Big Beautiful Bill, Elon/Trump, Dollar Down Big, Harvard's Money Problems, Figma IPO

All right, welcome to the show, everybody. Number one podcast in the world. And man, going to be really exciting come September, September 7th, 8th and 9th, the All In Summit in its fourth year. This week, I'm doing Friedberg's job for him because he's been a little bit busy. No, you're not. Lockdown is in. Jason, what are you doing? Why are you doing this? Nick B.

Every year, you pre-announce a bunch of people who don't show up. It's literally, you literally pick people who won't show up. What are you talking about? I got Elon to come three out of three years. I have gotten a couple of trillion dollars in market cap for your freeberg and more to come. Don't worry about it.

Don't worry about it. This year is going to be better than ever. Better than ever. Allin.com slash summit. And lots of exciting news around the tequila boys. Freebird, did you see MSN covered me sending a case of the tequila to Bezos? I didn't see that. What do we do now? open source it to the fans and they've just gone crazy we've uh

Been crushed with orders. Apologies if we're taking a little bit of time with customer support, but you can go to tequila.allin.com. Deliveries begin in late summer, right around the time, I think, of the summit. Freeberg and I were in Las Vegas this past weekend. It was a blast as always. We had a really good time. We had 20 of our besties or so with us. Great, great time. It was a great time.

I wish I could have been there, but I was on the snake river doing a little, I wasn't talking about, I was getting lobbied, like cancel your family trip, whitewater rafting to come to Vegas. I was like, yeah. Don't remember inviting you. Freebird, do you remember? Trust me. People, when you go to Vegas, you want J-Cal. J-Cal's a good time in Vegas. That is true.

That is true. I got a lot of invites, but Nick pulled up the picture. I was on the Snake River there. I was doing my whitewater rafting trip. And so if you're ever interested in doing a fun trip with your family, you can do these two or three night occasions. No, I'm not. You camp on the side. You eat mid-food. You don't shower for three days and you have four days. But yeah, there's the view from the Snake River. It was absolutely stunning. And yeah, we camped. Is that where...

Is Snake River, is that also where like Snake River Farms comes from? You know, the high quality meat? Yes, I'm sure it is. Idaho, Oregon border. So that is, yeah, that's where Snake River Farms is. Not as good as Long Hill Wagyu, but, you know. I mean, listen, that's like two elite steak producers. Get the culette, a.k.a. the picanha.

All right, listen, the BBB has passed the Senate. Let's get into this docket. But there was a bit of drama in the House after an all-night session and over 24 hours of deliberation. Senate passed the big, beautiful bill on Tuesday. Friend of the pod, J.D. Vance, cast the tie-breaking vote after a 50-50 deadlock. Three Republicans voted no. And Trump won over Senator Ron Johnson.

On this very podcast, he said he would be a no unless more spending was cut. There were significant changes to the bill. We'll get into that in a minute. And so it's got to pass the House again before Trump can sign into law. Lots of drama. Trump set the deadline for July 4, which is Friday when you're listening to this. And it will in all likelihood get there. According to Polymarket, there is a 96% chance the bill will pass by Thursday and a 97% chance it'll pass by Friday.

July 4th, Independence Day, the day we published. So it looks like it's pretty much a lock. Some big changes in the Senate. Biggest change, the 10-year AI regulation moratorium, which we're going to talk about, for states was removed. Ted Cruz tried to negotiate cutting it to five years.

suggestion I made, maybe 10 years was a little bit too long for folks, but that didn't work. According to an NGO called National Conference of State Legislatures, over a thousand bills related to AI had been filed by state lawmakers in 2025.

So expect a lot of state-by-state AI regulation. I think this is a good place to stop. We don't have Sachs here to talk about AI regulation, but he talked about it the last time. Freberg, your thoughts on... states you know we talked about state rights here in relation to abortion guns gun regulations cannabis many different you know debates over who should get to decide for the country

Where do you stand on this one? Should states have a voice in how AI is deployed in their, you know, borders, within their borders? Or should the federal government take this? And if so, for how many years? Because that seemed to be a sticking point. Look, I'm a big believer in the construct of our federated republic in the United States where states can operate with as much kind of discretion as they choose to with the laws that they pass and how they intend to govern.

There are, however, things that affect more than the state. We have interstate commerce. We have international commerce. We have the open internet. And we have a lot of other systems at play here. that extend beyond the boundaries of a state. And the way that AI tools and AI systems and AI services and AI-related jobs are being deployed and activated, I do think it's critical that we treat

AI regulation at a national level, at a federal level. To date, there have been, I believe, 70 state laws or statutes passed thus far in the United States, with I think over a thousand having been proposed to date. if the numbers are right. And having a patchwork of regulations on, for example, model development or telling software companies what software they can deploy.

would make it practically impossible for internet service providers like a Google or an OpenAI to service customers across state boundaries in a way that is actually going to meet the needs of the customer.

This is a huge detriment to consumers and a huge detriment to the job market if we end up creating a patchwork of regulations on AI this early. One of the things that I would point out is that much of the early... legislation, like for example, what we saw in California, if you read that legislation that did not get signed by Gavin Newsom in California, there was a definition on model parameters.

being a boundary condition for whether or not something would go through a regulatory review process. That was such a naive assertion that early in the phase of AI technology development. And think about the implication was, okay, well, everything is LLMs. But there's other models, like vision action models that are going to be used in robotics, models that might be used in predicting and driving physical systems, like in self-driving cars, for example.

the way that the regulation gets written will often be done in a naive context in a limited fashion by regulators that don't fully understand the breadth of the technology that's coming our way. And I do think that it needs to be kind of leveled up and allowed to operate at a federal level. I think it is absolutely critical, not just for technology companies, not just for the industry, but for the opportunity for job creation, for improving the economy, for driving GDP and productivity growth.

that we get something passed that forces AI regulation to be done at a federal level. Even though I generally agree that states should be able to self-govern, this just has too much of an interstate and global interaction. That was the biggest disappointment for me in the negotiation that's gone on with this bill.

is that of all the things that I thought were going to be passed that I thought were maybe not ideal, getting this AI federal preemption in that bill was probably the best thing, the top of the list for me. in terms of critically important for the U.S. economy. Yeah, Chamath, your thoughts here? Obviously, abortion is like an interesting one to look at because that went to the states in furtherance of Freeburg's.

you know, position here, you have just many different rules and regulations between Texas, Oklahoma, whatever it is, everybody's got a different view. It's chaotic. And we don't have a singular point of view on it. Therefore, Women in one state have very different rules than in another state. So where did you fall on this one? Federal legislation? Or is it just going to take more time to figure this out? I mean, that's another, I guess, angle here. This is nothing like abortion. Okay.

Abortion is an individual issue between a woman, her doctor, her partner, her God. And so... A state being able to have rules and then allowing that woman to choose which state she can go to. is quite reasonable because I think that it acknowledges that there's no one-size-fits-all. So that is clearly a state issue. But the reality is that AI is of national security importance. It is the tip of the spear of our ability to have technological supremacy.

That is how we have economic supremacy. And so not governing it at the federal level, I think is a mistake. And it makes... as much sense for states to legislate AI as it would make sense for states to have competitive armies. It doesn't make sense. There are certain things that are just so fundamentally primary.

to American supremacy and safety and security that it needs to be regulated at the federal level. And I think AI needs to be at the top of that list. So I was disappointed that we weren't able to see the forest from the trees here. Now, I'm sensitive to... part of the reasons why. Many of the states have very specific issues around child safety that they mention. In Tennessee, there was a lot about copyright ownership related to musicians and their content.

I get all of that. Those are legitimate things that need to get ironed out. But I think that it could have been done in a federal framework. Not having it, I think the risk is that if you have... 50 different sets of regulation. And it won't even just be 50, as Freebrick said, it's going to be, you know, all kinds of pet organizations that pop up in all of these states. What happens, I think what it does is it slows down startups.

