A product discussed on 20VC with Harry Stebbings.

Crusoe CEO: Why Everyone Gets GPU Depreciation & AI Energy Costs Wrong
Oct 3, 2026 · 1:05:02
Crusoe CEO Chase Lochmiller tells Harry Stebbings that data centers lower energy prices, use almost no water, and that most moats in AI are an illusion. He explains Crusoe's pivot from Bitcoin mining to AI infrastructure, accelerated by ChatGPT's November 30, 2022 launch, and how Crusoe built Abilene's first 200-megawatt buildings in one year when 34 competitors bid two and a half years, vertically integrating electrical manufacturing to cut a 100-week power distribution lead time to 28 weeks. He names energy and skilled labor as the true bottlenecks, concedes 50% of planned data centers may never be built, and frames Crusoe's three products—data centers, GPUs, and tokens—through an 'AI super major' analogy to Exxon's vertically integrated hedge. On GPU depreciation, he argues six-year cycles underestimate H100s, whose rates today exceed launch pricing, defends take-or-pay rental contracts, and predicts closed models capture more dollars while open models generate more tokens.

Meta's Muse Hits #1 | Menlo Sounds the AI Bubble Alarm | Keith Rabois vs Airwallex: Who is Right?
Sep 24, 2026 · 1:20:44
Harry Stebbings, Jason Lemkin and Rory O'Driscoll argue Meta's Muse hitting #1 is the first true ChatGPT competitor and a Trojan horse that added $100 billion to Meta's market cap, and that Anthropic's delayed $2 trillion IPO is a bet on a cleaner Q4 story, not a cracking market. They break down OpenAI's $278 billion burn and $700 billion of CapEx, argue Jev's $40 million seed shows 20% of a $100 billion LLM spend will leak to cheaper classifiers, and predict agentic commerce will maim Amazon while benefiting Shopify. They debate disappearing traditional seed rounds, FOMO-driven checks and what LPs should back today. They approve Factory at $5 billion — coding is the motherlode — pass on Crusoe at $30.9 billion, and side against Keith Rabois in his Airwallex fight, urging founders to build an army of advocates.

Town vs Instinct vs GrokBot | Why the AI Assistant Market Is Not a Bubble
Sep 7, 2026 · 1:16:01
Jean-Denis Grèze, Co-Founder and CEO of Town, joins 20VC's Harry Stebbings to argue the AI assistant market is not a bubble and that Town can survive Google, Apple and OpenAI. He explains Town's pivot from AI tax prep to an assistant living in email and calendar, arguing the winning product will have agent-level network effects. Grèze says startups are subsidizing frontier model costs today, pricing for 20–30% margins in 18 months as prices halve every 9–12 months. He predicts people will trust agents to decide what data to share within five years, calls token maxing the wrong metric, and says Apple could lose because it lacks cloud DNA and is tied to on-device privacy. He also refuses to inflate announced round valuations, calling the practice unethical toward employees.

Anthropic's $30T Assumption & OpenAI Confirms IPO | Why Customer Service & Robotics are Overinflated
Aug 27, 2026 · 1:26:44
Jason Lemkin, Rory O’Driscoll and Harry Stebbings say the AI boom now depends on Nvidia and hyperscalers financing frontier models, as shown by Nvidia's $6B Poolside purchase and $1B at a $12B pre-money valuation. They dissect OpenAI's promised 2027 IPO, arguing it has no choice as Anthropic outraces it and 'it's all about code'; they call Anthropic's $30T TAM claim delusional and OpenAI's $200 plan a losing consumer business. Also covered: Mercor's $20B round, Hugging Face's $13B sale risk, Citadel unwinding 80% of Leopold's fund, Stripe's 41% growth, agents' data leaks, and why customer support, humanoid robotics and AI services are the dumbest categories. Their verdict: we're less than a third of the way through the cycle and addicted to tokens.

How to Build a $100M Growth Engine: Lessons from Wispr Flow & Superhuman | Matt Swulinski
Aug 15, 2026 · 1:20:47
Matt Swulinski, Head of Growth at AI coworker Viktor and former growth lead at Wispr Flow and Superhuman, argues the ECOM paid-ads playbook is the right playbook for SaaS and that paid should start immediately. He details analytics setup, why 90% of SaaS companies get it wrong, and scaling creative to 400–500 new creatives monthly. He covers LTV-to-CAC, token-based economics, referral programs tied to usage limits, and paywalls right after the magic moment. He also discusses AEO as the new SEO, why X ads are polluted, and why AI-native 'systems thinkers' are the only hires that matter. He shares Viktor's affiliate program paying 10–15% revenue share as the highest-ROI channel.

Frontier Labs Threatened by Kimi? Should the US Ban Chinese Open-Source Models & Stripe Buys PayPal
Jul 23, 2026 · 1:27:39
Harry Stebbings, Jason Lemkin, and Rory O'Driscoll debate China's near-frontier open-weight models Kimi and Quan, arguing the US should not ban them but compete. They discuss OpenAI's 'AI Communism' tweet, the commoditized inference market leading OpenRouter to consider sale while Fireworks AI hits $1B ARR at $17.5B valuation. The panel notes the application layer has not arrived, with infrastructure spending far exceeding app revenues. They analyze the Stripe-Advent bid to take PayPal private at ~$60B, predicting a 35% premium deal. Finally, they touch on Databricks' $188B Series M, nuclear energy progress, and the strange inversion of private and public markets.
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