马斯克获薪酬、苹果 AI 亮相、OpenAI 营收猛增、宏观辩论与特朗普筹款会内幕

Jason Calacanis (00:00:00): Nick, these guys are low energy today. You notice that? You know what we need to do, we need to gamble. Let's do it, Nick. Let's play a hand of blackjack. Let's get these guys Tim Naki (00:00:08): Gentlemen, what an absolute pleasure to walk amongst some goddamn greats. Let me see if I can put a bit of pep in your step with a one-time blackjack hand to kickstart one of the greatest podcasts on earth. I can't confirm this is not AI. You did this? We're gonna rock and roll proper tonight. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:24): Let's go. Speaker 4 (00:00:25): Alright. It's a match. David Friedberg (00:00:27): Is this guy on right now? David Sacks (00:00:28): That'll have to. Yeah. Tim Naki (00:00:29): Mate, you are going you are I'm actually breaking my own rules for you guys. I filmed today's hand day boarding, but I've got to film tomorrow's hand for you guys right now. It'll roll out this week's roll roll out. David Friedberg (00:00:42): Hold on. Jason Calacanis (00:00:43): Hold on. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:43): Wait a minute, Tim. You are a Kiwi living in Calgary. Jason Calacanis (00:00:48): Is that right? Tim Naki (00:00:48): It's correct. Yep. Kiwi living in Calgary, but since September 2022, the missus and Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:53): Oh my gosh. Welcome. Welcome to my country. I don't know how I David Friedberg (00:01:00): stumbled across you somewhere, and I started watching all your videos on Instagram. They were off the hook, man. Congrats. They're awesome. Speaker 7 (00:01:07): Thank you. David Friedberg (00:01:07): Okay. So much fun. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:01:08): Where in New Zealand are you from? Tim Naki (00:01:11): From Taranaki. So West Coast, North Island, certainly not somewhere. It's not a holiday destination for certain if you're going. It's like dairy farming country. It's beautiful, but it's off the beaten path. So yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:01:22): And how did you how did you choose Calgary of all places in Canada? Tim Naki (00:01:25): You know what the mission we hold right here my fiancée, May 2022, and we thought it was just gonna be a holiday then back to the farm. But I guess we had that COVID cabin fever like the rest of the world and loved our time here so much that we just decided before we even finished the holiday that we wanted to get new visas and got back, sold up my livestock, and leased the farm back to my parents and made the move and we haven't looked back. I don't think they'll be seeing me pulling tits on the dairy farm anytime soon. I'll let someone call out real for, by the way. Yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:01:58): So lads, what do we wanna do here? We wanna put $10K and then, you know, give it to one of Tim's mates who's stuck or something. How do we do this? We MrBeast this. We give $10K to the next time you get coffee if we win and give it to the barista or something, what should we do? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:02:13): Yeah. Let's do it. Let's do a $10K free roll for Tim and his fans. Tim Naki (00:02:17): Okay. Perfect. So now do you want me to add that to my bit for this one? Yep. David Friedberg (00:02:21): Yes. Absolutely. We want to be in a Jason Calacanis (00:02:23): $10K sweat with you. Tim Naki (00:02:24): One and done is absolutely the way to go about this. Speaker 4 (00:02:28): There we go. Tim Naki (00:02:29): First part we've gotta do here is pick out. Speaker 4 (00:02:31): Are these real dealers Jason Calacanis (00:02:32): or are these okay? I know how to pay. Tim Naki (00:02:34): These definitely are real dealers that certainly Eastern European as far as I David Friedberg (00:02:38): know, I don't Tim Naki (00:02:38): know what the quality of life is like. I imagine they're warehoused somewhere and put on the tools. Now I had a I'd win with a young lessee today and she rolled bold and asked for me. So we'll go back to the folks because they've been good to me. Jason Calacanis (00:02:50): Yeah. Pick a bloke. Pick a bloke. Somebody who feels blue collar who wants to work for us. We need somebody who's a worker, and you have over a million followers now watching this. Yeah. It's from Tim Naki (00:03:01): 15,000 to 1,300,000 in this entire journey. So, yeah, a little bit nonsensical, but Speaker 4 (00:03:07): Okay. Jason Calacanis (00:03:07): This this looks like a good he looks like a hard worker. Speaker 4 (00:03:09): What do you mean by David Friedberg (00:03:10): this guy? It's gonna Tim Naki (00:03:10): work for us. Oh, you gotta you gotta copy and solve live as I do it. Alrighty. It is j 15. Go to blackjack committee. Once every dollar I've got, we have a $14,000 Bitcoin on the line for me personally, but I actually have some absolute legends with me today. I'm betting for the besties from the All-In Podcast as well. They're gonna bring the luck. I think being rolled, bold, and asked by a young Lesley yesterday with $34,000 goes on the lot. Oh, no. No. You guys want 10,000. Right? Not 20. Jeez. I better not not take it. Yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:03:42): Put a stack for 10. Put a stack for 10. Tim Naki (00:03:44): 24,000. It's going on the line. Our dealer looks like the kind of bloke who stops at red lights playing GTA. We won't hold it again. I will not, if you will, I need to see good cards. Jackie. Oh, yeah. Speaker 4 (00:04:16): B. I know he can do it for us. I can't Tim Naki (00:04:19): believe we've just pulled that off. Oh my god. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:04:23): Oh, did that did that Tim Naki (00:04:24): reach out? Gentlemen, that has really just happened. You've just turned 10 into 25. Holy. Jason Calacanis (00:04:31): Holy cow. Speaker 4 (00:04:33): Oh my god. Look at that. She's like, we can do this for the whole tape. David Friedberg (00:04:38): That's amazing. It's actually for another round. David Sacks (00:04:41): We turned twice 10 to 25? Alright. So are we gonna have a separate All-In balance? We just keep rolling it every week. Jason Calacanis (00:04:47): Yeah. Can you come back next week? Speaker 4 (00:04:49): Could be we just keep rolling. David Friedberg (00:04:51): We just keep rolling. Speaker 4 (00:04:52): We have to. Tim Naki (00:04:54): We might Speaker 4 (00:04:54): have to. Tim Naki (00:04:55): That is I cannot believe we've just black checked. There is unbelievable. David Friedberg (00:05:01): Well, Tim, have a Speaker 4 (00:05:02): good day. Alright, Tim. You are Jason Calacanis (00:05:04): a legend. Everybody follow Tim on Instagram. Let's get him to 10 million. Let's get I mean, you have a future in broadcasting. You are gonna make millions. You you went from the farmhouse Chamath Palihapitiya (00:05:16): Oh, yeah. To them. David Friedberg (00:05:16): Literally. Jason Calacanis (00:05:17): And here we go. Now you're gonna be running a casino. I believe you should have Tim's BlackJack. You should have your own branded. Oh, I love you. Brand on this. Keep holding on. On insta. I'll tell you what. I'm not. Naki. Tim Naki (00:05:29): I would have to run anything if I can just play one hand of blackjack with you guys, and I'd land Jack Ice every week. That is unbelievable. Jason Calacanis (00:05:36): And like we said, that 15k we won Speaker 4 (00:05:39): Yep. Jason Calacanis (00:05:39): That's yours for you and the missus. David Friedberg (00:05:40): Go on Jason Calacanis (00:05:41): a great vacation. No. No. No. No. We said it. We said it. We want David Friedberg (00:05:45): you to Jason Calacanis (00:05:45): do something. Go with it. We're already cashed up. You take that 15k. You take the missus out. You get some first class tickets. You meet your mark in Italy, and then let's go. That's it. Come to Tim Naki (00:05:56): the summit. I'm gonna go first class to the All-In Summit. Now that now is Speaker 4 (00:06:00): a good idea. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:06:01): We could play some Oh, Jason Calacanis (00:06:02): we can have a David Friedberg (00:06:03): full session. We may not have a have a fun casino night there. So this will be fun. Yeah. You gotta Jason Calacanis (00:06:08): come to the summit. For sure. Alright. Yeah. Get the missus. Take the $15K, two first-class tickets. Get yourself set up in a nice hotel, and we will see you there. Alright, everybody. Let's get to the docket. Tim? David Friedberg (00:06:19): Thank you. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:06:20): Tim, see you later. I appreciate David Friedberg (00:06:22): it, man. That was awesome. I can't believe they have live dealers standing in a warehouse in front of a webcam. And I don't that that is such a, like, imagine walking into that facility. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:06:32): You're surprised that that facility only has web dealers? That's like, Speaker 4 (00:06:35): I would like to answer. There's a lot of webcams there. I think you can choose to ignore what you wanna do. Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:06:41): Deal blackjack. Yeah. David Friedberg (00:06:42): Oh, yeah. Or whatever else you wanna whatever Jason Calacanis (00:06:44): else you wanna be on a webcast, you Speaker 7 (00:06:45): know, we should be doing everything. David Sacks (00:06:47): Probably making a porno in the next room. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:06:50): Above the table and below the table. Speaker 4 (00:06:52): There's two different tapings. Jason Calacanis (00:07:00): Oh, it's rough. David Friedberg (00:07:01): It's awesome. So what happened? You DM'd him? That was yeah, we re Jason Calacanis (00:07:05): he you know what? No. What happened was somebody emailed me and they're like, hey, that's my mate that you talked about. He's a big fan of the show. It turns out. Speaker 4 (00:07:12): Yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:07:12): You know, this is the thing about influencers now. This is the thing about this micro-celebrity stuff. We all know each other by default. Right? So he was just split into the DMs. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:07:24): There's definitely David Friedberg (00:07:24): a camaraderie. Jason Calacanis (00:07:25): Yeah. That was awesome. Alright. David Friedberg (00:07:26): That's awesome. I'm so glad he won. Jason Calacanis (00:07:28): And, you know, he basically got smashed in his DMs, like, a thousand people DMed him. Oh, you're on All-In. They're bugging out to you on All-In. And, so, yeah, I just said, Hey, would you do a hand would you do your live hand with us? And then I didn't I didn't I wanted to clear with you guys before I put our money on it or whatever, but I couldn't do that because I wanted to surprise you. David Friedberg (00:07:46): Yeah. That's correct. Did not think that was real when he popped up. I thought I'd like to report this thing. Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:07:51): All I could think of was do I look like an ass by saying more? David Friedberg (00:07:55): So then I just stayed quiet. Speaker 4 (00:07:58): I thought David Friedberg (00:07:58): we had touched on more than a Chamath Palihapitiya (00:08:00): I was like, well, you know, start with $50K. Let's just see what happens. David Sacks (00:08:03): I know. You ever feel like when you, like, tiptoe into the bet with, like, a small amount, but yours, you wanna do more. And then you win and and you feel like you actually lost money, because David Friedberg (00:08:12): if you would have made a bigger bet, you would have made more. