 Hi, everyone, this is Dave Vellante and we're about to go on the road for pretty much the rest of the spring. Events are back and theCUBE is in very high demand, covering all things enterprise tech, cloud, infrastructure, AI, of course, is part of every discussion. And we've been working on a new mental model for data. The premise goes something like this, applications are moving from being process-centric to data-centric, meaning rather than data being locked inside of apps in silos, the business logic is going to be embedded in the data and organizations are going to build data apps on top of that. And the example we use is Uber. When you call a rideshare, the data app maps a rider to a driver, it calculates a route, a destination, an ETA, et cetera, and each of these items, you can think of it as a data element or data product even. Now the interesting thing is these data elements are all coherent. They're a coordinated set of data products that together create a series of actions and an outcome. And to make that happen, the data elements need a semantic layer that creates this coherency. Now AtScale was one of the first, if not the first, independent semantic layer for data and analytics. And over the past few years, we've seen a surge in interest at the company and we're really pleased to welcome investor, entrepreneur, and my friend, Chris Lynch, the executive chairman and CEO of AtScale, back to the queue below Chris, what's happening? Hey, Dave, how are you? Good, good, what's new in your life? You've been traveling like crazy, that's not new I guess, but what's been going on out there, where you been? I'm traveling quite a bit, but before we jump in, and we are friends, but I still have to correct you. We are the first in the only universal semantic layer, right? So there are semantic layers, but you have to take all your data and put it in this proprietary stack and it's very limited in its function. Dave Mariani had the vision to invent this technology almost 10 years ago and the rest of the world's caught up with us. So the power of what you just said is, if you have an independent semantic layer that is horizontal across any place, any stovepipe, any cloud, any whatever, that becomes really the point of coherency for my upfront wrap. I would imagine that threatens a lot of people because if you succeed in getting people to adopt that, then people are going to have to kiss your ring. Well, you know about my famous ring. No, tell me about the ring. I mean, I've seen the ring, but I don't know the story behind it. You don't know the story of this? No, it's the story behind that ring. So I purchased this from Barmakings Jewelers, one of the oldest jewelers in, I think the country. Long story short, there was this short guy, shorter than me, from South Boston, that did business with them. And he had this made, and while it was being made, he had to Ampsgrey. He had to get out of town, out of the country. And long story short, he never came back for it and it sat there for like 10 years and the guy's my neighbor, and we were having a couple of glasses of wine one night. He said, I've got this thing in my bowl. I cannot sell it because everyone thinks it's bad karma. You're the guy that could pull it off. So he brings it home. I see it, I always used to wear a clattering and I like what it stands for, friendship, love, and loyalty, things that are important to me. And I saw this thing and I'm like, yeah, I'll wear it. And what was amazing was this thing, I could put it on my thumb loosely. So this person who was shorter than me must have had hands like a gorilla. So wait. I'll let you figure out, wow. Show the camera, put it in front of the camera so we can see this thing, it's a little higher. Yeah, oh wow, look at that. Can you guys get that? Oh, that's good. I don't know why that's bad karma. I mean, that's friendship, family, love. Yeah, I don't think, no, not a clattering, but the person that this was made for. Oh, got it. I'm always gonna leave it there. So, okay, so you've been traveling around, you're going to London next, right? Yes. Tech Tackles Cancer London, I was there last summer, it was awesome. I mean, really amazing event. Give a quick plug for that. Sure. So May 24th, we will be in London at the Omera, O-M-E-R-A. It's a club owned by the Mumford and Sons, the band, and they've graciously provided us the venue. And every year we try to raise a million bucks in a night for pediatric cancer research. And this will be no different. We've got a show coming up in September in Boston, but we've decided because it's a global charity and initiative that we're gonna take it on the road. So this is the first of many shows we'll do throughout Europe and the rest of the world. And the idea is to go to every major city around the world and educate people on the issue of pediatric cancer and raise money to solve the problem. But people don't know Tech Tackles Cancer is an amazing charity that you guys really done a wonderful job with. It's billed as a live karaoke, but it's really more than that. It's actually live bands. The tech community comes together. I participated, well, just as an audience member last summer, it was incredible. I mean, I