Trump-Xi Summit, Benioff: "Not My First SaaSpocalypse," OpenAI vs Apple, Multi-Sensory AI, El Niño

1. 0:00 – 1:14

   Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff joins the show!

   1. JCJason Calacanis0:00

      All right, everybody. Welcome back to the number one podcast in the world, The All-In Podcast, episode two hundred and seventy-three. It's a huge week. Sacks is out, so we got to get Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.

   2. MBMarc Benioff0:11

      I'm the only one left here, so-

   3. JCJason Calacanis0:13

      You're the only one left

   4. MBMarc Benioff0:13

      ... that's why, that's how I made it on.

   5. SPSpeaker0:15

      No software CEOs, right, to China?

   6. MBMarc Benioff0:17

      There's no software, uh, CEOs in China.

   7. JCJason Calacanis0:20

      Hmm. Interesting. But did you get the invite?

   8. MBMarc Benioff0:22

      Yeah.

   9. JCJason Calacanis0:22

      What's your, what's your status with this administration? 'Cause you were obviously very famous for, you know, being a Democrat on the left, um, and, uh-

   10. MBMarc Benioff0:30

       [laughs] I'm not a Democrat on the left. I never have been.

   11. SPSpeaker0:33

       Jason, you're so-

   12. JCJason Calacanis0:34

       What are you talking about?

   13. SPSpeaker0:34

       You're so right wing.

   14. MBMarc Benioff0:35

       Bro, I'm not.

   15. JCJason Calacanis0:35

       You're donating to all these folks, and now you're kind of in Trump's camp?

   16. MBMarc Benioff0:38

       No, bro.

   17. JCJason Calacanis0:39

       What is it?

   18. MBMarc Benioff0:40

       Listen, um, uh, the number one thing is, hey, I'm here to support the country.

   19. JCJason Calacanis0:45

       Got it.

   20. MBMarc Benioff0:45

       It's what I do.

   21. JCJason Calacanis0:46

       Okay.

   22. MBMarc Benioff0:46

       Yeah.

   23. JCJason Calacanis0:47

       So you're right in the middle. You have, uh, an allegiance to America.

   24. MBMarc Benioff0:51

       I hope so.

   25. JCJason Calacanis0:52

       Yeah.

   26. MBMarc Benioff0:52

       I'm not a Democrat or a Republican.

   27. JCJason Calacanis0:54

       You're an independent like me.

   28. MBMarc Benioff0:55

       I am American.

   29. JCJason Calacanis0:56

       Okay. I like it.

   30. SPSpeaker0:57

       Benioff got the invite to the two hottest tickets. He got the invite to Windsor Castle and Tails, and then he got the invite, uh, when Prince Charles came here too, I saw. He was in Tails then too.
2. 1:14 – 18:46

   Trump-Xi summit, doing business in China as a US company, impact on Americans and the midterms

   1. JCJason Calacanis1:14

      The Trump-Xi summit has begun. That is the number one story right now after a two-month delay because of the war in Iran. This is the first visit to China since 2017. Seventh face-to-face meeting for Trump and President Xi. There are twelve hours, fifteen hours ahead of us today. Thursday was officially day one. Here's what happened. China agreed that the Strait of Hormuz should remain open with no military commitment and that Iran should not have a nuclear weapon, so we're in sync on that. On Taiwan, this is a little spicy. Xi warned that, quote, "If handled poorly, the two countries will collide or even clash, putting the entire US-China relationship in an extremely dangerous situation." Polymarket says Taiwan is safe for 2026. Only six percent chance China invades this year on twenty-three million volume, which is a lot of volume. Seventeen percent chance, roughly triple, that something happens by the end of 2027. There's been a lot of debate. Uh, some people say it'll happen after Trump is out of office. Some people think it's gonna happen while he's in office. On trade, Xi committed to buy more soybeans, US oil, LNG, and two hundred Boeing jets. Xi said the talks laid out a vision for constructive, strategic, and stable ties. Uh, Trump was effusive in his praise, uh, for his friendship, giving the disclaimer that people don't like it when he praises Xi. Let's stop here and have a bit of a discussion. Friedberg, you, uh, have been a bit obsessed with this relationship and the bipolar nature of it. What are your thoughts here, and what is the goal for Trump? What is winning for Trump coming out of this? What is winning for Xi?

   2. SPSpeaker3:11

      I mean, Xi made comments in his, uh, opening remarks that it would be ideal if the United States and China could avoid the Thucydides Trap, which, as you'll recall, we talked about with Graham Allison, and we've talked about several times over the last few years, that as a, a rising power meets a kind of declining power, [laughs] there's always some moment where you end up in this kind of state of conflict. And the question is, can the US and China avoid conflict and find a path to cooperation, which has happened a few times in history when we found ourselves in this moment, but doesn't often happen. And I think the way to kind of think about the opportunity is if you're in a resource expansive world where you're increasing productivity and increasing production globally at an accelerating pace, perhaps there's less of a reason to have conflict. Perhaps there's a way that, uh, both societies, both countries can increase the quality of life for their people without taking it away from the other side. And in a world where you're more resource-constrained or resource-static, that becomes less possible. You have to fight and grab land and grab territory and grab resources from the other side. And it seems like in this moment, when we are seeing these extraordinary technology shifts unlocked by AI and automation and biotech and all of these kind of moments of what could be true abundance, uh, ahead of us, it seems like the perfect moment to say, "Hey, maybe the world can be more multipolar. It doesn't need to be unipolar. It doesn't need to be bipolar, but everyone can participate in the expansion of the pie." And I think that that's kind of the idealistic way to look at the opportunity in front of the, the administration and Chinese leadership right now. Is there a way to kind of look at the next thirty years and ask the question: How do we all share proportionally in growing the pie and not find ourselves in a moment of conflict where we assume the pie is static? That's, I think, hopefully the message that comes out of this. From an administration political perspective, it just seems like this is gonna be a major coup for the president. If he can walk away with a series of trade deals with China that increase job security, increase prosperity, increase income levels, increase investment in America and American jobs, it would be a huge win, and I think that's the tactical stuff that people will be truly looking for. And I think the big strategic question, which I care most about, which is avoiding conflict, is there a way we can chart a economic and cooperative path that doesn't involve eating each other and involves sharing in a bigger pie?

