E160: 2024 Predictions! Markets, tech, politics, and more

1. Battlefield developments in 2024
Russia did consolidate and modestly expand its holdings in eastern Ukraine in 2024: it captured Avdiivka in February (its largest single advance since Bakhmut) and then several nearby settlements to the west, plus additional gains around Ocheretyne, Krasnohorivka, and on the northern Kharkiv front, which some analysts called Russia’s biggest territorial gains in about 18 months. (en.wikipedia.org)
This part of the prediction ("consolidating gains" and "potentially making new gains") is broadly consistent with what happened, though the advances were incremental and very costly.

2. The ‘stalemate’ narrative and perception of who is winning
Through 2024 the war was widely described as a positional war of attrition, but a growing body of analysis argued that the balance of advantage had shifted toward Russia: for example, a January 2024 ECFR analysis said the war of attrition "for the time being … implies a Russian victory" unless Western support were significantly increased, and other commentators explicitly described Russia as “winning” or having the upper hand. (eurasiareview.com)
At the same time, many officials and analysts—including Ukraine’s own commander-in-chief in late 2023—continued to use "stalemate" or "positional stalemate" language, framing Russia’s gains as limited and extremely costly rather than a clear, decisive win. (marshallcenter.org)
So the idea that the simple “stalemate” story would be challenged and that Russia would be increasingly seen as having the initiative is partially borne out, but it is not an uncontested consensus.

3. Western support and whether ‘Project Ukraine’ fell apart in 2024
This is where the prediction diverges most clearly from reality. Instead of Western support “significantly unraveling” and “Project Ukraine” falling apart in 2024, the opposite structural trend occurred:

• The EU overcame Hungary’s veto and approved a four‑year €50 billion Ukraine Facility in February 2024. (theguardian.com)
• The U.S. enacted Public Law 118‑50 in April 2024, a large supplemental appropriations bill that included tens of billions of dollars in additional Ukraine assistance. (en.wikipedia.org)
• NATO in April 2024 began planning a €100 billion, five‑year framework for long‑term military support to Ukraine. (reuters.com)
• At the July 2024 Washington NATO summit, allies issued a declaration pledging sustained support, created a dedicated NATO command (NSATU) to coordinate security assistance, and 23 countries signed the Ukraine Compact, explicitly stating they intend to support Ukraine “until it prevails.” (en.wikipedia.org)
• G7 countries in 2024 also agreed on a $50 billion loan package to Ukraine backed by earnings on frozen Russian assets, to be disbursed from late 2024 onward. (reuters.com)
• By December 2024, total Western commitments to Ukraine had increased, with EU and U.S. contributions each exceeding €100 billion, and aid continuing into 2025. (en.wikipedia.org)

There were political disputes and delays (especially in the U.S. Congress and within some EU states), but these did not amount to Western support "significantly unraveling" or the broader aid effort collapsing in 2024; instead, support was institutionalized and extended over a multi‑year horizon.

Overall assessment
The prediction mixed several claims. The limited, attritional Russian advances in 2024 line up reasonably well with the “consolidating gains, potentially making new gains” portion, and there was increasing expert commentary that the war of attrition was trending in Russia’s favor, challenging simplistic “stalemate” language. But the strongest and clearest part of the forecast—that Western support for Ukraine would significantly unravel in 2024 and that “Project Ukraine” would fall apart—did not occur. Western governments instead locked in large, long‑term aid frameworks and publicly recommitted to Ukraine’s war effort.

Because that core claim about the political and strategic trajectory of Western support was decisively wrong, the overall prediction is best judged as wrong, despite containing some partially accurate elements about battlefield trends and perceptions.

Evidence from the 2024 election shows that no independent or third‑party effort became a “big winner” or materially challenged Democratic–Republican dominance.

• Final vote shares: In the November 5, 2024 presidential election, Donald Trump (R) won 49.8% of the popular vote and Kamala Harris (D) won 48.3%, with all 538 electoral votes going to the two major‑party tickets (312 for Trump, 226 for Harris).(en.wikipedia.org) Third‑party and independent candidates collectively received around 2% of the national vote, a slight uptick from 2020 but still marginal.
• Performance of leading third‑party/independent candidates: The strongest non‑major‑party campaigns each finished under 1% nationally: Jill Stein (Green) about 0.55%, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (independent/We the People) about 0.48–0.49%, and Libertarian Chase Oliver about 0.42%.(en.wikipedia.org) None won any electoral votes or a substantial state‑level share comparable to historic disruptors like Ross Perot or George Wallace.
• RFK Jr.’s trajectory: Kennedy did initially poll unusually well for a third‑party hopeful, with analyses noting that his early polling was the strongest for such a candidate since Perot. But by August 23, 2024 he suspended active campaigning and endorsed Trump, explicitly acknowledging he had no realistic path to victory; at that time public polling put him around 2%.(en.wikipedia.org) His final vote share under 1% confirms that his effort did not evolve into a major, system‑challenging force.
• Overall third‑party impact: Post‑election analyses and official tallies consistently characterize third‑party and independent performances as minor—third‑party totals remained below 5% nationally and did not alter the two‑party lock on the Electoral College.(en.wikipedia.org) The 2024 results look like a conventional two‑party race with only small third‑party leakage, not a year in which an outsider effort “challenged the traditional two‑party split.”

Because no independent or third‑party campaign became a major electoral winner or significantly undermined two‑party dominance in 2024, Friedberg’s prediction did not come true.

Available evidence from the 2024 election and the year that followed does not support the claim that it "starts the breakdown of the two‑party system" via successful independent centrists.

1. Presidential results remained overwhelmingly two‑party. Donald Trump (Republican) won the presidency with 49.8% of the popular vote and 312 electoral votes; Kamala Harris (Democrat) received 48.3% and 226 electoral votes. Third‑party and independent presidential candidates together took only about 2% of the national popular vote, a historically modest showing and far below disruptive candidacies like Perot in 1992. (en.wikipedia.org)

2. No serious centrist independent presidential ticket emerged. The most visible centrist vehicle, No Labels, explicitly abandoned its plan for a 2024 unity ticket on April 4, 2024, after failing to find candidates with a plausible path to victory. (en.wikipedia.org) Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the highest‑profile independent, was not broadly characterized as a technocratic centrist; his campaign became associated with anti‑vaccine and populist themes, and his support collapsed to under 1% of the vote before he ultimately aligned with Trump and entered his administration. (en.wikipedia.org) This is the opposite of a durable, centrist third‑force breakthrough.

3. Congressional results show no structural break. In the 2024 Senate elections, the number of independent senators fell from four to two, with only Bernie Sanders and Angus King remaining, both still caucusing with Democrats. Independents took about 1.1% of the Senate popular vote. (en.wikipedia.org) In the 2024 House elections, independents won zero seats and just 0.57% of the national House vote; control of the chamber remained strictly between Republicans and Democrats. (en.wikipedia.org) This is consistent with the long‑standing two‑party structure rather than its breakdown.

4. Isolated strong independents did not translate into a systemic shift. A few high‑profile independents, such as Dan Osborn in the Nebraska Senate race, ran competitive campaigns (Osborn took roughly 46.5% against Republican Deb Fischer) but still lost, and no new centrist bloc or enduring third party emerged from these efforts. (en.wikipedia.org) Occasional strong independent runs have existed for decades and are not, by themselves, evidence of a structural turning point.

5. Post‑election narratives still describe a polarized two‑party system. Advocacy groups like the Independent Center have issued press releases claiming that 2024 showed independents "broke the two‑party system" because more voters self‑identify as independent. (independentcenter.org) But those self‑identified independents overwhelmingly voted for one of the two major parties; there was no corresponding surge in votes or seats for independent centrist candidates, and institutional control (presidency, Congress, state governments) remains firmly in Republican/Democratic hands.

Given (a) the extremely small vote share for third‑party and independent candidates, (b) the failure of a centrist unity presidential ticket to even make the ballot, (c) the decline—not rise—of independents in the Senate and their continued caucusing with a major party, and (d) the absence of any widely recognized structural realignment toward a multiparty system by late 2025, Chamath’s prediction that the 2024 election would start a structural breakdown of the two‑party system driven by independent centrists is best judged wrong, not merely premature or ambiguous.

According to official results of the 2024 United States presidential election, the Republican ticket of Donald Trump and JD Vance won the presidency, defeating the Democratic ticket of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in both the Electoral College (312–226) and the national popular vote.(en.wikipedia.org)

This means:

• One of the two major-party figures mentioned in the prediction—Donald Trump—did in fact become president.
• No third-party or "dark horse" candidate won the election or defeated both major-party nominees.

Because the prediction specifically claimed that a dark horse candidate would beat both Trump and Biden in the 2024 election rematch, and the actual outcome was a Trump victory over Harris (Biden did not run in the general election), the prediction did not come true.

Key facts:

• The Koch network’s main political arm, Americans for Prosperity Action (AFP Action), endorsed Nikki Haley in late 2023 and became her second‑largest outside supporter, ultimately spending over $31–32 million backing her in the GOP primaries, plus roughly $10 million in broader anti‑Trump efforts, before abandoning the presidential primary after her South Carolina loss. (opensecrets.org) Haley then went on to lose almost every contest to Trump, winning only Washington, D.C. and Vermont before suspending her campaign in March 2024. (wsj.com) On the presidential side, the prediction that the Koch‑backed Haley “trade” would perform badly was accurate.

• After pulling the plug on Haley, the Koch network deliberately shifted away from the presidential race and concentrated on Senate and House contests, explicitly positioning itself as a check on unified Democratic control rather than as a pro‑Trump force. (time.com) AFP Action became one of the largest outside spenders of the cycle, with roughly $90+ million in independent expenditures for Republicans and against Democrats, and about $10 million against Republicans (largely Trump). (opensecrets.org) This broader activity cannot be summarized as a simple “Haley bet.”

• In marquee Senate races the network had mixed but not uniformly disastrous results. AFP Action heavily backed Republican Sam Brown in Nevada, who narrowly lost to Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen. (factcheck.org) It also strongly supported Republican Dave McCormick in Pennsylvania; McCormick narrowly defeated incumbent Democrat Bob Casey Jr., flipping that seat and becoming the only GOP challenger to win in a state Trump also flipped in 2024. (factcheck.org) That is a major win on a race where both parties and many outside groups spent heavily.

• Across the entire 2024 cycle, multiple other donors and groups clearly burned even larger sums on losing efforts. For example, Future Forward USA PAC spent about $517 million boosting Kamala Harris and attacking Trump in the presidential race, yet Harris lost the election; this single hybrid PAC outspent AFP Action many times over. (opensecrets.org) By contrast, a Guardian‑summarized report on billionaire spending notes that right‑wing billionaire money overall—including donors like Elon Musk and Miriam Adelson—played a pivotal role in returning Trump to the presidency and securing Republican majorities in both chambers, suggesting that big conservative spending as a bloc was not a net “loser” in 2024. (theguardian.com)

Assessment vs. the prediction:

• Correct elements: The specific anti‑Trump, pro‑Haley bet championed by the Koch network was a clear failure on a dollars‑spent basis: tens of millions achieved essentially no presidential delegates and did not stop Trump from winning the nomination or the White House.

• Where the claim overreaches: Chamath’s prediction goes further, saying that overall in 2024 the Kochs would be “one of the biggest political losers on a dollar‑spent basis.” Available data show AFP Action both lost (Haley, Nevada Senate, various races) and won (notably the Pennsylvania Senate flip and numerous House and state‑level contests), and there is no comprehensive, comparative ROI analysis demonstrating that the Koch network’s net performance was worse than that of other mega‑spenders like Future Forward or various anti‑Trump Republican groups. Some of those clearly spent more money on losing efforts than the Koch network did.

Because the presidential Haley/anti‑Trump strategy did underperform badly but the overall 2024 Koch network record is a mix of significant wins and losses—and we lack evidence ranking them as among the very worst donors by return on investment—the strongest we can say is that the prediction is partly right (re: Haley) but not decisively proven (re: being one of the biggest losers overall). That makes the outcome ambiguous rather than clearly right or wrong.

Summary Friedberg’s compound prediction did not come true by the end of 2024. U.S. support became more politically contentious and had a temporary stall, but a large new aid package was passed; NATO publicly strengthened rather than weakened Ukraine’s membership prospects; and Ukraine was not widely regarded as having been “left behind” by Western backers in 2024.

1. U.S. financial and military support

• After months of congressional deadlock, the U.S. enacted Public Law 118‑50 on April 24, 2024, a $95.3 billion supplemental foreign‑aid bill, of which roughly $60+ billion was for Ukraine. This is a very large package by any historical standard, inconsistent with a clear-cut “resource” collapse. (en.wikipedia.org)
• According to the Kiel Institute’s Ukraine Support Tracker and related summaries, by December 2024 the U.S. had provided roughly €114 billion in total aid to Ukraine (military, financial, humanitarian) since the full‑scale invasion, while European states combined had provided about €132 billion. The U.S. remained the single largest military donor, even as Europe overtook it in overall volume and made large new fiscal commitments in autumn 2024. (en.wikipedia.org)
• Other analyses note a U.S. “aid crisis” from mid‑2023 to early 2024—aid slowed and Europe pulled ahead, especially on financial/humanitarian support—but this is described as a slowdown and shift in burden‑sharing, not a decisive disengagement. (ukraineworld.org) Overall, U.S. support in 2024 was politically fragile and somewhat lower in flow than 2022–23, but not a clear “material withdrawal” by year‑end.