gotta say, I thought DuPlessie, Steve DuPlessie was outstanding. He did Mustang Sally. I thought Ken Steinhart was up there. So the solo, doing Eddie Van Halen and seeing you were up there. You had me until you took your shirt off and then you scared the crap out of me. And I'm a madman, but really a great cause and a lot of people there, really wonderful supporters. I didn't know you did it in London. That's awesome. It was the first time you're doing it in London. Yes, this is the first time outside the U.S. And the goal is that we'll hit every NFL city in the U.S. But we're expanding major cities around the globe. And this is the first. So this is sort of the inaugural event outside the U.S. Congratulations. All right, let's get into it. So you guys had this, your semantic layer summit. Recently, I'm still absorbing the content from it. And we've had a couple of meetings with Josh at AtScale and Dave and he's like, I mean, so over my head but I take good notes. And the content was really, really good. You had a big crowd there, like 10,000 people I think you had between physical and online. So you started to talk about the semantic layer and the status, you're the only independent. How do you look at the semantic layer market? It's esoteric to some people. I think people are like, what is that? Why do you need it? Explain how you think about the current market and the status. Sure. So obviously when I say that we are the only universal semantic layer, what I mean is we're multi-cloud, we're multi-bender and we support on-prem as well as cloud. So we can deliver the value of the semantic layer in any of those forms. So that's point one. And no one else on the planet can do that. Period and a story. With respect to the functionality, we have the ability to create one logical view of all your data and any data that you have, the ability to work with that could be outside of your organization. And we create one logical view, it can live wherever it lives and that delivers the power of all of an enterprise's data, of all supply chain's data and ecosystems data in a governed, performant way that leads to new and interesting actionable insights. When I say actual insights, I'm talking about multi-dimensional analysis. I'm talking about this semantic layer, this logical view, being the bridge between BI and AI and back. As you know, because I know you're lineage and we go back this far because we're both old, EMC, Dick Egan had a saying that I stole and contemporized for 2023. You probably remember the posters. It's about the software, stupid. Yeah, right. Okay, well, as you probably already also know, our largest individual investor is the Egan family. So with their permission and blessing, I took Dick Egan's prophetic saying and I've made it my own. It's about the data, stupid. It is about the data. And of course, that's a reference, go back to when Bill Clinton beat George Bush, the elder for the presidency, but that was their saying, it's the economy, stupid. James Carville was his sort of advisor. And so, you know, applying that to data is right on. So let me tell you what I mean by it. And I'm the founding investor, as you know, of DataRobot. Yep. The ground-breaking auto ML company undeniably. With that said, it's not about the algorithm. The ability to create step functions and value from data is about being able to assimilate the data with business context. That's what a semantic layer does. The more data you get, the more insight you get, the more value you get. There's a margin of return on optimizing an algorithm to the 0.000% to step functions and value and bringing new data to those algorithms. That's what we do. One logical view, we auto-engineer that data into the models, that feature store is built, and we publish to every BI tool, from Excel to Tableau to Power BI, we don't care. So what's the significance? Now, business analysts have the power of all an enterprise's data. Now, Tableau, Excel, whatever BI tool you use is AI-powered, and that's how you're gonna democratize AI. Not by teaching people Python, not by trying to create more data scientists with IQs of 170, you can't create the IQ, right? It's a small market. The real power is in the data and the application of it in AI. So the big dollars today are in BI. I mean, we built a whole business up around business intelligence, definitely software. It's all the data in the state. It's all the data, exactly. But now the future is AI, and those two worlds, I think I'm inferring from what you're saying, are coming together. So where do foundation models like GPT fit? Are they gonna be writing Python code? Are they gonna put analysts out of business? Are they gonna supercharge them? And where do they fit into your world, the semantic layer world? Right, they're another source. Everything's fed into the semantic. So to the extent that that technology matures and broadens in its capability, it's only gonna empower the semantic layer, which in turn is gonna power everybody with the BI tool is getting the benefit of that technology. So what's the adoption? Look, I said earlier, if you can get this adopted, that you're going to be in a very strong position in the industry. The cloud guys don't want