The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 2,812 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 53 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Chang: TSMC Offered NVIDIA Over $100M with 48-Hour Deadline
“Yes. More than a hundred million. And I also said, our offer is effective, 48 hours. If you do not, there is not going to be, we are not going to argue, we are not going to bargain. If you don't accept the offer within 48 hours, we will have to go to an arbitr…”
Chang: Previous TSMC CEO Offered NVIDIA Zero Dollars in Dispute
“The previous CEO did not even give him a number, you know. The previous CEO gave him zero.”
Gilbert: Only a complete paradigm shift can unseat TSMC
“I think the only thing that will unseat TSMC is a complete paradigm shift.”
TSMC will soon create more value than the entire prior silicon industry
“So it is true that the value that TSMC will create in the world over the next year, two years, three years, is probably more than the entire silicon industry leading up to this point combined.”
Mars has generated billions in profit from commodity trading operations
“Rumors are, these are rumors, but heard from multiple places, Mars has actually made Many billions of dollars of profit from commodity trading over the years.”
Mars is so private it does not produce financial statements for bankers
“No one knows what their balance sheet looks like, including their bankers. They don't produce financial statements for their bankers.”
Chocolate sales will not decline despite widespread adoption of GLP-1 weight-loss drugs
“Even if everyone starts taking Ozempic, I don't actually think chocolate sales are gonna fall.”
IKEA has no direct globally scaled furniture competitor in 2024
“IKEA does not have a direct competitor today in 2024. There is not a single other globally scaled furniture business in the world.”
Sandberg Bet on Mobile Because Zuckerberg's Control Prevented His Firing
“And when they sort of arrived at this plan of, we are going to forego a lot of desktop revenue to basically bet it all on figuring out mobile revenue, she said, well, Mark, nobody can fire you, and only you can fire me, so if you're in, I'm in.”
Turning Off Meta Ads Actually Reduces User Engagement in Some Markets
“There are markets in the world today where I think Meta has run this test, where if you turn off ads, In the, you know, meta family of apps products, engagement in those products actually goes down, which is just, like, freaking wild.”
Facebook Acquired Onavo to Track Competitor Network Traffic and App Usage
“Well, in 2013, Facebook acquired a small Israeli company called Onavo, and Onavo was exactly what you just said, Ben. A VPN, actually, I think it initially started as, like, a data compression tool, so if you were worried about your data plan, which was Really…”
UK probe found Facebook told Cambridge Analytica to delete data in 2015
“The conclusion was that the quiz was taken by 320,000 people. Since those people had access to friends, the total surface area was the public profile data of eighty-seven million Facebook users. They also found that Facebook had requested that Cambridge Analyt…”
Zuckerberg Claims Meta Media Would Be Twice as Profitable on Owned Hardware
“And Mark made the comment on stage with us that they've run the analysis. They think they could be twice as profitable in their Core media products if they were on their own platform.”
Zuckerberg: Holographic smart glasses will be the ultimate form of AI
“It's going to be, I think, the ultimate Digital social experience, and I think it's also going to be the ultimate incarnation of AI, because you're going to have conversations where it's like, alright, there's some people, it's like maybe like, I'm physically …”
Zuckerberg: Meta brand will take another 10 years to recover
“I think it's going to take another 10 years or so for us to kind of fully work through that cycle before our brand and all of that is back to kind of the place that it maybe could have been if I hadn't messed that up in the first place.”
Zuckerberg: AR and AI smart glasses will become completely ubiquitous
“I'm pretty sure glasses and kind of, like, holographic presence and AR is going to be a completely ubiquitous Product, right? It's just like everyone who had a phone before replaced it with a smartphone, and then a lot of more people got smartphones. If all we…”
Zuckerberg: Apple is Meta's primary competitor in ideological open-vs-closed race
“I expect them to be our primary competitor, and I think it will not be Just a product competition. I think it's like a, in some ways, very deeply values driven and ideological competition around what the future of the tech industry should be”
Zuckerberg: Full-scale AI will arrive before AR holograms
“A few years ago, I would have predicted that AR holograms would have been available before kind of, like, full-scale AI. And now I think it's probably gonna be the other order.”
Zuckerberg: Facebook board tried to fire him after rejecting Yahoo's $1B offer
“In 2006, Yahoo wanted to buy the company for a billion dollars, and everyone on our management team wanted to sell it, and the board tried to fire me, and everyone, and basically in the next year, everyone else on the management team left because they, I hadn'…”
Zuckerberg: Apple will be Meta's primary rival in ideological platform war
“I think Apple will have a place for sure. I expect them to be our primary competitor, and I think it will not be Just a product competition. I think it's like a, in some ways, very deeply values driven and ideological competition around what the future of the …”
Gilbert: Microsoft is the only Big Tech giant without federal antitrust probe
“The only one that's not under active antitrust investigation today by the federal government.”
Gilbert: Popular belief that Nadella originated Azure is historically inaccurate
“As the general public is concerned, Steve Ballmer was obsessed with Windows. He built the enterprise business. He left. Satya Nadella came in and launched Azure, and Azure has been great. Like, not exactly. That's not really what happened.”
Gilbert: Microsoft shelved finished Office for iPad project in 2013
“And absolutely, 100% something that happened is all 200 of us worked for multiple years to get these things ready. We had a ship date. Well, we had what we thought was a ship date. Actually, what happened was we were told that actually we're gonna shelve it. A…”
Schultz: Starbucks introduced the caffè latte to America without trademarking it
“The other thing I didn't do is we introduced cafe latte to the, to America. We didn't trademark it. You know, we trademarked Frappuccino later on, but we didn't trademark cafe latte.”
