00:00:00
This is what we need. Let him go. >> All right, here we go. >> This is Jason in the corner warming up.
00:00:04
>> Two. Shut the up, Freeberg. It's my show. Three. Two. All right, everybody.
00:00:08
Welcome back to the number one podcast in the world. The podcast I, Jason Cowakanis, named, created, and I'm the
00:00:15
executive producer for life. With me, my three Miss Crant friends, Chimath Poly Hapatia, our dictator. Love you,
00:00:21
brother. Good seeing you. Uh David Freedberg, our Sultan of Science and Yeah. Thesar. Yeah. Who's now made his
00:00:32
way down to Austin. Welcome, brother. Let's go shooting. Let's get those beef
00:00:35
ribs. David Saxs, how you how you uh how you settling in to the great state of Texas. Everybody wants to know, David,
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>> I'm loving the 70 degree weather. Is it like this all year round? >> You know, it's uh this is a very
00:00:50
wonderful time of year. uh you miss the two weeks where it goes to freezing temperatures. We have 10 days of
00:00:55
freezing temperatures and then we have 80 days of 100 degree temperatures, but you'll be on a yacht or Italy or
00:01:01
somewhere uh during that like the rest of us. That's basically all you need to
00:01:05
know about Austin. Just get out during the summers cuz it's brutal. That's it.
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Everything else is fan freakingastic. But in all seriousness, >> you're here. You're here. You're you've
00:01:15
moved. You've doiciled in Texas. This is This is This has happened. >> It happened in December.
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>> Yes. >> And so we closed on a new house. We moved in. Went to the DMV. I signed a
00:01:30
lease for an Austin office for craft. >> Nice. >> It's done. >> It's done.
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>> It's done. >> Okay. I got to I'll get you a dentist and whatever else you need.
00:01:39
>> I got a doctor, too. >> Okay. Does this mean I have to bring Moose back? This has been the big
00:01:44
discussion in our house. Does this mean we lose Moose or do we have you in custody?
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>> He needs a significant acreage to run around. We know that. >> Oh, he does. He does. But he misses you
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and I and we'll definitely bring him by for a visit. >> And we'll we'll be playing some back gam
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smoking some cigars. >> You got to come by. >> Cannot wait. Shamath, what about you guys? You guys
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going to come down? Two of four besties. >> Matt and I started the process in
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December. We are coming to check things out. We have not made any final decisions though.
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>> Okay. Shout out to our boy Ro Kana for driving everybody out of the state.
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>> So, here's the funniest thing is we're all in the chat group discussing the
00:02:21
California wealth tax, whether people are going to leave or not. So, Chimath, he's making a big show. I'm going to
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stay and fight. I'm not leaving my home. They can't drive me out. And then
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meanwhile, I get a call from my broker who says she's helping Chimath find a
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place. >> UHOH. WHAT'S GOING ON? >> IS CHAMOTH DOING BACKDOOR TRADE? I'm
00:02:41
shocked that Shamat tells you one thing and is doing another. >> Oh my god.
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>> He's at least hedging his bets. >> He's hedging his bets.
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>> A lot of people are hedging their bets. A lot of people are >> Serge in Florida. He got a I'm sorry. Uh
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Larry's got a beautiful place in Florida. I see. According to the news, a lot of people and I saw Governor Abbott
00:02:59
uh reached out to you. >> That's right. He welcomed me to Texas on X. A lot of people did.
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>> Michael Dell did Ted Cruz. >> Ted Cruz. And yeah, it was a real welcome reception. It's funny. I never
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got anything like that when I was in California. >> Jason, I I put it on. >> The politicians were never
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>> They weren't embracing you. >> Yeah, they were embracing me. I don't
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know why. >> Who knows? I put this on X. But when you look at our friends that all explicitly
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left, it's about half a trillion of net worth, which I think is very bad for the
00:03:33
long-term budget of California. then I can pick about 25 people just off the top of my head. And then if you
00:03:41
think about all the people that will stay and fight, I still intend to stay and fight, but where if we're forced to
00:03:48
look down the barrel of a an asset tax that has god knows what methodology, >> it's the only thing that's united
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everybody on the left and the right. Even Reed Hoffman thinks this is insane. I think a lot of other people will
00:04:02
leave. It's probably half the total wealth that the budget estimated would be available to be taxed will be gone.
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>> Wow. I mean, these are I I don't understand. >> That has huge implications to the social
00:04:15
programs and the general budget of California. >> Listen, I think this is going to be a
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topic. This is a prediction. I think this is going to be a topic throughout the year because it's not going away.
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They're gathering signatures right now. >> I agree. >> And we're going to find out in say April
00:04:29
whether it's on the ballot. Now, it's possible they don't gather the
00:04:32
signatures, but they only need about 850,000 of them. If it gets on the ballot, you know, again, we'll know in
00:04:39
just a few months. There's going to be a huge freakout and I think there'll be a
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lot of people who will say, "I can't take the risk. They're going to leave
00:04:45
the state." So, I think there's going to be a rush for the exits. There's going
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to be all sorts of repercussions from that. Then, there'll be an election in
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November. Obviously, we'll find out if it passes or not. And then there'll be
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legal challenges. So, this is going to be a saga. I don't think this is over by
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a long shot. And quite frankly, even if it's beaten in 2026, I think a lot of
00:05:06
people expect that some version of this comes back in 2028, which is the thing that kind of pushed me over the edge in
00:05:11
terms of leaving is I don't think this problem is going away. It's very difficult if you're an entrepreneur with
00:05:17
a good idea to start building here because if you get stuck in success with a bunch of illquid stock and have no way
00:05:24
to pay 5% of that value, you're going to bankrupt your own company. It just doesn't make any sense.
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>> And what if your company goes to zero the next year, which can totally happen
00:05:34
with private companies? You still owe the tax bill. >> Yeah. I don't know how that reverses
00:05:38
itself. It's a terrible idea. I mean, I was talking to Roana and Eric Swallwell
00:05:43
who we had on the program and I told these guys like these dopey Democrats, you have to stop fraud first before you
00:05:51
start seizing people's assets or start a discussion about raising taxes. And you
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know, we had Nick Shirley on last week who was doing his investigative journalism. Shout out to Shirley. And uh
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how do we sell to the American public that we want to seize their assets while and then sending it out the back door to
00:06:12
fund fraud? That makes no sense. It's a leaky bucket. So fix the bucket first
00:06:19
and then let's have an honest discussion about what the right tax rate is and and
00:06:23
why do this with a unique tax? Why not just put a point onto capital gains or income tax and and have that discussion?
00:06:30
>> That's a great point. You could also do what Bill Aman suggested, which is stop
00:06:34
allowing these margin loans. There's a lot that actually live off of margin. Is
00:06:39
it a good idea? Yes and no. Depending on the asset base you have, and if the tax
00:06:43
laws changed, we would all change the approach. >> You mentioned that Larry and Sergey have
00:06:49
left the state and they're probably getting dragged for that. But one of the
00:06:52
reasons why I think they kind of have to is because of the super voting stock provision in this thing where the way
00:06:59
they calculate the value of your stock is not based on its liquid market value but if you own super voting shares they
00:07:06
multiply your ownership your super voting by the market cap of the company and they deem your shares to be worth
00:07:11
that. Yeah. >> So for example Larry and Sergey I think they combined have voting power of about
00:07:17
52% of Google. So what's Google worth these days? uh 4 trillion >> and a half trillion. 4 trillion.
00:07:23
>> Okay. So now I think I mean they're very wealthy guys. I think they're each each
00:07:27
worth whatever 100 billionish or whatever it is >> I think. Yeah. >> 200. But now their net worth will be
00:07:33
deemed to be I guess each one of them would be deemed to be roughly one trillion each. Not the call it 200
00:07:41
billion. So the 5% tax for them is more like a 25% tax of all their net worth. So it becomes and it becomes it becomes
00:07:49
50 because you'd have to sell more than that to overcome the drag of selling to
00:07:53
generate 25 billion or 50 billion of net worth. You have to sell 2x that because
00:07:57
you have to pay taxes on that, >> right? So now what what is the point of having that super voting provision in
00:08:03
there? It's just totally punitive and vicious. >> All right, so let's just go with a quick
00:08:07
prediction here. >> I'm going to call an audible. We're gonna get into the prediction show,
00:08:11
folks. We've been delaying this prediction show because the world is moving at an incredible pace and the
00:08:16
news is just, let's just call it what it is. It's just intense. And we have a lot
00:08:20
of stories you all want us to to cover. We will cover them, but we're going to
00:08:24
start with our prediction show. Just lightning round prediction here. Does this seizure tax, I'm going to call it
00:08:30
what it is. It's a seizure tax. They're seizing assets. Does the seizing assets
00:08:34
tax go into effect or not? Does it pass or not? Freeberg, you're first. Yes or
00:08:39
no? Give us a percentage poly marketed. >> Well, does it get on the ballot first
00:08:43
and then does >> Well, we know it's going to get on the ballot. I think we agree with that. But
00:08:47
not correct. >> Oh, we don't know. So then I'll make it a two-parter. Fine. Does it get on the
00:08:51
ballot? Does it pass? Chimoth, you seem ready to go. Go. >> No. Free. Go ahead.
00:08:55
>> I don't think it's going to get on the ballot. >> Oh, >> I agree with that.
00:08:59
>> In California 100%. >> All right. Here's your poly market, everybody. Shout out to Shane. No,
00:09:04
>> this is to make the ballot. This is to make the ballot. >> This is the question.
00:09:09
Will the billionaires to Austin tax, wealth tax, drive people uh will it make it onto the California ballot? Lightly
00:09:17
traded currently at 69%. >> But you see how much lower it was? That spike happened after Roana elevated the
00:09:25
issue. So when it became a cause celeb among progressives and Bernie Sanders weighed in, it spiked up from what was
00:09:32
it like 45% to 80%. >> Okay. So when Roana committed political sapuku, uh, it drove up. Maybe he had a
00:09:39
bet. Maybe he placed a bet. >> I don't think it's political suicide for
00:09:43
him. There's only two ways it doesn't get on the ballot, right? One is >> if the SCIU uh, which is the union that
00:09:51
supported this, proposed it, >> doesn't have the money to pay to collect
00:09:55
the signatures. >> But I, you would think that they would, right? >> Mhm. 8 million or so is roughly what it
00:10:02
costs to gather the signatures for these types of things. Clearly, they can find
00:10:06
850,000 people in California who support it >> if they're willing to put the effort in.
00:10:11
The other possibility is that the powers that be, let's call it Gavin Newsome and
00:10:15
the machine are able to negotiate >> with this union to get them to stand down. And I don't have any insight into
00:10:23
that because that's obviously Democrat politics, not Republican politics. H but
00:10:29
Freeberg and Chimat might have some information. You have some insight. I don't know. We're going to we're going
00:10:33
to leave it at that. >> But if it does get on the ballot, what do you think the odds are that it
00:10:37
passes? >> I think it's going to be a really important >> 40% >> moment for people to vote
00:10:44
the ability to be industrious and have agency or what did Mamani say? It's rugged individualism versus
00:10:53
>> collectivism also known as communism as in collect. We collect your assets,
00:10:58
Jamal. >> He said that we're going to replace >> the fragility of rugged individualism
00:11:04
with the warmth of collectivism. >> I mean, at least he's saying it out
00:11:10
loud. I I like this new I like these new politicians just telling you straight up
00:11:15
what we're doing. >> Well, his new housing commissioner, have you seen this?
