This Is The Point

Google Cloud doubled its revenue, and Wall Street still hammered Google’s stock. Search grew 12% when it was expected to grow about 15%, and fears that AI is finally eating Google’s core business came rushing back. Journalist Alex Kantrowitz and investor Sheel Mohnot debate whether this is Google’s innovator’s dilemma arriving at last or a Wall Street overreaction. Then they dig into the numbers in Anthropic’s IPO filing. Anthropic now makes $2.08 in revenue for every dollar it spends on compute, earns an 85% gross margin on its existing models, and has more than $100 billion in cash. So why is it going public? Alex makes the skeptic’s case: as companies pull back from the token-maxing era, and Anthropic moves into drug discovery right before its IPO, is this the best its business will ever look? Plus: Alex’s painful Facebook IPO lesson, why Stripe is still private, and Airbnb’s new rule that guests who pay a cleaning fee no longer have to clean. Sheel tells the story of how he became the first person to book Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky’s house. And a giant pointing hand on X raises the question: who’s actually running the product? Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/sTEsNZL171A Follow the Hosts Alex Kantrowitz: https://x.com/Kantrowitz Sheel Mohnot: https://x.com/pitdesi Follow Us Website: https://thisisthepoint.co/ X: https://x.com/thisisthepoint_ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisisthepointpod/ New episode every Monday! This Is The Point is a HubSpot Original Podcast Brought to you by HubSpot Media Production by Third Mind Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano

Alex finally got Google CEO Sundar Pichai on his podcast, and asked him why anyone needs the AI frontier. But if Google, OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta all reach superintelligence, does anyone win? Or do we just end up in a price war for superintelligence? Journalist Alex Kantrowitz and investor Sheel Mohnot unpack Sundar’s case for frontier AI, from getting an early look at new capabilities to recursive self-improvement. They debate whether there are any moats left in the model business. Then Alex shares Sundar’s revealing answer to the show’s favorite question: why doesn’t AI search work in Gmail? It points to Google’s real bet, a single AI agent that works across all of its apps. Then, OpenAI’s models come to Google Cloud, now the fastest-growing major cloud at 82% growth. SpaceX reports 161% revenue growth as Elon Musk floats a merger with Tesla. And after Anthropic commits 5% of its equity to a public benefit fund, Musk says he’ll give one SpaceX share to every child in America. Is that generosity, or a way to create a new generation of shareholders? Plus: Alex’s Threads conspiracy theory runs into real data, and Sheel explains why he bought an onion future that may or may not be legal. Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/B-qch6KMT5s Follow the Hosts Alex Kantrowitz: https://x.com/Kantrowitz Sheel Mohnot: https://x.com/pitdesi Follow Us Website: https://thisisthepoint.co/ X: https://x.com/thisisthepoint_ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisisthepointpod/ New episode every Monday! This Is The Point is a HubSpot Original Podcast Brought to you by HubSpot Media Production by Third Mind Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano

An AI agent leaked a tech CEO’s personal financial information to his company Slack. Now he’s cut every AI agent off from his accounts. Alex Kantrowitz and Sheel Mohnot are joined by Shane Mac, CEO and co-founder of XMTP Labs, to discuss how a Grok Bot agent mistakenly shared his private banking information with the wrong executive team. What went wrong, and how much freedom should we give AI agents? Then, AI comes for accounting. New research from Mercor shows frontier AI models outperforming 12 CPAs on real-world tasks. Sheel explains why the traditional accounting pyramid could become a diamond, and what that means for entry-level jobs. Plus, OpenAI publishes hundreds of mathematical proofs in a single night. Is AI creating knowledge faster than humans can absorb it? The hosts also discuss whether AI agents could trigger a bank run, why Sheel trimmed his Nvidia holdings, Alex’s Muse horror story, and Amazon’s surprisingly personal assessments of its shoppers. Follow the Hosts Alex Kantrowitz: https://x.com/Kantrowitz Sheel Mohnot: https://x.com/pitdesi Follow Our Guest Shane Mac: https://x.com/ShaneMac Follow This is the Point Website: https://thisisthepoint.co/ X: https://x.com/thisisthepoint_ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisisthepointpod/ New episodes every Monday. This is the Point is a HubSpot Original Podcast. Brought to you by HubSpot Media. Production by Third Mind. Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano.

The most powerful people in tech went to the White House to talk about AI safety. They left with a "morally binding" pledge, and the pledge had a typo in "United States." Journalist Alex Kantrowitz and investor Sheel Mohnot break down President Trump's summit with the AI titans. They get into why the seating chart said more than the pledge did, why Alex has almost no faith the government could step in if something really went wrong, and why Sheel thinks we need an Apollo program for AI safety rather than a heavy-handed regulator. Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora called "pacing the frontier" a ninja move to box out competitors. Sheel explains why it might actually help open-source challengers, and why Nikesh has his own stake in the debate. Then OpenAI enters the agent wars with Dots, its always-on AI agent. Why is it locked behind a $100+ a month plan while Meta gives Muse away for free? And what happens if these assistants really cost $3,000 to $7,000 per user per year? Plus: Meta poaches MongoDB's CEO to take Muse into the enterprise, a big shake-up in the AI Aura Rankings (Alex has a new No. 1 he once said had no shot), Ron DeSantis rebrands data centers as "surveillance centers," and why Delta's CEO snubbing Starlink could cost the airline its most valuable customers. Follow the Hosts Alex Kantrowitz - https://x.com/Kantrowitz Sheel Mohnot - https://x.com/pitdesi Follow us Website: https://thisisthepoint.co/ X: https://x.com/thisisthepoint_ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisisthepointpod/ New episode every Monday! This is the Point is a HubSpot Original Podcast Brought to you by HubSpot Media Production by Third Mind Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano

Meta may have just built the AI agent OpenAI should have. But the bigger story could be what Muse reveals about the economics of AI itself. Journalist Alex Kantrowitz and investor Sheel Mohnot dig into Meta's breakout AI agent after Alex finally becomes a Muse believer — and ask how OpenAI left the door open for a competitor to get there first. Then the conversation gets bigger: if cheaper, "good enough" AI models can power products like Muse, what happens to the companies spending billions — or trillions — building frontier models? Sheel makes the case that the model itself may not be the business. Plus: why AI agents could threaten Expedia and other internet middlemen, why Amazon blocked Muse while Shopify embraced it, why Meta can’t stop sexualizing its Muse mascot, whether Andreessen Horowitz can build a real alternative to college, and President Trump's attempt to rebrand "artificial intelligence" as "super intelligence." Watch the full episode on YouTube:https://youtu.be/cheNwqvHFd8?si=pym_2qUIBswgUjaX Follow the HostsAlex Kantrowitz - https://x.com/KantrowitzSheel Mohnot - https://x.com/pitdesi Follow usWebsite: https://thisisthepoint.co/X: https://x.com/thisisthepoint_Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisisthepointpod/ New episode every Monday! This is the Point is a HubSpot Original PodcastBrought to you by HubSpot MediaProduction by Third Mind Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano

Two AI companies are about to be worth $3.5 trillion. So why does the math only work if AI replaces you? Live from HubSpot's Unbound conference in Boston, journalist Alex Kantrowitz and investor Sheel Mohnot dig into the IPO math behind the biggest numbers in tech: OpenAI at a $1.5 trillion valuation, Anthropic at $2 trillion — on a fraction of Meta's revenue. Sheel's case for why those prices pencil rests on one uncomfortable belief: to be worth trillions, these companies have to take budget from human labor, at scale. Smart bet, or bubble? Then: the OpenAI model that rewrote its own personality to stop answering to humans, the researcher warning the labs have quietly stopped reading their own code, why the people building AI are the ones most afraid of it, recursive self-improvement, robots and the return of "you'll have everything and be happy," whether China is really racing without brakes, the end of credit card points — and the debut of Aura Rankings, where Alex and Sheel rank the entire AI field by vibes. Watch the video version on YouTube: https://youtu.be/oHeW35L8SEI Follow the Hosts Alex Kantrowitz - https://x.com/Kantrowitz Sheel Mohnot - https://x.com/pitdesi Follow us Website: https://thisisthepoint.co/ X: https://x.com/thisisthepoint_ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisisthepointpod/ New episode every Monday! This is the Point is a HubSpot Original Podcast Brought to you by HubSpot Media Production by Third Mind Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano

We have the smartest technology ever built — so why hasn't the economy moved? In the first episode of This is the Point, journalist Alex Kantrowitz and investor Sheel Mohnot go head-to-head on the biggest disconnect in tech: AI can solve Millennium Prize problems and pull $100B in revenue, but GDP growth is stuck at 1.7%. One critical take, one bullish take, and a running fight about what actually deserved your attention this week. In this episode: - The $100B AI revenue vs. flat GDP paradox - The Ramp data: are AI spenders really growing faster? - The AI jobs boom — 1M created vs. 200K lost - The Anthropic researcher who resigned: "gambling with our lives" - A conspiracy theory about why the doom talk keeps coming - Would a superintelligent AI even need us? - Meta's AI trust problem - Instinct's $2.5B bet and Google's fumble - Resy declares war on booking bots - Two stories the press got wrong: the Kenya outsourcing piece and the folding iPhone New episode every Monday. In partnership with HubSpot. Follow us: Website: https://thisisthepoint.co/ X: https://x.com/thisisthepoint_ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisisthepointpod/ Hosts: Alex Kantrowitz — https://x.com/Kantrowitz Sheel Mohnot — https://x.com/pitdesi This is the Point is a HubSpot Original Podcast Brought to you by HubSpot Media Production by Third Mind Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano

The AI job apocalypse was supposed to be here by now. It isn't. In this first clip from "This Is The Point", tech journalist Alex Kantrowitz and VC Sheel Mohnot dig into the numbers everyone expected to show mass layoffs -- and found the opposite. "The Economist" estimates AI has created around 1 million jobs while destroying roughly 200,000. So is the apocalypse cancelled, or just postponed? Alex and Sheel don't agree on the answer. This Is The Point: We break down the week's news, giving you perspectives and analysis at the intersection of tech journalism and venture capital. Further Reading: https://www.economist.com/finance-and... Follow Us! Website: https://thisisthepoint.co/ X: https://x.com/thisisthepoint_/status/... Alex Kantrowitz X: https://x.com/Kantrowitz Sheel Mohnot X: https://x.com/pitdesi This is the Point is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by HubSpot Media

News is everywhere. The point is harder to find. Each week, Founder/VC Sheel Mohnot and journalist Alex Kantrowitz break down the biggest stories in technology and business—helping industry leaders understand how to think about the stories shaping our world.