SPEAKER_00: this is what we need let him go all right here we go this is jason in the corner warming up two shut the up freeberg it's my show three two all right everybody welcome back to the number one podcast in the world the podcast i jason calacanis named created and i'm the executive producer for SPEAKER_04: life with me my three miscreant friends chamath palihapitiya our dictator love you brother good seeing you love you uh david friedberg our sultan of science and yeah bizarre yeah who's now made his SPEAKER_07: way down to austin welcome brother let's go shooting let's get those beef ribs david sacks how are you how you uh how are you settling into the great state of texas everybody wants to know i'm loving SPEAKER_14: the 70 degree weather is it like this all year round you know it's uh this is a very wonderful time of year uh you miss the two weeks where it goes to freezing temperatures we have 10 days of freezing temperatures and then we have 80 days of 100 degree temperatures but you'll be on a yacht or italy or somewhere uh during that like the rest of us that's basically all you need to know about austin just get out during the summers because it's brutal that's it everything else is fan freaking fantastic SPEAKER_15: but in all seriousness you're here you're here you're you've moved you've domiciled in texas this is SPEAKER_18: this is this has happened it happened in december yes and so we closed on a new house we moved in David Sacks: went to the dmv i signed a lease for an austin office for craft nice it's done it's done it's SPEAKER_22: done okay i gotta i'll get you a dentist and whatever else you need i got a doctor too okay does SPEAKER_24: this mean i have to bring moose back this has been the big discussion our house does this mean we lose SPEAKER_26: moose or do we have custody he needs a significant acreage to run around we know that oh he does he SPEAKER_28: does but he misses you and i will definitely bring him by for a visit and we'll we'll be playing some SPEAKER_22: backgammon smoking some cigars yeah you gotta come by cannot wait i can't believe you haven't come by SPEAKER_34: yet what about you guys you guys gonna come down two or four besties matt and i started the process SPEAKER_36: in december we are coming to check things out we have not made any final decisions though okay shout SPEAKER_39: out to our boy rokhana for driving everybody out of the state so here's the funniest thing is we're David Sacks: all in the chat group discussing the california wealth tax whether people are going to leave or not so chamath he's making a big show i'm going to stay and fight i'm not leaving my home SPEAKER_42: they can't drive me out and then meanwhile i get a call from my broker who says she's helping chamath find SPEAKER_45: a place what's going on i'm shocked that chamath tells you one thing and he's doing another oh my SPEAKER_34: god he's at least hedging his bets he's hedging his bets a lot of people are hedging their bets a lot of people are hedging sergeys in florida he got it i'm sorry uh larry's got a beautiful place in florida SPEAKER_54: i see according to the news a lot of people and i saw governor abbott uh reached out to you SPEAKER_18: that's right he welcomed me to texas on x a lot of people did michael dell did ted cruz ted cruz SPEAKER_58: and yeah it was a real welcome reception it's funny i never got anything like that when i was in SPEAKER_61: california jason i put it for some reason the politicians were never they weren't embracing SPEAKER_62: you yeah they were embracing me i don't know why who knows i put this on x but when you look at our friends that are all explicitly left it's about half a trillion of net worth which i think Chamath Palihapitiya: is very bad for the long-term budget of california then i can pick about 25 people just off the top of my head and then if you think about all the people that will stay and fight i still intend to stay and fight but where if we're forced to look down the barrel of a an asset tax that has god knows what methodology it's the only thing that's united everybody on the left and the right even reed hoffman thinks this is insane i think a lot of other people will leave it's probably half the total wealth that the budget estimated would be available to be taxed will be gone wow i mean these are i SPEAKER_72: don't understand that has huge implications to the social programs and the general budget of california David Sacks: listen i think this is going to be a topic this is a prediction i think this is going to be a topic throughout the year because it's not going away they're gathering signatures right now i agree and we're going to find out in say april whether it's on the ballot now it's possible they don't gather the signatures but they only need about 850 000 of them if it gets on the ballot you know again we'll know in just a few months there's going to be a huge freak out and i think there'll be a lot of people who will say i can't take the rest they're going to leave the state so i think there's gonna be a rush for the exits there's gonna be all sorts of repercussions from that then there'll be an election in november obviously we'll find out if it passes or not and then there'll be legal challenges so this is going to be a saga i don't think this is over by a long shot and quite frankly even if it's beaten in 2026 i think a lot of people expect that some version this comes back in 2028 which is the thing that kind of pushed me over the edge in terms of leaving is i don't think this SPEAKER_36: problem is going away it's very difficult if you're an entrepreneur with a good idea to start Chamath Palihapitiya: building here because if you get stuck in success with a bunch of illiquid stock and have no way to SPEAKER_78: pay five percent of that value you're going to bankrupt your own company just doesn't make any SPEAKER_18: sense and what is if your company goes to zero the next year which can totally happen with private SPEAKER_81: companies you still owe the tax bill yeah i don't know how that reverses itself it's a terrible idea i SPEAKER_14: mean i was talking to ro connor and eric swalwell who we had on the program and i told these guys like these dopey democrats you have to stop fraud first before you start seizing people's assets or start a discussion about raising taxes and you know we had nick shirley on last week who was doing his investigative journalism shout out to shirley and uh how do we sell to the american public that we want to seize their assets while and then sending it out the back door door to fund fraud SPEAKER_04: that makes no sense it's a leaky bucket so fix the bucket first and then let's have an honest SPEAKER_14: discussion about what the right tax rate is and and why do this with a unique tax why not just put a point onto capital gains or income tax and have that discussion that's a great point you could also Chamath Palihapitiya: do what bill ackman suggested which is stop allowing these margin loans there's a lot that actually live SPEAKER_62: off of margin is it a good idea yes and no depending on the asset base you have and if the tax laws SPEAKER_18: changed we would all change the approach you mentioned that larry and sergey have left the state and David Sacks: they're probably getting dragged for that but one of the reasons why i think they kind of have to is because the super voting stock provision in this thing where the way they calculate the value of your stock is not based on its liquid market value but if you own super voting shares they multiply your ownership your super voting by the market cap of the company and they deem your shares be worth that yeah so for example larry and sergey i think they combined have voting power of about 52 percent of google so what's google worth these days about four and a half trillion fortunately okay so now i think SPEAKER_84: i mean they're very wealthy guys i think they're each worth whatever 100 billion ish or whatever it is but now their net worth will be deemed to be i guess each one of them would be deemed to be roughly 1 trillion each not the call it 200 billion so the five percent tax for them is more like a 25 tax Chamath Palihapitiya: of all their net worth so i mean it becomes it becomes 50 because you'd have to sell more than that to overcome the drag of selling to generate 25 billion or 50 billion of net worth you have to sell SPEAKER_84: 2x that because you have to pay taxes on that right so now what what is the point of having that super voting provision in there it's just totally punitive and vicious all right so let's just go with a quick SPEAKER_14: prediction here i'm going to call an audible we're going to get into the prediction show folks we've been delaying this prediction show because the world is moving at an incredible pace and the news is just let's just call it what it is it's just intense we have a lot of stories you all want us to to cover we will cover them but we're going to start with our prediction show just lightning round SPEAKER_07: prediction here does this seizure tax i'm going to call it what it is it's a seizure tax they're seizing SPEAKER_14: assets does the seizing assets tax go into effect or not does it pass or not free burger first yes or no SPEAKER_92: give us a percentage poly market it well does it get on the ballot first and then does it well we know it's going to get on the ballot i think we agree with that that's not correct oh we're not sure SPEAKER_94: so then i'll make it a two-parter fine does it get on the ballot does it pass chamath you seem ready to go go no free bird go ahead i don't think it's going to get on the ballot oh i agree with that in SPEAKER_98: california 100 all right here's your poly market everybody shout out to shane oh this is my guy SPEAKER_07: ballot this is to make the ballot this is the question will the billionaires to austin tax wealth tax drive people uh will it make it onto the california ballot lightly traded currently at 69 David Sacks: did you see how much lower it was that spike happened after roqana elevated the issue so when it became a cause celeb among progressives and bernie sanders weighed in SPEAKER_103: it spiked up from what was it like 45 percent uh 80 okay so when roqana committed political seppuku SPEAKER_18: uh it drove up maybe he had a bet maybe he placed a bet i don't think it's political suicide for him David Sacks: there's only two ways it doesn't get on the ballot right one is if the sciu uhw which is the union that supported this proposed it doesn't have the money to pay to collect the signatures but you would think that they would right eight million or so is roughly what it costs to gather the signatures for these types of things clearly they can find 850 000 people in california who support it if they're willing to put the effort in the other possibility is that the powers that be let's call it gavin newsom and the machine are able to negotiate with this union to get them to stand down and i don't have any insight into that because that's obviously democrat politics not republican SPEAKER_114: politics but freeberg might have some information okay you have some insight i don't know we're gonna SPEAKER_58: we're gonna leave it but if it does get on the ballot what do you think the odds are that it passes SPEAKER_116: i think it's going to be a really important 40 moment for people to vote Chamath Palihapitiya: the ability to be industrious and have agency or what did mom donnie say it's rugged individualism SPEAKER_119: versus collectivism also known as communism as in collect we collect your assets he said that we're SPEAKER_84: going to replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism SPEAKER_126: i mean at least he's saying it out loud i i like this new i like these new politicians just SPEAKER_100: telling you straight up what we're doing well his new