00:11:18
>> Yeah. The white lady's like, "White people must suffer." And then she's like
00:11:21
she had these things where she's like, "I see white babies in the airport and
00:11:25
it makes me mad." And I'm like, really? This is crazy. >> Um, what man broke up with this lady?
00:11:32
Because that dude >> has created a monster. >> Didn't she say something like, "We need
00:11:37
to introduce a a new relationship between >> white people and property and their
00:11:42
property rights or something." >> Yeah, exactly. >> I mean, they're saying it out loud now.
00:11:45
And then I guess she had a mental breakdown and started crying when they came to see her. I
00:11:51
>> No, no. What happened is they pointed out that her parents own a multi-million
00:11:55
dollar home and then she broke down in tears. >> Oh, her mom's a white supremacist. I
00:11:59
didn't realize her mom was a white supremacist. That explains it all because this is all about her mom.
00:12:04
>> I feel bad for her parents. >> Oh god. Can you imagine your imagine one
00:12:09
of your kids goes and does this and says, "We have to go collect your houses." I mean, listen, let's do it.
00:12:15
Let's do what everybody wants to hear. Our predictions for 2026. We've been
00:12:20
pushing it off. We're going to give it to you right now. We always like to start since uh you know we got into
00:12:25
politics here on the program at some point. The biggest political winner, last year's prediction for biggest
00:12:30
political winner for 2025 to remind everybody. Freeberg said young candidates. Well done. Gavin who was on
00:12:36
the show sitting in for Sachs who was busy joining the administration. He said Trump and centism would be the biggest
00:12:44
political winner. Chimath, you said fiscal conservatives and who asked for restrained spending. It was a good
00:12:51
thought and I said Gen X and Elder Millennials, the JD Vance, Tulsi Sachs group. So, let's go around the horn
00:13:00
here. I wonder Friedberg, who you think will be the biggest political winner of 2026? Freeberg, your chance. Democratic
00:13:07
Socialist of America, the DSA, just like the MAGA movement took over the Republican party, I think the DSA is
00:13:12
taking over the the the Democratic party. And I think that's the move we'll
00:13:15
see solidified in 2026. >> Okay. Tight is right. Well done. Chama, who do you got for biggest political
00:13:22
winner 2026? >> Whoever is going to fight waste, fraud, and abuse at the >> federal, state, and local level.
00:13:29
>> Got it. So, it's an open lane to anybody. >> It's an open lane. It's a political
00:13:35
gambit that I think will work really well in 26. >> Very nicely done. David Saxs. Gosh, I
00:13:41
can't imagine who you would pick as a political winner in 2026. >> Well, I'm gonna go ahead.
00:13:46
>> I'm gonna say that the Trump boom is going to be the biggest political winner
00:13:50
of 2026. The good economic news start breaking out before 2025 was even over. We have
00:13:56
2.7% inflation. Core CPI at 2.6. Both those are 40 basis points below expectations. 4.3% GDP growth in Q3.
00:14:06
Lowest trade deficit since 2009. The Challenger Gray report out today showed that job cuts dropped 50% from November,
00:14:13
which was itself down about 50% from October. >> Give us a number for the boom. What is
00:14:17
it going to be? >> Hold on. The S&P 500 keeps making record highs. People are paying less for gas.
00:14:24
Mortgage costs have fallen by $3,000. Real wages are up over $1,000. And by June, I predict we will see more rate
00:14:31
cuts, possibly 75 to 100 basis points. And big tax refunds are coming in April. thanks to a bigger standard deduction
00:14:39
and no tax on tips overtime and social security. So I think there is so much good economic news coming and it's
00:14:46
already started and I think that it's going to have a huge impact not just on
00:14:49
the economy but also on political perceptions for next year. >> Pick your GDP for this boom year. Three,
00:14:55
four, five or six points sacks. I'm pinning you down. >> Pick four. >> If you make it a prediction then I'd
00:15:01
like to pick as well. >> Okay. I'm going to go sacks first. >> I'm going to go for 5%.
00:15:05
>> Within a rounding error I believe 5%. >> Sure. Sure. Plus or minus? Chabat. You
00:15:09
want to pick a number? You said you did. >> I think the lower bound is five. I think
00:15:12
the upper bound is 62. >> Wow. Incredible. Well, just to put that in perspective,
00:15:19
if we print six, the only country in the modern world that we think of as a quasipier competitor that has printed
00:15:26
six is the Chinese. In a period where it had complete and total coordination and
00:15:31
domination of a federal, state, and local economy. And the fact that we can do it under democracy and capitalism
00:15:41
is outrageous. Freeberg, do you want to take a stab at that? >> 2026 growth. Yeah. 4.6%.
00:15:47
>> Okay. I was going to go with between four and five as well. In terms of my
00:15:51
prediction for the big political winner, I went back and forth between the emperor's apprentice, Darth Vance, JD
00:15:56
Vance, or the Mandami moment. I said Darth Vance for a couple of reason. uh you know he is out there defending Trump
00:16:06
uh and he's surging on poly market and in the polls. He's obviously the co-pilot of MAG. He's done a great job
00:16:11
of being second seat. He is not usurping President Trump which would be a big political mistake. He's really
00:16:17
navigating being the co-pilot there. But he is the most popular politician clearly at Turning Point USA and he is
00:16:24
the OG in the America first America only moment. But I'm going to give the edge
00:16:28
to the Mandami moment. He's 34 years old. We've got Ro Khan at 49 pivoting
00:16:33
into a socialist. And I think that's because Democrats believe the easiest way to win in 2026 is to go full
00:16:40
socialist. And Trump has, I think, given this lane because he's forgotten about
00:16:45
the working man and woman in America. Net disapproval for Trump on the economy, 58% inflation. Despite what Sax
00:16:53
is saying there, it's still closer to 3% than 2%. And Trump just announced he
00:16:58
wants to increase the military budget by 50% while people are still complaining about their healthcare. And Trump has
00:17:05
turned into a complete neocon, bombing seven countries this year and uh threatening to take over Colombia and
00:17:12
Greenland. Who knows if that's Trump being Trump or if that's reality, but
00:17:17
Trump becoming a neocon was not on anyone's bingo card. And uh I think Trump may have incited and given a bunch
00:17:24
of fuel to the Mandami moment by not addressing the American people's needs and going for the international
00:17:33
interventionism. Okay, now >> that was like three different answers right there.
00:17:38
>> My answer is clearly Mandami. My second place though I like to always explain my
00:17:42
thinking is Darth Vance. JD Vance biggest political loser. Last year's predictions I said Putin. Gavin said
00:17:49
Putin. Chimath, you said progressivism and Freeberg, you said the pro-war neocons would be the biggest political
00:17:57
losers. Uh, let's get into who we think will be the loser this year. Uh, Sax,
00:18:03
why don't you start? Who's your big political loser in 2026, you think? >> Well, I said democratic centism or
00:18:09
democratic centrist, which is sort of the flip side of you guys saying that socialism or progressives are uh
00:18:17
winners. And there's two reasons for this. One is because the socialist ideology is sort of ascended among the
00:18:23
democratic base, especially the young people who support Maani, things like that. Unfortunately, our universities
00:18:28
are woke madrosas have done a terrible job educating these students and they've
00:18:34
brainwashed a lot of them into this woke ideology. But also, there's the fact
00:18:39
that there's so few House districts anymore that are truly competitive. So both the Cook Political Report and Larry
00:18:47
Sabado's Crystal Ball, they say that there's fewer than two dozen House races
00:18:51
that are genuinely competitive going into 2026. That's because of uh gerrymandering and so on. So if you're a
00:18:58
Democrat incumbent who is in one of these districts, like all but a couple dozen of them, your only real threat to
00:19:06
losing your office is from the left, right? It's some young AOC type coming up to challenge you. And so you don't
00:19:13
want to expose your left flank. So even the Democratic moderates have been shifting further and further to the
00:19:19
left. And so you see this AOC mammi effect happening there. So I'm kind of in the same camp as you guys is this is
00:19:27
not a good trend. But uh I put this as biggest political loser. >> Biggest political
00:19:32
>> democratic centism. >> Got it. Chimath, what do you got? >> Can I just go back and just nitpick with
00:19:38
you a little bit? Why do you think progressivism didn't fail? And the only reason I ask
00:19:45
you that is outside of a few pockets of progressivism and specifically Mandani, if you look at the elections in Virginia
00:19:56
or the elections in New Jersey, those are more centrist than progressive. And if you look at the general approval
00:20:02
rates of Democrats, they trended consistently down through 2025 as they handgun themselves about leaving
00:20:10
centrism and embracing progressivism. So the more talking points around progressivism that emerged, the poorer
00:20:16
they performed. So I know your perception or some people's perceptions may be different based on one localized
00:20:23
win, but if you look at the broad trend, it didn't work. I just put that out
00:20:28
there just as just as the facts and not the vibes. >> Well, I don't want it to be true. Just
00:20:32
to be clear, I would >> I'm I'm picking >> I would love for the Democratic party to
00:20:35
be >> I don't want it to be true either, but it does seem >> No, but you like it was wrong and it
00:20:40
wasn't wrong. So, >> well, I it might be a jump ball might be the best way to describe it because you
00:20:44
have effect and >> Okay, just look at the numerical numbers. The trends were horrible. Like
00:20:50
meaning wherever the Democrats started, the more progressive talking points they
00:20:54
added, the poor and poorer they performed, the approval ratings went down, the disapproval ratings went up.
00:21:00
I'm not saying that they didn't win a mayoral race. They did do that. I'm just
00:21:05
saying broadly speaking, nationwide, is the Democratic Party and its embrace of progressivism, at least at the federal
00:21:12
level, has it paid off over 2025? And I would say categorically, mathematically not.
00:21:19
>> Okay. Now going to 2026. What is my biggest political loser? What I would
00:21:24
say is the biggest loser of 26 is the Monroe Doctrine. I think that when historians look back on the Trump
00:21:32
presidency, they're going to rewrite it. I think people have tried to minimize
00:21:36
Trump's worldview as a Trump corollary. I don't think that's what this is. They
00:21:40
even try to minimize it by calling it the Dawn Row doctrine. I don't think that's what this is. I think that there
00:21:45
is a clear Trump doctrine that trumped the Monroe doctrine and I think that is the political loser because there is a
00:21:53
huge body politic that has been built around the Monroe doctrine. How do we view wars? How do we view our spheres of
00:22:02
influence? How do we view economic multilateralism versus unilateralism? All of that is out the window. You know,
00:22:09
we view this as hemispheric dominance. That's Trump. We view it as proactive
00:22:15
and in very specific cases interventionist. We intervene against drug cartels. We control immigration. We
00:22:21
secure vital assets. That was you know not really the scope of the Monroe Doctrine.
00:22:27
We have more transactional relationships quite honestly which allows us to react
00:22:33
in the moment. So I think the Monroe doctrine is the biggest loser of 2026. >> Free your biggest loser 2026.
