This Week in AI: Tesla Ending Model S, Gemini in Google Chrome, Grok Imagine

Ejaaz: Welcome back to This Week in AI. It's been a pretty big week for the robots taking over. Ejaaz: Tesla are retiring two of their most iconic cars, the Model S and the Model Ejaaz: X, to make room to scale out their new Optimus Gen 3 robot, which is targeting Ejaaz: 1 million units this year. Very ambitious, let's see if they make it. Ejaaz: Figure, another robotic startup, also launched a new humanoid robot, Ejaaz: which did something that no other robot has done before.

Ejaaz: Clean the dishes, which sounds like a really simple task, but actually requires Ejaaz: 61 very precise locomotive operations. Ejaaz: But the best part is that it did it completely autonomously. Ejaaz: And in final news, the Chinese and Google both released two AI models. Ejaaz: One can convert video recordings into production-ready apps, Ejaaz: and the other might just make the first major scientific discovery since we discovered DNA.

Ejaaz: Google also introduced their leading Gemini model to 3.8 billion people in the Ejaaz: form of a personal AI agent in their browser. an exciting week. Let's get into it. Josh: Let's start with the Tesla earnings report because that was the highlight of Josh: the day for me, at least. I've been following these reports forever. Josh: In fact, it's funny, six years ago, I was watching a video that popped up six Josh: years ago this day talking about Tesla earnings.

Josh: They were a blowout quarter in terms of forward-looking guidance, Josh: a little bit less so on the actual numbers. The stock's down for today, Josh: but that's not the story. Josh: The story is the forward-looking future of what this company looks like, Josh: which is very much centered around autonomy and robots and manufacturing. Josh: In fact, there's a world in which five years from now, you can't even really buy a Tesla.

Josh: And that's signified slightly and early from the Model S and X depreciation. But I think Josh: You'll continue to see more of that as we go because Tesla is fully leaning into autonomy. Josh: So much so, in fact, that they're doubling their capital expenditure this year. Josh: I believe last year it was $8 billion.

Josh: This year they're going up to $20 billion in CapEx spend just to scale these Josh: production lines for things like the CyberCav and for things like the Optimus humanoid robot. Josh: Which is really exciting because I think this year, paired with the Helix News, Josh: we're seeing a lot of humanoid robots, a lot of automation actually coming to the physical worlds.

Josh: Like entering meat space, we're going to be able to walk down a street and not Josh: only have a self-driving car roll right by you, but also see a humanoid robot Josh: maybe walking down the street or doing something actually useful this year. Josh: And Tesla has a plan to scale these at a rate that no one else really is, Josh: starting with a million units this year and then going to 10 million, 100 million.

Josh: And then they project up to a billion of these. The idea is that these will Josh: be able to offload enough of the human capital workforce that it'll unlock significant Josh: amounts of GDP for the actual country. Josh: So this is a gigantic project that's getting underway. Josh: And what we're seeing now is the early seeds being planted through these huge Josh: capital expenditures happening across the globe at all of the gigafactories.

Ejaaz: This feels like a very prescient moment because Elon's clearly saying that Tesla Ejaaz: in five years or 10 years is not going to be known to be a car company. Ejaaz: It's going to be an autonomous robot company. Ejaaz: And we've kind of seen the signs of that over the last year where Elon's kind Ejaaz: of just spent all his time on full self-driving and improving that neural network Ejaaz: and focusing on his kind of Cybertruck's autonomously working in SpaceX and

Ejaaz: then this new Optimus Gen 3 robot. that to me is like Ejaaz: kind of like crazy switch, I guess, to still kind of like materialize in my head. Ejaaz: And I don't think it's coincidental because this year was also, Ejaaz: or rather 2025 was the first year that Tesla's annual revenue went down. Ejaaz: They only put out 1.64 million cars. Ejaaz: I think that's down like around 9% from the previous year.

Ejaaz: And the fact that he's shutting down two of his most early models, Ejaaz: I think it was like back in 2012 and 2015 that he released both the S and the X. Ejaaz: He's now going all in on humanoid robots. I feel like, Josh, Ejaaz: that this is the same moment where Elon was like, no, FSD is going to be the Ejaaz: biggest thing for Tesla cars. Ejaaz: He's doing the same thing for robots now. Ejaaz: So people might kind of take it as this is kind of crazy right now.

Ejaaz: This humanoid robot isn't really useful for me or can't automate a bunch of manual labor. Ejaaz: But I think Elon sees something that we don't. Do you agree with this? Ejaaz: Do you feel kind of like solemn that we're going from cars to robots now? Ejaaz: Or has this always made sense to you? Josh: Yeah, well, this has always made sense because they've telegraphed this years in advance.

Josh: Tesla famously has released these master plans, or Elon has released the master Josh: plan, once every three to five years for the last 15 years. Josh: And it just very clearly states exactly their plan and what they're going to do. Josh: And going back and looking at the old content from me, the old content from Josh: the master plans, it's very clear that this has always been the plan. Josh: They're just accelerating the advent of sustainable transport.

Josh: And now they're kind of moving to a sustainable abundance through the Optimus Josh: humanoid robot. But the idea is always just to move the world towards an autonomous future. Josh: And cars were the gateway drug to doing that. It started with the Roadster.

Josh: The Roadster was the very high-priced model that wealthy people were able to Josh: buy to fund the production and development of the Model S and the X, Josh: which funded the production of the scale vehicles, which is the three and the Y, Josh: which is funding the production of full self-driving, as well as serving as Josh: the actual network in which they could distribute the software on.

Josh: So it makes sense to depreciate the S and X. I'd like to take a moment of silence Josh: for these unbelievable cars that changed the world. Josh: I mean, I would argue the Model S is one of the most. Josh: One of the most important cars that was ever built and ever shipped because Josh: it came out in 2012, just five years after the iPhone. Josh: And it proved that electric cars were not only possible, but they can be great Josh: and they can be better than gas vehicles across the board.

Josh: And not only that, but they could be capable of autonomous transport in a world Josh: where all of those things were complete contradictions and believed to be impossible. Josh: And the Model S did that. And it went on an amazing 15-year, Josh: 13-year run where they sold almost a million of these vehicles. Josh: It proved that it was possible. It funded the development of where we are today. Josh: And they're just unbelievable vehicles.

