Continental Breakfast
Continental Breakfast
What a time to be live. The main thing happening today is an OpenAI employee allegedly planting a listening device in one of their offices, but the real news is Elon and Zuck’s thoughts on our pint chart. Here's your Order of Play, plus the full leader board drama.
12:05 PM - John Kerry, ex-Secretary of State & Co-Exec Chair at Galvanize Climate Solutions
1:15 PM - Jeremy Fraenkel, Co-Founder & CEO at Fundamental
1:30 PM - Tom Shea, Co-Founder & CEO at OneStream Software
2:00 PM - Ravi Subramanian, Chief Product Management Officer at Synopsys
2:30 PM - Rutger Bregman, Historian, Author & Co-Founder at The School for Moral Ambition
What’s Happening Today
OpenAI has caught an employee allegedly planting a listening device in one of its offices.
The device was discovered on September 30, hidden in a USB port behind a television in a San Francisco conference room. It had advanced encryption, audio monitoring and a mechanism to transfer data without being detected. Prosecutors say the employee planned to plant more devices in sensitive areas to secretly record meetings.
Abdulrahman Alfozan, an engineer who joined OpenAI’s product team last July, was arrested by the FBI on October 9th and charged with intercepting oral communications. He faces up to five years in prison if convicted.
OpenAI says it used its own AI models to analyse the device’s stored data and trace changes to it. The company says it has no indication that the employee accessed model weights, source code or customer data. FBI director Kash Patel said the alleged scheme was aimed at capturing sensitive communications about OpenAI’s superintelligence technology.
The case adds to growing concerns about the security of the closely guarded models and research being developed inside the world’s leading AI labs.
We’re getting into all of it in today’s show at 12 BST.
The Cheeky Pint Benchmark
Yesterday we published the most important benchmark in AI. Monty watched every episode of Cheeky Pint, John Collison's podcast, and counted how many pints each guest drank.
Then the guests arrived to defend their pint counts. Elon wrote "Funny thing is that I hardly ever drink alcohol!" ( Elon ). Mark Zuckerberg, a day after launching Muse Wonder, said "I'm confident we can reach the frontier here too" ( Zuck ), though his reaction after one sip potentially suggests otherwise. Shopify's Tobi Lütke told us Monty had missed his second pint, which "would have insulted my german heritage" ( Tobi ). Kalshi's Luana Lopes Lara called the whole thing rigged because her Brazilian beers didn't count ( Luana ).
Congrats to Monty who has officially taken over X!
etn. Insight
A semester abroad at Stanford or MIT could be worth an extra $2 million in your first funding round. Chris Meerman, founding partner at Cherry Ventures, came on the show to explain why US-educated founders raise significantly more than their European-educated peers, even when building companies in Europe.
“US-educated founders raise a median first round of $3.5 million in Europe. Europe-educated founders raise $1.5 million, regardless of the degree level.” And you don't even need to spend your whole degree in the US. “They could have been there for a year in Stanford or MIT.” As Meerman puts it, “a semester abroad kind of gives you double the funding round.” The advantage, he says, comes down to having “a very strong network,” better access to international investors, and the perception that you can attract better talent.
Watch the full clip below.
Continental Breakfast
FBI Arrests OpenAI Employee After Planting Bug
