Two Legendary Founders: Travis Kalanick & Michael Dell Live from Austin, Texas

[00:00] I don't know if some of you knew I was an angel investor in some companies. On the count of three, what's my favorite angel investment of all time? 1 2 3? Thank you. Give it up, TRAVIS KALANICK. >> [cheering] [applause] >> APPRECIATE YOU. ALL RIGHT. WOW. Um on a big news day Travis is here on a very big news day. You spent
[00:30] wow, guess like 7 years just in the lab building. Last year, every year I ask you, "Hey, you want to come to the All-In Summit? You want to" He said, "Nah, it's like I'm going to just chill. I'm building." Next year, "Hey, you know, just always available to you." He said, "You don't understand. I'm stealth." Yeah, he's stealth. I'm stealth. Nobody knows where I am. Nobody knows what I'm doing. The employees are not allowed to put the name of the company on their LinkedIn. Thousands of employees that weren't allowed to put the company name on LinkedIn. I mean, incredible. And I'm like, "Okay." And
[01:02] >> Their parents thought they worked for the CIA. Yeah, and then he's like, "And by the way, Jason, you can invest. You can't announce it, and you have to sign an NDA. You can't mention you're an investor." So, I'm like, "Okay, no problem. I'm just happy to be on the cap table." Is he like kind of like secret saying what he wasn't supposed to say? >> That's what I was Now he's talking about the company. >> What just [laughter] happened? You did it. Well, you came Chamath, you're out now. Okay, let's go. >> You're out. It's out. You You came out of stealth today. Um That's so funny. Okay. >> great. You came out of >> Stealth Well, you you talked a little bit. You came to All-In Summit last
[01:32] year. >> Is that fair? You say you're coming out of stealth today? Is that right? >> Well, look. Let's just start with what that meant for our employees because again imagine if you're at a multi-thousand person company and every single employee has stealth on their LinkedIn. Including sales people. >> [laughter] >> Okay? Including recruiters. Like it was hard They They were they were living life on hard mode. It's kind of fun, too, right? I mean I mean, yeah, they it was like
[02:03] What's What is this? Why are there Why is this massive density of stealth >> Right. startup people in Los Angeles? What is happening over there? >> Yeah. Yeah. Also, technically, the name of the company in different countries was very generic names of companies. I mean, everything was designed to be >> stealth. Right. So, we operate in 30 countries. In the US, the kitchens product is known as Cloud
[02:33] Kitchens. In Korea, it's Kitchen Valley. In the Middle East, it's Namah. Latin America, parts Latin America, it's Cocinas Ocultas. I mean, you get the idea. >> You can't ever remember all the names or all the code words. >> about it, yeah. >> The thing is through, um, but today >> China. You know, it's like all over the place, yeah. But things have gone really well. And you've been a little inquisitive. So, tell us about the
[03:04] branding today that you're announcing, and then maybe some of the acquisitions and evolution of the company. You're not just renting kitchen space. Those who I mean, know how I thought about things in the Uber day, a lot of this stuff's not surprising. I I would often talk about digitizing the physical world. I think I even did it all at Summit. The quick version of this, I'll try to do it quickly, but it's like, we know the bits world, the computer world, the one that Michael Dell essentially invented for us. CPU, storage, network. These are the
[03:35] three core computing resources. When you go to computer science class your first day, three core computer resources. CPU manipulates the bits, storage stores the bits, network moves bits from point A to point B. But if you're digitizing the physical world, you're treating atoms like bits. You're building an atoms-based computer, and I'll explain what I mean to say. I know this is a little little out there. CPU manipulates bits, what manipulates atoms? Manufacturing. Storage stores bits, what stores atoms? Real estate. Network moves bits from point A to point
[04:05] B, what moves atoms? That's transportation or logistics. So, you have these three core computing resources in an atoms-based computer. The name of my company was very obtuse and purposely designed to be as boring as hell. Was called City Storage Systems. So, that's digitized real estate in an atoms-based computer, our first computer being a food computer. What does that mean? Manufacturing, real estate, and logistics for food.
[04:36] And so, you start to get there, and the idea the the mission was infrastructure for better food. The idea was, can you get a meal that's prepared and delivered to you so efficient that it starts to approach the the the cost of going to grocery store. If you can do that, you do to the kitchen what Uber did to the car. But in the Uber day, the roads were there. The cars are unused. You just had to put an app in the app store. Wasn't that easy, but kind of that easy. In this world, you can't do this on a
[05:06] restaurant. Restaurant doesn't have When I left Uber, 13% of all San Francisco miles were Uber miles. You can't get And that was 10 year 9 years ago. You can't get there on food, on restaurants. They They have like 20% capacity. Uber Eats and DoorDash fill it, but the infrastructure to do high-capacity, high-scale sort of industrial production is just not there. And the logistics just not there. It just doesn't work. That's why on
[05:36] e-commerce, you go through Amazon big-ass warehouses with awesome logistics. You've got to do the same thing when food when food goes to e-commerce. That was a lot. Okay, so bottom line is it's awesome. We do this food computation stuff. We're doing more computers now. And so the name of the company is called Atoms. And it's let's say the mission is physical automation to transform
[06:06] industries and move the world. And so we have our food computer we talked about. Then we do we're doing mining. Mining as in mining minerals. >> We're talking about atoms, guys. Yeah. So well of course you do some mining data mine, too. But the point is is physical mining. So automation of mines. And the mission there is more productive [clears throat] mines to power Earth's industries.
