Jan 25, 2026 · 2h 14m · allin
The Future of Everything: What CEOs of Circle, CrowdStrike & More See Coming in 2026
Jason Calacanis · 43m spoken Jeremy Allaire · 32m spoken Chase Lochmiller · 20m spoken George Kurtz · 13m spoken Adam Goldstein · 12m spoken
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At the World Economic Forum in Davos, host Jason Calacanis conducts in-depth interviews with CEOs from Circle, CrowdStrike, Archer Aviation, and Crusoe Cloud. The conversations explore the transformative impacts of artificial intelligence, evolving regulatory landscapes, cybersecurity threats, electric aviation, and the massive energy infrastructure required for next-generation computing.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. The hosts hold 35.9% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
The hosts as informed peer 4.7 Guest teaching 5.0 Guest disagreement 1.5 The hosts pushing back 2.6
speaking balance: gold is the hosts, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 1:38:44 Calling out regulatory inaction from former leadership
Archer Aviation CEO Adam Goldstein forcefully criticizes former Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg for refusing to meet with domestic eVTOL founders, contrasting it with active engagement under new leadership.
Hardest push from the hosts ▶ 1:28:02 Host presses CEO on flying inside test aircraftJason Calacanis refuses to accept standard PR answers and directly challenges Archer Aviation CEO Adam Goldstein on why he has not personally flown inside his company's test aircraft.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 59:38 Manager resists firing North Korean IT operativeCrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz educates the host on the absurd extent of remote worker infiltration, revealing an engineering manager asked to keep an uncovered North Korean spy because he was shipping great code.
The host holds their own ▶ 2:01:26 Pressing Crusoe CEO on OpenAI counterparty debt risksJason Calacanis demonstrates deep financial expertise by referencing BG2 podcast discussions on OpenAI's run rate and pressing Crusoe CEO Chase Lochmiller on how lenders evaluate startup lab bankruptcy risks.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | The hosts as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | The hosts pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Introducing Jeremy Allaire and Reflecting on Early Davos History | 3 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Jason Calacanis opens the episode reflecting on Davos history and early dot-com days with Jeremy Allaire. Allaire outlines the early vision of Circle as an HTTP protocol layer for fiat currency on the internet. The dynamic is collegial and conversational. | |
| Choosing U.S. Regulation Over Offshore Regulatory Arbitrage | 4 | 4 | 1 | 2 | Jason asks why Circle chose US regulatory compliance rather than moving offshore to Zug or Dubai like many crypto contemporaries. Jeremy explains testifying before the Senate in 2013 and choosing the longer path of institutional trust and compliance. | |
| Legacy Financial Incumbents and the Evolution of Financial Software | 5 | 4 | 2 | 3 | Jason compares traditional banks' reaction to stablecoins with legacy media responses to Craigslist and web publishing. Jeremy details global payment stablecoin rules under the Genius Act and international regulatory frameworks. | |
| Global Banking Integration and High-Speed Treasury Operations | 4 | 5 | 2 | 3 | Jason questions whether major banks backchannel to kill stablecoins out of competitive threat. Jeremy reframes this by highlighting how major global banks are actively integrating USDC for inter-branch liquidity and capital market clearing. | |
| Reserve Income Economics and Interest Rate Correlation | 5 | 6 | 2 | 4 | Jason presses Jeremy on Circle's exposure to interest rate declines given reserve income float economics. Jeremy educates the host on the inverse correlation between interest rates and stablecoin velocity and circulation volume. | |
| Developer Flywheels, Platform Integrations, and Network Defensibility | 4 | 5 | 2 | 3 | Jason asks if major platforms like Amazon will launch proprietary stablecoins. Jeremy explains network effects, liquidity flywheels, and why single-platform tokens fail to achieve internet-scale utility. | |
| Geopolitical Realities, 2026 Outlook, and Global Currency Strategy | 4 | 4 | 1 | 2 | Jason discusses rising geopolitical fragmentation and national champions. Jeremy outlines Circle's multi-currency strategy, including EURC and white-label technology stacks for foreign jurisdictions. | |
| Stablecoin Adoption and High-Frequency Trading Edge with Jeremy Allaire | 5 | 6 | 1 | 2 | Jason cites wire transfer friction in poker and remittances. Jeremy surprises the host by revealing that high-frequency electronic market making firms are the single largest power users of USDC due to millisecond capital efficiency. | |
