“$500B to $1T in ARR by the end of 2027” 🚨 Emergency Valuation Corner 🚨 @AmanVerjee breaks down SpaceX’s Q3 beat, its first profitable quarter, the 13-gigawatt compute buildout and why a SpaceX-Tesla merger looks likely in 2027. [ spacex q3 earnings ] 02:03 @SpaceX beats estimates: $14.6B revenue 02:40 SpaceX's three business segments: Space, Starlink and Super Intelligence 06:20 the key to SpaceX's AI spending: CapEx payback 07:33 SpaceX's path to $500B in revenue 12:07 Is SpaceX worth its $2 trillion valuation? [ spacex x tesla merger ] 13:00 could SpaceX and @Tesla merge in 2027? 15:00 the financial case for combining SpaceX and Tesla 16:56 how Tesla could help @elonmusk get to mars 20:03 Elon Musk responds to merger speculation and the "Kabuki" process 22:26 Aman's 2027 merger prediction: Could Tesla get a $420 offer? thanks for watching this emergency edition of @TradingVCs 🚨

The 10-year treasury just crossed 5% for the first time in nearly 20 years. There are several possible reasons why. "It's just economic growth is creating demand for capital. If it were the budget deficit, if it were something specific to the US, you would expect the dollar to be weakening. But...it's generally been rising. It's sort of flattened over the past couple of years. It actually substantially increased just after Trump's election and then has been normalizing, but doesn't seem to be losing ground against major trading currencies." -@AmanVerjee on Trading Places Podcast EP50 with @davemcclure

Investing in defense tech used to be taboo in Silicon Valley. Those days are over.  "Probably the number one factor is just the advances in AI technology. It's just time for the category because the technology is working. To paraphrase Kyle Reese in the Terminator movies, the machines just got smart... But in this case, it works better than human pilots, and it works better than what's on the ground right now." -@AmanVerjee on Trading Places Podcast EP49 with @davemcclure

WHY A SPACEX-TESLA MERGER IS LIKELY 🚀 @SpaceX's ambitious AI compute buildout could require $400 billion in CapEx over the next 12 months. Combining SpaceX and @Tesla could give @elonmusk the capital, infrastructure, and scale needed to pull it off. “It's much easier to do it if you're SpaceX and Tesla together.” -@AmanVerjee Aman breaks down why a merger could be increasingly likely by 2027.

Two-minute map of the entire AI industry: "At the very bottom you have the guys who provide power to the ecosystem. Above that you got the chip makers... like NVIDIA. The chip makers have probably something like 10 trillion dollars in market cap right now. The power guys... the entire S&P 500 is under three trillion in market cap right now for the power players. And only a subset of those are powering the AI revolution. Then the cloud guys... the hyperscalers are folks like Amazon and Alphabet, Oracle, Azure, and then Meta... as well as SpaceX. And then you've got some of these neoclouds, folks like CoreWeave or Grok, who are specialists in just supporting AI. Here's the higher end of the stack. We've got maybe five trillion or so of market cap. A lot of this is the closed source frontier models in the US, so Anthropic, OpenAI. Then you have the open weight models, many of whom are Chinese right now. Note that there's not that many companies at the top of this pyramid, the application layer... Harvey among them. There's Replit, there's Cursor. But if you add up the market cap of all those companies today, it's only about a trillion bucks." -@AmanVerjee on Trading Places Podcast EP48

Google's Gemini quietly joined OpenAI and Anthropic in the "AI models that broke out and hacked real companies" club: "They've also announced that they are just as much a bad boy as OpenAI and Anthropic, and disclosing that they did some AI hacks to three companies as well."-@davemcclure "Let me ask you this, if you're about to go public... and you have to explain, my product will break out of the sandbox... would you invest in that company at a trillion dollar valuation?"-@AmanVerjee

What if AI regulation isn’t just about safety? The argument: closed-source AI companies could use regulation to shield themselves from disruptive open-weight competition — much like the ICC helped protect incumbent railroads. @davemcclure and @AmanVerjee break down the potential strategy behind AI companies embracing regulation.

SpaceX was already worth $73B when Aman Verjee’s fund got in — and it wasn’t even public yet. In 2021, Practical Venture Capital bought SpaceX shares directly from existing investors through the secondary market, making it one of the fund’s top five positions. Now, that position is its biggest — up roughly 20x from where they entered, despite dilution along the way. @AmanVerjee explains on The Claman Countdown with @LizClaman how secondary investing lets funds get into companies like SpaceX years before they reach the public markets.

The U.S. can keep running $2 trillion annual deficits — until the market decides it can’t. With roughly $40 trillion to refinance, rising rates could make the cost of carrying that debt increasingly painful. And if entitlement spending isn’t addressed, the pressure only gets worse. The optimistic case? A return to the bipartisan fiscal discipline of the late 1990s. The alternative is waiting until the market forces the issue. How long can the U.S. keep deferring the pain? @davemcclure and @AmanVerjee break down the consequences of America’s growing deficit and why the market may eventually force a reckoning.