[06:36] Right? So it's got this industrial atoms vibe to it. And then on the transport side, it's wheelbase for robots. Cuz if you're doing specialized robots, not humanoids, specialized robots, you need to be able to move and act in the physical world. But the minute you're moving, you got to have a wheelbase. So it's just part of the equation. And a lot of people go look at Tesla, it's great. Look at look at Waymo, awesome. They're cruising
[07:06] around Austin, of course. But there's so many things that move. It's not just a ride-sharing thing. And so obviously including mining equipment that's doing its thing. So you guys that's the general sort of idea and we acquired a company on the mining stuff. A company called Pronto. Or it's about to close. It's we're we're inches from closing is the way to put it. What were they doing? What was their business, Pronto? Automating mining equipment. >> Where are they based? They're based in San Francisco. So you and I were
[07:37] starting to talk about this backstage, but there's some folks I talked to in the mining industry who mentioned, you know, like the the the big issue with mining, number one, is just surveying, like finding the the the locations, right? Is there an advantage to be created there cuz I know there's a couple startups that are trying to be really smart about selecting locations to get the targets out of the ground. Yeah. >> And then the other one is like, well, can you go deep because pretty much anywhere on Earth you can get whatever you want if you're willing to go deep enough, but the cost is is distance squared, right? So, the energy cost is like, how deep are you going to the to
[08:09] to the second power? So, it becomes, you know, geometrically more expensive to go deeper, but the deeper you go, you're the more you're able to kind of not worry about getting the right location. So, does automation unlock that capacity that >> Automation definitely does. I mean, I mean, also it's like, man, does Boring Company have some good stuff going? Like, I hope we we're like we're doing the mining thing, like, and Boring goes makes, you know, some good tunnels for for cars to do the thing, but like, there's some kind of boring mechanism,
[08:41] automated tunneling to do some of this. But, to be honest, there's there's, you know, they have this this thing is like rare earths. I don't know why they put plural. Rare earths, isn't it? Rares' Earth? I don't know. But, the but rare rare rare rare earth, yeah. >> Yeah, but the it's not rare. It's a very common mineral. Guys, it's not rare. It's what you have to do the land is aggressive. And what's rare is the is is where the where are the places they'll
[09:11] let you do it that you can also sort of get people to. When you automate, you can go to a lot of places. Uh well, first is all the mines that exist are way more productive. Um and the second is you can then sort of justify going to places you wouldn't have been able to go before because um you don't have as much of a labor footprint or a safety issue or a whole bunch of other things that then So, if it's inhospitable, [clears throat] if it's regulated, if it's like I don't want to live there. It's the end of the
[09:41] earth. >> Yeah. You can send robots and have people monitoring them remotely. Yeah. And this is like a future that feels like a little bit like science fiction. Look, we're here in Austin. You you got to do the shout out to Tesla and all the things cuz I like to sort of break down the physical AI stack. Includes not just like oh yeah, computation and I've got to have physical AI models and I got to all the things you sort of think of. What about
[10:12] land development? That should be in that stack. What about chemistry? That needs to be in the stack. Manufacturing needs to be in the stack. When you look at the stack, you're like damn, Tesla's got this. They are they are the Google of this era, which is what I mean by that is in the 2000s, if you were doing a startup in the 2000s, the first question you would get is uh why isn't why isn't Google going to kill you? Or why isn't Google just going to do it? Why isn't Google just >> going to know that they killed you. And
[10:42] before that, Microsoft. >> And before that was Microsoft, the late '90s. Uber had the time, 2010s. >> Yeah, but if Uber puts that in the app. >> Come on. >> [laughter] >> It's like dude, this is Uber. I'm like but you know, I think in the physical AI space that's a that's sort of a Tesla thing. But there's so many things to do. You got to shoot your shot. You got to do these stuff. And rumors that hey, you might not be done with self-driving, something that you were very early on. How do you think about what you're seeing in the playing field of self-driving because
[11:12] my lord, you know, Waymo's making great progress. Tesla's making great progress. >> Like pick a winner between Tesla Tesla, Waymo, Uber. Or like Uber Uber Uber Uber Uber Uber seems to be building a network of stuff. Yeah, I mean the number of Pick a winner. >> The number of players in this space is crazy now, right? Like >> Yeah, look, there's I think there's more noise if there's more bark than there is bite right now. Um look, I think Waymo obviously is ahead. The existence proof is there.
[11:42] Their issue is manufacturing and scale. Um and urgency and fierceness. Like let's >> Come on. >> Let's win. Let's go. Yeah. You know, Uber had an autonomy project back in the day. So and they have a different strategy these days. I haven't been there for a while. So but the but the point is is that you So you got Waymo, then you've got Tesla. Fundamentals. Science. Hard mode times 100.
[12:13] And the question is do they get there in what time scale? If if they And like honestly, everybody's like, "Could happen tomorrow. Could happen in 5 years." And I think that it's like when does the chat GPT moment happen for vision? Is basically the thing. Let's call it vision without other sensors. So super inspiring, but like what's the timeline on it? Um those are the base This is basically the And then there's a lot of other little guys that don't really have the
[12:43] stuff, I believe, [snorts] yet. There's nobody standing out just yet of of the others. Do you think we're at a point now like obviously now that you're getting into more of these kind of autonomous systems that move around, like do we have these vision language action models tuned and ready for prime time? There's There's been a conversation like, "Who's going to have the Android, the operating system for vision language action, where I can use my voice, tell it to do something, and it knows what I'm saying,
[13:13] and then it identifies the objects and does the thing in the physical world?" Do those models exist today, or are they still work? And is that like a Google OS, or like where does that OS come from? >> Look, I think there's a there This is an area of a lot of energy, a mix of research and implementation. I think there's a lot of hope and interesting stuff. I mean, the high level is we all remember what happened when you use chat GPT 3.5 and you're like holy Yeah, it's legit. Whoa, and then it went
[13:43] to four and you're like okay, like some stuff just changed. The world just changed and I can sort of connect some dots [clears throat] and getting real. Is it about to happen? Is it about to happen for physical AI? And that's what this [clears throat] is about. >> Yeah. And the fun part about it is machine learning, deep learning, this kind of thing for many years, decades was like inscrutable. I don't know what the thing is thinking. It just spits out an answer and I know it's correct. Well, now you can have a conversation with it.
[14:13] Right? Like imagine if it's driving your car and there's different agents and one's just driving, the other's like, "Yo, look out over there." Yeah. It's like, "Oh." Just like how we roll. Like somebody does that, you're like "Honey, that's like 200 m away. We're going to be okay." >> Yeah. [laughter] Jason and I don't call each other honey, but I got you. Yeah. Like sweetie. You know. Yeah. >> [laughter] >> Okay. So anyways, so that was odd, wasn't it? Okay. >> a little strange. >> Okay. Okay. I didn't mean it that way.
[14:44] >> does that. I didn't mean it. >> Yeah. Yeah, you know, I meant it. Okay. >> [laughter] >> Language is a beautiful compression mechanism that humans use 100 W of energy. Like and you put that in the scheme of things of like AI training, AI energy, the power plants that are built to do the thing that isn't even at human strength yet. Okay? The Waymo machine takes 100 times more energy to drive a Waymo
[15:16] than a human does to drive a Waymo. So so language we there are still things that humans are great at and that unbeat like the goat, we're still the goat at certain things. Language is this epic compression. And um we need to find ways to compress cuz like when you think about how how we first started looking at the physical world is we saw everything. And you know what guys, and this is sort of obvious, like it doesn't matter what the cloud is doing if I'm driving.
[15:47] But like the car doesn't know that. It's pulling in every freaking data point and processing everything and it's it's you know, look, they've been about sort of carving out the things that don't matter and things like this, but there's ultra awesome versions of this and you can imagine how you can use language or things that look like language to communicate either amongst agents or sort of safety systems with a driving system to sort of get very efficient answers and to identify safety issues very efficiently.