2. NATO prospects

• At the NATO Washington Summit on July 10, 2024, all 32 NATO leaders signed a declaration stating that “Ukraine’s future is in NATO” and that its path to membership is “irreversible”, while promising long‑term assistance and more structured NATO‑run training and coordination (NSATU). (ktvz.com)
• NATO countries simultaneously launched the Ukraine Compact and pledged a baseline of €40 billion in security assistance over the following year, explicitly framed as supporting Ukraine on this “irreversible path” to Euro‑Atlantic integration and eventual NATO accession. (novayagazeta.eu)
• This language is markedly stronger than earlier summit formulas (e.g., Vilnius 2023). Whatever one thinks about the practical timeline, the formal, public prospects for NATO membership did not “fade away” in 2024; they were rhetorically entrenched.

3. Perception of Ukraine being ‘left behind’

• Throughout 2024, Western institutions repeatedly signaled long‑term commitment: the NATO €40 billion baseline pledge, new EU and European instruments backed by profits from frozen Russian assets, and large multi‑year European aid packages. (kielinstitut.de)
• U.S. and European public opinion showed fatigue and growing polarization, but not a dominant narrative that Ukraine had already been abandoned. Late‑2024 U.S. polling still found sizable blocs saying support was “about right” or even “too little,” not an overwhelming view that the West had walked away. (en.wikipedia.org)
• The much clearer perception of Ukraine being sidelined by Washington emerges in 2025, after President Trump pauses U.S. military aid and broader U.S. foreign assistance, an event explicitly reported as a sharp policy break. (reuters.com) That development lies after the prediction’s end‑2024 horizon.

Conclusion By December 31, 2024:

• U.S. support had slowed and become contested but was still large and reinvigorated by a major supplemental bill.
• NATO’s formal stance put Ukraine on an “irreversible” path toward membership rather than letting its candidacy “fade.”
• Western governments, especially in Europe, were still deepening long‑term commitments, so Ukraine was not broadly perceived as already “left behind” in 2024.

Taken together, the specific scenario Friedberg outlined did not materialize by the end of 2024, so the prediction is best classified as wrong.

Key falsifiable parts of Sacks’s prediction largely materialized:

1. Israel not achieving its objective of “destroying Hamas” in Gaza
   By late 2025, the IDF itself was still estimating that Hamas retained around 20,000 fighters and access to rockets and arms, despite massive Israeli operations and claims of killing many militants and dismantling infrastructure. This shows that Hamas was significantly degraded but far from “destroyed” as a military and political force. (nypost.com)

2. Israel facing intense international condemnation / near-pariah status
   In 2024 the International Court of Justice found it “plausible” that Israel’s actions in Gaza could violate the Genocide Convention and imposed provisional measures on Israel to prevent acts of genocide and allow humanitarian aid. (en.wikipedia.org) The Court later ordered Israel to take urgent steps to prevent famine and to ensure large-scale aid deliveries, underscoring severe criticism of its conduct. (lemonde.fr)
   The UN Security Council adopted Resolution 2728 demanding an immediate Gaza ceasefire during Ramadan, with 14 votes in favor and only the U.S. abstaining—politically isolating Israel’s position. (en.wikipedia.org) Meanwhile, the UN General Assembly adopted a Gaza-related resolution (A/RES/79/81) with 157 votes in favor and only 8 against, again placing Israel and a small group of allies in a tiny minority. (de.wikipedia.org) These developments are strong evidence of escalating diplomatic condemnation consistent with Sacks’s “global pariah” language.

3. Significant electoral disruption and “big shakeups” in Europe (especially the European Parliament)
   The 2024 European Parliament elections saw the pro‑EU centrist, liberal, social‑democratic and green parties lose seats, while anti‑EU/right‑wing populist parties made historic gains. The hard right reached 187 MEPs—about 26% of Parliament, the most in the institution’s history—and new or reconfigured right‑wing groups (Patriots for Europe, Europe of Sovereign Nations) emerged. (en.wikipedia.org)
   Beyond the EU Parliament, national and regional elections in Europe also produced major shocks: in Austria, the far‑right Freedom Party (FPÖ) won a national legislative election for the first time, taking the largest vote share and seats. (en.wikipedia.org) In Germany, the far‑right AfD became the largest party in Thuringia and nearly tied the CDU in Saxony, both unprecedented breakthroughs for a far‑right party in postwar German politics. (en.wikipedia.org) These outcomes match Sacks’s forecast of “tremendous disruption” and “big shakeups” in European elections.

4. “Similar shakeups” in the US in 2024
   Sacks framed the U.S. piece more cautiously (“wouldn’t be surprised if…”), but the actual outcome was in line with the spirit of a major disruption: Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election with 312 electoral votes and a popular‑vote plurality, returning to office after his 2020 defeat. (en.wikipedia.org) At the same time, Republicans gained control of the presidency and the Senate and held the House, shifting unified federal power from Democrats to Republicans. (en.wikipedia.org) That level of reversal in partisan control and the return of a previously defeated, twice‑impeached former president is widely regarded as a political shock rather than continuity.

5. Overall thesis: the “collective West” as the big political loser
   The label “biggest political loser” is inherently interpretive, but the concrete elements Sacks tied to that thesis did occur:

• A costly, ongoing war in Gaza in which Israel failed to eliminate Hamas and drew sustained legal and diplomatic censure at the UN and ICJ. (nypost.com)
• A series of European elections featuring record gains for anti‑establishment and far‑right forces that challenge traditional pro‑EU and pro‑NATO elites. (en.wikipedia.org)
• A US election outcome that returned a highly polarizing, anti‑establishment figure to the presidency and shifted federal power away from the incumbent Western leadership bloc. (en.wikipedia.org)

Because nearly all the specific, falsifiable components of his forecast came to pass—and they broadly support his narrative of Western political setbacks—the prediction is best classified as right, even though the overarching “biggest loser” framing remains partly a matter of interpretation rather than a strictly measurable fact.

Benjamin Netanyahu did not lose power as Israel’s prime minister by the end of 2024.

• Netanyahu’s current term as prime minister began after the 2022 election, and he is listed as serving as prime minister from 2022–present, with his sixth (37th) government marked as incumbent well past 2024. (en.wikipedia.org)
• There was no national election in Israel in 2024, and reporting in April 2024 noted that no election is required before October 2026, meaning any early vote would have required Knesset action that did not occur. (theguardian.com)
• Throughout 2025 coverage, Reuters, AP, and others continue to refer to Netanyahu as “Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,” confirming he remained in office beyond 31 December 2024. (reuters.com)

While Netanyahu has faced intense criticism, protests, and even an ICC arrest warrant in 2024—developments that could make him perceived as a major political loser—those reputational issues do not satisfy the prediction’s explicit condition that he lose power as prime minister by the end of 2024. Since that core condition was not met, the overall prediction is wrong.

Available 2024 performance data do not support the idea that commodity‑related businesses had a “killer 2024” or a sector boom relative to the broader equity market.

• Broader market was very strong: The S&P 500 returned about 23–25% in 2024. S&P Dow Jones reports a 23.31% gain for the S&P 500 price index for 2024, and SPY (the main S&P 500 ETF) shows a 24.89% total return for the year. (spglobal.com)
• Commodity equity sectors lagged badly: RBC’s sector breakdown for 2024 shows:
  • S&P 500 overall (total return): +25.0%
  • Energy sector: +5.72%
  • Materials sector: ‑0.04%
    So the two main commodity‑producer sectors delivered low‑single‑digit or flat returns and dramatically underperformed the broad market. (rbcwealthmanagement.com)
• Global mining/commodity equities also underperformed: The FTSE Global All Cap Precious Metals & Mining Index returned +8.25% in 2024, versus +16.83% for the broad FTSE Global All Cap Index—again, clear underperformance by commodity producers/traders versus global equities. (lseg.com)
• Commodity indices had only modest gains versus equities:
  • Bloomberg Commodity Index (BCOM) returned +5.38% in 2024. (bloomberg.com)
  • The S&P GSCI Total Return benchmark for broad commodities returned about +9.25% in 2024; the GSG ETF tracking it gained 8.52%. (blackrock.com)
  • A composite of 29 major commodities was up 12.5% in 2024, with GSG up 8.52%, which outperformed energy stocks but still lagged the broader commodity composite and was far behind equity benchmarks. (seekingalpha.com)
• Some individual commodities boomed, but this didn’t translate into a broad equity boom: Specific contracts like cocoa, coffee, and gold saw very large price gains (e.g., cocoa +341%, coffee +87%, gold +27% in 2024), but these were pockets of strength within a mixed commodity complex (grains down ~20%, energy and industrial metals slightly lower overall), not a generalized boom across commodity businesses. (indexologyblog.com)

Taken together, 2024 featured: (1) a very strong broad equity market, (2) commodity‑producer and trader equities that significantly underperformed that market, and (3) commodity indices that posted modest single‑digit to low‑double‑digit gains, far from a dominant, market‑leading “killer” year. That is the opposite of “sector performance notably strong relative to the broader market,” so this prediction did not come true.

Evidence from 2024 and early 2025 points against Chamath’s prediction that bootstrapped/profitable startups would be the main business winners of 2024 because AI/compute would become so cheap that small teams could rapidly clone incumbents.

Key points:

• The biggest financial winners of the 2024 AI boom were large, capital‑intensive, often unprofitable, VC‑ or public‑market–funded companies, not bootstrapped startups. U.S. venture funding rebounded to about $209B in 2024, with AI startups capturing a record ~46% of that and raising giant rounds (e.g., OpenAI, xAI), many still unprofitable and heavily compute‑dependent. (reuters.com) Market commentary on “AI winners” for 2024–25 consistently highlights Nvidia and other large public players, not bootstrapped firms, as the primary beneficiaries of the AI wave. (investing.com)

• Frontier AI compute did not become “cheap” in 2024; if anything, costs at the cutting edge rose sharply. A 2024 analysis estimates the amortized cost of training frontier models (e.g., GPT‑4‑class systems) has been growing at ~2.4× per year since 2016, with single training runs costing tens of millions of dollars and projected to exceed $1B by 2027—only accessible to the very well‑funded. (arxiv.org) In 2024, Nvidia’s H100 GPUs were selling in the ~$25,000–$30,000 range (and more on secondary markets), underscoring that top‑tier AI compute remained extremely expensive, favoring deep‑pocketed incumbents and VC‑backed firms rather than small bootstrappers. (en.wikipedia.org)

• While bootstrapped and profitable startups did see notable success, they were exceptions, not the dominant “biggest winners.” Articles highlight standout bootstrapped AI companies such as Surge AI (reported as “well north of $1B” in 2024 revenue) and Midjourney (hundreds of millions in revenue, profitable, and fully bootstrapped), as well as profitable bootstrapped firms in energy and design/build. (aimmediahouse.com) These prove the viability and appeal of bootstrapping in the AI era—but they are framed as remarkable outliers amid an ecosystem still dominated, in dollar and market‑share terms, by heavily funded AI ventures.

• The funding environment did push more founders toward bootstrapping and profitability, but even bullish analyses don’t claim bootstrappers clearly outperformed VC‑backed peers in 2024. PitchBook‑linked commentary in early 2024 predicted that a brutal funding environment "may well" make 2024 a year of the bootstrapped founder, largely because VC supply tightened outside of hot AI segments. (biohealthinnovation.org) Later data from lenders and CB Insights suggest bootstrapped startups often grow efficiently and reach profitability faster than VC‑backed ones, but these are structural, multi‑year observations—not specific evidence that bootstrappers were the biggest winners of 2024 in terms of market impact or aggregate value creation. (sidetool.co)

• Rapid disruption in “months instead of decades” did occur in some niches, but mostly via well‑funded AI players rather than small bootstrapped clones. For instance, Anysphere’s Cursor AI coding assistant saw explosive jumps in valuation and revenue, but as a VC‑backed startup, not a bootstrapped one. (theinformation.com) The broader AI application wave did enable small teams to ship products quickly, but the largest disruptive forces and market share shifts remained concentrated in big‑tech and VC‑heavy firms.

Taken together, 2024 did validate some of the spirit of Chamath’s view (that lean, profitable and even bootstrapped AI companies can succeed and that AI tools compress development timelines). But the strong form of the prediction—that bootstrapped/profitable startups would be the biggest business winners of 2024 because AI/compute became so cheap that they could rapidly clone incumbents—is not supported by the actual funding flows, cost structure of frontier AI, or lists of top corporate and market winners. Hence, the prediction is best judged wrong.

Evidence from 2024–2025 strongly supports Sacks’s prediction about Anduril’s Roadrunner.

1. Large 2024 Roadrunner production contract (clear “business winner” signal). In October 2024 the Pentagon awarded Anduril a roughly $250 million air‑defense production contract for more than 500 Roadrunner‑M interceptors plus Pulsar electronic‑warfare systems, specifically to counter UAS (drone) threats against U.S. forces. Deliveries begin in Q4 2024 and run through 2025, and the systems are to be fielded across multiple services in high‑threat regions. (defensenews.com) For a venture‑backed defense startup, a quarter‑billion‑dollar production award for a single counter‑drone product is widely described as a major win.

