Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: Let me tell you we have a new star.
Speaker 3: A star is born Elon On Mars Juthan Kennemy.
Speaker 4: He is the Thomas Edison plus plus plus of our age.
Speaker 5: Probably his whole life is from a position of insecurity.
Speaker 5: I feel for the guy.
Speaker 3: I would say ninety eight percent really appreciate what he does.
Speaker 6: But those two percent.
Speaker 4: That are nasty, they are our pit in four post.
Speaker 5: We were meant for great things in the United States
Speaker 5: of America, and Elon reminds us of that.
Speaker 1: I'm very disappointed in Elan.
Speaker 7: I've helped Elon a lot.
Speaker 5: Welcome to Elan and Bloomberg's weekly podcast about Elon Musk.
Speaker 5: It's Tuesday, June twenty fourth. I'm your host, David Popadopoulos.
Speaker 5: So over the weekend, while the world was transfixed by
Speaker 5: the war raging in the Middle East, US quietly rolled
Speaker 5: out the Tesla robotaxi on the mean streets of Austin, Texas.
Speaker 5: It didn't stay quiet for long though. In fact, it
Speaker 5: sounded a little like.
Speaker 3: This, This is a big day for Tesla robo taxi
Speaker 3: experience is.
Speaker 5: About to be crazy.
Speaker 3: We are fastened, we have our location here estimated rival
Speaker 3: start ride. Our ride is complete, but it looks like
Speaker 3: the Robotaxi is waiting for its next call.
Speaker 5: Bloomberg EV reporter Kara Carlson was there for it all,
Speaker 5: and she makes her elon Ink debut today to tell
Speaker 5: us about it. Welcome to the show, Kara.
Speaker 4: Yeah, thanks for having me.
Speaker 5: Then later on, our man Kurt Wagner, just off the
Speaker 5: plane from the French Riviera, will join us to break
Speaker 5: down Ex's participation or perhaps absence, from the all important
Speaker 5: Lions Advertising Festival. Of course, an episode of elon Ink
Speaker 5: ain't an episode of elon Ink without the pre one,
Speaker 5: Max Chafkin.
Speaker 3: I was wondering who if you were going to introduce
Speaker 3: me or what here? I was very patiently.
Speaker 5: You were nervous, worried. All right, So Max will have
Speaker 5: for you today, in no particular order, reports on enchiladas,
Speaker 5: exploding rockets in Musk's odd computer situation. But we do
Speaker 5: indeed start in Austin with you, Kara. You were there
Speaker 5: for the launch on Sunday. What did you see?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I started off bright and early.
Speaker 2: You know, six am is when they were potentially going
Speaker 2: to start launching, So I didn't see any four hours
Speaker 2: they end up launching it about too. But I live
Speaker 2: in one of the neighborhoods they're launching, so I actually
Speaker 2: was seeing some of their vehicles just driving around, you know,
Speaker 2: my neighborhood streets in the morning as we were waiting
Speaker 2: and watching streams. I ended up watching the first three
Speaker 2: rides through the stream of some of these people with
Speaker 2: early access before heading out, and there was only a
Speaker 2: few cars out, so it was actually a bit of
Speaker 2: a game to try to find any of them.
Speaker 5: Okay, So in other words, like there was no starter gun,
Speaker 5: there was no pomp and circumstance or a hype man,
Speaker 5: there was no musk, there was nothing that said the
Speaker 5: Robotaxi launch.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 5: Suddenly they just started popping up here and there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they've been in areas of south and southeast Austin
Speaker 2: for a few months now. They're not labeled Robotaxi, the
Speaker 2: ones they've been using for testing. They're just model wise
Speaker 2: that they just recently refreshed. And I started noticing there's
Speaker 2: a lot with you know, manufacturer plates just kind of
Speaker 2: popping up. Sometimes they had some roof racks with sensors
Speaker 2: on them. They're just kind of driving around. I think,
Speaker 2: you know, Elon Musk said, they're driving around in circles,
Speaker 2: and that really is what some of these neighborhoods have
Speaker 2: felt like we.
Speaker 3: Should probably just like lay out the basics of this launch.
Speaker 3: Kara mentioned it very small number of cars. I think
Speaker 3: we think, what like about ten, Tara, is that right.
Speaker 4: About ten to twenty? I would say from what I observed,
Speaker 4: that feels like the right number. And that's what Tesla's
Speaker 4: said before.
Speaker 3: I feel like you maybe saw every single one of them.
