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 321 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 6 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
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.”
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.”
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.”
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…”
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…”
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.”
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”
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.”
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…”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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…”
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 …”
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.”
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…”
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…”
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.”
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”
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.”
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.”
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.”
Gurley: Large endowments are holding zombiecorn startups at unrealistically high valuations
“And by the way, you talk, if 80% of the zombie corns are never going to get out or are going to get out at reduced prices, I'm telling you flat out, those are being held on the large endowments, you know, as LPs at unrealistically high prices across the board.”
Gurley: Building next-gen nuclear requires ground-up deregulation and litigation immunity
“And if you want to go build this next generation level three plant, I think you've got to rewrite the regulation from zero ground up, like make it, Thinner and tighter. And two, I think we've gotten to the point where we got to say this is so important you can…”
Gurley: Closed-source AI leaders are drafting EU AI regulatory language
“The leaders with their closed source AI models are spending more money than any startups ever spent. You know, in lobbying efforts, and they're drafting the language that ends up in the EU doctrine”
Gurley: LLMs Are Structurally Set Up for Diminishing Marginal Returns
“I'm probably more skeptical. I think that the way that LLM's work is actually set up for diminishing marginal returns, but we will see.”
Gurley: Credit Card Data Implies $2.1B of OpenAI Revenue Is Consumer
“I went into one of these credit card survey things, and I looked at OpenAI, and assuming that people don't pay for the API with a credit card, so the credit card pool just represents, and I compared it to a company where I knew the revenue it would imply that …”
Gurley: Elon Musk's Pay Package Is the Most Shareholder-Aligned Ever
“The Elon package is the most shareholder aligned CEO compensation package I've ever seen. I would be thrilled if all of my hired CEOs had a very similar package.”
Gurley: Companies Need to Consider Leaving Delaware as Fast as Possible
“I think companies need to consider leaving Delaware as fast as possible.”
Gurley: OpenAI and AI leaders are spouting vague, unsubstantiated hyperbole
“I think in this case, because some of the leaders and I'd say OpenA is probably the strongest Are willing to spout hyperbole. And what I mean by hyperbole is they're willing to just state really vague, broad, big ideas without much meat on them.”
Gurley: Protective tariffs will weaken US automakers, not strengthen them
“And pulling up the, these tariffs to help protect our companies won't make them stronger. It'll make them weaker by not exposing them to the reality on the field.”
Gurley: Altman and Amodei speak in platitudes while Zuckerberg discusses technical specifics
“Dario and Sam talk in these high level platitudes about how this stuff's going to cure cancer and we're all going to, Not have to work anymore. And Zuck was down in the weeds in the meat.”
Gurley: Staying private indefinitely will trigger sudden, severe valuation write-downs
“That staying private forever has consequences. And unfortunately, the way it'll show up is some people will have kept some private marks in their very large positions and very large portfolios for a very long time, and then they'll be corrected all at once.”
Gurley: Standalone owned AV fleets like Waymo require hundreds of billions
“Someone trying to build a completely separate fleet, I just don't think it works. Like, and I would encourage anyone that believes in it, or anyone that's a, let's call them a Waymo advocate, let's build a public Google sheet of the 20 year financial statement…”
Gurley: Sam Altman's Energy Compute Framing Is Jobsian-Level Promotion
“I want to, there's two things Sam did this in this recent Interview that I think put him in the promotion hall of fame. And one of them was he juxtapositioned AI versus the smartphone market and then on the smartphone market is being small. He said, well, that…”
Gurley: US Nuclear Deployment Costs Are Limited by Regulation, Not Technology
“The biggest problem, as I understand it, once again, from talking to experts, not from my own direct knowledge, but our cost of deploying new nuclear fission infrastructure is limited by our own regulatory framework, not by the technology.”
Gurley: Waymo and Cruise cannot compete if neural networks solve autonomy
“If let's, let's make an assertion. If this type of neural network approach is the right answer. Yes. And I want to reason you once again, you know, Occam's razor seems that way to me, then who could compete in one of the companies or two, you know, several of …”
Gurley: Open-source AI models will outperform proprietary models in the enterprise
“So there's a lot of different elements that, that make me think that the open source component models, Are gonna be way more successful in the enterprise, and it's a really tough thing to compete with.”
Gurley: Google Gemini acts like an autocratic model restricting information
“The Google Gemini model was much more similar to something autocratic that you might equate with a communist society, like that's intentionally limiting the information you can have and painting it in a very specific way. And so, yeah, I, I'm more afraid of th…”
Gurley: Musk's 2018 Tesla compensation package was among most shareholder-aligned ever
“It may be like one of the most, you know, shareholder aligned incentive packages ever, which is, is exactly what you would think Delaware courts would be looking after.”
Gurley: There is no chance of competing simultaneously with TSMC and Nvidia
“And then some of them, and I, once again, I don't know that there was an exact quote, but the idea that you're going to build a fab is And compete, you're gonna compete with TSMC and NVIDIA at the same time. Like, no chance. Like, no chance.”
Gurley: Reshoring competitive semiconductor fabs to the US will not happen
“And to think you're going to re-onshore a fab and ignore Morris Chang is just kind of crazy to me. And I look at the Requirements, once again, that we put on companies around labor and say to myself, it's not going to happen here.”
Gurley: Google's aggressive culture makes win-win partner deals impossible
“Every company I've ever had that sat down to do a deal with Google has been shown a contract that you would never, ever, ever, ever consider. And if we're going to get to a place where I just tell Google my favorite travel site is this, my whatever, they're go…”
Gurley: Cloud Revenue From Invested AI Credits Is 'Low Quality'
“From the big company player side, I would just say definitively, And this could get me in trouble, but this is low quality revenue. Like, this is flat out low quality revenue, and I'm certain that they've got their auditor to sign off on it, but I don't think …”