Brad Gerstner on the Largest Wealth Transfer to America’s Kids

Brad Gerstner, Founder of Invest America, on scaling Trump Accounts with Michael Dell: “We forecast that within the next 10 years, we will have $4 trillion in Trump Accounts.” “This is $4 trillion of wealth transfer to kids who would've otherwise had zero, who feel like they're totally out of the game.” Stats: › 70M U. S. kids under 18 is the goal › $6.25B committed by Michael & Susan Dell to fund $250 investment account deposits for 25 million U. S. children aged 10 & under › Up to $100M personally pledged by Brad for children in Indiana › $4T in Trump Accounts within 10 years, Brad forecasts › $1,000 federal seed for eligible newborns Molly on X: https://x.com/MollySOSheaBrad Gerstner on X: https://x.com/altcapBrought to you by:Brex—The modern finance platform, combining the world’s smartest corporate card with integrated expense management, banking, bill pay, and travel. As a Sourcery subscriber you get: 75,000 points after spending $3,000 on Brex card(s). Plus, white-glove onboarding, $5,000 in AWS credits, $2,500 in OpenAI credits, and access to $180k+ in SaaS discounts. On top of $500 toward Brex travel, $300 in cashback, plus exclusive perks (like billboards..) visit → brex.com/sourceryFollow Sourcery for the latest updates! https://www.sourcery.vc/TIMESTAMPS:(00:00) Putting $150 Into a Trump Account (02:53) How Trump Accounts Work (03:08) Building Invest America (03:25) Scaling From 9M to 70M Accounts (03:43) Brad Gerstner & Michael Dell’s Contributions (04:01) Forecasting $4T in Trump Accounts (05:06) From Idea to Federal Law (05:25) The “IPO” & Scaling to 70M Accounts (06:31) Teaching 750K Kids Financial Literacy (07:12) The Power of Compounding (07:51) The Pushback on Trump Accounts (08:07) Bipartisan Support (08:47) Taking the Idea to President Trump (09:21) “The Giving Pledge 2.0” (10:22) Brad’s AI Safety Take (10:40) Elon, Dario & Jensen on AI Risk (11:14) A New Consensus on AI Safety (11:31) China & AI Peer Review (11:48) Finding the “Commonsensical Middle Way”

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

• 0:00Molly O'Shea?

  All right, we have a live one. Brad is a very special celebrity because people come up to him of how much they've impacted his, or how much he's impacted their life. So you have a Trump account?

• 0:10Speaker 01

  My son does, yeah. Yeah, my son Derek, he's a, he's a high schooler and we just opened him a Trump account.

• 0:16Speaker 02

  I love it. What's your name and where are you from?

• 0:18Speaker 01

  David Harris, I'm from Howley, California, San Diego.

• 0:21Speaker 02

  Oh, I love it. So we're here at the All In Summit. Molly's amazing and I've had a lot of people come up and say they have a Trump account. My first question is, do you have the app on your phone? And if they do, get out the app and I'm going to put a hundred bucks in your son's account. So what's his name?

• 0:34Speaker 01

  Derek Harris.

• 0:35Speaker 02

  Okay, so we're gonna, we're gonna walk through.

• 0:36Molly O'Shea?

  Talk through how easy this is.

• 0:38Speaker 02

  So, so here he is. You could see on his phone, if you just turn it a little bit to me.

• 0:42Molly O'Shea?

  There's a QR code?

• 0:43Speaker 02

  It's a QR code on his phone, so you pull it up. I scanned the QR code. So scan his QR code, it works very fast, but it is very sunny. And now we deal a little bit with a slightly slow wifi, as you know, Molly.

• 0:56Molly O'Shea?

  Brad, how many of these did you put some money into yesterday?

• 1:00Speaker 02

  I think I probably spent 5,000 bucks to 50 accounts, maybe, for people over the last two days. I mean, listen, it's addictive.

• 1:08Molly O'Shea?

  It is addictive, why talk to you about this?