Josh: A lot of people don't understand that the Model S and the X actually only account Josh: for about 3% of Tesla's vehicle sales now. It's a very niche audience. Josh: They're fairly expensive. Josh: They're over-engineered to hell. They have the craziest features, Josh: particularly the Model X. So it is very sad to see them go, but it is very much Josh: expected and very much exciting in the sense that that production line starts Josh: turning out humanoid robots this year.

Ejaaz: Well, it's also important to remember that robots, as it were, Ejaaz: isn't just going to materialize as humanoid robots. Ejaaz: It's also going to look like the cars themselves, right? You mentioned like Ejaaz: they only account for 3%. Ejaaz: The rest of the vehicles that he's going to be producing are mainly going to Ejaaz: be targeted for just completely autonomous vehicles. Josh: So they won't even have a steering wheel.

Ejaaz: They won't have a steering wheel. Like, it's a good point, right? Which is Ejaaz: these vehicles are going to become thought of Ejaaz: as less of a car where you sit in the front and Ejaaz: steer something to kind of like a third space to kind Ejaaz: of like a living room where you can be productive or enjoy Ejaaz: and consume entertainment when you get from Ejaaz: as you go from point a to point b and we're seeing this with his plans to roll

Ejaaz: out the robotaxi service so um you know at the end of last year he was all kind Ejaaz: of like there were numerous sightings of him trying robotaxi um he's going to Ejaaz: be rolling out or planning to roll out the robotaxi service to nine more cities this year, Ejaaz: which is super exciting to see, nine cities in total. Ejaaz: And I know that there are several reports at this point where it is good enough Ejaaz: to drive much better with lower incidental damage than humans.

Ejaaz: I don't know if you saw this, Josh, but Lemonade Insurance, which is a very Ejaaz: popular insurance startup here in the US, are offering drivers 50% off their Ejaaz: driver's insurance if they enable FSD on their Tesla cars.

Ejaaz: And I kind of thought of this like fun idea where like it would be funny if Ejaaz: Elon just kind of like packages his new FSD subscription that we spoke about Ejaaz: in a previous episode last week with this kind of like insurance discount Ejaaz: to kind of like increase FSD subscribers and stuff like that. Ejaaz: I know those are ways that you can mix and match this. I'm excited to see more Ejaaz: robots roll out this year.

Josh: Yeah, for the people who are listening, the new cities that you will be able Josh: to get a robotaxi are going to be Austin, Dallas, Houston, Phoenix, Josh: Miami, Orlando, Tampa, Las Vegas. Josh: If you live in any of those places by the end of this quarter, Josh: you will be able to try this for yourself, which I think is so cool. Josh: And as it rolls out, I would encourage everyone to try. Josh: Like I mentioned last week, I was in LA and using Waymos.

Josh: And it's unbelievable if you've never experienced it before to see and feel Josh: what it's like to have a computer driving you around.

Josh: So far, they have 600,000 autonomous miles driven on the robo taxi network that Josh: number is going to increase it is safer than a human driver as reflected with Josh: the insurance tesla actually also offers their own insurance which incentivizes Josh: people to drive safely so really cool updates from tesla across the board very Josh: excited about that and this isn't the only news from the elon, Josh: atmosphere i guess this week uh there's also some more

Josh: spacex news particularly as it relates to the ipo which Josh: seems as if they're going to be raising even more money Josh: than previously thought 50 billion dollars which is going to be i think the Josh: largest amount of capital ever raised for an ipo and the largest market cap Josh: of a company to ever go public all in one this is going to be huge they're targeting Josh: june as the announcement and release date for this ipo to go public for people Josh: to actually invest in SpaceX.

Josh: And SpaceX, to me, I mean, this is a huge opportunity. This is a huge company. Josh: I'm so excited for this to get into the open market and see how the public reacts. Ejaaz: It's also one of the few IPOs that are raising at such a large valuation that Ejaaz: I think justifies the amount that they're raising. Ejaaz: We're going to talk about OpenAI raising $100 billion later on this episode. Ejaaz: But I would say $50 billion is probably too low in an IPO.

Ejaaz: And I know he's raising other rounds, but like he probably needs more money Ejaaz: to achieve his mission of getting to Mars, the moon and setting up, Ejaaz: you know, these interplanetary energy factories and stuff like that that he's spoken about on X. Ejaaz: So this is really cool and exciting. I think 2026 is gonna be the year of big IPOs, Josh. Ejaaz: We were talking about this before we started recording. We've got what, the Anthropic IPO.

Ejaaz: You've got OpenAI raising an $850 billion round now and they're gonna be presumably

Ejaaz: IPO-ing more than that. like 1.4 is what some more before trillion dollars is Ejaaz: what some of the rumors are saying um yeah this is just crazy to see Josh: Yeah we might get striped this year too a lot of ipos and part of the value Josh: in which enabled starlink and spacex to go public is the starlink network is Josh: the internet network and as they improve this network through starship launches Josh: which allows them to put their new version 3 satellites into space,

Josh: And for reference, those version three satellite launches are 20 to 40 times Josh: more effective than the current versions that they're pushing out right now with the version two. Josh: So it's a huge increase in bandwidth. And that bandwidth is going to make its Josh: way into cell phones in our pockets because the direct to cell network is growing very quickly.

Josh: If you're a user of T-Mobile, you can try this now. But Apple is now reportedly Josh: planning to integrate Starlink directly into the iPhone 18 Pro, Josh: which is coming later this year in September. Josh: So this is really exciting news coming from Apple. Again, outsourcing the software Josh: stack to someone else who is more capable and competent in doing this. Josh: In this case, it's Starlink.

Josh: And it solves one of the huge pain points for the perfect mobile device, Josh: where my hypothetical perfect mobile device has unlimited battery, Josh: unlimited connectivity, no matter where you are. Josh: And now this solves the connectivity problem, where there's nowhere you can Josh: go where Starlink will not be. And that's a really exciting partnership that I'm looking forward to.

Ejaaz: In other robotics news, I saw one of the coolest, but maybe unsexy to some, Ejaaz: demo of a humanoid robot. Ejaaz: What you're watching on the screen right now, and if you're listening to this, Ejaaz: I'll describe it to you, is a humanoid robot, which looks very much like a human, Ejaaz: I have to say, he's just missing some clothes, unloading a dishwasher, Ejaaz: walking across a full-sized kitchen, Ejaaz: placing all these dishes and crockery into the cabinet.

