DeepSeek, Stargate & The Battle for Open AI - Christopher David

I view Deep Seek as allies. I see them as on team Open.

Some of the best funded lobbying for regulatory capture. There's a bunch of that during The tail end of the Biden that like they were going to anthropic, essentially, that's To build this kind of de facto been blown wide open by But you still have what, day Sam Altman, closed AI guy up for OpenAI only. What?

Welcome to the Business The show dedicated to helping business with bitcoin, the I'm your host, Josh Friedeman, David, who is the founder of Today on the show, we're and why Christopher believes of AI. We're going to get into our after this. Christopher, welcome to the podcast. Hey, Josh, thanks for having me. So I like to start off every that help us to get to know us some insight for our own lives. So you ready for these? Yeah. Question number one is this.

When and how did you first This was 2011. No, I don't have a massive my like political Ron Paul in the context of, and the Fed stuff like, hey, check out bitcoin. And that was after bitcoin had And I was like, I was relating invest. And I was like, do you think He's like, eventually. So I bought a bunch at 30. It crashed down to like 2. I'm like, ah, screw this. And then, you know, a couple above 200 sold. It made a 5X. Felt cool.

But, you know, started doing of like this potential on develop, realizing it could applications, which I'm sure So follow up question there. It sounds like you came into side, but from, from that Than from the technology side. Is that right? Yeah, that's cool. But it seems like you figured side as well. Yeah, I'm a developer and so applications. My kind of journey, starting what I now call shitcoins. Forgive my French, but you because apparently they would applications.

It turns out that they've only people from their money, but realizing that this is where activity is, is migrating to. Question number two.

Is this what's an insight or understood? Probably increasingly to be a lot of talk about Is there really is and needs like the first invention of can never be reproduced and to do all sorts of other of like a technology. And there's going to be lots gets a debate at what the US of building reserves and And my kind of observation I so called toxic Bitcoin as I limit my toxicity to Twitter. I'm otherwise kind of, kind of nice.

But that sort of like strict important defense mechanism or polluted by very well opt or hijack or distract or Fortunately, I think all of will continue to go to zero But there's going to be a lot as everyone kind of is government as legitimacy. So we'll see what happens. But you don't have to care or digital assets. It's okay to be Bitcoin only. Good to hear. So question number three. What's the bitcoin resource I think the body of work from probably what everyone standard.

Um, it's okay to not get It's very like kind of but as like a philosophical of parallel book fiat standard it the evils of the fiat These really are the stakes. And my favorite quote from earlier point is that, you were not on the same team. Bitcoiners are trying to end money printing. The other people are basically they benefit. So the big innovation of alternative financial and system, and then on top of of beneficial things for humanity. Question number four.

Beyond Bitcoin, what is a helpful to you or your work recently? I say an idea and that is kind It's both open source as well And this is adding real value an open source company, a on open source. It lends itself to interoperability. So there are other companies of building at the And because we're building on protocol, which is Bitcoin, above that called lightning.

We're more or less also using that works well adjacent to like decentralized data, being that are more specific to our for agents on top of that substrate. Everyone kind of wants to So we're not competing. There are other companies that and that we are allies. So it's a value add. And if you look outside the at Silicon Valley where Everyone just wants to chase of a zero sum game in a lot of space where everyone's kind of own roll up.

There's all these kind of like have incentive to cooperate, their token or whatever it is It does not lend itself to And I think over the next year see that interoperability competitive advantage for businesses. I can see how that's starting I think particularly once we through and we're able to kind with other businesses. There's a lot of kind of win, be done. I think it's going to be a the people that are building Yeah.

I want to follow up with you about that because I'd be those trends that you're seeing. But for right now, let's get We call it our arbitrary but As a general life principle, I love both of those. And if I had to pick, I would Because why gets to first principles. And I think that that has to Like why do I need your Why do I need your crypto coin? Why do I need dot? Like why? You follow the whys and you beautiful place called. I actually don't need all of Everybody else.