[16:18] People don't know that you moved to Texas as of or most people don't know, but it's it's out there. Yeah. You moved here in December, so now you're a resident of Austin. >> Yeah, I was I'm about Thank you. It's very exciting for me. We've been getting to play some backgammon. >> Backgammon, cards, It's cards. We're having a good time. So, I've had a place on Lake Austin since 2021. And I go there. I'm an avid water skier, like
[16:48] You're impressive at water ski king, I have to say, like So, I've had a place in Austin for 5 years. Freaking love it. It's my weekend I would go 15 weekends a year. What do you think's going to happen in California? It's pretty messed up. Look, I I grew up in Cali. Like I grew up in Los Angeles. My parents were born and bred in Los Angeles, which basically makes them the founders of LA, okay? But um so that I have a lot of heart, like my whole family, everything, you know? It's pretty
[17:19] It's pretty It's I don't want to A lot A lot of us feel that way. >> want to get the violin out, but it's just but It's heartbreaking. The place It totally It's just the place you grew up. It's your home, you know? When you have to leave. Uh but it's getting weird out there. And uh it feels like it's getting weirder. And at some point that's it's just too weird. It's too weird. Do you think everyone's going to leave? I mean, it started with Elon, and it was like >> Yeah, he was in the right. >> We don't want Elon here, and then he's
[17:49] like, "Message received." >> Like, cool. Right. And then it kind of worked its way down the tech industry, and then the kind of it, you know, world of people building businesses and whatnot. And now it's kind of gotten so broad in terms of the group of people >> comedy, music, New Yorkers, restaurant tours. I mean, this place is much I'm not even talking about this. I'm just talking about everyone leaving LA or sorry, leaving California is almost like working down the path of Look, my the
[18:20] rest of my team's like, "Where When are we moving?" You know? They're like >> And how are you dealing with that? So, that was the question with like >> Got to buy a home on the lake. There are literally dozens of startup CEOs of call it successful or growing companies that I talk to who are like "Dude, I want to leave, but I got employees here. I got an office here. I got a facility here. I build stuff here. How am I going to leave?" >> yeah, I totally get it. It's a real thing. So, look, I think like most things uh sort of
[18:50] when it's time and it feels painful to do something, sometimes it's actually not as bad as you think. And you just got to make the move and lead and do it. Um and so uh that's kind of what that's kind of the process that almost like a mourning process I went through. And that's just what it is. And you're setting up a team here? Yeah, of course. Uh and I got that office right on the lake. Did you get that? Uh, it's it's we are negotiating No, it's all good. No, no, no, it's all good. We're negotiating right now. Okay. But
[19:21] I'm going to jet ski to work. No, literally, we were Is it Is it true story? Last year we're like driving up the thing and I was like, "Wow, I wonder who owns that?" He's like, "I will." And I was like, "Did you look at it?" He's "I looked at that." And I was like, "That's a That would be a nice one." But the the truth is, you know, I I and I had a couple people move here a couple years ago and they all had the same reaction. "Oh my god, I'm living in a place that's twice as big for half as much. The people here are dope. The food is dope. Everybody here
[19:52] is got this sense that we're building the future and it's just fun and we're all positive and, you know, for me, I got to live New York, LA, San Francisco. I I did three of the great cities in this country. This one feels the most like home to me, which is a very strange feeling to me, but it feels like everybody here wants to build the future and it's very diverse, you know, like it it all these different industries and people pursuing stuff. I I think this is the future. >> Yeah, here's the thing. Like you go to San Francisco and I still have a little nostalgia when I go to San Francisco,
[20:23] just having built Uber there and the whole thing. Um, I still get the you know, the butterflies. Just I did, you know, but it does have something magical. You you just can't take it away. And then you look at all of these bike lanes and these bus lanes that never have a bus or a bike in them. And cost $400 million to build 1 mile. And it's literally it's sort of like this subconscious desire to choke the city off. Now, remember, I look at things through
[20:54] roads. That's how I think. So, I'm just like, obviously, the city is totally busted. Yeah. No, but they they literally took Market Street and they're like, "What would be the optimal way to this up and virtue signal at the same time. And they're like, "Yeah, buses." And it's like, "Nobody's on the bus. Nobody takes the bus. It's a beautiful small town. San Francisco's Austin." That whole street is empty. It's painted red. Okay, so we Okay, so we all and complain nonstop on our group chat. When are you leaving San
[21:24] Francisco? When are you leaving? I'm number one, I get it. But Friedberg, when are you leaving? Okay, well, so >> chat, you're the best by far. Okay, so let me just A couple glasses of wine in. public-facing Friedberg And he's like, "You know, I think there's a better way to do this." And then there's like Darth Friedberg in group chat. He's like, "These people, these morons are morons. They're destroying society." He is like Darth [cheering] Friedberg in group chat. Am I lying? Am I lying? Is he the most Correct.
[21:54] Especially after a couple glasses of wine. When I start drinking, he's like takes a photo of a cliff. And he takes pictures. He's like, "Fourth beverage." And we're like, "Oh, it's worth staying up on the group chat." >> [laughter] >> And then I'm like, "I'll go and attack this congressman on Twitter." which I realized Yes, and then you got to delete the tweet. Yeah. Don't delete the tweet. >> Yeah, I delete the tweets. Okay, so >> [laughter] >> there's a group of people trying to raise $500 million to create like a tech/business coalition to go to Sacramento, which arguably is something that everyone's
[22:24] left and avoided doing forever cuz no one wants to spend time in freaking Sacramento fighting politicians. But it's almost like we're all falling off a cliff, it's time to do something. Do you think there's a realistic path back? Do you think the people can actually get their together? That even if $500 million came in, there's a way to kind of turn around the state, fix some of the policies. Do you think it's too late? >> think that Look, I would go I Look, anybody who's doing anything to fix things, I'm like, "Hell yeah, let's do something." The issue is we all grew up
[22:54] in the tech world which was like a libertarian place where you stay out of politics and that kind of It was that kind of vibe. It was just everybody was like that. Leave me alone. I want to make stuff. Yeah, I just I I'm not I don't do that. And that's obviously There's not a thing anymore. In California, I think the the ballot initiatives are very powerful and there's very clean ways to get something on the ballot. Love that. I think that your DAs who have decided we do not
[23:24] enforce crime at all anymore, that's like a sweet spot. Like I believe I sort of have this aphorism. Truth and justice are the immune system for society. >> [snorts] >> When when the immune system is suppressed, all the social ills flare up. So, look for the places where truth and justice are being deteriorated, are being degraded, and say how do we get at
[23:55] that? Because if you get at that, everything else downstream will be better. So, that's kind of how I look at things and how I also determine whether the world's getting better or worse. When I say weird, I'm talking about truth and justice. That's what I mean when I say, "Oh, man, it's getting weird. It's getting weirder." Which means it's weird. I'm just talking about truth and justice. >> Well, I mean, and you look at the homeless industrial complex, you look at Chesa Boudin, which the all in pod, Sachs, myself in the pod, like we we literally led the recall of him. And
[24:27] then you have the same thing going on in LA where they were just like if somebody Gascon. Yeah, Gascon. I mean, we basically lost the script. You're running the city for the criminals. It literally is like a Batman movie. It's like Bane. I mean, here's here's the >> to arrest the criminals. Look, I was born in the darkness. I mean, these guys are lunatics. Yeah, look, I I know police officers in Los Angeles who are no longer police officers. And these are lifelong guys who protect
[24:57] and serve, that's in their blood or DNA. They want to protect people. They want the bad guys to be dealt with and they they almost have PTSD from what it is like to want to serve and see bad things happening and not being allowed to stop it. Yeah, nobody's got their back and they're not allowed to do their job. It's it's crazy and I it's getting weird. >> Okay, hey, I want to just go back to AI for >> Sorry for the darkness. >> no, I think it's good. >> I was trying to induce I'm trying to
[25:28] dark Freeburg. >> brought it up. I mean, someone bring me a tequila, I'll get going. Yeah, let's do it. Can we get a couple tequilas? >> was funny. I went on this podcast yesterday and the guy and I the first the guy was like the first hour was middle of the road. I was talking about tech and science and then like politics came up. He's like, so socialism. And he said like you lost it and then you were like he's like the energy went 10x and Don't take yeah. So that'll come out in a couple weeks, but I was like it got me going. Okay, I want to talk about physical AI one more time. Yeah. So one of now that now that you're doing this, I saw a presentation the other day.
[25:58] Someone showed like a video of a squirrel jumping from one tree to another tree and they're like a tenth of a watt or something. Like like the biology is tuned and it's so perfect in terms of its efficiency of energy utilization to do physical things and we're taking these like big things of metal and motors and like actuators and if you add up or you compound all of the inefficiencies in the system, it's like 1200 watts to get the robot to walk four foot. Like >> Yeah.
