After the fanfare of the OpenAI/Jony Ive multibillion-dollar device partnership, io, all references were scrubbed from the internet as if it never happened. After rampant speculation, it was revealed that it was over a claim the whole thing was stolen. From some guy named Jason, no less. Seems like OpenAI is a real drama magnet. We discuss the case, including some screenshots of emails that Sam Altman posted. Additionally, Kiwi accounting software powerhouse Xero is making some moves. We talk ab...
Jun 26, 2025•37 min
Canva has made another acquisition : MagicBrief, the advertising command centre founded by a dear friend of the pod. In this ep, we talk about the acquisition, where it fits in Canva's strategy, and wind off into a bigger chat about the ad market. Then, for some reason, we talk about Apple Music and Spotify. Real smorgasbord here folks. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
Jun 19, 2025•33 min
Apple had its software development conference this week. It announced a whole new design language filled with organic movements and over-the-top animations, serving as the perfect distraction from the company's very public missteps in AI. We go through everything you need to know. Well, at least 60% of it. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Jun 12, 2025•47 min
Remember Grammarly? Of course you do. The briefly ubiquitous piece of software that made sure you were using your possessive apostrophes correctly. Well, guess what? They just received $1 billion in nondilutive investment from General Catalyst to become an all-in-one AI platform? Sounds like bullshit? Well, probably. But it's a business model we'll be seeing more of. We chat through the rise of zombie AI platforms, before digressing into a chat about Perplexity. See omnystudio.com/listener for p...
Jun 05, 2025•51 min
It's been a while since we've done of these. We answer your burning questions on topics including but not limited to: Jony Ive's partnership with OpenAI Apple after Tim Cook Atlassian and Immutable, two Australian unicorns Ranking the Magnificent 7 tech stocks by aura/swag See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
May 29, 2025•46 min
We've been saying for a little while that Google has caught up in AI, and is now trying to deploy the full force of its product range and scale to the problem of achieving domination. Dunno if they're there yet, but the I/O conference shows that they're still got a few tricks up their sleeve. In this ep, we go into what they announced, including some interesting movements on our recent chats about search and the monetisation of AI. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
May 22, 2025•45 min
Airbnb is in a mid-life crisis . Founder Brian Chesky is undergoing one of his routine meltdowns where he suddenly decides that the short-stay rental platform should actually be a ticket-clipping mediator of literally all human experience. The platform has been redesigned and relaunched, with both 'services' and 'experiences' living in separate tabs and hoping to tempt you to open the app more than once or twice a year. A tall order indeed. We discuss. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy inf...
May 16, 2025•49 min
Last week we gave some cursory attention to Apple's legal troubles in its battle with Epic Games and every other developer who chafes at paying the 30% Apple tax on everything. This time, we give it a little more attention and thought. Plus, the company's services boss Eddy Cue popped up in another trial, and gave us some intriguing insight into Apple's relationship with Google. Insight which caused Alphabet stock to crater nearly 9%. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
May 09, 2025•49 min
Australia's graphic design unicorn is yet to go public, and find themselves in an intersting position. As we all know infinite growth means you can't just be a really nice graphic design platform, you have to be Microsoft. The boys ask the question, are Canva an enterprise company or for SMEs? Are they for pros or amateurs? What the hell is AI? And also an update on Apple's App Store issues. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
May 09, 2025•3 min
Stacked deck today folks. First we return briefly to Tesla to talk about a Wall Street Journal story which reported the company opened a CEO search to replace Elon Musk. Then we move on to the big tech news story of the week: OpenAI rolling out a ChatGPT update that made it too sycophantic. It was funny, but also shows how these big AI firms are thinking about what their product actually is. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
May 02, 2025•45 min
Tesla turned in an absolute shocker of an earnings result, which may be related to why Elon Musk announced he would be turning more of his attention to the electric carmaker and less on being Trump's friend. In this ep, we go into the earnings, give a little update on what the EV market is looking like and what Tesla says it wants to do — and a little detour into talking about a Down Under business, GoGet. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
Apr 25, 2025•31 min
Raph has returned from the land of the free, and we're back in the regular studio for some more Down Round. Nvidia has just been slapped with a new restriction on exporting its slightly less than cutting edge H20 chip, which cost it a $5.5 billion charge. We talk about chips and continue our chat from last week's premium episode about how Trump's trade war is affecting tech. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
Apr 18, 2025•43 min
We talked about the new OpenAI image generation platform last week briefly, but we recorded on the day it released and therefore missed the massive amounts of discourse it generated. We're sorry. We'll never miss the discourse again. But it was a great opportunity to take stock of the AI art conversation, which has only become more heated and baroque over the past three to six months. Over this episode and the premium, we dive into the current state of computer pictures and the politics around t...
Apr 03, 2025•45 min
The chickens have come home to roost for 23andme, the consumer genetic testing company which has gone from making people feel nice about being 4% Italian to languishing in bankruptcy. With the vultures circling the carcass, we reflect on its very weird business model and why it should never have gone public. Then we talk about Google, which has been cooking on the AI front recently, and how it looks like their overall strategy in that space is coming into focus. See omnystudio.com/listener for p...