housing commissioner have you seen this yeah SPEAKER_128: the white lady's like white people must suffer and then she's like she had these things where she's like i see white babies in the airport and it makes me mad and i'm like really this is crazy um SPEAKER_130: what man broke up with this lady because that dude has created a monster didn't she say something David Sacks: like we need to introduce a new relationship between housing people and property and the property rights SPEAKER_34: or something yeah exactly i mean they're saying it out loud now and then i guess she had a mental breakdown and started crying when they came to see her i know what happened is they pointed out that David Sacks: her parents own a multi-million dollar home and then she broke down in tears oh her mom's a white SPEAKER_141: supremacist i didn't realize her mom was a white supremacist that explains it all because this is all SPEAKER_51: about her mom i feel bad for her parents oh god can you imagine your imagine one of your kids goes and SPEAKER_04: does this it says we have to go collect your houses i mean listen let's do it let's do it everybody wants to hear our predictions for 2026 we've been pushing it off we're going to give it to you right SPEAKER_34: now we always like to start since uh you know we got into politics here on the program at some point the biggest political winner last year's prediction for biggest political winner for 2025 to remind everybody freeberg said young candidates well done gavin who was on the show sitting in for sax who was busy joining the administration he said trump and centrism would be the biggest political winner chamath you said fiscal conservatives and who asked for restrained spending it was a good thought SPEAKER_14: and i said gen x and elder millennials the jd vance tulsi sax group so let's go around the SPEAKER_54: corn here i wonder freeberg who you think will be the biggest political winner of 2026 freeberg your SPEAKER_146: chance democratic socialists of america the dsa just like the maga movement took over the republican SPEAKER_148: party i think the dsa is taking over the the democrat party and i think that's the move we'll see SPEAKER_119: solidified in 2026. okay tight is right well done chama who do you got for biggest political winner 2026 SPEAKER_62: whoever is going to fight waste fraud and abuse at the federal state and local level got it so it's an open lane to anybody it's an open lane it's a political gambit that i think will work really SPEAKER_141: well in 26. very nicely done david sachs gosh i can't imagine who you would pick as a political winner in David Sacks: 2026 well i'm gonna go ahead i'm gonna say that the trump boom is gonna be the biggest political winner of 2026. the good economic news has started breaking out before 2025 was even over we have 2.7 inflation core cpi 2.6 both those are 40 basis points below expectations 4.3 percent gdp growth in q3 lowest trade deficit since 2009 the challenger gray report out today showed that job cuts dropped 50 from november which was itself down about 50 from october give us a number for the boom what is it going to be hold on the s p 500 keeps making record highs people are paying less for gas mortgage costs have fallen by 3 000 real wages are up over a thousand dollars and by june i predict we will see more rate cuts possibly 75 to 100 basis points and big tax refunds are coming in april thanks to a bigger standard deduction and no tax on tips overtime and social security so i think there is so much good economic news coming and it's already started and i think that it's going to have a huge impact not just on the economy but also on political perceptions for next year pick your gdp for SPEAKER_14: this boom year three four or five or six points sacks i'm pinning you down pick away three four or SPEAKER_119: five six if you make it a prediction then i'd like to pick as well okay i'm gonna go sacks first i'm SPEAKER_58: gonna go for five percent oh within a rounding error i believe five sure sure plus or minus SPEAKER_62: chamath you want to pick a number you said you did i think the lower bound is five i think the upper SPEAKER_78: bound is six two wow incredible well just to put that in perspective if we print six the only country Chamath Palihapitiya: in the modern world that we think of as a quasi-peer competitor that has printed six is the chinese in a period where it had complete and total coordination and domination of a federal SPEAKER_62: state and local economy and the fact that we can do it under democracy and capitalism SPEAKER_165: is outrageous freeberg do you want to take a stab at that 2026 growth yeah 4.6 percent SPEAKER_14: okay i was going to go with between four and five as well in terms of my prediction for the big SPEAKER_34: political winner i went back and forth between the emperor's apprentice darth vance jd vance or the mandami moment i said darth vance for a couple of reasons uh you know he is out there defending trump uh and he's surging on polymarket and in the polls he's obviously the co-pilot of mag he's done a great job of being second seat he is not usurping president trump which would be a big SPEAKER_04: political mistake he's really navigating being the co-pilot there but he is the most popular politician clearly at turning point usa and he is the og in the america first america only moment but i'm going to give the edge to the mandami moment he's 34 years old he's got ro kanna at 49 pivoting into a socialist and i think that's because democrats believe the easiest way to win in 2026 is to go full socialist and trump has i think given this lane because he's forgotten about the working man and woman in america net disapproval for trump on the economy 58 inflation despite what sax is saying there it's still closer to three percent than two percent and trump just announced he wants to increase the military budget by 50 percent while people are still complaining about their health care and trump has turned into a complete neocon bombing seven countries this year and uh SPEAKER_23: threatening to take over colombia and greenland who knows if that's trump being trump or if that's reality but trump becoming a neocon was not on anyone's bingo card and uh i think trump may have SPEAKER_14: incited and given a bunch of fuel to the mondami moment by not addressing the american people's needs and going for the international interventionism okay now that was like three different answers SPEAKER_23: right there my answer is clearly mondami my second place though i like to always explain my thinking SPEAKER_34: is darth vance jd vance biggest political loser last year's predictions i said putin gavin said putin SPEAKER_14: chamath you said progressivism and uh freeberg you said the pro-war neocons would be the biggest political losers uh let's get into who we think will be the loser this year uh sachs why don't you SPEAKER_18: start who's your big political loser in 2026 you think well i said democratic centrism or democratic David Sacks: centrists which is sort of the flip side of you guys saying that socialism or progressives are uh winners and there's two reasons for this one is because the socialist ideology is sort of ascended among the democratic base especially the young people who support mam donny things like that unfortunately our universities our work madrasas have done a terrible job educating these students and they've brainwashed a lot of them into this woke ideology but also there's the fact that there's so few house districts anymore that are truly competitive so both the cook political report and larry sabato's crystal ball they say that there's fewer than two dozen house races that are genuinely competitive going into 2026 that's because of gerrymandering and so on so if you're a democrat incumbent who is in one of these districts like all but a couple dozen of them your only real threat to losing your office is from the left right it's some young aoc type coming up to challenge you and so you don't want to expose your left flank so even the democratic moderates have been shifting further and further to the left and so you see this aoc mam donny effect happening there so i'm kind of in the same camp as you guys as this is not a good trend but uh i put this as biggest political loser biggest political democratic centrism got it chamath what do you got Chamath Palihapitiya: can i just go back and just nitpick with you a little bit why do you think progressivism didn't fail and the only reason i ask you that is outside of a few pockets of progressivism and specifically SPEAKER_36: mamdani if you look at the elections in virginia or the elections in new jersey those are more centrist than progressive and if you look at the general approval rates of democrats they trended consistently down through 2025 as they hand wrung themselves about leaving centrism and embracing progressivism so the more talking points around progressivism that emerged the poorer they perform so i know your perception or some people's perceptions may be different based on one localized win but if you look SPEAKER_78: at the broad trend it didn't work i just put that out there just as just as the facts and not the SPEAKER_138: vibes well i don't want it to be true just to be clear i would i'm picking i would love for the SPEAKER_88: democratic party to be as central as possible either but it does seem like it was wrong and it wasn't David Friedberg: wrong so well it might be a jump ball it might be the best way to describe it because you have the SPEAKER_62: mandami effect i was right and okay just look at the numerical numbers the trends were horrible like meaning wherever the democrats started the more progressive talking points they added the poor and Chamath Palihapitiya: poorer they performed the approval ratings went down the disapproval ratings went up i'm not saying that they didn't win a mayoral race they did do that i'm just saying broadly speaking nationwide is the democratic party and its embrace of progressivism at least at the federal level has it paid off over 2025 and i would say categorically mathematically not okay now going to 2026 what is my biggest political loser what i would say is the biggest loser of 26 is the monroe doctrine i think that when historians look back on the trump presidency they're going to rewrite it i think people have tried to minimize trump's worldview as a trump corollary i don't think that's what this is they even try to minimize it by calling it the don row doctrine i don't think that's what this is i think that there is a clear trump doctrine that trump the monroe doctrine and i think that is the political loser because there is a huge body politic that has been built around the monroe doctrine how do we view wars how do we view our spheres of influence how do we view economic multilateralism versus unilateralism all of that is out the window you know we view this as hemispheric dominance that's trump we view it as proactive and in very specific cases interventionist we intervene against drug cartels we control immigration we secure vital assets that was you know not really the scope of the monroe doctrine we have more transactional relationships quite honestly which allows us to react in the moment so i think the SPEAKER_62: monroe doctrine is the biggest loser of 2026. freeberg you're a biggest loser 2026. my biggest SPEAKER_146: political loser of 2026 is the tech industry i think ai and tech wealth have become the lightning rod for SPEAKER_148: populism on both sides of the aisle i think um the right is fracturing a bit where this call it alliance between tech and maga seems to be getting a really strong challenge from the more populist movement in the same sense the left is turning hard on tech because of tech's alignment with the right and so i think we're going to see in the midterms a really big