Latent Space: The AI Engineer Podcast
00:20:34 · Jamin Ball, Shawn Wang
[00:20:34] S0: We need to, we can can flip the switch and and be profitable. [00:20:39] S1: Yeah. And for listeners, a couple things on the accounting side, just because I... We gotta educate people. Right? FCF is typically, like, the most honest version of what profit looks like. Yeah. But in this case, you can mostly just regard it as what an operating margin would... Profit margin would look like because, basically, FCF just focuses on cash, and so there's less tricks to play with accrued receivables and and and offsetting your liabilities and what have you. And so, like, that that is the roughly Yeah. Rough thing. And... But also this... The re... The reason people have adjusted revenue and adjusted profit is because of nuances in the running the business like this. Right? Like, GAP, which is the official generally accounted... Accepted accounting principles that you have to report, doesn't doesn't regard how you want to run the business and split out investment. It doesn't have investment decisions versus, like, sort of profitability of of core business decisions, but, it all gets smushed into these decisions. Right? It's like... So, basically, what what I'm trying to sort of guide people towards, if you do see a change in this margin profile, it is a conscious choice. Yeah. And, actually, you should probably split it out further between what is actually the core business and, you know, is that actually inflecting Mhmm. Or is this more investment, therefore, the FCF went down?
00:21:58 · Jamin Ball, Shawn Wang
[00:21:58] S0: Yeah. And look, at the end of the day, cash is king. And your measure of profitability should be, is your cash balance going up or is your cash balance going down? Now, if you wanted to poke holes at this, reality of GAAP accounting is there's two forms of... Well, very broadly, there's two forms of expense. There's the cash and the salary that you pay people, and then there's also the [00:22:18] S1: equity. Stock based. [00:22:19] S0: And then the non cash that you pay people. So non cash stock based compensation, equity compensation, that doesn't show up in free cash flow. It's actually added back because it's a non cash expense. So there are a lot of people who look at the free cash flow metric and say, well, it actually overstates your profitability because the reality is if you didn't grant equity to your hires, they wouldn't join you. And so it is a real expense. Treat it as a real expense. I don't have a chart for this, but if you were to adjust free cash flow [00:22:47] S1: It's still profitable. [00:22:47] S0: Stock based comp, you're still at an 8% Yeah. Free cash flow excluding stock based comp. And so you're you're even profitable if you include the big By normal [00:22:56] S1: rules. Yes. [00:22:56] S0: Yeah. Exactly. [00:22:57] S1: And so, like, if you've never seen a software IPO, this never happens. [00:23:00] S0: Yeah. It's very rare. I mean, I think there are there are a lot of software companies that are free cash flow positive today. [00:23:06] S1: Yeah. [00:23:06] S0: But if you factor Not at IPO. Never. Not at IPO.
00:23:06 · Jamin Ball, Shawn Wang
[00:23:06] S0: But if you factor Not at IPO. Never. Not at IPO. [00:23:09] S1: Never at IPO. [00:23:10] S0: But but even today, the mature ones, even if you factor in stock based comp, most of them are free cash flow neutral or negative if you treat stock based comp as a cash expense. [00:23:19] S1: So all those companies are dying and everyone's just buying Anthropic, right, as the company? [00:23:23] S0: I think there's a... Well, you're not quite that, but certainly [00:23:27] S1: Why would you? Like, anything else.
00:23:27 · Shawn Wang, Jamin Ball
[00:23:27] S1: Why would you? Like, anything else. [00:23:28] S0: Yeah. I mean, look, here's a crazy stat. In the s one, it's like a breadth versus depth one. They called out 50% of the Fortune five hundred is using Anthropic. Yep. However, if you look at what that cohort, the Fortune five hundred, is spending on Anthropic as a percent of their expenses, it's point 1%. And so you ask yourself, where's that headed? I think John Collison on... He had Sam Altman on his podcast the other day. I think he mentioned 1% of Stripe's expenses are on tokens today, but he expects that to go to 15 to 20% Jesus. Over the next few years. Jesus. And so, obviously, Stripe is a very forward leaning tech company. Your average business in the Fortune 500 isn't gonna show that level, but it could show a same order of... Or a same magnitude of growth. So if Stripe is saying we're going to 15 to 20 x the spend on tokens relative to other expenses in the org, maybe you see something similar in the Fortune one five hundred go from point 1% to 1%. But I do think it's, you know, ultimately, where do you think that settles out? How deep can they penetrate their TAM? It's kind of like an important question that, you know, folks should think about. But to me at least, what it demonstrates is they really haven't... Despite... I mean, despite the insane ramp in revenue, you know, growing over a thousand percent year over year in the q two quarter, there's probably still a lot of room left for them to kinda continue to penetrate their TAM.
00:24:57 · Shawn Wang, Jamin Ball
[00:24:57] S1: Yeah. And, you know, I think the the word is virtual collaborators. Yeah. You know, I I say agents, but Right. You you make it a friendly term for people. And, you know, I really start to tell people, you should just start thinking about it in terms of, like, what your employee spend versus your workers spend is. [00:25:12] S0: Mhmm. [00:25:12] S1: Mhmm. And most people are at, let's call it, 0.1 or Yeah. Zero point... Or, like, one to 5%. Yep. The median AI company is at 50%. Mhmm. And the top AI companies... You know, let's say ninetieth percent of telanthropic person is, 10 x token Yeah. Tokens of salaries. Yep. And so that is probably the right comp of, like, well, what are you spending on humans? Yeah. Right. And like, probably 30%. Right? Yeah. Like Yeah. And well... Okay. [00:25:38] S0: So Could be more even. I mean, yeah, humans could be like four... You know, total headcount could even [00:25:42] S1: be like 40% the day. Right? Yeah. Exactly. And so, like, if you're a physical business, fine. That's like, until we have good robots, then that's not that's not getting happening. But what are you spending on knowledge worker humans? What is... And and knowledge worker humans that includes coders, but also just admin and ops and what have you and and and legal and whatever you want Yeah. And all of that. And some part... Like, that percentage... The the ratio of tokens spend to human spend was zero to whatever Yep. And now it's gonna rise. Yeah. And how far can it go?
00:25:42 · Shawn Wang, Jamin Ball
[00:25:42] S1: be like 40% the day. Right? Yeah. Exactly. And so, like, if you're a physical business, fine. That's like, until we have good robots, then that's not that's not getting happening. But what are you spending on knowledge worker humans? What is... And and knowledge worker humans that includes coders, but also just admin and ops and what have you and and and legal and whatever you want Yeah. And all of that. And some part... Like, that percentage... The the ratio of tokens spend to human spend was zero to whatever Yep. And now it's gonna rise. Yeah. And how far can it go? [00:26:10] S0: Yeah. Totally. Totally. It can go a lot. I mean, look. I I think there's there's a lot of, like, hyperbolic statements being made both positive and negative about OpenAI, Anthropic, the big labs. I think it really boils down to three main questions. Can Anthropic stay on the frontier? Is there a business and a durable business to be built at the frontier? And if so, how much is it gonna cost? And and and and then in reality, two and three kind of, like, relate to each other. Can it make enough money to cover all the costs to be at the frontier? And that's that's the one where... I think I actually have a couple. I think I [00:26:48] S1: have one chart on this.