OpenAI Going Public, the China–US AI Race, and How AI Is Reshaping the S&P 500 and Jobs w/ Salim Ismail, Dave Blundin & Alex Wissner-Gross | EP #205

Peter Diamandis (0:00)

Setting new records, OpenAI hits historic growth to 100 billion in revenue.

Alexander Wissner-Gross (0:05)

I think it's entirely possible that OpenAI could hit 100 billion ARR in a couple of years. I think the easiest path is OpenAI.

SPEAKER_3 (0:14)

Remember, of course, one of the most important companies in the world that could give it a market cap of $1 trillion.

SPEAKER_4 (0:19)

But of course, this is an ongoing story, and there's still a lot of uncertainties as well in OpenAI's future.

Peter Diamandis (0:25)

The big question is whether the S&P 500 is overvalued, and whether the Mag-7 can continue to sort of command that level of valuation, because they are driving much of the economy and much of the gains.

Dave Blundin (0:38)

AI is going to be huge no matter what. There's no doubt about that. But is that scarcity sustainable, or are there going to be many competitors in a race to the bottom, and margins will come down? With 800 million subscribers already, half this comes from subscription revenue. That's more or less in the bag. This is really dwarfing all history.

Peter Diamandis (0:58)

Now that's a Moonshot, ladies and gentlemen. So guys, I'm still getting up at like 3.3 in the morning coming back from Riyadh. How are you guys doing?

Salim Ismail (1:09)

I'm actually okay. I get back and I learned a trick from Ramez and Raymond McCauley, and they said, take a double dose of melatonin, and in a couple of days you're good. I've actually been surprisingly okay.

Peter Diamandis (1:25)

I actually like getting up at 3.30. It's like, I've got like four hours before anybody else wakes up, and it's like, amazing. Dave, how about you, buddy?

Dave Blundin (1:35)

No, I'm back on schedule.

Peter Diamandis (1:37)

All right, fantastic.

Dave Blundin (1:38)

I don't think I ever got acclimated to Saudi, actually. I don't think I slept more than four hours straight.

Peter Diamandis (1:42)

What an amazing trip it was. I mean, just to recount one second, I mean, spending time with Eric Schmidt and Feifei on stage was awesome. Hanging out with Ruth Perot, the president of Google, of Alphabet. I mean, what an amazing woman she is. Any favorite memories from you guys?

Salim Ismail (2:04)

I have a selfie with Ray Dalio, and I spent an evening late with Balaji talking about, you know, US, China, etc., etc.

Peter Diamandis (2:12)

Oh, my God. I had to duck out. I mean, so here we had this dinner in Riyadh that we put together basically with myself inviting and Dave and Amjad from Replit.

And we had Kathy Wood and Balaji debating China versus US. And I was like, oh, this is going to be a long conversation. Balaji can talk. Oh, boy, can he ever talk.

Salim Ismail (2:42)

Yeah. He's got some great framings though, right? He talks about the left versus right in the US as scribes versus vibes. So the left is scribes and they're like, crime is down by 50 percent. And the right is vibes. They're like, well, it doesn't feel good. And it was a really great framing.

Peter Diamandis (3:02)

Having breakfast with Libutain was awesome.

Dave Blundin (3:05)

I know I missed that.

Peter Diamandis (3:06)

The CEO of Intel.

Dave Blundin (3:07)

That was the biggest miss of the week.

Peter Diamandis (3:09)

I know. But we'll get them on the pod. He said he wants to join in the pod. We'll talk about his time at the White House and his skyrocketing shares at Intel. I mean, it's exciting. Any other favorite memories?

Dave Blundin (3:22)

Philip Johnston was doing it. He invited me to the SpaceX launch. I had a wedding to go to last night, which was also a lot of fun. But I would have been able to go down and see the launch of his Falcon 9

Peter Diamandis (3:31)

The first H100 in orbit.

Dave Blundin (3:34)

His H100 first chip in orbit. Yeah, that's not a huge amount of compute, but certainly a bellwether for humankind if we go down the Dyson Sphere path. So that was really fun. He's a sharp dude.

Peter Diamandis (3:46)

Yeah.

For me, hanging out with Bill Ackman was fun. He's getting involved in some of the stuff that we're doing. Bob Mumgard, the CEO of Commonwealth Fusion, was at our dinner. So it was great.

Dave Blundin (3:58)

I had a lot of great time with Bob, actually. He's an MIT PhD in nuclear stuff. So he knows all the details of sustainable fusion. There was a lot about it that I didn't actually realize.

Salim Ismail (4:12)

There was one thing that he said that blew my mind, because I asked him, when do we have a commercially available reactor? And he said it was looking like 2032 And I'm like, how much would it generate? He's like, about 400 megawatts. I mean, if we have Fusion, working Fusion in seven years, it's game over, right?