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Thomas Laffont: The $4T AI IPO Wave Is Coming… and We’ve Never Seen Anything Like It

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Thomas Laffont: The $4T AI IPO Wave Is Coming… and We’ve Never Seen Anything Like It

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934 segments

0:00

Why do you think I waited to make my

0:01

world podcast premiere for all in? All

0:03

the ankle biters called and I said, "No,

0:05

I'm just going to wait. [laughter] I'm

0:07

going to wait till the besties call."

0:08

>> Coatue is one of the most successful

0:10

hedge [music] funds of the last two

0:11

decades.

0:12

>> $55 billion under management.

0:14

>> This is their flagship hedge fund.

0:15

>> The reason we decided to kind of get

0:17

into this business is to find great

0:19

entrepreneurs and find great companies.

0:21

>> And they're looking to raise a whole

0:22

billion dollars more [music]

0:24

to invest in AI.

0:25

>> We're in an idea business and when you

0:26

have a truly revolutionary idea, it can

0:28

get really big.

0:31

>> I hope to do something a little bit

0:32

different. Besties, you've been on for a

0:34

couple hours, so you can take a break

0:35

now for a few minutes. Sit back. We are

0:37

going to show you some slides.

0:40

And

0:41

we're going to walk you through really

0:43

an update on the unicorn economy. So,

0:45

the markets are back. We can see that

0:47

the unicorn economy, on average, since

0:50

September of '24 is up 70%. I think

0:53

that's intuitive to a lot of us.

0:55

But, what's even more amazing is that

0:57

the public market has really

0:59

made the same move up.

1:01

So, if we look at the share of the

1:03

unicorn economy of the NASDAQ, which had

1:05

a significant move up since 2015, it's

1:09

really kind of plateaued

1:10

over the past few years and I think it

1:12

speaks to the performance of public

1:14

companies like Palo Alto and others. So,

1:17

AI is dominating fundraising.

1:20

What's kind of interesting in this slide

1:21

is you can see their share continues to

1:23

increase.

1:24

So, multiple years in a row now that AI

1:27

is increasing its wallet share of

1:30

fundraising.

1:33

But, the composition of that funding has

1:35

changed. If you look at the unicorn

1:37

factory, which really peaked in the ZIRP

1:39

era of 2021,

1:42

we've now really normalized at a much

1:44

lower level pre-COVID.

1:47

So, mathematically, if you put both

1:49

together, you can see that the funding

1:52

per unicorn has increased 5x

1:55

since 2021.

1:58

So, we have fewer unicorns that are each

2:01

raising more.

2:04

Now, I'm going to spend a minute on this

2:05

slide because this slide is really about

2:07

the health of our ecosystem.

2:10

So, the way to interpret this is if you

2:11

look at the green line,

2:13

which is the pre-ZIRP era unicorn

2:15

cohort,

2:17

of which there's about 73,

2:19

you can see that 20 quarters after

2:22

becoming a unicorn,

2:25

80% of them had either raised a new

2:27

round or exited,

2:29

which is, I would say, pretty healthy.

2:33

Now, if we look at the 2021 cohort,

2:35

which is the red line, two things stand

2:36

out. First, that 20 quarters in, you can

2:40

see

2:41

less than 20% less

2:44

had either exited or raised.

2:47

But, look at the number, 479 versus 73

2:50

in the prior cohort.

2:52

So, now here comes this new cohort, what

2:54

we'll call our 2024 cohort of AI

2:56

companies, and the key question is, what

2:59

will happen in the future?

3:02

Which of these cohorts will they

3:03

resemble the most?

3:07

So, we talked about how AI is

3:08

concentrating the funding base of

3:10

unicorns, but what we also see is the

3:12

top 10

3:14

is capturing a significant share of

3:17

funding. So, it's not just AI companies,

3:21

it's a small number of AI companies,

3:24

which probably makes sense since we know

3:26

that Anthropic and OpenAI are raising

3:29

massive rounds.

3:33

And so, what I like to think is we kind

3:35

of have a new index. If we really

3:36

thought about what the index of the

3:38

future is,

3:40

what for now I'll be able to call the

3:41

magnificent eight, but that number is

3:43

going to shrink as these companies go

3:44

public,

3:46

the first thing that jumps to my mind

3:47

is, "Wow, what an incredible group of

3:49

companies."

3:52

And look at the diversity. SpaceX,

3:53

Stripe, Anthropic, Databricks, Revolut,

3:56

ByteDance,

3:58

Anduril. We have internet, we have AI,

4:01

we have fintech,

4:02

we have space tech.

