AI Bubble Pops, Zuck Freezes Hiring, Newsom's 2028 Surge, Russia/Ukraine Endgame

(0:00) Bestie intros (1:59) What's new with the All-In Summit (9:02) AI Mania hits the brakes: sign of a bubble or a healthy correction? (30:49) Meta's AI hiring freeze: are the AI talent wars slowing down? (39:09) Gavin Newsom is the early favorite to be the 2028 Democratic nominee (54:03) Russia/Ukraine: Trump's two summits, what endgame to expect? Join us at the All-In Summit: https://allin.com/summit Summit scholarship application: http://bit.ly/4kyZqFJ Get The Besties All-In Tequila: https://tequila.allin.com Follow the besties: https://x.com/chamath https://x.com/Jason https://x.com/DavidSacks https://x.com/friedberg Follow on X: https://x.com/theallinpod Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theallinpod Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@theallinpod Follow on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/allinpod Intro Music Credit: https://rb.gy/tppkzl https://x.com/yung_spielburg Intro Video Credit: https://x.com/TheZachEffect Referenced in the show: https://x.com/autismcapital/status/1958566758719398351 https://fortune.com/2025/08/18/mit-report-95-percent-generative-ai-pilots-at-companies-failing-cfo https://www.cnbc.com/2025/08/18/openai-sam-altman-warns-ai-market-is-in-a-bubble.html https://www.theverge.com/command-line-newsletter/759897/sam-altman-chatgpt-openai-social-media-google-chrome-interview https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/19/technology/mark-zuckerberg-meta-ai.html https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/meta-ai-hiring-freeze-fda6b3c4 https://www.cnbc.com/2025/06/19/meta-tried-to-buy-safe-superintelligence-hired-ceo-daniel-gross.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/12/technology/meta-scale-ai.html https://www.cnbc.com/2025/06/18/sam-altman-says-meta-tried-to-poach-openai-staff-with-100-million-bonuses-mark-zuckerberg.html https://polymarket.com/event/democratic-presidential-nominee-2028 https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000198-c46f-da96-abff-d66f4c1e0000 https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250820615513/en/Statement-from-Marcus-Lemonis-Executive-Chairman-of-Bed-Bath-Beyond https://news.gallup.com/poll/693203/ukrainian-support-war-effort-collapses.aspx

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jason Calacanis?

  In confidence, Sax told me he's a little broken up about the empty nest kind of thing. And by empty nest, I mean his bulldog Moose is coming to live on the ranch.

• 0:09David Sacks?

  Has the Moose landed?

• 0:10Jason Calacanis?

  The Moose is landing next week. We're giving him a three-month trial. If he's on his best behavior, he stays.

• 0:15David Sacks?

  He's gonna be great. He's so well-trained.

• 0:17David Friedberg?

  What's going on?

• 0:18David Sacks?

  Moose is our bulldog.

• 0:20David Friedberg?

  Yeah.

• 0:20David Sacks?

  And

• 0:21Jason Calacanis?

  Moose is loose.

• 0:23David Sacks?

  He needs the space. He needs a ranch. He's a very athletic bulldog. This dog is not a couch potato. He's like very active and he just needs the space to run around.

• 0:32David Friedberg?

  Why don't you just buy a ranch and give him his own ranch?

• 0:35Jason Calacanis?

  Why buy a ranch when the bestie has one already?

• 0:38David Sacks?

  Yeah, the bestie who loves bulldogs. But no, he's a spectacular specimen of a bulldog.

• 0:44Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, he is stunning bulldog.

• 0:45David Sacks?

  He's a beautiful dog.

• 0:47Jason Calacanis?

  Great bulldog.

• 0:47David Friedberg?

  This is a trial adoption, a Sax Calacanis adoption cycle? Oh, my God, this is sad.

• 0:53David Sacks?

  You know, these bulldogs resist training.

• 0:55Jason Calacanis?

  Like Jason.

• 0:57David Sacks?

  You know, like, yeah.

• 0:59Jason Calacanis?

  This is like stoic, loyal, but stubborn individuals. They will Overweight, stoic, stubborn. Overweight? This is a schwell dog. How dare you? How dare you? Moose is a specimen.

• 1:13David Sacks?

  In terms of personality, this is founder-market fit. I mean, this is like owner-pet fit.

• 1:18Jason Calacanis?

  Founder-bulldog fit.

• 1:19David Sacks?

  So what Moose would do is he would jump on the couch and just kind of lay there. So it'd like Moose know, go down. So we put him down. He jumps right back up. We would take him down, jumps right back up.

• 1:30Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 1:30David Sacks?

  I mean, he can go on all night doing this. So finally, you just give in and let him sit there.

• 1:35David Friedberg?

  It's literally J-Cow.

• 1:36Jason Calacanis?

  It's literally, they are.

• 1:37David Sacks?

  Now it's his couch. Now it's his couch.

• 1:39David Friedberg?

  It's literally J-Cow. Yeah.

• 1:59Jason Calacanis?

  All right, everybody. Welcome back to the number one podcast in the world. We got a banger episode for you today. All the topics that you want to hear about in the world and with us, our amazing crew. Our chairman dictator, Trumak Paliohapatia, enjoying the final moments of summer. How you doing there, brother?

• 2:19Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Well, I come back in a couple of days.

• 2:23Jason Calacanis?

  Hmm. You get a little melancholy there, brother? You a little sad?

• 2:27Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I mean, I think it should, everybody should have a two to three week vacation in August. I think it should be mandatory around the world. I think the world should stop and we should all go on vacation.

• 2:41Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, well, you proved that to the audience by not showing up for the show for a couple of weeks. Yeah.

• 2:45Chamath Palihapitiya?

  The best time to go on vacation.

• 2:47Jason Calacanis?

  I agree. I agree. I just literally got back from a little.

• 2:49Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Work your ass off through the end of July and take two weeks off with your family. There's nothing better.

• 2:54Jason Calacanis?

  I just did a little visit down to Mexico City, which was absolutely delightful. Rome is amazing. Have you been there before, Chamor?

• 3:03Chamath Palihapitiya?

  No, but I've heard it's incredible. I heard the food scene in Mexico City is bananas.

• 3:06Jason Calacanis?

  It was bananas and the startup scene there is amazing. It's kind of like if Spain and Williamsburg, Brooklyn had a baby, like that would be Mexico City. It's super hip, super fun, lots of young people, lots of energy. Hey, speaking of young people with lots of energy, hey, Friedberg's back with us in his cell. Working throughout August to get incredible things done, like our AI summit and the All In Summit. Friedberg, you gave up your summer once again for the All In crew and for the audience. How do you feel? You resentful or you feel good about your decisions?

• 3:41David Friedberg?

  I live for the work, J Cal.

• 3:42Jason Calacanis?

  You do. How's O-Hollow doing? It seems like you're doing a lot of work there. You got your head down. Just give us a little update on the company.

• 3:49David Friedberg?

  I appreciate the ask. There's a lot going on. We're very busy. I actually had a really cool test tube here that we had a customer visit today. I'll go find it. The world's first true potato seed. And we are ramping up production. Lot going on. It's pretty exciting.

• 4:06Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, sounds thrilling. Sacks, any thoughts there on potatoes and just how thrilling this exercise has been?

• 4:14David Sacks?

  What are you talking about?

• 4:15Jason Calacanis?

  We're just talking about O-Hollow. Friedberg had a thrilling summer. He's, he's got a new potato in a test tube that he's working on. Just.

• 4:23David Sacks?

  Wait, did we invest? Is that, what's going on with that?

• 4:26David Friedberg?

  Yeah, you're a shareholder.

• 4:27David Sacks?

  I'm in. Okay. All right. Well, okay.

• 4:29Jason Calacanis?

  Chamor, are you in?

• 4:32Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Uh, no, he did not.

• 4:33David Sacks?

  I know he wanted to.

• 4:34Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Offer me an investment.

• 4:35Jason Calacanis?

  I didn't, I didn't get it.

• 4:36David Sacks?

  Wait, is this a sore subject?

• 4:39Chamath Palihapitiya?

  No.

• 4:39David Friedberg?

  Why?

• 4:39Chamath Palihapitiya?

  No, no.

• 4:40Jason Calacanis?

  It's a sore subject for me. When this thing becomes worth 10 billion and I didn't get to slide in a little 250 slice, not even a slice on Friedberg.

• 4:49Speaker 04

  Look, guys.

• 4:50Jason Calacanis?

  A slice for your friends.

• 4:51David Sacks?

  They want value added investors, J. Cal. What's your value add exactly?

• 4:56Jason Calacanis?

  Value add?

• 4:57David Sacks?

  Spreading disinformation on this podcast.

• 5:00Jason Calacanis?

