May 17, 2024 · 1h 41m · allin
GPT-4o launches, Glue demo, Ohalo breakthrough, Druck's Argentina bet, did Google kill Perplexity?
Jason Calacanis · 27m spoken David Friedberg · 26m spoken David Sacks · 19m spoken Chamath Palihapitiya · 13m spoken Stanley Druckenmiller · 27s spoken Sal Khan's Son · 18s spoken Sal Khan · 14s spoken OpenAI Demo · 6s spoken
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In episode 179 of the All-In Podcast, the hosts analyze key developments in artificial intelligence, including OpenAI's GPT-4o and Google Gemini, while revealing new startup ventures like David Sachs' Glue and David Friedberg's agtech company Ohalo. The episode also explores Stanley Druckenmiller's investment strategy in Argentina, US fiscal policy, and venture capital dynamics.
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 97.3% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
The hosts as informed peer 5.7 Guest teaching 1.2 Guest disagreement 1.1 The hosts pushing back 1.2
speaking balance: gold is the hosts, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 1:07:50 Sacks Slams Bidenomics Fiscal Policy
Sacks forcefully gives Bidenomics an F, arguing that government stimulus in a strong economy is contradictory and causes inflation.
Hardest push from the hosts ▶ 47:16 Sacks Challenges Ohalo Potato Size vs YieldSacks directly questions the practical benefit of Ohalo's boosted potatoes, forcing Friedberg to clarify that the gain is total yield per acre rather than individual potato size.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 44:22 Friedberg Educates Group on Plant PolyploidyFriedberg details the genetics of polyploidy, explaining how plants like wheat and potatoes double their chromosomes naturally and how Ohalo artificially induces this.
The host holds their own ▶ 1:09:39 Friedberg Explains Precision vs Accuracy FrameworkFriedberg articulates a comprehensive investment framework contrasting financial precision with macro accuracy, illustrating how precise modeling failed on legacy retail like Macy's.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All-In Podcast Title Sequence | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | The hosts engage in light banter about AI virtual backgrounds, Chamath wishing his anonymous child a happy birthday, and Phil Hellmuth's recent Vegas antics. The dynamic is purely casual small talk among peers. | |
| Casino Baccarat Debates and High Stakes Poker Hands | 2 | 0 | 1 | 1 | Friedberg describes playing Baccarat in Vegas and jokes about high-stakes gamblers trying to manipulate card flips. Chamath recounts a wild cooler hand from a poker game with Jennifer Tilly. | |
| The Sam Altman Interview and GPT-4o Launch Timing | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | Friedberg addresses viewer criticism regarding Sam Altman's interview airing right before the GPT-4o announcement. He clarifies that Altman delayed the product announcement at the last minute without giving specifics. | |
| The All-In Interview Philosophy: Conversation vs. Journalism | 3 | 0 | 1 | 1 | Chamath and Sacks explain their interview philosophy, emphasizing that they are technology investors and curious conversants rather than investigative journalists looking for gotcha moments. | |
| Analyzing OpenAI GPT-4o Demos and Features | 4 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Jason plays clips from OpenAI's GPT-4o demonstration, including real-time audio translation and Khan Academy math tutoring. The group discusses the major UI/UX leaps in voice and vision interaction. | |
| AI Model Evolution and ChatGPT Traffic Plateau | 6 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Friedberg outlines the architectural shift from single large models to interconnected multimodal systems. Chamath analyzes web traffic data showing ChatGPT usage plateauing and compares it to early social network adoption curves. | |
| B2C vs. B2B Monetization and AI Cost Reduction | 6 | 1 | 1 | 1 | Sacks explains why B2C AI subscription models suffer from high churn, arguing that B2B monetization via APIs and developer tools is superior. He notes that GPT-4o's tenfold speed improvement unlocks true conversational UX. | |