4:05

I'd feel pretty comfortable owning this

4:07

index if I could for the next decade

4:09

plus.

4:11

And obviously the performance of this

4:13

index has been incredible. It represents

4:15

almost $4 trillion of value

4:18

and has really crushed the traditional

4:20

kind of Mac 7.

4:22

Almost every single one of these names

4:24

has outperformed that index.

4:30

We'll go to the next slide.

4:34

Now, another positive sign is that if we

4:36

look at the exits,

4:39

the exits are thawing.

4:42

So, one of the things that we've talked

4:43

a lot about with the besties over the

4:45

years is

4:46

we know the unicorn economy is great at

4:48

consuming cash, but how much cash is it

4:51

really returning?

4:53

We need to have a balance between the

4:55

amount of cash consumed to the amount of

4:58

cash returned. That's how an ecosystem

5:00

stays in balance.

5:02

And if we look, 2026 is actually on a

5:04

pretty good trend.

5:06

Not quite where 2021 was, but pretty

5:09

good. And we still have half a year to

5:11

go.

5:15

But,

5:17

that doesn't include

5:19

three companies that we know will be

5:21

coming public pretty shortly. SpaceX

5:23

obviously in the next few weeks.

5:26

And we know Anthropic just today the

5:28

headlines hit that they've submitted

5:30

confidentially for their S-1.

5:34

And if you add up the totality of just

5:36

those three companies, you can see

5:39

that it's basically going to be more

5:40

than the 10 years kind of combined.

5:46

Which ultimately means, if you remember

5:48

and

5:48

you were there when I presented the

5:50

first all-in summit in 2024, we knew our

5:53

ecosystem was out of balance.

5:55

We were consuming way more cash than we

5:57

were returning.

5:58

Which is just a fundamental imbalance,

6:00

and you can see that now

6:02

even pre-the

6:04

liquidity events that I just mentioned,

6:06

our ecosystem is significantly more

6:09

balanced.

6:11

And that will continue to improve.

6:16

Part of it is that the growth rates of

6:17

OpenAI and Anthropic are unlike anything

6:19

that we've ever seen.

6:22

So, if you look at this chart, just

6:23

remember this chart starts in January of

6:25

2025.

6:28

That was only a year and a half ago.

6:32

Just a few months in, these companies

6:34

passed Workday, a pretty incredible HR

6:36

company.

6:38

Then it was ServiceNow.

6:41

It was Adobe by the end of the year.

6:44

Salesforce on the way just in January.

6:48

Now even bigger than Google Cloud and

6:50

Azure.

6:53

So, what can that look like in the

6:55

future? Well,

6:57

this is just based on kind of some

6:59

assumptions and some forecasts, but you

7:01

can see

7:03

that we estimate that only not only is

7:05

it bigger than Azure, but

7:07

by the end of the year could be bigger

7:08

than AWS

7:10

and potentially bigger than all of

7:12

Microsoft

7:15

by 2028.

7:20

Now, these hyperscalers aren't sitting

7:22

still. They're seeing the disruption.

7:25

But actually, they're doing more than

7:26

seeing it. They're actually funding it.

7:30

Because if you look at the ChatGPT

7:31

moment that we know happened, look at

7:33

how much these companies, the largest in

7:36

the world, have invested in enabling

7:39

and creating this change. Truly

7:41

unprecedented.

7:48

So, I know SpaceX, a lot of people are

7:50

going to talk about SpaceX, so I thought

7:51

I would share a little bit of how we as

7:53

investors think about SpaceX.

7:56

So that as you think about whether it's

7:57

a stock that you want to own or you just

8:00

want to seem smarter at a cocktail

8:01

party, you can benefit from our

8:02

knowledge.

8:05

The first thing that pops out when we

8:07

look and study SpaceX is that

8:09

the number one driver correlated to the

8:11

valuation of SpaceX is cadence of

8:14

launches.

8:17

Which intuitively makes sense. If your

8:19

business is the launch business, the

8:21

more you launch, the higher your value

8:22

should be.

8:24

So I think we see that in the data.

8:27

But there's another fundamentally

8:28

different

8:30

ratio that I'm going to point you to,

8:32

which is what if we took the valuation,

8:34

we divided it by the number of launches,

8:36

what would that look like?

8:38

Well, you can see it was kind of in a

8:39

fixed range for a while and then it

8:41

really started to move up.

