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
Traditional boat builders lack software and electrical engineers to integrate components
“What that naturally means is that the industry has evolved in a way where most people are buying most components off the shelf, and that means none of them are integrated. You have your Garmin display, you have JL speakers, you have, like all of these things a…”
Cohen: Anthropic's Claude is too slow for real-time phone calls
“We've tried Gemini, Claude and Anthropic are a little bit too slow for a phone call, unfortunately.”
McGee: Apple's China Investment from 2007 to 2025 Exceeds $800B
“If you just sort of took 22% of revenue, which is what fifty five billion was in that year. And just sort of use that as a sort of, you know, back of the envelope math, back to 2007, the birth of the iPhone, and you took it all the way to 2025, you'd get above…”
Strachman: Early media backlash targeted individual Thiel Fellows directly
“Reporters targeted specific fellows, people like Dale Stevens.”
Strachman: The American gap year did not exist before the Thiel Fellowship
“The American gap year did not exist when the fellowship started. It was not a thing. No one talked about taking gap years here, and now it's super common.”
Strachman: Thiel started the public conversation about the higher education bubble
“What's wonderful about the fellowship is that people talk about the cost of higher ed now and the education bubble and the crazy inflation that it's outpaced without ever mentioning Peter. Like people have forgotten that he's actually the one who started that …”
Agrawal: ChatGPT Daily Time Spent Exceeds Mainstream Social Apps Like X
“On, in terms of time spent, you know, we've published this analysis. They are far and above time spent per user per day compared to any of the other apps AI apps today. Actually not just AI apps. I, you know, one of the analysis we did is they are now larger t…”
Agrawal: ChatGPT exhibits rare retention 'smile curve' like TikTok and Instagram
“And ChatGPT exhibits a smile curve. The other apps that exhibit smile curves are Instagram, and TikTok.”
Agrawal: Switching to OpenAI's New Model Boosted XBOW's Cyber Detection to 81%
“Their benchmark, on their benchmarks, they saw a significant step up with GPT-V, much better than any other coding or design or math startup saw in their ability to find cyber exploits. And, you know, summarizing, basically, the jump was from just under 60% to…”
Agrawal: XBOW's AI agents ranked number one globally on HackerOne
“Expo has been let loose on this platform and couple of weeks in, they became the number one player in the United States. But two weeks ago right at Black Hat, they achieved the number one spot globally”
Agrawal: AI Cybersecurity Startup XBOW Spends More on Tokens Than Human Salaries
“And it is true. We spend more on tokens than we spend on humans. And it is, I guess, the shape of an AI native form.”
Levy: National Weather Service uses zero AI-powered forecasting models
“If you go on to the National Weather Service today, none of those models that you see there are AI powered.”
Doricko: China uses Wing Loong II military drones for cloud seeding
“China is retrofitting the equivalent of their MQ-Nine Reaper. So like our most advanced military drones, The equivalent of that in China, the Wing Long II they're using for cloud seeding missions.”
Levy: Atmo provides AI weather models to all US space launch sites
“ATMO provides AI meteorology models to all the space launch sites in the United States.”
Levy: Atmo Operates Texas's Most Advanced Wind Forecasting Model for Hedge Funds
“Atmo now operates the most advanced wind forecasting model in Texas. Now today we're doing it primarily for hedge funds.”
Levy: Atmo's AI weather models run 45,000x faster than numerical simulations
“Similarly, AI meteorology, like we're utilizing here, is, is now running, in our case together, about 45,000 times faster than numerical models of equal resolution so far, which allows us to do these things like consider the thousands of alternative scenarios …”
Maslin: Virtually 100% of Magnet-Making Equipment Comes from China
“If China manufactures, 94% of the global supply of these magnets, where do you think all of the equipment to make those magnets comes from? It's virtually a hundred percent.”
Maslin: Vulcan Elements won DOD contracts across every military branch
“One thing that we're really proud of here is we've won several DOD contracts over the line, over the last nine months with every branch of the military, top priority programs, making sure that the defense industrial base has the material that it needs to go an…”
DOD rules ban Chinese magnets in defense hardware by 2027
“If you look at section eight, 44 of the fiscal year, 21, NDAA, they actually banned the use of Chinese magnets and there have been follow on addendums that say by January first of 20, 27, you need any company that sells to the DOD. If there's a magnet, which i…”
Taylor: China is commercializing US nuclear reactor designs from the 1970s and 1980s
“They're also turning on innovative types of reactors that were invented in the United States in the seventies and eighties. And they sort of sat on the shelf and we never really tackled them. We ran into a bunch of regulatory roadblocks and then we never turne…”
Btaiche: Fuse built world's highest pulse power system and published in Nature
“We've built the words highest pulse power system ever called Titan. We fired that for the first time in March of this year and we live streamed it and Publish the results in Nature.”
McCormick: Fuse is already generating revenue by selling radiation
“The big difference I would say with Fuse and anybody else is they're already making revenue and that they're not going straight shot for commercial fusion power, but they're selling radiation kind of on the way up towards or down towards, depending on how you …”
Nolan: Only Russia currently produces commercial HALEU nuclear fuel
“If we need HALU, which is more enriched fuel for the factory built reactors, we need to get that fuel from Russia. Only Russia makes it today.”