  Okay. Yeah, all right. Well, since I'm not on the cap table, good luck with your mutant potatoes.

• 5:07Speaker 04

  It's information.

• 5:12Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, we'll get through it, folks. We'll get through it. Hey, Zach, you and I did a little interview with a certain senator. Give us an overview.

• 5:19David Sacks?

  Yeah, we did a great interview with Senator Eric Schmidt in the state of Missouri, who previously was Attorney General and wrote a book about his experience as Attorney General. He brought the lawsuit Biden v. Missouri, which exposed the Biden administration's censorship apparatus that they ran through social media companies. This was the government side of the Twitter files. And the discovery he brought when married with the Twitter files that Elon released really paint a picture of how the government was in bed with social networks to basically censor Americans' free speech rights in favor of their point of view on COVID and many other issues. So I think it was a really good conversation.

• 5:56Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, it was spicy. And it's everywhere where you can find All In. But we got this big event coming up. The summit is coming, folks. Here we go. For the fourth time in just a few weeks, September 7th to the 9th, I think 8th and 9th are the main days. Man, this lineup is stacked. Alex Karp, Vlad from Robinhood, my guy, Energy Secretary Chris Wright, and I are going to have a great discussion, part two. Wow. Uber CEO hitting an all time high, Circle CEO. Just an incredible lineup here. And Friedberg, it looks like we've got some great partners, yeah?

• 6:27David Friedberg?

  First of all, the event is going to be very expensive to put on this year. We actually have, in addition to the great speakers, we have Diplo headlining one of the main parties.

• 6:38Jason Calacanis?

  The Diplo?

• 6:39David Friedberg?

  Yeah, Gary Richards and Dylan Francis.

• 6:43David Friedberg?

  And so we have a huge set of blowout parties every night. It's gonna be awesome to put all this on, to pay for the event. We want to thank the sponsors. So Solana, a big shout out. They were a sponsor last year and they're stepping up as a big sponsor this year.

• 6:55Jason Calacanis?

  Big shout out to our friends at Solana. They're amazing. They support everything we do. They're doing over 100 million transactions a day. It's unbelievable what they're getting done over there. Great team and they're gonna do a full open bar for us Sunday. Juice bar, coffee, the works. Classy team over there. And we don't just have like these typical sponsorships of events. What we do is we ask, you know, our partners, hey, make an activation, make a place for the besties and for the fans to hang. And they've all created these amazing experiences and there'll be machas and espressos and craft beers and sushi and all kinds of great stuff. And to our friends at OKX, they're gonna be coming back. They're building it onstage. Got

• 7:37Jason Calacanis?

  a macho bar coming. All these great things by our partners. Google Cloud's back, offering 350K in credits to Google Cloud for startups, what mentions they are over there. Google's crazy. Look at this, man. They're putting out a mini campus at the summit and yeah, 350K in cloud credits if you come. Athletic Brewing's back. They're doing the scholarships again. We have a couple of scholarship slots left. Please don't apply for the scholarships if you have means to buy a regular ticket. But if you do need a scholarship, please do apply if you're an up and comer. Allin.com/summit or allin.com/ yada, yada, yada.

• 8:11David Sacks?

  Did you guys see this?

• 8:12Jason Calacanis?

  What's going on?

• 8:13David Sacks?

  Apparently I was in the new South Park episode.

• 8:16Jason Calacanis?

  The whole thing was around the sycophancy of AI.

• 8:20David Friedberg?

  But do I say anything in the show or is it just, I'm just in the background?

• 8:25Jason Calacanis?

  Ah, no, they had a line of people giving tributaries to the president, you know, based on the Apple gift that Tim Cook gave to our amazing president. It's a funny episode. You know what I like about the administration? Like JD actually retweeted all this stuff and, you know, it's good fun. We get to mock our civil servants.

• 8:41Chamath Palihapitiya?

  That's the vice president to you.

• 8:43Jason Calacanis?

  That's what I said, my guy JD. What did I say? Suddenly on a first name basis. My guy JD. Hold on a second. Let me just say hi to JD here and I'll just get his feedback. I'm going to invite him to the Diplo party. Hold on. Your biggest nightmares here, me and Chris Wright also talking directly now. No, that's not happening. Oh yes, Chris Wright, I'm bringing him a special gift to the summit. You're going to be, you're going to love it. All right, we got to talk about AI. AI mania hit a bit of a detour this week. All over the, you know, three or four days, AI stocks were down across the board because of this MIT study that went viral, as well as Sam Altman's comments about a bubble and Zuck instituting a hiring freeze in AI after going on a complete blitzkrieg.

• 9:22Jason Calacanis?

  So let's get into it. Act one, Monday, Fortune dug up a generative AI study that MIT published last week, or last month I should say. In that study, MIT found that 95% of Gen AI pilots are failing to make it to production because of employee resistance, poor quality output. And the most interesting problem seems to be resource misallocation. According to the study, 70% of Gen AI budgets are going towards things like building sales and marketing tools, which have poor ROI. The highest ROI was found in back office optimization, like automating tasks that cut back spends, you know, on various departments. Basically, these pilots aren't working, Shama, is what this study found.

• 10:08Jason Calacanis?

  They evaluated 300 AI implementations and interviewed 150 leaders across 52 companies. You've been grinding it out with your own software company now called 8090. Does this align with what you're seeing on the field, Shama?

• 10:23Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I think what I would tell you is that, I think the first wave was just a lot of boards who read the words AI somewhere in an article. And then went to a board meeting and turned to the CEO and said, what's your AI strategy? And then the CEO turns around and sends that down into their org and it eventually hits the CTO's desk. And I think the first wave is mostly people just spending money because they had large existing budgets. And so they were like, let's just go and try a bunch of different things. And I think now we're going through the sorting function of realizing that there's a big difference between probabilistic software and deterministic software. That's probably the biggest reason why you're seeing so many failure modes in sales and marketing.

• 11:07Chamath Palihapitiya?

  It's very hard to codify sales and marketing into a set of heuristics that never change. But back office processes,

• 11:14Chamath Palihapitiya?

  why they're so good and a great target for AI is ultimately you have so many people that have been hired to deal with edge cases, right? I think like that's what people do in most companies is they're in charge of a process and they're they're dealing with edge cases. And I think that you can get extremely high rates of accuracy if you implement AI correctly in back office tasks.

• 11:36Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I think the real question is like, what happens to all of this revenue that has been generated? You're seeing companies generating fifty, hundred million dollars of ARR in a matter of months. And then raising huge rounds. I think what we haven't seen is whether there'll be any sort of either logo churn or dollar churn. Has new companies come in with even cheaper solutions? The foundational models move up the stack and just absorb capability? Or things just don't work and they get abandoned? All of that churn happened in social. I remember when I was in the middle of helping build Facebook, we went through that whole cycle. There was seven or eight thousand social companies. And within six years, there was five of us left.

• 12:22Chamath Palihapitiya?

  It happened in SaaS when I was investing in SaaS. There's a couple of very early and important successes like Yammer, which Sack started, which I was very lucky to be an investor of. But then it took many years for the handful of winners to get really sorted out. And I suspect we're about to go through that same cycle in AI. So I think that article basically paints a very accurate picture. There's been a lot of trialing and experimentation. We now need to go through a sorting and a cleansing and then we'll rebuild from first principles around the

• 12:52Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, not surprising to our Sultan of SaaS, David Sacks, because the sales and marketing departments, they're very promiscuous when it comes to new tools, getting a great lead, closing a sale, you can directly connect it. So we always see them test stuff out. Doesn't surprise me that we'd see sales and marketing go after this first. But what do you think about the brittleness of this revenue, the churn, Sacks? Are we going to see a lot of these companies rocket up to 100 and come back down to 50? Is this something you're seeing, or your firm, which I don't know your status at the firm, maybe you could tell us how that's working out in terms of your intelligence there. But what is Kraft seeing on the field there?

• 13:33David Sacks?

  I think we're seeing a lot of interesting AI applications being developed, but it's still very early days. And I think that over the past week or so, there was a correction in sentiment towards AI. But I think it was a healthy correction. I don't think this was the beginning of a bust cycle or something like that. I still think that we're in a boom. I still think we're in a investment super cycle. But I think there was a healthy dose of skepticism applied to some of the more fantastical claims that have been made about AI. And I think this is why you saw there was like roughly, what, like a 10% correction in public AI stocks. And there was that MIT report that said that 95% of projects that companies are not making it to production yet and so forth and so on. So I feel like

• 14:17David Sacks?

  we're getting in the weeds a little bit here. And what we should be talking about is just sort of where we are in this AI super cycle.

• 14:23Jason Calacanis?

