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Hello and welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of corporate espionage. I'm your friend David Pierce and today on the show we have to talk about Jensen Wong. So Jensen Wong, the CEO of Nvidia, news has come out over the last few days. He was in a relationship with a woman named Alice Wong who was both a business partner of Nvidia and also maybe a spy for the Chinese government. There are a lot of moving parts to this story. Jensen Wong has cpped to the relationship and parts of the business dealings, but says there are no national security things. There's some evidence that the government knew about this for a long time. Marco Rubio is involved. We have an awful lot to talk
about and we're just going to try to figure out what's going on here and what it means for Nvidia, for Jensen Wong, for AI as a whole. Pure chaos, my friends. And when there is pure chaos, there is only one person we turn to, and that is the Verge Liz Lato. Let's get into it. Liz Lato, welcome back to the Vergecast. Thanks, David. It's good to see you. You've written some about this over the last couple days. You've been reading about it and talking to people about it. I think we should start with Alice Wong, who is kind of the new character in this story for a lot of people. What do
we know about who Alice Wong is? Well, she's a former TV reporter. So, like, first of all, nice work finding a job after journalism. Like, that's something that we're all thinking about, I think, as like the industry is kind of circling the drain right now. Uh but so this her way out of journalism was uh she became an executive at something called Megaste which um I'm not sure how closely you've been like looking into Mega Speed. Not very Liz I got to be honest with you. Mega Speed. Mega Speed I tracked. You wrote about something very sort of off-handedly about Mega Speed a while ago and I clocked that as like this sounds like the company founded by a
villain in a Pixar movie and then just sort of moved on. And that's that's about all I know about Mega Speed. So I've been um reading a couple of Singaporean newspapers because there's they have offices in Singapore. Um, and it kind of feels like it might just be like a P.O. box. Um, interesting. So, it's like it's it's, you know, like if you look at like anything about the company, like the reporting we have here in the US is like they're like, well, you know, they have contracts with Alibaba and then they have some ties to like the Chinese defense department and then you look at the Singaporean newspapers and like we can't find the executives.
Not great. What is this company ostensibly about? Like what would Megaspe tell you it is? Theoretically, it's a NeoCloud. So, it's like Coreweee, but it's business model is that it's got these data centers all over Southeast Asia and it they filled with uh Nvidia chips, like billions of dollars of Nvidia chips and then they rent that out. And the reason this is useful to certain companies is because there are import restrictions on those Nvidia chips uh to China and Alibaba obviously is like a major Chinese company. So if they're renting space to Alibaba, they're this is like a way to circumvent the chip ban.
Okay. So tell me what we know at this point about Alice Wong's relationship with Jensen Wong. And I just want to say the one of the funniest things about this is that every time anyone writes about these two, they have to write the parenthetical, no relation, which just the fact that they have the same last name is just endlessly hilarious to me from just a pure like how to cover this story situation. But what do we know about how the two of them became intertwined? I mean, I every time I write no relation, I think about like for those of you who've read David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, uh John Wayne, no relation. Uh, so I that's what I think about every time. Um, but
these two I guess they met theoretically when uh there was some sort of negotiation about these chips because they started being seen in public together around the time of the first chip purchase from Mega Speed. Was it in 2024 when Mega Speed made that first deal? And Mega Speed at this point has bought what almost $5 billion worth of Nvidia chips. That's right. It's like nothing to sneeze at. Uh yeah, these are big these are large deals like abs and all the other stuff. That's just the idea of Nvidia selling5 billion worth of chips to a company that doesn't seem to have a lot of footprint whose executive is a former TV journalist. There's just a lot of things
about this that even before you get to the affair and spy of it all is weird. Right. I listen personally I think one should not um have sexual relationships with people who are your business partners but like life happens so if you do that I think to be fair a lot of Silicon Valley would disagree with that assessment that's one of the many reason it's like one of the many reasons that I am not employed there um but you know like I just I really think that like in terms of like maintaining comfortable business relationships like not sleeping with people that you do business with seems like seems like good practice, but if you must like life happens, we're human.
Um, it does also seem like good practice to maybe disclose that and recuse yourself from the relationship. And obviously, that did not happen. instead we have all of these like couple photos and like the business deals simultaneously which like again Silicon Valley for those of you who are paying attention anybody who might be listening who lives there like I don't know how to put this um so I'm just going to be blunt about it um none of us are that hot okay like if you meet a really good-looking woman and she thinks you're really fascinating I think maybe you should like just like look, I know it's exciting. Like it's exciting when you meet someone who hot who's into you.