Speaker 3: Very small area, I mean, you know, it doesn't include
Speaker 3: downtown Austin. And really importantly, there was a safety monitor
Speaker 3: in the passenger seat, which so a guy sitting in
Speaker 3: the passenger seat, not behind the wheel, but somehow babysitting
Speaker 3: in the car. In a lot of these videos, the
Speaker 3: safety monitor has his finger on a button which I
Speaker 3: think most people assume is an emergency brake. Yeah, it's
Speaker 3: the it's the button that kills you if you tweet
Speaker 3: something mean about the ROBOTAXI while you're in it.
Speaker 5: Uh wait, women, so literally the whole time he or
Speaker 5: she has their finger like just hovering over the button.
Speaker 3: Yeah, or or just kind of on it. It seems
Speaker 3: like there may have been some other types of you know,
Speaker 3: controls or ways to provide input in the vehicle. You
Speaker 3: also have, at least according to statements that that Musk
Speaker 3: and others have made you know, on the earnings call,
Speaker 3: some tele operation as well, So they're probably in addition
Speaker 3: to that safety monitor is a guy sitting at a
Speaker 3: desk watching the ride who is also able to intervene
Speaker 3: one way or another world. I don't think we know
Speaker 3: exactly what that intervention could be. It could be anywhere
Speaker 3: from sort of giving the ROBOTAXI some commands or suggestions
Speaker 3: all the way to you know, maybe a steering wheel
Speaker 3: or whatever where where that person could literally take you.
Speaker 3: But we don't know exactly what That tele operation.
Speaker 5: A lot of supervision. Now, obviously the idea is at
Speaker 5: some point, once this thing gets you know, a little
Speaker 5: more experience out there, the training wheels come off and
Speaker 5: it's out on its own in the wild. Now, Kara,
Speaker 5: who got to take these initial rides? Was it just
Speaker 5: picking up random strangers on the street.
Speaker 2: So Friday night, a bunch of Tesla influencers and retail investors,
Speaker 2: and these are accounts that you know, really are interacting
Speaker 2: with Elon Musk get interacting with a lot of like
Speaker 2: Tesla News at all times. That's kind of whole brand.
Speaker 2: Got emails that said you have early access to the
Speaker 2: Robotaxi starting Sunday, and then you know, some other Tesla
Speaker 2: fans ended up coming in and kind of going as
Speaker 2: their plus ones.
Speaker 4: They were allowed one guest per.
Speaker 2: Ride, but it was really just a handful of pretty
Speaker 2: loyal influencers for the most part.
Speaker 3: These are not like automotive influencers like we've seen Elon
Speaker 3: Musk kind of include like these sort of YouTubers who
Speaker 3: review cars and stuff in at you know, at at
Speaker 3: at earnings calls and so on. This was like Elon
Speaker 3: Musk influencers. These are people who are very, very very
Speaker 3: enthusiastically on the Musk train, which Karen and I found
Speaker 3: out when we tried to be asked them if they
Speaker 3: would take us as their their plus one and were
Speaker 3: at least in my chance in hell, yeah, repeatedly denied.
Speaker 5: Right, Well, I can't blame them in your case now,
Speaker 5: I don't care. I'm just getting to know you. But
Speaker 5: in Max's case, yeah no, I also wouldn't ride in
Speaker 5: a vehicle with you, all right, So how in general
Speaker 5: these vehicles perform and how are they continuing to perform.
Speaker 5: There has been there have been some videos that have
Speaker 5: started to go a bit viral about some unconventional, shall
Speaker 5: we say, driving techniques. But on the whole and these
Speaker 5: things held up okay so far.
Speaker 4: They drive pretty much as any other car.
Speaker 2: They you know, they were doing pretty predictable driving behavior
Speaker 2: when we were following them around. But there have been
Speaker 2: a few videos that have shown some concerning behavior. There's
Speaker 2: been some mild speeding, you know, a few miles over
Speaker 2: the limit, which people are you know, humans too too,
Speaker 2: but it is strange for a robotaxi to speed typically.
Speaker 2: There's been one instance that a lot of people have
Speaker 2: poined us particularly concerning. So there's a vehicle that was
Speaker 2: starting to turn left, peared to maybe decided it was
Speaker 2: going to go straight instead, and the spearing wheel really
Speaker 2: jerked around and it started to go straight instead, and
Speaker 2: it was going in the wrong direction, in the wrong
Speaker 2: lane for a few seconds there and then.
Speaker 5: Got well, wait, so it was going into potentially into
Speaker 5: oncoming traffic, did go it did go in downcom then,
Speaker 5: but then it got it right two hours later, figured
Speaker 5: it out.
Speaker 3: It got back into them.
Speaker 5: Well that doesn't sound good.
