AI & Crypto Headlines - May 18, 2026

[SPEAKER_01]: Good morning.
[SPEAKER_01]: Good morning.
[SPEAKER_01]: We are back after a 3D holiday for us at least up here.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it was a little bit of a you had a break here.
[SPEAKER_01]: You had a graduation a big graduation down in Georgia.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, my youngest niece Reagan congrats Reagan.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, congratulations next up and actually my middle niece my brother's middle daughter
[SPEAKER_00]: graduated college week prior so it's the Parker as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: That is a big week in the yeah in the mirror house full done.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, a big week.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's awesome.
[SPEAKER_00]: Congratulations everybody.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yep, so I went down in a few days down sunny Atlanta, Georgia, and he headed the floor to yesterday and I headed back to Pennsylvania where it's actually pretty sunny here too.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, it's nice.
[SPEAKER_01]: It turned out nice yesterday.
[SPEAKER_01]: We got into the eighties and yeah, it's beautiful.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sunny and feel like almost summer.
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't
[SPEAKER_01]: I had the privilege of Friday of being invited to play with Bob Pompey and he done in the charteres, such a gracious host, and it was his first time out this year, and he almost had a hole in one of the number 16, I almost got the witness history being made.
[SPEAKER_01]: And grad squad.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so he played really well, and he's definitely going to be coming on the podcast, we're looking forward to his solo player.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got to play in a celebrity program with him about, well, he gets the ball about 10 years ago now, and he,
[SPEAKER_00]: That's such a nice guy.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, he said his biggest issue is just trying to find the time you can imagine.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I can't really work out from the very
[SPEAKER_01]: Early hours at the AM to the very late hours of the PM and it doesn't settle, you know?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Much like the AM.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, we know which brings us to this morning.
[SPEAKER_01]: Which brings us to this morning and the big headlines making AI is Trump and G and China.
[SPEAKER_01]: They got together even through the, even through the AI race wars.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you think it was just more of a standoff and kind of stare each other downpair or do you think it was actually trying to get something done?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I think it depends on which party you ask.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think if you ask Trump, it's stare down.
[SPEAKER_00]: And like that's his tactic, whatever it is, it's generally pretty effective.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know, I mean, I think both of them really, I think both of them truly want it to be, you know, it have a quote in quote happy ending.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, but, I don't know, maybe I'm given G too much credit.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I don't think they're all there.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, there certainly needs to be a level of competitiveness.
[SPEAKER_01]: But this AI war indication, you know, I think it's a little extreme.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there certainly are measures.
[SPEAKER_01]: We got to be careful if I talked about that on the danger side.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think China could only help it for all, you know, fighting that together.
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, but it's the first summit where they, you know, they met on the AI and semi-conductors in the Coragenda.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it was not a sidebar.
[SPEAKER_01]: Trump claimed that they agreed on AI safety guardrails.
[SPEAKER_01]: His folks out there cornered that same level.
[SPEAKER_01]: We don't have any federal regulatory statute in place yet.
[SPEAKER_01]: We just have this frame work from the, from the Oval Office.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm laying out the federal protections.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, and I've been calling for that, too.
[SPEAKER_01]: So bring out the uniform act.
[SPEAKER_01]: The states, you know, like California, Illinois, and
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, Connecticut, New York, New York, you know, they've tried to take it, you know, on their own hands and Perry, I just went through 2000 entries this weekend of state proposed legislation.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's how many different states are coming up with different AI days.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know, we had 2000 states.
[SPEAKER_01]: Not 2000 states, 2000 entries of proposed legislation and through the 50 states and DC.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's crazy.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's, it's amazing.
[SPEAKER_01]: And a lot of it's happening in California, Illinois and New York and Nevada.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's going to continue.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, even if we get the global protection, the macro protection at the federal level, in the states are still going to, states are still going to buckle down and find out, you know, a lot of it has to deal with transparency, a lot of it has to do with children and making sure that they're safe online and they're safe from this.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the scares lately with the AI, you know, and hacking into this cybersecurity world is really, you know, sent shutters as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's, you know, leading to a lot of, a lot of fury, I think, in the legislature.
[SPEAKER_01]: U.S. also finalizes on that same note there we have talked about the big five AI companies willing to send their frontier models to the government and have them evaluate before they launch it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they just finalize their pre-deployment AI evaluation agreements with the
[SPEAKER_01]: commerce department, so it looks like open AI anthropic Google DeepMine and Microsoft and XAI are all on board to send their models over.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not sure who's a well value waiting on that side.
