20VC: Meta's Muse Hits No. 1. ChatGPT Finally Has a Rival | Menlo Sounds the AI Bubble Alarm | Factory Triples Its Valuation to $5 Billion | Keith Rabois vs Airwallex: Who is Right? | Crusoe's $3.9 Billion Round. Is the Data Centre Trade Overheating?
September 24, 2026
AI Summary
5 min readMeta's Muse Hits No. 1, and the AI Assistant Race Suddenly Has a Real Contender
Meta's new AI assistant Muse held the number one spot on the App Store for days, and the stock ripped—adding roughly $100 billion in market cap on the week. The hosts see this as the first genuine consumer rival to ChatGPT. Jason Lamkin calls Muse "one of the best pieces of software I've ever used" and, more strategically, "a Trojan horse to fight ChatGPT because the LLM is pretty good." Every time a user asks Muse a question or runs an agent, they're using Meta's language model instead of OpenAI's. And it's free. "If it's free, why would an ordinary person pay?" Lamkin asks, noting that the token limits far exceed what ChatGPT offers free users. The product also ships with autonomous agents, which ChatGPT still lacks. Rory O'Driscoll agrees: "They just have the distribution. It's a good UI, it works, it gives me recommendations." Lamkin demonstrated the depth by describing how Muse built him a custom CRM that tracks every sponsor email in real time—"some of the first composable software that I've ever actually seen work."
Amazon Blocks, Shopify Partners: The Agent Commerce War Begins
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:39) **Anthropic Pushes IPO to November** - The panel discusses whether the delay signals market cracks or just a desire for a cleaner Q3 prospectus.
- 2 (10:33) **OpenAI's $278B Burn Forecast** - The panel breaks down the three key numbers in OpenAI's financial forecast: 10x revenue growth, $278B net burn, and $700B in required capex.
- 3 (12:55) **Meta's Muse Hits #1 on App Store** - The panel declares Muse the story of the week, calling it the first real ChatGPT competitor and a Trojan horse for Meta's AI ambitions.
- 4 (17:00) **Amazon Blocks Muse, Shopify Partners** - The panel analyzes the divergent responses from Amazon (blocking) and Shopify (partnering) to Meta's shopping agent.
- 5 (24:10) **ChatGPT Ships "Jev" — Fastest Vercel Launch Ever** - The panel reviews Jev, a new classification model that returns true/false/scores instead of text, calling it a "system one" thinking fast model.
- 6 (34:15) **Andreessen Horowitz Launches "Pre-Inception" University** - The panel discusses a16z's $40M university program for pre-inception investing, and the broader trend of seed rounds ballooning to $20M+.
- 7 (41:10) **Menlo Sounds the AI Bubble Alarm** - The panel reacts to Menlo's warning about the music stopping, with sharp disagreement on whether the caution is warranted.
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Guests on this episode
Show Notes
AGENDA:
04:35 Anthropic's $2 Trillion IPO Delayed. Cracks in the AI Boom?
10:30 OpenAI Faces $278 Billion Cash Burn. Out of Money by 2028?
12:55 Meta's Muse Hits No. 1. ChatGPT Finally Has a Rival?
17:05 Amazon Blocks AI Shopping Agents. Shopify Welcomes Them.
24:10 ChatGPT Inventor Launches Jev. Vercel's Fastest Launch Ever.
34:15 A $40 Million Seed Round. Is Traditional Seed Investing Dead?
39:00 Menlo Sounds the AI Bubble Alarm. Harry Calls BS.
54:00 Factory Triples Its Valuation to $5 Billion. Coding Is the Mother Lode.
1:00:20 Legora Hits $200 Million ARR. Is $11 Billion Too Rich?
1:03:50 Crusoe's $3.9 Billion Round. Is the Data Centre Trade Overheating?
1:08:55 Keith Rabois vs Airwallex. Fintech's Feud Escalates.
1:16:40 Sydney Sweeney for Airwallex? Lemkin's Wild PR Plan.
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