00:00You know, I was reading all of the different reports about this round, and we'll get to the money part.
00:05But I think what's jumping out at me, Christabel, it's great to have you back on the program, by the way,
00:10is the need to make models that are more useful, that can do more.
00:17Do you think that's a fair place to start?
00:20It is, and thank you for hosting me again and having me here.
00:23It is. I think it's a reality of where the technology is heading or where the models are.
00:28We've seen this a little bit with language models, but now I think world models are basically eating research and eating AI.
00:36It's kind of clear that the next frontier of what we expect to see progress in all modalities will come from video
00:43and from models that can understand and simulate the world.
00:46And so a lot of what we're doing with this new funding is to basically double down on that vision and that mission,
00:50which I think would have been first to market in many other parts of AI, including, of course, video generation.
00:55But now it feels like more present than ever, then world models will start really unlocking the next stage of AI progress.
01:03You may be a little beaten down by this story and line of questioning, but the capital is for compute or it's for talent or it's for both?
01:10And give us a sense of what that environment is right now.
01:14Yeah, it's for both.
01:15I mean, the growth of the company stems from how we allocate these resources effectively.
01:19And look, we've been a very focused and very efficient company at spending what we've raised in putting it into compute,
01:28into training some of the world's best video models out there and hiring.
01:33For the impact that we've had as a company and for the kind of customers and enterprises that we serve, we're a very small team.
01:39And so right now we are scaling that.
01:41We are hiring across the board, more researchers, more great talent.
01:46And of course, double down on compute, which is fundamental if you really want to get to the next stage of what we think will come.
01:52The kind of customers you serve.
01:54Cristobal, who is that then?
01:56As we still typecast you as an AI video generation company, but you're not.
02:02You're a robotics company.
02:03You're an avatar company.
02:04You're a world company.
02:05So who do you serve?
02:07Yeah, of course.
02:07That's a good question.
02:08So, look, I think it's important to understand how AI has progressed.
02:12And language models are basically describing reality.
02:15World models are simulating the world.
02:17And when you simulate the world, you can start tackling many different kind of industries.
02:21So the question of, like, will AI models will help advertising, marketing, Hollywood, media?
02:26I think the question is answered, and the answer is yes.
02:29It's kind of a pretty, like, obvious yes these days.
02:32And so we're the best company and the best kind of, like, solution for marketers, media, Hollywood entertainment.
02:39We've been doing this for quite some time.
02:41And so I think we've won there and we're going to continue to grow.
02:44There's a lot of expansion that we have to do with the industry there.
02:46Now, the models can simulate the world.
02:49So we started to simulate not only media and entertainment, but we started to simulate how the world works.
02:53And that is effectively very valuable for robotics, for physical AI, for AV.
02:58And so another way of thinking about it is we have some of the best tools to create media and videos for humans to watch.
03:05We now started to create videos and media for robots to watch and for those robots to learn from that data, which is fascinating.
03:12It is fascinating.
03:14It also has different impacts on different people.
03:16And when you say it helps an industry, it's kind of in the eye of the beholder.
03:19Christabel, talk to us about how you think about, as a leader of your business, the implications this has for the labor market, for what it means more broadly,
03:28for humans watching content that wasn't made by people and the reality of them.
03:34Yeah, look, that's a question that we've tried to grapple for a long time in terms of how do we make sure that companies and industries react accordingly to what's coming and what's happening.
03:44And I think my take after seeing the industry for quite some time is I think the industry is adapting pretty well, to be honest.
03:50If you look at advertising agencies, if you look at Hollywood, it's pretty obvious these days is that every studio has an AI department, an AI can function, an AI chief,
03:59and the organization has started to rethink themselves in an AI-native world.
04:05And that has allowed themselves to really find new jobs, new types of things that they weren't able to do before.
04:10So, in a way, that's taking some of the tasks and things we've seen in the past and that will go away.
04:16And that's natural.
04:17I think that we've slowly realized that that's the case.
04:20At the same time, we've seen more jobs being put out there with new descriptions on things that even a year ago would have been unthinkable of.
04:27And I think that reaction is now becoming obvious not only for media, for Hollywood, but for gaming companies and for many other industries, even for software engineers.
04:35I think it's kind of pretty obvious these days where you start to see that you can automate and simplify a lot of the entry-level tasks and jobs.
04:42And so, that's where I think we'll continue to see growth industry-wise in media and entertainment.
04:48Cristobal, we find that there's a lot of interest in runway, right?
04:51As a company, how the models are being deployed and used, commercialization.
04:56This was a big round.
04:58The valuation is interesting.
04:59A lot of the questions we get for you are about your future and whether you plan to go public.
05:05So, I'd ask you to kind of be candid about that, the benefits and negatives of being a public company and why you might consider doing that.
05:16It's not something we would not consider at some point.
05:20I think right now, given the breadth and research innovation that we conduct at the company, I think we're in a much better position thinking about being private for a bit more time.
05:30I think there's trade-offs as being a public company in terms of how you report, how you think about your growth, the kind of things that you need to focus on.
05:37Right now, for me, this is an area of unique frontier research.
05:42And being a private company allows you to do that frontier research with much more freedom.
05:47And so, it's something we wouldn't necessarily not consider.
05:50But right now, given the growth that we see, we'll probably remain a private company for quite some time to retain their independence.
05:57Cristobal, briefly, I sort of asked you about whether the employee base in companies are ready.
06:02Am I, as a human, ready to digest the wall of AI-made content and discern what's real and what's not?
06:09Yeah, you know, that's an interesting question.
06:13I actually will kind of flip the assumption there.
06:17I would start to assume and I would suggest everyone probably starts to assume that most of the content that you see out is going to be generated.
06:24And in that case, what we should be kind of watermarking and protecting isn't necessarily the generated content, it's the real content.
06:31It's the content that we've seen and we've recorded from a camera.
06:34And that inverts a little bit the problem because, yes, more content will start becoming the norm.
06:39More AI content will start becoming the norm of the content we interact with, specifically when you can also do it in real time,
06:45which is going to be a fascinating new avenue of, like, gaming and nonlinear experiences.
06:49I think the world is adjusting to that.
06:52There's definitely a cultural and social, like, adjustment period.
06:55But from what I've seen, I think it's happening faster than ever before.
06:59And just prepare because it's going to get even more crazy.
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