referendum against the tech industry coming out SPEAKER_189: of good populist that's a great one can i tell you guys a little story from yesterday i had a meeting Chamath Palihapitiya: with three very senior sitting senators before i flew back to california these are republican senators SPEAKER_62: and freeberg i was surprised exactly what you said there is a couple of companies that have Chamath Palihapitiya: exacerbated their frustration they view those companies these are techs and the tech leaders of these companies as just not trustworthy and they've largely been grin these guys for a long time SPEAKER_62: and they're pretty frustrated with it so to your point it is palpable look i can tell you that David Sacks: the natural ally for tech is with maga because we still believe in property rights and innovation and if the democratic party is truly going progressive which means socialist they want to rewrite your relationship to property rights whatever that means and impose wealth taxes and realize gains taxes and all the rest of it so look i don't think tech has that much of a choice as arnold schwarzenegger said in one of those movies come with me if you want to live come with me if you want to live yes get in the chopper but let me say this the reason why there's anger on the populist right is because they remember the censorship and the de-platforming and the shadow banning and all that kind of stuff and what there needs to be is i think there just needs to be some meetings some truth and reconciliation that happens between some of these tech leaders and some of these conservative SPEAKER_197: influencers guess what david tax i know one guy who can help make that happen no i would i would like to David Sacks: host some of these meetings in 2026 and get these people together because i think that the tech companies have either realized their mistake or they were pushed into it in a lot of cases by the biden administration yeah that had gone to their head yeah that had gone to their head now i also think that one other mistake they've made is quite frankly they've been donors to only left-wing causes and so if you listen to cernovich's account he's like look guys you banned us you cost us our livelihood for years debanked us debanked us where's the restitution or at least at least start giving SPEAKER_200: some support to our conservative by the way you nailed it on the head the senators that i talked to that's Chamath Palihapitiya: exactly what they want they just wanted an apology just be honest and say you did it this asset SPEAKER_201: seizure tax proposal in california in the conversation about other states i think is bringing a lot of people to that table sacks at least the tech people to say wait a second maybe i shouldn't have been only left donating over all these years maybe maybe i shouldn't have done this and i think contrary to what people may think it may actually be doing a lot more positive for the right side than the left SPEAKER_148: by putting this forward this may actually be catalyzing a big change in silicon valley SPEAKER_202: yeah and if you if you think about it if you were zuckerberg or you were you know the google SPEAKER_34: executives and the fbi is telling you hey we need you to take care of these censorship issues we need you to label these things etc you know it puts you in a pretty tough situation if the fbi is calling you if you're trying to do m a and then you know look now m a under trump is on fire we'll talk about that SPEAKER_14: more in our prediction show for me i was going back and forth in my biggest political loser SPEAKER_34: with these dopey democrats who are centrist and the the new neocon trump now i don't know if trump SPEAKER_07: will continue these neocon ways so i'm going to just align with sacks here that the centrist democrats David Sacks: are going to be this year's biggest political losers now that you've mentioned twice that trump is a neocon i have to respond to this no you don't you don't have to but go ahead okay look the the problem with neocon regime change operations was i'd say threefold number one the invasion you have this giant invasion land armies huge numbers of people getting killed took you know months or a year took them like a year to get saddam right number two you then have an occupation because whoever you then put in power only stays in power if you have american gis there pointing the guns so you end up with a 10 or 20 year occupation and then third you have nation building which is you end up spending trillions of dollars basically trying to turn them into us so that our troops can leave that was the mistake of afghanistan and iraq but look what has trump done that is like any of those things there's been no invasion no occupation and no nation building this war i guess with venezuela if you want to call it that it was a flawless operation it lasted three hours i mean i woke up and it was like you know the meme where it's like wake up honey it's like wake up honey trump's won another war it was over before it even started they went in there and they basically captured maduro no americans were killed it was absolutely flawless operation and they are bringing him to justice by the way he begged for it and he's on tape talking a lot of smack at rallies saying come get me you know calling the americans chicken and so on so in any event he was begging for it we can go into a lot more of the the reasons for doing it and defending it but i just don't think this is a neocon policy and in fact it's the democrats who've been calling to put in this uh nobel prize winner that you interviewed SPEAKER_208: freeberg right what's her name maria conchito alonzo machado okay anyway oh hector elizondo i think SPEAKER_210: it's hector elizondo i think he did somebody from the brad pack no she was in running man i think anyway SPEAKER_214: but but they're talking about the cuba venezuela actress i thought her name was maria SPEAKER_84: conchita alonzo okay maria carina machado sorry that's just what i thought i mean this world this SPEAKER_215: world venezuela in 1975 winner maria look the democrats are criticizing the administration for David Sacks: not putting her in power but look here's the problem nobel prizes don't keep people in power men with guns keep people in power and she doesn't have the men with guns so it'd be american gis there would have to be the guns to keep her in power and the administration has not done that they're looking to basically work with the existing regime and the big reason why we got sucked into iraq is because that whole deep application process where we didn't just get rid of saddam we took out the entire elite of the country which created a huge insurgency so there's been nothing like that jcal is what i'm trying to tell you in this case it's a whole SPEAKER_58: different paradigm is what i'm trying to tell you we're going to need a new name for it maybe SPEAKER_34: tramath is right it's definitely not neocon yeah we might need a new branding for it it depends on you know if trump is cosplaying neocon when he says he's going to take greenland when he says he's going to take colombia next when he says he's going to take cuba he's certainly playing the character of neocon SPEAKER_14: uh publicly here and who knows that could be trump just positioning himself and anchoring future negotiations but if i was telling you you know before the election when you were saying hey do not let certain people become president nikki hailey etc because they're neocons and they're going to go to war with venezuela they're going to go to war with iran well that's exactly what trump has done and as flawless as our troops did and my my lord the we have the greatest military ever so just incredible job and shout out to them to do this and lose no american lives was just unbelievable and it just says something about the dedication of these individuals but things can go wrong no matter how good SPEAKER_04: you are we could be sitting here right now with 12 captured delta force we could have 50 dead americans where's the war but if that did this is where you have to be intellectually honest if we were dealing SPEAKER_34: with a situation where they didn't pick up the target and we had lost american troops and god forbid they had taken hostages we would be sitting here with a much different discussion and so we have to be very careful i give we're not i give trump but that is an equal possibility this is like SPEAKER_220: certainly a non-zero possibility things can go sideways you sound like when sam harris was saying David Sacks: that imagine if kovid actually killed a lot of people then the conversation should be different SPEAKER_216: well it didn't there was no war here and by the way with denmark let's hope there isn't and let's SPEAKER_222: hope there isn't you know this is why i'll give trump a lot of credit he has been strategic i do give you that stick and move stick and stick him is the game i pray that he can continue and by the way SPEAKER_18: on record street first of all even if we took greenland it's not going to be a new there's 30 000 David Sacks: people who live there but i think it's more likely that we'll we'll make a deal i think we're going SPEAKER_226: to make an offer they can't refuse okay ken howary shout out to our guy ken howary maybe you can make a deal let's make him an offer they can't refuse yeah i mean how much could it cost i mean there's SPEAKER_34: nothing there biggest business winner for 2025 uh looks like freeberg picked robots and autonomous hardware year of the robot i think if you include robo taxi there you nailed it certainly next year will be the year of optimus uh 2027. chamath you said dollar denominated stable coins i think uh given what we've seen with regulation that was spot on gavin shout out to our friend gavin he said big businesses that use ai thoughtfully another great one i picked tesla which is at an all-time high and google which of all of the mag 7 crushed is the biggest winner and they did 65 so i know both of those we did i think all of us crushed that one who do you have freeberg as your biggest business winner prediction for 2026 go ahead freeberg i couldn't decide my number one is huawei which i've SPEAKER_146: mentioned in the past out of china i think huawei's effort to partner with smic to go deeper in the SPEAKER_148: chip stack and they're just firing on all cylinders i do think keep an eye on huawei over the next year it's um it's going to outperform expectations at least the western expectations and the second is polymarket i think polymarkets evolved from being kind of this one-off quirky prediction market to actually really providing insights into current events and the news in a way that none of us anticipated and i do expect that after the deal we saw with nicey that all of the exchanges and we're already seeing this with robin hood and coinbase and we should expect something from nasdaq this year adina friedman talked to us about this but i do think that prediction markets could become not just markets but also news and i think poly markets um just in such a position to have a breakout SPEAKER_54: year okay great one chamath biggest business winner for 2026 after yourself who do you got yeah it's hard SPEAKER_240: i mean i will pick me yep it's already done it's already in the books don't hurt your elbow don't SPEAKER_62: hyper extend your elbow already in the book so okay it's all downhill from here nick we need to use SPEAKER_26: that meme of obama giving himself a medal jama is giving himself i will pick copper okay copper we are Chamath Palihapitiya: still completely underestimating how short we are in terms of the global demand supply dynamics of a handful of critical elements that we need again in the trump doctrine view of the world that is no longer as multilateral as it was and we need to have unilateral