All right, everybody. Welcome back to

the number one podcast in the world.

Free Birds out saving the world,

creating new potatoes, or I don't know,

quinoa, maybe some Brussels sprouts. I'm

not sure what he's working on at this

point. In his place, his personal

favorite bestie, he always says that

when I'm not here, I want Brad Gerstner

in the seat. Welcome back. We haven't

seen you on the pod since

your shout-out at the State of the

Union. Take us behind the scenes for a

brief moment here, Brad, of what it's

like to get a shout-out from POTUS at

the State Did you know it was coming?

Did you choreograph this thing? Did you

Did you choreograph that, or was that

more spontaneous?

>> had no idea it was coming.

And in fact, I I found out after the

fact that it wasn't in the speech, and

the president added it to the speech.

So, I don't even think it was, you know,

a few days few days before going to

happen. But, we got an invite to the

State of the Union, and you know,

listen, it's an institution. This has

happened

every year for 250 years

in the country. I've never been. I

thought I did know he was going to talk

about Trump accounts, so I figured if

I'm ever going to go, that's the time to

go. And I have to say, you know, I'm

just a sucker for democratic

institutions and democratic traditions.

It It was an extraordinary night. Set

aside, you know, the headlines about

what Democrats did or Republicans did,

just the whether it's a Democrat

president or Republican president, that

this happens every year. You have to go

report on the State of the Union. So, it

was a It was a special night. Did dinner

ahead of time. We're in the chamber. The

chamber, as you all know, is very small.

And so, you know, just to your right was

the first family, and and Jared, and

Ivanka, and

And so, you know, we were there as to

observe, like everybody else. And wow,

it was It was quite a moment, and

>> I want to just say, you did a great job,

because when you sent your heart out

to all of America, I took it. I took it.

I took it. I was like,

>> it out and you cupped it at the right

angle.

>> Right. Right. You had just got up a

little bit extra, and out and out 5

degrees. You're being a Nazi. But it

would have been would have been no

bueno. Those would be some super racist

Trump accounts.

Keep your protractor and your ruler out

when you send your heart out. Okay. One

final thing on a Jason.

You know, we're signing up over 100,000

kids a day

to these Trump accounts. We have

millions of kids who've already claimed

their account. We have nearly 30 million

kids in America who are eligible for at

least $250 if they just go claim their

account. These things are going to be

live on July 4th. And what it really

showed, I think, the country, it

accelerated after the State of the Union

because the president, you know, really

believes this is a way to get everybody

in Main Street America into the game of

capitalism and get them all directly

owning, you know, the great companies in

America. So, it meant a lot to me in

that regard that it highlights the

importance of the program. So, I was

deeply grateful to the president

for not only making sure this happens,

but the shout-out is pretty cool. Good

for you, bro. I have um an interesting

idea for you. I'm sure it's come up

already, but with this whole discussion

of UBI, somebody said to me, "Oh, you

know, I really like these Trump accounts

your friends did, the the Invest

America, because it's like the start of

UBI." And I was like, "Well, that's not

exactly the intention, but I get it."

And with wealth disparity going on in

the country that has a lot of people

concerned,

what if there was a giving pledge around

equities? And people could opt into it,

they don't have to, but if somebody

like,

I don't know, Larry and Sergey or

Zuckerberg said, "I want to pledge 5% of

my shares to go into kids accounts over

the next 20 years."

What an amazing, beautiful thing that

could be, and it would be incredibly

material to get whatever it is, a tenth

of a share, a hundredth of a share, a

thousandth of a share of whatever

company. Has that come up yet as an

idea? I'm sure it's obvious, right?

It's come up. Stay tuned. But yes, we're

going to have

some banger announcements as we head

toward July 4th.

All right, let's talk about the war in

Iran. Obviously, there are much more

important issues than financial ones,

life, death, the freedom of the people

of Iran, but we're uniquely qualified, I

think, to talk about the economic

fallout, second-order effects,

first-order effects, and there has been

massive volatility over the last five

trading days.

Just talking about Brent crude oil, and

we'll we'll key the discussion off of

that

type of oil. It spiked $84 on Friday.

That was day seven of the war, 119 on

Monday, day 10.

Dropped back down to 84. Jumped back up

to 100 after three commercial ships were

hit in the strait on Wednesday.

Those ships, by the way, were not oil

tankers. They were carrying cargo. They

were flagged as Thai, Japanese, and

Marshall Islands. Brent crude currently

at 99 when we're taping this. It'll be

at something different by the time you

listen to the pod, I'm sure.

But it's quite a spike. And here's a

second chart that shows you the spikes

over time. I was old enough to remember

the oil shock of 1978. We had to like

get in line at the gas station based on

your license plate number, and you had

to wait an hour or two to get gas. Gulf

War, obviously, it hit $100 in 20 $26.

2008, we hit kind of a peak moment, $216

in today's dollars. That was the peak

oil discussion. Demand from China went

off the charts. When Russia invaded

Ukraine, we hit 115, which would be 133

in today's dollars. So,

this is not new, but it is significant

and breaking news today, Iran's new

supreme leader, Mojtaba, says he's

keeping the strait closed as a tool to

pressure the enemy.

Wall Street Journal on Thursday quoted a

senior fellow at the Middle East

Institute saying that reopening the

strait will require ground troops.

Polymarket, 27% chance that US forces

enter Iran by the end of March, and 57%

by the end of the year. So, So sharps

over at Polymarket believe we will have

boots on the ground. Let me stop there.

Brad, your thoughts on what happens when

oil hits this kind of number and we have

this uncertainty of hey, this could

last,

you know, two more weeks

or it could last 6 months, it could last

a year.

Nobody seems to know and how it

resolves,

we just had a really interesting talk

with Graham Allison.

Um, how it resolves is also a major

unknown. Your thoughts?

>> Right.

So first is

obviously there huge direct costs as oil

prices go up, right? Oil is a component

of a lot of consumer,

you know, and enterprise products. And

it also hurts consumer confidence,

enterprise confidence. Goldman Sachs is

out today with some analysis where they

updated kind of the economic knock-on

effects, right? So they raised their PCE

inflation forecast from 2.1 to 2.9,

right? For the year. So that's a huge

jump, right? In terms of their expected,

you know, PCE inflation. Core PCE, which

excludes oil, okay, is they forecast it

up from 2.2 to 2.4. So they're saying

even if you excluded the direct price of

oil, the knock-on effects is going to

cause a little more inflation. They

lowered their GDP forecast by 30 basis

points for the year.

And they also expect higher unemployment

as a result of this for the year. All of

that is weighing on the sentiment in the

market. Remember just a few months ago

the S&P peaked at 24 times, now we're at

21 times. But I think the market may be

getting it a little bit wrong, right?

The Trump doctrine, you know, I tweeted

about this last week. I think the Trump

doctrine is far more pragmatic than the

neocon doctrine, right? I think we I

think Trump has a very limited set of

goals. He wants to destroy and degrade

threats to America's national security

interest. He doesn't want to spread

democracy. So my suspicion is that these

impacts are shorter duration, but right

now the market's having a little bit of

post-traumatic stress, flashbacks to

Afghanistan and Iraq and wondering if we

might be wandering into a quagmire.

