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 92 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
Sam Lessin: People Will Kill Themselves and Others Because of AIs
“And like, at some point people are going to start killing themselves and each other because of AIs.”
Sam Lessin: Early Salesforce was unintegrated one-off software builds
“So the story I've heard, and someone can correct me in comments, I'm sure someone will, is that when he started Salesforce, it was billed as like this cloud CRM. And this platform, but it was total bullshit. He basically went to a bunch of people and sold them…”
Sam Lessin: Getting humans to Mars during Trump's administration is impossible
“Everyone, you know, you're up there applauding like this, like window, we're going to get to Mars in Trump's administration. And it's absolute horseshit. Like we, like there aren't even window launch windows open for that to happen.”
Lessin claims Spotify fired its Wrapped team and used AI instead
“Well, and believe it or not, at least I saw on social media, they had fired the entire team. So this was, they were able to produce with no people using AI.”
Sam Lessin: The 2024 Presidential Race Is Effectively Over for Democrats
“I just feel like this is over, right? Which I know is not what you're supposed to say, and, like, that helps purpose with town out and the whole nine yards, but, like, you know, Trump just had, like, one of the all-time ten-day periods ever, right?”
Lessin: Blackstone has only had one fund over 3x in 40 years
“It's like, in the history of Blackstone, they've raised, what is it, like, call it half a trillion dollars. That's again, that's not the number, but it's an enormous number of capital. They've had, like, one fund in, like, 40 years that has done more than thre…”
Sam Lessin: An outright US ban on TikTok will never get done
“I think saying ban TikTok, that's a thing that like candidly might be marginally better, but you'll never get done.”
Tesla and SpaceX trade at the world's highest revenue multiples
“Both Tesla and SpaceX are the two highest, I believe, like, dollars per dollar of revenue, or whatever you want to do, like, things in the world.”
Lessin: Boom Supersonic pivoted to supplying turbines for AI data centers
“And then AI, I think AI probably helped them with this, that they have a turbine they can use to run data centers, power for data centers. So they're not a supersonic company. They're just a jet engine company because they couldn't get anyone to sell them jet …”
Sam Lessin: Anthropic Is Now a $350 Billion Company
“Anthropik's now a three hundred fifty billion dollar company.”
Sam Lessin: Tesla will not receive robotaxi regulatory approval this year
“You forgot the most important line, which is you're not going to have regulatory approval.”
Sam Lessin: DJI announced removal of US restricted airspace flight limits
“At the same time, DJI, like today, announced the drone company that they're no longer limiting drones, like, from flying in restricted airspace in the United States, which I'm sure is actually unrelated, but it's a hilarious story.”
Sam Lessin: Appointees exploit forced divestment for tax-free asset diversification
“There's this hack where some Goldman Sachs guys got cabinet positions and they're like, well, the reason they did that, or like at some level of seniority of the government is because you are forced to sell, but you don't have to pay taxes on the sale. And so …”
Sam Lessin: Ultra-wealthy use government cabinet positions to defer capital gains taxes
“There's this hack where some Goldman Sachs guys got cabinet positions and they're like, well, the reason they did that or like at some level of seniority of the government is because you are forced to sell, but you don't have to pay taxes on the sale. And so i…”
Sam Lessin: Telegram is not actually end-to-end encrypted
“Telegram tells this whole story about encryption and pro free speech, but it's actually not end to end encrypted.”
Sam Lessin: Nvidia Scrapped an LLM Over Scraping Netflix Content
“You know what also got reported this week was how NVIDIA scrapped their large language model they had been working on that had been stealing all this information, like, in content from Netflix and everyone else, and they realized, oh, shit, we really can't lau…”
Lessin: BYD surpassing Tesla eliminates its structural valuation premium
“They're not the biggest shipping EV company in the world anymore. It's that Chinese company. Everyone has EVs. That kind of like structural advantage that makes them dramatically more valuable or differentiated from car companies is gone.”
