嘉宾访谈·中文精读

IPO 回归:科技巨头为何终于要上市 | All-In 流动性 IPO 专题

The IPO Comeback: Why Tech Giants Are Finally Going Public | All-In Liquidity IPO Panel

Cerebras 的 Andrew Feldman 与 Planet Labs 的 Will Marshall 分享上市对员工、客户和运营的影响,并谈太空数据中心时间表与 AI 对芯片市场的影响。

官方音频00:00 / --:--

本期章节点时间可跳到音频对应位置

  1. 0:00CEO 安德鲁·费尔德曼(Cerebras)和威尔·马歇尔(Planet Labs)做客节目!
  2. 2:05两位 CEO 谈上市:对员工、客户和业务运营的影响
  3. 13:18太空数据中心的时间表
  4. 19:28Cerebras 业务拆解、AI 对芯片市场的影响
  5. 24:45创始人兼 CEO 如何思考上市之路上的流动性
中文精读由 AI 基于原始节目改写,非官方翻译,可能存在偏差或错误;观点归属与表述以原音频与官方文稿为准。说明

上市第二天早上,他发现什么都没变

2026年可能创下IPO的历史纪录。这个判断是杰森·卡拉卡尼斯(Jason Calacanis)在开场抛出来的,但坐在沙发上的两位CEO,给出的第一手体验完全是另一回事。

安德鲁·费尔德曼(Andrew Feldman)是Cerebras的创始人兼CEO。Cerebras的发行价定在每股185美元,定价区间上调了两次,开盘冲到320美元,眼下在230美元附近,市值500亿美元上下。上市三周之后,安德鲁对这件事的总结是这样的:

第二天早上醒来,你一件货都没多卖,工程项目相比上市之前没有任何进展。你回到工位,账上多了钱,但生意里真正重要的部分一点没变。供应链有问题,它还是有问题;和供应商关系不错,它还是不错。(安德鲁·费尔德曼)

他描述上市前的流程,用了一个毫不留情的词:垃圾。一百三十个人同时挤在一个Zoom会议里,同一份文件反复过,逗号的位置挪来挪去,没有任何增量价值。然后敲钟,办派对,第二天所有人把头低下去继续干活。

布拉德·格斯特纳(Brad Gerstner)是Altimeter Capital的创始人兼CEO,也是Cerebras的早期投资人和前董事。他补了一层背景:Cerebras这条上市路格外难走,它的一家投资方来自阿联酋,在拜登政府任期内,CFIUS(美国外国投资委员会)的审查是一道绕不过去的坎。他的观察是,前面九年半全是地狱模式,最后十二个月忽然变得极其容易,所有人都想挤进来。

把时机搞对的方式,是搞错十年

有人问安德鲁怎么把握上市的时机,他的回答很干脆。

很多人问我们怎么把时机抓得这么准。答案是,我们在过去十年里一直抓错。(安德鲁·费尔德曼)

Cerebras做了超过十年。上市前那场聚会,公司把在职超过九年的员工连同家人一起请来。安德鲁说有两件事出乎他意料:一是工程师也是会打领带的,打上领带也没出人命;二是这件事对员工和他们的家庭意味着什么,远远超出他的预期。有人加入公司是为了一个念想,父母听过这个名字,感觉像办了一场成人礼。还有一位中国移民同事的父亲,看完之后只说了一句:我以为会更早发生。

派对结束,兴奋退潮,所有人转身问的是同一句话:现在做什么?

威尔·马歇尔:先上市,三年之后才被看懂

威尔·马歇尔(Will Marshall)是Planet Labs的联合创始人兼CEO,走的是路径的另一半。Planet Labs在2021年通过SPAC上市,估值20亿美元。上市之后有很长一段时间,市场对它基本无感。

我们是第一批太空股之一。我那时候觉得,人们根本不知道太空里正在发生什么,不知道它正在改变一切。他们看到我们就是,这玩意儿是什么?(威尔·马歇尔)

直到过去十二个月,股价从5美元走到50美元,十倍涨幅全部在公开市场里完成。格斯特纳把这件事抬到一个更大的层面上讲:Planet Labs是"风险投资发生在公开市场"的样本,90%的价值是在上市第三、第四年才被创造出来的。接下来的问题是,那些早期投资者拿到了吗?

威尔说,大部分拿住了。谷歌一股没卖,至今是最大单一股东;Capricorn持有到不久之前才动。格斯特纳讲了一个MongoDB的例子:十年前Altimeter以10亿美元估值投进去,在30到40亿美元这个区间把股份分给了LP,后面两年股价走到500亿美元。有人打电话来问,你们为什么不拿着?他的回答是:是你们在逼我们分配。

这段对话反复落在同一个点上:早期股东要拿到全部上涨,靠的不只是运气,还得扛得住、拿得住。

Planet Labs在卖什么:给地球做索引

威尔用一句话解释公司的产品。

谷歌地图上那个卫星图层你见过,只不过那是三年前的影像。我们提供的是今天的,而且每一天都往回存着。(威尔·马歇尔)