Absolutely. But you might just want to think about for a minute, you know, why is this person interested in me? Because like, you know, maybe in the case of like Jensen Huang, he was like, "Oh, it's my money. It's my power." Right? Like I don't think people are like dating Eric Schmidt because he's like gorgeous. Um just being real about it. Uh money does make you hot, Liz. Like this is just a fact of the world. Money does make you hot. Well, I kind of think it's the reverse, right? Where money means that you don't have to be hot. Like money is like money like lets you get out of the rat race of attractiveness.
Yes. Uh so but so you know like you might say, "Oh, it's money." But like you might just think one more beat and be like, is this person asking me a lot of questions about certain kinds of relationships that I have? And do I want to answer those questions? Because the answer is probably no. Yeah, you have to imagine this was very business focused pillow talk in a lot of cases. But to that point, actually, I am curious how you would characterize what somebody in Alice Wong's position might want from Jensen Wong because I think there are actually a bunch of possibilities. Uh maybe it might be several things out of all these possibilities, but can you just run through a couple of the things
that if you're in Alice Wong's position, we should say she is an alleged spy that we have not proven. Nobody's been convicted of anything. the Chinese government has viciferously denied it, which of course it would, but there is an awful lot of smoke suggesting that she is a Chinese spy. If indeed she was, what do you think she wants from Jensen Wong? Oh, there's so much she can get out of him, especially because he's so close to the Trump administration. So, like the obvious and easy thing is like knowing his schedule, knowing when he's meeting with Trump, getting a sense of what they're talking about. Like again, this is the sort of thing that like it's pillow talk, right? Like, oh babe, I'm so stressed. I'm going to be meeting with the president and he's
losing his mind and I don't know if he remembers that like I need him to like do the import restriction thing, you know, like the normal pillow talk we all have. So like that's what that's like the obvious one, right? Like that's just like you're you're way into the knowing what the administration is doing via this guy who's very close to it. Thing one. So thing two is that Jensen has an unusual corporate structure going on where he has 60 direct reports. And for all of you who manage people, um I'm just going to give you a second. Yeah, I'm going to give you a second to like put your head around that. 60. That's like that's just not real. That's not how that works. So
basically there's no part of the company that he doesn't touch. And this has always been um I think put forward as a selling point of Nvidia that you're like channeling this guy's brilliance, right? It also means that he has access into everything and like CEOs have a lot of access for sure, but usually um because of the way that delegating works, uh there's plausible deniability in places that they don't go and things that they don't touch. Mhm. Um, so you can say, "Oh, well, this part of the company wasn't really involved. We shouldn't worry about this." Like, you know, there's no none of that here.
Like, this is the whole company is potentially compromised. And so, like you think about the Binance hack, right? And there like it one of the things that involves a compromised laptop. So, again, imagine that you are on a business trip and you're meeting your fair partner and you probably have a laptop with you. At some point you are going to take a shower. Maybe not with her. That's a compromised laptop right there. Yep. This really is like every Netflix spy movie. It all applies like every plausible thing that happens in one of these shows and there are millions of them are just down the middle of this particular set of interactions.
I have been reading that this like this is just like this is for me because I love John Lake. This is like comedy John Lee. Like this is like the first time the Cold War tragedy this time. Farce. Yes. Um Okay. So I both of those sound right to me. Only one other one I want to throw in which you touched on a little bit in your piece and I'm curious to hear about is uh Nvidia selling chips to China which like you mentioned at the beginning we have pretty aggressive export controls on that in the US that state that Nvidia is actually not allowed to sell its best chips to China. Jensen Wong has been on kind of a war path to loosen those restrictions for some time. My question
for you here is how much do you think a relationship like this could affect those things? Because on the one hand, Nvidia has every economic incentive anyway to just try to sell more chips in China. They just want to sell more chips. I think it has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that everybody's only interesting more chips and they actually don't give a damn about much of anything else. Alice Wong, even if again, if we go back to the I would say increasingly far-fetched idea that Mega Speed is a real company full of real people doing real work, um they would also want Nvidia to sell chips to China. So, is that the China's access to chips seems like either like the main
most important thing going on here or a total sideshow? And I can't decide which one it is. Well, let's let's let's pause for a minute and think about Mega Speed's business model. Like again, imagine it's a real company. Um, its whole business is predicated on the export controls remaining in place because all of its data centers are outside China. Right? If China can get the chips, Mega Speed doesn't need to exist anymore, right? Or it has to go build very expensive data centers in China, right? Like Sure. Uh because like not to like I'm sure our audience knows this, but often being closer to a data center means faster uh speeds on the things you're trying to do. So, you know, that would be an improvement. It would be mega speed, if you will.