you owning the semantic layer, I presume. But what's the trajectory like? What's the uptake and adoption? So I would be, now I don't know what they tell you, but they tell me they love me. Why do they love me? For every dollar of semantic we sell, we drive $25 a compute. Ah, okay, so consumption is a good thing. But we do it with a level of efficiency for the user that they can manage and get the value of that compute. So the customer loves us because they optimize their compute. The cloud vendors love us because those workloads are now driven to the cloud. And as you know, they've got the sort of democles hanging over their heads. It's called that backlog. It's called what? Wait, it's called what, say it again? The sort of democles. Yeah, yeah. Okay. They actually talked to you. I thought I was just gonna be profaned and outrageous. You can be profaned and outrageous. That's cool too. I mean, you're well read. But so, okay, I get that, but it also opens up. Think of it this way, Dave. Remember the old days. And I'm feeling that way just because I turned 60 a couple of weeks ago. Yeah, congratulations. Welcome to the club. Thank you. I made it. You look good. Thank you. But back in the day, when we used to sell stuff that if you dropped on your foot, it broke your foot. Distributor warehouses were full of EMC storage and Cisco switches, right? And then the analysts would call in there to find out the backlog to know what was really sold. And that's how the stocks were shorted or long, et cetera. It's no different, right? With cloud compute. You book this stuff, right? You're gonna have to debulk it at a certain point unless it's consumed. We help the customer consume the cloud and we help them consume it with an application that drives tremendous ROI. So we enable Google GCP, Databricks, Snowflake, Amazon, Microsoft, IBM to deliver a step function, more value to their customers with their platforms. And in a world where everyone's hiding under the table, no one has an appetite for experimenting, they have an appetite for ROI. We're bringing AI ROI, because we bring applied AI. It's the only thing that matters. All of H2O. Anaconda. You pick it. Any of these guys, right? Hug your face. The challenge is, they've sold to all the data scientists. They've worked with all the experimental data sets. The way those businesses are gonna grow, data IQ, data robot, H2O, any of them, the only way they can grow is to apply to AI in the next two, three years. How do they do that? They connect to the semantic layer, multi-dimensional analysis powered by AI and then delivered in a feature store for analysis by any BI user. That's how it's gonna happen. That's how AI is gonna be delivered to the business user and the Fortune 2000 and beyond. And it's also what's gonna make those companies I mentioned thrive again, right? I mean, it's well known that the growth rates have slowed. I believe that's a temporary situation. And I'm already seeing evidence on how those companies are connecting the dots and figuring out how they connect business applications to AI. That's how it's gonna be delivered in the next three to five years. And I can't speak for any of those companies. Obviously, I'm a strong investor in data robot, full disclosure, but I can tell you that if there's a person that understands this, it's Devanjan and he's got the expertise to deliver it, which is why I recruit him into the company in the first place. So I believe that they're gonna be the thought leaders in delivering applied AI and you're seeing it in their messaging and you're seeing it in the products that they're delivering in the roadmap. That's gonna be the key, but at all, right, to get monetized has to run through that semantic layer because you need all the data. You need business context. You heard my Uber example up front and the premise that we have is that everybody, because basically what that is is it's a digital representation of their business and people, places and things and our premise is that everybody's gonna want that. The problem is Uber had to go out and build that and it's a pretty complicated architecture and if it works for Uber, everybody is gonna want a digital twin essentially of their business and the premise is to do that, there's got to be a semantic layer and so, but they can't be like 10 semantic layers. There's got to be- There's got to be one, Dave. Yeah, well, there's got to be one. Well, think about it by definition, if it's universal then everybody's using it. Well, so how big can you get as a standalone company? I mean, can you- How big is the world of data? Big. Okay, well, right, we have, I'm not gonna be looking from a market standpoint, I'll compare myself to these companies. I'm not comparing myself to these people because I respect them and they've done stuff that in my opinion is incredible as business people. I aspire to do it, but I'm not bold enough to say that I will, time will tell. But I came out of venture semi-retirement back to a real job, a respectful job. Why? Because I want to leave the way I started and you know, my career was really launched, not a digital, not a well-fleet, not a prominent- An arrow point. Yeah, right. We commercialized the web