01:56:11 · D.A. Wallach, John Coogan, Jordi Hays, Keller Cliffton
[01:56:11] S0: Is it going to solve aging overnight? Yeah. Those are sales pitches. [01:56:14] S1: How are you set up to invest? Do you you trade in the public markets? Do you have a fund? Do you have restrictions? Like where where do you see opportunity because the GLP one trade again didn't really happen in the private markets. Of course, were a lot of private market beneficiaries. But how are you investing structurally? [01:56:34] S0: We do both. So we have a private fund and then we've got a hedge fund. [01:56:36] S1: Okay. [01:56:37] S0: And you know, the the... Where the risk return is more attractive Yeah. Changes over time. [01:56:42] S1: I can imagine. [01:56:43] S0: Again, this industry is very sensitive to rates. [01:56:45] S1: Yeah. [01:56:46] S0: So when you've... You know, when you're in a secularly rising rate environment in Yep. General it's tough for biotech. Yep. You think about it... [01:56:54] S1: Because the earnings are falling So we [01:56:55] S2: need to go back to ZERP for humanity. [01:56:57] S0: We need to go back to ZERP. For humanity. The bottom line. And I'm buying all the long dated treasuries I can but it's not moving the... [01:57:05] S3: Yeah. I feel like [01:57:07] S1: a Fed chair who came out and was like, we need to lower rates to save lives because we're going to cure cancer if rates are low. That's a really effective message. [01:57:15] S0: It's a good pitch. I think it's better than like, oh, need AI to add 2% real GDP growth a year, which to me is tall order. [01:57:23] S1: Was I was... Tall order.
01:57:23 · John Coogan, Jordi Hays, D.A. Wallach
[01:57:23] S1: Was I was... Tall order. [01:57:26] S2: What's going on in the like biology and pharma data markets? Like is there is there That's a good question. Is there old companies that were dead and long... Effectively long gone that are being like, you know, that are suddenly worth something because they they had a bunch of, you know, they did a bunch of trials on something and that data is valuable and then I have a follow-up question. [01:57:48] S0: Okay. So when DNA sequencing first kind of hit the scene several years ago, there was this first wave of data is valuable as a market story. And I would say... [01:58:01] S2: It's new oil. [01:58:02] S0: Yeah. It's like the new... If we do a start up and all we do is we generate a boatload of data, maybe some big pharma's going to come and buy us for that data because they're going to mine new drugs out of it. There's really, to my knowledge, only one or two instances of that working. Amgen bought something called Decode, which is really interesting. Decode was a sequencing project for basically everyone in Iceland. Oh, [01:58:26] S1: I've heard of this, yeah. [01:58:27] S0: Interesting, quite genetically homogeneous population. Sure. That was good in some ways in terms of what insights you could derive from [01:58:34] S1: it. Yep.
