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 384 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 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
Jessica Lessin reports Meta's Manus acquisition was unwound after Chinese government intervention
“And of course they interfered and they did quick soon after in terms of sort of challenging the deal, calling back some of the key team to China. So they were in clear integration limbo, and now the deal is off, and they're sort of unwinding it, but.”
Lessin: Musk vs. OpenAI trial scheduled to start Monday over for-profit conversion
“This upcoming Monday is scheduled to be the start of the Elon Musk vs. OpenAI trial. The central question of which was, did OpenAI have the right to convert from a nonprofit to a for-profit, and what should Elon be compensated as well, having been one of the b…”
Elon Musk to get massive comp plan in SpaceX IPO
“The information reported this week, not only unsurprisingly, is he getting super voting shares in the SpaceX IPO, but he now Elon has a really aggressive comp plan as well that will give him tens of millions of shares if I think the market cap goes to 6.6 tril…”
Carta data shows median seed rounds reaching $45 million valuations
“And even the 75th percentile or 50th percentile, we're talking about like forty-five million dollar seed rounds, which is insane.”
Rauch: Anthropic long refused to support agents.md, requiring claude.md files
“For example, I don't know if they've adapted yet, but Anthropic for a long time was not playing ball with agents.md. You could only call their instructions claude.md.”
Jessica Lessin: OpenAI raised $3B from retail investors in latest round
“OpenAI's Monster Fundraising, complete with three billion dollars in raises from retail investors.”
Morin: Data shows AI tool usage degrades human memory and problem-solving
“Well, it's not only anxiety, Jess, but like there's actual now data coming out that people have been measuring people's, not only their memory, but their problem solving, like their constructive thinking and people, the more people are using all these AI tools…”
Morin: Nvidia contributed engineering resources to OpenClaw
“NVIDIA has been really helpful to OpenClaw over the last many weeks. They've actually brought engineering resources to the bear.”
Dave Morin: New website creation is up 40% and iOS apps up 50%
“New website creation is up 40% year over year. New iOS apps are up 50%. GitHub pushes are up 35% in the US, 30% in the UK. These metrics were flat for years before late 20, 24. And we're now seeing like jumps in the production of all kinds of different softwar…”
Jessica Lessin: Garry Tan and tech leaders are organizing against wealth taxes
“I mean, what, what's interesting to me now is like their attempts to organize the tech community to fight, fight this more formally. I think Gary Tan at YC has been very vocal about that,”
Lessin: Polymarket Odds on California Wealth Tax Passing Jumped Significantly
“The polymarket odds of it passing have jumped significantly.”
Lessin: The Information broke that Amazon may invest $10B in OpenAI
“Did you guys see, by the way, the information breaking this week that Amazon is in talks to invest ten billion dollars in OpenAI?”
Morin: Jony Ive says OpenAI hardware project is under two years away
“There was a bunch of Lorraine Powell jobs trying to get Johnny to pin down a timeline. And he said, I can't talk about that. You can probably get more out of Sam than me. And then Lorraine said, Then she said, well, is it five years? And he's like, no, no, no,…”
Jessica Lessin says Apple and Google partnered for Gemini to power Siri
“Google and Apple are doing a Siri deal, so Siri is going to be powered by Gemini, essentially, until, until Apple, quote, figures it out, but it, there seems to be this pattern here of Apple realizing Google is, is pretty good at this stuff, and they'll be pre…”
Landesberg: Some decade-defining wildfires were escaped prescribed burns
“It is true that some of the biggest fires over the last decade have been prescribed burns that got out of control”
Lessin: Sam Altman says OpenAI is calibrating ChatGPT to allow erotica
“The other news was that ChatGPT is gonna work to more personalize this so that it can Add more or enable more erotica for its adult users. So I think Altman was actually saying they had gone too far in weeding out some content and that they're, you know, just …”
Morin: Top hyperscalers projected to spend $400B this year
“And the Meg seven, not Apple, but the rest of them met a Google, Amazon, et cetera, are projected to spend about four hundred billion this year.”
Dave Morin: Apple spends 10-20% of income on CapEx versus 50%+ for peers
“Apple spending something like 10 to 20% of income on this capex. Everyone else is like well north of 50.”
Lessin: Paramount bought The Free Press for $150M, naming Weiss CBS editor-in-chief
“Paramount, run by David Ellison, has bought the Free Press, a relatively new sort of opinion news magazine run by Barry Weiss for a hundred and fifty million dollars. And she is now the editor-in-chief of CBS News.”
Jessica Lessin: OpenAI and Google have struck a cloud deal
“And so now all of a sudden Google like open AI actually in Google. Have a deal. A cloud deal. It's, like, wild.”
Gavin Newsom called for Harvard president's resignation over Trump deal
“Gavin Newsom just out of the blue, just like called for the resignation of the president of Harvard for doing like any deal with Donald Trump.”
Jessica Lessin: Anthropic reports 60% direct-sales gross margins heading toward 70%
“Anthropic recently said its gross profit margin from selling AI models and clawed directly to customers was 60% and moving towards 70, but this doesn't account for a lot of other shit.”
Yakovenko: Most meme coins launch on Solana, peaking over 100k daily
“At this point, most, but I think Ethereum has probably the most valuable ones, but by sheer number of launches per day, I think it's like, was peak over a 100,000 per day. I think it may be like 20 to 50,000 right now.”