And smaller companies who won't have the economic heft to fight these regulations or to work with them or to figure it out. And it'll advantage a handful of incumbents. And the problem with that is that our incumbents aren't yet mature. And this industry is still developing. So I think this is one of the unfortunate parts of what is otherwise a pretty reasonable bill. Well, you can look at gambling, I guess, and cannabis legislation. These are things that...

Americans largely want to do and they are fighting their way state by state. And at some point, we may have a federal regulation about online gambling, right? Right now, it's a patchwork. Same thing with cannabis. psychedelics, all a patchwork of different states. Why do you lump together things that are about individual rights with AI, which I don't think is about that? People might look at...

the rights of rights holders, cars, these AI things are going to hit people on an individual level. So I think when you bring this up, this topic, there are people who feel this is an individual sovereignty issue. Right. But, you know, there are other issues of individual sovereignty, like the ability to take drugs and there's still federal mandates that come through the FDA. You know, you're not allowed to short circuit or circumvent that framework at a state by state level.

Yeah, that actually is at the core of the cannabis debate is would they enforce the federal laws on cannabis and they haven't, right? So that was part of it. I'm talking about more as it relates to AI. Sure. Because AI means everything, I think that's what makes this issue very difficult. AI is going to affect everything, right? So probably the people who want to slow this down and have the states do it.

are saying let the states have their say on these granular issues. I'm not saying this is my position, but I think that's what I'm reading into their position. Hey, this is going to affect different states in different ways, let them figure it out, take some time, and then we'll build towards a framework.

nationally, which I think is what happened with the internet and section 230 as well. Although I don't know the entire history of it. We did come up with an idea that, hey, the federal government makes it common carrier to, you know, anybody can post anything on a website and then

You can request to take it down. That was federal legislation. Those things could have been held also on an individual basis. And then what would have happened for the internet? You would have had to have AOL or geocities have a different patchwork, like you're saying, in regulation.

I'm guessing the states probably do want to have a say on self-driving, that one specifically. And I don't know if they're wrong. What do you think on self-driving? Should it be federal? I mean, that's like an interesting lens to look at it through. I don't know the details well enough. It seems to me that self-driving touches both the states and the federal. Sure. Federal highways and local roads. Yeah. So, but just from first principles.

You know, there's self-driving cars now in Palo Alto going up to the city from Waymo. You got Austin, you got three different providers. Should the city, the state have a stay in that? Kind of feels like they should. Yeah, sure. yeah so i mean i think that i don't i don't think a city has any idea how to regulate a model no that's where it's obvious the other side like how would they ever even know and another piece that's

in flux and has been changing is energy policy, solar, EV credits, and maybe even disincentives, the $7,500 credit for buying cars, and then also carbon credits. and a fee of 250 dollars for everybody who owns an ev every year freeberg maybe you could talk a little bit about this part of the debate because we've been spending and hitting incredible goals as a country in getting more renewables more energy online but that comes at a cost right and so that is a big part of the debate here

And that obviously is something that impacts Elon, and we'll get to him in a moment, but that impacts Elon and Trump's relationship in a major way. The old school motivation and incentive. for what people would call green energy or green tech was to decarbonize electricity production and develop and deploy at scale. these new technologies at the time, like wind and solar, as an alternative to carbon-based technologies that put carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, like oil and coal and gas.

IRA, the Inflation Reduction Act, created tremendous government incentives for building solar and wind farms to create electricity in the United States. This proposal that's been going back and forth in this bill and some of the debate that's triggered many folks online to denounce the bill takes away those incentives, takes away those credits, takes away the EV tax credit starting in September, as an example. Why can't they do these in...

digestible chunks, it should be no more than 300 pages per bill, no more than x number of issues and breaking conversation to have good conversation to have another time, but we should talk to people on Congress, but there's a very specific reason why because of the logjam that happens with the filibuster.

it makes it impossible to get things done in that traditional context. So what's happened in the last couple of years is you end up with these massive, massive mega bills where they jam everything into one bill that they can pass with 50 votes. And then in the middle of the night.

They make these last minute changes and we have no say. It's so dark. There's no rigorous debate. There's no transparency into what's going on and why. And so the second argument away from the green stuff is the more modern stuff, which I've made. I know Chamath agrees with me on this, which is we have to increase electricity production in this country. The current plan has been to move from one to two terawatts by 2040. Meanwhile, China is moving from three to eight.

And China's adding an entire United States and electricity production capacity every 18 months right now. They're so far ahead of us. And ultimately, electricity production is what drops the price for things and increases jobs, increases GDP, increases your ability to make stuff.

And so the more electricity production comes online, the more we will be able to be sufficient in an AI point. Now, the Secretary of Energy, Secretary Wright, gave an interview. And he said, we have more than enough capacity with gas. oil and coal, and nuclear. And so his argument at this point is that we don't need to subsidize solar and wind where the government pays for these programs and private equity investors can make money on them.

This is a big part of the argument he's making. I'm not making it. But he's saying this will drive traditional energy investments in traditional systems that we can scale up quickly to meet our energy production goals. Now, I will say from my point of view. I'm not a huge fan of being dependent on government subsidized energy at all. So if the government is having to play a role in funding stuff, there's something really questionable in terms of our sustainability.

on that energy production source over time, will it actually be able to make more of it because what you want is not just to make a bunch of energy in the next six years or 12 years, you want to make sure that you've got an engine for creating new energy production on a continuous basis so we climb non-linearly the energy production curve. That's what we need to do. And I hope...

that one of the key outputs of this, which a lot of people are really unhappy about the loss of the demand for solar and wind because of the loss of the government programs here. But what I'm hopeful for is it creates a natural market force for nuclear. and that we actually see a better proliferation in nuclear, which Secretary Wright has said, and President Trump signed these EOs a couple weeks ago, to reduce the regulatory burden on nuclear and increase the ability for nuclear to proliferate.

much more quickly than has been the case historically. So while a lot of people are saying, hey, this is going to take away all this energy production capacity that's coming online in the next few years, it was supposed to the counter argument.

is we're going to create a natural market force because the energy demand will still be there. So someone's going to show up and say, hey, I want to make electricity because there's so much demand for it. And maybe they say, hey, let's try this new nuclear de-reg system and see if we can get it to work.

And so I don't know, the jury is absolutely out. We have not seen this energy proliferation begin in this country. But I do think one of the potential benefits of removing those clean energy tax credits is that we actually see natural market forces drive demand for more.

naturally sustainable, scalable energy production source. I announced this a few weeks ago, but I dipped my toe into real estate. I've never done real estate before, but just outside of Phoenix, we're building a one gigawatt data center. That's it. $25 billion total investment cycle, of which we'll be into it for $2 or $3 billion of equity when it's probably all said and done.

What I can tell you is the reason why you can underwrite that deal or why I was able to underwrite the deal was it's located downstream of a nuclear reactor. And so there's effectively infinite energy that we can tap. But we still need NatGas and a bunch of other things. The problem is that, you know, if we put in an order right now, we can't get NatGas turbine viable and turned on until 2030.

It's not a technology issue. It's purely a supply chain issue. So I think what our energy policy needs to make sure we contemplate is that many of the things that we are debating are no longer issues of production. But there are issues of supply, transmission, and distribution. And as long as we can make sure that we allow energy to be made wherever and whenever possible and then stored however possible.

We'll be on the forward foot. The big risk is that if we don't have that ability, and then all of a sudden we have these incredible achievements in technology, in robotics. And we don't have the electricity to power them. That's the big risk. As long as we can fix that. I still worry that with nuclear, the issue won't be the federal regulations. I think that it's good that the president cleaned it up.

The real problem is going to be the local and state regulators and how quickly they're willing to turn these on. And the reality is that, you know, these are 10 year projects. And so even if you say go from today. The earliest these things can be turned on really in 2032, 2033. That's far too late. And that's a lot of risk too, Chamath, because what if you get blocked at the last minute? This is where solar and other projects...

I'm a big fan of coal as well. I'll tell you a story. In 2020, right before the pandemic, I don't even know if I should say the name of the company, but I almost went after a coal company to buy it. And I had been obsessed with this company for a year. And it was cheap. It fell on hard times. It was like a billion two, a billion three. And my team went up in arms. They were like, oh my God, it's so dirty. You can't own a coal company.

