WE ARE JEROME POWELL, Holy Apple Airball, Tyler Cowen AGI Update, Meta Compute

Watch on YouTube ↗  |  January 12, 2026 at 23:08  |  3:26:27  |  TBPN
Speakers
Tyler Cowen — Economist
Ben Thompson — Guest
Andrew Feldman — CEO, Cerebras
Harley Finkelstein — President of Shopify
John Coogan — Co-Host, TBPN
Nathan Nwachuku — Co-founder and CEO, Terra Industries
Anastasios Nikolas Angelopoulos — Co-founder, LM Arena

Summary

TBPN's January 12, 2026 episode covers the DOJ criminal probe of Fed Chair Powell and market reactions, Ben Thompson's critique of Apple Vision Pro's immersive sports strategy, and interviews with Tyler Cowen, Andrew Feldman, Nathan Nwachuku, Anastasios Angelopoulos, and Harley Finkelstein. Key investment themes include gold/silver hedges, AI ad monetization at Google and Meta, memory/HBM pricing, AI in pharma, and Shopify's agentic commerce infrastructure.

  • DOJ subpoenas Fed Chair Powell; markets muted while gold and silver rally.
  • Ben Thompson argues Apple Vision Pro should focus on unedited live sports but frames it as a product critique.
  • Tyler Cowen discusses AI's mixed labor impact, data centers, debt, and recommends gold/silver as a hedge.
  • Andrew Feldman describes fast inference as a separate AI hardware category and warns of memory/HBM price inflation.
  • Nathan Nwachuku presents Terra Industries' African defense surveillance network.
  • Anastasios Angelopoulos discusses LM Arena's AI model evaluation platform and plans for speed/cost metrics.
  • Harley Finkelstein explains Shopify's Universal Commerce Protocol and agentic commerce growth.
Ideas
John Coogan Co-Host, TBPN 14:22
Lower rates make owning assets bullish.
If the erosion of Fed independence leads to lower interest rates, that is a bullish catalyst for assets. Investors may dislike the politics, but the market implication is to own assets and stay long.
SPY MED
Ben Thompson Guest 65:06
AI ad monetization favors Google, Meta.
The most compelling short-term AI monetization opportunity is advertising at Google and Meta. They already have at-scale ad platforms and can use AI to create perfectly targeted or generative ads, so Thompson remains super bullish on both.
GOOG HIGH
Ben Thompson Guest 65:06
AI ad monetization favors Google, Meta.
Meta's falling price per ad is often misread by the market as bearish. It usually reflects a massive increase in ad inventory, which is a huge opportunity as Meta learns to monetize new surfaces such as Stories, Reels, and AI-generated formats.
META HIGH
Tyler Cowen Economist 103:28
Buy gold and silver as hedge.
Gold and silver are useful hedges as the dollar becomes less of a safe haven and political risk rises. Cowen is considering buying more gold and says bitcoin is not a hedge, so he may also use silver.
GLD SILVER HIGH
Tyler Cowen Economist 116:36
Biomedical progress will extend healthy lifespans.
Biomedical progress, even without AGI, will continue against cancer, heart disease, and aging. Within about 40 years, most people may die of old age rather than most current killers, making the sector attractive long-term.
XBI MED
Andrew Feldman CEO, Cerebras 121:37
Fast inference is a major AI category.
Fast inference has become a separate and valuable AI hardware category. Production use cases are demanding vast amounts of compute, and speed is increasingly critical, validating Cerebras's wafer-scale approach.
AI Hardware MED
Andrew Feldman CEO, Cerebras 145:48
AI speeds drug discovery in pharma.
Fast inference is hugely valuable in pharma because drug discovery is long, expensive, and patent-limited. AI can run more experiments, scan literature faster, and improve the odds that selected candidates succeed, ripping a year out of an 18-year process.
XPH MED
Andrew Feldman CEO, Cerebras 147:50
Memory and HBM prices are rising.
Memory is in a steep upcycle: HBM demand from GPUs is absorbing DRAM capacity, fabs are hard to build, hyperscalers are panic-ordering, and traditional DRAM/server memory prices are exploding. This looks like a much bigger year than underlying demand suggests.
DRAM HBM HIGH
Harley Finkelstein President of Shopify 186:57
Shopify powers agentic commerce infrastructure.
Shopify is building the infrastructure for agentic commerce. Its Universal Commerce Protocol with Google lets every agent connect to every merchant, enables subscriptions, bundling, and merchandising, and Shopify is seeing 14x growth in agent-driven orders. Finkelstein wants Shopify to power the whole transition.
SHOP HIGH
Harley Finkelstein President of Shopify 195:19
Agentic commerce expands e-commerce penetration.
Agentic commerce can accelerate e-commerce penetration, which is still under 20% of total retail. LLM shopping assistants can provide better, unbiased product guidance and convert more purchases, expanding the entire e-commerce market.
E-COMMERCE MED
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This TBPN video, published January 12, 2026, features John Coogan, Ben Thompson, Tyler Cowen, Andrew Feldman, Harley Finkelstein discussing SPY, GOOG, META, GLD, SILVER, XBI, AI Hardware, XPH, DRAM, HBM, SHOP, E-COMMERCE. 10 trade ideas extracted by AI with direction and confidence scoring.

Speakers: John Coogan, Ben Thompson, Tyler Cowen, Andrew Feldman, Harley Finkelstein  · Tickers: SPY, GOOG, META, GLD, SILVER, XBI, AI Hardware, XPH, DRAM, HBM, SHOP, E-COMMERCE