Host 1: I don't know if some of you knew I was an angel investor in some companies. On the count of three, what's my favorite angel investment of all time? One, two, three.

Host 1: Thank you. Give it up. Travis Kalanick.

Travis Kalanick: Appreciate you. All right. Wow. Um, on a big news day, Travis is here on a very big news day. you spent uh wow I guess like seven years just in the lab building last year every year I ask you hey you want to come to the summit you want to say no it's like I'm going to just chill I'm building next year hey you know just it's always available

Travis Kalanick: you understand I'm stealth

Host 2: yeah stealth I'm stealth nobody knows where I am nobody knows what I'm doing the employees are not allowed to put the name of the company on their LinkedIn

Host 1: thousands of employees that weren't allowed to put the company name on LinkedIn I mean, incredible. And I'm like, "Okay." And

Travis Kalanick: their parents thought they worked for the CIA.

Host 1: Yeah. And then he's like, "And by the way, Jake Al, you can invest. You can't announce it and you have to sign an you can't mention you're an investor." It's like, "Okay, no problem. I'm just happy to be on the cap table."

Host 2: Is he like kind of like secret saying what he wasn't supposed to say,

Travis Kalanick: right? Now he's doing that just happened.

Host 2: Well, you know, you're out now. It Let's go.

Host 1: You're out. It's out. You're You came out of stealth today.

Host 2: Um,

Host 1: it's so funny. Okay.

Host 2: It's so great. You came out of stealth. Well, you you talked a little bit. You came to All-In last year. Is that fair? You say you're coming out of stealth today. Is that right?

Travis Kalanick: Well, look, let let's just start with what that meant for our employees because again, imagine if you're at a multi,000 person company and every single employee has stealth on their LinkedIn, including salespeople, okay? Including recruiters. Like it was they they were they were living life on hard mode. It

Host 1: was kind of fun too, right? I mean

Travis Kalanick: I mean yeah it was like kind of cool what the what's what is this? Why are there why is this massive density of stealth

Host 2: right

Travis Kalanick: startup people in Los Angeles? What is happening over there?

Host 1: Yeah.

Host 2: Yeah.

Travis Kalanick: Also technically the name of the company in different countries was very generic names of companies. I mean everything was designed to be stealth,

Host 1: right?

Travis Kalanick: So we operate in 30 countries. In the US the kitchens product is known as CloudKitchens. In Korea it's Kitchen Valley. In the Middle East it's Nama. In Latin America, parts of Latin America it's Cinaas. I mean you get the idea. You can't even remember all the names and all the code words.

Host 1: Think about it.

Travis Kalanick: To think it through. But

Host 2: we have four in China, you know, it's like all over the place. Yeah.

Host 1: But things have gone really well and you've been a little inquisitive. So tell us about the branding today that you're announcing and then maybe some of the acquisitions and evolution of the company. You're not just renting kitchen space.

Travis Kalanick: Those who I mean know how I thought about things in the Uber day, a lot of this stuff's not surprising. I I would often talk about digitizing the physical world. I think I even did it all at summit. The quick version of this, I'll try to do it quickly, but it's like uh we know the bits world, the computer world, the one that Michael Dell essentially invented for us. CPU, storage, network. These are three core computing resources. When you go to computer science class your first day, three core computer resources. CPU manipulates the bits. Storage stores the bits. Network moves bits from point A to point B. But if you're digitizing the physical world, you're treating atoms like bits. You're building an atoms-based computer. And I'll explain what I mean to say. I know this is a little little out there. CPU manipulates bits. What manipulates atoms? Manufacturing. Storage stores bits. What stores atoms? Real estate. Network moves bits from point A to point B. What moves atoms? That's transportation or logistics. So you have these three core computing resources in an atoms-based computer. The name of my company was very obtuse and purposely designed to be as boring as hell was called City Storage Systems. So that's digitized real estate in an atoms-based computer. Our first computer being a food computer. What does that mean? Manufacturing real estate and logistics for food. And so you start to get there and the idea the the mission was infrastructure for better food. The idea was, can you get a meal that's prepared and delivered to you so efficient that it starts to approach the the the cost of going to the grocery store? If you can do that, you do to the kitchen what Uber did to the car. But in the Uber day, the roads were there, the cars are unused. You just had to put an app in the app store. Wasn't that easy, but kind of that easy. In this world, you can't do this on a restaurant. restaurant doesn't have. When I left Uber, 13% of all San Francisco miles were Uber miles. You can't get and that was 10 nine years ago. You can't get there on food on restaurants. They they have like 20% capacity. Uber Eats and DoorDash fill it, but the infrastructure to do high capacity, high scale sort of industrial production is just not there. And the logistics just not there. It just doesn't work. That's why on e-commerce you go through Amazon big ass warehouses with awesome logistics. You've got to do the same thing when food when food goes to e-commerce. That was a lot. Okay. So bottom line is it's awesome. We do this food computation stuff. We're doing more computers now. And so the name of the company is called Atoms and it's let's say the mission uh is um is uh physical automation to transform industries and move the world. And so we have our food computer I talked about. Then we do we're doing mining.

Host 1: Mining as in

Travis Kalanick: mining data mining.

Host 2: We're talking about atoms guys.

Travis Kalanick: Yeah.

Host 1: So well of course you do some mining data mine too but the point is is physical mining. So automation of mines and uh the mission there is uh more productive mines to power earth's industries. Right? So it's got this industrial atoms vibe to it. And then on the transport side, it's uh wheelbase for robots because if you're doing specialized robots, not humanoids, specialized robots, you need to be able to move and act in the physical world. But the minute you're moving, you got to have a wheelbase. So, it's just part of the equation. And a lot of people go, look at Tesla, it's great. Look at uh look at Waymo. Awesome. They're cruising around Austin, of course. But there's so many things that move. It's not just a ride sharing thing. Um, and so, um, obviously including mining equipment that's doing its thing. So you guys, that's the general sort of idea. And we acquired a company on the mining stuff, a company called Pronto or it's about to close. It's we're we're inches from closing is the way to put it.

Host 2: What were they doing? What was their business? Pronto

Travis Kalanick: automating mining equipment.

Host 1: Were they based?

Travis Kalanick: Uh, they're based in San Francisco. So, you and I were starting to talk about this backstage, but there's some folks I talked to in the mining industry who mentioned, you know, like the the big issue with mining number one is just surveying, like finding the the locations, right? Is there an advantage to be created there? Cuz I know there's a couple startups that are trying to be really smart about selecting locations to get the targets out of the ground.

Host 1: Yeah.

Travis Kalanick: And then the other one is like, well, can you go deep? Because pretty much anywhere on Earth, you can get whatever you want if you're willing to go deep enough, but the cost is is distance squared, right? So the energy cost is like how deep are you going to the to to the second power. So it becomes you know geometrically more expensive to go deeper but the deeper you go you're the more you're able to kind of not worry about getting the right location. So does automation unlock that capacity?

Host 1: Automation definitely does. I mean, but you have I mean, also it's like, man, does Boring Company have some good stuff going?

Travis Kalanick: Like I hope we we're like we're doing the mining thing like and Boring Company goes makes, you know, some good tunnels for for cars to do the thing. But like there's some kind of boring mechanism, automated tunneling to do some of this. But to be honest, there's there's, you know, they have this this thing is like rare earths. I don't know why they put plural rare earths, isn't it? Rare earth. I don't know. But the

Host 1: but rare rare

Travis Kalanick: rare earth.

Host 1: Yeah. But it's not rare.