and now that's 25 years ago I was there and I'm gonna commercialize data. I'm gonna commercialize AI and then I'm gonna drop the mic but I'm gonna pick it up and I'm gonna put together a band and I'm gonna go sing and have fun but I'm getting this done first. I think it's a, well, we know it's a trillion dollar market in this company being a multi-billion dollar company of course it can. Am I the person to bring it there? I'm not gonna say I am but from a market standpoint, from a significant standpoint, this company is at least as significant as Snowflake, as Databricks, as Google GCP. Any of those things, we are part of the ecosystem that drives the data revolution. That's interesting. So this can be a game changer, right? But I just want to be clear so I don't, you don't get any hate on there. I'm not comparing myself to Ali or Frank or Thomas, their industry luminaries, they're far more sophisticated and talented than I am. The good news for me, I think you've mentioned this the beginning. I am one lucky motherfucker. How do you say that? I think we were talking off camera, right? You'd rather be lucky or smart. And I think we both agreed. You can surround yourself with smart people but it's better be lucky, don't you think? I've had a great life being lucky and I feel very blessed and fortunate that I'm a bullshit artist but I don't believe my own bullshit. But you've seen a lot of waves. I want to, you mentioned Arrowpoint. I remember Arrowpoint, I was at IDC at the time and I was like, wow, I don't think this company's going to make it. And the next thing, you know, it was like sold for a lot of money. And I think you had a lot to do with that but you've seen a lot of waves. I mean, so you go back to the sort of PC wave when I started in the business, I'm older than you are but I sort of, I was watching that as an analyst. I going to start eating what you're eating. No, you look awesome. Are you still doing the intermittent fasting? Yes. How long do you go? I mean, I go 16, 18 sometimes, how long do you go? I eat once a day in a four hour window. I have dinner. So 20 hours you go? Correct. And then once a week, I do a full 24. People. And I feel amazing doing it. It's amazing, isn't it? I mean, you're so much more focused, you know, when you're not... And I eat and drink what I want in that window and I can't put weight on it. Like I say, it looked fantastic. But okay, so you saw the PC wave, obviously you saw that the internet, you guys, you capitalized on that. You know, the cloud, big data, mobile, social wave, it was sort of, you know, the big data, you know, you and I, we spent a lot of time in that big data world, but it sort of dissipated now. It went into the clouds, went at the snowflake, went to the Databricks. It's sort of now it's a jump ball all over again. And now AI and generative AI comes in and it's kicked off this new wave. How big do you think this new wave is given that you've seen a lot of them? Yeah, so I think this is the last wave, meaning I don't believe that the market for data in different ways to leverage it ever ends. And I don't think it ever slows. Why? Because anything that has a electrode run through it is creating data. People create data. We're always gonna have more people. We're always gonna have more things that are turned on, that emit data. So the world of data never goes away. That's why I think you see these tremendous valuations of the companies I mentioned, the cloud companies. The way I think about it is the analog is the Databricks, the Snowflakes, the Googles, the Amazons, they are as cloud vendors what the internet was. And if I have anything to say about it, at scale is gonna be the arrow point of those clouds. Meaning we're going to deliver the ROI that fuels those engines, right? How did the internet take off from an infrastructure perspective? It took off because applications started to get built on. Applications like arrow point where you could deliver websites, right? And you could do commerce through them. It changed the world. We don't think about it, right? But like, is there anybody on the planet that doesn't have a website? How many people have a website and don't do business through it in some way? Like, I don't know of many or any. And I think that this revolution is as significant, but I think it never dissipates because I don't think we're going to run out of ways or humans are going to run out of ways to think about how to use data. And if that's true, then this is the last frontier. I want to come back to that. This is going to be cured. It's all data. It's math. Which I could count on taking my socks and shoes off, but... People talk about the singularity, you know, the machines go smarter than we are and then VR overlords. Are you worried about that? I'm very worried. I mean, to me, when I think about data and AI, what's going on, is it good? Is it bad? And is it ugly? And we need to catch up from a legal perspective, from a societal perspective with this phenomenon. So I think the risk is, as humans, we're very unsophisticated in understanding the power of this. So I do think at its worst, the ugly is, you know, this is kind of like a nuclear weapon. It could be used to protect. It