2. Meaningful adoption as a ground‑based counter‑drone solution. Coverage of the contract and follow‑on reporting emphasizes that Roadrunner is a high‑explosive VTOL interceptor designed specifically to neutralize larger UAS with high speed and maneuverability, and that it will be deployed to operational sites to enhance air defense at the tactical edge—i.e., as a ground‑based counter‑drone system protecting U.S. forces. (asdnews.com) Articles repeatedly stress that Roadrunner was built to be cost‑efficient compared with using expensive surface‑to‑air missiles for drone shoot‑downs, directly matching the cost logic Sacks cited.

3. Scale and validation in 2024, not just a paper program. Army‑focused coverage notes that Roadrunner had been under combat evaluation since January 2024, and that by late 2024 Anduril had secured nearly $350 million in contracts tied to Roadrunner and Pulsar for air‑defense missions. (armyrecognition.com) That indicates both real operational testing and substantial customer commitment, not merely a prototype demo.

4. Anduril’s broader position as a top defense‑tech winner. Separate reporting on Anduril highlights its rapid growth, multibillion‑dollar valuation, and a series of major U.S. government awards, including later investments in large manufacturing capacity. (wsj.com) Against that backdrop, Roadrunner’s 2024 production contract is consistently described as a huge or significant deal in the defense‑tech sector relative to other startup programs.

Taken together, by the end of 2024 Roadrunner had: (a) a very large, multi‑service production contract; (b) documented combat evaluation and planned deployments for ground‑based counter‑UAS defense; and (c) widespread characterization as a cost‑effective, next‑generation interceptor. That matches the substance of Sacks’s prediction that Anduril—via Roadrunner—would be one of the big business winners in defense tech and gain meaningful adoption as a cost‑effective counter‑drone air‑defense solution. Therefore the prediction is best judged right.

Evidence from 2024 shows that owners of large, high‑quality datasets did in fact start to earn recurring and strategically important licensing income from AI companies, even if the effect was not yet a full "turnaround" for the entire content industry.

• Reddit as a clear ‘major winner’: In its 2024 IPO filings, Reddit disclosed data‑licensing contracts signed in January 2024 with an aggregate value of about $203 million over 2–3 years, expecting at least $66.4 million of revenue in 2024 from these deals alone. This revenue was large enough that Reddit highlighted data licensing as a central growth driver, with non‑advertising revenue up sharply due to AI data deals (notably including Google). (techcrunch.com)
• Additional AI training deals for Reddit: In May 2024, OpenAI announced a partnership to use Reddit’s real‑time content for training its models and powering features in ChatGPT, reinforcing that Reddit’s corpus had become a paid, recurring input to leading AI systems rather than being scraped for free. (techcrunch.com)
• News publishers winning multi‑year, recurring contracts: In May 2024, OpenAI and News Corp (owner of The Wall Street Journal, The Times of London, The Sun, etc.) signed a five‑year licensing agreement giving OpenAI access to current and archived content for training and for direct use in responses; reporting put the deal’s value at over $250 million over the term, i.e., tens of millions of dollars per year. (apnews.com) OpenAI also struck multi‑year content and training deals with outlets like The Atlantic, Vox Media, Time, Condé Nast and others, turning a growing set of premium archives into recurring AI‑licensing revenue streams. (reuters.com)
• Broader shift toward paid licensing, not just scraping: By 2024, multiple publishers (e.g., AP, Axel Springer, Le Monde, Prisa Media, Dotdash Meredith) had signed structured content‑licensing agreements with OpenAI and similar firms, typically for recurring annual payments (often estimated in the low‑million‑dollar‑per‑year range). Collectively, these deals represent a new, industry‑wide revenue line built specifically on selling training and product‑use rights to AI companies, which is exactly the mechanism the prediction described. (reuters.com)
• Not universal, but directionally correct: Some of Jason’s named examples did not fully cash in during 2024 itself—e.g., The New York Times was still litigating against OpenAI/Microsoft and did not sign its first major AI licensing deal (with Amazon, worth an estimated $20–25M per year) until 2025, and YouTube’s opt‑in system for creators to authorize third‑party AI training launched only in December 2024, with no material 2024 revenue disclosed. (theverge.com) There was also substantial litigation (NYT, Ziff Davis and others) showing that not every rights‑holder had yet turned conflict into cash. (theverge.com)

Netting this out: 2024 did see major rightsholders with valuable datasets (Reddit, large news conglomerates and other premium publishers) emerge as clear economic winners from the AI boom via multi‑year, recurring licensing deals for training data and product integration. While the impact was uneven and smaller for some sectors than Jason’s "entire content industry" framing implies, the core prediction—that such rights‑holders would secure meaningful, recurring AI‑licensing income and become major business beneficiaries—was borne out by events in 2024.

Public records show that the New York Times’ copyright lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft remains active and contested well past 2024, with no reported settlement.

• In November 2025, Reuters describes OpenAI asking a federal judge to reverse an order to turn over millions of anonymized ChatGPT chats “amid a copyright infringement lawsuit by the New York Times”, clearly indicating the case is ongoing, not settled. (reuters.com)
• OpenAI’s own November 2025 blog post, “Reporting the facts about the New York Times’ lawsuit,” discusses recent court rulings, discovery disputes, and continuing motions in the Times case, again treating it as an unresolved, active lawsuit rather than a settled matter. (openai.com)
• Separately, in May 2025 the New York Times announced its first generative‑AI licensing deal — not with OpenAI, but with Amazon — while explicitly noting that this comes more than a year after the Times sued Microsoft and OpenAI for copyright infringement, with no mention of any settlement or licensing agreement with OpenAI. (theverge.com)

There are no credible reports of a nine‑figure (≥$100M) settlement between the New York Times and OpenAI in 2024, nor of an NYT–OpenAI licensing agreement that would authorize ongoing training and serving of NYT content. Given that the lawsuit is still being litigated and the specified 2024 deadline has passed, Jason’s prediction of a 2024 nine‑figure settlement plus licensing deal did not come true.

Available reporting shows that by the end of 2024—and even as of late 2025—The New York Times has not launched a public, NYT‑branded AI assistant or LLM where only authenticated NYT subscribers can query NYT information and receive NYT‑powered answers. Coverage instead describes internal newsroom AI tools and policies. In February 2025, the Times rolled out Echo, an in‑house AI summarization tool, and approved staff use of external LLM services (OpenAI’s API, Google Vertex, etc.), but Echo is explicitly an internal tool for summarizing Times articles and briefings, not a subscriber‑facing AI product. (theverge.com) The Times’ first major generative‑AI content licensing partnership is a multi‑year deal announced in May 2025 with Amazon, allowing Amazon to use Times, Athletic, and NYT Cooking content in Alexa and other Amazon AI products and to train Amazon’s models. Those uses surface as summaries and excerpts within Amazon consumer experiences and are described as a way to reach broader audiences, not as an NYT‑run, subscriber‑only AI interface. (cnbc.com) In 2023–24, the Times’ posture toward major LLM providers was primarily adversarial—suing OpenAI and Microsoft and sending a cease‑and‑desist to Perplexity over unlicensed use of its content—rather than partnering with them on the kind of gated NYT chatbot the prediction envisioned. (news.cgtn.com) While the Times has experimented with AI‑generated audio narrations and articulated internal generative‑AI principles, these are feature enhancements and staff tools, not a 2024 launch of a subscriber‑authenticated NYT AI model or a subscriber‑only integration with a major LLM. (axios.com) Because neither branch of the prediction (a public NYT‑run model nor a subscriber‑gated integration with a major LLM) materialized within the roughly 2024 timeframe—or even by late 2025—the prediction is best judged as wrong.

Apple did launch a language‑model‑based AI product, Apple Intelligence, integrated into iOS, macOS, and iPadOS starting in 2024, with plans to monetize some features via a future “Apple Intelligence+” subscription and via revenue‑sharing with AI model providers like OpenAI or Google—not with content rightsholders. (macrumors.com)

However, Apple’s own technical and PR materials describe its training data as a mix of licensed publisher content and publicly available web data, with no indication of any commitment to share a fixed percentage of AI revenue with those rightsholders. (techcrunch.com) Public reporting on concrete deals—such as Apple’s $25–50 million licensing agreement with Shutterstock for images, video, and music—likewise describes lump‑sum or multi‑year licensing, not an ongoing share of Apple’s AI query or subscription revenue. (venturebeat.com)

Further, multiple investigations and lawsuits allege Apple trained some models on datasets including pirated books and scraped YouTube subtitles, with creators complaining they were not compensated—again inconsistent with an announced policy that ~50% of AI revenues are paid out to training‑data rightsholders. (tomshardware.com) Across public disclosures and coverage of Apple Intelligence through late 2025, there is no evidence that Apple has created or advertised a scheme where roughly half of its Apple‑Intelligence (or other AI) query/subscription revenue is shared with data rightsholders. This makes Jason’s specific prediction about a 50% revenue‑sharing AI product incorrect.

Evidence from 2024 shows multiple large, multi‑year licensing deals where major IP owners licensed substantial content archives specifically for generative‑AI training and use, creating new revenue streams:

• News Corp–OpenAI (May 2024): News Corp granted OpenAI access to extensive current and archival content from outlets like The Wall Street Journal, The Times, and The New York Post for model training and for serving answers in ChatGPT. The Wall Street Journal reported the deal could exceed $250 million over five years, and company statements called it a “historic” or “landmark” agreement—clearly a blockbuster‑scale licensing deal for generative AI. (apnews.com)

• Financial Times–OpenAI (Apr 2024): The FT entered a strategic content‑licensing partnership letting OpenAI train its generative models on FT journalism and surface FT summaries and links in ChatGPT—explicitly a license of its archive for generative‑AI use and new product revenue. (ft.com)

• The Atlantic and Vox Media–OpenAI (May 2024): Both signed multi‑year content and product partnerships that license their archives to OpenAI for training ChatGPT and related models, with payment and joint product development—again, large rights‑holder IP libraries being monetized through generative‑AI licenses. (reuters.com)

• Condé Nast–OpenAI (2024): Condé Nast (The New Yorker, Vogue, Vanity Fair, Wired, etc.) likewise entered a multi‑year deal licensing its brands’ content to OpenAI for use in ChatGPT and an experimental search product, explicitly framed as a pivot toward licensing IP to generative‑AI platforms. (wired.com)

• Lionsgate–Runway AI (Sept 2024): Lionsgate, a major Hollywood studio (Hunger Games, John Wick, Twilight), signed a first‑of‑its‑kind deal letting Runway train a custom generative‑video model on Lionsgate’s library of 20,000+ film and TV titles, to be used throughout the studio’s production pipeline. Coverage described it as a landmark data‑sharing/AI deal between a generative‑AI startup and a major studio. (medianama.com)

Collectively, these are exactly the sort of “blockbuster” generative‑AI licensing deals Friedberg anticipated: large rights‑holders licensing substantial content libraries to AI companies for model training and generative outputs, in exchange for significant payments and new revenue lines.

His more specific example of Disney licensing its library did not materialize in 2024—reports in late 2024 still described Disney and Paramount only as being in talks with AI providers, with no announced library‑licensing deals. (techcrunch.com) But the core prediction was about several big generative‑AI licensing deals by major IP owners happening in 2024, which clearly occurred, so the prediction is best scored as right overall.

The prediction was that around the March 2024 expiry of the Bank Term Funding Program (BTFP), the Fed would either extend BTFP or create a successor facility providing similar special liquidity to regional banks.

What actually happened:

1. The Fed explicitly announced that BTFP would end on schedule on March 11, 2024, and did not extend it. In a January 24, 2024 press release, the Federal Reserve Board stated that the BTFP “will cease making new loans as scheduled on March 11” and only adjusted the interest rate on remaining loans; it did not announce any extension. (federalreserve.gov)

2. The Fed’s own BTFP page confirms the facility stopped extending new loans on March 11, 2024. The official description notes that “The BTFP ceased extending new loans on March 11, 2024,” with no mention of renewal. (federalreserve.gov)

3. Independent reporting also describes BTFP as ending on schedule, with no successor program. Reuters and other outlets reported that the Fed would “allow [the] emergency bank lending program to expire on March 11” and that the program “stopped making new loans on March 11, a year after its creation,” again with no indication of a replacement facility. (investing.com)

4. Support continued only via existing, ordinary facilities, not a new special program. In its communications on BTFP’s wind-down, the Fed emphasized that after March 11, banks would continue to have “ready access to the discount window” and other standard tools; this is part of the standing framework, not a new emergency or special regional-bank facility. (bankingjournal.aba.com)

5. Remaining BTFP loans simply ran to maturity; that is not an extension or successor. Banks could borrow or refinance up to March 10–11, 2024 for terms of up to one year, meaning outstanding balances persisted into 2025, but this was within the original one‑year loan design and did not constitute an extension of the program’s authorization or the creation of a new facility. (reuters.com)

6. Later Fed analysis treats BTFP as a time‑limited, closed program, with no follow‑on facility. A 2025 Federal Reserve staff paper describes BTFP as an emergency liquidity facility that “ceased issuing new loans in March 2024 and closed one year later as the last loans matured,” without referencing any replacement program. (federalreserve.gov)

Given that the Fed neither extended BTFP past its scheduled March 11, 2024 end date nor created a clearly analogous successor emergency facility for regional banks, the core prediction—that the Fed would have to replace or extend BTFP to keep supporting regional banks—did not occur. Therefore, the prediction is wrong.

Based on public information up to December 1, 2025, Starlink has not gone public via an IPO or spin‑out.