Travis Kalanick: It's uncommon mineral guys. It's not rare. It's what you have to do to the land is aggressive. And what's rare is the is is where the where are the places they'll let you do it that you can also sort of get people to.

Host 1: When you automate, you can go to a lot of places. Uh well, first is all the mines that exist are way more productive. Um and the second is you can then sort of justify going to places you wouldn't have been able to go before because um you don't have as much of a labor footprint or a safety issue or a whole bunch of other things that then

Host 2: So if it's inhospitable, if it's regulated, if it's like I don't want to live there, it's the end of the earth.

Host 1: Yeah.

Host 2: You can send robots and have people monitoring them remotely. Yeah.

Host 1: And this is like a a future that feels like a little bit like science fiction.

Travis Kalanick: Look, we're here in Austin. You got to do the shout out to Tesla and all the things cuz I like to sort of break down the physical AI stack includes not just like, oh yeah, computation and I've got to have physical AI models and I got to all the things you sort of think of. What about land development? That should be in that stack. What about chemistry? that needs to be in the stack. Manufacturing needs to be in the stack. When you look at the stack, you're like, damn, Tesla's got this. They are they are the Google of this era. Which is what I mean by that is in the 2000s, if you were doing a startup in the 2000s, the first question you would get is uh why isn't why isn't Google going to kill you or why isn't Google just going to do it?

Host 1: Why Google?

Travis Kalanick: They're not going to know that they killed you.

Host 2: And before that, Microsoft.

Travis Kalanick: And before that was Microsoft late 90s. Uber had a time 2010.

Host 1: What if Uber puts that in the app?

Travis Kalanick: Come on. It's like, dude, this is Uber. I'm like, but you know, I think in the physical AI space, that's a that's sort of a Tesla thing. Um, but there's so many things to do. You got to shoot your shot. You got to do some stuff.

Host 2: And rumors that um, hey, you might not be done with self-driving, something that you were very early on. How do you think about what you're seeing in the playing field of self-driving? Because my lord, you know, Waymo's making great progress. Tesla's making great progress.

Host 1: Pick a winner. Like pick a winner between Tesla, Waymo, Uber,

Host 2: or or like Uber. Uber seems to be building a network of stuff.

Host 1: Yeah. I mean, the number of

Host 2: pick a winner.

Travis Kalanick: Yeah. Look, there's I think there's more noise. There's more bark than there is bite right now. Um, look, I think Waymo obviously is ahead. the existence proof is there. Their issue is manufacturing and scale um and urgency and fierceness like let's

Host 1: come on. Let's go.

Travis Kalanick: Yeah. You know, Uber had an autonomy project back in the day. So, and they have a different strategy these days. I haven't been there for a while. So, but the but the point is is that you so you got Waymo, then you've got Tesla fundamentals, science, hard mode times 100. And the question is, do they get there in what time scale? If if they and like honestly everybody's like, could happen tomorrow, could happen in 5 years. And I think that it's like when does the ChatGPT moment happen for vision is basically the thing. Let's call it vision without other sensors. So super inspiring, but like what's the timeline on it?

Host 1: Yeah.

Travis Kalanick: Um those are the bas this is basically the and then there's a lot of other little guys that don't really have the stuff I believe yet.

Host 2: There's nobody standing out just yet of of the others. Do you think we're at a point now like obviously now that you're getting into more of these kind of autonomous systems that move around like do we have these vision-language-action models tuned and ready for prime time? There's there's been a conversation like who's going to have the Android the operating system for vision-language-action where I can use my voice tell it to do something and it knows what I'm saying and then it identifies the objects and does the thing in the physical world. Do those models exist today or there still work? And is that like a Google OS or like where does that OS come from?

Travis Kalanick: Look, I think there's a there this is an area of a lot of energy, a mix of research and implementation. I think there's a lot of hope and interesting stuff. I mean the high level is we all remember what happened when you used ChatGPT 3.5 and you're like holy.

Host 2: Yeah, it's legit.

Travis Kalanick: Whoa. And then it went to 4 and you're like, okay, like some stuff just changed. The world just changed and I can sort of connect some dots and getting real. Is it about to happen? Is it about to happen for physical AI? And that's what this is about. Yeah.

Host 1: And the fun part about it is machine learning, deep learning, this kind of thing for many years, decades was like inscrutable. I don't know what the thing is thinking. It just spits out an answer and I know it's correct. Well, now you can have a conversation with it, right? Like imagine if it's driving your car and there's different agents and one's just driving, the other's like, "Yo, look out over there."

Host 2: Yeah.

Host 1: It's like, "Oh, just like how we roll." Like somebody does that, you're like, you're like, "Honey, that's like 200 meters away. We're going to be okay." Yeah.

Host 2: Jason and I don't call each other honey, but I got you. Yeah.

Host 1: Like,

Host 2: sweetie,

Host 1: you know. Yeah.

Host 2: Okay. So anyways, so that was odd, wasn't it? Okay. Okay. Okay. I didn't mean it that way. I didn't mean it.

Host 1: Yeah. You know, I meant it. Okay.

Travis Kalanick: Language is a beautiful compression mechanism that humans use 100 watts of energy like and you put that in the scheme of things of like AI training, AI energy, the power plants that are built to do the thing that isn't even at human strength yet. Okay. The Waymo machine takes a hundred times more energy to drive a Waymo than a human does to drive a Waymo. So, so language we there are still things that humans are great at and that unbeat like the goat. We're still the goat at certain things. Language is this epic compression. And um we need to find ways to compress cuz like when you think about how how we first started looking at the physical world is we saw everything. And you know what guys and this is sort of obvious like it doesn't matter what the cloud is doing if I'm driving. But like the car doesn't know that. It's pulling in every freaking data point and processing everything. And it's it's you know look they've been about sort of carving out the things that don't matter and things like this. There's ultra awesome versions of this and you can imagine how you can use language or things that look like language to communicate either amongst agents or sort of safety systems with a driving system to sort of get very efficient answers and to identify safety issues very efficiently.

Host 2: People don't know that you've moved to Texas as of most people don't know but it's it's out there.

Travis Kalanick: Yeah. You moved here in December, so now you're a resident of Austin.

Host 1: Yeah, I was I Thank you.

Host 2: It's very exciting for me. We've been getting to play some back gammon.

Host 1: Back gamon cards. It's

Host 2: cards. We're having a good time.

Travis Kalanick: So, I've had a place on Lake Austin since 2021. And uh I go there. I'm an avid water skier. Like,

Host 1: you're impressive at water skiing, I have to say. Like,

Travis Kalanick: so I've had a place in Austin for 5 years. freaking love it. It's my weekend. I would go 15 weekends a year.

Host 2: What do you think's going to happen in California?

Travis Kalanick: It's pretty messed up. Look, I I grew up in Cali. Uh like I grew up in Los Angeles. Uh my parents were born and bred in Los Angeles, which basically makes them the founders of LA. Okay. But um so I have a lot of heart like my whole family, everything, you know? It's pretty

Host 1: it's pretty it's I don't want

Travis Kalanick: a lot of us feel that way. I don't want to get the violin out, but it just But it's heartbreaking.

Host 2: The plot totally It's just a place you grew up. It's your home, you know,

Travis Kalanick: when you have to leave.

Host 1: Uh but it's getting weird out there and uh it feels like it's getting weirder and at some point that's it's just too weird.

Host 2: It's too weird. Do you think everyone's going to leave?