could be used to intimidate. It could be used to destroy. Well, you think the government can figure it out? I don't. Well, I wouldn't hold my breath on that, but look, like any revolution, it's about the people. We have to do it. Yeah, I think you're right. I think the industry has to self-regulate. I think there's motivation to do that. Did you like being a VC? Paul Ferry, the founder of Matrix, you know, one of the most longstanding and successful venture firms in the world. He was a mentor. He put me in Wellfleet, Promenade, Arrowpoint, et cetera. When I went to do venture, he said, Chris, you're gonna hate it. You're too impatient, you're too much a control freak. And you used to be in the boss. You're gonna have partners and partners that were dancing. And I still did it, but he was right. So that's one dimension of it. The second is that being a venture capitalist, they won't admit it, right? Because they wanna see themselves as they wanna see themselves, but they're lawyers. They're students of the game. They're watching, right? So for me, I'd rather be the start of the game. The start of the movie than the executive producer. But you're still an investor. If you're doing, well, you're an executive producer. Right. You're not the star. They think they are, they're not. The star is the entrepreneur. The start at scale is Dave Mariani, it's not me. You know, I like the way. These companies that create the ideas and are bold enough to bring them to market. That's what changes the world, right? The money's the money. Someone's got to put it in, right? But the hard yards are the entrepreneur and they should get all the credit. You've always, you've always really respected the entrepreneur, the technical, you know, founders. But I may ask you, as an investor, you know, a lot of VCs are actually probably all VCs are really excited right now because they think they can start companies. You see it all the series C money go, you know, growth capitals drying up and it's all going to sort of early, early stage. And the excitement is around, I could start a company for short money, a bunch of people get laid off, bunch of smart people. I could start a company, get an MVP really quickly. Do you think that is actually gonna, I mean, it's gonna spawn new stuff, but is that the right play now or is that just, you know, VCs getting excited because they don't have to put as much capital in. How do you think about, I mean, you work with a lot of young entrepreneurs, people, you mentor a lot of people. What do you see with early stage kind of AI startups right now? So, I think, you know, there's a frenzy for sure as you're intimating. You know, I think it's part of an overhyped cycle, right? So fundamentally, I think it's an excellent time to invest. I'm investing, why? Because prices are low, there's quality talent out there and everyone's come to earth in terms of their expectations financially. And these companies, if you see the company today, they're probably getting their sea legs two or three years from now. And, you know, I do think that people have short memories and the markets will come back and, you know, we'll go back to valuing growth over profitability and all the dumb things we've done that got us here. So, fundamentally, investing is a good time. I think it's a great time to buy companies because you can get great value and if you've got the balance sheet to do it, you know, the companies are going to win and come out of this, the companies that are aggressive, screw it. So- Good time to start a company. I think that should happen. You agree, it's a good time to start a company? It's a great time to start a company. That said, what you asked me was about venture people investing, you know, in all these AI startups. I'm going to bring you again back since I'm sort of nostalgic. Think about back in the day, optical switching. How many optical switches were invested in, in Boston? Right? And then when the crash happened, they all went out of business. There was a big hole in the ground that the VCs dumped their money. Right? You're going to lose your money when you follow. You make money when you lead. So I'll leave it at that. So you turned 60 this year, just recently. April 22nd, I'm a tourist. Happy belated birthday. So what I heard you say is you want to see this through and then what? You're going to just become an investor. You're going to kick, I can't ever see you stopping working. I had my 28th wedding anniversary in January. Now, of course, like me, my time was terrible. So my daughter, Nora, got me a nice French restaurant reservation. And because I'm a knucklehead, I decided on that night, my anniversary, to tell my lovely wife that I'm never retiring. I'm going to follow the sun after this, but I'm never retiring. I mean, what would I retire to? This is my life's work. It's my love, but I have to do it differently. And I do think that it's time for me after at scale, is at a point where the value of the company and the significance of it is commensurate with what's been built. It'll be time for me to take some of these people that I've been working with for years and let them show what they can do. I'll stay involved, I'll invest, I'll chair