All right. And just he may not

um in terms of the doctrine, he has said

he wants to see uh the people rise up

there. So,

it might be splitting hairs, but I think

uh he might not actually be for regime

change. He says he wants the regime to

change.

>> being equal, I don't think he minds if

the people bring it to themselves. The

question is whether the US is going to,

you know, put boots on the ground and

try to spread Madisonian democracy like

like the Cheney doctrine was. And I

think this is very different.

>> Chamath, uh your take on the economic

impact and

you know, and any other uh things you'd

like to add about the war in Iran.

I think the most important thing that I

saw this week was

I think President Trump was asked about

the war, and he said the war would be

over very soon.

What did the market do?

The market literally took oil from 120 a

barrel to 90 a barrel.

Almost in, you know, in a nanosecond.

I think that that sort of tells you what

everybody thinks.

To the extent that

the market really didn't believe it, oil

would not have budged. And if anything,

it would have faded those comments.

And you probably would have seen oil

stay at around 120 or even go slightly

higher.

So, the fact that there was this

reflexive move, I think is a belief by a

lot of the sharps

that there is no path to a sustained

conflict. There's going to be a lot of

chest bumping from the Iranians,

obviously, because they need to save

face, and they will want to set up

whoever comes next to have the most

successful chance of governing. So, my

perspective is that was a trial balloon.

I think it validated what everybody

thought, which is that this is going to

be a short-run thing. I agree with that.

The downstream impact is, I think,

correct what Brad said, which is it

could show up

in some short-term price spikes.

But then on March 11th, you saw what

Chris Wright did,

which is the president activated a whole

bunch of member countries in the IEA.

And I think Chris released 172 million

barrels. I think there's a coordinated

release of about 400 million barrels of

petroleum.

That's going to dampen the effect of any

price spike.

On top of that, I think the estimate is

there's probably another billion or so

more barrels that one could

release out of strategic stockpiles. So,

I think that both of these two things

together kind of paint a picture that

probably the worst is behind us. And I

think now it's about finding the

off-ramp.

Sachs, your thoughts?

Well, I agree that we should try to find

the off-ramp. I mean, I agree with what

Brad and Jamar said about that.

Look, we've degraded Iranian

capabilities massively. Their army,

navy, air force all been destroyed.

This is a good time to declare victory

and get out. And that is clearly what

the markets would like to see.

You are seeing, however, a faction of of

people,

I'd say largely but not exclusively in

the Republican Party, who want to

escalate the war. And who are calling

for things like ground troops or regime

change or they simply want the pounding

of Iran to just keep going on and on. I

saw an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal

to that effect that we shouldn't try and

find an off-ramp. We should just keep

going with this.

And I just want to lay out, I think,

some of the risks of what

an escalatory approach

could entail. So, first of all, we're

all seeing that the the Straits of

Hormuz are closed right now.

We don't want that to persist longer

than it has to. But there are actually

worse outcomes than that. So, if the

Iranians get hit, if their oil and gas

infrastructure gets hit, they've already

said they're going to engage in

tit-for-tat retaliation against the Gulf

states. And we saw there was recently um

the Iranians blew up this giant oil

depot in Oman.

You saw some of those images. They could

continue to target the oil and gas

infrastructure across the Gulf states.

And if that happens, it won't really

matter if the straits get reopened

because you won't be able to restart oil

and gas production in the Middle East.

So that would be I think a much worse

outcome that could result from

escalation.

Furthermore, there's an even worse, I

think, scenario

from there, which is the region is very

dependent on desalination plants.

I think something like 70% of Riyadh

gets their water from desalination. I

think it's something like 100 million

people on the Arabian Peninsula that get

their water from desal. I mean, it's

basically a desert, right?

And those desal plants are soft targets.

You already saw there was I think there

was one desal plant in Iran that got

hit. And then it caused Iran again

tit-for-tat to hit a desal plant. I

think it was in Kuwait. I could be off

about that.

But in any event, if you see that type

of destruction continue, you could

literally render the Gulf almost

uninhabitable. I mean, you're just not

going to have enough water for 100

million people. And human beings just

cannot survive very long without water.

So that would be a truly catastrophic

scenario. And we're talking about

destroying the Gulf states economically

and then also from a humanitarian

perspective. So I think we have to take

things like this into account when you

hear people preaching for or advocating

for escalation.

You also have to I think consider the

impacts on on Israel. I mean, it's hard

to know exactly how much damage Israel

is taking right now. There's

a social media blackout. But what you're

starting to hear trickle out is that

Israel's getting hit harder than they've

ever been hit before in their history.

And we're only 2 weeks into this. If

this war continues for weeks or months,

>> then Israel could just be destroyed or

very large parts of it. Now, I think

Israel is a harder target than the Gulf

states. Their infrastructure is more

hardened. Also, they're further away.

The Gulf states are vulnerable to drones

and short-range missiles, whereas Israel

is mainly vulnerable to long-range

missiles. Nonetheless, at some point

their air defenses could become

exhausted if it hasn't happened already,

and Israel could get seriously

destroyed. Then you have to worry about

Israel

escalating the war by contemplating

using a nuclear weapon,

which would truly be

catastrophic. So, there's a lot of

scenarios here, a lot of really

frightening scenarios about where

escalation could lead. And even though

the United States is a much more

powerful country than Iran, they

essentially have a dead man's switch

over the economic fate of the Gulf

states and even potentially beyond that,

you know, the habitability of some of

these these countries.

So, I do tend to think that this is a

good time to declare victory. I think

Brad, you're right that the president

has never said that democracy promotion

is one of his objectives. Yes, Jake Hal,

obviously everyone would welcome if the

people rose up and chose a new regime,

but that's not something that we've said

we have to accomplish.

And this would be a really good time to

take stock of where we are and try, I

think, to seek an off-ramp. And look, if

escalation doesn't lead anywhere good,

then you have to think about well, how

do you de-escalate? And

de-escalation, I think, involves

reaching some sort of ceasefire

agreement or some sort of negotiated

settlement with Iran. And we can get

into more of what that looks like, but I

think that's the big picture is that if

escalation could lead in all these

horrifying directions, then I think

that's not the right approach. You have

to look at de-escalation.

Jake Hal, what what where are you on

this? Complicated. I have my personal

feelings on regime change, and since we

don't have the information uh the Mossad

and the CIA and Trump has, I do think

Trump would only do this if he had a

very high probability of success and an

off-ramp. However, it's not looking good

with the off-ramp right now

and it could be quite chaotic. I think

if the neocons get their way and the

people on Polymarket are correct, the

sharps who say 57% chance we'll have

boots on the ground, I think this is

kind of the end of Trump's second term

and if you were to put together

the series of mistakes that he's made um

and the administration's made, they're

really at the heart of why people voted

for him. You take starting a war like

this specifically with Iran, that's what

we were told was the reason to vote for

President Trump. He was not going to

take us down this path. He was not going

to

risk World War III. He was not going to

risk a nuclear possibility as as

Sachs correctly points out. And now you

have all the MAGA supporters from, you

know, Tucker to MTG to Rogan, Matt

Walsh, Megyn Kelly, they are all up in

arms about this is the end of MAGA and

this is, you know, a massive betrayal.

