very efficiently.
¶ Leaving Los Angeles for Austin, the decline of truth and justice in California
People don't know that you've moved to Texas as of or most people don't know, but it's it's out there. Yeah. You moved here in December, so now you're a resident of Austin. Yeah, I was I thank you. It's very exciting for me. We've been getting to play some backgammon. Batgammon cards. We're having a good time. So I've had a place on Lake Austin since 2021. And uh I go there. I'm an avid water skier. Like
You're impressive at water skiing, I have to say. Like So I've had a place in Austin for five years. Frickin' love it. It's my weekend I would go fifteen weekends a year. What do you think is gonna happen in California? It's pretty messed up. Look, I I grew up in Cali. Uh like I grew up in Los Angeles. Uh my parents were born and bred in Los Angeles, which basically makes them the founders of LA. Okay. But Um so th I have a lot of heart, like my whole family, everything, you know. It's pretty
It's pretty it's i I don't want to A lot a lot of us feel that way. I don't want to get the violin out, but it just but it's heartbreaking. The play it totally. Wait it's just a place you grew up, it's your home, you know. When you have to leave. Uh but it's getting weird out there. And uh it feels like it's getting weirder. And at some point that's it's just too weird. It's too weird. Do you think everyone's gonna leave?
I mean it started with Elon and it was like Yeah, he was we don't we don't want Elon here and then he's like message received getting maps. Right. And then it kind of worked its way down the tech industry and in the kind of it you know, world of people building businesses and whatnot. And now it's kind of gotten so broad.
In terms of the greatest. Joe Rogan, comedy, music, New Yorkers, restaurateurs. I mean, this place is the I'm not even talking about this. I'm just talking about everyone leaving LA or sorry, leaving California. It's almost like working down this path of Look, my the rest of my team's like, we're when are we moving?
You know, they're like, And how are you dealing with that? So that was the question was like there are literally dozens of s startup CEOs of Call it successful or growing companies that I talked to who are like
Dude, I want to leave, but I got employees here. I got an office here. I got a facility here. I build stuff here. Yeah. How am I going to leave? Yeah, I totally get it. It's a real thing. So look, I think like most things uh sort of when it's time and it feels painful to do something, sometimes it's actually not as bad as you think.
And you just gotta make the move and lead and do it. Um and so uh that's kind of what that's kind of the process, the almost like a morning process I went through. And that's just what it is. And you're setting up a team here. Yeah, of course. Uh and I got that office. Right on the lake.
Did you get that? Uh it's the one we are negotiating. No, it's all good. No, no, it's all good. We're negotiating right now. But I'm gonna jet ski to work. No, literally, we were it's it's a true story. Last year we were like driving up the thing and I was like Wow, I wonder who owns that. He's like, I will. And I was like, did you look at it? He's like I looked at that and I was like, that's a that would be a nice one. But the the truth is
You know, I and I had a couple of people move here a couple of years ago and they all had the same reaction. Oh my God. I'm living in a place that's twice as big for half as much. The people here are dope. The food is dope. Everybody here is got this sense that we're building the future and it's just fun and world positive and You know, for me I got to live New York, LA, San Francisco. I I did three of the great cities in this country. This one feels the most like home to me.
Which is a very strange feeling to me, but it feels like everybody here wants to build the future and it's very diverse, you know, like it it all these different industries and people pursuing stuff. I I think this is the future. Yeah. Here's the thing. Like you go to San Francisco. And I still have a little nostalgia when I go to San Francisco, just having built Uber there and the whole thing. Um, I still get the
You know, the butterflies, just I d you know, but it does have something magical. You just can't take it away. And then you look at all of these bike lanes and these bus lanes that never have a bus or a bike in them. And cost four hundred million dollars to build one mile. And it's literally is sort of like this Subconscious desire to choke the city off. Now remember, I look at things through roads, that's how I think. So I'm just like, obviously the city is totally busted. Yeah.
This up and virtue signal at the same time. And they're like, Yeah. Buses. And it's like nobody's on the bus. Nobody takes the bus. It's a... Beautiful small town. San Francisco is Austin. That whole street is empty. It's hainted red. Freebird, when are you leaving? Okay. Well, on the chat you're the best. Okay, so let me just go. Public facing Friedberg.
You know, I think there's a better way to do this and then there's like Darth Friedberg in group chat. He's like, these people, these f morons are mart. They're destroying society. He is like, Darth Friedberg in group chat. Am I lying? Am I lying? Is he the most correct? Especially after a couple glasses of water. Yeah, when I start drinking, he takes pictures, he's like,
Fourth beverage and we're like, Oh, it's worth staying left on the group chat. And then I'm like, I'll go and attack this congressman on Twitter, which I really Don't delete the tweet. Yeah, I delete the tweets. Okay, so there's a group of people trying to raise five hundred million dollars to create like a tech slash business coalition.
to go to Sacramento, which arguably is something that everyone's left and avoided doing forever because no one wants to spend time in freaking Sacramento fighting politicians. But it's almost like we're all falling off a cliff. It's time to do something. Do you think there's a a realistic path pack? Do you think that people can actually get their sh together? That even if five hundred million came in, there's a way to kinda turn around the state.
Fix some of the policies. You think it's too late? I don't think that but look, I would go with I look anybody who's doing anything to fix things, I'm like Hell yeah, let's do something. The issue is we all grew up in a tech world which was like a libertarian place where you stay out of politics and That felt it was that kind of vibe. It was just everybody was like that. Leave me alone. I want to make stuff. Yeah, I just I I'm not I don't do that.