8:45

And we believe that markets are rational

8:47

and so we started thinking, well, why is

8:50

it that the market is valuing SpaceX uh

8:53

higher on a per launch basis when it's

8:55

launching more than when it was just

8:57

starting out?

9:02

And my fundamental view, and we'll kind

9:04

of call this our code two framework, is

9:06

that the reason is

9:09

that the quality of SpaceX's business

9:11

model increases the more you launch.

9:15

So in phase one, which we call

9:16

pre-constellation, you're just trying

9:18

your rockets. And we know rockets are

9:20

hard.

9:22

And maybe you have a few government

9:24

customers and that's a one-time revenue

9:26

business and it's unpredictable.

9:30

Then you get into your initial ramp and

9:32

now you might have one constellation. So

9:34

why is a constellation important? Well,

9:36

it's an end market

9:38

and it's a recurring revenue business.

9:40

The more satellites you put up, the more

9:42

subscribers you have, the more revenue,

9:45

etc.

9:48

Now, you can move from ramp into scale.

9:51

Now, you don't just have one

9:52

constellation, you have multiple

9:54

constellations.

9:56

And ultimately, we believe that a wide a

9:58

wide variety of companies and

10:00

governments

10:01

and militaries will want to own their

10:03

own constellations so they can control

10:06

their own

10:08

destiny.

10:10

So, now you move into being a scale

10:12

business, which ultimately becomes a

10:14

platform. And we know how valuable these

10:17

platforms are in this technology age.

10:20

And platform means not only do you have

10:22

many more customers in your core

10:24

business, but you also have new

10:25

businesses.

10:27

It could be space

10:28

data centers, it could be the

10:30

optionality of the moon and Mars and

10:33

other space applications.

10:38

Now, we know when defining feature of

10:40

this era has been how quickly these

10:42

companies are scaling. And if we just

10:44

look at whether it's the PC or the

10:45

internet or the mobile,

10:48

Anthropic in particular is scaling like

10:50

no other company that we've ever seen.

10:58

Now, this was kind of an interesting

10:59

analysis and this is what I'm I'm

11:01

curious to kind of

11:03

discuss with the besties, but we looked

11:05

at essentially three buckets of

11:06

companies.

11:08

And we said, "Okay, within each bucket,

11:10

what is the likelihood that you will

11:11

have a 10x?"

11:13

Which I would view as an investor, maybe

11:15

not a seed investor like Jake Hal, but

11:17

for us as growth investors, wow, a 10x

11:19

is pretty good.

11:20

They're hard to find.

11:23

So, the data showed us that if you're a

11:25

unicorn,

11:27

the odds of you one day becoming a

11:28

decacorn are about 8%.

11:34

If you're a decacorn, so that means

11:36

you're over 10 billion,

11:40

the odds of you becoming a hundred

11:42

billion dollar company, not much better,

11:43

8% to 13%.

11:48

But how interesting that if you're a

11:49

centacorn, hundred billion or more,

11:53

the odds, and by the way, we're putting

11:54

in public and private companies,

11:57

you now have a 31% chance of having had

12:00

a 10x.

12:03

This kind of flies, in my opinion,

12:06

in different than maybe we would have

12:09

expected.

12:12

And if we look at how quickly these

12:14

companies are creating value, this is a

12:15

chart that I kind of added at the last

12:17

minute because the data is so fresh, but

12:19

you can see it typically takes multiple

12:22

years to go from 500 billion to a

12:25

trillion in market cap.

12:26

Well, something happened very recently

12:28

in the public market, which is that not

12:30

only did we have three companies do it

12:32

in the same year,

12:33

but we had two companies do it in a

12:35

matter of weeks.

12:38

So, we can talk about what conclusions

12:40

to take from that.

12:44

Now, even as these companies were

12:45

scaling incredibly quickly from 500

12:47

billion to a trillion,

12:50

we had other companies take a long time

12:52

to succeed.

12:54

And this is a company called Cerebras

12:55

that just went IPO, so I thought it'd be

12:57

a good candidate. I was very proud to be

13:00

a board member for a long time and led

13:02

the series B.

13:04

But if you look at the company's funding

13:06

history, you can see why I put the

13:07

little construction icon,

13:11

that it took a long time and there were

13:12

some dark periods, multiple years,

13:15

of no new capital, of hard grind to

13:17

develop their technology,

13:20

all of that time leading up to a massive

13:23

OpenAI contract,

13:26

which then can tuple the value of the

13:27

company.

