2025 Predictions with bestie Gavin Baker

ChamathBearishtracking with the call

Chamath doubles down on enterprise SaaS as worst performing asset, coining 'software industrial complex' to describe bloated legacy vendors whose go-to-market motions and heuristic-wrapped CRUD databases will be disrupted by AI-native competitors with order-of-magnitude lower cost structures.

“the software industrial complex. These are these large bloated, in many cases, enterprise software companies… I think the software industrial complex, these old mainline traditional enterprise software companies, I think you're going to sta”▶ Listen · 1:25:06 ⚑

FriedbergBearishtracking with the call

Friedberg triple-underlines vertical SaaS as worst performing asset, citing per-seat pricing compression and companies building in-house AI tools replacing traditional enterprise software.

“I'm probably just going to triple underline vertical SaaS again. Per-seat pricing model being challenged, pricing being compressed as companies explore in-house tools built with AI.”▶ Listen · 1:28:16 ⚑

Gavin Baker predicts enterprise application software will be the worst performing asset of 2025, as AI agents built by cloud providers and frontier labs will displace white-collar workers these companies serve, and SaaS vendors lack their own models or compute to compete.

“Gavin, enterprise application software. Okay, this is basically just about like— 2025 is going to be, I think, the year of agents, particularly in the second half… enterprise application software, I think, is going to be in a lot of pain… t”▶ Listen · 1:23:35 ⚑

JasonBullishbarely moved since

Jason picks Tesla as one of his biggest business winners of 2025, citing Colossus GPU build-out and AI investment as catalysts that will surprise the market.

“My biggest business winner prediction for 2025 is Tesla and Google.”▶ Listen · 29:03 ⚑

Gavin Baker argues FSD is crossing into mainstream adoption and will continue compounding at an accelerating rate, making Tesla a major winner in the year of robots/autonomy.

“I think FSD works today and it's gonna— it's, it's gonna cross into mainstream adoption where I already notice, particularly if I'm taking an Uber late at night, I really, really prefer to have a Tesla… I think it's going to continue compou”▶ Listen · 21:29 ⚑

JasonBullishtracking with the call

Jason picks the Mag 7 as the best performing asset of 2025, arguing their internal AI application will drive earnings growth beyond market expectations.

“I think the Mag 7 is going to be the best performing asset. I'm taking the other side… the internal application of AI will allow these companies to have earnings growth that people will not be able to comprehend over the next couple of year”▶ Listen · 1:22:10 ⚑

ChamathBearishtracking against the call

Chamath predicts the Mag 7 will see a multi-trillion dollar absolute drawdown in 2025 due to dangerous index concentration near 40%, regardless of underlying business quality.

“I think when we look back, the absolute dollar drawdown of the Mag Seven will be in the trillions of dollars. Okay. And the reason is not necessarily because of the underlying fundamentals of these companies, but I am a little bit worried…”▶ Listen · 40:02 ⚑

JasonBearish

Jason predicts OpenAI will be the biggest business loser of 2025, arguing its valuation is peak, competition from Google/xAI/Microsoft is intensifying, pricing power is eroding, and the nonprofit-to-for-profit conversion could fail.

“I think the one that is the most overpriced of all of this, and I think is going to see their peak valuation, is OpenAI. I think the headwinds for OpenAI are being absolutely underappreciated.”▶ Listen · 44:37 ⚑

JasonCommentary

Jason argues Apple Intelligence is a failure — worse than competitors — and that Apple is losing ground to Google's Gemini AI, undermining its AI narrative.

“Apple Intelligence is even worse than Copilot, which is saying something... Apple gets it wrong every fucking time. It's a piece of garbage. It's a disgrace.”▶ Listen · 57:34 ⚑

JasonBullishtracking with the call

Jason picks Google as one of his biggest business winners of 2025, citing Gemini Deep Research as a step-function improvement over competitors and Google's unique data advantages.

“My biggest business winner prediction for 2025 is Tesla and Google. I think this is going to be the year of AI and robotics, obviously. But I am just absolutely amazed at the comeback that Google has made with AI”▶ Listen · 29:03 ⚑

FriedbergCommentary

Friedberg argues Waymo is a proven, scaling business with improving ROIC metrics, rapid market share gains (22% in SF in 15 months), and expects a major deal — IPO, large financing, or acquisition — in 2025.