them, but not in an operating role. I want to be the chair leader for this army of entrepreneurs that know how to be successful, know how to do it playing by their own rules. And once they do it, they have the moral fiber to understand that they were fortunate, they were lucky and pay it forward and in turn teach another generation of entrepreneurs how to do it and how to do it right and how to live right. That's the mission. So what do you, that's awesome. What do you look for in a young entrepreneur? I mean, everybody wants people that are smart. Of course you've surrounded yourself with a lot of smart people, but what are the qualities that you look for in a young entrepreneur that you say, I want to invest in that person? Character, integrity, work ethic, and X factor. And the X is the wanted factor. And you'd be surprised how many people I run into and where I run into them. I'll give you one example. There's a young man, and we'll make sure he gets this. His name is Robin Pena, P-E-N-A. He's a Dominican immigrant. He came to this country with nothing. Long story short, he and his mom ended up on their own. He was a cleaner at St. Seb's, where my youngest goes, junior, who also performs a tech-tackles cancer with a Johnny Fingers Lynch. And by the way, shout out to Fuhr Storage and Infidadot, who are big supporters and performers. And as you mentioned, they actually can sing. But any event- HPE too, right? HPE, right? There's an HPE that doesn't dissipate? Yep, let's not forget those guys. Yeah. Yep. All right, where was I? I lost my train of thought. You were sharing with me the qualities of an entrepreneur that you wanted to invest in. Yeah, so this kid, he's a cleaner at night at St. Seb's. The head of security, oh, not head of security. One of the security guys leaves. He walks up to the headmaster and he says, if you give me one of those red shirts and hire me, I already got the keys and I know what to do. Because he had the keys because he cleaned the school. They gave him the job and with the benefits, he put himself through Bunker Hill in computer science. He then got a scholarship and he starts in September at BU for computer science. And I've seen this kid for the last couple of years, you know, when I dropped junior off when I'm in town, freezing cold rain, he's out there. The security guy that used to be there, you know, had the crack of his ass hanging out his pants and had a plus on his face. This guy opened every door for the kid, big smile, high-fiving the parents. He connected with everybody. He's telling me the story and I'm like, dude, you're an at-scaler. I'm gonna be on Team Lynch. He was in here this week. So we're bringing him in this summer. He's gonna be one of our interns. And that guy, that young man, I don't know how old he is, but probably early 20s, he can be a CEO, right? Why do I do the stuff I do, Dave? It's simple. I'm trying to show the world, if I can do this, anybody can do it, right? The powers that be want to think that, you know, you have to go to the right school, you know, you have to be a 42 long, you have to be something, you know? And I know that sometimes enough politically correct, but I love people, all people. And the message I have for everybody is, you can be who you are. You can be yourself and you can win on your own terms. And I don't want to talk about it. I do it. True. I mean, I've known you for a long time. You do piss a lot of people off. I think you, you know, I think you scare a lot of people because you're so unpredictable. I mean, I remember I was at a VC meetup, pre COVID, and I dropped your name because you're my friend and I thought this guy would know you. And he was like, oh, like he kind of ran away from me. I'm like, you're a dick. Sorry. So I was like, oh, that's, but I didn't, you know, it's funny because I know you and I love you. I didn't, I should know, but I didn't realize the reaction that some people have toward you. But then you think about it, you do, you don't really care what people think of you. Well, here's why they don't like me. I proved that I could do their job better than them. You look at my track record as an investor. You don't have to look any further than data robot or threat stack or data camp or Newtonian, right? And I'm just a dumb ass from Suffolk University. I don't have the pedigree. I don't have the discipline. I'm not articulate. I'm not handsome, but I work my ass off. I care about people. And I've been selling to the same hundred people in companies for nearly 40 years because I do what I say I'm gonna do. And that scares the hell out of them because they don't want everyone to know that anybody can do it and everybody should do it. You know, it's funny, Chris, because you do care about people. Nobody's definition of you, but your own. You do care about people, you know, you often ask me about how's that guy used to, you remember Jeff Kelly, our big data guy, and I sort of took him under my wing and he, you know, he took off and he did great. He's, you know, working out of AWS right now, but he's making more money than he would have made working for me. And, but you always ask about him and you remember him. You always ask about family. And you don't, it's