[26:28] Like break apart not just the software, but the hardware layer and where we at in evolving things like actuators and the materials and everything else that's going to make physical AI work and scale. >> a lot with the questions you're asking are going down humanoid lane, which is like this thing and and everybody talks about how do you do the hand? It's almost like Terminator 2 type obsession with the hand, which is fair. Like it's a very critical part of it. I mean, look at the I like to look at the Achilles
[26:59] the quote-unquote Achilles tendon of any of these machines and you're like that's where the action is. This this is a couple other places. Um Look, I'm in the non-humanoid space. I mean, but in mechanical engineers have been dealing with actuators and you know, all the sort of electromechanical sort of interactions that make machines do certain things, but like I'm in the food machine space. So, I can tell you how to open a paper bag
[27:29] and put a put a a bowl in a paper bag without tearing the paper bag, but I am less into the I I forget the name perio they're they're the the senses to understand awareness and touch. Um I'm not in that game. Um so, when you're mining you're like you're not [snorts and clears throat] like, you know, >> You're not threading a needle. You're not playing tennis. Um Certain things may be equivalent to tennis. So, look, the bottom line is
[28:00] we're seeing obviously all you have to do is go online and look at where the humanoids are going over time and how much better they're getting. Um it's wild and it's happening so freaking fast, but any humanoid demo starts with dancing and martial arts. Yeah. And we're sort of down specialized robot lane, which is gainfully employed robots. >> Yeah. So, I know I didn't totally answer
[28:30] the question on like the technology piece, but I just like do you agree that there's probably like a big opportunity for venture money and like research to go into material science actually yeah. >> For sure. Because if the physical AI stack manipulation and all of the related things around it is massive And so if you get the software working it's almost like the hardware has to catch up. Yes. We got a lot of investment to be >> I do. Well actually it's good that you bring this up. You
[29:00] know one of the things you pioneered at Uber was capital as a weapon and you were very thoughtful about hey if we can take this capital off the table then that's going to let's call it what it is it's going to be an advantage versus the competitors and these other competitors couldn't get that capital. That's now I think people have seen that playbook and they're like someone was like that was smart let me try. And it's at a different scale. Now that you've come out of stealth Yeah. Now that you've got and and people are
[29:30] starting to understand Yeah. starting today Yeah. how big your vision is capital as a weapon Yeah. This is I guess in your plan yeah? Well I mean here's the thing right so capital as a strategic weapon for its own sake is not a thing when it is actually a strategic weapon then it is a thing and what I mean by that is like in the Uber world early days if you didn't have capital didn't matter how good your app was because Masa's going to put a billion dollars in your competitor and you're going to lose 20%
[30:01] market share tomorrow. So a critical competency in fact your world class competencies one of them has to be raising capital and you need to do it better than everybody else and if you don't you are going to lose. Let me ask one follow up to that. Sorry you go ahead. Yeah. Um but the Middle East Yeah. I've heard theories the last couple days that big capital seekers are kind of right now because of what's going on in the Middle East with the Iran war Dubai Qatar Saudis are kind of going to close up the capital flowing to the US right now and
[30:33] is that real? I mean do you think that's a real threat? >> So look our Middle East business was supposed to go public in January and the Saudi market was went down 20% over like a 2-month period and that was like a massive damper on the situation. Now, part of it's part of that was because the oil prices had gone down so dramatically. And if you went into KSA, you went to the kingdom, everybody's like, "We need We need oil prices to go up."
[31:03] You know, that's the other side of the equation. So, I don't know what happened like I don't I'm not in the market raising money right at this moment and this is a 2-week old thing that I, you know, look, I see the news just like everybody else and I'm not out there calling while the war is going on and saying, "Hey guys, you got some money?" Um so, I don't know exactly what's going to happen, but if you are an optimist and you're like, "Okay, this isn't This is not going on forever." just like the tariffs
[31:33] it was the end of the world and then it wasn't very quickly. If you're an optimist about this situation and it won't be the end of the world maybe even a better world then we get to a better place and I think progress, abundance, the golden age happens and a lot of it is about all the things that are happening in AI, in physical AI and and and just the productivity gains that are coming in very massive ways. Yeah, I don't know it it was shock shock and awe and then
[32:05] hey, now we've got a steady state and let's hope that's what happens in Iran is that we can depose these evil dictators and replace it with something a little more stable. And related to this before we wrap, they're going to China, there's big trade deal being negotiated. What do you hope comes out of this Chinese thing? And what did you learn in China? Yeah, what would you learn and and what do you think would be great for America like what would you like to see and be like, "Man, that's going to set us all up. No more Look, here's the thing, if you go to China right now and you go and just take a tour of the manufacturing that's going on there just the manufacturing base
[32:38] The cities, especially if you've gone to China for a couple decades in a row. You're like, damn. Yeah. You so, let's just do two things. You go to Shenzhen, which before felt like Kansas City, but 50 years ago and really humid, which I guess Kansas City sometimes. But, you go there now and it's like one-upping Singapore. Right? Or so that's the city view. You're just experiencing a very awesome, you're
[33:09] like, this is advanced. And you just get the vibe and it's everywhere. And then you go and you start seeing the manufacturing base and you see what like Xiaomi is doing or any of the other there's so many scrappy guys, badass guys everywhere and you're like, F. They're hungry. So, does anybody remember the 2008 Olympics in Beijing? Anybody? Does anybody this is a little bit we're down rabbit hole. Does anybody remember the opening ceremony?
[33:40] And you're like, these mother are taking over. At least that's what they want to do. That shit's happening. So, I don't have any issue or this is not negativity for me. I'm like, these guys are killing it. The best idea is winning. They're fiercely they're fiercely going after truth and progress and they're making happen. Let's step up our game, okay? But we can also have a friendly game. Like we don't have to like be like the Detroit Pistons in the '90s, you know?
[34:10] >> Yes. We can we there there's a way >> the stands. Yeah. Yeah, you know. There's a way to do this right and there's a way to do it like adults. I hope that's where we would end up. Um I have a employee who cuz we we were we for for a long time were the largest built kitchen builders in China. I I an employee in China has an American wife. Okay? They both live in China. They're both from China originally, okay? But
[34:40] one of one of them to It would be great for him to work here on some things I'm doing. It's very hard to make that happen right now. Now, that's selfish like I like maybe selfish like I'm like there's a person I've been working with for over a decade. I'd love to continue here. Maybe there's other bigger picture items that I'm not dealing with. I'm not the geopolitical guy, but I'd love for there to be sort of good relations and good like like if you have
[35:11] a significant other in who is an American citizen, like do we have to make that hard? Is an example. >> Some normalcy would Something, you know, I'm just saying. Now, I agree like there are ways to do immigration properly. Like we effed it up super bad. Don't even get me started, but there's also there's good migration too. Like a lot of great innovators all over the place came from other places for their own version of the American dream. God bless. Free bird.
[35:42] And we don't have to that doesn't have to be a negative thing. And so I'd like to see more of that and um yeah, China's China's wild. So let's let's keep our eye on the ball and let's let's give them a run for their money, too. >> it up for TK. >> [applause] >> All right. Well done, brother. Thanks, That's good. Good to see you, brother. Wow. Michael Dell. >> [applause] >> My lord. Texas native. Michael >> born in Houston.