00:22:42
My biggest political loser of 2026 is the tech industry. I think AI and tech wealth have become the lightning rod for
00:22:49
populism on both sides of the aisle. I think um the right is fracturing a bit where this call it alliance between tech
00:22:56
and MAGA seems to be getting a really strong challenge from the more populist movement. In the same sense the left is
00:23:04
turning hard on tech because of tech's alignment with the right. And so I think
00:23:09
we're going to see in the midterms a really big referendum against the tech industry coming out of
00:23:14
>> good populist women. >> That's a great one. Can I tell you guys
00:23:17
a little story from yesterday? I had a meeting with three very senior sitting senators before I flew back to
00:23:24
California. These are Republican senators and Freeberg. I was surprised exactly what you said. There is a couple of
00:23:33
companies that have exacerbated their frustration. They view those companies, these are techs and the tech leaders of
00:23:41
these companies as just not trustworthy and they've largely been grining these
00:23:48
guys for a long time and they're pretty frustrated with it. So to your point, it
00:23:51
is palpable. >> Look, I can tell you that the natural ally for tech is with MAGA because we
00:23:58
still believe in property rights and innovation. And if the Democratic party is truly going progressive, which means
00:24:04
socialist, they want to rewrite your relationship to property rights, whatever that means, and impose wealth
00:24:10
taxes and the realized gains taxes and all the rest of it. So, look, I don't
00:24:15
think tech has that much of a choice. As Arnold Schwarzenegger said in one of those movies, come with me if you want
00:24:21
to live. >> Come with me if you want to live. Yes. >> Get in the chopper.
00:24:25
>> But let me say this. The reason why there's anger on the populist right is
00:24:29
because they remember the censorship and the deplatforming and the shadow banning and all that kind
00:24:35
of stuff. And what there needs to be is I think there just needs to be some meetings, some truth and reconciliation
00:24:41
that happens between some of these tech leaders and some of these conservative influencers.
00:24:45
>> Guess what, David Tax? I know one guy who can help make that happen. No, I
00:24:49
would I would like to host some of these meetings in 2026 and get these people together because I think that the tech
00:24:55
companies have either realized their mistake or they were pushed into it in a lot of cases by the Biden
00:25:01
administration. >> Yeah, they had a gun to their head. Yeah, >> they had a gun to their head. Now, I
00:25:04
also think that one other mistake they've made is quite frankly they've been donors to only leftwing causes. And
00:25:11
so, if you listen to Cernovich's account, he's like, "Look guys, you
00:25:16
banned us. You cost us our livelihood for years. >> Debbanked us. >> Debbanked us. Where's the restitution
00:25:23
>> or at least at least start giving some support to our conservative cultural?
00:25:28
>> By the way, you nailed it on the head. The senators that I talked to, that's
00:25:31
exactly what they want. They just wanted an apology. Just be honest and say you did it.
00:25:36
>> This asset seizure tax proposal in California and the conversation about
00:25:40
other states, I think, is bringing a lot of people to that table. at least the tech
00:25:48
only maybe contrary to what people may think it may actually be doing >> a lot more positive for the right side
00:26:01
than the left by putting this forward. This may actually be catalyzing a big change in Silicon Valley.
00:26:07
>> Yeah. Yeah. And if you if you think about it, if you were Zuckerberg or you
00:26:11
were, you know, the Google executives and the FBI is telling you, hey, we need you to
00:26:19
take care of these censorship issues. We need you to label these things, etc. You
00:26:24
know, it puts you in a pretty tough situation if the FBI is calling you, if you're trying to do M&A. And then, you
00:26:30
know, look, now M&A under Trump is on fire. We'll talk about that more in our
00:26:35
prediction show. For me, I was going back and forth in my biggest political loser
00:26:42
with these dopey Democrats who are centrists and the the new neocon Trump. Now, I don't know if Trump will continue
00:26:53
these neocon ways. So, I'm going to just align with Sachs here that the centrist
00:26:58
Democrats are going to be this year's biggest political losers. Now that you've mentioned twice that Trump is a
00:27:05
neocon, I have to respond to this. >> No, you don't. You don't have to, but go
00:27:09
ahead. >> Okay. Look, the the problem with neocon regime change operations was I'd say
00:27:15
three-fold. Number one, the invasion. You have this giant invasion, land armies, huge numbers of people getting
00:27:23
killed. Took, you know, months or a year. Took him like a year to get Saddam, right? Number two, you then have
00:27:29
an occupation because whoever you then put in power only stays in power if you have American GIS there pointing the
00:27:36
guns. So you end up with a 10 or 20 year occupation. And then third, you have nation building, which is you end up
00:27:42
spending trillions of dollars basically trying to turn them into us so that our troops can leave. That was the mistake
00:27:49
of Afghanistan and Iraq. But look, what has Trump done that is like any of those
00:27:54
things. There's been no invasion, no occupation, and no nation building. This
00:27:59
war, I guess, with Venezuela, if you want to call it that, it was a flawless operation. It lasted three hours.
00:28:05
>> I mean, I woke up and it was like, you know, the meme where it's like, "Wake
00:28:08
up, honey." It's like, "Wake up, honey. Trump's won another war."
00:28:12
>> It was over before it even started. >> They went in there and they basically
00:28:17
captured Maduro. No Americans were killed. It was absolutely flawless operation. and they are bringing him to
00:28:25
justice. By the way, he begged for it. He's on tape talking a lot of smack at
00:28:29
rallies saying, "Come get me, you know, >> calling the Americans chicken and so
00:28:33
on." So, in any event, he was begging for it. We can go into a lot more of the
00:28:38
the reasons for doing it and defending it, but I just don't think this is a neocon policy. And in fact, it's the
00:28:44
Democrats who've been calling to put in this uh Nobel Prize winner that you interviewed, Freeberg, right? What's her
00:28:51
name? Maria Kito Alonzo. >> Machado. >> Machado. Okay. Anyway. >> Oh,
00:28:58
>> Hector Alzando. I think it's Hector Alzando. I think he did somebody from
00:29:02
the Brat Pack. >> No, she was in Running Man, I think. Anyway, >> exactly.
00:29:08
>> But but >> you're talking about the Cuban Venezuela actress. >> I thought her name was Maria Kinchida
00:29:15
Alonzo. Okay. Maria Karina Machado. Sorry. That's just what I thought of. Miss World Miss World Venezuela 1975
00:29:23
winner Maria. >> Look, the Democrats are are criticizing the administration for not putting her
00:29:28
in power. But look, here's the problem. Nobel prizes don't keep people in power.
00:29:35
Men with guns keep people in power. And she doesn't have the men with guns. So,
00:29:40
it' be American GIS. There would have to be the guns to keep her in power. And
00:29:44
the administration has not done that. They're looking to basically work with
00:29:48
the existing regime. And the big reason why we got sucked into Iraq is because that whole debathification process where
00:29:55
we didn't just get rid of Saddam, we took out the entire elite of the country
00:29:59
which created a huge insurgency. So there's been nothing like that. Jal is what I'm trying to tell you in this
00:30:05
case. It's a whole different paradigm is what I'm trying to tell you. We're gonna
00:30:08
need a new name for it. Maybe Chimath is right. Is definitely not neocon. >> Not neon.
00:30:12
>> Yeah, we might need a new branding for it. depends on, you know, if Trump is
00:30:16
cosplaying Neocon when he says he's going to take Greenland, when he says he's going to take Colombia next, when
00:30:20
he says he's going to take Cuba, he's certainly playing the character of
00:30:24
Neocon uh publicly here. And who knows, that could be Trump just positioning himself and anchoring future
00:30:30
negotiations. But if I was telling you, you know, before the election when you were saying, "Hey, do not let certain
00:30:36
people become president, Nikki Haley, etc., because they're neocons and they're going to go to war with
00:30:42
Venezuela. Are they going to go to war with Iran? Well, that's exactly what Trump has done. And as flawless as our
00:30:47
troops did and my my lord, the we have the greatest military ever. So, just incredible job and shout out to them to
00:30:54
do this and lose no American lives was just unbelievable. And it just says something about the dedication of these
00:31:00
individuals. But things can go wrong no matter how good you are. We could be sitting here right now with 12 captured
00:31:07
Delta Force. We could have 50 dead Americans. >> Where's the war? But if that did, this is where you have
00:31:13
to be intellectually honest. >> If we were dealing with a situation where they didn't pick up the target and
00:31:18
we had lost American troops and god forbid they had taken hostages, we would be sitting here with a much different
00:31:23
discussion and so we have to be very careful. I give but we're not I give Trump, but that is an equal possibility
00:31:29
or certainly a non-zero possibility. Things can go sideways. You sound like when Sam Harris was saying that imagine
00:31:36
if CO actually killed a lot of people then the conversation would be different. Well, it didn't. There was no
00:31:42
war here. And by the way, with dead >> and let's hope there isn't. And let's
00:31:46
hope there isn't. You know, this is why I give Trump a lot of credit. He has
00:31:48
been strategic. I do give you that. >> Stick and move. Stick and move is the
00:31:52
game. >> I pray that he can continue. >> And by the way, record first of all,
00:31:56
even if we took Greenland, it's not going to be a there's 30,000 people who
00:32:00
live there. But I think it's more likely that we'll we'll make a deal. I think
00:32:03
we're going to make an offer they can't refuse. >> Okay. Ken Harry, shout out to our guy
00:32:07
Ken Harry. Maybe you can make a deal. Let's make >> them an offer they can't refuse.
00:32:11
>> Yeah. I mean, how much could it cost? I mean, there's nothing there. Biggest
00:32:16
business winner for 2025. Uh, looks like Freeberg picked robots and autonomous hardware. Year of
00:32:24
the robot. I think if you include robo taxi there, you nailed it. Certainly next year will be the year of optimist
00:32:30
uh 2027. Chimath, you said dollar denominated stable coins. I think uh given what we've seen with regulation,
00:32:37
that was spot on. Gavin, shout out to our friend Gavin. He said big businesses that use AI thoughtfully. Another great
00:32:44
one. I pick Tesla, which is at an all-time high. And Google, which of all of the mag seven crushed is the biggest
00:32:53
winner, and they did 65%. So I know both of those we did. I think W all of us crushed that one. Who do you have
00:32:59
Freeberg as your biggest business winner prediction for 2026? Go ahead, Freeberg.
00:33:04
>> I couldn't decide. My number one is Huawei, which I've mentioned in the past
00:33:07
out of China. I think Huawei's effort to partner with SMIC to go deeper in the
00:33:13
chip stack and they're just firing on all cylinders. I do think keep an eye on
00:33:17
Huawei over the next year. It's um it's going to outperform expectations, at
00:33:21
least the western expectations. And the second is poly market. I think poly markets evolved from being kind of this
00:33:28
one-off quirky prediction market to actually really providing insights into current events and the news in a way
00:33:34
that none of us anticipated. >> And I do expect that after the deal we saw with NY that all of the exchanges
00:33:41
and we're already seeing this with Robin Hood and Coinbase and we should expect
00:33:45
something from NASDAQ this year. Dina Friedman talked to us about this, but I do think that prediction markets could
00:33:51
become not just markets but also news and I think poly markets um just in such a position to have a breakout year.
00:33:59
>> Okay, great one. Chimath, biggest business winner for 2026 after yourself.
00:34:04
Who do you got? >> Yeah, it's hard. I mean, I will pick me. >> Yep, we already done.
00:34:11
>> That one's coming. >> It's already in the books. >> Don't hurt your elbow. Don't hyper
00:34:15
extend your elbow. already in the books. So, can't it's all downhill from here.
00:34:20
>> Nick, we need to use that meme of Obama giving himself a medal. >> Jam is giving himself.
