New Trends With Friends Episode: Google vs OpenAI: Code Red, Gemini, and the AI Arms Race

Good afternoon everyone,

We are back with another edition of Trends With Friends. On this episode, I’m joined by Michael Parekh and Roy Rubin to unpack the Open AI ‘code red’ and the state of the AI wars: $GOOGL ( ▲ 0.26% ) vs OpenAI, $AAPL ( ▲ 0.12% ) ’s quiet dominance at the edge, $AMZN ( ▲ 1.62% ) ’s under-the-radar AI position, and why $TSLA ( ▲ 0.22% ) ’s FSD might be the new definition of luxury.

Michael has been so right on our show the last year urging people to stay with Apple and Google as AI leaders because of their position on the ‘edge’.

Roy Rubin is a great friend, incredible entrepreneur, the founder of Magento (acquired by Adobe) and now a venture capitalist focused on software and ecommerce.

Sam Altman’s Open AI ‘code red’ is in response to Google’s Gemini push. Michael and Roy explain and how Google’s distribution edge (Search, Chrome, Android, YouTube) changes the AI game. Roy talks about his real-world shift from ChatGPT power user to Gemini. Finally, we discuss the uncomfortable truth about OpenAI’s business model, why Apple and Amazon may actually be the least appreciated AI winners, what luxury means, and why prediction markets (Polymarket, Kalshi, etc.) might be the new media layer over news & politics. Scroll down for the shows timeline details.

If you care about where AI, big tech, and commerce are really going over the next 2–3 years — not just the hype — this is the episode.

JUMP TO THE GOOD STUFF:

• (0:00) Welcome to “Trends With Friends: Code Red”

• (1:20) Roy Rubin intro: Magento, Adobe, and R-Squared Ventures

• (3:00) Magento’s origin story and the open-source e-commerce era

• (5:30) From $GOOGL ( ▲ 0.26% ) ’s 2017 transformer paper to today’s AI “code red”

• (9:00) $GOOGL ( ▲ 0.26% ) ’s TPUs, vertical stack and long-game vs OpenAI

• (12:40) Roy’s behavior shift: from hourly ChatGPT user to barely opening it

• (16:00) Usage data, code red at OpenAI & the fragility of subscription revenue

• (18:30) Ads, incentives, and the “one right answer” problem in AI search

• (21:00) Apps, agents, and why OpenAI may be crowding out its own ecosystem

• (24:30) $AAPL ( ▲ 0.12% ) ’s AI position: distribution, devices, and Siri’s next act

• (28:00) $GOOGL ( ▲ 0.26% ) vs $AAPL ( ▲ 0.12% ) vs Android: ecosystems, habits & where AI really lives

• (31:30) Browsers, AI search, and why no one downloads new browsers anymore

• (36:00) Grok on X: nice integration, but will it change user behavior?

• (37:20) $TSLA ( ▲ 0.22% ) FSD as the new luxury: time is better than leather; Waymo vs Tesla

• (41:45) $GOOGL ( ▲ 0.26% ) , China, $NVDA ( ▼ 1.24% ) , and who had to “kiss the ring”

• (42:50) $AMZN ( ▲ 1.62% ) & AWS: agents, chips and why they’re underrated in AI

• (46:20) Anthropic’s enterprise focus and cleaner business model

• (49:45) Commerce reality check: why AI front-ends are still “all noise”

• (51:40) $SHOP ( ▲ 1.01% ) , Magento, walled gardens and agentic commerce

• (54:20) Prediction markets as a new media layer on top of news

• (56:00) Final takeaways & what to watch over the next 2–3 years