Travis Kalanick: I mean, it started with Elon and it was like

Host 1: we don't want Elon here and then he's like message received,

Travis Kalanick: right? And then it kind of worked its way down the tech industry and in the kind of it, you know, world of people building businesses and whatnot. And now it's kind of gotten so broad in terms of the

Host 2: Joe Rogan comedy, music, New Yorkers, restaurant tours. I mean, this place is

Host 1: I'm not even talking about this. I'm just talking about everyone leaving LA or sorry leaving California is almost like working down this path of

Travis Kalanick: look my the rest of my team's like we're when are we moving you know they're like

Host 2: and how are you dealing with that? So that was the question was like

Travis Kalanick: got to buy homes on the lake.

Host 1: There are literally dozens of startup CEOs of call it successful or growing companies that I talked to who were like dude I want to leave but I got employees here. I got an office here. I got a facility here. build stuff here. How am I going to leave?

Travis Kalanick: Yeah, I totally get it. It's a real thing. So, look, I think like most things, uh, sort of when it's time and it feels painful to do something, sometimes it's actually not as bad as you think and you just got to make the move and lead and do it. Um, and so, uh, that's kind of what that's kind of the process, the almost like a morning process I went through and that's just what it is. is and you're setting up a team here.

Host 2: Yeah, of course. Uh and I got that office right on the lake.

Host 1: Did you get that?

Travis Kalanick: Uh it's we are negotiating. No, it's all good. No, no, it's all good. We're negotiating right now.

Host 2: But I'm going to jet ski to work.

Travis Kalanick: No, literally we is it true story. Last year we're like driving up the thing and I was like, "Wow, I wonder who owns that." He's like, "I will." And I was like, "Did you look at It's like I looked at that and I was like, "That's a that would be a nice one." But the the truth is, you know, and I had a couple people move here a couple years ago and they all had the same reaction. Oh my god, I'm living in a place that's twice as big for half as much. The people here are dope. The food is dope. Everybody here is got this sense that we're building the future. And it's just fun and world positive. And you know, for me, I got to live New York, LA, San Francisco. I did three of the great cities in this country. This one feels the most like home to me,

Host 1: which is a very strange feeling to me, but it feels like everybody here wants to build the future and it's very diverse, you know, like all these different industries and people pursuing stuff. I I think this is the future.

Travis Kalanick: Yeah. Here's the thing. Like you go to San Francisco and I still have a little nostalgia when I go to San Francisco just having built Uber there and the whole thing. Um, I still get the, you know, the butterflies just I, you know, but it does have something magical. You, you just can't take it away. And then you look at all of these bike lanes and these bus lanes that never have a bus or a bike in them

Host 1: and cost $400 million to build one mile

Travis Kalanick: and it's literally it's sort of like this subconscious desire to choke the city off. Now remember, I look at things through roads. That's how I think. So I'm just like obviously the city is totally busted.

Host 1: Yeah.

Travis Kalanick: No, they they literally took Market Street and they're like, "What would be the optimal way to this up and virtue signal at the same time?" And they're like, "Yeah, buses." And it's like, "Nobody's on the bus. Nobody takes the bus. It's a beautiful small town. San Francisco. That whole street is empty and painted red."

Host 1: So, okay. So, we all [ __ ] and complain non-stop on our chat.

Host 2: When are you leaving?

Host 1: I'm number one. I get it. But, when are you leaving?

Travis Kalanick: Okay. Well,

Host 2: on the chat, you're the best, by the way. I'm like,

Host 1: okay. So, let me just,

Host 2: by the way, there's couple glasses of wine in

Host 1: public facing Freedberg

Host 2: and he's like, you know, I think there's a better way to do. And then there's like Darth Friedberg in group chat. He's like, these people, these morons are they're destroying societ. He is like Darth Friedberg in group chat. Am I lying?

Host 1: Am I lying? Is he the most

Host 2: correct? Especially after a couple glasses of wine.

Travis Kalanick: Yeah. When I start drinking fall and he takes pictures, he's like, "Fourth beverage." And we're like, "Oh, it's worth staying up on the group chat."

Host 2: Yeah. And then I'm like, I'll go and attack this congressman on Twitter, which I realized.

Host 1: And then you go delete the tweet.

Host 2: Yeah.

Host 1: Don't delete the tweet.

Travis Kalanick: Yeah. I delete the tweets. Okay. know there's a group of people trying to raise $500 million to create like a tech/ business coalition to go to Sacramento, which arguably is something that everyone's left and avoided doing forever cuz no one wants to spend time in freaking Sacramento fighting politicians, but it's almost like we're all falling off a cliff. It's time to do something. Do you think there's a realistic path packed? Do you think the people can actually get their together that even if 500 million came in, there's a way to kind of turn around the state, fix some of the policies? You think it's too late?

Host 1: I don't think that. But look, I would go I look, anybody who's doing anything to fix things, I'm like, hell yeah, let's do something. The issue is we all grew up in the tech world, which was like a libertarian place where you stay out of politics and

Travis Kalanick: that kind was that kind of vibe. It was just everybody was like that.

Host 1: Leave me alone. when I want to make stuff.

Travis Kalanick: Yeah. I just I'm not I don't do that. And that's obviously this not a thing anymore in California. I think the ballot initiatives are very powerful and there's very clean ways to get something on the ballot love that. I think that your DAs who have decided we do not enforce crime at all anymore. That's like a sweet spot. Like I believe that I sort of have this aphorism. Truth and justice are the immune system for society. When when the immune system is suppressed, all the social ills flare up. So look for the places where truth and justice are being deteriorated, are being degraded, and say, how do we get at that? Because if you get at that, everything else downstream will be better. So that's kind of how I look at things and how I also determine whether the world's getting better or worse. When I say weird, I'm talking about truth and justice. That's what I mean when I say, "Oh man, it's getting weird. It's getting weirder," which means it's weird. I'm just talking about truth and justice.

Host 2: Well, I mean, and you look at the homeless industrial complex, you look at Chesa Boudin, which the All-In Pod sacks, myself, and the pod, like we we literally led the recall of him. And then you had the same thing going on in LA where they were just like if somebody

Host 1: Gascon

Host 2: Yeah, Gascon. I mean, we basically lost the script. You're running the city for the criminals. It literally is like a Batman movie. It's like Bane.

Host 1: I mean, you want to arrest the criminals.

Travis Kalanick: Look,

Host 2: I was born in the darkness. I mean, these guys are lunatics.

Travis Kalanick: Yeah. Look, I I know police officers in Los Angeles who are no longer police officers, and these are lifelong guys who protect and serve. That's in their bloods or DNA. They want to protect people. They want the bad guys to be dealt with. And they they almost have PTSD from what it is like to want to serve and see bad things happening and not being allowed to stop it.

Host 1: Yeah. Nobody's got their back and they're not allowed to do their job. It's It's crazy. And I It's getting weird.

Host 2: Okay. Hey, I want to just go back to AI.

Host 1: Sorry for the darkness.

Host 2: No, no, no. I think it's good.

Host 1: I was trying to induce I'm trying to induce dark free.

Host 2: Well, I brought it up. I mean, someone bring me a tequila. I'll get going.

Host 1: Yeah, let's do it. Can we get a couple tequilas?

Travis Kalanick: It was funny. I went on this podcast yesterday and the guy and the f the guy was like the first hour was middle of the road. I was talking about tech and science and then like politics came up. He's like, so socialism and he said like you lost it and then you were like he's like the energy went 10x and Yeah. So, it'll come out in a couple weeks, but I was like, it it got me going. Okay. I want to talk about physical AI one more time.

Host 1: Yeah.

