Summary

Joinin the trio today we have Dev Ittycheria, CEO @ MongoDB. AGENDA: 04:00 OpenAI Nears $70B Run Rate—Anthropic's Lead Under Threat 12:00 Factory vs Cognition: Silicon Valley's Talent War Turns Ugly 23:00 Vinod Khosla Blasts His Own Portfolio Company 25:00 Reflection Launches Beam: America Strikes Back in Open-Source AI 34:00 ElevenLabs Doubles Its Valuat…

Key takeaways

• OpenAI's reported 70% QoQ revenue growth signals a dramatic re-acceleration, shifting the competitive narrative back from Anthropic, which had briefly surpassed OpenAI in GAAP revenue during Q2.
• The Factory/Cognition advisor conflict and Vinod Khosla's public criticism of a portfolio company illustrate how reputational damage from loyalty breaches is a lasting competitive weapon in enterprise sales.
• Agents are now autonomously selecting vendors and infrastructure (e.g., Vercel's agent-driven new business rising from 3% to 50%), forcing companies to optimize for AI agent discoverability rather than just human buyer SEO.

Why this matters

As AI agents increasingly make autonomous vendor and infrastructure decisions, B2B companies must urgently rethink go-to-market strategy, partner loyalty standards, and cost governance around token spend before agent-driven procurement becomes the dominant buying motion.

Entities

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Show notes

Joinin the trio today we have Dev Ittycheria, CEO @ MongoDB. AGENDA: 04:00 OpenAI Nears $70B Run Rate—Anthropic's Lead Under Threat 12:00 Factory vs Cognition: Silicon Valley's Talent War Turns Ugly 23:00 Vinod Khosla Blasts His Own Portfolio Company 25:00 Reflection Launches Beam: America Strikes Back in Open-Source AI 34:00 ElevenLabs Doubles Its Valuation to $22B 37:00 Salesforce Buys Listen Labs for $2B—Sequoia Cashes In 46:00 Vercel Hits $600M ARR as Agents Drive Half Its New Business 55:00

Themes

• openai
• anthropic
• investing