| Open Source AI and the Open Compute Project Parallel | 7 | 1 | 1 | 2 | Chamath draws a historical parallel between open-source AI incentives and Facebook's Open Compute Project, which commoditized hardware data centers. Sacks adds that early customer support AI startups just saw years of R&D obsoleted. | |
| Product Demo: David Sachs Unveils AI-Native Work Chat 'Glue' | 7 | 2 | 1 | 2 | Sacks presents a live demo of Glue, an AI-native chat application that replaces traditional Slack channels with multi-person threads and RAG-powered transcript search. Jason and Chamath offer constructive feedback. | |
| David Friedberg Unveils Ohalo and Boosted Breeding Technology | 9 | 3 | 2 | 3 | Friedberg officially unveils Ohalo's boosted breeding technology, explaining how turning off reproductive gene splitting doubles plant DNA and drastically boosts crop yield. Sacks pushes on tuber size versus total crop yield. | |
| Technical Audio Glitch Leads to Besties Banter on Hunger | 5 | 1 | 1 | 1 | After Friedberg experiences a brief technical audio glitch, he answers Chamath's technical questions regarding quantitative genomics and how AI models predict optimal genetic crosses across millions of possibilities. | |
| Commercialization Strategy, Driscoll's Berries, and IP Moats | 7 | 2 | 1 | 2 | Friedberg details Ohalo's commercialization strategy, sharing insights from the Driscoll's berry market and explaining how continuous genetic iteration creates defensible trade secret moats beyond patents. | |
| Stanley Druckenmiller's Perplexity-Driven Investment in Argentina | 5 | 1 | 1 | 1 | The hosts discuss Stanley Druckenmiller's CNBC interview where he shared using Perplexity AI to instantly identify and buy Argentine ADRs following Javier Milei's Davos speech. | |
| Debating Bidenomics, US Deficits, and Interest Rate Crowding | 7 | 1 | 3 | 2 | Sacks delivers a strong critique of Bidenomics, citing Druckenmiller to argue that massive federal deficit spending in a strong economy contradicts Fed rate hikes and crowds out private sector innovation. | |
| Precision versus Accuracy in Investing and Venture Strategy | 8 | 1 | 1 | 1 | Friedberg articulates an investment framework contrasting precision with macro accuracy, showing how hyper-detailed modeling on legacy assets like Macy's fails if macro trends like Amazon e-commerce are ignored. | |
| Calacanis's Record Seed Investment in Athena Virtual Assistants | 6 | 1 | 1 | 1 | Jason details his seven-figure seed investment in Athena, a virtual executive assistant platform leveraging elite offshore knowledge workers in Manila trained with MBA-level curriculum. | |
| The A.D.D. Framework, AI Verticalization, and Startup Deflation | 7 | 1 | 1 | 1 | The hosts discuss how AI tools and delegation lower operating expenses across startups. Jason introduces his A.D.D. framework (Automate, Deprecate, Delegate) and argues AI is broadly deflationary for capital needs. | |
| Google I/O, Gemini AI Overviews, and Re-Underwriting Google | 6 | 1 | 1 | 1 | Jason presents Google Gemini's new AI Overviews from I/O, showing how search responses incorporate direct step-by-step answers and embedded product ads above standard web links. | |
| Evaluating Google's Dormant Value and Isomorphic Labs Opportunity | 8 | 1 | 1 | 1 | Chamath re-underwrites his Google thesis, highlighting high-margin side bets like Isomorphic Labs. Friedberg explains how keeping searchers on Google via AI answers reduces bounce-back rates and enhances monetization. | |
| Legal Risks, Fair Use, and Big Tech Monopolies in AI | 7 | 2 | 2 | 2 | Sacks discusses legal fair use challenges in AI data scraping and observes that Big Tech monopolies can recover from major strategic missteps simply by copying agile startup innovations like Perplexity's citation engine. | |
| Portfolio Strategy vs. Startup All-In Execution | 5 | 1 | 1 | 1 | Friedberg quotes Jeff Bezos on Amazon's history of experimental failures, and Sacks contrasts big company portfolio bets with early-stage startup single-focus execution as the show wraps up. |
Statements from this episode (39)
Calacanis: Duolingo stock took a hit during OpenAI's GPT-4o demo
“I think Doolingo stock took a hit during that.”
