Show Your Priors Podcast

Cerebras IPO, Brain Implants, and What Hannibal Teaches About Strategy | Ep. 11 Show Your Priors

Cerebras just delivered one of the most dramatic IPOs of the year, popping 68% on day one and putting real pressure on Nvidia's grip on AI inference. On this episode of Show Your Priors, Michael Nichols and Jason Thompson break down whether this punchy little startup with a dinner plate sized chip can actually crack Cuda, why Neuralink and Synchron are racing to put brain computer interfaces into healthy people, and what a 200 BC general named Hannibal can teach modern operators about winning every battle and still losing the war. If you care about AI chips, business strategy, ecosystem moats, frontier model IPOs, or the line between life changing tech and dystopian marketing, this one is for you. _Music by ThunderWof. https://www.instagram.com/apache_thunderwof_18/ https://open.spotify.com/artist/4092jgp59goD4nZIL2mQw5 _ We open in the Headlines with the booing of an AI commencement speech at the University of Central Florida and what it says about the foundation labs' brutal marketing problem. Then we get into the SpaceX S-1 filing and a possible 1.75 trillion dollar IPO as early as June 12th, the OpenAI breach of contract threat against Apple over the Siri integration, Microsoft pulling Claude Code from its internal developers in favor of GitHub Copilot, and what the Texas Roadhouse tablet rollout tells us about brand identity in restaurants. The Firehose covers Starbucks cutting another 300 corporate jobs, Ford's surprise 20% surge after spinning up Ford Energy for AI data centers using CATL battery tech, Cisco's record 15.8 billion dollar quarter alongside a 5% workforce cut, the EU pushing high risk AI rules back to December 2027, OpenAI launching a 14 billion dollar professional services arm, Anthropic targeting small business with a 10 city tour, Mind Robotics raising another 400 million dollars off a Rivian spinoff, Bosch teaming up with academics on robot hand dexterity, the mysterious Gemini Omni leak ahead of Google I/O, a new London and San Francisco startup called Recursive Superintelligence raising 650 million dollars to build AI that improves itself, and Anthropic's new Claude Dreaming memory feature. Then the main event. We take Cerebras apart as a strategy problem. Is inference speed enough to topple an ecosystem player like Nvidia and its Cuda moat, or is this another Clayton Christensen style disruption that grows up from the low end of the market? We connect it to the Microsoft and Apple battles in the headlines, where channel ownership and customer ownership keep eating product superiority for breakfast. Next we go inside the brain implant race. Elon Musk's Neuralink has 21 chips in human brains, while Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates back Synchron, which delivers similar results without cracking the skull open. We debate the ethics of marketing brain computer interfaces as a consumer gadget, the consent problem with neurological data, and where the line is between curing paralysis and advertising directly into your brain. We close with Michael's deep dive on Hannibal Barca, the Battle of Cannae, the Punic Wars, and one of the cleanest historical lessons in business strategy you will hear. Carthage had the better general and a master tactician. Rome had the better system. Rome rebuilt itself from a land power into a naval power on the fly with the corvus innovation, picked off Carthage's bases in Iberia, and turned its own allies against it. Tactics win battles. Systems win wars. If you are reading every X post about the next feature release and missing the ecosystem moves, you are watching the wrong board. Connect with us: YouTube: | https://youtube.com/@showyourpriors TikTok | https://www.tiktok.com/@showyourpriors Substack | https://showyourpriors.substack.com/ LinkedIn - Michael Nichols | https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-guy-nichols 00:51 Headlines 27:34 Firehose 52:51 Cerebras vs Nvidia 1:03:13 Brain Implants and the Consent Question 1:09:47 Hannibal: Win the Battle, Lose the War

White House Pumps the Brakes on AI, Anthropic Tops OpenAI, Dan Toma Interview | Ep.10 Show Your Priors Podcast

