Jensen vs NYT, New Model Reactions, "You Can See Everything" Trailer, Saudi EVs | Cristiano Amon, Talia Goldberg, John & Louis Antonelli, Max Levchin, Sam Ross

John Coogan (0:00)

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Today is Wednesday, September 23rd, 2026 We are live from the TBPN Ultradome, the Temple of Technology, the fortress of finance, the capital of capital.

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SPEAKER_3 (0:19)

All in one place. What happened, John?

SPEAKER_4 (0:23)

The mallet broke.

Jordi Hays (0:24)

No, you broke the mallet.

SPEAKER_4 (0:25)

You broke the mallet.

Jordi Hays (0:26)

I mean, does that have anything to do with the number of days until Christmas?

SPEAKER_5 (0:30)

I think so. Are we at 90?

Jordi Hays (0:31)

Are we at a round number, so we got to hit the gong? What are we? I can't read that. Is it 90?

SPEAKER_6 (0:37)

92 days. Okay.

Jordi Hays (0:38)

Well, yeah. If it's 92 days till Christmas, you got to celebrate, of course.

That's right.

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Get ready.

Jordi Hays (0:44)

TBPN Road to Christmas continues. 92 more days. Get ready.

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang went toe-to-toe with Ezra Klein on the New York Times podcast, Ezra Klein Show.

SPEAKER_4 (0:58)

That's actually a crazy environment to go in as Jensen. I just think he's brave. Ezra is a real journalist.

Jordi Hays (1:10)

He's brave. He engaged with a real journalist.

SPEAKER_4 (1:15)

You have to imagine he was a bit traumatized after Dwar Kesh, who I don't think of as a journalist by any means, but he obviously has very strong beliefs.

Jordi Hays (1:31)

And gets to the root question for a particular audience. Now Dwar Kesh, although he was going super hard on the open source question on selling ships to China, on sort of AI safety and rollout and like how the model, how the AI race should go, you know, Dwar Kesh is not the person to push Jensen on like politics specifically, right? Like that's going to happen somewhere else. But yeah, it is a hot seat, but I think he did well. Two hours almost hanging out with Ezra Klein. There's some clips and I have some reactions and it's sort of interesting to dig into the mind of Jensen because he's simultaneously the biggest force in AI, the central bank of artificial intelligence, according to The Economist. He's the backstop of all backstops. He's backstopping everything from the biggest data centers in the world, lending investment grade designation to the debt and the credit lines, to acting as a soft landing for startups that get acquired at the application layer, anywhere in the stack, he's been an acquirer that's underwriting.

If you're a VC and you did a deal at a billion dollars.

SPEAKER_4 (2:37)

You're in trouble on it.

Jordi Hays (2:39)

There's a chance that you could get out because Jensen is willing to do a $10 billion, $15 billion acquisition, whereas in the prior era, Apple had the money, wouldn't do it. Google really didn't do that many deals, that huge. Facebook would do one big one every five, 10 years, but Jensen's been quick on it. Then he's also been investing directly in basically every lab and basically every AI project. He's been an incredibly important force and yet he's now starting to stand alone in his sort of PDOOM equals zero take, which was very much the consensus in the technology community. Suck would like a word.

I think it's still is the consensus in the business community and the finance community. Basically, anyone at the application layer is PDOOM zero, anyone deeper in the stack on the semiconductor side or the energy side, the build outside, the Neo Cloud side, they're all pretty much PDOOM zero, but the labs and Jensen's been playing there. He's at that level. He's as important as a voice as Daria, Sam, Elon. So to hear him not jump on the bandwagon when Elon, Sam and Daria all agreed on pacing the frontier, he's saying, no, we don't really need to pace the frontier.

It's interesting to hear him say this. There's a couple clips. Let's play one. Then I have an allegory for where I think his position is, but let's play this.

Ezra Klein (4:02)

What I've been hearing from the labs, what they've been saying publicly, is that they are facing a hard problem.

John Coogan (4:09)

Yeah.

Ezra Klein (4:09)

Partially an engineering problem, partially an alignment problem, partially an operational excellence problem in Dari Amadei's framing.

What they are worried about is that in competition with each other, in national competition with China, that they are being pushed to move too fast, that they all feel they're in a collective action dilemma. Now, I watch you on the All In Podcast stage. Donald Trump, President Trump gave you a call there.