Yahoo Finance

Welcome to an episode of Opening bid. I'm Yahoo Finance executive editor Brian Sazi. This is the podcast that will make you a smarter investor, period. So much focus, uh, on tariffs, what's happening with the Mag 7, Nvidia, Tesla, you name it.I think investors have lost a little bit of focus on lots of cool things that are happening in the technology industry. To that end, I want to bring in Evan Cheng, Mistin Labs, co-founder and CEO. Good to see you here, uh, Evan. I finally got the company's name correct. Full disclosure. Sometimes I don't get it right, but I got it right this time. Good to see you here. For those not familiar with Ms. Great to be here. Yeah, good to see you. For those not familiar with the company, what are you working on and what did you uh found the company, uh, several years ago?

We're working on decentralized infrastructure, uh, decentralized infrastructure basic shift to responsibility of taking care of customer data, assets, information that secrets to infrastructure that run by a group of companies that have all entities that have sort of interest to keep it running well. So that's the fundamental shift.Similar to how you think about AIs or about automation, letting computer do your thing, or letting software do you think. It's very, very similar concept but just attacking different sets of broadband. Uh, that's why it inspired me, uh, for a number of years, uh, kind of, I got into this space, uh, officially back in 20 2017.For

sure, for those, um, for the lay people out there they're not in the trenches with this technology, how will what you are working on impact their lives in some way?

You're going to see different business and different products, different services that that the consumer to be more in control. Uh, you know, everybody's out there saying, well, I don't want so and so sell my data. And finally, you're going to have a different type of service. They give you all the benefit, all the utility that you come to enjoy, but you are now in control of your data, you know they are not following this, the typical.You know, sort of like gatekeeping advertising business model, uh, sort of more of a.A sharing, uh, kind of uh experience. Uh, the first such experience for those of you who are familiar with holding cryptocurrency is like, well, now you can claim your sort of like these services say you are in control of your cryptocurrency, your Bitcoin or whatnot. Uh, that has still early stage and most services still following the old.Sort of set up, right? They they sort of cost everything for you, but you're going to see that change coming and and it's going to go beyond just uh assets, right? For trading, uh, we just launched wars that's a decentralized storage, now you can say, OK, do I have the kind of similar experiences with Dropbox, but I know my document can never be compromised, even if the service goes down, somebody's.You know, I don't have to rely on the service to take care of my document integrity for me, and pretty soon it's going to be a secret. I don't have to rely on the company to sort of recover my password for me. I have a way of doing that. I can trust it because it's like hundreds of companies running the network rather than one single entity running the network. That's what's going to happen. We're still kind of in the process of building out those kind of experiences.

I, I talked to a lot of folks in in tech working on AI agents, uh, Evan, and they seem cool. I mean it seems like they're gonna change, uh, a lot of ways how we interact with businesses. In fact, they already are. Look at what Mark Benioff is doing over at Salesforce, but what is the downside to all these agents just like eating at each other inside of big companies? What's the risk to, to one's data, but and even like what's the enterprise risk?

Well, there's a couple of risks, right? One is the agents need to have access to data. Uh, data could be held by the consumer themselves or could be held by sort of the, the big.Products, right, the companies, the services that that holds the data for, you know, the customer data. Pretty soon the downside, the issue is going to be interoperability, right? Your agent is not going to be able to access my data. You have to use my agent and there's going to be the fragmentation, uh, it's going to have to move to a different model, perhaps, you know, pay for access, sort of thing that it's a lot of complication.going to come in, it comes down to trust. Uh, you know, I, I wrote a lawful article. If you ever ask, read my article on this, right? The, the concept of trust has changed so much over the years and AI and Adrian in particular is going to change that perspective again. Can I trust this agent is really, really what I think it is, uh, you know, we, we have this sort of concept of software transparency.The website you're accessing or the company's internal website, has it been compromised? Has somebody hacked my my server and and change it underneath me, I wouldn't know. Uh, there's so much at risk here and it's all comes down to trust, consumer business, you name it.