• SpaceX and Elon Musk have repeatedly discussed the possibility of a future Starlink IPO, often tying it to the company achieving more predictable cash flows, but have not executed such a transaction.
• There is no record in major financial news, SEC filings, or stock exchange listings of a standalone Starlink IPO or a formal corporate spin‑out during calendar year 2024.

Given that the prediction was specifically about Starlink going public during 2024, and that no IPO or spin‑out occurred in that timeframe, the prediction is wrong.

Jason predicted that in 2024 TikTok (or ByteDance via a TikTok-specific entity) would complete an IPO or public spin‑out, under political pressure to reduce CCP influence on the board.

By the end of 2024 and well into 2025:

• TikTok is still not publicly traded, and there is no TikTok-specific public entity. Multiple 2025 overviews of TikTok’s IPO status state explicitly that TikTok has no ticker, is not listed on any exchange, and remains owned by private parent ByteDance. (ebc.com)
• ByteDance itself likewise remains a private company; it is described in current references as a privately held firm with venture and founder ownership, not listed on public markets. (ts2.tech)
• In 2024, the U.S. instead passed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which forces ByteDance to divest TikTok or face a ban by January 19, 2025, but this divestiture requirement is separate from any IPO and did not result in a completed public listing or spin‑out during 2024. (en.wikipedia.org)

Because no IPO or public spin‑out of TikTok (or a TikTok-specific entity) was completed in 2024, the prediction did not come true.

Multiple large, highly publicized licensing deals between major rights‑holders and AI companies were in fact signed during 2024, well beyond anything resembling a NYT/OpenAI settlement.

Examples (all explicitly licensing content for use in training models and/or generative responses in products like ChatGPT/SearchGPT):

• News Corp – OpenAI (May 2024): Multiyear licensing deal granting OpenAI access to current and archived content from The Wall Street Journal, New York Post, The Times, The Sun, etc., widely reported as potentially worth over $250 million over five years and used both for training and chatbot answers. (apnews.com)
• Financial Times – OpenAI (April 2024): FT licensed its content for training OpenAI models and to let ChatGPT surface attributed FT summaries with links back to the FT site. (straitstimes.com)
• Dotdash Meredith – OpenAI (May 2024): One of the largest US digital/print publishers (People, Better Homes & Gardens, Investopedia, etc.) signed a multiyear content license for AI training and ChatGPT responses; later disclosures show OpenAI paying at least ~$16M per year. (reuters.com)
• TIME – OpenAI (June 2024): Multi‑year “strategic content partnership” giving OpenAI access to 101 years of TIME archives and current content for use in its models and responses. (openai.com)
• The Atlantic & Vox Media – OpenAI (May 2024): Separate multiyear content and product partnerships that license their archives for model training and allow ChatGPT to surface their journalism with attribution. (openai.com)
• Condé Nast, Hearst, Future plc – OpenAI (Aug–Dec 2024): Additional multiyear licensing deals covering major brands like Vogue, The New Yorker, Wired, Cosmopolitan, Elle, PC Gamer, Tom’s Guide, and hundreds of other titles, again explicitly for generative‑AI usage. (openai.com)

Given the number, scale, and publicity of these 2024 licensing agreements between major publishers and OpenAI (and the fact that they are specifically about generative‑AI products), Friedberg’s prediction that we’d see “a couple of big deals like that this year” clearly came true.

Public reporting shows that OpenAI’s late‑2023 employee tender offer valued the company at about $86 billion post‑money. (techcrunch.com)

In February 2024, a Thrive Capital‑led tender did close at around an $80 billion valuation, which is indeed below that late‑2023 level. (forbes.com) However, later in 2024 OpenAI raised $6.6 billion in a new funding round at a $157 billion valuation, nearly double the earlier ~$86 billion figure. Multiple outlets (Forbes, TechCrunch, and others) reported this October 2, 2024 round and valuation. (forbes.com) CNBC subsequently noted a SoftBank tender in November 2024 that explicitly referenced this $157 billion round. (cnbc.com)

By the end of 2024, then, the most recent secondary and primary transactions were implying a valuation far above—rather than below—roughly $90 billion. Under the normalized prediction that OpenAI’s implied enterprise value by year‑end 2024 would be lower than that late‑2023 level, the prediction did not come true, even though there was a temporary dip to ~$80 billion earlier in the year.

Public data on OpenAI’s private-market valuation shows that investors who bought around a ~$90B valuation in 2023 were well above water by the end of 2024.

Key points:

• In 2023–early 2024, OpenAI ran an employee tender offer that valued the company at about $86B, with reports of secondary transactions around that level; Jason’s comment about people “buying secondary at 90 billion” refers to buyers paying a modest premium over this price. (theinformation.com)
• By August 30, 2024, TechCrunch reported that secondary-market bids were already valuing OpenAI above $100B, with some bids implying valuations up to $143B, and a data provider (Caplight) estimating its value at over $111B based on secondary activity. That is already well above $90B. (techcrunch.com)
• On October 2, 2024, OpenAI closed a major $6.6B funding round that valued the company at about $157B, more than 70% higher than a $90B entry price. Multiple outlets (Reuters, MarketWatch, BusinessToday, others) reported this valuation. (investopedia.com)
• On November 26, 2024, CNBC reported a further $1.5B employee tender offer to SoftBank, explicitly stating that the share price in that deal matched the company’s most recent $157B funding valuation, confirming that this higher mark was still in effect heading into year‑end 2024. (cnbc.com)
• In 2025, valuations only climbed further (to $300B in a SoftBank‑led round and then $500B in secondary sales), underlining that there was no subsequent down‑round that would retroactively make the 2023 ~$90B buyers structurally underwater. (reuters.com)

Given that by end of 2024 OpenAI’s widely cited valuation was about $157B, far above the ~$90B secondary valuation Jason warned about, those investors were not underwater on paper. On the available evidence, the prediction that they would be “underwater next year” is therefore wrong.

Friedberg’s prediction concerned the probability that in calendar year 2024 a nuclear weapon would be used in an armed conflict somewhere in the world. To evaluate it as of the end of 2024, we check whether any such nuclear use occurred.

Historical and contemporary records show that the only wartime uses of nuclear weapons remain the U.S. bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945; there has been no subsequent use of nuclear weapons in combat, including during 2024. Major nuclear-weapons monitoring organizations, global news outlets, and international bodies (e.g., UN, IAEA) extensively track and report on nuclear incidents; none report any nuclear detonation in warfare in 2024. This includes the major conflicts of that year (e.g., Russia–Ukraine, Israel–Hamas and related regional tensions), where nuclear use would have been unmistakable and globally reported.

Because no nuclear weapon was used in an armed conflict in 2024, the specific event whose chance he quantified (1–2% probability of nuclear use) did not occur. In forecast-scoring terms, assigning a small probability to an event that does not happen is not a factual error; however, in this task we are judging whether the event he predicted would possibly happen actually did happen in that year. Since it did not, the outcome for the proposition “a nuclear weapon will be used in conflict in 2024” is false, so the prediction that such an event might occur is evaluated here as wrong.

(Note: If we were strictly assessing probabilistic calibration, a 1–2% forecast for a non-occurring event would be considered reasonable, not ‘wrong.’ But under the binary correctness standard requested—did the described event happen during 2024 or not?—the result is that it did not.)

Available evidence shows no formal or alliance-level move in 2024 to push Turkey out of NATO or to negotiate its departure.

• Turkey remained a full NATO member throughout 2024. Fact‑checkers debunked viral claims that Turkey was leaving NATO, noting there were no such announcements from NATO, the Turkish government, or credible outlets, and no sign of withdrawal procedures under Article 13 being triggered.
• Within NATO, Turkey actually helped reduce prior friction by ratifying Sweden’s NATO accession in January 2024, removing a major obstacle to alliance expansion.
• Ankara continued to engage in normal alliance politics in 2024, including dealing with the succession to NATO’s secretary general; Turkey ultimately backed Mark Rutte’s candidacy, underscoring ongoing participation rather than institutional rupture.
• There were high‑profile rhetorical calls to expel Turkey from NATO in 2024. Notably, Dutch politician Geert Wilders—leader of the largest party after the 2023 Dutch elections and prime‑minister‑designate—publicly urged that “Turkey should be expelled from NATO” over its support for Hamas. Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz likewise called on NATO to expel Turkey and instructed diplomats to lobby NATO members after President Erdoğan threatened possible intervention in Israel. A U.S. congressional candidate, Alex Balekian, also said he wanted a law to exclude Turkey from NATO. However, these were individual or third‑country statements; no NATO body or member government moved to open a formal process or collective negotiation about Turkey’s status, and NATO has no expulsion mechanism in any case.
• Similar “expel Turkey from NATO” rhetoric and even a U.S. House resolution had already appeared years earlier (e.g., Tulsi Gabbard’s 2020 resolution and assorted expert/official commentary), so 2024 was not clearly the first or qualitatively new “fracturing” moment on this issue.

Because 2024 did not see NATO or its members initiate a concrete, institutional challenge to Turkey’s membership—only recurring public calls of the kind seen in prior years—the prediction that this year would bring a significant political move or formal challenge to Turkey’s NATO status, marking an initial visible fracturing of the alliance, did not materialize.

Economic and market outcomes in 2024 were broadly consistent with a relatively smooth soft landing, not a “very bumpy” one with major setbacks.

1. U.S. economy:

• U.S. real GDP grew about 2.8% in 2024, with no recession, while employment stayed at record levels and unemployment only edged up from 3.7% in January to about 4.2% by November, still historically low. Real hourly wages were near record highs, indicating strong purchasing power. (en.wikipedia.org)
• This is exactly the type of outcome commonly described as a successful soft landing: inflation falling toward target without a sharp rise in unemployment or output contraction. (en.wikipedia.org)

2. Global economy:

• The IMF repeatedly characterized the global picture as an approach to or achievement of a soft landing: global growth around 3.1–3.2% in 2024, modestly below the 2000–2019 average but steady, with inflation declining. (imf.org)
• There was no global recession or systemic financial crisis; the narrative by major institutions through and after 2024 was that the world had largely avoided a hard landing.

3. Financial markets and volatility:

• The S&P 500 returned roughly 25% including dividends in 2024, its second consecutive year of >20% gains, and hit numerous all‑time highs. (dqydj.com)
• Global equities were also strong overall: MSCI World was up about 17% for 2024, with North America particularly strong. (panoramicfp.com)
• Measures of volatility contradict the idea of a very “bumpy” year. The Cboe Volatility Index (VIX) averaged about 15.5 in 2024, which Bloomberg noted was heading for its lowest annual average since 2019. (bloomberg.com)
• Analysis of S&P 500 drawdowns shows maximum intra‑year decline only ~8.5%, quieter than most years. (dorseywright.nasdaq.com)
• A 2024 market recap reports full‑year realized S&P 500 volatility around 12.7%, with volatility mostly subdued outside a brief spike around the U.S. election—again, not unusually turbulent by historical standards. (gia.com)

4. Comparing to the prediction:

• Sacks predicted that, contrary to late‑2023 optimism, the soft‑landing path in 2024 would become “very bumpy” economically and politically, with significant market and economic volatility and setbacks (even if avoiding a technical recession).
• Actual data show: no recession, solid growth, easing inflation, very strong equity returns, and below‑average or typical volatility by multiple measures. Political tensions and an election‑related volatility spike occurred, but they did not translate into the broadly turbulent, setback‑heavy scenario he warned about.

Given that 2024 delivered a relatively smooth soft‑landing outcome with strong markets and limited drawdowns, the prediction that the soft landing would become “very bumpy” for the economy and markets is best classified as wrong.

Evidence by late 2024 strongly supports Jason’s prediction.

• In June 2024 at WWDC, Apple announced “Apple Intelligence”, a broad suite of on‑device and cloud AI features (writing assistance, image generation/editing, etc.) for iPhone, iPad, and Mac, branded explicitly as its generative AI platform and positioned as a major strategic move. (pcquest.com) These capabilities began rolling out later in 2024 via OS updates (iOS 18, iPadOS 18, macOS Sequoia). (pcquest.com)
• The same initiative included a substantial Siri upgrade: Apple described a more capable assistant able to perform hundreds of new actions across apps and to tap into OpenAI’s ChatGPT, with a visible redesign and “personal intelligence” framing. Major coverage called this an “extensive makeover” for Siri and highlighted the ChatGPT integration as central to making Siri smarter. (adn.com)
• Mainstream outlets repeatedly framed this as Apple “entering the AI race” or “jumping into the race to bring generative AI to the masses,” explicitly contrasting Apple’s new efforts with earlier leaders like Microsoft and Google and treating Apple as now actively competing in generative AI rather than remaining on the sidelines. (adn.com)

By the end of 2024, Apple had launched major new AI capabilities, begun a significant Siri reboot, and was broadly covered as a real participant in the generative‑AI race. That matches the substance and timeline of Jason’s prediction, so it is right.

Available performance data show that the Global X Uranium ETF (URA) did not end up “among the best‑performing assets” in 2024.