  And where do you perceive us at? We're in the experimentation phase, we're in the pilot phase, but this issue around probabilistic versus deterministic makes it hard to trust the software? Is that what you think the key issue is?

• 14:35David Sacks?

  Well, let me tell you why I think that this correction is actually healthy, is that after ChatGPT launched at the end of 2022 and then throughout 2023, the dominant narrative in AI is that AGI was just two to three years away. And everyone had their own definition of AGI was, but it was kind of this idea of smarter-than-human superintelligence and kind of magic AI, AI would be able to do everything. And as a result of that, you kind of had both utopian and dystopian narratives really proliferated. And so you started getting this like job loss narrative that within a few years, 50% of knowledge workers would be out of jobs. You got this rapid takeoff narrative that basically the leading AI models would be able

• 15:20David Sacks?

  to turn their intelligence towards improving themselves, towards recursive self-improvement. And therefore, within a couple of years, the leading models would basically achieve superintelligence and leave everyone else in the dust and then capture all the value of humanity. And then based on that narrative, which again, it was the same underlying narrative that fueled both utopian and dystopian or doomer takes on AI. You got, I think, a huge backlash, which has already been forming, where you have a thousand bills running through state legislatures right now, and you have all this AI safety legislation. You got bills like in California, the SB 1047, which would have applied tremendous amount of new regulation to AI.

• 16:04David Sacks?

  So you saw this policy backlash happen as well, and it was all based on these fantastical and kind of magic views of what AI was going to do in just the next two to three years. And I think that the reason why this recent skepticism is healthy is because I think it's rebutting all of that. And it's showing that, you know, AI is a powerful tool. I mean, I definitely think it's a new and important form of computing, and it is going to unlock tremendous value in the economy, but it's going to take us a while to get there. I mean, you can't just tell the AI, you know, be a sales rep, be a customer service rep, and kind of throw it over the wall and expect that's going to replace a human. It takes a lot of prompting and iteration and validation to make the AI work, to make

• 16:49David Sacks?

  it generate business value. And if we were on a path towards rapid takeoff, then what you would see is that the leading AI models would be increasing the distance between, like the top one or two models would be increasing the distance between the rest of the models. And instead, what we're seeing is a clustering. Of model performance around the same performance benchmarks. It's incremental, right? They're incrementally getting better. The progress is to be a little bit more incremental. It's more evolutionary rather than revolutionary. And I, I think this really crystallized around the launch of ChatGPT five, where a lot of people were expecting GPT five to be this huge breakthrough. Sam Altman was sort of teasing this concept by posting photos of the Death Star. Yeah.

• 17:32David Sacks?

  That the idea that this model was going to blow everybody else away. And the reviews ended up being very mixed. And then we saw that on the performance evaluations. It's not that the model didn't represent progress. It just fell short of these lofty expectations that have been created. So Friedberg, let me get you in on this. Just sorry, I've been kind of long-winded here, but just let me just sum this up, which is, Please. I think that what people can now see is that we're not in like a, a loop of recursive self-improvement. We're seeing that there are a handful of, of great model companies, but the development of this technology is going to be a more normal technology race. It's not like the leading players just all of a sudden get to achieve AGI just very quickly.

• 18:14David Sacks?

  And as a result of that, I, I think because it is a more normal technology race, I think we can apply a more normal logic to it from both an investment and a policy standpoint. And I think that a lot of the narratives that were hyped up about imminent doom or imminent utopia, depending on what side you were on, were just massively overhyped. And this is why I think it's just a very healthy thing.

• 18:40Chamath Palihapitiya?

  By the way, the other concerning thing is it's concerning when models successively don't get meaningfully better, especially because there's a tendency for incremental models to get overfit to benchmarks. That's another concerning thing that I think people were like scratching their heads about. And if you look at the last big set of model updates, X of Grok, they didn't really meaningfully improve their separation from the last generation model on the big benchmarks that matter. And that's also very concerning because they tend to overfit to begin with.

• 19:10David Sacks?

  Yeah, and I would just say that, you know, another just piece of evidence here is that the model companies are still leapfrogging each other to some degree with their latest versions. And again, that should not be possible if one model achieved rapid takeoff. The other thing you're seeing is that it's not like one model is dominating all the other models. You're seeing that models are developing areas of competitive advantage. They're becoming increasingly specialized. They have different personalities. If ChatGPT has been accused of being sycophantish, Grok is maybe more based. I mean, they have different modes that they excel at. Google, I think, has gotten really good at video, for example. Anthropic is really good at coding. The specialization really belies this idea of

• 19:51David Sacks?

  one model becoming all-knowing and all-powerful. We're seeing a proliferation now of specialization.

• 19:59Jason Calacanis?

  Let me try and get Friedberg in here. Altman appeared to compare the AI craze to the dot-com bubble, according to CNBC. Here's the quote, "Are we in a phase where investors as a whole are overexcited about AI? My opinion is yes. Is AI the most important thing to happen in a very long time? My opinion is also yes." And then a quote from Sam Altman, another quote, "I think we totally screwed up some things with the rollout of GPT-5." So he's kind of admitting that, Friedberg. What does this mean in terms of the massive investment? Opening, I was talking about $500 billion. So is this, do you think if you were to game what Sam is saying here, maybe he wants it to cool off? Maybe these investments are too large, given the problem and the progress? What's the game on the

• 20:44Jason Calacanis?

  field here, Friedberg, in terms of the massive investment that people are claiming this is going to require if we're not seeing the results in corporations?

• 20:55David Friedberg?

  Like the big CapEx investment? Because most of the capital that's been raised has been raised by the model companies, and most of it's been deployed into chips, right in data centers.

• 21:04Jason Calacanis?

  Right. So does that make sense right now? Or does that need to cool off as well while these companies prove, hey, that we can get some things done in corporate America?

• 21:15David Friedberg?

  So I think one of the key things that's being understood, so you know, the internet was being connected, there was connectivity and fiber being deployed in a rate that exceeded the economic value creation by the end users on the internet during the dot com boom. And so as a result, the dot com boom was a became a bubble that burst, but the ultimate promise of the internet was realized many orders of magnitude greater than I think, you know, most folks declared and proclaimed at the time. It was just delayed by a few years. I think it's likely to be the same here. Whether this particular capex cycle is going to have that ROIC or not, I think is a bit TBD. But I think there's kind of

• 21:57David Friedberg?

  three big trends underway that are worth noting. The first is that there's a realization now that you need to pair humans and human engineering with the generative tools that these generative AI systems are providing. So you can get a bunch of code written, but you still need to debug the code. You still need to get it into production. You still need to get it to integrate. So this kind of pairing of humans with AI is something that's being learned. What's the right model? It's not that you just turn on generative AI and it runs your business for you. It's like, where does it fit in the org? Who are the people that run it? How do they use it? Et cetera. And then similar to that, I think we're seeing a lot of partner models being developed. So rather than have like a Sora or a video model, just generate a movie. It turns out that you can use the generative

• 22:42David Friedberg?

  AI to generate the objects and then use an existing rendering engine like Unity to actually make the video. So those sorts of pairing models where you use what's being called a deterministic system or an existing piece of software that integrates with generative AI can accelerate outcomes. So filmmakers can now make AI movies by coupling the AI generative tools with an existing off the shelf kind of rendering system. And that works a lot better than just telling the AI, make a bunch of video where then all the people look different. You can't control the objects. You can't change the camera angle. You can't change the framing, the color, the lighting, all the features that you may want to otherwise control. So layering AI on top of the existing system seems to be the right answer. And I think we're seeing that not just in filmmaking or digital content

• 23:27David Friedberg?

  creation, but in other areas as well, where the AI provides almost like a substrate that can sit on top of existing tools and just be like a marionette and do a better job. And I think, I think the third key thing that we're seeing That's causing a bit of the observed hiccup is this movement to SLMs. And you guys have seen a bunch of these papers from Nvidia and others that have shown performance improvements by actually moving away from one large model that does it all to much smaller specialized models that work on a specific task and a specific application or that work together as a network of models. And my personal belief on this is actually that these models are going to move towards SLMs that we don't understand how and why they work the way they do in a network fashion. Because today, we're designing the SLMs in a deterministic way.

• 24:10David Friedberg?

  We're saying, this is an SLM that does X, Y, or Z. But if the models eventually get developed by other models, those SLMs will become really, you know, not well understood, but they'll work in a network. The reason that's important is because this re-architecturing of these systems dramatically reduces the energy cost and the dollar cost per token generated. And so it brings down the cost and the runtime of these systems. So to your point, Jake, how the CapEx investment suddenly gets much higher ROI-C rather than the challenged ROI-C that it's dealing with today because the systems are so energy and cost inefficient today. So if the architectural redesigns work, then these systems become much more efficient, 10x, 100x more efficient.