And that's obviously z this is not a thing anymore. In California, I think the the ballot initiatives are very powerful and there's very clean ways to get something on the ballot. Love that. I think that your DAs who've decided we do not enforce crime at all anymore, that's like a sweet spot. Like I believe that I sort of had this aphorism, it's truth and justice. are the immune system for society. When when the immune system is suppressed, all the social ills flare up.
So look for the places where truth and justice are being deteriorated, are being degraded, and say, how do we get at that? Because if you get at that, everything else downstream will be better. So that's kind of how I look at things and how I also determine whether the world's getting better or worse. When I say weird, I'm talking about truth and justice.
That's what I mean when I say, Oh man, it's getting weird. It's getting weirder, which means it's weird. I'm just talking about truth and justice. Well, I mean in and you look at the homeless. industrial complex, you look at Chessa Boudin, which the the all in pod sax myself and the pod, like we we literally led the recall of him. And then you had the same thing going on in LA where they were just like if somebody
Gascone. Yeah, Gascone. I mean, w we basically lost the script. You're running the city for the criminals. It literally is like a Batman movie. It's like Bain. I mean, here you want to arrest the criminals. Look at that. I was born in the darkness. I mean these guys are fing lunatics. Yeah, look, I I know police officers in Los Angeles who are no longer police officers. And these are lifelong guys who protect and serve that's in their bloods or DNA.
They want to protect people. They want the bad guys to be dealt with. And they they almost have PTSD from What it is like to want to serve and see bad things happening and not being allowed to stop it. Yeah, nobody's got their back and they're not allowed to do their job. It's it's crazy and I
It's getting weird. Okay, hey, I wanna just go back to AI. Sorry for the darkness. I was trying to induce I'm trying to induce dark Friedberg. Well, I brought it up. I mean someone bring me a tequila, I'll get going. Uh yeah, let's do it. Can we get a couple to kill? I went on this podcast yesterday and the guy and the fur the guy was like, The first hour was middle of the road. I was talking about tech and science.
And then like politics came up, he's like, So socialism and he said like you lost it and then you were like he's like The energy with ten X and it's crazy. Yeah. So it'll come out in a couple of weeks. But I was like it it got me going. Okay, I want to talk about physical AI one more time. Yeah. So one of the now that now that you're doing this, I saw a presentation the other day. Someone showed like a video of a squirrel
¶ Actuators, robot hands, "Capital as a weapon," Middle East SWF impacted by Iran War
Jumping from one tree to another tree. And they're like a tenth of a watt or something. Yeah. Like, like the the biology is tuned and it's so perfect. in terms of its efficiency of energy utilization to do physical things. And we're taking these like big things of metal and motors and like actuators. And if you add up or you compound all of the inefficiencies in the system, it's like
twelve hundred watts to get the robot to walk four foot. Like w like break apart not just the software but the hardware layer and where are we at in evolving things like actuators. and the materials and everything else that's gonna make physical AI work and scale. Well look, a lot with the questions you're asking. a are going down humanoid lane, which is like
this thing and and everybody talks about how do you do the hand. It's almost like Terminator Two type obsession with the hand, which is fair. Like it's a very critical part of it. I mean, look at the I like to look at the Achilles, the quote unquote Achilles tendon of any of these machines. And you're like, that's where the action is. This, this, there's a couple other places. Um
I'm in the non-humanoid space. I mean, but it mechanical engineers have been dealing with actuators and, you know, all the sort of electromechanical sort of interactions that make machines do certain things. But like I'm in the food machine space. So I can tell you how to open a paper bag. and put a put a a bowl in a paper bag without tearing the paper bag. But I am less into the
I I forget the name. Perio. They're they're the the senses to understand awareness and touch. Um I'm not in that game. Um so when you're mining, you're like You're not like, you know, you know you're not threatening and you're not playing tennis. Um You certain things may be equivalent to tennis. So look, the bottom line is we're seeing obviously all you have to do is go online and look at where the humanoids are going over time and how much better they're getting.
Um it's wild and it's happening so freaking fast. But any humanoid demo starts with dancing and martial arts. Yeah. We're sort of down specialized robot lane, which is gainfully employed robots. So I know I didn't totally answer the technology piece. But I just like do you agree that there's probably like a big opportunity for venture money and like research to go into material science extra. For sure. Because if the physical AI stack manipulation and all of the related things around it,
is massive. And so if you get the software working, it's almost like the hardware has to catch up. Yes. And we got a lot of Investments. Well actually it's a was a it's good that you bring this up. You know, one of the things you pioneered Um at Uber was capital as a weapon. And you were very thoughtful about: hey, if we can take this capital off the table.
Then that's going to, let's call it what it is, it's going to be an advantage versus the competitors and these other competitors couldn't get that capital. That's now I think people have seen that playbook and they're like, hmm, Sam Lomman's like, that was smart. Let me try. And it's at a different scale. Now that you've come out of stealth, yeah, now that you've got and and people are starting to understand, just starting today, yeah, how big your vision is.
Capital as a weapon, yeah. This is I guess in your plan, yeah? Well, I mean here's the thing, right? So capital as a strategic weapon for its own sake is not a thing, but when it is actually a strategic weapon, then it is a thing. And what I mean by that is like In the Uber world early days, if you didn't have capital, it didn't matter how good your app was.
