Walker & Dunlop, Inc. Status update

Sometimes it's hard to keep up with them, Willy. Sometimes it's hard to keep up with them. As best I try, they're off doing things all through the night, which I find to be absolutely wonderful. But real talk, I just saw, I just got a notification that the agents are down because I hit my usage limit with Claude. So I think I need to give them a little bit more budget for today to get them back in action. Regardless, I'm glad to be here with you, Willy. We're going to make the most of it, regardless of whether they're working in the background or not.

I think it's important, one of the things you just mentioned is one of the things that I want to demystify as part of our conversation today about these chatbots and how really, if we look forward to the future, it should be about a lot more than just chatbots if we are to achieve what I will refer to as the infinite speed limit for any organization. There's plenty we can cover on our way there.

I actually think it's more appropriate for the here and now, the present and the future. I want to also make sure that we understand what that really means, because what meets the eye is not necessarily what happens underneath. Also, for the record, I didn't name the book. My followers on LinkedIn decided what the book would be called by voting in a poll. Where they landed was "No One Works Here." No one works here- What do you think your-- Hold on a second.

You know, I don't know. That's interesting. I think, given that the technology is fundamentally probabilistic, I think it would really depend on how I framed it for them. If I said to a large language model, "Here are three options for the title of my new book about X, Y, and Z," I think there might be one most probabilistic answer. I also think if I had shared the context that I want to get it in the hands of as many executives as possible, it might go in one direction. Whereas if I said something along the lines of, "I want it to be as provocative as possible," then it might have landed with No One Works Here. With or without the framing that what No One Works Here really means is not that people lose their jobs.

What it actually means is that work has changed, and it is continuing to change fundamentally. What we think of traditionally in terms of work actually looks very different now. It is less about doing the thing, and it is more about setting the intent and the goals for the agentic system to go and execute on our behalf. That is a fundamental mindset shift as we think about leading an organization, and it does require a redefinition of that word organization, something we talk a lot in the book about. Ultimately, what it comes back to in terms of what the agents might choose to title the book, Willy, is probability. That is the way the technology works, and my framing of that question to a large language model is what will ultimately determine which option it chooses.

basis. Yeah. The way I think about it, and even coming back to one of the things that you said earlier, Willy, is is this going to create problems in society?

Yeah, sure. Absolutely. We cannot ignore that. Is it going to also create tremendous opportunity and all sorts of new jobs? Yes, absolutely. I believe both of those things are true. When I think about what is happening, Nvidia's most profitable quarter ever, I think that is fabulous. I think that is an indication of demand, commercial demand for this technology, which is phenomenal. I think one of my reflections on that is that it is still early innings. While that may be a historical quarter in the economy, I think that is really just the first of many to come, and that is not a prediction of what happens to the stock market overall.

It is more so my outlook that the way in which this technology is being adopted is something that will take time. It is something that is slow, and that is not because of the speed of the technology. Rather, it is the speed of the people implementing the technology. Right now, one of the things that I see from my vantage point is that the technology is advancing faster than human habits are. Changing a human's habits takes a while. Changing an organization's habits takes even longer. When I see that milestone moment, I think, "Wow, this is phenomenal," but really this is just an indication of what is to come as human habits catch up or pace with the technology advances. When I think about that, I think, "Wow, we still have plenty to come," and we should be watching that very closely.

But at the same time, what you highlight in terms of open versus closed models, things along those lines, I think that's where a combination becomes extremely important. Looking at the ways in which we leverage those different types of models together. One of the things I think about when I consider Nvidia is that Nvidia's demand will continue to rise regardless of open versus closed models, given that those models run on top of Nvidia products. Now, when I think about the frontier labs, I think they're developing some of the most advanced models. Those are extremely valuable in such a wide variety of use cases. But there are also a lot of use cases where perhaps we don't need a frontier model. Perhaps we don't need the latest and greatest, and I have many of those running right now.