• 24:52David Friedberg?

  And I actually think at that point, token production will go way up, not way down. So those are three big trends that I see kind of underway right now that might be architecting the overall kind of ecosystem and probably causing some of the observed hiccups. Jake, what do you think? Is it like, do you think there's a big slowdown underway? I mean,

• 25:10Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, I mean, it's, this is following exactly the technological curve that we see. Nick, you can pull it up here where we've seen this with smartphones and the internet itself, but the trough of disillusionment is probably where we're living right now because there were so many expectations. You know, this innovation comes out, people get really excited, massive amounts of money is invested, and then people wonder, hey, was this a good investment or not? And then it just takes incremental improvement over time. We saw this with Uber as an example, where people were like, oh, it'll never be profitable, never be profitable, profitable, DoorDash will never work. And then they just added a couple of bucks and it scaled globally. The network effects kicked in. We're going to see it again with self-driving. Self-driving is actually probably just getting through the peak of inflated expectations

• 25:55Jason Calacanis?

  where people are starting to realize, oh, these edge cases are pretty serious. You probably don't want these things going too fast. You're going to need to be very thoughtful about. Putting them on roads and that leads to a really interesting discussion, Saks, we should have at some point on this program about should that be federal or local? Should the local states get to decide self-driving rules on their roads? Or should the federal government come in and make a blanket one? But looking specifically at the sales one, we're seeing on the field that maybe the salespeople aren't being replaced by AI, but the SDRs are becoming 10 times, like literally 10 times more effective at finding the next lead, at organizing leads and targets.

• 26:40Jason Calacanis?

  So it's definitely happening, but it's incremental inside these organizations and it's just going to take specialization and people have to actually embrace the tools. That's probably the biggest thing is there's a lot of resistance to these tools already. And once you get people actually embracing them, they start to work. But if people aren't going to embrace them and there's some resistance, it's kind of like what we saw with the internet.

• 27:04Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah. Here's a big question that I have. You know how at some point like you get so invested in a way of doing things that when things change, it's almost too hard to change the way your company orients?

• 27:21Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And you see it in every single phase of these big innovation cycles. The question is, is there a point at which these foundational model companies have invested too much money in LLMs? Where so many of their employees only understand that and all of a sudden there are completely different ways of building these models, state space is one example. But then, you know, some new entrant decides to build a completely different kind of representation. They may also then build custom silicon for it. All of those things have yet to happen. And the reason is we're really only a few years into what should be a multi-decade innovation cycle.

• 28:03Chamath Palihapitiya?

  So those are like some really important questions because then you have this problem of the sunk cost fallacy of, well, we spent all this money on this LLM-based approach and now all of a sudden there's this thing that comes around the corner. That's the thing that I'm really curious about and waiting for is will there be these small teams?

• 28:24Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And it may take advantage of what Freebrooke said. He uses an LLM as a jumping off point, but then builds an entirely different approach. He's able to generate entirely different and cheap silicon. That hasn't happened yet. And the reason it hasn't happened is not because it doesn't make sense, but it's because we're so early into it.

• 28:39Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 28:40Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And then what do these big guys do? The big guys have spent tens of billions of dollars.

• 28:46Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 28:47Chamath Palihapitiya?

  On all kinds of stuff. Human capital, OpEx, CapEx. Data centers. It's gonna be, it's gonna be really interesting.

• 28:56Jason Calacanis?

  Well, the study actually addresses this. Purchasing of AI tools from specialized vendors, those succeeded two out of three times. So the statistics in that early study seem to indicate you're right about that, Chamath, is if you're doing something very specific, and we've got a couple of companies doing very specific things, like TaxGPT is one of our companies we incubated, and they're only going after, you know, tax and CPAs and being a co-pilot for them. Those things seem to be succeeding faster than going to a general language model and asking tax questions to it.

• 29:29Chamath Palihapitiya?

  There's also all this other stuff that people never talk about that are very practical realities of building a, so for example, we've been selling into the enterprise at 80, 90. We'll do this year, this is our first full year of business, we'll do about $40 million of bookings.

• 29:41Jason Calacanis?

  In the first year?

• 29:43Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah.

• 29:43Jason Calacanis?

  That's crazy.

• 29:44Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And it's all back office type stuff. But our first customer where we delivered enormous gains, we were fired. And the reason we were fired was not because the technology wasn't working, but it's because as it goes lower and lower from the board and the CEO into the bowels of the organization, you actually run into huge pushback. And I think that there's going to be that cycle that we have to deal with as well, which is in all of these AI businesses, there's all kinds of stuff that scare people. And there are many people in decision-making roles at many of these companies that will have to sort out where's their comfort level. And

• 30:27Chamath Palihapitiya?

  It was like one of these things where I was like, well, what are we supposed to do? We escalated and blah, blah, blah, and it got resolved. But my point is that I think is a cycle that has yet to play itself out. In all of the Fortune 2000, Global 2000, I would not expect that the AI boogeyman that has been created doesn't have some negative ramifications over the next couple of years as well as this stuff gets sorted out.

• 30:49Jason Calacanis?

  The last piece is the talent war. On Tuesday, the New York Times reported that Meta was looking at downsizing its AI division as part of a larger restructuring. Wall Street Journal then reported Meta has a hiring freeze across the AI divisions, which is just crazy because just eight weeks ago, Zuck went crazy. He was trying to buy Ilya's super intelligent startup. You remember Ilya declined, so Zuck poached Daniel Gross. Meta acquahired the Scale AI team and then they agreed to invest 14 billion in that. Sam Altman claimed Zuck was making $100 million offers regularly for OpenAI talent. I'm curious, you know, what you think of that, Sacks?

• 31:29Jason Calacanis?

  Is the talent war seemed to go insane for a couple of months and now is pausing? What's your take on all this, I don't know, uncertainty, boom, bust, cycle in such a compressed period of time? Or is this just?

• 31:44David Sacks?

  I mean, you are seeing founders turning down multi-billion dollar acquisition offers for startups that hadn't even released a product yet as if those types of offers grow on trees. And they don't. I mean, these types of $100 million or $1 billion job offers, they don't come along very often. I mean, you have to be at kind of the sweet spot of a boom cycle and you need a huge company with tons of money that feels like it's strategically vulnerable and is at risk of being left behind. And if you get a confluence of those factors, then you can get kind of crazy offers like that. But they don't. Come along very often. I think that what Meta is doing is probably digesting a little bit. They've now made a bunch of talent acquisitions. They've done some Aqua hires,

• 32:28David Sacks?

  at, you know, very expensive Aqua hires, and they're probably just consolidating a little bit. Like I said, I don't think this is the bust part of the cycle. I don't think that a bubble has popped or anything like that. I actually think that we're still probably early to the middle of this investment super cycle. And it's just a healthy correction and sentiment here that people are realizing it's going to be a little bit harder and take more work than just, oh, the AI is going to figure out how to improve itself and we get to super intelligence. That was always a little bit of a fantasy.

• 32:58Jason Calacanis?

  You think Mira should have taken the billion dollar offer from Sock or Ilya should have taken the 30 billion Sachs? I mean, these things never happen. And as you're saying,

• 33:06David Sacks?

  I guess it depends how much they have in the bank account, you know, if they're already like billionaires from whatever they did before, then, then maybe it doesn't matter. But if you were just starting out, for example, and didn't have any money in the bank, that's a pretty hard thing to turn down. I mean, realistically.

• 33:23Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 33:24Chamath Palihapitiya?

  They probably, they probably sold a bunch of OpenAI equity at 300 and 500 billion.

• 33:29David Sacks?

  They're both OpenAI co-founders, so.

• 33:31Jason Calacanis?

  They seem like they're free rolling, so they have no incentive to sell.

• 33:34David Sacks?

  Yeah, which is fine. It's just that there's a lot of people who've never been through a bust cycle before. And if they think that this is the normal state of the world, they're going to be sorely mistaken.

• 33:45Chamath Palihapitiya?

  By the way, you're right, Sachs. It's hard to build, as you know, because you did it, a billion dollar company that then exits for more than a billion dollars. It is hard.

• 33:53David Sacks?

  Right. Where you justify that valuation based on fundamentals. So right now, we're in a part of the cycle where you can justify that valuation based on its strategic value to a multi-trillion dollar market cap company. But that only lasts while those companies are in the market for strategic acceleration.

• 34:12Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, if they're behind, if they're stuck.

• 34:13David Sacks?

  If you turn that down, then you have to make your company work on its own as an actual business. And to get to a 30 billion dollar valuation based on fundamentals, that is extraordinarily difficult. I mean, that implies, you know, multiple billions of revenue, actual revenue.