Sam Lessin: US politicians will not risk banning TikTok before 2024 election
“There's just no chance that in that environment they're gonna, like, risk any youth vote, even if they're terrible, woke people, for the sake of banning TikTok right now. And I think that sucks, because I think it is a huge national security risk, But I think …”
Lessin: Apple will not remove TikTok due to China exposure
“Apple's not gonna kick them out. Apple's China exposure is enormous, right? Like, you know, even if they should, they won't, right?”
Lessin: Sequoia and Reid Hoffman are major TikTok investors
“Sequoia's an enormous investor. It's like, Reid Hoffman, who's a huge Democratic donor and would have a lot of sway in Washington as a huge investor. Like, they're all investors.”
Sam Lessin: Ad Copywriting Jobs Will Disappear in Three Months
“They're not going to have a job doing that in like three months.”
Sam Lessin: LK-99 superconductor will successfully replicate before 2025
“I'll say yes on one-time replication, and I'll go further to say, like, this is my AI killer scenario, where, like, it's so disruptive if it happens, right, that, like, it's worth putting a lot of effort in trying to figure it out.”
Sam Lessin: Adobe's Figma acquisition will likely close despite scrutiny
“And it probably gets done, and even doesn't get done, whatever. Like, I don't think it really impacts the early stage market.”
Lessin: AI survey shows lower approval rating than Jeffrey Epstein
“I believe that in a recent survey, AI has a lower approval rating than Jeffrey Epstein. It's, like, six percent.”
Sam Lessin notes most Sequoia assets sit in Heritage, not venture funds
“The venture funds are still the venture funds, but like most of the assets are not in the venture funds. They're in heritage.”
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.”
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.”
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: Unlike AI, Facebook was massively profitable from its early days
“Facebook was massively profitable. From the early days, it was always almost zero cost from a user perspective. It was a great business from the very early days.”
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.”
Sam Lessin: Meta Engineered Smart Glasses to Brick If Recording LED Disabled
“They spent so much time trying to figure out how to engineer it so that it would brick it if you try to disable that LED for exactly that reason. Like it's a wild, the amount of engineering that went into that, like, make sure the LED cannot be disabled for ex…”
Sam Lessin: There Is Zero Percent Chance MrBeast Buys TikTok
“Oh, I was short that. There's a zero percent chance.”
Sam Lessin: Sam Altman claimed AGI was 14 months away in 2023
“I mean, I, you know, you have people like Sam Altman on stage, you know, what now, 18 months ago saying we were 14 months from AGI and all the jobs were over, right?”
Sam Lessin: EssilorLuxottica Does Not Manufacture Hardware for Meta Smart Glasses
“Look, Sadika, I promise you, is not making the hardware. Like, they make, they print lenses and, like, slap plastic on the brand and make a bunch of money on margin. Like, they're not a manufacturing company.”
Sam Lessin: ByteDance Will Sell TikTok to Saudi Buyers
“They're going to sell, you know, they're going to sell it to the Saudis.”
Sam Lessin: Elon Musk will still run Tesla in 12 months
“Yes.
Unless he does some hissy fit about his compensation package and like.”
Sam Lessin: Dude Perfect will secure $100M for their theme park
“Well, I don't know what's public or not, but they, I don't know if this is public. They're going to have that money.”
Sam Lessin: NVIDIA stock will go up regardless of earnings report
“It literally doesn't matter what they report, the stock will go up.”
Sam Lessin: The SEC is losing its case against Ripple over XRP
“The reality is, my understanding is, like, the government's basically losing, the SEC's losing the XRP case, right, the Ripple case and, you know.”
Lessin: Anthropic tokens cost 100 times more than open-source tokens
“Anthropic tokens cost like a hundred times as much as like the open source tokens, right?”
Sam Lessin: Cursor's store split from VS Code creates app store lock-in issues
“Cursor split the store from VS code because they want to, like, create their own ecosystem that's independent, etc. And the way it all plays out Is VS code is like, no, like the package you need to install to do Garmin watch faces. We're going to control that.…”