00:00Yeah, well, I mean, the motivator behind the interview was this release that you just mentioned, the MuseSpark 1.1.
00:07And we spent a good chunk of time talking about where Meta stands in the AI race right now.
00:14I think the prior models that the company has released have really been seen as sort of second tier behind
00:20the open AIs, the Anthropics, and even the Googles of the world.
00:23I think Mark Zuckerberg admitted to me in our conversation that they're still trailing Anthropic and OpenAI in a lot
00:30of ways.
00:31But he was very proud that this new model benchmarked better than the Google models.
00:36And he said this was sort of a milestone for them to, you know, in his words, kind of deliver
00:41something that's a higher quality than what Google is doing.
00:44And, you know, they are racing to try and develop superintelligence.
00:48They're racing to have the best model on the planet.
00:51They have another one coming. It's called Watermelon.
00:54I don't know exactly when that's going to be, but he talked openly about how that is going to, in
00:58his mind, push the frontier of AI development and progress.
01:02So, you know, a big part of the conversation was MuseSpark 1.1 and what that means for the business.
01:07But a big part of it was just where do they stand and does he feel like things are moving
01:10in the right direction?
01:10And he feels very confident about where they are.
01:13Hey, Kurt, looking at Meta's stock, META is the ticker.
01:16It's marginally higher now, about four-tenths of a percent, but it had been lower this morning on the back
01:23of some of that news.
01:24Why do you think that is?
01:25Obviously, the stock is down this year, but, of course, it was on such a tear in recent years after
01:30a lot of those job tranches.
01:31And, obviously, it's moved into AI and other vehicles there.
01:35What do you think is going on as far as how shareholders are viewing this?
01:40Well, the narrative around Meta's AI business for the last six months or so has been that they're spending a
01:46ton without a clear path for recovery.
01:49Like, where is all this money going to come back into the business?
01:52And in the last couple months, they've tried to answer that in several ways.
01:56They have a consumer chatbot subscription that they announced.
01:59They're going to be selling access to AI agents for businesses.
02:04Of course, there's today's news where they're going to be selling their model to developers via this API.
02:11And then we had a great story last week on Bloomberg about the fact that they're also exploring a cloud
02:16business,
02:17taking some of that compute capacity that they've acquired and maybe reselling it or using it in other ways that
02:23aren't just for its own products.
02:24And so I really think we've started to see a potential business shape up for them on the AI front
02:29in the last two, three months that didn't exist before.
02:32And I think you're starting to see the stock slowly, you know, reflect that, that people are saying, OK, they're
02:37spending a ton.
02:38But now we have a better sense of how they're trying to make money from this that we didn't necessarily
02:41know a few months ago.
02:43So is there this seems to be this whole AI chase, if you will, by the technology space in general.
02:50Well, it's just iteration after iteration after iteration.
02:54Where does Mr. Zuckerberg think a meta is in that game here?
02:59Is this something that they can continue to invest in, continue to improve in?
03:04One of the things that I asked him about was, why do this, right?
03:08Like there's so, so many companies, there's several companies that are kind of racing for this, what you would call
03:13frontier AI model, this, this tip of the iceberg, tip of the spear.
03:17And I'm like, why spend all this money when, you know, you could essentially license some of this technology from,
03:23from someone else who spends all the money, right?
03:25Maybe make it cheaper.
03:26And his answer was, look, if we don't control the technology, we're at a disadvantage because their goal, meta's goal
03:34is to build personalized assistance for everyone in the world.
03:37So they want every single person to be able to open their phone or put on their smart glasses and
03:41have that personal AI assistant there.
03:44And if, you know, they're relying on open AI technology or Anthropics technology, they just can't control what the priorities
03:51are.
03:51Mark Zuckerberg is big on that.
03:53He's big on making sure that no other companies have leverage over meta.
03:56And so I think for him, he's saying it's worth the spend because we can then, you know, build the
04:02model that's going to do exactly what we want.
04:04We don't have to hope that someone else does it for us.
04:07And so for him, it's worth throwing all this money at that problem, even if there are going to be
04:12several competing models, simply because he wants that control moving forward.
04:16Of course, to your point, critics have questioned whether or not the pivot will end up paying off.
04:20What did he tell you as to why he thinks it will?
04:24Well, he thinks that this is the most exciting technology that has ever showed up in his lifetime.
04:30And so he imagines this world, you know, what they did with social media in some ways is a similar
04:35strategy.
04:35They made it free, right?
04:37Facebook and Instagram and WhatsApp, those are free tools.
04:40Obviously, there's advertising.
04:41You do sort of pay, if you will, by giving meta access to your attention and time with your data.
04:47But ultimately, he's saying, hey, we're trying to make a tool free, give it to as many people as possible
04:51and figure out how to make money from it later.
04:53And I think that's sort of what he sees here is he goes, hey, everyone's going to everyone's life will
04:58benefit from AI.
04:59This is his perspective, of course.
05:00And, you know, let's make this as cheap and widely accessible as possible.
05:04And we'll kind of figure out some of the business a little bit down the road.
05:07And so for him, I think that's the motivation is he wants his product in as many hands as possible.
05:13And so that's why he's willing to sort of undercut on price with a lot of the stuff they've announced.
05:18And so that's why he's going to make a lot of the stuff he's going to make a lot of
05:18the stuff he's going to make a lot of the stuff he's going to make a lot of the stuff
05:18he's going to make a lot of the stuff he's going to make a lot of the stuff he's going
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05:18stuff he's going to make a lot of the stuff he's going to make a lot of the stuff he's
05:18going to make a lot of the stuff he's going to make a lot of the stuff he's going to
05:18make a lot of the stuff he's going to make a lot of the stuff he's going to make a
05:18lot of the stuff he's going to make a lot of the stuff he's going to make a
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