And it was such a huge miss on my part. I should have just bought the bloody thing. Then we went into COVID. Then everything went upside down. And lo and behold, that company is like quintupled since then. So I'm a fan of... all forms of energy production. I think the marginal cost of energy has to go to zero, which means that any single way you can get your hands on electricity production.

is a winning trade over the next 20 years in the united states this is i was trying to wrap my head around people saying oh we shouldn't buy all these solar panels out of china because china is making them so cheaply and our trade imbalance etc and i was like Well, wait a second. What's more important, the trade imbalance and giving China some money for solar panels?

We're getting more solar panels to Arizona, you know, to Utah. Look, let's take the subsidies off the table. Ultimately, you don't want any of these markets subsidized. The reality is it is faster and more efficient to put solar panels up. and start generating electricity. It's just that. It's like 17 months from start to finish. 17 months. So that's probably, in my opinion, the single most valuable underwriting feature of solar, which is you put a dollar in.

you can start generating revenue in 17 months from that dollar going in. That's very different than when you're putting a dollar in and you're not going to see it back for a decade plus. That's scary. And so you need to generate a rate of return that justifies. a 10 or 15 year investment cycle. And that's hard to do because there's a lot of volatility in the world and things can go, you know, down as well as up. So I don't know, my perspective is get rid of all the subsidies at this point.

create a clean slate, but don't do anything to hinder the production of electricity because we need literally as much of it as we can get our hands on. And then we need to find a way of storing it in a safe way. And then we're off to the races. And the battery technology free Berg is just keeps making great incremental process progress in terms of cost, you know, just going down what 15% a year. Jason, I have a question for you. Yeah.

How many days a year do you think California is in an energy deficit? How many days a year is California in an energy deficit? It doesn't have enough energy. It would be during the summer months. We know where the electricity prices go crazy, where they have to find all kinds of ways of generating massive amounts of baseload. How many days a year? I'm going to say like a third of the time, 100? Five. That's it.

Wow. So we've really made progress. You know, in California, our grid is on average about between 45 and 50% utilized. This is for PG&E. I don't know what it's like for SoCal Edison. But the point I'm trying to make is that. In normal market conditions for residential, we have tremendous amounts of power and for most needs, we have tremendous supply. So things can be pretty good. The problem is all of the stuff downstream from the making of it.

And if we don't clean that up, we're going to create these artificial constraints that will come back to bite us when we really need the power to do something very exciting. Yeah. All right, let's move on to Elon and Trump's relationship.

everybody wants to hear our take on what's going on between elon and trump in relation to this bill we took a pass on it last time but we'll take a swing at it now obviously there's been a bit of back and forth Between two of our friends, friends of the show, both Elon and Trump are... Are you friends with Trump, Jacob?

Well, I'm speaking on behalf of the show. I have never met Trump in person, but I did interview him here. He's speaking on behalf of me and Sachs. On behalf of the show. You guys are all team Trump. You're team Trump, too.

Elon has... I've never met the guy. You've never met... Never met the guy. You were in the White House. You took pictures in the White House. Never met the guy. Never met the guy. Really? Never met in person. Okay. Spent time in the White House, but didn't meet him. Okay. No problem. Yeah. Anyway, Elon...

has come out hard against this bill, he tweeted, it is obvious with the insane spending of this bill, which increases the debt ceiling by a record $5 trillion that we live in a one party country, the Porky Pig Party. Time for a new political party that actually cares about the people. This escalated a bit, but this isn't as bad as the first time around when asked if he would deport Elon Trump said, I don't know, we'll have to take a look.

and said he might stick Doge on Elon since he gets a lot of subsidies. Freeberg, we skipped talking about it because it was, I think, a bit chaotic last time.

But this time, I think maybe we'll chime in a bit. Things aren't as hot right now, and the bill's going to get through. So let's take a swing at it. What are your thoughts, Freeberg, on the kerfluffle, the Donnybrook, the brouhaha between Elon and... president trump there's a lot of people that are making accurate declarations that federal spending needs to be reduced the deficit needs to be shrunk we are in a debt death spiral and they are absolutely correct

So I don't think that Elon is off the reservation when he makes those comments and he's talked about this continuously and he dedicated months of his life to operating Doge and trying to bring... to light some of the extraordinary operating inefficiencies in the federal government that should be addressed and i think you know we'll see what happens juries still out for those actions to get permanent they

I believe, need to mandate them in an appropriations bill. And the White House has publicly declared that they are going to move forward with an appropriations bill to try and cement some of the DOGE actions. So I'm hopeful, but... I think Elon's right with respect to the spending. I will provide the voice I have heard publicly stated from the alternative view from the White House, which is...

This is not the bill to do that because it mostly focuses on these mandatory spending programs and they are addressing cost savings to some degree in these mandatory spending programs. while keeping the tax rates where they are or reducing tax rates in some cases, which the expectation is will stimulate GDP growth. So the White House view is also a view that you could look at and say,

economically, I could see a path here that does make sense. You're reducing spending only on mandatory programs, you're going to come back with an appropriations bill to address discretionary spending. And then the final kind of action that the White House might take, which we've heard about separately is impoundment.

that at the end of the fiscal year, they may come back and say all the money that we saved by not spending it, we can actually recover through impoundment. And the CBO has not accounted for tariff revenue. And just looking at the recent deal done with Vietnam, Vietnam's about $130 billion a year of imports to the United States. And they did a deal.

that they announced two days ago with a 20% tariff on Vietnam, which, you know, if Vietnam's import volume does not increase, it's about 26 billion a year of incremental revenue for the federal government.

So there's an argument that Besant and Lutnik and others are making that you guys have failed to recognize that we've got a few other things we have up our sleeve that we're going to do. We're going to do impoundment. We're going to do this appropriations bill. We've got more revenue coming in. net net, we will get the deficit down to where we need to be. In fact, Scott Besson was on TV saying over and over, we're going to get the deficit below 3% of GDP, which is the key target here.

But the immediate reaction to this bill, I think that Elon is having is the same that I've had. And it is the same that Senator Johnson had and is the same that many others have had, which is what the F are we doing? We are in a fiscal emergency in this country and we're not addressing it. So I think both points of view can be valid and both sides can have a good kind of argument for why the bill should be passed and why the bill shouldn't be passed.

The White House has declared that this is the only way they're going to get some of the programs done that they believe they need to get done for national security, like the ICE border stuff. And these are things that they believe they need to get done.

A lot of folks are looking at the numbers and saying this just isn't enough. And you're now increasing the deficit by cutting taxes. One of the things the CBO does not do, though, is they don't have a strong model. And there's a ton of economic debate on this point. which is how do tax cuts stimulate GDP growth and job creation and income growth for people with jobs? The one argument is when you cut taxes, more dollars flow into the economy.

More jobs are created, more businesses are created, the GDP grows, income for other people grows. The alternative argument is it's a tax cut for the rich. What are you doing? They're going to put that money in their pocket. It's only going to benefit themselves. So that's, I think, a key.

crux in the argument that you'll never get to a resolution on. The one side will use that one argument and the other side will use the other argument. So look, I mean, with respect to Elon and Trump, I will say one thing very importantly. I don't think MAGA can exist successfully without the tech alignment. I don't think tech can exist without MAGA because of the government alignment and the importance of the government allowing these new technologies like AI.

to come to market and to proliferate. I don't think that these two can exist in isolation and in conflict with one another. Elon is the de facto king of tech. he is the person that is saying, look, if I'm in conflict with Trump, tech is in conflict with Trump, or at least that is the perception on the MAGA side. And I think that that is very risky for both sides to allow a conflict to kind of endure.

And I do think that both sides have heads that are going to be cooler that will prevail here. And I do think that these two are going to recognize the importance of being codependent, if you will, in being able to progress their respective agendas. Chamath, your thoughts on the kerfluffle seem to be winding down and maybe reaching some sort of endgame. It feels like we're in some sort of an endgame here. And if there is one, what is it?