Speaker 3: I mean, I almost feel like I don't need to
Speaker 3: say this, but this is very much a demonstration, in
Speaker 3: a very controlled demonstration, so we're evaluating it. So so
Speaker 3: part of why Kara is bringing up these like what
Speaker 3: they sound like very minor examples, and they are, except that, like,
Speaker 3: this is a situation where you're where there is a
Speaker 3: ton of monitoring, where they're where the roots have been
Speaker 3: traveled over many times, where it's like a very controlled
Speaker 3: and we're even getting the information we're getting from these
Speaker 3: rides is also very controlled because it's being filtered through
Speaker 3: these fans. But the thing is, like what they've done
Speaker 3: here really is a long way from what Elon Musk
Speaker 3: has said they're going to do, and what he said
Speaker 3: they're going to do, just to remind people, is to
Speaker 3: be able to have any tesla anywhere driving around unsupervised.
Speaker 3: None of that is true right now. There is a
Speaker 3: very small geographic area, a very small fleet, and there
Speaker 3: is a ton of supervision, and I think it would
Speaker 3: have been it would have been surprising if something really
Speaker 3: bad happened with these tests. Even these minor, you know,
Speaker 3: screw ups are a little bit surprising just because again,
Speaker 3: this is not all that different from what we saw
Speaker 3: in October, you know on the soundstage, right, it's just
Speaker 3: like a charger version of that thing, and which, okay,
Speaker 3: maybe that's some progress, but still.
Speaker 5: Right, which gets me to the next point, Cara, which
Speaker 5: is despite how sort of you know, just okay, this
Speaker 5: whole launch seemed the stock really popped yesterday Tesla stock
Speaker 5: did it? It rallied eight percent, which by Tesla standards
Speaker 5: because it's a very volatile stock, it's not some enormous move,
Speaker 5: and yet eight percent is eight percent. It's certainly did
Speaker 5: not go down, So I guess the market market's first
Speaker 5: take is like, wow, this is great, big hit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, this is an event that people have
Speaker 2: been waiting years and years for. Elon Musk has really
Speaker 2: bet the entire company on autonomy, on AI, on the
Speaker 2: ability to launch a network like this, and investors are
Speaker 2: just glad it's meeting that mark on.
Speaker 4: A lot of levels. They will be closely watching to
Speaker 4: see if it actually can scale from here.
Speaker 2: Is something that even the most polish investers are really
Speaker 2: keeping an eye on right now.
Speaker 3: Though, Yeah, I mean, is is ten percent in a
Speaker 3: day for Tesla a huge move. That's like it's like
Speaker 3: a Wednesday or something.
Speaker 5: You know, it's nothing. Esha Day Bloomberg Tesla reporter told
Speaker 5: me she doesn't even get up for an eight percent move.
Speaker 5: She's Tesla, right, you yeah, for most other stocks, but no,
Speaker 5: so yes, correct.
Speaker 3: Look, the other thing is for this stock, eight percent
Speaker 3: is not a huge jump. This is a very volatile stock.
Speaker 3: But also like there were versions of this day that
Speaker 3: could have been a lot worse. Right, One thing that
Speaker 3: has surprised me, frankly, is how cautious Elon Musk is
Speaker 3: being with this launch, like it in certain ways, like, yes,
Speaker 3: he's putting these cars that in a lot of ways
Speaker 3: don't seem to do the thing that he says they're
Speaker 3: do on public roads. On the other hand, he's kept
Speaker 3: this to be a very modest demo, I think, much
Speaker 3: more modest than anybody believed or anybody would have thought.
Speaker 3: Like he's he's talking about teleoperation, which is something that
Speaker 3: it hadn't talked about before, or he had said if
Speaker 3: if there was tele operation, that would be a bad sign.
Speaker 3: So in other words, like he's being safe at least
Speaker 3: or maybe safer than he otherwise could have been or
Speaker 3: some of his actions like we didn't see as you know,
Speaker 3: maybe concerning or whatever. As the incident we talked about
Speaker 3: with the Tesla crossing over the double line is you know,
Speaker 3: there wasn't anything worse. So maybe it's slightly beat expectations
Speaker 3: that some people had.
Speaker 5: I do think apparently the bar was pretty damn.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm say a very low bar. But I'm they're
Speaker 3: also maybe like the enthusiasm may fade because like the
Speaker 3: novelty here of being able to drive like from one
Speaker 3: end of part of Austin to the other, it's is
Speaker 3: gonna face.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's like the boring company right where you can
Speaker 5: go from what I want.
Speaker 3: One end of the yea from the Las Vegas Convention
Speaker 3: Center to the resorts world.
Speaker 5: You know, Max, last week when you launched your acronym
Speaker 5: a report.
Speaker 3: Talking about mammoot or Madra, there were multiple, right, there
Speaker 3: were two, you had two. It was a two fer.