[36:12] >> Well, I missed the the opening. We we jumped to the music, but you started Dell computer here in Austin with a thousand bucks. 42 years ago in my dorm room at uh Doby at UT. Uh about a 10 days before I finished my freshman semester. Moving. And it's been working out pretty good. >> [laughter] >> Yeah, there's been some bumps in the road, but yeah, it's generally generally worked out okay. You know, we'll have
[36:42] about 140 billion in revenue this year, so Yeah, it's okay. >> Hey, it compounds over time, doesn't it? >> Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, you start small and just keep adding and there you go. That's how it goes. It's just that easy. >> [laughter] >> But [gasps] why Texas? Like I think this is an important thing. We're in Austin. Jason lives here. David Sacks lives here now. More people are moving from California to Austin. Why Austin? Why Texas? Why is it work here? And is it getting better?
[37:14] Or has it just always worked? You know, I think Texas has had a uh, you know, low-tax, pro-growth uh, environment for a long time and pro, you know, sort of progressive business climate. And you know, if if you sort of look at the the growth of the Texas economy relative to the rest of the United States without Texas, you know, Texas just kind of looks like a better version of the US economy.
[37:45] >> [snorts] >> And uh, you know, you now you've got uh, Austin is sort of just about in the top 10 cities in in the United States. So, you've got uh, when that happens, you'll have four of the 10 largest cities in America in Texas. One out of 10 children born in the United States born in Texas. Uh, more New York Stock Exchange companies in Texas than in New York or anywhere else.
[38:15] And uh, you know, you've got University of Texas here in Austin, which I would always think of as kind of the wellspring for a lot of the companies that are here, certainly ours. And you know, long history of of uh innovative, pioneering spirit, and entrepreneurship. And it's been a fantastic place for us. And part of this, I think Freeberg and Michael, is what's happened in the other
[38:46] great cities, or what were once great cities. My hometown, New York, got to spend 10 years in LA and in the last 12 the Bay Area. And what's happening there is incredibly un-American, uh and they're decelerating when compared I think maybe the gap maybe in the disparity from these um two locations has gotten greater, yeah? And you're seeing a lot more people say life there, here in Austin, seems a lot better than the life I'm living in New
[39:18] York, LA, or in in the Bay Area. Yeah, well, I've got a lot of new friends and neighbors, you know, that that have that have that have come. And certainly, I mean, if if you look at the the the migration statistics, Texas has attracted an enormous number of people. And and look, I mean, when you when you when you look at the environment here and compare it to the other kind of situations that are going on, uh it's it's it's very attractive. But, you know, it's it's kind of been great
[39:49] for a long time. So, uh it's not really new news to us that have been here a while. Yeah, Elon had a great experience when he was building the the Gigafactory over here. They let you do stuff here. Yeah, basically, you know. They let him build it. Which he said it was like an incredible experience for him, because in California, they didn't let him build you know, these factories. He In fact, the Tesla factory that in Fremont was just an old ancient factory that he was able to retrofit. So,
[40:20] uh there's something going on here as well with the data centers. And then that's actually I think very close to what you're working on at Dell. Maybe you could talk a little bit about the data center boom that's going on in Texas that maybe people aren't paying attention to. Sure. Well, there's, you know, obviously been enormous build-out of AI infrastructure and that requires, you know, lots of new data centers, lots of power. Texas, you know, has an enormous uh advantage there relative to other states. A lot of power, a lot of land, and it's and and
[40:53] you can build stuff, right? So, there's there's been a massive build-out particularly in some of the cities in and towns in West Texas where there's not a lot of population. And so, they're not really too opposed to having data centers out in the middle of nowhere where there's land and power. And so, um Yeah, I mean, the the the demand for tokens is enormous. You know, we've been building these AI data centers not just here in Texas, but
[41:24] around the world. And, you know, the growth in that has been tremendous. You know, we we introduced the the first H100 server It was literally a couple weeks before Chat GPT was announced. >> [snorts] >> And, you know, uh the progression of our business in that area sort of gone from like 2 billion to 10 billion to 25 billion to this year it'll be like 50 billion. So, so tremendous growth. And
[41:54] when you when you think about what these models are creating, there's this face change that's happened in computing, right? We we we had 60 years of calculating and computing. Now we have machines that are thinking and helping us think. And so, the demand for that kind of intelligence and you know, the models are amazing, but they're also the worst they'll ever be and they're continuing to improve. And so we just see uh a lot more
[42:24] demand than supply and it's happening not just in the hyperscalers and the cloud service providers, it's happening in 4,000 enterprises where we building these these Dell AI factories. It's happening in sovereign AI, you know, like Palantir and you know, people want to protect their data, but also use AI on it. They want to bring the AI to where their data is. And you know, when this kind of started a few years ago, we had some
[42:54] really sophisticated uh large companies, think think of like Fortune 100 and they started, you know, buying these AI servers from us and and uh they kind of knew what they were doing, right? You know, and and uh we said, "Well, what what are you doing?" All right. Yeah. And >> [clears throat] >> they they were they were kind of taking uh building their own models. They were taking open source models. They were running them. Some of them were were algorithmic traders or, you know, derivatives of machine learning.
[43:25] And of course um they needed a lot of help in in doing that cuz it it it was sort of a complicated thing. So, about 2 years ago we we put together this product that we we we we we called the Dell AI factory. And now we've got 4,000 plus of these and it's kind of running rampant across enterprises. How do you think about the payback time on the investment that's being made? The administration
[43:56] put in place this accelerated depreciation rule or by the company >> very helpful actually. Yeah. >> So, just for folks to understand that a little bit, like if you spend a hundred billion dollars this year building and data centers and buying infrastructure for those data centers, you get to write off a hundred percent of that this year. Correct. >> it, so you don't pay taxes. You pay way much fewer taxes. >> in place for 10 years, I think. >> That's a 10-year deal, so it's accelerating the investment. How much is that helping
[44:26] versus how are you seeing folks rationalize the investment relative to the return they're going to make and over what time scale? This is still the big question. Is the money really there? The hyperscalers, maybe they're starting to come up, but end usage, end states, are we kind of, hey, wait and see, we don't know yet, or folks are getting 20% ROIC starting in year one after they've made the investment? You know, I I I can tell you in in our business in in our company, we definitely see plenty of use
[44:57] cases where the ROI or the improvement in productivity efficiency is 20% or or greater. The right away gets there. Yeah, I mean, it it's you know, it's not like you just hit a button and you get 20%, right? There There's There's work required in thinking through the processes. And you know, it's worth a little bit describing that. So, you know, when you have a a any company, its processes and tools and technology are a function of what was available at
[45:28] the time it created those things. And so, what you sort of have to do is step back and say, all right, what's the trajectory of the improvement of the tools? What outcome are we trying to create? And now let's simplify and standardize the processes, get all the tools together, get all the data together, and then apply the technology. And this really has to be done in kind of a tops-down way. Uh you can't sort of do it spontane- in
[46:00] you know, in in silos are not going to spontaneously improve themselves and often that means that you're completely changing the way the organization works. It's like a wholesale re-architecture. It's a it's a re-imagining of the way a company works and you know, I mean the way I described this to our team about 3 years ago is you know, we were going to have a new competitor 5 years from now that would be 2 years from now, you know, that was in every business that we're in except
[46:30] they were going to be faster and more innovative and more successful and lower cost and they were going to put us out of business. And the only way we were going to prevent that is is we're going to become that company and here's how we're going to do it and you know, it excited some people, it scared some people and but I actually believe that that's what's going to happen and and so we've been dramatically changing our business. I would say the biggest benefit by far is
[47:00] speed. We're much faster at being able to apply innovations and so, you know, you look at our at our infrastructure business last quarter grew 73%. Well, that's kind of unusual for a business of this size. And you know, this quarter we guided that it would grow even faster like 100% so. You've lived through a couple of paradigm shifts here. The PC revolution obviously you led that and then you of course had you know, client server, the
[47:32] network revolution, online, internet, mobile. >> mobile. >> Yeah. So, each one of those we saw massive disruption. We're talking in in the green room about hey, we used to have a typing pool, there was a mail room. All these things got abstracted away by the PC and networked PC revolution. But it took a decade or two. And this one's happening a lot faster, yeah? >> Yeah, this one I think it's it's like um you know, a quarter is like a year. Maybe maybe it's five times faster or
[48:03] something like that. But but back to your question, I I I would say maybe 10 or 15% of large companies have really figured this out and the rest of them are kind of fumbling around and you know, there's a tendency when when you hear about a new technology to like oh, let's just let's just go do it, you know, and show the boss, hey, we did AI, you know. Yeah, the board said we got to do AI. We got to do AI, guys. >> We need AI. Are you Are you proud of me, boss? You know? Yeah. Um and Look at what I made.