Um or even if you won't. And so uh you know if this is a real company like theoretically the export controls are working for them. Um I will say like again Nvidia does not like this. There's good reason why they don't like this. The reason is that they would like to sell more chips. Um, what I think is interesting here is like there have been over the years, if you've been paying close attention, these occasional news reports where it's like, wow, Nvidia is not like checking up super closely on this chip sale. It seems like this company is kind of a P.O. box, right? Like this is this has happened a couple of times and it's like, ah, I see. So Nvidia is not that worried about selling chips to China as
long as they have plausible deniability, right? Which is I'm sure what they thought was going on here, right? Like again, Mega Speed's business model does in so far as it is a business does look like it's like ah rent chips to Chinese companies. So I am interested in this particular piece of it because obviously China wants the chips, obviously Nvidia wants to sell the chips. Um, but also there is like Chinese chip competition. It's not like, you know, serious competition yet, but again going back to like the idea that you might have a compromised laptop. Let's say that you are a Chinese company that is trying to catch up to Nvidia.
Would it be helpful to have some of Nvidia's chip designs to do that? I'm going to say yes on that point. Probably yes. I mean, like, you know, obviously it's it's difficult to make chips. you would need to like have like fabrication facilities that could do things with those designs. Like I'm not it's not like uh oh we get the designs and we're home free problem. But that doesn't it doesn't hurt to have the design for these chips that are banned. Yeah. I mean it seems like you you can sort of see the long-term bet there, right? That like and this is what China did with manufacturing, right? The book Apple in China paints this story exactly, right? that you get the manufacturing there, they start making the things there and
what you do is you essentially teach the industry how to make these things and build the infrastructure for them to make them. They're able to get more access to the systems, more access to the designs and all of a sudden Chinese culture is works in such a way that all of that stuff is just going to get spread far outside the confines of a company like Apple, which if you're a company like Nvidia, you would think would be a thing you would not want to have happen. Of course, you want to sell chips to China. You want to sell as many chips as possible. But the idea of giving some of the trade secrets and knowledge and manufacturing capabilities to someone outside of your own purview
seems problematic. And so that's where like maybe the being a spy is more useful than just being a very good business partner. That there are there are certainly lines Jensen Wong is too smart not to want to cross on even on that front in his job to sell chips in China. That's right. And like one of the things that I think is true is that like Silicon Valley is very paranoid about stuff leaking. Yes. Um and typically when we talk about that, we're talking about to us. Like they're they're paranoid about stuff leaking to us. Um you know, because that might screw up their marketing or whatever, right? Like they have a launch
planned, they have this whole thing and if we get it early, that screws it up. Um we are the best case scenario of stuff leaking. Okay. Like we're we're we're the good guys here. Um because there is this sort of persistent rumor out here as I of course live in Oakland. Um and I don't know how true it is and I don't know how you would verify it, but there is this persistent rumor that this whole area is covered in spies and people who are looking to acquire trade secrets. And it's one of the reasons why these companies are so paranoid because they don't want, you know, uh, Chinese spies or whatever other spies may be interested in their technology to get a hold of this IP. And so again, it is another reason why
if you are talking to somebody who seems like they're kind of out of your league and they're really interested in what you have to say, you need to pause and think, am I that hot? Am I that interesting? Because the answer is probably no. It's honestly surprisingly good life advice across all walks of life. Uh yeah, it's good. This is my wife is utterly uninterested in what I do for a living and that's how I know I have a successful marriage. It's great. Support for the show comes from AWS AI. AWS AI is powering transformation across the world's leading organizations, moving AI from possibility to production at scale. Like how AWS AI helps Formula 1 turn race day data into real-time insights that bring
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free today at framer.com/verge for 30% off a framer pro annual plan. That's framer.com/verge. Rules and restrictions may apply. Two more things I want to mostly talk about what you think happens next, but first I want to talk about Nvidia's immediate response to this because this is just one of the great PR cell phones like maybe of all time over the course of the last 48 hours. Uh can you just take me through the way Nvidia as a company has responded to this story over the last couple of days? Well, so I'm just gonna I'm actually going to back us up a little further because Nvidia this story has been like
these rumors have been circulating for a while. The New York Times has been reporting on this for at least a month. Um, yeah, there was a time story a few weeks ago. I remember we were talking about it in Slack because it was it pointed at Alice Wong and it pointed at her relations with someone in some US citizen and it was like slightly unclear what was going on but pointed at something big is happening here and I remember we were talking about it in Slack kind of like what do we do with this story? It's a bunch of good reporters doing obviously good reporting who do not generally screw around. This is a big story. They've clearly but there's like there's some tie here that has not yet been tied and it was Jensen Wong.