The AI pause may not really be about slowing AI down. It could be about protecting the companies already leading the race. As open-weight models become more competitive, regulation could become a moat: higher compliance costs, more liability protection, and fewer hurdles for companies with the resources to absorb them. It’s the “Marlboro strategy” — use regulation to make the playing field harder for everyone else. So is the AI pause really about safety, or about keeping competition at bay? @davemcclure and @AmanVerjee break down the potential strategy behind the AI regulation push.

Meta's @Muse is #1 on the App Store, ahead of ChatGPT. @alexandr_wang 👏 @AmanVerjee: "If I had to short one company right now… I'd short Instinct." A $10B valuation, with Sequoia and Benchmark rumored to lead. @davemcclure isn't so sure. Who's right? Episode 49 of @TradingVCs is here: 1:06 - [ tech and vc news ] 3:29 - Fed rates jump to 4%, gas @ $4.50/gal 8:16 - @AnthropicAI delays IPO; @OpenAI raising @ $1.2T 12:00 - Does AI need govt regulation? 16:54 - @nscale files for IPO 20:45 - EU AI rising: @MistralAI $24B, @cohere @ $20B 24:07 - @Gemini joins AI hacker club 25:33 - @Meta @finkd launches AI agent Muse; Instinct raising @ $10B @sequoia @benchmark 33:47 - [ intvw: Dan Gray @credistick, research lead, @JoinOdin ] 39:48 - Venture has eaten the IPO 41:19 - Shifting VC strategies 58:45 - How AI could upend VC industry 1:13:39 - Contrarian take on upcoming AI IPOs 1:13:21 - [ valuation corner: @shieldaitech seeks $20B ] 1:17:08 - Impressive founding brothers @brandontseng2 @rtsengusa 1:18:30 - Why VC defense investment is growing 1:22:18 - Breaking down world-wide defense budgets

THE SECRET BEHIND THE COWBOYS’ $10B+ VALUATION Why are the Dallas Cowboys the most valuable franchise in sports? It’s not just ticket sales or TV money. Jerry Jones negotiated a special deal that lets the Cowboys keep a much larger share of apparel, licensing, stadium, and hospitality revenue than other NFL teams. That means more revenue stays with the Cowboys — and more value accrues to the franchise. With roughly $1.2B in annual revenue, the Cowboys have built a business model that looks very different from the rest of the league. @davemcclure and @AmanVerjee break down how the Cowboys built the most valuable team in sports.

Catch up on full episodes of Trading Places Podcast! Subscribe to our YouTube channel! youtube.com/@practicalventur…

WHY WOULD YOU BUY A $3B SPORTS TEAM? Because the tax bill can look very different from the sticker price. A franchise buyer can potentially amortize intangible assets over 15 years, creating massive tax deductions along the way. For a $3B purchase, that could mean billions in deductions over time — plus potential state and local tax benefits. The real cost of a sports team may be far lower than the headline price. @davemcclure and @AmanVerjee break down the math.

Check out the latest episode of Trading Places Podcast! youtu.be/ai5CrPtxP4Q?si=8Rdh…

WHAT IF AI COMPANIES PAID THE GOVERNMENT FOR LEGAL PROTECTION? @sama and @DarioAmodei might accept an “AI tax” or even a government stake — if it bought them something critical: legal certainty. Pay upfront. Get protection from potentially unlimited liability as AI scales. @davemcclure and @AmanVerjee break down the tradeoff.

HOW DO YOU VALUE A $10 BILLION SPORTS TEAM? Teams trade around 9–12x revenue, driven by: • Stadium revenue • Media rights • Long-term media deals The Yankees generate ~$320M from stadium revenue + ~$220M from media rights. The Dodgers locked in a 25-year, $8B regional sports deal in 2013. @davemcclure and @AmanVerjee break down how sports franchises get valued.

AI giants hit the breaks. @DarioAmodei says the industry needs to "pace the frontier." @sama and @elonmusk agreed. Dave and Aman aren't buying the official story. Plus: a Valuation Corner deep dive on @harvey, now worth $15.5B just months after its last round. Watch now 👇 [ Tech & VC News ] 03:07 ⁠- oil, interest rates, and inflation all up 06:25 - importance of reducing the deficit 08:13 ⁠- AI leaders hit the brakes @AnthropicAI @OpenAI @spacexai 20:27 ⁠- why AI giants want to be regulated 25:22 - upcoming @ouraring IPO 28:34 ⁠- mega-round raises for a host of AI companies 38:09⁠ ⁠- tender offer boom [ Valuation Corner: Harvey AI @ $15.5B ] 43:34 - ⁠founder stories @winstonweinberg @gabepereyra 47:43 - ⁠breaking down the legal AI ecosystem 50:07 - ⁠⁠Harvey vs AI giants 57:30 - ⁠⁠tribute to a legend: Bill Draper thanks for watching another @TradingVCs with @davemcclure and @AmanVerjee