Host 2: So, one of now that now that you're doing this, I saw a presentation the other day. Someone showed like a video of a squirrel jumping from one tree to another tree. And they're like a tenth of a watt or something like like the biology is tuned and it's so perfect in terms of its efficiency of energy utilization to do physical things. And we're taking these like big things of metal and motors and like actuators and if you add up or you compound all of the inefficiencies in the system, it's like 1,200 watts to get the robot to walk 4 foot. Like like break apart not just the software but the hardware layer and where are we at in evolving things like actuators and the materials and everything else that's going to make physical AI work and scale. Oh, look, a lot with the questions you're asking are going down humanoid lane, which is like this thing and and everybody talks about how do you do the hand? It's almost like Terminator 2 type obsession with the hand, which is fair. Like, it's a very critical part of it. I mean, look at the I like to look at the Achilles the quote unquote Achilles tendon of any of these machines and you're like, that's where the action is. This this there's a couple other places. Um, look, I'm in the nonhumanoid space. I mean, but mechanical engineers have been dealing with actuators and, you know, all the sort of electromechanical sort of interactions that make machines do certain things, but like I'm in the food machine space, so I can tell you how to open a paper bag and put a put a a bowl in a paper bag without tearing the paper bag. But I am less into the I forget the name pero. They're they're the the senses to understand awareness and touch. Um I'm not in that game. Um so when you're mining you're like you're not like you know you know

Travis Kalanick: you're not threating

Host 2: you're not playing tennis. Um certain things may be equivalent to tennis. So, look, the bottom line is we're seeing obviously all you have to do is go online and look at where the humanoids are going over time and how much better they're getting. Um, it's wild and it's happening so freaking fast. But any humanoid demo starts with dancing and martial arts.

Travis Kalanick: Yeah.

Host 2: And we're sort of down specialized robot lane, which is gainfully employed robots.

Travis Kalanick: Yeah. So, I know I didn't totally answer the question, the technology piece, but

Host 1: I just like do you agree that there's probably like a big opportunity for venture money and like research to go into material science extra? Yeah,

Travis Kalanick: for sure.

Host 1: Sure. Because if the physical AI stack manipulation and all of the related things around it

Travis Kalanick: is massive.

Host 1: And so if you get the software working, it's almost like the hardware has to catch up. Yes,

Travis Kalanick: we got a lot of

Host 2: investor.

Travis Kalanick: Well, actually was it's good that you bring this up. You know, one of the things you pioneered um at Uber was um capital as a weapon and you were very thoughtful about hey if we can take this capital off the table then that's going to let's call it what it is. It's going to be an advantage versus the competitors and these other competitors couldn't get that capital. That's now I think people have seen that playbook and they're like hm Samman's like that was smart let me try and it's at a different scale now that you've come out of stealth

Host 1: now that you've got and and people are starting to understand just starting today how big your vision is

Host 2: capital as a weapon this is I guess in your plan yeah

Travis Kalanick: well I mean here's the thing right so capital as a strategic weapon for its own sake is not a thing but when it is actually a strategic weapon And then it is a thing. And what I mean by that is like in the Uber world early days if you didn't have capital didn't matter how good your app was because MASA is going to put a billion dollars into your competitor and you're going to lose 20% market share tomorrow. So a critical competency in fact your worldass competencies one of them has to be raising capital and you need to do it better than everybody else and if you don't you are going to lose.

Host 2: Let me ask one follow up to that. Sorry you go ahead. Um but the Middle East

Travis Kalanick: Yeah. I've heard theories the last couple days that big capital seekers are kind of right now because of what's going on in the Middle East with the Iran war. Dubai, Qatar, Saudis are kind of going to close up the capital flowing to the US right now. And is that real? I mean, do you think that's a real threat? So look, our Middle East business was supposed to go public in January and the Saudi market was went down 20% over like a two-month period and that was like a massive damper on the situation. Now part of it's part of that was because the oil prices had gone down so dramatically

Host 1: and if you went into KSA, you went to the kingdom, everybody's like, we need we need oil prices to go up. uh you know that's the other side of the equation. So I don't know what h like I don't I'm not in the market raising money right at this moment and this is a twoe old thing that I you know look I see the news just like everybody else and I'm not out there calling while a war is going on and saying hey guys you got some money. Um, so I don't know exactly what's going to happen. But if you are an optimist and you're like, "Okay, this isn't this is not going on forever." Just like the tariffs, it was the end of the world and then it wasn't very quickly.

Host 2: If you're an optimist about this situation and it won't be the end of the world, maybe even a better world, then we get to a better place. And I think

Travis Kalanick: progress, abundance, the golden age happens. And a lot of it is about all the things that are happening in AI in physical AI and and and just the productivity gains that are coming in very massive ways. Yeah.

Host 1: Yeah. And I mean it it was shock shock and awe and then hey now we've got a steady state and let's hope that's what happens in Iran is that we can depose these evil dictators, replace it with something a little more stable.

Host 2: And related to this before we wrap, they're going to China. There's big trade deal being negotiated. What do you hope comes out of this Chinese thing?

Host 1: And what did you learn in China?

Host 2: What would Yeah. What would you learn? And and what do you think would be great for America? Like what would you like to see and be like, man, that's going to set us all up. No more.

Travis Kalanick: Look, here's the thing. If you go to China right now and you go and just take a tour of the manufacturing that's going on there, just the manufacturing base, the cities, especially if you've gone to China for a couple decades in a row, you're like, damn. Yeah. You So, let's just do two things. You go to Shenzhen, which before felt like Kansas City, but 50 years ago and really humid, which I guess Kansas City sometimes, but you go there now and it's like one-upping Singapore, right? Or so that's the city view. You're just experiencing a very awesome. You're like, this is advanced and you just get the vibe and it's everywhere. And then you go and you start seeing the manufacturing base and you see what like Xiaomi is doing or any of the other there's so many scrappy guys, badass guys everywhere and you're like f

Host 1: they're hungry.

Travis Kalanick: So does anybody remember the 2008 Olympics in Beijing? Anybody? Does anybody This is a little bit you're down a rabbit hole. Does anybody remember the opening ceremony?

Host 2: And you're like these mofos are taking over. At least that's what they want to do. That shit's happening. So, I don't have any issue or this is not negativity for me. I'm like, these guys are killing it. The best idea is winning. They're fiercely They're fiercely going after truth and progress and they're making [ __ ] happen. Let's step up our game. Okay. But we can also have a friendly game. Like, we don't have to like be like the Detroit Pistons in the '90s, you know?

Host 1: Yes. We can we there there's a way

Host 2: go into the stands.

Host 1: Yeah. Yeah. You know, there's a way to do this, right? And there's a way to do it like adults. I hope that's where we would end up. Um I have a employee who because we we we for for a long time we're the largest build kitchen builders in China. I have an employee in China has an American wife. Okay. They both live in China. They're both from China originally. Okay. but want him to it would be great for him to work here on some things I'm doing. It's very hard to make that happen right now. Now, that's selfish like I I like maybe selfish like I'm like there's a person I've been working with for over a decade. I'd love to continue here. Maybe there's other bigger picture items that I'm not dealing with. I'm not the geopolitical guy, but I'd love for there to be sort of

Travis Kalanick: good

Host 1: relations and good like like if you have a significant other in who is an American citizen like do we have to make that hard as an example

Host 2: some normaly would

Host 1: something you know I'm just saying now I agree like

Travis Kalanick: there are ways to do immigration properly like we effed it up super bad don't to get me started. But there's also there's good migration too. Like a lot of great innovators all over the place came from other places for their own version of the American dream. God bless

Host 1: Freeberg.