It was a journalistic blind item if you will, you know. Yes, very much so. Um so, okay. So, Nvidia's like sort of first response is this is not an unusual relationship. Like we have relationships like this with a lot of our customers, which I then came back to after Jetson Hog uh disclosed his affair. So, I'd like to know who else he's [__] Like, who else? Who else if this is not an unusual relationship? Like, who else? This is how we do business. I mean, can we get the list? Like, I just want like I both because I'm nosy and also because this is a m matter now of national security. Like, who else is invol like who is he involved with? It's um
you know, one of the least discussed downsides of having an open relationship or cheating on your significant other is the possibility that you could be passing state secrets to uh people, but it is in fact in this case like it is a thing that has attained. Um so yeah, like I should be on a that should be a hinge profile thing that people have to fill out when they go on dating apps. Do you have any national security problems? So, you know, uh that for me was like just a genuinely incredible statement that I came back to like this is not an unusual relationship. Like it's not okay. Like do we need to hear about the rest of
them? Like is are they all Americans? Like are they who are the other like you know and like I'm sure John Rizzo, who's the guy who's been giving these statements, is having like a tough day because like generally PR people do not enjoy lying. um they don't want to do it. They know it kills their credibility. It's got their name attached. It's one of the reasons we put their name on their work. Um so we can come back and be like, "This specific person lied to us." Um so he's probably not having a great time because my guess is that he did not know about this. Um, but I'm only guessing because Wired reported something really interesting, which was that, um, last year, uh, Jensen looked into a PR firm that specializes in sex scandals.
And this was also right about the time that we think the government was starting to become aware of something going on here, right? This has been floating around in circles of people who know things for some time here. Given the sheer volume of photos, I'm guessing that there were a lot of people who knew about this at that point. You know what I'm saying? Like they're just the more photos just keep popping up and they're all public. So, a God only knows what was going on in private, you know, or like if you've gone to dinner with these people and you notice that they're like, you know, love birds and they're like canoodling a little, like I think a lot of people
knew about this. Like I think a lot of people saw this. Yeah. So, the state of things right now is the investigation is ongoing. Jensen Wong is still the CEO of Nvidia throughout it all. Uh Nvidia's new statement is that yes, all of this happened, but no national security or Nvidia secrets were compromised. That's their direct quote. I would say one, do we have any reason at all to believe that is true or even that Nvidia knows whether that's true? And two, what do you think happens to Jensen here? It seems to me that the odds of Jensen Wong not being the CEO of Nvidia at the end
of this are very low, but maybe not zero. What do you think? How the [__] do you know that Nvidia? Like, how do you know? You don't like 36 hours ago it was a normal business relationship, right? Which is one of the reasons why you want to be very careful what you tell your PR people to lie about because like because that credibility is now shot as I'm sure John Rizzo has told somebody at the top of his lungs recently. That's thing one is like I don't think Nvidia has any reason to know this. Um, and if Nvidia does have reason to know this and they have checked this and they have already sort of checked their IT systems.