Friedberg: AI will transition to continuously updated systems of models
“And so I think what we're going to see is soon more of an obfuscation of the individual models and more of this general service type approach where the updates are happening in, in, in a more continuous fashion.”
Friedberg: GPT-4o outperforms GPT-4 on benchmarks but trails Claude 3 Opus
“And you can see the scorecard here that GPT four Oh actually outperforms GPT four. And so this goes counter to some of the narrative that in order to get some of the performance improvements and speed improvements they got in four Oh, that they actually made t…”
Chamath: The 'Facebook of AI' has not been created yet
“I think where we are is probably within two years of where the basic building blocks are standardized. And then I think the real businesses get built. So I will maintain my perspective here, which is the quote unquote Facebook of AI has yet to be created.”
Calacanis: AI models will become 99% cheaper every two years
“And these are now becoming about 90% cheaper every year, which means every two years these things are going to be 99% cheaper and better.”
Calacanis: OpenAI may make basic AI free and charge for multiplayer
“And it might be that OpenAI sacks on a strategic level is going to make all this free or close to free and maybe just charge for multiplayer version. That seems to be where it's heading.”
Sacks: B2C software subscriptions are an unattractive business model
“B to C subscriptions, it's just not a very attractive business model because consumers just aren't willing to pay a lot and they have high churn rates and there's no possibility of expansion really.”
Sacks: OpenAI will pivot toward B2B models over time
“So I suspect they're going to move in more of a B to B direction over time because that's where the real money is.”
Sacks: AI app developers must differentiate from underlying model roadmaps
“If you're an app developer, the key thing to understand is where does model innovation end and your innovation begin? Because if you get that wrong, you'll end up doing a bunch of stuff that the model will just obsolete in a few months.”
Chamath: Companies will open-source non-core AI operational tools
“That's why I think the incentive for these folks is going to be to push this stuff into the open source. Because if you solve a problem That's operationally necessary for your business, but it isn't the core part of your business. What incentive do you have to…”
Sacks: AI chat will achieve promptless proactive assistance by GPT-5
“Well, that's where I want to go with it, is I call that promptless, which is I want the AI just to chime in when it determines that it has relevant information and can help the team, even if it hasn't been summoned yet. But we need some model improvement for t…”
Friedberg: Ohalo achieves 50% to 100% plant size gains versus industry's 1.5%
“In the corn seed industry, Breeders that are breeding corn are spending three billion dollars a year on breeding, and they're getting maybe one and a half percent yield gain per year. With our system, we are seeing 50 to a hundred percent jump in the size of t…”
Friedberg: Ohalo's boosted potato offspring yielded 682g compared to parents' 33g and 9g
“When you look under the ground and you harvest the potatoes, you can see that that AB potato only had 33 grams. CD had nine grams. So each parent had 33 and nine grams potato. But the boosted offspring had 682 grams of potato.”
Friedberg: Ohalo's potato true seed technology can save farmers 20% of revenue
“So there's no potato seed industry today. And potato is like a hundred billion dollar market. With our system, not only can we make potatoes higher yielding and make them disease resistant, what we also make is perfect seed. So farmers can now plant seed in th…”
Friedberg: Ohalo spent over $50M during five years in stealth
“This was stealth for five years. We put a ton of money into this business. So when you invest, like I mean, north of 50.”
Druckenmiller bought five Argentine ADRs after using Perplexity AI search
“I wasn't at Davos, but I saw the speech in Davos, and it was about one o'clock in the afternoon in my office. I dialed up perplexity, and I said, give me the five most liquid ADRs in Argentina. It gave me enough of a description That I followed the old Soros r…”
Chamath: Fixing mismanaged economies requires cutting entitlements and driving growth
“When you've spent decades Casting about and misallocating capital and running your economy into the ground. The formula for fixing it is exactly the same. You cut entitlements and you reinvigorate the economy.”
Sacks: Milei-style spending cuts will not reach US politics until forced
“Probably not. I mean, not until we're forced to”
Sacks: Reserve currency status alone prevents US bankruptcy and hyperinflation
“The only reason we haven't gone broke or experienced hyperinflation is because we're the world's reserve currency.”
