Jason Calacanis
Host of This Week in Startups, where he interviews founders and discusses startups, technology, and venture capital. He is also an entrepreneur and investor.
Anthropic’s Growth Case Hinges on Enterprise Returns and Compute Capacity
Anthropic’s S-1 presents a company growing at extraordinary speed, but the All-In hosts disagree on what its figures establish. David Sacks argues that rising margins, falling model costs and a large potential customer base support a historic business case; Chamath Palihapitiya says the unresolved questions are whether enterprise trials turn into durable, multimillion-dollar contracts and how the costly infrastructure buildout will be financed.
Amanda Bradford Opened The League to 500 Users After 8,000 Registered
Amanda Bradford built The League’s launch months before the dating app was ready, using in-person events and a waitlist to assemble a founding community. In her account, opening to just 500 people made it easier to see whether the product worked before expanding; she later concluded that launching in too many cities added complexity without meaningful revenue. Her approach treats pre-launch activity as a way to build and learn from an initial marketplace, not just generate buzz.
Venture-Backed Startups Account for Most AI Spending, Raising Questions About Durable Demand
Chamath Palihapitiya argues that venture-backed startups account for most AI spending, making current demand a fragile measure of broad adoption; Jason Calacanis counters that startups’ willingness to buy reflects the technology’s practical value. Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora warns that AI can help uncover vulnerabilities and accelerate attacks on unpatched systems, exposing the risks of years of deferred maintenance. In France, the hosts disagree over whether unrest and fiscal strain stem chiefly from excessive state spending, disappointing public services, immigration or weak growth.
Big Pharma’s Overlooked Drugs Can Become Billion-Dollar Businesses
Martin Shkreli argues that a technology’s technical breakthrough does not make it a sound investment: quantum computing may excel at a narrow set of problems, he says, without offering a viable business case. In a conversation with the Besties, he also describes pharmaceutical opportunity as finding drugs large companies have failed to develop well, while disputing claims that AI will soon transform drug discovery. Looking back on prison, Shkreli says his fixation on being a great trader obscured other paths and relationships that mattered more.
Celebrity Reach Can Open Doors, but Venture Returns Still Depend on Picking Winners
Jake Paul argues that a large audience can help founders reach customers, but cannot replace a good product—and that chasing attention can reward spectacle over substance. Alex Pall describes Mantis, the venture firm he co-founded with The Chainsmokers, as a supporting investor whose visibility and relationships can help companies, though that profile can also put off institutional investors. The discussion ties access to a broader test of value: whether an investor’s contribution or a company’s rising valuation reflects stronger business performance.
Hilton Pitches Tax and Gas Cuts to Win Over California’s Persuadable Voters
Steve Hilton argues that California’s high costs and weak public services stem from one-party rule and regulations shaped by political interests, despite the state’s economic and natural advantages. The Republican candidate says he would cut state spending and regulations, exempt workers’ first $150,000 of income from state taxes and bring gasoline prices down. Spencer Pratt, who ran for Los Angeles mayor after losing his home in the Palisades fire, backs Hilton’s appeal to practical concerns while alleging failures in the city’s ballot and fire-response systems.
Boom Plans to Finance Supersonic Flight With Data Center Power
Boom Supersonic founder Blake Scholl argues that the company’s engine program can finance and de-risk its planned Mach 1.7 airliner by first supplying trailerized, behind-the-meter power to AI data centers. After losing its intended engine supplier, Boom chose to develop and manufacture its own turbine core; Scholl says that same core can generate 42 megawatts in a stationary configuration while accumulating operating time before it flies on Overture. His broader case is that vertically integrated manufacturing, boomless overland cruise and a roughly $3,500 transatlantic break-even fare can make commercial supersonic service viable again.
Hugging Face Bets on Cheap Robots to Build Physical AI
Hugging Face co-founder Thomas Wolf argues that Microduck, a sub-$400 open-source robot, is meant to bring more builders into physical AI—not by solving household work, but by giving users a capable machine on which to train and share behaviors. In this interview, Wolf places that bet alongside Hugging Face’s larger model: free public distribution supported by paid storage and compute infrastructure, with open models providing organizations an alternative when proprietary systems are unavailable, restricted or unsuitable. He also says that openness must be paired with stronger AI-driven cyber defense after the company’s own breach.
