Jan 6, 2023 · 1h 38m · allin
E110: 2023 Bestie Predictions!
Chamath Palihapitiya · 24m spoken Jason Calacanis · 23m spoken David Friedberg · 20m spoken David Sacks · 17m spoken
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In episode 110 of the All-In Podcast, hosts Jason Calacanis, Chamath Palihapitiya, David Sacks, and David Friedberg present their comprehensive 2023 predictions across domestic politics, global macroeconomics, technology, financial markets, and pop culture while evaluating breaking news regarding OpenAI's $29 billion valuation.
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 99.7% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
The hosts as informed peer 6.1 Guest teaching 2.3 Guest disagreement 2.8 The hosts pushing back 2.9
speaking balance: gold is the hosts, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 1:30:30 Jason rejects OpenAI $29B valuation
Jason aggressively counters Friedberg's bullishness on OpenAI, arguing the $29 billion valuation ignores huge daily compute burn and massive legal exposure from using copyrighted training data.
Hardest push from the hosts ▶ 16:13 Sacks dismantles Chamath's Nikki Haley predictionSacks rejects Chamath's spread trade bet on Nikki Haley over Ron DeSantis, explaining how DeSantis unifies both MAGA populists and party establishment in ways Haley cannot.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 1:10:04 Chamath breaks down Blackstone BREIT structural issuesChamath educates the panel on the mechanics of Blackstone's commercial real estate fund redemption caps and its emergency high-yield preferred equity arrangement with the UC pension system.
The host holds their own ▶ 1:30:46 Jason lays out copyright law constraints on AI training dataJason demonstrates legal analysis by walking through fair use doctrine, derivative works, and commercial interference tests that AI foundation models will fail when monetized.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Welcome to 2023 and New Year Catch-Up | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | The co-hosts engage in light banter about their holiday breaks and note how Wall Street Journal stories frequently follow their group chat discussions. | |
| 2023 Predictions: Biggest Political Winner | 6 | 3 | 4 | 4 | The co-hosts share political winner predictions including Supreme Court affirmative action cases, MBS, and Nikki Haley versus DeSantis spread trades. Sacks provides sharp pushback on Chamath's prediction regarding Nikki Haley's primary viability. | |
| 2023 Predictions: Biggest Political Loser | 6 | 2 | 2 | 2 | Friedberg outlines how sovereign debt overhang will put the IMF under severe political backlash. Sacks points to California and San Francisco budget shortfalls following the post-2021 tech asset bubble collapse. | |
| 2023 Predictions: Biggest Business Winner | 6 | 2 | 2 | 2 | The group predicts top business winners including SpaceX/Relativity Space, OpenAI, US natural gas, and laid-off tech founders starting companies. Sacks provides detailed context on how European dependence shifted to American LNG after Nord Stream's destruction. | |
| 2023 Predictions: Biggest Business Loser | 7 | 3 | 3 | 3 | Friedberg and Chamath highlight capital-intensive growth startups facing severe valuation write-downs. They explain how liquidation preference stacks wipe out common equity and employees during structured down-rounds. | |
| 2023 Predictions: Biggest Business Deal | 6 | 2 | 3 | 3 | Predictions for 2023 deals include a Starlink IPO, a Sino-Russian trade partnership, and Apple acquiring a major car company or media entity. Chamath pushes back on fears of banning TikTok by arguing its algorithmic content lacks structural network effects. | |
| 2023 Predictions: Most Contrarian Beliefs | 7 | 3 | 5 | 5 | Sacks predicts a divergence between Biden and Zelensky over Crimea military objectives, raising risks of nuclear escalation. Friedberg argues the US dollar may trade more like a risk asset as global trade shifts away from greenback settlement. | |
| 2023 Predictions: Best-Performing Assets | 6 | 2 | 2 | 2 | Chamath and Sacks recommend holding cash and short-dated Treasury bills yielding over five percent. Friedberg presents an investment thesis around semiconductor, energy, and pharmaceutical infrastructure equipment. | |
