Down Round
Episodes
Xmas Spectacular 2025: The Year That Was
24 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the inaugural episode of this years holiday special, we rack up Ws as we dissect the predictions we made last silly season for 2025. Go to htt...
Feelin' Fine
17 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A highly requested topic in the Down Round Discord is mental health and mindfulness apps — from meditation platforms like Calm to therapist mark...
Netflix Eats Everything
10 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Netflix wants to buy Warner Bros. Discovery. Paramount Skydance wants to buy Warner Bros. Discovery. Both for many billions of dollars. Why? We break ...
Everything is Sportsbet Now
03 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week we're going deep on the rise of prediction markets — the hybrid of futures trading, sports gambling, and economic theology that sudden...
The Slop Farms of X
26 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week, we open with the final chapter of Frank, the student finance startup that sold JP Morgan a fake email list. Founder Charlie Javice is in pr...
It's Just Autocomplete
20 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week we unpack a growing split inside the AI world, centred on Yann LeCun — Meta’s AI pioneer who thinks LLMs are a dead end. Reports...
Apple’s Passive Income Era
12 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Down Round hasn't checked in on Cupertino in a little while. This week, we take stock of Apple’s strange position in the AI boom — not rea...
Data Centres 101
05 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We realised that we've been talking a lot about data centres but have gotten pretty pointy headed about it, without bringing our beautiful listeners a...
Spotify for Sickos
30 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today's episode is on the back of a curious report from The Information that Suno, the AI music generation app, now brings in $150 million in ann...
Atlas Shrugged
23 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
As was long predicted, OpenAI has released a browser: ChatGPT Atlas. It's a pretty clear attempt to attack Google's $100B search moat and establish a ...
Getting Steamy
17 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman made an interesting little announcement this week: the company has mitigated mental health concerns on its platform... and it's ...
Investigating The Mumgorithm (feat. Humyara Mahbub)
08 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week, Down Round is diving into the world of parenting and technology — everything from the various devices and gizmos targeted at parents,...
Vibes Off
01 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Vibes are up this week. Alexandr Wang, the former Scale AI CEO who now runs Meta's new multi-billion dollar Superintelligence unit, has announced one ...
Meta Glasses, Again
25 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We all know that Meta wants to replace the smartphone with smartglasses, and be the king of the AI device game. Well, they're one step closer to their...
Consulting the Oracle
18 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Oracle. Unless you're a big database guy, it's probably not a company you're going to be all that interested in. But it is one of the biggest companie...
iPhone, But Orange
11 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Apple have announced their new iPhones — and they sort of stink of desperation. But one of them is orange, which may or may not appeal to you. P...
K-Pop Demon Hunters
04 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We're dipping into the world of streaming and East Asian cultural dominance today, talking about Netflix's smash hit movie K-Pop Demon Hunters. W...
Copy Fight (UNLOCKED)
22 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A big topic of conversation Down Under over the past couple of weeks has been copyright — namely, whether we should loosen the rules to make it ...
GPT-5: Here We Go Again
12 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
After many months of hype and news stories, OpenAI has released GPT-5, the next major numbered iteration of its large language model. There have been ...
What Are They Planning? (ft. Cam Wilson)
07 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today James is joined by previous Down Round guest Cam Wilson, who has written a new book with (another former Down Round guest) Ariel Bogle, Con...
Knock On (ft. Tim Stewart)
31 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Several years ago, Down Round listener Tim Stewart submitted a question to one of our Q&A mailbag episodes: when is the new rugby league video gam...
That's Tea
26 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Tea, the app which offers what it describes as "dating safety tools which protect women", has been hacked. It follows a couple of weeks where it went ...
Microsoft's Xbox Conundrum
17 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Microsoft slashed 9,000 jobs a few weeks ago, with the Xbox division taking a hit including some studio closures. What about that $70 BILLION Activisi...
Grok: Elon's $28 Billion Slur Machine
10 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Elon Musk's AI chatbot, Grok, went "Kanye Mode" — becoming openly Nazi, seemingly out of nowhere. The boys get to the bottom of the root cause, ...
Meta's Highway Robbery
03 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
For a few weeks, we've been talking about Meta's revenge tour in Silicon Valley, throwing massive bonuses at AI talent at rival companies in order to ...
