Robinhood's Vlad Tenev on Tokenizing Everything, OpenAI's 6 Misalignment Reports, Figure's Robot Makes Beds | EP #292

Peter Diamandis (0:00)

On CNBC last month, you said, tokenization will take over the entire financial system.

Vlad Tenev (0:06)

I called it a freight train, I think. A freight train that can't be stopped and will eat the whole financial system. So it's a very hungry freight train.

Peter Diamandis (0:14)

What is the tokenization of everything enable? And when do we start seeing this really become the dominant paradigm?

Vlad Tenev (0:20)

I think that...

Peter Diamandis (0:22)

OpenAI this week published six incident reports under a new framework for tracking and publicly disclosing misalignment. Now that, you know, OpenAI is beginning to publicly disclose these and I think obviously Anthropic is likely to join this, is that enough?

Alexander Wissner-Gross (0:40)

More transparency, speaking broadly and without particulars, is generically good. The real issue is...

SPEAKER_4 (0:46)

Today we're releasing Helix 2.5. Figure 3 has never been in this room before. It's never seen this bed, it's never seen this pillow, and it has to be able to do autonomous work fully end-to-end to make this bed.

Dave Blundin (0:57)

Convergence across different actions is much richer than you would normally expect. If they get a big enough lead, it's just going to be crazy explosion of capability.

SPEAKER_6 (1:09)

Now that's the Moonshot, ladies and gentlemen. This episode is brought to you by the Abundance Summit and Link Ventures.

Peter Diamandis (1:19)

Welcome to Moonshots, everyone, your number one podcast on all things AI and exponential. This week, the AI industry debated how fast to build. The Treasury Secretary told the labs they don't get a liability pass. OpenAI started publishing its own misalignment incidents, and a robot walked into 30 strangers' home, made their beds and folded their laundry.

Let's begin by introducing my Moonshot mates.

Today, Dave Blundin, Alex Wissner-Gross is with me. Salim is on an airplane back from India. I'm Peter Diamandis, your host and abundance provocateur.

One of the questions underlying our future economy that no one's really been answering is the following. When AI and robotics change what your work is worth, who owns the machines? Our guest today has spent 13 years on that question. Back in 2013, two Stanford math guys had one key idea. Trading should be free and live in your pocket. Wall Street laughed, but they're not laughing anymore. Today's guest built a company that's now done $1.3 billion in revenue up 32% over last year. The company runs a top five blockchain, a billion-dollar private market fund, a prediction market exchange, and the app that just gave every American newborn a brokerage account.

On the side, our guest founded a company that's building mathematical superintelligence just by the way. He's 39, born in Bulgaria, and is the founder and CEO of Robinhood. Vlad Tenev, welcome to Moonshots. Good to have you.

Vlad Tenev (2:53)

Glad to be here. Happy to hang with you guys.

Dave Blundin (2:55)

Yeah. This will be fun.

Peter Diamandis (2:57)

Yeah. So much going on. You know, I don't know if you get as little sleep as we all do, just living through the Singularity. It's insane.

Vlad Tenev (3:05)

Very little sleep. Yeah. Last night was rough with my coding agents.

Peter Diamandis (3:11)

We're going to compare how many agents you're running simultaneous to Dave's agents.

Dave Blundin (3:15)

Yeah. I'd love to have that benchmark. Do they wake you up in the middle of the night or you just let them ride?

Vlad Tenev (3:22)

I let them run.

Peter Diamandis (3:23)

Yeah.

Vlad Tenev (3:23)

I think I try to sleep with the technology in another room because, yeah, otherwise I'm actually kind of concerned about my mental health.

Dave Blundin (3:34)

I feel you.

Peter Diamandis (3:34)

Yeah.

Vlad Tenev (3:35)

I don't want them pinging me while I'm sleeping.

Peter Diamandis (3:37)

It's funny too.

Dave Blundin (3:38)

I set the budgets through consoles originally and now I'm getting lazy. I'm just like, yeah, spend $1,000 on that, but no more.

And then I just walk away and I kind of assume that it's going to adhere to what I said. Any given morning, I could wake up and it could have gone insane. There's going to be like a seven-figure bill one of these mornings.

Peter Diamandis (3:58)

Well, as long as it did something productive and profitable.

Dave Blundin (4:03)

Rarely, rarely. Often enough, though.

Peter Diamandis (4:08)

Let's kick it off with one of the sharpest statements anyone in Washington, DC has said this week. On Tuesday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told the House Financial Services Committee that AI labs should not get a liability exemption. Three days after Dario's essay, here's what Bessent said. Quote, the one thing we should not do is give them a blank check on liability. I believe the best liability or safeguard is that they will be held responsible. So the deal the labs floated, you know, pace the frontier, get antitrust and liability cover, just got half rejected by the Treasury.