There's the one B betrayal where Trump

wouldn't release the Epstein files.

We'll put that aside because I don't

think that's as important as starting

World War III.

Um and then obviously the insane

unnecessary cruelty we talked about many

times on this podcast of ICE agents

which he has

corrected by getting rid of Kristi Noem.

So, you you start putting these things

together,

if this continues for another 6 months,

it's basically going to result in

the

Democrats

doing a clean sweep in the midterms.

Here's the chart that I think, you know,

the Republicans really need to look at

at how misguided,

you know,

uh this all is. This is the chart that

should be absolutely terrifying. Nobody

wanted this war or very few people

wanted it besides the neocons and the

people of Iran probably and the

Israelis.

But the chances of the Democrats

sweeping now is up to 45%. This just

happened.

The Democrats are going to sweep.

They're then they're going to win in

2028 and the entire agenda of Maga and

Trump's 2.0 will be gone. And then you

look at just absolutely ignoring the

working man.

Inflation going up above 3% as you

pointed out is a likelihood. Brad,

unemployment ticking up. Still very low,

but it's ticked up 10% worth keeping an

eye on. These foreign affairs things are

the least

important to the American people. It's

very very low on the list of priorities.

And people are looking at Trump and what

they believe is the enriching of his

family and all these business deals and

then they

>> kitchen sinking it.

>> It's literally what I was thinking.

>> You're bringing everything. I I 1 2 3 4.

Number one, doing the war that everybody

said he should not do include and that

that was why we should vote for him.

Number two, the Epstein files. Number

three, the ICE cruelty. And number four,

not working for the American working man

who doesn't own equities. Those are

four. 1 2 3 4. It's not a kitchen sink.

This is not my personal feelings on

this. This is my assessment of the

situation. If he doesn't find an

off-ramp quickly, they're going to lose

both houses in the midterms. That's I

think

the thing Trump needs to really consider

and I think he will consider it. I think

he's going to find an off-ramp.

>> Right. That is the topic. The topic was

are we going to find an off-ramp or not

find an off-ramp and in Iran and I think

Sachs made the argument that there's

danger that neocons and others are

arguing that we expand, put boots on the

ground. You're saying if he doesn't,

it'll be a disaster. Chamath and I both

say he will, right? And so

No, wait. Wait. Will what? He will find

an off-ramp over, you know, in the

nearer term because the Trump doctrine

is not the neocon doctrine. As much as

people want to talk about Iran, Iran,

Iran, I think as I explained last week,

I think this is about China, China,

China.

And you have to remember at the end of

this month he has a pivotal 3-days

with Xi Jinping in China. This is going

to be an absolutely historic

convening

of the two superpowers

that run the world. One,

which is us, we are the established,

and one, which is China, who wants to be

re-ascendant.

And I would bet dollars to donuts

that there is going to be an enormous

incentive

for Xi to negotiate a grand bargain in

those 3-days

and do something historic for himself.

And I think that the president will use

that if he thinks that it creates

leverage. I think is a great insight.

How does the Strait of Hormuz open? If

this war is dragging on and Israel,

which seems to be the driving force in

this, if Israel keeps it up with Iran,

how do we ever get the strait open

again? I think the off-ramp is that the

United States,

you know, declares victory, does what

Sax says, and says, "Listen, we degraded

and we destroyed. That's what we came

here to do. We did not come here for

some experiment in in democracy. We wish

the best to the Iranian people to do the

things they need to do." And if Iran

does not back down, if after that

declaration Iran continues to destroy

cargo containers moving through the

narrow straits,

I think you're going to see Iran's

neighbors and Israel and others get very

involved as it pertains to Iran because

it's in their interest. Listen, the

United States produces 20 million

barrels of oil a day and we consume 20

million barrels a day. This is a This is

a modest problem for the United States.

This is a massive problem for China.

This is a massive problem for Asia. This

is a massive problem for all of our

friends in the Gulf who are trying to

dodge Iranian missiles right now. So,

there are a lot of people in the world

who will take up arms to deal with the

Iranians if the United States isn't

there because we can take care of

ourselves. Your position, Brad, just to

confirm it is

we are going to leave the war in the

next 30 days and then if the straits are

not open,

then China, India, and all the Gulf

uh countries that are impacted by it,

they will protect it. They will fight

Iran. I think they'll put a lot of

pressure on Iran not to continue firing

missiles at their ships, right? At the

end of the day, this is not just an

American problem.

Right? And let's be clear, we're always

involved in this part of the world. The

only question is are we going to have an

active armada that's engaged in active

military activities against Iran? And

what I'm suggesting again, and listen,

anytime you try to clean up a mess like

this, there is risk.

This is not a risk-free, you know,

initiative by the United States, nor was

Venezuela. But let me

steel-man the alternative. Doing nothing

and allowing Iran to procure, you know,

the ingredients for a nuclear missile

when they are set on the destruction of

the United States and US interests,

doing nothing in Venezuela while the

Monroe Doctrine is totally wrecked and

we let our adversaries take up, you

know, positions in in South America,

those also have risks, right? Those

carry a lot of risks. And so, we're

we're weighing these two risks. Again,

for me, I don't like the fact that we're

engaged in military activities here, but

I will tell you I am very much on the

side that if we're going to go protect

American national security interests,

you go in, you do the the degrading of

their capability, and you get out. And I

think, you know, that's what I hear out

of the president.

Chamath, you had a follow-up.

All roads lead to China. I think that

there you're going to see

Xi offer up a grand bargain. And I think

it's up to the president to decide

whether he wants to take it and see what

he wants to add to it to get something

done. But I just don't see them meeting

and coming out with nothing. I think I

see them going in and coming out with

something that's historic.

And I think that all of this, Venezuela

and Iran together, is all about China.

>> Let me just say one thing as to that,

Chamath, I think because I think the

point is absolutely spot on. Right?

Probably the single greatest takeaway

for us from an investment perspective at

the start of this war

was that the Chinese,

right, didn't take up arms on behalf of

Iran,

aren't defending Iran,

and they didn't cancel the summit with

the president.

Right? The very fact that the

>> Because they need him. They need the

oil. 20% of their entire domestic

consumption is oil from Venezuela and

Iran. 20%, but it's not 20% because it's

literally 100% of anything that's

feedstock, anything that's transport,

cars, buses, planes.

They are in an enormous world of hurt.

Now, they have a strategic petroleum

reserve as well,

and it's quite robust, but it's not

robust enough to sustain five or six

months of this. It's not that robust.

So, at the end of the day, who is going

to be hurting the most? It is China.

And so, if you play this game theory

out, the reason he kept it is because

now he needs the summit even more. Could

you imagine if the president canceled?

That would be a disaster for the

Chinese.

So, the fact that it's still on the

books,

if I was Xi, I'd be like, "How do I

negotiate and help find the off-ramp?

How do I end up fixing this faster?" All

right. Remember, you have 25%

unemployment of young men inside of

China.

25% today. What do you think it goes to

in five months with no oil?

It's in the It's

>> That's the unemployment rate you should

be focused on, Jason.

Oh, the China issue is a separate one.

Just to

>> separate. No, no. That was separate from

my point is my point. I I was bringing

up a different point.