01:58:34 · John Coogan, D.A. Wallach, Jordi Hays
[01:58:34] S1: it. Yep. [01:58:34] S0: I believe it was from the decode data set that they actually figured out the mechanism for one anti cholesterol drug that's been very Wow. That still has benefits that will be harvested for years to come. Yeah. Now, the new thing that's happening is the AI labs are prospective buyers of biological data sets. And there's varying levels of sophistication inside of those companies. So Anthropic, a couple weeks ago, announced a number of partnerships with biotech companies. They're all trying to sell to the big pharmas in various ways. And as with all these questions of data sovereignty and so forth, the pharmas are a little bit in a difficult place. [01:59:21] S2: Apprehensive. [01:59:22] S0: They want to be innovative, they want to tell the street, they're doing everything on AI, but then they are a little guarded about their data. Mhmm. So I think it's going to be very interesting to see both how the big players decide to treat their own proprietary information and also how much the labs are willing to spend. Because, right, they've exhausted the Internet, they're paying Mercor and whoever else to go and generate expert style But this biological data, which really is intrinsically big data, I mean, you know, one experiment might create petabytes worth of information. You know, it it they think is an interesting place for them
01:59:22 · D.A. Wallach, Jordi Hays, John Coogan
[01:59:22] S0: They want to be innovative, they want to tell the street, they're doing everything on AI, but then they are a little guarded about their data. Mhmm. So I think it's going to be very interesting to see both how the big players decide to treat their own proprietary information and also how much the labs are willing to spend. Because, right, they've exhausted the Internet, they're paying Mercor and whoever else to go and generate expert style But this biological data, which really is intrinsically big data, I mean, you know, one experiment might create petabytes worth of information. You know, it it they think is an interesting place for them [02:00:01] S2: to try and suck up... How how is... How how do pharma executives view... Well, like what is their general view on the rhetoric within the tech industry around, you know, I think like this year everyone in AI was like, we really should cure cancer to help our popularity. [02:00:19] S0: When they're smoking cigs now. [02:00:21] S2: Yeah. Yeah. No sunscreen, all this stuff. Like what is the sort of pharma view on the rhetoric within tech? Do they laugh at it? Because they're sitting there being like, we've been curing cancer and helping... We're hated. And we're just hated. Yeah. [02:00:36] S0: Look, I think there's a mix of naivete and sophistication among the AI folks. So when they hear AI people say smart things, they go, cool. Yeah, let's run at [02:00:46] S1: it. [02:00:46] S0: Sure. Everyone respects Demis. [02:00:48] S1: Yeah,
02:00:48 · John Coogan, D.A. Wallach, Jordi Hays
[02:00:48] S1: Yeah, [02:00:49] S0: yeah. But when Demis says we're going cure all diseases in ten years, think people who have two PhDs and have been doing this for forty years ago, come on, man. One, you're giving a sort of false hope [02:01:00] S1: Sure. [02:01:00] S0: To a lot of people who are legitimately out there suffering or have a loved one who's on death's doorstep. [02:01:06] S1: Yeah. [02:01:06] S0: Like, that's a little messed up. Yeah. But on the other hand, they they also just think like it's not... [02:01:11] S1: Well, might be long tobacco So maybe he's pushing... [02:01:15] S0: I mean, I think it's an open question whether [02:01:17] S1: it's okay to just sort of [02:01:19] S0: sheep's clothing hedge fund manager. Probably. [02:01:22] S1: This this is a very [02:01:23] S0: long game that he's been playing. [02:01:25] S1: Exactly. Occam's razor. Occam's four d razor. [02:01:28] S0: I think it's legitimacy. [02:01:30] S2: What about robotics in a in a lab setting in an era like Kevin like Kevin Wheel has his his new company trying to sort of reassure stuff on the the R and D side. But but like that's been happening. Like people have said like we should automate labs. [02:01:52] S1: Every time someone picks a bottleneck goes and builds a business around it, the biotech community is like that actually wasn't the bottleneck. Like... [02:01:59] S2: Well, no no. But Kevin's Kevin's like strategy I think is more... It's honestly like a like a national security Totally.
02:01:59 · Jordi Hays, John Coogan, Max Siegelman, D.A. Wallach
[02:01:59] S2: Well, no no. But Kevin's Kevin's like strategy I think is more... It's honestly like a like a national security Totally. [02:02:08] S1: Think it's super valid. I I just think the biotech community is fantastic at getting something from the tech community and be like, yes, that is what that was a bottleneck but we have actually Right. 12 more bottlenecks for you [02:02:18] S5: to work Okay. [02:02:19] S0: I mean, this gives us a chance to talk a little bit about China. [02:02:21] S1: Please. You guys love China. Huge fans. We have Gong over there for China. [02:02:25] S2: Thank you. [02:02:25] S0: So the the... In in a way, a bigger a bigger shift than AI for the biopharma industry is the rise of China. [02:02:37] S1: Oh, yeah.