TBPN · Nov 6, 2026 · 2h 13m · 125m saved
With Praveer Melwani, CFO of Figma · Keller Cliffton, Co-founder & CEO of Zipline · Rahul Sonwalkar, Founder & CEO of Julius AI · Max Siegelman, Founder of Siegelman Stable · D.A. Wallach, Co-founder & GP of Time BioVentures
The October jobs report added 165,000 positions against forecasts near 59,000 to 70,000. Wall Street spent that same morning dumping anything that looked like an AI stock. Five guests then spent the next two hours showing the flinch was premature. A public company's AI product grew usage several times over in a month. Zipline, the drone-delivery startup, signed what its CEO calls the largest autonomous-vehicle contract in history. And a biotech investor argued AI isn't even the industry's biggest threat right now.
"We're expanding nationally with Walmart, starting with 300 supercenters, in the largest autonomous vehicle contract in human history." — Keller Cliffton
The panel spanned five different businesses in one sitting. Figma's own finance chief reported Q3 numbers live. The Zipline CEO had announced a $1.5 billion raise the day before. One founder was testing AI models against real private-equity deals. Another said the Knicks now treat his streetwear brand as a house logo. And a biotech investor had put early money into SpaceX.
The full episode is covered here so you can skip it. 133 minutes of audio, 8 minutes of reading.
Here are the 5 calls that matter.
Key Takeaways
Figma's Q3 revenue grew 43% to $391M, with net dollar retention above 131%
Credit consumption on its new AI agent rose 2.5x in a month, and its MCP server crossed a million weekly users
Zipline raised $1.5B at a $21.5B valuation and calls its new Walmart deal the largest AV contract in history
The 300-supercenter rollout sits alongside a push with Uber Eats toward a million deliveries a day
Julius AI built a finance benchmark that catches models that take a number at face value
It tested rivals on their own native tools, not its own harness, to stay independent
A $300 pandemic hobby turned into what its founder calls an unofficial Knicks logo
Siegelman Stable has never paid an athlete to wear its product
D.A. Wallach says China, not AI, is biopharma's bigger near-term disruption
Chinese preclinical work now costs about a quarter of the US price, done partly by scientists trained in American labs
1. Figma's 43% Quarter
Praveer Melwani, chief financial officer of Figma, opened with the numbers that have kept Figma's stock resilient through the AI-stock rout: revenue up 43% year over year, with retention climbing rather than eroding as AI tools spread.
Figma's Q3 revenue grew 43% to $391M, with retention above 131%
"We put up $391 million in revenue, we grew the business 43% year over year, and our net dollar retention rate's at 131%." — Praveer Melwani
Praveer tied that growth directly to Figma's own AI products, not outside agents eating into the business. The AI agent went generally available on October 6, and its credit consumption rose 2.5 times by the end of the month. Figma's MCP server, the connector that lets outside AI tools plug into Figma's canvas, crossed a million weekly active users. Write-back usage into the canvas itself rose roughly fourfold in the quarter.
"Our MCP server is up to just over a million weekly active users at this point. We grew overall usage three x and overall write-back usage to the canvas about four x." — Praveer Melwani
Praveer called that MCP-driven activity, now about 5% of all credit consumption, a retention driver rather than a threat, even as TBPN's hosts pressed on the broader worry that outside AI agents could someday route work around software makers entirely. Figma also raised its full-year operating-profit guide by $30 million on efficiency gains and hired a new chief information officer, Casper Sorenson, from Coinbase.