Planet Labs有大约200颗对地成像卫星,是规模最大的对地成像星座,每天扫一遍整个地球。这些数据的用途从农业、能源、民用政府,延伸到洪水与火灾监测,再到安全与情报。杰森问军用占比多少,威尔的答案是:今天约占营收的60%。安全业务本来就写在公司最早的规划里,只是这块的占比比他们自己预想的更大,眼下的地缘政治需求把这条线推了上来。

杰森还提了一句,在Anduril成功之后,市场很可能会把Planet Labs也归类成一家军工科技公司。威尔对此不回避,但他强调Planet Labs同时在服务农民、能源公司和NASA,盘子比军工这一个标签大。

真正让这条曲线陡起来的变量有两个。火箭发射成本在过去十年降了四到五倍,这个大家都知道。另一个被严重低估的变化是卫星的微型化:过去一颗卫星20吨重、造价十亿美元,现在是几十到几百公斤,功能不输甚至更强。

这相当于太空领域从主机到桌面电脑的那次革命。(威尔·马歇尔)

AI是第三层加速器。威尔估算,光是对地观测数据本身就有750亿到1000亿美元的市场,AI叠加上去,会把使用门槛继续往下压,让更多原本买不起这类数据的人用得上。

把数据中心搬到天上,这笔账算得过来吗

查马斯·帕里哈皮蒂亚(Chamath Palihapitiya)把话题引向太空数据中心。威尔在八九年前和谷歌做过一次联合测算,算地面数据中心的成本,和把同等算力送上天之后的成本,什么时候太空会变得更便宜。结论是:发射成本降到每公斤200到300美元时,把数据中心放到天上就是单纯更便宜。

今天这个数字是每公斤1000美元出头,十年里降了大约十倍。按现有轨迹,尤其是星舰(Starship)的迭代速度,威尔判断两三年内能落到那条线。

他给了一套直觉,让不搞航天的人也能理解这笔账为什么算得过来。数据中心本质上是个电力问题。地面用太阳能最便宜,但太阳能是间歇的,你得配电池,或者上天然气,或者上核电,成本立刻往上走。在太空,把卫星放在晨昏太阳同步轨道上,可以二十四小时对着太阳。

同样一块太阳能板,在太空能收集到的能量是地面的五倍,而且不需要电池。(威尔·马歇尔)

于是太空数据中心的整套基础设施,简化成了一块太阳能板、一堆芯片,加上上下行的射频信号。威尔说,剩下的就是等发射成本降到那条线。Planet Labs已经在和谷歌合作,把谷歌的TPU送上太空做早期测试,英伟达的GPU此前也已经上过天。他的判断是:十年之内,大部分算力会被放到太空,这个市场的规模是数万亿美元,比今天所有其他太空业务加起来都大。

安德鲁的反对:最后10%要花掉80%的时间

安德鲁没有接这个判断。他的原话很客气,但立场很清楚。

恕我直言,把GPU送上太空之前,还有一两个硬问题没解决。地面上集群之间的通信我们做得都还不够好,把它搬到太空只会更难。(安德鲁·费尔德曼)

他把这个问题归进一类特定的难题:最后10%要花掉80%的时间。自动驾驶就是这一类,卡了整整十年,直到最近才算翻过山头。太空算力到底是不是同一类问题,现在没人知道。

两人的分歧是时间点,方向本身没有冲突。但安德鲁也认为这件事值得砸钱去做,唯一的先决条件是发射成本先降下来。

只有先把发射成本压低,你才能开始做实验,才能试错、修正,最后搞明白。在那之前,这件事没办法验证。(安德鲁·费尔德曼)

威尔看的是成本的斜率,安德鲁看的是工程复杂度里那条尾巴有多长。谁对谁错,要等两年才知道。

Cerebras为什么敢做一块餐盘那么大的芯片

查马斯问的是更底层的问题:AI硅片的未来长什么样。安德鲁从计算机架构史切进去。他的观察是,新工作负载出现的时候,就是份额重新洗牌的时候。图形计算兴起,催生了独立GPU,英伟达就是这么来的;手机算力兴起,有晶圆厂、有最强架构团队的英特尔和AMD拿到零份额,整个市场挪到ARM;九十年代末数据网络兴起,Nortel那批公司没做出来,机会给了思科、Juniper和一堆新公司。

我们知道这个新问题会带来一次巨大的份额迁移。(安德鲁·费尔德曼)

由此Cerebras押了两个注。第一个注是专用硅片会赢。第二个注是它绝不能长得像GPU。安德鲁的逻辑很直白:如果你想比对手快20倍,你的架构就不可能和对手长得一样,因为低垂的果实已经被他们吃光了,照着一颗GPU做出来的东西想超过英伟达,概率约等于零。

他们挑的硬骨头是AI最根本的瓶颈:把数据从内存搬到计算单元。解法是把芯片做到极大,做到餐盘大小,而常规芯片只有邮票那么大。芯片足够大,才用得上另一种速度快得多的内存,可以把内存直接放在计算单元旁边。效果是,OpenAI使用Cerebras做推理时,速度是GPU的15到18倍。