I mean, I think it's just important to recognize that on the one side, you have the most powerful person in the world and on the other side, you have the most important, powerful entrepreneur and richest man in the world. When you have people that are that accomplished, it's not as if you're going to get along 100% of the time. So I think a lot of the breathlessness around all of this stuff is overblown. I think the reality is that...

When push comes to shove, I think that they agree on more things than they probably disagree. And I think when everybody realizes that the alternative is essentially... some insane form of socialism and redistribution, I think the alliance will hold and that they'll find some common ground. Jason, what do you think?

Well, I think you're right. These two individuals are used to speaking their mind and they're both really good at social media. And then there's no better media cycle than covering the two of them battling it out and trading barbs. I think what Elon did this cycle was really interesting. He started a preference stack for Trump and that cascade, preference cascade, preference stack, however you want to phrase it.

you know i think played a large role if not the role in getting trump elected people can debate that i don't know that you can perfectly know what that 250 million dollars and all that effort he put in you know what that did in terms of trump's chances trump probably would have won anyway versus kamala but maybe not putting that aside the platform elon has refined during this political cycle is one that resonates and i think it's

a really good idea for him to maybe, if he's going to be involved in politics, pull that string and just crisply define it. And I was thinking about it over the last couple of days. And I think it hits into four basic groups.

balanced budget and government efficiency. That's kind of one fiscal responsibility, sustainable energy, which obviously has been passionate about. And he's the leader in solar batteries, EVs, and then manufacturing in the United States, which he also is the leader in and pro natalism and just

you know, the, the population crisis, he really cares about those four issues. So what I think he should do is take that America pack. And instead of making it like just pro MAGA, he should just clearly define what it is that he believes small set of issues. And then you should go and back the people who are running to be in Congress and senators and just say, hey, here is what I would like you.

to be in favor of and do what Norquist did with his no new taxes pledge. Do some sort of pledge like that. I don't know if it needs to be a new party, but just really crisply define what matters to him if he's going to be involved in politics. then get people to agree on it. And if he wants to give them donations, as is his right, as is his PACS right to raise money, he could represent, I think, a very world positive view, sustainable energy.

just incredible execution and a really efficient government. Technical excellence. Technical excellence, excellence writ large. And America, just go for it. And it doesn't have to be personal against Trump. One of the big problems with Trump is... He has a bunch of sycophants around him. And the more you kind of appease him and just blindly follow him, I think the closer the perception is that's the closer you get to him. I don't know that that's true. I think he likes debating stuff.

So I think he should embrace the people who debated with him. And then those people should just crisply say, here's what I stand for. And I'm putting my money behind it. I hope we're in alignment. But I'm going to stay in my lane. And I'm going to prioritize what matters to me and Elon's priorities. are exceptionally sharp and well-defined, and you should pursue them. Yeah. Jury's out on where this ends up and the broader picture. You guys will get annoyed because I talked about Ray Dalio.

So much, but I think he's done an amazing job in the last five years, basically explaining everything we've seen from global conflict to the internal conflict, the rise of socialism in the US and the relationship to the debt and deficit cycle. He just posted on Twitter yesterday that he went to D.C. to discuss the budget deficit with senior people on both sides of the aisle.

And he said, it's clear to me that we are unlikely to change the debt trajectory we're on and avoid the painful consequences. And he talked a lot about this concept of absolutist politics. And this is the same reaction I've had every time I've gone to DC. And we've met with members of Congress. And if you guys remember from the beginning, I said, Doge isn't going to be it. As much as Elon can identify and resolve to a better way of operating the federal government's agencies, you cannot change.

the spending without a change in statute from congress you have to get congress to act and every time i met with members of congress their incentive is to keep the money flowing to their districts that's what they focus on

And every year their districts want more in different contexts, in different forms, through different programs. And that's what their job is. Their job is to go to D.C. to represent their state's interest or their local district's interests and say, we need to make sure that we're taken care of as the money flows. And as a result.

Everything keeps getting bigger and bigger and spiraling away. At the end of the day, the way we economically save America, if we even have a shot without money printing, which a lot of people like Balaji and Dalio and others are now indicating. is what's going to happen is we're going to end up inflating away or printing away all of the debt that we've taken on is to get to a 333, which Besant has highlighted is also his goal, 3% federal deficit to GDP, 3%.

GDP growth and 3% inflation. And just to give you a sense of where those numbers sit today, the current estimate is 6% deficit to GDP 2.4% inflation. So we've actually got a little bit of room to run on inflation. and GDP growth this year of 1.4%. So will the tax cuts in this bill increase GDP growth? Will AI increase GDP growth? The jury is out.

Will the tariff revenue reduce the deficit more than the CPO is estimating and the increased GDP growth reduce the deficit? The jury is still out. And what will happen with inflation? And if the Fed cuts rates, you're going to see inflation climb a little bit more. Maybe the tariffs effect on inflation will still come through. Some folks have said that hasn't hit yet, but it will come later this year. Will we exceed 3% inflation, TBD?

So the jury is still very much out on whether these actions that are being taken, which Besant has declared, is going to get us to that 333 number. But then a lot of folks who are looking at this with a cold stare. with like no political influence, with no political intention, not representing a party, not representing an administration, like Ray Dalio, are saying, what the fuck? There is no way we're going to get there.

Balaji, I think, you know, pointed out in his tweet, his point is actually a very good point, which is our debt is not just the federal debt. But there's other debt that we're not even accounting for. Consumer debt. I've said this in the past. There's actually corporate debt, the business debt, consumer debt. There's also state and local debt. And then the one key number that we never talk about is the unaccounted for liabilities in public pension funds.

which is on the order of trillions of dollars more. So when you add all of this up, someone's going to pay the bills on all that debt, or we're going to have to inflate away that debt by printing money. And at some point, the train's left the station. A lot of people are saying, we're done. There's no way out of this.

So, you know, the Elon Trump battle is like an interesting kind of side kerfuffle, but it's not really the big story here. The big story is the trains left the station. You know, I think if we're if we look at this as the first year that tech really got. actively involved in politics. Obviously, Peter Thiel has been at this for a little bit longer in his support of JD Vance, the vice president. I'm looking at this as like, maybe this is year one that Gen X is truly engaged.

and making a difference in Washington and setting an agenda. That agenda, you know, has 25 years ahead of it. If everybody remains disengaged, whether it's people like Sachs or TL or Elon or countless other people. You know, what is J.D. Vance's position on this when he runs for president in four years? What will these other individuals, Dean Phillips, who've had on the program, if he decides to run? I think this is. you know, we're maybe 5% into the impact this could be having. And already,

And in Freeburg, I always give you a lot of credit for this. Two years ago when you said you started bringing this up incessantly on the program and to the point of which you're freely admitting. It was during COVID I started doing this. Yeah, it was three years ago. And, you know, like...

Yeah, I mean, you're admitting you've been annoying for three or four years. I think, actually, it's the sand that might make the pearl and the oyster. We need to address this. It's become a top issue of our time. That's actually success. The fact that this issue is now the issue of our time, our budget, our fiscal responsibility, austerity, that's actually a really good thing. And yeah, maybe it doesn't get manifested in this bill.

But maybe it will get manifested in J.D. Vance's presidential run or Dean Phillips or the both of them will be discussing it in three and a half years or three years when they're. on the presidential trail so that could be actually the early sign of success for this i'm an optimist good luck

So I'm sure that it's over. Yeah. I mean, we sit here and we parked on this topic dozens of times. We keep talking about, oh, we need to do this. We need to do that. But at the end of the day, when the bills get passed. When Congress takes action, you get to see where their head's really at. And I do think that this bill has indicated that the administration has a set of incentives, which is they want to get the actions done that they promised they would on the campaign trail.

