78 – Market Meltdown | What You Need to Know About the Latest Volatility

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if you enjoy this content please take a moment to rate and review it your feedback will greatly impact our ability to reach more people thank you hello uh it’s just me today Marcus um Vic is out once again leaving me here and I was just too busy to book a guest host so you just got me but I’m gonna run you through the stories of the week because we got a job to do here we got to keep you posted on what’s going on in the world of health innovation the economy AI payers providers farm up the whole deal and what a week it was you know I was talking to Aaron our producer and we were doing our normal kind of you know review production what can we do better and he was like dude did you remember what last week’s shows title was and it was um you know could the could the AI bubble uh tank the US economy so kind of funny leading into this week uh how everything kicked off the week on Monday uh but before we go to much further uh I’ll just say that gotten some really good feedback on um the stories we’re we’re putting in on AI I think a lot of people are getting a lot of value out of that because um AI’s got is a really noisy space and so uh we are committed to continuing to do that so thanks for that feedback and and we will continue to move on with that um and with that I’m gonna go ahead and dig in so I wanna start just by talking about Mondays uh fiasco of a day I remember coming in on Monday morning

sitting down with Vic for our 9: 1:34

00am like we do every Monday and he started basically telling me he was listening to our friends at hedge I they do something called the call every morning for members of hedge I and so he was listening to the call and kind of give me the hedge I take and um which which is always really really good um and I was like I hear that I’m just telling you I have no idea what’s going on and I’m I’m I’m not really sure anybody has a great idea of what’s going on because uh when we went to sleep on Friday we had no idea you know we were gonna go into a weekend coming on Monday and see the Vicks go up to 65 you know the last time that the Vicks even got remotely close to that or I should say exceeded 65 um was during the pandemic right so and for those who are not uh clued in the VIX is is shorthand for the CBOE Volatility Index um and that is basically the index that says like how scared is Wall Street right how much volatility uh is there in in in the economy and how does the stock market how’s Walter review that that volatility so um generally speaking uh if the if the Vicks goes above 30 that’s like a pause don’t do anything um don’t sell because it may not be the bottom yet and it doesn’t go over 30 very often um and just so you know like recently it’s been below 20 for for for quite a while here in 2024 um it shot up one day from below 20 to over 65 spent the majority of Monday and Tuesday over 30 and then has uh come back down now it’s back below 30 again it’s in the it’s in the 20s I think it’s around 27 right now um at the time of this recording so um crazy crazy day I spent a lot of the day watching CNBC just hearing the pundits and hearing what they were talking about um but I do have to say whether it’s the the carry trade on the Nik or whether it was the jobs report the one thing that was really clear was there was a heavy heavy sell off of magnificent 7 um and I I do think that the pressure around being um economically productive assets and the scrutiny around the RND spend that that came with this earnings report season uh had to be a major factor in what happened on Monday and now that we are on the other side of it things are mostly okay i’mma talk a little bit about what’s what happened in the most recent jobs report from this week um I don’t think it’s too soon to say that some of what occurred on Monday was a correction right um there’s a lot of talk right now about pal and the Fed and whether or not they’re gonna do um an interest rate cut uh there’s story in the New York Times that came out today that I think very uh astutely sumizes what we are all sort of wondering is did the Fed wait too long are they gonna get to their soft landing or are we um do we go too far and do we push this whole machine over the edge into a recession I will say that as I pulled together stories for the week um there were not a lot of bright spots um you know a lot of what is going on out there reflects what I feel like I’ve been telling my portfolio companies for the last year and even today in a board meeting I was reiterating again um this is not a grow at all cost economy uh this is a you better be able to show that you’re profitable and I wanna see your balance sheet economy and um I don’t care what the promise of the future is uh we wanna know what you’re delivering today that’s that’s kind of where we are and it’s interesting it kind of feels like there has been um a decade plus of investing in the future and everyone is just kind of like okay we’re tired of that we want to see the rewards get reaped there’s not been a lot of feedback from the Fed you know when I was watching CNBC I saw the folks from the Chicago Fed talking so obviously you know the different outpost