Fed Hesitates on Tariffs, The New Mag 7, Death of VC, Google's Value in a Post-Search World
Jason Calacanis (host), David Sacks (host), Chamath Palihapitiya (host), David Friedberg (host), Philippe Laffont (guest), Narrator, Philippe Laffont (guest), Narrator, Narrator
In this episode of All-In Podcast, featuring Jason Calacanis and David Sacks, Fed Hesitates on Tariffs, The New Mag 7, Death of VC, Google's Value in a Post-Search World explores fed Waits, AI Surges: Tokens Outweigh Tariffs, VC Gets Squeezed The episode blends macroeconomics, AI disruption, and venture market structure, anchored by guest investor Philippe Laffont of Coatue. The besties debate the Fed’s decision to hold rates amid Trump’s tariff regime, arguing politics, liquidity risk, and new tariff-driven fiscal dynamics are all in play. They then pivot to AI’s impact on Google search, the potential decline of the current ‘Mag 7’ market leaders, and the rise of a new basket of 25 critical companies spanning public and private markets. Finally, they examine how aggressive antitrust policy and the collapse in exits are killing traditional venture incentives, and Laffont outlines his new Berkshire-like interval fund aimed at democratizing long-horizon tech investing.
Fed Waits, AI Surges: Tokens Outweigh Tariffs, VC Gets Squeezed
The episode blends macroeconomics, AI disruption, and venture market structure, anchored by guest investor Philippe Laffont of Coatue. The besties debate the Fed’s decision to hold rates amid Trump’s tariff regime, arguing politics, liquidity risk, and new tariff-driven fiscal dynamics are all in play. They then pivot to AI’s impact on Google search, the potential decline of the current ‘Mag 7’ market leaders, and the rise of a new basket of 25 critical companies spanning public and private markets. Finally, they examine how aggressive antitrust policy and the collapse in exits are killing traditional venture incentives, and Laffont outlines his new Berkshire-like interval fund aimed at democratizing long-horizon tech investing.
Key Takeaways
The Fed is prioritizing liquidity stability over equity-market support, with politics likely constraining rate cuts.
Philippe views the Fed’s decision not to cut as consistent with a solid real economy, noting strong consumer spend despite weak sentiment. ...
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Tariffs may create a durable revenue stream that reshapes fiscal and monetary decisions.
Friedberg highlights the UK trade deal’s 10% tariff on imports as a template: sustained tariff income could fund tax cuts, impact GDP and employment, and complicate the Fed’s incentive to cut rates into what might become a structurally different economy. ...
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AI ‘tokens’ and compute demand are emerging as a more powerful market driver than tariff fears.
Laffont frames ‘tokens >> tariffs’: Microsoft processed ~100 trillion tokens in Q1 (50T in March alone), and there is a broad chip and compute shortage across his portfolio. ...
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Google faces a classic innovator’s dilemma as AI chat cannibalizes search, and slow product courage may be its biggest risk.
Eddy Cue’s revelation that Apple’s search volume fell for the first time in 20 years—because of ChatGPT and Perplexity—triggered a $100B wobble in Google’s market cap. ...
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The ‘Mag 7’ era is ending; the real future index may be a 25‑company mix of public and private giants.
Philippe notes that markets moved from ‘FANG’ to ‘Mag 7,’ but rapid AI-driven change means those baskets are outdated. ...
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Aggressive antitrust enforcement and a collapse in exits are structurally undermining classic venture capital economics.
The hosts show post‑2021 IPO and M&A data flatlining and argue Lina Khan’s FTC has scared boards away from even discussing acquisitions, removing ‘singles and doubles’ that traditionally returned capital. ...
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Interval funds and permanent capital structures may be the next evolution of tech investing for non-institutional investors.
Laffont describes launching an ‘interval fund’ seeded with $1B from the Bezos and Dell family offices, targeting a Berkshire-like mix: roughly thirds in cash, public equities, and private investments over time. ...
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Notable Quotes
“We have this ratio at Coatue where we divide hard news by sentiment. It’s the first time where the news is so good and the sentiment is so bad.”
— Philippe Laffont
“Tokens are much greater than tariffs. At some point tariffs go away… what are we left with? We’re left with tokens.”