And then Congress has a lot of incentives to keep the money flowing. And I think we've seen that in this negotiation to get this bill done. And I'm not faulting anyone for it. Congress is looking out for the interests of the people that they represent. And the White House is looking out for the people that voted for them.

and they said this is what we're going to do and we have a mandate and now they're getting it done and that's just the way it is but this is the key part of the whole storyline which is at some point once the spending levels get too high and the country, the individuals and the businesses become too dependent on that spending, which is effectively what happens at the end of every empire, you can't back out. You can't stop spending. And everyone just votes themselves the dollars.

It's a scary moment. And I've said it before, I do think that the GDP growth is the one path that's left to resolve this. I don't think we're going to just cut spending. And so we need to kind of be really thoughtful about making sure we don't hamper GDP growth.

particularly as it relates to AI, which is going to unlock a lot of new industry, a lot of new growth, a lot of new opportunity for jobs. And this is why I worry a lot about this patchwork of regulation in states, making it really difficult for AI. You only need five more.

People like Rand Paul and Tillis, right? If you get a couple more of those, Chamath, this could be a completely different discussion. If you want to pivot to the next topic, I mean, one way to look at this is how the dollar is trading.

So the US dollar is now down 11% this year, and that's against every single major currency. Here it is. So the dollar was down over 10% through the first half of 2025. This is the worst start in over 50 years. Take a look at this chart and you can see it. It's kind of shocking. Keep in mind the dollar jumped 7% after Trump was elected. It kind of peaked in mid-January. So if you take the pre-election dollar index number 103, it's down 6% since then.

Not record breaking, but significant. And obviously, economists are saying tariffs and global trade are a big piece of this. And as we just discussed, and we'll keep discussing the US debt load at $37 trillion. It's more expensive for Americans to travel abroad. And it's less attractive maybe to invest in the US. Let me just follow up on the point I just made, but this is where, what do they say, the chicken comes to roost? What's the term? Chickens come home to roost, yeah.

The chickens have come from trees. This is where you start to see the inflationary effects of the spending and the spiraling debt is things get more expensive. and your earning power doesn't increase commensurate with the higher expenses. So what will happen is you'll see here, the US today imports four to $5 trillion a year. So that's four to $5 trillion that US consumers and businesses are buying from abroad.

And then we import into the US and use those products and services. So the cost of all that just went up by 11%. as the dollar declined in value against the average of all these currencies. And that's outside of increase in prices that may arise because of the tariff effect where folks may say, hey, let's charge more for tariffs. Whether it's the cost of tariffs or the cost of the debt, the dollars that you have to spend now just went up by 11%.

percent to buy the same thing and if that compounds and that continues and your earnings are not growing and your assets are not growing commensurate with that that's where dollar devaluation happens and where asset devaluation and income devaluation and that's where Again, we open up the door to a thing like socialism where people are like, it's now twice as expensive to buy my groceries. It's twice as expensive to pay my rent and I'm not making any more money. Man, I need a solution.

we got to get together and get the government to make everything free. And that's why I'm so convinced that there's a rise in socialism in this country. Because in this sort of an inflationary environment, like we're seeing so far this year, you don't see it in the dollar inflation numbers, you see it in the dollar currency numbers, you're going to say,

Man, I need an alternative. The paradox to that is free stuff is not free. It means increased spending, which means you're stalling the plane even more. So any thoughts here on the dollar? I think the dollar has devalued 50% in the last 35 or 40 years. So I think it's somewhat useful to look at any single couple of months in time.

This has been a one-way trade for a very long time. And it's probably important to understand why that is. And I think it generally has to do with the fact that the United States...

finances a lot of growth, and that has been the right decision. So unless you see a complete collapse in the currency, I suspect that this decay continues to happen so the question is is it a bad thing and the answer is it depends because if asset prices increase faster than the dollar devalues you're still ahead you may not be ahead as much

but you're still ahead. And if you look at asset prices in the United States relative to asset prices anyplace else in the world, it is the flight to quality, which is to say that it is the thing that everybody wants to own. And you see that in the equity markets, you see it in real estate, you see it in hard assets. So I don't know, I think that it's part of the fact that until we run surpluses and or completely eliminate the debt

There will always be a reason to be somewhat short the dollar. But the reality is that a lot of people still want to own these assets more than they want to own any other asset. And those assets are dollar denominated. And so as long as that continues to hold. In the push and pull, it'll be a slow bleed, but it's probably manageable. And that's just sort of like the mathematical trend of it all. So I don't know, unless there's some like cataclysmic collapse.

In asset prices, I think that this is just a thing that you have to deal with. It's sort of like the carry of it all. And it happens. There's all kinds of other trades where you sort of pay a carry, and that's okay. Is there a relationship you can explain to the audience between the stock market ripping and the dollar devaluing? Well, I think the reality is that if you think about a country that all of a sudden has to pay...

a tariff. So let's take the Vietnamese example that Freeberg said. Let's just say that they had to prepay one year of it, just to make the math simple so you can understand. They have to come up with 23 odd billion dollars, I think is what...

Freeburg, the number that you set or something like that. So yeah, like 26 billion on 130. How do you do that? Well, the first thing that you're going to do is you're going to sell dollar denominated assets that you already own. And you're going to generate those US dollars and then you're going to send it to the United States Treasury.

So you may be selling bonds. So you would think, okay, well, that's not really good for asset prices. Okay. But then what you quickly realize is that all of that is far outweighed by... The fact that all the rest of the stuff that you own, whether it's gold denominated or whether it's in local currency denominated, you want to actually go and buy these dollars because you want assets that are safe in turbulence and volatility.

And so would you rather be long the Vietnamese dong or the Vietnamese equity markets to a degree? Yes. But if you have obligations that the Vietnamese government needs to fund. Their central bank is probably deciding that they need to be long US bonds and fixed income. And other people who hold assets in that country are probably going to be, you know, on a weighted basis, adding exposure to the United States.

while all of this stuff is happening. Why? Because you're seeing the balance sheet of America burgeoning and growing 23 billion from Vietnam, 10s of billions over here, 10s of billions over there, it all adds up. So Again, I think that this is like a very complicated multivariate problem. But the net takeaway is that the dollar devaluation is not something that's new.

It is a phenomenon that has existed through market cycles for 50 plus years. It's a decay that has happened and will continue to happen. So I think the way that I think about it is there's a drag. But can the drag be overcome by the increase in asset values of the hard assets that are dollar denominated? And the answer is yes, and meaningfully so. And so as long as that's the case, I think you're going to continue to have a bid for equities.

If all of a sudden, the Mag 7 decided to delist and not be American companies, and all of a sudden showed up in the CAC 50 in France, yeah, we'd be in big trouble. But I don't think that's going to happen. And so as long as you know, there's American ingenuity and American supremacy, again, which goes back to the other thing, which is, we can't kill these golden geese, nor should we kill the emerging and growing golden goose, which is AI.

And as long as those things are the same, there will be a constant bid for American assets. And that will keep the enterprise of America going for far longer than most people would guess. up to a point but pull up pull up this chart that i said this is the yeah i think that this is why buffett sort of speaks about this in these extremely long arcs that you're always ultimately going to be on the wrong side of the trade

betting against the United States. And it's probably important to then say, well, what would a boundary condition be? I don't think the boundary condition is the dollar. I actually don't think the boundary condition is the debt. I think the boundary condition is if something were to happen with the quality of the human capital inside of the United States and its inability to innovate, then we're probably...

But even that story will take 50 to 100 years to play out. I just think for most of our lifetimes, this is a safe trade because it's a winning trade. Freebert? Well, I mean, it's winning. if you can put up with the currency dropping 11% in six months, and if you pull up this chart, and I get it, Chamath, I agree, but I mean, look. businesses are booming in india businesses are booming in china businesses are booming in other countries now in the way that businesses used to boom

strictly in the US, there are other markets that seem to be having their day. And you can see this number, which I think is a really striking number in the last 10 years. U.S. Treasuries held by foreign holders has declined from 34%. This is a good thing, not a bad thing. I mean, it's good in one context, but my point is people, foreign...

countries and foreign businesses and foreign investors aren't holding US Treasuries as much as they used to. There's nothing bad about this chart. This is only a good thing. This chart shows that people don't want to hold US Treasuries. No, this chart shows that foreign governments and central banks have less and less influence on the direction of American fiscal and monetary policy. Better. That's better. So who's going to buy our debt? How are we going to finance our debt?