Ejaaz: Very delicate, precise movements are needed for this, by the way, Ejaaz: walking back and refilling the dishwasher with all the dirty dishes. Ejaaz: These include wine glasses, by the way. Okay. So for all of you haters out there Ejaaz: that are saying they're using plastic stuff, no, he's using delicate glasses as well. Ejaaz: Now, what you're looking at is the new robot from FIGURE, a very hot robotic Ejaaz: startup here in the US called Helix O2.

Ejaaz: And this humanoid robot is different from the other humanoid robots in a few different ways. Ejaaz: Number one, it is the first robot to perform a four-minute fully autonomous task of this level. Ejaaz: Just get that into your head. That may not sound very impressive right now, Ejaaz: but I remember a time where AI model LLMs could only work autonomously for 10 Ejaaz: minutes at a time. And now they're doing weeks at a time. Ejaaz: This is the same kind of moment that we see for robotics.

Ejaaz: And I think that Helix is kind of like nailing that. Ejaaz: To emphasize, it is completely autonomous. There are no humans. Ejaaz: There's no teleoperation. You know who dares leverage teleoperation? 1KX. Ejaaz: Also Tesla Optimus, dare I say, although the new generation should be fully Ejaaz: autonomous in some way, shape, or form. Ejaaz: This is a really impressive feat because the technicalities and the mechanisms Ejaaz: that you need to achieve this is nothing short of just insane.

Ejaaz: So 61 locomotive manipulations are required for this robot to do this, Ejaaz: but that's not even the most impressive part. Ejaaz: Typically, these robots are pre-programmed to execute on a set number of different moves. Ejaaz: So those 61 moves I just mentioned, you need to hard code it. Ejaaz: And when it faces a scenario, it'll then activate that movement. Ejaaz: This is completely different.

Ejaaz: So what Felix did was they launched something called System Zero, Ejaaz: I believe, which is their new neural net, which is only 10 million parameters.

Ejaaz: But it basically ingests what it sees around it through its palm senses, Ejaaz: through its eyes, and reacts in real time. Ejaaz: This is different from how the model previously used to work, which is Ejaaz: Take in some kind of input, process it through its hard code, Ejaaz: and then output an action. Ejaaz: And hey, presto, the kind of like trophy win here is that it's fully autonomous, Ejaaz: and it's the first humanoid to be able to do this.

Ejaaz: Now, to remove all that code and transform it into neural net is cool enough. Ejaaz: But what I also like about it is that they have this new form of tactile sensors. Ejaaz: And I think we spoke about something about this on our previous run, Ejaaz: or maybe it was even last week's. Ejaaz: But because of its palm sensors and its new tactile sensors, Ejaaz: it's able to know when to apply pressure and when to be delicate.

Ejaaz: For example, lifting a wine glass and placing it into a cabinet. Ejaaz: So I personally like took this kind of boring task and thought, Ejaaz: huh, this is actually something that I would actually have in my home because Ejaaz: I can trust it. Also, look at the speed that it's moving. Ejaaz: It's definitely quicker than my sister that I've seen her loading the dishwasher at home at least. Josh: Do you think this is ready to be in your home? Is this something you'd be interested in buying?

Ejaaz: Well, I would need it to do something more than just dishwasher stuff. Ejaaz: But presumably, if it can do this, it can also fold my laundry, Ejaaz: Josh, and load the laundry basket as well. Ejaaz: So depending on what they're charging, if it's a subscription or if I have to

Ejaaz: buy it outright, would influence my decision, right? If I could have a live-in housekeeper, Ejaaz: sounds pretty good i'm a pretty messy guy Josh: Yeah when evaluating robots i think the things Josh: that are most important to look at are first the hands the dexterity the Josh: the sensors within the hands how capable the hands Josh: are because that's by far the most complicated thing the second thing is Josh: the intelligence how general purpose is it we we've seen this example over and

Josh: over again of loading a dishwasher or doing simple tasks like sorting clothes Josh: how complex are those tasks able to get and how quickly are they able to roll Josh: that out is the second thing and then the third is how quickly and how effectively Josh: are they able to actually manufacture this at scale?

Josh: Are they going to be able to create enough of these at a price point that makes Josh: enough sense with a feature set that makes enough sense to encourage people Josh: like me and you to want to buy one? Josh: It seems like there is a very long and challenging path for figure to get there. Josh: I'm really looking forward to Tesla's Optimus 3, which is coming this quarter Josh: and will be rolling out at scale this year. And I...

Josh: I'm hopeful that figure can keep up because competition is good. Josh: And I hope they don't turn into like the Rivian of electric cars. Josh: I want them to stay on the forefront. Josh: And I hope Brett and the whole figure team continue to keep their foot on the gas. Ejaaz: Yeah, I mean, I think this demo is cool, right? But it's pitched towards... It's like, it's cute. Ejaaz: It's cute. But I think the real application, the reality is these robots aren't

Ejaaz: going to be in your homes first. They're going to be in factories. Ejaaz: In fact, their Helix O1 robot has been working at BMW controlling their operating Ejaaz: system or one of their manufacturing plants for, what is it now? Four months now? Ejaaz: 24-7? There's like a live stream of this. Well, hopefully, maybe we can link Ejaaz: to this and people can go watch it. Ejaaz: But Brett keeps talking about it every single week.

Ejaaz: So I don't know. I'm bullish on it. I think Optimus is also going to be in factories Ejaaz: first before people's homes.

Ejaaz: But we shall see. Ejaaz: We have some big news from Google. Josh, you were showing me some pretty cool Ejaaz: demos. What's going on here? Josh: Yeah, big news. If you remember from a little while ago, we had the CEO of Perplexity Josh: on the show, and he was talking about the new pivot to the AI browser. Josh: Since then, OpenAI has released their own AI browser.

Josh: Claude has released a plugin for Chrome, but now Chrome, where everyone actually Josh: uses their browsing, has rolled out their own... Josh: Gemini agentic controller inside of the browser. And it's pretty incredible. Josh: I mean, like you mentioned at the intro, 3.8 billion people on earth use the Chrome browser.