Let me start from the, the, and then the why not would oh my man, like I'm going to or people who don't want me to And then if there's a wall like, that's like a kind of a But why? Why comes first? Well, Christopher, we're here Agents, as well as getting it comes to Bitcoin and AI, Those are definitely two of of development. And you find yourself there in Can you share with us a little

Sure. So I call Open Agents an and products for the agentic And the sort of impetus for the Dev day presentation in Altman unveiled their kind of around agents. I came to agree that agents sort of economic unit of the economy. And I just didn't like their approach. They mentioned also they were of like store for people to of agents and earn revenue And that's where I knew like not going to do that properly. They're just structurally not to build on Bitcoin and be like decentralized participant.

And this had been my background. My previous startup was a gig and kind of delivery networks I was like, here is where the could be a big advantage and that focuses just on this. So I had a existing company at to focus on agents. We renamed the company to Open Agents.

And the day after that I 150 plus video series of me over time, over the last year, that we've put out, things But Open Agents is really like this idea of like a research AI economy, but like being that we're open and taking strategic advantages that that allows. Could you talk a little bit the agentic economy, what that Well, the bet is that there of agents everywhere I mean, and to kind of drive look at the humanoid robotics and Optimus is. He's trying to manufacture a in the next decade.

So just, let's just say that at some point in the next 10 Before that point, the but for software. What we call AI agents are Like that's the first thing to grapple with. Agents are everywhere by person, family, business, device, business, everything processes running as part of it. And let's like pause to define agent.

Plenty of people have their of like something that no one I like to keep things simple process that does what you ask There's a lot of people that we're building AGI or building And there's a lot of kind of, it that I'm trying to steer This is something that If the kinds of things that particularly in your business and you can have 10 different monitoring your email, whatever. Like it's about fundamentally that.

But if we think about what is fundamentally that this has to of openness. If you have multiple billions of them are controlled by with connections to a whole bunch of people or you that are excited about and people are going to be on Like there's a lot of like of the technology. And I think that if the sort okay with it being controlled you're going to get a lot of that. But if the ethos shifts, open, things are expected to I think a lot of that bad off or get away with.

So we're trying to build the for that economy on a neutral And does decentralized mean Not necessarily. What does that look like? It seems like that would be But what are your thoughts there? I don't know how practical Part of the beauty of a system a parallel is it allows for a So if you are that hobbyist or on your home machine.

I've got my Linux computer it apart, you know, modify it you know, guarantees about kind of like black box But you can also build on top That's a more curated consumer experience. But Linux is the, you know, all these kinds of things. And so if we look at that kind and Linux, I think you're space where, you know, they're still the Windows You know, they own 49% of closed AI, GitHub and their empire in their You've got a lot of, on the and people, you know, taking wherever and running with them.

That's cool. But we do think there should of equivalent of macOS that is can then still smooth down scare off consumers. And in the space of AI agents, that's where we're trying to So as far as your current and what do those look like?

What can people be expecting Yeah, in the short term we're case that we've identified thousands of dollars per month Kind of a drop in remote This we think is going to help where just imagine that we at a lot of things, but it's of data source or whatever developer who has some unique be able to create a plugin get a little share of that revenue.

I think once we get that that's going to let us broaden And we want to get to the this end up will being a be a to be able to have their own way to Command agents, which app. Plenty of people think that, some other device or they're not. We, we are strong believers in everyone is already paying for literally all of the I guess you could say in some with Apple on that. I think that I have their have been like very underwhelming. I don't think they have the We'll see if that changes.

But you know, I fundamentally, install our mobile app. We have an app in development In open beta, it's still kind That's the kind of tools that But over the next few months open ended and generic. So to sum up, we're doing two interfaces. We're doing a web application you want to, you know, click it work and the kind of data or you can click to download We're envisioning that as like from Tony Stark. You just got your thing that it does stuff for you, that Is it could be a coding agent.