• URA’s 2024 return: Multiple sources (Yahoo Finance and AskTraders, which pull from fund/market data) report URA’s calendar‑year 2024 total return at about –0.53%, essentially flat-to-slightly-negative. (asktraders.com)
• Broader market comparison: The S&P 500 delivered a ~25% total return in 2024, a very strong bull-market year, driven especially by mega‑cap tech stocks. (broadway.bank) Many thematic and leveraged ETFs, especially crypto- and AI‑related products, posted far higher returns; StatMuse’s list of top 2024 ETFs shows numerous funds with returns from ~90% into the triple‑ and even four‑digit percentages, and URA does not appear among those leaders. (statmuse.com) That is inconsistent with URA being “among the best-performing assets” for the year.
• Uranium/nuclear complex performance: Uranium‑focused benchmarks likewise underperformed: Sprott data show that by August 31, 2024, uranium mining equities were down about 13% year‑to‑date, while the S&P 500 was up nearly 20% over the same period. (sprott.com) Full‑year fundamentals also don’t match a runaway “easy money” bull year: TradeTech data cited in a 2024 report indicate the spot uranium price actually fell about 19% over 2024, from $91 to $73.50 per pound. (sec.gov) That’s not the price behavior you would expect if uranium exposure were one of the standout winning “assets” of the year.

There was indeed an ongoing pro‑nuclear narrative and longer‑term demand story, but for the specific year 2024, URA and uranium equities did not rank among the top‑performing assets by return. On that basis, the prediction that URA would be "easy money" and among the best‑performing assets in 2024 is wrong.

Evidence on this prediction points in different directions depending on how you define the "public software index" and the benchmark for "late‑stage private tech/SaaS" valuations.

1. Public tech/software indices in 2024

• A reasonable proxy for a public software index, the iShares Expanded Tech‑Software Sector ETF (IGV), returned +23.41% in 2024 on a total‑return basis.【3search3】
• A more focused public SaaS benchmark, the Bessemer Emerging Cloud Index (EMCLOUD), rose about 14.3% in 2024, far below mega‑cap hyperscalers whose combined market cap rose 29% that year.【2search3】

So public software/tech did positively in 2024, but not uniformly spectacularly, and it underperformed the biggest cloud/AI platform stocks.

2. Late‑stage private SaaS valuations in 2024

• Bessemer’s Cloud 100 (a curated list of top private cloud/SaaS companies) reported that in 2024 its cohort’s aggregate equity value grew to $820B, with the average company valuation up ~25% year‑over‑year – but average revenue multiples fell from 26x in 2023 to 23x in 2024.【2search1】 That is: absolute valuations up, multiples compressed.
• A SaaS‑wide venture report using PitchBook data found that the median revenue multiple for all software venture rounds fell from 11.3x in 2023 to 10.1x in 2024, and that late‑stage (Series C) median pre‑money valuations in 2024 ($225M) were still well below the 2021 peak of $320M, indicating a continued reset versus the bubble era.【1search5】
• PitchBook’s 2024 Annual US VC Valuations Report shows that median annualized valuation growth between rounds for later‑stage startups was at a decade low, with the median Series D+ step‑up only ~1.2x, far below 2021 levels, i.e., many later‑stage rounds were effectively flat.【5search1】
• Sapphire Ventures, looking specifically at Series B+ enterprise software (mostly SaaS), reported that in Q2 2024, 41% of financings were flat or down rounds, the second‑highest level since 2010, and that many secondary transactions cleared well below prior private‑round valuations.【5search3】
• A private‑markets overview noted that, in this environment, “most late‑stage SaaS players are seeing flat or declining valuations,” highlighting Figma as a case where the valuation stayed roughly the same as 2021 while revenue nearly doubled, i.e., companies growing into prior prices rather than getting marked up.【4search3】

At the same time, some broad private‑market indices rebounded strongly from their 2022–23 lows:

• EquityZen’s 2024 review shows that private companies moved from trading at ~45% discounts to last primary rounds in January 2024 to ~11% discounts by Q3 2024, with its Private Markets 100 index showing aggregate price appreciation of ~38% over that period.【5search4】
• Fortune, citing PitchBook, noted that while flat and down rounds hit decade‑high levels in 2024, the median late‑stage pre‑money valuation slightly exceeded 2021’s median, reflecting that the companies still raising are a selected, stronger subset.【4search5】

3. Comparing the trade Chamath described Chamath’s trade was conceptually long public software/tech indices, short late‑stage private tech/SaaS, with the thesis that private late‑stage SaaS valuations would contract or stay flat even as these companies kept growing and issuing dilutive stock‑based comp.

Parts of that thesis did play out:

• There is strong evidence of ongoing multiple compression and valuation stagnation in much of late‑stage private SaaS:
  • Revenue multiples for venture SaaS rounds ticked down in 2024.【1search5】
  • Late‑stage step‑ups were minimal by historical standards; many deals were flat or down.【5search1】【5search3】
  • Case studies like Figma show flat valuations against rapidly rising revenue, exactly the “grow into your 2021 price” dynamic Chamath described.【4search3】
• Meanwhile, a liquid public software index like IGV delivered a solid +23.41% in 2024, confirming that public software exposure would have generated respectable gains.【3search3】

But other data cuts against a clean win for his relative‑value call:

• The top private cloud/SaaS cohort (Cloud 100) saw average valuations rise ~25% in 2024, slightly more than IGV’s 23.41% return, even though their average revenue multiple fell. An investor short that specific high‑quality private basket on headline valuation would likely have lost in price terms over 2024.【2search1】【3search3】
• Secondary markets for leading private tech recovered from very steep discounts; one widely followed index of 100 large private names appreciated around 38% over 2024, again outpacing mainstream public software indices.【5search4】

4. Why the outcome can’t be scored cleanly

• There is no single, agreed‑upon “late‑stage private SaaS index” to put directly against IGV/EMCLOUD. Different samples (Cloud 100, secondary‑traded unicorns, all Series B+ SaaS deals, etc.) give different answers on whether public or private did better in 2024.
• On valuation multiples and the qualitative picture (flat/down rounds, revenue growth with little or no valuation step‑up, dilution from new equity), Chamath’s description of ongoing private‑market compression is broadly supported.【1search5】【5search1】【5search3】【4search3】
• On headline valuation levels/price performance, however, the strong rebound at the top end of the private cloud/SaaS market and in secondary indices means it is not clear that being long a public software ETF and short a representative basket of late‑stage private SaaS in calendar 2024 would have reliably outperformed.【2search1】【5search4】

Because the answer depends heavily on which private cohort and which metric (multiples vs absolute valuations) you choose, the prediction cannot be clearly marked as fully correct or incorrect based on available 2024 data. Hence the classification here as "ambiguous."

Available performance data show that neither oil nor energy‑related equities were among the top‑performing major asset classes in 2024.

• Within U.S. equities, the S&P 500 returned about 25% total in 2024, while the S&P 500 Energy sector returned only about 5.7%. A sector breakdown from RBC (using total returns including dividends through 12/31/24) shows Energy at +5.72%, far behind leading sectors such as Communication Services (+40.2%), Information Technology (+36.6%), Financials (+30.5%), and Consumer Discretionary (+30.1%), and only barely ahead of laggards like Real Estate and Materials. (rbcwealthmanagement.com)
• A press release and fund commentary referencing the S&P 500 Energy Sector explicitly confirm that it returned 5.7% in 2024, noting that "the Energy market presented challenges" that year—again indicating that energy equities were not strong relative performers. (nasdaq.com)
• Looking at major asset classes globally, a 2024 asset‑class return table shows: Bitcoin +120.8%, gold +27.2%, U.S. large‑cap equities +23.3%, U.S. small caps +10.1%, etc., while crude oil (as a commodity) returned only +0.7% in 2024—near the bottom of the major‑asset‑class stack and well below equities and gold. (visualcapitalist.com)
• Oil prices themselves did not experience a big upside shock from geopolitical risk. A 2024 review notes that Brent crude traded mostly in a stable $74–$90 band and finished the year around $74.64, about 3% below its final 2023 close of $77.04, marking a second straight annual decline for Brent. (livemint.com)

Because both oil prices and energy stocks produced only mid‑single‑digit returns and clearly underperformed leading sectors and asset classes, the prediction that energy/oil would be "among the top performers of 2024" due to escalating geopolitical conflict and supply‑disruption risk did not come true.

Available 2024 data show that Germany’s real GDP contracted by about 0.2% in 2024, while the euro area as a whole grew around 0.9%, and most large peers such as France, Spain and the U.S. recorded positive growth, placing Germany near the bottom of advanced economies. (destatis.de) The IMF and other analyses describe Germany as the only G7 country with no economic growth or two consecutive years of contraction over 2023–24, repeatedly characterizing it as the weakest performer and reviving the “sick man of Europe” label. (reuters.com) These same assessments explicitly link Germany’s weakness to the energy‑price shock from the shut‑off of Russian gas, which pushed energy costs up and hurt energy‑intensive industry. (aa.com.tr) In parallel, Germany’s auto sector—a key export engine—saw falling sales and shrinking market share in 2024 as cheaper Chinese EV makers gained ground in China and Europe, with analysts and policymakers warning that Chinese competition is undermining German carmakers and contributing to Germany’s poor growth performance. (politico.eu) Overall, Germany did significantly underperform its peers in 2024 and was widely viewed as one of the main economic losers among advanced economies, with both the loss of cheap Russian gas and intensified competition from Chinese cars identified as major headwinds—closely matching Sacks’s “double whammy” prediction.

Evidence from 2025 shows that professional sports franchise enterprise values did not peak in 2024; they continued to rise to new all‑time highs across major leagues.

NFL: Forbes’ 2025 list values the Dallas Cowboys at $13 billion, up 29% from their 2024 valuation (just over $10 billion). The average NFL franchise rose to $7.1 billion, a 25% year‑over‑year increase, with all 32 teams now above $5 billion in value—record levels for the league. These figures represent clear appreciation, not a stall or reversal after 2024. (forbes.com)

NBA: Forbes’ 2025 NBA valuations show the Golden State Warriors at $11 billion, the Lakers at $10 billion, and the Knicks at $9.75 billion, all higher than their 2024 valuations (e.g., Warriors at $8.8 billion on the 2024 overall most‑valuable‑teams list). (en.wikipedia.org)
In 2025 transactions, a control stake in the Boston Celtics implied a $6.7 billion valuation, and the Portland Trail Blazers sale valued that lower‑tier franchise at about $4.25 billion—both at rich revenue multiples and consistent with continued investor appetite and rising values, not a peak already passed. (forbes.com)

Global soccer: Forbes’ 2025 ranking of the world’s most valuable soccer teams values Real Madrid at $6.75 billion, up about 2% from 2024, and reports that the top 30 clubs are collectively worth $72 billion, with the average club value up 5% year‑over‑year to a new record. (forbes.com) Again, valuations increased over 2024 levels.

MLB and other leagues: 2025 Forbes‑based MLB valuations also show team values generally rising, with clubs like the Red Sox, Cubs, and Giants all at or near record levels. (thetelegraph.com) Forbes’ methodology for these lists explicitly treats the numbers as enterprise values (equity plus net debt), matching the “enterprise value” concept in the prediction. (forbes.com)

Across the NFL, NBA, global soccer, and MLB, 2025 data show higher franchise enterprise values than in 2024 and, in many cases, accelerating or at least ongoing appreciation. That contradicts both parts of the prediction:

• 2024 was not the valuation peak (2025 values are higher), and
• the rapid appreciation of the prior decade did not clearly stall or reverse after 2024.

Given the available 2024–2025 valuation data, the prediction that “2024 is the peak in terms of valuations of professional sports” and would mark the high‑water mark for pro‑sports franchise values is wrong.

Available 2024–25 data shows vertical SaaS was not broadly “smacked” in 2024, nor was there evidence that enterprises at scale replaced expensive vertical SaaS with homegrown AI/low‑code tools in a way that drove widespread churn, pricing collapse, or sector‑specific valuation damage.

1. Sector performance and valuations. Analyses of public and private vertical SaaS companies show they traded at a substantial valuation premium to broader SaaS in 2024 (around 12.3× revenue vs ~7.6× for general SaaS), and investors continued to favor vertical software deals.(medium.com) Benchmarks also report that in 2024, vertical SaaS platforms outperformed horizontal SaaS by over 17% in revenue bands above $1M ARR, indicating relative strength rather than a broad hit.(tight.com)

2. Company fundamentals. Leading vertical SaaS players like Veeva, Procore, and Toast reported strong revenue growth and healthy net retention through 2023–24 (e.g., Veeva net retention >120%, Procore ~30% YoY revenue growth, Toast ARR and revenue growing >20%+).(pmarketresearch.com) Industry commentary repeatedly highlights vertical SaaS as a growth area and “the future of software,” not a segment in systemic distress.(saasworthy.com)

3. AI and the build‑vs‑buy story. Multiple 2024–25 analyses explicitly push back on the idea that enterprises are broadly abandoning vertical SaaS in favor of internally built AI tools. A detailed 2025 review argues that companies are not scrapping their software portfolios to run on DIY AI scripts; instead, vertical SaaS vendors are weaving AI into their existing products and are seen as well‑positioned in the AI era.(medium.com) A 2024 essay responding directly to Friedberg’s anecdote about churning from a $5k/seat tool concludes that, while such cases can occur, the author remains “long” vertical SaaS and views Friedberg’s extrapolation as overstated.(medium.com) Where AI coding tools are discussed as a threat to SaaS, they are framed as an emerging mid‑market risk rather than evidence that vertical SaaS had already been broadly disrupted in 2024.(businessinsider.com)

4. Macro context. Vertical SaaS valuations did normalize from 2021 bubble highs, but this is described as part of a general SaaS/venture reset driven by higher rates and tighter capital, not a 2024 AI‑driven collapse specific to vertical SaaS.(fractalsoftware.com)

Taken together, the evidence shows vertical SaaS remained comparatively strong in 2024—with premium valuations, solid growth, and investor enthusiasm—and AI was more often a feature inside vertical SaaS than a large‑scale substitute for it. That contradicts Friedberg’s prediction that vertical SaaS companies would be broadly “smacked” in 2024 by customers rapidly replacing them with homegrown AI solutions.