Because MASA's gonna put a billion dollars into your competitor and you're gonna lose twenty percent market share tomorrow. So a critical competency, in fact, to your world class competencies. One of them has to be raising capital and you do it better than everybody else. And if you don't, you are going to lose. Let me ask one follow up to that. Sorry, you go ahead. Um but the Middle East. Yeah. I've heard theories the last couple of days that big capital seekers are
Right now, because of what's going on in the Middle East with the Iran War. Dubai, Qatar, Saudis are kind of gonna close up the capital flowing to the US right now and is that real? I mean, do you think that's a real threat? So look, our Middle East business was supposed to go public in January. And the Saudi market wa went down twenty percent over like a two month period. And that was like a massive damper on the situation.
Now part of it's part of that was because the oil prices had gone down so dramatically. And if you went into KSA, you went to the kingdom, everybody's like, We need we need oil prices to go up. You know, that's the other side of the equation. So I don't know what hat look, I don't I'm not in the market raising money right at this moment. And this is a two-week old thing that I, you know, look, I see the news just like everybody else, and I'm not.
out there calling while a dwar is going on and saying, Hey guys, you got some money. Um so I don't know exactly what's gonna happen, but if you are an optimist and you're like, okay, this isn't this is not going on forever, just like the tariffs
It was the end of the world and then it wasn't. Yeah. Very quickly. Yeah. If you're an optimist about this situation and it won't be the end of the world, maybe even a better world, then we get to a better place. And I think Progress, abundance, the golden age. Happens and a lot of it is about all the things that are happening in AI, in physical AI, and and and just the productivity gains that are coming in very massive ways. Yeah. Yeah.
It was shock shock and awe and then Hey, now we've got a steady state and let's hope that's what happens in Iran is that we can depose these evil dictators and replace it with something a little more stable. And related to this, before we wrap, they're going to China, there's a big trade deal being negotiated. What do you hope comes out of this Chinese thing?
And what did you learn in China? What yeah, what would you learn and and what do you think would be great for America like what would you like to see and be like, Man, that's gonna set us all up? No more c Look, here's the thing. If you go to China right now and you go and just take a tour of the manufacturing that's going on there. Just the manufacturing base. The cities, especially if you've gone to China for a couple decades in a row.
You're like, damn. Yeah. You so let's just do two things. You go to Shenzhen, which before felt like Kansas City, but fifty years ago and really humid, which I guess it's Kansas City sometimes. But You go there now and it's like one-upping Singapore. Right? Or so that's the city view. You're just experiencing a very awesome, you're like, this is advanced.
And you just get the vibe and it's everywhere. And then you go and you start seeing the manufacturing base and you see what like Xiaomi is doing or any of the other, there's so many scrappy guys, badass guys everywhere, and you're like, F They're hungry. So does anybody remember the two thousand eight Olympics in Beijing? Anybody? Does anybody this is a little bit you're down a rabbit hole. Does anybody remember the opening ceremony?
And you're like, These mofos are taking over. At least that's what they wanna do. That shit's happening. I don't have any issue, or this is not negativity for me. I'm like, these guys are killing it. The best idea is winning. They're fiercely They're fiercely going after truth and progress and they're making shit happen. Let's step up our game. Okay.
But we can also have a friendly game. Like we don't have to like be like the Detroit Pistons in the nineties, you know? Yes. We can we there there's a go into the stands. Yeah. Yeah, you know. There's a way to do this right and there's a way to do it like adults. I hope that's where we would end up. Um I have a employee who'cause we we're we for for a long time we're the largest built kitchen builders in China. I have an employee in China, has an American wife. Okay. They both live in China.
They're both from China originally, okay? But Wanna want him to it would be great for him to work here on some things I'm doing. It's very hard to make that happen right now. Now that's selfish. Like I like maybe selfish, like I'm like, there's a person I've been working with for over a decade. I'd love to continue here. Maybe there's other bigger picture items that I'm not dealing with. I'm not the geopolitical guy, but I'd love for them to be sort of. relations and good like
Like if you have a significant other in who is an American citizen, like do we have to make that hard as an example. Some normalcy would something. You know, I'm just saying. Now I agree. Like There are ways to do immigration properly. Like we effed it up super bad. Don't even get me started. But there's also there's good migration too. Like a lot of great innovators. All over the place came from other places for their own version of the American dream. God bless. Freeberg. And we don't have to.
That doesn't have to be a negative thing. And so I'd like to see more of that. And um yeah, China's China's wild. So let's uh let's keep our eye on the ball and let's let's give them a run for their money too. Give it up for TK.
¶ Michael Dell: Dorm room to $140B in annual revenue, why Texas attracts founders
That's good. Good to see you, brother. Wow. Michael Dell. My lord. Texas native. Yes, born born in Houston. Well I missed the the opening. We we jumped to the music, but you started Dell Computer here In Austin with a thousand bucks. Forty two years ago in my dorm room at uh Doby at U T and uh about uh ten days before I finished my freshman semester. Moting. And it's been working out pretty good.
Yeah, there's been some bumps in the road. But uh yeah, it's generally generally worked out okay. Yeah, we'll have uh about a hundred and forty billion in revenue this year. So Yeah. It's okay. It compounds over time, doesn't it? Yeah. Yeah. You know, you start small and just keep adding and There you go. That's how it goes. Yeah. It's just that easy. But why Texas? Like I think this is an important thing. We're in Austin. Jason lives here. David Sachs lives here now.
