Swatch AP Collab, Cerebras IPO, Trump Visits China | Ferdinand Dabitz, Spencer Rascoff, Eric Olson, Matt Lohstroh, Jay Azhang, Amir Sadeghian, Alexander Taubman, Quaid Walker

**Tyler** (0:00)
You watch the TBPN.

**Jordi Hays** (0:02)
Today is Monday, May 11, 2026 We are live from the TBPN Altar, the Temple of Technology, the Fortress of Finance, the Capital of Capital.

**Jay Azhang** (0:09)
Another one.

**John Coogan** (0:11)
We got a banger show for you today, folks. We got a lot of guests coming on. We got two hours of back-to-back interviews with everyone from Spencer Rascoff, the CEO of Match Group, to Alex Taubman of Long Lake Management. Quaid's coming on from Bezel. He's going to take us deeper on our first story, which is, of course, Audemars Piguet AP is partnering with Swatch to launch a watch that's, you could call it a knockoff of the Royal Oak. It's certainly not a knockoff because it's official.

**Jordi Hays** (0:41)
It's from the actual- They knock themselves off.

**John Coogan** (0:42)
They knock themselves off. There's a bunch of interesting business implications of why they did this, what it means, what will happen. Let's pull up the video of the launch first.
You got to tell me, do you think this is AI or CGI?
Because it's a launch video and in 2026, it's hard to tell the difference. So we're going to play the- This is from the official Swatch account. This is something that looked like a fake clickbait video, but it's real. Here it is. What do you think? AI or CGI?

**Spencer Rascoff** (1:17)
CGI, precision, handmade CGI. Yes, yes.

**John Coogan** (1:23)
Not a transformer in sight, the way my grandfather used to like it.
There will be interesting pushbacks. I'm like, oh, this movie is awesome. It only used CGI. No AI involved whatsoever. Anyway, so is it a manual watch? Is it a mechanical?

**Spencer Rascoff** (1:40)
I think it's unclear. So what there's been a massive amount of, everyone has basically created somewhat realistic looking posters for these.

**John Coogan** (1:52)
Oh really?

**Spencer Rascoff** (1:52)
Actual watch has not been revealed at all. And that's the only thing that's been revealed.

**John Coogan** (1:55)
Just based off of the fact that Swatch did a collaboration with a luxury watch brand, the Moon Swatch, which was based on the Moon Watch, right?

**Spencer Rascoff** (2:06)
Oh yeah, I forgot about it.

**John Coogan** (2:07)
Yeah, and so the Moon Swatch was successful and was a more accessible entry point to the Moon Watch, which is from Omega, which is sort of in that like Rolex tier. And I don't know if the Moon Swatch, how they saved costs, because there's a certain amount of cost that just goes into making a movement, a mechanical movement. It's a lot of small pieces. Sure, you can put it on a manufacturing line and press them and stuff.

**Spencer Rascoff** (2:35)
John learning that watches have egregious profit margins.

**John Coogan** (2:40)
I know they have egregious profit margins, but still, the work to put together all the gears and manufacturing it, I would be surprised if it's a mechanical watch, is it really going to be $5? No, it's not a Happy Meal toy.

**Spencer Rascoff** (2:55)
There's the fake Chinese version of all these popular watches, Nautilus, APs, et cetera. You can get them, like you could go on Alibaba, get them in the low hundreds of dollars, right? And so it is totally possible to put together a watch that has a lot of the same componentry.

**John Coogan** (3:14)
I saw Nico Leonard on, who's a great YouTube watch reviewer, fun, very fun creator, on the Ice Coffee Hour with Graham Stephan.
And they gave him, this is a fun little game that they, they're getting really good at playing games with their guests on this podcast. They give him six watches and they tell him that three of them are knockoffs and three of them are authentic. And he has to guess and he nails it. He gets all of them cracked. Even though some of them were very convincing fakes, especially with Patek.

**Spencer Rascoff** (3:46)
So a lot of people are saying this is bearish.

**John Coogan** (3:49)
It's over.

**Spencer Rascoff** (3:49)
It's over. They're saying, every LARPR is about to buy an AP for $500.

**John Coogan** (3:54)
Rest in peace.

**Spencer Rascoff** (3:55)
AP has consistently done things over the last few years that were provocative. Some of the various partnerships they've had with talent, celebrities, et cetera, have been somewhat provocative. But overall, the brand seems healthy. It's not going to be for everyone. I think, in some ways, this decision could be seen.
And again, I'm no watch expert. But fakes are flooding the market globally. And why not just lean into that, basically? And the other thing is, they don't have any entry level, like the gap between, I'm sure this Swatch AP will end up retailing for far more. Or sorry, not retail, but secondary, will be far more than whatever it goes out at.