there's then a question of like how many shareholders are going to sue them for withholding this important information because uh this does seem like the sort of thing that rises to the level of securities fraud and like I'll grant like Matt Lavine will tell you um Bloomberg colonist we're all fan here uh will tell you that everything is securities fraud but this is something that is like particularly serious like this is like potentially you know something that ruins uh relationships with the government. It's something that potentially ruins Nvidia's like um public profile. In fact, arguably it already has. So, like if Nvidia knew um and didn't disclose that to their shareholders, like that's a lawsuit and that's an expensive lawsuit. So, that's
like one of the things to keep in mind here. Um, the thing is I feel like the other thing that I've been thinking about as I've been like looking at that statement is that it feels like the outcome of their investigation has now been like pre-ordained. Like they've told us that they are not going to be investigating it that closely. Yeah. What's to investigate if you already know that no secrets were compromised and everyone actually has acknowledged that the affair existed? What is to investigate? Right. Um, so the fact that it's a an internal investigation at this point should be raising some people's eyebrows. Like I think they've contracted someone to do it, but still like I'm going to wait until I hear from
the national security uh apparatus to make my judgment about whether or not anything got passed to the Chinese through this relationship because Nvidia at this point like they're they want to clear Jensen because they can't get rid of him. like his the company is like based on him. This is like the keyman problem. You think he is just like too big to fail essentially. I mean that has been what has been coming out of Silicon Valley for the last like couple of days is like all of these guys are like well it's a real shame he cheated on his wife like that. very sad, very embarrassing, but you
know, he's so key to this whole AI thing that I think we should just forgive him and move on. And it's like I wish it weren't my business that he was cheating on his wife. I would rather not know these things. Yeah. But uh if your whole deal is that this man is so key to the AI buildout that you can't get rid of him uh and he is potentially compromised by a different nation state, you're in trouble. Like you're in very real trouble. And I don't know that this is like something that has really like put gone through these guys' heads because again we don't know what if anything was compromised. But also like boys, those are your emails that we're talking about.
Yeah. Like those are your texts on his phone. Like you are potentially very much also in trouble because this important key figure in our AI buildout is compromised. Like this is a huge deal. Well, and to that point, I'm like you've spent a lot of time over the last year or so sort of painting the picture of all of the ways in which Nvidia, not only is it the center of the AI economy, but in many ways is the AI economy. Like there's just a lot of money circling around and most of it in some way or another is Nvidia's money. So, I think that a lot of people have looked at this over the last 48 hours and the people who aren't saying, you know, we have to forgive him and move on, which I think if you uh if you make the list of who those people
are and who has a lot of money invested in AI, those lists are going to look very similar. The flip side is a lot of people saying, well, this is how the bubble pops. The minute Nvidia becomes anything other than completely unstoppable and impenetrable, this all falls apart because the house of cards is just Nvidia. Do you buy that? Is that is there a real outcome here that this all just kind of unravels around Jensen Wong? Yeah. I mean, you only need a prick to pop a bubble. You've been sitting on that one, haven't you? Be honest. I have. Yeah.
You've been waiting for that one. We're going to run that as the title of this episode. Yeah. Well, listen, I listen. I feel I should be complimented for my restraint because I didn't do that one immediately. I'm psyched that it took you this long to get here. I'm very proud of you. But like yeah that's the thing is like Nvidia is so central to this buildout and so central to Neoclouds. Um it is like take Cororeweave our personal favorite. Um Cororeweave Nvidia is an investor at the time of the IPO. I think it was their second largest customer. Um and they Nvidia helped support the IPO itself when it was in danger of failing.
Right. Uh so you know like I think of Cororeweave as essentially being like an Nvidia client state and so the moment like in Cororeweave by the way you know they have these crazy loans on their chips which have a lot of you know interest they're they're expensive loans and let's say the interest rates go up and now I know the interest rates going up is like a not like the sexiest thing on earth but like it may very well happen. Um it's one of the ways that you curb inflation. Uh so the Fed ratchets up the interest rates and the loans um that Cororeweave has uh they also become more expensive which means they're spending even more money paying these loans off um which makes it even more difficult for them to
get out of the hole. Um and as I think we have demonstrated they are already in a place where they're not like quite making enough profit to dig themselves out. The only way that they can keep going is more debt. So, one of the reasons why I have not been like, "Oh, Cororey is doomed and here's the date is because up until this point I've been like, well, Nvidia can bail them out." Like, if things go wrong, Nvidia just infuses cash and then Cororeweave sort of like slaps the band-aid on the hole and keeps going. But if Nvidia is in trouble, and it may be in trouble, it's probably not in a position to prop up these companies in the way that it's been doing, right? And this ecosystem is so interconnected.