[SPEAKER_00]: I hope whoever's looking over it knows what they're looking at and they're not just rubber stamping this, you know, so, well, yeah, I mean, I could go both ways really, I mean, you don't want to just rubber stamp it, you don't want them to.
[SPEAKER_01]: don't want to kill it either you don't want to hold up a hold up you know it's a balancing act right so yeah to make sure make sure it's a it's safe yet yet not just to not not not just in words you know so anthropic you know has been in the process of raising 30 billion at a 900
[SPEAKER_01]: billion dollar valuation and predicts AGI by 2028 the LGI for the lay person is now that's the it's the artificial general intelligence and you know we talk we've talked about that line of singularity that and that's where it crosses over from where it's artificial intelligence right now but artificial general intelligence is when AI the AI systems are as smart if not smarter
[SPEAKER_01]: than our top PhDs in the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, our smartest minds in the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they're saying that's right around the corner.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, 28.
[SPEAKER_01]: Some say it's sooner.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it depends on who you ask.
[SPEAKER_01]: That that anthropics, you know, going to raise 30 billion.
[SPEAKER_01]: They don't have a term sheet yet.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not finalized.
[SPEAKER_01]: But, you know, they're, we've talked about their earnings, you know, being year over year.
[SPEAKER_01]: They were 80% up at 44 billion.
[SPEAKER_01]: So,
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm guessing it's not going to be too hard.
[SPEAKER_01]: They also have a thousand enterprise Customers now that are spending more than a million dollars annually, so those are pretty good Pretty good base of enterprise contracts that are that are
[SPEAKER_01]: prop on them up and I'm sure that's going to continue to grow and I think that the next headline shows it in such a fashion that price water cooperals, BWC deploys cloud firm wide gates foundation commits 200 million to researching with cloud and mostly it deals with their global health, the language accessibility, education, AI tutoring and agriculture, all
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_01]: Don't get me started on Bill.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, let me tell you think maybe he's faded into the He's back.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm scared.
[SPEAKER_00]: He shows back up again.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, his foundation is strong.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is a lot of money there
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, we talked about model context protocol.
[SPEAKER_01]: And just again, that just stands for, it's just a fancy way of saying in the AI world that allows the AI models to connect to different platforms, you know, allows them to have the APIs, allows them to connect it.
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you have, for example, clawed in your computer, you can now connect it to your Microsoft and all the different stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's becoming a popular new standard and it allows, it allows these,
[SPEAKER_01]: These AI platforms have become more functional.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, there's not just a standalone, it kind of integrates right into your work flows and it's good.
[SPEAKER_01]: And anthropic just crossed over 97 million installs of their MCP as of March 2026.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's, you can clearly see that it's, you know,
[SPEAKER_01]: it's a popular market makes sense and if you're going to use it you want to use it with everything right and it makes it many I'm I haven't installed the MCP but I'm makes a lot of sense I do it on my desktop because right now I'm just flipping back and forth my phone copy page to the notes and you know they did save it just saves a whole yeah it just saves a whole step in between right yep opening i launches a four billion dollar deployment company we we talked about this a little bit
[SPEAKER_01]: and they have four billion dollars invested into it.
[SPEAKER_01]: The company that they ended up buying was tomorrow, not spelled like tomorrow without the double R and without the W, but it's a consulting firm and they're backed by TPG, Bane Capital, Brookfield, and Advent.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they are looking to help enterprises deploy their enterprise model.
[SPEAKER_01]: And basically, saying, we can help you set it up.
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you don't have the folks that think they can do this, we have this solution.
[SPEAKER_00]: So for a company that's going to engage with them as far as, well, in this case, open AI, by installing your implementing
[SPEAKER_00]: systems inside their company, company wide, right, enterprise level, that these companies will come in and do the implementation of the trading.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think it's smart.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's very smart, it's hard to believe that they invested that much money in it.
[SPEAKER_00]: $4 billion?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you can see, you can see the need because
[SPEAKER_01]: Companies are scrambling to get their own AI departments that up so they can entertain that, but this makes a lot of sense for those that maybe haven't had the chance or don't have the wherewithal to set that infrastructure up.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and let's face it's still so new, not even open AI or probably any of the others really have anything like that in place.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's a great creating a whole new, the partners are whole new business.