Evidence from 2024 and early 2025 shows that the core of Jason’s prediction—continued sluggish smartphone and premium-smartphone sales in 2024—did not materialize at the market level, even though some details (like long upgrade cycles and flat iPhone revenue) were directionally right.

Key points:

1. Global smartphone unit sales rebounded in 2024, rather than remaining sluggish.
   IDC reports worldwide smartphone shipments reached about 1.24 billion units in 2024, up 6.4% year‑over‑year, marking a strong recovery after two years of decline and six consecutive quarters of shipment growth. (businesswire.com) This is inconsistent with a continued "major slowdown" or broadly "sluggish" unit sales in 2024.

2. Premium smartphones grew faster than the overall market instead of seeing flattened/weak revenue growth.
   Counterpoint Research finds the premium segment (≥$600) grew about 8% YoY in 2024, outpacing overall smartphone market growth (~5–6%), and its share rose to 25% of the global market, a record high, with OEMs explicitly “focusing on revenue over volume.” (counterpointresearch.com) That indicates robust, not flat or weakening, revenue growth for premium smartphones overall.

3. Apple’s own iPhone business was flat, but that’s the exception, not the whole premium market.
   Apple’s FY 2024 Form 10‑K shows iPhone net sales of $201.2B in 2024 vs. $200.6B in 2023, and Apple explicitly describes iPhone net sales as “relatively flat” year‑over‑year. (sec.gov) IDC’s shipment data similarly show Apple’s 2024 smartphone shipments down about 0.9% YoY (232.1M vs. 234.3M). (businesswire.com) This does match his claim that high‑end makers like Apple would see muted growth—but the prediction was framed as a broader, global premium‑smartphone slowdown, which did not occur.

4. Upgrade/refresh cycles did continue to lengthen, but this did not prevent a 2024 rebound.
   IDC notes that even as refresh cycles continue getting longer and the used‑phone market grows, 2024 still brought a solid shipment rebound driven by pent‑up upgrade demand. (itnewsonline.com) Consumer reporting in 2025 also emphasizes that Western users now tend to upgrade roughly every four years instead of two, clearly indicating people are skipping multiple generations. (thetimes.co.uk) So the “people will skip 2–3 versions” / long‑cycle part was accurate, but it did not translate into the broad, continued slump he forecast for 2024.

Putting it together:

• Correct: upgrade cycles lengthened and Apple’s iPhone revenue was basically flat.
• Incorrect at market level: 2024 did not continue a “major slowdown” in smartphone unit sales, and premium‑smartphone revenue growth accelerated above the market rather than flattening or weakening.

Because the central thrust of the prediction was that 2024 would be another year of sluggish smartphone and premium‑smartphone performance globally—and the actual data show a clear rebound and strong premium growth—the prediction as stated is best judged wrong overall.

Using IGV (iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector ETF) as a broad public software/tech benchmark, calendar‑year 2024 performance was about +23–27%, and the Nasdaq‑100 was up roughly 22.6% in 2024, indicating strong gains for public tech/software stocks over that year. (companiesmarketcap.com) For late‑stage private tech, the Forge Private Market Index—tracking actively traded, venture‑backed late‑stage companies—returned only +6.7% in 2024, far below public tech/software indices and implying significant relative underperformance. (forgeglobal.com) Carta’s 2024 private‑markets review finds that Series E+ (very late‑stage) pre‑money valuations were down 18% year‑over‑year and highlights a broader ‘late‑stage lull’, with late‑stage valuations still well below 2021 highs. (carta.com) PitchBook‑based SaaS VC data also show median revenue multiples on software venture rounds falling from 11.3x in 2023 to 10.1x in 2024, i.e., further multiple compression for private software deals despite more capital deployed. (buttondown.com) Although a handful of AI giants (OpenAI, Anthropic, Databricks, xAI) saw large valuation mark‑ups, analysts emphasize these as concentrated outliers in an otherwise subdued late‑stage market. (reuters.com) Taken together, public software/tech indices clearly outperformed while late‑stage private tech/SaaS valuations experienced continued pressure and contraction relative to public markets in 2024, matching Chamath’s directional prediction.

Evidence from 2024 shows that neither energy stocks nor oil itself were among the top‑performing asset classes, and oil prices did not experience an exceptional, conflict‑driven spike.

• Energy stocks underperformed other equities. The S&P 500 energy sector returned only about 1.9–5.6% in 2024, versus roughly 23% for the overall S&P 500, and ranked near the bottom of the 11 sectors (9th out of 11 by one breakdown).(visualcapitalist.com)
• Oil was not a top asset class. A cross‑asset table of 2024 returns shows crude oil up only about 0.7% for the year, while Bitcoin, gold, U.S. large‑cap stocks, and several other assets posted far higher gains. Commodities as a whole returned about 2.6%, again leaving crude oil well away from the top tier.(visualcapitalist.com) Even sources that estimate a mid‑teens gain for crude still place it far behind leading commodities like cocoa, coffee, and gold.(ctol.digital)
• Oil prices rose but stayed range‑bound rather than spiking. Brent crude averaged about $81 per barrel in 2024, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.(eia.gov) There were periods (e.g., April 2024) when Brent climbed into the high‑$80s, helped by Middle East tensions and other geopolitical risks, but analysts repeatedly characterized prices as stable or range‑bound, with a modest risk premium rather than a large, one‑off spike.(reuters.com)

Given that (1) energy equities were laggards rather than leaders and (2) oil prices moved within a relatively moderate band instead of delivering a dramatic, conflict‑driven surge, Sacks’s prediction that energy stocks and prices would be among the top‑performing asset classes in 2024 due to a significant geopolitical spike in oil did not come true.

Jason defined his “consumer comfort services” pick as on‑demand platforms like DoorDash, Airbnb, and Uber: “small luxuries like DoorDash, Airbnb, Uber… consumer comfort services is my pick for the best performing asset of 2024.”(podscripts.co)

Looking at 2024 total returns for those exemplars:

• DoorDash (DASH): +69.6% in 2024.(alphacubator.com)
• Airbnb (ABNB): –3.47% in 2024.(financecharts.com)
• Uber (UBER): about –2% in 2024.(financecharts.com)
  A later review of the All‑In predictions similarly characterizes this basket as “mixed,” noting a strong gain in DoorDash but flat‑to‑low‑single‑digit gains for Airbnb and Uber.(linkedin.com)

An equal‑weighted basket of these three names would have returned roughly +21% in 2024—respectable, but below or in line with broad U.S. equities, which returned around +23–25% (S&P 500 / U.S. large‑caps; Nasdaq‑100 about +25.9%).(rbcwealthmanagement.com) Several major equity sectors (Communication Services, Information Technology, Financials, Consumer Discretionary) returned 30–40%, clearly outperforming this “consumer comfort” basket.(rbcwealthmanagement.com)

Across major asset classes, 2024 was dominated by Bitcoin, which is widely documented as the best‑performing asset class of the year with ~120%+ returns, far ahead of stocks, gold (~27%), and other categories.(visualcapitalist.com) In published asset‑class league tables, top slots are consistently occupied by Bitcoin, then gold and U.S. large‑cap equities—not a “consumer comfort services” grouping.(visualcapitalist.com)

Because Jason framed this as the best (or at least one of the standout top) asset categories for 2024, and in practice the DoorDash/Airbnb/Uber theme delivered only mid‑tier equity performance and clearly lagged the widely recognized top‑performing assets, the prediction did not come true.

Available performance data for calendar year 2024 show that the Magnificent Seven significantly outperformed the rest of the S&P 500 (the so‑called “S&P 493”), meaning a long S&P 493 / short Magnificent Seven spread would not have been profitable.

Dimensional Fund Advisors’ analysis "Mag 7 Gravity" reports that for 2024 (as of December 31, 2024):

• S&P 500 total return: 25.0%
• Magnificent Seven basket return: 48.3%
• Other 493 stocks in the index ("S&P 493"): 15.9% (ifa.com)

A separate summary of the same Dimensional data used in adviser commentary reiterates that in 2024 the Magnificent Seven surged about 48%, while the remaining 493 stocks returned about 16%. (axis.ausiex.com.au) Other market commentary similarly characterizes 2024 as another very strong year for the Magnificent Seven, with estimates of their group gain around 60%+, further confirming their clear outperformance of the broader index. (markets.financialcontent.com)

Because the Magnificent Seven substantially outgained the S&P 493 over the full year 2024, a trade that was long the S&P 493 and short the Magnificent Seven over that period would have lost money on a relative basis. This is the opposite of the predicted outcome, so the prediction is wrong.

Evidence from 2023–2024 private funding rounds and sector-level data shows the opposite of what Jason predicted.

1. Flagship LLM startups saw big up-rounds, not 50–80% markdowns, between 2023 peaks and end‑2024.

   • Cohere was valued around $2.1–2.2B in June 2023, then raised a new round in July 2024 at $5.5B, more than doubling its valuation instead of falling 50–80%. (en.wikipedia.org)
   • Mistral AI was valued at “over $2B” in Dec 2023 and then raised a June 2024 round at €5.8B (~$6.2B), roughly tripling its valuation in a year. (en.wikipedia.org)
   • OpenAI completed an employee tender in late 2023 valuing it at $86B, and a follow‑on deal reported in Feb 2024 again valued it around $80–86B, i.e., holding or rising rather than dropping by half or more. (cnbc.com)
     Across the best‑known LLM startups, primary and secondary transactions in 2024 point to higher or at least sustained valuations vs. 2023, not a broad 50–80% reset.

2. Sector‑wide VC data shows GenAI/LLM companies were among the hottest areas of investment in 2024, not one of the worst‑performing asset categories.

   • An EY generative‑AI deal study (Dec 2024) reports that GenAI VC investment continued to surge in 2024, with total 2024 deal value expected to exceed $45B, up sharply from 2023, and explicitly describes GenAI as leading the way within AI funding. (ey.com)
   • Barron’s notes that overall VC funding in 2024 was still well below 2021, but AI investments grew over 80% year‑on‑year and accounted for close to one‑third of all VC funding, underscoring that AI/LLM startups were a central bright spot, not a laggard. (barrons.com)
   • A 2025 ecosystem report summarizing 2024 shows GenAI grabbing nearly half of all global VC money by end‑2024, characterizing GenAI as “the hottest investment trend,” again inconsistent with it being among the worst‑performing asset classes. (startupwired.com)

3. Other sectors, not LLMs, are singled out as 2024 underperformers.
   A global startup‑ecosystem report notes that sectors like Cleantech, Edtech, AdTech, and Digital Media saw funding and exits fall sharply in 2024, and describes their outlook as “rather gloomy,” while predicting AI will “remain the major growth sector” and continue to draw increasing VC capital. (startupgenome.com) That’s directly at odds with LLM startups being among the worst asset categories.

4. No credible data supports a broad, hidden 50–80% private‑market markdown for LLM startups by end‑2024.
   There were certainly many overhyped or weaker AI startups and some quiet down‑rounds or shutdowns, but available funding data and secondary‑market valuations for leading LLM companies show strong or rising prices, not a sector‑wide crash. If LLM startups had truly been marked down 50–80% across the board and become one of the worst‑performing asset classes in 2024, we would expect to see widespread reports from PitchBook, Carta, secondary‑market platforms, and major financial media. Instead, contemporaneous reporting frames GenAI as the standout growth and capital‑magnet sector of 2024.

Given the observable data by December 31, 2024, Jason’s prediction that LLM startups would broadly fall 50–80% in valuation and become his worst‑performing asset/one of the worst asset categories did not materialize.

Available market data indicates that a long‑hyperscaler / short‑SaaS trade in 2024 would have been attractive in roughly the way Friedberg described.

1. Hyperscale cloud/AI providers materially outperformed most software/SaaS in 2024

• A December 2024 analysis of the “Big Three” clouds (Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet) shows they added about $1.8T of market cap in 2024, a combined ~29% increase, with Amazon +49%, Google +36%, and Microsoft +18%. Over the same period, the BVP Nasdaq Emerging Cloud Index (67 leading public SaaS companies) rose only 14.3%. This directly shows hyperscaler stocks materially outpacing a broad SaaS basket. (newsletter.partnerinsight.io)
• Barron’s notes Amazon’s stock was up ~44% in 2024, attributing the move significantly to AI‑driven growth in AWS and related businesses. (barrons.com)
• An Evercore/TipRanks review of Microsoft states that in 2024 MSFT rose ~12%, underperforming the S&P 500 (+25%) and a software ETF (+30%), but still positive and benefiting from cloud/AI expectations. (nasdaq.com)
• Alphabet’s 2024 stock performance was also strong: its shares were up roughly 25% for the year by December 10, 2024, with AI and advanced computing (e.g., its Willow quantum chip) flagged as key drivers. (en.wikipedia.org)

Taken together, a simple long basket in MSFT/AMZN/GOOGL would have returned roughly the mid‑20s% in 2024—clearly ahead of broad SaaS indices.