Nolan: US produces under 0.1% of global enriched uranium today
“And so we're here now today with the U S doing less than .1% of global enrichment, effectively R and D capacity, not much commercial capacity, and just completely relying on foreign state backed entities. About 25% of enrichment in the U S comes from Russia an…”
Nolan: China doubled its grid since 2010 while US stayed flat
“And you look at China's grid in 2010,
U S and China were neck and neck.
Just that's where the two lines cross on the chart, 2010.
And since then China's doubled its grid while we stayed flat.
So now they have two X the energy production that we have, and it's …”
Nolan: Vogtle Nuclear Plant Was Cheaper Than Contemporary Offshore Wind
“If you look at nuclear historically, like you look at Vogel, which You know, it was over budget, over schedule. People still highlight it was still cheaper than offshore wind that was built around the same time.”
Applied Intuition software serves 18 of the top 20 auto OEMs
“They have cracked the code in selling to, you know, the top 20 auto OEMs. I think it's 18 out of 20 are customers.”
Vasavada: Pension Funds and Endowments Are Overallocated to Venture
“So if you look at the side of the managers, most managers are tapped out on LPs.
So if you go, if you're starting a venture fund tomorrow or you're starting a new middle market private equity fund and you're going to go pitch the traditional pension funds, end…”
Vasavada: Sub-2% of $83T Retail Wealth Is in Alternatives
“There's 83 trillion dollars and sub three percent of it, sub two percent of it is like less than, you know, two trillion dollars is in kind of what you would call alternative assets today, which means there's a massive, massive opportunity to sell alternatives…”
O'Shea: 50% of LPs have stopped allocating to venture capital
“Carta put out a report a couple months ago on different LP trends, and about 50% are not allocating into venture anymore, and so that, that's being cut away.”
Vasavada: Vise's largest client manages more than two years of VC deployment
“Like our biggest client has more AUM than the entire venture industry deployed over the last two years. And they're an RIA.”
Little: China Outproduces US Warships by 20-30 to 6-8 Annually
“We're getting destroyed by China in shipbuilding. They can outproduce us 200 to one. They have about 370, ah, warships. We have about 290. They can produce almost 20 to 30 a year. We produce six to eight.”
Little: $150B Defense Investment Over Last Three Years Matches Prior Decade
“And what's been fascinating to see is like almost of the private capital is a hundred fifty billion dollars has been invested in defense over the last three years.
That's as much as the previous 10 years.”
Little: DoD's $1.8B AI Budget Cannot Compete With $500B Commercial Investment
“Department of Defense had a budget for AI in 20, 24 of 1.8 billion. You just saw like the announcement with Oracle open AI and SoftBank for five hundred billion. And that's like only part of their investment for only three companies. And so you're just never g…”
Little: DoD Used Financial Audit Systems to Manage Major Military Crises
“So when I was in the building, we were using the platform that supported the financial statement audit to be able to respond to COVID-nineteen, to respond to the Afghan neo, to respond to the Russia-Ukraine war. To respond to the Israel-Iran 12 day war, becaus…”
Little: DoD Audit Data Prevents $1B in Improper Vendor Payments Annually
“We've been able to stop working with the data to also support the financial statement audit, almost prevent a billion dollars in improper payments to vendors per year and able to reallocate almost four or five billion a year to things that actually matter beca…”
Power: Hadrian achieved 10x revenue growth over four quarters
“When we launched, ah, like the factory to all of our customers in January, we basically 10 X revenue in four quarters last year.”
Majority of Brex revenue comes from interchange fees despite multiple products
“And so when you think about Brex and what we're doing, the majority of our revenue is through interchange, even though we have a number of other product lines.”
Amex acquired spend startup Center for $600M at under $20M revenue
“Amex bought a company called Center that had less than twenty million of revenue for six hundred million.”
Capital One's Discover acquisition creates the largest US credit card issuer
“The first one that comes to mind is Capital One and Discover. Huge deal. This is not a tuck in. This like materially changes their whole business model. And the reason is because it creates the largest credit card issuer by loan volume, because it allows Capit…”
Mature Brex cohorts spend 60% more than they did on Amex
“For mature cohorts, Customers are spending 60% more on their Brex cards than they were on Amex in the last month that they were on Amex.”
Kim: Cluely has good margins and founder claims profitability
“We know the product has good margin. He's said a couple of times he's profitable.”
Cluely makes more revenue from enterprise customers than consumers
“Right now we make more money off enterprise than consumer, which is pretty crazy. But I think it's because we're still warming up the marketing for consumer and they're larger customers than consumers are. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like the contracts, like are l…”
InterviewCoder hit $3M ARR before hiring any employees
“Like, InterviewCoder, before we hired anyone, hit, like, three mil ARR, and then and then we started hiring people.”
Cluely is profitable despite aggressive marketing and operational spending
“Like we're literally profitable and we spent, like we spent as much money as we can. There's almost zero expense that goes unapproved by us.”
Cluely spent the founders' $140,000 life savings on its launch video
“Cluley launch video was a 140,000. Yeah. It was before the raise, too, so at the time it was, like, our entire life savings.”
McCord: DoD is compressing hardware development lifecycles to 24 months
“The DoD is like shifting the way that it's thinking about a lot of these larger programs, trying to get away from 10, 12, 20 year program development life cycles. Like let's build the next exquisite, you know, bomber or exquisite plane or submarine. Right. Tho…”