Big Beautiful Bill, Elon/Trump, Dollar Down Big, Harvard's Money Problems, Figma IPO

Having a patchwork of regulations on, for example, model development or telling software companies what software they can deploy, would make it practically impossible for internet service providers like a Google or an Open AI to service customers across state boundaries in a way that is actually going to meet the needs of the customer. This is a huge detriment to consumers and a huge detriment to the job market if we end up creating a patchwork of regulations on AI this early.

I think what it does is it slows down startups and smaller companies who won't have the economic heft to fight these regulations or to work with them or to figure it out. And it'll advantage a handful of incumbents. And the problem with that is that our incumbents aren't yet mature, and this industry is still developing.

What they will have to do in order to finance their budget in probably 18 months is start to actively sell their private equity portfolio, which by the way, from 2019 to this year, almost doubled from 20 to 40%. So an insane asset allocation, frankly, an asset misallocation at the top of the market to the most illiquid asset class. And when people sniff this out, what they're going to do is, Harvard was able to sell a billion dollars recently of private equity stuff and managers that they didn't want to support anymore at a 7% discount. There is no smart money on the street that's going to look at any private equity portfolio from Harvard without asking for 20, 25, 30, 35, 40% discount, because your back will be totally against the wall.

The free money I think trade, instead of having to bet up or down Jason on AI, I would, if I could get like 50 or 100 million dollars of Figma, I would probably be long it and I would short an equivalent quantum of Adobe, and I would just book the spread. And I think you make a ton of money that way. That's a safer trade because even if the AI model thing comes around the corner, we don't see it. The person who's going to take a retrade on valuation faster than Figma will be Adobe.

The problem is that if we put it in order right now, we can't get Nat gas turbine viable and turned on until 2030 It's not a technology issue, it's purely a supply chain issue. So I think what our energy policy needs to make sure we contemplate is that many of the things that we are debating are no longer issues of production, but they're issues of supply, transmission and distribution.

And I think when everybody realizes that the alternative is essentially some insane form of socialism and redistribution, I think the alliance will hold and that they'll find some common ground.

And that's why I'm so convinced that there's a rise in socialism in this country because in this sort of an inflationary environment, like we're seeing so far this year, you don't see it in the dollar inflation numbers. You see it in the dollar currency numbers. You're going to say, man, I need an alternative.

Meaning like we don't know what the layoff cycle and the pattern of layoffs inside of companies may be with AI. Meaning, if we all become more generalized, skilled workers, and there may be many, many, many more companies, then the odds are more likely that you provision highly skilled vertically specific work to a set of agents.

And so as long as that's the case, I think you're going to continue to have a bid for equities. If all of a sudden the MAG 7 decided to delist and not be American companies, and all of a sudden showed up in the CAC 50 in France, yeah, we'd be in big trouble. But I don't think that's going to happen. And so as long as there's American ingenuity and American supremacy, again, which goes back to the other thing, which is we can't kill these golden geese, nor should we kill the emerging and growing golden goose, which is AI. And as long as those things are the same, there will be a constant bid for American assets.

And so I think in the IPO, what you're probably going to see is people approach this company the same way that they approach all non-core AI IPOs, which is that it's a business that you love to own for a year or two, but if there's a depression in valuation, it's because people cannot underwrite years three, four and five.

So this land and expand has proven out and there's real durability, it looks like, to this business for now. But to Chamath's point, like what is three to four years from now look like? Does this get absorbed into ChatGPT? You could say that about any software at any point in time.

Now, I will say, from my point of view, I'm not a huge fan of being dependent on government subsidized energy at all. So if the government is having to play a role in funding stuff, there's something really questionable in terms of our sustainability on that energy production source.

So, I don't know, my perspective is get rid of all the subsidies at this point, create a clean slate, but don't do anything to hinder the production of electricity, because we need literally as much of it as we can get our hands on.

But the immediate reaction to this bill, I think that Elon is having, is the same that I've had, and it is the same that Senator Johnson had, and it is the same that many others have had, which is what the F are we doing? We are in a fiscal emergency in this country and we're not addressing it.

And it's probably important to then say, well, what would a boundary condition be? I don't think the boundary condition is the dollar. I actually don't think the boundary condition is the debt.

So, I don't know, I think that it's part of the fact that until we run surpluses and or completely eliminate the debt, there will always be a reason to be somewhat short the dollar. But the reality is that a lot of people still want to own these assets more than what they want to own any other asset. And those assets are dollar denominated. And so as long as that continues to hold in the push and pull, it will be a slow bleed, but it's probably manageable.

In the last 10 years, US treasuries held by foreign holders has declined from 34%. This is a good thing, not a bad thing. I mean, it's good in one context. But my point is people, foreign countries and foreign businesses and foreign investors aren't holding US treasuries as much as they used to.

AI is the next leg of the stool to break. And I think that AI may actually break education. It may break higher education and then eventually it may make its way all the way down to childhood.

So I think the problem that we'll have is in the absence of brand, it's just going to be very difficult to differentiate oneself and filter people. And I think that what Jason says becomes the huge problem, which is then the burden of professional development for all these young kids is extremely heavy. So I think that the idea of all of this tooling is good and it's necessary, but I think it's insufficient.

but what I'm hopeful for is it creates a natural market force for nuclear and that we actually see a better proliferation in nuclear, which Secretary Wright has said, and President Trump signed these EOs a couple of weeks ago, to reduce the regulatory burden on nuclear and increase the ability for nuclear to proliferate much more quickly than has been the case historically.

I still worry that with nuclear, the issue won't be the federal regulations. I think that it's good that the president cleaned it up. The real problem is going to be the local and state regulators and how quickly they're willing to turn these on. And the reality is that these are 10-year projects. And so even if you say go from today, the earliest these things can be turned on, really, in 2032, 2033 That's far too late.

And Chamath, you talked about all this sideline cash sitting there in money market accounts, markets at an all-time high, Uber blew past 88, so I should be retired right now. What are your thoughts on M&A, IPOs? Feels like, man, we've got a really frisky, hot market right now.