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 1,341 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 40 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
Josephs: About $350M in capital follows Nancy Pelosi's trades on Autopilot
“Since then she has probably three hundred fifty million dollars following her, which is crazy. She's got her own little mini hedge fund.”
Asparouhov: NASA paid SpaceX half of Boeing's price for identical workload
“The entire structure of the contract is kind of insane in that they literally just, you know, gave SpaceX the same workload, but said the price for you doing it is going to be half of Boeing.”
US space startups bypass domestic regulators by obtaining German spectrum licenses
“A lot of space companies will actually go to Germany, because you can actually get a license from the German regulator of spectrum, and that is valid in the United States. That's probably a broken state of the world to be in.”
McCormick: Anduril's early round was crowded at a $100M valuation
“But that, like, early story that, like, nobody wanted to touch it was actually, like, a pretty crowded round at a hundred million dollar valuation.”
El-Baba: StackBlitz's Bolt.new reached a $20M run rate in two months
“So for example, we just invested in a company called Bolt, or previously the parent organization called StackBlitz... They've gone zero to 20 million in run rate in two months. And we were lucky to lead their series, be there.”
Tunguz: In Q1 2024, Ethereum was world's most profitable software entity
“Ethereum in the first quarter of 24 produced on a percentage basis is the most profitable software company in the world. And on a aggregate dollars basis, six largest producer of cash, it's worth seven snowflakes put together. It's three hundred fifty billion …”
Guo: Some Passes creators earn $100K monthly posting neck-up selfies
“A lot of our creators will make money literally just doing, like, a neck up selfies, and they're still making, like, a 100,000 a month.”
Wright: Armada has partnerships with all GPU and CPU providers
“We have partnerships with all the GPU providers. We have partnerships with all the CPU providers. We have partnerships with everybody who provides every component that we have in these galleons.”
Fiedler: All 20 of Coca-Cola's billion-dollar brands are declining year-over-year
“Coca-Cola has 20 brands that do over a billion dollars. Every single one of them is decreasing in sales year over year, and they haven't innovated at all.”
Socher: Only 5% to 10% of enterprise AI seats get utilized
“This comes from a lot of organizations that bought
500 thousand plus seats for their product.
And then after a few months, they look into how many users are actually using it.
And it's like five, 10% in the company actually really use it.
And so, you know, the…”
Socher: Salesforce Research invented prompt engineering in 2018
“On the research side this was in 2018, we finally culminated all my ideas when we invented prompt engineering, and we didn't quite call it prompt engineering, but the basic idea was there, namely that you can prompt a single model with different questions, and…”
LLM scaling exhibits decreasing returns, requiring 10x compute for sublinear improvements
“If you look at it today, though, we are, the exponential in LLM performance is so far working against us that you need Order of magnitude increases in compute, 10 X increase in compute to have relatively sublinear increases in performance. So you're at decreas…”
Sam D'Amico: Chinese EV makers offer Tesla Model 3 equivalents for $25,000
“China can offer. Like you can get a Tesla model three equivalent vehicle for like 25 K delivered and the vehicle quality is fantastic today.”
Alter: European VC funds beat North American funds in 10-year net IRR
“It's not surprising that when you, again, look at the numbers over a 10 and 15 year time horizon, European VC funds have yielded higher net IRR compared to North American ones.”
Isford: Early-Revenue AI Startups Still Command 100x Multiples
“And so if you're an AI portfolio company you're going to get a better premium. That could change, but we're still seeing, you know, high valuations and high multiples hundred X range for companies that are earlier in revenue.”
Sadeghi: Genetics alone can never predict IQ due to 50% environmental factor
“You can't. From genetics predicts someone's IQ. And actually what a lot of people don't realize is you will never be able to. And the reason for that is because 50% of intelligence is environmental. The other 50% is genetic.”
Radiant microreactors meet NRC radiation limits outside a 35-foot perimeter
“We are down at one megawatt, so enough power for 1000 homes. And we can mass produce these in a factory, deliver them to a site, and with no infrastructure just outside of a 35 foot fence line, you can operate them and be at the NRC public dose limit for a rea…”
O'Shea: NYC Surpassed SF in New Founders Starting Companies Last Quarter
“Someone sent me a data report like a day or two ago that New York finally surpassed San Francisco in the number of new founders that have just started companies in the last quarter.”
Power: Hadrian trains workers with no factory experience in 20 to 30 days
“From a workforce and training piece, we can train and onboard them in 20 to 30 days from their Home Depot, their bus driver, literally any background.”
Asparouhov: Post-2012 top Midas List VCs heavily skew toward operators
“And if you look at, you know, sort of top hundred on the Midas list, for VCs, they started their careers sort of pre-thousand-twelve called versus post-thousand-twelve. Pre-thousand-twelve, there was definitely a large number of investors that were pure sort o…”
Oltmann: OpenAI is attempting to build its own chip factories
“OpenAI is currently out in the market now trying to actually build their own chip factories and develop their own chips internally, which is a total shift away from historically what software companies have done.”
Oltmann: Hadrian boasts 70% gross margins and top 3% SaaS growth
“Hadrian's got like 70% gross margins and they're growing in the top three percent of all SaaS companies”
Mavrookas: Only one percent of the defense budget went toward autonomy
“One percent. One percent went towards autonomy.”
Mavrookas: China controls 57% of global shipbuilding capacity
“China has 57% of total global shipbuilding capacity.”