Josh: And now all those people have just been given a magical update overnight that Josh: allows this agent in and allows it to actually control and do things on behalf Josh: of the user within this browser. Josh: So we're watching on screen a introduction demo video that shows some examples. Josh: And I thought they were really amazing. Josh: The first one that they did was with NanoBanana Pro, which is the image generating model.

Josh: And they were just looking at a home and they wanted to add furniture to it, Josh: like looking at an empty apartment. And you could just ask NanoBanana to stage the apartment. Josh: Yeah, here's the demo. Where it's empty, you could ask it to stage the apartment Josh: and it shows you what it looks like with furniture on the fly as you're browsing.

Josh: The follow-up feature to this is they were looking for an apartment that accepted Josh: dogs, that was in X proximity to this place, that had a whole list to parameters Josh: that were pretty complicated that would have taken the average person a long time to do. Josh: And they typed in that prompt and it actually clicked through the browser and Josh: navigated through this for them. Josh: Putting in all the filters and figuring out which results were best for them.

Josh: And I think this is such a great use case because it's just so prevalent in Josh: what you do every day as a user of Chrome and as someone who uses a Chrome browser. Josh: And I'm excited to see it integrated where people are, where you don't actually Josh: need to download a separate piece of software, move everything over. Josh: It's just meeting people where they are and building on top of this existing Josh: knowledge base that Google has about you through your Gmail account.

Ejaaz: What I like about this is they're not over-promising, or they didn't over-promise Ejaaz: Gemini 3 being pretty much wherever you are on the internet. Ejaaz: Like, I've used Chrome browser for years now. I've used Gmail for longer. Ejaaz: And the fact that, you know, these demos show kind of places that I visit every Ejaaz: day, because like, let's face it, like most of my online life, Ejaaz: or rather, most of my computer life doesn't live on my desktop, right?

Ejaaz: Which is my, which was separately my point around cloudbot i'm like it's not Ejaaz: useful for me because i'm always on the internet but google is bringing gemini Ejaaz: and ai cutting edge ai to me on the internet on the browser where i am every day Ejaaz: I might not be someone that edits images all the time and says, Ejaaz: hey, show me in this outfit, but I am someone that writes a lot of emails. Ejaaz: I am someone that spends a lot of time in documents.

Ejaaz: And in some of these demos, Josh, it doesn't just get me to prompt it. Ejaaz: It prompts me and says, hey, I see that you have updated some of these goals for the next month. Ejaaz: Do you want me to email so-and-so on your behalf? Ejaaz: I've generated you a prescript if you want me to do that for you. Ejaaz: All I need to do is look over to it on my task panel on the right, and click send. Ejaaz: And that's just like such a beautiful experience.

Ejaaz: It sounds, again, unsexy, but I think this is going to make people way, Ejaaz: way more productive and most importantly, loyal to Google. Ejaaz: We mentioned their major release of personal intelligence, which is basically Ejaaz: a personal AI assistant that is prevalent across every single Google product Ejaaz: that you use, not just on your browser, but on Google Maps, Android, wherever you are. Ejaaz: This is it coming into reality just for Chrome. It's frigging awesome.

Josh: Yeah, really nice feature. It's just, it's, it's again, it's another muscle Josh: that people are going to need to train as they get used to these new tools in Josh: reaching for the agent in your browser versus trying to do it all yourself, Josh: where I would encourage anyone as you're browsing and you're doing something, Josh: you're trying to achieve a goal. Josh: Try to click that Gemini button and see if it can achieve that goal for you.

Josh: And the process of doing that over and over kind of trains your brain to rely more on this. Josh: And it just leads to a far better quality of life because it's better at doing Josh: a lot of these tasks than we are. Josh: The other thing that I thought was interesting to note is that they updated Josh: their Gemini AI Pro plans, the Pro plan and the Ultra plan, which are either Josh: $20 a month and $250 a month.

Josh: If you have those now, the big thing on this long list of things that they include Josh: is Google Cloud Credits. Josh: So now you can actually use, you could build your own environments for these AIs. Josh: You could start querying more of their API to get more, I guess, Josh: more just requests done, more intelligence. Josh: They're including a lot more tools in this package for people who are interested Josh: in just toying around with these products.

Josh: And for me, this is really exciting because I'm not running large scale, Josh: products. I don't need a server that costs more than $10 a month. Josh: And essentially for one membership of $20, I get all of these really cool perks. Josh: You get access to the entire Google AI ecosystem. Josh: And I just, I liked this pivot that they're moving towards kind of giving people Josh: the tools to tinker at a very low price point at $20 a month.

Ejaaz: So in other Google news, they released what is probably the most impressive Ejaaz: scientific AI breakthrough ever. Ejaaz: And no one kind of noticed it because it got published in Nature, Ejaaz: which is a scientific journal, but it was 100% open source and super cool.

Ejaaz: So this is, the best way to think about this is this is kind of like a DNA sequencer AI. Ejaaz: Now, the reason why this is cool is 98% of our DNA is actually not that important. Ejaaz: It doesn't actually lead to protein production. Ejaaz: The reason why protein production is important is because it influences pretty Ejaaz: much how your entire body, mind, and world works, how your perception is, right?

Ejaaz: The issue is we don't understand the 98% of that dark matter because it controls Ejaaz: some types of genetic expressions. Ejaaz: So for decades, like humans have basically just kind of like mapped out the Ejaaz: genome themselves and then like just tried a bunch of different tests to figure Ejaaz: out what proteins or what genes are expressed in A, B or C type of condition.

Ejaaz: Now there's an AI model that can not just sequence a couple hundred thousand Ejaaz: of these base pairs for your DNA, but up to 1 million base pairs. Ejaaz: Now there are four main base pairs in your DNA strand. We're taking it back Ejaaz: to like, you know, fifth grade biology here. Ejaaz: And if you connect them together in different types of combinations, Ejaaz: you can result in different types of proteins, which kind of make up your genetic makeup.

