Travis Kalanick & Michael Dell Live from Austin, Texas

On a big news day, we finally got Travis out of stealth, and yes, I’ve been under NDA for years while he built in the shadows; welcome, TK.

Stealth meant thousands of employees with no company on LinkedIn, cover names in 30 countries, and a culture of quiet execution so sales and recruiting ran on hard mode.

Here’s the reveal: we’re renaming to Adams and building an atoms-based computer—manufacturing as CPU, real estate as storage, logistics as network—starting with a “food computer,” expanding into automated mining, and a wheelbase platform for specialized robots; we’re also closing the Pronto acquisition.

Does automation change where and how we mine, especially with deep, expensive deposits and site selection challenges?

Automation boosts output at existing mines and opens inhospitable or highly regulated sites by shrinking labor and safety burdens, so the so‑called rare resources become far more accessible.

In physical AI, land, chemistry, and manufacturing belong in the stack, and Tesla looks like the Google of this era—but there’s room to take your shot across many moving machines.

Who wins autonomy—Waymo, Tesla, or someone else?

Waymo is the proof but must scale manufacturing and urgency, Tesla’s vision‑only bet is insanely hard yet could click fast or take years, and most others haven’t shown breakout fundamentals yet.

Are voice‑driven vision‑language‑action systems ready to run robots like an Android for the physical world?

We’re close to that “wow” moment—language is a powerful compression tool, multi‑agent dialogue can flag risks efficiently, and smarter filtering will slash wasted compute in real‑time perception.

You moved to Austin; what pulled you and what’s next for building here?

I love Austin—water, work, and a builder vibe—while California got too weird, so I led the move and I’m setting up a team here; I may even jet‑ski to the office.

Can California be fixed, or is it time to leave?

Ballot initiatives beat performative politics, and restoring truth and justice—starting with prosecutors who actually enforce the law—is the immune system society needs.

On hardware, do humanoids win or do focused robots lead the way?

Humanoids are racing ahead, but we’re all‑in on gainfully employed, task‑specific robots—think reliable bagging in kitchens or ruggedized mining systems—where venture‑backed advances in manipulation and actuators can compound fast.

You pioneered capital as a weapon at Uber; same playbook now, and is Middle East capital tightening?

Capital only matters when it’s strategically decisive—like Uber’s early days—and while the Saudi market dip paused a planned listing, I’m optimistic the funding environment normalizes as the world stabilizes.

What do you want from U.S.–China trade, and what did you learn on the ground there?

China’s manufacturing base and hunger are world‑class—Shenzhen feels next‑level—so let’s compete fiercely without hostility, make skilled cross‑border work feasible, and keep the game fair and open.

Michael, welcome; you started Dell in a UT dorm with a thousand bucks—why does Texas work so well for builders?

Texas pairs low taxes with a pro‑growth, pro‑business climate, four of the nation’s largest cities, a deep talent well at UT, and an economy that’s outpaced much of the country.

Data centers are exploding here; what are you seeing with AI infrastructure and Dell’s business?

Texas has land and power, so AI campuses are rising fast, our AI server business scaled from roughly two to ten to twenty‑five to about fifty billion, and we’re deploying “AI factories” across thousands of enterprises and sovereign AI programs.

What ROI and timeline justify all this capex, even with accelerated depreciation?

We’re seeing twenty percent or better productivity gains when leaders re‑imagine processes top‑down, which drives speed above all—our infra unit grew seventy‑plus percent and we guided to even faster growth.

This cycle feels faster than PCs, the web, or mobile.

Adoption is five times quicker, yet only a small fraction of big companies have figured it out—technology isn’t the barrier, culture and courage are.

Cloud, edge, open source—what’s the right AI architecture?

It’s all of the above with inference near the data for cost and latency, a cloud rebalance once the bill hits, and a thriving open‑model ecosystem running from phones to embedded devices.

Are powerful desktops back as people keep data local and run their own models?

Open models like Gemma and Nemotron run well on small machines, we validate them on our portfolio, and as agents proliferate, identity and security controls become essential.

AGI timing and what’s changed with the latest model wave?

I won’t timestamp AGI, but recent releases crossed a quality threshold, teams are shipping in days what took months, and private data fine‑tuning is unlocking huge new value.

Public worry about AI is rising; how concerned are you about social disruption and backlash?

Framing it like a person scares people—it’s really math and software—and while some displacement is real, these tools amplify human capability across science, education, health, and energy, and you can’t just outlaw software at the edge.

Before we wrap, tell us about Invest in America, which you’ve supercharged.

Susan and I committed $6.25 billion—$250 each for 25 million kids in lower‑income zip codes—into new investment accounts they must claim, a direct on‑ramp to ownership.

We hustled a bipartisan bill through during a narrow window, not as left or right but to reconnect families to capitalism; starting in 2027, every newborn gets an account at birth, with the $1,000 contribution re‑authorized periodically while the accounts are permanent.

By July 4, millions will see an app that decomposes the S&P into familiar companies, families can add with a tap, and over fifteen years we aim to move roughly five trillion dollars into households that otherwise had almost nothing.

Could this evolve into personal accounts that replace parts of Social Security so people see and own their savings?

We avoided that fight to get this done, but the vision is transparent, portable ownership from birth, and momentum is real—millions have already claimed, and anyone can adopt a zip code or school to help.

Give it up for TK, for Michael, and for turning a big idea into a movement; Texas, that was special.