安德鲁用一个反问收尾:今天"慢速搜索"的市场有多大?零。拨号上网的市场有多大?零。

你等一个网页加载三秒钟就会点走。你也一样不会等AI,我们必须实时把它送到你面前。(安德鲁·费尔德曼)

上市之后,钱在哪一段被赚走

格斯特纳把话题拽回在座LP最关心的事:流动性。他点名Cerebras在锁定期上做的一个创新,一种可以叫"滴漏式"的锁定期安排。股份在六个月内按一串业绩门槛分批释放,而不是等到某一天一次性解锁。格斯特纳说,SpaceX大概率会用类似的结构。

他的问题很直接:从锁定里放出来的股份,Altimeter应该分配掉吗?安德鲁的回答是,历史数据站在不分配这一边。

历史上,IPO之后赚到的钱比IPO之前更多,几乎每一份研究都指向这一点。绝大多数风投基金真正能投出去的钱其实很有限,而公司走到公开市场的时候,盘子大得多,事情也在往好的方向走。(安德鲁·费尔德曼)

威尔顺着这个逻辑补了一刀,指向SpaceX。大部分科技巨头上市时市值只有几十亿,不是几万亿,中间的零是上市之后长出来的。如果SpaceX要走同样量级的增长曲线,它就得冲着千万亿美元(quadrillion)的估值去。

格斯特纳把几位CEO放在一起对比:市场上现在讨论的三大超级IPO都是万亿美元级别,这些价值全部落在私募市场投资人手里;Planet Labs恰恰相反,十倍涨幅发生在公开市场。他补了一句,如果Cerebras按安德鲁的想法,十八个月前就上市,估值大概100亿美元而不是500亿美元,这两年的五倍涨幅就该归公开市场投资人所有。

运气好,比能力强更重要。(布拉德·格斯特纳)

他最后给了一个当下判断:很多人以为Anthropic、OpenAI、SpaceX是新常态,他反而看到钟摆正在往回摆。他所在的投资组合里,越来越多公司在考虑10亿、30亿、50亿美元估值就上市。

公开市场的淬炼,和一份"看不见现实"的模型清单

查马斯用一个类比收尾。两家公司都长期面对视野边缘里那个可见的竞争对手,压力从来没有消失过。但他认为,更早上市、接受公开市场的审视、被迫按期交出成绩,反而会让聚焦度变高。

铁磨铁,出利刃。(查马斯·帕里哈皮蒂亚)

他的判断是,让所有人参与进来,同时把自己放到聚光灯下面,好东西就是在这样的环境里长出来的。

威尔在最后三十秒给了一个更远的图景。他说现在大家惊叹的那些模型能力,本质上只是把互联网上的文本吃进了模型。这些模型已经很强,但它们对真实世界一无所知。

它们对现实一无所知,我管这叫盲的。它们不知道那块农田、那场洪水、拐角处的安全形势。把真实世界的数据喂给它们,它们就能回答真实世界的问题。(威尔·马歇尔)

他给这套东西起了两个名字:从large language model(大语言模型)走向large earth model(大地模型),从AI走向planetary intelligence(行星智能)。太空里有行星级的感知系统,也有行星级的算力系统。至于具体时间,两个人在台上可以继续吵下去。