Travis Kalanick: And we don't have to that doesn't have to be a negative thing. And so I'd like to see more of that. And um yeah, China's China's wild. So let's uh let's keep our eye on the ball and let's let's give them a run for their money, too.

Host 2: Give it up for TK. All right. Well done, brother. Thank you. That was good. Good to see you, brother. Wow. Michael Dell. My lord. Texas native.

Host 1: Michael.

Michael Dell: Yes. Born born born in Houston.

Host 2: Well, I missed the the opening. We we jumped to the music, but you started Dell Computer here in Austin with a thousand bucks

Michael Dell: 42 years ago in my dorm room at Dolby at UT. uh about 10 days before I finished my freshman semester.

Host 1: Amazing. And it's been working out pretty good.

Michael Dell: Yeah, it's been some bumps in the road, but yeah, it's generally generally worked out okay. Yeah, we'll have about 140 billion in revenue this year. So,

Host 2: yeah, it's okay. It compounds over time, doesn't it?

Michael Dell: Yeah.

Host 1: Yeah.

Michael Dell: You know, you start small and just keep adding and

Host 2: there you That's how it goes. It's just that easy.

Host 1: But why Texas? Like, I think this is an important thing. We're in Austin. Jason lives here. David Sacks lives here now. More people are moving from California to Austin. Why Austin? Why Texas? Why is it work here? And is it getting better? Is it just always worked? You know, I think Texas has had a

Michael Dell: uh, you know, low tax, progrowth, uh, environment for a long time and pro, you know, sort of progressive business climate. And you know, if you sort of look at the the growth of the Texas economy relative to the rest of the United States without Texas, you know, Texas just kind of looks like a better version of the US economy. And uh you know, you now you've got uh Austin is sort of just about in the top 10 cities in in the United States. So you've got uh when that happens, you'll have four of the 10 largest cities in America in Texas. One out of 10 children born in the United States born in Texas. Uh more New York Stock Exchange companies in Texas than in New York or anywhere else. And uh you know, you've got the University of Texas here in Austin, which I always think of as kind of the wellspring for a lot of the companies that are here. certainly ours and um you know a long history of of uh innovative pioneering spirit and entrepreneurship and um it's been a fantastic place for us

Host 2: and part of this I think Friedberg and Michael is what's happened in the other great cities or what were once great cities my hometown New York I got to spend 10 years in LA and the last 12 in um the Bay Area and what's happening there is incredibly unamerican uh and they're decelerating when compared and I think maybe the gap maybe and the disparity from these um two locations has gotten greater. Yeah. And you're seeing a lot more people say life there here in Austin seems a lot better than the life I'm living in New York, LA or in in the Bay Area.

Michael Dell: Yeah. Well, I've got a lot of new friends and neighbors, you know, that that have that have that have come. And certainly, I mean, if if you look at the the the migration statistics, Texas has attracted an enormous number of people and and look, I mean, when you when you when you look at the environment here and compare it to the other kind of situations that are going on, uh it's it's it's very attractive. But, you know, it's it's kind of been great for a long time. So, uh, it's not really new news to us that have been here a while.

Host 1: Yeah. Elon had a great experience when he was building the the Gigafactory over here.

Michael Dell: They let you do stuff here basically. You know,

Host 1: they let him build it

Michael Dell: which he said was like an incredible experience for him because in California they didn't let him build, you know, these factories. And in fact, the Tesla factories that in Fremont was just an old ancient factory that he was able to retrofit. So, uh, there's something going on here as well with the data centers and and that's actually, I think, very close to what you're working on at Dell. Maybe you could talk a little bit about the data center boom that's going on in Texas that maybe people aren't paying attention to.

Michael Dell: Sure. Well, there's, you know, obviously been enormous buildout of AI infrastructure and that requires, you know, lots of new data centers, lots of power. Texas, you know, has an enormous uh advantage there relative to other states. Lot of power, a lot of land, and it's and and you can build stuff, right? So, there's there's been a massive buildout particularly in some of the cities in and towns in West Texas where there's not a lot of population and so they're not really too opposed to having data centers out in the middle of nowhere where there's land and power. And so um yeah, I mean the the the demand for tokens is enormous. You know, we've been building these AI data centers not just here in Texas, but around the world. And you know, the growth in that has been tremendous. You know, we we introduced the the first uh H100 server. It was literally a couple weeks before ChatGPT was announced. And you know uh the progression of our business in that area has sort of gone from like 2 billion to 10 billion to 25 billion to this year it'll be like 50 billion. So so tremendous growth and when when you think about what these models are creating there's this phase change that's happened in computing right we we we had 60 years of calculating computing. Now we have machines that are thinking and helping us think. And so the demand for that kind of intelligence and you know the models are amazing but they're also the worst they'll ever be and they continue to improve. And so we just see uh a lot more demand than supply. And it's happening not just in the hyperscalers and the cloud service providers. It's happening in 4,000 enterprises where we building these these Dell AI factories. It's happening in sovereign AI, you know, like with Palantir and, you know, people want to protect their data but also use AI on it. They want to bring the AI to where their data is. And you know when this kind of started a few years ago, we had some really sophisticated uh large companies think of like Fortune 100 and they started you know buying these AI servers from us and and they kind of knew what they were doing right you know and and uh we said what what are you doing and and they they were they were kind of taking uh building their own models they were taking open-source models they were running them some of them were were algorithmic traders or you know derivatives of machine learning and of course um they needed a lot of help in in doing that cuz it it it was sort of a complicated thing. So about two years ago, we we put together this product that we we we called the Dell AI factory and now we've got 4,000 plus of these and it's kind of running rampant across enterprises.

Host 1: How do you think about

Host 2: the payback time on the investment that's being made? The administration put in place this accelerated depreciation rule. the cont.

Michael Dell: Yeah, that's very helpful actually.

Host 2: So just for folks to understand that a little bit like if you spend a hundred billion dollars this year building and data centers and buying infrastructure for those data centers, you get to write off 100% of that this year. Correct.

Michael Dell: To deduct it. So you don't pay taxes. You pay way much fewer tax

Host 2: and that's in place for 10 years. I think

Michael Dell: that's a 10-year deal. So it's accelerating the investment. How much is that helping versus how are you seeing folks rationalize the investment relative to the return they're going to make and over what time scale? This is still the big question. Is the money really there? The hyperscalers maybe they're starting to come up but end usage end states are we kind of hey wait and see we don't know yet or folks are getting 20% ROIC starting in year one after they've made the investment. You know, I I I can tell you in in our business in in our company, we definitely see plenty of use cases where the ROI or the improvement in productivity efficiency is 20% or or greater

Host 1: right away. It gets there.

Michael Dell: I mean it, you know, it's not like you just hit a button and you get 20%. Right? There's there's work required in thinking through the processes and maybe it's worth a little bit describing that. So you know when you have a a any company its processes and tools and technology are a function of what was available at the time it created those things. And so what you sort of have to do is step back and say all right what's the trajectory of the improvement of the tools? What outcome are we trying to create? And now let's simplify and standardize the processes. Get all the tools together. get all the data together and then apply the technology and this really has to be done in kind of a tops down way. Uh you can't sort of do it spontane in you know in in silos are not going to spontaneously improve themselves and often that means that you're completely changing the way the organization works.

Host 2: It's like a wholesale rearchitecture.