   3. JCJason Calacanis5:45

      Chamath, why is Trump bringing all of these CEOs with him, and what does success look like, uh, coming out of this meeting?

   4. SPSpeaker5:53

      I think that you find a resolution and a path forward with China through economic cooperation. It's the largest consumer economy in the world.

   5. DFDavid Friedberg6:03

      It's still largely closed off, and so I think what this is was about bringing some amount of financial firepower with them so that they could start to penetrate that market. Planes, cars, chips, you know, very much hard equipment type stuff. I've said this before, but I think the Chinese are very much a top-down Confucian societal philosophy, whereas Americans are much more bottoms-up, kind of an individualist construction. The fact that we're so different actually gives us a lot of room to find cooperation and not find conflict, and I think at the center of that is economic cooperation. I had a friend call me this morning, very prominent Democrat, and you know, he was the one that called out the media, which I was surprised by, and he said, "You know, the media gets it all wrong because they're talking about why is he bringing these CEOs, and instead the reality is that the simplest and surest path to a no-conflict détente with China is economic entanglement." And it has to be bidirectional, because really for so many years it's been one way, where they're sending us the cheap goods that they've wanted. So I think strategically it's good, and I think, you know, I'll just take a slightly different take on what Friedberg said. I think behind closed doors they're probably just figuring out how to divide the pie.

   6. JCJason Calacanis7:20

      Hmm. Uh, u- unpack that for a second. Divide which pie? The, the globe, the economy, the, the Western hemisphere versus-

   7. DFDavid Friedberg7:27

      Look, China-

   8. JCJason Calacanis7:28

      ... the Pacific?

   9. DFDavid Friedberg7:28

      China still needs a lot of energy. They also need a lot of critical technologies that America provides. And so I think that there's a trade there, and the quid pro quo is there are certain regions of the world where we want them to deescalate their participation in, Central South America being probably the most important, and then the second is probably in the Middle East, and then maybe the third is just to find some reasonable view of the AsiaPac region together. And I think there's a trade there to be done. And in that, you kind of start to carve up the world into a pretty easily identifiable bipolar construction.

   10. JCJason Calacanis8:01

       They also, uh, Marc, need customers, uh, to buy their goods, and we've had a bit of a, uh, mixed signals there. Tariffs obviously last year sticking it to China in a pretty hard way, the decoupling after COVID. "Hey, we need to be independent, energy, PPE, drugs, chips from China." Now we're kind of saying, "Hey, let's come to the table and build connective tissue." So sort that out for us on a business level. Should the two countries be deeply entwined? And then how do we manage having too much dependency on China?

   11. MBMarc Benioff8:40

       Well, you heard it today from President Xi when he said he wants a wider door, and that means that he wants the door of business to open even wider between the two countries. We have our absolute best [laughs] salespeople there, not just our president, who has to be one of the best salespeople I've ever met. But also we've got Elon, we've got Jensen selling chips.

   12. JCJason Calacanis9:04

       Kelly Ortberg selling planes.

   13. MBMarc Benioff9:06

       Kelly selling planes. He's already sold 200. He wants to sell 500 planes.

   14. JCJason Calacanis9:09

       Financial services, yeah.

   15. MBMarc Benioff9:10

       Brian is selling soybeans. Brian Sykes, the CEO of Cargill. You know, Cargill is the world's largest private company based in Minneapolis, and he is gonna come away selling a lot of soybeans. So we have a... You go through the list of the CEOs, each one is our best salesperson in this category, and they're gonna come back with orders, and it's gonna be amazing. And by the way, I think you said it very well. You know, this idea of business is this kind of greatest platform for change. Um, they are working together like never before. Don't forget, this isn't Trump's and Xi's first meeting. These guys really like each other. They are very connected together. You can see they're smiling with each other. They're very... They have a sales orientation. So w- I expect a lot of order books to come back.

   16. DFDavid Friedberg9:56

       I have a question for you. Are you allowed to sell software in China?

   17. MBMarc Benioff9:59

       We, uh... Well, with the right... The Chinese have a lot of data residency laws. So our... You know, we, we do it as we don't have any offices or employees in China. We never have. The only time we end up with any residue in China is when we buy a company and they have a presence over there, and then we have to divest from it. We have an exclusive partnership with Alibaba. Everything just goes through them, and we, we don't do anything in China.

   18. JCJason Calacanis10:26

       Is it significant, growing? Is it... What percentage of your revenue is it?

   19. MBMarc Benioff10:30

       Oh, it's, it's... Yeah, it's, it's great. You know, we have... It's a great partnership. Key customers of Salesforce like Louis Vuitton, you know, or Loro Piana. I know Chamath loves Loro Piana.