America’s Promise Is Opportunity, Not Guaranteed Outcomes
David Sacks argues that America’s defining promise is not provision but the opportunity to pursue anything through work, talent and initiative. In the All-In Summit’s 2026 introductory film, Sacks, Chamath Palihapitiya, David Friedberg and Jason Calacanis frame their immigrant and entrepreneurial experiences as evidence of a culture that rewards ambition, tolerates unconventional ideas and treats failure as part of trying. The montage pairs that case with presidential appeals to building, risk-taking and national renewal.
NASA’s Strategy Shifts From Commercial Subsidies to Nuclear Deep Space
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman argues that the agency’s $25 billion budget is sufficient but misallocated: NASA should buy commercial services where markets exist and concentrate its own resources on capabilities with no immediate business case, including lunar operations, nuclear power and propulsion, and deep-space science. He frames a sustained presence at the lunar south pole as both preparation for Mars and an urgent strategic test, arguing that delays would cede scarce operational ground to China and Russia.
AI’s Next Test Is Turning Data-Center CapEx Into Revenue
Altimeter Capital’s Brad Gerstner argues that the AI-led market rise is not a dot-com-style bubble because Nasdaq earnings growth, not multiple expansion, has driven returns—but the gains have been concentrated in semiconductor and infrastructure suppliers rather than the companies buying compute. He says the investment case now hinges on whether AI labs, especially Anthropic and OpenAI, can grow revenue quickly enough to support a trillion-dollar data-center build-out, while power, permitting, labor, regulation and borrowing costs limit how much capacity can actually be delivered.
AI Leadership Will Be Decided by Deployment, Not Model Ownership
Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang argues that AI policy should target demonstrable failures at frontier labs rather than catastrophic forecasts he calls ungrounded. In a discussion joined briefly by President Donald Trump, Huang says US leadership will depend less on owning every important model than on deploying AI broadly through open and closed systems, compute, power, data centers and industrial capacity. He also contends that “superintelligence” already exists in bounded applications such as autonomous driving and protein science, making practical deployment—not speculative thresholds—the central challenge.
AI Safety Rules Could Concentrate Control Over Frontier Models
All-In’s David Sacks, David Friedberg, Chamath Palihapitiya and Jason Calacanis argue that warnings of near-term AI extinction rest on an unproven leap from current models to autonomous self-improvement, while the policy response could concentrate AI control in regulated proprietary platforms. They extend that skepticism to Anthropic’s IPO messaging, OpenAI’s handling of customer data in its Navier–Stokes work, and Nike’s decline, which they attribute to weakened product discipline, distribution decisions and a blurred athletic brand.
Founder Vesting Protects Startups When Co-Founders Leave
Wilson Sonsini partner Becki DeGraw argues that startup equity should remain tied to ongoing contribution: founder vesting lets a company recover unearned shares when a co-founder leaves, while advisor grants need objective milestones or active termination when the work stops. She says founders negotiating financing gain their strongest leverage from multiple term sheets, which allow them to weigh vesting, board representation and follow-on capacity alongside valuation.
AI’s Defining Fight Is Open Access Versus Frontier Control
All-In hosts argue that GPT-6 Astra’s claimed AGI status matters less than the widening availability and falling cost of advanced AI. Chamath Palihapitiya expects frontier capabilities to converge quickly, while David Sacks sees a durable divide between a closed-model frontier duopoly and a larger commodity market—and warns that AI regulation could entrench the leading labs. Across cybersecurity, data centers and schools, they make the case for broad access paired with practical safeguards rather than centralized control.
Insulin Testing Could Reveal Metabolic Risk Before Blood Sugar Rises
Dr Mark Hyman argues that US healthcare is built to treat diagnosed disease rather than identify the metabolic and nutritional problems that precede it. Through Function Health, Hyman is making the case for patient-held, longitudinal records that combine laboratory tests, imaging, wearables and medical history, with AI used to organize the data under clinician supervision. He says routinely overlooked measures such as insulin and ApoB can reveal risk hidden by normal blood-sugar readings, while warning that wider testing and GLP-1 use require careful interpretation, follow-up and muscle-preserving care.