The White House just reversed its position on AI regulation, asking the same companies it spent the past year deregulating to suddenly slow down. On Episode 10 of Show Your Priors, Jason Thompson and Michael Nichols break down what triggered the about face, why Anthropic just surpassed OpenAI at a $900 billion valuation, and what Apple opening Siri to third party AI models reveals about who really controls the next App Store. Then we sit down with three time author and Thinkers50 management thinker to watch Dan Toma for a deep dive on corporate innovation, cargo cult strategy, and why innovation theater keeps killing real growth. _ Connect with Dan Toma https://www.linkedin.com/in/dantoma/ https://www.amazon.com/Open-Innovation-Works-Successfully-Leveraging/dp/1805920715 _ Music by ThunderWof. https://www.instagram.com/apache_thunderwof_18/ https://open.spotify.com/artist/4092jgp59goD4nZIL2mQw5 _ What we cover in this episode: A peer reviewed study where an AI model out diagnosed two attending physicians on real emergency room cases at a Boston hospital, and what that means for medical education, AI safety, and clinical deployment. Apple's reported plan to let iOS 27 users pick which AI model powers Siri, and why owning the customer beats building the model when you already control the channel. Amazon weaponizing its logistics stack as a product for any business in the country, running the AWS playbook for the second time, and which industries should be most worried. Nvidia's $500 million investment in Corning to ten times its optical fiber capacity, and why the next AI compute bottleneck is the pipes, not the chips. Anthropic's reported $900 billion valuation, putting it ahead of OpenAI for the first time, and what the B2B versus B2C split tells you about strategy, pricing power, and enterprise AI. A new EPFL benchmark showing AI models routinely hallucinate sources, even citing real journals for fake claims, and how to use AI without getting burned. A Claude curated Firehose covering the Anthropic SpaceX Colossus deal, Pennsylvania's first state level lawsuit against an AI company, McDonald's and Shake Shack earnings, Whirlpool's recession signal, Intel's Apple chip deal and the reshoring of semiconductors away from TSMC, Michael Burry exiting GameStop after the eBay acquisition pitch, Novo Nordisk and the GLP-1 weight loss boom, the protein supply crunch, LinkedIn's AI powered job search, the AI versus four year degree debate, and the Pentagon's UAP file release. The main topic: the Trump administration studying an executive order that would require AI models to clear a government approval process modeled on how the FDA approves drugs, what changed since JD Vance dismissed AI safety concerns at the global AI summit 15 months ago, the leaked Anthropic Mythos model, and how to think about regulation, leverage, and the art of the deal. Then our interview with Dan Toma, strategic innovation advisor to blue chip companies, World Economic Forum contributor, and author of The Corporate Startup, Innovation Accounting, and his latest book Open Innovation Works. We dig into cargo cult innovation, why copying Spotify's operating model fails inside banks and pharma companies, vendor management dressed up as open innovation, the high failure rate of M&A and corporate ventures, and why real innovation has to be a repeatable discipline instead of a one time moonshot. Main Channel | https://youtube.com/@showyourpriors Clips Channel | https://youtube.com/@sypclips TikTok | https://www.tiktok.com/@showyourpriors 00:00 Intro 00:38 Headlines: AI Out Diagnoses Doctors in ER Study 08:02 Apple Opens iOS 27 Siri to Multiple AI Models 13:20 Amazon Opens Its Logistics Empire to Every Business 22:14 Nvidia Bets $500M on Corning for Optical Fiber 28:34 Anthropic Hits $900B and Passes OpenAI 33:31 AI Models Are Hallucinating Their Sources 40:21 Firehose 1:06:54 White House Moves to Regulate AI 1:18:03 Interview with Dan Toma

Musk Sues OpenAI for $134B, Berkshire Without Buffett, Spirit Airlines Folds | Ep.9 Show Your Priors