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:08:15): I lost $60K. I should have put Speaker 4 (00:08:19): I would David Friedberg (00:08:19): have put Chamath Palihapitiya (00:08:22): I would've won $75K. Instead, we put $10K. We won $15K. I lost $60K. David Sacks (00:08:27): We made a joke outside. Jason Calacanis (00:08:29): Yeah. Yeah. Mister Fielderman. Speaker 7 (00:08:33): The weather winner is wide. Rainman, Chamath Palihapitiya (00:08:36): David Sacks. David Sacks (00:08:41): Open source it to Speaker 7 (00:08:42): the fans and make discoveries. Jason Calacanis (00:08:48): I don't know what's going on. Anything going on in your life? Anybody been busy having some adventurous acts? Seems like you were busy last week. Anything to report from your side of the world? David Sacks (00:09:00): Well, should we take you guys behind the scenes of a presidential fundraiser? I admit I've never done one before, so it was a new experience for me. When you host a president, it's just a whole different level of preparation. The Secret Service was out like a week before. The president has an amazing advance team. They work out every detail. They make a map of your house. They really have to think through everything. The police shut down the street. It's really a very involved process. David Friedberg (00:09:27): By the way, I went to dinner in the city that night. And, you know, I was right by your house. So I drove up the street, and they had everything blocked off on, like, three blocks on both streets. Like on both sides of your house. But there were all these protesters, like, all throughout San Francisco, like pro-Trump people had driven in from all over NorCal must have been because these were not the usual supporters. Yeah. And they came in with these, like, cars and the streets were blocked. It was a total zoo in the city for hours before and after. I actually stayed in the city that night, and I heard the people going nuts for hours afterwards. But it definitely, like, took over. It took over the city. David Sacks (00:10:07): Yeah. So what's really interesting is that all week, the San Francisco publications had been trying to gin up protesters by writing about that, you know, the president's coming to town and the protesters are gonna show up. And in fact, there were almost no anti-Trump protesters. And then a huge number of pro-Trump demonstrators came out, and they were waving flags and cheering along his motorcade as he was coming to the house. So the whole protest thing backfired. David Friedberg (00:10:32): Why do you think anti-Trump protesters did not show up? What happened? David Sacks (00:10:39): I think there's just a big enthusiasm gap. I mean, I think that the pro-Trump people are very enthusiastic and the let's call pro-Biden or from people are just not very motivated right now. Jason Calacanis (00:10:50): So it's exhausting to be against Trump for eight years. Like, this has been exhausting. People think they've exhausted folks. David Sacks (00:10:57): Uh-huh. So Des Traynor, the founder of Intercom, he was there. And I I think this was actually a a good summary because he said that he spoke with a bunch of people, and none of them identify as Republican, all voted or donated Democrat in the past. That's true for me too. Now they're backing this guy for his policies on war, immigration, crypto, and more. This election's referenced on those issues. So Owen, you know, came out. Appreciate his support, but it's true. The campaign told us that they had more first-time donors at this event than they've seen before. And that's because a lot of these people hadn't supported Republicans or had supported Trump, and they came out. So we have a few photos and videos here to take you behind Speaker 4 (00:11:38): the scenes. David Sacks (00:11:38): I think there might be some people. So the first thing to say is that President Trump is extremely charming. He connects with people in, like, five seconds. I mean, he meets you and finds something interesting and or funny to say, and he's hilarious. I mean, when he spoke in the living room and he talked extemporaneously for an hour. He's speaking off the cuff. Every speech he gives is different. This is him coming into the living room. He had made just a few notes about topics he wanted to talk about on a piece of paper, but that was it. It was all completely extemporaneous. No teleprompter, obviously. And he's hilarious. I mean, people don't realize how entertaining he is. Speaker 4 (00:12:20): What did we what were some of Jason Calacanis (00:12:22): the greatest hits? What did he hit on? Did he hit on low pressure from showers? Did he what do you what what because I know he's got like some things he hits on that are relatable. Was it all like specific crypto topics, tech topics, or did he go off? David Sacks (00:12:36): Well, he did, you know, he did talk crypto, and it was really interesting. At one point, in his speech, he called on the Winklevoss brothers who were there. And I'm only mentioning this because it was already reported that they were there, so I don't wanna speak out of school, but he said to them, he says, I know you guys created Facebook. You know? He was giving them credit for creating Facebook. And then he Speaker 4 (00:12:58): said he Chamath Palihapitiya (00:12:58): actually created it. David Sacks (00:12:59): Yeah. But he said, but it's okay. I mean, you guys look like models. You were dealt a lot of cards, you know, a lot of cards. Speaker 4 (00:13:04): You know? Jason Calacanis (00:13:06): I mean, they're very good looking. Huge. And, I mean, look at him. Yeah. David Sacks (00:13:12): And so I thought, okay. Wow. Like, he must know the Winklevoss brothers. He must have met them previously, and I found out this is the first time that he had ever met them. So think about the awareness that he has to know that they're in the audience to see them, point them out, and then have this kind of hilarious routine with them. So he's someone who's very sharp, very on the ball, very funny, and then his energy level is incredible. So he had started his day at Mar-a-Lago at 3:30 a.m. Pacific time, 6:30 a.m. his time. Then he flew to Arizona, did a Trump rally in Arizona, then he flew to San Francisco for our event. He spent four hours at our event. He could have left an hour earlier if he wanted to. Then he flew to L.A. for more events the next day there. So think about his day and his energy level was just amazing the whole time. Jason Calacanis (00:14:01): Chamath, your thoughts before this goes on for an hour. Yeah. I'll give you Chamath Palihapitiya (00:14:07): 2 observations. The first is that I think that there is a huge gap between how the media tries to portray Donald Trump and what he's like when you meet him in person. And that gap is really wide. And so I would say specifically to Democrats and independents, you really do need to sit in the room and feel what it's like. David is right. He is charismatic. He's intellectually sharp, and he's funny. And when you put that together, he can engage an audience for a long time and be totally extemporaneous. The other thing I would say is that he is very polite and he's kind in a way that was disarming and was not what I expected. And so I felt that I had misjudged him many years in the past, and so I was very glad that I had an opportunity to sit beside him and to actually interact with him one on one. It was really, really engaging. And so that's more about the style. And then about the substance, what I would say is it was not just a pro-America agenda, but it was very clear that he was pro-innovation. So he was really supportive of AI in the details that he talked about. He was very supportive of crypto in those details, and he's very much low regulation, low taxation. And so when you put that together, it does stand very much in contrast with what the alternative is. And so I think that both of those things are a reason why even if you aren't willing to vote for him, I would encourage everybody to experience what it's like to hear him. Jason Calacanis (00:16:09): Friedberg, your thoughts on all this? I didn't David Friedberg (00:16:11): go to this. I didn't go to do that. Speaker 7 (00:16:13): I don't know. Jason Calacanis (00:16:13): No. I know. It's just big picture. David Friedberg (00:16:16): Know why why Chamath didn't wear a tie. For Nelson's wearing a tie. You don't want the tie? David Sacks (00:16:21): Chamath doesn't need a tie. He's a baller. Alright. I just wanna say what Trump said to you when he met Natalie. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:16:27): So it's us talking, and he says you guys are a really beautiful couple. Uh-oh. David Friedberg (00:16:33): And and Chamath Palihapitiya (00:16:34): I said, well, thank you. And then he turns to me and he goes, well, you must be really rich. And I started laughing out loud. Nat thought he was hilarious. Jason Calacanis (00:16:47): So it's so the disparity in the looks between you and Nat is what you're David Friedberg (00:16:50): sort of implying. You guys sat next to him at dinner. David Sacks (00:16:53): Yep. David Friedberg (00:16:54): And was that like an hour just private conversation between the three of you? This is the other thing that Chamath Palihapitiya (00:16:59): he does. He actually sits there and he says, you know, folks, I'm happy to continue to talk about whatever you want me to. You feel free to ask me questions, or feel free to just go around the room and just tell me what you think. And what would happen is people would say different things and then he would start asking questions of other people and the thing becomes almost like this roundtable discussion of topics. We talked about Iran. We talked about foreign policy. We talked about David Sacks (00:17:23): deficits. Uh-uh crypto regulation, everything. David Friedberg (00:17:26): What do you say about? Did he say about deficit and debt? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:17:31): Well, he's very much he's very much on your side of we have to really figure out how to get spending in order and get the deficit under control. David Friedberg (00:17:41): Well, congrats on sounds like a successful event for you guys. Jason Calacanis (00:17:44): Sounds like you guys are in the halls of power now, and Trump has flipped his positions on EVs, abortion, and taking away a woman's right to choose. He flipped his position on TikTok and flipped his position on crypto. I give him a ton of credit. Four flips in a month. And he just sweeps all those votes. It's pretty smart. And for the Democrats who are listening, Chamath Palihapitiya (00:18:06): he's also pro razors. Jason Calacanis (00:18:08): And you're not listening to people. So you're gonna lose the election, and Biden's gonna get demolished. Nobody wants to vote for somebody who they What David Friedberg (00:18:18): do you think Biden's getting demolished, right? That's your thought? I mean, Jason Calacanis (00:18:21): did you see the video that came out this week where he was at some event? And he looked it looked like a Mitch McConnell moment, right, where he was kinda frozen. And so I don't wanna make it like elder abuse. And I know Like, is that people have older abuse to Chamath Palihapitiya (00:18:35): to sit to say, to to be honest about what you're observing, especially when it comes to Jason Calacanis (00:18:40): the No. No. I'm just saying The most harping Chamath Palihapitiya (00:18:41): on role in America. Jason Calacanis (00:18:43): Yeah. He's gotta it's gotta bow out. David Friedberg (00:18:45): 538 just put out their election forecast showing 51% chance of Biden winning, 48% chance of Trump winning as of 2 minutes ago. Jason Calacanis (00:18:56): Yeah. Who knows? I think it's all gonna be determined by the debate. Sacks, you were gonna say? David Sacks (00:19:00): Well, I just think what other job in America could Biden even be qualified for? Like, what what would you hire him to do? Is there any is there any He Chamath Palihapitiya (00:19:08): shouldn't be working. David Sacks (00:19:09): If you would hire him to do, is there any physical job you would hire him to do? Would you hire him to be your babysitter? I mean, I don't think there's any job in America that anybody would hire him to do. Except for maybe president. It's kinda kinda crazy. Jason Calacanis (00:19:21): And this is where, like, the Democratic Party is in shambles. David Sacks (00:19:24): We should have the highest standards for the mental acuity, sharpness, and energy level of our president. It's the most demanding job. Speaker 4 (00:19:32): We need a Jason Calacanis (00:19:32): cognitive test, but the Democrats need to just look deeply in the mirror and say, hey, you're fielding a candidate that nobody's going to vote for. That's the problem here. And there's not enough anti-Trump sentiment and Trump's a genius at flipping his position to get huge swaths of voters. And so you're gonna get demolished. If you don't hot swap them, I guarantee you hot swap is coming. I predicted the Trump. So I think and I predict it now. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:19:57): I think I think you're right about maybe some of the issues where folks will get much more precise on these issues. But I actually think what's happening is that this is really going to be about Trump versus Kamala Harris. I don't think Biden is gonna step down at all, but I do think there's a chance, a nontrivial chance that Biden wins. And if he does, I don't think he's gonna make it four years. And so then the real question is, do folks want Kamala? And have they had a chance to really figure out David Friedberg (00:20:27): whether they wanna vote for her or not. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:20:28): I think that's really where it's gonna come down to. It's really Trump versus Kamala Harris. Jason Calacanis (00:20:33): And if you if you frame it as that, Chamath, then it's even a bigger trouncing. Right? Like, if you put Kamala against Trump, then it would be an even bigger shellacking. Yeah? In your mind? I just think Chamath Palihapitiya (00:20:48): that without saying anything bad about this, Kamala, because I don't know much about her is really what say is don't know much about her. And so you can't have somebody who gets into that role accidentally. I think there we have to give both President Trump and President Biden a lot of credit, which is they stood in the eye of the hurricane and withstood all the pressure and won. And he who wins that way deserves to be the president of the United States. She hasn't withstood that. And so I think that it's pretty unfair for a lot of voters if there is a bait and switch. And so I think that you have to look at both of these two candidates and assign a reasonable probability that both of them make it to the finish line. And from it, at least, what I saw up close, I think it's a much higher probability that Donald Trump Jason Calacanis (00:21:48): does than President Biden does. And, listen, Biden hasn't made it to the finish line of his first term. Obvious to everybody who's in cognitive decline, you put up a candidate who's in cognitive decline, you're going to lose. Even against you know, Trump who people really don't like. These are the two most unpopular candidates of our lifetime. David Sacks (00:22:05): I'm not sure about that. I don't think it's true that people don't like Trump. I think that Jason Calacanis (00:22:09): there are. He's got a core, but no. People, the David Sacks (00:22:11): Republicans, including your seed up. Jason Calacanis (00:22:13): The Republicans, including yourself, were looking for a different candidate just months ago. And you said Trump is not your preferred candidate, and you are all in on DeSantis. So let's not pretend like he was your preferred candidate. He's the remaining candidate. So you're David Sacks (00:22:26): Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:22:26): But I think I David Sacks (00:22:26): think it's wrong to say that there's not enthusiasm and love for Trump. We saw it on the streets. We saw it in that room. Jason Calacanis (00:22:32): There's some. Yeah. David Sacks (00:22:33): Do you see Logan Paul meeting with Trump four years ago? He was for Biden. Now he's for Trump. Have you ever seen Trump walk into a UFC event? They go nuts for him. Jason Calacanis (00:22:41): I'm just saying there's a lot David Sacks (00:22:42): of Yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:22:42): There's a David Sacks (00:22:43): lot of enthusiasm and a lot of love out there for Trump, a lot of excitement. I don't see any of that for Biden. There are people who don't like Trump, and that drives some support for Biden. But if you look at enthusiasm and excitement, it's all on the Trump side. Jason Calacanis (00:22:57): In this, we are in total agreement. Yes. There is no enthusiasm to put somebody in cognitive decline in the White House. Alright. Listen. We gotta get to the docket. We could talk for hours about Biden Biden Biden, Trump, Trump, and we will. It's gonna be a continuing topic but let's get to a very full docket here. Breaking news last night. Tesla shareholders have backed their guy. Yes. There were two important measures that Tesla just had taken with their shareholders. The first was approving Elon's pay package, the $56,000,000,000 pay package that was voided by a Delaware judge. We talked about that on episode 164 back in February. And then moving Tesla's incorporation from Delaware to Texas. This is also a major move. We talked last week about the Texas stock exchange. Here's the two charts. Massive, overwhelming support. There were some notable people who dissented. I think Norway's sovereign wealth fund and CalPERS were two of the ones who were voting against it. Tesla share price popped 6% on the news. You don't wanna lose Elon and Tesla. That would be really bad. So your thoughts, Chamath, on this vote, and maybe the move and what that represents. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:24:17): It's kind of odd that we're in this crazy place. Jason Calacanis (00:24:21): Sameer. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:24:23): When that original package was unveiled, there were a lot of people, including me, who thought there's no way he's gonna hit this. It's just way too aggressive, and it requires so many things to go right. And so I think, in part, that's why three-quarters of the Tesla shareholders approved it then. 73% is not squeaking over the line. It's not 50% plus a vote. It's a Jason Calacanis (00:24:57): And that excluded Kimbal and Elon's shares. Exactly. So Chamath Palihapitiya (00:25:00): and then I think you have this very dangerous form of judicial activism, which essentially ignored the will of the shareholders, and tried to create some administrative ruling that threw up this big question mark. So then, in typical Elon style, he's like, great. We're just gonna get them to vote again. And then yet again, it passes, and it looks like it's gonna pass by around 73%. But the problem now is that it's still not clear what happens. I think that there's still some question marks where this may not nullify the judge's decision, it may actually create more question marks. So hopefully this gets sorted out. He should get the stock. He never should have been awarded these options. He never should have had them taken away. And so I just hope this thing, yeah. It becomes a nothing burger. Jason Calacanis (00:25:55): Sacks, you have thoughts on this outcome? Is it surprising to you? Not surprising. And then I think the jurisdiction thing is bigger than maybe people are thinking because Delaware has been the standard for incorporating companies. Elon is putting his companies in Nevada and Texas. We saw the stock exchange last week being back to move to Texas. This does seem like there's something about jurisdiction in the water. What are your thoughts, Sacks? David Sacks (00:26:24): Well, I think it's ironic that the winning margin 73% is the same margin by which shareholders approved his comp package back in 2018. So, again, they got 73% voted for this in 2018. Now they voted to reapprove it by the same margin. And the reason why they had to do it is because this activist judge in Delaware voided it, on the grounds that somehow the original shareholder vote wasn't valid. And I think this is interesting that the margin didn't change because it shows that shareholders aren't ingrates. Elon delivered what he promised, and now shareholders are upholding their end of the bargain. And, certainly, they didn't have to take that position. There were different groups like CalSTRS who basically took the position. What have you done for me lately? You know, yeah, you delivered, but we don't have to pay you because of the judge. So we're not gonna pay you. And I think shareholders wisely approved the package because I think there was some chance that if they were nagged, that Elon could leave the company. And I still think he's absolutely vital to all the innovation that's gonna come in the future from Tesla. And you see this, the stock is ripping on the news. It's up about 3% today in a down market. So clearly the market thinks that securing Elon's future at the company was the right decision and shareholders did the right thing. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:27:43): Yeah. David Sacks (00:27:44): In terms of the downstream effect on this, like you said, it raises the specter of Delaware being an activist state. That's not why anyone incorporates in Delaware. The reason why you incorporate in Delaware is because you think it makes you subject to an extremely predictable body of corporate law that's been tested and become bulletproof over many, many decades. And now all of a sudden, you have to worry that maybe a judge will set aside a shareholder vote for reasons that seem incredibly suspicious, especially in light of the fact that the shareholders just reapproved it. So, obviously, the shareholders didn't think they needed your protection and they voted to reverse you. And moreover, Tesla could still be subject to paying the legal fees of these trial lawyers who've asked for literally billions of dollars in legal fees that the judge selects a rule on. So imagine this. Imagine that the shareholder vote gets set aside by the judge and then gets reapproved by shareholders, but the trial lawyers who brought this nuisance suit can now get billions of dollars. If that happens, I mean, Delaware can kinda kiss its status as the premier corporate law state away. Jason Calacanis (00:28:59): Friedberg. This is a John Galt moment. Is this where capitalism, socialism, and the state collide and people now start thinking, maybe we need to create a new jurisdiction, a new framework. David Friedberg (00:29:14): That's a good question. I think it's a good example for capitalism, and I think it should shine the light on how other CEOs are getting compensated. At public companies where there's typically a multi-million dollar or multi-deca-million dollar pay package that has no dependency on the performance of the business you can make tens of millions of dollars a year and not drive shareholder value. And I think that the way that this deal was structured where Elon effectively got 10% of the company for 10x in the stock should be an example that other boards should actively consider when considering both candidates and their appetite for this sort of a package and their compensation packages themselves. The way executive comp typically works at the board level at public companies is you hire these comp consultants. And the comp consultants come in and they use comparables, which basically means let's do what everyone else does. And so you have this self-reinforcing system of compensation and benefits for CEOs that bumps up a little bit every year that ultimately has some degree of ownership in the stock, but fundamentally has very little downside, and Elon had no guarantees in his pay package when he got this comp package originally in 2018, and he got 10% of the company if he 10x-ed the stock, which is what he did. I really think that it is worth having this become the kind of beacon for all boards to consider, and it seems like shareholders in aggregate are applauding the concept. And look, Elon is a special guy, and he gets special treatment. But I think that it moves the needle and should move the needle a little bit for other CEOs and other boards to stand up and say, we should think about something that looks a lot more like this than what we typically do. And I think you would find a very different cast of people showing up to become CEOs and to drive performance out of these businesses and a lot more risky and aggressive behavior than what I think you would typically see. David Friedberg (00:31:16): In companies that are in maintenance mode. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:31:18): What do you guys think of the organizations that initially voted yes and now voted no? David Friedberg (00:31:25): They are saying, look, I mean, if you think about it, you're a big public company. I don't know what ISS recommended. This is Institutional Shareholder Services. They recommended no both times, right. And so ISS basically is what a lot of big public fund managers will follow when they make their votes. And so if I'm a shareholder, that's David Sacks (00:31:43): not what Chamath Palihapitiya (00:31:43): I'm asking. No. David Friedberg (00:31:44): I know what I'm saying, but, like, Jason Calacanis (00:31:45): let's say let's David Friedberg (00:31:45): say that I'm BlackRock or I'm a share a big I'm not gonna put BlackRock as some big shareholder, Tesla Stock, why would I vote to give away 10% of the company when I don't have to? Jason Calacanis (00:31:55): Yeah. Very simple because because David Friedberg (00:31:57): he would leave. Jason Calacanis (00:31:58): Morals and ethics matter, and you want to do the right thing, and you want to incentivize capitalism to operate properly and want to incentivize the people who take on the burden of running these companies. And the people who voted against it, I think people should just make a list of those individuals, Chamath. And they should not do business with us. If somebody is going to double-cross you, they've shown you who they are. These are people who double-crossed them. They got the benefit. And then they stabbed them in the back. That's Chamath Palihapitiya (00:32:27): exactly what they did. That's exactly what they did. David Sacks (00:32:29): It's worse if they voted yes the first time and then they voted no. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:32:33): No. I'm saying, and then and there's no final rule. David Sacks (00:32:35): Then maybe you're just against the deal. But if you're a yes, no, then that's a a a reneg. Jason Calacanis (00:32:40): Then you're a true scumbag. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:32:41): You're a scumbag. David Friedberg (00:32:43): Is that public anywhere? Who did that? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:32:44): Yeah. There are a bunch of folks that said that they, you know, I think it was CalPERS that voted yes. And then when they were on trying to explain, they were like, tap dancing in like, corporate jargon, but really what they are is scumbags. Jason, you're right. They are morally and ethically void and that they're reneging. And this is the one rule in business you're not allowed to do. And the people that do that are these penny-pinching scumbags. Jason Calacanis (00:33:06): I'm not saying a blacklist, but I would say making a list of people who maybe you want to consider not doing business with is how I would frame it. These are people David Sacks (00:33:14): who they're public market investors. They're not private sellers. They buy the stock on the open market, so they don't have to worry. David Friedberg (00:33:19): I mean, I think the question is what are the chances that Elon leaves the company if he doesn't get the payback? The chances David Sacks (00:33:24): will probably risk, and I think that was a non-zero possibility. Think about it. Jason Calacanis (00:33:28): Yeah. Non-zero possibility. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:33:30): You made an agreement with somebody and you shook their hand. David Friedberg (00:33:34): Yeah. What Chamath Palihapitiya (00:33:34): what why does it care whether he would have left or not left? Jason Calacanis (00:33:37): This is, like, have to do the right thing. Tim Naki (00:33:38): Yeah. You Chamath Palihapitiya (00:33:39): have to do the right thing. You promised the guy x amount of money for doing y amount of things. He did the y things and then you had a judge come over the top because of somebody who owned 10 shares. And David Friedberg (00:33:50): all I'm saying is if you if Chamath Palihapitiya (00:33:51): you don't have the intellectual intelligence to look past that and say, wait a minute, we just paid the guy to do and now we're gonna remake. They're gaming the system. I just think that, like, how can anyone who is capable of doing a job sign up for a pay package? How could anyone and the people that will sign up are these, like, middling, corpo people who will accomplish nothing and will run these companies in ways that then speaks to organizations that have just proven themselves to be totally unreliable. David Friedberg (00:34:23): The irony of the thing is that these folks thought that they were getting a 10% free roll when they voted no. And the reality is that by him getting the pay package, the certainty of him sticking around at the company caused the stock to go up by 10%. So they actually had the calculus wrong that if they had gotten their way, the stock would have declined by more than the 10% free roll they thought they were getting. Jason Calacanis (00:34:47): This is, I think, the main point. David Friedberg (00:34:48): And 10% being the ownership of the company that he gets. Speaker 4 (00:34:50): Yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:34:51): The pay package was laughed at on CNBC by all the experts. There is no way for him to hit this stuff. If he does hit it, he's getting a fraction of the value of it. And this is why stock is such get it and endowments get it and your retirement account gets it, everybody rows in the right direction. Is it perfect? No. People can buy back their stock. They can do a little gaming on the margins. But it is the most pure system we have. Everybody has a share of the company. So if you're a socialist, you know, like, you should actually kind of appreciate how stock works, that everybody has a chance to buy it. Everybody has a chance to participate. This is the model we should be using for all CEOs. They should all get a massive package if the stock goes up into the right. It's so obvious, and this was so unfair. But let's see this flipper, and I wanna see their explanation. Speaker 8 (00:35:47): Compensation is commensurate with the performance of the company. Speaker 7 (00:35:50): Did you vote for it in 2018? Speaker 8 (00:35:53): I believe we did vote for it in 2018. But this is about long-term value production. Speaker 7 (00:35:57): But do you believe you were duped in 2018? Speaker 8 (00:36:00): No. I believe we used the information we had available and made the best choice. Speaker 7 (00:36:04): Okay. So here's what I find so interesting about this particular choice. Mhmm. Seventy-three percent, I believe, of shareholders voted in favor of it in 2018. A judge has said that Speaker 4 (00:36:15): Mhmm. Speaker 7 (00:36:15): Shareholders were not informed properly. Right. If you talk to most shareholders, by the way, especially big shareholders, they said, we were not duped. We understood completely what we were doing and we were on board with this. Now that this almost opportunity has arrived on your doorstep. To say to actually rethink this, if you will. There's a view that, oh, maybe maybe we're not getting the value we thought we should. You thought you should get it, but he's worked, by the way, under the assumption that he was hitting the numbers Speaker 8 (00:36:46): Right. Speaker 7 (00:36:46): And dealing with the contract. If I told you that you were being paid a certain amount of money in 2018, and then I called you and said, actually, you know what? We're not gonna give you that money anymore. What would you do? Speaker 8 (00:36:59): It's a great question. I would, I would go to my board. You know, I would talk with my board. It's Jason Calacanis (00:37:06): Cortman is so smug. What is her name? Karen Frost? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:37:09): I don't think she's smug. Jason Calacanis (00:37:10): Sorry. Marcie Frost. Oh, sorry. I thought it was Karen Frost. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:37:14): I think that this is emblematic of the kind of person who is incapable of actually doing the right thing. And there's a lot of these people that run a lot of these organizations. That, I mean, what kind of an answer is it? Jason Calacanis (00:37:27): I mean, it was a non-answer. That's why I said it was smug. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:37:30): Let me just ask each of you. You've all started companies. Some of you are still running companies. Would you take money from her and CalPERS after that statement? Jason Calacanis (00:37:39): Hard no for me. Yeah. But David Sacks (00:37:40): remember, she's not investing in private companies. She's buying stock on the open market. David Friedberg (00:37:44): So Chamath Palihapitiya (00:37:45): CalPERS announced that they've been helping and they're starting to do directs. David Sacks (00:37:50): Oh, okay. I didn't know that. Jason Calacanis (00:37:52): Yeah. They're trying to catch up. They've been behind on venture. David Sacks (00:37:55): Let's call this whole thing what it is. It was a heist. You had these trial lawyers. They find a name plaintiff who's got 9 shares. And on a contingency fee basis, they go after Elon's pay package. What are they looking for? $5,600,000,000. Jason Calacanis (00:38:13): How does a lawyer make $5,000,000,000? Speaker 4 (00:38:15): How does David Sacks (00:38:15): that possibly this whole thing? They don't care about Tesla. They don't care about the company. They don't care about shareholders. They're looking for a giant multi-billion-dollar contingency fee payment and they took their shot. And they found a Delaware judge to basically agree with them even though shareholders approved it. And then shareholders reapproved it. So my question is, how much are these trial lawyers gonna get? Is a judge gonna award them billions of dollars for what was clearly now a mistake to void a pay package that shareholders wanted to stick with? If they award these lawyers billions of dollars, which is what they're seeking, no one's gonna wanna do business in Delaware anymore because it subjects you to these stick-up high-spy trial lawyers. So I think that's gonna be the next big shoe to drop is what do these trial lawyers get awarded? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:39:06): What what are Speaker 4 (00:39:06): they gonna get? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:39:07): Because they wanted to get paid in Tesla shares. Speaker 4 (00:39:10): No. I'm serious. Here's an idea. Buy the shares yourself. David Sacks (00:39:13): Yeah. They said we don't like your management of the company, but we won't take shares. Yeah. Speaker 4 (00:39:18): Yeah. By the way, they got their shares and then they voted to give Elon the next pay package. So it's just a full-on grift. They they screwed the bag. David Sacks (00:39:26): But Delaware is supposed to protect corporations against this grift. That's why people incorporate there. Jason Calacanis (00:39:31): When people ask, why does Delaware have the special place that everybody decided Delaware, which we were to incorporate. It was because it was predictable. Lawyers felt this was the most predictable jurisdiction that would be the most shareholder-friendly, most shareholder-thoughtful, whatever word you wanna use. They would defend the shareholders, and here we are. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:39:52): The last company I started, 8090, we incorporated in Nevada, and I just redomiciled a couple of other companies that I own into Nevada as well. Jason Calacanis (00:40:03): It's becoming a trend. We're having very big discussions about this in the startup community of where to domicile your company and more to come on this one. Okay. Let's keep moving. Apple had a huge announcement this week. Apple has entered the chat. They announced Apple Intelligence. Get it, AI, and they have included a ChatGPT integration from OpenAI. This was really, I think, impressive in many ways because people thought Apple was far behind. It was a banger of a demo. A lot of Apple-like future-looking demos. So none of these demos that we're gonna show are coming to your phone this week. They were really, I think, playing catch up with Microsoft, and it worked. Stock is up 10%. They added about $300 billion in market cap. Now the top three market cap companies are all driven specifically by the perception that AI is going to be the next technological wave. Microsoft, Apple, and Nvidia all cruising around about $3.2 trillion. And this top three keeps flipping back and forth. Apple had passed Microsoft in market cap. Here's the features. I'll just give you a quick overview of what we're seeing. It's added Grammarly-like features. Great product. Grammarly, I'm not an investor, but they added the ability to proof, get grammar help. AI will transcribe and summarize phone calls with permission, obviously, double opt-in. It will prioritize notifications and iMessage and email that are super important. You can do smart replies, a company we're an investor in, Superhuman, already does this kind of stuff. And they're bringing AI to Siri, and this is gonna be the big win in my mind. You're gonna be able to say things like you wanna order something in DoorDash or Uber Eats or Instacart, and the AI Siri will be able to dip down into apps. They're building a whole app AI interface. Much like the Rabbit device CEO talked about doing. And, I think this means that Apple is gonna win the AI consumer. There is a deal with ChatGPT that I'll get your feedback on gentlemen in a moment. According to sources, Apple is not paying OpenAI. It's a non-exclusive deal. ChatGPT can be swapped out. Apple is also talking to Google about a similar deal. Obviously, it doesn't take a genius to predict that Apple is going to auction off the LLM integration, I think, to the highest bidder. Jason Calacanis (00:42:24): They did that with the search deal. Google pays Apple $20 billion to be the default search engine. That's about 5 percent of Apple's annual revenue if you didn't know. And it's all profit. Right? So this is a huge profit moment. I'm gonna pause there for a second before I get into more of this, and just get your general reaction, Chamath Palihapitiya (00:42:44): I think you nailed it right at the beginning. The thing that I was struck by the most in this is we went from a phase where in the Steve Jobs era, these events were because you were about to unveil a product that was done and shipping as of that day. And then at some point, we transitioned to they are talking about products that they intend to release within a year. Now, we've shifted to the part where they're talking about software integrations from a third party that will happen in a year. So if you just look at it sequentially, it's a little disappointing in that sense because for a company this big, it's really not much of anything. You can't really touch it and feel it and it's gonna take a year before we really know what the totality of all of this is. Meanwhile, the economics of the ChatGPT deal were leaked, and there's no money on either side. So I don't know. It's a little bit of like it's really not much of anything, to be honest, because there's nothing we can actually play with and experience. Jason Calacanis (00:43:59): Friedberg, your thoughts on the vision here at least. And to Chamath's point, Apple used to release dope stuff fully baked, ready to go, and now we are increasingly seeing them talking about what's coming next year or at some point. Think Apple's gonna win the consumer? Do you think Apple's falling behind? Should they have built their own LLM by this point? David Friedberg (00:44:20): I'm not sure. I think what they have shown is more of a glimpse into the future of hardware, where for the last two decades or so, hardware has mostly been a portal to access the internet and use the internet through apps or through the browser. And hardware's done a good job of enabling that, but I think we're now gonna see a much tighter coupling where the hardware becomes more valuable, and it's less of this kind of funnel for apps to flow through and data to flow through, but the hardware actually becomes the value creator. You see a much tighter integration in the hardware OS and the AI or the software that enables you to do lots of things. You're no longer just gonna use the hardware to access an app to do something. So a lot of the companies that are app developers are likely gonna end up becoming services developers that enable that hardware AI to do something for you. And this coupling between hardware and software, because of the way AI works, is, I think, becoming more apparent, not just in consumer devices, but we see it in the data center and in the enterprise stack as well. You know, we've seen that. Obviously, there's this tight integration between the chip and the software stack that Groq built. There's a tight integration between Google's TPU stack and then the ML instances and the tools that you can use in Google Cloud that are optimized for use on that TPU hardware. NVIDIA has got a big effort, obviously, in continuing to build out their software stack that sits on top of their hardware and works in a more coupled way. And then Google has this ability to kind of realize, I think, a similar outcome with Pixel phones, which is a pretty sizable opportunity for them. And then all of the hardware manufacturers can probably grab more value now as they build their own AI into their OS and you start to see more of this value realized by the hardware companies. So I think that there's this really interesting shift where we've all thought about hardware as being this, like, commodity where there's some degree of, like, improvement or innovation made over time, but now it seems like a lot of value might actually get captured by hardware companies in all points in the value stack. David Friedberg (00:46:20): So it's an interesting moment. And I think that this just shines a light on that trend that I think is gonna play out over the next couple of years. Jason Calacanis (00:46:27): It's clear, Sacks, that right now, to enable these features, you're gonna have to have a pretty solid device. They announced here at the keynote at WWDC that you need to have an M1 chip or better, iPhone 15 or better. So and having all this local data is a huge advantage for Apple. They've got your message, your phone, your calendar, your photos, your app behavior, the data inside of your wallet. All of this gives them a huge, huge advantage. So I guess the question is, do you think this renews the Apple franchise and people start upgrading their phones again to get all these new features, David Sacks? David Sacks (00:47:09): Well, the market definitely thinks so because Apple was up big on this news. And even if it was largely vaporware at this point, the market definitely liked where they were going. And frankly, Apple did exactly what I said they should do last week, which was to reinvent Siri as an LLM with the capability to reach into apps as an agent and take actions on the user's behalf. That's what they effectively announced. However, Apple took a shortcut to get here. They partnered with OpenAI. And this is something that I don't think they've ever really done before at the operating system level. Apple is famous for being vertically integrated, for being a walled garden, for being end to end. They control everything from the chips, to the hardware, to the operating system, and they don't let anybody else in until you're at the App Store layer. This is allowing somebody in beneath the level of the App Store. This is allowing someone, OpenAI, to get access to your data and to control your apps at the operating system level. And I think, you know, Elon pointed out, wait a second. What are the privacy implications here? And I think there are major privacy implications. There's simply no way that you're going to allow an AI on your phone to take all these actions on your behalf without giving that model substantial amounts of user data. And that is a huge change for Apple. Remember, Apple in the past has been the advocate for consumer privacy. There's a whole issue of the San Bernardino terrorist where the FBI went to Apple and said we want you to give us backdoor access to their phone, and Apple refused to do it. It went to court to defend user privacy. And furthermore, one of Apple's defenses to the arguments, the antitrust arguments for allowing sideloading and allowing, you know, other apps to get access to parts of the operating system as they've always said. David Sacks (00:48:56): We can't do this because it would jeopardize user privacy and user security. Well, here they are opening themselves up to OpenAI in a very deep and fundamental way in order to accelerate the development of these features. In other words, they took the shortcut. They could have developed the LLM themselves. They could have developed the AI themselves, but they chose not to do that. And I think this is going to open Pandora's box for Apple. Because, again, they've proven that they can open up the operating system to a third party now and who knows what the privacy implications of this are going to Jason Calacanis (00:49:28): It turns out Apple has addressed this head on. They hear the concerns. And much like when you share a photo or you share your location, it's going to ask you over and over again. Do you want to let this app do this? So they're aware that this is an issue. They brought up privacy every single time, but people don't trust OpenAI, and they do trust Apple. So this is strange bedfellows to be short, mafia votes. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:49:52): I think that Apple really cares about privacy. When they're trying to hurt a company, they don't like, Meta. And they're willing to figure out a way to work around it when David Friedberg (00:50:04): there's a Chamath Palihapitiya (00:50:05): company that they clearly support, OpenAI. Jason Calacanis (00:50:08): Yeah. What were you behind? You know, you behave differently than when you're ahead and you have your monopoly. Friedberg, you wanted to add anything here before we move on to the next story. Okay. In related news, OpenAI has hit a run rate, and this is kinda stunning, of $3,400,000,000. That means they've roughly doubled their monthly revenue in the past six months or so. These are not official numbers; OpenAI is denying them, but here's a chart that somebody put together based on all the different leaks and approximations of what OpenAI is making. The reason this makes no sense to shorten. It shows a year, and then it shows a month, a month, a month, a month, is because there's been different leaks at different points in time, but just to normalize this in 2022 for all of 2022 before they really had a lot of customers, $28,000,000. And now on a $3,400,000,000 run rate, again, pretty stunning number. