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GPT-4o launches, Glue demo, Ohalo breakthrough, Druck's Argentina bet, did Google kill Perplexity?


Episode Details
Channel

All-In Podcast

Published

5/17/2024

Episode Summary

This episode of the All-In Podcast was a landmark event, featuring major product launches and investment announcements from the hosts Jason Calacanis, Chamath Palihapitiya, David Sacks, and David Friedberg. The discussion began with OpenAI's launch of GPT-4o, a new, faster, and cheaper {{Multimodal Models|multimodal model}} that processes audio, text, and video, following an appearance by CEO Sam Altman on a prior episode. The model's performance was contextualized using benchmarks from Stanford, which showed it competing with models like Claude 3 Opus. Hot on the heels of this news, co-host David Sacks unveiled his new company, Glue, an AI-native Enterprise Chat platform positioned as a direct competitor to Slack. He demonstrated how Glue eliminates channels in favor of threads and integrates AI using RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) technology from a service called Raggi to search internal documents, such as transcripts about Sacks's views on Ukraine, and even draft a letter to FTC chair Lena Khan. In an exclusive announcement, David Friedberg revealed the work of his stealth company, Ohalo, and its breakthrough in Agriculture Technology called Boosted Breeding. This revolutionary technique dramatically increases Crop Yield by altering plant genetics to pass 100% of parental DNA to offspring, with stunning results shown in Potatoes. The team's deep industry expertise is bolstered by CTO Jud Ward, formerly of Driscoll's. The conversation then shifted to the markets, analyzing Stan Druckenmiller's large bet on Argentina, which was inspired by President Javier Milei's Free Market Economy policies detailed in a speech at Davos. This led to a broader discussion on Investment Strategy. Concurrently, Chamath Palihapitiya announced his largest investment ever in Athena, a Virtual EA Service sourcing highly skilled talent from the Philippines, which was founded by the co-founder of Thumbtack. He related this to the '8090' business philosophy of achieving high quality at a fraction of the cost and also touched on the strategic value of Open Source for companies like Facebook. Finally, the podcast covered the competitive landscape of Search Engines, focusing on Google's response to the AI race with its new 'AI Overviews' feature. This move directly challenges Perplexity by adopting its core model of providing direct answers with {{Citation in AI Search|citations}}, raising significant legal questions about Fair Use and the future of online content. Chamath expressed renewed bullishness on Google, pointing to undervalued assets like Isomorphic Labs, while comparing its market power to that of Microsoft. Jason Calacanis reflected on his own early, pre-AI search venture, Mahalo.

Investment Ideas
Key Topics & People
Microsoft
Microsoft
Organization

A major technology company that acquired Skype from an investor group after eBay sold its majority stake.

Host of the All-In Podcast conducting the interview with Ryan Cohen.

All-In Podcast
Organization

The podcast hosting the interview with GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen.

OpenAI
OpenAI
Organization

Leading AI company mentioned in contrast to Anthropic's political alignments.

Google
Google
Organization

Major technology company and hyperscaler developing its own frontier AI models like Gemini.

Venture capitalist and podcast host who criticizes the behavior of frontier AI labs.

Entrepreneur and host of the podcast, known for his political, geopolitical, and venture capital insights.

Host of the All-In Podcast, referred to as Bestie or JCal, who moderates the discussion.

CEO of OpenAI.

Ukraine
Ukraine
PoliticalEntity

A nation in conflict where massive artillery and explosive usage is directly depleting global copper supplies.

Facebook
Organization

The social media platform led by Mark Zuckerberg that navigated strategic debates between HTML5 and mobile apps.

Davos
Event

The World Economic Forum annual meeting location, mentioned as a high-profile networking environment.

Claude 3 Opus
Technology

Anthropic's flagship AI model, experiencing rapid updates.

Stanford
Organization

University where Steve Hilton taught public policy.

Online platforms designed to search the web, a market where ChatGPT is quietly capturing massive share.

GPT-4o
Technology

An optimized model offering massive deflationary cost advantages and increased per-token efficiency.

Khan Academy
Organization

An educational platform partnering with Stand Together to provide scalable digital learning.

Sal Khan
Sal Khan
Person

Founder of Khan Academy and a major partner of the Stand Together educational initiative.