“Waymo is now at 22% market share of rides in SF... they also just moved the hardware platform over to a new device. That's supposedly going to bring the CapEx significantly down... you could see a big deal with Waymo this year.”▶ Listen · 54:22 ⚑

FriedbergBullishtracking against the call

Friedberg picks Chinese tech ETFs as the best performing asset of 2025, arguing stocks look cheap after years of selling, a US-China trade deal under Trump could re-rate them, and China's power buildout strengthens their cost advantage.

“So I went with Chinese tech stocks, uh, Chinese tech ETFs… these stocks look pretty cheap. I was just looking at Alibaba, and it trades at a pretty decent multiple. It seems like these stocks could be poised for a pretty good run in '25 if”▶ Listen · 1:17:40 ⚑

JasonCommentarytracking with the call

Jason argues MicroStrategy trading at 2-4x the book value of its Bitcoin holdings is unsustainable and a candidate for peak valuation.

“I looked at MicroStrategy, and that made no sense to me that they were trading at 2, 3, 4 times the book value of their Bitcoin, and I think that's not sustainable.”▶ Listen · 44:16 ⚑

Gavin Baker predicts companies with more than 35% of revenue from U.S. government contracts will be the biggest business losers of 2025 due to DOGE-driven spending scrutiny.

“Government service providers. You do not want to have the United States government at any level as over 35% of your revenue.”▶ Listen · 39:28 ⚑

FriedbergBearishtracking against the call

Friedberg predicts legacy defense and aerospace primes (Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon) will be the biggest business losers of 2025, as defense budgets shift toward tech-oriented ROI-driven spending and their cost-plus model faces DOGE scrutiny.

“I went with the kind of old defense and aerospace providers, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Defense 1.0... I think that this government contracting business across the board is going to be deeply challenged this year.”▶ Listen · 41:30 ⚑

Gavin Baker picks high-bandwidth memory makers (primarily SK Hynix and Micron) as the best performing asset of 2025, citing HBM being a larger share of Nvidia GPU COGS than TSMC and persistent sold-out conditions driven by inference compute demand.

“So high bandwidth memory would be my pick.”▶ Listen · 1:14:57 ⚑

ChamathCommentary

Chamath's best performing asset pick is buying CDS (credit default swap protection) as an asymmetric insurance against a credit/banking crisis, comparing the potential payoff to Ackman's COVID CDS trade.

“I would be long CDS. So what am I buying? I am buying insurance. I'm buying insurance using credit default swaps… if it hits, it will be the best performing asset of 2025. It will be the equivalent of Ackman buying CDS right at the, right a”▶ Listen · 1:15:35 ⚑

ChamathBearish

Chamath predicts traditional auto OEMs (Volkswagen, Stellantis, Honda, Nissan etc.) will collapse and be forced into mega mergers in 2025, as Tesla's software/FSD advantage and Chinese EV competition make them uninvestable.

“I think that this is the year that we will see the collapse of the traditional auto OEMs… I think that Tesla is just in an incredible position with the quality of their vehicles and the quality of their software and the quality of their aut”▶ Listen · 47:11 ⚑

ChamathBullish

Chamath predicts dollar-denominated stablecoins will be the biggest business winner of 2025, citing their decoupling from crypto volatility, transaction volumes already exceeding double Visa's, and imminent regulatory tailwinds under Trump that will disrupt the Visa/Mastercard duopoly.

“I think the biggest business winner of 2025 are going to be dollar-denominated stablecoins… I think stablecoins could quadruple or quintuple by the end of '25. I think it's just going to be an enormous market.”▶ Listen · 23:13 ⚑

Gavin Baker, an investor in Zipline, highlights autonomous drone delivery as a key emerging trend and calls Zipline a fantastic company well-positioned to capitalize on suburban delivery.

“There's a company called Zipline, which my firm is an investor in. Fantastic company. Yeah, but autonomous drones, they really are the best way to deliver almost anything to suburban America.”▶ Listen · 53:43 ⚑

FriedbergCommentary

Friedberg highlights Unitree as an incredible robotics business with low-cost hardware ($1,600 GO2, $16,000 humanoid) and strong API capabilities, supporting his thesis that 2025 will be the year of the robot.

“It's an incredible business, incredible product... This is the robot system that was used on some of those videos we looked at earlier this year... it's such a low cost at like less than $3,000.”▶ Listen · 18:18 ⚑

JasonCommentarytracking with the call

Jason views Truth Social as grossly overvalued at ~$7B with only $4-5M in revenue, calling it logically unsustainable.

“Truth Social, which is, like, doing $4 or $5 million in revenue and is valued at $7 billion. That makes absolute no logical sense.”▶ Listen · 44:28 ⚑