Lessin: OpenAI issued an internal panic memo over Meta poaching talent
“Then this memo came out of OpenAI saying, like, our house has been raided. We have to reconsider all these things. I also hear they have a week-long vacation this week, pre-planned at OpenAI.”
Brit Morin: LinkedIn gets 11,000 applications per minute; 25% fake by 2028
“11,000 applications are Happening on LinkedIn every minute. And the estimate is that by 20, 28, one in four resumes is, is going to be fake.”
Jessica Lessin: Tesla's Austin robotaxis require safety drivers in passenger seats
“There is a safety driver in the passenger seat.”
Lessin: Scale AI competitors are already generating over $1 billion in revenue
“There are other people who do things that are very similar that do more than a billion.”
Lessin: Google is offering buyouts to its search and advertising employees
“Another big story we had this week that kind of went under the radar because there's so much news is that Google's offering buyouts to employees in search and ads.”
Sam Lessin: OnlyFans Is Up for Sale
“Nonetheless, OnlyFans, the story is up for sale and there's some really interesting stuff about it.”
Lessin: Apple Scrapped Satellite Internet Project to Protect Carrier Relations
“Our new, but was previously at the information reporter, Aaron Tilly, and one of our reporters out of Hong Kong, Wayne Ma, published this really interesting in-depth piece about Apple's ambitions in satellite internet, including a lot of details about Project …”
Morin: Hailey Bieber's Rhode sold to e.l.f. Cosmetics for $1B
“So Hailey Bieber's company just sold today to elf cosmetics for a billion dollars.”
Lessin: Courts Likely to Bar Apple-Google Search Deal in Current Form
“The courts are likely to say that the Apple Google search deal cannot continue in its current form for antitrust reasons.”
Lessin: Coatue launches $1B permanent capital fund with a $50K minimum
“Led by Philippe, they announced something that is, I think a bill, it's anchored with a billion dollars from Bezos and Michael Dell. But the premise is that they will accept investments for the relatively low capital amount of 50 K, which is traditionally a mu…”
Dave Morin: Seed to Series A Graduation Rate Down Over 25%
“If you look at the number of series A's graduating from the seed ecosystem, it's down like over 25% now.”
Coles: X successfully operates on far less spending and fewer staff
“And the truth is that they have been able to run Twitter at much less than they were spending on it with far fewer employees. It's still up and running and it's become You know, the water cooler place again.”
Jessica Lessin: OpenAI is on track to hit $12.7B in 2025 revenue
“I mean, we reported their revenue target this year is 12.7 billion up from four last year, and they're on track to hit it.”
Ben Smith: The Atlantic's Signal chat scoop will not win a Pulitzer
“No, and Pulitzer only goes to things that look like newspaper articles from the 19 seventies.”
Lessin: Larry Page's Dynatomics Uses AI to Manufacture Flying Cars
“Larry's new company called Dynatomics, which is a very research focused effort to use AI to build flying cars as a first case for how you can go from models to manufacturing.”
DOGE Didn't Overhaul Treasury, Just Filled Existing Tags, Says Lessin
“What they had done is they hadn't overhauled the treasury system for payments. They had convinced the treasury to actually fill in the tags for the payments it was already making. There were already forms in the fields that they were not filling out. So basica…”
Jelly Jelly Token Hit $200M Market Cap in Six Hours, Says Lessin
“We launched Jelly Jelly, right? Which as pod listeners remember, went in six hours from zero to like over a two hundred million dollar market cap on half a billion in volume, which was all these crazy people playing this game.”
Lessin: OpenAI's board decided to reject Musk's $97B bid
“What we did also break was that the board had decided to reject the offer.”
Lessin: The TikTok deal will resemble an expanded Project Texas, not a sale.
“Yeah, but I don't think it'll be a straight sale. I think it will be something that kind of resembles this Project Texas data deal they did with Oracle, but more than that”
Jessica Lessin: Federal payments to Politico were subscriptions, not subsidies or grants
“One of these payments was to Politico, the news organization, and so instantly the narrative was that the government was subsidizing, giving grants, giving money, to Politico... So what it was, Dave, is that this agency bought a product from Politico through t…”
Morin: DOGE will release a metrics dashboard to the public
“At least what I'm reading from what's going on, it's that they're going in there to get metrics implemented into a dashboard that at some point they're going to show to the American people. And so you will get the transparency.”
Sam Lessin: There Is Zero Percent Chance MrBeast Buys TikTok
“Oh, I was short that. There's a zero percent chance.”
Dave Morin: DOJ artificially narrowed Apple smartphone market to claim a monopoly
“You can't claim that I just on one simple piece of data, which is that Apple doesn't even have a monopoly position in the smartphone market. You know, and like the lawsuit had to reduce the scope of the smartphone market to like just the expensive part of the …”
Dave Morin: Apple denies developers direct access to on-device models
“At the same time, the one thing that I was disappointed about is that you cannot access these local models directly. It's something that a lot of folks aren't talking about. They've put a pretty intense wrapper around it, at least on the developer front. You k…”
Rauch: Copilot gave Microsoft conviction in OpenAI after broader bets
“I was interviewing Nat Freeman today for our internal Vercel podcast today, and he was talking about how much conviction Microsoft got into OpenAI because of the effectiveness of Copilot. Like when Satya saw Copilot, when they were doing the initial iterations…”