Reading Out Confidential Emails Live On The Air
26 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
After the fanfare of the OpenAI/Jony Ive multibillion-dollar device partnership, io, all references were scrubbed from the internet as if it never hap...
They Do Ads On Computers Now
19 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Canva has made another acquisition: MagicBrief, the advertising command centre founded by a dear friend of the pod. In this ep, we talk about the acqu...
WWDC 2025: Extreme Liquidity
12 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Apple had its software development conference this week. It announced a whole new design language filled with organic movements and over-the-top anima...
Grammarly's Second Wind
05 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Remember Grammarly? Of course you do. The briefly ubiquitous piece of software that made sure you were using your possessive apostrophes correctly. We...
It's Q&A Time Pt. 1
29 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
It's been a while since we've done of these. We answer your burning questions on topics including but not limited to: Jony Ive's partnership with Ope...
Google's Little Victory Lap
22 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We've been saying for a little while that Google has caught up in AI, and is now trying to deploy the full force of its product range and scale to the...
Airbnb for Everything
16 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Airbnb is in a mid-life crisis. Founder Brian Chesky is undergoing one of his routine meltdowns where he suddenly decides that the short-stay rental p...
Peak Search
09 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Last week we gave some cursory attention to Apple's legal troubles in its battle with Epic Games and every other developer who chafes at paying the 30...
Canva Conundrum [PREVIEW]
09 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Australia's graphic design unicorn is yet to go public, and find themselves in an intersting position. As we all know infinite growth means you can't ...
Computer Says I Love You
02 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Stacked deck today folks. First we return briefly to Tesla to talk about a Wall Street Journal story which reported the company opened a CEO search to...
The President's Friend Premium
25 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Tesla turned in an absolute shocker of an earnings result, which may be related to why Elon Musk announced he would be turning more of his attention t...
Nvidia's Latest Problem
18 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Raph has returned from the land of the free, and we're back in the regular studio for some more Down Round. Nvidia has just been slapped with a new re...
Studio Ghibli, But Make It Slop Pt. 1
03 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We talked about the new OpenAI image generation platform last week briefly, but we recorded on the day it released and therefore missed the massive am...
Spitting In A Tube And Selling It To Private Equity
27 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The chickens have come home to roost for 23andme, the consumer genetic testing company which has gone from making people feel nice about being 4% Ital...
Rippling vs Deel
20 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
HR SaaS is probably the least sexy topic in the world, but fortunately two of the bigger players have made it interesting through bizarre corporate wa...
One Weird Trick That Payments Processors HATE!
13 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We're back with podcast content after a regrettable interruption last week. This ep we've got a stacked deck. First, we are forced by fate to talk abo...
Content Note
05 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Unfortunately due to circumstances within our control we are unable to record an episode this week. We promise we'll record a really really extra good...
No Such Thing As A Market Correction
27 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Tech stocks have been having a rough time since December. The Magnificent Seven, the undisputed kings of the market, have slipped 10% since then &mdas...
Do You Grok Me?
20 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Plenty of tech industry nonsense to chat about this week, folks. Elon Musk is fathering his 13th child (and a new Grok model) and trying to destroy Op...
Going Deep
13 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We got a few requests last week to talk more about OpenAI's Deep Research feature that everyone's been going wild about. We thought it was a good oppo...
Apple – Charlie XCX (official lyric video)
06 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Apple is worth $3.5 trillion. Trillion with a T. But all is not necessarily well in Tim Cook's kingdom. iPhone sales are slowing and the Apple Intelli...
DeepSeek Freakout
30 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
It's fair to say things have been a little crazy this week. Thanks to the drop of Chinese AI lab DeepSeek's beautiful, powerful AI reasoning model, te...
January Mania
23 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
It's not even the end of January and there's already so much crap going on in the world of tech. We're spoiled for choice here. In this two-parter, we...
One Big Gold Nugget, Please (PREVIEW)
16 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The number one social media app in the Apple App Store is currently Xiaohongshu, AKA The Little Red Book, the Chinese social shopping app reminiscent ...
Based Mark Zuckerberg (ft. Mike Isaac)
14 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Over the last couple of weeks, Mark Zuckerberg and Meta have signalled a shift in the way the company is run — eliminating factcheckers, rolling...
Xmas Spectacular Pt 5: The Accountability Episode
07 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On Down Round, we make many predictions. Almost all of them are correct. For this episode, we have used the power of AI to forensically audit a repres...