[48:33] Exactly. And I also think, you know, is an important point about about uh this which is you know, the barrier to technology adoption is is not technology. It's culture and leadership and courage, right? And and so Willingness to change and to adapt yourself. >> and you know, if you if you're in a business that you don't think it's changing very much or you know, heart change is really hard, right? And you you have to it can be very uncomfortable. You're like, well, we're
[49:03] going to stop doing that. Well, maybe we don't need this anymore. Particularly if your bonus is dependent on not messing things up. But let's go let's use the internet as an analogy which you saw up close. There were businesses that were internet transition successful. They made the transition. Maybe Macy's dot com versus Sears Roebuck, right? Maybe Macy's did a better job of taking advantage of the internet than Sears. But then there was internet native
[49:34] businesses that seemed to blow them all out. And uh maybe Amazon's a good example or um CSN stores, whatever they be Wayfair, etc. What's the right way to think about this evolution in industries generally? Are we going to have there businesses that are going to transition successfully and those that aren't and they're going to die. And is this really going to Are we going to see AI-native businesses in every industry come in and just disrupt everything? I believe we will and certainly, you know, when you talk to the Collison brothers
[50:06] at Stripe, they'll tell you that the rate of growth of the 2025 cohort companies is about four times faster than the 2018 companies. And so, every year the new batch of companies are growing faster and faster because they're starting with all these new tools that, you know, Well, because they see all the new companies on their platform. Exactly. And so, when when you think about an incumbent company, okay, that already exists, it has, let's say it's got brands, it's got balance sheets, it's
[50:37] got, you know, customer relationships, whatever stuff, right? Okay? Um but that's sort of like those are expiring value assets. If it doesn't change quickly and get on the other side of this, I think it will go out of business. And which is exactly the speech I gave to our team, you know, three three years ago. And Uh I think, you know, you you you you you have to be uh bold and you got to go make those
[51:07] changes to to not only survive this but but to but to thrive and and, you know, I think about it is how do we prepare our company to be ready for the 2030s? >> Right, isn't it like it's much more it's kind of the storyline. There's more to do than there ever was. It's like when the internet arrived kind of came around, Sears doesn't just need to sell locally, they can sell to the world. Well, sure. I mean, this is the point. >> AI lets everyone do everything. >> When when when we have better tools, we can do way more things, right? And and
[51:39] you know, when it when you know, when I hear people say, oh, you know, um maybe we're just going to have all these great tools and we we won't do more things. We'll just do the same things with fewer people. It doesn't sound right to me. I I mean, there'll be some of that, but I think most of it will be we're just going to do a whole lot more things. We're going to solve a lot more problems. We're going to accelerate scientific discovery. We're we're going to invent all sorts of new things. We're going to solve all sorts of problems that haven't been
[52:09] solved. And, you know, that's that's super exciting. What do we have wrong on infrastructure? So, the original build cycle looked a lot like everything's in a data center. Everything's got to sit there. That's where all the intelligence, it'll all be in these kind of hosted proprietary cloud models. Do you think that it's open source? Is it distributed on the edge? Where does the intelligence, where does the inference sit? And how does that really change or kind of re-architect the industry, do you think? It's really all the above. I mean, it
[52:41] it's not like there's one answer. I mean, certainly if you go to uh any industrial company or natural resources company, advanced manufacturing, retail, logistics, there's tons of inference at the edge. And that's growing very, very fast and uh you know, we make a lot of that embedded equipment. Certainly, you know, telcos are doing that too. I mean, it's pretty much every every industry. Think about wherever data is being created,
[53:12] you want the AI infrastructure and the inference, you know, close to the data. Um you know, there there there has been this sort of rebalancing as companies have figured out, you know, sort of everybody loves the public cloud, right? Until they get the bill, right? When they they get the bill, they're like, wait, this is supposed to save us money, but cost quite a bit more. So, you know, the the the lowest cost token is going to be the one that's generated right where the data is, on the device. You're going to
[53:44] have, you know, tokens being generated on your phone, on your PC, in every embedded piece of equipment. And And look, we have an interesting perspective on this business cuz we have 10,000 customers where they embed our product in their product. This is, you know, think medical devices, security, all sorts of things in hospitals and industrial plants and, you know, any any kind of uh you know, uh data-driven activity, right, requires
[54:16] some kind of computing network storage infrastructure. Yeah. So, when you um look at the desktop where you started, it's coming full circle and this must be at least very interesting or intriguing to you that you see this open claw movement, everybody trying to buy the most powerful desktop they can, and all these hobbyists who were your customers who were calling you up and ordering from, you know, Dell, their their bespoke PC. Now they're Dell.com. >> Dell.com. What did I say? Dell.com. Yeah. You said
[54:47] ordering from Dell. Calling us up. They They They order online usually. >> They order online now, yes. They have this thing called the internet, Jason. >> yes. It works out pretty well. Um But this is incredible that they're like all stacking computers and and running, you know, uh local models. I was just thinking back to how much the first couple of computers I owned cost, $4,000 in 1980. And then the prices came down, you could buy a Dell for 500 bucks, 800 bucks, like really nice laptops for that price.
[55:19] Um use the promo code all in. Um This is not a sponsor, it's a joke. Um But do you think there's a world where we're going to start to see the desktop, because people want to protect that data, they want to protect the skills they're building, they don't want to give it to Sam Altman, and it in a cloud somewhere. They don't want to give it to Google, whoever it happens to be. Um and that the desktop revolution comes back, and everybody's got a $10,000 desktop. Is that coming? I don't know if everyone will have a $10,000 desktop, but that would be
[55:49] great. I mean, you know, uh Um you know, so we have this tel- uh portal on Hugging Face. And we have all these open models, and we qualified them on every kind of machine we have. And you know, there's been enormous progress in the open source models. You know, Google has these Gemma models, g e m m a, and they work really, really well on small machines. You know, Open AI has their open source models. You've got the Nvidia NeMoTron models.
[56:21] You've got, you know, enormous uh ecosystem of open source that is, you know, thriving, and certainly Open Claw, and you know, there'll be some good discussion about that. How many people have set up Open Claw? Raise your hand. Oh my lord, that's about what, 20% of the audience here? Yeah, so you know, autonomous agents, um big deal, and certainly inside companies, there's going to be a lot more autonomous agents.