00:34:27
>> I will pick copper. >> Okay, copper. >> We are still completely underestimating
00:34:36
how short we are in terms of the global demand supply dynamics of a handful of critical elements that we need. Again,
00:34:45
in the Trump doctrine view of the world, that is no longer as multilateral as it
00:34:50
was. And we need to have unilateral national security. And if you look through that lens, the asset that is set
00:34:59
up to go absolutely parabolic is copper. And the reason is that it is at least as it stands today the most
00:35:08
useful, cheap, amendable, conductive material that we have. That material manifests in everything from our data
00:35:17
centers to our chips to our weapon systems. It's just everywhere, everywhere, everywhere. And right now,
00:35:25
Jason, we are on a path by 2040 where we will be short about 70% of the global supply at
00:35:34
current course and speed. And uh >> I will pick copper. >> Sax, what do you got? Biggest business
00:35:41
winner of 2026. Your prediction. I said the IPO. I think 2026 is going to be a big year for IPOs. I'm not going to say
00:35:48
which ones. I think there's going to be a bunch of them, a bunch of successful
00:35:51
ones. >> And I think we could see trillions of dollars of new market cap created of
00:35:56
public companies. >> Totally. >> For a while, people were concerned that
00:36:00
the number of public companies were shrinking. Public companies were actually being taken private. This is
00:36:04
going to be a big reversal of that trend. So, I think this be part of the Trump boom will be the idea.
00:36:09
>> I love that one. I like that one. >> Great one. Uh, I went with uh since I
00:36:13
nailed the Mag 7 for last year and picked the highest performer with Google and I placed a bet on that, so I'm
00:36:18
feeling pretty good about it. Uh, my prediction for 2026 is that Amazon is going to have a massive year interesting
00:36:23
>> as they continue to replace humans >> with robots. That's why here's a chart
00:36:28
for you. I've been talking about this a little bit. I think this is the most
00:36:31
important company to watch because Zuk's their self-driving is working. They're
00:36:37
making great progress with it. And here when you look at this chart, you can see
00:36:40
they're essentially flat in terms of hiring humans and they're surging in
00:36:44
deploying robots and they did their whole PR comm strategy of calling them cobots and donating to toys for tots
00:36:52
etc. I think they'll be the first corporate uh singularity which is to say the first company to have more robots
00:37:00
driving their bottom line than humans. So that's my prediction for 2026 is Amazon. And I'm going to place a bet on
00:37:08
that. >> My prediction is that Jayla is such a luck box that he'll end up being right
00:37:12
about Amazon, but not having anything to do with the reason he gave. >> Yeah, right. He'll hire a billion humans
00:37:18
to go do something and it'll be for a different reason. I am a luck box. That
00:37:22
is true. >> It'll just be better free cash flow and all of a sudden more people using AWS
00:37:26
and Jal will be right. Well, I actually I think the reason is if you just if you
00:37:30
think about it, I don't know if you guys have had this experience, but with the
00:37:34
delivery business, which was kind of a dog for a long time, obviously AWS is crushing it, but that delivery business
00:37:40
here in Austin, we get everything the same day. You're going to experience this, David, there are because of the I
00:37:45
think the geography here and the ability to have depot centers very close. Everything you order on Amazon comes
00:37:52
within the same day. >> You know, I've noticed that already. I've already started ordering things
00:37:56
from Amazon. You're right. It was all same day. I'm like, "Wait, what is going
00:37:58
on?" >> That's >> what it is is we have a lot of space 15 miles outside of the city center, 20
00:38:04
cent, and they built these huge um warehouses. So, you just get everything within 4 hours. They're like, "We'll be
00:38:09
right there." It's very bizarre. >> So, Jason, you'll buy like virtues at
00:38:13
like 8:00 a.m. and it arrives by noon. >> Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. And uh when
00:38:18
you put your order in for ethics and morality, it just never shows up. I don't know. It's lost again. Who knows?
00:38:24
It's just incredible. We're just both ends of the spectrum here. Moral. It's like, "Hello, customer
00:38:31
support. I ordered a moral compass 2 years ago. It still hasn't arrived."
00:38:34
Okay. Biggest business loser. >> I love each month. >> It hid behind the 20 billion.
00:38:39
>> It did. Absolutely. >> All I know is I got my beak wet. So, I hope your compass never shows up.
00:38:46
>> You got your beak wet on that deal. >> Well, Sundep came to Besties and he
00:38:51
wanted to collect all besties. We all got to place a little bet and then >> Oh, by the way, by the way, I devested I
00:38:57
devested my Gro shares as part of joining the government back in like February or March.
00:39:02
>> Oh god. >> So, >> oh by the way, by the way, what would that cost you like what the last triple
00:39:07
up? >> No, it was a small position that came from Grock acquiring Sunny's old
00:39:12
company. We didn't invest in Gro, so it wasn't big, but the point was >> Yeah, it's just another example of you
00:39:18
sacrificing for the country, which I give you a lot of credit for. It's good
00:39:21
for Sachs to put that on the record. >> Yeah. >> Well, it's just so ridiculous because
00:39:24
I'm accused of somehow doing this job for money when it just keeps costing me
00:39:27
money. >> It's negative money. >> XAI just raised an up round at twice the
00:39:31
valuation from the last round and we had to divest that too. >> Yeah. No, no, we didn't sit it out. Hold
00:39:37
on. Let's be clear. We didn't sit it out. We divested it. >> So, you place the bet and then before
00:39:45
you get to collect the ticket, you lose the last double up or triple up. The economic cost to Sachs will probably
00:39:51
exceed a billion dollars by the time he leaves. >> Personally, this is crazy. I mean,
00:39:55
people need to know this. It's a very important thing to put on the record. I
00:39:57
think it's important for >> I think everybody should know. All these dumb reporters don't get it, but Sax has
00:40:02
sacrificed >> financially an enormous amount to work on behalf of >> the government and the people. That's
00:40:08
that's really amazing. It's fine. I wouldn't even say anything about it if
00:40:12
it weren't for the fact that we got these mainstream media reporters lying and saying the opposite that somehow
00:40:17
this job is making me money, >> right? >> I wouldn't say a word about it
00:40:20
otherwise. >> Business loser 2025. >> Gavin said federal government service
00:40:27
providers, I guess because of Doge and them being held to the fire uh feet to the fire there to give us a better deal.
00:40:35
Old guard defense contractors like Bowen and Lheed was yours Freedberg and Chimath you said the Max 7 expected
00:40:42
a decrease in uh the record concentration. I said open EI which would see a peak valuation and obviously
00:40:50
I got that wrong. What do you got this year Freeberg? Who do you think is going to be the biggest business loser of this
00:40:54
year? To follow up on Chimath and my conversation at the Christmas dinner, I think these state governments are going
00:41:01
to have a real problem with finding financing because what's going on with the exposees that are underway on waste,
00:41:10
fraud, and abuse in state agencies, I think, is going to lead to a conversation that's going to cause folks
00:41:16
to question the long-term solveny in operations because the response won't be, hey, let's cut out the waste, fraud,
00:41:22
and the abuse. the response is going to be we got to keep it going and that is what is going to give people fear is
00:41:28
that if they did respond call it equivocally to the discoveries that the governments did then I think that
00:41:35
there's an opportunity to continue to be able to borrow and access capital markets but I do worry a lot about state
00:41:41
governments um borrowing. I think the other thing that's going to hit the the
00:41:44
fan this year in state governments is all of these um unrealized pension liabilities. I think when these numbers
00:41:50
start to come out this year and a lot of people are now digging deep into it, folks are going to wake up and be like,
00:41:54
"Holy, there's a ginormous hole in these states and their obligations."
00:41:58
>> And why does the government have to do these pensions? Why can't we do
00:42:01
superanuation like Australia does? We have to get this out of the I love that pick.
00:42:06
>> That's called a defined contribution instead of a defined benefit. And if you
00:42:09
get this defined contribution model and then just have good management, it all works out. So this is basically the
00:42:13
problem with social security. Social Security is a defined benefit and then all the money just doesn't sit anywhere.
00:42:19
It doesn't exist. >> If it was a defined contribution, >> it's just a liability.
00:42:23
>> And let me let me give a shout out. If it was a defined contribution like
00:42:26
Invest America accounts or Trump accounts as they're being called, and you put the money in and you see how
00:42:30
much you have and every year you track it and that's what your retirement is
00:42:32
going to be, just like we might have with our 401ks or our IARS, that is a system that actually has true solveny.
00:42:38
Otherwise, it becomes this runaway train of liability. And that's effectively
00:42:42
what the states have set up. And it's very dangerous. >> And if we were to take government out of
00:42:46
it and then every American just had to put 10, 12, 14% into their retirement account and it was forced, you'd have
00:42:53
happy people who feel some agency in their lives, which the people of Australia do. Chimath, who's your loser
00:43:00
2026? I will pick the software industrial complex. So these are the companies that
00:43:08
sell licensed SAS to the corporations of America. It's about a3 to4 trillion a
00:43:15
year economy. That is separated into three buckets. Bucket one which is the smallest is the initial licensing.
00:43:25
That's probably 5 to 10%. Buckets two and three where all the money is made is
00:43:31
what's called maintenance and migration which is how do I just maintain this big
00:43:37
bulky license that I just bought for $300 million as an example >> or how do I migrate it from product A to
00:43:43
product B. Those last two buckets represent 90% of all the dollars in revenue that's
00:43:50
generated in software. And because of the advancement of these models and the advancement of these technological
00:43:58
techniques that we are all uncovering, building agents, building systems, I think you're going to see that total
00:44:07
economic opportunity shrink and contract aggressively. The companies will still be able to do
00:44:15
their business. It'll just be at a much much lower incremental revenue. the customers will be able to do their
00:44:22
business. They'll have a lot more flexibility and a lot of upstarts I think will have opportunity. I'm
00:44:27
speaking my book obviously, but I'm seeing it on the ground with you have a company building software.
00:44:32
>> Our entire business 8090s business has basically migrated to disrupting
00:44:38
maintenance and migration patterns. I cannot describe how much opportunity there is. It's very tactical, mundane,
00:44:45
not very sexy work, but it's incredibly lucrative. And so I expect that that
00:44:49
thing is going to shrink. It's going to impact SAS companies, public SAS companies particularly quite severely in
00:44:54
20. >> What do you got facts for your biggest business loser of 2026 prediction?
00:44:57
>> For me, we already talked about this, but it was California because of the
00:45:00
wealth tax and also the ownorous regulations driving business and capital out of the state. I hope you guys are
00:45:06
right that it does not make the ballot. If it does, I think there will be a panic and rush for the exits.