It turns out that when you're the largest economy and you're growing, there's a lot of internal people that will do it. Right. So, I mean, that's a key point here, which means that the debt is going to get more expensive if there's a smaller market. That's not necessarily true either. Okay.

Well, one thing's true is that we're investing a lot of money and there's a lot of dry powder. The amount of money being invested into data centers and AI and the amount of cash that's moving into investment, specifically in our borders, that has to be accretive, right? Yeah, the amount of cash and money market funds probably exceeds the sum total of all of the equity markets around the world. That's insane.

Well, and it's like, now people are talking about building 10, 20, $30 billion worth of data centers and, you know, nuclear power plants again. So there's something going on here with American exceptionalism. Speaking of American exceptionalism.

Harvard is still battling it out with Trump and their $50 billion endowment is being questioned. And it actually relates in many ways to what we're seeing in private companies, tech and VC. It's going to take a little bit of a circuitous route to get there. Since Trump has been inaugurated, Harvard borrowed.

$1.2 billion due to uncertainty around their federal funding. Remember, the Trump administration canceled over $2 billion worth of research grants to Harvard. Earlier this week, the administration formally accused Harvard of tolerating anti-Semitism on campus. The White House said... it will file a civil rights lawsuit via the DOJ, ASAP, unless Harvard comes into compliance and does a deal with Trump. Here's what they're looking for, Trump, White House.

canceling DEI initiatives, third-party oversight of admissions, mandatory actions to combat anti-Semitism. Harvard has declined to do a deal so far. And you might remember House Representative Elise Stefanik. She asked the SEC two weeks ago to investigate Harvard's financial disclosures. So she got into the disclosures when they set up that one point whatever billion dollar line of credit and loan.

They did a bond deal, I think. They issued like $750 million of bonds. Yeah. So those $750 million bond offering on April 9th was sent out. And six days later, they sent out a supplemental disclosure. with more information about the White House civil rights investigation, which she claims painted a more dire financial picture. Harvard's cooked, and I think this is really good for America. Explain. It turns out...

and there's been a lot of people that's posted about this on X, but there continues to be rampant Title IX violations with respect to admissions. I think Kremu, Nick, you can probably find it. I think he published one. that Columbia was continuing to discriminate against Asian students. Harvard's original case was against Asian students. There was a bunch of woke stuff at other Ivy League schools like UPenn.

There's all this rampant anti-Semitism. It all needs to get fixed. And so I think that if you get a deal done, Harvard will have to capitulate. I think President Trump holds all the leverage and all the cards. And there's nothing mathematically that Harvard can do. They can stall for probably another year and a half. But at some point, they will not have the budget to sustain themselves. And they're going to get into a huge world of hurt.

What they will have to do in order to finance their budget in probably 18 months is start to actively sell their private equity portfolio, which, by the way, from 2019 to this year, almost doubled from 20 to 40%.

So an insane asset allocation, frankly, an asset misallocation at the top of the market to the most illiquid asset class. And when people sniff this out, what they're going to do is Harvard was able to sell a billion dollars recently of private equity stuff and managers that they didn't want to support anymore at a 7% discount.

There is no smart money on the street that's going to look at any private equity portfolio from Harvard without asking for 20, 25, 30, 35, 40% discount, because your back will be totally against the wall. And if you don't ask for that, you're just a bad businessman.

So if you put all of these things together, they're going to need to reestablish federal funding. But in order to do it, I think the president has been very, very clear. And for whatever reason, they've refused to want to address these issues. But the Ivy League, there's just something fundamentally broken. Well, and Freeberg, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that Harvard would face a billion dollar budget shortfall every year.

If Trump followed through on his funding cuts and tax hikes, he was also saber rattling that he would get rid of their nonprofit status or maybe change how the endowments worked. A lot of tools, I think, that he could deploy here. And there's an excise tax, by the way, in the BBB that taxes foundation assets. I don't know what the final language was, but there is a.

There was a version that I saw where excise tax on foundations was upwards of 8% a year. I don't know if that was the final version, but that's an enormous amount. Let's just say it's half that. Let's just say it's 4%. But if you're paying 4% tax on your endowment every year. It all of a sudden starts to add up. That's like, you know, for Harvard, like two and a half extra billion dollars a year that they have to pay. And Freberg reportedly.

Harvard is at the table and in discussions with the White House after a couple of months of defiance. But your take on this, is this an important priority for America and for the Trump administration? Is it a sideshow? What are your thoughts on the larger ramifications of this? Let me just suspend the brand and history and legacy of Harvard for a second. Sure. And just talk about these.

call them prestigious higher education institutions. What are the two primary functions of these institutions? The first is to educate students, and the second is to conduct research or to create facilities for research. Remember, these institutions... do not direct research. They recruit and enable researchers who apply for grants to get funding to do their research. And then they educate kids.

I think the internet was the first leg on the stool to break higher education. The internet democratized access to information and knowledge. You can watch MIT graduate courses. All of the core kind of educational content that is delivered in prestigious higher education institutions has been largely democratized and is broadly available for free on the internet. That's an incredible transition that's happened.

for humanity, for society, for the world. AI is the next leg of the stool to break. And I think that AI may actually break education. It may break higher education, and then eventually it may make its way all the way down to childhood. in terms of rethinking from first principles, how do we educate? How is an individual getting educated and what are the other benefits they get from an educational system besides just core domain knowledge? There's also socialization.

and experience with project-based work. But I think that AI fundamentally rewrites the ability for an individual to get a good quality education. And we could see kids in Africa and kids in South Asia. getting the equivalent of a Harvard graduate school degree at a cost of zero through personalized tutoring enabled through AI and the ubiquitous access to knowledge and information. So that core function of the university, I think, is broken.

And they're now starting to reconcile what that actually means for the long-term viability of all of these higher educational institutions in the United States. The research function, I think, is also being rewritten. Around the world, in Europe and in China and in Asia, there are independent research institutions that get research funding that can show up and say, hey, this institution is just being used to run research. It doesn't necessarily need to be.

within an educational framework. It can be an independent research institution that focuses on either a topic or a domain. So I do think we're going to see more and more independent research funding happening. with the grants that come out from the federal government, from nonprofits, from endowments and foundations that fund research. So I think that there's a real reckoning underway. It's almost like these guys have created a monopoly.

They've accumulated this capital, which allows them to build these great buildings, attract these great researchers, and then get the research funding to fund those researchers, and then use that to raise more capital in their endowment and build the next building and keep this thing growing. And I think that that's breaking. I have one question for you. I like where you're going with this, but there's one hole that I would like you to address, which is I don't think any of that.

is nearly as valuable to most of the kids applying or the parents forcing the kids to apply as it is brand and then the cycle that employers put back. So how do you fix that loop? I get it. You can YouTube your way to something and you can AI your way to something. But at the end of the day, Goldman Sachs loves to recruit from Harvard. And that's a really big deal because that's a wonderful company.

I think the Teal Fellows program has highlighted that you don't get exceptional performance by exclusively going to people that have higher education degrees from prestigious institutions. The Teal Fellows program, for those who don't know, offer significant funding to kids that are coming out of high school, 18-year-olds. And I think the Teal Fellows, Jason, you probably know better than I do what they've created, right?

Yeah, a lot of startups. No, but like amazing startups. Yeah, I know. But how do you deal with 500 million kids graduating a year globally with no brand differentiation? I think that's an important question. So how did Teal Fellows do it? And how do you hire Timoth? You just did a program for 80, 90 to find people, right? Oh, yeah. Well, yeah, I mean, we did a coding challenge.