Ejaaz: Now you have an AI model that can just sequence this entirely and predict what Ejaaz: the expression is going to be. Now, the reason why this is super cool is you Ejaaz: can apply this to so many different things. Ejaaz: You could apply it to preventative medicine. You could apply it to personalized Ejaaz: medicine to create personalized pharmaceuticals for yourself. Ejaaz: Or you could recognize genetic disorders before it manifests,

Ejaaz: before it becomes an issue and kind of snip that baby out. So it is such a cool thing to see. Ejaaz: It kind of harkens back to my biology degree where I'm just like, Ejaaz: oh my God, I can't believe that they've produced a tool that could have saved Ejaaz: me like months of work when I was doing that degree. Ejaaz: But I just think it is super awesome. Josh, are you impressed by something like this? Josh: Yeah, this to me is the coolest news of the week, actually, which is funny enough.

Josh: The biology stuff is so unbelievably impressive. And I think it's easy to overlook Josh: it because it's kind of complicated and difficult to understand for those. Josh: I mean, like myself, who just haven't spent much time in the world of biology. Josh: But in the research and learning about this segment, I discovered that the DNA Josh: sequence is 3 billion letters long. Josh: It's this ginormous sequence of letters.

Josh: It essentially acts as an instruction manual for the Josh: human body for the makeup it tells you everything that's right with you but Josh: also everything that's wrong with you and previous ai models before this they Josh: were like it was like reading a manual with either a magnifying glass where Josh: you can see tiny details but only a few segments at a time versus binoculars Josh: where you could see like a lot but it's kind of blurry this is able to do both

Josh: simultaneously and like you mentioned it can read one million letters at once Josh: with perfect clarity so while it's not the three billion. Josh: It is 1 million, which is a significant improvement because when doctors find Josh: a weird genetic variant and they ask, is this variant causing a problem?

Josh: Alpha genome has beat the previous models on 25 out of 26 of these tests, Josh: which means there's a lot of fewer, we don't know the answer, Josh: answers for patients with rare diseases. Josh: And it's able to kind of diagnose things that previously were not possible. Josh: And as we see progress through this, there's going to be a lot of unbelievable Josh: examples as it relates to like cancer and splicing these DNA sequences and improving things.

Josh: It's just, it's a huge quality of life improvement for the people who understand Josh: it and for the people who stand to benefit from this, which is, Josh: I mean, in a way, everyone we mentioned on a previous episode, Josh: you can upload your DNA sequence to something like Claude and you could ask it questions. Josh: This is that on steroids. This is going down to the letter and diagnosing what's Josh: wrong and what's right based on a single variance in a 3 billion letter data

Josh: set. It's really amazing. Ejaaz: For those of you who haven't spent time in many of the scientific journal world, Ejaaz: there are tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of scientific papers published every single year. Ejaaz: But the common pattern across all of these is that some of these conclusions Ejaaz: are simply inconclusive. Ejaaz: They don't have enough data or they just don't know. They haven't got enough Ejaaz: tools or technology to figure it out.

Ejaaz: Now, a tool like this, to your point, Josh, I don't think it's going to suddenly Ejaaz: have a crazy discovery this year, but you're going to see the discovery in some Ejaaz: of these papers that come out from the researchers that are using it. Ejaaz: In fact, we're probably going to see Alpha Genome be quoted as a main author Ejaaz: on some of the papers produced in 2026. Ejaaz: There are already 3,000 researchers using this. I think 1 million API calls every single day.

Ejaaz: So it's really been crushing a bunch of research across 160 countries. Ejaaz: So I am curious to see what this gets involved in and what discoveries it makes. Ejaaz: To your point, maybe it's cancer or maybe it's something smaller, Ejaaz: but one thing's for sure, there's going to be something major this year, would be my prediction. Josh: Yeah, the velocity in progress of this has just been, it's unbelievable. Josh: It's really exciting to see.

Josh: I'm looking forward to all the continued breakthroughs that scientists are now Josh: able to use because this is just open weights, open source, freely available Josh: for anyone who's involved in research to actually go and use for themselves.

Josh: There's another interesting breakthrough, or at least released this Josh: week that's slightly less eccentric this Josh: one's more practical and something you can use today which is Claude Josh: releasing interactive tools within Claude Josh: itself so if you are a user of Slack or Josh: Figma or Asana or any of these programs you Josh: actually never need to go to those websites ever again they will be integrated

Josh: into your Claude interface on your desktop for you to actually engage with through Josh: the chat interface to do whatever you want them to do so the example we're seeing Josh: on screen now is figma if you're a designer this is how you design things this Josh: is how you create websites create renderings of things.

Josh: And built into Claude now is tooling control that allows you to type in a prompt Josh: or even manually adjust things yourselves from within the interface in a way Josh: that's smart, it understands the context, and it writes back to the main server.

Josh: So if you, like for example, we use Asana for production workflows, Josh: for scheduling episodes. Josh: I don't need to go to asana.com anymore. I just ask Claude, when do we need to publish this by? Josh: Who is responsible for publishing this? And it has all the answers built in, Josh: and it can write the changes to that. And this is on the back of the integrations Josh: that they've recently added. Josh: Things like iMessage, which I think is really cool.

Josh: Previously, or early in this week, we released an episode on CloudBot, Josh: which is this whole desktop controller that allows you access to your whole Josh: desktop, but it is a bit technical. It does cost a bit of money. Josh: This is so easy. If you are a Mac user and you have Cloud downloaded on your laptop. Josh: You can connect Claude to iMessage and then have it send messages on your behalf Josh: or read messages on your behalf or integrate it into any of these other services.

Josh: And what they're doing is they're just creating, I think what OpenAI was trying Josh: to do, which is this full stack place in which you can go for any of your needs. Josh: It's just slowly embedding itself into more and more of your day-to-day workflow. Ejaaz: To me, what this announcement says is it's confirmation that we are heading Ejaaz: towards an AI operating system that is ephemeral.

Ejaaz: Now, we've mentioned this many times on the show before, but I believe in the Ejaaz: future, you're not going to navigate to an app or a website or scroll. Ejaaz: It's just going to appear ephemerally in front of you, auto-generated by tokens Ejaaz: generated by an LLM or any kind of AI model that is multimodal, right?

Ejaaz: And the reason that description that you just gave just now, Ejaaz: actually, Josh, is, you know, it all kind of converges into one synonymous experience Ejaaz: where you could be on different devices or you could be on your browser or you could be on a chat bot. Ejaaz: And somehow the same LLM or AI model follows you around and is there to be helpful Ejaaz: and expressive in many different ways. This is Anthropic confirming it.

