Articles mentioned in this episode:

You can follow Brian Barrett on Bluesky at @brbarrett and Zoë Schiffer on Bluesky at @zoeschiffer. Write to us at [email protected].

How to Listen

You can always listen to this week’s podcast through the audio player on this page, but if you want to subscribe for free to get every episode, here’s how:

If you’re on an iPhone or iPad, open the app called Podcasts, or just tap this link. You can also download an app like Overcast or Pocket Casts and search for “uncanny valley.” We’re on Spotify too.

Transcript

Note: This is an automated transcript, which may contain errors.

Zoë Schiffer: Brian, hello. Very exciting to have another way to talk to you when I’m not pinging you on Slack every five seconds.

Brian Barrett: It’s great, because Slack doesn’t have the voice part.

Zoë Schiffer: It doesn’t.

Brian Barrett: I will say: very sad that Leah won’t be a part of that journey today.

Zoë Schiffer: I know. It is really sad, but when the Leah’s away, the mice will play, and we will be talking about topics that Leah hates, so just wait.

Brian Barrett: And to be clear, she’ll be back next week. She’s just sick.

Zoë Schiffer: Yeah.

Brian Barrett: It’s allergy season.

Zoë Schiffer: Welcome to WIRED’s Uncanny Valley. I’m Zoë Schiffer, WIRED’s director of business and industry.

Brian Barrett: I’m Brian Barrett, executive editor.

Zoë Schiffer: This week on the show, we’re diving into Nvidia’s annual developer conference, why some Tesla influencers are fleeing the brand, and why Meta has finally shut down Horizon Worlds on Meta Quest. So to start us off, this week, Nvidia had its annual developer conference in San Jose. This is the big event in the AI industry. Some people even call it the Super Bowl of AI. Developers go, CEOs, researchers, WIRED reporters—and we’re all waiting to hear what CEO Jensen Huang is going to tell us about the future of the company.

Brian Barrett: One thing that’s interesting about the Nvidia conference too, is I feel like so much of it is business facing. It’s not a lot of stuff that you, as an AI consumer or someone who plays around with Claude, wouldn’t necessarily connect with. One thing, with a grain of salt, because this is someone who stands to make this money, but Jensen did say the revenue opportunity for artificial intelligence chips just at Nvidia might reach at least a trillion dollars through 2027.

Zoë Schiffer: Pocket change.

Brian Barrett: Pocket change, I mean, really, for Nvidia at this point. One thing that was really interesting: He introduced a new product. I always like when there’s an actual product tied to this rather than the promise of a product. A while ago, Nvidia struck a licensing deal with a company called Groq, not to be confused with the occasionally—