national security and if you look through that lens the asset that is set up to go absolutely parabolic is copper and the reason is that it is at least as it stands today the most useful cheap amenable conductive material that we have that material manifests in everything from our data centers to our chips to our weapon systems it's just everywhere everywhere everywhere and right now jason we are on a path by 2040 where we will be SPEAKER_62: short about 70 percent of the global supply at current course and speed and uh so i will pick copper SPEAKER_18: sacks what do you got biggest business winner 2026 your prediction i said the ipo i think 2026 is going to be a big year for ipos i'm not going to say which ones i think there's going to be a bunch of David Sacks: them a bunch of successful ones and i think we could see trillions of dollars of new market cap created of public companies totally for a while people were concerned that the number of public companies were shrinking public companies were actually being taken private this is going to be a big reversal of that trend so i think this is going to be part of that trump boom will be the idea i love that one SPEAKER_81: i like that great one uh i went with uh since i nailed the mag 7 for last year and picked the highest SPEAKER_14: performer with google and i placed the bet on that so i'm feeling pretty good about it my prediction for 2026 is that amazon is going to have a massive year interest as they continue to replace humans with robots that's why here's a chart for you i've been talking about this a little bit i think this is the most important company to watch because dukes their self-driving is working they're making SPEAKER_04: great progress with it and here when you look at this chart you can see they're essentially flat in terms of hiring humans and they're surging in deploying robots and they did their whole pr comm strategy of calling cobots and donating to toys for tots etc i think they'll be the first corporate uh singularity which is to say the first company to have more robots driving their bottom SPEAKER_253: line than humans so that's my prediction for 2026 says amazon and i'm going to place a bet on that David Sacks: my prediction is that jacal is such a luck box that he'll end up being right about amazon but not SPEAKER_255: having anything to do with the reason he gave yeah right they'll hire a billion humans to go do SPEAKER_238: something and it'll be for a different reason i am a luck box that is true it'll just be better free cash flow and all of a sudden more people using aws and jacal will be right well i actually i think the SPEAKER_14: reason is if you just if you think about it i don't know if you guys have had this experience but with the delivery business which was kind of a dog for a long time obviously aws is crushing it but that delivery business here in austin we get everything the same day you're going to experience this david there are because of the i think the geography here and the ability to have depot centers very SPEAKER_34: close everything you order on amazon comes within the same day you know i've noticed that already SPEAKER_216: i've already started ordering things from amazon you're right it was all same day i'm like wait what SPEAKER_34: is going on that's what it is is we have a lot of space 15 miles outside of the city center 20 cent and they built these huge um warehouses so you just get everything within four hours you're like SPEAKER_129: we'll be right there it's very bizarre so jason you'll buy like virtues at like 8 a.m and it arrives SPEAKER_04: by noon yes absolutely absolutely and uh when you put your order in for ethics and morality it just never shows up i don't know it's lost again who knows it's just incredible we're just both ends of the spectrum here moral it's like trust like hello customer support i ordered a moral compass two years ago still hasn't arrived okay biggest business loser i loved each month it hit behind the 20 billion SPEAKER_213: absolutely i couldn't see it all i know is i got my beak wet so i hope your compass never shows up SPEAKER_272: you got your beak wet on that deal well uh sundip came to besties and he wanted to collect all besties we all got to place a little bet and by the way by the way i divested i divested my rock David Sacks: shares as part of joining the government back in like february or march oh god so oh by the way by SPEAKER_277: the way would that cost you like what the last triple up no it was a small position that came David Sacks: from grok acquiring sunny's old company we didn't invest in grok so it wasn't big but the point was SPEAKER_81: yeah it's just another example of you sacrificing from the country which i give you a lot of credit for SPEAKER_281: it's good for sacks to put that on the record yeah well it's just so ridiculous because i'm accused SPEAKER_18: of somehow doing this job for money when it just keeps costing me money it's negative money xai just raised up around it twice the valuation from the last round that we had to sell that too yeah no no SPEAKER_289: we didn't sit it out hold on let's be clear we didn't sit it out we divested it oh so you place the SPEAKER_292: bet and then before you get to collect the ticket you lose the last double up or triple up the economic SPEAKER_36: cost to sacks will probably exceed a billion dollars by the time he leaves personally this is crazy i mean SPEAKER_295: people need to know this it's a very important thing to put on the record i think it's important SPEAKER_78: for i think everybody should know all these dumb reporters don't get it but sacks has sacrificed Chamath Palihapitiya: financially an enormous amount to work on behalf of the government and the people that's that's David Sacks: really amazing it's fine i wouldn't even say anything about it if it weren't for the fact that we got these mainstream media reporters lying and saying the opposite that somehow this job is making me money SPEAKER_14: right i wouldn't say a word about it otherwise our biggest business loser 2025 gavin said federal government service providers i guess because of doge and them being held to the fire uh feet to the fire there to give us a better deal old guard defense contractors like bowen and lockheed was yours friedberg and chamath you said the mac 7 you expected a decrease in uh the record concentration i said open ai which would see a peak valuation and obviously i got that wrong what do you SPEAKER_07: got this year freeberg who do you think is going to be the biggest business loser of this year to follow SPEAKER_232: up on chamath and my conversation at the christmas dinner i think the state governments are going to SPEAKER_148: have a real problem with finding financing because what's going on with the exposés that are underway on waste fraud and abuse in state agencies i think is going to lead to a conversation that's going to cause folks to question the long-term solvency and operations because the response won't be hey let's cut out the waste fraud and the abuse the response is going to be we got to keep it going and that is what is going to give people fear is that if they did respond call it equivocally to the discoveries that the governments did then i think that there's an opportunity to continue to be able to borrow and access capital markets but i do worry a lot about state governments um borrowing i think the other thing that's going to hit the the fan this year in state governments is all of these um unrealized pension liabilities i think when these numbers start to come out this year and a lot of people are now digging deep into it folks are going to wake up and be like holy there's a ginormous hole in these states SPEAKER_305: and their obligations why does the government have to do these pensions why can't we do superannuation like australia does we have to get this out of the i love that pic that's called a defined SPEAKER_201: contribution instead of a defined benefit and if you get this defined contribution model and then just have good management it all works out so this is basically the problem with social security social security is a defined benefit and then all the money just doesn't sit anywhere it doesn't exist right if it was a defined contribution it's just a liability and let me let me give a shout out if it was a defined contribution like invest america accounts or trump accounts as they're being called and you put the money in and you see how much you have and every year you track it and that's what your retirement is going to be just like we might have with our 401ks or our iras that is a system SPEAKER_148: that actually has true solvency otherwise it becomes this runaway train of liability and that's effectively what the states have set up and it's very dangerous and if we were to take government SPEAKER_14: out of it and then every american just had to put 10 12 14 percent into their retirement account and it was forced you would have happy people who feel some agency in their lives which the people of australia should do chamath who's your loser 20 26. i will pick the software industrial complex so these are the Chamath Palihapitiya: companies that sell licensed sas to the corporations of america it's about a three to four trillion dollar a year economy that is separated into three buckets bucket one which is the smallest is the initial licensing company that's probably five to ten percent buckets two and three where all the money is made is what's called maintenance and migration which is how do i just maintain this big bulky license that i just bought for 300 million dollars as an example or how do i migrate it from product a to product b those last two buckets represent 90 of all the dollars in revenue that's generated in software and because of the advancement of these models and the advancement of these technological techniques that we are all uncovering building agents building systems i think you're going to see that total economic opportunity shrink and contract aggressively the companies will still be able to do their business it'll just be at a much much lower incremental revenue the customers will be able to do their business they'll have a lot more flexibility and a lot of upstarts i think will have opportunity i'm speaking my book obviously but i'm seeing it on the ground because you have a company building software our entire business 8090's business has basically migrated to disrupting maintenance and migration patterns i cannot describe how much opportunity there is it's very tactical mundane not very sexy work but it's incredibly lucrative and so i expect that that thing is going to shrink it's going to impact sas companies public sas companies particularly quite severely what do you got sacks for your biggest business David Sacks: loser of 2026 prediction for me we already talked about this but it was california because of the wealth tax and also the onerous regulations driving business and capital out of the state i hope you guys are right that it does not make the ballot if it does i think there will be a panic and rush for the exits regardless there's two major refineries closing by the spring higher gas prices will be the result i just think that the politicians are not doing a good enough job in california dispelling the fears and the actual hostility of the business environment that's a great one and i went with young white SPEAKER_14: collar workers in america i think they're going to be the biggest business loser i think it's getting really hard for them to get entry-level uh jobs i'm seeing that all over the place because companies are having an easier job uh just automating with ai then training up gen z graduates that's my belief that's why i'm launched founded university of three continents if you are a young person you got to be SPEAKER_305: resilient you're going to have