E126: Big Tech blow-out, Powell’s recession warning, lab-grown meat, RFK Jr shakes up race & more
Jason Calacanis (host), Jason Calacanis (host), Chamath Palihapitiya (host), David Friedberg (host), David Sacks (host), David Sacks (host)
In this episode of All-In Podcast, featuring Jason Calacanis and Jason Calacanis, E126: Big Tech blow-out, Powell’s recession warning, lab-grown meat, RFK Jr shakes up race & more explores big Tech’s plateau, AI shockwave, and lab-grown meat’s hard reality The hosts dissect major Big Tech earnings, arguing that companies like Google, Meta, Microsoft, Apple and Amazon are becoming slow‑growth cash cows reliant on cost-cutting and financial engineering rather than breakthrough innovation. They contrast Big Tech’s resilience with Jerome Powell’s recession warnings, criticizing the Fed’s blunt, demand-killing approach and lack of supply-side creativity. A large part of the conversation focuses on AI’s rapid impact on knowledge work, with concrete examples of automation already replacing or augmenting white-collar tasks at dramatic cost savings. They also dive deep into alternative and lab-grown meats, explaining the underlying biotech, why the economics remain challenging, and how environmental, ethical and taste considerations collide.
Big Tech’s plateau, AI shockwave, and lab-grown meat’s hard reality
The hosts dissect major Big Tech earnings, arguing that companies like Google, Meta, Microsoft, Apple and Amazon are becoming slow‑growth cash cows reliant on cost-cutting and financial engineering rather than breakthrough innovation. They contrast Big Tech’s resilience with Jerome Powell’s recession warnings, criticizing the Fed’s blunt, demand-killing approach and lack of supply-side creativity. A large part of the conversation focuses on AI’s rapid impact on knowledge work, with concrete examples of automation already replacing or augmenting white-collar tasks at dramatic cost savings. They also dive deep into alternative and lab-grown meats, explaining the underlying biotech, why the economics remain challenging, and how environmental, ethical and taste considerations collide.
Key Takeaways
Big Tech is moving from hyper-growth innovators to ex-growth cash machines.
The hosts argue that Google, Meta, Microsoft, Apple and Amazon now grow revenue in low single digits and increasingly rely on layoffs, cost-cutting, buybacks and financial engineering to boost EPS, rather than shipping transformative new products.
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Google has deep AI capabilities but lacks clear strategic communication and cost discipline.
Despite a strong technical lead in AI and internal confidence, Google’s earnings call was marked by silence on AI strategy and only symbolic cost measures, worrying investors who want decisive leadership, structural cost cuts, and a public plan to compete with OpenAI/Microsoft.
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The Fed is using a blunt tool—killing demand and wages—rather than fixing supply-side issues.
Powell’s leaked remarks emphasize slowing the economy and cooling wages to tame inflation; the hosts argue policy should also target deficits, energy costs, and supply chain bottlenecks, and better mobilize idle labor instead of relying on recession as the primary tool.
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AI could automate roughly 30% of current knowledge work in the near term.
By wiring ChatGPT-4 to tools like Zapier and travel/APIs, they demonstrate that tasks like lead research, outreach, content drafting, and some analytics can already be scripted away, implying that white-collar workers who don’t adopt AI may become uncompetitive within a few years.
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AI is both deflationary for knowledge work and inflationary pressure for physical labor.
They foresee physical/service labor demanding higher wages due to scarcity and reshoring, while AI makes knowledge work far cheaper and more productive, creating a structural tension between expensive in-person work and increasingly commoditized cognitive tasks.
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San Francisco’s office market is in a years-long, possibly decade-long, reset.
With downtown vacancy potentially around 30–40% and building values collapsing by ~80%, the only rational buyers are long-horizon equity investors effectively ‘land banking,’ expecting little to no cash flow until the city and demand eventually recover.
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Lab-grown and alternative proteins are scientifically promising but economically early and hard.
Friedberg explains three categories—plant-based analogs, recombinant proteins, and cellular meat—stressing that while it’s biophysically feasible to make identical animal proteins and cells without animals, today’s constraints are strain engineering, process optimization, and massive, scarce biomanufacturing capacity, keeping costs far above commodity meat.
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RFK Jr. could channel anti-war and anti-security-state sentiment inside the Democratic Party.
Sacks sees parallels to 1968, praising RFK Jr. ...
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Notable Quotes
““We are now well past peak Big Tech… These companies are ex-growth, large cash flow businesses.””