>> kitchen sink didn't include the Chinese.

I get that. I'm just adding to your

kitchen sink.

>> I didn't have a kitchen sink. I have

four very salient points. All right,

Sachs, I'll give you the final word

here.

Well, look, that was a bit of a a

broadside, Jay Cow, where you kind of

did kitchen sink it. But look, here

here's the part I'll agree with you

about, which is it doesn't take a

political genius to understand that long

wars are unpopular.

It will hurt the Republicans in the

midterms of '28 if this does turn into a

long war. Fortunately, I think the

president understands that. His

political instincts are impeccable, and

he's always favored

short, decisive, swift actions, military

actions, whether it was midnight hammer,

whether it was the Maduro raid. I think

that is his inclination and preference.

And I think we are pretty much at or

close to a point where the president's

going to have to decide on next steps. I

think he's indicated that we have

completed our objectives, and I think

it's just important that we don't let

this neocon wing of the party try to

expand the objectives or aims of the war

because frankly they've always been

wrong about everything. I mean, these

are people who never wanted to get out

of Iraq and Afghanistan, would still be

there after 20 years if they had their

choice.

So, I think it's just important to not

listen to those people. And look, it's

not just one op-ed in The Wall Street

Journal. The Wall Street Journal is kind

of the tip of the spear representing

that whole neocon establishment. And I

think it's just important that this is

the time to frankly ignore those voices

and let the president do what I think

his political instincts are telling him

to do, which is to wrap this thing up.

I'm in strong agreement, and it is my

hope, too, that he wraps it up quickly,

and that we don't have any more loss of

life. All right, we'll keep discussing

this ongoing breaking news story in the

coming weeks, but back to our zone of

excellence, AI and tech. OpenAI and

Anthropic are scaling revenue and costs

faster than we've ever seen in the

history of, well, business, the world.

Revenue at these two companies growing

gosh, like unprecedented levels. Here

are the reports, and I believe your

investors in both these companies, Brad.

Anthropic hit a $14 billion run rate

last month, February.

That means they have grown revenue from

$1 billion

uh to $14 billion in 14 months. Yeah,

12x year over year.

They're valued at a meager $380 billion

uh last month. This feels like a bargain

given the growth. OpenAI ended 2025 at

$20 billion annualized run rate. And

they've grown revenue from $2 billion to

$20 billion in 24 months. They're valued

at $840 billion last month. Uh and man,

it looks like

Sam Altman has Dario in the rearview

mirror.

He could get lapped any moment. Lots of

debate Where'd you find this? What the

hell is this?

>> That one, I made that. This is Dario

closing in.

What is that? A velociraptor? What is

it? A T-Rex?

>> famous scene from Jurassic Park. Oh my

god. But I mean, I don't think anybody

expected Dario to be coming around the

bend this fast, but he's right behind

apparently, and they're winning

obviously the business-to-business side

of the business.

The J curve on these companies is

insane. 250, 500 billion, who knows

what's get gets invested

before these companies reach

profitability, Brad, but you're invested

in these two companies. Yeah. Unless you

sold when Sam Altman told you he would

buy his shares back on the famous BG2

episode. I don't think you sold it. I

bought

>> a lot more since then, Jason. I bought a

lot more since then. That's important

information for us to have. Quick

question for you. Number one, what's a

better buy here? Yeah. Uh Anthropic at

380, OpenAI at 840.

Uh and then I think people want to know

if these companies are going to go

public, what you if you think they

should go public, what is the chance of

that happening? Take these questions

however you like.

Well, I mean listen, you know, love your

children equally.

They're both incredible companies.

Anthropic unquestionably has a lot of

financial momentum, you know, and OpenAI

is seeing a lot of momentum themselves,

right? But the single most important

question this year, right? Was would AI

revenue show up?

And just 60 days ago, 90 days ago, there

was tremendous skepticism. No way all of

these infrastructure investments were

going to pay off. There's no incremental

revenue coming out of AI, including many

of our friends. But in February we had

in January and February we really had

kind of a nuclear moment, right? The

splitting of the atom moment. I mean, we

had a six billion-dollar month out of

Anthropic in February, right? What

widely reported, okay? Let that set in

for a second, right? Six billion dollars

in a month and it was only a 28-day

month, okay? That's more revenue than

the annual revenue of Databricks and

Snowflake that are two of the greatest

software companies of all time after 12

years, right? They could do in the first

four or five months of this year the

total revenue of SpaceX this year. What

is driving that? Just explain to the

audience what's driving it. Is it token

use? Is it cloud subscriptions? We

crossed a threshold

with Opus 4.6,

right? And we saw it again with ChatGPT

5.4, where the models and the agents on

top of them, whether it's Claude Code,

Codex, ChatGPT, they're no longer

competing with IT budgets. They're now

augmenting labor. They're competing with

labor budgets. You could not possibly

have a six billion-dollar month. It is

impossible to do that by displacing IT

budgets. Millions of other companies

across America say, "Oh my god, let's

spin up these agents and have them do

things for us and we're willing to pay

for it because the product of that

effort is worth the money to us." And

the revenue and the usage momentum, I

will tell you in the month of March

continues and it only accelerates from

here. As Kevin Weil has said, "The

models and the agents are the dumbest

today they will ever be." Right? We're

in the early innings of compute compute

and algorithmic uh capability. And so,

you know, like that to me is the

observation of this moment. Should they

go public? I said yes, they should go

public for several reasons. There's tons

of institutional demand. They need cheap

access to money to continue to build out

uh the compute they need to support.

They They There is more compute

constraint in these businesses this very

day than they've had any time in the

last 3 years. So, they need access to

the capital. And then finally, I think

you have to have the retail investor in

the game. These are two of the most

important companies in the history of

capitalism, in the history of America.

It's destabilizing not to have them

public. You know, Jensen said last week

that he expected the 40 billion he

recently invested in these two companies

would be his last money in because they

were both going to go go public. He

thought they He said they would both go

public this year. I think that, you

know, they're they're preparing and

heading down that path. You know, and

and listen, I want to get some of these

shares in the accounts of all these kids

that we're opening up because they're

really, really important companies to

the future of the American economy.

Chamath, you had some

insight into the quality, durability of

this revenue. There's not a single

good example that we can find of

sustained

positive

margin expansion and impact of

AI inside of a true corporate enterprise

that is not right now a small test.

There's not.

So, where does 6 billion come from?

Because everybody has to show up to

their board and have an AI checkbox. And

everybody is thousands and thousands of

companies. And when you have tens of

thousands of companies as customers

paying $200 plus a month, it's not that

hard to show up with that kind of

revenue. The real question is the

following.

If you take you use the Databricks and

Snowflake example.

If you look at the companies that use

that software,

those companies

generate enormous revenues and enormous

margins. And these products are in

critical

production workflows that underlie those

revenues and profits.

That is just not true with AI today. We

have all kinds of claims,

but we are still experimenting.

Why are we experimenting?

Because we know it's important,

but we don't yet really know what to do.

You can't just slot this in to a

critical workflow in healthcare, and all

of a sudden show up where if you make a

misdiagnosis or if you make a a

mischaracterization of a procedure,

you can get fined and go to jail. The

companies that are in healthcare don't

do that.