可以带走的东西

  • 盯住发射成本的绝对数字,而不是任何人的预测。每公斤200到300美元是"太空算力比地面便宜"的分水岭,今天在1000美元出头。这个数字每个月都能查到,比听谁讲时间表靠谱。
  • 上市窗口正在往回摆。过去十年"永远不上市"的共识在松动,10亿到50亿美元估值区间的公司可能是未来几年IPO最密集的一档。如果你在早期员工或早期投资人的位置上,这个窗口值得提前做准备,而不是等消息。
  • 上市不是终点,分配决策才是。90%的价值有可能发生在上市后第三、第四年。看到股份解锁时,先问一句:这一次分配,是拿到前半段还是后半段。MongoDB那个案例里,主动要求分配的一方少赚了十倍。
  • 关注滴漏式锁定期。Cerebras已经在用六个月分批、按业绩门槛释放的结构,SpaceX很可能是下一个。这类结构会改变新股上市初期的抛压分布,做二级市场的人需要重新校准节奏。
  • AI硅片的判断标准是速度,不是参数。新工作负载等于份额重新洗牌的机会窗口。Cerebras的赌注是专用架构加快餐盘大的芯片、把内存放到计算旁边,衡量它的指标是推理延迟,而不是芯片规格表上的数字。
文稿来自 All-In 官网(allin.com)发布的官方 Transcript,说话人按官网分轨数据标注,个别段落可能张冠李戴。
Jason Calacanis (00:00:00): Hey. 2026 could be an all time record for IPOs. Andrew Feldman (00:00:04): The AI IPO of the year so far. That company is Cerebras. Cerebras Systems founder and CEO Andrew Povnan. We are participating in something extraordinary. On everything we do, we are the fastest bar none. Well Marshall is the co founder and CEO of Planet Labs. Will Marshall (00:00:20): Space and AI are really a match made in heaven. They're getting married, in fact. Just like Google figured out how to index the Internet and make it searchable. We are indexing the Earth and making it searchable. Jason Calacanis (00:00:33): He's got his glasses, the famous red glasses. Brad Gerstner's here, founder and CEO of Altimeter Capital, a leading tech investment firm. Brad Gerstner (00:00:40): I believe that the wave is the biggest wave in the history of technology, will be incredibly beneficial for America. I'm rooting for all of them because I'm rooting for America. Andrew Feldman (00:00:50): Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Brad Gerstner, Will Marshall, and Andrew Feldman. Jason Calacanis (00:01:01): Welcome on the couch. We switched it up. Go on. Good couch. Nice you. Nice to you, my friend. Hey. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:01:08): Lovely, Blake. Will Marshall (00:01:09): Nice to see you. Jason Calacanis (00:01:09): Last last time I saw you were Davos? Yes. We were in Brad Gerstner (00:01:13): Davos causing J. Trouble. Cal. You know that little Davos yacht? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:01:17): I would just Andrew Feldman (00:01:18): you know, Jason Calacanis (00:01:18): it was pre IPO. We're chopping it up. Davos. We're in Davos. Brad Gerstner (00:01:22): Hanging out at Davos. Jason Calacanis (00:01:23): Well, no. Listen. I was everybody knows the story. I'm supposed to go on my yearly Japan ski trip. Sax calls me. With Tucker? Yeah. Well, anyway, we we don't drop that name, but I'll pick it up for you. Put it over here. So talk anyway, so I cancel on Tucker. I cancel the ski trip because Sax calls me. He says, listen, POTUS needs you, the world's greatest moderator in Davos. No problem. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:01:44): I said Brad Gerstner (00:01:45): Sachs, POTUS, and Davos. Jason Calacanis (00:01:47): I said, when? He says, in three days. I say, you got it. I go and they give me a badge and it's like the special green badge and they buzz you through the security. And I look at the monitor and it says, Jason McCabe Kalacanis with Donald J. Trump. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:02:05): Oh, wow. How did you feel? I thought Andrew Feldman (00:02:08): it was hilarious. Jason Calacanis (00:02:10): So then I went and we did a great interview there, and we did like six or seven of these great all in interviews, and it was fun. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:02:16): Let's start this because the two of you guys run two of the most interesting and consequential newly public companies in the stock market. Andrew Feldman is the founder and CEO of Cerebras. Will Marshall is the founder and CEO of Planet Labs. But you are also the insight and a gateway for all of us to understand these two big trends. One is in AI silicon. The other one is in space data centers. I think it would be a really interesting thing to Will Marshall (00:02:40): And they're emerging. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:02:42): And emerging, yeah. But let's just take one step back. You just heard the last conversation about being public, going public early. Let's just talk about that because I'm just very curious. How's it been? It's been three weeks or so for you. It's been about a year and a half or two years for you. It's more fresh for you. Was everything that you thought it would be? Andrew Feldman (00:03:04): What's clear so far is I need to upgrade my name drop game. I mean, that that was a tour de force. Yeah. But by the Jason Calacanis (00:03:11): way, you were you were in Davos with J Andrew Feldman (00:03:13): I I was. I was there, but that Will Marshall (00:03:17): Tour de force. Andrew Feldman (00:03:21): Look, I I I think you do all this work and I I think it's really difficult to to overestimate the amount of garbage that's involved in in going public. The number of meetings where you look on the Zoom and there are 130 attendees, and the amount of times you review these documents and the commas move and just no values added. You go there and you have this enormous event and the next morning you've sold no more stuff. Your engineering projects have made no progress since the day you weren't public and you go back to work And you have some new constituents that you have to address and communicate with. But the core parts of your business, you have more money in the bank, but not a damn thing changes in the important parts of your business. If you need new supply or if your relationships with your vendors are bad, they're still bad. If they're good, they're still good. And so I think what we've seen is your employees have a party, everybody's really excited, put your head back down, you high five and you go back Brad Gerstner (00:04:38): to work. Can I just give a little context and then I want to hear from Will? You know, if I can, Andrew, you know, we were investors in Cerebras. I was on the board a year earlier where we were trying to go public. And, you know, aside from just being a warrior who weathered a decade worth of storms that would have taken out any normal human being, the path to going public for cerebris was a particularly challenging one. One of their investors was The UAE. So, was questions about CFIUS, you know, in the prior under the Biden administration challenging to get public. My observation outside looking in is everything was really hard until it got really easy. Like nine nine and a half years of really hard and then twelve months, you know, of of of really easy where everybody wanted to get in. They priced the IPO at $1.85, which was up the range was taken up two times. Okay. The