13:32

But, we know Cerebras has been

13:33

successful and frankly, it's not just

13:35

Cerebras. Semis are on a generational

13:37

run. I was just talking about this with

13:40

my friend Brad Gerstner earlier. This is

13:42

just since 2024, the All-In Summit.

13:45

You can see how much

13:47

the semiconductor industry has

13:48

outperformed the index.

13:53

What will happen in the future? Well,

13:56

one takeaway from having listened to a

13:57

lot of speakers this morning is that

14:01

there seems to be wide agreement that

14:03

the more an AI system knows about your

14:06

business

14:07

or you as a user, the more useful it is.

14:11

You want to know when you go and book a

14:13

restaurant that it knows already your

14:14

preferences, whether it's what time you

14:16

like to eat or what food you like to

14:18

have, etc.

14:21

So, we think ultimately that in this

14:23

era, the amount of memory per user

14:27

could quintuple just based on the demand

14:30

that these AI systems are requiring to

14:32

provide their services.

14:34

That helps explain why we've seen some

14:36

of these moves in these memory

14:38

companies.

14:42

And then I want to finish on a point

14:44

that I think has a lot of controversy,

14:45

which is where's the revenue?

14:48

If we remember over the past 12 to 24

14:50

months, there's been a lot of discussion

14:52

about is there revenue? Is there ROI?

14:55

Where is this associated with?

14:59

So, we tried to look and see, okay, what

15:00

is the size ultimately of the AI

15:03

ecosystem?

15:06

We believe that it's about 140 billion

15:07

today.

15:09

It'll be about 300 billion this year and

15:11

it'll double in 2027. So, where is that

15:13

revenue coming from?

15:17

Well, if we break it down, we can see we

15:20

kind of estimate three key pillars

15:22

to this industry. One we know,

15:25

consumer,

15:28

number of subs times an ARPU, that gives

15:31

you your consumer revenue.

15:34

One that I think a lot of people forget,

15:35

but it's ads.

15:38

We estimate currently that about a

15:39

quarter of ads served by Meta and Google

15:41

are AI enabled.

15:43

We think that penetration will

15:45

eventually go to 100%. That's 150

15:47

billion.

15:50

And then obviously we all know about the

15:52

breakthroughs in enterprise

15:56

and what Claude code and codex are doing

15:58

inside of those businesses. So if you

16:00

add all these together, you get a good

16:02

sense of the size of this ecosystem.

16:09

So this will be kind of my second to

16:11

last slide.

16:13

One thing that's different to me about

16:14

this era versus the prior eras in which

16:16

I was an investor

16:19

is that almost every sector of the

16:21

economy is being transformed at the

16:23

moment. So we know some of the obvious

16:25

ones, software,

16:27

but look at Telco.

16:29

I believe that within a few years

16:31

Starlink will power a device which will

16:33

actually enable you to make a phone call

16:35

anywhere in the world, and we think

16:37

that's a solved problem, but

16:39

every time we get a dropped call, we get

16:41

reminded that there's a better

16:42

technology out there. So back to

16:44

Nikesh's framework on profit pools, I

16:46

think the Starlink profit pool is the

16:49

Telco global profit pool of broadband

16:53

and wireless.

16:56

We know compute is driving massive

16:58

changes in semis.

17:00

We had senators earlier on telling us

17:02

how data centers have changed the energy

17:04

equation in Pennsylvania.

17:07

Just think about the auto business. I'm

17:09

sure a lot of us followed what happened

17:11

to Ferrari last week trying to introduce

17:13

a new technology of electric and

17:15

autonomous.

17:17

Begging the question of what is the

17:19

future of that franchise in an

17:20

autonomous and electric world and I

17:22

think the response to that

17:25

car kind of fed into this narrative.

17:30

And then obviously in consumer, we know

17:32

GLP-1s are having a profound impact on

17:35

consumption of food, alcohol,

17:37

composition of diet,

17:40

and a huge focus kind of on wellness.

17:44

So, if we put all that together, what

17:46

are our takeaways? Well,

17:48

my first takeaway is that the new

17:50

unicorn economy is healthier.

17:53

And we really have kind of AI to thank

17:56

for that.

17:58

The winners are compounding faster than

17:59

ever, which means the cost of not being

18:02

in a winner

18:03

are higher than ever.

18:06

Disruption is impacting every part of

18:09

the global economy.

18:12

And by the way, we don't even have super

18:13

intelligence yet.