[SPEAKER_01]: I would envision to see all the other five or six majors.
[SPEAKER_01]: I would like to follow suit like,
[SPEAKER_01]: Google I.O.
[SPEAKER_01]: opens tomorrow.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's their big two-day developer conference that kicks off May 19th at Shoreline Appatheter.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're releasing the new Gemini models.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're showing their rumors that they're releasing their new Android classes are confirmed for a preview at the show.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Gemini Omni, a conversational AI video generation, which we've been talking about.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, the lack of that being in the major platforms and you know, we talked about having to go to in video or going into it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was there and I don't want to wear it.
[SPEAKER_01]: My journey was there for a bit, but I think they realized it was a big, a big spend on there on their, on their GPUs.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it really takes, it really takes a toll on it.
[SPEAKER_01]: So maybe they've found a way to isolate that or make it a little more efficient.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it'll be interesting to see what comes out of this two-day conference and what's what's ahead.
[SPEAKER_01]: Where is that amphitheater?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is that on the Google
[SPEAKER_00]: But that's a hop and party.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I can't imagine Google doesn't do it right, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you just go through Google's campus and it does feel like I can't because it doesn't feel like an office space that they really set that up nice.
[SPEAKER_01]: Have you been on, have you been there?
[SPEAKER_00]: No, I've just watched a whole lot.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I've seen videos of documentaries and it's, it's inviting, you know?
[SPEAKER_00]: It is, yeah, it's, they redefined, they redefined corporate America, really.
[SPEAKER_01]: Really did.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and I like how they make it social.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, I mean, their developers are all interacting and they're not isolated in these little cubes.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, smart.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, they're smart.
[SPEAKER_01]: So 50 plus researchers have fleet from space XAI.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now they've rebranded.
[SPEAKER_01]: Space is space XAI now.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, they merged.
[SPEAKER_00]: Did you see that?
[SPEAKER_00]: And I saw a tentative data now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Two and 12.
[SPEAKER_01]: Possibly coming up.
[SPEAKER_01]: Keep that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I open for a possibly the biggest IPO of all time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Elon's definitely breathing down the neck of coming public on the NASDAQ.
[SPEAKER_01]: And, uh,
[SPEAKER_01]: All 11 co-founders are now gone, though.
[SPEAKER_01]: So this merger has definitely sent, there's, there's, there's talent, a, a theory, and well, there, I don't know if it's a difference of opinions or if it's a different a vision kind of like Dario and Sam, but it, it definitely is, leaving them with a thin, thin staff as they're, you know, getting ready to go public, which I can't imagine is the kind of headline you wanna have, or I'd be four year going public.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, you know how it'll get spun.
[SPEAKER_00]: It'll get spun.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, these guys lost their jobs to AI.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, they'll be fun.
[SPEAKER_00]: Kind of funny.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're right.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's how many 11.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: All 11 co-founders.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're pre-training team pretty much.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's saying and and they're they're heading to meta in Miramarati.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Miramarati is the one that is is the the the the founder of
[SPEAKER_01]: chat GPT.
[SPEAKER_01]: She was the one that revolutionized everything that we know that is AI, you know, I've referenced her as being, you know, just brilliant to tell you.
[SPEAKER_01]: And she's, she's now got a super AI lab that's looking for that next level of super intelligence.
[SPEAKER_01]: So hopefully for all good purposes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: Stanford says US China AI performance gap is effectively closed.
[SPEAKER_01]: We can look at that as a good or bad way.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think we were trailing there for a while, but then also some say at least in the,
[SPEAKER_01]: In the GPUs, we were way ahead and that's when China was kind of using those DVS measures.
[SPEAKER_01]: Remember we talked about them, you know, just stealing with the anthropic using, yeah, they were training their models.
[SPEAKER_01]: They were just hanging around with, you know, they were all the enterprise, you know, enterprise subscriptions and just peppering them with questions.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, we were first training them without having to buy into the GPUs or do all that stuff, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So, especially pretty brilliant.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you think about it and it's all, you know, good.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was the China on that one.
[SPEAKER_01]: That was a well played, I do remember that.
[SPEAKER_01]: But, you know, China is mandating now 70% AI penetration in key industries.