but not a lot from the FMC and I think that’s good I’m really glad we didn’t hear from them on Monday people were banging the table calling them for them to make an emergency rate cut I’m really glad that they just stayed quiet let this thing play out because here we are Thursday when I’m recording the stock market has bumped the Dow has jumped six more than 600 points there were some really good earnings reports from organizations like Eli Lily that were saying they’re gonna revise guidance up so that’s really great the NASDAQ did a really good job in rebounding so basically we are I don’t know a slight correction from where we were last week but I think the question that has really set in based on last week’s jobs number and the overall sense that we we have hit a real soft point with the consumer the the credit card delinquencies are rising the credit card balances are rising the consumer discretionary spending is decreasing travel especially domestic is decreasing all of these trends feel like we’re at the point where we’re knocking at the door of a recession and some people who have their different formulas and rubrics would say we are in a recession so I I hope that that’s not the case I hope that we are right up against the wall of it and that in September we do get that re cut I I do think that for uh everybody to to be able to calm down we’re gonna need a re cut at this point because there’s just too much sense of tightness and the economy moving in the in the wrong direction and we’re getting to that point where the bearishness is starting to feel more like uh more like a a depression and I don’t mean like a Great Depression I mean people are genuinely depressed about the state of the economy um and that’s not where we want people in America feeling about the economy so my my sense is especially after this week’s activity and the threat that it posed we are I think we’re really likely to see a re cut in September so that’s my bet on it nothing more to say there I just I’m just gonna stick with I think on in September we’re gonna see a re cut okay so moving on Adventure Capital so that there weren’t a whole lot of great rounds this week but I did want to flag that over the last week there have been 2 500000000+ funds in the life sciences space and I think one of the reasons why that’s so interesting is when I start to run down things that are happening in pharma it really is a feast of famine life cycle right now we’ve talked in the past when I had Emily on we talked about how NIH funding is decreasing there’s a ton of pressure there that is shrinking the pipeline of new innovation that can make it through the regulatory gauntlet and that obviously means less innovation less opportunity for breakthrough less opportunity for return on the massive amounts of capital that have to go into life science investment so I thought it was really interesting that two life science funds from pretty big names in the space one then bio they raised 528 million dollars for a life science fund this this would be their fifth fund and the last one that they raised was in 2021 so they raised a 550 million dollar fund in 2021 that was the high point of the the private market activity funds being raised so makes sense that they raised 550 million then but then they came back in 2024 in a time where not a lot of people are matching what they did in 2021 and they raised $528 million now who knows how long they’ve been raising that fund but really impressive for them to get that out the gate and it’s it’s certainly a great sign for the life sciences community that this fund is now in market making investments and also TPG big name in the space uh they have raised $580 million uh for their life sciences fund and so you know these are these are big names these are these are big dollars they’re not billion dollar funds but certainly more than $500 million for two funds in a week in the life science of space is a really big deal so I did want to highlight that because I haven’t seen a lot of that activity going on I know the biotech has been really in trouble ever since Covid hit um it’s it’s the capital has really really dried up and that has made it really hard for deals to get done a lot of people have walked away from biotech I know for for funds that we’re contemplating in the future it’s really sort of low on the priority list so it is great to see fund managers who are specializing in having success with the LP environment being able to raise these funds so that’s really really good congratulations to both been bio and TPG for bringing more capital into the market uh moving into policy one real big story I wanna cover this week is that CMS announced that they are going to start to find ways to cover cutting edge medical devices with Medicare this is a big deal um I I think I’ve talked in in several episodes about the different experiences I’ve had over the last year with my dad and his experiences with the healthcare system and one of the things I think I was I’ve been least impressed with is the tech enablement that is available for seniors you know Medicare in terms of what they do covering hospital stays it’s fantastic um if you’ve got especially if you’ve got secondary insurance it’s unbelievable I mean the the coverage is