Speaker 5: I must forgot about Madra no when you were Okay,
Speaker 5: so when you were launching your acronyms, a bit of
Speaker 5: a riff on Taco, Trump always chickens out. Hence uh
Speaker 5: stock investors by stocks, we had asked our listeners our
Speaker 5: legions of listeners to put forth any ideas they may
Speaker 5: have for acronyms that could improve upon if such a
Speaker 5: thing could be done that would improve upon mammoot. And
Speaker 5: you know we got a brilliant idea.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we got some fun responses. My favorite and Grant,
Speaker 3: who responded with a lot of good ideas, but also
Speaker 3: complaining that we hadn't seen that he had his own acronym,
Speaker 3: which was enchilagaha.
Speaker 5: Way, so he launched it. He alleges he launched it before.
Speaker 6: Unfortunately, the time stamps uh confirm his his his launch
Speaker 6: uh elon never completes his innovative level for autonomous driving
Speaker 6: announcements enchilada.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: This guy obviously, you know, something of a bear. I
Speaker 3: would I would guess. He also, in response to mamoot,
Speaker 3: which he thought was, you know, insufficiently creative, uh, suggested
Speaker 3: a few others with the help I believe of chat Ept,
Speaker 3: including and now these are replacements for mamoot, which was
Speaker 3: musk always makes up with Trump. These include kso Coral
Speaker 3: until eventually snuggling online salsa spats are loud. Still amigos
Speaker 3: guawk grudges usually aren't consistent. Burrito billionaires ultimately reconcile, regardless
Speaker 3: of Internet tempestuous outbursts. None of them are perfect. But Grant,
Speaker 3: thank you Grants for these ideas. They are all hilarious,
Speaker 3: and I regret missing Enchilada.
Speaker 5: Grant's given this a lot of thought.
Speaker 3: I know a lot to work with.
Speaker 5: I like just about all of them, Enchillada in particular
Speaker 5: because there's a just a mouthful quile. It's very long,
Speaker 5: it's slightly incomprehensible. Elon never completes his innovative level four
Speaker 5: autonomous driving announcements. That's all good, But Kara, now that
Speaker 5: the robotaxi is is roaming the streets of Austin, is
Speaker 5: that still true? Is en shallota truer? Was the acronym
Speaker 5: launched only immediately to be vanquished, defeated and go away?
Speaker 4: I think it depends on kind of where we go
Speaker 4: from here.
Speaker 5: No, no, no, no, no, depends well.
Speaker 4: Level of autonomy they're using.
Speaker 2: They haven't actually revealed a lot about what kind of
Speaker 2: the text stack behind this.
Speaker 5: Looks like level four autonomy is like a lot of
Speaker 5: are you doing it.
Speaker 3: Without any kind of supervision? I don't think this counts.
Speaker 3: He's good, Kara, You think there's even a question here.
Speaker 2: I think we need to wait and see what level
Speaker 2: of autonomy they claim it to be, and they will
Speaker 2: have to self report in the very least suite to Texas.
Speaker 5: Well, wait a minute, but if there's a dude in
Speaker 5: the vehicle with his finger always hovering over the emergency
Speaker 5: eject button, I don't know. I mean that doesn't sound
Speaker 5: I think Grant's good. I think is good now for now. Okay,
Speaker 5: very good, Cara. We will talk again soon.
Speaker 2: So good.
Speaker 5: We are now joined by Bloomberg ex reporter Kurt Wagner. Kurt,
Speaker 5: welcome back to the show.
Speaker 1: Hi David, thank you for having me, so.
Speaker 5: Listen, Kurt. Let me just get this out of the
Speaker 5: way and get it off my chest. But fuck you, Kurt.
Speaker 7: Okay, Max and I been sweating it out on the
Speaker 7: mean streets of Manhattan, earning an honest living, and you're
Speaker 7: sipping Royal vespers and taking in the sea breeze at
Speaker 7: La Belle Epoc.
Speaker 5: What kind of gig is this that you have?
Speaker 1: I feel like this wasn't even the worst introduction you've
Speaker 1: ever given me on this show, so I feel like,
Speaker 1: you know, by that standard, I'm actually moving up in
Speaker 1: the world. That's right, David. While you were sweating here
Speaker 1: in New York, I was sweating in the south of France.
Speaker 1: And it's a hard life out there, you know, you
Speaker 1: get up early at the meetings.
Speaker 5: You know, looking out at the French River.