18:16

So, if I think that it was about 2 years

18:18

since my last All-In Summit,

18:21

I started thinking, well, gee, what

18:22

could this look like in 2 years? And we

18:25

know it's going to be a really

18:26

interesting time, and thankfully, we

18:28

have a great group to help us navigate

18:30

what the next 2 years will look like.

18:32

We're going to give this a title,

18:35

the power law rules our lives. The power

18:37

law rules our lives. All the great gains

18:39

are being consolidated into small

18:41

numbers of companies. Uh but we're still

18:43

seeing strength in those. How do you see

18:46

the private market

18:48

uh

18:50

ecosystem, the game on the field,

18:52

evolving because of the stay private

18:55

longer and these extraordinary outcomes?

18:58

Obviously, I operate in the earliest

19:00

stages. You have people who are doing

19:02

Series A's like Craft Ventures. You have

19:05

uh yourselves dipping down into private,

19:07

but I was talking to Brad Gerstner, who

19:09

you um

19:10

discussed earlier. He was like, I I

19:13

I have to figure out where to put my

19:14

time. You know, we have early stage and

19:16

and they and they do obviously public

19:18

like yourselves. So,

19:20

and then add to that,

19:21

you have people like Andreessen Horowitz

19:23

maybe going for the average in a major

19:25

way and indexing venture. What what is

19:28

the playing field going to look like for

19:30

people who are LPs, angel investors,

19:33

venture firms? What How does this all

19:35

sort out into a cohesive strategy over

19:37

the next decade or two because it's

19:39

clearly the private markets are

19:41

operating much differently than the

19:43

playbook 20 years ago.

19:45

>> Yeah, so I think the the first breakdown

19:47

I would I would submit is

19:50

on the positive side of the ledger, the

19:52

outcomes are big, right? We're seeing

19:54

outcomes that we never thought possible

19:56

in private companies

19:58

and I think that's good just generally

19:59

for our ecosystem. So, we have big

20:02

outcomes.

20:03

It's really why I wanted to kind of show

20:05

that SpaceX slide. It was somewhat

20:07

counterintuitive to me on the launch

20:09

business. Why is it that the company

20:11

would be valued more as it launched

20:12

more?

20:13

So, I think at least we have a number of

20:15

big outcomes

20:16

and those outcomes will be public within

20:20

it seems like a 12-month period. So, if

20:22

I think about, you know, the ZIRP era

20:24

where the outcomes were smaller and

20:26

companies were not going public, I think

20:29

at least in this era, we have

20:31

big outcomes and a desire of these

20:33

companies to go public. Right? I think

20:36

both Anthropic and OpenAI are both

20:38

publicly saying that they want to be

20:40

public. So, I would say that's good.

20:44

I'd say the biggest issue is

20:46

the

20:47

it seems like we're talking about

20:48

K-shape and power law in every aspect of

20:51

life.

20:52

>> Yeah.

20:53

>> And it seems like that's the case in

20:54

startups as well. So, we've seen if you

20:56

looked at my centercorn slide, we've

20:59

really kind of been stuck at this number

21:00

for a little bit now.

21:03

So, I think Jay Kyle, I think the point

21:04

that you're asking is if we were to see

21:06

no new centacorns right in the next

21:09

decade, we've basically not really seen

21:11

any new one in the past couple of years,

21:14

I think that's going to be a warning

21:16

sign kind of for us.

21:18

>> What does this mean for where capital

21:20

allocators should be thinking about

21:22

putting their money? Because what you're

21:24

showing here, a rational person who's an

21:26

LP, would just say

21:28

wait for whoever gets to a hundred

21:31

billion and yolo every dollar you can in

21:34

there cuz it's the most sure thing, it's

21:37

the least brittle, it's the least amount

21:39

of effort, and it's the quickest return.

21:41

But as we know, supply demand equals

21:43

valuation.

21:45

These valuations are disconnecting from

21:47

any valuation metric we've ever had. Uh

21:50

we had it explained to us today by Bill

21:52

Ackman, I think quite accurately. You're

21:54

making venture investments in trillion

21:56

dollar companies and giving them 50

21:58

times revenue, 100 times revenue

22:00

valuation. So talk a little bit about

22:02

where people should rationally, as a

22:04

limited partner, as a private investor,

22:06

a high net worth individual, ultra high

22:07

net worth, where should they be putting

22:09

their money to work?

22:11

And do you worry about this everybody

22:12

racing to be in three names?

22:15

>> Yeah, look, that obviously was the right

22:17

strategy for the past five years. The

22:19

question is about the next five years.

22:22

>> Correct.