It could be literally anything marketplace that we're where you don't have to care stuff that's happening in the background. You're just able to ask it to And it does. If you ask it to do something going to open up a little job 10 people requested this We will pay half a bitcoin for Or maybe way less than half a bitcoin. But you know, this, this will user demands. But I think that's one thing have is that marketplace. I don't see anyone really effect. What is going to set companies apart.

Obviously there's a race to the base level of models. There's what seems to be an battle is going to be more at And the sort of excitement to be around this concept of Companies that specialize in get very good at kind of AI agents. That's kind of like the, the, in Silicon Valley and such. I take a different view on that. That type of company. Vertical agents reminds me of people took the idea of Uber different things and five, ten to come up with like a real type companies.

Maybe there's a couple. Uber is still there. So it's like in the realm of daddy market hegemon going to be? I think open agents has a it's ideally it should be both And how we get away with that case coding. Agents is what we're focused both for, you know, our team that we're starting to work with. And enterprises are going to engineer.

But like I said, to be able to marketplace where we're able and service providers to help of the open agents platform distribution because we have a with businesses. We get paid by the business. We pay out, you know, cuts to So in that respect we want to I think that's how we, we And then that network effect we're building the best agents. Where are people going to go They're going to come to open it's open agents. Of course you want open agents.

You don't want agents that No, you want open agents. Right.

So then when it comes to Onyx, I'm guessing that's primarily Just, you know, the average What does that cost. We hope for Onyx to be free, Certainly there will be a base And you know, you can start to been changing where now like mini for free. Deep Seek has been offering services are getting slammed.

So they got, there's got to be But I think, you know, a year will be really going viral that the models could be just away really powerful running some devices on, on Like we shipped a couple kind 3.21b or 3d model running on Like we don't need to charge It's using your own battery power. You know, there will be other like if someone wants to pay So we'll experiment but you of open agents enterprise comes from. And then we're just able to lead gen and other kinds of opportunities.

Yeah. So while people are waiting today for an AI agent? You know what the average that they use? The average person? I mean, I would say like using talks about like chat GPT point where you're like, I it can't. That's where you want to start And, and for most people maybe your needs and you're fine I would say that if you're a developers or you're just efficiency in your development that's where you should reach we are working with people and way more bang for the buck kind of most people.

Yeah, I'd say use what's out there. If you have, I don't know, identify, please tweet them at us. At Open Agents, you know, those things that OpenAI and It's, it's a moving target. But the hope is that by, you infrastructure in place such like I'm asking my Onyx to do right away, it gets turned you know, builds and it's, evolving product I think, I So for devs, when it comes to compare your current product Well, OpenAI on their like $20 losing money on that.

So I think there's a level of, just able to do because of money that we can't, we Sure.

I have been happy for my day to $100 per day sometimes of thousands of dollars that I So I do think the kind of per sense where we can take, Deep Seq, which is like for, for percent of the that a bunch of the developers happy to, you know, buy $20 or And I'm, I'm confident, come down, if you're able to able to spend $5 of compute to pull requests done and that Developers who like know how see the value in that very, Yeah. So you mentioned Deep Seek. What are your initial thoughts?

It's been out for a few days. Is it kind of a sea change or What are initial thoughts? It may be overhyped and a lot it's revolutionary and I'm where I'm spending X amount on Claude. I, I have our Claude has been have used for the last six months. We've been for the last 18 OpenAI Claude 3 came out GPT been the best for the last six coding agents, but it can be expensive.

And so here comes a model that And even though in some cases model generally, and this is we're stripping Sonnet out of it with more of a kind of a just one call to Sonnet, we'll and kind of more smartly build So at least in our initial way smarter result. In the end, it's smarter and cheaper. Takes a little bit more work So from my perspective, just something finally I can rip In addition to the platform by anthropic or their APIs are I can use Deep Seats API.

