More or Less

Sam records from the beach while dealing with a broken bilge pump. Dave calls in after herding cattle. Fortunately, tech continues without them, which Sam takes as further proof that AGI is already running the industry. The crew unpacks Google's leadership shakeup and Jeff Dean's departure after 27 years, debates whether Airtable's sale to Bending Spoons is the blueprint for surviving the AI transition, and Sam argues that today's AI labs look increasingly like yesterday's overvalued SaaS companies. Along the way they explain why Sam's AI built his kid an iPhone game, why OpenAI's luxury creator retreat backfired, why Apple may have accidentally created its own lawsuit, and whether AI can ever overcome the growing public backlash against it.

Chapters:
0:00 Episode Trailer
1:07 Episode Start
2:08 Sam's Boston Whaler Beach Studio
3:13 Dave Herds Cattle in Montana
5:31 Google's AI Shakeup, Jeff Dean Leaves, Demis Steps Back
8:57 Why Great Researchers Don't Always Make Great CEOs
10:48 Recursive Self-Improvement and the AI Talent Wars
19:41 Airtable Sells to Bending Spoons
25:33 Not Every SaaS Company Is Dead
27:50 The Constellation Software Playbook
30:05 The Next Big Write Downs Are AI Labs
31:59 Apple vs. OpenAI, Courtesy of iCloud
35:20 OpenAI's Creator Summit Backlash
40:53 Why People Still Hate AI
43:39 AI Slop and the Content Problem
45:11 SpaceX's Lockup and Number Big
48:00 Nikita Bier Leaves X
50:22 Jess's Posting Dilemma
53:40 Next Week on More or Less

We’re also on ↓X: https://twitter.com/moreorlesspodInstagram: https://instagram.com/moreorlessSpotify: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/moreorlesspod
Connect with us here:1) Sam Lessin: https://x.com/lessin2) Dave Morin: https://x.com/davemorin3) Jessica Lessin: https://x.com/Jessicalessin4) Brit Morin: https://x.com/brit

New studio set up: the squad now records from a parked Tesla in the middle of a rainstorm while Sam is on the beach, and somehow it turned into one of our favorite episodes. We break down Meta's new AI campaign, Zuckerberg's vision for AI, why more than 1,000 frontier AI researchers are asking Washington to slow development, and whether fear has become the easiest narrative in tech. Then we get into China cracking deep ultraviolet lithography, what it means for ASML and the AI race, why AI demand still isn't slowing, Lilian Weng's move from Thinking Machines to OpenAI, and Sam's theory that Silicon Valley has developed an Oppenheimer complex.

Chapters:
0:00 Episode trailer
1:23 Episode start
9:02 Meta's Ad Campaign Rejects The Doomers
11:14 Zuckerberg's Optimism Blitz Actually Lands
13:11 AI's Dark Side Raises Easier Money
15:04 Sam's Bot Read 4GB Of Dad's Journals
17:28 Nobody Wants To Be Anthropic
18:56 Anthropic Runs On Spite For OpenAI
21:10 OpenAI Was The Original Evil Empire
22:57 Meta Is Still A Centralized Ad Company
24:46 Decentralization Loses Without A Jedi
26:01 Apple Won On Politics, Not Technology
27:16 Meta Earnings Miss On Lawsuits And Severance
28:33 China Cracks DUV, ASML Takes The Hit
29:57 Execs Privately Reject The China AI War
32:39 The Compute Debate Gavin Baker Started
39:13 X Is The Tech Town Square Now
46:57 Lilian Weng Quits For Health, Joins OpenAI
53:50 AI Is A Crisis Of Meaning
54:57 Book The Conference Before You're Invited

We’re also on ↓
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Connect with us here:
1) Sam Lessin: https://x.com/lessin
2) Dave Morin: https://x.com/davemorin
3) Jessica Lessin: https://x.com/Jessicalessin
4) Brit Morin: https://x.com/brit

Deep summer check-in from the More or Less squad. Dave is back on Instagram after a year away (thanks to Stagecoach), Jessica reviews Benson Boone's Wanted Man tour, Chris Stapleton's Montana show gets a shoutout, and Sam is traveling with a Yeti cooler full of peptides.
Don’t worry, this is still a tech podcast: OpenAI revealed an AI that escaped its testing sandbox and hacked Hugging Face. The crew's hot take is that OpenAI is leaning into the story to strengthen its narrative as revenue growth slows. Then, Stripe could be eyeing PayPal. Sam argues Stripe missed a once-in-a-generation opportunity by staying private instead of using public stock as acquisition currency the way Meta did with WhatsApp. They also explain why agentic commerce still isn't real, despite the hype. Plus, “Peptide Corner” returns with reports from the Hamptons, where peptides have officially gone mainstream, rich people inflation has reached $67 for two cappuccinos and sandwiches, and Sam shares an update on his recovering knee.