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:51:04): If you can do apples to apples here because, like, January 2023 is $200,000,000. Means that June is $300,000,000 if they're on a $3,600,000,000 run rate. Jason Calacanis (00:51:14): So yeah. And so if we were to even look at, you know, the number of people who work there, 770, if you put that at $500,000 a person, some engineers getting a couple of million, some people maybe getting less. They probably only got a half billion dollars in salaries a year. Who knows what they're spending on the infrastructure for this? If you were to do a valuation on this, everybody knows they sold a bunch of shares in secondary at around $80,000,000,000, which means they're trading at, if these numbers are true, 25 times revenue, which is close to what NVIDIA is trading at right now. Obviously, they're two very different businesses. So your thoughts on this as a SaaS company, obviously, the majority of this revenue is consumption-based, some portion of it is SaaS-based, recurring, like subscriptions we pay for at launch. My venture fund, we pay for $6,000 a year to have all 20, 25 people on ChatGPT as a corporate account. Maybe it's $250, $300 a year per person. So what do you think of this business, Sacks, and how fast it's growing? Obviously, some of it is API consumption-based, not recurring. Some of it is recurring. David Sacks (00:52:20): First of all, let me say that, you know, we've talked about AI General Hospital and all the soap opera issues around OpenAI. Yeah. And, you know, Judge Sacks had opinions on that. Yes. But putting that aside, I mean, everyone acknowledges that their products are awesome. I mean, OpenAI makes really great products, with the ChatGPT-4 being at the top of the list. And I talked about how when we moved from ChatGPT-4 Turbo to 4.0 at Glue, the speed and quality went up, you know, at least 2x, and it felt like 10x. So they have the best language model as of this point in time. And they also have other products that are really great, like the Whisper API which does transcription. I mean, there's a whole bunch of tools they have that are great for developers. So nobody's taking anything away from them on the product side. And I think you're seeing that in this revenue number. Now if I was to try and take apart this business as an investor, I would separate the B2C business from the B2B business. The B2C is a consumer subscription plan. People paying $20 a month. I'm one of them. I pay the 20 bucks a month. It's probably the only LLM that I would pay 20 bucks a month for. Jason Calacanis (00:53:32): How often do you use it daily, weekly, monthly? David Sacks (00:53:35): I'd say a handful of times. It's it's not, to be honest, it's not like a daily use for me, but I I probably use it every week, I would say, at least once. David Friedberg (00:53:44): Yeah. David Sacks (00:53:44): So I still use it. I have to say though that the other LLMs are catching up. And if Gemini ever gets good enough or, you know, when Bard gets to the next level, am I gonna stick with that $20 a month plan? I'm not sure. It depends whether OpenAI can really maintain the leadership it has or the perception of leadership. Okay. So that's half the business. And then the other part of the business is the B2B, which is the API products that effectively are selling to developers. And that's where I would place the future value of this company. I mean, as somebody who invests in SaaS, when we see a business that has B2C subscriptions and B2B, we place all the value on B2B. And the reason is because historically, the churn rates in B2C are too high. Yep. Five to 10 percent churn rates are common. 50 percent a year. Jason Calacanis (00:54:32): Per month. David Sacks (00:54:33): Per month. Fifty percent churn a year, very common. OpenAI may not be experiencing that yet. But it's very hard to avoid the downdraft of consumer churn. And, you know, on the other hand, on the B2B side, a good B2B business has expansion, 120 percent, 150 percent expansion year over year from the same customers. In other words, they're ordering more. Jason Calacanis (00:54:57): So you would compare this business to Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Azure. That's really the business here. David Sacks (00:55:03): Yeah. The first thing I'd wanna know is how much of the $3,400,000,000 is consumer and how much of it is developers. Jason Calacanis (00:55:09): We'll find out eventually. Chamath, your thoughts on OpenAI's surging revenue. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:55:14): I'm kind of in David's camp, which is I think to the extent that the business has a large terminal value, it's going to be because of the enterprise cash flows. The thing to keep in mind is that I still haven't seen enterprises building production-level products using AI. Jason Calacanis (00:55:36): It's all experimental. Right. It's all experiments now. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:55:39): Yeah. That's nothing against OpenAI, it's just a commentary on the fact that we are at a very, very early part of the cycle where when you use this term blast radius, right? What are you referring to? You're referring to this idea that you're stringing together elements of a model or multiple models that each have some nontrivial error rate. And by multiplying all these error rates together, you get your final product, but the unfortunate reality in most AI workloads is that you end up with something that's not very good. And that's not the fault of OpenAI nor is it the fault of LLaMA. It's just the nature of how these models work and the fact that, you know, you've gone from something very, you know, deterministic to something that's very probabilistic. And we have not found a way to create extremely high-quality experiences. We as an industry, that make this cost justifiable. So right now, as you said, Jason, most of that is toy apps and a lot of experimentation. Will we get there? I absolutely think so, but we're not there yet. So I suspect that most of the revenue then is on the consumer side right now, actually. And so I just looked at Google Trends, and I first looked at the United States, and I just wanted to understand how is the traction. And what's interesting is that the traffic in the United States is down about 25, 26% since the end of the school year, which I think reinforces this belief that ChatGPT has definitely over-indexed in that young people's cohort where they rely on it to write essays or what have you. But then I looked outside the United States and worldwide. And what's interesting about that is that's actually still growing up into the right. So I think you have then an ARPU problem, which is the same thing that we had to deal with at Facebook, which is we have these extremely valuable users in America. They asymptote at some point, and then we have to grow in other markets, but those markets aren't nearly as lucrative, right. Uh-uh. They just can't generate as much revenue. Jason Calacanis (00:57:44): ARPU per year is single digits. Maybe it hits double digits. Opposed to that states where it could be triple digits. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:57:50): Right? So then I I don't know. I I would just wrap up by saying that I think that it's just if this number is right, it's just an incredible testament to what they've been able to uncover and create in a short amount of time. That is legendary stuff. Yep. But what I can tell you in working with enterprises around these AI experiences through 8090, we have not yet seen production-quality models being deployed in the wild that are dealing with very, very important business processes, which means that most of the revenue right now is probably Jason Calacanis (00:58:31): Okay. Friedberg, you know if you got to see Sonny's talk at Liquidity last week, but he talked about how many of the CIOs and CEOs are looking for open-source solutions here. Eighty percent of them wanna go open source. They don't want a proprietary model to invest in, but the best model right now is a proprietary model. So what do you think about OpenAI's revenue surge? Is it sustainable, or are there 20 better open-source projects that are gonna be death by 20 open-source project cuts? And Chamath's general feeling here that, hey. It's not ready for prime time yet. It will be, but we're in the AI dial-up era, to use an analogy here. Hey. You could see the promise, but it kinda sucks in terms of reliability. David Friedberg (00:59:14): Maybe OpenAI is AOL? Right? Like, I think that there's gonna be a Google that'll show up that'll maybe it's Google. It'll grab a large part of the value here or you know, ultimately the cost comes down so much with the open-source tools. I do believe that these open-source tools are incredible. I mean, the open-source LLaMA instances are, like, they get you 85 to 90% of what you're looking for. So if you're an enterprise user, why would you pay thousands of dollars for the OpenAI platform when you can use LLaMA, and you can tune it, and you can build your own front end to it, your own integration with your own data, etc., etc. It's just early days for enterprises figuring out how to do that, but I do really believe that the future is enterprises, companies, building their own LLM-driven tools for both internal and external products that leverage smaller open-source models. And that we're currently kind of in this, you know, dearth of people's understanding and ability on how to actually execute against that, which makes the default to be go to the ChatGPT interface. I will also provide a counter. I just did a big project at work this week. We had, like, a big off-site with twenty people involved. And everyone used ChatGPT to get ready for it. So there was a ton of analysis, a ton of data gathering, a ton of reporting needed for the off-site. And rather than hire a third party or have people go out and source data themselves, a lot of us, including myself, I prepared like maybe a quarter of the material, just used ChatGPT and pulled the sources to make sure Speaker 4 (01:00:50): it was Chamath Palihapitiya (01:00:50): all Did you Jason Calacanis (01:00:50): did did you did pull sources and check facts. Right? You do Speaker 7 (01:00:53): have to do that. David Friedberg (01:00:53): Yeah. So we pulled the sources, and there was a lot of wrong stuff. Just to be clear, but for percent, Tim Naki (01:00:57): it says, David Friedberg (01:00:57): You're at a ballpark. I would say 25% of it was, like, wrong, and then you had to clarify, but the truth is for this particular application, it didn't matter. We were making some approximations on markets and sizes and various facts that we were kind of using to do some strategy stuff. But some product development stuff. So I would say, Chamath Palihapitiya (01:01:16): Like, it wasn't useful. You found it. David Friedberg (01:01:17): 100%. And I would say it saved us hundreds of hours. Hundreds of hours. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:01:21): And were you paying them an enterprise license or a consumer license? David Friedberg (01:01:25): 20 bucks a month. What is that? Jason Calacanis (01:01:27): It's the same thing for the enterprise, Chamath. You can just sign up and for 20 bucks a month, you can have your Speaker 4 (01:01:33): whole No. Jason Calacanis (01:01:33): No. You're Chamath Palihapitiya (01:01:36): just paying it yourself, or you pay for everybody at Calacanis. David Friedberg (01:01:39): think everyone has the right to pay for it. I think other people at the company pay for it too. I pay. I don't have like a corporate thing set up. So we we we took Speaker 4 (01:01:47): the time Jason Calacanis (01:01:48): to set up the corporate. It's really easy, and then anybody with your domain can sign up and let you track it, but it doesn't consolidate. That's what I'm looking for, Chamath, is the ability to consolidate all the searches in one place and everybody can share their searches. But like David Friedberg (01:02:00): I said, the application is what you Jason Calacanis (01:02:01): was doing, right, in some way, Sacks. David Sacks (01:02:03): Collaborative AI? David Friedberg (01:02:05): It's an application today. Meaning, like, we go to the app. We ask questions. We get answers, and we use that. And I actually had it pull tables down and I drop those tables in. Like, all sorts of great stuff we could do to, you know, do some analysis, pull out the stuff, what the analysis showed, understanding unit economics on various businesses, all this sort of stuff that it consolidates for Jason Calacanis (01:02:23): us very quickly. Definitely makes everybody bionic. Speaker 7 (01:02:25): I agree. David Friedberg (01:02:26): But what it doesn't do yet is take all of our internal data and all of our internal tooling and kind of reconfigure how we use that. So we're still paying for a whole bunch