China, China, China. Breaking Down China’s Tech Surge | BG2 w/ Bill Gurley and Brad Gerstner

Over lunch, this individual told me, you know, every founder and every VC in China studies the West at a nauseating level. So they listen to all the podcasts. They read everything they possibly can. They study any speech. They look at the financials. And he said, the West doesn't do that of China. And, you know, maybe we should be. Maybe we should be studying the best and the brightest over here. Hey, Bill. Great to see you. Good to see you, bro. Summer has just blown past. I it's it's almost football season. Yes. How are the Longhorns looking this year? They're ranked pretty high. What what's that mean? Come on. Give me the scoop. I know I know you're all over. People that people that know know, but they they have the, dangerous starting position of being ranked number one in the country. Oh, wow. Wow. Any big games coming up? They, play the number two team in the country this Saturday. And So we're gonna find out we're gonna find out oh, you know, going back to Buckeye Country. Yeah. Exactly. It's been really incredible. You know, I just, I just got back to Silicon Valley, after, you know, being away for a few weeks. These you know, the OpenAI deal, the Anthropic deal, I was just looking at these. I think these are bigger private IPOs than any public IPO, done in the last five years Yeah. In the tech market. Right? You had Sam say the other day, Sam Altman say, you know, two two things can be simultaneously true. One, that this is the biggest thing to ever happen in technology, but number two, that in the short run, things become overheated and people are can get a little bit ahead of themselves. Where are you on that? Look. There's just no denying that the amount of capital that is going into these companies earlier in their life and the scale of hiring and their willingness to take on risk, which I think you can use cash burn as just a proxy for risk because you get further away from knowing unit economics and and you're more threatening. You know, I I think what those numbers are unprecedented. Like, even against, you know, the Uber, DoorDash wars and all this, they're bigger than that. And so I think it's part of we've talked about it. I think it's part of a systematic trend where investors are aware of network effects. They they've watched companies that get the initial conditions right, go on to really big outcomes, and they're willing to bet ahead of the curve. And as the more confident they get over more time, the more they're willing to make that bet ahead of time. And, and so, you know, it is what it is. We're seeing, you know, massive numbers. Well, I would say it's it's it's a combination of two things. Extraordinary scaling. We've never seen two companies, in the …