stock opened at $320 a share, I think. Today it's at $230 a share, $50.60000000000 in market cap for a business like, you know, and Andrew is just one of these people, let's get back to work and build shit. But my just add on question to that is from an employee morale perspective, like distraction perspective, etcetera, has the last three weeks, you got a lot more capital, you got a lot more profile, presumably it's easier to sell to enterprise customers today. Net net, if you were advising me, if I was in a similar position, would you say go public? Andrew Feldman (00:06:17): I think the first thing is a lot of people asked us about how we got the timing right. Brad Gerstner (00:06:23): Right. Andrew Feldman (00:06:23): And I think the answer is by getting it wrong for a decade. I mean, that's really the right way to get timing right. Think first, we've been at this for more than a decade and we brought everybody who'd been with the company more than nine years to share and we brought their families. And first I learned that engineers own ties. I didn't actually know that. And they didn't die when they wore them. And second, I was surprised at how big a deal it was for them and their family. They were really proud in a way that sort of their parents might have heard of it or that somehow this was like a bar mitzvah or quinceanera or something. Then you had these sort of the children of immigrants. One of our leaders, her father, a Chinese immigrant, said, I thought it would have happened faster. That's Yeah. Right? And but I I think we are sort of by nature sort of in the the trenches, people. And so we we love solving hard problems. And so when when we had this excitement, everybody went, and they were so excited, we had a party. And I I think it it gave external validation and then everybody turned around and said, now what are we now back to work? And and so I I I think Brad Gerstner (00:07:59): And so you you started off kind of bang right out of the gates. Will, you had a little bit different experience in terms of, you know, the entry to the public markets, but over the last twelve months, your stock has gone from $5 a share to $50 a share, some 10x move in the public markets. So talk us through the other side of this where you come public, nobody really notices until they notice. Well, we were one of Will Marshall (00:08:23): the first space stocks and I think people just had no idea Andrew Feldman (00:08:26): No idea. Will Marshall (00:08:27): Earth is going on in space, how it was changing everything. And they were just like, What the heck is that? But, you know, I have similar opinions. Mean, the end, you've just got to get on with executing the business. Going public gives you access to liquidity for early shareholders, whether that's the early employees or early investors, and that's great. It gives you cash for the company, that's great. I do think it helps your business as well because the maturing event gives you more credibility to various customers. Oh, true. For us, we work with biggest agricultural customers, big governments, civil governments, defense and intelligence, all of those sort of actors. They want to know you're going to be around Brad Gerstner (00:09:10): Exactly. Will Marshall (00:09:11): And not going to disappear. I mean, have countries that are fully dependent on us giving them information. They don't wanna just disappear, so they really care that we're gonna be around. And being a public company gives you the kind of force in the world that people go, okay, you're here to stay and you have access to capital if you need it and so on. Right? It's legitimizing that. And, you know, you you know, where the stock is any one day, you know, we're not focused on that day to day. We're focused on how we build long term value for our shareholders. Right? And, you know, the market is, I think, starting to really understand where space is going, why it is changing the the the world. You know, people forget how space is part of your everyday life. Every time you use a phone, you're either using communications communications using using satellites satellites or or GPS GPS using using satellites satellites or or satellite data in some way or another that's sort of integrated in your lives, you may not realize it. But it's just booming now. Jason Calacanis (00:10:06): There's a the story's changed as well, obviously with SpaceX going public, but has the framing of Planet gone from like a data source for people who need data from space and maps to, hey, this is a tool to accomplish tasks and military. Post Andril's success, you probably would have been bucketed into Andril as a military tech company. So is that framing what's driving a lot Will Marshall (00:10:33): of Well, I think it's a bit more nuanced than that. I mean, firstly, for the audience's benefit, what Planet does, we have satellites doing earth imaging. We have the largest earth imaging fleet, about 200 satellites. They image the entire earth every day. So think of it like the Google satellite layout on Google Maps that you can look at, except it's today's date rather than three years old, and we have every day going back. So it's a time series analysis of everything going on on the earth. That's useful for farmers. It's useful for energy companies. It's useful for civil governments, flooding and fires. It's useful for security applications like you're getting at, and it's a wide variety of use cases. I think that where we're seeing this is that AI is now enabling the it's basically reducing the barrier to entry so that more people can get access to this, right? And, know, there's a lot more to say on that, but AI is only as good as the data Chamath Palihapitiya (00:11:27): it's What trained Jason Calacanis (00:11:28): percentage is military? I'm curious. Sorry? What percentage of revenue customer base It's Will Marshall (00:11:32): about 60% of our revenue today. Security is part of the initial thing that we said we would do out of the gate, but it's true there's a bigger fraction today than perhaps we would have guessed. But the needs of the geopolitical situation right now demand what we're doing. You know, just as an example, what this does is enable them to see threats around the corner. Yes. And then, you know, give them weeks or months advance warning of things and then that enables them to more likely do things that stop conflict. So, believe this is really better for the world. Jason Calacanis (00:12:06): Are you reticent to be perceived as a military company? Will Marshall (00:12:10): Not really, but I wouldn't say we're limited to being perceived like that, right? We are helping farmers, we are helping energy companies, civil governments. Work with NASA, we work with what have you. So, it's a bigger play than that. But back to the space piece of it, what has changed, obviously, rocket costs have come down about four or five x over the last ten years, which has helped tremendously. But a thing that people don't know that is actually perhaps more important is that we've had a miniaturization of satellites so that the same satellite that used to cost a billion dollars and weigh 20 tons now costs a few kilograms or a few tens or hundreds of kilograms and can do just as much stuff, if not more. It's it's the same as the sort of mainframe computer to desktop revolution for space and it's unlocking just like mainframes to desktops unlock loads of applications. This is unlocking loads of applications and it's so both go in combo. The launch cost coming down and this. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:13:16): Let's build let's build on this. So I think I I'd like first, you maybe take a few minutes and then I I wanna talk to Andrew the same question. Both of you guys are at the foot of what are probably huge secular trends in technology. How I would frame this is we are rebuilding the data processing infrastructure that has existed on the earth in the sky. And first you do the satellites, but I would love for you to explain space based data centers because I think everybody's hearing about that. Are they really viable? What are they? How will they work, etcetera? And then Andrew, this is the rebirth of silicon. We're going to find the next version of Moore's Law, which I think is more time bounded, not transistor density bounded. We now hear a lot about domain specific architectures. We hear I mean, your chip was just a complete transformation in terms of the design principles that Like at Grok, we took a very different approach. NVIDIA has taken a very different approach. You took a big pizza shaped die and said, fuck it, YOLO, this is it. And you were right. Just explain where we're going in silicon. So maybe Will, you start and then I Andrew, Will Marshall (00:14:26): mean, what we're seeing firstly in space is all these new applications based on data and AI. So, we're collecting vastly more data about the planet and with SpaceX and Starlink and OneWeb, they're transporting far more data around the planet. As you say, we're sort of changing the nature of data using satellites and that's basically doing what was once the province of governments only and giving everyone else access to satellite capabilities. I estimate there's a $75 to $100,000,000,000 market just on Earth observation, this data we collect, and AI on top of that, unleashing all the applications. So that's the near term thing, applying large language models to Earth imagery data, unlocking agriculture, energy, civil government applications, permitting, you name it. This is going to make everything more efficient. And then, where we're going is indeed space is is we did a study with our partners at Google about eight or nine years ago looking at what are the costs of data centers on the ground, what are the costs that it would take to put them in space, and when might it make sense to do it non terrestrially. And we figured out that when launch costs come down to about $200 to $300 a kilogram, it would be cheaper, just simply cheaper to put the data centers in space. Now, we're about $1,000 a kilogram just over that in right today, but that's come down about 10 x in the last ten years. On the current trajectory with Starship in particular, I would expect the launch cost come down there in two to three years. Elon might say it's next week, but at least realistically a couple of years. So we're not far away from it literally just being cheaper. Then in addition and and the intuition there that is that helps people understand that is you would naturally use solar panels for doing the the data centers are a power problem, and it's a power game. And you would normally use solar panels. That's the cheapest way to get a watt today by far, but you you don't want intermittent power. Will Marshall (00:16:34): So then you have to have batteries or you then you have to have gas or then you have to have nuclear, and then it gets really expensive. In space, you can put a solar panel in a sun synchronous dawn dusk orbit where you're twenty four seven looking at the sun. So you can have a solar panel that collects and gathers five times more energy per solar panel than on the ground, and you don't have to have batteries or anything else. So the infrastructure for the computing space is literally just solar panels and the chips and then the RF signals up and down. So it's actually really quite simple. It was just a question of when it's gonna be cheaper to launch all those solar panels and chips in the space than putting it on the ground. And it turns out that's gonna be in a few years. So we're partnering with Google to launch some of their TPUs into space. We've already launched NVIDIA's some of NVIDIA's GPUs into space. We're launching Google's TPUs into space on an early test. There's lots of technology They Chamath Palihapitiya (00:17:33): want to launch engines. Will Marshall (00:17:33): To figure out percent. Let's have a conversation. But it's an early it's early days, but I think no question within ten years, most compute will be put in space, which to give you a sense is a lot of money, trillions, and will be bigger than any of the other space businesses today, Calms, earth imaging, this is why we're getting into And this you're dealing game early Andrew Feldman (00:17:59): with this. Brad Gerstner (00:17:59): Do you believe Jason Calacanis (00:18:00): sending data centers to space makes more sense? Or is it just the regular Can Chamath Palihapitiya (00:18:05): you have him explain the business first and then? Jason Calacanis (00:18:07): Oh yeah, of course. Andrew Feldman (00:18:08): Yeah. So I think there, know, with all due respect, one or two hard problems still left beyond putting putting GPUs in in space right now. I I think we we we're not super good yet at building the clusters in space necessary for the communication. Between. Between. Exactly. Between. We're not good Brad Gerstner (00:18:33): at doing it on the ground. Andrew Feldman (00:18:34): We're not good at doing it on the ground. We're really not good at doing it in space. I I think this is an extraordinarily important and interesting problem and one we should be spending money and attacking. I've got it in a slightly different time frame, but one that certainly will occur. And the the hard part is this. Is it is