00:45:11
Regardless, there's two major refineries closing by the spring. Higher gas prices
00:45:16
will be the result. I just think that the politicians are not doing a good enough job in California dispelling the
00:45:23
fears and the actual hostility of the business environment. >> That's a great one. And I went with
00:45:30
young white collar workers in America. I think they're going to be the biggest
00:45:34
business loser. I think it's getting really hard for them to get entry level
00:45:39
uh jobs. I'm seeing that all over the place because companies are having an easier job uh just automating with AI
00:45:45
than training up Gen Z graduates. That's my belief. That's why I'm launched
00:45:50
founder university on three continents. If you are a young person, you got to be
00:45:54
resilient. You're going to have to be self-reliant independent of what Mandami
00:45:58
Mandami says about collectivism. It's easier to use AI than it is to train up
00:46:04
and we don't have professional development. That needs to come back. I just did an interview with the CEO of
00:46:09
McKenzie, which you may have seen on the feed. And this is the big challenge in corporate America is they're taking out
00:46:14
the bottom two or three rungs and automating stuff. And we really need to develop young people so that they have a
00:46:20
path to take the CEO jobs eventually. And I don't think they're going to have
00:46:24
an easy time doing that. That's why I think all young people should start companies. I am talking my own book. I
00:46:30
am talking about founder.university. Please apply Japan, Saudi, and in America. We're going to help you build
00:46:36
companies. Thank you for my promo, >> Jason. I got a text last night from a
00:46:39
friend and it's in response to your comment about young people not being able to find jobs because of AI, which
00:46:45
is the statement you've made a couple times. He said went to a roundabout of
00:46:49
50 CEOs of public and private companies and asked everyone if they're hiring
00:46:53
junior engineers. Everyone said they are still, but not as much as before because
00:46:58
during co every college lowered the bar on admissions and the talent just isn't
00:47:03
as good anymore. My friend went on and he said, 'You should talk about this to
00:47:07
counter Jal's point about AI taking young people's jobs. We see this with
00:47:11
financial analysts and we see this with sales people we hire. The Gen Z kids are
00:47:16
all really challenging to hire because of cultural issues, not because we're
00:47:21
not hiring them due to AI. So, we try and hire older people primarily to to fill those roles. So, there's a real
00:47:28
interesting point that he was making. I texted a couple of their friends to ask them their opinion and I've heard this
00:47:32
concurrence shout out which is like a lot of people think that recent grads out of college and this may be a co era
00:47:39
phenomenon they just don't seem to have the temperament the motivation the organizational skills
00:47:45
>> executive function yeah >> executive function and by the way some
00:47:48
of our friends who I've talked to who have kids graduating college there's
00:47:52
even a conversation about none of these kids are motivated to get jobs or to make money there's a very weird
00:47:57
phenomenon in the youth right now and this may be a COVID phenomenon and it may be a cultural thing that's part of
00:48:02
the long form of what's going on in our society or it may be a socialist trend
00:48:06
or it may be a populist trend or it may just be that people have gotten too wealthy and the nation has truly split
00:48:11
and you can't climb the ladder anymore. There's a bunch of things going on here,
00:48:15
but I do not think, and I think a lot of people are echoing this, Jal, that challenges that young people are having
00:48:20
finding employment is purely rooted in in an AI and automation phenomenon, but it may be a cultural phenomenon. And so,
00:48:27
I just put that on the plate for you to consider that I don't I do think it's
00:48:31
both. I do think it is partially what you're saying is that maybe these young
00:48:35
folks um have, you know, they're just either entitled or their parents have enough money for them to skate and go
00:48:43
sideways and maybe not be as career motivated. It could be a social thing, it could be a co thing, it could be all
00:48:49
of those and certainly multiffactor. I just know what I see on the ground which is you know so many companies coming to
00:48:55
me saying we can replace the bottom third of these tasks and that those bottom third of tasks are typically done
00:49:02
by young people out of school. So I think both things are probably true to a certain extent and time will tell. I do
00:49:09
think it's going to be challenging and continue to be challenging and you see
00:49:11
that in the numbers from you know Google, Uber, Coinbase, all these companies are doing more with less and
00:49:18
and maybe that's just the nature of AI. Maybe the first thing you do is cut costs. And maybe the second thing you do
00:49:23
is hire people who know how to use these tools. If you are a young person who uses AI tools, you're going to find a
00:49:29
job. If you're a young person who isn't motivated and doesn't use AI tools,
00:49:32
you're going to have a hard time. Let's go with the biggest deal. Last year's
00:49:36
predictions for biggest deal for 2025, traditional auto OEM consolidation. That was you, Chimoth. I think that we
00:49:44
haven't seen exactly the consolidation, but we have seen those businesses come
00:49:47
apart. So I think it's I give you definitely twothirds of a credit there. Uh Gavin said a title wave of M&A. I
00:49:53
think he's not wrong there. That has started to happen certainly. Freeberg you said massive compute buildout deals.
00:49:59
Of course you nailed that one. I said consolidation amongst the on demand economy. That hasn't happened but we do
00:50:06
see a lot of deals occurring. And I said also Apple would buy Warner Brothers. I
00:50:10
got that like a I guess uh that wound up going to Netflix. So I give myself a half point for that. What do you have as
00:50:17
your biggest deal for 2026, David Saxs? >> Well, I don't want to get prediction I
00:50:22
don't want to get too specific here in terms of names of companies and that sort of thing,
00:50:26
>> but uh what I would say is that I think there was a breakthrough in the last
00:50:31
couple of months in terms of these coding assistants where they've been around for a while, but there seems to
00:50:35
have been another level of quality achieved just in the last month or so. And you're really starting to hear I
00:50:42
mean maybe a lot of it is hype but there is I think a lot of people are getting very excited about the potential here
00:50:49
and part of it is coding part of it is just tool use. You can download the programs and so it has access to your
00:50:55
file drive and it can take actions on your computer. This trend feels to me like chat bots did at the end of 2022
00:51:02
going into 23 where it's like people were really hyped about it but then continue to play out play out in the
00:51:09
next year and so I think these this call coding assistance/tool use I think will
00:51:15
get bigger and bigger this year. >> Freeberg what do you got biggest deal?
00:51:19
>> Uh Russia Ukraine I think it's going to settle out this year. I think there's a
00:51:22
lot of motivating factors to get it settled out this year. Economic and other political factors, but I do think
00:51:28
it's going to settle out this year and it's going to bring a bit more stability
00:51:31
to that region. And there's a whole reset that's underway this year. I think
00:51:35
in terms of geopolitics and where the powers all sit, >> Trump can stop that war, he would be two
00:51:40
for two. That would be I think this one's going to settle. >> That would be that would be great. He
00:51:45
may not have done it on day one, but if he gets it done in in, you know, year two, that's good enough for me. Chimal
00:51:51
biggest deal 2026. What do you got? >> It's not a specific deal, but it's an
00:51:54
approach. I think that M&A cannot happen. And so it's the IP license M&A
00:52:01
workaround. And I think you're going to see hundreds of billions of dollars of
00:52:05
these kinds of deals. So this is the deal that Google did with Character AI. It's the same thing that they did.
00:52:11
>> Microsoft did it. Yeah, >> Microsoft did it. It's obviously what
00:52:14
Nvidia did with Grock. Why are these deals happening? Well, if you just look at what Facebook tried to do, they tried
00:52:21
to buy Manis for $2.5 billion. Manis was a Chinese company that then left China and essentially rebuilt itself as a
00:52:27
Singaporean business. The Chinese have now said, "We're going to look at this."
00:52:31
They are going to actively import export controls. They're going to actively look
00:52:34
at which technologies and even which researchers are working on things that are critical enough that it just can't
00:52:40
go abroad in this existential fight that they believe they're in with the United
00:52:44
States. The United States is in equivalent such position. All of this leads me to believe that traditional M&A
00:52:50
is effectively dead. I think it's going to be impossible to get a large transaction done. So how will you do it?
00:52:57
You'll do what Sundar did. You'll do what Satya did. You'll do what Jensen
00:53:02
did. You'll do what we did with Scale AI. These huge licensing deals that basically replace M&A. And I think that
00:53:09
that as a deal type will get better and more refined and tighter and better executed. We were the third or fourth of
00:53:18
these kinds of deals and even the third or fourth iteration was quite good. By the time that you're into the middle
00:53:26
part of next year and you've done 15 or 20 of these things, I think the lawyers
00:53:29
that work on these things and the accountants will just be bull. The tax treatment is not ideal but the speed at
00:53:34
which you can do them is phenomenal because the next day somebody like Sundep can be working for Jensen which
00:53:41
is what Jensen wants. They want the talent. Zuckerberg wants the talent working there the next day
00:53:45
>> and the IP >> and the IP of course. Um you know for 2026 I think we're going to see some
00:53:50
massive M&A. It doesn't matter to me how it occurs but I do think we're going to
00:53:54
see a 50 billion plus deal. And I think it could be uh one of the Mag 7, an Apple, a Meta, a Microsoft or an Amazon
00:54:02
going out and trying to buy XAI, Mistro, Perplexity, Anthropic. One of those four
00:54:08
comes to mind. I know most of them probably want to go public and uh go it alone, but I think an offer could come
00:54:14
in and during that race for which six or seven large language models and man it is a it is a battle where they are
00:54:22
moving up and down the rankings and beating each other out, you know, on your question
00:54:27
>> and I think one of them is going to I think one of them is going to go for it.
00:54:30
I I I think it could wind up being Apple. >> I met Meta or Amazon who buys an
00:54:35
anthropic or a perplexity. I started where you were, but this is why I went to this deal type as the biggest
00:54:40
business winner because if any of those companies tried to buy, let's just say
00:54:43
anthropic, I think it's three years of antitrust minimum. It's worse than when
00:54:49
Microsoft tried to buy Activision because that was a niche product and even that took almost 2 years and
00:54:57
like three or four months if I'm getting it right. It or about two years. It's a
00:55:01
huge slog because it's a it's about global coordination of multiple regulators.
00:55:07
>> Yeah. >> And get through the EU and eventually one of them takes the lead pole
00:55:12
position. But in the Microsoft case, it wasn't just one. You had to navigate
00:55:15
China. You had to navigate >> Europe. So I I agree with you because I think there's companies with so much
00:55:22
cash on their balance sheets that are effectively getting debased every day. the markets will start to punish these
00:55:30
companies. It just seems like you're right. There's going to be a hundred
00:55:33
billion dollar transaction. I just suspect it'll end up as an IP license. >> Yeah. And I think President Trump, one
00:55:38
of his great strengths is that he moves quickly. Man, what a first year. Whether
00:55:43
you like the decisions or not, he he makes decisions. I think this is one of the things that Democrats are learning
00:55:49
is that you got to actually get things done for the American people. I think he might instruct our government to let M&A
00:55:58
be great again and that would be great for American exceptionalism. These companies do need to merge and to
00:56:05
continue to grow and we should go try to get from a MAG 7 to a MAG 17. We need more bigger companies with bigger
00:56:12
footprints taking on global markets. Most contrarian belief most contrarian belief. People like this one. I said
00:56:19
openAI loses its lead in the AI race. Uh and in fact that has happened if you look at the um arenas and you look at
00:56:26
their market share they are being challenged. Chimath you said the banking crisis in one of the major mainline
00:56:32
banks. Gavin said one year of 5% plus GDP growth at one point over the next couple of years. Well done to Gavin
00:56:40
Freeberg you said socialism roars back. Another amazing prediction. What's your
00:56:45
prediction for this year since you crushed it last year? Freeberg. Go ahead. My prediction is based on the premise
00:56:51
that I think there is going to be this revolution in Iran and the Ayatollas are going to be out. That's not the
00:56:56
contrarian belief. I think that's the standard belief and I think that is going to happen and that's the premise.
00:57:01
But a lot of people think that Iran is part of the destabilizing force in the Middle East. And I do think that there
00:57:08
is already in anticipation of the turnover with the ruling parties in Iran. there is already this brewing
00:57:16
conflict amongst the other Arab states. So I think that between UAE, Saudi, Qatar and this fraction in Yemen and
00:57:25
then I don't know if you guys have followed but there's this kind of emerging independence movement for
00:57:29
Somali land which is kind of north of Somalia that there may be more conflict brewing
00:57:36
in the Middle East than anyone anticipates for this year that will not necessarily involve Israel and or Iran.