| 2023 Predictions: Worst-Performing Assets | 7 | 3 | 2 | 2 | The panel picks worst-performing assets including commercial real estate and consumer debt. Chamath details how Blackstone's BREIT faced massive redemption requests requiring emergency capital infusions. | |
| 2023 Predictions: Most Anticipated Trends | 7 | 2 | 3 | 3 | The hosts discuss personal and corporate austerity, waning Trump influence in the House speaker race, and breakthroughs in cell and gene therapies. Friedberg details the infrastructure requirements for scaling FDA-approved gene editing treatments. | |
| 2023 Predictions: Most Anticipated Media & Pop Culture | 4 | 1 | 1 | 1 | The group reviews anticipated movies, TV shows, and books for 2023 including Oppenheimer, Dune Part 2, and AI-generated media. Banter centers around Prince Harry's memoir Spare. | |
| OpenAI Tender Offer & The Legal Future of AI | 8 | 4 | 6 | 7 | Breaking news of OpenAI's $29 billion tender offer sparks sharp debate. Jason forcefully pushes back on the valuation, citing $3 million per day operating losses and existential legal liabilities regarding unpermitted copyright data in training sets. |
Statements from this episode (34)
Sacks predicts Supreme Court will strike down university affirmative action policies
“I think the majority will rule to strike down these policies That really discriminate against Asian Americans, and I think they're the last group in America where it seems to be okay to discriminate against, and I think the Supreme Court is gonna find that unc…”
Chamath: Affirmative action in college admissions is classism disguised as racism
“And so I think this was always an issue of classism that was disguised as racism.”
Friedberg predicts Crown Prince MBS will rocket to top of global influence in 2023
“I think as a result, you will see him kind of rise in terms of influence, not in terms of, you know, hey, the world has accolades for this guy. But I think in terms of global influence he will rocket ship to kind of the top because of this kind of jockeying he…”
Chamath predicts DeSantis will lose momentum and Nikki Haley will emerge in 2024 GOP primary
“And so if you put those two things together, the risk is that DeSantis decays. Things emerge, people attack him because he's the clear front runner, and the opportunity, just like it was for Trump in 16, or for Clinton, or for George Bush, Not Herbert Walker, …”
David Friedberg states global public and private debt totals $235 trillion
“Global debt is about 235 trillion dollars in public and private.”
David Friedberg predicts the IMF will be 2023's biggest political loser
“So my big bet is the IMF is gonna play a major role, and we're gonna be talking a lot about the IMF later this year. I think as a result, the IMF will get a lot of heat and you'll end up seeing a lot of pressure and political, you know, just like we blame NATO…”
Sacks predicts massive 2023 budget shortfalls for California and San Francisco
“I think California is my big political loser. And I would say in particular, the city of San Francisco, both are going to have gigantic budget shortfalls.”
Jason Calacanis predicts Ron DeSantis peaked too early for 2024 politics
“I think DeSantis peaked a little too early and the forever Trumpers and the chaos is gonna be a little too much for him to handle.”
Chamath: Relativity Space has a $10 billion order book
“And we have a, like a ten billion dollar order book that gets unlocked.”
Friedberg: OpenAI will receive a $1B+ investment in 2023
“They're going to get a billion dollar plus investment this year.”
Sacks: America's natural gas industry will be 2023's biggest business winner
“My answer for the big business winner of the year is America's natural gas industry.”
Calacanis: Laid-off tech workers starting companies will be extremely successful
“I think laid off tech workers who get together in groups of two, three, or four developers, product managers, people who actually build stuff and start companies together are going to become extremely successful.”
Friedberg predicts 99.5% of capital-intensive Series B-D startups will fail
“I think we'll see what we saw in the dot-com bubble, where 99 and a half percent of these companies actually die.”
Chamath completed five venture investments in Q4 2022 with clean markups
“At the end of Q four, I did five deals. And four were pro ratas. One was a new deal. And they were all clean markups.”
