Down Round
Down Round
Playlist by Down RoundThe number one podcast about tech business and culture, from James "JR" Hennessy and Raph Dixon.266 clip(s) in playlist
Everything is Sportsbet Now
This week we're going deep on the rise of prediction markets — the hybrid of futures trading, sports gambling, and economic theology that suddenly seems to have eaten the world. Platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi are booming and an increasingly big part of both tech culture and also gambling cult…
51:24
The Slop Farms of X
This week, we open with the final chapter of Frank, the student finance startup that sold JP Morgan a fake email list. Founder Charlie Javice is in prison for fraud, but the bank is still footing a $115 million legal bill that includes everything from luxury hotels to cellulite butter. Then we mov…
37:08
It's Just Autocomplete
This week we unpack a growing split inside the AI world, centred on Yann LeCun — Meta’s AI pioneer who thinks LLMs are a dead end. Reports suggest he’s preparing to walk, after being quietly sidelined under Meta’s “superintelligence” push and made subordinate to a 28-year-old ex-data-labelling kin…
36:45
Apple’s Passive Income Era
Down Round hasn't checked in on Cupertino in a little while. This week, we take stock of Apple’s strange position in the AI boom — not really innovating very much, but quietly raking in billions as everyone else builds data centres. From Siri’s long road to Gemini, to the cult of thinness and the…
54:46
Data Centres 101
We realised that we've been talking a lot about data centres but have gotten pretty pointy headed about it, without bringing our beautiful listeners along for the ride. We apologise. This episode is us pumping the brakes, going back to first principles and explaining the current data centre situat…
49:37
Spotify for Sickos
Today's episode is on the back of a curious report from The Information that Suno, the AI music generation app, now brings in $150 million in annual recurring revenue. That's not Meta level, but it's not bad either. It opens up a discussion of how the world of AI generated content is progressing, …
52:34
Atlas Shrugged
As was long predicted, OpenAI has released a browser: ChatGPT Atlas. It's a pretty clear attempt to attack Google's $100B search moat and establish a new surface for all the stuff OpenAI wants to do with agentic AI, personal assistants and all the rest of it. But is it any good? We find out. Also,…
41:41
Getting Steamy
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman made an interesting little announcement this week: the company has mitigated mental health concerns on its platform... and it's ready to let its users generate erotica. Now that might seem a little strange to you. Most of the internet had a similar response, actually. In this…
52:26
Investigating The Mumgorithm (feat. Humyara Mahbub)
This week, Down Round is diving into the world of parenting and technology — everything from the various devices and gizmos targeted at parents, through to the algorithm that swamps your feed the moment you become a new parent. Joining us to help us understand the deep mysteries of the mumgorithm…
52:00
Vibes Off
Vibes are up this week. Alexandr Wang, the former Scale AI CEO who now runs Meta's new multi-billion dollar Superintelligence unit, has announced one of their first products: What if TikTok but only AI slop? Vibes is a feed full of AI videos. That sounds like an idiotic thing to put the greatest…
43:53