Are you concerned about the pace of AI development? I, and I bring it up. Sure it's very exciting, but.To me it doesn't feel like the, the right guard rails being put in place, you know, I hop on the X. I don't even know. I can't even tell if I'm looking at the right people or if they're even people at all.

Well, that's, that's why we're working on what we work on. If you want to sort of like, uh, you know, simplify, have a very, very, uh, you know, something simple to remember, uh, decentralized infrastructure, decentralized technolog technology is about providing trust, rather than trusting humans or trusting a service that's run by a single entity that may not have your best interest in heart. It's run by lots and lots of different.Entities, so together they provide that distributed trust and that's much more trustworthy. So like a society, if you can't, it's hard to trust the individual you you have a relationship with unless you develop that trust over time. But if it's a group of people, they all have interest to keep each other.Honest, that's much easier for, for you to trust in them. That that's essentially the mechanism here. So, am I worried about AI moving very fast. I think everybody should be a little bit worried, but at the same time, people, you know, you know, like any new technology, the good is going to outweigh the bad. I believe that and because there's a lot of smart people working on different aspects of it.

Are you surprised by how much money AI OpenAI has been able to raise? Uh, these are, these are numbers, folks, I would argue I've never seen before.

Uh, yeah, I mean.I think we're going to keep on being surprised. Uh, I, I remember when I did my first run, you know, raise everybody's surprise, right? How, how can you raise that money just based on, based on your reputation. Uh, the world is changing, right? You see money go into concentration, the Magnificent Seven gets all the attention.The smaller player never getting attention anymore. There's plenty of public company out there that's worth less than a min coin, uh, a big mink coin. It's, it's a while, the world is definitely changing, but this speaks to also the, the, the need to, to rethink the way we build everything, including companies. That's going to change as well.

How have you been out there raising money and then what's the, what's the mood out there, uh, in the world of tech?

Uh, you know, it's really, really different for anybody. I think, uh, we, we just, uh, completed wrong for our second protocol Wars, uh, a couple of weeks ago, we raised $140 million. Uh, that took me about 3 weeks or or less than months. Uh, so we are fortunate that we have a reputation done well in the past. That's not bad.

That's not bad, dude.

That's not bad.

$140 million I'm in the wrong field. Like what am Idoing?

It's for the company, it's for the project. Uh, no, it's, it's, uh, but this is it, right? We had a reputation. We've done well with with and, and you know, there's a lot of excitement in what we build and uh so we're able to do that very quickly for a lot of other, it takes time, uh, sometimes very difficult. It it's not the same for everyone.

The the big discussion in uh in our world is AI demand slowing down. I don't see it, but when you're out there trying to raise money, do you hear those concerns? Do you have any sense that demand for AI chips, AI this, anything AI is slowing down compared to last year?

No, no,it's not, it's not really slowing down. It is going to be in every part of our lives.Uh, that's for sure. So there's no such a thing as slowing down. This kind of technical, you know, technology brought about transformation. We've been through this before, right? It's like the internet is slowing down. No, it's not. Nothing slows down.If it's part of our life, it's a new, it's just going to keep on growing in demand in in in the areas that we that touches or change our lives and perhaps that's what it means, sometimes not noticeable, sometimes behind the scenes, sometimes just feel natural and you're not thinking actively I'm using AI. That's how it's going to look like. It's going to be very, very similar to my field, decentralized technology. And I think when they talk about slowing down.It's short term, people are still trying to figure out is OpenAI is it one of the other open source AI model that come out of China, other area that that somebody say it's better in certain ways. It's a competition, it's a demand, uh, it's a race and so there's a lot of, you know, back and forth, a lot of confusion about what, where we going? Is it going to impact uh MBDR is going to impact, you know, some other companies.You know, it's, I, I doubt it. It's, it's the demands only grown.