| Velocity of Money and Circle's Global Economic Mission | 5 | 5 | 2 | 3 | Jason brings up state tax policy shifts and AI labor displacement concerns voiced by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei. Jeremy discusses capital accrual dynamics and how AI managers will replace traditional organizational hierarchy. | |
| Personal AI Workflows and Democratizing Public Equity Ownership | 5 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Jason describes his personal household Notion and Slack AI workflows. Both agree that broadening retail equity access through superannuation or stock programs is essential for economic stability. | |
| Interview Intro with CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz at Davos | 4 | 6 | 1 | 2 | Jason interviews CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz about AI threat vectors. Kurtz educates Calacanis on prompt-only autonomous malware that mutates locally without phoning home to command-and-control servers. | |
| North Korean Cyber Infiltration and Fake Remote Worker Schemes | 4 | 6 | 1 | 2 | George Kurtz explains finding dozens of remote North Korean IT operatives embedded inside US corporations. He shares an anecdote where an engineering manager resisted firing an uncovered operative because he shipped high-quality code. | |
| Mobile Security, Zero-Day Exploits, and Human Social Engineering | 5 | 5 | 1 | 2 | Jason shares how he social-engineered the NY Public Library VAX system via phone in 1987. Kurtz explains how modern session token replay attacks and help desk human vulnerabilities bypass sophisticated multi-factor authentication. | |
| AI Detection and Response (AIDR) and Market Opportunity | 5 | 6 | 1 | 2 | Kurtz illustrates multi-agent AI guardrail bypasses where internal AI agents collaborated on Slack to grant elevated privileges. The conversation shifts amicably to Mercedes F1 ownership, sports cars, and security consolidation. | |
| Intro to Adam Goldstein and eVTOL Regulatory Fast-Tracking | 5 | 5 | 1 | 3 | Jason welcomes Archer Aviation CEO Adam Goldstein to discuss eVTOL fast-tracking under DOT executive orders. Goldstein reveals Archer purchased the master lease and real estate of Hawthorne Airport for $170M to create an LA hub. | |
| Helipad Permitting and the Evolution of Urban Air Mobility | 4 | 5 | 2 | 4 | Jason challenges Goldstein on public market SPAC volatility and presses him on why he has not personally flown inside his own test aircraft yet. Goldstein defends retail investor backing and explains flight test safety protocols. | |
| Air Traffic Control Constraints, AI Integration, and Aviation Incidents | 6 | 5 | 2 | 3 | Jason references specialized aviation incident channels like Blanco Lirio to discuss pilot error versus automated flight. Goldstein outlines Archer's 24 redundant motors, 50-foot gliding wings, and order-of-magnitude safety goals. | |
| Business Goals at Davos and International Government Demand | 5 | 5 | 3 | 4 | Goldstein discusses Project NIX, an attritable autonomous attack drone developed in partnership with Anduril. Goldstein sharply criticizes previous DOT leadership for refusing meetings with American eVTOL founders. | |
| The Davos Obsession with Purchasing Greenland and Trump's Dealmaking | 4 | 3 | 1 | 2 | Jason and Adam banter about Davos' obsession with acquiring Greenland. Jason then introduces Crusoe Cloud CEO Chase Lochmiller to discuss AI compute infrastructure. | |
| Building AI Data Centers in West Texas & Boom Supersonic Turbine Partnership | 5 | 6 | 1 | 3 | Chase Lochmiller details Crusoe's West Texas campus with a 1.2GW substation, off-grid gas plant, and a $1.2B purchase order with Boom Supersonic for power turbines. Jason questions labor supply constraints and electrician pay spikes. | |
| Carbon Capture, Battery Storage, and Sustainable Power for AI Infrastructure | 5 | 6 | 1 | 2 | Lochmiller explains how synchronous GPU training cycles create massive electrical load fluctuations that require medium-voltage battery smoothing. He highlights deploying recycled EV batteries with JB Straubel's Redwood Materials. | |
| Surging Compute Demand and Lessons from Elon Musk's Colossus | 5 | 5 | 2 | 3 | Jason questions whether surging compute demand represents an AI bubble. Lochmiller reframes compute shortages across leading AI labs and analyzes how Elon Musk rapidly constructed the Colossus data center in Memphis. | |
| Structuring AI Megaproject Debt & Competing in Serverless Cloud Markets | 6 | 6 | 2 | 4 | Jason cites discussions from the BG2 podcast regarding OpenAI's burn rate and questions how Crusoe mitigates counterparty risk when raising project debt. Lochmiller explains how long-term off-take agreements with investment-grade firms like Oracle underwrite debt. | |
| Future Energy Frontiers: SMR Nuclear Reactors, Grid Benefit & Scaling Culture | 6 | 7 | 1 | 2 | Lochmiller details the trajectory toward 1MW power density racks and announces Crusoe's contract with Oklo for an SMR nuclear-powered data center at Idaho National Lab by 2027. Lochmiller closes on the operational challenges of scaling company headcount. |
Statements from this episode (82)
Allaire: Consumers will never use Bitcoin to buy a cup of coffee
“No one's going to buy a cup of coffee with a bitcoin, etc.”