to be self-reliant independent of what mondami mondami says about SPEAKER_04: collectivism it's easier to use ai than it is to train up we don't have professional development that needs to come back i just did an interview with the ceo of mckenzie which you may have seen SPEAKER_14: on the feed and this is the big challenge in corporate america is they're taking out the bottom two or three rungs and automating stuff and we really need to develop young people so that they have a path to take the ceo jobs eventually and i don't think they're going to have an easy time doing that that's why i think all young people should start companies i am talking my own book i am SPEAKER_166: talking about founder.university please apply japan saudi and in america we're going to help you build SPEAKER_201: companies thank you for my promo jason i got a text last night from a friend and it's in response to your comments about young people not being able to find jobs because of ai which is the statement you've made a couple times he said went to around about 50 ceos of public and private companies and asked everyone if they're hiring junior engineers everyone said they are still but not as much as before because during covid every college lowered the bar on admissions and the talent just isn't as good anymore my friend went on and he said you should talk about this to counter jacal's point about ai taking young people's jobs we see this with financial analysts and we see this with sales people we hire the gen z kids are all really challenging to hire because of cultural issues not because we're not hiring them due to ai so we try and hire older people primarily to fill those roles so there's a real interesting point that he was making i texted a couple of their friends to ask them their opinion and i've heard this concurrence jacal which is like a lot of people think that recent grads out of college and this may be a covet era phenomenon they just don't seem to have the temperament the motivation the organizational skills executive function executive function and by the way some of our friends who i've talked to who have kids graduating college there's even a conversation about none of these kids are motivated to get jobs or to make money there's a very weird phenomenon in the youth right now and this may be a coveted phenomenon and it may be a cultural thing that's part of the long form of what's going on in our society or it may be a socialist trend or it may be a populist trend or it may just be that people have gotten too wealthy and the nation has truly split and you can't climb the ladder anymore there's a bunch of things going on here but i do not think and i think a lot of people are echoing this jacal the challenges that young people are having finding employment is purely rooted in in an ai and automation phenomenon but it may be a cultural phenomenon and so i just put that on the plate for you to consider i do think it's both i do think SPEAKER_308: it is partially what you're saying is that maybe these young folks um have you know they're just SPEAKER_14: either entitled or their parents have enough money for them to skate and go sideways and maybe not be as career motivated it could be a social thing it could be a coveted thing it could be all of those and certainly multi-factor i just know what i see on the ground which is you know so many companies coming to me saying we can replace the bottom third of these tasks and that those bottom third of tasks are typically done by young people out of school so i think both things are probably true to a certain extent and time will tell i do think it's going to be challenging and continue to be challenging and you see that in the numbers from you know google uber coinbase all these companies are doing more with less and maybe that's just the nature of ai maybe the SPEAKER_04: first thing you do is cut costs and maybe the second thing you do is hire people who know how to use these tools if you are a young person who uses ai tools you're going to find a job if you're a young SPEAKER_14: person who isn't motivated and doesn't use ai tools you're going to have a hard time let's go with the biggest deal last year's predictions for biggest deal for 2025 traditional auto oem consolidation that was you chamath i think that we haven't seen exactly the consolidation but we have seen those businesses come apart so i think it's i give you definitely two-thirds of our credit there uh gavin said a tidal wave of m a i think he's not wrong there that has started to happen certainly freeberg you said massive compute build-out deals of course you nailed that one i said consolidation amongst the on-demand economy that hasn't happened but we do see a lot of deals occurring and i said also apple would buy warner brothers i got that like a i guess that wound up going to SPEAKER_311: netflix so i'll give myself a half point for that what do you have as your biggest deal for 2026 SPEAKER_18: david sacks well i don't want to get i don't want to get too specific here in terms of names of companies and that sort of thing yeah but what i would say is that i think there was a breakthrough David Sacks: in the last couple of months in terms of these coding assistants where they've been around for a while but there seems to have been another level of quality achieved just in the last month or so and you're really starting to hear i mean maybe a lot of it is hype but there is i think a lot of people are getting very excited about the potential here and part of it is coding part of it is just tool use you can download the programs and so it has access to your file drive and it can take actions on your computer this trend feels to me like chatbots did at the end of 2022 going into 23 where it's like people were really hyped about it but then it continued to play it out play out in the next year and so i think these let's call it coding assistance tool use i think will get bigger and bigger this SPEAKER_146: year freeberg what do you got biggest deal russia ukraine i think it's going to settle out this year i think there's a lot of motivating factors to get it settled out this year economic and other SPEAKER_148: political factors but i do think it's going to settle out this year and it's going to bring a bit more stability to that region and there's a whole reset that's underway this year i think in terms of geopolitics and where the powers all sit trump can stop that war he would be two for two that's a good SPEAKER_22: one i think this one's going to settle that would be that would be great he may not have done it on day one but if he gets it done in you know year two that's good enough for me jamal biggest deal Chamath Palihapitiya: 2026 what do you got it's not a specific deal but it's an approach i think that m a cannot happen and so it's the ip license m a workaround and i think you're going to see hundreds of billions of dollars of these kinds of deals so this is the deal that google did with character ai it's the same thing that they did microsoft did it microsoft did it it's obviously what nvidia did with grok why are these deals happening well if you just look at what facebook tried to do they tried to buy manis for two and a half billion dollars manis was a chinese company that then left china and essentially rebuilt itself as a singaporean business the chinese have now said we're going to look at this they are going to actively import export controls they're going to actively look at which technologies and even which researchers are working on things that are critical enough that it just can't go abroad in this existential fight that they believe they're in with the united states the united states is an equivalent such position all of this leads me to believe that traditional m a is effectively dead i think it's going to be impossible to get a large transaction done so how will you do it you'll do what sundar did you'll do what sathya did you'll do what jensen did you'll do what mark did with scale ai these huge licensing deals that basically replace m a and i think that that as a deal type will get better and more refined and tighter and better executed we were the third or fourth of these kinds of deals and even the third or fourth iteration was quite good by the time that you're into the middle part of next year and you've done 15 or 20 of these things i think the lawyers that work on these things and the accountants will just be SPEAKER_14: the tax treatment is not ideal but the speed at which you can do them is phenomenal because the next day somebody like sandeep can be working for jensen which is what jensen wants they want the talent SPEAKER_34: zuckerberg wants the talent working there the next day and the ip and the ip of course um you know for 2026 i think we're going to see some massive m a it doesn't matter to me how it occurs but i do think SPEAKER_14: we're going to see a 50 billion plus deal and i think it could be uh one of the mag seven an apple a meta a microsoft or an amazon going out and trying to buy xai mistro perplexity anthropic one of those SPEAKER_34: four comes to mind i know most of them probably want to go public and uh go it alone but i think an SPEAKER_14: offer could come in and during that race for which six or seven large language models and man it is a it is a battle where they are moving up and down the rankings and beating each other out you know i'm gonna ask you a question and i think one of them's gonna i think one of them's gonna go SPEAKER_129: for it i i think it could wind up being apple i meta or amazon who buys an anthropic or a perplexity i started where you were but this is why i went to this deal type as the biggest business winner because Chamath Palihapitiya: if any of those companies tried to buy let's just say anthropic i think it's three years of antitrust minimum it's worse than when microsoft tried to buy activision because that was a niche product and even that took almost two years in like three or four months if i'm getting it right it was about two years it's a huge slog because it's a it's about global coordination of multiple regulators yeah and did you have to get through the eu and eventually one of them takes the lead pull position but in the microsoft case it wasn't just one you had to navigate china you had to navigate europe so i agree with you because i think there's companies with so much cash on their balance sheets that are effectively getting debased every day the markets will start to punish these companies it just seems like you're right there's going to be a hundred billion dollar transaction i just suspect it'll end up as an ip license yeah and i think president trump SPEAKER_14: one of his great strengths is that he moves quickly man what a first year whether you like the decisions or not he he makes decisions i think this is one of the things that democrats are learning is that you got to actually get things done for the american people i think he might instruct our government to SPEAKER_22: let mna be great again and that would be great for american exceptionalism these companies do need to SPEAKER_14: merge and to continue to grow and we should go try to get from a mag 7 to a mag 17 we need more bigger companies with bigger footprints taking on global markets most contrarian belief most contrarian belief people like this one i said open ai loses its lead in the ai race uh and in fact that has happened if SPEAKER_98: you look at the um arenas and you look at their market share they are being challenged chamath you said the banking crisis in one of the major mainline banks gavin said one year of five percent plus gdp SPEAKER_14: growth at one point over the next couple of years well done to gavin freeberg you said socialism ross SPEAKER_98: back another amazing prediction what's your prediction for this year since you crushed it SPEAKER_146: last year freeberg