All right, uh, hang with us, Evan, we're gonna go off for a quick break. We'll be right back on opening bid.All right, welcome back, uh, to Opening bid. Having a fun chat here with Evan Chang, Mist and Labs, co-founder and CEO. Evan, you mentioned, um, Deep Seek. Now that news has settled down a little bit, what's the next big thing after Deep Seek? Because I think a lot of folks were, I mean they were really surprised. Investors, people, and I would argue in tech that news came out of nowhere earlier this year. Like, is there another Deep Seek out there?

Well, there's always going to be another deep seek or another foundational LM uh that's going to come out and say it's better in another way. It's, it's a race, all these big companies or some of these upstart companies are in a race to see who is the best and but you also see.Sort of more specialized LOM, uh, you know, there's other developments, you know, sort of, can I bring real-time information into, you know, to be used by the model, otherwise you're going to end up getting outdated information for anything that's developing, you know, quickly, right? There's like, can it be contacts where, can it be used by agents, can it be used by, can it be embedded in hardware in, you know, in robotics, um, so there's not going to be.Uh, and, and there's going to be concern on the other side, as you say, there's going to be uh concern about trust and security and safety and all that. So this field is going to move incredibly fast. Uh, I'm, I'm all for it. It's, it's super exciting. Uh, it's never going to slow down. I, I'm having a hard time keeping upmyself.

There's, there's two opposing camps. One,That that has seen the deep seek news and they say, right, we've already built too much AI capacity but then you have Jensen Wong, of course, Nvidia founder and CEO on the other side saying we need all of this computing power, uh, for infant, inferncing and training models. What side of the camp do you fall on?

Uh, I think it's.Both can be true. There's going to be shift in demand from one area to another. Uh, inference probably can be done with lesser hardware, so to speak. You don't need this ginormous uh server all the time for, for everything unless you open AI that's trying to serve everybody who's trying to, you know, create.New images, uh, you know, there is going to be a lot, there is a lot of interest in using more sort of local hardware or even on your phone, on your desktop to do influence, to to do refinement, that sort of thing. Uh, training, big, big training, big LM foundational, you know, models that can only be trained at the data center that specialized for them, that race is still on.Is it come a day where everybody say shift direction to a different model, they find out, you know, as a deep see figure out.You know, you can train with lesser uh hardware requirement, but maybe smarter software, that's always going to happen. But then you're going to see this co-design of software and hardware. Software gets smarter, but then, you know, everybody push the envelope so what somewhat and hardware demand increases and you know, and there's also going to be specialized hardware.This is not going to end anytime soon.

You know we're, uh, we're about 20 minutes in this conversation, uh, Evan, and we have to mention your former employer Apple, and I think the market and a lot of investors are wondering what exactly is Apple doing in the world of AI. It's tes some AI functions, of course Apple intelligence haven't really gotten that much buzz out of that.Is has Apple missed the boat on AI?

You don't really miss the boat on AI because it's going to be here for a long time and Apple has the best distribution. That's the strength and understand it. So if you look at what Apple is doing, they're not in the business of developing their own foundational model, they are using.But the company's model, what they are trying to do is integrate that into every surface they provide to the consumer. That's really powerful, right? This is why OpenAI had to deal with them. I know they would love to have a deal with Apple, uh, they have that special advantage then.Perhaps few if any other half. Uh, they're a little bit high, uh, you know, uh.They, they, they, you can see how hard it is to integrate new technology into a legacy.Uh, kind of product, right, even though Apple put out new hardware and software every year, a lot of architecture, the underlying operating system, the user interface, everything, how it works is not really quite ready for, uh, you know, and that's the, that's the struggle they're going through right now.

Have have they reached, I guess the, the max capacity and we have this amazing new AI technology and there's only so far you can push it on screen sizes or a watch or even in glasses.

No, no, no, it's, it's, you know, the breakthrough takes time to, uh, to build. Uh I, I'm sure they're working on new, new areas that, that's going to impact uh human life. Uh, there's, you know, talk about they're doing, taking on more moonshots, uh, you know, perhaps in health tech and other areas. It's, it's never gonna end. Technology will always push

forward. And of course you spent a good bit of time at Meta and they've really.They've had, I would say an under the radar story uh in AI with with their lama model. What's, what's their end game? You know, what are these new powerful models that they're working on? How does it impact their business? And I guess you know I widen their competitive advantage versusothers.