I can use, it's hosted a bunch I learned just in the last day The full version of R1, not the full version of R1 to Or you can build a rig to run I was like, all right, maybe bit because I want to run one me. How cool would that be? And then maybe we'll connect But like it's, it's remarkable of things. But it's finally, we finally of us inside of the sort of been hoping for, for a long least at par with the leading that is open that we can run

And the fact that they've because you can just think are able to fine tune that in of it, that it just unlocks not possible with the closed because it is so transparent I mean this has been a major developers have complained about. OpenAI, which is they're For 01 or 01 Pro. And you're paying for this do all this thinking. And sometimes you'll sit there minutes while it's thinking.

It doesn't really tell you You get little like very bare But with Deep Seek, you get of its thought process, you Now OpenAI has their kind of hiding that because they know it makes it that much easier can do better than, than what But that's a major, I think if they're trying to build as it's going to be. You're, you're basically in the model, the provider of the to, you know, I'm hiring these building agentic processes large parts of my business.

And you're not even going to I can't reproduce any of this. I can't see what happens when And then all this additional you're not going to share that I know, but over here I can quality. I think they're in a tough spot. I wouldn't want to be them. It's a good time to be no longer running to catch up. We may, we may, you know, In some things we are power, Because there's a whole slew open AI. They can't use their API leave their premises. And so maybe you've got some of custom.

There's companies, one or two send people on site to help But just that ability to know inspect it, modify it. Yeah, we need that, we need the closed source, you know, And then we just want to build That's the, the apple of that. Yeah.

So Some people have tried to It sounds like it's a win of Is that the better way of Yes, I do think so.

And you know, certainly I'll actually just read my I tweeted at David Sacks, the He was talking about Deep Seek US, China, etc. And my response was, hopefully attempts at regulatory capture both dimensions, us versus I'm seeing way too many calls It's the wrong approach and AI, or else there's some kind players that are behind might get a strategic edge and And people have speculated because they've been behind actually on the side of open source.

You're right to be skeptical In the case of Wen Fang Lang, but the CEO of Deep Seek, you someone did a profile on him. He's just some nerd who source. And like he's building an open in China. So I view Deep Seek as allies. I see them as on Team Open. And I hope that lessons that take from this is not that we to strike more of these kind with companies.

Like, I mean, you've already in the space are actively There's a bunch of that during The tail end of the Biden that like they were going to Anthropic. Essentially, that's it to. To build this kind of de facto been blown wide open by But you still have what, day Sam Altman closed AI guy up for open air only. What? I guess it's all private Even though there's some there. Elon has poured cold water on have the money. So how much of that was just We don't know yet.

They do have a, or Oracle I in Abilene that's been So that's sort of like phase But you know, clarity has come building this for open AI. So this is not like a neutral, This is like this is an open And if OpenAI has the issues you know, skepticism given. Altman also has been issuing like harvest people's There's some concerns about the future of this, of this technology. Altman would probably love to, the AI utopia slash dystopia, be the, the structure at all. It should be more open.

I hope that America can lead is really in line with the It's just whether some kind of incentive to have the US which unfortunately happens a Yeah, it seems like Stargate Seek or at least the main I still think it's important but if it's all going, or if now I feel like Open AI is Well, I think so too. And it's, it's, you know, if incentive for the kind of to keep going up and.

Oh yeah, like you know, that all this money on the latest amount of returns, maybe some, some insights of coming up with you know, an efficiency and like starts I, I just see all of that as a There's definitely too much returning to reality. Particularly recognitions that important thing to embrace actively. I think that's all bullish. Now I know with the app of its answers. Is there that type of action version, or is that something the app?

Only anyone who has an app in is going to have things like to the existing government. ChatGPT has the equivalent. Every app in the App Store has There's content moderation You don't have to use the app. You can take the underlying model. And companies like Perplexity only deploy the underlying have the aggressive content things it was trained on and or overridden. And I saw something like where they actually, like they remove some of that.

They did something where if about Tiananmen or any of gives you straight answers. Now, does it give you straight stuff that they might want you Like they're a US like every going to have some level of that. And then the question is, do model weight so you can put it where people around the globe new technology innovation I think that's beneficial. I don't think it's beneficial dominant edge over everything else. You know, hopefully everyone more or less, and they're just I don't know, maybe.