• 34:30Jason Calacanis?

  Does somebody want to underwrite 500 billion for OpenAI common shares? Anybody think that that is a good trade?

• 34:35Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I'll make the, I'll make the bull case. I'll make the bull case.

• 34:37Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, please.

• 34:38Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I think the simplest way to make the bull case is if you look at the CAGR on their Mous and the conversion from Mous to Dows.

• 34:47Chamath Palihapitiya?

  You essentially take a small, minor percentage of the Facebook or Google Terminal ARPU and apply it to some number of Mao Dao's three or four years from now. So if I had to guess, if you take four or 500 million Mao Dao, growing, I'm guessing, let's just be conservative, 50%?

• 35:05Jason Calacanis?

  It's by the way, 700 million weekly active users.

• 35:08Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Right, 750, okay. So then, so then I would probably put that at like 500 Dao to be conservative. It's probably doubling every two years. So 500 goes to a billion, billion goes to two in four years. And at 2 billion Dao, they generate a 10th of Facebook's revenue, just to be very conservative. And you probably get to a trillion five valuation then.

• 35:32Jason Calacanis?

  Right. So you could, you could triple up on that bet in 10 years.

• 35:35David Sacks?

  Yeah, I mean, look, OpenAI has actual revenue. I mean, they, they have actual revenue because they have subscriptions and they appear to have the dominant position in the consumer space. And it is a replacement for a lot of people for search, which is the most lucrative franchise on the internet. And this is one of their applications. So I actually think that you could make that case, you know, pretty comfortably. But can we, could we go back to a point you were making before, Jake Al about in the survey, that the attempts to just apply some sort of generalized AI model didn't work very well, like 95% of the time, it didn't succeed in these large enterprises. But if they used a more specific vertical application, or vertical model, or an SLM approach, which

• 36:17David Sacks?

  is more a smaller specialized model, then it showed much greater success. I mean, that makes a lot of sense to me, is that in order to drive business value, there's a lot of what I would call last mile problems, right? Like LLMs need context. And so you have to, first of all, connect to all of your enterprise data sources. And you have to prompt them in a very detailed way in order to get to a good answer. And then you have to validate that answer to make sure it's not a hallucination. And then you need to iterate on it. And so this idea that you're just going to have one super intelligence that just figures all this stuff out, it's just not the way it's playing out in the real world. You're seeing, again, a lot of very specific business problems that have to be solved. But I, I think that this is a great thing, ultimately, for the ecosystem.

• 37:04David Sacks?

  Because it implies that you're going to get lots of vertical applications and lots of specialized models that capture value in lots of different markets. And that that's actually the way that we're going to drive this throughout the economy as opposed to it just being one foundation model eating all the value. So I think this is a very healthy thing for the ecosystem.

• 37:25Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, it makes total sense that the vertical systems would feel more deterministic Saks because they're giving they have a tighter problem set, a tighter data set to actually come to an answer, whereas the, you know, probabilistic, you're just asking LLM to come up with a business plan for you. It just feels like it could be 80% correct, 90% correct as opposed to 99% correct, which the vertical ones are actually getting very good at getting the correct answer. Okay, let's talk a little bit.

• 37:55David Sacks?

  That last 10% is fundamental, and that's where you get all the the last mile problems. And you have to understand the the industry in order to solve the the problems of how you kind of go from, let's say, 90% accuracy or effectiveness to 99, which is where the business value is.

• 38:11Jason Calacanis?

  Well, and you use last mile Saks. I think it's quite appropriate if you look at self-driving, which is the tip of the spear, I think, in this argument. Waymo has a bit more deterministic model. They're they don't have safety drivers. RoboTaxi has safety drivers for a good reason. They're using a probabilistic model. And they're getting an intervention every, you know, X hundreds of miles, let's say. Which means if you were to use it daily, you're going to have, you know, an intervention. I don't know, every week or two. And obviously they'll iterate and they'll get that down to the same level as Waymo. But on what timetable, Friedberg? On what timetable do you see a probabilistic model like Elon is pursuing with his RoboTaxi program versus

• 38:55Jason Calacanis?

  the more, you know, deterministic one? What when do you think those cross over? Do you have any insight as a scientist or any guess?

• 39:02David Friedberg?

  I don't know.

• 39:04Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, that is the $10 trillion question is when will that problem be solved? All right, let's talk a little politics here. According to Polymarket, Gavin Newsom is the early favorite in the 2028 Democratic.

• 39:17Jason Calacanis?

  Presidential race, so who gets the nomination? So here's some background. Newsom is surging in a couple of polls this week. Here's one from Politico that asked California Democrats and left-leaning independents, who their preferred candidate would be in 2028? Newsom came in first with 25% of the vote, then Kamala, your favorite, Sacks, and Pete Buttigieg. AOC, your favorite, Chamafer. Tim Walz, another one of Sacks's favorite. And the odds have jumped about nine percentage points on Polymarket. You should polymarket. Newsom at 28, AOC at 14, and a bunch of people, you know, in the single digits that you could probably guess. So your thoughts on the early information here? Does this, is any of this even valid, Sacks, in your mind?

• 40:01Jason Calacanis?

  Or is it just too much time between now and then?

• 40:03David Sacks?

  Well, I think it's valid in the sense that you're seeing Democrats react positively to what Newsom is doing. And what Newsom is doing is mirroring Trump's style in an attempt to, again, give Democrats what they want, which is they want a Trump of their own. And despite Democrats feigning objections to Trump's style, that this is really what they want, is they want someone who they perceive to be a fighter. That said, I think there are two problems with presumptively crowning Gavin as the nominee three years in advance. One is that what Newsom is doing here is completely performative. Everyone can see that he's acting and he's aping Trump's style, what he thinks is Trump's

• 40:48David Sacks?

  style. Whereas Trump is completely authentic. Trump is always Trump, and everyone understands that. And there's something very authentic and likable about that. Whereas I think that Gavin comes across as being synthetic or plastic, and you don't really have a sense of who the real person is. And I think trying to pretend to be the left's version of Trump only, I think, reinforces that, that problem that he already had. So one is authenticity. The other is that I think that Democrats make a huge mistake if they think that Trump's popularity is based on his style. I mean, it's true that Trump has a trillion-dollar personality, and that is very helpful in politics.

• 41:30David Sacks?

  But ultimately, I think the reason why Trump has done so well for a decade is because he's been on the right side of a bunch of core issues in American politics that other people just weren't focused on or weren't talking about.

• 41:42Jason Calacanis?

  Safety in cities seems to be one that heads up versus... Gavin Newsom will become one of the attack vectors or one of the grand debates. You have Friedberg, you have California's, you know, descent into madness in the major cities, and then obviously Trump is cleaning up DC from a very first principle basis like, hey, you can't camp here, period, full stop. So what do you think the chances are here, Friedberg, that this new strategy going on the podcast, having a podcast, being spicy on social media is going to work for Gavin? Or are you in Saxon's camp, it's a bit performative and maybe not fake? And by the way, Gavin Newsom, can't wait to have you on the pod. Go ahead, Friedberg.

• 42:21David Friedberg?

  I would say that the current polling is a reflection of the non-Trump-aligned market's response to Trump. And so it will change certainly over time as the results of the administration's actions bear out, et cetera. One way to think about this or forecast this is what is the reaction going to be to this administration? I think there's a, as I've talked about many, many times, a very high probability that someone who's a little bit more socialist-aligned is going to end up being kind of thrust forward here, and I think AOC fits the bill there. So then I think the question is, what's the Republican response going to be to the choice

• 43:03David Friedberg?

  they may have in trying to prop up or frame up one of those two candidates? And I think frankly, there may be some group that would say, we would rather be up against the socialists because they're going to look like idiots and we're going to win. And so there's going to be, weirdly, support for a socialist-like candidate. The other side is the honest moderate question, which is, who would you rather have as president? A socialist or Gavin Newsom? And I do think a lot of moderates would say, if I had to pick between those two, excluding the Republican candidate, I would want to pick the moderate, I would want to pick Gavin.

• 43:39Jason Calacanis?

  Chamath, what issue will determine the midterms and then the 2028 election? Look at your crystal ball there, Chamath, and tell us what you see.

• 43:48Chamath Palihapitiya?

  That's a really good question.

• 43:50Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah. Midterms might be easier to think about, right?