Clean IP Title Determines Whether a Spinout Can Raise
Wilson Sonsini partner Becki DeGraw argues that a spinout must give the parent a defensible return without leaving the new company’s founders too little ownership to recruit, raise capital, and build an independent business. Alongside the cap table, she says, the parties must establish a clean chain of title to the IP and document continuing rights around infrastructure, employees, customers, and confidential information before the team begins operating separately.
AI Investment Accelerates as Treasury Faces a $10 Trillion Refinancing Wall
All-In’s David Friedberg, David Sacks and Chamath Palihapitiya argue that the US is entering a fiscal squeeze that Treasury buybacks cannot resolve, as trillions in debt must be refinanced at higher rates. They see continued private investment in AI infrastructure—bolstered by Nvidia’s earnings—as one of the few plausible sources of growth large enough to ease that burden, while Salesforce’s results challenge the broader claim that AI agents will erase enterprise software. Their distinction is between replaceable workflows and systems of record whose data, controls and organizational context agents still need.
Preferred Stockholders Control Their Designated Board Seats
Wilson Sonsini partner Becki DeGraw argues that startup founders should treat board seats as durable allocations of corporate control, not as informal advisory roles they can revoke when a relationship sours. Boards approve consequential actions from financings and equity grants to CEO changes, and preferred-stock investors commonly gain designated seats whose holders are elected by their own class of stock. Once those rights are set in the charter and financing documents, common stockholders generally cannot remove the investor’s director without that investor’s agreement.
China Uses Robot Sports to Normalize Humanoids Before Mass Deployment
Jason Calacanis argues that China’s World Humanoid Robot Games are not simply a technical showcase but a campaign to make people cheer for machines before those machines enter workplaces and daily life. On This Week in Startups, he contrasts Beijing’s use of sport and spectacle with what he sees as a more anxious American debate about AI displacement, while Lon Harris says the games’ anthropomorphic framing is plainly intended to make humanoids seem familiar and relatable.
AI Game Creation Shifts From Coding to Taste and Iteration
Astrocade CEO Amir Sadeghian argues that generative AI can lower the cost of making interactive experiences, but cannot replace the human judgment required to make a game worth playing. His company pairs natural-language generation with an editor for tuning mechanics, pacing and other precise choices, on the premise that “taste is the new programming language.” As more people publish AI-made games and other interactive content, Sadeghian says discovery and recommendation will determine whether creators can find an audience.
Anthropic’s IPO Would Test Whether AI Token Demand Can Fund Compute
All-In’s panel, joined by investor Gavin Baker, argues that Anthropic’s reported $2 trillion IPO would be a critical test of whether customer demand for AI can sustain the debt-financed compute buildout behind it. David Sacks calls Anthropic the industry’s “pace car”: continued growth would support spending across cloud capacity, chips and power, while a demand-led slowdown could trigger a broader pileup. The discussion also weighs whether cheaper open models and Grok will erode frontier labs’ pricing power—or expand the market while leaving a premium for leading systems.
An Allied Economic Bloc Is the Answer to China
Rahm Emanuel argues that the United States should counter China not through unilateral tariffs or confrontation with allies, but by organizing a democratic economic bloc with the scale to resist Beijing’s coercion. That strategy, he says, depends on rebuilding American capacity at home—from research and manufacturing to immigration, education and housing—while pursuing political coalitions capable of governing rather than ideological purity. Emanuel also casts the Democratic Socialists of America as a separate project whose priorities, in his view, undermine the broader effort to defeat Trump and enact practical policy.
Meta Offers AI Access in Exchange for Data Center Support
Jason Calacanis argues that Mark Zuckerberg’s AI manifesto is a political bargain: Meta promises broadly available tutors, agents and business tools in exchange for public acceptance of the data centers needed to run them. He sees open-weight models and AI embedded in Meta’s existing apps as both a competitive strategy and a way to argue that AI’s gains will not be confined to a few companies. Lon Harris is more skeptical, describing the essay as a polished case for Meta’s expanding product footprint as much as for distributed access to intelligence.