22:23

>> Right? So

22:25

the one push back I would have just on

22:27

the valuation argument is these are not

22:30

fake companies.

22:31

>> No, absolutely not.

22:33

>> I think we have to I remember the bubble

22:34

of 2000, I also remember 2021. Right?

22:37

These are companies generating

22:39

substantial revenue at scale

22:42

that are growing faster than anything

22:44

we've ever seen. So, you know, these

22:46

businesses are

22:48

real and they're performing and I think

22:49

it was widely

22:51

shown that Anthropic even had a

22:52

profitable month, I believe is what was

22:54

reported. So

22:56

you know, they're they're also kind of

22:58

profitable.

23:00

But ultimately, and I think Chamath you

23:02

agree with this,

23:04

the public market is the great

23:07

test

23:07

>> equalizer.

23:08

>> Yes.

23:09

>> Yeah.

23:09

>> The scale.

23:10

>> It will be the great antiseptic. It will

23:13

not care about my presentation

23:16

or, you know, um and so I love that. I

23:19

love that these companies are going to

23:20

have to face the scrutiny, both SpaceX,

23:23

OpenAI, and Anthropic, of the market,

23:26

right? And ultimately, I'm a big

23:29

believer in the market. And so I'm very

23:32

excited to see these companies go

23:34

public, withstand the scrutiny of short

23:38

sellers, pontificators, debaters,

23:41

politicians, kind of etc.

23:43

>> Let me Let me ask you two questions on

23:44

that. The first is very tactical, which

23:46

is

23:47

normally we would say that the

23:49

antiseptic or the disinfectant happens

23:52

on T equals one day, right?

23:55

>> Yeah.

23:56

>> Now the rules are changing. There's

23:57

going to be a lot of passive buying. So

24:00

it's going to move out that date cuz

24:02

you're going to have to wash through a

24:03

lot of supply demand. So that's that

24:05

could maybe

24:06

>> Six month plus one.

24:07

>> Six month plus one is when you'd say we

24:09

can really start to get a sense of what

24:11

these companies are.

24:12

>> Okay, so that's a tactical question.

24:14

>> The more strategic question, Thomas, is

24:15

do you think that there's something

24:17

structurally inefficient or wrong that's

24:19

allowing these compounders to accelerate

24:22

at scale? Like is that a market

24:23

efficiency problem or do you think

24:24

that's just a survivor bias and we

24:26

shouldn't look too much into that? How

24:28

do you look at that?

24:30

>> I don't want to read too much into it

24:31

because the end of those companies is so

24:33

small and look at Anthropic, right?

24:36

Anthropic pre-Claude code was a

24:38

completely different company than

24:40

post-Claude code, right? So one one

24:42

event completely dented the trajectory

24:44

of almost that entire industry.

24:46

So it's hard for me to know whether

24:48

that's truly,

24:50

you know, whether these companies were

24:51

like the mule in the Foundation series,

24:53

something that could never be predicted

24:55

and just came out of nowhere and it was

24:57

just a one-time thing.

24:59

You know, um we'll see. I do think that

25:02

the narrative of oh, these models are

25:04

commodities and these companies are

25:06

going to get I think that's been pretty

25:08

thoroughly disproven now.

25:10

Right?

25:11

Um and

25:11

>> How do you as Coatue, you know, your

25:13

asset base has swelled, you've gone into

25:16

you've expanded strategy, you're now

25:17

doing, you know, data centers, you're

25:19

doing many things.

25:21

How do you keep it all organized

25:23

when maybe a slide like that would say,

25:26

"Hold on a second, maybe we should have

25:27

just plowed $10 billion into

25:30

Unprofitable." Like how do you balance

25:32

that

25:32

>> the reason I I make a deck like this and

25:34

in some ways I should thank you guys

25:36

because

25:37

when we when I do something like this

25:39

for you guys and it is tremendous amount

25:42

of time from uh myself and our team and

25:45

um we really want to present you with

25:46

accurate information. So, the past 2

25:48

weeks has pretty much been a full-time

25:50

job doing this.

25:51

But for me, it re-anchors my conviction

25:54

around what to do. You know, I I can't

25:57

go and listen to a thousand people and

25:59

then I get distracted and I I don't know

26:01

what I'm thinking anymore. So, going

26:03

back to these ground truths of numbers

26:05

and valuation bring me back to a point

26:07

of okay, conviction. Right? So, for me,

26:10

whenever I try and understand the world,

26:12

I go back to okay, what do I understand?