fantastic and what it does in terms of getting you into specialists and all those kinds of things really really good we start talking about devices you start talking about giving access to the latest technology it really is lacking in that space and so it is I think it’s a great development that CMS has finally been developing this for a long time and they finally announced that they are going to temporarily cover select medical devices uh from the time that the FDA grants them with market authorization and it’s looking like this is gonna be sort of a five year pilot that they’re gonna put in place which is nice because it puts it in place where it’s gonna kind of go past the first term of whoever is the next administration so that’s really great um it’s it’s just nice to see real innovation coming into Medicare and not just more more dollars moving into the same old types of service models so that’s really exciting uh Scott Whitaker who’s the CEO of a device trade group advocate uh both celebrated it as a step towards stronger more robust policy but also acknowledge it doesn’t go far enough basically saying it’s the first step but you know the the device trade industry is is seeking more and more um uh support inside of CMS more and more resources inside of CMS uh to support more support for payment models that will bring devices to uh to seniors so uh I think it’s a positive move and excited to see what devices are gonna be part of the first wave that are gonna be rolled out and gonna be supported uh in the payer space two stories that are both tied to Medicare Advantage the first one is Sentine we’ve talked in the last couple of weeks about the really strong results of both Sentine and Molina have had these are uh payers that have really focused on the Medicaid part of the business and and focused on that and really been knocking out of the park Sentin is gonna exit six Medicare Advantage markets and they’re exiting pretty small markets for them it’s we’re talking about a total of only 37,000 Medicare Advantage enrollies between all of these um of these markets that they’re gonna leave so this is only 3% of their Medicare Advantage membership they are focusing on stacking their Medicare Advantage membership in states where they have really strong Medicaid presence so I think that makes sense where they can really focus on dual eligible programs that they can run uh and also programs where they’ve just got more stronger network more scale in place uh but what I found was really interesting is they are going to keep their Medicare Part de prescription prescription drug plans and that shows that the changes that have been rolled out in Medicare Advantage um really are about the drug plans they really bought the drug plans and the star ratings and the lower rates and so we know that the star ratings uh there was a loss in court around that and so that’s that’s pretty much been rewound uh but not the rates the rates are still sort of where they are and I think we’re gonna see more and more payers just saying we have to optimize for the markets where we have scale and where we can stack services uh in a way where it gives us an advantage on the margin side of the business so Sentine uh continuing to look like a really smart operator uh in the Medicare Medicaid space exiting small markets where they don’t have any real business playing and in optimizing for the markets where they can be uh best of breed especially with their dual eligible book of business uh the second one this was announced yesterday and this was a big one uh CVS they slashed profit guidance uh the CEO of the Etna business unit uh has been uh has been let go Brian Kane he only was at at the top of of Etna for a year I understand and so he’s he’s now gone Karen Lynch and the CFO Thomas Cowley they are directly coming in to oversee the Etna business um they’re they’re downgrading uh their their adjusted earnings um in in the guidance so it’s it’s just huge huge problems around the Medicare Advantage uh business this year still showing up I I think Vic and I thought that because of the court case that was gonna be a a change and because there was gonna be uh you know an increase in premiums which we saw humanity right away that these businesses were gonna be able to figure their way out of it but uh it’s looking like for CBS at least uh this is this is a a big problem so um we we’re gonna need to watch this one more closely because obviously CVS has drugstores um we we know that the drugstore business is a very challenged business whether we’re talking about the pharmacy side whether we’re talking about bad leases whether we’re talking about your ability to actually profitably operate um clinics inside of these these businesses but this but the focus here was about the insurance business and a little bit of me wonders we hadn’t heard a whole lot from Etna over the course of the last 18 months around where they were focusing their their insurance business you know we saw Signa say we’re gonna take a strong focus on the consumer we’re gonna shuttle all of our CMS business and that’s really sort of paid off for them United has tremendous scale and there they were they’ve been the first out of the um the gate with the payvider model and so their data advantage