If you're in financial services

and you make a mistake about somebody's

portfolio or you make a misallocation

and you point to a model, you will get

sued and you will be in trouble.

None of these things have transitioned

from it's interesting, it's experimental

to it's the core critical operational

workflow.

>> Mhm.

Just the interesting. There will be a

transition in revenue quality

when that happens. A great example of

this is Amazon.

Why does Amazon issue an edict that says

you cannot use this stuff

inside of AWS unless a human now reviews

and approves it? Because what happened?

They had three or four sev one faults

from a bunch of code that was written by

agents that brought down AWS. Now, look,

I've told you, I love AWS for one reason

because it's hyper-reliable. I hate AWS

for the same reason that

hyper-reliability comes at enormous

cost. I pay it. But, I pay it to never

have a sev-1.

The reason they have 12 nines of

accuracy is because it's humans and

deterministic code that never fails. It

doesn't mean that two companies can't

get to 20, 30, 40 billion of revenue.

What it means is we have to be honest.

This is an industry that's early.

We are all figuring it out. There's a

lot of test budgets that are going at

it. It will slowly and methodically

emerge into production, but let's not

oversell what this moment is. Okay,

Brad, I want to give you a

well-constructed question here to

respond, and then Sachs, we'll go to you

if you have some input. Of the 20

billion, how much of it do you think is

experimental? What percentage is

experimental versus production based on

>> out strip out the

the consumer spending for cuz like you

know, that's half of it. Okay, so let's

I'll I'll put aside the consumer Sure,

great idea. We'll put the consumer

subscriptions aside. They're obviously

getting value, or they wouldn't be

subscribing, but it's like Netflix or

>> way, for that, where it can be extremely

faulty, and there's no SLA that you're

giving. It's a phenome- These are

phenomenal products.

>> Yes, for 20 bucks a month, well worth

it, and consumers have decided it's

worth it. So, I think we're in agreement

there.

>> And also, for the individual engineer,

of which I suspect there's a few

million,

who get to pay $200 a month and have

their company subsidize it. The company

knows that these costs are being

incurred, but there is no tick and tying

at the end of it where then you review

the code in a different way because you

you you're worried that there's

hallucinations, as Amazon just

demonstrated. Yeah, there's a story in

the There's a story in the FT about

Amazon having some blast radius from

some computer-generated AI, and they're

putting controls in place. We'll put

that in the show notes. Brad, let's get

to the specific question I asked. Of the

tens of billions of dollars in revenue

between the two companies that's not

consumer,

what percentage do you think is

production quality versus experimental

to Chamath's point? Yeah, I mean,

listen, and I've been, you know, I

coined the phrase experimental run rate

revenue, right? Versus annual recurring

revenue, right? Like I think it's I

think Chamath's point is a really

important one. As an investor, I have to

discern what's repeating, right? What's

recurring and what's not. What I would

suggest is, of course, there's a lot of

experimentation because these things

haven't been around that long. But I

suspect, right, that Palantir,

the US government,

the US military, Nvidia, and a lot of

other major enterprises would argue

they've gone full production. In fact,

it's existential to the wartime effort

going on in Iran right now. That doesn't

sound to me like experimental as much as

it sounds like production capability.

And I will tell you what will prove this

one way or the other is in the month of

March, do revenues continue and go up?

Well, that's not true. The

experimentation can go on forever.

That's not true. That's not true. Okay,

well, if the experimentation goes on

forever, that sounds like recurring to

me. We scratch the surface of of the

number of companies that even know how

to adopt AI. So these numbers will go to

the stratosphere. I'm not debating that.

>> Yeah. Okay. Look, I'm on the same side

of the bet as you are. I want these

numbers to keep going to the moon. I'm

just being much more circumspect and

honest with myself to say, I see it on

the ground. I sit on top of these

models. I am paying these models

millions of dollars a year. I am. Yep.

And what I'm telling you is my revenues

don't go up faster than their revenues.

I'm consuming more tokens every single

day.

Do I get more economic output? I am not.

And I would say that my team is at the

leading edge, and so I suspect a Fortune

1000 company is steps behind my team.

And if I am spending triple every 3

months and not seeing my revenues

tripling.

I suspect these other companies are in a

similar situation. I'd finalize it, but

ask it on Friday when you're with

Michael Dell because I've had this

conversation recently with Michael Dell.

And Michael said a year ago, companies

weren't seeing ROI. Today, they're

seeing very big ROI in their AI

investments, but I think that's the

question on the table. But What

companies? Which companies? Yeah, let's

let's talk about Goldman Sachs Sachs. Of

course I'm probably seeing an ROI.

Sachs, we're agreeing. The company This

is experimental in large part, and this

is a new tool. So, by definition, you

have to experiment before you put it in

production. What's your take on this

grand debate? How much of this revenue

is experimental versus real? Well, look,

when you're talking about enterprise

revenue, what you're really talking

about is coding assistance. That's been

the breakout use case. It's really the

first big breakout use case on the

enterprise side. The consumer side's

been more of like, you know, research

and writing, that kind of stuff. The

chatbots.

But enterprise is all about about coding

assistance. My sense is that the demand

for code is very scalable. Software

engineers has always been an area of the

economy where companies have never been

able to hire enough. Even Silicon

Valley, which is the most attractive

place for software engineers to work,

we've never been able to recruit and

attract enough of them. The rate

limiting factor on the progress of every

startup I've ever invested in is not

having enough engineers to code up the

product roadmap.

And then you look at the rest of the

economy, Fortune 500, and so forth and

so on. They have hardly been able to

recruit software engineers at all

because they've all gone to Silicon

Valley. So, I think you're dealing with

a a part of the economy where there's

always been a massive supply shortage.

And I don't know what the natural limit

on that is, but my sense is that there's

a tremendous latent demand for the

ability to generate code

in large quantities, create new

products, you know, as the cost of code

goes down, as the coding assistance get

better, you can code up new types of

products. And then of course it's going

to lead to agents, which is another

way of basically using the code that

gets generated. So my sense is that this

could be very scalable. I don't know

where it it taps out exactly.

Where I think Chamath is right is that I

think there is a change management

aspect to this

in Fortune 500 companies for example,

and they haven't really wrapped their

heads around how exactly they're going

to use this. There was a McKinsey study

that showed that a lot of these pilot

projects in Fortune 500 companies were

experimental, and a lot of them were

proving not to be successful. So I do

think like as you go beyond coding

into, you know, company transformation

things like that, it becomes a little

bit more speculative. That's not to say

it won't happen. I think it will happen.

I'm actually I'm bullish, but I do think

that we're still waiting to see what the

breakout use cases beyond coding will

be. Probably agents will be the next big

one. But I think Brad's right that

that's big enough to see

you know, this scale for a while.

Because, you know, there's a thing about

the thing about code is you're paying

for code on a metered basis right now.

You're paying per token, which is kind

of an amazing deal for companies, right?

Because before they had to go through

this recruiting process to find

engineers, source them,

vet them, you know, keep them happy,

give them all the perks, the KIND bars,

all you know, uh and so to be able to

buy code on a metered basis as the cost

per token keeps going down,

it's kind of an amazing deal.