Well, I mean, first of all, meta has massive investment in AI for many, many years, even, even before this boom happens, uh, so.And, and you, they've been using AI that's just even more aggressively now and you see this happen, how it help with the advertising business, it's tremendous, right? It made us turn around from the, from the.You know, from a couple of years ago is pretty amazing, and they're going to integrate this capability into every, every surface, every product surface, uh or the social media or the other AR VR technology they're pushing. It's it's the same, similar, uh, but to Apple's Playbook, but different level and and meta has the advantage of being much more familiar and sort of build for AI from the very beginning.

You know, as we, uh, get ready to close this one out, Evan, um, you know, I, I went to your website and it looks like you're starting to advocate for blockchain, uh, in the, in the government. What is, what would you like to see from the Trump administration on on blockchain? What is not, what is the best case scenario?

Use technology to provide more trust to the citizens, uh, to, to the business. That, that's what the government's, you know, opportunity here. Uh, there's a lot of talk about stablecoin and how important it is in help establish dominance in US dollars, or, or, you know, continue the dominance of US dollars, but there's a lot more. Uh, there is more than efficiency. This is constant to trust, uh, there's talk about, you know, budget.Where the government spendings are, uh, entitlement programs, uh, you know, sort of programs for citizens, uh, you know, you know, money, there, there's all can be done with blockchain to provide trust and the record keeping, the transparency aspect come into play, and there's an automation part, uh, you know, how effectively can the citizen.Utilize the government services um and, and get their job done. You're seeing some of these experiments with California DMVs, uh, other countries such as UAE has adopt blockchain technology in all the citizen services from, from way back, uh, when my friend actually did that. Uh, so, so there is a tons of opportunity that would love to talk to the governor more.

Uh, in the last, uh, 11.5 or 2 minutes, uh, Evan, we always love to get a hot take from our guests, totally random questions. I don't write them down. I'm just living in the moment here. Uh, let's just stay on this, um, this topic of, of currencies, uh, in the administration. Why, why do we need the dollar? I see what you're working on, and I can't help but to think why does cash even exist anymore? And when does it all go away?

Yeah, it's a good question, but there's two different questions here. Uh, US dollar is still the dominant currency in the world. It's it's a world global reserve currency.And having paper bill is provide convenience for, for people who still not caught up with some of the, you know, last generation technology. Uh there's still parts of the world that use cash and I, I don't think it will completely go away, but you start to see that in a lot of places don't take cash anymore. It's just not efficient. It's wasteful. It's, it's all the things thatThat's bad it's, it's also hard to, harder to track, you know, that has its downside as well. Uh, that's, that's, that's a tough question. When is it going to go away? Who knows, but I think it's gonna be, it's already the case. It's going to be very rare. These days, if I go out.I don't need to have bills in my, in my wallet anymore. I, I rarely, I can't remember last time I went to go, go get cash out of ATM machine. It's just not necessary anymore.

Yeah, well, maybe the penny, you know, President Trump, he says he wants to get rid of the penny. You know, maybe the penny is the first one to go and then the dominoes fall and then it's the nickel, it's a $100 bill. I mean, it just all goes away. I mean, why not?

I agree it's like.Boy, pennies, come on.This pennies it's a

penny. I mean you throw those in a water fountain. Um, all right, well, good to see what you're working on, uh, over there at Mrs. Labs. Uh, Evan Chang, co-founder and CEO, looking forward to staying in touch. Appreciate your time.

Thank you very much.

All right, and that is it for the latest episode of Opening bid. Continue to hit us with those 5 stars on Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Music, all the podcast platforms, and hit us with those thumbs up on YouTube. Love all your comments, love all your reviews. I read them all and I try to reply to them all. We'll talk to you soon.