their services advantage the fact that they employ the most physicians in the country that’s giving them I think the scale and the breath to be able to perform uh better across the entire array of different markets of insurance uh but we’ve been talking about Santin and Molina and how how well they’re performing when it comes to uh CMS products but at then we hadn’t really heard a whole lot about like what changes are they making and and it seems to me that could be part of what’s going on here that they just were not fast enough to respond to the changes that were happening uh at CMS and and saying hey where are we going to focus uh our book of business and it could be that that’s what’s what’s really going on here so I don’t think this is gonna be the last big change we’re gonna see out of out of CVS and we need to watch them very closely because if Karen Lynch is actually stepping in to take over the Etna business I would imagine there’s gonna be some really big changes coming pretty soon uh those will look like business unit uh shutdowns those will look like layoffs those will look like cost cutting measures those may look like uh you know real focus on the on the Caremark business um so I think we need to watch CVS cause I think there’s gonna be a lot of changes happening over the course in the next six to 12 months uh Walgreens so we know Walgreens has had a CEO change Tim Wentworth uh came in uh last October and he has been sort of consistently making changes at at corporate lowering sort of the the overhead of some of the highest paid employees the company but now a big announcement that came out yesterday is that Walgreens is considering selling the entire Village MD stake so that’s a total turnaround from the position over the course of the last four years uh Walgreens made a one billion dollar investment in Village MD in 2020 and then they invested $5.2 billion uh in late 2021 taking a majority stake I remember when they did that um really going all in and saying hey this village empty is gonna be our platform for urgent care um they expanded into multi specialty uh when they when they acquired Summit Health City MD but now they’re looking at just boat anchoring the whole thing and I think again this just gets to this um the soberness that is hitting the market where people are saying listen this is not we’re not in a growth market we’re not in a uh consortium market we’re not in a conglomerate market we are in a show me what you do exceptionally well improve it in your PNL improve it in a really really robust balance sheet and that’s all anybody wants to see and nobody wants to see people being distracted right now because there’s just a feeling that capital is not gonna flow to overly ambitious distracted organizations and so I think Tim Wentworth was brought in to do just this and uh this is a big deal this is a big deal because if they sell the Village MD stake I mean where does Village MD go Walgreens is already talking about shutting down something like 25% of their storefronts um we already know Rite Aid is totally out of out of play where does Village MD go uh Kroger’s already got a platform you know there’s there’s no more big real estate platforms for a village empty to go to and Wentworth cited the reason why he’s looking at potentially selling it is because of the cash needs of the business which to me says that the business is not healthy uh this looks and smells a lot like Walmart deciding they were just out entirely we’re just getting out of the clinic business shutting the whole thing down so again major shifts this has been I don’t know feels like a 15 year process of integrating primary and urgent care into retail store fronts and it does seem like it’s it is largely getting walked back um today what we mostly see still working I know here here in Nashville there’s um partnerships between um you know Walgreens and Vanderbilt where they’re sort of operating a lot of the clinics and that makes a lot of sense because Walgreens has the storefront they’ve got the traffic Vanderbilt already runs a pretty robust urgent care business and um you know that that kind of makes sense but doesn’t make sense for groceries to actually be in the business does it make sense for drugstores to actually be in the primary care urgent care business um you know we saw Walmart decide hey instead of running our own clinics we’re just gonna partner with Humana they their their target audience matches our target audience so we’re just going to put this in a well clinic brand in our footprint and we’ll work out the economics on the back end and call it a day and it feels like we may be seeing more of this who knows this this could be something that CVS ends up you know taking a hard look at so just really really interesting trends happening in the space where people are making hard decisions in the interest of the health of the business and not trying to sell a story of growth because there’s just not growth capital out there not even for the biggest names are moving into pharma so I think the big story for this weekend thank you Emily for the for the hat tip on this Charles River Labs um they had met earnings and actually exceeded uh analysts expectations quarter after quarter uh for quite some time but this quarter