Xmas Spectacular Pt 3: Shark Tank (ft. Becky Lucas & Joyride)
01 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Just like we did last year, we're continuing the silly season with another entry of DOWN ROUND SHARK TANK. On social media and in our Discord, you sub...
Xmas Spectacular Pt 2: Q&A Continued (PREVIEW)
26 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This is part two of our annual Xmas spectacular, and we continue to answer your questions. To hear the rest, sign up to premium: downround.netSee omny...
Xmas Spectacular Pt 1: Q&A
26 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This is part one of our annual Xmas spectacular, and we are answering your burning questions. Is AI a bust? Why is a company called AppLovin worth mor...
Apple Intelligence: The OFFICIAL Down Round Review
18 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Apple has been hyping up its late-ish foray into the world of LLMs and artificial intelligence since June. But now a decent range of Apple Intelligenc...
Unpacking The Social Media Ban (ft. Cam Wilson)
10 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Australia passed legislation banning social media for kids under 16, as we've discussed in previous eps. But in today's episode, we're getting into th...
The Back Of The Smart Guy Queue (PREVIEW)
05 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a premium episode. To subscribe to Down Round Premium and get access, head here. Crypto is back. The industry is excited by...
The Failed Kickstarter Club
03 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Kickstarter. A gadget head's paradise... and hell. The boys revisit the glory days of crowdfunding, what was the vibe that made it prolific, and the p...
Just Browsing Thanks Mate
26 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The US Department of Justice wants to force Google to sell Chrome, its browser, for antitrust reasons. It raises the question: who would buy it? Could...
Bluesky Thinking
19 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The the wake of the US election and the increasingly weird vibe on X, there has been yet another exodus of users to the promised land of "any text-bas...
The Podcasting President
12 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
It's the first week after the US election, and Down Round is officially making the leap into being an American politics podcast. OK, not really. But t...
Is Technology Good? (ft. Mark Di Stefano)
05 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We are joined once again, for our sins, by the Australian Financial Review's Rear Window columnist Mark Di Stefano. A freewheeling episode on everythi...
Coins, But On The Computer
31 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a premium episode. To subscribe to Down Round Premium and get access, head here. We're putting on our hazmat suits and goin...
The Halloween Spooktacular
29 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
It's Halloween this week, and we've got an appropriately spooky episode for you. We're looking back at a random selection of some of our favourite dea...
The StarCraft Losers Club
23 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today's ep is the first and last edition of the Down Round Book club. We're talking about Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future Of Blizzard Entertainm...
BONUS: Arming The Rebels (feat. James Chin Moody)
22 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We're lauching a bonus episode this week to officially welcome in the silly season (commences mid October). We're joined by James Chin Moody, CEO of S...
Unpacking Tesla's Robotaxi Fantasy
15 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
It's another Tesla event, folks. At the tail end of last week, Elon Musk got up on stage and showed off the CyberCab, the company's attempt at a robot...
Talking About The Computer While Talking About The Computer (PREVIEW)
03 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a premium episode. To subscribe to Down Round Premium and get access, head here. Fun times create happy people, happy peopl...
The Society of the Spectacles
01 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In last week's premium episode, we sounded off about the state of VR and smart glasses. In true Down Round fashion, Meta had already announced its con...
Intel Outside
24 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Intel may have more or less invented modern digital computing, but it hasn't been going so crash hot lately. Following decades of strategic missteps a...
How Many Rs Are There In Strawberry? (PREVIEW)
19 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a premium episode. To subscribe to Down Round Premium and get access, head here. After 2 months of cringe-posting reference...
Accelerating The iPhone Supercycle
17 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We didn't cover the Apple iPhone keynote last week because it wasn't particularly exciting and there were virtually no surprises. But, having been giv...
Them Kids Ain't Right (PREVIEW)
12 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a premium episode. To subscribe to Down Round Premium and get access, head here. Social media. Is it too dank for the malle...
Humanoid Robots: Just Another Guy In Your House
11 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
For decades, technologists have fantasised about the ultimate prize: a humanoid robot, available to consumers and industry, which can perform a range ...
The Boys Go Founder Mode (PREVIEW)
05 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a premium episode. To subscribe to Down Round Premium and get access, head here. The tech world has been ablaze over the pa...