2. Public cloud/SaaS (including many vertical names) lagged hyperscalers in 2024

• The same Big‑Three vs BVP Emerging Cloud comparison above shows 29% combined hyperscaler market‑cap growth vs 14.3% for top SaaS names in 2024, i.e., SaaS underperformed large cloud platforms by roughly half on this proxy. (newsletter.partnerinsight.io)
• A May 2024 review of SaaS & enterprise software funding reports that the Bessemer Cloud Index was in negative territory for 2024 YTD and underperforming both the Nasdaq and S&P 500, underscoring relative weakness in listed cloud/SaaS names early in the year. (ctol.digital)
• Sapphire Ventures’ mid‑2024 “Broad Software Index” (133 enterprise software stocks) gained only 4% in 1H 2024, while the S&P 500 rose 14%, the Nasdaq 18%, and the Magnificent 7 (mega‑cap AI/tech, including the big clouds) 32%. (sapphireventures.com) This further confirms broad software/SaaS stocks lagged the mega‑cap cloud/AI leaders.

3. Vertical SaaS specifically did not generally lead equity performance

• Detailed, public, 2024‑only performance data for a pure "vertical SaaS index" is sparse, but sector work is consistent with vertical SaaS being part of the broader SaaS underperformance: Software Equity Group’s 2024 SaaS report shows the “Vertically Focused” cohort’s median growth had fallen and was weighed down by a very weak bottom quartile, indicating investor pressure and uneven performance in public vertical names compared with a handful of strong outliers. (scribd.com)
• A 2025 sector review by First Analysis notes that in a later period (June 2025 quarter), vertical SaaS stocks in their universe gained only ~5% on average and underperformed both the overall SaaS universe and the market, suggesting that even where fundamentals held up, vertical SaaS share performance remained relatively muted compared with hotter categories like cybersecurity and data visibility. (firstanalysis.com) While that reference is for 2025, it reflects a continuation of the same multi‑year pattern of SaaS/vertical SaaS lagging mega‑cap cloud/AI leaders.
• There were notable individual exceptions: for example, Toast, a restaurant‑focused vertical SaaS company, “nearly doubled in value” in 2024 according to Investor’s Business Daily. (investors.com) But Friedberg talked about going short the bucket of vertical software relative to hyperscale cloud stocks; a few big winners do not overturn the aggregate picture from the indices.

4. Does this match Friedberg’s claimed trade?

• His prediction was directional: “short vertical SaaS/vertical software companies and long cloud providers that have AI tools and platforms.”
• The best available proxies show that:
  • Hyperscalers (MSFT, AMZN, GOOGL) and similar cloud/AI leaders had strong double‑digit returns in 2024, with a combined market‑cap gain near 30%. (newsletter.partnerinsight.io)
  • Public SaaS—including many vertical names—materially underperformed both those hyperscalers and the main equity indices, with key SaaS indices flat to low‑teens for the year and even negative earlier in 2024. (newsletter.partnerinsight.io)

In other words, an investor who was broadly long the big cloud platforms and short a basket of vertical/cloud SaaS stocks through 2024 would, on net, have profited from the spread.

Because the prediction is qualitative (“underperform/outperform, making the trade attractive”) rather than a precise numerical hurdle, and the relative performance gap is large and well‑documented at the index level, it is reasonable to treat the prediction as having come true overall—despite a few standout vertical SaaS winners.

The prediction was that starting in 2024 and over the next few years, many high‑priced vertical SaaS vendors would see significant per‑seat pricing compression that would materially hurt revenue growth and profitability.

Two issues make this impossible to score definitively as of December 2025:

1. Time horizon isn’t over. “Over the next few years” reasonably implies a 3–5 year window from 2024. We’re only ~2 years in, so the forecast period is still in progress.

2. Available data points mostly show price increases, not compression, and are not specifically about vertical SaaS per‑seat pricing.

   • Broad SaaS pricing studies report that a substantial share of vendors raised prices in 2024. A PricingSaaS/Q1‑2025 trends report (summarized by Ray Rike) notes that 21.6% of SaaS companies increased prices in 2024, with price hikes on select plans averaging 27%. (linkedin.com)
   • SaaStr’s 2025 analysis of SaaS pricing calls the current environment a “Great SaaS Price Surge”: they report that around 50% of software companies are preparing to raise prices and cut discounts, and that average SaaS spend per employee is up roughly 27% over two years. Salesforce, as an example, has used price increases as a major growth lever rather than cutting prices. (saastr.com)
   • Other benchmarking and commentary pieces on B2B SaaS emphasize that when seat growth slows, vendors often respond by raising per‑seat prices, not cutting them; average SaaS spend per employee jumped nearly 18% from 2022 to 2023, consistent with this pattern. (uplatz.com)
   • For vertical SaaS specifically, recent overviews highlight strong performance and premium pricing power. A 2024 vertical‑SaaS roundup notes that vertical players are generally outgrowing the broader SaaS market, with high retention and the ability to command premium prices in their niches, rather than citing widespread price compression. (webuildsaas.com)

There are early signs of pressure on traditional SaaS models from AI and competition:

• An AlixPartners study on mid‑market enterprise software finds slowing growth, declining net dollar retention, and competitive pressure from AI‑native and low‑cost entrants, which could translate into discounting or margin pressure over time. (businessinsider.com)
• Forward‑looking commentary specifically about vertical SaaS argues that AI and automation are likely to be deflationary for SaaS margins and will erode the ability to charge premium prices, but this is framed as a future impact rather than documented, broad-based price compression already observed in 2024–2025. (insights.fusion-42.com)

Net assessment:

• So far, market data shows rising SaaS prices and strong vertical‑SaaS pricing power, not “significant per‑seat pricing compression” across many vendors.
• However, the prediction explicitly spans multiple years beyond 2025, and some of the structural pressures it describes (AI‑driven competition, margin pressure) are only beginning to show up.

Because the forecast window is still open and current evidence does not yet cleanly confirm or falsify the multi‑year outcome, the fairest classification today is “inconclusive (too early)”, not definitively right or wrong.

Evidence from 2024–2025 shows the opposite of what Chamath’s prediction implied:

1. Tech/software valuations did not “have a long way to go down” – they went up.

   • The Nasdaq‑100 (heavily tech and software) returned +24.9% in 2024 and is up about +20% in 2025 to late November, following a +53.8% gain in 2023, indicating a strong rally rather than a further large drawdown from 2023 levels. (slickcharts.com)
   • The iShares Expanded Tech‑Software ETF (IGV), a broad software ETF, was up ~16% over the prior 12 months as of July 31, 2024, then +21% year‑to‑date as of Feb 5, 2025, and +31% over the last 12 months as of June 11, 2025 – again consistent with rising, not collapsing, software valuations. (nasdaq.com)
   • While a high‑growth cloud ETF (WCLD) did experience drawdowns (e.g., ‑23% YTD and ‑14.6% over the prior year as of April 8, 2025), by October 31, 2025 its 1‑year return was +7.9% and 3‑year average annual return ~9%, suggesting volatility but not a sector‑wide collapse "a long way" below early‑2024 levels. (zacks.com)
   • A Reuters analysis in November 2025 notes that U.S. tech’s share of S&P 500 market cap is at multi‑decade highs and its forward P/E (~29x) is well above the 10‑year average, explicitly characterizing valuations as stretched, not compressed. (reuters.com)

2. Gross margins for software/tech did not compress toward 35%; they remained very high.

   • A 2024 software industry study reports 2023 gross margins around 70% for the sector, with a 10‑year median near 67%, already far above 35%. (blacknoteinvestment.com)
   • Updated 2025 benchmarks put SaaS gross margins in the 75–85% range on average, reinforcing that leading software businesses continue to enjoy very high gross profitability. (grossmargin.co.uk)
   • NYU‑Stern and other benchmark compilations similarly show software categories (system/application, internet, entertainment) with gross margins typically 60–70%+, not trending toward 35%. (thecfoclub.com)
   • Individual “best‑run” software names (e.g., Unity, Gartner) still show gross margins around ~70%+, with the industry median software gross margin over 40%, both well above the ~35% level Chamath used in his argument. (gurufocus.com)

3. High‑multiple software/AI names remain richly valued rather than broadly re‑rated down.

   • In 2025, Figma’s IPO priced up to an enterprise value of about 55× forward 2026 revenue, making it one of the most richly valued public software companies; Palantir was cited trading at about 80× next‑year revenue, far above any notion of compressed valuation multiples. (launchbaycapital.com)
   • An AI‑focused public‑company index reports a median next‑twelve‑month revenue multiple around 8–10× as of mid‑/late‑2025, again indicating robust valuations in a key software subsector. (flybridge.com)

Taken together, by late 2025 we do not see: (a) software/tech gross margins converging toward ~35%, nor (b) a substantial, sustained sector‑wide decline in software/tech equity valuations from early‑2024 levels. Instead, margins remain structurally high and broad tech/software indices are significantly higher than at the time of the prediction. On the available data, Chamath’s prediction has been wrong so far.

Public sources recount David Friedberg’s anecdote that an engineer at his company replicated a $5,000‑per‑seat‑per‑year vertical data‑management tool and that they planned to roll out this internal replacement in Q1 2024.(podscripts.co) Later analyses of his “vertical software” prediction by Euclid Ventures and Reformation Partners retell the same story but only as originally described on the podcast; they do not mention whether the internal tool was actually deployed or when.(insights.euclid.vc) A broader search for updates from Friedberg, Ohalo, or related entities likewise turns up no confirmation of a successful rollout, failure, delay, or open‑sourcing of the tool.(ohalo.co) Because this concerns an internal system and there is no public follow‑up on its implementation timeline, the real‑world outcome of the “Q1 2024 rollout” prediction cannot be determined from available evidence, even though enough time has passed. Therefore the result is ambiguous, not verifiably right or wrong.

Friedberg’s statement in the episode is that “there’s this tidal wave coming to market soon of cell and gene therapies. They’re going to have a profound effect on a lot of disease conditions.”(podscripts.co) The prediction is explicitly about “coming years” after 2023, i.e., a multi‑year trend rather than something that should be fully visible by late 2025.

What we can observe so far:

• By the end of 2023 there were on the order of a few dozen–roughly 70+–cell and gene therapies approved globally, with a rapidly expanding pipeline (thousands of candidates in clinical development).(industryresearch.biz)
• Since the episode aired (Jan 2024), additional high‑profile cell/gene therapies have been approved, such as lifileucel (Amtagvi) for metastatic melanoma (Feb 2024), atidarsagene autotemcel (Libmeldy/Lenmeldy) in the US (Mar 2024), and revakinagene taroretcel (Encelto) for macular telangiectasia type 2 (Mar 2025), along with further expansions and new approvals in areas like spinal muscular atrophy and graft‑versus‑host disease.(en.wikipedia.org)
• The clinical pipeline is still very large and growing: recent industry and market reports describe >2,000 active cell and gene therapy clinical trials and more than 3,000 development‑stage candidates by 2023–2024, with regulators like the FDA expecting to review 10–20 such therapies per year in coming years.(biospectrumasia.com)

These facts show early movement in the predicted direction (more approvals and a huge pipeline), but they do not yet establish that a “tidal wave” of therapies has actually reached the market and is having a “profound effect on a lot of disease conditions” in aggregate. Uptake remains constrained by high costs and access/reimbursement challenges, and most of the thousands of candidates are still in trials rather than approved products.(biospectrumasia.com)

Because:

• the prediction’s horizon is explicitly multi‑year/long‑term, extending well beyond 2025, and
• the current evidence is consistent with the prediction but far from decisive either way,

it is too early to say whether the forecasted “tidal wave” and broad, profound disease impact have truly materialized. Therefore the status of this prediction as of December 1, 2025 is best classified as inconclusive (too early to tell).

Friedberg’s prediction was that in 2024 there would be “a science corner … that says, look at this amazing new thing that was discovered in software, and it works,” i.e., a notable new drug/material/production‑method–type technology discovered using AI models rather than traditional brute‑force lab work.

In 2024, the All‑In podcast did exactly this:

• On May 3, 2024, they released the episode “In conversation with Sheryl Sandberg, plus open-source AI gene editing explained,” whose Science Corner segment is explicitly titled “Science Corner: Open-source AI gene editing with OpenCRISPR-1.” (zeno.fm)
• That segment links to Profluent’s OpenCRISPR-1 GitHub and work. (zeno.fm) OpenCRISPR‑1 is described by Profluent as an AI-created gene editor—a Cas9‑like protein and guide RNA fully developed using large language models trained on massive CRISPR sequence datasets, rather than through traditional discovery or directed evolution. (profluent.bio)
• Profluent’s 2024 announcements and technical write‑ups report that OpenCRISPR‑1 successfully performs precision editing of the human genome in cells, with activity comparable to or better than SpCas9 and improved specificity, and that it has been released as an open-source, licenseable tool for research and commercial use. (profluent.bio) Independent coverage (e.g., Chemical & Engineering News) characterizes this as a generative‑AI‑designed, new‑to‑nature gene editor created by protein language models. (cen.acs.org)

This clearly satisfies the normalized prediction:

• AI-driven predictive models, not brute-force discovery: OpenCRISPR‑1 was generated by LLM-based protein design models trained on vast CRISPR sequence data, then experimentally validated—exactly the “discovered in software, then shown to work” pattern Friedberg described. (profluent.bio)
• New therapeutic/biotech modality: While it’s a gene-editing tool rather than a finished pill, it is a novel, AI-designed molecular system intended for therapeutic and biomanufacturing applications, analogous in importance to a new drug platform. (profluent.bio)
• Featured as a Science Corner in 2024: The All‑In episode explicitly labels the segment as a Science Corner about “open-source AI gene editing with OpenCRISPR‑1,” within the 2024 calendar year. (zeno.fm)

Because at least one such AI-discovered biological technology reached a major experimental and commercialization milestone in 2024 and was indeed featured as a Science Corner topic on the show, Friedberg’s prediction is right.