Michael Dell: It's a it's a reimagining of the way a company works. And you know, I mean, the way I described this to our team about 3 years ago is, you know, uh, we were going to have a new competitor 5 years from now, that would be two years from now, you know, that was in every business that we're in except they were going to be faster and more innovative and more successful and lower cost and they were going to put us out of business. And the only way we were going to prevent that is is we're going to become that company. And here's how we're going to do it. And you know, it excited some people, it scared some people. And but I actually believe that that's what's going to happen. And and so we've been dramatically changing our business. I would say the biggest benefit by far is speed. We're much faster at being able to apply innovations. And so, you know, you look at our at our infrastructure business last quarter grew 73%. Well, that's kind of unusual for a business of this size.

Host 1: And uh you know, this quarter we guided that it would grow even faster, like 100%. So,

Host 2: you've lived through a couple of paradigm shifts here. The PC revolution obviously you led that. Um and then you of course had you know client server, the network revolution, online uh internet cloud, mobile.

Michael Dell: Yeah. So each one of those we saw massive disruption. We were talking in in the green room about hey we used to have a typing pool. There was a mail room. All these things got abstracted away by the PC andorked PC revolution. Um but it took a decade or two and this one's happening a lot faster. Yeah.

Host 1: Yeah. This one I think it's it's like um you know a quarter is like a year maybe it's five times faster or something like that. But but back to your question, I I I would say maybe 10 or 15% of large companies have really figured this out and the rest of them are kind of fumbling around. And you know, there's a tendency when when you hear about a new technology to like, oh, let's just let's just go do it. You know, show the boss, hey, we did AI. You know,

Host 2: the board said we got to do AI. We got to do AI, guys.

Host 1: We need AI. Are you proud of me, boss? You know,

Host 2: um and

Host 1: look at what I made. Exactly. And I also think you know there's an important point about about uh this which is

Michael Dell: you know the barrier to technology adoption is is not technology it's culture and leadership and courage right and and so

Host 1: willingness to change and

Michael Dell: and you know if you if you're in a business that you don't think is changing very much or you know hard change is really hard right you you have to it can be very uncomfortable you're like, well, we're going to stop doing that. Well, we don't need this anymore.

Host 2: Particularly if your bonus is dependent on not messing things up. But let's go, let's use the internet as an analogy, which you saw up close. There were businesses that were internet transition successful. They made the transition. Maybe Macy's.com versus Sears Roebuck, right? Like maybe Macy's did a better job of taking advantage of the internet than Sears. But then there was internet native businesses that seemed to blow them all out and maybe Amazon's a good example or um CSN stores whatever they be Wayfair etc. What's the right way to think about this evolution in industries generally? Are we going to have

Michael Dell: their businesses are going to transition successfully and those that aren't and they're going to die? And is this really going to are we going to see AI native businesses in every industry come in and just disrupt everything? I believe we will and certainly you know when you talk to the Collison brothers at Stripe they'll tell you that the rate of growth of the 2025 cohort companies is about four times faster than the 2018 companies and so every year comp the new batch of companies are growing faster and faster because they're starting with all these new tools that you know

Host 1: because they see all the new companies on their platform.

Michael Dell: Exactly. And so when when you think about uh an incumbent company, okay, that already exists, it has, let's say, it's got brands, it's got balance sheets, it's got, you know, customer relationships, whatever stuff, right? Okay. Um, but that's sort of like those are expiring value assets. If it doesn't change quickly and get onto the other side of this, I think it will go out of business. And which is exactly the speech I gave to our team, you know, three three years ago. And uh I think, you know, you you you you you have to be uh bold and you got to go make those changes to to not only survive this, but but to but to thrive. And you know, I think about it is how do we prepare our company to be ready for the 2030s,

Host 2: right? Isn't it like it's much more it's kind of the story line. There's more to do than there ever was. It's like when the internet arrive kind of came around, Sears doesn't just need to sell locally. They can sell to the world.

Michael Dell: Well, sure. I mean, this is the point when when when we have better tools, we can do way more things, right? And and uh you know, when you know, when I hear people say, "Oh, you know, um maybe we're just going to have all these great tools and we we won't do more things. we'll just do the same things with fewer people. It doesn't sound right to me. I I mean, there'll be some of that, but I think most of it will be we're just going to do a whole lot more things. We're going to solve a lot more problems. We're going to accelerate scientific discovery. We're we're we're going to invent all sorts of new things. We're going to solve all sorts of problems that haven't been solved.

Host 1: And you know, that's that's super exciting.

Host 2: What do we have wrong on infrastructure? So the original build cycle looked a lot like everything's in a data center. Everything's got to sit there. That's where all the intelligence. It'll all be in these kind of hosted proprietary cloud models. Do you think that it's open source? Is it distributed on the edge? Where does the intelligence where does the inference sit? And how does that really change or kind of rearchitect the industry?

Michael Dell: it's really all the above? I mean it it's not like there's one answer. I mean certainly if you go to uh any industrial company or natural resources company advanced manufacturing retail logistics there's tons of inference at the edge and that's growing very very fast and uh you know we make a lot of that embedded equipment certainly you know telos are doing that too I mean it's pretty much every every industry think about wherever data is being created you want the AI I infrastructure and the inference you know close to the data. Um you know there there there has been this sort of rebalancing as companies have figured out you know sort of everybody loves the public cloud right until they get the bill right they get the bill they're like wait this is supposed to save us money yes

Host 1: costs quite a bit more. So, you know, the the the lowest cost token is going to be the one that's generated right where the data is on the device. You're going to have, you know, tokens being generated on your phone, on your PC, in every embedded piece of equipment. And and look, we have an interesting perspective on this business because we have 10,000 customers where they embed our product in their product. This is you know think medical devices, security, all sorts of things in hospitals and industrial plants and you know any any kind of uh you know uh datadriven activity right requires some kind of computing network storage infrastructure.

Host 2: Yeah. So when you um look at the desktop where you started, it's coming full circle and this must be at least very interesting or intriguing to you that you see this open claw movement. Everybody trying to buy the most powerful desktop they can and all these hobbyists who were your customers who were calling you up and ordering from, you know, Dell, their their bespoke PC. Now they're

Michael Dell: Dell.com.

Host 2: What did I say? Dell.com. Yeah,

Michael Dell: you said ordering from Dell. Calling us up. They they they order online usually.

Host 2: They order online now. Yes.

Michael Dell: We have this thing called the internet.

Host 2: They do. It works out pretty well. Um but this is incredible that they're like all stacking computers and and running, you know, uh local models. I was just thinking back to how much the first couple of computers I owned cost $4,000 in 1980. And then the prices came down. You can buy a Dell for 500 bucks, 800 bucks, like really nice laptops for that price. Um, use the promo code allin. Um, it's not a sponsor. It's a joke. Um, but do you think there's a world where we're going to start to see the desktop because people want to protect that data, they want to protect the skills they're building. They don't want to give it to Sam Altman, put it in a cloud somewhere. They don't want to give it to Google, whoever it happens to be. Um, and that the desktop revolution comes back and everybody's got a $10,000 desktop. Is that coming?

Michael Dell: I don't know if everyone will have $10,000 desktop, but that would be great. I mean, you know, uh um you know, so we have this Dell uh portal on Hugging Face and we have all these open models and we qualified them on every kind of machine we have and you know there's been enormous progress in the open source models. You know, Google has these Gemma models, GMMA, and they work really, really well on small machines. You know, OpenAI has their open- source models. You got the Nvidia Neotron models. You've got, you know, enormous uh ecosystem of open- source that is, you know, thriving and certainly open claw and, you know, there'll be some good discussion about that.

Host 1: How many people have set up OpenClaw? Raise your hand. Oh my lord. That's about what a 20% of the audience here.