00:57:43
it will actually be amongst the other Gulf states as they v for influence and power and that the contrarian point may
00:57:50
in fact be that Iran has been a stabilizing force in that region and by removing Iran and by changing over Iran
00:57:57
and they become this kind of independent democratic state and this particularly is going to be heightened as there's
00:58:03
going to be this battle for who's going to take care of the Palestinians as the
00:58:07
two-state solution emerges and what's the role that Jordan's going to have to
00:58:11
play versus Egypt versus Saudi and it's going to lead to a lot of questions about resource allocation. So, I think
00:58:16
that this year could end up being a little bit nastier than folks anticipate in the Middle East as Iran turns over.
00:58:23
>> Sax got a contrarian belief for 2026. >> Yes, I said that AI will increase demand
00:58:30
for knowledge workers, not decrease it. I would refer you to Erin Levy's post
00:58:35
called Jevans paradox for knowledge workers. And the point of Jevans paradox is that as the cost of a resource goes
00:58:43
down, the aggregate demand for it actually increases because you discover more and more use cases. So I think this
00:58:50
will certainly happen with code. In the past has been very expensive to generate
00:58:54
code. You have to hire engineers. There's not enough of them. It's an expensive resource. So the amount of
00:59:01
software generated in the economy was limited by that. I think it's going to
00:59:04
increase massively now because the cost of generating code is coming down. so much. But there's other examples too.
00:59:10
You take a field like radiology that's frequently cited as a profession that AI
00:59:15
is going to put out of business. That's not what the data shows. The data shows
00:59:18
that the number of radiologists is increasing. Why? Because the number of scans that people want to make is
00:59:23
increasing. And it's true that AI can do some of the work, but you still need a
00:59:27
doctor to prompt the AI to interpret the AI to validate it. So you get more efficient. The cost of scans goes down.
00:59:34
And instead of it being a super specialtity that happens very rarely that you need like a referral on top of
00:59:40
a referral to get it becomes something that's normalized and everyone starts
00:59:44
doing it and you start getting more and more scans that leads to better and better outcomes. So I think there's
00:59:50
going to be a lot of those examples through the economy and we're going to look back and see that the job loss
00:59:56
narrative was not only wrong but we actually got job gains. >> Okay. Okay. And for those of you who
01:00:02
want to understand Jeb's paradox a little more, you can look at something like electricity or steel or concrete.
01:00:07
When we lowered the cost of those things, people didn't use less of it. They built skyscrapers and we had more
01:00:13
routes for more airplanes to take you on more vacations. And that went from being
01:00:17
something only rich people did to everybody. So Jeban's paradox is definitely at work. What do you got? Uh
01:00:22
Chimath, which what's on your uh contrarian belief? >> Gosh, I have two. Well, I'll give you
01:00:28
them both and you can just see. My contrarian belief number one is I don't think SpaceX will IPO. I think that it
01:00:33
will reverse merge into Tesla and I think Elon will use it as a moment to consolidate control and power of his two
01:00:40
seminal assets into one cap table. >> Oh my god, I love that. Wow. >> Well, he's talked about that before.
01:00:46
He's talked about having a holding company for years of all of the collection. You could put Neural Link in
01:00:51
there too, right Jim? You could put in the Boring Company as well. >> Sure. I'm just giving you my contrarian
01:00:58
take. there will be no IPO for SpaceX. I think it will just be it specifically will be a reverse merger.
01:01:03
>> There you go. >> The second contrarian take is that >> I think the central banks
01:01:11
will realize that there are limitations to gold and limitations to Bitcoin and will as a result seek out a
01:01:22
completely new cryptographic paradigm that they can control on their balance sheet. that is fungeable, that is
01:01:30
tradable and that is completely secure and private. And I think the reason why that privacy
01:01:38
needs to exist is that for the sovereignty of a country, you need to be in a position
01:01:45
where you have assets that are not easily disclosed to anybody else, friends or enemies
01:01:53
alike. And then separately, cryptographically, if you're going to own a currency,
01:02:00
you need to hedge against the eventual risk in the next 5 to 10 years that there's a quantum chip that can
01:02:10
challenge the existing cryptographic schemes that are used. And uh for my contrarian, I was thinking about going
01:02:16
with OpenAI losing their lead and not being the number one company again. uh because I do think that will be the
01:02:22
trend that they will have the they'll continue to give up their market share
01:02:27
to other players including Google and Gemini and XAI etc. But I'm going to go
01:02:33
with a a pretty wild card here. I think the standoff with China is going to be largely resolved and I think President
01:02:38
Trump's when he makes his visit there. I don't know if you're going to go on that
01:02:41
one sax but I think he should be included in it obviously because of the AI race. I do think that the standoff um
01:02:48
and the issues around Taiwan are going to be resolved and I think this could be the signature issue of Trump's second
01:02:57
term is that we work out a working relationship where both China and America win without one of us losing.
01:03:05
Best performing asset best performing asset last year's prediction I said MAG
01:03:10
7 which was up 22% versus the S&P 500 at plus 17. Chimathy were long CDS for a
01:03:17
potential run on a major bank. You said it was a long shot. Gavin said high bandwidth memory makers like Micron
01:03:24
which was up 230%. That was a great call. And Freeberg, you said Chinese tech stocks and ETFs Alibab
01:03:31
is up 85%. Chinese tech ETF up 47% versus the S&P 500 at plus 17. So I guess that means Gavin Freedberg and
01:03:41
then myself. What do you got for this year's best performing asset? Freedberg.
01:03:47
>> Poly market. Poly markets on a tear. Network effects. Replacing media replacing markets.
01:03:54
>> Congrats to our friend Shane. A poly market. >> Do you have a best performing asset for
01:03:58
2026? Go ahead, Shima. >> I would pick a basket of critical metals. >> Okay. Basket of critical uh metals. What
01:04:06
do you got, Zach? >> It's getting a little bit redundant for me, but I just said the expanding super
01:04:10
cycle in tech. I mean, again, this is just another facet of the boom. But actually, let me just show you some data
01:04:15
that literally just came out. I feel like this is breaking news. >> Oh, breaking news.
01:04:19
>> Nick, can you pull this up? US productivity just surged 4.9%, the strongest reading in nearly 6 years. And
01:04:26
this is the news item, >> is that the Atlanta Fed, their forecast for Q4 GDP just climbed to 5.4%.
01:04:37
Can that be right? >> Yes. >> Can we get a fact check on that? Five to
01:04:41
six is I think where we're going to see it, guys. We're going to see some sixes
01:04:44
get printed. >> I mean, >> January 8th, 2026, Atlanta Fed's GDP now
01:04:51
model estimate for real GDP growth in the fourth quarter of 2025 is 5.4% significant jump from the previous
01:04:57
estimate of 2.7% on January 5th. >> You have to remember that there's going
01:05:01
to be 150 basis point correction in Q4 GDP because of the government furlow. Okay? So let's say that GDP was probably
01:05:10
call it four. You're going to see a print of 2 and a half. So you need to readjust that because now all the
01:05:15
government workers are back. They're recounted in GDP. If you look through 2026,
01:05:21
there's a handful of things that I think people do not understand. Well, number
01:05:26
one, all of non-farm payrolls has been completely reset and rebased. And the reason why is because of immigration. So
01:05:34
what used to be a 100 to 150 number print is now a 40 to 50 number print. Why is that important? Because when you
01:05:41
look through earnings and you look at the lower 25% quartiles of earnings growth, they're
01:05:49
off the charts. There's all of these anecdotal examples now of earnings just
01:05:55
exceeding expectations. There was an article in the front page of the Wall Street Journal yesterday about Ford
01:06:02
trying to pay mechanics $160,000 a year and having 5,000 openings. So to Sax's
01:06:08
point, we are a coiled spring. Closing the border plus adding productivity lifts through AI and other things have
01:06:17
created a growth dynamic in the United States that will really start to show itself in 26. So I think that you should
01:06:26
be not short the US economy here. It is ready to rip and uh adding to all that and just giving my pick. I think if we
01:06:35
are in a rate cut environment and the tailwinds keep happening and people have a little bit of cash laying around. My
01:06:42
pick for best performing asset will be the Robin Hood poly market prize picks gambling wagering uh space because
01:06:50
people will be able to have a little cash around to make some bets. You can put Coinbase in there too. I guess
01:06:55
>> by the way the coralary to what we just talked about if you see five and a half
01:06:59
and six and a half prints and these employment numbers a lot of this affordability stuff may be not as
01:07:06
accurate as we think it is. Everybody right now is trying to figure out, okay, well, where are the pockets of
01:07:11
unaffordability? And there are clearly some, but those are narrow and they can be fixed, but on a broad-based basis,
01:07:18
what Sax says is right. You have this combination of earnings growth, productivity growth,
01:07:25
and now this overlay where you have these tax cuts that are going to hit in 26. My gosh, I mean, asset prices in
01:07:31
general, I think, will do well. Now you'll also see potentially home prices correct because if the president is
01:07:37
successful in making sure Blackstone can't buy houses but on the other side people are earning more and they can
01:07:42
enter with interest rates that are now 100 to 150 basis points lower. You'll
01:07:47
see a boom in housing where it's not the corporations that are buying the houses but individuals.
01:07:53
There's a lot of variables here that can that can break in America's favor. This
01:07:57
is why I think 6% is not unrealistic which would be absolutely nuts. Okay, let's move on to the worst performing
01:08:04
asset. Last year's predictions for worst performing asset of 2025, I said legacy
01:08:08
car companies and real estate. Both of those turned out to be correct. Chimath, you said enterprise SAS and the software
01:08:16
industrial industrial complex. Again, that uh looked correct as well. Gavin said enterprise SAS and Freeberg, you
01:08:22
said vertical SAS. So, we had three SAS and I had legacy car companies real estate.
01:08:26
>> Let me give you check out. >> Yeah, let me just give you some numbers
01:08:29
on that to show you. Service Now down 30%, Workday down 18%, Docu Sign down 23%, Dropbox down 9% and Box down 6%
01:08:38
while the S&P was up 17%. I think it's worth highlighting like it was a challenging year for this enterprise
01:08:44
asset. There's >> especially with the per seat pricing as opposed to consumptionbased pricing. If
01:08:50
you have a static number of employees or less employees like many of these companies do, there's just less seats to
01:08:55
sell. So their whole growth was based on land and expand. You land the client and
01:09:00
then you expand the client because they're adding staff. If you're not adding staff, you can't uh you know, you
01:09:05
don't have more people using Salesforce. Okay. So, let's talk about our worst
01:09:09
performing asset predictions for 2026. Who do you got? Sachs. Worst performing asset of 2026.
01:09:15
>> Well, I just said California luxury real estate because of the overhang of the
01:09:18
wealth tax and all the things we're talking about. >> Yeah, that one hits close to home, I
01:09:23
think. >> Now, yes, it does. Actually, what I'm hoping for is a dead cat bounce. If you
01:09:27
guys are right that the ballot initiative fails, >> then the overhang will be lifted and
01:09:35
maybe I can >> clear some real estate. >> Clear some >> It's not easy being It's not easy being
01:09:42
right sometimes. >> Yeah. >> Fre, what do you got? >> What What like what what's your discount
01:09:49
price on that asset right now? I mean, like I might make a bid, you know, if you give me a
01:09:54
>> give me a good clearance. got $100 million laying around. >> Yeah, I'm not paying 100.