More people are moving from California to Austin. Why Austin? Why Texas? Why is it work here? And is it getting better? Is it just always working? You know, I think Texas has had a uh, you know, low tax pro-growth. uh environment for a long time and pro, you know, sort of progressive business climate. And you know, if if you sort of look at the the growth of the Texas economy relative to the rest of the United States without Texas.
You know, Texas just kind of looks like a better version of the US economy. And uh, you know, you now you've got Uh Austin is sort of just about in the top ten cities in in the United States. So you've got uh when that happens you'll have four of the ten largest cities in America in Texas. one out of ten children born in the United States, born in Texas. Uh more New York stock exchange companies in Texas than in New York or anywhere else?
And uh, you know, you've got the University of Texas here in Austin, which I w always think of as kind of the wellspring for a lot of the companies that are here, certainly ours. And um you know, a long history of of uh Innovative, pioneering spirit, and entrepreneurship. And it's been a fantastic place for us. And part of this, I think, Freeburg and Michael is what's happened in the other great cities or what were once great cities, my hometown, New York.
I got to spend ten years in LA and the last twelve in um the Bay Area. And what's happening there is incredibly un American, uh and uh they're decelerating when compared. I think maybe the gap Maybe and the disparity from these um two locations has gotten greater, yeah? And you're seeing a lot more people say Life there here in Austin seems a lot better than the life I'm living in New York, LA.
Or in in the Bay Area. Yeah, well I've got a lot of new friends and neighbors, you know, that that have that have that have come and certainly I mean if if you look at the the the the migration statistics, Texas has attracted an enormous number of people. And and look, I mean when you when you when you look at the environment here and compare it to the other s kind of situations that are going on.
Uh it's it's it's very attractive. But you know, it's it's kind of been great for a long time. So uh It's not really new news to us that have been here a while. Yeah, Elon had a great experience when he was building the the Giga Factory over here. They let you do stuff here, yeah basically. You know. They let him build it. Which he said was like an incredible experience for him because in California they didn't let him build.
Uh you know, these factories. He and in fact the Tesla factories that in Fremont was just an old ancient factory that he was able to retrofit. So Uh there's something going on here as well with the data centers. And that's actually I think very close to what you're working on at Dell. Maybe you could talk a little bit about the data center boom that's going on in Texas that maybe people aren't paying attention to.
Sure. Well there's you know obviously been enormous build out of AI infrastructure and that requires, you know, lots of new data centers, lots of power. Texas you know, is a has an enormous uh advantage there relative to other states. A lot of power, a lot of land. And it's and and you can build stuff, right? So th there's there's been a massive build out, particularly in some of the cities in and towns in West Texas where there's not a lot of population.
And so they're not really too opposed to having data centers out in the middle of nowhere where there's land and power. And so um yeah, I mean the the The demand for tokens is enormous. You know, we've been building these AI data centers, uh, not just here in Texas, but around the world. And, you know, the growth in that has been tremendous. You know, we we introduced the the first uh H one hundred server uh it was literally a couple of weeks before Chat GPT was announced.
And you know, uh the progression of our business in that area sort of gone from like two billion to ten billion to twenty five billion to this year it'll be like fifty billion. So so tremendous growth. And when you when you think about what these models are creating There's this phase change that's happened in computing, right? We had 60 years of calculating and computing. Now we have machines that are.
thinking and helping us think. And so the demand for that kind of intelligence and, you know, the models are amazing, but they're also the worst they'll ever be and they're continue to improve. And so We just see uh a lot more demand than supply. And it's happening not just in the hyperscalers and the cloud service providers. It's happening in 4,000 enterprises where we've building these these Dell AI factories.
It's happening in sovereign AI, you know, like with Palantir and you know, people want to protect their data but also use AI on it. They want to bring the AI to where their data is. And, you know, when this kind of started a few years ago, we had some really sophisticated, uh, large companies, think think of like Fortune One Hundred, and they started, you know, buying these AI servers from us and
And uh they kind of knew what they were doing, right? You know, and and uh we said, Well, what what are you doing? And they they were they were kind of taking uh and building their own models. They were taking open source models, they were running them. Some of them were di were algorithmic traders or, you know, uh derivatives of machine learning.
And of course, um they needed a lot of help in in doing that because i it it it was sort of a complicated thing. So about two years ago we we put together this product that we we we we called the Dell AI factory. And now we've got four thousand plus of these and it's kinda running rampant across enterprises. How do you think about The payback time on the investment that's being made.
¶ Dell's $50B AI infrastructure bet
The administration put in place this accelerated depreciation rule where the concept is. Yeah, that's very helpful actually. Right. So just for folks to understand that a little bit, like if you spend a hundred billion dollars this year building and data centers and buying infrastructure
for those data centers, you get to write off a hundred percent of that this year. Correct. To deduct it. So you don't pay taxes. You pay way f much fewer taxes. And that's in place for ten years, I think. That's a ten year deal. So it's accelerating the investment How much is that helping?
Versus how are you seeing folks rationalize the investment relative to the return they're gonna make and over what timescale? This is still the big question. Is the money really there? The hyperscalers, maybe they're starting to come up at end usage, end states. Are we kind of, hey, wait and see, we don't know yet, or folks are getting twenty percent ROIC starting in year one after they've made the investment?
You know, I I I I can tell you in in in our business, in in our company, we definitely see plenty of use cases where the ROI or the improvement in productivity efficiency is
Yeah, I mean it it you know it's not like you just hit a button and you get twenty percent, right? Th there's there's work required in thinking through the processes and it's worth a little bit describing that. So, you know, when you have a uh Uh any company its processes and tools and technology are a function of what was available at the time it created those things. And so what you sort of have to do is step back and say, all right, what's the trajectory of the improvement of the tools?