uh they came out and they they said hey the outlook actually looks pretty bleak because we don’t see a great pipeline uh of of new activity coming through and that’s what Charles 4 Labs you know really does is they support the pipeline of innovation coming through again this is why I said I was so interested to see two new VC funds each at half a billion dollars coming online because it seems like the research for you know drug development is currently struggling you know that the entire pipeline and the capital that drives that that whole pipeline is sort of struggling and so Charles rivers uh Charles Charles River Laboratories stock tumble 12.6% um on on their announcements and you know just just kind of a it feels like there is a there’s there’s going to be a consolidation in the pharma biotech space um you know the lilies of the world seem to have an exceptional handle on how they’re how they’re navigating this we think about you know who were the darlings of um of all things pharma during Covid and you know if you look at what Pfizer was doing and now look at them and it’s just a really tough situation for anyone where the primary book of business was trying to you know focus on vaccines um the chronic disease dates um seems to really be a winner and we’re gonna talk a little bit about that in a little bit with hims um so so the Glip Ones obviously sort of a strong space but I think they’re gonna be challenged based on demand what the true sense of the demand is and also different players coming in uh who who have really really strong marketing uh capabilities and can meet consumer demand uh for something that is a is true uh national crisis which is obesity Charles River Labs been beating their even beating their expected results quarter after quarter this month finally saying hey we’re not seeing the pipeline come through we’re not seeing the pipeline come through so I think this is it’s it’s it’s going to be an interesting space to to try to measure up because I still think there are going to be a pipeline of drugs that are going to win I think some players are going to going to really make it but this is going to affect academic research centers you know this is going to impact there there’s so many players in this space in this ecosystem in this bio ecosystem that um if the pipeline does shut down and we think about all the CROs think about all the clinical trial players um all of that just kind of gets compressed and I can tell you firsthand like we we’ve got companies in our portfolio who have been signaling to us for a year and a half now that the clinical trial space is getting really really choppy that water is getting really really choppy um they were seeing clinical trials that you know looked really robust and then they got put on hold and no one sort of understood why they got put on hold so definitely a space to watch and if you’re if you’re long on this space I think you got to look at the folks who are who are winning and saying what are the what are the the traits of a Novo Nordisk of a Lily you know verses some of the others that may not be doing as well fierce healthcare uh published today The Fierce Biotech Layoff Tracker for 2024 um and I couldn’t believe the number of layoffs that have happened just so far this year uh and they said last year they tallied 187 total layoffs and that’s not lost jobs that’s layoffs um in 2022 was 119 so it had jumped 57% year over year and this year I mean the layoff count is pretty strong there’s you know kind of 20 per month uh maybe in this list here all included in the show notes uh but a lot of layoffs folks a lot of layoffs are happening in the biotech space a lot of slimming is happening and this is the kind of industry where these jobs are highly specialized right these are very very highly specialized skilled workers where do these folks get their jobs back I was talking to um a new college graduate who’s finishing up an intern getting ready to move back to Nashville and about to take her first job at a startup and I I just said listen um be really scrappy be really scrappy be really hard working and be willing to do uh whatever and have have no no rich expectations you know this this is not quite like graduating during the the great financial crisis um but it’s feeling like it’s not that far away from it and I do think work ethic and an ability to to adapt to what’s happening in the market is gonna be really really important because I feel for these people who spent decades of their life dedicating to to be excellent in in these specific spaces and between capital pressures you know governmental pressures and then the the rise of computer science and artificial intelligence and how that is going to uh replace labor some of these jobs I think are just going to be lost for good and you think about well how are you going to reskill people who are already highly skilled and specialized I don’t think that’s a simple easy thing to do um so the biotech space is a space that just really concerns me I have to say alright talk about him and hers so last week Vic and I talked about how the FDA issued an alert talking about the overdoses that were happening in the GLIP1 space specifically focusing on compounding GLIP1 organizations and talking about how the