All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Biggest LBO Ever, SPAC 2.0, Open Source AI Models, State AI Regulation Frenzy
03 Oct 2025
(0:00) Bestie intros! (1:53) EA acquired for $55B in biggest LBO ever, why PE is in trouble (17:42) IPO market, SPAC 2.0 (27:41) The AI rollup opportunity (36:01) Sacks joins the show! (38:27) OpenAI and Meta launch short-form video apps: "AI Slop" or the future of content? (45:04) Open source AI: DeepSeek's new model, pressure on US AI industry (1:05:11) State AI regulation frenzy: States' rights vs Federal control, overregulation Follow the besties: https://x.com/chamath https://x.com/Jason https://x.com/DavidSacks https://x.com/friedberg Follow on X: https://x.com/theallinpod Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theallinpod Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@theallinpod Follow on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/allinpod Intro Music Credit: https://rb.gy/tppkzl https://x.com/yung_spielburg Intro Video Credit: https://x.com/TheZachEffect Referenced in the show: https://apnews.com/article/ea-electronic-arts-video-game-silver-lake-pif-d17dc7dd3412a990d2c0a6758aaa6900 https://www.ign.com/articles/xbox-game-pass-ultimate-price-rises-to-30-a-month-microsoft-adds-more-day-one-games-and-throws-in-fortnite-crew-and-ubisoft-classics-to-help-justify-the-cost https://x.com/Jason/status/1973461806585966655 https://www.npr.org/2025/09/05/nx-s1-5529404/anthropic-settlement-authors-copyright-ai https://x.com/scaling01/status/1972650237266465214 https://www.insidetechlaw.com/blog/2025/09/californias-transparency-in-frontier-artificial-intelligence-act https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/google-withdraws-rezoning-proposal-for-468-acre-data-center-project-in-franklin-township-indianapolis
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
All right, everybody, welcome back to the number one podcast in the world.
Chapter 2: What is the significance of EA's $55 billion acquisition?
Of course, that's the All In podcast. I'm your host, Jason Calacanis. With me again, your chairman and dictator, Chamath Palihapitiya, and the sultan of science, David Freberg. David Sachs will be calling in from the SCIFT. He's in some deep negotiations for the United States of America.
From the skiff.
It's not, there's no T at the end, it's just skiff.
No T, no T. Oh, skiff to my left.
Okay, he's in a skiff doing something with his BlackBerry and a bunch of generals. Nobody knows what's going on in Sax's life, but he'll crack in from the skiff.
any moment now, but we'll start with... You guys see that Pete Hegs have announced a PT and a fitness test for the generals. Could you imagine if Sachs had to pass a PT?
Oh, my God. They should totally make it for the administration. Sachs, we need you to do one push-up, Sachs.
What do they do if you don't pass?
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Chapter 3: How does SPAC 2.0 differ from traditional IPOs?
They remove you from your... You probably get a cure period. We should do a push-up contest. That would be great. Winner take all. How many push-ups can you do, Freeburn?
You have to adjust for people's heights. I'm the tallest of all of you. I have a much longer limb system. What does that mean? 20 for me is much harder than 20 for you, Jason.
Chapter 4: What opportunities exist in the AI rollup market?
I mean, 20 is easy for me at this point. You're like Bilbo Baggins. It'll take you like eight seconds to put on.
I'm a tank, man. Bilbo Baggins. How about Thor? I'm like Thor at this.
I'm going to my Daniel Craig era.
J. Cal has an elbow to wrist to weight ratio that's highly advantaged.
Chapter 5: What insights does David Sacks bring to the conversation?
All right, let's get started. Enough shenanigans.
Chapter 6: How are OpenAI and Meta reshaping content creation?
EA is being taken.
What is your arm length, J. Cal? Do you have a good arm length?
My wingspan? My wingspan technically is enough to kick your ass with one hand tied behind my back.
That's actually what it is. brain man david sacks and instead we open source it to the fans and they've just gone crazy
Chapter 7: What impact does open source AI have on the industry?
Okay, EA is being taken private in the largest take private deal in history, $55 billion. Man, that just stacks up to, let's see, Texas Power Company in 2007, HCA Healthcare, $33 billion. This is a large deal. Investors in the Take Private include Saudi's PIF, Silver Lake, and friend of the pod, Jared Kushner's Affinity Partners. $210 a share, $25 premium on the stock.
Kushner's largest LP and Affinity, as you know, Saudi PIF as well. The PIF has invested over $900 billion. You know many of the things, Lucid Motors, Live Golf, the SoftBank Vision Fund, Uber back in the day, Newcastle, the Premier League. Electronic Arts obviously is in the video game business. They were founded at Sequoia's office in 1982 in San Mateo.
Shout out to our guy, Rulof Botha, who joined us for the All In Summit. Their headquarters is still in Redwood City. Madden NFL, The Sims. Oh, that's why you have the background The Sims this week. Need for Speed. Pretty insane industry. deal here, Chamath, and this is a high watermark for private equity any way you look at it. And the PIF loves games.
They are the biggest shareholder in Nintendo, Savvy Games, Scopely. I mean, they just keep buying games.
Chapter 8: How are states approaching AI regulation amidst federal control?
What are your thoughts here on this deal happening right now?
I really like it. Let me give you the bull case, and then let me give you what the bear case would have to believe. The thing to remember is that video games is the anchor pillar of usage across the entire internet. Last week at our poker game, we had Matt Bromberg join in just for dinner, who's the CEO of Unity. And Alex Blum, who's the COO of Unity.
And one of the stats that they shared with us at dinner was it's about 3 billion DAO play games. Wow. Exactly. It's an incredible, incredible stat. So in many ways, it's much bigger than social networking and social media or as big. And in that, EA is sort of this 800-pound gorilla. But I think the problem is, is that they've always been these gatekeepers.
And I think that there's a risk and a chance that these gatekeepers get eroded away. Specifically who I'm talking about are folks like Microsoft and Xbox. And at the point that this company is going private, there's some really interesting things that are happening. So Xbox, I think the day after the EA deal got announced, decided to hike prices 50% to their subscription service.
And what happened over the subsequent few days is that so many people tried to cancel that the site went down. So what are you seeing happening? You have distribution gatekeepers trying to raise prices and take share.
And then you have the original IP owners who have not had a well-funded way of fighting back in a category that is basically as important and frankly, more important than social media. So I think if you take an asset like this private, it allows you to take your time to clean up the OpEx model, figure out who does what, be able to use the best of all these next-gen tools,
and then be able to find ways of finding distribution outside the scope of Xbox and PlayStation so that you can take more of your share. If you do those things, this is a multi hundred billion dollar asset. And in that, I think it could be just an enormous win. So I think it's very smart. What's the bear case?
I think the bear case is extending a theme that I've talked about here a few times, which is I think the value of patents and by extension, IP and copyrights are going to go away. And in that, there's going to be a spectrum where certain content IP holders lose and other ones win. I think gaming is on the winning side, to be honest.
And I think content studios in general, like traditional content, the Disney's, the Hulu's, the Netflix's are on the losing side. But the bear case would be that these tool chains allow the number of games to be built to increase by two, three, four orders of magnitude, and that they are distributed by other places like the social media sites. I just think that that's a pretty low probability.
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