Speaker 1: I expect you to understand. But yes, I was at
Speaker 1: Canlon's last week, the Wonderful Advertising Festival. For those who
Speaker 1: are unfamiliar, it's essentially everybody in the world who is
Speaker 1: involved in the ad industry, from you know, the big
Speaker 1: players like the Metas and Youtubes and Googles of the world,
Speaker 1: to these agencies to the creators who are now making
Speaker 1: a living on this. They all show up and and
Speaker 1: spend a week together sort of cutting deals and boondoggling
Speaker 1: and all that kind of stuff. So it was a
Speaker 1: good time.
Speaker 5: Now, what was Ex's presence there, because I feel like
Speaker 5: just last year its presence was kind of odd, unique,
Speaker 5: and how did it play out this year?
Speaker 1: So last year was interesting because Elon showed up himself
Speaker 1: and I believe he did a keynote with WPP, one
Speaker 1: of the largest ad agencies in the world, I believe,
Speaker 1: the largest ad agency, and he kind of signaled, hey,
Speaker 1: this is important to me by physically showing up and
Speaker 1: giving his time. In years past, X formerly known as Twitter,
Speaker 1: had literally like a beachside setup, you know, they set
Speaker 1: up there was a concerts that they had, they would
Speaker 1: hold the all there. I was. That was back in
Speaker 1: the day. This was you know, pre COVID. When I
Speaker 1: was there this week, I did not see a single
Speaker 1: X branded sign throughout the entire conference. Just to give
Speaker 1: you a sense, like TikTok took over an entire hotel,
Speaker 1: essentially Meta takes over multiple floors of a hotel, has
Speaker 1: a giant beachside thing, you know, like everyone is throwing
Speaker 1: their logo in your face. Essentially you can't walk down
Speaker 1: the street without seeing these things, just just like right
Speaker 1: in front of you. X was nowhere to be seen.
Speaker 1: And I thought that was very notable.
Speaker 5: So how do I interpret this, Kurt? Are they just
Speaker 5: giving up? What does this mean?
Speaker 3: So there's two ways.
Speaker 1: I think there's a I'll give maybe the positive X
Speaker 1: version and the more critical X version.
Speaker 3: I think the.
Speaker 1: Positive is it's not very doge to go to can
Speaker 1: right like it is not.
Speaker 5: For all the reasons I stated at the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Saysten, we're cutting We're cutting into it a
Speaker 1: little bit. Okay, fine, I'll admit it's not the most
Speaker 1: doge thing to go to. Can It's it's definitely a show, right,
Speaker 1: It's a it's a bit of a circus. And so
Speaker 1: if you are X and Elon is running your company,
Speaker 1: maybe the last thing you want to do is be
Speaker 1: seen out here kind of frivolously spending money for a
Speaker 1: Diplo concert on the beach. I shouldn't say that Yahoo
Speaker 1: hosted a Diplo concert. I did go and it was
Speaker 1: pretty fun, so, you know, sorry for sorry to use
Speaker 1: that as the example. Yah was a great time. But
Speaker 1: my point is like, maybe Elon is not wanting to
Speaker 1: be seen doing that kind of stuff right now. That's
Speaker 1: the positive like reason why X might not be visible.
Speaker 1: The more negative is that, quite frankly, they either don't
Speaker 1: have the money to do those kinds of things or
Speaker 1: they're no longer in that tier as an advertiser.
Speaker 5: What do you mean they don't have the money there?
Speaker 5: They're a unit of Xai. Xai has got money coming
Speaker 5: out the ear.
Speaker 3: When I hear about Kurt talking about X's advertising business,
Speaker 3: I have that feeling of when you hear about a
Speaker 3: really old celebrity who you thought had already passed away
Speaker 3: like years ago. Like it's like, oh yeah, X has
Speaker 3: an advertising is I completely forgot because David, like you said,
Speaker 3: they are now part of Xai, and it really seems
Speaker 3: like this whole part, you know, this whole soilent.
Speaker 5: They're simply soilent for the Xai robots.
Speaker 3: Not necessarily the metaphor I would have used, but yes,
Speaker 3: that's exactly what I mean.
Speaker 1: That's the cynical way to look at it, right, is
Speaker 1: that x is sort of now the you know, the
Speaker 1: any money they make is sort of bravy, and it's
Speaker 1: the back burner to this much more important thing, which
Speaker 1: is that they're using the data to power Xai and
Speaker 1: that's really all that matters. And so you know, if
Speaker 1: that's the way that that X is, it's certainly nowhere
Speaker 1: near the kind of top of the conversation that it
Speaker 1: was several years ago in the advertising industry. But maybe
Speaker 1: it has a different purpose now to your point.
Speaker 5: But now, Max, it just said a minute ago that
Speaker 5: oh my god, right, X advertising, you know, it's just
Speaker 5: a corpse, it's a cadaver. It's it's it's long since past.