What outcome are we trying to create? And now let's simplify and standardize the processes, get all the tools together, get all the data together, and then apply the technology. And this really has to be done in kind of a tops-down way. You can't sort of do it spontaneous in, you know, in spontaneous way. Silos are not going to spontaneously improve themselves. And often that means that you're completely changing the way the organization works. It's like a wholesale re-architecture.
It's a it's a reimagining of the way a company works. And you know, I mean the way I described this to our team about three years ago is you know, uh we were gonna have a new competitor five years from now. That would be two years from now, you know, that was in every business that we're in, except they were gonna be faster and more innovative and more successful. and lower cost and they were gonna put us out of business.
And the only way we were gonna prevent that is is we're gonna become that company. And here's how we're gonna do it. And, you know, it excited some people, it scared some people. But I actually believe that that's what's going to happen. And and so we've been dramatically changing our business, I would say the biggest benefit by far is speed.
we're much faster at being able to apply innovations. And so, you know, you look at our at our infrastructure business last quarter grew seventy three percent. Well that's Kind of unusual for a business of this size. And uh, you know, this quarter we guided that it would grow even faster, like a hundred percent. So you've lived through a couple of paradigm shifts here. The PC revolution, obviously you led that. Um and then you of course had uh, you know, client server.
the network revolution, online, uh, internet, mobile cloud, mobile. Yeah. So each one of those we saw a massive disruption. We were talking in in the green room about they we used to have a typing pool, there was a mail room, all these things got ab abstracted away by the PC and networked PC revolution. Um, but it took a decade or two.
And this one's happening a lot faster, yeah? Yeah, this one I think it's it's like um, you know, a quarter is like a year. Ma may maybe it's five times faster or something like that. But but back to your question, I I I would say maybe ten or fifteen percent of large companies have really figured this out and the rest of them are kind of fumbling around and you know, there's a tendency when when you hear about a new technology to like
Oh, let's just let's just go do it. You know, and you show the boss, hey, we did AI. You know? The board said we gotta do AI. We gotta do AI, guys. We need an AI. Are you proud of me, boss? You know? Yeah. Yeah. Um And look at what I made. Exactly. And I also think, you know, is an important point about about uh this, which is You know, the barrier to technology adoption is is not technology. It's culture and leadership. And courage.
Right. And and so willingness to change and to you know, if you If you're in a business that you don't think is changing very much or you know, har change is really hard, right? Well, we're gonna stop doing that. Well, maybe we don't need this anymore. Particularly if your bonus is dependent on not messing things up. But l let's go let's use the internet as an analogy, which you saw up close. There were businesses that were internet transition successful. They made the transition
Maybe Macy's dot com versus Sears Robok, right? Like maybe Macy's did a better job of taking advantage of the internet than Sears. But then there was internet native businesses that seemed to blow them all out. and uh maybe Amazon's a good example or um CSN stores, whatever they be Wayfair, etcetera. What's the right way to think about this evolution in industries generally? Are we gonna have
There businesses are going to transition successfully and those that aren't, and they're going to die. And is this really going to are we going to see AI native businesses in every industry? come in and just disrupt everything. I believe we will. And certainly, you know, when you talk to the Collson brothers at Stripe, they'll tell you that the rate of growth of the twenty twenty-five cohort companies is about four times faster than the twenty eighteen companies. And so
Every year comp the new batch of companies are growing faster and faster because they're starting with all these new tools that you know because they see all the new companies on their platform. Exactly. Right. And so when you when you think about uh an incumbent company, okay, that already exists. It has, let's say it's got brands, it's got balance sheets, it's got, you know, customer relationships, whatever stuff, right? Okay. Um, but that's sort of like
Those are expiring value assets. If it doesn't change quickly and get onto the other side of this, I think it will go out of business. And which is exactly the speech I gave to our team, you know, three three years ago and Uh I I think uh uh you know y you you you you have to be uh bold and you gotta go make those changes to to
not only survive this but but to but to thrive and and, you know, I think about it is how do we prepare our company to be ready for the twenty thirties? Right. Isn't it like it's much more It's kind of the storyline. There's more to do than there ever was. It's like when the internet aro uh kind of came around.
Sears doesn't just need to sell locally, they can sell to the world. Well, sure. I mean th th this is the point. I mean AI lets everyone when when when we have better tools, we can do way more things, right? And and uh you know when it when you know when I hear people say, oh, you know, um maybe we're just gonna have all these great tools and we we won't do more things. We'll just do the same things with fewer people.
It doesn't sound right to me. I I mean there'll be some of that, but I think most of it will be we're just gonna do a whole lot more things. We're gonna solve a lot more problems. We're gonna accelerate scientific discovery. Problems that haven't been solved. And you know, that's that's super exciting. What do we have wrong on infrastructure? So
The original build cycle looked a lot like everything's in a data center. Everything's gotta sit there. That's where all the intelligence, it'll all be in these kind of hosted proprietary cloud models. Do you think that it's open source? Is it distributed on the edge?
