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 110 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: 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…”
Forensic experts proved China is funding opposition to Utah data center
“And then he hired forensic experts to go and factually prove that it is China actually funding all of this opposition in Utah. And he actually mapped it a lot. You can go look on his Twitter and Instagram and he shares all of the data. And apparently has now s…”
Coles says Musk plans to leave Washington role in 2-3 months
“Well, what he said was that he was planning to leave in two to In two to three months, his work would be done.”
Dave Morin: Most programming will be done in English by late 2025
“I think a year from now you know, most programming will be done in English. And I think that's the, there's almost no question.”
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.”
Morin: Tesla assembled the largest supercomputer in human history
“Tesla has also assembled the largest supercomputer in the history of humanity. That's a Tesla asset that is the GPU cluster that they've put together.”
Thiel Claimed Bill Gates Founded His Foundation to Pay Off Melinda
“The one thing that really pissed me off about the Peter Thiel, Joe Rogan interview was a long section where he Sort of claims in that Peter Thiel way that the only reason Bill Gates started the Gates Foundation was to pay off Melinda Gates instead of giving he…”
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.”
Federal Reserve data shows US AI adoption growth flattened recently
“Did you guys see that the fed introduced their latest data about AI adoption growth and it's actually been flat or linear, nearly flat for the last three months.”
Brit Morin: Andreessen Horowitz and Thrive are raising from the Middle East, not universities
“Andreessen Horowitz and Thrive are raising from, like, the Middle East, and not necessarily, like, universities at this point.”
Dave Morin: Hyperscalers are moving all data center spend off-balance sheet
“Good timing as all of these hyperscalers are moving all of the data center spend off of their balance sheets.”
Brit Morin: Returns for startup founders 45 and older beat younger cohorts
“But statistically, the returns of founders that are like, 45 and up, they're so much higher than those like 20 to 35.”
Britt Morin: Donald Trump's AI policy bans state regulation for a decade
“He's banning states from actually getting into any AI regulations over the next decade. He's centralizing federal control over AI regulation.”
Britt Morin: Half of teenagers talk to an AI companion every day
“Half of teens are talking to their AI companion every day.”
Dave Morin: ChatGPT's daily time spent is nearing Instagram's
“I saw a chart last week that ChatGPT is now nearing Instagram's daily time spent.”
Jessica Lessin: State attorneys general ruled OpenAI cannot become for-profit
“It still is a non-profit. The AGs of the world have decided they cannot become a for-profit, so.”
Lessin: OpenAI Is Cutting Prices to Directly Undercut Microsoft
“There are two ways if you're a business to get open AI. You can get them from Microsoft or you can get them from OpenAI. What's OpenAI doing? It's cutting the price to undercut Microsoft.”
Ben Smith: Pentagon advised Trump administration officials to use Signal
“And in fact, they had been told by the Pentagon they should be using Signal.”
Jessica Lessin predicts Google's $32 billion Wiz acquisition will not close
“I am going to go on record saying this deal will not close.”
Dave Morin: NotebookLM could replace Google's Gemini UX within six months
“I mean, I think you might see in three, six months that the sort of Gemini core user experience is thrown out in favor of the notebook LM experience because it's just better for everyday consumers.”
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…”
Neistat: Every MrBeast Video Gets More Views Than the Super Bowl
“Every video he posts does more views than the Super Bowl we'll do this year. With Taylor Swift, he will do more views with every video he posts.”
Sam Lessin: Ad Copywriting Jobs Will Disappear in Three Months
“They're not going to have a job doing that in like three months.”
Brit Morin: AI transcription has wiped out court reporting jobs
“Court reporting is a job that is just gone. Like, the whole, like, her whole life, she spent typing what everyone's saying at a speed so fast that she could follow along, and now it's just wiped out.”
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.”
Dave Morin: No AI agent system currently offers a multiplayer experience
“One of the things that no agent system has today is a multiplayer experience.”
Dave Morin: Waymo Vehicles Cost Between $250K and $500K Each
“I think these Waymo's cost on the order of 250 to 500 K a piece.”
OpenAI will never release a consumer hardware device
“I don't think there ever will be an open AI hardware device.”
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.”
Top 10% of startup valuations are 200% to 300% above 2021 levels
“The top 10% of startup valuations for Series D, C, B, et cetera, are now like 200 to 300% higher than 20 21.”
Morin: China builds nuclear plants in nine months versus six US years
“They can put up a nuclear plant and like something like, what is it? Like nine months. It takes us six years.”
Morin: Roughly one-third of YC's winter batch is building OpenClaw projects
“The word on the street is something like a third of the, of Y Combinator is open claw already. And they're winter class.”
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.”
Morin: YC Demo Day featured three separate AI fishing startups
“Almost everything was AI plus vertical of some, you know, sort of AI plus this vertical. And there were actually three AI fishing startups yesterday, but only one of them had somebody who had grown up in a fishing family”
Swift's podcast appearance will rival Super Bowl viewership numbers
“I think she will be close to Super Bowl numbers.”
Brit Morin: OpenAI acquired AI coding startup Windsurf for $3B
“Windsurf obviously got sold to OpenAI for three billion.”
Jessica Lessin: Gemini's Daily Active Users Are Three Quarters of ChatGPT's
“I mean, if you look at daily actives, Gemini is about three quarters of ChatGPT at the moment.”
Lessin: Enterprises are pausing AI spend increases due to DeepSeek efficiency
“We've done a lot of reporting at the information about businesses that sort of say, you know, we're not increasing our spend right now because we're getting efficiency gains from deep seek and all these other models.”
Jessica Lessin: Amazon prices Trainium 2 chips at 75% discount to Nvidia
“We moved the company's stock price earlier in the week by reporting that Amazon was undercutting, trying to undercut NVIDIA's latest project products with their second generation Tranium chip. At 75% off.”
Britt Morin: Discord will pursue an IPO in 2025
“Discord is now going to go out for an IPO this year.”
Dave Morin: Figure AI's valuation increased 15x in one year
“I believe it's called figure AI and these guys are up, you know, 15 X in a year.”
Britt Morin: Roughly 40% of people expect to stop using Google
“It's something like 40% of people think they're going to stop using Google the next two years.”
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…”