— Chamath Palihapitiya
““Google has such an incredible AI advantage over Microsoft… they just have to have the will and the leadership to do it.””
— David Friedberg
““The only thing we know how to do in this situation with inflation is to kill the economy… specifically to kill jobs and wages.””
— David Sacks, paraphrasing Jerome Powell’s stance
“If you’re a white-collar worker and you’re not using this [AI] this year, I think you’ll be out of a job within the next two.””
— Jason Calacanis
“Scientifically, on first principles, it is absolutely feasible… It’s a function of engineering our way there to giving everyone that eats burgers and chicken nuggets everything that they want, hopefully at a lower price.”
— David Friedberg (on lab-grown and recombinant proteins)
Questions Answered in This Episode
If Big Tech is now in a financial-engineering phase, where should investors and founders look for the next true innovation wave?
The hosts dissect major Big Tech earnings, arguing that companies like Google, Meta, Microsoft, Apple and Amazon are becoming slow‑growth cash cows reliant on cost-cutting and financial engineering rather than breakthrough innovation. ...
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
What practical steps could governments take on the supply side—energy, labor, and regulation—to fight inflation without engineering a recession?
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How should individual knowledge workers redesign their roles and skills around AI to stay indispensable rather than replaceable?
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Given the current constraints in biomanufacturing capacity, what business or policy innovations could accelerate the viability of lab-grown and recombinant proteins?
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To what extent could a candidate like RFK Jr. realistically reshape Democratic Party policy on war, the security state, and public health, versus being marginalized as a ‘fringe’ voice?
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Transcript Preview
I can't wait to talk about lab-grown meat. I have been trying to get people to- (instrumental music plays) Oh, God. (laughs) Oh, no.
(laughs)
Oh, please. Don't... Let's not get canceled.
(laughs)
But the four of us are functional again, we like each other, we enjoy, we look forward to doing this show again, everything's dialed in.
Is your lab-grown meat... does it use hormones?
My lab-grown meat was a little- (instrumental music plays) .
Let me ask you this about your lab-grown meat. Do you ever- (instrumental music plays) (laughs)
At this age? No.
No?
No. (laughs) No. You know, I was told that my lab-grown meat was a little- (instrumental music plays) . I've injected some flavors of, uh, tobacco, black cherry.
Some notes?
Some notes. (laughs)
Persimmons.
(laughs) Persimmons.
(laughing) Oh, God. No, it's-
Let your winner slide.
Rain Man, David Satterfield.
I'm going all in. And I said we open source it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it.
Love you, SI.
Queen of quinoa. I'm going all in.
So let's go to big tech earnings. Google stock is up 5% after beating on the top line and bottom line estimates. Some high level takeaways, Google announced a $70 billion stock buyback plan and that their cloud unit was profitable for the first time in its history. As we mentioned last week, Sundar officially announced that Deep Mind was merging with Brain. This is kind of controversial, because it's, uh, really hard, uh, according to some sources, for Sundar to get all his lieutenants to work together and row in the right direction. Google's Q1 search revenue up year over year, 2%, down 5% quarter of a quarter. This is kind of to be expected because of seasonality, and because we're in a down market right now, obviously with the recession. YouTube down 2.5% year over year, down 16% quarter of a quarter. Other Bets, which is like Nest and some other products, down 35% year over year. Net income, $15 billion. Any thoughts, Freyberg, on what is a mixed quarter by Google, and I guess, the wider-
I think, yeah-
... macro environment?
What was so striking about the earnings call is not necessarily what was presented, but what was not presented, which was a stronger voice and a strategic plan going forward for dealing with two major issues at the company. One is the operating cost model, and the second is the AI strategy and the response to this evolution in AI. I've heard from a lot of folks that the AI strategy in particular, it's almost like Google already has this in the bag, but they just haven't kind of let it out of the bag. It's like they've got a Tasmanian devil and they're, they're ready to go with it. And there's, from, from my read, an incredible amount of confidence that there's something that's gonna happen, and a set of things that are gonna happen that are gonna be very profound and powerful. I even heard some anecdotal stories about, "Hey, you know, we don't have this feature in this product, but ChatGPT does." And then people basically showed up to this meeting, and there was all this debate about, "Well, we can't let it out, because we're not sure..." You know, the, the classic kind of like, "We're scared of gi- doing, doing wrong," versus leaning forward and, and taking risks.
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