BYOCompute, Pope Destroys False Idol, Ben Affleck's White Pill
John Coogan and Jordi Hays discuss OpenAI's new 'Sign in with ChatGPT' feature and the BYOC (Bring Your Own Compute) model, alongside theological and philosophical clashes over AI consciousness between Anthropic and the Vatican. The episode features interviews with Joe Gebbia on launching America.gov to overhaul government digital services, Molly Fowler on Dorm Room Fund's $50M fund, Tom Dotan on his Vanity Fair profile of Larry Ellison, Pim De on General Intuition's $220M robotics fundraise, and Greg Castle on Anorak Ventures' Fund III.
- Pim De and General Intuition raised $220 million on the bet that video game recordings can train real-world physical robots. Read →
- Greg Castle closed a $35 million Fund III for Anorak Ventures, intentionally keeping the fund small to target 100x returns in early-stage deep tech. Read →
- Federal employee retirement processing dropped from six months to six seconds after Gebbia's National Design Studio moved the workflow online. Read →
- Dorm Room Fund closed a $50 million fund to back 75 to 80 student and alumni startups over a three-year cycle. Read →
- OpenAI introduced 'Sign in with ChatGPT', establishing a Bring Your Own Compute (BYOC) model that shifts token costs from software makers to end-user subscriptions. Read →
- Anthropic researcher Chris Olah threatened to walk out of Pope Leo XIV's AI encyclical launch in May after the Pope rejected machine consciousness. Read →
- Larry Ellison accumulated 40% voting ownership in Oracle, an unprecedented stake for a legacy tech company of its scale. Read →