Michael Dell: Yeah. So, you know, autonomous agents, um, big deal. And certainly inside companies, there's going to be a lot more autonomous agents. There are significant security requirements that need to go with that. We need to we need to be able to authenticate and validate who these agents are and what they're doing and, you know, have the right controls and and and that sort of thing.

Host 2: Yeah. and uh your take on uh AGI and when we're going to hit it like do you actually think about super intelligence and AGI and the the the two sets of problems that could solve there and do you have a personal definition that you like to use for those when you're talking internally with your team of how things are moving?

Michael Dell: I I I don't really know Jason. Um, you know, I I think if it feels like with the latest releases, we were talking about this backstage, uh, you know, the Gemini 3.1, the Opus 4.6, the OpenAI 5.4, it feels like we sort of u hit some kind of threshold where the just the quality of the the models are are just tremendous. and and and and you know when I listen to what our teams are able to accomplish in a day or two weeks that would have taken them you know a few months or nine months time you know it's it's just amazing the speed of of innovation.

Host 1: Yeah. And so

Michael Dell: it it seems to be continuing and we get all the reinforcement learning and there's also tons of private dark data that these models haven't been applied to and that's sort of what's happening with these

Host 2: I think the auto research is the that's the the key with auto research the capacity to take a standard model and then retrain it on your private data and keep it private and build an advantage for your organization based on the history of your data that no one else has. That seems to be what a lot of folks are thinking about that have the capacity. But if you were to start a company today that was not in computing and you were to build a business from the ground up, how would you architect your people and your organizational principles as an AI kind of first knowing what you know about computing and where things are headed? Are you hiring people? Are you hiring a bunch of people to run a bunch of agents? How do you think about architecting a new business today?

Michael Dell: It's a great question. I don't really spend a lot of time thinking about that. You know, I'm thinking about how do how do I run

Host 1: what the rest of us are thinking about.

Michael Dell: How do I how do I run our company? I mean, that's hard enough. So,

Host 2: yeah, everyone I talk to, that's the question. They're like, everyone goes to these off sites and they're like, I'm actually doing this with my management team on Monday. We're doing like a tear down be like, "Hey, how would we build the business differently today?" Knowing

Michael Dell: I mean what we've been thinking a lot about is

Host 1: it's sort of this this reimagining question. Yeah.

Michael Dell: You know, sort of all right, we know the trajectory of the tools. What are the tools going to be in 27 28 29 and how do we accelerate you know our path to that?

Host 2: How worried are you about social issues? So AI recently ranked as the most unfavorable term of a list of terms including president.

Host 1: It was somewhere between ISIS, the Democrats, ICE, ISIS, and the Democrats.

Host 2: ICE was better than AI.

Host 1: People liked ICE mass agents

Host 2: more than they like AI.

Michael Dell: Yeah. Well, I think I think part of the problem is it's been it's been uh you know maybe sold as

Host 1: as you know it it it sort of presents itself like a human would.

Michael Dell: Yeah.

Host 1: Right. And you know maybe if we called it linear algebra

Michael Dell: matrix multiplication

Host 1: and statistics instead

Michael Dell: matrix multiplier maybe that would be more friendly. I don't know you know.

Host 1: Yeah.

Michael Dell: But do you think do you think we're going to have No, I think you're right. the positioning is wrong and then we're not communicating to people, hey, this could help healthcare, this could make you live longer, this could help your kids get educated more, that this could help with housing costs, this could help with food cost. Messaging aside, I mean, how much do you actually worry

Host 2: about disruption or dislocation in employment, about acceleration of earnings for some people and deceleration for other people in society that feel left behind? And that starts to fuel more of the kind of social concerns and politicians saying, "Hey, we got to stop building all the data centers, you know, like that kind of stuff." And and how much are you really

Michael Dell: I I tend to be, you know, more optimistic and and um you know, I I do I do think that in all technology cycles, you get sort of these network effects and uh that's kind of inevitable. But I also think, you know, uh we're going to do more with the tools. You you do have this acceleration of all sorts of uh great things. I mean, education can dramatically improve, scientific discovery, healthcare, energy, you know, all sort of the the unsolved problems can can be accelerated. Ultimately, I think it's it's amplification of of human potential and capability

Host 1: and

Michael Dell: extending the frontier, too. And and and and by the way, we should also remember that basically what we're talking about here beyond sort of some of the advanced semiconductors in the you know big data centers, we're talking about software, right?

Host 1: Yeah.

Michael Dell: Right. It's like software that runs on your computer. So you know if somebody says well we don't we don't want that. It's like how do you stop software I mean

Host 2: yeah how are you going to how you going to stop someone putting an open source model on their computer at home and asking it for medical advice? You know, New York just passed a law saying AI models can no longer give

Michael Dell: medical advice. Passed, right? It's being proposed.

Host 2: Oh, proposed. It's being proposed. You can't give legal and health advice.

Host 1: We're anti-s software. It's like,

Host 2: yeah. Well, we're also anti books and advice. So, if you were going to look it up in a book, but were you dropping into your Bernie Sanders right there?

Host 1: That was my Bernie Sanders.

Host 2: Michael D. 1% of the 1% that you're enabling with your data centers. Why are you doing this to the people of our great nation while you give your money to children in the Invest America accounts?

Michael Dell: Yeah,

Host 2: this is a good one you're doing.

Michael Dell: Yeah. Can we talk about Invest America?

Host 1: I think he might have even criticized that, but but you know,

Host 2: well, that's the problem. The billionaires are giving our children money and they're not asking us permission and then those kids are going to buy things that their parents never asked for.

Michael Dell: Well, they they don't they don't actually get the money till they're 18 years old. So that's that's

Host 2: But what gives you the right to give our children an education? What is this philanthropy? It makes no sense. No, I mean honestly.

Michael Dell: Well, I see I see my great friend Brad Gersonner here.

Host 1: Brad's here.

Michael Dell: There he is.

Host 2: Brad, come up for this little uh segment here. Sit sit for a second. Let's talk about America. We got 5 minutes left here.

Host 1: So, you know, I heard

Host 2: everybody the fifth bestie. Give him a round.

Michael Dell: I didn't know he's going to be here.

Host 2: All right. I

Host 1: how did this go down, Michael?

Michael Dell: I I heard about this idea in 2021 from Brad

Host 1: and I thought, you know, that's a that's just a great idea. That's an awesome idea. And, you know, I think there were some discussions with the prior administration, but they didn't uh do do anything about that, unfortunately. And um you know, here we are, you know, a miracle. you know, uh the the the Invest America Act was was passed and um you know, now we have thousands of companies that are joining in and matching the government's contribution and u you know, Susan and I made a big announcement uh giving $250 to 25 million children in uh zip codes where the median income is

Host 2: I mean, Michael, let's just let's pause for a second This is one of the greatest

Host 1: What do you think, Bernie? Do you approve?

Host 2: I'm going to go with Jake All this. I just want to pause on this because it is one of the greatest philanthropic gifts in the history of humanity. And I I people have just kind of glossed over to it because there's a lot of big numbers in the world, but we're talking about you. You personally, you and Susan sat down and said, "We're going to give a number." And that number was five, six, seven billion dollars or this is

Michael Dell: well it's it's $250 to 25 million children ages 2 to 10 in zip codes where the median income is $150,000 or lession. It's $6.25 billion.

Host 2: I mean

Michael Dell: and I just want to say something. You know, we live at a time where

Host 1: but they have to sign up to claim the accounts. Yes,

Michael Dell: they they have accounts, but they have to sign up to claim the accounts. You know, I think we're getting 100,000 plus kids now a day signing up.