Allaire: Circle stablecoins are fully reserved with ultra-safe assets
“The model that we built, which is fully reserved with, like, Ultra safe assets and, you know, have, we have regulators look after it and auditors look after it and make sure it's all done the right way.”
Allaire: Mainstream crypto adoption requires integrating with traditional finance and regulators
“If you want it to work that way, well, you know, you have to integrate with the existing system, and you have to work with policymakers to figure that out. There's just no other way.”
Allaire: Policymakers engage when tech founders proactively address real risks
“I found over the years that if you come into a policymaker or a regulator and you say, hey, there's this, there's a new technology. It can improve things in this way. We're trying to figure out how to deal with the risks. There are real risks. Like, let's not …”
Allaire: Genius Act prohibits Circle from paying interest to stablecoin holders
“Under the Genius Act, Circle, as a payment stablecoin issuer, we're prohibited from paying interest directly to stablecoin holders.”
Allaire: Circle has more bank engagement than ever before
“We're having more engagement with more banks In the world than we've ever had before.”
Allaire: A global bank moves internal funds using USDC
“There's a global systemically important bank we work with who's actually moving their own money between their own global branches using USDC, because it's faster than going through the correspondent banking system.”
Allaire: Circle and regulators will figure out stablecoin reward mechanisms
“I think you know, we'll, we'll figure out this rewards thing. I'm very sure.”
Allaire: USDC is growing faster than other major stablecoins
“USDC, amongst the largest stablecoins, has been growing faster.”
Allaire: The legal electronic money TAM is currently 120 trillion dollars
“The TAM Of legal electronic money today is about a 120 trillion dollars, and growing because of monetary easing and things like that, but Of that there's about 60 trillion dollars, which is physical cash and non-interest-bearing demand deposits, so kind of wor…”
Allaire: Circle saw 1,000% annual USDC growth during low interest rates
“When interest rates were actually very low we saw a thousand percent year over year growth two years straight.”
Allaire: USDC circulation growth is inversely correlated with interest rates
“We've had a multi-hundred percent increase in the amount of USDC in circulation, and so there's an inverse correlation there.”
Allaire predicts tech forces will break 4% unemployment and 2% inflation targets
“Four percent unemployment, two percent interest rates. Both of those are going to be challenged. Yeah. Both of those are going to be challenged because of very significant techno Technological and macro forces.”
Calacanis: US labor participation is 61-62%, down from 68-69% peak
“Labor, I think labor participation now is 61 or 62%. And then when you and I were coming up, it had peaked at 68, 69%.”
Circle received conditional approval for First National Digital Currency Bank
“We've received conditional approval for something called First National Digital Currency Bank, which is a national trust bank that we're setting up to be part of how we operate USDC as well.”
Jeremy Allaire: Marginal value of a new dollar stablecoin is zero
“The marginal value of a net new dollar stablecoin coming into the market is essentially zero.”