• 1:10Speaker 02

  I mean, it's the gamification, it's so exciting to add money into your kid's account. So you can see on my phone, it says, contribute to Derek's future, your son's name is?

• 1:18Speaker 01

  Derek.

• 1:19Speaker 02

  It's Derek, okay?

• 1:20Molly O'Shea?

  Shout out to Derek.

• 1:21Speaker 02

  So get started, so just brings this up, we're gonna, we're gonna give him 150 bucks because he went on air with us, okay?

• 1:26Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:27Speaker 02

  So 150 bucks, and then it just says, who's it from? Right, so Brad Gerstner, give a little message, you know, to Derek.

• 1:35Molly O'Shea?

  You should pop a photo in there, take a selfie.

• 1:37Speaker 02

  Exactly, so here we go. Hey Derek, you have an awesome dad, here's a little gift to get you started, make sure you save a lot and keep compounding. Okay?

• 1:47Speaker 01

  That's Derek right there.

• 1:48Speaker 02

  Awesome. So you can see the message drops in, I say go, then it says, you know, confirm that you want to give this 150 bucks to Derek. Okay? Then it just goes here, I use Apple Pay. Okay, I have to choose my debit card because we haven't lit up Amex yet. Okay, so I double click on it, just like I always do.

• 2:09Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 2:10Speaker 02

  Okay, give it a second, done. So now, thanks for your contribution. And boom, there's my JP Morgan account that's been debiting 150 bucks. We just hooked up Derek.

• 2:22Molly O'Shea?

  Really easy.

• 2:23Speaker 02

  That's awesome, that's awesome.

• 2:24Speaker 01

  Can I get a picture with you real quick?

• 2:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, let's do it.

• 2:26Speaker 01

  So I can show them who's helping them out?

• 2:27Speaker 02

  Yes. Tell them the founder, the founder of Invest America.

• 2:31Speaker 01

  I love it.

• 2:32Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 2:33Speaker 01

  I love it.

• 2:34Molly O'Shea?

  Here, let me get the All In in the background. Awesome.

• 2:39Speaker 01

  You're the number one bestie.

• 2:41Speaker 02

  I appreciate it, I appreciate it.

• 2:43Speaker 01

  Thank you so much.

• 2:44Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 2:45Speaker 01

  Take care.

• 2:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, so there you go.

• 2:47Molly O'Shea?

  So as you can see, Invest America, Trump accounts are super easy to put money into and it's quite addicting. I know you have a problem with it now because you're giving everybody money. But I did this for my, my nephews, like, a month ago or so, and I was like, well, I maxed out the accounts because I was really excited, and I just wanted to put more money into. I guess, talk about the overall structure of that.

• 3:08Speaker 02

  Yes, so I mean, I mean, listen, from the beginning, we were never building a program, we were building a platform. We want to have a universal infrastructure of capital accounts for every citizen in the country. We started with kids, newborns, and then we said, let's do everybody under 18. So we're going to automatically create accounts. We have nine million accounts today, which makes it one of the largest programs in the history of the federal government.

• 3:30Molly O'Shea?

  That's insane, yeah, that's incredible.

• 3:31Speaker 02

  We're going to expand it to 70 million accounts within the next month. All kids under the age of 18 are automatically going to have one of these accounts. And now we have all these incredible philanthropists who you know, and tons unannounced. My dollars start hitting the accounts in Indiana on Thursday, Michael Dell's account, you know, and you can see how easy it is to donate to that phone. So moms and dads, friends, philanthropists, but the big one is companies. So now companies across the country are turning it into part of their standard 401k infrastructure. 401ks have $75 billion a year put into them, so 401ks now have $15 trillion in them. We forecast that within the next 10 years, we will have $4 trillion in Trump accounts.

