Tue. 06/03 – Framing The AI Debate
Techmeme Ride Home
Brian McCullough
4.7 • 984 Ratings
🗓️ 3 June 2025
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Elon Musk is suddenly fundraising everywhere. An attempt to solve the nomenclature problem around hacking groups. Is the solution to more energy for data centers already hidden inside the grid? And the final two pieces today are two different takes on the great AI debate, our entire civilization is having right now.
Sponsors:
Links:
- Musk Taps Investors for Billions Days After Washington Exit (Bloomberg)
- 'Forest Blizzard' vs 'Fancy Bear' - cyber companies hope to untangle weird hacker nicknames (Reuters)
- Gridcare thinks more than 100 GW of data center capacity is hiding in the grid (TechCrunch)
- Walmart is supercharging revenue — but with fewer workers (Financial Times)
- My AI Skeptic Friends Are All Nuts (Thomas Ptacek)
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Tech meme right home for Tuesday, June 3rd, 2025. I'm Brian McCullough today. |
| 0:08.6 | Elon Musk is suddenly fundraising everywhere. An attempt to solve the nomenclature problem around hacking groups |
| 0:13.8 | is the solution of more energy for data centers already hidden inside the grid. And the final two pieces today are two different takes on the |
| 0:21.3 | great AI debate our entire civilization is having right now. |
| 0:24.7 | Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. |
| 0:32.5 | A whole bunch of Elon funding news. |
| 0:35.4 | All of the sudden, sources say Elon Musk is selling $5 billion |
| 0:38.5 | and XAI debt at a double-digit interest rate via Morgan Stanley with demand already over |
| 0:44.0 | $3.5 billion and commitments due by June 17th, quoting Bloomberg, Musk appears eager to refocus |
| 0:50.4 | on his array of businesses after announcing last week that he would be stepping back from politics. He had spent months as a senior advisor and regular companion to President Donald Trump, |
| 0:58.5 | for whom he campaigned in the 2024 election and was a top financial supporter. The debt package |
| 1:03.4 | includes a floating rate term loan, a fixed rate term loan and senior secured notes, |
| 1:08.3 | said the people who are not authorized to share the information publicly. The proceeds will go toward general corporate purposes with commitments due June 17th. |
| 1:15.5 | Early pricing discussions are seven percentage points over the benchmark rate for the floating |
| 1:19.2 | rate term loan and roughly a 12% yield on the senior notes, different people with knowledge |
| 1:23.6 | of the matter said. The debt sale has already garnered demand in excess of three and a half |
| 1:27.5 | billion dollars, they added, end quote. In addition, XAI has launched a $300 million tender offer at a |
| 1:33.9 | $113 billion valuation validating XAI's price tag for when it acquired X in March of 2025. This will let |
| 1:41.4 | existing staff sell shares, quoting the.T. Musk launched XAI in |
| 1:46.9 | 2023 to take on Sam Altman's Open AI and other big tech rivals. It quickly unveiled the |
| 1:52.3 | Grock Chatbot and built a supercomputer cluster dubbed Colossus, one of the biggest AI |
| 1:56.7 | data center projects in the U.S. The AI startup obtained a $45 billion valuation in a $5 billion |
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