I guess what I'm saying is, though, that... So what's the alternative to that coding challenge? I mean... Yeah, no, no. The best way to determine, Friedberg, to answer your question, the best way to determine if a person can do a job... If you don't want to outsource it to a logo like Harvard or Stanford, which have worked in the past, is to watch them do the job. That is the number one day to do it. And the way to do that is to hire them for projects.

or do internships. And that means you have to invest in what's called professional development. And that slows companies down. So the hack is to just pick a logo. But I, for example, in our venture firm created a training program for associates, and we invested in that. And we hire three at a time, and two of them make it on typically, sometimes just one who hit our notes, and the other ones move on. And so I think you have to invest.

in your own professional development in your organization. And the organizations that do that then succeed and have a massive competitive advantage because they have their own training program and way to evaluate talent. That's one way. Doing a code-a-thon and scoring people is another way. Having an AI interviewer is another way. So you can interview 10,000 kids instead of interview the 50 that you chose out of Harvard because Harvard is your first filter.

So the real question, Chamath, is like, what are the mechanisms by which employers are going to create new filtering systems? And I think that there's a lot that we just we just kind of went through three examples, but I don't know if the brand holds over time. Well, here's the thing that what you're saying doesn't address. There are just a lot of kids that aren't ready to bloom when they're 18 or 19 or 20 or 21. And I'm not sure that, you know, I'll just take myself as an example.

was a marginal performer in university, but I had co-op. I did well in co-op jobs. Those co-op jobs were because these employers only wanted to recruit from the University of Waterloo. Now, if I had to compete with 50,000 kids, I'm pretty sure I would not have gotten it because I was a bit of a layabout. But then, you know, when I got into the professional working world, after a couple of years, everything just kind of clicked.

So I think the problem that we'll have is in the absence of brand, it's just going to be very difficult to differentiate oneself and filter people. And I think that what Jason says becomes the huge problem, which is then the burden of professional development. for all these young kids is extremely heavy. So I think that the idea of all of this tooling is good and it's necessary, but I think it's insufficient. There's something else that we need.

Because I think that being able to differentiate yourself in a coding challenge is not the future either. It's for a very, very narrow class of person. Look, project-based work, social adjustment, there are clearly other really important skills.

development cycles that are needed for people. It's not just dumping knowledge into your brain. This isn't like the matrix where you can just turn on the knowledge and gain it. And so I do agree. I think that there are other systems by which that will happen. And those systems will output filters.

I'm just not sure it's the same system that we've used for the last 250 years. It's not. I think that's the really interesting part of the discussion we've got to, Friedberg, is that we had an incredible system of a series of layered iconography.

That indicated, hey, you get 10 people from this group, 100 from this group, and you slot them in. And hey, your company is going to operate. And then parents don't have to worry. The students don't have to worry. Nor do the companies. In this new world. The companies have an opportunity by creating professional development. And you know what? The people who couldn't get into Harvard because they didn't have the connections, they weren't legacy, or they didn't have the wherewithal to.

pay for SAT tutors or whatever bullshit that it took to hack your way in and have a legacy family member or whatever racist policies they had and didn't let Asian people in because they didn't have the right personalities. All that nonsense goes away. And that actually benefits. Their grades were too good. Right. Exactly. Their performance was too high. In all fairness, you did too well. It's like the dumbest thing I've ever heard. But here's the good news.

Anybody can build a project in the world and refine their skills right now based on all the information that's on the internet. And you and I, Chamath, are part of that group of people. made our own luck, we made our own projects, we had some level of grit and autonomy and self reliance to do that. And, you know, the feedback I got from our previous discussion about this is everybody talking about

how poor people as a group can never, ever strive and never build anything. The truth is, it's the easiest it's ever been to build a company to build a project. and to be independent as a creator of a product or service in the world. It's the easiest it's ever been. It requires the least capital and the least amount of time. So we're selling a narrative to people that they're helpless when in fact they are super, super empowered. The only thing you can't do is put yourself into $200,000 in debt.

Because you'll never get out of it. I actually think this is a huge, beautiful opportunity to reset the system. But it's not going to be like going to, you know. a supermarket and picking the brands you want and then filling positions. You're going to have to be self-reliant for all the students out there. And that's what Peter Thiel got right. You got to give a shout out to Peter Thiel here, I think, Freeberg. When he did the Thiel Fellowship, the way they picked people was their...

They had a mission to accomplish something in the world and they were making progress towards it. That's actually the criteria they used. Did you have enough inner resolve to actually pick a mission? And did you actually do anything to steer yourself towards it? And when you make it a competitive, you know, sort of program like that, they just pick the people who pick the most interesting missions and have made the most progress.

But there's definitely going to be a hole left in society if these degrees do not correlate with performance and reality. All right, on Tuesday, Grammarly, I'm a huge fan of that product, acquired Superhuman.

That's that amazing, super fast AI email tool from Raul, of which I was the first investor in. Superhuman had raised $114 million. It was valued at $825 million during peak ZERP. According to Reuters, Superhuman has annual revenue of $35 million and Grammarly seems to be building a little bit of a suite of AI workplace tools.

They bought Coda. I was not an investor in, but I am a huge fan of that product as well. It's similar to Notion, another product I'm a huge fan of. They bought Coda back in December. And then on top of that... figma filed their s1 q1 revenues 228 million you remember they were going to get bought by adobe before before it got stopped and uh they have 13 million monthly active users a billion and a half in cash no debt and uh

Turns out CEO Dylan Field has 75% voting power, so he's in founder mode. Very nice. And? also a teal fellow, a really interesting cat. I've had him on my other pod. Figma is going to try to raise 1.5 billion in their IPO. That would match CoreWeave. That was the biggest tech IPO of the year so far. And we are on a heater. circle went public that was up 7x from its IPO peak and chime went public slightly higher than its IPO price you had eToro

Hinge Health also went public. Wealthfront, which I was an angel investor in. They just filed to go public. Yum, yum. And a bunch of M&A transactions. We talked about DoorDash made two purchases. Sam Altman bought two companies at OpenAI. and tons of M&A happening at the same time. According to Polymarket, 52% chance of a rate cut in September, 46% chance of no change. So we're definitely not getting an increase according to the sharp money.

And I think Powell said he would have cut if there weren't the tariff curveball thrown into the system, which is, I think, what most of us thought. And Chamath, you talked about all this sideline cash. sitting there in money market accounts markets at an all-time high uber blew past 88 so i should be retired right now what are your thoughts on m&a ipos feels like man we've got a really

frisky, hot market right now. Does it make you nervous or does it feel like this is where we should have been all along and that Biden maybe was putting a headwind against all this? Yeah. So here's the crux of the issue. I think this is the intersection of a lot of really interesting things happening right now. You have meta. giving individual human beings $300 million to $500 million packages like their NBA first-team all-stars. OpenAI, their revenue numbers just leaked.

They're forecasting $13 billion in 2025, spiking to $125 billion in 2029. You have Anthropic, their revenue. by 2027 is forecasted to be about 35 billion. So what does all of this tell you? To be honest, it's telling me that The state of software is a little unclear. Meaning, I actually believe the OpenAI in anthropic numbers. I understand why Facebook is now

spending as if there's an existential risk. And I think the existential risk is that these models could be so foundational to how social experiences and work are done, that it starts to absorb a lot of other stuff. So the question is, how do other tools fit into a workflow when these things become so central?

to how people both enjoy their free time as well as spend their productive time. And I think when you look at that, You look at Figma, what I would say is on the surface, in the absence of these AI businesses, I would say, man, what a gangbusters business growing by 40 something percent a year at this scale.

Adjusted, I think operating margins are 18%. I don't like adjusted because it's adjusted for stock-based comp. I don't know what it is when you add that back in. But the point is, it's a phenomenal business. The question that I think the institutional investor will have is, what am I buying? And does this revenue growth sit adjacent? to core model revenue growth, because the big question that we have yet to answer, and this is not a Figma specific issue, it is an industry wide issue.

is how much do these foundational models absorb into what they do for what you pay them? And I don't think we know the answer to that yet. So if all of these things just become excellent coding tools,

then all of this high level software is free and clear, right? It's in the safe zone. But I think the problem is we don't know that that's the case, you know? And so I think in the IPO, what you're probably going to see... is people approach this company the same way that they approach all non-core AI IPOs, which is that it's a business that you love to own for a year or two.

