Co-founder and host of TBPN, a daily technology talk show covering startup news, funding rounds and the businesses behind Silicon Valley. Before TBPN he was a serial entrepreneur, founding Capital (later acquired by Rho), Rorr and Branded Native, and he angel invests in startups on the side.
Records TBPN with co-host John Coogan on weekdays, and has appeared as a guest on the a16z Podcast, Prof G Media and My First Million.
The hosts were discussing news that Tesla will wind down Cybertruck production. Jordi, who owns one, listed its flaws while saying he still loves it overall.
At the end of the day, I love the car overall. Yeah. It is really, like, horrible in so many ways. And should... Like, what I actually love about it is it should never have shipped.
John Coogan
Like Yes.
Jordi Hays
It really should never have shipped. The build quality is is really bad. The... It it... It's like very dangerous. Like, I'm I'm constantly kind of on edge when I'm around it, you know, and like trying to tell other people that might be around the car, like, hey, that's like effectively a knife's edge, like, keep your fingers away from here or there. You can... And again, you can see issues with the car from like 20 feet away.
John Coogan
Mhmm.
Jordi Hays
And that's just like how the car came. So it really never should have shipped, but I'm glad it did because it like looks completely insane.
John Coogan
Yeah.
Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.
John had run through reporting and prediction-market odds on whether Anthropic's IPO still happens. Jordi argued the broad sell-off could be an opportunity for investors who have wanted into Anthropic for years.
…But still, the market is what the market is. I don't think very many bankers recommend Yeah. Jumping in the water when it's this tumultuous. So we'll see where they go. It feels like 5050 is pretty accurate. Those of you with even longer memories might recall the numerous years that we in the media
Jordi Hays
Interesting thing about the debate around where it actually goes out at Mhmm. Is it could end up being, like, the the the general market sell off Mhmm. If that means that a bunch of people that have wanted to invest in Anthropic for years have an opportunity to... Like, you shouldn't have less conviction in the company now Yeah. Than you did four months ago True. Just because some infrastructure names are selling off.
John Coogan
Maybe that's why people are realizing it. And
Jordi Hays
so if you if you liked this company
John Coogan
They're backing up.
Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.
Coogan raised a report that Google would turn off search for schools that reject its AI defaults. Hays explains Google's position as AI being built into every product.
And, but, but again, it's like, as long as they can stay competitive around the cloud and chip business, you know, there's a lot of upside.
John Coogan
What is going on with this New York Times headline? Google will turn off search for schools that reject AI. Curran is sort of correcting the record here, but it sounds really aggressive. It's like the carrot of the stick.
Jordi Hays
Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're effectively saying, like, if you, we are every, all of our products are AI. So if you tell us not to use AI, then you can't use any of our products, right? But it sounds much more aggressive to be like, you can no longer Google search. But I think their point is that AI is everywhere across every product surface area. And so it's unavoidable. So
John Coogan
Andrew Curran says this article is getting posted everywhere this morning. I can see why. Very, very controversial. But this decision is being incorrectly framed as punitive. There's no such thing as search without Gemini. Even if you don't turn AI mode on, you're still talking to Gemini in the…
Jordi Hays
I think so.
John Coogan
Google is not going to save you at this point. If you're trying to learn, you got to hit the books. I don't think you're going to be doing that. What's going on with Grockbot? I don't know. The Grockbot thing was very weird. So Elon Caps in on November 1st, which was what, Sunday morning, I guess…
Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.
Coogan had just read a post arguing Google's AI Mode is draining traffic from the rest of the web. Hays argues Google's other businesses outweigh the risk to search.
…because we do have a date, November 12th. The TVPN merch store is going to be gone live. It will be released first into the YouTube chat and it will sit there. I'm assuming we'll leave it there for like 10 minutes so the chat can feast and then we'll post it publicly over on X and everywhere
John Coogan
…frustrated. And it can be kind of an annoying funnel because you wind up in AI mode and then you're like kind of trying to click somewhere and it can be sort of jarring. It just requires a new flow to get into. I don't know. What's your overall thinking on Google these days, Jordy? Dylan Patrick.
Jordi Hays
I just think if you think AI, I think if you think AI is real and going to be big, it's very, very hard to make a super coherent bear case, right? Even if search revenues, even if search revenues decline every year and we're sort of at peak search, they just have so many other assets and they can use that search cash flow to finance so much other infrastructure and MA and things like that. I
John Coogan
mean, people are nervous about it, but it's still $200 billion. So effectively, I mean, that's revenue, but it's high-margin revenue that they can deploy elsewhere. And I mean, the take-him take is that in the race to win AI builders, Anthropic and OpenAI now account for 86% of enterprise LLM API…
Jordi Hays
flowing through GCP. It's paying for TPUs, right? So it's like Google's getting their, Google's getting their cut, right?
John Coogan
100%.
Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.
Giving a mixed verdict on prediction markets after the midterms, Hays objects that a market is of limited use if it only swings at the last minute.
I thought that obviously Texas was a bit of a surprise. Like the prediction market's not that helpful if it looks one way for months and months and months. And then in the two hours before results are in, it flips completely. This is the trick, right? But, I mean, again, and it's hard to process that, you know, if something has a 30% chance of happening. That's
John Coogan
one in three. I'll take those odds any day. Anyways, 50% chance. So yeah, some
Jordi Hays
surprises, but overall, like they seem to be pretty effective. It was interesting. There was a number of people, both in tech and tech adjacent, that were basically taking the stance of the polls are wrong and the prediction markets are wrong. Like just every indicator that we have is wrong. And…
John Coogan
Caul Shi came in at 95% accuracy when the polls opened. So you can always look at a prediction market and it's like, oh, right before the mainstream media calls the election, the prediction markets usually have it pretty dialed right before then. But the question is, what's the predictive power a…
Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.
After a bearish take that AI Mode is hurting Google's search traffic and publishers, Hays argues that Google's cash flow and other assets, such as cloud, TPUs and AI stakes, outweigh any search decline.
…because we do have a date November 12th. The TVPN merch store is going to be gone live. It will be released first into the YouTube chat and it will sit there. I'm assuming we'll leave it there for like 10 minutes so the chat can feast and then we'll post it publicly over on X and everywhere else.
John Coogan
…frustrated. And it can be kind of an annoying funnel because you wind up in AI mode and then you're like kind of trying to click somewhere and it can be sort of jarring. It just requires a new flow to get into. I don't know. What's your overall thinking on Google these days, Jordy? Dylan Patel.
Jordi Hays
I just think if you think AI, I think if you think AI is real and going to be big, it's very, very hard to make a super coherent bear case, right? Even if search revenues, even if search revenues decline every year and we're sort of at peak search, they just have so many other assets and they can use that search cash flow to finance so much other infrastructure and MA and things like that.
John Coogan
I mean, people are nervous about it, but it's still $200 billion. So effectively, I mean, that's revenue, but it's high margin revenue that they can deploy elsewhere. And I mean, the take him take is that in the race to win AI builders, Anthropic and OpenAI now account for 86% of enterprise LLM API…
Jordi Hays
revenue is flowing through GCP. It's paying for TPUs, right? So it's like Google's getting their, Google's getting their cut, right?
John Coogan
100%.
Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.