— Philippe Laffont
“If you look at the Mag 7, that was one correlated basket. Now that correlation has broken down, the real question is: what is the new Mag 25?”
— Chamath Palihapitiya
“If you marginalize the upside, you’ll have a stagnant society of marginal things. You need people willing to buy these lottery tickets.”
— Chamath Palihapitiya
“If I can compound capital at 12.5% incentive fee for a very long time, it’s better than 20% for a short period of time.”
— Philippe Laffont
Questions Answered in This Episode
Philippe, can you walk through a concrete example where your ‘hard data vs. sentiment’ ratio at Coatue gave you a contrarian entry point that worked particularly well—or failed?
The episode blends macroeconomics, AI disruption, and venture market structure, anchored by guest investor Philippe Laffont of Coatue. ...
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Chamath, you argued Powell is ignoring ‘blinking yellow’ liquidity indicators for political reasons; what specific metric or event would convince you the Fed had waited too long?
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For Google: if you had to choose one surface—YouTube, Chrome, Android home screen, or Gmail—as the primary Gemini front door for the next two years, which would you pick and what exact product changes would you deploy first?
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To all of you: how would you redesign U.S. antitrust policy to protect consumers from genuine monopolistic abuse without killing the ‘singles and doubles’ M&A that makes venture economics work?
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Philippe, in your new interval fund, how will you decide when a hyped private AI company (e.g., humanoid robots, autonomous driving) is priced too richly—even if it looks like a future ‘Mag 25’ member—and what guardrails do you use to avoid repeating 2021-style excesses?
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Transcript Preview
We went to an amazing restaurant Friday night. Shiso is the name of this restaurant. Wonderful food. The owner of this restaurant, Chamath, is a, is a super fan as well of the All-In podcast.
Is that a French restaurant, Jason?
Shiso was, um, more like an Asian fusion restaurant, like great sushi. We had this incredible-
It was delicious.
... salmon nigiri tail. Delicious.
It was delicious.
Just, just aces all the way. The guy comes and, uh, we go to pay. He says-
Oh, my God. Philippe, listen to this story. This is the most embarrassing-
"Your money's no good here. Your money's no good here, All-In."
This is the most-
He refuses to let us pay after we ran up a hell of a bill, and now you see Freiberg's running. Freiberg-
(laughs)
... just ran off the show. Why did he run off the show, Chamath?
Okay, so (clears throat) Jason says to me-
Unbelievable.
... "Chamath, we need to-"
This is absolute-
... "guys make this shit up-"
No, no, no, stop, stop.
"... to try and make entertainment out of me."
Really? I'll tell you the truth-
Out of me.
... because-
Yeah, you tell me the truth.
... yeah, I'll just tell the truth.
Truth, truth.
Meets Freiberg.
Go ahead.
Okay, ready? I'm gonna tell the truth.
Go ahead. Yeah.
So Jason says, "Guys-"
Bullshit. I'll see you guys later.
... "If they're gonna" (laughs) -
I don't care. Sure.
Bye.
It's not like he's gonna talk for more than three minutes anyway. Go ahead.
You said, "If they're, if they're gonna comp all the food, just make sure you give a great tip."
Huge tip.
Huge tip. Huge tip.
Chamath and J Cal level tip.
To- totally makes sense. Freiberg's like, "Yeah, I got it. No problem." We had, like, 19,000 pounds of food and he goes, "Is, is $175 appropriate?" (laughs)
(laughs) Literally, Freiberg calculated.
And so Jason says, Jason says no-
Okay, okay, okay.
... and then Freiberg says, "Hold on. Oh, fine, fine. I'll double it to 350." Now, he was fucking around. He was joking.
I gave the guy $1,000.
Gave $1,000 and I said-
Yeah. Yeah.
... "Actually, I think we should give two, 3,000," so then we tipped the woman an extra 2K. So, he gave her 3K for a, a 10-person dinner, which I think is appropriate. She was ecstatic. The food was phenomenal. It was great. Go to Shiso if you're in Miami.
Dave, are you adjusting the tips for the no tax on tips so you're, like, making them a little smaller?
(laughs)
(laughs)
Going all in. Don't let your winners ride. Rain man, David Sacks. Going all in. And I said we open source it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it.
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