Aaron Levie

And maybe with like a, you know, plus 10, 20% margin.

And maybe with like a, you know, plus 10, 20% margin.

Let me give you a fun stat. We give our customers unlimited storage. We have 82% gross margin. So what happened was the price of the underlying storage has gone down by hundreds of times since we started the company. And then all our value is in the software layer on top of the storage.

Let me give you a fun stat. We give our customers unlimited storage. We have 82% gross margin. So what happened was the price of the underlying storage has gone down by hundreds of times since we started the company. And then all our value is in the software layer on top of the storage.

So we've benefited by this incredible, just ruthless competition between Western Digital, Seagate, other players that are just trying to pack more more, you know, basically more storage density into these drives. And every couple of years, they have a new breakthrough. We're now, you know, upcoming, we're heading toward maybe a 50 terabyte hard drive.

So we've benefited by this incredible, just ruthless competition between Western Digital, Seagate, other players that are just trying to pack more more, you know, basically more storage density into these drives. And every couple of years, they have a new breakthrough. We're now, you know, upcoming, we're heading toward maybe a 50 terabyte hard drive.

When we started the company, they were kind of 80 gigabytes.

When we started the company, they were kind of 80 gigabytes.

Yeah, so back in the day, if we had 10 people in engineering, 80% of them was doing pure infrastructure work. Now, if we have 1,000 people, it'd be inverted in terms of the ratio. So you get more leverage, both as you get the advancements in the technology, but then also as you get scale.

Yeah, so back in the day, if we had 10 people in engineering, 80% of them was doing pure infrastructure work. Now, if we have 1,000 people, it'd be inverted in terms of the ratio. So you get more leverage, both as you get the advancements in the technology, but then also as you get scale.

But all of this is to say, you should basically anticipate a world where, and I think Zuck is this interesting counterbalance on all of this because of open source,

But all of this is to say, you should basically anticipate a world where, and I think Zuck is this interesting counterbalance on all of this because of open source,

If at any moment you know that Zuck will basically provide an open source model that is at kind of best in class benchmarks and at the frontier, then there is a limit on how much you can charge for the tokens of your hosted model because anybody will then be able to go host the open model and be able to provide infrastructure around it.

If at any moment you know that Zuck will basically provide an open source model that is at kind of best in class benchmarks and at the frontier, then there is a limit on how much you can charge for the tokens of your hosted model because anybody will then be able to go host the open model and be able to provide infrastructure around it.

So if you always have that counterbalance and the tokens eventually kind of look the same, the output tokens kind of look the same.

So if you always have that counterbalance and the tokens eventually kind of look the same, the output tokens kind of look the same.

It's actually not even necessarily the case that the that the customer has to pick the open source vendor, they might buy it through an abstraction layer that that is letting them get the benefit of open source, but but still buy through a proprietary.

It's actually not even necessarily the case that the that the customer has to pick the open source vendor, they might buy it through an abstraction layer that that is letting them get the benefit of open source, but but still buy through a proprietary.

I believe... In AI? No, no, no. I believe open source causes pricing to always be extremely low.

I believe... In AI? No, no, no. I believe open source causes pricing to always be extremely low.