It's so tightly connected. All of these people have deals with each other that I worry that if one of these companies falls, a lot of the other ones go with them. Now, I'm not talking about like Amazon and Google and Meta. Like, those companies are probably fine. Like, they have other sources of income, but, you know, I worry about all of the Neoclouds. I'm not sure that's a great business model. I'm a little worried about Oracle because it has basically pivoted to being a Neocloud. And even though it has other lines of business, it also has taken on really an incredible debt load. So things maybe don't look so hot for Oracle. Um, and then I just, you know, I wonder what that means for the frontier companies
because there's they're also renting this the space. And my guess is maybe nothing because you imagine the banks repossess the chips and like but they keep the data centers running, right? It's just like there's a change of control basically of who runs the data centers. They change the locks on the data centers. Corweed can't get in anymore. They auction it off to the highest bidder who is probably somebody picking it up for chump change, you know. Um, so maybe nothing. Maybe this is nothing. But also maybe there's a business disruption because when you have that change of control, you maybe have a change of employees. You maybe have things that go wrong. Maybe there
are like interruptions to service. Hard to know. Um, so yeah, I think that things just got more unstable. And I think the fact that Jensen Hang is so key to Nvidia and Nvidia is so key to this ecosystem makes this a remarkably dangerous situation for anybody working in AI, which is why you have all of these executives out here like, well, who wouldn't [__] a Chinese spy? I mean, that's just how it is. Like, how are you supposed to say no to that? It's a good note to end on. Liz, thank you as always. Good to see you. Yeah, me, too. Support for the show comes from Firefox.
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tedious work to Claude. Try it on any paid plan at claude.ai/verge. That's claud.ai/verge. and check out Claude Pro which includes access to all the features mentioned in today's episode. claude.ai/verge. All right, before we go, we have one more thing and one more person. Jen Tui, hello. I'm back. You are once again in New York. This is just this is what you do now. I know. I live here now. I like you. You sent your kid to college in the fall and you're like screw this.
I'm going to New York every week. Uh you're here once again for more Amazon related shenanigans. Uh two, I would say pretty splashy new devices you got to see this week. Tell me about them. What did you see? Yeah, new is a stretch. Fair. They are reincarnated Amazon Ring devices. Um but they are quite splashy. So yes, finally Ring is shipping its all well is shipping its autonomous drone camera for your home. If people who have been following Ring for the last few years recall 2021 they announced the always home cam which was a drone camera that could navigate your home when you're away. And the idea here is it c a camera that can go places and see things in your home without you
having to have multiple cameras set up in order to see. They've announced the new version which is the Ring Drone Cam. So that is going to ship January 27th, 2027. Jamie Simoff looked me in the eye and said it's shipping January 27th. I've We've had this conversation before, I said. Uhhuh. Um and any idea why it took 5 years? Yes, they it's completely new. They've completely redone it. It's gonna It's still $250, which is a good price. That for right now. Yeah, for right now. And that is the their big that was his big selling point is that
we could have shipped this 5 years ago for $5,000. Um, but we had to put a lot of engineering effort into making this an affordable product. And the big change is they have shifted all of the technology out of the drone and into the cloud. So, they have a new um AI pilot cloud-based AI agent that flies the drone. So, all it needs is Wi-Fi and the ability to land on the actual device. There's no sensors or processors or anything on the actual device. It's tiny. I got my hands on it. Very, very light. Um, has a 2K camera and it can fly set paths in your home or it can respond to events. So, if you have like a leak sensor and the leak sensor triggers, it can fly to the leak sensor and show you whether it's your
toilet overflowing or your cat just knocked over their water bowl. Got it. Um, so that's the concept. I It's actually a concept I've always really liked because I've personally experienced left the house. Did I leave the stove on? I've left the house. I get an alert that the back door opened and I don't have cameras inside my house unless I'm testing things and I don't want them inside my house. This would then just pop up out of its little case, go to where the incident is, send you video, you see what's wrong, you know whether you need to react. When it's not flying, it's camera lens is covered, so there's no chance anyone's spying on you. Um, it's very loud, so it's also not going to creep up on you. Um, and
it's $250, which is a lot for a camera, but it's a lot cheaper than buying it's not a lot cheaper than buying six cameras because you can actually buy cameras for like 20 bucks now. But, you know, for sophisticated cameras that have AI capabilities. So, that's the new that's the big thing that they showed off and I was surprised that it that they had taken basically they basically threw out the old model. This is a completely new design. Um, so that they just said, you know, we got to the point where it was just too complicated. Every time we added a new sensor or new technology that the device got heavier and more expensive and so
they just started from scratch. Um, and then oh the one other thing is it only can fly for 5 minutes. So it can't go for very long. 5 to 8 minutes um is I like when it's not a very good gadget is actually part of the selling point of the device. This is good. Yeah. And it can fly upstairs. So, um, you know, it's got those it's got a lot of those robots beat. Um, is this the kind of thing you'd put in your home, David, or no? So, I'm with you in that the very basic theory of it makes a lot of sense, especially when it is a thing that exists only for when I'm not in the house. Um, I of course do not want a flying thing running around my house while I and my family are at home. Just not interested.