Ejaaz: OpenAI actually released this feature themselves in ChatGPT last year. Ejaaz: Actually, I think it was mid last year. So that was super early with the exact same partners. Ejaaz: That uptake didn't really take off. I'm curious whether like six months later, Ejaaz: we now see a similar pattern with Anthropic or whether people enjoy it and find it more useful here.

Ejaaz: Another kind of subtle point that this is using underneath is something called Ejaaz: MCP, Model Context Protocol, which is something that Um... Ejaaz: Anthropic, I believe, found it. It's an open protocol that allows you to connect Ejaaz: to a bunch of different apps. Ejaaz: Now, the change here is that it's allowing the generative experiences to happen Ejaaz: within the chatbot, which is a UX decision, which I think is really cool.

Ejaaz: Now, I think this is a very strategic move for Anthropic because they created Ejaaz: the protocol themselves. Ejaaz: So Google famously produced Android and open source the entire thing, Ejaaz: or rather was like, hey, this is for everyone. Ejaaz: But they ended up becoming the dominant company that controlled that. Ejaaz: And now they manage like, you know, millions and millions and millions of devices.

Ejaaz: I think this is Anthropic's attempt to do the same thing. Now they're not planning Ejaaz: to release a new device, but it is yet another step for them to own the entire Ejaaz: operating stack for whatever AI becomes. Josh: Yeah. You said, you said this good word. I actually looked it up because I don't Josh: know what it means. Ephemeral.

Josh: You said ephemeral operating system, which is something that lasts for a very Josh: short time is fleeting or transient, often describes things that are beautiful, Josh: but temporary, like a moment of feeling. Josh: So I guess the idea is that this is, it's dynamically generated, Josh: right? Like it's kind of built on the fly. Josh: It doesn't actually exist as a permanent fixture in our workspace, Josh: which is super interesting. This is cool.

Josh: There is one use case that I particularly loved, which was the iMessage wrapped. Josh: I think one of my favorite parts of the year is Spotify wrapped when we can Josh: see all of the most played music. Josh: Everyone talks about how they're listening age. It's very fun because it has Josh: access to these more intimate personal data sets.

Josh: It can actually use that data to generate these fun things like iMessage Wrapped, Josh: which is a code project that this woman did, which I thought was really fun. Josh: It showed how many messages were sent throughout the year, who the top messages were with. Josh: It showed heat graphs and charts of when you are most likely to send messages. Ejaaz: Relationships over time. Josh: Yeah, you could see relationships over time. When a relationship got hot,

Josh: you were texting a lot. When it faded away, it's this really fun, exciting thing. Josh: Experiment. It shows grammar, who gets your best English, most formal versus Josh: most casual, your writing style over time. Josh: And you can really break it down because it has this deep understanding and Josh: intelligence, but also because it has this connection to your personal intimate data set. Josh: And I thought this was so much fun because it shows you even the heat chart

Josh: of when you are most likely to be sending messages. Oh, I like this. Josh: Your dream dinner party. Ejaaz: The dream dinner parties is good. Josh: Very cool. Who's sitting at your ideas table? Who are your ride dies. Josh: Who's the industry dinner? Josh: It's a really fun example of a use case that I hope we see a lot more of. Josh: And again, the hardest problem with these is just figuring out how to extract value from it

Josh: And whenever we get a cool example like this, it's awesome. It's like, Josh: okay, here, it's open source of my GitHub. Josh: You can go and copy it for yourself and go have fun. And this is a really awesome Josh: use case that I see for Cloud in particular. Ejaaz: As we're filming this episode, Josh, and we've given a bunch of tool demos and Ejaaz: examples right now, I'm realizing that we have made so much progress over the Ejaaz: last year when it was incredibly manual.

Ejaaz: And now it's much, much, much less manual. But in my opinion, Ejaaz: it's still manual enough.

Ejaaz: Do you know what I mean? and i think there's going to be a dissection Ejaaz: of audiences where you have the more kind of Ejaaz: i guess you can call them semi-technical folk that will spin up Ejaaz: a clawed bot or try out a new ai native thing Ejaaz: and to your earlier point like you should be proactively trying to Ejaaz: use these tools so you can kind of evolve your brain and thinking Ejaaz: into using these tools that you're not caught off guard but i

Ejaaz: think eventually uh majority of people are just going Ejaaz: to use some kind of package system like google is like the perfect placement Ejaaz: for this right where it's like hey don't worry gemini is just going Ejaaz: to come to wherever you are and we've got you we're just going to give you Ejaaz: the features instead of you trying to figure out the features this is an example Ejaaz: of someone figuring out the feature and i'm actually more of an advocate for

Ejaaz: people to go out and do that but yeah it just occurred to me that i think a Ejaaz: lot of people are just going to kind of take the lazy option and just wait for Ejaaz: that pre-packaging which isn't a bad thing because there's less security risk Ejaaz: it's probably going to be cheaper at that point it's probably going to be a Ejaaz: better user experience well Josh: It's also like what is the actual delta between the time that

Josh: early adopters use it versus the time that the general public uses it Josh: and it's becoming increasingly small it used to be months to years now it's Josh: a matter of days i mean claude bot was exciting because it had access to your Josh: iMessage and you could talk with it and now we have a connection and a really Josh: cool use case that's built right into your claude desktop app without any of Josh: the technical know-how or installation and that was a matter of days the compression

Josh: is happening very quickly. Ejaaz: Yeah i i agree with you on the software front i Ejaaz: maybe don't agree if I look at it from an investment angle. Ejaaz: Because to your earlier point, you knew Tesla was going to be a robot company, Ejaaz: a humanoid specific company six years ago with that video that you recorded, right? Ejaaz: So it's crazy to see how like a lot of these timelines are like collapsing for

Ejaaz: some things, but in other things, they're not. Or maybe it's just lagging. I don't know. Josh: I think people mostly understand the trajectory. The question is whether they Josh: can deliver on that or not. And in the case of Tesla, they have actually delivered on it.

Josh: In don't have set timelines they don't have set delivery dates Josh: it's kind of a fuzzy thing but everyone is generally working towards the same Josh: goals so what we're seeing is just incremental progress some faster than others Josh: um and xai right here is another example of incremental progress that perhaps Josh: leaves a little bit to be desired here the uh the new grok imagine model ijaz Josh: let's talk about this for a sec okay.