01:09:58
>> Okay, here we go. Bestie negotiations occur. >> All right. Um, >> give them the bestie price. The buy it
01:10:03
now. Bestie price. What's the buy? >> No, no, no. Okay. By the way, you know,
01:10:07
San Francisco has that insane luxury tax which they have in LA, too. You got to pay 5% on any piece of real estate over
01:10:14
>> 25% in San Francisco. Do you know that? >> Which makes it even harder for these
01:10:18
high-end places to trade. So wait, you're saying if I if I bought Sax's house for 100, I'd have to spend
01:10:24
>> Oh, he has to pay 6%. >> 6%. >> You got to pay your broker 6%. I mean,
01:10:29
they're just basically freezing the market. >> Okay. Not the buyer. >> Well,
01:10:33
>> you can negotiate who pays. >> The 5%, you know, quote unquote mansion
01:10:36
tax has just killed LA real estate. You talk to brokers down there cuz people used to flip houses a lot more. Now you
01:10:42
just can't afford to do that. >> unintended consequences, folks. really
01:10:45
bad for the >> Wait, you're telling me taxes slow down transaction volume and reduce the growth
01:10:51
of the economy? That's crazy. I had no idea, Zach. You should write that down.
01:10:54
We should do a whole thing on that. >> Yeah, maybe we should write. I had no
01:10:57
idea. >> Yeah. Somebody make a note. >> Yeah. >> So, worst performing asset, Chimoth,
01:11:02
what do you think? Worst performing asset. >> I won't say the worst performing, but I
01:11:06
think a very poor performing asset will be hydrocarbons. I just think that the trend in oil is inexurable and it's down
01:11:17
and the reason it's down is irrespective of your thoughts on climate change the trends on
01:11:25
electrification and energy storage are just unstoppable. >> And so what that does is it shrinks the
01:11:33
surface area of where oil is useful. It's not like a cataclysmic thing, but it's sort of a melting iceberg where
01:11:44
does it see $65 or $45? And I would say on on a per barrel basis, and I think it's more likely to see 45 than 65.
01:11:52
>> Okay. I went with the US dollar in different permutations of how you can
01:11:58
buy it because our debt continues to grow unabated. and you know >> the defacement trade JCAL JCAL owning
01:12:05
the >> I just think it's going to be hard for you know the the USD because we're
01:12:09
talking about we've been adding I think we're going to add two trillion in debt
01:12:11
this year and then if we're increasing and again I I know Trump says President
01:12:16
Trump says a lot of things but if we're increasing the military budget by 50% uh
01:12:21
that means uh that's going to be straight to our debt line so it's going
01:12:24
to be harder and harder for the dollar doesn't mean that America's not going to
01:12:28
do great but the value of the American dollar is going to be challenged which we see in people moving to gold and
01:12:34
silver and perhaps copper. Okay. If you could give us your worst performing asset of 2026, David,
01:12:41
>> it would be Netflix if they don't close the Warner Brother deal. I do think
01:12:45
Netflix's service is being challenged from all sides with deep content libraries. And I think we're seeing a
01:12:52
great commoditization happening. I've also heard directly from folks in Hollywood, the creators of new content,
01:12:57
that people would prefer not to work with Netflix. They only uh pay creators cost plus 10% now. And so as a creator,
01:13:05
you're actually better off not doing deals with Netflix anymore. So their content library is going to shrink
01:13:09
because of the natural economic forces underway. Alternative, if they do close on Warner Brothers, I think they've got
01:13:15
some good runway in terms of that content library and they'll be fine. And in that case, my worst performing asset
01:13:21
would be traditional media stocks. And I do think that they're going to underperform. There's just such an
01:13:26
incredible variety of high-quality content that's emerging from independent creators that
01:13:32
are leveraging their own distribution platforms through YouTube and others. And I think that um traditional media is
01:13:37
going to continue to be deeply challenged as we've seen for example just in the news segment with the rise
01:13:42
of citizen journalism. So that's the that's what I would kind of >> Yeah. And you know the the Netflix
01:13:48
observation I think is was well founded because they're also in terms of expanding their library. They just did a
01:13:54
deal with Bill Simmons, I see, and with um Bar Stool Sports to move over their sports shows, podcasts, video shows from
01:14:03
YouTube, and they're going to take them off YouTube and put them on Netflix exclusively. So, that's a really
01:14:08
interesting trend as well to keep an eye on. Okay. By the way, before we move off
01:14:12
asset, just on best performing asset, there's one category we didn't talk
01:14:16
about, but I think it's kind of interesting, which is the category of assets that qualify for accelerated
01:14:21
depreciation capital equipment. >> Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. >> That includes things like planes, so
01:14:26
forth. There's now 100% accelerated depreciation for certain kinds of capital equipment because of the big
01:14:32
beautiful bill. And, you know, it kind of goes along with some of the tax cuts that we talked about, but man, that is
01:14:37
making those markets super hot right now. >> Absolutely. Yeah. Try buying a plane
01:14:41
these days. It's very difficult. >> No, Jason. It's not planes. It's like
01:14:45
Caterpillar. >> No, no, it's tractors. It Yeah, it's generators. It's seaman. This is why
01:14:50
seaman stock is through the roof. All of this capital equipment, you get to write
01:14:54
it off 100% year one. It's creating a massive infrastructure build out in the
01:14:58
US. So, >> absolutely, >> there's some companies that are huge beneficiaries of this obviously because
01:15:02
they're the sellers of the capital equipment. And of course, this is one of the reasons GDP is going up is people
01:15:07
are actually investing in business again. Okay. Most anticipated trend. >> By the way, this is the correlary of the
01:15:13
statement that if you reduce taxes, the economy grows. So, >> there we go.
01:15:17
>> Yeah. >> Most anticipated trend of 2025. I said the wrath of Lena ending and M&A and
01:15:23
IPOs being back. I get some credit there. Chimath, you said the end of the deep state. I think you get a lot of
01:15:28
credit there. Gavin said, "AI makes more progress per quarter in 2025 than it did
01:15:33
in 2023." That's a great one. Free, you said the nuclear power buildout. I think
01:15:38
you get some credit there, too. Yeah. >> Not sure. Not sure. We got some work to
01:15:43
do there. Massive massively short nuclear. >> You're still short nuclear, but I know
01:15:49
the guy Howard Lutnik talked to him. >> I talked to Howard Lutnik as well.
01:15:54
>> He said he's all in on nuclear. >> Free, can I tell you why I'm short
01:15:57
nuclear? I think that we're in the very delicate part of the cycle where they've
01:16:00
missed the window. So by the time that they deliver working SMRs at scale, >> the problem is that the marginal cost of
01:16:07
electricity will effectively be zero and it'll have gone to zero because of a
01:16:11
combination of solar and storage as well as coal and oil. And so it's just in a
01:16:17
very delicate place where the large form factor nuclear reactors make zero economic sense by 2032 or 2035 which is
01:16:25
when through the Byzantine permitting and building they get it done and then the SMRs by the time that they get it
01:16:31
done they may not be able to meet the market either. So I think it's a very complicated moment for nuclear actually
01:16:36
not scientifically economically just does not hang together mathematically. I think that's if you assume um no shift
01:16:44
in the demand curve and I think that like if you if you look at China going to 8 terowatts of production and by 2040
01:16:50
or whatever it is and we're sitting at one and we're not moving we are going to have a big catch
01:16:57
up to do and the question is can we really build out two 3 terowatts of electricity generation how are we going
01:17:03
to build out 2 to three terowatts of electricity generation the amount of land that you would need with solar and
01:17:08
what's it going to take to get all of that installed and so on. And by the way, there's a lot of the stuff in
01:17:13
China, if you look at all the big solar buildouts that they did where they're
01:17:16
ripping it up now. This is a longer conversation, but I really do question whether we can pin everything on solar.
01:17:22
It's going to be a mix of stuff. And so your point may be right that in the near
01:17:26
term to meet the current kind of demand curve, nuclear is going to be economically challenged, but at some
01:17:31
point here, there's an inflection that we have to meet. >> So what's your most anticipated trend of
01:17:35
2026? Swedenberg, >> Iran becoming an independent democratic state. I think I'm just speaking
01:17:41
generally anticipated. I think a lot of people are anticipating that that's going to happen this year. There's an
01:17:46
uprising in the streets. There is a weakening of the Ayatollas and there seems to be a moment underway
01:17:54
>> and the demographics are destiny. There's a lot of young people in Iran
01:17:57
and they do not want to live under the current rule. They want to be free. >> But there is a major economic problem in
01:18:03
Iran in terms of affordability. You think we have an issue of affordability in the US. In Iran, it's very hard for
01:18:08
people just to buy their basic necessities, basic needs to the majority of people. So that that's why they are
01:18:14
taking to the street. There's a real economic crisis underway that is motivating this turnover. Every year,
01:18:19
everyone like anticipates some big change in the Middle East. But this could be the biggest rewriting of the
01:18:24
Middle East in a long time. >> Okay, Sax, what do you got >> for category?
01:18:29
>> Most anticipated trend of 2026. What do you got, Sax? I said auditing government
01:18:34
spending at all levels. >> That's a good one. That's a good one. >> Decentralized Doge.
01:18:39
>> Love. >> Yes. >> Let a thousand Nick Shirley's bloom. >> Love.
01:18:43
>> Let's do it. Audit everything. >> Audit everything. We need to normalize
01:18:47
independent audits across the board. >> Whistleblowers. Let's go. >> It is not acceptable for Gavin Newsome,
01:18:52
for example, to prohibit audits as he did with homeless spending. All government spending needs to be opened
01:18:58
up and audited by the public. We need people to see where it's going. And that that's just got to happen.
01:19:03
>> The Pentagon, when's the Pentagon's when are they going to pass an audit, right?
01:19:06
I mean, that's one of our biggest line items. Let's get them to be audited.
01:19:10
Hey, there's something President Trump could do. >> They're actually at least trying.
01:19:14
>> They're at least failing the audit. >> They're at least failing the
01:19:18
>> Gavin N's prohibiting the audit. >> Start where you're prohibiting them
01:19:20
first. How about that? >> Yeah. I mean, just audit everything, I think, would be I love it. What do you
01:19:25
got, Jim? I have a correlary to Freebergs which is I think it's the expansion of this Trump doctrine
01:19:31
independent of your politics. If you are an economic actor, you own a business, you invest in the stock market, whatever
01:19:38
it is, you speculate cryptocurrencies, you must understand the movements on the chessboard in 2026. The best framework
01:19:46
that I have used to organize myself is this idea of unilateralism, economic resilience. It's just a ginormous trend
01:19:54
and I think the output of it is going to be massive GDP prints on top of everything else.