But for the leak sensor thing you described is a perfect example. I think I and a lot of people will be suspicious about the idea of this thing being entirely remotely controlled, which just feels worrisome in a way that a more local thing is less worrisome. Yeah. Uh that's that's a lot of access and a lot of trust to give to a machine, especially one that operates mostly when I'm not home, right? But I'm I'm willing to see this one through because I think there is something to the use case that will actually work for people. So, we should see. But that's one robot. What's the other robot? The other robot has wheels, so it can't go upstairs. And this is Astro.
This is Astro has been reincarnated. Astro's back. Welcome back, Astro. Yes. Although with no personality this time, which is rather sad. Um, it is the Ring Rover Cam. And this is basically the drone cam but on wheels. So, it's it's an Astro. It looks It's the same hardware. They admitted it's exactly the same hardware with a few tweaks and modifications. And it has a 4K periscope cam so it can do the same thing. Go pre-programmed routes around your home or if there's a trigger of some kind sensor that says there's some incident can go to that spot. It is $1,000. Um, and they did say this is not
really aimed at homes. It's more for small businesses, but you could put this in your home. Maybe it can travel up to 5,000 square feet. Um, so if you have a really big home. Um, but yeah, it's it's it's the same robot without any of the Alexa, which was what was in Astro. And then they've added a tower light that shines a light up on the ceiling. So if it if you wondering where your robot is, you can look up on the ceiling and it's it glows. It's like shooting a flare up to find you. Shooting a flare saying, "Here I am.
Come and see me." Oh, that's a but yeah, it has two-way talk, so you can be watching, you can talk to anyone that you know you encounter. Um, it also works with Ring's um virtual guard service that you may not be may not remember, but they launched this a few years back. So, where they have live agents that can actually check in on your property for you, but again, very much designed for businesses. But what this also runs on this AI pilot um agent in the cloud and this whole product launch was now also the time they announced a new brand Ring Robotics. And I did ask Jamie you know and Jamie Simonoff who's the head of Ring. Um I asked if this means you know are we working towards more robots in the home?
Are we potentially looking at a humanoid? I know there's been a lot of rumors and um interesting acquisitions by Amazon over the last few months that point towards perhaps their developing some type of um home robot uh to follow up from Astro. I think this move makes it clear that whatever's coming from Amazon is not going to be Astro related. Astro has been uh repurposed and has found a new life as a home security robot. But yeah, it's it's interesting. It's going to be really interesting to see what Amazon does in this space. I feel like uh Home Robot is probably the next big thing we're going to see from the company.
The next thing to ruin Jen's home life is going to be just a bunch of humanoid robots just bumbling around your kitchen. Yes. I cannot wait. This is going to be great. Uh all right. Well, once you get one of these things flying around your house, you're going to have to report back because I think this is going to be one people have a lot of questions about. So, we'll we'll have to talk about this. You said January, right? Interesting one. So, yeah, the uh drone cam is January 27th and the uh rover cam is December 19th, so next month.
Got it. Awesome. Jen, thanks for coming on. Good to see you. All right. Thanks. All right. That is it for the show. Thank you to Jen for being here. Thank you to Liz for being here. Thank you to Jensen Wong for what I assume is going to be a tremendous amount of very good content. If you have thoughts, questions, feelings, other spies you'd like us to talk about, you can always get at us. Vergecast.com is the email. 866 verge11 is the hotline. We love hearing from you about anything and everything. The best way to support everything we're up to here at The Verge is always to subscribe to The Verge.com/subscribe. It gets you all of
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