Ejaaz: I'm gonna be honest because i'm a massive elon bull that that is no secret on this show but Ejaaz: And the video and image models from Grok, Grok Imagine specifically, Ejaaz: have kind of been subpar. Ejaaz: Like when I look at like what Mid Journey is putting out, when I look at like Ejaaz: what VO3 is putting out, when I look at like what Runway is putting out, Ejaaz: there's just a higher quality and definition that Grok just isn't giving me.

Ejaaz: And that wouldn't even matter because they are, again, like only a two and a half year old startup.

Ejaaz: But it's the fact that Elon keeps on shilling it like it's the next best Ejaaz: thing and i'm like bro it's not right anyway the Ejaaz: the news here is we have a new grok imagine Ejaaz: api uh which is basically their latest um Ejaaz: image or video model and as you can see it is Ejaaz: actually quite impressive and i might be being a bit of a brat here because Ejaaz: this is uh next level compared to like what we had last year and the cool part

Ejaaz: is it's cheaper it's quicker to generate um and it's just simply a better model Ejaaz: that is available everywhere um whether this inspires me to use it isn't really the point. Ejaaz: I'm sure there are people that are involved in video production that will find this way more useful. Ejaaz: Well, actually, let me ask you, Josh, as someone that plays around with a lot Ejaaz: of this stuff, is this a tool that you would use? Are you impressed by it?

Josh: No, they didn't need to release this. This didn't need to happen. Josh: They could have just shelved this and kept going with Grok 4.2 and then working on Grok 5.

Josh: Had this been released a year ago, it would have been amazing. It's a great image Josh: video generation model uh given today's standards Josh: it's not and while it's an improvement for the xai team it is not an actual Josh: improvement pushing the frontier of video or photos forward so while i look Josh: forward to the next iteration of this as they work towards their game development Josh: engine and building these graphics in real time this is kind of an incremental

Josh: progress update that really didn't need to come out i don't think many people Josh: are going to be super excited about this. Ejaaz: Well what if i framed it in a different way josh what if i told you that this Ejaaz: was actually never meant for video production

Ejaaz: but rather game development. So one of our predictions at the end of last year Ejaaz: was that XAI is going to release one of the best gaming AI models, Ejaaz: which will allow for real-time game immersion and gameplay, which is kind of Ejaaz: like some of the demos that we're seeing on this video right here. Ejaaz: And I'm wondering whether that might be their angle. Maybe they're just not Ejaaz: going for video production at all.

Josh: Yeah, and I suspect that's probably why Elon is abnormally excited about this, Josh: because he understands the vision for this and he understands where Josh: on the trajectory this incremental like data point falls Josh: whereas we're seeing it at face value and being like Josh: this isn't that impressive we've seen this before but gaming Josh: is certainly where they want to go gaming and animation and graphics and

Josh: building real-time three-dimensional spaces which are going to compete with Josh: google's genie the world building model so i'm looking forward to that war as Josh: it comes along because logan kilpatrick from google is actually teasing genie Josh: 3 this week which hopefully we'll be getting very very soon and we'll have a Josh: real comparison of a true frontier your world-building model very soon. Ejaaz: Mm-hmm. In other news, we put out an episode earlier this week.

Ejaaz: I actually think it's our last episode on this new Chinese model, Kimi K 2.5. Ejaaz: Now, we're not going to get into it on this episode, but the TLDR is it is a very impressive model. Ejaaz: It's 100% free, open source. You can download it, amend the model weights, and run it locally. Ejaaz: But it might cost you a few very expensive bits of hardware to be able to do that.

Ejaaz: But you can access it for free on their website. and the coolest part about Ejaaz: it is you can kind of like convert video recordings into live production ready Ejaaz: apps but there was an update that we wanted to make based off of this.

Josh: Yeah so we actually said that it would be immensely difficult to run this locally Josh: on a machine because it would have required a tremendous amount of compute and Josh: the reality is is that someone actually got this running with far less than we thought. Josh: You don't need a couple GB200s or H100s or any cutting-edge NVIDIA technology. Josh: This person actually did it with two Macs on his desktop.

Josh: So he bought two M3 Ultra Mac Studios and strung them together, Josh: which costs about $20,000 USD. Josh: And he was able to generate 24 tokens per second using these two computers and Josh: the new Kimi K 2.5 Pro model. Josh: So I think that is a testament to how accessible a model this good is and essentially making it free.

Josh: So now, it's funny, tying it back to the Tesla autopilot example, Josh: where you can buy a license currently for $8,000 and that gives you lifetime Josh: free miles, or you can do a subscription for $20,000. Josh: Now you can basically get a lifetime membership to pseudo AGI to one of the Josh: highest level frontier AI models. And you could run that for free through infinity Josh: at the cost of these two localized models.

Josh: And I think that's a really impressive and fun breakthrough where, I mean, Josh: assumedly the server costs to run this would be significantly lower and you Josh: could just run these open source models now that are very much at the frontier Josh: for a very reasonable cost relative to what some people are paying to use like Josh: an API like Opus 4.5 which is charging you $25 per million tokens.

Ejaaz: Yeah, I mean, the funniest part about this model release has got nothing to Ejaaz: do with the model, but the fact that you can never rest easy because your competition Ejaaz: is always cooking up something better.

Ejaaz: And literally within hours after recording that episode of Kimi K2, Ejaaz: Google pretty much announced an identical copy or functionality where they can Ejaaz: turn, they call it agentic vision, Ejaaz: but they can turn any screen recording into a production ready application. Ejaaz: Now, they don't state that specifically on here, but that's technically what it should be able to do.

Ejaaz: And it just is a testament to how quickly and almost synchronously these AI Ejaaz: labs are working together. Ejaaz: Now, in my opinion, it's more impressive for the Kimi K2.5 team, Ejaaz: the Moonshot Labs team, because they have less infrastructure. Ejaaz: Although someone made the point in our episode in the comments, Ejaaz: Josh, I don't know if you saw this, that they have a much, much cheaper energy.