dosing is you know specialized quote unquote specialized but also with that may not exactly be right and can easily lead to overdose we don’t have that kind of specialized dosing coming from the zip bounds and the uh and and the the the Novo Nordis product um was epic uh so that’s that’s sort of an advantage that the compounders can produce um they can create a microdose version for you you know that’s not something you can get with the big brands um but with that comes a lot less uh consistency probably a lot less testing and potentially you know more overdoses so there were some pressure coming from the FDA there maybe also just pressure coming from the big brands that have invested big in this and saying hey you know maybe we don’t want Tom Dick and Harry coming into the market and just selling the same thing that we have invested so heavily in well hymns came out and said we’re not stopping and in fact we’re looking at you know buying a US based compounding facility that’s registered with the FDA and and on that news their stock pumped so I think the point that Vic made last week is is probably the right one um which is the FDA is really the only entity in America that can take real meaningful action against a hymns for example um hymns is going to be very uh favorable to the consumer and so you know it’s not gonna be a popular thing for a government agency to take away a um a a provider to the consumer that the consumer really likes hymns is great at marketing great engagement you can see them all over you know Instagram Facebook so they’re up on the latest technologies and they’re publicly traded company and they don’t have a track record of you know being a being a pill mill that that gets people overdose and so I think they feel like they are doing this the right way they’ve got the scale they certainly have the the the ability to to fight a legal battle um and they probably have the consumer on their side they probably have the the will of the public on their side uh selling something that there is a demand for at a lower cost and in and more specialized dosing just sounds like a winning value proposition to me so I think it’s gonna be interesting to see whether or not the FDA takes that next step of action you know do they do more than an alert will there be an actual enforcement action that comes out and if it does come out are they going to actually target hims or are they gonna look for lower brow you know under the table not as buttoned up not publicly traded companies that are kind of easy to squash maybe continuing to send shots in the direction of a hymns but not actually taking them on uh in the meantime you know as long as they’ve got the window to do this and as long as they believe that there is demand I think hymns sees this as an opportunity to gain market share and to capture market share and so they feel that it’s a race and I think you know their their top line and their bottom line probably says this is really meaningful for the company and while a lot of people have thought about it as uh you know it’s it’s an emergency exception where they’re getting the ability to do this I think their view is once we get a certain scale in the market and we have a certain base of consumers are you really gonna tell the Americans consumer you need to switch back to the engaging in the healthcare system that you basically hate instead of this beautiful app telehealth experience that feels like Amazon and I think for most people you know the answer is gonna be that’s not gonna be a politically friendly thing to do and what administration wants to set up their their uh you know their regulatory agencies to do that um I think we’re already learning a lesson based on what’s happened with the SCC and Garrett Gandzler with the crypto uh industry that you you don’t wanna do something that is not consumer friendly right um if you wanna win elections and if you wanna you know keep a favorability rating and if you don’t wanna uh piss off a contention that could potentially you know raise a huge pack against you so well I think we’re learning a lot in this election season that’s going to stick for at least the next 12 to 18 months and it probably benefits him so interesting story there wrapping up with AI so our good friend uh Rick Abramson who did a guest episode with us uh he shared on that show a lot about how radiology was really tip of the spear when it comes to a lot of new technologies AI being no different he had just finished up a run as I believe the chief medical officer but I may have that wrong of a company called Analyse AI that’s based in Australia and so I found from from him sharing about it on LinkedIn that Annalise recently announced that they have secured Medicare new technology add on payment from CMS for for their technology specifically focus on obstructive hydrocephalus and so really impressive that an AI company based in Australia has been able to get a new payment from CMS uh radiology does have a track record of being a space where technology can be tested proven out and and get that get that next payment but this is a this is a big deal this is not like using AI to lower the cost of um you know doing revenue cycle management this is not like using AI to be uh ascribed so that doctors can