Calacanis passed on early Twitter investment at single-digit million valuation
“I had the opportunity to invest in Twitter when it was like a single digit millions company. And I just thought, you know what? This thing is only like the headline. And I told that like, it's the headline. It's not like the entire blog post. It's going to be …”
Sachs: PayPal founders succeeded partly due to lack of prior payments expertise
“When we did PayPal, none of us knew anything about payments, that was one of the reasons we were successful. All the payments experts told us it couldn't be done.”
Friedberg: Druckenmiller's long-term bet on Argentina's Milei will succeed
“From a macro perspective, what Millay is doing is significantly different than what we're seeing in any other emerging market, let alone mature market with respect to fiscal austerity, And appropriateness in this sort of inflationary, global inflationary envir…”
Calacanis: Made a seven-figure seed investment in Athena
“We put a seven figure bet in, which is rare for us as a seed fund, right? Normally our bet sizes are a hundred K to 50, you know, it's a fifty million dollar fund.”
Calacanis: Athena is growing faster than Uber and Robinhood did
“It's the fastest growing company I've ever seen. And I'm including Uber in that it has been growing at you know, A rate that I'll just say is faster than Uber and Robinhood when we were investing in them tens of millions of dollars.”
Calacanis: Using Athena cut venture fund operational costs by up to 75%
“And now our due diligence, our first level screening, you know, and our tracking of companies is being done by these assistants for what I'll say is a third to a fourth of the price I was paying previously.”
Chamath: AI will shrink company headcount and operating expenses
“The opex of companies is just going to go down, which means the size of companies are going to shrink, which means the amount of money you need is going to go down. And that's just going to create the ability for these companies to sell those products cheaper.”
Calacanis: Unemployment rate will stay very low despite AI adoption
“We're going to have more people be able to create more products and solve more problems. The unemployment rate's going to stay very low. We're just going to have more companies.”
Calacanis: Early startup seed requests dropped from $3M to $500K-$1M
“The same startups that had A request of three million dollars in funding five years ago are now requesting 500 to a million.”
Calacanis: Google will roll out AI Overviews to most users by end of 2024
“Basically it's perplexity for most users by the end of the year, they're going to have this.”
Calacanis predicts Google will face major publisher lawsuits over AI Overviews
“And I think that we're going to see a major lawsuit here.”
Chamath: Isomorphic Labs will reach Royalty Pharma margins at 10x-100x revenue
“I think something like isomorphic ends up being of that magnitude of margin scale, but at an order of magnitude or two orders of magnitude higher revenue.”
Calacanis: Generative AI will increase total search queries and user engagement
“My belief is that this is going to result in more searches and more knowledge engagement because once you Get how to cook your steak and get the right temperature, right? For medium rare. It's going to anticipate your next three questions better. So now to say…”
Friedberg: AI search snippets will cannibalize long-tail internet content
“So I think the real victim in all this is that long tail of content on the internet that probably gets cannibalized by the snippet one box experience within the search function.”
Friedberg: Meta and Amazon lack high-value call options like Google's Waymo
“Meta and Amazon do not have an isomorphic lab and Waymo sitting inside their business that suddenly pops to a couple hundred billion of market cap. And Google does have a few of those.”
Sacks: Gemini answer boxes will eat the rest of Google search
“It's very clear now that Gemini powered one box is the future of Google search. People just want the answer. I think that this feature is going to eat the rest of Google search.”
Sacks: Perplexity is screwed unless acquired after Google copied AI citations
“I think they're kind of screwed now, unless they get an acquisition deal.”
Sacks predicts Alphabet will reach $5 trillion market cap despite missteps
“They can make 10 mistakes, but their monopoly is so strong that they can finally get it right by copying the innovator, and they're probably gonna become a five billion dollar company now. Sorry, five trillion dollar company.”
Sacks: Startup founders must never hedge and should go all-in on one idea
“I always tell founders, just go all in on your best idea. They're always asking me for permission to pivot, and I always tell them, do, go for the best idea. Don't hedge. Don't try to do five things at once. Just go all in on your best idea.”