Mar 27, 2025•42 min
HR SaaS is probably the least sexy topic in the world, but fortunately two of the bigger players have made it interesting through bizarre corporate warfare. Rippling has launched a lawsuit against competitor Deel alleging that they placed a spy deep within. The saga contains a honey-pot Slack channel, a mole in the top ranks, and trying to flush a phone down a toilet. It’s good stuff folks. We get into it. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
Mar 20, 2025•32 min
We're back with podcast content after a regrettable interruption last week. This ep we've got a stacked deck. First, we are forced by fate to talk about Trump, Elon and Tesla briefly. Then we get into the lawsuit against creator economy platform and OnlyFans lite platform Passes. This gives us an excuse to go on a whirlwind tour of a few things: Scale AI, the AI infrastructure company co-founded by Passes founder Lucy Guo The creator economy, and how that's all going OnlyFans! Yeah, you want to ...
Mar 13, 2025•54 min
Unfortunately due to circumstances within our control we are unable to record an episode this week. We promise we'll record a really really extra good one next week. Thank you for your patience. Enjoy this AI generated James reading a text message from James. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mar 05, 2025•56 sec
Tech stocks have been having a rough time since December. The Magnificent Seven, the undisputed kings of the market, have slipped 10% since then — even before the DeepSeek moment. But not all are made equal. Meta, for example, is doing basically fine. Apple isn't too terrible. Tesla, on the other hand, has lost 37% of its value since then. In this ep, we discuss the market correction, including a long chat on Tesla and whether its reality distortion field is looking a little shaky. See omnystudi...
Feb 27, 2025•41 min
Plenty of tech industry nonsense to chat about this week, folks. Elon Musk is fathering his 13th child (and a new Grok model) and trying to destroy OpenAI. Everyone is trying to match OpenAI's Deep Research with similar products of their own. The markets are back. As always, Down Round is here to guide you. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Feb 20, 2025•36 min
We got a few requests last week to talk more about OpenAI's Deep Research feature that everyone's been going wild about. We thought it was a good opportunity to return to a topic that we've touched a few times over the past couple of years — what sort of work is being threatened with change by new systems like this? In this two parter, we look at Deep Research and the current prospects for automating white collar work with AI. To subscribe to Down Round Premium, head here. See omnystudio.com/lis...
Feb 13, 2025•30 min
Apple is worth $3.5 trillion. Trillion with a T. But all is not necessarily well in Tim Cook's kingdom. iPhone sales are slowing and the Apple Intelligence rollout was unimpressive and underwhelming. Now rumours abound that they are abandoning their rescue mission for their VR and AR ambitions. Are Apple floundering? Or just doing things The Apple Way ? Who better to discuss than the Down Round boys? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
Feb 06, 2025•33 min
It's fair to say things have been a little crazy this week. Thanks to the drop of Chinese AI lab DeepSeek 's beautiful, powerful AI reasoning model, tech stocks took an absolute pounding — producing, in no small part because of Nvidia, the largest individual loss of share market value in American history. The freakout wasn't just in markets. AI developers in the US were also going through it. We talked about DeepSeek a little bit last week, but this week we dive into the madness, and spend a bit...
Jan 30, 2025•34 min
It's not even the end of January and there's already so much crap going on in the world of tech. We're spoiled for choice here. In this two-parter, we're tackling the various stories that have sprung up around the inauguration of Donald Trump — everything from TikTok to meme coins to Project Stargate and Chinese AI. In this first part, we're looking at the latest on the TikTok ban, as well as DeepSeek, the Chinese AI shop that has everyone's attention. Want to get the second part? Join Down Roun...
Jan 23, 2025•47 min
The number one social media app in the Apple App Store is currently Xiaohongshu , AKA The Little Red Book, the Chinese social shopping app reminiscent of TikTok but with more shopping. We take a squiz at that, before assessing the latest announcements from Nvidia and what it all means. Strap in, the boys are back for 2025. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Jan 16, 2025•4 min
Over the last couple of weeks, Mark Zuckerberg and Meta have signalled a shift in the way the company is run — eliminating factcheckers, rolling back internal DEI policies and bringing politics content back to company platforms. On the one hand, you can read it as an obvious sop to the incoming Trump administration. But there's definitely a cultural change in the air when it comes to online platforms and politics, and Zuck is right at the coalface. Joining us for this episode is Mike Isaac , tec...
Jan 14, 2025•1 hr 1 min
On Down Round, we make many predictions. Almost all of them are correct. For this episode, we have used the power of AI to forensically audit a representative sample of episodes over the last year, with the goal of answering the question: just how right were we? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Jan 07, 2025•34 min
Just like we did last year, we're continuing the silly season with another entry of DOWN ROUND SHARK TANK. On social media and in our Discord, you submitted your startup pitches, and now we're going to decide if we will invest. Joining us on the panel are friends of the pod Becky Lucas and Joyride, who will assist us in the mammoth task of evaluating your very serious startup ideas. This is the first part of the episode. To get part two, sign up at downround.net See omnystudio.com/listener for p...
Jan 01, 2025•29 min
This is part two of our annual Xmas spectacular, and we continue to answer your questions. To hear the rest, sign up to premium: downround.net See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Dec 26, 2024•5 min
This is part one of our annual Xmas spectacular, and we are answering your burning questions. Is AI a bust? Why is a company called AppLovin worth more than 100 billion dollars? Has Raph watched any movies in 2024? An insane prank. Subscribe for part 2, which is out now: downround.net See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Dec 26, 2024•47 min
Apple has been hyping up its late-ish foray into the world of LLMs and artificial intelligence since June. But now a decent range of Apple Intelligence features are available — as long as you have the right device —like writing tools, image generation, notification summaries and so on. In this ep we talk about it, Apple's strategy, and why it all feels a bit weak. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
Dec 18, 2024•51 min