not just a throwaway. You actually care. And I think that's who you are. But you know, let people think what they want, I guess. I want to ask you something about, I've never been to the Middle East. You've been there a bunch lately. My understanding is the investment climate there is really interesting. They're trying to recreate themselves because they got oil locked up, obviously, and energy, but they really see the future as technology and they kind of, they really haven't been huge participants in the last wave, but they'd like to be in the next wave. What's going on over there? You've been there a lot lately, haven't you? Sure. So it's super interesting. I'm glad you asked me about it. So I've been there to the region four times in the last 14 months. Prior to that, I had not been there in 25 years since Arrowpoint. It is a different world. The advances they're making socially are amazing and it's great to see. So that's one. Two, they don't want to participate. They want to lead it. And I'm here to tell you the world of data, the world of AI, it's the new frontier. Nobody owns it. It's anybody's. And obviously, I'm American. I can tell you that if we don't get our act together as a country, this industry of ours that you and I grew up in that gave us so much and saw others so much, it's going to go the way of the Buffalo. Like manufacturing and steel, like textiles, right? You remember my old company, Acopia, that we sold at F5? Sure. Lowell, Massachusetts, right? Think about Lowell. What died in Lowell? What was created and died in Lowell? The textiles exactly. Many computer industry where we started. Remember Wang, where's Wang? Well, guess what? If we don't get our act together, there's, in the world of data, right? There is no such thing as geography or proximity, which means anybody can do it if you aggregate the assets and the assets of the data soldiers. And they have the money to accumulate them. And they have the ambition to it. And then last and not least, remember what I said, it's about the data stupid. Well, guess what? Their biggest, biggest, biggest, biggest advantage is they have the data and they have no restriction on using the data inside the kingdom. That's going to power the ability to drive use cases, which I think will invoke the influence pyramid and drive the rest of the world to follow them if they want to keep up. So that's their ambition. And I don't see any reason why they couldn't do it. And we should absolutely make it a horse race, but they have the vision, very sophisticated and they're importing all the assets, the people. Yeah, there is no entitlement. And John Chambers talks about that all the time. He used to work at Wang. Wang, Prime, DG, Digital, all gone, right? So the way of the buffalo. Well, and part of it, Chris, is the public-private partnership in the US is deteriorating. Correct. It's terrible. I mean, Lena Khan wants to attack every technology, big tech company, thinks the government has the right answers. How many technologists do we know? I'm not going to embarrass them, right? But like, a guy like Steve Papa made his living in Massachusetts, not to pick on him, but will pick on him. And then he moves up to New Hampshire, right? Why does he do that? And by the way, I like him. I think it's a loss. Now, I know he dips his toe over here, but at the end of the day, this is not a pro business state and they're making it very difficult. Look what's happening in California. Yeah, they're driving people out. And on a national level, look what we're doing. I can tell you that there's unity in the Middle East on the mission. We don't have that. We don't have it within a state. Never mind the United States or even, you know, with our allies, you know, we're missing the boat. Yeah, we are missing, I'm right, you're wrong. No, I'm right, you're wrong. And there's no compromise, but there's no consistency in the agenda. Okay, we're going to throw $50 billion at the CHIPS Act. Okay, yeah, that's nice, but then we're going to block arm. Well, that's only because, what's your name? Headstock, get it. Yeah, but then we're going to block arm by being acquired by NVIDIA. That's right, Nancy Pelosi. Nancy Pelosi, yeah, that's right. I want to see her carbon footprint, by the way. She's flying around in a jet we're paying for. But you know what I'm saying, right? I mean- Hey, but pardon the pun. Go ahead. We do have to fix this. And Nancy, we got to put the hammer down. Just know that you're husband. Ouch. And that's why people love you, Chris Lynch. You still say what you think. All right, I got to let you go. This was awesome. Uh-oh, did I get you in trouble? No, God, no. No, hey, this is- All he cares if Furrier is laughing. If he's laughing, I'm happy. I don't even think he knows that I'm talking to you. He's going to have FOMO. He's going to be pissed that I didn't invite him in. I took the whole mic. We eat the minutes. Could I have a great trip to London? Good luck. Thank you. And let's get together in June. I miss you, buddy. Yeah, me too. Man, I love you. All right, I love you too. Take care. Thanks a lot. We'll see you later. All right, thank you for watching. This is Dave Vellante. We'll see you next time.