X vs Brazil
03 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Brazil has slapped a ban on X, as the culmination of a dispute between the platform and the country’s judiciary over censorship. It’s weird, becau...
Telegram: Oh, So Posting Is ILLEGAL Now?
27 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Telegram CEO Pavel Durov was arrested over the weekend in France, with prosecutors accusing him of violations discovered as part of an investigation...
Google's Apparently Illegal Monopoly
13 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Apple's profit from "Services" is set to surpass profits from iPhones within a couple of years, which is pretty crazy, really. Of the ~$80-90b Apple m...
Nike: Barefoot is Illegal (PREVIEW)
08 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Nike: The brand of brands. When it comes to brands, they're top dog. When it comes to returning money to shareholders, less so. At least this year. As...
You Gotta Spend Money To Make Money
06 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
It's quarterly earnings season, and some of our favourite tech companies are looking a bit shaky. Not because they're not making money – they are –...
Llama-ma-mazing!
30 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Meta this week released the latest update to their LLM, Llama 3.1. It is ostensibly a "frontier model" on par with its OpenAI, Anthropic and Google ri...
Into The Goldilocks Zone (PREVIEW)
25 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Recently, the eponymous founders of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz went public in announcing their support for Trump in order to protect wha...
CrowdStruck
23 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
You are no doubt aware that the world suffered a fairly significant IT outage at the end of last week, affecting everything from TV broadcasts to supe...
The Tech Trump Turn (PREVIEW)
21 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A recent political incident involving the former president provide a stress test of X under Elon Musk. It also provides us with an opportunity to do a...
Investigating Real Estate Agent Drip
16 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Real estate tech is an underrated part of the broader tech ecosystem. From listing and buying platforms to property management apps and everything in-...
Who Made This? (PREVIEW)
11 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a premium episode. To subscribe to Down Round Premium and get access, head here. While the northern hemisphere is on summer...
You're Spending How Much On Graphics Cards?
09 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Over the past few weeks, several equity reports – from the likes of Goldman Sachs and Barclays – have sounded the alarm on the amount of capital e...
Gimme Money! Media Edition
03 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Australia's experiment with forcing big tech to pay media companies like Nine and News Corp for content is running into choppy waters, as Meta refuses...
A Small Modular Nuclear Reactor For Every Australian (PREVIEW)
27 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Nuclear is in the air. (Not literally.) In Australia, politicians are debating it, while a huge range of nuclear startups are ruling it out for fundin...
Hitting The Nvidia Wall
25 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Nvidia is the engine room of the AI moment, but they are struggling a little right now. The stock underwent a massive correction this week, and founde...
What's Tencent All About?
18 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Tencent is one of the largest and most valuable companies on earth, with operations that touch just about every part of the digital economy in China a...
GameStop Revisited (PREVIEW)
13 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a premium episode. To subscribe to Down Round Premium and get access, head here. You thought that because COVID was long ov...
WWDC 2024: AI For The Rest Of Us Chumps
11 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week, Apple held the keynote at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), where it traditionally announces its upcoming software updates...
Down Round Featuring Microsoft Copilot + PC (PREVIEW)
07 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a premium episode. To subscribe to Down Round Premium and get access, head here. A few weeks ago, Microsoft announced its n...
The Tech-Military Complex
04 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
For a long time, it wasn't a great look for startups and big tech – outside of companies like Microsoft – to openly work with the military-industr...
Google & OpenAI's Rough Couple Of Weeks (Pt. 1)
29 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the first part of a two-part episode on Google and OpenAI's tough PR challenges of the past couple of weeks, we dive into Google's launch of AI sum...
Down Round Q&A: Your Boneheaded Questions, Answered
21 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
It's time for another edition of DOWN ROUND Q&A. We solicited questions from both or premium members in Discord and our followers on X, and today ...
The AAA Gaming Apocalypse (PREVIEW)
16 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a premium episode. To subscribe to Down Round Premium and get access, head here. The pain for the gaming industry doesn't s...
They're Putting AI In The Bloody Phones Now
14 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Apple and Google are both on the precipice of announcing deeper integration of generative AI into their respective operating systems. Google's IO conf...
Into The Quantum Realm (PREVIEW)
09 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a premium episode. To subscribe to Down Round Premium and get access, head here. Quantum computing has been a research and ...