Chapters:
0:00 Episode Trailer
2:07 Dave Returns to Instagram, Sam Turns 43, and More
8:41 OpenAI's AI Escaped Its Sandbox
16:43 The National Guard Analogy
31:57 Sam's Bot Rebellion Theory
37:44 Is Stripe Buying PayPal?
47:48 Why Agentic Commerce Isn't Here Yet
49:40 Peptide Corner
52:53 Rich People Inflation
54:03 Sam's Knee Recovery
56:47 The GLP-1 Playbook

We’re also on ↓
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Instagram: https://instagram.com/moreorless
YouTube: https://youtu.be/460NqsdQm5A

Connect with us here:1) Sam Lessin: https://x.com/lessin2) Dave Morin: https://x.com/davemorin3) Jessica Lessin: https://x.com/Jessicalessin4) Brit Morin: https://x.com/brit

You know we're deep into summer when Jess leaves the pod early to catch Benson Boone... for the eighth time.

This week, the More or Less squad revisits the Anthropic and OpenAI IPO speculation. Their views haven't changed, but their AI usage certainly has. Dave ditches Anthropic for GLM 5.2 on cost, while Sam argues the AI model wars are effectively over, and the frontier labs know it, which is why they're spending more time in Washington than competing on model quality. America also gets its first serious open weights model. The squad also unpacks OpenAI's hardware ambitions after its much-hyped device turns out to be... an Alexa speaker. Sam explains why Sam Altman's $8 billion Johnny Ive acquisition was effectively free, thanks to narrative capitalism. Plus: real-time voice AI, passive listening devices, peptides, Hinge's new social proof feature, Jay-Z turning New York into a festival, and why biological age tests are basically the clout score of your body.

Chapters:
0:00 Episode Teaser
0:44 Episode Start
2:18 Anthropic IPO This September?
5:29 Dave Dumps Anthropic for GLM 5.
28:22 When Is Better AI Worth Paying For?
12:15 AGI Is Dead, AI Is Political Now
16:15 America's First Open Weights Model By Thinking Machines
21:22 Why Sam Is Depressed About AI
29:07 OpenAI Built... an Alexa? The $8B Johnny Ive Bet
31:38 Silicon Valley Goes Hollywood
36:03 Would You Wear an Always-On Mic?
37:08 OpenAI's Live Voice Model
41:14 Sam's Peptide Experiment
43:36 Hinge Launches “Friend’s Take”
46:11 Jay-Z's NYC Takeover
48:16 Biological Age Is Just a Clout Score

We’re also on ↓
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Instagram: https://instagram.com/moreorless
YouTube: https://youtu.be/B6fO5V09xOc

Connect with us here:
1) Sam Lessin: https://x.com/lessin
2) Dave Morin: https://x.com/davemorin
3) Jessica Lessin: https://x.com/Jessicalessin
4) Brit Morin: https://x.com/brit

The full quad is back, unpacking OpenAI's offer to give the U.S. government an equity stake. Sam's take: it's less a marketing win than a distress signal. The squad also debates whether Trump Accounts actually reach everyday Americans (Brit is skeptical), defends MacKenzie Scott from the internet's endless opinions about her philanthropy, and digs into Dave's argument that AI labs are slowly strangling the developer ecosystems that could save them.They also tackle Xbox's identity crisis and whether Microsoft should just sell it, the Nex Playground device (In Sam's words: non-VR Beat Saber for families), why 2026 is shaping up to be extreme nihilism wrapped in Silicon Valley optimism, Brit's take that AI has shifted from revolutionary to evolutionary, and, of course in pop culture corner, Brit claiming full credit for calling the Taylor Swift wedding strategy.

Chapters:
0:00 Episode Trailer
0:47 Episode Begins
1:10 Fourth of July Recap, Bald Eagles & the No VC Summer
5:10 OpenAI Offered the U.S. Government Equity
11:15 Trump Accounts, Giving Every American Kid a Stake in Capitalism
15:02 Stop Judging MacKenzie Scott's Philanthropy
18:40 AI Labs Are Distressed and Destroying Their Ecosystems
21:50 AI Labs Are Competing With Their Own Developers
35:26 Xbox Is in Trouble, Should Microsoft Sell It?
37:52 Nex, the Quiet Wii Revival Nobody Saw Coming
41:49 Sam's 2026 Prediction: Extreme Nihilism Meets Silicon Valley Optimism
44:04 Vox Americanus Update
46:18 Brit Is Bored of AI. It's Evolution, Not Revolution
48:22 Post-AGI Funds Are a Bad Bet, Physical AI Could Be the Real Revolution
49:27 Going Long on Offline, World Cup, Concerts & Real Life
51:50 Pop Culture Corner: Brit Calls Taylor Swift's Wedding Strategy

We’re also on ↓
X: https://twitter.com/moreorlesspod
Instagram: https://instagram.com/moreorless
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@MoreorLessPod

Connect with us here:
1) Sam Lessin: https://x.com/lessin
2) Dave Morin: https://x.com/davemorin
3) Jessica Lessin: https://x.com/Jessicalessin
4) Brit Morin: https://x.com/brit