   20. DFDavid Friedberg10:39

       [laughs]

   21. JCJason Calacanis10:40

       Yeah.

   22. MBMarc Benioff10:40

       And you know, Loro Piana-

   23. JCJason Calacanis10:41

       Same old, same old

   24. MBMarc Benioff10:42

       ... sells a lot of sweaters in China.

   25. DFDavid Friedberg10:44

       Yeah.

   26. MBMarc Benioff10:44

       And then, you know, in all the other stores all over the world, they use Salesforce, but in China it's Salesforce on Alibaba.

   27. DFDavid Friedberg10:52

       It's still your code, but then it resides in their servers for data residency stuff.

   28. MBMarc Benioff10:57

       Their data residency, their, their partnership, it's a totally unique relationship. It's the only place in the world that we do such a thing.

   29. DFDavid Friedberg11:05

       Yeah, and it has to be, all the data has to be kept in China. All the data has to be accessible by the CCP. Uh, and this is-

   30. MBMarc Benioff11:12

       That's why it's so extraordinary, by the way, what Elon has. You know, Elon has Tesla in China, no partnership. He's the only one. He has a phenomenal relationship with Xi. When you look at Xi and, um, Elon together, notice how deferential and respectful they are of each other. And here is these AI cars with all these cameras, American-made, you know, um, Chinese factories driving around China. That is pretty incredible.
3. 18:46 – 31:41

   Taiwan, chips, AI models, and peace through trade

   1. JCJason Calacanis18:46

      And then, of course, Taiwan is what they want, uh, most of all, and supremacy in, you know, their part of the world.

   2. MBMarc Benioff18:53

      I'm not convinced of that, actually.

   3. JCJason Calacanis18:55

      Okay.

   4. MBMarc Benioff18:55

      I think-

   5. JCJason Calacanis18:56

      Say more

   6. MBMarc Benioff18:56

      ... what they want... Oh, I, I mean, I think we just kind of said it. To summarize, they, they want to have, you know, economic success. They want to continue to grow their middle class. They want to continue to have a healthy economy. They want more trade. I thought it was interesting that they're talking about, Trump is talking about not only having the board of peace now, he wants a board of trade. That was a discussion we've never heard before today. Then, uh, you have Xi saying, "I want the wider door." Then we have all these folks there selling their products. Two people we didn't mention, the CEO of Visa and the CEO of MasterCard are on the trip.

   7. JCJason Calacanis19:31

      Michael Miebach.

   8. MBMarc Benioff19:31

      Now, why is that?

   9. JCJason Calacanis19:32

      Yeah.

   10. MBMarc Benioff19:32

       Because if you look at, you know, commerce in China, it is dominated by companies like Alibaba and, and these organizations who use these super apps. It's not really all the way open for a Visa and a MasterCard. That would be incredible for those executives. So in the same way that we want to sell airplanes, we want to sell chips, NVIDIA, the Qualcomm CEO, Cristiano, is also there. We want to sell soybeans. We want to sell payment services. We want to sell everything. The more economic collaboration and cooperation you can get between the two countries, the more peace you're going to have. You know, I-

   11. JCJason Calacanis20:06

       I agree. So Mark-

   12. MBMarc Benioff20:07

       I think that is the path to peace

   13. JCJason Calacanis20:07

       ... 100%, 100%. I agree. Three, three hard questions, Mark. Uh, should we be selling them the latest chips? Yes or no, in your mind?

   14. MBMarc Benioff20:16

       I think it's irrelevant at this point. I think that the Chinese models are as competitive as these US models, and they've learned to make these models without having the highest end chips. I think the highest end chips is kind of more of a ego gratification for us. We have Blackwell. We have this. We have that. But when you look at their models, their models are excellent. They fast follow us. You know, the best models we had-

   15. JCJason Calacanis20:38

       So if it's that way-

   16. MBMarc Benioff20:40

       ... six months ago, they have now

   17. JCJason Calacanis20:40

       ... should they, should we just sell it to them since they're figuring it out anyway, Mark?

   18. MBMarc Benioff20:45

       We probably should just sell whatever we can at this point. [laughs]

   19. JCJason Calacanis20:48

       Got it.

   20. MBMarc Benioff20:48

       And, uh, I think that, as I said, I think the more economic cooperation and collaboration is better, and if you want peace, I think that this... I think Taiwan, i- it's kind of a, a nonsense story-

   21. JCJason Calacanis20:59

       Well, we'll circle back around to that. Yeah. Friedberg, uh, your take on chips. Should we sell them the latest chips? And then Chamath. I want to get the answer to that question from each of you.

   22. SPSpeaker21:08

       I think it's inevitable that they get there. I... By the way, I do think this is one of the key aspects of this deal. I've said this before, but maybe Taiwan becomes less relevant to the US and to China as both China and the US, um, mainland, uh, fabs. So as we build out our own manufacturing capacity here in the US, and I know we've struggled, and there are fits and starts and issues with it and whatnot, but the, the TSMC facility in Arizona is running. They're printing, and if it works and they figure out how to scale it, there'll be other facilities in the US. And then China's mainlanding with Huawei, standing up a lot of facilities. They've got a multi... I think I talked about this on one of the shows, a multi-deca-billion-dollar government investment in ensuring competitiveness, not just with fabs, but also with semiconductor manufacturing equipment, so that they don't get cut off on the supply chain with companies like ASML blocking sales into mainland. So as they build out their own semiconductor capital equipment systems and their own fabs, does Taiwan really matter? Is there really that much of a security risk to the United States and to China in that sense? And perhaps what everyone's focused on, which is this pivot point around Taiwan, maybe it's not that the US is selling Taiwan down the river, but it's just that no one gives a [beep] anymore. So, you know, there may be this kind of cultural moment for China where they want to, at some point, say, "Hey, by 2040," which I think is what I've heard, they want to be able to kind of, you know, bring Taiwan fully into the sphere. Maybe the US shouldn't care that much at that point from a, a economic and security perspective. So I think that's, that's one of the things that's happening that, that maybe-

   23. JCJason Calacanis22:41

       So you're in the camp of-

   24. SPSpeaker22:42

       ... pe- people are-

   25. JCJason Calacanis22:43

       ... sell the chips to them, and it will demotivate the TSMC or the capture of those fabs by the Chinese.