focus on their patients they don’t have to be you know typing into a computer this is literally using AI and getting paid for it new money um so that’s that’s a big deal so analyst dot AI I’m gonna put the link for uh to the LinkedIn story in the in the show notes definitely look at this I think it’s a big deal that this company was not based in the United States but was able to get the first uh Medicare advanced uh add on payment for AI in in in this radiology area here in the United States you know Rick was talking about how difficult it is to to advance AI here in in the United States and how that was one of the things they were focused on was doing things in the UK and other markets where they had a more straightforward path because the FDA is kind of the regulatory body here and um they’re they’re regulating AI like a medical device and they just need to update everything but the fact that they minute figure out how to get an end an add on payment is a really big deal so this could be the beginning of many many more I I I I know they’re the first but I have a hard time believing they’re gonna be the only for very long so I think we do need to look at more and more AI innovation that now starts to seek getting add on payments from Medicare alright and then final story in the AI front is open AI open AI had a bang up week this week um John Schulman who is one of their co founders left the company and went to rival Anthropic um he said he wanted to deepen his focus on AI alignment I mean if that’s not a shot at open AI saying that they’re reckless at up at AI alignment I don’t know um and he wants to start a new chapter where he can return to hands on technical work maybe he’s saying he’s been doing too much red tape and too much politicing over at Open AI and also maybe he’s not because he is not aligned with the direction Open AI is going in he’s not allowed to do hands on work there um so he’s moving to anthropic and this this move from a co founder of Open AI really sort of singles that maybe anthropic is is the more morally oriented of the AI companies here uh so that’s a big statement in the same week Open Open AI’s other co founder and president Greg Brockman is taking a sabbatical through the end of the year he said in the next post this week um you know the only is the I think the only cofounder who who was left is Sam Altman right um Ilia Souskiver left in may John Schulman leaves this week Greg Brockman goes on sabbatical for the rest of the year it’s August 8th my friends I think Sam Hall was the only one left so there’s a lot of stuff going on at Open AI um and I think people are really going to start taking a much closer look after this week at what is going on at Open AI um for those who don’t know about Sam Altman and some of his other uh initiatives you might wanna look up World Coin it’s a much lesser known project that Sam Altman has but it is in the crypto space and it has a lot to do with scanning irises and creating a world ID for everybody so think about like clear but clear plus crypto um and not in the hands of anything that’s regulated heavily by a government um you know open AI is now talking about using all sorts of personal information and I think there was a lot of issues that John Schulman may have taken with that so we’re gonna have to focus on on what open AI is doing now I think officially because all of the co founders have left um and the only one that’s left is Sam Alman and clearly some something is is very very wrong there um I don’t wanna draw a direct analogy to um meta and what happened when all of Facebook’s cofounders left in only Mark Zuckerberg was left but uh I don’t know maybe it’s not that different so we’re gonna have to really really watch this company Sam Altman is very very smart um but if you look at the orientation for what he likes to build in the way he talks about things he talks in very ends justify the means language and I think that that is always something that requires scrutiny when we’re dealing with our our information which to me in a digital age is a big part of our our our freedom and our autonomy so uh that’s the last story for the week I told you I was gonna take too much of your time uh but I did wanna make sure I gave you you know a good rundown of what’s happened in this super crazy week uh and it has been super crazy um but yeah thanks for thanks for sticking in with me I kept it under 40 minutes next week Vic will be back we will uh be back at doing what we always do also heads up two weeks from now we’re gonna release a guest episode with Taroon Kapoor who is um the Chief Digital Transformation Officer at Virtual Health we’re gonna have a catch up with him about everything with robot um and also other things to do with AI we haven’t talked to him in six months and he’s fascinating brilliant super smart guy so I can’t wait to uh hear what he’s been up to over virtual health and just what he thinks about the way that AI has been evolving um a lot has happened in the space we’ve had several organizations in the healthcare AI space sort of pop up since our last discussion so a lot to hear from from Taroon so some good shows queued up for the next couple of weeks and I can’t wait to wait to share them with you and until then my friends I’ll see you