go ahead my prediction is based on the premise that i think there is going to be SPEAKER_148: this revolution in iran and the ayatollahs are going to be out that's not the contrarian belief i think that's the standard belief and i think that is going to happen and that's the premise SPEAKER_201: but a lot of people think that iran is part of the destabilizing force in the middle east and i do think that there is already in anticipation of the turnover with the ruling parties in iran there is already this brewing conflict amongst the other arab states so i think that between uae saudi qatar and this fraction in yemen and then i don't know if you guys have followed but there's this kind of emerging independence movement for somaliland which is kind of north of somalia that there may be more conflict brewing in the middle east than anyone anticipates for this year that will not necessarily involve israel and or iran it will actually be amongst the other gulf states as they vie for influence and power and that the contrarian point may in fact be that iran has been a stabilizing force in that region and by removing iran and by changing over iran and they become this kind of independent democratic state and this particularly is going to be heightened SPEAKER_148: as there's going to be this battle for who's going to take care of the palestinians as the two-state solution emerges and what's the role that jordan's going to have to play versus egypt versus saudi and it's going to lead to a lot of questions about resource allocation so i think that this year could end up being a little bit nastier than folks anticipate in the middle east as iran turns over it's actually got a contrarian belief for 2026 David Sacks: yes i said that ai will increase demand for knowledge workers not decrease it i would refer you to aaron levy's post called jevons paradox for knowledge workers and the point of jevons paradox is that as the cost of a resource goes down the aggregate demand for it actually increases because you discover more and more use cases so i think this will certainly happen with code in the past it's been very expensive to generate code if to hire engineers there's not enough of them it's an expensive resource so the amount of software generated in the economy was limited by that i think it's going to increase massively now because the cost of generating code is coming down so much but there's other examples too you take a field like radiology that's frequently cited as a profession that ai is going to put out of business that's not what the data shows the data shows that the number of radiologists is increasing why because the number of scans that people want to make is increasing and it's true that ai can do some of the work but you still need a doctor to prompt the ai to interpret the ai to validate it so you get more efficient the cost of scans goes down and instead of it being a super speciality that happens very rarely that you need like a referral on top of a referral to get it becomes something that's normalized and everyone starts doing it and you start getting more and more scams that leads to better and better outcomes so i think there's gonna SPEAKER_84: be a lot of those examples through the economy and we're going to look back and see that the job loss narrative was not only wrong but we actually got job gains okay and for those of you who want to SPEAKER_311: understand jevon's paradox a little more you can look at something like electricity or steel or concrete SPEAKER_14: when we lowered the cost of those things people didn't use less of it they built skyscrapers and we had more routes for more airplanes to take you on more vacations and that went from being something only rich people did to everybody so jevon's paradox is definitely at work what do you SPEAKER_166: got uh chamath which what's on your uh contrarian belief gosh i have two well i'll give them both and SPEAKER_36: you can just see my contrarian belief number one is i don't think spacex will ipo i think that it will Chamath Palihapitiya: reverse merge into tesla and i think elon will use it as a moment to consolidate control and power of his two seminal assets into one cap table oh my god i love that wow well he's talked about that SPEAKER_14: before he's talked about having a holding company for years of all of the collection you could put neural link in there too right you could put in the boring company as well sure i'm just giving you SPEAKER_153: my contrarian take there will be no ipo for spacex i think it'll just be it specifically will be a reverse Chamath Palihapitiya: merger there you go the second contrarian take is that i think the central banks will realize that there are limitations to gold and limitations to bitcoin and will as a result seek out SPEAKER_36: a completely new cryptographic paradigm that they can control on their balance sheet that is fungible Chamath Palihapitiya: that is tradable and that is completely secure and private and i think the reason why that privacy needs to exist is that for the sovereignty of a country you need to be in a position where you have assets that are not easily disclosed to anybody else friends or enemies alike and then separately cryptographically cryptographically if you're going to own a currency you need to hedge against the eventual risk in the next five to ten years that there's a quantum chip that can challenge the existing SPEAKER_14: cryptographic schemes that are used and for my contrarian i was thinking about going with open ai losing their lead and not being the number one company again uh because i do think that will be the trend that they will have the they'll continue to give up their market share to other players including google and gemini and xai etc but i'm going to go with a pretty wild card here i think the standoff with china is going to be largely resolved and i think president trump's when he makes his visit there i don't know if you're going to go on that one sax but i think he should be included in it obviously because of the ai race i do think that the standoff um and the issues around taiwan are going to be resolved and i SPEAKER_22: think this could be the signature issue of trump's second term is that we work out a working relationship SPEAKER_14: where both china and america win without one of us losing best performing asset best performing asset last year's prediction i said mag 7 which was up 22 versus the s p 500 at plus 17. chamathi were long cds for a potential run on a major bank he said it was a long shot gavin said high bandwidth memory makers like micron which was up 230 that was a great call and freeberg you said chinese tech stocks and etfs alibab is up 85 chinese tech etf up 47 percent versus the s p 500 at plus 17. so i guess that means SPEAKER_94: gavin friedberg and then myself what do you got for this year's best performing asset friedberg poly SPEAKER_201: market poly markets on a tear network effects replacing media replacing markets congrats to SPEAKER_94: shane at polymark do you have a best performing asset 26 go ahead i would pick a basket of SPEAKER_381: critical metals okay basket of critical map uh metals what do you got sax it's getting a little David Sacks: bit redundant for me but i just said the expanding super cycle in tech i mean again this is just another facet of the boom but actually let me just show you some data that literally just came out i feel like this is breaking news oh breaking nick can you pull this up us productivity just surged 4.9 the strongest reading in nearly six years and this is the news item is that the atlanta fed their forecast for q4 gdp just climbed to 5.4 percent can that be right yes can we get a fact Chamath Palihapitiya: check on that five to six is i think where we're going to see it guys we're going to see some sixes SPEAKER_98: get printed i mean january 8 2026 gdp now model estimate for real gdp growth in the fourth quarter of SPEAKER_247: 2025 is 5.4 significant you're going to previous estimate of 2.7 on january 5th you have to remember Chamath Palihapitiya: that there's going to be 150 basis point correction in q4 gdp because of the government furlough okay so let's say that gdp was probably call it four you're going to see a print of two and a half so you need to readjust that because now all the government workers are back they're recounted in gdp if you look through 2026 there's a handful of things that i think people do not understand well number one all of non-farm payrolls has been completely reset and rebased and the reason why is because of immigration so what used to be 100 to 150 number print is now a 40 to 50 number print why is that important because when you look through earnings and you look at the lower 25 quartiles of earnings growth they're off the charts there's all of these anecdotal examples now of earnings just exceeding expectations there was an article in the front page of the wall street journal yesterday about ford trying to pay mechanics 160 000 a year and having 5 000 openings so to sax's point we are a coiled spring closing the border plus adding productivity lifts through ai and other things have created a growth dynamic in the united states that will really start to show itself in 26. so i think that you should SPEAKER_05: be not short the us economy here it is ready to rip and uh adding to all that and just giving my pick i think if we are in a rate cut environment and the tailwinds keep happening and people have a little SPEAKER_98: bit of cash laying around my pick for best performing asset will be the robin hood polymarket prize picks gambling wagering uh space because people will be able to have a little cash around to make some Chamath Palihapitiya: bets you could buy coinbase in there too i guess by the way the corollary to what we just talked about if you see five and a half and six and a half prints and these employment numbers a lot of this affordability stuff may be not as accurate as we think it is everybody right now is trying to figure out okay well where are the pockets of unaffordability and there are clearly some but those are narrow and they can be fixed but on a broad-based basis what sax says is right you have this combination of earnings growth productivity growth and now this overlay where you have these tax cuts that are going to hit in 26 my gosh i mean asset prices in general i think will do well now you'll also see potentially home prices correct because if the president is successful in making sure blackstone can't buy houses but on the other side people are earning more and they can enter with interest rates that are now 150 basis points lower you'll see a boom in housing where it's not the corporations that are buying the houses but individuals there's a lot of variables here that can that can break in america's favor this is why i think six percent is not unrealistic which would be absolutely nuts SPEAKER_14: okay let's move on to the worst performing asset last year's predictions for worst performing asset of 2025 i said legacy car companies and real estate both of those turned out to be correct chamath you said enterprise sas and the software industrial industrial complex again that looked correct as well gavin said enterprise sas and freeberg you said vertical sas so we had three SPEAKER_148: sas and i had legacy car companies real estate yeah let me just give you some numbers on that to show you service now down 30 percent workday down 18 percent docuSign down 23 percent dropbox down nine percent and box down six percent while the s p was up 17 i think it's worth highlighting like it was a SPEAKER_81: challenging year for this enterprise aspect especially with the per seat pricing as opposed to consumption SPEAKER_14: based pricing if you have a static number of employees or less employees like many of these companies do there's just less seats to sell so their