• 4:13Speaker 02

  Now this is $4 trillion of wealth transfer to kids who would have otherwise had zero, who feel like they're totally out of the game, like, they're not in, they're not part of the American dream, and now we're connecting them all with private ownership, with capitalism, you know, and Michael and I have gotten so many emails and texts and letters and pictures from moms who say, you know, our family was struggling, it's only $200, but it gives us hope. We never thought we would own stocks, we never thought we were going to be part of this system. And I really think that is the spirit that, you know, makes America what it is. That is the American dream. And so I couldn't be more excited and so many thanks to everybody on the team, to Michael,

• 4:54Speaker 02

  to Joe Gabbi, to Vlad Tenev, to Frank Bisignano who runs all of this, he runs IRS, he runs Social Security, he runs the Trump accounts, to the President himself who took the entrepreneurial risk of getting it done, and so many others. But I would tell you, Molly, like, you know, like, in Silicon Valley speak, right, I had the idea, then, you know, getting Michael on board and building the Invest America Council, CEO Council, that was like the Series A. Getting the law passed is like the Series C, okay? Now we're just starting to scale.

• 5:25Molly O'Shea?

  When do you IPO?

• 5:26Speaker 02

  But, yeah, so I'm going to say the IPO is in 30 days when we automatically launch 70 million accounts.

• 5:32Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah.

• 5:33Speaker 02

  Okay, that makes it one of the largest, you know, programs, accounts, it makes it, puts it on the scale with Social Security, but again, it's still day one. What this really changes is over the next 25 years when we have 10, 20 million, 20 trillion dollars in these accounts, and most importantly, we have a generation, 150 million Americans who feel like they're part of the system. My biggest concern for the country on the 250th birthday of the country was that we're going to lose it. The magic formula that makes America, America, is this belief that we have economic mobility, this right to rise, and if you destroy that, then you destroy capitalism.

• 6:11Molly O'Shea?

  I remember the day that Michael and Susan Dell's contribution hit, and you just saw so many amazing messages all over the internet, not just on X, they were on Instagram, they were in the news, like, it was incredible. So could you talk about the impact and the impact of compounding and how you're teaching the American public about that?

• 6:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, we just did an event in Texas with Michael, you know, Ted Cruz, many, many CEOs, Gwen Shotwell was there, Vlad Tenev was there. In the state of Texas, they already are putting a financial literacy wrapper around this for 750,000 kids.

• 6:46Molly O'Shea?

  Wow.

• 6:47Speaker 02

  Okay, so imagine now, if you're trying to teach somebody something, and they don't own anything, and they have no prospect of owning anything, it's hard to teach them. But now the teacher says, get out your phone, open up your Trump account, and let's talk about how you got that $200, let's talk about what it's invested in, let's talk about what it means. Now you can, in the app itself, you can move the slider. What if I save $10 a month? What if I save 20? And it shows you how it compounds over time. So we now have a platform and the mechanism to begin teaching people about compounding. But I will tell you this, I think there's this belief that, like, poor folks don't want to save, or poor folks don't want to learn about this stuff, it's just not true, I grew up poor. Okay? The hardest movement in life is from zero to one.

• 7:31Speaker 02

  It's getting into the game, it's overcoming the cold start problem, it's having this belief that, I deserve this, I'm part of this. Once you're on first base, getting to second base is easier.

• 7:42Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah.

• 7:43Speaker 02

  Right? But what this really does, for tens of millions of Americans, is it takes them from zero to one, and I think that's a game changer for the country.

• 7:51Molly O'Shea?

  What is the biggest pushback that you get with the Trump accounts? Is it because they're labeled Trump accounts?

• 7:56Speaker 02

  Well, that definitely, that definitely is the one I hear the most often. Obviously, the country's pretty evenly politically divided, but I will tell you this, there is a grand bipartisan support for this. There has been from the beginning, and I tried to get it done during the Biden administration. I had a lot of support on Capitol Hill, but I could never get to the White House to really get action going. And so whether it's, you know, senators like Booker and Warner on the, on the left, or whether it's, you know, obviously senators like Cruz and Hagerty and so, so many others, John Thune on, on the right, same in the House, but we have, you know, Gavin Newsom came out and said, I enthusiastically endorse everybody to go get their Trump accounts. You know, Bill Clinton has, has said that this is the type of thing that can save America.