Maybe we need like a. An AI version of Mutually Like, everyone's got the Everyone, Everyone, including because we've all got really each other. I don't know. Yeah, yeah.

So I want to turn to a little bit more before we Just first of all, speak to, this. Is it primarily because it's additional benefits to Bitcoin ways that you've seen that open agents and other companies? Yeah, it's A step one is value. What are they going to be Are they going to have their Maybe. I'm sure there's a company or own bank accounts. That sounds horrible to me. These are Internet native They should have Internet We have that with Bitcoin.

Are agents going to be Chuck E. Cheese token of the day? Probably not. Even though there's a whole hard on that, I just I think agents like people paid in the hardest asset, the Cheese token or a devaluing And regardless of whether or Bitcoin the Rails where you and Light Spark building sort Lightning network as transport. So there I, you can envision Bitcoin based assets like by agents. And this is something that I, of full range of Bitcoin based easily traded by agents.

But it's got to be that. It's got to use the Lightning are instant and Internet open to all people. Like that's going to bring the zero. And so I think fundamentally be a large driver. I think of Bitcoin adoption. If you want to participate or in the agent economy, like want your Bitcoin wallet, but we're going to charge you freer. And so that that consensus that Bitcoin is the any company that's building default interoperable.

Like I can buy stuff from them And then the other piece is They're starting to be open like Anthropic, you know, hats positive thing. For open protocols, they Context Protocol that people agents with a way to consume services. You know, a good start. But fundamentally I think if same language such that kind of global liquidity pool can draw on. And okay, this data source or this service will cost me a But there's no reason why decentralized registries of things.

And I'd say that's the, the that's happened so far between building on Bitcoin and AI are Bitcoin and AI, which is okay, there should be this shared registry. You know, we've got some L402 piece that connects all Some people are building more the APIs. I'm writing some like Noster specifications. I can kind of tie all this for the, for the data communication.

And it's just everyone's kind all have incentive to kind of have 2, 3, 4, 5 of the leading language, participating in a of startups is going to want So we're going to be building Is that going to happen from their own incentive and no Probably not. Is it going to happen from own token and no incentive to cooperate? Probably not.

I think you're going to see you know, ecosystem evolve 12 months. Particularly as, and this is is like what is the revenue source? What is the thing that people we get real commerce happening. That is our initial focus on just a problem that I for 30 years and the bulk of software development. And that's what I've been Kind 18 months is how can we build productivity but maximize like And going from 0 to 1 from product that I can test in the marketplace.

You know, to be able to bring absolute maximum is going to anyone building, building in So once we have the kind of with, early customers that we us, you know, a few hundred per month to kind of get a that with these coding agents, into more of a marketplace. Down the road, we do hope to stop shop for AI agents where of the like underlying stuff, It's just a place you go.

You can slap down the credit our sales team, whatever that and just have all of the best For most people, you know, want to have 8 billion people where they just open it up, like literally magic happens the background. Very cool. Well, any final thoughts you finish up today, as well as to give open agents a try or I'd say, please. We're very active on x. Follow us OpenAgents Inc. Is the Twitter. You can go to OpenAgents.com we're building as well as of our mobile app called Onyx.

And then in the next week or the new version of our kind of to be able to interact with If you are a business owner agents into your business, personally. You can contact us through the Great. Christopher, thank you so much It's been a pleasure, Josh, Well friends, it's a wrap. Thanks so much for listening show. If you want to reach out to You can find those links down Coding agents sounds as well. As always, keep building, keep living and leading.

Well. Thanks to those who have been recent days, the boost of the a comment about last week's Roger Mochegemba. He said great conversation to Bitcoin into healthcare. Loved hearing my client Dr. Roger explain the synergy and bitcoin. He was early to telemedicine, If you're around San Antonio Shout out for making it easy Bitcoin and the Lightning network. I appreciate the SATs, John, do as well. And if you also would like to on Fountain and either stream And if you send a boost with a the show.