[56:52] There are significant security requirements that need to go with that. We need to We need to be able to authenticate and validate who these agents are, and what they're doing, and you know, have the right controls and and and that sort of thing. Yeah. And uh your take on uh AGI, and when we're going to hit it. Do you actually think about superintelligence and AGI and the the the two sets of problems they could solve there. And do you have a personal definition that you like to use for
[57:22] those when you're talking internally with your team of how things are moving? I I I don't really know, Jason. Uh um you know, I I think if it feels like with the latest releases, we were talking about this backstage, you know, the Gemini 3.1, the Opus 4.6, the OpenAI 5.4, it feels like we've sort of hit some kind of threshold where the just the quality of the the models are
[57:53] are just tremendous. And when I listen to what our teams are able to accomplish in a day or two weeks that would have taken them, you know, a few months or 9 months time, you know, it's it's just amazing the speed of innovation. Yeah. And so it it seems to be continuing and we get all the reinforcement learning and there's also tons of private dark data that these models haven't been applied
[58:24] to. And that's sort of what's happening with these I think the auto research is the that's the the key with auto research, the capacity to take a standard model and then retrain it on your private data and keep it private and build an advantage for your organization based on the history of your data that no one else has. That seems to be what a lot of folks are thinking about that have the capacity. But if you were to start a company today that was not in computing and you were to build a business from the ground up, how would you architect
[58:54] your people and your organizational principles as an AI kind of first knowing what you know about computing and where things are headed? Are you hiring people? Are you hiring a bunch of people to run a bunch of agents? How do you think about architecting a new business today? It's a great question. I don't really spend a lot of time thinking about that. You know, I'm thinking about how do how do I What the rest of us are thinking about. How do I run our company? I mean, that's that's hard enough. So Yeah. Everyone I talk to, that's the
[59:24] question. They're like everyone goes to these offsites and they're like I'm actually doing this with my management team on Monday. We're doing like a teardown and be like, "Hey, how would we build the business differently today?" Yeah, I mean what we've been thinking a lot about is the sort of this this reimagining question. >> Yeah. >> You know, sort of all right. We know the trajectory of the tools. What are the tools going to be in 27, 28, 29? And how do we accelerate, you know, our path to that?
[59:55] How worried are you about social issues? So, AI recently ranked as the most unfavorable term of a list of terms including president >> saw that. >> somewhere between ISIS, the Democrats >> Ice ISIS and the Democrats. >> Ice was better than AI. People liked Ice, masked agents more than they liked AI. >> Yeah. >> Well, I think I think part of the problem is it's been it's been uh you know maybe sold as
[60:26] as you know, it it sort of presents itself like a human would. Yeah. Right? And you know, maybe if we called it linear algebra matrix calculations >> instead. [laughter] >> Right. Matrix multiplier >> that would be more friendly. I don't know, you know. Yeah. But do you think do you think we're going to have >> No, I I think you're right. The positioning is wrong and then we're not communicating to people, "Hey, this could help healthcare. This could make you live longer. This could help your kids get educated more. That this could help with housing costs. This could help
[60:56] with food costs." >> messaging aside, I mean how much do you actually worry about disruption or dislocation and employment about acceleration of earnings for some people and deceleration for other people in society that feel left behind? And that starts to fuel more of the kind of social concerns and politicians saying, "Hey, we got to stop building all the data centers." You know, like that kind of stuff. And and how much are you really >> tend to be, you know, more optimistic
[61:26] and and um you know, I I do I do think that in all technology cycles you get sort of these network effects. And uh that's kind of inevitable. But I also think, you know, uh we're going to do more with the tools. You do have this acceleration of all sorts of uh great things. I mean, education can dramatically improve, scientific discovery, health care, energy, you know, all sort of the the
[61:58] unsolved problems can can be accelerated. Ultimately, I think it's it's amplification of human potential and capability. >> And Extending the frontier, too. And And And And by the way, we should also remember that basically what we're talking about here, beyond sort of some of the advanced semiconductors in the you know, big data centers, we're talking about software. Right? Yeah. Right? It's like software that runs on your computer. >> [snorts] >> So, you know, somebody says, "Well, we don't
[62:28] we don't want that." It's like, how do you stop total software? I mean, >> [laughter] >> Yeah, I know. It's How are you going to not Are you going to stop someone putting an open-source model on their computer at home and asking it for medical advice? You know, in New York just passed a law saying AI models can no longer give medical advice. >> Yeah. Right? It's being proposed. >> Yes. It's being proposed. Yes. You can't give legal and health advice. We're anti-software. It's like Yeah, well, we're also anti- my books and advice. So, if you were going to look it up in a book, but were you dropping into your Bernie Sanders right there? >> That was my Bernie Sanders. Michael Dowell Do Do you have a the 1%
[62:59] of the 1% that you're enabling with your data centers. Why are you doing this to the people of our great nation, while you give your money to children in the Invest America accounts? Yeah. This is a good one you're doing. Yeah. Can we talk about Invest America? >> I think >> might have even criticized that, but but you know Well, that's [laughter] the problem. The billionaires are giving our children money and they're not asking us permission and then those kids are going to buy things that their parents never asked for.
[63:29] Well, they they don't they don't actually get the money till they're 18 years old. So, that's that's But what gives you the right to give our children an education? What is this philanthropy? It makes no sense. No, I mean honestly >> Well, I see I see my great friend Brad Gershner here. Brad's here? There he is. Brad, come up for this little segment here. Sit sit for a second. Let's talk about Invest America. We got 5 minutes left here. So, you know, I heard about >> Everybody in the fifth best, give him a round. I didn't know he was going to be here. Here you go.
[63:59] >> [applause] >> All right. I I >> How did this go down, Michael? How I I heard about this idea in 2021 from Brad. And I thought, you know, that's a that's just a great idea. That's an awesome And you know, I think there were some discussions with the prior administration, but they didn't uh do do anything about that, unfortunately. >> [snorts] >> And uh you know, here we are, you know, a miracle. You know, uh the the the Invest America Act was
[64:30] was passed and um you know, now we have thousands of companies that are joining in and matching the government's contribution. And uh you know, Susan and I made a big announcement uh giving $250 to 25 million children in uh zip codes where the median income is >> [applause] >> I mean, Michael, let's just let's talk for a second here. This is
[65:00] one of the greatest >> What do you think, Bernie? Do you approve? >> [laughter] >> I'm going to Jake out of this place. I just want to pause on this because it is one of the greatest philanthropic gifts in the history of humanity. And I people have just kind of glossed over to it cuz there's a lot of big numbers in the world, but we're talking about you you personally, you and Susan, sat down and said, "We're going to give a number." And that number was 5 6 7 billion dollars? Or this is Well, it's it's $250
[65:30] to 25 million children ages 2 to 10 in zip codes where the median income is $150,000 or less. It's It's $6.25 billion. I mean, >> [applause] >> I'm a And I just want to say something. You know, we live at a time where But, they have to sign up to claim the accounts. >> Yes. >> They They have accounts, but they have to sign up to claim the accounts. You know, I think we're getting 100,000 plus kids now a day signing up. >> Yeah. First, thanks for having me up. I
[66:00] mean, what what a national hero and national asset that my friend Michael Dell is, but he understates this because I've been working on this for 4 years. We've been talking about it on the All-In pod. We had a lot of momentum, but behind the scenes Trump gets elected. Um and so it's April that we're in the middle of the tariff strife, April 25. We realize there's only going to be one piece of legislation that gets passed during Trump's first 2 years. It'll be
[66:32] the you know, this big beautiful bill, the reconciliation bill. And so I I call up Michael and I said, "Michael, we got to go. We've got 5 days. We have the It It's drafted in the Senate. We have bipartisan support, but we have a window. And like we have I have to get in the Oval Office. We have to get in the Oval Office." And you know, Michael said, you know, "What What should the text say?" And you and I had a conversation and you you know, uh But You know, the text to DJT. Yes.