• 43:53Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I think the midterms are going to be about the economy. But the economy is going to be a window into a lot of these other issues, the safety, security issue, the immigration issue, the tariff issue, rates. I think rates are going to be an enormous swing factor here. I think Powell is really holding on white-knuckled to a position that probably doesn't

• 44:16Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Underlie the data. So I think in the short term, it's just going to be more of an economic up or down vote for the Trump administration. Many things I think are positive and in their control, but there are a few things that are not in their control. In 2028, I don't know. The one thing I would say about the candidacy, though, is like, I don't know if you guys remember, but when the Republican primary process started, the person at the top of the polls at the time was Ron DeSantis. And I said, you do not want to be ahead early. These people never win. They never win. They take all the arrows and peak too early? No, it's not even that. It's just like they never win. So if I had to apply that

• 44:55Chamath Palihapitiya?

  rubric here, what I would say is the practical choice that the Democratic voters will have is to actually ask whether they want a replay of California on an American 50-state scale. And if you look at it through that lens, I think Gavin Newsom is going to have a very difficult path because of what has transpired over his tenure as the governor. And he's going to have to explain away a lot. So I think that in the absence of real choices, I think that he's the clear winner. What is that phrase? In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king, sort of the thing?

• 45:38Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I think when you actually go into the election cycle, starting after 26 in 27, honestly, it's going to be up in the air. What I will tell you is that the way that the Electoral College is set up and the voting dynamics for the presidency is set up, a socialist cannot win. But the way that the Democratic primaries are set up, a socialist can absolutely win. So this is the sort of Saxon's point, which is, I think... For the Republican side, the best outcome is a very radical agenda that isn't really supported by substantive facts and is more supported by vibes. This is what I feel, I just feel it should be right, and I think that those things may

• 46:23Chamath Palihapitiya?

  win a primary, but will just get destroyed in a federal election. What about you, the world's greatest moderate? What do you think?

• 46:29Jason Calacanis?

  Pretty clear that the socialist movement is happening, and that is going to inspire a lot of young people to come out like they did in New York from one to Tommy. And I think, you have to think about what the platform is. I agree, the economy will determine the midterms. But I would look ahead at the core issues we've discussed here many times, Friedberg. And if I was advising the Democrats, I would smash the Republicans where they don't speak up about important issues to the American voter, and where young people feel they are being ignored. So what would I say if I was them? If I was running their platform in 2028? I would go with real wages that are stagnant, and Trump doesn't talk about that. In fact, he's cutting taxes on the rich.

• 47:12Jason Calacanis?

  They got a credible attack vector right there, that nobody's talking about the minimum wage, and Trump doesn't care, JD doesn't care about you or the minimum wage or your wages. I would go after education being unaffordable, and again, Trump and JD don't talk about that. Then I would go after housing. Republicans don't talk about that. They don't talk about housing. And then I would go right at the immigrant issue, and I'd say, listen, America's for immigration. This country was built off of immigrants, and JD and Trump want to pull up the ladder behind everybody and not allow other people to immigrate to this country after they benefited from it. That's the perfect attack vector for beating the Republicans in 2028. Housing, wages, education, and healthcare.

• 47:56Jason Calacanis?

  These are things you never hear Trump talk about, you never hear JD talking about these. And I think that that's the way to, if they want to beat MAGA, they could.

• 48:03Chamath Palihapitiya?

  They talk about them all the time.

• 48:05Jason Calacanis?

  It's way down the bottom of the list. No, they don't. When's the last time? Okay, so tell me, Jamal, what is the proposal?

• 48:12David Sacks?

  Real wages went up significantly in Trump's first term, and then they started stagnating again under Biden. And that's the whole purpose of his trade policy is to encourage reshoring of manufacturing in the United States.

• 48:22Chamath Palihapitiya?

  He passed a huge tax bill that locked in all these gains, no tax on tips. So you can debate the impact to the broad population, but there are enough examples where actual take home wages are higher than what they would be in a counterfactual.

• 48:36David Sacks?

  Yeah. And by the way, Gavin Newsom has a super majority in the California legislature. He can run the state however he wants. He also has a very compliant court that will rubber stamp his decisions, completely different than Trump, who has a very narrow majority, and he has a court that basically tries to stop everything he does. So Gavin Newsom can run the state. He could be operating the state for the benefit of its citizens instead of holding all these performative press conferences and doing podcasts and tweeting all day. So where is the program that you're talking about? It doesn't exist.

• 49:08Jason Calacanis?

  It's a fine criticism, but if the, I'm talking about the Democrats as a group. If the Democrats came out and just said, we're going to add a dollar to the federal minimum wage every year for the eight years we're in office, that would fly with the American public.

• 49:20David Friedberg?

  That doesn't actually sustain. That's not a strategy that sustains.

• 49:23Jason Calacanis?

  Sure, you could make that argument. I'm just telling you what the winning argument is. The winning argument is we're going to make trade schools free.

• 49:28Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Well, no, you're just saying whatever it takes to get elected. But giving stuff away is not how adults make hard decisions.

• 49:32Jason Calacanis?

  You mean like giving people no tax on their overtime and no tax on their tips? Those kind of giveaways, Jamal?

• 49:40David Sacks?

  Those are very popular. That's helping the middle class and working class.

• 49:43Jason Calacanis?

  I don't disagree, but to the point of giving away free stuff doesn't work, it actually does. It does get people out to vote. People were very motivated when they heard those proposals by Trump. I'm saying they should just take that proposal and 10x it. That's a way to win. I'm not saying it makes sense. I'm not saying I'm endorsing it. I'm just giving you the playbook.

• 50:00David Sacks?

  Okay, well, what I would do to to fight your your playbook of empty promises is I would actually talk about the record of the candidate.

• 50:08Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Exactly.

• 50:08David Sacks?

  And I think we're talking about a state like California, which is thoroughly blue and has been run by Democrats now for a long time. And Gavin probably will be the nominee because I do think that his performative antics are working with the base. I mean, they want an anti-Trump. But the the way to attack this is to talk about the record here. So let's just go through some of the numbers. So as we all know, we pay the highest taxes in the country for the worst public services. Gavin's spending turned a $75 billion surplus into a $20 billion deficit in just a couple of years. And somehow, none of that money went to fill the reservoirs or fire hydrants. And so we had entire neighborhoods burned down as a result, and they can't get permits to rebuild. California has the fourth-largest economy in the world, so that's good.

• 50:53David Sacks?

  But we have the highest rates of poverty, homelessness, inequality, illiteracy, and wage stagnation. So yes, wage stagnation, J Cal, is the highest in the country. And we have the third-highest unemployment among the 50 states. We're second only to Hawaii in housing costs. So you want to talk about making promises to lower housing costs. But if you look at blue states like California, they're among the worst. We're the worst in energy costs, and we have the highest rate of both retail crime and frivolous lawsuits. And that's why businesses are moving out of the state. You may have seen that Bed Bath & Beyond said that even as they're opening 300 more physical stores, they're not going to return to California.

• 51:34David Sacks?

  And this just got the CEO mocked by Newsom because he never actually takes any of the criticism to heart. He just sort of deflects it. So until the Democrats, I think, confront why they really lost, okay? And it's it's not just because of the style of Trump. They want to just attribute it to Trump's style. But the reality is, it's because of the the policies.

• 52:00Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Policy policies, yes.

• 52:01David Sacks?

  And it's about the record. And until they're willing to confront those things and change their policies, then I think they're going to continue losing.

• 52:07Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I put into Grok the following question. And the reason I ask the question this way is I think that the three most credible candidates that have a record to run on, on the Democratic side, are Gavin Newsom. Gretchen Whitmer and Wes Moore. So I asked Grok, rank Michigan, California, and Maryland. So three Democratic states run by three very popular, well-known Democratic governors on three metrics: quality of life, cost of living, and crime. And summarize that into a ranked overall list, right? So pretty standard, plain vanilla question. And at the end, I can publish this later if you want, but at the end,

• 52:48Chamath Palihapitiya?

  the final overall rankings were Maryland first, excels in quality of life and has the lowest estimated crime rates with a moderately high but manageable cost of living. Michigan, most affordable with decent quality of life and moderate crime, making it a balanced choice. California, high quality of life in terms of opportunities and lifestyle, but severely hampered by high costs and elevated crime rates. And there's all kinds of detail, but I was just giving you the final summary. So I think that when you get into a Democratic primary, those are three people that will run.

• 53:24Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And I think Democratic voters will have to choose what record do I want to put up to vote for the broad voting American public? Is it California's? Is it Maryland's? Or is it Michigan's? And if you just do a quick AI-driven analysis, Wes Moore, then Gretchen Whitmer, then Gavin Newsom, just on the facts.

• 53:45Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, makes sense. Freiburg, your thoughts on the platform I put out there or anything else with this 2028 discussion as we wrap up?

• 53:51David Friedberg?

  No, I think the socialists are gonna continue to grow their momentum and,

• 53:58David Friedberg?

  you know, it'll be fun. See what happens.

