More or Less

Stripe buys OpenRouter for billions, which naturally raises the question: did Stripe just buy critical AI infrastructure, or a very expensive router with great distribution? The original squad is back to debate why $7B acquisitions somehow feel normal now, whether Google already has agentic commerce won by owning your inbox, calendar, and Drive, and why Anthropic vs. OpenAI might be less about who has the best model and more about who built the right company. Sam makes the case that OpenAI pulled off the “greatest fundraising story in history,” Dave argues Grokbot might officially make AI a three-player race, and everyone tries to figure out how you price any of these companies when no lead seems to last. Plus, is AI a great investment or just a great trade, does the data center backlash actually have anything to do with data centers, have we built trillions of dollars of infrastructure before finding enough use cases for it, and, naturally in pop corner, Josh Kushner bought into the Lakers.

Chapters:
0:00 Episode trailer
1:00 Episode start
4:00 This week in AI
5:00 Stripe buys OpenRouter
8:30 Is OpenRouter actually worth billions?
11:00 The agentic commerce bet
14:00 Why Google could own the AI assistant
17:30 The DOJ investigates Andreessen Horowitz
22:00 Anthropic vs. OpenAI
26:00 Why OpenAI is struggling in enterprise
28:30 Can anyone actually price AI companies?
30:00 OpenAI’s “greatest fundraising story in history”
33:30 Is AI a great investment or just a great trade?
36:00 SpaceX, Moderna and narrative capitalism
37:30 Grok enters the AI race
41:00 AI makes software increasingly disposable
45:00 The AI data center backlash
47:30 “The backlash is that AI sucks”
48:30 Did we build too much AI infrastructure?
53:30 Josh Kushner, Thrive and the Lakers
55:30 Travis Kelce enters the NIL business

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1) Sam Lessin: https://x.com/lessin
2) Dave Morin: https://x.com/davemorin
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A very special edition of More or Less, featuring Josh Wolfe (Founder, Lux Capital), Rachel Holt (Founder, Construct Capital; former Head of North America at Uber), Scott Belsky (Partner, A24; Founder, Behance), Scott Stanford (Founder, Acme Capital), and Peter Deng (GP, Felicis; formerly Google, Facebook, Instagram, Uber, Airtable, and OpenAI). Sam takes over hosting duties and assembles an overqualified group of investor friends to argue about where AI goes from here, from agents, Grok, Claude, and the shift from “help me do this” to “just do it,” to trust, data ownership, Apple’s AI advantage, open vs. closed models, model routing, and why proprietary data may become the real moat. They also dig into NVIDIA’s massive compute financing strategy, the risks of securitizing GPUs like long-lived infrastructure, what the OpenAI executive exodus says about the AI talent market, and the bigger question hanging over all of it: if AI really changes work, who actually participates in the upside?

Chapters
0:00 Episode trailer
1:24 Episode start
1:59 Meet the panel, every flavor of venture capital
5:14 Consumer AI agents cross the Rubicon
7:24 The end of websites, when agents talk to agents
8:32 Which AI companies do you actually trust?
11:41 Why Apple could win AI by doing nothing
16:40 If models commoditize, unique data becomes the moat
22:15 Open vs. closed AI, and who owns your data
27:06 NVIDIA’s balance sheet shenanigans
31:26 NVIDIA gets the upside, who gets the risk?
34:31 Nobody has ever securitized compute
35:02 Who owns the wealth AI creates?
39:38 What happens when economic opportunity runs out?
42:23 Why OpenAI’s best people keep leaving
47:23 Why AI may look more like GPS than Facebook
49:14 What actually happened with Airtable
50:30 Lightning Round: Rachel Holt on physical-world investing
53:00 Scott Belsky on AI watermarks, provenance & deepfakes
54:15 Josh Wolfe on socialism, Europe & defense
57:15 Final thoughts & sign-off

We’re also on ↓X: https://twitter.com/moreorlesspodInstagram: https://instagram.com/moreorlessSpotify: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/moreorlesspodConnect 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

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