Wh where does the intelligence, where does the inference it? And how does that really change or kind of re architect the industry, do you think? It's really all the above. I mean, i i it it's not like there's one answer. I mean, certainly if you go to uh any industrial company or natural resources company, advanced manufacturing, retail, logistics, there's tons of inference at the edge. And that's growing very, very fast and
Uh, you know, we make a lot of that embedded equipment. Certainly, you know, telcos are doing that too. I mean it's pretty much every every industry. Think about wherever data is being created. You want the AI infrastructure and the inference, you know, close to the data. Um You know, there there there has been this
sort of rebalancing as companies have figured out, you know, sort of everybody loves the public cloud, right? Un until they get the bill, right? When they they get the bill, they're like, Well, this is supposed to save us money. It costs quite a bit more. So, you know, the the the lowest cost token is gonna be the one that's generated right where the data is on the device. You're gonna have, you know, tokens being generated on your phone, on your PC.
In every embedded piece of equipment. And and look, we have an interesting perspective on this business because we have 10,000 customers. where they embed our product in their product. This is, you know, think medical devices, security, all sorts of things in hospitals and industrial plants and, you know, any any kind of uh You know uh data driven activity, right, requires some kind of computing, network, storage infrastructure. Yeah. So w when you um look at the desktop where you started.
It's coming full circle and this must be At least very interesting or intriguing to you that you see this open claw movement, everybody trying to buy the most powerful desktop they can, and all these hobbyists. Who were your customers who were calling you up and ordering from, you know, Dell their their bespoke PC. Now they're Bill dot com. What did I say?
Dell dot com. Yeah. You said ordering from Dell, calling us up. They they they order online usually. They order online now, yes. They have this thing called the internet usually. They do, yes. It works out pretty well. Um But th this is incredible that they're like all stacking computers and and running, you know, uh local models. I was just thinking back to how much the first couple of computers I owned cost$4,000 in nineteen eighty dollars.
And then the prices came down. You could buy a Dell for five hundred bucks, eight hundred bucks, like really nice laptops for that price. Um, use the promo code all in. Um it's not as much as a joke. Um But do you think there's a world where we're gonna start to see
The desktop, because people want to protect that data. They want to protect the skills they're building. They don't want to give it to Sam Altman, put it in a cloud somewhere. They don't want to give it to Google, whoever it happens to be. Um and that the desktop revolution comes back and everybody's got a ten thousand dollar desktop. Is that coming? I don't know if everyone will have$10,000 desktop, but that would be great. I mean, you know, uh you know, so we have this.
And we have all these open models and we've qualified them on every kind of machine we have. And you know, there's been enormous progress in the open source models, you know. Google has these Gemma models, G-E-M-M-A, and they work really, really well on small machines. You know, OpenAI has their open source models. You've got the NVIDIA Nemotron models. You've got, you know, enormous
uh ecosystem of open source that is, you know, thriving and certainly OpenClaw. And, you know, there'll be some good discussion about that. How many people have set up OpenClaw? Raise your hand. Oh my lord, that's about what, a twenty percent of the audience here. Yeah, so uh you know, autonomous agents, um, big deal, and certainly inside companies. There's gonna be a lot more autonomous agents.
There are significant security requirements that need to go with that. We need to we need to be able to authenticate and validate who these agents are and what they're doing and you know, have the right controls and and and that sort of thing. Yeah. And uh your take on uh AGI and when we're gonna hit it, like do you actually think about superintelligence and AGI and the
the the two sets of problems that get solved there. I and do you have a personal definition that you like to use for those when you're talking internally with your team of how things are moving? I I d I don't really know, Jason. Uh um, you know, I I think it if it feels like with the latest releases, we were talking about this backstage, uh, you know, the Gemini 3.1, the Opus four point six, the OpenAI five point four. It feels like we sort of
um hit some kind of threshold where the just the quality of the the models are are just tremendous. And and and and we and when I listen to what our teams are able to accomplish in a day or two weeks. that would have taken them, you know, a few months or nine months time. You know, it's it's just amazing the speed of of innovation. Yeah. And so it it seems to be continuing and we get all the reinforcement learning and there's also tons of private dark data That
These models haven't been applied to. And that's sort of what's happening with these. I think the auto research is the that's the the key with auto research, the capacity to take a standard model and then retrain it on your private data and keep it private. and build an advantage for your organization based on the history of your data that no one else has. That seems to be what a lot of folks are thinking about that have
the capacity. But if you were to start a company today that was not in computing and you were to build a business from the ground up, how would you architect your people and your organizational principles as An AI kind of first knowing what you know about computing and where things are headed. Are you hiring people? Are you hiring a bunch of people to run a bunch of agents?
How do you think about architecting a new business today? It's a great question. I don't really spend a lot of time thinking about that. You know, I'm I'm thinking about how do how do I run So the rest of us are thinking about it. How do I how do I run our company? I mean that that's hard enough. So Yeah. Everyone I talk to, that's the question. They're like everyone goes to these off sites and they're like
I'm actually doing this with my management team on Monday. We're doing like a teardown be like, Hey, how would we build the business differently today? No one. It's sort of this th this reimagining question. Yeah. You know, sort of all right, we know the trajectory of the tools. What are the tools going to be in 27, 28, 29? And how do we accelerate, you know, our path to that. How worried are you about
Social issues. So AI recently ranked as the most unfavorable term of a list of terms, including President Trump. It was somewhere between ISIS, the Democrats. ICE, ISIS, and the Democrats. ICE was better than AI. People liked ICE, massed agents. More than they like AI. Yeah. Well I think I think part of the problem is it's been it's been uh you know maybe sold as uh you know it it it sort of presents itself like a human would. Yeah. Right. And, you know, maybe if we called it
Linear algebra statistics instead. Right. Matrix multiplication. Maybe that would be more friendly. I don't know. Yeah. But do you think do you think we're gonna have no I I think you're right. The positioning is wrong and then we're not communicating to people
Hey, this could help health care. This could make you live longer. This could help your kids get educated more. Th this could help with housing costs. This could help with food costs. Messaging aside, I mean how much do you actually worry? about disruption or dislocation in employment, about acceleration of earnings for some people and deceleration for other people in society that feel left behind.