   26. SPSpeaker22:51

       Put it this way. Put it this way. I think the more the global productivity index can climb, the better off all humans will be. So the question is, do you really want the West to see their productivity index climb, and then you're effectively forcing conflict and forcing issues with the East? Or if we all grow our productivity index, we all make more stuff. Everyone benefits. Everyone has better jobs. Everyone makes more money. Everyone has access to more stuff. The cost of goods comes down for everyone. Doesn't that make the world a safer and more secure place?

   27. JCJason Calacanis23:22

       Sure.

   28. SPSpeaker23:22

       So I think this idea that, like, technology should be held to one s- uh, side of the world and not given to the other side of the world is inevitably gonna lead to conflict or increase the probability of conflict. Whereas if you let technology diffuse and proliferate, everyone benefits, and conflict indices go down. So it's one of the reasons to do it.

   29. JCJason Calacanis23:40

       It's because it becomes commoditized, uh, you know, and everybody has access to it, so then it, it becomes a-

   30. SPSpeaker23:44

       You give everyone a higher standard of living.
4. 31:41 – 47:26

   AI's impact on software: What SaaS thrives, what SaaS dies?

   1. JCJason Calacanis31:41

      All right. AI's impact on software rippling through the market. Marc, you're on the front lines here.

   2. MBMarc Benioff31:46

      Thank you for reminding me.

   3. JCJason Calacanis31:48

      Yeah.

   4. DFDavid Friedberg31:48

      [laughs]

   5. JCJason Calacanis31:48

      Well, I mean, in pain and suffering are lessons, right? I think the Buddha and Tony Robbins both taught us that, and the only way to the other side is through, as you know, Marc. So Salesforce down a whopping 37%, $90 billion in losses for you. ServiceNow, 42%, Workday, 45%. $180 billion in market cap's been lost, and the assumption, Marc, is that AI is going to make it unnecessary for you to use Slack or Salesforce or HubSpot, whatever it happens to be, that you'll just ask your AI to solve this for you, and we'll all look at a piece of glass and have no actual software. The AI will just tell us what to do. What's your response to the fear, the criticism, and how are you managing this massive change internally?

   6. MBMarc Benioff32:35

      You're right. It's the SaaSpocalypse. Um-

   7. JCJason Calacanis32:37

      Yes

   8. MBMarc Benioff32:38

      ... I mean, it's not my first SaaSpocalypse, honestly, but it's the current SaaSpocalypse, so we are all now drinking the Salesforce Sasparillas. And, uh-

   9. JCJason Calacanis32:46

      [laughs]

   10. MBMarc Benioff32:46

       ... we actually have a pet Sasquatch as well.

   11. JCJason Calacanis32:48

       [laughs]

   12. MBMarc Benioff32:49

       Yeah.

   13. JCJason Calacanis32:49

       Okay.

   14. MBMarc Benioff32:49

       We're all a little more sassy. That's what I would say. That's number one.

   15. JCJason Calacanis32:52

       Okay.

   16. DFDavid Friedberg32:53

       You bring the SaaS to SAS?

   17. MBMarc Benioff32:55

       We gotta bring the SaaS-

   18. JCJason Calacanis32:56

       The software as a service

   19. MBMarc Benioff32:56

       ... to Sassy, you know? And then-

   20. JCJason Calacanis32:57

       Well, you've always been a sassy guy.

   21. DFDavid Friedberg32:59

       Yeah. [laughs]

   22. MBMarc Benioff33:00

       And then number two is, look, the market is re-rated. It's not a mystery. Everybody knows. You know, you guys have been talking about it for a while. I've been living it. So the market, software market's re-rated. It happens every now and then. There are cycles. You know, I've been doing Salesforce for 27 years, uh, enterprise software for 40, and the market's re-rated. So you mentioned HubSpot. [laughs] They're trading at two times sales. I've never seen that before. They just had a great quarter. We saw a lot of great quarters. I looked at the top 10 major enterprise software companies. They all had great quarters, and they're all trading at two times sales. So why? Because of everything you just said. There's, like, you know, a hypnosis around AI, and, you know, we haven't seen it show up in the numbers yet. If it shows up in the numbers, maybe people will be right. Right now, all we know is there's still a lot of enterprise software being sold in the world.

   23. JCJason Calacanis33:51

       So you've been through this. It's not your first time.

   24. MBMarc Benioff33:55

       This is not my first SaaSpocalypse. I mean, I remember the SaaSpocalypse of 2020 when [laughs] COVID happened and all of a... You know, everything collapsed. There was the great SaaSpocalypse-

   25. JCJason Calacanis34:06

       What's your strategy?

   26. MBMarc Benioff34:06

       ... you know, in 2016.

   27. JCJason Calacanis34:08

       Yeah.