26:15

I understand models, I understand

26:16

numbers. Let me go back and kind of peel

26:18

this out. What I think hopefully the

26:20

deck will show is look, there is

26:22

substantial reasons for why right? If

26:26

you look at the the trillion-dollar

26:27

companies that became trillion-dollar

26:30

companies in a matter of weeks,

26:32

these are not fake companies. Like these

26:34

companies have been around for decades,

26:36

right? And they trade at the lowest

26:38

multiple of earnings of the S&P 500 of

26:41

almost any other company.

26:43

So, there is kind of something kind of

26:44

real happening.

26:45

>> energy there that just got released.

26:47

>> Correct. And now it's like, well,

26:48

someone made a point to me on on

26:50

on uh you'll like this on memory, right?

26:52

They said, "Well, if if I want to design

26:54

a chip like Open AI, I can go to TSMC."

26:57

And I know it's hard, but at least I

26:58

have TSMC to help me. If I want to make

27:00

memory, well, there is no TSMC.

27:03

>> Right.

27:04

>> So, what should the memory multiples be

27:06

versus ASIC chips as an example?

27:08

>> The wrath of Lina Khan can be seen seen

27:10

clearly in this. And Sachs, I want to

27:12

get your input into how policy and

27:16

elections matter when it comes to

27:17

outcomes.

27:18

>> As I saw, I don't know if it was this

27:20

chart, but the the chart where you show

27:22

the odds of each category reaching the

27:25

next level, the

27:27

>> Would you have predicted that out out of

27:28

curiosity?

27:29

>> very counterintuitive. Where my mind

27:31

went was extrapolating one more, which

27:34

is what are the odds that

27:35

trillion-dollar market cap companies get

27:37

to 10?

27:38

>> Yeah.

27:38

>> Yeah.

27:38

>> And the last one was 31%. I mean, it

27:41

seems to me it would be like 50%? 100%?

27:44

I don't know. It seems I'm thinking is

27:46

it going to be greater than or less than

27:47

30? And it seems to me it's greater than

27:50

30% are going to hit that.

27:51

>> It's It's It's probably the filtering

27:53

mechanism of what's the compounding

27:56

advantage or the durability of earnings

27:58

of that company. And for every step, you

28:01

have a filter that says, "Do you have a

28:03

compounding advantage? Do you increase

28:05

Do you have a stronger durability of

28:07

earnings?" And if so, you're going to

28:08

accelerate to the next phase. It's

28:10

almost like fundamental to business um

28:13

valuation analysis, like Ben Graham

28:15

style analysis.

28:16

>> To get to that level, let's call it the

28:18

trillion-dollar club. You have to have a

28:20

dominant business. And then the question

28:22

is just at what point do you hit

28:23

saturation? And it seems like all of

28:26

these markets have ended up being so

28:27

much bigger than anyone would have

28:28

predicted.

28:29

>> Yeah.

28:29

>> I mean, just

28:30

>> And monopoly or or government

28:31

intervention. Cuz fundamentally, if you

28:33

think about the breakup of uh the Bell

28:35

system, I mean, who knows where that

28:37

would have gone over time. They could

28:38

have had a monopoly on the internet.

28:39

They could have had a monopoly on

28:40

commerce. They could have had a monopoly

28:42

e-commerce. And on and on and on.

28:44

>> But but as a trading strategy, what

28:46

you'd like to do is have a bot that just

28:48

starts buying up shares of a company

28:50

once it hits 1 trillion.

28:51

>> [laughter]

28:52

>> And actually, if you had done that, I

28:53

mean, a lot of the

28:54

>> I remember who Who was the first company

28:56

to hit trillion? Was it Apple?

28:57

>> I believe so, yeah.

28:58

>> Yeah, and then everyone was like, "Oh my

28:59

god, wow." You know, now there's what,

29:01

like five or something?

29:02

>> Well, by the way, that's what I was

29:03

There was that study that showed if you

29:04

bought I'm sorry to interrupt, but that

29:05

if you bought the Nasdaq

29:07

um over a 10-year period, you get like a

29:10

3x multiple or something quite

29:12

significant. You just rebalanced every

29:13

year on the top 10 companies in the

29:15

Nasdaq. So, just buy the top 10

29:16

companies by market cap and you

29:18

outperform over a decade by like 3x.

29:20

>> Yeah, Thomas, why didn't you do that?

29:23

What is your maybe maybe just the last

29:24

question so we make sure we wrap up

29:26

about something that I think you are

29:27

uniquely positioned to tell us. What

29:29

happens when all this money gets

29:31

distributed back?