Chamath predicts Google Search will lose 10% to 15% usage in 2023
“So I think that, you know, Google could lose 10 or 15% of usage to all these other sites. And that may not make any of those sites that relevant, but it'll have a material measurable impact to Google”
Chamath predicts Starlink will IPO in 2023 at a $75B+ valuation
“Starlink will go public. Oh, SpaceX will cut and paste the cap table. And we will take that. Yum. Yum. It'll be yummy and delicious. And my prediction is that the Starlink valuation will be at least half of SpaceX's current private mark.”
Chamath asserts KA band plane broadband costs $500k annually
“Just so you know, the best in class broadband connection for a plane is called KA band, and it costs 500 grand a year.”
Sacks predicts a major strategic economic deal between Russia and China in 2023
“There will be a deal between Putin and Xi. And they met by satellite late last week to discuss ways to further help each other in 2023.”
Friedberg predicts Apple will make an out-of-the-ordinary acquisition like Disney or Fiat Chrysler
“So my wild card is I think Apple ends up buying something completely out of the ordinary.”
Calacanis predicts TikTok will be forced to divest Chinese ownership and go public
“And my runner-up is TikTok is gonna divest under duress. I think that it's going to have to go public, and the Chinese are gonna divest their interest in it and just take their chips because they're gonna be faced with the existential threat during the politic…”
Sacks predicts the Biden-Zelenskyy political alliance will end in 2023
“My prediction or most contrarian belief is that the bromance between Biden and Zelensky comes to an end at some point in 20, 23.”
Chamath predicts US inflation will remain persistent throughout 2023
“I will go and pick that inflation, which people expect to fall off a cliff, doesn't fall off a cliff as fast or as meaningfully as people want.”
Friedberg predicts the US dollar will lose its global reserve currency status
“It could be that the US dollar coming out of 2023 starts to trade more like a risk asset and less like a risk free asset. And so I think that that's my big contrarian bet is that maybe this year marks the beginning of the end of the US dollar as the kind of gl…”
Calacanis: Seed stage venture capital will be 2023's best-performing asset class
“I'm going with C stage investing again. I don't think people want to get into these toxic cap tables at the late stage, as Chamath pointed out. So I go with seed stage and, you know, end up to series A, the people brave enough to place bets, the founders brave…”
Sacks: Capital flows are shifting heavily from equities into bonds
“And that's why capital flows are moving hugely right now from equities into bonds, especially if we're going to a recession, which is inherently deflationary.”
Chamath predicts tech, energy, and junk debt will underperform in 2023
“I think that tech will have a tough year. I think energy will have a really shit year. And probably the biggest asset class that is going to get pressured is going to be junk debt.”
Sacks: Banks will soon take over San Francisco office towers
“I think office towers in San Francisco are, that is some serious toxic debt, 27% vacancy rates and growing as Lisa's role. I think that a lot of these buildings, maybe virtually all of the San Francisco downtown is going to be owned by the bank soon because no…”
Chamath: Blackstone guaranteed UC pension 11.5% interest on $4B BREIT deal
“And so they went to the University of California pension system, and they essentially got a huge infusion of capital. I think it was about four billion dollars where they guaranteed 11 and a half percent interest to these guys for the four billion dollars. And…”
Friedberg: Consumer credit will hit a wall in 2023 as defaults rise
“And so I think we're going to run into a real wall with respect to consumer credit in sometime this year. And you're going to see, As you guys know, it's such a complicated, interwoven market of assets, that the way that this can be traded, there's a lot of di…”
Sacks: Trump's influence in the GOP will continue to wane in 2023
“The trend that I am going to suggest will be to your great disappointment, J Cal, which is Trump's influence in the GOP continues to wane.”
Friedberg: 27 FDA-approved cell/gene therapies exist with 1,000+ in clinical trials
“There are currently 27 FDA-approved cell and gene therapies on the market. There are over a thousand in clinical trials, many of which are already showing extraordinary efficacy and benefit.”