Down Round

We're back with podcast content after a regrettable interruption last week.

This ep we've got a stacked deck. First, we are forced by fate to talk about Trump, Elon and Tesla briefly. Then we get into the lawsuit against creator economy platform and OnlyFans lite platform Passes. This gives us an excuse to go on a whirlwind tour of a few things:

• Scale AI, the AI infrastructure company co-founded by Passes founder Lucy Guo
• The creator economy, and how that's all going
• OnlyFans! Yeah, you want to hear all about that, don't you.

Good to be back on the tools.

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Unfortunately due to circumstances within our control we are unable to record an episode this week.

We promise we'll record a really really extra good one next week.

Thank you for your patience. Enjoy this AI generated James reading a text message from James.

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Tech stocks have been having a rough time since December. The Magnificent Seven, the undisputed kings of the market, have slipped 10% since then — even before the DeepSeek moment. 

But not all are made equal. Meta, for example, is doing basically fine. Apple isn't too terrible. Tesla, on the other hand, has lost 37% of its value since then. In this ep, we discuss the market correction, including a long chat on Tesla and whether its reality distortion field is looking a little shaky.

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Plenty of tech industry nonsense to chat about this week, folks. Elon Musk is fathering his 13th child (and a new Grok model) and trying to destroy OpenAI. Everyone is trying to match OpenAI's Deep Research with similar products of their own. The markets are back.

As always, Down Round is here to guide you.

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We got a few requests last week to talk more about OpenAI's Deep Research feature that everyone's been going wild about. We thought it was a good opportunity to return to a topic that we've touched a few times over the past couple of years — what sort of work is being threatened with change by new systems like this?

In this two parter, we look at Deep Research and the current prospects for automating white collar work with AI.

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Apple is worth $3.5 trillion. Trillion with a T.

But all is not necessarily well in Tim Cook's kingdom. iPhone sales are slowing and the Apple Intelligence rollout was unimpressive and underwhelming. Now rumours abound that they are abandoning their rescue mission for their VR and AR ambitions.

Are Apple floundering? Or just doing things The Apple Way? Who better to discuss than the Down Round boys?

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It's fair to say things have been a little crazy this week. Thanks to the drop of Chinese AI lab DeepSeek's beautiful, powerful AI reasoning model, tech stocks took an absolute pounding — producing, in no small part because of Nvidia, the largest individual loss of share market value in American history.

The freakout wasn't just in markets. AI developers in the US were also going through it. We talked about DeepSeek a little bit last week, but this week we dive into the madness, and spend a bit more time talking about the model itself.

If you want to hear us go deeper, sign up for Down Round Premium today.

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It's not even the end of January and there's already so much crap going on in the world of tech. We're spoiled for choice here. In this two-parter, we're tackling the various stories that have sprung up around the inauguration of Donald Trump — everything from TikTok to meme coins to Project Stargate and Chinese AI.

In this first part, we're looking at the latest on the TikTok ban, as well as DeepSeek, the Chinese AI shop that has everyone's attention. Want to get the second part? Join Down Round Premium today.

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The number one social media app in the Apple App Store is currently Xiaohongshu, AKA The Little Red Book, the Chinese social shopping app reminiscent of TikTok but with more shopping. 

We take a squiz at that, before assessing the latest announcements from Nvidia and what it all means. 

Strap in, the boys are back for 2025.

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Over the last couple of weeks, Mark Zuckerberg and Meta have signalled a shift in the way the company is run — eliminating factcheckers, rolling back internal DEI policies and bringing politics content back to company platforms. On the one hand, you can read it as an obvious sop to the incoming Trump administration. But there's definitely a cultural change in the air when it comes to online platforms and politics, and Zuck is right at the coalface.

Joining us for this episode is Mike Isaac, tech correspondent and Meta whisperer at The New York Times. He helped us untangle some of the forces driving Meta's change of heart.

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