[SPEAKER_01]: So they are really putting a big bush.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're also, they've all implemented into their schools that AI must be taught from kindergarten on up.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it is, it is,
[SPEAKER_01]: It is an embedded mission for China and hopefully the US will see the, you know, the light on the educational side that That's just a little bit of enhancing tool, you know, I think we'll see a lot more of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been that's going to be that'll be the topic and the computer labs It's a good school soon.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a divided issue right now though, Perry, I mean, you look at the the lady at George Mason that was given the Commencement speech and when she mentioned AI was like the next industrial revolution.
[SPEAKER_01]: She got a lot of booze a lot of booze and every time she mentioned it, so you know that the
[SPEAKER_01]: Right now, the perception of it out there is got some bad PR and I think a lot of it has to those the data center worlds, you know, about these popping up and I think that the jobs.
[SPEAKER_00]: Both the jobs, the figure, if you're a college student coming out right now.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you know, and they're saying, by the way, the junior analyst and the jobs are going to be harder to come by because you don't want to hear that, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I still think I, I, I,
[SPEAKER_00]: I've read more and more and now this could just be the industry trying to kind of cover their bots or put to rest some of this concern, but I mean, you read more and more about how the experts, you know, quote unquote, are saying that what
[SPEAKER_00]: That it will be used as a tool to make yourself a more valuable employee not to make yourself a former employee and I think I think I think what will happen is there'll be maybe there'll be a little bit of a pause in the job creation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well
[SPEAKER_00]: because let's face it, or steady job creation, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So maybe there's a little bit of a pause as efficiencies and the volume of work that can be done with the same number of people improves with AI, but then after that, it's just going to take off.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's going to shift, too.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's totally okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: You need people to know what they're doing with these tools.
[SPEAKER_01]: You need, you need, it might create some of these things.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's like that it's pretty traditional business opportunities with, therefore, create additional jobs, too.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, it's just going to be a shifting in my opinion.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's not going to happen just like overnight,
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, as a student out there, if you're in the college ranks or in high school right now, just you got to stay flexible and the biggest thing I would say right now is learn as many of these AI tools as you could say.
[SPEAKER_00]: Learn as much of it as you can.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, take it all into that much more value with it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Play with it because companies are going to want to look at it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, sure.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you can create some creative things on your, you can be very simple.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just create a few things on your own and you can put it on your resume and show it as a website link.
[SPEAKER_01]: for you know future perspective employers and it's a great way to showcase your your talents yep totally agree so uh you know we're moving on to one more uh
[SPEAKER_01]: headline meta's avocado model has been delayed I guess you know so this is their next launch and I think they wanted to delay it to probably tell June since you know we have all the big developer conferences happening here at the end of the month and they don't want to have it to come out where they might get swallowed in the media of all the news that's happening with the new development so it's been delayed so we'll look for that here possibly in June
[SPEAKER_01]: what is that?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's there and it's there next front tier class open weights model that missed its May target internal test place.
[SPEAKER_01]: It just below Jeep, Chatchy PT 5.5 and it drops up open.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's kind of their answer to that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's like their version of Claude or it is.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: Cool.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, crypto.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, crypto's been under pressure lately was going up last time you and I talked but now Bitcoin is a as seen some macro head ones hitting its assets and it's down it's been down and pushing you know resistance at 84 and getting possibly you know looking at into the 70s again.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we'll see we'll see where it goes the the Iranian conflict, you know kind of
[SPEAKER_01]: sparking back up a little bit.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just isn't, isn't helping matters in any kind of market, you know, for the uncertainties that lie out there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Also, the AI-armed hackers that are out there or sending shutters down the crypto, you know, spines is, if you can be vulnerable with AI, I mean, that there's nobody more vulnerable than these digital platforms.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, for sure.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, we hear about the digital wallets, you know, being compromised.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a scary, scary thought.
[SPEAKER_01]: So they're scrambling to make sure they get measures in place.
[SPEAKER_01]: That is the headlines today, Pierre.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a, that's a, that's still a lot.
[SPEAKER_00]: It, it's been missed Friday.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I know we did miss Friday.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we aren't catching up to a breather, but you know, yeah, it's, it's, it's ever moving.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I can't wait to see what the developments come out of the Google conference.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we'll be, as well, keeping, if there's anything good developments coming out of the open AI and musk trials, well, yeah, that'll be big too.
[SPEAKER_01]: That will.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hope everybody has a wonderful Monday.
[SPEAKER_01]: Have a good one.