But if there's a depression in valuation, it's because people cannot underwrite years three, four, and five. Freeberg, do you believe that the Star Trek communicator just double click on your pendant? Ask the computer to do something means there's one piece of software in the world that does everything and all this long tail of business software just goes away? And if so, on what timeline? No. Okay.

Yeah. I mean, this speaks to revenue quality, revenue stability. I think you used the term, how brittle is it, Chamath? What are your thoughts on Chamath's angle here of that unknown? Where would you fall either way? Are we going to have a suite of products or does it kind of become more narrow? Well, it depends for what application. I think Figma has done a classic land and expand.

in terms of who they initially go after and then what the suite of tools that they offer does. By expanding that, they now can offer a bunch of different people within an organization a set of tools to help them all. collaboratively developed products and services. And you can see that in some of the numbers. Revenue growth is on the order of 40 some odd percent. They ran a 43% operating cash flow margin in Q1.

In Q1 of this year, Figma generated $95 million of free cash flow. They've got net revenue retention of like 130%. So this land and expand is proven out. And there's real durability, it looks like, to this business for now.

But to Chamath's point, like what does three to four years from now look like? Does this get absorbed into chat GPT? You could say that about any software at any point in time. I think the thing that makes this AI era different is that that transformative shift can happen overnight.

where suddenly someone else launches a service that completely obviates another service because of what AI can do. But I think Figma has done a great job staying out of the curve. The free money, I think, trade, instead of having to bet up or down, Jason, on AI.

I would if I could get like 50 or 100 million dollars of Figma, I would probably be long it and I would short an equivalent quantum of Adobe and I would just book the spread and I think you make a ton of money that way. That's a safer trade because

You know, even if the AI model thing comes around the corner, we don't see it. The person who's going to take a retrade on valuation faster than Figma will be Adobe. And so you'll be hedged and you'll probably make money that way. We look at something. in terms of not just the quality of revenue in our investment firm, we look at the durability of it. Like, can this exist two, three, four years from now? And is the value accruing so much to the user that the amount they're paying

They just never think, I should swap this out. I should replace it, right? And the revenue durability of your iPhone is a good example of it, despite people not renewing your phone every year. You still can't think there's no better option than an iPhone right now. Even my Google Pixel 9 fold as great as it is. It just feels like that revenue is still durable. I wonder when it becomes less durable. Can I push back on this?

I think the question that it brings up is not whether the individual person can whip out a card and pay for it in four years. It's whether that individual person actually exists. And so the consumer with that amount of money to spend. No, no, no, no, no. Meaning like, we don't know what the layoff cycle and the pattern of layoffs inside of companies may be with AI. Meaning if we all become more generalized, skilled workers.

and there are maybe many, many, many more companies, then the odds are more likely that you provision highly skilled, vertically specific work to a set of agents. If that's true, then the tools that created incredible durability when the organizational chart of a company supported vertical specialization won't exist. When instead you have horizontal capabilities that you work across. An example. I think that that's the big question that AI will.

will bring to bear. And again, it's not going to be overnight. But that's where people will front run those trades in the market specifically, if they sniff this out, we'll want to price that 24 and 36 months forward and say, this is what the end state looks like. A way to sort of for people to understand that is imagine you outsource HR and you don't have a six person HR company like you talked about two years ago.

And then you don't need HR software. So your point, each group has a set of SaaS software and tools it uses. If that group goes away because it's just abstracted into the AI machine, outsourced. There's nobody to buy it in the organization. There's nobody going to the CFO saying, I need this HR software. I need this project management software. I think it's a really interesting point. And the way as you, for a founder of Freeberg to avoid this is to have.

a product that services many different needs for those customers or that organization. I think that's why I like these tools like Coda and Notion is they kind of infect many different departments in the organization. This has been an amazing summer episode.

of the all in podcast we weren't going to do it this week but we said you know what we wanted to talk about a couple of issues friedberg we wanted to see each other and uh it's the slowest news week of the year but we wanted to get together and hash out some of these issues

Anybody got big plans for the weekend and any recommendations for people? I did some books to read. You guys got any shows or books you're reading right now? Any albums you're listening to? Any things you're obsessed with? I'm reading Modern Poker Theory by Michael Acevedo. Oh, really? This goes into GTO and that kind of stuff? Yeah, fabulous book. And what's your big takeaway thus far? Do you have something that you wrote a note about or you highlighted?

No, I mean like I'm just tuning up my game. Always tuning up my game. Oh, you're doing a little toony tune? I mean, I hope that- Is that because we have something going on in November? You want to do well. We can't talk about that. We can't talk about that. Well, I don't know if this, if this poker thing happens, maybe we can't play poker anymore in America. Oh yeah. We didn't mention this, but the big bill says, I don't know. Maybe you can't be.

We didn't talk about it, but man, that's the reason to get up in arms about this bill. If it gets rid of the poker ledger, what do we do with the ledge? No, the ledger will survive, actually. Actually, this reinforces the value of the ledger because you'll just run the ledger infinitely. Forever. You may have to have an infinite ledge. Never settle. Never settle. I was thinking my proposal for the ledge was if you're under 100 dimes, you roll.

If you're over a hundred times, you're clear, you know, like each year at the end of the year, because it's just not worth the, you know what I'm saying? It's not worth the tax implications. Well, we may have to create like an offshore blocker.

Fund it with stable coins. I mean, the whole thing is going to... It's getting really complicated. Our lawyers and accountants are going to have a field day with this once this passes. Just so we can flip coins and play bomb pots. Freeberg, are you watching any shows or movies? Maybe you could...

Maybe you could give us one of your great deep pulls for a science fiction film that people should watch this weekend if they want to get some joy. Maybe Silent Running. You like Silent Running. Logan's Run. Logan's Run. silent running those are good show 1967 yeah and and i think oh i watched the bob dylan flick on the flight to italy oh shout out to timothy chalamet what a great film i mean he okay i have to be i have to be honest with you i was

not a super fan of Bob Dylan's music before. Yeah. But then I was like, wow, the body of work is really impressive. Let me give you two. And sorry, and Joan Baez. And their music together. Incredible. I mean, I was a little short on Joan Baez too. And I was like, this was a mistake. I'm just going to give you three albums to listen to. Blood on the Tracks. I want you to listen to Blood on the Tracks.

Then I want you to listen to Infidels, which is like his best of the 80s. Infidels and Blood on the Tracks. Those are two, and Empire Burlesque. A third one, Empire of Bolesk and Infidels from the 80s. This is Dylan at the really interesting height of creativity. And then Blood on the Tracks, post his 60s, 70s faux rock stuff in that transition.

People consider Blood on the Tracks the seminal album. I will also give you a deep pull of Straight Legal with an incredible track, Changing of the Guard. This you'll love, Chamath, because you also like the War on Drugs. War on Drugs, very influenced by that era. So you got Blood on the Track, Street Legal, Infidels, and Empire Burlesque. Those are J. Cal's Dylan choices. I hate drugs. War on Drugs. Did Bob Dylan do drugs? I mean, it was famous that he, I think.

He was on speed for a little bit in the 70s, reportedly, and that's where he had a lot of productive days. But I think he introduced the Beatles to LSD was the rumor. Freeberg, your thoughts on my Dylan selections, and do you have one of your own? I'll leave it to you, J. Cal. You got any movies or something? I did recently rewatch The Arrival by Denis Villeneuve. How do you pronounce his last name? Villeneuve.

He's doing the new Bond. That's going to be great. He's doing the new Bond. All right, everybody. We will see you next time on the world's number one podcast. Sexy Poole will be back. Love you, besties. Love you, boys. Bye-bye. We'll let your winners ride. Rain Man David Sacks. And it said we open source it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it. Love you, Wesley. I'm the queen of kinwop.

We should all just get a room and just have one big, huge orgy, because they're all just useless. It's like this, like, sexual tension, but they just need to release them out. Wet your feet. Wet your feet. Merchies are back.