it one of those problems where the last 10% is 80% of the time? Mhmm. Now self driving was a problem like that. Right? Where the last 10% proved to be a decade's worth of work. And just now we're over the hump. And we don't know yet. But I think the interesting work they're doing at Planet is really important. I think the fundamental driver to experiment, to even get insight into whether I'm right or not, is to get down the cost of launch vehicles. Then you can start doing experiments and getting it wrong and fixing it and figuring it out. And until then, it was For mostly on Chamath Palihapitiya (00:19:27): the foreseeable future, you're going to be terrestrial. Explain your business and how you made these critical decisions that kind of took you on a different path and you versus NVIDIA versus AMD and what you think the future of AI silicon looks like? Andrew Feldman (00:19:41): I think there were two parts. Your first question was around sort of the rise of silicon in general. And I think what AI did, and it's rarely sort of framed this way, but it allowed computers to address a class of problems that before AI, computers were bad at. We were bad at images for almost the entire history of compute. We could store them and that's about it. We were bad at language. We could store it, but that's about it. We could transform numbers. We were magical with numbers. And what AI did starting in about 2015, 'sixteen is it opened the door, the aperture, to say, maybe we could use computers on images. All right? Maybe we could find insight in images. Maybe not only could we store language, but we could generate it. All right? Maybe we could understand it rather than storing it and regurgitating it. And what this did is it it opened up sort of to compute huge areas that were previously foreclosed. And at the same time, we were adding to those areas. We were taking vastly more images. All right. Terrestrially in satellites. And what this did is it it simultaneously opened up this entire area and allowed compute to attack it. And this is what's underpinning both NVIDIA's growth and and sort of all the growth you're hearing about in AI compute is as a processor builder, as a hardware builder, suddenly our tools could attack more in different parts of knowledge. And that was sort of the first part to answer your question. Now, how you do that, there are lots of different strategies, tons of different ways to skin cats. What we saw in 2015 were several things. First, we saw that AI would be an enormous consumer of compute. Alright? And historically for computer architects, new workloads were the opportunity for share to change. Share changed when the rise of graphics emerged and you got the dedicated GPU. That's how NVIDIA was born. Andrew Feldman (00:22:04): Share changed when cell phone compute emerged and Intel and AMD who had fabs and the best architects got zero share, And it all moved to ARM, right? Share changed in the late 90s when Nortel and all these companies we've forgotten about couldn't build chips and couldn't do data networking. And what you got with Cisco and Juniper and a wrist in this collection of new companies. So we knew that this new problem would present an opportunity for massive change. So we saw that. We we made two bets. The the the first was dedicated silicon would be the answer. And the second was it couldn't look like a GPU. And our view as computer architects is if you want to be 20 times better than somebody, right, your architecture can't look like them. Right? It it it can't. They have they have enjoyed and and eaten all the low hanging fruit. So if you build a GPU, the odds that you're better than NVIDIA in our view are approximately zero. That led us to a fundamentally different architecture. Alright? The hard part here, the hard part is moving data from memory to compute. This is the fundamental problem in AI. And we solved it with a way that that very few others had even attempted, which was to build a very big chip and to put memory right next to compute. By building a big chip, a chip the size of a dinner plate, whereas most chips are the size of a postage stamp, we could use a different type of memory. And by using a different type of memory, a memory that was vastly faster, we opened up all sorts of opportunity. So when OpenAI uses us, we're 15 or 18 times faster than a GPU. That means your answers are delivered more quickly. It means your engagement with with the AI is more enjoyable. It means you can use the AI to solve harder problems and not wait. And the way to think about this is sort of to ask yourself the the counter factual question. Andrew Feldman (00:24:21): Big is the market for slow search today? Right? Right? It's zero. How big is the market for dial up? It's zero. How long do you wait for a website to resolve before you click away? Three seconds, five seconds? You will not wait for AI. We have to deliver it to you in real time. And that's what we saw. That's what we built. So the panels on going public, a lot Brad Gerstner (00:24:49): of LPs in the room, they need to get liquid. I'm curious about the journey for your investors. Yeah. Okay. So, well, you guys went public what year? 2021. 2021 by way of a SPAC. Will Marshall (00:25:01): Correct. Brad Gerstner (00:25:02): Okay. And your VCs were who? Draper Professor Jervisin one Will Marshall (00:25:09): of the earliest Capricorn, Peter Thiel's Founders Fund. Okay. Then we got Uri Milner's DST. Great. Okay. Brad Gerstner (00:25:17): So, investors come in, you go public at 2,000,000,000 via a SPAC. Now we're four years later, really it wasn't until year three or '4 that 90% of the value was created. Okay. So did those early investors capture this Yeah. 90% move? Did they stay in it? Will Marshall (00:25:38): Most of them did. Yeah. Most of them did, which is really smart on their part, obviously. Think Great. They should hold on even more. If I didn't think that, Andrew Feldman (00:25:47): you should Well, I'm a little bit self Brad Gerstner (00:25:49): interested. What's interesting about this Will Marshall (00:25:51): is No. But really they did and and I mean, Google hasn't sold a share. They're our largest single investor. Capricorn didn't until very recently. Basically, most of them stayed really well in, and they got all of that upside and good for them. Brad Gerstner (00:26:06): Reason And this is so important is that there are lot of LPs in this room who they're like, when a company goes public, give No, us the Will Marshall (00:26:14): no, no. Yeah. Give us Brad Gerstner (00:26:15): the shares. This is a counter example, right? This happened to us in Mongo ten years ago. We invested