Dueling Presidential interviews, SpaceX's big catch, Robotaxis, Uber buying Expedia?, Nuclear NIMBY

FriedbergMixed

Friedberg sees a financial rationale for Uber acquiring Expedia at ~4x pro forma EBITDA after cost synergies and cross-selling, but acknowledges significant long-term AI disruption risk to Expedia's core business model.

“if you can bump the EBITDA up to $6 billion a year... you're kind of paying about $22 billion enterprise value... that's a pretty low multiple. I mean, you could kind of see yourself rationalizing this just from a financial basis that”▶ Listen · 33:50 ⚑

ChamathBearish✗ wrong so far

Chamath argues Expedia is a fragile UI layer over commoditized data that is highly vulnerable to AI agents like Perplexity executing travel bookings directly, making it a terrible $30B capital allocation for Uber.

“I cannot think of a more fragile business model than the UI layer on top of widely available data... in the example of flight bookings, you could go directly to United because Perplexity will just show you all of the flights... and then”▶ Listen · 29:37 ⚑

FriedbergBullish

Friedberg argues SpaceX's successful Starship booster catch is the critical milestone enabling a path to ~$10/kg launch costs, which would make Mars colonization economically feasible and cement SpaceX's dominance in the launch market.

“the cost per kilogram comes down... the booster has estimated that Starship and the booster cost about $90 million today... if you can reuse that thing 10 times, that's a $3.5 million cost per launch, plus a million for fuel... That's how”▶ Listen · 19:45 ⚑

SacksBearish✓ right so far

Sacks argues that acquiring Expedia would be value-destructive for Uber because Uber users want transactional efficiency, not cross-sold travel products, making the synergy thesis an MBA fantasy that doesn't reflect product reality.

“I don't think Uber customers want to be cross-sold on booking a hotel... I'm never going to think to go on my Uber app for that... The more Uber tries to promote some unrelated product... it's clutter in the app.”▶ Listen · 36:08 ⚑

FriedbergBullish

Friedberg believes Starlink could grow from 4 million to 100+ million subscribers by displacing inferior ISPs and cell providers, potentially becoming one of the largest subscription businesses on earth.

“Starlink's running at 4 million subs right now. That's like $100 a month, 4 million subs... If we can get satellite to phone and you can get Starlink more broadly available, this could be a 100 million subscriber business.”▶ Listen · 21:23 ⚑