Elon Musk drags Sam Altman and OpenAI into an Oakland courtroom over a $134 billion charity. Berkshire Hathaway holds its first annual meeting in 55 years without Warren Buffett at the helm. Spirit Airlines liquidates overnight, taking 17,000 jobs with it. Co-hosts Michael Nichols and Jason Thompson break down the strategy, finance, and management questions buried inside this week's biggest business stories. _Music by ThunderWof.https://www.instagram.com/apache_thunderwof_18/https://open.spotify.com/artist/4092jgp59goD4nZIL2mQw5 _ In the headlines, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta committed up to $700 billion of AI infrastructure capex for 2026, with all four CEOs telling Q1 calls they are still supply constrained. Microsoft alone is sitting on an $80 billion Azure backlog it cannot fill for lack of power. Gary Marcus calls the spending out of control. We compare hyperscaler economics to the dot com bubble and ask which foundation labs survive a price war. Then the model wars. Moonshot's Kimi K2.6 ties GPT 5.5 on coding at 80% lower token cost. xAI shipped Grok 4.3 as a budget reasoning model. Is the frontier decoupling from the bulk market? Anthropic moved Claude security to public beta with CrowdStrike, Microsoft Security, Palo Alto Networks, SentinelOne, Trend AI, and Wiz embedding Opus 4.7 into their platforms. Does this kill the AI native cybersecurity startup category before it gets funded? We cover AI slop in peer reviewed research, where submission volume jumped 42% after ChatGPT. China blocked Meta's acquisition of Manus, signaling that AI capability flight is now a national concern. Trader Joe's faces a class action over caffeine content in its private label coffees. In the firehose, David Silver closed a $1.1 billion seed for a new superintelligence lab, AWS launched managed agents in partnership with OpenAI, Japanese airports started a humanoid robot pilot, Jane Street paid $4.9 billion in employee comp, and a new LLM called Talkie was trained only on text published before 1931. Outside the courtroom, Musk called most cryptocurrencies scams and triggered a selloff.Then the three main topics. First, the OpenAI lawsuit. Musk claims Altman and Greg Brockman stole his charity by pivoting to for profit, but emails show Musk pushed the same structure when he expected to control it. xAI is now a direct competitor, and Musk admitted under oath that Grok has been distilling OpenAI outputs. Is this principled or $134 billion of founder's remorse? Second, Berkshire Hathaway. The first annual meeting since 1970 without Buffett. Greg Abel walked into doubled profits, a record cash pile, and a stock trailing the S&P by more than 30 points since Buffett's retirement announcement. Abel told shareholders Berkshire would not do AI for the sake of AI. Can he carry the prior when so many holders believe Berkshire equals Buffett? Third, Spirit Airlines. Liquidation began this morning, 17,000 jobs gone, and a $500 million Trump bailout died from creditor opposition. The Iran war doubled jet fuel prices and the ultra low cost carrier model could not survive it. This is Spirit's third bankruptcy since late 2024. Frontier and Avelo are forming a coalition to absorb the routes. Connect with us: Subscribe to Show Your Priors for weekly conversations on business, strategy, and the ideas shaping the world. https://www.youtube.com/@ShowYourPriors Chapters: 00:00 Intro 0:48 Headlines: Big Tech's $700B AI Capex Bet 6:21 Frontier vs Budget LLMs, Kimi K2 and Grok 4.3 11:43 Claude Security Goes Public Beta 17:46 AI Slop and the Peer Review Crisis 24:16 China Blocks the Meta Manus AI Deal 30:59 Trader Joe's Caffeine Class Action 35:00 Firehose 52:00 Topic 1, Elon Musk vs OpenAI in Court 1:06:18 Topic 2, Berkshire Hathaway Without Warren Buffett 1:17:23 Topic 3, Spirit Airlines Liquidation

Did Elon Just Buy Cursor for $60 Billion? AI Strategy with Scott Newton | Ep.8 Show Your Priors

Papa Elon just slapped a $60 billion price tag on AI coding startup Cursor, and the structure of the deal is even wilder than the number. Is this a real acquisition or the cleverest IPO pump of the year? In Episode 8, Michael and Jason break down the SpaceX and Cursor deal, then sit down with their very first guest, strategy expert Scott Newton, to talk about what modern corporate strategy actually looks like in the age of AI. __ Connect with Scott Netwon https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottbnewton/ __ Music by ThunderWof. https://www.instagram.com/apache_thunderwof_18/ https://open.spotify.com/artist/4092jgp59goD4nZIL2mQw5 __ Scott Newton is a managing partner at Thinking Dimensions, a global strategy consulting firm, and has spent over 20 years advising boards, CEOs, and private equity on strategy and growth. He mentors founders at Techstars, leads the MBA consulting program at CIMBA, and holds board seats at Strategy Tools and Sirius. We dig into AI adoption inside the enterprise, why most corporates are stuck in pilot hell, the Kodak versus Fujifilm story, why European automakers are getting eaten alive by BYD and the Chinese EV wave, and what the board of directors needs to look like for a digital first company. Before the interview, we run through the headlines: Google is investing $10 billion in Anthropic with another $30 billion to follow at a $380 billion valuation, AI journalism and the Wire by Atticus, DeepSeek V4 dropping at less than 15 percent of OpenAI compute cost, Siemens humanoid robots running an eight hour shift in the factory, and new MIT and Penn studies suggesting AI chatbots may be eroding cognitive ability. Then we ride through a Drinking from the Firehose rapid fire round covering Tim Cook stepping down at Apple, Intel earnings, Meta cutting 10 percent of headcount, Microsoft offering voluntary buyouts, GPT 5.5, Codex, Volkswagen AI agents in China, Microsoft's $18 billion Australia deal, and Anthropic and Amazon expanding their compute partnership.If you care about AI strategy, corporate governance, venture capital, business model disruption, or just want to understand where the money is actually moving in tech, this one is for you.Connect with us:Subscribe to Show Your Priors for weekly conversations on business, strategy, and the ideas shaping the world. Clips Channel | https://youtube.com/@sypclips Spotify | https://open.spotify.com/show/7qz3G3XoOaSPpg2elfKmH3Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/showyourpriors/Threads | https://www.threads.com/@showyourpriorsTikTok | https://www.tiktok.com/@showyourpriorsX - Michael Nichols | https://x.com/m_g_nicholsX | https://x.com/showyourpriorsSubstack | https://showyourpriors.substack.com/Reddit | https://www.reddit.com/r/ShowYourPriorsPodcastLinkedIn - Michael Nichols | https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-guy-nicholsLinkedIn - Jason Thompson | https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-thompson-607b0b54 00:00 Intro 00:28 Headlines: Google's $10B Bet on Anthropic 04:26 The Wire by Atticus and the Future of AI Journalism 09:15 DeepSeek V4: Open Source at 1 Percent of the Cost 14:55 Siemens Humanoid Robots Hit the Factory Floor 19:33 Are AI Chatbots Rotting Our Brains? 24:57 Drinking from the Firehose: Rapid Fire Headlines 33:30 Topic 1: Did SpaceX Really Buy Cursor for $60 Billion? 44:26 Topic 2: Scott Newton on Modern Strategy and AI 53:00 Kodak vs Fujifilm and the Trap of a Great Business Model 60:30 Why European Automakers Are Losing to BYD 66:00 Pilot Hell: Why Corporate AI Adoption Stalls 77:49 Education, Critical Thinking, and the End of Rote Learning 88:32 Fun Closer: TQM and the Chairman's Circle of Excellence 91:00 The Trait Every Leader Will Need 93:21 Closing Thoughts Keywords: AI, artificial intelligence, Elon Musk, SpaceX, OpenAI, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Tim Cook, Meta, Intel, Anthropic, Cursor, Cursor AI, DeepSeek, GPT 5, Codex, Claude, Copilot, business strategy, corporate strategy, AI strategy, AI adoption, AI investment