[67:04] I'm not talking out of school. Listen, Biden what wherever you sit on the political divide, I will say I've said this, Trump seeks out ideas from business leaders. And he has deep respect for business leaders like Michael Dell. And like wherever your politics are, that's just the truth. And the last administration didn't. And you know, If it was Hillary Clinton, she may have done the same thing. >> this and I just have to say this Invest America, it's not a red idea or a blue idea. It's a red, white, and blue idea, right? It's it's
[67:34] >> So, And [applause] to and to the prior conversation, when Michael and I first talked about it, um you know, it was this is the right thing to do. Right? Like we have to reconnect the 70% of people who feel left out and left behind to the American dream. Right? But this is in our self-interest. This is about defending the ownership society and capitalism that for 250 years created the greatest experiment in the history of the world, but that's at at risk. Less than half of
[68:05] people under the age of 40 have a favorable view of capitalism. So, when I talked to you about it the first time, Michael understood both sides of it. It's the right thing to do and it's the right thing for the country. And so, at any rate, Michael Dell, tremendous American. I have one just one one punch up. The name Invest America, Trump accounts. What do you think? Were you Were you considering this in the context of other philanthropy? I mean, how do you How do you kind of put
[68:35] this together in the spectrum of how you think about giving back? Yeah, great question. So, so, you know, we have a foundation that's very focused on children in urban poverty. That's basically the central focus of the foundation. Although, folks in central Texas would know that we do a few other things here in our local community. Um and >> [snorts] >> you know, when I've heard about this idea, one of my thoughts was wow, this is like a platform for directly giving
[69:06] to the people that we're targeting. Right? And you know, we actually thought about doing it just in Texas first. And um you know, things have gone pretty well with the company and all that. So, you know, we thought we just go bigger. And and what happens Brad if you know, 10 more Michael Dells show up? And and there are dozens of them. >> a lot of Michael Dells, let's be honest, but There are there is a number of folks
[69:37] who could make an equal size or even greater gift. Um there are people who, you know, many hands makes for light work. There are a thousand people who could make a a gift of significance. What if this actually becomes a movement and we change the dial? >> I I think I think it actually is becoming a movement instead of a moment and and and we've you know, we've got a lot of that queued up, Brad. I want you >> Wait, have you called anybody, Michael? Have you called Did you call Michael yourself? My my Michael and I chair the Invest America Giving Committee and
[70:07] we're ambitious guys. So, you're you're knocking on doors. You've you've had a few conversations. >> people. >> Yeah. And so so so so so so just There was a question earlier. First, it's really important to understand and for you guys to spread the word, every child under the age of 18, every child under the age of 18 is eligible to claim their account. Number one. Number two, you've heard this like, oh, kids born between 25 and 28. No. This is forevermore. The legislation creates
[70:37] this account forevermore. Every child born in America starting January 1st, 2027 will automatically get an will get a Trump account, right? At birth, stapled to their social security card. The thousand dollars has to be reauthorized every four years. Okay, but the accounts don't. So, every kid, this is social security 2.0. This is the biggest change to the social contract in America in in 50 years. 3.7 million kids a year will get an account
[71:07] that can compound as a 401k from birth. And yes, we're going to have a lot of announcements, but it's not just billionaires. It's going to be companies that are donating stock on their IPOs into these accounts. It's going to be wealthy people. It's going to be states. It's going to be moms and dads. It's going to be corporations. Normal people. >> And the estimate is over 15 years, we can move $5 trillion into the into the pockets of families that would have otherwise had zero.
[71:37] $5 trillion. Right? And so to me, the leadership that Michael showed not only in helping me get the meeting that ultimately got this passed into law, and it does take people. Like those moments either happen or they don't happen. And if they don't happen, there's no law, and this doesn't change kids' lives. By the way, two things on this. If this $5 trillion moved through government programs, it would get incinerated. >> Exactly. That's what we see happen. There's just a million crony structures that take it
[72:09] away and destroy it. So to give it directly into the accounts is the circumstance. The second thing is it makes a lot of sense that you guys can I'll I'll I'll be the lead. But can we replace social security in this country with a defined benefit or defined contribution like this? And eventually everyone have a Trump account or whatever you call it. And we don't have to have this fake Ponzi scheme that we call social security. >> we can do it. >> Well, they they they have a defined benefit program, but I'm saying like everyone has an account and they all own
[72:39] a piece of their future. And every time you get a payroll tax deduction, instead of it getting eviscerated and destroyed and vaporized, that money actually goes into an account and you buy a piece of a company, and maybe you can direct it. >> Freeberg's getting angry. >> on July 4th of this year. You're getting me wound up. >> So, for all the There are 4.5 million kids who've claimed their account. Almost $150,000 a day will have on the trajectory we're on. 10 million by July 4th or 250 at the anniversary of the country. Every one of those kids' accounts, the parents and the kids, on
[73:10] July 4th, they'll see an app on their phone that looks a lot like a Robinhood app. They'll see them owning It'll say you've received your $1,000 or your $250. You're And it will show a little bit of Nvidia, a little bit of Walmart, a little bit of Dell. We decompose the S&P 500, which they own, into the constituent parts so they can get excited about being an owner in the upside of America. And when moms and dads double click an Apple Pay 5 10 bucks into the account, right? When they
[73:40] send their QR codes to their friends on their birthday, and now their friends all add to the account, or on Christmas, or bar mitzvahs, and they add to the accounts, when companies add to the accounts, all of this they see it growing, and it unlocks the human potential. It's not just the money. It's that I'm in the game. I have a shot, which to David's point, I think the biggest crime of Social Security, and we made very clear, Social Security is a sacred promise. We We refused, and many people
[74:11] tried to get us to to to take on the broader struggle, and we didn't do it because we knew it it would kill this program. But But let's be clear about this. Our government requires all of us to give 10% of what we earn into Social Security, right? It was the social contract evolution in the Industrial Revolution that kept kept the country together. The only problem is it goes into a black hole. Nobody sees it. Nobody knows what's there. But it is your savings. Now, imagine if that same money was required to, you know,
[74:42] government took it away, but it was in an account with your name on it. You could see it grow. You know exactly what was there. You could get excited and say, "Hey, I'm going to add a little bit more to that." Right? And and and you had a little bit of choice. That to me is is the possibility and I think we will end up there. And and and Brad, thank you for >> Yeah, let's give it up for Brad Gerstner. >> [applause] >> Finally! Yeah, I'm just going to say, you know, Brad [applause] Brad also adopted his home state of Indiana. We have Ray and Barbara Dalio Dalio adopted
[75:14] their home state of Connecticut and many many more to come. And and and look, it's going to be super easy for anybody to add 100 kids in your neighborhood, adopt a zip code, adopt a school district, adopt a town. >> It's going to be amazing. Give it up for one of the great entrepreneurs of our time and an incredible philanthropist. >> [applause] >> I'M DOING ALL IN. >> [music]
[75:51] >> I'M DOING ALL IN.