Slack
Organization

Enterprise communications platform owned by Salesforce, uniquely serving as the foundational, data-rich context layer for its new AI agents.

A movement in software development seen as a major competitive threat to the closed, proprietary models of companies like Anthropic and OpenAI.

Athena
Athena
Organization

A service providing highly skilled executive assistants from the Philippines.

Perplexity
Organization

AI search startup acting as an LLM-agnostic wrapper.

8090
Organization

Software factory and firm actively building and deploying enterprise AI.

AI systems capable of processing multiple forms of input like text, image, and code.

Argentina
Argentina
PoliticalEntity

A South American country invited to join the BRICS alliance as part of its recent expansion.

Ohalo
Organization

An agricultural technology company founded by David Friedberg, which is developing the world's first true seed for potatoes.

Jud Ward
Person

The CTO and co-founder of the gene-editing agriculture company incubated by The Production Board. He is credited with conceiving the novel ideas behind the company's technology.

A legal doctrine that permits limited use of copyrighted material without permission from the rights holders. Its application to training AI models on open web data is a point of contention.

FTC
Organization

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission, a key regulatory body whose anticipated opposition was a factor in the cancellation of several large mergers, including a proposed Cigna-Humana deal.

Glue
Organization

A forthcoming enterprise communication startup founded by David Sacks, positioned as a 'Slack killer' that aims to solve issues of noise and scalability in team chat applications.

The new president of Argentina who gave a viral speech at the World Economic Forum denouncing collectivism and socialism, and advocating for free-market capitalism.

Lena Khan
Lena Khan
Person

Chair of the FTC, cited as an example of a government official beloved by the New York Times despite a perceived lack of real-world experience, contrasting with experienced individuals like David Sacks whom the media attacks.

The approach to allocating capital. Stan Druckenmiller's forward-looking strategy is used as a framework to evaluate Tesla's focus on future technologies like AI and robotics over current financial performance.

A renowned investor whose philosophy on buying stocks based on their 18-month future outlook is referenced in the analysis of Tesla's long-term potential beyond its current earnings.

Isomorphic Labs
Organization

A subsidiary of Alphabet (Google's parent company) focused on drug development, which is commercializing the intellectual property of AlphaFold 3.

A business model that provides executive assistant and operations support remotely, as exemplified by Chamath's new investment, Athena.

Mahalo
Organization

Jason Calacanis's former human-powered search engine, which he cites as an early, pre-AI attempt to provide direct answers, similar to what Perplexity and Google are now doing.

Philippines
Location

A country in Southeast Asia that is the source of knowledge workers for the virtual EA service company, Athena.

Thumbtack
Organization

A home services marketplace. The co-founder of Thumbtack went on to create Athena, which Chamath invested in.

Driscoll's
Driscoll's
Organization

A major berry producer where Jud Ward, Ohalo's CTO, previously ran molecular breeding, indicating deep industry expertise within the Ohalo team.

Raggi
Organization

A 'RAG as a service' company that provides the technology stack for Glue to integrate its internal data with the AI model.

An AI technique that enhances language models by retrieving relevant information from an external knowledge base to generate more accurate and context-aware responses. It is used by Glue.

The practice of AI search tools providing sources for the information in their generated answers, a key feature pioneered by Perplexity and now adopted by Google.

The measurement of the amount of a crop grown per unit area of land. Ohalo's technology aims to radically transform crop yield, with examples showing 50-100% increases.

The world's third-largest source of calories. Ohalo demonstrated massive yield gains in potatoes using its 'Boosted Breeding' technology.

The sector focused on using technology to improve agricultural processes and output. Ohalo's 'Boosted Breeding' is a significant innovation in this field.

The market for business communication software, currently dominated by platforms like Slack. David Sacks' company Glue is a new entrant in this space.

A proprietary technology developed by Ohalo that modifies plant reproduction to allow them to pass 100% of their genes to offspring, dramatically increasing crop yield and creating hardier plants.

AI Overviews
Technology

A new feature in Google Search that provides AI-generated summaries and step-by-step guides at the top of the results page, similar to the functionality of Perplexity.

An economic system based on supply and demand with little or no government control. Javier Milei is described as a leader implementing these principles in Argentina.