Stanford 2026 AI Index, SPACs Are Back with Chamath, and Stalin's Corporate Strategy Lessons | Ep. 7

Episode 7 of Show Your Priors takes on three heavyweights at the intersection of business, strategy, finance, and technology. The Stanford 2026 AI Index Report, the surprise return of SPACs with Chamath Palihapitiya, and what Joseph Stalin's five year plan can teach corporate leaders about the targets sitting on their desk right now. We open with the headlines. Allbirds ditches its shoe business to become an AI compute company, and the stock rips 880 percent in a single day, while Michael Burry quietly loads up on beaten down SaaS names like Adobe, Veeva, and Autodesk. We talk vertical AI, thin wrappers, the next greater fool theory, and why the dot com bubble playbook is alive and well in the current AI hype cycle. From there we cover the US Air Force's new War Matrix AI wargaming tool, a federal judge ruling that your ChatGPT history is closer to a postcard than a privileged legal conversation, a Fortune report on how much of software engineering and customer support AI can already do, and Elon Musk's latest universal basic income pitch. If AI drives massive layoffs, who exactly is buying the next iPhone? The main topic is the 2026 Stanford AI Index Report. We dig into whether China is closing the gap on US AI supremacy, where private AI investment actually sits, why foreign AI researchers are not arriving at the rate they used to, the entry level squeeze hitting junior software engineers and customer support reps, global sentiment on AI as friend or enemy, generative AI adoption curves that outpace the internet, AI in medicine and digital twins, and where the data centers really are. Then SPACs. Chamath just raised another 300 million dollars to do it all over again. We break down what a special purpose acquisition company actually is, why the structure rewards sponsors before retail investors, what Virgin Galactic's chart reveals about the entire model, and why the 2026 version looks a lot like the 2021 version with better PR. Social proof, survivorship bias, caveat emptor, and why index funds keep winning the boring way. We close with Joseph Stalin and the Soviet five year plan. Why did top down targets lead to purges instead of productivity? And why does your annual corporate budget cycle rhyme with that same mechanism? Stretch targets, deterministic management, no excuses cultures, airbrushed CEOs, and the real reason big corporations struggle to innovate even when they have every dollar available to spend. If you have ever survived budget season, this one lands. Show Your Priors is a weekly business, strategy, finance, marketing, management, and AI podcast hosted by Michael Nichols and Jason Thompson. A prior is the belief you bring before the argument starts. Every week we show you ours. New episodes every week. Like, subscribe, and share with a friend who still argues for stretch targets. 00:00 Intro00:43 Headlines: Allbirds AI Pivot and Michael Burry Loads Up on SaaS05:13 War Matrix and AI in National Defense07:52 Federal Judge Rules ChatGPT Chats Are Not Privileged10:47 Fortune Report: How Much of Your Job Can AI Actually Do12:33 Elon Musk, UBI, and the AI Layoff Paradox18:59 Main Topic: Stanford 2026 AI Index Report41:10 SPACs Are Back: Chamath and the Special Purpose Playbook56:52 Joseph Stalin, the Five Year Plan, and Corporate Targets