>> It was just metered on people. Now it's

Now to your point it's it's metered it's

metered in a different way, but it's

still metered. Yeah. And let me just,

you know, you used this term

labor displacement, Brad. That's like

the one part where I might disagree with

you is because there was such a shortage

>> Yeah. of software engineers. I think

when people hear the word labor term

labor displacement they might start to

think that 6 billion of incremental

revenue means 6 billion of layoffs and I

don't think it does and and the way to

to thread that needle is the fact that

we were artificially constrained in the

number of software engineers and how

they could be used and how rapidly they

could be acquired and all that kind of

stuff. So to be able to now turn that on

like electricity and that's kind of what

we're talking about exactly is just such

a huge

game changer and unlock for the whole

economy. Yes.

>> And that's what I think is really

exciting about it.

>> It's augmenting it's augmenting human

labor, right? We're not at a place yet

where it's displacing and this is the

definition of productivity gains. I'm

going to make just uh two quick points

here.

The place to look for this actually

moving from experimental into production

is not not at big companies. Big

companies are actively resisting this

management and big companies will resist

it because it means lowering head count

and it means the person who implements

it might actually implement themselves

out of a job. So that is the natural

resistance you'll see in big companies.

That's not where to look for adoption of

new tech.

>> That's not why it's happening. That's

not why it's basically happening.

>> my point and then you can you can

counter it.

Startups are the place to look at this

and that's where I am on the ground and

what I'm seeing there is that startups

are using this in production for their

legal work, for their marketing, for

SDRs,

uh for their accounting, reviewing legal

documents. This is all

uh work that would normally they would

hire consultants for, outsource, uh or

make hires for. And what I'm seeing on

the ground is it's production ready in

startups who are using it in those

categories. HR as well, accounting,

marketing, all of that. All that

blocking and tackling, all those chores

are being done currently with these LLMs

and they're doing it in production and

they're doing it at scale. Just a quick

second point here. Here's the J curve

and this is the question I think we'll

get to in our next segment. When does

this become a profitable business? If

And And you asked this of Sam in that

famous clip on the BG2 podcast,

RIP BG2.

Here you go, the LLM industry J curve. I

just asked Claude to make this for me.

If you have 500 billion, I think you

would agree it's probably going to be

around that number Brad invested in all

of this. And then

>> More. A lot more. Okay,

so 5 billion is an underestimate here.

And then when do we actually see these

large language model companies hit

profitability in a in a calendar year?

It took Tesla, Uber,

Amazon, you know, decade plus in each of

those cases to win back their

investment. If you put it at 10 billion

>> This is a really good chart. Here's the

precise math on this. So I am building a

1 gigawatt data center in Arizona. Okay.

When I greenlit that project, I thought

it was going to be a four or five

billion dollar investment. I was like,

okay, whatever.

Then it went to 10. Then it went to 15.

Then it went to 20. And now it's upwards

of 50 billion dollars for the powered

shell, for all the land, for all the

permits, then for all the

infrastructure, all the people, all of

it. Okay.

Sarah Friar said, I think it was about a

year ago, maybe less than a year ago,

that for them every gigawatt is about 10

billion of annual revenue. So if you

think about that J curve Jason, really

the way to think about it is look,

energy equals intelligence.

For every gigawatt that they're trying

to spend, they have a five-year payback.

It's roughly what it means just to get

to break even. And then year six, seven,

and eight will be where the profit is.

Now how do you shrink the J curve?

You have better silicon. We're going to

see something from Jensen in a in a week

or two that uses

a bunch of the stuff that we partnered

with him at Groq on.

There'll be other people. There'll be

open source. So all those things can

shrink the depth and the surface area of

that J curve so that you can get out of

it faster. But right now that that thing

is roughly accurate, which is it's about

50 billion per gigawatt. And it's about

a

five to six-year payback just to get

into the money, and then it's about 10

billion a year.

And the technology industry has to do

something to make this better.

Could I, though,

take a step back and give you just a

different framing of all of this?

Please.

I think the big thing that we're

debating

is actually something we've seen in

every other technology trend

when it started to get some really

meaningful traction. So, in the first

generation of the internet when you

started to see e-commerce and all these

other business models.

Then in the second big wave of the

internet around the move to mobile and

the move to social. And then now we're

seeing this big wave around AI.

And I think what happens

is in step one

entrepreneurs

are AB testing

what it takes to raise money.

Okay, that's step one.

And I think what has happened

is that at least some parts of the AI

ecosystem

have decided that this crazy

scary doomerism is the best way to raise

money.

Where every now and then they come out

and they say, "All the jobs will be

destroyed." And Prophetic, you know,

Dario says that. "This thing is

sentient."

And investors are like, "Okay, here's 10

billion. Here's 50 billion. Here's 100

billion."

But then the second step happens. They

get the money. They start to do the

training. They start selling.

And then the investors are like, "Hey,

where's the revenue?" And so then they

start selling everywhere.

And then, if you see in the Department

of War example

all of a sudden you flip-flop. You

become sort of an un-serious dilettante

like partner to the American government.

They're like, "We're going to boot you

out." That's billions of revenue gone.

And what happens? Well, the same

investors that gave billions of dollars

are like, "Hey, hold on a second.

That's absolutely not allowed. You need

to conform and get back on track." And

so what does Dario do? He flip-flops.

And he's like, "Oh, I'm really sorry. I

didn't mean to. Let's sort of make

good." All of that, to me, is an

industry that's still in its very early

phases and still figuring out what its

place in society is.

So, what is the problem?

The problem is the following two clips,

and I'll just have Nick play these, and

I'd love your guys' reaction. The one

thing though that I think, even now, is

underestimated by all actors in

industry,

and including in Silicon Valley, is how

disruptive these technologies are. If

you are going to disrupt the economic,

and therefore political, power

significantly of one party space, highly

educated, often female voters who vote

mostly Democrat, and military and

working-class people who do not feel

supported, and you feel like that's you

believe that that's going to work out

politically, you're in an insane asylum.

Like, that you cannot have it This

technology disrupts humanity's trained,

largely Democratic voters, uh and and

makes their economic power less, and

increases the power economic power of

vocationally trained, working-class,

often male

uh voters, and and and so, these

disruptions are going to disrupt every

aspect of our society. And it to make

this work, we have to come to an

agreement of what it is we're going to

do with the technology, how are we going

to explain to people who are likely

going to have less good and less

interesting jobs, from their

perspective, and how is it that we are

going And by the way, on the military

thing, these technologies are dangerous

societally. The only justification you

could possibly have would be that if we

don't do it, our adversaries and uh will

do it, and we will be subject to their

rule of law. So, you If you decouple

this from the support of the military,

you're going to have an enormous problem

explaining to the American people why is

it that we're absorbing the risk of

disrupting the very fabric of our

society including the most powerful

parts of our society uh if it's not

because it's about maintaining our

ability to be American in the near term

and and and long term. Now watch Sam's

reaction. Fundamentally, our business,

and I think the business of every other

model provider is going to look like

selling tokens. But we see a future

where

intelligence is a utility like

electricity or water and people buy it

from us

on a meter and use it for whatever they

want to use it for. So, if you take

those three messaging veins on a

spectrum one is we have a sentient

supergod, we're the only ones that can

protect you from it, but you know, your

days are numbered. That's Dario. Alex,

which is hey, hold on a second, you

can't have it both ways. You can't both

say it on the one hand and then try to

run the fabric of society and flip it.