   28. MBMarc Benioff34:08

       What's that?

   29. JCJason Calacanis34:09

       In, in all sincerity, what's your strategy and how do you deal with, you know, your internal team? Obviously they are compensated through, you know, stock, and this is headwind, and you have competition for employees from OpenAI, Anthropic, and SpaceX. So how do you deal with, uh, rallying the troops, and then how do you develop a strategy?

   30. MBMarc Benioff34:29

       Well, you're right. I mean, it's a lot easier to be a private company right now where you don't have to be rationalized by the public markets. If you're in the public markets and you get re-rated, that's the reality of being in the public markets. And I think that for what I tell my employees, right, I just told my employees is, "Look, you can't get drunk on the stock price." If you are, like, focused on today all the time and that is how you're getting, you know, your emotional state, it is not gonna work for you. You have to find a different anchor. So I try not to pay really a lot of attention to it. I'm focused on my customer success. Powers our revenue. Look, we'll do over $46 billion this year, more than $16 billion in cash flow. We have more than 83,000 employees. These are the things that I'm focused on. What is the level of customer success that we're delivering? That's a really important... I can't control the stock price.
5. 47:26 – 56:54

   OpenAI is considering suing Apple over failed ChatGPT integration

   1. JCJason Calacanis47:26

      I wanna get everybody's take on this. OpenAI, in a breaking news story, is considering suing Apple over their ChatGPT partnership. As we all know, two years ago, Apple and OpenAI announced ChatGPT would integrate into Siri, iOS, macOS. But according to Bloomberg, the deal has gone so poorly for OpenAI that they might sue Apple for breach of contract. Here are OpenAI's gripes. Apple ChatGPT integration within Siri requires users to specifically say, "ChatGPT," to get results. We probably all experienced this if we haven't given up on Siri, which is the worst personal assistant ever created.

   2. SPSpeaker48:01

      [laughs]

   3. JCJason Calacanis48:02

      Uh, Apple hasn't... It's disgraziad to the highest level.

   4. SPSpeaker48:06

      [laughs]

   5. JCJason Calacanis48:06

      Just disgraziad with this product. How do you get there first and you remain worst? Apple hasn't promoted the integration at all, and users are still overwhelmingly going to the standalone ChatGPT app or others. OpenAI expected billions of subscription revenue from the deal, and it hasn't come to fruition. According to Bloomberg, Apple's side of the story is, hey, they have concerns about OpenAI's privacy practices. Maybe they don't trust the guy in charge over there, which was a reoccurring theme in the lawsuit, and they're annoyed that OpenAI, and here is the palace intrigueThey're upset that OpenAI is building hardware to compete with Apple and that they've recruited their design guru, Jony Ive. Marc Benioff, you know the players.

   6. MBMarc Benioff49:01

      Yeah.

   7. JCJason Calacanis49:01

      What is going on here?

   8. MBMarc Benioff49:03

      Yeah. It, it's, you gotta upscale it.

   9. JCJason Calacanis49:04

      And do you trust Sam Altman and OpenAI?

   10. MBMarc Benioff49:07

       I love him, but let's just upscale this conversation just one second. Listen, what has happened? What happened is we have these LLMs, they're starting to come al- come out. Every company's kind of chosen a slightly different path. You had Elon, he went out, he had Grok, and he kind of started building these companions and sex bots and all this kind of stuff going on.

   11. JCJason Calacanis49:29

       [laughs]

   12. MBMarc Benioff49:29

       And that was a huge focus of his, the sex bot focus.

   13. JCJason Calacanis49:31

       [laughs]

   14. MBMarc Benioff49:32

       Then you kind of had OpenAI, and they were doing the Sora video thing, and they were also doing ad networks and s- crazy stuff like that. Then you had Gemini, and they had the Nano Banana. And then finally, you've got Anthropic, and they go, "We don't know about those sex bots, and we don't know about Nano Banana, but we're gonna do coding agents." And it turned out Anthropic was right, and all of a sudden the rocket ship took off, and now everybody's like, "Whoa, where did Anthropic go? Oh, whoa, they're way up there." And then they're all like, "We're only gonna do coding agents too." [laughs] And now they're all resetting and kinda hitting their buttons and going, "Coding agents, everybody. Focus, focus. Kill Sora. Kill th- this. Get, get rid of that. Sex bots off," you know?

   15. JCJason Calacanis50:12

       [laughs]

   16. MBMarc Benioff50:12

       "Cursor on."

   17. JCJason Calacanis50:14

       Yeah.

   18. MBMarc Benioff50:15

       And that's where we are right now. And so everybody... Look, this is what's cool about right now, is that everybody... It's such a dynamic moment in our industry, it's, like, so exciting, that people have to pivot, and you have to be ready to focus and refocus and constantly ask the question, like, what do you want right now? And everyone is changing what they really want. And if you looked at where everybody was a year ago and where they are now, they're in a totally different place. 'Cause we all know that when Anthropic 4.6 hit, boom, everyone could code in their companies, and before that, they really couldn't. It was a l- little bit of a productivity improvement, but not as much as we wanted. Now everybody sees this and goes, "Wow, this is unbelievable." We're even working on technology inside Slack to make it easier for everybody to code.

   19. JCJason Calacanis51:04

       Hm.

   20. MBMarc Benioff51:04

       So I think it's gonna be really-

   21. JCJason Calacanis51:06

       Ooh, breaking news. Breaking news there. Highlight.