Jeremy Allaire predicts companies will not build proprietary stablecoins
“Yeah, I don't see that. I think this is a lot like other internet platform markets. Like, everyone doesn't need their own data center. Everyone didn't need their own vertical search engines. Yeah. You know, everyone, you know, there are a lot of things that pe…”
Allaire: Circle operates the largest euro-based stablecoin
“We have the largest euro-based stablecoin.”
Allaire: Stablecoins are coming to Japan, Brazil, Philippines, and other markets
“In the Philippines, or in Mexico, or in Brazil, or in Japan, and other markets, or Australia, Korea, there are stablecoins coming”
Allaire: World's largest electronic market firms are top USDC users
“You know who the biggest users of USDC are? It's actually, it is a form of gamblers, which is, it's the biggest electronic markets firms in the world.”
Allaire: Trillions of dollars in transactions are invoiced annually through QuickBooks
“And actually, QuickBooks, you know, they invoice people through QuickBooks. And it's actually trillions of dollars of transactions a year that are invoiced through QuickBooks.”
Allaire: Trillions of dollars in loans have been issued via stablecoins in DeFi
“Well, so already today there have been trillions of dollars of loans made in stablecoins through DeFi protocols.”
Allaire: AI and blockchain credit models can increase money velocity
“I think these kinds of credit intermediation models powered by AI and blockchain networks can actually further increase money velocity.”
Allaire predicts AI will drive extraordinary GDP growth over next 15 years
“I think we're going to see an acceleration of GDP growth. Pick, pick your time frame. Three, five, 10, 15 years. Like, we're gonna see, I think, an extraordinary period of economic growth acceleration.”
Allaire: Managing AI agents is essential to becoming a better corporate leader
“If you're a great manager at Circle, probably one of the best things that you can learn how to do is manage AI. And so, you know, invest in how you manage AI and AI agents. Actually, that's how you might actually become a better manager and leader through that…”
Allaire predicts AI will force rethinking of taxes and social contracts
“All that's, I think, in the coming years gonna kind of have to get thought about again. In different ways. And I don't think it's gonna, it's not gonna be the straightforward answers that we've turned to.”
Kurtz: LLMs empower less-skilled hackers to execute nation-state level cyberattacks
“You're minting new adversaries because you don't have to have all the knowledge that you had to have in the past. You can ask any number of LLMs and you can get answers back. So what's happened is the attack timeline has been compressed. You can automate all o…”
Kurtz: Hackers are deploying prompt-only autonomous malware that interacts with LLMs
“What we're seeing now is prompt only autonomous malware, meaning I can drop the prompt on your computer by a variety of means, and then it will autonomously interact with an LLM, and it will give a unique fingerprint every time it runs.”
Kurtz: Modern AI cyber threats can run autonomously without phoning home
“Now these can run autonomously whatever, without ever phoning home.”
Kurtz: CrowdStrike uncovered hundreds of North Korean operatives working as US engineers
“Well, it, it's hard to find these guys, but any event we found 40 of them. We were right. 40 of them. That, that's for the first run. We found hundreds now over.”
Kurtz: Top companies embed cybersecurity personnel in HR to filter AI resumes
“So, what we're seeing now is the best companies are actually embedding a security person in the HR group, where they're pre-filtering all these resumes, because the resumes are AI generated, the LinkedIn profiles are AI generated, so you want to catch them up …”
Kurtz: CrowdStrike has never operated or generated revenue in China
“We don't have operations there. We don't have any revenue. We don't sell them to China. Never have. From the start of the company.”
Kurtz: China directly hands stolen US trade secrets to its domestic companies
“The big thing with China is, there's a commercial aspect to what they do. So if the government breaks in and steals a trade secret from some company in the U.S., they'll just give it to another company in China.”
Kurtz: Nation-state hackers will always break into a target phone if determined
“If you look at the nation states and some of the creative ways they can actually get into a phone, as an example, if they want to get in bad enough, they're going to get in.”
Kurtz: All software contains unpatched zero-day vulnerabilities
“There are zero days in all software”
Kurtz: Help desk speed incentives create major cybersecurity vulnerabilities
“So their whole job is to open a ticket, solve a problem, close a ticket. So if you follow the money and the incentives, you can see why there's a problem and people want to be helpful at the help desk and hence they get into the situation.”