of enterprise software and SaaS licenses for things that we know we don't wanna be paying for in the future. And we're now starting to figure out how can we build our own AI-based software to replace a lot of the dependency we have on third-party software that uses our internal data for our internal consumption. So there's a lot of that's still ahead of us. And that's why I know, and we're pretty progressive. So that's why I know it's early innings because I see the way we're gonna use it. And I know that we're probably well ahead of a big enterprise company that are more traditional. And so I can see, like, a couple years from now, all these big enterprises are gonna figure the same thing out, and then you're not necessarily gonna need to pay for this ChatGPT stuff. If there's an internal tool and an internal LLM that you can run. Jason Calacanis (01:03:19): Are really getting dependent on this, and they use it constantly. We're on our investment team meeting. We're evaluating a company for real estate brokers. We're evaluating a company. For therapists and, like, tools and SaaS products for those type of people. And when I asked them, well, what's the total addressable market? Boom. Three or four researchers and analysts on my team are doing that search, finding sources, and saying, there are this many therapists, this many social workers, this many real estate brokers, this many advisors. And then I'm saying, well, did you source that? I'm like, yeah. Of course. I asked and, like, what if it was like, well, I asked Claude, I asked Gemini. I asked ChatGPT. I asked them all for sources. I cross-referenced them. So they're like, you have three of these things open. And so just everybody's knowledge level goes up, you do have to check it because one out of four facts is probably wrong or cited wrong. And so it's gonna be David Friedberg (01:04:07): I think one out of four is about the right number. That's what I want. And so David Sacks (01:04:10): That's interesting. So you use multiple LLMs to find the hallucinations. Jason Calacanis (01:04:14): Yeah. Basically, you cross-referenced something. David Sacks (01:04:16): That's actually pretty interesting. David Friedberg (01:04:17): I jump on Gemini too. So I use Gemini dot Google, and I use ChatGPT, and I just make sure that stuff lines up. Just sanity check things, because I'm just gonna process a lot of data David Sacks (01:04:26): for Right? How many would you be willing to pay for? David Friedberg (01:04:29): I can pay for five. David Sacks (01:04:31): You'd pay for five different LLMs. Jason Calacanis (01:04:32): Well, think about it. If somebody's salary is $100,000, and these costs $1,000 to have five of them? Of course, I pay for five. David Friedberg (01:04:38): Well, is it a work tool? David Sacks (01:04:40): It is a work tool. You know, I guess, I guess there's three categories to their business now that you're raising this. There's sort of the consumer subscriptions. Yep. Then there's the business subscriptions, which are basically the consumer product, but a company's paying for it. Correct. And then there's the developers paying for metered. Jason Calacanis (01:04:55): Yeah. Yeah. That enterprise is really powerful. David Sacks (01:05:00): Yeah. It's kinda like Microsoft Office or Google Docs where consumers use them for free or wanna use them for free. And then companies will pay for it, and that's where the real money is. Jason Calacanis (01:05:10): Anyway, this is going to make people bionic. I think all organizations will have the same number of people for the next couple of years and then just individuals will get better and better at their jobs. And so efficiency is gonna go way up. Speaking of efficiency, the market is ripping. We're gonna get a little macro here in three acts. Inflation has been broken. I think it's safe to say. We're down at 3.3%, lower than expected. And hiring of wages are surging, and stocks are surging. So let's go through it here and get the besties take on the vibe session. David Sacks (01:05:47): Actually, just you're at that framing, Jason. David Friedberg (01:05:49): Yeah. I agree. I disagree as well. Jason Calacanis (01:05:51): Let me go through the numbers, and then you can all disagree. That's how this works, folks. Inflation print came at 3.3%, lower than expected. Here's your 10-year chart. Super easy to explain what's happening here. Rates were low for a long time. Inflation was cruising at about 2%. And then lunatic spending during COVID. And, we added a trillion to the national debt and then Biden added a bunch. Everybody got those stimulus checks and PPP loans. And so if you look at inflation here, we were just cruising along at 2%, massive spike up to 9% year over year inflation and now coming back down to And the question is, can we get to a 2 handle? And the rates went up faster than ever in history. Here's the Fed chart. You can see there. And this goes from the '80s. You see that massive spike when they tried to break the back of inflation previously. So this is the fastest they've ever gone up. And here we go. The common sentiment here is that savings have been burned off, and people are starting to have debt. And so now we are in act 2. The lowest unemployment rate of our lifetime continues. If you believe those numbers, some people do, some people don't. The Labor Department reported 272,000 new jobs in May, smashing, crushing the 190,000 estimate. And then act 3. Average hourly wages are up a massive 4% from last year at $35 an hour. That also topped estimates. So if inflation is at 3.x and hourly earnings are at 4.x, maybe consumers will start feeling better about the economy eventually. They obviously have been pretty shocked by that 9% inflation and only 4% growth. Here's your chart from the Fed and the hourly earnings of all employees, and you can feel pretty good about that. Where everybody's wages keep going up. The question is do they go up faster than inflation. Okay. So there's my framing of the situation. Friedberg, tell me what I got right. Tell me what I got wrong. David Friedberg (01:07:49): I think there are three numbers that matter. Okay. Inflation rate. The growth in GDP and the cost to borrow. The growth in GDP in the first quarter of 2024 was a lousy 1.3% on an annualized basis. And even if the rate of inflation came down, we are still inflating the cost of everything by north of 3%. So the economy is only growing by 1.3%, and it costs more than 3% more each year to buy stuff. So that means everyone's spending power is reducing, and our ability and our government's ability to tax is declining because the economy is only growing by 1.3%. The most important fact is that the interest rates are still between 4 and 5%, 4.7%. That means that to borrow money costs 4.7%, but the businesses, the economy on average, is only growing 1.3%. So just think about that for a second. We have a tremendous amount of leverage on businesses, on the economy, on the federal government. That leverage, the cost to pay for that debt, is more than 4 to 5%, but you're only growing your revenue by 1.3%. Yes. So at some point, you cannot make your payments. Jason Calacanis (01:09:07): And the goal and that is true. David Friedberg (01:09:09): That is true for consumers. That is true for enterprises, and it is true for the federal government. Jason Calacanis (01:09:15): Just to point out here, what you're saying, the goal was to, in fact, increase the interest rate just to cool the economy, right, which they got to late, but that was the goal. That was the explicit goal. David Friedberg (01:09:25): was to cool the economy. Yeah. The whole purpose of raising rates is to slow the flow of money through the economy. And by slowing the flow of money through the economy, there is less spending, which means that you are reducing the demand relative to the supply. So the cost of things should come down. You should reduce the rate of the increase in the cost of things. Now, if you click on this link, Nick, that I just sent you, in response to the condition in the economy today, Elizabeth Warren sent this note to Jerome Powell 3 days ago saying, dear Mr. Powell or dear Chair Powell, we write today to urge the Federal Reserve to cut the federal funds rate from its current 2-decade high of 5.5%. The sustained period of high interest rates is already slowing the economy, and is failing to address the remaining key drivers of inflation. She goes on to point out the fact that consumers are suffering, businesses are suffering, and the strain of these three numbers is really starting to show on individuals, on businesses, and obviously on the power of the dollar. But the dollar is a different story. Of the economy and the rest of the world, and we're in a very unique position. But I think that things are not as rosy. Now there's certainly a shift in the market because what tells us is that the timeline at which the Fed will cut rates is coming in a little bit relatively speaking. And so the market is saying, okay, let's adjust to lower rates, the 10-year treasury yield has come down a bit, but we are still in a difficult situation for people and for the, for businesses you have Elizabeth Warren, who I think is the voice of small businesses and consumers. She's she's she's trying to be the voice of those. Yeah. Speaker 4 (01:11:00): Since David Friedberg (01:11:00): I think you Chamath Palihapitiya (01:11:01): represent so Jason Calacanis (01:11:02): hard on people. Chamath, what's your take on this? We have a slowing GDP growth. We have inflation going from 9 down to 3. We have wages going up 4%. How do you make sense of all this? Do you feel like sorry. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:11:17): Friedberg, are you saying we're gonna have stagflation? Or David Friedberg (01:11:20): We have stagflation right now. Definitely. But what I'm saying is that it's not a rosy picture just because labor rates are going up. If the labor rates aren't going up, you can see this ultimately. The best number for this is the sum of GDP growth. So in aggregate, if the revenue of everything combined, which is GDP, isn't going up faster than the increase in the cost of everything, people, businesses, and the government can't afford their stuff. And that's fundamentally what's going on right now. What we need to see is a normalization where GDP growth is greater than inflation rate. And as soon as that happens, then we have a more normalized and stable economy. So right now, things are not stable. There's a lot of difficulty and strain in the system. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:12:03): I will put myself on the other side of that trade if there was one. If I had to simplify the United States economy, remember GDP is 70% spending by individual people. And so people can spend 2 things, savings that they have or credit that they have. And what's interesting is that we have finally burned through, and this is what this picture shows, all of the money that folks had in their bank accounts. And so what does that force people to do? It actually forces people to reenter the workforce so that they can start to make money. But the problem is that companies have been shrinking and have been on a defensive posture. And so as a result, what you started to see this past unemployment report. Unemployment is now ticking up because when these people reenter the workforce, there are no jobs for them to have. People are filing incremental unemployment insurance claims, states like California. In fact, the state of California was the worst off this past month. So I think what we're starting to see is that for the large portion of the economy, we've run out of cash to spend. And as a result, I do think that we are going to see an economic slowing. And I think that that will create not just enormous empirical justification for Jerome Powell, it'll be exacerbated by what Friedberg just showed, which is the political pressure that he's going to be under to cut. Will it cause him to cut more aggressively than he would have otherwise? On the David Friedberg (01:13:48): margins, I actually think yes. Jason Calacanis (01:13:50): Mhmm. