(Preview) Inference in the Agentic Future, xAI Is Two Companies in One, Q&A on Elon’s Lawsuit, Intel, Apple

**Andrew Sharp** (0:00)
Hello, and welcome to a free preview of Sharp Tech.
Hello, and welcome back to another episode of Sharp Tech. I'm Andrew Sharp, and on the other line, Ben Thompson. Ben, how you doing?

**Ben Thompson** (0:19)
Well, the question is, how are you doing, Andrew? We unfortunately did not podcast last week.
There was no chance it was happening. What's my travel plans actually worked out? Good thing, we did the makeup in Taiwan, just reminding everyone, we're very conscientious of your time and attention. But in the meantime, you're Washington Wizards, number one pick in the NBA draft. Oh my God.

**Andrew Sharp** (0:42)
Yeah.

**Ben Thompson** (0:43)
Is this making up for the fact that the NBA let Dallas win last year so that Luka could go to the Lakers, thus demoting you so they made it up for you the following year?

**Andrew Sharp** (0:55)
It doesn't quite make up for it because there's no Cooper flag level prospect available this year. But look, I can't get greedy.
Does it make up for the last 25 years of Wizards fandom? Probably not. It's not making up for that either. However, it's nice to have some hope in Washington, DC for the first time in about 10 years or so. I was very, very happy on Sunday afternoon. Now I would say pretty anxious about what direction the Wizards are going to go over the next seven weeks.

**Ben Thompson** (1:27)
I had a few moments of happiness. I mean, hopefully that's not the peak level of happiness in like your entire adulthood of being a Wizards fan, but I'm happy that it happened.

**Andrew Sharp** (1:35)
You know what? That's all that matters. There was a window of pure happiness. Now we're back to anxiety. We'll see where we end up by the end of June.

**Ben Thompson** (1:43)
But here's the deal. Here's the deal. I hope they choose someone that you don't like. Because my experience of the current Wizards regime is that every time they do something you disagree with, they end up right and you end up wrong.

**Andrew Sharp** (1:56)
So we're not going to relitigate the Bradley Beal trade at the top of this Sharp Tech episode.

**Ben Thompson** (2:01)
You can even become an Alex Sarr guy. I mean, you wanted a What's-his-name in Houston, Reed Shepard. Reed Shepard.

**Andrew Sharp** (2:09)
I'm not giving up hope on Reed Shepard. I'm not fully in on Alex Sarr, but I'm happy to be wrong on that point. I would definitely rather have Sarr and he looked great this year. So things are looking up in our nation's capital.

**Ben Thompson** (2:22)
I'm happy for you. I'm happy for Charles. I'm a big believer in raise your son to support the hometown team.
Like you don't want your son to end up like Andrew. I guess no. If you want to be like Andrew and not cheer for the hometown team, just because you're a contrarian, look, potential big history for you in podcasting. So that's fine as long as you did it yourself. But by and large, either raise your son to support the hometown team, or let him rebel on his own, so we'll see.

**Andrew Sharp** (2:55)
Well, and that's one of the reasons I'm excited. I can actually take my son to some Wizards games over the next several years with a clear conscience. I don't have to worry about consigning him to decades of mediocrity, or at least the next decade of mediocrity. But in any event, it's great to see you. I did miss you last week. It's good to see you on the other end of the video call here, and we have a lot to cover. So we're going to begin with your article on Monday that was headlined, The Inference Shift. And you mentioned that there have been three inflection points over the past three years of AI development. I'll list those three inflection points for anybody who's been asleep for the past few years. ChatGPT demonstrated the utility of token prediction.
O1 introduced the idea of reasoning, where more tokens meant better answers. And then Opus 4.5 and Claude Code introduced the first usable agents, which could actually accomplish tasks using a combination of reasoning models and a harness that utilized tools, verified work, etc.
So reading your article Monday, it seemed like the kernel of insight that spawned the article was that fast inference for coding is ultimately going to be a temporary use case. Can you explain what you mean by that? Because it was a bit of a light bulb moment for me that seems obvious, but hasn't really been articulated, at least from what I've seen.