29:33

Like, what do you think happens to your

29:34

competitive dynamics? What do you think

29:36

happens to entrepreneurial dynamics?

29:38

What happens in Silicon Valley when

29:41

three or four trillion dollars gets put

29:43

back to GPs, then to LPs, and then the

29:45

recycling happens?

29:48

>> Well, the first thing that comes to mind

29:49

is I remember when David was so bearish

29:51

California real estate

29:53

um

29:55

>> [laughter]

29:55

>> We'll see whether this influx of capital

29:57

>> Time to sell.

29:59

>> San Francisco homes are selling

30:00

>> Yeah, maybe buy the mausoleum.

30:02

>> Anybody Anybody interested in a 40,000

30:04

square foot mausoleum?

30:06

>> [laughter]

30:06

>> Protesters not included.

30:09

>> The one thing I'll say on SpaceX, and

30:10

look, I don't know whether 1.75 is the

30:12

right price for the IPO and you know,

30:15

frankly, I have no clue.

30:17

What I do know is that the global profit

30:20

pool of telco and service providers

30:22

across the world

30:24

is anywhere between two to 400 billion

30:26

depending on who you want to address,

30:27

right? So, you do have to think about a

30:29

company that just in a core business,

30:31

which by the way, wasn't even in a

30:32

couple years ago,

30:34

is addressing a profit pool of multiple

30:36

hundreds of billions of dollars with a

30:38

substantially better product, right? I

30:40

think all of us, when you think about

30:42

Starlink

30:43

works all the time, no radio towers, you

30:45

know, etc.

30:47

So,

30:48

I go back to it and I think

30:52

it's hard to know, Chamath, cuz we've

30:53

never had anything like this before,

30:55

right? Um

30:57

the ultimate question would be if you

30:59

look a bit in the in the ride-sharing

31:01

wars and in food delivery wars, at some

31:03

point that excess capital was used to

31:05

have a price war.

31:07

>> Right.

31:09

>> Could we see a price war between OpenAI

31:11

and Anthropic as a question, right? If

31:14

these companies have so much capital, is

31:16

one of them ever going to pull a price

31:18

lever to try and compete with the other?

31:20

>> Rationally, they should.

31:21

>> They should. So,

31:22

we might see things that we can't

31:24

predict today, right? Where companies

31:26

might say, "Why I have my 200 billion

31:29

of cash?" Now, the issue is they're

31:31

spending so much on infrastructure,

31:32

right? So, it's it's not obvious, but I

31:35

do think we're going to see some

31:37

counterintuitive

31:39

um changes.

31:41

You guys will discuss them on the show

31:42

every week, and hopefully I'll come back

31:44

in 2 years and

31:46

and analyze what went right and what

31:47

went wrong.

31:48

>> Honestly, I think what should happen is

31:49

you should come back here every year and

31:50

we should get the benefit of

31:52

>> Yeah, let's lock it in.

31:53

>> We'll lock it in.

31:54

>> We'll pay We'll pay for the two weeks of

31:57

>> We [laughter]

31:57

really appreciate it, by the way.

31:59

>> We do appreciate the work and the

32:00

effort. I know

32:02

>> And it's it's really great to have you

32:03

bring this to the audience.

32:05

>> It just shows also the power of

32:06

sometimes slowing down and to meditate

32:09

on you know, the the actual state of

32:11

reality, and it was incredibly

32:13

grounding.

32:13

>> Incredibly rich coming from you.

32:15

Incredibly grounding.

32:16

>> I think it's a compliment or an insult.

32:18

I'm

32:19

>> Compliment to Thomas. Compliment.

32:20

>> Thank you.

32:21

>> I'll just say thank you.

32:22

>> To you, Chamath, for that incredible

32:24

compliment, and for you, Thomas, for

32:26

coming again. Thank you.

32:27

>> [applause]

32:28

[music]

32:29

>> Thanks, bro. Thank you. Great job, guys.

32:38

>> [music]

32:43

[music]

32:43

>> Mhm.

Interactive Summary

This presentation provides a detailed update on the current state of the 'unicorn economy' and the broader venture capital landscape. It highlights the dominance of AI in fundraising, the increasing concentration of capital among a few top performers, and the shift towards a more balanced ecosystem with significant upcoming exits. Additionally, it explores the valuation drivers of companies like SpaceX and the future impact of large-scale capital distribution and potential market competition in the AI sector.

Suggested questions

4 ready-made prompts