20VC: Cognition vs Factory: Vinod Khosla Creates a Storm | OpenAI Nears $70B Run Rate: Anthropic Under Threat | ElevenLabs Doubles Its Valuation to $22B & Salesforce Buys Listen Labs for $2B

Rory O'Driscoll (0:00)

It will be super interesting to see where that Anthropic Q3 number comes out.

Dev Ittycheria (0:05)

I've never seen a CRO flip from one competitor to another.

Jason Lemkin (0:08)

But I just think in the AI age, the definition of loyalty has changed.

Dev Ittycheria (0:12)

I think the reputational damage that you can do in a long term is gonna come back and bite you. Basically handed every other firm a weapon when they're competing on a deal saying, is this the partner you want when things go bad?

Jason Lemkin (0:24)

When agents pick you, it's a force of nature right now.

Rory O'Driscoll (0:27)

There's a lot that's gotta happen between now and the Anthropic IPO in the middle of November.

Harry Stebbings (0:32)

This is 20VC with me, Harry Stebbings, Jason Lemkin, Rory O'Driscoll, the biggest news in tech. And we have a special guest joining us this week, Dave, the returned CEO of MongoDB. And today we discuss OpenAI. They are closing the gap on Anthropic, nearing a $70 billion run rate. Then we have the factory and the cognition debacle. Salesforce then buys Listen Labs for $2 billion. Reflection, could they be the US's best hope for an open source model that can compete with China? This and so much more in today's show. But before we dive into the show today, Base 44 is one of those products I used and I just thought straight away, man, I wish I had had this when I started 20VC with $50 and no contacts in Venture. I wanted to see what it could do. So I built a guest research hub for the show. Upcoming guests, company notes, previous interviews, sponsor contacts, follow ups, all in one amazing location. I described it in plain English. A few minutes later, I had the product open in front of me. Database, login, backend and hosting already handled and just all in one. It made it so easy. And that's what I loved. I didn't write a long spec. I didn't stitch five different tools together. I built the thing and I started using it. For any founder listening, that's the point. The faster you turn an idea into something real, the faster you launch apps, dashboards, internal systems, AI agents, whatever you need to build, Base 44 gets you there. Go to base44.com/20vc. That's base44.com/20vc.

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Rory O'Driscoll (4:07)

You have now arrived at your destination.

Harry Stebbings (4:10)

Boys, it is so good to be back, and we have a phenomenal guest joining us today. Dave, thank you so much for joining us, dude.

Dev Ittycheria (4:17)

Thank you, Harry. Thanks for inviting me and being part of this amazing group.

Harry Stebbings (4:21)

Do you know what? Actually, I don't know if you guys know, but Dave gave me feedback that we needed to move on faster from just OpenAI and Anthropic.