whole growth was based on land and expand you land the client and then you expand the client because they're adding staff if you're not adding staff you can't uh you know you don't have more people using salesforce okay so let's talk about our worst SPEAKER_94: performing asset predictions for 2026. who do you got sacks worst performing asset of 2026. well i just SPEAKER_127: said california luxury real estate because of the overhang of the wealth tax and all the things we're David Sacks: talking about yeah that one hits close to home i think now yes it does actually what i'm hoping for is a dead cat bounce if you guys are right that the ballot initiative fails then the overhang will be SPEAKER_26: lifted and maybe i can clear some real estate there's some it's not easy being it's not easy being right SPEAKER_294: sometimes yeah freeberg what do you got what like what what's your discount price on that asset right now i mean like i might make a bid you know if you give me a oh give me a good clear you got a hundred SPEAKER_410: million dollars laying around yeah i'm not paying a hundred okay here we go bestie negotiations SPEAKER_388: occurring all right um give them the bestie price to buy it now bestie price no no no no okay by the SPEAKER_201: way you know san francisco has that insane luxury tax which they have in la too you got to pay five percent on any piece of real estate over oh my gosh like six percent in san francisco do you know that which SPEAKER_165: makes it even harder for these high-end places to trade the way you're saying if i if i bought SPEAKER_189: sax's house for a hundred i'd have to spend a hundred six oh he has to pay six percent six SPEAKER_416: yeah to the same you got to pay your broker six percent i mean they're just basically freezing the SPEAKER_418: market okay not the buyer well you can negotiate who pays the five percent you know quote-unquote SPEAKER_18: mansion tax has just killed la real estate you talk to brokers down there because people used to David Sacks: flip houses a lot more now you just can't afford to do that unintended consequences SPEAKER_420: folks really bad for the what you're telling me taxes slow down transaction volume and reduce the growth of the economy that's crazy i have no idea you should write that down we should do a whole thing SPEAKER_94: on that yeah maybe that is great i had no idea yeah somebody make a note yeah so worst performing SPEAKER_62: asset chamath what do you think worst performing asset i won't say the worst performing but i think Chamath Palihapitiya: a very poor performing asset will be hydrocarbons i just think that the trend in oil is inexorable and it's down and the reason it's down is irrespective of your thoughts on climate change the trends on electrification and energy storage are just unstoppable and so what that does is it shrinks the surface area where oil is useful it's not like a cataclysmic thing but it's SPEAKER_153: sort of a melting iceberg where does it see 65 or 45 dollars and i would say on a per barrel basis i SPEAKER_319: think it's more likely to see 45 than 65. okay i went with the u.s dollar in different permutations of SPEAKER_311: how you can buy it because our debt continues to grow unabated and you know the debasement trade jcal SPEAKER_308: jcal owning i just think it's going to be hard for you know the the usd because we're talking SPEAKER_14: about we've been at it i think we're going to add two trillion in debt this year and then if we're increasing and again i know trump says president trump says a lot of things but if we're increasing the military budget by 50 percent uh that means uh that's going to be straight to our deadline so it's going to be harder and harder for the dollar it doesn't mean that america is not going to do great SPEAKER_98: but the value of the american dollar is going to be challenged which we see in people moving to gold SPEAKER_311: and silver and perhaps copper okay if you could give us your worst performing asset of 2026 it would SPEAKER_201: be netflix if they don't close the warner brother deal i do think netflix's service is being challenged SPEAKER_148: from all sides with deep content libraries and i think we're seeing a great commoditization happening i've also heard directly from folks in hollywood the creators of new content that people would prefer not to work with netflix they only pay creators cost plus 10 percent now and so as a creator you're actually better off not doing deals with netflix anymore so their content library is going to shrink because of the natural economic forces underway alternative if they do close on warner brothers i think they've got some good runway in terms of that content library and they'll be fine and in that case my worst performing asset would be traditional media stocks and i do think that they're going to underperform there is just such an incredible a variety of high quality content that's emerging from independent creators that are leveraging their own distribution platforms through youtube and others and i think that um traditional media is going to continue to be deeply challenged as we've seen for example just in the news segment with the rise of citizen journalism so that's the that's what i would SPEAKER_308: kind of yeah and you know the the netflix observation i think is was well founded because they're also SPEAKER_14: in terms of expanding their library they just did a deal with bill simmons i see and with um barstool sports to move over their sports shows podcasts video shows from youtube and i'm going to SPEAKER_98: take them off youtube and put them on netflix exclusively so that's a really interesting trend as SPEAKER_216: well to keep an eye on okay by the way before we move off asset just on best performing asset David Sacks: there's one category we didn't talk about but i think it's kind of interesting which is the category of assets that qualify for accelerated depreciation capital equipment yes yes yes yes that includes things like planes so forth there's now 100 accelerated depreciation boats for certain kinds of capital equipment because of the big beautiful bill and you know it kind of goes along with some of the tax cuts that we talked about but man that is making those markets super hot right now SPEAKER_114: absolutely uh try buying a plane these days very difficult pp no jason it's not planes SPEAKER_201: it's like caterpillar no no it's everything tractors yeah it yeah it's generators it's semen this is why semen stock is through the roof all of this capital equipment you get to write it off 100 SPEAKER_148: year one it's creating a massive infrastructure build out in the us so absolutely there's some companies that are huge beneficiaries of this obviously because they're the sellers of the SPEAKER_305: capital equipment and of course this is one of the reasons gdp is going up is people are actually SPEAKER_105: investing in business again okay most anticipated trend by the way this is the corollary of the statement SPEAKER_420: that if you reduce taxes the economy grows so here we go yeah most anticipated trend of 2025 i said the SPEAKER_14: wrath of lena con ending and mna and ipos being back i get some credit there chamath you said the end of the deep state i think you get a lot of credit there gavin said ai makes more progress per quarter in 2025 than it did in 2023 that's a great one freeber you said the nuclear power build out i SPEAKER_334: think you get some credit there too yeah not sure not sure we got some work to do there massively SPEAKER_444: massively massively short nuclear you're still short nuclear but i know that's howard lutnik when i SPEAKER_94: talked to him i talked to howard lutnik as well he said he's all in on nuclear freeberg can i tell SPEAKER_36: you why i'm sure yeah i think that we're in the very delicate part of the cycle where they've missed the window so by the time that they deliver working smrs at scale the problem is that the marginal cost of Chamath Palihapitiya: electricity will effectively be zero and it'll have gone to zero because of a combination of solar and storage as well as coal and oil and so it's just in a very delicate place where the large form factor nuclear reactors make zero economic sense by 2032 or 2035 which is when through the byzantine permitting and building they get it done and then the smr's by the time that they get it done they may not be able to meet the market either so i think it's a very complicated moment for nuclear SPEAKER_36: actually not scientifically economically just does not hang together mathematically i think that's if you SPEAKER_201: assume um no shift in the demand curve and i think that like if you if you look at china going to eight SPEAKER_148: terawatts of production and by 2040 or whatever it is and we're sitting at one and we're not moving we are going to have a big catch-up to do and the question is can we really build out two three terawatts of electricity generation how are we going to build out two to three terawatts of electricity generation the amount of land that you would need with solar and what's it going to take to get all of that installed and so on and by the way there's a lot of this stuff in china if you look at all the big solar build outs that they did where they're ripping it up now this is a longer conversation but i really do question whether we can pin everything on solar it's going to be a mix of stuff and so your point may be right that in the near term to meet the current kind of demand curve nuclear is going to be economically challenged but at some point here there's an inflection that we have to meet SPEAKER_375: so what's your most anticipated trend of 2026 friedberg iran becoming an independent democratic SPEAKER_148: state i think i'm just speaking generally anticipated i think a lot of people are anticipating that that's going to happen this year there's an uprising in the streets there is a weakening SPEAKER_309: of the ayatollahs and there seems to be a moment underway and the demographics our destiny there's SPEAKER_81: a lot of young people in iran and they do not want to live under the current rule they want to be free SPEAKER_232: but there is a major economic problem in iran in terms of affordability you think we have an issue SPEAKER_148: of affordability in the us in iran it's very hard for people just to buy their basic necessities basic needs to the majority of people so that's why they are taking to the street there's a real economic crisis underway that is motivating this turnover every year everyone like anticipates some big change in the middle east but this could be the biggest rewriting of the middle east in a long time SPEAKER_247: okay sax what do you got for the category most anticipated trend of 2026 what do you got sex SPEAKER_100: i said auditing government spending at all levels good one that's a good one decentralized doge SPEAKER_61: love yes let a thousand nick shirley's bloom love let's do it audit everything audit everything SPEAKER_456: we need to normalize independent audits across the whistleblowers let's go it is not acceptable for David Sacks: gavin newsom for example to prohibit audits as he did with homeless spending all government spending SPEAKER_171: needs to be opened up and audited by the public we need to be able to see where it's going SPEAKER_458: and that that's just got to happen love it the pentagon when's the pentagons when are they going to SPEAKER_459: pass an audit right i mean that's one of our biggest line items let's get them to be audited hey SPEAKER_460: there's something president trump could do they're actually at least trying they're at least failing the SPEAKER_461: audit they're at least failing me gavin this is prohibiting the audit start where you're SPEAKER_465: prohibiting them first how about that yeah i mean just audit everything i think would be i love it