Schultz: Starbucks was seven months from insolvency in 2008
“I went up there, and I laid it out. Chapter and verse. I think we have seven months left. We are going to be insolvent.”
Schultz: Previous Starbucks leadership diluted coffee quality to maximize yield
“Because the previous administration had done things that diluted the integrity of coffee to maximize yield.”
Schultz: Starbucks Replaced Entire Executive Team Except General Counsel
“He was right, except for one, the general counsel. They were all gone.”
Schultz: Straight espresso is Starbucks' number one selling beverage in Italy
“Two, three years later, what do you think the number one beverage is? It's espresso. For Starbucks. Straight espresso. Espresso is the number one beverage.”
Microsoft's Altair BASIC was the first commercial software product ever sold
“This is the first time software has ever been sold. Other than the IBM accounting machinations to protect themselves from antitrust, which was just accounting, nobody had ever sold software before. This is the first time.”
No other major quant fund operates with a single unified model
“No other at scale investment firm period, and especially quant firm operates this way today with just one model.”
Rosenthal: Bob Mercer was primary funder of Breitbart and Cambridge Analytica
“Bob was the primary funder of Breitbart, And Cambridge Analytica, and one of the major financial backers of both the 2016 Trump campaign and the Brexit campaign in Great Britain.”
Bernard Arnault secretly accumulated Hermès shares using equity swaps over ten years.
“So in 2001, right after he lost Gucci, Bernard quietly buys an initial stake in Hermes of 4.9%.
Now I believe that was just under the threshold that they would have to disclose it under French securities regulations.
And then, here's what they do that the Herm…”
Hermès destroys imperfect manufactured products to prevent them from entering the market.
“Hermes cares so deeply about their brand that they burn imperfect products so they never see the light of day.”
Germany directed Novo to supply insulin across Nazi-occupied Europe
“They are now essentially the official Nazi-sanctioned insulin provider for all of Nazi-occupied Europe. So, the German government basically directs Novo To massively expand production and supply insulate, you know, not only to Germany, but to France, to Poland…”
Eli Lilly claimed rebates account for 75% of insulin's sticker price
“Eli Lilly has publicly claimed that the cost of these discounts and rebates accounted for 75% of the sticker price of insulin.”
Wegovy and Ozempic cost over $1,000 monthly in the United States
“The price of Ozempic to treat diabetes is north of a thousand dollars, and Wegovy for weight loss is north of 1300 dollars per month before insurance, and this is in the U.S.
So expensive, right?
That's a lot of money.
In Canada, of course, Ozempic is 147 doll…”
Early studies show GLP-1 weight loss causes 40% lean muscle loss
“When you're losing weight normally, you lose, like, 25% lean muscle, and these early studies are showing it's something like 40%.”
Munger claims quant firms achieve high returns through increasingly massive leverage
“And the way they get their returns year after year is taking the leverage, the midday leverage up higher and higher and higher and higher. So they're making smaller and smaller profits on more and more volume, which gives them this big peak leverage risk, whic…”
Endowments across America are slashing effective private fund fees by 50%
“The endowments have started to say to the, all these people that charged three and 30 or whatever they charge, they said, we'll pay your three and 30, but we're going to put in twice as much money, and then the next half you'll get nothing on it, or you're jus…”
Huang says almost all software will be programmed via machine learning
“Almost every piece of software in the world would eventually be programmed this way.”
Huang: NVIDIA is only accelerator maker with universal architectural compatibility
“We are the only accelerator on the planet where every single accelerator is architecturally compatible with the others. None has ever existed.”
Huang: NVIDIA's RIVA 128 chip design methodology became the industry standard
“The number of smart decisions we made, which are smart to this day, how we design chips is exactly the same to this day. Because, gosh, you know, nobody's ever done it back then, and we pulled every trick in the book in a desperation because we had no other ch…”
Huang: Tech companies will become much larger as they manufacture intelligence
“Don't be surprised if technology companies become much larger in the future, because what you produce is something very different.”
DeMuro: Porsche Digital's Online Car Auction Site Marqued Is Fledgling
“Porsche has a business right now an auction business called marked that they're running and as a, from Porsche digital, and it's fledgling to say the least.”
DeMuro: Analog Exotic V12 Cars Will Appreciate Rapidly As EVs Dominate
“As cars start to become more electric, more, sort of, the all-electric cars sort of have a similar shape because of aerodynamics and fuel range Gas-powered, old-school, wedge-shaped, exotic V-twelves are gonna be, like, the cars that continue to go up.”
Nvidia's gross margins will not erode significantly below 65% as shortages subside
“That's gonna go away, but I don't think this very high, you know, 65% plus margin is gonna erode too much.”
The AI market faces an investor crisis of confidence within 18 months
“I think there's a pretty reasonable chance that there's some falter in the next 12 to 18 months where there's a crisis of confidence among investors where at some point something will come out Where we all observe, oh, maybe GPTs aren't as useful as we thought…”
Nike Over-Supplied Retailers to Reach $126M in Air Jordan Sales
“Nike needed that first year of the Jordan deal to be a huge hit. So they stuffed the channel. They pushed so much product on retailers and through the futures program and whatnot that that's how they hit the hundred and twenty six million dollars in sales. The…”