Ejaaz: So I don't know how that translates necessarily. Maybe they just run these servers Ejaaz: for way, way longer and it just costs them less. So it kind of like matches out. Ejaaz: But it's interesting that the open source teams and the centralized teams are Ejaaz: kind of like moving at parity right now. Ejaaz: It's cool that the open source teams have even caught up. But yeah, Ejaaz: Google's come up with the same thing if you want to try it and use a Western AI lab product.

Josh: It's amazing how quick they were to respond. And also that comment is very correct. Josh: Chinese electricity costs significantly less than the US electricity does because Josh: they have so much more of it. So the cost per token, the cost to train these Josh: models is significantly lower because of that cost per kilowatt as it relates Josh: to just generating all of this energy. Josh: Yeah, yeah. But really nice reply from the commenter, but also Google in a matter of seemingly days.

Josh: It feels like they had this ready to go and they were like, oh, Josh: all right. Well, I guess we should probably just release this now because Kimmy did something similar. Josh: And now here we are. Agentic vision for all.

Ejaaz: Well, if Moonshot AI, KimiK 2.5, is the model example of spending your resources widely, Ejaaz: OpenAI probably needs to be on the opposite end of that spectrum with the breaking Ejaaz: news that they are raising a $100 billion round, Ejaaz: which is just gargantuan, to value them at around $730 billion. Ejaaz: I've seen $850 as well.

Ejaaz: I can only imagine that they are raising this amount of money to blow it all Ejaaz: on training various different models, not just one model, or to kind of build Ejaaz: out a new social network that we saw on the timeline. Ejaaz: Apparently, they're building that and their hardware device. Ejaaz: And what else am I missing, Josh? We've got the Sora TikTok app competitor.

Ejaaz: It just seems like at this point, and I know this might be a negative take, Ejaaz: they've been raising so much money and endlessly blowing it on myriad different Ejaaz: things. so they're spreading themselves very thin. Ejaaz: This doesn't signal confidence to me, actually. It actually signals that they Ejaaz: are kind of being reckless at this point.

Josh: Yeah, it's probably helpful to look at past fundraising history to get a better Josh: perspective of how much money this actually is in a way that feels almost existential. Josh: There's so many vested interests in OpenAI succeeding. Josh: If they don't, what does that look like for the rest of the industry? Josh: That's an important question to just kind of sit on for a little bit. Josh: But if you go back to the funding rounds, even April 2023, they were raising still in the millions.

Josh: They raised $300 million at a $27 billion valuation. Then in October 2024, Josh: they raised 20 times that, $6.6 billion at $157 billion valuation. Josh: And now they're raising eight times that at $40 billion at a $300 billion post-money valuation. Josh: Now, this is interesting because Ejaz, earlier in the episode, Josh: we mentioned SpaceX was looking to raise $50 billion at about a $1.5 trillion Josh: valuation. So they're raising 20% more. Josh: At 500% the market cap.

Josh: And we're starting to see like OpenAI is giving up a lot of equity here. Josh: They're really giving a lot of vested and controlled interest to a lot of companies Josh: that may not want that liability. Josh: And I wonder if this is a strategy in where he's trying to, Sam and the OpenAI Josh: team are just trying to get as many vested interests as possible in their success Josh: in a way that they become too big to fail.

Josh: Where so many people have so much money tied up in this thing that they own Josh: a lot of, that they are forced to give whatever it takes to make this work because Josh: the downside effect impacts the entire industry in such a large way. Josh: And I can't help but read these headlines and not think that. Josh: I mean, this is just outrageous. They have a tremendous amount of debt. Josh: They haven't made a single profit. They're trying all these things like ads.

Josh: They're trying to take revenue cuts. Josh: They're trying social media things, seeing what sticks. Josh: And it's giving it's giving desperate vibes.

Ejaaz: Yeah i mean i have a simple take Ejaaz: which is uh they are on track to make and Ejaaz: also burn 20 billion dollars of capex Ejaaz: this year i think they need someone to foot the bill uh Ejaaz: to also spin up a bunch of the compute data centers 1.4 trillion dollars worth Ejaaz: um over the next three years and i think they're panicking that they didn't Ejaaz: spend enough time and resources on building out a better coding model to compete

Ejaaz: with anthropic which is kind of taking over all of enterprise and eating out Ejaaz: their market share right now. Ejaaz: And Neil's is spending it on other stuff like social media apps and stuff like that. Ejaaz: Uh, my take is, listen, I hope they raise the round. Good for them. Ejaaz: Uh, but I don't trust Sam and the team to spend it wisely for now. Ejaaz: And that might be super bearish take. Ejaaz: I'm willing to be proven wrong, but that's just where my head's at.

Josh: Well, I feel like we have to root for them because we have no choice. Josh: If OpenAI goes down, so does everything with it. So we're rooting for you, Sam and the OpenAI team. Josh: I hope everything works. I hope this money goes to good use.

Josh: And I think that probably wraps up our roundup for this week. of all the top news in AI. Josh: As you enter the weekend, you can now feel properly satiated that you are fully Josh: up to date and aware of all the hottest news that you needed to this week. Josh: We released a few pretty great episodes. They're doing really well on Kimmy Josh: K2 and Claudebot. So if you haven't had a chance to go listen to those, Josh: please go and check them out.

Josh: The ask for you perhaps this week is to try out the Gemini Chrome extension Josh: situation and use it to subscribe to our podcast. Josh: That's like a fun little demo. You can say, hey, subscribe to my favorite new Josh: AI in Frontier Technology podcast, and it will actually go and click the button for you.

Josh: And then if you go on Claude and you connect your iMessage, you could ask it, Josh: send the Limitless podcast to 10 of my best friends and figure out which are Josh: my 10 best friends who would be most interested and share the link with them. Josh: And I think these are really great use cases that you can try. And then get it to spin. Ejaaz: Up a number of other Google accounts and do the exact same thing, Ejaaz: right, Josh? Let's just create an entire platform.

Josh: Exactly. But I mean, this is a bit of a longer episode. So if you made it this Josh: long, thank you so much. These are the real ones that are still here at the end. Josh: Thank you for listening. We will be back again next week with plenty of new Josh: episodes, lots of new news to cover, and a lot of exciting topics that we will Josh: keep on keeping you up to date with. So thank you for watching, Josh: and we'll see you guys next week. Ejaaz: See you guys.