Kurtz: The web browser is the primary front door for cyber adversaries
“So it's the front door now for how people work and how adversaries get in us through the browser.”
Kurtz: Two AI agents collaborated to bypass enterprise administrative security guardrails
“These two agents are reasoning and they went right around The guardrails that were put in place.”
Kurtz predicts each corporate employee will eventually control 90 AI agents
“On average, each employee is going to have about 90 agents they control.”
Kurtz: CrowdStrike uses internal SLMs and guardrails when leveraging LLMs
“We, well, we have our small language models, and we do work with just about all of the large language models. But we've built our own guardrails around what gets shared, how it gets shared, and how we process any of the data back.”
Kurtz: Companies shouldn't try to replicate billions in frontier AI R&D
“For other bigger, you know, frontier type models, I mean, you're not going to replicate billions in R and D you want to leverage what's out there and take the best of it.”
George Kurtz acquired a 5% ownership stake in the Mercedes F1 team
“Just last fall I put a deal together and own five percent of the Mercedes team now.”
Kurtz: Rising geopolitical tensions consistently drive increased cybersecurity activity
“Whenever you see the geopolitical tensions go up, there's always more security activity”
Kurtz: Trump administration takes platform-focused, business-first cybersecurity approach
“When you think about what the administration is doing with security, they're taking a business first approach. You know what that means? They want to save money. They want to consolidate. They want platforms. They want better outcomes. Right. And they don't wa…”
Goldstein: A Trump executive order is fast-tracking the eVTOL regulatory framework
“President Trump issued an executive order that was fast tracking the program through the regulators and really starting to create a platform for us to launch.”
Goldstein: Archer Aviation won exclusive flight partner rights for LA 2028 Olympics
“We won the exclusive for the L.A. 20 Olympics.”
Goldstein: Archer Aviation recently acquired LA's Hawthorne Airport
“We also recently bought the Hawthorne Airport, right, outside of LAX, to help give us a hub.”
Archer Aviation spent around $170M on Hawthorne Airport acquisition
“It's around one hundred and seventy million dollars for everything, including the FBO and all the real estate around it.”
Goldstein: Early eVTOL launch locations will likely include Texas and Florida
“I think it's probably going to be a lot of red states you'll see. So my guess is you'll see something in Texas. You'll probably see something in Florida. Maybe you'll see something in New York.”
Goldstein: Municipalities will loosen helipad rules for safer eVTOLs
“That being said, this is a safer platform than what already exists, helicopters, so I think there'll be a lot of loosening of that because it's just increasing safety to something they already do.”
Goldstein: New York City is the largest US helicopter market
“It's already the biggest helicopter market in the US.”
Goldstein: eVTOL fleets will scale to hundreds of aircraft in 5-10 years
“So you can start with maybe tens of aircrafts and then, you know, maybe over five, 10 years, you scale it up to hundreds of aircrafts.”
Goldstein: Archer Aviation has raised around $4 billion
“So we've raised around four billion dollars.”
Goldstein: Going public via SPAC was definitely right for Archer
“And this was the right avenue for us for sure.”
Goldstein: Archer eVTOLs are safer, quieter, and cheaper than helicopters
“It's safer than helicopters. They're super quiet. They cost less.”
Goldstein: Archer Aviation conducts flight operations in California and UAE
“So two core places we fly. One is in Northern California in the Bay Area. So we fly at a Salinas, the airport there, which is about 90 minutes south of the Bay Area, and then also in the UAE.”
Adam Goldstein expects to fly in Archer's eVTOL aircraft in 2026
“Later this year, that'd be my guess.”
Goldstein: LLMs will first bridge pilot-to-machine communications in aviation autonomy
“With the advancements of LLMs, it actually allows this interesting period of time where you can now communicate with a machine in a way you couldn't really before, and so there's this probably middle ground that happens where there's pilots talking to machines…”
Goldstein: Archer's aircraft uses 24 redundant motors for 12 rotors
“Yeah, there's actually redundant motors. There's actually 24, but we, for simplicity, call it 12.”