ETF approval part:

• On January 10, 2024, the U.S. SEC approved 11 spot Bitcoin ETFs (e.g., from BlackRock, Fidelity, Ark/21Shares, Invesco, etc.), matching the “series of ETFs” and “days away” timing in early 2024.
  → This portion of the prediction was correct.

Mainstream adoption / ‘traditional financial lexicon’ part: Chamath’s broader claim was that by the end of 2024 Bitcoin would have mainstream adoption in the sense that it is:

1. Widely understood
2. Easily purchasable by retail investors, including older demographics
3. Commonly treated as part of the traditional financial asset lexicon

Assessing these points is inherently qualitative:

• Easily purchasable: After ETF approvals, BTC exposure became available in standard brokerage accounts (Fidelity, Schwab, Robinhood, etc.), including for retirement accounts and older investors. This clearly increased access and made Bitcoin more like a conventional asset in distribution channels. (This part leans true.)
• Widely understood: Surveys and media coverage through 2024 show growing awareness of Bitcoin and crypto, but not consistent, deep understanding in the general population, especially among older or less tech-savvy groups. A large portion of the public still views Bitcoin as speculative/volatile and does not fully understand how it works or its investment thesis. (This part is not clearly true.)
• Part of the traditional financial lexicon: Bitcoin and Bitcoin ETFs are now regularly covered by mainstream financial media and included in portfolio discussions (e.g., “alternatives,” “digital assets,” or small satellite allocations). But it is not yet treated as a standard core asset class on par with stocks and bonds in most traditional asset-allocation frameworks and retirement plans. It remains somewhat niche/controversial rather than universally accepted. (This is partially but not fully true.)

Because “mainstream adoption” and being part of the “traditional financial lexicon” are subjective thresholds without a clear, quantitative cutoff, and the evidence points to partial fulfillment (access and visibility yes, universal acceptance and understanding no), the overall prediction cannot be cleanly scored as right or wrong.

Conclusion:

• ETF timing and approvals: right.
• Strong-form claim about Bitcoin’s mainstream adoption and fully entering the traditional financial lexicon by end of 2024: partially realized but not clearly achieved.

Given the mix of clearly correct and inherently subjective elements, the fairest overall verdict is "ambiguous" rather than definitively right or wrong.

The prediction explicitly concerns what things will look like “when we look back on it in 5 or 10 years” starting from 2024. That sets the evaluation window roughly between 2029 and 2034.

As of today (December 1, 2025), we are less than two years into that 5–10 year horizon. While AI capabilities do appear to be advancing quickly and are increasingly visible to mainstream consumers, the core claim is about how the entire multiyear trajectory will look in hindsight (whether exponential-like improvement continues and whether innovations keep diffusing into the mainstream over that full period).

Because the specified timeframe has not elapsed, we cannot yet say whether the exponential-like pace will continue over the full 5–10 years or whether consumer diffusion will sustain at the implied rate. Therefore the prediction cannot be definitively judged at this time and is best classified as too early to call.

Evidence from 2024 strongly supports Jason’s prediction that a key trend would be efficiency via AI tools plus aggressive use of lower‑cost global remote talent at roughly one‑third of U.S. cost.

1. AI tools explicitly adopted to boost efficiency in 2024

   • A 2024 survey of 3,000 American managers by Beautiful.ai found that 66% said they were adopting AI tools specifically to enhance worker productivity or improve efficiency, and 90% had already introduced AI into their own workflows; 68% were encouraging employees to use AI if it helped them perform better. (beautiful.ai)
   • Tech.co’s 2024 “Impact of Technology on the Workforce” report found that businesses heavily using AI tools were much more likely to report high productivity (72%), and that digital collaboration + AI tools were now “key to increasing productivity.” (allwork.space)
   • An HR-focused summary of the same manager survey likewise reports that most managers are bringing AI into the workplace to drive productivity and efficiency, not just as a curiosity. (thehrdirector.com)
     Collectively, these show that in 2024, using AI for efficiency was not fringe behavior—it was a central management theme across companies, consistent with Jason’s framing.

2. Remote hiring/outsourcing to cheaper geographies surged in 2024

   • Deel’s Global Hiring data, reported in Nearshore Americas and other outlets, shows that demand for remote Latin American tech experts “leapfrogged” in 2024, with U.S. companies actively “scouring the region for talent.” Remote hiring growth was striking: Chile up 67%, Colombia 55%, Mexico and Argentina 54%, Brazil 53%, all versus the prior year. (nearshoreamericas.com)
   • A 2024 hiring-trends piece on Colombia, relying on Deel’s Global International Hiring Report, notes that Colombia stayed in the global top tier for remote hiring, with the U.S. and U.K. among the main countries hiring Colombian professionals for tech and other skilled roles. (colombiaone.com)
     These are exactly the kinds of cross‑border, remote knowledge‑work arrangements Jason was describing, and they clearly accelerated in 2024.

3. Cost arbitrage at roughly one‑third of U.S. rates is empirically accurate

   • A 2025 Deel–Carta compensation report (with 2024 data) shows median engineering/data salaries in India at $36k in 2024 versus $122k in the U.S.—Indian pay is under 30% of U.S. levels, i.e., roughly one‑third. (timesofindia.indiatimes.com)
   • A LinkedIn post citing 2024 Glassdoor and regional data highlights that Indonesian and Vietnamese senior developers deliver comparable work at “one‑third the cost” of Silicon Valley engineers, giving U.S. figures around $175k versus local ranges of about $48k–72k. (linkedin.com)
   • A 2025 salary analysis (drawing on 2024 ranges) compares senior software developers in the U.S. at $120k–$150k to similar roles in Latin America at $40k–$60k, again around one‑third to one‑half the U.S. cost, with some roles and countries showing even larger gaps. (weknowinc.com)
     These data points match Jason’s claim that startups can often hire remote talent abroad for about a third of the U.S. cost.

4. Putting it together: was this a major 2024 startup/company trend?

   • On the AI side, multiple 2024 surveys show broad, management‑level adoption of AI explicitly for productivity and efficiency, across industries—not a niche experiment. (beautiful.ai)
   • On the global talent side, Deel’s large data set (hundreds of thousands of contracts) and the coverage it received in 2024/early‑2025 describe remote hiring from Latin America and other lower‑cost regions as a core way companies—especially cost‑sensitive firms—are building teams. (nearshoreamericas.com)
   • Contemporary analyses of LatAm vs U.S. salaries explicitly frame this as a strategic play for startups and fast‑growing product teams to get high‑quality talent at far lower cost, confirming that cost‑efficiency via global remote hiring had become mainstream startup advice by then. (weknowinc.com)

There is nuance—AI adoption was uneven (e.g., many employees reported confusion or even reduced productivity, and some regions like French SMEs were slower to invest). (forbes.com) But Jason only claimed this would be a leading trend, not a universal practice.

Given: (a) widespread 2024 use of AI specifically for efficiency, (b) strong documented growth in remote/offshore hiring to lower‑cost regions, and (c) salary differentials that are indeed around one‑third of U.S. levels in many cases, Jason’s prediction about the dominant 2024 trend of AI‑driven efficiency plus global labor arbitrage is well supported by the evidence.

Available evidence shows that the full, specific scenario Friedberg described did not materialize in 2024.

1. Closest match – Channel 1 AI did not clearly launch as a full consumer product in 2024.

   • Channel 1 announced an AI‑powered news network with photorealistic AI anchors and a personalized news experience. Plans called for a FAST channel in February/March 2024 and a dedicated app later in 2024 that would learn viewers’ interests and deliver tailored stories.(advanced-television.com)
   • Coverage throughout 2023–2024 repeatedly describes Channel 1’s offering as upcoming or set to launch, pointing to a 21–22‑minute demo newscast with AI anchors, not an already‑operating, widely‑available consumer app.(cointelegraph.com)
   • Later industry write‑ups in late 2024 still refer back to Channel 1’s 2023 AI‑anchor demo and focus on new internal production tools, not on an already‑launched personalized consumer app with interactive controls.(mediagazer.com)
   • I could not find an iOS or Android “Channel 1” consumer app, or mainstream 2024 coverage saying “Channel 1 app is now live” with personalization features; sources keep talking about it planning to launch, not that it already has.

2. Neus AI and similar apps are personalized news, but not new 2024 launches and not clearly real‑time video anchors with rich interactive controls.

   • Neus AI – News Assistant Video (iOS) offers a personalized news feed, daily short video briefings and radio, and explicitly mentions “video news briefings from AI news anchor,” plus an in‑app chatbot and user‑chosen categories/publications.(apps.apple.com)
   • However, Neus AI’s app history shows it has existed since 2022, with video, radio, and AI features rolling out from 2022–2023 onward, well before 2024; 2024 updates mainly refine personalization and UX.(apps.apple.com)
   • So Neus AI is at best one partial example, not a 2024 launch, and the description does not clearly indicate a fully synthetic, on‑screen avatar anchor with the kind of fine‑grained “tell me less about X, more about Y” video‑presentation control Friedberg described.

3. Other AI news anchor systems in 2024 are either older experiments, propaganda use, or B2B tools, not consumer news products matching the prediction.

   • China’s Xinhua–Sogou AI anchor (2018) and People’s Daily’s virtual anchor Ren Xiaorong predate 2024; Ren allows users to select from preset topics inside the People’s Daily app but is not a new 2024 product.(en.wikipedia.org)
   • A 2024 Guardian analysis and other reporting describe AI‑generated anchors proliferating on social platforms and in state‑backed propaganda (e.g., deepfake “Wolf News”‑style clips), but these are mainly disinformation or one‑way broadcasts, not interactive consumer apps that let individual users dynamically customize a real‑time video newscast.(theguardian.com)
   • Numerous services (VEED, Topview, Elai.io, JustBaat, etc.) let creators or publishers generate scripted AI‑anchor videos from text, aimed at marketing or quick video production. They do not themselves fetch and synthesize real‑time multi‑source news for end‑users with conversational controls over topics and style.(veed.io)

4. Truly interactive, consumer‑facing AI news anchors arrived later and/or without the full feature set.

   • NewsVoice: AI News Broadcaster on iOS, for example, markets itself as “the world’s first interactive AI news anchor,” offering live, up‑to‑the‑minute spoken news on any topic with conversational follow‑ups—but it is audio‑first and its 1.0 release and major updates are dated January–February 2025, after the 2024 window.(apps.apple.com)

Putting this together:

• In 2024 there were demos and pilots (Channel 1) and partial precursors (Neus AI, state‑backed AI anchors, B2B avatar‑video tools), and AI‑generated news clips became more common on social media.
• But I could not find evidence that multiple consumer‑facing products launched in 2024 that: (a) deliver real‑time, AI‑generated video news, (b) are fronted by synthetic presenters, and (c) let ordinary users interactively steer both topics and presentation style in the flexible way Friedberg described.

Given that gap, the prediction that “during 2024, multiple consumer‑facing products will launch” with those specific real‑time, interactive AI‑video‑news capabilities is best judged wrong.

The Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA) of 2023 did create a mechanism for an automatic 1% reduction in discretionary spending caps if Congress failed to complete appropriations, but it did not operate on a mid‑January 2024 timetable, nor did an across‑the‑board 1% cut actually occur.

1. Timing in the law: OMB’s December 22, 2023 guidance explained that although the FRA revises the caps when a continuing resolution (CR) is in effect on January 1, no sequestration order is issued on January 1. Any across‑the‑board cuts (sequestration) would only be considered after full‑year appropriations are enacted or on April 30, 2024, whichever came first, if a short‑term CR was still in effect then. OMB explicitly said it would “take no action on Jan. 1, 2024” and agencies should not self‑sequester. (voter.org) So the prediction’s scenario of an automatic 1% cut being triggered in mid‑January is inconsistent with how the FRA actually worked.

2. What Congress did: Congress ultimately completed full‑year FY2024 appropriations in March 2024, not failing to agree on a budget. Six bills were enacted in the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2024 (P.L. 118‑42) on March 9, 2024, and the remaining six in the Further Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2024 (P.L. 118‑47) on March 23, 2024. (iaproject.org) A CRS analysis on exemptions to the FRA caps confirms that all 12 regular FY2024 appropriations acts were enacted in those two laws. (congress.gov) That means the April 30 “penalty” deadline was beaten, so the automatic 1% enforcement mechanism was never triggered.

3. No 1% across‑the‑board cut occurred: The same CRS report, summarizing OMB’s Final Sequestration Report for FY2024 (April 12, 2024), notes that there was no breach of either the defense or nondefense discretionary caps and thus no need for discretionary sequestration. (congress.gov) In other words, the feared across‑the‑board 1% cut to discretionary federal spending never happened at any point in 2024, let alone in mid‑January.

Because (a) the legal mechanism did not operate the way the prediction described for mid‑January, and (b) Congress passed full‑year appropriations in March 2024 such that no automatic 1% across‑the‑board cut was triggered at all, the prediction that this was the “most likely path” turned out to be wrong in outcome.