01:20:00
>> Yeah. And I think I'm going to stick with my last year's prediction going
01:20:05
into 2026 again. The wrath of Lena ending. We saw the M&A train start with Grock obviously uh Netflix and Warner
01:20:12
Brothers, Google and Whiz. So many deals are ready to be done and they're starting to pop off in M&A. uh we can
01:20:19
debate what structure they are and and regulators etc. but they're happening
01:20:24
but I'll go with IPOs coming back right now. You've got to anticipate one of the
01:20:29
following two will file. SpaceX, Andro, Stripe, Anthropic, and OpenAI. I think two of those file and it is going to be
01:20:36
gang busters. The public wants these shares. They're buying them in the secondary markets. We have half as many
01:20:42
publicly traded companies. the public would like to participate and this is something Trump can uniquely do that the
01:20:50
Democrats were trying to stop and slow down which was M&A and IPOs. I think this will be the year of the mega IPO
01:20:56
and it's going to be very exciting for Silicon Valley. It's going to be very
01:20:59
exciting for the employees at these companies and for the pension funds and the endowments that own shares in these
01:21:06
companies. They're going to be able to take that money and put it to good use
01:21:09
hopefully. So, SpaceX, Andrew, Stripe, Anthropic, OpenAI, those are on the short list obviously of ones that could
01:21:16
go public this year. All right, a fun one we like to do is the most anticipated media. That's a fun one. You
01:21:24
know, what are you looking forward to in 2026? Last year I said Superman and Andor season 2. Turns out Superman did
01:21:30
great. Andor did amazing. It's the best TV show of the 21st century. I think
01:21:35
Chimathu said, uh, enormity of the files that will be declassified. Epstein Files. Halfway there. JFK Files. We
01:21:42
haven't seen those. Gavin said 1923 season two. I don't even know what that
01:21:46
is, but Okay. >> Taylor. That's a Taylor show. >> Oh, that's the Taylor one. Yeah. Yeah.
01:21:52
You watching Land Man? Land man's pretty great. Um Freeberg, you said AI video
01:21:56
games. >> What do you got this year, >> Freeberg? You you love the media. You're
01:22:02
you're a cinnophile. >> What are you looking forward to in media in 2026? This isn't as much as what I'm
01:22:08
looking forward to, but I do think the big trend in media is going to be the citizen journalism doing exposees. I
01:22:14
think that we're just at the beginning of the expose man on the street. >> Man on the street pushing stuff, getting
01:22:21
cameras in people's faces. The work of journalism has been decentralized and I think there's going to be so much
01:22:29
more that's going to be kind of shared and uncovered this year. >> Okay. Do you have one? Uh,
01:22:34
>> and by the way, the the difference I would say in terms of what Nick Shirley
01:22:37
is doing and what we've seen maybe in the past, but it's going to be the new
01:22:40
trend is much of the citizen journalism in the past has been to some degree a little bit more passive. It's sort of
01:22:45
like, hey, I caught this thing and I observed it. But now there are people that are going to actively take a camera
01:22:50
and say, "Hey, I'm going to go discover this thing. I'm going to go deep on it."
01:22:53
And that's what I think we're going to see happen in a big way this year.
01:22:55
>> Well, and there's a monetization path. You have Substack where people can give
01:22:58
donations, GoFundMes and uh on top of that YouTube allowing you and X allowing you to share revenue on this particular
01:23:06
category which they previously did and as Nick Shirley pointed out means there is a path to profitability there get
01:23:12
more clicks get more views you make more money and then you can reinvest it. So I
01:23:15
think I like your choice a lot Chimath you have something you're anticipating
01:23:19
>> exact same thing as Freebrook I'll just double down in >> Okay. And what about you Sax? You got
01:23:24
something you want to double down on? investigative journalism. >> No, I thought we were talking about
01:23:29
entertainment here. >> Well, yeah, I thought I It's okay. These guys went these guys zigged where we
01:23:34
zagged. But >> one of my weird like things that I watch on Tik Tok that I got stuck on and Tik
01:23:39
Tok just keeps showing me them is these auditing videos. Have you guys ever seen
01:23:42
these first first amendment auditors? So, these are people who take a camera, they stand on the street, and they just
01:23:48
point the camera into someone's store or into a bank's window, and they just film
01:23:52
the people in the bank. >> And then they wind up spraying each other. >> There's always people that come out.
01:23:59
They're like, "You can't do that. You're not allowed to do that." They're like,
01:24:00
"Okay, I think I would like you to leave. I don't want to talk to you." And
01:24:04
they just do this and they instigate people to call the police. And what they're doing is they're auditing
01:24:08
whether the police understand First Amendment rights. And then how the police react is basically the end of the
01:24:13
video. Sometimes the police are like, "You can't do that." And they're like,
01:24:15
"Yes, I can call a supervisor." And then they teach the police officer that
01:24:18
you're allowed to stand in public places and film. Otherwise, they're just like,
01:24:21
"Hey." They go to the business owner and they tell the business owner, "This
01:24:24
guy's allowed to do this. Leave him alone." I don't know why, but these
01:24:27
videos are so entertaining. >> Well, there's tension. There's a lot of
01:24:31
tension there. And there's something freedom of speech, which is the first amendment for a reason. stoner. The
01:24:36
stoner comes out sometimes tries to physically confront the guy, but then you'll have like a woman walking with
01:24:41
her like 2-year-old child and then she'll get into it and she'll be like,
01:24:44
"Hey, >> exactly. >> Don't violate his constitutional rights.
01:24:47
He's allowed to be." That's the best. That's the best. >> It's so good. You never know what's
01:24:52
going to happen. Each one of them is like a whole new adventure. I don't know
01:24:55
why it's such an interesting form of content. I like love watching it. >> It's a uniquely American phenomenon to
01:25:01
>> Yeah. um establish your freedom, your your first amendment rights and and they
01:25:06
even go into like the really dicey ones or where they go to like the parking lot
01:25:11
of a prison or into the lobby of a police station and do it and it gets pretty spicy. What do you got, Sax? You
01:25:18
got you got any media you're looking forward to? These guys are going first amendment investigative journalism, yada
01:25:23
yada. What do you got, S? >> Well, the new Christopher Nolan movie is coming out. The Odyssey looks
01:25:27
interesting. >> Great call. Great call. >> Yeah, >> that's mine. Great call. I went with the
01:25:32
Odyssey. >> What is that? What is that about? >> The Odyssey. >> Oh, come on.
01:25:35
>> Come on. >> No. Homer's Odyssey. >> Yes. But as interpreted by the great
01:25:40
director of our time, Christopher Nolan. >> Have any of you idiots actually read the
01:25:44
Odyssey? This is not great. I'm sorry, but >> The Odyssey is a terrible book.
01:25:52
>> All right. Okay. So, we're going to get some good comments there. >> You guys are all such wannabe poser
01:25:58
intellectual. >> Just Christopher Nolan is just great. It's IMAX. It's going to be epic. It's
01:26:03
trash. That book is blleh. >> Okay. You know, >> you don't like amic pentameter.
01:26:10
>> So, so the idea of some confused person making a movie about it is also just how
01:26:15
do I short that? Okay. That is actually Can I short that? >> Can I short that movie on a poly market?
01:26:21
I'm sure there will be. You could probably bet on the box office. Pull it out, Nick.
01:26:25
>> I bet zero. >> Okay. It's gonna be a lot more than zero, I'm sure.
01:26:30
I I'm uh also a um a big fan of Timothy Shalabay and Doom part 3 is coming out.
01:26:36
I also like Avengers Doomsday. >> Dune 3. >> Oh, I love Dune. >> Doom part three.
01:26:42
>> I love Doom one and two so so much. >> Two was great. I think one was a little
01:26:46
bit of >> Doomsday will be good. Doomsday actually I go with that. >> Avengers Doomsday is going to be I think
01:26:52
fantastic. Robert Downey Jr. as Dr. Doom setting up secret wars and then you're
01:26:56
going to tie up all the previous Marvel strings. >> Look at look at the Odyssey Zero.
01:27:02
>> They're going to use They're going to use Doomsday to bring back all the
01:27:05
characters they killed. >> Hey, besties. Uh here's a little something I think we're about to hit today 1
01:27:13
million YouTube subscribers before we do our Netflix deal and take the show off of YouTube. We hit a million uh before
01:27:20
we >> Yeah. Wasn't it supposed to happen like a year and a half ago? We're gonna have
01:27:23
like a million subscriber party a year and a half ago. You know why? >> Ask me. Ask me what I do.
01:27:27
>> Tell me why. Tell me why. Sucks. >> Cuz we never tell our subscribers to hit
01:27:32
the like button or smash the subscribe button, whatever. >> Yeah. Every other podcast I watch on
01:27:38
YouTube, and I watch them all, they're always like, "Hit the like button. Hit
01:27:41
the like button." >> Oh god. Well, you know what too is the the the big trend now is to just do
01:27:46
10-minute quick hits as news breaks. So you you this is people are flooding the channel.
01:27:51
>> Ask me ask me what I think about getting to a million subscribers. >> Any thoughts on this seinal moment for
01:27:56
the all-in pod hitting 1 billion subscribers on YouTube? Go ahead. I'm sorry. 1 million.
01:28:01
>> You're welcome. >> You're welcome. You're welcome. >> You're welcome.
01:28:08
>> What's this week at? >> Oh, this week in Sus is quarter million.
01:28:13
Don't worry about it. Um it's a niche show. Don't worry about it. Not bad.
01:28:15
Just a frag. Not bad. Not bad. Hey, listen. I love doing it. Uh, the reason there's four of us
01:28:20
>> there's four of us, one of you. So, we have four times the subscribers.
01:28:25
>> Yeah. Something like that. Yeah. They listen. One of the great things you you
01:28:28
learn in media is when you build a super team, a super band, you know, it can actually do better than everybody
01:28:35
individually. So, collectively, we can do better. And listen, it's not for me
01:28:39
to say. >> Listen, you I think you've adjusted to being Ringo Star. Uh, listen, I everybody says the same
01:28:47
thing to me. Without the show, this would be propaganda and it would be uh the Trump's personal uh
01:28:54
>> who says that to you. >> Everybody wants to walk moose. Everybody
01:28:59
says the drink. That's I'm the stir in the drink. I'm the I'm the stirs the
01:29:03
drink. >> You're keeping the private equity wives watching. Great job.
01:29:06
>> Absolutely. I'm keeping them in. All the private equities love it. For every left
01:29:09
winger you that you keep watching the pod, >> we probably lose five >> MAGA people
01:29:17
show. >> The people the MAGA people they love hating me. They love hating me and they
01:29:23
love they come back every week to hate watch me and my takes. >> Hate watch.
01:29:26
>> They do. They just like they hate watch you Jamal >> the watch for a reason.
01:29:32
>> They tune in to hate you and hate me. Uh well listen it's been a great year. It's
01:29:36
been a great year. Great job. Besties, we kept the band together for one more year. Let's do a poly market. Chances
01:29:43
the All Podcast makes it to 2027. >> Honestly, honestly, it's not 100%.
01:29:49
>> It's not >> It's never 100%. Um, it's never 100%. We'll do the best we can. You guys love
01:29:54
the show, >> smash the like button, comment, link, subscribe, whatever you want to do.
01:30:00
Write a review. Tell everybody how much you love Jamat Sweaters. and we'll see
01:30:04
you next week on another amazing allin. >> Bye-bye. >> Let your winners ride.
01:30:20
>> We open sourced it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it.
01:30:32
>> Besties are gone. That is my dog taking on a share driveway. >> Oh man, my habitasher will meet up.
01:30:42
>> We should all just get a room and just have one big huge orgy cuz they're all
01:30:46
just useless. It's like this like sexual tension that we just need to release
01:30:49
somehow. >> We need to get merch. I'm going all in.