pre IPO at a billion dollars. We distributed the shares, I think at 3 or 4,000,000,000. And then it went to 50,000,000,000 over the course of the next twenty four months. And we have people who called us who said, well, why didn't you hold onto the shares? And we're like, because you're pounding on us, right? To distribute the shares. So, you're an example. Now, your case, Andrew, you have an innovation, right? You're just now public. So, all of your investors are still under lockup like altimeter, but you guys have innovated with the banks on what I call a dribble lockup. So, over six months, the shares can be dribbled out according to a bunch of performance hurdles, which SpaceX is going to have a very similar Andrew Feldman (00:27:05): When did we lockup Jason Calacanis (00:27:06): start this process of the dribble? The dribble? Brad Gerstner (00:27:11): Consulate. We started it years ago, but Yes. But all of that age. Respect to the lockup, I think this is the the most innovative and I think SpaceX is gonna have a very similar innovation. But Andrew, for your investors, if you were talking to my LPs right in the room, should Altimeter be distributing the shares when they come out of lock? How do you think about, you know, your VCs holding onto the shares kind of post lock? Andrew Feldman (00:27:39): I think historically more money's made after IPO than before. Yeah. I think every single study shows that there is more money to be made both in percentage and in what we care about, which is absolute. Yes. And so the amount of money that it's possible to put to work in most venture companies is very modest. I mean, are two or three or five outliers, but for the most part, can only put a relatively little bit of money to work. By the time we get public, there's a lot more money there. Things are going well, and the opportunity to make vastly more is after IPO, not before. Will Marshall (00:28:17): If I could just add on that, one interesting question is what's going to happen with SpaceX on this because, you know, a lot of the value is in the future, right? But, I mean, most of the big tech companies went public at a few billion, not a few trillion. There's a lot of zeros in between those, right? And you've got all this upside afterwards. Now, for the equivalent liftoff, SpaceX would have to be aiming at quadrillion dollar valuations. Now, I know Elon has those sort of ambitions, but you really have to believe in that to get, you know This is kind of the point I'm getting to. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:28:53): Yeah. Brad Gerstner (00:28:54): Right. We have three mega IPOs, know, we keep talking about that are multi trillion. Yeah. All of that value accrued to private market investors. Planet Labs is a great example of venture capital in the public markets where the 10x has occurred in the public markets. We're all advocates of these companies coming public sooner. Had Andrew had his way, he would have been public eighteen months ago, probably at $10,000,000,000 rather than $50,000,000,000 and that 5x over the course of last two years would have gone to public market investors. So, go ahead. Way better to be lucky than good. Yeah. So, think that I hear a lot of people thinking that Anthropic OpenAI and SpaceX are the new normal. Actually think the public markets may And be shifting back in this a lot of the companies in our portfolios are now thinking about going public at a billion or 3,000,000,000 or 5,000,000,000. We had this period of a decade where Andreessen was really pushing stay private forever. And I see the pendulum swinging back to companies are like, man, I wanna be like Planet Labs and get public. Yeah. Right? And and have to play in the big leagues and do it in the public markets. So here's here's Chamath Palihapitiya (00:30:09): what I'll say maybe, just like to the two of you guys. Both of you guys have had enormous pressure because there's visible competition that's always sort of in your periphery. But I do think that getting public sooner, having the scrutiny of public markets, having the scrutiny of having to deliver sharpens the focus. Brad Gerstner (00:30:28): It's For Chamath Palihapitiya (00:30:29): sharpens steel, iron sharpens iron. And I think innovation tends to get better. And so the idea that you allow everybody to participate, but you also put yourself in the spotlight, to me is where great things happen. I agree. And so anyways, I just wanted to say to both of you, just as we wrap, you guys are an incredible testament to entrepreneurship, both of you. I mean, we've been talking literally since day one, me and Andrew, because we went in different paths and then we kind of reconverged. And then Will, same with you. Andrew Feldman (00:30:59): I'm happy it worked out for you, Chemosh. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:31:01): Well, it's worked out for both of us, so it's fine. You guys are incredible testament to entrepreneurship. I And just want to say thank you for everything you guys are doing. The next few years are going be really Yeah. Will Marshall (00:31:11): If I could just spend thirty seconds on the next few years, because I think it's going to be so exciting with, as I mentioned, AI and space merging together, we're going to see a takeoff of applications. I'd say that all the cool stuff that we're doing on the with LLMs now is really based on just the text of the Internet being absorbed into these models, which is incredibly powerful already. But they don't know shit about the real world. I call them blind. They don't know about that farm field, that flood, the security situation around the corner. If you give them real world data, then they can answer real world problems. And that's going to open up gazillions of applications for these AI models. I call them, instead of having large language models, large earth models, or instead of AI, planetary intelligence, where you have planetary sensing systems in space, planetary compute systems in space, and we could disagree or agree on exact time frame, I think it's going to happen. And then that's going to enable a huge economy. So it's an exciting time in the next few years. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:32:16): Andrew, thank you guys very much. Jason Calacanis (00:32:17): Well done. Will Marshall (00:32:18): Thanks, guys. Brad Gerstner (00:32:19): Okay. Thanks, buddy. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:32:22): Thanks for Will Marshall (00:32:23): having me. Appreciate it. Jason Calacanis (00:32:24): Great seeing you, brother. Congrats on everything.

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