Speaker 5: But I actually thought there was reporting, including perhaps from you,
Speaker 5: that indicated there's been a bit of a of an
Speaker 5: uptick in advertising revenue over there at X.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we talked about this a few months ago and
Speaker 1: it came up again this week. So way back in February,
Speaker 1: I wrote this newsletter that essentially said, hey, we're seeing
Speaker 1: it up to an advertising Elon Musk is out here
Speaker 1: saying the quote unquote a boycott is essentially over or
Speaker 1: soon to be over, like what gibs, right, And what
Speaker 1: I heard and what I put in this newsletter was
Speaker 1: essentially that everyone in the ad industry is terrified of
Speaker 1: not advertising on X because at the time, the owner
Speaker 1: of the company was bff with the President of the
Speaker 1: United States and they were suing people who didn't advertise there. Right,
Speaker 1: So there was this implicit sort of idea that hey,
Speaker 1: if we don't spend money on X, we are going
Speaker 1: to be sued, and it has been talked about for
Speaker 1: several months. The couple days maybe a day before the
Speaker 1: conference started last week, the Wall Street Journal had a
Speaker 1: more detailed version of that story that said, the lawyers
Speaker 1: for X are literally calling some of these advertisers and
Speaker 1: making this threat explicit, right, you advertise with us or
Speaker 1: we will sue you, and that.
Speaker 5: The illegal argument is kurt. The legal argument is, uh,
Speaker 5: what what's the legal argument?
Speaker 1: Well, I'm not an anti trust lawyer. The claim is
Speaker 1: that this is anti competitive and that these brands are
Speaker 1: sort of colluding to damage X's business. Now, I have
Speaker 1: never really heard of a boycott being considered anti competitive,
Speaker 1: anti trust, right. I mean, think about how people vote
Speaker 1: with their their wallets all day, every day, right, And
Speaker 1: there's never been any kind of sort of to my knowledge,
Speaker 1: like pushback on this from all illegality standpoint. When you
Speaker 1: think about what Elon in particular and Linda really have
Speaker 1: said about free speech, it's quite comical to think that,
Speaker 1: you know, hey, spend money on our product or we
Speaker 1: will sue you. Oh, by the way, we're free speech absolutists.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: To me, those things do not really go hand in hand.
Speaker 1: But again, on the eve of this conference, essentially this
Speaker 1: story comes out that paints X in quite a negative light. Again,
Speaker 1: it's not totally new. We've been talking about this for months,
Speaker 1: but it did set a stage, i would say, for
Speaker 1: discussions around next At the event, and a bunch of
Speaker 1: people that I talked to last week pointed out like
Speaker 1: this is pretty shady stuff. If this is indeed what's
Speaker 1: happening to people.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, Max, I guess I don't understand if
Speaker 5: they are doing this and they're allowed to do this,
Speaker 5: I guess I just don't know where it ends like
Speaker 5: to me. Then, I suppose the hot dog vendor at
Speaker 5: the street is, you know, his sales pitches by this
Speaker 5: hot dog or I'll punch you in the face. The
Speaker 5: guy selling shovel says, by this shovel or I will
Speaker 5: beat you with it. I mean, it's pretty darn odd like.
Speaker 5: And I don't, well, I guess if it's working in
Speaker 5: the short term, I suppose, God bless him. But man,
Speaker 5: it doesn't.
Speaker 3: Seem still is it working? I mean the data.
Speaker 5: Kurt said that he's got reporting that says revenue is
Speaker 5: ticking back up.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I just again, like you sort of would wonder
Speaker 3: if we're seeing maybe token purchases, small purchases to deal
Speaker 3: with the threat rather than well it.
Speaker 5: Just Kurt, that is the would token purchases of ads
Speaker 5: be enough to drive that pick up and add revenue
Speaker 5: that you talked about.
Speaker 1: Yes, at scale, because remember the numbers are quite small. Right.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is not like a one hundred billion
Speaker 1: dollar annual revenue company where someone spending ten million bucks
Speaker 1: gets totally lost in the sauce. It's like they're making
Speaker 1: you know, two zero point five billion dollars in annual revenue.
Speaker 1: So if suddenly you have, you know, a dozen advertisers
Speaker 1: that all could you know, spending ten million plus dollars
Speaker 1: or whatever it is, that's going to actually be a notable,
Speaker 1: noticeable jump in revenue. Small but noticeable. So I do
Speaker 1: think the token thing is is sort of a real
Speaker 1: and if you are a giant advertiser, you have to
Speaker 1: weigh like, is ten million dollars worth sort of the
Speaker 1: public drama of being sued by X and going through
Speaker 1: a multi year lawsuit. And I think a lot of
Speaker 1: brands would just say, you give money enough.