   22. MBMarc Benioff51:08

       You're gonna see some cool stuff with Slack and code. I'm not ready to talk about it yet. But there's no question that, uh, we are at a new moment in coding. I mean, Chamath's got a whole company around it. A lot of people have companies around it. There's gonna be... Before, coding was all about humans, and, like, that's where I started. I was 15 years old, Burlingame High School, on, hands on keyboard, writing video games, you know, basic 68000, 6502. You know? No, no. Now it's like everyone is like-

   23. JCJason Calacanis51:38

       How has that changed your org? I- is it the product manager, the developer, or the UX designer who's now the creator?

   24. MBMarc Benioff51:45

       It's all blended. It's all-

   25. JCJason Calacanis51:45

       Or did it all blend into one?

   26. MBMarc Benioff51:47

       It's all blended together.

   27. JCJason Calacanis51:47

       And who wins? Uh, who wins, Marc?

   28. MBMarc Benioff51:49

       It's all, it's all blended together. And by the way, to, to Marc's point, the hands-on keyboard thing, you know, most of our engineers just speak. They s-

   29. JCJason Calacanis51:57

       Yeah. [laughs]

   30. MBMarc Benioff51:57

       So it's like, and so, you know, one of our guys just has a foot button-
6. 56:54 – 1:02:24

   Thinking Machines releases real-time model, future of consumer AI, multi-sensory models

   1. JCJason Calacanis56:55

      You're hitting on something very important, and it dovetails with another story on the docket. Mira Murati released Thinking Machines' new real-time world-

   2. DFDavid Friedberg57:04

      That was impressive

   3. JCJason Calacanis57:05

      ... And this is super impressive, and Apple-

   4. DFDavid Friedberg57:07

      Super impressive

   5. JCJason Calacanis57:07

      ... at the same time has patented-

   6. DFDavid Friedberg57:09

      Very

   7. JCJason Calacanis57:09

      ... putting cameras into your AirPods, so you're right. And then I use this plot pin.

   8. MBMarc Benioff57:13

      Yes.

   9. JCJason Calacanis57:13

      I've talked about it before. These persistent hardware devices, the watch, the earpieces, are gonna know your entire reality. They're gonna monitor your entire desktop, and this is gonna lead to a, a use of tokens that would be 1,000 times what user, business users are currently using. Because the way Mira's m- uh, we should have her on the pod or at one of our events. The way her model works, Friedberg, is it's watching your desktop, it's listening to all the voices, and then it's watching your webcam all at the same time. And every 200 milliseconds, it's uploading it to two different models. One is deep thinking and looking backwards, you know, at a maybe a 30-second clip, and the other one's in real time. That will 1,000x the need for tokens if people are doing this for eight hours a day, 'cause it's not the turn-based, "Here's my latest prompt. Here's my question. I got a response." It's in real time, always querying an LLM, which is gonna require a hardware upgrade to the average desktop. Marc Benioff, what are your thoughts on this brave new world?

   10. MBMarc Benioff58:18

       It's one small step for man, one giant leap towards AGI. I think that you said it s- really well. I mean, the n- we are in the, we've been so kind of think the LLM is the be all, end all. We're gonna go to AGI. I don't really understand how large language models, which are only about language and words, and we know how it works, it's one word, one word, one word, therefore the next word is this, is gonna get us to where we wanna go to, which is Minority Report or, uh-

   11. JCJason Calacanis58:44

       Agreed

   12. MBMarc Benioff58:45

       ... all the s- science fiction movies that we've seen. But what we saw in, and I think, Jason, you'd really articulated that super well, by the way, multi-sensory models. And multi-sensory models, well, here's a good one. Oh yeah, me, I'm a multi-sensory model in a biological computer. I'm a multi-sensory model. I've got these eyes, ears, mouth, you know, work sometimes, some brain, heart, whatever, and some other things going on, too, that I don't even understand, and it's all running in this biological computer. I'm not exactly a large language model, though I do have one sometimes. So I would say that multi-sensory models are the next big wave for AI, and then, but we're still not at AGI at that point. But those-

   13. JCJason Calacanis59:27

       Mm

   14. MBMarc Benioff59:27

       ... demos, like the demo of that model-

   15. JCJason Calacanis59:30

       That's super cool

   16. MBMarc Benioff59:30

       ... that was pretty-

   17. DFDavid Friedberg59:31

       It's super cool

   18. MBMarc Benioff59:31

       ... everyone should see. Like, that was-

   19. DFDavid Friedberg59:33

       It's super cool

   20. MBMarc Benioff59:33

       ... pretty awesome, and then I think we can kind of say, "Hmm, where are we now on this, on the path?" But I think it, every model company is kind of go, "Hold on. Pivot, you know, again. Pivot." Right, Satan? Pivot. Everybody's pivoting, and you're gonna have to pick your poison, and where, where are you going next, you know? And you can't do everything.

   21. JCJason Calacanis59:54

       Well-

   22. MBMarc Benioff59:54

       You can't do everything

   23. JCJason Calacanis59:55

       ... you said you were spending 300 million on tokens with Anthropic. Now imagine what this would do to an average, you know, employee if they needed 1,000 times the tokens they have now. So instead of spending 150K in tokens, you gotta spend, [laughs] you know, 100 million. But you have some-

   24. MBMarc Benioff1:00:14

       Well, I, I don't think that's true. I, I don't think that that, I think we're getting brainwashed on that.

   25. JCJason Calacanis1:00:19

       Okay.

