Opinion
Gurley: Defense tech startups and Palantir profit from escalating China tensions
“You have the new kind of VC-backed defense companies who all, and maybe I kind of put Palantir in that group, but they all I think have an incentive To kind of have tension with China, if you will. It actually increases revenue. I call them the new neocons.”
Opinion
Gurley: US policy to block China from AI is futile and backfired
“I think the policy of American, of the American government to try and keep China out of the AI game is futile. I've always felt that way. I don't think it'll work. In this case, I actually think it backfired.”
Assertion Contradicted
Gurley: Cross-country excess death data shows COVID lockdowns achieved nothing
“They've gone back through, and looked at excess deaths at a number of different countries, and lockdowns achieved nothing.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Gurley: OpenAI Consumer Subscription Cohorts Suffer ~65% Annual Churn
“At least for the cohorts that are old enough, the churn's about 65% annually, so they're only 35% retaining, which Sachs had hinted at on All In, and maybe the reason that I think Sam at one point said he didn't really see the twenty-dollar thing as his future…”
Assertion Supported
Gurley: Microsoft's OpenAI deal uses cloud credits to create cashless revenue
“It started with the original, from my perspective, with the original Microsoft open AI deal where credits go in as A in kind investment. And then those credits are used back against, you know, Azure and Microsoft cloud services. And in the, in that case, you k…”
Opinion
Gurley: High-profile companies face the highest risk in Delaware courts
“I think it's actually the highest profile companies that are at risk because they're the ones that, you know, an activist judge is going to want to make an exception out of.”
Opinion
Gurley: Super-voting shares exist largely to block proxy advisor control
“One of the key reasons so many companies have super voting is so that these two companies can't tell them what to do”
Insight
Gurley: Defense Tech VCs Adopt Hawkish China Views to Help Portfolios
“Once you invest in something, you just start to adopt the mouthpiece for it and make a lot of arguments that are central to that company's success. And I think that's happening now that we have a large number of VCs in the military space.”
Assertion Supported
Gurley: Two Delaware Judges Account for 55% of Super-High Fee Multipliers
“In the 20 cases where you have this super high multiplier 55% of the cases are just two of the judges, and there's something else that, that I learned in reading this, which I didn't know, but the chancellor who is one of the two, gets to pick who the cases ar…”
Disclosure
Gurley Plans to Advise Every Company He Is Involved With to Leave Delaware
“I read this, and I think, you know, any company that I'm involved with, I'm gonna encourage to leave because this is radically different Then why I was told we were supposed to go to Delaware.”
Opinion
Gurley: US must open borders wide to skilled Chinese immigrants
“And I've said, you know, for a long time, the number one thing we could do would be to open up our border for skilled immigration from China as wide as we possibly can.”
Insight
Gurley: Export controls on digital goods sold globally cannot work
“If you're gonna sell something in a 120 countries around the world and try and tell one country they can't have it. There's no effing way that's gonna work. Like, and especially these goods have digital attributes.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Gurley: Zero chance US stops China's AI progress or widens lead
“I think there's zero chance that you're going to stop China or somehow like I even, I use the phrase increase the gap.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Gurley: Export controls and chip bans could escalate into a hot war
“But any one of these decisions, and certainly the combination of them, could lead to escalation. It could go as far as leading to a hot war.”
Opinion
Gurley: The US cannot 'win the AI war' because AI is an infinite game
“Almost everyone in the AI space that I see with a microphone in front of them says, The US has to win the AI war. I don't know what that means. And if I guess as to what it means, I don't think it's possible. And so. It's an infinite game, and no one that I ta…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Gurley: Controlling AGI will not grant zero-sum global control
“I see a very similar vein in AI, where people, especially people that believe in AGI and ASI and magical AI, think that it's just gonna explode, and then whoever controls this uncontrollable force will control the globe. In a zero-sum way. And I just, I don't …”
Insight
Gurley: Hindering Foreign Competitors Weakens the US Long-Term
“Protecting the U.S. By trying to somehow injure or disable or hinder a competitor that's in a different country in the long run will make us weaker. I believe that fundamentally.”
Opinion
Gurley: OpenAI's Anti-DeepSeek Paper Signals Uncompetitive Rent-Seeking Behavior
“I think your friends at open AI added to that last week by putting out an anti deep seek paper that I thought was quite sad. Like if a company like GM or Ford were to put out a paper like that about BYD, we would look at them and go, oh, you just want the gove…”
Opinion
Gurley: Building bigger clusters and more LLM parameters won't yield much
“I've been concerned that the way an LLM works and the way it's optimized that building bigger clusters and more parameters won't buy you much.
Right.
Whether I've said it or not, Ilya said it, Andreessen said it, other people said the same thing, and so to m…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Gurley: Escalating tech constraints on China raises Taiwan invasion risk
“But I think if you, I think I can imagine that if you just poke China enough, if you keep poking and you keep poking and you keep raising the constraints, you increase the odds that they make a run at Taiwan.”
Opinion
Gurley: Blocking ASML and AI tech to China is not working
“I don't think blocking ASML or blocking AI technology or blocking anything is working. It's just not working”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Gurley: Tariffs will only protect US industry for a very short window
“Tariffs and protectionism will only protect American industry for a very short window. It's actually going to deny them the competition they need to get their together.”
Assertion Contradicted
Gurley: Anthropic and Eric Schmidt Pushed to Restrict Open-Source AI
“Anthropic and their investors like Eric Schmidt have been some of the people that have been encouraging, you know, more and more AI oversight and AI regulation and trying to make it such that open source AI would not be legal.”
Opinion
Gurley: Dr. Jay Bhattacharya is the best candidate to head the NIH
“His name is now being floated as a potential head of the NIH, and I couldn't, I can't think of a better candidate, and I'm so hopeful that, that he ends up in that role.”
Bill Gurley