You need to be much more circumspect.

And then Sam's, which is we want to sell

tokens as a service.

I think the point is that this industry

right now, that revenue traction if

anything else

has distracted people from actually

getting on the same page and being much

more methodical

and much more reliable and trustworthy

in explaining all of this and managing

the expansion of this. And so, what I

would say is all of this fundraising

gobbledygook has actually created this

breathlessness that is not useful and

isn't helping.

And I would say there needs to be a lot

more seriousness by these folks to

actually run this business thoughtfully.

You can't be a dilettante, you can't

flip-flop, you can't pressure test AB

test this kind of messaging in public.

But I understand why you're doing it

because the stakes are so high. You're

playing this enormous poker game.

But I think we need to do a better job

of explaining all this to people because

right now my end of this is look at this

chart.

This is now the result of those three

messages. Here is where AI is. It is

slightly above the Democratic Party and

an autocratic state, that's where AI is.

ICE is more popular than AI.

So

>> very popular.

So

to me, this is really the crux of this.

Where we are not really being honest. It

would be much better if we said soberly,

there's a lot of experimenting, this

revenue is great, but we don't really

know what's real, we're going to try to

figure it out, we're going to work

methodically, there's a lot of regulated

industries, we're going to work within

those, we're not going to flaunt the law

and the rules, licensure will still mean

something. That's a way better,

thoughtful, mature message.

And Brad, what do you think? And rant.

And rant. Great rant. Uh,

Brad, does the industry have a PR

problem? Obviously these recent surveys,

and especially comparing them to China,

where people see AI as abundance and

like this incredible new technology they

want to embrace. Here, people are

scared. People are scared they're going

to lose their job, people are scared

about wealth

disparity, the rich get richer, the poor

get poorer. There's a lot of fear here

in the United States. What can our

industry do

to turn this around in terms of

communication from the big companies?

They don't seem to be communicating in

any coordinated fashion, and and they

obviously are scaring the out of

the public. Yeah, no, listen, I think

it's I think it's a fair rant and a fair

point. At the start of the Industrial

Revolution, at the start of, you know,

in the in the late 1800s, we had similar

social responses to innovations that

were occurring. We in fact had some

violent clashes, we had demonstrations

in the street, we had the entire robber

baron movement, you know, so class

warfare and worse is, you know, has come

with other rebel you know, kind of

industrial changes of this magnitude.

So, it doesn't surprise me that we have

a lot of anxiety by people that they may

lose their job. And I think there are

people out there who are kind of

forecasting into the future

in ways that are scary to, you know, the

average person who's who's listening to

this. And I don't think that's

particularly helpful. So, could we do a

better job messaging? No doubt about it.

But if I just rewind to kind of where we

started, I actually think the industry

is um you know, this is going to be a

pivotal year for the industry to

demonstrate, right, how this is really

beneficial for humanity. I think we're

going to be able to demonstrate that

it's very beneficial from a healthcare

perspective, from a drug discovery

perspective, from an education

perspective, etc. But we need to have a

coordinated effort because Chamath

right, it's deeply unpopular in the

country. I happen to be on the

optimistic side of this. 70% of the jobs

that exist in the United States today

did not exist 40 years ago.

Right? Right? We've gone through the

digital disruption that put a lot of

people out of work, but the abundance

and the and and the recreation of new

jobs, right, expanded the pie for

for largely everyone. I think that will

be the case here. If you listen to

Dario, he says the concern is that the

disruption occurs at a faster and and

and and bigger rate. And so that we

can't keep up with kind of that

replacement. I think that's another fine

point. But if we just go back to where

we started the conversation, which was

are these good investments, right? Do

>> That's not the conversation. No, of

course they're good investments. Of

course you're going to make money.

That's not what it's about. That's not

He asked the question. You made the

argument. Jason asked the question,

right? Are these companies simply

selling tokens at a loss, right? And we

moved into the

>> No, no, no. They're they're selling at a

profit. I'm buying them and losing

money. Right?

In the 1849 Gold Rush Yeah. Anthropic

and OpenAI and all of these model makers

are selling the pick and shovel in the

Gold Rush. I am buying it and I'm trying

to pan for gold. But as with the Gold

Rush, most of these companies will go

out of business.

And all I'm saying is if we are really

circumspect and honest

there is still way more to figure out

than has been figured out. This is not a

solved problem and I think we would

would behoove everybody to just tell the

truth about this. It would be way better

to be honest. This is not figured out.

>> I would say I think the data the cards

that are being turned on the table move

me in the exact opposite direction.

Okay, let me get Sachs involved and then

I'll give my take. Sachs, you have any

thoughts here?

Well, I have some thoughts on the

question you asked about is the industry

doing a good job with PR? I think the

answer is clearly no. I think they are

scaring the bejesus out of the public

and that's why the popularity is right

down there with

I don't know, what was it? Iran?

It's pretty

I think we're a little more popular than

than Iran, but um But look at Iran

Iran's had 100 years to it up. So

we've only had two.

Yeah, or 47 anyway.

>> Yeah, Iran's had 47 years to it up.

We've only had two. But it is very much

a US specific problem. If you look at

data sentiment data across countries

what you'll see is that other countries

are much more optimistic about AI than

the US. I think the Stanford did a study

on AI optimism. They simply asked the

question do you think AI is going to be

more beneficial than harmful? Something

like 80% of people in China said yes, in

the US it was in the 30s and it might be

even lower now. And it's not just China

and the US. You see across Asian

countries they tend to be pretty

optimistic. And then the US and Western

Europe tend to be pretty pessimistic

about it. I think that's less about the

reality of AI and more about our media

environment and who influences it.

Obviously you have the influence of

Hollywood has created a lot of dystopian

films about AI. You've got the fact that

like we talked about these CEOs are

doing a horrible job and they keep

talking about putting everyone out of

business. I mean, this is I think been

not accidental. I would say some of

these CEOs

are speaking this way because they're

not very good at coms. I think others

are actually doing it because they see a

strategy there. You know, they're going

for a regulatory capture agenda.

>> a good point, Sachs. It's delusions of

grandeur plus they're positioning their

companies. Yeah. It could be for

financing reasons like you've mentioned

Chamath, it's like they want to tout

this stuff for fundraising. But also, I

think that some of it is to

create

a regulatory backlash that they can then

control, you know, create a licensing

scheme or permissioning scheme.

And that's a big part of it, too.

And then I think you just have the fact

that in our media environment, the scare

stories are the ones that get a lot more

attention than the heartwarming stories,

you know, if

it bleeds, it leads type thing. So, you

can just see how unpopular it is for all

of these reasons. You know, New York is

about to outlaw medical and legal advice

from AI chatbots, which by the way,

that's probably the the most obviously

valuable and highest and highest ROI

thing for for a consumer. And it hurts

poorest people the worst. Hurts poorest

people the worst. But you understand

like if you're say a professional

association that sees it as your job to

protect your industry from disruption,

you might actually want to spread FUD

about AI in order to then seek those

protections through your state

legislature. Well, because if you have

companies that are fanning those flames

and those companies are the ones in the

industry, it's making your job even

easier. But just think about the poorest

person. They they can't afford a lawyer

and they want to do their own research

and they research the legal stuff to in

order to fight an eviction. Or there are

poor people who don't have a primary

care doctor, they're not insured and

they find a way to deal with, you know,

some medical issue they're having, and

this is the greatest thing. It's the

level It's a It's It levels the playing

field for

for people or people without resources.