And that starts to fuel more of the kind of social concerns and politicians saying, Hey, we gotta stop building all the data centers, you know, like That kind of stuff. And and how much are you really I I tend to be you know, more optimistic and and um You know, I I do I do think that in all technology cycles you get sort of these network effects and uh that's kind of inevitable. But I also think, you know, uh we're gonna do more with the tools.
y you do have this acceleration of all sorts of uh great things. I mean education can dramatically improve. Scientific discovery, healthcare, energy, you know, all sort of the the unsolved problems can can be accelerated. Ultimately I think it's it's amplification of of human potential and capability.
And extending the frontier too. And and and and by the way, we should also remember that basically what we're talking about here, beyond sort of some of the advanced semicolon big data centers, we're talking about software, right? Yep. Right? It's like software that runs on your computer.
You know, if somebody says well we don't we don't want that, it's like how do you stop total software? I mean, how are you gonna not how are you gonna stop someone from putting an open source model on their computer at home and asking it for medical advice? You know, New York just passed a law saying AI models can no longer give Medical advice. Oh, proposed. It's being proposed. We're anti software.
But were you dropping into your Bernie Sanders right there? That was my Bernie Sanders. Michael Dowell the one percent of the one percent that you're enabling with your data centers. Why are you doing this to the people of our great nation while you give your money to children in their Invest America accounts? Yeah. This is a good one you're doing. Yeah.
Can we talk about Invest America? I think he might have even criticized that, but but you know Well that's the problem. The billionaires are giving our children money and they're not asking us permission and then those kids are gonna buy things that their parents never asked for. Well they they don't they don't actually get the money till they're eighteen years old, so that that's that's but what gives you the right to give our children an education? What is this philanthropy? It makes no sense.
No. Well I see I see my great friend Brad Gersner here. Brad's here? Brad, come up for this little uh segment here. Sit sit for a second. Let's talk about domestic America. We got five minutes left here. So, you know, I heard Everybody the fifth bestie, give them around. I don't know who's gonna be here.
¶ Invest America: Michael Dell's $6.25B gift - A 401k from birth for 25M kids
All right. I yeah, how did this go down, Michael? I I heard about this idea in twenty twenty one from Brad. And I thought, you know, that's a that's just a great idea. That's an awesome idea. And, you know, I think there were some discussions with the prior administration, but they didn't uh do do anything about that, unfortunately.
And um, you know, here we are. You know, a miracle. You know, uh the the the Vest America Act was was passed and Um, you know, now we have thousands of companies that are joining in and matching the government's contribution. And uh you know, Susan and I made a big announcement uh giving two hundred and fifty dollars to twenty five million children in uh zip codes where the median income This is one of the greatest What do you think, Bernie? Do you approve? I'm gonna go with Jake Allen this way.
I just want to pause on this because it is one of the greatest philanthropic gifts in the history of humanity. And I I People have just kind of glossed over to'cause there's a lot of big numbers in the world. But we're talking about you you personally, you and Susan, sat down and said, We're gonna give a number, and that number was five, six, seven billion dollars or this is Let's it's two hundred and fifty dollars. to twenty five million children.
Ages two to ten in zip codes where the median income is one hundred and fifty thousand dollars or less. Billions of dollars it's six point two five billion dollars. I mean and I just wanna say something. You know, we live at a time where But they have to sign up to clean the accounts. Yes. They they have accounts, but they have to sign up to clean the accounts.
You know, I think we're getting a hundred thousand plus kids now a day signing up. Yeah. First, thanks for having me up. Yeah. I mean, what what a national hero and national asset that my friend Michael Dell is. But he understates this. Because I've been working on this for four years. We've been talking about it on the all in pod. We had a lot of momentum. But behind the scenes, Trump gets elected. Um
And so it's April that we're in the middle of the tariff strife, April twenty five. We realize there's only gonna be one piece of legislation that gets passed during Trump's first two years. It'll be the you know, this big beautiful bill, the reconciliation bill. And so I I call up Michael and I said, Michael, we gotta go. We've got five days.
We have the it it's drafted in the Senate. We have bipartisan support, but w we have a window. And like we ha I have to get in the Oval Office. We have to get in the Oval Office. And, you know, Michael said, you know, what what should the text say? And you and I had a conversation and you you know, uh you know the text to DJ T. Yes. I I'm not talking out of school listen, Biden uh w wherever you sit on the political divide, I will say I've said this. Trump seeks out
And he has deep respect for business leaders like Michael Dell. Like you wherever your politics are, that's just the truth. And the last administration didn't. And you know If it were Clinton may have done the same thing. So into the prior conversation, while Michael and I first talked talked about it um you know It was this is the right thing to do.
Right. Like we have to r reconnect the 70% of people who feel left out and left behind to the American dream. Right? But this isn't our self-interest. This is about defending. The ownership society and capitalism that for 250 years created the greatest experiment in the history of the world, but that's at at risk.