Lehman: Defense contracting officers often lack awareness of permissible acquisition policies
“I think one thing that could help is using AI to augment the acquisition workforce because we've come across multiple times where there's a lack of awareness about a new regulation, a new policy that tells them they can do something that they're adamant that t…”
Ganesh: Saronic autonomous vessels have recorded accelerations north of 20 Gs
“So a good example of this is like, I think a lot of commercial boats, like you kind of target the human beings to like, take like .4 to .6 G's maybe you know, our boats like We've seen accelerations north of 20 G's before.”
Mavrookas: Only 1% of US defense budget allocated to autonomy
“When you look at the budget today, just look at the Department of War's budget, we talked about the request for 1.5 trillion, and where the budget is today, right around a trillion dollars for 26, one percent went towards autonomy.”
Mavrookas: US lacks logistics ships to resupply troops during wartime
“Cause if we, Don't have tankers. If we don't have roll-on, roll-off vessels, it means we actually don't have the ships to resupply our force if we're actually in a conflict or a war.”
Mavrookas: China built 1,000+ commercial ships in 2024 versus five US ships
“They built over a thousand commercial ships last year, and the United States built five. I think this was 20, 24. Five. Like one, two, three, four, Five large ocean going commercial vessels.”
Mavrookas: Port Alpha's 800-acre footprint makes it largest US shipyard
“Just that footprint alone will make it the largest shipyard in the country.”
Mavrookas: Saronic's main line has capacity for 2,000 Corsairs per year
“So in just this line we're walking down right now, we can build, we have the capacity to build 2000 Corsairs per year.”
Mavrookas: China outbuilds the US 230-to-1 in shipbuilding
“China outbuilds us 230 to one. Our naval fleet is actually shrinking and we have 0.1% of global shipbuilding capacity as a non-existent industry.”
Mendler: Operators cannot reliably control dynamically maneuvering spacecraft
“All of those use cases where spacecraft are moving dynamically around in new ways in the space environment. They basically just don't have a solution for how to connect and control that spacecraft.”
Beck: Rocket Lab reached space on under $60,000 USD in capital
“And with like, 80, I think we had a total capitalization of under a 100,000 New Zealand dollars, which is like 60,000 US dollars at that point, so.”
Beck: Rocket Lab reached orbit for under $100M with 80 people
“You know, for example, the Electron rocket, I think it was under a hundred million dollars and 80 people put the first rocket into orbit.”
Beck: Iridium acquisition immediately adds profitability to Rocket Lab
“Like, Iridium, you know, adds profitability to the entity straight away. It also buys us time to put up a new constellation.”
Beck: SolAero, Sinclair, and PSC had zero in-orbit failures prior to acquisition
“Like, you know, Solero Solar, never had a solar panel fail in orbit in 40 years. Doug Sinclair and reaction wheels, same again. PSC, never had a failure, separation system failure.”
Beck: Rocket Lab's $800M SDA deal grew past $1B supplying competing primes
“Our SDA contract was a great example where, you know, we won an eight hundred million dollar contract, and there was two other primes that also won contracts, But actually that turned into over a billion dollar contract for us because the primes needed our stu…”
Lamm: Colossal achieved world-record multiplex gene editing in healthy woolly mice
“We had a hundred percent healthy mice born with exactly the predicted phenotypes with the most multiplex edited delivered at one time ever.”
Lamm: Colossal grew mammoth hair follicles from elephant stem cells
“We actually have a hair follicles growing in, in where we've taken elephant stem cells and created follicles so that we can grow mammoth hair.”
Arora: AI Models Can Daisy-Chain Vulnerabilities to Attack Infrastructure
“You've seen that it can find cyber vulnerabilities. It can daisy chain vulnerabilities, attack infrastructure. So it's clear these models are going to be extremely powerful. They already are.”
Monroe-Anderson: Intercepting jet-powered Shahed drones requires 400 km/h speeds
“So, 300 is actually a pretty good spot for taking out, like, typical Shawhead drones. To go after jet-powered Shawhead drones, we need to be closer to, like, 400 miles 400 kilometers an hour, So that would be kind of the ideal end state.”
Monroe-Anderson: Iranian Shaheds Destroyed Billions in Middle East Equipment and Infrastructure
“Shahhead drones, Iranian Shahhead drones have taken out billions of dollars of infrastructure and other weapon systems in the Middle East and you know, against US forces.”
Monroe-Anderson: China produces tens to hundreds of millions of drones annually
“China has been the biggest beneficiary because they've been supplying both sides of the war and probably making, I mean, tens of millions of drones per year easily, maybe in the hundreds of millions.”
Monroe-Anderson: DJI drones are the most common reconnaissance drones in Ukraine
“What DJI makes, which, you know, they make the best consumer drones in the world, but they also make the most commonly used reconnaissance drones for the battlefield. Like, Ukraine and Russia are using Mavic's, Matrice's, all these DJI products that are incred…”
Monroe-Anderson: Neros Was First with an FPV Drone on Blue UAS List
“We were the first company to have an FPV drone on the blue UAS list, meaning the Department of War could actually just purchase and use it without having to go through a bunch of crazy approvals.”
Lopez: Base Power batteries offer 40 kWh capacity, triple traditional home units
“So it's a 40 kilowatt hour system and 20 kilowatts on the inverter. This is like three times larger than what you would find in a traditional home battery.”
Fox: AssemblyAI processes four times YouTube's daily audio volume on peak weeks
“And so now, you know, on a given week, on a peak week, there'll be something like over a hundred and twenty million conversations, voice conversations going through our platform, over two million hours of voice, which as of December of this past year was four,…”