Host 1: Yeah.

Brad Gersonner: First, thanks for having me up. I mean, what what a national hero and national asset that my friend Michael Dell is, but he understates this

Host 1: because I've been working on this for four years. We've been talking about it on the All-In Pod. We had a lot of momentum, but behind the scenes, Trump gets elected. Um, and so it's April that we're in the middle of the tariff strife. April 25, we realize there's only going to be one piece of legislation that gets passed during Trump's first two years. It'll be the, you know, this big beautiful bill, the reconciliation bill. And so I I call up Michael and I said, "Michael, we got to go. We've got five days. We have the it it's drafted in the Senate. We have bipartisan support, but we have a window and like we ha I have to get in the Oval Office. We have to get in the Oval Office. And you know, Michael said, you know, what what should the text say? And you and I had a conversation and you you know uh you know the text to DJT.

Brad Gersonner: Yes. I I'm not talking out of school. Listen, Biden, where wherever you sit on the political divide, I will say I've said this, Trump seeks out ideas from business leaders and he has deep respect for business leaders like Michael Dell. Like you wherever your politics are, that's just the truth. And the last administration didn't and you know, if it may have done the same thing

Michael Dell: and and this and I just have to say this, Invest America, it's not a red idea or a blue idea. It's a red, white, and blue idea, right? It's it's

Brad Gersonner: so into the prior conversation when Michael and I first talked about it um you know it was this is the right thing to do right like we have to reconnect the 70% of people who feel left out and left behind to the American dream right but this isn't our self-interest this is about defending the ownership society and capitalism that for 250 years created the greatest experiment in the history of the world but that's at at risk less than half of people under the age of 40 have a favorable view of capitalism. So when I talked to you about it the first time, Michael understood both sides of it. It's the right thing to do and it's the right thing for the country. And uh so at any rate, Michael Dell, tremendous American I have one just one one punch up the name invest America Trump accounts. What do you think?

Host 2: Were were you considering this in the context of other philanthropy? I mean, how do you how do you kind of put this together in the spectrum of how you think about giving back?

Michael Dell: Yeah, great question. So, so you know, we have a foundation that's very focused on children in urban poverty. That's basically the central focus of the foundation, although folks in uh central Texas would know that we do a few other things here in our local community. Um, and you know, when I heard about this idea, one of my thoughts was, "Wow, this is like a platform for directly giving to the people that we're targeting, right?" And, you know, we actually thought about doing it just in Texas first. And, um, you know, things have gone pretty well with the company and all that. So, you know, we thought we just go bigger. And and what happens, Brad, if you know 10 more Michael Dells show up and and there are dozens of

Host 1: That's not a lot of Michael Dells, let's be honest. But

Michael Dell: there there's a number of folks who could make an equal size or even greater gift. Um there are people who, you know, many hands makes for light work. There are a thousand people who can make a gift of significance. What if this actually becomes a movement and we

Brad Gersonner: I think I think it actually is becoming a movement instead of a moment and and and we've you know we've got a lot of that queued up. Brad, why don't you

Host 1: Wait, have you called anybody? Michael, have you did you call?

Brad Gersonner: Michael and I chair the Invest America Giving Committee and we're ambitious guys.

Host 2: You're knocking on doors.

Brad Gersonner: We we've had a few conversations.

Host 1: You're texting people.

Brad Gersonner: Yeah.

Brad Gersonner: And so so so just there was a question earlier. First, it's really important to understand and for you guys to spread the word. Every child under the age of 18, every child under the age of 18 is eligible to claim their account. Number one. Number two, you've heard this like, oh, kids born between 25 and 28. No, this is forever more. The legislation creates this account forever more. Every child born in America starting January 1st, 2027 will automatically get an will get a Trump account right at birth stapled to their social security card. The $1,000 has to be reauthorized every four years. Okay? But the accounts don't. So every kid, this is social security 2.0. This is the biggest change to the social contract in America in in 50 years. 3.7 million kids a year will get an account that can compound. a 401k from birth. And yes, we're going to have a lot of announcements, but it's not just billionaires. It's going to be companies that are donating stock on their IPOs into these accounts. It's going to be wealthy people. It's going to be states. It's going to be moms and dads. It's going to be corporations. And the estimate is over 15 years, we can move $5 trillion into the pockets of families that would have otherwise had zero. $5 trillion, right? And so to me, the leadership that Michael showed not only in helping me get the meeting that ultimately got this passed into law. And it does take people like those moments either happen or they don't happen. And if they don't happen, there's no law. And this doesn't change kids lives.

Host 2: By the way, two things on this.

Host 1: If this $5 trillion moved through government programs, it would get incinerated.

Brad Gersonner: Exactly.

Host 1: That's what we see happen. there's just a million crony structures that take it away and destroy it. So to give it directly into the accounts is the circumstance. The second thing is it makes a lot of sense that you guys can I I'll I'll be the lead but can we replace social security in this country with a defined benefit or defined contribution like this and eventually everyone has a Trump account or whatever you call it and we don't have to have this fake Ponzi scheme that we call social do we can do it. Well, they they they have a defined benefit program, but I'm saying like everyone has an account and they all own a piece of their future. And every time you get a payroll to tax deduction, instead of it getting inviscerated and destroyed and vaporized, that money actually goes into an account and you buy a piece of a company and maybe you can direct it.

Host 2: Freeberg's getting

Host 1: on July 4th of this year.

Brad Gersonner: You're getting me wound up. So for all the there are 4.5 million kids who've claimed their account almost $150,000 a day will have on the trajectory we're on 10 million by July 4th our 250th anniversary of the country. Every one of those kids accounts the parents and the kids on July 4th they'll see an app on their phone that looks a lot like a Robinhood app that'll see them owning. It'll say you've received your $1,000 or your $250. you're and it will show a little bit of Nvidia, a little bit of Walmart, a little bit of Dell. We decompose the S&P 500 which they own into the constituent parts so they can get excited about being an owner in the upside of America. And when moms and dads doubleclick and Apple pay 5-10 bucks into the account, right? When they send their QR codes to their friends on their birthday and now their friends all add to the account or on Christmas or bar mitzvah and they add to the accounts. When companies add to the accounts, all of this, they see it growing and it unlocks the human potential. It's not just the money. It's that I'm in the game. I have a shot. Which to David's point, I think the biggest crime of social security. And we made very clear, social security is a sacred promise. We we refused and many people tried to get us to to to take on the broader struggle. And we didn't do it because we knew it it would kill this program. But but let's be clear about this. Our government requires all of us to give 10% of what we earn into social security, right? It was the social contract evolution in the industrial revolution that kept kept the country together. The only problem is it goes into a black hole. Nobody sees it. Nobody knows what's there. But it is your savings. Now imagine if that same money was required to, you know, government took it away, but it was in an account with your name on it. You could see it grow. you knew exactly what was there. You could get excited and say, "Hey, I'm going to add a little bit more to that, right?" And and and you had a little bit of choice. That to me is uh is the possibility. And I think we will end up there some

Host 1: and and and Brad, thank you for just going to say, you know, Brad Brad also adopted his home state of Indiana. We have Ray and Barbara Dalio adopted their home state of Connecticut. and many many more to come.

Brad Gersonner: And and and look, it's going to be super easy for anybody to add a 100 kids in your neighborhood, adopt a zip code, adopt a school district, adopt a town.

Host 2: It's going to be amazing. Give it up for one of the great entrepreneurs of our time and an incredible pledge. I'm going all in. I'm going all in.