• 54:01Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Okay.

• 54:02David Friedberg?

  Here we go.

• 54:03Jason Calacanis?

  So Trump had a busy week. He met with Putin, then Zelensky and some of the leaders in Europe. Sax, this is your time to shine. We didn't talk about this yet because it happened after we taped, but last Friday, Trump met with Putin in Alaska. Lot of hand wringing around that lasted about three hours. No ceasefire was reached. That was the stated goal of it. And on Monday, Trump met with

• 54:25David Sacks?

  That was not the state of the goal.

• 54:26Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, I'm just going by what Trump said when he was on his way there, that he wanted a ceasefire. And then the, on Monday, Trump met with Zelensky and a bunch of European leaders at the White House. First in-person meeting since that argument, you remember back in the Oval Office in February, and included the EU President, NATO Secretary General, Chancellor of Germany, Italy and UK showed up as well. Your thoughts on where we're at with the Ukraine and if we're going to get a ceasefire, a peace negotiation, or a peace settlement? Or if the United States is just going to walk away? Because it seems like Trump is a little perturbed by the progress here, and he has said, you

• 55:08Jason Calacanis?

  know, maybe it's just up to them to figure it out, and he'll be done with the whole thing. Your thoughts, Sacks?

• 55:13David Sacks?

  Well, I think that the Alaska summit was major progress. I think that, first of all, the President deserves enormous credit for re-establishing diplomacy and communication with the Russians. There literally hasn't been a meeting between the US President and the Russian President since 2021, while this war is going on and while the war has continued to escalate. I guess the Biden Administration's policy was just to ignore the Russians and roll their dice and hope that the war didn't escalate out of control. In any event, I think Trump deserves a lot of credit for, again, re-establishing that diplomatic connection and trying to use diplomacy to end the war. And it was shocking to see how much Democrats in the media were openly rooting for him to fail in these efforts to end this war.

• 55:56David Sacks?

  And effectively, they're rooting for hundreds of thousands of more people to die or get maimed.

• 56:00Jason Calacanis?

  They were pretty hysterical, right? On the news, it was pretty crazy.

• 56:03David Sacks?

  Yeah, and by the way, they claimed that they care about the Ukrainian people, but the Ukrainian people, by large majorities now, want this war to end, and they're willing to make meaningful concessions to do it. So there was a poll by Gallup, which Nick, maybe you can throw this on the screen. Where a year or two ago, something like seventy percent of Ukrainians wanted to keep fighting the war. Now that number is down to twenty-four percent. Again, the vast majority are looking to achieve a peace. And I think that President Trump and President Putin made some important progress in terms of getting to an eventual peace deal. And I think there are a few planks here. Number one was the recognition that we should try to get to a comprehensive peace deal, not a ceasefire.

• 56:45David Sacks?

  A ceasefire is temporary, and the Russians have already said they wouldn't do it because they understand from their point of view that this would just give the Ukrainians time to regroup and rearm and try to reset, but it wouldn't end the war. And the truth of the matter is that when you're fighting a war and losing, you don't get to call a timeout. So the Russians have been rejecting this idea of a ceasefire for months, and I think that it was wise, if our ultimate goal is to get to a deal, to recognize that the comprehensive peace deal is what we want to get to. So that's point number one. Point number two is that President Trump acknowledged that Ukraine would not be joining NATO, which was the key source of the friction, and it's the thing that ultimately led to this war.

• 57:26David Sacks?

  So I think that definitively taking NATO off the table, I think, was a very important precondition to getting to an eventual peace. And then I think the third thing was that the parties, both the Russians and the Americans, agreed that there would have to be territorial concessions of some kind. And we don't know all the details yet. There was some conversation about land swaps. But the point of the matter is that we're not going back to the pre-war status quo ante. The Russians have taken the big chunk of territory. The Ukrainians have not been able to get it back. People are trying to blame Trump for this somehow, but the real cause of this is the failure of the counteroffensive in the summer of 2023.

• 58:08David Sacks?

  Remember, we gave the Ukrainians something like a hundred billion dollars worth of weapons to retake that territory, and it was an abysmal failure. They didn't even make it past the first Suravikin line. That is the real cause of why the Ukrainians are going to lose territory in this war, is they're simply not able to retake it. And I think there was a general recognition coming out of that. Alaska summit, that there would have to be territorial concessions. And I think in these three pillars, I think you have the basis for a comprehensive peace deal, which is, again, number one, we're going for a peace deal, not a ceasefire. Number two, no NATO, and number three, we have to recognize the realities on the ground. Now, I think the big question mark, I think we could get to a peace deal pretty quickly

• 58:52David Sacks?

  if Zelensky and the Europeans were willing to acknowledge these three points, but so far they have not been willing to acknowledge those three points. And I think this is one of the things that if you're listening to the remarks the following Monday, when the Europeans came to the White House, there was no recognition. They were still clamoring for a ceasefire, you know, again, which the Russians had rejected as opposed to a comprehensive peace. They were still clamoring for NATO and they were still rejecting the idea of any territorial concessions, including even Crimea, which was lost over a decade ago. So I think that the issue we have right now is that Zelensky and the Ukrainian government, not the people, but the Ukrainian elite and some of these European countries that are

• 59:34David Sacks?

  backing him are not willing to make the compromises necessary to achieve a peace deal. And as President Trump has said, at the end of the day, you need the Russians and the Ukrainians to agree. So I think that President Trump deserves enormous credit here for reestablishing diplomacy, for making substantial progress towards a comprehensive peace deal. But at the end of the day, unless Zelensky starts being willing to make compromises, I don't know how you're going to get to that deal.

• 1:00:00Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, Friedberg, Dave, any thoughts on this? No. Negotiation. Chamath, anything?

• 1:00:06Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Well, I was pretty curious about the historical pattern of this, so I just went back and here's what I learned. What's interesting to note is that since 1945, so not assuming, you know, conflicts in Africa because they are not really quite part of the Western political global order per se, it's important to ask the question like, how have other? Territorial disputes panned out. So there are disputes that end in stalemates. And when you end up in a stalemate, you basically arrange a DMZ, demilitarized zone type arrangement. So there's one in Korea, right? 1953 to now. There's one in Cyprus, 1974 to right now.

• 1:00:49Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And there's one in Kashmir, 1947 to today. And then there's this kind of thing in between Israel and Lebanon. And then second, there are disputes where there is some action taken by one country to take something by force, but then there's no consensus internationally as to who owns a territory. So Crimea, as Sacks mentioned, 2014 to present. And then Israel and East Jerusalem, sorry. So I think the point is that unless President Trump figures out a way to do something that frankly, truly unprecedented. The historical pattern is that it's been nearly impossible for even the most powerful and influential person

• 1:01:31Chamath Palihapitiya?

  in the world to frankly draw deals in these kinds of situations, especially when they become protracted. And I think that's what he's getting to when he reinforces these things never would have started or gotten this far had I been president. You know, that's what he says, in quotes. And I think this is what he's referring to, which is that the longer these things get drawn out, and particularly with Russia, Ukraine, and Israel, Gaza, you're talking about conflicts and historical issues that have been simmering for hundreds of years and in some cases, thousands of years, all the way back to the antiquities. So I don't know. I just think that it's an incredibly, incredibly difficult position.

• 1:02:16Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And I just don't know what's going to happen. But I think that for modern progress to happen, I think it's important for both of these two issues to get put to bed as quickly as possible.

• 1:02:29David Sacks?

  Jake, what do you think? And we saw the media attacking Trump for even daring to hold negotiations with the Russians. Do you think this was a good idea? Or do you think that somehow Trump was caving to Putin?

• 1:02:38Jason Calacanis?

  I give Trump a lot of credit. He is incredibly good at foreign policy and specifically with dictators. If you look at our past presidents, they didn't want to meet with Putin. They didn't want to meet with Kim Jong-un, Kim Jong-il. They thought isolation was the best policy. It's not. I think talking to these folks and trying to find common ground is the best policy, even if it's a 5% chance of it actually working out, which is what I think any president dealing with a dictator and a despot like Putin is gonna have. I think you have a 5% or 10% chance. And I think Trump and Biden actually had a lot in common that worked. The loan leasing of the weapons and not costing the American taxpayer any money, where a lot

• 1:03:22Jason Calacanis?

  of partisan people said, "Oh, my God, this is costing the Americans so much." It's actually, Trump has figured out a way to make it profitable. He's selling more weapons to Ukraine, and he got us the mineral rights. It turns out, Trump was able to turn a cost center, or a supposed cost center, into a profit center in terms of this specific war. And if you look at the sanctions, Trump has increased the sanctions. So Trump had my exact position that I fought for here on this podcast for the past couple of years in this conflict, which was, keep the pressure up on Putin. And Trump took it over the top by going to Putin's main client for his oil now, which is India, and putting a massive tariff on

• 1:04:05Jason Calacanis?

  them and threatening them with a huge tariff. That was a bold, audacious way to deal with Putin. So I give Trump a ton of credit for trying to make peace here. Okay, so here's my question. And Putin has been, hold on, let me just finish. And Putin has been absolutely humiliated. He can't even get to Kiev, let alone take over Finland or Poland. And this has cost Russia, their greatest customer, which is the EU, Germany. These people are never gonna buy his oil again, not after what happened here. And that, you can give a lot of credit to Trump, because he told them when they built their oil pipelines that the Germans were lunatics for doing that and for creating a massive...