   26. MBMarc Benioff1:00:20

       So-

   27. DFDavid Friedberg1:00:20

       That's fine

   28. MBMarc Benioff1:00:20

       ... I think that's a mistake to think that way. See, I think we are wasting a lot of these tokens.

   29. JCJason Calacanis1:00:25

       Oh, for sure.

   30. MBMarc Benioff1:00:25

       So I'm like coding, here's my guy. I think I can convince you of this. So here's a, here we're using $300 million of Anthropic this year, and we're coding, we're coding, we're coding, right? The vast majority of those tokens don't need to go to Anthropic. The, there needs to be some intermediary layer, layer that's saying, "Oh, oh, that one has to go to Anthropic, but these ones can hand- handled by-
7. 1:02:24 – 1:11:40

   Science Corner: Impacts of a historically strong El Nino in 2026

   1. JCJason Calacanis1:02:24

      last. Friedberg, what do you got in Science Corner? Everybody, all the s- all the Friedberg fans are just distraught-

   2. SPSpeaker1:02:30

      [laughs]

   3. JCJason Calacanis1:02:30

      ... when we skip it. So let's give them-

   4. SPSpeaker1:02:32

      Another good one. Marc, do you like Science Corner? I know you do.

   5. MBMarc Benioff1:02:35

      I do.

   6. SPSpeaker1:02:35

      Come on. Yeah.

   7. MBMarc Benioff1:02:36

      Only if it's about the oceans.

   8. JCJason Calacanis1:02:37

      We're gonna talk- Marc is the greatest salesman in Silicon Valley. He loves it all, and he wants to hear more.

   9. SPSpeaker1:02:43

      [laughs] He loves it all. He is...

   10. JCJason Calacanis1:02:44

       Marc, how did you learn sales? And w- how do we become half as good as you?

   11. MBMarc Benioff1:02:48

       I'm not a good sal- I'm like a c- I'm a c- a geek.

   12. JCJason Calacanis1:02:52

       You are.

   13. SPSpeaker1:02:52

       Yeah.

   14. JCJason Calacanis1:02:52

       But you know how to, like-

   15. MBMarc Benioff1:02:53

       I read a lot at a Tony Robbins seminar. Let's go.

   16. JCJason Calacanis1:02:55

       Okay.

   17. MBMarc Benioff1:02:55

       Walk over the coals together.

   18. JCJason Calacanis1:02:57

       We're all going.

   19. MBMarc Benioff1:02:57

       Let's roll.

   20. JCJason Calacanis1:02:57

       We're all going to Tony. Put out the coals. We're walking across them.

   21. SPSpeaker1:03:01

       Nick, let's pull up the first chart. This Science Corner is about the dreaded El Nino season that is coming up. And so this is a forecast for sea surface temperature anomalies, and basically, what this means is that the ocean at this point has heated up so much that there's now a forecast on ocean temperatures that are gonna s- exceed anything we have seen in recent history. So we're kind of looking at temperatures that might be four degrees above normal. That doesn't sound like a lot, but let's just look at this image. That top image is the sea surface temperature anomaly. That means how different the sea surface or the s- the ocean temperatures are. Why does that matter? And this is compared to 1877, when we had the biggest El Nino year ever, and I'll explain what that means in a moment, but why does this all matter? The reason is the oceans are the battery of weather. What happens at one part of the year is that the oceans absorb heat energy, and absorb, absorb, absorb, gets hotter and hotter and hotter, and then that heat energy is released into the atmosphere, and then the atmosphere drives the weather events that happen all over the world, and it becomes somewhat predictable that you can estimate what the weather over the next year is going to be like based on how the temperatures are sitting in the ocean today. And at this point, there is so much excess energy stored up in the oceans. I'll give you guys a statistic. It's about 11 million terawatt hours. The whole planet Earth uses 25,000 terawatt hours in a year, so 11 million extra terawatt hours of energy is currently stored up. That's 500 years worth of human energy in this ocean. And over the next few months, that energy's gonna be released into the atmosphere, and that will absolutely, 99% confidence, that will make the upcoming year the hottest year on record by far that humans have ever experienced or at least that we've experienced in recent history where we didn't have data going, going back a long time. It changes the trade winds, which changes how a lot of the weather evolves from a normal season. It changes the moisture in the atmosphere in certain parts of the world, and I'll just give you some highlights of what this means over the coming year. There will be major atmospheric river events, where you just get w- water dumped on you in the Southwest, in California, and the Gulf Coast. You'll have very low snowfall and very high heat waves in the northern part of the US going up to Canada. You guys remember all those fires a couple years ago in Canada. Interior regions of the US, like in Phoenix and, and so on, they're already seeing temperatures at 106 degrees in May. A super El Nino like is forecasted for this year could extend that duration of these heat domes, which could create temperatures that we've never seen in those areas. Southern Argentina, Chile, Brazil could see record-shattering heat waves, and this is where things start to get a little nasty because when that happens, the crops start to fail. And in many parts of the world, Brazil, India, Australia, these are critical, uh, local consumption for large populations but also major ag export markets. So if Brazil's crop fails, if Australia's wheat crop fails, Australia's wheat crop goes to places like Indonesia and the Philippines. Hundreds of millions of people depend on that, that wheat crop. Hundreds of millions of people depend on the exports out of Brazil. Brazil's the world's largest ag exporter. And the scariest one of all is if the monsoons fail, which is now a very high probability event in India. 150 million farmers in India that depend on their agricultural output or they don't make any money. They can't survive. And one and a half billion people that depend on that food. So the importance of this El Nino event goes beyond just, like, an interesting weather anecdote. But if you think about the second and third order effects of this over the next year, you could see energy prices spiking and electricity spiking and the grid failing in parts of the Southwest, commodity prices spiking all over the world, and then you would see places like, uh, India, the Philippines, Vietnam starting to face some sort of unrest if there isn't enough food supply that's coming into those markets. And then the question in India is a really nasty one because there isn't a really good solution.India and markets like it that are significantly dependent, uh, on having their monsoon event, but also are currently facing a shortage of nitrogen-based fertilizer because of the crisis with Iran and the Strait of Hormuz, which we've talked about is a double whammy. So over the next year in South Asia, you could see a calorie deficit and a major kind of economic crisis that starts to emerge. So this El Nino event, I just wanted to kind of bring it up as an interesting Science Corner because the data now seems pretty confirmed, that over the next few months we're gonna have this record-breaking El Nino, and these are the sorts of consequences that will play out over the next year.