Less than half of people under the age of forty have a favorable view of capitalism. So when I talked to you about it the first time, Michael understood both sides of it. It's the right thing to do and it's the right thing for the country. And uh so at any rate. Michael Dell, tremendous American. I have what just one Were were you considering
This in the context of other philanthropy? I mean, how do you how do you kind of put this together in the spectrum of how you think about giving back? Yeah, great question. So so, you know, we have a foundation that's very focused on
Children in urban poverty. That's basically the central focus of the foundation, although folks in uh Central Texas would know that we do a few other things here in our local community. Um and You know, when I heard about this idea, one of my thoughts was, wow, this is like a platform for directly giving to the people that we're targeting.
Right. And, you know, we actually thought about doing it just in Texas first. And um, you know, things have gone pretty well with the company and all that. So, you know We thought w we just go bigger. And and what happens, Brad, if You know, ten more Michael Dell show up. And and there are dozens of the five. That's not a lot of Michael Dells, let's be honest. But there there's a number of folks who could make an an equal size or even greater gift. Um there are people who
You know, uh many hands makes for light work. There are a thousand people who can make a a gift of significance. What if this actually becomes a movement and becoming a moment in instead of a moment and and and we've you know we've got A lot of that queued up. Brad, once you have you called anybody, Michael? And we're ambitious guys.
So you're you're knocking on doors. We've we've had a few conversations. You're texting people. So just there's a question earlier. First, it's really important to understand and for you guys to spread the word, every child under the age of eighteen. Every child under the age of eighteen is eligible to claim their account. Number one. Number two You've heard this like, Oh, kids born between twenty five and twenty eight. No.
This is forevermore. The legislation creates this account forevermore. Every child born in America starting January 1st, 2027, will automatically get an event will get a Trump account. Right, at birth, stapled to their social security card. The thousand dollars has to be reauthorized every four years. Okay, but the accounts don't. So every kid, this is Social Security two point oh, this is the biggest.
change to the social contract in America in hi i in fifty years, three point seven million kids a year will get an account that can compound. It's a four oh one K from birth. And yes, we're gonna have a lot of announcements, but It's not just billionaires. It's gonna be companies that are donating stock on their IPOs into these accounts. It's gonna be wealthy people, it's gonna be states, it's gonna be moms and dads, it's gonna be corporations, and the estimate is over fifteen years.
We can move$5 trillion into the pockets of families that would have otherwise had zero. Five trillion dollars. Right. And so to me The leadership that Michael showed not only in helping me get the meeting that ultimately got this passed into law and it does take people. Like those moments either happen or they don't happen. And if they don't happen, there's no law and this doesn't Change kids' lives. By the way, t two things on this.
If this five trillion dollars moved through government programs, it would get incinerated. That's what we see happen. There's just a million crony structures that take it away and destroy it. So to give it directly into the account. is the circumstance. The second thing is it makes a lot of sense that
You guys can I'll I'll I'll be the lead. But can we replace social security in this country with a defined benefit or defined contribution like this and eventually everyone has a Trump account or whatever you call it? and we don't have to have this fake Ponzi scheme that we call social security. Well they they they have a defined benefit program, but I'm saying like everyone has an account
And they all own a piece of their future. And every time you get a payroll to tax deduction, instead of it getting eviscerated and destroyed and vaporized That money actually goes into an account and you buy a piece of a company and maybe you can direct it. Freeberg's getting on July fourth of this year. You're getting me wound up. So for all the there are four and a half million kids who've claimed their account.
Almost one hundred and fifty thousand dollars a day. We'll have on the trajectory we're on ten million by July fourth, our two hundred and fiftieth anniversary. Of the country. Every one of those kids accounts, the parents and the kids, on July fourth, they'll see an app on their phone that looks a lot like a Robin Hood app that'll see them owning it'll say you've received your thousand dollars or your two hundred and fifty dollars.
You're and it will show a little bit of NVIDIA, a little bit of Walmart, a little bit of Dell. We decompose the S P five hundred which they own into the constituent parts so they can get excited. about being an owner in the upside of America. And when moms and dads double click and Apple pay five, ten bucks into the account.
Right? When they send their QR codes to their friends on their birthday and now their friends all add to the account or on Christmas or bar mitzvahs and they add to the accounts When companies add to the accounts, all of this they see it growing and it unlocks the human potential. It's not just the money. It's that I'm in the game. I have a shot, which
To David's point, I think the biggest crime of Social Security, and we made very clear social security is a sacred promise. We we refused and many people tried to get us to to to take on the broader struggle. And we didn't do it because we knew it it would kill this program. But but let's be clear about this. Our government requires all of us to give ten percent of what we earn into Social Security.
Right? It was the social contract evolution and the industrial revolution that kept kept the country together. The only problem is it goes into a black hole. Nobody sees it, nobody knows what's there, but it is your savings. Now imagine if that same money was required to you know government took it away but it was in an account with your name on it you could see it grow you knew exactly what was there you could get excited and say hey I'm gonna add a little bit more to that
Right. And and and you had a little bit of choice. That to me is Uh is the possibility and I think we will end up there. And and and br and Brad, thank you for Yeah, let's get back to Brad Gerson. And finally Yeah, I was just gonna say, you know, Brad Brad also adopted his home state of Indiana. We have Ray and Barbara Dali Dalio adopted their home state of Connecticut. and many, many more to come. And and and look, it's gonna be super easy for anybody to
Add a hundred kids in your neighborhood, adopt a zip code, adopt the school district, adopt the town. It's gonna be amazing. Give it up for one of the great entrepreneurs of our time and an incredible college.