Speaker 5: You just give them the money and run the ad.
Speaker 1: But is this a sustainable thing? Right? Like to Max's point, like, Okay,
Speaker 1: maybe there's an uptick this year, but like, this is
Speaker 1: not the sign of a healthy business when you have
Speaker 1: to force your clients to spend with you at risk
Speaker 1: of lawsuit.
Speaker 5: Okay, Kurt so CEO Linda y Eckarino sat down with
Speaker 5: an Axios reporter for a panel there at kind and
Speaker 5: it got a little sporty tell us briefly about it.
Speaker 1: Well, we talked about that story that came out, and
Speaker 1: so Linda was asked about this on stage. I believe
Speaker 1: it's on Monday of can so, the very first day
Speaker 1: of the conference, and essentially, instead of you know, either
Speaker 1: acknowledging yes, we are doing this or even disputing it,
Speaker 1: the real feedback was like she trashed the Wall Street Journal.
Speaker 1: You know, was like, and we.
Speaker 5: Will still read that publication.
Speaker 1: Right, and the whole notion. And you guys are familiar
Speaker 1: with this because you cover Elon and have paid attention
Speaker 1: to Elon for years, but like, this is a pretty
Speaker 1: tried and true strategy from sort of el Dusk as well, right,
Speaker 1: which is like someone writes something that he doesn't like
Speaker 1: or in this case, she doesn't like, and the response is, well,
Speaker 1: I'm just going to bash the journalism. I'm going to
Speaker 1: bash that outlet and those reporters and sort of cast
Speaker 1: doubt on the story that way. And so that's what
Speaker 1: we saw. But it was a kind of an awkward
Speaker 1: way to start the week, right, everyone's there to potentially
Speaker 1: do these deals and and.
Speaker 3: Perhaps give x big checks for money for ads.
Speaker 1: But instead of starting that way, it really started with
Speaker 1: this sort of combative conversation with Linda, and and it
Speaker 1: did come up several times throughout my discussions that week.
Speaker 1: Is just sort of like it wasn't really a great
Speaker 1: look for her or X on the eve or the
Speaker 1: beginning of this important conference.
Speaker 5: A bit of a buzzkill.
Speaker 3: The other thing I'm thinking about as Kurt is talking
Speaker 3: about this, we talked last week about cash burn at XAI. Yes,
Speaker 3: I think a billion dollars a month was the figure
Speaker 3: that we had from our reporting. I mean, there's a
Speaker 3: lot of cash going out of this combined company, and
Speaker 3: for x.
Speaker 5: It's mostly just going to be for the debt, right,
Speaker 5: I mean they've sacked a huge chunk of their workforce
Speaker 5: and right, I mean, yeah, you're right, they are believing.
Speaker 3: I'm just saying there's not that much revenue coming in
Speaker 3: to this operation, either from the AI side or from
Speaker 3: the advertising side.
Speaker 5: Yeah. I mean that fundraise apparently, which they are still
Speaker 5: doing right now for XAI, of which x is now
Speaker 5: a unit, apparently came a touch too late for the
Speaker 5: big con party. They had that money come in. You
Speaker 5: know they would you know, that's where Kurt would have
Speaker 5: been hanging out on Thursday nights.
Speaker 3: It would have been doing a double.
Speaker 5: Okay, now, Kurt, don't hang up, don't leave us.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 5: But I got a couple of quick things rapid fire
Speaker 5: for Max and if you have some clever thought, some epiphany, sir,
Speaker 5: great way in the shouted out Max, there was another
Speaker 5: exploding rocket.
Speaker 3: Yeah, over the weekend, a starship rocket doing a static
Speaker 3: fire test. That's a kind of test where they fire
Speaker 3: the engine while it's it's on the ground. It exploded.
Speaker 3: I think in the statement SpaceX called it like a
Speaker 3: significant anomaly or something like that.
Speaker 5: But yes, it was a bad They say the darnedest
Speaker 5: things they do. You got to give them credit. They
Speaker 5: have rocket engineers.
Speaker 3: Is funny, right. Anyway, this was bad. This was not
Speaker 3: something they expect, especially, and.
Speaker 5: It's bad because they just keep happening one after the
Speaker 5: after another, like.
Speaker 3: The third fourth, Yeah, I think maybe the fourth trier
Speaker 3: we've had it not go exactly right. If Lauren Grush,
Speaker 3: you know, our colleague and Bloomberg Aerospace reporter, were here,
Speaker 3: she just got Curt. She would say that like, look,
Speaker 3: this is these are experimental crafts. Explosions are not totally
Speaker 3: uncommon or or necessarily even unexpected.