• 1:04:49Jason Calacanis?

  Revenue stream for a dictator who is, in my mind, a war criminal. What he did in invading Ukraine makes him a war criminal. What he did in kidnapping these children makes him a war criminal. I think it's awesome that Trump is doing this intervention, even if it has a 5% or 10% chance of working. And then making the NATO alliance pay their fair share and selling them more weapons, I think, also brilliant. So I give Trump a lot of credit here. He's aligned exactly what I said we should be doing, which is holding dictators who invade other countries accountable for it. And he's added to it the fact that he can connect with people. So I give him a ton of credit for it, Sacks. I know that's maybe not the answer you want, but that's how I personally feel.

• 1:05:30David Sacks?

  No, look, I think you use this highly moralistic language, and you engage in a lot of name-calling, and I actually think that's counterproductive.

• 1:05:36Jason Calacanis?

  Which one? Which name is inaccurate, please? Dictator or war criminal?

• 1:05:40David Sacks?

  Well, look, you're complimenting Trump for engaging in diplomacy with Putin, but then at the same time, you want to call him a dictator and war criminal, and that's not going to be conducive to actually trying to reach a peace agreement. Now, it's fine for you to...

• 1:05:51Jason Calacanis?

  But I'm not doing the negotiation. If I was doing the negotiation, I wouldn't come in and say, "Hey, dictator, war criminal, let's fight for peace." I'm giving you my personal belief as a person not negotiating.

• 1:06:00David Sacks?

  Right, so you're praising, and you're praising Trump for increasing the pressure and leverage that he has with the Russians, which I think is fine. My question for you is, would you increase the pressure or leverage with respect to Zelensky? So, for example, would you tell Zelensky in no uncertain terms, "Listen, stop demanding to be part of NATO, because it's not happening"? In fact, the president has done that. What about...

• 1:06:23Jason Calacanis?

  The answer to that question is yes. I would say, "Listen, it's not realistic to join NATO. You can't get some security guarantees." There's sort of talk of this NATO light, so I would agree with that. I would say, "Listen, we're going to take..." And I said this on a previous episode. "We should just take off NATO inclusion for like 20 years."

• 1:06:40David Sacks?

  Okay, so here's a hard one. What about territorial concessions?

• 1:06:44Jason Calacanis?

  I think that's a decision Ukraine has to make. We should encourage them to make whatever decision is best for them. But if they want to keep fighting this thing, that's going to be up to their people to decide if they want to fight for their land.

• 1:06:56David Sacks?

  Well, the people have said they don't want to keep. The problem you have right now is that 70% of Ukrainians say they don't want to keep fighting.

• 1:07:03Jason Calacanis?

  So it sounds like Zelensky should.

• 1:07:05David Sacks?

  They're ready to make concessions.

• 1:07:06Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, so it sounds like Zelensky should listen to his people, yes.

• 1:07:09David Sacks?

  I think he should.

• 1:07:09Jason Calacanis?

  But that's his decision to make. I think he has sovereignty and the people get to make that decision in his country.

• 1:07:14David Sacks?

  Well, but the problem you have is it's not just Zelensky, right? It says ruling click. They have canceled elections and they will remain in power as long as the war continues. So there's a conflict of interest there. And there's a lot of money flowing into Ukraine because of the war. So what if the ruling elite wants to keep the war going forever while the people want it to stop?

• 1:07:36Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, they're going to face a revolution right quick. And so I think they have to take the citizens of Ukraine into account. And it's a tough decision for them to make, but it's not our decision to make for them. Is that a reasonable position? It sounds like a reasonable position.

• 1:07:51David Sacks?

  Yeah, I think it's reasonable.

• 1:07:52Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, I mean, I don't.

• 1:07:53David Sacks?

  Look, at the end of the day, the Ukrainians and the Russians have to agree.

• 1:07:56Jason Calacanis?

  Yes.

• 1:07:57David Sacks?

  And I think that of the major parties, I think President Trump cares the most about peace. I mean, I think he is pushing the hardest for there to be a peace deal.

• 1:08:06Jason Calacanis?

  I, you know, I know people are like a little flabbergasted that I really believe that Trump is great at this. I think he's great at this. He is great at negotiating with difficult people. And I think he's going to get it done. I think he's got a 50/50 chance of getting this done. And I think other people need to try.

• 1:08:27Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Just admit it. You like him. You really like him.

• 1:08:31Jason Calacanis?

  It's not about whether I personally like Trump or not. It has nothing to do with that. I think, I call balls and strikes here. It's all balls and strikes for me.

• 1:08:39Chamath Palihapitiya?

  No, no, no. You're in like with him. You may be in love with him.

• 1:08:43Jason Calacanis?

  I love JD. I love with my guy, Vice President JD Vance.

• 1:08:48Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And you loved it when he said even Jason. You loved it.

• 1:08:51Jason Calacanis?

  Well, I thought it was hilarious as a troll.

• 1:08:54Chamath Palihapitiya?

  How many people did you send that link to? Be honest.

• 1:08:57Jason Calacanis?

  I just tweeted it. I didn't send it to anybody. I tweeted it.

• 1:08:59Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Okay, so everybody, a million people?

• 1:09:01Jason Calacanis?

  A million people. I mean, it was a surreal, funny moment and a great troll inside joke.

• 1:09:07Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Is it the high? It's not a troll. It's not a troll.

• 1:09:10Jason Calacanis?

  I mean, it was a troll on Sax's part, I think. I think Sax may have encouraged it.

• 1:09:14Chamath Palihapitiya?

  It's an incredible thing that you got.

• 1:09:16Jason Calacanis?

  Let's keep these great debates going here on the All In Podcast, a platform for important discussions. Another amazing episode, Summer Months, coming to a close, and we'll see you all in Los Angeles for the fourth edition of the All In Summit. I'm so excited.

• 1:09:33Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Back to the office next week. Back to the office. Love you guys.

• 1:09:35Jason Calacanis?

  Back to the office and then back to the grind.

• 1:09:37Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Summer has ended. Summer 2025.

• 1:09:40David Sacks?

  So sad. Way too soon. Can't believe it's over.

• 1:09:44Jason Calacanis?

  That's ridiculous. The only thing that is giving me some hope is that ski seizing is going to be coming.

• 1:09:49Chamath Palihapitiya?

  You know, when your kids, like Sax, you can relate to this. Actually, Jason, your kids are pretty old, too. The summers go by so quick and it's like, you just start to see like, they are, Sax, what are you like? I am now 18 months from my oldest leaving the nest. It's the craziest.

• 1:10:05David Sacks?

  Same here.

• 1:10:06Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Oh, my God. It's so, oh, I can't deal with it. My, my son sits for his ACT in like, three weeks. He's, he's getting his driver's license in a week.

• 1:10:14Jason Calacanis?

  Are you sad about it? Are you feeling melancholy, like, leaving the nest kind of thing? Or are you excited for that new chapter?

• 1:10:20Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I feel like all of my kids deserve to have their own adventure. And so what I tell my son is like, listen, you're packing your bags, you're building your little toolkit, you're about to leave and you're just going to go on an adventure and I'm so happy for him. But, man, yeah, it guts me inside.

• 1:10:34David Sacks?

  My oldest is applying to colleges right now.

• 1:10:36Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

• 1:10:37Jason Calacanis?

  All right, everybody, another amazing episode. All right, love you besties and we'll see you in Los Angeles.

• 1:10:42Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Love you, boys.

• 1:10:42Jason Calacanis?

  All In Summit. Love you, boys.

• 1:10:44Chamath Palihapitiya?

  See you next week.

• 1:11:06Speaker 04

  Besties are back!

• 1:11:09Speaker 04

  That is my dog taking a piss in your driveway.

• 1:11:16Chamath Palihapitiya?

  We should all just get a room and just have one big huge orgy because they're all just... It's like this sexual tension that we just need to release somehow.

• 1:11:24Speaker 04

  What your... B B! What your... What your B? B! What? We need to get merch! Besties are back!