Episode 32: The Snap Inc. IPO

**Ben Gilbert** (0:00)
People misuse the crap out of literally. And they're like, oh, he literally had him eating out of his hand. It's like, no, he didn't. He figuratively had him eating out of his hand. But last year, the whatever Marion Webster added an additional definition to literally to mean figuratively. So now it literally means that some total of everything that it means and everything that it doesn't mean. Welcome to episode 32 of Acquired, the podcast where we talk about technology, acquisitions, and IPOs. I'm Ben Gilbert.

**David Rosenthal** (0:38)
And I'm David Rosenthal.

**Ben Gilbert** (0:40)
And we are your hosts. Today's episode is the Super Bowl for our world, the Snapchat IPO. It's been long-awaited, highly speculated, and everybody's got an opinion. And they are not all the same. So we're recording right now on Friday, March 3rd, exactly 21 hours after trading originally started. Trading is underway for day two. And hopefully we should be able to get this out to you guys by probably tomorrow over the weekend and get some pseudo real-time discussion going here on Snapchat. This is a great time to tell you about one of our very favorite companies, Acquired, which is Cruiso.

**David Rosenthal** (1:22)
So Cruiso, as listeners know by now, is a clean compute cloud provider specifically built for AI workloads. NVIDIA is one of their major partners and literally Cruiso's data centers are nothing but racks and racks of A100s and H100s. And because Cruiso's cloud is purpose built for AI and run on wasted, stranded, or clean energy, they can provide significantly better performance per dollar than traditional cloud providers.

**Ben Gilbert** (1:48)
Yes, we talked about that on our ACQ2 episode with Cruiso's CEO, Chase Lockmiller.

**David Rosenthal** (1:54)
The other element that makes Cruiso special is the environmental angle. Cruiso of course locates their data centers at stranded energy sites. So think oil flares, wind farms that can't use all the energy they generate, etc. And uses that power that would otherwise be wasted to run your AI workloads instead. Yep.

**Ben Gilbert** (2:12)
Obviously it's a huge benefit for the environment and for customers on costs since Cruiso doesn't rely on the energy grid. Energy is the second largest cost of running AI after of course the price you pay in video for the chips. And these lower energy costs get passed on to customers.

**David Rosenthal** (2:28)
It's super cool that they can put their data centers out there in these remote locations where quote-unquote energy happens as opposed to the other hyperscalers such as AWS and Google and Azure who need to build their data centers close to major traffic hubs where the internet happens because they are doing everything in their clouds.

**Ben Gilbert** (2:44)
Yep. If you, your company, or your portfolio companies would like to use the lower cost and more performant infrastructure for your AI workloads, go to crusocloud.com/acquired.
That's crusoecloud.com/acquired or click the link in the show notes.
All right, listeners, so as you know, we also like to try new things on the show. And we have a little bit of a format switch today which we'll tell you about. One thing that I wanted to try is reading some of our iTunes review here on Acquired. So when you guys leave one that we think is particularly worth reading on the air or funny or, I don't know, extra complimentary or something, we're going to read them. Kind of like the Bill Simmons mailbag but for iTunes reviews. So here's one. They aren't scalpers that want to create fake problems or to short a stock. Well, thanks Spencer Camp, we appreciate it. And here's another. It's as if you are reliving the story with them as an insider. From Peach1987. Thank you, we appreciate that. Ben has been a real trooper here. He was post-surgery and now he's back. Great show. MG, MG, MG, MG, 3141 Well, to whoever knows me personally and knows that I had I had knee surgery last year. Thank you, MG, MG. We really appreciate that.

**David Rosenthal** (4:06)
Ben has indeed been a trooper.

**Ben Gilbert** (4:09)
Yeah, thank you, David. But all good now and, you know, excited to talk Snap. So if you like the show and want us to read your comment on the air, leave a review on iTunes. And we've also got a Slack. I just looked, we are 475 strong of people hanging out, talking M&A, IPOs, tech in general.

**David Rosenthal** (4:32)
So much great discussion on the Snap IPO. Shout out to everyone in Slack.

**Ben Gilbert** (4:37)
Yep, yep. And honestly, there's a lot of good content on this show that came from the discussion yesterday. So join us. It's fun. So without any further ado, Snapchat.