Speaker 5: Sorry, wasn't it and maybe you already said this, But
Speaker 5: wasn't it simply refueling?
Speaker 3: It was a fuel mishap. There was an explosion while
Speaker 3: they were loading fuel in Uh. Yeah, definitely not supposed
Speaker 3: to happen, and they're investigating it. And I do think
Speaker 3: while these are experimental craft each time something like this happens,
Speaker 3: it pushes the timeline back a little bit. And this
Speaker 3: is a company that is very much under the gun
Speaker 3: if they want to meet Elon Musk's very very aggressive
Speaker 3: timelines for sending these rockets, you know, towards Mars or
Speaker 3: even set putting them to tests that could lead them
Speaker 3: to go to Mars. So definitely a setback. You know,
Speaker 3: on top of the issues that we've talked about for
Speaker 3: the last few weeks with Trump and the former NASA
Speaker 3: point e.
Speaker 5: Now we also had a revelation of sort On Musk's
Speaker 5: computer situation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is where I want Kurt's input here, because
Speaker 3: a lot of people were surprised that in the legal
Speaker 3: filings between open AI and Elon Musk in the dispute
Speaker 3: between Sam Altman and Elon Musk open Ai and Elon Musk.
Speaker 3: Elon's team essentially said he does not have a computer
Speaker 3: and that, like the open Ai, I had been expecting,
Speaker 3: you know, emails or documents from his computer. I guess
Speaker 3: they got some from his phone, but his lawyer said,
Speaker 3: no computer. And a lot of people are surprised by this.
Speaker 3: And my reaction, Kurt, was, is it really that surprising.
Speaker 3: I feel like Elon's not the only CEO who goes
Speaker 3: or claims to go without a computer. Yeah, I'm not.
Speaker 1: I actually wasn't surprised at that at all. For the
Speaker 1: same reason Max. I remember in the book I wrote Battle.
Speaker 3: For the Bird.
Speaker 5: By the way, by it read it?
Speaker 1: Yeah, by it read it?
Speaker 3: Please.
Speaker 1: Jack Dorsey, the co founder and former CEO of Twitter,
Speaker 1: did his entire job from his smartphone. You know what
Speaker 1: I mean. He had an iPad that he used from
Speaker 1: time to time. But really, I mean, like this is
Speaker 1: a guy running.
Speaker 3: That's like very you know, elderly I don't know, or
Speaker 3: child of him or something.
Speaker 1: I like, Yeah, but I mean like this guy wasn't
Speaker 1: just running Twitter. He was running Square now Block at
Speaker 1: the same time. So a CEO of two publicly traded
Speaker 1: tech companies who did his entire job from his phone, right,
Speaker 1: And so, I, I mean, it's hard for me to
Speaker 1: imagine Elon's sitting down at his laptop and typing away.
Speaker 1: I think we know he did, because he's posted some
Speaker 1: some screenshots of a laptop at one point that The
Speaker 1: only reason I remember is they were like really smudgy
Speaker 1: and gross, and everyone was like, Oh, your screen looks
Speaker 1: really looks really gross. You need to clean it. So
Speaker 1: I do remember some of that, But no, I'm not
Speaker 1: surprised to hear he he works from a phone.
Speaker 3: I suspect that laptop is his gaming piece, like he
Speaker 3: does play a lot of computer games. But yeah, like
Speaker 3: these guys have assistance and stuff as well, Like what
Speaker 3: what what would you need a computer for? If you're
Speaker 3: Elon Musk.
Speaker 5: You've got he's got what's what the hell is the
Speaker 5: name of his robot. He's got optimists Optimist. Yeah, and
Speaker 5: he's got like a he's got a hole flock of
Speaker 5: Optimi around him that just at his beck a call.
Speaker 3: I would be surprising if you saw Elon Lake typing
Speaker 3: away at a laptop, I'd say, unless he was playing
Speaker 3: a computer game. Or composing a meme.
Speaker 5: Kurt Wagner. Thanks as always, Max.
Speaker 3: Thank you, thank you, thank you, Thanks David.
Speaker 5: This episode was produced by Stacy Wong and edited by Annamasirakas,
Speaker 5: Blake Maples handles engineering, and Dave Percell fact checks. Our
Speaker 5: supervising producer is Magnus Hendrickson. The elon Ink theme is
Speaker 5: written and performed by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex Sugierra. Brendan
Speaker 5: Francis Newnham is our executive producer, and Sage Bauman is
Speaker 5: ahead of Bloomberg Podcasts. A big thanks as always to
Speaker 5: our supporters Joel Weber and Brad Stone. I'm David Papadopoulos.
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