Sam Lessin: AI boom is narrative collusion among Washington, tech, and finance
Sam Lessin · Fire Sam Altman, The End of Software Engineers, and Why AI Is All Narrative · More or Less Podcast · Mar 6, 2026 · at 38:38
Slow Ventures partner Sam Lessin explains his macroeconomic thesis on what is keeping AI valuations and capital expenditure elevated despite recession warnings.
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“For two years, I've been saying like, look, there's this like triangle trade between DC, Silicon Valley and New York, whereas huge deficit, huge debt problem. GDP has to grow massively fast in order to deal with it. It's like the only way out because we can't cut costs to make it happen realistically. And so the triangle trade becomes Washington being like GDP must grow to like Silicon Valley being like, I have a magic answer called this AI thing. To make GDP number go up to New York and Riyadh and wherever else being like, cool, we'll fund it and we'll get in the game, which is really exciting. And so this is all of this, like there's this huge narrative collusion around like our only way out is up through AI”
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