   22. DFDavid Friedberg1:07:38

       This is [censored] scary. God damn. What do you do about the, the food problem? That's a big problem.

   23. SPSpeaker1:07:45

       That's a big problem, and this is, the commodity markets-

   24. JCJason Calacanis1:07:48

       Sorry, did this-

   25. SPSpeaker1:07:49

       ... are going wild for this right now

   26. JCJason Calacanis1:07:49

       ... did this-

   27. SPSpeaker1:07:50

       Yeah

   28. JCJason Calacanis1:07:50

       ... did this happen the last time we had an El Nino?

   29. SPSpeaker1:07:52

       Yeah, so when we have El Ninos, there's a severity of these sorts of events happening.

   30. JCJason Calacanis1:07:56

       No, I mean-
8. 1:11:40 – 1:16:29

   Anthropic goes after "Dark SPVs"

   1. JCJason Calacanis1:11:40

      I'll, I'll just lightning round this one. Anthropic has had enough of the shenanigans of the multi-tiered, multi-layered SPVs being sold to dentists for 10% load-in fees. I think we all knew this day was coming since it's becoming the Wild West. They called out specific platforms, and they said, "We're gonna negate them." Chamath, tempest in a teapot or long overdue-

   2. DFDavid Friedberg1:12:05

      Love

   3. JCJason Calacanis1:12:05

      ... punishment for bad actors?

   4. DFDavid Friedberg1:12:07

      Love. Marc said it right. All these companies should go public and get a valuation and fo- and focus on the higher order bit, and all of these ticky-tacky mechanisms that people can use to stay private longer need to get a bullet put in its head. And these SPVs-

   5. JCJason Calacanis1:12:23

      That's it

   6. DFDavid Friedberg1:12:23

      ... are the worst, the layered SPVs on SPVs on SPVs.

   7. JCJason Calacanis1:12:26

      Disgusting. Disgrazia.

   8. DFDavid Friedberg1:12:28

      By the way, I, and I will guarantee you this, once SpaceX goes public, once Anthropic goes public, once OpenAI goes public, you're going to see a litany of these lawsuits back and forth between the purveyors of these SPVs.

   9. JCJason Calacanis1:12:40

      Yep.

   10. DFDavid Friedberg1:12:40

       They should not be allowed. They should be all negated if possible. You can't... Now, you can't unbreak the egg, so I guess you just have to call it what it is. I hope every company adopts this, and I hope as a result these companies go public sooner and they rationalize their equity structure faster. I think it's the right thing to do, so I like the fact that Anthropic is doing this, Chamath.

   11. JCJason Calacanis1:13:01

       Just say it, Chamath, disgrazia

   12. DFDavid Friedberg1:13:04

       Well, it's not disruptiat. I just, I, I just think that you are gonna have a lot of-

   13. JCJason Calacanis1:13:07

       The actors are disruptiat, yeah

   14. DFDavid Friedberg1:13:07

       ... no. Well, you're gonna have a lot of people that are gonna be very upset once this SpaceX thing comes up, because inevitably, 'cause it happened in Uber, somebody gets screwed in a layered SPV somewhere that they didn't know.

   15. JCJason Calacanis1:13:17

       Yes.

   16. DFDavid Friedberg1:13:17

       And they're gonna be like, "What happened?"

   17. JCJason Calacanis1:13:19

       Read the fine print. You're getting double carry, and you paid 10% on the load-in fee, and you paid a price 10% over what the last round was. So it's a recipe for disaster, the fine print matters.

   18. DFDavid Friedberg1:13:29

       Recipe for disaster.

   19. JCJason Calacanis1:13:30

       Recipe for disaster. Hey, Marc, great job. Thanks so much for coming on the program.

   20. MBMarc Benioff1:13:34

       Great to be with you guys.

   21. JCJason Calacanis1:13:35

       And yeah, come back-

   22. DFDavid Friedberg1:13:36

       Yeah, that was great

   23. JCJason Calacanis1:13:37

       ... any time. You were great.

   24. MBMarc Benioff1:13:38

       Thank you.

   25. JCJason Calacanis1:13:38

       Hey, uh, Pete, there's a, we have a fan question here. This is a fan question that came in-

   26. MBMarc Benioff1:13:44

       [laughs]

   27. JCJason Calacanis1:13:44

       ... written by your PR department.

   28. MBMarc Benioff1:13:46

       Stop. [laughs]

   29. JCJason Calacanis1:13:46

       They wanna know, when you do your charity work, uh, or your innovation as a founder, are you more s-

   30. MBMarc Benioff1:13:53

       Yeah

Episode duration: 1:16:30