So, this is the craziest stupidest

legislation ever.

>> I give them

the sky.

>> sky of the week. No, the problem is very

the problem is very specifically that

these people that rely on these models

to make a healthcare diagnosis or get a

legal opinion to help improve their

lives,

the makers of those tools are telling

everybody that they're about to bring

death and destruction upon the economy

in the world. So, then the lawyers and

the doctors are like, well, then maybe

we should slow this down, and they tell

their lobbyists, who then go to New York

and then tell the New York legislators,

"Hey, uh

these guys are like trying to wreak

havoc." And then they're like, "Oh,

yeah, well, then maybe we should shut it

down." That is the loop that's

happening.

Incredible.

>> That was the That was the Bernie Sanders

moment this week where he said, "We

ought to have a moratorium on all data

centers being built in the United States

because AI is dangerous." That was his

message, and that is what he's pushing.

>> And actually, that brings me to another

point, which is

if you look closely at Bernie Sanders'

messaging, one of the talking points he

used was literally verbatim from Future

of Life Institute. Uh I think it was

something about how AI is less regulated

than a sandwich shop, which is just not

true. But Future of Life is one of these

EA-funded doomer think tanks, and

they've got something like a billion

dollars. Vitalik Buterin donated 600

million dollars of dog coins to to

Anyway, you've got I mean, this is one

really weird sort of quirk about our

media environment is we have these

EA-funded think tanks with literally

billions of dollars. You know, it's guys

like Dustin Moskovitz and They're the

D-cells. They're the Democratic

Socialists kind of warm. It's so weird

that like New York is now taking the

crown of most state from

California. I don't know how this

happened, but they just seem to be

making every mistake possible.

>> But,

>> on. Let me just finish my point because

you've got these let's call them doomer

think tanks funded by these EA

billionaires. They have literally

billions of dollars. You can influence a

lot of public discourse with that. A

lot. Short. And they are behind a lot of

the NIMBY stuff around data centers.

They've been spreading a lot of the FUD

around data centers increasing your

electricity prices, which again, I think

is a solved problem now because the

users the AI companies have agreed to

pay for the incremental costs and stand

up their own power generation. They've

been spreading a lot of stories about

water usage, which is just totally made

up. I mean, the modern data centers

recycle their water.

So, they don't use up water. But again,

you've kind of got these doomer groups

who are just trying to stop AI however

they can.

And they're extremely well funded and

they're having a big impact. And I think

actually this is one of the reasons why

you're seeing in the US again that AI I

think is

it's basically the least popular thing

they can poll for except for the

Democratic Party and Iran. And by the

way, FLI, the Future Life Institute,

they also fund journalism

fellowships and endowments at

publications. So, Who probably writes

negatively about AI?

Yeah, exactly. Here's Sax, look at this

chart. It goes back now a little bit

earlier than '23, but I had the

data accurately from '23, so we're going

into the fourth year.

About 40% of all protested data centers

in America get canceled.

And so in 2023, this was a non-issue.

There were a few data centers that were

protested. And a few of those, 40% of

them, I think it was literally like one

or two got canceled.

But then starting in '24, when you have

this divergence of messaging or this

chaotic slipshod messaging,

and it was just a fever pitch to raise

money,

what you started to see was this

fomenting of negative perspective by

individual people on the ground.

And so in 2024, about 40% of all

protested data centers were canceled.

Still a small number, you could ignore

it. But last year was when the bottom

fell out.

We had about 25 data centers canceled,

about 5 gigawatts that got canceled. If

you use Sarah Friar's number, that's $50

a year of revenue,

which is off the table because of what

happened in 2025. Now, that has

implications to everybody. Look at the

amount of taxes that that would actually

raise for federal and local and state

governments. All gone, vanished.

In 2026,

just at the end of February, there were

about a hundred data centers being

protested,

which if you flow that through, will

mean about 40

will get canceled.

And that number right now is about 7

gigawatts, so another 70 billion dollars

a year revenue.

So, just last year and this year, we've

taken off the table a hundred and twenty

billion dollars of revenue per year.

This is a wake-up call that this

messaging is wrong. These people are not

doing what is right on behalf of a very

nascent and critical industry for

America.

There's only so much that Sachs can do,

the White House can do.

All these other people are kind of at

the periphery, but if the people that

are on the ground don't get their

together, this is a national disaster.

Just to give people a sense of where

this is happening, almost all of these

cancellations are Virginia and Indiana,

according to some of some cursory

research here.

And there have been zero cancellations

due to local opposition here in the

great state of Texas, where we have over

150 gigawatts of data capacity requests.

So, if you want to do this, come to

Texas, talk to Abbott, talk to Ted Cruz,

you just CC them on your tweet, and

they'll have you to the poker game, and

they will greenlight it. Brad, before we

move on, want to get your opinion on

open source and how powerful it is and

how powerful Apple silicon is getting.

I'm not sure how you factor this in at

Altimeter

into your thinking, but this seems to me

to be a massive headwind against the two

big bets you have.

All of these open source models, we

started running them

picking up about 85% of our tokens right

now, and every startup I know

is saying, "We are standing up our local

models, and we only use the top models,

the paid ones, uh when we have jobs we

can't do." So, I I'm just curious your

thoughts on that, and you can add to

that the auto research project from

Karpathy that came out this weekend. For

people who don't know, we now have

a group of tinkerers who are setting up

their open claws, and now setting up

large language models, and now trying to

train them with this auto research tool.

This seems like a parallel track that

could be material. I'm just curious if

you're monitoring it at all.

>> I mean, first I would say that uh

I am

very enthusiastic for open source. Okay.

We see it in widespread use

everywhere. But, here's the interesting

thing. You know, for the advanced

companies, they're doing some like

planning,

you know, with the frontier labs, and

then they're kind of doing the

execution, if you will, with the open

source models. So, they're running an

ensemble of model strategy. But, here's

what I think's more impressive.

We have incredible open source models

nearly on the frontier, and

notwithstanding that, we're seeing

companies like Anthropic add five or six

billion dollars of revenue in a single

month, which is extraordinary. We've

never seen anything like it in

technology. And that's in the face,

Jason, of all this open source usage.

So, what does it tell me? It tells me

that the TAM is dramatically bigger than

any of us think that it is. And that,

you know, when we when we look back on

this period,

you know, that will be the big takeaway.

It's a takeaway with Uber, the takeaway

with Google, the takeaway with Amazon.

The TAM was way bigger. We've crossed an

important threshold. Open source will be

a part of it, but clearly the front

frontier labs can do well even in the

face of it. All right, a little

housekeeping.

The All-In Summit is coming and

liquidity is uh I think it's sold out or

about to sell out. We might have a

couple tickets left. You can find both