Goldstein: Archer's eVTOL aircraft can glide up to 10 miles
“We have a big fifty-foot wing, you can glide, the glide ratio is huge, you can get up to max 10 miles of glide, so you can do a lot of things here.”
Goldstein: The World Economic Forum in Davos discourages talk of defense
“There is another element where, you know, Davos is sort of a non-defense oriented. They don't like you to talk about defense here.”
Goldstein: Archer Aviation partnered with Anduril to build autonomous military aircraft
“We do have a really strong partnership with Anderil. And so we've been building the new kind of autonomous, attributable aircrafts.”
Archer Aviation builds aircraft airframes while Anduril adds military systems
“We build the core aircrafts, and Andrel missionizes it, so think sensors or munitions, those kind of things.”
Goldstein: Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg refused meetings with Archer Aviation
“I could not get a meeting with the former Secretary of Transportation.”
Goldstein: Davos Attendees Are Obsessed With Potential U.S. Greenland Purchase
“And I will get asked that question in nearly every meeting. And I mean, literally, back in Silicon Valley, I, like, no one, I mean, yes, we've heard it on the news, of course, yes, of course, it's important, but people aren't talking about it on an every hour …”
Lockmiller: Crusoe Cloud is vertically integrated across energy, data centers, and AI
“We're a vertically integrated business, which means we're focused on not just the compute layer, but also the energy development, the data center development as well as the, you know, application layer where we're, you know, running things like our managed inf…”
Lockmiller: Crusoe built a 350-megawatt gas plant for a Texas data center
“We have a 1.2 gigawatt substation there. We've also built a 350 megawatt gas plant on site. To energize one of the largest clusters of GPUs in the world.”
Lockmiller: Crusoe placed a 1.2 billion dollar gas turbine order
“Now we're, you know, their first large purchase order for 1.2 billion dollars of, ah, gas turbines to power AI, critical AI infrastructure.”
Lockmiller: Crusoe Cloud has 8,000 workers on site in Abilene, Texas
“So in Abilene today, we have 8000 people on site every day.”
Lockmiller: Crusoe Cloud will employ 2,000 permanent staff in Abilene
“Long-term, we're going to have about 2000 permanent workers at the campus.”
Lockmiller: Crusoe Cloud plans to build a 10-gigawatt data center in Wyoming
“We have another project in outside Cheyenne, Wyoming, that we've announced we're planning to build a 10 gigawatt campus.”
Lockmiller: Syncing massive AI GPU clusters causes extreme power draw fluctuations
“When you're deploying giant clusters of GPUs you know, the entire data center is acting as a single computer. It's running one single workload that's training some breakthrough foundational model. And what that results in is actually massive load fluctuations …”
Lockmiller: Crusoe runs an off-grid AI data center cheaper than grid power
“We actually deployed a fully off-grid solar plus battery energy storage system that powers an AI data center, 24 hours around the clock, with a power price that's lower than the power price in Northern Virginia.”
Crusoe CEO Lockmiller: No leading AI lab has enough compute
“Nobody has enough compute. None of the, you know, leading labs, none of the leading application companies can get their hands on enough compute.”
Lockmiller: Crusoe Cloud sees compute demand accelerate going into 2026
“No, we're seeing things accelerate.”
Lockmiller: Crusoe secured a 15-year Oracle off-take agreement in Texas
“We have a long-term lease agreement with Oracle. Right, so we have a long-term, you know, fifteen-year off-take agreement with Oracle and so they're committed to sort of paying us for that, you know, time frame. So that helped unlock a lot of the construction …”
Lockmiller: Competitors would quickly absorb compute capacity if OpenAI failed
“Imagine, imagine they did go out of business. The reason they'd go out of business is because some other model company, whether it be, you know, Anthropic or Gemini or Grok, like really blew them out of the water. But if that were to happen, the group that mas…”
Lockmiller predicts AI data center racks will reach 1 megawatt density
“The next generation, Vera Rubin, is gonna be 250. And then Vera Rubin Ultra is expected to be 600. We're ultimately gonna get to one megawatt racks.”
Lockmiller: Crusoe has over 45 gigawatts in its development pipeline
“Crusoe has over 45 gigawatts in our pipeline”