Chamath Palihapitiya: what do you got i have a corollary to freebergs which is i think it's the expansion of this trump doctrine independent of your politics if you are an economic actor you own a business you invest in the stock market whatever it is you speculate cryptocurrencies you must understand the movements on the chessboard in 2026. the best framework that i have used to organize myself is this idea of unilateralism economic resilience it's just a ginormous trend and i think the output of it is going to be massive gdp prints on SPEAKER_14: top of everything else yeah and i think i'm going to stick with my last year's prediction going into 2026 again the wrath of luna khan ending we saw the mna train start with grok obviously netflix and warner brothers google and wiz so many deals are ready to be done and they're starting to pop off in mna we can debate what structure they are and regulators etc but they're happening but i'll go with ipos coming back right now you've got to anticipate one of the following two will file spacex andrel stripe anthropic and open ai i think two of those file and it is going to be gangbusters the public wants these shares they're buying them in the secondary markets we have half as many publicly traded companies the public would like to participate and this is something trump can uniquely do that SPEAKER_34: the democrats were trying to stop and slow down which was mna and ipos i think this will be the year of the mega ipo it's gonna be very exciting for silicon valley it's gonna be very exciting for the employees at these companies and for the pension funds and the endowments that own shares in SPEAKER_14: these companies they're going to be able to take that money and put it to good use hopefully so spacex andrel stripe anthropic open ai those are on the short list obviously of ones that could go public SPEAKER_98: this year all right fun one we like to do is the most anticipated media that's a fun one you know what SPEAKER_07: are you looking forward to in 2026 last year i said superman and andor season two turns out superman SPEAKER_14: did great and or did amazing it's the best tv show of the 21st century i think chamath you said uh enormity of the files that will be declassified epstein files halfway there jfk files we haven't SPEAKER_05: seen those gavin said 1923 season two i don't even know what that is but okay that's a taylor that's SPEAKER_98: a taylor that's the taylor one yeah yeah uh you watching landman then it's pretty great um freeberg you said ai video games what do you got this year freeberg you you love the media you're you're a cinephile what are you looking forward to in media in 2026 this isn't as much as what i'm looking SPEAKER_148: forward to but i do think the big trend in media is going to be the citizen journalism doing exposés i think that we're just at the beginning of the expose man on the street man on the street pushing stuff getting cameras in people's faces the work of journalism has been decentralized and i think there's going to be so much more that's going to be kind of shared and covered this year SPEAKER_201: okay do you have one uh by the way the difference i would say in terms of what nick shirley's doing SPEAKER_148: and what we've seen maybe in the past but it's going to be the new trend is much of the citizen journalism in the past has been to some degree a little bit more passive it's sort of like hey i caught this thing and i observed it but now there are people that are going to actively take a camera and say hey i'm going to go discover this thing i'm going to go deep on it and that's what i think we're going to see happen in a big way this year well and there's a monetization path you have SPEAKER_14: sub stack where people can give donations gofundmes and uh on top of that youtube allowing you an x allowing you to share revenue on this particular category which they previously didn't as nick shirley pointed out means there is a path to profitability there get more clicks get more views you make more money and then you can reinvest it so i think i like your choice a lot chamath you have SPEAKER_92: something you're anticipating the exact same thing as freebrook i'll just double down and okay and what about you sacks you got something you want to double down on investigative journalism SPEAKER_282: no i thought we were talking about entertainment here well yeah i thought it's okay these guys went SPEAKER_201: these guys zigged where we zagged but one of my weird like things that i watch on tick tock that i got stuck on and tick tock just keeps showing me them is these auditing videos have you guys ever seen these first first amendment auditors so these are people who take a camera they stand on the street and they just point the camera into someone's store or into a bank's window oh and they just film the SPEAKER_483: people in the bank yes and then they wind up spraying each other you know when somebody comes out there's SPEAKER_294: always people that come out they're like you can't do that you're not allowed to do that they're like okay i think i would like you to leave i don't want to talk to you and they just do this and they SPEAKER_201: instigate people to call the police and what they're doing is they're auditing whether the police understand first amendment rights and then how the police react is basically the end of the video sometimes the police are like you can't do that and they're like yes i can call the supervisor and then they teach the police officer that you're allowed to stand in public places and film otherwise they're just like hey they go to the business owner and they tell the business owner this guy's allowed SPEAKER_294: to do this leave him alone i don't know why but these videos are so entertaining yeah there's SPEAKER_488: well there's tension there's a lot of tension there and there's something freedom of speech which SPEAKER_128: is the first amendment for this reason the store owner comes out sometimes tries to physically confront the guy but then you'll have like a woman walking with her like two-year-old child SPEAKER_350: and then she'll get into it and she'll be like hey exactly don't violate his constitutional rights SPEAKER_493: that's the best yeah it's so good you never know what's gonna happen each one of them is like a whole new adventure yeah i don't know why it's such an interesting form of content i SPEAKER_495: like love watching it it's a uniquely american phenomenon to yeah um establish your freedom your SPEAKER_34: first amendment rights and and they even go into like the really dicey ones or where they go to like the parking lot of a prison or into the lobby of a police station and do it and it gets pretty SPEAKER_166: spicy what do you got sacks you got you got any media you're looking forward to these guys are going first amendment investigative journalism yada yada what do you got well the new chris SPEAKER_18: nolan movie's coming out the odyssey looks interesting great call great call yeah that's mine SPEAKER_501: great so what is it what is that what is that about the odyssey oh come on tomorrow homer's odyssey SPEAKER_94: yes but as interpreted by the great director of our time christopher nolan have any of you SPEAKER_189: idiots actually read the odyssey this is not great i'm sorry but the odyssey is a terrible book SPEAKER_506: all right okay okay so we're gonna get some good comments there you guys are all such SPEAKER_388: wannabe poser intellectual no it's just christopher nolan it's just great it's imax it's gonna be epic it's trash that book is left okay you know you don't like iambic pentameter SPEAKER_130: so so the idea of some confused person making a movie about it is also just how do i short that SPEAKER_129: okay that is actually can i short that can i short that movie i'm on a polymarket i'm sure there will be SPEAKER_514: you can get somebody bet on the box office pull it up nick i bet zero okay it's gonna be a lot more SPEAKER_34: than zero i'm sure i i'm uh also a um a big fan of timothy chalabay and doom part three is coming SPEAKER_130: out i also like avengers doomsday dune three oh i love dune dune part three i love doing one and two SPEAKER_506: so so much two was great i think one was a little bit of slow i love them too doomsay will be good SPEAKER_514: doomsday actually i go with that avengers doomsday is going to be i think fantastic robert down jr as dr doom setting up secret wars and then you're going to tie up all the previous marvel strings look at the odyssey zero they're going to use they're going to use doomsday to bring back SPEAKER_22: all the characters they killed hey uh besties uh here's a little something i think we're about to hit SPEAKER_14: today one million youtube subscribers before we do our netflix deal and take the show off of youtube we SPEAKER_475: hit a million um before we took so long wasn't it supposed to happen like a year and a half ago we're going to have like a million subscriber party a year and a half ago you know why ask me ask me David Sacks: what i tell me why tell me why sex because we never tell our subscribers to hit the like button or smash the subscribe button whatever yeah every other podcast i watch on youtube and i watch them all they're always like hit the like button hit the like button oh god well you know what they're doing now too SPEAKER_14: is the the big trend now is to just do 10 minute quick hits as news breaks so you you you this is SPEAKER_78: just people are asking asking ask me what i think about getting to millions SPEAKER_532: any thoughts on this seminal moment for the all in pod hitting one billion subscribers okay i'm sorry SPEAKER_536: one million you're welcome you're welcome you're welcome you're welcome what's that what's this week SPEAKER_05: got oh this weekend service is quarter million don't worry about it um it's a niche show don't worry about it it's a fragile not bad not bad hey listen i love doing it uh the reason so there's four David Sacks: of us there's four of us one of you so we have four times the subscribers yeah something like that yeah SPEAKER_98: hey listen one of the great things you you learn in media is when you build a super team a super band SPEAKER_07: you know you can actually do better than everybody individually so collectively we can do better and SPEAKER_119: listen it's not for me to say listen you i think you've adjusted to being ringo starr incredibly SPEAKER_04: listen i everybody says the same thing to me without the show this would be propaganda and it would be uh the trump's personal uh who says that to you everybody everybody everybody wants to walk moose SPEAKER_222: i'm the star in the drink i'm the really that stirs that you're keeping the private equity SPEAKER_279: wives watching great job absolutely i'm keeping them in all the private equis love it for every SPEAKER_216: left winger you that you keep watching the pod we probably lose five mag oh no you could SPEAKER_465: if we were just a magnet show the people the maga people they love hating me they love hating me and SPEAKER_34: they love they come back every week to hate watch me and my takes watch they do they just like they SPEAKER_126: hate watch you chamoff uh the private reason they tune in to hate you and hate me uh well listen it's SPEAKER_14: been a great year it's been a great year great job besties we kept the band together for one more SPEAKER_555: year let's do a poly market chances the all-in podcast makes it to 2027 honestly honestly it's not SPEAKER_04: a hundred percent it's not it's never a hundred percent um it's never a hundred percent we'll do the best we can you guys love the show smash the like button comment link subscribe whatever you want to SPEAKER_14: do write a review tell everybody how much you love jamal sweaters and we'll see you next week on SPEAKER_575: another amazing all-in podcast bye-bye