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:13:51): But my perspective is that I think that we've run out of money, individual people. So I think unemployment is going back up. I think GDP is gonna shrink. Yep. And so I kind of tend to be in this camp that we're gonna see more than one rate cut. Jason Calacanis (01:14:05): So here is total job openings to your point, Chamath, they're getting burned off. We peaked at 12 million. Again, if you believe the numbers or not, they obviously have some value. And we've burned off a ton of those. So, Sacks, what's your non-political, non-partisan take, first principles of what's going on with the economy. David Sacks (01:14:23): Well, look, we just had this inflation report. CPI was 3.3%. The market was expecting 3.4%. So that's a teeny bit better than expected, but it's still persistently sticky inflation. And furthermore, Powell's comments were very hawkish. He basically said he could not commit to when rate cuts might begin. And remember, at the beginning of the year, we entered the year with expectations for seven rate cuts this year. Now we're down to an expectation of one rate cut, and we can't say for sure when that's gonna happen. So honestly, I think your introduction overstated how positive this news was. And that's why I think if you look at the markets right now, it's very mixed. Most tech stocks that I'm seeing are actually in the red, and a few of them like Tesla and Apple and Nvidia are up, but the vast majority are in the red. So I think the market is taking this in stride. I think the big picture here is just we don't know when rate cuts are gonna begin. And I think that Vinny Lingham had a really interesting take on this actually where he said, look, could Powell cut by a quarter point? Would that matter that much? No. It wouldn't matter that much. But the point is Powell doesn't want to say that the rate hike cycle is over. Right? If he were to cut by a quarter point, that by itself wouldn't do much, but it would be a huge statement that we're out of the woods on inflation. There's not gonna be any more hikes coming, and we're beginning a new rate cut cycle. And Powell is clearly unwilling to say that. We're still in this limbo where he is saying that we don't know when rate cuts are gonna begin. Jason Calacanis (01:15:59): Betting markets had a 70% chance of two rate cuts before Powell spoke. Afterwards now, it's one rate cut, Dow record high. Again, this past week and Nasdaq record highs each of the last, like, month or last four months. So the market putting aside individual stocks has broken records almost every month for the last three Friedbergs. David Sacks (01:16:22): On the back of, like, two stocks. I mean, Nvidia is holding up the whole market. There's a lot of funny memes about this. Jason Calacanis (01:16:28): Nvidia, Microsoft, David Sacks (01:16:30): and AI, AI stocks are holding up the whole market. Jason Calacanis (01:16:34): Correct. Yes. Record stock market. David Friedberg (01:16:36): What does Jerome Powell have to gain or lose by bowing to political pressure? So a lot of folks mention and reference this kind of political pressure for him to do something, but why would he bow? What does he care? What do you think the motivation is for Powell individually? And what is the political process that will ensue? Jason Calacanis (01:16:58): Future job prospects. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:17:01): Think it's the legacy and the perception that he leaves behind. I think had he not over-promised and under-delivered at the end of last year? Remember, he was promising a Saks six or seven rate cuts, and he's delivered bupkis. And the markets were none too pleased. And so now I think he's just swung the pendulum to the other side, which is he's going to massively under-promise and then over-deliver if he can. And so as a result, I think he's being much more measured and guarded. I don't think he wants to be wrong here. So I think he's thinking about what most folks think about when they're at the tail end of their of a job like this. He's not gonna get reappointed. He's gonna go off into the sunset. It's roughly about how his pre will write, how he handled the transition from that to the next phase, whatever that is. So I think he's probably very interested in making sure he doesn't break the economy and also that he doesn't seem like he's constantly waffling and unpredictable. David Friedberg (01:17:53): Is any just an autonomous agent that is meant to respond to the data? I guess I'm not quite understanding the degree of judgment and discretion that ever have to do something you have. They have a mandate, but if you're asking David Sacks (01:18:04): what his incentives are, I think his main incentive at this point is concerned for his historical legacy. And specifically, he wants to be thought of like Volcker, not like Arthur Burns in the seventies. Volcker basically crushed inflation even at the cost of recession, and he is worshiped today as the best Fed chair ever, whereas Burns let inflation slip the leash in the 1970s, and he's not thought of very highly. So I think that Powell's main concern here is with his historical legacy at this point. I don't think he's expecting to be reappointed. He's wrapping up his second term already. Now I think if you go back to 2021, the incentives were a little bit different. Powell wanted to be reappointed by Biden. And remember that in the summer of 2021, that's when the inflation began. We had that surprise 5.1% inflation print. Powell was up for renomination and confirmation in November of 2021. And I think what happened back in that year is the administration downplayed the inflation report. They called it transitory. Yellen did. Biden did. And so Powell had to get on board with that message if he wanted to get confirmed by the Democrats. And he did get on board with that message. He repeated the whole transitory point. And for that reason, they didn't begin the rate hike cycle until March of the following year. And from that May inflation print in November, they kept doing QE, even though we had inflation back in the system. So I think that Powell was actually intensely political in 2021. He knew who was going to reappoint him and who was going to have to confirm him, and he got on board with that message. And that's why they were so slow to react to the inflation. And I think that's one of the reasons why the rate tightening cycle was so steep is because he had to catch up with all this inflation that he had allowed for nine months longer than he should have. But if you ask me what's his incentive now, I think it's purely about legacy, and he does not want to let inflation come back after cutting rates a little too soon. So his incentive, I think, at this point is to make sure that he's not wrong again about inflation. Jason Calacanis (01:20:11): And to remind everybody, maximum employment, stable prices, moderate long-term interest rates is the mandate for the Federal Reserve. They're supposed to be independent. Famously, Reagan pushed Volcker to get rate cuts. And there is a lot of politics involved in this. And so legacy does seem like the organizing principle here. I agree with Chamath and Sacks that it's legacy, but there's always political pressure here as you can see. Elizabeth Warren is trying to push him to make cuts for obvious reasons. David Sacks (01:20:45): Well, no. There's politics when they're up for appointment or for reappointment for confirmation, basically, because they want to get that vote. Speaker 4 (01:20:56): Yes. But what sir Jason Calacanis (01:20:57): can subtle pressure. And then there's a letter writing like Elizabeth Warren's doing here, right? So the pressure can be there. The question is do they bow to it, right, Sacks? David Sacks (01:21:04): Yeah. They don't have to. I mean, the Fed's independent. David Friedberg (01:21:06): What do they stand to gain or lose by the pressure is my question. And I'm not sure. I really like this context exactly. And I think that's really where there's an important point to note here that you could identify the guy's motivation and how he's gonna operate. David Sacks (01:21:20): This year because there is no political pressure. There was in 2021, and I think that's why he was slow to react. Yeah. Right. Listen, if Powell can stick the landing here, then his legacy comes out intact. But if he screws this up, and then he was slow to react to the inflation back in 2021 and 2022, his legacy is gonna be mud. So I think he's gonna be more concerned about erring on the side of tamping down inflation than erring on the side of the economy not doing as well. I think those are the incentives. Jason Calacanis (01:21:55): My position is I think he he might have already stuck the landing. I think, like, the fact that we've burned off all that savings to your point, Chamath, that people are going back to work and that these businesses are doing fantastic and efficient because of AI and other gains. It feels like Speaker 7 (01:22:11): all people are Jason Calacanis (01:22:11): replying. I think he's at the end already. Stocks that David Sacks (01:22:14): are no. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:22:15): No. Yeah. They're trying to be back to where the jobs don't exist. Jason Calacanis (01:22:19): I think they're gonna take jobs. They just might not get the job they want. And that's what I think people have to recognize is they have to take a job, and it may not be the one that they want working from home. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:22:31): We could have a negative recessionary print going into the election cycle. I think that's very possible. David Friedberg (01:22:36): Yeah. Exactly. David Sacks (01:22:38): I don't know, Jason. Look. I'm hearing a lot of happy talk right now, and I agree with you. You had 1.3% GDP growth rate with a 6% of GDP deficit by the government. If the government wasn't printing so much money, wasn't overspending, Chamath Palihapitiya (01:22:53): Right. David Sacks (01:22:54): If you were to have a balanced budget, David Friedberg (01:22:56): It would be a recession. David Sacks (01:22:57): Yeah. Think about that. Disastrous. David Friedberg (01:23:00): It would be negative GDP growth if not for the government's program stimulating the economy. David Sacks (01:23:05): And a lot of the jobs you're talking about are government jobs. The government is creating jobs like crazy in the private sector, but in the public sector because it is an election year. So there's a lot of political forces propping things up. And I wonder what happens after the election. Jason Calacanis (01:23:22): We'll find out. Alright, everybody. This has been another amazing episode of the All-In Podcast. David Sacks (01:23:29): Just one last thing, guys, this is really important. So friend of the pod, Peter Fenton, who's a famous VC in Silicon Valley, tweeted that his sister has been diagnosed with a rare sarcoma, and they are searching for look-alike cases to do a study at Dana-Farber. And if this works, it will change the future of cancer, but they are seeking this, researcher William Gibson who is retweeting is seeking patients with myxoid liposarcoma featuring a PLAG1 fusion. So if you are somebody out there who has a case like this, then please reach out and let us know or let Peter Fenton know. This could save a life or many lives. His sister is also the wife of a good friend of ours, Pete Briger. So our thoughts are definitely with you. And if there's anybody out there who has this type of rare sarcoma, please let us know. And we can refer you to Dana-Farber. And this is a very important study that may save some lives. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:24:36): Pete and Peter are great guys and our thoughts are with Devin. Hope you guys find a cure. Jason Calacanis (01:24:40): Okay. Best wishes to Peter and his sister. Help out if you can, and you're in our thoughts and our prayers.