• 8:41Speaker 02

  So like, there is broad bipartisan support here, but the fact of the matter is, this would not exist. Michael Dell and I went and saw the President, and we said, this is something that we think is really important for the country. We weren't even there five minutes when he said, this is the whole meaning of my presidency, it's the Main Street agenda, we're going to make this happen. He picks up the phone, he calls the Speaker of the House, he said, get it in the bill. And that is, again, a very Silicon Valley founder moment.

• 9:07Molly O'Shea?

  Right.

• 9:08Speaker 02

  That we, you know, we needed, we needed that to happen, and now we're running with it, and the execution by Scott Besant, by Frank Bisignano in the government, and then by the partners outside the government. Michael Dell is the best partner I could ever dream of. I mean, he and I are going out and talking to every company, we're talking to every philanthropist, I think this truly will be the Giving Pledge 2.0, and it's going directly to America's kids, 100 cents on the dollar, no intermediaries, and I think that the evidence on the field is, more likely to graduate from high school and college, more likely to buy a home, more likely to start a business, more likely to pay taxes, less likely to be incarcerated. We've done the bipartisan research on this, the ROI is going to be off the charts for

• 9:52Speaker 02

  society, and I, I honestly pinch myself, I can't believe we got it done. I can't believe we're here, and we're going to IPO in about 30 days, and then, you know, our goal is, you know, multi-trillion dollar company, even though it's a not-for-profit.

• 10:03Molly O'Shea?

  I love it, I love it. Well, Brad, thank you so much, this is incredible, between the calcium scans, learning more about the Trump accounts. And before we close out, I have to ask, we had some incredible programming here, Jensen, we had Elon chime in with Gwen.

• 10:19Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 10:20Molly O'Shea?

  What is your hottest take from the All In Summit this year?

• 10:22Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, obviously, we had a lot of controversy at the end of last week, you know, that I was quite critical of on Friday, people coming out saying there's a 10% chance of extinction event from AI, then we had the Dario essay that I thought was, you know, a good path forward around independent monitors on, on Saturday, a lot of controversy about how much that meant slowing down. We had Elon come here and say, listen, I tend to agree with Dario, the risk is augmenting, and we need to have peer review, independent peer review, I thought that was a great idea. Jensen said, listen, the labs themselves need to control it, they need to do a better job, they need to get this under control. The President calling in while Jensen's on the, you know, on the couch and chiming in. So everybody thinks there's chaos, I don't think it's chaos.

• 11:05Speaker 02

  I think what we're doing is we're open sourcing in real time how consensus forms. The sausage making's kind of ugly, but if you really just think about everything we heard, it's boiling down to a pragmatic consensus, that yes, there's more power and more risk than we may have thought of, so we, we need to act responsibly, it needs to start with the companies themselves, but we probably do need some sort of peer review, we do need to talk to China about whether or not they're willing, you know, Elon said yesterday, maybe they'll participate in open source peer review on this. So those are important conversations, important things to explore. I think sometime in, in the business of podcasting or X, everybody wants you to join a tribe.

• 11:48Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah.

• 11:49Speaker 02

  You have to be all on this side or all on that side, but the constructive solution around Trump accounts and the constructive solution here is going to be a pragmatic, commonsensical middle way, and I think you saw that unfold here. I mean, it's incredible. And I just want to say, hats off to four of my besties who put this together. I mean, it's far more than a podcast, it's a community that I think is advancing important conversations, you're a part of that, but to watch that unfold in real time on stage and to move the conversation forward, something I'm proud to be a part of.

• 12:20Molly O'Shea?

  I don't think anybody who, who came here will forget that, Roman.

• 12:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's extraordinary.

• 12:25Molly O'Shea?

  Seeing history unfold in front of our eyes.

• 12:27Speaker 02

  Well, congratulations to you on all this success.

• 12:30Molly O'Shea?

  Thank you so much, Brad, really appreciate the time, and very happy All In Summit.

• 12:35Speaker 01

  Indeed.

• 12:36Molly O'Shea?

  Cool.